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Diversifying Across Marketplaces: Don't Put All Eggs In One Basket · New Era Reseller

• 0:00
  Brian Olson: The day that I knew for certain that we were renting and not owning was the day I opened the fourth quarter fee schedule.
• 0:07
  Brian Olson: And here's the number that did it.
• 0:10
  Robin Joy: Yeah. Well, here's what I want to do.
• 0:12
  Robin Joy: I know there's somebody out there listening who's who's gonna kind of question this, and they have a fair objection.
• 0:19
  Robin Joy: So I'm gonna push on my own article here for a minute.
• 0:22
  Brian Olson: The smartest first move that I've seen all year actually came from a new seller who decided not to spend 99% of his money that he had sitting right there in his account.
• 0:32
  Robin Joy: There is something that I know we're gonna get.
• 0:34
  Robin Joy: Pushback on.
• 0:35
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 0:36
  Robin Joy: And it's about playing playing it safe, right?
• 0:39
  Brian Olson: If I had it to do all over again, there's one thing I would change about how we built this, and it's got nothing to do with sourcing.
• 0:45
  Brian Olson: The most important part of this whole strategy isn't which platform that you're going to pick to expand on.
• 0:51
  Brian Olson: It's not the fee schedule, it's not how easy it is to list a product over there or anything. It's a line that really is 400 years old and that is our quote for this week.
• 1:06
  Brian and Robin Joy: So we've all been there, right? Yeah. Ask me how I know. Ask me how I know.
• 1:10
  Brian and Robin Joy: I stack the deck in your favor. This, stack the deck in your favor. Yeah. That's what you say. Uh-huh.
• 1:12
  Brian and Robin Joy: What can cure that? That's right. We kind of turn it upside down. We turn it upside down. I love turning it upside down.
• 1:15
  Brian and Robin Joy: I know. You know what cures that? Ask me how I know. Amazon is a logistics company.
• 1:21
  Brian and Robin Joy: Test more ASINs. Go test more ASINs. Test more ASINs. Test more ASINs. Test more ASINs. Right. I gotcha.
• 1:24
  Brian and Robin Joy: Let's go test more ASINs. Let's go test more ASINs. See you soon. See you soon.
• 1:27
  Brian Olson: Welcome back to the Modern Builders Network. We are the Official Olsons. I'm Brian.
• 1:32
  Robin Joy: And I'm Robin Joy.
• 1:33
  Brian Olson: And this is the New Era Reseller.
• 1:36
  Robin Joy: We are all in the business of becoming undeniable.
• 1:41
  Robin Joy: Hey everybody.
• 1:42
  Brian Olson: Welcome back.
• 1:43
  Robin Joy: What's going on, Brian?
• 1:44
  Brian Olson: Let's see. We're going to have an awesome webinar this week.
• 1:47
  Robin Joy: Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait.
• 1:49
  Robin Joy: It will be over by the time this airs. We'll have a recording. We always have a recording.
• 1:54
  Brian Olson: Be sure to go watch the recording on AI, Self-Driven AI is a good idea.
• 1:58
  Robin Joy: Self-driven AI.
• 1:59
  Brian Olson: This is going to be a really good one. I'm really looking forward to it. We've got special guest, um, Derek Komlo on the show with us, who uh a former international seller who just relocated back to the U.S.
• 2:11
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 2:12
  Brian Olson: He's pretty pretty excited to be back home.
• 2:14
  Brian Olson: Yeah, I'll bet.
• 2:15
  Robin Joy: I'll bet he is.
• 2:16
  Brian Olson: And yeah, and we're excited to have him on the show.
• 2:19
  Brian Olson: He's uh he's uh leveraging AI in some pretty cool ways, which we're gonna unpack tomorrow night on the webinar.
• 2:26
  Brian Olson: So when you go back and watch it, you'll get a sense of that.
• 2:29
  Robin Joy: Hopefully a lot of you were there.
• 2:31
  Brian Olson: That's right.
• 2:32
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 2:32
  Brian Olson: But today I want to start with something a little embarrassing uh for and multiple fronts.
• 2:39
  Robin Joy: Is it going to embarrass me?
• 2:40
  Brian Olson: That's the way it's no, I don't think so.
• 2:42
  Brian Olson: It's gonna embarrass me.
• 2:43
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 2:43
  Brian Olson: Um that all allow. But last week for publication this week, you wrote an article on the fact that people say they have an Amazon business.
• 2:54
  Brian Olson: But yeah, but really the way that you framed it up is that you're renting like space in a mall when you sell on Amazon.
• 3:03
  Brian Olson: But really, what you do is you own a business that sells something in a mall, more or less. It's you don't have an Amazon business.
• 3:11
  Robin Joy: I own an arbitrage business.
• 3:13
  Robin Joy: I use Amazon as one of my outlets, right?
• 3:16
  Brian Olson: Yeah, and this article is not out yet. It comes out on Wednesday.
• 3:19
  Brian Olson: And I read the draft.
• 3:20
  Robin Joy: It'll be out by the time this is. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:22
  Brian Olson: Sorry, it'll be out by the time.
• 3:23
  Brian Olson: Yeah, sorry. I was thinking into the future.
• 3:26
  Brian Olson: It's funny, we do work um our business like three, four months into the future, but I never think about when we're recording this.
• 3:32
  Robin Joy: This is something that happened long ago when we were checking expiration dates.
• 3:36
  Robin Joy: All of a sudden I'm two or three months ahead of myself all the time.
• 3:40
  Brian Olson: So this next part is what happens quite frequently for me, which was I remember one night like Friday to Thursday or Friday night, I was like, Oh, yeah, I had this great idea about how to think about the business.
• 3:52
  Brian Olson: And I argued my way basically to Robin's thesis of this article, and and Robin was like, Yes.
• 4:00
  Robin Joy: Yeah, I mentioned something weeks ago. He did this all the time.
• 4:05
  Robin Joy: I mentioned something weeks ago, uh-huh, and bring it up, and you and then all of a sudden, one day, Brian says, Hey, I have a great idea.
• 4:15
  Robin Joy: It's exactly with the same support, the idea that I had already.
• 4:21
  Robin Joy: And so this time I had to prove it because I'd already written the article that said the same things that you thought were your idea.
• 4:27
  Brian Olson: So I was all proud of myself for about four seconds.
• 4:30
  Brian Olson: And then I was like, Oh, yeah, I guess I liked it better when I said it.
• 4:34
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 4:35
  Brian Olson: Literally, word for word.
• 4:37
  Brian Olson: And it's like uh your words were so good.
• 4:40
  Brian Olson: I'm like, oh yeah, that's good.
