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The Amazon Files, hosted by Kristin Ostrander, Amazon business strategist and one of the founders of Mommy Income, hits the airwaves every Tuesday with the real truth about selling on Amazon. This show isn’t about sugar-coated reality. It’s real truth - the good, the bad and the ugly - shared with practical action steps and strategies to help both new and experienced sellers tackle the world’s largest retail sales platform.

Sep 12, 2022

Do you want to make more money?

I mean, why not? 

BUT do you know what it takes to produce more profit in your business? 

Today, I'm going to give you some practical steps to help increase your bottom line, but they're going to be a little bit outside of the box. There is one essential skill that you need, in order to increase your profit. Did you know there are certain things that are costing you money and ruining your profitability because they're taking too much time and too much energy?

I'm calling this finding the holes in your bucket and plugging them. The holes aren't always financial and many times are actually mental blocks. They are us getting in our own way and they're just plain and simple lack of organization

Most people struggle in one area or another when it comes to organization, which I believe it is the number one business essential skill that you need in order to increase your profits. If you're disorganized, you're losing money left and right, you just don't know it. This episode of the Amazon Files is all about practical ways to get and stay organized when it comes to your Amazon business here.

Example: Don't be so disorganized that it takes you 2 hours to do something that literally could have taken you 30 seconds. Listen to the full podcast to hear the story.

I too struggle with holes in my bucket and profitability in my business. However when I notice that it’s happening, I take action, because I don't want to lose two and a half hours looking for a piece of paper, a very important one.The idea here is that when we aren't organized, we spend more time, energy and money getting ourselves out of trouble that we should never been in. I should have never had to spend two and a half hours looking for a piece of paper.

Have you ever had a never again moment where you do something and you're so frustrate and annoyed. You tell yourself, never again, will I do that? 

I'm going to share multiple ways for you to boost your profitability by getting organized. If I were to ask you how you do a certain task, would you have an answer? Do you have a method by which you operate on a regular basis? Are you a fly by night, immediate in the moment? Are you a planner? Even my planner super organized friends, struggle in some way. Maybe they're really good at organization, but they are worrywarts and they can't pull the trigger. We all have something that we struggle with and so if you don't struggle with organization, then come give us all your tips, cuz we need it.

The first thing about organization is literally stopping and analyzing your process. So I'm going to challenge you to take a few minutes after this episode, of course, and take your notes or listen to it as you're doing it and press pause. Then with fresh eyes, walk into your inventory processing area and think about what you do first, second, and third.  Write that down. And the question is, do you do it the same way every time? And if your answer is, no, my question is why?

If you can save even 10 minutes of your process by organizing it differently, just three times a week, that's half an hour of your life you got back. Spend five minutes. Write down your processes for your stuff. Where does it go? How do you physically process your inventory? Where do you store it? How do you scrape the stickers? Where are your tools?

Organize your space and give it a permanent home. If you have permanent homes for stuff, but they never end up there, the best way to trick yourself into putting things back where they belong is to pretend that it's not your space. Our brains are very adaptive and we're really smart people so pretending is kind of a way of tricking our brain into thinking that something's real. So just for a second, pretend that it's not your space. If you came to my office and you used my tape gun, would you just leave it on the table? You wouldn't because we tend to respect other people's space more than our own. However if you pretend for a second that you are hired help and you were here to do a job, you would come in, you would find the tools, you would use them and you would put them back where they go when you're finished because it's not your space.

Organization creates efficiency. Efficiency makes you can do the same tasks faster, which means you have more of your precious time to do whatever you want, including making more money. The next thing about this organization is documenting the processes. Take a queue from corporate America and create SOPs standard operating procedures for your business. One step at a time, 15 minutes, twice a week. When you're documenting your processes, you should have a step-by-step to refer to. Write out “Do this first, this second, etc”  as if you were teaching it to a 10-year-old. If for some reason you are unavailable, you don't want the whole ship to sink because you weren't organized. 

This concept can be overwhelming. I understand that and I am overwhelmed sometimes just talking about these things, BUT you've got 15 minutes to make a list of the processes that you have. If you haven't gotten my 15-minute hustle guide, you need to download that and get the book and listen to it and pay attention to it.

The next practical step to increasing your profitability is by organizing your thoughts. How do I want to organize my day so that I'm not ping-ponging all over the place? Then I'm actually thinking about the task and focusing on the task with intention. Part of this comes with making a schedule that can be flexible and fluid, but knowing what you will be doing and how much time you plan on spending on that task or that project will help you feel less overwhelmed and more productive.

Your actions are going to follow your thought process. So here is another way to organize your thoughts. The old-fashioned way! Get a pen and paper or your phone for note-taking. I don't know about you, but when I lay down at night, I remember everything that I didn't get done and it floods my head, the moment I'm trying to lay down and go to sleep. My solution was to put a notebook  next to my bed. If I feel like there's something that I really need to remember, I write it down and then I turn the light off and go to sleep.

Another thing to help organize your thoughts is to take breaks. We don't always have to be on hustle, beast, fast mode all the time. It's really healthy for you to take breaks. Five minutes of a break is not going to affect your whole day. It will actually make it better. You need to give yourself some mental breaks. It doesn't have to be a 30-minute walk. You can literally just get up out of your chair, walk to a mailbox and walk back. Just give yourself a break. When I need a brain break or I need a time out, I'll get my car and drive.

How organized are you? Do you know exactly what you're doing tomorrow morning? If you do these organizational things that I'm teaching you right now, even 15 minutes a day for this, the rest of this month I guarantee you will see the results.

If you want to make more money in your business, all you have to do is increase your efficiency. Then you'll be making the same money in less time, which means you get a raise. So congrats. I'm proud of you for whatever step you're about to take. 

 

RESOURCES:

15 Minutes Hustle

Merchant Words

Helium 10

Wholesale Bundle System

 

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Until next week…keep on bundling…

-KO