FBAM 6: Building With The Purpose of Selling With Kevin King

FBAM 6: Building With The Purpose of Selling With Kevin King 00:00:00 Why is Amazon hands down the best opportunity for entrepreneurs today? What about that myth that you can strike it rich practically overnight on Amazon? Well, our guest who has 18 years of experience selling on Amazon will answer those questions and tell you why the majority of Amazon sellers fail in just their first few months. From the West Coast to the world, this is FBA Millionaires. 00:00:36 Welcome to FBA Millionaires. This is the program that is geared toward helping you pursue your goal of earning a seven-figure income selling professionally on Amazon. Hi, I'm Jeff Allen, and I'm thrilled once again to be back with my resident expert, Amazon sales machine, Mr. Will Moffitt. Will, hello. Hey, Jeff, thanks for coming on once again with us. And it's a little gloomy out here in Northern California. The weather, it looks like it might rain. Yeah, see, fall is in the air finally after a hot summer. And now we have like this semblance of normalcy, cool weather. It's got to be a relief, right? Definitely a relief. And this is the good sleeping weather, but we don't want to sleep too much because we've got a lot of money to get, right? 00:01:21 Oh, that's right. And that's why we got our guest, Kevin King, here. Kevin King is a very good friend. We met about a year ago at the Prosper Show, and Kevin just has a wealth of knowledge. He's a very experienced Amazon seller. The guy is just awesome. I've never said hello to Kevin before, so this is kind of my first time in. Hi, Kevin. You got a rookie on this end. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing today? I'm doing fine. You said you're in Austin. Is that correct? I am in Austin, Austin, Texas, the heart of Texas. Will, I didn't mean to cut you off. I just had to get that out of the way and say my hellos to Kevin. Please continue. No worries, Jeff. 00:02:00 I was just about done. I was just giving Kevin so many compliments that I think it's better if we just hear Kevin and you'll soon see how good Kevin is. We just wanted to kind of learn a little bit more about you with the audience. And how did you get started with Amazon? How did it all come about? Well, I've been doing e-commerce since the days before there was even a Google, back when AltaVista reigned and Yahoo reigned. I had websites back then. So I've been involved in that for a long time. I started selling on Amazon probably about 1999, year 2000, something like that. But there was no FBA program then, not like we know it now. I used Amazon almost like a – almost like a glorified eBay. 00:02:42 You know how Amazon has that 'Sell Yours' feature? So, I was one of those hijackers. I would go on some other product's listing and I had an old DVD or an old printer or something in the office that I wanted to sell, and I would sell it that way. And then shortly after that, I have another business outside of Amazon where I sell calendars. It's a seasonal business, and we specialize in a certain type of calendar. I have a huge mailing list, about 7,000 guys. I still have old-school guys that send in checks and money orders in envelopes. That's a seasonal business, but I also wholesale some of those calendars. We make them over in Korea for about $1. 50 landed and sell them for $20, and wholesale them to Amazon for about $9. 00:03:24 And so Amazon has been buying those from me through a program called Advantage, Amazon Advantage. It's kind of like a Vendor Central account, but it's only for books and media and DVD. It's a little bit separate. It's a little bit older than the Vendor Central. And so this time of year, I get purchase orders from them on consignment. So I get purchase orders twice a week and I send in products. So I've been selling that way on Amazon for a long time. But as an FBA seller, I've been selling since 2015. I started it, my first product went live in August of 2015 as an FBA seller. I've got five brands on Amazon. I launched five brands at once. I have a range of products from private label products I get out of China, some stuff I get out of the US. 00:04:08 I've created custom products where I've actually spent $30,000 or $40,000 creating a mold and tooling and stuff and actually sell those on Amazon under one of my brands. Actually, two of the brands are totally custom products like that. And so I've been doing that since 2015. I'm probably going to pare down one or two of those brands into about three right now and focus on those three. And in addition to the Amazon, I sell on Walmart. I sell on Shopify. I'm on the Shopify side. I sell on eBay. Those are small compared to what I do on Amazon. Then I have, like I said, the calendar business, which is completely separate. And then it's not only a wholesale to like Amazon and some other stores, but also the calendars. 00:04:54 com, the little kiosk you see in the malls and stuff; I sell to them. And then I have a mailing list. We send out actually a little catalog, a little printed catalog to those 7,000 guys. Hey, Kevin, let me jump in. How much, you say you have five brands currently on Amazon? How much wholesale do you actually purchase? Do you maintain a lot of wholesale inventory for your retail customers there on Amazon? Anything like that at all? You predominantly a private label? Most of my sales are private label. So, wholesale is just pretty much the only thing I do wholesale on Amazon is through the Advantage program. That's the calendar. I'm FBA. Now, I do do some of my products. I do wholesale to other companies like Zulily and Touch of Modern, Chewy. 