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[00:00:00] : welcome to the cellar roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with Andy Arnott and Amy wees. Hey everyone this is Andy are not welcome to the cellar roundtable Amy is not with us today but we have a special guest Leslie coasters on Welcome Leslie, thank you for being here. So happy to be here. Let's dive in. All right, so the first thing we love to do is get your background kind of your, your story up to today, uh you can get as detailed as you like, we love, you know where you're born, where you're raised, kind of your, your whole journey to where you are today. We always love to, to dig dig into that. Okay, good, let's talk about it. So I mean my, my story for all the amazon entrepreneurs out there is basically that I've been an entrepreneur for a really long time and we're talking like 30 years, I started being an entrepreneur but it wasn't until like my mid fifties that I became quote a more successful entrepreneur regarding like financially So going back those 30 years, how it all started was I went traveling to the beautiful country of Indonesia and I was living in New York City at the time I was doing pr was working kind of in a corporate job, I had a situation happened where my apartment got robbed and which sucked but the good news is I had insurance and with that insurance money I decided to do something I always wanted to do which was to travel And Indonesia was just like I used to look at the map and I saw that string of islands from Java and Bali and I just felt a pull to go there and I did and I traveled and I loved it and I was there about seven months and then I had to come back to New York City again and this is like, I would say maybe this is like in my early 30s, something like that or 30 years old, maybe a little earlier earlier. So I was sitting on my bed, I had the new york times open which is how you looked for jobs back then because I needed to get a job or do something after the traveling and there just was not like one single job in the entire newspaper that I wanted and I had one of those like Oprah Winfrey lightbulb moments which went like, wow, I remember the beautiful clothing I saw in bali Indonesia when I was traveling and I wonder what would happen if I jumped on a plane and I went back to bali and I just bought things off the street and brought it back to new york city and tried to sell it at street fairs because in new york city there were tons of these weekend and holiday markets and things like that and my passion for not getting a job was so strong inside of me that it felt easier to get back on a plane and go back and just start like buying stuff and stuffing it into like big duffel bags because back then you could do that and that's what I did and that's actually how I just how I launched my business back from bali and I'm now design and manufacture women's bohemian style, colorful comfortable clothing um in bali Indonesia, I imported into the U. S. And you know at least for the last 10 years, 11 years, I then sell it online primarily on amazon. Yeah, I love that. So um you know that's kind of uh what's funny is a lot of successful entrepreneurs are kind of accidental entrepreneurs, right? They know what they're currently doing is not right for them and they kind of gravitate towards something else, You know, I started my career, I went to college as a to be a pilot, decided I didn't want to do that, then I, you know was an air traffic controller for 13 years uh and just didn't enjoy the job, I was always an entrepreneur, you know, had an entrepreneurial mindset, always did, you know, uh moonlighting and things like that and you know, I finally pulled the ripcord and got out of there and and you know, never looked back kind of similar to your story in that sense. Um one of the things that you know, I think that so many people um you know, just don't believe number one that they can be an entrepreneur and number two kind of don't see the opportunities that are right in front of them, right? I mean your opportunity that was right in front of you is like, you're like, wow, there's a lot of cool clothes in Indonesia. The price point, I know at least back then was you know, nothing, you know pennies on the dollar probably in terms of cost of goods um and uh, and so you saw that, you know, just, it's almost like arbitrage, you know, in that sense and you know, going in and buying off the street there and bringing it back here and, and, and you know, building that market and then seeing, oh I can just scale this and and then find that opportunity, so um in your case, you know, it was very serendipitous, but any tips in terms of, you know, what kind of things people should be looking for in their day to day life, that might where there might be some opportunity, whenever you think to yourself, I wonder if that's your opportunity. So it always starts with a thought and it starts just literally with that question, like I wonder if I quit the job, I wonder if I, you know, sold dog products because I'm totally into dogs, which is something I'm thinking about right now because I was thinking of like new if I change my brand, what would it be like, I'm so happy around dogs. So whenever you are thinking like, I wonder if that could work, I wonder if I go there. I wonder if that is your opportunity. So not what we all have to realize is that not everybody gets the same. I wonder if not everyone is all thinking, I wonder if I sold the dog products or I wonder if I jumped on a plane and went to Indonesia and so we tend to, like, whenever we start wondering, we start shutting it down because we then start thinking, well there's a million dog brands out there and like, didn't everybody already bring clothes back from Indonesia? There's nothing new and we start shutting down that question that we have or that you're that yearning actually rather call it yearning than anything else. And that is really what one needs to be looking for is what are you shutting down in your life and what are you yearning for in your life? And you know, again, in my case, I was yearning so passionately for not getting another job and um, I loved the experience of traveling and then I was like, I wonder if this could work and why not try it and I just jumped on an airplane and did it and you know, again, it goes from wonder and the thought and then of course we have to take action and action is the one thing that a lot of people don't do and that is the difference between people who are successful and people who aren't because it's certainly in my case my success did not come because um I was trained to do it because of, I'm already a great designer, it wasn't for any of those reasons, I've had huge amounts of problems in my business and continue to, by the way, I mean I am an amazon seller after all right, but it is, it's really that perseverance and the continuing of taking some kind of action, uh that is what is going to be your keys to success, I love that. So, you know, one of the things, you know, later in life, you know, I've been an entrepreneur almost my whole life as well, you know, started pretty young in college and just kind of taught myself how to code and do some other things and you know, one of the things that I finally in my forties now have come to realize is one of the biggest things that you need to tackle before you can even, you know, think about entrepreneurship or starting a business or things like that in my opinion, not to say that, you know, you can get lucky is self development, so, you know, you, you talked about a lot of people not being believing in, you know, being able to do things, I mean to me that was one of the biggest issues, uh you know, once I was in my forties, I did, you know, I think it was skill and luck, one of, you know how I got lucky as I was and continue to kind of see into the future, be really good at at seeing trends and, and things that a lot of other people can't, but I had a huge downfall similar similar to you in terms of, you know, not knowing operations, not knowing systems, not knowing some of these really basic things, you know, not having self development or self care or you know, things like, you know, I used to laugh when people are like, oh, I get up in the morning and meditate, I'm like, oh my goodness, this is some really weird boo boo things, but when you actually start to do it um and you see the impact in your life, it's so huge. I mean, one of the favorite books um that me and my wife and I recently did was the Miracle Morning, and if you guys listening, haven't check that book out yet, I would say that would be one of my top five, um you know, Rich dad, poor dad, another great one. Um the one thing, you know, I've probably read or listened to, you know, over 100 business books, so I have a lot to choose from. Uh, you know, pick five books and, and look at people who have been successful before you, it they'll usually have pretty good advice when it comes to, you know, great things to read. But did you kind of have that, that that same journey in terms of, you know, self care self development kind of, let's talk about what you did in those realms in order to make your make yourself a better business person. Okay, so I, you know, after like bringing my business, you know, it was, it was a slow, you know, elevation for me, I didn't go from like, you know, five figures to multiple seven figures in a year or two years. It actually for me my my rise, you know, just it went from 50,000 and 100 and then two and then four and seven and etcetera. And it's continuing to to grow of and after um like reflecting on how in the world did I do this because as I said before, I don't know no business background. No, no, no design background. I don't know even know how to sell, I sell Children's clothing. Um, and I decided to sit down and think about how I did it and what I did and that has now become a book that will be coming out in a few months called Seven keys to seven figures. And one of the chapters in the book is just what you're talking about, which is basically my last chapter, which is called Taking Empty Time because it is so essential to in order to build you actually also have to have quiet time and you have to have reflective time and you have to have self care time and that is something I actually always did because for me after that travel in Indonesia, I realized like my most important value in my life was freedom. That that was really what I wanted. I did not want a normal job because I refused to give up my freedom. So that was always my, my mantra. And for me that meant actually going to a spiritual retreat in the summertime in New Mexico and learning to meditate and breathe and uh living in a tent in all of these things and what I found is that by doing that every year and I continued to do that every year, even while building a multiple seven figure business that taking that time out and by the way I would go not for a week, I would go for six weeks, so we're not talking about just a weekend thing here. I found that as I was building a successful business and taking the downtime, my business was continuing to rise that there was absolutely no negative effect whatsoever of taking time off. And I really believe that that time off time is what has fueled my success and also has fueled somewhat of a balance in life as balances you can be as an entrepreneur right. Um, and it's not only because of the obvious things that we all know, such as stress is really horrible for our health and you know, we need good sleep and we need to eat well and we kind of all know all of this. So those are the obvious reasons, but I also believe there's a much deeper and more powerful reason for taking down time. And that is because in those moments of quiet and self care, we can actually hear what it is that we really, really want and what is really, really important to us. And if we don't take those moments to figure that out and it's not even it's not the right word, figure the right word is feel it out okay. If we don't take those moments to feel it out, then we're just basically on one of those, you know, you know, going around in circles and and just fulfilling our to do list all the time without really understanding what our deep values are, what we really want and for everybody that's different and success can mean so many different things and we need to follow, follow what that true success with value, success really means to us and without having self care and that downtime, you won't know what it is because you simply won't have the time to know it right. You know, you're not still enough to actually hear, right. It's hard to know even what, you know what you want on a day to day basis. If you don't give yourself that space to actually think about it. So I love that a few other things to impact there. You were talking about being away from your business and having it still thrive. One of my other favorite books of all time is Clockwork by Mike McCalla wits. If you haven't read that one, another great one, it's all about operations and systems which you know we gravitate towards whether it's politics, whether it's religion, whether it's you know business, we always gravitate towards the things we're familiar with or we already know right? But sometimes the best learning is when you go to the things that your weakest in right? So for me I knew that operations was really weak, I knew that finance so those are a lot of the that I consume now self care. You know I'm getting away from stuff like marketing and S. C. O. And some of these uh you know paid advertising all these things that I have got dialed that I've done for years which I would gravitate towards. But it's kind of like alright I already know this stuff, I'm pretty much an expert in those realms why am I continuing to you know sort of relearn stuff I already know. So um the other thing that I want to unpack there is um you know I think that as as entrepreneurs early on especially if you have some really big early successes which like I said I did and I think one of the reasons why is I was ignorant to the fact of how hard the business was, right, if you go, you know, if you've been an entrepreneur for as long as you have I that you and I have been, is you know how hard it is, right? But when you're first starting out, you actually do have an advantage in terms of kind of not knowing how hard it is and just, you know, being like I want to get to this thing or this spot or this product or whatever this is and I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna trudge through it and I'm gonna figure it out. Whereas you know, when you've done it for so long, at least for me it's kind of like, okay, I've got all this information I've got, you know, all this stuff that I'm so great at, but oh my God, this is gonna be so hard or this is gonna be such a big hurdle or you know, you're, you're kind of already talking yourself out of it for a lot of things. So um any kind of, you know, really big lessons that you've learned along the way that you can pass on to, you know, somebody maybe early on in the journey that might help them a lot, maybe some big mistakes that you made that you wish you, you know knew better or you know, yeah, sure, like that would be awesome. Yeah, the biggest mistake I definitely made is I never hired anyone to teach me what to do, you know that that was my, that was years, I mean, so I had the business for, I think it was like maybe even, I don't know 10 years or it was a while before. Like I even even had the thought that maybe I should get some help because I didn't even, I I just didn't even know when God help. I really didn't know I was, I really didn't know what I was doing and it was, it was the change that happened to me is I had I made a very conscious decision, I wanted to be more successful, I want to make more money, I want to improve the business and that was the number one that happened and then number two that happened is I began to be focused on the business because at the time I actually had two businesses and both were kind of mediocre. So that was the second thing I did which was to make a decision to focus and to focus on one of the businesses. And then the third thing that I did is I literally jumped on a plane and went to a conference and went to an amazon conference in Seattle and that was the beginning of the change for me. So this was the biggest step that I took that I would advise everybody to do is to really get help there and what I mean by that is to hire consultant or mentor. Um I like to say you should hire people who are, where you want to be and where, where you are now, so you don't want, especially in the e commerce space or we're in business coaching, I'm really talking about not life coaching, but when it comes to business coaching, you want to hire someone who really knows if you're an amazon seller, who knows the amazon world. So that's what I did. And so I wasted like years and years and years and years and years, I would say doing, you know, really mediocre. I mean I was, I remember at one point Like hitting 20,000 a year on Amazon and going woo, having no idea that like that sucked, right, you know, I didn't even know it was bad, I was like this is great and then it was only once I really took myself seriously and hired the right, help that things really began to take off, and then. you know, and the other mistake is not realizing and this is a big one for entrepreneurs not realizing, you're not just an entrepreneur, you're actually a ceo and that this is the point of this business is actually not a, not a hobby for most of us, all right, and we can, can't approach it as a hobby and like thinking yourself as a Ceo like myself, you know, here I was traveling to Indonesia buying pretty clothes, bringing it back, like I was not, I didn't think of myself as a ceo, I never thought of myself as a leader or any of those kind of things or even having a great idea, I just didn't want to get a job. But once you start to get into the business and and new entrepreneurs need to understand that your job is your business and it, it is, you are literally the captain of a ship and your business is the ship and your job is not to do all the work in the ship, You're not serving the food, you're not putting the fuel into it, you're, you're not really, that's not ultimately what your job is gonna be, it's gonna be being the captain of that ship and knowing what is happening inside your ship. And that is a real mindset shift because you need to be become knowledgeable or even understanding all these aspects. Like I love Mike McCalla, which you've mentioned mentioned, you just mentioned one of his books, you know, profit first, which you know, really, you know, I remember also when I started working with my consultant who I met at that amazon conference, by the way, that's how I started um working with my consultant. I remember like maybe six months or so into working with her, she said to me, do you pay yourself and I like it stopped me in my tracks. I was like what do you mean? Do I pay myself? And she said do you pay yourself? I said, well, you know, I use money on like plane tickets and buy stuff. No, do you pay yourself? Yes. And I'm like, am I supposed to be, you know, this is even things like this at the beginning of your business or even for me, I was years into a business, I didn't know these things. And you know, paying yourself is one of the most important things you could do as a business owner, otherwise, well you're just not going to be very happy. Let's put it that way. Yeah, absolutely. So if if you guys don't know, we've had mike on the podcast. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go search it out. It's a great one, of course, the other thing I love about Mike is, he's just hilarious. He's a really, really funny guy. He's got a podcast himself and, and he does some Youtube and, and uh, yeah, Mike's a great, he's one of those guys where you can listen to him and know that he'd be an awesome guy to go get a drink with. You know, he talks about getting hair plugs and you know, kind of no holds barred. So I really enjoy that. He's in your neck of the woods. I think he's in Jersey. Um, so yeah, really, really great guy. Um, enough about plugging Mike Markowitz, even though he is one of my favorites, um, one of the other major issues and I, and I see this all the time and when I was younger I kind of thought the same way, right, Everybody thinks that you need this massive amount of money to get started, right. People are like, oh I need you know investors and all these things and I think your story, my story is very similar. I think I started with putting my, my first order for amazon was, was put on a credit card. My, my first wholesale order was put on a private label order was put on a credit card and you know, I think it was like 3 to $500 I can't remember the exact number, but you know, I started really, really small, I mean granted back then, once again I saw the future. So I started on amazon in 2012 where he could pretty much put anything on amazon and make money. Um, but kind of, what, what have you done in terms of money, have you just bootstrapped, have you taken on investors kind of, what's, you know, what, what have you done in terms of raising or you know, having capital for your business. Uh, I've always believed in making a profit from the very beginning. So like literally when we're talking about going back to Indonesia, I think, I don't know, I spent $500 or something like that, which I had And I then literally did street fairs and I turned that 500 into cash and then I jumped back on planes. So I really bootstrapped my company and when you know, and as it's grown and grown and grown, I, I just have never believed in taking on an investor or bar or literally borrowing money, I don't borrow money. Um, and even now with running a multiple seven figure business, I do sometimes use a line of credit um, through my bank, but I pay, I pay this back regularly. I have never been comfortable with like running a business and being in debt all the time. It's not how I wanted to run it. So I don't think you need to run it now. I think there's two kinds of businesses though, that one can grow and one could be the kind of business that I have and maybe the one that also you, you have or had Andy, but the other businesses, the people are growing, our business is to basically to exit, okay, and when you're building a business business to exit that you plan to maybe exit in two years or three years or you know, under five years, it's a very different business model and there's investors involved and that's a whole other world that I just never dip my own toes into. So I'm definitely here to tell you, you can start a business on not much money, I think realistically now you probably should have around about $3-$5,000 to start to start a new business. Um but you can definitely do it, you, you buy, you can put it on a credit card or you use your own savings and then you just start and you start small. And I've always been also because of profit first, okay, you know, I, I know how to read my balance sheets, and I know how to read my income statements and I'm always watching my expenses all the time. In fact, that that is, you know, being the captain of the ship, that is really my main job is the money. Um and that's the part that I am the most involved in, you know, among other things, but that's definitely number one. So I think there's definitely ways to keep your business going and start businesses. I don't believe you need investors, I don't believe you need to do that, but that is another strategy. And I also don't want to say that's a wrong strategy, it's just wasn't mine. Yeah. You know, one of the things, uh you know that I love when you hear, uh you know, um I can't think of his name right now, creator of for the guy in shark tank, you know, he talks about how he just, he like was sowing his own clothes and he kind of, he made money to then scale the business right? You're not, you're not, um you know, getting money to scale the business, you're, you're actually proving the concept as you build the business, right? And I think there's something so powerful about that and I think that, um, you know, if I were to do it again, I think I would do it the same way because I think that you're proving your business model by having to scrape together, by having to be scrappy, you know, by having to kind of make money to grow to grow money, right? Rather than be like, you know, I have a million dollars and I'm gonna start this clothing company, Oh well, let's hire these influencers, let's hire the thing and let's order, you know, three containers full of product from china and you do all this stuff and you launch a product and it's crickets, no one buys it, right, because you haven't proved the model, whereas if you went the other way around and you, you built that revenue, you're proving the model and you're learning business. So if you're somebody new, you're learning how