#118 - If You Sell Products Online, You Need to Go To This Conference I The Corey Ganim Show

#118 - If You Sell Products Online, You Need to Go To This Conference I The Corey Ganim Show Speaker 1: Welcome back to The Corey Ganim Show. And today we've got a special episode because I'm going to be telling you guys about an event that's coming up that is a game changer for not only just Amazon sellers, but for Walmart sellers, sellers who sell on TikTok Shop. Really, if you sell on any e-commerce marketplace, this event is a game changer. And I don't say this lightly. Because this is the third year in a row that I'll be attending this event. This is also the third year in a row that I'll be speaking at this event. And the takeaways and the connections that I've gotten from the last two years of attending and speaking at this event have been next level. So the event that I'm referring to is called Sellers United. Previously, it was called AMZ United. Now they rebranded to Sellers United this year, which I think was a really smart move because For the first two years, they were AMZ United. Now that they're Sellers United, they've really opened up the speaking slots, really some of the speakers as well as some of the content is not only going to be focused on selling on Amazon, but also selling on Walmart and selling on TikTok Shop. I'm going to go into what exactly this event is, what you can expect to get out of it. I'm going to highlight a few of the key speakers. I'm going to give you guys a sneak peek into my presentation. Like I said, this will be the third year that I'll be presenting at this conference, and I'm going to be giving you guys a recap of everything you can expect to get out of it, as well as how to sign up, where to get more details and a special discount code if you listen to the end of the episode. Before we kick off, if you guys want more details outside of this podcast episode, you can go to sellersunited.com and that is going to give you all the details you need. And like I said, I'm going to be going into a lot more detail in this episode. So talking about the event as a whole, what exactly is it? So Sellers United is held in Secaucus, New Jersey, which is like 20-25 minutes outside of New York City. So it's nice that it's in that location because you're not having to deal with the traffic in New York City, but you're close enough to New York City where you can go to dinner there. You can go hang out in the city. And that's what we've done every time for the last two years is we'll hang out in the city the night before the event. So it's in Secaucus, New Jersey. The conference itself takes place on October 16th, 2025. However, they do a special, what they call a casino networking night the night before, the night of October 15th. So I think the casino night is actually one of the best parts of the conference to attend because this is where you get to really in a very casual environment, get to rub shoulders with a lot of the people that are going to be at the event. Not just the attendees, but the speakers. In fact, the people who put on Sellers United really highly encouraged the people or really the speakers at the event To attend casino night so that they can rub shoulders with some of the attendees so that they can get the most value out of their ticket as possible. So the casino night, which is a networking event where you just play kind of casino games casually, which is fun with a lot of people at the event. It is, I believe, Wednesday night, October 15th. And then the event itself is Thursday, October 16th. Now, who is the event for? The event is for Amazon sellers. It is for Walmart sellers. It is for TikTok shop sellers. It's for anybody who is selling on an e-commerce marketplace. Now there's plenty of other marketplaces. You've got Whatnot, you've got, you know, I think Mercari is still a marketplace. But in general, if you're selling online, this is an event for you. Now, this is also the event for you if you are a service provider. So if you're a prep center, if you run an e-commerce software company, if you're a logistics provider, all of these service providers can gain heavily from networking with people at this event because their customers are literally walking around the floor. And also if you're a wholesale supplier, I cannot tell you how many suppliers I networked with specifically the first year. I don't know what it was about that first year, but I left Sellers United the first year with three solid supplier leads, two of which I bought quite a bit from in the following months and the following years. So if you're a wholesale supplier, whether you're a distributor or a brand, this is a really good event for you to attend as well. Now, how is this event different from other conferences? Guys, I can confidently say that the content of Sellers United is a hundred times better than any other Amazon conference I've been a part of. Now, I've been to many Amazon conferences over the years. Most of them are light on the content and heavy on the pitching. And one thing I love about Sellers United is they don't allow any pitching at all. So you will not hear any of the speakers Pitching a course or a community or even their services. They are not allowed to pitch. In fact, you will not hear me pitching on stage. Last year when I presented, I asked the guys who put on the conference, I said, Hey, can I give away a few