Episode 014
On today’s episode we interview Amazon Wholesale Expert Todd Welch. We get to find out Todd’s unique story and how he ended up in the wholesale business. Discover what Amazon Wholesale is and how to operate that business model (and scale).
Todd’s website –> https://www.entrepreneuradventure.com/
Todd’s YouTube channel –> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeNVgygMlCnOYRf_799fLqg
Resources mentioned in the episode:
www.Tacticalarbitrage.com
www.Pricechecker2.com
https://www.analyzer.tools/
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Email us –> support@firingtheman.com
Todd (00:00):
Wholesale is definitely where it’s really started taking off for me.
Ken (00:05):
No, we all as entrepreneurs we bootstrap a lot. So you know, using your garage as your, warehouse for a while that’s kind of, it fits the mold. Right?
Todd (00:13):
And my goal this year is 3 to 5 million in sales.
Intro (00:20):
Welcome everyone to the www.firingtheman.com Podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you were capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs, David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
Ken (00:45):
Welcome everyone. This is episode 14 of www.firingtheman.com Podcast. Today I’m doing a solo interview with an entrepreneur, a good friend of mine, Todd Welch. He actually has his own podcast, www.entrepreneuradventure.com. Uh, you know, today we’re gonna. I’m really, really excited to have Todd on the podcast. We’re going to talk about something that you know, normally on firing the man. We talk about private label and you know passive income. Today we’re going to talk about Amazon wholesale and how Todd has grown a rather large business, uh, selling wholesale on Amazon. So welcome to the show, Todd.
Todd (01:26):
Yeah, appreciate it, Ken. Thanks for having me.
Ken (01:28):
Yeah. Yeah. So Todd and I met last year at an e-com (BAL 2019) conference and we’re in a mastermind together and, and Todd is an Amazon wholesale expert, so definitely wanted to bring him on the show and let Todd educate everybody on, on what is Amazon wholesale, you know, how do you do that? So Todd can, can you give us a little bit of your story, your background?
Todd (01:54):
Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I guess my e-commerce adventure kind of started way back when I was like 14 years old and I built a, a website. The Euro was www.bestteen.com and it was basically like a place for teenagers to chat and had games and newsletter sign ups. And you know, it wasn’t anything major, but I started making like two, 300 bucks a month off of that by signing people up for different uh, email lists and things like that. And that kind of went into the wayside. I got into computer programming and networking and built a computer repair business that I eventually sold to one of our employees. After that I got back into the eCommerce world with Amazon and started in the private label world like you guys Ken and had some failures there, you know, learning lessons basically. There’s not really any failures unless we give up.
Todd (02:55):
But had a couple products that didn’t really work out there and started learning about Amazon wholesale and that is where I really started getting some traction and selling quite a lot of products on that. I still do some of the private label because I kind of like doing that, but wholesale is definitely where it’s really started taking off for me.
Ken (03:21):
So. So wholesale seem like a good fit.
Todd (03:24):
Yeah, definitely. It’s, you know, like private label, you really have to have a good chunk of money to get started. And do it right, especially nowadays where wholesale you can start with a smaller amount of money. You know, if you have more money, obviously you can do it faster. But with a smaller amount of money you can get that ball rolling and just start building up your products that you have for sale.
Ken (03:51):
Yeah, absolutely. So most of our audience, you know, they either don’t have a business yet or you know, say they hate their job, they want to quit their job, they want to, do something different. So if someone was uh, you know, can you explain a little bit, you know, wholesale kind of maybe from a 10,000 foot view of what we’re talking about?
Todd (04:11):
Yeah, for sure. So you guys are coming from the private label world. So private label, as you guys know, is basically creating your own product. Where with wholesale, we’re not really creating any of our own products. We’re selling products that are already existing and out there. A lot of them, most of them already for sale on Amazon. So we’re coming to brands like you guys and asking if we can sell your products or we’re also going to distributors who sell lots of different brands and opening up accounts with them, getting a list of their products and finding those profitable products on Amazon and just buying those products, sending them in and selling them and just kind of rinse and repeat over and over again.
