Music That Inspires

This week, I’m joined by our resident Amazon policy and compliance consultant, Lesley Hensell. Lesley is co-founder and co-owner of Riverbend Consulting, an organization that helps people with suspensions, policy issues, and account management. She’s an Amazon expert and has also been a seller for almost a decade. She’s here today for her regular update on what’s going on with Amazon, what’s new, what’s changing, and what’s going to affect you and your business. The first part of her update is on the rampant suspensions of linked accounts that Amazon’s going in for right now. Lesley tells us that Amazon is using AI to crack down on people who have more than one account without good reason, and we discuss how to follow the rules and avoid suspension. Another big issue happening with Amazon recently is a surge in bogus IP complaints, and Lesley explains the importance of protecting yourself with brand registration and making sure your paperwork is organized and accessible. Related to this, I talk about some problems I’ve had recently with bad players selling counterfeit versions of our products, and Lesley provides some reassurance that Amazon has started really enforcing its brand registry rules and suspending people who abuse them.

Next, Lesley has some good news about getting suspended ASINs reinstated—it seems that Amazon is now giving the option (in some cases) to get your ASIN put back up in exchange for taking a training course. This is a faster option than the usual process and has the added benefit that you can learn something important to help you with your Amazon business. Lesley and I then spend some time discussing the bad things that can happen in the Amazon warehouse, including expired or used products being put back into rotation, and Lesley has a tip for managing your SKUs to avoid that nightmare scenario. I also ask about Amazon’s PPC rules, and Lesley tells us about how some sellers are using meta-tags and back-end information to get past those rules, another bit of rule-breaking that Amazon is really cracking down on. Then I ask Lesley to describe the services Riverbend provides and how they can help you with your Amazon problems and guide you in making more money before we close out the episode with some details about SURGE Summit, the conference that Riverbend is sponsoring. It’s taking place in Tampa Bay, Florida, over September 6-8 and features power sellers and experts from all over the industry, including a keynote from the CFO of Pharmapacks, one of the biggest sellers on Amazon (plus a cruise and a retro 80’s arcade!).

You can chat more with the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword RIVERBEND, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• Linked account suspensions
  
• IP complaints and brand registration
  
• Counterfeit products
  
• ASIN reinstatement via training
  
• Problems in the Amazon warehouse
  
• PPC issues
  
• Riverbend’s services
  
  

“At the end of the day, you are playing on their playground, and it’s best to play by their rules because they will very swiftly boot you out if you don’t do it right.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“You can have more than one seller account if there’s a really good reason to. So, if you have two private label brands, if you use one account that you’re selling lawnmowers and the other one you’re selling greeting cards, you want to have different accounts. So if you have a good business read on it, you can have more than one account.”

“Amazon uses a lot of artificial intelligence, and AI, as you know, what makes it kind of creepy but effective is that it learns over time. And so they programmed it early on to match things like who has two accounts that have the same bank account.”

“It can be very useful, if you are legitimately running more than one account, if you use a VPN, so they don’t think you’re on the same IP address and think for some reason you’re doing something you’re not supposed to.”

“If you have two companies selling the same ASIN on the same listing, you’re competing with yourself, and then you’re pricing against yourself. So arguments can be made that there’s price-fixing.”

“Amazon has done a really bad job in its new brand registry. We were all so hopeful that Amazon brand registry 2.0 is gonna solve all of our problems! And really, it’s just like everything else, they built it for Amazon, they didn’t build it for sellers.”

“You do need to be brand-registered because you at least have a shot. But it is by no means a panacea and the answer to all of your problems.”

“Here’s the problem, the law requires Amazon to act on these complaints. They don’t have a choice. They can’t say, ‘Oh, I think that looks bogus’ and just ignore it. Because once someone files an IP complaint, they have to do something about it. Even if these are garbage, and even if they don’t make any sense.”

“Get brand registry, get trademarks, get your own custom packaging. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s just doing business legitimately. And then that protects you.”

“People respect their Amazon account enough to watch the training, maybe answer some relevant questions. And then, now at least you’re educated. So next time, you can’t say I didn’t know any better because then you have a record that you did the training.”

“You cannot assume that they will do any work for you, ever. They won’t.”

“If you’re making thousands of dollars a month on an ASIN that gets suspended, you’re screwed for that amount of time until you can fight with them to get back, which we know takes weeks, if not months for them to even, you know, give you an answer.”

“Bad things happen in the Amazon warehouse.”

“Amazon’s not going to hand it back to you just for fun. The struggle is real.”

“When you’re trusting someone else with your inventory and your money, there’s going to need to be accountability, some way or another, whether it’s on your end or their end. And we all knew it ain’t on their end. So we might as well take care of it.”

“Most of the time, they’re not just picking on random people. You’ve done something wrong, knowingly or unknowingly, and they’re not just randomly scooping up a bunch of people, there’s not some mean dude that’s having a bad day going, ‘Let’s pick on Lesley today and let’s see if her account’s doing anything wrong!” No, it’s automated, it’s artificial intelligence. It’s all bots.”

“We have people who did do the wrong thing all the time, and we help them, you know, get right. We have our little 'come to Jesus' meeting and ask you why it happened and say this is how we fix it, and we help them fix it.”

“Honest to goodness, that’s just the reality of this all, you guys, it’s just, like, doing business with integrity. Stop trying to circumvent the rules, stop trying to get around them.”

“We just did our final year-end taxes or whatever, and I wanted to give you the number that Riverbend has gotten back for us, for our company for reimbursements, damages, irreconcilable issues that we have on Amazon, and it was, like, over $3,000 last year.”

