Starting from Nothing The Foundation Podcast Guest Name Interview Clifford & Jessica Larrew Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing The Foundation Podcast, the place where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their business entirely from scratch, before they knew what the heck they were doing. What I would like to do with you guys is really just dive into your story here to get started. So, Cliff and Jessica Larrew are The Selling Family. Help me understand a little bit about what was going on in your lives before you guys decided to take advantage of the opportunity of becoming Amazon sellers. You know our journey into entrepreneurship starts a little bit before we were even Amazon sellers. So we go back a few years before that and I was fiddling around on ebay and I just felt like that s kind of the start of everybody s Amazon business who s been around for about as long as I have. I was just messing around on ebay and I was selling the stuff that I had around the house or stuff that I would buy at yard sales. I had a great job, Cliff had a great job, and I was just kind of looking for some fun money to buy things for Cliff for Christmas or do fun things for us. I never super thought it would be like a full-time job for me. And then when the housing recession hit, both Cliff and I were in the housing market and so -- he was my boss at our job at a tile store and so I had security, right? Talk about job security. Yeah. I thought, We re good, and so I m just making this fun money on the side and then all of a sudden I no longer had a job. Cliff didn t actually give me my notice. Somebody else came from corporate office to do that. But pretty much we went from a two income household that we thought we re never going to not have this income to, well, shoot, we now have one income. Cliff is at a job that just let his wife go.
So, I thought, Well, what can I do? I thought, you know, obviously no job is really secure like I thought it was, and I had this thing going on ebay on the side and I thought, Well, let s just see what I can do with that. So I took my last paycheck which was so pitily and I took my $700 and I thought, I m just going to buy what I can to sell on ebay. And so I was able to really quickly replace my old income by selling on ebay. It was really nice for me because I felt like I was in control and nobody was going to be able to take that away from me. So that was really my step into being an entrepreneur. Okay. And then Cliff continued on to work at that job for a couple of years before we actually went into entrepreneurship together. So over that time, I have gotten to the point where I was making about $2,000 a month selling on ebay but I just couldn t grow that into more of a business because it just took more time. Everything that I was going to sell, I had to list on ebay, I had to ship it myself, and it just wasn t something that I could scale. And so I found out about Amazon and I really thought that was going to be my answer to making this business something that was just bigger than ebay was. In 2010, I started to really dive in into Amazon. My first Christmas on Amazon I realize, you know what, this is like real. This can make real money. Instead of buying things from yard sales, I was now buying stuff from retail stores and I was just selling them for more money on Amazon. And then that first year of me being full-time on Amazon, I actually was able to not only replace what I had been selling on ebay, which was my old job income as well, but I was able to replace Cliff s income. At that point it s like, Hey babe, why don t you come home and work with me? That s kind of where Cliff s journey into being an entrepreneur starts. Yeah. So we were doing the Amazon thing and to begin with I thought it was just a hobby, to be honest with you, when Jessica started it. It was something that I didn t know was going to be really scalable or doable because we were like a lot of people with the whole online business thing, the whole stigma. Is it a pyramid scheme or is it -- does it actually work? It was something that I ve seen her grow and it was an amazing process to see. Oh, that s awesome. I want to clarify for the listening audience. What I m curious for you guys to explain to everybody is when you guys were getting started, it sounds like you re
doing things like retail arbitrage and that kind of a methodology. I m curious, is that still what you guys do or do you guys do that kind of thing as well as FBA. Well, we started, originally, with retail arbitrage. We found stuff at retail stores, at Walmart, Target. We d go to the clearance aisle, clean up, scan whatever we could that would make a profit, and then we d send it in. And then we found what we call now liquidation stores. These are places that have shelf pools from stores like CBS and Target, Costco. They buy these things in bulk and they sell them for really cheap. We started with retail arbitrage and went into liquidation. We believe that as an Amazon business starts, it does grow and evolve overtime. We do very little private label. We have a couple of products we know that s really a hot thing right now and a little bit of wholesale. But we are, I would say, 90% retail arbitrage. Just to clarify. So that is being sold through FBA. Okay. What FBA is is that s Fulfillment by Amazon. So you can sell on Amazon as a merchant where you sell the