# 430 – Real Amazon Sellers, Real Results & Strategies Part 1

34 minute read

Published: March 4, 2023

Modified: March 8, 2023

If you’re an Amazon and Walmart seller, or aspiring to become one, you know how challenging it can be to navigate the world of E-commerce. There’s so much to learn, from finding the right products to sell, to optimizing your listings, to managing your inventory and shipping logistics. But what if you don’t have a fancy business degree or a background in marketing? Can you still succeed on Amazon? Absolutely!

In this episode of our podcast, we’re thrilled to bring you real Amazon sellers, with real results and their strategies, where we feature regular people who have found success selling on Amazon. These inspiring sellers come from different backgrounds and levels of experience, but they all share a common passion for E-commerce and a determination to make their dreams a reality.

What’s remarkable about these sellers is that they didn’t start out as experts or influencers in their respective niches. They simply had a dream and the determination to make it happen. They took action, learned as they went, and were willing to take risks and make mistakes along the way.

We hope this episode of our podcast inspired you to take action and pursue your own dreams of selling online. Stay tuned, next week, for Real Amazon Sellers, Real Results & Strategies Part 2

In episode 430 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and the sellers discuss:

03:00 – Our First Three Guests Share Their Story And Journeys
11:20 – Why Would Newer Sellers Be Part Of The Elite Program?
14:40 – Our Next Three Guests Join The Conversation
16:50 – How Much Gross Sales Did Our Guests Have All Time?
18:30 – 60-Second Strategies From 6 To 7-Figure Sellers
21:15 – How Do You Get Reviews For New Products?
22:50 – Another Batch Of Guests Joins Us
26:00 – Gonzalo Made $1 Million With One Product And Tips On How He Got There
28:20 – How Elizabeth Made $2 Million In Three Months
29:45 – A Valuable Lesson That Helped Jake’s Company Succeed
31:00 – More Experienced Amazon Seller Joins Us
32:00 – What Inspired Them To Get Into E-commerce
35:00 – If You’re Just Starting Out, What Going To Take Your Business To The Next Level?
36:00 – Stay Tuned For Part 2 Of This Episode!

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got our annual Average Joe and Sally episode, where we invite a number of regular sellers of all levels from unique backgrounds. And these aren’t influencers or service providers or trying to sell something. They’re just regular people sharing their inspiring stories and strategies. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

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Bradley Sutton:

I’d like to offer you the same wonderful experience a lot of sellers have had. Sign up with Airwallex at www.airwallex.com/h10. That’s www.airwallex.com/h10 and get a $500 annual bonus. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton. And this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And as I mentioned, this is our annual episode where we call it the Average Joe and Sally episode, where we bring in just regular sellers. We love experts out there. I’ll never stop having experts on the show, but every year, one of the most popular episodes is where we just bring some average shows and Sally’s that are just regular people like you and I, who might not have come from some amazing e-commerce background, but they had a dream to sell online and they’re executing.

Bradley Sutton:

Some of these sellers are newer, some of these sellers have been selling for years. But we brought them on and this was kind of like a webinar that we did. And so we took some excerpts from this webinar, Carrie and I, we’re just interviewing them, asking them how much money they’ve made online, what are some of the wins and losses they’ve had on their journey. And what I want you guys to do when you listen to their stories is see who you can relate to, whether you’re a brand new seller yourself or an experienced seller, I’m hoping that you can find some motivation listening to these real people with their real stories. So let’s go ahead and hop into it with our first three guests.

Richard:

I’m Richard Toops. I live in Boquete Panama. I saw several Panama people flash through when the room was opening up, and I built automobiles for a long time before I got involved with Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Built automobiles, what’s that? Like you took broken down cars and then you rebuilt them, or you built cars from scratch or?

Richard:

No, built brand new automobiles for General Motors.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, okay. Okay. All right. Excellent. Gina same questions.

Gina:

So I’m Gina Perez. I’m from San Antonio, Texas. I’ve actually been in e-commerce for almost 24 years now, so I’ve been in at least the online space for that period of time.

