Inventory Forecasting That Prevents Storage Fee Surprises with Chelsea Cohen

Amazon can take a shocking cut of your revenue before you even count product cost, shipping, and overhead, and that reality is forcing sellers to get far more disciplined about inventory and profit. We sit down with returning guest Chelsea Cohen to talk about what she’s learned as SoStocked moves through acquisitions and into a larger corporate ecosystem, and why that shift makes real-time visibility into fees, forecasting, and unit economics even more important for day-to-day decisions.

We get specific about the hidden margin killers that sneak up on Amazon FBA brands: storage fees, aged inventory fees, capacity constraints, and mismeasured products that land in the wrong FBA fee tier. Chelsea shares how smart sellers build a regular overstock plan, move slow inventory without panic, and think in contribution margin terms so they can spot which SKUs are quietly draining cash. We also talk through the pricing trap, why raising prices doesn’t always work, and how to weigh profit dollars against the workload and complexity that come with higher volume at thinner margins.

On the tactical side, we cover wasted ad spend audits, negative keywords, reimbursement opportunities (including AWD mistakes), and how Amazon Warehousing and Distribution can help with inbound and capacity when used as a lever instead of a full dependency. We close by looking at how AI is starting to move from “answer my question” to “recommend my next action” in inventory management, plus what needs to be in place so sellers can trust the numbers. If you got value from this, subscribe, share it with a seller friend, and leave a review telling us which fee or profit leak you’re auditing first.

Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call.  https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Return

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income stream in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs, David Shomer and Ken Wilson.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man podcast. Today's guest is someone who needs no introduction to many of our listeners because this is her third appearance on the show. Chelsea Cohen has built a reputation as a thoughtful entrepreneur, strategic leader, and someone who consistently brings practical insights that business owners can immediately apply to their own companies. Every time she's joined us, our audience has responded incredibly well because she doesn't just talk theory. She shares real-world examples, lessons learned, and the strategies that helped her navigate the challenges of building and growing a successful business. So stocked. A lot has happened since her last appearance. And today we're going to dive into what's changed, what she's learned, and what opportunities she's excited about, as well as advice she has for entrepreneurs looking to grow their businesses while creating more freedom and fulfillment in their lives. Chelsea, welcome back. You are among an elite list of people that have been on the show three times.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much. I love coming on this podcast for sure. It's uh it's always a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Oh, very good. So so fill us in since your last appearance on the podcast, what are some of the biggest developments in your business and in life?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, so in business, um, so um So Stocked, which was acquired in 2022 by Carbon Six, was in last year, about a year, a little over a year ago, uh, acquired by a company called SPS Commerce. So that has kind of been the one of the

Life After A Major Acquisition

SPEAKER_01 2:10

bigger pieces of of um development in business. It's been very interesting. It's a company that is publicly traded. It has a hundred uh a hundred quarters of growth, so uh successive growth. So it's it's very different and and interesting and insightful to move from I've never been in the corporate world to moving into the corporate world, but still maintaining a lot of the individual freedom that we have uh within SoStocked. So still running SoStocked, still able to uh develop that, but then moving into discussions around how we continue to integrate and improve on maybe the relationships between uh the various different tools. So that's yeah, that's been kind of the biggest, the biggest development.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Well, very nice. Now, for people that are unfamiliar with SoStock, can you share a little bit about that and what it does?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Sure. Yeah. So SoStock is inventory management for Amazon uh 3P and uh more importantly, inventory forecasting. So that's really the biggest um the biggest strength of SoStocks is it actually will allow you to forecast up to a year into the future and customize it, adding, you know, the various different elements, which uh include things like um last year's sales, uh adding your marketing plans, all of these different elements. And we've gone a step further in adding fees to that. So storage fees, if we can project your sales velocity, we can project storage fees. So we do that, and then we've started to do some profit forecasting, which is one of the subjects I'm very passionate about. As profit tends to be right now one of the harder portions of the business.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Absolutely, absolutely. And and for our listeners, I use SoStocked. I have used So Stocked for about five years now, and I'm a huge fan of it. It makes our inventory planning process so much easier, and and I'm excited to dig into these. And so uh let's focus on the profitability and and um you had mentioned fees. Um for any seasoned Amazon sellers that are listening, they know it's not a single line item of fees. Uh and so what are what are some constraints or what what are some fees that Amazon sellers are running into that they should at least be aware of?

