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Jeff’s previous episodes: 73, 132

Jeff’s Linked-In Contact

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Jeff:                                       [00:00]                     In relation to courses being released and they see a low success rate. It does. They, they, they see a low success rate. Now, we talked about this before. What makes one person different than the other is not the course that they take. It’s the action that they take from the course. Because let me, none of the gurus want me to say this, but all of the information that you need to be successful in any of the disciplines of selling on Amazon is on YouTube for free.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:32]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:46]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, th the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re going to cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay, so you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [01:29]                     Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out and ask them, is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you joined through my link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in them. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage. And you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list, make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen:                             [02:14]                     Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q4 is here, it’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce women in podcast. This is episode 413. Jeff Cohen from seller labs a been a long time since I talked with Jeff. And what’s interesting, we discuss risk. I think risk is just something that is very important, um, for you to consider in your business. And you know, depending on the business and depending on where you are in your business, if you don’t have employees then you don’t have workman’s comp issues. Um, but if you have employees you have to plan for workman’s comp and what does that look like? There’s risk, right? Or inventory. Where’s your risk or um, advertising or gray hat, black hat. So we talk a lot about those things and we also talk about that Jeff is a seller.

Stephen:                             [03:04]                     Most people don’t know that I’m and why he sells. I think that’s important. Um, and give you a clue, relevancy and I think that that really helps and that’s why you can have an intelligent conversation and he knows what he’s talking about because he’s been there and he understands it. So very, very cool. Let’s get into podcast and welcome back to the eCommerce momentum podcast. Excited to have an old guest return old. He’s getting old. Is that old as an age? Um, you know, I’m just going to let people hear it and figure out, um, you know, no, Jeff Cohen, welcome back. Jeff Cohen.

Jeff:                                       [03:36]                     Thanks Steve. Appreciate you having me back on. I, I, I guess you and I chat on a regular basis, but we haven’t recorded them in a really long time.

Stephen:                             [03:44]                     Spent a long time. So, especially since we talked about this business, you know, you guys are, we talked about toys for tots in between, but about business and some of the crazy changes that are going on, which I think, you know, you’re an expert to talk about that. Um, and we’re going to talk about Jeff Cohen’s selling, which people are going to be like, wait, I still think most people don’t know that you have an Amazon account and you don’t steal their private label products or you don’t steal their retail arbitrage. You don’t go to toys R us went, no, you don’t go to target because you don’t get toys. You don’t go to target and skin and caps for because you saw somebody had it on their account. So we’re going to talk about that. Um, and I think most people don’t know that and I think that’s gonna be, um, you know, I want to talk about why, but it’s been, you know, three plus years and I think there’s been a few changes in the business, um, in the last three plus years. Would you say that’s a fair statement?

Jeff:                                       [04:34]                     I’d say that’s a tha that’s three calendar years. That’s not three Amazon years. So yeah, 21 Amazon. Yeah.

Stephen:                             [04:42]                     Yeah, no doubt. Um, some of the stats that just recently came out, I saw again the number of sellers at certain levels. Did you see that chart where there were, you know, yeah,

Jeff:                                       [04:53]                     yeah. The numbers that Amazon releases around sellers who are over a hundred K and over. Yeah. Did that surprise you in any way when you look through that list? Well, you know, I think that what, that doesn’t surprise me it’s been, it’s been constantly growing at about a 30 to 40% a clip over the last three or four years that we’ve been tracking it. I think that, what I don’t want to say is surprising, but it is most interesting, is that Amazon, they use very vague terminology similar to how they build out their terms of service. And so it’s hard to tell whether the growth is real or not, because they say at least a hundred thousand sellers, um, at least 130,000 sellers, they call them at least 130,000 small to medium business sellers. So they’re trying to get their message across. They’re trying to get a message across to the market that they’re in support of small business, that they’re not putting the, you know, the local out of, out of business, but they’re actually supporting local businesses like yours and mine and Andy’s and, uh, all the other people that we interact with in this space.

Jeff:                                       [06:09]                     Um, but they’re, you know, that they’re not just here for the big guys. And that’s really, I think, what they’re trying to do with those numbers. Um, but I would also say that in general, over the last couple of years, I’ve seen the number of masterminds and private groups around million dollar sellers, uh, continue to grow and grow. And so, um, what happens to the iron sharpens iron kind of model was that it’s, yeah. Well what happens is, is that when you’re looking at when you’re, when you’re, I just had a conference, uh, last week, seller labs is doing these like little one day workshops around the country in different cities, small format, right? There were 22 people there and it was in Denver. And what was really interesting about that was how many he build. There were like surprised at the quality of Amazon sellers who were also in the Denver area.

Jeff:                                       [07:09]                     Like they felt very alone and then they went to this event and they were like, cool, look at these other great sellers that are here. And I think that what happens is, is that we start to engage and we start to, uh, engage in the community. And then as we engage in the community, um, we want to start to separate ourselves with people that can help us with our business versus people we’re helping with their business. And so it’s a natural tendency that as your business grows, you still want to socially be involved, but you don’t necessarily find the content is useful. Or maybe the initial networking is useful because you’ve built your own, uh, connections within the community.

Stephen:                             [07:55]                     I think some of it too is the challenges are different, right? So in that example you’re giving, I’m assuming some of those companies now have staff, right? Because they had to size up, right? They had to scale, um, those challenges. Now when you, we, it was part of our pre call you in our chat and about when you have employees that you have to deal with, those are different challenges than just talking about how to, what tape do you use on a box? I mean, I’m bad example, but you know what I mean as like, or how do you run an ad campaign that’s different when you scale it up to an extra zero or two? Is that fair? And so therefore you need a different discussion. Maybe

Jeff:                                       [08:32]                     that’s very true. And I think that one of the things that we’ve seen is that there, you know, a few years ago there was one big player in this space who was teaching people how to sell on Amazon. Today, there are many gurus or self-appointed gurus in this space who are trying to teach people to sell on Amazon. And, um, I think that some people enter through that type of community. But even, you know, like one, I know you talk about regularly, like either you know, the ho the guys at the wholesale formula or, or Andy’s group, when you age out, when you age out of the group, right? When, when you’re done knowing the basics, you’re still looking for community. And so seek to find people that can kind of push you even higher. And so maybe it’s about managing your staff. What are the things that I find really interesting when I talk to people at trade shows is that they have this, uh, they have this balance of somebody on stage told them to do something and they really want to do it, but they really came to the show with a problem in their own business.

Jeff:                                       [09:46]                     And that’s the business the problem they’re trying to solve. And so, um, you and I both know this. It’s human nature that I want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about you. And so there’s this, uh, interesting dichotomy that happens in human relationships where I’m interested in you, but I’m really only interested in you if you can help me. And we don’t talk about that. But that’s the reality of how human interaction works. And most people who are givers, um, understand that the receiving occurs by giving and they’re willing to give over time because they’ve received in different ways, but in general, and I, I call it, um, I, I call it one up Scotty, that’s what I call it. And so we all have a friend that’s this way. So you talk about a vacation that you went on and then your friend goes, Oh, well let me tell you about my vacation.

Jeff:                                       [10:47]                     Yeah. Right? So everybody always wants to kind of one up. Well, when you’re trying to take your business to the next level, you want to hear what people have to say, but you really want to find someone that can help you solve your problems. So maybe you’re struggling with trademarks and brand registry, and if they happen to be presenting on that, then you’re really interested in that topic. Maybe you’re struggling with advertising and ad management on Amazon, or if you can connect with somebody that can help you with that, you get really engaged with wanting that level of help. And I think the challenges that you have as your business grows, become more complex. Um, because it’s just the, the nature of this business. Um, if you’re really, and I’m not trying to oversimplify it, but if you’re an RA guy or gal and you go to a store and you buy products and you ship them and you, and you box them and you ship them to Amazon and then you rinse and repeat that every day, that’s the complexity of your business. If you start to, uh, negotiate with the store manager and start trying to reach out to manufacturers, you’ve added complexity to your business. And as a, as you choose to add complexity to your business, you need to surround yourself with people who have similarly solve that complexity to help you in the long run.

Stephen:                             [12:12]                     Hmm. That makes perfect sense. You know, you talked about gurus. Now I’ve...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3869Mon, 04 Nov 2019 03:00:27 -050057:55nofullJeff’s point needs to be taken to heart. Challenges to your business will come whether you like it or not. The successful entrepreneurs have the ability to push past, take advantage of or pivot their actions and therefore their businesses when needed. Sometimes it can be daily. That’s why this business is not for the…eCommerce Momentum Podcast411 : Greg Purdy – The value of your audience is the key thing to remember when building a long term businessWhat a great opportunity to get inside what it takes to be a successful marketer long term. I add long term because there  will be a new superstar today, tomorrow and the day after who likely will be gone by the end of the week. Look longer, look past the fast buck. Dare I say add value? No Greg does that in the and every conversation I have with him. He really cares and it shows in his new tool: AsinZen.com – 30 DAY FREE TRIAL. Try it and see if it helps you once, just once. Then evaluate the cost and rethink your business with better data.

Mentioned:

AsinZen.com – 30 DAY FREE TRIAL

Essential Daily Deals

My FBA Team – How to Hire/Train/Retain your team!

Seller Essentials

Essential Wholesale & Liquidation

Greg’s Facebook Contact

Greg’s previous episodes: #002 , #136

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Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Greg:                                     [00:00]                     You can go online and, and log into a website and type a few words and they’ve, they have the potential to reach thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Now, the reality, they probably won’t reach that many, but they’ll reach well enough, but the odds are the chances of selling that item go way...]]>What a great opportunity to get inside what it takes to be a successful marketer long term. I add long term because there  will be a new superstar today, tomorrow and the day after who likely will be gone by the end of the week. Look longer, look past the fast buck. Dare I say add value? No Greg does that in the and every conversation I have with him. He really cares and it shows in his new tool: AsinZen.com – 30 DAY FREE TRIAL. Try it and see if it helps you once, just once. Then evaluate the cost and rethink your business with better data.

Mentioned:

AsinZen.com – 30 DAY FREE TRIAL

Essential Daily Deals

My FBA Team – How to Hire/Train/Retain your team!

Seller Essentials

Essential Wholesale & Liquidation

Greg’s Facebook Contact

Greg’s previous episodes: #002 , #136

Sponsors

AsinZen.com – 30 DAY FREE TRIAL

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Greg:                                     [00:00]                     You can go online and, and log into a website and type a few words and they’ve, they have the potential to reach thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Now, the reality, they probably won’t reach that many, but they’ll reach well enough, but the odds are the chances of selling that item go way off. It’s exponential. And, um, I, I, I

Cool voice guy:                  [00:24]                     welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:38]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re gonna cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [01:21]                     Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, NSM. Is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you join through mind link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in him. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage and you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat. Amazing.

Stephen:                             [02:07]                     freedom.com, forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q4 is here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 411. Greg Purdy, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I talked to Greg. And it’s funny, we talk to each other a lot. Um, outside of this and an issue came up somewhere and I’m like, huh, Greg’s the expert and I’ve seen so much of this. And so I really, what I love in this episode is we, we talk about how to create a business. Um, maybe it’s selling on Amazon, maybe it’s selling on your own website. Maybe it’s making soap. I get to that story and it’s pretty interesting. Um, but Greg’s been doing this for a long, long time and he will tell you he’s nothing special. He was a truck driver, had to his phrase, he didn’t get a big fancy college education.

Stephen:                             [02:57]                     He got a life education and yet he’s been able to apply it into an existing business and it’s been consistent for the last five years that I’ve known him. And that’s what I always look for as longevity. Um, and uh, we do have a special offer in there, which is pretty cool. And uh, I’d love to hear that it helps you. So send me a note, let’s get into the podcast and we’ll come back to the eCommerce women in podcasts. We’re excited about having a return guest. I can not believe it’s been three years since we talked. I went back and looked. I’m like, no way has it been that long cause we talk personally, uh, on and off all the time and it just blows my mind. So welcome back Greg Purdy.

Greg:                                     [03:33]                     Hey Steven. It’s good to be back three years, dude. It doesn’t seem like it. It’s crazy. I’m sitting in the same place I was three years.

Stephen:                             [03:42]                     You know, it’s funny, I’m not because I’m in a much bigger warehouse. Um, however you were episode number two and that was the other one. That was almost five years ago. And I think about where you went from that, you know, that episode two to three years ago and your business evolved. Um, now three years later and talking with you, your business has evolved again. Right.

Greg:                                     [04:07]                     And it will continue to, but yes, it’s uh, it’s always something new that, that fits my personality very well.

Stephen:                             [04:16]                     That that part of it’s real, right? That that’s hard to find things that fit your person out because you see other people and I’m sure you’re a guy just like me who says, Ooh, I could do well, but you wouldn’t love it. How is it a maturity thing since you hit 50, you and I are about the same age. Is it a maturity thing for you not to go after the shiny object?

Greg:                                     [04:36]                     No, no, no. I still do. I still do. Um, so I’ve not matured that much. That’s for sure. I recognize is, I think it’s a maturity thing that I recognize that’s my problem, but it’s not matured me enough that I’ve been able to resist it at this point.

Stephen:                             [04:54]                     Well, do you have some resistance at least? I mean, are you able to filter some out and say, no, no, that’s an easy, no,

Greg:                                     [05:00]                     not enough from experience though, right. It’s from being burned in the past and you, and you actually have a memory of it, um, or you just know that th the likelihood of it ending well is probably not there. So, um, but yeah, I mean that’s why prior to Amazon, I was attracted trailer driver and I saw something different all day, every day. And that suited my personality and this business, you know, working online, you know, of course it has its downfalls because I can click around and the next thing you know, I’m, I’m, I’m researching things on Google that are not part of my business, but, um, you know, it at least I know that if I get bored sitting at the desk, I can get up and walk into the warehouse or I can go out and do something else. So it’s pull you right back.

Stephen:                             [05:52]                     I mean, is that because I think about that a lot, you know? Um, so if we do some RA or something like that, it gets me laser focused. When I start to drift, I find myself, Ooh, if I can just do this, boom, it kind of brings me back. It does. And it reignites the excitement

Greg:                                     [06:09]                     to either cause it, especially if you get out and you and you, like you say RA, you go ahead and buy something. It was like, wow, that was great. You know, and then, and you write, you know, you get excited again and then you go listed and you know, yeah, it’s a, it definitely tends to, uh, to, to refocus if you, um, if you start to drift a little bit, you know, just step away and, and go do that. One thing that, uh, that, that brings it back around for you.

Stephen:                             [06:40]                     We, uh, as, as you and I, we’ve talked about, we’ve had it RA back into our business. Um, my son, my, my younger son who graduated from college and his friend who graduated from college, both work for us full time now and they are so enthusiastic. It’s funny, I look at them as kids and yet not that long ago, you and I were those kids in this business and we had that same enthusiasm member hat.