“What we are shooting for is to have the best content of any Amazon conference because we’ve all been to conferences where people sell from the stage. I don’t like that. That’s not my style, it makes me uncomfortable. I want to hear from people who are real sellers.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• Riverbend homepage
  
• Lesley on LinkedIn
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword RIVERBEND to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

Today I am frustrated, and I am going to be upfront: today, we’re going to talk some dirt. My inbox is flooded with messages from people complaining because they received bad education and wound up suspended from Amazon because they didn’t check the rules. So today’s episode is about honesty and truth and clearing the air about what bundles are, why they work, and how to execute them properly.

I open with the very important truth that there are people out there who want to swindle you by lying and teaching concepts that will get you kicked off Amazon and that you need to go into every learning opportunity (including mine) with your eyes and ears open. Then I discuss what bundles actually are and emphasize that your very first priority when creating bundles should be adding value for your customers to make yourself stand out and let your customers know you care about their experience. I also give some examples of good and bad ways to bundle, including mismatching consumable and non-consumable items, annoying customers with unwanted extras, and using custom packaging to add value. After that, I go deeper into the philosophy behind successful bundling, which is that products exist to meet a need or solve a problem, and introduce the 'who-what-where-when-how' framework for understanding how your bundles can do that for your customers. Then I emphasize how you can’t automate creativity and have to put the work in, and finish off by sharing one of the most important things my dad ever taught me: you should do your best to do things right the first time so that you can avoid stress and mess and get on with being successful.

You can chat more with the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword SUCCESS, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• Bad education and following Amazon’s rules
  
• Clearing up bundling misconceptions
  
• What bundling is and how to create value in your bundles
  
• The importance of treating your customers well
  
• Examples of good bundles
  
• Making your bundle stand out
  
• Mismatched bundles and how not to pair consumables and non-consumables
  
• Meeting your customers’ needs and solving their problems
  
• Choosing complementary products
  
• The Who-What-Where-When-Why of your bundle
  
• Packaging as a value-add item
  
• What you can and can’t automate
  
• Doing it right the first time
  
  

“I’m the one telling you right now, it’s not about you, it’s about your customer. But it will eventually be about you and your product and your profit and your bottom line if you do it correctly.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“That’s why we’re in business. We’re in business so that we can do better for ourselves. So you can have freedom and flexibility and financial security and things like that.”

“Just because somebody is making money and making success at something does not mean they’re doing it correctly, properly, above board, and without crazy Blackhat strategies. So let me just, let’s just be honest about that. There are people out there that are swindling, that are lying, that are teaching concepts that could get you kicked off of Amazon in a minute.”

“Guess what? Jim Bob over here in another Facebook group who says this is allowed isn’t an expert. He’s just working on maybe his own experience or something he’s learned from somebody that told somebody that told somebody.”

“All I want you to do is be aware that there are people out there that are teaching the wrong things when it comes specifically to bundling, when it comes to dropshipping, when it comes to some of these concepts that you are and aren’t allowed to do.”

“Bundles are highly complementary items packaged together in a convenient way.”

“When you’re creating a bundle, the very first question you should ask yourself is, 'What is the value I’m bringing to my customer?”

“Did you know that if you think about your customer first and think about enhancing their experience and helping their experience go better, they will come back to you and buy from you specifically? Because you treated them so well, because you had their best interest in mind, not just your bottom line.”

“As a consumer, you understand when someone’s put time, effort, and energy into something upfront in order to create a great experience for you as a buyer. You remember that. If a store clerk remembers your name the next time you come in, you’re going to remember that.”

“They think they’re enhancing the brand services but guess what? I’m buying bathroom towels for my bathroom that I just remodeled and updated, and I don’t want your coffee mug, and that does not enhance my experience. As a matter of fact, it gets on my nerves.”

“Bringing value is enhancing their user experience, making it memorable, making it more convenient, making it easier. Something that’s adding value to them, not as a way to get around the rules, to get around product restrictions, to get around brand restrictions, to get away from hijackers, to just try to sell more product outside of that. Because anybody who tries that doesn’t succeed for long.”

“If you created your bundle just to get hijackers off of your listing, and you randomly added something there that doesn’t bring value to the customer, it’s not going to go well.”

“Correct bundles are successful when they have things in common.”

“That is what bundles do, they meet a need or solve a problem.”

“Items have to be highly complementary and make sense together. Just because it’s all used in the kitchen doesn’t mean it’s used together.”

“The best bundlers can answer who, what, when, where, why, and how of their bundle. And if you can define that for your bundle, the chances of you being successful are ten times more than people who don’t have that.”

“I’ve never met a person who has never heard of Walmart, or Starbucks, or Nike. Why? Because these brands and companies have taken the time and energy to take care of their customers, listening to their customers, understanding what their customers want and need.”

“The creation process and the research process for creating things cannot be automated.”

“It’s not going to be automated. You’re going to have to set up your systems and processes, you’re going to learn how to do the proper research and do it right and do it correctly and do it for the right reasons. And when you do all of those things, just watch the money roll in.”

“The choice is yours. You can struggle, you can literally drive the struggle bus up the mountain if you want, that’s totally up to you.”

“We know that bundles work. And they work when you do them correctly. And you can do them successfully. But there is a right way and a wrong way. And there’s a right motive and a wrong motive. So just ask yourself those questions.”

“I am still a wholesale bundle seller. That is how I make my primary income. So I’m in the trenches with you. I am not teaching from some random sideline when I don’t know what’s going on. Y’all, I have had 412 correspondences from Amazon in the past two weeks with, you know, dealing with the same problems and same issues that you guys are as well.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword SUCCESS to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

We start the episode with some info about the tradeshow experiences and workshops we’ve got coming up before diving into Joe’s background as an entrepreneur, from his childhood business selling nightcrawlers to selling his last e-commerce business and joining Quiet Light. Then I ask Joe to explain how to begin thinking about whether your business is sellable, and he discusses the importance of setting goals for what you want out of selling your business and reverse engineering a path to those goals. He also talks us through The Four Pillars of Value, markers that potential buyers look at to figure out the value of your business, which will dramatically influence the offers you receive. We then turn to some more technical details of selling a business, with Joe explaining how to deal with discretionary earnings, the different types of buyers (including aggregators and private equity firms), and the benefits of setting SOPs. He also goes through some of the dirty tricks aggregators can pull and advises that having a trustworthy broker in place can help you avoid these and have a smoother exit. Then we wind things up by talking about the emotion involved in selling a business and how going through an honest and understanding broker like Quiet Light can help manage those emotions and expectations. And last but definitely not least, Joe shares how you can get your hands on a FREE digital copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook.

