If there’s anything this year has taught us, it’s that ecommerce is no fleeting trend. Ecommerce is an industry filled with more opportunity than most of us have seen in our lifetimes. And it’s not too late to get started! If you’ve already got an online business going and you’re ready to grow, Alex Sklar is here to talk about how Payability can help you get capital to get ahead. Stay tuned.
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What Is Payability?
Payability is a service that allows you immediate access to your sales. Amazon gives us fourteen days to access our funds while Payability gives you next-day access for 80% of your earnings (Instant Access). Payability also launched a service (Instant Advanced) that projects your sales for the next month and gives you an upfront lump sum of cash that you then pay back over time.
Why? Their goal is to help your business grow. Payability has no hidden fees and interest rates as low as 0.4%.
An Explosion of Ecommerce
Quarantine has accelerated the growth and expansion of ecommerce. While it’s no secret that many shopped online due to lockdown restrictions, entrance into ecommerce has also skyrocketed as businesses adapt to rising demand. As Walmart experiments with drone delivery and Amazon looks to repurpose malls, those of us who’ve been in the online game for years can coach newcomers and take advantage of a wealth of industry knowledge. Moral of the story – if you’re in the game, stay in it and if you’ve not yet joined, now’s the time!
Know Your Numbers & Know The Market
Before growing your business with capital, Alex recommends all sellers know their numbers. What does this mean? It means hire someone to balance your books and send you profit and loss statements every month. You should know exactly what your bottom line is before making big business decisions. If you’re losing money, the last thing you want is to take on more debt that you won’t be able to repay.
Alex also recommends knowing the market. Understand what products to package, what products to offer as complimentary, and study what consumers are responding to and asking for. Once you understand what people want, you can take a product that’s already selling well and improve upon it. Also know the ins and outs of Amazon and ecommerce before launching a private label. Because if you’ve never sold anything, your product won’t succeed.
The Importance of Staying In Stock
Why do we need capital? As online sellers, we understand the importance of staying in stock when demand grows. Out of stock product means delayed shipping which means poor reviews and a lost buy box. Sometimes, the saying is true: you have to have money to make (more) money.
Overall
So if you’re ready to grow your business, Payability is an easy place to start. The application takes no more than ten minutes and if you sign up using Todd’s affiliate link, you can get your first $250 in fees free.
Remember, now is the time to get started on Amazon. Check out Todd’s webinar on reverse sourcing to get started gaining momentum.
As always, happy selling everybody.
Resources From This Episode
- Sign up for Payability and get your first $250 in fees free
- Amazon Wholesale Reverse Sourcing Webinar, How To Find Profitable Wholesale Suppliers for FBA
Outline of This Episode
[00:00:39] Todd’s introduction to this episode
[00:03:29] Intro to Alex
[00:05:14] What is Payability?
[00:22:16] Behind the explosion of ecommerce
[00:38:36] What Alex recommends before growing your business
[00:52:23] The importance of staying in stock
[00:59:06] Todd’s closing thoughts on this episode
Transcript
Alex (00:00:00):
People realize that e-commerce is not a fad. It’s not something that people just do as a hobby. It’s a real industry. And what, what I’m hoping is cause you know, I’m obviously bullish on e-commerce is people are going to start to take note and realize this is one of the largest industries out there, period. And it’s not just something you do on the side. It is its own whole ecosystem.
Announcer (00:00:22):
Welcome fellow entrepreneurs to the Amazon Seller School podcast, where we talk about Amazon wholesale and how you can use it to build an e-commerce empire, a side hustle or anything in between. And now your host, Todd Welch,
Todd (00:00:39):
What’s going on everybody. Welcome to episode 51 of entrepreneuradventure podcast. Today we have a really good one for you. I think we’re going to be talking with Alex over at payability. And payability is essentially a service that allows you to get immediate access to your Amazon sales Walmart’s sales, Shopify, lots of different places and marketplaces and things like that, that they connect into, but you can get immediate access to help your business grow and help you with that financing that you need, which is something that e-commerce businesses like ours. We are always in the need for more and more money, especially if your business is growing. I know I always am. It’s something that you’re just always running into and I’ve looked into them. I have been referred to them from people that I know and trust. I went through the process to get signed up.
Todd (00:01:42):
I did not end up taking the funds because I actually got a line of credit from my bank, which is a really low interest rate. But I may look at signing up for them in the future. So we dive into their service, tell you guys all about it, how it works. If you’re interested at all, we’ve got a affiliate link where you guys can get a $250 credit towards any fees that they have. So check that out. If you’re interested at all throughout this video, it’s amazonseller.school/Pay P a Y and you can get that there and get signed up. And I would really appreciate that if you’re interested at all to use that link. And we also dive into just the explosion of e-commerce and online shopping in general and how Amazon is going to compete with these competitors that are coming on board like Walmart and Alibaba and things like that.
Todd (00:02:43):
I really think you’re going to like this. We dive into all the financial stuff, but we also dive into like selling on Amazon and e-commerce so if you’re not a numbers guy, a financial kind of person, you know, you’re gonna really enjoy this episode regardless. So definitely sit back, relax, and let’s go ahead and dive into this interview with Alex.
Todd (00:03:07):
All right. So today I have Alex Sklar. He is the head of business development and partnerships over at payability and they help sellers like you and me get the funding that we need to keep growing our business. So, Alex, I really appreciate you coming on the show. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
Alex (00:03:29):
Yeah. And thanks for having me, Todd. So I’ve been with pay ability for almost two years now and have been in financial technology for a little over seven years was in public accounting before that I’ve spent pretty much my whole career working in and around small businesses. I’ve founded a couple of businesses myself and you know, I really take pride and working with small businesses of all different sizes. You know, small business kind of has a funny term because it really can be companies that are only doing maybe $50,000 a year. And it could be companies that are doing $50 million a year, but you know, they all have very similar issues. And a lot of that is how do I actually grow my business? How do I access capital? And you know, that’s what we’re here to talk about today. And you know what I talked about regularly with e-commerce folks all the time.
Todd (00:04:14):
Yeah, for sure. And, and I have signed up with you guys. I have not taken any money as of yet. Because I was able to secure a line of credit through my bank with a 5.9% interest rates. So that is a pretty good in my opinion. So I didn’t end up taking money from you guys, but I thought the process of signing up was really easy and your guys’ customer service was really good. And that’s why I reached out to you guys to bring you on the show, because I know a lot of people, especially if they don’t have a history, they’re not gonna be able to get a line of credit like that. So they’re either looking at probably using credit cards something like payability or taking an Amazon loan or something like that. So why don’t we go ahead and just dive right into your guys’ services. We’re going to touch on a bunch of other stuff as well, but let’s dive right into your guys’ services for anybody who’s interested in knowing that.