• 4:41
  Brian Olson: I'll make that up in my own head, right?
• 4:44
  Robin Joy: So that is the article.
• 4:46
  Brian Olson: It's gonna be kind of flattering for me to give it back to you.
• 4:48
  Brian Olson: It's like, oh, this great idea.
• 4:50
  Robin Joy: Yes, it is flattering in that way.
• 4:53
  Robin Joy: Yes.
• 4:53
  Brian Olson: But yeah, you know, well, anyway, go read the article.
• 4:56
  Brian Olson: We're gonna talk about a bit of it today, too, just in so support of that. But um, you s you say that you have your own store.
• 5:04
  Brian Olson: What are you talking about? What do you mean by say that, right?
• 5:07
  Robin Joy: Yeah, let's let's quantify that.
• 5:08
  Brian Olson: All right. So your piece opens with a picture.
• 5:13
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 5:14
  Brian Olson: I haven't written the I haven't been able to get it out of my head since you mentioned it, obviously, since since uh you first mentioned it to me. And then I went and actually read the draft, and I like it better the way you'd say it, actually.
• 5:26
  Brian Olson: Tell us about that. Yeah.
• 5:28
  Robin Joy: So selling on Amazon is like renting a storefront in a mall.
• 5:34
  Robin Joy: Like you're in the busiest mall anywhere.
• 5:38
  Robin Joy: The rent pays for the space, and the customers are already walking by, and the landlord handles the security and the cleaning and even the checkout lines and the returns desk. The landlord handles all of that, and you didn't have to build any of that or buy an ad to get those people to your store.
• 6:00
  Robin Joy: You didn't have to do any of that.
• 6:01
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 6:02
  Robin Joy: But you have to live by the landlord's rules, and the landlord has a right to change them whenever he wants to.
• 6:10
  Brian Olson: That's right. The day that I knew for certain that we were renting and not owning was the day I opened the fourth quarter fee schedule.
• 6:19
  Brian Olson: And here's the number that did it.
• 6:21
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Storage on a standard size item runs 78 cents a cubic foot.
• 6:28
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 6:31
  Brian Olson: Yep.
• 6:31
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 6:32
  Brian Olson: January through September.
• 6:35
  Robin Joy: 78 cents. 78 cents.
• 6:37
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 6:37
  Brian Olson: But October, it's actually like January 15th.
• 6:40
  Brian Olson: Because October through January mid-month, it goes to $2.40 a s uh per cubic foot.
• 6:51
  Robin Joy: It's kind of a little more than three times as much during that period.
• 6:56
  Brian Olson: Same shelf space. My product sitting in the exact same spot it does anyway.
• 7:01
  Robin Joy: But there are reasons for that. Doesn't matter.
• 7:02
  Robin Joy: They get to choose whether they have reasons or not.
• 7:05
  Brian Olson: And this kicks in like October 15th, right?
• 7:08
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 7:08
  Robin Joy: Yeah. Like any minute now, right?
• 7:11
  Brian Olson: And okay, and if that's not enough to make you a little uncomfortable for Q4, they rebuilt the entire seller central um workspace, and they've been trying to get people to convert to it. Yeah.
• 7:22
  Brian Olson: Like and we keep saying, no, no, no.
• 7:25
  Brian Olson: I we do. I do anyway. I'm like, no, I don't want to see that.
• 7:27
  Robin Joy: I've been trying to get used to it. I've been really, really exploring it.
• 7:31
  Brian Olson: But all the menu paths that you had memorized before, all the little places like that, you know, the pattern recognition that you had moving your cheese.
• 7:38
  Robin Joy: That's right. That's right. Now, recently we have found the Amazon is starting to give us notices that, hey, we are switching over.
• 7:47
  Robin Joy: You're not going to have that old way of looking at Seller Central anymore.
• 7:51
  Robin Joy: So you better get used to it.
• 7:53
  Robin Joy: So we're having another webinar next week on what that looks like, the new Seller Central and what's going to impact us there. It's not going to be that bad.
• 8:05
  Robin Joy: It's just a matter of getting used to it, I think.
• 8:07
  Brian Olson: It's funny, we've made quite a number of videos that have lived in various repositories over the years.
• 8:14
  Brian Olson: And no sooner usually than we make it than an update gets pushed.
• 8:19
  Brian Olson: And so whether it's uh the keep interface, the seller central interface, like as soon as you say this is good to publish, it's outdated because they came behind you and they do something else to it, right?
• 8:31
  Brian Olson: And so we've refrained from putting any, you know, any more of that into videos than we have to for that very reason.
• 8:43
  Brian Olson: Because you don't want to seem like you're out of touch, right?
• 8:45
  Brian Olson: Like, oh, that's from four years ago.
• 8:47
  Brian Olson: Like there's some part.
• 8:48
  Robin Joy: There's a lot of information out there that is out of touch.
• 8:52
  Brian Olson: Yeah, there is. But anyway.
• 8:53
  Robin Joy: Okay, back to the the piece.
• 8:55
  Brian Olson: The uh and Q4 is just stacked with surprises.
• 8:58
  Brian Olson: Okay, because not only are are we gonna be paying increased storage fees, but keep track now, right? Increased storage fees, three times as much, more than three times as much, a whole new seller central experience starting soon in the next few days, forced on us, right?
• 9:15
  Brian Olson: There's gonna be this regating.
• 9:17
  Brian Olson: It's been happening every single Q4 for years.
• 9:20
  Brian Olson: Okay. And this means that Amazon is going to ask you for fresh approval to sell a brand that you've already been selling.
• 9:30
  Brian Olson: Sometimes you already have units sitting on the shelf or on the way to Amazon.
• 9:34
  Robin Joy: And you don't know which ones it's going to be.
• 9:36
  Brian Olson: You just don't know which ones it's going to be.
• 9:38
  Brian Olson: And of course, they're the landlord in this example that you're setting up.
• 9:43
  Brian Olson: So and they've got every right to do it.
• 9:44
  Robin Joy: Brian, I got to interrupt you because I I know you think this is all your idea, what you just said, but I just wrote the next week's article on the I know very so you're acknowledging that. Okay.
• 9:57
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 9:57
  Robin Joy: Happens all the time, folks.
• 9:59
  Robin Joy: All the time.
• 10:00
  Brian Olson: I know. That's like uh I should have given you a little credit there, yeah, for sure. You've got like a Q the things that happen in Q4 that you don't plan for.
• 10:07
  Robin Joy: Yeah, that most people are not mentioning.
• 10:09
  Robin Joy: Yeah, that's coming out.
• 10:10
  Brian Olson: A lot of people skip over. Yeah.
