#436 – Amazon Seller Stories: How This Husband And Wife Built A 7-Figure Business

Video of the episode at the bottom

Amazon FBA has become a lucrative opportunity for entrepreneurs, and the success stories of these third-party sellers on this platform are always inspiring. In this episode, we hear from a husband and wife duo, Aiden Tropiano and Alexandra Waitr, who built a 7-figure business on Amazon. They share their journey from their first product launch, which was a total flop, to finding success with their next products and selling over $1.2 million in 2022.
 
The episode covers a range of topics such as the day-to-day operations of their business, how they make decisions when there are disagreements between them, and their favorite SSP episodes and Helium 10 tool. They also offer advice on how to effectively partner with your spouse or significant other in business. Additionally, they discuss common obstacles faced by Amazon sellers based in Australia when selling on Amazon USA.
 
If you’re looking for insights into the Amazon FBA business and want to learn from those who have found success, this podcast is a must-listen.

In episode 436 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Aidan, and Alexandra discuss: 

• 01:57 – Spouses Who Are Amazon FBA Sellers
• 04:45 – Catch Bradley In Bali This June
• 05:10 – Aidan And Alex’s Backstory
• 12:30 – How They Got Started Selling On Amazon
• 15:50 – Their First Product Launch Was A Total Flop
• 18:39 – Finding Success With Product #2
• 19:50 – Selling Over $1.2 Million In 2022
• 22:41 – The Day-To-Day Operations Of Their Business
• 24:30 – How Decisions Are Made If There Are Disagreements
• 27:00 – You Can Run An Amazon Business With Your Partner Or Spouse
• 27:10 – Alex And Aiden’s Favorite Helium 10 Tool
• 27:24 – How Listening To SSP Helped Their Amazon Business
• 29:37 – Alex And Aidan’s 60-Second Tips
• 31:48 – Best Advice When Partnering Up With Your Spouse Or Significant Other
• 33:11 – Common Obstacles While Selling On Amazon USA From Australia
• 35:30 – How To Reach Out To Alex And Aidan

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Do you think that having your husband or wife as a business partner would never work? Well, today we’ve got a married couple who’ve built a seven figure Amazon business. Tell us how it’s worked for them. All the way from Down under.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you wanna see how your listing or maybe competitor’s listing rates as to best practices for listing optimization? Or maybe you wanna compare a group of ASINs or Amazon products to see how they compare to each other. Maybe you wanna see within seconds the top keywords for a single listing or a group of listings. You can do that and more with the Helium 10 Tool Listing Analyzer. For more information, go to h10.me/listinganalyzer. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton. And this is the show that’s a completely BS free, unscripted, and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we’re talking to some people across the world. And like I did a few weeks ago, this is an episode I’m doing like at about 11 o’clock at night.

Bradley Sutton:

And the last one I was in my Japanese robe, my Yukata because that’s usually what I wear at 11:00 PM at night. But now I’m sporting this sporty hoodie because if some of you podcast listeners out there might remember Celine Dior, who’s been on the podcast a few times, well, one of her brands is Vitae Apparel and she was kind enough to send me, but Vitae Apparel guys, she actually finally made clothes for that. That goes for guys too. So Vitae apparel. This is not an a hashtag ad everybody, cuz I don’t get any commission or anything, but this is like the Comft hoodie I’ve ever had. But anyways we have two guests from around the world who have never been on the show before. Like I said, Celine’s been on a few times. So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourselves.

Alexandra:

Yeah. thanks so much Bradley, for having us on. We are husband and wife team. Our names are Aiden and Alexandra and yeah, we live in Perth, west Australia. And we’re FBA sellers.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. And that is part of, you know, what she said is why I had them on because I like highlighting different dynamics in e-commerce. You know, I have had married couples on here before. I’ve had two brothers. I’ve had two sisters, I’ve had father son combos on the podcast. And so, you know, a question a lot of people have is like, man, can it really work if my spouse is involved or if we just get into each other’s nerves and anything? But it’s actually interesting how you guys even came on my radar. I’m saying this in front of her husband. You slid into my DMs on Instagram, but it’ll be okay guys, this is, this is not a bad story here, but, but tell me the story around that cuz I think it is quite interesting.

