Aug 25, 2020
On this episode of our podcast, we speak with Kellianne Fedio, an
Amazon consultant. She discusses selling her previous business for
seven figures and the creation of her new podcast. Her journey is
long and interesting, with a lot of twists and turns. Here, she
shares her entire story and offers great advice to those who want
to follow in her footsteps. Tune in to hear Kellianne’s great
insights. Topics:
- When she stumbled on Ecommerce, she realized it was a good
fit.
- How Amazon has changed since she started.
- Why outside funding sources are necessary.
- The importance of Mastermind groups.
- Living through rocky periods.
- Explaining rebates.
- Kellianne’s consulting methods.
Resources: Kellianne on LinkedIn Kellianne on Facebook Digital Shelf Strategy Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
Transcription: Mark: Joe, we know
that first-hand experiences of people that have gone through the
process of building a business, preparing it for sale, going
through that exit, that tends to be some of the greatest stories
and stories where we can get a lot of lessons back to us that we
can apply and learn how to optimize our own businesses for a better
exit. I know you had Kellianne on recently and she shared her story
of building her business and going through that exit and now her
current pivot where she's starting up a podcast on this very topic.
Joe: Yeah, Kellianne is good friends with another
good friend of ours, Paul Miller, who owns Cozy Phones and
Kellianne had a seven-figure exit. Technically, I guess it would be
early this year that she closed on the transaction; early 2020. And
she's learned a lot through that process and now she's sharing that
experience and the knowledge and the networking and the story of
building a business on Amazon; all the resources and connections
that you need to make in order to build it well and build it right
with an eventual exit in mind. So she shares her entire story and
gives real tips and advice from her own direct experience during
the interview.
Joe: Hey, folks, Joe Valley here
from Quiet Light Brokerage and the Quiet Light Podcast, Today I’ve
got Kellianne Fedio and I had to say that out loud several times to
make sure I pronounced it right. Kelly is a former attorney, Amazon
seller, seven-figure exit that she's had recently. And she's going
to be moving into helping people build their Amazon businesses for
a stronger exit down the road. Kelly, welcome to the Quiet Light
Podcast.
Kelly: Thank you so much for having me,
Joe. I'm such a big fan of everything you guys are doing over at
Quiet Light and have done for the past several years so it's a real
honor to be here.
Joe: I appreciate that. I did
more of an intro just now than I normally do, but I didn't read
from the script. But why don't you go ahead and tell us who you are
and your story and where you came from and what you've done here?
Kelly: Sure. So I started out as an attorney in a
former life, and after having kids, getting married, I became very
unhappy in that profession. That was just a lot of long hours, not
enough pay at least for what I was doing, and I really wanted to be
there for my kids. So I became a stay at home mom for a while and
loved every minute of it. And then when my kids started elementary
school, I was like, okay, what's my next chapter here? And I never
would have guessed it would have been entrepreneurship. I was very
traditional type-A personality in high school. I'm going to get all
A's. I'm going to go to college. I'm going to go to law school. I'm
going to be an attorney. And that was like my plan for the rest of
my life. And so fast forward to several years later, after having
practiced law for 10 years and now having kids and a husband and a
wonderful family life, I was like what am I passionate about? What
can I put out there into the world that not only is going to
hopefully bring in income to our family but also that I could be
excited about doing? And so I just knew it had to have something to
do with online; being online and creating value online. And so,
like a lot of other entrepreneurs getting involved in the online
space, I tried a lot of different things, made tons of mistakes,
had tons of failures, learned a lot, loved every minute of that
experience, but sooner or later stumbled upon e-commerce and pretty
quickly realized this is something that I really could see myself
doing for the foreseeable future. And so around that time, Amazing
Selling Machine had become pretty prominent in terms of the Amazon
education space. So I was in ASM3 and of course…
Joe: I got to ask, what number were you? The early
ones were the good years. They're coming back around. They're doing
good stuff again. I talked to them last week.
