418 : Amy Feierman – Follow your framework to successfully selling on Amazon
What a great story of planning, follow through and success. Do you have a plan? Are you looking for a way to scale your business with your own private label? Maybe bundles are for you?
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Mommy Income Wholesale Bundles Workshops
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Transcript:
Amy: [00:00] But then you get to explore competition. There’s 45 pages of red towel bundles on Amazon. Guess what that tells you? You’re not going to be able to land on page one and be successful with that bundle idea, but at each different step along the way, we help you make the decision of is this a go? Is this a no-go?
Cool voice guy: [00:16] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:30] Welcome back to the eCommerce momentum podcast. This is episode 418. Amy Fearman. Uh, this is the third time I’ve had Amy on and um, it’s been a long time and we get into that. All right. Welcome back to the eCommerce [inaudible] podcast. Excited about today’s guest, a repeat guest, uh, from way back. She’s old. Well, not really. I’m old. She’s not Amy for your man. Welcome Amy.
Amy: [00:52] It’s great to be here.
Stephen: [00:54] Um, March, 2017. Can you believe it?
Amy: [00:57] Wow. That’s a lot. Has changed in the time since I was last on.
Stephen: [01:01] Well, actually this is the third time you want the first time you always act X [inaudible] episode 15 and at that point you were, you didn’t find your footing. And I think that’s a fair description. You had identified what you didn’t want. You knew that you were making big changes and at that point you had partnered up with Kristin but you were, you hadn’t found your footing by episode one 83. You were established, you were, you guys were on a path. Is that, is that fair?
Amy: [01:28] That is a very fair way to put it. Yes. And we’ve come even further now.
Stephen: [01:32] Well now you know seven figures bundling wholesale. Come on. Nobody does that anymore Amy. There’s no business model that works. Bundling wholesale.
Amy: [01:43] Uh, that’s the only one that works doing anything with wholesale. And that’s not completely true but it’s the one that we’ve found the most profit and we have built seven figure businesses on that.
Stephen: [01:53] I would agree. I mean even our wholesale, like if you sell a, I’m going to say water bottles cause I always look at my water bottle, but you know, one pack of water bottle, there’s really no competition. But if you do a two or with Gatorade, I’m bad example. But something with it complimentary that that is a model that still works today because you are solving the customer’s problem.
Amy: [02:12] Correct. And that is the most important part of bundling in the misstep that we see a lot of people do is well bundling doesn’t work well. It only works if you’re solving a problem. You can’t just put two products together and say, Oh this is cute. Or I think that works. You still have to do the market research to determine if this is solving a problem. If it doesn’t solve a problem, it’s not going to sell because nobody wants it.
Stephen: [02:33] Well an extreme example that you’re selling a TV, Ooh, I’m going to bundle two TVs together and give them a discount. That’s a good example, right? We’re just looking how many, I’m sure there are some, but how many people are looking for two large television? Nobody.
Amy: [02:47] No, but if you’re looking for two TVs, they’re looking for one for their living room and one for their bedrooms. They’re looking for two different sizes. It’s all about understanding the customer and understanding what you’re bringing to the table to meet need that they have.
Stephen: [03:00] Where do you draw that experience from? Is it because you’re a mom and you’re a Christian as a mom and you’ve got families or you’re looking at your, the extended family or friends? I mean, how do you, how do you start understanding a customer?
Amy: [03:12] Understanding a customer comes from a variety of different angles. When we dig into our wholesale bundle system and into our framework, one of the big parts of that is utilizing tools that we have. So part of it is your knowledge bank. So part of it’s understanding, and it’s not just me being a mom, but it’s me being a daughter, a wife, all the people that are in my network have needs, wants, desires. And I can feed off of that. Chris. And always calls it ear hustling and paying attention to other people are saying we’re struggles that other people are having because if they’re having it, they’re probably not the only person having that struggle out there. And so starting to understand that that’s part of it. Understanding what it is that you know, because every single one of us has a different journey that we’ve been on.
Stephen: [03:57] W let’s not leave the Christianism side. So the ear hustle. So you’re, when you’re, you would just Thanksgiving are you listening and paying attention to what they’re talking about and then digging deeper. Like are you listening to pro? What do you what, what’s a clue?
Amy: [04:12] Um, [inaudible] what are they talking about? What can’t they find online or what is it that they’re looking for? Specifically knowing. So somebody in my family is getting into rock climbing, which is something I’m very knowledgeable in cause I rock climb every week and just being unable to understand the pain points of somebody who’s new to something that I do really well, I can start talking to them about, well, why don’t, why don’t you have this gear? Why don’t you have to say school? I didn’t know I needed that. And so being able to start opening those conversations, sometimes it’s an open dialogue. Sometimes it’s just, huh, I hadn’t thought about that. I’m going to go and do some research online to see if that’s a need that’s met already or if it’s something that I should look further into.
