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How Faith and Focus Built a Thriving Amazon Business With Aaron Oliveira · Profitable Christian Business

• 0:00
  Doug Greathouse (00:00.746) Alright, hello and welcome to another episode of the Profitable Christian Business. I am overjoyed today to have my guest Aaron Olivera with me today. I practiced his last name just before we got on, just so everybody knows. I sometimes, past guests knows this, if I don't do that I might butcher their name. So just full transparency there. But I've known Aaron for a little while now. He is actually good friends with
• 0:01
  Aaron Oliveira (00:16.666) You
• 0:02
  Doug Greathouse (00:28.716) my business partner, Jason Webb at the Prophet Christian Business. So we're gonna dive into a lot of stuff. We're gonna talk about e-commerce. We're gonna talk about how you can get involved in that. We're gonna talk about how to do it right. We're gonna talk about faith, which is one of my favorite topics. But enough of me talking. I'm gonna let you talk for a second, Aaron. Aaron, tell a little bit about who you are what you do.
• 0:03
  Aaron Oliveira (00:50.181) Sure. Yeah, so a little bit about me. Married for 14 years, it'll be 15 years this autumn, this fall. Serial, bivocational entrepreneur. So I'm a preacher. I'm a reformed Baptist in my theology. We have four beautiful children expecting our fifth in July. And yeah, just really through different personal experiences, some faith-based experiences, and even some
• 0:04
  really difficult business separations with people that weren't Christians led me to really relying heavily on e-commerce versus traditional business brick and mortar, nothing against brick and mortar. I use brick and mortar businesses all the time to get my products to my clients. But really just kind of zoned in on e-commerce and passive residual income, call it mailbox money, whatever you want. But yeah, my big thing is faith first. And I think a lot of people that join my business
• 0:05
  I can feel that I care about the results of that business. And I think that really also does set me apart as a Christian business entrepreneur, as a profitable Christian business owner, and then point at the sign again. So that's a little bit about me.
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  Doug Greathouse (01:59.778) Yep. Yep. Yep.
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  That is awesome. So I picked up on something there and I just want for the audience clarity and maybe a little bit more of clarity on my end. What is Reformed Baptist?
• 0:08
  Aaron Oliveira (02:16.124) Yeah, so Reformed Baptist basically goes back to, I guess you could go as far back as calling it a catechism, but it's really just a organized formal structure of which the traditional Baptist church, and that goes all the way back to John the Baptist, so it's one of the oldest, you might want to call it a creed, I wouldn't call it a creed, but there's a confession of faith. Westminster Confession of Faith is based off of the Reformed Baptist Confession of Faith.
• 0:09
  It predates it. It's actually technically the second London Confession. And it's just reflective of what I believe from what the Bible tells me how to live my life as a Christian, but also how that looks to the public eye as I blend faith with public exposure. It's interesting too, knowing what we do as Christians on a world scale now. People can basically post anything online and say whatever they want.
• 0:10
  But yeah, Reformed Baptist goes to the Reformed Baptist confession of faith or catechism. You could call it a catechism. And it really just means I believe in believers baptism. I believe in not, I believe I'm pro-life. I'm pro-church. The soul five solace. I don't know if you're familiar with the five solace. So it's really a reflection of the five solace by Christ alone, by faith alone, by his grace alone and continues on. So that's what Reformed Baptist refers to.
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  Doug Greathouse (03:37.592) Nice.
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  Nice. And you may have said it and I apologize if I missed it. You said you are a preacher. How long have you been a preacher?
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  Aaron Oliveira (03:49.067) So I've actually been preaching longer than I've been married to my wife. So I've been preaching for 16 years, not all full time. I started full time about 13 years ago. So a year after that, a year after I was married, I would kind of just preach in an itinerant aspect for two or three years as I was trying to find a church that I felt was appropriate for my beliefs, but also one that was willing to be flexible.
• 0:14
  around what I was already doing, because I was already bivocational. And so, you know, found this little work where they had had a pastor that passed away suddenly, and then had a temporary pastor that couldn't really manage it with the financial, I guess, requirement to be full time. So I just went into the church and said, as long as you guys are okay with a part-time preacher and part-time pastor, then I am, I'm your man. So to speak.
• 0:15
  Doug Greathouse (04:44.694) Nice.
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  Aaron Oliveira (04:46.4) And that's what it was. blended. I've been blending faith in business and faith and career for over 14 years.
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  Doug Greathouse (04:54.808) Wow, so you are a perfect guest for the Prophet Christian Business Podcast.
• 0:18
  Aaron Oliveira (04:57.535) Maybe not the most perfect, but I am definitely an ideal guest for the podcast.
• 0:19
  Doug Greathouse (05:04.076) Yes, yes, yes. I like to have a little fun at the beginning. I was already go deep right there. But I like to have a little fun at the beginning of the show here. And I like so given I know what you do with the e commerce, who is someone from the Bible that you think would crush it as an Amazon seller? And why?
• 0:20
  Aaron Oliveira (05:12.369) Sure, let's do it. Let's have some fun. Let's have some fun.
• 0:21
  Aaron Oliveira (05:18.567) Yes.
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  Aaron Oliveira (05:25.682) So I think ultimately, I'm to give you two answers. The first one that comes to mind if I was a woman or I was looking at an ideal woman for an Amazon seller, I think of Lydia and the seller of Purple for sure. And textiles do super great on Amazon if you have the right supplier and you don't have a garbage product.
• 0:23
  Doug Greathouse (05:29.303) Okay.
• 0:24
  Aaron Oliveira (05:48.734) know, being as old as Lydia would have been in the first century, I think that you would have seen a lot of really high quality textile there. And then as far as associating myself, I'd start first actually with being bivocational, right? And so who was one of the first bivocational preachers that we found? And that was Paul or Saul Paul, you know, new name Paul.
• 0:25
  Doug Greathouse (05:58.51) It's good.
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  Doug Greathouse (06:10.154) Hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (06:13.101) And so, you know, he was bivocational. He would preach and he would write letters and he was at least a leader in the church. And then he would make tents. So he was a tent maker as well to support himself financially between his synagogue visits, which we see that in Acts. And so I would say Lydia and I would say Paul. so, yeah, that was that would be my short answer of who I think would be a really good Amazon reseller.
• 0:28
  Doug Greathouse (06:38.682) That is awesome. You know, to most of the questions that I ask about the Bible, Jesus is the first answer that people say. And I think there would be a case for Jesus in this, right? He was a carpenter. He could definitely make something in Stella.
• 0:29
  Aaron Oliveira (06:45.852) Yeah, yeah.
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  Aaron Oliveira (06:52.954) He was also pretty bivocational, yeah. Yeah, but you know, if I was, and I was just kind of bringing myself into that, Doug, and just saying, you know, if, like, and I would never, no matter how righteous of a lifestyle, I would never compare myself to Jesus. And so, you know, I took him, I took him off the board. I see, I definitely see the correlation for, you know, being bivocational as well, or dual vocational. But yeah, Paul.
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  Doug Greathouse (07:07.63) Right.
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  Aaron Oliveira (07:18.812) And you know, I do some travel preaching as well. know, Paul was going from synagogue to synagogue and would preach for three Sabbaths or for three months, depending on where he was. So, you know, I did, I do similar things. I would go and I would preach and I'd come back. And so I would associate myself with Paul. And then, yeah, like I said, an ideal, ideal, ideal woman, an Amazon reseller, we'll go with Lydia, the seller of purple, because the textiles do really well.
• 0:33
  Doug Greathouse (07:33.934) Nice.
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  Doug Greathouse (07:40.682) Nice, nice. Yeah, we will we all strive to be more like Jesus, but to compare ourselves. Yeah. that is fun. So keeping in the Amazon theme, is there anything that you've ever had in your Amazon cart or you may be having your Amazon cart right now that you probably won't buy, but you feel bad removing it from your cart?
• 0:35
  Aaron Oliveira (07:48.697) I don't like it, I don't like doing it.
• 0:36
  Aaron Oliveira (08:03.514) Mmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (08:08.547) So yeah, so that's a really funny question. And it happens, right? It happens to, and that's why, that's kind of why we make money, not obviously the stuff that is sitting in the cards, but because there's just so much versatility on Amazon and so you find everything, right? You can find anything from the daily things you buy and sell or use to stuff like this. And I pulled up my Amazon app on my other phone. It's a book, it's a book.