Ken (05:01):
Can you describe this, I guess like a wholesale products, maybe some examples and then kind of how you, do you go about finding those?
Todd (05:09):
Yeah, for sure. So really any product that you think of could be a product that you can sell on a wholesale. Uh, you know, the big names like Nike and things like that. Those are going to be a lot harder though because if you’re looking at big name brands, then you’re going to have a ton of competition. So most of the products that I sell, if I started naming off the brands, you guys probably wouldn’t know what they were, but I just did like a quick search on Amazon for dog treats, for example. And there’s some on here, like a premium care and sniff snacks and pig ears and different brands that we could potentially sell. Now, I don’t know if these specific ones are any good, I’d have to more digging with the tools that I use, but if everything looked good, what I would do is I would reach out to the brand number one, see if they’d let me open up an account directly.
Todd (06:09):
But then at the same time I’d also be looking for distributors of that product to find and buy that product from distributors potentially, because not all brands will allow you to open up an account directly, but a lot of times you can get the products through distributors instead. And plus when you go with a distributor then you’re getting potentially hundreds or thousands of other products to potentially sell as well.
Ken (06:35):
So distributor would have multiple brands.
Todd (06:38):
Exactly. That’s, that’s the benefit of the distributor, right? So a lot of people out there, when they talk about wholesale, they talk about going brand direct. So buying directly from the brand and that’s a really good method. You definitely want to do that part. But your rejection rate is going to be like 80 90 95% depending on the category that you’re looking for. Products where with a distributor you’re going to have more like a 60 70 80% success rate on being able to open accounts with them.
Ken (07:15):
So it sounds like distributors are probably more of the way to go or,
Todd (07:20):
yeah, it’s, you know, you definitely want to do both because if you think about it like a brand, you guys own your own products. If you’re doing private label and you know those can become like your baby, they, it’s very emotional attachment to them. So when you’re trying to open up an account with the brand, they’re much more critical of who they open an account with. Not all of them, but a majority of them, especially now that Amazon is so popular and they’re getting contacted, you know, all the time from brands or from people that want to sell their products. Where with a distributor it’s more of a transactional thing. There’s still a lot of relationship building that goes into that, but it’s more, you know, you’re working with a salesperson and they want to sell more products.
Todd (08:11):
You want to buy products, so it’s a lot more easier of a transaction so you can get going faster by going the distributor route. But with the brands you really have, that’s kind of where you fortify your business by opening those direct accounts with the brands because then it makes it harder for other people to get those same products that you’re selling.
Ken (08:35):
Well, one question I had for you, do you ever try to, when you contract contact a brand, do you ever try to get an exclusive contract with the brand?
Todd (08:43):
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got several exclusive agreements with brands. It’s not something you want to do upfront, you know, because if you think about it, if somebody just called you up on the phone and be like, Hey, do you want to let me be the only person selling your stuff on Amazon? You’re probably going to be like, I would get like, get outta here.
Todd (09:02):
No, not a. So instead you’re more, you know, you’re just trying to open the account with them, asking them, Hey, I want to sell your products. Is that okay? You start selling it and then what I like to do is show them what I can do on Amazon. So a lot of times when I’m looking for products to sell, I’m looking for products with really bad listings, not optimized at all because that tells me that the brand is not taking care of it and they don’t have another seller taking care of it. So I can potentially come in there, start selling their products and fix up their listing, improve it, get them selling more, and then maybe six months or a year down the road after we’ve built that relationship, I can say, Hey, by the way, checkout, you’ve seen what I’ve done with this product.
Todd (09:53):
You want me to maybe do that with some of your other products. We can do some kind of an exclusive agreement here or get an extra discount on the products and we can make your brand look really good on Amazon and get you more sales.
Ken (10:07):
Nice. That’s a, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. To go in and kind of show them some value and then, and then, yeah, offer to increase sales on the rest of their catalog.
