I don't really feel like a multi-millionaire, but the numbers on my P&L and

balance sheet say that's true. The most hardest asset that

I found I could invest in was, and so that

in itself has led me to create more wealth. Many

people don't even get to that stage of even opening an Amazon account. They

spend a lot of time thinking about the product where it has to be done in

a way where you've got to take action. So perhaps the idea would

be, hey, I want to start an Amazon business, I want to find a product, but find

a product to launch into Amazon first that's going to be minimal cost.

Cutting costs is the key to profitability. Ideally,

you need to find a profitable product first. The

perfect business model though is not actually, in my opinion,

the restaurant business model. The perfect business model is an

online digital model and an example of that would be...

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. In this episode, I'm

going to be myth-busting money advice as

a multi-millionaire. I can tell you sitting here right now, I don't really feel like a

multi-millionaire, but the numbers on my P&L and

balance sheet say that's true. But I can give you some insight

having to now being in this multi-millionaire position of

some of the things and I guess, beliefs out there in

society and tell you whether they're true or false

or whether you should listen to them or whatever. So, let's go. The

first one is you need to spend money to make

money. This, I would say, is false. There

will become a point in your journey where you will need to spend

money to make more money. However, for most people

now listening to this, you're not at that position. And so

how do you make money without spending money? And

that simply comes down to getting skills for

yourself. Now, let me give an example. There's someone that I know who

became very good at identifying commercial properties

in the market to buy. Because what she found, and I can tell you this is

true, people who have money, they want to invest that money somewhere.

For example, commercial property. But they don't have the time and

energy to go out hunting for commercial property. So

they either engage a buyer's agent, or in this case,

she became essentially like a scout for property. So

she would go and find the commercial property. So she learned all the knowledge

about commercial property, which cost her nothing to do. It was

just research and time, no outlay of cash. She

would go and then package the deal and then present the

deal to a suite of other

millionaires. And then what she would do is she would take a cut

of the sale. So she had no money down on the property, however,

she was making money off the back of the sale of the property. And

the idea that she was getting to was to build up enough of these

types of deals so that she could build up enough money of

her own to then put that money in to a property

deal herself. But you can see how that's quite powerful because she

found a niche where people needed that information and

she was able to package up deals and sell it to multi-millionaires. That's one

way to do it. Further down the track though, you're going to get to the position where you're going

to spend money to make money. Now, here's a great example. I was

selling a healthcare product and I

would spend money on Facebook ads and Google ads

in order to then generate more sales. I was spending money

to ultimately make more money. And back years ago when

it was at its height, I was spending about a dollar and then getting $5 back.

So I was spending money to make money. And there's many

other types of situations where you can do that across many different

things, spending money to make money. But in the beginning, you don't have

to, you just have to find a skill that you can ultimately sell.

All right, then myth number two, debt is bad for

business. Who came up with this myth anyway? Debt is bad for business. Debt

is good for business, but it has to be manageable debt. You

don't want to over commit on debt repayments, for

example. And this can be a real struggle for businesses at times because some

businesses, and I've seen this happen actually, and I'll give you a real life

story. There was a business that I know personally, not my

business, somebody else's business. They went through a period of massive

sales growth. And everything was going fantastic. Millions of

dollars was pouring into their business account. They thought this

was never going to run out. But it just happened to be during a period

where online sales and health care sales were

going really well. So what they did is they overcommitted. They

got a much bigger office. They got about double their footprint for

staff. They spent a lot of money on cars and

vans and branding and just things

that were way too top heavy. Like for example, the bigger premises required

more rent and they spent a bucket load of money, this was the big thing too, like

a shit ton of money on stock. So then

all of a sudden the sales started to teeter off. They were stuck with much

higher overheads, as well as they'd manufactured a whole bunch of product, which

now they needed to still pay for, but now couldn't be sold. So

they couldn't recoup that money back really quickly. And so they took on

a lot of extra expenses, but in doing so, they also took out some debt

on the business as well, because they were trying to expand into

other territories. So that stock And so when the sales went down, they

were left basically in a bit of a shit show. They ended up having to

close up the business. They got locked out of their premises. And now

they're sort of scrambling to try and get that business back into an

order by reducing the overheads. And at the same time, trying to

refinance the debt and sell the stock they've already got.