• 10:11
  Brian Olson: And you know, it does beg the question like, really, how much do I how bad do I really want to sell on Amazon in Q4?
• 10:17
  Brian Olson: You know what I mean?
• 10:19
  Robin Joy: Well, at least how bad do I want to make adjustments?
• 10:23
  Robin Joy: No risk, no reward, but the risk gets much higher in Q4.
• 10:29
  Robin Joy: Especially when Amazon is the only place that you sell.
• 10:34
  Brian Olson: That's right.
• 10:35
  Robin Joy: Yeah. When Amazon's the only place that you sell, then Amazon's decisions become your business decisions, and you didn't get a vote.
• 10:44
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 10:44
  Robin Joy: If that's all you have, then you do what they tell you to do, and you don't have any other outlets to do anything else.
• 10:50
  Brian Olson: Okay, say that one key line again.
• 10:53
  Brian Olson: Because that's what's been that's what landed over me.
• 10:56
  Robin Joy: Okay. When your business is only on Amazon, then Amazon's decisions become your business decisions.
• 11:06
  Brian Olson: And this last part is key.
• 11:08
  Robin Joy: And you did not get a vote.
• 11:11
  Brian Olson: You didn't get a vote. That's right. I mean you voted by saying, Yeah, I'll sell my stuff here, but you didn't vote on the way that you get to sell your stuff there.
• 11:18
  Robin Joy: No, Amazon decides everything for you there, and you don't have any place that you can do anything different.
• 11:23
  Brian Olson: So when you are only selling on Amazon, you got one store, one landlord, right? That landlord decides to raise the rent.
• 11:32
  Brian Olson: Guess what?
• 11:33
  Robin Joy: The rent's or you have no place to sell your stuff.
• 11:36
  Brian Olson: What else are you gonna do? Yeah. Right.
• 11:38
  Brian Olson: And so here is this like debate that we've been having because we know someone, a pretty influential someone, who's been at this for a number of years, who's doing many multiples of what a lot of people, the kind of a business that a lot of people dream about.
• 11:54
  Brian Olson: Okay. But he has all his eggs on one platform or in one basket, so to speak. And I asked him fairly recently, like, hey, when are you gonna do some stuff for Walmart?
• 12:07
  Brian Olson: And he said, Oh, well, no, no, no, Walmart seems way too risky for me. And I thought to myself, too risky, huh?
• 12:15
  Brian Olson: What seems risky to me is having all your eggs in the Amazon basket.
• 12:19
  Brian Olson: That's something I figured out, and I'm not saying this person's not smart, that's not the case at all, right?
• 12:24
  Brian Olson: But I decided a long time ago I was not gonna let Amazon decide my future, just Amazon.
• 12:30
  Robin Joy: Right. That's the risky part, in my opinion, because when Amazon's your only outlet, then Amazon decides you can't play on their in their playground anymore, and you're done. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, so I would say that's the risky part.
• 12:45
  Robin Joy: He really said that he that was risky about the that second door, that second option, huh? Yeah, about Walmart.
• 12:52
  Brian Olson: And I and while I'm seriously impressed by his numbers, and I can't argue with anything that he's built, right?
• 12:58
  Brian Olson: Yeah, I just want to name where the risk actually sits.
• 13:01
  Brian Olson: And in my opinion, it's in having all of your eggs in that one basket, right? He's because he has the one landlord.
• 13:08
  Brian Olson: And and the part that nobody really thinks about until you need to diversify, because Amazon, like you said, can come along.
• 13:16
  Brian Olson: When Amazon's your only platform, not only do they make your all your decisions for you, but also your business is much more difficult to resell.
• 13:25
  Brian Olson: And this person is approaching an exit point if he wants to.
• 13:29
  Brian Olson: Right. Okay, I'm not suggesting he he would.
• 13:31
  Robin Joy: No, but he's definitely got an asset somebody might want to buy.
• 13:35
  Brian Olson: When you've got a solid eight-figure business, seven figures a month business, uh-huh, then you become attractive to a lot of different interested parties, right?
• 13:45
  Brian Olson: But Amazon's got some pretty strict rules about handing your account to somebody else.
• 13:49
  Robin Joy: They do. Yeah. You know, that's pretty undefensible if the only the only thing in your business is Amazon, then Amazon pretty much gets to say.
• 13:58
  Brian Olson: Yes.
• 13:59
  Robin Joy: So anyway, so in this situation, the rent went up three times over.
• 14:03
  Brian Olson: Oh, yeah, for your storage fees.
• 14:04
  Robin Joy: And the only question anybody asked was how they wanted to pay it.
• 14:08
  Brian Olson: Yep.
• 14:08
  Robin Joy: That that's all Amazon asked.
• 14:10
  Robin Joy: How how would you like to pay for this?
• 14:11
  Robin Joy: Right. Right.
• 14:12
  Brian Olson: So let's talk about this. Let's just unpack this a little bit.
• 14:15
  Brian Olson: When you build a business like this person has, you are thriving.
• 14:19
  Brian Olson: Okay, uh, even if your eggs all are all in one basket, right?
• 14:22
  Brian Olson: How much of this actually belongs to you?
• 14:24
  Brian Olson: So that is a question. Let's think about everything that you've learned since your very first shipment when you're first starting out of the business, right?
• 14:31
  Robin Joy: A ton.
• 14:32
  Brian Olson: So you know how to spot a product that sells, you know how to read a uh full-on price history and decide what an item might be worth to you. You have learned to know your numbers, okay.
• 14:43
  Brian Olson: You know what you paid, what it costs to sell, and and what you get to keep. You've built this sourcing list, okay.
• 14:49
  Brian Olson: You've got a testing habit, uh framework for that, hopefully, right?
• 14:53
  Brian Olson: Soon you can have an automated one.
• 14:55
  Brian Olson: We're gonna talk about that in the AI session too.
• 14:58
  Robin Joy: Yes, that's very exciting. I've been asking for this for a long, long time.
• 15:01
  Brian Olson: Yep. You have a sense of you know when to hold your price, when when to modify it based on kind of the way the the waves are coming in, right? Um, you've got capital that you've built up, you've got discipline to keep working the system, and all that lives here with you, right?
• 15:20
  Brian Olson: In your head, in your spreadsheets, in your systems.
• 15:24
  Brian Olson: And it can theoretically go wherever you go.
• 15:27
  Robin Joy: That's true. Well, here's what I want to do.
• 15:29
  Robin Joy: I know there's somebody out there listening who's who's gonna kind of question this, and they have a fair objection.
• 15:36
  Robin Joy: So I'm gonna push on my own article here for a minute.
