Dive in. Learn by DOING.

 

In today's video, I'll be answering questions from my Q&A Facebook group. If you'd like to get your question answered in an upcoming video, click this link to join the group:

 

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Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. You hear that? There's no drilling sounds today. Incredible. What a luxury, right?

 

Well, we've got some incredible questions today and today I tried to pick a few questions on the same theme so maybe I can teach you a lesson in different ways by answering various different questions.

 

I think you're going to take quite a lot from this video, especially if maybe you've been procrastinating. Maybe if you haven't dived in yet and you know it's about time to just get started.

 

I have a bundle ready to test batch. Is 10 too small a batch or should I wait until I can get 50?

 

So we've got a question from Dave Sharpe and Dave says, I'm currently working arbitrage/retail online arbitrage- awesome, man, great to hear that you're doing some stuff- but I have a bundle in mind which I've researched and ready to test batch.

 

Awesome, great work. So Dave knows the thing I always teach rather than going in with a thousand units of import like a lot of people teach that you should do, test small first to see if there is a demand. To get concrete proof that your thing is going to sell before you dive in and spend a lot of money.

 

Dave says the bundle would be great to launch in the next six weeks, but is 10 units too small a batch or should I wait until I can get 50? This is a great question. Dave's got a great niche, great product opportunity, a good bundle idea. He's going to sell main products with some other products and he's thinking, should I just launch 10 right now or should I wait until I can launch a set of 50?

 

If it was me, man, what I would do is I would have launched it yesterday. I am ridiculously impatient when it comes to stuff like this. If I had a great idea for a bundle, I would get it into the warehouse as soon as I possibly could with whatever resources I had at the time. I mean that's just my personality. I like to get things moving. Try it. If it fails, so what? We'll try the next thing. I just want to get things moving. I want momentum.

 

So what I would do, man, is I would just send those 10 units in right now that you can afford, that fits into your budget, and just get them in. And then once they start selling, if it's going well, then get the rest of the 40 units in. Get the other 40 units sent in. Yes, you will definitely get more data if you have a little bit more stock.

 

If you sell 10 units on Amazon, then you will learn some things about the product. How much can you charge? Are you going to get reviews? Do the customers like the product? But if you sell 50 you'll learn a lot more. You'll get a much more solid idea of how much you can charge. You'll probably be able to push the price up a little bit more and probably get a few more reviews.

 

You understand realistically, is it going to sell five times a day or three times a day? Things like that. So it's better to have more stock. But I would dive in and send in those 10 if that's what you can do right now. Great question Dave.

 

What it feels like to be a boss, knowing how tax works, connecting with suppliers, building rapport, ordering in bulk.

 

So Wayde asks, I want to know what it feels like to be a boss. I want to know how tax works. I want to know how to connect with suppliers and build real rapport with them. I want to know how to order bulk amounts of products and I want to learn how to just do things on my own.

 

This is a great question because obviously when you have your own business, it's very different from being an employee of a company. Because you are your own boss, right? You have to do things on your own, you have to use initiative, you have to think on your feet.

 

It might be a bit intimidating to make this transition and learn how to do all this stuff and run your own company rather than being hired inside somebody else's company. Because remember, when you're by yourself, you don't have a boss motivating you, giving you targets, telling you what to do next. You have to think of it all yourself. So how'd you do this?

 

How'd you go from being employees to being your own boss? It's very simple. You learn by doing, you learn by doing you, you learn by diving into the deep end and seeing what happens. If you're in a job and you don't hit targets or you don't do work or you're not motivated, the worst thing that's going to happen is that your boss is gonna ask you what the hell is going on? We might lose the job if you do this for a long time.

 

But in your business you'll learn very quickly that if you're not motivated, if you don't put in the effort and really put in the hours, you don't make any money. So you learn sooner or later that you should be doing things to make you money and all of a sudden it becomes this game.

 

It's like, if I put in this effort and I prioritize this stuff properly now maybe next month I can make double what I made last month. And you have the ability to do this stuff. And that's what's so freeing about having your own business.

 

So rather than getting paralyzed by all the stuff you need to learn how to do, just get moving, get some sales happening, start building up your income with the Amazon business and sooner or later you will learn all of these skills. You will just naturally learn because you'll have to do otherwise the business won't grow.

