0:01

Hey, business building warrior, I've

0:03

got a treat for you today. From time

0:06

to time, well actually about once a week or so,

0:08

I like to go live in the Facebook

0:10

group and invite any of the members

0:12

who'd like to join me onto

0:15

like a Zoom session where we can see each other

0:17

and interact with each other on the screen. If you want to join

0:19

us for one of these, by the way, typically I

0:21

do it on Monday evenings around 5 p.m.

0:24

Eastern time. That's 5 o'clock p.m.

0:27

New York time.

0:28

Most weeks, not every week, but this time

0:31

I recorded the session. We don't record all of

0:33

them, but we did this time and we may

0:35

do this a few times in the future as well if this

0:37

is something that we get some feedback

0:40

from you saying you enjoy.

0:42

So let me set this up a little bit and you

0:44

can decide if this is an episode for you. We

0:47

ask all of the members of our community,

0:50

we've got about 72,000 people in our Facebook

0:52

group to bring any questions

0:54

they have to a live Zoom

0:56

hangout where the topic is typically revolving

0:59

around growing

1:00

your business in e-commerce and

1:02

on Amazon. So we get all kinds of interesting

1:05

questions and you can see from the description

1:07

today some of the questions that were tackled during

1:10

the discussion time.

1:11

A lot of times these Monday night meetings

1:14

are a way for us to greet the newest

1:16

members of our community. So you'll see some questions

1:18

in there that kind of cater to the newer

1:21

sellers who are trying to establish a business

1:23

on Amazon.

1:24

But just so you know, if this is one of your first episodes

1:27

you've ever listened to of our podcast,

1:29

my name is Jim. I'm the host most of

1:31

the time on this show. We have some other great

1:34

coaches who host as well from time

1:36

to time. But this show has

1:38

about 500 episodes or more of

1:41

success story interviews

1:44

with the students of ours who are taking

1:46

the Proven Amazon course. That's what

1:48

this community is about. That's what

1:50

this show is about, helping you launch a great

1:52

business using a course that's called

1:54

I'll give you the name again. It's the Proven Amazon

1:56

course. You can find details on that

1:59

course at proven.

2:00

amazoncourse.com.

2:02

So most of the episodes of this podcast

2:04

are interviews with the students who are succeeding

2:07

with that course.

2:09

But we like to have some other content

2:11

as well. You guys have requested it, where we

2:13

dive in and answer those questions. So in an open

2:15

microphone setting, we captured some of the best

2:18

questions from the community, hanging

2:20

out, and I gave answers. And

2:22

you never know what interesting questions might pop up.

2:25

And again, if you want to join us live, the best way to get

2:27

in on this is to get into our Facebook group.

2:30

There's a link at silentgym.com. You

2:32

can get into our free Facebook group. There's

2:35

also a link there to our Proven Amazon course, and

2:37

you can hear all of our past podcast episodes

2:39

by going there as well. A lot of our episodes

2:42

only are found in audio format,

2:45

and there's a link there. You can get on iTunes

2:47

or Spotify or your favorite podcast listening

2:49

app, and you can hear all those great

2:51

interviews with our successful students. Something

2:54

else we're very proud of, that free Facebook group

2:56

I mentioned.

2:57

You can jump into it and see for yourself. We

3:00

have 1,700 tagged success posts

3:02

from students using our Amazon training

3:05

to build beautiful businesses. Many

3:07

of those people go on to be guests on our show. But

3:09

today, it's an open microphone. It's

3:12

me with the community, hanging out, answering

3:14

questions. And like I said, if you enjoy this, please let us

3:16

know. We'll do more of this kind of thing. And plan

3:19

to join us on Monday, 5 p.m. Eastern. Get into

3:21

our Facebook group and look for the announcements. We'd

3:23

love to have you join us live. We can interact,

3:25

and I'd love to answer your questions as well.

3:27

I've been doing e-commerce for 20 years.

3:29

It's the only income for my family. There's seven

3:31

of us. We homeschooled and raised five kids.

3:35

They're getting married and moving out and getting older at

3:37

this point. But the 20-year experiment

3:39

was a wild success. We're

3:42

so excited and happy to see how things

3:44

have turned out for our kids, for our business, for our family,

3:47

for the relationships. We love entrepreneurship

3:49

and homeschooling under one roof. That's how we

3:51

did life for 20-plus years. And

3:54

it's been so rewarding. We want that for as many people

3:57

that want that for themselves as well. So

3:59

we hit on some of those.

3:59

kind of topics on these discussions as well. You never

4:02

know what you're going to get, but like I said, look at the description,

4:04

see if there's some interesting topics there for you today that we're

4:06

going to dive into. And thanks for listening

4:08

to Silent Sales Machine Radio. Let's get

4:10

over into the Q&A session with

4:13

the other listeners. All right, so

4:15

I am a pretty much fresh beginner at

4:17

this. I haven't even started selling yet. I'm

4:20

just about getting ready to actually buy the

4:22

approved Amazon course. I

4:24

have a couple of thousands saved up and ready to go. So

4:27

I'm wondering, as a very new

4:29

beginner,

4:29

is it worth getting an LLC

4:32

right away, or should I wait until

4:34

things start moving along? Yeah, great

4:36

question, man. I'll jump into that for you. Yeah,

4:38

LLC. If I had my coaching

4:41

director, Nathan Bailey, with me here

4:43

right now, he would say, hands

4:45

down right now, get your LLC, put

4:47

it in place, get

4:50

your legal paperwork lined up, don't

4:52

wait. Do it the right way

4:54

right out of the gate. Me, I'm

4:56

more of a, hey, let's, there's

4:59

nothing wrong with getting a little bit of momentum, selling

5:02

a few things, because I see

5:04

people, I see it happen to people all the time where they're

5:07

getting ready to get ready to get ready to launch a

5:09

business, and they're constantly finding new

5:11

things. Like, oh, I haven't even hired an accountant

5:13

yet. Oh, I haven't even bought the office chair I always

5:15

wanted yet. Oh, I don't have a business banking

5:18

account yet. Oh, I don't have my LLC yet. Oh,

5:20

I didn't do this yet.

5:21

You can create an endless list of boxes

5:23

to check. I'm like, sell something,

5:26

sell something, sign up for an Amazon account

5:28

and sell something. Once

5:31

you've got a little bit of momentum, now

5:33

you can start checking some boxes and you'll have some energy

5:35

behind it instead of making it a list of things that

5:37

you do to waste time. But as a standalone

5:40

question, your question, Coby, was, should

5:42

I have an LLC when I start?

5:44

I'm not a lawyer, I can't give legal advice, but

5:47

yeah, it's not a bad idea to have

5:49

an LLC. It's not a bad idea to have

5:51

your business bank account set up separately

5:53

ahead of time.

5:55

You don't want to be making a lot of changes later that

5:57

can be kind of painful with Amazon. So it's probably...

5:59

smarter to go ahead and set those things up. Don't

6:02

pay a bunch of money to do it. Any

6:04

decent accountant from your area can walk

6:06

you through this stuff, or minimal

6:09

if any expense.