• 0:38
  Doug Greathouse (08:12.952) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (08:32.37) The reason I haven't bought it is because I can get it with Audible. And I just haven't used my credit for it yet this month. But it's How to Raise a Healthy Child in a Sick World by Dr. Christina Kill Stitcher. So a really good book. Again, the reason probably is because I'll get it on Audible, but there's already a lot of things related to that book that I kind of just read in the preface.
• 0:40
  Doug Greathouse (08:35.946) Hmm.
• 0:41
  Doug Greathouse (08:43.406) Ooh.
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  Aaron Oliveira (08:56.442) or preface depending on how you want to say it, that my wife and I have already started to align because of some health issues that she went through three years ago that really led us down to the path of going all in on e-commerce and building a business.
• 0:43
  Doug Greathouse (09:10.7) Wow, so if you don't mind me asking, how old are your children?
• 0:44
  Aaron Oliveira (09:14.595) So my oldest, Micah, is 13 years old. My next is Isaiah, and he is 10, but he'll be 11 soon, May 24th. The next in line is my first girl, and only girl so far, Eva, and she's seven years old. And then my baby for now, until July 25th-ish, is Caleb, and he's gonna be five in June. And then we're expecting our fifth baby in July, on July 25th, is the due date.
• 0:45
  Doug Greathouse (09:39.852) Wow. Well, congrats on that. So yeah, I could see how that book could come in handy. Yeah. It's like, what did we do, right?
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  Aaron Oliveira (09:42.88) Yes, thank you. Congrats to my wife.
• 0:47
  Aaron Oliveira (09:50.485) Yeah, what did we do? We didn't really do that much. We're there for a lot of support afterwards and obviously being the one that provides value in the financial aspect and leadership aspect.
• 0:48
  Doug Greathouse (09:53.134) Yes. Yes.
• 0:49
  Doug Greathouse (10:01.964) Yeah, awesome, awesome. So I also picked up on this. Do you prefer audible books or do you prefer reading it in the physical form?
• 0:50
  Aaron Oliveira (10:10.396) Yeah, so if it's the Bible, 100%, I'm reading the physical one. Concordances as well as commentaries, physical almost all the time. do have a digital Matthew Henry because it's exhaustive. I have some one-off Matthew Henry commentaries that would be specific to the book that he was commenting on. I find it also gives me a lot more knowledge.
• 0:51
  than if I was to try and actually attempt to be a theologian. So every one of these books are accessible to me because someone else devoted their entire life to just studying language and Bible and history and geography and culture. other than my Bible and commentaries and my Strong's Concordance, I would say that it is definitely audible all the way.
• 0:52
  Doug Greathouse (11:01.932) Yeah, I think for entrepreneurs, audible is almost a staple of because we're driving at the gym, right? We want we're doing all kinds of things all the time. And there's those times like at the gym or when you're driving, we you just you need to be focused, but not as focused as you are in other areas that you can listen to something and actually take it in. I've tried
• 0:53
  Aaron Oliveira (11:09.312) while driving in your car.
• 0:54
  Aaron Oliveira (11:25.188) Yeah, for sure.
• 0:55
  Doug Greathouse (11:30.816) in the past, working and listening, but I don't pick it up, right? Because I think that's one way I think that women are more capable than us because they tend to, they can hear channels, more channels. We tend to focus a lot more.
• 0:56
  Aaron Oliveira (11:35.594) You don't, not the same, yeah.
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  Aaron Oliveira (11:48.349) Yeah, we compartmentalize a little bit more and they can kind of multitask a little bit better than we traditionally can be capable of if we don't want to fall into too significant of a stereotype.
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  Doug Greathouse (11:54.232) Yeah.
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  Doug Greathouse (11:59.35) Yeah, yeah, I will. fall into the stereotype. My wife will tell you. So this should be a fun question for you to answer. If someone made a meme about your entrepreneur journey, what would it say? And maybe what is the picture on it?
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  Aaron Oliveira (12:02.512) hahahaha
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  Aaron Oliveira (12:17.063) Yeah, so that one, there's so many, Doug. It would be hard probably just to choose one and without getting into what I believe about the kind of detractions or the evils of Disney, which is a completely different conversation or the promotion of the different lifestyles and things that they're doing politically and kind of wading into the progressive woke-ism. I would say Nemo.
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  Doug Greathouse (12:33.302) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (12:45.084) And I would say just keep swimming. Right? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. know, she felt as though she was lost. He felt as though he was, and they just what? know, just keep swimming. And I think when it comes to entrepreneurship, we can, at least I can, you know, I can get a little bit of FOMO, you know, fear of missing out when it comes to other opportunities. You see other people that are very successful in different.
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  Doug Greathouse (12:45.486) yeah. Wow. Yep.
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  Aaron Oliveira (13:10.239) you know, different opportunities that they have, right? Whether it's real estate, whether it's a good stock portfolio, whether it's getting into, you know, what we really have to face now, more and more as Christian entrepreneurs and into the crypto space and Bitcoin and Forex and all of those different things. And, you know, there's just so many different things that you can kind of look at and say, you know, what about that guy? That guy looks like he's crushing it. What does he do? Realizing, look, I have a fantastic offer. I have huge value.
• 1:06
  The residuals annually for net profit are almost completely incomparable to anything else that has the low, level of volatility is just buying something low and selling it high. So I just need to keep swimming. And when it gets hard or when it gets difficult or when it gets tough, which it has, you know, I think, I think of so many successful entrepreneurs and nobody has a story of I started on top and stayed there. We all have like these.
• 1:07
  Doug Greathouse (14:04.302) Nope.
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  Aaron Oliveira (14:07.426) like really terrifying stories of, you know, on the precipice of falling off the edge of the world, so to speak. And, you what do we do? We just kept going and we just kept swimming. So again, not to wade into, you know, my lack of support for Disney as a whole, just with the kind of fight, the posturing, the social posturing that they're doing right now. And what I don't believe is an honorable and Christ-like organization anymore. But
• 1:09
  Doug Greathouse (14:14.264) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (14:36.453) definitely nemo and or finding nemo or whatever you want to call it and it would be just just keep swimming because that has been that has been my my mantra in you know different variations I don't get up in the morning and tell myself just keep swimming but you know that you have to do your daily dues you know that you have to do the consistent thing you have to stay consistent in the things that you know will bring you success and stop FOMOing
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  You know, don't think that there's a better way. If something works for you, do it until you're proven wrong, that it's not the best. And make sure you go all in on that. And keep swimming, keep doing it, keep pushing.
• 1:12
  Doug Greathouse (15:08.43) Wow. I'm going to have some I have some follow up insights and questions and all of that from this. I was just on the podcast yesterday and we just talked like that was one of the things I feel like I am doing a lot. And I was on the podcast and we just talked a lot about the power of focus. Right. One of the I think it was I almost want to say it was Zig Ziglar that wrote
• 1:13
  Aaron Oliveira (15:12.08) Yeah, for sure.
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  Doug Greathouse (15:33.932) the book, somebody had written a book like is one of the it's probably over there on my shelf and I'm not getting the author right. But the power of focus was one of the first books I read on my entrepreneurial journey. And there's also the one thing, right?
• 1:15
  Aaron Oliveira (15:43.901) Mm-hmm. Might be in my let too.
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  Aaron Oliveira (15:50.586) The one thing, the power of one at MyLet, really good. So yeah, there is. And I think that might be a predisposition maybe for entrepreneurship, right? We see value in everything. All of a sudden you sit there and go, whoa, I could build that too. Whoa, I could do that. I could be good at that too. And I've really in my own life only had one entrepreneurial failure, true entrepreneurial failure. And it was almost entirely out of my hands, which.
• 1:17
  Doug Greathouse (16:00.909) Mm-hmm.
