388 : Sam Cohen – Delegate, Automate, Eliminate and outsource to grow your Amazon business

eCommerce Momentum Podcast

Fascinating to see how Sam’s business model and more importantly his clients business models are also changing in today’s ecommerce world. Think of all the retail stores in your market that have closed. Where are their buyers going? Are the retailers that remain busier? Are they carrying tons more stock and tons more sku’s? I am not seeing that. I seeing a trend of off brand stores liquidating fashion of major brand inventory like TJ Max or Marshalls and then Ollies in our market. So what can this mean for your growing business? Opportunity? Sam says yes!

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Sam: [00:00:00] This guy came in and screwed up their account more. If he tried. I mean he was, he was not even putting parent and child eight since together variations were each their own listing. It was a logistical nightmare. And I told them and let us show you what we could do. Let us do work for free for you for a month. And then you’ll decide if you want to work for us. And My,

Cool voice guy: [00:00:25] we focus on the people, the products and the process of ecommerce selling today is your host Stephen Peterson.

Stephen: [00:00:37] If you’re looking for cashflow or you’re looking for another revenue stream. And when I suggest is you have a staff member who shows some interest in this, uh, taking on this project and you look at it as a project and you measured their costs versus what your gain is. Um, then I have a group for you. I have a really strong group for you and it’s Gaye Lisby and Gary raise $1 million arbitrage lists. And what’s cool about this list is, um, those multiple lists. There’s limited number of people on the lists and I’m on one of them. And what you get is you get these daily lists Monday through Friday and they just have all these different things that you can buy. Now. You might go try to buy it and they might be sold out. However you were trying to buy the blue one and we, there’s a pink one next to a lie and then you’d start down that rabbit hole.

Stephen: [00:01:24] And these lists are phenomenal. They’ve consistent, they’ve been out there for a couple of years. And what I like is the people that have joined through my link, and again, I get paid for this, so I don’t want to hide that they stayed with them. And that’s very cool to me because that means something. That means they got value. And so I’ve got a 14 day free trial. The only way you’re going to get this offer is if you go through my link. So it’s a 14 day free trial and you’re going to get either Gaye or you’re going to get Gary, who’s going to onboard you. That’s a big deal because they can find out maybe how to tailor a little bit towards you. Um, and again, I suggest if you have somebody else that you can have handle this for you, that’s how you’re going to grow your business.

Stephen: [00:02:04] Um, they bring in inventory for you. They follow the procedures, you’ve got good receipts, they’re all receipts that should stand up and, and so again, consider joining. You’re going to get a 14 day free trial. So if it doesn’t work, pull out. I get it. Sometimes this doesn’t work. You thought you had a process, you thought you had the right person, you give them the opportunity and they fall short. It happens. But this is a great opportunity to try it, especially if you’ve got a spouse or significant other that wants to help them, the business, but doesn’t have a lot of time. This might be a perfect opportunity. Again, a 14 day free trial. So here’s how you get there. You come through my link in which you come into this episode. You’ll be a link there, but you go to amazing freedom.com, forward slash, momentum, the word momentum, hyphen arbitrage.

Stephen: [00:02:47] Yeah, that’s a lot of stuff to spell, but it’s momentum, hyphen arbitrage. And you’re going to get that link. It’s going to click through and they’ll know it came through us and they’re going to give you that 14 day free trial plus the onboarding and have a discussion with Gaye or Gary and talk about where you are in your business, where you’re going in your business, and let’s see if they can help you. And again, 14 day free trial, try it. And if it doesn’t work out, you move on. But get that team member producing revenue. Everybody, we are in the revenue business. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 388 Sam Cohen. You know, I was thinking about why I’m the one who approached Sam to come on because he has this conference coming up and it’s an east coast conference and it costs us 199 bucks.

Stephen: [00:03:30] Yes, I’m leading with this and you save $50 if you use this code solstice, um, off of his website, Amazon consulting experts.com. And the only reason I pitch it is because it’s east coast and it’s very inexpensive. He puts a top shelf show on, um, definitely suggest you go down the night before, get a hotel. It’s very inexpensive on the Jersey shore and uh, enjoy yourself because the night before there’s, there’s cocktail parties or whatever that you can go to some meetups and you’re going to meet people. That’s the whole key. And this is drivable for me. That’s why I enjoy it. And for 199 bucks, it’s a heck of a deal. Um, I am speaking there, but I’m not getting any money for, for pitching his stuff. This is a chance if you want to meet people, you don’t have to fly to Vegas or go to Orlando. This is a great opportunity if you’re up in this, this part of the world to go to this conference and there’s a lot of speakers, but more importantly, you know, yes, I’ll be a terrific onstage.

