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David is on the show today and we talk about how he went from $0 to $100K+ per month on Amazon in well under a year. David also has ambitious plans to build a team and scale the business even further. If you want to hear about how to scale quickly you'll enjoy this episode.
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Podcast Transcript
Intro: Hello everyone, Chris Guthrie here, host of Sellercast. In today’s episode, I interview David, who started selling in July of 2015 but has already been doing six figures per month and has done so several months in a row, actually. So we talk about how he was able to ramp up so quickly. And we also talk about some of his goals for scaling and growing this business even further. So let’s get into this episode. And hopefully, you’ll enjoy what you have to hear.
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Chris Guthrie: Hello everyone, Chris Guthrie here, host of Sellercast. And today I have David on the show. David, welcome.
David: Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me, buddy.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, we just met down in Vegas. We were at an event. It was nice to see you in person. And I know we’d seen each other at a previous event. But it’s great to have you here. And I’m excited to talk about your journey and your ecommerce business that you’ve been building along the way. So that’ll be fun.
David: Yeah, thanks a lot.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, so we know your name, but how long have you been selling? And why did you get into this in the first place?
David: Okay, a bit about me with my story, I got into this about seven or eight months ago. I was actually looking for my stats yesterday. And I saw that I took my first sale on the 1st of July.
Chris Guthrie: Was that July of 2015?
David: Yeah, July 2015. And I got into it. I had a bit of a history in terms of my old workplaces, where I had a few careers, maybe two or three. I kind of jumped around. And then I ended up in more of a really corporate type of office, really long hours. I kind of hit a point where I thought, “I’ve got to do something different here.”
Chris Guthrie: Okay. And so that’s what got you into doing it. So how did the start of the business go for you then? Did you pick one product to start with? Did you start with private labeling? Or did you do retail arbitrage before that? What did you do?
David: What I did basically is I just had it as an idea to make money online. I don’t really know why. And it’s pretty funny. I just started searching online, basically through Google searches, YouTube, and so on and so forth. And I actually came across a few ideas first. I know apps were pretty big around 2012 and onwards. So people started making their own apps and that sort of stuff. I looked at that. I also looked at Kindle e-book publishing. And then I just kept searching. And funnily enough I came across one of your YouTube videos. I think you had made about $6000 or so dollars in sales in about 30 days or something. I thought that was pretty cool.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, it’s an older video.
David: Yeah, it’s one of the older ones. And then I thought, “Wow! This seems like it’s onto something. This guy seems pretty chilled out. And looks like he’s working from his basement, just pulling these numbers through.” And I thought, “You know what? I might start looking at it.” And then I just kind of went down a rabbit hole where you just keep going. And one thing leads you onto another. Then you end up in a few courses. And one of the major courses I jumped on was Amazing Selling Machine. I’m sure a lot of your viewers would’ve heard of it. I jumped on that course as part of my training. I did a lot of other stuff on the side. I actually was self-taught before that course. And I just went through podcasts and just pretty much consumed a lot of information, and basically, just did things as they made sense and kind of just moved quite quickly, to be honest.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, there are so many people that have learned from specific courses. There are a lot of them out there. Some people like, dislike all the different names out there. So it’s great. You learned from a course. Then you started also learning from other sources like podcasts, videos, blog posts etc.
Let’s bring us up to speed on where your business is at now. How much are you selling at this point in time in February of 2016?
David: Yeah, sure. At the moment, I’ve just crossed over the $100,000 a month mark, and that’s revenue. And that’s as of this month, in February. To be honest, the most growth happened around November, December. I don’t know whether or not it’s because of the Christmas period. I think it’s more of a case of just the velocity in my product may have overtaken and displaced one of the competitors, which is what I believe has happened. And I’ve been tracking everyone’s sales. I watch it pretty closely. So for some reason or another, it’s kind of switched over. And there are other people that have entered the market. I guess with this business, your product is either on or off. That’s what I found. And I find that it hits a critical mass at some point. And then it just kind of takes off from there.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, that’s a consistent theme that I see when I talk to people and just from talking to a lot of sellers. So $100,000 per month. And what are your margins roughly then?
