Podcast Episode 209 – How to Master Your Amazon FBA Reselling Skills

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Episode 209 Transcript:

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01.8] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Full-Time FBA Show. In each episode, it’s our goal to help you turn part-time hours into a full-time income, selling almost anything on Amazon. Now, your hosts of the show, Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman.

[WELCOME]

[0:00:21.8] REBECCA: Hello there and welcome to this episode of The Full Time FBA Show. We are on episode number 209 today, and we’re going to be talking about how to master your Amazon FBA reselling skills. This is something that you need to focus on as you’re getting your business up and going or as you are a little bit down the road.

If you were listening to this and have already started your business and have been at it for a while, there might be some skills that you haven’t mastered yet that you really need to focus on. And so, we want to help you think through those things today, in this episode. And with me to talk about that is my cohost and business partner, Stephen Smotherman, welcome to the show.

[0:00:56.8] STEPHEN: Well, I’m glad to be here to help people master their sourcing skills, all the skills that we need to run a successful business and a successful Amazon business, and we’ll get into that today on The Full-Time FBA Show.

[CONVERSATION]

[0:01:10.5] REBECCA: So, Stephen just mentioned there are sourcing skills and many other skills that you need to learn and become a master at as you are getting into selling on Amazon. You want to master those sourcing skills to find profitable inventory. You also need to work on your pricing skills so that you can squeeze out every last penny of profit while keeping those sales coming in.

You want to make sure that you have Keepa skills so that you can read and understand the Keepa graph, you would need to have planning skills to make sure that everything that needs to get done actually gets done. This is very important as we have learned over time, you got to plan, you got to prioritize. You need business skills to make sure that your Amazon business is actually running profitably and the list goes on.

So that brings us to today’s topic, how to acquire and master these skills that you need for running your FBA business as a reseller.

[0:02:04.2] STEPHEN: Yeah, this is going to be a powerful episode if you’re able to connect with the strategy and if you’ve ever worked out in your life, maybe in the gym or workout video, then you can understand what it takes to gain a masterful understanding of improving your Amazon reseller skills, and I’ll tell you what I mean by that.

So, step number one to master your Amazon FBA reselling skills is to understand your main goal. Let’s think about the situation of going to the gym to get in shape. So, we have someone going to the gym, they’re wanting to get in shape, there’s all sorts of machines, and different people doing different things. How do you know what to do? How do you figure out what you need to do first?

Well, I mean, that depends on what your goals are. Some are at the gym wanting to lose weight, some want to gain muscle, others want to improve their range of motion, or something else altogether. So with your Amazon FBA business, think about this, what is your main goal? Focusing on understanding what your goal is, to begin with, that is your first step, and the next step, it becomes more clearer once you figure out what your goal is.

[0:03:02.2] REBECCA: So, once you know your goal, the second step in this process of mastering your skills is to follow an action plan. So talking about our exerciser, our gym goer, I don’t know, what would you call that person?

[0:03:16.8] STEPHEN: Let’s go with gym goer.

[0:03:17.8] REBECCA: A gym goer.

[0:03:17.9] STEPHEN: Yes.

[0:03:18.3] REBECCA: So, depending on the goal of that person who is going to the gym, you’re going to put in place a particular workout plan. So let’s say this person wants to put on muscle. Okay, this would be me at my age in life, I am in my 40s, this is a time when you’re starting to lose that muscle mass as you’re getting older, and so you want to work on that, putting on that lean muscle.

So what do you do? You start lifting weights, and you start adding heavier and heavier weights to lift, and as time goes on, those initial weights become easier to lift because your muscles are growing and so you’re able to add more weight. You don’t start off lifting like a hundred pounds at a time. You have to start off with a very small amount of weight.

You put a plan in place to start out small with like five-pound weights and then just keep going at your exercise, keep going at your workouts, you don’t do all of those workouts at once but you do them over and over again. Over time, those muscles build, lifting becomes easier and eventually, you have muscles that can lift those heavier weights.

So let’s say that the main goal for you, not as a gym goer or as a middle-aged woman trying to not lose your muscle mass, is that you’re looking at your main goal as your business, to find and sell profitable inventory on Amazon, and you want to do that again and again because you’re not just looking to make a quick buck.

You are looking to make a full-time income at Amazon and that’s a great goal, and it’s one that we can help you with. So you want to learn some sourcing strategies, you want to go out looking for profitable inventory, and that’s hard at first because you don’t know what you’re doing at first but over time, it’s going to start getting easier.