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah. Um so obviously there are fees that can't be avoided, fees that most people are most aware of, um fulfillment fees and referral fees. Fulfillment fees, those should be monitored and because Amazon will change those fees. So if you're not paying attention, it you know, you might be being charged. We've even seen identical SKUs or identical ASINs within the same parent, which are identical products, but maybe a different color. And the and the fees being different because you know, that it gets scanned and then it gets tagged as a higher fee. So those fees can actually be uh audited. And, you know,

Forecasting Inventory A Year Out

SPEAKER_01 6:00

that's an opportunity. You can also repackage product. We've seen a lot of people doing vacuum packing. So rethinking the the those general fees, but the biggest fee constraints that are overlooked are the storage fees and the aged inventory fees. And those are some of the biggest um areas that we point out are what not only what fees are you being charged today, but what is your potential liability over the next year that you're not foreseeing because you're not really looking at the products that have just been sitting there, not not gathering revenue. So you tend to kind of push them aside, but they could be a time bomb waiting to go off.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Absolutely. Absolutely. And one thing I will add to that is uh so I love the long-term storage fee tool that that SoStock has, and it's absolutely a part of our like monthly planning. Uh what I have found is that um running into capacity constraints is another one that that we're Amazon sellers are are running into where they may have some slow-moving inventory and their top sellers are obviously selling out, and and when it's time to replenish those, there's no room. And so can can you speak to you know, how are smart sellers addressing this as it relates to just running a healthy Amazon account?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Yeah, so keeping uh view on that, the SoStock can create custom dashboards, but we also have default dashboards and uh filtering by some of your overstock inventory. What are those products that you have over 90 days of stock? Uh, what are those products that are maybe you know less revenue generating and coming up with a plan on a regular basis to move through that inventory? So not to just ignore it, but to know that if you move through that inventory, it will improve your capacity, not just in clearing out the excess inventory that's sitting there, but in increasing your velocity so that you actually receive higher capacity um capacity limits. So having that be part of the regular planning and the regular strategy is extremely important in being strategic in your marketing.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Okay. Okay. For sellers that are so that they get so stocked, they they identify ASINs that are approaching long-term storage fees. What are some methods? You know, once they've identified that, now it's time to take action. Um, what are some things that they can do and and what would you recommend they do?

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Um, yeah, things like just, you know, coupons or discounts, doing if they have an email list, they can do a sale through their email list, uh, lowering prices to be more competitive, exploring external traffic might be uh a way of doing that. And then doing bundle deals, you know, making taking your best sellers and maybe making an image or making a coupon deal to show that there is the ability to, you know, buy these other products, maybe the other products are similar, but they're just not, they don't have the visibility.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

One of the things that I really like about that tool is because you do have visibility into the future, you can be proactive on it. One thing I can personally attest to is I've got a you know a container that's ready to ship in China. I go to generate shipping labels, and I don't have capacity. Now I need to dispose of or you know, act quickly, and and oftentimes like disposal is or you know, returning inventory back to your warehouse is a lever that you can pull. I'm not saying that it's the best lever, but it oftentimes feels wasteful. And uh, whenever I've been in that situation, I've often thought, man, I needed to be thinking about this two to three months ago. Uh and and so um, yeah, no, I I I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah, no, that's definitely a lever. That's not a lever, that's kind of a one of those where we like to use it as a last resort because it gets quite expensive. Uh disposal costs the same as removal. Uh some other ones that could be a bit more cost effective if they don't work as quickly, so that you know your your scenario is not necessarily wouldn't necessarily work for that. But Amazon has a liquidations program where you could potentially come ahead. They still charge you a fee and they take a percentage of the liquidation cost, but you could end up making some cash back, and it's not gonna be profit, but it's gonna be some cash back rather than uh money out of your pocket. It has to be something that uh qualifies, and they don't always find buyers for it, but there's that, and then there's also donating inventory, which still costs you money, but it ends up potentially being an additional write-off if you're in the US.

