So about a month or so ago, @Eskil and @1step offered an opportunity for 1-on-1 Amazon coaching and I decided to jump on it. The details of the program are listed HERE, for those not familiar or who may have missed it originally.
Now, my intention with this thread is not only to hold myself accountable through this process, but to also offer as much insight to others who may be starting their own similar journeys.
However, I do want to predicate this by saying that while I intend to be as forthcoming as possible, I will also be adding an additional layer of filtering on my words simply because my experiences, at least in the recent past and near future, are and will be guided by the paid course that @Eskil and @1step are offering. I have no intentions of revealing the details or specifics behind the content of their coaching because that content is private to those paying for the program. However, I do believe I can still provide some valuable content without crossing that line. Where possible, I will try to point out where I am leaving things out intentionally that are directly related to the content of the coaching.
Finally, I want to remind everyone that this is a personalized coaching program. My experiences and progress vs. that of the others in the program will probably vary. I have yet to interact with any of the other nine students, nor do I know who they are or where they are on their own journey. For all I know, they could be 10 steps ahead or 10 steps behind where I sit with this today.
Because I am long winded by nature, (@Eskil can confirm,
) I will try to section off the content of my posts. This first post will have extra background info that many of you probably won’t care about. Feel free to skip ahead to where you find value in the post. However, sometimes this stuff can add perspective for others, so I will leave it in there.
A Quick Background About Me...
I am 36 years old and currently live in Pennsylvania with my wife and two daughters. At 22, I started my first business, a home theater / home automation company that did residential installations. My business partner and I managed and ran everything ourselves with the help one additional person whom we made a minority partner (mainly to avoid the extra costs of having employees vs. owners). We grew our sales yearly, but by choice, we never expanded our work force beyond three. Shortly after I turned 33, we merged that business into a much larger company that wanted to utilize our skill sets to help expand their service offerings in the commercial sector. I work for them currently managing a subdivision of the parent company that focuses on high end AV and Security related installations for corporate and educational clients.
At the time of the merger, I made the decision to give up control of my company to pursue what I thought would have been an improved lifestyle that would provide me with more time for my family. Now, 3 years after the merger, I miss the excitement of owning my own business. I am doing better financially than I ever have, but I can’t shake the desire to build something I can call my own and take everything I have learned from my past mistakes to create something truly exciting.
So why choose the 1-On-1 Amazon Coaching?
About a year or so ago I took a step back to look at how I wanted the rest of my life to go. I realized pretty quickly that the path I wanted to walk down didn’t include working for someone else for the rest of my life even though my current slowlane wouldn't exist without the efforts it took to create my first business.
One of the things I did was re-read TMF for some inspiration. That in turn brought me back to lurking around here and absorbing whatever knowledge I could.
Anyways, I started exploring options that I felt would allow me to create a business that would help support the lifestyle I wanted to live. But this time around things were a little different for me. I had a family to support and all of the responsibilities that came with it. Even though I know they would understand and support whatever I decision I would make, I didn’t want them to have to give up what I had worked so hard to give them. So, in turn, I have decided to build this business while I continue to work my day job.
As I set back out on the path to entrepreneurship for the second time, I found myself struggling to execute like I used to know how to. I ended up wasting time looking for the safe play and afraid to take risks. At one point I even broke out of my lurker's shell and invaded @Kak’s e-commerce progress thread trying to get him to validate things for me. Even MJ jumped in to point out to me what I was doing. At that point I figured it was time for me to put on the big boy pants. I got my ducks in a row emotionally and set aside some money so I could get started. Then, two things happened that coincided with my decision to change. First, I took advantage of a phone call with @JackEdwards. His perspective added that additional kick in the a$$ (props to @JackEdwards). Also, right around that same time, @Eskil and @1step put up their thread offering the 1-on-1 coaching.
