Organize Your Amazon Business (and Your Life!)

Now that you’ve cleaned up your inventory and brushed up your team’s responsibilities, it’s time to organize and implement so that you may realize your business’s true potential.

Organizing your business starts with organizing your life.

Don’t believe me? Look at it this way:

If you don’t have a clear end goal in mind, it can be difficult to know where to even start. This is why I challenge you to dive deep into asking yourself:

“What does my business really need from me right now?”

Today, I’m going to have you take this a step further. Ask yourself:

“What are the main things I must complete today - no matter what - IN LIFE?” (Note: If you’re a business owner, this includes business too.)

If you make it a point to get clear on what you desire for the future, it makes it much easier to prioritize what you need to do on the daily level.

For example, because my husband (and business partner) and I live a nomadic lifestyle and coach and consult, we’ve made it a goal for ourselves to only work 2 hours per day on our eCommerce business. Within those two hours, we’ve decided that we only want to focus on leading, delegating and strategizing with our team so that we have the rest of the day to speak to clients, travel and explore, work out, focus on new business ventures, learn and/or simply enjoy each other’s company.

What Does Your Perfect Day Look Like?

Prioritizing important things outside of our business pushes us to stay disciplined and to look outside of ourselves to make our goals a reality. It also helps create a sense of balance in our lives in order to avoid any inkling of burnout. The only way we’re able to make this happen is by having the right systems, tools and people in place.

This takes vision, planning, and structure. And believe it or not, with structure comes freedom.

Building a solid foundation in your business is a must. It’s the key to growing and scaling your business operations. Unfortunately, this is an area that way too many business owners neglect because they believe all of their attention and resources should be placed solely on monetary growth. It’s easy to measure dollar signs because you can see it and feel it in your bank account, and it’s much harder to measure foundational structure and planning-out strategy because it’s often depicted as merely maintenance work and can be a slow process. This foundational structure and strategic thinking, however, is what sets the tone for long-term business success, opens up the time and attention you and your team need for activities that will move the needle monetarily, and creates the opportunity for an exit strategy, if you wish.

What Could Your Amazon Strategy Look Like?

Let’s use your Amazon business as an example.

First ask yourself, “Am I an implementer or a strategic thinker?” and “Am I working in the trenches, or am I focusing on activities that will take my business to the next level?”

If you’re an implementer working in the trenches, ask yourself “Am I the only person capable of doing this?” If your answer is “No,” this is a sign that you should find a way to automate and/or delegate. And before you start thinking to yourself that you’re not ready or you can’t afford to delegate, weigh the opportunity cost of not putting a system in place or not delegating. Be honest with yourself…can you afford not to?

If you’re focused on forward-moving activities and coming up with strategies that will take your business to higher levels, do you have the tools and resources in place to see your ideas through? If not, who and what do you need to put in place to make it happen?

From business owner to business owner, I believe our time is best spent on strategizing and planning out projects that are aligned with our vision for the business and that will increase sales revenue and profits. Everything else should be handed off over time. Sure, we ourselves, could probably implement every single idea we come up with, and some of those activities may even be fun. But if we keep on trying to do everything, it will take years if not forever to get it all done! Imagine where your business could be if you decided today to leverage other people’s strengths and expertise as a resource. You’d get from where you are now to where you want to go much, much faster!

When we adopt a “Do what only I can do and delegate the rest” mentality, we create the opportunity to open up a world of positive shifts within our businesses and more freedom in our lifestyles.

Delegate for Increased Efficiency

If you’re just starting out, here are a few areas that I recommend you delegate to a dedicated resource or invest in a software tool to become more efficient:

• Hire someone to source and list new products to add to your Amazon inventory - if you’ve mastered the process, someone else that you train can easily master it too.
• Get a software tool that will help you manage your Amazon FBA inventory and stay on top of your purchasing - we, personally, use RestockPro.
• Hire a virtual assistant or an intern to create purchase orders, communicate with your suppliers, audit your invoices for accuracy, and carry out FBA shipments within Amazon Seller Central to completion.
• Delegate the preparation of your Amazon FBA shipments and/or the packing and shipping of your Merchant Fulfilled orders - we use third-party fulfillment centers to do the job.
• Hire or train someone to tend to Amazon account maintenance and customer service.

If you’ve already freed your time from the activities above, consider leveraging other tools and resources in the following areas:

• Start to document your processes (or communicate to someone who’s systems-oriented on what you need documented) to standardize your business operations and ensure that things are getting done to your standards.
• Invest in an intuitive repricing tool to automate your pricing strategies.
• Plan out marketing strategies to boost the visibility of your products and entrust capable team members and software tools to take your ideas and strategies to completion.
• Hire experts who specialize in specific areas of your business that need attention (i.e. accounting/bookkeeping, Amazon advertising, marketing - listing optimization, keyword research, graphic design, and analytics).
• Consider an online business manager to help you stay organized and on top of projects.

By laying it all out and delegating responsibilities like this within your business, you’ll be able to free up the time to focus on activities that are in YOUR zone of genius while trusting that the other important areas are meeting your standards. Delegation also opens up the opportunity for you to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and to leverage their expertise to both of your advantages! Lastly, it’ll free you from being the implementer in every single area of the business, and allow you to realize faster growth and success than what you may have experienced if done solo.

Find Freedom Through Structure

Sometimes, we never get to this point because “doing it ourselves” is all we’ve ever known. I get it because I’ve been there and done that. It’s how most entrepreneurs start out! However, you don’t have to nor should you do everything yourself. If we can expand our minds and think bigger picture with our end goals in mind - in both life and business - this newfound clarity will without a doubt guide and direct us on what we need to put in place to achieve maximum results. It truly is possible to have it all if you set up your environment and align it with all that you’re after!

Remember, with structure comes freedom…

Isn’t it about time to get organized and see your ideas come to fruition?

Create a plan. Build the foundation. Invest in the resources. Structure your days. And make it happen. You’ve got this! To your continued success, always.