- thepassiveincomeex
Amazon Retail Stores: Can You Really Make Money?
Updated: Oct 19, 2022
The E-commerce Business School can help you build a profitable Amazon Retail Store.
Before I interviewed Ann Sieg, founder of the E-commerce Business School, I had the pleasure of getting to know her more. I was delighted to learn that we had so much in common! From homeschooling and building a business that involves our children to both having a management background; but, the number one similarity that really connected us was that we are both incredibly passionate about helping families build quality lifestyles around a business. Ann's focus is helping families replace their 9 to 5 income with profitable Amazon retail stores.
On the podcast, Ann shares more about how she started her journey as a CEO and eventually transitioned into building an online business. She homeschooled her boys who eventually discovered their own interest in online business. Over time, each of her sons played a role in helping her build the E-commerce Business School; a school dedicated to helping people escape the rat race by making consistent income with an Amazon store.
Ann's heart-driven mission is seasoned with 18 years of experience helping families. After learning more about her and her team I felt strongly that they're a great resource for the PIE Tribe!
Ann and I hosted a workshop together to help you get more familiar with her program. The workshop details:
- How long does it take to make money with an Amazon Store
- How much time and energy does it take to build an Amazon Store
- How much experience do you need to make a profitable Amazon Store
- Plus, when you register, you'll receive Ann's Profit Projection Calculator that shows exactly how much you need to invest to reach your monthly goals... whether that’s an extra 1k, 5k, or 10k+ per month! You'll get a copy of the calculator to use on your own. And you'll receive a workbook created specifically for the workshop so you can really dig into the training.
I love when we find partners that can illuminate the path and dispel the muddy waters! Click the button to register for the free webinar to see if building an Amazon store is right for you.
Listen To The Episode With Ann Here
Some say Amazon stores are not passive because they can be labor-intensive. This is certainly true if you try to build and maintain the store on your own. This is why the E-commerce Business School teaches its students to build a business that incorporates outsourced labor to offset the time and energy you personally are putting into the business. Although, Ann and I agree that it is vital for each business owner to be well-versed in all aspects of the business and to have a clear understanding of how each element works so that you can effectively manage your investment.
I asked Ann about how many people she has helped build an Amazon store. The answer blew me away. Almost 9,000 people have built life-changing Amazon businesses as a result of the E-commerce Business Schools training. The success of her students is personally a high priority to Ann which was another reason I decided to sponsor her program. I love how she helps people systemize their businesses from the ground up so that they can quickly scale.
How do I choose PIE Partners?
I personally vet PIE Partners by meeting the owners, interviewing them on the podcast and verifying reviews from others who have gone through their program if I haven't taken it myself. I only support one PIE Partner per passive income source. By that I mean, I will only consider one Amazon retail expert in the PIE circle because it is important to me that my listeners have access to a trusted resource to help weed through the online noise. You can help support my family when you choose to work with PIE Partners using links I provide because I may receive an affiliate commission. I only advocate partners I trust and encourage you to follow your own inner voice when it comes to deciding who to take advice from.
Amazon Retail Stores Are A Revenue Generating Machine
How long does it take to start seeing profit with an Amazon retail store?
How to find profitable products for an Amazon Store?
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Amazon Retail Stores Are A Revenue Generating Machine
When built correctly, Amazon retail stores can be a revenue-generating machine. There is much to know about how to build a successful e-commerce store. Having a trusted guide to help from the beginning increases the odds of success exponentially.
Wondering if you'll need to house inventory? Ann's program specifically helps you partner with consistent suppliers that ship the goods for you saving you from having to store inventory.
Are you ready to discover how it all works? Register for the free workshop right now.
How long does it take to start seeing a profit with an Amazon Store?
Obviously everyone's individual results will vary; however, Ann has seen students experience a profit in their Amazon star 60 days after they started. Her proven system is what makes this timeframe even a possibility for people with no prior experience in e-commerce.
The E-commerce Business School gives its students specific step by step instructions to take to start and scale an Amazon store.
What I appreciated most was Ann's Profit Projection Calculator that helps you create a realistic plan up front. You'll know how much money to earmark for the project, and when you dedicate the time to take the steps outlined, earning consistent profit becomes a numbers game which reduces much of the risky unknowns that many other passive income streams have.
If you're looking to replace your income with a stable business model I strongly encourage you to research this option.
How to find profitable products for an Amazon Store?
This is another great question Ann answers in the webinar. (Psst - if you haven't registered yet, you really should ;) ) One part of the answer that Ann and I discuss on the podcast is where to source products. Obviously, many Amazon retailers struggled during Covid and after due to supply chain issues. But, as it turns out, there are many great places to source products besides China.