to grit through all this stuff rather than just being handed money, uh, and then, and then, you know, sinking the ship. So going back to your analogy of, you know, being the captain of your ship, who are the, the, who are, who are the, the first mates on your ship and how do you know when to throw them overboard. Yeah, You know, when you, when you have a business and you start, it starts to grow, you definitely need help and that's, that's another line that like as an entrepreneur one needs to cross over from being this entrepreneur to having maybe a bigger team and um I dragged my feet on that one for a really, really long time because again freedom was like, as I said, it was my number one value and I honestly did not want the responsibility of like other people or employees, so I still work just with contract workers. So I, I don't have any employees myself, but I do have contract workers and you know the, I would say the, you know, I have the team in Indonesia, you know who's making my clothes and I have a manager there and he's like absolutely critical to me and then I have the team in the US who, who's helping me with, um I have an inventory inventory manager, um there, then there's the, you know the listings and you know the keywords and then there's the ads and there's all, you know, there's so much different things to be doing for the business. I really try to um not hire too many people and to keep it as lean as I possibly can keep it because again, profitability is my most important value and and freedom along with it, but team management is, is hard and I honestly don't know if I've really nailed it yet and again, there's there's different ways to look at it. I don't know if, you know the book traction, for example, um that, that's a book who really talks about basically hiring and having employees rather than contract workers because you need a vision and people around that vision to build a vision. So there's, there's so many different ways to build a business, I suppose, and then you have to, again, it goes back to that empty time and it goes back to what it is you really, really want. Do you want a billion dollar business with a big team and to exit, is that what you really want? So you have to keep going back to what it is that you really want and then creating your business around that and you know, I've gone off track of that many times. I remember, you know, a few years back like, oh my God, I've become like an Excel spreadsheet human, like that's all I did, I felt like and it really, you know, in page ranking and all of that, and that just wasn't my strength and I was hating my business and I was, you know, it was weekends and you know, it was starting to look like that and uh I went to a conference, I went to a workshop from Ali Brown, she's one of my mentors, somebody I suggest people follow, especially if you're a woman entrepreneur and I remember going to her workshop and meeting at the time, I had not crossed over seven figures and I remember meeting other people there who had and who was able to run their business on 10 or 20 hours a week and I was like I want that, you know because again freedom, freedom, freedom, this is what I want And what I realized what I had to do to do that first of all is to understand what all the operations are and what all the tasks are to run my business. So I had of course correct, but it's not like you just go, okay I'm going to decide to work 20 hours a week, you have to do this systematically and for me what that meant and this is one of the best exercises anyone could possibly do is create an operations list and what that means is in excel to have each task that needs to be done in your business in there, who is doing it at the time and you know and what is it and you, You know once I did the operations list, I had, I don't know I had something like at least 300 tasks or something like that that needs to be done in my business and my name was in almost all of those slots of who is doing it. So it was from that moment and and seeing what was possible from these other women running multiple seven figure business is understanding if I need to change anything, it's not just like you just change it, there's a system to change it. And what that meant is operations, understanding one's operations, understanding what you do, what you want to do and who you could maybe hire to do it and this is a work in progress Alright. I am working on my operations list every, I would say every definitely every quarter and fine tuning this. I like that. So um yeah, one of the things, I mean I think a lot of people now, especially with the covid thing, you know, way more people working from home and I think that remote teams are actually growing in terms of popularity rather than declining, right? I feel like there's so many people like yourself like myself who who value kind of the freedom aspect of working for yourself. They don't want build themselves a giant billion dollar corporation where they've just built themselves a corporate job which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place. Right? So uh you know, if you decide that you know how like how much money is worth it for you, right? I mean can you survive off of 203 150,000 whatever it is, you know, so many people put um you know a a number up that they need to hit in order to quote unquote beyond happy. But sometimes that sometimes that number is is you know doesn't mean a thing unless you go back to some of the personal development stuff and and really get clear on what's going to make yourself happy. So you know, if you're if you're valuing freedom and flexibility, building yourself a billion dollar or $100 million business might not be the right path for you. So I think that's a good point in terms of getting really clear with that. Um The other thing that I would love for you to kind of talk about is in the beginning you were talking a little bit about your core values, things like that. Um I think that and this is just my perception of what I'm seeing in the world but that a lot more people now are buying rather than buying brands, they're buying from people uh that they share kind of some core values with. Um and then trust right, we're kind of making a full circle. I feel like in terms of people are so tired of the corporate, you know of the of the Walmarts of the world and even the amazons of the world, a lot of people don't understand which I just saw that amazon put a little tag on, if you browse a listing that's a local business, it'll actually put local business like on the product page which I thought is super cool. Um but I also feel like they amazon needs to promote small business a little bit more because they are replacing the mom and Pops right? Like the mom and pop close shop on the corner is being replaced by these online stores and a lot of people don't like amazon or walmart or you know, or these giant corporations which I kind of agree. But what they don't realize is a lot of the business that's going on there is supporting uh, the smaller, you know, Mom and pop, you know, some mom and Pops are doing 78 figures. But um, you know, these small businesses who exist there. I would love to see a little bit more of that. But talk about in terms of of you know, core values for yourself and how that kind of plays into your business and what you're what you're doing. You know, this is the world is like, I mean the world is always changing but we're in some serious change at the moment and people need authenticity. They are being so much more discerning about who they're doing business with, where they're getting their products from. You know what the background story is. People are sick of being sold to, they're sick. They're just sick of all the crap. Um, and this is going to get stronger and stronger. So core values who you are, what your brand is really about why you started your brand. These are the things that customers are are more and more interested in. I today sent out an email, my email to my customer list. I've always in the past been like nervous to share too many personal things with them. And today, you know I shared much more personal things like you know I had my husband quit his job, we just traveled in nine countries. I wrote a book like I was sharing like these personal things that have absolutely nothing to do with that. And then received responses like wow great email because I was being like real with people, so being real with people no matter what kind of business you have, if your culture, whether you're selling products, this is beginning to be like more important than ever. Um And and also beyond that, we're also all sick of living lives in our own lives, like it's it's so time for everyone to um connect with their spirits again with their with their inner self, whatever you wanna call it, their higher self, their their feminine nature, their you know, whatever you want nature, nature, whatever you wanna call it. Um And and get back to what's real and what's really super super duper important to you. Um And that and and I guess what I'm saying is like your core values and business and your business is not separate. And I think in the past things used to be separate, like you had your personal life and then maybe you went to your job right? And the two were like didn't really relate any longer, that world is kind of over. Um And it's crumbling before we see it. All right. I mean, in all ways we need like a holistic way of living anymore. Uh, and and that means really having the time and the quiet time to know what it is you really want, taking care of yourself and those that are important to you and and living the values that are meaningful to you and in your business too. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, once again, I love recommending books because I've read so many, but start with the y or start with why I think it is Simon cynic um is a great book and and their whole premise of that book is, you know, that, that the most successful companies in the world kind of started with a vision and uh kind of a a or a I guess, you know there why was it was never cloudy, It continues to to always be clear. Um, and it was a really interesting book. It was kind of more, you know, slated towards bigger companies, you know, when I was listening to it, but I did take a lot out in terms of, you know, one of the things that, you know, you struggle with sometimes is like, oh, well, you know, you get a gut feeling when you're working with someone like they're just not right, right, They're just not right in terms of, you know, uh, I don't know how to describe it, but you probably know what I mean in terms of you just have a gut feeling that like, you know, working with this person is not going to benefit me and um I think that, you know, you really need to, you know, sometimes there's a, you know, a lot of talk about fire your customer, right? I think that it's, that's really important because I think that um you can't be afraid to say no to business, right? Because if it's not going to align with your vision, your core values, uh kind of what you're up to. Um I think that it's almost an obligation to to um to fire your customer to make sure that you're doing business with people who are once again, you know, up to what you're up to. So um in this book, start with why they talk a lot about Apple. Um I don't think Apple, Apple is a saintly company. Um but it's it is an interesting dynamic in terms of, you know, almost the cult following that Apple's had for so many years. Um I would say that kind of died off with steve jobs, but still really, really interesting. Um So yes, definitely uh it's not gonna work anymore having one personal value and then it, and then your job or something is against that personal value. I mean, listen, there's times we have to do what we have to do, but it's the world, the way the world is going, this is gonna work less and less and less and if you are starting a new business then um you need more than ever to know like how you are serving your customer and, and, and that is the absolute most important thing, who your audience is, who he is, who she is and what problem you're, you're helping them with their solving with them and appreciating them because that is all we really have and then showing who you are as a brand owner and your why, like you're saying um start with your why that they understand your why as well and what you're trying to do, it's it's almost again like things are just not separated anymore, it's all the same like your home life and your business life and your inner life and your outer life all needs to be following the same values that you have. Yeah, absolutely, so um you know, you were talking before we started how, you know, your, your main kind of focus and what you're doing a lot of work with our, you know, female entrepreneurs um what are kind of some of the main challenges um in terms of having this this journey as an entrepreneur um in in the the female side of things, which I know is a minority in terms of um you know, startups and and you know uh the just the entrepreneurial journey, you know, okay, when I heard this statistic, I was like what, and it goes like this, that only 90% of women entrepreneurs business owners do revenues of over 100,000 year, that's it, that's like crazy, right? 10% of women entrepreneurs have revenues of over 100,000. I mean I was like stunned when I heard that statistic and actually when it comes to seven figures it's 3%, so something is really off here that women business owners are not really building businesses that are financially successful and there's many, many, many reasons for this um you know, motherhood and ideas of this type of jobs women should be in and and there's there's a myriad of reasons, but the fact is this has to change and I very much want to help inspire women to make this change a lot of it, I really, I think has to do with women's relationship with money and how comfortable they are around money. Talking about money and saying they actually love money and want money because this is something that women are kind of trained not ever to say or talk about, it's kind of okay for a guy to make a lot of money and talk about money and be a money guy, but it's not cool for a girl to be like, you know, a woman money person, it's like somehow somehow it's off and because of this um almost like shame alright around wanting to be a successful money making entrepreneur, I believe this mindset is really inhibiting women to be building successful businesses um and so that's why I think women, you know, even though there's there's the same skill set needed to build a successful business as a, as a man and as a woman, a woman is needs even more I believe of the mindset work in order to step into that role because you start to wonder like, you know, she has to look at her identity as well, because you know for example an identity of a man to make a lot of money is sort of like that's what most people think an identity of a man is supposed to be, take care of their family and all of that, it isn't really the identity of a woman in general, still in our world and so when she begins to be successful um and and does more money than her husband, right, or partner or like you know, or much more money than you know her friends and things like this, it changes the identity as well, so these are the other issues that women entrepreneurs deal with, that men entrepreneurs do not deal with, I love that, because to me that is a empowering way of looking at it rather than, you know, oh well societies is you know, not not catering to to women in the workforce, which I'm not saying that's not the case at all, but I feel like in terms of uh you know what kind of message or what kind of mindset you're going to have uh moving forward is, what you're talking about to me is you know, changing the the personal belief rather than what other people think right, and I think that's super, super powerful, that that is like how I did it really, you know, because my story was was that I, you know, I grew up in a family where like the men are supposed to make the money and the women, you know, my mom had even had her own business, so it wasn't like not supposed to work, but it wasn't that important. And I grew up that way. And so I grew up like expecting my husband to make more of the money and for him to buy the dream house and all of that, and the way my my mindset was over years and years of that was that um you know, because you know, I'm the freedom person alright, I'm the one who wants to live like this, I don't want to give up my freedom and he's the one who's supposed to be working hard and being successful in all of that, that's not my job. And what I realized was that was a false belief, mindset belief that was based in my money story as growing up in my family, but it really wasn't based in any reality or truth, and once I started to realize, you know what I would like to make more money, I want to be more successful and I admitted to myself this secret that I wanted to make more money. It was like a secret that I got forbid I ever told anybody because it didn't it seem greedy or unfeminine or whatever you want to label it as when I finally became honest like this is what I want. Um that's when everything completely changed for me and that was the secret to where I am now is really having a mindset shift, what was possible and also I was also fearful that being successful was going to take away my freedom. That was my other fear, you know because I was so into freedom. Um and what I have found is the opposite alright that that's not true either being successful does not actually take away one's freedom or ability to go to a retreat or taking a lot of vacations or you know whatever freedom means or waking up when you want to or if you learn systems, if you learn Operations, if you run, if you're, if you run your business and you keep learning, you know, it's not about being, if you're smart, if you keep learning then you could build a business where you have a seven figure business and you are working 20 hours a week, this is so incredibly possible. Uh and that was a mindset belief that I had to change because I thought that wasn't true, I thought it meant I was going to be working 40 hours and never having my freedom. And I found out that that thought came from a fear that I had not from any truth. Yeah. So one of the things for me since we're kind of still in the mindset and I like that as my journey goes on. I feel like you know, these are my, some of my favorite episodes where we talked mostly about mindset because like I said to me, uh, you know, not knowing this to later in life, I felt was a huge detriment. But um you know, one of one of my coaches and mentors, you know, his thing was always garbage in garbage out, right? I'm one of those people who used to watch the news every day. Um, you know big into like watching politics and geopolitics and you know what's Russia doing today and you know all this stuff and you know really what I started to turn that off more and you know, go with more positivity and more, you know what I'm up to instead of like watching the world implode around me, which is honestly when you really step back and look at it pretty worthless right? Unless you know, unless you get the civil defense warning of a missile coming your way. You know, that's something you would pay attention to. But you know, everything today is so fear based and and you're worried about everything. So it's like that's what your your daily concentration is on. It's such a waste of energy. So my last thought for me is is be done with the garbage, you know, turn off the real housewives of Orange County, turn off your netflix and you know, go on Youtube and watch things like one of my favorite channels these days called mo diversity and it's literally, you know, some of the best minds in the world where they talk about discipline and mindset and waking up early and and hustling and having grit and all these things where you know, spend two hours a night watching that rather than the stupid, you know, next next episode of whatever garbage you're binging on right now and I promise you give it 30 days and you'll see such a big change in your life. Uh so Leslie on that note, kind of wrap it up, kind of what are, what are your last feelings in terms of of, you know, entrepreneurship, you know, how what people should do if they're if they're just starting out, you know, just a few quick tips and then last but not least let people know, you know where they can find you, you know, get, I would say get honest with yourself, like get really, really honest and again to get honest, you need to get quiet and and learn how to get quiet, like what that means to you. So journaling for example, a lot of women like to journal being out in nature meditation um petting your animal just quiet times a retreat if you can do it, find out what it is that you really, really want and don't do anything and don't start a business because of any idea of what you think you're supposed to be doing, do it because it's something because you can't not do it. I think that's the best way. If you want to be an entrepreneur it's going to be because you can't not be an entrepreneur because the alternative to that is not acceptable to you, so really go and become honest with what it is that you really really, really want, know that there is help out there and you will need it, I promise you you will need it. There's a lot of free help out there, there's so much free help out there. My God you can get confused with how much free help but honestly get yourself when you can a consultant or a mentor. Again someone who is where you want to be and was where you are right now so get the help and continue to be what I like to call an unquenchable learner Alright this that the successful people out there are the ones who are the most humble who will say they don't really know what they're doing exactly and this is the most honest place to be and it's the place where you will be the most successful and you'll be successful because you will learn things, you will go to motive er city, which I'm going to check out, thank you very much, um you know, you will hire the mentor, you will get into other mastermind groups, you will read books and you will take courses and that is the way to go and there is no end result, you know, I know, I will think the end result is, we're going to hit six figures, seven figures, eight figures and result exit, you know, it's really like being an entrepreneur is like being in the University of Life and it's the self development process of it, that is really is really what it's all about, there is absolutely no end result in it, I love that and and let people know where they can find you and what you're up to. Yeah, totally, so please, um for my clothing, women out, there are guys who want to buy their, their, their partners something back from bali, and best place to reach me is on amazon, so just check amazon back from bali or my website back from bali dot com and in terms of learning about entrepreneurship, I have a great book called seven sabotaging mistakes most women entrepreneurs make, so do check that out and you'll find that on my personal website, which is my name, Leslie kuester dot com, I have lots of free content, their videos blog, that's amazing, I love that you're kind of paying it forward in terms of, you know, it's funny, you know, a lot of people get slack for digital courses and books and things like that and you know at least in the amazon world, you know, a lot of people get tagged with like this false guru thing and things like that, and there are definitely those out there, I've run into them for sure, but there are lots of great resources out of there out there, a lot of great people who are just trying to pay it forward and those of you listening to this, if you feel like that's what we're doing here, I'd love if you guys rate review subscribe, you know, let people know about the podcast, we have Leslie uh on here and and so many other great guests and thank you guys so much for listening. Leslie, thank you so much for being on this was an awesome, awesome episode. I like how you know sometimes I I craft the episode, I kind of do an outline in this one, I didn't and I swear these are always the best ones because you kind of go down the rabbit hole and and kind of let the ideas flow and come up with something at the end. That's pretty amazing, so thank you so much. Um and uh as usual everyone who joins us live lad, thank you so much for being here if you want to join us live, we do this every Tuesday one pm pacific time, sell around table dot com forward slash live. We'll see you next time on the seller roundtable. Thanks thanks for tuning in, join us every Tuesday at one p.m. pacific standard time for live Q and a and bonus content after the recording at cellar Roundtable dot com, sponsored by the ultimate software tool for amazon sales and growth seller S c o dot com and amazing at home dot com. 

