Episode 103: How to Become a Profitable Amazon Seller with Cyndi Thomason, Christine Cobb and Ellen Britt

Christine, give me discount again.

1, 2.

Did you get that?

Yeah, I still got her.

Okay, we're in stereo here. You know, the Skype messed us up, so we had to just convert back. We're good now.

Oh, yeah, you had to go back to black.

Back to black. Did you just say. Did you just say back to black? Here we go. Yeah. Soundboard. Soundboard is improving.

Happen to have that one.

Let the grunting begin.

Dude. Dude. That's how you start a show, Christina.

And everyone who's on the line, please grunt. When we start, Christina is going to.

Shout out the episode number, by the way.

Yeah, I want to do it.

Christina's now calling our episode number. So when he says, welcome to Prop First Podcast, we throw to you now you say episode 103.

Oh, you don't say, I'm not gonna say anything. I'm just gonna say it.

You just do it. Okay.

Okay.

You're listening to the Profit first podcast, episode 103. Grunting.

That's right.

Yes, bruh. Yes. Welcome to the show, everybody. My name's Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit first and Serge. I mean, do you have a copy of that yet? It's been in the market for so long. And I'm joined in the studio by Christina Bulduk.

Hey, Dar.

And you are listening to the Profit first podcast, the most high energy show on profitability in the world ever. Ever.

That's right. You have a business, you bring in revenue, and you keep profits if you have any. And that's what this show's about, how to have more profits in your business. Because that equals sustainability. If there's one thing I ever learned from Mike Michalowicz, it's profit equals sustainability.

Yes.

That'S right. We're available everywhere. You can hear podcasts, itunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, everywhere, including the website. Have you been there yet? Have you commented and made fun of Mike McCann Kalowitz in one of the posts? Please do profit first podcast dot com.

Actually, we did get a comment on one of our episodes. Actually, I saw today. I don't know the person's name, but he said a show for entrepreneurs who want to increase their profits. And since when did talking about money need to be boring? The Profit first podcast gets serious about money by having the most fun possible. So shout out to you, dude. You're welcome.

Wow.

Kill me.

Hey, Chris. Christina's reading that into her brand new purple microphone.

I have a Multicolored microphone now, so.

Oh, it's the little windscreen on top.

Yeah, the windscreen. Yeah. Not the entire microphone, just the windscreen. So the last episode we did, Christina disinfected the studio. No, you always do. But you disinfected literally for 15 minutes. Okay, enough's enough. Enough's enough. Trying to disinfect the windscreen's not easy, so we got you your own. Thank you.

Yeah, I know we got a bunch of different colors, so it depends on my mood. It's like my mood ring.

Yeah, yeah.

You could take it home and throw it in the washing machine while you're using a different color.

Exactly.

And, dude, she's all hyped up. You guys see the shout out we got? I. Yeah, we'll read in a second. Yeah, but Chris, first, what you been up to? My bear.

You know, this deer had two babies right in our backyard, like, literally 25ft from my sliding glass door. No joke.

This is. I think this happened once before. You mentioned that before.

No, no, I mentioned we saw a moose that had babies and the magpies had babies.

Everybody's having babies, actually giving birth.

Wow. What's in the water at your house?

No, we're just.

We're just in the wilderness. Well, we're in Colorado Springs, but we're near the mountains, like in the northwest part of town. So the mountains are, like, right there. So all this wildlife comes down. We see bobcats, coyotes. Yeah.

Wow.

Anyway.

Wow.

What have you been up to, Mike?

Dude. So my daughter just had prom, and they. They meaning my daughter says, hey, can I have some friends over after prom? And our idea is that we're just going to set up tents in our backyard. Our backyard faces woods here too.

Right, right.

And so we're like. My wife and I are like, okay, that sounds cool. And she's like, oh, oh, no, we've been doing that in the office. And so I'm like, yeah, it's limited to just your closest friends. No problem. 3:10 set up and everything's good. Then the morning of the prom, like, two more tents arrive. I'm like, oh, I guess there's a couple more by the end. Right before they left for prom, there's 15 tents. And these aren't like two person tents.

These are big.

Yeah, these are like the military. I thought the Civil War reenactment was happening in our backyard. Oh, I'm like, what's happening? She's like, well, the friends invited friends. And I'm like, oh, so, yeah. Oh, yeah, dude. Midnight. Midnight. On Tuesday night, you hear a diesel engine down the road and I start shaking. It's the bus from prom bringing all of the prom partiers to our house for the after party. Party.

No way.

From 12 midnight till 4 in the morning, me and Krista sat in the house shaking, trying to control 100 plus seniors. It was pure mayhem. I did not sleep at all that night.

I know he just looks at me the next day when we come down for our meeting and he's like, never again, Never again, Never again.

Yeah. Oh, your few closest friends. Yeah. So there's still. This is now four days later, three days later, still tents in our yard. I'm afraid to even go outside.

Oh, my God. So class story.

Yeah.

Krista goes, I think we need to check the chest to make sure we didn't leave any bodies in.

Oh, my God.

I was like, oh, my God.

Prom.

Oh my God shows up.

So we have a. We have an office in the house in the basement. People are coming into work and there's like teenagers all throughout the backyard, like hanging out and stuff. It's. It's crazy.

At least they weren't in your kitchen, like wearing a robe, making pancakes and stuff.

Oh, my God. Well, dude, they came in, they were coming to the houses, like, what are you doing? And we said, okay, if girls have to use the restroom, fine. Boys use the wood.

No.

So we gotta read the shout out to you real quick or Christina's gonna read it. Read that shout out, you guys.

Oh, yeah. So one of our fans, Beth, she was touching, and I saw that she commented on the episode and she was just curious. She was talking about the Jen Sincero episode, about when she coached me through opera singing, and she just wanted to touch in. And she said that I said two very important things within the first 30 seconds about talking about my opera career, that I felt something inside me pulling me towards things since I could talk. And that part of it was pushed down by my family. And she just kind of reiterated how family has such a big influence on our lives if we let it. But, you know, now that I have this mass support group from professionals and from my coworkers, that I can't let that cloud my judgment. And I thought that was really nice that she took the time to reach out to me and to tell me that. And she just wanted to know how I was doing. So thank you for checking in. I'm actually doing very well. I still see my vocal coach about once a week, and I've started teaching. I found a passion more in Teaching too. So Beth, shout out to you for being awesome.

Yeah, that's awesome. So we, we read the entire letter together off the air. But you. Christina starts choking up. I'm a co crier and it just starts going downhill. So. Meaning in a good way. But that is wonderful. And Christina, I am telling you, don't start. Well, I'm telling you, the opera is waiting for you.

Thank you.

Grab. Grab it. And this job will always be for here for you, even if you take a temporary departure to live your day.

Thank you. A theater leave.

Yeah, theater leave. Right, right. A theater leave. So, yeah. So good job.

Thank you.

Chris, I want to tell you what's coming up. We're going to talk about Amazon. You know, Amazon is like exploding in popularity. Not the website Amazon and the core business, but the supplemental fulfillment practice. They have the fba which is fulfilled by Amazon or fulfillment by Amazon. That sellers. It used to be the ebay platform that's still pretty large. Have moved to Amazon and there's massive opportunities for profit there and there's massive lessons even if you don't use the Amazon platform. We got three guests. This is a first attempt ever to bring in three simultaneous guests. It's going to be a disaster. So I want to thank them. We're going to introduce them in a second. But put on your five point seat belt system in preparation for us, which, by the way, I've been looking this up. There are five point seatbelt systems.

Yeah, it's legit.

And it's legit. And it does go over your crotch.

That's. See, that's what we were all wondering. So thanks for clearing that up.

Thanks for. Yeah. Which I don't know how anyone could handle that kind of accident. Like, whatever. Well, it may save your life, but it destroys your life at the same time. So I want to thank our corporate partners who make the show possible. Thank you. To Fundera.

Yes.

And Fundbox.

Yes.

And nextiva, who just stepped up and did another project with us. And Receipt bank and. Oh, and Fund box. I was talking to Dave Tolkien sends the funniest picture in. It's on the web. Try to just Google David Tolkien wearing a Profit First T shirt with a knot in the side like he's a. He's a woman from the 70s kind of pulled up with his. It was hysterical.

And his pants are like falling off his butt. He's got his boxers showing his massive scraggly beard.

A babushka at all.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, well, we're burning daylight. Let's get to business here. I want to introduce our three guests. Christine Cobb is a WordPress website consultant, Amazon FBA. Now that's the fulfillment by Amazon seller and instructor. Additionally, she was a past cpa, so she knows her numbers. You're not a profit first professional, though. But Cindy Thomas, Ellen Britt is a high ticket sales expert. How do you make the best big priced items? You know what I'm trying to say? The high ticket price. Yeah. How do you make money with the things? She's a master interviewer. She's a mastermind expert and a lover of southern food. I'll tell you, if you're not a lover of southern food, are you even a human being? Best foods from the South. Grits. Oh, man, I love grits. And then Cindy Thomason, who is a profit first professional, a leading the, I shouldn't say a, the leading authority in profitability in the Amazon space. So a grand welcome to all three of you. Welcome to the show.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you.