00:05:37 com, which is a big pet place. I do do direct wholesale to them. But, to be honest, I looked at retail as well, but the margins are so much smaller and the turn times and the inventory requirements are so much higher. It takes a lot more cash. So, I'm just more comfortable just going through the FBA model now where I'm more in control and I can kind of dictate how much I send in, what my inventory levels are, and it's more of a comfort level for me than having purchase orders where you guys ship two here or maybe 200 here or whatever and then sit back and wait. I just prefer it. Luckily, I'm one of the old school accounts on Amazon. I know Will here with Upfund, it's a great program to raise money for Amazon sellers. 00:06:21 I'm sure we'll talk about that in a little bit, but I'm one of the old school guys where I get daily withdrawals from Amazon. I don't have to use any of these other third-party companies or I can just go and hit a button every 24 hours and take whatever's out of my account, which is kind of nice from a cash flow point of view, but that's because I've been selling for so long. In addition to the Amazon stuff, I'm also a mentor in the Illuminati Mastermind, which is a mastermind for high-level sellers, people doing over 25K a month. We do a couple big events a year. We have one coming up in Hawaii in January. And then I also just recently launched something called the Freedom Ticket for new sellers, so people who are new to the business or just starting out. 00:07:01 Because there's so much training out there and everybody's teaching the same thing. Everybody's saying, find something lightweight that you can air freight over. It fits in a shoebox, blah, blah, blah. And so you have so many people just trying to do this exact same thing. And only about 5% of them ever succeed because everybody's doing the same thing. And so I created a course that's completely different. It was shot live with an audience. I just have the first people finishing up the first – it's an eight-week course. They're just finishing up the online course now, so I have that as well. So I'm keeping pretty busy. See, that's what I like about you, Kevin, the diversity. You look at this as a true business. 00:07:45 I mean, even, you know, everybody sources from China, but Kevin comes out with Korea. You know, it's just different things. You know, it's not all about FBA, but it's all about also doing all the other type of deals that could be related to importing and getting product circulated, whether it's through Walmart. com, FBA, Amazon, or eBay. That is really the mindset that separates the good from that 5% that you were just talking about, Kevin. Yeah, there's a lot of people that see Amazon. And a lot of these courses, there's hundreds of courses out there. Everybody and their dog is teaching you how to sell on Amazon. And most of them flat out suck. And I'm not just saying that because I have a course. They just suck. 00:08:35 I've never done any of those courses myself. I have seen access, gotten access to them and I've seen what they've taught. But the problem is most people see this as a get rich quick. You know, all the courses teach you quit your day job and retire next week. And look at this guy who's doing a million dollars a month. Here's a screenshot that may be fake or may not be fake of his of his sales. You know, look at this person here. They were, you know, they were destitute and owed $200,000 on a credit card. Now, a year later, you know, they're taking vacations everywhere. That's what they sell. They sell it as a dream. I mean, some people do hit the lottery. 00:09:12 You know, I can go down to my local 7-Eleven and buy a lottery ticket and I might win. It's the same thing with some of those people. Those are the people that bought that winning lottery ticket. But your odds of that happening are next to none. Four years ago on Amazon as an FBA, it was ripe for the taking. There was a lot of people three or four years ago where there wasn't competition. Amazon hadn't tightened down on the rules, and they were able to get in and do pretty good. These days, you have to treat it like a business. And this is not a get rich quick. It is a way to make money. It is a way to create a lifestyle for yourself. 00:09:43 It is a way to get away from working for the man. But it's not a get rich quick business. And if you treat it like a business and a real business, you can do well. And that's part of the problem is a lot of people that get into this Amazon business don't treat it like a business. You know, I think Amazon said there's a last year in 2016, there's about roughly 100. Close to 100,000 people that actually did over $100,000 in sales as a third-party seller on Amazon. That's in a year. I do more than that in a month. But that's not a lot of people compared to what's their two, two and a half million sellers, third-party sellers on Amazon. 