#220 – The Latest Unique Ways to Sell on Amazon, Regardless of Your Starting Point

Amazon’s marketplace is a lot like looking at a map of New York or Los Angeles and seeing all the different roads joining the city center from every angle. There are so many ways to get started in e-commerce, with more being pioneered every day.

In this episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Evangelist, Bradley Sutton welcomes two sellers who started as backyard neighbors and friends, then later became e-commerce partners. Nechole and Renata are with Bradley today to discuss how they perfected the art of scaling up from almost nothing.

Now, their business is thriving and they’re helping other sellers do the same. They talk about getting started with dropshipping, as well as their “thrifting and flipping” tactics for generating seed money for bigger projects. Both women offer a number of clever tips and strategies for Amazon sellers of all levels of experience.

In episode 220 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Nechole, and Renata discuss:

• 01:29 – Starting as Backyard Neighbors and Friends
• 04:15 – Saving Dogs (and the World)
• 08:17 – A First Exposure to E-Commerce
• 10:05 – Dropshipping Amazon Products on eBay
• 14:25 – Scaling Up from Almost Nothing
• 17:13 – Thrifting and Flipping
• 19:36 – Don’t Overlook Collectible Cards and Broken Technology  
• 24:58 – E-Commerce – Changing Lives and Helping Make Ends Meet  
• 27:59 – Selling Whataburger Ketchup Online
• 29:51 – The E-Commerce Online Summit – Perfect for Right Now
• 33:48 – Retail Arbitrage Tips
• 35:42 – Creating a Realistic Work Schedule  

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today, we’ve got two sellers who were childhood next door neighbors, but now they’re e-commerce partners with thrive and a lot of platforms like Mercari, Poshmark and more that we might not think about. Now, these strategies are great for new sellers trying to build capital, or maybe some of you experienced sellers who want to get your kids started in e-commerce. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS, free unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon and e-commerce world. We’ve got a couple serious sellers here. Renata and Nechole, welcome to the show.

Renata: Thanks for having us.

Nechole: Hi, thanks for having us.

Bradley Sutton: Now, what I like to start out always on the episode is kind of get the superhero origin story of the guests. So, uh, let’s start with Renata. Where were you born and raised?

Renata: Born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. I’ve been gone for a long time, but that in and of itself says quite a bit. I’m a Midwestern girl, and Nechole and I actually grew up in the same neighborhood and I was a latchkey kid. And when my parents were gone, I was at home selling all their stuff.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. So, Nechole, you were born and raised in the same area?

Nechole: I was raised in Wichita, Kansas, but I was not born there. I was born actually in St. Louis, Missouri, but I was raised in Wichita, Kansas, and we were actually backyard neighbor. Like we were our backyard backed up to each other. So we’ve been friends. Like the story is, we’ve been friends for years, like years. We’ve known each other for over 40 years. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Wow. You just age since you was like, since you were a one year old.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. There you go. So both of you all I would assume like maybe went to the same elementary school even.

Renata: I think we met– we didn’t actually move to that. I didn’t move to that area till we were in elementary. And so we went to school together, I guess. What was it? I was in the, I was 10.

Nechole: So we went to middle school together and high school together.

Renata: Okay. There you go.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Excellent. So now when you guys were in middle school, try and think back to that time, like, what did each of you think that you were going to be when you grew up? 

Renata: I was going to save the world. I wanted to be a corporate attorney. I went to Girl’s State. I don’t know if anybody knows what that is, but I went to Girl’s state and did all this stuff and then figured out that was a bunch of BS. And I didn’t want to do that. Didn’t want to do that because even with the elections and stuff back then, it was the politics. So I did, I wanted to be an attorney and I held onto that for just a little while. Like by the time I went to college, I decided I didn’t want to be an attorney, but going into college, I had decided I wanted to be a journalist and a kid, more BS, more politics. And so went into technology.

Bradley Sutton: Hold on. You’re skipping too much. Nechole is going to feel left out here. For what about you, Nechole? What were you thinking? What were you thinking about back then? Like when you were in middle school with Renata and did you know that she wanted to be an attorney back then? And what did you think about?