So, Christine, I want to start. Hi, Christine, I want to start with you. You know Amazon, it's a cutthroat industry. You can't, you can't make money on there. Can you really be profitable on Amazon as a third party seller?

Man. Should I just tell everybody they can't and.

Yeah, then we're done with the show.

Good night, everybody.

Good night. Let's go crack a beer.

Some competition. Yeah.

Have a drink.

Tell me there's still opportunity out there. I mean, once the online marketers kind of took hold, it got a little crazy. But yeah, you can definitely make money if you know what you're doing.

Okay. And so that's the key. You got to know what you're doing. Because I think most people go in it ill prepared or not prepared whatsoever and get their butts handed to them. Christine.

Well, I see it every day. I mean, there are people out there placing orders for private label products in China and asking in a Facebook group, how do you make a label? How do you send stuff to Amazon? How do you do this, how do you do that? I mean, they might as well have bought an expensive car and asked the Facebook group how you turn it on. It's just craziness.

And the cool thing with Amazon is if you get your butt handed to you, they ship it back to you actually in a box.

Yeah, yeah. They make you a podcast. Podcaster then.

Oh, that was a slap. Yeah. Ellen. Yeah. Ellen, on Amazon, it's a commodity business, Right. I can get some commodity items a little cheaper there than Walmart. And so forth. I think you're saying you can sell high ticket price items on Amazon too?

Well, yeah. I mean the. Some of these private label products are very, very lucrative for people. And I think there's less competition if you do have something that's a higher ticket item because most sellers when they first come into the market are going to go for a low price product and there's more competition that way. So you can definitely differentiate yourself there.

You know, I don't know if you heard of this. We had a. Oh, Chris, maybe you remember the term. We had a guest on our show who was implementing profit first in his business. Actually, Cindy, maybe you remember him. I think his name was Eric. Does that name sound familiar, Cindy?

No, I'm not placing it.

He said he worked with you. Who was the gentleman? I think he's from Korea or Thailand or something.

Common.

Common, yeah. Eric and Common often get confused. Yeah, Common said he does this process where he finds in retail stores items that are significantly discounted and resells them at their list price on Amazon. Is that one of the strategies to be profitable?

Absolutely.

How's that work?

Well, you go into a retail store and a lot of people get started out that way, go into a retail store and you can go to a clearance aisle and look and see things marked down every day of the week. And if you wait long enough, sometimes they're marked down to almost nothing. You take your little Amazon scanner app, which Amazon provides you as a seller, you scan it, you can compute pretty quickly whether that product's going to be profitable for you. You scoop it at a discount, you pack it up, send it to Amazon, Amazon sells it, and you get, you get the profit back.

Hold on, this is amazing. Amazon gives you a scanner. Does it connect to your phone? Is it an app?

Yeah, it's an app. It's a downloadable app.

And tell me more of the particulars, how does that work?

Well, you just download the app, you've got your Amazon seller account, you scan the barcode, the UPC code that's already there on the product, Amazon pulls it up and gives you information about how many other sellers are selling it, what it's going to cost you in terms of Amazon's fees, and you can kind of plug in what it's going to cost you to ship it to Amazon and you can figure out very quickly whether you're going to be able to make money on that product or not. If it's. If not, then of course you don't purchase it. If you do, then you purchase it, send it in.

Simple. Wow. So this, it sounds like it's almost like guaranteed that you'll know in advance to buying stuff if you'll make money or not? Or is that just in the moment? And then the time you drive home, Amazon, if you rescan, it says, oh, don't buy this now. You made a total mistake.

Well, I don't know. Christine could probably speak more thoroughly to that than me. But there are fluctuations and sometimes if you send something in, every if it's a popular item, lots of sellers maybe have jumped on it and by the time you get it in, maybe the price has fallen. But I have found that personally that's it's not the case. If you act quickly, you get it in and it usually sells.

Christine, for the folks who want to get started on Amazon and use the FBA program that they provide, how do you get started? Is this the way the arbitrage or whatever we're talking about, or is there a different way to get started?

