The bank doesn't give a shit about you. Oh, but Matt, I've been with the Commonwealth Bank

or XYZ Bank, NAB Bank. They know me there. They don't know anything.

You are just another number. My advice, the short version is, wouldn't

it be great if you could start a business today? You built it up to,

let's say, a million dollars in revenue. After about one, two

years, you could sell that business for a million dollars. Where else can

you do that? You certainly cannot do that. working in a 9-to-5 job.

The beauty of having an online business is you can actually have a

9-to-5 job and be building your online business

on the side, and the skills you're going to learn is going to be incredible. But these are the

things that most people going into the online space don't

even think about, and that's... I'm Matthew Fraser, and

this is Amazon Ecom Secrets. I'll be

sharing with you the secrets that helped me go from millions in debt

to an eight-figure entrepreneur. If you're ready to escape the

nine-to-five and live life on your terms, let me show

you the way. In today's episode, it's going to be super interesting.

It's very personal. How to be a business owner and not

self-employed. And I talk about For most

people, it's actually about trying to break out of the 9 to 5 matrix.

But then when you get into the business world, it becomes the

business matrix. And then your goal is to try

and get out of the business matrix or the self-employed matrix. Ultimately,

you would love to have a business that you just don't work

in, you just oversee. In other words, if you could just collect checks

every month and had nothing to do with it because you had the right

systems and processes and more importantly, people

in place, then it would be brilliant. But

I can tell you, I've been in business now for 25 years

and I'm going to go through them in a second of the different types

of businesses that I have and whether I consider them to be

auto-operational or not, because this does

make a big difference. It's a real pain point for me too, because I've

been trying to get out every day. Here's the ongoing joke.

I wake up in the mornings, I turn to my wife and say, clear my

diary. I don't want to do it. That's it. I don't want to do anything. Because

as a person who has businesses or is self-employed, there's

just always something to do. So my mission is

to just get rid of things off the dollar. I don't want to have that commitment anymore. Now,

when you're first building up a business, whether you own

the business or you've just bought something new

or you're in a business that you had for a long time, your goal really is

to remove yourself from that business because you want

ultimately, which is what everyone wants, is the freedom. That's

actually what we want. We don't really want a business, right,

for most people. They're like the trimmings

of what potentially a business could provide, which

is their lifestyle of not having to work

for somebody else and working in a 9-to-5 situation. And

they also want the idea of a really great

profit, which ultimately gives you more money so you can go and do

things you wanna do. Travel the world, spend more time with your kids, buy flash cars,

whatever it is, right? And so let

me take you back because when I first started in my own

self-employed business, even right, right back, I

was mowing lawns, right? This is as a kid. And people do this today, right?

They are trades people who are self-employed, but

the business relies on them. Like if you stop mowing

lawns, there's no money coming in. Now you could say,

okay, what if I had employees? You could have a lawn mowing

business and you could just rely on people to mow the

lawns. That sounds great, but from my experience, it's

very difficult to get highly trusted

people who will show up every day to go out

and mow the lawns. And when they don't, it's now

either you have to step in as the business owner to go and

mow the lawns, or you just fold up the business.

So you would have heard a lot of people say, if you buy an

existing business, for example, a lawn mowing run, or

you're a trader, you've just bought a salary. That's

pretty much what you've done. And the salary is now reliant on yourself. So

if you don't show up to work, you don't get sick pay, there's

no holiday pay. So there's actually a lot of negatives that come with

that type of business because it's all on you. But

the more work you put in, ideally, the more reward you

would get. The problem with that type of business model, though, is,

as you can appreciate, if it's just you, you've

only got so many hours in the day, right? So you've only got, let's

say you've got 12 hours a day that you could possibly mow lawns. But after

that, that's it. So then you've got to go to expansion, which becomes

employees, which becomes a whole headache. Because

not only is it, you know, you have to get higher employees and they have

to show up, but you've got to pay Sick pay, holiday pay,

superannuation, loadings, penalties. There's

just so many taxes. And if you've heard any of my previous videos

talking about taxes, you know it's an absolute bugbear of

mine. I cannot stand it. I mean, in Australia, we are so heavily taxed.

