From Trash to Treasure: How Joshua Crisp Made a Million Dollars in a Day | Digital Social Hour #63

How much money have you made

in a single day?

We're getting right into it.

Right into the nitty-gritty, right?

The most amount of money I've made in a day is a million dollars.

Telling you, it's easier to make a million dollars in a day or a hundred thousand dollars in a day than it is to try to make it over the span of a year.

So nobody was a millionaire in my family.

I was the first millionaire in my family.

So they were constantly telling me like every mistake I made going back to mistakes, it was magnified tenfold because they were like, we told you so.

Welcome to the digital social hour.

I'm here with my co-host, Wayne Lewis.

What up, what up?

And our guest today, Joshua Chris, how's it going?

Good, man.

Appreciate it.

For having me, guys.

Absolutely.

You flew in today.

Yep, from ATX.

ATX.

Yep.

How much money have you made in a single day?

We're getting right into it.

Right into the knitting grid.

I'm curious because I'm hearing different things.

So let's just get right into it.

Cool.

For the record, how much money have you made?

Yeah, so I've got several different businesses.

The most amount of money I've made in a day is a million dollars.

It's actually in about several hours, so half a day.

And I was just telling you outside, which is crazy, like it's easier to make a little bit of money.

It's easier to make a lot of money in a short period of time than it is to make a little bit of money over a long period of time.

And I remember going from the first milestone being 10K a month, 100K a month,

then a million a year.

And like I was telling you, it's easier to make a million dollars in a day or $100,000 in a day than it is to try to make it over the span of a year.

Well, once you actually figure out what your formula is, it becomes easy.

For most people, that's astronomical.

Most people won't even make a million dollars their lifetime.

Was that through like a Black Friday sale or something?

No, so it was through a promotion.

So it was similar to promotion, but just average day, right?

And the reason why is because people have limitations on what their capabilities can be.

Like, I remember, like, okay, if I can make a million in a year, I'm crushing it.

Right.

But that was still like kind of unrealistic to me because of where I came from and what I was exposed to.

But then, as I started to learn and elevate my knowledge and the information that I was learning in marketing, I understood how to do it.

So it was through a promotion.

And it's pretty much like a kettle pot.

Like, once the steam fills up, the pot overflows and it blows up, right?

So it's through a promotion.

You do a promotion, and you pretty much have a trigger where the sale drops.

and when the sale drops use ethical keyword ethical urgency and scarcity a lot of people their offers don't work across their businesses because they have unethical or unrealistic urgency and scarcity right there's only one left there's only 10 left this deal is only gonna last till midnight and then you can never get it and then there's emails two weeks out for the offer at the same thing so building up true urgency and true scarcity

and being ethical around that really really helps and then it has to be an irresistible offer so the components to having a large volume day or even hour are those three things irresistible offer not what you think is irresistible in terms of how many pieces can i stack and what is this crazy long drawn out number that doesn't make sense like you're gonna get this this this and this for a hundred thousand dollars and for today only and there's only eight that's unrealistic and the marketplace is educated they know that's fake so real uh real irresistible offer real limited quantity and a real limited time that's the three components gotcha and you achieved massive success at a pretty early age would you say there was a lot of failure along the way?

Oh, absolutely.

Like, I made tons of mistakes, tons of mistakes.

And here's the thing that I've learned, which a lot of people aren't going to believe, which I believe in, and this is what I go hard on, is that time is more valuable than money, right?

And we've always heard that.

However, there's only two ways that you can learn something.

You learn through trial and error, or you learn through the trial and error of someone else.

That's the only two ways, right?

So when I was started and I was trying to make my first 100K online, I was naive and I was the prideful type that I'm going to figure everything out.

I can get all the information on YouTube and podcasts and so on and so forth and when I was starting out I didn't have a ton of money so I had to kind of be that way but then I realized like I wasn't getting anywhere I was turning my gears and I believe my mom always told me this since I was little that you meet people for a season or a reason so I was introduced to my first mentor from my wife now a girlfriend at the time and he was a business owner and growing up where I grew up at I didn't know you could be a business owner and be a normal guy like I thought you had to inherit it or be this huge business owner And I became infatuated with the fact that this guy works for himself and he's this entrepreneur.