6:10

You know, a friend of a family friend who helps

6:12

small businesses in the area accountant, they'll

6:15

talk you through whatever you gotta do locally. That goes

6:17

for anyone, anywhere in the world. A good local accountant

6:19

is worth their weight in gold. Bounce this off of them, tell

6:21

them what you're getting ready to do. Say, hey, you know, what should I file

6:24

with the state? What do I gotta do here?

6:26

They'll talk you through it. So does that help,

6:28

Coby? Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

6:31

Excellent. Great to meet you, man. And

6:33

we've got Eduardo with a question I'm gonna hit real

6:35

quick before I jump in with you guys, who

6:37

have your hands up, because I love this question. Jim,

6:40

could you define what an underserved ASIN

6:42

is? It's the question Eduardo

6:44

has in the comments. An underserved

6:48

ASIN, is

6:51

one of our attempts to create a word image

6:53

about what a replan is. The

6:56

base model we teach around here

6:58

for new Amazon sellers, 98% of

7:01

all students who come to us and say, okay,

7:03

I know I can trust you guys, shape

7:06

me out, take my business, run me,

7:08

hold me by the hand. What do you got for me

7:11

here? Let's build something. There, you're gonna

7:13

start with replans in the United

7:15

States.

7:16

I don't care where you live in the world. I don't care what your best

7:19

experience is. I don't care, you do a lot of those

7:21

things. We're gonna start you with Amazon replans and

7:23

say, okay, what's a replan? We've come up with several

7:25

creative word images and ways to describe

7:28

as succinctly as possible what

7:30

a replan is.

7:31

So you may hear us say things like, it's any

7:34

inventory that you can buy at full retail price

7:36

and sell at a reasonable profit

7:39

repeatedly on Amazon, and you can easily

7:41

go get more of it when you need to.

7:43

That's one description. You might hear

7:45

some people misconceive and say, well, a replan

7:48

is something that the same customer buys over and over

7:50

and over again, right? Like, you know, people have their

7:52

favorite jar of jelly and they go buy it at

7:54

once a month. Like that's a replan, right? No, no, that's not.

7:56

We're not talking about the customer replenishing

7:59

products We're talking about the seller

8:02

replenishing easily sourced inventory,

8:06

most often at full retail price, by

8:08

finding what we call underserved

8:11

listings or underserved ASINs

8:14

on Amazon. So just

8:16

in case someone doesn't know what an ASIN is, each

8:18

individual listing on Amazon is an

8:20

ASIN. ASIN has a unique qualifying,

8:24

identifying number. It

8:25

starts with the letter B, then 00 something,

8:27

and you'll see it from now on, now that I've told you about it, every

8:30

listing on Amazon has it. Each ASIN

8:32

could have

8:33

one seller or 200 sellers.

8:37

So anyone selling the product that matches

8:39

that ASIN can sell on that listing,

8:42

and they're selling against that

8:44

ASIN. So what is an underserved ASIN

8:47

is Eduardo's question. Underserved ASIN is simply

8:49

an ASIN where

8:50

I,

8:51

as a seller, I could be the third

8:54

seller who shows up, or I could be the

8:57

15th or the 50th seller

8:59

on that ASIN. I don't care how many other sellers

9:01

there are,

9:02

but can I show up with a reasonable

9:05

expectation that I'm going to sell

9:07

a product to a happy customer at a price

9:09

that makes me a profit?

9:10

If so, that is a

9:12

test-worthy ASIN or a potentially

9:15

underserved ASIN, also known as

9:17

a replant. That's

9:20

what a replant is.

9:21

So that doesn't clear it up, and

9:24

then Eduardo, raise your hand, will talk

9:26

more about it, or anyone else for that matter.

9:29

But the replant's game is

9:32

basically one of finding underserved

9:34

listings on Amazon

9:36

and testing a little bit of inventory

9:38

against it. And if your test goes well,

9:41

you celebrate, and you don't go by 50 or 100

9:44

more, you go by a handful more,

9:46

and you never buy more than a month's worth

9:48

at a time for any ASIN. So you end up with

9:50

this inch deep mile wide, that's what we call it.

9:53

Inch deep

9:53

mile wide means I'm no more

9:56

than a month's worth of inventory into

9:58

any listing.

9:59

And I'm ready to move without emotion at

10:02

any time, out of any of those listings where I can't

10:04

make a profit any longer. If I have

10:06

to drop my price, empty out handful

10:08

of units, I do it. No

10:10

emotion at all. I'm looking for

10:13

very low risk, very high odds of return

10:15

underserved listings on Amazon. And they

10:17

are everywhere.

10:20

That is a beautiful based model. We have many

10:22

multiple six figure sellers in our community doing

10:24

just that model or like the person

10:26

I just interviewed on the podcast today, that episode

10:28

will be out about a week from now. She

10:31

jumped right into branded bundles after she understood

10:33

replans and how to find underserved

10:35

listings. She's combining

10:38

underserved listings and creating these beautiful bundles

10:40

and doing really well with that. But the base

10:43

level knowledge you need to do well with all

10:46

the strategies we teach around here is understanding

10:48

underserved listings, underserved ASINs. And

10:51

I'm happy to talk more about it. If someone has questions

10:53

about that. I got you school boss.

10:55

What's your good evening. Hello,

10:58

my name is Ivo. Ivo,

11:00

Ivo. I love it. Yeah.

11:03

I got you. My,

11:06

actually, it's my nickname,

11:09

the school boss. That's my

11:11

best friend. I used to work as a teacher

11:14

and I switched from teaching to

11:17

online teaching. And

11:20

then I run up on this Amazon

11:22

story. And I love the whole idea. I

11:24

love the whole idea about

11:26

school, actually home teaching, about

11:28

being available to being,

11:32

being free. I kind of just the

11:34

metro organizing your time. And

11:36

my problem is actually I have two questions. One

11:39

is related to the other. Okay. I

11:42

did a lot of investigation and I did

11:44

a lot of research and I did a lot of learning

11:47

and I kind of burned out. At

11:49

least I feel like that. I love

11:51

the podcast. I've been number of

11:54

series. I remember the series of that

11:56

wish coffee. It's a lovely story. That's

11:59

the story I.

11:59

can point out at this very moment, but if

12:03

I could kind of, if I film back,

12:06

there's a

12:06

bunch of lovely stories and they are very

12:09

successful

12:10

and they

12:11

work in favor of kind

12:14

of boosting your energy and boosting

12:16

your will.

12:17

But the thing is, I came to a stall

12:20

because

12:20

I realized opening account,

12:22

it's not uneasy.

12:24

I didn't mention, I'm calling at this

12:27

very moment, it's almost midnight

12:29

in my place and I'm from Serbia, that's

12:31

Europe.

12:32

Yeah, of course. Belgrade is the capital. Belgrade is

12:34

the capital. For example, if you heard about Novak

12:36

Djokovic, Novak Djokovic is from Serbia.

12:39

So I came to a stall of opening

12:41

an account. In addition to

12:43

that, I realized that I don't have a product

12:47

and those two combined, I wasted

12:50

at least a year and a half since I kind of

12:53

deep myself so deep in it,

12:55

I'm going to open it, I'm going to do it, I'm going to try.