Todd (10:20):
It’s all about building relationships. So private label and a retail arbitrage. Online arbitrage are very like transactional, right? So you buy the products, send them in the Amazon, you sell the products. Amazon takes care of most of the dealing with the customers. Where with wholesale it’s basically all about building a relationship almost 100% like 99% relationship, 1% all arrest. Because if you’re not building those relationships with the brands and the distributors, you’re not gonna get those exclusive agreements and you’re not going to get those additional discounts that you have to get because it’s, it’s the norm in wholesale to get discounts on top of what they initially tell you.
Todd (11:11):
So building those relationships can help you get deeper discounts and those exclusive agreements.
Ken (11:19):
You mentioned earlier, like your tools and stuff. So, okay, so now we, we, we know we want to go to distributors or brands. So how do you go about doing that? How do you, how do you find the products once you go there?
Todd (11:32):
Sure. So you know, if anybody’s interested, they can check out my YouTube channel. Just search for entrepreneur adventure. I’ve got some really good videos on there. Like for reverse sourcing is one of the big methods that we use to find products, which basically is just going on to Amazon, doing a search for whatever product you want or whatever category you’re interested in. And then just go through the products and look for ones that meet our criteria. So typically we look for products that are $15 or higher.
Todd (12:07):
I’m selling, you know, my breakdown of the sales would be like 20, 30, 40 or more per month. There’s two or more sellers on the listing. We look for two or more sellers because that way it’s more likely not a private label brand or they don’t have an exclusive agreement. So we might be able to open an account there. And then, so let’s just take this one. I’ve got a search over here. There’s a dog treat called Roco and Roxy. So let’s say if that one met all my criteria, then I would just jump over to Google, do a search for Roco and Roxy, find the brand page and add that to my spreadsheet. And then do the same search and add distributor to the end. So Rocco and Roxy distributors, and then basically just go through all those pages that come up in Google, find all those products or all those distributors, add them to a spreadsheet. And then when I’m done doing all that, I can sit down and start making phone calls to open the accounts. Okay.
Ken (13:15):
So you’re basically doing a, you know, kind of grinding it out, finding a product, Google scraping out the distributors and then, you know, kinda knocking on doors basically.
Todd (13:26):
Yeah, exactly. And that’s, we were talking about earlier about my VA that I’ve got virtual assistant doing that now because it, it’s, it’s really tedious, so you can get burned out on that pretty quickly. But it’s, that’s really where the gold is. Just going through that rinse and repeat over and over and over.
Ken (13:47):
Let’s say you find a distributor and they’re like, you know, yeah. Todd, you know, we’d love for you to sell our product. Here’s our catalog. So how do you know what, what products are gonna fit your criteria? You know your criteria, you know, how are you going to be profitable?
Todd (14:03):
Sure. So there’s some softwares out there like a analyzer tools, and tactical arbitrage, price checker 2 that you can load the spreadsheet into and it matches those products on Amazon. And so that’s one way to kind of do it quickly. But what I’ve found works the absolute best is just go through it manually. So I’ll basically sort the spreadsheet by like brand name and then just take the brand name, go over to Google search for that brand name. If there’s a specific category that it’s in, I’ll click on that category and just start going through them and look at all the products. Because what you’ll find is there’s so many products that the UPC is don’t match on Amazon. Or maybe there’s a two or a six pack or a bundle of a couple different products that a lot of times the software will miss. Um, they’re getting better. So they find them sometimes, but it’s not 100% so where I’ve, I’ve really gotten good at is just going through Amazon manually and finding the brand, the products that look good and then I jumped back to the spreadsheet and see if that company sells them.
Ken (15:16):
So. So you don’t use any software at all? Or do you use a hybrid approach? Like a little bit of both?
Todd (15:21):
Yeah, I use analyzer tools, so I run it through there just to do the quick analysis, check everything out, you know, find those, uh, easy ones to find and then I go in and do the, the manual search as well.
Ken (15:34):
Okay, nice. And what, what is the, uh, you know, criteria sort of like private label? You know, we normally try to aim for, you know, a 30% 40% margin, you know what it now, how is wholesale different than private label?