You can chat more about how to successfully manage your FBA business with the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword EXIT, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• There are a few spots left in the tradeshow experience we have coming up in Grand Rapids
  
• Joe’s first entrepreneurial experience
  
• How Joe broke into and got out of the e-commerce world
  
• Knowing your business is sellable and setting goals for the future
  
• The Four Pillars of Value in today’s FBA business world
  
• Built-in paths to growth
  
• Risks for buyers
  
• Owner-operators and discretionary earnings
  
• The difference between aggregators, private equity firms, and private individuals as buyers
  
• The benefits of setting up SOPs
  
• The dirty tricks aggregators play and using brokers to avoid them
  
• Add-backs and the mistakes people make without representation
  
• The emotion of selling a business
  
• Quiet Light and honesty about the salability of a business
  
• Joe’s book The EXITpreneur’s Playbook and how to get your FREE digital copy
  

“Always have your exit in mind because you just never know what’s going to happen.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“I’ve got a question for you. Are you selling wholesale? Have you had issues with wholesale? Are you scared? Are you nervous? Do you not know what the heck you’re doing wholesale? If you answered 'yes' to any of those questions, I would love to help you navigate wholesale.”

“This is where you want to be able to continually set up and maintain your business so that if and when you decide to exit, it can be a slam dunk for you.”

“Came out of that five-year stretch, tired and worn out, woke up one day and said, 'I wonder if I can sell this thing?' Didn’t plan it, necessarily, just woke up and needed to move on as an entrepreneur as we often do.”

“Now we’ve got a team of fifteen advisors, about ten support staff, we closed just under $250 million in total transactions in 2020, all online business transactions.”

“As entrepreneurs, we seem to have short attention spans, whether that’s three years, five years, ten years. We’re always wanting to pivot and change.”

“Every business is sellable. It’s just a matter of what it’s worth to the buyer and what it’s worth for you to go through that sale process.”

“I mentioned documentation. If you want to reverse engineer the path to your goal, you have to figure out the value of your businesses today. If you do not have profit and loss statements with a monthly view, you’re not even going to get out of the gate.”

“Your CPA is a tax-mitigation specialist, and they file your tax returns. Don’t let them be your bookkeeper, too, because they will just screw it up.”

“Growth, they love to see growth trends and built-in paths to growth.”

“When it comes to pure risk, the larger, more established businesses are less risky than the younger, smaller, less-established businesses.”

“Risk, growth, transferability, and documentation is what buyers look at.”

“The more they trust and like you and believe in you and what you’ve built, the better deal structure and the higher value of the company. So that’s one reason to set up SOPs. The other is if you get hit by a bus, your spouse can take over or your employee fairly quickly. Or, you know, if you just want to go on vacation and not be bothered by anybody, not check email, SOPs are great.”

“The aggregators are well-educated, charming, likable, they’ll heap lots of praise on the brand that you’ve built in your business and say that they’ll buy your business for all cash and close in thirty days and then they’ll slide in there, ‘Avoid the broker fee.’ If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

“The advisor is somebody that should be in the middle, helping you first understand the value of what you have, what levers to push and pull to increase the value of that. And then eventually, when you’re ready, exit it for maximum value.”

“We consider ourselves an education firm, first and foremost. And then we happen to do M&A deals as well.”

“You need to be able to feel really comfortable about handing your baby off to someone else who’s going to be able to take care of it. Regardless of the check that they wrote you, you still want to be able to feel comfortable and confident that what you’ve built isn’t just being, you know, tossed to the wayside.”

“These are very emotional processes. You’re a week, two weeks away from life-changing money for the baby that you built, and you know, you need somebody on your side that’s going to support you and help you through that process.”

“If it’s a situation where it’s not sellable in its current environment or current state, we’ll tell them why. And if it’s a situation where it’s a great business, but it’s not sellable by us, then we’ll tell them why.”

“Let’s be real, we all don’t want to work for the rest of our lives forever, all the time. Retirement, whether it’s at fifty or seventy or thirty-two, you want to be able to have a plan and be prepared, and this is the best way to get that done.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• Quiet Light homepage
  
• The EXITpreneur’s Playbook on Amazon
  
• Get your FREE digital copy of The EXITpreneur’s Playbook
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword EXIT to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

This week I have two amazing guests, Dave and Laurie Bilyeu, who run eBLISS, a storage and fulfillment center for eBay and Poshmark sellers. They’re here to talk about how their fulfillment service can boost your reselling business by reducing the time and stress of dealing with your back-end. I kick things off by asking how Dave and Laurie got into e-commerce and eBay, and Dave shares how he started out flipping items he found in Goodwills before Laurie came on board, and they grew into a full-time business. They then talk about scaling up by hiring staff, setting up dedicated space, and setting up systems and processes to help manage your business and any new people you bring on board. Next, Dave and Laurie go into more detail about eBLISS and the gap it fills by providing fulfillment services for eBay, something that resellers have been sorely lacking. They explain their process and pricing structure and how eBLISS removes the storage bottleneck that is such a major hurdle to eBay sellers growing their businesses. We also discuss the eBLISS philosophy, which is to restore the joy in reselling by giving you back the freedom to go out and source treasures to resell. And finally, we talk about one of my favorite subjects, time as money, and break down how outsourcing your back-end will give you more time to spend on the money-making aspects of your business.