12:58

So basically, I came to a stall and

13:01

I'm not sure what

13:03

to do next in order to boost

13:05

myself again to kind of investigate

13:08

eventually to open the account and

13:10

eventually to start the Amazon business

13:13

because I personally think it's a very

13:15

low idea, it's good way to

13:17

make profit,

13:18

but apart from profit, a

13:21

lot of benefits are included if you manage

13:23

to develop Amazon business. In

13:26

addition to this,

13:27

I put aside the Amazon for

13:30

a year, year and a half, and

13:32

I came upon a product which is

13:35

CBD and THC-contained.

13:38

So it's a CBD attached in this industry.

13:41

And maybe I could be able to represent

13:43

something in order to be present

13:46

on the Amazon, but then again, I'm not sure

13:48

if I can start with

13:49

CBD or THC product. That's

13:51

my bottom line question. So those are two

13:54

and a half questions, two and a half questions. Yeah,

13:56

no problem. I'm going to hit all those questions, buddy. And

13:58

they're all easy questions for me to hit.

14:00

I mentioned,

14:02

no, no. So the first question, if I came to a store

14:05

when it comes to opening an account, I

14:07

realized I don't

14:09

have a product. And the third one, in

14:12

the meantime, I came upon CBD and

14:14

THC storm. Maybe I could do

14:16

something with that. But then again, I understand

14:18

all three of your questions. Yes. Yes.

14:21

I think you're going to get all three. I'm going to hit

14:23

all three. I'm going to hit the easiest one first.

14:26

Please do. I'm only you can't sell CBD

14:31

on Amazon. Not going to happen. I've seen

14:34

thousands of people try. I haven't seen one person

14:36

successfully do it. It's not happening.

14:38

So let me answer all your questions and then I'll unmute

14:40

you again and we'll see if I hit them all accurately.

14:43

The next answer is we've

14:44

got students all over the world doing

14:47

what we teach. You can hear dozens

14:49

of podcast episodes of people. For example,

14:51

one of the coaches on our team, his name is Joseph. He

14:53

lives in Slovakia.

14:55

They don't have Amazon in Slovakia, just like they don't

14:57

have in Serbia or, you know, a lot of

14:59

European countries, they don't, you know, they have no Amazon

15:01

presence whatsoever. But even if they do have an Amazon

15:04

presence, it's not as active as it is in the United States.

15:07

So what you need to do is get a US

15:09

based entity and set

15:12

up a US based Amazon seller account.

15:14

It's just a matter of doing the work. You know,

15:16

you can be intimidated by it or you can get some help and

15:19

get it figured out and get it done. We've got a service

15:21

called Humminbird. I'm going to type it into

15:23

the notes right now. They

15:26

can help you as well. If

15:28

you get an appointment with them, they'll help

15:30

walk you through the process of getting a US based

15:32

entity established.

15:34

Now you've got a US based address and entity.

15:36

You can sign up for an Amazon seller account that way.

15:39

And then as far as

15:41

finding a product

15:42

goes, you don't start off finding

15:45

a product. Anytime someone says, Hey,

15:47

my name is on seller, but I don't have a product.

15:49

I need a product to sell. That tells

15:51

me that they've probably been spending time on YouTube,

15:54

listening to people, convincing them that

15:56

the way to start on Amazon is to find a good

15:58

product.

15:59

They say, you know, they will see these videos that

16:02

say, we can help you find a great product. Our software

16:04

will help you identify with the right keywords and the

16:06

right research. You can find a great

16:08

product. No, 95%

16:10

of the people

16:12

that start their Amazon journey by looking

16:15

for the right product

16:17

end up with a garage full

16:19

of that product

16:21

and tens of thousands of dollars of

16:23

wasted investment.

16:25

95% of

16:27

the people who try to start there with a private

16:30

label or finding a good product, they

16:32

end up with a garage full and a bunch of wasted

16:34

time and money.

16:36

We actually call this Facebook

16:38

group and our podcast, the

16:40

burn unit of the Amazon industry

16:43

because people go to YouTube,

16:45

we're 90% of the experts out there

16:48

selling these, you know, $5,000 courses

16:50

that teach you how to find a good product,

16:52

how to source the product from China, all

16:55

that private label dreams.

16:59

95% of the new sellers who go down that road end

17:01

up getting burned.

17:03

And they either decide to leave the industry

17:05

altogether or they find a burn unit, which

17:07

is what we are. And they say, wait, if there's

17:10

a better way, yes, absolutely.

17:13

Finding the underserved shelf

17:16

space at Amazon, these underserved ASINs,

17:18

these replins, that's

17:21

the low risk, low learning

17:23

curve, low investment required, high

17:26

odds of success business model where we start

17:28

all new sellers.

17:30

So it's not a hunt for a product,

17:33

it's a hunt for underserved listings

17:35

on Amazon, which is a very different adventure.

17:38

It's a low risk, inexpensive

17:41

adventure that anyone in the world can do.

17:43

We've got great students thriving,

17:47

selling in the US, never seeing

17:49

or touching their inventory. They'll

17:51

shop online in

17:53

the US and they'll have the stuff sent to

17:55

a prep partner in the US who prepares

17:57

it, puts their label on it, puts their stickers

17:59

on it.

19:58

on the program

20:01

with a free report. They wanna give you no

20:03

strings attached. Go to

20:05

silentgym.com slash

20:09

giftcards. That's silentgym.com

20:12

slash giftcards, one

20:14

word. It's in the show notes as well, that

20:16

link.

20:17

What they do is they put together a report

20:20

that shows you all the places you can go to

20:22

get great discounted gift cards,

20:24

and they also offer the service themself,

20:27

selling gift cards to many

20:29

online sellers, our community

20:31

included. So it's a pleasure to bring them

20:33

on board as a sponsor. Again, the

20:35

link one more time, silentgym.com

20:38

slash giftcards for

20:41

that free special report. Let's get back to the

20:43

show. We've

20:46

got someone asking about the Kickstart

20:48

program.

20:49

Let's talk about Kickstart real quick, guys. For $40

20:54

one-time payment, we have this

20:57

new session that we've put together,

20:59

this new series we've put together, where

21:01

you go through, or kind of

21:04

like what we're doing right now, that

21:06

it won't be 50 people or whatever we're up to now.

21:08

It'll be how many

21:10

of our new people are coming through with

21:12

you as proven Amazon core students. So it may

21:14

be anywhere from four to 12 or so people.

21:16

We do these new groups every few days.

21:19

So it's a small group on a Zoom session

21:21

with one of our top coaches. You get four

21:23

sessions and it's a Kickstart program

21:26

where they're talking to you through the basics. It goes from

21:28

knowing nothing and being completely clueless

21:31

to making your first sale. Just covering

21:33

those first few steps that intimidate

21:35

so many people.

21:36

And you're doing it as a group. So you can encourage each

21:38

other, you can inspire each other. A lot of times friendships

21:41

are forming and masterminds are forming out of these little

21:44

Kickstart groups.

21:45

Again, it's one-time payment of 40 bucks. If you're interested,

21:48

you can go to silentgym.com, click on

21:50

the support button

21:52

and just send our team an email. We don't have really

21:54

a sales page for it that's public facing

21:56

because it's only for proven Amazon core

21:58

students.

