People know Picasso for his cubist art but what they may not know is he is an incredible “normal” artist who can capture the emotion of a subject better than you could imagine without seeing it for yourself. The difference with Picasso is he understood the imbalance of nature so understood art shouldn’t be balanced either. No eye is exactly the same. No leg is exactly the same. Cubism highlighted this in an unorthodox way. Picasso was also a sculptor who saw art in things as simple as a broken bicycle.

Finding Art Where No One Could

In his 90+ years of life, he created over 5000 works. The incredible thing is he didn’t sell one a piece until after he died. His focus was to create a collection for himself. A memoir of sorts. He loved painting and drawing images of his wife and his child, his family, different matadors, artists, acrobats and all sorts of things that he could remember his travels. He created beautiful works during the Depression and the World Wars that oozed pain and uncertainty in his own way.

Creating For Himself

Even at 90, he painted with a childish flair. He painted matadors with a range of strange colours, kind of like a circus clown. He painted men with no backgrounds or context…just dots and strokes of different colours and shades. Picasso never lost his love of life and of his art and this shone through even at the end of his life. Going back to the previous point, it wasn’t about other people…he kept his childish nature to create art that made him happy, that told his story.

Painting Like A Child

While in Màlaga, Spain, Scott and I escaped the rain for a few hours to visit the Picasso Museum. I expected to be wowed by the amazing art but I was not expecting to walk out of there with an…

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3 Life Lessons from Pablo Picasso | by Angelica Nohra | Medium

Amazon is known to be one of the biggest selling platforms in the world. According to Statista, as of April 2021, Amazon registered around 407 million visits per month in the UK alone. One of the best things about Amazon is that anyone can sell on the platform ‒ you don’t necessarily need to be a big retailer with a huge warehouse.You can sell on Amazon even if you have no selling experience. Want to start selling on Amazon? Here’s how to do it.

Sell On Amazon

Amazon is a go-to website for shoppers and sellers alike. As an Amazon seller, you’re part of a diverse community of retailers and sellers of all types and sizes, from Fortune 500 companies to creative visionaries selling their handmade wares from home.According to statistics on Amazon’s website, they have more than 300 million active customer accounts. These accounts exist in more than 180 countries.  By selling on Amazon, you contribute to providing those customers with the best selection, the best price, and the best customer experience.

The Benefit Of Selling On Amazon

Amazon has two selling plans: Individual and Professional. These can be considered standard and premium selling plans. These two plans offer you flexibility in the type of selling you wish to do ‒ you can sell one item or thousands if you choose.  Amazon’s Individual plan charges the seller $0.99 per sale, whereas the sellers opting for the Professional plan are charged a flat fee of $39.99 per month, no matter how many items they sell. Amazon suggests that it makes the most sense to buy the Professional option if you sell more than 40 items a month.

The Selling Plans

The registration process is very straightforward:<ul><li>Visit https://services.amazon.com</li><li>Click ‘Sign Up’</li><li>Follow the prompts and create your Amazon Seller Account</li></ul> Some things you’ll need on hand to complete your registration are:<ul><li>Bank account number and bank routing number</li><li>Chargeable credit card</li><li>Government-issued national ID</li><li>Tax information</li><li>Phone number</li></ul>If you’re prepared with the above, your entire registration process will take minutes to complete.

Register As Amazon Seller

Depending on your selling plan, there are different fees for selling on Amazon. There are three main types of fees related to being an Amazon seller:<ul><li>Subscription fees – Subscription fees are the fees that you pay for your selling plan</li><li>Selling fees – Selling fees are what you are charged per item sold. </li><li>Shipping fees – Amazon shipping rates apply when you fulfil orders yourself.</li><li>Fulfilment by Amazon – There are fees for order fulfilment, storage, and optional services for products that Amazon fulfils for you as part of Amazon’s dropshipping equivalent, Fulfillment by Amazon service.</li></ul>

The Cost Of Selling On Amazon

If you are selling a product that another seller is already selling on Amazon, you can match their existing product listing. If you are the first and only seller of a product, you will need to create a new listing. Each seller’s selling plan determines how they upload and list their products. If a seller has chosen to use a Professional seller account, they will have the option to list all of their products in bulk with bulk uploads or inventory management using third-party systems. Sellers with the Individual plan must list each of their products one by one.

