Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altiger Show. Today on The James Altiger Show. So I've been doing this experimental program. I have now 4 people that I've more or less randomly picked and my goal is to make them worth a $1,000,000 or at least see it possible within 6 to 12 months. And I'm using just the techniques in my book called Skip the Line, which just came out. So this session I'm releasing with James Pondell and we talk specifically about how he can use his Amazon skills to make more money than he's currently making with them. James, how are things going? Things are going well. The The James Altitude Show audience has been, at least from my vantage point, loving these these podcast episodes and loving this mentorship because I've gotten contact on every platform I'm on from someone saying that they like the show or they're learning a lot and that they wish us luck and that we keep going. And, people are recommending people I should interview or people that they can introduce me to, and, it's it's overwhelming, but it's really cool. And, yeah. No. It's a good community because I think people people read these books not because they wanna read my books, but it's because they want to change their lives. They realize, I think, that the system they grew up in that told them you can do this, but you can't do this. You can't get a job unless you have a college degree. You can't just write a book without an editor or an agent or whatever because you need, you know, you need the New York literary scene. And meanwhile, you have E. L. James, wrote fan fiction about Twilight, then self published a book called 50 Shades of Grey, and then after it sold 250,000 copies on Amazon as a self published book, only then Simon and Schuster said, oh, this is good enough for us. And, you know, so now there's a there's different routes to every goal. And it's not so much about getting the goal, it's about who you become in the process of getting the goal. So, like, for in so what I mean is, you know, you could write a book and it's published, and that was the goal. You wrote a book. But to self publish, you have to become the before you have the book, you have to become the sort of person who's willing to say, okay. I'm not gonna put the publishers and editors and agents or whatever on a pedestal. I'm not gonna wait for their permission to write a book, and you're able to write a book. And some by the way, not many people are willing to say that. Like, so many people I know who are good writers say, no. I'm I would never self publish. They think there's, like, this stigma to it, but the stigma is only in their minds. It's how they view the world. No one has ever asked me, by the way, James, who's your publisher? Like, whether I self publish or not publish, no one's ever asked me, is HarperCollins your publisher or did you self publish? No one's ever asked me that. And so, it's the stigma is in their own mind, and maybe there's other things they're afraid of. Like, they're afraid they'll fail without a a a real publisher or whatever. But, you know, ultimately, how you market your book and whether the book is good or not are the biggest determinants of how it sells. So And that's irrelevant of if you have a publisher or you don't. You still have to have the audience and the marketing ability and the story to tell people. Well, the last book I did, Skip the Line, was published traditionally by HarperCollins, and it was the first one I had traditionally published in a few years. I had self published the last 4 or 5. And the first thing everyone asked me when I walked into the room was, how big is your platform? How many followers do you have across all the platforms? And that's how they make the decision. Not completely. They still want to see a a good book, but, primarily, there's a lot of good writers who might be rejected because publishing is a business, and I respect that. And they need to know before they give you an advance that they're gonna make money on the book. So in order to write a book now, and in order to do the choose yourself way of writing a book or the skip the line way of writing a book, I can't just tell you you have to write the book and then publish it on Amazon. Along the way, again, you have to become the sort of person who is good with that and and independent and is willing to choose themselves and realize that could even be more valuable than the traditional route. Like, my best selling book ever was choose yourself, which was self published. And all my traditionally published books just don't seem to do as well, and I I never quite figured that out. I I just whether I get a big advance or a small advance, they just they just don't do as well as the my self published books. So for listeners that have an idea for a book, they have a story, and it takes them 18 months to write the book. If they go with a traditional publisher, won't it take another 18 months before it hits the shelf possibly? I mean, they could go and publish on Amazon tomorrow and then start working on their next book in that 18 months. It depends. I mean, with nonfiction, you usually write the book after the deal's done. With fiction, write the book first before you get the deal in most cases. So you don't even approach publishers with fiction until you write the book, which is a drag also. You have to write an entire book before you find out if it's good or bad. Much better to just write the book and publish it, kinda like E. L. James did. True. Yeah. The most successful author probably ever, really, in terms of, like, the speed of which she sold her first 100,000,000 copies. Let me see. How many copies did E. L. James sell? Okay. So Fifty Shades of Grey was the best selling book of the decade from 2010 to 2019. It sold 15,200,000 copies, and the series has sold 35,000,000. And then, of course, she sold, you know, a bunch of movies. So suffice to say, she made a lot of money. And it's interesting. I'm looking at a list of the top selling books of all between 2010 and 2019. Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed are numbers 1 through 3. The Hunger Games is number 4. And number 5 is The Help, which is interesting because The Help was sort of a literary book, and usually literary books aren't up there, but the movie certainly helped it. And then the rest are all genre books. So Gone Girl was like a thriller. The Fault in Our Stars was a children, you know, a young adult book. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a thriller, and Divergent's like science fiction. Young adult paranormal is the or young adult science fiction is is the genre. Well, I liked the that series, so I guess I'm a young adult, Well, young adult young adult is pretty sophisticated. Those that genre is there's books about suicide and a lot of food issues and science fiction. Myself a young adult for the the rest of my life because once you start calling yourself an old adult, then it's all downhill. It's true. I I think that's true. I think once you think you are old, it's like you become older. That's just my my private theory. But I was starting to get some self talk a year ago where I was starting to say that I was old for some reason, and I'm like and I had to I I I noticed it after a few weeks and said, I cannot say that anymore, and I just started saying instead, like, I'm not old. I'm young. Like, I'm still learning. I'm still growing, like, about all this other stuff I'm gonna do. But I think we just that's I mean, you you know, you just start saying that, and you don't know why. It's it's not good. Yeah. No. It becomes an excuse for like, for instance, my memory is worse now than when I was in my twenties or when I was in my teens. And I can attribute that to oldness, or I can try to make my memory better, or I can find workarounds. And so I I've been trying all 3, because memory just sort of slides every decade. Not and it doesn't have to. I think it's just that we're not used to constantly training our memory. And then when you're a teenager, yes, the brain maybe is set up to do memorizing better, but that's unclear because there's new discoveries in neuroplasticity that you could grow more strong memories even as an adult and and change your habits and so on. But I think with kids, they just memorize for high school for tests, so they just get good at memory all the time. They're they're memorizing every day. We don't really have to memorize anything because we got Google. Like, when's the last time you took a test? I never take a test. So there are certain games that require memory. Like, scrabble, you have to memorize words and things like that, but, most of the time, you don't really have to remember anything. Talking about the chess community, that becomes a potentially, it could be self talk, but a lot of the, grandmasters start to say, oh, my memory just doesn't work like it used to, and then they start repeating that. And then maybe they're not spending as much time on opening theory as they did 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So that's the real problem. And then it's interesting you bring up chess because, yes, when I was a kid, I would memorize huge numbers of variations on every opening. But now it's really important for me to go around any issues with memory I might have. It's it's super important for me to find out the ideas behind every opening. So for instance, the king's Indian has a certain type of pawn structure. The French defense has a certain type of pawn structure. So I instead of trying to memorize all the variations, I try to now learn what okay. In the French defense, do do you do you break with c 5? When do you break with f 6? What are white's typical plans? What are black's typical plans? And I've learned so much more about the openings that way in terms of, like, knowledge about them than I did as a kid. It's just ridiculous. Like, I never in the king's Indian, I never even thought about, hey. Maybe black has a queen side attack. But now in the pawn structure where sometimes you do c 6 and then take the pawn on d 5, then you double up on the c file, and I've watched a bunch of games now with this. Like, I'm starting to without memorizing the exact games or variations, I'm able to say, okay. This is an opportunity now to switch from the king side to the queen side. This is this is the idea that you're on the file. You can put a rook there and yeah. Yeah. So now I'm just I'm I'm more and memorizing ideas is is easier than memorizing every single move and every single variation. So now I used to be good at the memorizing. Now I'm better at and I learn more. I think I have a deeper understanding by memorizing the ideas anyway. So I I made it my weakness a new strength for me. But, anyway, how was, so what's gone on since our last meeting? So we're this today, I wanted to talk about how you could potentially monetize more your skills with being an Amazon ninja, and we'll talk about that in a second. But any progress on the other lane that we're looking at and and it's always like you have these wheels, and we look at for you know, one is, like, let's say, Christian thought, and the other is your Amazon seller experience. And then we want all the spokes to monetize it. Yeah. And I think it it made a lot of sense what you said last week about this the Christian thought spoke, which is the YouTube channel, the blog, the podcast, the books, that's like a long term game. It's it's gonna work and it's gonna build an audience and we're gonna be able to monetize it, but it's gonna take a lot longer than potentially some of these Amazon spokes that I mean, it's basically with the Amazon spokes, everything we could do there could help people make more money with their business. So it's easy for a business to say, I'm gonna invest $1,000 or $5,000 on a course because I'll immediately go and make a 100,000 with it. Right. Because here's the thing. I I agree with you. So I think the stuff we spoke about last week and the week before, will you know, that was all about building the skills and the knowledge to make money, both ultimately with spiritual thought or Christian thought type products. But that's the sort of thing that you're right. It's gonna take 4 or 5 years. 1 year to sort of break into building a social media following and and maybe start writing articles somewhere. And then it just takes time to build up a brand and to to figure out how to say something unique in the space. But it'll work. You'll do it. But you need now we need, you know, multiple sources. Like, again, I hate to say the word multiple source of income. It's like, oh, you need multiple there's all these, like, commercials. But the IRS itself says the average multimillionaire has 7 different sources of income. So now you know, okay, you could start incrementally moving forward on one lane. But now I agree. The Amazon seller stuff, you mentioned in the first time that you don't necessarily enjoy it as much as the other things, and I get that. But, you need multiple lanes, though, and you enjoy it enough that you do it for a living. So that that and you're good at it. People hire you to set up their Amazon seller stores, and now we just need you can't scale yourself. So we now just need to figure out how to build something scalable given your knowledge and, and see what works. And I'll give you an example. Jay and I tried to set up an Amazon seller store of some of my stuff once, and we literally like, we're 2 smart guys. We literally could not figure it out. This was about 2 years ago, and it was so frustrating that we just couldn't figure it out. So we would have loved a course or a a service agency or just a description even or a podcast, whatever. So or all of the above. Well, now you guys know me. So Exactly. So so but let's talk about it. So, first off, let me just get an understand well, let let me back up a second. First off, on a daily basis, I have to always ask, are you, you know, coming up with that exercising your creativity? Are you writing the 10 ideas a day? Stuff like that. Yeah. Absolutely. And I am on my blog now sort