The Simplest Biz Update, a shipping products brokerage business, with entrepreneur John Wilker and special guest Tom Hinson.

John Wilker is former construction contractor and the founder of The Simplest Biz – a shipping products brokerage business. John has developed a simple yet effective business model for providing middle-man services for businesses that ship and receive products. Specifically, he acquires industrial byproducts used for shipping like pallets, cardboard boxes, crates, and sells them to others for a profit. John has perfected this business model over the past 25 years, and he helps others start their own Simplest Biz through his online video course and other resources.

John was originally on The How of Business podcast back on episode 203, and then again on episode 334.

John lives in Birmingham, Alabama.

On this episode, John share a summary of The Simplest Business – which includes flipping pallets – and the latest trends and statistics of the shipping industry.

Tom Hinson, a student of John Wilker’s The Simplest Biz course, joins us on this episode to share his experience with evaluating The Simplest Biz and starting and growing his own shipping products brokerage business. Our conversation with Tom included these topics and questions:

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of this episode of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run and grow your small business.

Resources:

Other Related Podcast Episodes:

Episode 334: John Wilker – The Simplest Biz

Episode 203: John Wilker – Shipping Products Brokerage

You can find other episodes of The How of Business podcast, the best small business podcast, on our Archives page.

Transcript:

The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

0:00:05.6 HENRY LOPEZ: Welcome to The How of Business with your host, Henry Lopez, the podcast that helps you start… Run and grow your small business. And now here is your host. Welcome to this episode of The Hello business, my guest today. Repeat guest, John Wilker. John, welcome back to the show. I had to be here in looking forward to this conversation, so many of my listeners have really been able to take advantage of this opportunity and to learn about this business opportunity, so we’re gonna revisit on this episode, John’s gonna share with us again, the simplest is business model, and we’re gonna hear from an actual client of is someone who went through his course and has his own simplest buzz business and a special than invitation to a special offer. So stay tuned for all of that. Of course. You want more information about the halibut-ness, including everything. And we’re gonna talk about on this episode. You can go to the show notes pages and find that at the Haines dot com. So let me re-introduce you, for those of you who are not familiar with John, he’s been on the show a couple of times, but John is a former construction contractor, and the founder of the simplest is the simplest business, a shipping products brokerage business, or break that down and explain what that is for those of you who may not have heard from John previously.

0:01:26.8 HENRY LOPEZ: But what it is, is John has developed a simple, yet effective business model for providing middleman services for businesses that ship and receive products, and yeah, that’s a lot of different businesses that are local to you, and specifically, one of the things he teaches as he acquires industrial by products, that’s just a fancy name for the kind of stuff that’s used to ship things like palates, wooden pallets, cardboard boxes, crates and so on, there’s all kinds of different materials that companies receive when they receive particularly raw materials or components, and then he takes those from companies that don’t need him anymore, and sells them, brokers them for a prophet. John has perfected this business model over the past 24 years, and maybe even 25 now, and he helps others through the simplest bus and online video course. Helps others learn how to do this, and we’re gonna hear from Tom Hinson and specific is one of those people that went through his course back in 2019 and now has his own business. As I mentioned, John was originally back on the show in episode 203that was released back in August of 2018, John, how long it was that episode has now been downloaded over 5,500 times, then you were back on the show for episode 334 in October of 2020.

0:02:51.9 HENRY LOPEZ: That goes to show you how it… This year has been such a blur for me on… We’re recording this at the end of 2021… Well, that episode from October of 2020 has been downloaded 7900 times so far. Yeah, well, this has been an incredibly popular topic, and you’ll understand why if this is the first time you’re exposed to it, you’ll understand why… As we get into it, John lives in Birmingham, Alabama. So once again, John will welcome back to the show. Glad to here. And just when you go over that review and I hear it coming out of your… Your description of what this business is… Who knew? Palettes could be so sexy. Right, and even when I was putting this training together, I knew how much I loved it all these years, it was a hard nut to crack to figure out, Alright, how am I gonna help people understand this and really see, ’cause we are dealing with something kind of innocuous, but once you learn about it and see all angiotensin our society, you almost say, if it didn’t exist, society magnates. Interesting, yeah, I mean, it’s so essential, we’ve become very hyper-understanding of how essential containers are to the whole supply chain, but when people do realize maybe they do, is inside those containers, most of that stuff is on balance, right.

0:04:22.7 John Wilker & Henry Lopez: That is great, and we have not created the anti-gravity Machine yet to take from place the other… The palette is the way everything is moved, and with the internet is what happen right now, the amount of goods that are being moved now is just not… You know What’s going on off it goes to California, so everything is at capacity and just stretching to even get bigger and needing to get bigger, because there’s such a demand to move stuff in this country worldwide, actually. So the internet has created a swarm of pallets and grades and shipping goods, so we went from 2 million to the 25 million, 2 billion in 2020 to 25 million in 22. Collette existed in the world. Was that so right? Exactly, that’s just meant United States. Let me ask you now, I talk about this and are back in our first episode, I remember back in, I think it was in the late 90s, I was in the software business, and I forget the reasons why, but there was a pallet shortage, big pallet shortage has this situation now with the supply chain created a similar, maybe not shortage, but heightened need for these pallets or what’s been the impact on that? Yeah, it’s actually created a situation for the businesses where there’s a wood shortage of everything else…