• 15:39
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 15:40
  Robin Joy: When you're selling other people's brands on somebody else's platform, you could be replaced on a given listing in a heartbeat.
• 15:50
  Robin Joy: So what is there that is actually yours when that happens?
• 15:56
  Robin Joy: That's that's the question.
• 15:58
  Brian Olson: Well, the brands on the platform, well, the brands in general have never been ours, right?
• 16:04
  Robin Joy: Right.
• 16:04
  Brian Olson: Our ability to find, create the relationships to get access to those brands is the pricing is ours.
• 16:12
  Robin Joy: Yes.
• 16:12
  Brian Olson: The list, the habits, the capital, right, the numbers, those are all ours, right?
• 16:18
  Brian Olson: But anybody can be replaced on a listing at any time.
• 16:21
  Brian Olson: Sure. Right? Not any not everybody can go find the next one.
• 16:25
  Brian Olson: You can. You've got the skills to go do that, right?
• 16:27
  Robin Joy: It's that skill that matters.
• 16:29
  Brian Olson: And exactly. And this is what I see people protecting the more often is protecting the account instead of the skill.
• 16:36
  Robin Joy: They yeah, the account with Amazon instead of the skill of what they can do on Amazon.
• 16:41
  Brian Olson: So three years of getting better at Seller Central or you know, how to optimize your what you know, your Amazon experience, but you're you're not getting any better at finding new products.
• 16:51
  Robin Joy: And then when the rules change, yes, it's hard to adjust.
• 16:54
  Brian Olson: Such as if Seller Central moves everything around.
• 16:57
  Robin Joy: Right? I wonder if that's gonna happen.
• 17:00
  Brian Olson: And this goes well past arbitrage, by the way, right?
• 17:02
  Brian Olson: So, like just say you are a wedding photographer.
• 17:05
  Brian Olson: Okay, and you get all of your clients from one booking application.
• 17:10
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 17:11
  Brian Olson: Right. Or a you're a bakery, yeah, and you you only have a relationship with one supermarket chain.
• 17:18
  Brian Olson: Okay. This is the anchor account problem that we've talked about before, right?
• 17:23
  Brian Olson: Or consultants whose only leads come from one single social platform, right?
• 17:29
  Brian Olson: Every single one of those is built on somebody else's, you know, mall, in somebody else's mall, basically.
• 17:36
  Robin Joy: Yeah, sure. Sure. And when the floor shifts, the ones who know who they are, they're the ones who recover the fastest from these changes, right?
• 17:44
  Brian Olson: Yep.
• 17:44
  Robin Joy: But this makes me want to ask you, Brian.
• 17:46
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 17:47
  Robin Joy: Kind of the opposite question.
• 17:48
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 17:49
  Robin Joy: Why do we still send brand new people to Amazon first?
• 17:52
  Robin Joy: Can you answer that?
• 17:53
  Brian Olson: I can. I'm pretty convinced about this if I if I need to get up on my pedestal for a minute and talk about it.
• 18:00
  Brian Olson: But it's for many reasons.
• 18:02
  Brian Olson: But let's start with number one, the lessons are cheap here, right?
• 18:06
  Brian Olson: Yeah. And the customers are.
• 18:09
  Brian Olson: The customers are already walking, like the mall's already packed.
• 18:12
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 18:12
  Brian Olson: So the products already have a sales history.
• 18:14
  Brian Olson: You you can read before you spend a single dollar on anything, and you can test a couple of units at a time.
• 18:21
  Brian Olson: You don't have to go buy pallets or or cases or anything like that, right? Yeah.
• 18:26
  Robin Joy: Investment is small.
• 18:28
  Brian Olson: Yeah. So if things sell slower than you thought, well, then you can just lower your price, you move on.
• 18:32
  Brian Olson: And the lessons that you're learning cost you a few dollars instead of a few thousand dollars.
• 18:38
  Robin Joy: That's a big difference.
• 18:39
  Brian Olson: It is a big difference.
• 18:41
  Robin Joy: That makes me see it in a completely different way.
• 18:43
  Robin Joy: So most businesses.
• 18:44
  Brian Olson: The the smartest first move that I've seen all year actually came from a new seller who decided not to spend 99% of his money that he has sitting right there in his account, right?
• 18:55
  Brian Olson: Because it's so easy. We hear this a lot.
• 18:56
  Brian Olson: Hey, capital is not a problem for me.
• 18:58
  Brian Olson: I got X amount of dollars in the bank.
• 19:00
  Brian Olson: Like this one guy had like $30,000 that he could have put in.
• 19:03
  Brian Olson: And he chose instead to start with $3,000, which is a great decision, right?
• 19:08
  Brian Olson: I agree. He's got a mortgage to protect, right?
• 19:11
  Brian Olson: He's got a family to take care of, and he wanted to see real profit before he put more money in.
• 19:16
  Brian Olson: Very smart approach.
• 19:17
  Robin Joy: Build something that supports the money that he's putting in.
• 19:20
  Brian Olson: We felt the same way.
• 19:21
  Robin Joy: We did.
• 19:22
  Brian Olson: We needed proof of concept.
• 19:23
  Robin Joy: About how much we started with as well.
• 19:26
  Robin Joy: It is.
• 19:26
  Brian Olson: It's exactly how much we start. Well, 3,500, maybe, but yeah.
• 19:30
  Brian Olson: Um but that start is available on Amazon and it's not available in most other businesses.
• 19:36
  Robin Joy: Let me let me clarify a little bit further.
• 19:39
  Robin Joy: That start is available on Amazon with a strategy of replenishing items on existing listings. Not on all strategies on Amazon.
• 19:49
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Okay. Well, so let's compare that to what seems like the more grown-up version to reselling on Amazon, right?
• 19:56
  Brian Olson: Which is somebody else we know who spent, you know, three, four months calling between two and three hundred different distributors trying to land some wholesale accounts with zero selling experience on Amazon.
• 20:08
  Brian Olson: And they hit the same wall every single time, right?
• 20:11
  Brian Olson: So the products were gated to them, or they belonged to brands that he had no way to break into because he had no sales history.
• 20:19
  Brian Olson: Um he went back to sourcing from retail.
• 20:22
  Robin Joy: And he only had one platform platform.
• 20:24
  Brian Olson: He only had one platform, right?
• 20:25
  Brian Olson: And so he ended up going back to retail arbitrage to first build a steady base, learn the basics, right?
• 20:34
  Brian Olson: Get some reps under your belt, under his belt, as if as it was, and then and then go back to those distributors later.
• 20:41
  Brian Olson: You can have a completely different conversation 12 months after you've figured out how to do arbitrage on Amazon.
• 20:50
  Brian Olson: Yeah, right.
