Latest / New Era Reseller / CARCAST: He Was Checking 14 Things. All the Wrong Ones

Transcript

CARCAST: He Was Checking 14 Things. All the Wrong Ones · New Era Reseller

• 0:00
  Brian: We've all been there.
• 0:00
  Robin Joy: Oh no, I know.
• 0:01
  Robin Joy: No, I know.
• 0:02
  Brian: Stack the deck in your favor.
• 0:03
  Robin Joy: Stack the deck in your favor. That's what you say.
• 0:04
  Robin Joy: Cure that.
• 0:06
  Robin Joy: Turn it upside down.
• 0:07
  Robin Joy: Oh, turn it upside down.
• 0:09
  Robin Joy: You know what cures that?
• 0:10
  Robin Joy: Amazon has a logistic company.
• 0:12
  Robin Joy: Let's go test more ASINs.
• 0:14
  Robin Joy: Test more ASINs.
• 0:15
  Robin Joy: Test more ASINs.
• 0:16
  Robin Joy: Let's go test more acids.
• 0:19
  Robin Joy: Welcome back to the Modern Builders Network.
• 0:23
  Robin Joy: We are the Official Olson's.
• 0:25
  Robin Joy: I'm Brian.
• 0:25
  Robin Joy: And I'm Robin Joy.
• 0:26
  Robin Joy: And this is the New Era Reseller.
• 0:29
  Robin Joy: We are all in the business of becoming undeniable.
• 0:34
  Robin Joy: Hey Brian.
• 0:37
  Brian: Hey Robin.
• 0:38
  Robin Joy: We are in the car trying this new thing.
• 0:41
  Robin Joy: You guys let us know what you think.
• 0:44
  Robin Joy: So, what do you want to talk about today, Brian?
• 0:46
  Brian: Oh, I started to tell a story, and then I was like, well, let's put the microphone off because uh this could be good and interesting for a lot of people.
• 0:55
  Brian: Tell me a story.
• 0:56
  Brian: So I had a coaching session this morning, in fact, with somebody who's been doing this, building his business since October of last year.
• 1:07
  Brian: Okay.
• 1:08
  Brian: Today's like it's the end of July, early August.
• 1:11
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 1:11
  Robin Joy: My hair's picking up.
• 1:13
  Robin Joy: We're all ready.
• 1:14
  Robin Joy: Go camp.
• 1:15
  Brian: Almost a year that he's been building this business.
• 1:17
  Brian: And he's showing me these ADINs that he's reviewing.
• 1:22
  Brian: And he shows me something that is so old school that when I say, when we say all the time that there's so much outdated information out there, this is one of those things we can't say enough.
• 1:38
  Brian: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Brian: Right?
• 1:39
  Brian: Two things he was looking at.
• 1:41
  Brian: Number one, he's looking at how many drops are in the Keepa chart.
• 1:44
  Robin Joy: And it it yeah.
• 1:46
  Brian: And sales rank drops.
• 1:48
  Robin Joy: Sales rank drops.
• 1:49
  Brian: Yeah.
• 1:49
  Brian: Sales rank drops in Keepa have were redesigned to not drop.
• 1:55
  Brian: The whole point is that they're supposed to show you sort of more of the average of what it is as opposed to when a s when uh sales rank changes.
• 2:05
  Brian: And that's been it's been decade, 15 years or more of this these talk tracks out online that are getting some of ours because we used to do it that way.
• 2:18
  Brian: Based on sales control.
• 2:19
  Brian: It worked.
• 2:20
  Robin Joy: It doesn't work anymore.
• 2:21
  Robin Joy: Amazon has completely changed the way they present sales ranking.
• 2:26
  Robin Joy: It happened May of 2025.
• 2:28
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 2:29
  Robin Joy: Like it was a specific thing that they did.
• 2:31
  Robin Joy: It wasn't just, oh, it seems like that's not working anymore.
• 2:34
  Robin Joy: There's something better.
• 2:35
  Robin Joy: It does not work anymore.
• 2:38
  Brian: So I but I had to let him talk it all out because I'm not gonna blow him up on the first.
• 2:44
  Brian: No, you're wrong, right?
• 2:46
  Brian: Sort of deal.
• 2:46
  Brian: Strike one.
• 2:48
  Brian: Uh I just let him keep building up three strikes.
• 2:52
  Brian: And so then strike two was he's like, and so this is a dollar twenty to three profit, which is good for me.
• 2:58
  Brian: This is on a twenty-two dollar product, twenty-two dollar cost of goods.
• 3:02
  Brian: Oh, and of course it was like five percent ROI, whatever the math is on that.
• 3:06
  Brian: And I was like, I didn't say anything.
• 3:08
  Brian: Was he looking at margin instead of ROI?
• 3:10
  Robin Joy: No, he was looking at ROI.
• 3:11
  Robin Joy: A lot of people who look at margin instead of ROI would say that.
• 3:15
  Brian: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Brian: And um, and then the final thing he did was uh take me through every data point that he's looking at in order before he makes a decision.
