How This 17 Year Old Started an Online Empire

what's up everybody I'm here today with Carter Maxwell aka the highschool hustler his name says it all he has a YouTube channel called highschool hustler which will be linked up in the description of this video I'm gonna let him introduce himself and tell you guys a little about who he is and his backstory so hey Carter how's it going good Paul it's going good great why did you tell everyone a little bit about who you are awesome so thanks for having me on so much Paul really doesn't mean a lot but just about a quick little introduction of you know who I am so I'm currently a you know 17 know the entrepreneur throughout the past known four or five years I've sold on multiple platforms from eBay to merch by Amazon FBA a little bit on Shopify and you know I've had a lot of you know ups and downs and you know I've shared that on my youtube channel and just recently over the past year or two I've really been able to scale my own Amazon FBA business do you know six figures and beyond a year so that's a pretty big accomplishment for me especially being 17 and you know I talk about it on my channel and I'm not it's not there to brag but it's there for me to you know inspire other people that you know that age you know it's just a number that you can start a business with you know zero experience zero knowledge I know whatever it is you just learn it and through trial and area with a build something that you know can potentially change your life so you know when it comes to my back story you know I'm at the age of 12 I sold my first item on eBay and then I sold on reselling just random stuff on eBay for about two years until about age fourteen and a half and then I started getting into FBA and originally I started reselling and then after I you know I built up a little bit more capital I started to get into a model it's a bit more scalable known as private label which I'm sure will go over a little bit later on in this video but that's kind of my backstory in my journey as a young entrepreneur so twelve years old is when

you started selling online yes where did that inspiration and drive come from at twelve because I think when I was 12 I was playing like Dungeons & Dragons with my friends in my parents basement wasn't even thinking at all about making money online so or making any money for that matter so where did that come from um I mean I was still you know playing video games hang out with friends and I've reached that stage Reno I wanted some you know higher priced items and I wanted some more luxury type you know electronics or you know video games and you know my parents said you're gonna have to save up your money and I'm actually surprisingly I went to goo I'm like how can I make money as a kid and you know I looked up you know the top 40 list and it was like you know you can babysit you can walk dogs do a lemonade stand and then like number 40 was like eBay it was like starting online business I was like okay I like that and so you know I took a risk in um I sold a coin that I was gifted from a relative they still don't know I sold it but the coin is worth like 25 $30 and for me that was just like wow like I just made like thirty dollars in a day from selling this item and then I ended up stealing you know my brother and sisters coins and so I was able to build up you know seventy-five eighty dollars you know within the first day of selling these items so it's just a huge inspiration was like Noah I like this you know cash flow coming in you know how can I make you know a hundred dollars how can I make a thousand dollars and that kind of you know started my entrepreneurship journey and I was never really forced into it like my parents never made me you know sell on eBay or sell on Amazon there's just something that you know I really enjoyed and I enjoyed you know the experience of being able to build something like you know really helped me years down the road from now why did you

then move from selling these items that you were stealing from her siblings and from around the house to you know a different business model where did you go from there and why did you make that move um the transition from eBay to Amazon FBA was there's a really big transition for me because I'm still being in high school for you know eight hours a day playing basketball in out the gym for an hour and a half in the evening um you know my time was somewhat limited to run the business and eventually um reselling on eBay I was getting to the point where I was selling you know twenty to twenty-five items a day and when it comes to eBay you're having you have to manually you know ship each of the items out in for me you know a one-man show was it was a bit difficult to be able to go through and you know have to pick pack and ship all those different items no different sizes different locations and it just took up a lot of time and I've heard some stir on YouTube about this new program you know FBA if I fill in by Amazon and I tried it out and what happened was you know I eventually reached the same you know says velocity as I had on eBay you know if I sold 25 items that day on eBay and 25 on Amazon you know Amazon using the FBA program they would fulfill all those orders for me so basically I'd have all my inventory sent in stored at an Amazon warehouse and then once it sells on Amazon the fulfillment team picks packs and ships that product you know today's shipping to my customer for me so that day that I sold 25 items on Amazon I didn't touch any one of those provide any customer service at all Amazon handled that and when it came to eBay it's just I was just tired of having to go you know spend all that time you know having to process each of the items so that was kind of the transition and you know why I decided to move from eBay to Amazon this so it sounds like you

