395 : Allen Walker – You must remember you are a buyer first to have success selling on Amazon

eCommerce Momentum Podcast

Wise words from a young guy. You must be a buyer first. Regardless if you are an RA, OA, Wholesale or Private Label seller it all starts with the buy. That sets the tone for how you can sell your products. If your costs are low you have flexibility in a competitive market. If your costs are high where pennies matter you need to understand the competition and demand. I also love the way he talks about how far incremental changes have taken him. Small adjustments over time equal big changes. I am halfway done with the book he recommended: “Mindset by Carol Dweck”. Very worthwhile

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TRANSCRIPT

Allen: [00:00:00] Uh, she definitely developed an eye for what to look for. And you do the same thing with Amazon where I’m learning like niche by niche and cause I sell a lot of different things. Uh, and you just, you develop that eye when you see it, you know, it’s an instant buy or that it has potential.

Cool voice guy: [00:00:17] Welcome to the ecommerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.

Stephen: [00:00:32] Hey, wanted to take a second to talk about Gaye Lisby and GarryGary Ray’s, Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as I like to call it. Mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying while you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested.

Stephen: [00:01:31] And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, I’m, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me, so I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined have so much success. It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group.

Stephen: [00:02:18] I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum IFE in arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the momentum podcast. This is episode 395, Allen Walker. Very, very cool. A story. Um, and we never even got all the way into his store. I mean incredible success, selling shoes on Ebay and now, um, is, you know, just killing it on Amazon.

Stephen: [00:03:17] But a lot of this talk is about mindset and how important mindset is because Allen and I seem to be kindred spirits. Um, and maybe a whole bunch of you are too with the negative thoughts and um, you mentioned a book and I’m getting ready to download it next, uh, mindset. Um, and it’s talking about fixed mindset or growth mindset. And I’m definitely a fixed mindset person in a lot of it is my training and my limited, you know, I’m suspicious of everything, hard to let people in. And so a lot of that talk comes out in this conversation. Um, and man, for him to be so self aware at his age just sets him up for such an incredible future and more importantly, an opportunity to change other people’s lives by opening up and being willing and being vulnerable to say, Hey, I don’t have it all figured out either. Um, because most people you think do don’t. So there’s my deep thought on that. Let’s get into the podcast

Stephen: [00:04:12] and welcome back to E-commerce, women and podcasts for excited about today’s guest. Because in dog years, he’s 140 some odd years as a seller to me. He’s so, so experienced yet at Kelly loads will like to hear. I have socks older than him and I’m going to walk our welcome Alan. Thanks. David’s nice to be here. Funny story about the socks. I probably told this before, but um, Kelly one day were together and he says, Hey, did you like the socks I sent you? I’m like, what are you talking about? He goes, I sent you socks. I’m like, uh, hey. I sell socks. So I probably thought they were a return. I got cases of socks everywhere in the world and in our warehouse. And he said, I was tired of hearing you say on a or that you have socks older than these kids. And so I sent you socks and I’d never caught on it so that it is my line. I like that line. So anyway, so you, you are an old dog seller. I mean it’s crazy to me. We met and the conversation just blew me away to think of what an early adopter you were. I mean, that’s weird when you think about it. That is,

Allen: [00:05:18] and I, I’m not like an old dog seller. Like I’ve been doing this forever. I’ve only actually been selling as a full time gig for less than a year, but I have dabbled with Ebay since probably fifth grade and my grandma’s antique shop

Stephen: [00:05:34] and Ebay at scale at some point. I mean, so it wasn’t just a little bit like, you know, hey one or two items. Well let’s go back there. Okay. So why, I mean your grandmother was into antiques or how did she get into that even? Uh, she actually,

Allen: [00:05:51] well my dad was growing up, she was the, a secretary for the governor of Indianapolis and the story that I heard is she really liked antiques. She started buying them and then she kind of did what a lot of people do. She, she started selling off pieces that she didn’t really like and just built up an inventory and it was like her side hustle from a long time ago. And then it turned into working out of her, what? She retired, she worked out of her house, did it full time out of her house and eventually opened up an antique shop. And she mostly did sterling silver flatware and hollowware. And it was just something that at some point she was a collector. She was interested in I guess like you said, she accumulated volume. I mean like, yes. Uh, at, I think at the peak she had a couple million dollars in inventory.