Bradley Sutton:

And so E-commerce has kind of been the main, the main part of your life then.

Gina:

Yeah. Yeah. I started before people were even comfortable putting credit cards online, like in 98 it was, it was novel concept back then, so it was learning everything was new every year. Something was new. For the last 24 years, it’s still happened.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So here’s somebody who actually did come from e-commerce background. All right. Renee?

Rene:

Hi, I’m Rene Baron, and I’m living now in Celebration Florida, and I’ve worked for 30 years for the US Army Corps Engineering Contractor.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Yeah. I think my father during Vietnam was US army Corps of Engineers. I think he was stationed in Japan for that. So interesting. All right. Now, next question. Like how long have you been selling on Amazon itself, Richard? And then, like, overall, like, what, what’s the total you’ve, you’ve been, been your gross sale so far?

Richard:

So we started our Amazon account in 2019, and went through all of the learning mistakes and had a lot of slow activity went outta stock. About the time the Covid shut down, it happened. We had our largest order of inventory was held at the factory because they shut the town down. So we’ve been consistent since the middle of 2020. And in that year we sold about $25,000 worth of product through our camp with one product. And just this year since January we’re probably going to get close to double that. But it’s been a journey.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. So it’s like you’ve been selling for about 2-3 years. Doubling goal is double your sales to 50,000. So you, time wise, maybe not completely new, but you’re gradually getting up there in sales. I like it. I like it. And what would you say, like, if I were to ask you for a 30-second strategy for everybody out there, it could be something about like just like staying motivated. It could be something that turned the corner for your puff, could be about anything. What could be about living in Panama taxes? I don’t know. What’s your 30-second strategy for everybody out there?

Richard:

Well, the most profoundly important thing for us is learning about Helium 10. And there was almost a naive kind of an approach because back in the nineties we had an eBay account. We were doing different types of attempts to sell online. But until we begin to really get into how this works, it was just going in a circle. So Helium 10 provided us a pathway to begin that process of working our way out of that circle. And once again, the journey part of it for us has been ever, we’re learning something every week. So that’s been probably the most important single thing that I can think of.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. I like it. I like it. And I especially like too that, you’re no spring chicken like me a a as they say like, so there’s no right or wrong age we, we’ve got I think Kevin on the AM/PM podcast last week had somebody who started selling when he was 10 years old. You know, we, we have people Paul Miller started when he was like in his late sixties, I wanna say. You know, so there’s no right or wrong age to get started in e-commerce. That’s another thing that I love about that. All right. Same questions for Gina. So for the Amazon side of things, now that it’s you, since you started your own private label, but I know you were in e-commerce, but like working for other companies, but since you had your own thing going, what would you say is your total gross sales that you’ve been doing and how long did it take you to become profitable, if you are?

Gina:

Yeah, so with, with my, my own product cuz I did some test products on, on Amazon first to kind of get my feet under me and figure out how the process went. So I didn’t, my first official sale on my own product was in April of 2020. And so nine months worth of sale is, I was just shy of six figures. So I mean, there’s like a couple thousand that I was short, so I was going for the goal, but if I’d had the other months of sales and I probably would’ve hit it. And then over the next two years I’ve seen an average of 55% growth year over year. So it’s, it’s been good. Strategy for me, like I would say because I’m pretty much a one person show was I had to kind of implement the 80-20 rule, not just in advertising dollars or budgets, but in how I spent my time.

Gina:

So I had to spend most of my time on the 20% of the things, projects or whatever that were going to benefit my business the most. And the one thing that I think I knew that I didn’t wanna do, and it’s just a a headache for me was I found basically an accounting, a bookkeeping person agency that helped me get control of the books right off the bat. So I knew where profitability were, where expenses were, where anything that was or wasn’t working anomalies that were sticking out, having somebody like do all the work for me to just be able to look at reports cuz in my previous career, I’m used to looking at the, the Flash report where I can see all the numbers in some bi person put it together and I can make decisions from there.

