Show notes for this episode:

 

 

 

 

Hey, how's it going? It's Ollie here. So you may have noticed I'm back in my usual recording place, right back in my apartment this week, after my little excursion last week, I realized that staying in, getting it done, is the best way to move forward. Luckily, today's not too hot either. It's actually quite cloudy outside. The temperatures dropped and that's made me happy.

 

So today we're going to be talking about the number one thing you have to do if you're really serious about making a six-figure income selling stuff online. Now, it doesn't matter what the business is actually, obviously selling on Amazon is one of the best opportunities you have to start a business and that's why I did it. And that's why I do it. And that's why I teach it. But actually, the topic of today's episode really applies to whatever business you want to build.

 

It doesn't matter. It's universally applicable. So if you do have someone who is building a business who wants to get to six figures in income, definitely share them this episode because there's going to be a lot of value bombs today that will help you make that leap.

 

So, first of all, why do I feel so qualified to talk about what it takes to actually make this happen, to actually make six figures online? Well, I think to be honest, I'm overqualified for this topic. For the past five years, five years in a row now, every single year, I've generated a six-figure income. In fact, a very healthy six-figure income, close to a seven-figure income in terms of sales. And also some years, six-figure profits as well.

 

I've done this consistently now for a decent amount of time. It's not just, I got lucky one time and made a hundred grand or whatever and then it never happened again. Consistently it's happened year after year after year. And this has all been with my own businesses and you know, haven't ever had like an actual job apart from working at a bar on a zero hour contract back in 2013 or whenever it was.

 

So what's different about someone like me, who's doing this consistently, you know, year after year, week after week, month after month, day after day, doing this stuff you need to do to bring in six figures versus someone who just hasn't made it happen yet? Who's still stuck in a job, who has tried a few different businesses and it just hasn't really taken off, or got a bit of a win or something but then it's fizzled out, or never even got the wind in the first place and wants the first taste of it really happening? What's the difference?

 

Well, it all boils down to becoming a master of taking action. That's it right? To get to six figures. It's not really much about anything else. It's not really about building systems. It's not really about being able to hire people. It's not really about being the most technically proficient person. It's about taking as much action as you possibly can.

 

This is what gets you to six figures, understanding the fundamentals of whatever business you want to do. Okay? The fundamentals, the basic things you have to do to make money, and then just doing absolutely tons of it.

 

Now, incidentally, the stuff that gets you to six figures - a hundred K a year, 200K, 300K, 500K, 600K, whatever it is - that stuff, if you want to get from 600K to, say, 6 million a year, now you have to change things. Now you have to be better at creating systems. Now you have to be better at hiring, building a team, building a company culture.

 

All those things are different and that's the stuff I'm transitioning to now to be able to grow even more. But you don't need to worry about any of that stuff until you get to decent, you know, mid-six-figure level with your business. To go from zero to six figures, it's all about taking action and getting stuff done yourself.

 

So let's break this down. How can you become a master at taking action and actually make the six figures come in? What do you need to do to make that happen?

 

Well, I think the first thing is to chip away at your procrastination habit. Chip away at procrastination habit. Now everybody has a procrastination habit. Everybody. Doesn't matter how successful you are. You procrastinate at some things at some times, you know, and I think it's important to understand what procrastination really is. And then also understand how to get rid of it.

 

I see procrastination as like a mass of energy, almost like a brick wall right in front of you. That's what procrastination is. It's like a massive energy right in front of you. And on the other side of this massive energy is everything you want in life, all the money you want.

 

The big houses, the big cars, the holidays, the freedom, not having to have a job, being able to earn as much as you like, having amazing relationships, amazing social life.. All that stuff is on the other side of this big, massive energy that is procrastination.

 

So what we have to do is we have to chip away at it. It's important to understand that you're not going to become a master of action tomorrow by doing three simple steps or something like that. It's just not going to happen. It takes time to develop this new way of acting. It takes time. And it's okay if you're not at great in the beginning because you know, that's the way real life is, right? We're not perfect at things day one, it takes a while.

