🚀 Shiny Object Syndrome or Secret Weapon?

What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

• 🚀 Shiny Object Syndrome or Secret Weapon? [True Story]

• 🚨 Amazon Facing Class Action Lawsuit

• ⏰ 5 Things That Did NOT Help Me Scale My Business

• 🔥 7 Key Lessons From a Serial Entrepreneur

• ✅ How to Use ChatGPT to Build a Lead Engine

My friend Chad Rubin is offering Beardos a FREE test run on this new tool called Profasee.

You plug it in. It prices your products optimally.

You profit instantly.

You basically do nothing while you build sales and reputation on Amazon. Book a demo today 🔥.

Have a great Monday.

🚀 Shiny Object Syndrome or Secret Weapon? [TRUE STORY] 

I’m often told I have shiny object syndrome.

And honestly, I think 90% of entrepreneurs do too.

But I believe it could be the secret to building an indestructible business moat.

Let me explain…

Back when I ran a promo company, we didn’t just stop with promotions.

We expanded.

We bought an embroidery house, a screening facility, a fulfillment center, and even a courier company.

We linked all those pieces together, drove our costs down, and created something that worked beautifully.

It was impossible for other companies to compete against us.

And it was all part of our plan.

This is the same idea with strategic partnerships and what I have now with Kevin King and our company DragonFish.

But that’s the thing…

You’ve got to be willing to think outside the box.

You need to see what others aren’t doing, and build your own moat.

Today, it’s more important than ever to lean on each other and use those partnerships to make everyone stronger.

So the business lesson here?

Sometimes having a lot of irons in the fire is a strategy.

Create a network of value that others might not see right away, but that ultimately sets you apart.

Build that moat.

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter.

— Norm

P.S. You’re invited to an informal AMA with Kevin King and I, on the CMS Cigars & Whiskey trip happening this November, as well, you’ll find out what DragonFish is up to.

🔥 Sign up here!

🚨 Amazon Facing Class Action Lawsuit

Amazon is officially facing a massive class action lawsuit that could impact hundreds of millions of U.S. consumers.

A federal judge in Seattle just ruled that Amazon must answer to claims it overcharged customers for products sold by third-party sellers.

The lawsuit covers 288 million customers and billions of transactions, making it one of the largest class actions ever in the U.S.

It applies to anyone who bought five or more new items from third-party sellers on Amazon since May 2017.

The claim?

Amazon allegedly violated antitrust law by forcing third-party sellers not to list their products cheaper anywhere else. By locking sellers into higher prices on Amazon, the company could charge inflated fees, which ultimately made shoppers pay more.

Amazon denies any wrongdoing and has already appealed the decision.

They argued the class was “too large to manage” and that their pricing program ended back in 2019.

But the judge wasn’t convinced, noting other cases have certified classes just as big.

 🔥 7 Key Lessons From Serial Entrepreneur, Colin Campbell:

1. Start vs. Scale Require Different Playbooks

In 2006, our public company was flatlining. A board member even suggested replacing me as CEO. I reached out to a fellow EO member who introduced me to Patrick Thean of Rhythm Systems.

We implemented two days of strategic planning, 90 days of execution, daily huddles, core values, goal setting and more, we really went all-in.

The result?

We tripled in size within a few years and sold the company to a Fortune 500 firm at a 125% premium to our stock price.

2. Hire Based on Personality

At an EO University, I discovered the DISC personality profiling system, a self-assessment tool that helps identify individual behavioral styles.

I had each member of my team take the test and suddenly understood why some thrived and others struggled.

It became our game-changing hiring philosophy. We built incredible teams by aligning roles with personalities.

3. Get Comfortable Presenting in Public

Like most entrepreneurs, I dreaded public speaking.

But through EO, where I presented at events and within my Forum, I gained the confidence to handle Initial Public Offering (IPO) roadshows and investor pitches.

4. Learn to Lead Leaders

Entrepreneurs and most great executives tend to be strong-willed with a dominant personality. In other words, they are not “Yes” people.

They tend to challenge you, which can be frustrating, but if you can manage that while simultaneously inspiring and aligning them, you can scale a company beyond what you imagined.

5. Delegate Responsibilities, Not Tasks

In Start mode, you do it all yourself. In Scale mode, you empower leaders to do what needs to be done. The key factor here is to assign outcomes not checklists.

I even discovered a hidden benefit: You get to sleep at night. Your team might be up worrying about the details at 3 am but you won’t.

🌎 Where in the World is The Beard Guy?

Five Things That Did NOT Work While Scaling My Business

The following is a condensed excerpt from Ryan Deiss’ Scalable Case Study.

Before settling on an operating system upgrade as the solution to Ryan Deiss’ burnout-inducing scale problems, Ryan tried five other things that flat out it did NOT work. 