An interesting side-note I learned about Ann is that one of her sons loved to travel and actually lived in China for a while. He ended up helping the business by verifying wholesale sources. As I said, she and her team really have a handle on building Amazon businesses. They have been hands-on in ALL aspects of the business model.
Working with a trusted partner like the E-commerce Business School will give you a leg up when it comes to sourcing profitable products because they are helping new students day in and day out which means they are knowledgeable about which sources to trust and which ones to avoid.
If you have given any consideration to starting an Amazon Store to replace your daily income, register for the live workshop.
You have nothing to lose and will walk away with more clarity about whether or not this income stream is right for you.
Transcription:
Amazon Retail Stores: Are they smart passive income?
Lindsay Sutherland: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Passive Income Examiner. I'm super pumped about today's guest. Her name is Ann Sieg. Ann, am I pronouncing your last name right?
Ann Sieg: You got it.
Lindsay Sutherland: Good deal. I was just reading through Ann's bio and just got chills.
I cannot wait to share her story with you guys. This is gonna be so exciting. But before we dive into that, let's just let Ann tell her story. So Ann, tell us a little bit about you and how you got where you are in life.
Ann Sieg: Okay. Well, in a nutshell, I actually, so I am in now sales and [00:01:00] marketing.
I've been online for 18 years. I kind of got my impetus into this whole crazy world of, of sales actually through my mom. And I'd have to tip my camera a little bit to kind of show this on my bookshelf. You see that there's this panda bear and then a red, white, and green. Those are little Christmas bells and they're there for a reason.
My grandma taught me how to knit those Christmas bells, and my mom said, You know, you could go out in the neighborhood and sell your Christmas bells. So I was maybe eight or nine years old. My mom did not go with me back then, it was the suburbs. It was all more safe back then, but she set up my first store and it was a cardboard box, and I put in all my little Christmas bells, and she even taught me that, Okay, they'll be 50 cents a piece, or three for a dollar, a bundled offer.
And so I went out in the neighborhood ringing the doorbells, and I sold all my Christmas bells. And I remember walking home, it was crisp and cold out was [00:02:00] winter, and I could hear dollar bills and change rustling around in my box. And I was like, How about that? So I didn't really actually get into sales until I was married and had our first child.
I started with direct sales doing well, I'll just stay it, one of the very popular ones from back in that time. Mary Kay. And I just wanted to find a way that I could be home and bring in extra money. And so I did a lot of different direct sales opportunities and whatnot. But in the meantime, my husband and I being very, very entrepreneurial, we got into real estate investment which is an interesting experience.
It ended up not being our money making opportunity of choice. So we moved on from that, but we also had a windshield replacement business for 12 years. That was our business. And I did all the bookkeeping and calling insurance companies and all that fun stuff. And I also then chose to homeschool our three sons and That was a 12 year journey.
I was also a gymnastics coach for 12 years, which is my massive [00:03:00] passion, but it hurt too much after a certain amount of time. My wrists were so sore and I couldn't make dinner. It hurt so bad in my hands. So I quit doing that, though I loved it. I'd be doing it still if it weren't for my body saying don't think so.
Then basically it was through my family and working with our three sons that I was exposed to really, the book that made me into this great pivot was Robert Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cash Flow Quadrant, which are some pretty well known books from a couple decades ago had my eldest son read those.
He was, by this time in high school, I said, Read every book this guy has written. So what happened is he tried many different businesses during high school, and then what happened is when he was 18 years old, he sponsored me into a company and we got going in that it was a direct sales company again, and he's like, "This isn't working for me."
So he started to study online marketing. Well, in the meantime, I was struggling with that direct [00:04:00] sales company. He said, Mom, you gotta go online. Best thing I ever did completely changed my life. And so I, I went online and I started to get into training. Subsequently, I became the top sales performer within that company.
This is a full 18 years ago. And then I said, Hey, to my oldest son, "I think we had a partner up together." So he was 21 by that time and he was the top affiliate marketer. For some brands like Walmart in the world for Walmart and Get Response different kind of, you know, affiliate marketing was just kind of coming into its own about 20 years ago.
So he was doing really, really well with Google AdWords doing affiliate marketing. I was becoming very skilled with what I was learning. We came and joined forces and we did 20 million in sales together. As a result of partnering up, who then was with my husband, we brought him home. Oh, regarding the windshield business.
So yes, [00:05:00] the hard lesson learned there. You can get into an industry and then. A lot comes out, you know, and certain industries have more laws governing them than others, depending on special interest groups that find their way in to put things into their favor. And so all the little mom and pops got wiped out.