 

So we have to chip away at this procrastination habit that we've built up. And, you know, you can talk about why we procrastinate. There's several reasons. A big one is fear. A lot of people procrastinate because they're worried. You know what, if I do go ahead and take this action, this thing I'm supposed to do, whatever it is, choosing a product, placing an order, creating that listing.. Whatever it is, setting up my Amazon account..

 

What if I do take this action and it doesn't work out or what if I do this thing and then I destroy this illusion of myself that I have for myself that I am successful? What if I do the thing and it doesn't work and I fail? And then I thought I was brilliant, but then I have this failure. And all of a sudden, it's proven that I'm not as perfect as I thought I was. My delusion of being a successful person in all areas is broken because this thing failed.

 

I think that's the thing that makes people procrastinate - also is a self-esteem thing. It's like, well, what if I'm not good enough? What if I'm too old? I'm too young. What if I'm not clever enough to make this happen? What if I'm not the right type of person? What if I'm not business minded? Right? All these things can make us procrastinate.

 

Also could just be a lack of focus. You might just not realize, you've got so many things going on in your life that you have no chance to chip away at this procrastination because you're procrastinating by having too many things going on. So that's what develops this huge, massive energy that stops you from moving forward in any one particular area.

 

So you can procrastinate for several reasons. And I procrastinate on things all the time, you know, in different areas of my life, but the ones that move my business forward, I've become better at not procrastinating. And that's all you have to do.

 

It starts with a little bit, it starts by taking baby steps and just doing five minutes, five minutes of action, five minutes of action, you know, consistently just doing something. And before you know it, the massive energy that's procrastination is smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and it becomes less and less of an issue.

 

So what happens when this mass of energy disappears and starts to get smaller? Well, you've replaced the mass of energy that is a procrastination. You replace it with discipline. That's what comes in place of procrastination.

 

Instead of, you know, sitting around, looking on Facebook, instead of doing some product research, now you sit down without even thinking about it, and you're already doing product research before your brain even gets to catch up with what it is you're doing at that particular time. That's discipline.

 

And the great thing about discipline is - a lot of people don't like the word discipline, and they think it's a negative thing that's unpleasant. It's like being disciplined is like being in the army or something. It's like, you know, you have to be really hardcore and have no fun in life and just be disciplined.

 

What discipline really means is your you've programmed yourself so well that now something isn't even a problem. You don't even think about it. You're already doing it. And that actually is way easier than being caught in this whole procrastination thing. Because when you're disciplined, you actually feel really good about yourself. And that's a key to getting the snowball rolling and then becoming even more disciplined because it feels really, really good.

 

This is something you can have 100% control over. There's so many things in life where you don't actually have control of it, but discipline is something you do have control of. So you can get yourself out of situations, which are bad news by being extremely disciplined and knowing that, you know, you’re in control of this part of your life.

 

It applies in so many ways, it applies if you want to get fit and healthy, having the discipline to go to the gym, right at home, having the discipline to look after your house, and I don't know, wash dishes and stuff like that - certainly not an area I'm overly really disciplined in, my girlfriend will agree, but same applies.

 

If you can be disciplined with that stuff, it helps when you feel good about yourself, you need to apply that discipline to business, and you are disciplined in certain areas you probably just don't realize you are.

 

Also, you need to practice being efficient. Practice being efficient. Now, right now, you might not be very efficient when it comes to your own business and doing your own stuff within your business might not be very efficient with it. It might take you an hour to do a task that could do could take 10 minutes.

 

One thing I've been really focusing on recently is any task that I know I need to do, which takes less than three minutes, I do it instantly. Or if I see an email come through and you know, it's something that I know needs to be done and it's quite important and it can be done very quickly, just like saying thank you to somebody or just scheduling in something or whatever. If it's going to be very quick, I just do it instantly.

 

Cause I'd much rather have that done, than it be at the back of the mind while I'm focusing on a bigger task. Like imagine if there was say, 15 or 20 tiny little things I knew I had to do while I was trying to record this podcast, how distracting would that be?