David: If I look at it, I’ve got four products at the moment, two major ones that are selling. I just had a look at them the other day. The first product, the margin is about 60 percent. And the second product, the margin is closer to about 50. It’s about 47-48. And that’s before advertising cost. So that’s purely the net margin, not including the advertising cost. And it’s been selling quite well. I’ve turned all ads off for a few weeks, to be honest, just to kind of catch up with inventory. Otherwise, I pretty much push it to run ads. There’s no point to run ads when you’re forecasting forward and you’re seeing you may potentially be out of stock.
Chris Guthrie: That’s fantastic. I mean less than a year’s selling, and you’re already past six figures in a month and have done it now a few months in a row, at least since November, December.
David: I used to watch these podcasts myself and I used to see these people doing these crazy numbers. I was thinking, “How the hell are they doing this? I’m going to work at it for a year or two and just keep that and maybe I’ll get there.” Just can’t believe what’s actually happened.
Chris Guthrie: That’s fantastic. And so this is the typical thing when we have guests come on, they don’t talk about what they’re selling, of course, but can you share – and you don’t have to if you don’t want to – but can you share the specific niche that you’re in or category on Amazon Press?
David: Yes. My product’s in health and personal care. And I was thinking about this the other day. I think the main thing with the growth now, people look at it and see a large number and think, yeah I’d be happy with that and I’m happy to kind of stop there and, you know, I’ll take a hundred grand every month, you know, all day every day, but the thing is, I think it’s more a case of the initial margin in the product. I look at a figure of the ratio, so money in money out. So if you put a thousand dollars of inventory in, how much are you going to get back out? Net of everything. So, net of all your Amazon seller fees, everything. And my ratio was about 5 or 6. So I put a dollar in and I’d literally get $5 back and I thought that was insane and that’s basically the thing that allowed me to restock really quickly and when I could restock really quickly, I all of a sudden could come to the party with a much bigger gun, if you will, and you just blast out a lot more. More reviews, more ranking, and it just kind of helps you push up and I think that’s one of the key things, how I started.
Chris Guthrie: I like that philosophy. The dollar in, dollar out. I actually talked to another person recently and they said that they were really into real estate and actually sold all of their real estate investment properties specifically so they could just hit Amazon harder and get into it at a much higher level and so that’s great. And just for context, how much did you start with when you did your first initial order? I know some people that are starting there like I can only afford a thousand bucks. Maybe they can’t even afford that and so what did you do with your first order to kind of get you started, and then keep recycling that money so you can keep getting it further and further with more inventory, new products, etc?
David: So, I started off with a thousand units and the key is if you can get a product that you can land in the States for $2-$4, that’s going to be ideal. I mean, coming up with $3000-$4000, I know it’s hard. I know people have different situations. But it’s not like you’re mortgaging your house to buy a traditional brick and mortar business. It’s really not that much. It’s just a few grand. If you have to save for a few months, so be it. But, yeah, you want to come to the party with at least a thousand units because you’re pretty much a nobody on Amazon. You need reviews, you need ranking, you need a lot of inventory to play with, and then also, you need inventory to sell through whilst you have your re-order going and it’s a kind of a cash flow balancing act.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah. Let’s talk about a little bit that as well. But going back to one earlier point you mentioned where you’re talking about your margins, you mentioned one product was 60%, the other was 48-50%, and that was before advertising costs. So when you specifically separated that out, that made me think, okay you’re probably doing a lot with advertising or you’ve tried a lot of different things or it’s just a matter of you aren’t tracking that metric but what are you doing on the advertising side? Is it just Amazon PPC or are you doing other stuff as well?
David: Yeah. Just purely Amazon PPC and I’ve done a lot of experimenting in terms of different types of campaigns and just the different types of advertising settings that Amazon makes available and I’ve got it down to a point where my first product, I could advertise, when I was really pushing and I think I was paying for all the units that I was selling in the daily ad spend, it worked out to be about $2 or so per unit and then on the second product, it turned out, because it was a high-value product, it would be about $3 to $4 per unit. So, you kind of spread the advertising cost over your daily sales.
