#127 - How I Made Over 3000 Cold Calls with Arjun Mahadevan I The Corey Ganim Show

#127 - How I Made Over 3000 Cold Calls with Arjun Mahadevan I The Corey Ganim Show Speaker 1: I sit down in person face to face with my friend Arjun Mahadevan. Now you guys might remember Arjun from a few episodes back. He is the founder and CEO of doola, which is a company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs set up their LLCs the right way. And the cool thing about doola is they help with not just the company formation, but all of the back office admin as well, such as bookkeeping, taxes, et cetera. So me and Arjun got to hang out in New York city this past week and shoot an episode for his podcast. Which is called The 15 Minute Founder. So in this episode, he's going to be interviewing me. He's going to go into a little bit about how I built my business, habits that got me to where I am today, my outlook on the future and a lot of other fun topics that if you're a small business owner or an entrepreneur, you're going to get value out of. So enjoy the episode for the next 45 minutes or so. Be sure to go follow Arjun and subscribe to his podcast, The 15 Minute Founder on all platforms and YouTube. And as always, thanks so much for watching and I hope you enjoy. Speaker 2: Corey Ganim, thanks for coming on The 15-Minute Founder. As you can tell, we have to learn everything about you in 15 minutes. So we're going to cut the fluff and I'm going to jump right in. I read online that you've cold called over 3,000 suppliers. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: A lot of people have never cold called. You did it 3,000 times. You're about to see me at least. So what I want to ask you is why do you cold call so many people and can you give everyone a tactical tip on how to get better with cold calling or overcome their fear of cold calling? Speaker 1: Yeah. So starting out, I was making so many cold calls because it was more of a volume game. I didn't really know exactly. Like I didn't have an ICP dialed in. I was kind of just Throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick. So naturally you've got to make as many calls as possible to put those reps in and get better. But I would say, I mean, a really tactical tip for getting better at cold calling is, well, I think it's so basic, but it is the glue of the whole thing is just following up, right? Like rarely, I mean, depending on what you're selling, but really regardless of what you're selling, you're not going to make a sale On that first call, that first call is always going to be building rapport and positioning yourself for a follow up down the road. So, I mean, the best tip I can give is just follow up. I mean, most, you'd be shocked how many people just don't do it, right? One time, much less the five, 10, 20 plus times it might take to close a sale, depending on what it is that you're selling. Speaker 2: Okay. I'm guessing there was some, or were there any uncomfortable cold calls you made? Speaker 1: Oh, so many. Yeah. Especially, I mean, I'd say the first, And I wouldn't even say first 100, 150 calls. It was the first 100, 150 conversations because naturally, you know, you're only going to get a certain amount of people that you call to actually pick up. But those early conversations, I mean, everyone was uncomfortable. I was stumbling through my pitch. I didn't really know what I was talking about. It was more, again, more just testing stuff out and seeing what sticks, even as far as the pitch is concerned. And then after about 100, 150 conversations, it's like, you got that down, you kind of have a better idea of what you're talking about, then it flows a lot easier from then. But even then, I mean, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of cold calls in, you still get people who are just complete jerks, who, you know, say all kinds of crazy things. And you're like, I just need to get off this call as quickly as possible. So yeah, it never ends. I've got a lot of stories for sure. Speaker 2: I've heard this Tim Ferriss line that success in life is directly correlated to the number of uncomfortable conversations you're willing to have. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: So you're willing to go through it hundreds of times, but you understand it's part of the process. Speaker 1: Totally. Yeah. And I, that's a great quote. I think he's spot on. Speaker 2: I want to work backwards now. Why were you cold calling? What was the objective? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, this was in early 2019. So, January 2019 was when I started turning my Amazon business into a more legitimate venture. So, at the time, I just been kind of flipping stuff on the side on Amazon casually, not Not really taking it too seriously, but then January of 2019, I mean, I saw an opportunity to turn it into a legitimate business. Amazon and e-commerce was on the rise. It still is. And there was just a lot of opportunity to go out there and partner with up and coming brands, as well as large distributors to bring their products to the Amazon marketplace. Because a lot of brands At the time and even now just didn't know what they were doing when it came to Amazon. There was like almost like a knowledge arbitrage of, hey, this brand's got products that sell really well on Amazon, but they don't know how to manage it. So if I can come in as the Amazon specialist, I can offer to help them with that management, whether through selling their products or just through like a typical management type deal. And, you know, create some upside for myself that way. So that's what I was calling. I was just cold calling brands all day. Speaker 2: Okay. And what's the name of that business? Speaker 1: Brand Rocket. Speaker 2: Brand Rocket. Okay. And how big is that business now today? Speaker 1: Yeah, so we've gone through phases over the year. I think we peaked two years ago. Our peak was like four million, I think we did two years ago. Last year was just over three. This year is going to be a little lower than that, but lifetime sales with that business is over 16 million over the last, I guess, six and a half years that I've been using this specific business model. Speaker 2: Wow. So you have some receipts there. Is it true for that team you've hired over 30 virtual assistants? Speaker 1: Yeah, over the years. I've hired and fired over the years probably around that many. Now we've got a really lean team. I only have three people in my company and all three of them are virtual, based overseas. One of them is in Colombia. South America and two are in the Philippines. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: Right. So I've, over the years I've kind of hired some specialized roles or whether it's project work or just short term work and yeah, have, have done a lot of hiring and firing and virtual assistants over the years. Speaker 2: Okay, I want to ask, I think like most things in life, there's a permanent con or there's double-edged swords. What's the secret in plain sight people don't see when it comes to hiring VAs? Maybe they're skeptical saying, no, why would I do that? I need to hire someone right next to me. And then maybe what's one of the, not downsides, but hey, something that you have to work at to compensate or something that you might not realize on the outside, like, hey, it all sounds good, but here's something behind the scenes that you actually have to work on. Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think one of the biggest pros is the thing that's the most obvious. It's really just the cost of the labor. So my, for example, my people in the Philippines right now, I'm paying one of them, I think it comes out to like $8 an hour. The others, so she's at like 12 or 13, but even that's really high for the Philippines. When they started off, they were around four or $5 an hour. So that's one of the big obvious pros is the difference in the purchasing power from there to here. Cause a dollar in the Philippines goes a lot farther than it does here. But then one of the probably less obvious cons is that the part of the Filipino culture is they're very hard workers, which is definitely a pro, but it's a con in the sense that a lot of folks in the Philippines have multiple jobs. Even if you've got them in a role that's 40 hours a week, Most of the times those same folks are still going to go and get another part-time job for 10 or 20 hours a week. Or worst case, they're going to have another full-time job and they're trying to juggle your role with their other ones. So that's a big pro that, or sorry, a big con that I think a lot of people don't realize is they, they think they can get this labor for super cheap, which they can, but a lot of times that labor isn't laser focused, right? So it's kind of like a give and take as far as, quality versus cost versus what you're actually getting. Speaker 2: And that team's three people. Now it's a lean team. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: A lot of people would hear that and say, how do you do 16 million or over the years, several million a year with such a lean team? What is the most unsexy task that happens, but it's just part of the engine? Speaker 1: So that's a good question. I would say it's probably everything relating to shipment creation and just nurturing shipments all the way through from like purchase order place to product is for sale and gets bought by a customer. So there's so much that goes on behind the scenes when we Let's say, for example, we're buying a big inventory order from a distributor. It might be $20,000, $30,000, $50,000 worth of inventory, which isn't a ton in the grand scheme of things, but there's a lot of moving parts, especially if it's 5, 10, 15 different SKUs. We've got to make sure that those are accounted for in terms of our finances. Then we've got to make sure that we create the shipping plan and tell Amazon, Hey, this is everything that we're sending you, you know, account for it correctly, more or less. And then we've got to pretty much babysit that shipment from the supplier to the 3PL and then from the 3PL all the way to Amazon. Just because we're telling Amazon, hey, we're going to send you 2,000 units, a lot of times they might receive 1,700 or 1,900. There's going to be shortages. So then we've got to go and reconcile that with them and make sure we get reimbursed for anything that they missed. So it's a lot of work behind the scenes, a lot of babysitting when it comes to shipment specifically. And I think that's part of the process that most people glaze over because it's just not sexy to talk about, but it shipping and logistics really is what will make or break you in this business. Speaker 2: I like that. Have you heard of the weightlifting app, StrongLifts 5x5? Yeah, I have heard of StrongLifts. The entire app is like you just do 5x5 with the big three and then every time you add two and a half pound plates until you can do the next set, that's it. It's just adding two and a half pound plates. When I hear this, it's like, place the order. Make sure that you send it to the 3PL, send it to Amazon, just push it through over and over again and just do that really well. Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, that's pretty much it. And to use your, you know, two and a half pound plates analogy, it's the same process every time except, you know, the first order might be a thousand dollars and then You add that two and a half pound plate to the second order, which might make it, you know, $1,500. And then same thing, third order might be $3,000. And again, you just keep slowly increasing that amount of inventory that you're buying over time. And that's what creates the snowball effect of, well, you look up, you know, in eight years later and you've got, you've sold $16 million and same with lifting weights. I mean, I know you're a big lifter and so am I, it's the same process. You just make a little bit of progress every day for a long time. And that's the whole journey. Speaker 2: Can you break down because a lot of entrepreneurs geek out and like getting in the weeds here. Can you talk through the business model here? So you talked about buying inventory and it's going to Amazon, but how does the business actually make money? Speaker 1: Yeah. So the business model that we practice, it's called wholesale, which is funny because it's really a retail business. Like I'm a retailer, right? That's what we're doing. The reason it's called wholesale is because we're buying the inventory at wholesale. So what we're doing is we're reaching out all day every day to either brands, meaning manufacturers or distributors. And we're pitching them on, Hey, we'd like to buy your products and turn around and resell them on Amazon. So, you know, we'll, if we get in with a brand or we get in with a distributor and we find some products that are profitable, we'll buy the products at wholesale. Usually we'll pay up front or we'll get, you know, 15 or 30 day terms. We'll buy that inventory. We'll send all that inventory to Amazon's fulfillment centers where Amazon will Receive it, they'll warehouse it. And then when customers buy the individual products from us, Amazon will ship out each unit one at a time. So we basically get to do all of our shipping up front. So if I buy, let's say 2000 units of this pillow right here, I'm going to ship all 2000 pillows to Amazon up front. And then when a customer buys, say one pillow for me or three pillows for me at a time, Amazon's going to ship each individual unit out to the customer. It gives us a lot of leverage in the sense that, again, we can just ship everything up front and then Amazon obviously takes a fee for doing that fulfillment work, but then Once Amazon receives the product, it goes live for sale and then we start making sales and then we get to collect the money every two weeks. Speaker 2: Very cool. I was gonna say, can you explain like on five, you did it like I was five. So you're buying inventory for a certain cost in bulk. Send it to Amazon. Amazon is then shipping it for you when someone goes to Amazon to purchase. You're then charging a certain price, obviously above your cost and then you take off Amazon's fee and then that's your profit. Speaker 1: Exactly, yeah. How the profit breaks down is like, you know, let's say I, I'm selling a product for $30, right? So I sell it for $30. My Amazon fees are usually going to be roughly 30% of the sale price total. So that, you know, there goes 30% and then you've got your, uh, you know, your overhead, your admin, your salary, everything that goes into the actual, Getting that product sold and then you've got your cost of goods sold. And typically, and people are going to laugh at this because they're going to think it's low, but the net margin, like net net in this business is going to be five to 10%. Right? So that's again, a pretty low margin business to most people, but you've got to consider the fact that this is a volume business. This is a business where A lot of people get started and they get up and running and if they're doing things right and they have access to capital, they can get up to 20, 50, 100K a month in a relatively short amount of time. But again, when we say 100K a month, we're talking revenue. Profit on that 100K a month is probably going to be like 10K. So that's something that in our industry I don't like that people throw around these big numbers all the time and they are big numbers and they sound big. But keep in mind, this is a low margin, high volume business. Speaker 2: I'm glad you shared that because I think a lot of people can hear $100K and if your costs are $200K, you don't have a business. You have a losing $100K, whatever you want to call that. So on that top line of, hey, we're selling the product for $30. After all is said and done in terms of fees, net margin, cost, etc., you're walking away with maybe a couple dollars. Speaker 1: Yeah, probably like two to three dollars profit per unit most likely. Speaker 2: Gotcha. Speaker 1: Like net profit, yeah. Speaker 2: Okay. And I guess overall though, You can make a dollar by getting a dollar bill or 20 nickels or a hundred pennies. It's all a dollar at the end of the day. There's just different ways. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. Well said. I mean, it's just one business model of many. I mean, there's other business models for selling on Amazon. I mean, private label is a great example where, yeah, your margins might be a little higher. You might be able to get 15 or 20% net margins, but you're taking a whole different set of risks in the sense that With Private Label, you are creating a new brand from scratch that has no awareness. You're developing the product. You're marketing the product. You're running ads. You're doing influencer marketing. You're doing everything that you would have to do to start a brand from scratch. So, you might get a little higher margin, right? Because you're taking a lot more risk. But with my business model wholesale, the awareness is already built in. We're just reselling big brand names that people are already searching for. So yeah, my margins lower, but I don't really have to worry about marketing or anything like that. I'm just looking at numbers. Hey, can I buy this for three? And, or sorry, can I buy this for 10 and maybe and sell it for 30, right? Versus with private label, it's like, well, shoot, I've got to research this whole niche. We're going to look at my competition. I've got to see if there's anything I can do differently to make the product unique. I've got to create the packaging. I've got to run the ad campaigns. So much more that goes into it with that type of model. Speaker 2: So using pillows as an example with wholesale, you are, I don't know, let's say it's West Elm. You would buy pillows from West Elm. And then when you sell them on Amazon, it's listed as a West Elm pillow. Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Because again, we're just reselling. We're just taking existing brand name products and essentially flipping them. Right. I hate to use the word flipping because it makes it sound casual. It's like, oh, you know, we're just making a quick flip. Cause it makes it sound less like a legitimate business, but there are, and you know, we're, I'm here in town for the, the sellers United conference, right? I mean, I think you're going to be there tomorrow too. We're going to walk in that door and there's going to be people in that room that are selling eight figures, some even nine figures. Per year, I'm talking a hundred million plus dollars. In fact, there's going to be a billion dollar seller there tomorrow per year pattern. One of the biggest sellers on Amazon where this is their whole model. They're just reselling brand name products. So, yeah, it's a big business if you've got the capital and you've got the operational expertise. Speaker 2: This is a naive or even dumb question. Why isn't West Elm just doing this on their own? Speaker 1: Yeah, well, a lot of brands are, right? But I think the opportunity for this business model is the brands that their products are being sold on Amazon, but they're being sold by third parties like you and me, right? So like, for example, West Elm You might fall into one of two categories. Most brands do like category one is they know Amazon, they're selling on Amazon themselves and they're crushing it, which is a minority of brands. And then there's category two, which is, Hey, yeah, there's demand for the brand on Amazon. Maybe the brand's trying to sell it or they've got some random resellers or maybe Amazon themselves are selling the brand, but the brand has no idea what they're doing. They don't have insight. They don't want pricing control. They kind of bury their head in the sand when it comes to Amazon. And that really is the majority of brands because they need that really deep platform expertise to be able to do well on Amazon. And that's what I tell a lot of brands. I'm like, listen, you've got your salesperson's cousin Who's running your Amazon ads. Like that's not, you need somebody who's an expert in the platform, right? Not just like a casual acquaintance because it's an entirely separate business for most brands. And when they treat it like one, they tend to do really well. Speaker 2: Let me see if I can restate it back. Private label. So instead of buying a West Elm pillow, you would find your own manufacturer in China and it would be Corey's Pillows. Speaker 1: Exactly. Speaker 2: And then because it's your pillow, your brand, you can charge more than a West Elm pillow and maybe your cost is lower too because you're sourcing on your own. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 2: Okay. So your margins are a little higher. You gave a great explanation there. Another term I've heard is, or is another model just called arbitrage? Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: Okay. Can you explain like if I have arbitrage too? Speaker 1: Yeah. So arbitrage, so again, my business model is wholesale. Arbitrage is similar. But the difference is that with wholesale, with my model, I'm going directly to either the manufacturer or a big distributor and buying in bulk. So I might be buying a hundred, a thousand, 10,000 units at a time and usually getting a discount. Whereas with arbitrage, you're actually buying from another retailer. So you're going and buying from say Target or Walmart or Dick's Sporting Goods. And you're doing things like stacking a bunch of discounts on top of each other to get the product at a buy cost where you can make a profit. So the folks that do arbitrage, they might go to Dick's Sporting Goods and see a Stanley Tumbler that retails for let's say $50 and it's selling on Amazon for let's say $70. So normally there's no margin, right? Buy it for 50, sell it for 70. You're pretty much going to break even after shipping and fees. But what these arbitrage sellers do is they say, okay, The standard retail price is $50. I can use a cashback credit card and get say 2% back. So that's a 2% discount. I can go online and buy discounted Dick's sporting goods gift cards and let's say those are 12% off. So I've got my 12% gift card plus my 2% credit card. Now I'm at 14% off and then I can go on a cashback website that might be offering 7% on Dick's sporting goods. So now I've got 7% Plus my 12% gift card plus my 2% credit card. I'm at 21% off retail right there, right? And then Dick's Sporting Goods might be running a buy one, get one or a 10% off site wide. So you can see there's a bunch of different things that arbitrage sellers do to basically stack a bunch of discounts on top of each other to get, to use that same example, a $50 Stanley tumbler. For, you know, $25, $30. So now when you're buying for 30 instead of 50 and selling at 70, now there's a lot more margin. So that's the whole game with arbitrage is, again, you can't necessarily buy in bulk because you're buying from another retailer. But if you're good at finding