The Fees Sellers Miss Most

SPEAKER_02 11:40

I didn't even think about that as being a yeah, absolutely that would be a write-off.

unknown 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah. Huh. I just had a light bulb go off. Um anyway, um you had mentioned profitability is something that you're you're incredibly focused on. And and I it has been my experience amongst, you know, engaging with other Amazon sellers that you're not the only one that's has concerns about profitability. Like it's it's something that's very, very common. What are you, you know, as you're engaging with Amazon sellers, where do you see the biggest profit leaks or holes in the boat, so to say?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah. Um I mean, obviously storage fees is a hu is a big one. I think the biggest uh oversight is really not having oversight, you know, not uh knowing which products are costing money. So just leaving them in the catalog or continuing to replenish them, not realizing and doing an audit frequently enough to you know, you've got tariff fees that have come in, you've got price changes. Profitable products last year may be unprofitable this year. And especially when you have a large catalog, it's very difficult to find those needles in in the haystack. A lot of the a lot of the industry is moving toward contribution margins, which is much better than looking at kind of just the bottom line. Um and contribution margins essentially breaks down your expenses um uh in terms of percentages along the different uh cost centers. So, you know, I want to be at 70% um profitability after my uh landed cost. I want to be, you know, at 50% after my fees, 20% after my ads, that sort of thing. So that's very helpful and it's very different from, you know, kind of the the wild old days when we used to be able to sell and you know, we were always profitable. We didn't really pay attention to a lot of those pieces as much. But a lot of the contribution margins are done on a catalog level. So they're not broken down on an ASIN level, and then uh there's a whole a whole piece that that kind of uh opens up where it's not there's some some holes in in the logic, even when you're looking on an ASIN level. And those are the those holes are the things that I really have taken a lot of time kind of diving in and figuring out how do we discover those holes.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Mm-hmm. What so I like the the granular look at profitability as a retired CPA that's definitely in my wheelhouse. Uh one thing I think a lot of people, especially on product launches, is setting that initial price. And I'm curious when people are doing back of the napkin math, um, you know, on my $100 product, how many, like what can I expect in terms of fees? Um that would be your referral fee, your FBA fee, maybe even fold-in uh pay-per-click advertising. But what what percentage is going back into Amazon?

SPEAKER_01 15:19

What percentage that you're actually paying them? I think it's like something like it's between like 60 and 70 percent. There's just there's there and if you start using, you know, the supply chain by Amazon, it's even more. Um as time has gone on. They've just pay taken a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. You know, now they're your 3PL if you're using AWD and if you're shipping, you know, they're also taking that cut. The only pieces, you know, at the end of the day that they they don't tend to take are, you know, your supplier fees and your overhead. Um and you know, really there and that's been the goal is how do we take more money out of, you know, out of the same uh pool.

SPEAKER_02 16:10

I was looking at this metric for one brand that I own and manage, and in the last 12 months it was 58% for that particular brand. Uh and that's before you include unit cost or shipping to get the product to the end user. And so one of the things that you know, typically in business, you'd say, okay, if you're you're incurring increasing costs, just raise your price. Uh and that that doesn't always work. And so can can you speak to that a little bit?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah, I mean, increasing price doesn't work when you have other competitors who are uh have lower prices. So, you know, you have to look at sometimes it's weighing out what are the profit dollars at the end of the day, and not focusing on revenue as the the sole driver of your decisions. So I we've got a client that we're working with, and they have had to increase their prices and their revenue does decrease. So, you know, in in the general view of things, oh, our revenue is decreasing, it didn't work. But being able to look at, okay, we are profiting more for every unit, our revenue may be decreasing, but our profit is increasing. So it can work in in that view, but then in other in other ways, you know, a lot of times it it can also not work based, you know, to to your point, what do you do then? Is you have to start looking at the various different line items in the uh unit economics. And that's where that's where I've been doing a lot of work. It's how do you identify those things and how do you uh start to rein them in.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Absolutely. Yeah, for one thing that doesn't fit perfectly or squarely into a spreadsheet is say you have the option between selling a hundred units at 10% or 50 units at 20% margin. Uh selling the 50 units is less work, it's less shipments booked, it's