copies of my book for free at the end of my presentation? And they wouldn't even let me do that because my book pitches one of my courses. So I say all that to say that they really make a strong emphasis in making this content heavy and zero pitching at all whatsoever. And some of the speakers, which you'll hear me talk about here in a second, are so high level. Like you've got a speaker who is an executive at the biggest Amazon seller in the world. So I'm going to go into his bio and some of what he's going to be talking about here in a second, but you're not going to get better actual information out of any conference aside from this one. And then another reason that makes this conference different is it is reseller focused. Most Amazon conferences out there, like if you go to Amazon Accelerate or Innovate or MDS Inspire, all of those conferences are private label focused. They're going to teach you how to build a brand, how to market a brand, how to exit your brand. But Sellers United is one of the few, in fact, maybe the only conference out there that is focused on resellers specifically. And not just reselling, but wholesale specifically. Now you are going to find one or two speakers speaking on arbitrage, but I'd say 90, 95% of the content and 90 to 95% of the speakers are wholesale experts, whether they are wholesale sellers, whether they are experts in wholesale PPC advertising, which is one of the speakers I'm going to highlight. And some of these guys have no exaggeration, sold hundreds of millions of dollars on Amazon with the wholesale business model. So it's the highest level wholesale specific conference that you're going to find. Okay, now let's talk about a couple of the big names who are going to be presenting. We're going to go through some of their credentials and exactly what they're going to be talking about. So first and foremost, you've got the folks putting on the conference. Now the people putting on the conference are Scott Needham, who's the CEO and founder of SmartScout, as well as BuyBoxer, and I'm going to go into more detail on his Credentials here in a second, as well as Michael White, who's the chief strategy officer at SmartScout, James McConnell, and Diana Gershman. And you probably recognize some, if not all of those names, but I'm going to go into each of them in a little more detail. So Scott Needham, like I said, founder and CEO of SmartScout. He's also the founder and CEO of BuyBoxer. Now, what I love about Scott's credentials is SmartScout, as you know, if you've listened to any episodes of this podcast, is the best This is a tool on the market for wholesale sellers to find brand direct leads. And not only is Scott the CEO of SmartScout, but he was the founder of BuyBoxer, which at one point was a top 10 Amazon seller in the world. They did 60 to $70 million per year in revenue, all wholesale. And at one point they had 100,000 individual SKUs in stock. Okay, so Scott is no stranger to the wholesale landscape. Both from the selling perspective and the software side of the game. And he's tailored this conference towards wholesale sellers of all levels. Next is Michael White, who, like I said, is the Chief Strategy Officer at SmartScout. Michael is in the weeds every day solving problems for sellers. In fact, we've had him on our wholesale network community calls, I think at least three or four times to do deep dives and to Multiple topics, how to find brands, how to evaluate brands, how to store front stock. We had them on two weeks ago to talk about how to use SmartScouts keyword tools and how to do some other things as far as reading brand reports and using that information to tailor your pitch to brands. So Michael is another OG when it comes to wholesale because he was actually Scott's first buyer in the BuyBoxer business. So Michael White not only has helped develop SmartScout from the ground up, but he helped Scott buy millions of dollars worth of inventory in his wholesale business. Next, you've got James McConnell, who is a multi seven figure, probably even an eight figure per year wholesale seller. Who is also the founder of Marketplace Prep. Now, I will give James credit because he is one of the smartest people I've ever met when it comes to shipping, logistics, and just Amazon prep requirements and compliance. This guy has contacts at Amazon, he's got contacts at Walmart, and he is a genius when it comes to shipping and logistics. And his talk last year Absolutely blew my mind. He went into such granular detail about the shipping process, specifics in how to get shipments routed to the right FC, how to save money on your shipping costs. Just a few of the tips that he gave in that presentation saved me a few thousand dollars last year in not having to pay those in shipping costs. So you can see that the ROI on just one presentation, if you just show up and pay attention and take notes, can exceed the cost of the ticket by like 10X. And then last but not least, out of that initial four people that I mentioned, all four founders of the conference, is Diana Gershman. Now, Diana is another OG. She's been in the game for like 12 years at least, maybe even closer to 15 years is how long she's been selling on Amazon. And she's been doing wholesale pretty much the whole time. Not only does she have wholesale experience, She has distribution experience. She has experience running multiple warehouses. She has