Kelly: They are. They're always innovating, always
doing new stuff so, I mean I always bring that out when I'm on
podcasts or other interviews, because if it wasn't for that course
my life would be a lot different. So I met an amazing group of
entrepreneurs with the affiliate group that I joined. It was Ryan
Moran and his tribe. I met a lot of amazing people. I’m still
friends with them to this day, and really just dug in and had some
pretty early success early on. So it was really, really exciting
and I knew that this was what I was going to be focusing on,
probably forever.
Joe: How did you choose your
first product?
Kelly: I chose something that I
thought I could build a brand around. So I'm very passionate about
talking to other Amazon sellers about when they're thinking about
how to start their business. You know, people always ask, well, how
do you pick a product? First and foremost, you have to build a
brand these days. When I started, you could throw up kind of
anything and just with a little luck and…
Joe: How
many years ago was it that you started?
Kelly:
2014.
Joe: Okay.
Kelly: Yeah, so
it was a while ago. Things have drastically changed, right, in the
Amazon space?
Joe: A little bit, yeah.
Kelly: Yeah, a little bit. And so even back then;
and I had no branding experience or consumer product experience,
but I knew that this first product, I could build a brand around it
and actually wasn't a product that had a huge demand at the time,
but it was a product that I knew that I would love and that I knew
that other active women would love. So that's really what I built
the brand around and just continued to develop products; not all
winners, lots of failures…
Joe: Additional
products all within that brand, yes?
Kelly:
Exactly, that would serve a core audience and solve a problem or
need.
Joe: How many products did you launch
initially, was it just one?
Kelly: It was just
one.
Joe: And it was a success out of the gate?
Kelly: Not right out of the gate. So I launched it
in August but by that Q4, I had reached seven figures on top-line
revenue so it was really, really exciting.
Joe:
Cool, very exciting.
Kelly: Just with one product,
one variation.
Joe: And probably not working as
many hours as you did as an attorney.
Kelly: No, I
mean, I definitely was working a lot because I was still in
learning mode. I mean, the thing about Amazon and e-commerce is
you're not only learning the platform itself, but you're learning
how to source overseas, perhaps, and manufacturing and product
design and advertising and marketing. So there's a lot of different
skill sets you have to learn. So I definitely was really, really
passionate about learning as much as I could.
Joe:
When you learn all of those things, do you think it's things you
need to learn and then do yourself or do you think that there are
certain experts that you can outsource certain things to like
photography or listing creation or whatever it might be; importing
from China, dealing with different things? Are there certain
aspects to an Amazon business you feel that should be outsourced
and things that you should do in-house as the entrepreneur that
started the business?
Kelly: Oh, absolutely. In
the beginning, I think you should do everything with the exception
of maybe photography. Super specific skill sets, like graphic
design or photography certainly, you can outsource that early on.
But everything else I would say you have to learn first and
foremost yourself before you can effectively outsource it. And
there are I mean, so many great service providers now that have
obviously spawned in this Amazon industry not only software
services but also other types of services, whether it's Amazon
brand management or writing listings, things like that. So now it's
all out there, but you should really learn the components and the
strategy behind it first before outsourcing.
Joe:
How much money did you start with Kellianne?
Kelly: I started with about $5,000.
Joe: Okay, and did you have to borrow more to keep
up with inventory? Because that's the story that I consistently
hear. I started out with X and then when you dig deeper the
business didn't fund the growth. Did yours fund the growth or did
you have to go and borrow more?
Kelly: In the
beginning, it did. But yes, even if you reinvest all of your
profits, there's no way you can grow initially without getting
capital from outside sources. So about a year into it, I was able
to get Amazon Lending so that was great. But before that, it was a
lot of credit cards. And then early on, I actually was able to get
a line of credit after the first year. But until then, it was
really credit cards. And I wouldn't recommend people doing that but
sometimes it's just a necessary evil to get where you need to go.