You’re going to have that repetition, just like when you’re learning to lift weights. You’re going to do it over and over again, starting out easy, and eventually building up to lifting heavier weights, sourcing more difficult inventory, and that commitment to the process paired with learning the right sourcing strategies will start to bring results.

So again, you don’t just source a little and get successful overnight but you have consistent repetition of the same activity, over and over gradually increasing what you’re doing until you get that success.

[0:05:32.4] STEPHEN: Yeah, there’s many times when I have conversations with people who are trying to get started with Amazon and I ask them, “How often do you go looking for inventory?” and they’re like, “Um, well, I mean, I went – like, a month ago and I think, again like for a little bit last week” and there’s no consistency. There’s no repetition that comes with building those sourcing muscles, and so getting an actual plan is huge and can help you.

The next step, number three is to track your progress. This is a step that most people roll their eyes at when I tell them to track their progress. They say, “I know if I’m making progress, I know if I’m doing this” but if you are ever tempted to ignore this step, don’t. It’s a critical step towards your success.

And so our gym goer, because we’re going with that, no pun intended, our gym goer with the goal of building muscle, you know, will actually build muscle faster if they track their progress. You know, it’s been scientifically proven, tested, that the best path for a gym goer is to gain muscle, is to write it down on day one.

How heavy the weights are, how many reps, the repetitions that they lift, for them write down the size of their biceps or whatever muscle they’re focusing on, then each time they lift, check in with tracking their progress, the weights, the reps, the size, again and again. That way, especially if they can see the results in the mirror yet, maybe they can see on paper, their progress.

How much they’ve gained of muscle over a certain amount of time, how much progress is being slowed down because it took two weeks off from going to the gym. Once they’re following a plan, they can see the results based on their actions or their inactions that brought about the results that they’re experiencing.

So as an Amazon seller, this is an important step too, tracking your progress. So as an Amazon seller, this is an important step, tracking your progress, that many Amazon sellers skip. But those who track their reseller actions can start to see how well things are going, and possible reasons why things might not be going as well as they hoped.

So tracking reseller actions like, how long do you spend learning a new strategy? How long do you spend sourcing for inventory? How many items do you ship to Amazon this week? How many sales you got? How many returns? Tracking your feedback score, your account health. There’s a lot of things to track, so don’t try to start it all at once.

Remember, go back to what your main goal is, track the important things, the important reseller activities that match up with that goal, track the progress, and it will help you master more and more reseller skills over time.

[0:07:50.2] REBECCA: And those things that you’re tracking, it may be that you’re having to just write that down in a notebook, open up your notes app, write those things down or it could be that you look in Seller Central, or if you use InventoryLab like we do, you can track a lot of that in those applications.

The same way that I track my progress in apps when I’m doing my exercise for the week. I track my progress with my Apple Watch and I track it with different apps that I use to track my nutrition and how much water I’m drinking every day. All of that you can track it using technology or just use a notebook, and write it down. You don’t have to do it every day, but do it once a week or so, so that over time, you can see and it really is inspiring to see that progress as you’re making it.

[0:08:31.3] STEPHEN: Absolutely.

[0:08:32.4] REBECCA: So the last step that we want to talk to you about in mastering your Amazon FBA reseller skills is to hire a coach. Sure, our gym goer that we’ve been talking about and maybe we’re just talking about me, I don’t know. We keep saying gym goer but then I keep talking about my own progress here.

This person might have the goal of putting on muscle and you can watch some YouTube videos and try to pick the right machines to get the most muscle gain in the shortest amount of time, but there is a huge difference between going to the gym by yourself and doing all those activities by yourself versus hiring a personal trainer.

So a personal trainer can tell you which machines are perfect for your body type or for your muscle goals. They can give you corrections when they notice you’re doing something wrong with the weights. They can also give you the encouragements that we all need and they can give you accountability.

Usually, you don’t talk yourself out of going to the gym if you’ve paid for a training session and a coach is waiting for you to show up. That’s not the time when you’re just going to be like, “Eh, it’s not important to me.” No, you’ve paid for it, somebody is waiting for you. So many amazing things come from hiring a coach to help you meet your goals.

Of course, a coach comes with a cost but think of it this way, you’re not really paying for the coach. You’re paying for the customized plan, the shortcuts, the feedback, the encouragement, the accountability, the results, and back to me as the example of the gym goer, I watch plenty of YouTube videos.

I follow people online, I’ve been doing this for years for either workouts or yoga sessions or whatever. I’ll tell you, the greatest results that I have found in building up my own strength and flexibility and endurance came when I signed up for a yoga studio and went in on a regular basis. I started going in, I’ve got teachers who know me.

