In Depth with Kevin King

Jodea Pearl Abalos
August 16, 2019

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It wasn’t always roses and honey. In this episode, an honest in depth discussion with Kevin King sharing what it takes to be a King in Amazon and the struggles he went through to be a Master. Plus an important tip at 1:28:00 of the podcast that all sellers mus do ASAP!

A bit of a background

Never worked for a corporation.
Worked in a fast food as his first job, then delivered pizzas in college.
Started selling at 3 years old and his first product was selling bubble gums.
Moved lawns and made $100 a week as an 11 years old
Used his money to buy his games as a kid.
Always trying to make money in everything he did.

Did you get frustrated with people, waiting for them to catch up with you?

Saw some people as lazy or unproductive.
And got frustrated with people because Kevin saw ways things could be better.
Kevin has now 6 sources of income.
He has 2 Amazon businesses, 1 partnership, 2 trainings and a calendar business.
Learned coding early in his time and started to teach people how to use internet and code. This is the beginning of his journey into teaching other people.
Started using listings at an early date.
Started creating manuals on how other people can accomplish things.
These small steps lead towards what he does today.
His first official business is selling gaming cards.
Kevin discovered the power of marketing using lists.

After College

Leveraged direct mail in sending out flyers and mailings
Sent out mailings to parents to send care packages to their college kids.
Sent out flyers to a targeted list for selling anything.
Developed employee manual in his business.
His first business failed due to lack of capital but he learned a lot from it.
In ’92 to ’94, he found Compuserve and the power of internet and started his online business printing trading cards. This business did not continue
This evolved to the calendar business he has today.

The Calendar Business

The calendar business is a bit seasonal– they go hot on November and December. Start selling in October and done by early January.
Mostly men buyers.
Travels to different places for this calendar business.
Business evolved in mid 90’s.
They now have a DVD club or behind the scene videos (not pornographic).
They had behind the scene videos shown on TV networks. But no longer active cash flow. YouTube ended this.
The calendar business evolved to coffee table catalogs and outfit catalogs.
YouTube Impact: reduced staffing

Didn’t remit taxes in that business and the IRS caught up.
Avoiding taxes is straight up stealing and the company had to pay and was hurt.
Had to file bankruptcy, sold the assets and started a new company.

It wasn’t always roses and honey..

YouTube killed the DVD and video production part of the business.
Bankruptcy stayed on his record for 10 years.
Kevin was unable ti buy a house or take out a loan.
Also had to pay a lot of back taxes.
Leveraging payroll for cash flow. It was difficult.
Lesson: be very careful and be very lean. People depend 100% on you.

Growing Pains

There are people out there who are successful with the Amazon business who don’t even talk about the pains of growing the business.
A good example of growing pains in Amazon is Ash Thompson’s podcast episode.
These stories has to be told. It is not like people started with nothing and grown it into millions — that is bullshit.
You have to have capital in order to start a business.
People have to focus on the struggles and learn from the growing pains.
The people who have won lottery tickets or who were in the right place and the right time are very few. That is very difficult to repeat winning chances.

Strategies

Hire good people and partner with great people.
Go to people who have things in place and let them do the things for you.
Let them use their traffic, let them use their resources which are in place, for your business.
Mix business with pleasure when you can.
You can get the best education from travelling.
Get a really good lawyer when in trouble.
Travel while you can walk and enjoy the sights. Invest in this.
Have freedom and be your own boss.
Structure it in a way that you can do what you want.
Spend your money on experiences.
Do a lifestyle business — be able to do what you want when you want.

Content is King

When you own content, you can always make money out of it.
Keep your content and make sure you license it.
Kevin made money by re-purposing content.
This allowed Kevin to travel and make money from 2007-2014.

Starting in Amazon

Amazon is a cash flow business.
Kevin wanted to do it differently — he started with the FBA model.
He stumbled across ASM course where they give four free courses and the fourth one pitches the course, and got the idea.
Kevin realized he has been doing these for years!
It was a perfect fit of all his experiences all in one.
Learned more from Facebook, YouTube and so on.
NOTE: There are courses out there who do not teach you anything.
First product: Apple watch dock
Stumbled on finding additional capital to put into business.
Loaned from an alternative loaning option.
NOTE: Make sure you have great margin if you do this.

Amazon Suspension

Account got suspended after a claim was submitted for filing a claim on missing inventory/ shipment.
Lost two weeks on that.
Finally sold all inventory and threw in the towel on that product.
LESSON: How much cash you really need in this business to be successful and there are a lot of factors out there that are out of your control.
Learn from your mistakes. Mistakes are opportunities for learning.

Prediction

The next ship is still Amazon!
It is still the best way to leverage.
It will keep on expanding and it is a real business.
It is not a passive income! Listen to Michael Hartman’s episode about this.
In 2017, Kevin was frustrated with all the misinformation and started the Freedom Ticket for new sellers. It is not a cookie cutter. It teaches you how to think.
There are so many people doing this wrong.
You’ll see major disruptions in this business.
Amazon is constantly changing!
IMPORTANT: Download ALL YOUR DATA. Go back from one year and a half. Use this as your lead magnets! There will be a time in the near future when you can not download your data.
Do what you love to do and make money doing it.

More tips

Think of stuff that people would want to buy with your best selling product.
Consumables are the best type of product to have.

Speaking Gigs

Brand new version of Freedom Ticket in October
- This is for new to medium sellers
- Not a seller hacks session.
Billion Dollar Seller Summit in Austin Texas — this is for high six figures to seven to eight figures sellers.
- Limited to 50 tickets
- Next session after this will be next year.

Join us in these key events!

September 12-14 – Sellerfest Lithuania | Check event HERE
October 1 – Birmingham Linn Academy | Check event HERE
October3 & 4 – Amsterdam PPC Congress | Check event HERE
October 17 – AmaFest Manchester | Check event HERE
October 22- 23rd – Cross Border Summit and China Magic the same week!
October 27 and 29 – Global Sources | Check event HERE
October 14-20 – India Sourcing Trip | Check event HERE