So we lost that business that my husband really, really loved, but we made the pivot. That actually started between me and my son. So my message here is you have a wealth of opportunity within your own family household, and I'm very resourceful at moving resources around to create an outcome.
Because the first person I actually hired was my youngest son who was in seventh grade at that time. And I said, "Hey, you know what? I have this task that I, it takes up two hours of my. I'd like to offer you XYZ [00:06:00] and pay and you know, what do you think?" He did it. He's my full-time videographer. Because I'm tight, Lindsay.
So he's now 32 and he's my full time content manager and videographer. And it began with hiring him when he was in seventh grade. I gave my eldest son free reign to try many businesses in high school saying, You know, I don't know if you're gonna succeed or not.
More importantly, you're gonna learn something. Why not do that in high? Why not? That was his schooling, obviously at other schooling required curriculum and whatnot. But I was the principal, so I decided what are the values I want for my family, You know, kind of thank you very much. And my parents are both educators, so I had to comfort level with that.
But anyways, so that's kind of the snapshot of how I got to where I am.
Lindsay Sutherland: Yes. Okay. So many things I love about your story. I mean, the fact that you homeschooled and you incorporated your kids. Let's just talk about that for a [00:07:00] second. Cuz you know, that's close to my heart. I was homeschooling last year.
Kids actually begged me to go back to school. So they're in school this year, but, That is something I really want to impress upon them is that culture of being able to be entrepreneurial and to build things up and teaching them passive income. I talked about it on the podcast a couple times. Little strategies that I've helped 'em with, but they also work for me.
My two oldest do, Oh yeah. My high schooler is my podcast editor. He's amazing. He's better than any podcast editor I've hired. Got really an attention to detail when it comes to sound and he edits videos, so I just haven't moved in that direction yet. But he's ready whenever. And then my other son helps me with more admin tasks and some of the client work I do.
So it's, I love that family culture. It's so important. And I think really, Ann, I'm sure you see this too with the people you help, we kinda help a lot of the same types of people, mothers or fathers, who want to create that family dynamic and maybe [00:08:00] even build a business to be more with their family.
Maybe that's how it starts. Mm-hmm. and then all of a sudden they say, Golly, you know, I could teach this to my children. This is not taught in school. This online business stuff is not taught in school, and it is a skill that they can go into the world with and be successful whether they go to college or not, whether they follow a career path or not.
It's, it's a good foundation to have. I've just, I had to go on my soapbox cuz I love it.
Ann Sieg: Well and I carry that with me in our training and mentorship system. So I'm one of the business advisors. We have a team of advisors. So I'm consulting with people one on one and I'm always wanting to assess the full dynamics of what they bring to the table because it's really to do a business, you need to be good skilled at resource allocation.
So one of 'em I'm wanting to find out, you know, Do you have family? One of my business advisors she was a subscriber of mine from like 12, [00:09:00] 13 years ago when she came into Amazon as a seller.
She had, her daughter was 11 and basically she had her daughter work alongside her so that by age 13 she was able to run and manage the Amazon business. So I think school is so standardized in cookie cutter, which I do not like, just to be honest. Mm-hmm. because of my parents' educational philosophy.
But I do think children are not given the credence of the tremendous talent and value that they can provide at a pretty young age that just teach them. Cuz when you think about it, the founding of our country, we were primarily business owners because of the farmers we were in agrarian society. And so you had all these small business owners, A.K.A. Farmers, the kids grew up in the farm.
Well now we're in the era [00:10:00] of technology. When we know the kids are all attached to technology, just teach them to be entrepreneurial because then you have you have so much more potential, and so I'm just such a big believer in it. So every family encourage them to consider their children as a potential resource to help them.
Lindsay Sutherland: Absolutely. So, and then a lot of network marketing, sales, direct sales. I also followed in that path. I know a lot of people do and even Robert Kiosaki talks about it in Yeah, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that it's one of the easiest ways to get started in business and it's a great little addition for tax write offs and things like that.
But you know, to take that and then fully scale it. And in your bio you say that, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, 90,000. In a month or something like that, that you did when you and your son teamed up, Is that right?
Ann Sieg: Mm-hmm. , correct?
Lindsay Sutherland: Yeah. That's incredible. That's incredible. And were you guys just selling on Amazon that month? Or was it?
Ann Sieg: No, actually we were digital [00:11:00] marketers together, when we first started. And basically we did leverage somebody else's system, meaning we began to sell a training course that they had. It was the first online training company I came in, which was teaching salesmanship cuz I was in network marketing at that time and I wanted to learn better salesmanship, but I also.
