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Stephen Somers is the CEO and Co-founder of Marketplace Superheroes, an 8 figure online education and services business that teaches people how to create a fulltime income selling simple branded products globally on Amazon. Over the last five years, Stephen and his business partner Robert Rickey have grown their company from a single online course to the fully-fledged five-time Two Comma club award winning business that is today serving close to 8000 members. Along the way they have built a global freight company as well an entire software suite to make shipping and ordering products to sell on Amazon as efficient and effective as possible for their clients. Stephen and Robert also run their own 8 figure Amazon business and have sold $12 million dollars worth of physical products globally. Get the Free 7 Day Masterclass Series https://marketplacesuperheroes.com/7day-masterclass
Marketplace Superheroes is all about helping their community of ‘Heroes’ create home based lifestyle businesses selling simple, everyday products globally on Amazon. Their aim is to create the #1 platform for aspiring entrepreneurs to learn how to build a real business from people who have ACTUALLY done it.
Stephen and Mike cover a ton of great stuff in this episode like why a good process is key to turning a good idea into a successful business, why listening to positive, that you are the average of the 5 people you spend most of your time, the trap of listening to positive affirmation speakers like Tony Robbins and Jim Rhone, how you can be successful selling something simple if there is proven demand, how to be successful selling on Amazon, and much more.
And now here’s Steven Somers.
Full Transcript Below
Mentions on the Podcast:
Marketplace Superheroes – How to Start Selling Globally Using Amazon https://youtu.be/shBh-w8JvsI
Marketplace Superheroes – Youtube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/c/MarketplaceSuperHeroesofficial/videos
E Myth Revisited Book and Process – The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It: Gerber, Michael E.: 0099455020992: Amazon.com: Books
Jim Rohn Motivational Speech https://youtu.be/aOOYeMDLgC0
Tony Robbins Push Yourself Everyday https://youtu.be/lEL-y1W1jjg
Jack Canfield It’s Never too late to become a millionaire https://youtu.be/rO02pOreRfk
Brian Tracy 5 Steps to Solve any Problem https://youtu.be/CdVCNjX6pc0
Jay Abraham 4 Power Strategies https://youtu.be/RmO5FRcljNI
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, amazon, sell, products, money, successful, shipping, thought, moved, called, understand, building, bit, mindset, opportunity, mentality, day, big, number., keyword
SPEAKERS
Mike Malatesta, Stephen Somers
Mike Malatesta 00:31
Hey Stephen Welcome to the show.
Stephen Somers 00:37
Well Mike, it’s great to be here, thanks for having me.
Mike Malatesta 00:40
Yeah, I’ve been really excited about doing this because ever since I was introduced to you. I’ve been thinking about okay, so this guy had, you know, like a tough start right he struggled, and then, you know, met a partner and things started to come together, but ultimately, the business that that you’re in, which is helping people be successful on Amazon was something I’d never I’d never thought about before. I never it never even crossed my mind I mean I use Amazon Of course I know how it works but I never thought about it so I, and I think most of the people listening here probably have thought about Amazon as a, as a shopping place but not as an investment or business for themselves so, so I’m really, I’m. Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to it so Stephen, I start every one of my shows with the same question, and it’s a simple one. How did happen for you?
Stephen Somers 01:42
I remember hearing, Dan Kennedy joke about this, you probably answered by saying pain and suffering. But I won’t start that way I’ll say for me was, I mean, a long journey, but a very fortunate one as well because like a lot of people listening or maybe some people listening, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, my late teens and I thought I wanted to get into music and stuff like that and I did that for a long time I thought that’s where I was going to go. Of course I didn’t work out. And that’s absolutely fine. And then I just studying in college for two years. Just before I was 20, and I really got into business at that point, I just loved the theory of business and I studied everything you can imagine when it comes to business theory from like Porter’s Five Forces, which is like super boring business theory through to reading things like the E Myth by Michael Gerber and things like that and just learning a lot. I had no business experience practically though, at all. So, I was working on a job then as a data processor, wild Trinity’s musician in Dublin and moved away up there at the time. And I said to myself, look at the speed up there’s more data, I got to do something in business, I wanted didn’t mark out, you know, for about a year, I got fat lazy and drank too much, and was not very happy. And then I started getting into personal development started reading stuff like the success principles and then there’s actually called How to Get in reality where you want to be a Jack Canfield, that book really started changed my life and I started thinking about, okay, I’ve been taking responsibility for my life. Now, you know, am I blaming other people for why I’m not successful yet, my, my beliefs around money are just terrible like I thought what if I caught my monthly expenses, then I can like free up money but that’s not how money works, because I didn’t know that back then, and the weirdest stupidest revelation that led to me figuring it out and getting here was in my room one night live with 10 other people in Dublin, for a period of time. And I remember being in my room and I said to myself, there’s no way for me to save up 10 grand this year because that was one of these arbitrary goals, I set for myself, I realized the only thing I can do is learn how to make another tanker and on top of what I’m currently making which was not making much money. Now one little revelation sent me down this pathway of, well, the only way I’m going to do that is either become a more skilled or building my own business. And so that led me to my early 20s and 33 now for anybody, wondering that led to me, Googling, how to make money online how to become an entrepreneur, and anybody knows if you google how to make money online, you’re going to find some not so very good things you’re going to find a lot of nonsense. I certainly fell in love nonsense, and I fall in love the nonsense paths for quite some time wasted money on Florida’s fire course and like I can’t do this next part, and all of that. Long story short, though, 2122 years old now 23 years old man, I realized, John business I can really get into I can feel good about it, it’s not like a weird online thing it’s an understandable thing is selling products on the internet, made sense to me, didn’t need to be an expert, and I was like, okay, well, how do we get into them. So we started going down the route of dropship and that was what I thought I wanted to do pretty much not sure what drop shipping is it basically means you have your own website or whenever you sell a product on there, find a supplier who has those in stock, and then sell it to somebody, let’s say that by $50, you’re able to buy it for $20 shipped to you make $30, very basic numbers, yep not fully accurate but you get the idea. That’s what I thought I won’t do. I wasted a whole bunch of time on that. And then I was like, I need someone to help me with this. I’m never going to build a real business doing it, doing this, that’s not, and then my aunt heard about this who lives in Northern Ireland. Luckily for me, she introduced me to this big six foot two, bearded fellow last drink a beer called Robert, who’s still my business partner and to this day. And I met this guy, and he was selling stuff on Amazon and on eBay. He had two warehouses he had eight staff prime. And when I met this fella, I just knew this was the right guy to learn from. I quit my job and moved in with my hand in our spare room. I went up to Northern Ireland and I lived there, I just started working in the warehouse every day with Robert, and he was teaching me everything he knew. And then, over time I started to apply some of that theoretical stuff that I learned that business they had no practical thing to put on it to start applying some of the principles into that company, and over the space of about a year of working together. I was working for free a lot of that year, for that company, where we didn’t need staff, we didn’t need warehouses, we could just sell on Amazon and go 100% selling on that platform. And so I’ve been working together, we need to have made the leap. We got rid of everybody got rid of every warehouse, everything. And we pretty much started from scratch, and our goal was to sell our own branded products across the globe and Amazon, not just in the UK. And we did that. We were selling in the US, UK, all across Europe, and it was all our own branded stuff that we systemize the process of finding things and so we turned it into a very successful business, and we ran that for a number of years, and then people started asking us how we do it. How does that work, how did you make it happen? Yeah. Tell them how we did that, and then we can talk about this as we go along so that’s obviously translated into where we are today, you know, a successful coaching training business afraid company that we wrote now for Amazon sellers, we use it as well as software services for Amazon sellers and just a very successful business that those eight figures a year. At this point in time, and that all started just from that, yeah, two weird Irish guys who like to sell things on the internet.