Chris Guthrie: Okay, so you’re saying about $2 for your first product and then $3 to $4 in advertising costs to get a sale. So your ACOS then, I guess it depends on what you’re sale price was, but can you give that as a percentage …?
David: Oh, no. What I meant is I normally have ACOSs around from as low as 15% up to about 50% or 60% across advertising campaigns. So, effectively, so my worst case, my campaigns kind of pay for themselves. But I spread the advertising cost across the daily sales and I kind of justify it in that way.
Chris Guthrie: Nice, nice. Okay. That makes sense.
David: And then when I look at my profit margin, I can say, “Okay, I’m moving so many units a week. I will spend this much in advertising a week.” It’s effectively $2 per unit, so then I can quickly work out what my margins are.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah. And other things that seem to be changing on Amazon, it continues to seem that the PPC platform is getting a lot of different changes along the way and you mentioned that you tried a bunch of different campaign settings and testings. What have you found along the way that’s worked best for you in terms of the products you’ve been selling? I mean, are you doing auto-campaigns, manual, both? Maybe you can share a bit about that.
David: I’m fairly impatient. I don’t like auto-campaigns because they take too long and that really depends on whether or not Amazon believes you have relevancy for a keyword and the way you can find it, if you have relevancy for a keyword, is, for instance, there’s a program out there, Keyword Inspector. You can do a reverse scrape of a competitor and just basically take all the main keywords that they’re apparently selling for, throw it in a campaign, put some money behind, and see what happens, and then the ones that you show up for, you seal the impression, so you think, “Okay, Amazon believes I’m relevant for this,” and then you have a look at whether or not you’re taking sales and you just pause the losers and you kind of scale up the winners, really.
Chris Guthrie: Awesome. Okay. So let’s shift gears a bit here. So then, what have you been focused on lately? You’ve got four products. You’ve passed a 100k barrier in November, which is already kind of insane considering you started in July and then have been able to push that even through here in the early part of 2016. What are you focused on these days in your business?
David: At the moment, it’s kind of like with any business and they talk about it a lot in the seminars and all the material out there that you hit an income ceiling I think at around probably two or three products realistically. If you’re doing all the work that you could conceivably do for a product, you hit an income ceiling and you become the bottleneck. So the main thing for me is to get help so I’ve kind of planned out what I need, the type of person that’s going to look like, the kind of the skills that they need to have and basically planning out a structure for other people to come in and assist me, really. So, that’s going to be the big enabler because, the thing is, firstly, it’s the human capital. You need people to help you out. So you basically need to effectively clone yourself in a way. So you’re a certain person at PPC and then you’ve got all your knowledge. You need a systematizer and offload that to someone else that can report to you and you can supervise because that frees you up to do other things which are of much higher value.
Chris Guthrie: Definitely. I think a lot of times, business owners are too busy trying to do everything or, worst case, they’re trying to do some outsourcing but they still do the tests that are the $10 an hour test instead of the $1000 an hour test that they should be focused on.
David: Yeah, exactly, and that’s the main thing if I can get a few people in place. Personally, for my business, and I think any business I would start, you hire the first person and then they kind of assist you and then it kind of branches out from there. But I can see 3 roles, maybe 4 roles, more or less. I guess one person would be operations and customer service, and then you have another person for sourcing products and dealing with suppliers and doing shipping and then re-orders, and the third one would probably be like a marketing type of assistant, someone who would do all the marketing collateral work, YouTube, press releases, anything you really want to do. And then I’d say probably a fourth person ideally would be a project manager that would basically sit in your role and you can more or less have it effectively automated.
Chris Guthrie: That’s great. And so, which one do you think are you going to hire first? Probably the operation side with the customer support.