Alexandra:

Yeah, so actually, we’ve been longtime listeners of the Helium 10 podcast, like literally since we started selling on Amazon back in 2019 which really isn’t that long ago actually. But anyway so we are also partnered with a company called 8fig for our Financing. And we listen to an episode where Bradley, you had interviewed Dana and she mentioned, and this was, I think this might have been last year, it would’ve been last year in 2022?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, for sure.

Alexandra:

Yeah. And she was telling you a story about how there was this couple that is partnered with 8Fig and they live in Australia. And basically like, we had an incredible Q4 in 2021 and really attributed that to like, not ever having to go out of stock. Anyway, we listened to the episode and we were like, is that us? That has to be us. And and then a couple months after we had heard that episode, we were talking about going to a seven figure Amazon seller retreat in Bali, the one that’s upcoming in June.

Bradley Sutton:

You guys only do things around figures, eight Fig seven fig. What? I’m gonna go ahead and start a six fig company and then you’ll definitely sign up, I guess huh?

Alexandra:

Yes. Yes. that’s an interesting pattern.

Aiden:

Yeah, that’s fantastic.

Alexandra:

That’s a good pattern to have, I guess. So yeah, we heard that Bradley, you were going to be coming to the retreat and we more than likely won’t be able to make it just due to timing things anyway.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m sorry guys, we’re gonna have to cut this podcast short. I’m very disappointed you guys can’t come. I mean, it’s, it’s in your neighborhood, guys. I mean

Alexandra:

I know.

Bradley Sutton:

I think you can bring kids and everything. I mean, what a perfect, you know, romantic second honeymoon Amazon conference. Come on guys, you can make it. But for the rest of you guys who are wondering what we’re talking about we talked about it a little bit earlier, but you can go to h10.me/bali, h10.me/bali. It’s gonna be a cool conference that it’ll be my first time in Bali and my first time with this conference. All right, now Aiden, let’s start with you. Let’s, let’s take it a little bit farther back, like where were you born and raised, and tell me, tell me about your life story a little bit.

Aiden:

Yeah, thanks Bradley. I know my wife does talk a lot. So I don’t really get an opportunity.

Bradley Sutton:

My next question is like why your accents are so different, but, but let, let’s just keep it with you for a, a little bit. Go ahead.

Aiden:

Yeah, so an easy story is Alex is American, I’m Australian, and so yeah, born and raised in Western Australia. So I grew up in a little farming community, four and a half hours north of Perth called Mowa. And my parents are farmers and basically yeah, grew up my whole life here and only spent a couple years outside of the state. But yeah. And now we live in Perth full-time.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So as soon as you grad, I don’t know what you guys call it over there, but we call it a high high school over here. Like as soon as you graduated high school, did you just start working immediately back on the farm or did you go on to university or what did you do over there?

Aiden:

Yeah, so I actually pursued a career in the sporting world. So I was a semi-professional athlete in Australian rules football, and I did that for 10 years. And then sort of–

Bradley Sutton:

Is that something that you do in high school? Like they have high school teams over there and then you get scouted later? Or how, how does that even work over there? How do you get to that level?

Aiden:

Basically. Yep. Basically, so you play in the local leagues and then, you know, as you get older, then you move into the, the state competition if you’re good enough. And then from the state competition you’ll be drafted into the top level. But

Bradley Sutton:

So for 10 years, was that your main income?

Aiden:

No, that and working apprenticeships and also in the sort of sales realm of work. So yeah, I spent probably, seven years in the trade industry and then I spent probably three-ish years working sales. So yeah. As a little bit of a change.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m just still trying to understand how you would get a chance to meet somebody American. So, so maybe Alex, if you can fi figure out how you met this apprenticing Australian rules, footballing person in the middle of Australia being in the American.

