The Growth Booth

eCommerce in 2023: $550,000 Selling A Microphone?! | The Growth Booth #58

February 14, 2023 Season 1 Episode 58
The Growth Booth
eCommerce in 2023: $550,000 Selling A Microphone?! | The Growth Booth #58
Show Notes Transcript

$550,000 selling a microphone? YES! But how?

Welcome to the 58th episode of The Growth Booth Podcast, a show focused on supporting budding entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, towards achieving lifestyle freedom through building successful online businesses.

This episode, Aidan is joined by Stephen Somers to talk about what’s in for e-commerce in 2023, and to dive deeper into one particular eCommerce model that is working well right now.

Whether you're looking for step-by-step strategies to start building an online business, simple game plans to grow your business, or proven lifestyle freedom frameworks, you’re in the right place.

Stay tuned and be sure to join the thousands of listeners already in growth mode!


Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

02:47 Working in E-commerce in 2023

06:45 Finding Suppliers and Products

10:20 Episode Sponsor

11:13 How Quickly Sales Can Grow

18:23 The $550,000 Microphone

24:11 Dealing with Logistics

27:55 Barriers For Non-US Sellers

28:51 Benefits of Setting Up The Business

32:20 A Business Tip

36:39 Outro


Links and Resources Mentioned:


About Our Host:

Aidan Booth is passionate about lifestyle freedom and has focused on building online businesses to achieve this since 2005. From affiliate marketing to eCommerce, small business marketing to SAAS (software as a service), online education to speaking at seminars, the journey has been a rollercoaster ride with plenty of thrills along the way. Aidan is proud to have helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn their first dollar online, and coached many people to build million-dollar businesses. Aidan and his business partner (Steven Clayton) are the #1 ranked vendors on Clickbank.com, and sell their products in over 100 countries globally, as well as in 20,000+ stores across the USA, to generate 8-figures annually.

Away from the online world, Aidan is a proud Dad of two young kids, an avid investor, a swimming enthusiast, and a nomadic traveler.

 

Let's Connect! 

●  Visit the website: https://thegrowthbooth.com/ 

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●  Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheGrowthBooth 


Connect with Stephen at marketplacesuperheroes.com!


Thanks for tuning in! Please don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!



Aidan

Welcome to episode number 58 of The Growth Booth, where today I'm joined by a dad of two, serial entrepreneur, e-commerce expert Stephen Somers. Stephen has been someone I've wanted to get on the podcast. We've been kicking this around for a month, even probably a year at this point. I've been saying, “Hey, man, you got to come on the podcast. I want to interview you. You're doing some amazing things,” and finally, all the stars have aligned, and the man himself is here with me today. So, Stephen, thanks for joining me here.

 

Stephen Somers

Aidan, any excuse I get to talk to you, I will take it. I'm delighted to be here. I get a couple of minutes away from those two kids to chat with you, so I cannot wait to get into this today.

 

Aidan

Awesome. So if you have heard of Stephen, but maybe you don't know where you've seen him, he is the mastermind, one of the co-founders of Marketplace SuperHeroes, which you can check out at marketplacesuperheroes.com. He's been living, breathing, and eating e-commerce for as long as I know anyway. He's done all kinds of different things, from selling thousands and thousands of physical products online to getting involved with logistics and shipping.

 

On a personal note, I've had the fortune of being able to hang out with Stephen in person probably on five or six occasions, maybe, at this point. Stephen has been a guest speaker at some of our Blueprint Academy’s live in-person events. So this is someone that I genuinely know really, really well, and I know that he knows a heck of a lot about e-commerce, probably more than anyone else that I know.

 

What is working in the world of e-commerce in 2023? Which way to start here?

 

Stephen Somers

Yeah. Well, as you know, Aidan, I've spent the better part of now 12 years working on marketplaces and selling products on marketplaces, all different kinds. As you mentioned, we've sold our own branded products ourselves for many, many years, myself and Robert Ricky, my other business partner, Marketplace SuperHeroes.

 

And lately, we returned back to where I began in e-commerce. When I started out 12 years ago, sure enough, we were selling on eBay, we were selling on Amazon, but actually, we were selling other people's already branded, already successful items on the platform. For many years, we didn't teach that. You know, we did it for a long time and continued to do it and made a lot of money doing it. I reckon Robert's probably has done about $20 million, maybe $25 million now just like other people's branded products on Amazon at this point in sales.