 

My mind would be all over the place. I wouldn't be able to focus on this content and the quality of this podcast would drop. But every time I've had one of those tiny little tasks I've got maybe over the past few days, I've done them all instantly, and now they're out of the way. They're done. That's much more efficient.

 

So that's an example, but there's loads of areas where you can be efficient. For example, figuring out your priorities is another way to be efficient. Like I'm launching a new product in Amazon USA at the moment. I'm about to. And for my analysis, I estimate this product could do up to a hundred K a month in revenue. I feel quite confident about that.

 

So if you think about launching a product and all of this stuff that goes into launching a product, there's a lot of stuff that I could be doing to get the process moving, right? There's so many things I could be doing. And if you include all this stuff that I probably shouldn't be doing, that could be part of the process. I mean, there's infinite amount of stuff I could be doing.

 

For example, I could spend four hours right now, I could sit down and spend four hours designing a new logo for this product to sell in Amazon USA. I could spend four hours doing that, but is creating a logo really something I should be prioritizing? Is having a really great logo on the product going to make me a lot of money directly? No, having a logo is more of a long-term thing that will connect my products together within a brand.

 

And so right now, that shouldn't be a big priority for me. Like yeah, have a logo, but don't spend ages on it. The thing I should prioritize is the only thing that's gonna make me money, which is getting the stock into the warehouse, getting some test batch products into the warehouse and seeing if it sells trying out. So therefore that is my priority.

 

That's the next thing on my list and the clearer you get on what your priorities should be, the better everything is. You get more stuff done, alright, because you know why you're doing it. So you're more motivated to do it. You make more progress because if you're prioritizing correctly, you will. Because you're doing the stuff that makes the progress. And also it feels incredibly good cause you do the stuff and then things happen.

 

If you do loads of stuff and nothing is happening, chances are your priorities are way off. Or you're probably doing loads of stuff that's completely irrelevant. If I was to spend, I dunno, 25 hours building a website and that's it, obviously nothing's going to happen. I need products. I need traffic. I need offers. You know, those are the things that make money. So getting clear on your priorities is a huge way to be efficient.

 

So how do we do stuff without needing tons and tons and tons of discipline and even if we procrastinate, is there an easy way we can get around this whole procrastination thing and not have to be crazily disciplined? Well, luckily there is. In fact for me, creating habits has been one of the most important factors that has enabled me to earn six figures. Creating habits has been an absolute game changer.

 

For example, my calendar is King right now. My calendar is King. I follow my calendar to a tee. Whatever's on my calendar is what I do during the day. For example, every single Monday, every single Monday without fail, 4:00 PM Swedish time until 6:00 PM Swedish time, I've blocked off two hours to do this podcast and also to do a blog for my music stuff. So that two-hour slot on my calendar, it says podcast and Mega Reach blog.

 

I don't need to build a to-do list. I don't need to think about which things I need to do for the week. I don't need to prioritize anymore. I know this is an important thing which is going to help you. And it's going to help me as well because there's people listening to my podcast. You know, it's good for my coaching business. So it's on the calendar. So I don't need to think about it. I don't need to be disciplined and I'm not going to procrastinate because all I'm going to be doing for those two hours is creating the content.

 

Calendar, such a simple app, and you don't need to buy anything. You don't need to learn some new software, take the calendar you already have on your phone and turn it into the controller for the stuff you do throughout the week. Or if you have a reminder on your calendar, 11 to 12:00 PM every Saturday to find products to sell on Amazon, let that dictate what you do rather than having to come up with to-do lists all the time and think about it. Cause spent time spent thinking about stuff you need to do, could be spent getting on with it.

 

Another thing I've found when it comes to the calendar, is that being rigid actually frees you up. Like when I first started my businesses, I didn't want to have loads of time blocked off on my calendar because I thought that it would make my life really rigid and it would remove all of the spontaneity from my life. And it would be very, it would just feel like being at a job or something, you know, feel very kind of regimented.

