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Welcome to the Million Dollar Sellers podcast. I'm your host, Nick Shucet. We've got Corey Ganim on the call today.
Corey has been selling on Amazon for seven years now. He's got a great wholesale business. I really love his topics around lead generation, closing deals, and really just getting things done.
Man, I get that vibe from you when I see stuff. I'm like, Corey just gets shit done. He's leveraging things, he's doing more with his time. You got that Hormozi-type vibe as well.
I love your content, man. I know that's something you could talk about as well, content creation. Excited to have you on the podcast, man.
Thanks for having me back. I think the first time I was here was probably a year and a half ago. It's been a little bit.
It's been a while man. Excited to have you back on, and see what you've been up to.
I know you've been doing some more content creation-type stuff like we were talking about, but I know you've still got a good wholesale business as well.
I know we're gonna talk a little bit about what you're seeing in wholesale right now, what problems we're dealing with, how we're overcoming those.
I know that's gonna be of interest to a lot of people.
Why don't you just start by telling us a little bit about what you've been up to and what your plans are, what your vision is for the next quarter or the rest of the year?
Great way to lead it off. I’ll just refresh people from the last time I've been on the show.
If you want to hear my full background, how I got into Amazon, and my story, check out the first episode that Nick and I did.
I think it was like the first episode of season two of the MDS Podcast. That was my full background.
Now, as far as what I've been up to from then to now, which is over the last maybe a year and a half or so, I've been really focused on one, building my personal brand.
Two, also continuing to build my wholesale business. On the personal branding side of things, I've been relentlessly putting out content.
My main platforms are YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Just trying to be really consistent across all of those platforms.
Then on the Amazon front, like I said, the big focus is on continuing to build my wholesale business.
We've been in talks with a couple of brands on landing potential exclusives or semi-exclusives.
Also doubling down with some of the distributors or wholesalers that we've been working with for a number of years as well.
I'm sure this is something we'll get into, but wholesale is one of those businesses where it's all about relationships.
It really just takes a couple of key relationships with some key suppliers to kind of build your whole business. This is not a business where you need 100 suppliers to do decent numbers.
It's a business where you need maybe three to five, or one to three, to really build a sustainable business. We've just been doubling down on what's working here in I guess year seven.
May will be seven years on Amazon for me.
I really like that you touched on doubling down a piece of looking at your current partners in your wholesale business.
This means people you buy products from and being like, hey, instead of looking for more of these people, let's just invest more in this one relationship or these three relationships.
When I did that with arbitrage, that's when my business exploded. When we're getting invited to the group chats of everyone that works at the store and they're opening the store early for us.
They're telling us about deals, and you're bringing people into the business as buyers who know how to build relationships with people and can repeat the same type of relationship building.
Which is not an easy thing to teach, man. You've got to be a certain type of person to be able to build relationships like that, but it's worth it.
Totally. At the end of the day, it's just B2B sales. I think that's why that's really what drew me towards wholesale as a business model, more so than arbitrage.
Which is a little more, I mean, the way you did it, it's not transactional, but typical, let's say online arbitrage is going to be a lot more transactional and then private label.
Definitely not transactional, and also a very big relationship-heavy business, but it requires a little bit of a different mindset.
Having those design chops, having an eye for branding. These are things that aren't necessarily my skill set.
When it comes to sales, following up, relationship building, rapport building, and being at the right place at the right time in terms of popping up in front of those decision-makers.
That's where I feel my strengths lie. That's what drew me to wholesale. That's why I've stuck with wholesale.
Well, I think it's clear from your content and me just knowing you for a little bit that the one thing that you do well is just closing the deal.
Filling the pipeline with leads, qualifying, and closing the deal.
There are all these stages to that process and you really need to be good or have people that are good in each one of them to have a good wholesale business.
That's what I found, man. When we were growing that thing, we were breaking Helium 10.
We were always hitting the API limits all the time, worrying about sending too many emails, and getting shut down.
Getting sent to spam or something.
We were not able to send any emails because we jumped up too fast. You start to run into all these new boundaries which is interesting.
