Brock Johnson on Being an Entrepreneur and Winning on Amazon (Follow the Data Ep. 17)
Get inside the mind of entrepreneur Brock Johnson. He’s well known in the Amazon seller community for his incredible success with solar eclipse glasses this past summer, but he’s been flipping products and chasing down entrepreneurial pursuits since he was 9 years old. He has been featured on the DailyVee (episode 367) and has his own successful YouTube channel where he shares his tips for Amazon FBA success.
Follow the Data Show Notes
- Looking for a great seasonal product like solar eclipse glasses? Filter for it with Product Discovery!
- Want to keep in touch with Brock and track of his latest ventures? Check out his website here, or Follow him on Instagram.
- Check out Brock’s YouTube channel, especially his comparison of Viral Launch and Jungle Scout (here’s another complete comparison of Jungle Scout vs. Viral Launch)
- Look for Brock on the DailyVee. Hint: he’s wearing a bright blue snowman blazer 😉
- Want to be on the show? Have your own story of entrepreneurial success? We’re working on an episode that features our listeners! Reach out to our content team with stories or questions about your Amazon business.
Podcast Transcript
CAMERON YODER:
What’s up, everybody? We are live today with Brock Johnson. I’m here with Casey. Casey, say hello.
CASEY GAUSS:
What’s up, guys?
CAMERON YODER:
So Brock, Brock is a seller on Amazon, and he’s involved with a lot of different things. And so we’re just
going to run through some questions. The purpose of today and the purpose of these episodes, which
we’re going to be doing month-to- month, is to inspire you with different stories.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and if you guys haven’t heard of Brock Johnson you may possibly be living under a rock. This guy is
blowing up right now, and so we just thought he was the perfect fit to bring him on, provide some
inspiration to you and just show you, you know, how tangible or attainable kind of these lofty goals that
you may have, just are – if you put in the work and you’re, you know, you’re logical about your
processes. So yeah, Brock, thank you so much for coming on, dude.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
CAMERON YODER:
Okay, well, we’re going to start just with some awesome questions just for you to explain yourself and
your story. First question is something we’re going to be asking everyone when they come on the show
is have you always considered yourself an entrepreneur?
BROCK JOHNSON:
That’s a tough one. So I have. I guess in retrospect now I would consider myself an entrepreneur, but I
didn’t always think of myself like that. But even since the age of, what, 9 or 10 I was – I was using my
mom’s eBay account to so all my friends’ video games. Then I was also playing on all these online games
like World of Warcraft and stuff, and I was more focused on the economy and flipping stuff on auction –
I was actually flipping stuff on the auction houses of these video games. And then in college I was like
buying and selling pennies. So I was doing this all the time, but I never thought it would be a full-time
thing until it came to where I had to get out of college, and it was like well you either go get a job, or you
start a company, or you do something. And that’s when I was like all right, I’m an entrepreneur. But I’ve
always been one.
CAMERON YODER:
That’s when – so when you got out of college and you started considering going into other jobs or other
fields, that’s when you said hey, I guess I kind of am an entrepreneur?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, yeah. Well, when I really did it was because I never really had a job my whole life because I had
always found ways to make money. Like I was card counting in casinos, or you know, just doing my own
side hustles and flipping stuff. But then it was when I got an internship, that’s when I – the decision was
made.
CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha.
BROCK JOHNSON:
I was like wow, this sucks.