of trying to write the in this sort of spiritual disciplines for entrepreneurs niche, and Monday published an article called the 4 spiritual disciplines that will help you and your business grow. And see that. And in it, I I quoted from the transcript from our call, with with Dave Kurpin. I put his, his practice, his gratitude practice inside the article. Yes. You know what? It's interesting. I just got a, so Dave Kirpan was one of the people we interviewed live on the podcast. It was a surprise to him and to you and to me that we that we did that. I'm just trying to find oh, 4 spiritual disciplines for your business. Is this you? Yes. Okay. So and the other thing is I just got another testimonial the other day from from someone who was using kind of the daily gratitude practice, and he said it changed his life after, like, just a few weeks or a few months. So, that's that's something that's very important. And, again, everybody I think we spoke about this. Everyone has, like, a baseline of happiness, and it's hard to move a baseline. So let's say you make a lot of money in the lottery. You'll be happy for, a few weeks more. You you'll be extra happy for a few weeks, but then it always goes back to the baseline. And one of the only ways that research has shown to improve that baseline is have a gratitude practice every day. And what's great about having a a gratitude practice, let's say in the morning or at evening or in the evening at the dinner table, you are gonna have to say or write down what you're grateful for that day, well, our brain is lazy. It wants to make things as easy as possible. So guess what it's gonna do? All day long, it's gonna be looking for things for you to say you're grateful for later or to write down. So all of a sudden, like It's the it's the avanta effect. Exactly. So the flower sitting here or, you know, the time I got to spend outside in the sunshine, like, now I'm, like, thinking about these things. And so it's like, I sit down and what am I grateful for? Like, well, which thing do I pick? Because I have 10 things now because I've been thinking about it all day long. So you you take the most basic things in your life, like listening to a good song or just taking a walk outside or having a chance to sit on the couch and drink a cup of coffee without an interruption. And, like, those become the things you're grateful for and but, also, they just become the things you look forward to in the day and, like, pause from the rest of the from of your life. So, yeah, it it's really helped me a daily practice of gratitude. I would say it's probably the foundational piece of my spiritual life is just being grateful for all of just the small things in my life. That's really great. I like this I didn't see this before. I like this 52 books. You 52 books you must read to lead in business and at home, and then and that's how you get people to go on to your email list. That's that's a good idea. And skip the lines in there. So Oh, good. Thank you. And, okay. So let's talk about how did you get involved in the Amazon seller store? What is what you do related to the Amazon seller store? Basically, brands generally in the health and wellness space hire me to completely manage their Amazon business. So they don't have to even think about it. I handle everything on Amazon, including creating their listings, launching their new products, managing customer service, making sure they don't run out of stock, doing the advertising, setting up the pictures and writing the copy, and, responding to Amazon health concerns, the full gamut. And so that way, these folks, just like you and Jay, like, you're busy doing other things. Like, you just wanna be able to reach the customers that are on Amazon, and you don't necessarily wanna learn how to do everything. And that's a good point. I wanna do nothing. Right? There's no reason that that needs to be a so if someone is beautiful at designing t shirts, for instance, like, they they really know how to design the best t shirts, why should they learn all the technicalities of setting up an Amazon seller store? Well, it's gonna take them away from creating t shirts, or at least learning how to do it, which I've spent years doing it. And I've I've spent a lot of money on advertising learning what works and what doesn't work, and I've spent a lot of time writing copy and creating images and to find out what works and what doesn't work. But when someone hires me, they just are basically outsourcing that entire account, and so then they can just create their products and focus on their main business. The problem is is I can only work on so many accounts myself. I just can't physically help everyone that wants my help. I have to pick and choose which people I'm able to help. And it's really important to keep repeating. You can't scale yourself. I cannot. That said that said, I always tell people a service business is a great way to start before you automate something because then you learn very specifically. If you can do this, if your idea is such that you can do it manually for a while, then you know specifically what the customers want. You they might surprise you, and you learn different nuances of what they want. Like, you may maybe you're setting up the seller store, but you didn't realize they all also want email lists and and best practices for how they can keep communicating with their customers. So then you have to learn the skill of building an email list. If you had automated everything first, you wouldn't have had a component for email lists. And but, you know, learning by doing it manually is is very good. But, ultimately, you have to transition. Every great business goes from manual to, you know, automating as much as possible so they could, a, have a higher valuation when they get sold, b, get sold. Because if you have a service business, they say all your assets walk out the door at the end of the day because the people are doing the services. That's your only asset, really. And, you just you just get a higher valuation if you if you with software because it's scalable and it it's every one instance of the software is free. So it's you get huge gross margins. Well and and and there's potentially a more affordability factor for the businesses because now that you're not you're not limited by the time, you can create a a solution that everyone can access, and it costs less time for you. Right. Like, a great example is making a website. So I used to make websites for a living in the nineties when nobody knew how to make a website. So there was scarcity, and I was able to charge a lot. I could charge, like, $75,000 for a 3 page website to a Fortune 500 company. They wouldn't think twice about spending it. But then there were things like WordPress, so now basic websites can be made for free. Or if you have something slightly more complicated, there are many sites like freelancer.com, 5, or whatever, where I could make a decent website for certainly less than 5,000, maybe less than 10,000 if it's a little more advanced. 