Making $250,000 per month on Amazon FBA....

Hey, how's it going, YouTube? This is Eman Los Angeles, and I'm super excited about today's video because I had the pleasure of being interviewed by a longtime friend of mine, Shay Billingsley. And Shay lives out in Reno now, and he owns his own company called Tech Envy, so go ahead and check that out. But in today's video, we're gonna go over myself, like how I started Amazon FBA, what, what the ideas are, me as a dad now, what my future plans are. Because at the moment right now, I do own 3 different brands, which is Factory Laced, Maverick, and Relax Support. And combined, they do well over $3 million a year in revenue. And obviously revenue doesn't equal profit. And it's not a video for this. But I'm really excited to take you in my personal life to see how my personal life is now owning these 3 businesses. But let's go ahead and go straight to the podcast.

What's going on, Eman?

Hey, what's up, Shay? How's it going?

It's going well, brother. Thank you for hosting us and having us in your lovely house that you just Recently purchased.

Any excuse to have Shay over in LA is always a good thing.

So even if it's only for a few hours.

Yeah, like it always is.

Yeah, we've learned that about me. But I really love, bro, the fact that like every time I come here, it feels like home. It feels like a home, you know, because you have the baby now. That's a whole new—

I think it feels like home because I'm here 24/7, man.

So, oh bro, I mean, this is home. Yeah, 100%. Anytime that you're at your house locked in, tapped in, you know. Yeah, I feel like every time I see like an Instagram story or like anything that you're doing, it's always in the Oh yeah, I live here. Every single Instagram story, everything. That's awesome, bro. Like, I just wanted to really give you your flowers and tell you that I really appreciate the friendship that we have. Uh, we've been friends for an extremely long time, it feels like now. And you've seen my kids grow. I'm now seeing your baby grow. Like, how's it being a dad?

It's different in the— in all the best ways possible, right? Uh, I know fathers out there, if you haven't become a father, Having a kid is the most life-changing thing ever, right? Those first 3 months—

Been telling you, bro. Been telling you.

Dude, it's insane, right? People tell you, but you don't really know until you actually experience it. Those first 3 months of no sleep, baby crying, you don't know what's wrong with the baby. You know, it's probably the worst, but also the best.

Right.

Right? Because you have to experience and cherish those moments, and it makes you appreciate life, right?

It's like— When you're away from your kid, do you feel like there's something missing?

Oh dude, I can't be away. I can't be away. But they always say you have to have rainy days to enjoy the sunshine days.

True. I see you like getting the tire fixed, baby's there. You're over here getting some pizza, baby's there. Like, bro, the baby's always with you. And that's awesome to see, bro, because for all the dads that aren't involved with their kids, they miss out. And you can— and like, that's the pain.

I can't even imagine.

Yeah, that's the crazy thing about it, right? Like, you flip your mind into that kind of like theory, right? You're like, what if I wasn't around? Like, you just couldn't even think about it because Having a baby is just so amazing. Like, it's a little you.

Yeah, I'm definitely in a fortunate position.

Yeah, that's, that's super awesome. But like, the whole interview, the whole podcast, I think today is going to focus around like time, you know, like the time that you can have with your wife, the time that you can have to go travel. You love to go to Italy and all that stuff. The time that you can have with your baby. Can you explain how you have so much time on your hands to be able to do these things? Because not to say that having a baby isn't time-consuming, having a wife isn't time-consuming, but How are you able to like spread out the time? Yeah. What do you do? What does E-Man do, bro?

I think that's what Shay's trying to ask the question, right?

Yeah, I'm trying to beat around the bush, but it's like sometimes awkward, right? Is that not awkward asking what someone's like, what do you do for a living?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I, I like to always go with like the PG-13 answer because sometimes I kind of hate telling people what I do because there's always this stigma.

Is it raw?

So I'm gonna go ahead and say, you know, I'm an Amazon FBA seller. Seller first. Right. And I say this is a bad stigma because I don't know, maybe a lot of your viewers don't know, like, or watch the internet about what Amazon FBA is, but usually it's like a guru telling you it's a get-rich-quick type of, you know, industry where you're going to make a lot of money tomorrow.

Um, and that's a scam.