Nechole: I did not. But she was actually very, very active in a lot of different things. She was, I mean, I think she even did the cotillion and all this other stuff, so, and she actually did some pageants. So yeah, she was very active on the other hand was not, I was excited to just be able to ride my skateboard. So ironically, we live near the health department and there was a big, giant parking lot. So we would, I would ride on my skateboard and we would just hang out in the parking lot and ride on our skates. Yes, I was a skater girl. And then, one of the things we lived next door, ironically, besides the health department on the other side of us was a dog catcher, like the dispatch office, where they would check in the dogs, Oh, I wanted to save the dogs. And I even wrote the governor about the fact that I wanted them to stop. Like we would see dogs every single day and we would hear the dogs yelping inside the truck because they would come, they would pull in right next to our house. And you could hear the dogs just yelping in the back of the truck and the cages. And I just didn’t want the dogs to die. So that was my thing. I wanted to save the dogs. I didn’t know how I was going to save the dogs, but I wanted to save the dogs.

Bradley Sutton: Your future ambition, like to work somehow in that field. 

Nechole: I thought about being a veterinarian once, and then I just was like, no, I’m not going to be able to do that. But I thought about it. I seriously thought about being a vet. And I thought about trying to figure out how to save the dogs. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Because there’s a little girl. You don’t know how to do that. Sure.

Renata: Some complex ladies on here. That’s what you got.

BradleySutton: Did you all go to college after high school?

Renata: Yeah, I did.

Nechole: I did too, but I didn’t go as long as she did. I actually got out very quickly.

BradleySutton: Okay. What did each of you enter college? Like, what was your major in the beginning?

Renata: So I went in, like I said, I wanted to do journalism. I went in and they told me I had to major in journalism. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to major in Spanish and minor in journalism. And unfortunately the school I went to didn’t offer that they wanted me to major in journalism. And tell me what to write about. I said, no. So I ended up in technology and I was the kid that came from, like the poor part of town I wanted out. So I decided, well, I can make some money. If I go into some computers, it was very male driven. I was the only chick at a bunch of my classes. We were the– long time ago. So we were like out, spread out on the floor and spread eagle, decoding stuff and doing all kinds of stuff. So I was taking econ classes at the time. At the time I decided to go into technology, but I was majoring in economics. I got my bachelor’s in business. I went on to get an MBA. It was business.

BradleySutton: So, what’s your first gainful employment, like your first full-time job after getting out in the world?

Renata: I was a coder.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. So you actually were able to do what you were went to school for. Not a lot of people say that or after, because you have now, Nechole, what did you go into college with the, I mean, I think you said you didn’t finish it, but what were you going to do? What was the plan?

Nechole: So the first time I went to college, I went to Wichita State University and I’d signed up to be in their nursing program.

BradleySutton: A shocker, right.

Nechole: Yes, a shocker. I was going to be a nurse. I was just trying to get into their RN program. So I was going to have to do all the base classes before I could become a registered nurse. So that was the thing I wanted to do initially. Then I left. I probably was only there for one semester, maybe two. And then about three years later, maybe four, probably four. I went into Kansas Newman, a degree completion program for computer information. It was called CIS, computer information systems. And I was in that program for about a year and then I left.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. I’m sensing a theme here. So like, was it you got bored or what?

Nechole: I was doing too many things. Renata will tell you. My entire life, I have actually always had two jobs. I’d be the chick that would have two, three, four jobs just hustling all the time, doing 90 different things. I’ve done everything from clean toilets to make pizzas, to watch people’s dogs in their houses too. Like, I was just, I was hustling hard and maintain working a full-time job and all my side hustles in school. So I was like, okay, well, school has got to go.

BradleySutton: All right. Now, sticking with you for a second here. Nechole, how did, what was your first exposure to the e-commerce world?

Nechole: My first exposure to the e-commerce world was I think, it’s kind of hard to say because I think I remember Renata giving me a link to something and I signed up and, or either I got a link and I think she sent me a link at the same time. Because somebody was really doing like they were driving traffic. So we were both signing up for some link for something. But prior to that, I had done, I don’t know, like six or seven different network marketing companies. And I just like, yeah, it was not my thing, but I was trying to figure out how to make some money on the side all the time. I think that was the first full rate. And it was eBay. That was my first.

