Finding Your Business's Acceleration Gear - The Growth Gear Podcast Ep. 1 with Tim Jordan

We all have dreams of building a thriving business, reaching the pinnacle of success in our fields, and proving to the world that we're successful entrepreneurs. But sometimes we find ourselves cruising in the slow lane and we don't know how to speed up. Enter your secret weapon of acceleration, The Growth Gear Podcast hosted by yours truly, Tim Jordan. It's like hitting that boost button for your business, pumping your engine full of actionable insights, motivation, and the knowledge that you need to get to the fast lane on your entrepreneurial journey. So now it's time to find your gear, view your growth, and dive into another episode of The Growth Gear Podcast. Every generation has something in pop culture that represents it, right? This could be a political situation, it could be something historical. It could be a song or a genre of songs maybe. It could be a movie in some of the more recent generations.

I remember my dad making me watch Animal House when I was young and him explaining to me that that movie defined his generation and that movie represented his childhood and growing up and everything that was going on in the world related to pop culture. The movie that I think of as a geriatric millennial, which is what I'm officially referred to as, is the Fast and the Furious. Now, I know there's a lot of movies that I could have chosen, but when I really think of a movie that impacted me, that kind of defined my, I don't know, the high school years, right? The really instrumental years, the years where you make your largest development and growth, it was Fast and Furious. Now, at the time in high school, I was in Michigan, and Michigan is the motor city capital of the states, right? That's where Chrysler and Ford and GM, they're all based, they're all located, and everybody that I hung out with, their dads worked for those motor companies.

And they all grew up in the era of muscle cars, the late sixties, the early seventies, just raw horsepower cars that just went extremely fast with very few safety measures that kind of defined their childhood or their younger years and their generation. So all of us growing up, our dads were appreciative of fast cars and they had souped up a lot of cars. But the Fast and the Furious came out when I was in high school, and the whole premise of that movie is a bunch of guys that are tuning up import cars, the Hondas and the Toyotas and the Nissans, right? These primarily Japanese made cars. Well, there's a similarity with our generation and our fathers' generations right? We all wanted to soup up cars. We wanted to make them go fast.

And for our generation, that really kicked in because of the Fast and the Furious. The Fast and the Furious has a bunch of great movie quotes, I won't go into those, but lines that resonate really well. And I remember I wanted a tuner car. I wanted so bad, I couldn't stand it. I had friends in school that were getting Honda S2000s and Nissan Skylines and all these great cars. They could soup up and just go ridiculously fast, and they weren't that expensive. And I was broke. My first car was a 1989 Ford Escort station wagon. Not sexy, not cool. I had it for four days before I drove underneath the back of a dump truck and wrecked it. My dad called me one day and he was driving down the road and saw a car parked on the side, and he checked it out. It's $1000.

He called me. He said, "Tim, hop in your mom's car. Come check this thing out. You can probably afford it. It might be right up your alley." So I went over there a few miles away, and it was a blue 1993 Mazda MX3. Most of you have no clue what that car looks like. For the few of you that do kudos because you know your cars. It was a tiny little Mazda. It was technically a four-seater, but you had to be really small to get in the backseat. But what was cool about it was some of those models were made with the smallest production V6 six cylinder that was ever produced. It was a 1.8 liter V6 that was meant to rev up really high. Well, this car was a piece. Interior is falling apart. It was missing a headlight at rust on the body.

And to me, it was beautiful because I had this really sharp little V6 engine. It was a stick shift and I could afford it. So I bought this car and I started fixing it up. And in my mind, I was Paul Walker's buddy. I was driving around doing this import tuning street racing thing, and I got that guard going pretty fast. I did little mods and little tunes to it over a couple years. And remember my senior year, there was a bunch of us in high school that would get together regularly in an old abandoned warehouse, literally straight out of a movie. We'd listen to music on a pirate radio station that a buddy ran out of the back of his van, which was super weird. And then we would do what we called the loop. Now the loop, you would go down one major road in our area and you'd get on the interstate and you'd go about 15 miles on the interstate and you'd take another interstate and then another major highway back to where we were.

So all in all, it was like 35 mile run, and it was pretty nice, wide open roads. And at night, there was never any traffic. So the idea with running the loop was we could just go obscenely fast. Not endorsing that. Definitely not a good idea. Definitely broke the law a few times, but it was fun for a 17, 18-year-old kid. Well, I remember I had specifically done a tune up to my car. I'd put some different parts on it, made it a little faster, and I was ready to go run that loop one night. So we go out on the loop and there's a bunch of us, maybe 30 or 40 cars. We had little walkie-talkies all on the same channel, thought we were cool, and we hit the interstate. And I wound it out. I had my gas pedal all the way down.