00:10:17 So as you can see that most of the people that are selling on Amazon are not doing a whole lot of business. But depending on what your goals are, if your goals are to do this on the side and you're working your normal job and you just want some vacation money or something to pay off some student debt or whatever, it can be great. But if you want to treat it like a real business, you got to treat it like a real business. And most people getting into this either don't have the business experience or they don't treat it like a real business. And the problem is everybody's following the same little formula that's been parroted. And there's so much misinformation out there in a lot of these Facebook groups, it just becomes gospel that's just absolutely not true. 00:10:48 And people start believing in it. And I see it all the time. People take courses, they come to events, there's a paralysis. Everybody's like, did I make the right choice? Did I do the right thing? They're afraid, like you said, to import something. I'm going to send $5,000 to China. What if they rip me off? I got to use send by PayPal, or I got to use an escrow service or whatever. They're just so scared. And those are the people that aren't really going into this as a business. You've seen a lot of Amazon sellers come and go. You've been in the game for a very long time. Tell us, where's the real money to be made? What do these guys know that the rest of us should know? 00:11:25 The real money in this business is not in the daily cash flow. The real money is building a business, working your ass off for a couple years or maybe more, taking just a little bit out if you can afford to take just a little bit out. Building it up and then selling it. And that's where the real money is made. I mean, I know a couple that recently, the husband is a husband-wife team, and they were doing baby products, and they he kept his day job for two years. She worked from home raising the kids and worked on the business, and they didn't take any money out to live on or to go on vacations; they just kept rolling it back over and over and two and a half years later, they just sold it for uh, $3. 00:12:00 8 million dollars, wow, so I mean, that's where the real money is, so they can then use that leverage and say, okay, let's do this again, let's take half a million of it, let's say, and reinvest in uh, and that's what they're doing into another brand, you know, totally. They have a non-compete, so they'll invest in a totally different brand, maybe it's beauty or you know something else, but they got 3. 3 million in the bank, you know, and they're set; their kids are set for college and whatever, so if you treat it like that look at the long-term goal, And that's where it's at in this business. And so many people, they don't understand it as a business. You see on the Facebook groups and in different places, people say, I got 40% profit margins, 60% profit margins. 00:12:36 And every time I see one of those, that tells me that's an amateur. That tells me that's someone that doesn't really know their numbers. And most people doing this business, unfortunately, don't really know their numbers. I was at a big meetup last night of Amazon sellers here in Austin. It's an in-person meetup we do every other Wednesday. It was like eight of us there, and everybody's doing over seven figures a month. And this subject even came up. We think that most people selling on Amazon really aren't making money. Amazon's the only one making the money. We're footing them. And people have cash flow, and they say, I got $30 ,000 a month in sales on Amazon. I got 50% profit margins. 00:13:12 But once you factor in all your costs, all your software costs, all your returns, and everything, if you're hitting a 20% gross profit margin, you're doing well. At the end of the day and most people don't know that stuff, and, and the other problem is in this business is it's very cash intensive as we all know, and that's why UpFund is such a great company to use-the problem most people, and I've made this mistake myself, and it's gotten me in some trouble sometimes. You can't look at profit; it's not this business because it's so cash-intensive. Because if especially if you're ordering from China, uh, you know, you gotta pay 30% up front. Then wait a month for it to be made. Then 70% before it shipped. 00:13:48 And depending on how it's shipped, it's either coming by air or sea. You can have a three-month window there where you're tying up a bunch of money before it even gets to Amazon. And then you've got to sell it. And if it doesn't sell quick, you're in trouble. So inventory turns are crucial in this business. And cash flow is crucial. But the number that people make a mistake is they look at profit. And profit doesn't matter. Profit's a nice number on paper. They may make a difference when you sell it. But what matters is ROI, return on investment. And that's what you've got to pay attention to in this business if you're going to succeed and scale is your ROI. Because you can have a 30% profit margin with a 10% ROI. 00:14:25 And so that'll kill you. That'll crush you. And that stalls a lot of people in this business. Is the cash flow and the ROI. So you've got to pay attention to that stuff. We're joined by Kevin King on this program. This is FBA Millionaires. You're with Jeff Allen and Will Moffitt in Northern California. And Kevin King joining us from Austin, Texas today. Everything you said there resonated with me very heavily because I am kind of just kind of getting my feet wet in the whole FBA environment. You talked about this not being a get-rich-quick