BradleySutton: So, Renata, when was this, and then how did you, if you were the one who introduced it to Nechole, like how did you find the eBay opportunity, I guess you could say?

Renata: The thing came along with the drop shipping from Amazon over to eBay. Got a link for, I don’t know, it was just people were driving traffic. I think Nechole and I were looking at it around the same time. It sounded super easy to do because, you know, they had software and all this stuff around it by then. And she, and I jumped into it kind of at the same time and started making money with it.

BradleySutton: And so this was like about six, seven years ago?

Renata: 2000. And I think toward the end of 13, I think that’s when we really started looking at it pretty seriously. Right.

BradleySutton: Then you would just like take products that were on Amazon and then just put it on eBay. And then when you– when somebody buys it from eBay, you just use your Amazon buying account to, uh, to send it, or was it vice versa or was it opposite?

Renata: It started that way, but because I had already been selling on different platforms. And by that time, it was, it just kind of opened my eyes to what was available out there. So it kind of started that way. We had some training available to us, and so we would find things on Amazon and all like, man, this stuff is pretty cheap. So when I would see it, I would immediately start listing it everywhere. I started listing it on Craigslist. I started listing it on eBay.

BradleySutton: Now, going back to Nechole, I think a lot of people have sold on eBay. A lot of people sold on Amazon, their textbooks or their school textbooks, or, you know, they want to sell their old video games on, on eBay. But, uh, I’m assuming there was a point, after you guys started selling where it was kind of like that light bulb moment, I was like, wait a minute, man. I can like scale this thing. Like this could actually be a main source of income here. Like, do you remember that moment when you kind of realize that?

Nechole: Yeah, I do. So, my– the reason I actually I’ve always been hustling, I feel like is because of my kids. I want to back up probably about five feet, just for a second. I got married. I ended up ultimately getting divorced, but I have two kids that are on the spectrum. So, me, the shock of finding out that my youngest was autistic and having seizures, I needed to figure out how to make some extra money, how to get some extra money, how to be able to cover his medical expenses, his therapies, and all that other stuff. So I literally had to continue to hustle. I did everything from, uh, I got my insurance license, became a licensed agent and I sold insurance life insurance and health insurance for a while. I ran a candy vending business, which was extremely successful. And again, I used that money to cover his special diet, his supplements, his therapy, speech OT, ABA, all those therapies that you need when you have an autistic. So that was my journey. And so when this came along, it didn’t require me as a life insurance agent. I had to go out, I was excited about the fact that I didn’t have to go anywhere. So that was the reason why I really started digging into this. And once I figured out that I could start making some money out, because I just sold a bunch of stuff. I always used to have garage sales too. So was always trying to make some money for these kids. And so, once I listed a boatload of stuff and I made like, I don’t know, $6,000 in like, in October, just in sales on eBay, I was like, okay, well this is a real thing now, because before it was just a thing, a random thing. Now it’s a real thing. We’re going to stop doing this other stuff and we’re going to do this. And so that’s when I decided we’re doing this over here.

BradleySutton: Okay. All right. Now obviously, we’re five, six, seven years past that time, eBay’s still around. Amazon is still around, but like knowing what you do now about the landscape on Amazon and eBay, and I’ll put this question to Renata, maybe like, would somebody be able to do what you guys did back then now? Or is it so different the landscape now where doing that drop shipping Amazon to eBay is not viable anymore?

Renata: Oh, no. It’s actually way more viable now. Like again, because of the software that’s out there, because people have kind of figured the whole thing out. I mean, when we were doing it, it was, obviously it was doable. We did it, but there was a lot more work behind it. We were still figuring things out. Then now you’ve got software, you’ve got software that will figure out exactly how much of something you need to buy, what you need to buy. When to put it out there, you’ve got all kinds of things. Now for me personally, that model just, I chose not to do that model anymore. I decided to do wholesale. I decided to do RA. There were things because I have kids because I was always out RA and OA. I decided that those would be the things that work best for me, I’m always shopping because I have kids, my kids could tell me things, there were things that just kind of fit into my lifestyle.

