He Found 1,000 Profitable Products in 5 Weeks

Today's guest expects to use strategies he learned from the ProvenAmazonCourse.com course to sell about $700K total at a 100% ROI in his Amazon "REPLENS" business. Recently he hired some help and turned them loose and found approx. 1,000 profitable products for his business in about 5 weeks. The challenge isn't FINDING products to sell - it's finding time to buy them all! We discuss great books, what tools we use and other strategies in this episode. If you are new to Amazon selling you'll be inspired by this episode for sure! If you are experienced you'll get some great strategies. Thanks for listening to the podcast ranked as the "Top Amazon Seller Podcast by Feedspot". Today's guest: Dennis Hertzler

Transcript

Dennis: Thanks, Jim. Hey, it’s great to be here. It’s a thrill.

Jim: Hey, this is really cool for us, too, man. It took a while to get these set up sometimes, but it’s good to finally hang out with you a little bit. I want to get right into your story. I can’t wait to hear it.

Dennis: Sure, great. A big part of my story is that I’m married to a wonderful woman and this year will be our 25th, actually.

Jim: Oh, congrats. Any big plans, man? What’s on the docket?

Dennis: Oh, yeah. We haven’t really done any vacations for several years, so we’ve got a big vacation planned at the end of this year. That will be our celebration. We’re definitely looking forward to that.

Jim: That’s great. Good for you. Have fun.

Dennis: We also have a daughter, also have a beautiful daughter who’s 11 years old. We actually adopted her from China. She’s just phenomenal.

Jim: Great, we have that in common as well. Our little guy, he’s a little older. He’s 18 now, but we got him as an infant as well from China, Ty, yeah. What’s your little girl’s name?

Dennis: She’s McKayla, McKayla’s her name. Yeah, and she is a gift from God for sure. She’s awesome. Yeah, that’s that.

Before I got into Amazon I was in technology for like 30 years. In fact, I worked for a good-sized hospital here locally. I always smile whenever I hear you talking about your Microsoft past because I – well, I was in that position. I dealt with a lot of Microsoft reps.

Jim: Yeah, well, I was a reseller. I don’t know where those go in the IT department, but we’re the ones that took you to lunch and tried to convince you to buy licensing. That was me.

Dennis: Yeah, well, that’s it; we talked to a lot of licensing, a lot of Microsoft licensing in my days.

Jim: You’ll put me to sleep if we stay on that subject too long, man. That was brutal.

Dennis: Anyway, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial – of course, I was working in the corporate world for that time. I always had an entrepreneurial slant. I started actually a computer business, a retail store back in the late ‘80s, so a long time ago. That never really succeeded. Then I went into the corporate world and so forth, but I’ve always had that entrepreneurial spirit that I wanted to do.

Actually, in the late ‘90s, I started on eBay, about the same time you did, probably. I was just selling stuff from around the house and never really made a business of it. Five years ago, I decided all right, the corporate world – the technology was just getting me burned out, so I decided to make a change and actually became a realtor at that time. I’ve been doing real – being a realtor for the last five years also.

However, I never really just – I never really took off as a realtor. I enjoyed it and so forth, but it just – I don’t know, just maybe it wasn’t quite my thing. Three years ago, I decided, okay, this eBay, Amazon thing – and I hadn’t really heard about Amazon. Somewhere I saw a podcast – or not a podcast, I heard one of your podcasts or whatever and maybe found your Facebook page. I did read the silent Jim book at that time. I thought, oh, Amazon. Maybe I’ll look into this.

Three years ago, I started a business, although I didn’t really do anything with it for quite a while. It wasn’t really until September of 2019 that I decided that, okay, I’m really going to do something with this. I got PAC. I’ve been a PAC owner for a couple of years now at least. Then I got Replens. I think it was about the time replens started getting bigger.

Jim: Yeah, Replens has been a module for about two years in the Proven Amazon Course at this point.

Dennis: Yeah, so I was right there at the beginning of that. Started just piddling around going into stores. I can remember looking at clearance aisles in Walmart trying to figure that out. I found a couple of deals. It was good and everything, but nothing sustainable really big.

Anyway, near the end of September, I think I started getting – taking replens more seriously, and so started that. By the end of the Year 2019, I had done 17,000. I think I did 10,000 or so in December. Then January, February, and March were pretty good. March had a big uptick. That was when COVID started. I think I was up to about $17,000. That was my best month ever.

