#37 - Mastering Amazon FBA

i built and sold an amazon fba business for me nov vc my employees i was working full time i started with five thousand bucks in my little chromebook building on the back of amazon i mean it has this wrist we can talk about that but it also has this huge scale and leverage that you can generate alright i got the create first products this gonna to be awesome look for enough demand but not so much efficient not done all my product research and i source it out of china i get this logo off of fiber like i feel like i already got the right pieces in place and i get it in i launch it and it is a total fail i got burned somebody the first time i'm hurting because i do not wanna stay in the career midnight so i'm feeling like so much is riding on this and it's just gotta work and once i got a little taste of it was like okay now it's on that first year played almost six figures in revenue it almost didn't feel real until the deposits fit in i'm like oh my god people are really buying this and the hardest thing to overcome was really my own self doubt i mean it felt like every order i placed that was like putting my whole net worth on the line it was crazy we put the business on and within them i wanna say a week or ten days there were seven full price or higher offers people can access these types of businesses and with a pretty small bet like rate a life changing business for themselves in their families so carry something from kind of the regain your head building it to scaling it to selling it like you gotta want it pretty asymmetrical like i said with five thousand bucks in terms into seven figure business five million is nine a million ten million million money million dollars hundred billion dollar half a billion hundred and fifty million dollars one or two people in a bedroom actually have threats to these like giant multi million dollar companies because you have creativity and you have nothing to lose add another zero to that price buddy add two more zeros first every week we sit down with self made millionaires and asked them how did you do it i didn't start a podcast i already my own personal business school and the teachers are the successful entrepreneurs behind the biggest brands and businesses that you find today i wanted to know the real stories where all the details like how did you get your first hundred customers what did it feel like my shit at the head fuck i ask them how'd do you spend your money now that you're rich and what would you do if you're starting over from scratch again today if you're like me and you wanna own your own business instead of living a nine to five job this is the podcast for the hustle presents my first million paul what's up man how are you you get you flew in today today right or last last night yep late last night i was excited for this you were a lit you're a listener who is on the show is that correct you exactly that's the the new american dream i love show i reached out to you and and here i am so yeah and i liked your story because you did something that i think not a lot of people well i'll put it differently you did you built a amazon fba business and i've seen a lot about fba but the people who tell me about fba are always selling me something for fba and so i hate that and i like just talking to people who if you if you're telling me you got rich then you probably don't need to sell me something for nine ninety nine type of thing exactly and so so i'm excited to talk to you because you built a successful amazon fba business and you're here to tell the tale what made you wanna do this well for me when i was learning the business podcast for everything like podcast podcasts facebook groups reddit threads i feel like i've gotten so much from podcast podcasts so hopefully someone will you know get a little bit inspired to get educated like you were listening to them or you went on them in that no listening listening completely yeah there's just kinda named manny coats who does an amazon podcast podcasts never met me he doesn't know me i mean i probably know a million dollar business without right without him so there's there's all these people have been really influential via podcast that it kinda it's fun to come full circle and say like here's my story on a podcast right and so so what is your story okay so we're here in my first million how did you make your first million just let's start with this the basics so i i built and sold in amazon fba business okay and let me i can give you kind of the please do the scoop so fba people don't know is essentially selling on amazon right so that gives you access to to of the most powerful things out there which is millions of amazon households prime customers in amazon's distribution network so say we wanna create a product sean you know cell phone case sean's cell phone case we put your your handsome face on there yep we can list it on amazon alright reach millions of prime households and when someone buys that product you know we're gonna use amazon's distribution they're gonna do pick back and ship and don't have to do a thing and then we get paid so the net of reaching all those customers and having their distribution means we can scale up a huge business a seven figure business with just one person like right for me no vc my you know employees i was working full time i started with you know five thousand bucks in my little chromebook like so building on the back of amazon i has this risk we can talk about that but it also has this huge scale and leverage that you can generate i love it and so so fba stands are fulfilled by amazon for the exactly we're talking about and it's similar to other e commerce businesses but amazon is your in this case it is the main selling channel for you was it the main sell channel it was the main selling channel yeah and then secondly amazon is the sort of back of the house it is the the the sort of pick package and ship so that you can focus on growing the business and not just the operations i have to hire staff and get a warehouse and do all these other things in order to fulfill your orders that correct a hundred percent yep you nailed it and so what what were you doing before you started this business yeah so i was so i started the business in twenty sixteen i'm about ten years out of school at that point i'm kinda reaching this inflection point where i was really not happy in following kind of the the right path quote unquote the right path what's the right path well you know you kinda are whether it's society or whatever else you kinda hear this you go to school like i went to school i started accounting i got my cpa worked for you know good firms and the at the end of it i just wasn't that engaged or happy and i got really scared like you know i'm early