Mike Malatesta 07:51
And what was what was Robert’s interest in you, I mean I know that your ad made the connection but why would he invest his what he knows and someone like you.
Stephen Somers 08:06
I think he saw something in me. I saw a drive in a hunger that he possessed. And actually, let me pause, one sec there’s birds singing here, and I just shared a really annoying.
08:18
thing going on putting your audio.
Stephen Somers 08:27
I’ll do a clap for you to make it easy to come back here, okay. I just know that slavery never does something that I grew, and I could trade Islam.
Mike Malatesta 08:33
Yeah, cool.
Stephen Somers 08:36
Yeah, so he saw something to me a hunger desire to he possessed, and you know he, I think that was the initial thing. Then he saw how enthusiastic I wasn’t at the whole business. He saw that I was researching heavily I was learning, but I had no practical experience and I think he just said to himself, you know, I gotta cost me money to work with this guy, because he wasn’t gonna pay anything, and he’s good. Then we could figure out something really cool here. And so he started giving me some little exercises to do and things like that before I moved up tombs, I met him at around August of that year I moved up in November, and he could see like from the conversations we were having but I just really listened to what he had to say. I was doing the work he was asking me to do. And he just made sense it was a really no risk proposition for him. And I suppose that if you fast forward today it’s been a brilliant lesson from him. Yeah, and obviously incredibly grateful
Mike Malatesta 09:30
to him also. And it sounds like that’s very, very true. So let me, so let me sum that up I can. So, a woman that I know who just happens to be this kid’s aunt is offering this kid to come work for me for nothing. And I need to do is sort of show him the ropes and see if he can, like grab it and if so, you know, I’ll, I’ll have a tremendous success on my hand that’s kind of what it’s, that’s a quick synopsis of what you just said they’re smart. Yeah, so Roberts a smart dude, your music career. So, or aspirations or whatever you like to call it these days, what, when did you get started. It come from and then I’m really interested in the journey there even though, you know, maybe it didn’t lead to a Grammy but.
Stephen Somers 10:22
Yeah. So I started playing music, though, 11 years old. And my brother passed away around that time, and I use music at that time, as a coping mechanism is a little bit older than these two years older me, and he passed away showed me this thing called Sudan, it just means sudden unexplained death epilepsy, so he basically just went to sleep, suddenly very tragic very tragic. You know I don’t want talk about that because it was very formative experience for me, that has led to a lot of the, the today like no and so I use music as a coping mechanism and then it became, I don’t know I just, I fell in love with it because I think it gave me so much relief in that time, and through my teens, then I was in a number of different bands, and we were always the guys who really organized the gigs, well you know we always packed, packed places here in town, your mics originally a couple of 100 kids in the show, so I was using maybe some sense of a marketing ability. Back then, I was always the one that kind of just had a feel for what would work has to do for the right way to do things, you know, don’t do a show every week do it every couple months so that people want you to do another gig and stuff like that. I really enjoyed all that and I really truly believe that was my destiny. Like, I met this guy and Tommy. Tommy was the old Robbie, and that he also had red hair spray strange, okay, we were like brothers, as well, inseparable. We moved together, while he was in Dublin, a little bit before me but I moved up to him, lived in that house for 10 other people it was one of the guys lived there, and we really thought we were going to do with. And the reason was really down to me, looking back, you know, Tommy was this guy who would just go for. He moved to America actually a number of years ago back all the way back then had nowhere to go, or to stay and just move there just did it. And I just might. I had too much fear as I didn’t know what I can do that the parents were absolutely against it. No, no, no, and I didn’t believe I could do it to be truthful. And so that was one of the reasons that initially didn’t work out like I’m not. Today I’m a very different. I’d say I’m a similar personally, my morals and stuff like that but in my belief system, very different person, they accredit Robert for a lot of that, I will say you changed my life in so many ways, and you’re just like a lot of people, you know people who just don’t believe they can do it. That’s where the more ago I played semiprofessionally quite a bit, was on TV here in Ireland, used to play bass for a couple of different pop bands and stuff like that which is really enjoyable. I was doing that while I was working as a data processor so that was a nice relief from a boring job. But one of the biggest experiences that after the band finished and I was writing some songs myself, and I was sending them to America actually to a company who would critique your songs for commercial ability, commercial, as opposed commerciality and one guy came back and said, you know, your songs are bad and eight, eight out of 10 for commercial ability, but he said in order for you to become a really successful professional songwriter, you need to get yourself to nine or 9.5 There’s no such thing as a 10, and he said in order to get to a 9.5, you might have to do this for the next 10 or 15 years or even sooner but it could take you that long as well. And I remember looking at that and being in my early 20s and thinking, you know, Do I want to keep kind of struggling in these jobs for the next 15 years, I really are passionate about that, and I’ve been studying business at that time and getting interested in this stuff. And I just said to myself, I’m really not. I’m not passionate enough to stick it out. And I’m delighted I didn’t because you know I’m really looking back as a singer; I just wasn’t good enough. And my strengths, lay in other areas that I focus on now and yeah, so you know some heartache there for sure, some rejection there for sure, really taught and brought me to the right place, which is,
Mike Malatesta 14:24
I’m really grateful for as well. And did he, excuse my ignorance here but did he tell you or did you know what would have to happen to elevate you from where you were to a nine or 9.5?