0:05:50.5 JOHN WILKER: Exactly, but… I don’t wanna get too nerdy, I need to really probably cover this, a lot of businesses, and we’re dealing with pallets larger businesses, and they are dealing with one size palate called the standard 4840 palette. Well, in reality, there’s hundreds and hundreds of different sizes and styles of palettes in that 48, 40 price increase is practically doubled, which is good for us, we are in this position, but it’s also gotten these larger companies and all different types of companies looking for an alternative size to deal with instead of having to do with these alleys, so the squeeze is on that standard, and I see, but no other stuff that’s out there, and the way I teach this to be able to move this on these other sides of the styles of pallets which puts that in a really strong position to acquire reoccurring can from these businesses that may have given us a cooler before, in addition to the smaller businesses that need this type of stuff as well that we deal with, the mixed loads and the different styles of palette so we’re in good shape. The Palate yards are in… How much like the Galante, they’re really not at the moment, it’s just there is just been a TV pricing is on it because of that particular demand that the repetition thing.

0:07:18.2 HENRY LOPEZ: Thanks for sharing that. That’s very interesting, and I think it goes to what I wanna move to next is that this is a brokerage business and so… But as we’re gonna hear from a Tom, I’m sure when we chat with him as a brokerage in any business, it doesn’t matter what business you’re a brokering, you stand out because you solve… You help both sides solve a problem, and it’s not just about moving things were in place, the other is really about understanding, and you just gave an example of understanding a problem here that’s being created by this excess stretching of the chain and how you’re able to… As a broker, help smaller, especially the smaller companies, relatively speaking, solve this problem, right? Exactly. The knowing of what the problems of these businesses are that we deal with, whether it be a supplier or a buyer, and how to set the deal up with a pallet, dementia recurring business from a buyer, or how we’re keeping the supplier under their situation or control, ’cause they’re not all created equal. I have to walk through out in the field and the training and show you exactly how to evaluate the deal here, or the problem to me is, is the problem that we’re gonna solve for these businesses, it’s such an under-service…

0:08:41.8 JOHN WILKER: Sometimes it’s considered unprofessional niche because it’s what so-called scavengers out there selling the name, right. So we wanna go in and be able to actually ask the proper questions, have the proper solutions to whereas you’ll really be appreciated by the business owners out there that have been burned maybe in the past, to where you can solidify these deals for decades to come with recurring orders each week, and that’s what the position I wanna put people in so they can have more free time for themself… Yeah, but that’s such a great take away, you’ve talked about this before and you talk about it in the course, obviously, that there’s a real opportunity here by being a professional, by showing up, by adding value, there’s a need out there in this space to provide… Right. And it’s more than just, I have pallets. You need palate. There are things going on in the warehouse issues that are taking place, if you’ll notice, you’ll be able to notice when you go do the training, if you have to consult them and they’re not used to being consultant, not by the pallet, you are on the Avengers and that type of thing.

0:09:48.6 JOHN WILKER: So my take, it’s very important to have that knowledge and on… You don’t wanna go in there sounding like a rookie anyway, ’cause you gotta know the lingo as well, you know the lingo, you better know what they they’re talking about when you approach him. So that’s part of it is, is we ask you do this, we’ve been diving into it, but if you had to summarize what this business is at the highest level in a sentence or two, how would you explain it? I have businesses that don’t need palette scrapers and damage, and they’re either gonna give them to me for free week after week after week, or they’re gonna pay me to take it away, and I’m gonna drive for down the road to the business that ship stuff out day after day after day, and need these pallets, we after week after week, and I’m gonna drop them off there, and I write an invoice and I’m a ranching repeat, and then I’m gonna go home at 10 o’clock in the morning, go play golf because we are not working for hours, we’re working by the unit, we’re not trading time for money or training units for money, so this is a matter of how many pallets can I move before 10 o’clock this morning? We’ll kind of…

0:10:56.6 JOHN WILKER and HENRY LOPEZ: Let me come a… So you can do the math, 300 pallets by 10, six bucks a PC, 1800 bugs. Pretty simple market going, if you wanna get really down to it ’cause some… The bottom dollar is important, the freedom is what really comes down to, if you really want to translate as a way of making money in a quick batholith, out having to take your whole day up to spend some time with your wife. And I know that with more than one sentence, but… No, no, no, but that’s a part… That’s a great way to explain it. Obviously, you’ve been explaining it for some time, so thank you for doing that. Alright, here’s what I think we’ll do now, John, We’ll segue into this conversation that I had and you joined in at the end as well, so we’ll hear both of us talking to Tom Hinson, tell us just briefly about Tim from your perspective, and then we’ll segue to the conversation that we had with him about his experience with this business… Yeah, and I remember speaking to Tom way back when He waded in and when you were here to awaits distinctive it’s calling. He just… A storyteller voice, I guess is the best way of putting it. He really stood out, and he was one of the types of individuals… Sometimes I have students come in and I never hear from them. Maybe unless Erin, the Facebook group, the private group that we have, but Tom was always given me calling up and attributing in the group as well, but he would remember and he give me updates and I don’t know, we just developed an easy report. When you deal with somebody like you can see how he does well with this business as well, ’cause you have to have the knowledge at the same time to be able to communicate what you’ve learned and put it in the action. It’s so important as well. So you can tell Tom, it’s had that experience of dealing with the public, and I just love the way he won at his business and the fashion went about it, so he’s been appreciative of me as well, which… That’s always nice, and I’ve been appreciative of him because he’s really been an example for the other students in the group to follow, that’s a synergy. Lots of exchange of value.