Most of the time people do arbitrage, but you don't have to necessarily go to stores. For me, that's not me. My sister, for example, Ellen, they love to shop. They love to go to stores and browse, and they love that part. For me, I'd rather shop online. So there's two kinds of arbitrage we talk about. There's just regular retail arbitrage where you're going to the store, and then there's online arbitrage, where you're shopping online and finding the deals and again sending it into Amazon to be resold. So most people, when they get started, will do that. It's the way that I think that people should start because you learn a lot about the whole business and how to evaluate whether you're really profitable or not.

And Cindy, you've evaluated a lot of businesses. You help them become profitable. Do you suggest start very slow and kind of learn the ropes, or do you have a kind of a set strategy where you can grow quicker?

No, I think learning the ropes is the best thing. I mean, there's a lot to learn. As Christine and Ellen have mentioned, there's a lot to learn to know how to operate an Amazon store. And a lot of Amazon business owners have come to that position from a different kind of background, maybe a corporate background or something. So they don't always know the retail side of things. So they're really is a lot to learn. And I don't know of a quick strategy to jump ahead of the pack except to learn and Learn from people that are doing it, like Christine and Ellen, because they have the secrets and they can help you learn how to navigate so many different aspects of working with Amazon.

Ellen, I think of inventory turn at least a concept in traditional manufacturing. When you create something, the longer you sit on it, the more costly it becomes. You want to turn inventory quickly. Is that a consideration and how do you address that if it is with Amazon fba?

Well, I've learned everything I know about Amazon FBA from Christine and I'm an amateur when it comes to that. My area of expertise is getting other people's knowledge out to the widest possible audience. But I have learned the concept of inventory turn. And yes, that's something you want to take into consideration. There are several factors if you're going to bump up against what Amazon has in place are long term storage fees. Then yeah, you want that Amazon, that, that inventory to turn very quickly and you might lower your price to make that happen. And some people have a business strategy going in. They want a fast turn business so they'll be willing to take a lower profit margin to get that inventory to churn faster so that they can get their cash in and out. Other people take an absolutely opposite tack where they don't mind holding for a larger piece of the P. So, Alan.

I'm going to give you a layup question in just a minute. But Christina, I want to ask you that question about inventory turn. Should we be spinning this stuff, buying it and selling within a day? Is there a realistic expectation? What's your suggestions around inventory turn?

You know, there's a, there's a formula and we're not going to go through that because that can be pretty boring. But you have to look at your profitability at the end of the day. So if you're going to cut your price by 50% and make just a pittance in order to sell it in a day or two days or three days, whatever it is, then you may end up just going out of business. If you don't understand what the ramifications are of your actions in pricing, I'll give you a story. There's people out there teaching people to buy as much stuff as they can buy and utilizing a service out there called ebates, which basically gives you a rebate of, you know, something like 2%, 3%, maybe as high as 5%, 6% of your purchase price. It's like an affiliate situation with them in the stores. They're teaching these people buy as much as you can, send it into Amazon it doesn't matter if you make any money. All you're trying to do is get that ebay check. I mean, it's the craziest thing you've ever seen. And so you are competing sometimes with these people. Now, granted, they're not going to be around long because, you know, eventually they're going to run out of money. But still, you know, for every person who drops out with this kind of mentality, there's another person that comes along. So you. So experience is going to teach you how to deal with all the external things you have no control over. And that's just one of them.

Okay, so what it sounds like are those people are doing not just thin margins. It sounds like, Christine, they're doing, like, no margins and they're just hoping for a little rebate on the backside. Is that what you're saying?

That's exactly what I'm saying.

Gotcha. Gotcha, Cindy.

I know. Crazy.

Yeah, that is crazy. Cindy, I gotta ask you, you work with many Amazon sellers. I know that there's gotta be a certain kind of margin you need to have to consistently be profitable. Is there kind of a range or, you know, what are the numbers here? Where should we be positioning ourselves to be consistently profitable?

Well, I like to see my clients in the 30% range, 25 to 30% range. Now, they can't always be there on every product, but to cover the other costs that they have and to pay themselves, and to be profitable as a business, you've got to have margin coming to you and not just reinvesting it in inventory. And that's one of the bigger problems that I see is that, that a lot of clients are in this habit of getting their check from Amazon, their payout, and then turning right around and just purchasing more inventory and never paying themselves. So you've got to have big enough margins, and you've got to have the discipline to program the funds that do come to you that are, you know, the funds that are available for inventory purchases, put that back into inventory, but also take the money that, that you need for your operating expenses and include yourself in that.