Then for personal reasons and just money reasons, I decided to focus more on my real estate, plus I had an opportunity there. Anyway, I focused on real estate for several months and did actually quite well with that. The Amazon stuff, I was just – my business went down like this on Amazon. I was still sending stuff in, but not real steadily. Then August of last year, of 2020, I decided, okay, I still really want to get this Amazon thing going. To get it going, I’m going to need to get some help. I found a good friend who decided to be my prepper pack and shipper.

He started with me in late August. Then September, October, November, all the way through December, things just started climbing. I think I hit 20,000 in November, which was a record. That was going – I was still just working out of the house with the room being used up with all the boxes and everything.

Jim: This friend you hired came to your house to prep?

Dennis: Yeah, he did.

Jim: Got you. I’m always interested in the arrangements that people use.

Dennis: Yeah, my wife was okay with that because we know – we knew him. I was always here when he was prepping.

Jim: Did he show up early and make you guys coffee in the morning or how did that work? What time does he show up?

Dennis: He was here usually I think by 9 or 10, something like that, and worked until about 2 o’clock or so.

Jim: Got you, but you didn’t find it disruptive? It was all good. Your daughter, McKayla, you said, just totally normal and worked out well?

Dennis: Yeah, well, and he’d known her for quite a while too because both families knew each actually through dance. We met him through – my daughter loved to dance and his daughter dances, so they were good friends. That’s how we met.

Jim: That’s cool.

Dennis: Yeah, but then come near the end of December, in fact, before that, I’m thinking, I really need to get a warehouse because trying to juggle that and really build it, there were time constraints because I had to be here and couldn’t be out shopping or whatever. I decided I really need to get a warehouse so that he can come and go as he pleases and it just will work out much better. Through him actually, he found a guy that has – that we could share space with. It was a phenomenal deal. It’s like, okay, this was meant to be, so we moved into a warehouse in January.

Of course, since then, the business has just been going up and up and up and up. We almost hit 50,000 in June. I think it was 48 something in June. July is a little bit – is going to be a little bit slower because –

Jim: As we’re recording this, we’re coming in the tail-end of July here I guess you could say. Yeah, summer can be a slower period. It’s that little last chance to take a deep breath before Q4. That’s what July and August are. Then, man, it gets exciting again is what I’m predicting. You hit 50 in June. If you don’t mind sharing approximate margin, ROI, what’s your take-home on all that?

Dennis: Sure; by the way, I just want to talk a little bit about my replen business because I do it a little differently than – I wouldn’t call it a standard replens.

Jim: Awesome.

Dennis: Because back when I first started, I was having a hard time finding things, as everybody does. It was just hard times. Then somehow, I stumbled onto this. We had some regional stores that have sales all the time, weeks, every week they had sales, and good sales. I’m like, well, let’s try to aww, this is easy to find replens for.

I started focusing on those sales. I have a list now of over 2,000 items that cycles. They’re not always available. I can’t always send them in. Sometimes I run out of stock and everything, but at any one time, I’ve got 6 or 700 active items that I’m selling actively, obviously. They’re all pretty good. My ROI I calculate – I think I calculate my ROI a little differently than most people do too because not only do I add in the cost of getting the product, and the cost to ship to Amazon, and all the Amazon fees, I specifically, I pay my prepper by the item so I know exactly how much each item costs.

Jim: Right, okay, you’re really accurate on your ROI.

Dennis: Right, I add that into my cost. Then shopping, I know exactly how much I pay myself right now, but I actually just hired a shopper. We haven’t quite started yet, but just hired a shopper. I know how much I’m exactly going to pay them, so I include that in my ROI calculations.

My ROI, I let it go down in the early part of the year because I started adopting Jimmy’s 20% minimum, 20-25% minimum. My ROI was going down there. It was still probably 60%, but I did some calculations. I figured doing that, I’m just doing a lot more work and getting less money, so I decided to increase my target ROI again. Right now, for the last two months, everything I’ve sent in is over 100% ROI, including all those extra costs that I put in there into that ROI calculation.

Jim: That’s phenomenal. The way some people calculate ROI, we’re talking 150-plus%.

Dennis: Right, yeah, probably because it adds at least 40-50% probably.