• 3:28
  Brian: And this was really one of those enlightening moments for me that uh people believe that the more items you consider take into consideration, the better your chances are of success.
• 3:45
  Brian: And this is the whole Codie Sanchez love you for this quote: complexity makes you seem smart, simplicity makes you money.
• 3:54
  Brian: He had 14 different things he was looking at.
• 3:59
  Brian: I'm not kidding.
• 4:00
  Brian: I'm sitting there writing a check for everything that he's looking at, and that doesn't even count his uh deep dive on anything, and so then I would go look at this, and so then I would go look at that, right?
• 4:11
  Brian: And I was like, wow.
• 4:13
  Robin Joy: He thinks he's impressing you by all the things he understands about the exactly.
• 4:16
  Brian: He's like, see, I I know what I'm doing, and um, all I could think of was the what the story that we tell people to make the case the other way, which is how we came up with the three-step check in the first place.
• 4:30
  Brian: Okay, now can you remember that?
• 4:33
  Brian: I do, but let's be honest about how it began because in the Dimmy we didn't have this defying system about how we were evaluating ASINs, right?
• 4:44
  Brian: We had gut yeah, experience experience, and and also that's what a lot of the other veterans in the industry had too.
• 4:55
  Robin Joy: So they would build that over years and years.
• 4:59
  Brian: So when they were explaining to people how they were evaluating ASA, they're like, Yeah, I would buy this, if that, and the other thing, and if it was this time of day or this time of year, and uh depending on who the supplier is and how much I can do.
• 5:17
  Robin Joy: And it was the second Tuesday, the fourth month of the yeah, right?
• 5:21
  Brian: Right, and that's where you and you gotta you know stand on one foot, hold your mouth right.
• 5:25
  Robin Joy: Oh yeah, you've gotta hold your mouth right.
• 5:27
  Robin Joy: If you hold your mouth right, that makes all the difference.
• 5:29
  Brian: Do some bodily consortiums to make a decision.
• 5:32
  Brian: And why is that?
• 5:34
  Brian: And it's because Keepa gives you, I don't know, over 300 filters in the uh Keepa product findings.
• 5:41
  Brian: 300 filters.
• 5:44
  Brian: And so talk about information overload.
• 5:47
  Brian: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Brian: So when we were, and I explained this to this client, and I said, you know, look, when we first started coaching, we're trying to find a way to share our knowledge, our experience with people.
• 6:02
  Robin Joy: We're trying to help people pull the trigger.
• 6:05
  Brian: Yes, because what happens is people get so overwhelmed with the data that uh they can't make a decision.
• 6:14
  Robin Joy: They look at all these things and they still don't have an answer, so they can't pull the trigger.
• 6:18
  Brian: So I explain it to him, like, yeah, so here's what happened.
• 6:20
  Brian: You spend uh you just what you just told me you're gonna spend 20 minutes doing the one ASINs, and then chances are you're gonna talk yourself out of it at the end because you have to spend so long, it wasn't like obvious to you, right?
• 6:33
  Brian: And uh what and we couldn't get people to send inventory in in the place that you learn the most on this learning curve, okay?
• 6:42
  Brian: The one's got this learning curve.
• 6:44
  Brian: The place that you learn the most on that learning curve is when you have active inventory.
• 6:49
  Brian: Just no substitute for the actual experience.
• 6:52
  Brian: So, how do we get people to actually send an inventory so they can A, start to get feedback from Amazon, and B, start to connect the dots on how this whole thing works.
• 7:04
  Robin Joy: So you said the minimum that we need to know in order to send a test because it's just a test, right?
• 7:14
  Brian: You actually said it a little bit differently.
• 7:15
  Brian: You said, how do we turn this upside down?
• 7:18
  Robin Joy: Oh, I always say that.
• 7:19
  Robin Joy: I said that about everything.
• 7:21
  Robin Joy: All right, is there a way to turn this upside down?
• 7:23
  Robin Joy: Yeah, what did you come up with?
• 7:24
  Brian: What would be the opposite of looking at every piece of data before we make a decision?
• 7:28
  Brian: What is it?
• 7:32
  Robin Joy: Figure out what's the minimum that we need, yeah, and only look at those data points.
• 7:37
  Robin Joy: Now we'll get called on.
• 7:39
  Robin Joy: Yeah, we'll get called on.
• 7:41
  Robin Joy: I wonder if you guys can hear this.
• 7:42
  Robin Joy: Well, we were saying, what's the minimum that we need to know in order to do the test?
• 7:49
  Robin Joy: So the opposite of what we were doing.
• 7:51
  Robin Joy: What we're doing is trying to figure out the answer before we test it.
• 7:55
  Brian: Yep, exactly.
• 7:56
  Robin Joy: The opposite was how if we test it and see what actually happens and then make a decision.
• 8:02
  Robin Joy: What's the minimum we need to know in order to get it tested?
• 8:06
  Robin Joy: And what do we come up with?
• 8:09
  Robin Joy: Three things.
• 8:10
  Robin Joy: Three things.
• 8:11
  Brian: I need to make sure that it is actually selling because there's nothing worse than sitting in inventory and it just sits there because there's no demand.