Clearing Aged Inventory Without Panic

SPEAKER_02 18:30

less customer service. Uh, you know, and that's something that I think people don't think about. Uh, you know, we want to be increasing revenue, we're constantly in that mode, but kind of pivoting and and focusing more on profitability, I think, is is is the absolute move if you want to stay in business. And so if if someone were to come to you and say, Chelsea, my uh I am uh every dollar that comes in goes out. I'm I'm selling at break break-even. I feel like I'm a hamster just running on a wheel. We take a look at my account. What are gonna be some of the first things that you're looking at?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah. Um, so first and foremost, the uh storage fees, because that's the area when when a person comes and they say, I don't know why, it doesn't make sense. They generally understand uh how much they're paying their supplier because they, you know, do the wires. They're generally understanding how much they're paying in terms of ads. They have less control in terms of fulfillment, but the storage fees it can end up being, you know, a couple of years ago we start we saw a ton of people posting, you know, Amazon took $25,000 out of my account in November. Well, you had aged inventory fees and you had peak storage fees. So that's the that's the piece that generally people don't understand. We had someone come to us so they Amazon was taking $14,000 a month out of their account. That was that that's a huge that's a huge red flag in terms of your profitability. So that's where I would start is looking at are you carrying dead weight that's just taking money out of your pocket? And how do we move that inventory? Removals might not be the solution because they're so costly. And sometimes a removal will cost more than six months worth of aged inventory fees. So it's important not to have that and be the knee-jerk reaction, which sometimes, you know, and I'll mention it, and all of a sudden, you know, the seller turns around and they've removed it. I'm like, no, you shouldn't have done that, you know. Um, so looking at the storage fees and then looking at uh making sure they've done a a wasted ad spend audit, that's one of the faster ones because storage fees and storage uh and inventory in general is a they call it a slow boat to turn. So that's a long term short term would be advertising and then also doing an audit. We have a free tool that does an audit regarding um any opportunities to reduce your product into a lower fee tier. So whether it's off by a slight amount and Amazon has just bumped you into a fee tier that's higher, and you can you can actually go and you can request for uh products to be remeasured. And if they come back and they're remeasured, you can submit to get 90 days worth of that over charge returned to you. So there are fulfillment fee solutions. Um there are ways to maybe go back to your supplier and get new dimensions. you know, reduce the product to gain, let's say, another 15 cents by moving into a lower fee tier. So all of those things, just looking at all of the line items. And then of course, um, you know, making sure reimbursements are being done and being done in a timely manner. Something that our our company SPS does is, you know, the reimbursements. So I think most people are doing that at this point, but you know, it's surprising when you find they they aren't or they aren't, they don't understand that there are a lot of different, a lot of different areas where you could be doing that. Like AWD. AWD makes a lot of mistakes. And so you can go and it's a little bit harder and a little bit less effective, but you can go and request uh reimbursement for the mistakes that AWD makes and I think a lot of people don't understand that either.

SPEAKER_02 22:56

Myself included I didn't even think about AWD.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

In that now that that will dovetail nicely into my next question. In a healthy Amazon brand, how does AWD fit into the picture if at all?

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Yeah um so AWD there's there's fees that can be avoided with AWD I never recommend it as a as a total solution. I think you need to keep your own 3PL as well otherwise you're giving everything over to Amazon and we know how Amazon can lose things we know how Amazon you know can get backed up and all of a sudden they say we're not taking any more stock um you know before Prime Day or whatever it is. So it's but it can definitely be a card that can be played they you can avoid inbound shipping fees. So if you're if you've got products where you don't want to use Amazon optimized because Amazon optimized you know in terms of inbound placement fees