Alex (00:05:14):
Yeah. And I’m happy to dive right in, I think just on one point that you just touched on, you know, finance in general, it’s, it’s not something sometimes it’s seasonal. Sometimes you need it all the time and you know, each business is different. So, you know, when it comes to offering finance, it’s not so much, you sell finance, you explain finance, and if it’s a fit, then we want to be able to provide it as fast as possible. So today we’ve provided a little over $3.5 billion in growth capital over the last five plus years to e-commerce folks, whether they’re selling on a marketplace like Amazon or Walmart, or they’re selling on their own website like Shopify. And we do that through our two main products. One is called the instant access and that takes old fashioned factoring and gives it a real time, modern digital spin.
Alex (00:06:03):
So you’re making sales on a, we’ll use Amazon as an example, you’re making sales on Amazon for most companies who are selling on Amazon. They get paid every 14 days. And what we do is we turn that net 14 and net one getting paid every day. So you have access to daily cashflow. And so you can reinvest it in your business and keep up with all that demand that Amazon can drive to you. And we do that by advancing up to 80% of today’s sales to be made available tomorrow. And then when Amazon released us that full amount, 14 days later, we give you that remaining 20%, we were holding back when the reason we’re holding it back is for things like chargebacks and returns. But our goal is always to advance as much as we can, the most amount of money at the cheapest rates.
Alex (00:06:43):
And, you know, after having that product out in the market for a couple of years, a lot of our customers said to us, you know, getting paid every day is great. It helps me keep up with the demand that Amazon drives, but every now and then I need, you know, I need to make a large bulk purchase of inventory. Can you make us the loan? I said, well, we can’t make you a loan per se, cause we’re not a lender, but there’s probably something we can do. And that’s when we rolled that instant advanced. So with instant access, you’ve made the sale, we’re getting paid faster on the sale with instant advanced we’re projecting what we think you’re going to do next month in sales and giving it to you upfront in a lump sum of cash that you then pay back over time as you’re making yourself.
Alex (00:07:21):
So it’s, it’s technically called a cash advance or a future purchase of receivables. So you haven’t made the sales yet. We’re advancing the sales that you’re going to make, and then you pay it back a small portion over time. As you make the sale, we support multiple marketplaces. What really separates us apart as opposed to like an Amazon lending or Shopify capital is we want to work with all the places that you’re selling online. So we take like a marketplace agnostic view and therefore if you’re selling on, hopefully you’re selling on multiple channels. So we can work with you on Amazon, Walmart, new egg, top Hatter Ebay Shopify you name it because what we’re looking to do is look at the health of your business and help you grow and, you know, help you keep up with the demand when you’re selling in the marketplace and in the form of inventory typically, and then help you drive demand. If you’re selling on your own website, whether that’s Facebook ads, Instagram, Google ads, you name it.
Todd (00:08:14):
Yeah. And you guys, you guys connect in Amazon anyways, you guys connect right into Amazon. Right? We, I think when I was going through the process, they have you create the user and do the program connection and everything. So you’re looking right into Amazon to see what kind of sales and stuff that we have and basing the, the money that you’re able to give us off of what just the Amazon balance that’s showing there. Right?
Alex (00:08:42):
Yeah, it’s exactly right. So we have an Amazon approved API and that allows us to not have to do some of the things that a traditional lender will look at. Like, we don’t look at any credit checks. We don’t require you to send, you know, like tax returns. We’re not securing against the home or anything like that. We’re looking at, you know, not just the cash that’s coming in and out of your Amazon sales, but we’re looking at all sorts of different health metrics. You know, cause we do risk based pricing. So we’re looking at, you know, like product concentration, we’re looking at, you know, geographic concentration, you know, there’s a big disparity between, you know, a reseller, a brand and then a drop shipper. And we want to be able to work with all of them. So that’s how we’re, you know, I, I can’t even count the amount of algorithms they have running in the background, but we do a lot of machine learning. And that way we can basically, again, try to provide most capital we can at the cheapest rates possible. And then once we’ve worked with a customer and we have a little bit of track record, we can usually increase that advanced rate and then lower those fees because the risk for us goes down the longer we’ve worked with someone.
Todd (00:09:42):
Yeah, absolutely. Makes sense. What kind of initial fees are, are people looking at for using your guys?
Alex (00:09:49):
Yeah, so it’s a range on, on the instant access to it usually ranges from as low as 0.4% to as high as about two and a half percent with two and a half percent. Usually being like riskier, international drop shippers and things like that. Cause we work with sellers all over the world, as long as they’re selling on a US-based marketplace and they’re not like on a prohibited list by the government on the instant advance, we charge a weekly fee. It ranges from 0.5% to one and a half percent per week, but you only pay for it the weeks that it’s out of standing . So if you pay it back early, we’ll give you a rebate for every week that you pay back early. And then we also have our nifty little pay ability seller card here. And you know, once we make capital available to you, we actually have to give it to you.
Alex (00:10:30):
So that’s where everyone who signs up is assigned to is given a dashboard and there’s reporting on, you know, the cash we’re making available as well as other reporting on you know on your account. And from there, you can either wire money to your bank account and you can either do a same day ACH for up to a hundred thousand dollars. You can do an instant transfer for a small fee that moves the money in five minutes where you can opt into our payability stellar card, no fee for the card, but for every dollar you spend on the card, we’ll give you 2% cash back as another way to try to get those fees down for you. And you know try to be as useful as we can and give you more options as you spend the money and you can log in on desktop. On mobile. We have an app in the iOS and the Apple store. We have an app and a Google play store too. So constantly trying to remove friction, make it as easy as possible for everyone.
Todd (00:11:20):
The little bit I was in your website, it definitely looked nice, easy to use. A lot of times you run into websites that are really horrible, but you guys definitely do good there. Now on the lower end, you said it was 0.5%. Did you say it was the bottom
Alex (00:11:35):
On the instant access, which is the daily cash flow product it’s 0.4%. And on the instant advance, which is the lump sum of capital it’s 0.5%.
Todd (00:11:44):
Okay. So what kind of metrics do you need to meet to get that 0.4%?
Alex (00:11:50):
Typically we’d be looking for someone who’s doing around a hundred thousand dollars a month or more in sales.
Todd (00:11:55):
Okay. A hundred thousand dollars a month. So if we were using you, then you would take a point about $4,000 out of that hundred thousand, if I’m calculating that. Right.
Alex (00:12:08):
So in a month, a hundred thousand dollars, if you got the lowest rate, we’d be looking at $400,
Todd (00:12:14):
400. Okay. I missed a zero on there. All right. So that’s not bad at all. Then a $400 on a hundred thousand, if you’re able to get that money faster and flip this faster it definitely could be, be worthwhile. I’d have to be more calculating to see what like an annual rate would be, but how does it compare to like a typical Amazon loan when I was getting those, usually they were around 18 to 19% give or take depending on different variables.