thirties mid thirties now i was this gonna be my next is five ten is this is this it is this all there is and that scared me so much right and that was really the what lit the fire of like there's got to be like i gotta build my own right life raft out of that because you were winning the normal game right go to school get a good job do well in that job and that's a scary feeling when you're like i'm winning but i feel like i'm losing yeah it totally is yeah it's a really scary it feels it's sort like this dissonance in your head like i thought i was doing the right things to win this game and it's not like i was financially that far ahead either because like you know you end up getting that decent car a nice house not you you know we have a kid recently so it's like wait a minute i don't even like playing this game and i'm not really getting where i thought i was gonna go so that's kinda what's spurred like it's sort of hour whenever every time we're gonna be having a kid in the near future and i mean as you probably know they haven't a having a kid and starting something or they're hard to do at the same time so i felt like all this pressure like i gotta go and i gotta go now and get something going and so do you remember what do you remember the the sort of the day you made that decision or you you really felt like okay i gotta do this well it really comes back to these pockets like i said i mean everything from kinda marinating in the tim ferris world to this this guy like i said man manny kinda learning all that and then i could see myself like i can see myself doing this and you don't need an insane amount of capital like i'm living in minneapolis i'm not you know out here gonna pitch the vcs it's like it felt attainable like i could i could start it and i said you know at the the thing i like what amazon is pretty asymmetrical like i said bought five thousand bucks in terms into seven figure business so right it feels like hey i'll make a small bet that's gonna really sting if this thing just goes to zero but i can pick my life up and keep going even if i you know lose every dollar i put into it right and you what were you i like this question what were you making before you quit your job to do this what was their salary as a as cpa is that right was that what you're doing yeah transition to finance so i think i wanna say was making i don't know hundred and five a hundred and ten something low live in and live in minneapolis yeah goes pretty far like it's a comfortable life and like i don't i don't wanna say on grateful or you know come off like you know totally out of touch but i just on the inside of the end of the day when you layer head in the pill like i just didn't feel a filled so yeah so it was comfortable but it just wasn't something was missing right and so okay so you you do this and by the way we're not gonna be able to say exactly what the product is are exactly the company name for for sort of non disclosure reasons because when you sold the business you agreed to keep things confidential but we'll talk around it and and i think more importantly than the specifics of what your product was it's the mechanics right it's the mindset you had to go into it it's how you figured out how to actually build this thing it's the mechanics about what it means to be to sell online and then lastly sort of this the the happy ending which is being able to sell this for seven figures and now you know you're you're anew you you've you sort of achieved the thing you set out to achieve so talk talk to me about getting it off the ground so yeah you decide i gotta do something yeah you're inspired by these podcasts what does that really mean first did you start as a side hustle or did you quit and go go full on first started the side hustle i wasn't you know i was optimistic but not so not so optimistic i was ready to stake my whole future on it so i started on the side my first product i can i can say what that was i started with this if you ever heard a pour over her coffee popular in san francisco yeah so i started with this accessory for pour coffee and it was made out of wood and i thought like you i done all my product research and i also like to choose things that were kinda trending upward and this seems sort like a hips like cool thing it's gonna keep trending and growing like alright i got the great first product por coffee stance it's gonna to be awesome and i you know i source it out of china i get this logo off of fiber like i'm i feel like alright i got the right pieces in place and i get it in i launch it and it is a total fail it it flops it's it turns out products made out of wood can break they can crack and that's what happened with this and i'm getting one star reviews on amazon i'm getting all these angry customers so i'm feeling pretty defeated at that point i was able to you know i probably put five thousand bucks and maybe got four thousand bucks out of it so i took like small small loss but how much time did you put into that maybe three months three months and learned it was like you got a test run i got so much learning out of that from how to source it to china it's to how to you know optimize a product on amazon to deal with customers to like the learning wasn't invaluable if i can't if i would quit there obviously would never hit the second product but like without that i might not ever you know been able to grow it to what i did so so i i take a hit there and i'm down kinda licking my wounds and visiting my parents in arizona and we start talking and they casually are mentioning what turns out to be my next product now right and i think you mentioned this recently on a podcast like i was i'm a big believer in like the notes app and like observing everything like we filter out so much yep and i was kinda in this frame where everything i was doing on like could this be a business could this be a business and i'm gonna put in the notes app and i'm gonna come back to it i'm gonna see what happens with it and this is relate to that yes yeah i got pray thirty of you know i leased that in my phone so you can turn your brain into a scanning machine for opportunity you can if you're wired if you if you start thinking that way you won't even have to try your brain will just start seeing everything there your friend will be telling you about something you couldn't give less of a shit about what they're telling you except for the fact that you're like is that is that made in china or is that sell for so if you buy do you buy multiple of these or just want you know you start assessing a business potential everything it's so true you start d like but i get it out china for three bucks right but it's it's but you just gotta flip the switch because then all of a sudden you do that and then you can marry