things and you ship them from your own house or you can have Amazon s warehouse to do that service for you. And so that s what we do is we send all of our products to Amazon and then we show up as prime seller. So if somebody is paying for that prime account then they can get the free two-day shipping and then that is where the term FBA comes into play. Cool. So let s say the listening audience, they re interested in getting their feet wet with the Amazon business. Maybe you can share with us a little bit about your thought process of private labeling versus things like retail arbitrage or liquidation stores. Why do you guys decide to focus more on one side rather than the other? Private label, it is a very profitable niche for people to get into but it s something that we ve never done very much of. When we teach people how to start their Amazon business, we want them to do it with minimal risk and investment on their part, you know? Because a lot of the people are looking to start their own business but they re not looking to invest $7,000, $8,000 and bringing products from China. That s just not doable for a lot of people. With the retail arbitrage aspect of Amazon, you can buy very -- you can start with $100 or even items around your house. We ve had people just, you know,
to start their seed money, they ve gone and scanned new items in their home that they ve never opened and sent them into Amazon that way. With retail arbitrage, it s a minimal investment where you don t have to put up a whole bunch of upfront money because that s just not doable for a lot of people. We ve always recommended that people start small, see if you like Amazon, and then try and grow it into something bigger and better for yourself. Cool. Okay. So retail arbitrage allows folks to get in at a much lower, original investment and start building up their capital reserves. Exactly. Cool. So I want to explore now. So Jessica, you mentioned that you kind of started off in 2010 roughly full force into Amazon. What I m curious to explore a little bit is how did you go from this being a hobby to being a business? What I m particularly curious about is what changes did you guys make in the things that you were doing on a daily, on a weekly basis in your transition from hobby to real business? Well, when it was a hobby, it basically was just for extra money. There was no goal in mind. It was just whatever I could make, I could make and that would do something fun like take us on a trip or buy an extra Christmas present or something like that. For me, I started to look at it as a business as soon as I lost my job because I felt like I needed to contribute. The truth is is that we weren t using a lot of my money. I air quote that my money for paying bills and things. And so I think that s kind of why Cliff saw it as a hobby for longer than I did because I was able to use that money to pay bills and things but it wasn t like, Oh, the business made $1,000. Oh, the business made $2,000. It was just something like, Okay, well, we need this to add to our rent, or We need this to add [unclear 00:10:11], and I would just take it in from the business and put it in. And so the difference was making it to where instead of just going out when I felt like it it was like, Okay, now I need to go out at least a few times a week and look for inventory because if I don t send something in then we re not going to have anything to sell. At this point, Cliff is still working a full-time job and we also have a new baby at home. And so when Cliff would come home we had this schedule where a few times a week he would stay with the baby right after he got home from work and then I would go out and shop at nighttime. And then during the day whenever
Aiden was sleeping, then I would process all this inventory and send it in to Amazon. To me I always really looked at it as a business once I didn t have a job because I felt like I needed to make that as an income. It really transitioned into something very similar just on a larger scale when Cliff quit his job because he quit right around the holidays and, as you probably know from talking to other Amazon sellers, the 4 th quarter is just where basically it feels like anything that you can send in to Amazon you will just sell super fast. Okay. And so we knew that if we were going to make it for the years to come, you know, it s the end of the year. We didn t have a bunch of money and savings but we knew that, okay, this is the time where we can really turn this into something great. And so we just really turned it on and treated it like a full-time business for both of us once Cliff came home. And so we had a lot more schedule and we would trade off doing tasks and things. It was also a scary time for me because that decision to leave my job, I was a manager at a corporate company and we were making a big decision for me to leave my job. We were leaving the benefits, the health and dental benefits, and all that insurance. It was a scary deal for us and especially for me. At that point, when I left my job, I knew, okay, we have to knock this out of the park because we don t have anything to fall back on now. We really put that hustle and work into it to go out and make it a viable business for us. It s like our journey, it just expands over so much time and it feels so different for both of us because my decision was made for me. I didn t get to make that decision if I was going to work from home or not. I feel like if I had the opportunity, if I was still working at that job and I knew that I could make something work online, I feel like I wouldn t have taken that risk and just like quit my job. I would have never put enough effort into ebay or Amazon at that point to try and replace my income because I felt so secure in where I was so why would I try to leave that. For me it was like -- that decision was just made for me and I was going to run with it. And then fast forward the years, even though we saw that the business was making money and it was profitable and it was paying bills at this point, it was still really like now we re actually making that decision. This is final. If Cliff leaves his job, we re going to make this work and it was just like --