Todd (15:49):
Yeah. So 30% margin is definitely, or not margin, but 30% ROI I should say. So if you’re spending $10, you’re making $3 on that after your expenses. And so I, I usually try to shoot for like three to $4 profit or more. But you know, I have some that are down to like a dollar 50 it depends on the product and how easy it’s going to be for me to compete and how many sales I’m going to get in the month. So you kind of have to decide if it’s worth it, right? So if you are only getting a dollar profit and you’re selling a hundred that’s $100 and so is it worth it to make $100 and go through all the work that it takes to keep restocking that product versus maybe something where you’re making 10 bucks and selling 20 a month and making $200. So you kind of have to depend and you know, $200 doesn’t sound like a lot, but if you get 10 of those products now you got $2,000 a month coming in and you might be able to get 10 of those products from one distributor or a few different of distributors. So it just kind of snowballs.
Ken (17:02):
Okay. No, that totally makes sense. So you’ll basically filter all your products by ROI and say, Hey, I’m going to go for the, you know, I’m going to cherry pick the top ROI because you know, the faster you know, your cash flow will be as tied up or you’ll make more return.
Todd (17:17):
Yeah, exactly. I usually go through the whole list, find all the products that I might want to buy and then, you know, maybe weed out a few of them, but probably make like small test orders of everyone, maybe like a dozen or a couple dozen, get them in Amazon, see how they sell. And then I use a software called restock pro to do all the tracking of restocking my inventory, what the profitability is and stuff like that.
Ken (17:48):
So as we, as we kind of step this model out, so you found a distributor and you look through their catalog and let’s say their catalog had 2000 products and you’ve found 13 of them that fits your criteria. What’s the next step? You just buy them and then,
Todd (18:03):
yeah, so the first step is to tell the distributor, you know, I think I can sell like this many of all these products per month. What’s the best price that you can give me for that kind of sales volume? Keeping in mind that I’m going to order a smaller amount upfront and get that best price, because if you take that spreadsheet and run it, you’re probably going to have zero that are profitable at the price that they give you. That’s why I said earlier, you have to get a discount. So upfront, I’m not even really looking at the ROI. I’m more just looking at the other criteria and then getting the best price and then looking at the ROI, you know, unless it’s like negative 50% but if it’s, if it’s like 0% ROI or higher, then I’m pretty much adding it to my list and contacting the distributor about discounts and stuff.
Ken (18:58):
So let’s say you, you contact them and they’re like, okay Todd, we think you know it’s a good fit. We’re going to go ahead and give you a, you know, X amount of discount. Um, and then so, so how do you, how do you go from there to, into Amazon?
Todd (19:14):
So then it’s basically either having them direct ship into Amazon for you, which sometimes you can get them to do it. Sometimes you can’t. Or having making the order and having them ship it to your warehouse or your garage if you’re working out of your garage or a prep center. I use a prep center, uh, that way I don’t have to deal with all the running of warehouse stuff and that works fine for me. Now I will probably eventually get a warehouse when it really makes sense for me. Um, but right now, so far a prep center has been fine. So they receive it in, then I make the shipment in Amazon, just like you guys make the shipment to send in your private label stuff and they slap on any labels that are needed, any bags, bubble wrap, anything that needs to get done and ship it into Amazon for me. And it goes up for sale.
Ken (20:08):
Well, let’s unpack the prep center a little bit. So the prep center is basically you’re kind of outsourcing your warehouse to a prep center. They receive all the products in, they get it ready for the shipment, and then you coordinate that with the prep center.
Todd (20:23):
Exactly. Yeah. They’re basically just handling the warehouse duties for you. Um, and yeah, so they just receive it all in, make sure everything came in, and then after you make the shipment, they do all the prepping to send it into Amazon, packaging it all up and ship it out for you.
Ken (20:43):
Okay. And it sounds like that’s more efficient than for you just go out and and lease your own warehouse and hire employees. Right?
Todd (20:51):
Yeah, definitely. You know, if you’re starting with a limited budget, do it out of your garage, you know, they’re probably going to have the best, most affordability at that point, right. Because you got to, you’re going to have to save money and get all your money back into products so you can get that snowball going. And plus you’re going to want to learn what everything looks like and what you’re doing. You know, I always recommend doing everything yourself before handing it off and then either move into a prep center or get a warehouse, whichever way you want to go about it.
