0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like I Digress. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to crush it on Amazon. Regardless of the business model, you choose to drop these value bombs. I brought Maximiliano Abreu into EOFire studios. Max was raised in Paraguay and swam all his life. He came to the U S on an athletic scholarship. He loves Jesus, E-commerce is his passion, and he is shooting for $10 million in revenue on Amazon this year. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about focus on investing in yourself.

0 (45s):
Why action trumps knowledge in knowing your numbers cold before you take action and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, if you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website, and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. The My First Million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts.

0 (1m 28s):
So Max say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know

1 (1m 35s):
What is going on. Fire Nation. I have been looking forward to this day for a while, been a longtime listener. So really, really excited, and a fact about me that people don't know. Most people don't know. I I'm from Paraguay originally came to the states when I was 18, never had a job right out of college started e-commerce. So I've never really had a job in ever.

0 (2m 0s):
Wow. So this is a guy Fire Nation has never had a quote unquote traditional job. Guess what? He has a goal to make $10 million in rev in revenue on Amazon this year. So exciting times that we live in exciting times. And what's his masterclass on you say, well, it's about how to crush it on Amazon, regardless of your business model, whether that's retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, private label wholesale, and we are chatting with Max today. So cool, cool staff, Max, give us just a couple teasers of Oregon to be chatting about today.

1 (2m 32s):
So I'm going to try and break down just a little bit about why Amazon is the best place to start. You know, it starts selling and also all the different business models that are available on Amazon, whether that's the typical hustler, you know, or going to different places and buying stuff to flip, or, you know, launching your own brand.

0 (2m 52s):
I'm a hustler, baby. I just want you to know. All right. So listen, let's get into your story. Let Fire Nation know a little bit more about what you have going on, and then we're going to just drop some Amazon value bomb,

1 (3m 3s):
Awesome stuff. So, and where do I start? So I been a swimmer my whole life. I came to the states when I was about 18, came on a swimming scholarship here. I've always been intrigued with making money online. I just always found it fascinating that you could make money from a computer. And so I knew I wanted to do that and then come senior year, you know, it was about to graduate, but I still wanted to swim. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do. I mean, I knew I wanted to make money online. So I started researching, started dabbling a little bit. And one thing led to the next and in, I started flipping a couple of goods here and there.

1 (3m 46s):
And then I met this guy. His name is Chuck, still great friend, great mentor to this day, he was doing it full time. He was selling on, he was on full-time for about 10 months ahead of me. And that was kind of a huge epiphany moment for me. It was my aha like, oh, it could be done. It could be done full time. And so I told my roommate at the time, who was helping me, he was just helping me. Cause he was curious about the business and whatnot. And I said, look, this guy's doing it full time. This is what I want to do when we graduate. But I knew I was still gonna swim cause I was training for the Olympics. And so I asked him if he wanted to be my business partner. And he said, yeah.

1 (4m 27s):
And so we moved to Florida. I, I kept on training for about a year and a half. Didn't make the Olympics, but then never looked back.

0 (4m 38s):
I just want to say this. I love this world that we live in where you can just say, listen, I want to go deep on one subject or one topic or one industry or one platform, you know, for Max right now, it's going to be Amazon. But for you, it can be something else. It can be so many different things. But if you are willing to put in the time, the energy and the effort, you can absolutely dominate whatever niche that you choose. And so we're really going to be focused on Amazon today because that's what Max shows that is the pony that he is writing. So tell us, Max, why is Amazon the best place to get started when it comes to e-commerce

1 (5m 11s):
In the last quarter of this year, over 55% of the products that were sold on Amazon were sold by third-party sellers. So think of it like this, like more than half the time that you buy something on Amazon profits are going directly to someone like me on the other end and Amazon needs us, like people like us to be the everything store that they are, you know, and another reason is there's over 550 million products I think on Amazon. So if you want to sell something, you could definitely find something to sell. Then the, the FBA warehouses that they have, they can take care of all the fulfillment to where you don't need a warehouse.

1 (5m 51s):
And then Amazon is not going anywhere. You know, they've got the biggest market share by far and the e-commerce in general is not slowing down at all. So I like to, I like to think of it as riding the wave and not trying to go against it. You know,

0 (6m 5s):
Fire Nation. I have a pretty decent size audience. I mean, if you're listening, you're definitely considered one of those. And I love you for listening for being part of the audience. And I have both the freedom of mastery journal for sale, and guess what? They have their own Shopify websites@thefreedomandmasteryjournal.com their own separate websites. But on Amazon, I sell both of those websites 10 to one, 10 to one. So even though I have a big audience and I drive drive, drive my audience there for people that make sense for either the freedom or the mastery journal, guess what Amazon still else sells me, tend to want for my journals, which I have with their FBA program. And as people who don't know me as people that are just, they're searching for journals and goals and productivity journals and all this stuff, and they're buyers, they have their credit cards already entered in and they're ready to buy.

