Digital Social Hour - Making $4M+ off Amazon, Retiring Parents & Being $1.8M in Debt | Kwadwo Tuffour DSH #303

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Kwadwo Tuffour comes on the podcast to talk about making millions off Amazon, what it was like going on Fresh and Fit podcast and how he overcame $1.8M in debt. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly Factor: Use code "DSH50" for 50% off your order at https://www.factormeals.com/dsh50 Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Did you know a 2018 study showed half of prenatal vitamins tested had unacceptable levels of heavy metals? I'm Kat, mother of three and founder of Ritual. When I was four months pregnant, I couldn't find a prenatal I could trust, so I created my own. Ours is matricable, third-party tested for heavy metals, and recently earned the Purity Award from the Clean Label Project. But don't just take my word for it. Get 25% off at virtual.com slash podcast. So you were the first millionaire in your family, right? Yeah.

What was that dynamic like? Did you have people trying to take some of that or was it kind of friendly? Obviously, sometimes you get people that didn't really know before. Like, yo, help me, bro. Why aren't you helping me out? You're such a messed up person. I don't like mentality yes you know what i mean awkward like i feel like just there's better ways of asking for it than phrasing it like that wherever you guys are watching this show i would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm

it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right we are back we got kt today amazon expert all the way from miami sir how's it going man pretty good bro can't complain it's a nice day out here rainy but it's good vibes yeah not as nice as miami but i'll take it man yeah vegas miami are my top two cities in america right now yeah i'll say the same honestly yeah la used to have that that kind of number one number two spot but it's kind of falling off i think yeah i don't i don't like to go there too much i don't know many people that do but let's dive in your story man i know you're doing millions on amazon when did you start getting into all that so actually i got into amazon about three years from this time so i

started amazon like 2020 in december december 20th around there so it's been about three years from this time. So I started Amazon like 2020 in December, December 20th around there. So it's been about three years since I started. And overall, I've done about over a little over 10 million in sales, lifetime sales. Wow. Yeah. Now I know a lot of people try to do Amazon and a lot of people teach it, but I feel like very few reach your level. Yeah, that is true. Like it's a really good business model for someone who is trying to get a side hustle, make a few extra thousand dollars of income. Also, I feel like a lot of people stop there. Some go on to the point where they have a full-time income making 10 to 20K, but then

few go on to build an operation where they're doing 40k and up profit which that's like operation level yeah so what do you think separates that gap from the 10 to 20 to the 40k plus so the 10 20 those people i feel like they get stuck a lot of times people in that area are either comfortable or they're they're so busy running their business they don't know how to scale with their time they're lacking some some things to get them to the next level which a lot of times it's either capital or just information which sometimes they don't want to invest into mentorship sometimes they're not aware of anyone that could help them out i just feel like people over there are stuck yeah yeah that makes sense

you got to be constantly testing new products right yeah constantly you know opening up so for me i sell brand name products so i'm content contacting brands like big brands such as like dove method big brands basically i'm contacting them and trying to get wholesale deals or maybe even exclusive relationships with those brands like imagine if i was the sole seller of dove on amazon right i'm running up millions if i'm the only one selling it because it's usually split between multiple different sellers so people that are just actively working at getting deals with these companies are the ones that win and what criteria do these big companies look for when they're doing wholesale with smaller vendors

yeah so for big companies like i like to look for companies sometimes in the small medium range when it's a big company um i don't look for exclusivity but they just want someone who can spend a lot of money with them like it's capital is the most important thing there right yeah because you know you're competing against guys who are buying 100 200k with their stuff so they're just looking for people to spend that. Yeah. So walk me through the model. Like when you contact a supplier, are you wiring them all the money up front? Yeah. So I'll walk through the model from finding the brand. So finding a brand, basically I use a software called Smart Scout where I go in and I'm able to find brands that are doing revenue on Amazon. I'm able to filter through

to see how much revenue they're doing. I like to look find brands that are doing revenue on amazon i'm able to filter through to see how much revenue they're doing i like to look through brands that are doing over 50k in revenue because they're doing less than i don't really think it's worth 50k a month right yeah 50k a month in revenue so then i'll go and i'll check to see the listings if there's multiple sellers on them that means that i have an opportunity to come on there's only one seller and mainly they have an exclusive relationship with the with somebody or it's that person's brand so there's multiple people i see an opportunity there so i'll go and i'll contact those companies and basically say hey like hey i'm trying to purchase from you directly um yeah like what are the next steps and i purchase from them and yeah it, it's upfront.