Now, when you say a 30% or profit, does that mean if I buy something for, say, $10, do I mark it up 1.3 or 30% more? Do I sell it for 13, or is the math work differently than that?

Oh, no, the math works differently than that. And you've got a. It's complicated, too, because a lot of the Amazon sellers are just looking at their net payout and what they get from Amazon, which already has the fees taken off of it. So I, like many of them, are just looking at that number, that payout amount. And so I like to work with them to understand what their total product price is and how that actually comes to them after the fees are taken out. So, yeah, we need to get a little more into the details than that.

Alan, get ready for your layup question. Best Southern food. What is it?

Oh, grits. Hands down.

Yes. You nailed it. Okay, Christine, right over back to you. I want to get started. How do I go about technically setting this up? Do I log into a website? Do I call you and just say, do it for me? What do I do?

Yeah, Amazon makes it pretty easy to get set up. You just fill out an application and join their program. They actually have a couple of different levels. One where you are called kind of an individual seller and they charge you like a dollar for every product you sell. Then there's the professional level, which you pay $40 a month for. But it is so much better to join at that level because it gives you a lot of other benefits. And so you can actually, even though it might be tempting to want to start at that lower level, you're kind of starting with a couple of weights around your feet as you start the race, if you start at that level. So you just, you know, they just make it real easy to get set up, but that's just the beginning. You really, really need to learn the ropes. And, you know, Amazon has an incredible business and they're very protective of their business and they expect you to understand it's their sandbox and they expect you to follow their rules, even if they are a little wacky at some times. So that's, you know, besides just getting an account and learning the steps of how to get inventory into Amazon and that sort of thing, there's a lot of their rules that you need to learn so that you don't get in trouble with them and be put in time out.

Are there, like, easier products to start with, meaning maybe less competitive? Is there a certain way to start learning the ropes before you go all in on this based upon product or something?

You know, there are just, I don't know how many products, millions of products out there. But also you want to understand that there are some that are a lot more popular than others. And so there's a sweet spot between products that have less competition and products that are super popular. So I don't know, you remember back in Christmas what the popular toy was at Christmas last year.

Anybody Do I remember the popular toy? I was about to say, like, Tickle me Elmo, but that's from like 1930.

Pie face.

Pie face.

Pie. Oh, that's right. Bazinga. That's right. It was Pie face.

Okay, so if you, if you got in early with Pie Face, you made a ton of money and that you could, you could go buy it at regular retail, not even on sale, and sell it because it was selling at a premium. But then when the flood of people who discovered that this was the most popular toy came into the market, you know, prices plummeted. It's supply and demand. I mean, it's the perfect scenario for supply and demand. So I just suggest that people start scanning stuff around their house or go to a Walmart or something and just scan stuff just to start learning how things are priced on Amazon and what the comparison is between what you sell it for and what you get.

If you're a fan of scanning the items in your house, do you suggest expanding that and scanning your neighbor's houses? Maybe when you're out to dinner?

Absolutely.

You're in the bathroom, you're scanning their medical medicine closet. Whoa. There's a lot of money to be had here.

Yeah, yeah. Go to somebody's house and scan their bookshelf.

Oh, that's wonderful.

They don't want those books.

They're asking like, oh, how's the family and kids? You're like, not now, for God's sake, I need to scan your books.

No, you ask to borrow the books and then you scan.

Yeah, you're like, this one book up here, this book, the pumpkin plan, it's worthless. You know, why do you even have this? Oh, hey, Ellen, you say we can do high ticket price sales. You know, is there a way to take these commodities and make them perceivably more valuable? Is there a way to increase these margins?

Well, one of the ways that you can make your listing more valuable is to bundle it with other products. So that way you can raise the price sometimes more than the price of the individual products combined. So it just bazinga. And then you have something where you have a specific product that you've got that's unique, so you're going to have less competition because it's hard for other sellers to put together your exact bundle. And if you took a private label product and then you combine that with a different product that's hard to get, then you can kind of control that listing on your own. So, yes, there are ways to make your products more valuable.

I love the idea of bundling, I think of like the iPhone. If I sell an iPhone, you sell an iPhone. There's no difference. We'll go with the cheapest. But if you sell an iPhone that comes maybe preloaded with 15 of the most popular apps of all time, you're differentiating yourself. Is that kind of what you're suggesting?

Yeah, you're differentiating yourself. And more importantly, you're controlling that listing. So there's no other competition until somebody comes along and maybe matches the bundle. But if you have a private label product that you put together with a different product, then you can control the listing, have no competition, and maybe charge a significantly higher price for that product.