They recognize me now because I’ve been there long enough, they know my progress. They are encouraging about the progress that I’ve made over time. It is night and day difference from just watching videos online. I still watch videos online and exercise when I’m not able to get out of the house or when I just want to do something real quick.

But it does not beat having a personal coach or a personal teacher, and the same is true with meeting and even exceeding your Amazon FBA reseller goals. Hiring a qualified coach or teacher can be a game changer that will save you from making both big and small mistakes as well as fast forward your progress towards becoming a successful Amazon FBA seller.

At Full-Time FBA, we have a specialized coaching program to help sellers like you find the success on Amazon that you are looking for.

[0:11:12.0] STEPHEN: Yeah, and we’d love to help coach you and I don’t know if anyone’s ever worked with a trainer or a coach before but it’s one of the best things that you can do to move forward because in regards to the gym goer, Rebecca, actually, when it comes to going to the gym, you know I have done it both ways.

I have done it on my own, I have hired a personal trainer and my results with the personal trainer were always so much better than just doing it on my own, and we don’t want you to be on your own anymore in your Amazon business. So, if you’re curious about our coaching program, simply go to fulltimefba.com/coaching.

And if you want a taste of what our coaching might be like, then all the things that we teach and are important to your success, then we invite you to a free five-day online workshop coming up soon, called, The Amazon Q4 Income Accelerator Workshop, where we will show you how to realistically make a full-time income selling on Amazon through the ways that we have found success and our coaching students have found success too.

So the sign-up link, fulltimefba.com/workshop. It’s a free five-day online workshop, they’ll be five of the best most content-packed days of free Amazon FBA success training. Basically, our goal for this upcoming workshop to be even better than the last paid Amazon training you paid your time and your money into. So be sure to come there, fulltimefba.com/workshop.

[0:12:26.2] REBECCA: What if somebody is listening to this in the future not when this episode drops, can they still go to that link?

[0:12:32.4] STEPHEN: Yes, they can absolutely still go to that link, fulltimefba.com/workshop. We do workshops like this a few times a year and so even if you’re missing our Q4 workshop, guess what? There is another one coming up right around the corner. So no matter when you’re listening to this, fulltimefba.com/workshop, to get access to our upcoming workshop that will be coming up soon.

[0:12:52.3] REBECCA: So, if you’re a seller on Amazon or you’re thinking of getting started selling and you want to really start to build up your sourcing strength, your sourcing muscles, finally become a professional seller on Amazon, the kind of seller who consistently sells your inventory over and over again, who’s able to make a full-time income selling on Amazon, then join us for the free five-day online workshop, where we will show you how to find unlimited sources of inventory to sell on Amazon for consistent profits.

We’re also going to cover how to make the best inventory sourcing decisions like what to resell, what to pass on, what to buy a lot of, how to always have profitable inventory in stock. We’re also going to talk with you about the full-time income success path and how you can realistically snowball your Amazon profits into a full-time income. If this sounds like something you’d want to experience in your Amazon world, then join us for the upcoming Amazon Q4 Income Accelerator Workshop.

Sign up now to get to content that only those who sign up for the workshop are going to get. It will be so much more than you get on this podcast, which we are pretty proud of this podcast and we feel like we give really good information here but the workshops are even better. There’s just so much more that we can do when we’re looking at you face-to-face through the Zoom and not just talking into your ears through a podcast.

So again, the link to that free five-day online workshop is fulltimefba.com/workshop and we really hope to see you there.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:14:24.4] REBECCA: Thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show. As a reminder, the show notes, the transcript of this episode, and all of the links that we mentioned today can be found at fulltimefba.com/209 because we’re on episode number 209.

[0:14:39.6] STEPHEN: Next week on the show, we’re going to be talking about Five Amazon Coach Red Flags. We have some experiences with Amazon seller coaches, some have been great, some have been not so good, and there’s some that – some of our coaching students have told us about some of their previous experiences, and so we’ve put together these five big red flags when it comes to Amazon coaches to look out for. We just want to make sure that you make a good choice about that.

[0:15:03.0] REBECCA: Can I also share my story of a really bad writing coach that I had one time? I’ve got a great red flag for that one.

[0:15:08.8] STEPHEN: Okay, we will definitely drop that next week too on The Full-Time FBA Show.

[OUTRO]

[0:15:14.6] ANNOUNCER: That is all for this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show, so head over to fulltimefba.com/podcast, where you will find the show notes and links from this episode. While you’re there, subscribe to our newsletter where you’ll get several free downloads of our popular and helpful Amazon FBA resources. Now, take action on what you have learned today, so you can find success at turning part-time hours into a full-time income with Amazon FBA.

[END]