• 20:50
  Robin Joy: You sure can. You sure can. You get a lot, a lot of experience that shows when you're trying to find those those kinds of accounts.
• 20:58
  Robin Joy: So additionally, yeah, if Amazon closed my account tomorrow, which could happen to any of us, we'd still know how to do every bit of that arbitrage that we have learned in our own on our own in our own way to using the Amazon platform. We still have what we learned to do.
• 21:20
  Robin Joy: Yep.
• 21:21
  Brian Olson: Does that make sense? That's right. We have those skills that we were talking about, right? That are not where's it I know where everything is in Seller Central.
• 21:27
  Robin Joy: Yeah. It's skills about that there's anything wrong with that.
• 21:30
  Robin Joy: Yeah. Like I said, we're doing a webinar on that as well.
• 21:32
  Brian Olson: But but but it's the it the part of the business that is yours is the arbitrage business, not the Amazon business, right?
• 21:41
  Brian Olson: So what we're here to do is to is to build an arbitrage business.
• 21:46
  Brian Olson: Amazon is one of the platforms that we do that on.
• 21:49
  Robin Joy: Yes. And that skill does not belong to a tool that you use to do that either.
• 21:54
  Robin Joy: It belongs to you and whether you have built that skill or not.
• 21:58
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Well, here's where I think.
• 22:00
  Brian Olson: It can get real practical.
• 22:01
  Brian Olson: Okay. Okay.
• 22:03
  Robin Joy: Let's get practical.
• 22:04
  Brian Olson: So let's say, because we're good at this applied.
• 22:06
  Brian Olson: We we like applying these concepts and principles.
• 22:10
  Robin Joy: We value that, yes.
• 22:11
  Brian Olson: Frameworks, right? We do, yeah.
• 22:13
  Brian Olson: Um, I I highly value it actually.
• 22:15
  Brian Olson: And I think that's one of the reasons that some some so many of the topics that we talk about can be much more appealing to people because we're not just talking at a surface level.
• 22:23
  Brian Olson: We're saying, here's the lesson.
• 22:24
  Brian Olson: Now here's how we apply it on Amazon.
• 22:26
  Brian Olson: Yeah, yeah. Same thing with AI.
• 22:29
  Brian Olson: Anyone, and trust me, everyone is talking about AI right now, but so everyone's talking about, did you know what this tool can do?
• 22:36
  Brian Olson: Blah, blah, blah. But they don't know, they're not showing you any real application.
• 22:40
  Robin Joy: Yeah. They're saying they're saying, here's a prompt you can use, but not application to any concept that you are already needing to do.
• 22:49
  Brian Olson: It kills me. I'm gonna go off script for a minute.
• 22:52
  Robin Joy: Oh, here we go.
• 22:54
  Robin Joy: Of course you are.
• 22:55
  Brian Olson: It kills me when I see these creators across various platforms, um, that they they they're one of ones, these creators that do like, you know, 40 videos a week or something like that on all the latest and greatest on AI.
• 23:09
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh. When do they ever have time to do any real production of products?
• 23:14
  Robin Joy: Like they're switching tools.
• 23:16
  Robin Joy: They like all they know how to use all of the what do you call them, the frontier models.
• 23:21
  Robin Joy: They know how to all the tricks and all the all the Git models and everything.
• 23:26
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 23:26
  Robin Joy: But when do they actually have time to to do anything with I asked
• 23:31
  Brian Olson: one of them one time, like, when do you ever have time to build
• 23:33
  Robin Joy: anything?
• 23:34
  Brian Olson: Because you're constantly migrating platforms.
• 23:36
  Brian Olson: Yeah. No response.
• 23:37
  Robin Joy: No response. Yeah.
• 23:38
  Brian Olson: So anyway, and I'm not saying there is a good response.
• 23:41
  Robin Joy: Yeah, no. That's not her model. Yeah.
• 23:42
  Brian Olson: Anyway, so let's get practical here, right? So let's picture this item that you tested last September.
• 23:47
  Brian Olson: Okay. And it sold pretty well, but it was selling slowly.
• 23:52
  Brian Olson: Actually, let's use this September, because this September's almost over.
• 23:55
  Brian Olson: Okay. So it sold okay, but it was a little bit slow.
• 23:58
  Brian Olson: We're a few days out from October at this point.
• 24:01
  Robin Joy: Yep.
• 24:02
  Brian Olson: So on a lot of times on Amazon, a product that was slow, well, not a lot of times. What we actually just described is going to happen.
• 24:10
  Brian Olson: Now it's going to cost you three times as much to leave it there and sell it more slowly on Amazon.
• 24:16
  Robin Joy: Right, right.
• 24:16
  Brian Olson: And if Amazon's your only outlet, then you got three choices.
• 24:20
  Brian Olson: You pay the higher storage, you cut the price and get it that thing sold for less than you'd like, um, or you extract the units from Amazon, which is also going to cost you a pretty penny because of guess what?
• 24:31
  Robin Joy: And probably not going to happen as fast as you want.
• 24:33
  Brian Olson: Increased uh shipping and handling that happens in Q4, and you may not even get it back. By the end of Q4.
• 24:40
  Brian Olson: By the end of Q4, right?
• 24:41
  Brian Olson: However, if you have a second or third or fourth outlet added to your business, then you have a fourth choice.
• 24:51
  Brian Olson: So you can send the remaining units somewhere else and let them find a buyer on some other platform, right?
• 24:59
  Brian Olson: So it regating works the same way.
• 25:02
  Brian Olson: Let's say you got regated on something that is on its way to Amazon or you already had some inbound with Amazon, and now those units have been sidelined and you can't sell them anymore, right?
• 25:10
  Brian Olson: So if that brand gets regated while your units are just sitting there, you can have them sent back, you know, or do or you can actually offer them up on another platform and use some pretty creative ways to get rid of it.
• 25:23
  Robin Joy: Yes. Multi-channel fulfillment.
• 25:26
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 25:26
  Robin Joy: Yes. Okay. So there is something that I know we're gonna get pushback on.
• 25:33
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 25:34
  Robin Joy: And it's about playing playing it safe, right?
• 25:37
  Robin Joy: Being careful and keeping your risk comes in two versions.
• 25:40
  Robin Joy: Okay. Keeping your risk low comes in two versions.
• 25:42
  Robin Joy: One of them builds a moat that protects you.
• 25:45
  Robin Joy: Okay. The other one builds a cage that holds you in.
• 25:49
  Robin Joy: They look exactly the same right up until the moment when they don't.
• 25:55
  Brian Olson: They start feeling different, right?
• 25:56
  Robin Joy: Yes. One constricts you and one protects you.
• 26:00
  Brian Olson: So selling in one place.
• 26:02
  Robin Joy: One limits you and one protects you.
• 26:03
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Selling in one place because it's where you learned starts out as the moat. Like that's your skill set.
• 26:09
  Brian Olson: You know, you've learned how to do it.
• 26:11
  Brian Olson: Nobody else really knows, not nobody else, but few fewer people know how to do that. Um, but it can turn into cage pretty quickly, and nobody really notices until the day that it happens, right?
• 26:19
  Brian Olson: So which platform?
• 26:21
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 26:22
  Brian Olson: Because that's the next question that everybody has.
• 26:25
  Brian Olson: Which platform would I be?
• 26:26
  Robin Joy: What other one would we add, right?
• 26:28
  Brian Olson: I would say the obvious number two platform is the Walmart marketplace.
• 26:32
  Robin Joy: If you're going for arbitrage, I think you're right.
• 26:34
  Robin Joy: I think you're right. These are not hard and fast rules.
• 26:37
  Robin Joy: We're just giving you some suggestions.
• 26:39
  Brian Olson: It depends on the type of item. Yeah. Right.
• 26:41
  Brian Olson: Um, with Walmart, they also have their own fulfillment services like Amazon.
• 26:45
  Brian Olson: It's very similar. FBA. Yeah, it's called Walmart Fulfillment Services, and it works a lot a lot like FBA.
• 26:51
  Brian Olson: But different use case when you're signing up for Walmart versus when you're signing up for Amazon.
• 26:57
  Robin Joy: Different requirements from you that Amazon has.
• 27:00
  Brian Olson: Because when you sign up for an account on Walmart, even for a professional account, all you need is your social to get started.
• 27:06
  Brian Olson: Your social security.
• 27:08
  Brian Olson: That's what I said, Amazon.
• 27:09
  Robin Joy: You said Walmart. On Amazon, let's go to the tape.
• 27:15
  Brian Olson: Replay assistance requested.
• 27:17
  Brian Olson: We'll find out later.
• 27:19
  Robin Joy: On Amazon, you only need your social security number.
• 27:22
  Brian Olson: That's right. On Amazon, all you need is your social.
• 27:24
  Brian Olson: On uh Walmart, you actually need your business tax ID number to actually get going on Walmart.
• 27:31
  Brian Olson: Yes. So it's a whole
• 27:35
  Robin Joy: style business. Yeah.
• 27:36
  Brian Olson: Yeah. So it's asking a little bit more of these right at the gate.
• 27:40
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Not a ton.
• 27:41
  Robin Joy: Probably something you should have eventually.
• 27:43
  Brian Olson: But eBay is also a strong play for like used items, collectibles, games, parts.
• 27:50
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Right? Anything that like the more hunter type.
• 27:53
  Robin Joy: Unique items like POD, to print on demand items.
• 27:57
  Robin Joy: Um yeah, other things that you're doing.
• 27:59
  Brian Olson: I mean, yeah, you you got Etsy for things like that.
• 28:01
  Brian Olson: Right. Facebook Marketplace is more for local and for some of these bulkier items, you're like, I'm just never gonna ship this, right?
• 28:07
  Brian Olson: It's too good.
• 28:08
  Robin Joy: It's a recliner. Somebody has to come and pick it up.
• 28:11
  Robin Joy: That's right.
• 28:12
  Brian Olson: Yes, exactly. So an Amazon has, as you said, multi-channel fulfillment.
• 28:17
  Brian Olson: So that means that they can fill orders for your other sales channels right out of Amazon.
• 28:24
  Robin Joy: Yeah. So I can keep the inventory that I have already sent to an Amazon fulfillment center there, listed on eBay, for instance.
• 28:35
  Robin Joy: When my eBay customer buys it, I can tell through the multi-channel fulfillment program, I can tell Amazon go ahead and send this item from your warehouse, where I've been keeping it, to this customer, my eBay customer.
• 28:50
  Robin Joy: Here's their address, and da da da da da.
• 28:52
  Robin Joy: So you can keep the storefront and still have a second door, not really changing a whole lot.
• 28:58
  Brian Olson: Thus multi-channel, MCF, multi-channel fulfillment.
• 29:01
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Right?
• 29:02
  Robin Joy: Look how they did that.
• 29:03
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
• 29:04
  Robin Joy: Wow.
• 29:05
  Brian Olson: That just worked out pretty magically for them, didn't it?
• 29:07
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 29:11
  Robin Joy: All right. Welcome to my world, people.
• 29:13
  Brian Olson: Welcome to my world. If I had it to do all over again, there's one thing I would change about how we built this, and it's got nothing to do with sourcing. I would have added this second outlet a couple of years earlier. Like we did add eBay early on.
• 29:26
  Brian Olson: We were we were doing cross-channel on eBay.
• 29:30
  Brian Olson: We have an eBay account. We still sell things there.
• 29:32
  Brian Olson: Um, but we didn't do Walmart as soon as we could have.
• 29:36
  Brian Olson: Why is that? I just don't think we were quite motivated enough at the time.
• 29:40
  Robin Joy: We were very busy as sometimes people are selling on Amazon.
• 29:45
  Brian Olson: Yeah, we were distracted by other things we had going on in the business, and it wasn't as high a priority.
• 29:49
  Brian Olson: But then all of a sudden things started getting a little bit more strict and and restricted.
• 29:55
  Brian Olson: And so then it was like, I remember coming home from I think it was 2023 proven, and I'm like, let's get this Walmart account going.
• 30:01
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 30:02
  Brian Olson: And we did, and it, you know, it was like two days of work, and we and we were approved. Actually, I think we had to wait on them a couple of more days after that.
• 30:09
  Brian Olson: But but it happened, it was painless, pretty painless, right?
• 30:12
  Brian Olson: So yeah. And um, we've maintained that account in good standing through the years.
• 30:16
  Brian Olson: And um, we're actually ramping that up more and more as we speak, thanks to a wonderful Walmart coach we have, who's also been a longtime coach on our team. So um really looking forward to that here in Q4 as well, just adding that additional, uh ramping up that additional um channel.
• 30:32
  Brian Olson: But anyway, we waited, we we waited for a couple of things to happen before that really became a top priority for us.
• 30:38
  Brian Olson: Fees actually started getting a lot more expensive, restrictions started getting a lot more prevalent in Q4.
• 30:45
  Brian Olson: And now the re I guess the main reason that I wasn't super motivated to do it was I had to go learn a new platform.
• 30:52
  Robin Joy: Yes. And that's always that's always a uh deterrent, right?