Alexandra:

So we actually met when I studied, well, kind of met when I studied abroad in 2011. So I went to university in the States. I was born and raised in Chicago and studied abroad in Perth, in West Australia just for a semester. And I became really, really close friends with Aiden’s older brother, who’s obviously– That’s the wors part.

Bradley Sutton:

This is one of those stories. Okay, I see.

Alexandra:

Yeah, it’s totally not like that. But yeah, so okay,

Alexandra:

My, my now brother-in-law people ask us that all the time, by the way. Yeah, so it was like a group of us that all stayed really close that semester after exchange. And, and yeah, Kurt and I just stayed really close friends, and I knew of Aiden and like always had a crush on him from afar, but it was like, oh, he’s my friend’s younger brother, he lives in Australia, it would never happen, blah, blah, blah. And then in 2016, Aiden was traveling in throughout the US and Canada and with Kurt. And yeah, long story short, I was living in Seattle at the time.

Bradley Sutton:

What were you doing for work at that time?

Alexandra:

So I was in fashion merchandising and buying, so okay. I started my career career working for Abercrombie Corporate in Columbus, and then moved to Seattle where I actually worked for Amazon headquarters as a buyer. And then worked for Lululemon in Vancouver, in Canada before moving to Australia. But yeah, so Aiden and I met while he was traveling, and I had said like a few weeks before Aiden slid into my DMs. I had, Kurt and I were like going out with some friends and I was like, oh, I’ve always had a crush on your little brother. You would love to have me as a sister-in-law. And it was like, totally a joke. And then like, we went out and never talked about it again. And now we’re related

Aiden:

Yeah. Married two kids. Yeah brother-in-law.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Yeah. Now, what was the decision like, was it like not even a discussion at all where you guys would live or like it had to be Australia or was there any discussion like, all right, we gotta take this relationships in next step, we gotta kind of, you know, be together instead of long distance. How did that decision make America versus Australia

Alexandra:

So we were long distance for two years before I moved, and it was kind of always, I’m so sorry to my family who’s maybe listening, but we kind of always were like, we’re gonna live in Australia. It’s just like, it’s such an incredible quality of life here. Obviously you can get an incredible quality of life in the US too, but bieng lived in both countries, it’s just, yeah. It’s just, it’s so much easier to be an entrepreneur here too. But yeah, at the time you were still playing football and I didn’t want you to have to give that dream up because you can only play that sport here, so.

Aiden:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. Now you finished football, I’m assuming, and then Yep. What were you guys doing to sustain yourselves then? You know, because you know, a bachelor sure can, can, can get by doing this and that, but you know, once you start a family, you need at least one, you know, full time regular job, whether it’s the wife or the husband. So like, how, how did you guys what did you guys do for, for money in the beginning?

Aiden:

We got a, yeah, I suppose it’s quite a unique situation. We were living in Adelaide at the time and we thought, you know, like I was grinding away, grinding away in the sales job, and, you know, it was some really good opportunities through there, but you could tell it was gonna be more and more taxing. And we sat down with each other and thought, what life do we want? How do we wanna live it? And went through like this whole list of like, who we wanna be and what do we want to achieve, and how do we wanna feel in life, and all those type of things. And you know, we end up coming out like time is really important to us and with time, you know, how do you get more time? So then we sort of, from that we said, okay, well, I’m ready to finish up playing sport, you know, I’ve had enough and we’re done not going to the next level. And then we said, okay, we need, where do we wanna live in Australia? And then that was the next step, and we ended up moving back to Perth or back to Western Australia. And then we said, we really wanna be entrepreneurs. That’s what our gut feeling is. That’s who we want be. We’ve started Amazon, we really need to like, go fully into it. And yeah, we actually moved to my parents’ farm slash holiday house in Gilton and yeah, we lived there for eight months.

Alexandra:

Yeah, we lived there for eight months with the intention of basically like just focusing all in on our Amazon business.