I didn't know this stuff existed.

So I started to ask him all these questions.

So a lot of people were like, well, I know that information changes situations with implementation, but I don't have the money for a mentor.

I don't have the money for a course.

I don't have the money for college.

I don't have the money to invest, right?

You can invest time or you can invest money.

So if you don't have money, you can invest time.

And if you have money, you can invest the money to save the time.

That's what I believe in.

So I invested my time because I didn't have the money.

So I would just ask him everything that I could think of.

And here's the thing that I've learned about successful people.

Even to this day, making multiple eight figures online, to this day, this is still true.

Successful people will give you breadcrumbs.

They won't give you the whole loaf because they value their time.

Time's the only thing that you can't replace, recreate, repurchase, or get any.

You can't get it back.

So they're not going to spend their time with you, especially if you're not at their caliber or their level.

So he would give me breadcrumbs and I would take extreme ownership and execution on what he taught me and go run the play as fast as possible with no delay and come back like what else you got right and what happens is they'll start giving you more breadcrumbs until you get to the loaf so that's pretty much how I got started and how I learned I made tons of mistakes but here's the thing the biggest mistake you'll make is not making the mistakes to get where you want to be

that's bar like that so

how big of a support system did you have or did you have one and where did you if not where did you pull your motivation from man that's a good question man so many people ask me this all the time.

And like, if I could go back, one of the biggest mistakes I made was not starting sooner or not going harder because of that belief system.

So in the world of entrepreneurship, so I'll be 34 this year.

I got started in 2015 with this whole entrepreneurship thing.

And we grew up in a small town and everybody worked for someone else.

You know, my uncles, they worked at steel mills.

My wife's family, they worked on farms.

So everything was physical labor.

My dad's 74 years old.

He still works every single day.

Everything was physical labor or the traditional curriculum or traditional workforce you know get a job go to school get a job so when i tell them i'm going to figure out how to make money online they're like listen man you got to be a real man you know if you're going to try to start a family you're going to become an adult you have another uh significant other to take care of you need to learn a high income skill set become a welder go get your cdl go get your gda gde gde because i didn't have a high school diploma i didn't have a gd no college education nothing right they're like this is a scam you know what scam stands for, right?

Still, still confused about money.

So nobody was a millionaire in my family.

I was the first millionaire in my family.

So they were constantly telling me, like, every mistake I made going back to mistakes, it was magnified tenfold because they were like, we told you so.

Yeah.

Like, just go get a job.

They want to be right.

When are you going to learn that this isn't going to work?

You're making a fool of yourself.

Right.

So on and so forth.

So I didn't really have a support system.

The only support system I had is my wife, so girlfriend at the time.

And I kept failing.

I failed over and over and over again in fact when i launched my e-commerce business my first three products failed at the time i was working for minimum wage because i didn't have a ged didn't have a high school diploma i was working third shift at a place called finitec a recycling plant hand sorting trash with my bare hands because there's no machines that can tell the difference um in the plastics you have to hand sort them on the bottom of every plastic uh piece of material is a number well i just noticed you said you were hand sorting trash yeah because there's no machine so if you look at the bottom bottom of all the plastics there's a number there's no machine that that can sort them.

So you have fours and fives and sixes.

So these are all felons and people that can't get jobs that are doing this.

So I work third shift, minimum wage, hand sorting through trash.

My wife was working for minimum wage, so I didn't have much money, and all of it went into the business.

So every time we made a mistake or every time I made

it costing to the fact where I couldn't pay rent, so I had to go to center township to get vouchers to cover rent.

Couldn't get food, had to go ring the bell at Salvation Army to get food for my family.

At the time, now we have a newborn.

So, the three first products failed.

Fourth one made me a million in one year.

This is 2015, changed the game for us.

Wow.

And what was that product?

So, that product, it was actually, so my wife, girlfriend at the time, her boss, my early mentor, was a manufacturer in the bath and body space.

So, I was going in there and I'm just picking up the game, the breadcrumbs, and I'm asking, like, how can I get started?

How can I get started?

Because he sold B2B, which is business to business, and they would then distribute it or resell it, repurpose.