Stephen Somers 14:42
He didn’t tell me I don’t think he could tell me. I’m relating is like a very, very subjective thing right and it changes all the time. Sure, well there’s some real fundamentals of songwriting, you can learn if you want to be a commercially successful songwriter, and yeah, I mean, to this day I love a hit song like I love it, I think it’s cool I love. I really respect the process I respect Popeye or just because people don’t realize some of the greatest pop songs of all time are some of the best crafted songs while playing under crafted as well, not just that just happened, and I really loved that process but as I say, I just don’t think I loved it enough. And looking back, you know, if I had had a better mentality, I would have got an answer to that question, but yet again, I didn’t have the same belief systems that have today, like I know if it was me today, I would go to everywhere I could possibly go train speak to anybody I can possibly speak to send them my stuff, sit down with them pay them the money in order to get that feedback. But of course, at that time, I wasn’t taking full responsibility for everything. I was blaming and all the rest of them if you have those people cloud mindset, but I don’t believe in the word mindset because what do we want to set our mind, we want to have a mind flow we want to change and be open to changing. At that time yeah like I just my, my mind flow or mentality was not powerful you know it was very submissive.
Mike Malatesta 16:02
And what about Tommy What could he make it.
Stephen Somers 16:06
No, he is not social media anymore. Last, Tommy, he actually was doing really well in real estate in Nashville, he lives there now. Okay, well, real estate, and still involved in music now. But real estate was weirdly, he’s brilliant at that because he’s just such a driven guy’s great speaker, and that was, I would say he was better at that than probably music, you know, and it’s funny that sometimes we. It’s like, No. It really impacted me as well. He said, there’s nothing worse than meeting somebody who is just obsessed with being successful. He said it’s the most off putting thing in the world that you’re just so obsessed with that and you’re going on about that all day. It’s just not very endearing. And I’d say for myself, and I can’t speak for Tommy, but I can just suggest as well. We were those guys like we really want to make it in music. We didn’t have the right intentions like how we wanted to be famous or whatever we want people to say we were wonderful, probably still do it or their childhood or whatever, you know, we didn’t. I don’t think we really wanted to be in it for the love of the craft, and that’s where we went wrong.
Mike Malatesta 17:26
And this timeframe, because it seems so you’ve, you’ve said, you know your belief system may not have been in the right spot but, but, as I listened to. So you’re doing all the you’re doing all these proactive things to become successful, you know your booking strategy or marketing strategy or you’re being frugal, I guess, living with 10 other people I don’t know where that comes from it’d be interesting to see how you made your way into that, but then at the same time, you know you’re saying well, you know, my belief system wasn’t quite there and it seems like so I’m wondering is it your beliefs, and I’m not questioning you, I’m just curious. Was your belief system really not there or was the break that you needed to reinforce what to, you know what I’m trying to say?
Stephen Somers 18:18
Actually it’s a very interesting point. And I would say that there’s probably a bit of both, I would say some of the, I think there’s a thing like you know you can confuse activity over achievement. Right. And so, back then, I was doing a lot of things, but they weren’t the best use of my time like today I meet people all the time and they’re doing lots of things right, but they’re not seeing the results when you
actually look at what they’re doing. It’s like typical, I want to be successful in business, so what am I gonna do, I’m going to go get a local name, you know, I’m going to go get a business card right, and okay, they may help you, but I think the best thing for them to know, and so if I was to really look back critically, I hear what you’re saying and I actually appreciate what you’re saying, and also something else that there’s a degree of, you know that that’s 14 years ago, and I suppose it’s very easy to feel like, well, it’s, we’re so far away now that but actually you were doing a lot back then and that’s maybe true but I could have been doing so much. I could be more effective in what I was doing like yeah, I reached out to for example, I would reach out to different songwriting. People like Max Martin was one of the most famous commercial songwriters of all time, Britney Spears all those people wrote songs for them. But I would send one email to him, and they will come back and say, No thanks. I’ve never followed up.
Mike Malatesta 19:41
Okay, yeah, yeah, okay. Okay. And, you know, there’s a, there’s a, I don’t know those Jim Rohn or somebody that somebody said, you know you’re the product of the five people you spend the most time with the average yeah and I’m thinking about you with these 10 other people who may not have a good average. That’s what I was wondering if it was, yeah.
Stephen Somers 20:09
Yeah, look, I’m very grateful for that time in my life too because that’s where I met my wife, and she, she was great, you know, she met me when I had nothing, no money she had money, she was looking after me. And obviously, a lot has changed in that time and I’m really fortunate and she’s always stood by me and always been there for me. Well yeah like I mean, the people I live with we’re not people you would want to be the average of nice people, but you know, from my point of view of being proactively going out trying to do things, you look at where most of those people are now they’re, you know, they’re, they’re doing what they’re doing but they, they’re not in a place where I would want it to be, to certainly there was that element. But you know it’s just there’s so many things about being successful in business and life that are really simple like simple I’ll give some examples, but I just wasn’t following, you know, like for instance, for example, one of my beliefs is one of the greatest shortcuts to success in anything, is to find a pre proven process, right. And just do that execute on that. And then you can innovate later on. So, for example, I was in my job data processing, and I will be there every day like searching different business ideas, and if I found one website that had that business idea on there. I would be like I can’t do that now because it’s just one person in the world is doing that.
Mike Malatesta 21:30
Okay, sure,
Stephen Somers 21:31
the belief of like I have to make a Facebook or an Instagram or whatever, that’s the only way to be successful, which is complete and utter nonsense like not true, but a lot of people think that way because of how business success is sold to us you know Shark Tank Dragon’s Den over here. It’s all about the ID, it’s the idea whenever the idea is really important, but a very small element really in the overall scheme of success when it comes to business. So even understand that well if I just went out and found a process that’s working for someone, and even if I didn’t do that, I’m going to get way more experienced doing that than I am trying to come up with some new idea that’s never been thought of before. So, things like that are like, anyone can look at that, and anyone can learn from that, it’s the old Tony Robbins success leaves clues, and it’s true. So that’s one example. Another thing I would say is, I fell for this trap, which was, I would listen to positive information, all day, Jim Rohn talks about this you quote him earlier on, he says, you know, you can’t just listen to the positive stuff. Believe as a phrase that that’s what I would do I would, I would walk to work, and listen to like Tony Robbins Jim Rohn and Jack Canfield Brian Tracy, all those people and listen, listen, listen, listen. Listening get fired up. Then it’d be like okay well what practically can I do, yeah that’s the thing, those people are great speakers’ great ideas, but the practicality was on the low side, so I just didn’t have a never map. So meeting Robert I didn’t ask why he was such a big impact. He had a process that was working and apply just follow that and learn that I could see the path of success because I could see the product laying around the warehouse is very visual to me. Like, we pass it off to people nowadays, obviously. But that’s it, like, you have the simplest business idea in the world. And people want the like it proved them that, you know, you can be successful, how successful that depends on you and the process that you put behind how you sell which so, man, I didn’t know any of this stuff back then I was like, and I didn’t feel like that for sure.