Ken (21:27):
Yeah, definitely. I would, I would second that. I had did a little bit of a wholesale early on before private label and I had everything shipped to my house and did all the labeling. And I agree with you. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s way easier. And also you don’t want to outsource something if you don’t understand it. So doing it yourself, you know, and you know, we all, as entrepreneurs, we bootstrap a lot. So, you know, using your garage as your warehouse, it fits the mold, right?
Todd (21:57):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean you got to write what Microsoft and Google and all those are standard are out of their garage. So it’s kind of the way it works.
Ken (22:04):
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so now we’ve, we’ve got the shipment that goes into Amazon. Um, so now how does that, uh, you know, a private label listing, like you mentioned, it has, has one seller. Now a wholesale listing has multiple sellers. So how does that all work with, let’s say there’s a, uh, product and there’s 13 sellers, how does your product get sold?
Todd (22:32):
Yeah, so basically anybody within the buy box, so we usually consider it about one to 2% of the price of whoever has the buy box. The seller currently is going to get a percentage of the rotation. So if you’re matched price and everything else is equal, like you have good seller feedback and you’re selling prime, then you’re going to get a mostly equal rotation into the buy box. So Amazon is pretty good about that at rotating people out. So everybody kind of gets a share of it. Um, some things can affect that. Like if your seller feedback goes below maybe 80%, then you’re going to get penalized. Or if you’re not selling prime, then you just won’t get any of the sales unless you’re really low or way below the prime offers. Um, but then also the, the amount of stock you have can play into it as well.
Todd (23:33):
So if you’re using the micro, the, the Amazon FNSKU, you know, the special number they give you, then it’s only going to be the stock that you send in. And so if stock is all on the East coast and there’s a sale over in the West coast, then they’re probably going to give it to someone who has stock over there, so that can hurt you a little bit. Um, but for the most part they just kind of rotate you into the buy box.
Ken (24:00):
That’s interesting. Um, so it’s, it sounds like if as long as, as long as you fit the mold that they’re looking for, they just, they put you in the rotation and everybody sells the same amount, right?
Todd (24:10):
Yeah. Unless you’re competing direct against Amazon retail, then you’ll probably just get zero by their own rules. So that.
Ken (24:21):
you brought up an interesting, uh, topic. Now I’ve thought about this for a, for a while with my private label in terms of sending more inventory and you know, uh, in, in, uh, trying to co trying to cover all the warehouses in the U S with, so especially since they did the next day shipping that, you know, if you had your products are only in four warehouses and they’re all on the East coast, well are they going to sell to my competitors on the West coast. So it’s interesting to increase the levels of your inventory until the sales level off is that something that you also see in wholesale?
Todd (24:57):
I’ve never really played with it, but it, I imagine it’s probably the same, you know, especially to get that rotation, that equal rotation unless you’re using the UPC of the product. Right? Because Amazon really tries to push that and some people like doing that. Some people don’t co-mingling their inventory as you call it, because then if another seller is doing a bad job at prepping, then you can get blamed for it because they’ll just grab whatever product is closest to the end user.
Todd (25:28):
Um, so that’s one way to kind of get around it, but you have to be careful. Like I don’t like to do that with like food products and things like that that could potentially cause harm to someone. But other products, if it’s something like a fishing lure, you know, I don’t really care about that. Just sending it in with the UPC and having it commingled.
Ken (25:50):
Huh. Yeah. That’s interesting. Um, so you’re saying the standard UPC is okay to send in for a wholesale product, but you do have an option to put an FNSKU on it that would attack your ID?
Todd (26:02):
Yeah, you can, you usually have the option to pick. Sometimes Amazon does not give you the option to pick. They force you to do the FNSKU. If the UPC and Amazon is messed up or they found some problems, they’ll force you to do it. But otherwise you can usually pick back and forth. I have a defaulted to use the FNSKU and then I’ll switch that depending on the product.
Ken (26:28):
In terms of competition, uh, you know, you do both private labeling and wholesale. Uh, you mentioned the rotation. Now is there, are there ways to, you know, get an a, a competitive advantage for wholesale or not? Or is it all everybody in one basket.