• 8:19
  Robin Joy: Because that could be a way of losing all of my all of my capital that I put in.
• 8:23
  Robin Joy: Okay.
• 8:23
  Robin Joy: And that's that's gonna be the biggest thing, which is the second point is can I do this and at least get my money back if it doesn't work out right?
• 8:32
  Brian: Okay.
• 8:32
  Brian: So we need to make we we need to make sure there's demand because otherwise you send an inventory on an item, and it doesn't matter if it's you might think it's price related, it doesn't matter how low you take your price.
• 8:46
  Brian: It's still nobody's gonna buy it.
• 8:48
  Robin Joy: So nobody's seeing the listing, they're not buying it.
• 8:50
  Brian: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 8:51
  Brian: That was the second thing.
• 8:52
  Robin Joy: Second thing was can I protect my capital?
• 8:55
  Robin Joy: Is there a way that I can at least get my money back if this doesn't work out?
• 9:00
  Robin Joy: Because really, what I'm concerned about, both in the velocity and the capital protection, is am I burning, am I setting $20 bills on fire?
• 9:10
  Robin Joy: Yep.
• 9:10
  Robin Joy: Nobody wants to set $20 bills on fire.
• 9:13
  Robin Joy: You want to have, even though there are no guarantees of any of this, there is a small amount of risk.
• 9:18
  Robin Joy: You want to have a really low risk of losing your money.
• 9:21
  Robin Joy: And that's what we're trying to put together.
• 9:23
  Robin Joy: And then the third thing, what was the third thing?
• 9:26
  Brian: The third thing is potential profit.
• 9:28
  Brian: Is it worth your dollars, your capital to invest in this, or is it gonna be like two cents of profit, right?
• 9:37
  Brian: Or whatever, whatever it would be like a really low amount, or do you have potential for more?
• 9:43
  Robin Joy: If you have a minimum that you're trying to accomplish, that you're testing for, does it is there evidence that that that that price is possible?
• 9:56
  Brian: Exactly.
• 9:56
  Brian: Okay, well, yeah, so if you're if let's say if your ROI target is 30%, is there evidence, historic uh historical evidence that it has sold based on the buy box um at or above that price?
• 10:11
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 10:12
  Robin Joy: So a couple of things here that that get missed, I think, is that um the potential profit we look at buy box from Keepa to see if there's any evidence of that.
• 10:31
  Robin Joy: That tells me there's probably more of that because Keepa only has only looks at one buy box at a time, and you don't know where that is, it's usually like a national average, or we don't know.
• 10:43
  Robin Joy: But if it has ever hit there one time and a buy box has hit there, and you have evidence of that, that one actually did happen, and it's pricey, it's not a sale.
• 10:55
  Robin Joy: But um, if they got the buy box at that price ever, even for a minute, then that gives me an idea that Amazon was okay with a buy box at that price, there wasn't a high price here, at least at that point, that that someone tried it and it showed up.
• 11:17
  Robin Joy: And I'm pretty sure if that happened once, it's probably happened several times.
• 11:23
  Robin Joy: And if it hasn't, it's just because nobody's trying.
• 11:25
  Robin Joy: Yeah, and I'm gonna try.
• 11:27
  Robin Joy: Remember, this is just a test.
• 11:29
  Robin Joy: This is just for a test.
• 11:32
  Robin Joy: We're gonna let the test tell us whether we should replenish or not.
• 11:34
  Robin Joy: If we try to figure out whether we should replenish or not before we test, we're gonna be highly disappointed most of the time.
• 11:42
  Robin Joy: If we expect to be disappointed that it's not replenishable and we test small because of that, then we're not gonna be disappointed.
• 11:50
  Robin Joy: We know our conversion rate is gonna be low in the beginning until we get some more experience.
• 11:54
  Robin Joy: And as you get that experience where you can make that call a little bit better every time, it will your conversion rate will go up.
• 12:03
  Robin Joy: So however many you test, more of those will become replenishable.
• 12:07
  Robin Joy: But don't forget the benefits of testing whether you get your price or not.
• 12:18
  Robin Joy: You got your money back, so you know, in most cases, you're gonna get your money back.
• 12:23
  Robin Joy: So that's not lighting a $20 bill on fire, right?
• 12:28
  Robin Joy: But you also got a sale, and at this point in your career, a sale is probably pretty important to you because what does a sale give you, Brian?
• 12:39
  Brian: Uh a sale gives you a successful transaction, and a successful transaction gives you enough of them give account health points, gives you an opportunity to get client feedback on you as a seller.
• 12:52
  Robin Joy: Um builds trust with Amazon.
• 12:54
  Robin Joy: What does building trust with Amazon get you?
• 12:57
  Brian: More approvals throughout the catalog.
• 13:00
  Robin Joy: Yeah, then they start opening up the code.
• 13:01
  Brian: So more opportunity, what that means too.
• 13:03
  Robin Joy: More choices.
• 13:04
  Robin Joy: Yes, is more profitable ASINs, more ASINs that can be replenishable when you test them.
• 13:10
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 13:10
  Robin Joy: So that's another reason your conversion rate gets better, it's because your options get bigger.
• 13:15
  Robin Joy: Your choices, there are more choices.
• 13:17
  Robin Joy: Right?
• 13:19
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 13:20
  Robin Joy: Okay, so that's where the three-step check came from.
• 13:24
  Robin Joy: And it's it's tough because people just they really want to know for sure before they send it in whether they're gonna make money on it or not.
• 13:36
  Robin Joy: And the things that they're looking at are not telling them that.
• 13:39
  Robin Joy: That's the myth of the whole thing.
• 13:41
  Robin Joy: Is that they're falsely believing this lie that's been told, it's intuitive, so they want to believe it, that you're going to be able to know if that's profitable for you before you test it.
• 13:56
  Robin Joy: And I just have talked to too many people that thought they were gonna get profit out of that, and then they didn't because they didn't test it.
• 14:09
  Robin Joy: I mean, they put 50 in there and oh, I lost all my money.
• 14:14
  Robin Joy: Well, don't put 50 in there, test it first.
• 14:16
  Robin Joy: You know what else I find is that people don't test ASINs for the price for the possible price, and so they never know if they could have sold it for more.
• 14:29
  Robin Joy: They're into selling fast, they want to sell a bunch of them.
• 14:33
  Robin Joy: The problem with selling a bunch of them is that you have to lower your price to sell more of them, and then all you're doing is doing a whole lot of work for no profit.
• 14:44
  Robin Joy: Because if you're gonna chase everybody else, I've I'll I always say this.
• 14:49
  Robin Joy: I don't let other people, other sellers, Amazon.
• 14:54
  Robin Joy: I don't let other people tell me what my price should be.
• 14:58
  Robin Joy: I let the test tell me, I let the experience with the ASIN tell me, I don't let other people tell me if they want to go driving the price down.
• 15:07
  Robin Joy: Go ahead.
• 15:08
  Robin Joy: I'll hold my price until and unless it stops selling, and then I might adjust.
• 15:14
  Robin Joy: But I don't let them tell me, I let the ASIN tell me whether I'm gonna replenish or not.
• 15:22
  Brian: That was one of the other things he said was uh, oh, and look at it, it has a nice steady buy box.
• 15:27
  Brian: Oh no.
• 15:28
  Brian: It's whole news, right?
• 15:30
  Brian: Uh usually a nice steady buy box, depending on the velocity of the ASIN, means that the price has been decided and all the profit has been competed out of that opportunity.
• 15:44
  Robin Joy: Yeah.
• 15:45
  Brian: And so I explained the fundamentals, you know, of uh economic theory that you're looking for what makes a free market work is this balanced um this balance of demand with supply.
• 16:01
  Brian: Yeah and what balances that is the price.
• 16:04
  Brian: And if something is not worth, if something is really expensive, in other words, it's not worth the price, then there isn't that much demand.
• 16:13
  Brian: And so it doesn't make a sense for you to go buy a whole bunch of it or manufacture a whole bunch of it.
• 16:19
  Brian: Like in the early days of big screen TVs or even large tube TVs, right?
• 16:24
  Brian: It costs a lot of money to make those in the beginning.
• 16:28
  Brian: Over time, the price came down.
• 16:30
  Brian: When the price came down, the demand went up, right?
• 16:33
  Brian: So if you're looking to be in a position that has a lot of demand for not much profit, then you're looking for those types of items.
• 16:42
  Brian: If you're looking for areas where there's more opportunity, we look for more volatile um buy boxes and the buy box history, so long as you can maintain capital protection.
• 16:57
  Brian: But again, this is a business decision.
• 16:59
  Brian: You decide that ultimately, what risks you're willing to take for your business.
• 17:04
  Brian: And um, so by the time I was done sort of talking about all the things, um you know, he goes, Well, let's go back to the profit about does $1.23 a profit?
• 17:15
  Brian: That's good for me, I'll take it.
• 17:17
  Brian: And I'm like, where did you come up with that $1.23?
• 17:19
  Brian: He goes, Well, it says right here, you know, this is the price.
• 17:23
  Brian: I said, Let's go down and look at the Keepa chart.
• 17:26
  Brian: Okay, he didn't have profit in it.
• 17:28
  Brian: And I said, Look at the historical buy box.
• 17:32
  Brian: How high do you see that that has gone in the last 90 days?
• 17:36
  Brian: The price has actually gone up a lot to where he would he could get $14 of profit multiple times in the last 90 days.
• 17:47
  Brian: There's a buy box that goes to the place that he would get $14 of profit.
• 17:53
  Brian: And I said, why wouldn't you then send this item in and see if you can get that price of $14 of profit on a $20 buy?
• 18:02
  Brian: That's a way better attractive uh return on investment than $1.23 20 bucks, right?
• 18:10
  Robin Joy: Good point.
• 18:10
  Robin Joy: So let's dig into that utility.
• 18:13
  Robin Joy: You did a study.
• 18:17
  Brian: So then I talked to him about this very thing.
• 18:20
  Brian: So great transition.
• 18:22
  Robin Joy: Oh, wait, but before we go there, what if he had had path profit zones?