Stephen: [00:04:25] Not the deal is you’re going to get to meet a whole bunch of other likeminded sellers. That’s the key, right? And so I just think it’s a great event, um, that they put on and they put on a really nice event. It’s really well done in a really nice places. New places, supposed to be even nicer. So I’m pretty excited about that since June 30th, 2019 so that’s the pitch fest. I do allow him to pitch it because again, we’re, can you meet two or 300 other sellers for 199 bucks? And matter of fact, you could save 50 bucks by using the code. Let’s get into the podcast. All right, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. We’re excited about today’s guest. A repeat from a couple of times and the reason I haven’t back is because the dude knows what he’s talking about and he’s got a breadth of experience from running his own business, but then hundreds of clients that he’s had over the years. Sam Cohen, welcome back Sam. Thanks Dave. I appreciate you having, I appreciate you coming on because I know you’re busy. We were doing in the precall we were both like checking off our list of the 20 projects we’re working on today. Literally today, right?

Stephen: [00:05:30] Not enough hours. Um, I mean, remember I’m part time. I’m spending a lot of my time with my grandkids this week and it really affects my life and, and I, I couldn’t get in until late. I have to cut out early. Um, but as I said to my son, we were talking earlier, I said, this is the beauty of what we do is the freedom to decide when your kids need you. Your grandkids need you, that you can do that. That’s your experience too. Correct. Absolutely. My were just off

Sam: [00:05:57] for about 12 days for spring break for Easter and Passover and I took him to New York City. We took them to the car show, took them to American girl, you know, everything we wanted to do, we were able to do. And I was able to catch up on work by coming to work early this morning and five in the morning, you know, because I don’t have my kids in the morning. So it’s very easy to catch up on work and I get more work done between [5:00] AM and [9:00] AM than I do from [9:00] AM to [5:00] PM because there’s no interruptions.

Stephen: [00:06:31] Right. And there’s fires. All you’re doing is running around putting out fires, right?

Sam: [00:06:34] Yeah. You tend to be reactive rather than proactive and uh, yeah. So it’s an ongoing challenge. I’ve studied time management for years. I’ve studied energy management, which is just as important as time management. And I do my best work in the mornings, so that’s pretty cool.

Stephen: [00:06:57] Me Too. And you know, it’s funny, my son is working with us and so he does all our video and photography and listings and all that stuff. For today we are doing an Fba shipment for a client. And what’s he is a nighttime or so he wants to sleep in, right? I mean he’s 22 I guess he graduates college this week. I’m very proud of him. Um, my daughter too. Oh Wow. We’re getting old. Was her graduation? The university. Oh Wow. Congrats. I mean it’s a, it’s awesome. And then she’s getting married in September. Oh Wow. You got the double, the double win. Isn’t it? So cool. You know, and like I said to him this morning though, I said the beauty is this flexibility and for him to stay late at night or work nights or whatever or sometimes he’ll leave cause we do a lot of video editing or photo editing. He’ll leave and go to a coffee place and hang out. That’s the lifestyle he wants. I don’t care the work, as long as the work gets done, I don’t, I don’t as I tell him all the time, I don’t want to be a boss anymore. I was a boss for so many years. I don’t want to be a boss. The work management, you’ve got to self manage and teaching, teaching that that’s the life skill that I don’t, I know I wasn’t taught until Grad school. How about you?

Sam: [00:08:11] Yeah. Uh, I went to, you know, some of the top schools and they don’t really teach you what’s going to happen after school. They kind of teach you how to live in a box and how to get a job and had a, you know, do a four o one k and work for 40 50 years. And then, you know, when you’re 65 or 75 hopefully you’ll have enough money to retire. And at that point your life is pretty much a, you know, your health thoughts going and you can’t, you don’t really have the energy to travel or whatever you know you want to do. So I always go back to the Peter Thiel quote, he says, if you have a five year plan, ask yourself why you do. And in six months, you know, and I’m, I’m all about the vision boards and imagining my ideal lifestyle and documenting and journaling and you know, I just decided I want to go back to living on the ocean and I, and within a month I made it happen. You know where I’m going to be living on the ocean starting on Wednesday May 1st. I’m super psyched about that.

Stephen: [00:09:23] Well, let me ask you something, because you just talked about all the methods of planning, tracking and that kind of thing. Does that really work for you

Sam: [00:09:32] all? Yeah, that’s, that’s the, the foundation of my life is visualization. And you know, I’ve tried to learn from the smartest people in the world when it comes to business like Warren Buffet, he spends most of his day reading and thinking or Bill Gates. And then when you do, when you do those things for the majority of the day, when it comes time to make decisions, you have all this stuff that you’ve acquired, knowledge in your head, and then the decisions become easy because you’ve done all that preliminary research. I actually real quick on time management, I actually document every hour I spend in a week, 168 hours how I spend it. And then I review it the following week and I say, okay, what can I delegate? What can I outsource? What can I automate? What can I eliminate? You know, a lot of people are busy being busy and they’re not being productive. So

Stephen: