March 25, 2024; Hangout & Q&A
Video link: https://youtu.be/gVMbkGjJLY8
Summary
In this engaging video discussion, various Amazon sellers swap insights about their experiences and strategies for success. They touch on topics such as managing inventory, optimizing profit margins, and navigating the complexities of Amazon's new low inventory fees. The conversation also dives into the significance of understanding supplier relationships and negotiating effective deals. Whether you're new to Amazon FBA or a seasoned pro, there's plenty of valuable information to absorb. Join in to learn the critical factors that can influence your selling strategies and profitability on Amazon’s platform!
Part 1: Q1 Business Update (0:00 - 10:00)
Discussion on personal experiences in business in Q1.
Success in maintaining sales through consumables and health-related products.
Challenges faced with shipping delays and inventory management after Q4.
Part 2: Online Arbitrage and Opportunities (10:01 - 25:00)
Insights into attending sourcing challenges and courses to gain experience.
Importance of the use of tactical tools like Keepa for tracking price changes.
Tips on creating and using lead lists for better sourcing opportunities.
Part 3: Techniques and Strategies Discussion (25:01 - 45:00)
Sharing of effective sourcing techniques, such as reverse sourcing.
Emphasis on building personal databases for past products to refer back to.
Discussion about how the Canadian market differs from the US market for sellers.
Part 4: Software and Pricing Challenges (45:01 - 65:00)
Critique of tactical arbitrage and the effectiveness of tools used.
Acknowledgment of the challenges in keeping up with changes in suppliers and pricing.
Discussion on the impact of shipping costs and inventory fees on profitability.
Part 5: Future Plans and Innovations in Selling (65:01 - 80:00)
Exploration of potential software for managing inventory and pricing efficiently.
Sharing of thoughts on how to navigate changes in Amazon policies and challenges faced by sellers.
Considerations of leveraging loans for scaling business and operational growth.
Detailed Summary:
In this detailed conversation, participants discussed various aspects of selling on Amazon, focusing largely on selling strategies, product sourcing, navigating challenges, sales performance, and the nuances of working with suppliers.
The conversation began with a casual check-in among participants. They moved into sharing individual experiences regarding the first quarter of the year, which included insights about their sales patterns. One participant noted that their sales had remained consistent even in typically slower months due to a shift in focus to consumable items.
A key topic brought up was the impact of seasonal fluctuations on sales and the financial implications of selling certain types of products post-holiday season. Discussion touched on the implications of inventory management and the importance of sending consistent shipments.
Training and the importance of learning were heavily emphasized. Participants discussed the value of courses and mentorship from seasoned Amazon sellers, particularly highlighting Chris Grant's OA Challenge and its implications for their respective businesses.
The participants also exchanged insights about product sourcing, specifically emphasizing the significance of using data analysis tools like Keepa to assess product viability. They discussed sourcing strategies, including finding profitable items and how to capitalize on trends within the marketplace.
There were mentions of Amazon's policies, particularly regarding meltable items and how to navigate potential pitfalls when deciding what products to source. The importance of building relationships with suppliers was stressed, as establishing trust can open doors for better deals.
Additionally, the conversation shifted towards the nuances of purchasing at scale and managing cash flow. Participants shared their experiences with financing their operations, with some discussing the possibility of acquiring loans to bolster their inventory purchasing power.
As the chat progressed, discussions veered into logistical concerns, especially regarding shipment logistics with various carriers. Specific services like Chit Chats were mentioned for providing discounted shipping options in Canada.
Towards the latter part of the conversation, participants shared thoughts on the emotional journey of scaling their Amazon businesses, grappling with fears of overspending while navigating new territories. Personal anecdotes highlighted the ups and downs of dealing with supplier relationships and how to maintain profitability amid various challenges.
One participant expressed concern over making risky purchasing decisions and how that impacted their confidence in scaling their business. The conversation wrapped up with discussions on using different sourcing platforms and the need for diligence, strategy, and community support as they continue their journeys in the Amazon marketplace.
Overall, the dialogue was rich with insights, personal experiences, and strategies that could aid sells navigating the intricacies of selling on Amazon, showcasing the value of sharing knowledge among peers in this entrepreneurial space.
Video Transcript
(00:00) hello re how's it going good about yourself I can't complain pretty good good how's q1 treating you so far being that it's almost over yeah q1 has been good like January was pretty good I mean yeah like a couple of weeks the first couple of weeks for March went a bit slow for me but yeah other than that I didn't see the usual slowdown that I used to see in Q probably because I had moved to more consumables and health and beauty and stuff like that that people kept on ring instead of more toys yep so yeah it has
(00:32) been pretty good this year good good were you very consistent uh with like sending in units into Amazon after Q4 yeah actually during Q4 I was traveling and I had send in some boxes to us and approximately $10,000 worth of inventory just came back from the border so and I was not here to receive it so that's the reason most of my sales were in q1 instead of Q4 so yeah um but but even after that yeah I was kind of conly stting in the inventry yeah with uh with my own business I've always found that January for us is actually one of our
(01:11) highest months uh January almost always beats out like December November uh Etc and that's probably that's probably because we are more so consumable Goods like kind of like what you mentioned and I think a lot of people are just kind of like replenishing stuff after the holiday spending gift cards stuff like that yeah I think so and I I believe like in in December a lot of people are more focused towards buying gifts and stuff like that and then in jary they realize they a lot of they're out of a lot of stuff right so yeah yeah the
(01:40) first two weeks of January are just amazing yeah January is always a really solid month for us yeah I was actually just I just got done like almost an hour back with the O challenge um first session it was good yeah good good so that that's like the challenge with Chris Grant yeah yeah I love that guy okay right on and so you took that last year and you're taking it again this year is that right yeah I mean honestly Jordan the price isn't that much it's like 397 us but considering it's like 14 days of Life sourcing and and it's more like
(02:17) this guy knows keepa like anything so I mean I believe like the the information that he was able to share in the last session helped me grow my business like anything because uh just from um like attending those sessions I realized that there's a big big big uh gap between the market where people are not able to kind of sell in us the Canadian products or not as many sellers in there and that's when I started using his techniques and kind of mixing that with crossb Arbitrage and that paid me really well so I was like you know what I was I was
(02:48) I was at a lower level of selling at that time when I took took the course first time so this time around I'll be able to kind of learn some new things right on right on yeah like I think um Chris Grant he's always been somebody that's been very solid very knowledgeable um and and yeah like with finding stuff that he probably knows and this goes with anybody trying to teach things or learn things from somebody is there chances are there's all there's always somebody that probably knows something that you don't they may not
(03:17) necessarily know more than you do but they probably know something that you don't and if they're able to show you and you're able to like kind of see how you can apply certain things to your business that can make a huge change yeah for example like um I was I was listening to one of his webinars and he he he he had this very like a normal thought that that I mean I believe a lot of people would be doing like uh copying all their Ence from their old lead list and stuff like that and then just putting it into keepa and applying
(03:46) filters of how the prices have went up in during the last 90 days and that would give you like solid 50 60 new leaves and I was like man I never thought of it that way definitely 100% And yeah like uh um he was somebody so like I have watched a lot of his content I've never taken his OA challenge specifically which honestly I should someday just to see um but uh I've watched a lot of his content uh a lot of the stuff from him and a guy named Chris Anderson uh helped me a lot with kind of really going deep into
(04:18) tactical Arbitrage and then has also kind of helped shaped a lot of our own personal processes as well like for example I tell people a lot that you should all the products that you have you should put and kind of form kind of your own database when it comes to OA or wholesale and then you can easily pull from those products later on like so even if your products are dead they die like a couple months after you Source them put them all in your database and then you're able to go back in that database and reference it and you know
(04:46) eventually it'll be thousands of products large and then you can really easily resource that database for new sales Brands Etc and that was an idea I got specifically from Chris Grant yeah yeah this the I I I like he I think you also did this session and it was pretty much the same on how to utilize a lead list and that that kind of have paid me off like really well because I was able to kind of find the your lead list like the can to us one almost dating back to six seven months back and almost every other lead on that
(05:20) list was more profitable than it was because a lot of people came in and then they R off stock and never restocked and I was able to yeah yeah and like again when people know these methods because they they've done it they've thought about it in depth and you have never thought about it some of these things can be quite game change it yeah 100% like for example yeah like um the way I mean the one thing he mentions is the shortgun method of reverse sourcing is just essentially taking a lot of as and putting it into
(05:51) techical Arbitrage and starting the reverse search process has has been really well for cross waterer Arbitrage I for me it hasn't worked very well for the for the local arbit like for Canada to Canada us to us but for but for the crossb thing it has been like pretty spot on I I have been able to find like 50 60 good leaves in a single search Beauty and so and and like like that really tells you something because like so with tactical Arbitrage specifically I have found like that ta uh I I can't say for sure but to me it just seems
(06:23) like it's kind of getting worse over time um but so even though that you're able to use it and find that many products is a good sign and then once we see uh other products that I know already exist that once they start integrating into Canada like Arbor source is something that I've tried quite extensively over the last year if you're able to apply those methods to something like arbas Source you'll probably be even more successful yeah I mean U because like like most of my sourcing is is from Canada and then selling to us so RB
(06:54) Source I love that piece of software but it doesn't currently support Canadian source yeah so that's the reason I I've been kind of switching on and off on that do software I I buy it for a month and then kind of go on vacation for two months but yeah once once it gets into the Canadian Market I'm pretty sure it's going to beat hell out of tech Arbitrage because yeah I kind of agree with you there I've been using Tactical aritar for for last couple of years I believe and and the search quality results have have gone down like anything else
(07:23) especially they are not able to scpe off Walmart now yeah and like that's just with them not being able to keep up with things right so like I know Walmart recently uh there's been issues like with their API and then like if they're not actively attempting to fix these issues then obviously we're going to get bad results from it right and I I haven't found that they really keep on top of things very well yeah I mean three course has has has damaged the product more it has just went downhill but yeah for for now it is
(07:53) making me more money than I'm paying in subscriptions so I'm good sure but yeah um yeah agree with you there depending on how much time you want to put into it with arbours if you actually use it um they do have a new feature now where they can basically almost build xass for you right inside inside their software you can actually technically utilize that build xass for Canadian websites and then run us searches and it's basically doing Canada to us searches for you yeah yeah yeah that's that's what I had planned for myself I did a couple of
(08:28) xas um uh they didn't turn out to be that good for me but I mean yeah that's that's the reason I started my subscription for RB Source yeah because stores like for example brick creation or store Snowman and stuff like that if you able to get like X pass for those it it would be gold yeah like I have I already have a couple hundred xass that we previously purchased for tactical Arbitrage I I used I I bought a lot through the service like tactical bucket through Javier um so some of them like we don't have access to the source code
(09:00) some of them we do uh so they've been easily to be they're easily exported to ARB source for the ones that we actually have the code for but like with their with their integrated program that they released uh like a month or so ago that build X pass for you uh it's not perfect but I have found that it's quite effective for a lot of websites especially like the smaller Niche websites and if you're willing to spend some time with it it's actually not that difficult to build xass yeah I mean it's it's just a I think I'm kind of stuck in a lot of
(09:31) things but yeah I believe I believe you there I mean this I mean with Amazon or with any online business the the possibilities are just andless you can just think of ideas and keep on digging deep into that and you would you would just enter into something that you have never thought of yeah 100% Evan how's it going are you here with us Evan maybe maybe not yeah so yeah but but I think that um uh honestly like I I feel that there's a a big gap in Canadian market for for for some trainings because I mean the couple
(10:16) of trainings that I've have come across on Facebook GRS they they're just bad I 100% agree um yeah like the the Canadian Marketplace like any any training that you have like even if you learn stuff from Chris Grant or anybody that is actually really in Dept with sourcing a lot of the basics and fundamentals applied to Canada but like the overall sourcing methods um and how you're able to vet products properly and sell in Canada do not always translate exactly just It's So Different Here Yeah I mean it's a smaller Market
(10:48) but but sometimes you are able to find gold yeah I bought a lot of cleaning stuff and when the US market I got um when amazoncom F kind of um puted that in into the restricted category so people were liquidating clinic and I bought almost like ,500 worth of Cl stuff from amazon.com just to flip on amazon.
(11:14) ca and cl does well here because you were getting like you are paying pannies on dollars 100% And yeah like there's lots of opportunity going from us to ca um and yeah like there is tons of opportunity for CA Arbitrage don't get me wrong it's just a very different Marketplace than the US like so most of listings you're not going to be selling a ton of units per listing but there's still lots of opportunity to make a lot of money you just have to go relatively wide yeah I mean the way I think of it is that you are putting I mean for me um I'm I'm not I'm not an expert when it
(11:45) comes to the same Market uh Arbitrage sourcing so it it takes me a lot of time to find product in the Canadian market for which I will not be able to buy as many units as I would be able to buy in the US market so it's just low per hour profit for me personally yeah and and that's fair yeah but yeah I mean for someone like you or someone who's who's who can find per Left Right Center uh I mean it's it's a go mine because the the margins in Canada are are just amazing especially if you're like local Arbitrage U compared to us local
(12:21) Arbitrage uh you you you don't make a lot of money in there Canada to us is a different story Al together and similarly US to Canada is a different story together but yeah the local and I mean apparently it looks good but but also you need to take into consideration the lead times because you are get ordering a stuff then the then the stuff is going to be stuck at your crossb warehouse for a week or two before it gets shipped out to us and then it would go into receiving and and then movement between the different FCS so it's for me
(12:53) it's almost like a month on average before the inventory is available for sale right so yeah like again that can be something that obviously everybody has to take into consideration when they do something like ca to us uh but yeah like the profit margins definitely make up for it because ca2s sourcing can be quite massive for profit margins um you just have to adjust your lead times accordingly especially now with things like the new low inventory fee yeah I mean honestly I've just added $1 on top of everything I'm
(13:24) sing because I mean in Arbitrage model there is no way you will be able to kind of Avo that fee I mean especially in the US Marketplace because I mean we you are going onto listings that are selling like almost 100 to 200 units a month and there is no way you are able to like send in almost like 60 70 units um I mean I you take into considerations that there are per day limits uh that that are that the CBL that the IR or what is that you us CBP has in place so it it takes time and but yeah g current has had an interesting opinion today on
(14:01) those fees so he is of the opinion that that fee should be only for the pl sellers or for the uh listings that only have usually have one seller on the listing because um which which sounded like I I don't know but but uh it sounded it made sense to me he said that Amazon like for example if you have got a listing where let's say there are 10 Sellers and it sells maybe let's say th000 units a month so if everyone is talking let's say 800 unit or 900 units then Amazon has got like 10 months of inventory in their warehouse
(14:33) which they don't want so he was of the opinion that that it would be changed really soon it it it it should be done on as level not on the SK level but again it doesn't make sense if they're like branded protos like maybe sari or n stuff like that who are they going to penalize if the inventory is low so I'm not sure what's what's going to happen right so yeah like it would probably make more sense if that was the case like if it applied over all like with everybody combined but that would be very hard to assess and like then
(15:04) somebody else's lack of inventory management would affect you so I'm not sure if and how they would be able to do that yeah but I mean in in in in the current scenario Amazon warehouse are going to be a stock with inventory so yeah and like when we had the session with James last week on Friday did you attend that or listen to that at all no I wasn't able to make it to that okay so like James he had some good opinions about that as as well um so James is somebody if you're not familiar with him uh he runs a relatively large prep Center in the US
(15:35) he's he's decently large seller himself and he's very analytical and so he has access to a lot of data because of the customers that he has and so with their permission he's able to analyze a bunch of different shipping plans products Etc um and he said that somebody specifically asked if they think that the warehouses are going to get backed up if they're going to start getting overstocked and he he made a very good point that well considering that he is coming out and he is like basically teaching people about what
(16:08) these fees are because most people do not understand what these fees are um and we're a very small subset of the overall Amazon sellers that exist do you actually think that most Amazon sellers are going to be aware of these fees or actually do anything to change anything in their business probably not the the thing is with this fee this low inventory fee it's not like a fee that's right in your face like the standard like referral um or fulfillment fees this is kind of more a hidden fee that gets assessed on the
(16:35) back end and it's it's assessed on future orders so most people if they don't actually pay attention to like their transaction levels in their accounts they won't even notice these things until it comes tax time yeah that's true that's right I mean yeah it's just one more cash SC for as to to an to an extent 100% like they're they're probably going to be adding on a ton of with these new fees uh but with that being said it's also forcing people to assuming that you actually know about it it's forcing those that want to try to avoid these
(17:09) fees to manage your inventory properly which has been something that Amazon has always pushed for over like the last decade plus yeah but I mean Jordan one thing that that kind of really confuses me because I mean with Amazon you you don't know what they're thinking but like recently you must have heard a lot of people get ungated with the retail invoices so which means Amazon is kind of starting to accept that you know what Retail Arbitrage online Arbitrage is perfectly fine you can fight your authenticity claims with those invoices
(17:40) from retailers so this this this whole fee model doesn't uh kind of it doesn't make sense for the arbitrages right I mean there's only a limit of limit limited quantity you can you are able to buy and send in to Amazon so it depends like they it depends on your model so like for me personally I've always when I was more heavy into Arbitrage I basically treated Arbitrage like whale we would basically only source items that we could buy larger quantities of or listings that sold higher volumes uh but the the profit tend to be a little
(18:16) bit lower um there definitely are products like say if you're buying like Arbitrage toys that have like very limited quantities available or from sources that will only ship you so many yeah like those it'll probably be very hard to avoid those fees to some extent like but a lot of a lot of the stuff that you're buying Arbitrage anyway is going to be like opportunity buys where it's like you're buying something on sale or on clearance and a lot of those items only make sense when they're on sale so you send in like