20,000, maybe a little bit more. But in general, nobody could charge $75,000 for a 3 page website that could be done for free now on WordPress. But okay. So so how did you get into it, at all? Like, how did you you realize and and by the way, what you realize that people need help sending up these stores is particularly important now because everyone got laid off last year. 55,000,000 people filed for unemployment. And what are they doing? They're trying to figure out, oh, I'll make shirts or I'll make some kind of nutraceuticals or I'll I'll sell surgical masks. And they're setting it up on Amazon stores, and they're a lot more there's a lot bigger audience now setting these up and being and very confused. Yeah. It's not easy, and I run across things, even doing this for years now, that surprised me when Amazon changes something in their infrastructure that I have to go and and and spend either hours on the phone with them or research how to to get around. But it started because I helped a friend create a product, and we wanted to sell it on Amazon. And we didn't know how. And we didn't have any products on Amazon. So I was like, well, you know what? I'll just figure it out and do it. And it was a success. They've they've sold 1,000,000 now on Amazon, and it's a huge portion of their, their their revenue for the company, the Amazon business. And so then they just started referring their friends to me in the business, and I started helping them do the same exact thing. So what's a what's a store? Can you tell us a store that you set up? Yeah. The the first store that I set up was, for Ben Greenfield, and the store is Kion, k I o n. Yeah. Wow. I didn't even know he had a store. Here's Keyon Products. These look nice, actually. And he's that he Ben Greenfield is super smart about everything health related. That guy, first off, he's incredibly healthy. 2nd off, I mean, when I he he came on the podcast. I would encourage people to listen to it. I have the book at Balmus, actually. I'm looking at it right now. It's right in front of me just by coincidence. Upgrade your brain, optimize your body, and defy aging. I would encourage people to relisten to my podcast with him because I was asking so many questions, and he knows every detail of the body. But let's see. So so, actually, the the first product I launched was on Kickstarter, and it was Ben's Christian gratitude journal. And that's what got me into the gratitude practice that I do now every day. And then I was the project manager for his Boundless book and helped launch that book. So through those relationships, it was a natural fit to go and sell these dietary supplements on Amazon, and the products are really great. So And this this looks good, and he's he's doing well. The the business is doing well. Like, the I see he sponsored some products too, so that's that probably helps. Yeah. They're doing well on Amazon, and, the reviews are great, and the yeah. I mean, everything's great there. So so okay. So altogether now, how many stores have you helped set up? Dozens. And and then what what's, so so, like, you started doing this more and more as it increased. Like, every month, you have more customers, or what's what's the status of your, and is it just you, or do you have other people that help you? I it's me and one assistant, and we, I mean, some folks have come and gone, because one thing with with us talking about the course, I was thinking about who would even be eligible to sell on Amazon in the 1st place because I I think some people discover that maybe their products aren't a great fit for Amazon after they're on there for a while, because it's it's it's expensive to reach the customers on Amazon. There's a there's so many products. It can be it can be cost prohibitive to stand out unless your product is extremely unique and and new. So so so what are best practices for standing out? Well, have a unique and new product would be one thing, because if you're if you're if you're going on Amazon and you want to sell salt, you're gonna have a really hard time standing out because there's 100 and 100 and 100 of people that are doing it, and they've been doing it for a decade. And so to to create noise in that space is gonna be extremely difficult. You're gonna have to have a strong brand presence somewhere else and have your story being told somewhere else because the numbers don't lie. People don't go on Amazon to shop. People go on Amazon to buy. So they're not going on there to look for maybe finding a new company to try. They're going on to Amazon to buy the company that they already know and that they want. So to stand out in that, it it can be it can be expensive and difficult. That yeah. So, like, let's say you could use, ads to stand out. So you just you sponsor yourself, and you're everywhere. People go. People will see you. How how much an ad does Amazon ads work for Amazon sellers? 100%. It's an it's really a necessity to sell on Amazon for you to be running Amazon ads. And and how much do you need, say, to sell a new brand of salt? Depends on how much salt you wanna sell. It it you're gonna be looking, potentially, for a very competitive space like that. You're gonna need to for every dollar you wanna make, you're gonna have to spend least a dollar on advertising. And so, if I stand out as a brand like, let's say I'm gonna sell, and this goes to your Christian thought thing. Let's say I'm gonna sell biblical salt. So all the salt, we've we've carefully processed from the Dead Sea. Yeah. That sounds really great. It'd be hard to tell that story on Amazon. You would have to go tell that story on podcast and go tell that story on ads on other platforms where people are more scrolling and they're looking for engaging content, and you would say, oh, this salt, we discovered it in the, bottom of the Dead Sea, and it has these curative powers. And, it's possible that, the disciples, actually used this salt, you know, in the Last Supper. And, I mean, all this would have to be true. Right? Yeah. But Yeah. And then you could tell that story other places, and then they're gonna come on Amazon and search for your for James Altucher's Dead Sea Salt. And then that is inexpensive advertising on Amazon. That you can buy very in very cheap because when people search for it, they're looking for you, they're gonna buy you, and Amazon starts to reward that with better organic rankings and everything else that you're doing because they love when people are coming on to Amazon and searching for a product. They reward that because they you're sending them customers. Yeah. So it's it's it's so interesting. So, okay. So, like, if you were let's just think about this now. What are what are the difference? So so Amazon sellers is a setting up Amazon sellers is a skill you have, and it's not just the technical skills. It's also best practices for running the store, whether it's marketing or using how to use other platforms or customer service. There's all sorts of stuff that goes into it. How how to make the products, I assume drop shipping