CAMERON YODER:
So okay. Well, that’s a good response. Thank you for that response. Can you explain just a little bit about
yourself? Can you tell us where you’re from and what your experience was growing up, like if you had
siblings, or if you did well in school what your favorite subjects were? Just give us some background info.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I’m from Minnesota, born and raised here. I’ve got two sisters. With school, I don’t know, I did
all right in school. I never really tried, so I had decent grades, but then I started to do bad. I ended up
with like a 2.9 in high school or something. But then I went to college, and when I would apply myself I
always did really good in math classes or physics and stuff like that, but to be honest I was known as the
worst person. I never attended. I went to less than 50% of my coll– I have a full math degree, so I went
through all the advanced math classes, and I went to less than 50% of the classes because I hated it. Like
just somebody teaching me. I just wanted to go learn it. And so I would actually like do the tests, and I
would go to a math test, and I wouldn’t go to any of the classes, do any of the homework, and then 24
to 36 hours before the class I would just go and just read the textbook and teach myself everything and
stay up for 36 hours. And then I would go and get like a B on it. So like I’ve just always been like nobody
teach me; like I’m just going to go and like immerse myself in something.
CAMERON YODER:
Did people ever try and call you out on that, like hey man, I noticed you’re not going to classes. What’s
the deal with that?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, people called me out all the time. And so would my teachers. But I was really good at making
excuses.
CAMERON YODER:
Right. Right, no, yeah, yeah.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Excuses that you can’t call out or just like coming up with stuff.
CAMERON YODER:
Right. I mean the thing is you had that drive to go out and learn and do it and do it for yourself, and
that’s what you did, which I think is – that’s so inspiring. So you talked about this before, but before you
started selling on Amazon, before you got involved with Amazon, can you give us the full picture again
just of what the process was that led you up to that point?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I was selling on eBay. Well, first internship, wow, life sucks. Don’t want to work for somebody
else because there was no correlation between my efforts and what I got in reward. And I didn’t have
the choice of what I did. So that’s what led me to e-commerce. And then at one point I was trying to
build a tech company to start out, but then I was like ooh, this is a long, hard path, and I have no
experience and no capital. But so I got onto eBay, and that was great, but then eventually I got banned
from eBay for life because they just have – like they have metrics. And if you don’t meet these metrics
or you don’t respond to people or like just one or two people flag you for something you can just –
they’ll just decide oh, we’re done with you.
CAMERON YODER:
Interesting.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, yeah, but then so then I was flipping stuff, and I just watched some YouTube videos of people
doing retail arbitrage. And then that’s where I heard about Amazon, and then I tried it out a little bit,
and then it was like oh, there is some money to be made here.
CAMERON YODER:
And so you, when you first got involved with Amazon you were doing retail arbitrage?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I actually did retail arbitrage for, on and off, for about two years.
CASEY GAUSS:
So people just looking at getting started on Amazon, a lot of people kind of suggest jumping into retail
arbitrage to build up their capital. Would you – do you feel the same?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I absolutely do because you learn – okay, you get paid to learn. So there’s a lot of things about the
Amazon platform that you just need to get into the thinking mode about how do listings work on
Amazon, what do people buy, and why don’t they buy things? So when you’re picking up hundreds of
items a day you see, oh, well Walmart charges $30, but people are only willing to pay $9 on Amazon.
That’s weird, why? Oh, well it’s because it’s just this private label, or it’s this brand product, but nobody
wants it. Or this listing is bad. So you learn all these mini lessons, and then you find one that does sell,
and then it’s wait; why is it cheap in the store and expensive on the intranet? Oh, there’s maybe some
value here. So I learned, you know, hundreds and hundreds of lessons through doing retail arbitrage
that a lot of people don’t talk about. But you know, just learning. And then when you get into the
seasonality, too, that’s where I learned a lot was oh wow, you can actually make – it’s like the price of
these things skyrocket near Q4 because there is a limited supply. So you really learn a lot of supply and
demand lessons, too.
CAMERON YODER:
Interesting. So okay, we know about the solar eclipse glasses, but a lot of people listening might not. Can
you talk about a bit of what happened with that and kind of what led up to that point?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I had been doing wholesale and whatnot, so I did retail arbitrage, and that I did more so
wholesale when RadioShack went out of business. And thousands of stores went out of business around
the country, and so I went to all of those, and I went to about 400-ish literally across the whole country
and was able to build up good capital through that. But then they ran out of stores. And then I was doing
wholesale through them, and then the Chairman of the Board who was like this billionaire sent me an
email threatening he was going to sue me for like buying and selling their – because they were selling it
on Amazon, too. They had just learned how to do it. But I had a repricer and they didn’t. So they
couldn’t win the buy box. And then like they had this big meeting, apparently, at like their headquarters,
and they’re like what is going on? Why can’t we win the buy box?