Jim: Yeah, that’s awesome. Just to recap your strategy, I’ve heard this before. There’s a handful of people that do this. It’s the replens strategy the way we teach it, but you focus specifically on which of my replens are on sale right now. You go clean those up.

What that does, I know you know, but see if I hit the nail on the head here, Dennis, because I’ve gone through this before. You’re buying it better than wholesale, especially if you start tracking with the – you get your credit card miles maybe. You’ve got your bonus point, whatever this store is. You get so many points, and you get freebies, and you get free gasoline or whatever. You start adding all that up, and suddenly, you can compete with even Amazon on some of the most aggressive ASINs that are sitting out there flying, the stuff that sells 500 units a month on Keepa or whatever.

This is great; you can get in the mix and you’re making a few bucks. You’re not worried about people tanking the price because you’re making a good profit because you’ve really stacked your discounts. Another way people stack discounts is they’ll buy gift cards, $100 gift card to the store for $90. There’s another $10 of potential profit for you as you go in. You stack them and it’s no longer a mad hunt for those little unusual items that are hidden in the cracks. It’s the stuff that’s right under your nose. Am I speaking the right language?

Dennis: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. One of my stores that I shop them regularly, they give a – they have an awards system. Probably now, I’ve got about $300 worth of free groceries on that I can go buy. Those add up.

Jim: I’ve got sitting right here next to me just out of arm’s reach, I got a rebate check yesterday for $400 and another one today for 140. I’m like, am I going to use that for my stuff or am I going to use that for more replens? That’s the decision. Probably should use it for replens to keep all the numbers square in the books, but those stuff – that stuff just rolls in. You join those programs, it really adds up. You could be very price competitive too on those ASINs that are flying out the door with maybe 20 or 30 other sellers. Are you playing in some of those arenas where there’s a bunch of sellers? I imagine you probably are.

Dennis: Oh, yeah. The prices still go below where I want to be a lot of times.

Jim: It happens.

Dennis: Yeah, some things I have to drop off, but then there’s a bunch of other stuff I add on. By the way, I also – this is the fifth week now I’ve bought – I hired a VA from the Philippines that now – because one of the things I was – I was not taking the time to find new products as much as I should be just because I didn’t have time. I decided I needed to do something about that. The way I do my product research is I just go take pictures.

Today, a new sale started at one of my stores, so I went and took pictures. Now, I just send the pictures to him. He goes out there and does the searching for me. Honestly, it’s been phenomenal. Like I said, we’re in Week Five now. He’s approaching 1,000 new ASINs that he’s found since he started.

Jim: That’s awesome. People say this business is too complicated. How long did it take you – well, I got two questions for you about your VA because people are just going to light up about this topic; I know they do all the time. Where do I find an Amazon trained? You don’t want an Amazon trained VA in my opinion.

I’m not sure what you’ve got, but if you find someone who’s trained on Amazon already, they might be working for 15 or 20 other Amazon sellers. Everything they learn with you, they’re teaching to their other clients. I want someone that is competent but not serving a bunch of other Amazon sellers. There’s if not hundreds of thousands of these guys out there on any – you can just Google, I want to hire a VA.

We like the Philippines for several reasons. We won’t go into it, but good job, great call. The Philippines is the way to go for many reasons. Rattling off the top of my head, they’re very pro-US. They use the US dollar. They speak English very, very well. They love working for an American-based employer.

You can get someone highly competent, and organized, and motivated for $5, $10 an hour. That money spends very, very well in their local economy. You can multiply that by three or four to do the math on how it spends. Many, many reasons that the Philippines makes sense.

Maybe you have some things to add to that, but I just wanted to point that out that you can go anywhere and find a VA. You don’t have to find a service that trains people how to – Amazon VAs ready to go. No, go find someone cold. That’s my advice. You found 1,000 new ASINs in five weeks by taking pictures of store shelves, so you know the inventory is available, and having them do the research.

Dennis: Yep.

Jim: How long did it – talk us through that. I want to hear –

Dennis: It probably took me –

Jim: If I messed up any of that description, fill in the gaps.

Dennis: No, that was perfect. You’re exactly right. No, it was only three or four hours maybe on a Zoom call with him to teach him how to do it. He had a little experience working for another seller searching for things. I showed him the tools I like to use, and gave him my criteria, and off to the races. He was phenomenal right from the beginning.