(18:44) say 30 days worth of inventory you're going to start getting assessed fees like the following Monday uh and you'll get assessed fees on the remainder of your inventory so probably about like anywhere from like 50 to 75% of your inventory will probably have those fees applied uh so yeah to an extent a lot of the fees will be very hard to avoid if you're not able if you're doing a lot of opportunity buys for for Arbitrage if you're not finding stuff that you continuously restock then yes it will be difficult 100% yeah I mean like apparently the
(19:17) test bu are going to cost you more money now because if you're signing in like let's say 15 20 units just to see how the listing is performing then the next time you're able to restock that you would be paying like as you said 50 to 75% of your inventory would be kind of being charged the low inventory FBF fee so that's that's kind of it's It's and and I'm not sure how so it's going to be like one of those St charges I believe like what posted once through your a month or like it's going to be on every order any idea how it's
(19:49) going to work so it's applied so the the fee is reassessed every Sunday night/ Monday morning and it's based on your his IAL days of Supply so if you look at your FBA inventory tab in Seller Central you can see each in each skew that you have you can see your historical days of supply and so uh it works between the averages between your 30 and 90day historical days of Supply but essentially uh if you go below 28 days of historical Supply you're going to get assess this fee and this fee uh is based is based on your historical days of
(20:25) supply and the size of the item and so depending on the product it can be anywhere from a 10-cent fee assessment all the way up to like a $150 okay so like on average it'll probably be on average about 50 cents for most units um and then what will happen is you get assessed this fee um or you get assessed this on Sunday nightmonday morning then all of your future orders for the following week will then be assessed that fee so it's not retroactive it's applied to Future orders so so yeah and then it gets reassessed every week so
(20:58) then if your historical days of Supply increases by the time next Monday comes around uh then you will no longer be assessed that fee for that week but it only counts it only counts for units that are actually received at the warehouse it does not count inbound inventory yeah I mean that that that I mean that's that's the problem I for see with the can to us prate rage because I mean one of my shipment plans that I created one of larger one like it I guess it had like 600 700 units almost like one month back it still being
(21:28) received and being shipped out so uh it's going to it's going to be fun yeah but I mean the nice thing with that is like with CA to us specifically like you probably most items you probably have higher margins on and so something like that you can probably just afford to like you said factor in the additional fee to just kind of just expect you're going to pay it yeah s good night um um my name is Ronald uh I do mostly OA I've been in here like for a month now um this does not apply um for if you delete the listing um for instance say I
(22:07) get up I get 30 products and I they are sold off and I delete the listing because I cannot force any more of it um will those Fe still be applied and also it's not um regulated for Canada as yet so the low inventory fee is Canada yes uh I'm not sure why people don't think it's coming to Canada so like there's two new fees that have happened recently so there is the inventory uh the inbound placement fee that started I think that was March 1 that one is us specific that one's only in the US for now uh the low
(22:41) inventory fee comes into effect April 1st and that is for both Canada and the US and so it doesn't matter if you delete your listing so what this fee is essentially is doing it's forcing you to manage your inventory and keep at least 28 days worth of stock in Amazon's warehouses and so if you fall below 28 days worth of stock historically then you will get assess that fee on all future per on all future orders for that individual asent so like for example if you just send in 30 days worth of inventory say you have an item that
(23:17) sells one unit per day and you send in 30 units that's 30 days worth of inventory uh so when it hits the warehouse you have 30 uh you have 30 days of historical inventory or historical stock right and you start selling those you start selling those units and say from Monday to Monday you sell seven units so uh when your fee is assessed on the following Monday you now have 23 days worth of Supply left so that means you will get assess this fee and every future order that you have will be charged this additional low
(23:49) inventory fee until it's recessed again a Monday and if you have below that stock threshold again come the following Monday you will then be assessed that fee on all future orders for that week as well whoa seem like I need to hurry my ass into whole that like I mean it's not specifically OA or wholesale like the same fees apply for wholesale they they apply for OA it's just generally speaking it's easier to get more units for individual products for wholesale but again it's not always viable for everybody because that ties up a lot of
(24:22) cash flow so like realistically you have to to avoid these fees you realistically have to basic stock two months worth of inventory and then be restocking inventory by the time you're at like 45 days left and that's going to get up a lot of cash flow and that's not realistic for everybody so it's best to just um focus on like specific acing then and um try to restart those uh as much as possible yeah I mean that's kind of always been the name of the game is you know I I wouldn't say just SPOC uh focus on just
(24:57) specific as but like the name of the game has always been find as much viable inventory as you can send them in see how they do and then restock those that are still viable right I mean the name of the game is still that that process overall but ideally you will be finding the products that do well for you and you'll be restocking them more consistently um if you're unable to do that you can still make Amazon work you just have to ensure that you factor in those additional fees to your profit emergence otherwise it it could just
(25:30) potentially hurt you a lot yeah but um do those fees only work for the specific asence right what do what do you mean all right for instance say I'm selling a pack AUM right yep and it's finished and uh and I can't restock anymore is it that case where the low in the low inventory fee is across my as no it's it's it's per asent it's so it's each individual asent is assess their own individual fee so again like say if you stock that bubble gum and you you run out of stock and you're not able to stock anymore you won't get charged any
(26:13) more additional fees because that is for that individual product and it's the fee is only applied to Future orders it's not retroactive okay okay yeah then also put more like on jumping on the listing or Price getting 10 because like normally like for me I would I would I would try to kind of optimize my inventory to have be in warehouse for like 15 20 days of Supply but now if you're looking at let say 50 40 to 50 days you essentially doubling the risk that you have in the game so that's that's one more thing so for me
(26:50) I'm I think that I'm I'm better because of the margins obviously if I can afford it then I think it's better to pay that $150 or whatever that fee is to to kind of have your risk mitigated but again that's me and everyone has a different game for sure 100% so Ron uh in the voice chat chat I sent you a link to the YouTube video for the live session that we had in the the public Discord uh to we had we had a conversation with somebody who really knows the new low inventory fee that's coming into play so if you want uh you can review that video
(27:24) and it goes a lot in depth about how the fee is actually happening okay thank you definitely so Evan does your mic work now can you give it a go yes I think it does oh beautiful beautiful how's it going oh not too bad it's it's a little a little frustrating but such as in my uh trajectory on Amazon so far um what do you mean by frustrating just because of like the the book situation that you mentioned earlier in the chat there yeah primarily it's um just because of where I live um I don't have many opportunities to Source you know
(28:07) lucrative books books that um you know fetch uh you know tens of dollars per unit and most of the books I've sold so far they haven't sold too many to be fair um they uh profit maybe you know a few dollars or some in some cases it was A1 66 I mean that was a a do 66170 which was a mistake on my part it just had to do with discrepancies and the the Fe calculations and uh and and scoutly right so yeah like with that um kind of I'm not sure if you had a chance to to read my reply there obviously like you would have to adapt whatever
(28:45) strategies you have to your individual area and what's available to yourself so like for example I know somebody that is he's located in uh I believe it's New Brunswick he's in a relatively small town in New Brunswick uh he is a book seller and he has been for a very long time and so I would probably think he's probably in a smaller town than yourself but like a long time ago the way that he adapted is like with his local thrift stores he was able to start with a a bulk book purchase from them because like with
(29:17) most thrift stores they have a a problem with having too many books it takes up a lot of their space that's like some of the stuff that they get the most and so he was able to purchase them and bulk from them you know by the Gaylord for a few cents a pound they delivered it to him and then he was just able to scan uh books locally like in his in his garage that he had or he set up like um like a little C can in his yard and then he was able to profit that way obviously that situation could be different with
(29:44) everybody you may not have the space for that um that may not be some a route you want to go but that's also potentially an option when I was into books I had a deal similar with a local thrift store um I wouldn't get books delivered by the Gaylord but I would go and I would pick up their their Overstock that they had and at that time I was paying them I believe it was 10 cents a pound so I would just bring my scale with me uh we would weigh any additional books that they had that they didn't have time to process that they felt like they just
(30:13) had too many I would take all their extra boxes that they had that week I would take them back we would scan each one uh and then anything that had any form profit in it those are ones that we would send in so it's definitely a grind and you you you're going to be sending in a lot more lower value books but you can also earn a pretty good profit a lot of them when you're buying them so cheap yeah I I did read your reply I mean the uh option of purchasing uh books by the G Gaylord wouldn't um wouldn't work for me unfortunately in my
(30:47) area I I mean in my area but so small I have only one thrift store and that the thrift store is a part of a a charity as many oneoff thrift stores are and uh they just don't the infrastructure to do anything like that and because I live in a condo complex there's just isn't the spatial the the space to for for that to be a viable option for me right um so um but uh I mean we once in a while in this area in our library system we will have library sales and I think there's one I think there's one coming up in um June I
(31:20) want to say it runs for the whole summer so that'll that might be helpful there's a lot of older that particular Library sale t to attract a lot of older texts so texts before there were um Library of Congress identifiers right right um attached to them and so on and so forth and some of them can be pretty lucrative typically I don't scan those types of books because I I just I can't be bothered opening them to the correct pages and scanning them I just I want to get through the inventory fast for sure 100% so and I have to also check the
(31:53) tendency to start reading the books I pick up because I read speically so you only have so much time you can only read so much yeah and some of the books you pick up are really fascinating they've been out of print for you know 40 50 60 years or more I just picked up a a book the other day and actually ended up buying it for personal use rather than for uh for the for my Amazon business um and it was a a really lengthy um autobi or a really lengthy biography of the um the philosopher car Carl marks so and uh I hadn't seen
(32:31) hadn't seen that book in years and uh I part of my when I wrote my thesis um part of it was dedicated to uh to Carl marks so I just started reading it and then I realized or remembered why I was at the thrift store and I thought okay I'll just buy this and read it later definitely I built up quite a decent Library myself when I was into book selling because I would just get like hauls of books from people because I did like a lot of like the free Book pickup and then anything that was interesting in that is like assuming that it wasn't
(32:56) too profitable I be like this looks interesting so I'm going to keep this myself uh I found some very interesting books um are you aware of the author John Marco Allegro at all no um in which um in which genre or discipline does he write so he was a um I believe he was a philosopher a scientist but he did like a lot of research on a lot of things that were quite taboo back in like the 60s and 70s where like he was he he found like he did a lot of deep analysis into like the the Dead Sea Scrolls the the ones that
(33:30) were found and then he had like a lot of theories um and he provided like a lot of what he figured was evidence for another book uh called The Sacred Mushroom in the cross where he said that like a lot of the the stories that we have nowadays like with Santa Claus um a lot of those come from like ancient um ancient rituals and religions around like eating amonita muscaria mushrooms that made you trip balls and it's it's very interesting is RA taboo and a lot of those books were pulled from from uh publication because uh a lot of the
(34:04) churches did not agree with his ideas yeah actually I am familiar with a version of that um a version of that but it's through the um the writings uh of this uh um Professor he's uh he's not a philosopher specifically but he's in religious studies Bart armman he has interviews all the time he's a fantastic lecturer and speaker and uh but his his specialty is in the New Testament scholarship and one of the books of his that I picked up that's analogous to the one that you were discussing was a book called misquoting
(34:40) Jesus and it's a a um very uh detailed um but uh Illuminating read of the of the New Testament and the various iterations um of the New Testament and how just how much of what is in the New Testament and this I mean this guy's a philologist so he um he he studies Classical Languages and literature and um understands how in the classical World texts uh were worked and reworked and that much that what we have available to us today in the New Testament is the series of U multiple reworkings from monastic Scholars over
(35:17) the ages and that almost anything that in the New Testament uh particularly the the sayings of Jesus are much are highly likely to be historically inac right yeah a lot of those are very very deep rabbit holes that people go can go down and there's a lot of interesting histories and things that some people would never think of and a lot of ideas that were taboo and even people today will get offended of just for discussing because a lot of people hold obviously religious TX so so dearly which completely understandable but it's very
(35:50) interesting to see other people's opinions about things that are not specifically attached to any individual text yeah for sure hey Chris how's it going I see that you joined us you joined us in in the middle of random discussions about books and historical texts what's going on my dudes hope you're all doing well hope business is uh doing good for everyone you as well how has q1 been treating you it's almost over now um it's had its I think now with q1 you know coming to an end I can definitely see the shift um
(36:33) this is my first q1 by the way so I didn't really know what to expect but I can definitely see that things are slowly picking up and I guess kind of normalizing I think normalizing is the correct term but um yeah I think it's a looking uphill from or downhill from here for sure not uphill I think like I think that a lot of the conversations that people have um around Q cuz like a lot like the gurus vide stuff that you that you see a lot of them say you know you have to go super heavy in Q4 Etc I think like some
(37:05) of those are a little bit disingenuous because yeah like Q4 can be quite massive for a lot of people but like it doesn't it doesn't mean that you can't make consistent profit throughout the rest of the year I think like you know this is kind of what I developed in my head to kind of like wrap myself around the whole systems of Amazon and it's like if you look at q1 obviously it's going to be the least profitable you know quadrant or whatever you want to call it least profitable season or or whatever right so I mean if you look at it as a bigger
(37:37) picture though right like obviously you're going to make the most money in Q4 but then you're going to make the least money in q1 but if you look at all of it together it should kind of balance out right like the losses in q1 will balance out with your gains in Q4 right and then the rest of the season should be pretty pretty steady from from my understanding I guess back to school it's a little bit hectic but that does fall into Q4 anyways so I don't really know much about like two and three I guess summer I mean I don't know maybe
(38:05) like seasonal products will go ham but other than that I mean my knowledge is pretty limited so you're going to have to jump in here for sure so I actually just disagree so q1 uh so January is always our most profitable month um so with that being said like we do see decreases uh tend to come like February March but they don't tend to be very extreme because we're not heavy into seasonal um but January historically has always been our biggest selling and most profitable month so Q4 typically overall just because we see that increase tends
(38:38) to be most profitable but q1 for us is always second most profitable and then our least profitable months tend to be uh around the summer season just because I think a lot of people are away they're not spending time indoors they're not worry about purchasing as much but with that being said is we still make consistent sales and Prof profit um through the summer months it's just that it's less than the rest of the year that's interesting so why would you say that q1 is your I guess second or not q1 but January is it because the
(39:10) products that you pick or do you think that's just how the game is so I think most people when they think Q4 like they think like gifts toys Etc and so if you're primarily into those categories uh yeah Q4 is going to 100% be your best only months uh with us I've always been very heavy in a lot of consumables so a lot of groceries Health and Beauty uh items that I basically consider Recession Proof um and so I think I have my theories I don't know for sure but I think it's like a lot of people just replenishing stock after the holidays
(39:44) spending money with their gift cards for Essentials things things like that and they're still kind of in the spending mood right after Christmas and then we see a bit of a decline come February March that makes sense yeah I guess like what I can comment is a lot of people are talking about like you know January being the biggest return like return month but is definitely still the case 100% for me though I well for me though I've kind of I didn't really get that and I don't know if I got lucky or what it is because I I went pretty heavy on
(40:14) clothing um like all throughout you know Christmas time and whatnot and honestly I I had the most amount of returns from beauty products not even clothing products like people barely returned any clothing so I don't know if this is me getting lucky or what it is man but like I honestly like all throughout January I probably had like I don't know maybe like 10 to 15 returns and this is talking on like a 5 600 unit you know move right it's not it's not like I only mooved like a 100 right so I would say that you're probably that's probably
(40:48) fairly rare for the clothing category and there probably was some form of luck behind it because like clothing just in general tends to have higher returns I interested as to why or how you got so many returns with health and beauty because like beauty products just by themselves most of them are not able to be returned to Amazon so like customers can still get refunded but they have to go through like a lot of additional Hoops in order to get refunded for them yeah I don't know they would just like um from like if I look at all my
(41:18) returns I would say the most definitely came from some form of beauty like a cream or um like I don't want to go into too much detail obviously but you know like some form of I guess Health and Beauty section product I could say not like with clothing I know everyone says that and it makes sense in my head too right like you know someone's going to grab a large be like that doesn't fit so I want to grab a medium right but I don't know man like for me it's uh it really it hasn't been the case I just can't say it's been the case and I I
(41:46) really do think that you know it might have something to do with luck here but yeah that's just kind of my experience with it maybe you just found super solid SKS that people already knew what their sizes were and they they didn't have any concerns about it yeah and also I think on average like 3% return rate is is pretty pretty average right so that's that's what you we saw like 18 units on 600 units like roughly 3% so like for me it has been the same way I I also believe like uh for January I mean if you if you look at
(42:17) the number of units that every seller is able to sell in December is essentially like almost double of what they would do in a in a normal month so you would expect like double returns and that's what i' I've seen over the last couple of years for my business I haven't seen like something extraordinar like I would say I've hit like 7% returns but yeah 4% four and a half person that's F by Max so Chris just because Ron asked you there about clothing selling well in Canada um obviously without going into detail do you want to mention like what
(42:48) what type of clothing are you selling like are you selling like socks pants like what what what type of clothing um I I guess so the biggest thing would be kind of like General colors so like you don't want to sell like some hot pink I mean okay that one might work cuz girls like that [ __ ] but like you don't want to sell like some random ugly weird color that nobody's going to get and it's like you want to kind of focus on you know sizes that are pretty common and I'm not saying that like you know XXL is not going to work
