Listen

Watch

Show Notes

To boost your chances for success, absorb as much knowledge as possible from the success stories around you. One of those success stories is CEO and founder of BuyBoxer, Scott Needham. BuyBoxer is one of the largest Amazon sellers in the nation and Scott’s here to explain his secrets to e-prosperity. From finding your niche to choosing a product strategy and breaking the “Amazon seller barrier”, Scott explains it all.

Find Your Niche

Worried it’s too late to break into Amazon wholesale? Think again. As long as you set yourself up within the right parameters, a profit is within reach on day one. It’s also important to consider the benefit of carving out a niche. Find new products and brands that few others are selling, sell it well, and build exclusive agreements with brands. Because there is an infinite number of niche products, your chances for Amazon success are still sky-high.

Go Wide

Your strategy for product purchasing is up to you. However, Todd and Scott have both found success widening their product range and therefore reducing risk. If you’ve got all your eggs in a couple of product baskets and one relationship falls through, your business can go from hot to not overnight. Scott’s also managed to stay competitive with a high ROI (55%!) using his data to predict future profitability and keeping his inventory lean.

Stress Service

Vie for exclusivity agreements by offering brands a wide array of services. For instance, offer to optimize images, provide data, and improve listings. These extras help you break common Amazon barriers such as lacking a brick and mortar store and being an Amazon seller to begin with. With an emphasis on personal touch, your small shop can beat out large sellers.

Brands vs. Distributors

Scott works with both brands and distributors and both have their advantages and downfalls. While brands may offer better pricing and exclusivity agreements, distributors are easier avenues for Amazon sellers to explore given that many brands are warry of Amazon sellers. Try starting out with distributors while you work on building relationships with brands.

NARF

Amazon recently launched a program where they take the inventory you sell in the U.S. and ship it when it sells in Canada or Mexico. In short, you can list products in two marketplaces without actually having to import products yourself. Expanding internationally can also be a great way to test products.

Divide Your Time

Consider the ways you’re spending your time. Are you doing things that you could be outsourcing or automating in order to scale your business? Because Scott was able to outsource immediately, he grew faster than almost every seller around him.

Overall…

If you’re hesitant to launch a business selling Amazon wholesale, don’t let the fear that it’s too late discourage you. Check out podcasts like Scott’s – The Smartest Amazon Seller – and the one you’re listening to now! All the knowledge you need to succeed on Amazon is out there. All you have to do is reach out and take it.

Outline of This Episode

[00:18] Todd’s introduction to this episode

[07:07] The importance of finding your niche

[11:52] The benefits of going wide with products

[20:49] How to stress your services to boost business

[23:35] Working with brands versus distributors

[27:10] Using NARF to test products and increase sales

[33:45] Why outsourcing is essential

[37:11] Todd’s closing thoughts

Resources From This Episode

• BuyBoxer
• The Smartest Amazon Seller

Transcript

Announcer (00:01):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the entrepreneur adventure podcast where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an eCommerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host Todd Welch

Todd (00:18):
What’s up everbody, welcome to episode number 15 and today we’re sitting down with Scott Needham. He is the CEO and one of the founders of Buyboxer, which is right now according to web retailer.com the 22nd largest Amazon seller in the United States. So you’re definitely gonna want to pay attention to this. We dive into some details that are really gonna help you as a seller, whether you’re new or you’re already established, including things like buying from distributors or brands. What kind of tactic you should have. Should you go deep on products? Did you go wide? What kind of sales rank should be you be looking for? How can you get around the, we don’t want any more Amazon sellers and lots of other great information like that. Scott is a really great guy. It was really fun talking to him and I think you are really going to like it.