• 1:18
  Doug Greathouse (16:14.606) Mm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (16:14.767) is very very and you know we're gonna have you know probably gonna cover it here in a bit anyways but uh yeah you know it was almost entirely out of my hands and that would be the only quote-unquote failure and i would call it a failure because i i was forced to quit so i fail lots right but it's only a failure when you stop and i was forced to stop because of my wife's health condition um from three years ago which she's almost you know basically healed from now so no longer it's not no longer a big problem
• 1:20
  Doug Greathouse (16:37.912) Well, that is awesome. Yeah, you and I could probably talk for a while because I've had my spouse has gone through health struggles as well. Probably too much for this episode to talk about that. maybe. Yeah, I think I think there would be value in that as how we as men can come along and support in that area. Right. But again.
• 1:21
  Aaron Oliveira (16:51.022) Maybe another one. Maybe another one.
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  Doug Greathouse (17:05.774) But we're probably gonna grow really deep there. So I want to kind of keep the train on the tracks a little bit here. But one of the other things, keep swimming. Like I end the podcast, every one of these podcasts with keep moving forward. That has been my mantra. Because again, you don't fail unless you quit. Right? Because you're learning something. So.
• 1:23
  Aaron Oliveira (17:11.214) Let's try, let's try.
• 1:24
  Aaron Oliveira (17:20.791) Same thing, same thing.
• 1:25
  Aaron Oliveira (17:27.618) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yeah, you don't, 100%. Yeah, and that's what the entrepreneurial jersey is. It's a stack of failures to the world. They don't see all the failures, but it's a stack of failures that are essentially stepping stones to the pinnacle of I have made and found success in this. And all successful businesses are built upon micro failures and macro failures.
• 1:26
  Doug Greathouse (17:51.628) Yeah, I watched a reel yesterday of Myron Goldin and he talked about most of the people he knows got rich. Most of people he knows, he knows, I can't even talk today, got rich twice, got rich twice, meaning that they lost it all and then got rich again because they just kept moving forward. They didn't let that huge failure keep them from doing it again.
• 1:27
  Aaron Oliveira (18:06.454) Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (18:13.566) Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.
• 1:29
  Doug Greathouse (18:17.646) So that was, I thought, wow, that's, if you are a truly driven person, that's, you can't lose. Even if you lose at all, you still can't lose.
• 1:30
  Aaron Oliveira (18:25.972) Yes, Alex Hermosy says that, Alex Hermosy, he's not a Christian, but he's very, very foundational entrepreneur, multiple, kind of like we were talking about, failures that led to successes. The founder of Jim Launch, now he's acquisitions.com, amazing entrepreneur, but he has so many different nuggets that he shares. But he talks about, and it's just this kind of resonating message in everything that he does, is you're not going to have
• 1:31
  Doug Greathouse (18:45.474) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (18:55.645) everyone around you and everyone there to see all your failures. And you're going to probably privatize a lot of them because of shame or because of optics or because of how other people will just tell you, I told you so. And he says something that's really powerful and he says they will be right until they're wrong. And I was like, I was just like, actually, you know, obviously I don't know Alex personally, eventually I probably will meet him. Ultimately, I took it back and created a sermon series on it.
• 1:33
  Doug Greathouse (19:13.538) Yeah.
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  Aaron Oliveira (19:23.71) But from a biblical perspective, right? They will be right until they're wrong. And you talk about the people in Egypt and you talk about the judgment of Babylon, you talk the judgment of the Persian Empire, you talk about Jesus Christ coming and the Jews versus the Gentiles. They were right until they were wrong. And he gives a couple different analogies of it. They won't know until exactly and how wrong they were. And he's a perfect example of it. I believe he's technically a billionaire now with acquisitions.com and he just has this super
• 1:35
  Doug Greathouse (19:24.074) Mm-hmm. Yep.
• 1:36
  Doug Greathouse (19:32.739) Yep.
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  Doug Greathouse (19:41.24) know how wrong they were.
• 1:38
  Doug Greathouse (19:49.454) Yeah.
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  Aaron Oliveira (19:53.178) oversimplified way of analyzing your business and telling you where you can improve it and where you can make more money and more and find more success. And it's you know, it's it's fascinating. He's a fascinating entrepreneur. You know, I do pray for him. think that I do think he may come to Christ because he I think he's close. And you know, he talks about so many things about making his life right and making ethical decisions and making moral decisions. And it's like, where are those ethics of those morals coming from? They're coming from Christianity and from Christ. So anyway, that's my own side thought is
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  Doug Greathouse (20:07.818) Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 1:41
  Doug Greathouse (20:19.074) Yeah.
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  Aaron Oliveira (20:20.846) one of my goals. see Alex and Leela safe.
• 1:43
  Doug Greathouse (20:23.746) Yeah, that would be amazing. I want to wrap up this little, let's just call it a segment, with some practical advice for anyone that's watching. And I think what we need to go back to is the idea of focus, right? Not having too much, what I would say, if you are watching this or listening to this, take a list of everything that you're doing. Start to separate it. What is moving the needle the most in your life and in your business?
• 1:44
  Aaron Oliveira (20:26.409) It'd be cool. It'd be really cool.
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  Doug Greathouse (20:52.428) and start to discard things. The more that you can discard to get to that focus and to just focus on that and move forward, I think you will see tremendous momentum and results.
• 1:46
  Aaron Oliveira (21:04.36) Yeah, yeah, you know, the path of entrepreneurship, not that it's a lonely one, but it's more lonely than the, it's much more lonely than the status quo of the average person, human, woman or man. So many people have accepted the 40 for 40. You know, I'm gonna work for 40 years and 40 hours a week and then I'm just gonna retire.
• 1:47
  And when you look at that lifestyle, they have quote unquote free time because someone else, they're building someone else's dream. They're building someone else's success. And by all means, we need those people. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing. You can have a very successful W2 lifestyle, but those people that are used to and accustomed to the W2 lifestyle will invite an entrepreneur out.
• 1:48
  Doug Greathouse (21:46.561) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (21:52.827) and invite them for dinner or they'll invite them for beer or they'll invite them for to go out for dinner or to see a hockey game or to see a football game. And you're going to get knows a lot from an entrepreneur who's building their future because what we can do to really focus in on five years is going to change the trajectory of our life forever. And I don't care. It sounds it can sound very, very crass to someone who doesn't understand where you're coming from. But I don't care about that dinner as much as I care about the time I can spend with my son.
• 1:50
  Doug Greathouse (22:02.827) Mm-hmm.
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  Aaron Oliveira (22:22.534) or daughter, whoever's about to be born here in July 25th-ish, I don't care about that dinner more than I care about the time I'm be able spend with them four years from now or three years from now or whatever that is. Because I'm going to have access to time that's going to be completely different and look very different than someone who works the 40 for 40. I'm gonna be there for their first steps, Doug, because I'm gonna be at home working from home and my wife's gonna holler at me from around the corner and say, he's taking his first steps or she's taking his first steps.
• 1:52
  Doug Greathouse (22:44.739) Mm-hmm.
• 1:53
  Aaron Oliveira (22:52.538) versus my first son where I was, I was a W-2. I'm a licensed technician coming from engineering. And I looked at that lifestyle, I looked at what it was and I was missing out on their first words and I was missing out on their first steps and I'm experiencing it through a screen because my wife was able to run and grab the phone, which is fine and I'm thankful for that. But historically, men were at home and experiencing those things with their families, no matter what it was. Whether we were farmers or blacksmiths, whether we were
• 1:54
  Sellers of purple or tent makers. We were there. We were present. Everyone was an entrepreneur a thousand years ago. And you the industrial revolution and a couple of other different things that we won't go down that path for the sake of time really took that from us. And I think there's a heart of entrepreneurship in so many of us that we won't settle. And that's why 5 % of all of the world is still an entrepreneur when there's no need for it really. Corporations can do what we're doing.
• 1:55
  Doug Greathouse (23:25.646) Yep.
• 1:56
  Aaron Oliveira (23:49.272) but we decided to niche down a macro and micro that entrepreneurship journey and say, I'm be there for them and I'm gonna have those. And so it sounds crass. No sounds crass or sounds unemotional or unrelational to a lot of people. But that no is because I care more about the relationship with my family than I do with other people that, again, I don't want it to sound selfish, don't feed into what I'm doing. But what I mean is creating a...
• 1:57
  a network and creating an atmosphere that's going to give me a lot of short-term sacrifices that will give me the delayed gratification of having access to things I never would have otherwise done.