• 30:57
  Brian Olson: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:58
  Robin Joy: But you learn it's much easier to learn this platform because you've already learned Amazon, don't you think?
• 31:04
  Brian Olson: Oh, for sure.
• 31:05
  Robin Joy: I mean, first of all, you understand the business.
• 31:08
  Brian Olson: Understanding you you're we're still doing arbitrage.
• 31:10
  Robin Joy: Yes.
• 31:11
  Brian Olson: It's just a different application. Yeah, just like whether if we're doing very similar arbitrage at a flea market or whether we're doing arbitrage online.
• 31:18
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 31:18
  Brian Olson: So, and we're not necessarily making a wholesale change here.
• 31:22
  Brian Olson: We're not saying I'm cutting off Amazon and we're gonna put all my eggs in the other basket, right?
• 31:26
  Robin Joy: No, that would be repeating the same problem.
• 31:29
  Robin Joy: Exactly.
• 31:30
  Brian Olson: So we're just bringing, we're just gonna add it in, right?
• 31:33
  Robin Joy: Just add another basket.
• 31:34
  Brian Olson: So Amazon, though, is still the best place that we know of to learn the business. So keep building there for sure.
• 31:42
  Brian Olson: Okay. And then once you're steady, add one platform, just one at a time.
• 31:46
  Brian Olson: Treat it the exact same way that you treated your first shipment.
• 31:49
  Brian Olson: So you pick a handful of items, you list them, and and you test them and you see how things go, right?
• 31:54
  Brian Olson: Price high, see what you can get.
• 31:56
  Brian Olson: Remember, it's just a test.
• 31:58
  Robin Joy: Yeah. What's the worst thing that can happen?
• 32:01
  Brian Olson: Uh but the question that I get every time I suggest this is why only one? Because they buy the same mentality that you do.
• 32:09
  Brian Olson: Well, if two, if two is good, then four must be better.
• 32:13
  Robin Joy: Four is never better. Right.
• 32:15
  Brian Olson: Just for the record. Well, if two is good, then three must be better.
• 32:18
  Brian Olson: Or five must be better.
• 32:19
  Robin Joy: Makes fun of how I cook.
• 32:21
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh. I shouldn't.
• 32:22
  Brian Olson: Well, I and yeah, whatever.
• 32:24
  Brian Olson: I shouldn't make fun of how you cook. But you know, there, I I'm gonna I'm gonna go off script again because I keep meaning to tell this story and uh I keep forgetting.
• 32:35
  Brian Olson: So now I just remembered it.
• 32:36
  Brian Olson: So totally off script.
• 32:38
  Robin Joy: Totally
• 32:38
  Brian Olson: off
• 32:39
  Robin Joy: script.
• 32:39
  Brian Olson: Okay, totally off script. Oh, here we go. We'll come back to the this.
• 32:41
  Brian Olson: Hang on, guys. We'll come back to the platform conversation in just a second.
• 32:44
  Brian Olson: You have a very distinctive look.
• 32:46
  Brian Olson: Your purple hair stands out, right?
• 32:49
  Brian Olson: So a few weeks ago, we were back in our hometown traveling through because every few weeks we go down there for some errands that we we've kept some service providers in in Colorado Springs that we still go see.
• 33:01
  Brian Olson: Plus, we got to go through there to go see kids and grandkids, right?
• 33:04
  Brian Olson: So on our way back, we usually stop in the springs, we'll get a haircut, we'll have some lunch, we'll see some friends, yada yada.
• 33:10
  Brian Olson: So we stopped into this old pizza joint that uh we used to eat at when we were in high school all the time.
• 33:17
  Brian Olson: You did when you were in high school, yes.
• 33:19
  Brian Olson: You didn't eat there.
• 33:20
  Robin Joy: I didn't I didn't go to school the same place.
• 33:22
  Brian Olson: I've taken you there before. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:24
  Robin Joy: I love the place.
• 33:24
  Brian Olson: Yeah, yeah, it's really good pizza.
• 33:26
  Brian Olson: And uh, so we stop in, we pull in the parking lot and we're getting out of the car, and all of a sudden I hear from across the parking lot, hey, I know you.
• 33:34
  Brian Olson: And of course, it's this girl I went to high school with and her husband. And she's not looking at me though.
• 33:39
  Brian Olson: She's looking at Robin. She's coming straight for me.
• 33:41
  Robin Joy: I'm like, I don't know this person.
• 33:43
  Brian Olson: Robin's never met her before in her life, but but she recognizes Robin because of the because of the purple hair.
• 33:50
  Brian Olson: And so it's funny that I'm I'm known in my own hometown because of my wife.
• 33:57
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 33:58
  Robin Joy: Well, you know.
• 34:02
  Robin Joy: It reminds me of that joke about Hillary Clinton, right?
• 34:05
  Brian Olson: Okay.
• 34:06
  Robin Joy: Can you tell the joke?
• 34:07
  Brian Olson: Yeah, go ahead.
• 34:08
  Robin Joy: So Hillary and Bill were driving down the road and they saw some guy digging ditches over the side.
• 34:15
  Robin Joy: The uh Hillary said, I know that guy.
• 34:18
  Robin Joy: I went to to school, to college with that guy.
• 34:21
  Robin Joy: And Bill said, Wow, I'll bet you're really glad that you that you married me instead of him.
• 34:28
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 34:28
  Robin Joy: So she says, Why?
• 34:30
  Robin Joy: Well, because now you're first lady, and you know, this is when Bill was president. And she said, Oh, honey, Bill, if I'd married him, he would have been president. That's the story I live my life by.
• 34:45
  Brian Olson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:47
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Okay.
• 34:48
  Robin Joy: So you started. You told the story.
• 34:53
  Brian Olson: Because when you sign up for an account on Walmart, even for a professional account.
• 35:01
  Brian Olson: Okay, back on script. Okay, back on script.
• 35:04
  Brian Olson: Add one platform, okay?
• 35:06
  Brian Olson: Not five at one time.
• 35:07
  Brian Olson: I mean, we don't want to overwhelm ourselves and crash the business, right?
• 35:11
  Brian Olson: If you just do one, then you can learn that one and then add a third one and add a fourth one as things go, right?
• 35:17
  Brian Olson: But take the simplicity over complexity by just adding that one more outlet.
• 35:22
  Brian Olson: Learn it well, right?
• 35:24
  Brian Olson: It will change the shape of your business.
• 35:26
  Brian Olson: It will increase the volume in your business.
• 35:29
  Brian Olson: It's a growth factor. Sometimes it could be an exponential growth factor.
• 35:33
  Robin Joy: Sometimes it can't. Sometimes you can learn something that you didn't even know was there to learn.
