I looked around at people that were in their 40s, 50s, 60s.

They were diseased, divorced, very unfit and

overweight. I was like, if that's me in 20 or

It's just those small conversations and insights that make

people realise why they need to keep pushing forward. Imagine going to university and

spending $100,000 on an MBA. You still don't have any real world experience.

Nine out of ten blokes can't do one chin-ups. It's a hard task and

not a lot of people put effort into it. It ties into business really well. You

just have to keep doing the reps and turning up every week and wake up every morning

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. Hey, guys. Welcome to Amazon Ecom Secrets.

My name is Matthew Fraser, and in today's episode, I've got a really special guest,

John Salmon, Chief Exercise Officer. Hey, mate. How

Yeah, awesome. Great to have you in the house. Today I want to talk to you about your

business and also a bit about your history, how

also it relates to Amazon Ecom, which I

think there's a lot of synergies there to do with, I

guess your mindset is probably a big one. And I also want

to touch on, I don't know if you know this, but the business that you actually

took a venture in, which ultimately didn't work out. Yeah, great. So

start for me though, because a lot of people want to peel back some layers. You actually

started off in the police force. Tell us about that.

Mate, I started at the police academy here in Queensland in

2013. So I was 21 when I started there. I just

turned 21 in May and I started in June. So young,

dumb and thought, you know what? I'm going to

be a cop. And I'd only

decided that like a year prior and applied and just, yeah,

just progressed, actually applied for the military as well. So I applied for both and

just happened to progress faster through the police thing,

like the application process and ended up at the academy. And

I spent nine, almost nine years there. And

so this little flashback, everyone says, you did a decade. I'm like, I didn't. You know

I like specifics. I'm like, it wasn't a decade. It was

nine years. But anyway, so that was most of my 20s

And what was that like being a police officer? Is it

what, because we, I mean, we don't get to see everything, but there

was obviously some period there where you thought this is awesome. And then at some point you

Yeah, good question. I'd say for the first, let's

go half without getting, I can't remember exactly, but

there was a point where I was like, this is amazing. I want to be here for the rest of my

career. And that's quite the narrative or the culture internally

is once you join, and I'll tell you why, and you'll find

this fascinating, and I'm sure our conversation will segue in a second, but

there was a point about sort of halfway through, I thought, I'm not 100% confident

that I want to do this forever, but I had absolutely zero

idea of what it was that I wanted to do. And

the longer those like months or years went on,

the more I had this mindset of

like, I need and want to get out of here, but I

hadn't fully understood or decided what

I wanted to do because replacing a salary with your own business in

But just to offer you the edge on, at some point, you weren't thinking, I'm going

to get out of this sort of, I guess, 9 to 5 job to

another 9 to 5 job. You were thinking, I want to get out of this 9 to

5 and do my own business. Is that right? That's right.

Yeah. I thought about some different

positions that I could do, as in other government roles,

some private roles doing all kinds of different things. And

I had conversations and had coffee catch-ups and lunches

with people and explored a few different options. And all

of the people that I spoke to in

the private world that weren't in government, that actually had their own businesses,

I noticed straight away those conversations were very different, and those

people thought differently. I'm not pedestalling business

owners over an employee, but I am saying that I appreciated and

liked the mindset of that of a business owner, which made

me think, there's obviously a reason I'm drawn to that. Maybe

Because there's obviously something in there

too, John, you just said too, your mindset was,

you know, I talk about the golden handcuffs, especially people

who are working as bureaucrats. You're like a bit of a bureaucrat working

for the government, and you can get locked

into the job, the super, the

career path, you think, oh, there's going to be a future here for me. But

then at some point, either the job sold was destroying, you

realize there's actually more to life than the nine to five, but

maybe freedom came into it, a bit more freedom, like living life in your own terms.