• 1:58
  Doug Greathouse (24:26.476) Yeah, that is awesome. I just was on that podcast yesterday and we talked about that as well. Sacrifice, right? If you're No, no, it's good. I was a guest on that podcast. And we I just really want to kind of go here a little bit more is that I was talking about my story. I turned off my life in order to launch my entrepreneur journey. I turned off my life. I worked a part time job as soon as I got off that part time job.
• 1:59
  Aaron Oliveira (24:31.332) We're just rehashing your podcast from yesterday,
• 2:00
  Doug Greathouse (24:56.47) I was working on my skills, developing my craft. And I, supreme focus, at the time, I didn't have a family. So it was a lot easier then, when you don't have a family, when you don't have those responsibilities and commitment. But I knew that that was what I wanted to do. And I just learned everything I needed to learn in order to have the value to take to the marketplace. the message to entrepreneurs, have to, and to go back to your point, short-term sacrifice,
• 2:01
  Aaron Oliveira (25:01.176) Yep, you have to.
• 2:02
  Aaron Oliveira (25:07.768) For sure, for sure.
• 2:03
  Doug Greathouse (25:26.186) long-term gain, right? If you're not willing to have delayed gratification, like you said, it's going to be a hard road for you.
• 2:04
  Aaron Oliveira (25:32.18) Mm-hmm. It's gonna be very difficult and that's why it's even, it's created almost a little vacuum in entrepreneurship for our age group because, know, and my son's an outlier for that because I'm preaching and training him not to think that way. But there's so much entitlement in my generation and below. They're just like, well, I should get it now. Why? Because our food was now. Because access to sexuality can be now.
• 2:05
  Doug Greathouse (25:42.989) Mm-hmm.
• 2:06
  Aaron Oliveira (26:01.218) because access to information can be now. And so we're programmed to just get everything now. So when you tell them, hey, you're gonna have to basically eat dirt for two years, they're like, well, why should I? Like that doesn't make any sense. Like I'm sure I can make money faster. And yeah, you can, absolutely, Doug. You go get a sales skill and you can make a ton of money real quick, but you're not building a business yet. When it comes to building a business, you are eating dirt. And some people may eat dirt for five years. The average turnaround for a business
• 2:07
  Doug Greathouse (26:22.05) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 2:08
  Aaron Oliveira (26:31.115) for Profitability is five and e-commerce is two. So we've cut that in less than half and by building it out for people, but you have this entitlement. So what we have Doug now is this, we have this vacuum of entrepreneurs that are excelling at this kind of hyper speed because no one else in the marketplace is willing to do it and look at what we see now. And I don't say this as a disrespectful thing, but the boomers, baby boomers, not the disrespectful, all those boomers, the baby boomers.
• 2:09
  Doug Greathouse (26:34.424) Nice.
• 2:10
  Aaron Oliveira (26:58.014) are all walking away from profitable businesses because no one's willing to run them. Not even just because they can't even sell them. They're offering, hey, I'll do seller finance and I'll just take a portion. And now what do we see? We have private equity groups that are buying up thousands of American businesses, thousands, because no one else is willing to run them. Their kids aren't willing to run them. Even their grandkids aren't willing to look at it. And we're not talking about something that's difficult. He can tell them and show them or she can tell them and show them what to do. So we've created a vacuum now in our generation because
• 2:11
  Doug Greathouse (27:01.699) Mm.
• 2:12
  Aaron Oliveira (27:27.602) Everything is instant. Everything is instant gratification. So when you start telling people, our whole life, and what I've done, what's been helpful for explaining this to people is everything that's good in our life is delayed gratification. I started thinking about children when I was a teenager. I didn't get married till I was 25. I was thinking about an intimate relationship with a wife, my wife, my future wife, my parents. I was raised in a Christian home, Doug, so I had the beautiful blessing of being able to meet my wife. We were both one another's first intimate relationships and first everything.
• 2:13
  Doug Greathouse (27:39.65) Mm-hmm.
• 2:14
  Doug Greathouse (27:43.543) Mm-hmm.
• 2:15
  Aaron Oliveira (27:57.024) And so I was able to preserve myself morally and emotionally and sexually for my wife and everything is delayed gratification. I had the desire to be married when I was a teenager, but I waited till I was 25. I had the desire to have children. I had to wait till I was married. I had the desire to have all these different, everything that is good. And now being married, my marriage is better now 14 years later than it was when I first got married to her in 2009, 2010. So you're looking at that now and you're going,
• 2:16
  Doug Greathouse (28:04.802) Mm-hmm.
• 2:17
  Aaron Oliveira (28:25.94) Well, all of this amazing success that we have had in our marriage now is also delayed gratification. I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, but that took time. So everything that's amazing in our lives, our marriages, our relationship with our children, eventually, if you're an entrepreneur, the flow over into your business, all of it is delayed gratification.
• 2:18
  Doug Greathouse (28:45.11) Yeah. One thing I want to bring up about that is think about the people that get things quickly. Like they get money quickly, they get an intimate relationship quickly, and it usually does not turn out well because they are not the person they need to be in order to handle. Exactly.
• 2:19
  Aaron Oliveira (28:53.108) Mm-hmm.
• 2:20
  Aaron Oliveira (28:58.752) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 2:21
  Aaron Oliveira (29:03.668) handle it. Yeah, they can't navigate it.
• 2:22
  Doug Greathouse (29:07.948) Yeah, so that's powerful. The whole delayed gratification, you have to have the patience.
• 2:23
  Aaron Oliveira (29:12.916) Well, and you said it. You said it, Doug. It's value. What can I do in my after I'm done? I said no to my part-time job. I increased my skills. Why? Because you have to bring value. And when you bring value and you learn through tough times and education and reading books and hearing about other people's success and applying it to your life, you're bringing your value to match the maturity in order to handle what that means. I can handle money now. I can handle a wife now. I can handle children now. I can handle a business now.
• 2:24
  Doug Greathouse (29:15.832) Mm-hmm.
• 2:25
  Doug Greathouse (29:42.157) Yeah.
• 2:26
  Aaron Oliveira (29:42.477) because you increased your value in the marketplace.
• 2:27
  Doug Greathouse (29:44.879) If you're a young person, I don't know where to put the age range in. If you're watching this and you're listening to this and you're a young person, one thing that I recall back to is me and my friends would talk about how it's not the type of woman that you're looking for. Let me phrase this correctly. We have to become, we have to be the right man. We have to grow ourselves into the right man that would attract the right woman.
• 2:28
  Aaron Oliveira (30:03.732) No, you're going down the right path. You could have left it.
• 2:29
  Aaron Oliveira (30:12.633) That is so true. That is so true.
• 2:30
  Doug Greathouse (30:14.06) and not just think I gotta get that right one, look in the mirror first.
• 2:31
  Aaron Oliveira (30:18.103) Yeah, and what we can do Doug to our sons and to our daughters and what we can do for our sons and our daughters is create in them a high enough level of value that it actually attracts the right people to them. And what's interesting is my wife and I had this conversation. I had a very, very controlling mother, even though she was a Christian. Well, anyway, different conversation for another time. I think she's a Christian. Even though she was a Christian and my father was a Christian, she was a very controlling, domineering wife. And my
• 2:32
  in-laws without being judgmental. Very similar situation, but a tone down. It was just a tone down. She would use emotions and her emotions to manipulate the path that she wanted her husband to take instead of just honoring his leadership and his authority. But he came from a relationship where his mom did the same thing to his father. And then you look at my background on my mother's side is Latvian, very matriarchal society. And so then her mother was doing the same thing. The stable ones were the women.
• 2:33
  the stable ones financially, the stable ones emotionally, the ones you could trust, the ones you could count on was a woman. And so then they started adopting a level of authority that was not for them biblically, but kind of hid in the shadows. And the irony was when my wife and I met, we fit and we're attracted to that in one another, nonverbal. It was emotional. And I would say in a way vibrational, I believe that there's a spirit.
• 2:34
  that comes from a frequency and without getting weird, I don't mean in a weird way, but we put information out there without putting information out there verbally. And as we have grown, we actually both grew together almost at the same time to say, hey, this part of our relationship was not healthy. And it came from me not being properly prepared by my father. So now I get an opportunity to course correct. And the crazy thing, and this is something else that happens with entrepreneurship.