Gina:

Me having to do all that and then look at it and make some analysis about it was, is just kind time consuming. You get lost in it. So hiring a bookkeeper and a CPA was, was really like that, you know weight off my shoulders of okay, somebody who knows what they’re doing because there’s all the expenses and stuff that come not just from Amazon, but pulling data from Walmart, pulling data from any other channel that you sell on to make sure that all of your PNLs in order so that you know where you need to cut if you’re profitable. What, what’s working, what’s not working, it just makes it so much easier. So I’d say right off the bat, if you can kind of get your books in order instead of, what I think a lot of people do is they, they do all the marketing and selling first, and then they come back and be like, oh, but you know, this little formula I used at the beginning said I was gonna be profitable, but I didn’t account for business insurance and I had to buy a new computer and legal fees, all these other things that people just don’t account for. That’s kind of what I banked on at the beginning.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Excellent. Rene, what about you? How long you been selling? How much have you sold and what’s some advice you give for newer sellers like yourself?

Rene:

Well, I have started in 2022, got my product. I only have one product 2022, and I’ve only sold about 8,000 total. So long way to go.

Bradley Sutton:

Brand new. I love it. I love it. Now you three are all Elite members so sometimes people say, oh, hey Elite members it’s only for being nine figure, eight figure sellers but, but you were on the newer side in the last couple years or even the last few months have started. So some people might be like, what in the world, why would a newer seller be a part of the Elite program? So, just really quick, 30 seconds or less, like Richard, what’s your biggest benefit you’re getting out of the being an Elite even though you’re a still a newer seller?

Richard:

The depth of knowledge and the availability of the help that that we’ve been able to get from the other Elite members that recognize and that I think that was important that right away they recognized what our question was. And so there wasn’t a lot of trial and error, we were able to get specific help right away and that made a big difference.

Gina:

I’d piggyback off of that too, cuz there’s some specific things that go wrong for you that you may not have experience with and anybody and everybody on the call is willing to help. They may either have been through it or it’s kind of a big think tank of how can you solve the problem. Try this or try that. Cuz you know, again, not everybody works. The solutions don’t work for everybody whenever you’re doing anything on Amazon. But just being able to ask those questions of people that are not trying to sell you something is a big difference for me. When you’re trying to go to a consultant or an agency they wanna have consulting hours or a plan, you kind of have a retainer with a whole bunch of sellers that either have been where you are or just great e-commerce people or great minds that are problem solvers together and kind of put some information together and try to solve your problem and help other people. You might have some input too that help other people solve their problems.

Rene:

Well, I just knocked it up to Elite in November. And the first thing I heard was that you were having your quarterly what do you call it? Workshop out at Irvine, California. And so I just went to that and I was just awestruck by the amount of knowledge in the room and the information we were being given. And I just thought, oh my gosh, this is great. Also I get on the round table with Kevin King, I get on the weekly calls and I’ve just started taking advantage of, we can have a monthly call with both Carrie and Bradley and they just dive into whatever you’re asking and such a lot of help. So it’s the communication that I appreciate, the knowledge that everybody is so happy to give me.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Richard, Gina, and Rene thank you for joining us and you know, if one of you guys out there saw something or heard something that resonated with you I hope you get inspired by them. Richard and Renee haven’t been on our podcast yet, but if you want to get more of Gina’s life story, we actually had her on a podcast. You can go to h10.me/330, h10.me/330 And you can get more of Gina’s life story and her journey in e-commerce. So you three I thank you. Now Carrie has got our next three guests lined up and those are Rebecca, Andrew and Abdul. Go ahead.

Carrie:

So what I wanna do is just start and have you introduce yourself and then just let us know what you were doing before you started selling on, on Amazon. And I’ll go ahead and start with Abdul and,

Abdul:

Hey Carrie.

Carrie:

Hi.

Abdul:

So well I’m still programming and testing software for the international finance industry. So I haven’t really left the nest yet. I’m still with that.