Stephen: [04:54] And then when you, so two, two thoughts there. So when, let’s use your Bruck AMI example. So do you then go to Amazon and you look and you see there’s a harness and then there is a, I dunno,
Stephen: [05:05] Okay. Yeah, of course. Like I know what I’m talking about. So, so, uh, you look to see that others have bought down the bottom that say that. So you’re like, okay, there’s a second, there’s a reinforcement to the what I was thinking,
Amy: [05:17] and actually I don’t go to Amazon first. No, we actually go to, well, we use merchant words for what we do, but whatever keyword tool that you use. But we found that merchant words is the best for bundling to understand if people care about this product, do people care or this, this idea, do people care about this? If their search volume for that, then okay, we can take it the next step further. But if I’m not even gonna take it that far, if nobody cares about it. For example, does anybody care about trying to think of something that’s crazy? Um,
Amy: [05:58] football, soccer, uh, I’m trying to think of cooking. Does anybody care about, okay, let’s think. Hold on. I’m going to pull this one out. Does anybody care about
Amy: [06:20] Tie? Die? Don’t ask. That’s random cake. Tie dye. It’s a thing. I’ve seen it on Pinterest. Do people care about this? Yes. People do this. Don’t ask. I don’t understand cake decorating. It’s not something I ever want to do. But do people care about cake tie dying? So if I went on to merchant words and typed in cake tie and saw that less than a hundred people a month were searching for that. I want you a couple of other word searches around that. Other words that people might use to see if there’s searching for under something different. But if I’m not finding search volume on that, I’m not going to take my process any further to finding vendors or looking into any of that because there’s nobody searching for that. So it’s not a problem that enough people have for me to solve.
Stephen: [07:02] Okay, so that’s the place you start. So right there, you saw that you heard your sister-in-law talking about, Oh, we’re going to do this cake dying. Okay, so you’re like, Oh that sounds interesting. Something I’m not familiar with. You then go search. Um, and you see there’s no volume. What number are you looking for in search volume to say, okay, let’s move forward to step two.
Amy: [07:21] Okay, so we are nontraditional in this. Most people are looking for, I need 100,000 I need 300,000 no, we actually, our target is very niche. We’re looking for 2000 to 6,000 is our sweet spot. You don’t need to sell 5,000 of one thing to all the people. Most of the things that Kristen and I sell, we sell anywhere from 50 to 150, maybe two 50 a month. We don’t need to sell 60,000 a hundred thousand. And what people forget is the higher the search volume, the more competition, the lower the search volume, the two to 6,000, the lower your competition is. So you get to have more, you’re more likely to show up on the first page. You’re more likely to show up on that top spot on the first page, because now no one, everyone else is too scared to target the niches
Stephen: [08:14] because it’s just too small. There’s not a big enough market. I can’t be 7 billion, there’s not a $7 billion audience there. Um, ho let me understand this. So on that particular bundle, the two to 6,000, your goal is to sell how many units? You said
Amy: [08:30] our goal is any, my minimum is I want to within three months be selling one a day. So 30 a month. I would love to see it hit the 100 to 200. We don’t like to dig deep on any one product. We go wide. And so Chris and I are different. We have a different variety of numbers, but anywhere from 60 to 200 been active skews at a time. So we’re not doing four, we’re not 10 but we have a variety that we have in the mix at any given time.
Stephen: [09:00] So in the private label world, one of the math things are you want to make $1,000 per skew per, you know, per month, and then you only need 10 of them and boom, you got $100,000 net business. Beautiful, right?
Amy: [09:11] That’s his perfect world, right?
Stephen: [09:13] Bundle world. Are you looking similarly? So you’re saying, Hey, I want to sell one a day and my goal was to make a profit of $6 $10 $15 of course you want to make three times $3,000 but realistically, what? What have you? What’s your experience?
Amy: [09:27] All right. My experience has been not so much on, I want to make $50 a month, $20 we have an ASP. My goal is to have my ASP be 29 99 or higher. I don’t love smaller bundles. While they are profitable, depending, you get a lot of profit, not by Amazon fees. Right. But also in that is when you put a bundle together, especially when somebody else is doing the work and you’re not doing it, it’s less about how many dollars, like dollars per bundle I’m selling. It’s more about what’s the, how much can I make with the least amount of effort on my part. So if I have my prep center who’s bundling something and I’m making $5 a bundle, I’m happy with that. I don’t want to go less than usually $5 per bundle is my minimum per bundle. What I want to earn. But honestly I still want to hit that 100 percent ROI. Like I want to hit whatever that looks like. Depending on the bundle. If I’m doing 29 99 is my sales price on average, that I don’t want to sell anything for less than $10
Stephen: [10:31] and that that includes their fee after their fee. So I’ll make sure people understand that. Okay. So I was sitting there thinking about this as you’re, as you’re bundling, are you looking, you know, how do you ensure that that bundle has longevity? You know, you want to sell one a day, that means you need at least 30 for that month and 30 for the next month and 30 and you know, probably 60 90 days of inventory out there. How do you ensure or are the button, or is this a secret sauce or the bundles where you could replace a Steve’s water bottle with a Yeti water bottle or bad example. But you know what I’m saying is that, you know, I Brown pencils, I can’t get Brown pencils anymore. Now I need to use red pencils. Is that, is that part of the secret to make sure that you have longevity,
Amy: [11:16] longevity with bundles? You know, with any product you’re going to have longevity depending on the demand. It all depends on how long it is that people are wanting. If they don’t want Blaume pencils anymore, it doesn’t matter if you still have Brown pencils in stock, they’re still not gonna want to buy your item.
Stephen: [11:33] So wait, does that mean then you don’t buy too far in the future? Because the trend can change?