• 18:26
  Robin Joy: What would he have seen maybe?
• 18:28
  Brian: Uh he would have seen what we call peak price.
• 18:30
  Brian: And peak price shows you the highest that we have within the period being evaluated, the highest price that we have evidence that the item is sold for.
• 18:39
  Robin Joy: Which is where we encourage people to start.
• 18:41
  Robin Joy: Absolutely.
• 18:42
  Robin Joy: And if he had premium path profit zones.
• 18:46
  Brian: And then he would also be able to see the different buy box prices throughout the country at 18 different veterans.
• 18:52
  Robin Joy: Yeah, because remember He's looking at one price.
• 18:55
  Robin Joy: He's looking at one price, the price that it would cost for him to be delivered to his house if he picked the buy box.
• 19:02
  Brian: Yep.
• 19:03
  Robin Joy: But I might have had a completely different buy box than he had, and profit zones shows us that the different variations of the the buy boxes when there is some, right?
• 19:17
  Robin Joy: So that tool can be quite helpful in making that decision with again some quick looks, not 14 different places.
• 19:27
  Brian: So the velocity zone study was really interesting, and I initially did it on over 15,000 ASINs, and what we found was that the ASINs that have sales velocity between 50 and 190.
• 19:45
  Robin Joy: You think very fast.
• 19:46
  Brian: It doesn't.
• 19:47
  Brian: This is uh this is based on what Amazon's saying from a uh monthly sold number, but it at least it's verifiable.
• 19:56
  Brian: It's not uh a drop that's been marginalized out of meaning anything.
• 20:02
  Brian: Yeah.
• 20:02
  Brian: Uh directly from Amazon.
• 20:04
  Brian: And it's showing that these ACEs that move that have verified sales loss between 50 and 199 times a month, they actually don't have that much uh volatility to buy box.
• 20:17
  Brian: This is a really interesting find.
• 20:20
  Robin Joy: Um, because the ones between 50 and what?
• 20:23
  Brian: 199.
• 20:24
  Robin Joy: They don't have much volatility.
• 20:26
  Brian: That's correct, they don't have as much volatility as the next band up.
• 20:29
  Brian: Okay, okay.
• 20:30
  Brian: And I'll tell you why.
• 20:31
  Brian: So in the 50 to 199 range, there's typically only one meaningful seller, sometimes two.
• 20:40
  Brian: What I mean by meaningful seller is FBA.
• 20:44
  Brian: Sometimes there's no FBA.
• 20:47
  Brian: And that's the little gold mine when you find some moons where it's only FBM offers.
• 20:53
  Robin Joy: Well, let me, if I can insert something here that's also a myth.
• 20:57
  Robin Joy: There are uh valuable ASINs and things that aren't C, even if it's not FBM only.
• 21:05
  Robin Joy: A lot of people think the only ones that have any opportunity are the ones that besides you see the buy box, are the ones that don't have an FBA seller on it.
• 21:14
  Robin Joy: That's absolutely not true.
• 21:16
  Robin Joy: I just gotta say, I'm tired of hearing that's the only way you can find it because it's not.
• 21:22
  Brian: Okay, now back to this 50 to 199.
• 21:24
  Brian: Not that much pricing volatility because there's usually not that many meaningful sellers.
• 21:28
  Brian: Okay, and so they're able to, they don't have competition, so the price stays pretty steady.
• 21:33
  Robin Joy: See what happens when we don't have new notes, I get them way off track.
• 21:38
  Brian: Then the next range is 200 to 499.
• 21:42
  Brian: Now, this is the range that has the absolute most volatility in the historical buy box prices.
• 21:49
  Brian: Okay, it's not even close.
• 21:51
  Brian: Really?
• 21:52
  Brian: Even any of the ranges above it.
• 21:54
  Brian: And this is because, like this, to me, if you are interested in you know getting in and out of ASINs and you know potentially uh playing that buy box so to speak as opposed to like a flip yeah um or even the replant like i this works really well for replants now you're you're subject to a little bit more volatility because it's a there's more competition and potentially wider swings in this where it could go below yeah but you don't have to follow it no I know but you could go below but break even for longer than your parameters are set for um but you get a lot of pricing volatility in that space which is useful for for profitability and moving decent amounts of inventory so they set there's more offers the buy box is trading hands more frequently and then you get to take advantage of that the price has not been decided it hasn't been settled price is always in flux that's the kind of market that we're looking for as an arbitrage seller this is not the buy and hold game where we're you know buying discontinued uh brick toys or whatever and we're holding on to it or we're buying discontinued uh thermal bugs and waiting for someone to waiting for the manufacturer to stop making that color or whatever right this is a regular replenishable play that we can take advantage of okay so why is it that the number that we rested at because great question Robin I'll tell you why thank you the reason that's not the sweet spot that we focus on is because the this this range of 50 to 199 when I look at the sources for uh those those products that we can get out of the bulk matching tools it has the highest percentage of products that you can buy right off the shelf and resell on that ASIN with the existing buy cost and where exits where the existing buy box is like you just get a much larger percentage of product that you don't even have to worry about managing these pricing swings.