Finding Profit Leaks With Contribution Margin

SPEAKER_01 24:10

there's you know there's um Amazon optimized keeps you from having to send in um or having to pay inbound shipping fees. You have to send to five or six locations though. So that may be expensive in terms of uh the shipping cost even if you're avoiding inbound fees you have to look at shipping cost versus inbound fees am I saving money by doing you know Amazon optimized and Amazon or AWD can be a lever to pull if the fees that the AWD charges are less than the fees that that you would pay for inbound or for shipping to five different locations. So that's one of the opportunities there are also it also gives you a little bit of extra if you're running at low capacity you don't have enough capacity you can send some of your spillover stock to AWD and they will send stock in so even if you don't get the inventory in on time you know in because you don't have the space AWD will continue to fulfill and to send inventory in. So it kind of can override a little bit that capacity restraint.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Okay. Now if the way I have my inventory set up and and I am inviting you to critique it um I put my products into three different categories. I have my fast movers which I try to keep about 60 days of inventory on hand at any given time. I've got my medium velocity products uh which I try to keep 50 days at any given time and then my slow movers which would be 30 to 40 days at any given time. Yeah I my goal here is I never obviously never want to go out of stock on my top sellers and I have that cushion um however I don't want to have too much because uh my fast movers can be seasonal they can slow down they can I can get list have listing issues and and all of a sudden you know if I had it at uh say 180 days um I would be knocking on the door of long-term storage fees uh potentially and so what would be for a healthy Amazon account if they were to put their products into those three different tranches uh what would you recommend for just a target?

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Uh-huh yeah we say no more than 90 days um it depends upon your supply chain um and your lead times so if you're sending direct to Amazon from you know China 90 days is is usually the good rule of thumb because something could go wrong right you know you have some sort of delay you know you miss the boat have to wait another week so having that extra buffer is important. I think 60 days or seven 75 days is a good uh if you've got external inventory sitting you know locally that's a a good way to go about it um if you've got you know products that maybe could tend to spike having a little bit more on the higher side is is important. As far as the the mid the mid you know sounds sounds sounds good. Uh my concern would be with the slower sellers. I'm not sure what we refer to as slower sellers so it really depends on what the person's velocity is but uh between 30 and 40 you can start to skate toward the side of low inventory fees. Low inventory fees I mean if you are truly between 30 and 40 you won't tend to hit that but you could get a a bit close your at if your average is below 28 days of stock you start to incur low inventory fees and it is an average. So it's a 30 day average and a 90 day average are compared. So between 30 and 40 you're good but if you start creeping down consistently with products you could move into the range where you're paying those low inventory fees which are basically a fulfillment fee on each product that gets shipped out. It's an additional fee because Amazon says you don't have a wide enough spread across the country we've had to be how to express ship your products so we're gonna charge you for those express fees. So that's essentially the logic behind it. Another thing that Amazon starts to do when you start dipping below that 30 day is something called geo ranking where if your products are let's say concentrated on the coasts and in the middle of the country your product may be ranked lower than you know in the coastal areas. You probably if you're in California, if you're in Florida, you're probably not seeing this when you're searching your product it's something that if you change the you know ship shipping zone right your zip code, you could probably start seeing okay my my listings are actually showing up lower for specific keywords because Amazon doesn't want me to sell it because they I don't have it. They'd have to extra express ship it.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

So all of that when you've got low inventory you've got low uh coverage you've got very sparse coverage Amazon will start to you know effectively uh reduce your your volume or your your visibility in those areas but they'll also uh if you get too low charge you those extra fulfillment fees I was not even aware that low inventory fees existed where would if somebody wanted to look on their account and see am I being charged this where would they go?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

So the my favorite report in all of Amazon is called the FBA inventory report. It's if you go to fulfillment, if you go to reports fulfillment and then in the inventory you have to click more and it reveals it

Fast Audits For Ads Fees Reimbursements

SPEAKER_01 30:40

at the very bottom and it's a treasure trove of information. It's like almost three alphabets long in terms of number of columns. It has all the aged inventory uh data so you can see which of your products are you know let's say over 180 days which of them are over you know over nine months you get into that's the that's the biggest area of of risk is you know when your inventory is over nine months it shoots up to you're paying five dollars and forty five cents per cubic foot on top of regular fees. But low inventory fees will also be found there. You'll be able to pull are there any products that are being you know charged low inventory fees and it'll give you your weeks of your days of supply. So you could see a product that okay I've got you know on average 42 days for this one oh this one's got 31 I probably should pay attention to you know increasing my supply on that um so that's where you would go but you would also see some products are marked as exempt and those products are uh the general rule is if you have sold seven units or less in the past 20 days that product is exempt. So if you've got very slow sellers, you don't really have to worry about those products getting you know two units, three units here or there um you don't have to really worry about low inventory fees for that.