sold tens of millions of dollars on Amazon over the years, and she's one of the most well-connected people I know in the Amazon space. So if you hear of somebody or you know of somebody in the Amazon space, I can virtually guarantee that either Diana knows them or they know Diana, and she is a wealth of knowledge. Her presentation last year, or maybe it was the first year, but she talked at length about How to position yourself to brands, how to show value to brands and distributors other than just placing a purchase order, which I think is one of the most critical topics that anybody in this game can know because you could be brand new, you could have no experience and no credentials, but if you know how to position yourself properly, you will land really good accounts that even experienced sellers can't land. So her presentations are always a must attend. In fact, hers is one of the only ones that I make it a point, no matter who I'm talking to, no matter what I'm doing, I cut off that conversation. I go find a seat and I go listen to her presentation. Now, those are the four founders of the conference. So we're going to go into a couple more of the key guest speakers that I think you guys will take a ton away from. One of them is Abe Chamali. Now, Abe Chamali owns a company called XP Strategy. And what I love about his company is they are a PPC firm dedicated to wholesale PPC. So a lot of you guys have heard me talk about the benefits of running PPC ads for the brands that you work with. Or just running ads on your portfolio in general, even if you're buying those products from a distributor. And Abe is an expert when it comes to PPC strategies specific for resellers and specifically even more for wholesale sellers. So if you want some game and some tips on how to optimize your PPC, and maybe you don't want to farm that out to an agency, maybe you just want to learn how to do that yourself. Abe's presentation is going to be a must attend because he drops so many gems on how you can optimize your PPC for your brands that you're working with and how to make a lot more money and amplify your sales through running effective PPC ads. Now, next guest I'll talk about is myself, right? I won't go into too much detail here because in the next section of this podcast, I'm going to be giving you guys a sneak peek into my presentation, but I'm going to be giving a presentation on why wholesale and why today. Specifically focusing on the folks that are selling arbitrage, but want to make the transition to wholesale. And maybe they're not sure how, or they're afraid, or maybe they're doing so well in arbitrage. They think that they don't want to necessarily cut off their arbitrage business and just hard pivot to wholesale. And spoiler alert, you don't have to do that. So in my presentation, I'm going to be giving you guys some really tactical, really actionable tips on how to add wholesale to your existing arbitrage business without shutting down your arbitrage business. So I'm going to go into a few more details on that here shortly when I give you guys a sneak peek into my presentation. Now, a couple more notable speakers, Dan Buford, who you guys probably recognize as 1000 ASINs. Dan is one of the biggest wholesale sellers out there. He's doing I think like 30, 35 million a year in wholesale sales on Amazon, profiting somewhere around like a million dollars a year, no exaggeration. So he's someone who's an expert in this space. He's got a lot of knowledge. He has his wholesale business. He owns a prep center. He's also dabbled in private label, and he's going to be giving some really high level tips on how to just grow your wholesale business to eight figures and beyond because he's been there, done that, and that's going to be a really good presentation to attend. Now, the last speaker that I'm going to highlight is Emily Baker. Now, I've had Emily Baker on the podcast probably four or five episodes ago. Now, she is otherwise known as Crazy Flippin' Mom on Instagram and on Facebook. She's got like 100,000 plus followers on Instagram. And for good reason, she is a master when it comes to selling on Walmart. She's one of the few people that I know that's really cracked the code to selling on Walmart. And I think the timing is perfect for her to be a speaker at this conference because Walmart seems to be the new hot topic in town. Everybody wants to start selling on Walmart. Everybody sees the opportunity there. The marketplace is growing and everybody wants a piece of the Walmart pie. So her presentation is going to be focused on How to sell on Walmart, how to grow your Walmart sales and how to just start selling on Walmart. Because the thought of starting selling on a new marketplace is intimidating for a lot of people. And she helps demystify that process, make it a lot more approachable for new sellers. And I think you guys are going to benefit a ton from her presentation. I'm certainly going to be sitting in on it because she is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to selling on Walmart. All right. So that is a little sneak peek into some of the guest speakers. And now I'm going to be talking about my presentation and a sneak peek into my presentation. And one more point before I jump into my presentation is guys, you've got to keep in mind the fact that when you attend events like these, not only do you get to listen to the presentations from