Amy: [11:38] The trends can change at any point. And that is that that goes with anything. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a bundle or a regular private label product or something, you buy wholesale. You have to understand what is the trend think fidget spinners. Okay. How many people got burned on the fidget spinner trend? That was crazy. Crazy good. And then now we have, everybody has more fidget spinners than they know what to do within their warehouse because they can’t sell them anymore. And so we’re never buying huge amounts this time of year. We usually have about two months in stock because we’re in Q4 and we want to make sure we have product to sell during Q four in the normal time of the year, not during Q four we usually have 30 days, maybe five weeks of Indian inventory depending on our vendors. Because vendors, as we all know, don’t always have stock when you want them to have stuff.
Stephen: [12:28] So wait 30 days in Amazon or 30 days in the pipeline, including Amazon.
Amy: [12:33] It’s usually 30 days in Amazon. It depends on the vendor. Some vendors I can get it shipped to me and be arrived to me within two days. So I have 30 days overall. Whereas other, well 30 days is all inclusive. But also when I have vendors that have a 12 day, 14 day lead time, I have to factor that in differently than those that can ship to me in two days.
Stephen: [12:55] And, and that brings up an interesting question I hadn’t thought about before. How do you manage that? So say you know, you’re, you’re spinning plates, right? You, you’re juggling cats in that scenario because you know, this vendor gets it to you within 10 days. You can trust them, they’d never run out of stock. But these other vendors, you know, might be 30 days, might be 20 days. How do you manage all that process? I mean, is there a tracking system that you use for that particular bundle? So, you know,
Amy: [13:20] I have a very in depth spreadsheet system that I utilize for that and what I’ve learned with, I’ve gotten really good. I, this is also why I don’t have 200 vendors. I don’t even have 10 vendors. I have eight vendors that I order from consistently. And that allows me to understand their timing on everything. And I understand which vendors run out of stock and which vendors, cause there will be a bunch, I have one vendor that will run out of stock for two of my top five bundles for three months at a time. That kills my business if I don’t have enough stock. So I will stock the components from that vendor for three months in my warehouse so that I can make sure that I don’t run out of stock while they’re out of stock.
Stephen: [14:02] And then your competitors do run out of stock obviously because they’re not managing it as well.
Amy: [14:06] Well that’s, well, let’s talk about competitors for a minute there because for competitors on my listing, I don’t have competitors.
Stephen: [14:13] Well, but I would think that, let’s just, let’s just go back to the pencil scenario. So let’s say it’s paper and pencil and eraser. Real complicated, right? So the pencil could be for sale and then somebody else, you know also bought paper also bought an eraser, right? You’re solving the problem, you’re giving them one listing with all those three things that they want, you know that they want it. So you would still have a competitor that would be a pencil seller maybe and maybe a different papers, but that’s now into the hassle factor because you’ve eliminated it. That’s why you have no competition. Is that fair?
Amy: [14:43] We have right. We said that we don’t have any competition. It’s that we have zero competition on our own listing and so there is going to competition out there with somebody who brings in something similar. And that’s one of the reasons why we don’t solely base our research on the frequently bought together. It’s more complicated than that because have you ever looked at frequently bought together for some things and gone? What are they buying that too? Right. So one of the ones that we did once was serving trays and we kept finding, we found serving trays with plants and pillows and like, okay, bed and breakfast maybe, but what? Like, I would never think to bundle those things together. I don’t know what problem I’m solving.
Stephen: [15:27] I’m listening to you is when you guys are coaching, cause you guys have classes and we’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but are you saying to somebody, Steve [inaudible], you know about, you know, being the big athlete I am, right? The whole sports, right? And we’re all going to laugh about that. But so you would say, Hey, stay in that niche. I mean, is that, or is it again going wide and saying, Hey, my wife’s and I’m a keto guy, so I want to do that and I want to do a sports water bottles and my waste into crocheting. So I want to do crafting, uh, bundles too. Or do you recommend that you stay focused and narrow so you can really understand that market
Amy: [16:04] stay focused and narrow for a time period of time? We’re not telling you to pick a niche and that’s the only thing you’re ever going to sell on Amazon ever. If we did that, we’d both be out of business because of this, because of trends, business evolves, business changes. But going back to the original point, if you try and do all the things at once, you’re not going to get good at any of them and you’re going to miss out on profit because you’re not able to understand all the parts and pieces. So we have a niche that we focus in and over the past two and a half years, when we get a new catalog from a vendor, we can look at it and based on our knowledge bank that we’ve built up over two and a half years, make educated decisions to pick new products that they’re bringing to the market without having to do a lot of research. We will do some, but we have a knowledge bank to build off of. If you do that in 14 different categories, you’re never going to build up that knowledge bank and be able to make those easier decisions down the road
Stephen: [16:58] and recognize those trends. Right. When you know that that particular category super well, you’ll know the trends, you’ll see them cause you’ve seen, Hey, this is normal normal note Lake. This is unusual. Oh wow. Let me take advantage of that.
Amy: [17:10] Right, so example, back to when we did retail arbitrage, it was very similar. If you scanned the same section over and over again or you went back to that section every time. If you walked into toys, you knew it instantly, that toy wasn’t here last week. I need to go take a look at that. The same type of thing happens in your niche. That’s something that people have been asking for. They’re the first one to bring it to market. I am going to go and capitalize on that trend before anybody else does. It allows you to be in front of the curve because you have more information banked than your competitors do.