• 24:12
  Brian: Okay the next level up this two to four ninety n is the second highest range okay but if you like less competition then 50 to 199 could be your sweet spot if you like the variability of being able to take advantage of larger swings then the second zone is your sweet spot.
• 24:32
  Brian: And what's the second zone?
• 24:34
  Robin Joy: 50 I'm sorry uh 200 to 499 sales verify so if I just kept it within 50 to 499 I probably get yes the most of everything right yep I like that that's easy I like easy clear numbers.
• 24:48
  Robin Joy: Yep 50 to 499 would work.
• 24:51
  Brian: Yeah yeah give that a try okay now one more point before we turn this off for now is um the last thing this guy was showing me that he thought I'm gonna show you how much I know in a good way like I'm a in this case I'm his coach so he's trying to show off you know like hey I'm checking that he's done he's done some stuff and uh he's like uh so I looked at this one and there's uh there's one person that has 97% of the buy box share and so uh so of course I'm not gonna buy it and I'm like well hold on a second if you're gonna go to that level of detail which I don't do by the way no then you have to take all things into consideration so show me a list of five offers that are on this listing okay two of them are FBA the other three are FBM one of them doesn't have any stock currently the other one does and has historically like replenished to 20 and sold out 20 and sold out.
• 25:48
  Brian: Of course he's gonna have the buy box 97% of the time he's the only one with inventory who is FBA.
• 25:55
  Robin Joy: Yeah so it doesn't make sense who knows what would happen if somebody else put FBA inventory in there you're making a decision I've also seen people use that number to say it's 97% of the buy box but 90 only 97% of the time did it have a buy box.
• 26:15
  Robin Joy: So of course right yeah and remember that's still one buy box some other guy could have had the buy box 100% of the time in a different region that Keepa wasn't tracking.
• 26:27
  Robin Joy: So the I I don't put much stock in who who had the buy box or percentage of of holding the buy box I don't put much stock in that at all.
• 26:35
  Brian: Right.
• 26:36
  Brian: Yeah all right so just a quick recap that one session had so many like conventional wisdom things that we uh addressed it was in that session that you were talking about you just did yeah yeah so many things and this is the old school old playbook mentality that is just it's so prevalent out there in YouTube and these older podcasts and stuff.
• 27:04
  Robin Joy: So what yeah or even the new ones it's the uh people who don't realize things have changed so much that's how you can tell they're a guru and not someone who's actually working is they don't know kind of detail what's called yeah and they don't really realize what their advantages are which is why I say if you're starting in 2026 instead of 2017 your advantages support even 2020 your advantages are have dramatically increased as a seller the reason people think it's getting all tight is because they're trying to use the old playbook.
• 27:47
  Brian: I love one of the things you said which is the reason people look at so many data points is because they're trying to determine the outcome of the test before the tests.
• 27:57
  Robin Joy: Why do they need a test if they can determine the output but exactly if they can determine what the test is going to determine why would they test?
• 28:05
  Brian: So we can't I saw a great quote from I'm not like I just saw it in sporting I'm trying to remember who uh where I saw it but it was something like profit exists because nobody can tell the future yeah we don't have a crystal ball and so if you get into a position where you can tell the future there there's a good chance there's not gonna be profit there or not much.
• 28:32
  Brian: So we there has to be a little bit of risk there in order for you to be able to take advantage of or leverage that opportunity.
• 28:42
  Brian: The other thing I wanted to talk about is uh the multitude of tools that are hitting the market these days and uh ask me how I know because I made one right there are a lot of new tools coming to market and they're not using the new era benefits they're using the capitalizing on that some of them right uh are are using new like I like to think ours does.
• 29:11
  Brian: Ours does yeah that's the whole point of ours because nobody else was oh we had to make our own so two problems with this or challenges I'll just throw back at you is you can you had a coaching uh an email from one of your coaching clients who was again assuming they're showing you all this great work that they're doing which is you tried 20 different things I'm doing this I'm doing that the other thing I also tried this and I got that and I went to this event and blah blah blah.
• 29:39
  Brian: And it reminded me of my early days when I called my coach I was like yeah I got KDP I got wholesale I'm trying out these bundles I also figured out how to do a paint pouring kit I'm getting this figured out right and after four months of that I had a $2000 business which was nothing to speak of because I was distracted with all these oh because what what feels hard is when you're look when you're looking for quote unquote profitable ASINs.
• 30:11
  Brian: And you think well there must be an easier way there must be an easier way let me try this let me try the next thing and really there is no easier way.
• 30:19
  Brian: Yeah where it is test it to see if it's profitable.
• 30:22
  Brian: Sure but I mean you still have to take action there's no easy way before you take action to figure things out so to to keep trying the next new thing is just going to keep you distracted from the blinders that you need to put on so that you can focus on what really sustained uh consistent activity.
• 30:46
  Brian: Yeah so one of those tools was a part of this session that I did this morning and um this person said look this tool says I have approval for over 26,000 brands and I was looking at this I was like are you kidding me 26000?