scheme, and I think a lot of people get into it because they think it is going to be a get rich quick scheme. Look, I just sold a box of these lunch pails or something like that the other day on eBay. 00:15:10 I'm pretty good at this. But this is something that people really need to look at and evaluate. But another thing you touched on is the fact that a lot of people don't see this as a means to an end. But you do. You think that this is an opportunity to build a business for the purpose of selling it. So I guess a two-prong question. Number one, how important is it to have some business knowledge, at least business book knowledge? Number one. And number two, how important is it that we shouldn't look at our FBA business as a lifestyle business, but rather as a business that we need to build with the end in mind? I think from the first question on business experience, I think it definitely helps. Is it absolutely 100% necessary? 00:16:00 I don't think it's 100% necessary as long as you're disciplined and committed to it and you're committed to learning and understand you're going to make a few mistakes along the way. But some of the good courses out there will teach you that, like the Freedom Ticket. I go over all that stuff that most people skip over, all the little details that everybody always glosses over. Let's get here's how to make a product sell, you know, a million dollars a year on Amazon. But they forget all the little details that you got to know to actually get to that point. So I think it does definitely help. But is it absolutely necessary? No. But if you're sharp and you're disciplined, you can definitely do it. As far as the means to an end, some people look at this. 00:16:39 It can be a cash flow business. I mean, some people, they like to ride the seasonal trends or, you know, the hot trends like the spinners or something like that. And you can make quick cash. You know, there's a guy that during the eclipse back in August, the big solar eclipse that came across the U. S., he got in. He'd been selling just $10,000 a month, $15,000 a month or something on Amazon, nothing major. But he was smart enough to foresee that people are going to need these sunglasses to watch the eclipse. And he made sure he got a certified factory from the U. S., not some Chinese factory that doesn't have the right certifications for the eyes or whatever. And, you know, he did $4. 00:17:14 8 million in a month on Amazon and sales, total sales. I can say I've been doing this, like I said, for 30-some-odd years as an entrepreneur, and I don't think there's ever been anything in the last 100 years that's been as great an opportunity as what Amazon is. No other business out there can you really leverage the power of a marketplace like Amazon. It's not just the U. S. I mean, the opportunities in Amazon are beyond the U. S. There's 11 other markets. And some people don't even do the U. S. I met a guy last night. He's doing millions of dollars solely in Europe, and he lives in the U. S. He's just not doing the U. S. So there's opportunity out there, and there's never been a greater opportunity. 00:17:54 These numbers aren’t exact, so don’t hold me to them. It’s something like if you took $10,000 right now and you put it into one of the best mutual funds, it gives the best returns out there, one of Moody’s highest rated mutual funds. In three years, you would have roughly, on average, about $15,000 or $16,000. That's a pretty good return. But you take that same $10,000. And if you don’t have to take the money out to live on, you know, if you can just keep reinvesting it and you can turn your inventory at least four times a year and just keep adding products. And so, by the end of the third year, you may have 10 products in your portfolio that are all doing OK, doing singles or doubles. 00:18:30 That 10 grand will turn into about 160 grand. So there's no better return on your investment than Amazon businesses right now. And so a lot of investment banks and a lot of big bank, big people are seeing that opportunity but they don't want to do all the dirty work, so they'll come in like we talked about these people that just sold for 3. 8 million, they had a skill set that could get it to that level, but then to take it to the next level to get into the stores to have the cash flow to finance you know to underwrite a buy-baby-buy purchase order and write it out and and all that they weren't at that level. 00:19:02 So these these investment companies are coming in and seeing this great opportunity and like look we don't want to do the nitty-gritty, but they've proven it, they've proven there's demand, they've built an audience, they've built a brand; we'll take it from here, give you 3. 