0 (6m 56s):
And I am still to this day, shocked at the amount of sales I do every single day on Amazon. And it's such an amazing experience. So I know what to sell on Amazon Max. I sell my journals. How does Fire Nation who's never sold anything on Amazon? How do they know what to sell?

1 (7m 12s):
The beauty of selling on Amazon is that it's so data-driven to where the guessing game of looking at a certain product and saying, oh, this looks nice. I bet it'll sell. You know, those days are gone. Amazon just provides so much data to you. As far as knowing how, how popular a product might be, what your competition is estimated to be selling a month. You know, you can look at competitions, negative reviews for you to improve upon your product. Everything is a blueprint. Everything is a formula. There's no creative genius per se needed. You know, before we buy a product for us to flip and sell, we usually know, you know, how much we're going to make and how quickly it'll sell before we even buy it.

1 (7m 60s):
You know? So that's, that's unheard of in other industries.

0 (8m 4s):
Wow. I mean, Fire Nation. Just think about that thing about what Max just shared. And what I'm curious about is the different business models that you can actually do. Cause I think a lot of people just think, oh, I've got to come up with a physical product and do this and X and Y and Z. But the reality is there's different models on Amazon than just doing that traditional approach. So it's kind of talk about some of those

1 (8m 26s):
A lot, you know, but I'll, I'll focus kind of on what we do. And, and there's there's retail arbitrage, which is going into a physical store, buying something and then taking it home, shipping it to Amazon's warehouses and then basically watching itself. And there's online arbitrage, which is similar to, to buying rather than buying from a physical store. You're buying, buying from an online store to flip on Amazon. Then there's wholesale, which is basically contacting, you know, a distributor or a brand to sell their product on Amazon. And then there's private label, which is, you know, launching your own brand on Amazon, similar to, you know, the mastery journal and all that good stuff.

0 (9m 11s):
Take us through those again. But I want you to share with us the pros and cons as you're going through it, because each one of those has their pros. Each one of them has their cons. Let's really flesh this out for Fire Nation. Who's maybe trying to figure out what relative they want to go.

1 (9m 25s):
We've done them all. We still do them all. And there, there are a huge pros, huge cons to each one, but we obviously still continue to do them. So they're great. But retail arbitrage, when you're going into a store, that's very low cost, very low risk it's. It's how we got started. It's still, we still have it's bread, our bread and butter. And basically, you know, you go in with a story, you go into a store, you've got your phone, you scan barcodes. It tells you how popular it is on Amazon and you ship it to Amazon. And that's it. Now one of the cons for that is a little bit harder to scale. You know, we have, we have teams of people doing it and we've got a system in place.

1 (10m 8s):
And another con to that is you might only be as good as your last hustle. So basically you're, you're only as good as your last deal there. So you got to constantly be on the lookout for product and with, with online arbitrage, it's kind of similar, but you've got the freedom of working from your computer. You know, so I know a lot of people that crush it with online arbitrage, by buying something online, flipping it on Amazon, but shipping it to a third-party fulfillment center, for example, you know, they don't have to necessarily be there to buy the actual product so that you've got the freedom and it can also be easily delegated. I can, it's a very teachable skill to maybe a virtual assistant in the Philippines that can kind of take that over.

1 (10m 53s):
And you can duplicate that. Now the cons with online arbitrage is that it can be competitive. You know, it's, it's your base. You're, you're only as good as your last hustle again, but you're buying stuff from the internet. You know? So if, if I'm doing it and anybody has access to the internet, then some of those deals might get a little saturated here and there. So you gotta be quick. Then there's wholesale, wholesale, again is buying from a distributor or brand. And some of the pros there are that it's fast moving, you know, it's turn and burn. And a lot of times it's replenishable. So if you land a good brand or a good supplier, you can usually order it over and over and over again.