So I like to buy a month of inventory at a time. I don't like to do two months, three months. But I'm able to see how much their band is doing on Amazon every month. So I can calculate to see, all right, I can sell this much each month. So I'll buy a month or maybe even two if they're saying, oh, I can't get good pricing. So I'll use my capital to try to get better pricing because it's bulk. And are you undercutting the current listing's price

or are you matching it? I'm matching it. I don't like to undercut because it creates a price war and everyone's just going low. Yeah, that's a problem with e-commerce, man. And I'm sure people do that on Amazon. I feel like it's a big, big problem on Amazon. Yeah, because then by the time you do it and you keep doing it your margins are like 10 yeah bro and then

no one's making money at that point yeah except the one who made like a 300k purchase with them they're up yeah but that no one wants to play the volume game you want decent margins exactly yeah that's like the most important thing for me this year what uh margins do you aim for typically so in my wholesale business it's more volume game so we're looking at around 12 to 15 margins right now i'm sitting at like 15 percent okay margins which is pretty good for wholesale because for wholesale yeah for wholesale really good yeah that's healthy a lot of people are running at eight to ten yeah i like i like higher because i'm putting in so much money i want to make sure that

you know i'm getting good margins all that money you're putting up is is risk at the end of the day so i want to make sure that i'm getting good margins off it the cool thing with your method is you don't got to worry about qc because it's already an established brand too yeah exactly so i'm looking at brands that already have tons of reviews already i already know the product is good people are searching for it i'm just trying to get it at a good price yeah because you hear nightmare stories about like stuff from china from certain brands yeah yeah a lot of people come to me like hey should i buy from china alibaba and they show me products that just like look like plastic yeah who knows what's in those bro yeah your method's good because it's it's a name brand and you know the product's not going to fail

i feel like a lot of people are guessing what certain products they're buying. Yeah, exactly. And for people who don't really have that much creative inspiration or a winning product in their brain, this is a way they could get into e-commerce and Amazon without creating their own thing. Yeah. So were you successful before Amazon? No, I was not successful before Amazon.

I was working at a car dealership before. I did not save any money yeah i honestly didn't think this would happen wow so you were doing sales yeah i was doing sales at a car dealership working like 10 hours a day making like two to three k a month damn that's it yeah geez what dealership is a kia dealership oh k Makes sense. Oh, geez. And you got fired from there, right? Yeah, so during ***, there was no, no one was buying cars, like in the beginning of ***. Yeah. So I was like, all right, there's no business here.

I need to figure out something that I'm going to do. Yeah. And that was in Miami? No, D.C. Oh, D.C. That's before I moved. I moved to Miami after I became a little successful. Got it. That's what everyone does.

It's either Miami, Vegas, LA, or New York. Arizona. So you grew up in DC? Yeah, I grew up in DC. Nice. But your parents are from Ghana? Yeah. And that's sick.

And I saw you just went there, right? Yeah, I was just there a few months ago. What was that like, dude? It's amazing. Every time I go back to Ghana, I feel like I have a reset in my mind. I've gone back in the past a few years a few times but every time I come up with like a big idea or something big happens because I just go there I see all my family I see just like my roots something about being there when feeling

my roots is it's a really good feeling yeah and basically it's really humbling as well when you go back home and you see basically what's what's going on with everybody and you realize how blessed you are to be where where i'm at because my parents didn't take the risk to come here are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest we'll click the application link below in the description of this video we are always looking for cool stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode guys i would be in ghana still and if i'm in ghana like the gdp is like i don't know four or five billion still maybe wow the whole country yeah there's no money there so how am i gonna get out of there so my parents came

out came to america and now i'm able to capitalize on this. Yeah, that's crazy. Is there internet there? Oh, yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of nice areas. When I go back, I'm in a very nice area. There's mansions. It's a very beautiful country, but the majority of it obviously is not very nice. You're driving on a lot of dirt roads.