David: Yeah. That’s the first ones. You look at the, as you said, the lowest “hourly dollar” tasks first and then you kind of move up the value chain from there.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah. So I had another seller, Isaac, on a previous podcast episode – for people who want to listen to that at sellercast.com/25 – and they have a team of people in the Philippines. They set up an office to do that and he actually said not to do that and he just talked about some of the challenges in dealing with the laws and everything else in terms of getting it done but are you going to be looking locally or are you going to be looking at a VA type person in the Philippines or some other location?
David: Yeah. I guess, it’s like with anything. I may just experiment and see what works. Initially, I may try for a VA in the Philippines although I’m not sure how that’s going to work. I guess the second option would be here, to perhaps source someone locally, someone that ideally probably wants to work from home and that just avoids the whole, when you put them on a contract, it avoids all the other costs increases that go up with having a physical presence somewhere. Then you hire people, retain them, the whole office infrastructure, and everything and the whole idea of a business is to keep it lean, I guess, whilst you grow. So maybe, we’ll try with Philippines on a contractual basis and then after that, maybe look at someone locally. Really just depends what can be done but I guess what I envision is perhaps you could have a very small team locally wherever you are, whether it be in the States, Canada, or Australia, and then that’s your, effectively, your project management staff and they may do some of the grunt work but then a lot of the, I guess, the menial tasks and the really easy and straightforward stuff they could outsource and manage VAs elsewhere around the world. You can retain control and you’ve got a bit of direction but you also keep your costs down. So you don’t need an office of ten people.
Chris Guthrie: I’m a big fan of the “replacement self.” You’re hiring your replacement basically, your first hire being someone that starts to take over your tasks and then, eventually, they can potentially hire other people for your team. That’s what’s worked well for me in the past in other businesses and, again, since we’re having this casual conversation here and I’m giving you unsolicited advice, I would say that you can try for the VA in the Philippines but, based on the four people that you’re trying to hire, that I think you’ll have really good success if you find someone locally. And often too, if you find the right person, then maybe you can even throw some sort of a sweetener in there with some equity or maybe some sort of profit-sharing depending on how you want to compensate. But that’s what I’d suggest with what you’re shooting for.
David: Yeah. It’s the first thing for myself. It’s my first business so it’s going to be a first hire as well but, again, you source, you research, and then you test pretty quickly, and you don’t have to be too caught up on any one kind of direction. But the other thing I just thought of, I mean, outsourcing is so huge because, think about it, in about 7, 8 months, it’s gone from zero to a 100k a month but if you just had a team to assist you, you can definitely do that, not that it’s always going to be replicated. But, I mean, that just shows you that, and everyone starting this business themselves, if you get to five grand a month, ten grand a month, I mean that’s a big achievement and that’s come out of an idea that you had in your head, so that’s such a high value asset and it’s such a high value task. So, you want to be able to do that over and over again. So, the more people you can get to assist you, although it’s going to cost you some money, I mean, the much bigger picture is that that’s such a high value task that you’re doing and it’s really only yourself that you can really do and you can rely on yourself too. You can’t really kind of outsource that.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah. I love that you’re going to be doing that. The number one mistake I have made across previous businesses, I made this mistake twice in two different businesses which is waiting too long to hire and then we finally did it, you hit a “new normal” once you bring that person on and get them up to speed. So that’s great. So then you’ve talked about you’re planning for your team and what you’re going to do and you’ve got this success so quickly. What are you shooting to hit by the end of this year, if you’re still aggressively ramping this up? And are you taking any money out for yourself right now or are you just kind of a small salary?
David: No. So basically, firstly, my goal for the end of the year, just said, I think I can and I want to hit $300K in December. I want to have enough stock, enough product, in there to hit that mark, and then I want to get to a million a month a year after. That’s a pretty big goal for myself but I might as well go for it, and I believe if I’ve got the team in place, and the other thing is, I look at everything as a cash flow stream. So, as the cash starts to accumulate, all of a sudden you can start purchasing other product lines and, conceivably if you’ve got the same approach, each 10-20 grand can be put towards another product that will never suck money out, if you will, and it will just spit out cash after a few months of operation. So, this year going forward, I think I can probably do that by December or so, so that’s a main goal of mine.
