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Episode four of Amazon Seller School Amazon Wholesale Podcast focuses on the importance of examining why you want to become an Amazon wholesaler and the practices that help you develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Show host Todd Welch shares a method to help determine your “why” and provides ideas on how to design an effective morning routine. Check out an overview of the episode below!

Why do you want to become an Amazon wholesaler?

Your desire for a flexible lifestyle and the opportunities to gain significant profit may be major motivations in becoming an Amazon wholesaler. However, Todd warns you that those reasons are not enough to keep you dedicated to the business. Without deep consideration of why you want to start a business, you may find yourself unwilling to put in the effort. Todd suggests completing an exercise: think about why you want to be an Entrepreneur then ask “Why do I want this?” Eventually, you will get to the core of your purpose. Listen to this episode to hear why Todd is emotionally committed to Amazon wholesale!

Establish your morning routine

A solid morning routine is the key to starting your day off with purpose. The beauty of a morning routine is that it varies for everyone, but there are some practices that tend to work across the board. Todd suggests several activities to include in your routine that have proven effective for him, including getting enough sleep and implementing a fitness practice. To hear about the rest of his routine and the tips he gives to create yours, tune into this episode!

Make sure you’re eating well!

Never underestimate the power of a nutritious meal, especially as a part of your morning routine. Although an option like cereal is quick and convenient, there are plenty of alternatives that are efficient and pack a healthy punch. In this informative episode, Todd talks about how he caters his breakfast to his individual needs and gives advice on how to determine what works for you!

Outline of Episode Four

[00:00]: Episode introduction
[01:13]: Todd encourages you to find your “why”
- [03:10]: The “why” writing exercise
[09:00]: Todd gives you insight into designing your morning routine
[18:52]: Todd advises you to eat well
[21:54]: Episode conclusion/Todd gives instructions on how to join the Amazon Seller School community

Resources From This Episode

Transcript

Todd: 00:00 What’s up fellow entrepreneurs. Welcome to number four of the Amazon Seller School podcast where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build your e-commerce empire, side hustle or anything in between. In this episode we’re going to be talking about finding your why and also my morning routine. So a little bit of a sidestep out of the Amazon wholesale directly and more into building a business and building a mentality to build your business the way it needs to be built. There are certain things that successful people tend to do and help them stay motivated, keep going forward, building their business, stay focused, have a more energy, and overall just be better entrepreneurs. So I wanted to dive into that in this episode. And if you want to get the show notes or the transcript of this episode, remember to head on over to entrepreneurventure.com/4 you’ll be able to find that there.

Todd: 01:13 So let’s go ahead and dive into this episode, finding your why. What does that mean? Every person has a reason that they are doing whatever it is they’re doing. You have a reason that you want to build this business. Now, on the surface level it might be you want to make more money. You want to get some cash for retirement. You want to build a huge business and become rich. Often money, ideas like that are only surface level. There’s usually something underneath that, something bigger, a bigger reason that you want to build this business and it’s really important to find your why, because that’s what’s going to drive you. So you’re going to get going in this business. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be exciting, you’re going to enjoy it, but there’s going to be a come a time that it gets hard.

Todd: 02:19 You’re struggling, you don’t want to do it anymore. You’re getting lots of no’s. You can’t open any accounts. Amazon suspended a product, Amazon suspended your account, whatever the case may be, there’s going to become a time. I guarantee it. They talk of the entrepreneur roller coaster going up and down and it’s totally real. 100% one day you’re going to feel like you’re the King of the world. Nothing can stop you. You know everything you can figure anything out and the next day you’re going to be what’s going on? I don’t know what happened. I don’t know anything. This isn’t working. So that is completely real. And what’s going to get you through those periods is your why and having a deep down, emotionally connected. Why? So how do you figure that out? You’re going to figure that out by writing down on a piece of paper, your initial thought on why you’re doing this business.

Todd: 03:23 So write down the first thing that comes to your head and then after you have that written down, ask yourself why do I want that? And then write down whatever comes to mind to that. And then look at the next thing that you have in mind that you wrote down and ask yourself why do I want that? And keep writing down. Why? Why do I want that? Why do I want that? Why do I want that until you are absolutely 100% exhausted that there’s no other reason why you want something and that is going to be your bottom line, emotional why you’re building this business. So for me, for example, obviously I want to be a millionaire. I want to have a nice car, a nice house. I want to be able to travel all over. I want to own a Kentucky Derby winning race horse.

Todd: 04:25 I want to own a football team, whatever it is, all those things I do want, but those aren’t my bottom line whys. What really drives me and keeps me going. For me, my first big why is I want to give back to my parents so my parents have worked hard all of their life. They provided us a good childhood, a good upbringing. I had anything that I could ask for. We weren’t rich by any means. We were low middle class, but I never knew it myself. Growing up, we had video games that we wanted to play. We went camping, we went swimming. We did lots of things together as a family and I really appreciate that, that my parents did that and I want to give back to them in their retirement. I would love to be able to give them two to $4,000 per month so that they can have a retirement that they deserve, be able to travel around the country and go do whatever they want to do.