Wow, humble beginnings, man. Yeah, it sounds like spiritual almost. Yeah, it's spiritual bro like when i go i have a reset i come back and i just you know run it up yeah something about just seeing where your where your parents came from is humbling though for sure because my parents were immigrants too yeah yeah so i went to china where my mom was from and then i went to ireland where my dad was from yeah and humble beginnings bro for sure yeah bro keeps you grateful yeah that immigrant mentality is something that is tough to replicate with our kids i'm a little worried honestly yeah so for me i have a plan when i have kids i'm gonna take them

straight to ghana like and just show them you know have them exposed like see they could see basically what kids their age are doing they're in the village playing around not much health care just like have them see that yeah you know because i was i was exposed to that at an early age and that really had an impact on my life that's cool how's the food over there so good my favorite food in the world really yeah i've never had it yeah you should bro i wonder if there's any spots in vegas but dude if there is i'm down what's like a popular dish so the most popular dish is a dish called jollof rice it's rice it looks orange because there's so much like tomatoes and um a lot that goes into it we eat it with um chicken or goat meat it's really good wow i like goat actually yeah i get that i get goat

in my indian food yeah indian food's fire. Go curry bro. So you were the first millionaire in your family, right? Yeah. What was that dynamic like? Did you have people trying to take some of that or was it kind of friendly? Yeah. I mean, like my family has always been, you know, I've had a blessed family and honestly, I didn't, no one really believed that this would happen. Like when I first started selling on selling products you know my parents were just saying okay go to college go to or not go to college but get a job get a job until it came to a certain point where i was making a good amount of money and talking about moving to miami buying a rolex and then the support came and then they're

just you know they've been very very supportful just trying to help me in any way, even trying to offer me money. Like it's just in any way, they're very, very supportive. My cousins, my whole entire family is very supportive. Obviously, sometimes you get people that didn't really know before. It's like, yo, help me, bro. Why don't you help me out? You're such a messed up person. I've had that before as well.

It's very interesting. I don't like that mentality. Yes. what i mean awkward like i feel like just there's better ways of asking for it than phrasing it like that exactly and if you're trying to start like if you're actually trying to start then i would make an effort to learn and then tell tell me yo i got started out doing this bro i've done like 2k like what do you think i should do next exactly then i'm like bro what let's go yeah that would hype me up put in some effort first and then talk to me for sure exactly because people won't you could tell people so much things and very few will actually work on it yeah and that's another thing i would give so many people free game i would sit there

writing paragraphs trying to help out and i'll go to the person like see what they're doing and if i acted on it at all. Posting in the club, I'm like, bro, you have no money right now. Why don't you just do what I told you? Yeah, that's so relatable. So did you go to college after high school? Yeah, so I went to college for four years. I have a degree in finance.

Congrats, man. That's impressive. Not a lot of people on the show make it all the way. Yeah, I did. It was rough but i did and i never used my degree ah that's something common i hear from people that do make it yeah i was i wanted to work on wall street but i never had like high gpa had like a 3.1 so it was not able to work out wow so they actually look at that when you're applying for jobs yeah yeah i was

talking to a guy at goldman sachs and i was trying to get you know it was like a family friend connection and he just kind of started ignoring me because look at my my resume i had like one internship bad gpa like you know there's no way i mean now you're making more than him yeah much more yeah i mean nine to five is different different game man i mean you experienced it with the sales yeah car sales and now you got a lambo right yes sir everything comes full circle dude which uh lambo did you get so i have a earth dude that's fire yeah it's honestly one of my i think my favorite car because it's convenient fast it can fit a lot of people in there yeah trunk space that's on my dream list man i'm

getting into cars now i really wasn't until i saw the value of the networking opportunities from it big time um because i don't really care to drive but like once i saw that and i was like all right it's like getting a watch i get it now yeah exactly opportunities yeah especially in your city like vegas or miami too yeah well miami it's normal to have a supercar yeah it's like wait you don't have one you know what i mean there's so many over there yeah there's tons yeah um growing up as a kid were you always entrepreneurial you'd say not really like at all growing up just i was the quiet kid trying to you know do well in school it wasn't until um 12th grade when i started my brother was selling water in dc this is a story i haven't really said much my brother was selling water in D.C. This is a story I haven't really said much. My brother was selling water in D.C. It's actually very lucrative, like selling water bottles to tourists.