Chris Guthrie: That’s great. I’ve met a lot of people that are in varying ranges and a lot of times what separates people that are doing a few thousand a month and maybe that are just getting started, which is fine, the people that have been doing it longer and are still selling at a lower range, it just comes down to that willingness to keep pushing it and keep trying to see what’s the limit because there really isn’t any cap. That’s the beautiful thing about building your own business is that there’s no cap on the money that you can make. If you want to make a $1,000,000 a month in revenue, then you can and there’s not really anything that says you can’t do that. So that’s fantastic.
David: I’m sorry. Just that one other thing. So, about pulling money out and paying myself, so what I’ve done is I’ve paid myself back all my initial investment. So I don’t have any, I guess, I’ve got my time and investment tied up a bit in terms of money. I’ve pulled all of that money out and Australia’s not tax-deductible so it’s effectively a loan to the company that you pull back out. I’m sure it’s probably the same in the States. So it’s not actual profit you pull out of the business. And the rest will be retained in the business. I pay myself a salary, so I’m the first employee of my company and I just pay myself a salary now, and there’s no real intention to pull any more money out, really. It’s just more of a fun and an interesting experience and the idea is to build up assets. This is the first physical products on Amazon and maybe physical products on other channels afterwards. I may expand if I’ve got time. If I automate this, I may try digital products, other types of subscription stuff, so I’m just kind of building a foundation to just to leverage and jump off into maybe other business models. So, my focus is just to generate a cash flow stream. So I want assets out there that are constantly pulling in cash. I don’t want to be too leveraged. I don’t want to do a big market disrupter type of play. I just want to have just simple businesses that just spit out cash, fund my last one, and allow me to jump into other businesses because the way I view it is we’re all online now. Amazon’s a big thing at the moment but we don’t know what’s going to open up in a year or two and the people who are well-positioned are really going to kill it, like the ones who’ve really killed it on Amazon, all the guys and girls who are really into big digital marketing and online marketing, so the ones that were doing direct response type of stuff and playing in those circles. When ASM came out, in like one or two, they were the first ones on it and they are the ones that are selling now a million a month, you know, $500,000-$600,000 a month because they were in the right place and they’re just waiting for the right time to open up and that’s kind of how I view it.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, it’s great. I think that’s true. Things are always going to change in a marketplace and so being prepared for that as you move forward is key. And yeah, I’m sure selling on Amazon won’t go away but certainly the rules and how things develop along the way can certainly change. But let’s talk about some of the mistakes. If you’re hitting 100k per month in less than a year, then I’ve got to assume you’ve made no mistakes but maybe I’m wrong.
David: No, no, that’s right. We all make mistakes. I guess one of my products is not doing too well that I launched. I see that as not really a failure but more of a something that could have been done a bit better and it’s more of a case of I jumped into another market and, to be honest, it’s really hard to put a finger on it and I think you can overanalyze things but I think the product was just, for whatever reason, not what people wanted in that market. So I launched a product into a market and it was a slight, I guess, variation of what was normally purchased. So it wasn’t totally different. It was just made of a different material, different fabric, and look, it appears that people don’t really care about that kind of difference and then the other thing is, it’s quite price sensitive. So my product, I normally go on the premium end and for whatever reason, this market’s a lot more price sensitive and I guess you can only find that out through actually jumping in and then seeing what happens, really. And yeah, maybe another mistake is perhaps, I guess, waiting around a bit longer to pull the trigger on a second product. So I’ve just launched my second product and it’s taken me 6-7 months to do so. I think I could have done that a bit quicker but, again, when you’ve got other constraints where I was paying people back that I had borrowed money off to jump in the business, I thought that was probably the main priority first to get the money out and ensure everyone was safe first before I grow and before I proved the concepts. I guess I probably could have brought this cash flow a bit sooner by throwing a second product in earlier but, again, kind of hard to say.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah. That makes sense. And I think that certainly making sure that you pay off the people who helped, either loaned you money or gave you money to get going is good as well.