it up to there's these great tools you can do research on amazon to kinda see you're looking for let's talk about some of those tools so you you should start to get this idea of like what about this product what about this what's the first step of research for you when you were like okay how do figure this out is this good or bad yeah so there's a couple tools and essential with the what you're trying to do is look for enough demand but not so much competition right there's sort of the sweet spot like if you have no demand and you you can be the only one staying there but no one's gonna buy it and the the opposite is true so there's a couple tools helium ten jungle scout if people wanna learn about those go check with their great tools to learn you know what's selling on amazon so this product that year went on and like alright i hear about it for my family it looks good let's you know fire another shot here and see what see what happened so i run the same play this again is twenty sixteen probably put now my four thousand dollars that i have allocated for for this into it and the four thousand bucks is going mostly towards the minimum order is exactly inventory yeah so i think it ordered five hundred units at the start which was the minimum order right find my supplier and alibaba right i'm up at you know nine ten pm at night talking on the phone trying to you know come off that i have half a clue what i'm doing and your private labeling a product try a product you weren't saying let's invent something together you were saying i want that was it did you even modified it or you're like i want that but here's my brand logo colors etcetera i did some modification i think especially now gotta do more than just be a total me too the modification doesn't need to be big so like for me i added something to my product that literally cost me ten cents i think you know say my product has seven bucks and with this little additions seven seven ten right but the thing is you're trying to increase the perceived value of your product so if i have product a and product b and i've got something else in product b that that a doesn't have alright i might pull a bunch of buyers from that for the low low cost of you know five ten cents yep so there was slight modification but it wasn't like a reframe of you know inventing stuff doing all these sketches write nothing like that it was like let's get some nice branding and let's make it appealing to people online alright it's twenty twenty new it's gonna be a big year and you know we had to come in with some new awesome partners so for january we were partnering up with microsoft and my first million that's right this episode is brought to you by microsoft because whether you're just starting out or you're well on your way to your first million microsoft teams can help your team hit the ground running with must have features like real time chat editing and video calling all in one easy to use platform teams is a no brainer at a price you can afford yep there is a free version of teams as in it costs zero dollars so see for yourself at a k a dot m ms slash the hustle again that's a k a dot ms slash the hustle to check out teams brought to you by microsoft i love it microsoft that is a trillion dollar company we're talking about my first million they're they're on my first trillion so that's goals for everybody they got there because they build epic products microsoft word excel powerpoint these are products that stand the test of time and now they've come out with teams to help teams chat communicate it worked together and i think it's awesome alright great let's get back to this episode and now for anyone who's ever tried to source products from china or alibaba overseas in general there's the natural here sort of like there's a language barrier slightly there's the biggest thing is trust right so how did you have any missteps in terms of sourcing the product or any bad experiences where they should you something in its junk did you how did you navigate that no that was i was really scared about at the start because you the way you pay you pay thirty percent to start production and then seventy percent when production complete and i thought you know they're gonna just take my money and run i'll never hear from the chat messages will just be unanswered so honestly it's i you know there was never anything like that like you know there's always little quirks and little quality things and you know you asked for something and you get something else like that's just part of the the nature enter the beast but there was never any big you know big problems or issues okay so you get this product source and we can say it's what's the sort of generic way we can talk about the the the space you were in we so there's different categories in we can say it's in the sports and outdoors ports in outdoors categories you resources product you you you spend about how long to to do that that takes a month that takes a month and a half about a month about a month and how does round two go so round one kinda got your ass kicked what happens in round two so round two so i think i get the product up the fall of twenty sixteen and then you know come q four is prime time for selling online it can blow your mind the the amount of sales that can occur so so i've got the product on there my expectations are fairly low because of what happened around walmart and it takes off pretty much from the jump there's some different things you kinda wanna do to get get the wheel spinning but it that first year partial year twenty sixteen did had almost six figures in revenue so for someone going from zero to something that that was like wow this is this is huge i mean there's i'm not sure if you're sold on amazon or see but there's a seller app and i was like check an attic just refreshing that thing like constantly right and it almost didn't feel real until the deposits hit in i'm like oh my god people are really buying this right the the product so that's when it was like this could really be something and then kinda the rest of the journey was doubling down and trying to just grow it from there and so so that sounds amazing and if i'm listening to this i'm like oh hold on i feel like the magic step of like how the orders started coming in like what what was that what did you do to get it off the ground terms of the marketing or acquiring customers yeah so on amazon you need to be at the top of page one if you wanna get sales in your organic rank there's a couple different ways you can you can get there and it's harder now than it was that this is somewhat like the gold rush days of amazon that i was starting so it it's a different time and easier than it is today but you need to get to the top of page one so a lot of a lot of