• 2:35
  They look at your life and they see you changing. And again, I'm stealing this from Alex Hermolazzi, but they see you changing and they've defined you a certain way, Doug. They see you changing and they say you're different because they don't know how to say you've grown.
• 2:36
  Doug Greathouse (32:11.832) Mm-mm.
• 2:37
  Doug Greathouse (32:22.382) Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, man. That's awesome. No, honestly, that's that's just sound wisdom. I think Myron Golden has said the same thing in the past. Like, it's just sound wisdom that echoes, right? We're just echoing the sound wisdom that's out there. So I want to get to the fill in the blank question. This has been so great so far. But let's let me ask you the fill in the blank question. Walking, walking in faith as a business owner means trusting God even when
• 2:38
  Aaron Oliveira (32:24.453) Totally ripped that off from Alex Hermos.
• 2:39
  Aaron Oliveira (32:36.911) We are done. We are.
• 2:40
  Aaron Oliveira (32:46.959) Let's go. Let's go.
• 2:41
  Doug Greathouse (32:52.556) Blank.
• 2:42
  Aaron Oliveira (32:54.937) walking in faith, say it again, walking in faith as a business owner, yep.
• 2:43
  Doug Greathouse (32:58.382) as a business owner means trusting God even when blank.
• 2:44
  Aaron Oliveira (33:04.951) Okay, even when blank, I would say even when the bank account doesn't look like trust, or doesn't look like a trust, and I'm sure you've done this too, Doug, sometimes you have to pay your people before you pay yourself. And I've had to quote unquote write checks, you're not, now it's sending wires or sending Zells or sending money grams or whatever, but sitting there going, man, you know what, I have to pay that person.
• 2:45
  Doug Greathouse (33:10.39) Mmm. Mmm.
• 2:46
  Aaron Oliveira (33:33.864) that person has to get paid for my business to keep going. But I'm now in a position financially that is extremely scary or frightening. And you know, it could be zeros, it could be negative numbers, depending on whether you have a balance protection or not on a credit card or on a bank account. So I would say that, you know, the trusting God in my business when it doesn't look like trust, you know, for whatever reason.
• 2:47
  God on many times is just this 11th hour operator. And I think he is that way because we are so prone to trust in ourselves. And I do believe God will do one of two things. I do believe he will create situations where we're forced to trust him. I think even some course correction can come from having to be pushed into a situation where you ultimately have to trust God.
• 2:48
  And I think he will create that situation until you cry out and you say, God, you've got to show up, man. Like, I've done everything in my power. I've done absolutely, I've done everything right as far as I knew what right was. Yeah, I made some mistakes along, I didn't even know those were mistakes until I made them, And I read a book, I can't remember the name of the author, but it was In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. It's actually a picture from 1 Samuel.
• 2:49
  Doug Greathouse (34:53.303) Mmm.
• 2:50
  Aaron Oliveira (34:57.622) and 2 Samuel, I think it's 2 Samuel, and David before he was king. And it gives us a picture of when he fought the lion. And it was in a pit with a lion on a snowy day. And it highlights the prayers that he was praying. And we in modern Christian society have taken prayer and have, without,
• 2:51
  demonizing assemblies of God or Charismatics, which you know, I do believe that their doctrine is off obviously as a Reformed Baptist. But we've taken it and we take prayer and it's like, you know what? We have to twist the arm of God. We have to pray this otherwise nothing is going to happen. They're not entirely wrong, but they're not entirely right. And I say this because if we don't pray, I do believe that there's things we miss out on and that things God won't act.
• 2:52
  Doug Greathouse (35:47.682) Mm-hmm.
• 2:53
  Aaron Oliveira (35:49.462) a certain way because prayer in and of itself is an act of faith. But there is a specific, if you have some specificity in your prayers, God, this is what I need and this is why I need it, but I pray your will be done. You go to the prayers of David and you go to the prayers of Saul before he was demented when the Holy Spirit lifted his spirit off of him and the anointing of David as king with the horn of oil.
• 2:54
  and we look to the New Testament and we look to all these different examples. They were praying for miracles and they were praying for things that were out of their control a lot of the time. Or they were praying for things that if you looked at it from an analytical mind, this doesn't make sense. What are we doing? Like, what are we doing? And you see God show up on both sides of it. So you see God show up and do
• 2:55
  amazing miracles for the people of God. And then you see the people of God that are praying out of obedience. And I think of Peter's arrest, right? James is arrested and he's killed by Herod. Herod sees that it pleased the people, so he arrests Peter. And they're in, they're hiding, underground church now because of the persecution of Rome through Judaism. And they sit there and they go, we have to pray for Peter.
• 2:56
  Doug Greathouse (36:53.347) Mmm.
• 2:57
  Aaron Oliveira (37:12.55) We have to pray for Peter. We have to pray for Peter. But then what happens when Peter shows up miraculously at the door and they tell Rhoda, it must be his spirit or his ghost. He's in jail. They probably killed him and you see his ghost. And then she runs to them and then they say that and then he's still knocking at the door. God showed up even when the prayer was not faith-filled because they weren't. They didn't even believe it was him. They had just seen the death of their brother James and the disciple and the apostle James.
• 2:58
  Doug Greathouse (37:24.29) the
• 2:59
  Aaron Oliveira (37:42.296) they didn't believe God was going to show up for Peter, but they prayed anyways. And they still prayed a faith-filled, a faithless prayer that allowed for God's will to be accomplished. And again, we're not going to into this, wade through the semantics of it. Well, if they didn't pray, would Peter have, no, let's not go there. It's not worth it. They prayed. It was not faith-filled because they didn't even believe the account of Rhoda when he's knocking at the door. And amazing things happened. And then we have
• 3:00
  We have examples of the likes of Elijah who are praying. I think it's Elijah, might be Elijah. But God said pray and it won't rain for three years. And he says, and he tells us what? He says, the faithful and fervent prayer of righteous man availeth much or has power muchly, depending on your translation. And so we have to find the balance between the two. And I think prayer is a massive, massive part of that,
• 3:01
  Doug Greathouse (38:36.054) Wow, man, I love all that. That is so, good. No, especially, especially since I just reflect on my own prayer life and when I wasn't consistent in prayer to where I am consistent in prayer. And not to overlap too much business and faith. Actually, I will. But the consistency aspect.
• 3:02
  Aaron Oliveira (38:40.284) Super long and blank answer.
• 3:03
  Aaron Oliveira (38:48.519) Mm-hmm.
• 3:04
  Aaron Oliveira (38:59.248) It has to.
• 3:05
  Doug Greathouse (39:03.11) There was a meme out the other day that I saw that consistency isn't the full circle every day, right? It's maybe you get the full circle here every day and maybe that's the faith-filled prayer. The next one is you prayed, but you just prayed and you didn't, it wasn't faith-filled, right? But you did it anyway, right? And this consistency, and that's how it is in business too, right? You may not get, or in working out or whatever, you may not get your full workout in that day, but you did something.
• 3:06
  Aaron Oliveira (39:24.873) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Again, you're right, 100%. It's that consistency. And you just talked about it. Gym, business, faith, marriage, children, it starts overlapping.
• 3:07
  Doug Greathouse (39:32.056) You moved somehow to stay consistent towards that. And I think...
• 3:08
  Doug Greathouse (39:46.476) Yep. Yep. And that's, that's what makes it prof all of it profitable, profitable, right? Profitable for, for, for the kingdom, profitable for your business, profitable for your marriage, profitable for all of that. that, that is awesome. So let's now we're going to actually talk about what you do. How about that? So the secret question is what is the secret to a successful Amazon store?
• 3:09
  Aaron Oliveira (39:50.46) That's what makes all of it profitable.
• 3:10
  Aaron Oliveira (39:56.07) Mm-hmm.
• 3:11
  Yes. Yes.
• 3:12
  Aaron Oliveira (40:07.502) Sure, absolutely.
• 3:13
  Aaron Oliveira (40:16.343) So that's a pointed question. There are so many things that would, say, are an absolute 100 % requirement for a successful Amazon business. Luckily, I have already made lots of those mistakes. And that's really the same thing as the gospel. And I know it sounds so cliche. I'm just another beggar pointing you where the bread's at and pointing you to the bread.
