I recently broke hundred and twenty thousand dollars
for my amazon business
I recently broke over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars for my Amazon business, but if I had to start it all over again
I
Don't know if I would let me explain
When I decided to start Amazon I was in a similar situation to where I bet a lot of you are right now
You know I was doing something I didn't necessarily love. I was just working
Excruciating hours like I was doing this catering company
And it was just it was brutal right 85% of my days were putting out fires and not literal fires
That wasn't that bad of a catering company, but it was just just soul like draining like honestly. It was brutal
And then I needed that a steep right I needed to just get something where I can
Stop doing what I was doing and have more time to do things that I actually enjoy doing but
There was an other side of me where it was like
Had I had pride in my catering company right because I was a business owner. You know 19 year old business owner
I felt all cool. I made business cards. I think I have some land here
I can probably pull them out for you Yeah, right here, so there's my business cards. Oh, I just like that
I dropped them on the table I'd be like yeah look voice CEO
And then two minutes later, we're eating dinner the waitress comes drops the bill. I'm like
Because I was broke as a joke even though I was you know a business owner. It's like that
Quintessential entrepreneurs struggle, so let's fast forward. I meet Nick I discover
Amazon I told you guys before we met at this sales conference so we were just sitting down
And he's showing me his numbers, so let's grab my phone here
He's showing me these numbers this casually dropping numbers as Nick does three thousand five hundred thirty two dollars as you can see right over
There it's like that this one
It's 15k, or you know a little faster on Nick likes to speak, and I were just like they're jula man cool
What 15k what fifteen thousand dollars?
And he's like yeah fifty thousand US dollars. I'm like you kidding me, dude, and that's that was back then 30k
He's probably doing 50 right now for that was that specific account
And I was just drooling like a bulldog like life. Is this guy doing I'm like
Sitting there. We're drinking coffee and in the time he's
I'm thinking about my clients right I'm thinking about oh, there's I'm stressing out and I deliver this one
This guy changes order this you know someone's called in sick my boys called it sick
And then he's just on this money printing app you say
And it's not even a deal big deal for him. I was like dude
I need to do what you are doing right so we kind of that's what we kind of figured it all out and
Let me do it for us, so I enter the world of
Amazon okay, I take course after course probably where you guys are right now, I try and take courses thinking about getting courses
I took them all in just like this video right over here
And I learned everything I could in a very in mind. I I like
Jam-packed it right so I benched it there. You go all within a week bumped out with this courses
I had Nick help me look for some products
I did the product research, but he would verify them for me, and I'm just like everything's going smooth. I'm super happy like
Taking this fresh opportunity breathing all in breathing the new opportunity
Exhale the old right, I'm like fine if I could just reach
Right there. That's so close. I can see it the world of Amazon you know passive income, and I'm just like
Finally I can leave the 16-hour
days behind
Now listen up Empire nation
That was the worst
assumption of my life
Let me tell you I when you enter the world of Amazon
It is literally like walking in to the Amazon jungle
Right Guns and Roses it's gonna bring you to war
I
Mean in the early stages you're gonna have these amazing days, you know you're just high on life
Everything's exciting and then as you get into it you get into the grind
You're gonna have days where you just want to get your inventory
Throw it in a paper bag set it on fire and leave it on Jeff Bezos doorstep
Because it gets just like blood boiling frustrating it gets very
Yeah, it gets to the point where it's just rough right like this
I'll go into it in a bit, but there's a lot of stuff that can happen on Amazon work
It makes you want to pull your hair out. Okay, so the 16-hour days became 10-hour days
Good news, right, but the hours can be worse sometimes because you got I remember at least when you're living
Where I live like West?
West Canada down to California
You're staying up at like 3:00 4:00 a.m.
To talk to suppliers that are in China that are on the other side of the world
And you just have to stay up
You know where to get stuff done sometimes you gotta be up at the right time to talk to these people
And they're you know almost a day ahead of you
And the time zones just don't Mack job so that gets hard those hijackers
Okay, so these are
literal pirates like Jack Sparrow
Straight-up pirates like they can steal your income like let's think about this in like a physical
Storm, there's someone walks into your store
sets up their own cash register and sells your products to your customers and
Takes all your money
and there's nothing you can do about it right you have to go through this process and
of course and you can eventually get rid of them, but it's just
Sometimes there's days at a time where you just unnie can do and they're just stealing your income
For days right and then worst of all
Is that you're playing on it you're playing the Amazon jungle it's their book
It's their rules everything your business lives
Dies rides on their the Amazon team the Amazon algorithms that they have right so very limited control
on the platform
but yeah
Those are the things that really?