Mike Malatesta 23:39
Well, that’s funny. The, the idea thing you talked about is, I think that’s really powerful because you people are in a trap, sort of like what you were in where you’re like, ah, somebody beat me to the to the idea or whatever, but ideas are everywhere. It’s execution on an idea that’s the thing that makes the difference I think most of the time now some ideas maybe they’re just so phenomenal that you could execute very poorly and still, but that’s rare. The execution on it is really the thing that’s make makes or breaks the idea, I think.
Stephen Somers 24:22
I mean, even though this, there’s a nervous thing to suggest, which I didn’t know back then I know now, which is when you understand a niche or a subsection of America as well, from a business standpoint, it’s amazing, the opportunities you can see within that space. So, again, getting practical it’s like, I got into selling on Amazon from eating rubber and selling on eBay as well. And then when you’re in that market then you’re seeing what’s going on. You started to see all these opportunities, and so air freight company is a great example. Have there been freight companies before ours, of course, millions, but we came out as focusing on what would an Amazon seller one need in order for it to be an amazing phrase business as service is a no brainer. And we were only able to come up with that because we were in the market if you understood that the problems that those people have and had. And so it’s vital even though as well when you get into a tight space, a niche whatever an interest, you understand everything going on in that market, there’s, there’s, there’s so many opportunities even within moments, I didn’t know that as well. And that’s another thing if you’re on the outside constantly looking in to an industry, you can see opportunities because you don’t understand the various factors in there you don’t understand what people want one of the biggest problems men struggle with, was when you do, you realize, oh my god, like, the opportunities are endless, and there’s other, there’s other, I’ll tell you one more thing on that if you don’t mind. Sure, which is, again, I’m a huge fan of Jay Abraham, where my, my mentors, spoke to me this year, which is gray and a one to one call for a few hours, and like Jay talks about I think is a great way for a lot of people to start to which is just understanding that every business has resources right has like clients has potentially non planes, it has equipment, machinery has all these things they put money into. If you’re able to find another business that has a problem, and this business that is the solution to this business problem. You can literally connect them together, get no money whatsoever, and you can make some money doing that now. Will you be a millionaire overnight? No, but that can get you you’re in, and even now I teach my clients, even though we teach on the Amazon being these other little projects that we do from time to time. And one of the things I tell them is like mean if you can mastery some as simple as learning how to write great emails for a business, most, most businesses have all these emails, and doing nothing but I know from experience that that is the most important thing in a company, so if I can show you how to do it the way I do it. I know it’s proven succeed, you go into businesses, you can be a value to somebody straight away because you have domain level expertise you have a way to make a business more successful, you have a way to make a return that people can see very quickly. And that is something that I believe is a real game changer. That’s just not talked about, you know. So,
Mike Malatesta 27:21
Jay Abraham, who you mentioned. What I like about him is that he kind of like what you said right, you could, you’ve got systems and processes or whatever in your business that work really well. There, there are a lot of industries that just don’t know about those systems and processes, it’s not like, so it’s not like you have to, you know, he always talks about how he’s worked in 1000s of industries, he’s like, I don’t know 1000s of industries. I know a few things and then I bring them to different industries and all of a sudden, things they didn’t know so it seems like I know you know more, but he also builds on, you know, borrow ideas from other places right and if it’s an idea is working in this industry and I can bring it to this industry, why would I not, why would you not do that. Take it. Yeah, you don’t have to go so much deeper in lane and industry to, you know.
Stephen Somers 28:15
Yeah, well, but like I mean, you can do so it’s Jay a local thing a little bit Jay’s he understands that truly businesses are unlimited when they think in the right way. And certainly, I have seen that to be true, like I’ll give you one practical example of something we’re doing now. Nobody’s doing, and we’ve just stumbled across it because it just makes logical sense and that is that we need to we need to have more people on our team who are good at marketing, email marketing funnel creation whatnot. We need more people who can speak to clients, help them solve their problems, point them in the right direction so you can lose the turn that enrollments right. I looked at that and I was like, you know, why would I go outside of our own place, we have brilliant people in here. They’re looking for an opportunity they understand what we’re doing, they’re building the business themselves, they get it like they’re a perfect person to speak to a prospective claims to point him in the right direction, or they’re a perfect person to come in, learn how to write good emails and can write some emails for the company, our sister companies like a phrase business from whatever sounds like a no brainer here, which my other team introduced me was paid apprenticeships, right. Like, that’s such a smart idea like we can just, people pay some money, but we actually can let them come into our business for three to six months, and they can literally sit down and sit in on team calls, they can learn from our team but how we do those specific functions, we can give us some practical experience I can write some emails we can see how good they are in the followings here but it is the guy should be in the business, learning, and then if they want they can go elsewhere, or the best people aren’t people want to stick around, we can give them a position at the end, or you can put them into long term projects that we’re working on something like that it’s just not been done in the industry, and it’s just down to a good idea borrowed somewhere else there’s electricians, that are applying it to aerospace and then providing value to our planes because, where are they going to get the opportunity to come in and sit in on a 15 to $20 million per year business, learn everything. And then, if you want to go through yourself for a client, you can if you want to stick around, that’s available as well you know.
Mike Malatesta 30:28
Yeah, most times, people bring in apprentice. And it’s about getting the coffee or making copies or whatever. It’s not about, it’s not about having that kind of access. That’s phenomenal. So before we get into the sort of the weeds of this, I want to go back to two things that you said if you don’t mind, one was, I want to make sure people understand your perspective on mindset. So you said that you don’t, you’re not a believer in the Word. If I heard you right, could you explain you explain your thinking on that because I’m kind of fascinated by it because so many people are mindset mindset mindset.
