Podcast Episode 094 : Is The Wholesale Formula Course Worth It?

On today’s episode, we give you a full rundown of what the The Wholesale Formula course entails, how it compares to others that cover the same topic, and how each of us has benefited from doing it to help you make an informed decision. We kick off our episode by sharing our personal experiences with the course and letting you know when it is next available for you to enroll. We also share three main reasons that the course was useful to us, from being the most complete course of its kind to the evidence that it delivers actual results.

To further back this up, we hear from two Full-Time FBA followers who have taken the course. The Wholesale Formula course may or may not be right for you at this point in your Amazon business journey, and so it’s our goal with this episode to help you know if it’s right for you. We hope you join us for a thorough exploration of the benefits of this great resource in order to make a more informed decision on your Amazon business journey!

Listen on the podcast player below.

Like what you hear? Tell a friend… and be sure to leave us a rating and a review. Here’s how.

Key points from Episode 94:

• When Stephen and Rebecca each took The Wholesale Formula course and their own individual experiences with the course.
• Why The Wholesale Formula is the most complete course of its kind.
• Stephen’s experience with other wholesale courses before finding The Wholesale Formula.
• The companion portion of the course that focuses on training Virtual Assistants to work on wholesale-focused activities.
• Why The Wholesale Formula is the most content-packed course available.
• Proof that The Wholesale Formula delivers actual results.
• Results that Rebecca and Stephen experienced following the course.
• Lacey Sanders shares her experience with The Wholesale Formula.
• How The Wholesale Formula helped Julie Hughes build a business she loves.
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• Free access to the live online Wholesale Training Workshop
• Free webinar: The Best Way to Get Started with Wholesale on Amazon
• The Wholesale Formula course
• The Full-Time FBA / Wholesale Formula Bonus Package

Right-click here and save as to download this episode to your computer.

More Episodes from the Full-Time FBA Show podcast:

• Click here to see the full list of podcast episodes

Don’t miss an upcoming episode! Subscribe, download episodes, and review the Full-Time FBA Show:

• • • Subscribe on iTunes
    • Follow on Spotify
    • Follow on Amazon Music (or just ask Alexa to “play The Full-Time FBA Show podcast”)
    • Follow on iHeartRadio
    • Subscribe on Podbean
    • Subscribe on Podbay
    • Subscribe on Podchaser

Click here to subscribe to
the Full-Time FBA Newsletter

Back to the main page for The Full-Time FBA Show

Episode 94 Transcript:

[WELCOME]

[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.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:20.9] STEPHEN: Welcome to episode number 94 of The Full-Time FBA Show. We are here today talking about is the wholesale formula course worth it? Is it the right thing for you to do? And to talk about it with me today is my wife, Rebecca. How’s it going?

[0:00:36.4] REBECCA: It’s going great, looking forward to this episode.

[0:00:38.2] STEPHEN: Yeah, we’ve both taken The Wholesale Formula Course, I took it back in 2015 when it first came out and I’ve been able to apply what I’ve learned and seen some success and you’ve recently took it, so tell us about that.

[0:00:49.5] REBECCA: Yeah, I started on the course in late 2020, finished it up early in 2021, it didn’t start sourcing until earlier this year, 2021.

[0:00:57.8] STEPHEN: Yeah, we’ve both had different experience with previous versions. The current version, we’ve had different results and stuff and we’re going to talk about this today on the podcast because in just a few days, The Wholesale Formula course is going to be available and open to purchase. Now, The Wholesale Formula is usually only open once a year to the public and so this is a very special time to take advantage of The Wholesale Formula.

You know what? The Wholesale Formula Course is an investment, it’s an expensive course but it delivers the results that it promises and so we want to talk about that today on the episode. To make sure that the course is worth it for you and so we want to break down exactly what we think about it and if we think it’s right for you and we’re going to do that on this episode of the Full-Time FBA Show.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:41.5] REBECCA: Okay, let’s get started with talking about The Wholesale Formula course and whether it might be right for you as an Amazon seller. We’re going to be covering our top three reasons that we have found The Wholesale Formula to be 100% worth the cost and you can see if that matches up for you. It may or may not be right for you at this point in your Amazon business or with your business model. Hopefully, this will give you a little bit of clarity on that.

Our first reason that we have found The Wholesale Formula to be worth the cost is that it is the most complete wholesale course available. Stephen, can you fill us in a little bit on your experience with the wholesale courses that are available for Amazon sellers and how The Wholesale Formula has compared to them?