This is kind of crazy. I wanna learn how to do this online because this whole burned through your friends and family list. Mm-hmm. I had done it like several times through and then pretty soon they're like, Oh man, you know? Yeah. And I just didn't enjoy that. I did it, but I did not feel comfortable I that, And that's when my son was like, Mom, it's kinda like there's a whole nother world over here,
So basically what happened is we excelled really well. We became the top promoter of that particular, It was an MLM training company and we were promoting their product. So we went from $2000 and $90,000 primarily through Google AdWords selling [00:12:00] their training program. And then my son said, Mom, I've crunched the numbers and if we were selling our own training. We'd of made much better profit and that's what we did. And we released that training in, it was in 2007 and we did $4 million in sales with our first e-book.
I'm no longer training in that industry and I shifted into e-commerce nine years ago, which curiously enough, my sons, because I gave them such an open pathway to try things, they actually did Ebay.
The eldest was in high school and the middle son was in junior high, and all I did was, uh, the younger son was responsible for shipping, so I drive him to the post office and the elder son managed that whole business. I had nothing to do with orchestrating it, and so we had already begun our foyer into e-commerce when they were in junior high and high school.
And [00:13:00] then, so the shift back into e-commerce was fall of 2013. And so by that time I had a very big training company at that time, online training for network marketers, which was basically to teach them how to market themselves online. And I have to tell you that in the online space, they don't really take that favorably to the network marketing business model. Mm-hmm. you just don't. Every platform says, Ah, no, you don't. And so we shifted into e-commerce and our, we transitioned our members over and they just had such rapid success and they were thrilled because the network marketing is arduous either way. And I'm not saying people can't be successful with that, but I have found this just so much more satisfying and rewarding, shifting into the e-commerce space.
It just, it has just so much more potential that I was glad to make [00:14:00] the shift by that.
Lindsay Sutherland: Interesting. And there are, I know there are some companies specifically that restrict your online presence more significantly than others. Mm-hmm. or they say you can only do one network marketing company at a time, which I don't think that's even fair.
I could see not doing two competing ones. But anyway, there are a lot of things that once you get going in there, that can, it feels almost like it's holding you back. But then there's so many good things too. There's the camaraderie and the relationships you build with people and with your customers. And I mean, there are some really beautiful aspects to it too.
It's a double edged sword as they say. Now you, so you were already gifted with the eCommerce. What made you choose Amazon? What was it about Amazon that kind of lit you up?
Ann Sieg: Well, the curious thing about that, it was an actual M LM training company that had this offer about learning how to sell on Amazon.
And I told well, and using eBay, and I told my [00:15:00] husband I think you could do this. And he's very non-techy, so he is like, Yeah, that sounds kind of fun. He started making money right away. And I'm like, Okay, this is the shift we've been looking for. So that was our conduit and pathway. That particular M LM training company, to my knowledge, is no longer in existence.
So by the time that that happened, we had a very, very strong infrastructure. We had workshops we were doing throughout the country, like we were built to grow fast. And so when we made that shift and then that company kind of furthered away, which often happens to new MLM companies, but we were grateful that it proved to be a transition.
Curiously enough, it was merging MLM with amazon, the selling opportunity. And so we were already ready to go with workshops and everything and so now we have our own internal certification program for [00:16:00] trainers and they all have to have demonstrated, they have an automated e-commerce business and automation being, they have systems in place and they have a team that's running their business for them.
When I say automation. And then they are then able to mentor our students. So we have, it's a pretty big operation, so it's not like I'm the trainer. I have a whole team of certified coaches who do the training and my, I'm the CEO of the company eCommerce Business School, and then I'm also, I was the director in marketing until my son, he was with me 10 years.
Then he took a hiatus for six years. He just came back August of this month of this. After six years and I'm like, You know what, You could have that department back .
Lindsay Sutherland: Yeah. Really? So that's exciting.
Ann Sieg: So I can work more. It's, its amazing that he came back and was more excited than ever. So.
Lindsay Sutherland: Oh, that what a blessing. And what a, I mean, just thinking about the lifetime impact this is having, not just on your [00:17:00] two sons or whatever other children you might have. Do you only have two sons?
Ann Sieg: There's three. One in lives, lives in China and he's actually provided sourcing trips in China, but he's now moving to the states permanently.
It's been 10 years and he has a little family.
Lindsay Sutherland: Oh, how exciting. But I mean, and the legacy that that's gonna, this is a forever business. And what else is really cool? And I wanna point this out to you guys listening Ann started this, did you say nine years? With Amazon?
Ann Sieg: When we shifted into e-commerce. Correct. Nine years ago.
Lindsay Sutherland: And how long have you been doing this Amazon focus specifically?