CAMERON YODER:
This guy, Brock Johnson, he’s the reason.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, apparently they were talking about me in this big meeting. And yeah, then they sent me some
threatening emails. So that was wonderful. And then I was like all right, I’m done with this. I want to be
– I want something scalable that nothing can take away from me. And that’s what led me into this. So I
just decided okay, I’m going to do private label, and it just so happens that right when I made that
decision I got – well, before that I went to China, went to the Canton Fair, started to learn everything I
could about private label, and then didn’t end up getting any good product ideas or sourcing abilities,
but then when I came back some guy sent me a random email just about this time that I made this
decision I’m going into private label. It was like a one sentence email saying oh, are you interested in
solar eclipse glasses? They’re really hot in the United States. And I was like sure, send me some
information. I’m interested. But he never responded to me. But that’s when I went and I looked into the
opportunity of the solar eclipse, and I was like you know I think this could be something big. So that’s
kind of how I led into the solar eclipse.
CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha. So then yeah, so then can you walk us through okay, I stumbled across – first off, did you ever
reach back out to that guy that shot you that email and said thank you so much for what you’ve done?
BROCK JOHNSON:
No, I need to. I need to. I’ve thought about it many times in my head, but I should because yeah, that
was a very valuable email.
CASEY GAUSS:
So we haven’t mentioned the stats yet around like what happened with solar eclipse glasses. So people
unfamiliar with you are still like okay, solar eclipse glasses, like big deal. Who is this guy? Can you give us
a little bit of the stats and then kind of go through like how you went from, okay, the idea of solar
eclipse glasses to I’m a king on Amazon?
BROCK JOHNSON:
So basically – okay, so the numbers, I did $6 million in sales in the first six months, and it got really crazy
–
CAMERON YODER:
Wait, wait, hold up. Say that again.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I did $6 million in sales in the first six months private label.
CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
BROCK JOHNSON:
And that’s with over a 50% profit margin.
CASEY GAUSS:
Geez.
CAMERON YODER:
Wow.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, that was absolutely crazy. So basically yeah, so it goes from idea to oh, this could be a big
opportunity. And then that’s where, you know, it gets hard now. You [could run 0:10:49.7] number. So
basically there were rough– when I got into it there was about 20 people selling, but they didn’t have
the best designs, in my opinion, of these glasses. And you know, these were cheaper glasses, but you
could like put your complete unique design on them, and they were so cheap that you had to sell them
in bundles and packs. That was the only way to make it profitable on Amazon. So there was a lot of
creativity that I see that could be done. So then I looked at just how many people were going to view
this, and it was tough at the time because there were not – barely none were selling, and there was 20
people.
CASEY GAUSS:
What month was this? When was this?
BROCK JOHNSON:
This was – when I found out about it was January 27 th .
CAMERON YODER:
Okay.
CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so January 27 th I found out about the opportunity. You know, wasn’t selling much, but I ran the
numbers, and it was literally going – every single person in the United States was going to see a partial
eclipse at least. I didn’t think that anybody would watch the partial eclipse, to be honest. I was wrong.
Everybody watched the partial eclipse. But I just took the assumption, and I ran, and there was 10
million people that lived under the total eclipse. So like how could you not look, like watch that? If it’s
going over your head, this happens – this is a once in a lifetime event. So I said all right, there’s 10
million customers here. Let me capture 1% of it. And then then that’s all I need, 1% of 10 million is
100,000 glasses. If I could find a way to make a dollar per glass I would make $100,000, and that would
be jacked. I would be jacked.
