Podcast Episode 066 : The Secret Ingredient to Success with your Amazon FBA Business

There are many ingredients to becoming a successful Amazon seller. You need to buy the right products to sell, price your items competitively, learn and execute different sourcing strategies, and the list goes on… but today, we’re going to be discussing the one essential success strategy that nobody seems to talk about: Focus.

By eliminating the noise and focusing on what truly needs your attention, you can finally transform your FBA business into a successful one. We open the show by taking a look at the starting points that’ll give you the best opportunities to achieve maximum focus. With so many things that need to be done to run a successful business, we’ll show you how you can know the exact next steps to take in order to see the biggest results in the shortest time possible. Toward the end of the episode, we explore the range of distractions you might be exposed to and talk about how to consistently overcome your biggest distractions. If you want to find your focus, be sure to join us in this episode!

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Key points from Episode 66:

• Why a lack of focus causes frustration with not seeing the success you’re expecting in your Amazon FBA business
• Why being busy doesn’t necessarily mean that you will achieve success
• How focus can help you remove things from your unending “to do” list
• The “smarter” way to create success for your FBA business
• How following a proven plan will help you overcome overwhelm in your Amazon reseller endeavors
• The one important question to ask yourself to keep your focus
• Strategies to successfully cope with and even overcome distractions
• A true to life example of how powerful focus can be in finding success selling on Amazon
• And more!

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

• FREE WEBINAR! – Why Your Amazon FBA Business is Stuck (and the simple steps to find massive growth)
• Podcast Episode 64 – Successful Goal Setting for Amazon FBA Sellers with Jo Ann Zimmerman
• Creating SMARTER goals for your Amazon Business
• JumpStart Amazon Course
• Next Level Amazon Course
• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
• Deep Work (Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)
• Overcoming Overwhelm

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Episode 66 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]

[0:00:20.8] STEPHEN: Welcome to episode number 66 of The Full-Time FBA show. We are pleased to be here and that sounds, like, really formal.

[0:00:29.8] REBECCA: Pleased to be here.

[0:00:31.4] STEPHEN: So pleased to meet you. Anyway, I’m here with Rebecca, my co-host, how’s it going Rebecca?

[0:00:35.5] REBECCA: Very pleasing.

[0:00:37.4] STEPHEN: That’s good. Well, today, we are going to dive into a secret ingredient to success with your Amazon FBA business and it’s not going to stay a secret very much longer. So, let’s get to this episode of The Full-Time FBA Show.

[0:00:49.8] REBECCA: My pleasure.

[0:00:51.9] STEPHEN: Let’s do this.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:56.6] REBECCA: Okay, today’s topic, we’re going to be talking about the secret ingredient to success with your Amazon FBA business. The truth is, this isn’t really that big of a secret if you’ve been around The Full-Time FBA blog or podcasts for any amount of time. This is something that we’ve talked about in the past but it is so important that we wanted to talk about it again today and really focus an entire episode on it.

Wait, that was a spoiler, I totally did not mean to do that.

[0:01:22.2] STEPHEN: That’s okay.

[0:01:23.1] REBECCA: But what is the secret ingredient, Stephen?

[0:01:26.1] STEPHEN: Well, the secret ingredient is to focus and –

[0:01:29.2] REBECCA: I promise, I did not mean to do that.

[0:01:30.6] STEPHEN: Hey, it works. But yes, it could be really frustrating, especially for new Amazon sellers to spend a lot of time and energy, trying to grow your business but not see a lot of results because of that time and energy. There’s not a lot of results showing because of the effort that you’re putting in.

A lot of times, as Amazon sellers, there’s so much that we can do that a lot of people think that even if I’m just really busy, that’s going to lead to success but busyness is not the secret and when we say the secret ingredient to success, we mean that this is a mindset, this is an action that almost every single successful Amazon seller experiences and tries to improve upon.

That is you know, focus. You know, it’s really hard to focus, we’re going to discuss how to focus what to focus on in this episode, how to overcome distractions that cause us not to be able to focus because there is a ton of distractions out there.

I mean, there’s new blog post, new videos, new podcast episodes that all give you a new idea or new strategy to try. After a while, your to do list ends up just becoming really long and you end up being overwhelmed with all the things that you want to do and you’re not able to actually get anything done. We’re going to overcome that overwhelm with walking through how to focus, especially on your Amazon FBA business.

[0:02:50.4] REBECCA: Yeah, I really love this, I’m glad we’re talking about this especially at the beginning of the new year because a lot of times, we hear from people in the FBA world or just really in the entrepreneurial world in general that you need to be busy, you need to hustle.

You know, you just need to always be doing something, doing more, focusing or always be doing more and just getting out there and go, go, go, go, go. Yes, you need to work hard but if you’re not focusing on what is at hand and really honing in on what it takes to get your business going, you’re going to miss out. So, I’m glad we’re talking about that today.