And that segues nicely into

the point that I was going to make earlier. was that I

sat... Well, firstly, I looked around. You're exactly right. I

looked around at people that were in their 40s, 50s, 60s,

for example, which is in the decade you need

to retire. And I thought, well, firstly, I

don't want to spend the last like 30 or 40 years of my life just sitting

down, having retired, doing nothing, except

walking to the coffee shop. I want to actually do things and

add value to the world. So that retirement thing was number one. I

was like, that's weird. Secondly, I thought all

of the people, I shouldn't say all, that's probably rude. A

lot of the people who were my sort of immediate line

supervisors, sort of within one or two ranks, I

started taking notice and I thought there were

a much higher percentage that

were in categories that weren't diseased,

divorced. grumpy, very

unfit and overweight, all of those things. There's

more categories, so not to put

them in a category. There are certainly some amazing supervisors, amazing

people. However, so many that were in

my sphere in the place that I was working at the time, I

was like, is if that's me in 20 or

30 years, stuff this. That was

one. Then the other thing that links to what you were just saying about the golden handcuffs

and things like that is I started asking them, and it's available online, what

are your salaries? What are you earning? These are people who are decades down

the line from me. Mate, they're only, let's

say, within 50 grand of earning. I was like,

eight to ten grand a year in earning, that's all you're

So- And that was like a wake-up call, right? You were like, oh my

And I was like, so the- Yeah. And

the narrative a lot was, oh, but I'll

get my super. So that's great. And

that was a very big conversation, but the soup is great. And the percentage of

soup is great. And it is, it's awesome. And having spent

nine years there. What is it? If you, you

can give 6% and you get 6% from the government. And

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's pretty good, but

like, You know what business is like. You

work hard for, we're not talking 50 years, that

it would take you to generate some serious money. So, yeah,

That's interesting, John, because I've got people who

want to get out of the 9 to 5. I speak to all the time trades people,

same people who work in bureaucracies. you

know, in government sector roles, feel trapped. And

they're coming to me, you know, oh, Matt, you know, I really want to do this

Amazon business. You know, that's what I see that so,

so much. And you were in that, in that space

too, thinking maybe not even Amazon, but I think if I can add

to that now, you, you actually went from the police straight

into personal training business, or where did the online business

When Mel, my wife, so Mel and I have been married for six

years now, together eight, known each other forever, she

was making this granola at home in

the kitchen at her house. And then fast

forward because the between details don't really matter, but we start cooking

this granola stuff together at nights

during the week sometimes and on weekends. And

she'd sell it to people and she worked at a health food store or

was studying to be a naturopath. And along the

line of we were making it one night and I was cleaning these trays, right?

And if you've ever, if anyone who's listening has made food

that's made with like oils and honey and which granola

is, it's like really sticky and it gets all this

stuff around the outside. And it's like, it's a bit of work, right? Especially if you

don't have like a commercial dishwasher because scrubbing things at home. I

remember thinking, this is really boring, scrubbing these trays, but

I know that all this effort that we're

putting into making this food, everything that

we produce from it, let's just

specifically talk about funds, money. we

get to keep, like it's ours. And so I was like,

I'd never looked at this part of it before. I was like, have you got a

spreadsheet of like, do you know how much is

going in and going out and all this stuff? And she was like, yeah, I did this spreadsheet with my

cousin a little while ago. And Mel will happily admit,

she won't mind me saying, I'm probably the more like analytical one

that will break all the numbers down and things like that. right

to the little bits of like, what's that

cost? And what's this cost? And what's this cost? And

I remember thinking, wow, this could be a really scalable thing. And

so I was like, well, we can't keep cooking at a home because I'm sick of scrubbing these

trays. And so I also knew that it

would need a decent amount of scale. I'm getting to a point, by the way. I

knew that it would need a decent amount of scale to replace

a wage. And so I thought, you know what? I

like fitness. I want to learn more about fitness. I'm going to go study PT and

start a side business. So within the same year,

I start full-time policing. I start

doing personal training sessions before and after work and on weekends and

whenever anyone would listen and pay me. and

we start the food business on the side as well. It's

Just dropping there. When you do the numbers, John, what

was the margin you were working with? Initially, you're doing it in your

house and you've done some spreadsheets, you've figured out

We're making bags of granola between 800 grams and a kilo.

And I remember at that time, because our purchase price for

all of our stuff was so high, because it was so, we're buying in such small quantities.