I quickly made the decision to jump on the coaching program. I had lost so much time farting around and looking for people to put up safety nets for me that I was eager to entertain anything that would help me get back some of that lost time. Even though I was prepared to take the leap on my own, I figured if I could afford to pay someone to help me navigate through things at a much faster pace than I could do on my own, well the hell not do it?
@Eskil and @1step had a history of posts that seemed to continually add value to people on this forum. Now, being more of a lurker than a poster, I could only go off of my gut at this point. I had not established a past relationship with either of them, but they seemed like the right guys for the job. They also got some pretty good endorsements from other reputable members here. It was time for me to prove to myself that I could put up or shut up….so I sent @Eskil the money and got the ball rolling.
So what do I hope to get out of all of this?
My long term goal is to build a business that allows me to live a location independent lifestyle. I want to be able to offer my children the opportunity to see the world and experience things that they would not normally get to experience just living in western Pennsylvania or on the yearly family vacation.
I also want to build something that will add value to lives of other. How I will accomplish all of this and how all of this will play out, well, I don’t have a script for it yet. But I will get there.
I am using the Amazon coaching opportunity as a stepping stone. I am hoping to generate enough income doing this to replace what I currently make so that I can quit the slowlane job and build something that offers me control of my life. That is what I view as true the fastlane. For me, The Fastlane is not just about hitting a target number in your bank account so you can sustain a preferred lifestyle. Sure, that number is and can be a key element to achieving your goals. But as has been stated here by so many that have wisdom beyond my years, if your single goal is the pursuit of an arbitrary number then you will miss out on the true meaning of the fastlane.
So as of right now, I have decided on e-commerce is my chosen vehicle for this ride and I can’t wait to see where this ride takes me. I have a genuine interest in the process and I am hoping that as I continue to put together the pieces of the puzzle, I will meet new and interesting people, forge new relationships and begin to identify other opportunities that I can grow into.
Also, aside from the knowledge I hope to gain regarding the process, I hope to build friendships with other like minded individuals and grow with them as they forge their own path. Building a business or embarking on an entrepreneurial journey can be a long and arduous journey. Having the right people in your corner, even if it’s someone you can bounce your frustrations off of from time to time, can severely help your mental state. I am kind of hoping that when the class ends there will be opportunities for the others in the group to chat. Maybe even create a small mastermind group on Skype or something to help each other press on.
So what did you actually accomplish besides writing a really long progress post?
So for those who opened this thread hoping to find something more than the ramblings of some random internet guy, here are the details of my first month in the program…
After I filled out the sign-up forms, @Eskil reached out to me almost immediately regarding my sign up. I asked a question or two and then sent him the money. @Eskil was assigned to be my coach. Because it’s basically self-paced personalized coaching and not a set curriculum, we picked an “official” start date that worked for both our schedules and determined that our primary method of communication would be weekly scheduled Skype meetings with email conversations as much as needed in between.
Even though I had done some research on e-commerce on my own prior to contacting him, I had explained to him that I wanted to go through this process from the beginning and to assume I knew nothing about it. Which was for the most part true. In my opinion what you can learn from research does not equate to knowledge gained from action. I also wanted to learn as much as I could along the way about how these guys did things. I saw potential to fill in possible gaps in what I had done.
So with that said, the first step was to find a product to sell. During our first chat, @Eskil gave me some criteria to use when searching for a product and told me to have a list of options that we could review during our next scheduled chat. His commitment was to bring a list of a his own product ideas to share as well. So, using the criteria set forth, I organized a list of about 5-10 items for us to evaluate.
When we talked next, we went through my list and talked about a couple of his ideas as well. We then started eliminating items that he thought wouldn’t make viable options. We narrowed it down to about two or three products. (I am intentionally leaving out the details of what he shared about what he thought would make a viable product. I feel this is course specific content). I ended up choosing a product that both of us actually happened to have on our lists that met the requirements. I figured if we both came to the exact same product on our own out of the millions of products on Amazon, then that was a good sign.