Joe: Yeah, I was playing golf with a mentor years
ago before I grab my head and one of the things he said to me was
get a line of credit set up now; before you need it, get that line
of credit set up because you never know when you're going to need
it. And I see so many people that are struggling to keep up with
purchasing more and more inventory for growth or developers if it's
a SaaS business because they don't have the ability to stroke a
check when it’s necessary. They go hunting for that line of credit
when they need it as opposed to getting it set up beforehand so I
think it's great to get it set up beforehand. So you hit six
figures you said by the end of Q4 your first year…
Kelly: Seven figures, I was very lucky. Yeah.
Joe: And did a million in revenue in 2004.
Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Joe: Don't you
like how I could do the seven-figure translation to a million? That
was really; okay, all right. Anyway was it all with one SKU or did
you add additional SKUs as well?
Kelly: By that
next quarter of 2015 then I started adding more SKUs, but it was
really just on one product. And so that talk about funding the
inventory for that, I got to say it was just a lot of luck. I was
able to forge a really strong relationship with my supplier very
early on in China without ever having met him. And he gave me terms
once he saw that this thing; and that normally doesn't happen that
early on in the relationship.
Joe: No. Yeah, I
know.
Kelly: He was able to give me terms. So
that's another way that I was able to fund that growth so quickly
that that first year.
Joe: Yeah, if you can get to
China, folks, we did a podcast with Athena Severi from China Magic
and before that with Dan from Titan Network all about negotiating
terms with your Chinese manufacturers, and it does exactly what
Kellianne did, which was it gives you more cash flow for buying
more inventory. And if you can get terms, it's a lot better than an
Amazon Loan because the interest rate is very different. It's
nonexistent in most cases. During that initial journey Kellianne if
we summarize things so far, you took ASM3, you invested $5,000, you
did a million dollars in revenue. Sounds easy, but I'm sure it
wasn't, right?
Kelly: It was and I know it sounds
easy and like I said, there was a lot of luck in there too. I'm not
going to like take credit that it was just all my superpower
genius. But I did have tremendous tenacity because between the time
that I launched the product in August, it was like pushing a
boulder uphill; August, September, October, November. It wasn't
really till November that it really took off. And I had the
foresight and maybe just stupidity to order a bunch of inventory in
anticipation of Q4 and early on recognize that I could market this
product as a gift in addition to just the primary keywords that
were related to the product. So that was something that I did very
early on and that allowed me to scale too because I was able to
secure top positioning for keywords such as gifts for women, top
Christmas gifts for women, things like that, very early on. So all
of that came from me putting in the hard work of learning and
masterminding, I can't underestimate the power of masterminding as
well. I found a small group of; there were all guys, actually, I
was the only girl. They are all amazed…
Joe: So
you were in charge essentially, right?
Kelly:
Yeah, sort of but we just were kindred spirits and we became very
close and we would meet once a week and we were all building Amazon
businesses, others went on to build SaaS businesses and all other
types of businesses. They're all super successful entrepreneurs and
that really made a huge difference in making me feel like I could
really do this because I had other people in my corner so that was
all.
Joe: There's nothing more valuable than that
and it didn't cost you anything. It sounds like there are groups
that can get together just to help share information or you can
join more formal groups like eCommerceFuel or EcomCrew Premium
things of that nature.
Kelly: Exactly.
Joe: I think it's incredible. So let's talk money;
ASM3, launched million dollars in revenue within the first year,
you must be rolling in cash flow, yes?
Kelly: No,
absolutely not.
Joe: I knew the answer to that.
Kelly: I wish.
Joe: How much did
you; other than distributions just to make you feel good to pay
taxes that were going to be due, did you put yourself on payroll or
take any money out of the business for you and your family?
Kelly: No, not the first couple of years I did
not. And I was again, lucky that I had a husband who had a
full-time career and that's the money that we relied on to support
our family. So starting this business, that wasn't the mindset that
we were going to do this to support our family. This was hopefully
something that we could build into something bigger and perhaps
fuel some bigger investing goals and things like that.
Joe: So you would not recommend someone listening
quit their job and they've got $10,000 and they're going to do
$5,000 to start the Amazon business and live off the rest until
revenues start rolling; bad idea, right, because they're going to
run out of money very fast?