SPEAKER_02 32:15

Okay. Okay. Now a little bit earlier you had mentioned a wasted ad spend audit. Is this um like a a tool that you recommend or is this just kind of taking a hard look at your PPC or what are what are can you go deeper on that?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah um so it's something that used to be done in one of the companies that Carbon 6 had um I don't think it's done any longer but I think it's something that uh agencies will offer maybe some softwares will offer and it's identifying which products and you could probably you know even do this yourself. It's a little bit tedious but which products are using keywords that have you know had let's say you know whatever three clicks five clicks and had no sales right uh if you're doing auto campaigns going through and seeing are there pro are there you know keywords that are being used that are just they should be you know turned into negative keywords. You know we were selling uh pepper grinder uh several years back and uh electric kept coming up and we did not have an electric pepper grinder so we had to negative keyword those. So it's negative keywords it's you know creating guidelines around how many clicks am I willing to get before I say this keyword is is not you know something that I should be spending on um ones that have really high ad spends. So uh doing an audit yourself or working with an agency that does one of those and and doing it consistently so it's not just kind of a one and done it's consistent, you know.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Okay. Okay. Very good.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

I AI could probably help you with that too.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

I'm glad you mentioned that. And that leads me to my next question. As we sit here talking in June 2026 AI is moving at an incredibly rapid pace. And in my experience it's doing things that I never would have anticipated six months ago.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

How are you using AI? How are you seeing smart Amazon sellers using AI?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

So right now in terms of AI I've used it a lot in problem solving so you know and in helping me to develop out concepts you know having an idea of of a concept of I have this problem and I think this is the solution, you know, are there gaps within my my logic for that right um you know I this is I don't have this data available Amazon only gives me you know this amount of data how do I you know resolve that so those types of things in terms of building out the platform and the features specifically for us. And then I'm starting to dive into you know MCP maybe an MCP integration we're starting to look into that because we do have some endpoints exposed for uh so stocked. So we have data available that can be accessed and I've just been doing research on um you know people have asked for an open API and an open API I've done the research it's you know a month long process but MCP is such to my understanding we're just you know we're starting to dive into it but my understanding that's something where you expose endpoints you write a little bit of language you know on the app side on the um you know the AI side and then you kind of connect it together and it's could be a few days you put something together. So that's something that can create opportunities to take the data and not only to feed the data you know you ask the question how which of my products are going to stock out but wanting to get to a point where it's making smart recommendations, taking several different data points not just you

AWD Strategy Capacity Limits And Low Stock Fees

SPEAKER_01 36:20

know stock levels but stock levels, fees, that sort of thing how do we take the all the data that we have with the forecasting the fees and and profit and and turn it into something that can advise people on what to do beyond just here's the data. It's here's the data and AI is going to tell you what to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Yeah um the the API the open API integrations have been I was using some with between shopifying claude the other day and it was pretty incredible with what it did. It also feels from a business owner standpoint kind of feels like you may have a rogue employee that is operate you know doing its own thing um without a ton of oversight and so um good and bad I would say yeah you have to be you have to be careful like that's that's one of the things you know in terms of to put together um an MCP or any sort of AI valid dating making sure that there's no hallucinations and that the data can be trusted.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

