Shownotes
How many times have you heard it? Create a “b” plan. You are playing in someone else’s sandbox so have a backup plan. You better have an umbrella for the rainy day. All true in my world and likely in yours too. So what can you do about it? Teresa Rose shows you ways you can add other channels to sell and methods to drive traffic. Can you also add some services that you know inside and out as revenue streams for you “b” plan?
Mentioned:
Sponsors
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Stephen: [00:00:00] Wanted to take a second and recognize my sponsors this week, you know, [inaudible] million dollar arbitrage as edge and list group. That’s a mouthful. It is. But guess what? It’s a great opportunity. You can build a big Amazon business. You don’t need a lot of capital when you start. I mean we all started, you know, um, most of it started selling books and then you move into retail arbitrage that is the place that you can turn your money the fastest and online arbitrage. And so by having that skill set, by learning those skill sets, you can get the best bang for your buck. And so gaze group will help you learn online arbitrage. It’s, it’s more than just a list service. They’re going to give you a whole bunch of actionable inventory every single day. Write Monday through Friday. However, there’s also a mentorship that goes on and that mentorship is so important because sometimes it’s great to know what to buy, but it’s more important to understand why to buy it.
Stephen: [00:01:02] But yeah, that’s that. You know, learning the fish are just getting fit. You really want to learn because ultimately you want to strike it on your own and this is a great way to do it. So how about seven days free trial. About a free trial, right? Very, very cool. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash is the mouthful. The word momentum. You’ve got to use a hyphen and you put in the word arbitrage. So it’s amazing. Freedom Dot [inaudible], forward slash momentum dash arbitrage, and you’re going to get a free trial in gaze group. You got to tell her I sent you, right? I also have the link in the episode, but it’s such a great opportunity. So she has amazing, amazing. I’m in that group so you’ll see me there and amazing, amazing person who’s there to answer your questions, who’s there to help lead you and help guide you.
Stephen: [00:01:50] And that’s what gay does. She does it every single day. The testimonials are real. Go take a look. You will be blown away and again, it’s a free trial. I have the link on this episode to reach in your seller labs, Jeff Cohen and the team. They have blown me away with this scope project. We use this all the time for our business. We do a lot of private label. We also do a lot of wholesale and wholesale bundles or multi-packs, that kind of thing, which a lot of people do, but we use a scope to help us figure out what are the key words and so it’s really simple. You basically figure out where you’re going to sell, what you’re going to sell, what category, find that lake product, find the top couple sellers and find their keywords. Boom magic. There you go. You copy the best because it’s working.
Stephen: [00:02:39] And guess what? That’s a proof of concept and scope allows you to do that. So it’s seller labs.com, forward slash scope, seller labs.com, forward slash scope. Use the code word momentum and you’re going to get a couple of days free trial and you’re going to save a little bit of money and you’re going to get some free keywords. It’s worth every penny. I’m in that group. Come and check me out. So our labs.com, forward slash scope. Again, use the word momentum solutions for e-commerce. Karen Lunker, great, great, great group. I’ve been using them for a long time and I guess it’s over two years and I’m in there and I pay just like everybody else. Yeah, she’s a sponsor my show, but she makes me pay and I got the same $50 discount that you can get. Oh, by the way, you’re going to get that through my link and my link only.
Stephen: [00:03:25] Oh, and you’re also going to get the free inventory health analysis. Great Way to start 2018, get your inventory in line and Karen will help you do that. We use them for everything basically, uh, you know, long-term storage fees coming up. Guess what, show evaluate. She’ll make some recommendations and I’ll say, yeah, check, check, check, check these out, this return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And magically it’s done. I love it, love it, love it. I love the fact that they take and get rid of stranded inventory for me. I see it in there. And then next time I go in and it’s gone. Love it. Love it, love it. Got An ip infringement, she’s going to help you work your way through that. This is the kind of service that you get from Karen Locker, that’s solutions for the number for e-commerce solutions for e-commerce dot com forward slash momentum, right? So you’ve got a forward slash momentum and you’re going to save $50 a month, 600 bucks a year by just clicking that link. She pays me. I don’t want to hide that. I never do. I’m always upfront about that, but it doesn’t cost you anything additional and you’re going to get that inventory health report. The only way you get that is through mind link the solutions, the number for e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum.