Greg:                                     [07:04]                     Oh, I do. And I, I’m envious of the, the kids will call them today because they’ve got the internet, which we didn’t have. Right. So I mean I was buying and selling as early as 18, um, is when I started running ads in newspapers and magazines. I was buying cars and stripping them out Mustangs specifically. And um, you know, back then, you know, the old 65 to 73 Mustangs were everywhere and I was buying them up and I had a lot of them sitting around and I would run ads in the Baltimore sun newspaper seven days a week and all the issues in the mornings on the, at the evening sun, they had the Sunday sun. Um, and I had knew I had ads in every one of them in the classified section that I was buying and selling and trading Mustang park. And I was running ads in Hemmings motor news, which was going across the world.

Greg:                                     [07:51]                     And I was running into that Mark Tang monthly magazine and, and since some of the Ford magazines and whatnot, and you know, that was how you reached your audience or you go to Carlisle where you live and you’d set up at the car show, which I did that year after year after year. That was how you reached the audience and who now, you know, the, the kids will call them, can go online and, and log into a website and type a few words and they’ve had the potential to reach thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Now, the reality, they probably won’t reach that many, but they’ll reach out enough that the odds are the chances of selling that item go way up. It’s exponential. And, um, I, I, I envy that. Obviously I don’t wait a bit,

Stephen:                             [08:39]                     right. A little bit. Not the, not getting up early and coming to Carlisle and that and sleeping in campers or crappy hotels. That was fun of like living those Berkus life. And that was fun. Yeah, there is a, there’s still huge shows. One just finished, uh, two weeks last weekend. Maybe, maybe last weekend, this last one for the year. And it’s still, it’s huge now. It’s definitely smaller than what they’ve been, but it’s interesting and I’ll give you a good story. So my brother-in-law, uh, who has, uh, I guess it’s a Chevy that he’s got an old Chevy and he’s, he’s like, I can’t wait to come to the car. He came for a couple of days and we went to the show and I, to be honest with you, I’ve not really experienced it at that level. We went to the auction and we were not bidding, but we had a VIP thing and we did the whole thing.

Stephen:                             [09:21]                     And to see his enthusiasm and he’s like, look, I can go online and buy these parts, but I’m looking, I want to touch him. And it was weird to see and I thought to myself, huh, there is still a market for it for him. He’s completely gone the opposite way. There’s certain things he doesn’t care about, he’ll buy online, but there are certain things he wants to see that it’s authentic, he wants to feel and touch it. And it was interest. I watched that and I thought, huh, the air there, if you have the right product and you know your audience, there’s still a way to do business, uh, without e-commerce in that world.

Greg:                                     [09:56]                     And you know, they have the same problems in the, in the, we’ll call it the real world that, that we experience on Amazon or any commerce, you know, it on Amazon is there’s always a chance that they’re going to accuse you of selling a counterfeit. Well, you know, in the, in the, we’ll say the auto parts world just to select that,...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3858Mon, 21 Oct 2019 03:00:03 -050052:55nofullWhat a great opportunity to get inside what it takes to be a successful marketer long term. I add long term because there  will be a new superstar today, tomorrow and the day after who likely will be gone by the end of the week. Look longer, look past the fast buck. Dare I say…eCommerce Momentum Podcast410 : Dan Wentworth – Team work really does make the dream work when selling on AmazonIs it too late for you to have RA in your business? I talk with Dan who runs a virtually 100% RA multiple 7-figure business in multiple states. So he would say no it’s not too late. He would also tell you it is not easy. Sure buy an item and sell at a higher price. Works right. Well start adding zero’s and employees and multiple states to that and it gets complicated. Fortunately (he would say he was blessed with this opportunity) he was prepared by his corporate life to take on such a monumental undertaking. Strong family (Smarter wife ) and real focused discipline in team building has paid off.

Mentioned:

Dan’s previous Interviews,: 172 , 297

Dan’s Facebook contact

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Dan:                                       [00:00]                     As most people in Amazon know that they’ve somewhat SLPs, but it’s a flowing system. This, the shipping, you know, they’ve had different types of shipping. Inventory labs will change something or, or seller central will change thing. So there is some flexibility in it, but basically they’re the same. Yeah.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to...]]>Is it too late for you to have RA in your business? I talk with Dan who runs a virtually 100% RA multiple 7-figure business in multiple states. So he would say no it’s not too late. He would also tell you it is not easy. Sure buy an item and sell at a higher price. Works right. Well start adding zero’s and employees and multiple states to that and it gets complicated. Fortunately (he would say he was blessed with this opportunity) he was prepared by his corporate life to take on such a monumental undertaking. Strong family (Smarter wife ) and real focused discipline in team building has paid off.

Mentioned:

Dan’s previous Interviews,: 172 , 297

Dan’s Facebook contact

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

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Scope from Sellerlabs

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Dan:                                       [00:00]                     As most people in Amazon know that they’ve somewhat SLPs, but it’s a flowing system. This, the shipping, you know, they’ve had different types of shipping. Inventory labs will change something or, or seller central will change thing. So there is some flexibility in it, but basically they’re the same. Yeah.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re gonna cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out, uh, amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [01:14]                     Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, an SM. Is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you join through my link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in him. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage. And you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen:                             [01:59]                     Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q4 is here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 410 I’m bringing back, Dan Wentworth can never get enough to end Wentworth. You know, eh, I’m going to kind of at a loss because I sit back and I think about our first interview years ago and how, you know, I thought to myself, man, what an outlier. The way he was able to take this, you know, his experience of being a DM, run an a whole bunch of stores and apply it to the business. Man, it’s just amazing. But then I watch him taken, develop people and get the best from them, really strong leaders and get them to give you their best. That’s such a talent. I don’t have that. That is, that is a talent.

Stephen:                             [02:47]                     Very rare to find. And he was able to do that. Now, um, it blows my mind to hear why they’re up 40%. And so you’re gonna have to listen to the episode to hear it, but it will blow your mind when you sit back and think about it. It’s very, very logical and it’s not reactionary. It’s intentional. And I think that’s the, that’s quite frankly the reason that they’re doing so well. They’re very intentional in what they do, but it’s not just Dan or Michelle, it’s everyone on their team and that just doesn’t happen again. It’s intentional. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. We’re excited about today’s returned guest. I’m, this is his third time on the show and it’s funny, it’s been more than a year and change almost. Well, it’s a definitely a year and a half since we last chatted and at that point his business was exploding and you know, it was all about people and development and, and what they brought to the team. Um, and now you’re up a measly 40% from a huge number. Dan Wentworth. Is that true? It is, yeah. We’re having a good year. And by accident, just, just luck would have it. Right.

Dan:                                       [03:56]                     Yeah. I think things are going well.

Stephen:                             [03:59]                     What’d you say? You know, let’s start with this because you know, last time we chatted it was all about staff development and people taking on key roles and that kind of thing that that hasn’t changed, right? That consistency in the last year and a half when you look at your leadership, it’s pretty much the same. Correct.

Dan:                                       [04:13]                     It is. It’s leadership hasn’t changed. But as we brought these people on, I’d say probably with the fruit of that that we’re now reaping is that those seeds that will plant that is that they’re starting developed, taking over a brand or adding brands to our line up. So we got basically our core brands are pretty flat or up slightly, but we’ve just added a lot more.

Stephen:                             [04:35]                     Oh, Oh. So that’s interesting. So rather than, Oh, that’s interesting. Rather than, um, you know, taking an existing brand and pushing it further and you know, out reaching out, they were able to take and just keep it pretty steady and then take other ones and bring them in and replicate. Is that kind of the way?

Dan:                                       [04:55]                     Exactly, yeah. It’s a very similar pattern that we use. We’ve, when we explore a brand, we’ll test it out, get to know the brand, and then some fail and we’re out. But others grow. And in probably 40% of our businesses from new business, uh, over the last 12 to 18 months. And different categories. Yeah. Some, some are similar categories and we’ve taken what we’ve known for the brands we’re in, but then it’s all some, a completely different categories. Yeah. That we had never touched before.

Stephen:                             [05:23]                     And in our pre-call we can’t, I don’t want to say the brands, but you’re talking about similar brands. So you know, if a Steve’s water bottle brand is selling well then Dan’s water bottle would likely sell well to. So therefore wash, rinse, repeat. Right. Same concept. Okay. Yup, yup, yup. Um, let’s talk about, I want to talk about successes of course, but I want to talk about singles because I don’t think it was like a miss. Like, so let’s, let’s talk about your operations. So first off, if somebody is interested in finding out about Dan, go back to episode one 72 and you’re going to hear as crazy story how he, he had a little bit of responsibility working for CVS, just a little bit a 17 stores. Uh, so that’s a little bit more than that, but he was a district manager and, and then he was able to apply that in this business. Right. By, you know, hurting type a cats. That’s really what you’re doing because leaders of each operation, you have three operations. Third, they’re type a and they’re like herding cats. Correct. Correct, correct. And so that applies coming from CVS over to this, um, leading leaders is way harder than it is leading. I don’t want to make this derogatory, but workers, it’s a different type of leadership, right?

Dan:                                       [06:37]                     It is. It is. We, we, it’s funny you mentioned that because we’ve talked about that as we’ve had, um, as well, I think we’re gonna start getting into, now we have an operation in Chicago. We had an operation in California until recently. And then we have our, our strongest portion of our businesses here in Massachusetts and, and um, and Adam, I like, uh, VP said one time, he said, imagine if we were all here in the same building. I said, as good as that sounds, we’ve got all, we have all very strong personalities that like to lead our businesses. So to bring us all under one roof, while it might sound you bring in a lot of intelligence into one room at the same time we bring, like you said, type a personalities or

Stephen:                             [07:16]                     it’s herding cats. What percentage? And it’s a good question. What percentage of, uh, management would you say that you give each operation? So for example, you know, your Massachusetts, you’re there lots of days, not every day. Um, but I mean, is it 10%, you know, and the 90% is up to the individual of that particular location to get my question.

Dan:                                       [07:38]                     Yeah, I do. Yeah. They’d given a lot of autonomy.

Stephen:                             [07:41]                     So I mean, could you, could you say it’s, uh, could you say a percentage? I mean, could you guess,

Dan:                                       [07:45]                     say 90 10 is probably a pretty good one. So those a couple of ways we communicate. One is we have like a Slack channel. It’s like a discord or a Facebook messenger on steroids where we’ll communicate daily. So we’ve got some communication going there, but that’s not a lot of direction. That’s just up.

Stephen:                             [08:03]                     It’s just communication both ways, right? It’s both ways. Yep.

Dan:                                       [08:06]                     Yeah. And then once a week we get together for about an hour and a half to two hours on a Skype call. We’ll bring all off full-timers in. So usually it’s about eight or 10 people in the meeting. Um, and that’s, and that’s basically where we’re giving direction and we’ll get feedback from the other branch too.

Stephen:                             [08:22]                     And so direction meaning what? Hey, you know, we’re going

Dan:                                       [08:27]                     [inaudible] this week. This brand is down, this brand is up, the ROI on this particular brand isn’t cutting it. Are we making bad decisions? Chicago for example, you might be buying too much of this or, or you, you know, or, or you’re killing it an issue. You really need to pick up more. That type of thing. Analyzing the business I guess.

Stephen:                             [08:47]                     And I would say that’s one of the things that you do better than most. Um, and I’m making that broad of a statement. I guess I’m comparing it against me. Let me say it against me. You way better than so that way we don’t, I don’t wanna offend anybody cause I know there are outliers all around. And one of the things that I think is interesting that you use both inventory lab and scan power for your business where most people use one or the other. W when and you recommended me to add back inventory lab cause we use scanned power, been using it forever. I love Chris green and Paul Rutherford had been using them forever and I can do our accounting from it. It gives me a cost of goods and all that kind of jazz. But your comment was, um, and this is not a criticism of scan power, but inventory lab allows you to go back and evaluate how you thought you were going to do versus how you actually did.

Dan:                                       [09:34]                     Correct. Correct. Yeah. That’s a great point. So we do like both tools. Um, we’ve used inventory labs from the gecko, so going on five years now, but probably our favorite part of enrich our lab is the analysis of our post sales, uh, business, you know, so, so it’ll break down supplier profitability. So we know how each branch is performing, how each brand is performing. And we’ll also, we can break down [inaudible]]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3853Mon, 14 Oct 2019 03:00:59 -050043:29nofullIs it too late for you to have RA in your business? I talk with Dan who runs a virtually 100% RA multiple 7-figure business in multiple states. So he would say no it’s not too late. He would also tell you it is not easy. Sure buy an item and sell at a higher…eCommerce Momentum Podcast409 : Elizabeth Thompson – Accept that good enough is going you to push forward. You might end up being surprised by how much better they are than you.Real talk from a real seller. How true is this for you: “I can do it better myself!” or “No one can do it as well as I can!” Well I know I can relate and have said those things only to be humbled when someone picks it up faster and improves on what I was doing. Humble indeed. But Elizabeth had a plan and worked her plan. With strong support from her husband and kids she has built a real future that will move on her terms. Great story and she says you can do it too!

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Elizabeth’s First Interview #179

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Elizabeth:                            [00:00]                     A, I’m thinking about leaving my nine to five. My first thing is you need to have six months of emergency fund. You cannot just leave as like, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And that’s my biggest encouragement is make sure you can pay your bills for the next six months if something happens.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:16]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the good news is you can still get in, right? They...]]>Real talk from a real seller. How true is this for you: “I can do it better myself!” or “No one can do it as well as I can!” Well I know I can relate and have said those things only to be humbled when someone picks it up faster and improves on what I was doing. Humble indeed. But Elizabeth had a plan and worked her plan. With strong support from her husband and kids she has built a real future that will move on her terms. Great story and she says you can do it too!

Mentioned: 

Elizabeth’s First Interview #179

RA Secrets

Elizabeth’s Contact information

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Elizabeth:                            [00:00]                     A, I’m thinking about leaving my nine to five. My first thing is you need to have six months of emergency fund. You cannot just leave as like, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And that’s my biggest encouragement is make sure you can pay your bills for the next six months if something happens.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:16]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the good news is you can still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re going to cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [01:14]                     Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out and ask them, is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you joined through mind link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in them. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me to so amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage and you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen:                             [01:58]                     Amazing. freedom.com. Forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. [inaudible] here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce women a podcast. This is episode four Oh nine, Elizabeth Thompson. Now I’ve had Elizabeth on way back more than than two and a half years ago, episode one 79 and she gets back in her story of how she came to that conclusion to jump ship and do her own thing and the encouragement of her husband. So now we are almost three years later, their business has exploded. Um, and it’s had challenges and they dealt with the challenges and she talks about some of those challenges and what triggered that and those things. Um, really help, I think, uh, give you a perspective that, you know, just doing your own things. Not easy, right? Nobody said it was going to be easy. But on the other side of it, it’s incredible.

Stephen:                             [02:51]                     And she talks about quite a bit of that. Um, the good enough is a big, a big thing. You know, you do do things perfect. We don’t do things perfect here. So why am I expecting others to do perfect? I shouldn’t, I should be doing good enough. And she makes some great case for that and what it’s done for her personally. I just think it’s so healthy. It’s such a cool story. Let’s get into the podcast and we’ll come back to the e-commerce women in podcast. Very excited to have back a guest two and a half plus years ago. I had the pleasure of speaking with Elizabeth Thompson. Welcome Elizabeth.