 

One thing that is important to understand is I was terrible at first when I started my business. I was terrible. I didn't know what was going on, but I learned very, very quickly, I picked up this stuff very, very quickly and it's because I was so passionate and I really loved running the business.

 

If you start doing it and you really enjoy it, then you will learn very quickly as well. So learn by doing, dive in, and that will be the key to answering your question.

 

Now there's a few things you mentioned which you will need some guidance with. Like, building rapport with suppliers is something that won't come naturally. Tax, especially, I wouldn't do that stuff yourself. I would outsource it and get an accountant to do all that stuff for you.

 

Build a business that's profitable enough so you don't have to do your own bookkeeping because it's really long winded, extremely boring and there's a chance you can mess it up. So hire an accountant, they aren't that expensive if you have a profitable business. Get someone to help you with that.

 

If you're the type of person who's really good with numbers and loves all that stuff, then you can, if you enjoy it, that's fine. There's a lot of entrepreneurs who do their own accounting 'cause they like it. And that can be an advantage too. But the key here is not to try and learn how to do all this stuff before you build your business.

 

Understand you're going to learn how to do it on the job. For example, these videos. With these videos, I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to do it.

There's so many questions coming in this group. I mean right now we've got about 120 questions that you guys have asked and I didn't know how I was going to shoot the videos and and make sure you guys get your questions answered and also how to make the videos interesting.

 

I was thinking, should I just answer four random questions every video? Should I think of a theme and have a theme for each video? So when someone's watching it who isn't in the group, they learn sort of one big thing from the four different questions in the video. Or should I do it some other way? I had no idea. I still don't really know.

 

But I didn't want to figure out all this stuff before starting to shoot the videos because then it would be next July when I got started. So I didn't. I just pressed record, started with whatever I had and now we're here today and I'm learning by doing. I'm making it slightly better every time. And sooner or later I'll get into an amazing rhythm where I figured out the formula that works.

 

I'll get the feedback from you guys to tell which way of doing it is better. And that's how to create something great. So getting started, learning by doing is the best way to approach this stuff. Great question Wayde.

 

Should I always use both arbitrage and private label?

 

We've got a question from Cain who asks, should I always use both arbitrage and private labels through my Amazon journey? This is a great question, because obviously arbitrage- buying stuff from shops for discounts, selling it for a profit on Amazon- is quite often seen as a short term strategy.

 

'Cause you take some cash, buy some products very quickly, turn it around, but you can't really build assets on the marketplace like that because it's other people's products and the competition can come in and tank it very quickly. And the amount of stock you have access to can be very limited.

 

You get four or five units of each thing and then you have to keep finding new products and it's a bit of a hassle. However, with private labels, you could just sell one product that does say, 500 units of sales a month and you just keep restocking and you just keep doing that over and over and over again.

 

Just reorder them all units from China, getting them cheaper and cheaper and cheaper as you order more and more and more, and this thing just sells and just makes profit month after month after month. It's relatively automated, right?

 

So yes, ideally you'd want to move into private labels, later down the line. You might want to have five of these products, bring it in to say, a grand a month each. It's a great business.

 

However, that's what we would aim to do, ideally. it's good to remember that every business is different. You can't predict what's going to happen with your business and your situation long term. It's so funny when you see all these business plans, entrepreneurs, and they got all this plan, and this is the revenue I'm going to do in year one.

 

When the investors ask the entrepreneur, okay, so what revenue are you going to do next year? And they're like, oh, we did 200,000 this year. Next year I project we're going to do 500,000.

 

I'm always sitting there thinking when they say this stuff, how do you know that? But your business could crash and burn tomorrow. How can you predict that you're going to make this jump?

 

These business plans, they're always speculative, they're always just completely made up. If you expect to be doing just private labels later down the line of your business, I mean, yeah, it's a good prediction. But at the same time, who knows what's going to happen?

 

You might find an arbitrage supplier who puts you in contact with a wholesale supplier who can get you these certain types of products ridiculously cheap. And so why would you stop doing that? Why would you not get hundreds of these wholesale products, stick them on your Amazon account and just get cash flow from that.

 

So yeah, I would aim to build a business that's automated and have a clear goal of what you want. But if the arbitrage stuff is still fun and it still makes you cash, then I wouldn't stop. Just keep doing what's easy and just keep doing more of what works and try things that will help you build the business that you want to build long term. Great question.