Speaker 2: [00:04:39] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast. Will focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:04:53] Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 200 and eighty seven. Theresa Rose, man. Oh Man. I am pumped. Pump pumped. Her enthusiasm. Got Me enthusiastic. Have you ever had a teacher? And I’m letting it out that she was a teacher. Um, and we get to that in a little while, it like opened up for me, but you remember those teachers that just, you got pumped from, they just taught you so much because they just saw it. They had it, they believed it. You would follow them off the cliff like a lemming. She’s one and man, I’d follow her anywhere. What an inspiration and her connection, her going full circle in her life. I think there’s so many of us that are not willing to look back because they’re trying to get away from something or they don’t only think of the negative parts of their life that got them to where they are yet those challenges.
Stephen: [00:05:49] You could go back and fix with the new skill sets you’ve learned and then you have a business. I’m also, I really, really appreciate creating a backup plan. Multiple streams and um, the discussion gets really interesting. I just think it’s so powerful. Um, and it’s such a great point in time in this world, uh, with all these changes going on in a positive way. These changes can be very positive for you. Depends on how you look at. Let’s get into the podcast. All right. We’ll come back to the e-commerce movement podcast. Very excited about today’s guest. I’m a multifaceted, which I always appreciate somebody who’s doing a whole bunch of things. I’m a because she’s a woman. She can. US guys are one directional. They can multitask. It’s a skillset I wish I had, but it’s also makes it cool. I think it makes it fun. You don’t get stale or stagnant. I’m Theresa Rose. Welcome, Theresa.
Speaker 3: [00:06:41] Hey, it’s great to be here.
Stephen: [00:06:43] I think that’s a true statement, don’t you? I think it’s true. You can multi-task where drive the same way to work every day
Speaker 3: [00:06:53] about. I don’t know. I shouldn’t say that I’m, I mean, I can multitask, but am I good at it? I’m not. I’m not gonna say that I’m good at it because I’m not sure that I believe in the whole thing and multi-tasking and being able to do it well. Um, so, you know, I will take on different projects and do experiments and testing, but then I learned really fast that um, if I don’t have a plan of action to keep executing in that direction and stay focused on something, then something’s going to fall apart and get neglected.
Stephen: [00:07:23] Is that an experience issue that you’ve learned over time that used to not be that way? Or were you always that way?
Speaker 3: [00:07:32] Well, this is what happens when you start experimenting and you figure out more ways of making income and you see, wow, this is working. OK, well now you’ve got one more thing to work on because you saw some really successful results. So the issue is, is your time, how are you going to leverage your time because you’re now having to split it across more than one stream that you are developing and trying to get that to grow, but you need to really get a system in place of how am I going to keep working on that and not let it fall through the cracks and that, that I think is a struggle for every, every single person. I don’t, I don’t care what gender you are or how, what your age is, that is a difficulty that we all have and that’s just let’s get one stream going, focus on it, try and get that one down well to where you are putting it in management mode or you’re hiring some help too to keep managing it for you while you go on and you build another one. So multiple streams of income is definitely what everyone needs to do, but I think the issue is how do you tackle it and be able to do it well without letting something fall through the cracks.
Stephen: [00:08:46] I like what you said about management, my management mode. Say That fast few times. So let’s walk through that. Let’s unpack that a little bit. So you know, startup as exciting or planning, you know, thinking it through. You never put risk in the modest me, steve talking, never put risk into model’s going to be upside only it’s going to be awesome and then it happens and things are working and this what you thought it was going to be generally isn’t what it’s going to be, but you hit a stride rite. You get to that place. How do you get that management mode is, is it documentation for you? Is it process streamlining? Is it, you know, all the above. I mean, what, what do you do?
Speaker 3: [00:09:26] Well, what I’ve learned to do is just, you know, paper pencil. I think we have to. We have to keep things simple and go back to the basics and just get a piece of paper and start writing down all of your income streams and take, take account of it every single month so that you can see what’s happening or not happening and you can keep up on, OK, where is all my streams of income coming from? Cause sometimes you get carried away and you want to start chasing the next shiny object. You might see success at it, but then if you don’t have a plan of action to execute it, then that dollar amount might go down, lower or um, may not happen or maybe it’s going higher and he didn’t realize it. So you really don’t know what’s going on in your business. You may not be able to sit and wait for your bookkeeper to update the books every single month or quarter or every six months, whatever it is that you have worked out with your bookkeeper.