CASEY GAUSS:
How did you get to the number, though, of the number of units that you would order for the first time
or for the first couple times?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so what I did for the first time was, well, I just bought what I could afford.
CAMERON YODER:
Right.
BROCK JOHNSON:
I could have afforded a bit more, but so I started out with a $7500 order, which was 25,000 glasses.
CASEY GAUSS:
Oh wow.
BROCK JOHNSON:
That’s what I – yeah, so that’s what I started out with, and that was like I was like at first thinking I don’t
know if I’m going to be able to sell all these. But then I was thinking of – what I always do is I go through
the worst-case scenario. Okay, well if nobody buys my listing on Amazon I could hard call schools and
businesses and sell them in big packs at wholesale price, and I could probably get my money back. So I
like to look at worst-case scenarios, and if you can get your money back and there’s a huge upside, then
okay, this is a good opportunity to go into. So I had calculated how many hours it would take to call up
businesses, and it was like okay, I could get rid of these in a couple days or a week. So I’ll buy 25,000 and
see how it goes. And then they started to sell really well. So then that’s when I was like oh, okay, I’m
onto something here.
CASEY GAUSS:
When was it that they started to – sales started to pick up?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Sales? Well, I started in right at the end of March, beginning of April, and they were doing good. I don’t
remember exactly how much I was selling then, but it was, I mean I was doing probably $1000 a day at
least, like right off the bat. So that was great. And then I got up to a lot more per day. But to be honest
the sales really – well they started to pick up in June, and then they launched – they [took off 0:14:35.4]
better in July, but then I found that there’s this human procrastination curve, essentially, like that’s true
for all seasonal things, something about 30 days until an event. So like a mental trigger goes off in
people’s heads, and that’s where it just skyrockets.
CAMERON YODER:
I want to touch on one aspect that I think a lot of sellers get hung up on in both the just seasonal,
sourcing seasonal products, but also just sourcing products in general, and that’s risk. You talked about
it a little bit. When you had kind of that backup plan where you said okay, if I run – or if people don’t buy
my listing then I’ll just go call people and cold call people or whatever, go to schools and sell them
directly. But what would you say to sellers that are getting really hung up on risk when entering markets
maybe they’re not familiar with? What advice would you have for them?
BROCK JOHNSON:
If you’re entering into a market that you’re not sure about and you want to look at the risk, what I would
say that you should do is just, is there some utility? Are you doing something unique? Is there like – are
people – does this product like sell on eBay? Like could you liquidate this somehow? That’s kind of what
I look at on the risk side. Are you doing something different that’s a value add? And if there is demand
there and there’s some form of liquidation and you’ve done something different, you’re going to be able
to sell it, especially if there’s any room for margin on Amazon. I just don’t see why you wouldn’t be able
to slowly sell one unit a day over a year and a half. Like you’ll sell it eventually.
CAMERON YODER:
What was your differentiating factor then for your glasses?
BROCK JOHNSON:
So for my glasses it was one, they were actually good and real, and they were certified, where 98% of
my competitors were not. So that was the biggest one. They all had theirs made in China, and mine were
made in the USA. And mine actually – so they had the certification. Made in USA made a big difference
for people looking at their eyes, but then I also had just really, really good design. So I went to 99designs
and I actually had professional designers like – if people aren’t familiar with exact – well, who’s not
familiar with eclipse glasses, okay? And maybe if you weren’t in the USA because I know people watched
all around the world. Basically they’re like these cardboard glasses or something. And so you could print
whatever design you wanted on them. So I specifically put types of images and logos that would
correlate to space and the eclipse the best. So like certain ones were made towards kids, and they had
certain images that would really be appealable to children and all these different sects of people. So I
made all these different designs, and then the bundles and then just had the best, you know, really the
best photography. That was how I differentiated on glasses, but then I also had goggles. So those were
way better sellers because nobody made goggles. So these paper glasses let in a bunch of light, so I
made these more, you know, super, the super eclipse viewers per se.