(43:20) but you don't want to get like you know 30 sweaters that are trip XXL right I mean you got to kind of like like think about it logically you know how many people are going to be in that category of of that size right so I would say like if you want to stay safe you know hit the big Brands like Adidas Nike um under arour whatever kind of like think seasonally too right like you don't most likely want to be selling sweaters in summertime right so I mean summertime try to stick to shirts um maybe shorts you know stuff like that stick to sizes
(43:56) that are common you know if you're into female products go for the extra small small medium you know and then obviously when it comes to how many you're going to stock up you want to like check all your graphs and everything that we learn you know check the reviews make sure it moves in Canada um check the keep a charts and then just to be extra safe you know pick up the the common colors like I mentioned you know grab the blacks grab the whites um if it's a female product you know maybe you can get like a pink or whatever but I
(44:26) wouldn't go like super on like I don't know army green or something like that random right unless you know that that specific variant is selling right so really do your math um if you stay around the 10 Mark you should be fine like I've had no issues moving almost anything obviously like you know if if the product has a good seller Rank and if it's something common I haven't had any issues moving you know up to 10 units of almost anything if you're patient enough like very rarely like I had one product that it's been over 3
(44:56) months now that that is a clothing product but I terribly picked it and that was my first it's an Adidas product it was my first product that I bought and I used that to ungate so I mean sure you can say that I've I don't know lost out on like a 100 bucks there that I ungated with but considering that it was my first product ever I had no idea what I was doing and I Ed it to ungate I think it's pretty fine to lose a 100 bucks in the long scheme of things so I guess that's kind of all the advice I can give that comes to mind I'm sure
(45:25) Jordan and anyone else in here can toss in anything else that they can think of but yeah that's kind of it for me so Chris do you mind me asking what specifically made you want to start with choan um I think it's something that was the most familiar to me like obviously now you know doing the business more um you see a lot of different brands and you kind of start to learn that there are so many random things out there that you never thought of like right now I would say something that I really stay away from is makeup products and I'm not
(45:58) saying that it's a bad category or anything but I just don't know anything about it and I don't feel comfortable yet to kind of explore that and you know kind of like my philosophy in my head is that if like if I would want to buy something then you know I'm sure other people would too and I'm not saying that's like the right philosophy or the best philosophy but that's kind of like how it is for me when I'm sourcing a piece of clothing or whatever and I'm looking at I'm like yo that looks really sick like I would wear that or you know
(46:24) it looks like a a good bang for your buck right I can kind of like evaluate what's a good deal and what's not um and obviously like the more that I Branch into things and get to learn more things I start to kind of expand my Avenues deeper and deeper but like as a total beginner I felt like that was the most kind of comforting thing to do like I know what Nike is I know what Adidas is you know I know all these clothing brands like I know what my friends would wear I know like what you know I used to wear in high school or what people would
(46:53) wear in high school and it just felt really comfortable to kind of like like if you're spending $1,000 let's say it felt a lot more comfortable spending it on let's say like a bunch of brand name clothing than it would to like go out and buy $1,000 worth of makeup and you're like yo I have no idea what any of this crap is right so I guess that's kind of like My Philosophy when I first started out for sure that's that's completely Fair like that's I think a great way to get started is getting started with something that you're
(47:22) familiar with I would just recommend that going forward that you don't let that um prevent you from expanding no yeah absolutely like right now I think that I've told like the most randomest things I mean like a lot of things I have no idea what they even do but at the end of the day like if the numbers match up man like you know just get it and um I've been fortunate enough to like because I'm a very careful person by Nature so like I really you know quadrupled check everything um so that's I think helped me not kind of
(47:55) like make mistakes not to say that I'm perfect obviously I've made my business mistakes as well and you know I'm sure everyone has their dumb mistakes where they're like oh crap well if if I only checked this you know that would have saved me 100 bucks but I think like on the grand scheme of things you know I've been pretty fortunate in that regard just to kind of have those kind of traits as a person and I think that's definitely saved me a lot of money but um yeah like slowly as as I feel comfortable to kind of dig into new
(48:20) things and as I have time you know like I'll I'll want to make sure I research like for instance I I brought up those makeup products and that's because there's like there's just so many little things that I mean you know the average dude is not going to know right like there's different shades and you know the a matter of one shade can be a completely different product and it's like man I would much rather put my money into something that I know is not going to get returned due to my error um rather than kind of like yeah this
(48:47) product sells good but you know maybe I messed up one shade that I just didn't know and now I'm down 400 bucks right so yeah like once I kind of I guess desperately need to expand into something new and have the money um you know maybe I'll put more time and effort into learning that but I think for now like with with how much money I have in my Capital I honestly don't have any issue finding products so it's kind of like I'll get paid by Amazon go ham for you know a couple of days spend it all and then it's a waiting game until the
(49:16) next paycheck so that's kind of uh where I'm at yeah so with most of your clothing like are you sourcing from like outlet stores or from winterers Marshalls places like that or from like regular uh retail stores um I try I mean I try to stay away from like big stores that would be like your Walmarts and all that stuff as much as I can and I'm not saying that's like a you know a bad place to to buy stuff like I know people get it you know at really good prices and it's they're good places but I kind of try my best to like go to
(49:51) some weird places that and that's not to say that I don't go to these big stores like if I see a big deal let's say like there's some crazy coupon going on and it's like you know there's already a discount and there's like a cash back that's like 15% so you you know you stack all these things and you got a really good deal then yeah I'll get it but typically if it's just kind of like a standalone good deal and it's from Walmart or something I mean it could work like my experience is if it's something that's that accessible and
(50:17) that easy because these are the places that everyone hits right so I've noticed a lot of tanking happens with these kind of products um if I really need to spend the money and it's like like I just cannot find anything better yeah maybe I'll grab like 10 units whatever send it in worst case that happens is you're going to break even if you do your like math properly and everything right like very rarely have I actually lost money on something so that's um definitely really good for me as well but yeah I try to stay away from from the really
(50:46) easy Big Brand uh or sorry like big retail stores and try to kind of like find that you know Niche little store that's like I found some of the best products from like the random Rous places where I had to literally go on Google Maps um track them down across the street oh there's this little name here on this little sketchy looking broken down store and then it's like yo they have the best customer service that I've ever had in my life so it's definitely possible you just got to like go the extra mile and really like you
(51:15) know go stalker mode right fair enough and I think like a lot of that um a lot of those could also apply for just like regular ra products um a lot of stuff like if you can find like nich places or places that stock stuff that's just simply not available online those can be extremely lucrative fair fair yeah ra is something that um like I don't want to use it as a cheap cop out and say I don't have time but I mean like you know with me working at 9 to5 and living alone and kind of like you know dealing with just life
(51:50) things on top of putting at least 10 hours a day into Amazon like literally half of my my work shift is Amazon and then when I get home another probably five or six and this is at the minimum a day I'm talking right um hours is into Amazon and then on top of that it's like you know try to go to the gym to stay mentally sane and obviously stay in shape um and all these things so it's like yes you know you can do anything that you want like if you really wanted to set aside a few hours into ra you could so I don't want to say that I
(52:23) don't have the time like I'm sure I could make it work but I don't know I just didn't need to do it yet um I I've I've I've been fine with the capital that I have doing OA but yeah I think ra is very good because if you can get those products immediately that cuts down your your shipping times and all that stuff right so it's a very very good good idea it's just I I don't know man I guess I'll use it and just say it I don't have the time that's that's completely Fair uh sorry I want to say thanks Chris um cuz just hearing you talk I've been
(52:59) trying to get ungated foras for at least couple of weeks now and um just anything like within less than a minute and got approved I want say thanks really real thanks yeah no problem dude um yeah I'm happy it worked out for you beauty yeah and like that's like like it's always interesting to hear what everybody's doing because like historical knowledge is that like clothing isn't super viable in Canada and I haven't really talked to a ton of people that sell a lot of clothing in Canada more so in the US so it's always
(53:34) interesting to hear that people are making it work yeah like I haven't tried shoes I know that falls under the same category like I'm pretty sure shoes falls on under clothing because I I haven't tried shoes um I would assume shoes would probably have a lot more returns because you got all the mids sies and I mean you know I'm guilty of it too it's not even like me trying to screw anyone over it's like if I'm a 11 in one shoe and a 10 and a half in another shoe I mean it's it's different right like even the half
(54:01) sizes matter so I could definitely see an even higher you know return rate um but that's something that I haven't sold what I can say though is for like the clothing pieces or like the sweaters and all that stuff and the shirts and you know pants and shorts and all that like yeah it's been it's been pretty good honestly and these are some of my most profitable asens as well so yeah don't be scared guys don't be scared right on I think that's that's a nice thing about having conversation like this like uh Danny that we have in the server who one
(54:29) of our staff members he is specifically into like CL outs and liquidations that's like basically all he sells so it's always interesting to see everybody's different business models hey Jaden how's it going I see that you joined us hey good good all right was I saw your message saying it'll start in 5 minutes and then I was like hm had some food had some dinner and then just took a a nice nap on the couch and then I was like oh [ __ ] happens I guess it's a Monday I know the feeling I I passed out for like an hour before this happened and I woke
(55:15) up I was like oh my god did I miss it I'm like no I'm good yeah and I have like lot I think 60 units of one SK to pack and I'm like hm do I schedule my up drive over tomorrow or not if I do I need to get my [ __ ] together Ju Just Just schedule it and then that forces you to be have to do it exactly yeah otherwise like I've got inventory in my room in the room I'm sitting right now except my prep and kind of my sourcing room I have got like inventory here for the last 45 days and I haven't had the energy and the
(55:49) motivation to pack gas so yeah better to do it now just schedule the pickup and then you have to yeah now now I mean it's it's it's it's a it's it's such an older story for me I don't even remember the SKU nothing so it's just I I need to scratch start from the scratch you should be you should be prepping and packing while we have this call right yeah I mean the best decision I've ever made in my Amazon business is outsourcing the process that has helped me turn over my Capital real quick because normally I would like take my
(56:25) very sweet time to you get the units ready packed and then Shi to UPS sometimes it would be packed for like a couple of days and I would just completely forget to to schedule the pickup yeah so I thought I I think for me for for a lazy person like me a prep Center is a blessing yeah but like regardless like you say like you're lazy you're probably not that lazy but regardless um I think like prep and pack is like one of the first things people should look at Outsourcing like whether it's whether it's a prep Center or local
(56:53) employees because um even like it's it's really easy to teach and it can buy back a ton of your time yeah and I mean after for me I mean once I'm done with all the prepping and everything I don't want to source for the next couple of days because I'm I'm constantly the thought that if I Source have to pack again yeah and that's the thing right for me sometimes I Source throughout and then I have like 50 different SKS I need to send it and then this time I'm like it's just one skew I need to print 60 labels for how hard can it be so I'm
(57:26) going to ship this to myself right and then it's like why cuz you're like oh why should I pay someone's a dollar a unit to prep it when I can do it for half the price rate but I mean if you can do it if you're not like me why not so like I've kind of always been the like I've I I wouldn't say I've been the opposite but I've always been extremely cheap where I don't want to pay somebody that amount of money to do it for me so like I have I outsourc prep fairly early on on but I was always just like I need to get the resources train the employees
(58:00) have them do it so that I I can control it we contr control quality control we can still ensure that we are able to get things out in a good amount of time I don't have to always do it myself uh and then that's just that's always the methodology that I've ran by yeah but I mean um that's that's that's honestly what I want but the prices here the commercial price rental prices right now in in the GTA region in Ontario are just over the this is crazy right now I can imagine 100% th000 squ Warehouse with with no
(58:32) with no loading dock with nothing with just an Overhead Door would cost you in the neighbor of $2,000 plus CMI that's insane for how big 4,000 square foot yeah that's pretty expensive so then yeah for something like that to make it worth it you have to ensure you're pumping out enough units for sure yeah so I mean for me um my calculations are I need like 3,000 for rent I need 2,000 to pay a full-time employee for prepping on average so the the minute my prep bills it starts to hit $6,000 I'll get my own warehouse but
(59:03) not before that yeah and I guess ABD I mean you're based in per say yeah I'm I'm Lon in GD oh so that's still not bad like for me example I'm right in downtown I mean Midtown or whatever so like it's like fundamentally even to get a warehouse you know cost of impossible yeah so it depends even where are I think fundamentally right yeah I'm talking about like places like nor york and ju because I mean the warehouse prices in missa in the one the west side are more more expensive than the you than the than the North York or the one
(59:39) side for some reason oh interesting so I feel like I'm very fortunate because like our warehouseing here I mean to begin with is not ridiculous but I also got a extremely good deal on the space that we have like I have 800 square feet I pay 500 bucks a month for rent so I really can't complain that's a steal that's a Ste feeling in in Toronto people will probably move in and live live there as a house if it's that cheap oh 100% yeah I mean I pay less in rent for my warehouse than I pay for my mortgage for my condo it's is just too crazy here right
(1:00:24) now it's happening everywhere like those the the housing market is trickling everywhere but yeah like Toronto and Vancouver it's especially ridiculous yeah yeah I was in Texas in December for visiting some of my families and a couple of them have their warehouses they had like huge warehouses like 4,000 square feet 4,500 square feet with two loading dogs and like the the most Hightech warehouses in terms of construction you can see and they were paying like 2500 to $3,000 month I was like man that's that's just so
(1:00:59) cheap yeah it's time to move somewhere like Texas where we don't have to pay personal income tax so much right yeah man it's it's and also the houses are cheap yeah yeah no I think eventually one day we'll have to move to a a tax Haven Country and stop paying so much income tax yeah the you know the guy Rock Cosman from selling from the beach yep yeah he Liv in I think he lives in um Costa Rica if I'm not wrong right yep yeah a lot of people especially who are kind of doing Amazon fulltime have moved out of Canada it doesn't make sense yeah
(1:01:38) I mean like especially if you're able to do it remotely like if you utilize things like prep centers um 100% like it would probably make sense for a lot of people assuming that you're you're willing to move away from your quote unquote home right yeah I mean for me I'm I'm an immigrant I came here like four years back so I've I've not that stronger roots to Canada yeah like with somebody like myself I've I'm born and raised in the city that I'm in and like all my families here not saying I'm super attached but um they just obviously
(1:02:08) different circumstances yeah obviously yeah a lot of people are moving to Spain these because of they a residency new Residency program you need to prove like you make like 22,000 $3,000 a month and you get a resy Visa with not income tax that's nice people are just yeah people are leaving Canada day and night well I can tell you that speing is not it I can that one Ron uh Ron where do you originally come from I'm come from Jamaica I I'm trying to I'm doing school over here so I'm setting up a business I I'm professional athlete um W an
(1:02:53) Olympic medal and everything so I travel the world so I kind of have an experience and I based in Europe like for the past five six years so uh in Italy so I've been back and forth in Spain and all those places and I do Spain is not it my [Laughter] friend um so like you're in Canada for school yeah for the most part I plan to well if the situation um here as it terms of as in terms of the living expenses food expensive expenses goes down then maybe I'll stay I don't I don't know if that's gonna happen but if not I'll just I'll move in
(1:03:46) the in the US because I have a green card Okay cool so yeah like it's always interesting to hear people like move from places that are like very warm tropical come somewhere like Canada because I'm like I always saying what are you doing like it's it's very cold here it's expensive why would you want to move from somewhere like Jamaica I guess it's down to opportunity or at least that's what some people say for sure just different situations and everything trust me definitely wasn't my choice yeah yeah that's fair yeah that's completely
(1:04:30) yeah I mean last three years have been have been quite bad for Canada but I mean when they came here in 2020 things were pretty pretty pretty good as compared to now groceries were cheap rents were not that expensive everything was better yeah so like I've always had the aspiration that eventually I will probably leave Canada but I would definitely want to go somewhere completely different country and somewhere that's War all year round yeah I've I've been to a couple places in Italy and if I could I think I would
(1:05:03) like to kind of park there for a few years hey Jordan uh this one's for you do you want to stay in the west or would you rather go somewhere you know Europe area so like I would I would probably go somewhere like like I mentioned like Italy right uh I've I've been there I've been to a couple places in Italy I really loved it I'm not a I'm I'm not a person that likes crowds whatsoever or a lot of people in small spaces but I absolutely loved Rome and it was packed full of people so that tells you a lot yeah I feel like I mean even people
(1:05:39) look at like Mexico or you hear about people going to the Middle East for example being one of them right it's just each have their own books and benefits if you ask me yeah some places where your dollar goes the further but on the Note too something else maybe outside of this I don't know if anyone here has looked into hiring like co-ops or interns there's a bunch of like grants programs where you know the the government at least in Ontario for example pays up to 50 to 70% of or some cases 30 to 40% of a salary of someone
(1:06:19) uh if you hire them out of a postsecondary institutions I'd be curious if anyone's taking advantage of any of that I'd be interested in something like that but um I'd be unsure like if that would be the route a lot of postsecondary grads would want to go I mean I feel like around like the e-commerce side like if you teach them like e-commerce and research and finding of products I mean in this day and age I don't know if you know someone just needs a job they're willing to work it right and if the count as a manager and
(1:06:52) they're learning something new if you ask me if someone in New she taught me how to run a business like if you're an entrepreneurship major maybe right yeah that's fair that's fair so i' be I mean let's see if I I know there are some for each like each province has their own stuff then I know Ontario has some own so it depends yeah let's see here internship in Saskatoon yeah so like I mean obviously if you're if you have things that are those programs available um that yeah you just need to be thly incorporated and you need to be paying
(1:07:36) them as employees it's not like a contract role sort of situation you have to be putting them on PR right so if you're set up for that great and that could be a great way to get some at least temporary help um and Save A Lot on expenses for sure yeah interesting I never thought about that I mean l corporations take advantage of it so there you go for sure yeah I'm I'm just always under like the thought that like say for example for me if I was a postsecondary ground looking for something like this in my opinion I probably W to be looking at
(1:08:16) like one of the big major corporations for stuff like that but I guess it also depends on everybody's individual interest and job availability right yeah exactly cuz once you like get onto there you can partner up with the University or or how you got to promote it right cuz I mean if you start looking at the cost savings say it cost you know 20 bucks an hour and you divide that and you find after all the credits you know you're only paying 10 bucks an hour like fundamentally looking at almost competing with a VA to a certain level
(1:08:47) but obviously getting a local person right um and then the question is what can you leverage them like can they do sales right to a point of like hey reaching out to wholesalers and getting them to open accounts that could be like to me that sales if you ask me right trying to get distributer accounts so for sure for sure Chris it looked like you were going to say something what's up no I was just going to say um you should hire an intern for low inventory fees man great opportunity financial analysis and accounting bookkeeping there you go yeah
(1:09:22) easy work boys so yeah and like when when you mentioned that in ER call with James I could definitely see that like but it just depends on like scale on whether or not the total labor cost would outweigh the additional amounts that you're going to be paying for managing it I suppose that was you replying to my comments about hiring someone yes yeah I mean I I think really like that you know that's kind of the only way to do it obviously like with me I I'm probably around 100 as you know I can probably do it myself right but I mean you know for
(1:09:55) stores that are like a th000 2,000 and this is dynamic weekly like man that is a lot of work right so 100% yeah yeah so like it just but like with that though like so like just say for example I probably wouldn't personally hire like just any random VA to do that I would probably want somebody more locally just because it is more sensitive work and so if something does if like somebody did say per se have bad intentions I want to some form of recourse right uh not not saying that a VA wouldn't be a bad option but for me
(1:10:31) that is just more personal um so I mean going the route with Jaden said like say paying somebody 10 bucks an hour I guess it depends on what they're able to do in their time versus what they're able to save me for fees you're also risking a lot right because like you said if if they I mean even if it's not intentional right like you never know what if somebody's having a bad day their head hurts they just can't think straight I don't know they miss a couple of numbers well now the difference is between buying you know 20
(1:10:59) units and I don't know 200 units right so like a lot of things can go wrong if you get the wrong person in this position yeah I I could foresee like that like a lot of that would just be like your personal inventory analysis and then like say for example adjusting your prices to increase to ensure you don't hit bottom up with that threshold um but like if they're not analyzing things properly then all a sudden they're increasing your price so you don't sell those items um but then you are are we missing out on Revenue
(1:11:28) opportunity and profit opportunity versus what they're actually doing right because like with with like restock and like Inventory management in general um I have myself that does it and I also have my nephew that I've been training for like the past I don't know year and a half two years and so like he does it side by side with me and he puts together POS and stuff and like I still sign off and everything um but yeah like even after a couple years there's still like like some questionable things that he does I'm like well what the hell were
(1:11:58) you thinking about yeah I mean like getting someone who think like you is the is the major major challenge here like for me I cannot get any of my vs to think like me I cannot replicate myself and similarly I cannot think so there that's also a big big thing you you need to spend like for me I think it would take like five six years before someone is so aligned with your thoughts and you are so so much able to understand what they're thinking before you can place your trust on them well like I think there's different levels of trust so like for
(1:12:40) example like for I I Outsource a lot with virtual assistant right and I have a VA I have a VA manager that basically manages those vas but we put a lot of time and effort into the trainings that we provide and she is more or less like on the same wavelength as me for that part of the business and it didn't take that it didn't take that long it just took the right person to be able to do that um with my nephew here working with me locally um doing POS and inventory management with me um he is he is quite a bit younger comes from kind of a
(1:13:12) different background um so like I would say like he I would never say that he's like quote unquote thinks exactly the same like me and I I don't think it's always reasonable to have employees or want employees that are 100% going to think like you um but I also understand that he or any employee is never going to be as efficient as me either I would never expect that right I would I would typically expect most employees to be about like 50 to 70% as efficient as you are yeah for thems for you yeah and like at
(1:13:48) the end of the day it's not their business and they should never really care about it as much as you do if you find somebody that does that that's excellent but just not reasonable reasonable to ask yeah D do you have any plans to kind of have a VA placement program for people like me who are not able to get right people on board at least I've had a couple people ask me that um maybe eventually when I have the time and I like my VA manager actually pitched that idea to me that we should start a VA agency because she's like we
(1:14:16) have all these systems in place we can train them Etc it's just a matter of willing to be able to put the time and resources into that yeah honestly because one okay go on were you going to say something Jaden oh sorry yeah I mean I have used quite a bit of lead list and honestly like not on not saying on this your face or something but yeah the quality of the leads that you you that I got from you that it be us to Canada can to Canada were like really high quality leaders compared to what I have gotten from other people and and I'm talking about
(1:14:54) people who who run like large scale businesses in the US and Canada so I mean I'm I'm really on impressed by the way you have trained your vs and would definitely be interested in something if you offered that down the road right on I I definitely appreciate that and yeah I mean don't don't feed my ego too much but I appreciate that um but yeah like I don't know um a lot of it has just come down to me being with my VA manager she was the first VA that I hired back in oh God what was it I I want to say 20 20 we had no like no
(1:15:26) processes in place no like Sops I I just knew I needed help so I hired her and we've kind of like just kind of built and figured things out as we go and buildt the processes as we go right yeah yeah I mean taking a lot of time question for Jordan um how did you decide like because I know you mentioned so she was your first kind of like external hirer right and it's like how did you decide how much to pay was it just kind of like talking to her and being like hey you know what Fair did you just like research the market at the
(1:15:57) time because I mean like I'm thinking of my business right now and it's like being able to pay someone fulltime that's you know local I don't know if she's local I didn't ask that but you know to pay someone a Canadian wage I mean it's it's not that easy like you have to be doing very well to afford even like you know minimum at this point right okay so like there's a couple things so she wasn't actually my first hire um officially like I had hired one of my other nephews I have a very large family but I had hired um this would
(1:16:25) have probably been like 20209 I hired one of my other nephews to help me with prep and pack okay so with with that I kind of analyze it this way so I kind of keep track on average how many units can I reasonably prep and pack per hour right and then I I know based on that um realistically how much can I pay somebody else to make it worth it for me so for example like with our prep and pack right now we average across mixed prep so this is breakable complex prep uh easy prep Etc this is all combined we average about 60 units
(1:17:02) per person per hour so that's fully prepped and packed right so that means that if I'm paying somebody exchages for example $15 an hour that means if they are able to maintain that average I'm going to pay them 25 cents a unit right so I can compare I can compare that cost versus how long it's going to take me versus how much revenue I can personally produce versus Outsourcing that to a prep Center okay um when when it came to hiring a VA I can't I can't really say that I had a specific idea in mind on what what was going to be reasonable to
(1:17:35) pay them I just knew at that point because I was working full-time I needed help and I was wanting to expand with the product offerings that I had to purchase from and I was wanting to get into wholesale and I didn't have enough time so I just kind of looked at the like the the General market on how much Vas are getting paid I asked quite a few people that I knew how much are you paying your VA per hour and then I the original ad I I put out was on the VA job form onlinejobs.
(1:18:07) ph and I got like a couple hundred applicants within a few days and then I just went through like um a a task process with with the ones that look reasonable I had them do a task for me I paid them and I pulled out the one that I I thought had the most promise um and I wasn't I knew that I could afford to pay somebody like a relatively low wage which most standard vas are um but I wasn't 100% certain like if it was going to be worth it for me long term I was just kind of hoping I knew I had enough that I could Outsource to her fulltime
(1:18:41) but you you don't always necessarily have to hire somebody full-time off the Hop if you only have like part-time work available there's a lot of people that are willing to work part-time as well right so I just I had her off the Hop um just basically contacting wholesalers to initiate the um wholesale application and then I would take care of the rest and then I started training her on how to Source wholesale cataloges and then I started trading on how to Source OA products and then just basically expanded from there I'm not sure if that
(1:19:09) really answers your question but no yeah I think that's great um I guess it leads into a couple of other questions um when you say like you had her contact wholesalers was that directly through email or did you kind of like sign up to a uh you know Canadian number service and then gave her like a phone number with Wi-Fi all that stuff and then she was kind of making phone calls as well or was this just kind of like um sending out those cold emails right so that was that was exclusively emails so I don't necessarily think now like after you
(1:19:41) know a lot of time and learning that would be the best way to go but doing that is better than nothing so she would find a wholesale opportunities like basically Googling them going through directories Etc uh send out initial cold emails and then put in a spreadsheet of who she contacted and then if she got replies from these people then she would for them on to me to to finish up and kind of open and close the account right um if you the obviously the ideal way to contact wholesalers is number one ideal is in person that's not always possible
(1:20:13) but number two is on the phone I wouldn't hire a VA to do that be because one it's going to be very difficult to find somebody that's comfortable to have those conversations and actually like be able to answer the questions that wholesalers are going to ask you as a potential business owner buyer they're just not going to have that knowledge unless they've worked for you for quite a long time or come from extensive research or extensive experience in that space I just don't think it'd be viable um but hiring somebody to do cold emails
(1:20:43) um is definitely better than nothing and you can certainly open up some accounts that way and I open up a good handful of accounts doing that yeah that makes sense I was going to say I mean you know the Comfort level obviously and and you know cuz I do that for for for a living like my 9 to5 is I'm a procurement manager for a company here in Edmonton but you know just talking to suppliers all day like you you really got to be on your feet right I mean you gota you you really need to know like how to answer each like I
(1:21:11) don't even want to say question but it's like you'll know where they're going with what they're trying to say right so I mean putting someone from overseas whose English might not be you know the best or whatever and just not knowing what the hell they're talking about I mean that would probably close more doors than open to be honest yeah and like it probably wouldn't be an effective use of the labor so like honestly like for specifically Filipino vas which is exclusively what I have hired thus far um it's most of them
(1:21:38) speak very very well fluent English um some of them have like some of them have like a little bit issues understanding some things um but most of them are super fluent in English so that's solid uh but like if you're contacting a wholesaler they're going to assume that you're contacting them either as the company owner or a representative from that company that's willing to open up the account and deal with them directly and buy from them so they're going to have they're going to talk to you and they're going to be asking you questions
(1:22:04) about like who's your company where are you established when did you establish what kind of volume are you willing to purchase uh what is your familiar familiarity with these products Etc and a VA is just not going to be able to answer those questions very fair yeah so like with myself um I almost exclusively talk to new wholesale potentials myself right now um we're not contacting you know hundreds of people a week but when it comes time to open up a wholesale account that is where I find like a lot of value for my time is spent
(1:22:43) because of what potential it can pull out of that for me so like I do have like my nephew here locally uh he sometimes communicates with wholesalers via email that we already have accounts with asking for quotes Etc um but when it comes to actually having initial contact and opening accounts um I find that it's hard for me to rely on somebody else to do that at a certain point I'm going to have to if we want to scale past a certain point but that is where my time is best spent but yeah like if you are looking
(1:23:19) into say hiring a VA for any kind of tasks um if you're if by chance like say you're hiring somebody from the Philippines depending on what you're wanting them to do uh you have to be willing to be able to train them to do those tasks for you efficiently uh but you can reasonably expect to for most vas to only have to pay them between like three to maybe $5 us per hour yeah I think it breaks down a what I think it was like 4 500 per month or something that right yeah it just depends on the VA what you have them do
(1:23:49) and then what like what kind of background they're coming from and what they want so like I have a questionnaire that all the vas that appli for my company fill out and they always fill out what their expected salary is and almost every single person with their expected salary says between about2 to $2.
(1:24:12) 50 us per hour which is lower than than than you wanted to pay them anyway so that works out eh well yeah but like I almost always pay them more so like they they come to me and they say that they want to make $2 an hour it's like okay cool cool I'll pay you $253 an hour and then I also give paay time off um vacation you all your holidays paid bonuses Etc and then as they progress um and they're able to produce more I have a system that they automatically get raises based on their production I don't want to take advantage of anybody in any in any way
(1:24:47) that's not what we're about um but I also want to be able to reward performance and I don't want to pay over market for you know somebody unless they are extremely talented but yeah like in contrast to like my VA manager my VA manager makes like 3 4X what a standard VA makes right but she also puts in the amount of work and responsibility that kind of commands that price yeah while we're while we're hanging out uh does anybody have anything that they'd like to discuss any questions let me know we're here so you might as well
(1:25:39) ask hey Jordan um do you know if by chance um that uh online calculators like sell or amp whether they're um going to integrate anything into the calculator to compensate for um the low inventory fees as far as I'm aware no so if you do want to calculate that self you um you would kind of just kind of do a a standard average and you'd want to apply that additional amount into your additional fees yourself um because like with that I don't think it's like um the calculators they can't calculate that they have no
(1:26:13) idea what kind of stock you're going to carry um if you're going to be able to manage it correctly Etc so like on average it seems like again on average it's going to uh differ for everybody but it's looking at about 50 cents per unit so if you do want to factor that into your own costs you can if you for example if you are doing just like say primarily books like used books just for an example you probably don't have to worry about that so much because a lot of the books that you're selling are going to be like say a single unit of a
(1:26:41) individual ISBN so you're probably going to sell it and then you're not going to have any like historical days of Supply stats right yeah I wasn't thinking about that for used used books specifically I was thinking about about it for eventually when you know um I re reiv it to online Arbitrage but I was thinking that those that even though those calculators um wouldn't be able to compensate for um what specifically would apply to your account specifically how much stock you would carry in whether your stock levels
(1:27:14) would be subject um to the fee given the parameters within which that fee is applied there could at least be some sort of functionality um say uh that would tell you what your U profit would be if the fee were assessed so even though it couldn't predict exactly how much stock how many units of a particular as that you have in in stock the calculator might be able to say well if the fee is assessed this is what your profit will be gotcha so like with that I I can't say that they won't I haven't heard anything that any
(1:27:49) of the calculators are going to implement that um I think if they are able to kind of like really break down the math properly and get an actual solid calculation for what they are going to be estimated they probably will but I think a lot of people are still very confused about how everything applies and there's also talk that things are going to be changing but nobody knows how they're going to change or what's going to happen yeah I was going to actually ask about that and I was going to say um you know with all your Amazon experience
(1:28:21) have you ever encountered that Amazon put something out some kind of policy or fee or whatever then saw negative backlash and then you know reverted it or changed something or like do you think that's ever a possibility or you know is everything that Amazon do like is it all set in stone forever so like there have been like Minor Adjustments to things that have happened but like it's it hasn't been like they apply something and then they completely backstep I've never personally seen that uh they have definitely applied
(1:28:51) things very rash like the the biggest thing were like the the inventory like restock limits when Co first popped off that was crazy when that happened um but it was necessary based on everything that was happening um with this fee like just like from like talking with James the other day uh he said that he has heard things about like a lot of people are very upset even in Amazon internally about these fees that are being applied and um obviously sellers are not happy about it Etc so like he said like they are going to probably be changing
(1:29:25) something but I doubt they're going to completely back step they'll probably just adjust it in some way to hopefully make it more clear or maybe just slightly more beneficial for the sellers but it's not something that I would expect yeah that's fair that's fair like ideally like because again this fee is not super straightforward like James mentioned you have to spend like multiple tens of hours to figure out the math to see how it's actually going to apply and that should never happen for a fee it should be very clear
(1:29:58) on how and when it's going to apply so hopefully they at at the very least they make it more clear and more like I see this unit I know I'm going to get exactly charge this fee um not saying that's G to happen but hopefully it does yeah I'm gonna be honest right now like I have no clue like I know that there's different tiers or whatever but like I honestly cuz for me I think I got like another three four months until it comes to me and like I know it's going to come eventually I'm not saying it's not but you know I'm kind of in the
(1:30:31) mindset where it's like I'll I'll figure that out when we get there you know what I mean like the future me can can figure that out you know so I'll probably start like prepping for it a month in advance or something but yeah man it's really confusing that's all I got to say yeah and like that's like bad business 101 like if you any type of thing that you do in a business you want to be as clear as possible like whether you ment like a policy with your employees or a bonus structure whatever it should be as clear
(1:30:58) as possible so that anybody can read it understand it immediately those are the things that are going to be the most effective and this is not it yeah do you know if there is um an Overstock fee as well because I think I read something in one of the Articles where there's like the tiar for the low stock or like low inventory tiers but then are there tiers for like Overstock as well cuz I think I saw it going the other way as well so it was like you know if you have more than this amount you get this if you have more than that
(1:31:29) amount then you get this fee and Etc right so there's no like specific Overstock fee but there are the standard storage fees that have always been in play right okay okay yeah so is it right okay so like realistically like standard storage fees in Canada they're not that expensive assuming that you're moving inventory it can get very expensive once they start becoming long-term storage fees yeah that makes sense because I saw somewhere that there was like a tier list of Overstock and then I was like man this is so hard because now not only
(1:32:01) do you not want to go too low you can't even go higher because then that's going to screw you in the Overstock so I don't know what I was reading maybe it was something else but I remember seeing like a tier of Overstock as well there was like three different Overstock tiers and it was like man if you go under you're screwed if you go over you're screwed and it's like how do I balance this Teeter to you know what I mean right for sure have you ever looked into your personal um reports when it comes to the storage fees that you're paying