Stephen: [17:45] All right, well I’ve asked you, I want to, I want to build out an example of going a trade show, how you would approach it for going specifically for bundling, but first I’m going to ask you an unfair question. I think this is a really unfair question, but I think it’s, it’s reasonable. Um, there are people that join your groups that try your model and fail. Correct. I mean there’s just, that’s just the way it is. I mean there are, I’m sure there has to be. Right. Okay. So that’s the unfair part of it. I just want to say that. Um, but why, why, why, what are some of the common things that you’ve seen in people who haven’t succeeded in doing this and failing is, maybe that’s a strong statement. Cause if they learned something, they really didn’t fail, but why haven’t they succeeded? Maybe that’s a better way to say it.
Amy: [18:24] There are a couple of reasons why we see people not being able to fully capitalize on the wholesale bundle business model. And one of the biggest ones is they think they can learn through osmosis. When you buy a course, when you take a workshop, any of that stuff, it’s not enough to just have made the purchase. You actually have to take the action or Mack recommended in the course. And so we’ve built our course and our in person workshops in such a way that encourages action, encourages you to take that next step. So you’re taking what it is that you’ve learned in the videos and actually putting it into play. And it’s oftentimes the people who are struggling to make that happen is that they haven’t fully taken the action steps that they need to. And this goes across the board for humans in general. This is something that we in our own selves see ourselves do. I mean, Steven, how many times have you purchased something, whether it be a book or something that is still sitting on your Kindle that you haven’t actually dealt?
Stephen: [19:24] You know, my name’s Steve and I’ve done it.
Amy: [19:27] We all have. And that’s the reality. That’s part of it. That’s why when we, with our courses, we encourage people, is this what you need right now and are you going to have the time to be able to sit down and do it? Because our goal is not to just sell you something. Our goal is to actually help you implement it so it makes your business better than before you took.
Stephen: [19:46] You’d rather have them walk away. Correct. I mean it’s, it’s better for both of you cause it’s a, it’s a soul sucking thing. When you see somebody spend their money and they don’t do it and yet they have the capacity but they couldn’t because their life was in turmoil, whatever. I’d rather see them walk away.
Amy: [20:00] That’s the hardest thing is you see people want Amazon selling to be what solves all of their lives, worries and it can’t. And you have to put a lot of hard work and effort into being successful on selling on Amazon. And if you don’t have the bandwidth to do it right now, understand that and say, I’m going to come back to that. I love this idea. I want to do this. It’s just isn’t a good fit right now. And we’d rather people do that then dig themselves into a deeper hole than they need to be in. That’s our, we’re truly honest about that because we don’t want to see people suffer and stumble through it. We’re here to support people. That’s why we do a podcast. That’s why we teach the courses that we do is we started doing this because we started teaching because we found the success that we were happening and we wanted to share it with others. We wanted to share the success that we were having.
Stephen: [20:50] All right, so number one thing that people don’t do is they don’t take action. So you have to go into it with an action mindset and then actually physically do the work and it is work. Correct. This is not just ma unicorns and rainbows, right? It doesn’t magically happen, right? You can’t manifest bundles.
Amy: [21:06] There’s a reason why we have a 12 step system that we follow, a framework step. We have 12 step. It had it had to come up because it’s 13 didn’t work. So we have a 12 steps framework that we follow every single time we create bundles and that framework that allows us to take the steps to be a goal. Does this work, does this not work? And it gives us a number of points to look at. And if you don’t follow a framework, you end up, this is one of the things we’ve heard from our students over and over again before they’ve taken the course is I just spent six hours quote unquote researching, but I have nothing to show for it because they ended up at the end of it without being able to make a decision as should I buy this or should I not? And we’ve put together something so that people can actually make a decision whether it’s a yes or no, you still have the ability to say, Nope, that’s not a good one. Okay.
Stephen: [21:55] It’s a like an evaluation guide. I mean kinda
Amy: [21:58] kind of. Yes, and it allows them to be able to say and all through different points we go from validating the idea, is this a good idea or not a good idea? Looking at the competition, let’s talk red towels for an instance. If you had this, everybody loves red towels, the merchant words is right, whatever, but then you get to explore competition. There’s 45 pages of red towel bundles on Amazon. Guess what that tells you you’re not going to be able to land on page one and be successful with that bundle idea, but then at each different step along the way, we help you make the decision of is this a go, is this a no-go, but we also talk about, one of the things we also hear is I don’t want to go through all that work. I just want to know if it’ll work.
Amy: [22:37] The problem is it’s a catch 22 is if you don’t do the work, you’re never going to know and it’s the same thing. It’s going into CVS and scanning an entire shelf of beauty products only to find the Amazon is on every single one of those at a price that’s below what you can pay for retail. It’s the same thing because you just realize that you’re not going to have to come back and do this research again. It goes both ways though. If you do this research and it doesn’t pan out, Oh well if you do the research and it does that same research can be used for multiple bundles. It’s not just for one because usually the information can go across a spectrum.
Stephen: [23:12] So it’s like retail arbitrage. When do you go in and the black ones selling well, but the red one, yellow one, the pink one are not on there yet. There’s demand, you bring them to market and you’ve exceeded you, you succeed. So in a bundle world, it’s the same concept you bring, let’s say you bring the pen and pencil and paper to market, right? And then you say, Oh wait, there’s also a day planner and there’s also calendars and let me know bad examples, but right. That takes you down a rabbit hole that opens up. I mean, is it easier then to do the listings? I mean, is it like the whole system just becomes like flow?