started I guess maybe you say like down here and found something that works but then found something that worked but solved all the problems you were having with the first one but then you moved up again didn't you start doing something else different with Amazon yes so I'm actually switched my business models got kind of switched my strategy so I was using the same strategy he was using on eBay and my first business model known as reselling at it's one of the best ways to start on Amazon especially if you have limiting limited capital and how much experience I was selling you know books and video games and newer used electronics and just kind of finding random items like garage sales and books house and overtime I was wanting something that was a little bit you know a little bit more scalable suddenly I could you know scaled you know ten thousand dollars a month and beyond and I found this business model known as private label and there wasn't a lot of people were talking on YouTube about you know Amazon FBA and I mean you look on Amazon FBA now everyone's trying to you know sell their own product everyone's talking about it now but when I first started about a year and a half ago there actually wasn't really anyone that had a course so I didn't actually have a course to take you know on how to private label it was just you know a YouTube video here you know an article on Google here and it was a lot of trial and error for me so I lost you know a lot of money I mean my first two products failed and you know I just I stuck with it in like you know invested more in tools and I kept doing more research and I finally you know found a stretch you know a blueprint that I use and that I teach um that was able for me you know keep finding and keep you know being able to list and sell you know products and the thing about that business model that's different you know private label is you're going in sourcing you know one individual product to sell that parodic you know multiple times throughout the day so I know I like to follow my strategy which is you know they've that ten by one so I like to find products that are gonna you know make ten sales a day at around ten dollars profit for one day so if I can find a product that's gonna make me you know a hundred dollars profit a day even if that's you know twenty sales a day at five dollars profit that 100 dollars per day is that goal then I just want to keep adding you know new products and that was just a great way to kind of you know to scale from there so instead of trying to find a product where you know here's a five dollar profit and you know a twenty five dollar profit I'm just consistently selling you know the same item over and over for a five dollar profit or ten dollar profit how

many items you have private label now I have about at the moment six and before I go on my vacation in about two or three weeks I'm trying to add two more so and it kind of fluctuates like I had to drop one product not too long ago and it just I have one seasonal product so they're kind of all over the place when it comes to you know the products that I'm adding but I'm really trying to add on at least you know one every month or a month and a half it's but I've been putting a lot more time into YouTube and I'm helping people in the course so it's kind of it stood stagnant about a product every month that's a go and a

half so you were mentioning before you made a lot of mistakes when you first started with private labeling what kind of mistakes were those man so the first mistake was just I didn't have like someone to help me a blueprint like I mentioned I went through trial and error which is a great way to you know learn it if that's your only option but one thing I didn't do is I didn't invest in a tool you know starting out with an online business obviously you want to you know invest like the least amount of funds because you want to obviously be profitable and so I didn't really invest in any you know high quality tools such as you know Douglas cot which is what I currently use for product research so my first two products I just manually did research on Amazon now that's still profitable you still can't have success doing you know manual research on Amazon there are some different tactics but the way I was doing it you know the knowledge that I had at that moment I didn't know if there was an opportunity in a market to sell that product you know I was just looking at you know a sales volume and I mean I'll tell you the first product and went after an iPhone case I went after a knife a clearer iPhone case for you know the new iPhone 8 that was coming out at that time and you know it was like man like this products gonna be the next big thing you know all these sellers are doing you know 30 40 km unthe but I just entered a market that's too competitive and ended up losing some money on that product but it was a great learning experience so when it comes to mistakes um definitely just not having like the knowledge not investing in a tool was definitely one of the bigger mistakes I made so I just heard you say

that you lost some money on that first product so what would you say to someone like if I were to say to you I'm afraid to start private labeling because I'm afraid my products gonna bomb and I'm gonna lose money on it well first off a great way to you know eliminate the chance of you know having a product that's gonna be a bomb you know lose money is to just follow a blueprint follow a strategy that someone else that has had success has you available to use and I could be a course that could be you know mentorship coaching something like that where if you run into a problem you can ask someone up you know a higher stage you know help you along the way but when it comes to you know making sure your product isn't a flop I mean obviously there's no guarantees but you know product research is the foundation of your business it doesn't matter you know how good your pictures are how good your listing is you know how well it's selling if you don't pick a good product if your product is not gonna be a winning product and it's just gonna be extremely hard to be able to scale now if you were to launch a product I still believe that even if you're not profitable you can break even so there are a ton of different ways you can liquidate and I've learned that you know over the last year or so especially with the first product you know I didn't know exactly how to you know um sell a product you know how to break IAM at a loss and there's ways you can liquidate so when it comes to losing money it's very rare it usually happens if you pick a product that is just absolutely garbage just horrible so when it comes to you know not making that mistake product research is definitely the place to start so if people are interested

more in doing this where is like a good place they can go to learn some more information about this so not too long ago I actually launched my own private label course we know I teach someone that has zero experience on Amazon FBA private labeling or I teach them you know step by step how to build you know a successful private label business from you know creating your account with seller plan to choose you know different product you know product research strategies know contacting suppliers how exactly you can order these products how you can brand the product so I go step by step and you know one thing that sets me apart from all the other courses out there is you know I provide assistance I provide mentorship within my course so if you do have any questions or concerns while you're running your business and if you are enrolled in the course you will have one-on-one access to me to ask me any questions or concerns regarding the business that's definitely important because I definitely wish I had that you know when I first started cuz I was just going by trial and error when I made a mistake when I came to you know a roadblock I mean there was really no one to give me any advice on you know how to move forward or how to get past that and I did lose a lot of money so if you could have someone I mean myself or anyone that can you know help you along the way it does help save you a lot of money and time to really know quickly scale that business to whatever you know amount whatever product you know sales that you desire very cool