 

We returned back to it this year because I had an experience where I met a guy called Mike Sieben. Mike is in Canada, and basically, he was interviewing me for his YouTube channel, and I was talking about Amazon's private label, i.e., selling your own branded stuff on the Amazon platform. And as we got talking, he was speaking to me about a model that he had been perfecting, like a wholesale model, where he was selling these already successful products. And I was saying, “Hey, I did that for so many years, I made a lot of money doing it. Tell me more about how you do it.” And sure enough, like you, Aidan, you're a curious guy, I'm a curious guy. He started talking to me about how he was doing it, and it was very different from how Robert began.

 

So big focus for us last year, and now this year as well, has been on how can we help people grow and scale on e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon without having to wait a long time to get stuff imported, without having to do a lot of the different things that we've done for so many years, only doing the private labels. It's been incredible. One of the accounts that we're involved in, I mean, we've done well over $1.3 million in, well, less than 18 months with what I'm talking about. And the really crazy thing that I had never done, genuinely, is we can sell things from brands like Disney and Samsung and Adidas and all these huge companies, Mattel, and I never did that. We always went directly to a brand and sold their products on Amazon. And that for me, has been really interesting, just seeing how you can resell things that are already working and already making a ton of money, and the risk factor, as we've learned, is almost zero, simply because we have a methodology whereby we're working with these different distributors or wholesalers. There are different categories of companies we work with.

 

I've never seen anything like it from the speed of success in our community as well. That's been one of the coolest things. Just seeing people who maybe didn't get involved in the private label was too difficult or whatever took too long. All these different things that beginners and beginning entrepreneurs have them actually get involved now and going and doing it and going to have success. So in a way, what's new for me, Aidan, this year in e-commerce is something that's been around for a long time. It's just we hadn't focused on it and I hadn't learned a few of the little pieces that Mike brought to the table, and it's just so exciting and there's even more we're doing. But that's been, I suppose, one of the main things we've been focused on and the success from ourselves and from others has been the most I've ever seen in my 12 years now selling on the internet. So that's pretty cool. And Aidan, at the end of the day, results are the name of the game for ourselves and for others. So, yeah, it's been really, really great, really exciting, and I can't wait to do more.

 

Aidan

You know, we've had a long history of selling our own branded products on Amazon as well. So we now know some of the challenges that people face with that. I mean, for starters, if you're selling your own brand or product on Amazon, it means you're going to have to do some branding upfront. You're going to have to order some inventory, which could be a few thousand dollars’ worth upfront. You're going to have to ship that in to handle all the logistics. Whereas with what you're talking about here, just clarify me if I'm wrong here, it seems like you are not worrying about buying too much inventory, if any, upfront, and you don't need your own brand. What about actually finding these products? Where do you have suppliers? In China? Or is it in the United States? How does that work?

 

Stephen Somers

It's the beauty of it all, really. That in and of itself, I think, is a game changer. I just want to make it clear and put it on record, by the way, for everybody listening, we're huge fans of private label still. I know Aidan and Steve and the team, and also they do a lot of that as well as we talked about. Just want to make that clear. I suppose where I'm coming from is we're talking about what's been a really interesting growth area and this has been it. Just to say yes with domestic suppliers, like I just said, meaning, like, if you're selling an Amazon.com, for example, well, yeah, you're going to domestic US suppliers, number one.

 

Number two, I think what's even more interesting, maybe for you listening today, is simply the fact that if you're selling something that's private label, you're saying, “Well, I'm looking at a market here,” and this market for, let's say, I don't know, tomato stakes, we might sell that because we can see there's an opportunity. We can get our own branded version of this and put it into the market and have success.

 

Whereas my question when I first met Mike way back and he introduced me to this, was it was like, “What if you could just sell what's already working?” He didn't have to establish anything new. You didn't have to even create a new listing. You literally could just sell what was already selling. And yeah, you won't make as big a margin as selling your own branded item, but at the end of the day, what you “lose in speed”, you make up for massively in zero risk, basically, which I'll happily get into. I can't say 100%. It's not zero, but obviously, it's as low as possible, which we can talk about. But it's the fact that it's like, “Oh, I can see that. It's a Disney Princess doll from Frozen or whatever, and I'm able to get access to that from a wholesale distributor, and I'm able to get myself in a position where I could literally sell that.”