[0:02:22.2] STEPHEN: Yeah, I’ve definitely had a lot of experience with different wholesale courses and I’ve been wanting to add wholesale to my Amazon business for a long time and back in 2014, 2015, I started looking for courses to teach me how to do it. I didn’t know anything about it, retail arbitrage came natural to me but I needed something to teach me how to do wholesale.

I found a course, I paid for it and I did not see results because of that course. I kept looking for other courses, found another course, paid for it, that one didn’t work for me either. I even found a book on Amazon that focused on this and that book didn’t help me either.

Finally, I got a chance to talk to Dan Meadors of The Wholesale Formula and he walked me through kind of the process that they have of buying and selling wholesale items on Amazon and a huge lightbulb went off and so I invested my time and took that course and started seeing results and so it’s a course, it’s been around since 2015 and every single year, they update the course, sometimes there’s a full update where they update everything, other times there are certain sections that they add or tweak or make more concise and so the course is not only just complete, it’s always up-to-date.

While other courses might focus on how to find wholesale sources and how to choose what to buy, almost all the other courses miss a huge ingredient, which is how to land the wholesale account, how to have the brand accept you as a seller of their products on Amazon. That’s the thing that’s the hardest part of selling on Amazon with wholesale inventory, getting the wholesaler to agree and so, The Wholesale Formula is complete because it goes deep and provides multiple ways to get a wholesale brand to say yes to you as a seller of their products on Amazon. They help you land that account and that’s been a game changer for me.

[0:04:11.1] REBECCA: Yeah, I have found all of these things to be true with my experience to this point as well with using The Wholesale Formula course to learn how to sell wholesale items. Now, I’m a few years behind you in that I did not begin learning how to do wholesale sourcing until really earlier this year and one of the things that I have found to be very helpful with the course in talking about how complete the course is, that they have large companion portion of that wholesale formula course, it’s focused on training for VA’s or virtual assistants to help you outsource.

Learning how to use a VA, how to get a VA going, helping you to outsource your sourcing and we’ll get into that a little bit more later but that’s an area that I think is going to be pivotal for me in particular with sourcing through wholesale sourcing methods because I’m finding that I am the bottleneck in this whole process and I can learn all of these different methods but having the time and the ability to sit down and do it all is where I find myself being limited. I love that within the course, there’s this component.

[0:05:23.3] STEPHEN: Yeah, the ability to outsource and scale just takes wholesale to the next level, being able to learn that and really glad that’s in The Wholesale Formula course.

[0:05:31.2] REBECCA: Our first reason that we think that The Wholesale Formula is 100% worth the cost is that it is the most complete wholesale course available and our second reason is that The Wholesale Formula is the most content-packed wholesale course available and I would say with that, having been through the most updated version of The Wholesale Formula in recent months, there is zero fluff included in these videos. You’re not going to be listening to a couple of people, jibber jabber or have small talk before they get into the topic.

Stephen and I have both attended webinars with people who spend their first 15 minutes of their training, even on a training video that should be edited and packaged in a way that’s more accessible for people to do not on a live format and it’s just frustrating when people are talking about things completely unrelated to the course content and that is not a thing with The Wholesale Formula.

Every model, every video in this course is very concise and to the point and I actually saw videos from the previous version that’s a step ahead of the version that’s available now and it’s been fine tuned and edited to be even more concise than the previous version and so we love the fact that they just get to the point, they do not joke around.

[0:06:51.6] STEPHEN: Yeah, there’s a lot of really great information and I just feel like The Wholesale Formula, people, they value our time and they want to make sure that we want to learn as much as we can in as little time as possible so that we can take what we’ve learned and put it into action and not just get frustrated with fluff that’s just helping them fill up time and space, so that’s pretty awesome.

One of the ways that I love that this is a content packed course is there is more than just video modules. I mean, there’s live webinars that go on, there’s nine weeks of coaching that you get, you get group coaching for nine weeks when you get the course and if you decide you want to keep coaching beyond that, there’s an option for that.

Then there’s also a The Wholesale Formula alumni Facebook group. You not only get specialized coaching with The Wholesale Formula video course so you can ask questions of people, the coaches and get support like that but there’s also a peer group for you, a peer support group in The Wholesale Formula alumni Facebook group where you’re able to ask questions, you’re able to hear their stories, you help other people overcome their struggles, they help you overcome yours and it’s just, I mean, it’s complete.

You’ve got the video course that you can take on your own, in your own time, you have coaching that you have the support system of the people who are trained in The Wholesale Formula to coach you and give you direction like specific things that you and your situation need to do and then you got the peer support and the peer support alumni Facebook group just continues on the lifetime ownership of that and involvement in that. It’s just like every angle that you need to help and support to learn how to buy and sell wholesale successfully on Amazon, you get it with The Wholesale Formula.