0:13:11.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Let’s listen to that conversation now. Alright folks, I’d like to introduce a special guest here, Tom Hinson. Tom is actually someone who has been through John’s course, the simplest bus and runs this business, he’s gonna share with us how he does it, why he did it, how he came to this, and so it’s a great privilege and an opportunity to have Tom on the show, so Tom, welcome to the How obsess by Henry is a pleasure and an honor to be with you today. You had mentioned you, I think initially, you were sharing, found out about John’s program through this podcast, is that right?

0:13:52.7 TOM HINSON: That’s right, it was probably a… Well, probably March of 2019, I found out about the simplest biz and also came across you interviewing John, and so that interview, I made some great insight and created a great buzzing interest with me to look further into the simple business model.

0:14:22.4 HENRY LOPEZ: That’s wonderful. It was the only way. Thanks for being a listener. So I’d like to start with you just give us briefly, a little bit more about you, your background, and what you’ve done career-wise or job-wise in your life. Just give us a summary of that. If you would, please.

0:14:36.3 TOM HINSON: Okay, well, I currently live in South Carolina, which is where I’m from. And after I graduated college in 1978, I began taking care of a private security company out with Director of Operations for a private security company, and Maria, South Carolina, and I was with that organization for several years, and then about 1981 I became an insurance investigator for a Nationwide Insurance Company, and then that segue after some years to being the claims of manager for the 13, so the most counties of Mississippi, and then I kinda jumped a stone and went to work for New York Life and got great training in the insurance business, and then a few years after that, I took over the financial services division department of a large independent insurance agency in coastal South Carolina. And then my mom, my parents passed away, I inherited some resources from them, and my wife and I bought in a storage piece of property in the North Carolina mountains, just south of booth Carolina Ellis house in the county, and we turned it into a historic bed and breakfast and operated it that way for about 17 years, and we’re real blessed to be number one on Trip Advisor for a number of years now, and we’ve sold all of our property in 2015.

My wife and I both from South Carolina and we moved back to our home state, and then I had some time on my hands as kind of a retiree, and then low on behold, the opportunity with the simplest best presented itself and so I’ve been pretty busy with the simplest, but since 2019, between the time we sold our property in North Carolina in 2015, until I became involved in the samples is in 2019, I was doing some other… I had some side hustles that I really enjoyed, but anyway, that kind of brings me up to date now… Yeah.

0:16:55.5 HENRY LOPEZ: No, absolutely. Quite a journey. Quite a career. And of course, that historic B. And B, was that your first adventure of being your own boss owning a business outright? Was that the first time you had done that? Then based on the journey, you laid out.

0:17:11.4 TOM HINSON: Yes, it was, and my family and my wife’s family had been in the hotel motel B and B business on the North Carolina in South Carolina and Georgia coasts. And so we thought, Well, we have enough information and experience just watching our families to do this ourselves, and we were naive, but there we found out how different it is to be here on her own. And my wife and I worked well together for 17 years and still very happily married after 40 years, she didn’t kill me, so by her there first venture as business owners, and we had a great run and that was a great experience for us in our family.

0:18:04.3 HENRY LOPEZ: Fantastic, so what was it about when you heard about… So you must have been looking… You said you were doing separate different side hustles… I know in part, I’m not quite there yet, but I’ll be getting their suit when you get to that age where you retire, you still… A lot of people still need something, something to be challenged by, and of course, the extra income doesn’t hurt, but it sounds like you had been looking for something that was a good fit for you to do as a side hustle, even though you were retired, is that fair.

0:18:36.7 TOM HINSON: That’s fair. And when we sold our business, I’ve pretty much turned at 60, but thank God, I’m in good health, I’m very active, very active, and I enjoy people, I like getting out and about, and so I wanted to… I frankly enjoyed earning money, and I like to have activities that they generate income, and we’ve been blessed with what we have, but I just wanted to find something else that was enjoyable and hopefully lucrative, so be something that I could get out and about and be active and that led me into finding out about the Simple Biz, and it was kind of a funny… You can ask me about this. I think it’s kind of a funny situation how I’ve actually found out about it.

0:19:34.1 HENRY LOPEZ: Yeah, tell me about that, obviously, that you’ve heard about it initially, if I’m following you correctly on the show, but then tell me more about that.

0:19:41.2 TOM HINSON: It was about the same time, and I remember this exactly. I was at home one night on a Friday night, my wife had gone out to dinner with some friends and go to a enemies, I was at home one night by myself and I was on Facebook, and this had popped up and there’s a man sitting there with an Auburn cap on. And I’m thinking, What’s this all about? Why is this I had popping in, and he said something that was John Walker with the samples is I didn’t know him from The Man in the Moon, knew nothing about the pallet business, really didn’t know what he was talking about, but he said something to this effect that 95% of the products that I get for free. Sell a high profit.