 

And so it becomes a case of the question changes from, “Well, do I have to establish something brand new in Amazon?” No, it's like, “How can I jump on this listing and share the revenue and the profits with other people who are selling that exact same item?” And some people are like, “Oh, well, I want to be selling 100% of it. I don't want anybody else,” but you don't need to. You can make tens of thousands of dollars a month by just sharing it and not doing any marketing whatsoever, because people are already on Amazon literally looking for that doll, and they go into that listing to buy it. If you have access to that buy box, I'll happily chat a bit more about the area where it says Add to Cart or Buy Now. So if you've ever been on Amazon, you would see that one seller can only operate that buy box at one time. When you have that, it's kind of like being on page one of Google. You get all the traffic, most of the traffic, you get most of the sales. And yeah, look, there's so much more. I'm happy to go as deep as you want, Aidan, whatever you want.

 

Aidan

Yeah, no, I really enjoy listening to everything you're doing there. And there are a lot of parallels between what you're doing with what we did a few years ago. I think it was 2016, or 2017. We were doing something that we referred to as Amazon Wholesale, which is basically the model that you're talking about here. For some of our listeners, you may remember that we had a product around that called Seven Figure Cycle. In this product, we showed how we were selling everything from bags of seeds to plant in the garden to little gizmos for recording audio on your cell phone, and everything in between.

 

And it really is, in terms of e-commerce, one of the fastest ways to get up and going. I think there are a lot of parallels between what you're doing with this model to what we've been focused on over the past few years with our Kibo courses where we're selling other people's products. The only difference is that we're not specifically using the Amazon platform. We've been selling other people's products. We've been able to pinpoint other people's products that are selling well, sell them in our own stores, and sell them in the Facebook Marketplace and other platforms. But you're specifically doing it on Amazon, which is huge. I mean, can you share some numbers perhaps or just some weird and wacky products that you might have sold or you have seen other people selling on Amazon using and the kind of velocity that you can go from, “Okay, I'm going to start selling this little microphone”? There are three other people selling it as well, the exact same one. How quickly can sales build here?

 

Stephen Somers

Huge. You know, in one of the accounts that we run, that account at the time of recording, it's doing anywhere from about $7000 to $10,000 a day in revenue doing the model. We're selling all kinds of different stuff from different kinds of supplements. We're selling some beauty products, different types of creams, things like that. We're also selling some toy products. So again, literally, we sell like Paw Patrol wallets. It's one of the things that we've sold, right? And again, these Disney Princesses I mentioned, there are even Christmas products that we did a few months back, like Elf on the Shelf type stuff. Because, as you mentioned with your product, you guys talked about it's a similar model, but a little bit different, I think, as well. Because one of the things with us is the brand is very important. Selling a branded product is important in this model, and the reason for that is because the traffic is coming to those listings because the person is looking for that exact item.

 

So another example would be like, we've sold Mattel products, like Hot Wheels products for kids. Again, I'm throwing a toy example just because they're really easy to understand and a lot of you might have seen them before or stepped on them whenever you're in the house and your kids were playing with them, right? But you could get these exact Hot Wheels products, bring it in, and that product could be doing anywhere from about $30,000 to $50,000 in a month in revenue, and then you could be one of three or four sellers selling that. So you can essentially divide the revenue by four if you become the fourth seller. And that's what you could potentially be generating in revenue.

 

I even have another thing I was just looking at the other day. We're not selling it right now, and I don't think any of our clients are yet, but it's like a power tool product. It was a very well-known branded power tool. It was the Wahl brand, and there are about eight different sellers on it, but there are only about three or four who are what we would call competitive sellers. In other words, they're selling it at a price point where they could get access to the Amazon buy box. So let's say they're selling it for $200. Everybody else is selling it for, like, say, $250. Well, Amazon will only give it to the people who are at the lowest price using Amazon's Fulfillment service as well. Key, key point.

 

So, again, like that listing, which is just crazy, we're looking into it and that does about $260,000 a month in revenue on Amazon. That one listing. And so that's likely been split up between about six or seven people. That's a huge velocity. We're not selling that product, just to be clear. But again, our business, that's done about $1.3 million in the last 18 months. That's literally been about six suppliers, approximately selling five to ten products a supplier. It's not like we're selling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different items. And so, really, the name of the game is, how can we find items where people, they're already buying them right now? The traffic is there, no marketing required, therefore. And then how can we get access to those products? Which is a question you asked a minute ago.

