Today I was inspired to leap to the microphone by a mentoring session with a client.

If you have existing revenue, you can get a return on mentoring very fast

I love working with clients who already have revenue/turnover because it's so easy to help them get a win, and/or reduce costs by a large amount.

I also feel great about it, because I know that they'll get a lovely return on the fees they're spending with me - either in massive cost reductions or risk reductions; or a big uptick in sales, or profits, or both- my favourite of course (and theirs!).

It's early days in my relationship with this new chap but the signs are excellent I can help him achieve the same.

Links mentioned in today's podcast: 

Mentoring programme (with yours truly)

10K Collective Mastermind

The E-Myth by Michael Gerber

Adam Hudson (Reliable Income Amazon training course)

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

What's always amazing to me is how quickly people dump entire businesses or business models, or at least markets they know well. Often they are only a couple of modest changes from sales and profit.

Today's client was so interesting. He's selling hand-made products on Etsy but he kind of brushed over that and wanted to plunge into Jungle Scout results on Amazon.

When I asked about it, it turns out he is making profitable sales (and the products looked gorgeous to me too).

He said that there were two issues:

* he was finding it hard to get much sales volume for the highest priced item (£250+), probably because the price was too high to get volume

* he was running out of time and energy to physically make the products

I pointed out that really that was not a failed business or product; both were potentially solvable problems. So the main thing was to

a. calculate costs (very easy, using the Amazon FBA Revenue Calculator for UK)

b. see if he could engage someone to make the things -probably on a piecework basis, rather than production-line style for craft items; again, an easy win as there won't be an extra overhead as such.

Of course, we don't know the result yet but I would put money odds-on that it could be made to work. Which is way better odds than starting absolutely from scratch.

Start with what you know

Even if you don't have any turnover yet and are just starting out in the eCommerce game, it makes no sense to me to ignore your existing "expertise" as a consumer of products.  On the contrary - be a passionate, obsessive, knowledgeable consumer and you're halfway to understanding what kind of thing you should be trying to sell in the first place.

This is the very fundamental first step in our Niche research (AKA  "Product research") method in the Private Label Process Course.

(For a free PDF guide on the overview of Private Labelling, click here)

Whatever you do in your business life, start with what you know! In a competitive world,