BradleySutton: Let’s say, let’s make up an imaginary person who might only have about $500 or it’s somebody else who’s selling already on Amazon. But they were like, Hey, I just want a different stream of income. Not to have all my eggs in one basket here. I got $500. What’s– that might not be enough for a private label product that you can scale up fast, you know, like sure. For 500 bucks, yeah. I can order some straws from China, sell it for $6 on Amazon. I’ve actually done that before, but that’s not something that you’re good. That’s going to give you any kind of meaningful, full income. So with $500, knowing what you all do now, and all these different forms of selling, be it wholesale drop shipping, you mentioned retail arbitrage, online arbitrage. What would be kind of like your mini blueprint for somebody with that on how they can just start generating some money on Amazon.

Nechole: So what I teach people is first I start always talking about, start with stuff around the house that is the easiest way to get started. And that’s how I started. I started with whatever was in my garage, whatever I had available. And then I would also reach out to neighbors and also people I went to church with. I’m like, okay, if you’re cleaning out the garage during spring cleaning, let’s take a look at what you got. If your wife told you to go dump that stuff off at the dump or give it to the stores, donated to the DAV, can I please have all the stuff in your, when I first started, I probably had over $3,000 worth of inventory that I didn’t spend any money on. And I made over 6,000 or more on that because people would just donate. So that’s the fastest way to get started or finding stuff in your attic, your garage, or basement. Then the next thing that I would do is I would do a strategy where we would go find where people were giving, like free stuff, like come pick it up. So we would, I would get in my car with my kids, load them up in the back. And I would drive around to all these places where people were just like, Oh, it’s on the curb. We have all this stuff. And then my third strategy was a garage sale.

BradleySutton: How do you find out about those? Are you talking about looking in Craigslist?

Nechole: Well, I would go to Craigslist. I would go to those sites. And then the other thing that I would do is, I would go onto Facebook for Facebook garage sales, which the structure of Facebook garage sales, those are different now, but I would go to Facebook garage sales. And when people would say that they were having a garage sale on Saturday and Sunday, I would literally reach out to them. Like if they say that they’re doing the garage sale from, I don’t know, from seven until 12, I would reach out to them at 10:30. And I would say on Sunday, I would wait till the last day. And I would message them on Facebook and say, Hey, if you still have some stuff left over from your garage sale, you don’t want to take it in the house. Let me know. And that was one of my strategies is I know how labor intensive it is to bring all that stuff, drag it all back into your house, set up all those tables, all the money, all this stuff. So I would literally reach out to them like when they were on the, on the tail end of their garage sale and say, Hey, if you got some stuff that you’re just you don’t want to take back in the house, let me know if you want to donate it and I’ll come by and pick it up.

BradleySutton: Can you think of other methods of selling, that’s not like I would say mainstream and I have a feeling that you know about this because you know, we’re, we’re going to talk more about the conference you have coming up. But with this conference when I look at the list of speakers, I was like, I’ve never even heard of some of these speakers. I’m looking at what they do. I’m like, Whoa, I never thought about that. So in the past, with your students or with, with other, speakers, guest, speakers you’ve had at your conferences, what are a couple strategies or unique things that you would probably venture to say that 98% of people like never even thought of?

Nechole: Well, besides, we teach a lot of retail arbitrage and online arbitrage. We teach thrifting and going out and thrifting and flipping. We also teach like the strategies that I previously talked about. We teach people how to sell a car and Posh mark, different strategies on selling things on Etsy, what people are overlooking. We also teach like the–

BradleySutton: Let’s go back to that. I’ve never talked about the Mercari and and Poshmark. So like, how is that different than like an Etsy or eBay?