Definitely think it's a scam and it's definitely not the case. Right. It's definitely hard work. It's definitely having to have knowledge. It's definitely competitive. Um, but Basically, let me go back for those people that don't know what Amazon FBA is. Basically, there's different forms of Amazon FBA. Me myself, I do private label. And what private label means is I sell an existing product that's currently in the market right now. I try to market it and brand it in a way where now it is my product with my brand name on it. I get this, um, these products manufactured in China or any other country that does manufacturing. Once it's done, gets shipped to an Amazon FBA fulfillment center. And from there, I don't touch anything. I have Amazon. I leverage Amazon to do all the work for me, which is pick, pack, warehouse. And whenever I advertise my products to be sold on Amazon, somebody purchases that product, Amazon ships it to their house, handles any returns. And, um, that's how I'm able to have all the time.

Bro, you made that sound so simple when, you know, I've tried like 4 or 5 times to do this.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to simplify it the best way possible.

Yeah. But obviously that goes back to, it's not easy. And I think that's where the scam part comes into it because a lot of people that fall into quote-unquote scams are the people that want to get rich quick.

Yeah, that's— and I think that's why people, 99% of people might fail in Amazon FBA because of their expectation, right? They think it is a get-rich-quick scheme, which is definitely not. I mean, it takes time, effort, and even if you are making profit, it's reinvesting into the business, trying to grow the business out, getting new products, getting more inventory. So sometimes it's even hard to even take money out of the business.

Right. And that goes back to like, I feel like you used to do it and I'm going to call you out on it when you would show how much you can make from Amazon. But people don't see the reality because I see that with even OnlyFans, right? People say, look at these numbers that I have, but how much does it cost? That's what people have to remember. How much does it cost to get the product, make the product, sell the product, marketing? Those are all those questions that they should be asking.

That's, that's definitely a great question. So Let's go ahead and put up, um, shameless plug here. This is one of my products here. Uh, this is factory lace shoe cleaning kit. It comes with different brushes and whatnot. And I'm gonna use this example here with Amazon FBA. They like to show a lot of screenshots, right? They like to show that they make $100,000, $1 million, this and that. That's not what you take home in your pocket. Yeah, because there's so many different expenses and, um, and reinvesting. And reinvesting. And right now I have multiple 7-figure businesses. They all make $1 million of revenue every single year, right? Right. But revenue does not equal profit. There's a lot of different things and expenses that go to it. So for that $1 million, maybe I collect anywhere between 15 to 22% of that. So on a good actual product, maybe let's, let's take the one in the middle, 20%, uh, profit margin. I'm probably going ahead and collecting, you know, $200,000 from that million-dollar business, right?

Do you feel like that's where the lack of education is? where people don't understand. I think you're college educated.

Mm-hmm.

And then I feel like there's the side of it where you can know someone that has a successful business and put you on game, like people out there that have successful parents, right? And that they grew up in a business like a restaurant or like a car wash, whatever it could be. They understand how business works. It's not just like, hey, yeah, we made money today. You take this all home. No, there's other expenses like you were explaining. And I feel like a lot of people aren't up to game or educated on the fact that, no, that's not how business actually works. So when they fall into these quote unquote scams, You can't just give someone $100 and expect for you to make $1,000.

Yeah, I mean, that's a great point because obviously I can try and get my profit margin to be a little bit higher. Maybe if I wanted a 30% profit margin, I can go ahead and do that, right? But the thing is that I'm trying to scale at this point, right? If I want to make 30-35% profit margins, I'll be stuck having a $500,000 of revenue business right now. In order to go ahead and get to $1 million of revenue, you need to be Advertising, you need to be spending, you need to be hiring people, you need to be doing different types of things. So the more you want to scale, the, the lower the profit margin is going to be. So again, it can be a one-man show and it can definitely, you know, give you the amounts of money.

But if you want your brand— So I can't go on the street right now. I couldn't because I'm not a good salesman and be like, hey, buy this, you know, or even the mall, you know, the mall has all those people that clean the shoes and stuff. Hey, can you buy this? Walking around the mall all day, maybe I get 5 people. How many are you selling a day?

So listen, that's a great point. And maybe you can make a profit margin of 50% if you do that, right? But now it's time.

Time, right?

So I'm, I'm willing to have a 20% profit margin because I'm able to reach millions of people every single day on Amazon.

While you're hanging out with your baby.

Exactly right. I'm able to go ahead and get the impressions, the clicks, the orders by just sitting behind a computer, right? And letting Amazon's algorithm and Amazon advertising and Amazon workers do all the work for me. Exactly right. I pay a huge commission To Amazon every single year in order to go ahead and use their platform, but I would pay it every single time.