And kind of like white labeling.

and I'm like how do I get started he's like you got to find a product I'm like I don't have the money to build a product develop a product I'll sell your products

so he didn't have a ton of money because he works on small margins so what he ended up doing is giving me some product that he couldn't sell the product that sold the least amount that he had or products that made where there was mistakes made so there was a different color to fragrance variation and he gave me this and he said figure it out right figure out how to sell it and I was trying all these different ways and it wasn't working so I used to on my days off I was there studying.

I wasn't watching TV.

I wasn't going out.

I was sitting there in his office.

He would take all the sales calls.

He'd run all the orders.

The employees would come and talk to him.

He would work with everybody.

And I would hear him on the on the he'd have his feet kicked up on the desk talking to people on the phone, telling them, stop doing these house parties.

Stop trying to get small locations in the mall.

Figure out Shopify.

Figure out Amazon.

And I asked him, like, why is nobody doing this?

And at this point, I wasn't able to move the product and figure this out.

And he said, because people only want to do what they know exists.

But in order to have what you don't have, you have to do things that you don't, that you're not doing.

Right.

So I said, I'm going to figure this thing out.

So I worked diligently for months just learning the Amazon platform, the Shopify platform.

And at this time, it wasn't Seller Central, it was Vendor Express, Vendor Central, and it took off.

And I got number one in the world.

It worked for my, it really worked to my advantage because Lush had a patent on Bath Bombs and it just, literally the patent just expired when our product went live.

live and the product that he had that he couldn't sell that was his least seller now

i didn't know they patented bath bombs yeah and amazon's big on you know uh cease and desist and you know you can't impersonate you know you can amazon's big on that they'll cut you off dude it ended up being a perfect product because it's a it's a product that's used like you use it once it's gone um it's a product that pretty much any demographic geographic any gender can use little kids women men um and it's cool it's an experience you get to watch it disintegrate I'm a fan of Bath Bombs.

I know I get a lot of hate for it.

It's kind of like a girly thing.

Yeah, but

I feel like that's

an inexperienced item.

Like you would get to experience it.

So I think that's what people rock with it.

So how do you find winning products now on Amazon?

Because everyone's looking for that.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

So here's the thing.

So many people overcomplicate this whole situation.

Like there's a special strategy.

It's got to look like this.

It's got to be this size.

It's got to be this weight.

Here's a few facts.

Number one, all things that can be listed on Amazon sell on Amazon.

Number one,

the million-dollar question is not how do you find a winning product?

How do you find a good product?

How do you find a good product for you?

Because if we were going to start a product, let's say we all three pulled some money together and we came up with a hundred grand cash, our budget is significantly different and our experience and exposure

millions on social media, hundreds of thousands on social media experience is different than someone who's starting out.

So the first thing I tell people to do before they start product research is to come up with what the freedom formula is for them.

So number one,

I call it the freedom formula because our goal is my first product, not my first product, my third product, but the one product changed me and my family's life.

So the AMZ formula of my company, the slogan is you're only one product away.

So we call it the freedom formula because before we start anything, we want to identify, number one, what product do you have an appetite for when it comes to risk?

What product do you have an appetite for when it comes to investment?

And will that product create enough cash flow or enough revenue for it to be worth it?

Right.

So those are the three questions we're looking at.

And here's the mistake that everybody makes.

I'm going to give it a try.

They invest what they have to lose.

Right?

So you have to give up what you have in order to be where you want to be.

Like me, I was able to make it because I gave everything up.

I wasn't dabbling.

I wasn't trying.

And most people, now I've been doing this since coaching and consulting since late 2017.

I've helped tens of thousands of people.

I've noticed the main mistake and the limitation on the products that people find is their budget.

Because because you can find a product that costs a dollar to make, or you can find a product that costs a thousand dollars to make.

So, you got to look at the risk tolerance, you got to look at the investment tolerance.

And so many people are scared to lose.

Well, they're starting the business off with the mindset and the mentality that, well, I'm just going to try.

And if it loses, I can afford to lose it.

But if you do your due diligence and you know, people are using this every single day, people are buying this every single day.

No-brainer.

People on Amazon with brands that you've never heard of are making six, seven, eight, nine figures annually with these similar products.