But, Ellen, does it make it harder to find? I mean, if the consumer is seeking the iPhone, but yours is now a combo package, will they still find you seeking an iPhone, or do they have to be specifically looking for this combo package?

Well, I don't know. That'd be selling iPhones, but nice. Yeah, I know. But just in terms of a bundle, there are ways to enhance your listing. You've got to go in there and put in the keywords so that when people search, they are finding your product. You can also use Amazon's internal ad system to run pay per click ads within Amazon to your listing. You can also advertise your listing on social media, market it to your list, or do other things.

All right, so we're going to wrap up on a round robin. Ellen, we're going to start with you and Christine and then, Cindy, I want to know if you can depart one final tip or maybe repackage something you already shared. What's the best way to be successful in Amazon? What's your tip, Ellen?

I would say get started and just learn all you can know that it's a learning process. You've got to start at square one.

Okay, so scan the shit out of your neighbor's stuff. That's right, Christine. You can't steal that one. What's your new unique tip? Darn, the Southerner took you down.

She sure did.

Find trustworthy people to learn from. Because there are people out there that are teaching things that are going against Amazon's terms of service and you don't want to hook your wagon to theirs and then have Amazon give you the boot.

Yeah, perhaps the lesson, if it's too good to be true or sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Cindy, your last tip.

Set up a separate bank account for your inventory purchases. And when you get your sales coming back in from your payout, Replenish that inventory account so you're not commingling your operating expenses in your inventory. Because I see a lot of people get in trouble with not really understanding how much they're spending on inventory.

Profit first. Right.

What a powerful, powerful. Kind of expected that answer.

Yeah, I love it. If you didn't say that, Cindy, we would have hit you. All right, now I know Ellen, Christine, and Cindy, you have a special event coming up, and I just wanted you to share exactly the details behind it. Christine, maybe you can just tell us some of the details.

Yeah, we. Twice a year, we hold a live interactive class for people who want to get started on Amazon. And so we will be scheduling this next class. I think it'll start in the second week in August. It'll run for five weeks, and by the end of the time, you will have your first inventory and probably have made your first sale on Amazon before the class ends.

Oh, nice. Alan, what websites do they go to? How do people find out about your stuff?

Well, we're actually going to have a training call and talking about that, actually giving away some secrets. And that training call, you can get signed up for that@pinkcoattails.com Amazon FM, FBA. And you spell pink. B, I, N, K, C, O, A, T, T A, I, L, s dot com, Amazon, fba.

FBA as in fulfillment by Amazon. And then Christine will put that in there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

All right, Cindy, Christine, and Ellen, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. Thanks, guys.

Oh, it's been a blast.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So, Chris, if your business is the red now, you're back in the black. Right now you got the tips being profitable. Yeah. So, Chris, I want to know in a second what you learned. And Chris.

Yeah.

Be prepared on your purple microphone there. But first, I want to thank our corporate partners.

Oh, by the way, after we talk about our corporate partners, we need to ask Barry what, what his tip is for selling on Amazon.

Oh, he's got a tip.

I can't wait.

Let's. Let's hold on that. Yes. For a second. But let me tell you about our corporate partners.

Tell me.

So listen, dude, I don't know why I called you dude. Nextiva. Yeah, I call them up. I said we need possibly another phone, and they said it's already been shipped to you within seconds of doing it. It's like they've anticipated the needs.

Of course.

They are the ultimate customer service.

Yeah.

We're becoming more of a virtual business. I know you're working home from. From home. One day A week now, which is. It's more productive.

Absolutely.

It's no commute, but we still have the FaceTime. And now Erin's back from her pregnancy. She's working from home a little bit more. And now Halluch, his new nickname is Hawaiian Lumberjack is now just Hallucination. Hawaiian Lumberjack is too much to say. So his initials are hlj. So Hallaj. Halaj is like, I want to do work from work, from home last night. And we said, oh, we should get you a phone. I call next, Stephen, like, oh, we're on it. We're shipped it. We thought you'd want that because you didn't have a phone.

We actually shipped it last week.

Yeah, no, I mean, it wasn't that. I wish it was that good.

But they'd be great at that moment if you're. If all of a sudden they're like, check the door. And you hear.