Carrie:

All right, so you’re, you’re kind of still in it. Very nice. Yeah, I think that’s pretty common for most people. I also have a job as well. Alright, so go ahead to Rebecca. Like let’s just go ahead and just introduce yourself. Maybe also say how long you’ve been selling and then what job you had before you started selling.

Rebecca:

Hi, yes. I’ve been selling for about two years now, maybe a little longer. I kind of had one product for a few months before that and then before I’ve been a stay-at-home mom really. So I’ve been out of the workforce in that capacity anyway for about 15 years.

Carrie:

Very nice. And you know, if anyone else is a stay-at-home mom, I’ve heard that moms get stuff done very well. So I think it’s a good strategy to start selling on Amazon cuz you’re just gonna get stuff done and be efficient. So and then Andrew, how about you? How long have you been selling and what was the job that you had before?

Andrew:

Sure. I’ve been selling since November, 2019 and job before was, I did technical sales for water treatment chemicals. So I would drive around and do some testing, but also do sales of water treatment chemicals.

Carrie:

Very nice. So I love the diversity of jobs beforehand cause it goes to show that anyone can really start to learn this stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

I think Andrew had the most boring of the group. I can’t imagine doing that.

Andrew:

I’ve had like so many jobs in just the short amount of time I’ve been outta school. So it’s like I make up for it in creativity I feel like.

Carrie:

All right. And then let’s go ahead and talk about your gross sales and you know, how much you’ve sold all time.

Abdul:

So I’ve been selling since 2016. At my peak I hit 60K a month, which has gone down a bit for various reasons. So I would say it’s half of that now around 30K-35K peaks to 40K, but I’m pushing the envelope. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do more soon.

Rebecca:

Yeah, in 2021 I was about $180,000 in revenue and I was not profitable. Last year I was 800,000 in revenue and I was profitable. And then this year, so far, January and February have been really good. I’ve been about double my numbers from 2022.

Carrie:

That’s amazing. That’s quite a bit of growth in just a year or so, two years. That’s amazing. Alright, Andrew, how about you?

Andrew:

Sure. The first year since I started in like November in 2019, my first year was like a huge grand total of 5,600 bucks. It was nothing too big. But last year we finished up with 2.5 million and I think total over from like 2019 to now is right. I think it’s just short of 5 million.

Carrie:

So Very nice. Very nice. Okay. So the next question I’d like to, and I think you guys have some good stuff here, is if you could give a 60-second strategy that you could share with the group that you think has helped you or that you wanna talk about that you would be helpful for everyone in the audience. I’ll start with Abdul. Do you have one in mind?

Abdul:

Yeah, it’s always get back to your basics first before you start doing advanced stuff. Make sure your customers are happy. Even if the annoying ones. We’ve managed to give good service and we’ve turned one stars into five stars. So you really want those scores, your metrics to be as high as possible. So I would just add, keep tight control of your inventory and I always recalculate my margins. Every single freight shipment I get we bring out the notepad and recalculate cause the cost keeps swinging, especially the logistic cost.

Carrie:

Yeah, I think that’s really important cause I think everyone’s always looking for the next hack or how can I do this and that. But really if you do the basics and you focus on that firm foundation, you’ll do well long term. I think that’s a really good point. So thank you for sharing that. Alright, let’s go to Rebecca. What do you think, what’s, what’s a 60-second strategy do you have to share?

Rebecca:

I’d say your product is really important, what you choose and one that has worked really well for me is one of my best sellers is just finding something that’s not on Amazon already, but in a category that people are searching for. If that makes sense. So they’re looking for it, but you’re gonna really stand out cause it’s not on Amazon yet, so

Carrie:

All right, thank you. And then how about you Andrew?

Andrew:

Lately since everyone’s been talking about ChatGPT and stuff, I’ve been using ChatGPT for I haven’t made Excel macros for me so I can like automate some of my PPC stuff. So that’s kind of helped and I think it can, I mean it could automate in any computer language, so anything where you want some automation done, I would play with ChatGPT and see what you can do.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, well there was a couple questions coming in for some of our guests here, I noticed. So before we let them go like Lisa here had a question says, Rebecca, where do you find your products?