must be a little part of this. Yeah. And I and I spend a lot of my time actually educating on the holistic marketing strategy for the brand altogether because, like I said, it's very competitive on Amazon. So how do you stand out? Well, I can share what I've seen work on email marketing or what I've seen work on Facebook ads. And Yeah. What what are what are some best practices? Like, what are some things you know that that I might not know or a listener might not know? Well, for email marketing, for example so let's say you have a Shopify store and you're selling salt. Let's just stick with salt. And you're getting people on your email list. They're they're they're considering buying, and for some reason, they just never bought from your site. They just for whatever reason. Anyone who has an ecom store knows that there's a very high percentage of people that are are just they they they never purchased. They're on your email list. So what I would do in that scenario is I would advise, well, okay. You've got 4,000 people that are on your list that have never bought. You've sent them coupons. You've sent them videos. You've taken them through your entire flow, and they never purchased. Well, let's give them one more chance before you remove them from the mailing list, and let's give them a special coupon that works only on Amazon. And they click this link. It takes them to Amazon, and they buy. And it works. Like, it it really works because sometimes people aren't buying from your store not because they don't like yourself, but because they don't wanna register on a the 1,000th ecom store. Like, they already are Amazon Prime members, so they just buy on Amazon now that you gave them a coupon. So it's really easy copy. You just say, hey. Did you know that we're on Amazon now? And with Amazon Prime, you can get our products in 2 days anywhere in the United States? Click this link, and we're gonna hook you up with 25% off. Yeah. And I think a lot of people don't realize this, but if you set up a a store on your own website and you also set up the same store on Amazon, people are 70% more likely to buy from your store on Amazon than the store on your site because people just love shopping on Amazon. They feel safe with that. So forget about the outside stuff like marketing for a second. What would you say are the micro skills for actually setting up a seller store if I wanted to do it myself? Copywriting. Mhmm. Managing the ad platform. Because you have to advertise. You have to advertise. Mhmm. They actually like, the creative elements, the creating, the the images that are in the carousel that that the the main product image and then different lifestyle images and then infographics to explain what your product does. Yeah. And by the way, these images for Kian are, like, great. It looks beautiful. Yeah. They did a they did a really, really great job. They just went through, a a new branding, and it's it's beautiful. You can see in there the old packaging versus the new packaging. They basically, now, if you look in your supplement cabinet and there's 50 supplements in there like a lot of people have, they're gonna stand out. Yeah. So so okay. What are some other micro skills? So you've gotta know the customer service element. Amazon is extremely demanding with customer response time. If you don't respond to a customer that contacts you within 24 hours, you're gonna get red flagged for that. So you've got us Oh, really? Not only stay on top of it, but you also have to have great customer service because, Amazon, it it puts customer service above everything else over anything that they do. So, that's extremely important micro skill, having good customer service. And then, this is a this is a silly, micro skill potentially, but patience is extremely important because, there's a lot of there's a lot of moving pieces with Amazon, and sometimes it can be complicated to actually get what you want done on the platform completed. So you'll have to maybe contact Amazon seller support 10 times sometimes to get to the right person that can solve your problem, and so that just requires persistence and and patience. And, you know, another thing is just, the awareness of knowing what products are a good match and not a good match. And I think for that, it's knowing your numbers and the the accounting side of your business to know what your cost of goods sold are and and what, how much potentially, you can afford to sell on Amazon. Because some of the brands that I've worked with over the last couple years, when we started, they were they weren't doing very much in Amazon, maybe 15 or $20,000 a month in sales. And then after a year of working with me, they're doing, you know, 1 and a quarter now a month. And you start to realize, okay. Wow. This is more you know, where's all the cash? There should be a lot of cash here. And there's not as much as they would maybe expect even though they 6 x their sales. So knowing before you get on there, knowing your numbers and knowing exactly what it's gonna cost you to sell on Amazon is extremely important. Yeah. It's interesting. And then, so okay. So there's various microskills. And, by the way, each one of those could be a course. But let's say you're let's say you're making a course about just the technical setup of how do you set up an Amazon seller store, because then there's other courses. How do you do marketing for an Amazon seller store? I think that should be like a separate course. And in general, each microscale is like another chapter. So, like, how do you write cop how how do you technically actually sign up and and load up products and set up an Amazon seller store? How do you then write the copy? How do you make the photos? How do you get noticed? And that could lead into another course, which is the Amazon seller marketing course. Like, you know, I was talking, I think, a few weeks ago about one of the pockets I did was with with this guy, Brandon Lemmon, who made a couple courses on sales. He could've made one big course on sales. Like, that's the way I think. I'll I'll make the master course on sales, but he really divided up niche by niche. He's like he made one course on how to do cold calling in sales, how to, you know, I I forget some of the other ones. We made, like, 3 or 4 courses all about each one was, like, kind of a micro skill of sales as opposed to doing one master course in sales, and he made a good amount of income from them. But I would start thinking, a, what are at least 2 courses you can make? You wanna make 2 courses. And, b, what are 10 or 20 sections of each course? I try to make 20 sections for each course. I went in on our, our Google Doc, and I outlined a a course on there. Okay. Let me see. Hold on. I'm gonna go to it right now. And, partially, this could be the secret sauce, but I'm gonna share it with anyone that might be listening. Oh, yeah. By the way, which is important to do, we always wanna share everything because you're the Amazon ninja. Like, you could do it, and you'll do it fast. Yeah. Imagine what the