You can find out more about running an eBay business from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group, (this week's codeword: EBLISS) where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• Mommy Income is coming to a city near you, including Grand Rapids and LA, with workshops and tradeshow walkthroughs
  
• How Dave and Laurie got started in e-commerce and eBay
  
• How to scale up your eBay business by hiring people
  
• Setting up systems and processes for your business
  
• Dave and Laurie’s eBay fulfillment service
  
• The process of eBay and Poshmark fulfillment
  
• The storage bottleneck
  
• Fulfillment and freedom
  
• eBLISS’ pricing structure
  
• Dealing with long-tail items and handling inquiries
  
• The challenges Dave and Laurie have experienced
  
• The benefits of outsourcing your back-end
  

“This is such a needed thing in this world, to be able to grow and scale.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“I love wholesale, and wholesale just makes life so much easier. It’s not complicated. It’s not scary. It’s not hard, you can do it.”

“I found myself going to Goodwills and finding North Face jackets in Colorado for $4 at a Goodwill and flipping them on eBay for like $50 or $60. And I was hooked.”

“We hired a couple part-time listers and shippers so that we could fully source 100% of the time and really built our inventory up from when, I think I started, you might have had twelve hundred listings, we quickly almost tripled that in probably a year-and-a-half or so.”

“The whole managing of people is very daunting because it takes a certain kind of personality and skill set to be able to manage other people well.”

“It comes down to systems and processes. You need to map this out for yourself and for anyone else that would want to come on board and help.”

“I think everybody should have their processes in their brain written down.”

“I think the biggest bottleneck for a lot of eBay sellers is they love the treasure hunt. They love the buying part. And then they have what I call the death piles or the, you know, overflowing eBay closet where they love to buy it and got it for a great deal. But then it’s not being listed because that’s the time-consuming part.”

“We allow them to free up anywhere from three to five to seven hours a week because they no longer have to ship. And they use that time to source more and list more, and they get their death piles done, they get all that stuff lifted and sent into our warehouse. And when it sells, we ship within the same or next business day.”

“It’s so fun to me to source with other resellers because they have knowledge over here, and I’ve got knowledge over here, and between that, like, we’re all making a lot of money.”

“The level of genius that a lot of sellers have is in their eye for the thrift, their eye for the treasure, realizing this is going to make money. And that could just be a wealth of knowledge someone has about a specific category, or they could be like a freak of nature, which I’ve been called when it comes to thrifting.”

“I think our clients really appreciate the time they save, the fact that they can scale without worrying about cluttering up their own home. Because I mean, let’s be honest, everybody has some space limitations at some point.”

“At the time, there was honestly no fulfillment service, and I think there still isn’t, that caters to this kind of reseller, the reseller who buys one-off, used, thrifted items of many sorts, whether it’s clothes, books, games, electronics.”

“We love to restore the joy in reselling to all of our clients.”

“We don’t have spikes in storage like Amazon FBA. We’re not going to gate people from selling anything.”

“Basically, the higher your ASP, average selling price of your items, the less our service is going to cost you as a percentage of your overall sales.”

“I’m going to resurrect the eBay business that I have because of you guys. And now I know that I can have the location freedom that I want to not have to ship those things, that’s going to kind of resurrect that.”

“Since we are resellers, we understand that there’s value in long-tail items.”

“We love the fact that we deal with all types of clients, those that just want those items out of their house and don’t plan on growing and those that want to grow. And we have the ability to accommodate them if they want to scale.”

“We’d like to speak to everyone prior to signing on with us because we are resellers. We want to hear about their goals, their objectives. And if we’re a great fit, awesome. If not, not a problem.”

“We wanted to be able to provide the service for resellers. We’re not really interested in housing people’s items who just want to source, and they don’t want to do the work of actually being a reseller. So that’s why it’s called reseller solutions because we feel like we are a solution for a lot of these issues that resellers have, not the casual thrifter-flipper.”

“You guys are just innovators. You’re, like, ready to solve the next problem before people even ask the questions.”

“That’s business. You have to adapt whether you’re a reseller or someone like us with eBLISS, you have to adapt, and it’s okay to adapt.”

“I suggest you outsource, if anything, you outsource the back-end of that first, which is the storage and the shipping. Because there’s no money to be made in there.”

“You can’t write off your own time that you’re doing this yourself on your taxes, right? But if you outsource it, that is an expense that you can write off. So you’re actually even saving money even more by having somebody else do it.”

“Reselling is our first entrepreneurial experience ever. And it’s been the most fulfilling experience in my life. Fulfilling, no pun intended.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• More info about eBLISS
  
• eBLISS on Instagram
  
• eBLISS on YouTube
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword [CODEWORD] to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

Today on the Amazon Files, I’m joined by a very special guest, Michelle Love, to talk about the not-so-sexy but very important subject of insurance. Michelle is an insurance expert who’s worked in the field for almost thirty years and specializes in ecommerce accounts. She’s also been an e-commerce seller since 2003, and she and her daughter have been private label Amazon sellers, so she speaks the languages of both e-commerce and insurance.

Following an update about our 2022 workshops, Michelle and I kick things off by talking a little about how she got into e-commerce before discussing the benefits of insuring your business and the nightmares that can happen if you don’t. Then we move on to specifics, as Michelle explains Amazon’s insurance requirements for third-party sellers and what kind of protection Amazon gives your FBA products in their warehouses. I also ask Michelle about insurance for private label products and higher-risk products like supplements or medical devices and your liability for these. Then we wrap up our conversation with some advice about how much the average business owner should invest in insurance and how having insurance in place is a tremendous relief should the worst happen. Tune in today to learn how insurance allows you to protect your business and show it the love it so richly deserves.

You can find out more about insurance from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword LOVE, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• New workshops are available for 2022, including a tradeshow walkthrough in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  
• There’s also a Mommy Income retreat coming up this year
  
• How Michelle got started in e-commerce
  
• The benefits of having insurance coverage
  
• Amazon’s insurance requirements for third-party sellers
  
• Does Amazon protect your FBA products?
  