That's how you know you’re trailblazing, which is such a good feeling.
That's one thing I love about Amazon and these digital opportunities you get to flex all those different skills in that same business. There are times to go really fast.
There are times to go really slow. There's time to rely on foundational business principles and there's times to try new things that have never been done before.
It's such a great platform to express yourself in my opinion. I've really enjoyed that. That's what I see a lot of other people doing through social media and business in general.
There's just a certain type of people, they're unique people. We were talking about community building that's what I get out of MDS as well as just that exposure to like-minded people.
I'm curious to hear some other things that you're doing in the business that might offer some leverage to other people.
Are there any tools helping you pump out or edit your content in a faster way to get that stuff published?
Then let's talk a little bit about some of the things you're facing in your Amazon business and how you've overcome those.
I know inbound fees and just logistics in general are big topics right now.
All topics that we should definitely cover. To answer your first question about the content creation side, how am I like getting stuff out there consistently?
Well, there's nothing sexy about it. It's not like there's a specific tool that I use that nobody else is aware of. It's just the concept of batching.
I think that that's been really effective for me in the sense that on Mondays, I don't schedule any calls on Mondays.
Mondays are my content day where I sit down and that's where I'm going to bang out. I'm going to schedule two tweets per day for the next week.
That covers Twitter. I'm going to go ahead and write and schedule my newsletter for the week, which goes out on Thursday.
I might record a podcast episode or two, which I release once a week, every Wednesday. Then I'm going to sit down and do any sort of other video content.
Batch a couple of YouTube videos, batch a couple of just iPhone in front of the face, talking head type videos, and post a couple of stories as well.
I think by knocking out a lot of the content load for the week there on Monday, my Mondays are super, it's a long day because it's a lot of work to do that for the week.
It makes the whole rest of the week easier. Then from there batching my calls into a try to do between 1 and 4 PM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, knock them all out.
I'll have calls back to back to back to back during those days, which allows me to again, focus on the content on Mondays and then have the mornings for more deep work.
Which is when I sit down and actually work on a project or work on infrastructure, do those things that actually move the needle.
As far as your second question, I know that touched on the content side of things. What was that second question again?
That was stuff happening in Amazon right now and any other hacks you can think of in the business. When I say hacks, I like to think of leverage points.
I do like what you mentioned though about what you're doing because batching content, I would consider that a hack because it takes things to the next level.
I think people miss stuff like this because sometimes when I'm sharing these ideas with some people, they hit me with this blank stare. Why would you even think about that?
I think about those moments. Podcasting is such a good one, which we both can relate to. Yesterday I did four podcasts and I only had to set up my stuff once but I did four.
That's a big point of leverage there where I didn't have to spend that time to set that stuff up. It's not just time, it's energy. I didn't have to deal with technical problems or this wire not working.
All that stuff was drastically cut and that stuff matters. I think it's time and brain power that you're reserving there to have a bigger impact on those deep sessions that you're having.
When it's the context switching too, I think that's what it's referred to.
Where for example, to use your example of yesterday, if you sat down to record four podcast episodes in a row, you're going to be way more efficient if you just bang out one after the other.
As opposed to, all right, I'm going to sit down and record a podcast episode, then I'm going to go answer a couple of emails, then I'm going to come back and record another episode.
Then I'm going to fire off a purchase order to my supplier. If you go back and forth like that, it's going to take you literally the entire day to do that, to do those things you mentioned.
Whereas if you just again, batch the podcast and then batch the other tasks, you're going to be way more efficient.
Oh, and another kind of, call it a tip, call it a hack, whatever you want to call it, that has really helped me, especially as of recent, is setting timers, setting deadlines.
Very artificial deadlines. A practice that I've implemented probably over the last month or two is what I call a power hour. First thing in the morning.
My routine is I usually wake up, go to the gym, come home, go on a short little walk outside, and then as soon as I get inside from my walk, which is right around 8:30 AM.