CASEY GAUSS:
And there was, I don’t know, super eclipse Armageddon or whatever where you know a lot of the
glasses were taken down, but some people were still up, and they were allowed to charge like a much
higher price. How did you kind of fare through that process?
BROCK JOHNSON:
It was rough at first when you get an email from Amazon – because I had bought – I went off of this – I
kind of made a forecast model that showed that everybody was going to buy in the last couple weeks
because everybody procrastinates. So I had hundreds of thousands of glasses, and like they just arrived,
and I’m shipping them into Amazon, and right as I’m about to ship them all into Amazon they send out
an email saying they’re taking down all eclipse glasses, basically, because there’s bad ones. And I was
pissed because I had been warning them for months. I had called them over 10 times, sent them
countless emails warning them they’re going to make people blind. Take down the competitors, and
then they’re going to say okay we’re just taking them all down.
So yeah, then everybody freaked out. We all dropped our prices to the floor. And so that was really
rough, but then eventually, okay, so they wanted a certification for every glass, but so we got the
certification done for like our main one, but then if you got a different design we didn’t get the
certification done for the new design because it’s just like a different color on it, you know? But so that’s
where I thought I was really screwed because I had all these different designs and only one certification.
But what they ended up doing was they actually kept mine up, most of them. Some of them they took
down, which was frustrating. But I was able to provide that certification, stay up, and everybody else got
taken down. So a lot of private labelers from the United States had sourced from China. They didn’t
actually have the real certs, so they took their listings down. And then they refunded all of those
customers, and then a month and a half later they made all of those sellers front the bill for that. So they
had to pay for the product. They had to pay the Amazon fees. And then they had to pay the entire listing
price back.
CAMERON YODER:
Oh man.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah. Like I can’t even imagine.
CASEY GAUSS:
So were you able to raise your price during that period where fewer sellers existed so that like helped
margin?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I definitely was able to raise the price then because well, you know, then now it was just us real
sellers. But I had still done a lot of revenue up until then. Let’s see, I believe I had done, until that time, I
think 2.5 million, and then this happened, and then –
CAMERON YODER:
I’m going to shift our focus a little bit here, but I want to ask one last question before we get off of the
subject of solar eclipse glasses. And that’s through all of your experiences with this product and the
different products that you sold on Amazon and are selling on Amazon, what one piece of advice would
you have for Amazon sellers specifically?
BROCK JOHNSON:
You’ve got to do your research. If there is certifications, you need to do your due diligence because if
you’re not checking out your supplier and vetting them, a lot of, unfortunately, Chinese suppliers will lie.
I went to China, and I was trying to source – because my true passion is like LED lighting, and I was trying
to source it for the longest time. But it just never seemed right, and I wanted to get UL certification
because that really protects you in a lawsuit. And none of the Chinese sellers would – like they wouldn’t
really have it, or some of them would have it, and I would go talk to them, and then they’d be like oh
yeah, we have UL and there would be UL on the product. And then I would go to their factory, and so
then I would ask for the actual certification and they didn’t actually have UL. They said oh, we could get
it if you order a large enough quantity. So basically they were going to sell it to me with the UL sticker on
it and never actually have the cert.
CAMERON YODER:
Wow.
BROCK JOHNSON:
And same with the eclipse glasses. All those got shut down. So if you’re selling something that’s
potentially dangerous, check that out. But just to protect your liability because it doesn’t matter how
many millions of dollars you make. Burn down one apartment, and it’s all gone. So and then do
something different. Like just make a, you know, small change, or catch a trend. Or you’ve got to do
something more unique to compete. Like you either get in early, you make a new mold – or you don’t
even need to go as far as making a new mold. Do new colors, a new bundle, a new marketing pitch, like
now you’re making clothes, but these are close for vegan. I just used the product discovery tool
yesterday. One of the top idea scores was clothes for vegans.