David: They’re really nice to kind of lend me money, no strings, no equity play, nothing. So it was a big priority for me to return the money to them.
Chris Guthrie: Yeah, that makes it an even higher priority when you’ve got a sweet situation like that. I mean, if you want to introduce me to them later, that’s good ;-) Okay, so then let’s talk about some of the scale too. I mean, I know we talked a little bit about how you were able to get up and going but I’m really trying to unpack what you were able to do to get sales so quickly. Does it really come down to – it sounds simple saying this – but does this come down to just that you picked a great product and you marketed it well on Amazon or is there something else that you really did that kind of helped separate you from the rest of the people that they get started and maybe it takes them longer to get going or they just kind of struggle along the way?
David: Yeah. I think there’s probably a few things. Firstly, I had a look at the market in which I wanted to jump into the most or my main competitor was selling quite well and they are more or less out on their own. There was no real good direct alternative competitor and the funny thing is we’re priced in a much higher region so I knew that that market wasn’t so price sensitive. It was really important what they got so they wanted a good unit at a good price and they pretty much really neglected all the rest and I basically went out and sampled dozens. I probably hit up about 30-40 suppliers, sampled about 10 or 11 different products and then found a product funnily indirectly by looking for another related product. So I was basically looking for, say, product A initially, kept searching, searching, couldn’t really find it, a good unit that worked well at a good price, and then they suggested I look at this other product and then I checked that market on Amazon, and it seemed a lot better than the first in the sense that it was a lot less competitive, and I guess the main seller was really just basically cleaning up, as I say. I mean, there was really no competition. So I found a product that was better than his. So I believe it was better and I tested it more. So I said, “Look, I’ve got a great product here. I’ve got a better product. I know these people are buying this product at this price. I just need to get in front of them and show them.” And I just did that. I knew if I pushed enough product and launched enough out there and got enough reviews and enough sales velocity and enough activity around this product, it would go. And it took a few months but it finally tipped over and I was quite aggressive with advertising. I basically rolled all my profits back into more inventory and kept going. So, the first part is, I just picked a product that was selling quite well, reasonable competition, I put the better product in the market, and then secondly, I had a good margin. So it allowed me to purchase more stock and throw it in there.
Chris Guthrie: Awesome. When I hear health and personal care, when you mentioned your category earlier, I always think US suppliers because I think of supplements, etcetera. Are you sourcing through the US suppliers or are you using another source like Alibaba or some of these other China-based sourcing places?
David: Yeah, I’m sourcing off a supplier that I found on Alibaba in China.
Chris Guthrie: That’s great. Okay. That’s cool. You’ve been able to suggest, “Hey, here’s another product we have...”
David: Yeah. Some of the suppliers are really good and you’ll find that the funny thing is as I’ve developed a relationship with them, I’ve always been super nice and courteous to them and I’ve always made sure that they don’t feel that there is a big authority gradient, in the sense that I’m the big boss and they’re kind of my servant. We’re more like partners and with partners you can throw ideas around. They can ask questions to each other. So that’s the kind of relationship that I’ve got and, funnily enough, they’ve kind of saved me a few times in the sense of there’s some regulatory requirements and packaging requirements and it’s good. The way you deal with suppliers the way I’ve dealt with, I love them because without them, I’ve got no product to sell. I’m back out on the street. So I rely heavily on them and the main thing is to just look after them and they’ll look after you.
Chris Guthrie: That’s great. It’s a continual theme, especially with some of the most recent episodes that we’ve been doing here is people sharing their stories of building a really good relationship with their supplier and that’s always really seemed to help them. With this great relationship with the supplier, are you doing anything to inspect your products or have they been good so now you’re not really doing that or what are you doing when it comes to the shipment process for that?