the people that I just mentioned who are at the highest level of this game, but you also get direct access to them. Okay. Every one of the people that I just mentioned is going to be walking around the show floor. They're going to be talking to people. They're going to be answering questions. They're going to be having conversations with people like you and me. Again, the ticket I think is small peanuts compared to the value that you can get from picking the brain of somebody like a Diana Gershman or a Scott Needham or a Dan Buford just from showing up and being in attendance at this show. So I wanted to put that tip in there and now I'm going to give you guys a sneak peek into my presentation and I'm going to break down the key points of what I'm going to be talking about. So like I said, my goal with my presentation is to teach arbitrage sellers how to add wholesale to their existing business. What I'm not going to be doing in my presentation is disparaging arbitrage or saying that it doesn't work or saying you've got to stop doing arbitrage and you've got to start doing wholesale. That's not the case because there's a lot of people out there making good money with arbitrage. So how could I possibly tell somebody to stop doing something that's making them a lot of money? If anything, my goal with the presentation is to help them see a clear path and provide some actionable tips and strategies for how to simply add wholesale to their existing business model. I'd rather add than subtract to somebody's business that is already doing well. Now I'm going to be talking about the risk reduction that Wholesale provides. I'm going to be talking about the leverage that the business model provides. And I'm going to be talking about the opportunity for consistent cashflow that Wholesale provides more so than arbitrage, right? Wholesale is just a much more consistent business than arbitrage. I'm going to be breaking down a couple of common myths that people have around Wholesale, both positive and negative. People have, for whatever reason, maybe because they watched a YouTube video or they saw an Instagram reel, people have these thoughts about wholesale that are just totally out of whack, both for better and for worse. So we're going to be calling out some of those common myths, and I'm going to be just shedding light on the reality of the situation and really just dispelling a lot of those common myths. We're going to be talking about Exactly why arbitrage sellers are actually the best suited people to transition to wholesale. Arbitrage sellers are in such a stronger position to add wholesale than a new seller would be. And I'm going to be talking about the arbitrage advantage and how they can parlay their existing arbitrage skills into a really successful wholesale business. And then the second half of the presentation is going to be talking about why today? Why do we need to add wholesale to our business model today? And why is there a sense of urgency around that? We're going to be talking about Amazon's tightening restrictions around documentation. We're going to be talking about other marketplaces like Walmart and some of their requirements around letters of authorization and working directly with brands and authorized distributors. And we're going to be comparing the business model of arbitrage to the business model of wholesale. Now, one point that I'm going to make in the presentation, that's probably going to upset a lot of people, but is absolutely a fact is that arbitrage is a hustle, whereas wholesale is a business. Okay. I'm going to be breaking down why arbitrage is more of a side hustle type business and wholesale is something that you can build into more of a consistent, efficient, operationally sound machine. And then I'm going to end the presentation by giving you guys a very actionable four-step roadmap for transitioning from arbitrage to wholesale. And again, you don't need to transition fully. You can simply use this roadmap to add arbitrage to your existing wholesale business. I'm going to be telling you guys Exactly how much capital is required to add wholesale to your business. I'm going to be helping you identify the brands that you're already selling in your arbitrage business that make really strong candidates for opening wholesale accounts with. And then I'm going to tell you guys exactly how to contact those brands in a very simple, And I'm going to summarize the whole thing at the end. So I really think that my presentation is going to benefit a lot of you guys that are doing arbitrage that want to add wholesale and I've geared the presentation towards people who are newer to wholesale. So if you're doing wholesale successfully and you're doing it at a high level, I'll be the first to tell you my presentation is probably not going to add a ton of value to your existing business. But if you're either brand new to wholesale or you're successful in arbitrage and you want to add wholesale, then I highly recommend showing up for my presentation because I think you'll get a lot out of it. All right, now let's talk about what you will get out of simply attending the conference overall, right? Not only are you going to get the content that the speakers provide with no pitches, which is extremely rare for a conference of this magnitude, but the networking opportunities are truly the highest benefit and the highest ROI of an event like