Todd (01:18):
Make sure you check out the show notes for this episode. Entrepreneuradventure.Com/15 to get all the links that we talk about in this episode and including links over to Scott’s podcast, the smartest Amazon seller. You’ll definitely want to check that out and we’ve got a new five star review over on iTunes. This is from cloud nine society says one of the best podcasts for wholesale. I started watching Todd’s YouTube channel looking for wholesale on Amazon info, then found his podcast excellent and informative. This podcast is one of the best about wholesale on Amazon. Thanks Todd for your advice and expertise. This is Tom from Highland CA. You answered a couple of my questions on the previous podcast. Great work. So Tom, I really appreciate the five star review. Tom, thank you so much. If you haven’t left one already, make sure you head over there to iTunes, leave us a five star review or less. If you don’t think we deserve a five star review, whatever, and I will read it on an upcoming episode and make sure you share this with your friends on social media. Anyone who might get good information out of this to help us grow the show. So I can keep interviewing great guests like today’s. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into this episode with Scott. All right, Scott, thank you so much for coming on to podcasts. Why don’t you just start by telling us a little bit about your history with Buyboxer, how you got involved in Amazon and how you managed to grow to such a large size.

Scott Needham (03:00):
Todd, thank you. Yeah. let’s see. So I went to college and I studied computer science and I left the family business never to return against my parents’ best wishes, but then my brother started doing something very interesting. He took a brick and mortar store in a small town of Logan, Utah and started pushing the, the brands that he had relationships, sort of selling them on Amazon. And he was telling me that about the problems that he was having in his kind of scaling and automating. And this is 20, this is 2011, 2012. There was no tools out there like there are today. I mean right now you can’t go too far without finding a lot of software services. But back then there was nothing and I didn’t have a mindset to create a software, a service for others. I just wanted to help my brother’s business and to scale. And that was all the focus, you know, every single part of the business, whether it was you, the order management to sourcing, to getting data back from Amazon. And I would just take a specific task that each part of the business was doing and I would find some sort of way to automate it to, to speed it up.

Todd (04:29):
Okay. Very nice. So lots of, lots of automation to kind of push you ahead of the competition then.

Scott Needham (04:36):
Sure. Yeah. I mean the, the competitors were sophisticated as well. You know, this is 2020 now and I, I’m certainly scared of some of those out there that also have an army of software developers to increase their own efficiency.

Todd (04:57):
Yeah, for sure. It’s, there’s a lot of great tools out there nowadays and more and more always coming. So what, what year was it again that you started Buyboxer?

Scott Needham (05:08):
So I came on full time in 2013 Buyboxer, started selling online for the first time in 2011. And and the rest is history.

Todd (05:21):
Yeah, now, you guys are one of the largest Amazon sellers. What number are you at?

Scott Needham (05:29):
Let’s see. So, you know, we started growing, you know, double or tripling in size the first few years that I was there. And then we’ve kind of been pretty stagnant the last few years. It’s just what it is and we’ve been in the top 10 before. But this year we’re sliding, if you like a seller ratings, I don’t even like to look at anymore because I mean, because our business has shrunk to focus on profitability. You know, you’re, and I think it’s important to know what modes your business is in so you can make decisions around that so that if you, you know, if you’re in growth mode that you make decisions around that or if you’re at a steady state or even shrinking and you can optimize for those situations.

Todd (06:15):
All right. Yeah, for sure. It’s, you know, when you’re growing, obviously you’re just throwing money out there, getting as many products as you can and then figuring stuff out as you go along. And obviously there’s going to be a lot of mistakes, but as you start reeling it back in, getting towards that profit and making sure you’re doing a profit, then naturally your numbers are gonna start falling.

Scott Needham (06:36):
Right? That’s right. Yeah. I mean you said you said money takes it to, to grow. Most of our bigger growth modes did involve you know, extra capital getting thrown at it to, to fuel the fire.

Todd (06:53):
Okay. So one question a lot of new people ask is, is it too late to start selling Amazon or wholesale on Amazon? What are your thoughts on that?

Scott Needham (07:07):
Absolutely not. There is like I, I find that there is, there’s infinite amount of niches out there. In the last month I’ve spoken from a seller from Hawaii who sources Hawaiian brands and has used that to leverage, you know new products that have not been available on Amazon. They’re not his. And so that’s why they would probably be a wholesale. And then I know someone does the same thing, but with with ethnic food, he, he knows the market and is using that to bring new products that are never been in the FBA program to, to people that want them, you know, their ethnic foods has grown to be main staples of our diets. And so I do think it’s like there’s, there’s growth yet. And and as, as many as many sellers as there are and new sellers that come, there are people that throw in the towel that decide on a different line of business.