1. Make sure your profile is complete and up-to-date.
2. Use keywords in your profile so you can be easily found by potential connections.
3. Connect with as many people as possible. Including local events 
4. Join relevant groups and participate in discussions. 
5. Share interesting and relevant content on your profile. 
6. Keep your profile updated with your latest professional achievements. 
7. Use LinkedIn’s advanced search features to find potential connections. 
8. Connect with people you know in real life on LinkedIn. 
9. Use LinkedIn’s InMail feature to reach out to potential connections. 
10. Participate in LinkedIn’s Question and Answer feature to show off your expertise.

The Ultimate Guide To Dominate On Linkedin - How To Use Linkedin To Up Your Growth And Marketing Game With Amazon FBA Products And Beyond!

Introduction: Amazon FBA products are a great way to increase your online sales and marketing efforts. But what about the rest of your business? If you’re looking to take advantage of Amazon’s reach, you need to know about Linkedin. With Linkedin, you can connect with other entrepreneurs and businesses in a variety of industries. This way, you can collaborate on product ideas, share resources, and build relationships that will help your business grow.How to Use Linkedin to Build a Successful Business.LinkedIn is a social networking site that allows users to connect with other professionals and share information. When you use LinkedIn to build a business, you can increase your social media presence by sharing your products and services on the site. You can also use LinkedIn to Increase Your Marketing Ability by finding out about new businesses and their products, or by using it to network with potential customers.How to Use Linkedin to Increase Your Marketing AbilityBy using LinkedIn to increase your marketing ability, you can target specific markets and generate more leads and sales. You can also use LinkedIn to improve your skills so that you’re better able to sell your products or services.How to Use Linkedin to Generate More leads and salesOne of the most important things you can do when using LinkedIn for marketing is to generate more leads and sales. By subscribing to different LinkedIn groups, you can get a detailed understanding of the industry in which your product or service is concerned, which will help you find more qualified buyers interested in buying from you. Additionally, by sending out targeted email campaigns containing information about your product or service, you can increase your chances of selling through online channels such as email marketing or social networking.How to Use Linkedin to Achieve Your GoalsBy using LinkedIn to achieve your marketing goals, you can increase your sales and reach new customers. You can use the site to build a following, find clients in specific industries, or create powerful content that will help you sell more products or services. By using LinkedIn as a tool for business growth, you’ll be on your way to achieving success!How to Dominate On Linkedin.Linkedin is a social networking website that allows users to connect with one another. It’s a great place to find friends and make new ones, as well as build relationships with businesses. To dominate on Linkedin, you need to use the tools available to help you do so.tool such as the Add New Profile button, the Message Boards, and the Groups tab. You can also use tools like Linkedin Ads to reach more people and increase your visibility on Linkedin.Increase your engagement with LinkedinYou need to be engaging with your users in order to keep them coming back to Linkedin. Use features like the Grouping feature to organize your user data and make it easier for you to find and respond to comments and questions from users. And remember: never stop responding! Keep people engaged by regularly communicating with them through Linkedin.Increase your visibility on LinkedinYou need to be visible on Linkedin in order to get the attention of businesses. Use features like the Photo Uploader and the Posts tab to make your content more accessible and searchable. As well, use tools like the Bio and Social Profiles to write interesting, engaging pieces that will keep your users coming back for more.Use the strategies to increase your marketing reachBy using a variety of marketing strategies, you can reach a larger audience with Linkedin than ever before. Use features like the Ads tab and Grouping to target businesses with relevant ads and messages. And remember: never stop responding! Keep people engaged by regularly communicating with them through Linkedin.How to Use Amazon FBA Products and Other Amazon Services on Linkedin.One of the main ways to increase your sales on Amazon is by using Amazon FBA products. This is a service that allows you to sell products through Amazon. You can then use those products to sell on other websites, like Linkedin, and make money from the sale of that product.To start selling with Amazon FBA, you first need to create an account on Amazon. After creating an account, you can begin selling products through the Seller Central window on your account. You can also list your products in search results or within one of your categories on Amazon.If you want to focus on increasing your sales more directly, you can use tools like Seller Maven and Seller Chief to help manage your Selling process and grow your business even further. These tools will help you automate tasks and speeding up the selling process for you.Use Amazon FBA to grow your businessAnother way to grow your business with Amazon FBA is by focusing on specific areas of marketing that are important for online businesses: social media marketing, email marketing, and website design/development. By doing this, you’ll be able to bring more customers into contact with your product or service and increase conversions rates. Additionally, by using these marketing channels together with Linkedin, you can reach a wider audience than ever before.Use Amazon FBA to sell more productsThe final way to increase sales with Amazon FBA is by focusing on higher-value items that are not yet available on other websites or platforms. For example, if you have a unique product or service that only exists in one place and it’s not currently being sold elsewhere, then selling that product through Amazon FBA may be the best option for you! This will allow you extra income while also letting people know about what you have and how it differs from other options out there.ConclusionIf you're looking to build a successful business on Linkedin, there are many ways to do it. By using the tools available to us, we can help you reach your goals and dominate your field. Additionally, by using Amazon FBA products and other Amazon services, you can increase sales and grow your business. In order to manage your business successfully, use the Linkedin tools to keep track of your progress and make necessary adjustments.

Amazon FBA Businesses - Why You Should Look At This Alternative When You Look At Selling Your Amazon Private Label Or White Label Brand - How To Sell Your Amazon Brand And Capture All The Upside! This episode is sponsored by Society Brands. Visit their website at: https://bit.ly/3AaTtet

How to Set Yourself Apart In The Amazon Seller Business Wars - Using Social To Help Boost Your Brand On The Amazon FBA Marketplace - With Victor Aleck Dwyer. Please remember to rate, review and subscribe to this Amazing podcast! Remember to share this podcast with all your friends!

Things we discussed in this session:

A. Part

B. Part 2

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Transcription in this episode:
[00:00:01] spk_0: Welcome to the seller, roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with Andy Arnott and Amy Wees. [00:00:10] spk_1: So I'm gonna also add that our lives every image we're gonna we're gonna make has his wording, we utilize strategic wording, uh so there's no lifestyle that's just gonna show a model holding the product. Um We're gonna showcase, like, let's say it's a shoe and we have the model pulling the let's say it's a boot pulling the boot on. Um we would say uh comes with pull up tabs so you can easily get it on and off. And it's it's not, I mean, traditionally lifestyle maybe doesn't have wording. Um I don't know, I'm not sure what everybody else does, but what we do is we're gonna utilize uh not a lot of wording because we we don't want to overwhelm them and give them too much to look at. Usually like a quick line, 2, 3, 4 words maximum. And the reason why we do the lifestyle first is simply because I have a B tested just about everything out there and I don't like, I love how you take the scientific approach to it. I I don't know if I have like a fact to throw at you, but I feel like customers want to see what the product looks like in their real life setting, so obviously I hear what you're what you're what you're saying about getting in the mind of the shopper and showing them, you know, um you know, like making an order out of it. Um I there are certain situations where we put the lifestyle second, we will do main image, infographic infographic lifestyle, lifestyle. And then the last two images are usually a spec image. Um I just I [00:01:40] spk_0: think you're doing something really similar to what we're doing in terms of like showing it in use because we don't start with an infographic, it's like too overwhelming, right? We start more with like the lifestyle, but with some strategic wording. So it sounds like we're doing very similar things, but it also sounds like what you're doing is you're really studying the product and the customer and you're designing your photo layouts based on what you think based on your research, they're going to want to see and it's gonna help them make that buying decision. And it seems like it's working for you. So, [00:02:13] spk_1: we always pride ourselves on two things. The first thing is when I look at the page and I say, all right, I took a nice crack at this category. Uh you know, not always. But if we didn't if we did the right job and we we had the right the right product, I could say that our product is the nicest in the category or at least I'll tell myself that. So again, we we we pat ourselves on the back when the project comes out looking good. But ultimately, when the when the performance is there, when the listing cells, when listings conversion rate increases. Um I definitely like there's no you can't argue with data. You know, you're, you're gonna have 10% conversion rate before you optimize and 30 after. And that's, I mean there's no real perfect way to, to say, you know, that's from that. But when all you changed was the images. It's a pretty good, it's a pretty good indication that that that's working. Um, the last image was a brand image and I find that a lot of people don't do that. Um, it's kind of like more accepted now with E B. C. And a plus. Um, you know, because that's, I mean, BBC enhanced brand content right in the name you're saying, give me more information about the brand. Um, we were doing brand images as image seven for a very long time before, you know, a plus was it was a thing, it was, you know, started out as a vendor central, uh, you know, tool and we take that seventh image to showcase the brand. Nothing. I mean sometimes we'll have the product in there, but typically we don't, typically, if it's like a shoe company and they like, like I said that boot example, we're gonna have maybe a bunch of girls hanging out and, and uh, you know, maybe their, their their legs are hanging off of a ledge and each each leg has a different type of a shoe on it. And now instead of just showcasing, hey, we sell boots. But with a simple easy image with, you know, half the images showcasing five different categories of footwear that the seller sells. We also have a three sentence about us saying that we're dedicated to customer satisfaction and we're here to, to make innovative designs and affordable products and all that good stuff. Um obviously you have the ability to put that down below, but there is still a certain percentage of sellers, I'm sorry, of shoppers who don't know about A plus or a. B. C. [00:04:31] spk_0: Yeah, they go through those main images and a lot of times they don't even scroll and I can't tell you how many listings I've reviewed. Well, I can tell you because you understand this, but I review so many listings and people will have amazing a plus content that tells the story of their brand and really sell the products and you go through the images and they are crap and you're like, they're not even scrolling to your a plus because they just went through your images and they're moving on. So you can definitely see the difference where people have paid for a plus and the designer did a really good job and their images are just terrible. So I love that you're adding that dimension of brand and a lot of people just think that it's amazon selling a lot of shoppers think it's just amazon selling all these products. So I love that you're, you're taking the time up there to establish that trust and tell that brain story. Amazing. Really good tips on images. Love it. Um, frank. I want to know about videos because you're doing this video's thing, you're pretty good at it. Um it just Davidson, we're good at it, but I would love to know when it comes to videos, right? Um what are your processes for making a really great converting video? And so, like, what are those elements that matter when it comes to creating a video that converts? And then I would love to know, like, your take on different videos. So, like, do you use a different video for, like, the product pages versus like a video ad? [00:06:03] spk_2: Sure, good question. So there are three things that my three steps, one to strategy to a strategy and three strategy, right, strategize before you do a video? I see a lot of people, like, they're like, oh, well, it's a simple product, right? The reality of the videos that you need to grab the attention. You have a very short span of person's attention when they land on your listing or your website, whatever it is. If you don't capture them in the 1st 345 seconds, forget 53 to 4 seconds. That's it. They're going off the video. They don't care about it anymore. So how do you make it exciting where they continue watching a video? Just like a great copywriter. Um, your main goal over the first sentence is to get them to go to the second sentence. And the only goal of the second sentence is making to go to the third, right? So in video we have the same process where we want them to continue watching. So what what strategy do you use to make them watch the video until the end? And that's what's important, right? Where you get into the largest of four for 45 seconds pre before working in this agency. My my parents owned the television channel. So I was working the ins and outs of the television channel and I've learned how how long 30 seconds were, Right? I that's where I really learned how long these 30, videos are. You can tell a story, you can tell everything in 30 seconds. So how do you make it? How do you make it engaging where people continue watching? So, I think one of the things that strategizing and the way that we strategize, is creating a story board, um selecting the right models. I'm going through the process of calling out every feature of the product. So, I think that pre production is a big part of it. Um a process that we don't skip. We don't just say, send your product will figure it out. We go through. Um We created, we create a brief from the brief, we go and create the storyboard. And from that we involve the customer right, finding the right model of finding the right thing. Um you know, there's a whole production versus just getting, grabbing a filmmaker and telling him to do the video. We have stylists there. I think one of the, one of the things important too is that if your product works well with props, make sure you get the best props, right? If you're doing a charcuterie board video, which is a new video that we got working on, we went and purchased the best cheese is the best salamis, right? You want to make it appealing? So sometimes it's not just your product is also getting the right props for the video, making sure that everything is up to par. And people can, I'm telling you, people can't tell the difference between a real video and a crappy video very quickly. Um, Why? Because either your competitor has a great one or they have or they have a worse one, it's never equal right there. They have a way better video than you or they have one that's the complete opposite. So, um, I think strategizing and making sure that you, you Create a storyboard that's going to attract the customer to continue viewing. So that's one. And the second question was, what's the difference between a page and add, right? I think I'm an adjective only around 15 seconds. So I would try to minimize as much lifestyle in the ads and go straight product product product. Um, just because when, when they're shopping for a product and a video pops up, um that's your attention, that's your time to grab, make your product stand out, right? So instead of adding so much lifestyle to it, I would go and focus on the product. I also found that throughout my customers and seeing their how the videos are playing and everything, um start the video with the product immediately. That way you don't confuse the buyer, they know that the video they clicked on is your product and um show that its full glory. If you, if you have a bicycle, show somebody riding a bicycle. If you have um a product show the product being used in the pet, instantly, right? So it's capturing that first initial play button and making sure that they continue to the end and the way to do that is to call out the features in a unique way, in a lifestyle way. I do believe that lifestyle videos are translating better than ever now. Um and if you look at the history of amazon, they went from a person speaking about the video, then they want to through um somebody narrating a video, then the unboxing right now, you start more and more seeing lifestyle videos and you start seeing how people can, once you have a product and you see how another human interacts with it. It shows you that you can, how you're gonna use that as well. So once you create the human factor into it. I think it's a huge difference. [00:10:24] spk_0: Yes, definitely. I think that it's so important to really help the customer imagine um that product in their life, help them answer that question is this for me, right? Um it's it's awesome. What would you say is the secret sauce to getting the customer to watch the video from the beginning to the end? [00:10:51] spk_2: Yeah, so number one is quality. Um make sure that you have very sharp um make sure the video looks crispy. Um you know, when you click on some of those videos and they look blurry instantly, whether it's a good video or not, um they're no longer interested in watching. Well, I'm no longer interested in watching, so make sure that the quality of the camera is good. Um the lighting is good so that they can see the product and like I said, um show the product in his glory. Show show all of its potential. Um you know, we we had a bath caddy that we were doing a video for and when we first did the video, we showed the bath caddy empty and then we showed like the model placing it in and we quickly realized that um like the video wasn't getting a lot of traction. We switched it up where we showed the product and its full essence in the first two seconds of the video and realized that more people were watching and that it was translating differently, right? So whatever the product it is, the first two seconds find a unique way to show it. Um, and showed that the smoke glory. So if you're, if you're selling a wine cup, make sure there's the perfect red wine and it's those little details that that go side and side with your product. [00:12:02] spk_1: Thank you. Just brushed over something that I heard you kind of stress a little bit more in the past, which was the first couple of seconds. The first couple of seconds literally set the tone for the video. I've heard you explain that a bunch of times to people who asked and I think that that's very true as well, like those, you know, the customer, if you lose him in the 1st 345 seconds, he's gone, he's not giving you more than that. So it's very important to, you know, take advantage of that and and just start with with your best. Um, I was actually looking at the chat, I saw scott asked about the image on, I mean the image one with wording. So I saw you responded that one of your favorite hacks is putting the packaging and the image one, which is technically it's not illegal. Um, I have a version of that that I've come across. I don't love it and, and I have like a tendency, we won't say no, like it's your business, you're, you're listening, you can do whatever you want. I'm gonna always let you know like my favorite way to say is what I would do if it was my listing. Um So if it was my listing, I still feel like I wouldn't put um any any risk on, on getting flagged, because even getting flagged for one day, um it's just not worth it, but I've seen a hack where somebody designed image, one with the product and a label. So imagine if you have a product and you added a label to the product, and if there's a label on the product, then you're allowed to showcase the product with a label on it. But what happens if there's actually no label on the product and you just showcase the product with, with like [00:13:48] spk_0: a [00:13:50] spk_1: Photoshop label with your logo and maybe like a quick wording that helps, you know, showcase what the product is. Um And again, personally, I don't like love this strategy, but it's technically a hack and technically something that I see people get away with, like I said before, I would always provide a secondary main image without that, just just in case, because I'm just worried about one day, maybe they'll make a change and and it won't be allowed to do that. Um But technically, I'm just, you know, I figured I'd throw that out there, it's definitely a hack, I've seen it work [00:14:26] spk_0: and I love just, and what I mean is it's not necessarily a hack. I like to make sure that we build retail ready packaging from the beginning because customers associate the packaging with something they've seen in stores and they trust stuff they've seen in stores. So even if you have a private liberal product that you're not selling on in retail yet, if you build that packaging from the beginning and you put that in your main image, you can call out some of those amazing features, you can get that, you know, that same intention you get on the shelf, but it can really really up the quality of your product and your conversion rate and it can help you stand out against competitors who just have that plane main image with, you know, just a product there that it doesn't look at all like a real brand right from the main image. So that's it's not really a hack for me, it's more like when you're in your prep phase and your branding and you're doing your product development and you're designing your packaging, you should be designing retail ready packaging from the beginning because that's going to help you make more conversions in the long run, [00:15:33] spk_1: correct. [00:15:34] spk_0: I [00:15:35] spk_2: want to answer some of scott's questions because I was just reading them. Yeah. [00:15:39] spk_0: Unboxing video. [00:15:41] spk_2: Unboxing unboxing. Um, they're great videos, right? I do also see a lot of my customers using them as a secondary video. Um, I have seen in some cases, so I'm not an amazon agency. I'll leave this up to David for him to answer. I'm not sure. I've seen listings that have two videos I've also seen when you click on one of the images, other images show up as well. And there's like secondary third videos as well. So, um, a lot of my customers are doing both and I think sometimes it's better for you to just tackle if we're doing a lifestyle video to instantly tackle an unboxing video right then and there the product is there, the model is, there doesn't take too much work to, to add an unboxing video. Um, so whoever whoever does your videos, I would, I would see if you can negotiate them to do an unboxing as well and whatever their radar. Um, lately we've been doing that, but I think the main