#090 - From Online Arbitrage to Wholesale with Grant Baker I The Amazon Wholesale Podcast

#090 - From Online Arbitrage to Wholesale with Grant Baker I The Amazon Wholesale Podcast Speaker 2: All right, Grant, welcome to the show, man. I appreciate you taking the time to hang out with me today and talk wholesale. How are you doing? Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm doing good. How are you doing? Speaker 2: I am doing well, man. Well, listen, you are one of the people that I wanted to be sure that we had on here sooner rather than later because you're doing a lot of cool stuff in the wholesale space. So you've been a part of our community, I think for about four, four and a half months or so now. When you joined, you were a little quiet and I know that's because you were head down in grind mode. But really recently, I think over the last month or two, you've really started to see some great results. Placing some big purchase orders, really getting wholesale to scale. So I want to spend a bulk of the conversation today talking about your journey, where you started, where you are today and everything that went on in between. So let's maybe start there at the beginning. How long have you been selling on Amazon and how did you get your start? Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's funny enough. I started selling on Amazon in 2020. I mean, everything going on, you know, started selling the hot items, you know, PlayStation fives, swimming pools, graphics cards. A lot of that stuff was still A to A flips. So buying it on Amazon, flipping it right back on Amazon for the profit. So I did that for a few years, kind of like the Bolo type items, did some RA, looking for just specific items to go in the store. And back in, you know, 2023 is when I really started taking it a little more serious. Started actually, you know, growing, you know, a business. I'm gonna quit my job, working in a factory. So then I started working closely with an Amazon seller. And then from here, last year, we did roughly 2 million. Last year, mostly OA. Um, sprinkled in a little bit of wholesale. Um, now, you know, we have a team of four employees, so they're still focusing on OA. So this year, just wanting to grow my wholesale business, still keep my foot on the pedal with OA. You know, we already have a team built of that, um, for OA. Um, and then, you know, still trying to focus on taking my profit from, you know, OA, wholesale, dump it into real estate. As well, you know, this past year we started Untrend, which is an Amazon customer return solution that helps Amazon sellers focus on reclaiming money back through reimbursements. Unknown Speaker: Awesome. Speaker 2: And you've got a lot of different things going on and you're on the younger side too, right? You said you're what? I think you said you're 25? So you're 25 years old. Just a few short years ago, you were working in a factory, probably nine to five, maybe even, were you like graveyard shift or what did that look like, the factory job? Speaker 1: It was awful hours. Worked from five o'clock in the morning. So I'd wake up at like four and then work till about one, 1.30, get off and just grind. It actually worked out pretty good because I would come home, just work on my business, go in and store. So it did work out all right, but it was, This is Grant. Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, the 4 a.m. wake up's tough, right? I was in a very similar boat when I was working my insurance job back in 2020, I want to say. I was working for IBM for a couple of years, quit that to pursue Amazon full-time. Didn't really work out as planned, so I had to take another job working in insurance for my uncle while I was doing Amazon on the side. I mean, very similar to you, right? It was a nine-to-five job, so I had to either work on my business from, say, 5 to 7 a.m. or from like 5 to 8 p.m., but you're always working around that work schedule, and I'm sure there are a lot of people here that can relate, but that's really impressive that you built a seven-figure OA business that now sounds like it's being run by a team so that you can focus more of your time on wholesale and then taking some of that Amazon profit and dumping it into real estate, which I think is a very smart strategy. Now let's talk about the wholesale side, right? Because you've been posting quite a bit in the Success Post channel of the Wholesale Network Discord that you're starting to place some pretty big wholesale orders. So kind of catch us up to speed on the wholesale side of your business. What does that look like today in January, 2025? Yeah. Speaker 1: So surprisingly enough, it's all been through Brand Direct. So I haven't even really dabbled with distributors. So currently we have I think it's around five to six different brands that we're currently working with, you know, just buying directly from the brand. Speaker 2: And then of those five to six, how much are you spending with them? Let's say, let's break it down a few different ways. So how much are you spending with them? Let's say in total per month, and then let's break it down even further. And of those five to six brands, is there maybe one or two that you're doing the majority of the business with? Speaker 1: Yeah. So the biggest, so since, you know, started wholesale, it's been probably three or four months now. The biggest, Spend with our supplier or with that brand has been a little over 60 grand with just, you know, placing that several POs over to you, just restocking. And then, you know, the second biggest brand that