Jim: Yeah, which tells me anyone can learn to do this in three to four hours if they’re competent and they pay attention to details, right?

Dennis: Yep.

Jim: Really, that’s what it is. If you go into the Proven Amazon Course and you grab the replens module, and you go through that, that’s 98% of what you’ll ever need, that three or four hours’ worth of content. There’s always little ways to improve on what your processes are, but that’s awesome. I love that. Okay, you trained him over Zoom. That’s it. You’re just five weeks in and you found 1,000 ASINs.

Dennis: Yep, and now I’m starting – I’ve got to figure out – my goal was to get to where every week, I’ve got the sale items down. Then I want to start branching out into normal replens, which I have at any one time. Probably 10% of what I have out there is just normal priced replens that I’ve found. They’re just at normal prices.

Jim: What’s the advantage there? I know, but why – people may be saying, well, why are you looking for normal replens if you’ve got these sale ASINs. How does that make life easier if you have normal replens that are full-priced retail?

Dennis: Yeah, well, it is nice to be able just to when I do run out low on stock to be able to just go out and get it and send it in and not run out of stock because obviously when they run out of stock –

Jim: You’ve got to wait for another sale.

Dennis: Yeah, exactly. Plus, at some point, I’m going to hit a max of how much I can sell of those. To increase, to grow the business farther, then I believe I need to have the normal replens to do that. That’s why I’m working on that also.

Jim: Hey, this is Jim. Sorry to interrupt this fantastic episode, but I wanted to alert you very quickly before we jump back to the show about today’s sponsor. This episode is sponsored by the Legends Group. That is a small group of sellers who gather primarily on Facebook but also live at a couple events per year and talk about how to source products successfully to sell on Amazon. They specialize in retail arbitrage and online arbitrage strategies.

If you want to check them out and find out more about them, there’s only one link to use. That’s provenamazoncourse.com/legends. Again, provenamazoncourse.com/legends. Go ahead and check them out. It is a phenomenal group.

You can drop out any time you want, but I think you’re going to love the regular trainings, the positive atmosphere. It’s like a big family. If you want to hang out with other people who are doing creative things, sourcing retail and online arbitrage style for Amazon, that is where you want to be. Hey, let’s jump back into the show now.

Dennis: Plus, at some point, I’m going to hit a max of how much I can sell of those. To increase, to grow the business farther, then I believe I need to have the normal replens to do that. That’s why I’m working on that also.

Jim: There’s a gentleman in our community who’s done some work for us and with us who has – he regularly hits well over a million dollars in sales. He’s been doing it a few years now using the exact strategy you do with a very small team. I think it’s him and two people. It’s primarily one store, 90% plus.

Dennis: Target are you talking about?

Jim: That’s it, nailed it, yep. He’s inspired a lot of people to consider, hey, why not just go the sale route and just buy stuff because when you look, a lot of times, at the major retail stores, the ones even everyone’s heard of – now, Walmart doesn’t have sales. Pretty much everybody else does. If you look at their sale prices, they’re – the stuff that they use to get people in the door, if there’s no limit purchase quantity, those are safe bets a lot of times. Just snag them. That’s a great way to get started even is just – and you start stacking those discounts, and gift cards, and that kind of thing. Pretty soon, even if you had a wholesaler supplying, you couldn’t beat the pricing, right?

Dennis: Right.

Jim: Inspirational, man. I love it.

Dennis: Yeah, that’s it. As I said, I just also just hired a shopper. I’ve been the shopper for this whole time and so decided that I need to get some help doing that because I’ve got other things I need to work on, too. She should be starting here soon and within the next week. I just expect things to start climbing even stronger again. Right now, I’m at $270,000 for this year. I expect I should – I probably will hit $700,000 by the end of the year I would guess if things go the way I expect.

Jim: That’s awesome. Any plans for Q4? Are you changing the game up at all as we get closer to the last three months? Any new products in the mix or are you just playing the same game you played the rest of the year, just more people shopping?

Dennis: Yeah, I don’t have any intentions. I’ll look at that I’m sure, but so far, I’ve been so busy just doing this that I haven’t had time to concentrate on it. In fact, last December was – December went down from where November was, but then January picked up quite a bit. December wasn’t a big deal for me.

Jim: Yeah, replens is stable in that December isn’t necessarily the big, impressive month that it is for some other sellers who have a holiday-specific private label item or something. They rely very heavily on that November, December Christmas sales. Replens, it’s the same old boring products people buy all year round.