Alex (00:12:47):
Yeah. So the, you know, the funny thing about APRs is that it’s they were really designed to compare 30 year mortgages. And so like, you know, I’m actually buying a house right now or actually I just closed on it on Monday and you know, I thank you. And so if I break down, you know, the, the APR, the APR on that loan is 3.375%. But if I actually look at what the full payback would be, you know, it’s, you know, because that’s 3.3, 5% is every month for 30 years. If you actually look at what the, if you, if you were to turn that into like a factor rate, it, would it be somewhere around a 1.5, four or a 1.59? And that’s because you know, what, what happens with APRs is it’s very hard to conceptualize with 30, 30 years of payments will look like.
Alex (00:13:35):
And so people could, so people could compare mortgages, apples to apples. They came up with the APR. So we could really just be able to compare it to mortgages, but what we’re talking about, short-term capital because it’s less than 12 months, it’s going to make the API APR much higher. So typically with Amazon lending, you’re getting a 12 months, you know, a 12 months a loan. If you were to increase that to three years, that APR would go lower. Now, conversely, if you were to condense that down to like around six months, the APR would double just as a result of, of the math. So when you’re talking about short-term capital, the APRs can look high, but that’s why you want to focus on what the actual cost of capital is. Because if I, if I look at something where let’s say, let’s say we have a 10% flat rate and you know, you’re getting 1% per week, over 20 weeks, but you pay it off early in 10 weeks because a lot of our customers pay it back quickly.
Alex (00:14:30):
So they’ll get the rebate and the discount. So let’s say you get a 10% flat rate. Let’s say you were going to take $25,000. So your 10% rate is $2,500 cost to capital. But now let’s say you’re getting a three X ROAS with that money and spend it on advertising. So we’re going to take that $25,000 and you’re going to put it to work in advertising and you’re to bring back $75,000 in in revenue, you returned the $25,000. So you’re left with 50, and then you have that cost of capital at $2,500. And you take that off as well. So you’re left with 47,500. So the real question is, and forget the APRs, you know, and I’m not trying to do a bait and switch, but like genuinely, when you’re talking about short-term capital, does it make sense for me to spend $2,500 to create 47,500 in new opportunity?
Alex (00:15:20):
And that’s the way you kind of look at cost of capital. Because if I were to look at that mortgage as an example, I have a really low rate, but if I took that all the way to term, you know, let’s say it was a 200,000, let’s do it $100,000 mortgage. I’m going to be paying back 159 on that hundred, if I were to go full 30 years. So there, the cost of capital is I spent $59,000 to be able to access a hundred, right? And that’s where kind of cost to capital and APR is. And it’s, it’s why APRs aren’t always applicable to factoring. And so if we did the APR, it ranges, it can be as low as like 23%. It can be as high as maybe 120%. But if you actually think about the cost of capital, when we look at that rate, that 0.4%, we think about Amazon.
Alex (00:16:02):
We have our Cox, we have RFPA costs and we maybe have prime and we have gift wrapping and we have short-term storage. We have long-term storage and do, do all the way down. If we were to stick one more line item in there at 0.4% that said get paid tomorrow. Would that make sense for your business model? Do you have the margins to support it? And that’s how we want to think about short-term financing because it’s not really built for an APR because there it’s not an annual fee. You’re talking about something that might only be three to three to six months. So not trying to dance around the APR conversation, but really it’s about that cost of capital and then measuring that cost of capital versus the opportunity and seeing if it makes sense for your business model. And if it does, we want to work with you. We want to provide it as fast as we can. And if it doesn’t, then we want to talk with you and see if there’s a way that we can make it work for you. And then if it doesn’t there, we want that feedback so we can fix it going forward. So we kind of make it work for everyone.
Todd (00:16:56):
The fee is paid right off the top before the disbursement, right? So it’s not like we actually owe you guys money. You’re just giving us access to the Amazon money sooner than the two weeks that we normally would see. Right.
Alex (00:17:11):
And there’s no other fees on top of it. There is no origination fee. There’s no application fee. There are no hidden fees. That fee that you see off the top is the only fee that’s going to be charged.
Todd (00:17:21):
Okay. Very good. And one thing I always like to bring up when I’m talking about taking money is that do not take any money and unless, you know, your numbers inside and out, if you don’t have someone doing your books and giving you a profit and loss statement every single month, and so that, you know what your bottom line is, the worst thing you can do is take money because if you’re losing money and then you take more money, then you’re just going to get yourself into more trouble. So I know it’s not technically a loan where it’s not like we’re going to owe the money, but yeah, you gotta know your numbers first, before you do anything with financing.
Alex (00:17:59):
And then I would add one more thing to that too, which is if you’re going to take outside capital, you want to be able to put it to work. This does not, you know, it’s not money to go on vacation with, do you want to be able to put that money to work, to drive more revenue? So people, people often ask me like, you know, what does a perfect pay ability customer? And we have customers as small as 2000 a month in sales, we have customers as large as 10 million a month in sales. The thing they all share in common is that they’re selling online on either a marketplace or their own website, and that they’re looking to grow their business. Because when you take on outside capital, it could be a VC investment. It could be debt. It could be, you know, an advanced, it could be factoring.
Alex (00:18:36):
It could be a credit card. It could be a rich uncle. That money has to be paid back to someone at some point, whether it’s through your sales or whether it’s the loan and you know, and so you want to make sure if you’re taking on money, especially if you’re taking on an investment and giving up equity in your business, you want to make sure that you can actually use that money to grow the business. Because, you know, there’s not really a reason to take on outside capital if you’re just running a hobby. So with like on eBay, you have a lot of there, they call them pickers right there at garage, the garage sales estate sales for them, you know, the thrill is actually finding the product taking on outside capital might not be the right fit because you’re, you know, it’s more of a hobby, but when you’re running a professional business and you’re looking to grow and you, and you’re looking to, you know, and especially if you have your own brand, you’re looking to be that next Casper, that next Allbirds there, you know, if you know how to run your marketing correctly, and you have a product that’s really moving, you know, until you’ve hit a market saturation where adding additional capital, isn’t going to get you additional returns.