 

But what was happening was that, number one, I didn't know when I should be doing stuff and when I should stop. So sometimes I'd worked too long or sometimes I wouldn't know what to do. So I ended up doing nothing, but I'd have this looming feeling of like, should I be doing something right now? Which isn't nice that certainly doesn't feel free.

 

And also I'd go a few days and I'd realize, oh my God, there's this massive task I was meant to do, which I haven't done yet. And I'd have to scramble to get it completed. So trying to be free and free-spirited with the way I worked was the one thing that was completely getting rid of all my freedom, because I knew at the end of the day, all right, whether it's five, 6:00 PM when I sort of finished working, everything was such a mess that I felt like I couldn't completely relax.

 

Whereas now, at the end of the day, when I finished working, I know that because I'm so rigid with all this stuff on my calendar I need to do each day, by the end of the day, I know the stuff has done because I've planned it out. The calendar is dictating what I need to do and therefore all the tasks are done. And then I'll have a small, very small to-do list of usually maybe three things or something outside of the stuff on the calendar.

 

You know, some days maybe it's more, maybe it's four or five things, whatever. And the rigidity gives me freedom because when I'm finished working, I can do whatever I want. I can relax. I know that everything's under control.

 

One huge lesson I've had while building businesses is to just completely forget perfection. If one thing's going to hold you back, it is trying to be perfect. I've talked about this before. I've talked about this for the past four or five years.

 

Crappy action is the best kind of action. Getting something done in a good way is way more productive than getting everything done in a perfect way, because it could take half an hour for you to do a task and make it good, but it could take five years to do a task and make it perfect.

 

Or you probably noticed that when I send out emails, sometimes when I have a good video or other things you've seen from me, you've probably seen there have been some mistakes in some of the stuff you probably seen spelling mistakes. You might have seen maybe a wrong picture on something sometimes, you know, it happens.

 

And the reason why is, because part of my philosophy is, good is better than perfect. I'd much rather send out an email that has a couple of grammatical errors that don't really affect the message very much.

 

I'd rather send that out than never send anything out because I'm trying to make it perfect and I'm so worried that some grammar nazi is going to come up to me and point out. I'd much rather just send it out and have a couple of errors. Cause at least it does get sent out and I could probably send out, you know, five emails with errors in the time I could take to make one perfect.

 

This philosophy has enabled me to take way more action. Just be a little bit less rigid on your need for perfection. It doesn't matter that much. The more stuff you do, the better. It's not about how perfectly you do it.

 

Also, basic stuff is the stuff that makes you the most money. You know, I could create a listing and launch a product and I could make sure the listing is absolutely beautiful. We could hire really expensive professional photographers to do all the photos for Amazon.

 

We could hire an SEO expert to find the very best keywords for the listing. We could spend hours and hours and hours and hours on the copy and make the copy look incredible, the writing for the headline and the bullets and the description, all that stuff, right. We spent hours on it and you know, really become an expert at all that stuff.

 

But if you want to make more money, if you want to get more progress, it's not about becoming an absolute genius. All those elements, it's about really just getting more listings out there. You know, you can have a tiny little bit of knowledge and you can make a lot of progress with it. That’s the key.

 

The people who get extreme amounts of success in business, the ones that know loads of things, they're the ones that do loads with a little bit of knowledge. They do have, you know, I mean, who would make more money?

The person who has knowledge of 10 different strategies to sell on Amazon and uses none, or the person who knows about one strategy, but exploits it like crazy and that's all they do for five years?

 

Obviously, it's the person who does the stuff with the knowledge, right? Knowledge doesn't really make you any money - it's used as applied knowledge that is really powerful.

 

Talking of strategy, I always recommend you just take one strategy that makes sense to you and run with it. Like in the first few weeks of me selling on Amazon, I figured out that you could do retail arbitrage. And that was a thing I figured out was real and it worked. And I've told this story before my YouTube channel, haven't taught it in a while, but I found this little call blocker.