I set a one-hour timer and I call it the power hour. Phones on airplane mode. I'm locked in on my desk I've got the lo-fi beats going in the headphones, super focused for 60 minutes straight.
That's the goal. Alright, I'm gonna focus on my most important task for the next 60 minutes. When that 60-minute timer goes off, I step away, that's when I sit down and have breakfast.
What I found Nick, I swear it's crazy because you hear people talk about this. Until you actually experience it.
You're like, no way that's that's not true, but there are some days when I get 70% of my work done in that one hour because I'm focused, I'm locked in, I'm not looking at my phone.
I sit down that breakfast and by the time I'm done with breakfast, it's maybe 10 AM. I'm like, okay well, I have maybe one hour of work left.
Then the rest of the day is geared towards recovery or thinking about strategy-type thoughts, conversations, and also calls.
I found that if I can actually execute that power hour on the days that I can get that done, it makes the rest of the day and the rest of the week just so much easier.
It's great. It really does feel like a power hour, man. In the first quarter, I did this “wake up and work” thing.
I've talked to some people about it, but for me to really get that time to myself, I had to get up pretty early, 3:30, or 4:00.
I did that for the whole first quarter and I was working from then to 7:00, I would do a little deep Yoga Nidra-type thing from 6:45 to 7:00. Then I'm making food for the kids. Breakfast.
Getting them packed for lunch and then take them out around the neighborhood because my oldest goes to school at 9:00.
Well, the other kid goes to school at 11: 15 so one of them's around for a while.
Now I've gone from someone stressed out about not feeling productive at work to feeling like I could be spending more time with my family.
To someone who's feeling like they've accomplished both those things by 11 AM every day.
It's probably the most productive quarter of your life too if you did that for a whole quarter.
Yes. I did get thrown off a little bit with honestly, allergies, which are still kicking my ass. Allergy people, we get it. I get it. I think Corey probably gets it too.
I was reading about the impact of Google and how it lowers the quality of life. Depression. Allergies can be such a drain.
Might have been bad the last couple of weeks.
All around bad. Trust me, I was on the golf course this past Saturday. Mine had been bad the last couple of weeks.
It was the second I stepped foot on that course, I was sneezing every 30. We had to stop after nine. I'm like guys, I'm sorry, it's that bad. I get it.
It shuts things down. I've been thrown off track.
For anybody who's trying to take their productivity to the next level, you really have to start thinking about how you can squeeze more out of the time you already have.
Not how to get more time because then you have to start making trades. I can't really do that. I'm like, sorry, kid number two.
See you later. All right. Kid number four. I can't do it. You've got to start thinking about maximizing your time.
I think batching your content, and then just doing things that increase your ability to produce. I just came across some training and I got in their funnel.
I realized I had all the other pieces of recovery, but I was missing this “wake up and work” thing where the guy was like, yeah, just wake up and work.
Just get to work within three minutes. That's what I was doing, man. In my pajamas, at the desk, working in the zone within 15 minutes and feeling great.
It's as simple as that.
Well, I think that's where Mozi's talked about that too. That's his thing. You don't need a morning routine.
I think his thing is, that the alarm goes off, he makes a cup of coffee, and then he sits down and gets to work.
Then I think he does that until around noon. I think his thing is no calls before noon. I've heard other big guys.
I don't know if you're familiar with Lewis Howes, like the School of Greatness podcast. He's a very big podcast. Same thing, wake up, get to work for a couple of hours.
Then it's not like you're doing that all day. The idea is that you can knock out the most important stuff first or at least make a big dent in it.
Then the rest of the day is easier and you can save the afternoon for your calls or for that type of work that maybe isn't as needle-moving if you want to put it that way.
I think that stuff's critical, man. I swear you don't hear a lot of people talk about this, but working remotely is, while it feels probably not new to us, it's new to a lot of people.
Civilization in general, if you look at it historically, is a new thing. You've got to start to think about how you're managing all these inputs into your brain and what it does to you.
That takes a lot of practice, man.
I think just having those time blocks helps you set your day up in a predictable way, which allows you to then manage those unpredictable things in a better way.