CAMERON YODER:
On the rise man.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, just so like you know, I think gone are the days of literally just sticking a logo on it. But there is still
lots of opportunity, but you’ve got to do just a little bit more than a logo, I’d say.
CAMERON YODER:
That’s good. So I had said I was going to shift focus a little bit. Sometimes when sellers, or when people
get in in the Amazon space specifically and they sell a ton or they see the potential they shift their focus
solely to Amazon. And I want to ask has your focus solely been placed on Amazon, or have you now kind
of broken into a couple different areas of focus?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so there’s – you know, Amazon was great for the growth and everything, and it has the best
wealth building opportunity that I see out there. If your main goal is to literally just grow your business
and build as much capital as possible, I would say to just stick it on Amazon. Like that’s it. That’s all you
need to do. But I guess where I’m going now is I’m going for more of a – I had this realization, okay, I can
easily build up $100 million of wealth by just selling on Amazon. The opportunity is there. But it wasn’t
what I was particularly extremely passionate about. I love it, but just to just solely do that is whatever.
So now I’m really focused on building – I’m still selling on Amazon, and like don’t get me wrong; that’s a
main thing. But now I’m trying to build a whole brand. So not just on Amazon, but also getting to
Shopify, into software, so literally building an entire brand and then going into personal branding, and
then also social media. So all of these five work together to make a brand that’s truly that value of like
that perceived value. So I don’t care what happens on one platform. I don’t care about the – you know, I
can charge a premium price, like Apple can charge a premium price. Nike can charge a premium price
just because it’s, you know, it’s there, and it’s got that value. So I’ve kind of diversified a little bit. But
Amazon is still there.
CAMERON YODER:
How did you come to terms with your passion because some sell– so sometimes what happens is people
get in the space, or any marketing or business space in general, right, and they see the money potential
and the value proposition that’s there, and they push their passion to the side for a long time. How did
you come to terms with the fact that you knew what your passion was and you’re pushing towards that
now, and you’re not necessarily pushing money to the side, right, but you’re also pushing for your
passion? So what did that process look like?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Well, what it came down to was just making that large sum of money and not being happy. That’s what
it came down to because you’ll hear the thing that money brings happiness, but it’s true. Some lessons
you can’t learn until you feel them. Like some things you just have to experience. So by just getting that I
was like okay, you know, now I know this. I don’t need to just push and maximize ROI. But I mean I’m a
finance and math guy. I’m not going to sit there and just retire or whatnot. I’m still going to make over
$1 million a year every single year. I’m trying to go for like five, six this year. But like don’t care if that
happens, you know. So now I’m more focused on the impact that I’m going to have on the world and
doing things that make me happy. But it just, it literally some things you’ve just got to learn for yourself.
But what’s great is you kind of have to get on this path where you have to get financially free first. Like
it’s hard to go from a 9 to 5 job to passion. So go out there, start hustling, building skills as an
entrepreneur, building up capital, and then eventually once you’ve built all these skills, these lessons
and you have all this money, now you can start to go at that passion. And I think that’s actually an easier
path to getting to where you want than to start out and just go from nothing to all right I’m going to
make a full time at my passion.
CASEY GAUSS:
As a side note kind of on the selfish side, okay Amazon sends you $6 million in payouts, or whatever, you
know, 50% was profit, so $3 million. What in your mind – what is the first thing that comes to mind as
this is the first thing I’m going to buy with my $3 million?
BROCK JOHNSON:
I bought like a chocolate bar, and my wife really wanted a camper, so we paid like $12,000 for a trailer
camper, like a vintage-looking one. And that’s it.
CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.
CAMERON YODER:
I love it.
BROCK JOHNSON:
You know, like oh well, no, what I thought was I can now fund a software company that I’ve always
wanted to build.
CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha.
CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.
