Sara Zomer is turning her fantasy of owning her own business and quitting her day job into a reality. In February, she was just four months in and shared her story with us at the Live Event in Las Vegas. Six months later, she shared with our community that she quit her job and is now pursuing her own business full time.
After seeing her post about quitting her job, we had to find out more. Brynn Jacoby (our Community Manager) and I sat down with Sara to hear more about how she’s doing now and what advice she has for others just getting started.
Sara: I’m excited. It really has been life-changing because I’m still not the million-dollar product, but just being around this community and having my business on Amazon, the biggest shift has been in my consciousness, like I’m in a place of abundance. I think that’s been the biggest shift, knowing that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that there’s so much to achieve. It has been…the program and also the network that I’ve been building with other ASMers. There is no business in this world that you can build with such a community around it. It’s impossible.
Melissa: Tell us a little bit about your background and what you were doing before you discovered Amazing Selling Machine.
Sara: Okay. That’s an interesting question. I always start with the fact that I pretty much have two personalities. I’m Batman. I studied Fashion Design and Merchandising. That has been my 9 to 5 and my bread and butter for almost 15 years already. I’ve worked at this company that I just quit for 11-1/2 years, working in the design development and merchandising department. My expertise is mostly in textiles. It’s a fitness company, so I’ve been doing fitness for those for more than a decade. A little perk that I brought in already to ASM was that I’ve been working with China suppliers for all this time. That wasn’t scary for me. At the end of the day, it’s easy for everybody, but I didn’t have that fear factor. My fear factors were something else.
Since I graduated high school, [textiles] was my career, but I’ve practiced yoga for half my life and I was also working on teacher trainings. I have a few teacher trainings in a few hours that I’d done. Somewhere around, I think it was 2009, I started teaching yoga. Then I really got focused on prenatal yoga, which is what I really, really love. I became a birth doula and a childbirth educator. That’s what I’m really passionate about. I was doing the double thing. I’m a doula at night and a merchandiser by day, just because you have to pay the bills. I had lost passion for my job a long time ago. I had all that beautiful, magical work that I’ve been doing, helping people and sharing with my soon-to-be mamas and all that stuff.
Really, when I got into ASM, my dream was if I could just work, and I can’t even call it work, in my prenatal business and helping moms and doing all my childbirth education, I’ll feel like I’m retired. If I could just live off of that and have enough money to cover the bills and be happy and be relaxed, I’ll feel like I retired at 36. I have been taking a few financial coaching lessons trying to figure out a way to get out of there, get out of that grind of working in the morning, teaching at night, teaching early in the morning even. Then I stumbled upon Amazing Selling Machine. That’s when it all shifted.
I was hooked with video one because I think I also had that fantasy, working in production for so many years. I had the fantasy of having my own line of products. I knew how to make them and I had the expertise in China, but I was like, “Where on earth am I going to sell this? Am I going to go knocking on doors? Am I going to sell 6 pieces to a yoga studio and then 6 pieces to a friend? How am I going to do this? Where am I going to start?” I also don’t have the money to invest in a huge warehouse and hire sales people. It was just a fantasy. Up until I saw Matt and Jason’s first video, it was just a fantasy of having my own line of something, of cool baby clothes or other products. I’m not in the clothing business now. I think with video one, from that release for ASM before, that the fantasy was like a reality right then. I hadn’t signed in, I hadn’t heard the course, but now it was like, “Okay. This guy knows how to take my fantasy somewhere that is not just a dream or a fantasy that maybe I’ll win a million dollars, but then if I already have the million dollars, maybe I wouldn’t want to do it.
That was pretty much it, that it was a shift right away. That is why when I was in Vegas, I hadn’t even started selling and I already felt the shift of consciousness because I already knew I had a plan. I had a plan and I was taking action. Having the plan and taking action was just everything I needed and I’ve been very successful since then. When you guys heard my first testimonial, I wasn’t even live. I was waiting for my product to arrive.
Melissa: You already seemed very determined at that point.
Sara: You know what? It wasn’t a what-if thing; it was something that is just happening. Okay, I have a business and it’s going well. I think it also has a lot to do with the mindset, getting into that abundance mentality. In the community, people are looking for answers, and so I always try to reach out and be like, “You can do this. It’s just a little pebble in your shoe. It’s fine. Let’s get going.” I’ve had a few of my friends … One of the close friends that I mastermind with now, another ASMer, he had a really crappy situation, where his product had to be recalled. Things happen, but you need to keep your mind focused on the goal. That’s the thing. At the beginning, I was already ready.