From there, I started reaching out to manufacturers in China. Now, @Eskil and @1step do specifically mention in their thread that they don’t provide assistance with sourcing from China, but @Eskil was willing to be a sounding board for me during this process and offer his opinions along the way, which he did. Because they don’t cover the specifics of China sourcing in the course, I will try to cover my experiences in more detail in a future post, but there are already good posts on this forum that do discuss this as well.
After many conversations with various manufacturers from China, I started to realize that the product we chose had a potential problem. Even though it seemed to be almost ideal in terms of the criteria we used for selection, it ended up being way too expensive for me to have shipped here to the US. In looking at the product itself, I never anticipated this would be the case, but I got almost 20-30 price quotes that confirmed I was wrong.
Essentially, what I found out was that to have this shipped here via air I would be pretty much bottoming out my profit, far below the desired profit margins we wanted to achieve. The shipping costs were effectively exceeding the product costs by almost 150%. The product was not heavy, but apparently how they packaged it for shipping drastically affected pricing based on the volume of the cartons used for shipping. This appeared to be consistent with every manufacturer I talked to. Now, if this were not a course that had to be completed in 3 months, I probably would have continued to pursue this product and just have it shipped by sea. The pricing for that method was much more reasonable and put us back in our desired profit margins. But for now, I was on a timetable. At least if I wanted to keep this rolling along and learn as much as I could about the ENTIRE process from start to sale. So, I needed to adjust quickly.
We went back to the drawing board immediately and I chose another product. Because I liked the potential of first product so much, I decided to pick another product in basically the same niche with the plan that if I am able to find success in this niche and build upon it, then I can go back and take a stab at the first product at a later date. I figured once I had a successful product rolling, I could afford to wait for the first product to ship by sea.
Now, just a quick few notes about my product and niche. My niche is large. Very large as a matter of a fact. The products I am choosing within this niche are nothing special and most people wouldn’t turn their head at them if you saw them. As mentioned, I can’t really go into details here as to how we chose the product but I will say this….If you are trying to pick your own products to sell...think simple. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Yup...that’s vague. I know. But reread that sentence a few times until it clicks.
Ok, so you are one month in and all you have done is pick a product?
Well, product selection is just one small piece of the puzzle. I am not one for excuses and admit that in hindsight there were probably better ways for me to execute my actionable steps. But I am learning and those same mistakes won’t be made moving forward.
But more specifically, during that time I also:
Admittedly, I made a big mistake during my negotiations with China. From day 1, I should have done them ALL through Skype. My problem was I chose to go the email route and that cost me WAY too much time. I probably could have shaved off a good bit of the time I spent negotiating had I done it all on Skype. I will always do it that way moving forward unless a better method presents itself. I think I didn't do it this way initially because I was never a big Skype user going into this, but that will change now.
Also, I got a little held up in the time I lost pursuing the first product. That hurt a bit. Also, I had a family vacation scheduled in there as well. I took my laptop and did some work there when the family was sleeping, but my primary focus during that time was the time I could spend with my family.
All in all I would say I am comfortable with where I am at. Could I be further along if I would have executed more efficiently? Sure. But in one month I am way further ahead than I expected I would be a month ago. Plus, I have learned a ton already...which was the goal. I can tell you for the next product I expect to execute in half the time.
So what's next?
At this point I am expecting to receive my first full order of product the week after next. Our plan is to then prep the product for sale on Amazon and work on optimizing the product listings. This is the part I am most excited to learn about and probably the most green at.
During my downtime of waiting for the first lot of products to arrive, I have some small tasks to execute and I am working on them currently. Details around those will come later.
As we progress I also hope to talk about what my expectations are going into this versus how they actually play out and any of the other challenges I will face or have faced along the way.
Please feel free to ask anything and I will do my best to answer. If you read this far I would say you probably need to go ahead and get up and stretch your eyeballs a bit. I told you I was long winded!
Thanks for reading.
Bryan
Now, my intention with this thread is not only to hold myself accountable through this process, but to also offer as much insight to others who may be starting their own similar journeys.