I think it was costing us $9 to $10, right,

to make this bag and probably selling it for I

think at that time, it was like 20 bucks, maybe 19 bucks,

something like that. Not

Correct. That's direct to the customer. That's not retail or

Yeah, we deliver if we could for

Wow. Okay. So you're working pretty, pretty tight. Probably

no margin, to be honest, by the time you

factored in everything. At a COGS level,

you were making about $10 a bag. not including everything

else. You're doing this for a little while and then what

Then I realized at some point along

the journey, I've got all these journals here. One

day I'll get it all structured out and we can look at a timeline. Basically,

I got to this point where I knew that we decided we

can't keep cooking at home, we're not making any margin, and it was like,

do we Do we keep doing this and

grow it, or do we just cook it for ourselves? Because it's

silly. And so Mel, we

were laughing about this the other day. She said to me, I'm at

uni. You're a cop, you're doing shift work, like

it's a high demanding job, it's stressful, you work

through the night, all these things. At this point, fast

forward a little bit, we're actually going to a commercial kitchen in the

evenings because it was cheapest to rent from 11pm until 5am

because no one wanted to cook in the middle of the night. When

I had days off shift, when I'd specifically

done night shifts, it was already in the cycle of my body clock. I

was awake, so I thought I'll just go then. We'd go there and lease

this space and no one else was there because what idiot cooks food at

nighttime? This guy and Mel. We

would do that because it was super cheap to hire the space. And

it was a turning point where I said, we need to stop it or

keep doing it. And so I was like, stuff it. And so

I made a Facebook group, made a Facebook page, made an Instagram page, invited

all our friends to the group. And it was like Mel was doing an assignment in

the next room and she starts getting these like dings on her phone. And

she's like, what's this? And I was like, I made a Facebook page

for our business. She's like, What do

you mean? I logged into

mine, I logged into yours, added all our friends, and I'm like, hey, do you want to buy

Like, oh my God. And so, John, did people

actually come in and start buying granola? Is that what happened or did

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Which is what confirmed at that stage

in our life that we were like, yeah, we're going to pursue this and see what we can do with it. Got

it. Got it. Okay. And so, that was the... And to...

In case there's any points, I don't know if you want to go away from this point

or keep digging into it, but to fast forward to the next like little

bit, We had a

commercial kitchen where we were cooking it. Then we shifted

to a bigger one with a bigger oven, like a 20-tray oven

because the other one only had 10. And we kept growing

and moving spaces to the point where we actually outsourced that to a third-party

manufacturer. And he was cooking it by the pallet load because it was

obviously way cheaper to do that. Still

at this point, it couldn't

So we're used to seeing at this point that by scaling it to this

now commercial kitchen, I guess in a sense you've validated it

in a small sense by cooking it yourself. You then move to your own little

commercial kitchen. Then you've had your friends come in and start buying it. So I

guess you were thinking, hey, this could lead to something. You then outsourced

it into a bigger commercial kitchen that somebody else is

now making. Yeah. And at some point now,

then what happened after this? Did it just collapse or you just couldn't get the volume?

Yeah. So we started working with two distributors.

One was quite obviously to us, more

interested. They were very health food store conscious,

a lot of IGA connections, things like that. And the other guys

were more the Foodworks IGA, like

the bigger IGAs I should say, and chain

stores. So they were not as interested because of the

shelf price that we just had to have because we used

all certified organic ingredients and

home compostable inserts and all the works. And,

you know, we had thought we had this amazing idea, but like you've

experienced with clients and yourself, like you have these

ideas and you get attached to them and you think this is going to be great, but

it's just dependent on what the market does. And so we start working

with these two distributors. And the long and the short of that journey,

I guess, is those distributors basically ignored my

relentless phone calls and emails and knocking on

the door. Like the amount of one of them in particular, when

I actually got the meeting, it was 12 months

after first contact. And a friend of ours who was in the food industry said,

oh, that'll take a year. And I was like, okay.

And if anyone that's sort of close to me will know

that I'm relatively, I'm not trying to sound big headed, but

I just love that relentless activity until it's either

a yes or a no and not this like, yeah,

I don't like open-ended stuff. I like to like close the loops all the time. And

so we, We finally had a meeting with them

and they took us on. At that point, we'd had about 30 or 40 stores

that we'd gone into and sold the idea

to and we're on the shelves of. Together

with them, up to the point where we decided to stop

Wow, I had no idea, John. I thought you got to the

cooking in your house, it didn't work out, and then you just sort of folded up.