course will have if I'm sharing all this for free. Yeah. Exactly. But the I really think it's important to to go back to what I was saying earlier about knowing your numbers is that there's an intake quiz. Is your brand ready to sell on Amazon? Because maybe it's not. By the way, this could be this intake quiz, this could be a marketing effort. Like, one hundred percent. This quiz before they buy the course because you wanna know they're ready. I don't want them to buy the course unless they took this quiz because I don't want them to be the wrong person and then be disappointed. I wanna Yeah. Take a brand who's gonna be extremely successful on Amazon and then help them make that happen. And since I'm I can't help very many more brands myself, like, this is my way to go and actually help thousands of brands out there achieve the success that the people that work with me have. And, I, like, I these are kind of the the questions here on the intake quiz would tell you if you're ready or not. And then my thought was, okay. So that quiz determines you're not ready, but why not? And then what can you do to get ready? And then that would be where I just give them a a free ebook on, like, how they could maybe restructure their business or maybe why it's not Oh, yeah. Fit right now and then what they what steps they could take. And then if they are eligible, then great. Buy the course and and and, you know, grow your business. And, for launch your products, what so this is this is basically, a course right now for people who have products. Maybe they have an offline store. Maybe they have an ecommerce store on their website or on Etsy or someplace else, and and and then you're gonna help them put this additional spoke in into their wheel, which is set up a a store on Amazon. What about, if they if they wanna learn drop shipping? Could that be another course, or is that something that you would help people with? Yeah. I that's not really my specialty. I I think there's lots of other courses. That's how I learned, actually, was through a course that was primarily, drop shipping based. Mhmm. And I've sorta niched down as supporting brands. So so, basically, because then, oftentimes, they have a unique story. They have selling, unique selling propositions. They've got a unique product that's different. I found that working with companies that are unique and have a brand, they they have a lot more success on Amazon than a brand that is just like another water bottle company that you just, you know, you you make it in Alibaba, ship it in the US, and put it on Amazon. Like, yes. There's a lot of people making 1,000,000 of dollars like that, and there's nothing wrong with that business. But to stand out as a brand that's not already on Amazon, like, branding's gonna help you a lot more. I see this outline. Looks great. Let me ask the question, which is a chapter in the book. Who are you? Why are you? Why now? Now who are you? We know you've done dozens of stores, so that's fine. And you've kinda mentioned this already, but why are you passionate that people should have stores on Amazon? Well, I think that you have to be on Amazon if you want to compete and get your product into the hands of all the buyers. Like, that's where people are shopping now. They're not shopping at, the brick and mortar store. And I came from retail. I love brick and mortar stores. I love that one on one interaction that you can only get in a store. But the it's been shown, and we keep seeing this every quarter at Amazon, that more and more and more people are joining Prime and more and more people are buying on Amazon. So if you want your products to be bought, you have to be on Amazon. If you aren't, you're missing out a 100 of millions of customers. You're basically saying to those customers, like, oh, we don't wanna sell to you where you like to buy. I mean, that's a huge mistake. It's a gigantic mistake. Yeah. So I I agree with that, and and I think the data agrees with that. Like, there's there's I think I think also quoting from research on that would would be helpful. And then the other thing is, why now? Well, look at the environment that we're in in this last year, for example. People are going into stores even less than ever before, and they want to buy on Amazon where it can just be delivered to their door. So if you've got a product that's unique and special and you believe in it, then your customers are probably already searching for it on Amazon. And a lot of times, when a when a brand is considering going on Amazon and they contact me and they say, hey. Could you help us? I look on Amazon and I can look at some of the the the search numbers. People are already looking for their brand on Amazon, and I just take a screenshot and say, guys, they're looking for you and you're not there. But guess who is there? Your competitor. And so they're buying from your competitor instead of you. So you it's, it's I mean, that they're gonna buy from someone. They're going on there to buy. And if they're looking on Amazon, they're probably not coming back to your your store to buy. Even if it's and I've even done tests. I've raised the price of some of the products $5 above what the brand's primary store is at, and people still wanna buy it on Amazon. They prefer to buy it on Amazon in in a lot of cases. It's not it's not gonna dissuade them. What, what platforms are you thinking of building an online course on? I don't know. My wife is doing a graphic design course on Udemy, and it's Udemy is good. It's been really easy for her to use, and and she really likes it. Is she making money with it? Well, she's doing graph she's doing all the graphics for me now. So you that that really great image from Dave Kerpin on my blog you saw, she she designed that. Oh, it's great. And, Yeah. There's Udemy. There's Skillshare. There's Teachable. There's all these places that are that are good. And, how would you market the course? Well, once the first thing that came to mind is, I like to look on Upwork to see what people are looking for. Mhmm. And people are always looking for help on Amazon, on Upwork. 