Shownotes
The title really says it all for Sean. He really does want to work on his terms. There is a negative connotation to the phrase: “Be careful that you don’t create a job for yourself”. But when you think about it, no matter what role you take on you are “working”. So why not figure out the part of this work YOU love. It is not the same for everyone. There are leaders, operators, CEO’s, CFO’s, Marketers and countless other possible roles to take on. Which one is right for you? Which one brings you “Marie Kondo” level joy? Go all in even if that makes you a great number two. No matter what pushing past the hard parts makes it so sweet in the end!
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Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Sean: [00:00:00] Yeah, I mean, uh, I, you know, uh, I have a little bit of the Shiny Object Syndrome, right? I, and it was kind of a progression. I went from, you know, the drop shipping to Ra, so there’s some oaa to wholesale and then private label was the obvious next step. Um, and once, once I kinda thought I had wholesale down and again, I’m no expert at anything, but once I was making a consistent income of wholesale, I figured it was time to take another course and learn a little bit about private label and diversify. Um, because I’ve had those, I had those brands, you know, take that income from, uh, you know, and it’s tough. So I, I wanted to try to diversify my income a little bit, um, and not be so reliant on another person’s brand. I wanted to build and build my
Cool voice guy: [00:00:43] welcome to the focus on the people, the products and the process of selling today, Steven feeders in.
Stephen: [00:00:58] Want to jump in and talk about two sponsors today. Sellerlabs scope. You’ve heard me say it, you know, and, and you know, you’re probably sitting there saying, Steve, you said this every episode I do because I believe in the product. Um, yes, uh, similar labs is a sponsor. Michelle, don’t get that wrong, however, it’s a sponsor of a product that I use, so I’m Kinda lucky they pay me and yet I pay to use the product and the reason I pay to use the product is because it allows me to, um, get better listings, right? That’s what you need to do, right? If you’re selling on Amazon, you need to understand keywords and you need to figure out what are the right keywords. And sometimes it’s confusing as heck. Why does a certain key word work a certain way? Well, the beauty of is in scope.
Stephen: [00:01:40] As you can pull up your competitor who’s really crushing it and see what keywords they’re using, that’s the lesson. And then you can find a similar one and pull them up and you’re going to see a pattern and then you do that pattern for yourself and you can get those same results if you get lucky and figure out what the key word is for your product. So take some of the luck out of it and use scope. Um, again, go to [inaudible] dot com, forward slash scope. Use the code momentum, save 50 bucks and try it and see if you can improve an existing listing. I think that’s the best thing you can do is take one of your listings that’s performing and then go in and try to enhance it and see if you see an improvement. Give it, you know, 30 days or what have you.
Stephen: [00:02:20] And if you see an improvement, then there’s a clue that maybe you can see an improvement on all your listings. That’s why I use a scope and I just think it’s such a great product because I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Right? There are much smarter people than I that have done a lot of other cool things to figure out what the keyword is and what people are searching for. Use in a whole bunch of other techniques and then you get to take advantage of it and it’s really inexpensive and again, you’re going to save 50 bucks. So solar labs.com, forward slash scope. Use the Kobo momentum, save 50 bucks. Second one is Karen Locker and I talk about her a lot. Right now. They’re reconciling of shipment and they’re sending the note. Steve, you have to send in receipts because that’s one of the big hassles.
Stephen: [00:02:58] Now I’ve got to send receipts to prove that I bought this stuff so I can get my reimbursement and her team is all over me. Like, Steve, this is your third request. That’s designed service. Sometimes I need. I’ve been traveling these last few weeks extensively. I kind of need somebody else. Yes, I could have somebody sitting in my office doing it, but that would be a fulltime employee and we don’t want any full time employees. I’m just my wife, my son and I. and so anyway, um, that’s why I have members of my team in different areas and I don’t want to have to manage them, you know, I know Karen uses some Va’s, but I don’t want to have to manage that team. And so she does that and her team does the team leaders and stuff and they’d been doing it for me, for me, my wife for I don’t know, two or three years.
Stephen: [00:03:39] And we’ve been very, very pleased because the money they saved me, the refunds, they get me, the reimbursements, they get me the fixes when I’m on the road and hey, this isn’t, you know, correct. And they can fix it or I have a question. That depth of knowledge that I get from Karen because of her experience is so worth the price. So it is, um, solutions four ecommerce. So the word solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. Okay, so use that code solutions four ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50 and $50 a month is a lot of money. And what’s really cool is she’s going to do that inventory health report that I talk about. If you’ve not done one, you should, you know, I mean, you’re getting a clue every week when they tell you your inventory health report.
Stephen: [00:04:29] But if you want to dig deeper, and again, if you don’t want to do the work, that’s the beauty, she’s going to send you a spreadsheet and then you can parse it and slice and dice and then send it back saying, hey, kill this stuff, refund this, donate this Blahblahblahblahblah. That’s what I do and I don’t have to go through and do the work. And it’s just important to have a person on your team you can trust. And again, I’ve been paying for the service for two and a half, three years. I have to ask her how long it’s been. And I’m very, very pleased, uh, would think of no one else to be on her team. But Karen and her team, because of what they’ve done, I look for consistency over time. You’ve heard me say that and I’ve gotten it from Karen. So solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum saved the 50 bucks.