0:20:28.4 HENRY LOPEZ: That’s anybody’s attention, right.

0:20:31.0 TOM HINSON: Well, and I remember saying out loud, do what a aortic as well as to where this was a… Well, I’ll tell you about how skepticism a doubting Thomas and Antonin Thomas. But I stayed with that, I stayed with that video that John did, and afterwards I thought, Well, who is this young? While what is this all about? And then I Googled John, and it led me to the hall of business. I see. On that same night, I listen to the podcast. Well, I thought afterwards, I thought, If this is real and legit, this is brilliant, but I was skeptical, and because I did around a private security Investigation Company, and I was an insurance investigator, so I talk to myself well, and I’m going to… John’s listening, hope won’t be upset with this, but I remember thinking of myself, well, I’m gonna investigate this joint Walker cat and this so-called business model, and I wanna check out the palate potential here, where I live in South Carolina. And I did all of that, and then I thought, Well, I’m gonna get a… Hopefully, I’m gonna schedule an appointment where I can talk with Mr. Welker and have a consultation.

0:22:02.7 TOM HINSON: And I did that with John, I think we had a very good conversation. And then after that, my wife had been watching me what some of John’s videos, and she asked me, What’s all this pallet stuff you were looking at, and I said, What is a… Amano has a training program about selling pallets, getting them for free, me selling them. And she went, Oh, well. And then my wife and I were driving to the Atlanta one day, and I said, I want you to listen to this podcast with this man on the hill of business. And she listened to it. And then after this, I say, Well, what do you think? And she said, Well, Tom, you can’t not do this. This has got Tim Henson written all over. Now, I said, I know. And she said, Have you signed up to buy that course yet? And I said, No. She says, Man, you need to do it, dude, you need to jump on that. So I’ll butters and I’ve bought a 12-foot flatbed truck about the same time, and I started in my pallet business here where I am in June of 2019, and I wish I had known about this to John, this I wish…

0:23:10.1 TOM HINSON: I don’t know about this 30 years ago, because 99% of the palace that I get for free from businesses that don’t want them, I’m able to sell for anywhere from 6 to 30 a piece… Depending on the size of the pallet. Amazing, amazing. Yeah, it is, it is like I found out that not only is it real legit and brilliant is lucrative.

0:23:38.0 HENRY LOPEZ: Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that. That’s inspirational and then I appreciate it. It’s always even just for me to know that somebody was listening in and had an impact that now you’re actually doing the business is fantastic. Feedback, I wanna go back to you what your wife said that this as… This has Tom Henson written all over you. What was she saying by that… What was it that she heard that she felt so strongly that it was a fit for you?

0:24:04.6 TOM HINSON: Well, she knows how I enjoy people, and she knows how I like to be out and about in the public, and she just thought that this would just be just right up my alley, I guess that’s just the best way to say is she wanted you out of the house a little bit, ’cause that was John’s part as we probably…

0:24:25.7 TOM HINSON: Well, you know what, the definition of retirement is something like twice the husband has the income, so… Yeah, I don’t wanna be out.

0:24:33.6 HENRY LOPEZ: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Fantastic, that’s great, that really answer is one of the biggest questions, which is, why did you decide to do this? And I just love, obvious, with your background that you would have very carefully vetted this, there’s so many courses and promises out there on the internet that you have to be so careful with, and that’s why I’ve… Over the years, I’ve developed a relationship with John of trust, and I very rarely do. I recommend a program now, there are no guarantees, there’s no guarantees in anything in life, but this is something that can work, it’s not full proof. And there might be some cases where it doesn’t work. But I think if you apply it and you apply the learnings that he offers in the course, then you can make this happen and… So tell me about the course. What did you think about the course that you took from John?

0:25:27.7 TOM HINSON: Well, it was much more valuable than I ever expected. I knew nothing about the pallet business at all, but it taught me everything that I need to know to be efficient, proficient in this business, who to talk to, what to say, what kind of companies to call on for free pallets and what kind of companies to call on that are typically buyers of balance, and this business model does revolve around finding free Palace, but there’s so much more, there’s so many other type of products that they go along with this, we’re kind of directly or indirectly involved in the shipping business, if we’re doing the Simple Biz model, because many companies have other items to get rid of that they don’t want items such as Corrugated boxes, the Gaylord boxes, metal barrels, plastic barrels, reels and schools, IBC toes, crates, Danae… There’s a revenue, another revenue stream that John teaches in the course that basically has nothing to do with selling anything, and I frankly just has generated thousands of dollars for the income for me. And that’s all Talin, the program. And then John teaches how to be a palate broker, there’s sometimes when some of our customers or potential customers will need a special type of palette that may not be readily available from our free suppose teaches in the course how to develop a good business relationship with a big pallet company, and a big pale company would be one who has the equipment to build pallets and they can build palettes for me, I broke two pieces of business where the big valley company can build a palace for me and then ship the pallets to my customers for me, and then I get a dollar amount for that, and the one, the pallet company loves me because I’m bringing him good business that he doesn’t have to go out and insert for himself…

0:27:49.2 TOM HINSON: Right.