BROCK JOHSON:
That’ was like – and so I put like $250,000 into that, and then I just started investing money into myself
by going and seeing Gary Vaynerchuk, going to Tony Robbins events, joining the platinum membership
there and, you know, just making investments into myself, things that are going to make me happy and
grow more. That’s kind of it.
CASEY GAUSS:
Heck yeah, man. I love it.
CAMERON YODER:
I love it. So you talked about –
BROCK JOHNSON:
I’m not going to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo.
CAMERON YODER:
Wait. Say that again.
BROCK JOHNSON:
I’m never going to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo.
CAMERON YODER:
No?
BROCK JOHNSON:
No.
CAMERON YODER:
You talked about Gary Vee and Tony Robbins a little bit. What – who are some of your role models?
Who are the people that you follow closely and really try to emulate?
BROCK JOHNSON:
I’d say Elon Musk, Tim Ferriss, Dave Asprey, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Yeah, those are some of my – oh, Gary
Vee, Tony Robbins. Yeah, that’s kind of who I listen to and what I emulate.
CAMERON YODER:
Do you try to split your attention between all of them, or is there kind of one or two that you follow
really closely?
BROCK JOHNSON:
I’d say the one that I follow the closest – well, it used to be Dave Asprey because that completely
changed my life. So I’m really into biohacking and just optimizing every part of my biology to get the
most out of life, so I’ve always got energy. You know I’m running these 16- to 18-hour days, just like – so
that’s huge. But then I’d say recently now it’s Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk that are – that I listen to
the most.
CASEY GAUSS:
Nice. Do you want to give some quick tips on biohacking things that have worked for you to help you be,
you know, at the top?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Take a cold shower.
CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Right there. Take a cold shower. Do yoga every single morning, or not – I mean it takes time to get there,
but you know I just do like 10 minutes of yoga every morning, meditate for a little bit, cold showers,
Bulletproof coffee, intermittent fasting. So I don’t really eat until like 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. I just
have this Bulletproof coffee. If you don’t know what it is look it up. It will change your life. You know,
just doing stuff like that. I really am focused. I have a standing desk. I have a triple screen set-up. I have
white boards all over my basement. So in physics, you know, the particle is affected by the field. And in
our lives we as human beings are affected by our environment. So by just really focusing on what you do
with your biology and how you shape the space around you, that will shape you then. And it’s a positive
feedback loop.
CAMERON YODER:
Nice. How much sleep do you get?
BROCK JOHNSON:
You know, it depends. I’d say on average about six, six hours.
CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha. For everyone saying you need eight, no excuses.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I mean I do feel better when I get like – when I get a bit more. But it matters if I’m going – I’ll go
through like a period of grinding for a month or two where it’s just all on and then, okay, I’ll take a week
or two and, you know, recharge but then get back at it.
CAMERON YODER:
Of course.
CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so if you want to make $6 million in six months, be Brock Johnson. Sleep six hours a night.
BROCK JOHNSON:
No, if you want to do that you sleep like four.
CAMERON YODER:
Taking a look at where you’ve come from and where you’ve been and looking ahead now to 2018 and
whatever is beyond 2018, where do you hope to go from here?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Where I hope to go from here? I want to essentially go and have a giant estate in the mountains and
essentially to start kind of a retreat center out there. My wife’s a yoga teacher. And so just helping to
get some people just on track, like you know where they could just go for a bit and have this total
immersion, really like focus on their biology and their psychology and to just like revamp and kill it. So
kind of doing that, but mainly what I want to do is to just help other people’s lives by – there’s not a lot
of tools to focus on our goals, our bucket list, just the little practices that make our life better on a day-
to-day process. So I’m building out currently an entire physical brand around just personal development,
that whole area, but then also software around that. And then my personal brand digitally and then
building that up on social media and everything so that it’s this just one giant conglomerate that is
focused on making a better world and helping people just achieve their goals, but then making a profit
at the same time. So you know, like just then it all is just I feel good about. That’s where I’m going
towards.