The first reason we think The Wholesale Formula is 100% worth the cost is that it’s a complete wholesale course, it’s the most complete wholesale course. The second one is it’s the most content packed wholesale course available and then finally, The Wholesale Formula is the course that delivers actual results. We’ve experienced results that we know that it works so it’s not just a one-off thing where I’m able to get it taken care of but Rebecca is not or she’s able to find success but I’m not, we’re both able to find success with this course.

In my own situation, within three months of starting the course, I already had multiple wholesale accounts and within six months of taking the course, I was already reordering from those accounts and so I had multiple wholesale accounts that I was reordering on a monthly basis and started getting that snowball ramping up when it comes to wholesale inventory, I was able to find, accounts I was able to secure and inventory that I was able to order on a consistent basis and it’s just been hugely freeing to be able to have that as an inventory option for our Amazon business and I just absolutely love it.

What was that like for you when you first started, Rebecca?

[0:09:35.4] REBECCA: Like I said, I started earlier this year and within a month of finishing up, watching the video modules and getting everything setup to go and actually start the sourcing and contacting companies, I had two accounts within the first month of getting started with that.

That was two accounts that I was able to place orders on, I had other accounts that I couldn’t find anything to, it ended up that they were not profitable but two accounts that I was able to place orders on and then within a month of that, I started being able to reorder from both of those accounts on a regular basis. Every month since then, I’ve been able to place a follow-up orders with those two accounts.

Then, I’ve also added some other accounts in the meantime that we’re kind of waiting to see how they turn out but yeah, within a month, have two accounts that we’ve placed orders multiple times between earlier this year and now, here we are getting into late summer.

That’s been pretty awesome for me. I feel like if I had the ability to focus more a time on the type of sourcing that this sourcing method, I would be able to see even better results than that. I am convinced that it works and like I mentioned earlier, I feel like I am the bottleneck in this whole process and that if I could have some help because I just have a lot going on and you know, I am not spending my full-time working hours on this.

I have other things that I’m working on and so if I had some help with it, I think that I could see even greater results and so I’ve been starting to go through the course modules on training a VA or hiring a VA to help you with the sourcing process and with some of the management that goes along with that and I am really excited to see how that goes. We’re just in the process of going with that, so I can’t really speak to how that will end up but I’m convinced that if I can manage to do that and I feel like The Wholesale Formula has cracked the code on that as well.

I am excited about finishing up that part of the course module and then putting that into practice to see where that goes from there as well because I feel like if I can get the results that I have with a limited amount of time that I’ve had with it, if somebody is able to or I am able to hire somebody who can spend dedicated full-time on it, they will find even better results than I am.

[0:11:51.8] STEPHEN: Yeah, so as I’m thinking through our experiences with The Wholesale Formula, you might be listening to this and thinking, “Well, you are Stephen and Rebecca Smotherman. You run Full-Time FBA, of course you’re going to find success.” I’ve asked two ladies to share their experience, just people who have followed Full-Time FBA for a while and I’m going to turn things over to them and they’re going to share with you a few minutes of their experience with The Wholesale Formula.

The first one is Lacey Sanders and she’s someone who started off doing well with retail arbitrage but wanted to know how to transition into wholesale and figure out how to scale that. Let’s listen to Lacey and her story.

[0:12:29.5] LACEY : Hi, my name is Lacey Sanders and share a little bit of my story and how selling on Amazon and also purchasing The Wholesale Formula course has changed both my immediate life and the financial life of my family. Five years ago, I read an article about selling on Amazon. At the time, my husband was finishing his doctorate degree and we have three little kids. I was a stay-at-home mom and money was really tight.

I read it out there, so it seemed like too good of an idea or too good to be true so I took it with a grain of salt but I really wanted to try it and I read about how you can put things at retail stores and thrift things and so my husband gave me $200 for a Christmas present, which at the time was just enormous, which obviously when you think about starting a business, it’s nothing but for us at the time it was everything and he gave it to me and he said, “You know, do what you want with this, have fun. Don’t feel pressure to have it turned into anything.”

You know, he basically – it was a gift, he never want to see it again kind of thing but I was really careful and I thrifted and I retailed and I bought books and sold books and I learned a little bit Amazon for about two, three years and I did pretty well at it. I was able to pay off his student loans. I was able to save about for a down payment on our first house. It was really cool but I feel like I kind of hit a glass ceiling a little bit. I mean I could hire other people to do that for me but it was just monotonous like I could never scale and I came across The Wholesale Formula.