0:27:49.7 HENRY LOPEZ: Especially at that scale, right? Because there are probably more figures on the larger opportunities, missing out on maybe smaller local opportunities. Is that true?

0:28:00.0 TOM HINSON: Well, there’s some truth to that too. And the Palos me because what he’s paying me is not coming out of his pocket, he’s paying me what I’ve added on top of his price, so that’s a good residual passive income that comes in month after month after month.

0:28:19.6 HENRY LOPEZ: How many hours a week are you putting into this business now.

0:28:23.5 TOM HINSON: Well, here’s my situation. My wife and I like to travel quite a bit, and we do. So I’m working this on a part-time basis, and I put in 10, 12, 15 hours per week, and it generates a very nice income for me that I’m very happy with.

0:28:47.0 HENRY LOPEZ: What do you do when you’re gone… Do you have somebody who continues doing the work, how do you not lose those relationships and connections, how does that work at a high level?

0:28:55.2 TOM HINSON: Well, well, what John taught me in the training course is just common-sense kind of stuff anyway, I will contact my customers before I leave and I’ll say, Look, I’m gonna be out of town from these days to this day, check your inventory. If you need me to bring you Palace before I leave, let me know. And they’ll oftentimes say, Well, you go, we appreciate you doing that, we appreciate you giving us a heads up, and then what I’ll do is, if they want some Palace before I leave, I say, Look, I’m gonna bring you some extra ones in case you get busier than you anticipate, or if my wife wants to stay at the beach next a couple of days, you’ve got plenty of pallets and you’re not gonna run out of place and you don’t have to pay… You don’t have to pay me for the exons that I bring you now, I’ll just get payment on the next go around, I met, we tell you, customers really appreciate that because unless the obtuse appreciate them, I appreciate their business. And that’s how we do that.

0:30:01.2 HENRY LOPEZ: Yeah, that’s really… Yeah, like you said, John talks about that, that really, you’re building these relationships with both sides to help them solve their problems, you’re… I think a good broker does that anyway, regardless of industry, but you’re certainly doing out here in this business…

0:30:19.1 TOM HINSON: Well, John and his training program has taught me everything that… Has helped me be successful. That’s wonderful.

0:30:26.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Alright, you’ve touched on… So one of the things I always ask is, who do you think this is a good fit for? You’ve touched on some of those things that were a fit for you, you like communicating with people and interacting with people, you wanted something that got you out of the house and out there out and about… I think another thing, John and I have talked about that I think is critical here, that often, just generally speaking now, some… An old guy people have an issue with is the business is out there and not sitting here at home behind the desk, You gotta go out during… Get it is. Do you agree with that?

0:30:59.4 TOM HINSON: Oh, absolutely, this is not dialing for dollars, this is for people who have energy, motivation, enthusiasm. That can get out and go talk to people. One of my favorite TV shows as a Bosh and Harry Bosch is an LA homicide detective. And in his cubicle, how clean this up? For the guy in his cubicle, there’s a sign that says, get off her butt and go knock on doors, this is what you have to do in this business, you have to get out and you’ve gotta go see warehouse managers, operations managers, small business owners, whoever is in charge of the palace of these business, and you have to let them… What kind of services are provided?

0:31:50.9 HENRY LOPEZ: That’s brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. I’ve found that to be, as I’m sure you have in your experience, that applies to just about any business and life doesn’t it… You gotta go. Boasts, not gonna come to you.

0:32:02.1 TOM HINSON: No, but there’s plenty… Lessee, surprising thing to me is, it was, is that there is so much business out there for this business model, it’s everywhere, large cities, medium-sized cities, even smaller towns have pallets that businesses are buying and that businesses are getting and don’t need, and this might… May discussing here. Some people might think, Why would a business give palates away for free, right? And here’s why, there’s many businesses that receive product and merchandise and on talents, but they don’t ship anything out because their customers will come to their brick and mortar businesses and buy from them, and therefore they’re stuck with these unwanted pallets and these palace oftentimes a little accumulate maybe inside their warehouses and causing them storage problems, or they may have to store them outside on their property, and it could cause problems with blocking tractor trailers, bringing in deliveries or even be an attractive-ness in the insurance business, we call a swimming pool, an attractive nuisance okay, well, palace can be an attractive nuisance for people who may be out there just scavenging, just looking for… To steal a power, pick up a palette it in the truck and go sell it to a pellet company, I get a dollar or two.

0:33:40.8 TOM HINSON: Well, anyway, we can help these businesses that have these unwanted palates solve their problem with unwanted pole by just removing them for them for free, and sometimes these suppliers will actually rent dumpsters and throw perfectly good sellable palace in the dumpsters and then after encounter phase and removal phase. When we go to them, these type of businesses are identified, the training program, we go to them and say, Hey, we can remove these Palace for you for free. I actually had a warehouse manager just about picking me up in a bar hug one day, and he said, Where have you been… Not… What do you mean? That we’ve been looking for somebody like you for years, and this is when I first started this in middle of 2019, and I said, Well, I just now started this, so that’s one… It’s a service that we can provide.