Stephen Somers 31:11
Well, we use word mindset, too, when we’re talking about a belief system, way of thinking, it’s just the list, the word renews the main great books about mindset Carol Dweck’s being some of the best, and it’s quite literally called mindset. And that’s really interesting, the better growth mindset and a bit of fixed mindset, that’s the main portion of her work for anybody who doesn’t know growth mindset means I’m not good today but I’m getting better all the time, essentially, that I expect to be good straightaway, fixed mindset is, I’m not going to this right away I suck. So that’s the basic of that work. The way I look at that is I heard someone say it it’s not it’s not for me. It’s like if you think about the etymology of words too. I think it’s important word we headed toward get formed and you’ve got mind, and you’ve got set. So then, describing our mindset. If especially if you’re not where you want to be, and your belief system is. This is called so bizarre, it’s not going to get you to where you want to be, why would you want to. Why would you focus on that word like why would you why would you label it mindset? Whenever there’s a more, I think, exciting idea of a mind flow or a mentality. I use the word mentality because a mentality can change, it can grow can expand. It’s also a mentality is a way of thinking about something, it’s a set of beliefs financially, but I just don’t like the word mindset anymore because I just number one’s overused. And number two, yeah, it’s just like, think about it, I don’t want my mind to be said, I want my mind to be constantly expanding rolling changing, and so I just, I’m more excited about the word mentality. For me, I’m not saying anybody’s wrong if they want to use the word mindset. I’m just giving people another way, because language is binding. Yeah man, here’s another good example, like if you have a mentor once said to me another mentor, Jim said, Steven, you know, use the word need all the time. And I was like, do I, he’s like yeah, you’re saying Yo I need more clients I need more money I need these things. It’s like if you keep saying the word needles and you’re gonna come in at five Gianni, you sound ridiculous. He’s like, why not change the word needs to have an opportunity to and see how that works. So it’s like, why don’t need more clients have an opportunity to work and more than once. I have an opportunity to make more money. I have an opportunity have an opportunity. So then you start understanding. Well you have a mentality is constantly changing and evolving, and you’re actually speaking into the language of opportunity more and more so now you start to see possibilities where they weren’t there before. And that’s really important, I think, when you are talking about business building or anything, you got to always be looking at understanding where the opportunities are, how can I uncover more, and how can I see everything I do is unlimited, and also that there’s multiple levels to what I’m doing. There’s always a deeper level, there’s always, I can always go deeper I can always do more in a positive sense, that’s my take on that.
Mike Malatesta 34:21
I like that. I like how he asked you to sort of just because words matter right words are important, you, they may mean something which is the point you were making and the point he was making with need as opposed to create an opportunity, and I like mentality Steven that because mentality is flexible, because you can have different mentalities to different things toward different things in your life, and they aren’t conflicting, that’s just the way it is, right, where mindset as you said is mind set, you can’t, you can’t have flexibility in a mindset, right, because that’s right. Yeah, interesting.
Stephen Somers 35:01
I get excited about things like that because it’s amazing how much can unlock in the second. Yeah, that needs to have an opportunity to unlock the light in me. Also there’s other things we have called weasel words so that we can easily mean other things, you know, could maybe possibly might would should try trying. Jim Tommy’s like you got to speak in the affirmative. What will happen to well it’s going to happen, and not what might happen, and I was like Oh, does not seem a bit strange if you’re maybe talking to a client and you’re always saying what will happen. A bit arrogant and he’s like, well no, because why would anybody want to hear you talk about what might happen, what would happen, they do the work they put in the stacks, and Robert says, it becomes inevitable, and I like that word to inevitable, it’s an interesting mark.
Mike Malatesta 35:52
So the other thing I wanted to explore was the nonsense that you said you found, when you were first looking for a way to make money on the internet you were talking about Googling, how to make money on the internet and you found nonsense because I think a lot of people, at least a lot of people that I are, they’re a little skeptical, you know like when and you hear about these people who create businesses on that are supposed to train you to become something. And what ends up happening a lot of times is that the. It’s a revenue model for someone who’s telling you that they can train you, but they don’t, you know,
Stephen Somers 36:36
yeah, the paradox in practice.
Mike Malatesta 36:38
Yeah, so can you. So yeah, what was some of the nonsense you were what, what are some of the nonsenses you encountered and
Stephen Somers 36:46
it was around. So it’s it was a misunderstanding of the revenue model. So, you know, a great revenue model for businesses is affiliate marketing I mean Amazon grew their entire business through affiliate marketing, that’s how they, they launched their associates program, but the misunderstanding them for me was that, you know, the only way to do affiliate marketing is to talk about, make money online programs, you know, so you’re talking about, as you just said like how much money you’re gonna make, and then when you get into it you realize, well, all this person is doing, is they’re literally talking about, you know, if you sell buying program to other people, they’ll sell our program to other people and then it becomes like a pyramid scheme. But multisensory American like that’s just one kind of branch of that. And so for me I just build this belief like that well affiliate marketing is like a scam. Right, it’s not a scam it’s just my, my mindset maybe back then and when and how the back then, was, was wrong. But there’s stuff that as well. I guess you know there was just, there’s lots of other stuff, I mean people are getting into forex and all this and then we have crypto obviously mean crypt crypto investing, there’s nothing wrong with that actually it’s going to be, you know, Bitcoin, I do believe as the ability to be the future of currency, we’ll have to see if it eats or not but the problem again with Bitcoin it’s like the best strategy with Bitcoin is to buy and hold and don’t sell it, whereas if like, if I, if I sold you a course for $500 which was like buy bitcoin don’t sell it, I mean, it’s like, I don’t need to do a little course to learn that. So there’s that kind of in two people are creating work at times in things where the better strategy would be to buy and hold something, so there’s that kind of element of things too, and really the biggest issue is, people want, you know, big results and they don’t want to put any effort in and that’s not always the fault of the Creator, but always oftentimes it’s the fault of the person doing the work you know.
Mike Malatesta 38:51
Yeah, and I love when, when I was reading about marketplace superheroes. And I think even on your LinkedIn it, you know, you say, if you’re looking to like get rich quick, you know, sort of take all the shortcuts or whatever this is not, this isn’t what we do when it’s not what we do we build, at least I read through the lines we help people build sustainable long term businesses.
