#110 - How to Make Money Online as a Mom of 4 with Emily Baker I The Corey Ganim Show

#110 - How to Make Money Online as a Mom of 4 with Emily Baker I The Corey Ganim Show Speaker 2: Welcome back to another episode of The Corey Ganim Show. So this week we have a special guest with us. Her name is Emily Baker, otherwise known as Crazy Flippin Mom. Now she has amassed a huge audience on Instagram. She has quite a few followers, so she's built a solid personal brand in the mommy income slash, you know, make money online business for mom space, which I think is really cool. It is a Demographic that we don't usually get to talk to. So we're going to go deep on how she built that audience as well as how she's built a community of Amazon sellers and how she's built her own Amazon business. So there's a lot to dive into this week. Looking forward to hearing from Emily on her story and deep diving into her multiple businesses. So Emily, thank you for the time. Looking forward to chopping it up with you and hearing everything that you got going on. Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. So Emily, let's start with your origin story. So not even on the Amazon side, but just in terms of entrepreneurship, how did you get started as an entrepreneur? Speaker 1: I, um, you know, it's always been something I, I get this question a lot and I'm like, wow, how did I start? Because I remember being in like middle school selling candy. Like I would bring candy to my classmates. Like I was always, I, yes, I had a lemonade stand. And then when I was in high school, I would go clean daycare toys. But so before I was in high school, so before I could get a real job, I was like, go to daycares and be like, I'll clean your toys after hours. So they would pay me cash under the table. So I was always destined for this life. I'm a big fan of like entrepreneurship. I definitely fit the mold, you know, high anxiety, ADHD, like always thinking, working, planning. I love it. And I'm so I'm way too like sassy now to have an actual boss. But I think some days like I'll just go work at Starbucks, but that would probably kill me. So I've always been doing something. But yeah, I started selling on eBay. Like eight years really grew my eBay store full time. I had like 1500 listings and I cross listed all over and I was a part of that community, like the resale community. I bought other people's eBay stores and that is like the gateway drug into Amazon. You know, at some point you're like, I need to do more. And then you find out about Amazon. So I pivoted through a series of events and I just started focusing on Amazon and that was, um, I think I've had my Amazon account. I think this is year eight. Okay. Nobody back then was talking about arbitrage necessarily, especially merchant fulfillment. And it was very like closed lip. Like you couldn't get information unless you're selling books. Books was easy to get in. Like everyone was talking about becoming millionaires on books. Speaker 2: So Reezy was the man back then talking about books. Speaker 1: And I tried it all. You know, I failed it at all. And I finally landed in merchant fulfillment. And it fit my lifestyle and I didn't have the, the money to make mistakes on wholesale and sending stuff in. So I was like, I'm going to merchant fulfill. And that was also no, no one was merchant fulfilling pre COVID. So I spent that year, like I can figure this out. I can merchant fulfill. We're very tight budget with four kids at home. So I just spent the year learning like what listings, Could translate to merchant fulfillment, when, how, all the things. And then COVID happened and everybody was merchant fulfilling. So I kind of like was prepared, you know, for the turn to merchant. Speaker 2: Sure. Speaker 1: And my husband, about six months into shutdowns, his job was affected, but we were looking at what I was doing on Amazon and I was making up both of our incomes at that point. And so he left his job and joined me full time. And we've been doing this full time together ever since then. Like that's that covers like five years really quickly. And there's a lot of Everything that disasters and success and that happens there, but it always is. Yeah. So doing this, um, full time working with your partner or like all of that could be a whole separate conversation. Um, but yeah, we're still here. We sell, I sell mostly on Walmart. I scale WFS, which is Walmart fulfillment. And then I now merchant fulfill on Amazon again, and it's how I'm able to, kind of focus on both platforms at the same time. You know, I have to split it up a little bit. Speaker 2: Yeah, interesting. Okay. So there's so many different directions that we could go there. But one thing that I want to touch on is you'd mentioned As a mom of four kids, right, the budget's tight. So when you're trying to get this Amazon thing off the ground, you're testing arbitrage, sounds like you've got a pretty tight budget. And it sounds like testing product, like you have to be pretty choosy with what you're buying, right? Because capital is tight. You've got to make sure you're placing your test orders. You're not going too deep into a certain product and, you know, end up losing it. And then there goes half your capital. So what is your process look like in the early stages as you have limited funds to work with as you're testing and as you're scaling? Speaker 1: So in the beginning, because I was so limited, I would take my SKUs that I was looking at buying and testing out and I would write them all out and be like, and honestly, if you have a lot of money, cause I work, I used to do one-on-ones. Like I've been doing this a long time. I used to mentor. Now I have a group and the people who have a lot of money, endless money, usually take out the hardest because they're not looking at the pennies. Where I was so limited, I knew every dime. Amazon was taking, I knew the fees. I knew return, how much I was paying in returns. And that knowledge was powerful to my business. So I would take my SKUs. I would break it out and see like at 20 profitable products, which one will be the less returns? Which one will be the easiest to ship out? Which one am I going to net the most, the easiest? And then I would focus. So my money I was turning so successfully, you know, in those beginning days, just making sure every penny went, you know, worked for me. Speaker 2: Well, I love what you're saying because I feel like a lot of people when they come into this space, they use lack of capital as an excuse more than anything to either not get started or as being a barrier to them having success in this business. When in reality, I think it can be an advantage. And clearly you saw it as an advantage as well, because by having little capital now, of course, you