Stephen: [23:46] a lot easier because if you go from that’s try this option and that starts doing well, whether you change the components, whether you change the color, whether you change the theme, as long as you’ve got the like let’s talk about the paper paper pen and erasers, that paper pencil and eraser set. If you do that the same thing. But it’s a different theme and you’ve done the research for that basic set. You’ve got all the reasons to sell those sets. Sell. If I do a dog theme, well stuff I do a cat theme will itself. And then doing your research solely on the cat part of the bundle research cause you already done the core of it when, when you’re sitting there thinking about this stuff, I mean how much, you know, like I think a party supplies, I know a bunch of people sell party supplies, you know, and you get the tablecloth and the paper plate and the napkins and uh, you know, the kid parties, uh, paw patrol or whatever, teenage mutant Ninja turtles. I’ll date myself. Um, though those things, competition clearly is there. Right. Cause I always say that somebody can buy it cheaper than you can Amy. I mean there’s no doubt somebody’s got a bigger zoo, more zeros on their check then what you could write. Right. Me too. Right. So, so price is a piece of it. Competition though is number of sellers or is it number of sellers and the price that they’re selling it at? I mean you’re going to say duh, of course
Amy: [25:02] it, yes. And it’s a co, it’s a con number of different pieces to it. Okay. So we’re looking at the number of competitors that are there. We’re then looking at what they’re selling, but we’re also looking at it same as private label. How can I differentiate the product that I’m bringing to the market? Right? So if I have teenage mutant Ninja turtles, what is it that the other sellers are selling and what are they missing? What is the other component maybe that they’re infrequently bought?
Stephen: [25:29] And back to back that example, how are you finding that merchant words? Or is this where you do some other research?
Amy: [25:35] It’s merchant words. It’s going to pen. If I was doing price supplies, I’d go to Pinterest and look there and see what are people actually and you know, going to Google and looking at the buying the shopping section of Google and seeing what people are buying and what is out there and available. Looking at my competition and going, well they all have plates and napkins and cups, but none of them include the table cover. And I know from my knowledge bank because I have a 10 year old and a six year old that when you put together a theme party, what do you need to make it a complete theme?
Stephen: [26:08] So back to the experience you, you draw on your experience or your friend’s experience because at that point, so it’s, it’s a little bit of all that, but it starts with that first initial, does it pass the first test check? It does. Okay, now we go on. It’s kind of in grad school. It was a decision tree we used to call it, right? We, you had to, if this then this, if this then this. And so these 12 points we’ll walk you through them. Oh I love it. Love it, love it.
Amy: [26:31] And I mean we always go, we even go all the way as far as getting to how much it costs and setting that price because it may be that you get all the way through step 11 of our process and realize I can’t make a profit on this because of whatever the, whatever the pieces are. And it may be that, okay, I can’t make it with this vendor, with this product, but can I find a different vendor with a similar product that is 50% cheaper with costs of goods?
Stephen: [26:56] It’s one of my, my latest private label products home run until it’s not. Because if I sell it at the price I want to, it’s a home home run. I sell it at the one I am selling it at. It’s a single or a double because I can stock out, but I can’t make any money. That’s a bad business model, isn’t it? I mean, that’s just not going to be good who longterm. But it’s true. It’s, you can’t, I can’t source it any better than at this point, so I have to table it, but it’s one of those things of knowing that now back to your, you’re looking for a certain dollar amount. That’s what protects you because you could write it down a little bit. Correct.
Amy: [27:30] Correct. And that’s why paying attention and knowing your numbers and really understanding all of the costs that go into your bundle are important. Because if you don’t have that information and you have to adjust your price, you don’t necessarily know, am I still making money or not? That’s why we, it’s important to have all of those anywhere from what Amazon’s fees aren’t, all those parts and pieces, but the shipping, the inbound shipping, did you have to pay shipping from the wholesaler to get it to you? All of those parts and pieces are essential to knowing are you making a profit or not?
Stephen: [28:02] Yeah. The other thing you said earlier that’s so smart is by having eight vendors and being able to buy multiple items from that vendor, you’re reducing your shipping costs to you. Correct it. Maybe it’s certain dollar amount you get free shipping or whatever. It doesn’t matter when you average down that cost, that’s another way of managing. Oh gosh, you’re so smart. Love it. All right, so what I want people to understand is this, is that you guys started a group. How many years ago did mommy income start
Amy: [28:26] mommy and started in October of 2014.
Stephen: [28:29] Okay, so here we are five years later. And Steve still a member of mommy and come, yes they let men in this mommy income group. But it was basically, I mean the way you guys get started was you go over moms that wanted to make extra money and you know, maybe get control of your family and your lives and you had some success. So you start this group and then it evolves into now where you guys are, you know, I hope you don’t get offended. Uh, quite frankly, the experts, the a, what did I call you? Queen bundle. Bundle bundle Queens. You know, you really, you guys really have, you’ve embraced it and made something of it. Um, and you have a podcast called the Amazon files podcast, correct? Correct. Where you’re talking like this every single time.
Amy: [29:12] Every single week. Every Monday we have a new episode that goes live.