Stephen Somers 39:18
Yeah, so when it comes to mark those up runs what I like about and always have like bet is we’re teaching people how to sell their own products, on a platform where there are millions of customers. We’re not saying, you know, take our training program, then don’t ever sell anything on Amazon, and just go and sell our training program again and again and again and you’ll make money doing that. And then the next person will do the same, and the next person will do the same. We’re very, we’re very focused on, well, we’re building a business, some are showing you how to build a business selling your own stuff on Amazon, taking your own risk. Let’s just call it as well, even though I don’t really like the word risk. I can talk about that for sure but I’m not really a big fan of that I don’t think it’s labels put on things. So it’s a very practical thing that people can go and do. And the second thing I like about what we do is we say look, in order for us to be successful long term. We have to get you shipping with us, without a freight company right now, the only way you’re going to keep shipping better for a company, is that our material works, and you can sell more products, so there’s a nice partnership form, in that if our program is a little crap. Does Mark, you know, people won’t ship anything, so we will not make money long term. And then, you know, our business will not be there but obviously we’ve been doing this now for seven years at this point in time, it’s really grown a lot more aggressively over the last few years just because we’ve been in the market so long, but we’re seeing it now like I mean, just to give some numbers on that last year 2020 We shipped 2 million items from China to our warehouses, and we just had the US, UK, a little bit of Australia. Now we have Canada as well. And this year we projected we would ship 6 million items that are members and her own items as well. But actually, the current trajectory is like 10 to 12 million items this year from two to 12 Girls on last year, which, if it continues it’s gonna be an issue because we’re gonna have warehouse issues need more space, but I suppose that’s a nice situation to be in where, if we’re full of crap, you can be successful long term, and it keeps us accountable, you know key and it keeps focusing on the people that are going to go and do this and are going to be successful. Whereas what a lot of programs are doing is they’re counting on the fact that people are not going to go and do the work are not going to be successful, and they’re just trying to put more stuff in from the out of time, just because that’s how they’re making their money whereas for us, it’s like, we’ve only ever taught how to sell on Amazon for last seven years. Yes, now we’re adding in some other stuff like building brands on your own site and different things like that, they’re just in there because they make sense, and our audience are thankful that we’re increasing their knowledge and skill base for most of our time we’ve never moved, and that sort of thing to some people who’ve talked about selling on Amazon, and then it wasn’t quote unquote hot anymore, meaning we’re not people just like flocking to buy horses at Amazon, they were gone, they’re off the similar thing they’re off the crypto they’re off to, you know, building a social media agency or whatever, which has never been there, we’ve always spoken, and we’ve reinvested in our company we’ve invested millions of dollars now of our own money. Never had insightful knowledge we’re afraid business, because we know like if we can provide great services, we can make it easy for people to actually do the business, rabid about the people that are going to actually do it, and that’s what we’ve done. And so far, that’s been really worked great for us, and it’s just given me a lot of confidence, you know like we do these case studies on our YouTube channel and people can see, these are real people, regular people came in, learned a pre proven process like I talked about earlier, and just went and executed on and did it, and they’re getting the results now. And as you mentioned earlier on. Yeah, like many times like our members, they’re celebrating doing their first $1,000 in sales in a day in sales in the month, and some people are telling their daughters, it’s like, well, it’s $1,000 More than you thought, cuz you haven’t even started yet, number one, right, then those same people started giving $1,000 sitting off they’re doing 30 grand a month 50 grand a month. And everyone’s like, What’s the secret to their success. Obviously selling, Getting Started products. Products they’re investing, they’re putting in money into their business, and that is another thing it’s like people believe on online businesses some difficult thing, like it’s not really a real business, whereas it is, it’s a company. And so if we were going to go out and start a coffee shop somewhere. We will invest 10s of not even 100,000 Or even more to do that. Whereas when we go on to sell products on Amazon, or any other online business for that matter. What’s everyone talking about, well, what’s the least amount of money I can get started with, how can I do this for like 200 bucks, I always tell those people. That’s just the wrong mentality, right, because you’re going to end up doing all the courses, not getting anywhere fast but never the real answer is, is process that’s investing, and that’s how you get successful.
Mike Malatesta 44:39
So someone like me who’s completely ignorant I’m saying I’m looking at this and saying okay well I have you know how it works so I’m sort of teeing it up for you to tell me. But you know I’ve got a product, what, why don’t I just go directly to Amazon and say, sell my sell my product, I mean what is obviously there’s obviously there’s a benefit to working with, with you. How does it change the first point?
Stephen Somers 45:14
Too many people can take things right literally right but yeah, I would first of all go into the How did you arrive at that product right once we’re out there and we’re happy, makes sense to sell on Amazon, we’re looking at Amazon and I look at anything else that’s important. Then from there, why would we sell ourselves and use the FBA versus vendor Central, which is where you’re talking about where you would sell your products to Amazon. I’d say a couple of reasons number one time actually sells on Amazon, you have to have something significant for them to want to buy it and sell it on the platform. So the second thing is, honestly, I believe it’s even if you weren’t big like and there are companies that are being big don’t actually sell Amazon directly, they just sell on the platform and they send their inventory in FBA, it makes a lot of sense because, you know, if you were going to be calling like Amazon and you’re sending an inventory, manage so many rules like you know, rebates and all this kind of stuff and like, they’re going to give you so much red and that there’s reap returns like what are you going to do and all this kind of stuff, whereas if you actually just leverage the platform, you become a third party seller on there, you send in some of your inventory to the Amazon warehouses, you have more control. But also, it’s just easier, you’re just not dealing with this big Goliath and trying to get money out of them and whatnot and it’s just not available to everybody so selling through FBA Fulfilled by Amazon is great. Now, good and the bad news. The good news is it’s great numbers. You could deem this the bad news, but we’ve obviously already solved the problem for people that don’t know us and don’t work in our freight business for example, you can’t just send in 1000s of units to Amazon anymore. He used to be able to, but you can’t do it anymore because they’re just like, don’t send the same, all these units that are unproven we want to sell products that are gonna turn faster. So nowadays you can only send in a certain quantity depending on what you’re selling. That’s what you need to have a partner like ghosts, because then we have a pre Amazon location in multiple countries, not just the US, we’re able to store your products before the Amazon also what happens if your products get damaged in transit labs if you get stuck in customs. These are all issues that are alleviated, when you have a pre Amazon location. So again, we offer that obviously we’re afraid business, we don’t work with us. Getting a freight forwarder and stuff like that. You can do it, but man, it’s a real pain. And also, if you’re only going to ship a small number of units, which a lot of people over understanding myself included, you don’t want to be working with a freight forwarder assuming target fortune ship from China, you want to be working with ourselves, we understand you, we understand what you’re looking to do we make it very cost effective because we’re shipping containers of our own containers with our own members products on there as well as their own. We’re not just getting a random container and trying to buy space and so that’s another really important thing.
Mike Malatesta 48:03
Okay. So you let me, let me make sure I have this so people who, who, you teach. And we’ll get into the teaching part, but I just want to understand the forward freight forwarding thing. So you have a contract. Maybe it’s not a contract, I don’t know but with Amazon, let’s say, so you’re able to deliver to them from a lot of different parties is that do I have that right.