It's totally insane. They make it extremely difficult

for business. So not only are you going to have to have those taxes as well,

but then you're going to have to have other taxes in the forms of insurances, like

insurance for your business, obviously for damages,

indemnity, and things like that, but also work health

safety, right? So there's more taxes there. And if you're an even

big enough business, you're going to love this one. In case you don't know, there

is such a thing in most states, if not all states around Australia, Payroll

tax. So this is the worst tax in

the history of taxes. It's if you employ more people, you

have to pay more tax. This is a totally insane

tax. And every time a political party of

any persuasion gets in, they sort of talk about, oh,

we'll have to fix it. And they don't. They just dance around the edges. And they

keep it in. They might raise the threshold of when the tax actually kicks in.

But it's a horror tax and completely counterproductive.

So these are the things that I absolutely hate. So that's

one type of business, right, is the you've just bought a salary type

of business. And then the next thing after that would be, and I've operated

that type of business when I was younger, the next type of business would

be like a franchise model type of business, similar

where you could actually be buying a salary for yourself. But

I remember when I was about 21, I

opened up my own wizard home loans franchise. And

back then, it was actually owned by Mark Buros, who's a very,

very famous business guy in Australia now, who did The Apprentice

as well in Australia. a great guy, he's got a really good podcast

as well if you want to check that out. And so he was the owner

of Wizard Homelines, but ultimately he sold Wizard Homelines to, I

think it was GE and cashed out for hundreds of millions of dollars, did

really well. But that type of role, it was,

you got to operate under somebody else's brand and

try and make as much money as possible. Now, in that business, you could also bring

in more people to write more loans, so more workers, essentially.

The benefit with that model was that you didn't have to pay a

salary. They were on a commission basis only. If they brought in the deals, they

got paid, but you would make a cut of those deals. And so, theoretically,

if you just had 20 of those people out doing businesses, you

could just sit back and collect commissions off all

the business that they did. Now, what were the problems with

that type of business? you had to manage those people.

And you had to, as you can appreciate, push them and

motivate them. And it was really quite difficult. And

as you can appreciate, too, in the mortgage business, there's

a lot of competition. And most people, sadly, go

to a bank. And I can

tell you from experience, you should definitely not

go to a bank. This is like a side note. I've been giving you little bits

of my gold and experience over the years. The

bank doesn't give a shit about you. Okay, that's the fundamentals. It

doesn't matter. I've heard it. Oh, but Matt, I've been

with the Commonwealth Bank or XYZ Bank, NAB Bank for

20 years. They know me there. They don't know anything. You

are just another number. My advice, the short

version is, go and seek a broker. Find a great broker. In

fact, I will do this for you guys. If you

need the broker that I deal with, and

he is the best broker in Australia.

I've been dealing with this guy now for five years. He's incredible. Reach

out to me. Send me a message. I will give you

his details. It's no cost to you, but if you just want the same

person who's looked after me, and I know he'll look after

you, reach out to me and I'll give you his details. Based in Sydney, but you

could be based anywhere in Australia and he'll look after you. He's done commercial loans for

me for obviously commercial properties and also residential properties. So

that's that type of business. Then we moved on to, when I

was about 29, we bought this Hungry Jacks business. Now, that

seems pretty good because the advantage with a Hungry Jacks model is

that you've got more, one, systems and

processes, and you've also got a range

of staff. And then it's really up to you to

build the staff numbers make sure they're trained, make

sure they're looked after. We do our, certainly

with my wife who's running the Hungry Jacks business. does

absolute best to make sure the staff are looked after.

What's interesting about that is we actually have one of the lowest turnover of

staff in all of Australia. When

staff come our way, they tend to stay. And that's because we really

believe in our staff, we give them the right incentives, and we just give them

the right respect. And we're very flexible, actually, with the way

we deal with our staff, because a lot of the women there have children. So

we're quite flexible with how we operate there. And so in turn,

by having the processes and systems in place and

the right people, the structures in place, Paula

and myself, I don't go into that business at all. I

basically never sit foot in there anymore. I used to in the very beginning when we first bought