David: So, every shipment, because obviously I physically don’t see the product, I have every shipment inspected and you get it quite cheap. I use a company, inspect goods and for $100 US or so, they’ll go down there and physically check out your product, take photos of it, and just kind of work with your supplier. So you just put those two in contact and the local inspection agency will speak to your supplier and you just tell them to figure it out and then they’ll organize an inspection. So you don’t have to be the middleman constantly playing them all off against each other. They just sort it out themselves. That’s how I kind of do it.
Chris Guthrie: That’s good. So you pay maybe 30% upfront and then you release the 70% once the inspection service has gone down and finished the work.
David: That’s right. Look, after the third or fourth inspection, I just tell them, “Look, I’ll pay in advance. Just send it out,” because I was kind of almost running out of stock a few times. So, sometimes I would pay early. Other times, and so it’s kind of back and forth, so sometimes I’d pay early before the inspection. Obviously, if there is a major defect, okay, my money’s gone now, but there’s going to be consequences in the sense either they fix it, they reimburse me, or I don’t do business with them, and secondly, they’ll sometimes tell me, “Look, if you’d have just told us you were going to place this order, I’ll place your order right now before the money comes through,” because it takes a few days for the money to come through. So the suppliers trust you. They’ll actually go out and order the raw materials themselves before your money actually comes through in the form of a deposit. So it helps you shorten that lead time.
Chris Guthrie: That’s great. Okay. And so then I’m looking at the time here. We’re getting close to wrapping up but I think some of the takeaways that people will think about when they listen to this is that you’re aggressively reinvesting your profits to continue to scale the business. You’ve paid back the people that helped give you some money to get you going. You quickly started launching your products and now you’re thinking that even though you’re at $100K a month, which is fantastic to hit that but you’re saying, “this is just the start, what can we do next?” $300K a month by the end of December and then a million a month in the year after that and so I think that’s inspiring to be able to try and push for that much and try to grow that quickly. What are some other main things that you would say that have differentiated your success against other people? I know that’s something I’ve talked about briefly before but anything else, either something that you found along the way that’s been a great tactic or philosophy or anything else like that that you can close on?
David: Look, I would say probably: Look you’re going to encounter a few roadblocks, a few failures. I mean, not everything is going to go your way. The main thing is to just be focused and be passionate about it and quite aggressive. Just make it a focus. I mean, if this is something that you want to do and you’re serious about, I mean, that market’s there for the taking. If you want to succeed in the marketplace, just look at things from a customer’s point of view and just look at what they want and give it to them and give them a good story through your photos. Hit on the points that they want in your bullet points. Source a genuinely good product. Don’t sell people crappy products that they’re just going to end up returning to you. So, do the work for the customer on the front end. So when you’re sourcing through all these suppliers, take your time to go through them and find the best product you can and then they’re going to reward you by buying it and then commenting well. And then just overall, I just say to people, just focus on your health, your relationships, and your money equation. They’re the three main areas in our lives and just take responsibility for it and fix whatever you need to get fixed. Don’t wait to be put on. Don’t wait for some tactic, some shortcut, some special way to do it. You just have to work at it and the funny thing is about the internet now is all the resources are out there more or less for free. It’s all out there. It’s just a case of how bad do you want it and you just have to go out and get it and it’s pretty much all there for the taking.
Chris Guthrie: I love it. I want you to come back when you have your team built and you can talk about that process and what you’ve done to help get them going. And so, I will look forward to having you back on when you’re there. Thanks again, David.
David: I’d love to. Yeah, thanks a lot.
Chris Guthrie: Alright. Have a great rest of your day.
David: Oh thanks, Chris. You too.
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Outro: Alright, that was the episode with David. Hope you enjoyed what he had to share in that episode, talking about getting ramped up so quickly to six figures per month in sales along with his ambitious plans to grow his business even further. Now, if you’d also like to be on the show, if you have an interesting story or you just want to talk about what you’ve been doing to grow your business, then you can also contact us. salesbacker.com/contact will take you to a page where you can send an email and we’ll make sure the email gets to me and we can see if we can have you on the show to talk about your business and share with the audience so they can learn from your experiences as well. Thank you so much for tuning in and we’ll see you in the next episode.