Makes that one tough right so it's definitely not the beautiful perfect world that a lot of these gurus online link to
Paints right where it's just like income and passive and you're working two hours a day, and you have Lamborghinis
And it's just like super cool easy fun lifestyle with Amazon. That's not the way it's gonna
That's not the way
It's gonna play out its bet at least not in a short amount of time right where you can be super passive with Nick
He could go he can leave he could go to Brazil. He could be good for a year
He'd be good for two years and then Brendon totally passively, but once you get to that point where you are an expert at it
There's no reason to stop building right because if you look at it in six months. I was able to get to
125,000 dollars in sales we have score students who are almost gonna surpass me
Like mo, he's almost gonna surpass my selling probably has surpassed my sales, and he's only been sitting it for three months
So would I do it again if I lost it all yes. I would do. I'll reluctantly do it again
I probably take a month off
But I would get back into it because it is fast but big but here big, but I would
I would do a lot of things differently I would change
almost everything I do and
Allocate that right now because I'm sure you're wondering so what would I change if I was to start everything from the beginning?
Number one and this was the biggest lesson of course why's number one?
Is that I would get the money first and then put all the eggs into the best?
Basket now what do I mean by that get the money first meaning?
Don't just ya know. I've gone into debt and have gone into loans here, so if you're against loans. That's fine just
Doesn't matter just disregard what I'm about to say, but I would get the money first
I wouldn't I started with twelve thousand dollars, which is a lot, and you can definitely be successful with twelve thousand dollars
Saved up, but I would eventually got a fifty thousand dollar loan if I was to start over again. I would've got that loan first
Now that would be hard because I wouldn't be able to get out of the business
would have taken out personally honestly just under my personal name get the loan get the money and
shooting as much money as I can at the very beginning because
The more money you start with the less problem you have down the line especially when you try to stretch it out so that goes
Lead into what else other thing I said for number one is put all your eggs into the best basket now
I know that's like kind of against what you usually hear. You know don't put your eggs into one basket
But for Amazon I definitely think that's the best way to go because what I did I started with $12,000
And I spread that out, so I started when I first word was $6,000
I did three thousand to one product three thousand to another product launch them so many things went wrong
I'll get to that too
But eventually when you spread out like that you get into cash flow issues right so you have less inventory of each product
And at the time I was looking for quantity of products not quality
Which was the dumbest thing you could possibly ever do not do that look for the best product
Don't just try to say. Oh, this one's pretty good. This one's pretty good. This one's pretty good
Let's get all of them and probably one of them will be good look for one where you know this is um percent good
Go run with it. Okay. Take it run like Forrest Gump and just keep on running keep on running
because
It's not like a box of chocolates. You know what you're gonna get when you do your research, right?
It's not some random like oh, I hope this product
That's good. If you make a grand-slam bundle the white Nick teaches you do your research?
Like diligently no shortcuts, and you come to market with something unique
100% unique
You will do well
It's just that simple and you will do well so put all your eggs into the best basket
Do not spread it out too soon
You're gonna spread yourself, then you're gonna run into cash flow problems then you're gonna take out more money anyways, which again
You should have done in the first place so point number two don't treat this like a hobby
dedicate more time so when I started I was in the mindset of
Side hustle okay, Amazon's gonna be my side gig and then I'm going to do catering full-time and
Make so much money doing both
Because you know Amazon's past right that's passive. That's what they tell you
That's not the case guys again. Don't it's not it's not it's not for a while okay
so I kind of treated it like a hobby and
That was a big mistake now that doesn't mean I didn't act fast like I said
When I found out about Amazon I had two products within the first month, so I was moving fast, but not
Like efficiently I would just like
Going with that broken-down car speeding down the highway
Eventually it's gonna break and crash and burn right which eventually which it did my first two products
bye, bye
so
I was coming to ours at night
Just I would didn't do my proper research like I just said with a grandson bundle everything. I was just kind of doing
Just a bare minimum of what I could do I would ask Nick
You know kind of rely on him to kind of show me the way, and then I was just okay
That's what you say. I'll just do it. I just blindly just go go go with very vague advice
I was just kind of going at it because you know people online make it seem so easy
I thought it was gonna be easy which
Don't assume that because it's not
So don't treat you like a hobby if you want to get into Amazon you can remember
This is a business like a straight-up real business, okay?