• 31:05
  Brian: I don't think I ever bought 26000 directly out of Amazon but apparently they exist and when I was looking at them off you know he had like the front page of all the brands that he was approved for I couldn't find one legit brand on there.
• 31:18
  Brian: So you're approved for a whole bunch of brands you don't want to have anything to do with there were a lot of spelled wrong spelled wrong foreign case Bobby's candy bars Billy Bob's custom bundles misbranded bundles and all these things and I was like oh my gosh and this is what these tools do.
• 31:36
  Brian: They just I can't really blame them.
• 31:38
  Brian: They're saying you put your methodology to work on here because not every tool has to be designed strictly for Amazon.
• 31:46
  Brian: Right.
• 31:46
  Brian: And that's what the way that you can use these other brands and suppliers although this these brands came directly from Amazon and it was an Amazon tool saying you can sell these on Amazon.
• 31:57
  Brian: Your brands you're approved for on Amazon is just going to get so many accounts cooked I just I'm I'm afraid for that developer because their trust what happens is the new sellers come in and they're like oh look at this tool on it it says I'm approved for 2600 brands.
• 32:15
  Robin Joy: Yay and I'm gonna go source all these brands and they're misbranded their private label or their brands that don't sell nationally don't sell to the public they only I mean I sorry they don't sell to resellers they don't even sell to Walmart or Target.
• 32:34
  Robin Joy: They only want to sell from their own website right like uh Pampered Chef is is the biggest one I've seen.
• 32:41
  Robin Joy: Yeah and if you don't think you're gonna get an IP complaint I cannot tell you the number of people who have come back to me with IP complaints from Pampered Chef.
• 32:53
  Brian: Right.
• 32:53
  Brian: So the reason I bring it up is that one of the pieces of of uh IP that we've created is well it's two things.
• 33:06
  Brian: First of all it's a list of brands ranked by how can you trust them two pieces of IP one is this brand list and when I say ranked I don't mean ranked by how well they sell and ranked by how well known and trusted they are and then a list of suppliers that we have ranked for our own business that's lined up for defensible sourcing so that we don't get ourselves into trouble buying from a supplier that's not legit.
• 33:39
  Brian: And again legit for Amazon some of these suppliers are fine for eBay by legit you mean brand authorized that's right authorized by the brand which is what Amazon requires a legit site that means to me that means they're not going to take your money but there are plenty out there that are not going to take your money they really are legitimate sites including mine but not branded by not authorized by the brand it's a reseller so 26000 brands is such an overinflated number because the reality is when I took a list of 14,000 brands and ran it through the US PTO database to find out which of those brands have registered and active trademarks it really was only about 4400 and so you got to figure and and that's really the the entire US PTO database of active registered trademarks isn't 26000.
• 34:41
  Brian: It's way smaller than that.
• 34:43
  Brian: So you really want to be careful with this stuff and these the I'm we're not trying to uh only feed you exactly what's going to keep your account safe this is what keeps our account safe and if you want to use this system you can yeah this approach yes this approach and we'll show you how how we do it and we'll give you the list that we came up with uh in the Modern Builders Stack so no guarantees but stack the deck in your favor right yeah give yourself half a chance so don't get distracted and be careful about some of these new tools that are coming out yes not saying they're bad I'm saying make sure you fully understand make sure you're the one making the decisions not the tool the other thing that this guy had was an on-page calculator and he's like yep see look at it gives me this score right here tells me it's good I'm like do you know what goes into that score?
• 35:43
  Brian: Well um well let's see it says uh and so then he he's trusting a number that the system is spitting out so if I say 75 yeah you're gonna go with that because I set it on my calculator?
• 35:57
  Brian: Right.
• 35:58
  Robin Joy: Oh let's put some numbers on path profits on say oh this is uh 78.
• 36:03
  Brian: Yeah because I picked a number the way that we designed profit zones is for it to you to configure the settings so you know exactly how it's scoring out because you set it you set the parameters yourself.
• 36:19
  Brian: And you decide whether that's a good score or not.
• 36:21
  Brian: You get to decide whatever your parameters are and then you see how these agents measure up to your own.
• 36:27
  Robin Joy: And what's cool is you can do it in bulk.
• 36:30
  Robin Joy: Oh yeah it's pretty cool okay I'm done with my rants here okay I would like to talk about a new and upcoming thing that I've been just spending my life on is that takes an awful we're putting an awful lot in this is called FBA fast track what FBA fast track is is it's a it is an approach that helps you set up your system not my system not a system not the system your system uh there is a sort of a textbook that you go through and it helps you realize what the decisions you need to make up front are.
• 37:18
  Robin Joy: Because if we make the decision now about when we're gonna cut our losses or whether we're going to test or not if we make that decision now then in the heat of the moment or during an emotional time or when we're desperate for one is not going to be the time that we make that decision.
• 37:35
  Robin Joy: Right?
• 37:35
  Robin Joy: We're not gonna be making all kinds of exceptions that we can't ever hand off.
• 37:42
  Robin Joy: If it's an ex if there everything's an exception then you can't hand that off because they have to bring you everything anyway it takes you through making those decisions, what decisions there are to make making those decisions, recording those decisions in a playbook that is yours, that has your numbers in it.