video should always be a lifestyle video and impressing the client with someone actually using it. You know, when people go on your listing, if they didn't come through the video ad their senior images, they already read your bullet points. The last thing they needed somebody repeating that over and over again. They just need something exciting to make them buy the product. So I would focus on more of a lifestyle and I'll give them the option of, Um, for them to see an unboxing when you click on one of the videos and then more pictures show up. So that's that as for MP four. Yeah, Amazon has weird requirements. Um, I would suggest every video you do to put them on a dropbox or what will drive and you wouldn't have that have to download them from Youtube every time it's in the link. Um, Amazon does want to embed their own um, back and cold. So it just stops, like you said, it stops them from looking at going to a link on Youtube and going to another product. You know, amazon wants to stay king and they want everybody to stay on their website. [00:17:28] spk_1: They don't want anybody going anywhere else they want to, [00:17:31] spk_2: this is where it goes, you're not going to another um, platform. So, um, yeah, but I would suggest just just keep on going to drop on the dropbox. [00:17:40] spk_0: I love that tip that you mentioned about just when you're making your videos be thinking about all the different types of videos you could make, you've already got the people there. It's not that hard to make another story board to get the filming done. You know, you can do different clips that you can mix and match over time to, you know, make different videos for different purposes. Such a great tip. So before we get out of here today, I want to talk to you guys about this project that you guys have been working on for a long time and something that I've been able to be part of um, at some of your events that you guys have put on. Um, and that's the aecom cooperative. Uh, you guys started this, um, this e commerce cooperative, which is, you know, but maybe I'll just let you you talk about it, but I just have to tell you guys the listeners, I went to an event the last event. Where were we? We were in um Oh geez, where were we? [00:18:37] spk_1: Were [00:18:38] spk_0: we were in Miami. Yes, these guys got this restaurant, it was like a meat carving restaurant and they had the whole thing, like rented out. It was incredible. They had waiters walking around with the most amazing appetizers, open bar, really incredible, like just beautiful crafted cocktails. Um, and just the most amazing atmosphere. And then we all sat down to dinner and I had this like buffet of the most amazing meets all these carvers, everything and just the greatest people. They're so much fun. We had like birthday celebrations going on and just filled with e commerce sellers. Oh, and just really fun. Really just great times and and nothing. No, no. Conference, we weren't there to, to learn anything. We were just there to network and you guys made that possible through this thing that you built the Aecom cooperatives. Can you tell everybody like a little bit about that? And and why you made it and how you pull off these incredible events, David, [00:19:46] spk_2: I'll let you talk about, let me talk about the fun stuff. I'll let you talk about the structure and how it came about, but just to touch on the dinner real quick. Um we we wanted to change networking, we wanted to bring something different and before the calm, cooperative me and David were we we've done so many dinners, it's something we did with our customers, we would take them out to have a great steak and um throughout those dinners we just looked at each other, we're like, wow man, we need to make this into a real thing. Um and we were like if we can create an environment where it becomes memorable and we're not so much about um too many people talking or the next speaker, we wanted to create something fun and interactive and we said you know what, let's let's try a dinner, let's try doing the dinner. And um we're from new york, we believe in going bold and going strong and doing things right, doing it the right way. So just renting out the table wasn't an option for us, We needed the whole restaurant and as you saw man, it was just, it was just us trying to change the networking environment in the e commerce space and obviously there's a lot more to it, but the main vision was to create something memorable and different that nobody else was doing. [00:20:58] spk_1: I'm glad amy to hear your feedback on on that evening because we had a lot of fun and and it was definitely a lot of work. Um It's just ironic to know the how that came to be. Um we reached out to that restaurant, which was the only rest only kosher restaurant that could hold 250 people. Um anywhere else could maxed out at about 80 or 100 people. We wanted to be kosher because we had a lot of big jewish audience. Um and we called them up and they said no, they said, we don't rent out our restaurant for events and I mean, I can't go into the whole story now, I don't have enough time for it, but we willed it into existence for the most part. Um, we didn't take no for an answer. We got the, we went to a different restaurant and asked the chef to connect us to a food critic who was friendly with the owner, got the guy's cell phone number, I begged him for a phone call and then pretty much didn't take no for an answer when we got on the phone with him. Ultimately, we were, we were right with wanting that venue. Um, like you said, it was, it was the right place, the right environment, the right atmosphere and ultimately all we wanted to do, like frank was saying was create something unique and different. There's enough conferences out there with speeches and tons of content and booths and all the good stuff that you get at every other conference [00:22:18] spk_0: and you guys just keep getting better. I think this is my third aecom cooperative dinner that I've been to. And it just like everyone just keeps getting better and like, oh, it's gonna be that you guys are gonna have to like how are you going to top that? We [00:22:30] spk_1: don't know right right now. We were supposed to have our next dinner already, but we couldn't top it. So we just didn't do it yet. We're doing it, we're doing it right. We're not just doing it to do [00:22:39] spk_0: it, but [00:22:40] spk_1: a little bit on how the economic cooperative started. Um, everyone in the service provider and the solution provider industry has has companies, you know, people friends that they work with, that they trust that they, that they, you know, uh connect their clients with and that's how the calm cooperative started. Very organically. The four founding members, um, yoni from to or Jason and Lenny from the cellar kit frank from creative percent and myself. Um, we, we were just out to dinner one night and we wanted to do some co marketing initiatives. We decided to do a giveaway of services little by little that blew up and 44 companies became 40 $10,000 and give away became 100. And we realized two things when we finished that give away. One was that we clearly needed to build this community and to was that we had nothing to call this a community and we had to get to work on building the community. Um, and we did, we, we built out a whole bunch of resources and tools, uh, in person events, virtual events. Um, the goal is to just continue to give our audience and amazon sellers and providers a chance to learn and connect and grow together. Um, and we're very proud to be part of it. We're very proud for the explosion that it had over the past year. We were about a year and change in existence at this point. And thankfully it's growing fast and, and uh, it's, it's good people trying to do the right thing. So it's free to join for amazon sellers. You can go to the Aecom cooperative dot com and sign up, uh, and getting, getting involved and in tune to our next events and, and, you know, nothing to lose and everything to gain. So [00:24:18] spk_0: Now, now that I know that there's, I'm here, by the way, finally, after about 10 reboots and driver issues and all kinds of fun stuff now that I know there's a plethora of meat at your events. I'm going to have to, you know, I'm gonna have to make it out [00:24:30] spk_1: 100%, We wouldn't have it any other [00:24:33] spk_0: way. I love it. Well, it's so good to have you back Andy Oh man, yeah. You know, all part of, of moving, you know, moving and we went from, I went from satellite internet to being in the city where I got solid, you know gigabit internet back to the country where now I have t mobile home internet which actually has been fairly good. But I think I'm gonna have to run a hard wire down to my office here. So we're working through, we all know what it's like process. So before we let you guys go today we should probably um ask you how people can get in touch with you or how people can follow you [00:25:18] spk_1: frank. [00:25:19] spk_2: Yeah, so um frank, I created percent of my email creative percent dot com. Um and if you're on thin, thin is the platform that I live in the most um we can reach out there or um amy you could also if they want to reach out to your first few collectors is also an option. [00:25:36] spk_1: And then I'm gonna, I'm gonna say the same thing linkedin is the platform I frequent most. Um and you can reach out at David at amazon experts or amazon experts dot com and we're always happy happy to help [00:25:50] spk_2: amazon experts with an X. [00:25:52] spk_0: E. Love it. Yes, I love it. Yeah, I have to agree linkedin is is super underrated and I keep telling people it's it's growing every single day. And you know, I keep telling my wife's a real estate agent and she keeps talking about like getting leads and I'm like, have you been on linkedin? No, no no for like six months. She's finally on linkedin. She's like I'm like that's where the people who actually have good jobs live. They're not the people who are right, they're not the people who are on facebook who don't have jobs who are just trying to kill time. [00:26:23] spk_2: I love [00:26:24] spk_0: it. Well thank you guys so much for being here today. We've appreciated all your amazing tips on listings and branding and everything else and we appreciate everything you guys do for the e commerce community definitely and and uh we just enjoy having you on the show and and yeah, don't forget everyone who's out there to rate, review, subscribe. Uh Andy and I love when you give us your opinion, even if it's not good, although we don't get a lot of those but um but yeah, we we love to hear from you um and we this is one of our favorite things to do every week, so thank you guys so much for being here and uh well don't forget to join us in the zoom every week, every Tuesday we're here at three p.m. Central time one PM pacific. We're here in the zoom so you can go to sell a roundtable dot com forward slash live and we will see you guys next week for episode number 140. Oh my gosh yeah yeah and I hopefully will be, will participate here for my computer and internet will will will cooperate and amy I just thought of the best. The title for this episode is we Have the Meats, Right? I mean that's that's gotta be it. It's right there. I love it. Alright, you guys well, thank you [00:27:49] spk_1: guys. Thank you so much for having us. [00:27:51] spk_0: All right, see you later. Bye bye bye bye. Thanks for tuning in, join us every Tuesday at one PM pacific standard time for live Q and a. And bonus content after the recording at cellar roundtable dot com, sponsored by the ultimate software tool for amazon sales and growth [00:28:08] spk_1: seller S C o dot com and amazing at home dot [00:28:12] spk_0: com. 

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Transcription in this episode:
[00:00:01] spk_0: Welcome [00:00:02] spk_1: to the seller [00:00:03] spk_2: roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with Andy Arnott and Amy wees, [00:00:09] spk_0: Hey everyone, what's up, this is Amy Wiese and my buddy Andy or not is having internet troubles right now. So we hope he's gonna join us later on in the show, but we are on episode number 139 of the cellar roundtable and I'm so excited you guys to be here with my favorite brothers from another mother. And as Andy said before we hit the record button, coffee talkers from the east Coast, I'm here with David. Dion frank Acosta guys, welcome to the seller roundtable. It's great to have you. [00:00:49] spk_1: Thank you so much for having us. [00:00:51] spk_2: Thank you Amy. It's a pleasure to be here. Good to be with good people. [00:00:55] spk_0: Yes, definitely. So our first question on the seller roundtable is always for your blood sample or your D. N. A. Um we like to start off kind of learning a little bit more about you is as little as you want to tell us or as much as you want to tell us, but que es in on who you guys are and how you landed here on this seller roundtable podcast [00:01:20] spk_1: frank. I think we should switch it up. I think you should do my intro. I'll do your intro. What do you think about that? [00:01:24] spk_2: Oh no, no, no, no, no, I mean not even go there fine. So um David comes from a background of the aecom. He comes from the economic experience, he built his way up on the amazon ladder, working through agencies knowing the ins and outs of, of dealing with brands. Um I want to say some numbers, but David doesn't allow numbers. So I'm not going to go and talk about some of his status. But um he worked with a few agencies and climbed up the ladder eventually he decided to branch off and do it on his own, right? So um with the years of experience that he has on amazon and he went and structured an agency very different from others. He's a he's not your typical agency where he's always looking for the next customer. He's very detailed and who he wants to work with. And because of that, um the detailed is shown on the work. So they specialize in anything from listing optimizations to the content, writing to the a plus content and his agency has grown in the community and he's um you know, it's, it's hard to tell, give an intro about somebody else, but um he's definitely crushing it. But I think the most important thing is, you know, when you come from knowing um like you started from the ground zero, right? Some people just wake up and say, I want to build an agency every day. We see it more and more again where like new agencies are uprising and I think getting your hands dirty and and putting in the work that you did in the beginning stages um told him what not to do, right? And because of that he was able to grab all the things that he learned not to do. Um and convert them to what should be done and build an agency that is functional and yeah, I'm excited for amazon experts. [00:03:03] spk_0: So that's pretty, that was pretty good. David. Uh you know, frank frank, did a good job of talking, definitely, definitely did a [00:03:12] spk_1: good job, definitely did a good job. Thank you, frank um frank Acosta from creative person, what can we say? Creative first, you can see it in the name, right, frank, started out creative percent doing branding, website development and design. Um And more recently frank took his his, you know, his his run at amazon videos, product videos and brand videos. He actually started out before he was doing his creative percent branding and websites. He worked for a commercial company for a television channel. Um and he has a lot of experience kind of behind that camera. Um I mean I met frank about, I wanna say two plus years ago, um He was getting into amazon videos. I tried him out with some of my clients um Till today I've done maybe hundreds of videos with him and I've never even had one revision, never not even one. Um So that says something we do, we do our own services and we rely on the revision process frank comes with a story board. Um and always kills it with the storyboard and then always under promises and over delivers. Um, His, his, uh, you know, his videos are nothing short of commercials helping sell the product and every feature about it. And I am proud to call him a friend partner and reach out to creative percent if you're looking for any, you know, of the branding materials that you might need, because he's definitely, definitely leading in the industry of of those types of services. So that's, that's my that's my version of frank's [00:04:44] spk_2: intro. [00:04:46] spk_0: So I'm curious to know, I'm gonna, I love both of the intros by the way, I like that. Both of you are in kind of the creative agency side of things and I'm definitely going to pick your brain about all things um company. I mean, how do you make a video without revisions? We're gonna get into that, you know, that kind of stuff. Um what converts best? What are, you know, what are some of your favorite things? We'll get into all that. But before that, I have to know, How did you guys like, I guess I'll start with David since he was introduced first. Um, David, How did you learn about amazon? [00:05:25] spk_1: Okay, that's a good question. Um I learned about amazon straight out of high school. My first job in the amazon world was listing products. This is back when Arbitrage was the name of the game. Um, and I would, I would get paid, it was a summer job and I would get paid to list products, I get paid a flat fee for every product that would create every page I would create. Um I'm happy to say I broke the record for how many page, how many product pages were created in one day. Um I actually used to, I figured out that if I came in early enough and worked undistracted, I'd actually be able to like, leave before noon, potentially do more work than anybody else in the office and enjoy my summer. So it was like a very convenient job and I realized I was good at it, I had, like an understanding for it. Um ultimately what I ended up doing now has nothing to do with that, but that was just my entrance um you know, I remember once looking to see, you know, everyone I knew that was making money was doing sales and I was like, alright, let me let me go get a sales job and somebody like, drilled it into my head there, like, you're in the amazon space, it's an emerging, you know, world stay there and you'll be happy and I owe that guy a lot because uh you know, one thing led to another and I have an agency now and, and uh still in the amazon world, so [00:06:47] spk_0: I love it, you know? Okay, so along that line, before we get to frank, I have to know, are you a fan of flat files. [00:07:00] spk_1: Yes, [00:07:01] spk_0: tremendously. I want to know, like I need to see the battle between, like Vanessa Hung and somebody else who's just crazy about flat files. So I love it. I mean somebody who's figured out how to list that many products in a day and a very short period of time has to know a little something about flat files. So I like it. I like it a lot. We might just have to have another show just about flat files. The nemesis, right? Like amazon has changed so much to in terms of like listing products, I'm sure we can talk a little bit about that, evolving over the years as well. Well frank, what about you? How did you hear about about amazon? How did you get? [00:07:40] spk_2: Yeah, good question. So I look, I don't call myself an amazon agency, just there's so many people that have that title. I comment, I'm a branding agency, right? So I started creating logos in the beginning and I started branding everything from a dentist to an e commerce brand to to a law firm. And I started building my portfolio and I quickly saw that my best work was in the packaging space, right? You take a look at your portfolio and see what you do best. And I was like, my best work is in the product space. So I started, um, I wouldn't say I niche down, but I just said, you know what, I'm only going to take in product clients. Um and I fell in love with the aecom world, right? I fell in love with the process, the building and eventually 11 to amazon, right? Um David was actually one of the people that opened the doors to amazon for me, just because I dealt with a lot of DtC brands and it's very different from building a DtC brand and building an amazon brand from two different worlds and two different objectives. Um but because of like the nature of the business, and I fell in love with the process, I targeted it and I started doing it more and more and more and I quickly noticed that that's where our sweet spot was, right. Um and there's a promise that I've always made to myself when I built this agency is that I'm going to stick to what I'm good at and what ends up happening in in multiple agencies is that you're always looking for like the next service to add the next um the next um way of income, whatever, you know, and I said, you know what, let me stick to what I love doing this creating and that's where I live and I've made sure that I stuck my stuck to my rules, right? Um so in other words, amazon came to me, I didn't search it just happened to come my way and it just resonated with everything that we was doing with creating the brand, creating the name, the packaging and it's just, you know, you love what you're doing, you just bring some repeat, you know what I mean? [00:09:32] spk_0: Awesome. So my next question is for David, I would love to know David, how have you seen listings of amazon product listings evolved over the years and along that line? Um you know, what are your top tips for people when they're creating a listing on amazon? [00:09:54] spk_1: Okay. Um so first of all, the, the evolution of of creating listings is is it's a, it's really a night and day from back in the day. I'm just gonna touch on what you mentioned about the flat files when I started, when I, when I first, you know, my entry job in amazon flat files either weren't popular or non existent. That's what, that's what I'm gonna go with. And [00:10:17] spk_0: what year was it when you started? [00:10:19] spk_1: Um I have to look at my linkedin, hold on about 89 years ago, maybe something like that. Um maybe a little longer. [00:10:29] spk_0: Okay, [00:10:30] spk_1: so, so flat files I'm gonna go with weren't popular or just, you know, I wasn't aware of them and we would create everything manually. Um somewhere along the way it became a much more streamlined process by simply using flat files. Obviously, you know, when, when you're creating, you know, you have to set the flat file up, but I was actually fortunate enough to create some functions, some some excel functions to, you know automate that and, and and make it much quicker. Um we had, you know, at one point I had like a full team of developers, developers available to create whatever I want that I was like a kid in a candy store and I was developing tools ultimately, you know, there's other people out there who have everything and more that I created. But back in the day it was, you know, there was no, there was no software out there and uh it was something that you had to rely on, you know, whatever you built. So I would definitely agree with Vanessa and the fact that manually entering something um it's almost like a little bit more hands on, I want to say where on a flat file you're gonna have the ability to quickly understand what went wrong and quickly fix it. Um I want to say there's almost like less of a chance of something going wrong when you're doing it manually. [00:11:47] spk_0: She actually showed me the other day we did a live stream on flat files and she showed me how you can add a characteristic to a listing simply by copying and pasting a column from one category file to another. And I was like, what? Oh my gosh, now I know how my competitors are adding these other, if it was such a cool thing and it reminds me of what you said about, you know, how you kind of built Excel functions to do different things and help you over the years with this. Um So I never even knew that all these things existed with with flat files but you learn it over the years. So I love that. And what would you say is your your number one tip for helping you know for creating a listing. Like what what do you recommend? [00:12:35] spk_1: So that's one thing that has never changed. Um And it goes it has to do with pretty much anything you're going to do. Uh and that's do some research and prepare, make sure you're you're setting it up in the right category, make sure