Our friends didn t know what we were doing and they were cool with me making money online as long as Cliff still had that job. It didn t even matter if I was making more than Cliff because his job was the one that was secure in people s eyes and so that made it really difficult to just be like, No, we re actually going to do this full-time and This is it. Yeah. I m curious. So, we ve actually got in the community. We ve got people who are husband and wives teams as well as business partnerships. I m actually partnered with my sister on a business. I m curious, how do you guys each see your role and function within the company of selling on Amazon? How do you guys divide up responsibility? I enjoyed the shopping part the most and so if I could just shop, I would hand over the rest of it to Cliff. Okay. I get all the logistics of shipping it in and getting everything packed up and ready to go. That was a tough transition for me just as a side note because I went from being the boss and having 30, 40 employees telling them what to do, including my wife who was on our staff, and then coming home to she s the expert at this business and I m taking orders from her and changing diapers. It was a big transition for me. In the very beginning, like I said, it was the 4 th quarter and we had a new baby and so when Cliff left, Aiden was just over a year old. We would switch off and on where a couple days a week I would go out and source during the day and then a couple of days a week, Clifford go out and source during the day. One day a week we would go out together and Aiden went with his grandma. It was like we kind of had to just split everything and then we would pack together at nighttime. But as things progress, it got to where it s like, Okay, well, I ll find this stuff online, doing online arbitrage, and I ll get it shipped in and then can you just pack it all up? So it s really evolved overtime. But that transition that Cliff was talking about, it wasn t just awkward for him. I mean it was awkward for me too because here I am now with over two years of experience in having an online business and he s run this multimillion dollar company for somebody else and I m like, Well, but I know how to do this. So, could you just do it my way? Wow! What are some of the biggest challenges that you guys faced? Let s go with not any of the ebay stuff but once you guys are both a full-time Amazon team, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you guys made in the first year or two of that business that people hearing these can potentially shortcut?
Looking back, obviously, hindsight is 20/20 but looking back, I think we would have gone harder and sold more during those first couple of years because we were -- As much as we were hustling and going, we could have done more. But what we ve tried to do with this business is create a lifestyle business for ourselves. We re trying to put our family first and work minimal hours and do the things that we love to do and have the money to do the things that we love to do. I think in the first couple of years, we probably would have bought more inventory to sell. I think that was maybe a mistake that we made. And I think it s something that we learned overtime. Looking back, I think the first couple of years maybe where I came home and we went full-time, or even when Jessica was by herself, we probably would have invested a lot more in it to be honest with you. And one of the things, too, that I look back on and realize is that when we were at the point where we re like, Okay, well, this is fall time so we need to make sure that we need to buy enough stuff to replace our income. Because, you know, it s not like a blogging business where we just add more blog post or more affiliate links or more things like that. It s like we have to actually spend money in order to make sure that we have money coming in. And so we would have these spending goals where we would say, Okay, well, in order to make $4,000 this month, we need to spend $4,000 on inventory. There were times where we would buy things because it met our money criteria but it didn t quite meet all of our other normal criteria. There were some risks that we took that didn t pay off where we spent thousands of dollars like $2,000, not $10,000, and thought, You know, this is really going to sell and this is going to sell really quickly, and then it just kind of sits around. There s times where we just really jump in with both feet without thinking something totally through. I don t always take my own advice because it s like, Well, you know, just test things out. I would never tell somebody, Okay, buy 200 of something and then I ll just go against everything that I ve ever believed in the business and say, Okay, let s just get this because it feels good and then it s like, Oh, it didn t work. Sorry. (Laughs) But here s the thing though is that one thing that we found in this business is even when we make a mistake or we buy something that we shouldn t have, worst case scenario usually is that we break even or we lose a little. So it s not -- it s happened before because I ve decided that I don t want to sell something after I purchase it. And if I just donate it, then it s basically a complete loss. But