Stephen: [00:05:09] Get your inventory health report, get 2019 in order and start this new year off. Right? It’s gonna. Be a great one. Well, we’ll back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 372. Sean Human Chuck. I’m one of the coolest stories I’ve seen it. Just the way it flows, the way his, his trek has flown through the ecommerce world, starting in drop shipping, which I didn’t know about. Um, evolving into wholesale or Ra then into wholesale and into private label and back into wholesale with a private label approach I think is so powerful. His explanation of why building someone else’s brand I think is probably one of the strongest because I get asked that question a lot. Well, I don’t want to build somebody else’s brand. Well, I mean his diversification explanation I think is a really solid one and what he can do for that brand. But he’s not building, you know, uh, somebody else’s brand along with 100 other sellers.
Stephen: [00:06:04] He’s walking past those customers. And that think that’s the distinction and I think he does a great job explaining phenomenal, phenomenal seller and I’m lucky to call him a friend. Let’s get into the podcast. Yeah, welcome back to ECOMMERCE, but minute podcast, I’m very excited about today’s guest, a good friend, a smart guy who I’ve seen evolve and we’re going to talk about that evolution, which I didn’t know about drop shipping. This is really going to be interesting to hear all the way through to what he’s doing in private label and wholesale. I mean, just phenomenal Sean. Human check. Welcome Shawn.
Sean: [00:06:38] Thank you so much for having me mean, you know, I’ve been listening to for a little over three years now, so it’s a pretty cool to actually be on the pocket.
Stephen: [00:06:46] Um, and it, your life is why you couldn’t get out before you’re, you’ve, you’ve got lots of moving pieces, although a lot of them have stopped moving, which is very exciting. Then we’ll talk about her but, but to me, I think watching you evolve and I think that’s the best term to use. When you say your experience with ecommerce.
Sean: [00:07:07] Yeah, I mean I think that’s a perfect way to put it to where I am now. It’s a, it’s totally changed in the last couple of years.
Stephen: [00:07:15] Well, yeah. Let’s go back because, uh, you, which I didn’t know that you started in drop shipping. How, how did you even find out about drop shipping?
Sean: [00:07:23] Uh, so a local, a friend of mine’s cousin actually
Stephen: [00:07:28] my next door neighbor’s brother-in-law, sister knew somebody who knew. Go ahead.
Sean: [00:07:33] Well, his background is like Internet marketing. So I’d see them at bars, he’d always hand me a business card, hey, I got this opportunity and I kinda was always, I go home and Google it and I’d be like, all right, that seems a little. There’s all these warnings on Google, you know, so you stay away from those. And then I seen him posting his Amazon sales numbers a couple of years later and I’m like, what are you selling? What’s $40,000 in sales? That sounds pretty, pretty serious to me. So I asked him about it and uh, he, he got me introduced to drop ship domination, which is very, very controversial in the Amazon, in the Amazon space. Um, but I’m, I’m thankful for it because it got me, it got me my start and introduce me to ecommerce. And this was years ago. Yes, this was like the middle of Twenty 15 is when I first kind of started dabbling with drop shipping on Ebay and it was actually, um, I was sourcing products on Amazon to sell on Ebay.
Stephen: [00:08:32] And so let me make sure I understand this concept because I think I do so especially back then, um, but you could, uh, somebody, you would use the ds domination software and uh, it would, it would scrape Amazon in some way and it would find a product and then it would, it would create a listing on Ebay or somehow
Sean: [00:08:53] not even. It was basically, um, I mean it was like, it was a training program. They would train you. You paid $20 a month, they trained in how to drop ship on Ebay. You pay $50 or $100, they teach you how to drop ship on Amazon had just how to create an account and the basics of it. And then there were some facebook groups that you got access to, but it was a very low level training and then if you paid like, I think they had a $1,500 program that would teach you the basics of private label. Now I never got that forward because I was, you know, I was, I was still working and I was just trying to dabble a little bit and ecommerce and get my feet wet. Um, so through them I only, I started drop shipping on Ebay and then.
Stephen: [00:09:37] Well how did you do that? To walk us through that? Did you create stuff yourself? I mean it was at one on one and then when it’s sold you had to manually go in. You didn’t use a software’s.
Sean: [00:09:45] Exactly, yeah, exactly. I was going through, I mean, like I said, this was, I had no, I had no idea what I was getting into. Steve. I had no idea, uh, that people were buying things from retail stores and selling them on Ebay and Amazon. I mean, this was a whole new concept to me. Um, so I was probably, you know, a little late into the game of drop shipping on Ebay for sure. Um, but it, it showed me how, you know, showed me how ecommerce we’re on, so I had to go in and create the listings myself and then when
Stephen: [00:10:13] on Ebay. So, so, so let’s just say Steve’s water...