Bradley Sutton:

So, did that come from, because you worked at Amazon and you knew what people were doing. Cause that’s not, you know, in, in our world, probably all our listeners, like, you know, selling on Amazon is like a no-brainer, but yeah. You know, that’s not necessarily a common thing that couples like, oh, let’s sell on Amazon. Like, they don’t even, I would say 95% of the population that, you know, exists. So yeah. Is that where it came from because you knew, you know, cause of your experience with Amazon?

Alexandra:

Sort of, not really. That more just reaffirmed it. So when I moved to Australia, it was August 2018, and we were already pregnant with our first daughter. And I kind of just like, we both kind of just knew that we were like in and said, gonna be entrepreneurs. And when we were living in Adelaide, I must have like clicked on some ad for a course. And so like all these webinars started popping up, and I just went to a couple, like courses, how to sell on FBA, Amazon, blah, blah, blah. And then that’s what clicked in my memory of like, oh, right. Like this is a thing that people do back from my corporate days. And yeah, we built the business while we were our first year as parents.

Aiden:

Yeah. And yeah, it’s sort of just super unknown, like was working on my parents’ farm so we could have income to let this entrepreneurial like venture sort of come about and see like what it was, what was gonna happen. And the more we went into it, the better it became, and then it sort of reaffirmed, okay, well this is the direction we need to head in.

Alexandra:

And then through the course that we actually first bought to learn how to sell on Amazon, they, like, we shared our success story with them and they brought us on as coaches and consultants. And so then when we moved off of Aiden’s parents farm after those eight months, then that became our living income while we were still building the business.

Bradley Sutton:

So I mean, yeah, it takes a few months to really get started. I mean, let alone make money, I mean, just to develop products. Yeah. I’m assuming you started in Amazon USA?

Aiden:

Definitely.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. Okay. So then from that time you decided to start selling on Amazon, you know, we’re talking months before probably you launched your first product. Yeah. So were, were you still just doing, did you have money saved up? Were you still doing like side jobs here and there, or how did you guys survive?

Alexandra:

That was when Aiden, so we started learning at the end of 2018 and all of 2019, that’s when Aiden was doing his sales job and a simple professional athlete. Then we moved to Perth. Then we moved to Aiden’s parents’ farm, and that was when we were like, the focus is to basically minimize living expenses.

Bradley Sutton:

What kind of farm is it? Just curious.

Aiden:

Yeah, so it’s Wheat and sheep.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s like, it’s what?

Aiden:

Wheat and sheep. So Grain and sheep,

Bradley Sutton:

So, oh, okay. Okay. So, okay. Okay. I thought you were talking about a specific kind of sheep. I was like, I’ve never heard of that. Sheep. It’s, it’s two different things we’re talking about here. Okay. See Alex, you gotta translate a little bit here from you. Okay, I got it. All right, cool.

Aiden:

Yeah, specifically it’s grain and sheep and they own about five farms in the region they’re in. So yeah, about 20,000 acres of land.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you guys still selling the very first product that you launched?

Alexandra:

Yes, we are.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s counting yourselves. That’s a blessing right there. A lot of people, you know, they, they usually fail on their first on their first product. So hang on.

Alexandra:

On, that’s a lie. No, we’re not our first product launches a total failure.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s what I wanted see. Either way, that’s why I like that question, because either way there is no bad answer here, so, all right. That’s even better. Tell me about this terrible product launch you guys did.

Alexandra:

Yeah. See, we’ve even forgotten about it because we’ve just moved on.

Bradley Sutton:

You block it from your memory. I like it.

Aiden:

Every bad experience block it.

Alexandra:

Yeah. So we launched that product end of 2019 and it was a total flop. We really did not do, you know, like high demand.

Bradley Sutton:

Since you’re not selling any anymore. Can you tell us what it is?

Alexandra:

Yes, we can. Have you seen those pink rose quartz Jade rollers? It’s a big product.