However, I do want to predicate this by saying that while I intend to be as forthcoming as possible, I will also be adding an additional layer of filtering on my words simply because my experiences, at least in the recent past and near future, are and will be guided by the paid course that @Eskil and @1step are offering. I have no intentions of revealing the details or specifics behind the content of their coaching because that content is private to those paying for the program. However, I do believe I can still provide some valuable content without crossing that line. Where possible, I will try to point out where I am leaving things out intentionally that are directly related to the content of the coaching.
Finally, I want to remind everyone that this is a personalized coaching program. My experiences and progress vs. that of the others in the program will probably vary. I have yet to interact with any of the other nine students, nor do I know who they are or where they are on their own journey. For all I know, they could be 10 steps ahead or 10 steps behind where I sit with this today.
Because I am long winded by nature, (@Eskil can confirm,
) I will try to section off the content of my posts. This first post will have extra background info that many of you probably won’t care about. Feel free to skip ahead to where you find value in the post. However, sometimes this stuff can add perspective for others, so I will leave it in there.A Quick Background About Me...
I am 36 years old and currently live in Pennsylvania with my wife and two daughters. At 22, I started my first business, a home theater / home automation company that did residential installations. My business partner and I managed and ran everything ourselves with the help one additional person whom we made a minority partner (mainly to avoid the extra costs of having employees vs. owners). We grew our sales yearly, but by choice, we never expanded our work force beyond three. Shortly after I turned 33, we merged that business into a much larger company that wanted to utilize our skill sets to help expand their service offerings in the commercial sector. I work for them currently managing a subdivision of the parent company that focuses on high end AV and Security related installations for corporate and educational clients.
At the time of the merger, I made the decision to give up control of my company to pursue what I thought would have been an improved lifestyle that would provide me with more time for my family. Now, 3 years after the merger, I miss the excitement of owning my own business. I am doing better financially than I ever have, but I can’t shake the desire to build something I can call my own and take everything I have learned from my past mistakes to create something truly exciting.
So why choose the 1-On-1 Amazon Coaching?
About a year or so ago I took a step back to look at how I wanted the rest of my life to go. I realized pretty quickly that the path I wanted to walk down didn’t include working for someone else for the rest of my life even though my current slowlane wouldn't exist without the efforts it took to create my first business.
One of the things I did was re-read TMF for some inspiration. That in turn brought me back to lurking around here and absorbing whatever knowledge I could.
Anyways, I started exploring options that I felt would allow me to create a business that would help support the lifestyle I wanted to live. But this time around things were a little different for me. I had a family to support and all of the responsibilities that came with it. Even though I know they would understand and support whatever I decision I would make, I didn’t want them to have to give up what I had worked so hard to give them. So, in turn, I have decided to build this business while I continue to work my day job.
As I set back out on the path to entrepreneurship for the second time, I found myself struggling to execute like I used to know how to. I ended up wasting time looking for the safe play and afraid to take risks. At one point I even broke out of my lurker's shell and invaded @Kak’s e-commerce progress thread trying to get him to validate things for me. Even MJ jumped in to point out to me what I was doing. At that point I figured it was time for me to put on the big boy pants. I got my ducks in a row emotionally and set aside some money so I could get started. Then, two things happened that coincided with my decision to change. First, I took advantage of a phone call with @JackEdwards. His perspective added that additional kick in the a$$ (props to @JackEdwards). Also, right around that same time, @Eskil and @1step put up their thread offering the 1-on-1 coaching.
I quickly made the decision to jump on the coaching program. I had lost so much time farting around and looking for people to put up safety nets for me that I was eager to entertain anything that would help me get back some of that lost time. Even though I was prepared to take the leap on my own, I figured if I could afford to pay someone to help me navigate through things at a much faster pace than I could do on my own, well the hell not do it?