• Insurance for private-label products and high-risk products
  
• How much to invest in insurance for the average seller
  
• Shipping insurance and workers comp
  
  

“I do know that there’s a lot of sue-happy people, in at least our country, and because of that, good insurance and a good lawyer is always something every business should have on hand.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“I know it’s not a sexy topic, no one likes to hear about insurance. As a matter of fact, most of you are probably already trying to swipe off of this podcast and listen or watch something else because you’re like, 'Ugh, who wants to talk about insurance?'”

“We think, 'Oh yeah, well, wouldn’t Amazon just protect our stuff because it’s in their warehouse?' The truth might shock you and surprise you, and also the affordability of insurance.”

“If you’re considering coming to a workshop, I’d love to meet you, I want to meet you, I would love to be able to raise a toast and talk the talk with you and have a drink with you and teach you all about wholesale bundles so that you can have a rockstar year.”

“There’s going to be a special Mommy Income retreat coming up this year. Why? Because we all need a retreat after the few years that we’ve had. We need a rest, we need a recharge, we need a retreat.”

“We’ve seen commercials on TV, you can cue the eye roll here for like, you know, all the different commercials that are out there about, you know, insurance and protecting your business and protecting all of your assets and things. But I think it’s just one of those things that people don’t like to think about and talk about or spend money on until it’s too late, until it’s necessary. And then it’s like, by then, it’s too late.”

“One of the biggest benefits with having insurance in place is it covers your legal fees.”

“This is typical Amazon, you know, we’ve been around the block almost two decades now, we understand that Amazon always has a lot of these policies and then when they get sued for something, then they realize they need to start enforcing these policies.”

“The general rule is if you are a seller and you send your things to the fulfillment center, if you’re doing FBA, then Amazon has your products in their care, custody, and control, and they have coverage for those products.”

“If you are, you know, in that baby, pet, ingestibles, topicals, anything medical device, even, you know, an ice pack, you wouldn’t think that’s a medical device, but that is. Anything that’s durable medical equipment, even as moderate as a blue ice pack you would put on your arm, all of that is higher risk, and we have to go to the other markets.”

“A lot of people ask me, are there any categories I stay away from, and they think more of like, Amazon competition and profit margin, and I always think of liability. Like, I literally do not want to be sued for anything.”

“I want to support people’s ideas, but at the same time, I’m like, 'Oh, I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.' If somebody is ingesting something, like, I’m scared.”

“In general, whether you’re starting or you’re well-established, I just want to help you be protected. I don’t make a tremendous amount of money off of these policies, I do it because I really, truly care.”

“Whether you’re being sued or whether the roof is ripped off of a warehouse and all your stuff flies away, it’s still a very difficult time in life or business to be able to deal with a loss like that and to have proper insurance just brings so much more relief.”

“You know me, and I’m tough. And I’m just telling you, you are required to have insurance because you signed the Terms of Services to sell on Amazon.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• FBAQuotes.com
  
• EM Ford homepage

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword LOVE to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

On this week’s episode, I’m joined by ecommerce expert Kevin Sanderson, who’s here to share his expertise in global business expansion. Kevin is the organizer of the Convert More Clicks Summit, which will be taking place on 1-3 February, so we kick the episode off with a chat about what the summit will cover. Kevin is bringing in some of the best experts from the Amazon world (including me!) to talk about driving sales, getting more traffic, and making more conversions. It’s going to be a fantastic opportunity to get advice and knowledge from successful business owners and entrepreneurs, so make sure you book your ticket!

In the rest of the episode, Kevin talks about his journey into the world of ecommerce, from working in the hotel industry to dabbling in retail arbitrage to running a successful international business. He shares how he began expanding into international markets, using his knowledge of Amazon to try out different markets and see which worked for him and which didn’t. Kevin also gives some advice about one of the scarier aspects of global expansion—dealing with other countries’ tax systems—and suggests some questions to ask your CPA or other financial advisors. Then we discuss the value of summits and the high-quality education they offer from experts in the field, with some tips about scheduling and how to get permanent access to presentations for later viewing. Finally, I ask Kevin for his thoughts on what not to do when expanding internationally, and Kevin discusses the importance of understanding the culture of the markets you choose to expand into.

You can get more advice on expanding your business globally from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword INTERNATIONAL, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• Brand new workshops for 2022
  
• The Convert More Clicks Summit
  
• Kevin’s e-commerce background
  
• Creating a global expansion
  
• How to deal with international taxes
  
• Questions to ask your CPA
  
• The value of summits and ongoing education
  
• What not to do when expanding internationally
  
• Understanding the culture in your marketplaces
  
  

“The more we know, the more we grow.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“We hear the term, you know, when you work for someone else, you’re working really hard for their dreams. I was living that. And so I was friends with these people, and I’m happy for their success, and they’ve done very well. And I’m happy for that. But it was like, I need to go carve my own path.”

“I’m a hustler. So I understand, like, anywhere you can make a dollar, you should make a dollar.”

“One of the things I learned very quickly was, it doesn't matter if you’re coming in with, you know, a couple thousand bucks or a million dollars in this business, everyone gets to a cash flow crunch at one point.”

“By and large, if people in the US are buying it, chances are someone in Canada is looking for it right now, as we speak, and someone else is getting the sale over the course of the time you’re listening to this, that you could have gotten if you were offering your product there.”

“Anytime you hear the word 'taxes', everyone gets real nervous.”

“If you don’t have one, please pause this and go look for a CPA. Be a real business owner, have a CPA to do your taxes.”

“Let not taxes be the reason that you don’t sell internationally. Because really, it’s about those products, right, finding the products that our international friends cannot get their hands on very easily locally and meeting that need for them with the products that we have access to.”