I had no idea you went on to this extent. I mean,

I take my hat off to you and Melissa, because even to get that far is

a big deal. Thank you. Tell us now, having now gone

through that and you've now wrapped it up, of course, you're not doing it anymore, what would

be the key learning lessons now looking back that you perhaps

would have changed or that you would sort of point out maybe even that

What I... This is a good point. So,

naturally with business, right? The longer that you're in it, the

more you develop the stuff behind the scenes of

your real understanding of... And if you've someone

like yourself who's grown multiple businesses, multiple

products, you know the lessons. And what I

know now is that we started with a single

tab spreadsheet that had one rectangle in it with a

couple of sums in it. And by

the time we stopped, there's

a 20 tab spreadsheet with a ridiculous amount of

information. If you'd never seen that business, you would open that sheet or that

Excel document and go, well, how do I digest all

Too many thumbs, too many sums, equals some bracket,

you know, like stop it. But

I guess what I'm getting at is one of the big lessons was,

and I don't think you would know this, it's like the fitness

stuff that we've been discussing. You can't know until you've put the reps in

and done the work what the journey looks like. But I

think the whole, I guess the point I'm trying

to make is, A big lesson was the more

I got to know it, the more I realized that you can only

reduce your cogs so much, which is, if

you're listening, you know what that is, the cost of goods. You can only reduce that to

a certain amount. The reference I made before

from the home kitchen and the expense of making it at home and buying

at a retail level and trying to make money there, right

down to where I can buy from a distributor

or an importer half a pallet of oats

or a pallet of oats and 100 kilos of honey compared to a

five kilo tub, for example. that

cost can only get down to a certain amount, and then it just can't

go any lower. I didn't fully understand that. I thought,

no, the bigger we get, the more we buy, the

more we buy. If you're at a Woolworths level, you have a lot of power, but

a big, small business is still just a ... They'd rather just

Have you or did you ever consider getting a business

We did and we did and we did. So we considered it

and we didn't for a while. And when we did, it was It

was really helpful because it was someone else that was completely

emotionally detached from our

own financial situation, our decision-making about

our baby, so to speak, and how good or we

thought the product was and the business was and what we thought

the market thought. It was someone that was very emotionless

and what's the market actually saying because are

they buying it or are they not buying it? And are they buying at a rate that's growing?

And is it producing money? And all those things. So having

that person was awesome. Yep.

And were they the one that eventually said, shut

No. No, they were very

good at letting us lead that decision. and

keeping our, so as in not

making that final call, do you want me

to still help you grow this thing? Or like, can you see, he would

use the phrase a lot, can you see the path? Can

you still see the path to where you're trying to get to, to the

goal, to the vision? And there was a time where

I was, and both Mel and I were very confident that we could,

and then more and more I got asked that, because we'd

speak about it every week, the more I would pause before

I said it and have to really think about it. And despite,

again, talking about resilience, being like, no, I can do this and saying

yes, there was one day I just walked out

into the lounge room and said to Mel, I'm done. This is over.

We're out of here. That's interesting because you

take so many lessons. Even in my case, having my very first Amazon product,

which was that car chamois. I probably

lost about $6,000, but it was the lessons that I took from

it. I just kept pushing forward and then pivoted

into something different, which was still a product on Amazon because it wasn't

that In your case, I guess it's not that

business is bad, right? It's just that this particular product,

the margins didn't work, you couldn't get the product market fit right, you're

losing money for a longer period than probably what you needed to. You probably should have,

if I was there, probably pulled out sooner. Just follow it up

sooner. But like you said, though, it's hard when it's emotional. In

my case, I just said, look, I'm not getting the volume on this

car shammy. I'm just going to wrap it up. But by that

stage, I was already looking to something else in

the Amazon to sell on Amazon. Because it wasn't Amazon

that was the problem. It was the product that I had selected that

was the problem. But it gave me the skills then, of course, to do the next

Funny, we were just talking about the other day, Mel and I, because she's done two uni

degrees. And that's a lot of knowledge

learned. And there's a short amount of prac at the end, before

you can actually practice. But the lessons

that we both learned through our own

business experience, in comparison to some of

the conversations I've had with good friends who have gone to uni

and studied business, they'll openly say, I

would rather have just started a business. because the barrier to

entry is actually now so low, you

can get in the marketplace with something that's not super

expensive and just learn and test and measure and work

out what you're good and what your strengths and weaknesses are and develop

Absolutely. I mean, that's exactly what I do with my one-on-one mentoring

clients, is we get in early, we get set

up, we test fast, we

build the skills, We have the knowledge which creates the

power. Ultimately, that then gives them all

the necessary attributes in order to

succeed because they've got the skills fast,

rather than taking decades to

accumulate these things. I think that's what the power is with having a

mentor now, which transitions me really into what

you're doing now in the PT space. You're now

helping clients with their physique, with their nutrition, and

through full transparency. I've been working with you now. You've

been helping me for, what is it, coming up to

over six months now? It would be, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

And so what was that transition then? Because you've essentially been burnt

in your first business, let's call it, but now you're sort of going down

this PT line. Did you ever have any doubt that,

geez, I don't know if this business thing is going to work, or did you just pull your socks up

The latter. So just pull my socks up and kept going because what's

In the back of your mind, you must be thinking, I don't know.