8 million and take it to the next level, so there's great opportunity with that right now in the Amazon business, but you've got to treat it like like a business. The perspectives of Kevin King, longtime e-commerce expert, going back to the early days of Amazon, and I mean early, now an advocate of selling on Amazon the FBA way. I'm Jeff Allen with Will Moffitt, and coming up, we're going to find out where the real money is in building your Amazon business when FBA Millionaires with guest Kevin King returns after this. 00:19:51 Getting the funding you need to grow your business can be challenging, but our friends at Upfund make it super easy. See how much you qualify for in 30 seconds and have your inventory funded in just days. Check out Upfund. io to get started today. That's Upfund.io. 00:20:19 Stay on top of what we're doing and thinking and join our mailing list to get expert tips and advice, special offers, and to be among the first to hear about upcoming guests and future topics of interest here on FBA Millionaires. Become a member of the FBA Millionaires Club. You don't have to be a millionaire to join. You just need to have the desire. So sign up now and sign up free at FBAMillionaires. com. Jeff Allen and Will Moffitt back with you, and our guest, Kevin King. Kevin, you've highlighted something very important here. There are situations where approaching investors, whether they may be angel investors or even private equity firms, could take your Amazon business to the next level. But some people don't feel that way. 00:21:03 They feel that maybe there may be too much competition, saturation, or they may have given up, or they feel like they can do it all alone. What's wrong in those situations? So many people think they have a great idea and there are so many small businesses out there that say, in big businesses too, you know. Big corporations that say, 'Amazon doesn't work.' You know, we put our products on Amazon, and it's just not much of our business. We're not going to focus on it it's because they're freaking doing it wrong, completely wrong. There's a huge opportunity right now for in corporate America for these big companies; they're you know these 10, 15, 20, $100 million companies that need an Amazon expert that really knows Amazon to come in and show them the light. 00:21:42 And I've talked to many people that, a couple of people that have done that, and it's amazing what you can do. But it's all about product selection. So as someone just starting out like yourself, Jeff, is you've got to use the... Amazon doesn't give you the data. Strictly, you've got to use indirect and third-party tools to get the data. But the trick about making money on Amazon is not having the next brilliant idea, the next best mousetrap. It's finding out where the demand is and where the opportunity is that's not meeting that demand or whoever's meeting that demand is failing because there's something faulty with their product and stepping in and taking their place. I mean, Amazon is like a major like a freeway with cars going by at 60 miles an hour. 00:22:24 And all you've got to do is find that right freeway in that right corner and you stand out there with your card reader, you know, just in your palm, and let the cars as they go by swipe the swipe their credit card. I mean, that's. That's how easy it can be on Amazon. But you've got to do the homework up front and find the right product. So the trick to making money on Amazon is finding where the demand is on Amazon, finding out within that demand where the opportunity is to either improve a product or to step in and fill a gap and just lay down in front of it. And that's all you've got to do. Uh, and just repeat that process. I mean, people can overcomplicate it and there is a lot of work. 00:23:02 Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of details and there's a lot of work, a lot of things to know, but you don't need to overcomplicate it with, 'I need to have Facebook sites and all,' there's so many shiny objects out there. Um, and you don't, you don't need to chase them. You don't need to chase them all. That's so true. Um, Kevin, you know, I just love you, man. You have. You make it simple. You make it plain. You make it less complicated because at the end of the day, I love your example how you look at it like baseball. I actually look at it the same way. I use the reference of stocks. I choose products like stocks. I follow the product lifecycle. 00:23:46 When a product is paying me well, I – I write the product lifecycle, and when it drops, I drop the product, and the product may come back next year. But I look at it just like stocks, and I was just listening to this video on Warren Buffett yesterday, and he was talking about how he actually looks at the market and looks at companies to acquire. And he doesn't buy the stock based upon the current price, but he looks at what's the value of the stock or what's – He believes the future value of the stock is. And he'll buy based upon that. And I love your example of you're saying the seasonal products or making money with different products at different times of the year. And there's a lot of things to look at. 00:24:41 And it's all about really just looking at the market, looking at the products, evaluating what's to come. What can you bring to the table with these products? And you're so right, Kevin. You're dead on, man. And that's why I just had to have you on the show. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ways to make money on Amazon. There's not one right way. I mean, there's wholesale where you do wholesale. There's retail arbitrage. There's online arbitrage. FBA, third party, there's merchant fulfilled, there's being an affiliate and setting up affiliate sites and driving traffic. There's so many different ways that you can leverage the marketplace of Amazon. And there's no right way or necessarily best way. It's whatever you're most comfortable with and whatever your long-term goal is. 00:25:29 And there's some businesses, like if you build a brand, you can actually sell it. Now, those baby people, if they hadn't built a brand, if they were just selling random shit, if they were like, I'm selling a you know, screwdrivers and I'm selling garlic presses and I'm selling just, you know, odds and ends, you know, like a general store. It's much more difficult to sell a business like that because it's actually not a brand, doesn't have a following, doesn't have someone. So if you really want to make the money at this, the best thing is to build is. build a brand. You may not be able to do that in the beginning. It may be just more about cash flow in the beginning and you're getting your feet wet. 00:26:04 But as you evolve, you're going to have to start thinking about creating a brand and building this as a brand. Hey, Kevin, let me jump in here real quick. You know, you talk about building a brand and so often the brands themselves are tied to the very products that they sell. I mean, Coca-Cola, take that for example. It's one of the oldest brands here in the United States, but it's one of the most recognizable around the entire world. And what did they do right for so many years? They made one thing and one thing only. I made Coca-Cola. So my question to you is this. You are somebody with quite a bit of experience in actually finding these products. And we don't need to know exactly what it is that that you have and that you've sold and what you private label. 00:26:41 But what it is that we're interested in is how do we aspire to be a Kevin King? How do we, how do we pick the right product for us? What's a good maybe some rules of thumb that we as, those who are developing our FBA businesses and trying to incorporate private label products as part of our business, how do we find the right products to sell? It's all about numbers. I mean, too many people get emotionally tied to a product. It's their baby. No matter what it is or whether it was their idea or they found a private label product that they're going to put their name on and they stay with it too long. It's kind of like Will was saying earlier. 00:27:17 Sometimes you've got to bail on a stock and people just get too emotionally tied to products. So, that's the number one mistake I see is they're not willing to let it go. If you don't have this, you need to get someone on your team or a partner that does. You need analytical skills. If you are able to look at the numbers using Amazon data and third-party data, that's where the money is made in this. It's strictly black and white. It's numbers. And so it doesn’t matter what you sell or what brand you build, if you can just find that hole where those numbers are. Now, it does help if you know something about what you’re selling, but you don’t have to. For example, I’m a guy. 00:27:55 I have a beauty line. I don’t know the freaking first thing about putting on mascara or eyeliner or using a makeup mirror to pop zits or whatever the hell they do. I don’t know. I don’t know the first thing about it. So it’s more difficult for me to actually write a description and write a bulletin to try to appeal to that market. But you can hire that out. From a comfort level, if it's something you know about, if you're into cars, maybe it's going to be better for you to sell automotive. Or maybe if you're into pets and you know a lot about dogs, maybe it's good for you to sell dog stuff. But don't stick to that. I mean, that makes it easier and makes it more comfortable for you. 00:28:33 But that may not be the best way. The best way is to take the data from these third-party tools and what Amazon gives you and analyze it. And some of that data you have to pay for. This is not free. I recommend that people starting this business, 'you hear', how much do I need to start? And some people say, oh, I started with $100 or I started with $500. And I always say, yeah. You might have, but if you're successful and you're actually selling a million dollars a year now, in month two, you were going to your rich uncle and getting 50 grand or you're taking money out of your IRA or you're going to someone like Will and Upfund and you're getting money from somewhere because this is a cash-intensive business. 00:29:09 So I always tell people when you start, you need at least two and a half times your initial inventory. So if you found this great product that you're going to go after and you think this is the one, and like Will was saying, you don't need You can put together a bunch of singles. My products, there's something on Amazon called BSR. It stands for Best Seller Rank. And a lot of people focus on their BSR. And the lower the number, the more you sell. I don't like my BSRs to get below about 4,000 because it becomes too competitive. So I like to stay in that 4,000 to 10,000, 15,000 range because I can sell, that's still selling 5, 10, 15, 20 units a day on Amazon. 00:29:44 I'm totally happy with that. I don't need something that's selling 100 or 200 because at those margins, there's a lot more competition. You're cutting your margins down to where you're making a dollar or something maybe on every one you sell. I just don't like to play that game. And so I tell people that when coming into this, you need at least two and a half times your initial inventory order. So let's say you found a product that's going to cost a dollar just to make the math easy. That's going to cost you a dollar to get out of China and get landed into the U. S. Well, you need twenty-five hundred bucks to start this business because you're going to need that first. 