“The beauty, though, of a summit is that, number one, you’re in the comfort of your own space, and you can kind of come and go. You can eat your popcorn or drink your coffee in your pajamas and still get high-quality education.”

“I think it’s so important to, especially with entrepreneurs, to be able to have ongoing education because that one thing that you learn in one session of even one of these could change your business for life.”

“We get caught in the weeds, and we’re just doing our business, and we’re selling products and doing all this, and we don’t make time for education. And then we wonder why we’re not growing or that we’re hitting a plateau.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out or, you know, you’re a seven- or eight-figure seller, you’re going to find something that you can employ into your business to really take things to the next level.”

“I feel like I always level up when I learn from other folks.”

“The first Friday of every month, I have a three-hour block that I use, personally, to watch other people’s trainings, other people’s things, to educate myself, because I don’t know everything. Because I am the wholesale bundle queen and expert at that, but I am not an expert on other things.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• Convert More Clicks Summit tickets
  
• Maximizing Ecommerce homepage
  
• Maximizing Ecommerce on YouTube
  
• Email Kevin

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword INTERNATIONAL to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

First up, I’ve got some advice on organization and planning, including how to figure out the best organizational methods for you, whether that’s sticky notes (my favorite), paper planners, or phone notifications. I also discuss the importance of setting out your daily tasks, especially the ones that make you money, to reduce the time wasted on figuring out what needs to be done. Following that, I talk about being flexible but organized with your schedule, grouping similar tasks together and creating steps to follow while giving yourself the freedom to stick with inspiration when it hits. Then I tackle procrastination and distractions, with some tough love on self-managing our attachment to screen time and digital notifications. And finally, I wrap up the episode by discussing one of my favorite ways of avoiding procrastination: the 15-Minute Hustle, a fantastic tool for getting over the fear of starting tasks you’ve been dreading and getting them done in fifteen-minute bursts.

You can get more advice on managing your FBA business from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword BEGINNER, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

•              The rest of the workshop locations for 2022, including a virtual option
  
• How to organize your to-do list
  
• Setting out your Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and master task list
  
• Figuring out your money-making tasks
  
• Flexibility in scheduling
  
• Time blocking (including breaks throughout the day)
  
• Managing distractions
  
• Blasting through procrastination
  
• The 15-Minute Hustle
  

“If you own your own business, you are a business owner, you are a CEO, you are an entrepreneur. And so you can own any or all of those titles. This isn’t just some little, small side gig you’ve got going on. This is a big deal. You started a business, most people don’t do that.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“People that come to workshops usually find the most success when it comes to wholesale bundling because they feel supported. They feel like they have these ‘Aha!’ breakthrough moments where the course was great, but they got the questions asked, they got to build a bundle together with other people and kind of fail and try again and work through things, and realize how normal that process really is when you do it yourself.”

“That’s entrepreneurship, you know, you’re the one in charge, you’re CEO and janitor, you’re going to have to do all the hard things and the easy things and all the things until you can hire help.”

“The reality is, you have to figure out what works best for you that you are actually going to follow through on. Yes, we can create new habits, that’s absolutely true, but you also have to be a hundred percent committed to creating new habits and giving it, you know, six weeks of practice every single day to make a new habit.”

“That’s a lot of where time is wasted and lost when it comes to an entrepreneur, that we’re responsible for so many things that we sometimes sit down at our desk and know that we have a boatload of stuff to do. But we don’t really know what to do.”

“CEOs and business owners and entrepreneurs face decision fatigue all the time, every day, probably. We’re constantly making small and big decisions, and it’s exhausting.”

“Sometimes, we can’t wait for inspiration. We can’t wait for the time to be right where we’re feeling creative. Sometimes we've just got to do it.”

“If we’re constantly trying to handle things while we’re doing our tasks, we’re gonna be all over the place, and all over the place is not where we want to be.”

“Life is all about the miscellaneous, right, so we want to make sure that we have space on our calendars in order to handle this miscellaneous stuff that just randomly comes up.”

“We can regulate our kids, we can put parental controls on there, and we can, you know, block certain things from their phones, but what are we doing to protect ourselves from ourselves?”

“Procrastination is part of everybody’s life. It is. It’s a symbol of a bigger problem, a symptom really of a bigger problem, most likely a combination of fear, ignorance, overwhelm, being uncomfortable.”

“If you only have room for four 15-minute hustles, and you commit to that, you will see your productivity skyrocket. Because you’re being intentional, because you’re planning, because you put it on a thing, and because you wrote it down,”

“Most of the problem is starting the task.”

“We spend more than fifteen minutes scrolling on our phones in the bathroom, let’s just be real about that. You have fifteen minutes. You have more than fifteen minutes.”

“I didn’t feel like it was this big, long, overwhelming Saturday where I had to spend the whole day putting Christmas away. Instead, I just did fifteen minutes at a time. And I knew I had a plan for that. And I knew I was gonna continue executing that. It was freedom. That’s what it felt like.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword BEGINNER to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

In today’s episode, I’m talking about wholesale—specifically, how to find wholesale products and find them legitimately. I get a lot of messages from people asking about wholesale and saying that they haven’t been able to make a success of it, but what strikes me about all these people is that they quit too early. So first up today, I discuss the need for hard work and perseverance because you’re not going to knock it out of the park on the first try. You have to be willing to put the effort in and try everything—and if you really have, and it’s still not working, you can come talk to me, and we’ll work things out.

Moving on, I debunk some of the myths surrounding wholesaling on Amazon, including the idea that it’s better to start with products instead of distributors and manufacturers, and that you should go after big brands. Then I share with you the best ways to find wholesalers, like looking at a product’s retail packaging to find details of their distributor and manufacturer, going to trade show websites, or signing up for industry newsletters and trade publications. I also talk about common excuses people use for giving up on wholesaling, like being rejected by vendors who don’t work with Amazon or believing wholesale is too expensive or competitive. Finally, I wrap things up with some advice about the importance of doing your research in order to have the best chance of success at wholesaling.