Do you relate that back to when you were a real estate agent, when you had to pay all those people? So you— I don't know how real estate actually works as an agent. I feel like you have to pay a certain amount of people to advertise you, to put you— like if you worked at RE/MAX, right? Like you're paying your dues essentially to be able to be an actual agent and be making money because there's other, you know, situations.

Let's say this, this goes for any type of business, because you're relaying it back to, to RE/MAX and real estate. When I was a real estate agent, um, if you want to be a successful real estate agent, you need to pay for leads as well. You have to go on Zillow, you have to go on realtor.com, you have to go on different sites like Redfin and pay to get these leads. If you're not doing it from those sites, you're getting it somewhere else— mailers, phone calls. You have to have software systems to go ahead and have a robodialer, right?

Right.

You're always gonna have to spend money in order to make money, right? Because at the end of the day, it's how many people can you reach, and based on that, that's how much you You have the opportunity to make a sale, right? So there's always going to be a sense of, of the same thing. You have to spend money in order to make money, right?

How many people— and this is going to go off to the side a little bit— how many people from like high school, college see how well you're doing and reach out and ask questions, but they never follow through?

The thing is, I have to do a better job.

Don't mention me.

No, I have to do a better job of posting it more because right now I like to have like my little bubble of— I do have a YouTube channel And those people are primarily people that are interested in Amazon FBA.

Right.

I try to keep my life as personal more as possible, especially nowadays that I have a family and, you know, I don't have to prove anything to anyone.

Right.

You know, I don't have to show these screenshots. I'm, I'm not out here going ahead and pitching my course or anything like that in the sense of me needing extra money outside of whatever I currently have. Right. So I would say when I was posting more, people did go ahead and follow through and create Amazon FBA businesses. I have, you know, Kevin over here. I have Roy over here. I have other people as well.

You put a lot of people on game.

No, and that's the thing. I didn't put anybody on game. They did it themselves, right? At the end of the day, 99%—

I feel like you did the legwork, though. And that's no diss towards anyone not putting in the work. I'm just saying that, like, they saw someone that's close to home actually do it. Like, you were the first person to go out there, take the gunshot. I saw, bro, from, you know, years ago, you were like, shit, like, this one's not doing that well. That one's doing better than this one. Like, the— Stuff that keeps you up at night, you were dealing with that, and you can come back and tell all these people, this is what you should do, this is what you should not do.

Yeah, man, I like to say this to people.

I call you all the time, bro.

Yeah, I remember that. You do something long enough, you're gonna start making money.

Yeah, 100%.

That's what it is, 'cause you're gonna learn, even in your jobs, right? Like, you have a sales job, you stick to it long enough. If you go to school to become a doctor, you do it long enough, eventually you're gonna make money.

Yeah.

'Cause you're gonna learn what other people do, and you can go ahead and learn from even your own mistakes.

Yeah.

Right? So yeah, I dealt with all that stuff here, and maybe I'm being naive or anything like that, but Um, I just feel like anybody that sticks it long enough, um, you're going to end up making money. But the thing is that with Amazon, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. And, um, people that started Amazon FBA based on like showing my stories or close friends, um, I just showed them a blueprint.

Yeah.

I didn't go ahead and put a gun to their head and tell them to do Amazon.

Oh yeah.

I wouldn't do it.

I mean, for me, my experience with Amazon, I think it goes back to what you just said. I didn't put in the time, the energy, the effort. I would call you and try to get the shortcut. I'd be like, hey dude, so I just got the WhatsApp app, WhatsApp app, and I just downloaded it. I'm now talking to someone from China. The hours are all weird. I don't know, they're messaging me at night. I'm, you know, trying to figure out all that stuff. And then I think I was even telling you like, man, I don't know, they want me to design this label. What was that?

UPC codes, the dye lines.

Yeah, all that stuff. Stuff that's easy and stuff I can clearly do my research on, but I was reliant on you to like give me like The answers. And I'm going to honestly say I was a victim of falling into the laziness of not being able to launch a successful Amazon FBA because it goes back to what you were saying earlier. You have to put time, you have to put the energy in, you have to want it. Yeah, I didn't want it bad enough.