all the discounts and knowing all the loopholes with specific retailers, you can get stuff at a really steep discount. And then that's your margin for selling on Amazon or online in general, really. Speaker 2: Are there any ethical concerns with that? Or no, it's just, hey, I don't even know if loophole is the right word. It's like saying the markets aren't actually efficient. If the markets were efficient, then there's no way to make money in the public markets too. It's just a market inefficiency. Speaker 1: Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to refer to it as. I mean, really, at the end of the day, all it is, it's a market inefficiency. It's not, I certainly don't think it's unethical. I think it's just, you know, you're taking advantage of a lot of different And I'm here to talk to you about how to make a profit. And I think if everybody knew about, well, Hey, yeah, you can buy these discounted gift cards. You can use these cashback sites. You know, a lot of people know about it. It's just, it's kind of a process and a pain to do. So my thought is, well, if a, you know, an entrepreneur is willing to jump through those hoops and systematize that and do that at scale and they can make a lot of money, then all power to them. Speaker 2: What I love about business is I didn't know that business was a thing. It's absolutely insane. A lot of aspiring entrepreneurs listen and they don't have an idea. I think there are many ideas out there but are you willing to put the two and a half pound plates on or do the cold calls or scan the coupons or fill up the truck from Dick's Sporting Goods? That's where I think a lot of people don't make it. What I want to ask you here and I'll ask you To be as objective as possible, let's say someone listening says, okay, I'm sold. Amazon's growing. I think there's opportunity here. What business model would you recommend for a beginner? Maybe not the best business model, but for a pure beginner, wholesale, private label, arbitrage or something else? Speaker 1: Yeah. For a beginner, I'd say definitely arbitrage, right? It's just going to be the lowest barrier to entry. It's the lowest capital requirement. It is really the easiest way to get your proof of concept. So one thing I love about the arbitrage model, You could find a YouTube video today that teaches you arbitrage, right? You could literally discover the business model exists today. And then an hour later, you could be at a store scanning products on the shelves, find your first profitable product listed on Amazon as merchant fulfilled, which all that means is that when it sells, you have to pack it and ship it to your customer. And if it's a product that sells well, you could literally have made a sale before you even get home, right? So that's why I love arbitrage because the feedback loop is so fast. You could discover it, go out and execute and make a sale all within the same day, right? Like that's not unheard of at all. So that's where I would start. To learn the ropes, to learn how to ship products, to learn how to do all the things that people in this space do, some of the nuances. And then from there, once you have some bankroll saved up, then I would transition into more of a wholesale model, which is what I do. Cause it's just higher leverage. It's going to be a little lower margin, but you're going to get a lot more leverage out of being able to buy bigger quantities and creating relationships and getting credit terms. Speaker 2: You know your stuff. You create content. You educate people on things too. And in any industry, I'm newer than you are to this industry. There are lots of We've got a lot of influencers or some call them gurus out there that talk about the industry and I think what a lot of people don't realize with any business is that you might see the videos of, oh, you can break the nine to five and you can work from your laptop on the beach, but oftentimes to break the nine to five, it takes a lot of nine to nine. They don't really talk about that or the two and a half pound plates. My candid question for you, you don't have to give names, is what is the biggest lie that the Amazon gurus say that isn't true? You talked about maybe the top line is one without me asking, but out of all the The gurus out there or the influencers out there, when it comes to Amazon, what's just the biggest lie that people tend to talk about, but it just genuinely isn't true? Speaker 1: So I would say the biggest lies, and I don't know if you would even accept this as an answer, but it's people that, it's just posting the revenue screenshots, right? And not giving the caveat that, hey, this is revenue and not profit. So, in our space, you've probably heard this before, but people call it like posting your orange bars. And the reason they call them orange bars is because in the Amazon seller app, which will show you your sales for the day or week or month, it shows you those sales in like an orange bar graph, right? So, that's kind of where that industry term came. It's like, oh, well, you know, show me your orange bars, which basically means show me your sales. So on social media all the time, and it's really not as bad anymore, but back when, you know, everybody was pushing Amazon a year or two ago and it got really crazy on social media, I feel like every other post I would see is somebody I'm posting their orange bars. It's a snapshot of their revenue for the day or week or month. And again, people who are in the industry, they don't need that caveat to sit to know that like, Hey, this is revenue, right? This isn't profit. But I think it got a lot of people into the space that saw those screenshots are like, Whoa, that guy started, you know, three months ago and he's already doing 20 K a month. That's crazy. They look at that 20K and they most likely think that that's profit, right? Especially if they're new to business, they don't realize how low margin of a business this is or the expenses that go into it. So I think it's just people that make revenue claims without adding the caveat that it's not profit. Because I just think it's more misleading in our industry than any other because of how large the revenue numbers can get quickly. Speaker 2: Next time someone, you hear someone say, show me the orange bars, you have to say, and your profit. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Show me, yeah, show me your actual profit. Cause like, and I, you know, I never, I've never screenshotted my actual sales. The only time I've shared sales screenshots is from a lot of people in the space use an app called seller board. And seller board will show you your sales for a given period, but it'll also show you your gross profit, right? So you can, there's almost like a, it's in like a card format. So inside seller board, the only time I've ever shared. My sales numbers, I'd go in and screenshot that card and sell it where it says, hey, I did X amount of sales today and then right under that's a gross profit. So there's really no hiding from that. Now, obviously that doesn't even account for your operating expenses, but it's much more transparent than being like, hey, I sold 10K today. It's like, okay, well, yeah, did it cost you 11K? So that's kind of where that comes down to. Speaker 2: Awesome. I want to learn a bit more about you because behind any business is the individual and a lot of entrepreneurs like to hear the Tactics are the tips and tricks that individuals have because it's a long run game. So a couple of questions. I like to always start with books. I'm a huge fan of reading. A lot of entrepreneurs are too. In your life, what would you say is the biggest earthquake book you've read? Earthquake book is in once you read it, it created a ripple. Your life just wasn't the same after. What's that book? Speaker 1: Yeah, good question because I love to read too. I've read a ton of books. I would say for me that was probably Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. Which, have you read that one? So you've read Rich Dad Poor Dad probably. Speaker 2: Heard of it. Speaker 1: Have you heard of it? Speaker 2: Come up with a bunch of times now. Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's he, same guy who wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad wrote the book that I'm talking about, Cashflow Quadrant. Rich Dad Poor Dad was his first book, which is international bestseller, huge hit. Cashflow Quadrant was his follow-up to Rich Dad Poor Dad. And it's funny because Cashflow Quadrant, it's not groundbreaking. It's not going to show you some strategy you've never heard about. But it was the simple premise of his point is that, hey, You're in one of four quadrants at all times. You're either an E, which is an employee. You're an S, which is someone who's self-employed. You're a B, which is a business owner, or you're an I, which is an investor. So you've got the E and the S on the left side, and you've got the B and the I on the right side. And the difference between an S self-employed and a B business owner is an S self-employed. Yeah, they're self-employed, but their income is reliant on them showing up. Whereas a B business owner is someone who owns a business, AKA a business system. And that business continues to make them money, whether they're there or not. So the whole premise of the book is him talking about if you're on the E or the S side of the quadrant, you want to make a shift. To the, uh, you know, the I investor or the B business owner side over the course of your career. And really the whole premise, the big wake up call for me was him talking about you create a cash flowing business or eventually cash flowing businesses. And you take that cash flow and you buy assets like that's it. I'd heard that before. I'd heard people say it, but I feel like it's one of those things where I just heard it at the right time. I'm like, oh, that makes sense. That's when it clicked for me. It's like all my cash flow has to go into assets because otherwise it's just going to evaporate. That's kind of the way I feel. Speaker 2: Those quadrants, sometimes people make fun of consultants for them, but they're good when they're applied well. Speaker 1: Right. Again, it's one of those things where it's not like I hadn't heard that before. It wasn't like earth shattering. But I'm a big believer in like, sometimes you've got to hear something at the right time. Like you might have heard that 15 times before, but if it hits you on that perfect day at that perfect time, that 16th time, you're like, Oh, okay, now I get it. You know? Speaker 2: I also was doing some research. You have your own book. Can I ask you to give the same summary, like the 280-word summary like you just did for the Cashflow Quadrant for your own book? Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. So my book, it's called The Five Pillars of Amazon Wholesale. And from a very high level, it just goes into the five pillars. It breaks it down. So the pillar one is finding suppliers. Pillar two is contacting suppliers. Pillar three is sourcing products. Pillar four is shipping and logistics. And then pillar five is leveraging virtual talent to scale. So it really, it's sequential. It'll walk you through each phase of the business and kind of work up towards the end, which is when you've got. Folks, you know, virtual assistants or whoever that may be managing a lot of the business for you. Speaker 2: Very cool. In a typical day, what time do you like to wake up? Speaker 1: I'm a 5 a.m. guy. Speaker 2: Alarm or no alarm? Speaker 1: Alarm, yeah. Speaker 2: Okay. Do you drink coffee or caffeine? If so, how much and what do you drink? Speaker 1: Yeah, a ton. Recently, it's been like 400, 450 milligrams a day. I kind of, you know, I'll cycle, like I'll shift between like 200, 400, but I'm a big caffeine guy. And usually I'm just black coffee, uh, like these canned cold brews from Kirk, uh, from Costco. It's like just Kirkland brand cold brew and a can each cans to 25. Sometimes I'll have two of those in a, in a morning. Um, but yeah, that's my go-to source of caffeine. Other times I might have pre-workout, but, I prefer coffee. Speaker 2: Okay. What is your favorite productivity hack? Something that you do to get into flow or get shit done? What is that hack for you? Speaker 1: Yeah, it's setting a timer when I'm sitting down to do like a deep work session. So really it's phone on airplane mode. Off to the side. So I usually put it behind me or on a shelf somewhere else. And then in my headphones, I'll turn on the, this app. It's brain.fm, which is just like a, you know, there's a million apps out there like it, but it'll just put like focus, focus waves on or whatever. And they kind of, you just kind of use that to zone in and then I'll set a timer. I'll just, you can Google timer and there's a timer built into Google and then I'll just put it in the tab off to the side. And so it's always just counting down. So if I'm sitting down, To do, say, an hour of deep work, it's like that timer's always there. It's like I'm always trying to beat the timer. And for me, that really helps me lock in and just stay focused and be like, all right, I got to get as much done before that timer hits zero as possible. Speaker 2: What's the best piece of advice or the hardest lesson you've learned about managing other people? Speaker 1: Ooh, um, I would say, well, in terms of lesson learned, and this was a tough lesson to learn, but it's like good people, like the best people will want to work for you when you're really good yourself. But sometimes, like, I'll give you an example. I had an assistant for about two years. She was fantastic. She was awesome. Everything about her was great. But I realized that I wasn't doing a good job managing her. I wasn't being clear with her. I wasn't setting expectations properly. I was just doing everything wrong when it came to managing her and about Probably seven or eight months ago, she just, what I thought was out of the blue, just reached out and said, Hey, you know, I'm going to be looking for a new position. Basically my time here is done. And that hit me like a train cause I thought I'd been doing a decent job with her, but I realized I wasn't. So that kind of led me to The realization of like, well, hey, I had somebody who was really good, but I wasn't good enough for her. So I needed to level myself up and become better as like a person, a manager, entrepreneur, so that people like her in the future, you know, they're drawn to me as opposed to repelled from me. Right? Like, I almost feel like she was at a higher level than I deserved at the time, if that makes sense. Speaker 2: It's very humble and thoughtful to have that reflection. I think it's hard to take the extreme ownership view or point internally. But I guess sometimes they're like these unteachable lessons you're going to learn from going through them. Speaker 1: Yeah. That was one of those things where as soon as I saw that message from her, it's like it hit me. I'm like, damn, this sucks, but this is definitely a learning lesson. I learned the lesson all within the snap of a finger. It's like as soon as I saw that message, it's like, all right, like lesson learned. I get it. Like it hit me. So I'm just like, shit, that sucked. But it did lead to, I mean, my assistant now is fantastic. She's a rock star, but you know, the, the one that I had before her too was also fantastic. So everything happens for a reason. But one of those like humbling lessons that you learn, it's like, this was totally my fault. Like there's no, there's no getting around it, you know? Speaker 2: I have to ask this question. What is the biggest way that you're using AI either in your personal life or the business? Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm using AI a ton. I mean, that's what I'm spending the majority of my time doing and learning and building with. I'd say the biggest unlock for me Are you familiar with context profiles when it comes to AI? So really it was sitting down with a specific AI tool one day, a tool that specializes in building context profiles. And it basically interviewed me about my writing style. So it's like, Hey, what words do you use? What style do you prefer? You know, give me examples of your writing. So I sat down with this model for 30, 45 minutes and just gave it examples of my writing, talked about my tone, my voice, how I write, how I talk. And at the end of that, it gave me basically a PDF. That I could save and upload to a custom GPT or like a project in Claude so that when I use that custom GPT or I use that project in Claude, it has context on my voice. So now when I go and write content, because I do a lot of writing, Now, I'm not saying that it's just completely AI generated, but I will oftentimes type a rough draft or just bullet point thoughts into this custom GPT and it will give me a much more polished and much more refined version of the rough draft that I gave it in my tone and in my voice because it has that context that I spent 30, 45 minutes developing that profile. That's the way that I'm using it the most is, you know, there's plenty of times where I sit down like the last week or so, I'd say all my writing has been just a hundred percent me off the cuff, no AI. But then