Dennis: Yeah, the first December that I did, I had gone out and bought toys and some other – a bunch of other stuff. My category mainly is 95% grocery at this point.

Jim: You talked about groceries. Okay, how do you handle and manage the expiration dates? Any lessons you can teach us there? What do you do there?

Dennis: Yeah, well, be careful, obviously. I had one customer say that one of my items came in expired already, which we’ve always been very careful about double-checking and making sure that we’re sending it in with at least 105 day, but I’ve increased that now to be a minimum of 120 days. I have a spreadsheet that I use for my shopping list. I calculate the date right on there so that when I’m out shopping and when my shoppers out shopping, they can see the exact minimum date that they can buy something. Yeah, it’s definitely something you need to be careful of because you don’t want to be flagged for that if possible.

Jim: Now, that’s interesting. We use our own in-house shoppers’ sheet, too. Now, we’re using Replen Dashboard and a handful of other tools that we’ve implemented in. It seems like everybody gets their own process. Putting that date on there what automatically calculates, it’s an easy formula. What date is 120 days from right now? Just put that at the top. Don’t buy anything before this date, right?

Dennis: Exactly.

Jim: That’s a great idea. I think I’m going to add that onto our spreadsheet when I get off this call.

Dennis: Yeah, I wasn’t doing that. Then when this happened, I’m like, okay, what can I do to improve my chances of not doing that. I thought, hey, why don’t I do that.

Jim: That’s a great idea. We’ve got like seven shoppers. I’m one of them. I don’t do it a lot, but I do it enough to be dangerous as does everyone else. We don’t have a full-time shopper; we have seven of us who spend somewhere between an hour and six hours a week shopping. Having that shared spreadsheet has been just invaluable for us. That’s a great idea. I’m going to do that right now when we get off here.

Tell us more of your story. What else have you done? You’re in for $700,000 this year, which it sounds to me like you’re on track to hit, which is beautiful. You’ve got another VA now, 1000 ASINs. That’s a lot of shopping. That’s a lot of buying. Are you buying all of those?

Dennis: No, like I say, any one time, I have 6 to 700. Actually, my list is grown to over 2,000 now; however, at any one time, I’m probably buying 130 to 150 different ASINs every week, which has been about my average I think, but that’s growing now with my VA. It’s becoming a bigger number every week.

Jim: What are you paying the VA? I’m curious. We breezed through that. I took a stab; I said $5 to $10 an hour, but what are you paying?

Dennis: He was very inexpensive. He’s a younger guy. He was hungry and looking for something. In fact, it’s so low that I decided that as he finds things and I successfully sell them, then I’m going to give him a little bonus. It’s a little bonus, but to him, it will be a much bigger percentage of his pay.

Jim: Oh, for sure, because again, the dollar spends in the Philippines – that’s part of the beauty of it. You’ve got to multiply it by three, four, or more in some cases. We had a VA work for us one time. This has been a few years back. I think we were paying either $8 or $10 an hour. I don’t remember which it was. He was in the medical field. I’m thinking, okay, well, he’s like a nurse’s assistant or something. No, this guy had a medical degree.

Dennis: Wow.

Jim: He was thrilled making twice as much working for us as he was working at the clinic where he worked for $8 or $10 an hour. The dollar goes a long way in the Philippines. It’s got me thinking, man, I might be moving to the Philippines.

Dennis: The cost of living is certainly a lot cheaper.

Jim: Oh my goodness, the cost of living there is just so much different, but you’re amazed at the quality of the education. Again, they love Americans; they love America. You look at the history of our two nations; it’s a very friendly relationship, and very pro-capitalism, pro-e-commerce economic activity. There’s so many of them that are looking for work, too. Great call on that. I love it.

Dennis: There was a lot of good candidates when I –

Jim: Oh, no shortage. We’ve actually got a short training in the Proven Amazon Course that talks you through how to hire and find a VA. Even if all you do is – I generally tell people that you want someone who can speak English and understand you well enough that it’s not a challenge to communicate. I like to put a little video instruction together regardless of what service I’m using to find a VA. I put a little video like I’m doing right now if you’re watching this on YouTube. You can see the video and just say, hey, here’s the job; here’s what it’s going to involve. I need you to reply back to me with a video, please.