Kelly: Absolutely, I
would never recommend somebody quit their day job. You really need
to start any business, in my opinion, as a side hustle. I mean,
even my husband and I to this day, like right now, I'm really
getting into real estate investing and he's getting into day
trading and we're going to wait until we become masters of that and
really start making significant sums of money before he would ever
consider quitting his job.
Joe: Yeah, good advice.
All right, so 2016 rolls around how do things go? Did you have any
rocky periods where you thought this isn't for me or did revenue
just continue to climb?
Kelly: Oh, no. There was a
lot of rocky periods. So back then there was no brand registry,
there was no; just counterfeiters galore and the initial product
that I had launched all of a sudden came on everybody's radar. I
can't remember if by then there were tools such as Jungle Scout or
things like that to look at what sales revenue these products were
doing. But it definitely; people caught on and started copying my
exact listings, the exact product. I mean, certainly, I didn't have
any proprietary rights. The product was a private label product,
but definitely, competition grew and revenue; I was able to
maintain revenue because I diversified my keyword traffic and
wasn't going with what everybody else is going for. Slowly but
surely the market grew. But my market share also grew with it and
then declined at some point because so many competitors came in.
Joe: Did your margins tighten; did you have to
drop the price too?
Kelly: Yes, I did. I remember
actually, so Q4 of my first year of selling, I think I sold that
particular product at a price point of I think as high as $35. And
now if you were to look at this product on Amazon it ranges between
$10 and maybe $17 tops.
Joe: Wow.
Kelly: Yeah, and that happens. I mean you don't
get to; that product was still a winning product by the time I sold
my business but I knew that this couldn't sustain me forever. I
needed to obviously continue rolling out products, right?
Joe: And that's how you combatted it; you
continued to roll out new SKUs?
Kelly: Yes,
absolutely.
Joe: How did you determine what to do
next in terms of SKU expansion?
Kelly: I did make
a lot of mistakes there. I launched a lot of products that failed.
Joe: How many? Just out of curiosity.
Kelly: How many failures?
Joe:
Yeah, after the initial launch out of the next 10, how many were
successes, and how many were failures?
Kelly: I
would say I was probably at a 50:50 rate.
Joe:
That’s good.
Kelly: I would have liked it to be
higher. And I think nowadays, with all of the tools that are
available and with the mindset that you have to cut losers quickly;
that was my biggest downfall, is it was so hard for me to give up
on a product that I spent not only time but a lot of money on
developing and then to just let it go. That was really hard for me.
I was emotionally tied and that's one area that if I had cut those
losers quicker, I would have freed up my cash flow and been able to
expand and scale a lot quicker and more efficiently.
Joe: Let's go into that a little bit further.
Let's define a loser in terms of products. Is it one that is
negative profit-wise or is it at 5% profit where the others are at
43% profit? How do you determine what a loser is and then what
action do you take with it?
Kelly: Well, it also
depends on the time period. So when you're launching a product;
everybody has their own time frame, but I kind of give it a
three-month cycle of pushing it out, launching, ranking it,
advertising, heavy on advertising so you're usually in the red. At
least I was okay with being in the red at that point, but then it
should start to pick up after that if it's going to be a winning
product. If you've done everything right with your launch, and
ranking strategy, it should just start to kind of take off on its
own, really.
Joe: A three month period is that
what you're okay?
Kelly: Yeah, about three months.
Joe: Okay.
Kelly: At least for me
back then. I would say now it’s probably a longer time window. I
would say probably about six months. But there becomes this like
intuitive sense of you're still continuously pushing a boulder
uphill with your nose rather than it's starting to gain some
traction and go downhill. And so you've got to know when is that
point to cut it off and it definitely took me a lot of failed
products and a lot of wasted money and time to finally realize.
Even up until when I sold my business; I mean, the buyer who bought
my business, there were quite a few SKUs that he was just like I
don't want to continue with these because these are just not making
enough profit. They were profitable but not making enough profit.
So everybody has their own standards.