Create A Product Listing

When selling products on Amazon, the website needs a product ID to properly identify the precise item you’re selling. These IDs are typically an ISBN, a UPC or an EAN. Amazon may require that you purchase a UPC code for a new product or request an exemption for the listing of a new product. Each product listing will also need the following to be complete:<ul><li>Stock keeping unit (SKU)</li><li>Name of the product</li><li>Description of the product and bullet points</li><li>Images of the product</li><li>Relevant keywords as well as search terms</li></ul>

Product Listing: The Details

Amazon prides itself on giving its shoppers a safe, comfortable shopping experience. They want their customers to shop with confidence. For that reason, certain products are known as restricted product categories. To sell in these categories, Amazon will likely request that you supply additional fees, performance checks and other qualifications. To receive approval to sell certain brands or list items within a restricted category(like alcohol or tobacco), you can request approval from Seller Central.

Restricted Product Categories

If you follow best practices when adding listings, you can greatly increase your chances of success. Shoppers will be able to find your products more easily if you are sure to add descriptive titles, use clear pictures and have concise feature bullets to your listings. Some factors that could negatively impact your product launch include:<ul><li>Variation problems</li><li>Image compliance</li><li>Product IDs</li></ul>

Ensuring a Successful Listing and Product Launch

This simply means that the seller stores and manages their inventory and ships their products to their customers themselves. As soon as an order ships, Amazon charges a shipping fee based on the product category and the shipping service selected by the customer. The shipping fee is then passed on to the seller in the form of a shipping credit. There are set shipping rates for all products with an Individual plan, so you need to decide if you can still price your products profitably when factoring in shipping costs.

Delivery: Merchant Fulfilment

The company operates 175 fulfilment centres around the world that contain more than 150 million square feet of storage space. When sellers choose Fulfillment by Amazon, they can store your inventory in those warehouses, saving sellers the expense and inconvenience of storing and managing inventory. These sellers also become the beneficiary of Amazon’s customer service and returns, automatic Prime eligibility and Free Super Saver Shipping.

Delivery: Fulfilment By Amazon(FBA)

<ul><li> Step 1: The seller ships their inventory to Amazon where it will be scanned and put up for sale.</li><li>Step 2: When a purchase is made, each order is packaged and shipped directly by Amazon to the customer.</li><li>Step 3: Amazon is responsible for collecting payments from the customer. The seller is paid any available funds by Amazon every two weeks.</li><li>Step 4: In the event of any problems, any questions, returns, refunds and such are handled by Amazon’s customer service team, saving the seller the stress of dealing with unhappy customers.</li></ul>

Steps To Use FBA

Once you have registered as an Amazon seller, you will be able to access your Seller Central account. Seller Central is an important resource for selling on Amazon, acting as a portal to your Amazon business and providing all of the tools you need to manage your selling account. With Seller Central, you can also add product information, make inventory updates, list all of your products and manage payments. It is a hub of useful information that will help you along your journey in navigating your Amazon business.

Amazon Seller Central

<ul><li>Check for new orders daily – Keep on top of when customers order a new product so that you can promptly fulfil the order and ship it out.</li><li>Keep track of your inventory – Be sure that you are always aware of exactly how much stock you have. This way, you’ll avoid ever being unable to fulfil a product due to being out of stock without realising it.</li><li>Keep your pricing up to date (and competitive) – Keep an eye on similar products to yours and make sure that you are pricing yours within the right range, as customers frequently gravitate towards the lowest price.</li></ul>

Tips And Tricks For Sellers

Strong customer response is essential to being a successful Amazon seller and improving your credibility on the platform. Some ways to cultivate that rating is:<ul><li>Accurate product descriptions</li><li>Prompt shipping</li><li>Be upfront with customers about any delays or changes to their orders</li><li>Respond quickly to questions (within 24 hours)</li><li>Encourage positive feedback on your packing slips</li></ul>

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Selling products on Amazon is a great business opportunity, no matter the size of your business. Want to start selling on Amazon? Here's how to do it.

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How To Start Selling On Amazon

The first two exercises are about controlling your hand. We want to build muscles and train our hand-eye coordination. Mechanical exercises like these are great for beginners. Later on, you might use them to explore new pens or get started when you don’t know what to draw yet.  They are also terrific ways to relax your mind.

Dexterity — two workouts

Distribute circles of various sizes on a piece of paper until the paper is filled. Make sure the circles do not overlap. Drawing circles is <a href="https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-perfection-is-boring-1079cb3bf5d1">not as easy as you might think</a>. Notice how the circles become harder, the bigger you make them? Try them in both directions — and make lots of them. Tip: Shake your hand when it starts cramping! This is a workout for our hands after all.

Exercise 1: Circles — more is more!