almost 95% of the time, we end up still selling the product. We just sell it at our cost and so we re out the Amazon fees or something. Okay. But risk in this business, you know, you re not going to just lose everything because you re going to get some money back. Cool. Okay. You guys talked about this being a lifestyle business and treating it as such. For a team of two to replace two full-time incomes, what amount of time are you guys spending in this business on a weekly basis if you had to guess? Well, it has changed over the years as we ve gotten smarter and sourcing products and our business has evolved. But when we first started together, both of us full-time, we were putting in anywhere between 10 to 15 hours a week during like January through October. And then during the 4 th quarter which is like crazy selling time, we were doing 40 plus hours a week just because you can make a tremendous amount of money during that time on Amazon. So we would go just gung-ho during those months of the year. But on an average week between sourcing and shipping, it s about 10 to 15 hours for both of us. And here s one thing that we ve really done is that because we know that we can make so much money in the 4 th quarter. We look at our 4 th quarter as a time where we kind of write ourselves a bonus check but we don t spend it all that time. We can make $30,000 in profit in November and December and if we carry that over into the next 10 months of the next year, then we have just over -- what is it, $2,000 a month? Yeah. That we can live on. And so we don t have to actually make that much money in a normal month because we save that money from the 4 th quarter previously. And so that s kind of what we ve done is in the 10 months of the year we really take it easy, we just work those 10 to 15 hours, and then we really, really hustle in the 4 th quarter so that we can still do that. A lot of people, they hustle just as hard during those 10 months and that s great. So for us it just works the opposite way where we felt like if we could make enough that we don t have to work hard the rest of the year then we won t. Cool. I m hearing a lot about this. I ve talked with a few sellers in the last few weeks about the opportunity in November and December. I m curious. Let s say I ve got a product that during the year might be selling, like, let s say $1,000 a month. What s going to happen to that product in November and December?
So it s actually hard to just say like on a broad scale because one of the misconceptions of 4 th quarter is that anything will sell and it will sell more or for more money. What we found is the quantity of sales goes up tremendously. So we can say four times the amount of sales will happen in those the 4 th quarter than in the regular year but it won t necessarily be for more money and so you re just doing it on volume. So you could say that that product -- if the demand for that product went up in 4 th quarter, then instead of doing $1,000 you could do $4,000. Okay. But I don t have an exact number because what we do with it being retail arbitrage is we don t actually have those type of figures because the things that we sell in the 4 th quarter are different than the things we sell in the regular year. So that would be something that somebody who sells the same thing all year would really know those numbers but we just know that the volume across the board goes up in 4 th quarter. And during that time, too, that s when you really see inflated prices. I mean not everything goes up but that s the time of year where you see things start to go for three, four, five times what you can buy in the store sometimes. Especially toys, for example, because they bring out hot new toys around that time. I think what people need to understand is that s one of the biggest hurdles for people wanting to sell on Amazon. They were like, Why would somebody pay twice or three times as much for something on Amazon when they could go to the store and get it? You have to remember, with the Amazon FBA business, you re selling a service pretty much. When using your products, you re going out and collecting these products for people and a lot of times, some people can t even find them and you re saving them hours of going from stores to store to store to find this product and they can t find it. You re saving them time and people. During the holidays, they just don t have time to go out sometimes, you know. They re busy, they got things at school going on, holidays. It s worth it to a lot of people to just buy it on Amazon and have it shipped right to their doorstep instead of spending hours in the crowd to maybe find what they re looking for. So people are buying convenience especially at that time of the year. Exactly. Yeah.