So debt is bad for business. It can be, but

that's why it has to be managed very, very carefully. But

on the flip side, Where can debt be good

for business? I'll tell you from personal experience, there was a period where

my sales were about to go through the roof, but I didn't have

the cash to go and buy the stock. So

what I did is I went and got what's called inventory finance, And

it's where a company will simply give you the money upfront to

go and buy the inventory or the stock so you can take advantage

of it now and then you can pay that debt off over

generally three to six months. So that is an example of

where I was spending money to make money and I was

using debt for business so that I could get the stock now

and sell it later. With number three, you have to reinvest

all profits back into the business. I think

this is very contentious because it depends on

who you speak to. Some people will say, put all

of your profits back into the business to help grow the business. Where

others will say, perhaps even sell the business sooner rather

than later. Or some people say, take the profits out of the business and

allocate that money into something else. I can only speak from personal experience.

As my business started to grow and do eight figures a

year, I found that I had lots of what I would call spare

liquid cash. So it didn't really matter if I was to

reinvest that or not. I kind of got to a point where I had already reinvested

a lot of money back into the business to help it grow. And it was mainly by

buying inventory. So I got to a point in my business where I

didn't have any debt whatsoever on the stock that I had. And

I owned about $2 million worth of stock. in the marketplace around

the globe, sitting in warehouses basically ready to be sold. And so at that

point, I was prepared to take now the profits out of the

business that I had now lying around to put into other

hard assets. In the beginning, I started to buy commercial

real estate. That was the first thing I did and ended up buying a number of commercial real estate

offices. So what I did is I reinvested now

the money that I was making from the business into commercial property. And within a

short amount of time, I'd purchased a few different commercial properties. And

then at the same time, I was also looking at where I could

invest the money into also other hard assets. And the most hardest

asset that I found I could invest in was Bitcoin.

And so now I've got a good size Bitcoin portfolio amongst

some other smaller cryptos. And so that in

itself has led me to create more wealth by

reinvesting into those harder assets. Myth number four, the The

more clients and customers you get, the better. It

really depends on the product that you sell. If you've got something that

is like toilet paper, for example, that you sell, then yeah, it's a

commodity. Everybody needs to buy it. So the more clients and

customers you get, the better. The more sales you're going to make. It's going to be a volume play. I

also have a restaurant, Hungry Jack's Restaurant, and the more customers that

we have, the more sales we do, the more profit we make. But if you're

in a service type industry where you are a coach,

for example, and you have clients or you have a clinic that you service

people on neck injuries, something to do with sports, then you're

better off to have less clients and charge more

rather than just more clients. because the

volume is not going to help. You're going to just be completely burnt out and there's

only so much time in the day. So I would say that myth is

in the middle. True for some, false for others. Myth number five. You

need to have it all figured out before you start. This This is

definitely a big handbrake that I see on

so many clients and just people and family and friends. They'll

want to go and start a business for example but they spend months

if not their whole life thinking about doing it and they never get

around to doing it. You have to start. So if you're someone who's thinking about

selling on Amazon, I've got a section in my mentoring program

right now that you can access and it shows you how to launch on

Amazon in literally like 5 hours. So that would be a way where

you could start your Amazon business, for example, by taking

the first action steps. And it would literally cost

you, I think it's like under 50 bucks. So it's basically nothing.

And from there, it would give you some skills, some

confidence to then even know, is this something that I want to do in

the future? Many people don't even get to that stage of even opening

an Amazon account. They spend a lot of time thinking about the product where

it has to be done in a way where you've got to take action. So perhaps

the idea would be, Hey, I want to start an Amazon business. I

want to find a product, but find a product to launch into

Amazon first. That's going to be minimal cost. If that's what you want to

do, like a hundred units. I just did an episode recently where you

could do a skincare type product. and it was like

$1.60 a unit to buy. So you could buy 100, 160 bucks

in, send 100 units into Amazon and simply start learning that process. But

this isn't even just about Amazon. It could be about, I want to invest in

Bitcoin or I want to start a share trading company or whatever it

is, right? Start first and figure it out as you

go, but do it with minimal money. Hey guys, I just

want to break away from the episode for just one moment and let you know that I've just

launched the Amazon Launchpad mini course. Now, this is designed for people who

want to get started on Amazon really, really fast.