Now that we’ve established that that’s our secret ingredient that we’re going to talk about how do we know what we need to focus on, that’s another big question that I think comes up a lot is you know, there’s a lot that I can choose from, what do I do?

[0:03:43.0] STEPHEN: Yeah, there is a lot you can choose from, there’s going to be a lot of different people, bloggers, podcasters, telling you what you need to do and you’re like, “Okay, well what do I do first?” Well, the way to figure out what to do first is to make sure that you create your goals, we had a great episode, episode number 64 with Jo Ann Zimmerman about creating goals.

Being able to create your goals, helps you plan out the path of you know, how to reach those goals. So, you want to make sure that the goals that you create are high-impact goals. Goals that will cause a lot of change and a lot of growth and to make sure you sprinkle in long-term goals, short-term goals.

Make sure that those goals are smart goals or even smarter goals, there is an acronym for the word SMARTER and you know, we can do a whole podcast episode on this sometime in the future but just to run through it very quickly, taking the letters of the word smarter, you want to make sure that your goals are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, time-bound, exciting and relevant.

You don’t want to have vague goals, you want to have goals that you can actually measure to make sure that you’re actually meeting those goals, you want your goals to involve a verb, some type of action that you’re doing, you want to make sure that the goals that you are creating are realistic, you know, you’re not coming up on your first year of Amazon saying: “I’m going to make a two-million-dollar sales,” that’s just not realistic for most people.

Make sure that the goals are time-bound and that you have a deadline and be sure you don’t put all those deadlines at the end of the year, you want to make sure again, long-term goals, short-term goals, you make sure the goals are exciting and get you, you know, pumped up to do that, and relevant that the actions that you’re coming up with and the measuring points that you’ve come up with, that those are connected to the overall goal that you’re trying to create.

So, I’ll even put a link in the shownotes to our blog post about smarter goals where you can get a little bit more information about that but once you set those goals up, you can figure out what you need to focus on.

[0:05:37.4] REBECCA: Okay, so, once we’ve gone through that process and like you’ve said, we’ve discussed that in a previous podcast episode, we have a blog post about it. We have decided on some goals. When do you then focus on first, if you have – I know for us personally, we set eight, nine, 10 goals for a year, you know, that are related to business and family and whatever else that we’ve got going on?

How do we know how to focus for – what to focus first on?

[0:06:06.9] STEPHEN: There are a couple of different ways to figure out what is the first thing you should focus on in trying to meet your goals. I know Jo Ann Zimmerman in that episode, number 64, talked about starting with the end in mind and kind of working backwards.

So, when she talked about – if you have a certain sales goal, well what does it take to make those sales each month and what does it break it down monthly and then what do you need to do weekly? So, planning out your steps that way can help you. Another thing that you can do is follow a plan that’s already laid out for you, whether that’s something like the JumpStart Amazon course which is about starting your Amazon business or the next level of Amazon course about how to make a full-time income with only part time hours.

The courses can give you the actual steps that you need to take and so that’s a great way to plan out what you do first. Another thing that you can do is to ask yourself this question. “What do I need to do now that will have the highest impact today in reaching my goals? What’s going to have the highest impact right now?”

Gary Keller and Jay Papasan wrote a book called The One Thing. I highly recommend it and that is the whole point of the book.

[0:07:13.6] REBECCA: I was going to say when you said that, it made me think of the book, The One Thing.

[0:07:17.5] STEPHEN: Yeah, and their main question that the whole book, The One Thing is focused around is this question. “What is the one thing I can do, such that by doing it, everything else will become easier or unnecessary.” When you really look at your Amazon FBA business and ask that question and put it through that filter, it really helps you to know what’s the first the first thing that you need to work on doing?

Because a lot of times, we can get really muddied and messy and kind of doing a little step here, a little step there, but not really doing things in the right order. Well, find the thing that has the highest impact today and do those goals.

Then, when you finally figure that out, plan it out, put it on your schedule. Because, if it doesn’t get scheduled, it’s not going to happen or it’s probably not going to happen. You know, going into a day without having a schedule of what you’re going to do is really fertile ground for distractions. All of that will help you figure out what to focus on first.

[0:08:14.3] REBECCA: So, another aspect of focus that I think we should consider is thinking about the word not just in relation to how do we, you know, focus in on what we want to achieve or to kind of hone in on which task we’re doing to meet certain goals but also, let’s think about the word focus when it comes to distractions and keeping a focus even though there’s all these other things that might come up that which would try to steal our focus.

What do you think about that concept of the word focus? How can we deal with those distractions that inevitably come up?

[0:08:53.2] STEPHEN: There’s a couple different strategies that you can handle distractions and be able to still focus on what you need to be doing and the first one is realizing that not all distractions are avoidable, you know? We’re still going to have distractions that come up, so when you’re planning your schedule, planning things out, so plan for some wiggle room for you to be able to accommodate those distractions and then other times, you know if you are a workaholic, some distractions might actually be good.