 

So just to answer that, how we do that is, let's say I'll just pick the Hot Wheels example. So Mattel Toys are the company that makes the Hot Wheels product, right? So there are a number of different things you can do. You can go to Google, cost you nothing, and you can literally search Mattel Distributors New York, Mattel Distributors California, for example. So we're on different coasts in the US. You will get a lot of results, and even Mattel themselves, in many cases. If it's a distributor, you can go to the website and you can just see these are the distributors that they work with because this is something that people don't understand, Aidan, it's important when you've got these big companies that are humongous, bigger than any of us will ever be, right? They don't have the time to build a sales team, to be on the ground building distribution and warehouses, and all that.

 

So what they do is they say, “Okay, how can we find a wholesale distributor who can take over that for us? They'll go and find resellers. They'll go and deal with Walmart, they'll deal with 7-11. They'll deal with all these big Targets, huge companies, Tesco in the UK, for example. Our goss in the UK, they'll deal with them on behalf of the brand, and so then we can come along. These are just one source of products for us. We can open accounts with these distributors and be a reseller. And so there are different levels to this as well, which, again, we can get into if you want to, but you can go with a wholesaler, which is somebody who gets lots of products in big volume, and then they want to resell them to resellers.

 

You then have a distributor who directly distributes a brand, and that's a little bit more difficult to get involved in, but totally doable. We do it all the time. Then you have the brand, you can work directly with the brand. There are many occasions right now, we're actually establishing a vitamin brand and I think to do some proteins as well on Amazon. They don't want to deal with Amazon. They don't want to do it themselves, so we're literally doing it for them, dealing directly with the brand. So there are three different levels. There are all kinds of different things that can happen at each level. What's the most important thing to understand? Is it actually really simple in many cases to open wholesale accounts? Simple, simple. Distributors are a little bit more involved, but equally not hired at all. So it's so interesting, this whole thing.

 

Aidan

Obviously. We've been talking a lot about this as an interesting opportunity in 2023. It's something that's working really well in e-commerce right now, it would be very interesting to build a brand-new business around it. But a lot of our listeners who already have e-commerce stores, I'm looking at this and thinking, “Hey, this is the way you can add another layer to the business. This is the way that you can have another income stream coming in, diversify what you're doing and tap into this amazing Amazon ecosystem. So get your foot in that door. Leverage everything there is to love about that ecosystem, such as the logistics being handled for you, piggybacking on listings that are already something crazy. For the people that are watching the video version of this podcast, which I should say that you can find at thegrowthbooth.com, head over to the podcast section, navigate to episode number 58, or head over to YouTube and do a search for ‘The Growth Booth’. You'll find this. I'm going to open a little brown box, which I've got, and if you're just listening to the audio vision, I'll explain what I'm doing here.

 

Inside this box, I've got something, two things, actually, that I purchased recently on Amazon, and I purchased them from sellers who were resellers, essentially using the exact model that Stephen is using. So I'm opening up my little brown box here and two things are coming out. One is a pretty boring microphone cable. I can't remember what I paid for that, but we're talking maybe $10 or $15 or something. But the guy that sold this did no work at all, and he was able to pocket, I don't know, 30%, 40% maybe, depending on what his margins were. 

 

Now, the other thing which is pretty interesting is a shotgun microphone. It's a shotgun microphone. Now, this thing from memory might have sold for $100, $180, maybe $200. And also, I didn't buy this from the Rode company. I bought it from just some random seller who was able to sell this product. This person who I bought this from is selling a worldwide, well-known brand in the audio-visual space and would have probably pocketed $20, $30. He didn't have to worry about any branding or anything like that. So this is something that can work for the most mundane products, like a little microphone cable, which could cost $10, or things that can cost hundreds of dollars, like the Rode shotgun mic that I just shared with you. I think that's really interesting.

 

There's an opportunity here to sell lots of different products in your account. You could be selling gardening seeds. You could be selling kitchen accessories. You could be selling a microphone like this one, or you could double down and get into a niche. I know you want to jump in there and say something really smart.