Nechole: Well, Mercari and Poshmark, it’s the mobile app. So we teach people how to sell on the mobile apps and Facebook marketplace. But we teach because of the fact that you can make money, you can actually make a living selling on point Mercari and Poshmark. And the great thing about it is like Poshmark. You actually like charge more than what you would think you could. And we’re talking about the majority of the time. These are sometimes use things. So each one of the platforms are different. You’re running it completely from your mobile app. And you can list items that you’ve acquired, however you acquired them, whether you acquired them. Some of the strategies I used, which was wait until the end of a garage sale, it’s like, Hey, I’ll come pick up your stuff. Reaching out to your community, your next door neighbor or your family members and friends saying, Hey, give me the stuff that you were going to donate to the salvation army, and I’ll take it or reaching out to your church members and say, give it to me. And then you literally take amazing pictures of those things. You need it like a ring light, or maybe a shadow box or whatever it is, or just a white piece of paper and a really good camera and include as much detail as possible. So that, that way the person that is interested in it can buy it. You have to take that. You have to learn how to, when you’re selling with the mobile apps or any platform, you have to do really a really good job with your photos. And you definitely have to do a good job with your titling and keywords.

Renata: Yeah. Your listing. And one of the things about that though, is you’ve got a completely different audience. So when you look at a Poshmark, you’ve got people that will go to Poshmark, looking for specific things. When you look at Etsy, when you look at a Grailed, when you look at your offer up, you’ve got, they have very specific audiences. And so, you’ve got people that, like Nechole said, that will make a whole living on one of the one or more of those apps. And so we’ve got inside of our Academy, we’ve got like whole training programs, just on the mobile apps. We talk about safety. We talk about shipping. We talk about all of those things.

BradleySutton: Interesting. Interesting. Now, let me just throw out some of my unique experience here or recently. I’m not sure if I’ve talked about this on the podcast, but you had me thinking about that when you’re talking about thrift stops or, or, or garage sales. But let me just tell everybody out there who’s listening. I don’t know what has happened, but baseball cards and like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards the last year is just ridiculous. So my dad, 20 years ago, he had a little, before, there was all this.com stuff. He had this little thing going on, where he would fly back and forth from Japan. And he was like, just buying, going to all the toy stores he could in Japan, buying up all these boxes of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards when it was really hot here in America. And then he just fly back and forth and then sell it to like shops and stuff. But then that bubble burst or something then, and he was just stuck with like tons and tons of stuff. And it’s been sitting in a garage for the last 20 years. And then when the Pokemon go, started coming back a couple of years ago, he’s like, Hey, why don’t you? I found all this stuff. Why don’t you list it? So like at the time I was just, I thought I was making a killing, like, I was selling this stuff for him. Like these boxes that he probably paid like 50 bucks for. And we were selling a box of 60 packs for about a thousand dollars. And I was just like, Oh my goodness, this is just, I even feel bad. I’m making this kind of money, but those, I wish I would have held onto it for one more year. I had a little bit left right now. Let me just tell you like a box of 60 packs that I sold $1,200 and felt guilty about it. Those packs now are going for over $300 each. These unopened 20 year old Japanese pack, the same exact ones. So guys, if you are out there and you’re checking garage sales, I heard some nods, some verbal nods over there. Are you, are you all seeing the same thing about how baseball cards and stuff.

Nechole: Not just baseball cards. So let me just tell you, we had this whole discussion within our leadership. We were talking about the old, like the Nintendo, like the old stuff, like plastics. And we were talking about how much some of that stuff is going for. So, one of the other things that we always talk about as far as our training is we tell people like don’t overlook, like selling things that are not working because people buy things for parts. They buy it in pieces. And so they just need that, you know, this one button or they need this one wheel or whatever it happens to be. So list the broken stuff too.

BradleySutton: All right, guys, quick break from this episode for my BTS, Bradley’s 30 seconds. Here is my 30-second tip of the day. We’ve been talking a little bit today about selling things on eBay. So one little trick, like if you’re not sure how much something costs, you can search for it and see what things are bidding for people, what people are bidding for right now. But don’t always go by that because just because the bids are at, or the asks are at a certain price, that doesn’t mean that it’s selling for that price. So after searching, hit the little filter on E-bay that says looking at completed or ended items and which ones actually sold and go by that price to have an accurate idea of what you should price your products. You’re trying to sell on eBay.

BradleySutton: I’m going to ask both of you all this question, but speaking of the different, making the killings for different people, like if I were to ask you what one story, you know, from one of your students or somebody you know, that sticks out the most in your mind, you don’t need to say their name or exactly what they sold, but it’s more like, one of these two minutes stories where it’s like, Hey, they started here, they started doing this, and then now they’re here. And like something that’s most inspiring to you when you think back to it.