You can get more advice on wholesaling from the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today’s codeword VENDORS, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you’re ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

• Quitting too early
  
• Debunking the myths about wholesaling on Amazon
  
• How to find wholesalers
  
• Common excuses for giving up on wholesaling
  
• How to avoid middlemen and illegitimate wholesalers
  
• Price tiers and increases
  
• Do your research
  
  

“We see the result, we see a win or a loss, or we see the different plays come into action when we’re watching football. What we’re not looking at and not seeing is all of the work that these people have put in over and over again, week after week after week, to get that result.”

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

“The reality is most people start, really, to slow down. They quit before they actually get the result they want. They try two or three different things. They say, ‘Well, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that.’”

“Guess what, you’re gonna have to grow a little bit of thick skin. You’re going to have to keep doing some things over and over again in different ways because you don’t always get to knock it out of the park the first time.”

“Do you want this to work or not? Because if you do, you’re going to have to put in some effort, some consistent, quality effort. Like, no half-assed work here.”

“Like the needle in a haystack. One of my favorite things about hearing that thing is, the easiest way to find a needle in a haystack is to bring a big, fat magnet.”

“Most product-selling businesses are built on really good solid research and good products. So let’s do research. That’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to be research experts.”

“If you have no idea what to sell, and you’re just trying to get some wholesalers, you’re just trying to get some ideas, and you don’t know what you’re doing, that’s even better. You know why? Because there’s way more options.”

“The last time we went to Atlanta, I really tried to get someone to say ‘no’, I couldn’t sell their product on Amazon. And I couldn’t get anyone to say ‘no’ to us.”

“This isn’t personal at all. It’s all about business. They are in the business of selling products, you’re in the business of selling products to the end-user via brick and mortar, your email, your Facebook marketplace, your Etsy shop, your Amazon store, wherever it is that you’re selling all these products. They want to sell products to you, and you want to sell products to your customers, and everybody wins, and everybody makes money.”

“Being a wholesale customer is one of my favorite things about this business. I get free products, I get catalogs, I get reps calling me, telling me all about their discounts and their deals. They want your business really bad, so give it to them.”

“Working long-tail with specific vendors is always going to be a great idea. Because the longer you do business with someone, the more trust is built, the more they realize that you’re a regular client customer, they can count on you for regular purchases, and they’re more apt to give you incentives.”

“Nobody’s gonna look through that catalog for you. No one’s gonna do that research for you, unless you hire them to.”

“If you feel like you’ve done absolutely everything you could, and you still haven’t found one vendor or one product to sell, hit me up. I will have a chat with you, and we will find you something that really, really works.”

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
  
• Wholesale Bundle System
  
• Email questions
  
• Learn With Us
  
• Coaching
  
• The Amazon Files Hub
  
• Video Tutorial on Finding Sellers
  
• Mommy Income’s Vendor List
  
• Wholesale Central
  
  

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of The Amazon Files , the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don’t forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword VENDORS to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don’t forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

Today I'm going to tackle one of the things that this podcast is all about—growing your business. These will be your 2022 business growth strategies for your Amazon and your product-based business. In e-commerce, everything is changing so rapidly that it's tough to keep up. Just when you think you've got it nailed, something changes. But guess what? There's nothing new under the sun. So if you're in business, you better be ready to make changes regularly because that's what's going to be required of you.

I begin this episode with a timely reminder that this is the last week that you can sign up for the in-person bundle-building workshop, and that we also have a virtual workshop available. This, then, brings me to the discussion today about business growth strategies. You don't have to be a billion-dollar global brand to get the lion's share of the market for your products and for the competitors around you. What you need is just an unstoppable business growth strategy. This episode touches on five strategies you can implement in 2022 to grow your business. These include minding your own business, where I stress that you need to know where you are and where you want to go to grow and stop chasing someone else's finish line or climbing someone else's ladder. I emphasize that you must know your business numbers, such as cost of goods, operation costs, sales, and your breakeven. Other strategies I explain in detail include marketing, diversification, meeting a need unmet by all the other products in the marketplace, and strategic partnerships. Finally, I give real-life examples and stories to show the practicability of these strategies. As we begin 2022, today’s episode will go a long way toward helping you ensure growth for your FBA business not only this year, but every year.

You can be part of the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group using code word GROW, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you're ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

•   This is the last week to sign up for the in-person Competent Wholesale Bundlers Workshop.
•   2022 business growth strategies for your business

o   Strategy #1: Mind your own business

o   Strategy #2: Marketing

o   Strategy #3: Diversification

o   Strategy #4: Meet a need unmet by other products in the marketplace

o   Strategy #5: Strategic partnerships

•   Why you must know your business' numbers
•   Things to troubleshoot before you put PPC on your listing
•   What A/B testing is, and why you need it
•   Off-Amazon marketing strategies you can implement
•   Why you should think twice about Facebook ads
•   The shortcomings of retail arbitrage
•   Margin-based versus volume-based business. Which is better?
•   Why you should consider diversifying into brick-and-mortar stores
•   Case Study of Dollar Shave Club's strategy.
•   Case Study of the Taco Bell and Doritos partnership for Doritos Locos Tacos
•   The value of documenting

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always gotten. And if you're trying to grow, you're going to have to do things differently."

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

"Don't spend time chasing someone else's finish line or climbing someone else's ladder."

"You can make a really decent profit without having a huge business."

"You need to know where you are and where you want to go to grow."

"The money is made in the numbers. The money is made at the end of the day when you actually sell that product and then see how much you're making on it."

"You want to make sure that you're minding your business and who's doing what, when, and why are they doing it."

"Marketing does not start with PPC campaigns."

"In reality, if you're not offering what a customer wants, then more visibility isn't going to help you."

"Sometimes it takes time and energy and a little bit of love and a little bit of work to make the listing the best it can possibly be."