0:34:34.6 HENRY LOPEZ: It adds value, and then it recycles that item that can be used again, so there’s all of that goodness there as well, right. To say to somebody who might be interested in this, you shared some of the things that you did early on. But if someone listening is interested in this, what do you recommend as to where they should start?

0:34:55.0 TOM HINSON: Well, I think they have to kind of evaluate themselves in slave, do I have a lot of motivation, do I have a lot of energy, do I like being out and about in public? I think that those are key issues with a person’s personality, and of course they need the training program to be able to know how to do this, I mean, this is not something that one can figure out on their own. I know that John’s been doing this business for over 23 years, and he learned the hard way how to do this, so I didn’t have to… And anybody else who’s interested in this program, we’re interested in this business, they don’t have to figure it out.

0:35:37.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Yeah, well said, Absolutely, because I think, as I think about it, sometimes the name can almost be misleading and that it’s simple, it’s not… It doesn’t mean that you can go figure this out, maybe you’re probably good if you give it 24 years like John did, but it’s simple and how simple it is to implement for someone and to get started, but there’s a lot that John has figured out that he teaches in his course end, and it’s not just… Of course. But the ongoing support.

0:36:20.1 JOHN WILKER: Wonderful. I did wanna say something about the name Simple Biz… And there’s two parts of this business. The first part is knowing what to say, and you gotta know that even the lingo, you have to learn the lingo, you have to learn the industry itself and what the problems of these businesses are, but how to set the deal up correctly, evaluate the deal correctly to bidding or what’s going on in a situation to really learn how to help these businesses out the right way, that part’s not so simple, right? You need to know your stuff because you don’t wanna go in, they’re sounding like a rookie, but on the other end of the spectrum, once you have these accounts, I don’t know if Tom mentioned it yet, but the recurring aspect after that point is pick up and delivery pick up and delivery, pick up and deliver. At that point, super simple, there’s just a little bit of existing going on, but a 16-year-old to do that part of picking up and delivering Bosman, I think just for clarity, that’s a simple part of this business, ’cause that’s what the majority of your life’s gonna be like, at that point is after you got to feel constructed, but learn how to do it…

0:37:27.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Right, to lock that in. It’s simple and that I do… We’re not talking about inventory here, in most cases, we don’t have to hire people if we don’t want to, so it’s simple in that regard as well, from a startup perspective, to get started, the startup investment is in the time and energy to learn and follow what John teaches that’s the investment, but it’s otherwise it’s simple related to other businesses to get started and… Reyes, sir.

0:37:57.4 TOM HINSON: Let me mention this, that is incredibly simple. But there is a learning curve. That’s right, and I got… And personally, I do not have any employees because I don’t need any, and I don’t have any storage facilities for police because I don’t need any, and my customers are like John says, The Rise and repeat over and over and over again, calling me for pallets, and it’s good residual income.

0:38:27.8 HENRY LOPEZ: Let me ask you one last question as you mentioned it, what do you think is a fair expectation… We’re generalizing, everybody’s different, but generally speaking, from the time I start John’s course and that’s gonna take some time to complete before I realistically starting to generate some revenue. What do you think that is? A fair time frame. Well.

0:38:49.6 TOM HINSON: Here’s my testimony, I completed the course in two days were… Well, and that’s only because that I had plenty of time because I was pretty much retired
Ready… I was jumping at the bit. And so I went through it in two whole days, I started on a early Saturday morning, went through late Saturday night, started back up, so I more… And finished Sunday night. Now, here’s the thing, three days after I completed the training program, I got my first customer that they may half of what I pay for the training course, and I thought, What just happened? And then four business days later, I got my second customer and I was able to pay off the entire training program and had Bach’s my testimony. And I’m not… And I’m not unusual in, I’m sure there are other people that have hit the ground running, gotten after it, did what they had to do and started generating income quickly and… So that’s my testimony. That’s my answer. Absolutely.

0:40:06.0 HENRY LOPEZ: No, I appreciate you sharing that as… But

0:40:08.1 TOM HINSON: Not everybody, but not everybody has the time or have the time that I had or whatever. And so I’m sure that it does vary from other people with other people, and there’s two other gentlemen here in my area, they are simple operators and I’ve not worked with them, so… And we all started this in a different way, we all pay them out of the gate differently, but that’s how… What came out of the gate?

0:40:38.7 HENRY LOPEZ: That’s the… Anything I love about it is everybody can kind of adjust as to what they’re looking for and need and can accommodate in their particular at this phase in their lives, and that’s the other thing that makes it so flexible in my opinion, right. Weepin Tom, Listen, Sir, thank you so much for taking the time to share this with us, so appreciative that you’re transparent and willing to share all these insights, thanks for being a listener of the Howard business and for taking the time to be with me today.

0:41:10.1 TOM HINSON: Well, it has been my pleasure and an honor to speak with you, and I’ll just close with this, I really enjoy this business, it’s a lot of fun, and the money’s been surprisingly good, and I think this is for people who have some personality, motivated enthusiastic, and I think for people that… That are like the retirement age, this is a really good additional source of income for them that they can work into their life into their bank accounts.