The first thing I need you to say is the phrase x, y, z, whatever, just make up a phrase. I need you to type that out in your response as well. I can scroll through super-fast because you’ll get 80-plus responses back. You can scroll through and see who followed your instructions with the written instruction.

Then of those, you can see the video and see did they communicate well? Can I understand them? Were they able to understand me? That’s a good way to narrow it down just as a tip for the listeners. It sounds like you found a great one.

Dennis: Yeah, he does great work.

Jim: Yeah, definitely. What are the missing pieces of this story that we could share with everyone? Any other little tips, or strategies, or tools? You said you had some books? I want to get into whatever else you had on your mind.

Dennis: One of the things I highly recommend is – I’m not really an accountant and I have an accountant; however, I do most of the basic bookwork. I use Quicken and so forth, but – QuickBooks. One of the systems I found a couple years ago when I first started all of this is the Profit First System. In fact, there’s a Profit First for Ecommerce written by a lady that adjusted – and I just love it because it makes sure that you keep all your – make sure that you have enough money for getting new inventory once you sell it. You always put away the amount of money at least that you spent on it or that you sold in inventory so that you can replace it, but it also has you put aside money for taxes, for your normal expenses, for your pay if you want to get paid, and for – and a profit account.

I like the profit account because every quarter, you’re supposed to draw some money out of that to show – to take advantage of the fact that you’re actually making some money because a lot of times people don’t take the money out at all. It’s not a lot, but it takes something out. That’s fun money. It’s great. In fact, our 25th-anniversary vacation will be paid by that probably.

Jim: Awesome, where are you guys going if you don’t mind sharing? You didn’t say.

Dennis: We’re going to go to Helen, Georgia. We love it up there in the mountains right around Christmas time. It’s beautiful. It’s a little German town in Georgia, but it’s in the mountains. Lots of hiking trails around there and just rent a cabin.

Jim: It sounds beautiful; never heard of it. That sounds great.

Dennis: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. Yeah, that’s what we’re doing there.

Jim: Enjoy that, man; well earned. What other books, tools, that sort of thing?

Dennis: Yeah, I just use the standard tools. Basically, I have Inventory Lab for managing my inventory and shipping, doing the shipping. I use Replen Dashboard, although I don’t use it as built. I use it to gather the data and then I export the data into my spreadsheet which does all my – figures out exactly what I need to buy and everything. I was a database administrator when I left technology, so like you, I’ve got this complicated spreadsheet that does everything basically for me.

Jim: Yeah, I nerd out with spreadsheets, too. We could probably have a lot of fun and lose everybody else talking advanced formulas and strategies in spreadsheets. Yeah, it’s a good skill to have. That is one thing from my traditional education, my college education that I probably walked away with benefiting from, very valuable with learning to use spreadsheets and learning to use them well.

That’s another area too where you can find people all over the world, Philippines, Pakistan. I had someone just offer to just do some ridiculously advanced work for us, spreadsheet, for $5 an hour. It’s crazy what you can get done. Yeah, we’ve got a similar setup it sounds like. Replen Dashboard, Inventory Lab, I’m assuming Keepa’s in the mix?

Dennis: Oh yeah, Keepa, of course. Then I used RevSeller for a while. It was good, but I found ASIN insight – AZInsight, I mean. It just had a couple extra features that I liked, so I’ve been using AZInsight for calculating the profit margins and stuff like that. Let me see; there was something else. I’m sorry, it left my mind.

Jim: No, that’s all right. Any other books?

Dennis: I’ll tell you one of the things that real estate did for me is it – I went through a lot of different books on – there was one thing called the one thing. There was a book called The One Thing, which is geared towards real estate, but it’s really geared toward anything. Basically, what it is, it’s about what’s the one thing that you can do today that is going to make it so that you don’t have to do more stuff tomorrow? In other words, it’s the one thing to focus on in your business that will really make a difference in where you’re going. For instance, me hiring that VA was one thing that could free up a ton of my time and also get me better results. You work on that one thing until you get it solved. Then you go onto the next thing.

Jim: That’s a great example. It sounds like a book that challenges you. I’ve heard of the book. I’ve never read it. It challenges you to step back and say, which of the processes that I’m involved in are taking up all of my time? Is there anything I can do to make those more efficient or better?