 

There's a tiny little bit of plastic that you plug into your landline phone, like your house phone, and it blocks telemarketers from being able to call you. So there were loads of people selling payment protection insurance, and loads of other scam phone calls and other marketing companies would just call you and ask you to switch your cable provider, you know, whatever else.

 

And this little device blocked those calls and had lists of these numbers. And it also, if you had a number from a scam marketer, you could press a button and it would remember the number and block it next time. Super powerful thing.

 

Anyway, I found it in a store called Robert Dyers in the UK for £4.99. I noticed on Amazon, it was selling for 39 99. So there was eight of these things on the shelf in a Robert Dyers, in Richmond actually, and there's eight of them there and they were five pounds each.

 

So I thought, you know what? This looks really good. I don't really know if it's going to sell because I wasn't that clued up on how to research products at the time. So I thought, you know what, I'll buy four of them and I'll spend 20 pounds. Now, to me, 20 pounds was quite a considerable amount of money. Like that was a really great meal or I dunno, a night out or travel money or something.

 

It was quite significant at the time. But I thought, well, if I buy four of these and spend 20 pounds and they sell well, then this is going to go really well. Anyway, bought four of them, sent them into my account, literally within minutes of one of them going alive on my Amazon account, it's sold. And that same night, the other three sold as well.

 

So I'd just turned 20 pounds into 120 pounds profit. These things sell for 160 pounds, total revenue. And 120 pounds of that was profit. 30 pounds profit for each one. This blew my mind. This absolutely blew my mind. So for that next few days, I did nothing else other than hunting for more of these call blockers, I called up every single Robert Dyers in the UK.

 

I called up all of them and asked, do you have any of these call blockers? And they didn't know why I cared so much about these things. And they had no idea. I was thinking like, you guys don't know that you're sitting on gold, right? The staff there, they knew that you could sell these things on Amazon. I mean, they wouldn't have sold them to me, but had no idea.

 

So I called them up and then there was one store that said, yeah, we got 12, man. That's insane. I was like, can you just put them aside for me? I'll come pick them up tomorrow or later, they were like, yeah, fine. You know, they were on sale. They want us to get rid of them anyway. It was like an end of line clearance thing. They weren't even making this product anymore.

 

I found another store that had like five and another that had two. And these are all different ends of London. So I had to get like a day travel card, go to London and travel on the tube, I went to like, the London bridge, I went to all these different areas of London in the same day, sometimes going to like four areas.

 

I remember I went to London bridge, then I went to Essex. And then I went to some other little towns right at the top North of London, like almost Hertfordshire. And I went all the way to the South. And that's all I was doing, finding these things. And then at the end of the few days, I think I found a total of 26 and I made a total of 900 pounds profit in under five days all because I took a strategy and just went crazy on it.

 

And that has been the philosophy for my business ever since. As soon as I realized that private labels would work, I went crazy on that strategy as well, launching products, making three, 4K a month profit, you know, and that's the secret.

 

Pick a strategy that makes sense to you. That's key. Now, the reason I didn't get into say, I mean, I could have made any business work really, you know, I'm willing do whatever I could have done trading or something, but trading stocks and shares or penny stocks or whatever else it is that people do for X, it just doesn't really make sense to me.

 

I don't really see how you could build that into an actual, reliable, sustainable income. I know people do it. I've seen them do it. People make a lot of money. I know people that make a lot of money trading, but to me it just doesn't make sense. It feels like something where you have to be very, very, very good at reading graphs and data and spotting trends and you know, all this stuff. And it just doesn't really make sense in my head.

 

Whereas buying stuff cheap and selling it for a profit and making sure your numbers add up so there's some money left after your expenses. To me, that seems kind of easy. It's just basic maths. If you can buy something cheap, sell it for a profit, you win. Right?

 

So these strategies made sense to me, Amazon made sense to me. And that's why I went on full force with it. That's one of the reasons I didn't do music actually as a full-time career, even though I I'm seriously passionate about it and I even went to university to study it. I didn't do it as a full time thing because I don't see how you can, you know, guaranteed make income from it.