0:41:49.7 HENRY LOPEZ: Wonderful. Thanks again, Tom, I appreciate you being with us today. Yes, so… Hi, John, that was a great conversation for Tom. Thanks. Thanks, first and foremost. He’s a great guy, obviously. Thanks for arranging that. Thanks for facilitating that. That was so valuable to get somebody who’s done it, and of course, as we talked about before we went into it, somebody at the caliber of Tom to share it, so thanks for putting that together for us. Well, I appreciate your time for volunteering to speak about it, and he’s put the time and he’s put the hours, and he put the Verein, and it shows as a few questions as a follow-up, but from the things that he said, first of all, what was very interesting. Is he vetted you? Right. You know how to do that. So, thank goodness, you didn’t have any skeletons in your closet is A A… I think… Yeah, you know, I didn’t know what… I didn’t do it, he said that on the thing, and I otherwise get it. There’s so many of these types of things available online, and he does… He didn’t know you, so how do you vet this…

0:42:57.1 HENRY LOPEZ: Is it real? Is it not you offer a significant number of testimonials on your website, that’s one of the things that I love, and of course I’m sharing his story serves as that, but… So let me ask you this question related to that, I asked that of Tom at the conversation there, if somebody has been listening to this and they’re interested in… What do you think they should do next? Well, I think the first part is, what are you not really after, you gotta evaluate your life and what’s the situation where you presently are, and then what are you after? And if you are truly trying to incorporate something else in your life, if they could either add more freedom or more income to your life, didn’t do take the next step if we have time, pickers on Next fit as well. I would say the next thing to do, there’s a huge difference, I made a video about this the other day, between somebody who’s gone to my YouTube channel, it’s an example, the simplest is… It’s on YouTube, if you can, I look it up. But between somebody who wide from one video and tinge what’s going on, but not quite sure, compared to someone who’s watched 10, 20, 30 videos on how to do it, but what am I getting into? Right.

0:44:09.8 HENRY LOPEZ & JOHN WILKER: What is this business about? What kind of money was in the life. What does it require? For me, what does it look? Exactly, and to be honest with you, and I want good students and a good barometer of that are the people that have taken the time to really evaluate… Okay, in addition, people do get more and more excited about this as it’s a type of thing where they hear about policy, never paid a Chinese to before, but then they become in fact in a way, and everywhere they go, they start seeing something was right under their nose, they’re allies. Meyer driving in a, buddy, you say this or they interrupt… When my daughter was here for Thanksgiving driving around town, we kept seeing, I don’t know if its the same guy, a truck with a bunch of pallets on it, and I was like, That’s it, and my daughter, because he listens to this, so hey, that’s… That pallet business I met, so you… Probably one of my students, they probably said, Oh yeah, we have students in 14 different countries there, Wow. Different entries, so he touched all the… Everywhere, everywhere.

0:45:21.8 HENRY LOPEZ: What does it take… What does it take to do this kind of a business? And he shared, he was very clear on some of those things, he was a Pratt person that likes to get out there, he’s a people person. And then we talked about the need to go out there and get it is… Those are the big things, but is there anything else that came to mind as you were listening to him that you have seen is a common denominator amongst the people who do this and are successful with it? Yes, and you have a student that’s just going out their day one, a little nervous, you never talked about palate before, and they’ll say this inside our group and then say, I was a little nervous the first day, but by the third person, they’ve spoken to him, they realized, I am talking to blue collar Salto, the earth normal people, and I’m just having a conversation, asking the right questions, trying to figure it out, and it becomes… And I think it over and over, and that fear or that uncomfortable as a bear uncomfortable just melts away within really less of a day.

0:46:23.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Interesting. And how, since we’re dealing with salt of the earth, I don’t know if that’s the best phrase I can come up with when we’re down blue colleges, regular, normal. Funny. Hilarious. Hard work and people… Exactly, they’re working hard on trying to do their job, so they are… Exactly, then when she realized that, that’s the common denominator is, Wait a minute, now I just need to help. I wanna help these people up because they’re hard working people, a lot of people use… They then going to work. Right, so for the ones that are… That you really wanna help them out, but I can. With what you’ve learned, well said, well said. Alright, let’s talk a little bit about the training program, would you introduce you just at a high level, what’s included in this training course that we have a special offer for the… How a business listeners… What is it comprised of? Yeah, and when I put this together, I wanted to put it in sequence of what you need to do first when you do second and third and forth on each given day, and as you’re going through the course, it’s out in the field.

0:47:31.6 JOHN WILKER: I won’t want to be able to see what I’m doing, so I wanted you to be there with me and go in through different scenarios for there’d be a supply or a buyer. When did you know where to go? I wanted you to know who to talk to and I wanted to know what to say, which questions to ask, so I also provide ways of even scouting the stuff from home to make it more convenient and how to be more efficient and how set deal up and identify the problems with these businesses to make a win, win, win situation. So it’s a big course, it’s not just, Here’s a couple of sheets who buys and he tells this is getting in depth on how to really help these spies out, because if you lock a deal in with this particular business model, you got them for decades, and it’s a repeatable income source multiple in a lot of cases, so I walk you through step by step and you’re taking action, is you’re going to the force, it’s video based along with cheeses and spreadsheets and list and stuff that you’ll need to actually do the business, and then lastly on the back, it’s how to do this business, but then we gotta teach how to run the back side of the business as well, so you keep on money in your pockets, first Attica, and how the devising and setting it all up, and really running the back side of the business as efficiently as possible, so we have that, and then lastly, is equally important, it’s just the training course itself, is our private Facebook group of all the members, so much information, additional information in there.