@Eskil and @1step had a history of posts that seemed to continually add value to people on this forum. Now, being more of a lurker than a poster, I could only go off of my gut at this point. I had not established a past relationship with either of them, but they seemed like the right guys for the job. They also got some pretty good endorsements from other reputable members here. It was time for me to prove to myself that I could put up or shut up….so I sent @Eskil the money and got the ball rolling.
So what do I hope to get out of all of this?
My long term goal is to build a business that allows me to live a location independent lifestyle. I want to be able to offer my children the opportunity to see the world and experience things that they would not normally get to experience just living in western Pennsylvania or on the yearly family vacation.
I also want to build something that will add value to lives of other. How I will accomplish all of this and how all of this will play out, well, I don’t have a script for it yet. But I will get there.
I am using the Amazon coaching opportunity as a stepping stone. I am hoping to generate enough income doing this to replace what I currently make so that I can quit the slowlane job and build something that offers me control of my life. That is what I view as true the fastlane. For me, The Fastlane is not just about hitting a target number in your bank account so you can sustain a preferred lifestyle. Sure, that number is and can be a key element to achieving your goals. But as has been stated here by so many that have wisdom beyond my years, if your single goal is the pursuit of an arbitrary number then you will miss out on the true meaning of the fastlane.
So as of right now, I have decided on e-commerce is my chosen vehicle for this ride and I can’t wait to see where this ride takes me. I have a genuine interest in the process and I am hoping that as I continue to put together the pieces of the puzzle, I will meet new and interesting people, forge new relationships and begin to identify other opportunities that I can grow into.
Also, aside from the knowledge I hope to gain regarding the process, I hope to build friendships with other like minded individuals and grow with them as they forge their own path. Building a business or embarking on an entrepreneurial journey can be a long and arduous journey. Having the right people in your corner, even if it’s someone you can bounce your frustrations off of from time to time, can severely help your mental state. I am kind of hoping that when the class ends there will be opportunities for the others in the group to chat. Maybe even create a small mastermind group on Skype or something to help each other press on.
So what did you actually accomplish besides writing a really long progress post?
So for those who opened this thread hoping to find something more than the ramblings of some random internet guy, here are the details of my first month in the program…
After I filled out the sign-up forms, @Eskil reached out to me almost immediately regarding my sign up. I asked a question or two and then sent him the money. @Eskil was assigned to be my coach. Because it’s basically self-paced personalized coaching and not a set curriculum, we picked an “official” start date that worked for both our schedules and determined that our primary method of communication would be weekly scheduled Skype meetings with email conversations as much as needed in between.
Even though I had done some research on e-commerce on my own prior to contacting him, I had explained to him that I wanted to go through this process from the beginning and to assume I knew nothing about it. Which was for the most part true. In my opinion what you can learn from research does not equate to knowledge gained from action. I also wanted to learn as much as I could along the way about how these guys did things. I saw potential to fill in possible gaps in what I had done.
So with that said, the first step was to find a product to sell. During our first chat, @Eskil gave me some criteria to use when searching for a product and told me to have a list of options that we could review during our next scheduled chat. His commitment was to bring a list of a his own product ideas to share as well. So, using the criteria set forth, I organized a list of about 5-10 items for us to evaluate.
When we talked next, we went through my list and talked about a couple of his ideas as well. We then started eliminating items that he thought wouldn’t make viable options. We narrowed it down to about two or three products. (I am intentionally leaving out the details of what he shared about what he thought would make a viable product. I feel this is course specific content). I ended up choosing a product that both of us actually happened to have on our lists that met the requirements. I figured if we both came to the exact same product on our own out of the millions of products on Amazon, then that was a good sign.
From there, I started reaching out to manufacturers in China. Now, @Eskil and @1step do specifically mention in their thread that they don’t provide assistance with sourcing from China, but @Eskil was willing to be a sounding board for me during this process and offer his opinions along the way, which he did. Because they don’t cover the specifics of China sourcing in the course, I will try to cover my experiences in more detail in a future post, but there are already good posts on this forum that do discuss this as well.