Bradley Sutton:

So exactly what that is. Yeah.

Alexandra:

Yeah. So there’s super saturated now. I mean, they were super saturated when launch.

Alexandra:

Yeah, and I thought that I could create a point of difference cuz we sell a private label I thought that I could create a point of difference around it by adding a lavender silk, like eye pillow with it. So it’s like a beauty ritual experience. And also like, you know, when we went back and looked at the data, it had really, really strong conversion, like really strong conversion. So I think I just didn’t do an, a good enough job learning SEO to be honest.

Aiden:

Our experience was, we had no experience, so it was just trial and error and now we look back at it. Back then I reckon we could’ve hacked it, but now, you know, like, then when we started it was like, yeah, like, I don’t even know how that we even got that thing to, our

Alexandra:

Photography was horrible. Oh, we did it ourselves. We did all the things you’re not supposed to do.

Bradley Sutton:

How much would you say you lost though? Because, you know, like, I always say that, you know, sure, you might lose a, a little bit, but, you know, obviously the experience is, is is priceless. But, you know, you invest $10,000, it’s not like you lose $10,000, you know, all the time because, you know, you still sell, maybe you lose money on profit, but like, did you ever calculate how much money you lost on that?

Alexandra:

We’ve honestly never calculated it, because to us it’s like, that’s a waste of time.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay. So see that’s important to me because that, what that tells me is that you guys, it probably wasn’t even on the conversation to like, give up at that point. You know, like, you know, the people who start calculating, oh my goodness, I lost $7,333 is, you know, those are the people who know exactly how much they lost. It’s like, hey, we’re not gonna go forward with this product. Doesn’t matter how much money we lost, we know what we did wrong. Let’s keep going. I like that attitude. So then you started over and then your next product what did you do something different about how you chose the niche that you’re gonna get into, how you launched it? What was different about product number two?

Alexandra:

So product number two was the product that laid the foundation for our whole business and we built our brand around it. It honestly was just a product that intuitively I just kept going back to. And then when we looked, because we, for our brand, we are the customer. And that’s really lucky. Like not a lot of people get to like luck into that. And it was just something that we noticed was missing from the space and we verified it with our coach at the time and she was like, yeah, go for it. Now it’s super saturated. But yeah, so it was just something that we as consumers knew was missing on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. So then a little bit more data driven, you know, maybe, hopefully paying more attention to Helium 10 and the keywords and which ones to focus on and things like that. Now, you know, let’s just fast forward, just so you know fast forward to today or, or last year, we just ended a few months ago. What did you end 2022 in, in gross sales?

Aiden:

Yeah, so we roughly, yeah, so we ended in 1.2 million. Awesome. So yeah, first year we did a hundred thousand second year 700, just over 700 and last year went to 1.2. It’s just amazing cuz like the more we grow as individuals, the more the business grows.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now is this all in all these sales you’re talking about? Is this all in the USA marketplace? Are you selling any other marketplace or a website or anything like that?

Aiden:

Not just all US. Okay. We’ve built out omnichannel to Shopify, we haven’t really got that going yet, so. But yeah, 99.99% last year was US Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Now are you still putting it in time in farm work as well?

Aiden:

I like to keep my finger on the pulse because I’d love to put some of our wealth in land in farming land. So every year we like to go out, we’ll go and help out for a couple weeks, put in some crop and then, you know, sort of ground in have a refresher with our brain and our business. And like, it’s amazing sitting on a, a tractor or just being out in the fresh country, air really brings in new ideas. That’s where they should be doing the Seller Summits

Alexandra:

Come to the farm. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

You, you, I just have this, you know, especially since your, a romantic story, if you had lived in America, you guys totally could have met on farmersonly.com. You don’t have to be lonely, it’s farmersonly.com. Okay. I don’t know why I’m thinking of these commercials now, but they don’t have that in Australia. I don’t think

Alexandra:

There’s a show

Aiden:

Farmer wants a wife.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you serious?