times people will cut the price of their product pretty heavily which will basically entice people to buy the product and then it you get in the good graces of amazon's algorithm you start moving up to the top of page one so long as your your product's good and your service is good you can stick there like and what did you notice for the algorithm what did it favor was it reviews is there anything else return rates you know what what did it like to me the two big variables are reviews and price like if if you have good reviews and your price competitively like you're gonna be in the good graces of the algorithm so those are those are so is that what you did did you did you lower the price initially to get going i lower the price initially ago and i got some initial reviews there's it's all sorts of funny business going on right now with reviews but back then you know i did it the right way and engaging in in any of that funny business i got all these legitimate reviews and it just started small there wasn't that much competition them versus now a lot of things are there's still a ton of opportunity in amazon and you can grow a huge business today but it is a little more saturated and competitive now so month one do you remember what you did month one was that what you were saying six figures or that was no that was the first like three months okay yeah so month one i wanna say it was like ten grand and then it starts to ramp and then it starts to ramp yeah it gets into the the holiday season is how are you feeling how are you feeling at this time i'm like i'm just pinching myself because i got burns somebody bed the first time and like i said mentally eventually i'm in a place where it's like i'm just i'm hurting because i do not wanna stay in the career i mean i it's just not the right fit so i'm feeling like so much is riding on figure this out and it's just gotta work and then once i got a little taste of it it was like okay now it's on give yourself a certain amount of time is like i'm gonna give myself six months to try this if i don't do this i go back and get my job or did you just say i'm doing this and you know well i kept my job right so i was i was still at my job so it was kind of you know if i was single in my twenties maybe i would have been been a risk year but i was we were expecting a a kid and you know at a mortgage payment so it was like i can't be irresponsible interest how was going to work that day when you're like well i'm doing you know sixty grand a month right now in my my my side hustle how was that very difficult very difficult to focus oh how i i have to say you know i was a professional i hope i like to think through and through but i can't lie like my you know my output or what i gave the company probably wasn't right everything that i i could just because you know it's it was so exciting like something else could could be hitting here and so how long did it go before you did end up going full time so twenty sixteen when i started in the fall and kinda ramped up and then twenty seventeen like halfway through seventeen is when my son was born and also i left the company so was a big right a big moment there and and seventeen was just over seven figures in sales that's when it really started to kinda validate like this is legit business you're always a little bit like is this real it's gonna be here tomorrow and then after you see it kinda of run a certain amount of time it's like okay i think it is and i can right i can step away and do it so what's a healthy margin on a business you do a million in sales for an amazon fba business what's considered good bad mediocre or whatever like give us a sense for the margin you should be looking for what you actually get to keep out of the revenue yeah yeah so i i target about twenty five percent is is good i would say right ppc cost advertising cost have been creeping upwards so i think like there's not a ton of like high sales spots anymore where you're gonna be able to pull that margin mh but at twenty twenty five percent is is pretty realistic and you were advertising on amazon itself absolutely yeah advertising is key on amazon as well and you can do you know like google you can get on amazon the most powerful shopping platform in the world then on a keyword and be the top result you know your sponsor but you are at the top of amazon dot com for whatever keyword you wanna get and reached millions of people that's that is serious power right there and so at your let's say when you in your your stride what percent of your sales were coming from the sponsored link versus organic so it was probably seventy percent organic and thirty percent sponsor okay and what were there any sort of key things you did that were because what i like about your what i like about what you said so far is there's two types of stories there's the founder is a genius it's like i was a genius for coming up with this idea i invented this thing that didn't exist and then when i was marketing this i came with was genius idea to to do something nobody else was doing and then this the other one which is more like reality which is founder not an idiot and founder not an idiot it says i did basically all the obvious things you would expect me to do and i did them well and i did them consistently and then and then i succeeded it and it didn't require and sort of of god in order to do it were there any founder genius moments because so far you've told me a lot of the the other one which is sort of not fumbling the ball were there any unconventional things you did or tried that worked you know not really i think that's the appeal of this business is that the hardest thing to overcome was really my own self doubt and at the start i was really uncertain like i'm just i'm a fool i'm gonna lose this money and i was telling my wife about this idea i'm gonna i sell stuff my name was i'm gonna take five thousand bucks and i'm when send it to china and bring product in and like she you know very loving and trying to be held from the start but saying like are you you know looking at it like a like she would any business trying to poke holes in it and i remember saying like at this point like please just be at cheerleader because i'm already kinda hanging by a thread like on my own belief in it so just like tell me i can do it and then like once we get this ball rolling and then like you know come on in and help me with some of the tactical stuff but but no there was no big thing and i think the biggest thing is like it's all so much of stuff is right there on the internet in facebook groups on podcasts on reddit like if you seek it and you really wanna go out there and and do it and actually take action and and you know do more than kinda just look at it and talk about it like it's