Renata: Okay. So when I first started selling on e-commerce, I wanted to save the world. I was like, Oh my gosh, this could change everybody’s life or whatever. So I was at a women’s church event. And I was telling all the ladies, I was like, look, I started selling online, six or seven months ago. And I’ve actually been working on my own for about the last 14 years. So, that in and of itself was inspiring, to some women. But, there was a lady that was sitting there. I didn’t know where she was at the church event. She’s like, let me get your number. So I gave her my number. We started talking and literally, I think it may have been about six months later, she had been working in the school district here. I had only moved here maybe about a year prior. She had been working in the school district for 26 years and suffice it to say she hated her job. And within about six months, she was able to quit her job. She was able to quit her job. And for me, it was great because now all of a sudden I had a shopping buddy. So we would go out late at night we had Hatchimal stories, we’ve got fingerlings stories, we’ve got all kinds of stuff. That for me, it was absolutely great because it literally changed the landscape of everything that was going on. It was like, okay, she now was able to contribute more to her family budget. She was able to take trips. She went with me on my milestone birthday trip. She’d never been on a trip without our family, all of that stuff. It was great.

BradleySutton: Love it. Love it. Nechole, you have a story that sticks out in your mind?

Nechole: I do. It’s actually a recent story. So we offered our 90 day, our 90 day intensive for Q4 for our Walmart training. And we had one of our team members came back and she showed her numbers. By the end of December, she was at 22,000. So it’s a 90 day game plan. She came in, I think on week three, week two or week three. So she didn’t even start at the beginning by December, the beginning of December, she was already at 22,000 and she sent a picture and she said, thank you so much for helping me. I just never would have thought that this would have happened. I just never would’ve thought. So, I love those stories because we’re, both of us are single moms. I have two special needs kids. And so I’ve helped so many moms that have special needs kids try to figure out how to make this work. Because when you have every single month, you have all these medical expenses for your child, and you have to see these specialists that are not covered by your insurance, or they’re considered out of network. You got to have that extra money to be able to do those things. And so, doing e-commerce has changed my life personally, but I just watched family after family there’ll be impact and say, now I can get that specialized test. Now I can see that specialist that’s out of network for me. Now we can start this therapy and I didn’t have the money before, but now I do. So I love those stories.

BradleySutton: Yeah. As do I. And then, we have tons of listeners here. So if you’re out there thinking, Hey, I wonder if that could be me. Hey guys, it could be. As I said every single person who comes on the show, we always talk about, their backstories. And, uh, and it’s always from different backgrounds. Now, in this case, it happens to me next door neighbors. And they kind of grew up together. So a little bit, this is probably the most similar we’re going to get for a backstory to what all the other 250 episodes. Everybody else was pretty different. So just guys out there– okay, go ahead.

Nechole: No, it’s something about your Pokemon story. So I will add Pokemon. I want you to know. So we were doing bundles, Pokemon bundles from the dollar tree. And I want to say this was like 2016. And so I literally drove all over the, I live in the Dallas Fort worth area. So I drove all the metroplex to get these pieces that we put together for this bundle. We created this amazing bundle and it was selling out. Time after time, after time, after time, it was all these just different pieces. All of it, a hundred percent source from the dollar tree. And we literally cleaned out every single dollar tree in the Dallas Fort worth area to make these bundles because you had to have the specific pieces and they would just completely fly off the shelf on eBay. I mean, I’m sorry on Amazon. It was amazing. So I was just going to say Pokemon sales, and we know that.

Renata: There’s a bunch of dollar trees in the Dallas Fort worth area.

BradleySutton: We don’t have too many out here, but yeah, I remember when driving through Texas, I seemed like I would see that in every corner over there that end what a burger. We don’t have that out here in California, but you all don’t have a in and out.

Renata: No, we have In and Out here now. Very interesting. Brad, just to tell your listeners this, if they are wondering what they can sell, like we get these stories all the time, but you just mentioned that you don’t have Whataburger. If they’re in California, they can source what a burger and sell it all day long on Amazon. Because when people live in areas where they can’t get what they add, where they came from, they go online to buy it. So I can tell you this, there are people that buy Whataburger ketchup online every day. That was one of my top sellers in all of 17. All of 19.