Elizabeth:                            [03:28]                     Hi, how are you? I’m good. How are you?

Stephen:                             [03:31]                     I’m not doing as well as you, but man, I’m doing okay. That’s funny. It is funny. Um, you know, I want to start off with this because uh, you know, kind of the pre stuff that we go back and forth a little bit. I had yet on two and a half years ago and you are really, you are killing it. You are crushing it and from the outside. And when, when I talked about coming back on, you said, Hey, I feel more confident now, and I would sit back and wonder, you know, like, like I said in our pre call, it seems like you’ve given yourself permission to accept the fact that you know what you’re doing. Is that a weird, the way I said it?

Elizabeth:                            [04:08]                     No, but the way you say it makes a lot of sense. Yes, I agree with that.

Stephen:                             [04:13]                     Well, why, what, what was it that turned the switch to give you permission? I mean, it, it, it can’t be a dollar amount. It can’t be, it’s gotta be something like some switch. What was it? I’d love others to get that switch turned on.

Elizabeth:                            [04:27]                     Um, well I think I believe in silence is about 2006, so Amazon, uh, full time since 2011 and, um, I think that I finally just gotten to where I feel very comfortable in where we are. It’s still was to where it didn’t, I didn’t feel as successful, I guess then I, that as I do today. Um, I think it has more to do with the fact that we’ve gotten to where our account is just is very comfortable in terms of I’m not having to do as much work as I used to because I’ve been, I’ve been better at delegating, um, my old tasks to other people.

Stephen:                             [05:08]                     Let’s stop there a second. What does that mean? Right. So, so you’re not doing as much work. Are you doing different work? Cause I can’t imagine you’re committed. I mean there’s no, I know you, you’re like the rest of us.

Elizabeth:                            [05:22]                     Yeah. Different. I would say I’ll say different work. Um, and um, I’ve different work but I would say be more different work and I’m still working crazy amount of hours. Um, but I think it’s different. Also. I think you’re going to talk to me more about fact. My husband has not come onto our business full time. And so it’s different because before we had his income to fall back on, now we’ve had over a year that is the two of us full time in the business and we’re now realizing that Hey, we can be successful at this with not having other outside income coming in. As I said, if that makes sense.

Stephen:                             [06:00]                     It does. But I want to go deeper on this, this work. Is the work more suited for you? I mean, do you feel like the work that you chose or you’re ended up with, maybe that’s a better way to say it, the work that your ended up with that you couldn’t delegate or you chose not to delegate, is it more suited for you and that’s what makes it not seem like work?

Elizabeth:                            [06:21]                     I think overall I feel like overall it has never really seem like work. Um, and I think that it’s just that, like I, I at first I delegated out like the prepping and the listing and the, I know every, all the warehouse tasks. Then I started delegating out the shopping piece of it. And now I’ve gotten to the, where I’m can delegate out some of the admin work, um, is I think every time I start doing something else more, I’m trying to learn something for myself and then I can delegate it out until I feel very confident in doing it myself. I don’t feel comfortable delegating it out.

Stephen:                             [06:54]                     Okay. So that’s it. That’s it. You’ve got the confidence in each task, therefore you’re ready to hand it out. You’ve got it to optimal for you and then therefore you can show somebody else. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Does, does each build on each other. So you know, now you, you’ve gotten rid of a task and now you’ve moved on to a new task. It’s not like you’ve given up stuff, right? You’ve got other stuff. And so is that now make that next one make more sense. I mean, so I always think about this way. It’s like when I go and do something and I’m always like, Oh, that’s why they did it. It’s like all of a sudden there’s like a clarity. I never understood why we did it that way. Now, boom. Oh, this makes it easier when I do this.

Elizabeth:                            [07:32]                     Correct. Yeah, I would say, yeah, mean I think whenever, when I like, I guess you go back and going back to the training piece of it. I mean I think I always thought about no money to ever do this the way I do it. And so, um, and so it was very difficult to hand things off. Um, and instead of, so like when I, once I’d started handing off smaller tasks, like the prep or the list, it, I realized I was like, wait, other people can’t do it. It might not be the exact way that I would do it, but it still, right. I mean, and so you look back in my account and I think about, okay, well you can look at it in terms of your account metrics have met, account metrics changed since I left. Other people start doing these tasks. No they haven’t. And so that’s my biggest concern is, you know, uh, you know, a possible suspension or you know, the IP claims or unauthentic claims has that, you know, have those changed? No. So I guess they are doing a good enough job to where I can delegate these tasks.

Stephen:                             [08:31]                     So good enough. I was thinking exact same thing. So good enough is good enough. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Right? It was that the enemy of great is good, right? Or the enemy of good is great or something like that. Whatever that is. Yeah. Um, does it help? And I’m, you’re going to be like, duh, of course. Do, does it help that you’ve surrounded yourself and your relationships have gotten stronger with other similar types of sellers? Therefore you get the best of, you know, any challenge that you’re in?

Elizabeth:                            [08:59]                     Absolutely. I, I could not be where I am without the different Amazon sellers that I, that I know. Um, it, it’s crazy that you can have this camaraderie with people all over the United States who do the exact same thing that you do, but they’re not like in the cubicle next door to you. Like I was when I had a career, um, in like a nine to five job in these are my, these are the people who I would consider to be mine. You know, my cube, my cube mates that are all over the country.

Stephen:                             [09:29]                     But you never had that level of relationship with your [inaudible] to be honest.

Elizabeth:                            [09:33]                     Not at all, never, never. And that you got, that’s a really good point. And I really thought of it that way. But um, yeah, I’ve got a couple of different mastermind groups that I’m in and just, um, definite, very deep relationships in terms of just being able to help me. Like if I, if I have questions, you know, usually we just grab, get G get on PM or I can call them on the phone and just hash out whatever the issue is at the time. Or if I need a contact or if I need help figuring something out, I have so many people I can go to that I know was like, you know, drop what they’re doing to help me out.

Stephen:                             [10:08]                     You know, thinking about let, let’s go a little bit back on that cubicle thing. It’s, it’s fake relationships. There’s no depth to it. Oh, what’d you do this weekend, Elizabeth? Oh, you took the kids there. Oh, well, let me tell you about my day. Let me tell you [inaudible] that’s the way it is. Yeah, that’s real. You wouldn’t go on vacation with those people with you. You wouldn’t go hang out in Orlando at a conference and spend four or five days of your life and put together a bunch of effort to do a conference with them, would you?

Elizabeth:                            [10:34]         ]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3849Mon, 07 Oct 2019 03:00:17 -050048:39nofullReal talk from a real seller. How true is this for you: “I can do it better myself!” or “No one can do it as well as I can!” Well I know I can relate and have said those things only to be humbled when someone picks it up faster and improves on what I…eCommerce Momentum Podcast408 : Bob Steele – Don’t just chase inventory if you can not get it through your processBob speaks from experience. Inventory buying is a thrill. Finding great deals is what we do. But if it sits in your warehouse and doesn’t get processed then it is wasted economic value. Value you might not get back. See if it forces you to borrow money or put off hiring key labor that would benefit the organization. Then you have a miss. Let’s talk about what you can make your Amazon business look like.

Mentioned:

Bob’s previous episodes:

60 , 113

Chris Green

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Bob:                                       [00:01]                     Who knew some computer stuff that were able to find me. Basically, you’re not unlimited lists of wholesale suppliers. I mean, of course they don’t all take Amazon, but I was able to use some portals and stuff to find more supplies than I could ever buy from, and I’ve just kind of taken the OAA that I did because I love the away. But the issue was I was getting too many IP complaints. I was afraid I was going to lose my account. I think I had maybe 12 in a year or something like that, so eight here in addition to wholesale, but I was kind of doing it the way I was doing away, always using the same tools I was using, tactical arbitrage, you know? Except that I was getting a program to a wholesale sites and basically that’s the same way I still do wholesale now. I either use tactile LABA charts to import a

Cool vice guy:                    [00:47]                     welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the...]]>Bob speaks from experience. Inventory buying is a thrill. Finding great deals is what we do. But if it sits in your warehouse and doesn’t get processed then it is wasted economic value. Value you might not get back. See if it forces you to borrow money or put off hiring key labor that would benefit the organization. Then you have a miss. Let’s talk about what you can make your Amazon business look like.

Mentioned:

Bob’s previous episodes:

60 , 113

Chris Green

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Bob:                                       [00:01]                     Who knew some computer stuff that were able to find me. Basically, you’re not unlimited lists of wholesale suppliers. I mean, of course they don’t all take Amazon, but I was able to use some portals and stuff to find more supplies than I could ever buy from, and I’ve just kind of taken the OAA that I did because I love the away. But the issue was I was getting too many IP complaints. I was afraid I was going to lose my account. I think I had maybe 12 in a year or something like that, so eight here in addition to wholesale, but I was kind of doing it the way I was doing away, always using the same tools I was using, tactical arbitrage, you know? Except that I was getting a program to a wholesale sites and basically that’s the same way I still do wholesale now. I either use tactile LABA charts to import a

Cool vice guy:                    [00:47]                     welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eCommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [01:01]                     Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4. Got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re going to cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free, okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out, uh, amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [01:44]                     Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, and ask them, is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you joined through my link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in him. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage. And you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen:                             [02:29]                     Amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q four is here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode four Oh eight Bob steel. Um, it is crazy how long it’s been since Bob and I talked on air, um, mind blowing and his business has completely evolved, um, with a lot of hard work. You know, his name is steel, he’s got steel in his resolve is persistence. I mean he is, it’s tough stuff and he’s pushed through it. Um, some really cool things about warehousing. Um, very interesting to listen to some of that conversation. Um, we both talk about our situations. Um, and I think there’s a value there. Um, I think his investing in real estate, uh, with warehousing is a very interesting concept that others might want to consider. And then we talk about lessons learned, things that are you should have done differently.

Stephen:                             [03:26]                     And you know, there’s a maturity you get to, I mean, you know, he’s very humble, um, and very quiet, but he’s matured. He’s recognized. I mean, that’s cool that a guy, uh, my age and his age, we’re pretty close, can still learn and is willing to learn and admit that he doesn’t know it all. That’s, Oh, I get the chills thinking about it because that, that’s why he’s such a great guy. He’s such a good friend. I just love him. Um, and I just think there’s some real value. And the one thing, and I, I kind of use it in the title here about chasing inventory. Don’t just keep chasing inventory. Make sure that it’s inventory you can process and prep. That’s a pro pro tip to pop gifts. Don’t forget that, you know, don’t just keep getting inventory to get inventory. Spend your money.

Stephen:                             [04:09]                     If you’re just going to sit, don’t do it. Get that stuff out. Spend your time there and you’re going to be better use. Let’s get into the podcast. Hey, welcome back to the eCommerce momentum podcast. Excited to have back my guest and we both are blown away to realize it’s been three plus years since we last talk. Bob Steele, welcome back. Bob Steele. Nice to be back. Steve. We’ve been well. I have been. Well, I know you have been. Well, um, you know, it’s funny. At our age were 50s, uh, we only not only have to do business well, we have to stay health well, right? I mean it’s an issue, you know, it happens. I mean, so we’re not going to turn this into a health, uh, conversation, but it’s definitely one of those things. How about mental health? That’s an interesting thing to talk about. How do you, because you used to have a big job, a lot of responsibility. Um, did you believe that when you got at your own business and you were gonna and you walked away from your corporate job, that the pressures were going to be less than the responsible cause you were going to have less responsibility?

Speaker 4:                           [05:15]                     Yeah, I believe that, but that’s certainly not the cases [inaudible] stress and pressure now than I’ve ever had. Yeah, that’s plenty a, I was just thinking the exact same thing, you know, and I had a big job and I had a lot of responsibility. Now when you have employees and you have other people relying on you bomb, that’s so lot isn’t it? [inaudible] and it’s just constant. It’s one battle after the other, after the other and it’s all, I can just pass it on to someone else. It’s all got to get done. Well, you know, how much help you have. It’s like ultimately you’re responsible for on an average on it and figure it out. Yeah. That’s it. The buck stops with you. Um, do you think you were meant to

Stephen:                             [05:57]                     be a leader in this role when you think back to your skillsets and your life and the things that you’ve done?

Bob:                                       [06:04]                     No, I’m, when I first started selling on Amazon, my opinion was, you know, I never want to own a warehouse. I never want to have employees. I just want this a little bit on the side and you know, things evolved and that’s where I’m at now. When there’s some days I just want to give up and say I’m going to send it all to a prep center or I’m just going to do something else. Cause I’m, I was actually at our meeting with uh, Chris green and some other FBA sellers a few weeks ago and one of the things they talked about was Emma’s on fatigue where everyone’s starting to look to do other things because it’s, it’s a constant battle of finding inventory and turning inventory and prepping inventory. And it’s just a constant battle and to look to other avenues and it’s something I’ve considered, but right now I’m still fighting the Amazon battle.

Stephen:                             [06:49]                     Well, you, you are doing some other things with investing in real estate. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But let’s go back to that cause I think that’s interesting. Amazon fatigue. Do you think some of it, and this is, I have these thoughts, some of it is because the rules change. Like in your old business you guys had policies and procedures, right? They probably were the same for 20 or 30 years. Some of them, some of them should have changed, right? Of course they should have. Right. But lots of them didn’t need to, you know what I mean? Whatever it was. With Amazon it’s almost week to week that changes. So you can never like that one part of your world can’t settle. Is that fair?

Bob:                                       [07:26]                     Yeah. So like every other week there’s something else coming on. You know, we’ve been fighting hazmat issues for weeks over the name brand on the MSDS. She doesn’t match the name brand of the product and it’s because it’s a PR, you know, it’s our own brand and it’s a bundle and it’s one component inside the bundle. It’s a highlighter. So I send them the MSDS for the highlighter. They don’t accept it because the brands don’t match is it’s a fighting battle and now we’re getting all types of trademark issues for certain wholesale is that we use in this anal, that brand name is the trademark problem. Like no, the brand says it’s fine. It’s the right brand is every time you turn around and they are doing something to change and always having to spend hours and hours figuring out what they want and still not getting them right.

Stephen:                             [08:11]                     Yeah. Unintended consequences. Right. So I’m sure they’re trying to address nobody sitting in her saying, Hmm, who am I going to mess with today? Right. Nobody’s doing right there. They’re fixing a problem for something else. Right. Whatever it is. However, there are consequences in a, and I, I’ve said this a lot, a, you and I both are old sellers, right? We’ve been zoned for a long time. The where we’re just doing the way we’ve been doing for years. So you can’t all of a sudden just say, Hey, you’re not doing it right. It’s like, wait, it was right. Okay. You want me to change? That’s a different conversation. Help me change that. And I think that’s always been a miss. Even with eBay, I think there’s always been a miss that they’re not helping. And maybe it’s because we’re smaller sellers or at least we were, we were right.