Why would you dabble?

So, figure out what you can actually invest.

Now, you don't want to go bankrupt or lose payments or be on the street, but you also don't want to gamble with a small budget because the more budget you have, the larger pool of products you can find.

Number two, risk tolerance.

Like in this industry, in the Amazon industry, there's a lot of like bad reputation, and there's a lot of people that come in and they lose money and they're like, oh, this is a scam.

So on and so forth.

Remember, scam is still considered.

They use scam for everything.

We don't like the word scam.

Here's the thing.

People are looking looking for get-rich-quick schemes, but don't want a get-rich-quick scheme.

You know what I mean?

They're looking for a legitimate business, but when they start the legitimate business, it's not fast enough.

It's not profitable enough, fast enough.

So it's how long can you be in this business?

How much time can you actually put into this business?

How much can you actually invest?

And then you start looking for the actual products.

Some things I recommend is: number one, of course, not a patented product.

There's tons of tools that you can use.

Google Patents is a free and easy one.

Make sure the product's not patented.

Number one, it's easy because you can tell.

If you're doing product research and you see one or two named brands dominating a space, perfect example, Blender Bottle, Nine Figure Company, they have a patent on the ball, the sphere apparatus inside of a bottle for mixing potter.

Really?

Yeah, so they have a patent on that.

It's nine-figure company one product, Blender Bottle.

Oh, they have a patented on the ball that's in there.

But the ball is everywhere, right?

Not inside.

Is their ball special?

Because they're balls.

With certain protein.

Yeah,

there's a a ball in there.

So there's different ones.

So now what people have done to bypass that is they have like looks like a blender thing in it and it's electric and they have a battery on it.

So obviously people are crushing it.

Like that, right?

Yeah, exactly.

They're crushing it.

But they have a patent on it.

So number one, making sure it's not patented.

Number two, people still make this mistake.

I'm going to still throw it out there.

Don't market or launch a licensed product if you don't have a license.

Don't put Mickey Mouse on it, SpongeBob on it.

People still do it because they see the search volume is crazy.

Obviously, you don't have a license for Door of the Explorer, right?

Number two.

Number three, I'm looking for products that are not seasonal and people mistaken seasonal with semi-seasonal.

So semi-seasonal would be a pull float.

In Texas, Vegas, California, Florida, it's going to be selling 24-7, 365, not in Indiana, not in Chicago, not in New York.

So that's a semi-seasonal product.

It'll sell full-time in specific cities.

Do you still sell those?

I don't sell any of those.

Everything that I sell is used every single day, regardless of the time of the year, regardless of the age group.

Like I really try to look for products.

I've made millions of dollars in office products.

They're used, they're replaced, everybody uses them.

Bath and body products, everybody uses them.

So not semi-seasonal, not seasonal products that are going to sell 24-7, 365.

And I like to see at least 25% margin on the products.

That's like three of the biggest things.

Nice.

And where do you see the future of e-commerce?

Do you see Amazon dominating still?

Or do you see players like Walmart, Target getting in the space and taking some market share?

Yeah, dude.

They're going to have to.

They're going to have to do something.

Like, this is my personal opinion where I see the marketplace going.

I think Amazon's not going anywhere.

I own a lot of stock in Amazon.

We love Amazon personally.

I think that Walmart's hanging on by a thread and not because people love human interaction, because of the produce space.

Well, Amazon had a huge MA, they had a huge merger and acquisition with Whole Foods.

So they're really quiet on that, but I see two components.

When Amazon dials in

virtual reality in terms of clothes and in terms of furniture, where you can now get an Amazon Prime headset, almost like the metal one, for $93 or a part of your Amazon Prime membership.

And you can wear that and you can see yourself in the clothes and you can see the furniture around your home.

It's over.

Those two sectors are over.

And then when they can get poultry and they can get food to your home same day with some type of dry ice or some type of apparatus that will keep it fresh, keep it cool at Walmart prices or near Walmart prices, it's over.

costs.

Do you think grocery stores will be hit by Amazon?

Oh, I do.

Walmart and Amazon are already hitting grocery stores.

I order my groceries online on an app.

Amazon is the biggest conglomerate, though.