we just opened up last week, we spent, it was, I think around 26,000 for that PO. So. Speaker 2: So, what's your typical margin on these POs, right? So, let's take the main brand that you said. It sounds like you've spent about, what was that? Was that 60K per month with them or that 60K like total since you started? That's total. Speaker 1: So, I think the first PO was around 20 and then we placed a couple. So, it's been 60 total within the last few months. Speaker 2: Okay, so you've kind of snowballed your business with them over time, right? So it sounds like opening PO is 20K. Second PO is probably similar amount, maybe a little more. And then it's like you kind of work your way up slowly but surely. Is that kind of how you guys are approaching it? Speaker 1: Yep, yep, absolutely. And it moves fast. As soon as you start to see products, the velocity, how fast they move to restock the item, I mean, it moves fast. Speaker 2: Well, and that's the beauty of it on the brand side too, right? From the brand's perspective, they're like, wait, this guy Grant kind of came out of nowhere. He started off with a 20K PO and now he came right back with, let's say, 25K. They see that you're growing and they want to support that growth because obviously When you grow, they grow and vice versa. So that's the beauty of getting in directly with some of these brands. They see your potential and you see their potential and you can kind of grow together. It's more of a partnership. It's just a little less transactional than say like an OA, right? Speaker 1: Would you agree? And that's what I really like about the wholesale part of it is you're building that relationship You know, you hope that, you know, it's not just, you know, transaction. You know, they're gonna help you as if you, you know, help them grow the business and whatnot, so. Speaker 2: 100% and that's been my experience for years as well, right? Brands want to work with sellers who are taking that partnership approach, right? They're not looking for that transactional relationship where, hey, Grant spends 20 grand and then we don't hear from him until it's time for him to place his next order. Instead, it's, hey, Grant spends 20 grand. He gives us feedback on how the process went. Maybe he gives us some tips for improvement and then we keep growing together. So that's fantastic and I think you're taking absolutely the right approach. Now, okay, so let's break that down a little further. So that opening PO with the biggest brand that you've got, right? You said it was for about 20K. What did the margins look like on that PO? Because I'm assuming now you've placed two or three orders with that brand. You probably already sold through that first PO. On that 20K in spend, how much did you make in profit? Speaker 1: It was probably roughly around the 10 to 11% margin. But the best thing about that is it's a very low return category. So, you know, obviously some other sellers might have higher margins, you know, product wise, but their returns, you know, affect their margin quite a bit. So that's, you know, pretty much net because it's such a low return category. Speaker 2: Do you have an idea in terms of ROI just because, and again, this is more so for the audience, right? So on 20K and spend, he said, I guess the sales were roughly about 10 or 11% in margin, which you can't really get like the dollar profit if you're talking about margin versus investment, right? So in terms of like ROI, do you have an idea there? My guess is if you're making a 10, 11% net margin, you're probably what, 20-ish, 25% ROI on that 20K and spend? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably a little closer to 25%. Speaker 2: Okay, that's good. I mean, the way I see it, right, there's not many other businesses or many other things you can buy or investments you can make where you can make, like you said, a 20 to 25% return on that investment in, well, in your case, probably about roughly 30 to 60 days, right? Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: That's fantastic. You get a foot in the door with this brand, you place a $20K opening PO, you make, sounds like, roughly $4K to $5K in profit on that $20K in spend. Once you sell that inventory, now you've got 25K to deploy on more products with that same brand or other brands, which leads me to my next question in how did you even find this brand in the first place? How did you even determine these guys were a good potential fit to work with? Speaker 1: My favorite method of sourcing is just reverse sourcing and sounds. I kind of pretty much took what I was doing OA-wise and did it to wholesale. So I found I have a few good wholesale sellers that are selling medium to large, smaller to mid-sized brands. Obviously, I'm avoiding the super large brands and listings that have five to eight different sellers on their listings. And then I just find their site, find the contact us, a form to fill out. And then the biggest thing that I've done is just call, get on the phone. I know you preach this a lot. Just get on a call and try to talk to the sales rep. I've also had good luck with emailing, but phone has done very well for us. Speaker 2: So, and obviously I agree with everything you're saying 100%, right? It's really, at the end of the day, it's that simple. And it's funny you say that you like to reverse source, otherwise, you know, some people call that a storefront stocking type method. But it's funny we're talking about this today because literally this morning, like two hours ago, I went in and queued a tweet to be posted a week or