Alexandra:

Dead serious.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh my goodness. I love it. I love it. Alright, anyways, the reason I was asking is just like, so, but the main income now, is that Amazon, you know, for like your, your family or is it still other things?

Aiden:

Yeah, we choose to keep probably about 95% of the money in the business, the money from the business into the business, and we just take our part at the end of the year, but the rest comes from coaching, consulting.

Alexandra:

Consulting.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Aiden:

Yeah. Yeah. Basically how we see it, Bradley, is the faster we grow, the faster we can reach our goal. So the more money in the business, we can build more products. We can build out Shopify, we can do all those things that where our brand is going, but if we take too much away from it, then it’s a slower progression.

Bradley Sutton:

Tell me about the makeup of, of the day-to-day operations of your Amazon business. I mean, this is a, you know, seven figure business not your main thing. You know, you got some farming work you’re doing, you’ve got consulting that you’re doing, you have two kids, you’ve got a family. There might be people out there. All right, well, well what’s, how, you know, wondering how you guys juggle all that. So, so like, can you break it down? I don’t need to know every single task who does what, but can you kind of break it down how you guys divide and conquer as it were? Or maybe we have staff, et cetera?

Alexandra:

So the two main things that we outsource are PPC and account management. We outsource PPC. When we started getting to like 30 k months in revenue we just realized there’s other experts that can like, take that branch and run with it. And then everything else we do. I mean, we have contractors that do our photography, we write our own listings. We look at analytics, but like yeah, it’s a really nice role division that we have. I would say like Aiden is definitely CEO, like he, we always joke like Aiden can drive the ship and I can’t.

Bradley Sutton:

Or the tractor, we should say.

Alexandra:

Or the tractor. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I could help build it. So it’s like I’m kind of the creative numbers, analytical, like that piece of the puzzle and, and like putting together Yeah. Just our creative content, creative design for products. And then Aiden works with our suppliers and essentially is like COO.

Aiden:

Basically suppliers, logistics, inventory and then basically like high level thinking of where we’re going with the brand. So, and then I annoy my wife every two seconds of the day to tell her we should be doing this, or we need to move in this direction.

Bradley Sutton:

What happens when you know, anybody who’s been married knows that you don’t always agree on everything, but you know, whether it’s partners or whether it’s married, you know, whether your partner is your spouse. How do decisions get made when there’s like a path that one person wants to take and somebody, you know, the other person wants to take a different path?

Aiden:

Do you wanna do that one or?

Alexandra:

I think it really depends on–

Bradley Sutton:

We fight to the death

Alexandra:

Sometimes.

Aiden:

And I never win Bradley

Alexandra:

Honestly, it depends on like how well I’m looking after my mindset, if I’m being super honest. Like if I’m doing like a crap job at looking after my mental health and like my emotional stability as a person and as a woman I’m harder to, to work with. And I know that. So I think like we just have very intentionally curated times throughout the week where we make sure like, Hey, we’re talking about like all the PPC things during this time or like we’re talking about all of the high level vision stuff during this time and just making sure that we always like actually on the calendar have an invite to like a container to make sure that important stuff gets talked about.

Aiden:

Yeah. I think you learn along the way with entrepreneurship that when you are building a business or you’ve acquired a business of whatever you’re doing, that it does integrate into your personal life no matter how much you try and not let it. And I think you just gotta be a bit more, bit more flexible of how it does flow in and flow out. And just making sure all parts of your life are sort of that balance. But yeah, I think people don’t really quite get that, you know, that’s like, you are kind of like your wealth generator and you’re working as a team to build that wealth generator and it has to cross overlook to the personal life. So, you know, I think we just learned that when we need space, we need space, when we don’t need space, we keep the flow going. But yeah, I dunno if that made any sense, but

Bradley Sutton:

No, no, that’s good. That’s good. You know, I think think the reason why, I mean, not the main reason, but one of the reasons there’s many of them, you know, why the majority of people in the Amazon space, men or women are usually just in it by themselves, is, is sometimes they’re like, they’re like, oh no, my, my girlfriend or my significant other my husband, my boyfriend, whatever. You know, like, there’s no way we, you know, we would just fight all the time. Or like, I, I don’t, I can never run a business with him, but, you know, this is proof guys that it can, you know, it can, it can work. Taking it back a little bit to, to some Helium tens favorite Helium 10 tool or strategy that you guys use on your business.