 

Again, I know people that do. I know somebody who owns an extremely good lifestyle, very successful six figure, high six figure income from just music, independent artist. And I know they've done it, but just, to me, it doesn't quite make sense how that works. So I didn't want to put my eggs into that basket.

 

I wanted to do something that I really got. For me, Amazon was that thing. And once you find that thing that makes sense to you, you're off. Right? And you should just do that and just run with it and just forget everything else.

 

So these have been some tips. This is really my two cents on how to get a six figure income and the one thing that really matters, which is becoming a master of taking action.

 

So, speaking of taking action, I want you to take action right now. You're listening to this podcast and listening to podcasts is easy, right? Easy. It doesn't count. It's not work, right? It's fun, if anything, even if they are about business, like it doesn't count. It doesn't make you money. So I want you to take some action.

 

In fact, what I want you to do no matter where you're listening to this podcast, whether you're driving, whether you're walking, whether you're sitting on your sofa, whether you're lying in bed at the gym, doesn't matter.

 

Wherever you are, I want you to stop doing what you're doing. If you’re in your car, pull over. Just pull over super quick and get out a pen and paper or your phone or whatever. And I want you to take some action.

 

I want you to write down three big rocks for the week, three big rocks for the week. So what’s a big rock? Well it’s something that's going to move you forward. Okay? Something that’s going to move you forward, like a priority.

 

For me, a big rock will be connecting with a ton of suppliers and getting quotes for this new product I'm launching an America. That's a big rock. That'll get me before that will get me closer to finding products that I can sell. That will make me money. Right?

 

Creating a logo is not big rock. That's tiny, tiny rock. What are your big rocks? I mean, it could be setting up your Amazon account. A lot of people say, oh, I don't want to set up my Amazon account cause I have to pay monthly. I have to pay 30 pounds a month.

 

No, set it up now because then if you're paying 30 pounds a month, you won't procrastinate anymore because you won't want to throw the 30 pounds a month down the drain. You'll want to sell some products to make that 30 pounds back. Right?

 

So set the account up now. Set it up this week. That could be one of your big rocks. Another one - find a product. You need to find a product, find a product this week, just do it this week. It's not rocket science picking a product, like you don't have to spend 10K on your first import. Spend 300 pounds. If you want pick a product, test it. Cool. Finding a product could be one.

 

Another one could be book a call with me. If you need some help, you want some help along the way, why not book a call. Go to ecommercefreedom.com. There's a link at the top, Amazon Accelerator Call. That could be it. That could be a big rock. Have a chat with me, get some expert advice on what you should do next. That could be one of your big rocks.

 

That might not be. You might have other stuff that you need to do that, you know, you already know what you need to do, and you're just not doing it. Figure out your three big rocks, right? Put it down as a bonus step. You could actually schedule time in your calendar to do it. I mentioned being rigid and letting your calendar control your life. We'll put that into practice now. Decide when you're going to do each one of these big rocks.

 

Set up your Amazon account? Okay. Maybe set tomorrow at 5:00 PM. You've got an hour free. Good. You can do it then. Right? Finding a product. Okay. It's going to take you a bit of time to find one. Why not put in 10 minutes a day, schedule the 10 minutes on your calendar everyday 10 minutes slot. You could do what I do quite often, set reminders that repeat on your calendar. So, daily, 10 minutes slot dedicated to researching products, for example, right?

 

Whatever it is, setting these three big rocks, getting the action done and scheduled is going to be the only thing that makes this stuff reality for you, right? That's it. Reading about it, listening to podcasts, watching videos, do nothing. You know that that already. It's good to be clear and be reminded of. Awesome. Okay.

 

So I hope this podcast gave you some insights about what it really takes to build a real income. And I can't wait to see you put this stuff into action. And by the way, if this has been helpful, shoot me an email - support@ecommercefreedom.com - and give me some feedback.

 

If you have any stuff you want to hear in future podcast episodes, send me an email as well, support@ecommercefreedom.com. I can talk about it. Awesome. All right. Thanks for listening. And I'll catch you next week.