the business. I was really back then buying a salary in a

way. But when you buy these types of businesses, it's

obviously in your best interest to make sure that

it is successful. And if you just

walk away and just think, oh, it'll just take care of itself, it

won't. Because at the end

of the day, there's certain things that, and that's why

you're the business owner, because you should be able to see things at a

different level and a higher level than perhaps what

the employee sees it. And not to say employees are bad, it's just

that they don't have the same glasses on and

the frame of reference to what you do as a business owner. And

it comes down to really that you've got skin in the game. The employee doesn't

have any skin in the game whatsoever. They

are happy to show up and get paid, and that's

their role. And of course, while they're there, you want them to do an

extraordinary job. But there's going to be things outside of that that

perhaps they just don't see, just different nuances. Now, you can

absolutely train people and we have done that, particularly

my wife, who's trained up some really great people

so that for the most part, she doesn't have to go into the

store. She could not go into the store for weeks if she had

to, right? Because the systems and processes are

in place and the right staff are in place to manage that. That's

the next level of business that I have

experience in. And then aside from that is the one

that you should hopefully know by now, if you've been watching this podcast

for a little while, is the Amazon e-commerce business. That

is a completely different kettle of fish. And even

in that, I've had my own personal struggles with

trying to detach myself as much as I possibly can

from the business. And I'm going to share some stories with you of how I've been able

to detach myself as much as possible. But

I remember when I first started out, 2016 and

in 2017 I went to the

United States and they had a show there called The Prosper Show

and it was based in Las Vegas. So we flew over there, I was with

a cohort of people, all entrepreneurial slash

Amazon sellers or wannabe sellers. I can't

even remember if I'd launched by that stage my first product. I think I hadn't. But

I went to this place and I was just trying to absorb as much information as possible

about the space. You know, anything I get my hands on to do with Amazon

and e-commerce and having online businesses, I wanted to know about. And

so I rocked up at this huge, huge hotel. As

you can imagine, if you haven't been to Las Vegas, it is something else.

And this is my first time in USA altogether. I

actually really loved Las Vegas. Just the people,

the sights, the town. It was just incredible. The

history as well there. And so we've gone to this massive hotel, and

there's this Prosper Show, which is basically Amazon people

getting together, talking about business and Amazon. There

was probably, I would say something like 5,000, 7,000 people

at this show. And there's one thing I distinctly remember

was sitting down listening to one of the speakers, whose name was Michael Gerber,

who does a book called The E-Myth. And

I sat down listening to this guy and his whole premise of

this book was about how to build the right

systems and processes to get

your business ready ultimately to sell. And

by doing that, it was removing yourself from the business. Because

as you can imagine, If you're going to sell, like

if I sell a Hungry Jacks business and I've got all the right staff

and the systems and processes, I could just package that up. Someone

else comes in, they buy it, and the business

just keeps running. Because ideally, you're not

doing anything. Like obviously, there might be some payroll,

there might be administration types of

jobs, which is kind of common with most jobs. There's not

really any business that there's no admin, right? But as

far as the operations of the business go within the Hungry Jacks, it can just

operate by itself because everyone knows how to make the hamburgers, right? This

was Michael Gerber's whole premise. And he was trying to push

this point onto all of the Amazon sellers and e-commerce sellers

in this room who were all just sitting in amazement, listening

to Michael Gerber, who he must

be pushing 70 years old. He's just got this immense wealth

of experience. And I remember leaving there just thinking, Wow.

I mean, I was flat out at that point just trying to

get a product up and running on Amazon, let

alone thinking about how can I detach myself away from the business. But

it was certainly something that was in the back of my mind thinking, okay, well, there's

obviously something to this is the aim is to build this business,

but put the systems and processes in place so

that anyone could just walk in and just take

over the business. And that ultimately becomes more

valuable for your future buyer. And

if anyone who's thinking about going into the Amazon e-commerce space,

I would always suggest that they have it

in the back of their mind that they're aiming to sell the

business. So you're always going to have in

the frameworks in place, the systems and processes in

place, and the people. So that at any point in time,

you can just say, you know what? I want to walk away from this business. I

want it to be sold. Now, if you choose not to sell, totally

fine. You just keep operating as normal. But wouldn't it be great if

you could start a business today, you built it up to, let's say, a

million dollars in revenue. And for rough numbers, after

about probably one, two years, I would say, we'd be safer. You

could probably sell that business for a million dollars, right? So

in two years, you could sell it for a million dollars. That's totally incredible, right? Where

else can you do that? You certainly cannot do that. working

in a nine-to-five job. And that's the beauty of

having an online business, is you can actually have a nine-to-five job

and be building your online business after

work, before work, on the weekends. So you can still keep

that revenue coming in from your day job, but build this other asset.

on the side. And the skills you're going to learn is going to be incredible. And as you

probably know, my life story of how I got here was basically that.