there's plenty of times too where I'm like, Oh, I've got this topic. Like I know, I know what I want the post to say. It's just, I don't have the exact words. So I'll type a rough draft into Claude is the one that I like to use. And a lot of times it'll spit out a post and I'm like, that is so damn good. It's like, it's so good, but I can't just copy and paste it. So I've got to go in and at least, you know, change up a few things here and there. But I've just been experimenting with it for content creation. And I feel like some of the posts that it's generated, I mean, some of them have performed great. Some of them have knocked it out of the park. Some have completely flopped. But bottom line is it just really helps me I consolidate my writing and, you know, make my thoughts more concise and many times generate really high quality written content, but only because it has that context. Speaker 2: Do you have a tool recommendation for those context profiles? Speaker 1: Yeah. So I used a, so it's funny, I joined a, it was like 75 bucks a month, a community on WAP. There's a guy on Twitter. I don't even know his handle, but he goes by EP and the name of the community is AI Frontrunners. And so inside the community, it's a discord, but you also get access to a full tool suite. And one of the tools inside the tool suite is a context I'm a profile generator. And so again, you tell it, you say, Hey, I want to build a context profile for my ICP, for example, or for my marketing strategy or for my brand voice. And then it will interview you and ask you questions to then create that context profile. But what I realized is that I just went into Claude and did the same exercise. So I use that, you know, paid community to generate the context profile for my writing and for my brand voice. But when I went into Claude last week, I'm like, I could just talk to Claude and have it do the same exercise, but this time for say my content strategy. So that's what I did. I just went into Claude and said, Hey, I need you to help me build a context profile for my content strategy. Ask me questions to help tailor this. And so Claude got the job done just fine. Speaker 2: Very cool. And as I hear the, you said it was I think 30 to 40 minutes of going back and forth. Speaker 1: Yeah, it was super quick. Yeah. Speaker 2: Some people might hear that and say 30 to 40 minutes, that's too long, but it's like ounce of preparation, pound of cure. And with that doc, now you can go bullet points to post. That sounds too good to be true. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, again, it really is. It's something where you put in that 30, 45 minutes to build a foundation. And then now, I mean, if I really wanted to, I'm not that I would ever do this and I wouldn't recommend anybody to, but if I really wanted to, I could entirely automate written content creation in my voice because I put in that 30 minutes, right? Like I think that exercise is really beneficial for anybody that creates content, whether it's written or video, because even if you specialize in video, you can still have it draft scripts in your tone and in your voice. I think that's one of the most important things to do, especially if you make content, is have a really strong brand voice context profile. Speaker 2: You've passed 10,000 subscribers on YouTube. For someone who is just starting or isn't at 10K yet, what's your biggest piece of YouTube advice? Speaker 1: That's a good question because I'm not an expert. I just had basically an agency run it all for me for the last two years. But I would say, one, determine your niche. What is it that you're going to specialize in? Determine your ICP, your ideal client profile. What problems are they trying to solve? And then just make a bunch of different videos for every problem that they're running into. Right. So it's you probably like for me, Amazon wholesale is my niche. I have a notepad of like 20, 30 different problems that people run into. And then it's just making videos that solve each of those problems. And then it's making one long video that solves all the problems. And then it's taking a subset of the problems and turning it into a masterclass, right? So it's like, really at the end of the day, it's like we're helping people solve the same five to 10 problems. It's just how many different ways can we package that? So that'd be my best advice. Speaker 2: Very cool. The final thing I want to ask is, You have taken the plunge into entrepreneurship. You know your stuff. There's multiple business models. You have a candid rec on how someone could get started on Amazon. You're starting with an arbitrage model and then there's many other levels to the game, if you will. Eight figures, nine figures, huge business to be built there. We're in New York City. Let's say I could give you a billboard in Times Square with a message to aspiring entrepreneurs. What would that message say? Speaker 1: It would say focus and be consistent. It's really those two things. That's what it all comes down to. It's like focus on one business, get really good at it, better at it than anybody else, and then be consistent with the stuff that you know you got to do every day to make it work. Speaker 2: Okay. And then the last question I have to ask you, is Amazon saturated? Is Amazon dead? Or is there still opportunity for in 2026? Speaker 1: Yeah, still a ton of opportunity. I mean, people have been saying it's dead since I started in 2017. So yeah, I mean, nothing's truly saturated if you're good enough. And that's my strong belief. If there's more people doing it, it's harder than ever, but it's still a really good opportunity. Speaker 2: Focus and stay consistent. Corey, thanks for coming on. Speaker 1: Yes, sir. Thanks for having me.