Rebecca:

I’m a shopper Lisa, so wherever can pay off sometimes. So if I see something at Anthropology, Creighton Barrel or Etsy, even Etsy’s Easy or any of those places cuz you can kind of see if things are selling if they say, oh, sold out, stuff like that. Or Etsy as a best seller, so anywhere really.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Excellent. And then another question, this could be for anybody who wants to answer Mario was like can you give tips on how to get reviews for new products? So all of you guys have launched products over the last couple of years. Is it just kind of like the bread and butter works or you think one of you is doing something a little bit more special than another potentially? Or what is the bread and butter you do? Anybody wanna take that? Maybe Abdul or Andrew?

Abdul:

Yeah, I’ll take that. I have a good customer base that I’ve built. I have ManyChat following. I have email blast that I send out. Or don’t forget those insert cards. They’re basic, but you include a little thank you note a little extended warranty that goes a long way.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. Andrew, do you have anything for reviews that you’re doing? Are you just doing Follow-Up or what are you doing?

Andrew:

Yeah, I just do Follow-Up. I’d say the best, I don’t have a big community yet. That’s one of the things I’m kind of working on. But I just think selling a lot of units is the best way to get reviews. Just kind of keep that in mind when you’re launching a new product that you’re gonna have to keep the price low and for a certain amount of time until you get 20, 30, 40 reviews. And then you can start to bring your price up and just kinda see what happens.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, cool. Well Abdul, Rebecca, and Andrew thank you so much. I hope to see you each of you guys soon. I know a couple of you guys might be in Vegas for the Prosper Show, so I’ll see you then. So thank you very much. All right, next group we’re gonna invite up Jake and Gonzalo and Elizabeth. So Gonzalo, if you can just introduce yourself, where you’re from and how long you’ve been selling on Amazon and what did you do, what did you do before your Amazon life?

Gonzalo:

I’m from Chile in Latin America. I started on November, 2019 and before this, I was sales manager on Johnson and Johnson in the personal care area. And then I try a lot of things trying to start a company as entrepreneur.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And what inspired you to get into to e-commerce?

Gonzalo:

Actually there was two companies that always call my attention. One was Amazon and the second is Disney. I love it.

Elizabeth:

So hi, my name is Elizabeth. I’m originally from Nigeria. I live in Las Vegas. I’ve been selling on Amazon since 2018. And the last job that I had before then was a treasury analyst position.

Bradley Sutton:

That doesn’t sound like fun either too much. So what inspired you to get start selling online back in 2018?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, so when I moved to the US at the time I moved to Chicago, it was so cold and I told my husband, I’m like–

Bradley Sutton:

Wait hold on. Wasn’t it snowing in Vegas yesterday? I heard.

Elizabeth:

In the mountains, yeah, but not really.

Bradley Sutton:

You probably thought you were back in Chicago this last week in Vegas, right?

Elizabeth:

Yeah, I know. So I was like I can’t do this code and stuff like that. So we moved to Vegas and unfortunately I had to quit my job. And when I got to Vegas, it was so hard for me to find the type of job I was looking for. And then we realized that I was expecting our first baby and my husband was like, you know what? I’ve heard of this Amazon thing. Can you take a look at it? I’m like okay. Youtube, Helium 10 group and all that stuff. And then I started doing my research. So that’s how I got into Amazon.

Jake:

So our company’s in leasing Missouri now. We actually just moved, so just outside the Kansas City area. Mark started selling on Amazon, Flipp and used books back in like 2012. I think I started with the company 2014 ish, early 2014, I think. So we’ve been here a little bit.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Gonzalo from what, since you’ve been selling on Amazon, I think you said I forgot what you said already. 2020, 2019. How lo how much have you sold gross sales overall, would you say? If you were to estimate?