Speaker 4:                           [08:57]                     They’re not helping bring you through those transitions. Right. Is that, is that right? Yeah, and especially, I mean eBay I don’t really do a lot with, but Amazon, they don’t give you the time towards transition. It’s like, okay, this is happening tomorrow. You know? Like I know one of the bigger changes has been the way the small light programs changed where now it’s a $7 maximum and a seven ounce maximum for the weight. But so that they said, okay, this is not going to be any more small and light and your products had to be in by a couple months ago while they’re still having me send the products. I used to have enrolled in small light to small light warehouses. So they kind of said there was going to be a change, but really I guess they haven’t implemented it. And that’s probably very, very frustrating. Now, at least with eBay, and this has been my experience later.

Speaker 4:                           [09:47]                     It’ll be interesting to see if anybody else agrees. We have been able to call and get a U S rep almost every single time we have a problem. They are almost always from Utah for whatever reason, and it’s just been a wonderful experience. They’re like, Hey, you know, we can’t help you there with this because of this and it’ll give you an actual reason. That’s been wonderful. I’m great. That’s amiss with selling on Amazon, correct? Correct. Mm Hmm. How hard it is. Imagine having times just trying to escalate a case and ask for a us representative. Sometimes you get one and sometimes it’s just passed on and you know, you get the merge. What are the merge case email? This is working into it and you get them for months on end and they don’t even tell you what it is anymore after the first one. Yeah.

Speaker 4:                           [10:31]                     You have no clue. Is that, would it be hard for them to implement, do you think? I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I just wonder, um, I think that’d be a lot of costs involved in that probably turn to avoid that as much as they can. Yeah. And another thing I think is, I always remember when I read the book, the everything store that if, if you have to call Amazon, it’s a fail on the customer side, right? They always said that you should be able to answer and anticipate all the customers’ needs and wants and the entire mall. Maybe, maybe they feel the same way about us sellers that we shouldn’t have to be able to call them. If that’s true. And I know Jeff Bezos is listening. If that’s true, then guess what? You got a little bit of ways to go there to help fix it.

Speaker 4:                           [11:15]                     And you know, we love the platform from it. God, we’d love it. Sorry, 80 90% of the revenue. Love, hate relationship. Yeah....]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3844Mon, 30 Sep 2019 03:00:53 -050055:48nofullBob speaks from experience. Inventory buying is a thrill. Finding great deals is what we do. But if it sits in your warehouse and doesn’t get processed then it is wasted economic value. Value you might not get back. See if it forces you to borrow money or put off hiring key labor that would…eCommerce Momentum Podcast407 : Mike Ward – Thrift Books Story – How to sell millions of books and create your own storyThis really is a story. A story of making a real difference and impacting the earth. See in  today’s technological world one small company can touch people around the world through commerce. Small chunks of love (Books) can end up in the furthest places by caring for customers and caring for the team members. A big takeaway from this episode is not to make the necessary financial adjustments on the backs of those who serve your business. Rather make them through technology. Very important not to forget this.

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Mike:                                    [00:00:00]               The physical inventory spread out around the country. And so there are times where, you know, take for example, you know, a book that sells very, very quickly, very, very popular book. We may not have a hundred copies spread out where there’s some in every site. You may just only literally have one copy that came in one hour ago. And if somebody buys it, I’m just stuck shipping it from wherever it happens to be. And so, uh, you know, that’s, that’s the challenge we have to face.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:00:30]               Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:00:44]               Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple]]>This really is a story. A story of making a real difference and impacting the earth. See in  today’s technological world one small company can touch people around the world through commerce. Small chunks of love (Books) can end up in the furthest places by caring for customers and caring for the team members. A big takeaway from this episode is not to make the necessary financial adjustments on the backs of those who serve your business. Rather make them through technology. Very important not to forget this.

Mentioned:

Thrift Books

Mike’s contact information

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye Lisby and Garry Ray’s Seller Tribe – (Get 14 day free trial!!)

Solutions4ecommerce

Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Mike:                                    [00:00:00]               The physical inventory spread out around the country. And so there are times where, you know, take for example, you know, a book that sells very, very quickly, very, very popular book. We may not have a hundred copies spread out where there’s some in every site. You may just only literally have one copy that came in one hour ago. And if somebody buys it, I’m just stuck shipping it from wherever it happens to be. And so, uh, you know, that’s, that’s the challenge we have to face.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:00:30]               Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:00:44]               Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re gonna cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay. So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon Seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out, uh, amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.

Stephen:                             [00:01:27]               Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, an sm. Is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you join through my link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in them. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage, and you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, Huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.

Stephen:                             [00:02:12]               Amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q4 is here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode four Oh seven, Mike Ward of thrift books.com. Um, get ready to have your mind blown on the ability to sell millions of books a year. It still happens still to this day. Um, he dropped some stats that just blow my mind. Um, 15 million plus skews, uh, thousands of a particular book copy, ah, eight locations, some of them over a hundred thousand square foot, big as a Costco, all filled with books, no retail locations, all done online and up. Well, well over 50% of their books are sold on their site and it’s their site. They’re no third party. That’s them. And you know, obviously the rest is sold on Amazon. Um, and all grew from them starting selling on Amazon. It’s a mind blowing.

Stephen:                             [00:03:12]               Um, and Mike Ward clearly has his pulse on the company. Um, then there’s some pride in there. I mean it’s, that’s a pretty awesome thing that he’s been part of. Um, to be able to create and man, there’s employees must be so proud cause it’s an amazing story. Let’s get into the podcast. Hey, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. I’m very excited today. Slurring my words here a little bit cause I’m kind of excited. This is an old school bookseller who’s made book selling my term sexy. We’ve just having a pre call conversation. How books are not sexy and some I, I think in this guy’s eyes they’re kind of sexy. Mike Ward, welcome Mike.

Mike:                                    [00:03:50]               Hi, great to be here.

Stephen:                             [00:03:52]               Would you agree books are sexy in your world?

Mike:                                    [00:03:55]               Yeah, they are. In fact, you know, when I have people in interviewing for positions, I have a bookshelf in my room with a bunch of old books on it and it’s definitely a conversation piece. I’d love to go through those. Yeah, I love books, new books and old books, but I have some books on my shelf that are from the 18 hundreds and they’re just, they’re just neat. They’re neat to look at. Um, so I, I would say that’s true of myself and it’s true of the people that work for my company to, you know, they, they’re drawn to books and so it’s a, you know, no offense to the folks, you know, for your listeners that maybe sell aquarium filters. But that’s Sorta my joke is like, hey guys, look, we’re not selling aquarium filters. We’re selling something people really mowed about. So it’s a, it’s a fun product for sure. It’s an emotional

Stephen:                             [00:04:34]               product. I mean, that is one thing about, um, oh, I just read finished. I just finished, started reading a John Adams and books like that giant big giant books. And yet you get absorbed in them. I mean, you literally can, cause I’m used to reading business books and I don’t get absorbed into them because they’re telling me, Steve, you need to make a list. You need to follow through on your list. You need to execute. You need to get up earlier. He Blah, blah, blah. All the same stuff. When I go into these other books, all of a sudden I can, I’m jousting or I’m climbing tree. I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s the truth. They really, it’s an emotional experience.

Mike:                                    [00:05:08]               Yeah, absolutely. You know, and we, we love that part of what we do. Well,

Stephen:                             [00:05:13]               let’s talk about what you do. So you’re, you have a little bookstore, right? Just a little dicky bookstore, a couple people working in it. Uh, what’s it about? Tell us about that.

Mike:                                    [00:05:23]               Uh, yeah, so more than a couple people, you know, we’ve got almost, yeah, almost, almost a thousand. We’ve got fulfillment centers spread out around the country and you know, we are selling millions of books a day. I’m sorry, a year. I wish it was a day. Um, you just large, large, large quantities of books and the model is pretty interesting. I mean, if I meet somebody and they asked me what I do for a living, I usually tell them I run an ecommerce business and you know, all of the normal ins and outs that you would expect with an ecommerce business. But there’s a big portion of our business that really looks a lot like a manufacturing business. I mean, we’re buying books from thrift stores, um, and from some libraries, uh, places like that. And we get them in large, large quantities, literally in semi-trucks and you know, hundreds of semi-trucks are going to be backing up into our network and we’re going to be offloading all of the books off of those.

Mike:                                    [00:06:20]               And then we use a lot of technology, uh, to process those and figure out what the market’s going to potentially sell using predictive analytics and a bunch of sophisticated, um, you know, some sorting equipment. And, you know, there’s also the human touch in there too. So, you know, we have to grade those books appropriately so that our customers know what, what quality the books are that they’re going to be getting. So, you know, there’s a lot of sort of processing that looks similar to what you would see in a manufacturing environment where we’re taking in a, a raw, unprocessed, you know, product or ingredient. And then after we’re done with it, we’ve added value to it and we’ve put that on the shelf and that’s what’s going to get sold online. And so we’ve got a large portion of our business that’s in that processing and fulfilling a section, you know, involved in those parts of the business. And then we’ve got what you would imagine two significant number of folks doing the listing management, the pricing management, uh, all of those things that you would typically have to manage in an ecommerce business

Stephen:                             [00:07:24]               when, when you think about, uh, cutting costs, right? Cause as I was sitting there and thinking about this because you’re talking touch points, all this operational stuff that, that technology is where the efficiency is, right? That’s it. Cause you can’t, you can’t cut wages, you can’t let people do, I’m sure. But in today’s Day and age, people have options. You really have to squeeze margin out of that technology piece. Right. And it has that really happened for you?

Mike:                                    [00:07:50]               Well, yeah, and it’s allowed us to scale. So you’re absolutely right. I mean, we can’t, um, you know, we can’t skimp on wages, especially in today’s Day and age. I mean, unemployment is at an all time low. So yeah, people have a lot of options with places that they can go to work. So yeah, we’ve put some equipment in place that makes those jobs easier, allows us to scale a little better. But yeah, fundamentally the technology is what allows us to find the right books that we’re going to put for sale and to skip over the ones that are not going to be able to be sold. And so, so yes. So you’re trimming and you know, you talk about cutting and trimming, that’s where you do it, is you just avoid touching the books that, you know, you’re not going to be able to make money on. So smart. TCIS all right. So I,

Stephen:                             [00:08:40]               uh, I want to get to the story about inventing systems and that spirit of entrepreneurial innovation because to me, you’re a big company, Mike. You’re not supposed to be that way. So I want to get there, but I want you to go back. Okay.

Mike:                                    [00:08:53]               Talk about how, how, how does, how does the reef books come about? I mean, where does that come from? It was just something, you know, uh, well take me all the way back. Tell me how you, how we performed. Well, so to be fair, I wasn’t there at the very beginning. I came in sort of, uh, at the entry level when it was small still. But the idea how many staff were on there when you were there? Oh, so we had one facility, well, when I came full time, I, you know, that was a small facility with maybe 20, uh, warehouse workers working part time for the most part and maybe six or seven people working in the office. So this is early stage. Yeah. So, and prior, prior to that I was attracted to the business. Um, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to your podcast.

Mike:                                    [00:09:41]               I was always interested in, you know, ideas that I saw out there that looked interesting. And, and this was one that a friend of mine had started. And so I was doing some work for them. Just moonlighting, you know, my full time job was writing code. I’m an engineer by background. And so I was writing code for a mutual fund facility and leading a development team there. And then in the evenings I was helping them, my, I was helping thrift books write some code for their shipping department and uh, interfacing with the u s ps we were using at the time and uh, and putting our first website up as well. So the genesis of the company really goes all the way back to Amazon, which I know a lot of your listeners, listeners are interested in. But, um, you know, Amazon opened up their API, opened up an API, allowing third party sellers to list books at the time was the primary category.

Mike:                                    [00:10:34]               And we, they’re the guy that founded the company, had access to books and he said, let’s, let’s try and put these online. And so it worked. And uh, kinda grew fairly slowly and organically over about three years. And that’s when I was helping a little bit from the sidelines. And then we came full time. Myself and a couple of other guys decided to come full time and do the proverbial quitting of the day job and going to the startup. And then we put the pedal to the metal and really sought to scale the business as quickly as we could. But you know, the genesis of the idea was Amazon making that decision to open up their platform to third party sellers, which is really fundamentally a very, very strange idea if you think about it. I mean, I bought the other company I see is Elon Musk doing it with these Tesla stuff,...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3840Mon, 23 Sep 2019 03:00:36 -050001:00:32nofullThis really is a story. A story of making a real difference and impacting the earth. See in  today’s technological world one small company can touch people around the world through commerce. Small chunks of love (Books) can end up in the furthest places by caring for customers and caring for the team members. A…eCommerce Momentum Podcast406 : Kiri Masters – Developing a team that’s focused on Consumer Direct MarketingWouldn’t it be nice to get an answer to a question right when you need it? How many times have you had a question, asked someone on the web and dropped the idea, issue or problem because you waited too long for an answer? Did you even get an answer? Kiri has an approach to have a silent member join your team: The Marketplace Institute. The Institute offers tons of “How to’s” and best practices but an Amazon hotline is the real key to helping you advance at the moment you need to behind their success. Great informative episode on what brands are doing, what teams brands are building and how you can build one to.

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Kiri’s Podcast: eCommerce Braintrust

Kiri’s Contact

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Kiri:                                        [00:00]                     It’s industrial products and machinery and medical supplies and supplies for dental offices, like people buy everything on Amazon. And so I think the original question was, oh yeah, Amazon doesn’t work for me. Well, you know, I certainly think that there are some products that won’t work on Amazon, which, which we turn away. And that is very high end products like Tiffany jewelry.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:30]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host Stephen Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:44]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go...]]>Wouldn’t it be nice to get an answer to a question right when you need it? How many times have you had a question, asked someone on the web and dropped the idea, issue or problem because you waited too long for an answer? Did you even get an answer? Kiri has an approach to have a silent member join your team: The Marketplace Institute. The Institute offers tons of “How to’s” and best practices but an Amazon hotline is the real key to helping you advance at the moment you need to behind their success. Great informative episode on what brands are doing, what teams brands are building and how you can build one to.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Kiri:                                        [00:00]                     It’s industrial products and machinery and medical supplies and supplies for dental offices, like people buy everything on Amazon. And so I think the original question was, oh yeah, Amazon doesn’t work for me. Well, you know, I certainly think that there are some products that won’t work on Amazon, which, which we turn away. And that is very high end products like Tiffany jewelry.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:30]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host Stephen Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:44]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out a amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as like to call it mailbox money. I love that term, mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them deliver to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [01:40]                     Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested. And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these market places and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me, so I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined have so much success.

Stephen:                             [02:23]                     It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast.

Stephen:                             [03:13]                     This is episode four oh six Kiri Masters. Um, very cool story because Kira, he does not deal with sellers like us. US meaning me and most listeners. Um, she generally deals with brands and not just any brands or significant brands. And it’s so interesting to hear her perspective on, um, what happens going through a brand and what they go through, you know, and, and at the end we get into some of the details, but you want to keep this in mind that, that one of the big takeaways that those big brands are like steering a shipping or giant cruise ships. It takes forever for them to turn, um, your ability to quickly, um, and accurately and on a dime change and adapt, um, gives you an advantage and you absolutely should take care of. Yeah, they have bigger cashflows, but that doesn’t mean anything if they can’t get an agreement on what to do, you have that opportunity and she really helps walk you through it.