Nechole: Yeah. So this is another one. Like people don’t have Bucky’s. If you’re we’re from Texas and I don’t even know what that is. It’s like a convenience. It’s a whole convenience store.

Renata: It’s a marketing, it’s a marketing. Maybe that’s what it is.

Nechole: It is a marketing Mecca, but they sell all these Bucky’s things. And so people who live somewhere else and they live in Texas and then they move somewhere. They’re like, Ooh, I missed Bucky’s and I want some Bucky’s. And so they will order things. And so, one of the things that we teach people how to sell is consumables or steady eddies, or your replenishable things that, okay, I eat up this bag of whatever they are cheese curls, and they’re gone. Let’s get some more cheese curls. So we would sell them. So food on eBay, I’m telling you, I’ve sold cereal on eBay. I’ve sold all kinds of stuff, because most people sell it. You sell it on Amazon, but some people overlook the opportunity to sell certain perishable goods on eBay as well.

Renata: Really no stuff, just keep in mind regional stuff, stuff that you like, where you are, if you ever moved away and wouldn’t be able to get it, you’re going to go online and buy it because you like it.

Nechole: Hot sauce, barbecue sauce, ketchup. I mean, it’s crazy

BradleySutton: Now, we’re going to get in a couple of seconds into your 30-second tips. That’s like a little feature that we do on this show. But before then, I was talking a little bit earlier about conferences and I love going to like unique conferences. And just here at Helium 10, we like attending unique conferences. Because sometimes you can go to you start going to the Amazon conferences and it becomes like all the same. I know we got Karyn and Cassandra here who are going to be speaking at a branded by woman conference. That’s kind of unique that it was, it’s all female speakers there. So that that’s an interesting one, but you all invited me to speak at your conference. And I remember, I turned down a lot of conferences, a lot of speaking roles, but when I saw that, as soon as I saw it, I was just like, this is, this is like unique. It’s different. Like I didn’t recognize one speaker. Sometimes all the speakers in the Amazon world, it’s always almost always the same and that’s great. We’re all buddies and stuff, but you’re hearing the same thing over and over again, me as a speaker going go into these battles. Like, you know what, if I go here, I’m going to like hear a lot of things for the first time. So can you talk about that conference you all have coming up.

Nechole: Yeah. So the e-com sellers summit is coming up. It’s February the 22nd through the 25th. And of course it’s a hundred percent online and I created the e-com sellers summit because of course my kiddos, I am that person that can’t travel like everybody else. And I miss the opportunity to be able to go to conferences. So we were doing the online summits before COVID hit like 2019 was when I launched the e-com. So technically we launched in 2018, but we didn’t have our first summit until 2019. And so now we’ve hosted a total of six summits online summit. And we’re excited to continue this journey because I know that there are people prior to COVID. There were people that can’t travel because they have kids or they may have something going on and it’s not, they don’t have the flexibility to be able to– I have to have somebody to watch my kids. I got to get on a plane, I got to rent a hotel. I got to pay for food and all of a sudden stuff. And what if I can get all the same speakers that would be walking across the stage? What if I could get all of them online in the convenience of my home? And I could watch it as whenever my schedule permitted. Now it’s a thing because of course of COVID. But prior to that, there were people that were doing random sonnets here and there. And so I created it because of that. And we want it to be able to represent all things e-commerce every time we would see anything or do anything, we would always see I’m sorry, would always be male dominated. And I was like, there are women out here doing e-commerce how come people don’t know the women do e-commerce too.

Nechole: And then you aren’t seeing a lot of diversities, like, okay, there are people of other colors doing e-commerce why are we seeing for that? So I was intentional about the e-com seller summit, because I wanted to make sure that women were represented in the space because there’s a lot of amazing women doing amazing stuff when it comes to e-commerce. And I wanted to make sure that minorities are represented. We cover everything. E-commerce we will talk about flipping. We’ll talk about coupon and we’ll talk about thrifting. We’ll talk about print on demand. We’ll talk about private label. We talk about drop shipping. We talk about wholesale. We talk about everything. Prep centers, you name it, whatever it is. We talk about trips to China. We cover all things. E-commerce. There isn’t an area of e-commerce that we don’t talk about.