two from now, where I said, I was like, reverse sourcing or storefront stocking is literally the goat of Amazon sourcing methods. For a number of reasons. And the greatest thing is, is it's not just, it doesn't just work for arbitrage and it doesn't just work for wholesale. Like reverse sourcing, storefront stocking, whatever you want to call it, that method applies to every Amazon business model. It works for arbitrage, it works for wholesale. You could even make the argument that it works for private label. And the reason it works so well is like you said, it's like, why are we reinventing the wheel? Let's just go find what other people are selling successfully and let's just go sell the same stuff. Because if they're selling it, that means they've done the research. They know it's profitable because why would they be selling it if it wasn't profitable? So you take the simplest approach, which in my opinion is usually the best approach, and you just apply that to wholesale where it works beautifully. So, what did that conversation look like with that brand? Again, let's talk about the big brand that you spent a lot of money with so far. So, let's say you found another seller who was selling those products and then what? You literally just Googled the brand, called them up and landed the account? Was it that simple? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, this one, we did end up emailing them. They get back to us. You know, we have done a call with them and luckily enough, they told us that they were only going to be adding four to five or they only want four to five Amazon sellers on their listing at a time. And it was just, you know, right place at the right time and another seller dropped off. So we were able to secure that fifth spot as, you know, selling on their listings. Speaker 2: So I want to highlight that point for a second, because there's a couple of different directions you could take this, right? And I've said this before myself, I'm like, guys, if you land the wholesale account from the first call, or even the first couple of calls, chances are the account's not going to be good. Because if it's that easy for you to get, then that means it's that easy for everyone to get. And even if it's profitable today, it's not always going to be that way because the brand more or less has an open door policy. But what you're saying is that, yes, it was easy for me to get this account, but it's because I was in the right place at the right time. It's almost like you called, In that perfect, like, you know, seven to 10 day window of opportunity that this brand just so happened to make the decision that, hey, we only want four or five sellers. Hey, this guy Grant just called us up. He seems legit. He seems like a professional. Let's maybe give him one of those spots because we had a good conversation with him, right? The reason I want to touch on that point is because like, yes, this was a quote unquote, easy account to get, but you don't get those easy accounts. Like these opportunities don't happen if you're not putting in the work every day. If you're not putting in the reps, if you're not making the calls, because what a lot of people do is they make calls for a day or two and they're like, well, hey, I don't yet have a wholesale account. This must not work. Or hey, I followed up with this brand 10 times and I still don't have the account. Grant's saying that he got this on the second call. He's just lucky, right? It's not when in reality, you get the lucky breaks when you're putting yourself in the position to get the lucky breaks, which you've been doing because you've been prospecting for weeks, if not months on end leading up to this. Is that fair to say? Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely. Just consistency. And then obviously another big point is, you know, we use a CRM that is in the wholesale network. We try to reach out to at least five brands a day. So it's really just keep stacking on brands. We'll go a week, sometimes two weeks without getting a response or account open. And then a week, you'll open up two accounts, three accounts and just stay consistent with it and you'll start seeing results. Speaker 2: And that's a great point too, right? Because that's just the nature of sales. What we're doing as wholesale sellers, we're professional salespeople. We're having to call these suppliers. We're having to sell them on why they should work with us. And Grant, what you're describing, it's just classic prospecting. It's the exact process that I went through myself when I was working in corporate America and I was having to prospect into these big companies. We're just like you said, it's like you have your input metrics, which for you, it's all right, I'm gonna contact five new brands per day. And all Grant has to worry about is hitting those five new contacts. He doesn't need to hit 10, but as long as he hits five, he knows that eventually those results are gonna follow. Because as long as you put in the inputs, exactly what you said happened is gonna happen, right? Some weeks you have nothing to show for it, you have no leads, you think everything's going to zero, but you keep hitting those inputs. And then next week, like you said, all of a sudden you open three accounts, right? Because they had been in your pipeline, or like you said, you were kind of in the right place at the right time, which doesn't happen if you're not putting in the reps. So it's a good point. And I know that there are people in the audience that are probably working a some sort of sales W-2 job and