 

How long does it take to hit 1K profit per month?

 

Sam asks, how long into training on Amazon through private label does it take to hit a grand a month in profits? With 1k per month, I can quit this job I have. Even though I earn slightly more, I have no time as I work six days a week. The money is nice though. Okay, cool. Great question.

 

So you want to earn a grand a month, so you can quit your job, and just have more time to do your own stuff. Fantastic. Here's the thing with predicting how long it's going to take for you to earn a certain amount of money in any business. The only thing I can guarantee for you and your situation, your results, is that everyone is different.

 

I've had clients start working with me and within two and a half weeks, they've got their product into the warehouse being tested and selling. Two and a half weeks after we start, within two or three months, they're doing 10 K a month.

Does that mean you are going to do this? Absolutely not. Because everybody's different.

 

I don't know anything about how committed you are, how much capsule you have, and how much business experience you have, whether Amazon is gonna throw you a curve ball and make the account take a little bit longer to set up. Whether you're going to add value to your marketplace with a product, that's something nobody can predict.

 

We don't know whether the customers are gonna love your particular product or not within the niche. You might pick the perfect niche, but the product within the niche might not be connecting. For some reason we have to test a few things before you really hit the nail on the head.

 

So it's impossible to say how long it's going to take. It could be a couple of months, it could be six months, could be longer, it could be way shorter. Anything you should do is commit to making it happen regardless of how long it takes. That's the key.

 

Another thing I would say is that the extra mile- if I can think of the phrase right-  the extra mile is a lonely road. Most people who go into this business, rather than putting in all of their energy and then some, kind of half-ass it. They kind of. say, instead of putting it 100%, they put in 90% of their energy.

 

If you put in more than all of your energy, if you go completely crazy, go ham into this, then the chances of you getting your goals hit in a short period of time is much higher because then the stuff that you're controlling and the stuff that you're able to control, you'll maximize.

 

You know, there's always going to be stuff you can't control. You can't control if a supplier is going to take ages to send your stuff, can't really control that. You can control that. You speak to suppliers that seem reliable, you get lots of quotes, but you can't control if one of them somehow manages to make a mistake.

 

You can't control a lot of the stuff that Amazon does, if they take a long time to process your account.. You can't control if Amazon loses some of your stock. Just can't do that. But there's a certain amount of stuff that is 100% your responsibility.

 

Are you pulling the trigger on imports quick enough? Are you doing the work fast enough? Are you putting in the hours? All of that stuff you can control. And if you go the extra mile with that stuff, you'll be in the minority of people who do that.

 

Very, very slim amount of people who are willing to put in the extra work and then you'll have a much higher chance. And I can guarantee you most of my clients who've done very well went the extra mile.

 

You know, if I told them, spend an hour a day on product research, they will spend two hours a day on part research. Because they want it to do more. They want to get there fast. They want to beat me and my expectations of them. So have that attitude. You will definitely have a higher chance of shorteing the time it takes to get to your goals. But I can't give you an exact period of time.

 

If you enjoy building the business, then it's not really about getting there really quick anyway. It's about being in this business a long time anyway. You should have fun on the way, and that's the thing to focus on. If you focus too much on the result, then you might end up getting a little bit disillusioned and that's not fun.

 

So, four great questions today. All were the theme of just diving in, getting started, learning on the job, and seeing what happens along the way. Hope you found something inspirational, insightful from this video.

 

If you're watching this video outside of my Facebook group, then please click the link below or above the video, join the group. And as you enter the group, you'll see a little box that enables you to ask a question and you can type in a question there and I'll answer it on one of these videos. You'll join a group of really, really great hungry entrepreneurs who are also building businesses you can rub shoulders with and connect with.

 

So thanks so much for watching this video and we'll speak very soon.

 

Oliver Denyer About Ollie


Ollie is an ecommerce and lifestyle business enthusiast.
He's sold tens of thousands of products he's never had to touch, pack or ship himself.
A persistent disdain towards feeling like he's in a "job" has inspired him to create businesses that are FUN to run.
This means leveraging big companies to ship products, outsourcing laborious tasks to a team of VA's and running everything from a laptop.
He's passionate about sharing his knowledge with the world and helping people find more freedom through business.

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