• 35:37
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 35:37
  Robin Joy: So you're saying take a few items that are already slow on the current platform and then just move them to another platform and see how they do there. That's that's the assignment.
• 35:46
  Brian Olson: You didn't have to move them. You just list them there, yes, and then
• 35:49
  Robin Joy: you can ship them from where they are.
• 35:51
  Brian Olson: Use Amazon as your third party, uh, your three P distributor, if you will, and they will ship the inventory to your customers on these other platforms.
• 36:00
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Now make sure you're following those platforms' rules on how you list products and all those things, right?
• 36:05
  Robin Joy: There are rules on all platforms for different yeah, where you can give their customers.
• 36:10
  Brian Olson: And it's just a test. Just run a test.
• 36:12
  Robin Joy: Just run a test. I like it.
• 36:13
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 36:14
  Robin Joy: I like it.
• 36:14
  Brian Olson: So the one more one more analogy that I was thinking of about the different ways that, you know, the bakers, the candlestick makers, the cobblers. Right. Think about this finish carpenter because we've talked before about how we built this back home back in the day.
• 36:32
  Brian Olson: And and uh I do remember having to bring out this this finish carpenter.
• 36:36
  Brian Olson: He does all the fine-tuning of like the doors and stuff like that, right?
• 36:40
  Brian Olson: And all he's got all of his tools that are in his truck.
• 36:43
  Brian Olson: You know, he's got the lockdown job box, toolbox, and whatever it is.
• 36:47
  Brian Olson: And um so if he only worked for one builder, he would be looking for work, right? He he usually one builder is not going to build enough property to for him to do that one piece. A custom, semi-custom builder.
• 37:02
  Brian Olson: Okay, I'm not talking about your U.S. homes.
• 37:04
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Right? They probably do have their own on-staff builders, but but the ones who do fine, fine craftsmanship, okay?
• 37:12
  Brian Olson: Nothing against if you own a U.S. home.
• 37:14
  Robin Joy: No.
• 37:16
  Robin Joy: Sometimes we go down the road.
• 37:18
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 37:18
  Brian Olson: Anyway, yeah. Rabbit hole.
• 37:20
  Robin Joy: Rabbit hole.
• 37:21
  Brian Olson: Yeah. He needs more than one builder to keep to k continue practicing his craft. Right. No more different than what we're doing, right?
• 37:27
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh. Okay.
• 37:28
  Robin Joy: So he's going to contract with several different builders.
• 37:32
  Robin Joy: He is, right?
• 37:32
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 37:33
  Robin Joy: So the and that would be the cage.
• 37:36
  Robin Joy: If he only had the one builder and he was dependent completely on that builder building another house for him to keep a job.
• 37:42
  Robin Joy: He's what makes it not a cage is when he has his own tools and his own truck and his own phone number where people can call him and ask him for jobs.
• 37:53
  Brian Olson: Yeah. Now I'm not going to let you ask me this time.
• 37:55
  Robin Joy: Oh.
• 37:56
  Brian Olson: Yeah. I do have a quote for us this week.
• 37:58
  Brian Olson: Actually, it flows really well.
• 38:00
  Robin Joy: I was just about to ask.
• 38:01
  Brian Olson: It flows really well into the last part of this session here, which is like the most important part of this whole strategy isn't which platform that you're going to pick to expand on.
• 38:12
  Brian Olson: It's not the fee schedule.
• 38:14
  Brian Olson: It's not, you know, how easy it is to list a product over there or anything. It's a line that really is 400 years old, and that is our quote for this week. Okay.
• 38:24
  Brian Olson: Quote, It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow and not venture all his eggs in one basket.
• 38:34
  Brian Olson: This is from Miguel de Cervantes of Don Quixote.
• 38:39
  Robin Joy: I was waiting for you to say Don Quixote.
• 38:44
  Brian Olson: No, you weren't. You know I know that one.
• 38:46
  Brian Olson: Give me a look at the bottom.
• 38:47
  Robin Joy: I know you know it, but you say So-crates, and you know that.
• 38:50
  Brian Olson: That I do on purpose. I know.
• 38:51
  Robin Joy: Like that's what I thought you were going to do it on purpose.
• 38:53
  Brian Olson: No, no, no.
• 38:55
  Robin Joy: Well, anyway, Don Quixote.
• 38:57
  Brian Olson: Yeah.
• 38:58
  Robin Joy: 400 years old.
• 38:59
  Brian Olson: I know.
• 39:00
  Robin Joy: And it's still a conversation.
• 39:02
  Robin Joy: And he never says get rid of the basket.
• 39:04
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 39:04
  Robin Joy: That's right. He doesn't say get rid of the basket.
• 39:07
  Robin Joy: Keep the basket.
• 39:08
  Brian Olson: Uh-huh.
• 39:08
  Robin Joy: Just don't put all eggs in that basket.
• 39:10
  Robin Joy: Get another basket. You can put some of your eggs in.
• 39:13
  Brian Olson: Yeah. I mean, it's great point.
• 39:15
  Brian Olson: Like he doesn't say get rid of the basket.
• 39:17
  Brian Olson: Yeah. So if Amazon is your only outlet today.
• 39:21
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 39:22
  Brian Olson: Okay. You're it's okay.
• 39:24
  Brian Olson: That's that's okay. Yeah. You can you're still in a good place, right?
• 39:27
  Brian Olson: You're only one.
• 39:28
  Robin Joy: You may not be ready yet. You may not have have it spun up yet and be ready to move.
• 39:33
  Brian Olson: You're only one platform away.
• 39:35
  Brian Olson: That's all you need. It's right there, what's waiting for you, right?
• 39:38
  Brian Olson: So take your five slowest items, pick one other place to list them on, and do it before that storage bill starts teaching you the same lesson that it did for me, right? Right.
• 39:48
  Brian Olson: Which is gonna cost three times as much.
• 39:50
  Brian Olson: And then when you hear yourself saying that I have an Amazon business, think about what we were talking about this week, right?
• 39:58
  Brian Olson: You have an arbitrage business.
• 39:59
  Brian Olson: Yes. Amazon happens to be one of your outlets.
• 40:03
  Brian Olson: eBay, Walmart, Etsy, whatever Facebook Marketplace can be your other outlets.
• 40:10
  Robin Joy: So when we catch ourselves calling it my Amazon business, you know what we do about that?
• 40:17
  Robin Joy: We we go be undeniable.
• 40:21
  Robin Joy: We will not be denied.
• 40:23
  Brian Olson: All right, let's go do some of that.
• 40:24
  Robin Joy: Let's go do some of that.
• 40:26
  Brian Olson: Great to see you all this week. We'll see you soon.