21:59

an Amazon course student. And

22:02

if you want to pay $40 one time, $10 per session, basically you

22:06

get four sessions. They're hour

22:08

to hour and a half each with typically

22:11

right now, it's Robin joy. The one you hear on our podcast

22:13

quite a bit, she's doing most of the sessions right

22:15

now. She's most likely to be your guide,

22:19

go through with a small group and answer all your initial

22:21

questions. That's kickstart. So someone said, Hey

22:23

Jim, I'm waiting on you to get back to me about kickstart. No, don't

22:25

wait on me. If you haven't heard from me within 24 hours,

22:27

that email or message is probably long forgotten.

22:30

So contact our support team. They'll

22:32

get you hooked up with kickstart.

22:34

Okay. Uh, and saying,

22:36

I'd promised to get her into kickstart for free and

22:39

I've somehow missing your messages. I

22:41

will still say contact

22:43

support and say, Hey Jim offered me a free

22:46

kickstart. They'll verify it with me. I'll

22:48

give the thumbs up. You'll

22:49

be off to the races. Don't wait on me. Contact

22:52

support. If you've been waiting more than a few days for anything,

22:55

okay. Yeah. On the

22:57

silent Jim.com page, scroll down to contact

22:59

support. There's a button. Thanks for your help there,

23:01

Lynette. I appreciate all the helpful responses

23:04

that people are getting. We

23:05

need to do this kind of thing more often. Jump

23:08

in here together like this. There we are. Hey

23:10

Jim. Hey Zaire. Good to see you, man.

23:12

How are you? I'm doing great. And yourself?

23:15

Fantastic, man. Yeah. Well, I'm

23:18

saying, Hey, but actually I'm on

23:20

for a friend of mine. She's actually listening to this.

23:23

Um, she's, uh, just starting to get into

23:25

Amazon and I wanted to ask

23:27

something for her to kind of listen to. I'm not sure

23:29

if she's not able to, um, you

23:31

know, sharing this or, you know, what her schedule is

23:33

looking like right now and everything. But again, she is listening.

23:36

Yeah. I'll post the recording in the group too.

23:38

Right. Yeah. And so she has

23:41

sold on Amazon before she sold books and things

23:43

like that. And she's dabbled with, you know, selling

23:45

on different platforms

23:47

like, you know, Poshmark and things like that. And

23:50

she's very, um,

23:51

into like what I'm doing, like, you know, I've been sharing my story

23:54

and everything with her as well. So

23:56

this is more of like a mindset thing,

23:59

um, what she's struggling. with is a little

24:02

bit of negative environment

24:04

when it comes to this resailing game. And

24:08

I try to express to her,

24:10

I'm very big on my YouTube when

24:12

you see it in the mornings. My YouTubes all have

24:14

like, mo diversity and other things that

24:17

just, I always listen to things like that

24:19

to kind of like, keep me in a good mindset. But

24:21

for her, she's kind of struggling with the environment

24:23

that she's in, the people that she's around to

24:26

kind of give this thing a go. She's

24:29

bought a few items and she's had a shit tour home

24:31

and then people around her are

24:34

just kind of saying like, you're not going to do it. You're

24:36

wasting time essentially. And

24:40

I know that other people have shared

24:42

in the podcast and things like that about how

24:46

having supportive spouse, supportive family and

24:48

things like that really helped.

24:50

I'm just wondering if you've had any experience or if

24:52

you've heard from other people that might be in like the

24:54

opposite type of environment and maybe

24:56

some words of encouragement that you can share because

24:59

I know this is more of like, I don't want to say just

25:01

newbie group because I mean, there aren't people, like I've

25:03

been listening to it for the past few weeks. I

25:05

was even on it last week, but just maybe some

25:08

share what you've maybe seen in the past

25:10

from other people that may have struggled, trying

25:13

to get into the right mindset and being able

25:15

to just

25:16

take the leap and drown out

25:18

like the negative noises and stuff like that. And

25:21

just to be able to share some words of encouragement or

25:23

anything that you've experienced in your past that may help. Yeah.

25:27

Well, you know, it's not a unique

25:29

situation that she finds herself in because I call

25:32

it, this

25:35

may sound like I lack empathy with my answer,

25:38

but chalk it up to me being on the other

25:40

side of 50 if you want. Okay. But

25:42

I've seen a lot of creative excuses

25:44

that people use to avoid pursuing

25:47

what they know they're capable of. And

25:49

I'm not saying that's what she's doing,

25:51

but I got to start there anyway, because I've never

25:53

met her. I'm not making a judgment against her. I'm just,

25:56

all I know is what you've told me

25:57

and what you basically told me to.

25:59

convince it down is

26:02

she wants to pursue it. She wants to do it. She

26:04

knows it's legitimate. She has a great friend who's doing it.

26:06

She's aware a lot of other people are succeeding, but she

26:08

has people speaking negatively into her life. So

26:10

she's not doing it. Well, the

26:12

problem with what,

26:14

and I may have not said it

26:17

and put enough nuance in there as I hear, but that's

26:19

basically what we're hearing.

26:21

If the attitudes of other people are

26:24

keeping you from pursuing what you

26:26

know you could and should be doing,

26:28

that's not them, that's the problem.

26:31

That's the person in the mirror, which

26:34

my vantage point, that's the

26:36

problem 99.9999% of the time. The

26:40

person in the mirror is the problem.

26:43

Because if you want to get creative and find

26:45

reasons not to do what you know you could

26:47

and should be doing,

26:49

you'll find an endless stream of

26:51

excuses, right? But

26:53

the thing I love about this community is,

26:56

and I felt a hint of this in your question

26:58

too, to hear is we're

27:00

gonna

27:01

beat you up with people who have bigger challenge.

27:04

Actually, the most recent Facebook posts

27:06

that I have on my personal Facebook

27:08

page is on this exact subject.

27:11

Because we all have to decide what we're gonna do

27:13

with those people that we see

27:15

around us who have a

27:18

better excuse list than we have if

27:20

they chose to use it.

27:21

They've got physical disabilities well beyond

27:23

anything we've ever imagined.

27:25

They've got financial difficulties. They've got relational

27:28

struggles like the one you mentioned Zaheer or

27:30

others recently divorced or

27:33

my parents were horrible people and

27:35

I was raised in an alcoholic's home or whatever

27:38

dysfunction you wanna put in there. They've got a

27:40

list

27:41

that beats our list, right? Like

27:43

you can imagine that person, like maybe

27:45

you've had a hard life. Well, you don't have to work very hard

27:48

to imagine someone who had it twice as hard a life

27:50

as you've had. But what they've done is they've

27:52

built a beautiful business anyway. They've

27:54

built a beautiful life anyway. They've overcome those

27:57

things. So what are you gonna do with those people?

27:59

Do you ignore them? Do you block

28:01

them out? Do you feel insulted or

28:04

do they anger you? Or do you say, you know what, I'm going

28:06

to be inspired by those people.

28:08

So I think she needs to find louder

28:11

voices than the one speaking negativity.

