Tom Wang was “this close” to actually giving up. He remembers the excitement he felt when he first started his Amazon business. It was new, it was adventurous, something he’d never done before. His first month he made eight grand in sales. It was eye-opening. But then sales fell off a cliff. So they (he and his then-girlfriend, now-wife) decided to launch a second product. It bombed. Hard. Which was super discouraging since they’d put so much time, energy, and money into this thing. Scroll down.
Hope was diminishing day by day. They couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. What if we launch a third product and it goes just like the last one, they thought. And what if we try another one after that, and it flops too? Is it even worth it? Or should we try something else, they wondered. At this point they were a year in. Tens of thousands of dollars in the hole. It was his woman, Christina, who held him down: “No, this works, people are making money on Amazon,” she told him.
She convinced him to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes. Give it one more shot. Tom agreed. But if it fails, he told her, we’re done with Amazon. Apparently, third time’s a charm. Before long, it was selling ten units a day, then twenty. Then fifty, a hundred, two hundred, four hundred, all the way up to five hundred units a day. Okay, maybe this Amazon thing’s legit after all, Tom said. That third product was the confidence boost he so desperately needed in order to move forward.
They kept launching products and scaled Sdara Skincare to a multiple seven figure brand. “The reason why I shared that story with you and the point I’m trying to make is that it’s so important to have a supportive partner in your life,” Tom says. “And it’s crucial for you to have a supportive partner in your life. A partner could be your spouse, could be your kids, could be your family, your friends, your actual business partner, anything. But it’s so important to have someone in your life that’s supportive and that will hold you accountable.”
“Someone who’s not going to just let you give up that easily,” he continues. “This journey is tough. Any journey that is worth pursuing is tough. It’s tough because you’re playing mental games with yourself. You have two voices in your head. One voice is telling you, ‘Hey, you can do this. If you work hard enough, you will do this.’ And the other voice, and often the stronger one, says, ‘You know what, this is not for you. Anybody else can be successful at it, but not you. You should go do something else. Stick to your nine-to-five job. You can’t do this.’”
It’s then, when the negative voice is getting louder, that’s when you need to lean on your partner. “I’m lucky, I’m blessed to have Christina in my life,” Tom says. “I know so many people out there that don’t have this type of resource. Sometimes their partner’s actually the one over here [the negative voice], telling them they can’t do this.” To that point, Tom had someone sign up for his FBA Masterclass course to prove their partner wrong. Which, for the record, he doesn’t recommend. But it happened.
Anyways, the partner convinced the chick it was a scam, Tom refunded her, and that was that. But what if she could’ve gone on to earn millions of dollars on Amazon, like Tom and Christina? She’ll never know. Tom feels awful for people like this, whose dreams are being crushed because of an unsupportive spouse or friend or whoever else gets in their ear. Don’t let anyone pull you down because they’re too scared or too lazy or too whatever to pursue a better life. Find that rock you can count on when the going gets tough; because it will.