Stephen:                             [04:11]                     Um, very cool. She really, uh, walks through a lot of details about how to do certain things and I think it’s just smart advice. Her, her tip about getting unstuck is, is great. Um, all in all, and she has a podcast which I like. Uh, anybody who has does a podcast, e-commerce brain trust podcast and where you can learn more about these things. And I just think there’s a lot of value. Smart Lady. I’m just a great, great person to talk with. It’s getting into the podcast and welcome back to the e-commerce by minute podcast. I’m excited about today’s guest. Um, a different kind of guest. Somebody who I normally wouldn’t talk to other than her PR agent was very, very persistent. I will give her that. Um, however, I normally wouldn’t talk to her because it’s not necessarily relevant to my audience, which are generally newer sellers.

Stephen:                             [04:53]                     Uh, who, you know, probably started selling books or started selling on Ebay and started growing maybe selling retail arbitrage, online arbitrage wholesale private label working their way through, but they haven’t hit the 10 million plus scale that normally, um, my guest would be speaking to because she runs a digital agency called bobsled marketing and they represent brands, um, in the 10 million plus range key. Remasters welcome, Carrie. Thank you so much. It’s great to be here. I did represent that well, right? I represented you well. Okay. Just want to make sure I’m clear on that. I think that was great. Thank you. But what I like is that we’re going to turn the conversation to something more relevant to those who listen. And Steve, me, um, about, uh, one of the kind of new ventures that carries into is helping companies create their own Amazon while you call it an all star Amazon team. I like that. I mean, that’s really what would it look like for a small startup versus a larger company because you say in our pre-call that not everybody can afford a spectacular agency like yours. Right? And so this is kind of a, like, it’s called an institute, right? So it’s, is it kind of a, like a, a whole, uh, a course and, uh, outline that a companies would use to, to build their team?

Kiri:                                        [06:16]                     Yeah. So I thought about a course, but as you, as you and everyone listening to the show knows, you can’t sit down, learn about Amazon for two weeks in a course and then know exactly what to do to your life. Well, it’ll change the day after. Exactly. It changes all the time. Not all of that information is relevant because in the Amazon ecosystem, we’ve got brands selling to Amazon on a wholesale basis as well as resellers as well as sell is selling on using FBA and seller fulfilled prime and [inaudible] like this. There’s so many different ways to um, to work with Amazon. And so sitting down and learning about the whole system is not necessarily helpful and a better way of actually learning, um, about such a complicated system and exactly what you should be doing is more of the blocking and tackling approach of, of, uh, finding help when you need it.

Kiri:                                        [07:13]                     And I think that that’s a way that a lot of sellers and vendors currently learn today is googling, um, uh, what is seller fulfilled prime? Is that a good fit for me? And learning about things as they go because it’s really your drinking from the fire hose with Amazon, you need information that’s relevant at that point in time. So instead of creating a course, the main foundation of the marketplace institute is a knowledge base which has all the searchable content, which is driven from processes that we’ve developed at bobsled marketing over the last five years. Working with these larger brands, um, checklists, debriefs of different programs, and one of it, they’re a good idea for you. Um, so that’s one piece. That’s the knowledge base. The second piece is PMR masterminds and a lot of, um, whether you’re an e-commerce director at a really big brand or, or your, uh, or you’re an entrepreneur on your own, everyone wants to learn from their peers and understand what’s working well in other companies similar to them.

Kiri:                                        [08:19]                     So that’s facilitated peer masterminds that we’re going to set up. And then the final piece of the marketplace institute that people love to hear about is the first and only Amazon helpline where you can schedule a call with an Amazon expert, 10 20 minute call about a specific topic and get, you know, a director person, a real person who knows what they’re talking about. Oh yes. So that, that’s what, when I, when I was researching this and talking with brand, um, e-commerce managers and directors at brands, that’s what they kept saying is there’s no health plans. This no Amazon health plan. I thought, well, I’m going to make the Amazon health plan that that’s what people want. So, um, yes, I’m, I’m really pleased to be able to offer the marketplace institute, which is, you know, to much smaller companies as well as the larger companies that we’ve historically worked with at bobsled marketing.

Stephen:                             [09:15]                     I, uh, there’s a couple of them and unpack that. Um, there’s [inaudible] there’s a lot there. Um, yeah. I mean I do love the idea of actually having somebody who will answer a specific question cause that’s one of the biggest challenges. Most of it’s intuitive and you’re going along and then all of a sudden it’s like, Huh, I can interpret that two or three ways. All right. Now that’s when you start down the rabbit hole and if you go and use Google or youtube, you’re going to get 50 different answers to that same thing. So the thing that you thought were two or three or now 150 and you’re like, what do I do? And so to have an expert that’s been through it, I think that’s, that’s a great idea. And I think it’s way, way past you needed. Um, the other thing that I was thinking about as you were talking is I’m thinking that you’re s you’re taking experience from these larger companies and then broke it down because I assume this is Steve’s assumption whose worked, I’ve been in, I’ve been a CFO and a bunch of companies, so I’ve, I’ve kinda been involved in this stuff.

Stephen:                             [10:11]                     We would expand as we’re expanding, we’re growing, we’re, we’re building out this team. And then once you hit, you know, when the team starts to work in all the processes, my job to come in and was to squeeze out the profits from that right and squeeze down the processes. And I’m pretty good at that unfortunately. And that usually meant eliminating positions and things like that. But it’s the truth. And so what you’re saying is that, hey, here’s what the team really will end up looking like, here’s the blueprint of what it’s going to look like and so therefore you can fill it in and it gets rid of that fluff. Right. Is that, is that fair when I’m saying it that way, that is that, am I correct what I’m saying? There’s a couple of,

Speaker 4:                           [10:50]                     well

Kiri:                                        [10:50]                     yeah, I think there’s a couple of reasons why you’d want to have your internal, an internal team that’s handling Amazon. It’s not often it is related to cost and it’s just like, well if we can get rid of an agency or consultant, then we should consider that and, and some of it is driven by cost, but sometimes it’s also just driven by efficiency within the company and the fact that you want to keep your institutional knowledge in house. And for us as an, as an agency up at bobsled there, we try and be as full service as possible and really manage all aspects of the Amazon channel for our clients. But there’s some things that we just don’t have visibility into. Like, we don’t always have item level profitability information and be able to make a call on what our ad budgets should be for that particular Asen.

Kiri:                                        [11:39]                     So we have to go back to the client, say, what’s the ad budget for this? Whereas if we’re an internal part of the internal team, we might already have that item level p and l and understand what we should be spending on ads for that particular product. Um, we don’t always know what’s in the product pipeline. We have to come up to speed on who’s their target customer, what do they care about. And so there’s some, you know, when you’re, whenever you’re outsourcing, there are some inefficiency in trying to get that agency or consultant or you know, contractor up to speed with what your company’s all about and how to do certain things. So sometimes companies, and I’m even talking about 5,000, $500 million companies, they often work with an agency, but they also want to have some portion of that handled in house as well because of that efficiency. Um, in just keeping that knowledge internal...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3833Mon, 16 Sep 2019 03:00:06 -050053:36nofullWouldn’t it be nice to get an answer to a question right when you need it? How many times have you had a question, asked someone on the web and dropped the idea, issue or problem because you waited too long for an answer? Did you even get an answer? Kiri has an approach to…eCommerce Momentum Podcast405 : Derek O’Carroll – Selling on multiple channels takes an all encompassing approach- develop a desired customer experience work flowI know this has a big title. But it is really important. Don’t try to serve everyone, rather serve your “Desired” customer. When you look at selling that person it takes a different approach. Derek walks us through developing a work flow to ensure consistency. After all that is what it takes to get through in today’s complicated marketplace. Oh and by the way, each marketplace has to be approached differently. Great discussion from an experienced agent.

Mentioned:

Brightpearl

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Derek:                                  [00:00]                     Right? And what we did was we said, well, hang on, why don’t we start from scratch and build a platform? We call it a retail operations platform that is built for purpose for one sector and is not customizable. In other words, you can’t go in there and write scripts on it. You can obviously use an API for ’em.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no...]]>I know this has a big title. But it is really important. Don’t try to serve everyone, rather serve your “Desired” customer. When you look at selling that person it takes a different approach. Derek walks us through developing a work flow to ensure consistency. After all that is what it takes to get through in today’s complicated marketplace. Oh and by the way, each marketplace has to be approached differently. Great discussion from an experienced agent.

Mentioned:

Brightpearl

Derek’s Email contact

Sponsors

Viral Launch – Save $50 with this link (Use coupon code: Momentum)

SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY LISTENERS ONLY

TWO WEEKS FREE TRIAL!!!!

Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List

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Scope from Sellerlabs

Tactical Arbitrage – Get an 10 day free trial with code: “Tactical”

Freeeup– Save 10% (forever) and get an instant $25.00 voucher for your first hire.

GoDaddy

Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Derek:                                  [00:00]                     Right? And what we did was we said, well, hang on, why don’t we start from scratch and build a platform? We call it a retail operations platform that is built for purpose for one sector and is not customizable. In other words, you can’t go in there and write scripts on it. You can obviously use an API for ’em.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:30]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting lists as grateful as I like to call it, mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on a various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [01:27]                     Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested and then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days, the only way you’re going to get 14 day free trials if you come through my link, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me, so I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined. Have so much success.

Stephen:                             [02:10]                     It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal over here. Hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, I even arbitrage amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast.

Stephen:                             [02:59]                     This is episode four oh five, Derek. Oh, Carol. Um, yeah, I get a little giddy in this episode because we talk accounting terms and inventory management and it gets me excited. Um, it gets me excited for a, because I’m a nerd on that stuff, but B, it is a place where a lot of companies struggle as you scale to size and you start managing thousands of skews and we do, it gets hard to manage. And I’m not saying we’re perfect at it, so this isn’t me preaching to anybody. What it is is a, Derek offers some solutions for free on ways to um, really look at your processes and then find out where you are and then find the gaps, right? Find that Delta, I always use that term, find the gaps, the things that are wrong and then you can address them. Don’t fix everything, fix the things that are wrong.

Stephen:                             [03:46]                     And uh, their company does offer solutions for larger companies, so $1 million in sales, so not, not terribly large, but when you get to that, it gets to be a challenge. When you start handling hundreds of skews or thousands of skews you’re in, you can get in trouble. And so finding a method that will help you get that cost of goods figured out. I think it’s a very powerful, and it’s not as crushing as some of the other companies out there doing it. You guys, if you’ve ever investigated some of those, you can’t get off their phone list and we all know who that is. Um, that’s crushing. That’ll crush you, especially as you’re spending more in advertising like we are. Um, you have to reduce your other costs. And so this is a great opportunity, a very smart guy. Let’s get into the podcast. We’ll come back to the ecommerce women and podcast.

Stephen:                             [04:31]                     We’re excited about today’s guests from across the pond. Derek O’Carroll. Uh, Derek Ha runs a company, owns a company’s CEO of Bright Pearl, and he’s going to talk to us about inventory, uh, omni-channel sales, which we all know is the thing that no, you don’t sell on Amazon. You don’t sell on Ebay, you don’t sell on Walmart. You sell on everywhere. And he’s going to talk to us about best practices and ways to reduce, uh, touch. I call them touch points, um, and a whole bunch more. Welcome Derek. Oh, thanks very much. David. Pleasure to be with you today. Thank you for coming. Uh, he’s fresh from the vacation and I’m fresh going on a vacation. So one of us is on edge taking take a guess which one it is. Two weeks though. Say, you know, let’s just start there for a second. What did it take for you to be able to get a team to allow you to take two weeks? I mean, you know, it that that says something that just doesn’t happen without intention.

Derek:                                  [05:31]                     Well, that’s a great question. I think there’s a couple of things that you need in the mix to be able to do that. So first is you’ve got to have a company strategy that the team are behind and believe in, but most importantly that they can translate that to, um, a level of zero ambiguity about what they do on an hourly basis to be able to play there apart and the team hitting the goal and the company strategy. And, uh, since I joined Bri pro in the last, you know, I joined just over three years ago, we’ve been very focused on that. What are the jobs of work that our customers need to hire us to do on their behalf that give them more time to focus on the important things in life? So to answer your question in those three years, it got to the point probably about a year ago that the strategy became very clear whenever I walked around the office and said, what do you think our strategy is?

Derek:                                  [06:22]                     I would start to get the same consistent answer back. But then most importantly, when we had a, an event with the staff and the team and I’d meet their spouses, their wives or their husbands, they also understood what the company strategy was, which was great for me to hear. But also the validation was they knew how they were being successful themselves and what they needed to do as a family and as a spouse. Because as we all know, in today’s busy world, there’s always someone behind you, you know, giving you that support and egging you along and giving you advice. And that’s essentially the environment and the culture that we were aiming for. Um, and yeah, so that’s essentially allowed me to go away. Two weeks is a good, is a good time. And I know you said earlier on, yeah. You know, but I’m, I’m, I’m said I’m over the pond, but I’m, you know, I’m two weeks in Austin, Texas and I’m two weeks and I’m in the UK every month, so I’m back and forth. So, you know, I think I deserved it.

Stephen:                             [07:19]                     Okay. All right. Well that’s pretty impressive. Uh, I’m going to get eight days, which is pretty impressive. I’m in my world. That’s probably one of my longer vacation. Um, so I’m, I’m looking forward to that. You know, the other thing I was thinking about is, and I know, I guess I can say for both markets, I know what Austin’s market is. It’s the hot market. It’s the hottest place for tech in the u s by far. Yeah. How about, uh, I don’t know where in the UK you are, but finding and keeping those cause cause you were just talking about employee spouses, right. And I always say that when, when you can build, uh, that employee up in front of their spouse and they, they get a little taller, they stand a little more proud. You know, it’s a very, very, a great way to, you know, build up employees. How hard is the market in those markets? I know Austin’s market’s hot to keep those good people. So I mean I, I get that you taught them the, or you help them understand where you’re going. But how hard is it to keep those people?

Derek:                                  [08:13]                     Well, it, it’s, it’s really hard. So, um, and firstly when I joined Bri Pearl’s u s operations was based in San Francisco. And uh, I, uh, needed a decision based on timeline and you know, time zone. Um, but also when I went and hung out with the people who worked with us back then, they lived in shoe boxes. You know, the quality of life wasn’t that high. And we are an inside sales driven organization. Or the go to market side. So it really made no sense to me to be in San Francisco as we know it was quite expensive. And then I just basically went and did Iraqi across other countries in the states. And I looked for partnership time zone and costs and then skills availability, which is best influenced by, um, the community of tech. And I looked at Colorado, I looked at Detroit and I ended up going to Austin.

Derek:                                  [09:05]                     And when I arrived, um, uh, there was a concert or a festival on that, that a weekend, which I wasn’t aware of anywhere else and just tick the boxes. But most importantly it was the skillset that were there. And Net migration to Austin was 150 tech workers per day. We’re moving to Austin, Texas. So that gave me confidence that we’d be able to find the right people in the sphere of E-commerce, which is a, you know, it was very competitive. And then it’s about, you know, making sure as we said earlier on, but also that the culture is right. It’s all about the culture that people have that respect. And, and have a fun factor and really get excited about helping customers on a daily basis. And that’s allowed us to go from, you know, when I moved to Austin, we, we essentially were two people when we moved over to Austin because a lot of people, you know, were weren’t on for the transition from San Francisco to Austin. I needed a different skillset. So we rebuild the business right back up and now we’re just under 50 people. We made that change to two years ago. 50 people in Austin, Texas and the U S has now about half our business just over half our business.