28:14

The negativity is still going to be there. I've got negativity

28:16

all around me any given day. All of us do.

28:18

All of us have people like, what are you crazy

28:20

for doing that? Oh, you should be doing this instead. Do you choose

28:22

to listen to them or do you find louder voices? And

28:25

some of my favorite loud voices to

28:27

listen to, I think she needs to listen to our podcast.

28:30

And listen to like Carolyn McFall

28:32

story, homeless mom with

28:34

her kids in tow, no money in the

28:36

bank on the run from an abusive

28:39

spouse who she was pretty sure

28:41

wanted to kill her. Right. That's

28:44

when she launched her business. Yeah,

28:47

she's the one that came out with the book, right? Yeah, she

28:49

has a book. Yeah, I remember. Homeless to homeowner.

28:53

Her first time on any kind of stage ever was

28:56

at one of our events, standing up nervous, shaken

28:58

like a leaf. Couldn't even look up at the audience. The lights

29:00

were bright and she just wanted to read her cards

29:03

and just told her story.

29:04

Bought the proven Amazon course for herself

29:07

as a Valentine's Day present.

29:09

Right. So does your friend have that kind of challenge

29:11

to overcome? Probably not. She's

29:13

got some people speaking negatively into her life. Do

29:16

any of them want to kill her? Probably not. Right.

29:18

You see what I'm saying? Like you start to surround yourself

29:20

with some of these stories of people that have it way worse

29:22

than you do and they've built something beautiful

29:25

and suddenly your excuse list

29:27

just kind of feels like something that you want to just, you know,

29:29

ride on a three by five card and maybe burn

29:31

and

29:32

make it a non factor and then go

29:34

after the life you want. We're the only thing

29:36

that God created that can wake up one day and go, you know

29:38

what? I don't like where I'm at right now.

29:41

I think I'm going to go after that

29:44

and then you set a course and you go after it. There'll

29:46

be voices, there'll be challenges, there'll be struggles.

29:48

And I'm not consider myself a motivational

29:51

talker by any means. I'm

29:53

just, I'm a realist. Like you

29:56

can choose to go after what you want to go after or

29:58

you can choose not to and you can come.

31:53

But

32:00

she talks about how to be the cheerleader for

32:02

the entrepreneur, even when you don't believe because

32:05

if we're to make a confession, entrepreneurs,

32:07

we could all raise our hand and go, yeah, that's

32:09

me. I have way more ideas than I ever actually make

32:11

materialized. And I talk about them a lot. And

32:13

that gets old after a while.

32:16

So she says, you know, when your entrepreneur

32:18

comes to you, and they've got their latest

32:20

big idea, and you don't even understand

32:22

the details of it, but they're just talking about it, you

32:24

don't say, how are you

32:27

going to do that? You go, wow,

32:31

you do that, right? It's a little change.

32:34

But that means a lot to us as an entrepreneur for

32:36

some reason. Right? I mean, it's

32:38

just a little sentence change. But

32:41

suddenly we're like, okay, you're not against me. Okay,

32:43

this, right, but that's a hard thing to ask

32:45

them to do over and over and over and over

32:47

and over again, as we go through our list of 50 things

32:49

that we're excited about in any given week, right? Most

32:52

of which never end up happening. That's just

32:55

the entrepreneur's brain.

32:56

So it's not easy. People

32:59

speaking in her life have seen her fail 50 times

33:01

in her own things that she just didn't put her heart into. And they're

33:03

just trying to love her.

33:05

They could be very responsible, loving

33:07

people, and they're just trying to keep her away from that next

33:09

big failure. But

33:10

she needs to find it within herself to

33:12

only she can control her future. So

33:16

let's end it there. I could go on and on. But

33:18

it's good to see us here. Yeah,

33:20

likewise. I appreciate you sharing that. And thank

33:24

you for everything that you do. And I hope that I will be seeing

33:26

you in July. Yeah, man, I really want

33:28

you to be there. Let me know, man. Let me know if

33:30

you're coming. Because I want to connect

33:32

and I want to get you on the podcast, too. I'll

33:35

shoot you a note later. Sounds

33:37

great. Thanks, Jim. All right, brother. Talk to

33:39

you later. Pardon

33:41

the interruption. We'll get back to the show in just a

33:44

moment. But I've got to tell you about the sponsor

33:46

that we have today. Humminbird. H-U-N-N-B-I-R-D.

33:51

Humminbird.com. There's a link in

33:53

the show notes.

33:54

They provide services for all your trademarks,

33:57

corporate setup, branding, marketing.

34:00

and tax advising

34:02

as well. As we enter that time of the year where taxes

34:05

are on the mind of, especially those of us here

34:07

in the United States,

34:08

how do you most efficiently handle

34:11

the challenges of making sure you

34:13

get all of your deductions, taking care

34:15

of all your tax concerns, making

34:17

sure you do it right without paying too much

34:20

as an e-commerce seller, as an Amazon business

34:22

building warrior. They've got some incredible

34:25

services that you should go check out at

34:27

humminbird.com. That's spelled H-U-M-N-B-I-R-D.com.

34:33

Let's get back to the program. All

34:37

right, we've got Makai

34:39

waiting with a hand up,

34:41

and I'm sure I butchered your name, but let's jump

34:43

in and have a conversation. You tell me how to pronounce your

34:46

name.

34:46

That's fine, that's fine. You didn't, it's

34:49

okay. It's Makai Lindo. It's

34:51

Makai Lindo. Makai Lindo,

34:54

Makai Lindo, love it. Good to meet you, my

34:56

friend. How can I help you out? Hey,

34:58

Jim, when you talk, I hear you, and

35:02

some of your podcast guests say

35:05

a lot, say that

35:08

there's so much, they have this phrase that says, there's so

35:10

much out there, there's so much out there. Can

35:13

you unpack that a little bit, or

35:15

can you talk about that a little bit? Because it's

35:18

intriguing to me. I mean, I know I see

35:21

some profitable, but

35:25

that phrase, you know, there's so

35:27

much of it. I still don't, I

35:29

mean, I haven't gotten to that point yet. Sure.

35:34

Let me take a, I'm gonna give you a short answer

35:36

to another thing that could be a very long topic.

35:39

And we talk about this frequently on the podcast.

35:42

I think if you listen to a good number of podcasts, you'll

35:44

hear me go in some good rants, and you hear the guests and

35:46

coaches on our team talk about it as well.

35:48

Most people who come into the Amazon arena,

35:51

having never had success before, are

35:53

under the impression that the game is won

35:56

by finding profitable products,

35:59

and they've built their game. entire thought

36:01

process on that platform, I've

36:03

got to find profitable products. Those

36:05

of us who came from eBay starting 20 years

36:08

ago plus for me, it was always

36:10

a search for profitable products. Is this

36:12

a profitable product? I don't know.

36:14

Let's do the research and find out. How about this? Is

36:16

this a profitable product? How about this product? And

36:18

they're thinking product, product, product, which one? I got to find a profitable

36:20

product somewhere.

36:22

We call it the treasure hunt model, Easter egg

36:24

hunt model.

36:25

When you say I'm having trouble finding any profitable

36:28

ASINs, for example,

36:30

that tells me that the

36:33

light bulb hasn't come on yet.

36:35

You're still in a bit of a dark room fumbling

36:37

around. You need to

36:39

step into a different mindset. That mindset

36:42

includes thoughts like these.

36:44

I'm not looking for a profitable product. I'm

36:46

looking for underserved listings.

36:50

I'm not looking for a keep a chart that

36:52

shows me obvious opportunity

36:55

and like alarm bills go off and like, oh wow,

36:57

that's a great product. I'm going all in on that

36:59

one.

37:00

I'm just looking for a test worthy

37:02

ASIN.

37:03

What's a test worthy ASIN? Well,

37:06

if you listen to podcast episode number 554, 554, I'm

37:08

typing that in the comments

37:10

right

37:13

now, just

37:14

so everyone can reference it. That's one of our

37:16

favorite recent ones. You're going to hear me say ignore

37:19

the buy box. When looking

37:21

at a keep a chart, you can ignore the buy box.

37:24

If

37:25

that ASIN needs certain qualifications.

37:28

This is one of dozens

37:31

of strategies by the way. So

37:33

this isn't the go to strategy. This

37:35

is one of dozens of strategies for finding test

37:38

worthy ASINs. There's no such thing

37:40

as finding profitable ASINs.

37:43

You find test worthy ASINs

37:45

and then you find out later if your test was a

37:47

profitable success

37:49

or if you broke even and you got your money back.

37:52

So no one can look at a keep a chart for

37:54

the first time for an ASIN and say, yep,

37:56

that's profitable. You

37:58

don't know till you test. So

38:01

you're not looking for profitable

38:03

assets. You're looking for underserved

38:05

assets that are worthy of being

38:08

tested. And then you test

38:10

them and you find out if it's profitable. And if it is,

38:12

you go get a few more and you

38:14

get a few more after that as they sell. And

38:16

if it stops

38:17

testing, if it stops performing well

38:20

for you, then you stop selling it. If

38:22

you can't make a handful of sales per month at a profit.

38:25

So right now, any of us could easily

38:28

with a few moments of training and a little bit of understanding

38:31

of Kipa, a little bit of understanding of replans,

38:33

we could easily go get on Kipa and

38:35

find ASINs that are dropping 50 or

38:38

more times per month.

38:40

And then go find product that matches that

38:42

ASIN. I haven't talked about price yet at

38:44

all, have I?

38:45

I don't care what you're paying. I don't care what it's selling

38:47

for on Amazon.

38:49

As long as the buy

38:51

box isn't well above or

38:54

right at what you can pay for it. If

38:56

there's any room at all above the

38:59

buy box where there could be some sales being

39:01

made a few times per month on this very

39:03

active ASIN,

39:05

then you're going to get a handful of those sales odds

39:07

are.

39:08

So a specific example of

39:10

an ASIN that I would like to park on,

39:13

when

39:13

I say park, I'm going to sell against it. I'm not

39:15

going to sell

39:16

thousands of units. Come on in, Zane.

39:18

I got my kiddo walking through getting some stuff.

39:21

This guy's about to get married. Give it up for Zane.

39:25

I got 50 of my best friends here, Zane.

39:29

So he's just grabbing his mail. He's

39:31

moved out, got it in place, but some of his mail still

39:33

comes here. She's got a mail box. I had

39:36

to print something else. I might be here for that. If it

39:38

works out, cool. Good luck. That printer's

39:40

been acting goofy.

39:42

But let me give you guys this example. OK, so

39:44

I've got an ASIN that I discovered that's dropping 50

39:47

times a month. There's 30 other sellers

39:49

on this thing.

39:51

Am I going to say, OK, there's

39:53

too many sellers. The buy box is too low.

39:55

The buy box is typically down here.

39:58

You may not get that thing to work, buddy. for some

40:00

reason, been acting weird. Am

40:03

I going to avoid it entirely? Or am

40:06

I going to test at a higher price that's profitable

40:08

for me? I'm going to test at a higher

40:10

price that's profitable for me. Send in one unit,

40:12

send in two units.

40:14

An untrained eye would have looked at that exact same ASIN

40:17

and said, oh, wait, the buy box is too low. There's

40:19

no opportunity here. The buy box doesn't represent

40:21

every sale.

40:22

The buy box price is here. Most

40:25

sales are happening at this level. But

40:27

on an ASIN that drops that much,

40:29

that's selling that many times a month, 50 drops

40:32

a month means 500, 800 sales

40:34

a month, who knows?

40:36

There's going to be plenty of sales that are made. And I

40:38

explain all this in podcast episode 554. Sales that are made

40:40

well

40:41

above the buy box line that

40:43

don't show up on a keep a chart. It never

40:46

shows up. But just put yourself... Imagine

40:48

yourself in this scenario. Here

40:51

you are, it's two o'clock in the afternoon.

40:53

There's a product that you need today

40:56

from Amazon. You don't have time to go to the store. You

40:58

live in a prime now delivery area. Amazon

41:01

hopefully has one in a warehouse near you. You

41:03

get on amazon.com. There it is. There's

41:05

one unit sitting in a warehouse near you.

41:08

It's not at the buy box price, though. It's $15

41:13

higher than the buy box on a $40 item, let's say. That

41:17

one seller is going to get the sale.

41:19

There were 30 other sellers selling

41:21

that same item cheaper than you.

41:23

And if I was willing to wait until Saturday, I

41:25

could have ordered from one of them. But I'm not willing

41:27

to wait until Saturday. There's a

41:29

regional advantage on these fast moving

41:32

ASINs where if you just got a few sitting in different

41:34

warehouses, someone's going to snag

41:36

it at a higher price.

41:38

So that's a long answer that hopefully I was able

41:40

to piece together and help you out to

41:42

where if you say, I can't find a profitable ASIN,

41:44

that tells me you don't understand the game yet.

41:47

It's not profitable versus unprofitable ASINs.

41:50

It's do I have a reasonable expectation

41:53

that I can sell at least a handful of months

41:56

against this listing?

41:58

Is there enough activity there?

42:00

I'm ignoring how many other sellers there are, ignoring

42:03

the buy box altogether. This

42:06

is a fast moving ASIN.

42:08

There's going to be a lot of regional activity

42:11

where people say, I need this now.

42:13

I'm going to send a few units to a few random warehouses

42:15

and see if those things get snagged

42:17

up a

42:18

handful of times per month. So I'll

42:20

sell five or 10 a month of an item that sells 1,500

42:22

times through 30 other sellers. But

42:27

on my five or 10 sales, I

42:30

make a nice margin. And

42:32

that's just one example. So once you

42:34

start to understand that, you

42:37

can see why we confidently say

42:40

there are millions

42:42

of underserved ASINs waiting on you right now.

42:44

They're literally everywhere. I'm

42:47

not saying you can go to the store and

42:49

buy one unit

42:50

of this drink off the shelf and go, oh, this

42:52

is a good product. I'm going to go sell this on Amazon.

42:55

I found a good product today.

42:57

Now, that's not how it works.