Scott Needham (08:26):
And so I don’t feel like it’s too saturated. I would, rather than that focus on, I think if you do wholesale right you’re profitable from day one. You know, if you’re a first buy is under the right parameters, I, you will, you’ll make, you’ll turn that inventory, make money out of it. So it’s kinda hard to, it’s kind of no. And if you know the data is right there and you can pull the trigger and buy that product and get a return of 40 to 80% ROI, yes you can still do it and many people are.

Todd (09:11):
Yeah, there’s, I mean there’s so many products out there and there’s new brands coming all the time and one tactic like you mentioned you can take is bringing new products to market as well. I don’t think a lot of people talk about that. It’s a little more work and effort upfront but if you can maybe have an exclusive with that brand and build that brand, you’ve got really good opportunity there.

Scott Needham (09:32):
Right. Here’s an example. I mean I see them in the wild every day cause there are some brands that I have seen him like and I check on Amazon and it’s like this is not being optimized. I was at a specialty root beer shop and I’ve seen this like specific brand of, I think it’s kind of like a butterscotch, a drink. It’s kind of a like butterbeer from Harry Potter. Obviously you can’t say the words Harry Potter or butterbeer. Those would be a trademark. But this premier brand that has been in, like, I’ve seen it in the least three stores it is not on Amazon and it’s right for opportunity because there are people that want it. And so I see opportunities all the time. I don’t act on all of them, but sometimes I do.

Todd (10:26):
Yeah, it’s, I was just on a coaching call just a little bit ago and I was telling them about that. Like, one of the tactics that I use is, you know, if you find a product that is that sales rank of like three, four, or 500,000, but it’s got some reviews and the listing is really horrible, you know, you can do a little test, buy on that, clean up the listing and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, clearance it out, move on to the next one.

Scott Needham (10:52):
No, that’s totally true about the if you see something at a sales rank that high, sometimes it’s that high because there’s no FBA offer. And the moment an FBA offer comes, all of a sudden it starts to sell. So there are 50 reasons why a product won’t sell and chances are that you can, you know, squash a few of them and bring the product back to life.

Todd (11:21):
Yup. Yeah, I’ve done it quite a few times, numerous times. You know, on most of the products that I sell that are really profitable for me, I almost guarantee that everybody listening probably has never heard of their brand, at least most of the brands that I carry. So that’s something to keep in mind too. A lot of people like to look at the sexy stuff and not think about the brands in obscure niches that you’ve never heard of and brands that you’ve never heard of. And so how many out there

Scott Needham (11:52):
You know, Buyboxer has one superlative we have the largest catalog of prime products in Amazon and that is because of our buying parameters. We are willing to go long tail. There’s higher margin on long tail and there’s less competition. Yes, they move slower. But we, it’s just the way that our system is built. What’s crazy is we actually have a hard time trimming it. If we want to, we want to reduce our amount of acents, I can’t do it very easily. And so we actually cast a very, very wide nets super wide and don’t go very deep and we steer clear of some of the super competitive products and the Amazon retail products as well. So I think most sellers, if you really dig down into their DNA, they have something that’s unique about their approach to wholesale and that’s an edge that anyone can get.

Todd (13:05):
Yeah, I do the same thing. I go wide. I think you are, you’re hedging your bets that way. Reducing your risk. I just heard a story of a, an Amazon seller who is doing really well and most of his profit though is coming from a couple of skews and there was a falling out with that brand and they pretty much lost there company overnight. Just about at least a large percentage of it. So spreading out like that can definitely help reduce your risk as well.

Scott Needham (13:35):
Yup. [inaudible]

Todd (13:38):
Now, I actually, I just want to let everybody know too quick here, why we’re still at the beginning that you have a podcast and that’s where I started finding out more about you. So I definitely want to recommend people to jump over there as well. It’s called the smartest Amazon seller and really good information. I definitely highly recommended I binge-watched or binge listened to the whole thing. What’s the website for that?