1 (11m 36s):
Maybe even get them to ship directly to Amazon, to where you don't touch it. Some of the cons there are that the wholesale counts might be a little bit harder to land. Sometimes you got to buy the whole catalog, not just the one winter product. And then finally, there's private label, which is launching your own brand on Amazon. There's a lot of pros here because you get to control your own brand. You get to build something that you can scale outside of Amazon, but there's some cons because there's a bigger upfront investment. You know, sometimes we're bringing stuff from China. So you gotta wait until it gets here. And the liabilities are a little bit higher there because obviously all the risk is on you.

0 (12m 20s):
Now I know nobody likes to just say they have a favorites, but do you have a favorite Max? Which one do you like more than the rest? Or is it just not the case you don't have?

1 (12m 31s):
I do. It's funny. We were talking about this today with some friends, but you know, retail arbitrage has been our bread and butter. And so I can't ignore it, but I would say my favorite is definitely definitely private label. Just because you get to build something from scratch, you can also sell it later. You know, you can have a good exit strategy with that, and it's a lot of fun.

0 (12m 56s):
So you gave us a couple of reasons why you really like it, but give us the number one reason why you love that and why that's your favorite

1 (13m 3s):
Private label would be my favorite because of the exit strategy. You know, you build something that's your own and you can, you can build it with the exit strategy in mind. And so now we're working on a brand that hopefully within two and a half years, we can turn around and sell and kind of have a, a big cash out. Some of the other stuff is a little bit harder to sell because you might be selling a system or a basically cashflow, you know, but when you sell, when you build a brand and then you sell it, it could, it could still skyrocket. People could do whatever they want with it. And I've seen it done over and over again. So we're looking forward to that.

0 (13m 42s):
That's some cool stuff I like to hear that. So let me ask you a question that I know for a fact is on the mind of some of our listeners, what if someone doesn't have enough money or they don't want to risk their own capital? What are the next steps?

1 (13m 56s):
I'll tell you how we started. We started with only a $3,000 each from our parents, but that was to, that was for everything, you know, live food, moved down to Florida, figured out kind of deal. So what we went ahead and did was since we had kind of proven the system, we applied for as many credit cards as we could, that were 0% interest, you know, for 18 months or whatever, and had no annual fees. And so that gave us free money to get started for a limited, from limited time, you know, but by the time those promotions ended, we had already paid back all those credit cards and whatnot.

1 (14m 36s):
But I would say if, if you don't have that option and I wouldn't, I wouldn't just encourage people to go out and just apply for a ton of credit cards without proving the concept. First, I would say, start with retail arbitrage or online arbitrage. You know, I could go to the store right now and maybe spend a couple hundred, or maybe like 150 bucks just to, just to try it, get comfortable with it. And then

0 (15m 3s):
Fire Nation. I love that story of going down there with a set dollar amount, $3,000, and just having to make it happen, just having to make it happen. Like that's such a great entrepreneurial. I love capitalism type story, such cool stuff. So Max has been dropping value bombs left, and right there are more to come. When we get back from thanking ours sponsor your customer's experiences, everything, when it comes to building and scaling your business and with multiple customers on board, your marketing team likely has conflicting priorities to juggle. Unfortunately, this means that customer oriented tasks can often fall through the cracks. But what if you had a system that allowed you to bring your customer's experiences to the forefront so that your marketing team isn't stuck in the weeds of operations and can instead focus on building targeted, meaningful campaigns, start giving your customers what they deserve.

0 (15m 53s):
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0 (16m 33s):
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0 (17m 14s):
Best part is they make it super easy. They handle everything. Go to ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOS sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad. That's conversion, fanatics.com. So Max I'm busy. You're busy. Fire Nation is busy. I mean, we're all busy people. That's just a reality. You know, I don't like that word busy, but I mean, we just like to fill our lives up with stuff. So what a Fire Nation's like this all sounds good at all, but what if I don't have time? Like what if I don't have the time to actually apply all these principles? What is your recommendation? I hear

1 (17m 50s):
That all the time. And the truth is that most sellers on Amazon start part time. You know, the most of the work with, with Amazon, especially with like you've experienced with the fulfillment centers and FBA and whatnot. Most of the effort in everything is done upfront. You know, most of the heavy lifting is upfront. And then you can kind of watch the results. I mean, I don't know how much time you spend on your Amazon business, but it's probably not very much, you know, it took some time to get it going. But besides that, you know, it's pretty easy going once you,

0 (18m 28s):
I log in like a once or twice, every few days just to check my sales. Like I want to be honest, like I have an alert set up for when my inventory gets low and then I ship it. Some, I ship some more inventory to FDA. But besides that, I mean, it is super hands-off. Now there was, as you mentioned, absolute setup time, there was definitely a little bit of setup time to really get my listing looking. Right. But after that point, man, it's just it's I don't wanna say set it and forget it, but it's like set it and check in on it every now and then that's kind of how it's been for me a hundred percent. Let's talk about customers and distribution. Like a lot of entrepreneurs myself, to some degree, you know, we like we're kind of control freaks and what happens if we actually want to be to control?