42:58

There may be 40 listings. Let's pretend this

43:01

is a flavored drink of some kind. There's 40 listings

43:03

where this appears. 38 of the listings

43:05

are a complete waste of your time. There's

43:07

not enough activity. The

43:10

brand is selling it against themselves. There's no room

43:12

in there. But then there's another listing buried.

43:16

Maybe it's on page eight.

43:17

And it's a three pack of this. And

43:19

I could make $4 per sale. There's

43:22

three other sellers on it. That's another

43:24

example of these

43:27

hidden ASINs. But they really are

43:29

everywhere. Does that help? Sorry,

43:32

that was kind of a long convoluted, full of interruptions

43:34

kind of answer. But I could

43:36

go much longer. Unmute

43:39

yourself and let me know what you think. So

43:43

does it have to have your

43:45

drops? Does it have to be high at

43:47

all times? Because I found? OK.

43:51

No, there's dozens of ways to find

43:53

great replans. I gave you one example

43:56

of a strategy that any of us can use, which

43:58

is to go find replans.

43:59

that have more than 50 drops and

44:02

then put a nice price on it and just see what

44:04

happens. Send in one or two test units. That's

44:07

a test-worthy ASIN. Anything

44:09

with more than 50 or 60 drops is

44:12

a test-worthy ASIN for me. Is

44:14

it a profitable ASIN, Jim? I don't know. I'll

44:17

tell you a month from now after my products are

44:19

checked in. My worst case scenario

44:21

is I drop my price and I sell it, get rid of

44:23

it. How do you know you're gonna sell it? Because it drops 50

44:26

or 60 times a month, which means it's selling 400 to 800

44:29

times a month. I don't

44:31

care how many sellers are on that thing. If I drop

44:33

my price on something moving that fast, it's gone.

44:35

I'm getting my money back. Maybe it costs me a little bit

44:38

of money. If it's not dropping, I would

44:40

say 10 or 12 times a month, I'm probably

44:42

not gonna be interested, no

44:44

matter what it is. That's kind of like the low bar. Okay,

44:47

all right. Because I saw an item

44:49

that is, I think, 11 or 19. It's

44:53

profitable at the buy

44:55

box price. I'll

44:58

try to test. Yeah. Thank you very much.

45:00

All right, I don't have any other hands up right now.

45:03

So I'm gonna scroll through and look at some of the

45:05

questions.

45:07

Someone's asking, what are drops? I

45:10

think the best answer I can give to that is, please

45:13

go watch this short

45:16

video. I'm typing it in, typing

45:18

into the comments right now. Please go watch

45:21

that or go listen to podcast episode 369 or

45:24

both, but a drop basically means that

45:26

the sales rank has changed on an ASIN.

45:28

So when you're looking at the sales rank

45:31

of a product on Amazon, the sales rank

45:33

is any given day is going up and down as

45:35

it sells or other products in the

45:38

same category sell, the

45:40

rank is changing. Think of it like that. What are the top 500

45:43

songs in the world right now?

45:44

Well, you might have a song that's ranked number eight today,

45:46

tomorrow's ranked number 14, and then

45:49

it drops back to number six. The

45:51

rank is changing based on how many

45:54

people are listening to it on iTunes.

45:56

You can see this in real time. What are the top 100 songs

45:58

in the world right now? Well, it's changing.

45:59

all day every day. So if you plotted

46:02

out the rank of any one of those songs, it

46:04

may have started out at 400, then it made

46:06

it onto the top 20 charts, and then it was back

46:08

down to 350, and then it was back into

46:11

the mid 50s.

46:12

That movement is ups

46:15

and downs. Sometimes it's dropping. When

46:17

the sales rank drops, that means it's

46:19

moving closer to being in the number

46:22

one position. The lower the number, the better. Kind of

46:24

like in golf, right?

46:25

The low scores win. When

46:28

you're ranking products, number one

46:30

is a good place to be. So if

46:32

you were at 200 yesterday, and you dropped number

46:34

one, that's a good thing. So a drop means you

46:37

improved your sales rank.

46:39

And if you watch the changes in sales

46:41

rank over time, you can see which products

46:43

are moving the fastest. The

46:45

reason it's even necessary is because Amazon does

46:48

not share with anyone how many

46:50

units per month sell of any given item. They

46:52

don't tell anyone that information. The

46:54

only people that know how many times per

46:57

month any item sells are

47:00

Amazon, they know. And if

47:02

it's a single seller

47:04

ASIN,

47:06

they can look at the records and see how many they sold. Other

47:09

than that, the rest of us have no idea. And there's

47:11

a whole bunch of expensive tools that pretend to guess

47:13

at that number, and they're all wildly different in

47:16

their guesses with their algorithms that

47:18

they use.

47:19

So we ignore those entirely. And we just look at

47:21

the number of sales rank changes because

47:23

the only way sales rank can move in a positive direction

47:26

is for at least one unit to sell.

47:28

So if a product is sales rank is bouncing

47:30

up and down pretty fast, a little green line on Kipa,

47:33

we know, hey, this thing's moving along. Let's

47:35

count the number of drops per month. There's 50

47:38

drops in a month.

47:40

That doesn't necessarily represent 50 sales because

47:42

a lot of sales could have happened since the last

47:44

time the sales rank was updated. It could

47:46

represent 50 drops a month, could represent

47:49

up to 500 or even a thousand sales

47:51

of that product. We know that's a fast mover.

47:54

If it's only dropping twice a month, that's

47:57

a really slow mover. It's almost like a logarithmic.

48:00

scale for mathematicians in the room.

48:02

Like there's a big difference between 10 drops a month

48:05

and 40 drops a month. Huge difference.

48:07

It's not a 4X difference. It's

48:09

a up to 30X difference

48:12

between the two. But

48:15

that's getting off into the weeds too much. Typically,

48:18

if it's less than 10 to 12 drops, most

48:21

of us ignore it. If it's 30, 40 or more,

48:25

let's pay a little attention and see what's going on. Can

48:27

we squeeze in here and maybe sell against this ASIN and

48:30

sell at a higher price? You

48:33

don't have to rely on buy box.

48:35

One of the most valuable lessons I think you

48:37

can learn as a new seller on Amazon

48:39

is that the buy box is where most

48:42

of the sales happen, not

48:44

where all of the sales happen.

48:47

The buy box is regionally unique.

48:51

So you can be sitting in three different cities in the United

48:53

States, and you're gonna see three different buy boxes

48:56

at the exact same time. Do the experiment with a friend

48:58

sometime.

48:59

It costs a lot of difference. Hey, what's the buy box on this ASIN

49:01

for you right now? It's gonna be something different

49:04

for you than it is for them based on

49:06

inventory availability and who can get it there

49:08

the fastest, which warehouse has the most

49:11

and which sellers are selling against it in any given time.

49:13

And which warehouse is getting inventory today versus

49:16

not getting inventory for three or four days from now.

49:19

So that buy box line that

49:21

you see, that is not a set in stone. Like you

49:23

gotta sell it for this price.

49:24

That's the biggest misconception a lot

49:27

of new sellers have is they think that buy box represents

49:29

the price that it will sell for.

49:31

And if I go above that, I will not make sales. Nope.

