Marketplace Superheroes
How can you and your team become marketplace superheroes? In this episode of Incorporating Superpowers, host Justin Recla welcomes guest Stephen Somers to the show. Stephen is the creator of an Amazon training business, that helps train entrepreneurs on how to become superheroes within the marketplace of Amazon. Do you want to get your product or service out to the world? Do you want to use your superpowers for good within the realm of business? Tune in today to learn more about becoming one of the marketplace superheroes!
Justin Recla:
Welcome back to Incorporating Superpowers. Today is for all of you who’ve ever wanted to sell on Amazon, even if you currently sell on Amazon, if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to build an Amazon business, and not just sell on Amazon, but become a marketplace superhero, while you’re in luck, because my guest today just happens to be the CEO and founder of Marketplace Superheroes. My guest today is Stephen Somers. Welcome to the show.
Stephen Somers:
Justin, thanks again for having me on. I am really excited to be here. I really love doing these shows. And I love getting to know you and your audience as well. So let’s rock it.
Justin Recla:
This is good stuff. So I’m just going to ask him to pull back the veil here. Because I find often that the best way to get to know a business and understand that business is to understand the reason why someone created a business. So I got to ask you even Amazon is when I think of Amazon, I literally think of the jungle because when I look out at the Amazon field and the sheer number of people in the Amazon space. Yeah, my head, my head wants to explode, because I don’t have the proper tools to tear down all the bushes that are coming up in front of me. So what made you venture off into the jungle of the Amazon?
Stephen Somers:
Yeah, well, just for some context for anyone listening, 35 years old. So I started in the jungle as it was 12 years ago now. And just before I got into the jungle, I was working in a job as a data processor. And I was really bored in my mind. And I always knew I was like, I want to do something in business. I don’t know what I had no ideas or anything. But I got lucky because I was looking at a lot of different online programs and things I could do. And I never did anything with any of them in all honesty. And just something about selling physical products really stuck with me. Because at the time I was like, I’m not an expert in anything. So there’s no need to learn anything from me in my early 20s or get a job I don’t like. And so what happened was I just landed on this Amazon thing I heard people having success with it. And I decided to do something different than just kind of like buying more courses and not doing anything with them. I decided to try and find somebody who’s doing this already.Â
So I got lucky in that I told my family, I’m looking for somebody who was already successful in E-commerce. And my aunt who I didn’t see very often. She’s from Northern Ireland, which is about two hours, two and a half hours north of where I was living at the time. I was in Dublin at the time here in Ireland. She called me and said, Hey, this guy, and he’s selling on Amazon, he’s selling on eBay. He’s got his own warehouse. He’s a good friend of mine, would you like to meet him? And so I thought this is my opportunity to get out of this job, potentially, and actually to learn a practical business, because I was reading all these business books, right? Sure you’ve done this before in your own career.
Justin, reading all the books, you know, the E Myth revisited the four-hour workweek and I got excited about all I can outsource to all these places. This sounds great. But then it’s like, what do you do? How do you go from A to Z in a business, right? So when so I met this guy was a friend of mine. And this guy called Robert Ricky is still my business partner to this day, he was like, and still is six foot three, big beard, loves drinking beer, huge fella. And I was like, This guy is going to be teaching me how to sell on Amazon. It was not the mentor I thought I was going to end up with. And so he just sat me down on the first day. And he explained to me, Amazon’s a great place to sell, especially using their fulfillment capabilities, which he was only doing a little bit of at the time. And I just he just told me all about his business. And I asked him a million questions, I decided you want to know something, I’m gonna go up and see his warehouse. And so I went up there, it was freezing cold, and all of that. But I thought this is what I want to do. And so it was at that moment, when I saw real products in a warehouse, getting shipped out to real people every day. I said to myself, this is a real business I want to get involved in, I’m gonna go for it. So I quit my job. I went all in with Robert and worked with him for nearly a year learning my trade. And we went on from there. But I’m conscious that I’m going on a bit of a long story to want to say here for 20 minutes. So that’s kind of where I got me, this is what I want to do. And lots happened since then I can tell you,
Justin Recla:
Fantastic. This is good. So I love the fact that you use this as a means of escape being something you no longer wanted to do. So you can create the life that you wanted to create. And now you’ve been doing this for 12 years. And real quick before we go on break though. How long have you been doing it with Amazon superheroes or with marketplace superheroes?
Stephen Somers:
We’ve been teaching it since 2014. So almost eight years now. So I was doing it for four years. Here’s before, we taught a single thing, but Robert has been doing it since the dinosaurs walked the earth. That’s all he’s selling on Amazon.
Justin Recla:
This is fantastic folks. Stick around because now you’ve gotten the backstory as to who Steven is, and how he got started on this absolutely phenomenal. And I love how your story just reminds us that I’m sitting there, Phoenix, you get started in Dublin, and we’re all operating business on Amazon. It’s a small world, folks stick around for the rest of the story. But Steven, before we go on break, where can people find out more about you?
Stephen Somers:
Well, I would just say get over the marketplacesuperheroes.com. That’s where you should go.
Justin Recla:
Fantastic. Folks. Stick around. We’ll be right back.
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