I was revving that thing up, and I was trying to get this thing as fast as it would go. And that little engine was screaming. I hit, let's say it was a high triple digit number, well, a low triple digit number, but it was a high number for my speed, especially with that car that was half rusted out. And I started to redline, I started to wind out. I started to hit the maximum RPMs. Now, what that means for those of you that aren't really mechanically inclined or know a lot about car engines, is that a car engine spins at a certain speed and there is a threshold for how fast it can spin. And the way that a car continues to accelerate is it changes gears. So you start in first gear and then second gear, and then third gear. And there are some variations with CVT transmissions and some crazy stuff like that now.

But essentially, the engine would rev up to about as high as it was comfortable to, and you'd change gears and you'd start the process again, and you'd rev up, and then you'd change gears and you'd rev up again. And every time you're revving up, you're going a higher speed. So first gear could be one to 20 miles an hour. Second was 20 to 40, or third gear was 40 to 60. And I'm oversimplifying, but you get my point.

Well, this car only had five gears, and I was winding that sucker out in fifth gear. I literally could not go any faster. The engine would not spin any faster without blowing it up. And even though there was technically power there, I couldn't go any faster because I was in fifth gear and I was maxed out. And here comes a stupid Camaro, and this guy pulls up beside me, again, we're doing triple digit mile per hour speeds, and he pulls up beside me, he looks over at me and he smiles, and he shifts his gear into a higher gear, and he restarts that whole revving up process, and he just blows right past me.

And I remember sitting there thinking, "If only I had another gear, if only I had another gear, if only I had another gear, I could continue to go faster." A lot of times as entrepreneurs or as business owners, we redline, we max out our revolutions per minute, our RPMs, and we don't have another gear to get into. Well, so many times in at least the past 10, 12 years in my business life, I have thought that I was redlined. I thought I was maxed out, or maybe I was redlined. Maybe I was maxed out. I couldn't go any faster. My little engine was running as hard and fast as it could, and I could not hit a new gear. I could not hit a new speed.

And many times something happened. Maybe it was a piece of knowledge, maybe it was an experience, maybe it was a relationship. Maybe it was another opportunity that was like getting another gear in my transmission and I could shift into that gear and continue to accelerate. Keep going faster. The name of this podcast, The Growth Gear Podcast, is built on the premise that there are new gears to hit, or maybe there's new speed to attain, but we have to hit a new gear. And The Growth Gear Podcast is intended to help you find that information, that wisdom, that experience, that idea, that motivation, that inspiration to take your business's car who's revving out its engine and shift into a new gear.

My name's Tim Jordan and I'm the host of this podcast. Some of you that are listening to this know me, you've seen me around, we might be buddies, and you're doing me a favor by listening to episode one, some of you have never heard of me, some of you have yet to come across me in this giant world out there. But I can tell you that my goal is to help you grow because so many have helped me grow in the past. I come from the world of digital marketing, specifically in e-commerce, and even more specifically in Amazon. And about 10 years ago, I started an Amazon business and then several other businesses off the back of that, and I redlined constantly. I continued to find the ceiling to my potential in sales, my potential in leadership, my potential in growth.

And the places that I got most of those new gears, those opportunities to continue to shift up, come from community. They come from the people, they come from, those that have gone on before me or trying to figure it out with me, those that have wisdom or experiences that can lend to my journey, and those are the things that have helped me propel the most. When I think about ways that I can help incorporate all of this wisdom, all of this knowledge, all of this experience from the community of entrepreneurs out there. Podcast is a great platform. All right, so in this episode, episode one, I'm going to explain a few things. The first thing that I'll go over is who this podcast is for, who should be listening to this. The second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to cover the format and the types of topics that we're going to cover in this podcast primarily.

I'm also going to discuss why this podcast is important for you. And if you're listening to this, if you found it, I'm absolutely certain that there's something in here that makes this podcast important for you and worth your time. And the fourth thing I'm going to cover is how you can make the most out of this podcast, how you can get involved and how you can reap as many benefits as possible from the work that all of these amazing guests and myself are putting together to bring to you absolutely free. So the first thing I want to cover is who this podcast is for, and it would be really easy to make a generalized statement such as, "Well, it's for any entrepreneur. It's for anybody with a business mind." Now, I come from a community of e-commerce, specifically in Amazon. And as we are looking around the ecosystem of Amazon sellers and e-commerce sellers, there's a lot of content, there's a lot of podcasts specifically related to selling on Amazon.