That's the good thing and the bad thing about Amazon FBA, because sometimes I'm reluctant to like pitch my course because there's always this stigma with Amazon FBA. You're a course seller, you're a guru, this and that. But at the same time, there's a blueprint, right? And if you follow this blueprint, you're going to be put in the most successful position as you can, right? Because if you buy a course, they're going to teach you how to find a product, how to get UPC codes, how to list your product online, how to go ahead and determine what type of packaging to use, what programs, what coupons, this, that advertising. So things that you maybe that you're shot in the dark, you know, Amazon FBA, but you're trying to do everything by yourself without paying for a course. You know, sometimes you end up losing so much money and then you're the individual that calls Amazon FBA.

Oh bro, I can't tell you how many samples I have at my house. that were not successful. Yeah, it didn't go anything further than a sample. And then I have tons of WhatsApp messages.

Hey, Shane, connections.

Yeah, a bunch of connections. But how did you learn, bro, what you know now? Like, was it straight through YouTube? I know you went to YouTube University.

Yeah, no, no, no. When I first started Amazon FBA, I bought a course. Yeah, just like anybody else that, you know, I feel like put in the effort to do Amazon FBA, all bought courses.

Right.

In my opinion, because YouTube can teach you a lot of things, but sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Yeah. And those courses will teach you, okay, this is exactly how you go on GS1. This is exactly how you pitch a supplier. It's exactly what wording to go ahead and use, you know. So, uh, yeah, definitely. I, I definitely bought a course when I first got started.

Do you feel like YouTube's helpful though?

Oh, 100%. Well, YouTube is so much more helpful, especially we're living in the golden age right now where It's so much easier to make money right now than when our parents grew up.

Yeah, because all they know is information is right in front of you.

And I mentioned it before, right? It's, it's like I'm selling a shoe cleaner alongside an Adidas, alongside a Kiwi, alongside of these big brands, and I'm able to sell more than them because of the power of the internet.

Right, right.

It's an even playing field right now, and I'm able to go ahead and do that.

And I think, uh, let's touch base on this. Um, so there's major corporations out there, and you have Amazon, uh, successful Amazon, um, e-commerce right, uh, product. Would you ever consider being in a Foot Locker or a Champs or what? I don't even know what other big companies are out there these days.

Like a Target?

Yeah, Target or any of those. But what's so crazy is those companies, like a JCPenney's— like, who's to say that Nordstrom's wouldn't fall like that with Jason Markk, right? I'm pretty sure Jason Markk has a really big account with Nordstrom, right? So if Nordstrom closed, he's going to lose a lot of his business in a store. Do you fear that would happen if you were to take that leap?

No, no, no, no. You can only control what you control.

Right.

And at the end of the day, like, like I mentioned before, if I want to get into a Nordstrom's or a Target, my profit margin is going to be lower. But I would love to get into one of those stores because of the fact that you get more exposure, you're getting more brand value. And at the end of the day, you can always sell an Amazon FBA business.

Yeah.

So I think that's one of the biggest benefits of Amazon FBA is where not only are you able to go ahead and cash flow and build a successful brand that you're making money each month, At the end of the day, if you're tired of it and you're tired of the hustle and bustle, you can literally sell your Amazon FBA business.

Right. I think I was thinking about it all wrong, especially when I was contacting you like a few months ago about the golf cleaner I wanted to launch. I was like, I have a successful golf store in town. I want to like make sure I can put— I could— I have a connection. I could put my stuff on their shelf. But at the end of the day, I was leaning more towards putting it on the shelf instead of putting on Amazon where you said They do all the legwork for you. You can pay for advertising, you can pay for all that. If I put it in the store first, or if that's where my mind was at, who's going to do all the legwork? I'd have to. So now I'm working double time.

Not only that, now you can have a proof of concept of like, hey, you know what? I have a golf product that does very well on Amazon and I'm bringing it to you. It's going to do very well in your store.

Yeah. As opposed to doing it the other way of like, hey, this worked at a store or didn't work at a store. And then my mindset's all messed up because I'm like, it's probably not going to sell online. Well, the thing is that people are afraid of online still.

Yeah, yeah, but you gotta understand that, um, how many people walk into that golf store?

Only a few. Maybe, maybe 30 people a day. 40 people.

Exactly. How many people are gonna shop on Amazon per day?

Hundreds, thousands, millions.

Millions of people. Millions, tens of millions every single day. People always trip out. It's like, how many people buy your product per day?

Oh, I used to trip out years ago, bro. How long have you been doing this for?

Uh, since 2018. It's so—

5 years? 5 years straight that you haven't had a 9-to-5 job or even thought about putting an application in?

Yeah, since I graduated from college, I worked at a startup and I did real estate for a year. But ever since then, yeah, for 5 years.