Yeah, open the box. So we're getting Halluch a home phone. It was just cool how fast it was. It wasn't like I had a call and spec anything out. I just said, it's for Halluch. And I guess they listened to our calls because they said, oh, you mean Mike Scalise. I said, yeah, yeah, the Hawaiian Lumberjack. Interesting. All right, Receipt bank, who emailed me the copy because I stopped reading the copy and I subsequently have lost yet again. But we use it. Receipt bank allows you to scan in your receipts. It is a productivity tool. How much time do you spend collecting receipts? Trying to document it. Why not just take a picture of the receipt while you're incurring the expense? Scan it. It syncs up with your system, and you don't even have to put that receipt in your wallet.

So easy.

So easy. Fundbox, we talked about how amazing those people are. David Tolkien, awesome. They're actually looking to do more stuff with us.

Awesome.

But here's the deal. I don't know, Christina, if you've experienced your personal life, but as an entrepreneur, sometimes you send an invoice out to a client and they don't pay it right away. But you need the money.

I know. Show me the money.

Now, how you used to do it is you'd make a call, Tony, Tony, Tony. Yeah, no problem. I'll take care of it. Money will be there by tomorrow. And it was. But often there was a sheriff then coming to visit you the subsequent day. Fundbox has solved that. The money comes to you immediately. They release the funds to you. The client doesn't even know that you've Been funded because Fundbox just delivers the money out of their own bank account. And then when you get the money from your client on your terms, you return the money to Fundbox.

Yeah. They say, forget about it. You pay me when you pay me.

Hey, seriously, I won't break your legs. What we will do is we'll send pictures of David Tolkien with a knotted up T shirt and a Dundee showing. That would scare the hell out of you.

You'll pay your bills.

And then Fundera.

Yes.

Meredith Wood had an amazing wedding.

Yes.

She was at what conference? Scaling new heights. She was partying it up. I was hanging out with her. She's a dancing machine and she's a funding machine. I think she did like five or six loan acquisitions while we're there.

This is the conference.

At the conference, she just, she's open her. She here was one. One loan acquisition. We're at the bar and the guy's like, here's your drink. And you know, it's. It's Bahamas or. Yeah, it's Bahamas. $10 a drink. And like I only have a few dollars on me. And I looked over and Meredith's like, oh, here's 10 bucks. Like that's the perfect loan on the spot. Her own money.

Yeah. And the bartender's signing his. Signing his agreement to get a loan too. She sold him a loan.

Yeah, but that's what they do. But they do it in the real world for businesses. And the loans aren bucks. It's like 10,000 to 100,000 to even a million dollar loans. And they can actually fund them sometimes within 24 hours. They're a one stop shop for funding.

Yes.

All right, Christina, you're up first. What'd you learn today?

Oh, I learned that especially when you're starting something new, and particularly Amazon, if you want to start going into the selling business. Myself personally, I get so excited when I make the decision that I'm going to do something. And sometimes you forget to read the manual. That is so important. And they've all made that abundant clear that you need to do your research and really know what you're doing before you take the plunge into doing this. You don't want to just hop right in because it's so easy to lose business and to screw yourself out of money. So you have to absolutely know what you're doing before you do it and talk to people, ask for help. I find a lot of people want to help you. You just have to ask. And a lot of your competition aren't asking because they're Way too damn excited.

Yeah, I totally agree.

Oh, Christine Note was right on.

Yeah, you did hit that note. Try one more time. Here comes.

Wow. Wow. Do you have perfect picture?

Ah, that's amazing. Here, can you sing along with this one? Try this.

What do you touch this?

Come on.

Can't touch this.

Nice.

That's kind of low for me.

Can't touch this. So, Chris. All right, you're up, bro. What'd you learn?

Yeah, well, actually, Barry's here. He wanted to share his tip. Oh, yeah, Barry, what is someone going to need to be a really successful seller on Amazon?

Yes.

You're gonna need a couple of horses or a couple of mules.

All right, spot on.

Clearly someone that's educated in the Amazon seller space. How's Barry?

Barry knows his stuff.

What do you think, Chris?

My takeaway is fundamentals, and Cindy is just nailing it every time. Take your profit. Set up your accounts. I mean, it comes down to fundamentals. I don't care what you sell. I don't care if you do sell the books off your friend's bookshelf. It doesn't matter. You need to get the profit from it at some point, so you need to have the accounts. And that's why Profit first is just genius.

You know, it's funny. Like, people come to me and go, mike, you wrote profit First. Why don't you tell me how to set profit first for Amazon? And I'm like, I'm not the expert. It's Cindy Thomason. And the whole idea here is, listen, Profit first is a foundational program, but for every niche, there is a different application of it. So what Cindy shared is something, actually, I didn't even really think about. But you have to have an inventory buying account. Yeah, it makes sense. I. And she takes it a lot further. So that was a big aha for me, too. Bundling. And by the way, I did Ellen. The classic test on any Southerner is you ask them about their food, and if the answer is not grits or chicken fry something, they ain't talking Southern food.