you're setting it up with the right keywords and make sure you're just everything you're setting is being done properly. I don't have to to start and and and scare anyone with the idea of soft holds on listings. Uh Today, more than ever, if you start changing things Um on on a list on the page you're eventually 1,23 tries they'll tell you you can't make any more changes for X. Amount of time. Sometimes it's an undisclosed amount of time and you don't wanna be locked out of making changes so you want to just be prepared and and all those changes you might make, [00:13:20] spk_2: go through them before [00:13:21] spk_1: you put anything online whether you're uploading it, you know through a flat file or manually you just have to make sure that you you know, cross your T. S. Dot your I's and don't make the changes after you upload it and let me test it out and all that. It's not worth it. Um Speak to somebody who gets blocked soft blocked on a listing or permanently blocked from making changes on the listing and they'll just they'll they'll scare you away from you know, deciding to to wing it. Um So the prep the prep and that's something that always was the same back in the day. It was just doing your due diligence and making sure that there was no mistakes and still that. Um But maybe it got a little more detailed over the years where you have to, you know, check more checklists and and make sure that literally everything is it is done properly because it only got worse when it comes to making changes after the [00:14:10] spk_2: fact you got [00:14:11] spk_1: more strict. [00:14:12] spk_0: That's such great advice. You know, one of the biggest mistakes I see people make, they'll come to me after they've launched a product they didn't use the right keywords on their listing. Their foundation sucks. We can't build a house on a shaky foundation, right? So it's it's so important to do that research ahead of time. I understand what you're doing before you go to put it in there because I've seen also so many times people mistyped their brand name and then they'll get bored [00:14:38] spk_1: and I was about [00:14:39] spk_0: to say that miss typing a brand [00:14:42] spk_1: name is by far the, like that's the point of no return like you back in the day again, we used to win brand changes. It was, it was not impossible today. I don't even think I would like confidently say we could win a brand change. Um, it's just not worth it. It's just just make sure you type the brand in the proper upper case and lower case and, and just don't, [00:15:07] spk_0: don't mess that up. Everything on a search engine relies on your relevancy and so that that ties into your keywords, that ties into your placement, that ties into how well your PPC works. So if you screw up your listing, everything else gets screwed up. So I love that piece of advice. It's something that people need to heed and frank. I'm, I'm ready to stump you with this one, although I think it's gonna be hard for a guy who never needs revisions to his videos. Um, my question for you frank, you're branding expert, You love branding, you speak it, you live it, you love it. Um what has been over the years, the hardest product for you to brand and why, [00:15:51] spk_2: wow, [00:15:52] spk_0: I'm gonna have a [00:15:53] spk_2: good, it's a good question. Um, wasn't expecting that, but wow. So, um, I would say a huge brand that came to me for rebranding and it was door handles and I underestimated the project so much. Um, they had different types of, first of all, it's such a competitive industry. Um, when it, when it comes to brands that already were already known and he wanted a unique name, but I always tie a name to something, right? And Brandon teaches us that when you make up a word, it's something more memorable than a word that already existed, right? So it's like, it's like Spanx, right? Everybody got the name, it was spelled differently. It was, it was short. So we all know the rules to create a good name, right? Keep it short. Try to mix towards all together and make it personal easy to find the domain. But this one was, it was just, I was like in a blank space and I was like, what the heck am I going to talk about door handles right? And it was, it wasn't like a unique brand where they were beautiful. It was just like, you know, it's, it's just um, you can buy these by the multitude. They, they're, they're good for um, if you're building a resort, if you're building a hotel, it's like you're comin go to the door handle right? And when I booked them the week we got through the branding phase, it took a little longer than expected. Um, creating the logo was easy. The strategy was the hard part, but when it came to video amy, it was like, I did not calculate how many doors, I had to purchase, how many holes I had to drill that I had to hire a professional to come and put all the door handles. It was, it was just so much that flew over my head. Um and I wish I would have contemplated things more, but it was definitely the hardest brand that I ever had to build, but um they success successfully exited two years ago, so we must have did something right. Um but it was, it was just such a challenging project, [00:17:52] spk_0: wow. Yeah, I can imagine, you know when it comes to branding, especially when you have that kind of common product that there's not really, it's not solving a huge problem for customers. Wasn't creative, [00:18:03] spk_2: it wasn't like, it wasn't like a beautiful looking product where we could go and put all the specs, it was just a simple manufacturing company that sold thousands and they wanted to get millions of products through. They were already in wholesale stores, right? And they wanted to get into the amazon world and it was tough. But um yeah, thank God um with headaches and screws we were able to come through with it. But that was definitely by far my hardest project today. [00:18:28] spk_0: I love it. Okay, and then my question for my follow up question, I gave David a tough question to it. The follow up. But my follow up question is what would be your, your number one tip for people when they're considering their branding right there, creating their brand, they're considering their branding. Um, what's your number one tip for them, like what do they really need to be thinking about? [00:18:50] spk_2: Yeah, so I always tell people do a lot of research before, before you want to hear everybody's opinions before you hire a branding expert, um, prepare yourself first, right? Um, read as much and and fill yourself with as much information as possible. Um, we have something called google these days where you can literally find anything and you know, like look up as much information as possible, look at the competitors, study the market, um, do your own research first because sometimes just from that information you, you can come up and bring from your own idea, right? So you don't, and you know, this is like shooting myself in the foot, but we like to keep it real, you don't always necessarily have to go to a branding strategist is something that you can start on your own, um because there's a lot of information out there, do your research and as the brand grows and you feel like it could grow to another potential, which you couldn't handle, then you get more people involved, right? Because we all know that starting a branding business is very expensive, especially when you're trying to brand the right way. Um, but, you know, it's a double is a double edged sword where if you don't do it right in the beginning and you don't do your research and you don't make that investment, it becomes more expensive down the road. So my, my number one advice is do your own research first. Um, and and dig deep to see what other people are doing and and give that. Don't skip that time. You know, it's very annoying and it is a stage that nobody wants to really deal with. There's a lot of reading, a lot of research um, put in that work, but in that time and you'll be surprised how much you can bring some on your own and how much creativity you can build up on your own. [00:20:20] spk_0: Yeah, branding is like the magnet that draws customers to your product or your service. And so it's like, it's it is that attraction because buying is a psychological process, right? It's an emotional process. And the colors mean things and the fonts mean things and they send a message that sometimes we don't realize when we're just kind of slapping a label on something and getting it on the market to your point. You know, that's that's how we can actually, you know, when we're bringing customers through the funnel, that's how we can actually bring more customers to our brand is when they're considering us, they're making that judgment whether they realize it or not when they see our colors and our fonts in our logo and, you know, we can command a higher price for our products if we do the right branding, um, it's like, it pays off so much and you know, I'm teaching a class this week, I'm teaching a class on updating your branding. Um and the one thing that I thought was really cool for considerations for branding is to consider branding before you even start product development, because if you were to, if you know who your customer is and you're like okay, we're starting this brand and we want to serve this niche of customers and you actually hire a brand strategist to study that niche of customers and the colors that they like and everything like that. You may develop your product differently based on that information and you're going to hit the mark because that right branding is going to lead to more conversions, better convergence, faster conversions, less paid ads, right? You're not gonna have to work so hard for it if you do the work in the beginning like [00:21:54] spk_2: 100% 100% and you know, Amy, I'm glad you said that because you brought me to one of our processes, right? One of the things that we do when we're creating the strategies that we create personas, right? We create like legit personas, we give them names, you know, um frank from Colorado, he's 28 we we build these personas so that you know who you're selling to and once you know who you're selling to now, you can market to them, right? You can speak in their language, you can speak in their position, your company in a way where you already know who's going to go and buy it. So that's what I meant by research, right? Where like before you even consider doing your pet products, go and look who's gonna be the consumer's right, who's going to be buying your product? And once you do that, you you're you're ahead of the curve, right? Because some people just want to, they want to go to Alibaba, they find a product that they want to slap their logo on it and, and and call it a brand, right? And you don't really even know um, who's who's like, who's the, who's the buyer, who are the people. So it's tough. It's not like it used to be right amazon back in the day. Um I had a friend that opened up a pet business, he's never owned a dog in his life And he was able to sell for 30 million to an aggregator not too long ago, but it's because back in the day on Amazon you were able to get away with things. Sometimes you are able to get away with not knowing just put the first product, your ratings are up. You've been in the game for a long time now with so many people in the space with so many users coming in daily new brands, you need to be up to par and um you can't get away with what people used to get away with before. [00:23:20] spk_0: Yeah, I love it. Okay. I want to get back to the listing optimization and listing side of things. Um, we talked about branding, we talked about like how you should prepare. I mean, your listing, you know, they say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Your listing is the window to sales. You know, making sure that you're making those sales. So, David, I would love to ask you about your process, like what is the process that you go through when you're creating a really good listing from start to finish and you know, what are those, those um, keys along the way that really make it great. [00:24:01] spk_1: Okay. Um, so I have a couple of, of just like pointers. The first thing I see even from other uh, you know, agencies that do optimizations is they'll provide you with five images, for example. Um when we optimize the listening, we're always gonna do seven images. Uh, sometimes we'll give eight or nine um, just because we want to have to have the ability to alternate something uh, you know, maybe during holiday season, you want to have a picture of a package under a christmas tree or on valentine's day. You want a picture of uh, you know, of, of a guy giving a gift to a girl or something and you just want to be able to kind of like play into whatever seasonality you might be able to ride the wave on. Um, but when, when we're creating a listing where we're gonna start with image, one of the strictest of all is going to follow the guidelines above all. Even if somebody requests, um, like, you know, to put swatches on, on image one, I'm always gonna just provide them with a backup without the swatches. Just because if or I might as well say when they get flagged and they need to put up a better image with no with no swatches of other colors available. Um, they're able to just go ahead and replace that image and not have to, you know, scramble to get a new image or do some Photoshop on the fly. Um, when it comes to, you know, the obvious, you know, the seven images that we're going to provide. We have like a protocol, like a structure that we follow. Um, we're always going to do a handful of lifestyle images. So that doesn't have to be with a real model. Through the use of simple shutter stock images, we can superimpose the product. Obviously you need the right angle. It all starts with the, with the, you know, the product photography, the ultimate image will only look as good as the product photography starts out looking. Um, you know, we have situations where someone will give us their 2-3 product images on a white background and it's just bad resolution and we'll say, Hey, we're sorry, but if you want us to do our job, we need you to give us better images. Like we can't, we can't do the work for for this unless you have, we have a certain quality. We need to be able to zoom up. I mean, you know, if we want to have a model holding it in their hands, we need an angle that kind of compliments that style and that. So [00:26:17] spk_0: it doesn't look like totally photoshopped and correct. Yeah. It's amazing what people expect Photoshop to be able to do right? Like can't you just Photoshop that elephant into my photo? What? Anyway? Sorry. Please continue. I [00:26:33] spk_1: always say that it's easier to Photoshop. Um a person into a background with the product than it is to Photoshop product into a person. Both can be done and trust me, Photoshop can do some pretty amazing things. Like there's some color correcting that I've seen that I could swear is a real photo. Um and there's some good, there's some good, you know, talent out there when it comes to to to graphic design. But I must say that it all starts with the quality of the image. Um so we're gonna always follow a structure of main image is gonna be a standard and following the protocol. Uh usually Image two and three is going to be a lifestyle image. Typically we're gonna go image four and five is gonna be more of an infographic um infographics are famous for like the you zoom up on a couple of things and put those circles and you know, you call out what it's what you're zooming up on. There's so many different ways to do that and so many different styles to do it in. Um We pride ourselves and always making sure that the infographic, I call it the virtual salesperson and you go to a store and you have a salesman to to help you, you know, buy the product, understand why you want to buy the product. Um The chance of you purchasing and purchasing the product is just going up. So the same thing goes for these images. You're gonna have the client looking at these images and you know, all of a sudden they come to one of the images and it shows you that this feature sets you aside from the competition and this is the spec and this is how it looks on your counter and you know, maybe have it compared to something that people have in their everyday life. So they know how big the product is and the questions that they're looking to answer during that shopping experience. You just want to do your best to answer those questions in the images. [00:28:17] spk_0: I have a question for you about the lifestyle of images two and three. So I I have a seven photo strategy that follows the customer sales cycle. So the mindset of the customer as they're going through and trying to make a buying decision. Our photos actually represent that. And so I'm curious as to why you put a lifestyle in the beginning because normally um the lifestyle represents their life now right with the product, happy, whatever they're doing right. Um and that is usually towards the end of the mindset um Where in the beginning they wonder is it for me, right? Like that's what they want to know first. Is this for me? Is this gonna solve my specific problem? And then, you know, so we get into that and then we go to quality and then we go to the infographics explaining like how to use or why user multiple uses. So I'm just curious as to why lifestyle upfront versus towards the end. [00:29:15] spk_2: Thanks for tuning into part [00:29:16] spk_1: one of this episode, join us [00:29:18] spk_2: every Tuesday at one PM pacific standard time for live Q. And [00:29:21] spk_1: A. And bonus [00:29:22] spk_2: content after the recording at cellar Roundtable dot com, sponsored by the ultimate software tool for amazon sales and growth seller S. C. 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[00:00:01] spk_0: welcome to the seller, roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with Andy Arnott and Amy Wees. [00:00:10] spk_1: Yeah, there's, there's a handful of things, there's there, you know, I did podcast this morning and I pretty much laid out all the potential options and, and, and it's a lot and we'll cover a view, right? It's not necessarily just choosing your wholesale pricing, You gotta have it, but what's within that? Right? It's not just a price, right? It's not just 50% off of of retail. You need to think through that long term strategy, where do you really want to take this? Do you want to be in Walgreens? Fantastic. That's a different discussion. Uh If you're like, hey, you know, not really, but I do want to be in a ton of independent retailers because that's kind of my brand. Fantastic. That's a different version as well. You're trying to think through what's the volume that you can expect on average, right? Because you might want to have volume based discounts. This is very common when I was a retailer, right? Um 0 to 100 you're paying 10 bucks, 100 1 to 2 50 you're paying 9 50 you need to think through that, right? This is why coming into your wholesale pricing and having enough margin is incredibly important. If you get this too low, you run the risk of a very large regional retailer as an example coming in and saying, hey, we want to buy 1000 units. It's a ton of money, You're super excited, but the price we're willing to pay his ex, well, one, you're a small brand compared to a massive regional retailer. So they have the power in this power dynamic situation. So it's pretty much like either accepted or don't and you don't want to find yourself in a weird position where you go, I could accept it and get the cash flow. But the issue is I'm not gonna make any money and by the way they're probably gonna want net 30, net 60, net 90. So now you got to cover the cash flow within that period of time. That's a problem. Right? So we want to think through like are you really positioned and ready Got for going B two b. So I I tend to recommend like the average benchmark and every industry is different luxury tends to have much higher mark ups and margins, but 40 to 60%. It's very common in B two B um as a margin. So I would say try to be a little bit on the higher end there, either through reducing cogs or getting your your retail price in a in a good good spot there. And obviously that's a lot of strategy there as well. The point here is you want to be able to have a flexible pricing structure. That makes sense for most retailers because you don't want to have a million dollar contract on the line and not be able to take it simply because the pricing doesn't make sense. And I've talked to enough brands that listen, like I talked to one the other day where they had a massive grocery chain come in and negotiate and she's like I'm taking that money like it's overnight, there were 75% of their wholesale B two B orders. I mean that's huge. And like of course they want that terms and you know, special discounted pricing because the volumes that they're gonna pull right, you're talking about going from an average of let's say 250 units B two B wholesale order too A 1000. I mean it doesn't seem like that big of a leap but it can be [00:03:03] spk_2: sometimes containers full of product from your supplier, which is [00:03:09] spk_1: correct. It's [00:03:10] spk_2: huge. You know, my client has a deal with the distributor and in another country and that distributor orders straight from there, they're one of the major distributors for their line of products um in in all of europe. And that distributor just orders straight from their their supplier. [00:03:34] spk_1: Get [00:03:35] spk_2: a check like it's just like stupid money right? So now, you know, they're starting to compare their what they sold on amazon with what they were able to do in wholesale and it's just it's like 80 20 and they're like for all the extra work that amazon is compared to the work that we had to do to get in with this distributor. Like it's a lot of work up front, like you're talking about with your pricing and getting everything ready. But now, once they get that, that pipeline going and they can keep it filled up. It's like a mailbox money. Its stupid, right? Sure? [00:04:10] spk_1: Sure. And a lot of the brands we've talked to, so all the brands, we talked to our direct to consumer, but they also happen to directly sell wholesale to retailers. That's like our sweet spot with the new product we're working on. Um you tend to see a process and systems issue as well, right? So, you know, amazon, you know, direct to consumer, you get that figured out, you're good, wholesale is a little different, right? So we already talked about, you gotta figure out pricing and make a few decisions there. But the process for a retailer to pay you money oftentimes gets overlooked. There's so much friction. Right? Listen, I've been a retailer, a small online retailer, um, buying directly from brands. Every brand was different and that's a problem because I would forget to be honest, like, I don't even know if, like, my pricing is up to date that this is an issue. And so some, I'm like, oh, that's right, I have to call you and give you my credit card number to place an order. This other one. I have to be fact, then this other one, there's a web portal. And so it becomes a problem. Right? The simple fact is you are in competition with other brands that that retailer could carry. So which one do they prefer, assuming profits and all that stuff is is equal. They prefer the one that has great communication that has a very clear process and structure in place for placing orders to where there is no guessing there is no, I know your price sheet says 20 bucks, but we negotiated an extra 10% off. Where do I see that? So we're just gonna remember, Okay, I hope you're you don't miss a day and then your team member doesn't apply that for me. Now, we got to go back and forth and now we're risking potentially the relationship itself, there's a whole lot here, right? Like you can you can see, I mean, do you want to accept net terms, can you afford to, is it net 30 net 60 net 90. What makes sense here? Right. When do you win? Don't you, are you going to run credit checks? Great. How are you going to do that? Right. How are you invoicing? Because you're not just getting an order, you're getting a purchase order, you gotta convert that over to an invoice and that's gonna come back and get paid, but it's a lot. And so what we're trying to work