Fill a piece of paper with parallel lines. Diagonal lines come easiest for us because they comply with the motion of our wrist.Left-handed people prefer the opposite direction than right-handed people.  Tip: Don’t rotate the paper. The whole point here is to train your hand to get comfortable with all directions.

Exercise 2: Hatching — the joy of structure

Tip: For the following 6 exercises I suggest you stick with one pen and one particular type of paper (for instance A5). The first two exercises are about controlling your hand. We want to build…

A quick beginner’s guide to drawing

You might have to pitch a mentor, an advisor, a supplier, a friend, a doctor, your family, your business or even your plumber on why they should charge you less.

How To Pitch Someone Like A Pro

Having the opening line “This is my business and here’s what we do” is the worst opening line.Make the opening line about them and why you reached out to them above everyone else. Give an example of their work in the opening line. Mention 1–2 points on why that changed you for the better.<blockquote>Too many people start pitches with talking about themselves.</blockquote>These pitches are disrespectful and unsolicited. You might get lucky here and there, but 9.9 times out of ten you’ll be ignored.

Talk About Them, Not Yourself

People who offer a lot of value and get lots of pitches will often ignore you.Understand that ignore means no.<blockquote>No doesn’t mean don’t try again; it just means be smart, give them some space and try again later.</blockquote>To get people who’ve done the impossible to help you, you’ll have to learn to be persistent.

No response means NO.

I make it easy for people by putting “Inspiring the world through entrepreneurship and personal development.”A quick scroll of my newsfeed shows loads of posts on kindness, self-improvement, Tony Robbins and homelessness. On this basis, pitching anything food related wouldn’t be wise.If you don’t do a little bit of research, you’ll be pitching all the wrong people and increasing your failure rate unnecessarily.

Do a 30-second Google Search.

There are always exceptions of course. With that disclaimer in place, I’d almost always never recommend pitch on your first email/message.When you haven’t got permission to pitch and someone doesn’t know you from a Vegemite sandwich, you’re better off waiting to pitch.

Don’t pitch on the first message

“We’re going to feed one million people and we launch next month.”A bold vision is great. Take it easy though young Skywalker. If you’re too outlandish with your claims and have nothing to back it up, the receiver of your pitch will call BS faster than you can say “Hot Potato, Cold Potato.”Sell the dream. Don’t oversell the dream.

Avoid overselling

When someone likes you and knows you a little, they will start to listen to you, and eventually, your pitch.Rapport is the art of finding a mutual connection with someone through the work they do, a hobby or even a book they love. When you have some rapport, then it’s a lot easier to pitch.I’ve seen more pitches with no rapport than I’ve had hot dinners.Lackluster, rapport lacking, cold pitches feel transactional.

Rapport above everything

<ul><li>Short and sharp is key.</li><li>A maximum of three paragraphs, with three sentences in each, is more than enough. No one will read your pitch if it’s an essay.</li><li>To be able to pitch in such a short amount of words, you have to refine your pitch.&nbsp;</li><li>I often write my pitches as a Linkedin status or tweet because there is a character limit. It forces me to remove words and keep things succinct.</li><li>As you begin sending your pitch out, you’ll get feedback. Use this feedback to refine the pitch more and more.</li></ul>

Carefully refine the pitch.

By mentioning someone’s work in your pitch, you put yourself in the fan category rather than the annoying category.<blockquote>No matter how famous someone is, it’s our human nature to respond to a fan.</blockquote>When people send me messages and come across as a fan that references my work, I’ll almost always respond because fan messages are important to me.Don’t be fake either. The mention of their work has to sound genuine and ideally, you’ll link it to something that has helped you.

Put yourself in the fan category

“Does what I’m offering align with your current interests?”“If so, I’d be happy to take a few minutes to explain it to you via email, phone or whatever works for you.”

Make the ask ridiculously simple.

Let’s have a five-minute call? No one will believe that a five-minute call is enough. I’ve found the magic number to be 20 minutes.I prefer to have the persons permission before pitching a call with a timeframe attached to it. That decision is yours.

Respect their time without being silly.

“If you’re not interested that’s completely fine and don’t feel you must reply.”Take the burden of regret away. Show the person that you’re once again respecting them as a person and the limited time they have.

Give them an opt-out.

“On that note, regardless of whether you respond, I’d like to thank you again for the work you do. It has helped me change my life and overcome mental illness which I’m forever in debt to you for.”This is an example of the last line I sent n a pitch recently. Again, it’s focused on the other person and shows them how they’ve impacted my life.It ends the pitch on a high and gives them something they can appreciate regardless of whether they ever respond to me.