Speaker 3: [00:10:20] So instead you need to have a general idea every single month of what’s happening with those streams of income. Now I’m not talking about tracking expenses, but just just tracking your income streams. Just doing that and seeing what is it that I’m doing that is bringing in money? What parts of it is bringing in more money than others? Is there something that I can do with that to keep that rolling? And then when you see another stream happen after your testing results, now you can put a plan of action of how do I now start to hit that and get that rolling? So when you put something in management mode, what I mean is that, um, you, you’ve done the hard work to get it going, to get the ball rolling, but in order to keep that ball rolling to build momentum, you are either going to have to set aside time, weekly, monthly, whatever it is, get it on your calendar or you need to hire a va, need to hire someone else that can take over that, that part for you and be able to keep it in management mode for you. And then you can continue to check on it to see if it’s still growing or not. If it’s not growing, then you need, there’s a change that needs to happen. So you’ve got a, you’ve got to keep track of stuff somehow to know where you need to make adjustments. And I think the key there is we all are going to have to make adjustments in the business is not something where you just set it and forget it. You’re going to have to make an adjustment somewhere.
Stephen: [00:11:49] Um, let’s talk about different things because you have, um, you have multiple streams, right? So you’re an Fba seller, you are merchant seller, you on more than one, um, um, marketplace, uh, you coach a, then you have some other courses and then you also have the pinterest thing, which I’m interested in, but you know, when you look at each one, uh, you know, I guess [inaudible] would be probably easier to set it and forget it kind of thing, right. To, to manage from afar arms-length, right? Unless you’re a designer that has to create everything, you can outsource that function where if you are, you could still create an outsource the function to upload and stuff like that. What, what approach have you taken with that? And then I’m going to go to Fba, which I’m more interested in because of the changes recently. So let’s, let’s just walk through what, what’s an example of what you’ve been able to do with merge?
Speaker 3: [00:12:35] OK, well, with merch by Amazon, that’s a little bit trickier because you still probably, I don’t know, I really hesitate to allow someone else to login to my account. There has been some issues that have happened over the last two months with some very big sellers having their account suspended temporarily. They’re trying to get clarity as to what the problem was. One possible problem was they allowed someone else to log into their account, a virtual assistant, and so there’s a different ip address as being detected and that has caused a little bit of issues. It’s still unclear as to if that was the reason for the suspension or was it something else, but you’re not taking a chance. That’s a risk, right? Yeah. What we’ve noticed in the last couple of months there is that merch by Amazon, Amazon is getting a little bit pickier now, a little bit pickier about who is logging in and out of your account.
Speaker 3: [00:13:32] So I would, I would be careful there with that. Um, so I, I do not allow anyone to login to my account as far as march by Amazon. I truly do have to do those uploads at this point and continue that myself, which means what I do is I go and I mostly purchased the designs and that’s the part that they outsource is the designs and um, the initial keywords, that is what I outsource because it makes it go a lot faster and uploaded into my account. So that part I really do have to, um, tackle it and do so much every day. A lot of people want to get their full uploads, but there does get to be a point when you get into the higher tiers where it’s very, very hard at. It will take several hours a day to do your maximum uploads. I think what would be better is if you would set aside a certain block of time every day, and it doesn’t matter if you max out your full uploads or not. You get something done.
Stephen: [00:14:30] You Max out your time, you said 30 minutes. You make it a real 30 minutes to get done and then move on.
Speaker 3: [00:14:37] Just stay really focused at the timer. Stay focused during that time. Do not do not look at facebook or any social media. Do not look at your phone, don’t accept calls, don’t check your email. All those things I’m doing, I’m sitting here saying, all right,
Stephen: [00:14:52] check done, check or I’m guilty, man, you’re making me a shrink a little bit in my chair
Speaker 3: [00:14:58] and if you just do that and managing yourself in time and you set your timer and say 30 minutes or one hour, whatever it is that you can handle, I’m going to just do this and focus. You’ll probably get a lot more done and do it very, very well.
Stephen: [00:15:13] I think that’s the point. You’re going to do it better. You’re going to do it right, you’re going to do it because otherwise you’re rushing and then when they don’t sell and then they fall off, you’re like, oh, and especially if you’re buying them, that’s expensive, right? That costs money.
Speaker 3: [00:15:30]