on with the new product is streamlining that process. So it is standard and it's just way easier. I mean, listen, placing a B two B order should be just as simple as placing a direct to consumer order. If I'm on Shopify, it should feel the exact same as if I'm on vin dr placing an order and that's kind of what we're looking at here, right? We're trying to say, listen, if you already have, you know, the relationships and wholesale in place, that's fantastic. Come on board will streamline things for you, but if you're brand new, we have a little bit of opinions built in so that it is much more clear cut and you don't have to worry about it as much because there is a lot to manage [00:06:36] spk_2: making it. Yeah, definitely. I mean what we do when we get wholesale orders, we just manually invoice in quickbooks [00:06:47] spk_1: and like you [00:06:47] spk_2: said, it's going to be getting those repeat orders and remembering to follow up and all of that is um it isn't easy, you know, it's a no. So yeah, I think making it easier is good. There are I know you guys are working on a product where you're building a wholesale side of Shopify so that people can basically take B2B wholesale orders on their Shopify, which is really, really powerful, so not [00:07:18] spk_1: necessarily um sorry to cut you off, not necessarily on Shopify. So basically, you know, we're Shopify is just an assumed thing for direct to consumer, right? If you're gonna go build your e commerce site, you're using Shopify, we want to build the B two B version of that. So it's its own application, it's its own whole thing and so there's it's a platform really and so there's two hemispheres. One hemisphere is the platform where you're able to manage your current relationships. Your retailers are able to see pricing specific to them if there is volume discounts, if you've pre negotiated anything, they can see inventory levels in real time if you have that connected as well. Right? So that side we're trying to reduce the friction of them placing a wholesale order while also reducing the friction for you to process it. Right? So we'll integrate with Quickbooks as an example. So you know, workflow here would be you would receive a wholesale order, you would review and say this all looks good to me, approve it, create the invoice and then that could be automatically sent over and and handled in quickbooks if you wanted. We're actually doing payment processing on platform. The second part there is how do you find retailers? Listen, this is a major major [00:08:26] spk_2: hurdle. So what I do right now is um I have a wholesale um section of my website and you can create an account all of that. But most retailers that I work with don't use that like they prefer to not have an account somewhere that they have to manage, right? They prefer to just invoice, you follow up with me. It's all good. Right. So what we've actually found um to work really, really well, but there's there's a there's a kind of either use a platform like Fair, where, where there's a lot of retailers that are already looking for you and they can, they can place an order right on platform and they can find you and place an order right on the platform. But a lot of retailers are not unfair. So then that's when that outreach comes in and you have to like find those things. So we use a system where we search, we scrape different platforms, right? We look at like yell for local businesses, that kind of thing. And then we have this database called any biz that has over 15 million businesses in it and we can search for various types of retailers around the world. And then it actually sends email campaigns out, but still you still have to follow up. You still have to do that. So, I would love to hear how you guys are finding the buyers. [00:09:58] spk_1: Sure. So this is interesting, This is hemisphere too. So, this is a marketplace you mentioned Fair. Fair is going to be one of our competitors. So Fair is very similar to amazon. Uh, the, the customers, the retailers are unfair affairs, customers, not your customers. Hence why they charge commission. Right? That commission eats into your margins, right? We already talked about margins already being slightly tight. We're not taking that approach here. So we're fundamentally against Commission were saying, hey, that's not the case here. What we are instead doing is a like a slack model if you will. Right? So it's based on active retailers. And so we were, you know, like Shopify, you don't say, hey, go to my Shopify site and buy my things talking to end consumer. You say go to my site. We want then drive to be that as well. We want you to say buy directly from me. So a lot of the brain's, we've talked about will say you can buy directly from me or you can buy unfair. What we want to say is you can, you know, when you say buy directly from me, you're actually talking about the van driver platform. Right? So there's some white labeling going on, [00:10:58] spk_2: correct. Exactly correct. [00:11:02] spk_1: We're the platform exactly. Now. We do have a marketplace. I think this is important. A lot of the brands we talked to when we asked them, how do they go about finding retailers? They're like, I kind of google and like, you know, but here's the thing, a lot of retailers don't have websites, massive ones do, but that's, you know, you're not going to just go to Walgreens dot com and be like, hey, I'd like to talk to you guys and they have a completely different process. Right? So You have good inbound on sites like fair because retailers are trying to find you, what when we looked at the data after talking with like 300 brands is you have a lot of first orders. But hardly any recurring. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th orders and the order volumes [00:11:41] spk_2: as well. [00:11:42] spk_1: And here's, here's the interesting bit I would ask you. Okay, so how much is your average cart total if you will for direct versus fair dramatically different? We're talking like 1500 bucks. 150 bucks. Okay, that's not a that's not a wholesale order. 100 50 bucks is not a wholesale order. That's just a very large bulk in retail discounted order. Right? So we don't have that incentive because we don't make money based on commission. We don't need you to lower to increase sales, don't need it to, I don't really care. So what we're saying is we charge based on active retailers. So if you work with 300 retailers, retailers in a year, but only 20 of them tend to place an order every single month. We only charge you for the 20. So now we're incentivized to say, hey, you tend to place an order every month, but it's been three months. Maybe you should place a restock order here. Right? So you mentioned retailers don't want to have an account. Let me explain that because I've been there. They don't want to have 1500 accounts. This is the problem because you're like, what was that long again? Oh my gosh, was it this way we are structuring then drive so that a retailer has a retailer account, there's a retailer side and a supplier side or a brand. A retailer can have connections. Just like a supplier can. [00:12:59] spk_2: So it's kind of like fair where they have that account and they're able to then search and they're able to pay right there and they don't have to correct it. And [00:13:08] spk_1: but we have connections. But here's the interesting bit, Fair says you're taking the order Right? Unless you can, unless you're going to cancel it. Like you don't, you don't, there's no relationship. It's purely transactional. But you know, as well as I do, B2B is relationship based. It's not transactional based. So for us, we said, Okay, there needs to be a layer where you both opt in just because somebody's willing to give you money doesn't necessarily mean it's good. This is a lot of what we heard with with the fair people we talked with where they're like, I'm getting orders, but it's like going to a farm, I sell things that are not farm related, just buying it in bulk, right? It's not whole. So I'm not really helping my brand. So for us we say, okay, a retailer can find a brand but a retailer, I'm sorry, a brand can also find a retailer. So it's very difficult for a brand to proactively go find new retailers to have conversations with and start sort of relationship with, it's easier for a retailer to find brands all day long. Right? I can just go on amazon and find brands but do the inverse. Hence why you have to scrape so much [00:14:12] spk_2: data like reach out on linkedin. We do different things. You know, you make phone calls, but you have to find out like a person who is going to be interested, you know, so it's, it is very difficult. [00:14:25] spk_1: But what if on the platform you go and you find a retailer and you know, the types of retailers that your brand and products do very well with, it could be a certain category, a certain size, certain geographical location. And you can go in search and find as many of those as you can that are on the platform and you reach out to the person who is in charge of that. It's no longer about trying to use hunter dot io to find the right email address and, and, and you know, hacking linkedin to figure out who's in charge here, The person who's running wholesale is running that account. And so what's great is you get to reach out and say, hey, I'd like to request to connect a connection. Once you both agree, it means you have a relationship now and they can be severed at any point, right? So if things go wrong and be like, hey, like this is not good. You can no longer buy from me, but you get to reach out. And so there's this interesting problem where when you're getting started, especially as a smaller brand and you're wanting to get one to go B two B wholesale, you don't have enough brand recognition yet to have retailers search for you. They might be looking for products like yours, but we want them to look for your brand, your products that's different. But how do you get there? It's a lot of outbound to be honest. It's a lot of sales when I talk to brands, they're like, I hit up the trade shows, I do sales, I hired a sales person to do it right. But what if you could just sit down and have a straightforward process where you can say, I know what does well what kind of retailers we work with that, that has super high throughput all that stuff and just go find more and start having great conversations and eventually over time they start to find you as well because you've built up that brand recognition, here's what's interesting as a second order effect. You do that enough with the small the medium retailers, large box retailers start to take notice. Yeah, because [00:16:04] spk_2: you're getting traffic in the store that they're not getting because they have interesting products. That's the reason that they all hate amazon because there's so many cool products and that are not available in their stores and the brands that are on amazon are not big enough to sell in their stores and are not set up to sell in their stores. So that's it's really interesting. So you're still in beta, we can, I love your passion about this platform and a lot of our listeners are going to be excited about checking it out when it comes, but what is your advice for, you know, we're, we're almost at our our today, What's your advice for folks right now, where they're at um about getting, getting started in that B2B relationship, like, what do they need to do? So when your platform is up and operational and great, what do they need to do? What are some D I Y methods for getting started and getting moving in, selling your products, BTB? [00:17:14] spk_1: Yeah, there's three major pillars in my mind that that really will set you up for success and that don't need to be perfect, but need to be at least somewhat thought of one is your pricing strategy, right? This, this is like fundamental, if you get this wrong, a lot of second order things start to go wrong as well, right? You don't, you don't want to find yourself saying, oh, this is an incredible opportunity, I want to go that route, it sounds fantastic and then realize you just don't have the margin for it, it's not going to work, right? So if you're, if you have a current product line and you want to make wholesale work, they're great start there and see if you can make it work. If not, unfortunately, you might neither need to raise your price. Which you might have needed to do for a while anyways lower your cogs, Maybe you are paying too much. It's always a good conversation to have and to think through um or launching new products that are a little bit more tailored to be able to go. So here's a second, you know, kind of strategy here is you have wholesale items that are really meant for branding to get people to like your brand to then search your other things and then by your other things directly to you. As in consumer. Right? So you have a lot of opportunity here, but I think you need to get it right, you need to think it through, right? And it's not just the price, it's recommended M. S. R. P. Do you want to have something like a map if you're you know um at well anywhere really map is applicable, but you know that makes sense if you want to have volume based discounts because you anticipate being unable to sell 1000 units a month to a retailer. Great. Think that through, you don't have to get it perfect, but think it through and there's a lot of different methods here, but there's no need to make it super complex, You know, dual pricing is very simple, right? This is why we charge for retail across the board, whether you're buying it for me or one of my retailers and this is what I charge for wholesale and it all makes sense where, you know, everybody's getting enough margin. # two is really the systems you need to think through, how are you going to receive the order? What you don't want to have happen is a retailer get excited that you, you sourced yourself and say, great, how do I, how do I submit in order to go? Um, send me an email, right? It's like it, you know, it can work. But listen, you're stepping into a different world now, this is not just amazon, this is, you're talking to professionals now, you, right? So like every interaction is a reflection of you and your brand that you're building and you gotta think through that, right? Because if that retailers like, it wasn't really that good of an experience, it seems kind of risky. Well maybe they're not going to come back and that becomes a massive blow 12, You know what you've been working on, but to the business itself. So you want to think through, how do I make this easy as possible? Enroll player? Right? Set up a simple process to be like, okay, that was a retailer, I go to pay me money or, you know, submit a P. O what does that look like for me? How many steps am I having to do and let's work to reduce that. And obviously you're gonna do a basic beta, if you will, and you're gonna launch that and you're gonna say, okay retailers that I've found, you can submit orders and then you have feedback with them. Hey, what did you like about the process? What did you hate? What was too time consuming? Right? You got to think through all these things. And then the third one is really thinking through how you're finding retailers, right? You gotta go get them. You know, it's sales 101, it's not the sexiest thing. But if you want to jump start that, you're gonna have to put in a lot of time and a lot of effort to find retailers, it does take time and it's not just get a retailer, you're trying to find the right types of retailers, right? You don't want hundreds of retailers that place one order and then never come back. That's not how you build a sustainable business. And that's what we're seeing a lot on with the brands that we talked about with, some of these marketplaces, like I get a ton of orders. But if I look at the 2nd and 3rd, they don't exist. I'm like, great, that's not a relationship, right? Because now you're constantly have to find new retailers instead. It's kind of like a portfolio, right? You really want to build a nice relationship with a handful of retailers that are consistent [00:21:05] spk_2: And that's the Amazon because sales are consistent. So if we want to have the consistency off of Amazon, we have to work towards that. And I love that 1,000%, I think all the way through the process, okay, someone wants to make a wholesale order for me today. What the heck do I do? Right, inventory located, How do I even invoice for that? How do I collect a credit card payments? [00:21:29] spk_1: What if they ask you for 30? [00:21:31] spk_2: Right? [00:21:31] spk_1: What if they ask you for net 30? Are you gonna be like, oh let me figure that out or hey actually we don't do that right? You got to think these things through. Um you know, I was talking to that, that retailer or the brain, I was talking about earlier where they had a massive regional brand or retailer come through place a huge order and they want net 60 and she's like one cash flow is going to be tough to inventory. That's dramatically more than like they doubled basically the volume she moves and she's like, I don't even have that right now and it's like in covid, right? So like logistics supply chain issues exist and she's like, but this is my only shot at making this relationship work, right? So if you can foresee some of those pitfalls, you can put things in line like that, you know, having a cash flow buffer, you know, slowly starting to increase your inventory [00:22:18] spk_2: levels. Exactly, exactly think through what if I got in order to actually we got an order from wal mart on the shelf and we couldn't we could not fulfill it because it was too much for our logistics team. We were not set up to keep this shelf stocked. So that was the thing is they really wanted us to like stay in and keep visiting and keep the shelves stocked and I was like huge opportunity but we're not ready for that, right? We would have to change a lot of our supply chain would have to change the way we handle logistics. And so you know for us the smaller retailers are better because we can we can fulfill small bulk orders, right? Um but then that allowed us the opportunity to really think through okay, when we grow to this level, what does that even look like? You know and how what would we need to change in order to fulfill a container load. Especially one of our products that's partially made in the usa partially made in china are packaging comes from somewhere else, it's like yeah, you know [00:23:33] spk_1: a [00:23:34] spk_2: lot, we have to change all of our operations, move everything over to our factory in in Dallas texas and get all that going right? So I love what you're the example you gave of think all the way through it. Run a beta, get it going, start small, get moving, think about your pricing strategy first, what do your quotes look like all of that? Okay and then start making your first sales right, pretty much start reaching out, but you sometimes only get one chance to make that first impression. So you want to think all the way through this before you go ahead and start Dylan, it's been so great having you on today. I'm so stoked about what you guys are working on in this unique um, market opportunity. And I love that you thought all the way through this and you've really thought, what is going to make you different from the fairs of the world, you know, and those types of things and I think that you've nailed it. Um, and I'm excited to see where it goes. Um, so tell everybody, how can they find you, how can they check, follow this opportunity to drive this building? Um, tell everybody how they do that. [00:24:54] spk_1: Yeah. So if you're, if you are a reseller by happenstance, come check us out at dot or dot com, that's G O A U R A dot com um, for, for the wholesale side, it's just been dr E N D R I V E dot com. Um, News site is launched, you can't join quite yet. Um, basically what we're doing is we're in a closed beta with a handful of brands that we've been having beta test as we've been building out prototypes. Um, but we have a public launch date for 2 to 22. So in february early, february will be going live, where any brand, any retailer is able to jump in And that's when we'll really start pushing for attraction. So yeah, you know, just keep keep an eye out. We don't have a form for you to sign right now, but keep an eye out on been dr.com, we'll do a big push of course, um on 2-22. [00:25:40] spk_2: Amazing. And we'll have to have you back on the show, you get that going. But your advice today has been incredible for brands. I think that all of us, you know, we want to make more sales, especially where a lot of us are trying to get all of our eggs out of the amazon basket. I love that um that you're offering this opportunity and that you've given us a lot of great advice and some things to think about so that we can be more ready to do that. Um awesome. Well, anything else, any other piece I love to ask what is your your we always ask at the at the end of our shows what is keeping you motivated right now. So, are you listening to any podcasts? Did you read a book recently that was just like ah ha moments. [00:26:31] spk_1: Yeah, interesting. I really like it's going out of style. It it's actually a spending problem because it's like just books arriving, you know, the biggest thing that's been helpful for me is is building the right routine. So I'm going through a flow of course right now. So, steven Kotler talks a lot about flow. Um I I was was a researcher and then discovered the flow inflow and just being like in the zone. So he has this incredible course and a lot of it's related to flow, but a lot of it also covers like productivity and good habits. And so one of the things that they talk about is the, the motivation stack and so basically what you're doing, if you're taking your MTP, which is a massively transformative purpose, this is like if I can do this in my lifetime, holy crap, life is amazing, massive. Then you break that down into a high, hard goal, which is like within the next 5 to 10 years, right? So you're reverse engineering from a very high level and so my process there is each week um each month, each year I set another layer here and then I'm trying to make sure that my weekly goals basically link all the way up. So I know that I'm on the right path, even when it's tough. You know, listen, we're all in business. It's tough at times, but it's nice to know that I'm not just working for today. I'm working towards this incredibly massively transformative purpose. Um that gets me super fired up. [00:27:55] spk_2: Yeah. Which research has shown if your goals aren't big enough, you're just going to procrastinate. So I love what I do is that um is the best year ever exercise every year. Every year. I look at Ok, what would make this the best year ever? Really think through that on a personal and business and and you know, growth level and then I work backwards from that and I set up my goals and then I do my quarterly planning, monthly planning, weekly planning and even chilly planning to get things moving. So I love that, I'm going to definitely look that up. What was that called? The program that you're going [00:28:34] spk_1: Through? It's called 00. Too dangerous. [00:28:38] spk_2: Zero to dangerous. [00:28:40] spk_1: It's pretty, it's like eight weeks so it's like very intense but it's great. It's been insane actually. Yeah, it's really cool. Like it goes super in depth on a lot of things like burnout um proofing. Um you know, it goes a lot over, you know, positive psychology basics like it covers it quite a bit. So it's pretty cool. [00:28:59] spk_2: I love it. Anything that challenges your thought process and your goals I think is a really positive, awesome thing. Alright everyone. Thank you Dylan for being here. Thank you all for being here on the show and thanks for listening. Thanks for rating, reviewing, subscribing to the podcast and we will see you guys next time on the seller roundtable. Bye. [00:29:26] spk_1: Thanks for tuning in, join us every Tuesday at one PM pacific standard time for live Q. And A. And bonus content [00:29:33] spk_0: after the recording [00:29:34] spk_1: at cellar roundtable dot com, sponsored by the [00:29:37] spk_0: ultimate software tool for amazon sales [00:29:40] spk_1: and growth seller s [00:29:41] spk_0: c o dot com [00:29:42] spk_1: and Amazing [00:29:43] spk_0: at home dot com. 

