Bus Proof Wholesale
(This is a guest post from our good friend Dan Meadors. He and his team are doing some amazing things. You guys really need to check these out. They have a free training course out now you can find here. -Greg Murphy)
Our Journey to Here
-Dan Meadors
In late 2011 we were both working full-time jobs for an online retail company that specialized in selling collectible card games. One day, the CFO of the company quit. It surprised us because he was making a six-figure salary at the time, so we asked him why he was leaving. He told us that he was making more money selling stuff on Amazon and he was just going to focus all his time on that.
We were shocked that this was even possible and to be honest, rather skeptical. We probed him about it further and he decided to take us on a trip to a local Wal-Mart to prove it to us. That was the day we learned about Retail Arbitrage and before that day could turn into night, Eric and I had decided to give...
Hire Your First Employee With Confidence
One of the first important steps towards building a Bus Proof Business is making that first, solid, hire. Your first handful of employees or independent contractors, especially while you’re expanding, will demand a pretty alarming share of your revenue. Depending on the quality of your hire, this drain on your profits will last for at minimum, a few weeks and then, depending on the nature of their work, you should see a boost in productivity that translates to your worker essentially paying their own way, and beyond.
This is “Delayed Gratification” at its finest. You need to be willing to forgo your immediate desires, to make money, for the future profitability of your company. We are expanding our Retail Arbitrage business (our Bus Proof Business that focuses on buying clearance items at local retail stores to sell on Amazon) and we recently brought on a new logistics manager (someone who preps, packs, and ships our FBA products in addition to a variety...
How to Start An Online Book Selling Business When You're Broke
So you want to start selling books on Amazon but there’s two problems; 1) You’ve never sold anything on Amazon before and, 2) You’re broke! In today’s article I will give you newbie sellers some much needed encouragement.
The wonderful thing about books is that you can literally start this business with ZERO up-front capital. That’s right, you don’t need any money to start a book selling business. Countless 6 and 7-figure Amazon sellers(including yours truly) cut their teeth selling books and they started with the FREE sources (locations) of inventory.
In this video I walk you through, not only how to list a couple of books to be sold on Amazon (Merchant Fulfilled) but I do so by pulling and evaluating random books off of my bookshelf. Be sure to check out the video!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNA2jI30k1k
Where you can find FREE inventory:
I don’t care if you’re brand new or you’ve been selling on Amazon for over a decade,...
Library Sale Hack
This is a great tip Bryan has been using for a long time to incrase the productivity of himself and his team. This stuff really works, and if you are going to really try and build your used book business, you should pay close attention to this video.
Losing A Round of the Mental Game - A Blow by Blow Account
By any rational standard, this past week was a pretty good one for myself and my businesses. Everything is going pretty well on all fronts. We closed spring enrollment for Bookflipping 2.0, our Amazon business is growing at a good clip, the Dollar Book Swap is chugging along perfectly, but I want to share with you guys an experience that I had this past Friday.
I came into work at about 4 am, which happens a few time a week. I don't know if it is a form of insomnia, but sometimes I have a problem waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep. I was in a really good mood. The enrollment numbers for our Spring launch looked good. The team had all worked really hard on it. I have dedicated a lot of time to this project and I was happy that the results would justify that commitment to myself and to my family.
In addition, we are making big strides to sell different types of books overseas...
Focus On Your Strengths and Farm out Your Weaknesses
I’m pretty bad at most things, like well below average. I’m also ignorant on many many topics. I can’t drive a large box truck, work on a car, or design a website. (That particular weakness should be very apparent.) That’s just the tip of the iceberg. If i tried to spend time on any of those things I would want to pull my hair out. No matter how much time I spent trying to fix cars or design websites, the best I’d ever be is mediocre if I was lucky.
Why should I do that? What use is there in me investing so much time to be a crappy mechanic when there are people that are great at it and love it?It’s a complete waste of time.The solution is for me to monetize what I’m good at and what I love, and pay specialists to fill in the gaps for me.
I hate lawn care.A lot.Cutting the grass makes me sneeze and my eyes itch, and I find it mind numbing.So I don’t do it.My cousin on the other hand built a lawn care empire.He has crazy huge machines...
Keep Your Soldiers on the Field
I recently shot a video of my car and the box truck we use for our business.It was a video to brag, but not in the normal way. I’m not normal and I hope you aren’t either. I drive an 8 year old Hyundai Elantra and our box truck is from the late 90’s with a cracked windshield. We grew a seven figure book business by throwing nearly every penny we make back into the business.
If you don’t have outside funds to invest in your business you can’t siphon off the revenue your business makes to buy shiny things for you and your family.
I heard an analogy from Shark Tank once about money.The jerky bald guy said that he considers his money to be soldiers.Their job is to go out in the field and bring back prisoners.
Your soldiers can’t do that if you take them off the field to buy a new car or a new phone, or a vacation.In this business you need capital to buy your inventory.Every dollar that you spend on trinkets and doodads now will cost you hundreds or...
The Three Reasons I Sell More Stuff Than You
Before I get into the reasons why I sell more than most people on Amazon let’s spend some time talking about things that aren’t correct.
I sell more because I have more capital than you.
That’s not correct.
I didn’t start with a ton of money. A had a little bit of credit card debt to start with but I have friends I helped start that had only books in their closets.
You don’t need very much capital at all to start. And no matter how much cash you have it doesn’t help you if you can’t find the books to sell in the first place.
So no, access to capital isn’t the answer.
The second reason some people think we do well selling is that I have more connections than you.
This is most likely true now, but when I started I knew no one. In fact there is a relatively large local competitor of mine that had a lot of obvious places locked down when I started.
Being connected isn’t one of the reasons we are successful either.
More knowledge....