need enough to get started. But as long as you have at least that minimum to get started, For arbitrage, it's really just a few hundred bucks. It forces you to stretch every dollar as far as you can. You're not able to go and splurge on all these different software subscriptions. You've really got to make sure that you're buying the highest ROI products, turning your money as quickly as possible and reinvesting as much as you can. And that sounds like that's exactly what you did. So that lack of capital was actually an asset for you as opposed to a liability. Speaker 1: It definitely wasn't. I didn't have KIPA. I didn't have anything. I just got so good at reading the listings and now I'm like, oh, I should add Keepa. I was so good at reading the listings. I had it open like I was... It was, it was insane. You know, I was like addicted. Speaker 2: How are you reading? Like, what do you mean reading the listings? Speaker 1: I had the listings open and I was just watching people's numbers dwindle. I was seeing who was winning the buy box over this person. And that was interesting. Like, you know, why would this merchant seller be able to be FBA right here or vice versa? Or why was this guy? I was able to up the price over time. So all of those things I was just doing real time. I didn't have somebody to be like, oh, you should get Keepa. Yeah. So I was just diving into each listing live on Amazon and I was like, oh, okay, this is a good merchant listing because, and I would say that's an issue across the board, is There's a lot of like, oh, good thing that sold. There's no, well, why did it sell? Why did it not sell? Why did you pick that listing? Why did you do a bundle? You know, and those are the questions that just don't get answered. And so that's where I spent a lot of my time. Like, why am I going to FBA this over merchant? And I got really good at, you know, we have Menards here in the Midwest. It's like the jewel of the Midwest, right? I can get 11% rebate there. That's where I was like, this is the only place I'm shopping to resell because my first month on Amazon, I made $9,500 in gross sales and that's all on 11% rebate, everything I bought. We'd get these rebates back, thousands of dollars so I could go buy groceries. Literally, I was putting everything into the business and taking the rebates to buy groceries at Menards. Honestly, there's a lot of excuses. I had a lot of excuses, but I was determined to make it work and it worked. Speaker 2: Well, I think that says a lot about the person partaking in the business, right? Because really there's a bunch of different things that you could have done to make money, whether it's selling on Amazon, obviously you sold on eBay, you could have started the service business. There's a million different things you could have done, but I firmly believe that it's The person is the entrepreneur that makes the business and not the other way around. So what I mean by that is that you could be, you know, a good entrepreneur and you could have a business opportunity that maybe isn't even the best opportunity, but you're going to make the most out of it and you're going to make money doing it. Now, I think you had the best of both worlds and that you're a talented entrepreneur and you had a good opportunity in front of you. And because of that, you were able to month one, $9,500 in sales, which for context, for me, my whole year one, which I guess was technically only six months, but really my first calendar year, I only sold about $7,200 total. Right. And that was in used books. Now, I think that you probably were ahead of the curve on me as far as just action taking. And, you know, clearly you were a student of the game. You're studying these listings, you're figuring out what to look for, what not to look for. But all in all, I think the right person is going to succeed regardless of what it is they're doing, which you've obviously translated into your community and into your group as well, which I'm happy to talk about. But before we kind of make the leap into that, were there any other major, I'd say like milestones or goals that you hit between that time of 9,500 that first month to today, now having all this experience? Speaker 1: Wow, so I think when I look back at everything I've done on Amazon and Walmart, Um, like one of the best. So I do focus a lot on merchant on Amazon and, um, we've had some amazing, like number we fold all the numbers, you know, it's fantastic. And I honestly, I think it's important to understand what you don't want your business to be. Uh, because social media is so demanding on us that we perform and you, you like let other people's vision of their business rub off on you. And you lose why you started it. You lose like the passion and the why. And I would say, you know, I know that doesn't translate to like, Oh, this, this number, but I would say, know what, knowing what you don't want your business to look like was really important. Like the pressure on me to always do more to move into wholesale. Like, I know I could do that. I didn't want to do that. That was not like my end goal. So once I figured out what I didn't want, I felt so much freer to just focus on what I do want my business to be. And until you realize like what is the purpose of this business, because for most people, We're not selling at the end of the day. We're not building a brand that's selling and we're going to go live on a private island. You know, at the end of the day, when you're done, you're done. You know, you get your last couple of payouts and you're done. So this is more or less like a job. What do you want it to be? And once I figured out what I did want it to be, I was easier at like, no, that's not for me. You know, even in business, you know, I get a lot of opportunities. No, that's not for me because I just didn't align with the why I was here. Speaker 2: I think that's such a good realization. And I think that's a very mature like realization as well, because obviously you've been in business for quite a while now. So I think you've probably learned that over time. And that's something that for me too, it took a while to learn is that, well, defining what you don't want to do or what you don't want or what you're not willing to do a lot of times is a good place to start versus starting with what you want, right? Because for most people, you could, you could go to them and ask them what they don't want and they can really easily tell you. But when you ask them what they do want, it's kind of harder. So, you know, for as an example that you mentioned, right, you're like, well, I don't necessarily want to get into wholesale, right? Just because that's what everybody else is doing, or maybe that was the trend at the time. That's not what Emily wants. And