Alex (00:19:36):
You want to keep pouring more fuel onto that fire as much as you can, as long as it actually makes sense for your numbers, as you were saying, because if you’re actually losing a dollar on every sale, you know, it’s kind of like the old joke and I fell a hotdog for for 99 cents. It costs me a dollar. Well, how do you make any money? Well, I do it in volume and it’s, you know, if you’re actually losing money on every sale, there’s no amount of outside capital. That’s going to solve that. He needs to start with the basics and make sure that what you’re doing is actually profitable. It’s revenue producing. And then you want to understand how are you actually going to deploy the money? And what we see typically in e-commerce is the two biggest uses are usually to drive demand in the form of marketing, or to be able to keep up with that demand in the form of inventory. And then there are other reasons too, maybe entering a new product vertical maybe hiring some virtual assistants and doing some things like that. But again, it’s about using that money effectively, just like it’s about knowing your numbers.
Todd (00:20:30):
Yep. A hundred percent super important to know your numbers. I messed up in the beginning with that and lost money, a lot of money and had to dig my way out of that hole. And so I learned my lesson the hard way, and that’s why I always try to tell people that, you know, your numbers before you do anything, but once you know your numbers, then getting access to that money can definitely be a, be helpful to keep growing because that’s something that never changes in, you know, physical products business. You’re always needing more access to capital if you’re growing. So it’s, it’s just something that’s ongoing and ongoing. Now we’re going to dive into a lot more, but if anybody is interested you guys are going to give our listeners $250. Is that Credit?
Alex (00:21:20):
Yeah, it’s the sign on bonus? So the first $250 in fees are on us.
Todd (00:21:27):
Okay, perfect. So free $250 in fees that they’re going to get and full disclosure. I’m an affiliate with the guys. So if anybody buys through my link I will get a cut of that. And I would really appreciate if you guys are interested out there and use my link, amazonseller.school/pay P a Y, and you can get that $250 in free fees. Again, amazonseller.school/pay. We’ll have that link in the show notes as well. If you’re on YouTube or podcast or whatever the case may be, you can check that out. Now, one thing that’s really a big this year that we wanted to talk about was just the explosion of e-commerce. How have you guys seen that go on on your end,
Alex (00:22:16):
That explosion it’s you know, we’ve seen you know, I feel like it’s a tale of like, almost to COVID. So in the beginning, you know, typically, you know, January and February are a little bit slower in e-commerce it becomes return season. You know, a lot of people are getting, you know, received presents that didn’t fit or they weren’t the right size, you know, typically in e-commerce do you see this big, big push in Q4? And it’s these a little bit of a slowdown, and then you start to see it, like come back up. Usually around March is at least what we’ve seen, but this year was really interesting. So, you know, again, it was kind of the tale of two COVID in the beginning of the COVID pandemic. It was everything was focused on PPE and, you know, people had trouble even being in, being able to get their products into fulfillment, into FBA.
Alex (00:23:06):
People were having trouble sourcing products. No one kinda knew what was going on and everything was focusing on PPE. And then as the PPE push kind of settled, but everyone was still kind of, you know, in lockdown, what we saw was, you know, a people were buying things that, you know, they normally don’t buy. So like I’m working at home in an office right now, and we saw, you know, a big increase in consumer electronics. People were building home offices, people are buying webcams, people are buying additional monitors or buying ring lights, and they’re buying everything they need to do to work at home. And then we saw, you know, apparel and beauty kind of went down for a little bit and then we start kind of go back up and it makes sense. Everyone has these high powered HD cameras. We’re all on camera from the waist up now.
Alex (00:23:52):
So at least, you know, in apparel, you’re getting, you want to make sure that you look to have a different outfit. And so and then I think we saw a lot go up in cosmetics again because all the HD cameras people want to make sure they look good on camera. We saw a lot of you know, a big increase in toys and games and then getting to people that are in their homes. And if you kind of follow the trend of what was happening with the pandemic could actually, you could see those trends happening in e-commerce as well. You know, we saw record amounts of online groceries happening, and we’re still seeing that we saw consumer electronics ramp up again in the spring and then in the fall because now kids were doing homeschooling and they needed that additional computer cause they couldn’t borrow mom and dad’s mom and dad are all working at home.
Alex (00:24:40):
And what we also saw was record entrance into e-commerce. Traditional brick and mortar stores that, you know, maybe they thought about doing e-commerce and now is the time to pull the trigger on it. Maybe they had a small e-commerce presence and then we’re now pushing into more e-commerce maybe, you know, their brick and mortar sales were supporting their e-commerce sales. And then we saw that flip on, it said an I-Corps e-commerce was not supporting brick and mortar. And we also saw a lot of people jump into e-commerce for the first time. We have a customer who’s who did a promotional video for us, Josh at our go Buddha. And he has such an interesting story. He was the executive chef for the Cleveland Indians. Well, the stadium never opened. So he’s doing I’m out of a job. What am I going to do?
Alex (00:25:21):
And he basically goes, what is my talent? My talent is being able to feed 40,000 people. I’m sure I can make a business out of that. And we started a Shopify store and he started making meal prep kits, and we were able to work with them. We were able to provide them capital and he actually opened a brick and mortar location based on his e-commerce sales, because they were just through the roof. We saw so many people like that, who they were thinking about e-commerce and then they decided to jump in or they needed to do e-commerce to be able to put food on the table. So we saw record applications month over month. We’re still seeing tremendous people coming into e-commerce and now we’re seeing all these other service providers come into e-commerce too, because they, you know, they may be provided a service that was more for brick and mortar retailers, and they’re going everyone’s online.
Alex (00:26:08):
Now. We need to have a piece of it too. If you look at the stock markets and you look at Walmart and you look at Amazon, you look at, you know, the publicly traded companies, ChannelAdvisor Wayfair, you know, and you look at all of them and you see what smart people on wall street, smart people and investments are doing. And there’s, you know, I mean, Shopify stock has been a rocket ship and it’s because what I think is happening is people realize that e-commerce is not a fad. It’s not something that people just do as a hobby. It’s a real industry. And what, what I’m hoping is, cause you know, I’m obviously bullish on e-commerce is people are going to start to take and realize this is one of the largest industries out there, period. And it’s not just something you do on the side.
Alex (00:26:49):
It is its own whole ecosystem. And so the players that were already in it are going to be able to take advantage of being able to, you know, leverage economies of scale, know how it works and be able to, you know, maybe even grow their business by being able to provide coaching or training to some of the new entrance. But it’s exciting times to be in e-commerce. I don’t see that changing anytime soon, sadly, with some of the news we’re getting with, with the pandemic. I wouldn’t personally be shocked if we saw, you know, another winter that looked kind of like last spring, but e-commerce is the place to be right now for sure.
Todd (00:27:24):
Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. It’s it’s hard to look at it that way when you’re in it, because to people like myself and people who do e-commerce really well e-commerce has been around forever. How can it be like this new thing to so many people, but yeah, I mean, there’s a, Amazon does 50% of e-commerce sales on the internet, but they’re only like 4% of all retail. So if you think of that, then if you double that, that means e-commerce is only like eight to 10% of all shopping that happens. So it’s still pretty minimal. And one thing, like you said with COVID, is it, it almost like accelerated everything by like 10 years, right. You know, everything that was going to happen has all been crunched into this year out of necessity. People have never shopped online before or shopping online. And every store just about now has like curbside pickup, which is pretty cool in my opinion. Cause it drives me nuts going into stores anymore. They always put everything on opposite sides of the store. Right. So you got to walk 10 miles to find what you need. So definitely happy with all that. And it’s, it’s really exciting to see all the changes and everything really taking off, you know, unfortunately it’s a bad reason that it’s happening. You know, you gotta take the good with the bad right then and ride that wave as it’s coming through.
Alex (00:29:01):
Yeah. And I think we’re going to see a lot of cottage industries pop up as a result of this too. Like one that I’ve been keeping an eye on has been cold storage. So when now that we’re all buying online groceries, you know, then the need for cold storage warehouses, close to the distribution centers and all the cities. So you can actually get fresh produce easily, you know, next day is that’s going to mean an entire cottage industry. So it’ll be really interesting to watch, you know, on a larger macro level is taking things like malls and being able to repurpose them because, you know, malls were already kind of starting to be on the way down. You know, the heydays for role’s really like seventies, eighties, and nineties. And so how can you repurpose those large square footage?
Alex (00:29:48):
And I think we’re seeing some unique things right now. I know some schools are using some large malls and some open spaces because it has a lot of cubic square footage, you know, and we want to have as much distance as we can from people we’re seeing a lot of cold storage popping up. And what we’re, you know, used to be rundown warehouse districts that are now coming back to life. And, you know, I can’t predict the future, but I think we’re going to see a ton of different cottage industries pop up. Now that e-commerce is starting to be at the forefront.
Todd (00:30:16):
Yeah, for sure. I I’ve even heard news stories, the rumors of Amazon buying malls some of these dead malls and turning them into warehouses and things like that. Because with Walmart trying to catch up with Amazon, really starting to push their e-commerce, they’ve got almost an advantage because they’ve got a store in every area that someone could potentially buy something. So it really helps them deliver stuff a lot faster. And especially the groceries they’re really hard because they’re so heavy, you know? So I think Amazon would make a big push and like, is that a lot of these other little industries and things like that? Cold storage is interesting. So they’re just, they’re converting some of these malls and things like that, just to be able to store like frozen foods and stuff more locally to be able to deliver.
Alex (00:31:11):
Yeah. And they’re taking over like old warehouse districts that were already, you know, part of like the infrastructure. So they’re already on the train track or already close enough to be able to do same day delivery into like, you know, major cities and you know, one other area that I wouldn’t be shocked if it starts to take off is people have always talked about having deliveries by drone. And it’s something that Amazon has always been working on. And I couldn’t feel better time to actually, you know, try to pilot some of those programs right now, especially for the people who live a little more remote. You know, if you live an hour outside of a, of a city, it’s, it’s harder to do that curbside pickup. And you know, it’s, you know, there’s a large carbon footprint to drive all the FedEx and ups trucks and, you know, postal service trucks into all the rural areas. So if there was ever going to be a moment to see that crack open of autonomous vehicles or drone delivery, this would probably be that time. Yeah,
Todd (00:32:06):
Big time. I had just a few weeks back we did an episode and some of the news articles were about that. A drone delivery had been approved in I think it was somewhere near Las Vegas and it was actually Walmart that was doing the deliveries and stuff like test deliveries and things like that. So it’s definitely full steam ahead on all that. And I think the drones are definitely going to come first because with flying you don’t really, you don’t have to worry about into stuff necessarily. Right. It’s a lot easier than trying to do in the autonomous car where you’ve got just everything in the way and you got to figure all that out. So it’s, it’s definitely coming that’s for sure. One way or another. And like I said, all this is just expedited, all of that. And everything’s online now, you know, we’re doing zoom calls with everybody and the zoom stock has gone through the roof. So it’s definitely interesting times. Lots of changes that are happening really quickly.
Alex (00:33:14):
Absolutely. And I think you know, zoom is a company that I think like, you know, in , like BizDev, I’ve been using zoom for a couple of years, at least, but now it’s like, I have zoom, I have WebEx, I have a Google hangout. You know what I mean? Microsoft teams probably list a couple more and zoom is becoming such a household name that it’s almost like the way Google became like, just search for something was to Google it now. Like, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on. We’re all calling it a zoom call or we’re all saying, you know, be on a zoom zoom meeting. And so it’s like you think about this company that probably half the world had no idea existed. And now it is just a household name. You’re doing zoom calls with your family.
Alex (00:33:53):
You’re doing them with friends, you’re doing them for work. And it’s what’s the, what’s the really exciting to stay in this isn’t to take away. There are a lot of people having real hardships right now, and I don’t try to pretend that’s not happening, but to watch how fast everyone adapted to the new reality. You know, it’s painful at times, but it’s been really, it’s been great to see that people, we figure it out, you know, and it’s, you know, and that’s, what’s so exciting about e-commerce is you can figure out a little niche for yourself and then be able to grow it and build upon it. And then say like, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned this, what is this over here? And, you know, we’ve seen it on our end, you know, businesses that start out doing a couple thousand a month, six, seven months later are doing, you know, almost close to a hundred thousand a month. And it’s because they’re intellectually curious. They’re constantly trying to find out how to improve upon things. Do a little bit more and just incrementally do a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And before you know it, you have a five big thriving business.
Todd (00:34:52):
It’s all about taking it one step at a time, you know, just building on that. That’s how I’ve done it. That’s how a lot of people have done it. And you just kind of keep flipping your money and keep growing and growing and growing. And if you’re in an area like we are with e-commerce, that is kind of having its day right now, it’s, it’s really important to take advantage of that and jump in. So that’s why I always tell people when they ask me if it’s too late to start selling on Amazon and I tell no, now is like the perfect time. Things are definitely getting harder as Amazon matures, but they’re still allowing new sellers to come on. There could eventually be a time where they say no more new sellers, you know, unless there’s some kind of special approval thing or something like that. So I think the opportunity as, as never really been better, even for smaller sellers that are just coming on board, what are your thoughts on that?
Alex (00:35:56):
I couldn’t agree more. I think we see it every day. You know, every day we see new sellers, we work with sellers as, you know, as small as 2000 a month in sales, then it’s little time in business. That’s three months and we see more and more every day. And, you know, I think the big thing too is it’s not just amazon.com. I mean like Amazon, you know, Amazon Singapore platform, you know, the United Arab Emirates is seeing explosive growth Europe. And then we still have all these emerging economies. I mean, just because you may have solved it in the U S you have an entire continent of Africa that is getting online and they’re going digital first, or, you know, they’re on mobile, there’s South America. That’s still an opportunity. There’s so many other opportunities out there besides just amazon.com that, you know, to be able to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week and sell all over the world. You know, it’s endless opportunity if, if, if you have a good product or you’re, you know, if you’re reselling a product and you have a good way to source it and be able to sell it effectively, it’s I don’t see it ending anytime soon. I see it growing because it’s not just this industry. It is going to be the new way of commerce.