I phrase it in my business philosophy as work yourself towards doing only the things that only you can do. You’re slowly stepping away until you’ve completely stepped away and they’ve got a self-sustained system that’s cranking out better results than if you were trying to do all of it yourself. That’s the goal. That’s what an entrepreneur is. Another book along those lines that I like is the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. Have you read that one by any chance?

Dennis: I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it.

Jim: You know the premise. Just because you’re good at making pies doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great owner of a bakery. It’s a different skill set entirely to think like a business owner. He talks through the difference between being that person that does the work and that person who owns the business. Sometimes you’re both and that’s fine, but you want to make that process – progress away from being the one that does all the day to day work. That’s what an entrepreneur is. I love it.

Dennis: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I’m just going to continue to build. I do work full-time now. I do intend to get back into real estate some once I get things really cranking with other people. However, right now, I’m – this is it. It’s been doing great, love it. I enjoy it immensely.

Jim: That’s phenomenal. Thanks for being a part of our community and volunteering for this episode. Unless you’ve got any other final tips, or thoughts, or strategies, I’ll go ahead and start to wrap this one up. Any final thoughts for the listeners or final pieces of advice, maybe?

Dennis: No, I think I covered pretty much everything. It was a pleasure.

Jim: It was a great episode in my opinion. Definitely some really good nuggets in there. I’m going to go change my spreadsheet as soon as we get off of here. I think some people are going to be looking for places where they can go hire a VA, too.

Again, there’s some training in the Proven Amazon Course, the basics of how to manage that if you want to jump in. It’s part of the training modules we have. It’s not a complicated thing. It certainly changed your life it sounds like, Dennis. It sounds like the sky’s the limit, too, man.

Dennis: Oh, by the way, I did join Jimmy’s Mastermind thing.

Jim: Oh, the Advanced Replens Mastermind, yes.

Dennis: Yep.

Jim: As we’re recording this, it’s full, but we’ll do it again in the future. Yeah, you’re going to benefit tremendously from that. It’s a few dozen sellers from our community got together. It’s basically anyone selling over $10,000 a month or more.

If you go to that website, we’ll probably have a waiting list for the next time, advancedreplensmastermind.com is it. I’m proud of myself for remembering that one. Yeah, you’re going to have a great time going through that with other people who are in a similar stage or about where you are, Dennis. I think you’re going to really enjoy that, so congrats on joining that group.

I’ll talk to the listeners here as we start to wrap this one up. Hopefully, you enjoyed this as much as Dennis and I did. You’re welcome that we didn’t nerd out about spreadsheets too much because we easily could have done that and we didn’t. That was our little gift to you.

Hopefully, you picked up some really great nuggets from this today. If you like this kind of conversation and you like this kind of camaraderie, man, there’s 65,000-plus of us all hanging out in a free Facebook group all day, every day around the world. There’s a link to it in the show notes. It’s the My Silent Team Amazon Seller Facebook group. You can find us pretty easily. I’d encourage you to join that.

If maybe this is one of the first episodes you’ve ever listened to of this podcast, listen to 10 or 15 more episodes like this. I think you’re going to get inspired. No matter where you live in the world, you can do this business. We can show you how to do it.

The Proven Amazon Course is the course that most people use on that journey from our community. Jump over and grab that if you haven’t yet. It’s just $29 a month. You can stop any time. You’re going to love that. Hey, I’m going to land this episode right now by saying God bless all the business building warriors who are out there, thank my friend Dennis for joining us today. Thank you, sir.

Dennis: Thank you.

Jim: We’ll have another great episode just like this one again for you real soon.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to Silent Sales Machine Radio. Visit silentjim.com for a link to our free newsletter, our free Facebook group, and all of our resources mentioned on today’s show.

Go From $0 To $100K Per Month In Amazon Sales

The Simple, Sustainable, Amazon Arbitrage Course

Proven Amazon Course (PAC) is the #1 highest rated Amazon Course with Thousands of verified reviews from average Joes and Janes) that followed a simple, proven, step-by-step process to build successful online businesses.


Over 1,000 verified reviews

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Go From $0 To $100K Per Month In Amazon Sales

The Simple, Sustainable, Amazon Arbitrage Course

Proven Amazon Course (PAC) is the #1 highest rated Amazon Course with Thousands of verified reviews from average Joes and Janes) that followed a simple, proven, step-by-step process to build successful online businesses.


Over 1,000 verified reviews

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