And then eventually my overall goal is building more of an artificial intelligence company that’s
collecting our biometrics and just ambient data to help correlate all of these inputs to get somewhat of a
picture of what mood we’re in or just different things about our biology that may see okay, you know,
he was really productive during these times. What happened? What factors were there? Or he’s starting
to become unproductive. What factors could we change in the environment, like the music, the lights,
the temperature, just stuff like that, to essentially help people making like a big mother technology that
just helps make our life better instead of like right now where oh, like everything on your phone and
every piece of tech just wants to take your attention and sell that and make you become distracted and
not have a better life.
CASEY GAUSS:
I love it, dude. I love the, you know, focus on helping people to be motivated or be kind of at their best
performance or encourage them to be who they want to be. Before Viral Launch I was actually working
on an app somewhat similar. I called it [Live 0:35:02.8], and it was just all around providing some
incentives and some structure around like setting goals and helping you to put the plan in place to
achieve them. So I think it’s [sick 0:35:12.5].
BROCK JOHNSON:
Oh that’s awesome.
CAMERON YODER:
All right, so last question. I love asking people this question. How much of your success would you
attribute to luck, and how much would you attribute to your own hard work and intelligence?
BROCK JOHNSON:
So luck was finding out about the opportunity at the time that I did, and the life situation, that was
lucky. But what wasn’t lucky was going through, you know, 70+ suppliers, finding out everything that
was wrong with it, actually finding the right ones, doing all this analysis, all these predictions and
everything. So it also got lucky that they took down my other competitors right near the end. But it
wasn’t because mine was taken down, too, and I had to argue and fight. So you know, to assign a
percentage, perhaps 15% of it was luck. But if I wouldn’t have sat there and grinded it out, you know,
there was a day where I stayed up 60+ hours in a row. That was really rough. But you know, that’s not
lucky. You know, and that was over $1 million of it was actually that one day, like I don’t want to get this
going too long. That’s a pretty long story.
CAMERON YODER:
Sure, no, that’s fine. I think a lot of people, it’s easy for people to see a story and just attribute it to luck
or [dumb it down 0:36:45.8] to oh, well he got lucky. And it’s really hard. It’s really hard for people to
see how much work and effort really is put into building and establishing an entire business, entire social
media presence, etc., right? And stories like this, I – a personal goal of mine is always to pull out the
hard work that people have done in an effort to establish something wonderful and establish something
great. And I see that with you. I mean you’ve obviously put in a lot of hard work and so, yes, there was a
bit of luck involved, but there was a lot of work.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, well thank you. I really appreciate you pulling that out. And I guess, like looking at luck, so some
people could say it was lucky, but I saw over 100 other private labelers who found out about this
opportunity, and that just sourced from China, didn’t really do much, and they all lost, you know, tens of
thousands of dollars. So if the luck was just finding out about the opportunity you would hear – there
should be 100 other Brock Johnsons with this crazy story you’re hearing about.
CAMERON YODER:
Right. Well Brock, that’s all we have for today. I wanted to thank you so much for taking time out of your
schedule to be here with us, and there is a lot of value in everything that we talked about today. So
again, thank you so much for being here.
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
CAMERON YODER:
If our listeners want to keep in touch with you and keep in touch with what you’re doing, with
everything on Amazon and everything outside of Amazon, how can they do that?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, come check me out. I’m on YouTube, Brock Johnson, just look me up. You’ll find me. And then if
you want to follow – I just started my Instagram, so if you want to follow me on Instagram it’s
@officialbrockjohnson. That’s where – send me a DM on there, and that’s how you can get a good
response from me. And yeah, that’s how you can check me out.
CAMERON YODER:
It’s going down on the DMs, man. We will put all of your info in our show notes. So guys, if you want to
keep in touch with Brock you’ll be able to find it there. But thank you again, Brock. There’s a lot of value
in what we talked about today. We very much appreciate