You show up better too. Man, I was showing up so well on the calls. I'm here for you guys. I have nothing else to do.
What problems do you have? I'm just handling all of them. It's such a big shift.
Then the other thing you get from it is that feeling of productivity that boosts your feelings of well-being in general.
I think that's something you don't really hear a lot of people talk about because you gotta be willing to try that new thing that seems a little crazy, like waking up and working.
Or no calls before 12 PM to really start to feel that effect. That's why I love to call that stuff out.
I want people to hear those results and be like, all right, I need to give this a shot, next two weeks I'm doing this. I'm not going to judge it until then.
For most people, it's like, Hey, test it out for yourself. There are a lot of people out there that aren't morning people.
Okay, well, maybe you don't do it first thing in the morning, but maybe you do it for your last hour at night.
There are a lot of people that operate best at night. Personally, I'm useless after 4 PM. I've always been a morning person.
I know that about myself and I try to set my environment up to optimize for that. Now here's another tool that I've been using probably for the last few months or so that's aided in this.
More so productivity type tool. There are a few tools out there like this, but it's like a calendar tool. It's like an AI-based scheduling tool. It's called Motion.
I think it's motion.app or something like that. In the past, I'd use one called Reclaim.ai, similar to Motion, but just far inferior.
I switched over to Motion and really what I do is I program those blocks of work that need to be done each day.
I've got my power hour scheduled in there every morning from 8:30 to 9:30. I've got breakfast scheduled as well. This is stuff that you wouldn't think about.
Do I need to schedule breakfast?
Well, if you want to be productive, if you want to get stuff done in truly the most efficient way possible to have actual free time, then yeah, that's something you got to do.
What I love about this particular tool is that, for example, today, I had a 9:30 call run a little late, so I started my breakfast minutes later than normal.
Which for most people would throw off their entire schedule. With this AI-based tool, all you have to do is just tell it like, Hey, this is when I started breakfast.
Which is 20 minutes later than normal. Then it's going to reorganize all your tasks to fit in with the schedule that you're now on, which is essentially 20 minutes behind.
That's really helped me stay productive as long as I'm being disciplined. All right, if I start something late, I have to make sure the calendar knows so that they can readjust.
Then discipline myself to stay on that structured schedule. When I do that, there are days where we say, I'm done at 1 PM or 2 PM.
In the past, I felt guilty about oh, I've got three four hours of free time. Was I really that productive? Is there more stuff that I could get done?
Now I know exactly what I accomplished already today. I know I was productive. Here's everything that I got done.
In the next three hours, if I want to go to the driving range, I'll do that. If I want to hang out, I'll do that. You don't feel as guilty.
It's a good feeling, man. I think it's so critical. For me, it's really made a big impact on me as someone with ADD, whatever that really means. I have it, whatever it is, I get distracted easily.
I'm always trying to get my hands on a lot of things because I get excited about new stuff.
Then working in the world that we do, there are endless amounts of ideas and opportunities and ways to do things and new things to try so you end up overloaded.
I remember when I connected Google to a ClickUp task to Google Calendar, you could check the box. I had a separate email account that I connected it to.
I checked the box to populate the ClickUp stuff on my calendar. Then you can see, oh wait, all this stuff I'm trying to do does not fit into the hours I have available to me.
That's one of those things where in my mind I had a shift. It was like okay, you can't think this way anymore.
You have to change the way that you've been operating. Getting it on that calendar, man.
I think for someone who's overwhelmed with tasks, if you're living in that digital world, you've got to start to operate a little differently.
Than people would before you'd be sitting here doing what me and you are doing and talking about selling on Amazon.
It's more of a reframe than anything.
I think that's how a lot of our brains still look at that stuff until you encounter that scenario of seeing your tasks on a calendar.
You're like, oh, I don't have the hours to do all these things available to me. There's nothing I can do.
Man, these are some great tips for productivity. I think a lot of this stuff applies to your Amazon business as well.
I heard someone say, I think it was someone in the group today, it was data over emotions. I see so many people make decisions based on emotions.