Todd (00:37:10):
Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. I’m just looking at my phone here quick. I’m pulling up my Amazon seller central, just to give people an idea. So right now and I just refreshed it as of this time, last year, my sales have increased 160% from this time last year. So just kind of to give people an idea on how things have just rocketed. And it really all started in April where it just exploded for the reasons that we’ve been talking about. So and going international, I haven’t done a lot of that. I sell a little bit in Canada, a little bit in Mexico. But yeah, there’s a whole other rest of the world out there, I should say that we can sell on and, you know, starting whatever country you’re in. You know, a lot of people are in the U S but we’ve got people who listen to this from the UK and Australia and Canada and all around the world. So start where you live and then just kind of expand out from there exactly. Now to bring this back around, to payability and things like that. What kind of recommendations do you have for people if they start using your service, they kind of manage their money better and just take the best advantage of getting that earlier.
Alex (00:38:36):
Yeah. So I think as far as recommendations you know, you kind of said it earlier, you want to know your numbers and you want to make sure that, you know, you want to make sure that you have margins that are working for you. You know, it’s okay to take losses for a while and it’s okay to take losses, especially if you’re getting into a new product vertical, but you want to understand when are those losses going to, you know, when are you going to have a break even point? And then when are you going to be able to start making revenue? There’s going to be a lot of upfront costs to doing anything. You know, if you’re just starting out, you’re probably going to be taking some courses you’re going to, thankfully there’s amazing videos online, like yours, that don’t cost anything to be able to watch.
Alex (00:39:15):
And, you know, there’s so much information on YouTube and there’s so much great information by successful sellers. And, you know, I think one thing that’s been so amazing about the Amazon community in general is how many people are willing to share whether it’s a LinkedIn group, whether it’s a Facebook group, whether it’s, you know, channels like yourself, there’s so many people that are willing to share that knowledge. So, first of all, it’s getting through all the noise and understanding like, where are you in your, you know, your seller journey. Typically people start out doing some type of form of retail arbitrage, right? You’re buying low, you’re selling high, but if you stay in retail, arbitrage forever, it’s almost kind of like day trading in the markets. You’re constantly, if you’re doing a retail arbitrage model, it means that you’re constantly sourcing every day. Now, some people love that.
Alex (00:40:02):
They love the chase. It’s almost too exciting to give up, but it’s hard to scale your business if you’re constantly having to do with the sourcing. So what we usually see is people start out in retail arbitrage and, you know, then they graduate into just becoming a more professional reseller. They figured out some really good sources to be able to buy products. They’re starting to build a reputation. You know, if there may be buying it from a wholesaler or a vendor, they’re building that reputation, they’re getting better terms over time as to become a better customer. And then they’re starting to really own a couple of product skews. They know how to price them. They know how to reprice them. If someone comes in as offering the same thing, they know how to source them. Well, they know how to make sure that they’re distributed, whether it’s FBA or they’re doing stellar fulfillment, then they’re making sure that they know where their buyers are.
Alex (00:40:50):
And you know how to make sure that they can get those products as fast as possible. No one really wants to wait anymore with all the beauty and great stuff that’s come with e-commerce and technology. Patience has not been one of them. Everyone wants everything on demand now. And you know, from there, once you start, you know, really owning that reseller world, then it’s, you know, some people start increasing skews. They go from 10 skews to a hundred skews, to a thousand skews, to 5,000 skews, whatever it is that, you know, that makes sense for your business doing complimentary products, it doesn’t always make sense to sell sneakers and, you know, computer monitors, because now you’re looking at two different buyers, but doing complimentary products, if you’re selling that computer monitor, maybe you want to sell the webcam. Maybe you want to sell the ring light.
Alex (00:41:37):
Maybe you want to sell the keyboard. Maybe you want to start selling some after, you know, aftermarket, consumer electronics. If you’re in apparel, figuring out like, you know, how can I leverage that same customer and create a repeat buyer if someone’s buying my, you know, bathing suits, does it make sense for me to do a non apparel product that also makes sense, like suntan lotion or, you know, like other types of beachwear. And so picking out what, you know, your concentration is making sure that you have the complimentary products for it and trying to maximize each individual buyer to see if they can buy more. So that way they’re already, you already have the customer and make sure that you’re providing what the customer wants. Usually there, we see people graduate, maybe they become a wholesaler. But typically what happens there is now they figured out a product niche that they like.
Alex (00:42:25):
And that’s when they start entering into the private label world. What we’ve seen not be successful is people jump right into the private label world before they’ve ever sold anything, or they manufacture a product before they’ve sold anything. And there’s so many ins and outs of Amazon in general, and e-commerce in general that you really want to learn all the kind of tricks and the nuances and how it works and how to fulfill and all that stuff. You want to do that with products that you already know are going to sell. So that’s usually where we see that journey. And then once you’ve hit that private label, you know, what’s usually really interesting that we’ve seen a lot of success then with customers is you find products that are already performing well, maybe there were products that were reselling and then you improve upon them.
Alex (00:43:12):
You dig through the reviews, let’s say you have a, you know, a Bluetooth speaker and it’s an outdoor speaker. And he starts looking at reviews, see what people are upset about and start to, you know, analyze, like if you have a Bluetooth speaker and everyone’s saying, Oh, it’s the best speaker in the world. I wished it would float great speaker. I took it in the pool, thank to the bottom. Oh man. Imagine if the speaker could float, that’d be great. And if you start to see enough, people say, you know, the similar thing about a product, see if you can take a similar product and then improve upon it. And then you can come out and say, Hey, I’ve got the Bluetooth speaker everyone wants. And it floats, you know, and, and you can do that across so many product verticals where you’re taking something that’s already working and you’re making a little better.
Alex (00:43:53):
And that’s, you know, it’s kind of the American way. It’s the way we’ve set up our patent rules. Why it’s not breaking someone’s patent when you improve upon it, because we want that better product out there. And then that’s when you start just like you were doing with the reselling, now that you have your own product, private product, then sell the ancillary and accessories towards it. And you know, maybe you have one or two products of your own and you’re reselling some complimentary products with it. And then you figured those out. And then now you have the multiple product line because you’re figuring out what the products are. And then from there, you know, maybe now you have a complete private label brand. And that’s something that, you know, maybe an investor wants to buy or, you know, then you get acquired. And that’s usually where we see the successful arts. You gotta start somewhere, start by reselling a product that’s already in demand. So you can learn how the platform works. And then you start to own that reseller world. And then you kind of keep moving up. We’re, you know, again, not to harp on it where we’ve seen people go wrong is I’ve got a great idea for a product I’m going to invent it. Well, that’s great. Does anyone want it? And that’s where the research comes in. Just like you gotta know your numbers, you have to know what the market wants.
