Robin Joy has two predictions for Q4 2026. First, Amazon is going to have a harder time than ever keeping up with everything going in and going out: backorders, delivery dates that slip, Prime orders that suddenly take four more days. Second, regating, the same problem we've watched for the past two or three years, starting right about now in October. Both sound like bad news. Turned upside down, both are opportunity, if you know how to handle them.

Then Brian has you write one number down. Storage on a standard size item runs 78 cents a cubic foot January through September. From October 1st through December it's $2.40. Same shelf, same box, a little more than three times the rent. We do the math on camera (carefully) for leftover summer inventory that's still sitting there into December.

From there it's the plan. Why holding your price until your inventory is in the Prime window wins the order when other sellers' deliveries slip. What happens when the great Black Friday deal you found turns out to be on sale for everybody. The 10% rule for any one ASIN, and the multimillion-dollar seller who went five figures deep on one Q4 toy. Then your exits: multi-channel fulfillment, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace, and FBM, which may be the most valuable on-platform outlet this Q4 and the one nobody picks in our webinar polls. Plus high pricing errors, and what to do when Amazon won't let you have the price you need.

The quote of the week is John F. Kennedy's, from the 1962 State of the Union: "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." And stay to the end for a birthday, a bonus quote, and the news that this is probably our last straight-up Amazon episode.

In this episode:

• (00:00) Cold open
• (01:12) Welcome back to the Modern Builders Network
• (01:47) Robin Joy's first Q4 prediction: backorders and late deliveries
• (04:05) Hold your price until your inventory is in the Prime window
• (04:53) Panic pricing and canceled orders
• (06:41) Prediction two: regating
• (08:33) Why a removal order won't rescue you in Q4
• (10:07) You need more outlets than Amazon
• (11:37) What do we do to keep our risk low?
• (12:22) No more than 10% in any one ASIN
• (13:06) One cubic foot, at Q4 rates
• (14:30) Write this one down: 78 cents to $2.40
• (14:53) Who it actually hurts: leftover summer inventory
• (16:07) Building months of storage into your cost
• (18:44) Going 100 units deep on one great deal
• (20:13) On sale for you means on sale for everybody
• (22:16) The Squishmallows story
• (24:32) Pick your percentage before you pick the product
• (25:46) Build your exits before you need them
• (26:24) Multi-channel fulfillment
• (28:33) FBM, the easiest on-platform exit
• (32:12) Have a plan
• (33:00) High pricing errors
• (35:10) Front doors, back doors, and fire drills
• (37:41) Quote of the week: John F. Kennedy
• (38:54) What does fixing the roof look like this week?
• (40:08) Off script: Brian's birthday, and a bonus quote
• (41:20) The last straight-up Amazon episode
• (42:06) Become undeniable

Tool mentioned: Profit Zones in PATH, where you can factor months of storage into your break-even cost (16:07).

Decide this week what you'll do when an ASIN gets regated, stranded, or stuck outside the Prime window, so that when it happens you just turn to the page.

Run your own numbers. The Profit Tune-Up is free. Upload your Amazon or Seller Board data, or even a Seller Board screenshot, and get the same review Brian runs in a live coaching session. officialolsons.com

Everything else lives in one place. The newsletter, the coaching, the community, and the rest of the tools are all at officialolsons.com (all O's, no E's).

New episodes weekly. If this one helped, leave a rating. It is the single easiest thing you can do for us.

The New Era Reseller is part of the Modern Builders Network, hosted by Brian and Robin Joy Olson.

Become undeniable.

Selling on Amazon is like renting a storefront in the busiest mall anywhere. The customers are already walking by, and the landlord handles security, checkout and the returns desk. But you live by the landlord's rules, and he can change them whenever he wants.

Brian knew for certain they were renting, not owning, the day he opened the fourth quarter fee schedule. Standard-size storage runs 78 cents a cubic foot January through September and $2.40 in the peak season. Same shelf, same product, a little more than three times the rent. And Q4 brings a rebuilt Seller Central and the yearly round of regating on top of it. When Amazon is your only outlet, Amazon's decisions become your business decisions, and you didn't get a vote.

So what actually belongs to you? Not the brands, and not the listings. The skill does: finding products, reading a price history, knowing your numbers, the sourcing list, the testing habit, the capital. Robin Joy pushes back on her own article, and we get into why protecting the account matters less than protecting the skill, and why this goes well past arbitrage, to the wedding photographer, the bakery and the consultant with one source of work.

Then the flip side: why we still send brand-new sellers to Amazon first. The lessons are cheap there. We tell you about a new seller who started with $3,000 of the $30,000 he had, and another who spent months calling distributors with no sales history.

The back half is practical. A slow item heading into October gives you three bad choices when Amazon is your only outlet, and a fourth when it isn't. Keeping risk low comes in two versions, a moat and a cage, and they look the same until they don't. We walk through Walmart Marketplace, eBay, Etsy, Facebook Marketplace and Amazon's Multi-Channel Fulfillment, and Brian shares the one thing he'd change about how we built our business. Plus a call that went to the replay booth.

This week's quote is 400 years old, from Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote: "It is the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket." He never says get rid of the basket.