• 3:14
  Doug Greathouse (40:19.15) you
• 3:15
  Aaron Oliveira (40:45.837) You know, that's the picture of the gospel. It's not as simple as that, it's not as linear as that, it's much more dynamic. But ultimately, I am not righteous at my core. I am not holy at my core. I am not good at my core. The Holy Spirit is, God is, He's made His temple inside of me. He's made me the holy of holies by filling me with the Holy Spirit. And I'm just telling people how to do it too. And that's what my Amazon business has become. Let me make all those, it's like a testimony, right?
• 3:16
  The testimony of faith always, I was this, I was lost, I did this, I had this terrible lifestyle, I hit rock bottom and God saved me. It's the same with my Amazon business. I did this, I did that, I've hit two rock bottoms with a poor business partnership once and then trusting people that were not Christians a second time. Well, actually transversed, it was the other way around. I trusted people that weren't Christians first, then a poor business conversation, a partnership with someone who wasn't genuine in their interests and their efforts towards our business, my business. And so I would say,
• 3:17
  If we're looking at, I'm gonna separate that into two or three different things. Compliance is the most important thing for a successful Amazon business, but very close to compliance. And it's intertwined. Like I said, we'd spend two hours looking at it for the knowledge I've built with all the mistakes that I've made. But making sure you're selecting a product that is already available as well as already in demand without being saturated. So we have lots of third party apps for that.
• 3:18
  You know, I have a coaching stream now as well, where we show you how to use what's already available with third party apps, the seller boards and the keepers and jungle scouts and all those different things that will go out and see, okay, is this going to already be, is this already a successful product in Amazon? I don't have to make a successful product. Why go through that time? You know, it would be like the wheel was invented and you're like, hmm, I'm going to make my own wheel. No, just put the wheel on your cart and let's get going.
• 3:19
  So you grab a round rubberized wheel instead of a stone wheel and you just stick it on your cart. Finding products that are already in demand and already profitable on the Amazon marketplace is for sure a large part of having a successful Amazon business. Going back into the compliance side of that, ultimately Amazon cares more about the end buyer than they ever care about their reseller. And that sounds like it's counterintuitive.
• 3:20
  Aaron Oliveira (43:08.595) but it's not, or even counterproductive, maybe on the Amazon perspective, but it's not. Amazon has 1.8 million resellers. They're projected to hit 3 million resellers by 2020, 20, 28, 2030. So there's a massive, massive opportunity still for resellers. But if you don't comply, there is at least 15 to 20 people selling the same thing that you are selling profitably.
• 3:21
  there's enough demand that you can still be profitable on that item. But Amazon ultimately cares more about the end buyer than they care about you as a reseller, even though you are partnering with Amazon as a third party seller. So compliance and product selection, I would say are the two most important things. Again, those are intertwined, tons of opportunity to make sure you don't make those mistakes with third party apps that scrape all that information for you already off of Amazon.
• 3:22
  We literally utilize them every single day in our business when we're running your absentee owned business for you. And you know, that's ultimately why I do this is I'm also just like, hey, I already made all these mistakes, pay my premium and I will make sure your business is successful and paid off in less than two years or around two year mark, depending on how much money you put into inventory.
• 3:23
  Doug Greathouse (44:32.012) Wow, yeah, that's awesome. So a question I have around that, because there are, I think, programs out there or whatever that teach, like, create your own product and sell it on Amazon, right? Can you talk about the drawbacks of doing that?
• 3:24
  Aaron Oliveira (44:43.195) Yes.
• 3:25
  Aaron Oliveira (44:49.138) Sure, and again, it's really just a matter of there's always more than one way to be successful. So there's three main channels that we use for Amazon. So you can't drop ship anymore. We haven't been able to drop ship for three years now. The drop shipping days were absolutely fascinating and amazing. lots of people, millions, billions of dollars in drop shipping through Amazon. A lot of people.
• 3:26
  Doug Greathouse (45:08.833) you
• 3:27
  Aaron Oliveira (45:18.396) from usually Southeast Asian countries were going around the rules and regulations around it and basically ruined it for everyone and they removed it entirely from a fulfillment channel perspective on the Amazon side. But you have FBA wholesale, which is FBA, fulfilled by Amazon. So all you're doing is finding a brand that's already got a lot of credibility, the Sig Sours and the Benelli's and the CRKT's and the Blue Steels.
• 3:28
  Finding a supplier that will sell that to you with a deep enough discount that by the time you ship it to Amazon and pay their fees, you still make money. So when we're doing Amazon wholesale, we're targeting 10 to 15 % after all of your expenses. Still great money because imagine, just use that as a multiplier. You have 100 grand and you put it into Amazon. On the fulfillment side, just the Amazon distribution side for buying inventory. And at the end of the year, we're gonna go through that four times.
• 3:29
  at 15 % per turn, you're talking about a 60 % annual return. Now, it's not as linear as that. You might make a little bit less. You might go down to the 10 or 7 percentile, but theoretically speaking, everything goes smoothly. You have an established store. You're talking about a 50 to 60 % annual return on whatever you're investing into your inventory. Unbelievable. You can't do that anywhere else. Not with the volatility that we have. It's so low. The volatility of the stock market, sure.
• 3:30
  Doug Greathouse (46:39.982) We just saw that.
• 3:31
  Aaron Oliveira (46:40.761) My goodness, look at the rock and roll we've just had the last three, weeks. know, it wiped out $1.8 trillion, bounced back another trillion, went back down again. And the only green I think was Netflix, because I think people were drowning their sorrows watching Netflix. And then, know, again, this week is going to be back up. Like it's all over the place. You know, I have a guy that has a self-directed SMA for the stock portfolio in the US. And he's like, I just, I stopped looking at it. I know I've got a million bucks in there and
• 3:32
  I'm not going to look at it because I had a $130,000 loss that day. But the game is not to look at it and worry. It's I know I have enough lot sizes and I know I have enough money in it that it's going to weather that storm. And so he left it in, took the loss, took the loss, then boom, it bounced back. the reason he's doing that is not to look at his losses and his gains. It's to sit there and say, I know what the volatility is. I'm looking at this as a 10 and a 15 year plan. And I can take that and can shrink that down. And I can say, look, you can do 60%.
• 3:33
  in two years, or maybe two and a half off of just buying stuff and selling it. so FBA wholesale is one of them. FBM wholesale is another one, which is the exact same thing. I go and find a credible brand, the Six Hours, the Benelli's, the CRKT's, the Blue Steels. I get a discount with the supplier, but then I have my own warehouse or my house and I print the label myself and I put the put the Amazon packaging together myself. And then I wait for the buyer.
• 3:34
  on the marketplace to say, want your item and then I ship it to them. And I save 10 % from Amazon. So, you know, all of a sudden your profit margins go from 15 to 25%. That's insane, but it requires a lot of work from you because I will not FBM for you. Or you have to partner with someone who's willing to do that for you and they're going to have a fee. So it ends up washing out to be about the same. And then you do have private label and private label.
• 3:35
  Doug Greathouse (48:25.208) Mm-hmm.
• 3:36
  Aaron Oliveira (48:28.823) which is not, you can do private label FBM or private label FBA, because that's just a fulfillment channel. That's am I sending my stuff to Amazon FBA or am I keeping the products and waiting for someone to buy it from Amazon and shipping it themselves? Private label can follow both of those fulfillment channels, whether FBA or FBM, but it's not wholesale. Now you're getting product rights, you're getting patents, you're doing all of the legwork to have your own product, but the risk is, okay, how long am I to the marketplace? So the...
• 3:37
  Doug Greathouse (48:57.08) Mm-hmm.
• 3:38
  Aaron Oliveira (48:58.401) positives of private label is you're gonna make a lot more. You're gonna have 40 and 50 and 60 % profit margins. But it may take you three months or four months or five months to sell out. So now all of a sudden, wait a second, I can sell something wholesale, move it quicker and do it multiple times in the same amount of time it takes me to make 60%. Wait a second.
• 3:39
  The 60 % doesn't do it in the same time. It takes four times or five times as longer. So now divide 60 by four and increase 15 % by four. Whoa, it's the same number. I could do the same number. So it's really a matter of what your palette for success and risk is willing to absorb. And so one of the things too, Doug, that has helped our business, even if we do private label, we never rely on Chinese manufacturing.