Stephen Somers 48:28
That’s the beauty like there’s no contract which is lovely. Okay, there’s just there’s a, there’s an Amazon, there’s an agreement that they have that you would click that you agree to but there’s no contract or anything. Okay, well, the products are absolutely yours are not Amazon at all. All you’re doing is you’re sending some stock of yours into their warehouse there’s they’re storing that in their warehouse still yours, not Amazon’s, and then you’re making your products available for sale on the Amazon platform, then every time a product is sold on I think I already have a product sold Amazon or pig, packing and shipping that product to your to their customer traffic and right now, their customer on your behalf, and they’re doing the customer support, related to the order so if the orders late, and someone wants to know where it is they’ll talk to Amazon, they want to talk to you. It’s a huge benefit because customer support, I’m telling you I did it for many years with Robert. It’s a nightmare, you’re on all day messaging people and we’re really, they’re just unreasonable, so it’s not a nice thing to have to do. So Amazon’s hugely beneficial from that point of view. So what happens then is you pay a monthly fee dams up pens many countries you sell it, it’s usually about 4050 bucks a month, that kind of money for the likes of us, and you actually get to access their customer base for that as in like their products, you can put up on the platform, there’s millions of people, so your research process is obviously really important than to sell the right thing that people are looking for it’s not too competitive obviously. But then from there, every time I was upset you sell from Amazon take a commission, usually about 15% of the sales price, then when they’re packing, shipping your item, they’re charging you for that as well. But when you have your numbers right, which again we have software and whatnot, where people can plug in all their numbers before they even place an order so they can see to the center which are going to be making at a particular sales price, you’ve got a lot of confidence then because you know, after all is said and done I paid every single fee or the important the item I pay the sales tax, I know I’m making 30% of the sales price in the hand, as net profit before tax for corporate tax, and that’s where you want to be if you’re selling something 20 bucks, you want to be making $6 is 30% between $20 and that’s a key thing, and that’s another really important point is like having the right calculators, we can put in the size of the product, the weight and the product, you can put in. I mean so much more simple stuff but they’re some of the main, some of the main things that you got to put in there, but you understand that, then you can categorize what wavebands in what size batteries and in off the field, it would be like an Amazon, how much is going to cost to import that because you know how big it is how heavy it is. These are important things, and their tools make it really easy to do that again if you didn’t have a tool where you can put in all that information, you’d have to figure it all out. And the trouble is, there’s, there’s calculators that Amazon put it there, don’t actually include the import costs, so you might be figured out. 30% is not even fair to your import cost yet, which is why our tools are important from that perspective as well having the right like guidance is important no one, no one these things and also, I would say finally, I met a lady one time, broke my heart. She was telling me that she shipped us a pallet of goods, which you know as we call it, two cubic meters. Might ship that with us for less than $1,000, from China, she paid $5,000 just shipped them, which is ridiculous. Like, it’s so ridiculous but she didn’t know any better, she didn’t have any help. And that’s the thing too, if you don’t have knowledge in this area. You can get ripped off by these unscrupulous people, and we’re really big on helping people avoid that, you know,
Mike Malatesta 52:12
and have those, just as an aside, have those shipping costs, gone up a lot recently because of the container shortage and port issues.
Stephen Somers 52:22
cost has trebled. But yeah, that’s, that’s one of those things we actually allow people to pre buy it or shipping, right. So think of it that we’ve presold frame at the old rate, so whenever people are shipping now, we’re not making any money we’re breakeven sometimes you know slight loss. That’s, that’s just the way it is at the moment because they, we have a container shortage, as you mentioned, there’s a massive amount of demand for consumers, all across the world right now, but I don’t think it’s gonna last forever. I mean that’s just a period of time, the late like the price of oil and whatnot, it’ll come down all the time. But we’ve had to obviously respond to that to our new rates where you can pre buy our higher notes after the, Well, yeah.
Mike Malatesta 53:07
So how does someone decide or who’s ideal to work with you, I’m trying to figure out, because I’m trying to think about in my own mind, you know, if I had to like work out a product, what kind of product, how much is there a sell point that’s, you know, important, you mentioned all this, the shipping stuff with the weights and the dimensions and all that, but just, you mean you sell a lot more than free forwarding um that’s just the whole system who’s, who’s the kind of person that would get gets the most benefit out of, out of work.
Stephen Somers 53:47
Typically we find the age group of the perfect person is about 45. Now, 40 to 55, age, usually the reason for that is when they’re always usually more successful is that accumulated a bit more money in their life, and a few life experiences, and they understand money into a business to be successful. The next thing you typically find is people usually working in a pretty good job. They’re making 60 grand plus a year, typically, and that’s also important to have some investable capital, and probably into the business. Aftermath and we find, typically, like the very specifics are typically married usually have two kids or more. We’ve seen that from a research that we’ve done. And again that family aspect has people you know I want to have more time with my family, I want to have more political and take vacations together. Now sometimes it’s I want to go see my grandkids a bit more often I’m going to be working all the time. So that so then that creates that real, real desire for actual freedom you know where I can bring my laptop and I can still work and all of that on from that, then usually people say things like, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mentality of always wanting to do something this, a lot of the passes on the kids want to do this for charity. I’ve always had this mentality of have never been able to turn into a real business before and this stands this makes sense I know what happens on these I know it’s a trillion dollar company, I get that I know how products work and you just make sense is logical to me. So that’s the type of person usually and then where do they hang out and say, usually they’re in good positions and management and stuff like that real estate, and also find as well, interesting a lot of professions have moved over to work with us some of our most successful clients like are people a dentist and stuff like that, where their dad trading time for money which is really cliche and it’s true, but they’re very aware of that, it’s like, no, do I want to be looking in someone’s mouth for the next 25 years, you know, not really. So, take some of the things that make good money, I can put it into something that’s controllable and the return is 100%, as in every time you sell a product you should be doubling your money. I know I said 30% turnaround, but that’s just like the percentage of your sales price, it’s the same number, it’s just expressed differently, basically. So your initial investment you would want to double that turn into 100% That’s what you’re looking for there. So then they know when to buy put in, we had a guy, Steve, he’s a dentist. Great example. I don’t want to say the surname because he doesn’t want to say it. He’s a great client of ours. He started with us but two years ago. You get a little more now, didn’t take it seriously for a while, then took it seriously 50 grand in the business, I’d say, and this year you should do $750,000 in revenue, or you were sending a net profit before tax, but he’s not actively pushing it that heavily in the healing sells a handful of products, you know, so is everyone gonna do that. No, but that’s the type of claim that we love and. And so, yeah. They’re the white people whereas the people are coming to us, and I know they’re not gonna be around for long is they want to shortcut all time. No one put money into the business right haven’t got much life experience yet and they’re still looking for the shiny object, the magic bullet. Usually it was Mark. No business was made in Poland, I hate to break it to the listeners, no business has got it, but there’s definitely shortcuts, but there’s no magic bullet, like there’s no like, I even now I built our own YouTube channel, and we are very consistent, we put a really good stuff. We’ve doubled our viewership against 2020 So far, which is great, but of course we’re still like amp up our videos don’t get 20,000 views every week you have to get like three or 4000 or 2000, so that there is that can creep into your mind, your brain to an instrumentality to and you have to remind yourself not like all these big numbers of people, a lot of them. Number one, if they got there could be they’re usually outliers. And number two, if they’re not an outlier, and I’m not an outlier, it’s I’m doing this 11 years now. It was a process, understand the process, and that’s the break from them to Unicom successful,
Mike Malatesta 57:58
well there’s also breakthroughs to like if you follow a process and you’re getting 2000 or whatever, you’re going to and you want more, you’re going to be one focused on what do I need to do to get more like maybe my contents not perfect or whatever but you’re also going to be talking to people who get more like okay so what, you know you’re going to be seeking out information I think if, if the contents.