In this episode:

• (01:41) Welcome back, and the self-driven AI webinar with Derek Komlo
• (02:32) Brian argues his way to Robin Joy's article
• (05:28) Selling on Amazon is renting a storefront in a mall
• (06:11) The Q4 storage fee: 78 cents to $2.40
• (07:11) The new Seller Central workspace
• (08:59) Q4 regating
• (10:39) Amazon's decisions become your business decisions
• (12:01) "Walmart seems way too risky"
• (14:12) What actually belongs to you
• (15:27) Robin Joy pushes on her own article
• (16:31) Protecting the account instead of the skill
• (17:49) Why we still send new sellers to Amazon first
• (18:45) Starting with $3,000 instead of $30,000
• (20:59) If Amazon closed our account tomorrow
• (23:42) A slow item, a few days before October
• (24:16) Three choices, or a fourth
• (25:28) The moat and the cage
• (26:19) Which platform? Walmart Marketplace
• (27:13) Let's go to the tape
• (27:43) eBay, Etsy, and Facebook Marketplace
• (28:16) Multi-channel fulfillment: a second door
• (29:15) What we'd change: add the second outlet sooner
• (32:01) Why only one platform at a time?
• (35:37) The assignment: list your slow items somewhere else
• (36:16) The finish carpenter with one builder
• (37:53) Quote of the week: Cervantes
• (39:38) Your five slowest items

Take your five slowest items, pick one other place to list them, and do it before the storage bill teaches you the lesson.

Run your own numbers. The Profit Tune-Up is free. Upload your Amazon or Seller Board data, or even a Seller Board screenshot, and get the same review Brian runs in a live coaching session. officialolsons.com

Everything else lives in one place. The newsletter, the coaching, the community, and the rest of the tools are all at officialolsons.com (all O's, no E's).

New episodes weekly. If this one helped, leave a rating. It is the single easiest thing you can do for us.

The New Era Reseller is part of the Modern Builders Network, hosted by Brian and Robin Joy Olson.

Become undeniable.

Every Thanksgiving, Robin Joy has the kids make butter. Cream goes in a Mason jar, the lid goes on tight, and they shake. And shake. Twenty or thirty minutes of nothing, long enough that they start asking if it's a trick. Then there's a thud against the lid, and all of a sudden it's butter.

The thud isn't the work, though. The work happened while nobody could see anything going on in that jar. This episode is about that stretch, in your business, when you've been doing the right things and there's nothing to show for it yet.

It starts somewhere strange: you've never seen a perfect circle. Robin Joy uses Plato and Aristotle to get at what "perfect restocking" means, and why the useful question is how close you can get to it, not whether you hit it. Then Brian takes one blueprint and builds it on different lots, which is why we give you frameworks and a recommendation and still leave the decisions to you.

Then there's the math, done on camera. Two crews build the same house with the same 160 hours of labor. One finishes in four weeks and the other takes 16, and nothing is wrong with the second one. That's just what 10 hours a week does. Same idea with the person you keep comparing yourself to: don't measure your third month against their finished house, measure it against their third month, when they had a hole in the ground too.

The back half is the foundation, and the part most people don't know: concrete doesn't dry, it cures. The water gets used up in a chemical reaction that makes it strong, so crews keep a slab wet on purpose. In this business the water is test ASINs going in. Stop sending tests halfway through and the slab cracks. And the cure keeps going long after the walls go up.

This week's quote comes from Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month (1975): "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."

In this episode:

• (00:00) Making butter in a Mason jar, and the thud
• (03:19) You've never seen a perfect circle
• (04:26) Plato, Aristotle, and where the perfect form lives
• (06:31) Perfect restocking in one sentence
• (08:18) Off script: the September 29 webinar on building an AI replenishment prototype
• (09:51) Same blueprint, completely different house
• (13:02) Our blueprint: the frameworks, and your lot
• (16:12) Borrow our way until you can prove yours
• (17:35) The house across the street
• (18:24) The math: 160 hours, 4 weeks or 16
• (21:16) Comparing yourself to someone six months ahead
• (23:37) James Clear and the flat part of the curve
• (25:24) Why butter churns instead of jars
• (28:03) What is your churn?
• (28:44) A client 10 weeks in, and tests versus replenishables
• (32:05) Nobody photographs the hole in the ground
• (34:34) The frameworks as a build sequence
• (37:28) Concrete doesn't dry, it cures
• (39:42) Your test ASINs are the water
• (42:11) 7 days, 28 days, and still curing years later
• (44:25) Stop testing halfway and the slab cracks
• (47:27) The butter has come, but it isn't done
• (49:06) The first sale is the thud
• (50:04) You're not behind, you're pre-pour
• (50:29) Fred Brooks on what you can't rush

Resources mentioned: the frameworks (pre-flight inspection, bridging the gap, the three-step check, the four-week test) are in our book PATH, and the September 29 webinar details are at officialolsons.com (all O's, no E's).

If you're standing in your yard looking at a hole in the ground, you're not behind. You're pre-pour.

Run your own numbers. The Profit Tune-Up is free. Upload your Amazon or Seller Board data, or even a Seller Board screenshot, and get the same review Brian runs in a live coaching session. officialolsons.com

Everything else lives in one place. The newsletter, the coaching, the community, and the rest of the tools are all at officialolsons.com (all O's, no E's).

New episodes weekly. If this one helped, leave a rating. It is the single easiest thing you can do for us.

The New Era Reseller is part of the Modern Builders Network, hosted by Brian and Robin Joy Olson.

Become undeniable.