Allen: [00:06:37] Are you kidding? I’m God. She was cool. Huh? Well, she, I mean when you think about his Oscar bag, she was probably the biggest influence in my life. Wow. And I regret not being able to take advantage of, cause I mean, I was, you know, I was a kid and I didn’t appreciate the knowledge that she had and I knew she wanted to teach me a little bit about antiques and sterling silver, but I kind of was like, well, I’ll Polish it. I’ll do the grunt work, but I don’t really want to know about it. And I definitely regret that. Now.

Stephen: [00:07:12] Um, I have an aunt, very similar story, introduced me to computers when I was probably that age and now think about that. They really didn’t exist, but they did, you know, and she was into that world and I didn’t adopt it as quick as I could have and uh, I regret it. Um, and she passed away very young in life. Um, so polishing silver, that was your life?

Allen: [00:07:36] Uh, yeah. I did a lot of the menial tasks in the shop. I Polish silver, I swept floors and then eventually a took over her, so I don’t even know what it was. I was probably fifth grade. She started talking about this thing called Ebay and how she was going to teach me how to take the pictures, do the listings, and I did all the, you know, I set up the listings. I didn’t actually take cash. I remember cash and check showing up in the mail and she would ship them all. And I remember the camera that I use, it was a Kodak that took a three and a half inch floppy disk. It was super fancy at the time. Well, Ebay

Stephen: [00:08:14] started in 1995 September 3rd and so you’re describing around 1998?

Allen: [00:08:22] Yes. It was 98 or 99 I think when I was that, I mean to be that early of an adopter. I mean, was she a young grandmother? I mean, what was, why was she so hip? I mean, how does she understand computers at that age? She actually didn’t, I set, I set up her computer. My Dad has a big computer background. I, there’s always been a computer in our house. You may not remember like my dad having a commodore 64 in the house. Um, but I set up her computer in the shop and she was in her, I think sixties how do you use your computer? I mean, she knew how to type because she was a secretary, but she, I remember her playing solitaire to become better at using the mouse.

Stephen: [00:09:06] Huh? There’s a lesson there, right? I mean, there’s somebody who’s committed, right. If they’re going to do that kind of thing, to get the control to learn that there’s a lesson there for everybody. So, so she’s going to teach you how to use computer. How adaptive were you? Like, because I described this in our warehouse and we have two guys working for us now. One’s a college student, the other one just graduated from college. We showed them one of these new, you know, either Ebay or Amazon or whatever. It’s like instant adoption. I’m like, well, you got to know they’ve already figured it all out. It’s like there’s no learning curve like my age would have had. So I assumed she would have had a pretty large learning curve. Did you surpass her very quickly? Not as in a negative way, but I mean, just in knowledge.

Allen: [00:09:50] Uh, at that age I just kinda did what I was told. I, I, I mean, I knew about the listings and take and the taking the pictures, but any of the backend stuff, like payments or shipping, I didn’t do any of that, that the shipping was pawned off on my grandpa. That was like his deal. He went to the post office almost every day.

Stephen: [00:10:09] So that was kind of a routine. All right, so you’re listing s I guess, silverware on Ebay generally?

Allen: [00:10:17] Yes. It was a silverware and really expensive hollowware I remember. What’s the second thing? Hollowware it’s like a tea, you know the tea kettles, anything that has a hollow body to it.

Stephen: [00:10:29] Oh, see, I love that term. That’s cool. I didn’t hear that term before.

Allen: [00:10:33] And so she had the hustle back in the day. I the, the one story that I remember is she found this rare sterling silver set. It was huge or just hundreds of pieces. It was plights. It was balls, goblets, everything. And it was the most expensive thing she ever bought. She’s paying $50,000 for smokes and she split it up and sold it piece by piece. And I think the last number I heard it was around 150,000 bucks.

Stephen: [00:11:04] Kidding me. I wonder what that’s worth today. I mean the equivalent, you know, now how did she find the things to buy? Do you remember?

Allen: