How This Veteran & Busy Dad Makes A Living With Amazon FBA

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]All right, sweet. Great to meet you in person, Dan.

[00:00:03]You're a fascinating guy because you and your wife have a successful Amazon business. You're a father and soon-to-be father of two. I'm a recently found father of one, right? Thank you, family.

[00:00:14]And you also graduated college 2 days ago. Right? So, okay, like break me down like how the heck all this works.

[00:00:20]Introduce yourself to the people and everything, but how are you getting all this stuff done? Uh well, thank you first off for let me finally share my my story.

[00:00:29]Uh I graduated 2 days ago and came to the conference because I wanted to meet you and the other Amazon sellers in the community. But, we got started just from seeing you on YouTube.

[00:00:38]>> Okay, so just YouTube content.

[00:00:39]>> did military for 10 years and >> And a veteran, there we go. So, we got the military discounts right there. You guys are watching that, it's a really good thing for Amazon arbitrage. Sorry to interrupt that, man.

[00:00:48]>> Absolutely. So, I was going to school uh using my GI Bill and during that time I was wondering what I was going to do after that. So, when I saw your videos, it was really um perfect timing. During my time in school, we were building up the business so that by the time I graduated, which is 2 days ago, we could put all of our time into doing that full-time.

[00:01:06]>> Amazon now.

[00:01:06]>> Yes.

[00:01:07]>> Yeah, yeah, cool, cool.

[00:01:07]>> Yeah, full-time sellers now. And we've just been doing it, you know, month by month trying to be better than the last month. Trying to attend uh as many classes or watch as many videos as we can, even if it's after the fact, watching the recordings, and then being actionable about the things that we were picking up. A lot of times uh I think that people watch the videos and they say that sounds good, but they don't actually do it.

[00:01:30]>> That's the only thing that makes money, bro, action, you know?

[00:01:32]>> Mhm.

[00:01:33]So, actually us putting the uh the footwork to the things that you said, even down to like s- little shipping adjustments, that made our business a lot more successful month to month.

[00:01:42]>> Yeah, cuz like when you're newer, you're only focusing on the big things. How do I source products? How do I learn how to use the softwares? Over time, you understand the big basic things, and those small details lead to more profitability. But, you don't worry about those when you're new and you get the basics start cuz you got to focus on the important things, right? So, that's like, you know, the things you see in the YouTube videos and stuff. You dig more and coaching get more specific things that really lead to the big growth over the long term, too. Now, time management cuz you are I'm a really new father. You're a new still a new father, right?

[00:02:13]Um and everything and you and your wife are running the business together, right? You have your second child on the way. That's awesome, right? What time management tips do you have for whether it's a student, parents, folks working 9-5 cuz pretty much everyone starts this stuff part time. Yeah.

[00:02:25]>> Right? I did, you did, right? Um and everything. So, break down how you're actually managing your time and all that while doing all the stuff you got going on and also building on Amazon. I want to be honest. It's uh it's probably going to be different for everyone.

[00:02:37]But for us, it's is it's really trusting each other, me and my wife. We are working from home. We're living at home.

[00:02:44]We're parenting at home. It's it's a lot of home time. So, we have to be uh really um intentional about how we're going to break up that time. Or else you could you could kind of chill all day Yeah. if you're not intentional. So, what we kind of do is just split it up in the morning. I'm typically with the baby giving my wife a little extra time because she's pregnant right now, a little more time to rest. By the time she gets up and she's taking over the baby, she knows I'm going to go into office mode. So, I'm going to go into the garage or the lab as we call it.

[00:03:11]>> on. You got to get in the lab, baby.

[00:03:12]Come on. That's when I'm working on sourcing um or checking out the back end admin stuff, making sure we don't have buyer messages or returns that we got to deal with or anything like that. Later in the afternoon, we generally come together, talk about the sourcing things or maybe we'll go out together and do a little sourcing.

[00:03:28]>> retail arbitrage and stuff.

[00:03:29]>> take the baby. Right? That's how you make your money.

[00:03:32]>> And uh and then we end generally around the same time, but basically we're creating office hours within our own life and that's helped us kind of stay organized and build the business up little by little. Okay, cool. And so, you're about a year or so into the game on Amazon. What were the really tough things uh as a beginner? Right?

[00:03:50]Obviously, bat, a lot, right? And then, what were some things that really kind of helped you make progress quick the way you did? Uh the I'd say the number one tough thing for us, and probably anyone, is understanding how to manage your uh your cash flow.

[00:04:02]>> Boom, okay. A lot of people uh I'm a little bit older than a lot of the new guys coming in. So, if you're, you know, over 20s and in your 30s, you might have some debt when you start selling on Amazon. So, managing, taking care of personal debt while building a business is something that >> It's tough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, the the the biggest thing that we had to deal with was that cash flow, trying to figure out how much to leave in the business so that it could keep growing, and then how much to take out so we could actually handle our debt. Because the cleaner your personal uh credit profile is, the more you qualify for business uh business funding, which goes into your business, uh which only grows your business. Yeah.