And you know, during the regular part of the year, our main focus on how we get inventory is we re buying discounted products. And so we re not buying things straight off the shelf at full retail price and then asking for two to three times the amount on Amazon. And so it s not as hard to buy something on clearance for $5 and then sell it for the retail price of 20 because people feel like they re still getting the deal on Amazon. Because that s what people are expecting a lot of times when they go to Amazon is they want the convenience plus they want the deal. And so if we can buy something discounted enough, we still get to provide the service and the deal as well as have the same profit margin. If something s on clearance for me, it may not be on clearance for you. And so people -- it s not like if they see it on Amazon for $20 they re not going to automatically think, Oh, well, this must be on clearance somewhere for $5. Let me go spend hours trying to find it. They re just like, Oh, okay. Well, I can buy it at Target for $20 or I can buy it on Amazon for $20 so why would I drive to Target? Yes. Cool. So I m thinking more about this opportunity as a lifestyle business. When people are hearing things like cues one through three, 10 to 15 hours, cue four more hours because you ve got a bigger opportunity, what does that entail? Meaning, as you guys have grown, is that still just the two of you or do you guys have a team that you outsource things to or a team of contractors that help you with certain things? Help me understand like as this has grown is it still the two of you or you guys outsourcing some of the stuff? So it s basically just the two of us still. When we re in the 4 th quarter and we re doing the more hours, we do have usually at least one person who s helping us to pack the products. Okay. When it comes to sourcing the products than actually picking them and picking them up from stores, that s just Cliff and I. So we make those decisions ourself and we do all the running around, placing the orders online. We do all of that ourselves. But when it comes to labeling the products and packing them up to ship them out, we try and get help. And so usually that, we keep it in the family, you know. We re called The Selling Family so it s usually like my mom will come and help us. She can label and box stuff up. Because when we do shipments at that time, we re talking sometimes 30 boxes in one day. So we have to be ready by the time that the UPS guy gets
there and we re just like, Okay, all hands on deck. Let s get this stuff out. But normal year, it s just us. Cool. One of the things that I ve seen with Amazon is constant change, right? So often times I even see like the way people were putting up listings, for example, a few months ago has totally changed now. How do you guys manage to incorporate the constant change from Amazon into your process? So maybe, I don t know if there s resources that you follow but how do you guys keep up with all of the changes that are going on from Amazon which obviously is constantly affecting your business since you re selling through it? Well, you know, we found that the changes are expected. Amazon is doing everything in its power to make sure that the buyer has the best experience possible. And so changes are things that affect the buying experience and so, to be honest, they don t usually affect us that much because we re selling retail arbitrage. So we re not creating new listings all the time. We re not trying to figure out Amazon s algorithm on how they re putting things into the search results because we re not actually dealing with that all the time. Whenever you re bringing like a private label product to market, that s something that would affect a seller like that because if Amazon changes the rules on how you can list the product, then you have to be creative and how you get your product in front of people. But when we buy our stuff, we already know that it is being reached by the buyers and so it doesn t affect us in that way. But there s changes that happen every year that feel new to somebody who s a new seller but because we re six years into this, it s like we just expect it. So things like Amazon will increase their fees. We just kind of expect that every year. They re going to send us an email and they re going to raise their fees. All that does is that makes it so that we re a little bit more picky when we buy stuff but we just make sure that the new products we buy fit into profit margins that we re comfortable with because that s all stuff that we can see ahead of time. And then changes like they want us to ship to different warehouses. It s just those kind of things that never seem to really impact us that greatly because we feel like in any business, we have to be able to adapt. And so even if whenever we were in the retail business, things would happen. Manufacturers would discontinue products and we would have to deal with that or we would change the pricing schemes and we would have to deal with the customers on that. And so it s just something that you always have to expect in the business is that things are going to change. Even if it was our own platform and we were selling just on our own website, Google changes algorithms and all that stuff it just happens then we just kind of roll with it.