there if you wanna learn it and it doesn't take it doesn't take huge capital to build a business like this i mean five grand is a lot of money but it's not you know gonna sync someone or gonna take takes someone one forever to save the type of money up did you go visit your manufacturer i did yeah i think were how many times did you do that and when did you do that early in the process as you grew or run to vet them so i went i found the manufacturer in alibaba and then as i was finding them and coming out of this business i actually had a trip book to go over to the canton fair which you don't know the canton fair it's like the world's biggest fare with suppliers over in china and it was insane i mean anything you ever would wanna source was over there so i was going over there thinking i'm gonna find all these products i'm gonna start my empire and that was really cool and i love being over there and the canton fair is like i i forgot the number it's like eight hundred football fields long or something crazy it's a biggest expo yeah crazy many manufacturers to meet sort of buyers exactly yeah so i went over there i didn't actually find my supplier there kinda had him on the on the line ahead of time but it was still a really good educational experience kinda both to see different suppliers learn more about the culture just kinda gate like in the in that heads space of doing business with china but then i did go visit my manufacturer a couple times and yeah it was really interesting i mean the first night i think he just wanted to mess with me he took me out and we're eating street food i like he bought me spiders and crickets and all these things just to just see you know what i would do i played her into his hands yeah there's a guy fuck with the americans yeah and he played it he played it well but it also i felt like going there cement the relationship further so like you get you know maybe a little bit better pricing a little bit better look at to make sure you get the quality right so i think it's such a relationship game with suppliers like whether they're gonna prioritize versus someone else's and all sorts of things are they applying for your competitors too i believe so yeah i mean that's the case for a lot of a lot of these plastic like they'll you know they're put out outputting all sorts of products and slapping on different labels so yeah they pretty certain they were so you you went and you cemented the relationship you spent some time together great so you you did that the other question i had was you talked about you know the more successfully you get the bigger your orders need to get and so you're always in this cash pour business you know asset rich game where the business is growing your asset is growing but you continually pouring out money before it comes back and so talk a little about how you manage that did you do anything with line of credit or anything like that talk about some of the mechanics yeah that was i don't i way underestimate underestimated that you're your spot on that was really a tough component of it and you feel really poor even though you're like i'm showing these profits on paper but like the money is the money goes just back out of my bank account so i i really just did it based on the profits of the business and drawn him down to i mean it felt like every order i placed that was like putting my whole net worth on the line which was a scary feeling but i was kinda of necessary to keep to keep fueling the growth of of the company so i did an amazon offers a line of credit once you get some establishment the interest rate's pretty high like but you can always pull on on that or once you've been up and running in a while but for me i just poured the profits right back in gotcha so let's let's do the formula so what on one side the input so five grand is what you put personal capital into the business right time so you started this sort of late twenty sixteen you sold when early twenty nineteen early twenty nineteen and so let's call it two two and a half years roughly right yep so that's the that's what came in what you got out of it so so you sold this business what multiple do these businesses of sell for are these the types of things that you know you could be doing a million bucks sell for ten or a million bucks yourself for a million yeah so usually about a three multiple of what of eb eb yep three of eb so it's a you know relative to other business it's a low multiple but you're also amazon's a risky animal to beyond so like i think the how did that decision to sell come up man and that was so hard because i really liked like this was like the first job if you will that i ever felt like i i love this so like i love doing this so the idea of selling it was hard and i didn't when i started this it was all about i i want freedom i want flexibility i wanna be around when my my son is here don't wanna be in commute in these meetings i want like the you know the actual time to be here but also kind of the mental mental health or mental clarity to be present as well so but as i built it and it i got bigger and bigger it seemed like alright this is the right thing to do for my family if we can sell this this would go a long way so i started because there's risk right that that was there's risk yeah amazon amazon risk amazon can take you out in a moments notice for something very legitimate something knowledge legitimate so like i i mean i would have nightmares at night like hey what if i wake up tomorrow and i have the email from amazon and i'm shut down and i gotta go through all the hoops and who know like so that just felt really scary and like there's probably a lot of upside left on the table like maybe you know the the the folks that bought the company from me they can turn around to sell for five x in a few years and that that would be that i'd be thrilled if they do that but for me it was like to to bank the the win the win just felt like the right thing to do and you also mentioned when we were chatting before we came on here the sort of other risks that are in in a business like this with physical inventory you know you're you're putting a lot of money into inventory what happens with a bad batch what happens you know so talk a little bit about that other rift that you saw besides the amazon sort of competition or algorithm changes besides that what else was there yeah so it's you know when i started i was bringing in five hundred units it's pretty small like i said five thousand bucks at the start but it's a very cash intensive business growing is great but that means your next order from your supplier is gonna be that much larger right so when from these tiny little orders to you know forty foot containers that have you know quarter million dollars worth of inventory