Todd: 05:33 So that is one of my big bottom line wise that I want to reach. That’s my first big why and my second why is building the family life that I want. So I don’t have kids yet, but my beautiful wife Asmaile and I, we got married in September of 2017 and we are hoping to have kids here sooner rather than later. And I want to be able to have a life that we can really enjoy from being able to travel all over the world with my wife and my kids, giving my kids a homeschool education as well as private school education so they can have the best education possible. And also being able to have as much time as I want with them and not having to miss any baseball games or any recitals or band concerts or whatever the case may be that they get into.

Todd: 06:47 I want to be able to be there for everything and not have to go to a job and miss half their life growing up. So that is a big why for me as to why I’m building my business. That’s probably even my biggest why. Providing the overall life that I want for my family. So you can see how those whys transcend just making money from the business and being rich. They are a lot deeper than those surface level thoughts that a lot of us think about. There’s nothing wrong with making a lot of money and having the things that we want, but a lot of times for most people, that’s not going to be enough. When things get really hard and you want to give up because that time will come that you want to give up and you need to have something deep down that’s going to push through when everything else is telling you to give up, you can’t do it.

Todd: 07:59 So find your why do that exercise. Write down your surface. Why. Keep asking yourself why until you have that deep down emotional connection as to why you want to build this business and hold on to that because you will need it when you hit those darker times that you need to push through in your business because business is not easy. Anybody who says selling on Amazon is easy, is lying to you. It’s hard. It’s a lot of hard work and it’s building a legitimate business and it’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of hard work that’s going to not be fun necessarily all the time. So keep that in mind. Build a business that you love, find your why and do it for your why moving forward. It’s extremely important if you’re going to be successful in this. Now the next thing that I want to talk about is a morning routine.

Todd: 09:00 So most successful people have some kind of morning routine that helps them be more successful. Get in the mindset of being successful, focus better, and feel better to perform at a top peak level. Most people are used to getting up, maybe eating some cereal for breakfast, grabbing something from McDonald’s, having some coffee and going to work, going through the day, coming home, maybe grabbing some, a supper from burger King or whatever the case may be. Hopefully healthier than that. But that’s a lot of people and they’re not getting the nutrients that they need, the exercise that they need or the mental space and clarity that they need. So I’ve gone through a lot of stages, developing my morning routine to finding something that really works for me right now and everybody is going to be different and this can change along the way. So you have to find what works for you.

Todd: 10:18 But just keep that in mind that a lot of this is a part of most successful people’s morning routine to start the morning off, right? So a big one, number one, is getting enough sleep. When you’re first starting your business, you’re going to have to have some less sleep nights, but you don’t want to make it every night where you’re working until 2:00 AM going to bed, getting up at 5:00 AM and going to work because you can only handle that for so long. You’re going to have to do that. Sometimes building a business, especially if you have a job, but make sure it’s not a habit all the time and you’re getting those full seven to eight hour nights sleeps, preferably going to bed at a consistent time. Waking up at a consistent time in the morning to get into that routine because that’s going to help you be more focused, have more energy for the day.

Todd: 11:23 It’s proven that if you continue to get not enough sleep, maybe four or five, six hours of sleep every night, that is going to decrease. Your mental capacity is going to decrease your effectiveness and your learning capacity and just your overall energy rates. So keep that in mind. I always try to get between seven and eight hours of sleep every night. I go to bed at about 10 to 11 in that area and I wake up between five and 6:00 AM every morning to wake up and do my routine. So that is my sleep schedule. I try to stick in now when I wake up, what I try to do is number one, well, what I do every morning, I should say for my morning routine now, is I go down, I make myself a fresh cup of coffee. I bring it upstairs into my office. I sit down on the couch that you see behind me.

Todd: 12:27 If you’re watching this on YouTube and you see on YouTube right above me, if you’re watching there, I have a book right back there. Right now it is the book getting to yes, which is a book about the art of negotiating and negotiating tactics, and I read that book for 30 to 40 minutes when I wake up, while I’m drinking my cup of coffee. So I’m getting knowledge and education and learning in the morning. I’m getting my mind right right away rather than what a lot of people probably do is grab your phone, scroll through YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, whatever the case may be and get a lot of garbage into your brain. So your initial way that you start your day and train your brain is going to have a lot to do with how your day goes going forward. If you put a lot of garbage and negativity in right away, you’re going to get a lot of garbage and negativity out.

Todd: 13:29 If you put a lot of good information, learning materials to better your brain, better your knowledge, that’s going to go forward and you’re going to get more knowledge, education and information going forward throughout the day. When I’m done, finished reading my book, then I do 10 minutes of yoga and 10 minutes works really good for me. Some people like to do five minutes, 15, 20, 30 minutes. I like to do 10 minutes because it’s enough to get a good stretch and start waking up my body and my mind and make it so I feel better. So I started doing yoga at the beginning of 2019 more seriously. I originally got the app downdog, which is a really good app to get training in yoga. And the way I think of yoga is a lot of people think they think a lot of like spirituality and things like that.