"If your listing is more than six months old, it's time to look at it."

"High quality, high-resolution images are going to sell your product. The title, optimized title will bring someone in via search. And once they get to your search, then they're going to be using the images to kind of decide if your listing is even worth looking at."

"A growth strategy can be what's already working and how can we enhance what's already working. That's called working smarter, and not harder."

"Get uncomfortable because that's where growth happens. It happens when we're uncomfortable. When we're chilling, and we're comfortable and whatever, we're living a life of ease - usually, there's not a whole lot of growth that's happening."

“You don't have to be a billion-dollar global brand to get the lion's share of the market for your products… what you need is an unstoppable business growth strategy."

"Don't pigeonhole or box yourself into just Amazon. If you've got great products that are selling well, it's time to expand them."

"Bundles disrupt. And why do they disrupt? Because they're bringing something new and relevant while saving people money, saving them time, saving the environment, all these different things."

"Disrupt by using bundle strategies that are different than anything else."

"You need to know your customers' pain points or their desires, and satisfy their needs. And all you have to do is do it slightly better than your competition."

Related Content:

• 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50
• Wholesale Bundle System
• Email questions
• Learn With Us
• Coaching
• The Amazon Files Hub

Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don't forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword GROW to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don't forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

Happy New Year! We've gotten through a lot these past two years, and finally, breathing the air of 2022 is enough to be thankful for and to celebrate. In this first episode of the year, I want to talk to you about the comparison between the wealthy, rich, and broke. I’ll highlight what it means to be broke and also speak in detail about what separates the wealthy and the rich - the most striking being that the wealthy have or aim to have financial freedom. Along the way we’ll also look at some other differences including the wealthy's humble lifestyle, where most are not flashy, and they spend more on things that earn money while they sleep.

I kick it all off with a timely reminder that there are only 10 days to our very first workshop of the year, and also that there are only a couple of seats left. I then delve into the topic for the day - Wealthy, Rich, or Broke – beginning with the example of financial responsibility that Shaq O'Neal sets, being a former basketball superstar and a business genius, and how he teaches his kids that his money is his own, not theirs. I also share my son's perspective of the rich versus wealthy, and how the rich person's wealth doesn't last very long as they go into massive debt for their flashy, glamorous lifestyles. We’ll also examine how the wealthy, on the other hand, generally live a humble lifestyle. Finally, I discuss ways to become wealthy, including increasing income, reducing unnecessary expenditures, staying healthy, investing in stocks, and savings. I am so excited to start this new year with you all and to continue our journey to wealth, happiness, and health together.

Another great way to start the year is to become part of the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group using code word WEALTHY, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you're ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today.

This week on the Amazon Files:

•   The Competent Wholesale Bundlers Workshop is coming up in 10 days, and there are only a few seats left!
•   Financial responsibility – case study of Shaq O'Neal
•   What the wealthy tell their children
•   My personal story of getting out of debt and the journey to being wealthy
•   Comparing the rich, the wealthy, and the broke
•   What sets the wealthy apart from the rich
•   You can become wealthy by

o   #1: Increasing your income

o   #2: Saving

o   #3: Investing in stocks

o   #4: Reducing unnecessary expenditure

o   #5: Staying healthy

•   Health as a critical component of being wealthy

"Wealth has nothing to do with how much money you earn; it has everything to do with how you spend what you earn. So whether you earn $30,000 a year or $300,000 a year, it's all about how you spend that money, how you invest it, how you care for yourself and for others."

- Kristin Ostrander

Quotes:

"'My kids are older now, and they're kind of upset with me because I tell them all the time, ‘We ain't rich, I'm rich.’ Shaq said that."

"He wants to change people's lives. So that, my friends, that is the definition of wealthy."

"When you take what you have, and you invest it into someone else or something else that you can see and help and shepherd, grow, or even just hands-off invest in them, that is wealthy."

"If you have a Tesla in the driveway and a Rolly on your arm, and you're wearing Gucci head to toe, awesome. Do you have debt? Better not. Because at that point, it's just a facade."

"Most people that are rich spend more than they earn…but if you wanted to peel back the layers of somebody's bank statements, then you could know that net worth, creating a positive net worth, is spending less than you earn, period."

"You can be rich and on the verge of bankruptcy."

"Rich is more about showing off your money than building long-term wealth."

"What does it actually mean to be wealthy? In a short definition, it is just achieving financial freedom."

"When you're wealthy, you get to decide when and where and how you work because you have the luxury to walk away if you don't enjoy your job."

"Wealthy people focus more on income-producing assets, things that make money for you, passive income, real estate investments, things like that, that make money while you sleep."

"You can have all the money in the world, but you can't buy health. It's something that you have to take care of and curate. It's one of your assets.”

"It all comes down to how you spend your money, how much you save, how much you spend, how much you invest."

"If you're not making that much money, you can increase your income. How do you do that? Invest in a business, start a business, start a side hustle. Stop buying stuff you don't need. Focus long-term. The rich quick gain will never get you long-term sustainability."

"Wealth is about taking care of yourself because if you're the main earner in this wealth cycle, you need to be healthy enough to continue earning."

"I've already saved like 12 grand automatically by just saving a little bit a month and investing into little stocks here and there. I think it's really fantastic. And that's only been like a year, a little bit of automatic saving."

"There's not some crazy secret formula. It's what do you want more than you want right now? What do you want more long term, and forever, more than what you want in the moment. That's called discipline. We want the result more than you want the temporary fix."

"Take a note from Shaq. He makes investments not for monetary reasons but because it will change people's lives. That hit home for me. And that is something that I totally align with. Because that's what I do."

"That's the only way I got to where I was. I didn't save $50,000 and just pay it all off at one time. But, little by little, I chipped away at it.”

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Grow Your Amazon Business!

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show and leave us your honest review. Don't forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword WEALTHY to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don't forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.