The Making of an Amazon Queen - Sophie Howard

 I’m so pleased to introduce you to my latest guest, the Queen of Amazon, Sophie Howard.

I have been fascinated for some time about how well Amazon does as you all know it's growing at a tremendous rate.
 
 We discover in the podcast that it's grown by 44% in the last 12 months during these very interesting and challenging times.

Sophie has an interesting story to tell

In 2014 she started learning about Amazon – at this time she had a full-time job, two children and a brand-new baby and was trying to figure out how to do all this and make it work and be wonderful. She wasn’t really clear on her pathway, but she knew she wanted to work from home and have flexibility.
 
 We have a great conversation in this episode about how she came to Amazon which has been an amazing success for her including the sale of a couple of Amazon businesses, one sold after 18 months for a million dollars! It's a really wonderful and inspiring story and Sophie talks us through how she approached building her business to a point now where she lives her dream life and runs a training program to train others to do the same.
 
 I think Sophie's terrific in her approach.
 

You're going to hear lot about how she's approached creating the Amazon business, how she chooses her products, how she builds relationships with people.

I’m fascinated and impressed by what she has achieved, and I know you will be too!

In this episode we talk about entrepreneurship and the mindset of handling ambiguity.

 We talk about what isn't going to work in Amazon and what it is she's focusing on now and give some really intriguing insights into how to think about the perspective we need to take to be a success in business. I share some of my stories about how things started for me and how tough it was. And probably some of the mistakes that we made at the start as well.
 
 Sometimes the success story that we're seeing is built on some of the tougher times and mistakes we’ve made earlier and doing it really tough. And I think to respect to success, we really need to respect the story that led to that and everything that comes along with how we define success. So, I trust you enjoy this episode of perspectives with Sophie Howard, I certainly did!

 In this podcast we have delved into:

How Sophie Started with Amazon

How and why Sophie chose Amazon as her online business partner and her life before Amazon wasn’t sustaining or fulfilling her

Online marketing options
 - Sophie’s take on affiliate marketing and view of online marketing methods.

- Who can you trust on line?

- We discuss the ups and downs of online platforms

Product Selection
 - We unpack ideas on product selection for success

- Sophie explains her thinking around what makes a great product

Why you should avoid the ‘most popular’ products
  - Why it’s important not to ‘follow the mob’ when choosing products

- What kind of thinking should you adopt when choosing a product

Why you should never tell anyone what Amazon products you have sold that have made millions of dollars.
 - Sophie talks about her experiences with copycats and why you should stay low key about your products.

- How she has launched over a thousand different products

- How to keep away from the competition and embrace the low competition product niche

How she made $33,000 in a day in sales

- Working full time Sophie’s Amazon business started to take off.

- When did she decide to skip the full-time job?

- Do you have a business or a product?

Daring to dream big
 - Making the move from full time work into the business you love

- Taking risks, having courage

Adapting The E-Myth approach in business
 - How The E-Myth massively changed Sharon’s’ business The Coaching Institute

Trade Markets
 - Searching outside of China for products around the world

Intellectual property and creating supplier relationships
 

Learning from our environment

- How what can you bring to your business success from previous experiences is important -what you should pay attention to
 
 Selling the business
 - When you get a million dollars for your online business where and how do you live?
 
 Self care
 - The importance of managing self-care, balancing life and family

- Handling and tolerating ambiguity and uncertainty to figure our way through it and to give ourselves the time and the space to develop the skills in the ambiguity is how we grow.
 
 Starting out on Amazon
 - what kind of time would you need to set aside? What would your thinking need to be?