• 3:40
  No one could have foresaw what we were going to be doing with the tariffs and through Trump's presidency and through his advisors and really just manipulating the marketplace to favor the United States. again, I don't want to get into a side con, a branch line here on the train, but it's very smart. What he's doing is intelligent. It's smart. It's driving manufacturers back to America, creating American jobs. And there's a strategy behind it. Okay. And that goes way beyond that. That's just one aspect of it.
• 3:41
  But it's completely unaffected our business. As a matter of fact, it's improved it because all the sellers that were buying stuff from China that was in transit, that's now sitting in the usually California harbors is now 100 % more expensive. And now it's completely comparable to me just doing wholesale. So what ended up happening was all those sellers pulled their products off of Amazon, created a vacuum for the same products that I'm selling.
• 3:42
  and now have increased our sales because they're just not selling it. They're waiting till the tariffs lift. China will eventually comply. I'd rather just let it sit and pay the storage fees and wait till I can sell it for a profit on the marketplace. actually staying American made, American supply chain and American produced and supplied has helped us tremendously over the last two months.
• 3:43
  Doug Greathouse (51:02.508) Wow, rewind. you want to, the first question before that was how to run a successful Amazon store. And then I asked a follow up question. So rewind it all the way back and kind of take your notes. And then of course contact Aaron to help you out with it.
• 3:44
  Aaron Oliveira (51:19.644) Yeah, yeah. Ultimately, if you don't want to spend the time looking into how this is successful, I will run your store for you. Yes, there's an upfront fee. I don't know if you want me to say it on the live or not. And the upfront fee covers my payroll for all of my employees that will work for you for the first year. And then after that, we're collecting a percentage from your profits so that we know that we can run your store now off of our profit share.
• 3:45
  So that ultimately, if you want to have a successful business, I will run it for you. I will also very, very limited, probably only four or five people a year will do coaching. And again, even on my, even on my, my absentee stream, the I'll run it for you stream. I don't, I don't sign up Copies amounts of people. I'm, I'm only doing 20 to 30 ever.
• 3:46
  And then we're done. just gonna get people to increase the amount they're spending on inventory and just focus on those stores. So it's exclusive, it's a little bit more boutique. We have 78 stores right now, we wanna run 100 and then maybe get into the 125 depending on how many people decide to sell their stores or drop off or whatever over the next five years. So a bit more boutique. I'm not a massive automation specialist. When we say automation, really someone else's...
• 3:47
  is someone else is just doing the work for you. That's why I like to say absentee owned because you're just managing managers. So if you want to have a successful business, let me run it or join my coaching stream, you know, four or five people, Max is all I can do right now just because of time and obviously a fifth baby on the way and homeschooling and all the other different things that we do as a family. And then what was your second question? Was your fulfillment change?
• 3:48
  Doug Greathouse (53:02.19) Yeah, yeah, I think so. was the... Yep.
• 3:49
  Aaron Oliveira (53:04.345) Yeah, so we do FBA, FBM. why? Why not private label or create your own product versus just, yeah. So the value is there for both, Doug. It's a matter of your own palette for success. Do you want to have more control of the product and absorb the risks of taking longer to get to the marketplace or you want to make money faster? Is it a short money or a long money play? FBA wholesale and FBM wholesale is a quick money play.
• 3:50
  Private label, if you're launching, is a long money play. But the money on the back end is always higher with private label. But most people are happy with 30 to 40 % returns in the first year and 50 to 60 for the subsequent years if everything stays ideal. Let's just say 30 to 40 % year over year over year over year.
• 3:51
  Doug Greathouse (53:48.544) Awesome. I do have a couple more questions. We are getting close to an hour on the podcast. No, it's one of the questions that I want to ask that I think everybody that would be interested in having an e-commerce, having you help them with an e-commerce is how important is knowing a market and itching into a market on Amazon?
• 3:52
  Aaron Oliveira (53:52.183) I know I talk too much.
• 3:53
  Aaron Oliveira (54:07.778) It used to be extremely important, but now with the accessibility, like we were talking about for that instant gratification of our marketplace now, there's just like, can go from selling rice and toothpaste to one client, to selling prepper kits for three months freeze dried food. It's all over the place. can buy, can sell a binocular or a scope one day.
• 3:54
  and sell a backpack or a fishing lure the next. Like it doesn't really matter. That's actually not as important as what we talked about before in what we said product selection. So any number of categories and any number of products are going to already be successful relying on those third party softwares that don't have a incentive behind telling you why you should buy that product. So for example, I won't use it by name because I think it could get in trouble, but there was
• 3:55
  Doug Greathouse (54:42.126) Mm.
• 3:56
  Aaron Oliveira (55:03.979) a scraping software that said, hey, you should buy this because it's so successful. But the guy that created the software was selling the products that were showing as being really good sellers. And then he signed up 15,000 people for his coaching program. They all bought the same product and then saturated the marketplace in the space of three to four months. And then none of them became profitable because he was telling the software what to show them to then drive his product that he was in control of.
• 3:57
  Doug Greathouse (55:21.016) Hmm.
• 3:58
  Aaron Oliveira (55:32.47) So make sure that the product, the third party software that you're using is not programmed to tell you, you should do this to help me. So that's why Kepa is good, K-E-E-P-A. Like I said, we use it. It's not our software, it's third party. It's do you wanna be successful on Amazon? These are the products that you wanna go to. So I think the success of the marketplace is really not specifically in a category. Look at a product by product.
• 3:59
  success rate and you can do that with those third-party apps going back to saying you know being reliant on those third-party apps that give those give the give you the Information you need to by scraping that already
• 4:00
  Doug Greathouse (56:12.652) Wow. So we're going to, what link do you want to share? Where can we send people?
• 4:01
  Aaron Oliveira (56:18.431) Yeah, so I have my website, I have my Instagram, I have my Facebook, they're kind of all integrated now. So it's really just a matter of whatever people are more inclined to use. So I've got my website, which has a little form that sends them to my email. I have my Facebook and I have my Instagram.
• 4:02
  Doug Greathouse (56:37.806) All right, well, we're gonna put all those, I think you already furnished all those links to me. So we're gonna put all those in the show notes. And wherever you're seeing this, those links will be somewhere around this video, whether it's in the comments, in the show notes, wherever it is, those links will be there. So make sure to check those out.
• 4:03
  Aaron Oliveira (56:41.727) Yeah, for sure, absolutely.
• 4:04
  Aaron Oliveira (56:54.231) Sure
• 4:05
  Doug Greathouse (56:55.53) I just want to highlight a couple things in that I was going to ask you a bunch more faith questions. I think we covered a lot of that in the beginning. I think I have to have you on for a second episode where we dive into some of those other topics that we kind of let float for a second and then we went off of. But back to the highlighting of what you said, return on investment. Think of all the things that you could be investing in right now. then the return on investment that Aaron was talking about, how does that compare to what your
• 4:06
  Aaron Oliveira (57:17.653) Mm-hmm.
• 4:07
  Doug Greathouse (57:24.29) thinking about investing in or already investing in, right? So I think it's at least worth having a conversation with Aaron and saying, hey, this is what I'm doing as far as investing. Does it make sense? Aaron's a straight shooter. I can tell you that about him. That's what I know about him. He's going to tell you, I don't think it's going to be right. Like if his solution isn't right for you, if you've got something better, he's going to be like, how'd you, I want to know about that.
• 4:08
  Aaron Oliveira (57:44.757) I just say actually what I do, I'm like, you know, if you can do better numbers than what I'm doing, like, let's have a conversation about what you do, brother. Like, I'll be ready to invest in something in six months. Let's go.
• 4:09
  Doug Greathouse (57:55.222) Yeah, yeah. definitely it's at least worth having a conversation with Aaron or someone on his team about what they could possibly do for you. All right.
• 4:10
  Aaron Oliveira (58:04.265) It'll be me. It'll be me because we're boutique. I don't have a team that handles my intakes. I handle all of it personally. Again, that's just me investing my own time in the business. You're literally communicating with the CEO at all times because it is boutique and because I have a limit on how many people I can service in the space of the rest of my Amazon fulfillment career.
• 4:11
  Doug Greathouse (58:26.89) that brings me up to, I think there's a sense of urgency around this right now because you talked about where the market is right now, right? That now is a great time to jump in on this.