Yeah. These all sound like additional reasons why pursuing retail arbitrage, at least initially over private labeling, is a better way to start a side business or a business with limited capital. It just sounds like more checkmarks as this is an interesting route to go in terms of the arbitrage. Less barriers to entry, less change. It really is and that s why we always recommend, you know, because this business isn t for everybody. We ve had people start it and just be like, You know what, I don t like shopping and finding products, and we re like, Okay, that s alright. That s why we always recommend Just start small. Start it as a hobby. See if you like it and then see how much you can grow it to a viable business for yourself if you choose to do that. With private label -- and, again, these strategies and ways to run Amazon and find products that are really profitable but the investment that s needed upfront to get it started with private label and buying wholesale is tremendous. You re talking at least a few grand to start off where if you do start off doing retail arbitrage, you can literally start with unopened items that are in your house already. We ve had so many people start with unopened board games or the mixing items in their kitchen that they ve never opened or stuff like that where they can send these in now and turn them and see like, Hey, this actually works. This is actually a viable business. I can do this. So that s why we always teach people start off with retail arbitrage and we ve never strayed from that. We ve always believed that retail arbitrage is the best place to get your feet wet in Amazon. Yeah. We have students who have taken our course and have worked with us for years. We have people who are doing like $80,000 to $100,000 a month now. That s not our style but our students do go on to do those kind of things and it s not through retail arbitrage. We don t have that where they re growing their business that greatly doing just retail arbitrage but the experience that they get and the learning of the processes and the platform of Amazon, they have that experience to know, Okay, these types of things sell and this is how Amazon works. and they re able to expand their business into other areas. And so it seems like a natural progression is that people will start with doing clearance and then they ll mess around with doing straight off the shelf retail arbitrage which is like what we do in 4 th quarter where we buy something at the retail price and mark it up. And then people start to do bundling where you re bringing your own products but it s still from retail and that s something we really enjoy. And then it s like, Okay, well, at this point, I can t just keep buying from the store. So where do I go? And then people will look into doing wholesale
products where they re buying direct from the actual company or a third party manufacturer or something like that. But they re buying name brand products where the consumer is already looking for them, they re already familiar with them, but you re not having to go to Target to pick it up. Then after that it s like, Okay, well, how can I sell where it s only me as the seller? and that s where people get into private label. Once you ve done that progression of the business, it s like it s so much easier for you rather than jumping in to the ocean without knowing how to swim. You ve started in the waiting pool and you ve worked your way up and now you can handle that. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people might make in retail arbitrage if they re pursuing that strategy? What might happened for someone where they don t see the results they re looking for? What are they doing wrong? One of the biggest mistakes that we see people make is they don t really understand the fees when they buy a product. A lot of people will scan something in the store and they will say, Oh, well, it s $5 and it s selling for $8 on Amazon. I m going to make $3. Right. And they re like, I m going to make $3 right away. Well, that s not necessarily true because Amazon takes their portion of the sale, the final sale, and yeah, shipping cost there, and then you also have other fees that with any business that you start up, there are fees. With Amazon you have to have a proseller account which does run $40 a month. So that s something that has to be taken into account. So a lot of times you see people -- they ll start scanning right away before they really understand the fees. There is still tools that will help you understand that but I think one of the biggest things -- mistakes that people make right away is they just start scanning things and buying things up and they re like -- they look back and like, Wait a minute. How come I m not turning a profit on this? Well, it s because they didn t understand the fee breakdown as the item sold and what was actually all calculated into the final profit for that product. One thing that we see, too, is that people will purchase products and the only type of information that Amazon gives us as sellers to give us any clue on how well a product is selling is what s called the Amazon bestseller rank. I don t know if you ve ever heard that. If you just look at on Amazon as a buyer, it s not even something that you would really even notice was there. But what it does is it basically -- the lower the rank is, the quicker that that product sells, or the more sales that it sees versus another product.