Ann Sieg: It was pretty much nine years ago. Okay. It was specifically, it was integrating initially between eBay and Amazon. Mm-hmm. . And then that particular method, Amazon said you can't do that method anymore. So if anyone knows the terminology, it was drop shipping and in Amazon no, no. You can't do that on Amazon. So we stopped that and we shipped.
Lindsay Sutherland: Okay, we're gonna get into that cuz I really have some questions about that. But before we do, I just wanna [00:18:00] highlight this. This is what I love about you so much as a guest on the podcast, is that you have this longevity of creating a system, a proven system.
How many students have you had, do you think, in your, in your e-commerce school?
Ann Sieg: It's almost 9,000. And me, actually, we may have tipped past 9,000. Yeah.
Lindsay Sutherland: Wow. Kudos. Kudos to you guys. I mean, think about that. Nine year, Nine must be your magical number today, nine, 9,000 students. It's a proven system Ann really knows what she's talking about.
And when it comes to Amazon. This is one of the things you guys know from my podcast when I started the very first episode is weeding out the legit from the shit, right? Because there is so much snake oil, so to speak, is is kind of the word I use to kind of conglomerate people who are maybe just started their store and now they're teaching people how to do it.
This is what's different about Ann, and I want you to stick around because Ann's got a proven system and she helps people from start with nothing and [00:19:00] build an automated Amazon business. We've had another guest on the. And he admitted, he said, Usually e-commerce is not a very passive strategy.
It's just not, It's a lot of time and energy. You're managing your listings, you're managing your sourcing. You know, it's a very hands on bootstrap type of a business if that's what you want, but I mean, you get the luxury of working from home and you know, all that good stuff. Mm-hmm. but you help people build a business, not just mm-hmm. , create an Amazon store, and I wanna hear about this. I wanna really hear about your methodology and kind of just in a nutshell, what does your program teach?
Ann Sieg: Yeah. I first wanna harken to the whole asset... So if you have an Amazon store, what's really key in terms of that being a true asset?
A sellable asset is you need to have a corporation that then owns your Amazon store. That's the only way you can transfer a store. It's huge that you know that up. Front cuz we're all always about asset protection. That being said, we [00:20:00]have members, we just want you to get into sales on profits as quickly as possible.
Amazon doesn't require an llc, we don't require it. That being said, once you start cranking that profit machine that happens with Amazon, we do recommend that you get an LLC.
And we guide people through that with our coaching. But I'll just say, I've learned through the school of hard knocks what it feels like to build something that you think is a quote unquote asset and really isn't. And it's the logistics behind it. So know that what you would be selling is your LLC that owns the store.
Then you can sell it. So you can build these to sell.
All right, now let's get in the conversation about the automation. So we have a long track record of training and mentoring. We're constantly monitoring our students. We have a lot of data that we're tracking and following for the main reason we're always aiming for excellent and maximum results for our members.
So what we found when we sat down, this is almost three years ago, in the [00:21:00] fall of 2019, is just looking at the student body. So at that time, we were about 7,000 students. We were like, you know, where are the biggest points of failure? And what can we do to ameliorate that, to correct that and give a better outcome?
It came down to two things. So on our end, it's the unique fascination. How can we make this better and even better? Two main things. One was, yes, even more mentoring and more handhold. The second one as written by a well known book called EMyth Revisited by Michael Gerber. He talks about the issue when you're a solopreneur, and before you know it, you're wearing all these hats.
Oh my gosh, I've gotta take care of accounting. Oh, now I have to market myself. And now I have you, and you have all these hats spinning, right? And that's because in the example of the book, you're the proverbial pie baker and you're, Oh, I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna have a pie store. And it turns out you need a whole lot more skill sets.
So what we noted with our [00:22:00] Amazon sellers, is they would hit a wall, and the wall that they would hit is they were running around carrying a bout too many tasks. And so what they failed, what we failed not to impress upon early enough is if you want a scalable business, know this from day one, you're gonna have to offset work, period.
You can't talk about a six figure income thinking you're gonna do that singlehandedly. That's a rare, rare feat to get to six figures of six figure income for whatever your goals may be. And so we thought, Okay, we're gonna change landscape here to our new mentorship program. Peak Performance Mentoring is one.
They're gonna learn from day one. Come into this system, we are gonna teach you automation that happens through software, specific software for the exact method we're teaching that will speed up your Amazon business. Software does two things, speeds up your activity. And it's to increase your [00:23:00] profits.
That's the soft function of software. So speed up your work, make you more profitable. You need proven blueprints and systems. You know, actual documents that someone has spent hundreds of hours refining and perfecting. We give those to you instead of you going through this goal of hard knocks trying to perfect those.