0 (19m 10s):
I don't remember how I'd like to work control my customer, but like, you know, at least have access to who my customer is and have access to my distribution and control over the distribution. Part of my business now with Amazon, you know, maybe kind of fill us in even more because you're more knowledgeable than I am, but we don't have like access to our customer's email and to, you know, their information and stuff like that. Like Amazon keeps that stuff. Now there are ways to contact our customer, but there's no way to actually have all of that information that went to say they, they come to the FreedomJournal.com and buy a Freedom Journal and fill my order form. I have all their information then. So what about those people that are taught that are talking right now, or at least thinking to themselves right now?

0 (19m 50s):
Hey, w doesn't Amazon keep all that stuff? I don't want to lose control of everything.

1 (19m 55s):
Yes. So a lot of people have that, you know, that objection in their minds and whatnot. And first of all, one thing I'll say is like, if, if you get big enough, you know, if you're really trying to hit it off with some sort of product, your product's gonna end up on Amazon at one point or another, whether you do it or someone else does true story. And then also there's, there's some tools that can scrape Amazon's customer information. Cause they do give a little bit, and you're able to append that information against big databases and kind of find out as, as much as many emails as you can to then retarget.

1 (20m 38s):
So it is possible obviously Amazon doesn't prefer that they would want to keep their customers on their website, but I know it's the dream to retarget them, take them out, take them to your Shopify and all that. So there's definitely some tools there that can help you do that.

0 (20m 55s):
Foundations listening to just like, well, I don't have a warehouse and I'm a place to store my product. Like I'm really kind of starting from ground zero. Like what is your best recommendations for people in that situation,

1 (21m 5s):
Similar to what you do, you know, you got FBA warehouses and that's what really changed the game. Even for me, when I was starting out in college, I couldn't believe that all I had to do was buy the product and then ship all of it at once to Amazon's warehouses. And then it would get taken care of. I mean, that's what truly truly changed the game.

0 (21m 27s):
And by the way, the best logistical system in the world, I mean, you're literally shipping them something and it is just magic, what they do with it when it gets there. I mean, I sit shipped them like 2000 Freedom Journals before I know it, those 2000 Freedom Journals are spread throughout like their seven distribution centers throughout the us for, you know, overnight shipping. It's unbelievable.

1 (21m 48s):
Yeah. The FBA warehouses are just amazing. You know, the fact that you can just ship your product straight to their warehouses, forget about it. It's incredible. It was a complete game changer in the whole e-commerce industry where all of a sudden, you didn't have to worry about shipping every single product to every single customer than worrying about returns, repackaging the fact that that part of the business, the logistics, which is the heavy lifting is, is taken care of. It's just incredible. It's, it's freeing and you can focus on actually making more.

0 (22m 25s):
I love it. I love it. And Fire Nation, when you focus on making more money, one thing I'm always a big fan of focusing on is investing in yourself. And I'm gonna tell you straight up that when I went through the setup, I wasn't like I'm going to learn. I wasn't like, I'm going to learn all of this from scratch. I said, Hey, I want to go to people who have been there, who have done that. And they're going to help me get the best product up there, which are my journals with the best listing, the best pictures and all the keywords that I wanted, all that stuff. And I invested in myself, I made it happen. And now I'm reaping massive rewards from doing just that. So Max, talk a little bit about that. Have you ever invested in any coaching for yourself, have you learned from other people or were you just learning on the go because you did have a limited budget?

1 (23m 8s):
Absolutely. Well, well first I'll say that your listing on Amazon does look pretty good. So whoever, yeah, whoever did that, did a good job at first, the guy that I met that was doing it full time, his name's Chuck, I owe him my life basically because he was helping me from the get-go answering every single question without charging me a single dollar. And, but later, later down the line we invested in all sorts of stuff, you know, all sorts of courses and basically anything that could speed up our learning curve. You know, we, we, we tried to spend money on it now many times, especially nowadays the problem with a lot of gurus.