Scott Needham (14:05):
So there is no website. It’s on Spotify, iTunes, it’s on all platforms. You’re more than generous to mention that, so thank you very much. I chose the a, I was telling him earlier Todd earlier that I chose the most humble name that I could find and it was the smartest Amazon seller. I really started it out just talking about, you know, insights as a developer that I’ve gotten and, and hopefully it’s out there to help people. And I, you know, it’s, the feedback that I’ve gotten has actually helped me. I’ve, I told people about a repricer I was using, come to find out a few months later, they started teaching me about new settings on that repricer and I was like, Oh, it does that? Okay.

Todd (14:53):
Yeah, there are so much different stuff that you can learn, but we’ll put a links to them in the show notes for like iTunes, Spotify and things like that. But just searching for the smartest Amazon seller, people can check that out. And yeah, I just, just the other day I’ve seen you guys jump on one of my listings. I’m like, what’re you doing jumping on my listings?

Scott Needham (15:14):
don’t worry, we’ll, we’ll stock out. Yeah,

Todd (15:20):
No, it’s all good. That’s what we’re here to compete and keep growing and stuff like that. So,

Scott Needham (15:27):
And, and you know what, I’m, one of the reasons I was, I’m so like willing to talk about the inner workings of our business is because I actually advocate a lot of ideas that help the marketplace and actually can help us down the line. I, I, I’m pretty passionate about, you know, finding creative ways to raise your price. I mean, I, I did have a podcast specifically on that, but that when we found ways to raise our price or increased our margins from, you know, 15% average to about 18% average gross margin. And I mean, you, we fight tooth and nail for even a single percent. So I really shouldn’t even spend tomorrow just to like dive in again at pricing again, just to make sure that, you know that we’ve got the smartest strategies there.

Todd (16:32):
Yeah. It’s so important for any kind of eCommerce business, especially to have those, those higher margins if you’re going to keep growing. Otherwise it’s, you know, you’re going to have that cashflow battle no matter what. But if you’re doing razor thin margins, it’s just going to be a never ending Cat and mouse game.

Scott Needham (16:48):
Well, I’ve actually been fairly open about the fact that like, you know, our, our company actually lost money in 2018 and that’s when we, we need, we, that’s what we decided to dial back on more profitable products and creative pricing and had a pretty significant turnaround in 2019, you know, shrinking helped us. Yeah, there’s a time to grow, but then there’s a time to be profitable and that’s, and you should be aware in your business what knobs you can turn to dial in for one or the other.

Todd (17:24):
Yep. Absolutely. So what is your target like ROI for a profit?

Scott Needham (17:29):
Let’s see. Well, what we’ve been achieving is about 55% ROI.

Todd (17:35):
Oh wow. That’s really high. Very nice. I usually recommend at least 30%, preferably even higher than that, but 55. That’s really nice.

Scott Needham (17:44):
Well, the truth is, is our business is large and it has large overhead. There’s no other way to describe it. Like, we have a hundred employees and you know, health care and you know, managers these are things that we are, you know, in some ways that were, we were proud to offer, but you know, we have to use everything that we can and we have to like use all of the automation too and we may need a higher ROI.

Todd (18:21):
Yeah. Yeah. That, that’s very good though. So how have you managed to stay competitive at that high of an ROI? Are you getting a lot of exclusives or,

Scott Needham (18:31):
No. So, well we, I have a lot of data. Yeah. We track historical data, we track the, we, we forecast you know, how many sellers are there and we track a lot of historical data with what’s it against Amazon retail. We avoid them at all costs and, and then we have creative ways of, at the beginning of a product’s life cycle, we try and like raise the price as much as we can. If it doesn’t sell, then when, then our price kind of goes down. And then as we stock out, we raise our prices. Again. That kind of a dynamic, you know, pushing up gives us ROI in situations where, you know, you’re, you may not be aware of. And let’s see.