in them and if something's goes wrong with that that's like i'm i'm sunk so there's also like every shipment you have this there's low grade fear that like you know this container gonna fall is this container gonna fall the boat and then like my business is done so you know to mitigate that it felt responsible too there's there's just various risk you all your eggs in that basket so and how'd do you go about selling what how did that happen so i used you had joe valley from twilight brokerage i used them they were fantastic yep i never sold a business i didn't know this world so they you know i i have a former accountant former cpa so like my books were were clean that's usually a pretty big thing that people mess up people mess up that wasn't wasn't an issue for me and yeah it was crazy i we put the business on and within i wanna say a week or ten days there were seven offers full price or higher offers which was just like mind blowing to to have that too so that was a a super nerve wracking process and also an exciting process and you went back and negotiated with all seven or took one of them of what you do yeah so there's negotiation so it's like i think when i walked into it it's like well whoever names the high number i'm gonna you know that's what i'm gonna take right but when you get into it you realize some people are like the guys that by my business i had a just a good connection with them and i thought they would really do a good job running the business like they knew what they were doing and they really capable they seem honest straightforward about things versus other people were a little bit like me a few years ago like they were awesome but like they were still sitting in their in their cubes somewhere and they never touched e commerce or amazon i was just afraid like if they inherit this beast and like things you know go bad like i i don't know what that looks like so i wanna make sure i pass this someone that you thought what you thought you get sued or you what would you think would happen if it was who cares you sell this i guess you didn't need this business before or sorry this business just came out of nowhere you you built it you sell it i don't know yeah i maybe it wasn't a rational thought i i'm really not sure i mean the other piece was the transition too it's like if people know e commerce and amazon it makes life so much easier they just pick it up and run versus if it was someone that never touched this they would've have been a lot of investment but yeah part of it probably was just an irrational fee like they're gonna they're gonna jack this thing up and somehow i'm gonna it's all gonna get un unwind and it's gonna be like a bad joke on here or something you know we've only known each other for i don't know how long ago just said here for thirty minutes maybe but i like i really like your personality because a you're nice humble guy you you know you're smart guy but b i think it's cool to see somebody who's not mister bra who started a business like i i actually think you're quite risk ave verse and you just took very practical pragmatic steps to like approach this business and get the outcome you wanted without being like sort of hero entrepreneur and there's a lot of hero entrepreneur stories out there because that's what sells right so taking crazy risk that's a great story right but what i like about your story it was a great story to me is that you were more of a conservative guy it sounds like to me you you know you're like you know i i got beat up my first but you lost only a thousand bucks in three months it's like that's nothing you know like that's a cost of entry for business right but but the way you were approaching it i think really is very i think we'll be very relatable if i'm listening to this i'm like okay this it's not like this guy's from some cut from some totally different cloth than me he's not some alien species that has this different no fear gene it sounds like you're a regular person who did a really awesome business and i ever i really like that oh cool yeah thanks for i i think it's really the truth that people can access these types of businesses and with a pretty small bet like create a life changing business for themselves they're right in their family so i think you know i would encourage a lot of you know if you feel something inside you go for and try it because you never know what could happen and so you sell and you do is is it a clean deal cash in the bank or you gotta do a seller note and sort of take money to it's mostly a clean deal with a small seller note okay yeah and so money hits the bank what happens tell me about that day u it was i think it was so going through the process was so stressful that when it hit i was just like this big relief and it just felt like like i had to run like you know an ultra marathon from like kind of birthing this little business out and then carrying it for a few years and then the culmination of it it was just like pure relief and i felt really good there was no like you know big part there there it was nothing maybe like you'd think when someone sells a business and they see seven figures dropping their account it was just like a big right exhale and so so you you see it coming your bank out and what changes for you in your life right you said you you you by that point i assume you had had your your child yes yep and so what changes in your life what do what did change in your lifestyle tell us about what that's what that's like yeah i mean it really was isn't a blessing it was and it still is a blessing just you know wealth in and of itself to me isn't kind the game but it's what the money can enable and like i son's two and a half now and like the the freedom and the flexibility and the relationship i have with him like it wouldn't have been impossible what had i still been working you know my normal nine to five your time i have i have the time and i have like i'm just president like a really happy and open to be with what's it's been the best things ever happened to me having right you know having our son so that honestly just kinda of that time and freedom has been the best thing also giving me the gift of just being able to sit back and reflect a little bit like what do i wanna do as far as you know do next what type of dead i wanna be partner i think for me like i was just on this treadmill you know going and go and going and i'm working i'm traveling them trying to get groceries in the house you just go in all the time and you don't like this allowed a little bit of space to to just step back and think like what do i wanna do next what do i wanna do with my life you know so that was a real blessing and i don't think a lot of people don't have that luxury to to do that and so you you you're talk