58:27
Stephen Somers Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean even now it’s interesting YouTube’s like videos remade says 19 Some of them are had pretended to use them, you know, so like that compound has happened more people watching that over time, same like on Amazon, you know, more products in your business more people looking at more deeper buying compounds more markets it compounds, same American superheroes more people join them, they tell other people and then more people join that’s a little evil. Everything’s comprehending, and the only way you can comprehend something is you have to stay, right.
Mike Malatesta 58:56
So let me, let me ask about the dentist again because this is really important that, and you don’t have to use specifics about this dentist but. So, a dentist working full time, you know, wants to diversify, maybe eventually not have to trade hours for money. Where does it done and so the money part, I get so he can come up with 50 grand, but how does it Dennis pick products, like how did he, how does he decide, not just pick them but find it all that stuff, I mean that’s, yeah. Well, I mean, it’s gonna be tricky to get into all the specifics about them as much as they can,
Stephen Somers 59:35
a good understanding about yourself specifics. Now we might get people. Okay okay okay. It’s not a little but it’ll be good. So, first things first, there’s some fundamentals, the number one fundamental is that we fulfill them, and we don’t create them, really important. So we’re looking at things that are already selling or already performing, but the second element of that is then the current competition, because there is competition for those products. The available offerings. Not very good listings at grade progress self is reviewed badly. There’s not much variance in America everything kind of looks the same. There’s only a couple of them. So there’s that element too so the competition is the correct competitive profile. So we look at that then obviously as well. We’re making sure the product is not something that we can sell nonsense ridiculous, but you know you could be fooled because you could look at something that happens on the selling and think you can sell it has you decided, Amazon can sell it but then we check those things as well. Okay, ultimately, like there’s some fundamental rules, how do you arrive at those products come in different ways, but you have to understand the next step which is. So, there’s a thing called keywords Amazon just keywords anywhere. When we search a keyword on Amazon, on the platform, it will come back and they, you know, one of 2000 results one of 223 results, then we search in its top left hand corner. So what we want to see that is a keyword research. We want to see that there’s 1000, or less results, number one, so now that’s not just put the product and it just gives you a feel for how many listings contain these keywords on the platform. If it’s three results. And then, and that will be great if the next step is draped if it said 50,000 results, it would not be so great, but it wouldn’t kill the product, then we move to the next step, and I’ll get to the key how we get to the keyword and sec. So we’re gonna do the next step which is okay we need to check the competition now. So how can we know how big a market is real product. We have to go on the bestseller rank, that’s on Amazon and it was number 50,000 Number 20,000 in kitchen at home, whatever. So we want our products to be less than 50,000 bestseller rank, but we want to see like how many different products are there. And if there’s a Seders two products. One is 2001 is 48 that is, well, it’s kind of tricky to determine the size of that market because on one hand, is this that would be a good opportunity by the way for anybody listening because you’ve got one, it’s kind of getting close to the age of, not good. Then you got one that’s really doing really well. Right, so it’s gonna be interesting when you get in you started seeing a few different products that are different all different bestseller ranks so one is 2000. Another one is 6000, and then it’s 20,000 35,040 8000 generic Okay, so this is a more of a medium sized mine because we’ve got multiple items that are lower bestseller rank, and then a few that are closer to the edge. Now a lot of people don’t want to know how many exact products are on the scene all that difficult to say my guess is that’s the one part of process that there’s a little bit of art to it. Really, you’re just looking at it you’re saying if I see pages and pages of the same thing. And they’re all low PSRS, it’s not good opportunity because it’s repetitive, low volume of snacks, it’s gonna be too competitive for you to get in, because we’re emulating the customer, we’re seeing when someone searches a keyword, what are they actually going to see. And if we see that there’s just like so many so hard to get in front of this person, it’s just not going to be for us. On the other hand, when we see a clear product it’s like, I know exactly what I should be selling a good example to worry about, but I think it just puts it in play that nicely. I was looking at these thread racks software threads and they’re all these sorts of rack you put them up. So, they’re all wood, right. All varying bestseller ranks looked like a pretty medium sized market they’re kind of a bigger market. I just spotted one product, it was a metal, they’re all wooden and metal thread right, and there was like two of them on all of them is on the bestseller ranks were like 16 102,000. So that tells me I know it’s a big merger right now I’ve seen like two there that are now it’s probably changed by now that might be but I’m just giving an example of something that I’ve seen. That’s a trust in them, because I know people are searching for metrics.
Stephen Somers 1:04:12
There’s a bit more to it, but if you can understand that there’s a mathematical piece to it. There’s an analysis piece to it, and they’re very much is we have this little thing that we bring people through to ask these different questions when you’re looking at something, and that helps determine the score, and that score is 100 determines how good of an opportunity it is required our roots research process, which is what we teach in our evening program that’s hard to go through right now because it’s a whole bunch of different we software just does it for you. Yeah, teach plumbing the different numbers and they’ll go, it’s 61% Oh, that’s really good, you know, that kind of thing. So we systemize that very deeply, most of our courses do not, they just tell you pick a random product pretty much or give you a couple of rules. We like that in those extremes because we’re looking, we’re in the business of mitigating risk as much as possible. We’re in the business of reducing risk as much as possible. So the better you are research, the less tactics we have to use them to make us successful because there’s people already buying it is already demanded there is volume out there, but the solutions are not great, and it’s easier to get in front of people as a result of that.
Mike Malatesta 1:05:19
then. Got it. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, yeah, I wrote it down, it’s like, that’s awesome, because I, yeah. How do you want people to get in touch with you what’s, what’s the, what’s the best way for them to communicate?
Stephen Somers 1:05:37
Yeah, so best thing to do, I would say is to do two things, one, go to our YouTube channel, watch a video, a number of videos for research, see which thing. I would also highly recommend go over our website marketplace superheroes, calm, not because the website full of we’re actually updating it as we speak. There’s a training there it’s a seven day masterclass training that I recommend you go, it’ll guide you through for seven days. The model hell words and then it’s enough information for you to decide, is this something I want to I want to go with further and do more with that I always like doing that we put so much information, really high quality information because we have to educate people out here, Like there’s a lot in this process. So go and check out those different things, and you still haven’t got an answer in email Stephen, my name with a pH as the EPA GN marketplace superheroes, calm, and we’ll pick it up, and we’ll point you in the right direction.
Mike Malatesta 1:06:35
Okay, cool Stephen. This has been so much fun I appreciate not only getting the, the, the Amazon course but more, even more so getting to understand, you know kind of where you came from and how you look at things and how you’ve broken through various mentalities, or belief systems and I love all of that stuff and it’s been great for you to share thank you so much.
Stephen Somers 1:07:02
I really appreciate how much effort goes into doing these kinds of things. So, thanks for having me on. I really enjoyed my play.