Gonzalo:

I think overall it’s around a million dollar. But the important thing for me is I only have one product.

Bradley Sutton:

So a million dollars from one product and just like some multiple variations, like some colors or something you have, but just one core product is all you have. What would you say has, has helped you get to that level? Because that’s not a level that a lot of people get to where with one product they can sell a million dollars like a lot, there’s a lot of million dollar sellers out there, but the majority probably sell multiple products. So was it just a matter of focus or what helped you get there? No,

Gonzalo:

I think I have the mentality that you can be profitable since your first month. As I came from a corporate mindset you have to have to love of SelfControl not spending on PPC more than you can afford, for example, and be extremely rational in your day-to-day control. I think that there is also an important thing that I always say. I don’t know if I’m the typical guy selling on Amazon because I’m start from the product. I have an experience, an accident, and for that occurred that I figured out that everybody needs this product. So when I got the product, I start selling on Amazon. So it’s kind of different storytelling.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now that was a strategy in itself, but maybe another strategy you can give out there about something that you think that you’re doing that’s unique for that’s helped you get ahead. Maybe it’s on PPC maybe it’s on anything you want to talk about.

Gonzalo:

I do a lot of social media. I have my routine that includes Helium 10 every single day to check Adtomic, Profit, everything, so it’s very methodic and also create new things on social media every time you can.

Bradley Sutton:

Now speaking of TikTok, Elizabeth tell me about you. You actually found a product idea on TikTok once, and then tell me like that one product in like two or three months, how much did you sell? I know it was some crazy story.

Elizabeth:

Yeah, that was like my Euro product for last year. That product did over 2 million for sure in three months,

Bradley Sutton:

2 million in three months. That escalated quickly. So, you were just scrolling in TikTok or were you looking at certain hashtags, or how did you even find that product?

Elizabeth:

Fortunately I was just crawling on TikTok and just found the product. It just happened that it was right off my alley. It was, you know within the niche that I was already selling in. So it was just easy for me to just hop on that and, you know brought it onto Amazon because at the time the product was not on Amazon yet, so I was like the first person to sell that product on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. And so that was just a couple months. Now, I obviously you’re not selling 2 million every two months, but if you were to estimate how much money you’ve grossed on Amazon since you started, what would that be?

Elizabeth:

About? 20-22 million for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Wow. So I would assume that’s a little bit more money than you’re making in Chicago or when you were living in Nigeria.

Elizabeth:

Of course, I was making $150 a month back in Nigeria at the time school definitely like huge difference.

Bradley Sutton:

There you go. Well, I mean, that’s not inspirational guys. I don’t know. I don’t know what is. All right, let’s move on to Jake here. Now, Jake, what’s a strategy that has helped your company that you work for selling on online where it’s like helped you level up whether it’s something on PPC or whether it’s something on your listing optimization. What would you say?

Jake:

We typically try to avoid a lot of fluff in our copy.

Bradley Sutton:

What do you mean by fluff?

Jake:

Just a bunch of nonsensical words to force in keywords, I guess. We try to make it easy to read, otherwise people don’t read it. But the other thing we kind of try and keep it simple just make sure the math works. Cuz if you’re looking at buying a widget for five bucks a unit, but don’t consider the testing and all the fees and importing and all that other costs and labor and then you have to get a two Amazon, like, you can get upside down really, really quick. We try to always have an out it’s just n nothing’s super groundbreaking. We’re placing an order on a new product we’re launching we will kind of depending on our cost. We’ll, we’ll look at how many we gotta sell to at least break even.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you Gonzalo. Thank you Jake for coming on here. All right. We only got two groups of people left and our next group we are going to invite to the stage is Ahmed and Ryan and Rolando.

Ryan:

Hello name’s Ryan from Las Vegas, Nevada as well. And I’ve been selling online on Amazon since 2012.

Carrie:

Very nice. All right. And then how about Rolando?

Rolando:

I’ve been in the e-commerce game since 2002 and on Amazon since 2013.

Carrie:

Very nice season seller there. And how about you Ahmed?

Ahmed:

For me, I was living in China and recently moved from China. I was living, yeah, I spent more than 10 years. I have a marketing agency and I found myself in Amazon, let’s say by, by luck and it has been one year. Yeah, one year in, in Amazon, visible. Very

Carrie:

Nice. Okay, so the next question is what inspired you to get into e-commerce and what were you doing before selling? I think let’s start with Ryan.

Ryan:

Sure. So I actually graduated college in 2012. I started selling in 2012. It was actually a friend in college. He sold some textbooks online over the summer and that’s when I realized, holy crap, you can sell stuff on Amazon. So got involved on that.

Carrie:

Very nice. And so, we went to the same university, a very nice university, kind of expensive. Do you think it’s important for everyone to go to college or do you think you can do this without a college degree?

Ryan:

The bottom line is you can do this, you can do a lot of things without a college degree. And I think the world’s kind of shifting a little bit. I know it’s kind of it was the normal for people to look at your degree when you’re hiring, but there’s a lot, I don’t know, you can do a lot without a degree, but I would say if you have the ability to go to college, definitely do that because of the experience you get and the people you meet and all of that is wonderful and not replaceable, but it’s not required.

Carrie:

Yeah. awesome. Thank you. And let’s go with Rolando. What inspired you?

Rolando:

Well, before being in the e-commerce game, I was working at Philip Morris, which most people know Marlboro Craft Foods. And I was in the package goods industry, knew nothing, zero about e-commerce. Knew zero about Amazon at the time. When I was there, I was there for about five years. Then early 2000 everybody wanted to be in the tech game and friends were like getting bonuses and Porsches and money was flying around. So I thought, I gotta gotta get in there on that man. So I went in and worked for an electronics company and that’s where I started. Oh wow. The electronics is kind of fun. Then everything kind of collapsed the telecom bubble burst. And then by sure luck, I decided, well, why don’t I just sell a couple of these products right here and letter in my garage? Sure enough, instead of throw ’em in landfill, I decided, whoa, just I could probably do this. Move 10, 4, 10 years later go, got into Amazon, first year selling Amazon only sold $10,000 worth of product. Now we were already profitable on our own website. And that was really, it’s really like a goose egg cuz we thought we’d sell to like, just like on our own website, gotta apply the new rules that Amazon has. So once we started doing that, things started taking off year number 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.

Carrie:

I think that’s a good thing to call out because some people get discouraged cuz their first year they didn’t make a ton on Amazon. And same thing with me. We had like, we were selling like $200 a month or something. So you know, you figure it out over time and you learn and then you can grow. Do you have any kind of tips on that, like taking it to the next level? If somebody’s starting out maybe their first year or they did just a little bit, like what kinds of things you do to take it to the next level?

Rolando:

Well, the first thing you gotta do is find a way to clone yourself. And the scariest thing to do when you’re starting is adding people. Cuz you don’t trust people. You don’t know if they’re gonna take your secrets and what you’re building up. And it took me a while to understand that and I would definitely advise people that are starting out find even a VA that can do some of the work for you somewhere, something, anything. Cuz the more you can peel off from your plate and let somebody else handle for you or outsource, the more you’re gonna be able to then dive in deeper and deeper and understand the business better and understand the customers better and understand how to market and understand how to YouTube.

Bradley Sutton:

All right guys, I’m gonna have to hop in and cut it off right here because this episode is going too long. So we’re gonna come back with part two in just a couple of days, but let me know what you guys think so far. Who did you connect with? You know, was it Rich who’s a newer seller, or Rene or perhaps Elizabeth’s story really inspired you? You know, that’s the whole point of this episode is to show you that you don’t have to be some e-commerce superstar in order to kind of like work towards your dreams of selling online. So I’m hoping that at least one of the guests today have inspired you. And in the next episode we’re gonna continue on with some of these guests and bring on some other ones who have collectively sold hundreds of millions of dollars. So I’ll see you guys in the next episode.

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