49:34

Pricing at the buy box level is

49:36

for completely brand new, inexperienced,

49:39

clueless newbies who are going to be frustrated

49:42

six months from now and give up.

49:43

Well, that's what pricing at the buy box is for. It's

49:46

all as good for frustrating sellers

49:48

who are going to give up a few months from now.

49:50

I might start using that

49:52

actually. We don't have any hands up. Oh yeah, we do. We

49:54

got another hand up. All right. Turn your mind guys.

49:56

Oh, I've got Tanya with her hand back up. That's awesome. Let's

49:59

have another chat.

49:59

So, Jim, I

50:02

had this is a silly question, but

50:04

no question is silly at this point, right? So

50:07

what is the difference between a receipt

50:10

like a store receipt in an invoice?

50:13

Oh great question

50:14

Yeah, cuz I know that I'm parent

50:16

like I'm extra paranoid to make sure I have all

50:18

my receipts and all my invoices in place

50:22

But is a regular receipt enough? How

50:24

does that work? Yeah, great

50:27

question and for me to fully

50:29

detail out this answer would be about 20 minutes

50:32

So I'm gonna do it in three and I'll give you the 90% of

50:34

everything you'll ever need to know. Okay,

50:36

so Receipts and invoices

50:39

a receipt isn't the get out of jail free card

50:42

if you're buying bad inventory Gotta

50:44

say that so if you're going to a store that sells

50:47

Close outs and liquidations or Amazon

50:50

to Amazon flips, you know returns

50:52

and that sort of thing like oh, but they gave me a receipt

50:54

It's like no that's not

50:57

proof that you're dealing with a legitimate distributor

51:00

of that product and

51:01

Jeff and I have talked on recent episodes Jeff

51:03

Shick and I on the podcast Wednesday

51:06

episodes you want to catch the end of the Wednesday

51:08

episodes of the podcast because we talked about these

51:10

types of things

51:11

But you want to make sure that you're buying from a legitimate

51:15

source Receipt and invoice

51:17

and now that protects you if it's not a legitimate source.

51:19

You could still be getting inventory

51:22

that was illegitimate

51:25

it was either like You know you've heard the horror

51:27

stories people buying Nike's and they're really

51:29

from China that kind of thing and it ended up in There's some

51:31

kind of bargain bin at some store and

51:34

here you are buying it's like all these are these are counterfeit

51:36

goods Right. So that's why you got to use legitimate

51:39

channels to buy your inventory But even

51:41

when you're online,

51:42

is this a legitimate source? And if you're not

51:44

sure if it's a legitimate source or not You

51:47

can go to the brand website and

51:49

just say hey, I'm getting ready to buy your products

51:51

from this website Are they an authorized

51:54

distributor authorized reseller of your products?

51:57

You can find out so now assuming

51:59

you're talking about a legitimate inventory

52:01

that's being distributed to legitimate channels. There's

52:04

millions of legitimate channels, but there's also a bunch of

52:06

scam channels too. But let's assume

52:08

you're talking about a receipt or an invoice from a legitimate

52:10

source.

52:11

A receipt covers you in the event

52:13

that Amazon comes back and says,

52:15

you get a complaint and it's like, hey, we're going to need to see

52:18

proof that this is legitimate inventory.

52:20

Send them a receipt, you're good. 100 percent

52:23

of the time, sometimes you'll get an agent who doesn't

52:25

know what they're talking about. He'd like, oh, no, but receipts

52:27

not good enough. Sorry. You escalate it and the person that

52:29

works above

52:30

them is like, yeah, they

52:33

don't know what they're doing in that department. Sorry, you're good.

52:37

Sometimes you'll lose a little sleep over a retail

52:39

receipt. But if it's an itemized

52:41

retail receipt from an authorized

52:43

distributor of the products, they've got legitimate inventory

52:46

that came from the manufacturer. It's

52:48

not something that was shipped overseas,

52:50

that

52:53

product intended for Canada that somehow made itself

52:55

into the United States or, you

52:58

know, product that was completely

53:01

manufactured with a Nike logo on it in China and shipped in a crate

53:03

to the US. Like, you know, we've

53:05

eliminated that from a possibility already.

53:08

The retail receipt is all you'll need to

53:10

compete against a complaint

53:12

from Amazon

53:14

saying, hey, is this legitimate?

53:16

Is this real inventory that you're dealing with here? Now

53:19

an invoice is needed when

53:21

you're trying to get approval for a new category that you

53:23

don't have approval yet. A lot of times they'll

53:25

say, hey, we need to see that you ordered 10 units

53:28

and we need to see it on an invoice.

53:30

A receipt won't cover you. The vast

53:32

majority of the time they will reject a receipt.

53:34

Like, oh, you want to see 10 units? I'm going to go to Walmart right now

53:37

and buy 10 units to get myself approved

53:39

in whatever, whatever

53:41

topical category. You know, I'm going to go buy 10 products,

53:44

whatever. I'll just use them myself and stick them in stockings.

53:46

But now I've got a receipt that shows quantity 10 and

53:49

I can get approved, right? Well,

53:50

typically, no, they want an invoice, which

53:54

means it's got an address on it of

53:56

where the products were shipped to. They know where

53:58

you bought them from.

53:59

Now, the good news is you

54:02

can go your entire career, never need

54:04

an invoice as a very successful

54:06

Amazon seller. Most people we advise

54:09

don't go chasing invoices with quantity 10

54:12

units, trying to get yourself approved and all these categories,

54:14

because once

54:15

you start selling and you've sold 30 to 40

54:18

units of anything, even

54:21

if it's a break even or a loss, these

54:23

categories are going to fall open for you anyway. And

54:26

certainly, please don't make the mistake of paying

54:28

somebody $200 or $500. I heard someone paid,

54:30

they paid somebody $1,600 to

54:32

get them a legitimate invoice to get them

54:35

ungated in the topicals category.

54:38

It was someone on the podcast a few days ago. I was like, oh

54:41

my gosh, are you kidding me? What

54:43

a complete waste of time, effort, money, energy,

54:45

and understanding of the policy. And that person ripped

54:47

you off. Don't

54:48

ever pay anybody money to help you get ungated,

54:51

ever. Don't write a book about how to get ungated, waste

54:54

of time. All you have to do is sell a few things

54:56

and the gates fall open

54:58

with receipts needed occasionally if you're

55:00

asked to prove that you have legitimate

55:02

inventory. So invoicing

55:05

is a good way to add extra

55:08

unnecessary steps to the process of

55:10

learning Amazon. Anyone talking about invoices

55:12

and ungating is something new sellers

55:14

need to really dive in and understand. It's a

55:16

complete waste of time. And we've got hundreds and

55:18

hundreds of sellers as evidence of what I'm

55:20

talking about.

55:22

So sell a few items, keep your receipts,

55:24

the ungating will happen without invoices. That's

55:27

the short answer to your great question. How'd

55:30

I do? That was perfect.

55:34

Thank you for listening to Silent Sales

55:36

Machine Radio. Visit SilentGym.com

55:39

for a link to our free newsletter, our free

55:41

Facebook group, and all of our resources

55:44

mentioned on today's show.