00:30:17 Probably you're going to have to order about 1,000 units, so that's $1,000. So you've got $1,500 left. You're going to have to run some sponsored ads on Amazon. You're going to have to do some promos. You're going to have to give some away. You're going to have to do some tactics to get noticed. You can't just put something up on Amazon, and then they start buying, unless you're the only one that has that, and it's in super high demand. That's just rare. If you're successful, those first 1,000 are going to start selling, and you're going to need to order more. So you don't run out of stock because that can kill you on Amazon, too. 00:30:43 So you're going to have to go back to the factory and say, 'Hey, I need a thousand more.' And they're going to want money up front. And you haven't been paid from the first ones yet. So it's a cash-flow problem. You have to work and turn your money into something to build it. And if you have the right ROI, you can scale it pretty quickly. If you don't have a good ROI, you're going to be stuck with debt and loans and and just slow growth. That's what I recommend on people when they're picking it. I recommend you look at the numbers and don't get emotionally tied to anything. Treat it like stocks. When you buy stocks, you don't always buy a stock because that's your favorite company. 00:31:18 You buy it because, like Will said, what Buffett said, you think it's going up and the future looks good. And you've got to treat your products on Amazon the same way. Oh, man, this is exciting stuff. What's the number one software or tool that you would recommend to help 10x the Amazon sellers' ROI or their bottom line? Because I know we can all use like eight different softwares or different tools, but if you could think of one that that you just say 'hands down', I must have. What would that be? The one third-party tool I would probably say is Hello Profit or Celex or Managed By Stats. They all do the same thing. Because Amazon doesn't give you good reporting. So as a seller, you need additional data. 00:32:03 And I like what they do to actually. Drill down into what you're really making because when you just look at your reports on Amazon or bring them into QuickBooks, it doesn't give you the whole picture so they break it down pretty good but as far as a tool to actually use to sell on Amazon and do research and find listings and create your listings and all that kind of stuff, the Helium 10 package um of suite of tools is probably the best one uh to actually go to to go for because there's so many different tools in there that really will help you, and their keyword tool called Cerebro, which is relatively new, is, I think, by far the most accurate. 00:32:38 And then the other one that's really good for doing a A lot of people use Jungle Scout or Unicorn Smasher. There's several that give these estimates, and they're just guesses of what products sell, but you can use them to get estimates. But I don't find them to be very accurate at all. The most accurate one I find is Market Intelligence. It's by Viral Launch. It's like $20 a month, I think. But that one has historical data. So let's say you can see where the peaks are and the valleys are over the last couple of years. So you know that, say, you're selling a Halloween product. You know that the day after Labor Day, people start. 00:33:10 Buying Halloween, you can actually see the sales spike and you know, okay I better have my inventory here and you know, that on October 29th, Halloween sales stop completely online or whatever, so you know. Exactly you know, you can see it for Christmas or you can see it for Mother's Day or you can see it for other products like fitness products or some supplements no January and February are huge and you can get ideas of the spikes like you can see uh, you know the average in this category over January the sales double because everybody's making New Year's resolutions or whatever so you better make sure you have the inventory to cover that so that's another really good tool as well, I mean I have about 15 different tools I probably pay about A thousand bucks a month for software tools but those three if you had this would be the ones that I would say are essential. 00:33:55 I would have to agree with you. We're going to actually also have Manny Coats on, along with Guy, to hear about that software that you were talking about because I've been exposed to it, but I would love to hear more about how the software helps Amazon sellers. In addition to the market intelligence, I've tested that, KC Software. Viral Launch is a very great company. I recommend that also, guys. This is some very valuable information. Whether you're a new seller or an experienced seller. You're a million-dollar seller, $5 million seller. We want to get you to that $15 million, $30 million mark. Go to the website, fbamillionaires. com. Send us any questions you may have, any recommendations on things you would like to talk about. 