about asking yourself that question alright what i wanna do now sale comes through you have that sort of diplomatic day where you you just feel relief you don't go do anything like i remember talking to michael bur he's like my probably the third fourth episode and know he sold his business for crazy money like eight eight hundred fifty million dollars and they they went to a movie like him and his wife went to a movie like at you know ten dollar tickets movie because he was like i don't know what to do we haven't seen a movie in a while i love movies let's go watch you know they they went much forgetting sarah marshall so so what did you actually do that day oh man it i honestly i think it was such an remarkable day that i can't i i think my son was home from his school and i feel like we just like watched you know mister rogers or something and like hung out and like when you're hanging out with a little kid like you you're go into a whole different heads space so it wasn't yeah it was just a normal thing which is actually totally fine and how i would've would've have liked it so it was pretty pretty chill day and you said you started ask yourself what you wanna do again so you had option one which a lot of people would take which is great i gotta win i know how to do this now next time if i did it out it'd be way smarter at it because i know all these new things and they jump back in and try to you know sort of exploit this opportunity again you didn't do that what oh i i really wanna like i i liked this but i feel like it was sort of a chapter in my life and like i did it i started and i learned a ton and i i don't know if i have the energy so like knowing what i know now like you gotta really want it to carry something from kind of the idea in your head building it to scaling it to selling it like you gotta you gotta want it deep down like every single day and keep grinding and keep grinding and keep grinding it and i honestly don't know if i have that in me right anymore for an amazon business so i'm doing a little bit of amazon consulting which i really like because i'm actually like when you do an amazon business it's kind of a lonely existence like it's it's just you you're talking to your suppliers but you just kinda roll in solo for most of it so it's been fun been working with with some companies to help them themselves names amazon that's been pretty cool and i'm trying to get into the content space as well kind of leveraging so like i said them a former cpa and personal finance nerd like building an online businesses so i think sam talked about like hey if i was starting something new on a weekend business go build the content site these guys are in a at nerd wall or whatever they're doing doing well so i saw the same thing and i felt the same thing as him so that's kinda of my next yeah shout it out what's the website i was reading it this morning i'm way yeah so it's called wealth fame dot com yeah it's brand new i'm kinda i'm still in that sort of fragile state like i was when like i haven't my parents are like what are you building them moment does it have a name like no yeah yeah of course it has a name so it's still kind of in those early days but the the thought is like i'm a personal finance nerd i've learned a lot from podcasts and online so i'm trying to like pull all these things together and and put a site out there that people can learn about making money saving money financial independence like that's became a big thing on this journey too like alright if you really want freedom you gotta you know get financial independence and financial freedom so talking about some of those things so we'll see i mean it's such a crowded of space and it's a hard thing to do as far as like stand out and get eyeballs on it but i'm starting at the same place as it was before at zero give it a shot and i i really like to write and i hope you know that we'll see what happens with it yeah wealth dot com so you i think you'll get thousands of visits just from saying that you know say three times wealth dot com wealth thing you know people will listen because because i think you know you touched on the right thing which is financial independence you know i regret naming this podcast my first million now because a you know the gimmick kind of is is interesting at the beginning but like then you're stuck with the gimmick because it's hard to change your name but b you know the intention is never really about making millions of dollars the what people want is a great life and the good thing about what what money can provide you is that freedom the financial freedom to to live life on your terms whatever those may be for you it might be hanging out with your kid it might be writing it might be consulting it might be skiing i don't know i don't know what else you like but it enables the freedom for the lifestyle you want and and i think it's really fundamentally what people what people want and are realizing that you know job is one option and it can get you to financial freedom but it usually gets you there when you're sixty five and if you're willing if you're willing to trade twenty one years twenty one through sixty five then that's a path that's trying tried and tested yep but a lot of people are now realizing especially as the internet opens up all these new opportunities that you can get financial freedom much faster and in a way maybe that that's more in line with you and who you are and once you have that financial freedom you can play the game differently because every month you don't have to sort of wonder where is the paycheck gonna come from and so so i like that you're teaching that because i think that is the probably the most important thing people can learn on a in terms of career or finances is that that one principle a hundred percent yeah and it took me a long time even to realize that you know i was not really chasing money for the sake of money but then once you get going and you're like i'm sure you've heard of the four percent rule like which is you know if you can if your burn rate essentially is say forty grand a year you need to save million bucks forty grams four percent of that so like you kinda can like quickly do like this math like alright here's what i need to achieve like so four percent rule helps you figure out what's your number where you would be financially free exactly right yep and and it comes from your monthly burn rate which most people don't even know that's my first figure out your burn rate and so so do you track your burn rate every month you know i'm not like hardcore but you have a rough sense to have yeah i definitely have a rough sense so like there was definitely like a number like hey if we get to you know this number like we can live a comfortable life like we're