 

Stephen Somers

When you were talking, I went on to Amazon and I decided, “Okay, let me go and see what he's got there.” So I reckon I have the same product. I'm pretty sure I might be a little bit off, but I think it's the same. It's a Rode video microphone. We have software of our own that we use here. A Launchpad, it’s called. What we can do is we can scan the listings. I think you guys had some similar stuff in the past as well. We can scan the listings. We have an algorithm in place that will tell us what kind of revenue that product is doing. This one that I'm looking at, which may not be the exact same as yours, but I think it's very similar, a Rode video mic that does, according to Launchpad, a monthly revenue of $551,518. Right?

 

So again, I'd be saying one person is making all those sales because that's absolutely not going to be the case. It's like you're going to be different people. As I look at it right now, just to say that, as I'm looking at this, there's a company called Pro Cam that is selling it. It's not Amazon themselves. It's called Pro Cam. So they are a third-party seller, just like what we're talking about, who have access to these products, and they're making sales. And you can see at $551,000, let's say there were ten different sellers. I mean, can I even see how many there are? There's used and new from $20.

 

But from what I can see here, there are only about four that actually are competitive, that are selling at the price point where they could make a sale, where Amazon would get in the buy box. So you could divide four into $551,000 and guess approximately what each seller could be generating from a revenue perspective from that one item. You're talking there a margin of probably anywhere from 15% to 30%. So again, you can do the math on that. And say, well, if it was 10% and you were doing $100,000 in sales, that'd be $14,000. But then you're probably talking more than that, so it's probably anywhere from $14,000 to $20,000 a month's profit. The one item, that's just me calculating based on the information I have. Not saying that's exactly what's going on, but that's likely the case.

 

Aidan

Yeah, it's directionally what's happening there. This is kind of back of an envelope scribbling down if you like, of how we go about this. I think it's really useful to sort of understand that Stephen sees a product like that, he's got some software that he can use, he can go to Amazon, and within a couple of seconds, he's got some real numbers coming back to him, which might not be 100% perfect, but directionally, we can see that the microphone is doing $550,000 in sales a month. And maybe the little mic cable might be doing $15,000 in sales a month, to give you an example. So that's awesome.

 

Now, in terms of logistics, how do you guys do that? Do you do Fulfilled by Merchant, where you're essentially setting off a product? How do you fulfill Amazon? How does that work?

 

Stephen Somers

Yeah. No, we definitely don't, which is great news because I have done that many times in my career.

 

Aidan

So you don't do it Fulfilled by Merchant? Just to be clear.

 

Stephen Somers

Yeah, yeah, I have done that many times in my career. That is not what we're doing. Fulfilled by the Merchant being I have the product, I'm shipping it out to you, the customer, and myself. I've done it many times, as I know you have, Aidan, over the years. I don't recommend it. Really stressful if you're dealing with customer support queries all day. It's just not ideal. So what we do is, let's just take this Rode example and just live it out a little bit, right? Just to make it really practical for you listening or watching today:  the Rode product leader goes, “Okay, Rode Distributors in New York.” Let's just say we do that. We go and we search that in Google and we can find companies or whatever distributors who have the product. We open an account with the distributor. Let's just say there are no problems. We open it up and then we're in a situation where we go, “Show me all the products you've got access to, show me your cost/ price to me, how much you're going to charge me,” and then we have a little method where we can just calculate out whether something's profitable or not profitable in our software. Very simple.

 

So let's say we find that Rode mic and it looks like it's going to make us money. It's making us 10% to 15% or whatever, we're really happy. That's great. Well, look at the volume. “Holy crap, we can get access to X amount of sales.” We're very excited at that point. Then we say to the company, “We want to order 20 units.” Again, if you watch it or listen today, you are like, “Why the hell would you only order ten or 20?” Well, you can do that to start if you want, right? Whatever a box quantity is just to get in, get the feel of it, and get going. Usually, suppliers will have a minimum order value, not a minimum order quantity. Like, “You have to order a hundred of these.” Usually, they'll say, “Look, we need you to place an order from $500 to $1000. Every supplier is a little bit different, but usually, that is the range that we see, so we do that. We buy a bunch of different Rode products or little cables that they have access to that we can see we're going to make money with, and then what we say is send them to what we call a prep center.

 

So it's a pre-Amazon location. The prep center is set up for this. We send that, we send the products directly to them. They get them ready into a box, and then Amazon comes and collects that from the prep center. Now, if you're in the country you want to sell in, if you want to do this yourself, you're more than welcome to do so. But a prep center is just an easy way to be completely hands-off, completely passive. You're not involved at all, and you're able to get it into Amazon and you don't have to find couriers or any of that stuff. Amazon will literally come and collect it from you through what they call their preferred carrier. Usually, it’s UPS.