00:34:41 Kevin, hey, how can we find out how to take your course? I appreciate that, Will. If you're new or just beginning, You can go to freedomticket. com and there's a free webinar there you can watch. I'll give you some ideas and then you can sign up after that. I offer some one-on-one mentoring as part of one of the packages on that, but 60 modules over eight weeks that'll break everything down for you in detail. A lot more detail than other courses, including all the business fundamentals of LLCs and all that kind of stuff that you're going to need to know, as well as sourcing products on Amazon and launching products and how to run ads and all that. And then if you've been selling for a while and you're doing at least $25,000 a month in sales, do the Illuminati Mastermind. 00:35:23 It's illuminatimastermind. com, which is a monthly training, high-level training within advanced marketing strategies. If you're new, it's not for you. It's too advanced. I mean, some new people do it anyway, but you're going to get the most from it if you're already selling on Amazon. And it's a monthly training where I train, and then we bring on guests that talk about some high-level stuff. One little tip off of there, if you're doing $100,000 a month, one tip off there can give you another $20,000 a month in sales or something sometimes from what we're doing. Those are the two ways. Like me on Facebook, AMZMarketer is my handle on Facebook. Well, Kevin King, this has been a very supercharged half hour show. Man, you've got some energy, my friend. 00:36:08 We probably have a lot more that we could talk about here. And one thing I think would be kind of neat is to have you back on the program again here, Kevin King, here in the future and have you on the show, actually kind of maybe delve into a topic. We wanted to learn a lot about you today on this particular edition of the program, kind of how you got involved in and how you see the Amazon FBA way as a business. Business and kind of the success that you've had with your five brands that you talked about, but I'd like to kind of delve a little bit more into private labeling with you. And we don't want to give away the show the whole the whole farm so to speak, because you've got your courses and everything. 00:36:44 But if we can maybe have you back on the program again and we can kind of focus a little bit more on private label labeling specifically for those people who have been selling on Amazon for a while and they're looking at taking off into a different direction, maybe they're they've been predominantly wholesaling or maybe they even been doing Merchant Fulfilled, and they're just stepping into FBA for the first time. Is that something that you'd be willing to do and come on and talk to us about in the future? Yeah, I'd be glad to, Jeff. No problem. Well, we'd love that very much. And Will, great find, man. Kevin King, fantastic guest. And Kevin, we want to thank you so much for joining us today on FBA Millionaires. 00:37:19 Hopefully, we can have you back on the program again real soon. Thanks for having me. There you go. Will, wow, man. Fantastic find. Great catch, my friend. Kevin is awesome, man. I keep telling him, I don't know if he realizes it. The man has got a lot of skin in the game. You know, there aren't many people out there in circulation that have been working with Amazon for as long as Kevin did. Because remember, I mean, we all remember Amazon being in the book selling business in the very beginning. And Kevin was right in, kind of, he came in at that point. And just really exciting to hear how someone has grown with the business. And continues to be on the leading edge of that. And e-commerce is so important to him and his livelihood. 00:38:03 And he has taken it to the next level. And he's really a tremendous expert, and somebody that we could all learn from again. So, again, Will, great guest; Kevin King, and looking forward to having other great guests on in the future. Any last words from you, my friend, before we bail out of here? Guys, if you if you want to wherever you want to go, I mean, if you're trying to get to the million-dollar mark or the five-million-dollar mark or the 30-million-dollar mark, there is a way to get there. And the way to get there is through networking, listening to FBA millionaires or other podcasts, finding people like Kevin King. There is a way it's being done as we speak. People are saying Amazon is saturated. It's definitely not. 00:38:52 A lot of people are discouraged because maybe the first or fifth product didn't work out. Or maybe your Amazon business was going well and it's no longer going well. Well, there's ways to get back on course. And just write in to us on FBAMillionaires. com. If you want to be on the show, you can send us a note. Hop on. We're just going to kill it, guys. We're going to do this. We're going to keep doing this until we see the daylight. And I'd just like to thank you guys for listening. Well, I appreciate that, Will, very much. And you know, the fact is, is it also helps to be open-minded, be open to making changes, be open to suggestions, be open to recommendations from these people that we have on the program. 00:39:36 Will and I don't know everything. I know next to nothing. And trust me on that. When I say that, that's why I'm working with Will. And Will is going to help lead me into the daylight, out of my cave, out of my rut. We're going to take this FBA businesses, all of our FBA businesses to the next level. So for now, my name is Jeff Allen. That man over in NoCal is Will Moffitt. And we're looking forward already to joining you on our next edition of FBA Millionaires. Until then, take care.