• 4:12
  Aaron Oliveira (58:38.856) Yeah, it is. And a lot of people are, they think, Amazon FBA is saturated, Amazon FBA, can't make money. Usually they're trying to sell you another service, right? Usually they're like, you should do Walmart, you should do Shopify, you should do TikTok shops. And so they usually have an incentive to say that. For me, and again, just in full transparency, if someone is telling you that either they have an
• 4:13
  They're incentivized to tell you otherwise because they're trying to sell you something off of the familiarity of Amazon and they want to create that scarcity. Or they're just kind of idiots. They're not educated on how Amazon FBA works. If Amazon is profitable, you are profitable. And Amazon is valued now, think, somewhere ridiculous, like $5 trillion or $3.8 trillion. They drove three quarters of a trillion dollars through Amazon last year.
• 4:14
  So if they are making money, you are making money. You just have to know where, know, make sure you're making money. doing that calculation first with the supplier level. And then it's just a matter of churn.
• 4:15
  Doug Greathouse (59:43.682) Yeah, as someone that owns Amazon stock, can tell you that they're making money. They take a hit when everyone else takes a hit, but they come back strong.
• 4:16
  Aaron Oliveira (59:47.058) They're doing well. They are doing okay.
• 4:17
  Aaron Oliveira (59:58.64) Yeah, because even when people are, again, when people aren't making as much money, a lot of times Amazon is five to 15 % cheaper than going to a corner store, which, know, again, I know there's a lot of people that won't touch Amazon because they're like, they're screwing this corner stores, they're screwing the little guy. You know what, go shop local, go spend some more money and shop local. But if you're gonna be going to Walmart anyways or Lowe's or Bass Pro, just jump on Amazon. You're gonna save money by doing that.
• 4:18
  Doug Greathouse (01:00:16.717) Mm-hmm.
• 4:19
  Doug Greathouse (01:00:26.646) Yeah, and you can always say, this percentage of my dispensable income I'm going to shop local with.
• 4:20
  Aaron Oliveira (01:00:33.074) Exactly, exactly. Just compartmentalize it so that it's win-win.
• 4:21
  Doug Greathouse (01:00:36.94) Yeah. Wow. Awesome. I do have one last question. ask everybody that comes on the show. And it's meant to so there you leave nothing on the table. Unfortunately, we're going to leave stuff on the table because we're going to have a part two lined up. But what words of wisdom do you have to pass on to anyone that's watching or listening?
• 4:22
  Aaron Oliveira (01:00:40.839) Let's go.
• 4:23
  Aaron Oliveira (01:00:49.777) They were gonna have to have a part two, let's go.
• 4:24
  Aaron Oliveira (01:01:00.11) Like just general wisdom. I would say, I would say from, yeah, generally don't be too reliant on one thing when it comes to business and entrepreneurship. You know, we saw that a lot with TikTok shops being banned for what, like 24 hours. You know, they were literally shutting down our country for COVID and, you know, people weren't calling their Senate seats and their house representatives or their state representatives. And, you know,
• 4:25
  Doug Greathouse (01:01:01.635) Just channel.
• 4:26
  Aaron Oliveira (01:01:29.456) all of sudden these millennial influencers and below, don't know if you call them zillennials or whatever, were bombarding the phone numbers for their state reps or for their county reps or for their whatever, because they had nothing else, right? There's actual people that don't go to work, Doug, and they don't do work, they just do content, which yeah, sure, there's an argument for saying that that's work, I'm not saying it's not, but it's not what we would have defined as work even 15 years ago. And they would have had nothing. If it stayed banned,
• 4:27
  They would have had nothing. were people making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of just having a TikTok and driving people to Amazon or driving people to their site or driving people to whatever. And when that was taken away, they had nothing. And what I learned in my entrepreneurial journey was if you are relying on only one thing, that's next to nothing. So don't rely on one thing. And that's why one, I get that.
• 4:28
  Doug Greathouse (01:02:02.979) Mm-hmm.
• 4:29
  Aaron Oliveira (01:02:24.972) branched out with Amazon, you're not selling one product, I'm selling 30 products. And actually, our fulfillment channels aren't one, we have FBA, we have FBM, we have eBay, and we have Amazon. So, you know, it's already spread out. But let's say that got taken away from me. It's not the only thing. I also have secondary investments that I'm already invested. I already have stocks, I already then have a sales skill that I can adapt and plug into anyone else's offer worst case scenario.
• 4:30
  I go jump on somebody else's train, I make them a pile of money and I do my own thing again once I've recovered. So don't be reliant on only one thing. And if you only have one thing, start developing a skill so you can have two things and then start creating residuals you can have three and four things. The average millionaire has five to seven streams of income from separate investments. They do not affect one another. When one goes up, one comes down. So the millionaires know what's up. They're already successful. They were good at one thing and they made money with one thing, but then they
• 4:31
  divested to five or seven things. So they have that flexibility when one thing's going well, the other thing isn't, when one thing isn't. If all things go well, they make even more. So I would say one thing is next to nothing. Make sure you diversify, divest, or create additional skills and channels in which you won't be as reliant on one thing.
• 4:32
  Doug Greathouse (01:03:40.876) Yeah, that is awesome. So I want to highlight a couple of things on their skills. I think that's one of the most things that you can invest in, especially if they're entrepreneurial type skills like sales or marketing or knowing how to. A.I. is the hot topic now. If you can build somebody's A.I. for their business, that is a huge skill.
• 4:33
  Aaron Oliveira (01:03:58.43) Yep. Huge value.
• 4:34
  Doug Greathouse (01:04:03.938) The other thing is kind of contrast what we talked about, the power of focus, because you said it in there. I don't want people to get confused. You can spread yourself too thin too quickly by trying to do too many things at once. You said the one thing. They built the one channel to where it was profitable and systematized. And then they started to diversify into the other verticals so that they would have more. So take that to heart.
• 4:35
  Aaron Oliveira (01:04:15.479) yeah. 100%.
• 4:36
  Aaron Oliveira (01:04:29.622) Yeah.
• 4:37
  Doug Greathouse (01:04:32.942) Don't lose focus you still need to focus but there is a point where you need to start spreading out and diversifying so that you're not trapped It's happened a long time and while I say a long time ago Facebook ads right when you when you got reliant on on Actually, it's Google ads when you got really reliant Google ads algorithm changed boom everybody lost a lot of money because Google was doing something different, right? Yep. Yep. So
• 4:38
  Aaron Oliveira (01:04:45.708) Yeah.
• 4:39
  Aaron Oliveira (01:04:54.986) and they were reliant on only one channel.
• 4:40
  Doug Greathouse (01:04:58.222) It's a cyclical thing. It's probably going to happen to something else that you have as a vertical. That's why it's good to have something adjacent.
• 4:41
  Aaron Oliveira (01:05:08.106) Yeah, 100 % because you can't anticipate things are going to be out of your control, but you can prepare to make sure you weather the storm, right? The the the the what and I can't remember the it's a it's a it's a nautical term and it's a nautical analogy, but it says the the strength of the ship is never found in the harbor. So you're going to have to go out of the harbor and you're going to have to experience it and you're going to like, you know what that that mast didn't hold up. Right.
• 4:42
  or that fabric didn't hold up or you know what, we need to make sure that when the waves come over the edge that we have a way of dispersing those, like there's any number of things that happen to a ship, never happens in the harbor.
• 4:43
  Doug Greathouse (01:05:47.938) Yep, you've got to get it to market and then the market will tell you what needs to be fixed.
• 4:44
  Aaron Oliveira (01:05:49.853) Yep. It'll dictate and then you can make adjustments and then you can start making sure you have those those outlets of diversification or divestment.
• 4:45
  Doug Greathouse (01:05:58.678) Wow, this has been amazing. Thank you again, Aaron. Again, on the lookout. Yes, be on the lookout for part two of the Profit of Christian Business podcast with Aaron. I don't know when that's going to air, but we'll work it out. And until next time, entrepreneurs, keep moving forward.
• 4:46
  Aaron Oliveira (01:06:04.125) No, thank you, Doug. And thank you, Jason.
• 4:47
  Aaron Oliveira (01:06:13.257) hahahaha
• 4:48
  Aaron Oliveira (01:06:20.253) Keep moving forwards, God bless.