It's online its e-commerce, so there's kind of this disconnect of oh it's just kind of like you know it's there
It's kind of going in the background, but if you really want to succeed
This is a business where you want to make a brand you know put real marketing dollars into it
You know have real nice design nice branding and really kill it because that's the only way
To kill it is to really
try to kill it and don't think you can just buy a crappy product put a sticker logo on it put it on Amazon and
Then be freakin a millionaire cuz that's not gonna happen so if you want to get at Amazon treat it like
It's your business and the third and final tip for this video, which also the most costly one for me, so stick around is
get samples
always always
Always always always always get samples okay now. I stressed always because it's very important three times
I didn't get samples three times. I got screwed over. Simple as that 100% of
First time my first product didn't get samples, okay. I thought hey I can just pull I can just pull
Pictures off my competitors, I'm good at Photoshop
I can Photoshop it
He'll never know it was his put my logo on and change the background everything's Kikuchi
Not the case two weeks later product was actually selling pretty well two weeks later. Got a with a copyright infringement
Then I had to it was up to the guy who
Sent the copper, so there's up to my competitor to allow me to use images again
So since I'm a Canadian. I couldn't even shit order my own
I was gonna say ship by the way. I couldn't even order my own inventory to my house to
take new pictures of this because
we're kidding, so I sound calm because you don't know I only sell to
America right so I couldn't
Order my props myself, so I have to get supply your pictures now
And there was another disaster because this was the first time that supplier ever made this product
That they made similar products I came to them said hey can you make this thing?
You know I know you don't have it in your thing, but can you kind of can you make it? Yeah?
We can make that for you. We can do it cheaper than these guys so my cool
But since it was the first time making it. They didn't have any professional pictures done for it
I was the only client that ever ordered it and they just took the pictures off their phone
Send it to me and those are the pictures. I had okay long story short that product is gone
I no longer sell that second time. I didn't get samples this time. It's only even created
I couldn't even believe it's one myself
I was having they had pictures on their alibaba listing right so I thought they were gonna look exactly like that
I said put this logo on it so I photoshopped it again with their pictures
And I put my logo on at the time, so I by the way is my first two products. I know much better now I
So I ordered it
Assuming they were gonna look like the pictures on their Alibaba listing plus my logo
That didn't happen this part
got destroyed in reviews because everyone that got the product it didn't even match the my Amazon listing because
The product that they sent was not the same as the product that was on their, Alibaba listing
So it was a total mess luckily I didn't order too many units
That products not actually done when destroyed the third time I didn't get samples fool me three times right I?
It was kind of the similar thing I ordered a variation product
Okay
one red one blue
The red one had a different logo than the blue one had so I was selling two of the same product
But my logos were just different. It was like a my outdated logo, and then a new look
They're a totally different looking thing and that one wasn't as big of a deal. I still sell that product I
Eventually got that changed, but all of these things
Cost me a few thousand dollars could have prevented could have been prevented with a free sample to my house
Okay, a free sample now
Especially if you're Canadian if it's very important at the sample because you can't like I said order your own inventory
Unless you're selling on dot CA so
Those are my tips
After all of this how can you?
Be sure if you want to start an Amazon FBA business right I know I mean it just sound like
You're walking through Jurassic Park
And sometimes it does feel like that
but if here's the test now this whole video was a test if
You watch this whole video and you're thinking hey that doesn't seem that bad. I can probably handle that
then go get your seller account right now if you don't already and start selling because you probably can't handle it if
You are still interested. Just highly interesting Amazon after I told you all the worst parts of it
Go for it because you're gonna make some money. Okay now if you're sitting there thinking oh
Amazon's probably shit, it's probably horrible. I'm gonna go I'm gonna leave
I'm gonna look for another opportunity, then I don't know right. I can't say for sure obviously is not a real test
I can't I don't know what you can handle right and as I said earlier
The jungle is not for the faint of heart
But one thing I do know is that nothing in this world worth having comes easy and this
Was hard as fuck
But if I had to start all over again fuck