That's crazy. But the numbers show because just what I was trying to say was 5 years ago you were showing me numbers and there was thousands of people that were buying from you back then. And Amazon isn't as big as it was now.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, 2020, the growth of over the pandemic has obviously accelerated online shopping. Um, obviously it's stagnant a little bit now, but that's because so many people jumped on going ahead and shopping online.

Right.

Um, and I feel like even in the years coming forward, it's always, it's going to keep on growing.

Right. I think the last thing I want to kind of talk about today is like a recession. Everyone's like recession talk, recession talk. How is that going to impact you?

Um, the thing is that what I like to say to people is you can control whatever you can control. Right now I'm in the phase where I'm growing out my businesses and I'm actually acquiring businesses. So I see it right now where if you want to put something for sale, like a business for sale, that's where it gets impacted the most, right? But your day-to-day stuff, it's always going to be— it's always going to be hard. Every business owner, it's hard day to day. I'm going to have more competition. Advertising costs might go up, right? Um, people aren't shopping as frequently, but I'm trying to control what I can control. So even if a recession comes, is it going to hurt going ahead and losing 10% of my profits?

Yeah.

But I put myself in a position where, you know, I live below my means. Um, I try and go ahead and do everything for the best of my ability. So the thing is that like in a, in a small point of view, me going ahead and looking at my products, it won't affect it too much. But if I'm looking outside, if I'm trying to sell my business, then maybe my valuation of my businesses get hit, which they have.

You know, I said that was the last thing I was going to say. I have one more question. So when you first started, what was your day-to-day looking like as opposed to now? 5 years in the game, like, that's not that long.

Yeah.

So if you think about someone like that wants to start off, where were you like day to day? Were you just like in front of the computer every single day, like for countless amounts of hours? And then like, can you kind of—

Yeah. So when I first started Factory Lace, which was previously named Deadstock, I was finding different ways of how to make money, man, because I couldn't go back to being a real estate agent because it was literally every day of hustle mode. door knocking, cold calling, doing different forms of marketing where if I close the deal, I don't know where my next deal is going to come from. I just couldn't do that. So I would, I would search up different ways. So even when I was launching this product, I was finding different ways in order to go ahead and make money online. But my day-to-day was always learning, always, always learning how to go ahead and optimize the listing, main photos, click-through rate, advertising.

So that's how I learned how to be a one-man band.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's hard sometimes because I— it's sometimes it's still hard for me to delegate tasks. I always like to be in control of a lot of things, um, but that's something that I'm always going to be going ahead and learning. Yeah, but my day-to-day now kind of similar. Right now I own 3 different brands, um, and we're constantly trying to acquire different brands as well on Amazon FBA. So it's a lot of going ahead and putting out a lot of fires now.

Yeah.

Um, as opposed to the day-to-day was basically making sure everything's optimized, advertising campaigns, going ahead and making sure Which new product to go ahead and launch. But even with that, Amazon FBA—

It sounds like you kind of built your own building and then you had a ladder and you went all the way to the top by yourself.

That's a good way to put it. But, but no, definitely along the way I've gotten fortunate. I've been lucky.

But you learned yourself. And it's like, like what I was trying to explain was like being in a restaurant, working in a restaurant, and you're the busboy, and then now you're the owner. You learned how to do the business. You learned every— like how to be a busboy, how to be a waiter, how to You know, manage your own restaurant, and now you're putting out those fires. Like you said, now you're in control of multiple businesses or multiple situations where you're firefighting. Yeah, you're just putting out fires.

Yeah, definitely. The more you grow, the more connections you make, the more, you know, you put yourself in a position where now you're doing speaking arrangements. Now you can go ahead and have your own, you know, following and this and that. So I've been grateful for it.

Obviously, I've been super grateful for it, man. It's awesome to see, bro. Well, cheers to that, baby. This is a good one, bro.

Yeah. Sounds good.

Thank you again, Shay. Yeah, definitely, bro. Hey, tune in to all of Eman's stuff. We're definitely going to link all that stuff in so you can see what he's doing, his growth on Instagram, Twitter. What else are you on, bro?

Yeah, mostly YouTube. So go ahead and follow me if you have any interest in brand building, Amazon FBA. Hit me up on Eman Los Angeles on YouTube. Also Instagram. It's more personal, like I mentioned in this podcast, but follow me there as well.

100%, brother.

All right.

Thank you guys. Man, love you, bro.