Stephen:                             [10:07]                     It’s interesting to see in our pre-call, we were talking a little bit about that there are so many options for inventory management, right? As you say, the big players are coming into the market. Um, my experience with that come in from corporate world when the big players come in and they offer some of the bells and whistles, but usually for the larger, larger scaled players, not the smaller sellers, which I would consider myself in the million dollar sellers in those ranges. Um, they, they don’t give enough, they don’t reduce enough touch points because the corporate still has departments and still has lots of people involved in it. What’s been your experience with that?

Derek:                                  [10:48]                     So like larger corporates have larger merchants have more complex requirements and they gravitate towards the bigger companies like say SAP or Microsoft dynamics or netsuite because those platforms are very configurable or skew, excuse me, they’re very customizable, but they’re only customizable by using engineers, writing scripts and giving clients what they want. It’s very expensive. It gets very expensive and they serve all sectors. Right? And what we did was we said, well, hang on, why don’t we start from scratch and build a platform, we call it a retail operations platform that is built for purpose for one sector and is not customizable. In other words, you can’t go in there and write scripts on it. You can obviously use an API for our more technical minded customers and therefore you can configure it very quickly. And the proof of the pudding is if, if, say, a customer of mine I was, I was talking to, uh, recently, they onboarded to the platform. There’s an a midsize, they identify it 7 million a year across 20 countries. They’ve got about six channels and they were able to move off a legacy system onboard to ours in just under 70 just under Saturday days. That’s calendar days, which might sound like a lot, but when you’re moving their whole back office onto a cloud system, if you were to go to a corporate that would take you about 180 to 250 days, and obviously as you said, is much, much more expensive.

Stephen:                             [12:17]                     So they had to be willing to make tradeoffs. Correct. What my experience, and again this goes back to the industry I was in, which in...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3828Mon, 09 Sep 2019 03:00:46 -050058:00nofullI know this has a big title. But it is really important. Don’t try to serve everyone, rather serve your “Desired” customer. When you look at selling that person it takes a different approach. Derek walks us through developing a work flow to ensure consistency. After all that is what it takes to get through…eCommerce Momentum Podcast404 : Chase Clymer – Create a content production system to create demand for your productsIf you know me I love systems. Systems bring you consistency and small consistent actions over time bring big results. Chase helps us (me) with step by step instructions on what the “Outliers” are accomplishing by using these steps. Chase also will help you master Shopify for your best results.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Chase:                                  [00:00:00]               We don’t have the budget, I would say you need to sit down and write a blog a week yourself. Like that’s just get that in your habit. Uh, but if you have a little bit more of a budget, maybe you want to hire a writer to help you produce a blog a week. Um, caveat on hiring writers. Make sure they’re good, make sure it’s English. Uh, and if you are want to save some money, you can hire a blog researcher that may be at a cheaper price point, maybe a, uh, you know, developing country where you can get a writers for a little bit cheaper. But then you are also going to have to hire an editor to turn it into actual American English. Uh, I’ve seen some people do that, so that’s a pretty good tip there. They’ll save you a little bit of money on your blog writing, or if you don’t want to deal with that many people, just hire one good writer.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:00:45]               Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven [inaudible]

Stephen:                             [00:00:56]               Peterson. Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and...]]>If you know me I love systems. Systems bring you consistency and small consistent actions over time bring big results. Chase helps us (me) with step by step instructions on what the “Outliers” are accomplishing by using these steps. Chase also will help you master Shopify for your best results.

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Chase’ podcast: Honest eCommerce

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Chase:                                  [00:00:00]               We don’t have the budget, I would say you need to sit down and write a blog a week yourself. Like that’s just get that in your habit. Uh, but if you have a little bit more of a budget, maybe you want to hire a writer to help you produce a blog a week. Um, caveat on hiring writers. Make sure they’re good, make sure it’s English. Uh, and if you are want to save some money, you can hire a blog researcher that may be at a cheaper price point, maybe a, uh, you know, developing country where you can get a writers for a little bit cheaper. But then you are also going to have to hire an editor to turn it into actual American English. Uh, I’ve seen some people do that, so that’s a pretty good tip there. They’ll save you a little bit of money on your blog writing, or if you don’t want to deal with that many people, just hire one good writer.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:00:45]               Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host, Steven [inaudible]

Stephen:                             [00:00:56]               Peterson. Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary, Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list, um, as grateful as like they call it mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [00:01:55]               Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested. And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days, the only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me. So I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined, have so much success.

Stephen:                             [00:02:38]               It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal here. Hey, there’s another opportunity and get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, I even arbitrage amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast.

Stephen:                             [00:03:27]               This is episode four oh four chase climber. Um, very cool guy who has a lot of experience, runs an agency that really specializes more in Shopify than anything else. Um, great, great website, electric I. Dot. Io. Um, and he has a podcast, honest e-commerce. But what I appreciated from him is he cave and he gave two really powerful pieces of information. One is if you have a Shopify store, here are the recommended apps, the things that you can use to really scale up, right? And he says, you know, rather than trying to figure it out rather than he’s already got proof, he’s got experience with a hidden benefit if you use these, right. So, you know, it’s an, it’s almost unsolicited, right? So there’s real value. The other thing is he talks about as a content production system and you know, we produce content, so it’s definitely part of our process, but hearing it that way and then building it and then making it work for your business, that’s what’s going to drive your business and give some really good examples in this podcast of companies that have done it, brands that he’s worked with.

Stephen:                             [00:04:31]               Um, and again, I’m, I’m stuck on his website that electric [inaudible] dot io the testimonials look up some of those companies, look at their websites. You can do that and these are successful brands that are out there selling on their own and on Amazon in this current market and having success. You can do it too. Let’s get into the podcast and we’ll come back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. I’m excited about today’s guest. Um, I’m excited because, uh, it’s the agency that he’s built. I think that that’s the way to approach it. The agency that he’s built has helped. Hopefully, I don’t know if it’s hundreds of clients, but a lot of clients. So I don’t know how many, um, build ecommerce businesses and it’s more brand. And I think, I think all of us who are selling, you know, we want to sell, we want our own brands.

Stephen:                             [00:05:18]               Um, this is a company that’s helped others prove that it can be done and it’s still being done today. Is that fair? Before I introduce, is that correct? Still being done today. Alright, good. So the Amazon, uh, world ha probably has an effect, but it probably makes everybody better. So chase climate. Welcome chase. Thanks for having me. I’m super excited. Well, thank you for coming. Um, the name of your company is the agency is called electric. I, correct? Yes. We’re named after a Judas priest, so it really a electric I. Dot. Io. So make sure people know that that’s a, the the agency that you run. So let’s talk about that because my statement, you know, and even in our pre-conversation, one of the things we have are lots of Amazon sellers listen to this and they want to build a brand. That’s what they know, right?

Stephen:                             [00:06:03]               So they, they probably started like you and I did sell books or thrift store items, build some success in like Ooh. And then they start maybe some wholesale and then they start their own private label and they probably Miss Miss, Miss. And then boom, something gets a little bit of legs. They have some success. They start building this item. Maybe they put a name on it, they maybe they get the trademark, maybe they start building something and then boom, somebody comes in and copies it. Identical, gets on their listing. They now spend most of their legal life fighting through that. And a lot of times never climb out of it, give up, move on to the next product. Um, that’s kind of a cycle that a lot of people see. So they want off, they want to do their own thing. But I think people get stuck in it. So walk us through like some of the brands that you’re working with. I mean, is that a similar story or is that a dissimilar story? And then can we learn from the dissimilar story?

Chase:                                  [00:07:03]               I think it is. I would say it’s not dissimilar. I feel it’s right in the middle and I’ll, I’ll kind of explain why the grass is always greener by the way. Let’s just talk about that. So I know of so many brands that started on Shopify and they’re like, we should have, you know, we should’ve been doing Amazon sooner and then we get so many people reaching out like, hey, we’re on Amazon, here’s our pain points. Can you help get us to Shopify? And you know, there are pros and cons to each of them. Uh, the easiest one to point out is with Shopify, you own your customer, but there’s no market to sell to. And then when you’re on Amazon, it’s the complete opposite. That’s like the differences. Those are the most polar opposite differences between them. And the way that that works out with building your brand is like pretty intense.

Chase:                                  [00:07:51]               So if you’re starting a new brand and you’re focused on finding product market fit, which I think should be the first thing you do. I liked that product market fit. I’ve not heard that once you’re, once you’re getting that product market fit, finding out that your product actually has traction with people. The best way to test that as Amazon cause there’s a lot of people looking for stuff on there. Uh, and Ebay as well. They’re, these are built in marketplaces with people that are searching for stuff. So I would say when you’re kind of vetting your products or like, I’m trying to think what should I sell? I have some ideas in this space. I would say build some test products and see if they sell on Amazon because that will translate over to sales on Shopify. But you’re going to have to do the leg work to bring people to your website.

Stephen:                             [00:08:35]               Let’s pause there cause that’s a, that’s a good point. So, so get a proof of concept, right? Getting it out there. People are buying his, like you said, that’s where the audience is currently dead. That’s already established. Um, if you do good job with keywords and all that jazz, you get found, boom, they buy, at what point do you say, okay, this is a good enough proof of uh, and I’m ready to move off and create my own. Because as you described, you’re then responsible to bring traffic. And that’s not easy. Correct?

Chase:                                  [00:09:05]               It is. It is not easy. Uh, and especially these days I want to just like pop the bubble, the balloon or whatever it is. Facebook is expensive and hard. It is not magic anymore. Um, it is, it used to be, and that’s Kinda how when the agency started, that’s a lot of what we were doing was managed Facebook and Instagram advertising for direct to consumer clients. Um, but now it’s, it’s very competitive. It’s very expensive in the learning curve, um, is a little bit steeper. So, you know, bringing that traffic in is more expensive if you want to do a paid marketing route because Facebook’s now mature, so as Google, so those clicks are expensive. Um, and then the other way to do it is you got to focus on beautiful content, content that resonates with your audience. And some people don’t want to put in the work

Stephen:                             [00:09:55]               that, uh, I mean, ultimately that’s the answer today, right? I mean, and it’s going to be where a lot of our conversation goes is you, I’m selling, uh, Steve’s water bottles. I need to have, you know, stories about camping and hiking or you know, sports or whatever. It’s something that people would use water bottles for to help bring those eyeballs so that audience are people that possibly would be interested in buying water bottles and then I can earn their trust. Right? I mean, that’s really where the work is today as opposed to, like you say, just run in a Facebook viral ad.

Chase:                                  [00:10:27]               Absolutely. I mean, obviously those tactics with Facebook and Google still work and you know, they should be kind of in your stack of marketing. But where the real money is, especially for young entrepreneurs who I’m assuming don’t have unlimited funds, uh, the way you can get traffic is by building, like creating awesome content. You can do it with your phone. I’ve seen people go viral with just a, uh, video they shot on their cell phone that led to thousands of sales.

Stephen:                             [00:10:58]               W you know, I was asking this earlier as in the more, maybe that was a dumb question. Is it, you know, what point do you get off? Well, the answer depends, right? I mean that’s, that was pretty dumb, but, but it isn’t illogical to think that there’s an evening out of your clients. What percentage of sales on an Amazon versus their own, do you have any clue?

Chase:                                  [00:11:19]               Um, actually so we’ve got it. You know what, it depends. I feel like when you’re building a brand that has a specific product or specific product niche, uh, the pain points on Amazon are going to start to be like the fees. And once you have a name attached to your product, it goes from just being a water bottle to being Steve’s water bottle. You know what I mean? So once you, once you make that transition to actually having a brand, I feel like you should put a little bit more weight into moving, trying to move your customers to your own website because then you can do amazing retargeting. You can do sales, you can kind of what the narrative is with your brand and your customer. Um, but on the other side, we have some customers that use Shopify to sell other products, I. E. S shoes or, uh, we have one client that sells a pool and spa like filters and equipment and stuff like that. And he has, he has them on both and he loves them on both. And...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3821Mon, 02 Sep 2019 12:36:26 -050001:03:07nofullIf you know me I love systems. Systems bring you consistency and small consistent actions over time bring big results. Chase helps us (me) with step by step instructions on what the “Outliers” are accomplishing by using these steps. Chase also will help you master Shopify for your best results.   Mentioned: Chase’ podcast: Honest…eCommerce Momentum Podcast403 : Mark Berkowitz – Dealing with common eCommerce Intellectual Property issuesIt’s funny in today’s fast changing world where a young guy (relative to me) is the absolute expert at his Law firm. Partners go to him for advice because the issues are new and were not planned for when the laws were written. Get some great legal advice for just the time it takes to listen from someone with a lot of experience.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Mark:                                    [00:00]                     It can be a lot of different things. It can be some, you know, some crazy claim. Let’s say let’s say a claim related to your product is better than a competitor’s product or that you know that your product contains certain ingredients, um, when it really doesn’t. Those are the ones that come up a lot, you know, for cosmetics and things like that. Um, you know, you say it has a certain, you know, percentage of the effective ingredient and it doesn’t, that can be false advertising. Um, a bait and switch type of a situation can be false advertising. Your advertising. One thing that has certain features, certain size and certain properties and it doesn’t really have those things.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:41]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:55]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and, Garry’s, Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and...]]>It’s funny in today’s fast changing world where a young guy (relative to me) is the absolute expert at his Law firm. Partners go to him for advice because the issues are new and were not planned for when the laws were written. Get some great legal advice for just the time it takes to listen from someone with a lot of experience.

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Mark’s Law Firm : Amster, Rothstein & Ebenstein LLP

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Mark’s Telephone #: (212)-336-8063

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Mark:                                    [00:00]                     It can be a lot of different things. It can be some, you know, some crazy claim. Let’s say let’s say a claim related to your product is better than a competitor’s product or that you know that your product contains certain ingredients, um, when it really doesn’t. Those are the ones that come up a lot, you know, for cosmetics and things like that. Um, you know, you say it has a certain, you know, percentage of the effective ingredient and it doesn’t, that can be false advertising. Um, a bait and switch type of a situation can be false advertising. Your advertising. One thing that has certain features, certain size and certain properties and it doesn’t really have those things.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:41]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:55]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and, Garry’s, Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out. Amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as I like to call it. Mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [01:51]                     Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested and then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me. So I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined, have so much success.

Stephen:                             [02:34]                     It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, how you Finn arbitrage amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that. Get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the e-commerce moment and podcast.

