Today I’ve got Jamie Davison on on the show, Jamie and his co-founders Jason and Brad combine to sell over $60 million per year on Amazon. He is the co-founder of AMZ Insiders, a coaching program focused on helping new sellers create their own successful Amazon business and provide insights and tips to existing sellers.

• Selling on Amazon


• How to build an Amazon business


• How Jamie and his partners business scaled very fast


• Jamies path to getting where is today


• How he quit his job and why


• Amazon strategies and secrets


• How to scale an Amazon business


• How to grow an e-commerce business


• How they are divvying tasks and diversifying


• Important networking tips


• How they plan to double their business

And much more

Free Video Training: www.AMZInsiders.com

Blog: www.AMZInsiders.net

Free Facebook Group: Amazon Insiders – FBA Sellers https://www.facebook.com/groups/AMZInsiders/

Email: Jamie.Davidson@AMZInsiders.com

DAVID ALADDIN: Great to have you on the show, Jamie.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:   Hey, thanks David. Great to be on and I appreciate you having me on.

DAVID ALADDIN:    Yeah. So can you take us to the beginning, before selling on Amazon? Where did your journey begin?

JAMIE DAVIDSON:               Sure, yeah. My journey I guess, everyone has a different path, of course. On my end, I was, way back when actually a military officer, had attended WestPoint and so. In my 20s was kind of had the military background eventually jumped into the corporate word and probably like a lot of people’s careers kind of worked up the corporate ladder the best I could so I had a—I was in banking early on, I’d been recruited over to Home Depot, so I had some retail experience there for a few years running a Home Depot store and then, I kind of fell into the education space with a big test preparation company, Kaplan.

DAVID ALADDIN: Oh, yeah.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah, yeah. And so then which great education minds and could use some help on the business side so I kind of found that space and stayed in there for a good while. Had some success there and again, worked my way up through just kind of a Senior Executive there and then was part of some private equity deals. We brought in as a Chief Operating Officer and a CEO of another company where essentially, these private equity companies are buying the company. Basically about 50 million dollar businesses or so and they hope to flip them in about four to five years. So I was kind of the hired gun through that approach, so, yeah. So I was kind of—I felt like I had this big title but at the end of the day I was a hired employee, just a senior employee to help kind of lead businesses in these spaces here.

DAVID ALADDIN:    I feel like when people amass so much money, they just create so much more money. I mean, 50 million, equity deals, and then they’re trying to flip it to 200? It’s pretty insane.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They’re trying just to take it across the river and in four or five years, probably at least sell it for double, if not more.

DAVID ALADDIN: So, how long was this before you got into Amazon? What year, you think?

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah. So I was in 2000, I mean, kind of the education run I think with Kaplan and a couple of these other companies was 2000’s, early 2000’s, up through 2013.

DAVID ALADDIN: Okay.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  And actually even through the last couple of years. Yeah, so for a while, I came down to—I’m in Atlanta here but I came down to Atlanta in 2011 and that’s where the kind of introduction to Amazon begun so to speak, yeah.

DAVID ALADDIN: Nice. You’d say like 2015?

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah, I mean, actually I had full-time jobs up until this past year.

DAVID ALADDIN: That’s awesome.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  But my co-founder Jason, he jumped in 2011 is what I’m sure we’ll talk some more about that but so I kind of was following that path while he was in it full-time, I was still kind of on these…as you’d say I have these awesome big titles which he seemed to be impressed with but I was much more impressed what he was doing actually in eCommerce and Amazon versus what I was doing.

DAVID ALADDIN: So, I’m guessing Jason got you into it, right? How’d that go?

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah. I mean Jason is a native Chinese. He’s been in the country for a long time, for about 20 years and he was a software consultant for companies like Coca-Cola and other major brands helping them with software and also kind of their back-end but I moved to Atlanta at 2011 to be the Chief Operating Officer of this tutoring company and he was literally my next door neighbor, a few feet apart from each other. At that point, he was selling cellphone accessories out of his garage at that point. So at that point, I really didn’t think too much of it.

It was—I have three sons and he has a daughter. My boys would come back over and they’d come back with an IPhone case and that kind of stuff and we’d…I’d say, “Hey where’d you get that?” and overtime it was like, “Oh, this is…” Yeah, I kind of learned this is what it does. Even then, we’d hang out a lot but it’s not like when you’re friends or neighbors, you’re not like diving into each others’ business so much in terms of what they’re doing. In some ways you’re trying to… you kind of get a feel for it but that was the beginning of it and because I think in 2011, it was still just a part-time thing for them and then in 2012 was when Jason quit his job and went all in. Well, again, I was still working through all this time but that’s when, that’s where he begun. I was kind of following the journey or kind of behind the scenes, helping sometimes, talking strategy and that kind of stuff but I was still working my full-time job.

DAVID ALADDIN: Interesting. I wish my neighbours were like huge entrepreneurs. I hope they’re not watching this but, man. They’re not like your type of neighbors.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  No, I mean, it was funny because he’s a very humble guy so usually what happened was in the house is a real nice neighborhood and everything, but the houses are really close and I would hear him out in his back deck and I’d stay up late working for my work but he was always out in his back deck speaking Mandarin or Chinese at one in the morning. And at the time, well I thought, oh, that’s interesting. That’s what he does. And I kind of thought that the reason he could do that was because he spoke Mandarin, and I thought that was like a barrier for me.

So at first, even though I was aware of how even early on, how well it was going. At first, at that point in time, I really thought that I didn’t fully recognize. Kind of what I recognized later that it’s an advantage to speak Mandarin, but it’s certainly not as I know you’re aware. It’s not a complete barrier but early on that’s what I thought so I kind of followed him along but I wasn’t thinking from day one. My wife was like, why don’t you jump in to that or at that time I was kind of looking at it like oh, that’s an interesting side gig, but as you know as I got more involved the further I realized the potential but earlier on I did not. I just kind of thought like, oh, it’s a side small little thing and it’s kind of funny, selling on Amazon, what is that?

DAVID ALADDIN: Sounds like, yeah.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:   Yeah.

DAVID ALADDIN: It’s surprising. You know how the saying goes, you’re the closest five people that you hang out with but you took it to the most literal sense with your neighbor.

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah. I mean so as we get further into it. Jason, still has a house in that neighbourhood but he’s back in just last year to really grow the business and what we’re doing. He’s over in Shenzhen in China for most of the year and I have a team here but back then, literally, it was kind of humorous. I’d go over, bring over some ice and I’d joke about teaching how to drink a rum and coke or we’d have a glass of wine late into the night and everything but we were just talking and he’d share kind of war stories as this stuff was going on but it really wasn’t intentional. A few times he would joke, oh, I should hire you as a CEO but I probably couldn’t afford you. And I was thinking, yeah, this is kind of a small retail business and right, I’ve got a family and a good paying job, so it wasn’t really my mindset at that point but I guess I’m a slow learner from that perspective, eventually, I got pretty excited about it.

DAVID ALADDIN: What do you think pushed you passed the edge like where you’re like, okay, I want to get into this as well?

JAMIE DAVIDSON:  Yeah, no, it’s funny and sometimes we’ll have Jason, he can join from China for example, but, get his perspective, too. But Jason for years would tell me and it wasn’t even just necessarily about Amazon, just as entrepreneurs, like you should totally do this, you should get into it. So we talked on his end too whether you want to do an education deal with me knowing my background on kind of for profit education. So, and I consider myself a risk taker but also I’m in my 40’s so with a family and everything else so it was hard because of the