I was in the police force. It was going so well. I was getting a

I did consider, well, could I work

for someone? Could I do this? Could I do this? But I already had this chunk

of personal training clients. So

we started our food business in something like 2019 at

a very, very small level. And when I say food business, I

helped Mel start cooking at which she already was and things

like that. And then a few years later, I built the PT thing up until

I could resign from the police because I had a wage,

a salary coming in from the personal training staff to do the

food business. And then As this food

thing started to wind down, I thought, well, I really don't want

to go back to my old job. The nothing really

lights me up and I was like, I sat down, got a little piece of paper

and was like, and I actually did this and went,

how do I want to spend my time? What do I want to do? Who do I

want to help? How do I want to help them? And things like that. And ultimately,

that's what kept me from going back to working for

someone else. And I thought, no, I'm going to have a real crack. and

keep working for myself. It was amazing the

clarity and the time that I got back when I was

just focused on doing one thing rather than

multiple things at once. That's probably ultimately what that

decision of, I said to Mel, you

can keep doing the food thing if you want. It needs more than one person because

it was just us two. But I'm

tapping out to focus on PT and coaching, and

Clients come to me now actually. They'll start the Amazon journey, and

the next thing, they'll come

to me and then say, what about affiliate marketing? And what

about dropshipping? And I say, hey, let's just

slow down a second. Let's just get Amazon right first,

Yeah. If that product and you get

Yeah. And it's trying to keep the clients on track. Forget about

those shiny objects. Just stay on this. You must be the same, right?

When you've got PT clients trying to keep them

100%. Yeah, yeah. And that's probably the most Everyone,

every individual is like a big puzzle because they've got their, like

I'm not with them. There's 168 hours in a week and you'd

know from our work together, we don't speak all the time. We

have moments where we touch base and we

have open lines of communication where we can talk whenever, but that doesn't mean we have to,

we need to, or you want to. It's when

it's needed. There's all those other times where you're worldview

or paradigm, if you like, your understanding of what to and

what not to do, you've built

that over your whole lifetime. It's

like a big puzzle with each person and going, how do I get them

to what questions do I have to ask? I call

them missions instead of tasks because tasks are boring. Missions

feels a bit James Bond-y, so it usually compels blokes to do stuff. How

do I get this person to actually take action and do

this as

respectfully as possible to make you feel like it's your idea

so that it aligns with your goals, your vision, your mission, and

That's so powerful. So, so powerful, because that's exactly what needs

to happen, I think, in any space and any new adventure as well, is

focus on the mission, get the goals right. And really,

as long as you can push through, I guess, the adversities, because every

journey has these challenges that come through. And I always talk about, within

the Amazon space, There's two sort of key factors where

people will most likely quit, especially if they don't have

someone who's by their side helping them, like either a coach or

a mentor. And that is in the very beginning phases of the setup, when

they're just like, oh, this is just too much. I've got to get up this company or

I've got to set up this Amazon account. It just seems too overwhelming. Now,

if they can get through that, the next time when they want

to quit is the product selection process. And

so what I've done is I actually make all that really simple because

I want my people to succeed. So I come up with a

really simple step-by-step guide of setting up the Amazon account. And

I've got another step-by-step guide of how to find the best types

of products for the Amazon marketplace, where to find them. I've

even got a process where I even show people the products. These are

the top selling products that you can choose right now to sell on

Amazon. and that's working so well because

it's pushing those people through those pain points. You must

Totally, totally. Like chin-ups

for you at the moment. Chin-ups, nearly a 10. So

8? Well, I didn't tell you this, but the other day I actually did 10, but

it was more like 7 good ones and 3 half ones.

So good. So good. I want to dig into that

Amazon setup thing because I have a short story which

will add value. But before 10, I did a post, I

don't know if you saw it, just yesterday about chin-ups. And

this is so interesting. And no, I don't know if the stats are

real. I just made it up. But I claim that 9 out

of 10 blokes can't do one chin-up. One. Right.