they're like hearing this and they're like, yep, this is exactly what I'm doing in my day-to-day, right? Speaker 1: And it's kind of funny you brought that up. Kind of part-time this past year, I've been doing door-to-door sales. I have a buddy from high school that has a roofing company and it just correlates. I think that's where I'm seeing Results, I guess a little faster is that I was going door to door knocking on someone's door trying to sell them on our product, our service, and it's just the same thing. You're getting on a call, selling yourself, let us buy your product to Amazon. Speaker 2: Yeah, I knew I liked you, right? I didn't know you did door-to-door sales, but I was like, something about this Grant guy I really like, but now I understand why, right? Because, I mean, people that have been listening to the podcast for a long time have probably heard me talk about this a few times as well. But I've done door to door. I mean, I've knocked hundreds, potentially thousands of doors. And I swear to you, it is the single best way to learn sales, to not only learn sales, but to develop skin made of leather and steel, right? Like, you know, Grant, as well as I do, that there's nothing worse than getting a door slammed in your face, getting rejected face to face. But the good thing is it's like that doesn't even happen that often door-to-door because people are way nicer in person than they are over the phone. But you just build up that tolerance and that rejection muscle so much faster in person, face-to-face, so that now when you're cold calling brands or distributors for your Amazon wholesale business, This thing is easy, right? These conversations are easy and especially because when we're calling these suppliers, we're trying to pay them. Like we're not asking them to pay us. That's the part that, that's what gets me fired up. Like when people are afraid to pick up the phone, I'm like, dude, you're literally calling a supplier and saying, hello, you've never heard of me before in your life, but I want to cut you a check for 25 grand today. Like that's literally the gist of your pitch. And so when you think about it that way, Calling suppliers should be the easiest sales job of all time because you're trying to become the customer. You're not trying to sell them anything. So that experience 100% translates and is obviously contributed to why you're seeing so much success so quickly on the wholesale side, right? Speaker 1: Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Speaker 2: So let's dig into something you mentioned earlier, right? So you said you've got your OA business, you've got your wholesale business, you're doing some part-time door-to-door sales for your buddy's roofing company. But one thing you mentioned is that you're taking a lot of your profits and you're dumping that into real estate. And so that's something that honestly I wish more people in our space would do. I feel like there's a big tendency in the Amazon space to once you have some cashflow coming in, people go and spend it on some stupid stuff or they just continue reinvesting, reinvesting, reinvesting, which is great, but they never really take any off the table and either keep it for themselves as profit or use it to turn around and buy assets. So what has your strategy been? When it comes to taking some of that Amazon profit and then using that profit to buy assets? Speaker 1: Yep. So I just, you know, a percentage each month I set aside. And then I just, you know, every year, you know, I try to, you know, this year I want to buy a couple more properties. I just, you know, set money aside each month. And then, you know, once I have enough to be able to put down and roll it right into another property. So I really like residential, you know, two to four units. Speaker 2: How are you finding these deals? Let's say you've got some cash in the bank. You're like, hey, I've got some cash set aside. Now I'm going to go buy my next property. What does the strategy look like? Is there a realtor that you work closely with? Are you just buying stuff right off the market? Speaker 1: I've only bought on market, so I just have a good realtor that is investor friendly. I'm in Cleveland, Ohio, so the Cleveland market that he knows very well, so when I'm ready to buy, I just let him know and he'll start sending me some deals. Speaker 2: And so is he kind of giving you his opinion as well? Like, Hey Grant, I think this would be a good deal because of X, Y, Z. Or is he kind of just sending you opportunities and say, Hey Grant, here's something you might be interested in, but do your own research. How does that work? Speaker 1: So far, I've really done majority of the work as far as that goes, but he definitely would give his input. If I'm thinking something, I'll ask him and he gives me his input on what he's thinking about it as well. So it's kind of team effort. Speaker 2: And so what are you really looking for when you're analyzing a property? What makes you say, hey, I would buy this versus, hey, I wouldn't touch this thing? Speaker 1: It's really, obviously everyone's looking for cashflow, but I really like just appreciation. So, you know, I have a nice little suburb outside of Cleveland that, you know, I think that is going to perform well in the next, you know, several years. So as long as I can, you know, at least break even, you know, put some equity into it, do a lot of the work myself. And just over time, the chances of it going up is obviously very high. Speaker 2: So you're doing a lot of the work on these properties yourself. Do you