Aiden:

Oh, Cerebro is the best.

Alexandra:

Yeah. By far.

Aiden:

Yeah. Yeah. Cerebro just tells you all the whole story.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it. Love it. And you said you’ve you know, been li you avid listeners of the podcast. Any favorite guests that you’ve had or something that was game changing for you guys that you heard from somebody that we had on the show?

Alexandra:

Yes. I love listening. I can think of like two instances where we just like got this really literally game changing piece of information. One, when we needed a new supplier for that first good product that we launched. It’s like an episode from like 2019 or 2020 and I think it was you had, I forget who this, who it was, but he took you through the method of how he uses Alibaba to find quality suppliers and that.

Bradley Sutton:

That was Kian.

Alexandra:

Yes, yes, yes. That changed everything for us. We find all our suppliers using that method. And, and then the second one that I could think of personally was talking about FBM back when, cuz our products are non-essential. Like, if you remember back in 2020, the non-essential inventory freeze. Yeah. We just learned a lot of really good pointers from that episode.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes. Love FBM. Go ahead.

Aiden:

Most personally I’ll probably listen to an episode every two to three days of yours. For me, cuz I came from a completely different background where I was, you know, focused on being an athlete and, you know in the trade industry and those type of things. I was nothing to do with e-commerce or how product even worked in that way. So I actually learned how to actually wet, like how to build our business, what to be looking at, getting all the information from lots of different sellers through who you interviewed. And I just would listen to it all the time, all the time. It would just like, it just built my knowledge so quickly. And you’ve had some of our mentors on there, like we had Kelly and Paul lately.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep.

Aiden:

And like, just different PPC strategies and, and just like, I guess little hacks as you guys call it to just how to like, improve just one little thing. And that’s sort of taking our business to the next levels.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Well, as you guys know, on, on the podcast, we, we have our 60-second tips used to be 30-second tips, but you know, you’ve learned and from those, so now it’s time to pass it on. So, you know, you’ve been you know, in the game for a few years now. So what is something that you think is somewhat unique that you guys are doing? It doesn’t have to be about Helium 10, doesn’t have to be about Amazon. It could be a life hack or something, you know, having a newborn baby and running a business. Or it could be some cool PPC tip, but why don’t each of you give a 30 to 60-second tip right now to pay it back to all those who or to the podcast that you learn from as well. Pay it forward. I should say not pay it back.

Alexandra:

Whichever. I think the biggest game changer for us has been learning to differentiate the difference between income and wealth. So many people when they start an Amazon business, they’re like, or any e-commerce business, they’re like, I wanna quit my job. And I say to them, don’t have an exit strategy. Build to exit. Keep your job, allow that to be the thing that pays for the groceries, pays for the rent, the mortgage, whatever. And then build your business on the side exit for multi six, seven, whatever figures, which is ultimately gonna change your life versus leaving a job and, and then like, putting so much pressure on the business to then be the thing that puts bread on the table.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. I like it. Aiden, go ahead.

Aiden:

Yeah, I would say mine is completely to do with mindset. Like, we, we talk about hacks all the time. Like, I don’t think we need another hack. But now that’s what got Kevin King for and those great people. But I think it’s all to do with mindset. So like, every time we come across a barrier, it’s only to help you learn and grow. So like if you go through that barrier and you learn from that and you grow from that, your business becomes better on the out on the other side. So to me, I guess my wisdom would be your business could only grow as much as you grow as a person. So yeah. That’s basically my SST.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now what would you say to, to somebody out there, you know, man or woman, maybe, you know, they kind of think that, you know what, I probably would be stronger and be able to do more and accomplish more if my significant other was in it with me. Like, what’s some words of advice for those who may be reluctant on how to get that started? Like, what are, I mean, obviously, you know, you guys have been working on this for years. We can’t compress all of what you’ve learned into two minutes here, but what would be your best advice for, for those people?