Stephen: [29:16] And how about, I mean, how rewarding is it for you as a mom? Now your kids are getting a little bit older, but you’ve been doing this long enough. You’re past that point of proof. How cool was it when you get that mom who’s life is just awesome, awful because of you know, corporate job and dropping the kids everywhere. You know all that. You know what I’m talking about, that craziness and then when the light goes on, how, how is that for you? It’s
Amy: [29:42] a, that’s one of the reasons why we do what we do is not, as I said before, not to sell people courses and for us to make money, it’s to have black people have those aha moments. It’s the most amazing when we do it in one of our live workshops and you watch the light bulbs go on in people’s eyes, it is one of the coolest moments to see them realize what they do. We’ve had a number of people in our group over the past 18 months leave their nine to five to do wholesale bundling full time and that is amazing to know that we had a hand in being able to help them make that transition.
Speaker 5: [30:12] Not many people get to say that. That is just so cool. Um, so you can join mummy income, but they do check to make sure you’re real. They still, you still do that, right? Just to make sure they’re not some
Amy: [30:23] chorus. Yeah, we do. And we request a code word and we do that because we don’t want, we want people who are truly there to grow their Amazon business and to support each other, not to sell each other things and spam us with Ray ban or whatever it may be. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 5: [30:39] where do we can use, can we say momentum? Can we say that there’s somebody? All right. So if you say the word momentum, they’ll let you in the group and you can see me there too. Um, but what’s cool to me, and you got to go listen to the podcast. It’s amazing because you know, you, you don’t only get Amy’s perspective, you get Kristen Australia’s perspective and together they’re unstoppable. I mean, it’s just, you guys are definitely married. You’re finishing each other’s sentences way. Have you been doing that for years? And it’s just so funny to watch.
Amy: [31:05] It’s what happens when you work in the same space all the time and we have the same desire to help other people be able to have the same success that we’ve been able to experience.
Speaker 5: [31:18] Well, let’s talk about this. Uh, before we get out, I want to talk about these, um, workshops that you do. I think it’s, it, it blew my mind when I saw it. A couple of you, you guys been doing it for how long?
Amy: [31:29] Three years. Three years. 2020 will be our fourth.
Speaker 5: [31:31] Well, when I saw it, I thought to myself, Oh my goodness, it is so smart because that hands on approach and you were doing them at trade shows, if I remember correctly, way back. And it’s just that hands on approach because I’m sure that, I mean, I know it when I walk people through a trade show that they’re intimidated to talk to somebody. They don’t, they don’t realize that that person’s job there is to sell their stuff. They feel uncomfortable. It’s intimidating. So to do it in that environment, do, did, is that why you did it to take away that fear?
Amy: [32:01] Well we did it for two reasons, are confident wholesale up on those workshops are two parts. We have our day long workshop where we work side by side with people to help them build bundles using our method, which is amazing. But we also take them through a trade show, walk through that shows them how we have conversations with vendors. I was that person back in 2016 we’re having a conversation with a vendor scared me and I am an open person. Talking to people doesn’t isn’t a problem, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what questions to ask all of those parts and pieces and it stopped me up. And now if I hadn’t gotten over that I wouldn’t be, I’m 99.9% wholesale at this point. I wouldn’t have made that transition and I can tell you, but now I would not still be doing retail arbitrage cause that burns you hardcore cause it’s just draining. Um, and so being able to help people, even just being there to give them the example and then have them try it out. And then have you talked through what their stuck points are, what they missed or things they could have done differently, gives them that bit of confidence that they need to say, I can do this. Okay, now I’m going to go off and do it myself.
Speaker 5: [33:15] When they lead that workshop, have they basically created a bundle? I mean, is that reasonable? Have you seen that?
Amy: [33:21] We, we see people, we break into groups and we create bundles. We usually have four to six bundles that are created. They go all the way through the process, um, during the workshop. And oftentimes we’ve seen people actually take those from that and bring them to market. Yup.
Speaker 5: [33:40] That’s awesome. Okay, so let’s talk about, uh, hopefully there’s still some openings for next year. Steve does not benefit other than you having success at these things, period. So please don’t think this is any other arrangement. Um, talk about 2020 and is there an opportunity for people who, who are connected with this? And again, listen to what she’s saying. She’s saying, Hey, don’t just take two water bottles and put them together. Anybody can do that. There’s no way of differentiating yourself. It’s a mindset shift. You have to really say, okay, what’s in the head of the customer? Here’s how they approach. There’s a 12 step approach, um, that they’re going to help you get, um, as part of this, um, this training. And so, uh, where are you guys going to be next year?
Amy: [34:22] We are going to be in Dallas in January, um, in conjunction with the Dallas market, which is the, we’ll be the first gift market of the year. It’s one of the biggest in the country. It’s an amazing place to be. Um, so that will be in conjunction with that. And then we’re also teaching a workshop in March in conjunction with ASD. And we do it in conjunction so that people, if they are in the space where they need it, it’s an optional piece of it to walk the trade show floor with us. We don’t man make it mandatory because we have people attending our workshop who want to learn how to bundle, have already done wholesale, but need this next step because they’re finding wholesale to be too competitive for single item wholesale.
Speaker 5: [35:00] And so this will help them get past that. So I guess you’re helping people where they are, right? You’re saying, Hey, if you need to start, let’s get started.
Amy: [35:08] Yeah, and our goal is to really take you from where you are to take that next step. It’s to level up your business because every single step in our business that we’ve taken, we find that we plateau and it’s taking that next step to get you off a plateau and moving forward in something different and it may not be that you want to earn more money. It may be that I want to do something that I don’t have to work as hard. We’re teaching you to work smarter, not harder. And part of that may be that’s bringing a prep center, the mix that can do bundles, maybe that is doing bundles so I don’t have to be driving around town doing retail arbitrage anymore. We’ve seen people make the transitions from a various different fronts and it allows them to be, it’s allowing them to position them for longterm success on Amazon is really what it comes down to.