Joe: So
yeah, there's SKU balance that offsets risk. If you've got one SKU
doing 60% or 70% of your revenue, some buyers will perceive it as
more risk other buyers will perceive it as less work, and they like
that.
Kelly: Yeah.
Joe: How do
you; I mean, if you're at a six month period now in your assessment
of really it takes that long to push that boulder uphill until it's
profitable and then you determine whether or not you get to keep
that SKU that you've worked so hard on or if it's not profitable
enough and you move on. How often are you launching SKUs? It sounds
like you're probably needing to launch them every couple of months
just to keep up and stay ahead of the game. Is that the case or is
that something you recommend?
Kelly: Yeah, it
definitely depends on your product mix and what your revenue goals
are and what capital you have to work with and your cash flow; all
those things. But ideally, if you could be launching a new product
I would say at least every quarter but there are sellers out there
that are launching products every week or every two weeks. It just
depends. I did not have nor did I want to have some big, huge
behemoth of a business where I had a million employees and I was
doing all the product design in the beginning; myself, along with
my manufacturers, maybe hiring some outside design people to create
changes to existing products to make them better. That was always
kind of my MO. And really, you have to have a certain amount of
capital that is allocated to new product development and know where
that line is because then you don't want to let your other product
suffer either and that's what's bringing cash in and keeping the
lights on, right? So there's a fine balance there and I really do
think that comes down to cash flow management; knowing your cash
flow.
Joe: And that's something so many people
fail at. I probably looked at 8,000 profit and loss statements over
the last eight, almost nine years now, and I'll be honest with you,
probably 70% of them are inaccurate; wrong cash accounting, not
using Quick Books or Xero, but the audience knows that. I know
that's my thorn in my side. Let's talk about favorite tools. I
mean, you obviously have figured out the Amazon game. You must have
used some tools along the way. Have there been any that have stood
out that you kind of you think must have? I mean, you mentioned
Jungle Scout a few minutes ago. What tools do you use in your
Amazon business or recommend as you work with new Amazon owners now
to help them fine-tune their business and get it ready to sell?
Kelly: Well, I wouldn't say I would at this point
in time recommend a specific tool because there's a lot of
competitors in the Amazon SaaS space, right? But you want a good
tool for first and foremost, keyword research and keyword tracking.
So, for example, Helium10 is a great one for that. But there are
many others out there that are very good. So I'm not going to say
that Helium10 is the best. They are one of the best and I like that
tool a lot. And then you're going to want to have a tool for
launching and ranking. These days that's all about rebates and so I
recommend Six Leaf. My good friend Joe Junfola created Six Leaf and
he's got a very new and exciting rebate option in there now and I'm
helping my friend Paul Miller with his business in using that.
Joe: Really? He's my friend, too.
Kelly: What's that? Yes, your friend too; our good
friend.
Joe: Our friend.
Kelly:
Yeah, and so if you don't have outside traffic that you can send to
your listings and have like a system for that, you definitely are
going to need to do some I would say giveaways but these days that
means rebates. And so there are other platforms that can do that
but that's the one I recommend for that. And then Helium10
basically has all the other components that I would recommend, such
as product research and keyword tracking. There are so many
different tools out there and they've all kind of evolved over time
and they all kind of overlap and what was most frustrating to me by
the time that I sold my company is I had so many different tools.
And even though they did a lot of the same functions, one did one
better than the other and so I felt like I just had a lot of bloat
in there and a lot of things that I could cut out. And so I wish
somebody would just like focus on one thing and just do it right.
Joe: Yeah, because if you wasted a thousand
dollars a month, that's going to cost you an awful lot in the sale
of your business.
Kelly: Yeah.
Joe: Can we talk about rebates for just a second?
I want you to educate me and educate the audience because a rebate
to me; from a novice standpoint and I don't sell on Amazon, I did
once upon a time but it’d be a conflict for me now as I see it.
Plus, I don't ever want to import from China.
Kelly: I don't blame you.