[00:04:40]And the thing that helped us the most was tapping in and talking to some other members in the community. Yeah. Joining those community calls. Our very first profitable, like, obviously profitable ASIN was when you started talking about Fuji.

[00:04:54]Oh. Yeah, that's a bag, right? If you know, you know, right? Yeah. If we were not a part of those calls, I would not have been able to see how one ASIN can literally change Yeah.

[00:05:03]>> it moves a thousand a month or 500 a month plus and there's, you know, under like 50 sellers or whatever, there's some serious opportunity there. Yeah, so that changed my whole outlook on it. I need to network more. I need to understand, you know, how to how to leverage high velocity ASINs versus higher profit ASINs. So, being a part like being a participating member of the community is what helped our business get to where it's at. Yeah, it's just such a difference doing this stuff on your own versus being around other people that are in the game and have thing and you know, that doesn't just look like hitting random people. What it looks like is, you know, going out and seeking the type of people you would hang out if they live locally to you. It's just 2026 and they probably live in another state, and that's all right. So, product sourcing game, there's a lot of people watching this who they understand like they understand the terms on this and softwares. They feel like they're struggling to find profitable products.

[00:05:55]Break down some tips that have been really helpful for you and your wife in the product research journey. Uh the very first thing you need to do to get better at product research is learn how to storefront stock. That's the most effective way for a new seller to actually find products they can sell and make their sales happen. And then the more sales you make the more you get ungated and so that storefront stocking method >> Yeah. Exactly. So uh once you learn how to storefront stock, I would say learning how to save those stores on a on a Excel spreadsheet and then those sellers become your your your friends in the game even if they don't know it. Because [laughter] let's say I want to go sell I'm going to just say Nike and I know that these stores are really good at Nike. Before I even go to some of those other routes, my first step is let's see what this store is selling today. Let's see what that store is selling cuz if they can sell it, I can sell it. And it's just a really easy entry way to get your sales going.

[00:06:47]>> Yeah, some sauce for you guys watching too actually. Have you seen the new Seller amp feature, the advanced search feature?

[00:06:53]Yeah, so there's some sauce for you guys. So in Seller amp the advanced search feature, if you I just posted a video about this too, but it's really cool cuz you can export list of ASINs so you could search like especially new person watching this, you can search like the pet supplies category, everything with over 10 sellers and 50 plus a month, right? So it's reseller friendly movement, right? You can export that list of ASINs and throw it into the Box Ungate Checker and that's a gangster way to see the entire category, everything that's reseller friendly, right? That you're ungated in and 2 months later, you're going to be auto ungated in way more stuff. In 6 months you're going to be auto ungated in way more stuff. Right? Like for you, when did you really see a lot more auto ungate start to hit than just like the 10% or so of ASINs the way it gets started when you're a new account?

[00:07:39]>> your program March last year.

[00:07:41]>> Yep.

[00:07:42]I would say May. Oh, so it's months. It sounds about right. Yeah, 2 to 3 months.

[00:07:46]Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right, and you just need those consistent sales, right? And then stuff starts to hit a lot quicker.

[00:07:51]But when you get started, you're just hopping around. You maybe do a big brand or two that does require documents. And that's a good thing, man. You know, you just trust the process and everything, too. Um on all that. And then how has cuz if I'm not mistaken, you guys had your first kid right about a year ago or so, right? And we're broke again. Yeah, well, [laughter] of course. But I'm like, damn, these dudes got it.

[00:08:10]And college, too. You're still in college back then. I mean, anything that's like obviously super impressive stuff and everything, too. And um you know, the community, obviously sourcing.

[00:08:18]Uh what are some things maybe that like you would tell yourself if you could go back to when you were a newer seller?

[00:08:25]Do not do it alone. Do not try to do it alone.

[00:08:28]Uh being a parent, being a student, uh whatever life throws at you. There's there's a lot of reasons that you can say you're busy and to say that you're not able to make the call. But it's extremely important to not do it alone.

[00:08:39]I'm even though I'm saying it, I'm me and my wife, we're still kind of lone wolfing it a little more than we should.

[00:08:46]Getting a part of the community and and even if you can't make it like having people doing the test with you is what I wish that I was doing a lot more sooner than I'm than I'm doing now.

[00:08:56]>> Cool. And you guys, I do think in my opinion you're doing a good job of that, too, as well. And where can people follow your Amazon journey on social media, too, as well? Uh on Instagram Ellen Darren or on YouTube. We're trying >> to do that, too. Yeah, we'll get all that stuff linked in the description, too, and then dude, super proud of what you guys have been able to do um and everything. So thanks so much for coming out in person and everything here. And then if anyone wants formal help, it's linked in the description, too. And then definitely check out these guys on uh social media, as well. And uh thanks so much for watching, guys. Thanks so much for doing the video. We'll see you guys next one.

[00:09:25]Peace.