Scott Needham (19:36):
That’s really it. I, you know, take for example any other wholesale instruction videos that you guys have probably seen. Generally speaking, they’re right, we follow the same tactics. And, but instead of going for volume, we go for, you know, ROI we could, we could find products that would sell faster. You know, maybe, maybe even push our we, we could be doing 100 million in revenue. You know, Buyboxer has been kind sitting at about a 60 million Mark. We could have done 100 million in revenue and lost more money. Sorry, I didn’t have like a, a lower ROI and ultimately we would have lost money. And so that’s well, as you know, as we were saying, kind of dialed things out.

Todd (20:32):
Yeah, and I think that’s the better route anyways. I mean, we don’t want to be Walmart where we’re selling at super small margins, just pushing high volume. It’s, it’s a lot less risk here in my opinion, by selling those slower velocity higher ROI products for sure.

Scott Needham (20:49):
Right? We do have some exclusive relationships and you know, where we are actively growing a roster by, you know, offering services. It’s not easy to get done. We and, and you can, and some of the situations start to get a slightly higher margins because if you’re an exclusive, you know, you can, you can find a way to raise it, a dollar or two. So I think any wholesaler out there can pivot slightly and and vie for exclusives by offering, you know, service back to that brand saying like, Hey, I’ll be your authorized, I’ll give you this data, I’ll optimize these images, I’ll do this, this and this. And and then you’re worth it. And, and I absolutely think a small amount and pop can beat us in service if they have, if a are paying attention. So that’s kind of like what I work with a lot still to this day is, is make sure that our services back to brands only gets better.

Todd (22:01):
Yeah. And I’ve mentioned that in the past how a smaller seller like myself can compete with a big seller like yourself by offering that more personal touch, right? Because it doesn’t really make a lot of sense for the CEO of, Buyboxer to be talking with a small brand about building their listings on Amazon where myself, it does. So a lot of small businesses would like to work with a small business as well. So we have that kind of leg up on a bigger plan.

Scott Needham (22:34):
And one thing that you’ve learned as a wholesaler is some of the Amazon expertise that you know, a brand doesn’t have, there is not a lot of really good on Amazon knowledge out there. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably the type that has already picked up a lot of these skills and so you are valuable and don’t set that aside of like what you’ve learned. And if you’re, if you’re still, if you’re still starting out, keep listening to podcasts, I actually think the cutting edge of information on Amazon is on podcasts.

Todd (23:13):
Yup. Yeah, for sure. And just having the format is just really nice. You can listen to while you’re doing just about anything. So yeah, definitely would recommend that as well. One thing that I’d like to touch on as well, brands direct or distributors, what is your breakdown with Buyboxer or where you’re getting your product?

Scott Needham (23:35):
I think we do about 50, 50. Distributors are, they really simplify a lot of things. They give you a huge catalogs. But one problem is their prices aren’t quite as good. And because some brands, you know, they, maybe they have one decent than one or two decent and products and your POS are, you know, under $1,000. The truth is that doesn’t really move the needle for us. You know, we send out POS regularly in the 20, 30, $40,000 and so that we’re able to do that with distributors. But I mean there’s strength to working with the manufacturer brand. You’re going to get a little bit of that margin, better margin and maybe even a more longterm relationship with a product that you can set up a future exclusive or semi exclusive relationship.

Todd (24:37):
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times a brand is cheaper. I’ve seen some times where it’s more expensive but yeah, it’s good to hear that it’s like 50, 50 cause I think a lot of people out there teach to just like go brand, brand, brand, brand and then I hear it from people all the time. I’ve, you know, I’ve reached out to 50 brands and nobody wants to work with me cause I’m an Amazon seller. And distributors are just so much easier and you can start getting some quick wins while you’re building your, your brand catalog as well. Now for your stock, what kind of stock levels are you guys keeping? Are you trying to do like a rolling 45, 60, 90

Scott Needham (25:22):
Four to six weeks? So that’s about 45.

Todd (25:25):
Okay, perfect. So about 30 to 45 days.

Scott Needham (25:28):
But but we definitely run out of inventory constantly. Really like to run lean, like to when you run out of inventory, that means you know, you got your money back. If we, you try and have longer wakes up cover, we found that if a product stopped selling or say Amazon retail jumps on your ability to teach your mind bag, it’s just harder and you’re, further invested. So we, we try and avoid major investments that can burn us.