But guess what? I can get you launched your first product on Amazon with

just five hours. You just have to click on the link below, join my community,

and the course is absolutely free. All right, thanks guys, and

back to the episode. Myth number six, cutting costs is

the key to profitability. Ideally, you need to find

a profitable product first. And to a degree, it's

going to be the business model. I've got a few types of businesses. One is

a restaurant that has extremely high costs, as in

high overheads, lots of staff, lots of rent, lots

of electricity, lots of insurance, and I'm selling burgers for

basically nothing. Okay, so I've got to do an extremely high

turnover, high volume of product in order to make a

profit. In that type of business, cutting costs is

essential because I need to make sure that I'm making a profit on

the bottom. But when the sales drop, there's going to be certain costs that

you can't cut. For example, if sales drop, I

can't cut the rent. That is a fixed cost.

I can't really reduce the electricity. I might be able to get a

better deal, but generally they're on a fixed contract for a period of

like three plus years. So it's probably not something you can do there. You could

cut though, labor costs. So you could hire less people per

day to save on labor. By saving on labor, You're then going

to also save on work cover insurance. You're going to save on

paying out superannuation and holiday pay, et cetera, et cetera. So

that's one way. The perfect business model though is

not actually, in my opinion, the restaurant business model. The perfect

business model is an online digital model. And

an example of that would be Kindle Books. That's a great example. That's

a digital product where you don't have to hold stock and

you've got next to no cost, literally no cost.

You've got a computer and you're sitting in front of the computer, whatever it costs to turn

the light on. You can now sell that product plus advertising to

sell your product, right? But there's no cost for the inventory. There's no shipping cost.

There's no insurance cost. There's no superannuation because you

don't really have any staff. So super, super high margins.

Very difficult to cut costs. Let's say you could cut advertising in

that particular scenario. Maybe your advertising is running too high. But generally

speaking, there's not really much else to cut. And

the bonus is that you've got a very high profit margin.

That's not to say though, and if you talk about, if you think about my case,

I made a shit ton of money by selling a physical product.

I haven't even done the digital product, but I think that's a much better business

model if you can make it work. In my case, I sold

a physical product. And when things were lean in

my business, became lean, there wasn't really much to cut, right?

Because I didn't overextend myself by going and hiring out

an office with a whole bunch of staff. Very, very lean. I

just kept myself as the essentially the main person running

the business with an outsource manager and then some outsource customer

service people. I didn't go and buy trucks or start a fulfillment center,

right? So I was very flexible in that respect. Myth number

seven, you should pay yourself last as

a business owner. Small business. I've been there. It's

very, very tough. Look, most people don't pay themselves. Most people

operate as a sole trader. So the money that they earn, they just sort of essentially put

it into their pocket and whatever's in that account, they just use. They

don't really pay themselves. But if you set up as a company, then

you're going to be employed as an employee. You should definitely be in the routine of

paying yourself. That would be my suggestion. But I I also understand

it's difficult, especially when you're first starting out. I know when I

first started out, I wasn't paying myself a salary or

a wage, right? Because I was reinvesting all the money back

into the business, back into stock, back into advertising and marketing. But

it will get to a point, and you should do it as soon as you can, where you're

making enough profit to pay yourself. You'll also find it

becomes probably tax advantageous to do so, and that should be

a conversation that you have with your accountant. So the answer to

this myth, should you pay yourself last as a business owner, is

no. You should be in the routine of paying yourself as the business owner.

Myth number eight, you need a large team to succeed. Oh

my goodness, I could talk hours and hours about this. I'm

going to relate it again back to my current situation. I'll

tell you a funny story. I was going to the bank to get some funding to

buy some commercial property. And when I showed my P&Ls and my

balance sheet, the banker came back to me. She said, look, Matthew, I've looked at

your numbers. And I was doing it over, I think that year I did like $15 million

or something. And she said, you don't have any staff and

you don't have any sort of assets, so to speak, like

a building. And I said, no, that's right. I've literally got a

stand-up desk and a laptop. And she was just scratching her

head. She couldn't believe that doing $15 million for

that year, that I could have no staff, no

massive warehouse and a lot of like a large team around me.