And my bet is prove me wrong and I'll buy you a steak, whoever

you are, if you hear this. because I genuinely believe that

it's a hard task and not a lot of people put effort into it. It's not

about the chin-ups, as you know, because you've gone from like, what did you

No, come on, mate, please. I

Okay, cool. They're hard, right? No matter when

you're progressively overloading, it just always seems hard, but you just

No, wait, it's hard. I

was just talking about how people can't do chin-ups and how it ties into resilience and it ties into showing up

And I think that connects to business really well because

you just have to keep doing the reps and turning up every week and wake up

every morning and do the next task. And sometimes I

don't, despite the business I run, man, sometimes

I stand under that chin up bar, I strap the belt on, I put a plate underneath

Now you're talking it up. I don't got the belt

soon. But I think, I don't want to do this. I'm

tired of whatever. There's all these things that pop into your

head and you think, do I really need to

do this today? Do I have to do these two sets? Do I have to do these three

sets? Whatever you're doing, whatever the program is at the time. That's so

relative to business because you sit down and you go, What's

the email inbox? I don't really want to do emails. I

didn't quit policing to send emails, mate. You have to do it.

I'll tell you. Let me tell you, John. You'll know this, but this is

for everybody else. I have a personal training

hack And that is that I have a person that

I meet in the gym, who's Marie, my personal trainer, my physical

personal trainer, who meets me in the gym. And because

I have an appointment, I get up and I go to

the gym. I mean, even this morning I was like, ugh. kind

of a bit warm in this bed and I don't know if I really want to get out.

But I was like, no, Marie's going to be there. I have to get up and get down there. And

that is literally the reason why I've been so consistent over

the last probably coming up to two years now of going to the gym

every single week, multiple times every single week. Every session I have is with

Marie. And turning that into Amazon

coaching and training, that's why people hire me

because I keep them accountable. So when we meet every

single week or I'm talking to them throughout the week, I'll say,

hey, what are you doing? But more so, I think it helps them to

have me in their corner for any question that comes up. Even

if they're in doubt, I had a client recently who had

discovered this incredible medical

product. And I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. You

should definitely, and I helped him ultimately sign up this contract for

exclusive distribution. And when I spoke to him, at some point

in that process, he actually rang me and said, Matt, I just don't think this is right for

me. And I said, Mate, if

you don't do this, I said, if you don't do this, I will do it

myself. And I think that was the wake up that he needs, like, well, if,

well, Matt's willing to do it, it must be good. But it's

just those small conversations and insights that make

100%, man. And can you, I'd love to hear you

touch on, I'll keep this under

a minute because I want to hear your response on it, not my blabber. Our

food product, once the e-com store was running and things like that, I

got it onto Amazon just to

see what would happen. Which I didn't know. I didn't know that. There

you go. They may even still be listed on there. I'll send you a link. You

won't be able to buy it, but I'll send you a refund. I

remember that process being long, confusing,

frustrating because you and you'd know this

all too well, that's why I want to hear your response. You'd do

one step, right? And everyone knows you can go on to YouTube and

there's a million experts that know apparently everything about Amazon

and e-com and whatever you type in, you can find answers to. And I'm

a big believer in you'll find the answers that you're looking for. And

sometimes that's not a good thing though, is my point, because you

can find evidence to support any argument if you're biased one

way or the other. So my point is, I would apply and

then if I needed support, I'd message Amazon, you wouldn't hear

back. or you'd email them, their support team, and we

wouldn't hear back for a long time. And that process is

very long. And I don't remember exactly how long, but I

remember it being painful. And I remember when we finally

got all the listings done and all of the accounts set up and the

photos in there, exactly how they wanted them and everything has

to be reviewed because it's quite specific, which is great because it gives the consumer

a good experience. I was like, thank

God that's done. Like, I'm so glad this is finally, and

then not much happened with it. And so that's the next point I'd

love you to touch on, is if you can, because Once

it was listed, that was like the first step and I was drained by the

process and then nothing happened after. The sales weren't

happening. They were selling in stores but not on

Amazon. There are obviously some barriers that

your clients would hit and that you've had in the past and

I'd love to hear, in case they ever start another one and for any of the

listeners, how do you overcome that with your

coaching and with the services you offer? How

Yeah, first of all, I make the setup process pretty straightforward

because if there's any issues, one, they can call me. But I think to

Amazon's credit, I think things have improved since

you were in there last as well. I know that when I contact Amazon customer

support for anything, they're usually going to come back to me within probably

6 to 12 hours. So I'm not waiting days and days for a response. Now

that said, they do lack in sometimes their

response is quite generic, not specific enough. So that

does frustrate me. So if

a client had a query that was more specific, maybe rather than

going to Amazon, they could just come straight to me and say, hey Matt, what do you think about this? Now