Todd (00:45:00):
Yeah. I definitely agree. I, in doing the whole sale, I have a niche that I spend a lot of time in and it really helps get to know that niche to be able to talk the lingo and stuff like that. And yeah, I see a lot of products all the time that I could make private label versions of, you know, make them a little bit better. A lot of listings, they’re just so horrible and they’re still selling really well. So it’s definitely, you see a lot of that. And that’s something that I’ve been looking at doing as well. I do have some private label products and I will want to create more. One thing I would probably mention to people though, is make sure before if you’re doing wholesale before doing private label, make sure you work your way out of a lot of the day-to-day stuff in the wholesale business before doing a private label business, because they are both a lot of work.
Todd (00:45:59):
So if you’re just trying to do both of them, then you’re going to get divided and neither of them are going to be done as good as they should have. So that’s one warning I would probably throw out there, but yeah, it’s definitely something that is doable and something I want to do is that’s pretty cool that you see that a lot out there. People kind of going through that cycle. Now, the retail arbitrage, I should mention there too. Cause I like to kind of, that’s how I started and I think you’re right. A lot of people do start that way. And I kind of look at it like the, the retail arbitrage is kind of like medium risk, medium reward, the medium risk, because if you get IP complaints and stuff, there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. But you can’t scale at right where the wholesale world, you can really scale it. So it’s more like low risk kind of medium to high reward. And then of course got private label, which is high risk, high reward. If you get something that goes, you can make a lot of money, but you’re going to probably have some failures you need to push through before you get there as well.
Alex (00:47:08):
Yeah. And I, I think one thing that’s so interesting in the wholesale world too, is especially if you came up from that arc of retail arbitrage and reselling some of your buddies who you’ve been, you know, in member groups with might become your best customers when you start wholesaling it. And then, you know, you might start wholesaling to resellers, but then once your in that wholesale world, there’s a whole world of wholesale outside of Amazon to. Alibaba is making a huge push into North America to get more North American sellers on the platform. There’s, you know, Amazon first party, there’s other marketplaces like newegg that has first party sellers as well. There’s all these other, you know, what used to be traditional box stores that now essentially have created their own marketplaces, like fables tractor supply. You know, they’re allowing all sorts of third-party sellers now to get their products on the shelves.
Alex (00:47:59):
And they are basically putting all their products on the shelves online. And so it’s, there’s so many marketplaces out there now, too, that people don’t even think about that are really great fits if you’re in that wholesaler, that private label world too. And then I would just encourage everyone to explore all your options. Amazon is still the biggest full stop, but your customers might be other places to still learn about the different marketplaces. You know, depending on your product, maybe Etsy is a good fit. Maybe Ebay is a good fit, you know, and each marketplace has its little niches. Maybe you have a product that’s like an impulse buy and something like top hat or with their 92nd auctions is a good fit. So I would encourage everyone. Like Amazon is definitely where you want to be, because that is still the most demand.
Alex (00:48:46):
And you know, people who try to, you know, say amazon is going away and everyone’s leaving Amazon. You’re doing it really to get some attention because they are the biggest. They do have the most demand, you know, a lot of, you know, Amazon claims that like, you know, 65% or 75% of all search starts on Amazon. And I don’t know if I agree with that per se, because I think the type of search you do on Amazon is different than an exploratory top of funnel search you would do on Google. Like people talk to Google now it’s, you know, like, so you’re on Google and you go, what’s the best way to dry my hands. You know, when you’re on Amazon, you go paper towels. So, you know, there’s still discovery happening top of funnel. So as much as, especially if you have private label brands and you have your own product, as much as you can get at that top of funnel in that discovery, as well as being on the places where, when someone knows that a search who you are.
Alex (00:49:38):
So like things like Pinterest, I think are really interesting because it’s that top of top of funnel exploration and people are searching and people are getting, you know, going into the rabbit hole, but you still want to make sure that if someone is typing in paper towels, Bluetooth speaker, that search we’re suing knows what they’re looking for. That is that seventy-five percent or 65% of whatever Amazon claims, because it’s that more of a root search. But now that we have Alexa, we’re going to watch that. I, I can almost guarantee you, we’re going to watch that search become more of a natural language because now people are talking to Alexa and they’re going, Alexa, what’s the best toilet paper out there, Alexa, like what’s a book like this other book. And so I can see their search algorithms changing over time to match the way people are actually searching as well. Yeah.
Todd (00:50:28):
Interesting. You bring up Alibaba because I read an article and they were saying that they believe Alibaba is going to be the biggest on-coming competitor to Amazon, where usually people are looking and thinking Walmart. But Alibaba, like you said, they’re making some big inroads and big plays into, you know, the United States, especially in like the business world and things like that. Then, you know, I think Amazon is definitely the biggest, but that is just in e-commerce, but they are really playing in the retail world. Right? So they’re competing for your dollar either you can go to Walmart or go to target or some local store, or you can go online and shop on Amazon. And those big behemoths that are not online or coming online, like target and Walmart and alibaba, you know, they’re going to be throwing a lot of money into this. I feel like Amazon is going to start losing some ground in that way. Like if you compare it to like a Google, right. The domination of Google, but Google is like something that was brand new, there was no competition for it. Right. But Amazon, yes they’re e-commerce and they’ve dominated that, but they are competing directly head to head with every other retailer on the planet that’s been in business for a long time. So I think it’s an area where other companies can, can definitely make out some ground pretty quickly.
Alex (00:52:03):
Yeah. And I think you hit the nail on the head with how you kind of described Amazon as the behemoth of a retailer. And if you think about some of the other products that Amazon has, they’re also designed for you and me, Kindle Audible, and they do have Amazon web services, which is a more of like a B2B business play, but they own consumer mind share. And what’s going to be really interesting is things like Alibaba, where they’re, they’re going after that B2B. And they’re looking for large businesses that can fill a large products post-sale to other businesses. And it’ll be interesting whether or not Amazon just continues to own that consumer mind share or whether they start to go into that B2B business, you know, space as well. And there’s smart people over there. I’m sure if they do go into it, they’re going to go into it, you know, elbows deep. But there’s a lot of opportunity for others out there as well.