We don't want to pigeonhole ourselves that way, and I'll explain some of that when I talk about format in a minute. But we want to come at this podcast from the eyes of an e-commerce seller because that's where most of our audience and most of my community and most of my network is in. But really, this is for anybody that's an entrepreneur, specifically in branding, in e-commerce, in product sales. It's for anybody who wants to learn advanced mindset practices, hear motivating stories, gather inspiration, learn digital marketing tactics, learn advanced e-commerce tactics occasionally. Basically, anybody who is anywhere from a solopreneur newbie who's just getting into business for the first time, we're going to have a lot of content for you or that's applicable to you. It'll be applicable to everybody, but specifically applicable to you, or the most advanced e-commerce sellers and some of the most advanced entrepreneurs in this entire ecosystem.

When I look around at the network that I have really been fortunate to be a part of, and some of the most informative pieces of wisdom or knowledge that I've come across, they were agnostic to a specific avatar of entrepreneur, right? If there's a really great mindset principle, if there's a really great marketing tactic or if there's a really great business opportunity out there that applies to everybody. So if you started listening to this and you think, "Hey, maybe this isn't for me," you're wrong. Because if you're entrepreneurial at all, whether you're just thinking about getting started or you're a seasoned vet, this is for you. Now, when it comes to format, we're going to be doing one podcast episode every week. It's going to drop every week, and then we're going to take those episodes and we're going to break them into a lot of consumable content in different formats.

So not only are we going to have show notes and blogs and transcriptions, but we're going to repurpose these podcast episodes into bite-sized chunks that you're going to find on social media. Maybe you don't have time to listen to a 40 or 45 minute episode every week, which by the way, you could double the speed on most platforms and do it in your commute to the office at 20 minutes. But maybe you want to get little pieces of information and wisdom from social media. We're going to cut that up. We're going to drop it there for you too. It's a lot of places to access this, but primarily a flagship episode every week. Now, for those of you that are in the Amazon space, in the e-commerce space, we're also going to be doing a separate subseries of industry experts giving wisdom, content information, tactics that we're going to be formatting a little differently.

And in future episodes, I'll talk about where you can find that and where you can see that. As far as topics, when we were thinking about this podcast, we were thinking about the advanced e-commerce seller, advanced digital market, or what do they need to listen to? Yeah, they need to learn the platforms that they sell on. They need to learn more advanced e-commerce tactics may be your digital marketing tactics, but they also need to level up in a lot of other ways. They need to find gears in other ways. Maybe their ceiling isn't the ability to go out and launch products. Maybe their ceiling is in leading a team. Maybe the ceiling that the rev limiter that they've hit is in getting over their own core beliefs or eliminating some of their negative core beliefs and moving on to a stronger position themselves, or finding motivation or inspiration or ideas or learning from other people's mistakes to help you avoid those in the future.

We're going to be covering all of that. When I think about the topic list, and we've got a big list of stuff coming to you, it really is applicable to nearly everybody, but we are going to focus on the things that maybe a more experienced seller or an experienced entrepreneur would need to hear, not specifically related to e-commerce. And again, I keep stressing that because that's where most of my content has been in the past. So if you're not an e-commerce seller, you're like, "Why is he talking about e-commerce so much?" That's all it is. I think that's where people are going to expect me to go with this, and that's not the plan. That's not the plan for our topics. I recently heard a quote or saw a quote that talked about maybe you're on the right track, but if you're not moving forward, you're not moving.

So just being on the right track, but without motion doesn't do you any good. Or maybe you're stuck in a situation where you're cruising along and maybe you're comfortable, but you need to kick in the pants and you need to get out of that slow lane. You need to get in the passing gear. Maybe you're in a situation where you're struggling and you don't let anybody know about it. You're struggling with business issues. Maybe you have personal issues that are reflecting into your business. Maybe you have a business culture problem with your team that's not right. Maybe you have just a desire to learn from the best. Maybe there's no issues going on, but you just want to keep accelerating. You want to fine tune that vehicle. If any of that is interesting to you, then this is for you. And the reason that's important is because we have one life to live, and the things that we're doing are important.

I recently heard a wise man once, give an analogy, maybe we'll talk about that analogy on this podcast platform about how business owners and frankly, capitalists can provide so much good to the world. I once had a project set up where I set up a sourcing company in Central America. I don't speak Spanish, but I set up a company there. And what we were doing was fair wage, fair trade sourcing from artisans, local artisans for big brands in the US. And I felt like at a time when Central Americans were wanting to immigrate to the US and finding struggles there and wanting to get out of severe poverty or gang situations and leaving was really their best option, I thought that man, entrepreneurship can really change things. Entrepreneurs change the world. Look at every advanced development in medicine or in technology or in infrastructure or in logistics, anything.