not gonna be like you know taking month long vacations to you know the most exclusive places in the world like we can be very comfortable of a very nice life and like that was the goal and we're pretty much at that goal now and it feels like really really nice and so you said a new goal now or what happens you know i don't know i guess so because you gotta keep moving forward and doing something but it's the new goal is a little bit more like do something that's interesting like i also wanna figure out like i feel like in my life i'm you know mid late thirties now and i've done like very little to ever like give back or like do anything positive right for the broader world so somehow i want to do that because i think like that will feel really good and those are the types of things that kinda stick with you and really matter and that's been a big thing might being an parent just like caring about someone else more than you care about yourself like actually feels it's selfish it feels like really good it feels great to love someone that much contribute that much so i think like there's must be some nugget there that there should be some other other things to do then just keep chasing money keep chasing money because i don't know how you end that game if you just continue to try to do that do you do you know much about tony robbins have you you you ever followed him or or re listen to any of his stuff written i listen to him but i you know i i'm not not not like it not deep i know people that are so deep in it yeah in the basically you go from like i i don't know them and i'm skeptical it seems like just another motivational speaker it's kinda where i am to be honest yeah like that's that's the normal and my you take two steps forward and you're in the cult and it's like there's no in between i feel like with him and so i went to one of his events i actually recommend you go especially now because i think it's a it's best when you're in transitions or you're in a free space mentally to think and so i went to one of his events he has he's like events where he'll sell out you know five thousand seven thousand people will will come to this event called unleash the power with it he has lots of cheesy names because he's like you know older and built his fame on like the commercial days there's a lot of like cringey stuff like that but his content is very good and he two things stood that me one one that one just for context which is even if you're not into the content it's just fucking amazing to see this guy is the best public speaker i've ever seen i i would say he's the best public speaker on earth he is able to hold ten thousand people's attention for four days straight from nine am until nine pm with no breaks in between and you know he says this even during his thing he's like you know most people can't sit through a two hour movie nowadays their attention wander like watch what happens in the these next four days and it's true people are like wired they're like connected to him it's is really crazy so just from a wow that's a that's a that's what an effective speaker it looks like that is the mike of jordan speaker it's cool just to take that before he retire and when you're talking about your goal and the fact that you know you you gotta come up with a new goal he talks about this he's like you know you're gonna reach what you achieved if you if you put the work in and you're gonna reach what you achieved to do and you're watch what's gonna happen you're gonna move the goal post back and some people you see that as a defeating thing but he has a very simple phrase which is progress equals happiness and i've i i've really found this to be true which is you are at your happiest when you feel a sense of progress towards whatever it is if you're trying to lose weight if you start to lose the weight you will feel happy yeah it doesn't actually matter what your weight is if you plateau you will start to feel unhappy as soon as you start to make progress again you'll feel happy financially same thing career same thing relationship same thing progress equals happiness and i use this to manage people too because it's like instead of looking at the absolute goal of where people wanna be or where they are you just try to measure progress and encourage progress because they will feel happy along the way and it's it works for yourself too so it's a very long winded way to get to a very simple phrase which is progress equals happiness i love that wanted to share that yeah no i'll have to check out to to go from you know a mild skeptic to to to your level of all in on is the other one which is oh i checked it out and no that guy is the worst and didn't that's fine you could have your range of opinions but i think if you think there's lots of you know nuggets of gold in his stuff okay so so this has been awesome where can people will sort of get a ahold of you reach you read your thoughts so obviously wealth fam dot com what else is like just i just created a twitter account i think i have twelve followers right now it's brand it's a embarrassing single little follower account but i'm tweeting about you know financial independence building businesses online amazon all those sorts of good topics and at paul underscore d underscore anderson right anderson anderson's seo just buy yourself like a thousand followers just to get off the twelve number yeah for real real followers but you get to a thousand alright going on five by fiber just to get the credibility yeah yeah you can yeah i'd love to if you're interested in starting the amazon business you're doing you have questions thinking about selling it you know financial opponents anything be happy to you know converse with the online awesome dude thanks for coming i i i like this to i like like i like this a lot for for a lot of the reasons i said i think that if you're listening to this and you're in the same mindset you're in i'd be pretty inspired to to say yeah i can i can do something like that too yeah thanks a lot sean i think you're gonna be you're gonna just like me at these people that changed literally changed my life and they don't know who i am like you're gonna have people listen to this your podcast and then you know one year two or three years that you know look you up send you a know like hey man you changed everything for me and i i'd have to think that's gonna feel pretty good when that day happens because i think it is gonna happen yeah my favorite email that i get from listeners is the one that says you don't know like you don't know this yet but i'm gonna be on your show someday and i'm like hey hell yeah that's the yeah that's the go and you came from the audience onto the show so you are the sort of good example here alright man thanks great thank you too