that's not what It's going to bring Emily closer to her goal, right? For me, I think with my Amazon business, luckily, one of the things that I decided early on is that, well, I don't want to be tied to a location or to have to go into a warehouse every day and manage warehouse staff and manage a warehouse manager. So for me, my decision to use a prep center instead of getting a warehouse, even though maybe it costs me a little bit more per unit, I'm fine with that because it aligns with what I want and also with what I don't want, which is to have to go into a warehouse every day and be tied to a specific location. Right? Right. Speaker 1: I love that. I think it's definitely seasonal. With having kids at home right now, this is what it has to be. In the future, it will look a lot different. I hope it does because I do want to travel. We want to be able to do this on the road. It's seasonal, so better or worse. It's like, this is only a season, so I'm going to make it the best that I can. Speaker 2: Exactly. No. And again, the person listening to this, there could be a, you know, the 18, 19 year old Amazon seller that's listening to this, that's scaling like crazy. And they're thinking, well, I want a warehouse because I want to scale this thing to I'm a 10 million year, 50 million year, whatever that number is. And there's other people listening to this who are like, Oh, I agree with Corey. I don't ever want to have to go in and be tied to a specific location. So because of that, I'm going to take the prep center route as well. So again, I think the moral here is just knowing what you want versus what you don't want and what you are willing to do versus what you're not willing to do. So did you ever did you ever attempt to do wholesale or that's something that you said from day one? You're like, it's not not up my alley. I'm not going to even bother with it. Speaker 1: I will do it in the future. Definitely. It's part of my future business plans with Walmart, but it's currently We have a lot of businesses and every day I drive my husband crazy with more business ideas. Speaker 2: I do the same thing. Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you wake up one day and you're like, yeah, I should do that. So I don't feel this need to go all in on one thing and I want to be a little looser in what I'm doing than tied down with product. Like out of everything I do content, like The having actual product is expensive. So I definitely think in the future, I've been around enough people in enough rooms talking about wholesale. Speaker 2: I could probably talk about it, but I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure you, I could see you being good at it again, just from spending the last 30 minutes or so I could see you being good at it. You've got the people skills. Speaker 1: I would definitely love to. Um, but with little kids, they have all my money. You know, right now, all of my money is wrapped up in children. And if you're watching this, like, I don't know, should I use protection? Should I have kids? They're going to take all of your funds and you're not going to spend that. Yeah, so right now all of my money is in kids. Speaker 2: No, I mean, I think that's good advice, right? And again, you know, it's for where you are, your season in life. You're like wholesale isn't for me right now because I don't have the capital to dedicate to it. But you do have the connections in the background that whenever you do want to make that move or you do want to start that business, you could do it relatively easily because of the people that you already know. Now, oh, go ahead. I saw you're about to say something. Speaker 1: No, I was going to say, once I'm ready, I'll join your community. I'll be there. Ready to go. Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. No, we'll be here for you whenever you're ready. But the other thing that you mentioned that I want to touch on too, is you said that you're doing a lot with Walmart, right? And I know You've also got an in-person event, kind of like a small group event geared towards Walmart coming up. So do you want to maybe talk about the event that you guys have planned and then we could touch on what you're doing on the Walmart side? Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I am hosting a Walmart seller retreat in Omaha, Nebraska Actually a month from today. Speaker 2: So it is so today's June 18th 2025 so that that event is July 18th. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Okay in Omaha. Speaker 1: Yeah, so I Kind of an exclusive networking opportunity for people who are selling on Walmart, who want to sell on Walmart, and we're offering education around arbitrage and wholesale. So you kind of get a dynamic of both. There's definitely principles in the wholesale side that relate to arbitrage as well and vice versa. So we are talking Walmart for two days. This platform is up and coming and coming for Amazon, you know, they are really like they have their sites on Amazon. They want to compete. They're not there yet. But there's a lot of things that are different. It's not The opportunity is Amazon 10 years ago, but it's not Amazon. It will never be. So they're coming from a little bit different perspective and background. So it is a lot different. So yeah, come to the retreat. It's in Omaha, Nebraska, Midwest. It's hard to find a Midwest event around e-commerce. So that's unique too. Come hang out with us. You won't regret it. Well, I'll give you guys the links and some codes you can use. Yeah, I love Walmart. I love this platform and I've spent the last, this is year four, focusing here and learning everything I can from ads to scaling WFS and IP claims and all of it. And it's not Amazon yet, but like as far as sales, but I see amazing growth and opportunity here. Speaker 2: Well, and it certainly seems to be the trend right now, right? A lot of Amazon sellers are, I mean, we see some Amazon sellers ditching Amazon altogether and going to sell on Walmart. Now, I think most of the smart sellers are continuing to sell on Amazon and adding Walmart, but you've got a little bit of both, right? So bottom line is Walmart is on the uptrend. Seems like they're very pro-seller. Seems like they're doing a lot to improve the seller experience and just make it a good place to earn an income, right? So Emily, for the people that are interested in that event or at least checking it out, do you have a website they can go to to check it out? Speaker 1: Yeah, and I will give Corey links and you can follow me Crazy Flippin' Mom and I have all the links there, but sellerretreat.com gets you there. How'd you get that domain? Speaker 2: I feel like that's a pretty good domain. Speaker 1: Thank you. So my husband does my content. He does like graphic design, logos, web design. So he snatches all the good ones up for me. Speaker 2: That's pretty good. Yeah, I'm surprised that wasn't taken. So nice. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Well, that's, and guys, you know, for those of you listening again, Walmart, like Walmart's a place to watch, right? I know a lot of people doing big numbers there. Emily's proof of it. I didn't realize you've been selling there for four years. That's pretty cool. I remember, I think I opened my Walmart selling account. It was during COVID. So sometime during 2020, but I remember I just opened the account just to have it because I think they were only letting like certain amount of people in at the time. So I remember I'm like, Oh, I'm just going to open the account. So I have it. And then I never, I've never done anything with it, but I've got it. It is something that I've been meaning to get around to, but a lot of people I think are starting to make that pivot. Speaker 1: You know, definitely in the past year. I mean, last year I was going to events like, what do you have for Walmart sellers? From the provider, nobody had anything. And even some important people were like, it doesn't matter. You know, I could name names that people did not care about. This year, they're like, Hey, can you help us? Can you figure it out? What? Um, yeah, so I opened similar, I opened Walmart Just to like move some of my catalog, Amazon, and I definitely agree. You shouldn't give up one to go to the other. I definitely have both. I try to be strategic with my limited time and funds, what I do on both. But I opened my Walmart account and it was during like November, I want to say, and I moved over my seasonal candy. And again, we do fully merchant through the holiday season, usually, especially now with placement fees. I probably did have FBA there, but it's usually a lot of merchants. So I was like, okay, I'll just merchant fulfill on Walmart and just see how it goes. We like cleared $45,000 of sales in November. And that's when you had to buy shipping on your own. Speaker 2: Like they didn't have- Oh, I bet that was a pain. Speaker 1: So it was like hooked up to a credit card. And I was, I kept getting that shut down cause they thought it was fraud. Cause I was buying like loads from stamps.com. It was like a whole thing, but yeah. Speaker 2: All kinds of points though. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I mean, can you do that now? I guess you probably could still with VeCo. You could still have a credit card, but now they have options, you know, like Amazon, if you're going to Merchant Fulfill. Speaker 2: Right. Well, that is, it really is an under, well, Merchant Fulfilled in general, I think is underrated, right? COVID made it more mainstream, but for certain products and in certain categories, it can a lot of times be superior to doing an FBA or even like a WFS, again, depending on the product. So would you say, you said that right now your Amazon sales are entirely Merchant Fulfilled, and then on the Walmart side, I think you said you're kind of split, right? You're doing some Merchant Fulfilled and some WFS? Speaker 1: On Walmart, I am just strictly WFS. So I focus Walmart. I'm usually Walmart to Walmart over there, meaning I buy products from Walmart and resell it on the Walmart platform. And I try not to sell or fulfill because I think it's a pain. I don't like their system. I know some people do. I don't love it. So I prefer just if I'm going to merch and fulfill, I prefer to do that on Amazon. I don't do a lot on Amazon. I'm like right now through the summer, I'll be mostly Walmart and I probably back to school through Easter, Merchant Fulfill on Amazon. So I started that early, you know, with kids, my summer was off and then I would come back to selling back to school. And then through Easter, you know, there's so many holidays in there back to back. And then I was like, okay, have a break, two month break with my kids. And that was kind of my selling rotation. Speaker 2: Nice. Okay. So you really treated it as a lifestyle business, right? And I don't use that term derogatorily to mean, you know, casual or not very big, but you were treating it in the sense that, well, hey, my kids are home for the summer, so I'm going to spend the summer with them and I can pick this back up when they go back to school when I have more time, right? Is that kind of how you were? Which to me, I mean, That's a great business, right? That for most moms and most people in your position, I think they would absolutely love that because that does allow them the flexibility to be with the family during the summer and to, you know, create income in the other months. So I like that you took that approach. Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, like I'm very clear what this business is to me and what it isn't. And this is supposed to pay my bills, nothing else. I'm not emotionally connected to anything here. As far as Amazon and Walmart, like it is very black and white to me. And I don't want it to get emotional. I don't want to be tied to product. I don't want to be like, I have to scale for to be successful. You know, I know exactly how much I have to make to pay all my bills. I'm working like we're a one income family. So, those things are all very clear to me. I say one income, but we both have like freaking seven side hustles. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know you got a lot of different streams. Maybe one tax return is what you mean. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I'm very clear on what it is and I would say if you're young starting out, get really unemotionally specific about your business. You know, at the end of the day, what is it supposed to look like? This is not a romantic relationship. You know, I don't want it to keep me up at night. So I make decisions in that way. So it feels like, you know, it's working for me. Speaker 2: Well, and you don't fall into the trap of just scale for scale sake, right? And I feel like this was the downfall of a lot. I mean, this is one of the reasons why you see so, so fewer people on Instagram or on Amazon, Twitter and all these places where there used to be all this activity and all these sellers. Well, a lot of sellers got caught up in the scale by any means necessary mentality and they over leveraged and then they either got their account shut down or, you know, they got section three or something happened and then they had, they went out of business. Right. But, but you're saying you're like, I know what I need. I know exactly how much I need to sell. And if I get to a point where either, you know, this business is no longer profitable or if I'm no longer enjoying it or for whatever reason, I can step away without any sort of emotional attachment. That's kind of what you're saying. Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. I want this to work for me and my family. It is too much work, mental investment to learn it all to keep me up at night. I'm really big on that because I work with women who have a crappy marriage or they're single and they have a bunch of kids and they can't over leverage their credit cards. They have to buy groceries. It's something like I'm always like, do not, back away from the loan, back away from that Amazon loan because if you don't have a clear intention with that, it can sink you, it can sink the business. Speaker 2: Exactly. Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely, definitely. Speaker 2: Well, not just with Amazon loans, but just debt in general. I mean, I can't tell you how many people I've seen. Take an Amazon loan or they go and get a 0% credit card with a 50k limit, but they don't even have a bookkeeper or they don't even have a profit and loss statement each month. That's the biggest mistake people make with debt is they take on debt before they even know their real numbers. And the advice that I always give to people is until you know your profit down to the penny, then you have no business taking on any debt. So let that just be a warning for maybe some of the folks in the audience who are thinking or who are deciding whether or not to take an Amazon loan or any sort of loan at all. If you don't know your numbers or if you're over leveraged, then please do not load up on more debt. It's not going to help you out. If anything, it's just going to put you Probably deeper in the hole, right? Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Speaker 2: So let's talk about for a second, your social media, right? So your personal brand is huge on Instagram. How many followers do you have on Instagram? I think 140,000. Which is pretty big for the reselling, definitely the Amazon space, but even for the reselling space at large. So what are some things that you did to kind of grow your following there and how long have you been posting? Speaker 1: So when I started like dabbling in side hustles like eBay, I started sharing and I honestly didn't know you weren't supposed to for Amazon. I didn't know and I always get the comments like, You're ruining it for everybody. Speaker 2: People with a scarcity mentality. Speaker 1: If I can ruin your business with one skew, you don't belong here. Speaker 2: Or with one Instagram post, then you're out of business. Speaker 1: Get out of here. So yeah, I just started sharing and I started sharing like I am who I am in person. And online, like I am not flashy. I drive a minivan. I have four kids. My life is a cluster all the time. I'm honest about my struggles and that's attractive to people in a world that it's completely fake. And you see Lamborghinis and orange bars. I try to be my most genuine self. On social media and I think that has been attractive to people, you know. Yeah, just showing up and sharing what it's really like and not just like. The fake, Oh, I sold it. Like we can all sell everything, right? Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: You know, but like actually the struggles behind it. Speaker 2: Well, I think that's so important. And I think that's a piece that a lot of people mess up on as, as they're trying to build a personal brand or as they're trying to build an audience, they spend so much time trying to always put their best foot forward and always trying to make everything look as if it's perfect. But in reality, people don't resonate with that. They resonate with authenticity with, Like you said, sharing your struggles and knowing who Emily is and knowing that she's not flashy and all these things. And that's something I've tried to be good about as well as just being authentic and showing my true self. And something I had a conversation with one of my mentors earlier this week, he was talking about with Amazon, sorry, with AI continuing to become a bigger and bigger thing in our lives. I mean, it's going to be a time here soon where Most content is going to be AI, right? And really the only real people that are going to cut through the noise are the people who are authentic and who have built a legitimate audience of people who like them and who are kind of subscribed to them as a person. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I know there's this We've had a lot of conversation like AI is taking over everything and social media and selling and I think we will lean into human interaction in the next five years more in small communities and retreats. I think it'll be so much bigger because that's what we want, you know, in a world that we are overly connected, we're not connected. So I try, you know, at my in-person retreats in my community. That's what I try. We are sharing our real life, you know, sometimes really terrible, sometimes great. And the other thing is I think people shy away from the hate on social media and that has been the fire to my flame and I can't get enough of social media hate. And I find that interesting that most people try to make such boring content that they don't get anything but like nice hearts and likes. So I've leaned into all of the like, oh, I can't believe she posted that and just like, I know it's ridiculous. And all of that has definitely fueled growth on social media. Speaker 2: Definitely. I mean, you've got to be polarizing to a degree, right? You can't just be boring or middle of the line because then nobody's going to care and nobody's going to have an opinion one way or the other. I mean, the worst thing people can be is indifferent. You want people to either love you or hate you. You know, some people are going to, it is what it is, but really you don't want people to be in the middle and kind of be indifferent about you. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: So I like that you've taken that approach. I think it makes a lot of sense. And it clearly has contributed to your, the growth of not only your personal brand, but like you said, the community that you have and that you host, which, you know, let's go in a little deeper on that. What, what is the name of the community? Is it the Crazy Flippin' Mom Community? Is it named after you? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, a lot, like I've always, I've been attracted to community, you know, and wherever I'm at, I'm trying to connect. And so before the community, before even Amazon, I had this email blast and it was just me and an email list and you could sign up and there was like 20 of us. And every week I would just check in and be like, tell me your crazy flipping story, you know? So that's where the name Crazy Flipping Mom came from because I was, like, I was always finding these crazy flips, like I would buy out estate sales and storage units and finding the craziest things. So yeah, it grew from that. And yeah, we met with the developer five years ago, and they built an app out for us, which was unique. And I'm so glad we did. I want to do easy, like, let's just do it on Facebook. And my husband had the foresight to be like, no, we're not gonna do Facebook because Facebook owns you then. So being tech savvy, we built out our own app and community So we could be like your reseller sidekick. And that's been like probably the my favorite thing I get to do every week is to be on live calls with people, helping them and brainstorming and that whole side of the business. Speaker 2: Well, and it's smart, too. It's really impressive to me that your husband had the foresight to say, well, hey, let's not build our community on Facebook. Instead, let's We're going to build our own platform and host the community on that because that way we own it. And now, you know, five years later, five years after you made that decision, well, that's looking like a really smart decision because I'm a part of multiple Facebook communities that are paid, right? These are paid communities and the owners of these communities are migrating them to other platforms, whether it's to Discord or to school or wherever. Because Facebook buries posts, like you can't, even the owners of the group can't get in front of the whole group because it's all algorithmic based, even inside the group itself. So again, in hindsight, that was a really smart move. And I know it's contributed to like the tight knitness of the community. But before we go into the actual community itself and kind of what you guys do and what you're all about, you mentioned that I guess how you, the early stages of you building it, you have an email list of 20 people on the email list. So talk about like how, how did you build up that initial list and how did you start to nurture that community early on? You've got, you know, is it you just like asking them once a week, Hey, what flips have you had? And then kind of showcasing those or like, how did you build that early on? Speaker 1: So I think just the willingness to share and not demand from my community, like Be a part pay me and I was like in the background just like yes, everybody loves me But my willingness also to show up with education with loss with like don't do this You know in the stupidest things, you know, we want to appear the most educated to our communities But I think again taking the approach like I'm a student like you guys I'm learning it real time and this is I did this stupid mistake, you know and owning it and Publicly was, I think really smart, you know, it was just people realizing we're all in this together. We're like all on the same level. We're learning. Sometimes we're making big mistakes, but yeah, I think just helping, you know, and not, and that's a good question. I guess, I don't know, but I, I genuinely want people to win, you know, and I want them to win bigger than me. And I'm honored to be a part of Seller's Journey, no matter what that looks like, if it's six months or a year. And that's what I want it to be. I want it to be we're helping each other win. And there's no competition. Like you can have less money than me, you can have more money than me. I don't care who you are. I don't care your background. Here, we're all on the same level playing field, just learning. Speaker 2: Well, and I think you wanting other people to win and you actually caring is the secret ingredient because I mean, we all, I'm sure we can think of people who they went into the coaching space or the community space or the consulting space and their intention was just to make money. Right. And maybe they do even make a little bit of money because, but I think the amount of money they make is going to be directly commensurate to how much they help people. And so it sounds like what you're saying, if, again, if I can kind of understand your strategy, it's like, You started off with a small list of say 10, 20 people. And it sounds like you're doing things to grow that list. Maybe you're circulating lead magnets or just posting more. And it sounds like kind of throughout the week, you're just sending broadcasts to your email list. Hey guys, this is what I learned, or this is a mistake I made, or this is what I'm working on. And I'm sure as you're doing that, and as you're going from 20 people to 50 to a hundred and so on, people start responding and that creates conversations. And now you're answering questions and you're adding value and you've got this direct. So it's like you're broadcasting one to many, but then as they reply, you're, you're kind of taking that into like a one-to-one setting. So now you're able to help people. And then eventually did you like kind of send an email out to everybody and said, Hey guys, I've, I'm now launching this community like is that kind of how you launch that? Speaker 1: Yeah, so we had a big Instagram chat like in a bunch of people were involved and it wasn't paid. It was just like, oh, like an Instagram group DM. Yeah. Yeah. Like all these people are in the same. It was during COVID doing the same things. Let's get together and then Once we built out the app, it was easy just to move everybody over there as like a hub for us. And that's a good point you made about like, well, how did this happen? What was your end goal? And everybody, most people can sell a course once or community once. But I would say so many people out there are doing that to make money. That's their end goal. And which is fine. Like if that's what it is for you, but I wanted results for people. I wanted them to see, you know, I was mentoring people who started at scratch and they're making $20,000 their first month. That's what I wanted to see, you know, results happening. And so that was really sustainable just because it was quality. And I was, I wasn't reserving leads till they were tanked out. You know, I wasn't holding back. I was sharing everything I was sharing till this day when I go buy products, I share pictures of everything. So you get a really. Raw experience to like what I'm buying, what I'm selling, what I can't list. And I thought I could, and this tanked out and this brand came. So I think just being genuine about, you know, what you're offering definitely created that like longevity in this space. Speaker 2: Well, definitely. I mean, especially after now having been around for five years and this, so you go from this Instagram group chat to. Was it essentially a pitch? Like, did you charge for it from the beginning to say, Hey guys, I know we're all in this group chat, but. We can all jump into my app and it's going to be a little more curated and there's going to be some value, but it's 50 bucks a month. Whoever's interested, jump in. Is that kind of how you position it? Speaker 1: Yeah. And it kind of got to the point where I was spending all of my time answering questions. I wasn't doing the business anymore. I was just like, okay. Speaker 2: That's when you know it's time to start charging for your expertise or create a community where you can answer all the questions in one place, which I love. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. So, and I try to push people like 50 bucks a month. That's like how many dollars a day, right? And if you can't, if that's too much for you, you shouldn't really be on Amazon right now because it just gets more expensive from there. But it kind of gave me the place to answer all of these questions. And from the beginning we were doing two live calls a week. So I've been talking about Amazon for five years, twice a week. And just providing that space for people to get on and sometimes just cry, you know, as a complete loss and being like, you shouldn't be here anymore. Pack it up. This isn't for you. Speaker 2: Telling them like it is. I love it. Speaker 1: Having real honest conversations. Yes, but also doing the work. You know, I am a full time seller. This is how I make my money. It is not just a one off course that I'm selling. And then like, and I actually just made a Walmart course for my community. It's not public. And I put it out, it's like in eight parts. And I immediately had to take it all down and redo it because Walmart changed their policy. So, you know, when you're actually selling, the content stays legitimate, stays real, because it's adapting with what's happening on the platforms. Speaker 2: Right, at least in a good community, right? You hope that if you're in a community, especially one where you're paying ongoing, like yours, like you said, is 50 bucks a month. It's one thing if you paid one time a couple of years ago and maybe it's kind of died out and the content's not gonna be up to date, but yours is, hey, somebody's paying me 50 bucks every month, I better deliver them the most up-to-date, highest quality content out there. And we do the same thing, right, in our community, whether it's in our newer people's school community or whether it's in our higher-end wholesale network community, we make sure that we bring people Up-to-date information because Amazon's policies change all the time. And the last thing we would want to do is steer somebody in the wrong direction when that information is no longer relevant and that policy no longer applies. Speaker 1: So do you guys talk much about Walmart? I know like this is about me in my interview, but I'm just gonna ask you questions now. Speaker 2: No, so we do do a little bit of Walmart. So we've got two dedicated Walmart chat channels inside the discord. So we do have people in there talking about Walmart pretty regularly. And then one of our members, I'm sure you know, Tracy Shelley, right? Seven figure granny. She Emily is a Mastermind member, has been since day one. And she's hosted a couple, we've done like a couple of Walmart Masterclass calls with her community-wide where she's come in and like given a ton of value. And people eat those up. In fact, we need to do, I'd love to do one with you, but we need to do another one with somebody soon because people seem to really get a lot of value out of that. In fact, I did a poll in the community, I think last week about just asking how many people were selling on Walmart. And I think it was like 60 ish percent of people that answered are currently selling and are interested. Yeah. And like even more, there's an option for like not currently selling, but want to learn more. Yeah, you and I might have to talk after this about getting you into to talk Walmart with our group. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to. I'm going to already have you in my community and on my podcast. So we, I said it here. You gotta say no. Speaker 2: Now I'm holding you to it. So yeah, we'll do it for sure. But no, but again, either way, I mean, I, like we said, Walmart is clearly on the up and up. I think it makes, I think it's smart to kind of swim. Swim to where the current is heading, right? Skate to where the puck is being put, whatever the quote is. Speaker 1: I don't know that one. Speaker 2: Yeah, same thing, but that's the idea, right? So you might as well cater to that. Speaker 1: Don't you feel that Amazon is better now because so many people either got kicked off or they moved on? Speaker 2: So many people are gone. That is a very valid point, right? You see a lot of the sentiment on social media is that, oh, Amazon's dead. Nobody's doing it anymore when in reality, it's definitely never going to die. Like it's always going to be a thing. My take on it is it's just getting, it's getting harder, which is a good thing for people who are serious, right? And who are professional sellers. So it's no longer a platform where I can, you know, necessarily in good conscience, recommend somebody who's brand new to business, who has no experience come and put up 10 grand to try to sell on Amazon. But it is a great business opportunity for somebody who either has entrepreneurial experience, has a business background, or is already selling on Amazon. Maybe they're doing arbitrage or books or private label, and they want, in my opinion, a better opportunity. So then, all right, let's talk about wholesale and how we can transition into something more scalable, like working directly with brands. So that's kind of my take on it, which again, for experienced, legitimate, professional sellers, music to my ears, because half my competition quit overnight. Speaker 1: Right, right. And I found, so I wasn't doing much last, like I did most of my back to school on Walmart last year. So I was kind of jumping in back to Amazon late in the game. And I got on all my listings and I was like, Oh, it's just me. Like, wow. It's like showing up to a party late and be like, okay, last year, how many, there was like 40, 50 tanked out listings. And now it's like, wow. Okay. So this is nice. And I see members crushing Amazon again. So tonight is a beginner night and I, I agree. I don't tell new sellers, Amazon is the best place to start anymore. It's good to open an account because that's easier to get a Walmart account, but Walmart is much easier as far as getting on and in 30 days being profitable. That's not going to happen on Amazon. Speaker 2: Well, it's good to know that that is the case, that you're seeing that with Walmart, right? That they are beginner friendly, that it is a good place for people who are new, maybe even to e-commerce as a business to get their feet wet, to make some sales, to be profitable. And then eventually at Amazon. So I actually like that approach. I haven't heard anybody teaching it that way, but it makes a lot of sense to me. And I mean, part of what I do is, you know, I, we, at least in the wholesale network, we won't take anybody who is brand new to selling on Amazon. So if anything, people that come to me who are newer, I usually just point them to arbitrage and say, Hey, start with our, but if you're going to start on Amazon and start with arbitrage, right. But it sounds like you're saying, well, Hey, Start with arbitrage, but start with arbitrage on Walmart because even easier. Is that right? Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not the gating restrictions. So you can get an account. I do tell people to get an Amazon account because it will make it easier to get that Walmart account. Speaker 2: But it's probably good just to have one because you're going to, if you're going to continue an econ, like you're going to use your Amazon account anyway. So you might as well open it and start to season it and just have it be not like two days old whenever you decide to use it. Speaker 1: Right. But yeah, Walmart, they don't have the restrictions. They are rolling out brand and category restrictions soon in one of the next updates. So right now, everything changes like every day over there, but currently it's easy. I mean, I think even when they do rule out restrictions, it's going to be very similar to what Amazon was years ago, like submit an invoice and you're good to go. Speaker 2: You're good, yeah. Speaker 1: But up until like last week, you could submit Walmart receipts and that's how you're getting ungated. Speaker 2: Really? Speaker 1: So they just stopped, like in the past two weeks, stopped accepting receipts. I don't know if that's across the board, but that's interesting. Yeah. Speaker 2: That is interesting. Wow. I never realized that because one thing that I've sold a ton of on Amazon is the brand Gillette, right? And so that's a really high volume brand, but I've had to kind of stop selling it because I've got good product. It's legitimate product, but it's not coming directly from Procter & Gamble. I don't want to take that risk. The reason I haven't sold it on Walmart yet is somebody told me, they're like, oh yeah, Gillette's gated on Walmart. It's kind of hard to get ungated. But if you're saying, at least up until two weeks ago, I could just Buy 10 units of a Gillette razor on walmart.com. Use that to get ungated and then use the wholesale suppliers that I have for Gillette, which are profitable to go ahead and start selling that on Walmart. I would have done that weeks ago. Yeah. Speaker 1: And you don't even need 10 units. So yeah, you can submit an invoice with however many units you have. One, two, I got ungated in Disney with two products on a Walmart receipt. I submitted it and yeah, a couple of days later I could sell it. Speaker 2: Wow. Interesting. So, okay. So it is a lot easier than let's get to know. Speaker 1: Yeah, even still to this day, I mean, I could see them still accepting receipts, but you could do an Amazon invoice and submit it and you're going to get ungated, you know, and whatever you want. Speaker 2: Right. Well, hopefully it helps that my Walmart account at this point is like five years old, which is crazy to say, because when I made it, I feel like, I feel like when I created my Walmart account, I had been, I was like deep in the e-com game at that point, but I guess I was only three years in because if I'm eight years now, like, I don't know, time flies, but that's my observation. Speaker 1: It's dog years. Like if you've been on this game eight years, you're, that's like 18. Really? Speaker 2: No, I had somebody said that to me recently. They were like, Oh, how long you've been selling? It was like eight years. They're like, wow, you've, I was like, you've been doing this for a while. I was like, Yes and no. Like I think eight years is kind of a long, decently long time to be doing anything. It's definitely a long time for selling on Amazon. Like that is ancient. But then you think about people like Chris Grant or Nate McAllister or, you know, some of these like, oh, like Reezy, right. Like real OGs who have been doing it or like Tracy, right. She's been doing it for like 20 years. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: So there's some people who are. Speaker 1: That's not going to be my testimony. If I'm still doing this, that's what I said. Speaker 2: I was like, if I'm still doing this in five years, then something's wrong. Yeah, I completely agree. Glad we're on the same page with that. And Emily, I want to give people a place to either come check out your community and follow you directly. So where do you want to guide people if they're either interested in joining the Crazy Flippin' Mom community or if they want to follow you more closely? Speaker 1: Yeah, so crazyflippinmom.group.com, crazyflippinmom in the App Store. If you type crazyflippinmom on Google, you'll find everything. All one word, no G. You can sign up today, be in the community tonight. We have a call at 7 p.m. Central, a newbie call. So we're always doing these live recorded calls. But otherwise, YouTube and we'll have Corey on our podcast. We just launched a podcast a couple of months ago, Reseller Recap. Diana, we just dropped an episode actually with Diana Gershman. If you don't know Diana, the whole thing is bleeped out. It's super inappropriate. Speaker 2: Sounds about right. Speaker 1: Super wild, but it's hilarious. So Yoda, I don't know if you guys know Yoda from Three Cults. He will be on next week. So we have some really interesting people coming in and sharing their view in this space. So Reseller Recap is the podcast. But yeah, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thanks for coming on. I'm looking at the crazyflippinmom.group, the website, and I like how you guys have branded it, the social network app built just for resellers. So you're kind of marketing it towards obviously Amazon sellers, but just resellers in general. It's like, hey, this is a place to come and find your tribe of other resellers, whether they're selling on Walmart or whether they're selling on Amazon. So I like that. And yeah, I encourage folks to go check that out. Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we definitely talk a lot about we're going through a rebranding right now because we do so much more Walmart than we used to do. So since that's kind of taken over, but yeah, we still talk about both. Speaker 2: Yeah, smart. Well, good Emily. I enjoyed the time. So we'll have you back in the future and thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon. Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you guys. Bye.