When Amy The Amazon Queen (name changed for privacy) first came to me for business coaching, she was making 400K in her Amazon FBA retail business. She wanted to get the Amazon part of her business under control, because it was taking over her life, and get to where she had time to focus more on her passion for health coaching.

She was ready to not be so weighed down by Amazon and to give herself the freedom to play with a more fulfilling path.

What happened in just one year was that we turned her 400K Amazon business into 800K. In this case study, I’m going to share with you how we did that.

This is what you’ll be reading about:

• Part 1 – The Design: I’m going to share with you how Amy is energetically designed and how her design gives us clues to her success.
• Part 2 – The Before: Where she started at, then
• Part 3 – The Goal: To know where she wanted to go
• Part 4 – The Practical Applications: How the plan was implemented
• Part 5 – The Results: What she experienced in 1 year

Part 1 – The Design

All strategies are not created equal. We are all unique in our own way, so why would we think that a cookie cutter strategy to making money would work for everyone? They don’t. When you understand this, you can understand why it’s deeply frustrating to keep trying the next “guaranteed to work” system, only to have it crumble.

What if you’re not designed to work that way?

There are amazing clues as to how you’re designed to work found inside your Human Design Chart and your Element. Below I’m going to show you a few things about Amy’s.

Human Design Chart

One of the first things I do with every client, is pull their Human Design chart. It’s the energetic blueprint of who they are and who they’re designed to be. Here is Amy’s:

 

What her chart shows us is that she is a very powerful, deeply intuitive, and incredibly busy Emotional Manifesting Generator. She needs to be doing lots of things, with lots of irons in the fire, responding to what she intuits from her gut as correct for her and then sleeping on that decision to process it before moving full steam ahead.

Her work is deeply connected to her G Center, which means she needs to deeply love her work and the direction she’s going in.

She also has the Gate 5 defined, which shows us that she needs daily rhythm and patterns put into place for her to thrive at her best.

Element

Next, we look at her Element, which is Earth.

Those who are the Earth Element love to have structure and all of the steps put into place. They are meticulous and also not afraid to make bold moves. They are also methodical in their movements. Both as their body movements and in their business movements.

They need less crazy and more calm.

They are also the first ones to be drawn to things like minimalism because they need the space to think through things first without all of the visual and mental clutter getting in the way of their process. They need things to be clean and everything to be in its place. Both in their surroundings and in their business.

 

Now that you have an understanding of who she, the next part will make sense as to why Amy was frustrated with her business.

Part 2 – The Before

Making 400K a year selling things on Amazon sounds amazing right?

Right.

This was also true for Amy, until she realize that the cost of products, shipping, and storage fees bring her total net profit down to about 3K per month (32K a year), making it also very frustrating.

She had the money to purchase all new inventory and keep the business running at a high money-making level, but most of the money was just being reinvested into the business, not leaving much for her to live off of each month.

She enjoyed seeing the big numbers and going shopping, but with over 100 product listings to manage, maintain inventory on, and always feeling pressure to find the latest and greatest thing that will sell, things were overwhelming and not fun anymore.

So, my question to her was…Is it worth it?

Is all that work of 12+ hours a day with minimal net profit worth all that time and effort? She could go get a “regular” job for that income and not have to deal with the enormous amount of stress and chaos of running a multi six figure business.

So, was it worth it to her?

I had to ask this of her to make sure moving forward so that we both knew if it was a real yes or if it needed to be chopped. Did she have the deep yes to continue on?

Yes, yes she did.

Knowing that it was going to be worth moving forward for her, we a plan that felt good, and each week with our calls she knew exactly what she was working on next.

In summary, this is where she was starting from:

• 400K a year in sales through Amazon
• Working 12+ hours a day
• Less than 3K take home per month

Part 3 – The Goal

Having the end goal in mind was crucial.

The Goal was to get the Amazon business under control to free up time for the health coaching business.

What did that look like exactly?

If she was already working 12+ hours a day on Amazon, then creating a new definition of what she wanted her days to look like were in order.

She decided that she wanted to work 6 hours during the day while the kids were in school and then a few hours in the evening to wrap things up. She wanted to get her days down to 8 hours a day total so she could also have time to spend with her family when they were home.

This meant she needed to work smarter, not harder on her business.

In summary, this was her goal:

• Systematize Amazon business
• Have more take home money
• Work less hours per day

Part 4 – Practical Applications

Using the Kaizen Method of small steps to make big improvements, there were a lot of little steps that she implemented to clean things up and create structured systems around what she was doing, but there is one thing that made the biggest difference in her business.

Setting rules for each product.

We went through and looked at her inventory to see what was selling, and what wasn’t selling, applying the 80/20 rule. Asking the question of “What products are generating the top 20% of the sales?”

Then from there, seeing how much profit each of those products in the 20% was creating per sale and set the rules up based on those numbers.

Amy was surprised to see what products were her top sellers and realized she was missing the boat with one product in particular that kept selling out and going out of stock.

One thing with Amazon is that if your product continues to go out of stock (if you have it stored in their warehouse), your product listing increases in ranking, making it harder to get sales when you do have it in stock. The higher the listing, the less it sells.

It’s a vicious cycle that she wanted to stop and so she decided to focus on maximizing that one product’s potential by creating a solid fulfillment system around it to ensure it no longer went out of stock with Amazon. This meant kicking production into high gear and even moving to pallet shipments.

In summary, this was the practical application:

• Implemented 80/20 rule
• Determined which products met the new rules
• Create a system to keep top sellers in stock and improve listings

Part 5 – The Results

In one year of putting the practical applications above into place, bit by bit, week by week, and fine tuning her structure and system, she pulled the year end numbers and shared them with me.

We were both pleasantly shocked and surprised to see that her gross income had jumped from 400K to 800K and her net income had increased to almost 10K per month.

And because she was focusing on the top 20%, her hours in her day were more focused and reduced to her goal of 8 hours a day.

She was also able to hire virtual assistants to continue running and improving the system, and start bringing in time to play in her health coaching passion project.

To say she was thrilled that she had achieved her goal and more is an understatement. She was ecstatic!

Without the small steps that she implemented week by week, the clear focus she craved, and the honoring of how she’s designed to work, she would still be stuck inside all that frustration and chaos. With our collaborative monthly coaching, she far surpassed what she thought was possible.

In summary, this is where she was:

• 400K per year in Amazon sales
• Out of control inventory
• 12+ hours of working per day
• Less than 3K take home income per month

This is where she is now:

• 800K per year in Amazon sales
• Less inventory to manage that is now under control
• Working 8 or less hours a day
• Take home income at 10K per month

I am beyond thrilled for Amy. She had already started down a path that felt good to her. We verified that through our deep conversation. It just needed some focused fine-tuning to get it to where she wanted it to be. It’s now more than she could have ever hoped for.

Now that we have created a solid foundation, all that is left to do is grow from here.

Hugs,

P.S. If you’d like to become my next case study and to have a business alignment experience, schedule a time to talk with me.