Joe:
Yeah, I don't want to; I was at Helium10 back when it was a man he
had Illuminati Mastermind and I was at the event. It was in Cancún
and somebody was up on stage and she was literally talking about
importing from China, talking literally about the thickness of the
corrugated box that your products have to be in. And I swear to God
I felt sick three times and I thought never will I import from
China. Rebates, you're giving something away. They're getting a
discount back or they're doing a review and they're getting a
discount. Explain how it worked because it sounds like it's
definitely against terms of services depending upon how it's used.
Kelly: Now, I don't think it's against terms of
services. I mean there's a lot of rebate services out there now.
Joe: What is a rebate?
Kelly: A
rebate is the purchaser gets to purchase the products and then they
get reimbursed the full amount usually to be most effective or it
could be some percentage of that amount. So traditional retailers
have been doing rebates for years. I mean, it's a very common thing
in marketing.
Joe: So there's no hey, we'll give
you 100% refund for review it's just buy it and we're giving you
your money back and that improves the algorithm rankings; organic
rankings.
Kelly: It’s a keyword ranking strategy.
I would not use it as a review strategy; absolutely not.
Joe: Yeah, okay the review strategy definitely
gets against terms of services. Okay, thank you. I needed to hear
that.
Kelly: I mean, I wouldn't say it's
necessarily against terms of service if you're asking for a review
after the fact. But it just can be on that blurred line that you
could potentially; and I haven't heard of anybody getting taken
down for this but if you were to rebate a customer and then after
the fact ask for a review then Amazon could potentially look at
that as gaming the system. So you just want to be really careful
and I would just recommend that sellers don't ask reviews for
customers that they've given rebates to.
Joe: What
about is it cheaper or should it be a dual strategy of sending
traffic from outside; buying traffic on Facebook that would drive
directly using a keyword directly to the Amazon page, is that going
to have a similar effect as rebates, cost less, cost more, or would
you recommend a dual strategy of both of those or have you not sent
traffic from outside sources like Facebook?
Kelly:
Well, that's a great question, Joe, but the rebate is just kind of
like the end result of what the customer is getting but the traffic
and the quality of the traffic is the most important thing. So a
lot of these rebate services that are out there, they're just for
using the same audience that they've built on Facebook over and
over again. And Amazon now is so sophisticated they can tell that
all that traffic is coming from the same source that's just this
incestuous pool. So you really want to be careful of the services
that you use. And ultimately, the best way is always to build your
own list, to have your own audience whether that's a mini chat list
or an email list or if you're a master of Facebook Marketing and
you know how to target and you know what kind of audiences are
really going to go and actually buy your product and if you have
enough profit margin built into your product to do Facebook
advertising. That's a whole another thing in and of itself. But for
ranking purposes, you need to send high-quality traffic and a lot
of these ranking or rebate services you just have to be careful of
where they're getting their traffic from.
Joe:
Okay, so far we've established you as an Amazon expert; one that's
been there, done that. I had to ask a couple of questions; dumb
questions, if you will, to get us to where we are right now. Let's
talk about digital shelf strategy, your business, where you're
going to actually help Amazon sellers. If somebody out there in the
audience is thinking that they want to exit their business someday
in the future, or if they're just struggling and they're barely
able to keep up with inventory demands, not taking any money out of
the business and they're pulling their hair out, how are you going
to be able to help them?
Kelly: Great question. I
started digital self-strategy when I was still a seller because
I've over the years, I love Amazon. I live, breathe, eat, sleep,
Amazon. I still do. And I would get questions from people anywhere
from one-off questions to people wanting me to help them with their
businesses. And so I have been very, very generous I feel like with
my time wanting to help people. But sometimes if it needs to be a
little bit more work or more time spent with somebody then I set up
this agency just so I could have a way to work with sellers
ongoing. And so between that and then another new business that I
started with, Paul Miller, Amazing Exits, the consulting piece of
that is really helping sellers with being able to look at their
businesses holistically and help them figure out what are the
strengths and weaknesses of that business. So kind of like a SWAT
analysis and being able to help them with the things that are going
to really move the needle and increasing the value of their
business, whether or not they ever want to sell it because if you
increase the value of your business, you're going to be spending
out more cash flow. It's going to make you healthier in the long
run. And then it'll certainly make it a lot more attractive to a
potential buyer someday if you've got all your financials in order
and you've got a really healthy profit margin and ROI and all the
other things that go into having a valuable and sellable business.