Stephen:                             [03:23]                     This is episode four Oh three, Mark Berkowitz, a very cool guy. Um, he made, it’s funny afterwards I said it, uh, he made talking about law fun. I mean really it’s so interesting when you start thinking about, because if you’re selling, right, if you’re developing products and selling them private label where even if you’re selling third party products, um, I’m not sure you, me, Steve have thought about a lot of these things, but now when you sit back, if you have your own products, wait til somebody comes on your listing, then you’re going to be thinking about a lot of these things, right? And so, cause that’s happened to us and it’s like, Whoa, what do we do? You know, and then all of a sudden you now become the aggressive one. You’re like, wow, I’m going to hunt him down and, and pulled him off.

Stephen:                             [04:03]                     You know? Well that when that happens to you, what do you feel like? So it’s really interesting. Um, one of the real cool takeaways was that out of a hundred letters, majority of them don’t have any teeth. So those cease and desist letters you get might not have a lot of teeth, but you’re gonna have to pay to find that out. So, you know, I think there’s some, some good advice here. Um, do your work up front, do your research and be careful how far you go. Your risk meters should be guiding you and be real cautious because there are some, there’s some things that could happen to you and you want to be very, very cautious about. You want to build a nice longterm business. Let’s get into the podcast. Hey, welcome back to the e-commerce invent a podcast. We’re going to talk some real interesting stuff today, not however it is critical to our business and my guest would argue it is interesting because he has to think about it full time. Welcome Marc Berkowitz. Welcome mark. Thank you. You would find IP and patent law. Interesting, correct.

Mark:                                    [05:07]                     Definitely. Particularly now with the growth of commerce and the Internet, you know, we’re seeing issues that we never imagined 10 years ago. Um, so yeah, it’s really interesting time to be doing this.

Stephen:                             [05:17]                     What would most of it, that’s interesting. So would most of it, 10 plus years ago have been, I mean, how would that have happened? Right. So let’s assume the Internet wasn’t there, wasn’t that long ago, where would most of your work been concentrated?

Mark:                                    [05:30]                     I think it was, you know, at least for me it was a lot of it was consumer electronics. Um, things like that. You know, the way issues would come up would be, you know, you, you know, somebody would basically walk into a store or see a product, you know, in a brick and mortar store and say, oh, that, that infringes my pattern. Or you know, that your friends, you might trademark. Um, and they’d go, you know, try to track down where it’s coming from. You know, it’s up to the seller or go back up the chain eventually, you know, bring a lawsuit. And they had to, um, today that’s all different. You know, with ecommerce, with Amazon, you know, results, you know, you need to take action is immediate. Um, you can get results right away by going through Amazon, picking somebody off, um, everything sort of happening in real time.

Stephen:                             [06:14]                     Yeah, it’s interesting. And there are like, I, cause I’ve dealt with the um, oh the photo company, I forget their name, I can’t think of their name, but they, where they scroll Tro, uh, scraped the Internet looking for photos that they own and in a send you a bill and you pay it cause there’s no way around it. I forget the name of that company. They’re massive, but that didn’t exist. And so they have an essence robots. Right. These, these algorithms is out there searching for that stuff. Have you seen that in the, I guess you have, I guess on Amazon you would see that where people can be searching or have, uh, programs out there searching for things related to their business, correct.

Mark:                                    [06:51]                     Yeah, absolutely. I mean for things like images, you have their progress in their programs. I can do that for trademarks. The same thing. There’s, you know, there’s software, there’s, you know, people sitting there searching away, looking for potential infringements. Um, and when they see something, you know, you act right away, you fill out a form on Amazon, whether it’s their regular freshman forum through brand registry and you get, you know, get action right away.

Stephen:                             [07:14]                     Well, I’ve heard some, you know, private labeled teachers, you know, kind of skirt those issues in today’s Day and age, how these big companies, these real big ones with a lot to lose, they have staff that works on this stuff. Correct?

Mark:                                    [07:28]                     Sure. Some companies do it themselves. Some companies retain, you know, third party brand protection companies or you’re doing it in, you know, sort of a combination of the two. Um, yeah. And they’re, they’re, some of them can be very aggressive. Um, you know, sometimes right? Sometimes wrong in going after private label sellers going after, you know, resellers of branded goods. Um, you know, especially with trademark oil, you have an obligation to protect your rights and you know, you have to, you have to move quickly.

Stephen:                             [07:59]                     And in today’s Day and age, I think it’s really important. So let me go through these. This is a kind of the practice that you guys have them. And I think this is Steve’s opinion that most, that these are the ones that are related to e-commerce because that’s what we are, right? Where your commerce, ours, uh, counter counterfeiting, anti counterfeiting, copyright, false advertising. I don’t think people think about that, but when you make some crazy claims, that stuff can come back to bite you. Um, IP Litigation, um, that would be a good one. Uh, patents obviously. Um, uh, I don’t know what trade dresses I’m interested in. Uh, I mentioned trade secret in our pre-call and you said that really doesn’t come up much, but I want to think about that one for a second. And then trademark. And I, I also would say unfair competition, right? Cause if too, if me and you collude, right? I don’t know if that’s the correct term and it’s a term I use in my old accounting terms. Well, if we get together to set prices, um, that’s unfair, right? I mean, if a whole bunch of us, uh, do those kinds of things, those are our examples of unfair competition. So let’s, let’s peel them back one by one. If you don’t mind. I’m going to ask you a couple. So counterfeiting, have you seen counterfeiting issues in, in ecommerce or Amazon?

Mark:                                    [09:09]                     Absolutely. So there’s counterfeits that are his real counterfeits, you know, after straight knockoffs, you know, the guy who was

Stephen:                             [09:17]                     purses, you know, or the, that Gotzsche w uh, purses down on a, I dunno [inaudible] yeah, right. That’s an example.

Mark:                                    [09:25]                     But yeah, it’s even gotten bigger than that, hasn’t it? It has, it has. I mean, I think, you know, you have the, the, you know, what everybody thinks of as counter, meaning the straight knock off, they copy every aspect. Um, and there’s things in between where maybe they’re putting a name on the outer box, maybe they’re selling something on a particular listing, um, and suggesting that it’s, you know, of that brands and then fulfilling it with a generic product that could potentially be counterfeiting. Um, so yeah, it comes in a bunch of different flavors and you see a lot of it, you know, especially on Amazon real counterfeits, you’ll see a lot of um, incorrect counterfeiting allegations. People take advantage. Yeah.

Stephen:                             [10:04]                     Yeah, that’s a, that’s a real issue too. So, well, let’s talk about the real counterfeit here. So I’m selling a product, it’s my product, it’s Steve’s water bottle. It’s beautiful. And somebody comes on my listing and they’re clearly not selling my version. They’re selling another one, but it’s my packaging cause it’s just a well established brand. What’s my recourse? What’s, what’s the, what’s the, where’s the place I start?

Mark:                                    [10:25]                     Well, I think that the best place to start, you know, is to write to them and say what you’re selling is, is counter fit. Um, you need to remove it right away and tell us where you’re getting it from.

Stephen:                             [10:35]                     And so that term, that’s a pretty strong term. That’s a fair...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3815Mon, 26 Aug 2019 03:00:58 -050055:47nofullIt’s funny in today’s fast changing world where a young guy (relative to me) is the absolute expert at his Law firm. Partners go to him for advice because the issues are new and were not planned for when the laws were written. Get some great legal advice for just the time it takes to…eCommerce Momentum Podcast402 : Jon MacDonald – How do you convert more of your traffic into salesSo you worked really hard on getting people to see your stuff? But they are not buying (Less then 2% is the standard). Why? Jon walks us through how to parse your data to identify your buyers habits, then eliminate the noise where they are not buying. Think optimization. How has PPC optimization worked for you on Amazon? It is the game right now. So do the same on your own website and get the same results.

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Thegood.com

Jon’s contact

Hotjar

4 points you should be tracking on your site

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2- Heat Mapping

3- User Testing

4- A/B Testing

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Jon:                                        [00:00]                     Most people are using Google analytics. It’s free as we mentioned, but really dive in, get a good understanding from that. Once you feel like you have a good understanding of what people are doing on your site, move on to collecting those heat maps and other engagement types of tools and then just spend an hour a week looking at those.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eating commerce selling today. Here’s your host

Stephen:                             [00:29]                     Stephen Peterson. Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put...]]>So you worked really hard on getting people to see your stuff? But they are not buying (Less then 2% is the standard). Why? Jon walks us through how to parse your data to identify your buyers habits, then eliminate the noise where they are not buying. Think optimization. How has PPC optimization worked for you on Amazon? It is the game right now. So do the same on your own website and get the same results.

Mentioned:

Thegood.com

Jon’s contact

Hotjar

4 points you should be tracking on your site

1- Analytics

2- Heat Mapping

3- User Testing

4- A/B Testing

Sponsors

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Jon:                                        [00:00]                     Most people are using Google analytics. It’s free as we mentioned, but really dive in, get a good understanding from that. Once you feel like you have a good understanding of what people are doing on your site, move on to collecting those heat maps and other engagement types of tools and then just spend an hour a week looking at those.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:17]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of eating commerce selling today. Here’s your host

Stephen:                             [00:29]                     Stephen Peterson. Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby and Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine any list, I’m as grateful as like they call it mailbox money. I love that term, mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them deliver it to you and then sell them on various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying while you take these lists.

Stephen:                             [01:28]                     And you can join multiple lists if you’re interested. And then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trial. So if you come through my link, um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me, so I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined have so much success. It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group.

Stephen:                             [02:18]                     I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal group of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, how you Finn arbitrage amazing freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it, drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the e-commerce woman podcast. This is episode four Oh two John MacDonald. John owns a company, started a website called the the good.com, and owns a company, loved the name.

Stephen:                             [03:09]                     Um, and when you hear his mission, um, it’s really interesting and it’s going to be very relevant to you may who are trying to build a business. You’re trying to create something. And I would sell you the takeaways that I got from this is, you know, it’s like I used to sit on my kids do as I say, not as I do. Um, there’s a whole bunch of stuff that I’m still doing wrong because [inaudible] and I recognize it because I don’t like it when it’s done to me. And so I think that’s one of the biggest takeaways is to sit back and say, okay, what do you like about when you go to a website a lot, Amazon and let’s emulate that. And what don’t you like when you go to a website and they pop up that, you know, annoying ad right in your face or they, they shame you into closing the box.

Stephen:                             [03:54]                     Don’t do that. That’s about as deep as it gets from John explaining it to me. Um, and yet it, it’s just so powerful. I mean, it really is so powerful and he talks about amazing tools that you could use that are really low cost that can help you figure that out. That’s, that’s the depth of it right there. Do what works the best Allah, Amazon and get rid of the stuff that doesn’t work. Really good guy. Really good story. Um, very, very interesting. Let’s get into the podcast. Hey, welcome back to the e-commerce moment and podcast excited about today’s guest because he’s going to hopefully, hopefully help us, me, Steve, understand more about your own website. Lots of people in our pre-conversation we’re talking about this. Lots of people have their own sites now, right? Or they’re stuck trying to figure it out. And this is a company, uh, he owns a company that, that just does this and really helps convert customers who got to your site who are probably leaving and he’s going to help you make that sale.

Stephen:                             [04:55]                     And, and they have proven results, which I’m very interested here. John McDonald. Welcome John. Hi, how are you? Thanks for having me. Hey, thank you for coming on. That’s an accurate statement. What I described, right. Your, your focus is I got people to my site, but they’re not buying John and they’re leaving and they’re not saying, Steve, you’re great and uploading with their dollars. They’re walking away. Correct. That’s, that’s what your fortnight, right? Yeah, the good, which is the company I founded about 10 years ago now, which is a great name by the way. I mean like, thank you. Do you must get a lot of applause for that name? Well, it stems from our mission, which is the, uh, you know, we want to reduce all of the bad online shopping experiences until only the good ones remain. And how we do that is through conversion rate optimization, which means we help brains to convert more of their existing website traffic into buyers by essentially helping them understand how consumers using their site,

Jon:                                        [05:58]                     having empathy for those consumers and creating a better consumer experience on their site. That’s a lot to unpack because when you think about it, you know, how do you know why somebody’s coming to my site or I got him at my site and how do, how do you help me know what people are doing at that site? What, what are you able to help me figure out? Yeah, great question. Well, look, there are four main key data points that every e-commerce site should be tracking, right? And the first of those is analytics. So of course, something like Google analytics, right? You want to understand the trends, the seasonality, the entry points to your site and the exit points, even the paths that people take through the site. There’s a ton of information there, uh, and Google analytics. But let’s be honest, Google analytics is set up to help Google sell more ads.

Jon:                                        [06:49]                     Really know it’s free, right? If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. And so it’s interesting that, uh, you know, most people take Google analytics, um, at first glance and just pay attention to what it’s in the default dashboard. Don’t dig any deeper, but there’s some great information in there. First thing people should be looking at that’s a lot of value is there’s a tool that in within Google analytics it’s available to everybody that helps you to understand the paths that people are taking through your site. This is great because you get to see the funnel of your site and how it’s working and what path people are taking through that funnel. Okay, so wait, dig me deeper in there. So a math, so is that the entry point and then the next click that they made and then the next click that they made or is that, is that kind of it?

Jon:                                        [07:39]                     Okay. Yeah, exactly. And it actually allows you to click on a page title and then it will highlight all the different paths that people take over to the right. So you can kind of visualize, you have these columns that are the, you know, step one, step two, step three, and then there’s a horizontal lines that kind of cut across and show you all the different paths that people take from each step. And so it’s really helpful because it will tell you maybe you are injecting an extra page into the funnel that doesn’t need to be there. So, so when I’m looking at, I’m looking at the ones where the majority of them come in and then I’m looking at the outliers where hardly anybody’s coming in and those are the ones, does it slow down the algorithm? Is that what it does? Well it doesn’t necessarily slow it down.

Jon:                                        [08:24]                     I think that it really just, it creates an extra step for folks to get right is the best way to be thinking about it. How can you eliminate the extra steps that people would have to take? Um, it’s just like a physical retail store. You’d want to put your bestsellers up front, right? Cause otherwise people would leave. Right. Give them a reasonably okay. All right. That makes sense to me. Oh cool. Yeah. So analytics is one piece of data. A second is heat mapping. So heat mapping is where you can track how are engaging with content on your site. Now there’s several different types of heat mapping. So I’ll break this down quickly. There’s a mouse movement, heat mapping, so you can see where people move their cursor on your site, right? And get an idea for what they’re engaging with. There’s touch heat mapping.

Jon:                                        [09:12]                     So on mobile where people generally touching, I personally find that less helpful because you’ll have a big heat map along the right hand side of your page on mobile where people are scrolling more than anything. Uh, but there’s also things like click mapping. So this creates a, a nice image of hot spots where people are clicking on your site. It also is great for what I call rage clicking. This is where you understand where people are clicking on something that is not a link or not clickable, but obviously they think it should be. Oh, interesting. And so what, what, let’s give away the secret sauce here. John. What would you recommend to Steve? You say, Hey Steve, all these people are clicking on this picture. We need to make that picture go to x to help convert. Is that, I mean is that the kind of concept of what you guys would do?