Todd (26:10):
Okay, perfect. Well, I’m liking all your answers so far, Scott. It makes me feel like I’m on the right track here, so I’m a, I’m always behind ya.

Scott Needham (26:20):
It sounds like I’m on the right track, so I’m liking that.

Todd (26:24):
Let’s see. How about one thing that I just jumped into is the Amazon well they have the NARF program now, North America, Remote Fulfillment and then also just selling directing Canada and Mexico and Europe internationally. Do you guys do a lot of that?

Scott Needham (26:48):
Well, what we do do is we actually manage more brands in Europe than we sell ourselves, where we manage you know, Buyboxer has built out an agency to do that. And sometimes they want to go to Europe and, and so you advise that and kind of manage the aspects.

Todd (27:09):
Okay, nice.

Scott Needham (27:10):
And so, but I don’t have as much on the ground experience other than I know the steps to take. We have done some Canada direct. I, you know, ourselves where we did the exports. It’s kind of hard to justify the time spent on that. Canada’s a little bit smaller and it’s harder to get sales. So that’s why, you know, I’m a big fan of the NARF program. Talk plenty about it and because it’s a great way to test some other marketplaces in Mexico and Canada, your inventory in the U.S gets listed in the .CA And the .MX marketplaces and, and they’re using your existing inventory already announce on FCs. That means you are starting to sell more tomorrow. And right now that represents almost 4% of our business. It’s not, you know, game changing, but there’s not a lot of things that you could do that increase your sales by 4% overnight.

Todd (28:21):
Yup. Yeah, for sure. I heard you talk about it on your podcast, so I reached out to you about it and so I appreciate you helping me get that set up and stuff. And it actually just went live yesterday, so I’m still playing around with it, getting everything pushed over to the different marketplaces. But my thought with it is that if I start seeing sales of a product in Canada or Mexico, then I can go ahead and send that product in if it makes sense and sell it.

Scott Needham (28:53):
I mean, I think if you sold 10 units into a, one of those marketplaces, you’d probably say 10 units in a month, you can probably send 30 direct, and I, it would increase the sales because while it is a prime offer in those marketplaces, it’s not two day shipping and it is a little more expensive. I think you could have a better offer altogether. If you are actually, you know, your inventory resides in those countries. So I, I think NARF is great for testing that out. So if you see 10 sales a month in a, on a product, pay attention to that. You can see that double or triple.

Todd (29:40):
Yeah. And just to explain the NARF North America Remote Fulfillment, it’s basically where Amazon is taking your inventory. You’re selling in the U.S and shipping it when it sells in Canada or Mexico. So you can list products in those two marketplaces without actually having to import products into there yourself.

Scott Needham (30:02):
Yup, that’s right.

Todd (30:04):
Yeah. So I’m looking forward to checking that out. Any other tips or anything like that, Scott, for someone just getting started out? Like what something I just thought of, like, what do you guys do to get around the barrier of we don’t want any more Amazon sellers?

Scott Needham (30:30):
There’s a, I’ve heard plenty of tactics and some work and some, won’t. Everyone has a different Amazon strategy and we honestly try and adapt to that say and then actually built our company to evolve around that. There’s a chance to, Amazon evolves, you know, and more brands go to racks. So we have taken ourselves to manage their accounts and for a subset of them, it works where we can get a percentage of sales for managing their account and hopefully we do a great job growing their sales. Then that’s one thing. Another is we will, you know, talk about their brand and how we can grow them on Amazon and, and improve their pages with better marketing. And that will win for some, could be a hard sale. And then some brands you just have to walk away from. And that may be why we still are strong with distributors is because it’s just easier to get that. Yes.

Todd (31:40):
Yeah, a lot easier. It’s like night and day for the most part, especially right now in 2020, so definitely doing a mix of both is kinda where it’s at. Do you guys ever get any success getting around the, we require our sellers to have our brick and mortar store?