Amy: [35:59] And the reason that is is we want you to have a business model that’s scalable, not that’s just manageable and something like retail arbitrage is not scalable unless you hire a massive team and do all sorts of crazy things to make that happen. We didn’t want that because what we found and we’d got to a point of retail arbitrage that was too much. We were working more than we wanted to. It wasn’t the lifestyle we wanted and so we’ve looked at this more of a lifestyle scale up, what is it that we want? So for us to be able to help you, any one of our students to become a confident wholesale bundler. We found that the best way for us to do that, we’ve taught a course for coming and doing it live with us, allows people to ask all those questions, it live in person and work through that stuck point of the bundle research process with us to bundle Queen’s to one experts.
Amy: [36:52] We’ve been doing this for four and a half years now and allows them to have those aha moments to ask the questions and to move forward. And then take it back to their business and implement the strategy. Now, the one thing that we don’t do in this is we don’t say, here’s all the answers. Here’s a bundle, here’s a bundle. That’s not what we do because our goal is not to teach you, here’s a list. Go do this. It’s here’s how to do this over and over and over again. And you don’t always need us there to hold your hand to do it. You’ve got the support, you’ve got the tool that you need. Now go do it.
Speaker 5: [37:25] You know, I’m sitting here thinking about one of the, when you were talking about, you know, the, the spikes of business. This is another way to level your business if that’s what’s important to you. So one of the challenges, like right now, it’s key for, so your sales are higher. Well, what happens in January if you don’t have a plan, right? Most people sales are gonna go away, right? And so if they don’t have a plan, and so if you’re looking to find a way to level your business so you can kind of get, I always call it a foundation, that foundation of X number of dollars a month. Well what would that take was Amy said she wants to sell one unit a day times X at $30 with a margin of X. I’m sure that’s part of the 12 step, uh, and that I can get the ongoing supplies and it’s going to continue to sell. So if you’re looking for a foundation, um, and it’s a foundation, as you said, that can be scaled up if you want to scale it up because you have the time and capacity or capital. Awesome. If you don’t, you could scale it to where you need to be to give you back your life. And to me, I think, I think that’s the most solid thing I’m going to take away from this is that you can gain control. You can be intentional with your time if you’re, if you do this work. Is that fair?
Amy: [38:33] That’s absolutely fair. And that is one the biggest things going from when I was interviewed last on your podcast and now is making that mental shift from, I don’t need to go sky high. I need to get it to where I want it to be. That’s the right fit for my life. And that’s one of the things we want to encourage our students to do as well, is to really understand what it is that I want out of my Amazon business and how am I going to use wholesale bundles to help me get there.
Speaker 5: [38:59] [inaudible] this is a stupid question, but it’s real. You have a business now, don’t you?
Speaker 5: [39:04] see now think about that. If you were back in your old RA days, would you have a business that’s the questionable? Um, I’m not so sure.
Amy: [39:11] I probably wouldn’t. I know what I was doing in RA and I know that with two kids and all the demands that that has doing RA right now, I can’t even imagine trying to juggle where my kids are in their life now with all the things they have going on plus shopping, plus shipping. Plus, I’m like, no, and I was never great at OAA. It was not my skill set. It’s not something I sit at a computer all day now, but it’s not doing that kind of work. And so finding what I wanted, and I think that this is true for anybody in their Amazon business, is to not always be looking at what everybody else is doing. It’s that same shiny object syndrome that we see people get stuck in. I want to do what they’re doing. No, you need to do what you want to do and what you want to do with this business. Did you start it as a, I want to be able to take my family on vacation. Great. What is, if you’ve accomplished that, what do you want to do now? Don’t look at somebody else’s goal and try and make that because if it’s not yours, you’re going to struggle trying to get there and then you’re going to not feel great about where you are in your business. So whatever it is, is the best for you in the moment. Where you are is what you need to look at.
Speaker 5: [40:18] I always think of these things too as a means to an end. So for me, if I wanted to work on my health, I need time. Right? Cause he just, that’s all you got, right? You’re going to have to work on it. You’re going to eat better, you’re gonna have to exercise, you’re gonna have to do all these things. You have to manage that. Well. In order to do that, you have to have time. Where can I cut time? You’re going to cut from your kids. You can cut from your grandkids in my case. Heck no. So the only way you could do it is cut from your business. Well, I don’t want to lose income. Okay. So I need to establish, so what’s the best way back to your example of, of uh, you know, finding that consistency in your business, um, is an absolute way.
Speaker 5: [40:49] So again, mummy income is a group. It’s a free Facebook group. However, use a code momentum to get in. Again, I don’t benefit other than knowing that somebody who I trust can help you. Um, they have, uh, two workshops scheduled so far for next year, 20, 20. This is Q4 you made money, invested, invested. I, I remember speaking at a conference one time and somebody like, Steve, you’re up there making pitches. I’m like, I’m not making pitches for my stuff. I’m pitching other people. If you want to buy time, if you want to learn from somebody who’s already done it, you should be paying those coaches. I pay coaches. And so yes, I’m pitching their stuff because I believe in it. And I think that if you’re willing to do the work, but again, if you’re not willing to do the work or your life is in turmoil, please don’t join their group. Please add more chaos to your life. Please find your way. Um, but I’m very excited. It’s, it’s so encouraging when you see, when you recognize talent early on and you get to watch them blossom like you and Kristen have done. It’s just so it gives me the tingles to think about. Um,
Amy: [41:53] I will say though that that goes both ways because I remember I was in the room when the original conversation for e-commerce momentum happened and so just being able to see how we’ve both evolved and grown, what we started and it’s just amazing to see that. Is it okay if I share a link to the workshop information? Go for it. Okay. If you head over to mommy income.com/workshop you can learn everything you need to know about the workshops coming up in 2020 in both Dallas and Las Vegas. We are already 50% sold out. So if you want to make sure you come and learn a little bit more.