Now I’m doing my predictions and I’ve been working with the [holiday prediction] numbers Mike McClary shared with us and I’m sticking to those. I have my goals. I’m sure it’s going to go great, and the system works. That’s the thing. Stuff goes down on the way, but the system works. That’s why I feel…now I know that I can be a business person, that I can build a business that is scalable. I just have one product now, and there is an infinity number of products that one can offer. That’s what’s really cool about this, having a business and having a community.
Melissa: How do you feel like your life has changed since before you stated ASM and even since Live Event?
Sara: I am just so much happier with how life looks ahead of me. Oh, my God. I was so overworked, so overwhelmed. I was working 12, 15-hour days. I want to have kids soon. There’s just stuff in life…We kept thinking about babies because there’s not enough money. How are you even going to think about having a baby working 15-hour days? We don’t fit in the apartment, I have a one-bedroom, and all this kind of stuff that you’re like, “Okay. I just need to work more hours and I need to work more and work more and work more.” Now, again, that shift of consciousness that, “Okay. I don’t need to work more. I need to work smarter.” I am so much more relaxed and happy and slowly shifting. I have no idea what I’m going to do with my time once I have it for myself. That’s one thing I’m really looking forward. I’m doing all these lists of … Because that’s me. I’ve been busy. For 20 years, I haven’t had a big vacation or free days. I’m making lists of I’m going to work out and I’m going to walk the puppies and I’m going to do this and do that, but I’m really looking forward to a day that I just do nothing, and maybe check on my e-mails or check on my seller central, maybe even on my phone, or maybe not even.
Brynn: At what point did you know that you were going to quit? Was it when you realized the potential in this business, or was it when you hit a certain point in revenue? When did you make that decision?
Sara Zomer: Good question. I’ve been wanting to do that for so long. Sometimes when things are really bad, sometimes it’s easier to take action, but when you’re just bored but it’s not bad, I love the place, the people are nice, my job was nice; I was just bored. It wasn’t that easy to jump ship. If it would have been just horrible and I would have had a horrible boss, maybe it would have been just easy to do, but it wasn’t. I went through all these scenarios. I was like, “Maybe I’ll wait until I make this amount of money on Amazon and maybe I’ll wait until I double my salary, so I’m like super safe and I can have a cushion and what not.” At the end of the day, I just felt that it wasn’t fair for my employers that my head was completely somewhere else.
That was one of the things, but I’m not all about everybody else. Of course, it was not good for me either. I was feeling like I lost the excitement. I thought maybe I’ll do it in December and see how it goes with the end-of-year sales in Amazon and what not, but then I was like, “You know what? I’m hitting my goals, I’m exceeding my goals. In the last 3 months that I’ve been selling, I actually started selling…” It’s August now. I started selling in April. I was out of inventory for a month. In this time, I’ve reached and exceeded my goals, so I have no doubt that I’ll reach my end-of-the-year goals, and they’ll be a lot more fun than my salary.
You know what? If they’re not then we’ll have another product and we’ll make it happen, but, see, the difference between a salary and a business is I did make a little commission on sales, but I didn’t really shift much. The thing with the business is that if you offer more value then you get more money, and so you sell another product or you offer another color and you offer a little more customer service. The more value you offer then there are more possibilities of your income growing. Whereas, at a job, you can be the hardest worker, and, yeah, you might get a promotion, but it’s not the same. I have a very spiritual approach to money and I really think that if you open up to the universe and you’re very clear on what you want and what you need and why you want it then the universe delivers. Of course, you have to take action. You just can’t sit on a dream, but if you take action and you open the channels and money is just energy, and it’ll flow. That’s how I’ve been feeling in the past few months.
Melissa: What part do you think risk-taking takes in entrepreneurship?
Sara: I don’t now. I think risky would be to stay 20 more years sitting in that chair bored off my behind, gaining weight, seeing my legs getting purple every so often because I don’t move enough, and stuff. That, I feel is a lot more risky than this. I don’t feel I’m taking a risk. I’ll make sure that my business grows steadily and then I can pay back one way or another whatever I’m going to take in as a loan.
Melissa: What one piece of advice would you give to ASMers going through it right now?
Sara: I think it’s mostly two things. One, keep it positive. Whatever goes on, keep it positive, reach out to the community. There’s the community in the Amazing website, reach out. The mentors are there and everybody else is there. It’s just pebbles in your shoes. It’s not the end of the world, even if things get really sketchy. Keep it positive, keep going. Take action, keep going. Also, build relationships. If you can come to the Live Event, do so. Use the community. The training is really good, but the community is what’s priceless. The community is going to be there for you.