Alexandra:

Be willing to listen to the other person and really if, if there’s one person in the world that you can trust to build a business alongside, it’s the person that who’s your partner, right? Yeah. And yeah, just be, just be willing to listen and patience.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent.

Aiden:

Yeah. You’re probably, I would say leaving your ego out the door Yeah. Is a big one. Because like, you’ve got two great brains, two great energy, you know, two great bodies, like put them all together and you’ve gotta a winning combination. You know, if you’re gonna marry someone that’s like your better half of you or more of you. So if you leave your ego out the door and you don’t wanna fight and bicker about things and just like, want to grow life, then yeah, you can have great success with each other.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s another thing that you guys have that’s unique, but there’s a lot of people out there, you know, married or not there’s a lot of people who live outside of the United States are like, Hey, I worry about, you know, running a business where I don’t have boots on the ground. So have you guys run into any obstacles, you know, you know, being in Australia, having products manufactured in China, and then the products are being sold in USA like with inventory and shipping, and if so, like how have you overcome them? Or is it pretty, pretty smooth sailing for you?

Alexandra:

Honestly, like the biggest hiccup for us has been navigating international tax and finding the right teams to help us do that. I think.

Aiden:

We’ve had like little things like outta stock you know, like a product going down for no reason at all. But like, as you look at it, like the search volume has gone down and all that stuff, like in the, the micro level of the US has changed cuz the recession, all that stuff, right? But I would, I would say tax has been the pain cuz it’s like everyone’s giving you different information, so we’re always trying to work that one out.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you have to pay like, some kind of tax in Australia as well for, even though you’re selling only in America,

Alexandra:

It really VAT, it just depends on where your company is set up. So like for us, because we’re both tax residents of Australia, our tax comes, like, flows into Australia, even though we’re an LLC. And then we just, we have again, this is obviously not tax advice, but we have an Australian company here, and so yeah. Like, and that’s again, like putting those pieces together through lots of different consultations and partners

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Important to ask professionals, you know, not to try and just like yes, I’ll just do whatever I wanted. Then if the government wants to stop me, let them know that’s not something you guys mess with should mess with. All right. Well this has been a great story. You know, like, I didn’t know almost any of this, you know, before, but I knew it was gonna be kind of cool. Just be just from your sort, like, like how cool is that? That you know, you just randomly they didn’t even, they didn’t even say your name, you know on it, but you’re like, wait a minute, I think they’re talking about me on this podcast. You know, so that was so cool. If people wanna reach out to you, find you on the interwebs how can they find you guys?

Alexandra:

Yeah, connect with us on Instagram. We’re open books. People DM us all the time about our journey and yeah, we love sharing. So I’m at Alexandra Waitr

Aiden:

Yeah. And I would just reach out to me by email. It’s probably easier. So [email protected]. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

A fellow Hotmail user. I love it.

Aiden:

I still got Hotmail.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. Well, at least you didn’t say like AOL or something. That would’ve been more for my days. Anyways, I’m still crossing my fingers, so you guys might change your mind and make a last second trip out there to Bali, if not, maybe out here in the States, you know, at one of our conferences that we’re attending. But, but thank you very much. It’s, it’s great to see, you know, married, couple thriving. And, and you know, hope you I don’t hope I know that this episode is gonna serve as, as inspiration to hopefully some, some of our other listeners out there. So, thanks. And, and we’ll be definitely reaching out to you next year to see how your journey’s going.

Alexandra:

Amazing. Thanks Bradley.

Aiden:

Thanks Bradley. Appreciate it.

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

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business. 
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say. 
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.