1 (23m 53s):
And it's kind of why we started our company with solar systems, is that a lot of them, you know, talk the talk, but then don't actually walk the walk. And I had, you know, we had a real problem with that. And learning from people that are actually doing it is way different. You know, people will spend thousands oncologists. And this is something that my business partner, you know, we had this conversation recently is his favorite teachers in college were the ones that actually had business experience. It's just way different when you're being taught by someone who's actually doing it or has done it in, in the problem with, you know, today and online and whatnot.

1 (24m 34s):
You see a lot of people, like I said, just walking, talking the talk, but not actually walking the walk.

0 (24m 40s):
You are walking the walk, you are talking the talk. I mean, you've had massive success with Amazon. I mean, you've paid your dues. You've learned from other people you've invested in yourself, you've done all the right things. You're on pace or at least you're shooting for $10 million in revenue on Amazon this year. So a massive number getting up into eight figures is a super accomplishment, exciting setting times. And I know that you have a special offer for Fire Nation, for those people that might want to explore more about if and how Amazon is a good fit for them.

1 (25m 10s):
So what we've done JLD is we've partnered with Brandon Young, who is a private label expert. That's all he's doing. He's on pace for eight figures this year as well. And so what we want to do is we've want to teach people how to get started on Amazon, how to crush it, how to scale on Amazon, regardless of your business model and being part of a community and being able to learn from people that are actually doing it. So what we've got is a special offer. And I won't even say how much of a deep discount it is, but I love entrepreneurial fire. You guys are going to have to go check it out. It's code EOFire.

1 (25m 50s):
And you're going to have to go to seller-systems.com and find out all about us. And you'll, you'll find out that deep discount, if you type in EOFire and the promo code part of our program, if not a free Facebook group is always available where we can, we still hang out, you know, you can still get a fee, a field, excuse me for who we are. And yeah,

0 (26m 18s):
That's awesome. And I really just appreciate Fire Nation when people that come on this show that are, my guests are also listeners. And so they resonate with Fire Nation. They are a part of Fire Nation and they really hook up Fire Nation. So a strong call to action for you. If you have any desire to learn more about Amazon, at least go check out where Max is going to offer you. It's it's going to be awesome. I know he's going to over-deliver their seller-systems.com enter promo code EOFire, and just watch that awesome discount pop up right there in front of you. So Max, just give us one key takeaway that you want to make sure that our audience gets from this masterclass.

1 (26m 58s):
Well, one key takeaway, which is it's almost like a life lesson for me that has stuck with us from the beginning of the business. We still talk about it with my business partner, is that action trumps knowledge, you know, and if you take action, you're going to get the knowledge later. You have to look at things like learning experiences. At the beginning of our business, we made eight ton of mistakes, but we almost, we would laugh about it every time because we knew it was a learning experience. We would say, oh, that was a $5,000 learning experience. That was a more expensive learning experience. That was, you know, and we still do that to this day. And I think that's, what's kept us going because truth is you're going to make mistakes.

1 (27m 41s):
And as long as you learn from them, you'll keep going. And that's what it's all about.

0 (27m 45s):
Nation action, trumps knowledge. I could not agree more. That statement, there's so much truth in there. And you know, this Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with that. You've been hanging out with MA and JLD today. So keep up the heats and head over to EOFire.com type Max in the search bar. And the show notes page for this episode will pop up with all the links. These are the best shows in the biz with timestamps and everything. You can imagine more. And of course the direct call to action is course.seller-systems.com. Enter promo code EOFire for your mega discount. If you want to learn more about Amazon from people who are going into the eight figure stratosphere and Max, thank you brother, for sharing your truth with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (28m 36s):
Absolutely bless you guys. Thanks.

0 (28m 38s):
Hey, Fire Nation. Hope you enjoyed our chat with Max today. And if you've been saying to yourself, I think I want to start a podcast. Well, good thoughts. So what I want you to do next is to take action because as you know, action Trump's words and head over to freepodcastcourse.com. It is free. It's a podcasting course that will allow you to create, grow and monetize your podcast. This is a free course Fire Nation. I'd love to see you there. Take care. If you're generating seven to eight figures, plus from your website and you're not doing conversion optimization, you're leaving tons of revenue on the table. Visit ConversionFanatics.com for a free proposal today and tell them EOF sent you because traffic without conversions is just sad.

0 (29m 24s):
The My First Million podcast features famous guests, discusses how companies made their first million and brainstorm new business ideas based on the hottest trends and opportunities in the marketplace. One recent app was all about how venture capitalists make money. Listen to My First Million, wherever you get your podcasts.