(1:32:28) on a monthly basis yeah usually it's about like 40 to 60 bucks it's not anything substantial I think that's not bad at all so yeah and so like previously like storage fees were based on like a a per unit basis like if you stock this size of inventory for this long you're going to get charged this fee per month uh they've switched it like a little bit over time time where it's not like based on your total uh cubic foot or in our case cubic meter percentage that you're using um but again as far as I'm aware those fees are
(1:33:03) not changing whatsoever and they're not something that are really that concerning in Canada until you start getting into long-term storage fees yeah I think in February I don't have the March dos but I think in February it was like 44 something that I paid which I mean I can definitely swallow that if it was like 4 500 then I would start being like okay what's going on right 100% especially with something that's getting applied every month yeah for sure so Ron uh with yourself um how long have you been selling on Amazon for and
(1:33:36) how's it going for you so far if you're still here with us maybe maybe not bezos's got him yeah and Chris like I know we've had some extensive conversations where you mentioned like you're still relatively new but from what I understand like you're doing relatively well every single month yeah um be more specific like relatively well in terms of like my profits or like what are you refering to sales and profits uh I mean yeah I think like of course like you know we're all greedy and we all want to do better um but I
(1:34:19) think like if I kind of humble back and and and look at the numbers like yeah I would say I'm I'm doing pretty well yeah because like do do you mind sharing kind of where you're at with everybody um I mean no big deal I'll I'll talk about margins I guess but I I don't really want to go much into like numbers um but in terms of like margins as like a net I think like the first I mean January has been really tough on me and February kind of like started picking up slowly but another reason is cu I was kind of messing around with the
(1:34:53) different pricer so I mean I currently use beool um but I wanted to check out I believe it's called seller snap is what it's called that like super expensive one y um and you get like a free trial or whatever um I've heard really good things apparently they have some like crazy you know revolutionary stuff going on so I was like yeah you know what I'll give it a I'll give it a try so I was messing around in February like early February a little bit with it and obviously like when you're kind of switching all this stuff around and rep
(1:35:23) are not active my stuff wasn't the most competitive I guess you can say so that definitely um contributed to kind of like having a pretty low margin um January and February finished at around like a 10 to 11% profit so this is after like all the fees and everything and I'm not including accounting into this because I mean that's going to be different for everyone based on you know if they're a corporation how much what kind of fees they worked out and all that stuff right so I'm not going to include that that's kind of like an end
(1:35:52) of the year thing but um yeah it's been about like a 10 to 11% right now finishing up March um we're looking closer around to like a 13 so it's definitely improving um I did have some issues with a certain product that I mean it technically was kind of a mistake on my end it it was very similar but not fully the same thing and whatever not to go intoo much detail but I kind of screwed up like 400 bucks there so that definitely Aid into the into the profits um but yeah I think like things are definitely looking better moving away
(1:36:29) from q1 and once again like I don't have too much experience like this is my first q1 I started back in September so I basically like September 1st I was like all right like I'm going to do this I did a bunch of research for about like 15 days um just like went crazy on it Googled everything I could joined every Discord I could message people like literally left YouTube comments like just anything man like anything you can imagine I did like I joined like 15 groups I went into like you know like WhatsApp groups and and messaged people
(1:36:59) they're like anything you can think of I literally did you know what I mean like if I knew that a guy next door was selling Amazon I would knock on his door and be like yo tell me about Amazon right so I did it all um research for like 15 days and then obviously the research never stops like this is something that I keep doing every day consecutively in in anything like taxes new fees blah blah blah like you name it right um but did research for like 15 days decided to start buying some stuff um I think I started out with like a
(1:37:29) grand I was like all right let me put in a grand see what happens so I sent in some stuff and then it was all very new and cool and I was like yo this is really like exciting and fun so then I just kept going in more more more and more um by the end of it like of using my own money I think I put in about like um probably like 10 to 15 grand I guess you can say somewhere in that range um so yeah that's pretty much it I I send in a bunch of stuff LLY month after month probably added like an extra five grand of my own money to it um yeah things
(1:38:02) were looking good um here we are today I don't know I don't know what else to say well yeah like I asked you because like I think um like with everybody I think like you you doubt like where you're at right because like I've I've seen that and like when I actually look at the things that you've shared with myself you you're profitable and like that's that's hard to say with most businesses because most businesses take three plus years to be profitable and I think it's like 75 80% of them fail before they become profitable but you've been doing
(1:38:33) this since September and you are already profitable yeah I think like even my first month um I think my first month I was maybe like at a 300 loss and the only reason why I say that is because like you know we're accounting for all the software right so I I started using a repricer immediately cuz I was like like yo this is just something that I need to use and you know I just I'm just going to get it right I'm going to need it anyways what's 30 bucks to me right so we had like what um seller amp we had Kea beool and I guess the Amazon fee so
(1:39:07) that's already like looking at around 140 bucks and then you got all the initial shipments right because like at this point obviously I still haven't been paid by Amazon right so you got all the initial shipments and everything cuz that's all com out of your own pocket so the first month was probably like -400 but then the second month was already looking at like you know a posi of like 8 n to a th000 which then made up for the first month of losses probably netting like a 600ish profit for the second month and
(1:39:35) then obviously as more inventory went in and started just picking up from there so yeah I think like the only thing for me is that I guess looking at the progression and it's just a matter of capital right like you know I obviously want to grow faster but the only way to do that is to either wait the time that it takes to get the capital from the business or get some kind of capital influx with like a loan or something like that right so um that's something I'm looking at next is because I know sellers like Fred I think he mentioned
(1:40:08) he picked up like a loan or something and I'm sure other people B it too so that's something that I've been heavily working on this month I think that you know if I was to get an injection of like 40 50 grand um I mean I could probably make that money back pretty quick I mean if if even if you're looking at let's say like a 10% margin right I mean on 100K that's 10K back right so if you look at that for like a whole yearly you're going to end up making that loan back pretty quickly as long as you're not losing money doing something stupid
(1:40:39) right so I think like overall it's a pretty good thing and I'm pretty sure some of the loan places they don't charge you interest for up to a year so I mean in theory if you take that money make it back and more you know you're essentially getting a free job jump just by doing that because you'll be able to pay it back within that year anyways and that's considering that you don't get banned or some stupid unpredictable [ __ ] like that right but I think it's a really good move honestly so yeah and like those are
(1:41:06) really good thoughts to have um the only thing that like I I would say is that like most traditional loan places like say if you're getting a loan through a bank or BDC Etc uh you're you're probably going to pay interest on it regardless like it's probably not going to be interest free from The Hop typically the only way that you're going to be able to SEC secure that from my experience is if you get like say balance transfer offers on credit cards then you're going to have interest free for like up to like 12 months or so um
(1:41:32) but even with that said like say if you're able to secure either a a small business loan or a line of credit um depending on interest rates say your interest rate is like I don't know 12% uh that 12% interest rate is a annual interest rate so then yeah like your thoughts are exactly correct whereas if you are able to have a higher return on that throughout the year you should come out net benefit just assuming that you're able to manage your finances and still ensure that you're able to pay your bills yeah because I know there's that
(1:42:04) um entrepreneur thing it's like uh what I think up to like 12 up to one year of of starting a business you get like some kind of special special thing that you can pull out or something that I don't know maybe you can elaborate more on that I think it's called like future preneur or something like that yeah through through BDC as far as I understand I I don't believe it's interest free I just don't think you need to make payments for a year but I I could be wrong yeah I may have to look into that one a little bit more um I emailed them
(1:42:36) the other day I'm just waiting for an answer back now so I don't really have any info but that's definitely a meeting that I'm going to have with them and see what they say so I can uh I can update you guys in the chat I think the future PR loan is like for the first year you only pay the interest back think you paid like the actual loan amount that do you know what any percentage is on average the interest rate is like the standard CIBC whatever five or 6% plus two or whatever so plus one plus prime plus whatever I think it ends up
(1:43:11) being 6 or 7% on average so um yeah if we look at the prime rate today Bank of Canada prime rate is 7.2% so you're probably yeah it's interest is charge at C rate plus three so yeah and then yeah like obviously some of that's probably going to be dependent on your own personal credit um but like BDC BDC an example for my experience I I I've had conversations with BDC in the past um they are more willing to give loans and higher amounts to people uh but they tend to charge a bit more for interest uh the future preneur program that's
(1:43:46) something like that say like Dan for example he took advantage of I think a year or two ago um so if want you can probably talk to him I think mey may have as well um I I think with future preneur they charge lower interest overall because it is for younger entrepreneurs if you get a traditional business loan through them it does tend to be a bit more expensive than traditional Banks because they are taking on higher risk but it's not unreasonable yeah yeah know for sure I think like raising your capital is definitely like how you're going to
(1:44:18) profit the most like with that being said obviously if you know what you're doing and you're consistent with what you're doing and and you know you're not making some foolish mistakes or going super deep in the wrong products but I think like you know having because right now for example what I'm doing um would be a lot different if I had 500k and Amazon like I'd be getting back so much more just due to the fact that I have more Capital right so I think like the faster you can boost your Capital up to that you know 3 four 500k like the
(1:44:45) faster you're going to start getting back some really really you know I guess smiling results like you'll be happy with what you get back cuz I mean if you're only got in like 5K even if you're like the best sorcerer out there ever it's like you can only do so much like you're really limited you're really bottlenecked right 100% And that's one of that's one of the things about playing this game so you have to choose your path and are you going to take it slow and easy and slowly build up Capital over time are you g to try and
(1:45:09) get cash injections try and grow quicker that's all part of playing this game but yeah yes sir with Fred like he mentioned uh I believe the last time we had a call I think he said that I think he got like a 60k loan and I think he had a decent amount of capital behind him as well on top of that so that's one of the reasons why he was able to grow so quickly yeah I know he got a 60k loan for sure I don't know how much of his own money he put in but um I know about 60k alone yeah I talk some all that as well yeah and so like a lot of times
(1:45:44) when people see that especially if they're new um they may see that it's like well why the hell am I not growing that quickly like you have to be realistic because if you don't have you're not putting it as much Capital as that so quickly you can't expect to grow that quickly well that's the thing with why all those like Guru guys really like piss me off for lack of a better word it's because like they have like five mil in the business or whatever right and then they're showing these numbers it's like yeah but you understand that
(1:46:09) the average person doesn't have $5 million to put into Amazon right right 100% it's like yeah you're making 400k whatever a year a month whatever but it's like okay but you got like 10 million business my dude I got like 5K to my name you know so it's like right and so it's a completely different game and like yeah that's why like some of those things are a bit disingenuous but it's also a reality of as why you need to adjust and check your own specific expectations yeah because I sry I was for bit um that's the only drawback I
(1:46:50) have for this OA business is that I have um a small backing but I made some rookie mistakes still a rookie still very learning um where I almost tied up two three grand where I know it's a possibility I might lose it and uh from that I kind of trying to taper back and um just trying to buy stuff that I know that um it's hard for me to lose my money but that's at the same time um I'm souring less yeah and like everybody has a different process with that because like two grand isn't a small amount of money right and especially like if you only
(1:47:37) have a bank roll of like two grand or five grand like that's a substantial amount of money so it's like you don't have a lot of room to make errors and make mistakes where like with others if they have you know 100K plus bankroll per month making a two grand mistake isn't like the end of the world whereas with somebody else if you don't have that much Bank role that can be that can be catastrophic yeah that's true um I'm kind of above that but I'm just that the mistake was like when I look at it I was like I didn't want to make that bigger
(1:48:15) mistake but it is what it is you live and you learn yeah for sure like do you mind um without like getting into like specific details do you mind sharing what kind of mistake it was um I bought several at first I think because I was just going into it I did the book thing and I purchased a lot of book I think I spent around 2,300 books like at one time like one time I was just like okay books I see where I could make Maybe 20% Roi on on each one like all right so and books those not that fast yeah and like uh when I first
(1:49:07) started with books I made similar mistakes whereas like I overestimated on like how like how fast books are moving and what kind of sales rank we can actually sell in Canada realistically um so my mistake wasn't as expensive because I didn't have as much Capital but yeah like almost all the first stuff that I bought never even ended up selling uh but yeah like books are nice because they can be so cheap and they can have such a high return but yeah in return for that they don't move super fast so you have to be willing to
(1:49:38) be be willing to wait yeah and I and I spent I think $1,000 and ENT day um new Ari try to drive bu this product drive to this location buy this product and and when it when it was sent in Amazon came back in on stock I was like I just have to do this weet yeah and that's that's that's all part of the learning process man that's a Horror Story actually it reminds of one of my asens I used to get it from us so it's a very fast selling dress up kind of a toy kit thing so I bought it Amazon has never been in stock for the
(1:50:23) last two years my inventory hits the warehouse Amazon gets into stock and I kind of get done with it sell at a at a loss get my money back I'm like okay fine whatever seven months later I'm again sourcing from the same products and I see the same product and Amazon hasn't been in stock for the last eight months or N9 months I believe I buy it again my inventory hits the warehouse Amazon GES on the listing again so seems like they were tricking me or something but yeah that happen that [ __ ] happen that [ __ ]
(1:50:55) happens yeah sometimes you just get unlucky man it's part of life right I mean it happens you get lucky on other times and you know to balance that out sometimes you get screwed man yeah I mean that's hell Fu coincidence but yeah like a big thing is like just ensuring that you're doing more positive Roi stuff than you are doing negative right assuming you're doing that and you're learning and you're correcting your mistakes as you go forward then you should still always be in profit and like what Chris mentioned it's actually like you
(1:51:27) profitable fairly early on it's actually relatively hard to not be profitable in this business if you're doing proper research data analysis and making as good purchase uh decisions as you can you're definitely going to have bad buys you're definitely going to potentially lose money on un few skes but overall it's relatively hard to not be profit in this business assuming that you're doing everything that you should be yeah true yeah that's what I mentioned earlier too and it's like if you know there's like five or six things
(1:51:56) that you look at to you know be not 100% sure but like as sure as you can be right I mean even if you look at like two of those things and like let's say I don't know let's say like seller ramp says that this sells 70 times a month and you notice that there's a couple different reviews in Canada like it's not too bad and you look at the offers and people like it's moving right well if you're not going super deep like if you buy five to 10 units I mean even if it's like the shittiest product ever like you're going to sell those most
(1:52:23) likely within a month like you're safe it's not that bad right but if you decide to go now 70 deep because you trust seller ramp well now you might be in some trouble right so I think like if if you keep it to like the five to 10 units and you know you're super new and you're not very comfortable like you're most likely good by even checking like three out of the eight check marks that you need to check right so I think that's a really safe number for most new Sellers and if I'm wrong Jordan feel free to jump in no I would 100% agree
(1:52:51) and there's absolutely nothing wrong with um doing those smaller purchases especially when you're not as confident with the data I think that's a great way to start and learn stuff and then once you once you become more confident with the data you're able to read listings better um when you're able to go deeper in listings especially like off The Hop or even like a little bit quicker then that's when you get an even higher Roi in your time right because if you do come across those listings where it sells a couple hundred units per month
(1:53:19) and you yourself are reasonably expecting to sell like say 100 units per month right now you may not be willing to buy you know 100 plus units but when you're more comfortable with it and you understand the data and you have more cash flow back in you and you send in those 100 units that's just automatically a much higher return on your time right because you're doing the same amount of work but you're buying more overall just as quickly and you're able to get a a higher profit on that time that you spent sourcing that
(1:53:44) product yeah absolutely I think over time as well like you're going to learn the value of products and you'll know what's a good deal and what's not right and and I'm saying that because there's this product that I used to sell and I thought like getting it for 30 bucks was like it was pretty good and and you know having sold it like I didn't lose money on it it was very good it never dipped lower than you know break even like it was a really good product overall and then you know not too long ago I found the same product and it's I think it was
(1:54:08) like $21 so now this is $10 cheaper than than initially what I thought was amazing so I'm like man like I know this is good like I'm literally going to go 50 deep and I think I got like 44 units was all I was able to get but like I know that's going to do well and if it doesn't do well I mean even if I break even my lesson's been learned right so I think that's experience is is huge man 100% And yeah as you get more experience like um I was just like everybody else when I was learning you know I'd buy Six 12 units test something out slowly go
(1:54:41) deeper slowly go deeper slowly go deeper uh now on new like brand new skewes to us I've never come across before in my life uh I can analyze a listing and I can be confident to go 60 100 plus units deep on my first purchase right just because I I'm able to read those listings I'm not concerned about the cash flow that we're tying up for that individual listing and I know just from all the experience I'm not going to have issues with it and then yeah like I think everybody eventually assuming that you stick with
(1:55:17) this long enough everybody will eventually get to that point did you have a chance to um look at my uh private message it was just regarding that thing that we talked about but obviously you're busy so I just kind of wanted to see if you any time that's for Jordan I don't believe I did but after the call I certainly will thank you sir of course okay guys I'll hop off thanks for the call it was amazing to emate all of you thank you so much again definitely have a good night Abdul okay bye have a good buddy bye um I have a question U there's a