They had this one experience or they heard about this person who had this one experience and they're not testing this stuff themselves.
You have to get that data to really make a decision on these things. Trying the productivity thing, just give it a shot.
Try the time blocking, try the batching, try to work in the morning or at night, and then just wait and see what happens. Then apply those same methods.
We have that tool that some members talk about: Jungle Ace, where they split test market creatives via Amazon.
That's the example I was just about to make and talking about data over emotion. That's the exact example I was going to make. I think it's perfect.
For example, split testing that hero image. You could have an image where you're like, oh, this is a great image. I love the packaging. I love the colors.
This is my favorite and this is the one I want to go with.
In reality, once you split test the main image on a PickFu or another similar tool, come to find out customers actually hate the one that you like and they really like the one that you hate.
What are you going to do? Are you going to make the emotional decision and go with the one that you like?
Well, if you're a smart business owner and you want to make money, no, you're going to go with what the data says.
To draw it back to the productivity stuff, again, do it for two weeks, and see what the data says.
If you feel more productive, if you've got more done if it's directly contributing to the growth of your business.
Then well, if your emotions tell you that you don't like it, you need to get over it if you truly want to be more productive, if that's going to serve you.
It's a more freeing way to operate too. There are so many times where I throw my hands up and I'm like, I don't know yet.
I don't have the data I need to make a decision or I haven't had the experience really to make a decision.
I see some people sometimes, man, where they're agreeable and they act like they understand.
You know this person, or you've been working with this person, then in your head, you don't know.
You're just acting like you know because for whatever reason. It's just so important to really know your business and what you're doing if you want to work at the level that we do.
If you want to have a lead generation machine that pumps out emails in an automated manner, you've got to know every nitty-gritty detail about that and the variables.
Make sure it's working right.
If you want to do something like send 100 emails a week, for example, that was our goal when we were doing a big wholesale lead gen was sending 100 emails a week.
You can't be cranking that out if it's not right. Then you're just sending out a bunch of stuff that's screwed up and you're scaling that.
Either you've got to master that system yourself as the business owner, or you've got to have somebody on your team who can run point on that.
I think that's something that I feel is a hotly debated topic. Do you hire somebody if you don't truly understand it yourself?
Or do you learn the system yourself intricately and then hire someone to replace you? don't think there's a right or wrong answer there. I think that both sides can be true.
I think it's the wrong answer if oh, I'm too lazy to learn this so I'm just going to hire somebody and hope that they can figure it out. Well, that's not the right approach.
If it's, Hey, I have a general understanding.
I know that me taking my efforts away from the other stuff I'm working on and trying to learn this is going to actually detract from the overall goal, then it's okay.
Let's hire somebody who knows this a lot better than me.
I think looking at things from that perspective as well, to go back to your lead gen system example there is a good way to look at it.
That's a good skill to develop is knowing when to make that decision, to know when you've acquired enough knowledge to where you can hire someone else to do it.
That's something I have to try to always remember and continue to get good at because it's not an easy thing to navigate.
With tools like Upwork and Fiverr, you can get anything done if you navigate that world carefully.
To bring that back to the context of the wholesale business on Amazon, this is a super common example I've seen for years.
People, they get into wholesale, maybe they get a little traction or maybe they're still brand new and they say, okay, I'm going to hire a VA. I'm going to hire a virtual assistant.
They make the cardinal mistake of hiring a virtual assistant to do their sourcing for them, for example.
When in reality, sourcing is that one task, it's especially early on that moves the needle.
You make your money when you source, you make your money when you buy. That's how you make your money in a wholesale business. That is a huge mistake that wholesale sellers make.
Maybe they're okay at sourcing or maybe they're still brand new to it. They say, Oh, I'm going to hire somebody to do my sourcing for me.
When in reality, that is a task that I will firmly plant my flag in the ground.
You've got to be a master at sourcing before you can hire someone to come on and handle that aspect of your business for you.
I handled that aspect of my wholesale business for multiple years. 100 % me before I brought someone on to handle that.