You could make a few hundred dollars a day going to the monuments. Yeah, like the White House, MLK, just chilling there. You see a lot of tourists come through. It's like very big. And then you say, hey, I got water. And then everyone flocks to you. What do you charge? A dollar for water, two dollars for Gatorade.

That's not bad yeah not at all and i was making like a hundred dollars every single day okay 12th grade so that's not bad dude yeah it was good i was making more than everyone yeah i did that with candy but the margins weren't as good because it would cost like 20 bucks for 30 from costco so you would only make 10 bucks oh okay i should have did water man yeah i was buying the water is like the case was like a few bucks wow margins were crazy that's where are you buying case for a few bucks so i was going to sam's club okay yeah i think it's like eight dollars for like 24 or 30 something like that and i'll fill up go to dc i'll get like eight cases of water four cases of gatorade yeah put

all that in my trunk get uh ice from there as well and then just go and every time i'd run out like people would buy from me every time i'll run out run to my car for like 30 minutes with the big like cooler refill and go back and just be there for hours that's wild i see people doing that on the strip in front of the bellagio fountains too yeah exactly in dc i'll say like i don't know how like when i was there it was only me and my brother but now when i go back to dc i see like 40 people there so like a lot of people caught on to it what's the entrepreneur scene like in dc in dc it's more like politics okay i don't see like there's obviously entrepreneurs there but it's more low-key and there's not as many as in such as miami that makes sense i will say dc i've

been there a few times it felt way cleaner than manhattan yeah this is honestly i love it yeah i have a love hate relationship with dc but you don't like the weather nah the weather is too cold much i was just there i just came from there and it was freezing like legit freezing cold and raining the whole time yeah i mean once you're in miami there's no better weather in america so yeah exactly i mean if you can stand the humidity at least yeah yeah summer is brutal yeah it does rain a lot but it's usually quick yeah so it's not I mean, there's no better weather in America. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you can stand the humidity at least. Yeah, yeah. Summer is brutal. Yeah. It does rain a lot, but it's usually quick.

Yeah. So it's not too bad. What's a typical day like for you right now? So day in life, same thing almost every single day. I wake up, walk my dog on the water, come back, get into some deep work for a few hours. When I'm doing Amazon, I'm telling my warehouse manager all right what are we doing for the day i tap in with my va to see what brands he's contacted or what we have going on there i'll place a few orders my suppliers see how much i can spend depending on the day

um you know do some marketing talk to my sales team with my you know my my coaching programs and then i'll go box or i'll go work out depending on the day nice and yeah pretty much after that i'll do some light meetings see what's up with everything and then have dinner and it's so pretty light nothing too crazy it sounds like no nothing too crazy just just trying to grow everything yeah that's the cool part about just making money on your own in general like you can kind of make your own schedule you know yeah like one day i was just walking my dog at like 2 p.m because i just felt like it's out of my schedule i'm like well i'm walking my dog at 2 p.m this is a blessing low-key yeah on the water like it's great yeah for sure what what breed you got he's a mini golden doodle oh yeah puppy that's good i love dogs dude honestly

getting a dog changed my life yeah like i used to have anxiety and it literally went away yeah i feel you bro like i love dogs it's a game changer for sure um let's see here finding winning products you talked about the product research have you had any failed products yeah i have a few stories of failed products this happens every now and then one time so when i first started on amazon in the first year i actually was selling pools because pools are very good it was pools yeah there's seasonal products on amazon that's the thing like during christmas there's toys are selling well so you can hop in on that during like march april may there's like fertilizer in the summer there's seasonal products