• 38:04
  Robin Joy: And then it takes you through a a logbook which helps you to keep track of what has actually happened with those decisions so that you can see am I getting what I thought I would do I need to make any changes continually improving that it takes you through 100 days of this new plan that you're creating so that you have a real solid feel for what your decision should be, what kind of when and what decisions you're going to make I'm talking about things like what's my minimum return on investment and why what's my what is it return on investment?
• 38:45
  Robin Joy: What's the calculation for that?
• 38:46
  Robin Joy: Because there's more than one am I using ROI or margin well mean correct one but there are more than one floating around yeah but many people use uh a a wrong one that we think is wrong okay you know how many am I gonna test at a time how much should I spend in my first set of tests all of these decisions you make up front and we help you make that decision not by saying do it this way do this first although we give you recommendations by saying here is what this looks like here's what you're gonna get if you do this here's what you're gonna get if you do that here's what this decision is for and then you make the decision because I found that it's much easier for people to stick with their decisions if they made them themselves instead of doing what somebody else said they did.
• 39:37
  Robin Joy: It because it's just easier to believe when you've made that decision yourself.
• 39:42
  Brian: So that's what FBA fast track is and you have been helping me do some editing how do you feel about it what do you think it's gonna how this is going to go I think it's the most comprehensive knowledge jump in a it made in an organized fashion that's easy to consume that we've ever produced we talk about everything in this fast track all the time in one way or another.
• 40:08
  Brian: We do you know a lot of times we're talking about the same thing from different angles to try and present different perspective that may help those those make that idea land um with different people so that to me it just has all it has a ton of talk tracks with for for people who are just getting started I always say talk tracks learning tracks for people who are just getting started like you want to make a plan for your business this is the way to get started with that we see this a lot people come in and they're like this go as much as you can is not a plan.
• 40:48
  Brian: Right.
• 40:48
  Brian: And so it's it's uh it feels better when you take when you can take a designed a strategic measured approach to your business.
• 40:59
  Robin Joy: Yeah I think it does and everybody who I've taken through on this kind of approach has felt much more confident in what their choices are what happens next what happens if I do this uh and and marking progress that's a big thing is marking progress it's so hard to feel like you've done anything if you're just trying to remember because it feels hard all the time especially when you're first getting started if you mark progress you can see or it feels hard but I have made quite a bit of progress so I think that logbook is going to be super helpful in marking progress and helping you realize oh okay now I can look back and see did that do what I wanted it to do if not now I can see where the dials and switches are where I can tweak that dial it in and make it a little better.
• 41:55
  Robin Joy: But this is just you this is foundation building build your foundation and then we'll have some more training to go after that but that foundation is so important.
• 42:05
  Robin Joy: And once you get that down then you could go from there you probably don't need a whole lot more help.
• 42:12
  Brian: You know that it's so important too because what we run into a fair amount is well I was I I can't remember why I made that decision.
• 42:21
  Brian: I don't know what I was thinking at that time.
• 42:22
  Brian: Why did I decide to test this item?
• 42:24
  Brian: In fact a lot of times when we start working with people and we get them sort of informed about different ways to evaluate products and ASINs then they're like looking back at some of the early things they sent in they have they're like I have no idea what I was thinking.
• 42:41
  Brian: Yep.
• 42:41
  Brian: Because I would never test that ASIN today.
• 42:44
  Robin Joy: And that's so that's often what we have to take them through is a cleanup.
• 42:48
  Robin Joy: And that's okay.
• 42:49
  Robin Joy: Don't make a mess.
• 42:50
  Robin Joy: That's all right nothing wrong with that.
• 42:52
  Robin Joy: But at some point you have to have an approach that's that becomes predictable and is sustainable and scalable.
• 43:00
  Robin Joy: And making an exception every time you don't know why you made that decision is not scalable.
• 43:06
  Robin Joy: You cannot take yourself out of a business like that.
• 43:10
  Robin Joy: And that's what scalable means means move removing yourself from the tasks completely not just having somebody do your package actual scale so that's what FBA fast track is and that is coming soon pretty soon we're gonna have a get on the wait list for that it's that it's coming that soon.
• 43:33
  Robin Joy: Watch OfficialOlsons for a wait list to get on the wait list for that and we'll let you know when it's coming when it's getting published.
• 43:44
  Robin Joy: All right do you have a quote for us today?
• 43:46
  Brian: I do I actually talked about this in a previous episode but I'm going to repurpose this it's coming from the movie I'd say Rocky so write the script cast yourself in the best way that's what you want to do for your life that's what you want to do for your business.
• 44:10
  Brian: Don't you want to be the hero of your own story?
• 44:14
  Robin Joy: Yeah let's do that and when we're still defining our approach building our foundation and things are not quite going right yet what cure is that Brian we test more ASINs.
• 44:29
  Robin Joy: Let's go test more ASINs.
• 44:30
  Robin Joy: Test more ASINs.
• 44:31
  Robin Joy: Thanks everybody talk to you soon