The beautiful thing about that is over the last four and a half years that she's been handling that, she's now better at that than me.
There are now situations or products where I'm looking at them and I'm like, I don't know about this. Let me ask my buyer. Let's see what she thinks.
Now she more or less has the final say on certain stuff. She’s honestly more experienced at it than I am now.
That's a good feeling. If I'm trying to get some help with something and I know there's that element to it that I don't really want to give up, I like batching tasks.
I like to batch pieces of the work. The virtual assistant can do this part and prepare it for me to make the ultimate call or whatever.
I think that's one workaround if you're trying to bring in some help on something that's critical.
They tee up the the final mile for you more or less.
Make it easy for me to make a decision.
Exactly. That's how we still operate in our wholesale business. The buyer will tee up a PO. Now they've got the authority to pull the trigger on orders under a certain dollar amount.
If it's over that dollar amount, they pretty much spell it out for me and almost pitch me the deal. They say, hey, this is why I think we should buy this.
All I have to do is spend 5-10 minutes going through and almost just spot-checking their work. I can give it the thumbs up or the thumbs down, which is huge leverage.
If that's a, say, a $50 or $100,000 purchase order that we're gonna make a 25% ROI on, you're talking 10 minutes of my effort to produce a potential five figures and profit.
The inventory is gonna go straight from the supplier to Amazon or it's gonna go from the supplier to the 3PL to Amazon.
That's the type of leverage that I've been working to build and I think it's been really helpful in our business.
I'd love it if you mentioned that because people underestimate it and it makes me think of the Scoutify to Inventory Lab app that had the ideal buy feature.
You could customize it and it was thumbs up or thumb down. That's how I trained my buyers. If it's a thumbs up, buy it. If it's a thumbs down, don't. I would just program all there.
The app, I had set up as a user man. That thing made me so much money. Thank you, Scoutify.
Again, you train them. Obviously, you train them more than once, it's ongoing training, but the idea is you get them up to a baseline level of skill.
You let them go out there and learn, and then you're almost checking their work, which takes 5% of the time, 10% of the time that it would for you to actually do the work yourself.
The idea is that over time, it takes maybe 3% of your time, 2% of your time. Then maybe if they're good enough, they're autonomous. They come to you and say,
Hey, this is what I did. Let's review what I did, but it's already been done, and because are so good at that point, now you're like, okay, hey, that was great.
Or hey, maybe I would have done this a little differently, not a big deal, but let's just keep that in mind next time around.
It's a great opportunity for training and leveraging your time as well. That's how I'm always thinking about the business.
It's great to have a platform that allows us to be like, hey, how can I make this as easy as possible for me and actually do it? It's great, man.
Well, Corey, I know we're running out of time. Did you wanna mention any tips you have for me? Are you guys dealing with inbound placement fees?
For me personally, I'm not super concerned about them. We've pivoted to doing full truckloads, which I've talked a little bit about on the podcast recently.
Happy to always touch on that again, but I'm also curious to hear how you're navigating the new things that Amazon has rolled out.
The inbound placement fees are a huge, hotly debated topic, especially among arbitrage sellers and wholesale sellers because they really affect us probably the most.
Now, so we are doing a lot of full truckload shipments as well, which has mitigated that to a point, but for example, we sell a lot of razor blades.
These are super small. It's just not feasible to be selling or sending in a truckload of razor blades at a time.
There are plenty of situations where we're spending four or five case packs, which end up being hundreds of units that end up getting split among a couple of different FCs.
Previously, what we were doing was that most of our suppliers shipped directly to Amazon for us.
We place a PO, and they give us the box weight and dimensions, and we just send them the labels. They slap them on and they send them to Amazon.
Well, now with the inbound placement fees and Amazon being a little pickier about where we're sending stuff, same process.
Instead of them packing up the orders first, we're creating the shipment first, and then we're telling them how to pack it.
We might be saying, hey guys, we need 100 units in this box, we need 200 units in this box, and a hundred in this box. Whereas previously they might've just put everything in one box.