I had the business, we wanted to find something else. I

then started doing the Amazon course, ultimately led to doing Amazon

sales. And now I've done over like $50 million in sales.

It's totally insane and well beyond what

I could even dream of only a few short years ago

when I first started. And that's what I would certainly

encourage you to think about is it's not just building

this or starting, or even if you buy an existing business. Yeah, there's

other ways too. You could buy an existing online business. And

this is one of the things I talk to my clients about. Buying

an existing online business means you're buying a business that's

proven and already comes with sales revenue.

As opposed to starting something from scratch and for whatever

reason, it doesn't work out for you. This way, you're

kind of skipping that bit. You're buying something that's already working and

you're just going to take over. And there's a multitude of ways that

you could actually build out that business and increase the revenue.

So let's just say you buy it for $100,000. And

then after one year, you build up the sales so you can now sell

it for $200,000. So in one year, you've made

whatever profits you've made from the business plus another $100,000. And then

you perhaps move on to the next business. So these are the

things that most people going into the online space

don't even think about. And that's why I like to give my

clients the options. It's all about options. And

once you've done certain things along the journey, it opens up

more doors. Going back to the

struggles that I've had. So I've come out of this

Prosper Show in Las Vegas. I met some amazing people there.

And in the back of my mind, it's, hey, build

your business to sell in the future. Now, I sort

of forgot about it after that. And then I just got on hustling,

building my business. And it got to the point where

I was doing about, I don't know,

a few million dollars. Things were good. But

the problem was I didn't have any

staff, any real staff members that were locked

down. And I felt like I was just being completely overworked. I

was doing everything. I mean, in the very beginning, I

remember launching my first Shopify

store in Australia, and I was doing the customer service. So

I'm getting the goods going, building the Shopify store, and

then I'm also doing the customer service as well. So I can tell

you very quickly, I got out of that, because

that's a time sucker. But

at least I would say, look, I was able to validate the Shopify store, get

it going, and then once I'm like, yeah, okay, this is the success, I

then start outsourcing the jobs to other people. and

but there was a pivotal moment and I was talking to

one of my business mentors at the time and that's why you

know you look at me like hey I'm a mentor yeah I mentor

people now too but every step of my journey I've always

had another person who's my mentor or my business

coach because there's even things that I can't see

for myself. I'm very good at seeing opportunities and

ways forward, strategies for other people, but you get

locked into your own self and you can't see outside, you know,

your own sort of little circumference. And

so that's why at the time I had a business coach too. And so

he said to me, this was so powerful and I couldn't believe I didn't think of it

at the time. I actually had someone who was working for me who was based

over in the UK. And he said, why don't you get Marty

to become your operations manager and give him a list of

jobs that will just take everything off your plate. And I thought, oh God, why

didn't I think of that sooner? Because by that stage, I had already started

building a relationship with Marty based in the UK, and he was helping me

build out, at the time it was like a ClickFunnels store and

a Shopify store. We started rolling out globally. And

so, because he was so integrated into

the business anyway. And I'd already built up a really good relationship with

him. I really trusted him. And trust is a big factor when

it comes to this. I reached out to him and said, hey, look, what

if I put you on a retainer plus commission? Your

role now is global operations manager. And

here's all the work that you're now going to do, which is just taking it all off my plate. And

he was like, yeah, I'd love to do that. And

I'm like, boom, that was it. So all this work just got

moved off my plate onto his plate, which then gave me

back to this whole ideal of being the business owner

and not just the guy who had a

business but was working in the business. It enabled me

to do more things on the business. You've obviously heard that line before,

working on the business, not in the business. Now, here's

my, and he sort of just does more of the operations, but I

will tell you though, my Achilles heel is

that I just can't let go. I still

have to have some type of involvement. So it's my, look, it's easy

for me to say, hey, yeah, just get this business and just outsource it to people and

it'll just be great. And like I said to you before with Hungry Jacks,

You can have the right people and everything, but you still have to oversee it. Because

you've got a lot of money tied up in that business, and you just don't want

to just think you can go off and just holiday all the time and

think it's going to be hunky-dory. Things will happen, and

particularly in Hungry Jack's business, the margins are so thin

that if any one thing just blows out, well then there

goes all your money. And this can be the same thing could happen

with your online business. If you'd outsourced it to somebody

else to deal with everything, unless you say they weren't staying

on top of the ad spend through Facebook or Google, then

all of a sudden your profit margins could be just eroding away.