And the other is you have to outsource meaning, and this is how we stay profit. Is to outsource overseas known as virtual assistance. And so every task that we have in our business model of having an Amazon store, every single task can be outsourced and automated. Now, something I wanna make really g clear, cause I'd really like to have a realistic expectations.
It doesn't mean you have a business where you do nothing, a walk away. That's a fallacy, and that's because there's a term in business called governance, meaning you have to have oversight. And so the finesse of these systems and these people that you put in place, [00:24:00] especially the people that's incumbent upon you as a leader, okay?
And for professional women, they're bar none our best. Oftentimes they're project managers, et cetera. They make a really good candidate to start to develop a team of virtual assistants at a sixth of American wages who will help run your business for you. So it's knowing that if you want that bigger scale and true lifestyle freedom, you're gonna have to accept the reality that you're gonna have to offset the work.
And when you know that you can follow a proven blueprint to make that happen. That's what gives the assurance. So look at McDonald's. If you buy a McDonald's franchise, you can know for a fact you're gonna know exactly how to fry those french fries. You're gonna know exactly the hiring process, the whole nine yards.
That's what a franchise provides. Now, we're not claiming this as a franchise, but we do have all the proven blueprints and systems in place for people to implement them, and then we try and mentor them through [00:25:00] that process.
Lindsay Sutherland: Okay, so you said something really important. I wanna go back and kind of put a pin in.
You said the perfect person for this role. Somebody who's already been overseeing a team of people, right? So your mid-level managers, your SEOs, your corporate execs, even mothers. I mean, think about it, we're home. Absolutely. Um, you know, any situation where you're managing and overseeing things and you have that gift of being able to kind of have the, uh, I guess the visual, an awareness. I think that's the word of all these moving pieces, doesn't mean you have to be the expert guys in this exact thing. I mean, although it's important to, I think, learn and understand the system and how it works.
Because I think any business you should be able to jump in to any point in your business and be able to pick up the pieces and know how it works, but you don't necessarily have to be the guy doing it all. So if you're already running a business or you're in a career and you wanna start this, This side thing. [00:26:00] How many hours, Ann, I know this is kind of gonna be different for everybody, but realistically speaking, I'm really wanting to hit home people who are working full time. Mm-hmm. is this something that they can do in their, we won't call it spare time, cuz God knows we don't have that, but in, weekend evening type situation and to where they can transition themselves out of their nine to five?
Ann Sieg: Absolutely. Our minimum requirement is 12 to 15 hours a week. So Victoria is one of my top performing students in her first 90 days. And I gotta say, sometimes the busiest people are the best producers cuz they know how to manage their time. But when she came in our program, working 12 hour shifts as a nurse, the night shift, mind you, and five days a week, not four, it was five days and three little children.
Lindsay Sutherland: Wow.
Ann Sieg: She crushed it. She did 41,000 in her first 90 days. I had to interview her pray Tell Victoria, come here girlfriend, you know. So it's [00:27:00] really these women who are just they just chop, chop to get her done. That's what I call myself. Just, you know, gimme my list. Chop, chop, get her done. It's done.
Consider it done. And managing the house. My husband does all ours now. I'm like, mm-hmm. you're getting the taste of what I was doing and homeschooling and doing side jobs, you know? And I'm like, thank God he's handling that so I can focus on growing the business, but running a family household with everything involved, especially I'll say at the homeschool moms, you know, you're having to take your, okay, the furnace repair and the this and the that, and it's a thousand things going on in a household.
And the way a woman's brain works, I'm just gonna say, Biologically in general, we're like this, lighthouse and it's moving like this. And I can be thinking about one of the divisions in my company and thinking about someone who's two levels down in management and going, Okay, that's, you know, I got an idea to help, you know, Lisa with that, you know, and I'm thinking about my whole ecosystem.
And in part [00:28:00] it's kind of how mommys were wired. Mm-hmm. , you know, and so, It's a great skill set to bring to the table. If you have great organizational skill sets, you're gonna be just fine. I wanna really soundly concur with what you mentioned about Yeah. When, okay, someone said, Oh, they can't fill that role.
This is why it's integral you do have to know and understand what's going on in your business and not, I don't wanna learn this, just, Hey, you Filipino here, you know, yo, learn this thing for me. Take care of it. Would you? It doesn't work that way. You have to be a leader. You have to be a leader in your business.
So I'm gonna share one quick story if I could.
Lindsay Sutherland: Absolutely.
Ann Sieg: Okay. So her name is May Mawa. She's from Indonesia and she got a degree, a PhD in microbiology working in, you know, just pretty advanced PhD in microbiology. Had a really, really bad experience. There was embezzlement going on in the company, et cetera.