It's just, it's just being super proactive, over-communicating, and telling them why we need to do things that way.
It's obviously more hassle for them to pack things in three boxes as opposed to one.
Hey guys, for us to continue to maintain our volume of business with you guys, for us to increase that further, this is how we need things done.
It's not our decision. We're at the mercy of Amazon, but it's a good thing because we're gonna be able to increase our business further with you guys as a result.
I always try to frame things, especially if they might be a little bit of a pain for the supplier, always try to frame things in the context of what is going to put more money in their pocket.
How is this gonna help us do more business with them?
That's such another good tip as well. In reality, if you continue to adhere to Amazon's guidelines and what they're making you do, that increases your ability to do business on the platform.
Which gains them more brand awareness and customers, potentially. You've got to recognize that and call it out.
I see a lot of Amazon people, they undervalue themselves, and they devalue what they bring to the table.
They get pushed around. I've done some brand management, man, all those contracts end badly.
Everybody's going to get rid of you. If you tell me you have a brand management agency and you retain customers longer than three years, I'm going to have some questions.
You get tired of looking at that on your P&L when you're paying out that agency.
Eventually.
Right, and think oh, we can just do it better.
You said you're doing the full truckloads. Are you doing anything with AWD or a third-party warehouse?
Are you changing anything up there? We're moving mostly to AWD and trying to just fit into Amazon's pipeline for logistics.
We're not doing anything with AWD at the moment. We have had a couple of reps on that side reach out and look to explore that with us.
Just based on our business model, it's a lot of products that we don't necessarily have the ability to restock.
If anything, the low inventory fee is going to be more of a factor for us than the placement fee.
It's something that we are just continuing to monitor and seeing how this is going to affect our catalog. Which products make sense to keep after factoring in these fees?
Which products just aren't worth the squeeze anymore? Still using 3PLs, but really the majority of our inventory goes from the supplier straight to Amazon.
I'd say probably 90% of it at least, 95%.
Nice. Well, Corey, I know you're real active in the business, man, so we'll have to bring you back on and just see what's going on in the industry.
It's always cool to talk to someone who has a good pulse on the wholesale side of things.
I'm not actively growing that piece right now, although we are getting ready to kick off our lead gen machine again for wholesale.
I'm excited to see how that plays out. It's just cool data man to see. When I go back and dig in and look at everything that we had before, it's just lots of opportunity.
There are so many brands out there and products to sell and wholesale is such a quick way to get access to them. It's an insane business model to have an opportunity to build.
It still blows my mind sometimes.
Lots.
It's one of those things too, where there are always going to be the naysayers that, pat on Amazon as a platform and say, Oh, Amazon's pushing sellers out.
It's getting harder every year. Well, it is, but at the same time, that's a good thing because it's one of those things where only the strong will survive.
You hear a lot of people talking crap about wholesale and saying Oh, it's not sustainable. Margins are shrinking, that, and the other.
Well, margins are shrinking if you're selling bad products, but if you're partnering with good brands and you're reselling good brands, it's a non-issue.
It's one of those things where regardless of what anybody says, as long as Amazon has a marketplace, we're gonna have businesses.
Wholesale is gonna be an even bigger component of that marketplace, I think in the future, I strongly believe that.
That's why another thing I love about MDS because you get to see that stuff happening. I know there are people having success in wholesale.
I know a guy in the group whose whole business model was low-margin, high-volume products.
Being a part of something like MDS or a community, in general, allows you to see those things and be like, okay, it's real, it's happening.
Well, Cory, where could people find you, man? I know you are active on social media. Before we sign off, why don't you let people know where they can hit you up?
The best channel by far is going to be YouTube and that's just going to be at Corey Ganim on YouTube.
I've got a podcast episode that comes out there every Wednesday and then another regular upload every Sunday.
If you're looking to learn the business or even learn some of the higher-level tips and concepts, I put out a lot of content around that stuff as well. YouTube is the best place to find me.
Right on. All right, Cory, thanks for coming on, man. I appreciate it.
All right, thank you, Nick.