Speaker 5: [42:30] Yeah, and I would say this is again, if you want to make a change for next year because if the IP infringement things have been bugging you, it’s a number one issue. Greg [inaudible] riding me, he’s like, Steve, you need to concentrate on that for a month and do nothing but IP shows. He’s right because it’s a huge issue. If you want to deal with these things, if you want to find a way to mitigate your risk. Back in my old CFO days, we used to mitigate risk. I had risk management was one of my responsibilities. This is a way you could do it by getting that foundation in place and building your private label of bundles. That’s really what it is. It’s your unique bundle of yours. It really is your private label because you’re the one who put it together. You have it. Hopefully you’re the only one who can do it. Um, and you can build a real solid business. Again, mommy, income.com use a Copa omentum to get in there, but go to mommy and com.com and check out the workshops. There’s two. You said there’s a, they’re 50% full. All right, we’re going to close. So give me can be three steps now. Two steps of the 12 I mean, I think one is the research, right? Is that where we start? Right at, right away is or is number one just paying attention?
Amy: [43:36] Well, the number one is really digging into who you are and what, you know, that’s where we start. You is really not, not pushing what you know to the side.
Speaker 5: [43:47] I’m a, I’m a uh, a dad, an accountant, a CFO. Uh, I’m uh, not an outdoor enthusiast. Um, in taquito I mean, so all those different things of who I am, you pulled together and then that’s where I draw from.
Amy: [44:05] That’s where you initially start. Okay. Now that helps you be able to have conversations with other people that helps you frame what you’re comfortable with. One of the things that we’ve learned in bundling is if you start there, you are more successful. Initially we’ve been able to prove in our workshops that you can even if we just give you a page and say, create a bundle out of this, you can use our framework. Even if you don’t know the niche or category you’re working in. We’ve proven that in single workshop we’ve taught. But it’s much easier to do if you do something that you are familiar with because you know more if you know cake decorating, you know the components to put in your bundle. If you know Quito, you know the best things that you need to help that be a successful part of your life. So that’s one of the reasons why we encourage people to start with finding a niche or category, tapping into that knowledge bank first and learning the process with something you are familiar with so that then you can take the same process and move into things that you’re less familiar with.
Speaker 5: [45:03] Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat lemon.
Amy: [45:05] Exactly. And that’s really what the this comes down to is you can take the same process and do it in grocery. You can do it in office supplies, you can do it in toys, you can do it across the board. But stay with what you know, like we always tell people don’t sell toys if you don’t have kids and have no interaction with anybody, with kids, cause you’re gonna really struggle in that space. Another part of this is also really understanding your costs, knowing your numbers. And that gets later on in the framework, but it allows you to break down all of the parts and pieces, all of the parts and pieces. And I emphasize that piece because it’s really important to know if this one is going to be successful. There’s a lot of costs that go into it. Can I make money on this? Am I going to make money based on what I want to accomplish?
Speaker 5: [45:48] Hmm. Okay. So Amazon, uh, files podcast, you absolutely. This is what they talk about every single week. Um, and again, um, they are the hair just building this into, uh, a framework. I love that phrase. That’s that thing. Follow your framework to success. To me, that is just so powerful. Um, and I’m, I’m excited for you. I’m excited for Kristin. I’m excited for anybody who takes it. I would love to hear some feedback of somebody who decided to pull the trigger, did it, and then changed their lives. Oh, it gets me excited. Amy, thank you so much. I wish you nothing but success.
Amy: [46:24] Thank you, Stephen. It’s been great to be here.
Speaker 5: [46:26] It’s funny. And our after call because we’d known each other for so long, we’re sitting there probably talking for 20 minutes afterwards. I’m just talking about how far we’ve come, you know, to sit and watch somebody who, and again is this, you could see the talent. You just see it, it beams from their face. They don’t recognize they have it. It’s like watching a young kid just grow up and now to see what they’ve become and they way out pace you and they just, they’re outliers and there’s a reason they’re outliers because they believe in what they do and it’s just so cool to see the confidence grow and then boom. Now, you know, it’s not like an arrogant confidence. It’s a, Hey, I can help you to believe in yourself. Like that’s what I think she’s doing. Her and Kristen, they’re pulling others up to realize they have potential to um, how many, getting the chills, thinking about how many people get to say they’ve done that in their life. Very, very cool. Very exciting. Go check out the group again, mommy. income.com use the code momentum to get in and then check out mommy and com.com for workshops and see that’s what you need to
Stephen: [47:29] do to get your business on solid footing. I love that building block at a solid foundation, e-commerce, momentum.com e-commerce momentum.com take care.
Cool voice guy: [47:39] Thanks for listening to the e-commerce momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found@incomersmomentum.com under this episode number, please remember to subscribe and like us on iTunes.