Right?

So she said, I was expecting, you know, chicken fried chicken, chicken fried steak or grits and chicken. Yeah, chicken fried chicken.

That's the thing.

Oh, are you. Have you guys ever been to the South? Have you ever eaten good food?

Ellen's gonna reach out and slap you through the Internet.

I know there's no such thing, but. No, she's at grits. She passed the test. And then she blew me away with the bundling concept. Yeah, it's so funny. Any product can be made into a premium product by introducing elements to it that the competition doesn't offer. That's the concept of premium. It's unique. And so you can take a commodity and make it unique through bundling. I thought that was a big Aha.

Aha.

Aha. Oh, I want that sound bit.

Aha, aha.

That's it. 1-800-haluj. There you go.

Chris. Where can they, you know, leave a comment and do all that stuff?

I'm just loving the. What kind of a name is that?

You don't like that? Christina doesn't like.

Oh, I love it, but it's growing on me now. It's like the funniest thing ever. When I first heard it, I was like, oh, the Hawaiian lumberjack is so much better.

The hallucination, it makes him sound like sludge on the bottom of your shoe.

That's funny.

Well, the key of nicknames is when the person nicknamed doesn't like it. You know you have a good nickname, right? He liked Hawaiian Lumberjack way too much.

That is true. You had to bring him down a couple.

Yeah, I said he Ludge. And he's like, I. I don't think so. I'm like, that's it. That's like in Animal House when they. When Jim Belushi assigns the nicknames and he looks at the one guy and he goes, your nickname's Flounder. And the guy's like, why? He's like, because it is like. Like that's how you assign a nickname.

That's when you. Like when you were calling me Rash because I had that.

You hated Rash.

My knee.

I wanted to get you.

I was like, oh, dude.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, anyway, you know what you can do after hearing this show? Go to the post on Profit first podcast.com and comment on this post. Give your opinions about Amazon selling. What would you sell on Amazon? Or how are you being profitable selling your stuff? Profit first podcast dot com. You can, of course, rate and review the show on itunes or Google Play or Stitcher or Tunein Radio anywhere you hear a podcast. We really appreciate our guests today and our corporate partners, but most of all, well, the foundation of this whole show, Profit First Professionals just changing the world, period. End the show right there.

Boom. We're eradicating entrepreneurial poverty. We actually had our morning meeting this morning. We talked about it. Here's the deal, yo. Most entrepreneurs in the Amazon space are not profitable, but actually, most entrepreneurs in any space are not profitable. I don't care what kind of business you're in statistically, you're not profitable. And that makes no effing sense to me. It actually upset me so much because I lived through that that I decided it's time to stop this. I met with Ron Saharan. He's like, it's time we stop this. I met with Christina Bulldog. It's time we stop. Everyone in here has lived through our own version of poverty. We don't stand for it anymore. We are eradicating it. Here's how you do it. If your business. If you want to increase your Profitability, go to profitfirstprofessionals.com we have a collection like gaggle of experts in this space who can drive profitability. Cindy Thomason is one of us.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, yeah, that's right. Barry, come to our site. It doesn't have to be in the Amazon space, any space. We have experts in accounting and bookkeeping and coaches who will drive profitability in your business and get your business to where it should be. It's real simple. Go to proffers professionals.com, click on the find button, and we'll hook you up.

That's right. You need an accountant or bookkeeper anyway. Why not get one that's consultative and is going to help you be profitable? Hello. Which is what Cindy's doing. It just. There's too much awesomeness on this episode. Thank you for listening. Thanks again to Cindy and Christine and Ellen and Mike and Christina and Obi Ron in the background and the ludge.

Hey. And you're gonna be thankful for next week, Chris. We're gonna try to pull this one off. I'm calling my old college roommate who hasn't heard from me in 30 years. And I did set him up. I said, phil, I'm trying to reach out to you. If you answer the phone when we call, I'm just gonna bring up something that happened in college and you got 30 seconds to talk about and then we're hanging up on you. Nice. And also next week, we'll be talking with Corey Veith. His business is struggling. It's not as profitable as he wants it to be, but we're gonna help him turn his computer repair franchise into a money maker.

There you go. See y' all next week. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you, bruh. Come on, Christina.

Bazinga, Baz.