have a construction background or do you come from a family of contractors? How do you have that experience? Speaker 1: No, it's really just obviously just cosmetic, painting, tiling, just stuff. Learn yourself, YouTube, just figure it out kind of thing, DIY. Speaker 2: And then as far as how you're acquiring these properties, are you just putting 20% down and then getting a bank loan on the rest? How are you approaching it from a financing perspective? Speaker 1: It's mostly just owner-occupied. You can buy a property every 12 months and then every money I set aside for my Amazon business is what I put into renovations, whatnot. Speaker 2: Okay, so you're doing the strategy where you buy the property, then you move in, and then you fix it up while you're living there. And then what is the rule? It's if you live there for at least two years, then you don't have to pay a tax on the capital gains once you sell it up to, it's like 500K, or I think maybe it's up to 500K if you're married, maybe it's only 250K if you're single. But is that your strategy there? Speaker 1: I'm just wanting to hold. So I'll move out and just hold this property, let it appreciate. Speaker 2: And then are you pulling, okay, so then I guess you're just, I see what you're saying. Then you're just accumulating cash over the course of that year in the Amazon business, which is essentially your down payment for the next one. Is that kind of what you're saying? Got it. Okay, I love that, man. I really like that strategy. And that's something that I've talked about on social media before, something I'm trying to get heavier into is the real estate side. And just in general, just buying assets because We know Amazon is a terrific cash flow business. It's a terrific business for generating a lot of monthly profit. But in order to keep it growing, you've got to reinvest a lot of that profit. But at the same time, you want to take some of that profit off the table to then diversify into other assets like real estate, like you're saying, as well as We're going to be talking about stocks and crypto and all these other things that you could be investing in on the side as well. So Grant, do you have any other things that you're investing in or are you like, I'm all Amazon and all real estate and that's it? Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Love Vanguard, mutual funds, IRA, try to max that out every year. Just trying to diversify, you know, really try to be smart, you know, you know, early, you know, early mid-twenties, just trying to let the compound interest, you know, do its thing. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure you'll like, I mean, you know, this is just how it works, but I'm sure you've seen a trend in your investing, right? It's like you start off, it's like in the beginning, it's like you have no momentum, right? You're putting in, I think when I started investing, you know, I put in like 20 bucks here, 50 bucks there, 100 bucks there. And you know, a year later, you're like, I only have like 1200 bucks invested, right? Like how am I ever gonna, how is this ever gonna like make me financially free? But then it's like, You know, three years later, they're like, oh damn, it's like 27K now or whatever, right? And then obviously as you continue contributing to it and you get the growth from compounding, but have you seen kind of that snowball effect in your investments as well where it's like, hey, it started off slow, but now like I really see this thing picking up steam? Speaker 1: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, especially, I mean, obviously stocks and, you know, mutual funds, you can see it, you know, the money grow. But even in real estate, I bought a property back in 2020 and you can just see, hey look, I bought it for X and it's already worth Y. You start to kind of see just over just a couple of years how fast money can really compound and build up. Speaker 2: The beautiful thing about real estate too is like over that four year period, that investment wasn't costing you any money. In fact, it was probably paying you money, right? It was probably putting dollars in your pocket each month in the form of cashflow. And then, hey, by the way, now it's worth X amount more than I paid for it, which is almost kind of like the icing on the cake. So, I mean, I'm very bullish on real estate as well. It's something I've talked about at length before. It just makes a whole lot of sense, right? When it comes to the tax benefits, the ability to depreciate the property, the ability for your tenants to pay down your mortgage and then still leave you with cashflow left over each month. It just makes too much sense to me, right? I don't know why anybody, especially people that consider themselves business people are not in some way, shape or form investing in real estate. You don't necessarily have to be an active investor. You don't need to be running around town looking at deals, but like, Invest in somebody else's syndication or invest into a REIT, a real estate investment trust, which is essentially like buying a stock more or less, but get some sort of exposure to real estate. The younger you are, like Grant, you're obviously in a very good position and will be for the rest of your life if you keep this up, but I think young people in particular should really look deeper into that field and look to invest there earlier than later. Now, you mentioned your team on the OA side. So what does that team breakdown look like? And also, do you have any partners in the business? What does the whole team or the whole company look like? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mentioned we have four employees. One is strictly admin, so administrative account health, customer messages, the whole nine yards, making sure everything is all said and done. Obviously one of the most important things in the business that I feel like some sellers put off. So seller for that, or an employee that does that. We have a sourcer, I guess two sourcing employees that, you know, are adding the products to a leads list that we have. And then we have someone who's doing the buying. So, you know, pretty much we're pretty much all the way outsource on the OA side. We're just focusing on Having an employee load the items that the sourcers are sourcing, filtering through the price, adding it on the buy sheet for the buyer. That's just the one last thing and then we're pretty much set on that OA side. Speaker 2: Now on the wholesale side, what does the team look like? Is that still just you? Speaker 1: Yep, it's still just me. Looking to this year, obviously focus on the wholesale team, growing that up as well. Speaker 2: And correct me if I'm wrong, you just moved into a warehouse space not too long ago, right? Speaker 1: Yup, yup. About, it's small, 1,000 to 1,200 square feet. But I mean, it's a good space to just start receiving. We're doing all of the wholesale prepping ourselves with our team. Speaker 2: I mean, let's be honest. You say like, oh, it's a small space, 1,000, 1,200 square feet. That's enough space to do seven figures a year just in wholesale, right? Like when we had our, our warehouse was exactly 2000 square feet. And I mean, we were doing, yeah, probably 200, 250K a month out of that warehouse at the time. So, and we were selling a lot of like, sometimes like bigger, like bulkier products. I mean, there's no reason you can't get wholesale to seven figures per year just out of that space. And obviously you're going to grow and expand out of there as well, which is going to be awesome. Now, are you doing all the prep yourself? I think you've said you had a team there locally maybe to help with that. Speaker 1: Yeah, just part-time, some family, you know, just kind of so we can still, you know, obviously I'm doing a little bit of prepping, but I still try to stay out of it so I can, you know, still focus on growing the business. But just part-time, you know, family, helping out, whatnot, so. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great way to approach it, right? I mean, I did that Back when we had our warehouse, one of our warehouse employees is my cousin, right? He was on summer break from college and he needed a job, so we plugged him right in there and he crushed it. And I have also employed other members of the family over the years as well. So family can be a really good, almost like a short-term solution when it comes to hiring help, especially on the prep side. I'm sure you'll get to this point sooner than later, but as you scale, a lot of times, family's just looking for kind of like a part-time thing or something to make some quick cash. As you scale, it really helps to have those dedicated resources who might be external, Don't come with a lot of family drama as a lot of people can sometimes deal with and just getting them trained up and getting them dialed in and they can be really good assets to your business as well. So I'm sure you'll find some really good people like that there locally if you haven't already. Speaker 1: And that's just the biggest question going forward, too, is if we want to keep prep in-house or prep center. Obviously OA is all prep center. Just with Ohio sales tax, it just has always made sense to just go the prep center route for that. But obviously with the wholesale route, you don't pay sales tax. So we've kept it in-house. We have a cheap warehouse that doesn't have much overhead. It's something that we're going to have to figure out this year to see if we want to expand and go into a bigger warehouse or try to outsource it. It's still something that we're unsure about. Speaker 2: It's a big decision. That to say, it doesn't necessarily need to be made all or nothing, nor does it need to be made all at once. Plenty of people who say, well, hey, I've got this warehouse and it's going great, but maybe I want to start having this specific supplier shipped to my prep center, right? And testing out my prep center with this supplier. And if they do a good job with this supplier, then maybe slowly over time, we start to give them more of our prep work until we've got it totally off our table and we can just get out of our warehouse, right? And then you've got other people who say, well, Our warehouse is humming along so nicely and we've got a really good pipeline of local workers and of local people to come in and do the work. Why wouldn't we just keep expanding this ourselves? So again, multiple ways to look at it. There's no right way. There's no wrong way. It really is just what's the right way for you, right? So for you, Grant, where do you see the wholesale business going and what's kind of your goal with it? Speaker 1: So hopefully, you know, obviously, like I mentioned, still keep away around, you know, 2 million a year. I'm not really looking to grow that, but still, you know, obviously wholesale, try to, you know, do about the same as well. So hopefully around 2-ish million this year. You know, we have the capital. We've been leveraging 0% APR credit cards. We're in a pretty good spot to do so. So I'd like to, you know, hopefully see by the end of the year around 2 million wholesale. Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, you're well on your way to get there. I mean, again, you've five to six solid brand direct accounts that you've essentially opened in the last two to four months, right? With, again, we're not talking like, correct me if I'm wrong, Grant, but we're not, it's not like you're sitting there Banging the phones, calling a hundred new suppliers a day for eight hours a day and then spending another six hours going through spreadsheets. That's not what you're doing. Is that fair to say? Speaker 1: Yeah, no. I mean, to add five brands to a sheet to reach out to each day doesn't obviously take very long. And then going through, you know, we even have, you know, you know, going through these sheets, you know, these brands don't have, it's not like a distributor that has $10,000. Yeah, so these sheets aren't taking very long to go through, you know, either throw them out, say, hey, look, nothing's profitable here, you know, or go back to the brand, say, hey, look, you know, we need a part, you know, we need no X margin. This needs to be the buy cost and see if you can negotiate anything with them. Unknown Speaker: So. Speaker 2: Well, for sure. And that is, again, I tried not to cross the line between saying, oh, this is simple versus this is easy, right? Because it's not easy. I'm the first to say this is not an easy business. You would never say this is an easy business because it's not. But it's just simple. It's not that hard, but it's not easy, right? Again, we're not telling you guys in the audience here to go out and call 100 new brands per day for the next 25 weeks. It just doesn't take that much effort. Instead, like Grant is saying, let's get really tactical with the types of brands we're calling. Let's make sure we're calling qualified brands And let's just do that three to five times per day. And let's do that every day for the next 30 to 60 days. And then if we do that, we're going to have more opportunity than we have capital to spend. And then we can take our foot off the gas in terms of calling new suppliers. Right? Because Grant, I mean, my guess is you probably got so much opportunity, so many different, good, profitable products to buy right now that your bottleneck, Grant, probably isn't stuff to buy. It's probably capital. And if I'm wrong, tell me, but I'm assuming that's where you are. Is that true? Unknown Speaker: Not exactly. Speaker 1: I mean, obviously capital is some... Obviously, like I mentioned, we do have 0% APR credit cards. So capital isn't the biggest issue. It's really just, you know, we're, um, we're still probably looking to open up a, probably I would say, you know, another couple of brands will start running into capital issues. Um, but we're still, we're still doing all right as far as that goes. Speaker 2: Got it. Okay. That makes sense. And cause really, like I've said this before, every, every Amazon seller that's doing wholesale is in one of two camps. Camp one is they've got too many profitable products to, or sorry, I take that back. Camp one is they've got too much capital and not enough products to buy. And then camp two is they've got too many good products to buy and not enough capital. And every Amazon wholesale seller's goal is to get to camp two as quickly as they can. And I mean, again, you've only been at wholesale for four months and you're like halfway, you're like one foot in one camp, one foot in the other, right? This is something that's taken you really less than six months to dial in and to build momentum for what is, I mean, already a seven figure run rate business on the wholesale side, but what will definitely be a seven figure per year business by the end of 2025. Yep. Speaker 1: And if you would have asked me, you know, Q4 of last year, capital or, you know, product, like obviously capital was a concern with, you know, we were buying very heavy leveraging money. Now just coming off of, you know, Q4, we're starting, we obviously got some big payouts from Amazon. So now it's more just, you know, putting that money back into products that were shown. Speaker 2: Right. Continuing to reinvest, but doing it in a smart way and still taking some off the table, like you said, To put into real estate and to put into assets and to keep building a long-term wealth, right? Speaker 1: Yep, actually. Speaker 2: I love it, man. Now, you've got a lot of stuff going on. So you mentioned you started a returns processing service where you're basically... So it sounds to me like when... And I use one of these services. I think I'm understanding correctly. But basically you're saying like an Amazon seller, they sell a product and customer returns it, but it's damaged. But the seller doesn't want to get it sent back to them, right? But they want to get some sort of money out of it. So what, they just send it to you and then you sell it on like eBay or you liquidate it in some way and you almost like split the profit with them? Is that kind of how that works? Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely. So we take care of the whole process of, you know, all Amazon removals, you know, as we grew. We saw there was a huge problem with customer returns. I mean, obviously Amazon, you sell in some higher return rate as well and definitely ruin your business. So we focus on liquidating the items. So some items come back still brand new. So we send those back into Amazon for the seller. If the item is used, we liquidate it locally, eBay, Poshmark. And then a big thing that sellers aren't doing and they leave money on the table is reimbursement. So a lot of items that are coming back damage, return fraud. We've sold some shoes, some Nike, Monarchs that come back as a new balance or something along those lines. Amazon will reimburse you for that as return fraud. So something that a lot of Amazon sellers aren't aware of. Speaker 2: That's a huge place where money slips through the cracks, right? Is in not monetizing your returns and not monetizing your reimbursements. But so, and thank you for the explanation there, but the point I was getting at, so you've got this returns processing service, which you're running. You've got your OA business, which is more or less on autopilot, it sounds like. You've got the wholesale business, which you're running the day-to-day. You're going door-to-door for your buddy's roofing company, right? So obviously that's taking some of your time as well. And you've got your real estate rentals, some of which you're putting in some of the work in yourself to rehab some of these properties and get them up to rental standards. So that's a lot of stuff you've got going on. My question is, how are you spending your time? Like, what does your week look like in terms of a breakdown of each of those businesses? Speaker 1: Yeah, so obviously right now, the start of the year with Ohio, so kind of address the door-to-door, the winter months are obviously really slow. So right now my day, I wake up, focus on doing some sourcing, reaching out to brands, try to attack that in the morning. And then midday, I'll go to the warehouse, see what needs done for the day. Typically, prepping, if I have employees there, I do some work at the warehouse. And then obviously real estate, it kind of goes through spurts. Right now it's a little slower. We just moved into a property. So for the next few months, it'll be slower on that part of it. But it's really just the next couple of months is really just going to be focused on growing the wholesale, building a team on the wholesale side of the business. Speaker 2: Smart. And I mean, in my experience, the people that you have are everything, right? And that goes for any business. The only reason I'm able to operate my wholesale business more or less with an hour of my time spent on it per week is because of my team, because I've got really good people. We're able to run The Wholesale Network the way that we have been is because of our people, because of our team. And so, like I said earlier, the way that you're gonna really scale wholesale now to the next level is finding really good people to add to your team, to remove yourself as that bottleneck and start to build out a business there as opposed to a one-man show. And that's not to belittle anything that you're doing, of course, by any means. I know that you know that that's what it's gonna take to get to the next level, right? Speaker 1: Yep, yep, absolutely. Speaker 2: That's awesome, man. And hey, let's end it just by hearing from you. So again, I mentioned at the beginning of the episode here, you've been inside the Wholesale Network. You've been one of our community members since, I want to say like beginning of Q4, maybe right around the end of September. So I just want to hear, and for the audience as well, like your honest feedback. What have you gained as being part of the Wholesale Network so far? Like what's your honest opinion on the community we built here? Speaker 1: Now, it's been great, obviously, just surrounding yourself with around other people who are, you know, trying to grow their, you know, going from away to wholesale is, you know, some parts of it are very similar, and some parts are obviously very different. So, obviously, I wanted to just I grew up quickly with wholesale, you know, that transition. So just joining or being around, you know, other people that are trying to build wholesale businesses, you know, it's also awesome to, you know, having all three, you know, coaches, you know, to be able to reach out to message directly. I mean, it's been, it's been awesome. Speaker 2: Awesome, man. Well, you've been a fantastic member and watching you grow has been a joy and I know we're going to keep watching you grow throughout the end of 2025 into 2026 and beyond. So for those of you in the audience, You heard it here, right? You heard it directly from Grant himself. If you would like to join our Wholesale Network community, if you're doing arbitrage and you want to transition to wholesale, or if you've already got a little bit of traction on the wholesale side and you want to take that to the next level, then the Wholesale Network is the community and it is the place to help you do that. So if you guys are interested in joining us, you can head over to wholesalenetwork.io. You can submit a quick application there. We'll review it. And if you're a good fit, we will reach out and look to invite you to join us inside the network. So Grant, thank you so much for the time, man. Where can people connect with you? Where can people network with you? Where can people find out more about Grant Baker? Speaker 1: Yep, so on Instagram and Twitter, just Grant Baker and then we should be good. And I just wanted to add too, it is so important to be able to invest in yourself. So join that group. I'm not getting paid to do this, but it's such an awesome opportunity and just investing in yourself is worth it. Speaker 2: Well, hey, Grant, I appreciate the feedback, man. I appreciate having you on. I appreciate your time and you're killing it. Looking forward to seeing you continue to do so. Speaker 1: Okay, great. Speaker 2: Awesome, man.