if I know the answer, obviously I can give it to them. It's

interesting you say that because, in my opinion, the Amazon

setup is actually the easy part. If

you can't get through the Amazon setup, then maybe you're not meant to be online. But

once you're on Amazon, that's really when things start, and I can

guarantee you If you were making sales and

you were making profit, you would find the energy to keep going. You're

like, this is great. And you'd be in there trying to improve your

SEO, your PPC, your images, everything

you can to try and optimize that listing and that product to

make it more profitable. Because ultimately, I don't know

if you know this, John, but you could actually sell an Amazon-based business.

Did you know that? I didn't know that. Yeah, so there's actually businesses that

you can buy that are based on Amazon, which means that

they have a product that they've manufactured somewhere and it's

just selling through the Amazon platform, right? Now, the opportunity with

buying something like that is one, you could take that that

product and then stick it into a Shopify store and sell it

off Amazon. You could, let's say it was in the

United States, you could actually take that product now into the UK, into Australia, and

now you're going to expand it out across multiple channels. You can put it

into eBay, you can put it into Walmart, all

because you've got the foundation of that first product. And the other benefit,

John, with buying an established business, and

this is obviously something that wasn't made clear to you in the very beginning because you started from scratch,

is that it's already trading. So imagine

coming into a business, let's say it was the granola business, and

one, it was already profitable, two, all of

the formulas, the distribution network, the

wholesale pricing, all those relationships were already done, and

you just stepped in and basically took over. That would be completely

different. Now, the difference though is that

in the beginning, you start off with minimal amount of money, whereas on

a business that is trading, you might have to actually put in more money. Now,

that could be funded through the bank potentially, but probably likely

you'd have to find some sort of funding of your own. at

some point, to put me into the business. But that's certainly

something that even my clients look at now, because when I take them through that

first setting up the Amazon account, sending the test product in, sending in

another test unit order, 100 unit test

order from, say, China, the skills just go through the

roof, the knowledge goes through the roof, and now they've got the confidence

to say, actually, now I can make a decision about buying

an established Amazon business if they want to. Yeah,

100%. Yeah. So let me transition now into where

you are now and who do you help? So let's talk about your current business because

I think it's important for people who are perhaps in my shoes who are entrepreneurial

people or CEOs who want to get in shape because

I'm now 45. I was a bit out of shape and

you've been helping me along the line. So who do you help and how

Good question. So I help Fitness in

Business, which is my little neon sign you can probably see over my shoulder, is

Yeah, it's a little bit of a microphone to sort of cover up the business bit. There

I need good audio with what I'm about to say. So Fitness

in Business helps men in business predominantly get

fit, healthy, and strong. and have an appearance and presence that

they're proud of. Those different elements are

specific for a reason because I think all those little elements tie into

someone's overall health, well-being, and

longevity. The reason I

called it fitness in business is because it helps business

owners and business leaders. If

you're someone that isn't, and there'll be people listening who aren't

in that position, who aren't, you know, they walk into a room, they're not confident, whether

they're under or overweight. There'll be people that the

foods they eat make them feel terrible. The

alcohol or the drugs they use make them just feel

like crap all the time. That's just the way that

they've gotten used to living. I guess fitness and business helps

people do exactly that, just get fit, healthy, strong, and

start to feel great again. When

they are in their business, in their family, and in their life, they're

actually operating at the best level that they can so they can

ChiefExerciseOfficer.com forward slash

Perfect. I'm going to leave that link somewhere around

this video so they can reach out and connect with you. You're located in

Brisbane, but you can help train people all over Australia, right?

Anyone in the world that can speak English. Anyone in the world. There

Well, I want to say just thank you so much for coming onto the podcast today. And

also, thank you for all the work that you do with me. I know just as a testimonial for

you, John, you've been excellent. You're so great to work with. And

I know just from now being in my 40s, because

of you, I'm now focusing on the things that matter, not

just fitness, but also water intake, the

correct water, the correct food. I've had some protein things actually

in the studio here before I came onto here. Excellent.

Thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. I really do appreciate it. Everyone

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 Podcasts 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