100 and 100 of people are posting on there looking for help with their pay per click campaigns or designing their brand stores or launching or helping them to get, unsuspended or whatever. All those people probably have employees in house that could take a course and then not need anyone else's help again. They could handle everything in house. That's a great point. And so so let me ask you this. How often is there new information? So every week, is there a new like, first off, do the rules change? Does the technology change? Are there do the best practices change? Do you find often that, oh, here's another way to do an Amazon ad that I didn't think of before. Here's another way to advertise that I didn't think of before. You know, how often do things change? Things change, but I think, like, the principles of the store don't really change very much. Some of the, like, really, tactics change, but a lot of times, brands that are on Amazon aren't doing some of the more, some of those tactics anyway. They don't need to a lot of times. So sometimes the rules and regulations change. Like, right now, the dietary supplement space, this is this has been making news on, all the natural industry, websites. But Amazon is changing, their regulation policy for dietary supplements and requiring new documents. And, at one point, they were requiring letter of guarantees and images of the product. And, basically, if you're selling dietary supplements on Amazon, it is going to be much more regulated, and you're gonna be able to have to provide a lot more information to Amazon to show that you're copacetic, that what you're selling is what you're selling. And it all kinda started because of a brand, that bought a bunch of their competitors co q ten supplement on Amazon, and this is a big, big brand. So they did lab analysis on these competitors that are big time sellers, and some of them didn't even have any co q ten in their co q ten supplement. What? Is that illegal? I don't know. It probably is because you're making claims that it has it, and it doesn't have it. So, basically, now you're gonna have to actually give a COA, which is it's an analysis of your product that you're selling on Amazon. And some of these guidelines, the concern is that Amazon reacted to this, and it went very, very strong on what they were gonna do. And at the time, didn't necessarily talk to a lot of the, the Council For Good Nutrition and some of the other, natural industry folks on how to actually go about making sure that what people say they have is actually what they say they have. So some of these guidelines are actually more strict than, like, the FDA is requiring for companies right now. So so the reason I asked, is there ongoing things, and it sounds like there are, and then there's also things you could research and and and have ongoing, is that if you sell this course, once people enter the course, they're you know several things. They're interested in you teaching them how to do an Amazon seller store. They are probably interested in making a lot of money with an Amazon seller store, and they paid money to learn about it. So I would start on the course itself. I would say, hey. If you every single module of the course, I would say at the end, hey. If you want to also see my ongoing weekly newsletter about all the new things happening on the Amazon seller store, and you need to because you need to keep up with this stuff so your products sell the best, I would upsell a a newsletter from this. You know, maybe it's $10 a month or something. And Yeah. And and then they get a a weekly newsletter, or you can make it free. But I I would, I would downsell to the people who don't buy the course, I would downsell a free newsletter that's just about, in general, the basics, like like, you know, to make them more qualified to be an Amazon seller. Like you said, you know, you're gonna put together a free book, but I would have a free newsletter and then a for pay newsletter that people who sign up for the course are also sold the the for pay newsletter. And then later on, you'll make maybe a higher end course, about, you know, how to maximize your store on 20 different platforms and and so on. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually thought of another idea for the course would be offered to the folks that are part of it office hours, where weekly, I would have a time set aside. They can come in and ask a question and then record those questions and just put I mean, that could be the newsletter. It's just the questions Absolutely. That people are asking. I love that. So so I think now the next step is, let's say in in 2 weeks, I think you should write out your story. Now you may wanna videotape every module as well. I I think there should be text. I think there should be videos. I think there should be quizzes. You know, make it really comprehensive. There should be links to resources, and I think you should have the course first draft of the course done in, like, the next 2 weeks. And and start thinking about the newsletter. You can set up the newsletter on something like Substack. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It you know, when I was making that list of the the modules of the course, I've been procrastinating on putting that together, and it it didn't really take that long because this is I thought it would take longer than it did, but this is what I do. This is what I do every day. Like Yeah. You have don't forget to include so so writing is writing. Like, whether it's a course or a novel or a a Malcolm Gladwell book or whatever. And writing involves a story, involves a problem. And in this case, the buyer of the course is the hero, and he has the hero has to go on the hero's journey. There's a problem. It's you know? So the the the way you create a reluctant hero is, unfortunately, it's not easy to get set up in the Amazon with an Amazon seller store. So that's the problem, and they're gonna go on a journey where they have more and more problems. You know, you know, once you're set up, how do you market? How do you do customer service? How do you ship them everything? What are best practices from Amazon's side? What are best practices in terms of validating your products and using your analytics? And and on and on. And so and each section, there's problems and the kind of the arc of the hero in each section. So I would just go forward now and make all the modules. And then you don't have to video them yet because you wanna do that in a production studio, high quality, or or not. It doesn't matter. But, I would start actually doing the course because while you're doing the course, you might think of more ideas for sections and more ideas for other courses you'll be able to teach. Yeah. And then, and then there's there's different ways. Like, you know, I I it's really important to think of additional courses to teach. So for instance, there's, you know, my section in skip the line called idea exponentials, which is, can you take this course and scale it? So the way you would scale this course, vertically is to make a course on how to make a course. So because once you go through the process of making a course, you're gonna be and if it and if it sells well, you wanted to make sure it sells well, then you're qualified to make a course on courses. Or another thing is, are there specific brands that do better, like, you know, special add on course, how to make an Amazon seller course if you're in the, found the fashion industry or if you're in the electronics industry. So there might be separate upsell courses for that that might even be a little bit more expensive. Yeah. Because there's a lot of like, my specialty is is nutritional supplements and and healthy foods. And so there is a lot of particularities of that area because of all the, federal regulations that just aren't on there if you just wanna sell coffee mugs. So Yeah. Like, the coffee mug guy doesn't need to know about all these FDA regulations