You might be so into your work, you need to actually be distracted to kind of take a little bit of a break but most of us are more leaning towards the aspect of, you know we’re not working as hard or as focused as we need to be and distractions are taken away from the work that we need to be doing and so, you know there’s a lot of times where distractions are unavoidable. I mean just yesterday; I was working on the notes for this podcast and my 13-year-old kept coming into the office and asking me questions.

You know, I wanted to make sure that he understood that he was important and I tried my best to answer his questions and to have our conversations and stuff but after a while, it got to the point where like, “Okay, we need to be finished with our conversation so I can get back to work,” and we were able to have a short little distraction time but get right back to work and so distractions are not completely avoidable but we need to do what we can to fight the distractions that come that can be avoided.

One of the things that we need to realize mentality, again, the line set aspect of being a successful Amazon seller is a huge deal and it is important for us to realize that most of us are actually addicted to distractions. You know, work can be hard, work can sometimes not be fun and every once in a while, we feel like we need that little dopamine hit or something cool or fun or a distraction. So, you know, we have our phones right next to us and we end up going through social media or playing a game or something like that because we’re just fighting against that addiction of distraction.

So, when we have that mindset that, “You know what? I am fighting an addiction” then that will also help you overcome those distractions and choose to focus on what it is you need to be working on because, really focusing in on your work, whether it’s an action that you’re doing or whether it is something that you are learning can really make you go far. There is a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport that I really enjoy and it just talks about the importance of a distraction-free, focus-filled work setting.

Where it is, you know if you’re being creative or if you are focusing on a certain job task, whether it’s sourcing inventory, whether it is pricing inventory, whatever it is that you’re focused on, the more focused you can be on that the more results you can see and again, we love acronyms here. So, there is the acronym of F.O.C.U.S, which comes out to “follow one course until successful” and I have an example of that as well.

Say you’re wanting to learn new aspects of selling on Amazon. I am going to talk about Bob and I’m going to be talking about Betty. Betty does the things differently than Bob and Bob does things differently than Betty and as I tell you this, imagine for yourself who you think is going to be the most successful. So, on Monday, Bob learns about wholesale sourcing. Tuesday, he learns about retail arbitrage sourcing and Wednesday, he’s looking into online arbitrage sourcing.

On Thursday, he’s looking up how to learn how to do Amazon ads and on Friday, he decides to learn how to use Keepa. So that’s Bob’s week, what’s Betty doing? Betty on Monday she’s looking into wholesale. On Tuesday, she’s looking into wholesale. Wednesday, she’s learning about wholesale. Tuesday, she’s learning more about wholesale and on Wednesday, she is continuing to learn about wholesale. So, who is going to be able to go further and be more successful?

It’s the one who is focused. It’s Betty, she’s going to be rocking wholesale and actually getting wholesale accounts soon because she is focused. She is not scattered like Bob and that focus helps bring results and so when you’re thinking about focusing on your Amazon business and how that impacts your success, you start to see how focusing and looking at that one thing that’s going to have the biggest result for you, coming up with your goals, it helps you overcome the overwhelm that ends up frustrating you and causing you not to find success and sometimes even cause you to be tempted to quit. So, focusing can really help you with your Amazon business.

[0:13:18.1] REBECCA: Okay, well, hopefully this has been able to help you to understand a little bit more about how focusing can really help your business, whether it’s coming up with some new goals that you can really direct your work and your learning and just your efforts for your FBA business and one direction until you really see that success or whether it is learning how to deal with distractions and knowing how to sort out what’s important, what’s urgent and how to deal with that in your business.

We really hope that you’re able to take something from this podcast and apply it to your business today, that’s the important thing with any of these podcast episodes is finding something that you hear from this discussion and really looking at your own business and seeing how you can apply it today to get the most from what you’re learning.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:14:07.2] REBECCA: All right, if you have any questions that you want to look back over from this episode or if there’s any links to have been mentioned, you can find all of that in the shownotes along with the transcript so that you can review the content and that is found at the shownotes page, fulltimefba.com/66, the number 66. Because this is episode 66.

[0:14:29.0] STEPHEN: We have a webinar coming up, we want to make sure that you are aware of, if you feel like you in your Amazon business are stuck, maybe you’ve hit a plateau, you know, we want to help you get past that, help you get unstuck and help you grow your Amazon business, we’ve got a webinar and you can find out about it and sign up for it, fulltimefba.com/stuck and we will help you get out of whatever rut you might be in, in your business to find some new ways to grow your business and continue to go on your path to turning those part time hours into a full-time income with Amazon.

Again, the link, fulltimefba.com/stuck.

[0:15:06.7] REBECCA: Well, we hope you have a great week, until the next time that we’re with you. Our next episode is going to be about time versus money and how to get more of both. Those are the two essential ingredients that you’re going to have to have in order to be successful in your business as far as the resources that you have to spend.

You have time and you have money so let’s get together next week and talk about how you can get more of both of those.

[OUTRO]

[0:15:33.7] 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]