It's all entrepreneurs, right? So if you are entrepreneurial and you have an idea, you're literally making the world a better place, and that's pretty cool. And if you have an entrepreneurial bug, but you're not making the world a better place, then maybe you just haven't hit that gear to hit that speed that you need to. You haven't hit the velocity you need to. You haven't got that car rolling fast enough down the road, and it's important that you find that it's important that you ingest as much information and wisdom and knowledge as possible, and hopefully this podcast will do that for you. Now, as far as making this podcast the most benefit for you, you need to engage on our platforms. Now, I know that sounds like a pitch. I know it sounds gimmicky, go subscribe, but do it. We're on every major podcast platform out there.

We're also on YouTube Podcast. So if you go to YouTube and you search Growth Gear Podcast or podcast Tim Jordan, it's going to pop up, subscribe to both the YouTube channel and to the podcast platforms. And the reason for that is you'll be reminded of content, some of which will be repurposed, short snippets that are coming up in the very near future. So if you subscribe to the YouTube channel, you get those YouTube shorts as you're scrolling and looking at cat videos and learning how to crip walk, and maybe something will plant itself in your brain and help you kick into that next gear, that growth gear. You also need to follow us on social media. Now, the best way to do that is to follow either myself on Instagram, Timbo_Jordan, so Timbo_Jordan on Instagram, follow me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn, follow all the social media channels of Carbon6. Carbon6, I'm proud to be a part of.

And it's also the sponsor of this podcast. They're the ones that forked over the money to make this happen and put together the ability for us to create this podcast. And they're going to be showing a lot of this content in their social media. So make sure to follow Carbon6's social medias. The other thing you need to do is go to the growthgearpodcast.com and subscribe to our newsletter. This newsletter is going to be super important. Not only are we going to send you reminders of new episodes that are being dropped, but we're going to be sending show notes. We're going to be sending extra bonus content. There's a lot of cool stuff coming up for you there. If we put all this together and we have great guests, and we have great topics, and we have great information, and we don't get it to you, that's our fault.

But if we're putting it out there and you're not allowing it to be seen, that's your fault. So right now, pause, go subscribe on all those channels, and you'll get notifications when this content comes out. I'm so thankful to be doing this. I've hosted podcasts in the past, and I've been off for a couple years, and it's been on the back burner for a little while, and then it became a front burner topic and a front burner issue, and then it became a huge priority, largely because community is so empowering for entrepreneurs. I briefly mentioned Carbon6. They're the sponsor of this podcast, and I'm a huge part of Carbon6, or Carbon6 is a huge part of me, one of those two. I'm not even sure which way it goes anymore. But what we found out at Carbon6 is that entrepreneurs are growing like weeds.

The folks that do things right, the folks that learn from the best and learn from their own mistakes and become involved in community and sharing those things, they become the most successful entrepreneurs. And it is such an honor and a privilege to be able to share so much of that with you here representing Carbon6, representing entrepreneurs in general, and representing all of us that need to continue to grow because maybe our little Mazda MX3 engine is wound out and that Camaro is going faster than us, and it's frustrating, and we need to find a new gear. So I say this with all sincerity, all honesty. The hope and the intent that I have and that this podcast has is to give you one little snippet of information occasionally that helps you grow your business and grow yourself personally. Now, if you listen to three or four episodes and you got zero value out of it, which I think is impossible, but that fifth or sixth episode you listened to gave you one little nugget, would it be worth it?

I think so. It doesn't take much time. We consume so much media. We consume so much content that doesn't help us. I think that it's fair to treat ourselves right, to invest in ourselves, and really learn from others. Now, there will be solo episodes in here. Some of the things that I'm learning, or maybe even the struggles I'm going through or have gone through are going to be applicable to tell you, but largely we're bringing in some of the biggest and best and brightest minds in the industries of the topics that I've listed, not even one specific industry to share with you to help you hit that new gear, that growth gear. So thank you for listening to this episode, and I know it wasn't super exciting. I know that it was a little bit of housekeeping stuff and introducing you to what we're going to be talking about.

But please, please, please subscribe to those channels and share this with your friend, share this with your masterminds. Let them know what's coming, and keep in mind that we want feedback also. If you have a topic that you'd love covered, if you have a question that you'd love answered, if you have a suggestion for a great guest that needs to be out there in the intraweb somewhere where they can be listened to, send me an email, tim@growthgearpodcast.com. I promise you I'll read it. Promise I'll take every suggestion whether it's good or bad, and use that as data to help make the decisions for this podcast, which is for you, not for me, not for our guests. It's for you, the listeners. Again, make sure to subscribe, make sure to follow us on YouTube, make sure to follow us on all the social media channels, and we'll see you coming up on the first official, although it'll be called episode number two, Growth Gear Podcast.

See you then.