You couldn't believe it because it's just not really seen that common

in this industry. But she also hadn't dealt with someone like myself who

was an online seller. And of course, the advantage to have being an online seller

is I can keep my overhead super, super low.

and I don't need to build out a large team and go get an office because literally

when you're selling on Amazon, you're selling on Shopify, your business

is located on your laptop. That's it.

So it keeps your overheads super, super

low. So can you go and get a large team? Yes,

you can, but you do not need a large team in

order to succeed. Myth number nine, you need an office

space. Well, I've just proved that point in the last scenario. You

do not need an office space. You can keep your overheads low, keep

it lean and operate your business, particularly if it's online from

your laptop. Myth number 10, focus on growing revenue first

and profit will follow later. Gee, this is

a tough one. Yes, I do agree with growing your

revenue before you start taking profit. And what

I mean by that is, yes, put as much money back into

the business so that you can grow the business. But like I mentioned before,

you're going to get to a point where you've kind of exhausted the growth. And

if you're making very good margins like what I make in the

vicinity of 40 plus percent, you're going to have most likely a

lot of profit, like a lot is cash lying around. And

I would suggest that you actually take that profit out and reinvest it

into other assets. Myth number 11, personal and

business finances should always be separate. That

is absolutely true. Follow this to the

letter of the law. Do not mix up your personal bank

account with your business bank account. I have seen

this before where someone starts up a business, they're always just

on the side and they start incorporating their personal expenses

and their business expenses out of just one personal account. It

doesn't take much these days to simply open up a separate bank account. Even

if you were to open up the separate bank account in your personal name, as

a sole trader, you could do that and put some seed money

into your business account to start off with, and

then start paying all your expenses out of that account. Now, the reason

why you should do that, because it actually just makes it really, really simple for

accounting purposes. Because when you go to do your tax return, you're going to

have all your expenses coming out of the one single bank account.

Myth number 12, if you're not growing fast, you're

failing. Well, this could be the case, but

I would only speak from experience. It could take you time, and

when I say time, it could take you one, two, three years of

persisting in a particular niche before you

find that you find the perfect winning product and you

take off. People's expectations though of fast differ.

I've got clients who if they're not making like millions of dollars within three

months, this is it, I'm packing up, I'm out. You've got to have the right expectations when

coming into any new type of business. So have the

right expectations, learn as much as you can and pivot

when necessary. If something's not working, pivot to the next thing

and use the skills that you've got already to find the next best

either business model or product. Myth number 13, you

should only get a coach if you can afford it. Oh

my goodness. Well, I can tell you when I started out, I had

no money whatsoever. You've probably heard this story a thousand times.

For those who are new to my podcast, I'm going to share it again. I had no

money. My back was up against the wall and I needed to make something work.

I signed up to this Amazon training program and then I went

to a conference and of course they're pitching now the one-on-one

training. And it was 20 plus thousand

dollars to go and join. I called my wife up, babe, can we do this course? She said,

sure. I said, I will sell stuff I've got lying around the house.

It was like turntables, gold plated turntables and what have you. And

the rest of it I put on a credit card. So that's what I was prepared to do. even

though I really couldn't afford it. And ultimately, it

was the best money I ever spent because it got me into the

system, into the game. I learned so many skills, which

ultimately led me to do over now $50 million in

sales. And the rest is history. Myth number 14, you

should avoid paying taxes at all costs. No,

that is a big no-no. You should avoid paying

taxes legally to the system of

the tax code, but you should definitely pay whatever taxes

are due because the last thing you want is to have the tax system

or the tax office on your case. That could

be very, very bad for business and it could ultimately send

you bankrupt and you don't want that. All right, guys, that's it for this episode. I

hope you've enjoyed the myth-busting episode. If

you liked it, give me a subscribe and press the like button. And if you leave

me a five-star review if you loved this episode on Apple Podcasts or

Spotify, that would be amazing. Or if you're watching this on YouTube, consider

giving me a subscribe and a like. All right, thanks, guys. Take care. 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