BradleySutton: Okay. So then what’s the website do people want to go check it out?

Nechole: It is www.ecomsellerssummit.com. So it’s E C O M, one M not to www.ecomsellerssummit.com. Ecom sellers to us as sellers. You got put the extra S. there ecomsellerssummit.com.

BradleySutton: Yeah. Here’s a funny story. Two years in a row, we won this poll by I forgot what it’s a seller poll or sellers poll, something like that. But for the favorite Amazon podcast, and we get this big, huge plaque and everything. And both times they misspell this podcast, it’s Serious Sellers with an S, but they always put serious seller podcast. So the struggle is real. I know.

Renata: Well, she said it was one S, but I want to make sure she says, it’s two S.

BradleySutton: We have this part of the show. We call the TST or T S T 30-second tips. So you all have been giving us strategies, you know, throughout the whole episode, but we’re going to have each of you give one, but think of something that you haven’t mentioned yet, that’s highly actionable, a fairly unique, but that you could try and say 30 seconds or less. I’m not going to cut you off, but that’s the goal here? Renata, do you want to start?

Renata: Sure. Okay. So I actually specialize in RA before COVID I do a lot of OA now, but if you’re interested in RA, I suggest that you set a schedule. That’s the first thing be very– go oriented about it. I like to tell people to either set a schedule where you’re hitting all of one store, either once or twice a week or all of one area. So in other words, if you’re going to do all the targets in your area, all the dollar trees in your area, whatever that looks like, or if you’re going to hit a specific area and hit everything in it. So if you’ve got TJ max, if you’ve got Earlington, if you’ve got, you know what I mean? So if you’ve got a very retail heavy area and you’re going to go through it, it saves you a lot of time. It makes it very easy to kind of get all of your shopping done in one day and then come home and get your listing done. Otherwise, what you end up doing is running all over the place, running here and there, not getting a lot done. If you’re very careful about it, and you set your schedule up this way, every single week, you’re either going to do one or the other. Then you, if you’ve got coupons, if you’re able to check the ads, you’re able to get all your ducks in a row before you go out. Then when you come home, you can spend that time listing everything that you’ve got and making sure that you are as productive as possible. And that is my biggest tip, because most of the time we get out there, we get all this stuff, we get it home. And unless it’s listed, it’s not making you money. So you will want to make sure that you’re actually doing those income producing activities.

BradleySutton: All right. Thank you. Nechole. Can you kind of stick closer to 30 seconds then?

Renata: I thought I did a great job.

BradleySutton: Straight took all Nicole’s time. Like you got about five seconds. Go ahead, Nechole. Whenever you’re ready.

Nechole: So I’m going to say, sorry. I will say two things, but I’ll be short. The one thing that I say that most people do not think about when they’re on this journey is that they to build a real work schedule, a real work schedule that you can follow, and that is realistic for your lifestyle. Whatever’s happening in your life because everybody’s life is different and make sure that you follow it. Because if you follow the schedule, it will build the habits. The habits will build the consistency. The consistency will build the money. The second thing is, look for opportunities for bundles. I think a lot of people overlook that opportunity and there are bundles everywhere. If you are putting something in the car, what is it that you could, that you would probably also buy with it? Think about the salt and pepper shaker and buy or sell things that you can put together in bundles because bundles, you can increase your ROI. That’s it.

BradleySutton: Love it. I love it. All right. All right. Renata, do you see how well Nechole follows instruction now? Hey, you gave three X the value. There you go. All right. So I’ll definitely be seeing you and a little bit at that conference and anybody else who who’s going to join you I’ll make sure to give me a shout out in the chat or something. I want to reach out to you next year and hopefully get some more inspiring stories about some of your students on what they’ve done or what you all have done this year in 2021. So thank you for coming on the show and we’ll definitely want you all back here.

Renata: Absolutely, thanks for having us.

Nechole: And I just really am so thankful for the fact that you were a part of the summit. Thank you for saying yes to us. Thank you for being part of the summit and for sharing the value that you’re going to be sharing with all of the people who register.

Bradley Sutton: Absolutely. Thank you.