She's like, [00:29:00] Uh, no. Never gonna let this happen again. So she tried a whole bunch of online different methods. There's a lot out there. It's a confusing world when it comes to online. There's so many options, and she didn't have any success until she came into our community. So this is four years ago, and she had a baby at that time.
Now they're ages four to nine. They all help and work in her business, ages four and nine. She homeschools them. She has two eCommerce businesses. She has 11 VA's working for her. 11. Wow. Four years time more than replaced her income. She's in the driver's seat. Her children are being empowered. They're growing up as little eCommerce entrepreneurs.
It's pretty fun.
Lindsay Sutherland: I got chills. I love it .It's so good. Okay. Does your team, This is just a question, totally random, but does your program help them? Like do you have a network of VAs already , or do you just teach them how to find them? Or how does that work? [00:30:00]
Ann Sieg: I wish we did have that.
And that's on my wishlist. And we have a game plan to do it, but one thing at a time. But we do have the very thorough training of what websites to go to. So I'm just gonna say in the, there's, you can get VAs all over the world. What's unique about the Philippines is just like certain countries have their export that they're known for, it might be rice or coffee.
They're exporting what they are known for. Is VA Virtual Assistance Services. So in other words, there's companies all throughout the Philippines. So I gotta tell you, when you talk to people on Amazon, probably Filipinos mm-hmm. and in fact, two of them who work inside the eCommerce business school used to work for Amazon.
Mm. Okay. Now here's another important thing about the Philippines. The accent of, say from India, for me, they're harder to understand. It's a real sharp accent. The Filipinos, they're [00:31:00] English to me, for our English sounding ears is much more understandable, and that's an important factor when they're talking to your customers.
So their English is very, very good as a nation. They have a very, on the whole high standard of ethics. Mm-hmm. So we have had great, great success, but so we give you the websites, we give you the job posting, the interview questionnaire. We give you everything to fully execute on this, and we give you our training to give to the virtual assistant.
It's not like you have to create the training. We have created it. They get that. And you also do a test assignment before you hire em. To make sure. Yep, exactly. So you don't do all your onboarding. And then, Oh man,
Lindsay Sutherland: That was always the one thing I wished. Okay. So I don't know if you know my background. I used to run as a call center in a I basically ran a team of salespeople in a car dealership.
Ann Sieg: Oh, okay.
Lindsay Sutherland: And when I did that, I used to, well, I was in charge of hiring. Right? And I, I can't tell [00:32:00]you how many times I was like, Man, I just wish I could just put him on the phone for an hour and give them a list of 20 calls and just see how they do with it. You know, like I just wanted to try it out.
Ann Sieg: Yeah.
Lindsay Sutherland: So is there any other really important factors? Let me, I, I, Okay. My mind is exploding. Hold on. Just lemme reign it in a second. , I got, my mind comes up with like questions faster than I can spit 'em out. But I also don't wanna overwhelm everybody with information. I'm just in love with your program and your passion.
It's just so perfect for this audience. If we were to just kind of summarize what makes your program different, obviously the training aspect is a big key, but when it gets into the nuances of Amazon, right? Mm-hmm. , what makes it so different than maybe say, hiring or even just heck, YouTube University, right?
People are at home, they're like, You know, all this information's on YouTube. I've got time. I could watch the videos and piece it together. , [00:33:00] Do I really need a program like this? Now? My philosophy is coaching cuts time, like that's really what it is. Mm-hmm. , anybody can do it on their own, but with coaching you, you literally collapse time.
Mm-hmm. . Besides that though, what other benefits are there to your program, specifically related to Amazon itself that people might wanna know.
Ann Sieg: Yeah. I would say number one all, so this is really a huge distinction because if you run around a YouTube university, it's a slew of information out there. And what you're gonna see just before warn you're gonna, you're gonna trip over the King of Private Label.
Oh, hang on. You got the Queen of Wholesale. Oh, you got the Prince of Shopify. In other words, they are putting their shingle out there, so to speak, of an expertise in a given methodology. So when you are new, you don't have the global view of how to sift and sort and know, Should I be, [00:34:00] Hold on, let me see.
Now, should we start with private label? Should I be starting with Shopify? Oh, print on demand is all the rage. Maybe that's what I'm supposed to be doing. This guy is a guru after all. All right, So it can be very, very confusing. So I wanna liken this and we have taught every, everything I just mentioned, we've taught liquidation, private label, wholesale, private label, Shopify trade.
So trade show sourcing trips to China, you name it. So we've covered the gamet. I liken it to of swimming pool. So as you know, in the shallow end, or with children, you don't take them to the deep end, ring them up the diving, boarding and say, Time to learn swimming, Johnny. Go ahead at Johnny. And you know, we don't do that to Johnny.