(1:56:04) specific product that I am contemplating and purchasing um it says on seller that it's meltable but um when I download um the multiable as from Amazon I think he have over 3,000 um as and when I try to search for that as it's not there should I still um can I know that um when I read Amazon saying that if you have Mes in your inventory from April 30th they will dispose of it or something like that um should I if I search for it and it's not there but on seller it's say it's meltable and it's a beauty product um should I still try to pursue it or
(1:56:52) just leave it alone so it depends on the item uh Jaden do you mind muting your mic you just kind of cut cutting in there Jaden if you're here Jaden mute your mic sorry sorry how is this even unmuted I know I did thanks okay cool so um it depends on the item so just because Sellar amp tells you it's multiable doesn't mean it is um I don't know if they're cross referencing the multiple list I believe they are potentially cross referencing uh the the keywords that are in the listing in the description and if they're picking up like keywords like uh
(1:57:37) chocolate and stuff like that they might automatically determine that it's multiple so the best thing that you can do is ask yourself is this product have the potential to be meltable so like if it's like lipstick or eyeliner stuff like that typically speaking you don't have to worry about those being meltable but what you can do is you can look back on the keepo chart look back to last year around meltable season and just like after it started and just see if you see a a rapid decline of FBA sellers or if FBA sellers went completely out of
(1:58:08) stock okay if you see that then that may be an indication that it is meltable uh but typically speaking unless it's like a a gummy probiotic product um chocolate most other stuff is not typically considered meltable as long as it's able to sustain regular summer summer temperatures okay I so uh just look at the keeper chart and I can um see where EI it's either fbm and FBA because I I said as you know I'm new I'm less than a month a month in and I look at the keeper chart the price the price is very stable since it's since it since it got
(1:58:48) in it's um it dipped but it's stable for the last two years at a certain price point um so if I looking at keep I can you can analyze the data and know that if it's fbm or FBA yeah so you should be able to see if it was FBA sellers on the listing the year prior and then you should be able to look at the third keeper graph which you have to expand uh hold on I'll pull up an Amazon listing here and show you um but that keeper graph shows you how many sellers were on a listing at any given time so it tells you how many
(1:59:24) sellers total it doesn't specify if they FBA or fbm but if you click on I'll grab this screenshot and I'll send it to you okay so there's a little button in the bottom right hand corner of keepa that says uh more historical data or it'll say less historical data so you want it to say less historical data so I put it in the chat there and then that that gives you a third keeper graph with the new offer count okay the the the one of the very bottom so you can expand that and you can see what the offers were at
(1:59:56) this time last year or like the end of April uh coming into the the the following month and if you see a drastic decrease in sellers around that time then that may be an indication that people were getting off the listing because it's meltable oh okay thank you for sure and yeah using that third keeper graph uh for the new offer count that's actually the best way to gauge if a item has potential intellectual property issues if you see ROM Cliff Dives of sellers uh hop hop off a listing that is typically an indication that that may
(2:00:34) have IP issues there is this one listing that I was looking at and um there was this one dude that's been on it for like two years and it's literally just been him but when I look at his store I mean he doesn't seem like I know he's not the brand I know that he's not he doesn't seem like a distributor cuz his as are kind of all over the place like he doesn't just sell this specific category but I'm just wondering like why has no one else hopped on like are you know are they just not able to find the price like it's a pretty fast moving product I
(2:01:09) think it sells like 4ish hundred a month type of thing and it's like how is this guy the only guy that can find pricing on this is there like is there any way that I mean maybe he has like a brand exclusive deal or something I don't know because I just don't see why other people are not on this listing right that's a possibility for sure um it's a possibility that it might be a listing that say it was once available to get uh ungated for and now it has been completely restricted but those that were previously selling the item were
(2:01:38) grandfathered in uh they could be an exclusive seller for that product um it could be that they have places that um are difficult to obtain that product like say it's not available uh specifically online and they where they're able to purchase it all different kinds of things that could happen so I guess the reason I'm asking is because I have a supplier right now um that I have an account with that sells that product but in order to get the correct pricing I'd probably have to go you know 4 500 deep and it's like man
(2:02:07) I'm so scared because why has nobody else ever hopped on this listing like how do this guy have full Monopoly and I'm ungated it's not an issue like it's not a matter of ungating um he has like some random name you know it's not even he he seems like a normal dude that just literally has 100% access to this product so I genuinely have no idea what to do does your distributor know that you sell on Amazon well the thing with this one is that like I don't say it unless they ask um obviously like as we build more of a
(2:02:38) relationship I'm sure it's going to come up some way right but I mean I don't kind of go out of my way and be like oh by the way just so you know I sell on Amazon right like I don't know I kind of like keep it smooth and natural and like if they ask like all like what do you guys do for business then I'll be like oh yeah for sure right but I mean I don't really go out of my way to say it so this is a fairly new supplier um I've only made one order from them before it was for a different product I only ordered like 40 units nothing too crazy
(2:03:05) um and we're just kind of like slowly building the numbers as we build a relationship and whatnot um but you know I found this opportunity and I really think that I could get it for the price um I just don't want to then you know let's say something goes wrong I have to now return 500 unit it's like that's you know it's it's just not going to be a good look on anyone right so let me ask with this distributor was it a distributor where you were just basically able to submit an application online and got Auto approved or did you
(2:03:33) actually have to talk to a sales rep and kind of smooth your way in no so I have to talk to the sales rep um and just basically like Smooth my way in yeah like I've so they allow you to order without having an account but when you open an account then you get like exclusive pricing right so it's kind of one of those suppliers but in order for me to get that pricing like I had to freaking you know go the full mile so okay so when that conversation comes up like say if you are wanting to sell this product I would suggest that you
(2:04:04) probably start having the conversation about yes I sell on Amazon but you have to obviously approach it a proper way um and you may not be ready to do that right away but I would say that you should have that conversation first before you decides that you do want to start going deep on this item and just to have that conversation and ensure that they tell you that it's okay that you do sell this product on Amazon or that if somebody else has exclusive rights for it yeah for sure um and I think like as we build a relationship it's going to be
(2:04:34) one of those things where it's like you know after let's say I've been ordering for like four months and you know she likes me I like them whatever I haven't returned anything everything's good it's going to be like oh you saw Amazon okay cool we don't really care right but um I guess what I'm trying to say is like so they're not the brand direct they're a distributor as well um would they know that there's only like this other guy that's allowed to sell it if they're just a distributor how would they know you know when it comes to like the
(2:05:00) Amazon intricacies right with like who's the only person allowed to sell the type of thing most Distributors will for sure because the brands communicate that to them so they say that um they give them access to their catalog they sign the contracts and they say okay cool with third party sellers on other platforms we we will or we will not allow them to sell on these platforms and this is why because we have exclusive rights with these other with these with these companies right so like just for example if you and I use this one as as as an
(2:05:30) example quite often just because it's so easy to get access to the distributor Purity Life Purity Life is a a distributor that's notoriously easy to get access to you literally fill an account application with them online you don't have to talk to them you get approved whether you're sole proper or Corporation super easy um they are also extremely easy to do business with they have online ordering plat platform it's super smooth um it's it seems like overall they're super solid company to do business with but they're so easily
(2:05:59) accessible um if you actually look at their documentation online or talk to a sales rep if you get one through perod life they will clearly they'll make it very clear to you that these brands are not to be sold on Amazon okay and the reason is because those Brands either sell themselves they have exclusive contracts Etc so if they don't know you're an Amazon Seller to begin with you will have access to those products to sell on Amazon okay uh very quickly because them and their brands regularly do market analysis of sellers on their
(2:06:34) postings on Amazon if you don't tell them you sell on Amazon and you're buying those products to sell very quickly your account will just not be able to purchase those items from Purity life anymore yeah I mean it makes sense they'll just shut you down and you're screwed kind of thing yeah like with them specifically like they don't completely shut you down they just remove your access to buy those items um and so with them they're they're very lenient with some other Distributors you don't tell them they may just no longer
(2:06:59) do business with you period yeah like I've had that happen before where I it it wasn't like a super crazy process to open an account but like I would say like it was like a five out of 10 you know um and then I ended up doing some more research and I actually found that distributor like on a couple of products that they sell so they were selling themselves and once again I didn't get to the point to have that conversation but you know luckily I saw it and I was okay well obviously this isn't going to work out because if
(2:07:27) I you know if I tell them that I want to sell on Amazon they're most likely going to be like well screw you we sell on Amazon right so I mean I just kind of left it at that but um yeah yeah I know it's definitely good to to to have the inside scoop I guess you could say yeah like it just depends on the distributor like some of them are cool with other people going on the listing but I have a distributor for example that they 100% know that we sell on Amazon uh they gave me a list and they say that you cannot
(2:07:53) sell these brands on Amazon they never told me why but they say you can't sell these Brands and then eventually when doing research I found that um there is exclusively one seller on these Brands it doesn't have any indication that it's the brand directly it has no indication that it's this distributor um but their their name and address on Amazon is not linked to the distributor that I deal with but if you do some more research you look up that Corporation it is actually then linked to that distributor so I know it's that distributor that's
(2:08:20) actually selling those products that might be the casee then with this dude that I found because like I said I stalked him pretty hard and you know nothing indicates anything I mean he just seems like some normal dude living in a normal house you know what I mean and I was like yo how does this guy have access to this crazy moving item but that might be it right I mean he might somehow be affiliated with some kind of distri I have no idea right but I mean it just seems a little crazy that over the last let's say not fully two years
(2:08:47) but like a year and a half like nobody has tried to hop on this like there's no way like I can go right now and sell that at a loss I don't care I can sell five of them at a loss just to see what happens but it's like how has nobody else even attempted to right so I I have no idea man maybe nobody just able to get that price in or it could be one of those other things that we said yeah yeah because like you said like you might be able to get that uh the proper price and if you buy four or 500 deep do you know that for sure or you just
(2:09:15) assuming that well I'm assuming from experience I mean it depends they could always be like yeah sorry we have no wiggle room it all depends on their margins right but I mean it's about like a 25ish discount percent and I mean you know it's not the craziest discount but it's definitely doable it all depends on their wiggle room and what they're getting it for and what they're comfortable with selling it back for right so you can never really know but I mean usually like it honestly man it really depends like I've had some and
(2:09:46) I'm talking now for my 9 to5 cuz as I mentioned I I do this for for living as well um for 95 so like I've had products where you know there's just no wiggle room and they're like Hey listen sorry like we're giving it to you for 58 we literally cannot even go to 57 right and there are some products that I was able to get like a 50% discount so it it all depends man it's it's so all over their place in random and it really depends on what they're getting you for um what kind of deals they have and how much they're moving it do they want to get
(2:10:14) rid of the product do they want to you know there's so many factors man for sure but I'd also say that in the regular retail sector it's actually fairly rare to get discounts that high it's not impossible but like if you find a place that gives you a 25% discount that typically is a place that's gouging you off the Hop to begin with right like yeah most most Distributors do not offer those High discounts not saying it's not possible there like Closeouts and Deals and stuff but that's very rare yeah that one I don't have too much
(2:10:45) experience like the stuff that I buy for my 95 it's more like um like Warehouse supplies and like PP equipment and stuff like that it's kind of like Niche things um so I don't know like for for food and stuff but like for those kind of Niche things like I don't know like gloves and like face masks and stuff I mean you can pretty actively get solid discount like I've I've had instances where like I mean I don't know let's say like a case of gloves was like like 80 bucks and I was able to knock it down to like 52 or
(2:11:12) something right so I mean that's pretty significant right and so 80 bucks like like the price that you were given is that like the regular wholesale price or is that retail price that would be like the wholesale price that they start with I mean retail price like what does a box of gloves go for I mean typically goes for like what like 10 to $13 for 100 right is that kind of accurate I guess it depends on what kind of gloves you're buying like Nitro gloves like Nitro gloves yeah like a 3 mil glove something you know very basic
(2:11:38) standard a pack 100 probably cost you like 10 15 bucks yeah 1015 so I mean I'm getting them now for like $490 right so this is through like my ninet to-5 thing and I mean it's kind of hard because a lot of these things that I'm getting don't really there's no listing on Amazon for them so it's like I can just kind of like use these connections to to resell this stuff which if I could it would be awesome but like these are some you know like random brand gloves that people don't really sell on Amazon right so but this is my
(2:12:10) point so it's like I mean they start at let's say like I don't know eight nine bucks a box at the wholesale price and then I was able to get them down to like 490 520 is that area right so these are pretty significant um reductions in my opinion right right but if you look at that so like for example like say at like a Canadian Tire Home Hardware Home Depot whatever like say those gloves regular retail is like 10 bucks so if your wholesaler price if their standard price is like eight bucks that may be that that wholesaler just
(2:12:40) has high initial pricing to begin with for that reason because regular wholesale price like home dep's probably not buying those gloves for eight bucks uh like you're reg wholesale price that most regular wholesalers is probably going to be close to like maybe like five six seven bucks right yeah yeah so it could and that that's probably true like they probably left a higher margin on purpose to to be able to kind of like well if you don't say anything then we'll take your money type of thing right yeah and they may have like the
(2:13:07) Canadian Tire model where it's like everything's overpriced to begin with and then when they discount it you feel better there's that too right but yeah like from my experience like with most regular retail products of course like I said there's always a exceptions it's extremely rare from my experience that we get discounts like 25 plus% like most Distributors assuming that they have proper standardized pricing to begin with you're typically looking at between like five to maybe like if you're really lucky like 15%
(2:13:39) discount yeah I mean that's good to know because like yeah like I said my experience is in a little bit of a different area so I I don't really like the numbers maybe a lot different from what I'm used to um so yeah if that's the case and and obviously I'm going to trust your word for it like you've been in this for a long time but uh yeah then it might be hard to get that price e cuz I mean like I said I would need like a 2530 discount to to get that price so yeah and like there's a product that we sell it is a consumable product in the
(2:14:07) grocery category um selling it for a very long time and the distributor I deal with is as far as I'm aware the only distributor of these products in Canada um when I first talked to them like even with a decent I po there was absolutely no wiggle room for any discounts and that was okay like it was it was it was profitable at regular price but I always try um and then after dealing with them for over a year then I talk to my sales rep I say yo like we've been buying from you guys I don't say yo but we've been buying from you guys for
(2:14:38) over a year uh you can see the volume that we're buying so could we potentially negotiate some type of um some type of discount for us right because you see that we're longterm and we're serious and then after a year purchasing consistently every single month I was able to get I think it was right around 5% discount and that's probably like the most that we're ever going to get from these guys and it's also likely because like it's a product that they just don't have those High margins on themselves to begin with most
(2:15:08) Distributors like they operate on a volume game where they they don't have massive margins and they pass those on to you because they're expecting that you're going to be buying volume yeah and also shipping in Canada does not help definitely not yeah I mean it helps it helps because like most Distributors are selling stuff like via Freight and pallets and stuff but yeah I mean if you're doing truckloads then it's looking a lot better for you than less than truckload but if you're doing less than truckload then uh pretty pricey man I can say that
(2:15:42) for sure 100% like even if you buy um with you line specifically for like shipping supplies they charge you shipping for a full pallet no matter how much you buy um and then obviously they adjust that for initial pallets that you're buying just for like regular supplies and you know a standard palette if you're getting shipped from Uline is going to be like 120 to almost like 200 bucks just for one pallette yeah we use Uline a lot um for my 95 yeah like you said it's typically like well for us I mean I don't know we may have like a
(2:16:14) different structure in place but um for us usually like 80 to like 160 yeah per order yeah and that's probably also because you guys generally probably buy more volume so you're probably able to negotiate that with Uline as well yeah yeah but Uline is really overpriced man like I mean Uline is just a really like convenience thing you know it's like you want your boxes and you want them tomorrow then you you buy from Uline I mean they're they're very pricey and also depends on volume too like I don't know how much you're paying for your
(2:16:48) boxes and typically like you'd want to buy 24 by 24 by 24 right cuzz that's like the the highest that you can I guess 25 is the highest right is it 25 or 24 uh it is how many 25 by 25 by 25 is the highest you can use I believe but yeah I don't buy boxes from New Line they're way overpriced yeah they're they're garbage for that they're good for convenience like if you need something tomorrow and you're desperate that's kind of like their whole business model right it's like they'll give you the best customer service they'll
(2:17:18) they'll give you like you know returns or really easy I mean everything's very very customer service oriented but they'll gou you like ridiculous man but it also depends like so like like if you buy stuff from like say UL line like cleaning supplies that you can buy anywhere else they're going to charge a [ __ ] ton but Uline also has a bunch of stuff that you can't really find anywhere else so like we buy we buy bubble bags from Uline when we bought like our steel uh prep tables we bought them from Uline just because it's like
(2:17:45) anywhere else it would have been ridiculous and we unless we could find somewhere locally right when we bought like um whatever you call those like random bins like bins on Wheels we we we bought those from you line like to to transport our cardboard from Warehouse to recycle bin like finding that anywhere else in Canada is basically impossible no it's true yeah I mean we we bought a bunch of like um pallet racking and stuff and like different kind of wire decking and whatnot like for the warehouse from them and you know
(2:18:14) they like they have they're kind of like Amazon 2.0 honestly they're they're pretty big man Uline is crazy like I'm I'm still amazed that their customer service though I think like cuz you know Amazon is like okay they have like great customer service I mean they're okay but you line like if I ask for a quote like they will literally call me within two minutes no no questions asked like my phone will ring in two minutes and if I ever call you line the phone will not even ring like if I put in their number someone will answer immediately with no