and you have a YouTube channel right yes I do the high school hustler channel which I might be moving to my personal name carter max both within a couple of months just kind of building on my personal brand a little bit more well whatever you change it to that will be

the first link in the description I think even if you change a name it's still gonna go there what do you talk about on that channel so it's mainly Amazon related content but I've started adding some other you know businesses ideas on there such as you know some eBay dropshipping you know reselling on ebay a little bit of Shopify so it's mainly Amazon because that's personally what I do for a full-time income right now but also the channels there's you know kind of um inspire and just teach people we know as many ways as possible that they can make an income online awesome so guys I've subscribed to his

channel he has really great content you guys want to make sure you subscribe to it or check it out that will be probably the first link actually will be the first link in the description of this video if you want to see all his great videos check them out he has a lot of free information out there about everything we've talked about things we haven't even had time to cover and then you can hear more about his course which I'm gonna be taking a look at really excited to check out that course it sounds like it's really awesome how long has that course been up now Carter um I say it's been up around six or seven months at the moment and it took me around you know I say two to three months to make you know I basically made it I'd say December through you know February kind of around those three months so I was able to go through you know q4 which was a really big quarter for me I mean for any online so I can imagine an ebay job shipping for you I mean that quarter of the year is absolutely giant so I was able to go through you know have a big quarter like that and really understand you know how exactly you can really just make as much money as you can now throughout that period of time when sales are just absolutely skyrocketing so we've talked a lot about private labeling now what you're doing on Amazon do you suggest that business model for people who are brand new to e-commerce and haven't had experience selling on Amazon yet um I'd say it's really up to whoever the person is private-label is a business model that you know takes a little bit more of an investment upfront but you know in the back end there's gonna be a lot less competition because obviously you know not very many people have the funds to be able to invest and you know it takes anywhere from you know $800 to $1,100 you know if that's a smaller order to you know start your private label business but I mean there's also you know reselling and that's kind of where I started and that's where you can't start if you don't want to really take that risk upfront and a great strategy that I recommend is you know start and reselling you know random items you know books and video games and electronics and learn the Amazon FBA business phone you know learn how to use the platform and once you've built up some more capital once you have a little bit more confidence then you can get to something a little bit more scalable like private label cool so without going like maybe too in-depth about it can you just walk someone through like maybe just the basic steps of how this retail arbitrage FBA kind of business would look like what you have to do to get it going so it's a pretty good platform in the sense that I already mentioned a little bit earlier it's fulfilled by Amazon so basically you are sourcing different products for instance if you do using the reselling business model you're sourcing books you're buying them for a dollar selling over 15 20 dollars and you want to build up you know a surplus of inventory and then you're gonna ship that inventory through the Amazon warehouse and using this platform Amazon will store your inventory and their warehouses for you know a small monthly fee while your products are live and for sale on Amazon now once your product is sold and purchased on Amazon the fulfillment team by Amazon then picks packs and ships that cause that product you know today's shipping to your customer for you so it's an extremely efficient business model in the sense that you know for eight hours a day you know I'm at school and I'm still able to make money because Amazon is doing all the fulfillment I'm solely there to make sure that my product is selling that I'm advertising I'm driving people to my listing and that if I'm making sales that Amazon on the back end is gonna be shipping and doing you know kind of automating that backend shipping portion of my business awesome so you're finding

these products at like thrift stores or where are you getting them from yeah so when it comes to reselling I mean I'll probably have a guide in about three or three weeks that will show you exactly where so you need to find that on my channel or might be in the description of this but basically you can go we know garage sales thrift stores you know book sales you can also you know purchase items on eBay to then resell back on Amazon Aliexpress Alibaba I mean there's seven or eight or there's so many different locations you know websites platforms that you can source products from to resell back on Amazon well

Carter thanks so much for sitting down with me and talking with me your stories really inspirational I'm just blown away that you started this at 12 years old and you've created this huge business for yourself at 17 you have an amazing YouTube channel so guys who should definitely check out his YouTube channel that's going to be the first link in the description underneath this video and if you want to check out his course that will be the second link in the description of the video if you can check it out but check out his YouTube channel first you know get to know him a little better and I think you're gonna see that he's a very honest guy very open guy and has some really great content out there that you guys are gonna want to check out you're not gonna miss it so Carter again thanks so much and I hope we can do another one these in the future maybe after you release your next guide so people can hear more about that but thanks so much mmm sounds good thanks for having me