We put Johnny and the shallow end of the pool. So what is the information that has failed to be put out? There is a global view of the industry, so you're making a well-informed decision about starting in the right place where you have the greatest likelihood for [00:35:00] success. So I'm gonna make a contrast between two different sourcing methods.
And so what I rattled off, those are what are called different sourcing method. Okay, so, which means to find products, so it ranges from the shallow end of the pool, from retail arbitrage all the way over to the most advanced is Shopify. So we want what's called risk mitigation, where things are put most in your favors, so you can have as quick as success as possible.
For example, there's no reason why you can't be selling and in profit building it for 30 days. If you start with the right method, if you start with private label, Nine months, maybe you'll have your private label product into the Amazon marketplace. My son lives in China. He's a sourcing agent. Trust me, your risk factor goes up by a thousand percent if you're gonna start sourcing from China on day one and put an X over Alibaba.
Those of you are, you know, I won't go into whole thing about that right now, but all to say, so we start at the [00:36:00]place where you can get into cash flow as quick as possible. That will not be private label, that will not be Shopify. It's arbitrage. And all that means is to start low, um, pardon me, buy low, sell high, what their local stores or online stores.
We've been teaching that as the starter method of choice for nine years. After that, when you have a generous cash flow going on in your business, you have a team that's helping to run the operations of your business. Now you have sturdy legs underneath you and you can legitimately go into a more advanced method.
And I gotta tell you, nobody knows that when you're riffing around on, on YouTube University, there's another fatal flaw with YouTube University is that try to put it together piece-meal. How do you know that you're following the logical step by step process? Very linearly. You have no idea because you don't, you're not the [00:37:00] architect.
And I've heard so many people do this, and I get it cause I'm gonna do it on the cheap. Man. I tell you what, have at it. You're gonna waste time, money, energy, and effort, and the psychological wear and tear of why isn't this working? So it's twofold. Hand in glove, you've got to have a very clear, linear, step by step process.
And I mean as small step as possible. Not, wait a minute, they want me to go from here to here. Wait just one second, which is frustrating. And then you wanna mentor all along the way and there's another ingredient. This is a big distinction in the online space. You don't know how to sift and sort if someone just threw up their training gig a month ago, cuz there's trainers who teach you how to do this.
and they may be an extremely poor operator. They have no team behind them, but oh man, they're getting a $30,000 sale and that person is left hung to dry and is lost all their money, has no contact with [00:38:00] that person. They've since gone out of business. I hate to share horror stories like that. I've been in 18 years.
Those stories are very, very true and real. Do your due diligence. Okay, so make sure you can get as much upfront education as you have possible. So we have a blog, we do workshops. It's extremely in depth because I gotta tell you, I want you to know what you're getting involved with. I don't want a quick sale where you're clueless and you're paying amount of money and you're come in and you're going, What?
Mm-hmm . I didn't know I was gonna be doing that. That's no recipe for success. So it's the due diligence for me to ensure we're creating a win-win relationship, right? Because we are working with you handing glove so that we can proudly launch new, successful entrepreneurs in the marketplace.
Lindsay Sutherland: Yes, love it. Where can people find out more about your program?
Ann Sieg: Primarily E-commerce business [00:39:00] school.com. E-commerce business school.com. That's our homepage, our own website. There's a wealth of information. We have our blog chalk full of case studies, mostly professional women by the way. We have our community page where you can see how we interact with numerous touchpoints with our members.
We're also on Facebook and we do a free Facebook live training every Saturday. Saturday Morning Live, for eCommerce sellers, so there's lots and lots of free information for people to learn about who we are and what we have to offer. And we also have the opportunity for you to get into a consultation where you can speak to a business advisor, will help sit and sort wherever you're at, really taking the full gamut of what you bring to the table.
Cuz we truly don't want to enroll people into our mentorship if we don't feel it's a good fit for both parties. Mm-hmm. . We want both parties to feel good cause we're gonna put in our, I don't know, I'm wanna say mother love. We got lots of guys too , [00:40:00] but our love and expertise in our heart and souls into this effort of working to develop strong entrepreneurs.
But yeah, so we have a lot of free information out there.
Lindsay Sutherland: Perfect. Excellent. This has been incredible. I just, uh, grateful that we connected. This has just been great.
Ann Sieg: Awesome. I've enjoyed it a lot too. So Great to, uh, help people. Absolutely.
Lindsay Sutherland: Guys, go check out eCommerce school.com and connect with Ann's team so that you can find out more about how you can get started in Amazon.
Ann Sieg: Just one correction, it's eCommerce business school com.
Lindsay Sutherland: Thank you.