Todd (26:46):
keeping a good account like we talked about, your seller feedback is helpful and then potentially the amount of stock that you have in there. But other than that, it really comes down to price. And so there’s not a really big way to get an a competitive advantage other than building those relationships is what it really comes down to the mechanics in Amazon, once you figure that out, it’s just rinse and repeat it. But the business really comes down to building those relationships, getting the extra discount. Because there’s a lot of times where I look at a product, they give me the best pricing, the best pricing, right?
Todd (27:26):
And I put it in there and I’m like, well I’d be like losing money at that price. So someone else either found a better distributor or got a better discount or is getting direct from the brand and getting some special deal. And so there they have that advantage because I can’t even get to where they’re at. And so you do run into that a lot, but that’s where the relationships really come into play.
Ken (27:51):
Nice. Okay. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So you know, just like with anything in business, uh, you know, relationships are key, right?
Todd (27:59):
Yeah. And that’s a, you know, I was talking with uh, Scott, the owner of by boxer, he’s one of the, the 22nd largest Amazon seller. And we were talking about how in Amazon wholesale, what’s really cool is like a small seller just starting out can actually have a competitive advantage over him.
Todd (28:21):
And he’s doing $60 million a year because you can build that personal relationship maybe with another small brand that wants to work with a small business rather than a big business. And if you build that personal connection and you’re like on the phone with them and you become buddies, then you have a major advantage over any big company that’s trying to come in and sell their products.
Ken (28:46):
I’d like to talk a little bit about scaling. So, you know, you mentioned finding the products and kind of a manual search. How do you scale wholesale?
Todd (28:56):
It’s basically just rinsing and repeating what we talked about over and over and over and just doing continually doing that grind to get more products. So I kind of go with the approach of more go wide and go deep. So I have right now I have like 200 and some active skews in Amazon and I just basically have to keep growing those number of skews. You know, if I can get to like 600 700 active sku’s this year, that’d be ideal. Um, this last year I fell just short of $1 million in sales and my goal this year is 3 to 5 million in sales. So it’s going to be a lot of work to get there. You know, I like to shoot for those goals a little farther out of reach. And if I fall a little short, you know, I still hit a really good number. So, uh, that’s what I’m aiming for. Basically to get there, I’m going to have to probably triple or quadruple the skus that I carry
Ken (29:55):
That says how you scale right there. You just keep piling them on, right? There’s fine sku’s and add them in.
Todd (30:00):
Exactly. And making sure you have the profit, right. Like you, I know you’re following the profit first and I’m working on that too because you can really easily just get yourself into a cycle of buying more products, taking on debt to pay for those products. And you can pretty quickly find yourself in a lot of trouble if you’re not paying really close attention to your numbers. I don’t want to make it sound like wholesale is easy in any way because it’s not, it’s very hard, but you know, if, if you’re dedicated and willing to work and do the accounting or have someone do your accounting and looking at those numbers and making sure you’re profitable, um, I think it’s the most, the least risky way to sell on Amazon right now.
Ken (30:47):
Okay. So a couple of, if you could give the audience a couple of pros and a couple of cons on wholesale.
Todd (30:53):
The pro, as I said, I think it’s the least risky because you are ordering Amazon or ordering products that are already established a lot of times on Amazon. So you’re not trying to build something from scratch and hoping it sells. So that is probably the biggest pro that you can see the numbers, you know the numbers. You can do test orders. We’re not having to order $10,000 from China and hope that in 180 days we get our money back. You know, we’re pretty much, we can see within a month, to two months if something’s working or not working. So that’s probably the biggest pro. Um, the biggest con is that it’s not for everybody. If you’re not someone who likes to build relationships and be on the phone talking with people and basically just building those relationships, you know, it’s, it’s not just an analytical behind the keyboard and work on Amazon kind of stuff. It’s really getting out there. You know, if you can do it, ideally maybe flying or driving to see your distributors and brands and going to trade shows and talking with people there. So it’s more of a face to face human connection kind of thing. So that can be a pro or con depending on what kind of person you are.
Ken (32:15):
So I definitely want to be respectful of your time and I really appreciate you coming on the show. Uh, you’ve provided a tremendous amount of value on, on a different angle of selling on Amazon versus private label. You know, I think a wholesale doesn’t get enough of a spotlight and it’s definitely a viable option obviously at, you know, you’re killing it. So as we, we like to end the show with our guests, we have three questions that we ask every guest. What is your favorite book?
Todd (32:41):
Uh, so it changes. Um, I, I kind of have two of them that I really like, so I’ll tell you both of them if that’s all right. Sure. Um, probably the first one is the compound effect by Darren Hardy, uh, because it’s, it’s really what building a successful business is all about and just keep doing the small things that move you forward and building on top of those small things. Um, that’s what the compound effect is all about. So that one’s really good. And then of course, the, the four hour workweek by Tim Ferriss, which is a really popular one out there. And you know, I don’t really, I don’t like it because of I want to do a four hour workweek because, you know, that doesn’t really exist. I mean, it could potentially, but not really. It’s more about building your business in a way that it doesn’t rely on you and that I keep running with or without you.
Ken (33:40):
Nice. Yeah. Both really good books.
Ken (33:44):
Next question. What are your hobbies?
Todd (33:47):
Hobbies, definitely fishing. I love trout fishing, especially getting out into the mountains, high altitude lakes and stuff like that. Uh, so that’s definitely my biggest hobby that I love to do.
Ken (34:00):
Nice. Yeah, we both share that hobby that I truly enjoy. Trout fishing. Uh, all right, last one. What do you think sets apart successful eCommerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Todd (34:15):
I think being able to deal with the entrepreneur roller coaster, the, you’re, you’re always going to have failures. You’re always going to have those periods where you know, you get depressed or things aren’t working. And really being able to get over those humps, uh, faster than ever. Other people learning from those mistakes or things that you did wrong, you just keep going. I think most people can be successful in business, but a lot of people either get distracted and do something else or give up too soon.
Ken (34:53):
Yeah. I think I, yeah, totally agree. I think entrepreneurs have to be like a rubber ball. You’re bouncing, you bounce and you can, you’ve got to keep going. Right.
Todd (35:01):
Yeah. That the rollercoaster never ends. I mean, I don’t think it matters how successful you are. I, I think, I’m sure probably even Bill Gates probably gets those periods where he’s like, I dunno what I’m doing. Maybe I should just give up. You know, is there probably a lot fewer and farther between and he gets over and faster cause he’s become a master at it. But yeah.
Ken (35:23):
Yeah. Maybe the problems are just bigger as you go, right?
Todd (35:26):
Oh yeah. Yeah, I’ve heard that a million times. I definitely think that’s true.
Ken (35:30):
Excellent. Well, I appreciate you coming on the show, Todd, and how can our guests get a hold of you if they want to learn more about wholesale or,
Todd (35:37):
Yeah, for sure. So www.entrepreneuradventure.com Is the name of my podcast and our website. So if you want to listen to more stuff on wholesale, check us out to search for entrepreneur adventure on any of the podcasting platforms, www.entrepreneuradventure.com for our website, all the social media and stuff as well. And I’m actually working on a small group coaching programs, so where I’m going to basically kind of hand-hold people and walk them through getting their Amazon business started. So I haven’t released that yet, but if anybody’s interested in that, get onto our mailing list and you’ll be one of the first people to know about it.
Ken (36:19):
Nice. That’s awesome. Yeah, I definitely recommend that. If you’re interested in wholesale, you know, reach out to Todd, find him and go for that. Absolutely.
David (36:29):
Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s firing the man podcast. If you liked this episode, head on over to www.firingtheman.com and check out our resource library for exclusive firing the man discounts on popular e-commerce subscription services that is www.firingtheman.com/resource. You can also find a comprehensive library of over 50 books that Ken and I have read in the last few years that have made a meaningful impact on our business, for that head on over to www.firingtheman.com/library. Lastly, check us out on social media at firing the man in on YouTube at firing the man for exclusive content. This is David Schomer and Ken Wilson. We’re out!