(2:18:43) ringing it's like it's it's just crazy man like I've never seen that in my life yeah and with with you line um when I first bought the steel packing tables that we have like they're relatively expensive like 500 bucks a table I bought three of them to begin with we got them all good and then I wanted to buy three more and they sent them uh one of the boxes that came and had like a tear in it so I'm like okay cool like we might be missing some Hardware so got them in into the warehouse got them set up and yeah we're missing some of the
(2:19:11) some of the bolts and like there weren't anything special like I think we're missing two or three bolts and the corresponding uh the nuts to just put the tables together and so I just contacted Uline and I said we're missing the hardware for this table just wanted to let you know um and I was just expecting you know maybe this them send me new hardware or I wasn't even expecting them to really do anything I just wanted to let them know and they're like okay no problem like do you want us to just credit your account to refund
(2:19:37) you I was like what and they refunded me for the entire $500 table and I was like I went out and bought I went out and bought the hardware for like 10 bucks yeah man I'm I'm telling you Uline is like it's something else like if if I ever got to a point where like I was running a company that's what I would want I want a company like Uline they're just incredible man honestly incredible yeah there's a reason why they charge what they charge sorry Ron what's up no saying where do you guys Source your boxes I buy all my boxes from U-Haul so
(2:20:12) I buy them online they ship for free and they're the best pricing that I found in Canada oh youa okay thank you for sure I didst question I did post a question like um it's totally off topic but I trying to get a letter of a done to change a business name um I was wondering if anyone of you guys have ever done it and like where exactly like should the form is or something like that I haven't personally done that so I probably couldn't be a good help but if you post that question in the accounting taxes side uh car Carmela she might
(2:20:52) actually be able to point you in the direction for that all right thank you for sure me right [Music] now but yeah like with uh with Uline specifically I don't buy a ton from them I used to buy poly bags from them but like I found like their poly bag quality uh it's it's gotten worse over time and like they're they used to be okay but their strips were always super clingy which was always a pain in the ass and then by the time we stopped buying them from Uline their adhesive strips um they never really held very well and that's
(2:21:27) kind of relatively rare with u line I let my rep know about it and uh he said he was unaware but I ended up replacing them with I love supplies and like their bags are much Superior and if you're willing to buy a decent amount uh they end up costing about the same with the additional border fees and stuff bringing them from the US as Uline do um but yeah like we just buy like packing paper tape bubble bubble bags are a big thing that we buy from Uline because we can't really get those anywhere else yeah how much are you paying for your
(2:21:56) tape I have some pretty good connects uh let me find out I'll will pull up my Supply sheet I hope it's under two bucks because if you're paying more than two then yeah uh it depends on the R so like for for regular tape like just like 2 in acrylic tape we just use that to tape like bubble like bubble wrap down and bubble bags and stuff for for box tape we use like The Craft water activated tape like the Hot Melt or whatever think it's called like Hot Melt or something like that there's like different kinds of I'd have to look at I
(2:22:28) don't have it here it's all on my laptop but um there's like Hot Melt and there's different different like kinds there's the acrylic which is acrylic is like really good for like cold environments as well like it's not bad and it's overall like a pretty solid um piece like like pretty solid tape material I don't really remember too much of it but I I know that there's like a che one I think it's Hot Melt is what it's called like the cheapest kind of tape that you can get so I put it in the chat what we use for boxes like this is it's like
(2:22:57) craft water water activated tape so it comes through a machine with water on it goes on the box and then binds directly to the box it's like the same stuff that Amazon uses on their boxes so do you have like a tape machine that you're using or yep okay okay yeah so it's called Uh a better pack machine uh there are electronic ones that you can get but this one just has has a handle you can set your your tape length with those guys uh it just has a handle you pull it it comes through the the water section It Coats the bottom with
(2:23:29) water you put that directly on a box and then within a few seconds it's completely binded to the Box yeah this is way more specific I was thinking like you were just buying regular rolls and then I was like okay you know because I I know you can get them for because we pay about like um A1 120ish per roll something in that range $120 $150 so so but yeah this is like really specific I I I don't I'd have to like look into this and get quotes and whatnot and it's yeah so I do buy regular like acrylic tape too but like we don't use that
(2:23:58) nearly as much that's just to like tape down bubble wrap Bubble Bags Etc so we get like the the 2 mil the 2 in by 110 yards from U line and this this is the stuff that we use but we don't go through a whole lot of it see and that right now they're charging 255 per roll for 110 yard roll they're they're like they're decently decently bulky rolls and you're saying yeah 255 right is that what you're saying yeah yeah that's fair I mean if you haven't used this option before try to um try to quote through you line like
(2:24:35) usually they'll give you a discount they kind of like bank that you don't do it but I mean every time I've done it they always have given me some form of discount so like I don't know how many rolls you buy but like let's say you buy like I don't know 72 rolls right cuz you see how they have like the breakdowns 36 72 whatever so let's say you buy like 72 at a time just like add 72 to a quote and they might drop it down to like I don't know like 230 or something right it's worth uh giving it a shot man because I've always gotten discounts
(2:25:01) when I did that thanks I appreciate that tip I've never done that before and I will definitely try that because like yeah when we buy rules of tape uh we like I always have a backlog but then we're just like replenishing the stuff so we buy like a couple like probably like four or five cases and I don't remember how much is in a case uh there's 36 3 case yeah yeah so they'll always give you a discount just because they want to like make you happy like I've never gotten rejected for a discount even if it's like 10 cents I mean at the end of
(2:25:29) the day you're saving money right and I've been able to get some really significant discounts like I'm talking um up to like $1,000 on like on like the whole order type of thing right so like it's it's a good option to use man if you don't know how to do it I can uh I can walk you through after for sure like is it is it just like adding to your cart and then requesting a quote um let me see here no there's like an actual quote button here let me see so if you get logged in give me a sec yeah and that's what I love about
(2:26:18) having these conversations because you find out things like this that you would never really think [Music] of yeah I don't know where it is now I have to check on my laptop because like I'm logged into my personal um Uline account but I've never bought anything from them on my personal account so I don't know if it's like a like a special function or something I'd have to pull up my work laptop and have a look at it but I'll I'll tell you after the conversation I'll I'll have a look at it for you sweet definitely I appreciate
(2:26:54) that no worries my dude but yeah like so for I think probably the biggest things we buy from UL line is um Bubble Bags just because I like using those versus bubble wrap especially when you have a lot of breakable prep it's just unmatched and I haven't found really anywhere else in Canada that sells bubble bags they're so bulky how many are you buying like once again man like honestly just hit them with uh with a quote request and I guarantee they'll give you a discount like if they don't give you a discount
(2:27:25) like I I don't know what I'll do like I guarantee they will if they don't give me a discount I'll come to you and you have to reimburse me for that all right deal as long as you as long as you drive all the way over here with your personal car yeah sure villager how's it going if you're here with us if not no biggie um but yeah so the just like for anybody that is eventually scaling for Amazon specifically like if you do have a lot of breakable prep uh when you if you do have breakable prep and you are spending
(2:28:03) a lot of time bubble wrapping it 100% look into Bubble Bags like that was a massive change we made many years ago it helps a ton with labor they do cost like quite a [ __ ] ton uh but for for the labor savings it's massive are you here are you here with us villager um hey I just want to say guys um tonight was really informative I'm piecing out type of bit sorry what was that Rong yeah I'm just saying I'm good I'm just saying you guys were good thanks for everything y it was really informative especially for a
(2:28:48) newcomer like me yeah yeah def and yeah feel free to stick around as long as you want for sure I'm not sure how long we'll be in here for but we typically hang out and chat until everybody decides that it's time to go 37 villager what's up sorry Chris what were you saying no I was saying take it easy to that dude villager what's up good it's all good I just I just joined This Server like two days ago so I'm uh learning all the different channels yeah definitely there's definitely a lot in here so I know it can get overwhelming
(2:29:34) at first but um you asked it looks like you sent me a message and asked if I check if that category is gated um do you currently have a Seller Central account yourself no no no I don't um I don't I believe I don't I mean I had one but uh I think it closed down or um something happened to it so no I just uh I was wondering for certain products I'm not looking to sell now I'm just this was just the one ofk gotcha so with that guy um are you able to in the private chat there are you able to send me the as or or the URL directly and then I'll
(2:30:13) take a look so like um it's going to be hard for me to tell you if it's gated because my level of being ungated is going to be different than yours uh but I'll pull this guy up here and I'll tell you in general if this category is gated or not but like the best way is obviously to have your own Celler Central account and check with your own account if you're personally gated in that um it's just very hard it's very hard for me to say if it's going to be gated for you or not makes sense I'll pull this guy up and I'll see
(2:30:40) what I can I just uh I just found this product on clearance and I was just wondering uh maybe if it's ungated for you I can just send you the link uh cuz it's really cheap now I'm just wondering but Scotch got I know gotcha I I definitely appreciate that that's super cool of you um with that specific guy um like just looking at the sales volume via keepa and whatnot uh that one it actually doesn't look like it sells a whole lot per month so with that one even if it was on clearance uh you probably only expect to sell like one
(2:31:11) unit per month so it wouldn't be something that' be super interesting to myself but I definitely appreciate you willing to share that okay yeah yeah no worries it was on clearance for $3 which I think is a good price oh [ __ ] really cheap a lot of even even to use yel for packing good for sure sorry to interrupt I was gonna say Jordan I sent you the uh the stuff for the quote okay cool I'll take a look at that thank you yeah no worries dude so villager you come from some other servers is that correct that were
(2:31:46) kind of similar to what we do yeah yeah I'm in three currently for Canada Canada specific oh thank you so much for um I was able to add a secondary address to both RBC no to aex today I didn't I have no idea RBC they didn't let me initially through live chat but I asked um like you said to talk to the manager and they gave me a phone number so hopefully I'll sort that out this week Beauty and yeah of course uh with RBC when I did it um it's it might be a little bit different if you're using a Visa debit like I
(2:32:19) mentioned uh but when I did it I did I did it through like their messaging system so it wasn't live chat but it was like where you get your messages in RBC you're able to also send them a message um that's where I that's where I requested it and then the first person that I talked to uh mentioned that they're not sure if they're able to do this and I just said yes you are you've done it for me before um and then they obviously talked to somebody then they're able to do it right right right I see yeah I have a
(2:32:50) credit card with them so it should be they send me a special credit card department phone number so we'll see yeah you'll that that should mean that I can use that uh now I can use that address in say um Walmart or certain sites that only take a USA Building address I should be able to use those cards right yes 100% for those perfect so that's just like initially oh sorry go ahead sorry sorry go ahead no initially I uh I opened a RBC crossboard debit account just for that reason and now with this I mean I don't I have no
(2:33:27) use for that account it just simplifies it pfold so yeah like the the nice thing about it is like it obviously makes it very simplistic um if you if you are able to get a us specific card or one that has lower um exchange rate that would obviously be more ideal depending on the volume that you're doing but if you're only buying a few things here and there you're not concerned about the The Exchange fees that they're charging you it's definitely a lot easier I see for sure so so do you mind me asking how have you found uh what we do here versus
(2:34:03) the other servers that you're in yeah uh right now I'm in um this one North cop am notified CET those three yep uh this one I like there's a um the deals like there's deals what very very cenda specific which is a good thing whereas the other ones uh it's still I'd say mixed especially with some channels uh like for example am notifi Canada I barely use that I they have an extras Discord which isit kind of like um like any uh profit group in the US and it's all USB so I just have to reship everything but this one it seems also
(2:34:48) that it's very focused on on Amazon FBA so definitely something to look into and I think it sort it sorted out very well as well I mean like the categories everything yeah thanks I appreciate that and yeah like um we are actually still relatively new like I only started messing around with this server what was it back in June and then we kind of never really launched to like everybody publicly until like I want to say like September is so like we are still new we are still growing um but yeah I'm just trying to just pack as much value as we
(2:35:25) can in here with actual real professionals to try to make as much profit as possible makes sense yeah also I think I asked you this but uh certain channels they're just tagged at Green Team uh and then I'm getting pinged for that is there any way to UNP for certain channels or is that uh something that that's not possible on Discord so typically speaking if something is being pinged like with green team or most actual like role pings usually those are things that we determine are they should be relatively good deals um it's good
(2:36:04) unless you don't have access to that specific Channel like unless you turn it off on your brows channels you will still get pinged for it um I don't believe there's any way that you can just remove those specific pings if you see something that's coming through like a lot that is annoying like you mentioned with those video cards just let me know and I can probably remove them um but like for example like if we have the the price errors for the us we just have those automatically ping Green Team because not all of them are super
(2:36:28) viable but occasionally like we see some insane deals come through there so I just want to ensure that nobody's going to miss them okay yeah sounds good yeah that works for sure no problems with that and then yeah like if you want to set up um some of your own keywords like if you say want to monitor our deal monitors and you want to like say monitor like Apple products for example you can set up your own user keywords and then whenever our bot detects those keywords in those channels it'll ping you directly and it'll also send you a
(2:36:59) direct message of that actual message so it's very easy to sort through your pings also um have you used the Facebook scraper that you sent me have you ever tried it quite a while ago I want to say it was probably over like probably like six months to a year ago so so I don't I couldn't really give you a whole lot of help for it unfortunately all good have you have you tried it out yet no I tried um going through an app that lets you open exe files on Mac but uh it didn't it didn't open correctly so I'll Pro probably get a Windows laptop
(2:37:40) or try and find um any other method or an RDP of course probably the easiest and yeah like something for like a Facebook scraper like for keywords it's something that I've been actively trying to implement into the server just very difficult um I had yeah I can imagine I had a guy setting some stuff up for it and like we had to use like a ton of different logins for Facebook and most of them ended up getting clipped within a few days so it just ended up not being viable um with the other groups that you're in have you seen like do they
(2:38:11) have any options for that for Facebook no Facebook just seems like completely uh uncovered well not covered by any you see is probably I mean the only thing I found was uh certain scripts or Chrome extensions but even those don't work so I'm yet to find anything for Facebook Facebook just seems to be that one supp to be like Marketplace well obviously Marketplace seems to be very hard to um cover I think actually I don't know why but yeah and like they're they're individual notifications um because you can obviously set up like your own keywords
(2:38:45) but they they're absolute [ __ ] like you don't get notified half the time and yeah they're not good yeah so do you you do um Amazon FBA mostly yeah that is my full-time gig I've been selling on Amazon since 2018 and been doing it fulltime since early 2020 I believe it was um and then yeah I operate my leads list servers that I have and then also have been building This Server over the last good couple months right right sounds good um have you been able to score any um good fbm like for your deals like any Cheap
(2:39:26) shipping or anything like that Jordan sorry like what do you mean by like fbm yeah so like um have you reached out to any careers and tried to get some kind of pricing that would fit into I guess be profitable for Canada fbm at all gotcha so yeah that's on my working on list so I'm trying to Ure like there there's those things that exist but I want to ensure it's going to be obviously legal so like there's a tons of things that are out there that you can like basically buy fake labels definitely not going to do that because
(2:39:57) that's illegal and that's a federal offense um so I'm trying to find like an actual viable service that basically offers bulk discounts um I haven't been successful with it no um I have seen again some services that are definitely illegal services to buy shipping units but we're not going to go that road or or shipping rather yeah that would be huge man if you can find something that works for fbm cuz I mean honestly the opportunity for fbm is crazy I feel like just with how fast you can ship things and get in
(2:40:32) stock I think that's really revolutionary like if if I could think of anything that could scale my business a lot quicker would be just the ability to do fbm for like a viable price I think that's absolutely insane man so you're an Edmonton right correct yes have you chat at all do they I think they only do do Ontario don't they I want to maybe I I want to say I heard at some point there was one in Alberta I looked at stallion I mean they're very good obviously but they I don't think they they ship to Edmonton but they don't ship from
(2:41:08) Edmonton I don't think uh chitchat does have a Edmonton location and I've heard good things about them so I would definitely encourage you to reach out to them and ask them what they offer because like anybody that I I've heard that has been like relatively successful fbm in Canada has used a service like Chit Chats noted noted um my second question was did you by the way pretty good for fbm so Jaden is good uh sorry what were you asking there Chris well I guess I'll I'll ask Jay then um what kind of like rates are you getting through chat it's
(2:41:49) like approximately obviously it differs but like I guess the question is can you get it as low as like 10 bucks for like a smaller shipment um I would say if on I would say if it's within like say BC maybe um if it's like coming to Ontario like even like something like as small as like a a DVD can be like 12 to 15 bucks if you ask me yeah that's what I'm thinking cuz like I looked at my order history obviously through FBA and like sometimes people get stuff from no scope and it's like man if I have to fbm to
(2:42:21) novas Scotia that's going to be really pricey right and at that point you can't just cancel orders cuz they don't work for you right I mean if you're fbm you're fbm there's no cancelling right so it's kind of like a scary thing where it's like man what if somebody order something from Newland like what do I do you know you can set like shipping rates according to each province to a certain extent right um yeah I believe so like you can build like shipping templates that are different for each individual location
(2:42:48) it's not gonna be perfect um and like if you end up getting like a really rural address somewhere that may be more expensive you might have to eat some additional costs but I you you can find tun it to a point yeah it's something I definitely have to mess with um but yeah I think like that would be pretty huge and then I was going to ask you Jordan did you um get on the float thing yet because I know you were asking questions about float with like you wanted to jig uh jig addresses and all that stuff and names
(2:43:13) and all that credit card information and everything did you manage uh figuring that out yet so I was just playing with some of that this morning um I was signing up for coo for revolute um I I haven't went to down the float section yet um but I did confirm that coo does produce disposable vccs very very viable 10 minutes to set up you can get them immediately okay yeah because that's definitely something I want to mess with because I mean it's no secret like for example well.
(2:43:45) ca they always give you like a 15% first order discount but everything I've tried they've always like traded back to me and canceled my orders so I mean if I was able to you know get a different name and all that different stuff it may be viable I don't know if you know some secret trick to well.