Jon:                                        [10:02]                     Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what we do. Now. How we would figure that out. Um, that takes us to, to another data point that I would really recommend people do. And that’s called user testing. Now, user testing is where you have people come to your site. You can do this live, but you can just take your laptop out into the street and have people navigate on your website and ask them to tell you what they’re thinking. So how we do it is we do what’s called remote on moderated. Now all this means is that they’re at their home computer and we’re not standing over their shoulder. Okay? And what we do is we record their laptop screen or their computer screen and their audio, and these folks are all trained really quickly before they start to talk out loud about the experience they’re having as they’re completing these tasks that we’ve given them to do.

Jon:                                        [10:51]                     What this does is it really helps us to understand it. We’re watching and hearing what people are thinking as they’re going through the site. So they start trying to click on an image and they’re like, man, I want to, why isn’t this clickable? I think it’s going to take me to x, Y, or z. So then we start to have some empathy for what the consumer is going through on the site, which really helps us to understand from their perspective what the site should be doing, what the functionality should do. And I say this quite often, but business owners, ecommerce site owners especially who are at that smaller stage where maybe they built the site themselves or they had a huge hand in building it and structuring all the content that navigation, etc. I often say it is very hard to read the label from inside the jar, right?

Jon:                                        [11:44]                     So you’re so close to your site that you just don’t have a good understanding of what a new to file customer is, is experiencing. When they come to your site and they’re trying to get through your funnel, all they want to do is research and understand if your product can help solve their pain or their need that brought them to your site in the first place, right? They were maybe searching for something on Google and your site came up in their results and they were like, okay, well I’ll give this this site to try. Maybe they can help solve that problem I’m having. Once they get to your site and they say, Oh yeah, actually I’ve done a little bit of research, it looks like they can help me. All they want to do from there is convert....]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3809Mon, 19 Aug 2019 03:00:30 -050052:45nofullSo you worked really hard on getting people to see your stuff? But they are not buying (Less then 2% is the standard). Why? Jon walks us through how to parse your data to identify your buyers habits, then eliminate the noise where they are not buying. Think optimization. How has PPC optimization worked for…eCommerce Momentum Podcast401 : Andy Slamans – Amazon brand building today is different, it takes being different from your many competitorsFunny how this conversation started out. Discussing employee and contractor retention. Have you figured out what you would lose if your key employee left tomorrow? Do you have a contingency plan? How about instead you treat them right now? You check in with them? You ask how they are doing? You give them more money? See retaining your staff is almost always better than getting new untrained help. Sure they might get it eventually, but the lost institutional knowledge you lose will never come back.

Mentioned:

Andy’s previous episodes: 1, 101, 201, 301

Amazing Freedom

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Andy:                                    [00:00]                     Oh, you know, what, what are you doing different? Uh, you know, like, like if you look on Amazon right now, there is probably six pages of silicone spatula sets. Uh, and so you probably don’t want to do a silicone spatula set, but I bet if you search that keyword on Amazon, if you just put in spatula set, you might see some new or unique, uh, variations on different kitchen utensil sets that look a little different. Um, whereas you might see probably 50 listings, right, of ones that look the same. And so, you know, if you search that term on Amazon, look for the ones that look different, that’s a seller who is doing it right.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:43]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of...]]>Funny how this conversation started out. Discussing employee and contractor retention. Have you figured out what you would lose if your key employee left tomorrow? Do you have a contingency plan? How about instead you treat them right now? You check in with them? You ask how they are doing? You give them more money? See retaining your staff is almost always better than getting new untrained help. Sure they might get it eventually, but the lost institutional knowledge you lose will never come back.

Mentioned:

Andy’s previous episodes: 1, 101, 201, 301

Amazing Freedom

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Grasshopper

Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Andy:                                    [00:00]                     Oh, you know, what, what are you doing different? Uh, you know, like, like if you look on Amazon right now, there is probably six pages of silicone spatula sets. Uh, and so you probably don’t want to do a silicone spatula set, but I bet if you search that keyword on Amazon, if you just put in spatula set, you might see some new or unique, uh, variations on different kitchen utensil sets that look a little different. Um, whereas you might see probably 50 listings, right, of ones that look the same. And so, you know, if you search that term on Amazon, look for the ones that look different, that’s a seller who is doing it right.

Cool voice guy:                  [00:43]                     Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling. Today. Here’s your host Stephen Peterson.

Stephen:                             [00:57]                     Hey, wanted to take a second and talk about Gaye Lisby’s Gary Ray’s Amazon seller tribe and their daily lists that are put out, um, and incredible stories that you can read if you go out and check out, uh, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. I know that’s a lot to put in there. Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum dash Arbitron and you’re going to get 14 day free trial, no money risk, no, no challenges. You don’t want it when you’re done, you get out. But imagine getting list. I’m as grateful as like to call it mailbox money. I love that term. Mailbox money. It’s where you can work from your house, buy things online, have them delivered to you and then sell them on a various marketplaces. But imagine you can have somebody else do that for you. So you want to buy time, you want to control, uh, what they’re buying.

Stephen:                             [01:53]                     Well, you take these lists and you can join multiple lists if you’re interested and then you can segregate them for the merchandise you want and send them to them. They can make purchases for you on your behalf. Have it delivered to you or delivered to them for prep. Boom, sent into these marketplaces and you could sell. How about that? Wouldn’t it be awesome? I spoke at their conference and there were so many million dollar sellers just using online arbitrage. It’s still available. And again, 14 days. The only way you’re going to get 14 day free trials if you come through my link. Um, it is an affiliate link. Uh, they do pay me. So I don’t want to mislead you in any way. Um, I would appreciate it, but I’d like to see you try the 14 days. I’ve had so many people that have joined, have so much success.

Stephen:                             [02:36]                     It’s very exciting to me and you know, quite humbling to me, um, that they trust me to recommend this group and I 100% recommend this group. I’ve seen the results. These are great people that will also teach you to fish. This isn’t just a, hey, here’s the list. You’re on your own. No, this is, hey, here’s why that wasn’t a good deal. Or here, hey, there’s another opportunity and you get to join their groups. And it’s just a phenomenal of people. Um, just great, great, uh, leaders in that group and these lists are phenomenal. So again, it’s amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage, amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum hyphen arbitrage. Use that get two weeks free. Try it. You don’t like it drop out, but give it a shot if you want to add that to your business. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast.

Stephen:                             [03:25]                     This is episode four oh one Andy Simon’s. Yes, it’s an oh one. So it has to be an Andy Salmon’s. Um, and, and this one I tried to take it a different direction. We ended up a lot of conversation about, uh, employees and vas and developing them and seeing them stay with you. Because you know, some of the retailers that we talk about, a couple of them, they’re the biggest challenges keeping good people, right? If you have a business with employees, we have employees here and it’s a challenge keeping them. They never leave for one reason. It’s a myriad of reasons, right? There’s always a, they used to call it a death by a thousand slashes. So you want to pay attention to it and he gets some really good advice about connecting with people. And I think that that’s so powerful. I forget it. Steve Forgets it.

Stephen:                             [04:06]                     So think about it and take a look inside your business and have this conversation. Take this and let him listen to it and say, Hey, is that me? You might not like what you hear, but the good news is once you hear it, you can do something about it. I think that’s a good piece of advice. Um, the other thing we talk about is brands. How different launching a brand today is than what it was maybe even like four or five years ago on Amazon. Um, or lunch, Egon, Walmart, um, at Walmart, brick and mortar. How cool was that? Let’s talk about that. Um, so not so cool. Um, you much better launching on Amazon and then, um, he talks about advertising really the three phases, launch, optimization, and then maintenance and you know, where do you put the gas pedal down and where do you back it off?

Stephen:                             [04:49]                     I think those are all powerful things. Um, and we final, uh, close with, we talk about retail, Arb and online arb and then getting in the right groups and trying to figure that out because it’s such a good cashflow thing, especially as Q4 is coming. So I think it’s a really good conversation. Let’s get into the podcast. And welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. A excited because I’m back to a number one every time I do a number one number one number 101-TWO-OH-ONE-301 number four oh one I have Andy Slamon’s on. Welcome back, Andy. Thanks the as great to be here again. Well, it’s, it’s fascinating when I look back over the years at number one number two or number one oh one now you know, each one of those, how, how our conversation has changed because not only is Amazon Amazon changed, the marketplace has changed and that is that crazy when you think about that? Yeah. I mean, and it just feels like maybe it’s because we’re getting older, but it just seems like the change gets a little faster. It definitely is getting faster. I saw a story, I guess it was yesterday, that Lowe’s is gonna

Stephen:                             [05:58]                     lay off a couple thousand employees. The retail apocalypse, as they call it, that’s not slowing down. That hasn’t changed in the last four years. Would you agree? Yeah. You know, it’s funny that you say Lowe’s. I’ll hopefully, I don’t offend any listeners here, but I think we had this conversation last Q4 a because I was actually doing some buys from both home depot and Lowe’s. Lowe’s resign on Amazon and I think my words to you were, you know, I don’t think Lowe’s is gonna stay in business much longer. I just think the organization, when you compare them to home depot, they just, it just does not run as well. Hmm. My experiences, as you know, I have a house so I’m dealing a lot with these places. My experiences, the depth of knowledge. Home Depot has been better at retaining trained employees, you know, skilled. To me those are, I mean everybody works in those places, have some skills right there.

Stephen:                             [06:55]                     They know the business somewhat, but you know, it kind of, it’s a challenge for us. Right. I mean you’ve got a ton of employees too. It’s a challenge to keep good people, isn’t it? Yes, absolutely. And I think Lowe’s has not done as well of a job as home depot. One thing I say about my, my little home depot here in town here, it’s the same people. When I go in, they’re always there. So that’s kind of cool. Interesting. Yeah. It has to be strong for your business. You know, think about that. You’ve guys got 40 plus people in your organization, if not more by this point. How do you retain them? How do you guys work to retain those people? Yes, we were really fortunate. Um, some of the original VA’s that we started with, um, have now become our lead VA’s, uh, and are just tremendous, uh, employees and have really taken the lead on fostering, um, team.

Stephen:                             [07:51]                     And, um, and really that has probably been the biggest difference, um, for us being able to retain, you know, continued, uh, employees, uh, for the various services that we have. And then the second piece is we have two folks here in the u s my wife being one of them. Um, and uh, and then another close friend who does really well working with the VA’s that we have. So those two things probably have been the biggest difference. You know, this is gonna sound very sexist and I don’t mean it this way. Do you think because they both happen to be women nurturing, caring, not blunt guys like you and I, um, they get to show the compassion, the understanding and communication. Let’s face it, they so much better communicators. Um, do you think that actually plays into it or am I just pulling in a a hundred percent.

Stephen:                             [08:42]                     So, I mean you, you were in the corporate world for a long time. Uh, I work for a very large organization for 15 years and I always said if I’m ever, you know, if I ever built my business, uh, you know, and again, I may be wrong in saying this, but this is just my personal experience. I would look to hire females in some of the top leadership positions and that’s just because of ones that I’ve experienced and in my work life who have been tremendous. So I don’t know what your experience with that is. I’m 100% with you. Um, I, I just, the, the communication I think is the hardest part. Cause I’m too, you know, this about me, I’m direct, I don’t pull any punches. I say what is right. And they have a filter, they have a way to communicate. There’s an understanding.

Stephen:                             [09:28]                     And I think that’s because, um, you know, just environmental, um, they, they just understand it so much better than we do. And hence we’re the weaker sex. All right. We understand that. I’m saying I own up to it. I had my wife last one, I said, but it’s the truth. I get it. I mean that’s the God’s honest. True. All right, so, so building a team, so communication, um, nurturing. Are you investing in training those people that have stepped up into leadership roles where they would they have, is it a training issue? Is that what led you there and then you recognize it? Or maybe Nate recognize the, the skillset and the at, um, um, maybe the aptitude or something like that. Well, you know, it’s both. So you know, it’s training, but it also comes down to compensation. Ah. And so, you know, you, we’ve been friends long enough, you know, you know me that I think of a worker does his work, then he’s worth his wages.

Stephen:                             [10:21]                     And so we definitely, um, you know, try to connect on an emotional level with those, with those lead folks. But we also, you know, we compensate them very fairly, um, for the work that they do. And I think they appreciate that along with a performance bonuses. So, uh, you know, we were just talking about that the other day when we were in the warehouse. Um, it just makes sense, right? People are going to be motivated, um, when, when they see that their work, um, is going to make a difference on, uh, their potential pay, the stake in the game. You actually have some, your stakeholder, you’re truly a stakeholder, not just a, Oh, you know, widget mover, right? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, the organization that I worked for, it was a unionized environment and you know, unfortunately, similar to government work, um, you know, it just doesn’t motivate.

Stephen:                             [11:14]                     You know that, that’s one great thing. I know there’s a, a lot of negative things, but one great thing about capitalism is it can really motivate you. Um, and that’s the same way in the workplace. Um, you know, um, it just, it’s a great motivating factor I think compensation’s important to talk about because I think that there has to be competition for the best vas out there, right? I mean, we think about, you know, trying to keep trying to find, yeah, we always talk about life about where I live at Carlisle, there’s five Amazon warehouses, and if you, if you are certified and you can do all these different things, you can make $28 an hour in a warehouse right here in my little dinky town. Well, competitively, that’s very difficult to compete against, right. For a lot of businesses in town, right? The same thing has to be happening for key level, uh, vas right there.

Stephen:                             [12:03]                     They have to be in demand because there’s so many people that need them. And so you have to pay attention to where I think a lot of people have kind of set it and forget it kind of mentality. You agree? Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that’s one of the things like, so with, with um, our other u s um,...]]>https://ecommercemomentum.com/?p=3805Mon, 12 Aug 2019 03:00:25 -050056:53nofullFunny how this conversation started out. Discussing employee and contractor retention. Have you figured out what you would lose if your key employee left tomorrow? Do you have a contingency plan? How about instead you treat them right now? You check in with them? You ask how they are doing? You give them more money?…eCommerce Momentum Podcast400 : Chris Green – Change your side hustle to a side businessWhat’s an idea guy to do? He helps others. If you don’t know who Chris Green is, then get ready to meet one of the most giving guys I have ever met. Helps tons of people with no expected return. Tons of great ideas, very approachable and ready to help you grow your business.

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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.

Chris:                                     [00:00:00]               My ideal, I kind of audience are military moms. That’s a very common one. Military bombs. Uh, and they have very specific needs. And I’ve talked to enough of them that I understand what those needs are. You know, typically they want to contribute to the family, but because of constant moving and relocation, it’s can be very difficult for them to find a job that they could, they can do because of the schedule. But when they hear about self publishing and hear about merchant by Amazon, they hear about FBA, they hear about, wait a minute, I don’t have to do a wholesale. I can actually just contact wholesalers and create buying lists that I can then sell to actual wholesalers. And I can do that from anywhere at any, like that’s the key. It’s when you understand what’s out there and you, and you’ve got to have a little confidence to plug yourself in. And then I typically take people to from 1.0 to a 2.0 you could certainly do any of these as a military mom. Two Point Oh uh, is to say, look, I’m going to help all the other military moms.

Cool voice guy:                  What’s an idea guy to do? He helps others. If you don’t know who Chris Green is, then get ready to meet one of the most giving guys I have ever met. Helps tons of people with no expected return. Tons of great ideas, very approachable and ready to help you grow your business.