They're going after everything.

They have Amazon Fresh, too.

Absolutely.

Yep, Amazon Fresh.

And like I said, with the acquisition of Whole Foods, I think that's the five to ten year play.

I don't think it'll happen this year, but I think in the next five to ten years, it's over with because the overhead.

Here's the thing.

Like, the reason why my mentor was telling everybody, stop doing these house parties, stop getting these little boutiques and trying to sell the product is because the overhead So he was a European immigrant and all I heard him talk about non-stop is touch points touch points margin gaps margin gaps loss of profits So everything was how can we increase efficiency productivity reduce overhead increase margin reduce touch points so Walmart you have these huge spaces Then you have insurance then you have benefits and you have employees, you have utility bills, you have maintenance on on parking, you have all these lawsuits from the liability of the actual physical location.

There's too much overhead, too much touch points.

So where Amazon doesn't have that, they can then invest that into automation and delegation from artificial intelligence.

They literally have robots in their fulfillment centers, and then they can invest it in prime shipping.

That's why they're more profitable.

Amazon, because they have less overhead.

They have warehouses, shipping warehouses, but if you think about what he said, they're going super automation.

So with the implementation of robots right now, they just laid off.

I just read something some weeks ago.

It was like one Amazon spot laid off like 2,700 employees.

Wow.

Because of AI, robots, and all that stuff.

But they're going to need people to run the robots

in AI.

So it's kind of like a, you know, dude, everybody hates it, but then everybody loves Chat GPT.

So you can't ignore it, like artificial intelligence, AI.

And the lesson in that that everybody watching can take is that amateurs monetize the front end, experts monetize the back end.

The seven, eight, nine-figure earners will lose money on the front end to make a fortune on the back end.

A lot of people don't know this.

Amazon does not profit on Prime.

They lose money on Prime.

They lose money on Prime.

The membership, getting packages to you same day, next day guaranteed, or your money back, they lose money on that.

But they make so much money on the back end because 93% of Amazon buyers and consumers only go to Amazon when they want something.

Yeah, and

it's the middle class too, because it's more middle class than there is the top 1%.

So the primers are usually those guys, some of them, but the middle class are the ones actually spending the large amount of money.

And it's more of them than there is.

Do you believe in passive income?

I believe in passive income.

And here's the crazy thing.

A lot of people

like to ridicule people when they talk about passive income because it's like when you think of passive income, you think about skating in Bali.

You think about

laying up in a hammock in Bali.

That's because in one of the

coconuts

doing absolutely nothing.

Here's what passive means to me, and this is the reason why I got in the business in entrepreneurship, and I love the Amazon model.

It's being able to work on your business or work on the thing at your leisure, if you choose to or not, and still producing income.

So not where it's like a stock dividend where you're like, you do jack and you know you're going to earn X percent.

I believe there's different tiers of passive income, but semi-passive or passive to me is, can I put, what is the minimum amount of my time for the maximum amount of income that I can receive?

It's automation.

Yeah, so for me, I can work two, three hours a week.

And it's whenever I feel like it, and it can be in little 15-minute intervals.

See, Amazon runs 24-7, 365.

You can work on the business whenever you want, at your own leisure.

Absolutely.

On your break, on the weekend, in the bed, on the toilet, whenever you feel like.

It's like, if I'm not doing anything and I'm hanging out anyway, why don't I just knock out these orders or review the health or review the advertising?

I love that.

I agree with that, to be honest.

No, absolutely.

Because, like you said, passive income has so many different variables now.

So it's like, what, what's considered passive income to you?

For me, it's automation.

You know, less work,

but still making that money.

You still got to check.

You still want to check on everything.

Even if it's rental properties, you still want to drive up, just see how it was doing and make sure everything is, you know, A1.

How much do you think someone would need to start in Amazon and achieve some sort of success?

Success is relative, but do you think they need like 10K, 25K?

So 10K is a really nice amount.

And here's the thing.

Like, people don't ever ask, like, what do I recommend or what's a good amount?

Here's the million dollar question.

What is the lowest amount?

That's what they always ask.

So if you don't have three to 5K USD, I would say, and here's the thing.