(2:44:02) ca but I haven't been successful in in reusing that coupon so I don't know uh give me a couple seconds I just have to step away from my computer for a minute I will be right back and then we'll discuss that guy yes sir e but yeah CH chats is here like I'm just looking it can depend like usually $10 to15 I would say 15 is more like it in my opinion like even me shpping from Ontario to like Montreal or backc ends up
(2:45:07) being yeah that's not too bad because I mean typically FBA is like on these smaller items is probably like what like sevenish dollars so I guess you're paying like an extra six seven bucks I mean yeah that's not too bad did you get that through volume or was it just kind of like their standard offering rate by talking to them type of thing yeah it's just standard R to be honest okay okay so it's not like a volume you got lucky they do have a refer prr as well much sign up yeah I mean if you have some kind of program or something just
(2:45:46) DM me um I'll definitely look into that sometime this week because like I said the only though is with chip chats um they stopped integrating with Amazon so you have to manually copy paste over the address information a stallion did it automatically they us to have it automatic but not any they don't support the like a plugin yeah it's pretty annoying I mean at scale it's annoying for me I don't think it would be a big problem but um I think like right now just having access to instant sales is something that would
(2:46:24) benefit me a lot I think that sh chats they have like different levels the normal like the one which includes tracking is basically Canada Post expedited so fundamentally what happens is I usually just um once I ship it out it takes another day or two it depends how it shows up in the system like if you're shipping it from the way they get discounted shipping is cuz uh example if you're shipping from aditt they'll they'll transport it to I think like Ontario to the main Hub like themselves and then they ship it
(2:46:57) internally from ontar to ontar that's how the cheaper shipping rates kind of apply um and so like I just put the Canada Post tracking number in usually and that basically enables um on Amazon right because you have to choose shipping like service I just choose scada post and put that tracking number so sometimes it's like it takes two 3 4 days for it to show up yeah yeah that makes sense did you ever have like customer complaints I mean obviously you had them but I guess my question is like is it common to get
(2:47:31) people complaining like oh my stuff's not arriving fast enough type of thing or or have you no still I mean my handling time is decent enough so it's Canada Post expired so yeah it usually arrives within the end the like as long as I ship out within a day or two and like have a handling time and shipping time being you know 5 to 7 days once it's in the like Canada Post system and they're pretty good I think an average it will take no more than I would say no more than 5 days to go across in total yeah yeah that's not too bad okay cool
(2:48:11) cool Express is pretty good too um um for whether it's for eBay um I've done it more so for eBay than for Amazon so just as an example um about a couple months ago I had sold a shirt and to ship it to uh Los Angeles I think it only costed me8 or $9 yeah stallion's really good unfortunately I don't think that they work they ship to Alberta but I don't think they ship from Alberta um it's I think like that's probably one of the best ones but unfortunately I get screwed there so well you know what Chris you can uh bask
(2:48:52) in the win because saskatch win doesn't have [Laughter] any Jordan give me back my box man I know you took that [ __ ] so I had I had like five or six boxes come today and one of them was like a multi so like a four box order and I had like one two and three but box four out of Four's missing so I called them and I'm like yo like where is this order and they're like oh we like we messed up your order actually went to sasun and I'm like bro Jordan give me my [ __ ] just a super random place for it to get redirected to
(2:49:26) like literally Sask I was like bro this has to be linked yeah I'm definitely in your system and I'm routing your packages to me of course I mean I wouldn't be surprised man you got some crazy scraping Bots and [ __ ] like that's probably something you've been working on on the down low man just like a redirector bought yeah no I'm not in the business of screwing people yeah I was doing like a Best Buy cuz Best Buy is for splitting shipment so I ordered like five or something and then I was doing like an inventory I'm like I
(2:49:58) find three of them cuz they're three so where's the fourth shment two of them and I'm like I really got this like a like a week ago and I'm like great now I going reach out to them and on F later is showing us delivered so now I'm like what's going to happen here yeah I thought somebody stole it from like my front porch and I was like dude I don't want to deal with this [ __ ] man like it's the last thing I need right and then like when they told me that it's in sasude it's getting redirected back I was like oh thank God
(2:50:26) something positive happened you know I didn't get screwed this time go into things with a positive attitude and then you'll you'll find that things overall will have a lot more positive effect but typically with with like Best Buy typically is then I Pur says it's delivered I'm assuming they're not going to cover from insurance perspective right I mean you got to fight them on it I wonder if if it's like the retailer owns it or they own it and they're just going to pass the buck between each other fundamentally I think it all
(2:50:54) depends on the retailer yeah but if your [ __ ] gets stolen from your door like I don't think that gets covered man I think that's just like you just got unlucky right I believe it like it all depends on the retailer right so I thankfully haven't personally experienced that with anybody besides Amazon and who's actually an Amazon Courier um and Amazon just refunds you anyway but yeah like and I think it all depends on the retailer and whether or not they're going to cover it or make you attempt uh to make a shipping claim but I believe
(2:51:28) there is a lot of like I believe there is recourse if you don't actually personally receive your package because the thing is most of these cers they'll take a picture of it being delivered right so it's like when you go to argue with them they're going to be like well here's your picture of four packages right so they're like on our end we're done you know like how you can't really prove that it got stolen but at the same time you know like you can't prove that you don't still have it it's like such a tough case to deal with
(2:51:54) like honestly it's just it's such a headache man I believe most larger retailers have just come to the realization that that's something that they have to deal with and just kind of factor into their losses um but yeah I mean hope like hopefully it's obviously not a big thing in your area I know that it's getting more rampid throughout Canada but is pretty bad man like it's pretty crime is pretty bad here pretty bad it's uh like overall I think Edmonton's pretty sketchy City to be honest um but to answer that to what you said about
(2:52:24) the retailer it's not actually retailer this is one of my suppliers so I mean that's even worse because they're not really a retailer they're um a supplier that I have like that I have an account with so I mean you know that would be on how much they trust me and if they want to like send me another box I guess I don't know yeah and that's where those things can get a little bit tricky and it might be worth getting things directed to a either you know that somebody's going to be to receive it set up cameras Etc um but to talk about the the well
(2:52:58) discount and like we're using the code um so I don't know specifically with well uh I have seen this more so with iherb but like so for it all depends on the retailer and how well their systems detect unique or slightly different information um so like with iherb for example you can get a I believe it's a standard 20% welcome discount with IH herb right and it's literally as simple as just open up a new email and you can exploit that for a fairly extended period of time until they catch on once they catch you on and um link your
(2:53:30) account with like you you're all the same person then your account's just going to get clipped um and you probably can't order from them anymore period and that's a uh realistic thing that you have to deal you have to factor in when you're doing this with any retailer is that you have to expect that if you are trying to exploit their system eventually they might not sell to you anymore period so you have to be willing to take those risks um even with like disposable credit cards um a lot of them uh as as far as I know for Canada the
(2:54:02) only one that you don't have to use a specific address for is Loop um most virtual credit cards you have to actually have a an actual address attached to them and it'll be the address that's saved in your in their system when you register and so assuming that they track addresses it'll be very easy to link to yourself right you you can jig it but then eventually once somebody looks into it um it'll be pretty obvious that it's all coming to you yeah that's the thing because I mean you can change names you can change
(2:54:37) because I know with Flo you have different card numbers technically because I mean you can open as many employee cards as you want but I mean like at the end of the day like you have to receive your stuff right so you can only do so much to your address before it's not coming to you right so I mean that's kind of something that you know I like I don't even know if there's any solution to it really other than I mean yeah there's no solution because it has to come to you right so I know like even PayPal you can like hide stuff and
(2:55:04) whatnot but like I I don't know what to do about the address part that one is just very weird and kind of hard to to mess with right yeah and that's all depending on retailers so like for example when we're trying to get say like some of the The Limited drops that are coming out and we want to get more than the more than one unit or if they have like a limit on the units uh jiging addresses slightly is really good for that depending on the retailer so like Nike it can be more of a pain in the ass with like supreme Supreme is very easily
(2:55:32) jigged you can just add like in um like say your address is one 123 Fake Street all you have to do is add in one two three and then a random three letters like AER fake Street and those will go through all day and they never manually check so it doesn't matter at those will still come to your address um so it's going to come down to to well whether or not they have those systems in place to either detect it or their employees are paying attention and you don't know until you try it yeah for my experience well seems to
(2:56:01) be pretty Cary company so I don't know they have some good deals sometimes so I don't know if it's worth like getting banned but yeah they're pretty caring then yeah and that's going to be a decision that you have to make and um I don't know if they still have it but previously well in their terms of service specifically mentioned that they don't uh sell to resellers and they will ccel your orders over the last couple years I've heard they've been done a lot better um but because they had those they may be more
(2:56:33) strict yeah I can speak on that one um so I've noticed that the order is super huge like let's say you're buying a multi pack that requires five of a unit and you know obviously for it to make sense you're going to have to order like I don't know like you know 70 80 100 right at that point they'll cancel but like for my experience ordering like 2030 they've been fine as long as you're not trying to screw them on the coupons but like if I mess with the coupons then it's like they're canceling it immediately so yeah so in cases like that sometimes
(2:57:03) it's probably just worth it just find the stuff that's best at regular retail price and just deal with it yeah and I this might just be me but I haven't been able to find too many well coupons I I don't know if they just don't have them or what it is but they're yeah very very hard man very hard with that company so with coupons overall and this is something that I've taught my VA quite extensively is that um like for for example if you look at like say uh Fields a profit video for sourcing he is somebody that um 100%
(2:57:34) like bases his entire sourcing like around finding coupons and getting additional cash back Etc uh with Canada that doesn't really exist unless you're buying from Brands directly it's very rare that our regular retailers have really any significant coupons it does happen every now and again but it's extremely rare so most stuff if you're buying not from manufactur directly you just have to deal with the regular retail price or the current sale price a lot of stuff brand direct like say if you're buying from like I don't
(2:58:09) know Elf Cosmetics or uh the ordinary directly a lot of those times like those guys will have coupons themselves El uh but a lot of retailers do not everybody still here yeah sorry I just fell asleep man I'm just [Laughter] kidding so yeah like when you're sourcing um like you kind of mentioned that you haven't been having any problems finding products you are able to find products relatively easily just your biggest ball neck is cash flow um I think with my current capital yes just because I mean you know I'm not
(2:59:04) sourcing for 50 Grand at a time so like you know it's a process but eventually within I don't know like five or six days I'm able to kind of like spend all the money that I need to spend um but I think that you know moving forward like as the capital gets bigger um it's going to be kind of hard because let's say if I have 30 grand to spend obviously like the fast you spend the money and and you know get stuff in Amazon the faster that the whole process works but at the same time I don't want to make stupid purchases right so I'm not just going to
(2:59:34) like spend money for the sake of spending money right so I think right now I'm still good but this is definitely something to think about for like the next five or six months down the road um as the capital gets bigger and as the payouts get bigger you know it's it's going to get harder and harder um in terms of like OA and whatnot so I may have to hire vas and do all that good stuff we'll see what happens yeah I think like if you're scaling reasonably where you don't just get like a random very large cash injection it's actually
(3:00:03) it's not as hard as you think because like your skill and experience builds with you overall building your your your cash flow right and so it becomes a lot easier for you to source sustainably with the cash flow that you do have yeah that's that's true I mean yeah like and over time obviously I've opened up suppliers and all this stuff and you know it all kind of clicks into each other whereas if you gave me like 300K right now you're like yo spend this to the best that you can i' be like well okay I'll spend it but 300K is a lot to
(3:00:34) spend right so without having the infrastructure in place like the supplier ready to go and all the experience and whatnot like that that's a hard stretch man that's yeah yeah and like if you're not used to spending that much money you very easily get overwhelmed it's like oh my God I don't know how to prep all this stuff it's going to take me forever I don't know how to buy all this stuff and yeah for sure but yeah I like to see um I've seen quite a few people in our community like over time hit a point in their business
(3:01:05) and I've had quite a few of them reach out to me directly that it's the point where like they're basically [ __ ] themselves for the amount of money that they're going to spend and I think everybody eventually will go through that and they're like oh my God like I don't know like if I'm I like I'm super scared because my credit card bill is like3 $40,000 I spent so much money or I don't know if I should Etc and that is probably like one of the scariest moments uh when we're growing besides like getting really deep
(3:01:32) in with like employees and having a lot of people rely on you and it sounds super scary but once you're able to get past it and realize that it's not as scary as what it seems I think that's like one of the biggest growing points for a lot of sellers like the very first time I placed an order for $10,000 I was like oh my God like this is so much money I don't know if this is going to work out and then once you do it a couple times it's just it just becomes a regular thing right yeah I got lucky in that regard I
(3:02:02) mean lucky not lucky but I guess like you know with the career that I've chosen for my like 9 to5 and everything is like I'm I'm used to spending like company money so it's like you know when I started my own business like I like I went crazy and I'm so like you know I didn't really care like you know two grand is nothing even though it was my money um I bought like so much [ __ ] that I was gated in with like the Blind Faith of like it's just going to work and I was at the point where I had like six seven Grand of stuff that I was gated in
(3:02:31) and it just I wasn't getting ungated this was like during um the whole Christmas rush and it was like I think at that time Amazon just was not ungating people because they didn't want to like they didn't want to like have the chance of having like fake stuff in for Christmas and whatnot I think that is probably like a big thing as to why um and then randomly one day like I just was ungated and all these things that I've applied for a long time ago and I got super lucky where I could send it all in um but I think that like if I was
(3:03:02) wasn't in in the career that I am and let's say I don't know I was working like construction or something um I don't think I have the balls to like just spend six grand in stuff that I'm not even allowed to send in so I think like my start is a little bit different than like the average person's start because most average people will you know they'll they'll just buy like stuff they're ungated and whatever it's not an issue it's all smooth sailing but for me like I I really just cuz I was like following a lot of the um like the
(3:03:28) Launchpad stuff and like the US stuff and they were just saying like yeah you know it's super easy like just buy this get ungated it'll be done in like five minutes sell it in like immediately like you know it's a whole different game and I was like super deep just because I like I wasn't phased by these prices I was like whatever man it's 2 3K like like I'm buying things at like 100k for my for my career right so I was like you know this is all small talk and then I realized like holy [ __ ] dude I'm out of
(3:03:52) money and I can't send anything in um luckily that that got resolved but yeah that that yeah that was uh nerve-wracking to say the least but hey man like after I got ungated I can say that that was probably one of the best feelings that I've felt in life and I know that might sound sad or whatever like oh that's the best you felt but like no like it truly felt good to like succeed in such a big bottleneck like when you're screwed with something for like 3 months or for like 2 months and you're just like screwed but you keep
(3:04:20) pushing it and then it ends up working you're like holy [ __ ] dude it worked out like this is awesome right so that was definitely like a big dopamine release that kind of like got me hooked in the whole business and whatnot 100% but also with that you probably could have done it with being a little bit less risk adverse I could have man but I honestly think like I don't know I I just believed so hard that it's going to work and I just went deep man like right off the bat and I don't know it worked out it worked out
(3:04:49) that's all I got to say I'm grateful I'm grateful it's good that it did it doesn't always for everybody but it's good that it did and you always say that you're unlucky so I I disagree with you I think I'm reasonably lucky and unlucky but yes sorry go ahead J no just saying we bounce talk to you guys later have a good night man peace thanks for everything definely um but yeah like I have certainly went through that process and have went through times where it's like spending that much money makes my stomach turn because it's it's it's your
(3:05:24) own money and I mean if you're not that confident in the data and you're not that experienc yet it's like you never really know what's going to happen uh but when you become more confident more experience it's like it just becomes second nature right yeah um for me like a a hard a really hard on gate was those Stanley tumblers like that's something that I I mess with a little bit but like that was like man it was so hard because these things are pretty pricey they're like what $ 40ish Dollar a piece right um and
(3:05:53) I mean I probably spent like two or three grand on these guys I ended up making a pretty good you know Buck off them after I got ungated and whatnot but like just having like four grand worth of tumblers chilling on you know by my computer table I was like man what am I doing with my life bro like I even I listed them everywhere like I had them on Marketplace like I was trying to get rid of these things but you know it just wasn't working and then that night when I got ungated it was like for those tumblers and a bunch of other [ __ ] and
(3:06:21) it like it was just crazy just being able to send them in like man I didn't sleep all night like I was I was packing all night like I was going crazy man that was a crazy time but yeah and then like just like for uh for comparison like with the very first time I ever spent 10 grand like absolutely made my stomach turn I was like oh my God what am I doing and now like you see just like whatever it was last week or two weeks ago when I did the r trip we spent like I think it was like 11 Grand and like a 4 Hour ra trip right so
(3:06:51) it's like very very different very different times that we're in yeah that's good man I mean hopefully one day you'll be you know getting full truckloads I mean you probably already do I don't really know the scale of your business but yeah that's like a big milestone that I'm looking forward to is just being able to grab like I don't know like 5,000 units maybe not in Canada so much but like grabbing 5,000 units or something like man that's that's kind of like a dream for sure just just takes time to build up
(3:07:22) and get there like like I've seen for example like somebody like Fred who's like probably like one of the people that I've seen grow the quickest ever that I've really ever seen and like looking at that like seems super crazy and so like I can tell you without boasting about stuff is like I we we sell more than what Fred sells but it took us a very long time to get there compared to Fred right yeah I think it's one of those things where like you know he had that Blind Faith that I had um obviously for me like I mentioned it was you know 5 to
(3:07:59) 15 grand that that I kind of started out with um whereas Fred he had like 100k or whatever 200k and he's like yo [ __ ] it I'm just gonna go deep and and I'm G to have faith in this and yeah it worked out for him um he's like a success story I'm sure there's failure stories too so you know it's not I'm not saying like what he did was easy for sure like there's definitely people that probably attempted and failed and and I don't know recouped their losses and whatnot but yeah I think like a lot of new sellers will see those numbers and be
(3:08:28) like oh man like that's so much money like fred is killing it like you know and I'm sure he's making money but at the same time like his cost of goods is is up there too right like you can't just be getting you know 150k a months and and not have the you know cost of goods in there so like a lot of people think like you know like I I can do these numbers but it's like no man like you need to you need to invest a lot of money to to to like to do these numbers right so without looking at the final percentage um you can't really know
(3:08:57) anything like for all we know Fred's making 5% back right at which point he's failing the business in my opinion because like 5% on that amount of money is a very small like return right so it's really hard to say but yeah like I think the like the growth that he had is is really good but once again without analyzing like Fred's actual business we don't really know what he's doing right so for sure uh just like with most people uh I do end up finding their storefronts eventually um so like with Fred I 100% believe everything that he's
(3:09:29) doing from everything that I've seen um it does look like he has a good grasp on his numbers but yeah like we never know for sure he never know what's going on behind the curtains um but yeah like he in order to be as successful as he he has been as quickly he had to take massive risk and not everybody can or was willing to do that yeah absolutely um and I think like you know when I mentioned earlier where I bought all these products that um I was gated in you know I didn't buy them just because I wanted to spend money
(3:10:02) like these were all good products they were all good and I just took the risk of like hey you know I'm going to get on gay and it's going to work and I think that also contributed to like me growing quickly like obviously I don't want to say that I grew as quick as Fred because I mean I didn't right but let's say for instance if I did the same steps that I did with Fred's capital I feel like the charts would look very similar right and I mean you know that's just what it is more Capital with the correct products
(3:10:28) equals Fred's growth right 100% but yeah like it's like with him I know I know how much work he puts into it too and like I know like he's working a lot and on top of that he's being extremely efficient like not saying anybody anybody else doesn't do that but you you do need all that combination of everything in order to be able to do it yeah for sure I mean I don't know much about F like I know some things I know he's mainly OA based and I mean even with the capital like we mentioned before it's not easy to spend that much
(3:11:00) money so the fact that he's able to spend you know even the 60k that we know for sure from the loan like that's that's a lot of money man like to spend 60 Grand OA being new to the business like that's that's not easy so definitely hats off to him I mean he's he's doing something right that's for sure sourcing a lot and then anytime he's not sourcing he's pre it but yeah like it's like for example to say that oh like say we have 60k to spend um that wouldn't take us very long to spend but yeah like years ago when we
(3:11:36) first started it it would take us months and months to be able to spend that amount of money but the only reason why it doesn't take us that long anymore is because we've built up the catalog we have so many products that we know we can replenish on a consistent basis we have access to so many products that we can purchase and then we have the prior the prior stuff that we can always revisit and it's also not just me it's me and my nephew fulltime I couldn't imagine doing what we're doing now with just myself but there's people that do
(3:12:01) way more than me and they're doing it just by themselves yeah fair fair I guess now that a lot of people left I was going to ask um to to save you typing a million things um if you want you can also tell me on voice regarding those uh cubes whatnot cuz I was just wondering like what your opinion on them was cuz I I never got your side of it I just kind of told you what I felt about them and and I wanted to like kind of hear your overview on how you felt about that product well let's pull them up and we'll take a look and I'll give you my
(3:12:30) live opinion where was where were they here okay so we see that 700 plus bought in the past month we're going to assume that we can assort soures for $6.99 right yeah that was The Shield's price yeah I mean mine was a little bit more but fine for the sake of this conversation let's just say 699 okay for sure so let's take a peek here I'm just going to
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