And so I kind of compare it to like the Billboard top 100 songs. The number one song has been requested the most times and the 100 th song is still requested a lot, it s just not as requested as the first song. And so what the Amazon bestseller ranking though, they can go up into the millions. The number one ranked product is going to be the most quickly sold product and the million ranked products, they re not selling very fast. So every time that a product sells, the ranking goes down a little bit. And as time goes on, the rank goes up. So what happens is that s the only piece of information that we have to guestimate how quickly something is going to sell. And so if somebody goes into purchasing inventory without any type of understanding on ranks, then they could easily buy products that may not sell for months and months and months. Because if you go in and purchase something, say, a bedspread and the rank is 500,000, it may have great profit margins but it s probably not going to sell for a few months. That s one of the frustrations that we see is just not seeing the full picture like Cliff was saying with the fees and then where people don t understand, Well, what can I look at to make sure I m making a good buying decision? And then it s like, Well, I m sending stuff in but it s not selling so what s happening? That s one of the things that we can usually deduct is like, Okay, well, this it has a really bad rank, and so we wouldn t expect for it to sell right away. It may sell eventually but that was the only thing we could look at and say that probably wasn t a good buying decision. It s just so fun to go in and buy things and think This is going to resell or I m going to make money, and just kind of get caught up into that frenzy of buying, buying, buying and not looking at the whole picture. Or in the same scope buying ten of something when you haven t even sold one thing and then it s like, Oh, well, I sold one and that s it. And so there s a lot of thought process that goes into purchasing inventory and that s ultimately where people are going to get caught up and making mistakes. What s the best part about running an Amazon business? So now we ve gone through some of the things that is taking you guys to get where you re at. One of the things that I feel is the coolest is probably the lifestyle design aspect where I cannot spend 40 or more hours a week every single month doing this. But if people are now kind of have -- they ve got their interest peaked as we ve gone through this interview, what are your favorite things about being on Amazon and doing this as a job or as your company? Like why do you guys love it? Well, obviously, number one reason is the lifestyle part of it. We ve kind of talked about that. But another thing that I really enjoy is finding these products.
You never know what you re going to find when you walk into a store. It s almost like a modern day treasure hunting for us. That s the way we kind of look at it because you just never know what you re going to find in an aisle. I mean we ve gone in the store sometimes and we ll both be scanning products. And then we ll come across a palette of ketchup at a liquidation store and then we ll scan it and we ll be like, Okay, the rank is great, the profit s great. Look how much they have. The expiration date is good. It doesn t expire for a couple of years. And then we start doing the math and we re like, Man, we could make $15,000 off of this ketchup. Right here, ketchup. You just never know what you re going to find. There s days where we do walk in the stores and we come out with nothing because we didn t find anything but then there s other days where we walk in the stores and we find just cart full of items that are really profitable and so you never know what you re going to find and that is -- Some people don t like that aspect of it but I love it because it really does feel like you re a modern day treasure hunter almost and you never know what s waiting on the next aisle for you to scan. It s really fun because it s a business that can be done from anywhere. I mean anywhere locally for us. We don t travel across to different country and do it but when we go on vacations, we find that we like to play this game amongst us where it s like how much we spend on our vacation. Let s see if we can recoup our cost in inventory that we purchase on the road. So for, like, driving down to Disneyland which is almost a seven-hour drive for us, it s like, Okay, well, let s stop in a few stores on the way and just see if we can pay for our trip that we re taking right now. So that s really cool because we have the opportunity basically anywhere that we are that we can find inventory. It s a good thing but then it s also kind of bad because I ll be like, Hey babe, I need to run in to Walgreens really quick, and he s like, Really quick or you re going to stop at the clearance aisle? and I was, Well And it s like I try as fast as I can to check the clearance. It doesn t feel like we re working whenever we re just grabbing some groceries and we stop really quickly at the clearance aisle, you know? Yeah. Alright. So, you guys have heard from Cliff and Jessica Larrew of The Selling Family and just some takeaways. If you are interested in the concept of a lifestyle design business and then number two, if you feel like the description of becoming a treasure hunter is of interest to you, these are key things about the Amazon
business. Lifestyle design and if you feel, want to feel like a treasure hunter, this might be a good opportunity for you to get a business going. So Cliff and Jessica, if people are now interested, where can they go to connect with you guys and see if you re able to help them get this journey started. Closing: So our website is thesellingfamily.com. We have a bunch of free information that people can look at to start blog post. We have tips to starting an Amazon business or top questions that people ask about starting an Amazon business. And then we also have paid information where if somebody just wants a very step-by-step look into the business and how to go from the concept of starting an Amazon business to selling products. Then we also have paid training courses available as well. Awesome. Again, you guys have heard from Cliff and Jessica Larrew of thesellingfamily.com. Cliff and Jessica, thanks for joining us today. Thank you for joining us. We ve taken this interview and created a custom action guide so you know exactly what action steps to take to grow your business. Just head over to thefoundationpodcast.com to download it for free. Thanks for listening and we ll see you next week.