 

So all of this, you can outsource and it's not expensive. You calculate all of this before you place orders and all that, of course, to make certain that you're going to be profitable. And then Amazon takes care of the distribution to the end customer, which is the most tricky part of e-commerce. I don't know if anybody's ever seen the inside of an Amazon warehouse, but it's crazy. It's robots, it shoots, it's everything going on, they're set up for this. And so that's why, in my opinion, makes it a very - what I would call - an extraordinary thing. Simply because we're selling things that are already working, we're getting access to them. We're using other people to ship them out on our behalf. And it's literally just because we know how to put this together in our minds. That's how we can make 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% margins on these things. We're sitting at home or you're sitting in Ireland, Argentina, New Zealand, wherever you are. It's amazing, actually.

 

Aidan

That was actually the next question I was going to have. Obviously, you're up there in Ireland, I'm down here in New Zealand. We've got listeners all over the world and a good number in the United States, obviously, as well. For the people that are not in the United States, are there any obstacles that make this a lot more difficult or barriers and hard to overcome here?

 

Stephen Somers

No, there isn't. I mean, I'm more than happy to say one of the things that you'll use in the US specifically is what we call a reseller certificate. But you can get one of them in like ten minutes by going online and applying for free. We actually use California usually, just to say, but again, it depends on where you live. If you're in the US, maybe you want to do your own state or whatever. In the UK, you can do this model as well. You don't need any of that. It's very, very simple. There's nothing you need. We do recommend people use a company. I think it's just a responsible thing from our perspective to do, just because it's a better way to trade. Usually, if you're dealing with companies, it's a little bit easier.

 

Aidan

Not just that, though. If you are using a company, there are a lot of financial benefits as well to the way that you structure things from a tax standpoint and so much more. I think if you use a company and you set it up correctly, you're normally going to make more money back in savings than if you try to do it as a sole proprietor.

 

Stephen Somers

That's right, Aidan. And then at the end of the day for you, listen, you absolutely can do this. As a sole proprietor, we have people doing it as sole props right now. We just don't recommend it from many perspectives, the tax being one, but also really other things like liability and all that kind of crack. But usually, we're selling stuff that's completely harmless and is never going to be a problem at all. It wouldn't fall on you or me anyway because we're not the person who made the product, but just to say that's why we do it. I tell people, don't be scared about that. Because when you're coming in to learn a business model, be it from Aidan, myself, or whoever, you're coming in because you want to make it a success.

 

My thing always is, “Hey, let's set you up for the biggest success we possibly can, and then let's work towards the fact that you're going to make money doing this and you're going to make a lot of money over time doing this. Therefore, why not? Let's set ourselves up correctly. Let's focus on that being the result that we get. And so that's it for me. It's like if you come in, you're like, “How can I do this for $10 and have no company and put nothing in?” It's like, “Well, you're probably going to get that back on the other end.” Whereas as we know, for every action there's an equal reaction. Put in the right action, and we get the right other side. That's always my take. Anyway, I'm sure you're similar.

 

Aidan

Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. If you treat it like a hobby, you get hobby results, and if you treat it a bit more seriously, you can start getting a bit more serious results. So much of what you've been talking about here today really sort of lends itself to this dream of the four-hour workweek that you can run from anywhere in the world. This is the real four-hour work week and this is one that you can do from anywhere. This is something that's been steady for a few years now. Maybe you haven't heard all that much about it and the sort of online business community, but as I said, we were well in the trenches of this sort of five years ago and continue to be involved in it today. Not at the same level that you are, Stephen, but all this is just to say that this is something that works. And in the world of e-commerce, hopefully, having listened to this episode, you can sort of see where it fits into the jigsaw puzzle and it's something that you can layer on top of other things you've done in the past or build something completely new.

 

And you can get a lot of good information by googling and going and looking at Amazon wholesale businesses and something else that we could actually do because I feel like you've given a good sort of 10,000-foot perspective here. I'd like to be able to drill down more granularly to the step-by-step system. I'm sure there are a number of steps or a recipe that you sort of go through. Maybe we can have you back on another episode in a few weeks' time and sort of drill down to this a little bit more because I know that people are going to be salivating at the idea of being able to get in on this.