End On A High

You might have to pitch a mentor, an advisor, a supplier, a friend, a doctor, your family, your business or even your plumber on why they should charge you less. I get pitched on a daily basis from…

How To Pitch Someone Like A Pro.

A Millennial Digital marketer named Max told the story of how he came to his profession. The story, as Max told it, made him come off as a bit of a Quitter. Can you describe the moment you knew you weren’t cut out for the film business? he told the class about a Van, the discovery Channel, and a Smelly cow.

Details—even the gory ones—make you more likable.

The Stinky cow principle: stories connect better with audiences when you convey your inciting incident as a scene. "i decided to start a high-quality printing shop," a woman named Melinda said during a recent workshop. "if you want to deliver quality work that made people happy, I would have to quit and open my own shop," she said.

The Stinky Cow Principle: Tell inciting incidents as scenes, not summaries

The Stinky cow principle makes any business or personal story more effective at connecting with people.&nbsp;Stories connect better with audiences when you convey your inciting incident as a scene—especially when it involves suffering, failure, disillusionment or struggle on your part.

Apply the Stinky Cow Principle to all of your stories—business and personal

When you’re telling a story—whether writing a novel or relating recent events to a colleague—you’re constantly making a choice between the two narrative modes that writers call scene and summary.“I took the cold keys out of my pocket, pressed the automatic unlock button, and heard the doors snap open” is scene.“I drove to work” is summary.

Scenes Not Summaries

Last week I led a strategic storytelling workshop in which a millennial digital marketer named Max related the tale of how he came to his profession: Aside from lacking a certain oomph, the story, as…

The Stinky Cow Principle: How to Tell Stories that Make People Trust You

Mobile apps succeeded because of the right combination of fast networks and capable handheld processors. Technologies have progressed much further than that in the meantime, and the world of apps has grown beyond a healthy size. Among all of the headaches that follow the impenetrable mobile market today, the two most urgent would be the delivery and discoverability of content.

“OK Sherlock, So What’s Wrong?”

Companies want to deliver content and services to customers as fast and easily as possible. But the increasing reluctance for the perceived Installation-Barrier is putting up a delivery obstacle. Many popular Apps, such as Instagram and the daily, began as Mobile-Only Apps that surfaced great content only within a closed platform. A fragmented Internet where creative and original content is locked up in proprietary platforms is not the Internet we know and love.

Delivery and Discoverability

Google, Apple, and Facebook have all implemented variations of this technology. App indexing allows third-party content providers to show their own In-App content in a search query. By default, your content is not visible to the world wide web, exactly the opposite of how most Web-Based content work. Just get rid of "Apps," let’s see how we might be able to do this. If you want to consume and create content, you need to get rid of "Apps," not "Apps"

App Linking and Indexing Works, But Not Good Enough

If the developer puts in the effort, users can see previously Mobile-Only content surfacing on Google search results. This is great for Google to stay relevant in a mobile market that is increasingly reliant on native App content instead of web search. But in countries like China and India, where mobile phones are the first computers for millions of people, where Mobile-Only content is King, where does a search engine provide their links to begin with? suddenly,

App Streaming from Google

On-demand resources (Odr) is a technology released with Ios 9 that Downloads a small core application only on installation, and then Downloads extra parts and content as needed. Currently used mostly in games, where a user only Downloads the assets (Graphics, videos, etc .) for a few beginning levels.

On-Demand Resources from Apple

Web Apps run (relatively) securely in a closed browser environment. They are web-friendly, meaning they can be indexed and surfaced by search engines. If we had in 2008 the powerful Javascript Frameworks we have today, perhaps web Apps would have taken off. Steve Jobs was (at least accidentally) onto something when he put web apps in the first iPhone.

The Underrated Quest for Web Apps

We want something akin to Java Applets on Browsers (Yikes) on mobile. Developers can write an App once and stream it to all devices and Browsers. With Google streaming Apps to your phone and apple nudging developers to store parts of their Apps in the cloud, we may have just entered the beginning of a future where installation becomes obsolete. The user forefront of all these insanely complex, powerful, and cool Technologies is one of ultimate simplicity and elegance.

A Future without Apps

It’s the trademarked slogan that defined the mobile world since 2008. Surely, apps seemed to be the way to go. Coding bootcamps that claimed to teach you app development chops within weeks popped up…

3 Life Lessons from Pablo Picasso | by Angelica Nohra | Medium

How To Start Selling On Amazon

A quick beginner’s guide to drawing

How To Pitch Someone Like A Pro.

The Stinky Cow Principle: How to Tell Stories that Make People Trust You

April Ford