such as pools rafts tubes people go tubing kind of think like a consumer and see what people would like so i was selling pools i'll fill up a truck go to walmart each you know different walmarts fill up the truck and sell them on amazon i was making good money doing it but one thing i realized is i was shipping these products like these pools which are 155 pounds each and the max for ups is 150 pounds so they charged me a violation of a thousand dollars per pool i shipped out damn i shipped out like 300 but they only caught 30 damn i was i lost g's yeah i lost like 25 30k around wow and so is all shipping carriers a weight limit or was that just a ups thing there's there's always a weight limit and it was my first time i didn't have a mentor anything i was just selling on amazon i didn't know better than to ask oh like how do i ship

this properly i'll just see the profit margins are i'm making a lot of money then one day i realized yo there's 30k out of my amazon balance where Where the hell did it go? And I saw that. Oh, man. They didn't even hit you up? No, they didn't say anything. It was gone. And the thing is, I just came back from Miami. It was like my second time in Miami.

I'm celebrating making money from these pools because this is when I was first starting. I was in the club at Live, I think. Oh, God. It was like 7K. On a table? Big money for me back then. I was just like, you know, I'm coming up. I'm going to do it regardless.

So I came home and i got that hit and i'm like wow my my life is in shambles right now little wake-up call right yeah i think we all need that sometimes that's when it all changed for me i was because during that time i was buying stuff from walmart and target i'm sure you've seen videos like that yeah retail going in the stores or online ordering and that's when i realized i got to go into a sustainable business model that's when i started wholesale and getting wholesale deals with brands yeah that makes sense and when you were starting out you were 1.8 million in debt right so that is like my overall like credit card bill got it yeah yeah so i wasn't actually 1.8 million in debt but it's just like that's how much i've spent on my credit card in total how many points is that yes a lot of points you're flying staying at hotels for free yeah and like

this past month i spent a lot so this past month i got about a million points wow yeah we're trying to get right off before the end of the year just like yeah and then big inventory spending month yeah so all of that like a lot of points adding up. That's insane, man. What was it like being able to help retire your parents? Yeah, I mean, it's crazy because they didn't really, it's just crazy how going from them not even believing or understanding this to seeing, being able to give them all this money you know and whenever i want

give them the cars they don't need to work anymore it's it's a crazy feeling honestly and it took a lot of weight off my shoulders just like that's one thing on my bucket list that's crossed off and it forever feels good you know they're forever grateful and i just feel like they blessed me with the opportunity of being here you know giving me a good life in in uh united states just being here is the biggest blessing so that's i owe them that dude that's amazing i wish i got that opportunity but my mom's a savage dude she asians love saving money dude you know what i mean like even though she worked a nine-to-five her whole life she was able to save some solid money yeah it's amazing and that's something with asian culture like they're all about saving and you know education

yeah i'm glad i learned that from my parents it's great bro um yeah what are you working on this year man i know you're getting big on social media right yeah so a lot of you know social media you see i'm growing that up and another thing i'm working on i'm keeping my wholesale business going so my goal for my wholesale business to do around $7 million this year in sales. And I'm launching a new product. So I haven't ever launched a product on my own before. And that's what I'm doing. Because wholesale is great to generate money, run it up.

But now I'm trying to gain equity because now I have a lot of this cash saved up. I'm trying to build my own brand up. That's something I've been working on in the past few days. I don't want to say what it is, but it's going to be big. When I look back on this, it's already going to be worth a million dollars. Damn. Can you say the industry at least? Yeah, it's a supplemental type of product.

Supplements have high margins. Yeah, so very competitive, but I found a little niche that's not very competitive, but there's tons of people looking for it. yeah dude i'm pumped it's fun starting your own brand man yeah yeah i miss those days man just grinding away um where can people find you dude so on instagram and youtube at kt hustles i'm pumping out videos on instagram and youtube you know every single week every single day I try to be as active as possible, give as much value as possible about Amazon. I show my journey as well so you can see that. Awesome. Check it out, guys. We'll link it in the video.

Thanks for watching. I'll see you tomorrow. Appreciate it.