3 Mindset Shifts Every Seller Should Make

I’ve spent 1/3rd of my life in the Amazon seller space either as a seller or building software. Needless to say I’ve noticed clear patterns. Patterns that explain why some sellers scale and others flounder.

Every new seller experiences the same challenges as everyone else getting started. What if you could avoid those pitfalls?

In this post, I want to explain the three critical mindset shifts every seller must go through to scale their sales: Scarcity Sourcing, Founder Mentality, and Avoiding The Hustle.

Scarcity Sourcing

Your sales are only as good as your inventory. You may not realize it yet, but you buy your profit when you purchase your inventory, not when you sell it. Based on that, how you source is the single most important thing you do.

New sellers tend to buy anything that looks remotely profitable. This is due to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which explains that we tend to have too much confidence when starting with something new. Sourcing seems easy enough...

What new sellers lack is the experience of what to avoid. The subtle nuances of a Keepa chart, the not-so-obvious red flags.

This is something I experienced myself when switching from online arbitrage to wholesale. I lost $2,000 on a bad buy because I didn't notice the red flags.

One of the best mindset shifts any seller can make is to look for reasons not to buy an ASIN, rather than for reason to buy.

It may seem counter intuitive, but when you look for reasons not to buy a product and you can't find any, you should buy it. The simplest way to make this shift is to create a checklist of things to look for: the red flags. Run every new product through this checklist before buying it.

Your checklist should evolve as you find new red flags too.

I'd recommend reading The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande.

Founder Mentality

The words we choose impact our decisions, actions, and success. This is a recurring theme in the personal development world—language shapes our reality.

This choice becomes critical when distinguishing yourself between being a "business owner" and a "founder".

Without realizing it, we're confining ourselves to the "Amazon bubble". Adopting its mindset and practices. This isn't inherently bad, but it does limit our exposure to potentially better ways of doing things.

Startups use the term "founder", while Amazon sellers tend to use the term "business owner". All founders are business owners and most business owners are founders. However, the content created for each is vastly different.

For example, books written for founders advocate for hiring people more capable, smarter, and experienced than the founder is in a given area. Books written for business owners do the opposite, advocating for outsourcing everything to cheaper labor.

Neither is right or wrong, but the nuances are important. Rather than being 100% in either direction, you should find a balance between outsourcing and building a team.

By shifting your language a little, you open yourself up to incredible new insights and learnings. This, by itself, becomes a competitive advantage.

Here are two books that illustrate my point: Work the System (business owner) and High Output Management (founder). Both are great books by the way.

Avoiding the hustle

Sellers love to hustle. They love the grind. While working hard is a requirement for success, hustling is a different matter.

Hustling is a great way to get started, but it's not a great way to scale. Shifting from a hustling mindset to a more strategic one can triple your sales.

Where hustle is about grinding, strategy is about making critical decisions. Singular decisions that remove half your workload or double your sales. It's understanding what really moves the needle and focusing exclusively on that thing.

For example, run an 80/20 analysis on your time. What 20% of your tasks yield 80% of your sales? Remove everything else. What singular decision could you make that would remove half your workload overnight?

These questions act as prompts to make you think more strategically.

For example, what decision could you make to triple your inventory in the next 60 days? One answer may be switching from online arbitrage to wholesale because it takes the same effort to order 10,000 units as it does 10.

What decision could you make to reduce your workload in half? It may be hiring someone to handle the tasks taking the majority of your time: the urgent but not important.

You may find that "hustling" is actually holding you back.

Working hard is a must, but hustling is a different story.

Wrapping it up

The difference between starting out and scaling is to first shift your mindset. We’ve covered concepts of Scarcity Sourcing, embracing the Founder Mentality, and avoiding hustling with strategic thinking.

As you continue growing, remember that growth isn’t just working harder—it’s also working smarter.