1. Becoming “More Productive” Did NOT Work 

Back in my “prime,” 80-hour work weeks were the norm and 100-hour weeks weren’t out of the question. I worked nights and weekends, sun up to sun down and then some. 

My output was legendary. 

Seriously, I could outwork and outproduce anyone in the company 2X - 3X.

But here’s the problem with productivity: You still only have 24 hours in a day, and eventually you do need to eat and sleep.

The harder I worked, the faster the “To Dos” filled my list.

That’s when I realized I had it backwards all along.

As a business owner, my job isn’t to do MORE, it’s actually to do less.

As a good friend and mentor once told me…

“The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is.”

2. Creating SOPs for Everything Did NOT Work

Fairly early in my career, a well-intentioned fellow entrepreneur told me I needed to start reading books like The E-Myth Revisited if I wanted to learn how to build a real business.

Well guess what? I tried it…

I literally shut down my entire company for a full month…NOTHING, until absolutely everyone had documented absolutely everything they did.

No one was happy about it and I just barely escaped an all-out mutiny, but I pressed on, and at the end of the month we finally had it…

Binders of SOPs is NOT an operating system.

NO ONE ever looked at these SOPs. Not once. Not ever. 

3. Hiring “Rockstars” and “A Players” Did NOT Work

This one flies in the face of what all the experts and “gurus” preach when they say things like, “All problems are people problems…” and “There’s no such thing as ‘How’ problems, there are only ‘Who’ problems.”

But in the real world where we are living, the “just hire A-players and everything else will take care of itself…” advice wasn’t cutting it.

First, I couldn’t afford to make any major hires. Cashflow was just too tight.

Second, I didn’t have time to train and onboard any new people. (I was trying work LESS, remember?)

Good people don’t fix broken systems. Broken systems break good people.

Yes, you want to hire great people. 

Who doesn’t?!

But as a business owner who values both success AND freedom, your objective is NOT to build a team of "rockstars" and “A-players.” Your objective is to build a company that doesn't require them.

4. Hiring an “Integrator” Did NOT Work

The idea that you can make one, magical “unicorn” hire who will do all the “dirty work” while you just “visionate” all over the place is a laughable lie.

Heck, I wanted to believe it, and more than once I have attempted to make such a hire who’s job title was something along the lines of:

Role: Integrator

Job Description: Do all the stuff I don’t want to do.

But ask yourself, have you ever actually seen it work?

To be clear, I’m all for you hiring an Operations Manager, VP of Operations, COO, President, or heck, even a CEO one day. I want you to have that “#2” who can do all the stuff you suck at or just don’t want to do!

5. More Growth Did NOT Work

I operated under the delusion that growth fixes everything.

“I’ll slow down when we hit $1M in revenue…$10M…$30M…”

…the goal-post was always moving, because I believed that things would get easier once we hit that “next milestone.”

But the opposite turned out to be true.

As my business grew, not only did I have less and less free time, but as expenses went up and margins went down, I was also making less money, which meant I needed to work even harder just to take home what I was making when my business was smaller.

Clearly more growth was not the answer.

🔥 The Key to Ranking on Amazon in 2025

My takeaways from this episode! (Full episode is on YouTube)

1. Behavior and Intent Are Now Critical

For the first time, Amazon’s system is analyzing behavioral signals (what people search, click, and buy together) not just keywords. Example: a shopper searches for “shoes for pregnant women” and gets slip-resistant shoes because Cosmo understands intent.

2. Optimize for Both Cosmo and Rufus

• Cosmo: connects your product to the right audience.

• Rufus: answers shopper questions using your listing content.
  If Rufus can’t find details on your page, it may recommend competitors instead.

3. Customer Personas Drive Better Optimization

Every product should have at least 3 personas. Example for a knife:

• Functional buyer (cuts meat faster)

• Quality-focused buyer (premium materials, long-lasting)

• Gift buyer (presentation & packaging)
  Tailor bullets, images, and FAQs to address each.

🔥 AI Expert: Brands Are Getting Left Behind by... | Amara Omoregie

Here are my favorite tips from this episode!

1. We’re in a 3-Year AI Gold Rush

There’s a short window where businesses can make outsized returns by adopting AI. Early adopters who restructure processes around AI will pull ahead, while laggards will struggle.

2. Hire for AI Literacy Now

A core role in modern companies isn’t just a marketer or operator — it’s someone who understands AI, workflows, and training software to do the work. The org chart of the future will look very different, and this hire is foundational.

3. Schema is Fuel for AI and Search

Schema (structured data) is no longer optional. It not only helps Google rank content but also makes it easier for LLMs like ChatGPT and Rufus to understand your content and surface it to users. Think of schema as the “label” that tells AI what your content actually is.

Find this episode of Marketing Misfits on YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts

And that’s it, Beardos.

See you next Monday!

- Norm

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