Todd: 14:34 The way I think about it is stretching. So I had gotten to the point where I would wake up in the morning and I’m 38 years old now, so I’m starting to feel some of the aches and pains in my body. And I had gotten up to the point where I would wake up and it would almost hurt to get out of bed. Sometimes I would wake up with a really tight cramp in my shoulder and a headache and walking down the stairs I’d have to hold onto the railing cause my knees hurt. And so I was not doing very well. So I decided to get into yoga, started doing that. And as long as I do that yoga every single morning, I wake up pretty much pain-free. I don’t have the cramps in my shoulders. I don’t have headaches, my knees don’t hurt. And I just feel fantastic, like literally a thousand times better than what I felt without doing the yoga.

Todd: 15:34 The stretching is really what it is. Stretching your body, waking it up, getting the space in all your joints and getting your body flowing in the morning so that your body feels better throughout the day and you’re not jarring it when you’re doing things walking around running or whatever the case may be. So that is the second thing that I do. After my yoga, I do 10 minutes of meditation. So I used to use Headspace, which is an app for your phone that I highly recommend to really good way to get into meditation and learn the basics of it. But now I just use 10 minute meditations from YouTube. And so I just get into my meditation pose. You know, my hands on my lap, sitting on a pillow or on a chair and close my eyes. Breathe deeply and consistently and just get into it. Try to clear my mind as much as possible and get ready for the day because that really helps with clarity.

Todd: 16:43 And focus and I tend to get a lot of, well not a lot, but I tend to get some really good ideas while I’m meditating or after I’m meditating. Now I know you’re not supposed to think why you meditate, but it’s very hard for any company who has an entrepreneurial mind and has a thousand thoughts per minute. But I do my best as possible to clear my mind and some really good ideas come to me when I’m clear in my mind like that as well for the day. After I’m done with meditation, then I do something that’s called HIIT and that stands for high intensity interval training. I do the cardio version of it. So essentially it’s 10 minutes of cardio exercise from running in place to jumping jacks to pushups to high jumps and things like that to get your heart rate up really high.

Todd: 17:44 So my peak heart rate usually gets up to about 170 to 175 with the average being around 140 and 150 beats per minute for that 10 minutes. And what that does for me is really clears my head. If you ever experience like getting up and going to work and like for the first two or three hours of the day, your head is cloudy, you feel like you can’t focus really well. That was me before starting to do the HIIT training, but when I do the HIIT training, I wake up and clear my mind immediately. By the time I’m done with that, when I’m done with that, I’m focused and my mind is completely clear. The fog is completely gone for the rest of the day. It’s really amazing what it does for me. So those four things, getting enough sleep, yoga, meditation and HIIT training are my core things that keep me running in peak condition.

Todd: 18:52 But on top of that I’m eating right as well. So I’m eating very much gluten free and lactose free because my body responds to those very badly. I actually now that I haven’t eaten them for a while. If I eat them, my body will get like shaky and I get a lot of stomach pressure and pains and things like that. So I avoid those. I eat a lot of organic and natural foods. I used to eat like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and cereal in the morning where now I’m having sweet potato slices for my bread and then nut butter, organic nut butter, which is made of lots of different nuts like almonds and things like that. There’s a lot more healthy than peanut butter. And then I’m also taking a protein shakes that are made from bone broth and that really helps as well.

Todd: 19:53 Sometimes I’ll substitute in some eggs as well to get the protein and things as well. And I’m drinking lots of water. So I have this bottle from CACTAKI, which is a water bottle that holds 32 ounces and it’s got a little scale on the backside of it that tells you how much you’re supposed to drink. So you’re supposed to drink two of these every day. A three even is completely fine. So I drink a ton of water, which really helps my body as well and keeps me in peak performance so that I can have the sharpest mind as possible and enough energy to do all of the work that I need to do throughout the entire day. All right, so that is my morning routine and my why and how I recommend finding your why. I really hope that helps out there. I recommend you finding your why and start working on a morning routine.

Todd: 20:57 Take it step by step. You’re not going to jump to where I am. It’s taken me two years to get to this morning routine that’s really working for me. Changing things up, trying different things and figuring it out. So maybe add in five minutes of yoga, five minutes of meditation and a couple minutes of some type of cardio training, HIIT training or whatever. If you search for apps on the app store, you can find an app for H I I T training and you’ll find something good there, but just start somewhere, even if it’s one of the three or it’s just eating a little bit better in the morning. Start working towards that and building that up and you’ll get to a point and find things that work really good for your body and make you feel a lot better and it’s going to want you to keep doing more of that as well.

Todd: 21:54 So that about wraps up this episode. If you want the show notes or the transcript, make sure to head over to amazonseller.school/4 because this is episode number four of the Amazon Seller School podcast. And also make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast whether you’re watching on YouTube or listening on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, whatever the case may be, would really be appreciated as well. If you gave us a review on those platforms, let us know your thoughts. I will read some of those in future episodes as well, and it’ll help us get this podcast out there to more people just like you and I who need this information. So share it on your social media as well, if you would, that would be awesome. So with that, this is Todd Welch with the Amazon Seller School podcast, signing off. Happy selling everybody.

Entrepreneur Adventure is now Amazon Seller School

EA004 Find Your Why, Morning Routine, Mentality for Amazon Wholesale Business