So it's a one-stop-shop, really, in terms of being able to look at
a business, identify what are its strengths and weaknesses. For the
weaknesses, we want to connect them with the resources that are
going to help them fix those weaknesses and then ultimately be kind
of their white-glove concierge along the way to a successful exit.
Joe: And the Amazing Exits Podcast, that's where
you're going to talk to people that have actually sold their
businesses and have those resources, those experts on as well.
Kelly: Yes, that's going to be both. I mean, we
are looking for as many sellers as we can who have exited so we
definitely want to have those as guests on. But we're also
featuring top experts such as yourself to talk about exit planning.
We're really trying to make exit planning sexy. This is what I say
all the time and to really…
Joe: Good luck.
Kelly: Well, we're very passionate about it. And I
think that if we couch it in terms of making your business more
valuable now, like do you want more money now in your bank account
and your pocket to feel your life, to feel your investments? Well,
that's what it takes to build a successful business. And you might
not ever want to sell it, but you should be building a sellable
asset and realize why you're doing this.
Joe:
You're preaching to the choir. Making exit sexy again or sexy to
begin with is; I had David Wood on the podcast and one of his
visions was for people that are planning to eventually sell their
business to imagine themselves on the beach doing whatever they
want because they've got enough money in the bank to live off of
and that's the sexy part of it. Or if you're building a better
business, it's kicking off more cash flow. You are struggling less.
You're able to do the things that you want because you've got the
money and that part is sexy as well. Accounting makes most people's
eyes bleed. It's the foundation of understanding cash flow and
running your business successfully to get a strong exit. As you
know, Kelly, anyone listening that owns any kind of online business
at this time odds are that their business is their most valuable
asset. Also, if it's an e-commerce business that's growing odds are
that more than 50% of the money they'll ever make from that
business will come the day that they sell it. All of that combined
should kick start them into wanting to do more exit planning or
coaching or training or things; whatever you want to call it, just
getting in shape. As you want to work out and get your body in
shape you should exercise your exit strategy muscles so that you're
in better shape for your eventual exit because you will have a
better path to it, a better exit as well, and be better off
afterwards so that you can all go on to your next adventures,
whether it be start another online business or do what Kelly is
doing which is consulting and helping other people or where she was
just a few years ago.
Kelly: I couldn't agree
more. That’s so well said. And I would just add to that then, I
truly believe, Joe, that one of the fastest ways to build wealth is
to build a business and in this case an Amazon business and sell
it. And that's the word that I want to get out to people, is that
this is, like you said, your most valuable asset, most likely. And
I didn't retire after I sold my business. I made a nice chunk of
change and now I'm able to invest that into cash-producing assets
but I will never stop being an entrepreneur. But I have so much
freedom; clarity now that I didn't have when I was on that hamster
wheel of running the business. So I want to just be able to express
that to other sellers that there is another option to get off the
hamster wheel and you can sell and do this again if you want so
you’ll have a lot more freedom and peace of mind.
Joe: And cash in the bank throughout though.
Kelly: Yes.
Joe: Great. Kelly,
thanks so much for joining the Quiet Light Podcast. I appreciate
it. We’ll put URLs up in the show notes for people who want to
reach out. Kelly is there any other way that they can or should
find you?
Kelly: Yes, absolutely. They can connect
with me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active over there. @KellianneFedio
on Facebook and then they can also go toAmazingExits.com and sign
up for our email list for when we get ready to launch the podcast
later in August most likely.
Joe: All right, she
rolled her eyes a little bit here folks for those not watching.
She’s got a hopeful goal of August. I think it’s going to be great
whenever you launch it. If it takes an extra few weeks is not a big
deal. Kelly, thanks for being in the Quiet Light Podcast. I
appreciate it.
Kelly: Thank you so much, Joe.