After many conversations with various manufacturers from China, I started to realize that the product we chose had a potential problem. Even though it seemed to be almost ideal in terms of the criteria we used for selection, it ended up being way too expensive for me to have shipped here to the US. In looking at the product itself, I never anticipated this would be the case, but I got almost 20-30 price quotes that confirmed I was wrong.
Essentially, what I found out was that to have this shipped here via air I would be pretty much bottoming out my profit, far below the desired profit margins we wanted to achieve. The shipping costs were effectively exceeding the product costs by almost 150%. The product was not heavy, but apparently how they packaged it for shipping drastically affected pricing based on the volume of the cartons used for shipping. This appeared to be consistent with every manufacturer I talked to. Now, if this were not a course that had to be completed in 3 months, I probably would have continued to pursue this product and just have it shipped by sea. The pricing for that method was much more reasonable and put us back in our desired profit margins. But for now, I was on a timetable. At least if I wanted to keep this rolling along and learn as much as I could about the ENTIRE process from start to sale. So, I needed to adjust quickly.
We went back to the drawing board immediately and I chose another product. Because I liked the potential of first product so much, I decided to pick another product in basically the same niche with the plan that if I am able to find success in this niche and build upon it, then I can go back and take a stab at the first product at a later date. I figured once I had a successful product rolling, I could afford to wait for the first product to ship by sea.
Now, just a quick few notes about my product and niche. My niche is large. Very large as a matter of a fact. The products I am choosing within this niche are nothing special and most people wouldn’t turn their head at them if you saw them. As mentioned, I can’t really go into details here as to how we chose the product but I will say this….If you are trying to pick your own products to sell...think simple. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Yup...that’s vague. I know. But reread that sentence a few times until it clicks.
Ok, so you are one month in and all you have done is pick a product?
Well, product selection is just one small piece of the puzzle. I am not one for excuses and admit that in hindsight there were probably better ways for me to execute my actionable steps. But I am learning and those same mistakes won’t be made moving forward.
But more specifically, during that time I also:
- opened and funded a bank account
- opened and established my Amazon seller’s account
- researched and established a brand name
- did keyword research for my chosen product
- explored and chose stock photography for branding the product
- found and secured a domain name for a brand website
- negotiated with chinese manufacturers (more on this soon)
- ordered samples from several manufacturers
- evaluated the samples and narrowed it to one manufacturer
- placed my initial opening inventory of 100 units for testing
Admittedly, I made a big mistake during my negotiations with China. From day 1, I should have done them ALL through Skype. My problem was I chose to go the email route and that cost me WAY too much time. I probably could have shaved off a good bit of the time I spent negotiating had I done it all on Skype. I will always do it that way moving forward unless a better method presents itself. I think I didn't do it this way initially because I was never a big Skype user going into this, but that will change now.
Also, I got a little held up in the time I lost pursuing the first product. That hurt a bit. Also, I had a family vacation scheduled in there as well. I took my laptop and did some work there when the family was sleeping, but my primary focus during that time was the time I could spend with my family.
All in all I would say I am comfortable with where I am at. Could I be further along if I would have executed more efficiently? Sure. But in one month I am way further ahead than I expected I would be a month ago. Plus, I have learned a ton already...which was the goal. I can tell you for the next product I expect to execute in half the time.
So what's next?
At this point I am expecting to receive my first full order of product the week after next. Our plan is to then prep the product for sale on Amazon and work on optimizing the product listings. This is the part I am most excited to learn about and probably the most green at.
During my downtime of waiting for the first lot of products to arrive, I have some small tasks to execute and I am working on them currently. Details around those will come later.
As we progress I also hope to talk about what my expectations are going into this versus how they actually play out and any of the other challenges I will face or have faced along the way.
Please feel free to ask anything and I will do my best to answer. If you read this far I would say you probably need to go ahead and get up and stretch your eyeballs a bit. I told you I was long winded!
Thanks for reading.
Bryan
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