And if you don't know about it, that's a problem. You

certainly, I would say, want to stay on top of the numbers. Yeah, that's why

I have fortnightly P&Ls issued to

me through my bookkeeper. They're proper P&Ls, not just guesstimates. And

that way, I can stay on top of the numbers on an ongoing basis. You

know that most people don't even get P&Ls done. Can you believe it? Most business owners

do not even get a P&L done, probably because

they have to by the time it comes to tax time, which is like

once a year. They may, if you're lucky, do one once a

quarter for their business activity statements in Australia, their

BAS. But that, for me, is just not even good enough. So if

you're listening to this and you are in business, my advice would

be to at least get monthly P&Ls done

on your business so you can know exactly where you are on

an ongoing basis. And you can make adjustments when you can

see things, you know, if your labour's blowing out or your freight's blowing

out, you can just sort of start looking at these things to help minimise them. And

ultimately, this is where we're going to get to, ultimately increase

profits and increase your

sale price should you decide to sell in the future. Because

the more profit you make, the more your business is worth. It's as simple as

that. So guys, this has been my ongoing

thing with, as I started this pod

today talking about, I just want to clear my diary, that's kind of

like my mission. One of my friends wrote to

me the other day, he said, I'm so busy, he sent me a snapshot of

his diary, and it was just packed. And it's like, nah, nah.

Mind you, he's in the growth phase. He's trying

to build this business out. So I'm not saying you're going to just clear your diary and

you haven't even got a business up and running yet. You're going to be full on. There's going

to be none of this life balance rubbish. It's going to

be full on business all the time because your

life depends on it. Your life depends on it for you and your family. That's

what I want you to think about today is the different types of business

models. What do you also think would be right for you in going

forward? And I can just say that the journey going

through an Amazon type business is great. But let me, I sort of had

a bit of a... I've pushed

out some of that workload, but ultimately, although I

joke about saying clear the diary, ultimately, I'm sitting here today recording

this video and I'm not at work. I'm

not at work. I'm not at my desk because I've got the freedom

to just come in here and do three, four, five

hours of filming. because I've got that flexibility. And

not only that, I got to drop my girls off at school, right? Then I

was at the gym this morning, right? So I've got all that flexibility as

well with having an online-based business. So if

I could have my time again, I would probably

not go into a bricks and mortar business. Knowing what I know now, I

would definitely go into an online

business for the simple fact that it absolutely does

give you the freedom that most people

are wanting. Even if it's not ultimate freedom of I never

have to touch the business, it's still freedom in the sense that you

may only have to put in Once you've built the business, two

hours a day, maybe, right? Who wouldn't

want that? Guys, it's something to aim for, and

I do wish you all the best. Actually, on that note, if you are looking

to go into an Amazon or e-commerce business and you need some assistance, I

do offer a mentorship program. The easiest

way to get to know me even better is to come and join my community, which is

on school, really, really low cost right now.

And I've done that deliberately, so there's a no-brainer. joining,

right? There's literally no barriers to get in. And in that too,

if you haven't even started, I've got this Amazon Launchpad mini course

right now. You'll get a product live within five hours. I've stripped out

everything, I've stripped out all the bullshit, and you will just start making

wins straight away. And at the very least, with

literally no money, you'll be able to find out if you even like the

Amazon type of business in the first place. Maybe it's not for you, but

you'll find out quickly. Anyway, find the link somewhere around this video and

come and join the community. And obligation-free, you can always cancel

anytime if you decide it's not for you. But if you want to go and make potentially millions

of dollars just like I have, and completely change your life for you

and your family, then come and check it out. Thanks for tuning into Amazon

Ecom Secrets. If you enjoyed this episode, the best way

to show your support is to give a five-star review on

Apple Podcast and Spotify, and make sure to

subscribe on YouTube so you don't miss an episode. You

can also find more at I'm Matthew Fraser

on all social media platforms. Thanks so much, take