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Transcription in this episode:
[00:00:01] spk_0: Welcome to the seller, roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies with Andy Arnott and Amy Wees. [00:00:08] spk_1: What's [00:00:10] spk_2: up everybody? I'm hanging out here with my friend Dylan carter. We haven't hung out in a while and Dylan's been working on some crazy stuff, so I'm excited about that, I'm super tired today, I don't know why, but I'm drinking coffee this afternoon to try to stay awake [00:00:29] spk_1: for me too. Are you really? We get these triple shot La colombe coffees and they're delicious. They're really and they're small but it's, it's supposed to be like [00:00:44] spk_2: you're in florida now, [00:00:45] spk_1: right? No, no, so so we're in boston. Um no, it's a pretty big, I mean there's a there's they're not like super out there, but they have a few cafes here. But yeah, you can get on in most grocery stores now. They are. And saying like I just got another shipment of three boxes of 24 because we go through them so frequently [00:01:06] spk_2: your way past the single cup. Yeah, for me, I can't have more than like two cups a day, two cups is like my [00:01:18] spk_1: mask. So I've [00:01:20] spk_2: got my seller meet up cup that says being a Ceo is easy, it's like riding a bike except the bike is on fire, you're on fire, everything is on fire. That's so true, so accurate, so [00:01:37] spk_1: That's so cool. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I think I got 45 minutes of sleep last night, if I'm being honest, so I'm like nice and wired up. Yeah, it was a weird night, like went to bed, you know, we're so we, we pushed out some something new last night and we were up pretty late and so by the time I got home and I took a hot bath, started to relax, I was like alright, I'm good, I'm sleeping now and uh I have this habit of laying on an acupuncture mat while watching star trek next generation to fall asleep. It's like, it's a beautiful mixture and uh lay there and just Laid there for like seven hours and then my alarm went off. I was like, this is terrible, but it happens not frequently, but it does. So yeah, it's all [00:02:20] spk_2: good. So I'm doing this thing lately because I was not getting a lot of sleep either and I was just, my routine was just sucking like I wasn't taking good care of myself and you know, it just, we we get out of a good routine sometimes and um and so I was like getting up in the morning and I'd be like right on facebook on my phone and I was just like, not taking again, not taking care of myself whatever. So my husband rashid and I, we came up with this strategy because we wanted to also show our kids that, you know, it's before we mindlessly escape into video games or our apps or whatever. We wanted to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves, our environment and our mental health and our commitment. So those are the four things. So mental health is number one. So we read or do like prayer, meditation. And then the second thing is self care. So exercise, taking care of your body, all that kind of stuff and your, your hygiene, all the stuff that kids sometimes need a reminder on. And us adults sometimes need not as strong of a reminder when it comes to the video department, but, but our kids, you know, need that. And then our number three thing that we're doing is taking care of our environment, taking care of the things around us, making sure that where we are is nice and then finally our commitments and once we're done with all of those things, then we're allowed to like mindlessly escape into video games or netflix or whatever. But it's been tough. It's been like every time I want to get on facebook around social or whatever and just get that quick dopamine Tiktok, I'm like, okay, crap, I gotta take care of myself first. Fine. [00:04:14] spk_1: It's funny you mentioned that. So I struggle with that as well. I do active recovery protocols and each person has their own thing. So I have one in the morning, which I call my power our kind of thing. And so it's, it's a cold shower. I meditate for 15 minutes and then I do uh, the five minute journal. I do, I do the app actually. So I'm doing a bit of gratitude and just kind of like preparing myself for the day from like a, a uh what's the term, I can't think of the term now basically [00:04:47] spk_2: before your, before you get stressed feed your like putting things into perspective for. [00:04:56] spk_1: Exactly. And I've deleted facebook, deleted instagram, haven't jumped on Tiktok. So I have no social media apps outside of Pinterest on my phone. Um And then midday I do another Active recovery Protocol protocol. Typically I'll do like box breathing, I'll do another 15 minute meditation session. It's basically like, you know, as you come into the day, you have a ton of energy and then it just hardcore depletes and then you need to replenish it, especially like with what we're doing, we're moving so fast right now and I'm managing so many different things that, you know, it's, it's draining at times, right? Just because there's so much volume of it and it's never ending that I'll take a midday I'll eat and I'll go do this. And then in the evenings I have like a power down ritual kind of thing where like the whole next day planned out all my task for all my calendar, like even broken [00:05:41] spk_2: down all night thinking about correct. Yeah, that's the plan. Exactly. I'm going to bed [00:05:49] spk_1: and just go to bed Exactly. Which did not happen last night, but that's okay. [00:05:54] spk_2: Well, I suppose we should kick on off this pocket. I just want to join us. We're going to actually talk today about um a lot of fun stuff we're gonna talk about pricing because Dylan created re pricing at, which is cool. But in pricing has changed and so has reselling on amazon um lately. So that's cool. But Dylan is also working on helping people sell their products B two B wholesale. So we're going to talk about that and that's one of you know the topics that's near and dear to my heart as well. So I love that. We get to nerd out about that today if you guys want to join us in the zoom. I'm here with caramel, scott and Vlad um as well as Dylan and um and you guys can join us at cellar roundtable dot com forward slash live. We're here hanging out and I'm going to hit the recording button and we're going to get this party started. Are we ready? [00:06:49] spk_1: Let's do [00:06:49] spk_2: it. [00:06:51] spk_1: Game face. [00:06:52] spk_2: Game face. Hey, what's up everybody? This is Amy is here and my buddy and we are not is not here today. He has a sick kid. So you know, he's excused today. There's a lot of sickness going around lately but we're here with our friend Dylan carter and we're on episode 138 of the cellar roundtable. I'm so excited to talk to our old friend Dylan again and find out what he's been up to and what's going on in his world and there's some really exciting things. Um So we're going to talk today with Dylan about pricing, Like pricing is a thing, right? We've noticed it on the private label side. We've noticed it on the reselling side. So we're definitely gonna talk about some pricing trends today. We're also going to talk about setting up B2B channels, wholesale channels for your private label products. Dill is working on a special project there, so stay tuned. Let's get into it. Welcome. Dylan. Please tell us a little bit about you for the folks. Sure don't know who you are. [00:08:05] spk_1: Yeah, that was a lot of build up. I like it. I'll see if I can live up to it. Um Yeah, a bit about myself. So, it was an amazon seller for a number of years, like most amazon sellers, I started with R. A. Just to kind of test the waters right? Um I kind of wanted to just prove that it was real because I'm like, I heard it on podcasts and we'll see improved. It was real. I was like, all right, this is cool at the time. It was a full time personal trainer and I would spend every free hour I could sourcing and that was fun. But I got to a point where um with the personal training side I I decided to move away from that. Um One, it just, for me, my life always comes down to the scalability, right? So it's hard to scale your time. And I had this weird conundrum where I built relationships with my clients, but the only way to make more money was to charge them more money and that wasn't really a route I cared to go, it just felt kind of conflicting. And so I was like, you know what, I want to find something a little bit more scalable and physical products was that thing, and so I quit that, you know, triple down on retail arbitrage and then just spent 10 hours a day sourcing. Then he quickly realized, okay, it's still my time, right? Like I might be able to get sales in my sleep, but I'm still having to spend 10 hours a day sourcing and it, you know, it wasn't a whole lot less hours that I was working compared to being a personal trainer. So I was like, what's the next most scalable thing? Well, in my mind it was online arbitrage, right? I can do it from my home, like I don't have to jump around and you know, it's easier to buy and then shipped to, you know, my house and deal with everything. So it went that route and it was interesting, you know, I wasn't that great at online arbitrage if I'm being honest, um and then hit a fork in the road a major win, 1st 1st 1 in this story where I was like, okay, this is cool, but it's not something that I think I could grow into like a sustainable great business, so I need to figure out what I want to do business model wise. And so I thought, okay, I got wholesale or private label for me at the time, private label was, you know, going to cost a lot more money than I had available and it was going to test, right? It's like, I realistically had one at bat and I was like, listen, I'm paying the bills with our a right now and you know, not living lavishly. So one Abbott doesn't work for me, I need multiple. And so that's when I started to consider wholesale and I realized with wholesale, I could cash flow more quickly, right? So I could, I could be paying myself actual money in the salary within 30 60 90 days, depending on how quickly I could figure it out. And so I said a rule for myself, I said, I'm not allowed to buy inventory even if it's profitable unless it's also you gotta figure it out, burn the bridge, that's what I did. Um And you know, struggled for 3 to 4 months, It was really tough and eventually I did figure it out and grew that business where I was self sustaining, you know, it wasn't a lavish life, but you know, I at that point decided to go back to college full time as well. I had left a toxic relationship and was like, I gotta work on me, you know, So I went back to school full time actually as a finance major um at U. N. F. Did that full time while running the amazon business and it was great, life was awesome. And then I was talking with as many seven figure wholesale amazon sellers that I could find and I was like, hey, I'll pay you for your time, it's all good. And only one of them responded back and that was my now co founder James, he's like, hey, don't worry about it, let's just jump on. And jazz was like, all right, sounds good. So we started to meet once a week just holding each other accountable kind of like a mastermind, right? Just just him. And I, and initially I found out he actually had a degree in computer science and he was a full time college student as well. Um and so he kind of teased the idea of software, I'm like that sounds interesting, you know, we'll see here. And he had built out been dr crn dot com already and it was cool because you know, independently we had built our own systems for managing how we find suppliers, you know, using spreadsheets, tremolo for me. And he basically built a web application that did that but pulled in case and information, which is fantastic. And so we joined forces. We actually met on instagram, which is funny, we worked together for a year and a half on the business before meeting in person. Um and we learned a lot, We build a facebook group, we taught, we, we used to teach wholesale sourcing live for free, every Tuesday, I mean for 22 plus years I think. So we, we built up a nice audience. We, we had learned a lot. We failed tremendously on the software side because we had no idea what the heck we were doing within dr crm, it still exists, which is cool, you know, we stopped paying customers there, but uh, we decided we wanted to kind of up the ante, we wanted to take on a larger challenge and that challenge ended up becoming re pricing. We realized, you know, the area that needed a little bit more innovation um and could be done better and was within the wheelhouse that we were capable of achieving was re pricing and that's when we started working on aura. So James pretty much locked himself away. That's actually him right right back there, um, locked himself in the room for 80 hours a week for eight or nine months and built out the entire thing himself. Like I'm not an engineer, so I couldn't help, but we, you know, I flew out to his college between semesters on winter break and we launched aura Together and then I flew back and went back to two classes and yeah, so we, that took off, we've been growing that like crazy. Now we're a team of six, we gotta have our own office in boston, you know, so we're all co located here. Um, and we've got some stealth stuff I guess you can call it that we're about to launch. So it's been a lot, it's been a lot. [00:13:28] spk_2: I love it. So you're right down the road from taking metrics and [00:13:34] spk_1: so there are two blocks from my apartment actually [00:13:40] spk_2: I'm with have, you don't know, you haven't [00:13:44] spk_1: met [00:13:45] spk_2: e commerce chris. [00:13:48] spk_1: I don't think so. [00:13:50] spk_2: He, he does a conference called seller velocity. Um, and his company is e commerce chris and he is a former Amazonian and so he has a lot of connections and he helps sellers with reinstatement, suspensions, that kinds of things, account management, that kind of stuff and he's just really, really cool guy to know. So I'm going to have to make that introduced. I mean I just got a christmas gift from e commerce chris and it was honestly the coolest christmas gift that I've ever gotten from that one. And so you know, he's a good guy to know because he sends christmas gifts anyway. No, he's just a good guy to, he's been on the podcast a couple of times, a good friend of ours but I'm gonna have to make that I'm going to write it down, I'm gonna [00:14:44] spk_1: make you appreciate [00:14:45] spk_2: it because you got to know him and especially with what you're working on because I spoke with, I spoke at cellar velocity all about selling your private label products in retail stores in brick and mortar and that was a big hit. And so with the project you're working on, that would be good to go. You know, let's just talk about pricing for a moment on the private label side, pricing has actually become a thing. It didn't used to become a thing, but it just didn't used to be a thing. Um, but now amazon is starting to do competitor research and starting to look at other, like if you're selling on walmart For whatever price and then you drop your Amazon price or you raise your Amazon price. Um, you can get kind of a pricing violation alert in the skin cause problems. The other thing with private label is if you change your price any more than 2% of the last buy box price and you're not using the sale field, you can lose the buy box to yourself. People are like, well I'm the only one in the Bible. Amazon doesn't care. They're going to put you in the other sellers category and people have to click other sellers. So that's what's been going on in private label. So pricing is important in private. [00:16:13] spk_1: We can talk about that too because I think there's a lot to talk about just for that. Let's [00:16:18] spk_2: talk about it. What have you seen on that? [00:16:21] spk_1: So it's less about what I've seen and just more like what I've what I've noticed with a lot of sellers. So I've never done private labels. So take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt, please. Um I know a lot of private label sellers that do it full time. And there's this interesting issue where people, somebody will say I'm a private liberal sailor. I don't fully know what that means. Sometimes because sometimes it means you're building your own brand, it's good. Sometimes it means white labeling, meaning you took the exact same product and you threw your label on it and that's like there's no differentiation, right? So let's talk about that because that fundamental assumption is incredibly important. A brand exists. The term brand exists for a reason that's why people pay other people for brand marketing, it increases the perceived value. So here's what's interesting you have, I think a lot of people that are really doing white label, they're not really creating a company, a brand. And so [00:17:18] spk_2: taking a commodity products and they're slapping their label on it, which is white labeling an existing product. And suddenly you have many people competing for the same by box. [00:17:31] spk_1: And it's not even just that, it's like now you're competing solely on price [00:17:38] spk_2: and reviews. [00:17:38] spk_1: So here's an issue here is an issue I jumped on the podcast this morning, talking literally about wholesale pricing strategy, right? You don't just sit down and say, okay, well my cogs are this I wanna charge X. And like that's a cool gap. Like you need to think that through a little bit more strategically, especially if you want to go B two B. Now, you gotta factor in that, that margin hit, right? And that's okay. But what I find is a lot of people get a little too focused on the amazon side and they basically create a brand that is over fit for amazon, [00:18:09] spk_2: right? [00:18:10] spk_1: And that becomes a problem. Look at anchor, anchor started [00:18:13] spk_2: on amazon, [00:18:14] spk_1: correct? And you end up shooting yourself in the foot right? Anchor started on amazon and they did it right? But they also got off amazon as well, right? It wasn't just like I'm gonna be on amazon and like that's the whole shebang. I think that's a great launch thing, right? It's a great way to build a brand, get buzz, there's demand built in. You don't have to go build that out yourself. But here's the thing when you, when you transition, when you shift over from white label too, let's not even call it private label, let's just call it building a brand. That's really all you're doing when you do that, you approach things completely different. It's like what I tell people with wholesale when you just approach a brand and say, I want to give you money and buy your things and sell them good luck when you approach it as a relationship and you go more deep into the business aspects of it. The game is different. You're playing a different game, right? So a lot of people say, oh, there's so many sellers on, on amazon it's saturated. No, it's not. There's a ton of sellers but there's nobody really competing. It's a very small number and you gotta keep that in mind, [00:19:08] spk_2: control your price because you're offering something that a customer cannot get elsewhere and that something matches the pain point and that something is something you can protect. You. Now own your price point and you own your strategy um and you can build in the margin to be able to [00:19:29] spk_1: scale very quickly. You can position the brand, the product, right? So I'll give you a great example. I just brought brought, just bought a new dock kit Because I want to see a little bit smaller because I travel once a month and I'm like, I'm sick of packing a suitcase. I'm just gonna do it all. It's a weekend trip. Anyways, I'm gonna pack it into a briefcase and I was looking in, listen, there's there's a ton of private label options on there that are 12 and 15 bucks. I paid 50. Why? Because I went to, I found Bell Roy which is a brand and I could tell that the quality was good and