I think for a while smart sellers are going to experiment with it but also verify you know are the numbers correct yeah absolutely absolutely um okay well anything else that we want to cover today this has been a great deep dive on inventory management on profitability anything else that you think is worth covering um I I don't know that I guess just one of the things that has been interesting um tariffs obviously something uh but one of the things that I read recently was an executive order was signed a couple of days ago that will require sellers to or imp importers to have to reveal their ownership have to have physical assets within the United States uh have to have specific identifiers no longer can they be hidden right you can't have these shell corporations where you've got people you know lying about the value of the state inventory uh taking money out of the United States without any sort of um you know backing uh there's a lot of money that's leaving the country through e-commerce that people aren't paying taxes. So if you've got people that are not paying taxes, they're paying lower uh tariffs because they're lying on the paperwork because it doesn't really matter. There's no ramifications for that they're hiding their identity they're in another country that does that doesn't fall under the U.S. jurisdiction all of those things are being the executive order essentially starts to tear those things down. So the US sellers are going to have a greater advantage uh because the playing field is starting to be evened out which I think is a huge step in the right direction uh and what should have been done instead of you know the tariffs that penalize U.S.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

citizens to me that is a step in the right direction on you know providing legitimacy to uh e-commerce in general there's a lot of nameless face nameless faceless transactions I've I am dealing this week with counterfeit sellers um if we were in the same room there's no way yeah they would do that however I don't even know their name I don't know what country they're from they I get their listings taken down and the next day they have it up under another brand and it's incredibly frustrating. And so um no I think that'll be great. Anything that I obviously as a US seller I'm advocating for US sellers like myself. And so I think that'll be a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Yeah absolutely yeah so that's yeah I found that very interesting and hopeful because you know with the tariffs I was just I saw so much damage with that. I mean everyone did um and that's being been walked back but not nearly to the extent that it should be I thought that US you know US uh sellers should have been exempt from some of that. I thought small business in my opinion you know there should have been just like in in taxes in the U.S. there's this sliding scale you know if you you know a certain revenue you're at this this tax bracket you know and and reducing sliding scale tax bracket in terms of the same thing should have happened with businesses. If you're a business that's making under a million dollars you shouldn't be paying the same tariffs that you know Apple's paying.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

I agree. I Chelsea we need to get you into politics because that makes a lot of sense to me no I politics no but happy to give an opinion yeah well very good well before we close out the show we've got something called the fire round it's four questions we ask every guest at the end of the episode if you're familiar with these this is your third time on the show but are you are you ready?

SPEAKER_01 41:39

I think so all right what is your favorite book favorite book um that's I mean there

PPC Cleanup And Where AI Fits

SPEAKER_01 41:50

there's there's a lot of them I read one recently called the the uh I think it's the sorrow and the pity this year which is very well written um really like that book business books it's the one thing it's always been the one thing um but yeah for for business books it's the one thing I recommend it to so many people very good uh what are your hobbies um reading I like reading I I used to garden but I haven't done that as much uh spending time with my my son we're doing you know a lot of pool time he's nine months old so he's going to a swim class and uh I like cooking I don't get as much time for it but yeah cooking and and reading I would say very nice next question what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up fail or never get started uh I think you know as as cheesy as it sounds mindset just believing that it's going to happen and it might not be the path that you think if you believe in the destination and you're constantly putting yourself at the destination this is where I'm going this is the end result and not getting stuck on all of the minutiae that starts to open up opportunities that maybe you didn't originally see. So you know I never thought I would be developing and you know selling a software but I knew that you know that I was going to achieve something I I knew that selling products on Amazon wasn't my final destination. I I liked helping people to sell products and to to succeed in business more. And so that ended up with me getting into software uh I knew it would leap into something else. And so having that that destination mindset and that mindset of knowing that it was going to happen and then and then not being so rigid with it has to be this, it has to be this product it has to be this business it has to be this partner those types of things I think get you stuck in taking the failure personally because that thing didn't work out rather than you know the actual goal being more of a an abstract very good I really like that answer.

SPEAKER_02 44:25

And final question if people are interested in SoStock or getting in touch with you what is the best way?

SPEAKER_01 44:33

Yep I'm on LinkedIn uh they can go to so stock.com that'll take them to uh the SPS Commerce website our our page on the SPS Commerce website so so stock.com is where I would go to to find that and then I guess just my email people you know kind of giving out uh their emails it's not always taken people aren't always taken up on it but uh it's chelsea at carbon6 dot dot io still and uh you can reach out to me I'm happy to chat uh I love to talk uh profitability and give tools for that so anyone who wants to reach out can go ahead outstanding well Chelsea thank you so much for your time today and looking forward to staying in touch absolutely thank you