Scott Needham (32:01):
Well you know, we did have a brick and mortar store and in 2013 and we leaned on that we would never lie about what, where we were selling stuff, but we said, yeah, we have a brick and mortar and that helped open the door. But the last three years we just don’t even say that anymore. We just tell them what we do and approach the conversation that way. So there is an advantage to a brick and mortar, no doubt. And if you see an opportunity to, to get one, maybe you should take it. That’s it. But, but

Scott Needham (32:43):
Doesn’t mean you can’t get a lot of brands without it. Yeah. If you focus the conversation on how you can help them build their brand.

Todd (32:51):
Yup. Yeah. They’re just roadblocks that we all have to deal with and it’s not easy, but eventually you start learning different ways to kind of work around it. I just had one that I’ve been selling his product for over a year now and I took it upon myself to approve some of his listings. And just this year I reached out to him, asked him what his plans were and if you wanted to maybe work with us and now we’ve got an exclusive with them. So sometimes you just got to build that brand and, and start small. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oops. Sorry.

Todd (33:26):
That’s all right. So we’re, we’re probably running up against the, our time here. So any last things that you would like to throw out there for someone who is just getting started, hasn’t even sold on Amazon yet?

Scott Needham (33:45):
No, I mean, I would divide your time into ways. As you’re starting, there’s two types of activities. There’s the

Scott Needham (33:57):
The physical tasks or the, I don’t know, I need a new word for this, but you know, task, they’ll get a specific set result. Say you’re labeling a product, you could label 500 an hour. Great. So it’s you’re going to get that much input per hour. And then there’s the types of tasks that help you scale. That’s when you’re implementing new technology. That’s when you’re implementing yeah, a new piece of software that is taking away a task from you that you’re ended up doing every day. And also you know, hiring out or you know, using a VA for these is also a form of scaling your business. And so make sure you’re always mindful of, you know, which ones are you doing and where can you be what you have the money to do. Do you have money to invest time and money to invest in your processes and in your software or do you just, you know get, you know, a set amount of value per time. I think retail arbitrage is a great example of that. You get your scanner and you get your things go on and that’s as efficient as you’re going to be. You’re still driving around to pick up a certain products. And that’s kind of like, you’re not scaling your business. And so be mindful how you can scale. I mean, that’s how you’re ultimately going to get bigger if that’s your goal.

Todd (35:42):
Yup. Yeah, definitely. It’s, you know, you’ve got to outsource those tasks that are going to take up most of your time. One of those things is I think opening some of those accounts and doing the basic things like emailing and stuff like that. How, how soon did you start outsourcing that stuff?

Scott Needham (36:04):
Immediately that was one advantage of our brick and mortar stores. We had employees and we kind of, you know, having them shift some of their labor to helping us scale. And then they’ll just kind of like fuel itself and then we, you know we just only grew from there, you know, from the beginning. We did utilize help from others.

Todd (36:29):
All right, perfect. Yeah, extremely important in any business if you’re going to grow it for sure. Well Scott, I really appreciate you coming on the show here. I think this has been, an excellent episode. A lot of details and stuff that we dived in that are gonna help people. So I really appreciate you coming on the show and I look forward to staying in touch. We’re both here in Utah so maybe we can get together sometime for a drink or something.

Scott Needham (36:56):
Okay. Yeah, no that sounds good. I’d love to keep in touch and you know, just keep helping the community or whatever, you know, I, I gain a lot of that as well.

Todd (37:07):
Alright, you have a good one, Scott.

Scott Needham (37:09):
Yeah.

Todd (37:11):
All right, so what did I tell you? A great episode. As always, I really love talking with Scott. You can tell he really knows his stuff and has built a business that’s selling over $60 million a year. So lot of great knowledge there and I’m really happy we could get him to come on the show. Make sure you head over to check out the show notes at entrepreneuradventure.com/15 for links over to his podcast. And then I also recommend you check out his website Buyboxer.com it’s a great example of a value proposition website if you’re looking at building something for your own business as well. So with that, this is Todd Welch with the entrepreneurial adventure signing off, happy selling everybody.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
This has been another episode of the entrepreneur adventure podcast. Thanks for listening, fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours if you take it.