this. I said it before, so I'm not even going to say it again, but the opportunity to rub shoulders with people that have sold tens of millions, some people, no exaggeration, hundreds of millions of dollars on Amazon is unmatched. You really can't do that anywhere else. And if you can, usually you're going to be paying them for their time, which for most people is going to be like $500 an hour. And most people don't even sell their time. A lot of these guys, you can't even buy their time. And one of the speakers that I just realized I left out by mistake is a guy who works for Pattern. His name is Rob Han. He's the Chief Operations Officer at Pattern. And you guys might recognize that name, Pattern. They are the number one seller on Amazon. They sell over a billion dollars per year. On Amazon and they are 100% brand direct wholesale. So imagine the networking opportunity of running into Rob Han at casino night and being able to ask him questions about your brand direct wholesale business. Again, you literally cannot pay for that opportunity. Those opportunities only happen when you attend events like these and you show up and you ask good questions and you present yourself as a professional. Now, the other key takeaway that I want to touch on as far as what you're going to get out of the event is the potential partnerships, suppliers and funding opportunities, as well as access to service providers that you really can't get elsewhere. Now, when I say potential partnerships, I say that when you get to this event, there's going to be three or four hundred people there. And you're going to look around the room and everybody in that room is going to be a reseller like you. And chances are a lot of people in that room have strengths that complement your weaknesses and vice versa. You've got strengths that complement their weaknesses. And there are so many opportunities for you to partner up with people attending the event, whether it's swapping supplier leads, whether it's swapping expertise, and maybe it's even partnering on your business. I can't tell you how many people go to events like these and they meet their future business partner, or they meet a future investor, or they meet a future really good friend. These are the types of serendipitous interactions that occur at these events. So I don't want you to overlook. Yes, the networking is important. And when I say networking, I'm really talking about connecting with people that are at a higher level than you. But the collaboration opportunities that come from just talking to people who are either at your level or even slightly below your level, because I firmly believe there's always something you can learn from people even that are below your level. And there's going to be a lot of people there all the way from beginner to, again, like Rob Han, who's COO of Pattern, selling a billion dollars a year and everything in between. Now, my call to action for you guys is to look deeper into this event and to buy a ticket. And I'm going to share with you a code that's going to get you $50 off your ticket here in a second. So the reminder is the date and location. So the event is taking place on October 16th, which is a Thursday, 2025 in Secaucus, New Jersey. The casino night networking event takes place the night before, which is October 15th, Wednesday night in Secaucus, New Jersey as well. Now you can buy tickets online at sellersunited.com and sellers is plural. And you guys can use the discount code COREY, C-O-R-E-Y in all caps. For $50 off your ticket. Now, again, that code, you've got to enter it in all caps. If you enter Corey, lowercase, you will not get the discount. So enter the code Corey, C-O-R-E-Y in all caps for $50 off your Sellers United ticket. And guys, the price goes up slowly over time. I believe when I talked to Scott last week, I think there's one more price increase that's going to go into effect. I don't know when it's going to go into effect, but bottom line, if you're on the fence, Or if you're thinking, well, yeah, I'm definitely going to attend. I just haven't bought my ticket yet. Then do it today because the price is going to go up one more time here in the next couple of weeks. And this episode is going live on what, August 20th, 25. So we are less than two months out from the event. So go ahead and get your ticket, use that code Corey for $50 off, book your flight, book your hotel, get it locked in so that you're committed because I promise you the ROI that you're going to get on an event like this with people at the level that these speakers are at and that these attendees are at is going to be 10 to 20x or more. Now, That's pretty much it guys. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Again, you can go to sellersunited.com, use code Corey for $50 off. I can't wait to see you there. I'm going to be there the whole time. Shaking hands, walking around the room, talking to people. I'm going to be working out in the morning, probably with Wholesale Network community members specifically, but we're going to be going to dinner. We're going to be hanging out in New York City one night. So if you want to come hang out with me, I invite you to come to the event as well as all the other speakers and attendees there. So I'll see you guys in October in Secaucus, New Jersey at Sellers United. I'm looking forward to it and I'll be back next week with another episode. Thanks guys.