I was really intimidated to spend the money on the course because I thought, “Man, that’s a lot of money” but ever since taking the course, it changed the way I thought. It changed the way I viewed business and I was able to get my first few wholesale accounts and then after that, I was able to get exclusives and mostly just learn how to take the next step in this world and learn what I needed to learn to be an asset and a value to other people.

Since then, I’ve been able to hire several employees. We are actually moving into a 5,000 square foot warehouse here in the next month or two and we’re doing over seven figures on Amazon. It’s been an unbelievable gift and I just wanted to thank The Wholesale Formula team for an incredible course and thank you.

[0:14:55.5] STEPHEN: That was pretty awesome. Just imagine you having that same type of experience as well, being able to scale your business, being able to make those kind of sales, being able to get some wholesale exclusive accounts, it’s possible and she’s showed us that’s totally possible. Our last testimony to share to give their story about how The Wholesale Formula has impacted their life is Julie Hughes and again, Julie is someone who has followed Full-Time FBA for a while and has experienced The Wholesale Formula and here’s her story.

[0:15:26.1] JULIE : Hi everybody. I just wanted to share my story of what’s happened in my life and my business in the year and a half since I’ve joined TWF. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for 30 years. I have 11 children and I spent those years homeschooling my kids. Several years ago, we had multiple financial issues due to the housing market crash and that my husband’s business was very much tied to the building industry.

I started selling on Amazon in 2015 and I built a nice little business there but I was buying all my merchandise through retail arbitrage and as my business grew, I was plagued with complaints, account issues and kind of an endless churn of always trying to find the next deal. I realized in 2017, I really needed to do some things different, so I started looking around and I came across TWF. January of 2018, I joined TWF and I knew that I wanted to try to gain wholesale accounts and try to transition my business to wholesale over retail arbitrage.

My first event was in April 2018, we went to TWF live, one of my daughters went with me, I happen to have a very important meaning the following week after that with a brand that I really wanted to ask for a wholesale account but really didn’t know how to go about it. During that event in April, I was called up on stage in one of the hot seats and I was able to share some of the concerns and problems that I had and got some really great feedback.

I went back that following week, had that meeting and actually got that account, which was super exciting. It was my first wholesale account and that account today does 80 to a 100,000 per month in revenue for me. Since then, I have gained multiple other wholesale accounts, several of my kids work with me and my business. My oldest daughter is now my business partner and we’ve just been able to have a life that we never dreamed of with this business and it is a fun business.

We are very grateful to TWF, we’ve learned a lot through the course, through the mentorship that we’ve had and just have a business that we love. I just wanted to share that and thank you very much.

[0:17:39.8] STEPHEN: Okay, so if you’ve heard Lacey’s story and Julie’s story, you’ve heard my story, Rebecca’s story, if you want a story similar to that then I totally want to recommend The Wholesale Formula. It is the course that really has helped us finally successfully add sourcing wholesale items for our Amazon business. We are able to land multiple wholesale accounts and sell multiple items on Amazon via wholesale that we continually reorder on a monthly basis.

Now, if you are listening to this on the day of the podcast drops, The Wholesale Formula course is not open. You have to wait a few days but if you go to fulltimefba.com/wholesaleformula, then that link will forward you to a waiting list page where you can sign up for the wait list to be notified immediately when The Wholesale Formula course is open and that’s only just going to be a few days of waiting. If you are watching this a few days after the podcast drops, then The Wholesale Formula course is probably open and so you can go to that link, fulltimefba.com/wholesaleformula to learn more about The Wholesale Formula course.

There’s a very limited time in which this opportunity is open for you and so you want to go there now to see if it is available. If the doors have closed, then that link will lead you to a wait list to be notified when the doors open up again in the future because they only open up this course publicly once a year and so we’ve had a special private opening, a private launch for this course and so we just wanted to give you this opportunity.

If you are curious about The Wholesale Formula, we offer a really big bonus package to help incentivize you to purchase this course. If you want to look more into that bonus package that we offer at Full-Time FBA, you can go to fulltimefba.com/wholesaleformulabonus and you can get all the information that you need for that.

[CLOSING CONVERSATION]

[0:19:22.0] REBECCA: We are so glad you joined us this week for The Full-Time FBA Show. This has been episode number 94, so if you’re looking for any links that have been mentioned or the transcript for this episode, you can find it at the show notes page for this episode at fulltimefba.com/94.

Be sure and join us again next week, we’re going to be talking about how to handle Amazon product compliance request. We’re talking about these type of compliant request for things like pesticides or children’s toys, if you’ve been selling on Amazon for any amount of time, you’ve probably come across this is an issue if you sell certain types of products, so be sure and join us as we talk about how to handle those product compliance request.

[OUTRO]

[0:20:02.9] 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]