If someone tells you like it costs $3 to $5K to invest to get into this business model and they don't have it, they're like, oh, next, next flashy thing, right?

Let me learn how to play Blackjack or let me learn how to do YouTube automation or something like that.

The reason why I say three to 5K bare minimum is because a majority of the bulk is going to be for my business model, which is private label in the product and the shipping.

That's a majority of all the expenses.

And the more money you have, the more potential you have to find a product.

Like,

there's no, like, you're going to go put in the variables and do product research and just find this random product.

Because I have on my YouTube channel, I have a series called the Seven Figure Product Series.

Every single week, I review a product that is profiting $1 million or more per year.

Why do I do that?

Number one, to show people that there's tons of products out there making a buttload of money.

But number two, most importantly, to show people, dude, you need four or five hundred thousand dollars to launch this product.

Like this where I can $3,000 and make $20,000 a month, it's not realistic.

So we started with the freedom formula because if you know you can only make 30%,

well, every three products you sell, you double your money.

How much is it like reverse engineer?

How much does it cost to start?

How much can you potentially make?

So bare minimum is $3,000 to $5k.

The more you have access to, the better.

And the few ways that you can do this, I often say, if you don't have the resources, become resourceful.

So you can get working capital loans for low interest.

You can get 0%

interest credit cards from large financial institutions.

You can utilize that.

You can also do a partnership, whether it's a strategic short-term partnership where you put up the time, they put up the money, you repay them back 10%, 15%, which is more in a traditional financial institution, or you can do an equity play where they put up the money, you put up the time, they have equity ownership in the business.

Here's a mistake.

A lot of people will take 100% of nothing versus 50% of something.

All the time.

And the biggest mistake I made, like we were just talking about this, the two biggest mistakes I made is number one, not spending more money on my business and on myself.

And number two is not selling my business when it was ready to sell.

Those are the two biggest mistakes I made.

And a lot of people, to reverse caveat on that, they won't take, they won't give people equity.

Right?

They won't give people equity.

And I watched an interview with Jay-Z, and he was talking about he owned 100% of Ace of Spades.

And he was being interviewed.

I I think Kevin Hart was interviewed.

Yeah, yeah, well I see him.

And he's like, why would you give up 50% of Ace of Spades?

He's like, I'd rather give 50% up to Ace of Spades to LVMH, which is now the largest conglomerate and brand owner in the world.

That took him to the Billy.

Right?

So it's like, I'd rather give up 50% or 30% or 25% to have more than 100% to have less.

And got him international distribution, recognition, brand awareness.

And he ended up selling a large portion of his, right?

Well, not all of it, but he ended up, now he's like my minority owner

for the most part.

Yeah.

Yeah, people are closed-minded sometimes, I think.

But they don't understand business.

Yeah.

Yeah, they don't understand how it works.

Like you said, they would rather own 100% of nothing just to say they own it versus, you know, like Phil Ivy.

Well, no, not Phil Ivy,

Knight, my man from Nike.

Phil Knight.

He only owns 1% of Nike.

What?

Yeah.

Wow.

He owns 1%, bro.

Doesn't the average person own like 7 when they sell or something?

Something low?

It just depends on how far you want to go as far as Apple.

They own 3%.

The CEO of Apple owns 3%.

3% of $3 trillion.

Yeah, bro.

They're worth $3 trillion?

Big, big bad.

That's insane.

Yeah, big bag.

Josh, it's been a great episode.

Any closing thoughts?

Man, there's so much that I can say.

Number one is the enemy is in the inner me, and if it's meant to be, it's up to me.

So you're the only person that can get you in or out of your situation.

Number two is don't share your large dreams and goals with a small-minded person.

A lot of what holds us back, keeps us where we are, is not having big enough dreams or sharing our large dreams with small-minded people.

And number three is just don't give up, right?

There's two ways to fail anything, not only Amazon, anything that you do.

Number one, not starting, number two, giving up.

Everybody starts, and a majority gives up.

So, as long as you don't give up, you persevere, you're patient, and you're persistent, you can make anything happen.

Gotcha, absolutely.

Thanks for watching.

You heard my man.

Make sure you follow me on Instagram at Creator Digital Social Hour.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

See you next time.

Peace.