0:49:10.1 JOHN WILKER: I probably have 100 more videos in there, and me personally, and then tens of thousands of clothes from students actually sharing out in the field with they’re doing and how they’re doing, they’re recording to some of the… They’re actually… Negotiations are being… value of information inside that Facebook group that comes along with doing training, that’s so value. I wanna talk about that for a moment because I just had a conversation on a separate episode about the advantages and the potential benefits of a franchise, and there’s four things that I look out there, and the fourth is the network of other owners, typically with these types of situations, you don’t get that, but here you are facilitating that in to me, in my experience, that’s so valuable on going to have that support to be able to ask questions of other people who are doing the same thing, to get ideas… To bounce ideas off each other for support when things aren’t going so well, to me, that is incredibly valuable as it attain another level that is going on right now are collaborations with Clement in this particular college, it is absolutely huge between members that some holes, competition now you want somebody else around you that knows the deal, there’s so much business, you give it to any given block, there’s dozens or hundreds of businesses…

0:50:39.4 JOHN WILKER: Right. To deal with… There’s no way in… You can do it all. So if you have another simplest bus student in your town, I think of that is a batch, because you may have something… They need bigger deals together. It happens on the hour inside the group deals between students and it’s like a marketplace on top of everything else as far as this goes, so I’ve been… I didn’t see that at first when that part of the aspect of the Facebook group that’s to really come to fruition this last year, valuable stuff. Alright, so the hole business listeners get a special discount on this course, essentially it’s a 31% discount, a tremendous savings that’s been something that’s been there now for a little bit of time since John and I have had this relationship. That’s the value. And then what we’ve done periodically, which I’m excited that we’re gonna do again here at the beginning of 2022, this will be for a limited time, we’ve done this before, so we’re not… This isn’t a trick, this really… This piece of it, the discount will continue, but this onboarding piece, tell us about that special offer, John, and what our listeners can get there.

At one point, I wanted to have a nice bow around everything that you’ve learned in the training course and get you off to a fast start, so I went in and highlighted every aspect that you really need to pay attention to in the training, and I did a 90-minute PowerPoint presentation. Alright, and I covered every aspect of within the course, in addition to even some tips and pro-tips that needed to be vetted out further from the training itself as well, so it’s a way of really focusing, putting the blinders on, and I put that together for people at the end of the course, I normally charge for it a pretty good bit of money, but I wanted to… To your specific audience, I wanted to just throw that in. With the training. Excellent, and I appreciate that. I can say I can do it for a month at the door when you’re listening to this episode as the beginning of January, so don’t wait too long. If you’re not ready, you’re not ready, but if you’re ready, this is a great opportunity in a great motivation to go get this done, make this investment and learn about this business, so that’ll be an offer there to get that offer, you gotta link through the special link that will be on the show notes page for this episode.

0:53:06.9 HENRY LOPEZ: Or on my website, it’s multiple places at the The How of Business.com, but be sure to use that link, that’s how you’ll see on… Have to you that we’re gonna have to use that late, that’s right, that’s where you’ll see the special price on the course, and this included free onboarding bundle. So take advantage of that. Once that goes away, the special price on the course will still be there, but the special onboarding, a part of it that he’s including for free will go away… Correct. Lots of resources for you. This episode obviously, hopefully, was… If you’re listening this far, then it’s gotten your interest, you can go back and listen to their previous episodes that I’ve done with Johh, as well as you’ll find a link on the show notes page of this episode, a one-hour webinar that John and I did. That’s still another great way to learn more about this business on the website, on my website, you’ll find links to John’s page, he mentioned his YouTube channel, there is lots of information out there for you to continue learning as John explained about this business, to see if it is a fit for you.

0:54:14.4 JOHN WILKER: But there are all types of people from all walks of life doing this business, John, absolutely brothers, sisters, Fathers, Son, and wives, financial planners, insurance agents, teachers nurses, truck drivers, it is… I guess people are sick to their device if they are in the white collar, and in the blue collar, it sounds a Lucille people… Some people just wanna be outside too, you know, I have a business that you can get them out a little bit, so it has been a pleasure to see that there’s not really a pigeon all of the type of people, it’s a wide swath of young… All in close to retired or retired of… Absolutely. John, once again, a great pleasure chatting with you, thanks for taking the time to be with me, thanks for the special offer for our listeners, thanks. And as we’re recording, this is right before the holidays, so have a wonderful time in holidays with your family, and thanks again for being back on the show as always in… You’re a professional among professional, you know what I’m saying. You know your stuff, I think you had me on and happy holidays to everyone as well.

0:55:30.0 HENRY LOPEZ: Thank you. This is Henry Lopes, and thanks for listening to this episode of The How of Business. My guest today were John Wilker and Tom Hinson, who you heard from, we release new episodes every Monday morning, and you can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts, including my website. Thanks for listening. Thank you for listening to the how of business. For more information about our coaching programs, online courses, show notes, pages, links and other resources, please visit the TheHowOfBusiness.com.