and analysis forms that you have to submit. But someone in nutritional supplements, 100% needs to know all this, or, they they might be in bigger trouble than not even selling at all if they're not careful. Okay. So, make the course or at least a rough draft. Like, you know, text you know, write all the text out. And you know what? I'll bring on someone who's an expert in creating online courses. I'll bring on one of the the founders of of one of these companies or someone else who's who's an expert, and then start thinking of what ancillary products go along with this. Like, is you know, the newsletter, what would be in that? Or, But what if we you know, if we're gonna do the video or if I I keep saying we, but I maybe I should say I. I don't know. Yeah. But we. So if I you really would wanna be launching a product on Amazon in the video along like, what if we make a product that we go and sell now? Again, the course is showing us launching that product. I mean, I just read yesterday that dietary deficiencies in teenage women is becoming an epidemic for future generations' health. And my immediate thought was, wow. Are there any brands that are creating nutritional supplements targeting towards these girls who are in need of of of of vitamin b 12 and vitamin d and these other supplements. Right. So all of all of that's interesting. Like, all that these topics could be on the podcast, could be in a newsletter. I think sometimes you could have, like, Zoom conferences or or, like, special webinars on how to make an Amazon store, and that could be kind of a a a kind of a sales funnel for the newsletter even outside the online course. And, also, potentially, you know, as you're doing this, you're gonna learn more about the nuances of setting up Amazon stores. Maybe you'll have an idea for products that you could sell in your own store. So, I think let's let's start with that and, you know, make your online course on on being an Amazon ninja. You too could be an Amazon ninja, and and let's see the first draft in the next 2 weeks. Okay. I personally will take the course because I wanna set up an Amazon seller store. Or maybe I can help you with with your store. Yeah. Exactly. But I wanna learn I wanna learn. I like to learn. So alright. Let's, let's be in 2 weeks and, see what we've got then. But if you wanna email me stuff along the way or you know what? I would also try do a q and a on Twitter or on your Facebook page or on a in a Facebook group. Do a q and a right now even on what do people wanna know about setting up an Amazon seller store or about Amazon seller stores in general, and you'll answer every question. This way, you could know the type of questions people will wanna see in an online course. I don't really have a lot of people on Twitter. I'd love to answer the questions, but I did if I was to post something, you know, only a few people would see it. That's okay. Let's see. Let's see something if we can if we can do this a different way. On Quora, I searched Amazon seller. So Quora is this great q and a website, and there's all these questions. How can I improve my Amazon seller feedback? What are the Amazon seller analytics tools? How can Amazon sellers win a buy box? I don't know what that means. What are the difficulties faced by sellers on Amazon? What kind of challenges do sellers face at Amazon? How can a new Amazon seller get some quick reviews to start? How can I buy a premade Amazon seller account? I would go on Quora and start answering these questions and start building a following on Quora about the Amazon seller stuff. And, plus, by seeing what questions people have, again, it's almost like all you're writing out is is gonna end up in the online course. I would answer, like, you know, 10 of these questions to start off with and see you know, it gives you an idea of what people are curious about. Okay. Yeah. I can do that. I I know the answer to all those questions. So Yeah. I'm sure. I mean, and it goes on and on. There's hundreds of questions here. Can I have more than one Amazon seller account? Are people answering them? Yeah. Some answers might be good. Some answers might be bad. And you can even maybe even quote some answers in the course. Like, if someone's from Amazon answering these things, which is very possible, you could quote them. How can I how do I use Amazon Seller Central? So I did have a question, and this was just a a crazy thought. Isn't it possible that maybe Amazon would want to have someone help them with the onboarding process for their sellers because they benefit from people coming on there. I have the expertise and the passion. I could Yes. Yeah. The answer is yes, but the answer is you can't even think about that right now because you can't go to them, then you're at you're waiting for them to choose you to do this. Good point. Exactly. Make money doing this, and then you have power. So money and information are power. So you'll get more information as you do this because if you have high demand, it shows you that Amazon has a problem. People need an entire course to figure out how to do this part of Amazon. Then then you can go to Amazon because you have data. Information is power and, you know, not money is power, but making money is power. And and then, also, you become in the process of doing this, you will become the sort of person who makes an online course and teaches and helps people in that way, and it'll change your mindset about doing this. Even though you already do this as a service as a service business, this will go one step further. Yeah. I love that. I do have a random a random thought too. 1 of the listeners of the podcast episodes that we did, Michael, he asked a question of how could we make the shopping experience at a brick and mortar store so much better that they'd forego the convenience of buying on Amazon. Yeah. That's interesting. I would include that as maybe a separate course. Because that's, I mean, that's that you know, when you when you said maybe Amazon, you you've Michael and I were talking about why I'm hesitant or why I say sometimes that Amazon, isn't my long term thing, and it's I identified it's because of that. It's that that person to person interaction that you you don't get. And so we were we we we're just thinking why. Like, what could Walmart or Target or Best Buy or these stores do? But thank you very much. This is great, and I really appreciate this this time with you. This is this has been fantastic. I love it. I I have to stream chess at some point. You're you're you're it was always fun seeing you on the chess stream. Yeah. I beat you one out of 8 games, that one lucky game. You know? You're my according to according to Liches, you are my worst rated defeat. So I'm proud of that. I'm so proud. Hopefully, that record continues forever. So Yeah. But, alright. I will talk to you in in 2 weeks, James. But but get in touch if there's any questions or anything. Alright. Thank you, James. Okay. Thanks, you guys. Thanks, Jay. Bye.
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