 

I want to sort of fill that gap, make sure people have got some more info, anything that you sort of want to leave people with in mind that hopefully, we could get you back in a few weeks’ time?

 

Stephen Somers

Yeah. I'll just kind of finish with a philosophical piece of business and what I think about a lot. Anyway, I hope this is helpful for you listening today. At the end of the day again, I know it is a long time and everything that they put out is great and similar to ourselves, we put out things that are really high quality because why? Because we want to have an impact on the world. We want to see people like yourself have some success and big success. I suppose it comes back around to this idea that I learned many years ago, changed my whole life, and it was becoming a producer, not just a consumer. I read it in The Millionaire Fastlane book by M.J. DeMarco. It's a book I always read.

 

Aidan

M.J. DeMarco, love that book.

 

Stephen Somers

Love it. I interviewed him a little while ago actually. Super nice guy, a really interesting dude. And it's an amazing book. But that little concept, Aidan, for me was life-changing because I started thinking about it going, “Well, if I'm on the internet, like even with social media, am I spending more time consuming social media or am I using social media to produce something for myself and my family? If it's Amazon, am I buying stuff on Amazon all the time, or am I selling stuff on Amazon?” So you can take any aspect of your life and flip it and go, “How can I use this to be a producer?”

 

And then if you're consuming all the time, be it a course even, let's say you take a program from Aidan or my own or whatever, and you find that you're just listening to it all the time. It's problematic. You've got to become the producer. You’ve got to take that now and put it into action. Because anything that I've ever learned from anybody of substance that I've put into action, I've got results with being good, bad, or indifferent. And I know a friend of ours, a mutual friend, Anik, one of the things Anik said to me recently, which was really pretty great because he's a very successful guy, he said to me, “Stephen, you want to know something? I reckon you may just be the best implementer I've ever seen of just doing and listening and just going and doing something with it.” And for you listening today, I think that's a great thing to become known for, for being the person who is the single best implementer anyone's ever seen. That's been my goal over the last number of years, twelve years now.

 

Because before that, Aidan, I was the exact opposite. I mean, I'm telling you now, I was the exact opposite. I would talk about great ideas, “Is this money making thing or this, that and the other…” and I would do nothing with it. So for you listening today, whoever it is you work with, just make that your focus this year, you're going to have huge success. So that would be my tiring note today.

 

Aidan

Couldn't agree more with everything you've said there. I'll leave people with one more tidbit that comes to mind when I think about that, The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. He said something along the lines of “You get compensated in proportion to the size of the product, the size of the problem that you solve.” You could solve a small problem for millions and millions of people and make a lot of money, or you could solve a very, very big problem for a small number of people and make a lot of money. I think if we relate that back to e-commerce, what we're talking about doing here is hitting lots and lots of singles, selling lots and lots of products, and solving lots and lots of small problems. Like the guy that needs to buy a microphone, being able to put that in front of him at a price that works and being able to get a cut of that and doing that all day long and doing that for lots and lots of different products, this is something that I've kept coming back to over the past decade or more like almost two decades now since I've been building my online business.

 

I think e-commerce and particularly the model that you're talking about, we've been speaking about here today, Stephen, where you don't have to have a big line of products of your own, it allows you to solve lots of problems for lots and lots of people. And again, as I said, I'd love to be able to get you back here in a few weeks' time maybe and be able to drill down into some more of the specific steps and just provide some more value.

 

So thank you once again, man, for taking some time out of your day. I know you got two rugrats running. Or one of them is running, anyway. The other one is probably asleep or something. Newborn, relatively newborn baby at this point. So thanks for taking some time away from all of that and being here with us to share some insights today.

 

Stephen Somers

Yeah. Thank you, Aidan. Thanks for having me on, I really appreciate it. I love being here, I love chatting with you. So anytime, if you guys want me back on, I'm here. Thank you so much.

 

Aidan

Fantastic. Well, that is a wrap, guys. Make sure you head over to TheGrowthBooth.com, navigate to episode number 58. You're going to be able to see lots of links to the different things that we've discussed, a full transcription, and the video content as well, which you can also find on YouTube. Just navigate to The Growth Booth. Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you can see us in our beautiful faces on video, beaming into whatever device you want to watch this on. And that's a wrap. We'll see you in the next episode of The Growth Booth.