Todd (00:52:58):
100 percent. Well let’s kind of circle back up here. We’re coming up on an hour. So bring it back to payability. All of this was kinda e-commerce is exploding and we’re going to need money to grow our businesses. So anything that we haven’t touched on with payability that people should know before we wrap up here,
Alex (00:53:23):
That’s a great question. I mean, there’s there’s so we could talk about, but really what it is is if you’re looking to grow your business in, as by the company was built, one of the biggest pain points was limited access to capital and our mission at payability is to help companies grow. And, you know, we started by offering capital, you know, and providing capital because that is one of the largest paying points. But our mission is to have companies be successful. And, you know, I think a lot of people, when they start to think about finance, think about it, something that they’re committing to for the rest of their life. And we have companies that work with us for years, we have companies that show up every Q4 and leave every Q1 and come back into four. We have companies that only used us for a short period of time.
Alex (00:54:06):
Every company is different. You don’t have to fit yourself in any individual box. But if you do have cash constraints and a lot of people do, or you have a great product and you’re in that product journey and you’re looking how you can take the next step. You know, you have a product that moves it, can’t keep up with the demand. And you know, things that, you know, limited cash can affect this. Things like losing the buy box, which is really hard to earn one of the fastest ways to lose it as stocking out. And if we think about it, you know, just intrinsically, I want to buy that Bluetooth speaker I was talking about. I want it for a weekend, barbecue that I have you’re out of stock. I ordered it. There’s a speaker I never even thought of before, but now I saw your advertisement.
Alex (00:54:50):
I want it. I paid for it. Now I demand it. It shows up a Monday instead of on Friday, my weekend is ruined. I didn’t get that speaker I wanted. So I may have never written a review in my life, but now I’m going to write a review. I’m going to write a negative review and negative reviews are kind of like when people write reviews on restaurants, no one ever comes out and give someone a C or a C plus. No one says the food was exactly as I was expecting. It tasted fine. It showed up around on time. People write reviews when they’re annoyed, people write reviews when they’re off or people write reviews when it completely exceeded expectations. So you don’t see three stars, you get a one or two store, or you got a four or five star. And it’s because people don’t spend their time just saying, yeah, it was all right.
Alex (00:55:36):
People spend their time saying I didn’t get that product on time. Or people say the product was the most amazing product. Stocking out leads to bad reviews, bad reviews, lead to losing the buy box. If you’ve earned it, it leads to you not ranking as high. The fastest way to get there is to stock out. And so if you did, earn the buy box, if you do have that demand, you want to make sure you have enough capital to keep up with it. Whether that’s do use pay ability or another source, you want to make sure you’re well capitalized. If you’re running a professional business. So I would encourage everyone, you know, do your homework, check out. What’s out there. You know, with someone like us, it’s about a five to 10 minute application. There’s no credit checks, there’s no obligations. So I would encourage you, you know, apply, check us out, see what we can do for you.
Alex (00:56:23):
And if we’re not the right fit, let us know why we’re not the right fit so we can improve upon it. So I think that’s the name of the game. We want to listen to the market. If we’re not doing something right, we want people to share it with us so we can correct whatever’s going on and build that better product because everything is changing. We’re constantly changing and constantly rolling out new product iterations, building products for what people demand. And you know, as business owners, we should demand that of every partner we work with, every vendor we work with, you know, you can’t get anywhere. You can’t get things if you don’t ask for them. So the same thing with your suppliers, see if you can get favorable rates, see if they’ll give you terms. So you’re still giving, you know, specialty right now. Like if you’re a good customer, like it’s okay to be a little pushy when you’re a business owner, your business is what you need to take care of. So ask for what you want and see what people can do for you.
Todd (00:57:13):
Yeah. Absolutely. Ask for those net terms, ask for those discounts, especially after you’ve built up that relationship and you’ve kinda, you know, you know, like, and trust each other now. So definitely huge. And yeah, you know, you guys are definitely one of the standard bearers. I think in this industry, I reached out to you guys because people that I know and trust recommended you guys. And while I didn’t sign up, like I said, I was able to get that a line of credit. You guys treated me right. And customer service was good. That’s why I wanted to bring you on here. So what I would recommend anybody out there, if you think your business is ready for it, you know, your numbers, everything’s good. Reach out to you guys and go through the process, find out, you know, what that percentage is going to be, what you guys can do for the sellers out there and things like that.
Todd (00:58:09):
We’ve got that $250 sign-on bonus. Again, that’s $250. There’s free fees basically. And they can get that at th eamazonseller.school/pay. That’ll take you right over to your guys’s website. And that is an affiliate link, like I said before. So I’ll get a cut of that at no additional cost to the people who buy through you guys or sign up through you guys. And of course I would really appreciate that. You know, I don’t necessarily get paid a lot for just doing the podcast here. So if you’re going to sign up entrepreneurDventure.com forward/pay, and that would be awesome. So yeah, Alex, I really appreciate you coming on the show. I think this has been great. People are going to get a lot of good information out of this. And yeah, just appreciate you coming on the show.
Alex (00:58:58):
I appreciate you having us Todd and the kind words and it was, it was a pleasure.
Todd (00:59:03):
All right. You have a great one, Alex.
Alex (00:59:05):
You too.
Todd (00:59:06):
All right. So there you go. I really hope you enjoyed that. I had a lot of fun talking with Alex, really nice guy, really easy to talk with. And I think we kind of took that conversation all over and touched on a lot of really good topics in e-commerce. And of course, finances and helping your business grow. The opportunity has never been like it is right now. So if you’re not already selling on Amazon, get in and start selling. Now go find something in your garage listed and sell it on Amazon and learn the process and start doing the reverse sourcing method that I teach. We’ll put that link in the show notes. So you can check that out and start opening accounts with brands and suppliers. You know, if you’ve been in the learning mode for a long time now is the time to take the step and start doing.
Todd (01:00:04):
At some point you got to stop learning and just do learn some more, do learn some more, do learn some more. So definitely take that jump. If you’re already an established seller and you’re ready to take on or grow your business, I should say, definitely check out, pay ability. Remember entrepreneuadventure.com/pay P a Y to get that $250 bonus that they are throwing in for listeners of the Amazon Seller School podcast. So I really appreciate payability for that. And yeah. See if it’s a fit for you, just because you sign up does not mean you have to start using their service. You can turn it on and off whenever you want. So you’re not like locked into anything and you can talk with the people over there, see if it’s a good fit for you or not. So definitely do that. If you think you are ready to take that next step and keep growing or accelerate the growth of your business. So I really appreciate you listening to this episode. The show notes are over at amazonseller.school/51. And that wraps up this episode. I’m your host, Todd Welch signing off happy selling everybody.
Announcer (01:01:25):
This has been another episode of the Amazon Seller School podcast. Thanks for listening fellow entrepreneur and always remember success is yours. If you take it.