it felt like a brand, not just some something, somebody put up, it's different. I literally think about that as a consumer. I literally paid dramatically more money for a product, it's not, it's not cost anymore. Right? That used to be the case and I don't think it is anymore. But think about what that enables brand or bell Roy to do. They can go wholesale now. It probably cost them $15 to manufacture, They're selling it retail for 50. Absolute. A retailer will say, Hey, I'll buy it and I'll make a $20 profit on it. Cool. There's, they sort of profitable margins. Right? So your pricing strategy, when you're, when you're talking about creating and bringing on a new product line needs to take a little bit more time. In my opinion, I, I see a lot of cells when, when I asked, how do they approach it? They go, oh, I see the market and then I see the price point. I'm like, I get it logically, but I think you're missing the point a lot of times, right? It's not just, well they seem to be around 20 bucks, But like what could you do to make it worth 50 and people be excited for it? That's interesting. Right? Right? [00:21:01] spk_2: And you also have to be careful with that too though because There are certain there's certain markets that, that don't do well if you're just because you're building a brand doesn't necessarily mean somebody's willing to pay $30 more for your particular toilet. [00:21:19] spk_1: So [00:21:20] spk_2: It's very important to make sure that you are, that you can actually meet that price. And what I love to tell people is look at the market price. The the you know, if I'm selling something that is, you know, a fancy coffee mug or something or a fancy water bottle, whatever, right? And if I'm selling this, I'm going to look at the market price for stainless steel. Really nice. Okay. Probably around $20 for something like this, right? And now I'm going to differentiate it in a way that matters to the customer and in a way that I can protect my brand and my price and I'm going I might go a little bit higher price. But what I want to do is I want to make it so easy for that customer to [00:22:05] spk_1: choose me? [00:22:06] spk_2: I want them to go, oh my gosh, look at that. Yeah, it's almost the same price. It's just a little bit more, but it needs my need and it's a real [00:22:17] spk_1: brand, right? It's the value relative to what I'm paying, right? [00:22:21] spk_2: Exactly. If you feel like they got with the value that they paid for that product. So, you know, if if they're unboxing experience and they get it, it's like that expectation versus reality [00:22:35] spk_1: thing, exactly [00:22:36] spk_2: what is this? It's terrible. Right? So, I love it. And how was your unboxing experience with Delroy? Was [00:22:44] spk_1: it was great. Yeah, honestly, it was fantastic. Like, at no point was was I like, paid too much for this, I was like, that's about, right? I'm not like ecstatic, it's a toiletry kit, right? But I'm like, no, that's that fits my needs. I'm good like, and I'm happy with it. And I'm glad I didn't get something cheaper because that's what I currently have. Well [00:23:03] spk_2: that you bring that up though in terms of pricing, I agree. Like so many people are the other problem that I see people do with pricing, especially when they are white labeling or private labeling, is they'll pay too much to the supplier. So they're basically shopping on Alibaba, right? And they're reaching out to all these suppliers and they're like, how much is it? That's not the conversation you want to have with the supplier and then you're immediately telling that supplier that you're a Nube and they're gonna give you a crazy price because they're not going to expect to get a reorder from you and you're going to pay this crazy price. And then I have people coming to me going, I hope I can sell it for $50. And I go, well, wait, this toiletry bag looks the same as this $12.01. What makes you think you're going to be able to sell it for 50? I don't know, I'm hoping I can do better photos [00:24:00] spk_1: okay. But the [00:24:02] spk_2: price is $12 for this type of toiletry bag, right? So that's the that's the other thing that I see people doing. So when you're when you're thinking about your pricing, you need to look at the market price, you need to look at the value you offer, you need to make sure it matters to the customer and then you need to what we do and our program is divided by seven. And if we can't source that product at scale divided by seven, then we go this is not the product for us, right? Unless it's a more expensive product, then we'll go down to like a five X. [00:24:36] spk_1: Right? Makes sense. Makes sense. But [00:24:39] spk_2: That way we have that that built in margin to not only Amazon margins now, like it's like 40% for fees and everything else. It's crazy. So [00:24:48] spk_1: but but pause on that for a moment, right? So a lot of people complain about fees and listen, I get it, I paid them a lot as well. My thing is like it's it's all about perspective, right? Like what you're really doing is you're giving amazon a B two B commission to get your sales. That's all you're really doing. So it's like if you look at um brand or a retailer Margins, it tends to be 40-60 of a markup. That sounds about right. So actually it's actually on the cheaper end of what it would be if you go B two B. But but what's interesting is we have no no qualms about saying, oh well this retailer that's brick and mortar, wants a 60% margin. Yeah, I'll pay that all day long. Wait hold on. There's no difference. The only difference is amazon can command far more demand then your average retailer cam. Yes. Well your perspective [00:25:48] spk_2: but they can't command as much demand demand as a major retailer totally different shelves. Like that's life changing money. That will make [00:25:59] spk_1: your [00:26:00] spk_2: sales look like a [00:26:01] spk_1: penny. Yeah, I mean a [00:26:05] spk_2: Lot to go to get there right, we're not just gonna start just like we did on Amazon with one product, one you know one little market. You know, we're going to start with one little brick and mortar retailer. One online retail, one small online retailer. Um So I love that. So as far as pricing goes on the, you know, you guys have the aura re pricer um what's going on? I want to know what's going on on the reseller side because I've noticed that amazon really is putting a a premium on making sure that you're a registered brand. Like if you're not a registered brand on amazon, your life is hard. You can't advertise in half the places you can't and now they're starting to really lock down brands and make it very hard for resellers. So what are you seeing in that market and how does that work? [00:27:02] spk_1: So let's on the brand registry side more on, I mean this is just everybody but like the insurance side. I think everybody kind of got caught off guard where they're like prove that you have insurance right now. And so there's a lot of anxiety. [00:27:12] spk_2: Right? [00:27:13] spk_1: Sure. So for us the the interesting thing is during covid the algorithm for the buy box kind of shifted. So you started to say okay well people can't ship things into FB. A. So that's a no go merchant fulfilled is an option. So we're gonna prioritize merchant fulfilled. So we had a lot of sellers that were basically what the strategy used to be is if you're F. B. A. And the current by box price is FDA you would either match re price below by penny. We can talk about that. Um And why? That's not a bad thing. I know it's a misconception but um if if if it was a merchant fulfilled you actually re price above by 2 to 3% and you'd be able to pull the buy box up because technically you're a better offer based at least on the shipping time right? Shipping and handling time that changed though. And covid, I mean most of our users transition from FDA to merchant fulfilled and they're like I can still offer two day shipping, I can't do it nationwide obviously but there is such thing as a regional by box yes we typically only see the one like for us because we're using the amazon M. W. S. A. P. I we only see one by box, there is no like concept of regional but they exist. And so what's interesting is um a lot of sellers once that started to shift back over in favor of FDA once once the logistics problem was was kind of solved sort of flooding inventory in. Well why would you do that? You get more distribution which means you get more access to regional buy boxes. So wholesale is a great example. If you're you know moving let's say 100 units a month on average bump it to 1 51 75 most likely you'll find as as long as you're going into new fulfillment centers, you get access to new um regional buy boxes which is super important. Right? If you look at the algorithm there it hasn't changed a ton. I mean you know the biggest thing that that we recommend and we've unfortunately had to tell a few users hey like no repressing tool can help you right now because your seller feedback is so bad. Right? So repressing is a thing where it's not a silver bullet, nothing ever is, It's a multiplier. Right? So if you have amazing seller feedback, if you have, you know goodbye cost. If you have enough skews, it's a no brainer. It totally makes sense and it's gonna pay itself off within a few days. But if you come in you're like I have to skews um I overpaid on all of them. The buy box is below my buy cost. Um and I have 20 seller feedback. Yeah I can't do anything for you. You have deeper problems, right? So like most things in business it comes down to the fundamentals right? Like it's just getting the fundamentals [00:29:41] spk_2: right where you can move the needle right? [00:29:43] spk_1: Yes. Absolutely. [00:29:45] spk_2: Okay, that makes sense. And then um the other thing that I wanted to ask, you owe something that's really cool for private label sellers and um brand registered sellers is the pricing strategy. That is a lot of fun. Is you know that big red banner that shows up over a price, That's when something is at its lowest price in 30 days. So if you guys want the banner over your over your sales you can and that can that can sometimes make a big difference. Um Just make sure you just lower the price slightly so that it's the lowest price in 30 days. Um If you're going to lower the price more than 2% of the last five box price though, make sure that you're using the sale. Um The sales field in the offer tab of your listing so that you don't lose the buy box to yourself. Um So that is something to think about in terms of pricing. Um We talked about wholesale pricing like leaving enough margin, how you should think about pricing your products in the market, awesome. Anything else about pricing um that we should know before we move on to adding a b to B channel. [00:31:06] spk_0: Thanks for tuning into Part One of this episode, join [00:31:09] spk_1: Us every Tuesday at one [00:31:10] spk_0: PM, pacific standard time for live Q and A. And bonus content after the recording at cellar Roundtable dot com, sponsored by the ultimate software tool for amazon sales and growth [00:31:21] spk_1: seller s c o [00:31:22] spk_0: dot com and amazing at home dot com. 

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Transcription in this episode:
[00:00:01] spk_0: welcome to the seller, roundtable [00:00:03] spk_2: e commerce coaching [00:00:04] spk_1: and business strategies [00:00:05] spk_0: with Andy Arnott and Amy Wees. So you just mentioned you were selling shampoos and I think a lot of people have the misconception that their product has to be special and it has to be patented and it has to be different to sell to retail. And that was the number one thing that I learned from you that shocked me is that you can have the most basic product ever because every retail store needs stuff for their, you know, so as long as you fit into that store, but let's talk about what makes a good product for retail, what's a good product, what's a bad product? How does, how should people look at their products? Um when they're analyzing them for retail opportunities? [00:00:50] spk_1: Right, so I have, you know, I have a good example for that. Before we go to the basics, I heard someone approaching me with ceramic knives. Now we all know knives, there's so many knives out there, what's so special? So ceramic knives apparently is a little bit different from the others, although it exists, but going down to this niche, I understood quite fast that this is something that is, you know, with a huge potential in the market because it's ceramic, those ceramic knives, they cut much easier and much faster. I didn't know that I have never used that kind of knife until I met the guy and he was literally giving me samples like try it at home and see it, which was amazing. So I found that you know, it has an amazing market. So sometimes you look at your own products and saying, you know, it's not feeling special here. No, I don't think like that. But then there are principles, I have to say that like first of all, there's more excuses you have, it's better. That's for sure. If you're coming up with like 56 for seven SK us, it's gonna be hard unless unless you have something special at them now, something special doesn't have to be patent, it doesn't have to be a product that nobody has seen before. It could be the same very box that everybody else has with the same product inside. But then you have something special about the branding with crazy colors or with super boring colors, something different. Something that the market has yet to see. Okay. And if it, if it's something that the market have seen before and have seen a lot, you know, grinded products, I would call that, then you have to come up with a lot of SK us. Okay, because a lot of SK us, why am I talking about? Why am I saying a lot of sqs? Because if you look at the buyer side at the end of the day, it has limits limited sources to handle suppliers. He cannot handle like 100 suppliers. He could handle 50 or 40 or 30 depends, you know, so then if one supplier come up and gives him the solution for like 30 40 20 different sK us, that's very good for them rather than taking three different or four different suppliers for five sK us each. Right? But at the same time if if that vendor is coming and saying, you know what, I only have five sqs but look how beautiful they are, then you have something enhance. Alright now. Yeah, the looking good is like, you know, it it differs from from a brand to brand. But basically those are the terms obviously those are the principles obviously if you have patent or patent pending on your product then you have, you know, something that is easier to move in terms of not having something to special in terms of the design or branding and at the same time not having too many sK us that would be fine as long as you have, you know, again, pattern or something like that. [00:03:36] spk_0: Got it. So the bottom line is we don't have to have a unique patented product to sell. The retailer is quite the opposite. We just need to have something that fits and we need to have margin. That's the other big problem that you and I have seen when we re we have like a retail review service where we kind of review people's products of whether or not their retail ready and you guys can take advantage of that, you can go to amazing at home dot com forward slash retail and you can look at that and just fill out our form and we'll look at your product and tell us your retail ready. But the biggest thing that we see is that they're either not ready for packaging and branding because there isn't anything special that's gonna stick out on the retail shelf or we see that they might not have enough margin. Um because a lot of people are selling with just like, you know, they're sourcing it for um you know, half of what there are, they're sourcing it for wholesale prices and there, you know, it's that's really hard to to be able to have enough margin to set something up. So I love that. Okay, my last question before I turn you over to my podcast, co host. Andy over here is finding and talking to buyers. I think that's one of the biggest things that people are struggling with because they're like, okay, I just do I just fill out this online form, How do I get, how do I get to the lows buyer? I want my tool and lows, how do I talk to the, you know, the Home depot person or how do I find a buyer and and talk to them? [00:05:06] spk_1: Right, so, I mean, one of the main things that I'm saying all the time. Do not waste your time on online forms. They don't go anywhere. Just trust me on that. I know what I'm saying, I don't like, I don't want to sound, you know, whatever, but it is what it is that do not waste your time feeling that I've seen people feeling that again and again with no results. I feel those forms myself just to make sure that I'm not wrong. When I say do not do it, okay. I wanted to make sure that I'm not doing any mistake. I don't want to mislead anyone about anything, don't do it. I have an internal information from some retailers that those forms are going nowhere. If they would, you know, go to the FTP service and they could find it there. But I mean, what a buyer would go to the FTP FTP server when he has 600 emails waiting for him on his inbox. Right. Anyway, that's about yeah, the online forms, how do you get to them? I mean, linkedin is a good tool, is a great tool. I I think that linkedin in general is like, it's heaven. It's really a heaven. But you have to spend a lot of time in order to put your hands on the right person and to get him to be responsive and to get his email and eventually to get him to see your samples and order and everything. It's not something that you do in a day. It's quite, you know, quite um how would I define that? It's quite hard, just quite hard. So linkedin is one is one option and other option is yeah, obviously research in the internet of different, you know, different functions of people in in in the market. I know it sounds strange, but small retailers sometimes put their own emails on their website. It's very rare. It doesn't happen a lot, but there are small retailers. It doesn't, you know, when I say small retailers, I'm talking about 10, 20 maximum, 30 different stores. Okay. Normally they wouldn't do that. You wouldn't be able to find online, same club emails or whatever, you know, free people, uh, West L. M. Or whatever. But yeah, I mean, most of my contacts are based on, you know, history because I was moving from thing to thing. Like if I knew people in Macy's, then I was pulling, you know, um, pushing it to get some more context there when they left Macy's and they went to Nordstrom, I went together with them to Nordstrom. So we stayed in touch. That's how I built my contacts. And there are quite a lot of them out there and then there are, you know, other tools, external tools. But yeah, I mean, it's not it's not an easy thing. There's no magic in that. [00:07:42] spk_2: Yeah, Taylor, I think linkedin is a huge uh, it's super undervalued in terms of getting great connections, especially in the retail world. Um, you know, one of the things you're talking about, you know, it can be difficult, but if you put us, you know, take a couple of hours, right, A quick system for a visa from the Philippines and let you know, give them your login info, they can go out and and touch a lot of people in terms of, you know, say like you said, Costco right, is one of, is one of your target retail destinations, right? Uh, then you would go in and use linkedin search to find, you know, people in those job titles that would most affect your ability to get there, you know, to get attention there And connect with them and then just start messaging them. Uh, you know, 90% will probably not reply, but you might get one or two and, and at least get a foot in the door. So I think that's, that's, that's a really good technique and it doesn't work. You know, not only for retail, but like any type of business. Like I said, um, you know, I've been booted off of facebook multiple times and whenever that happens, I end up going super deep into Lincoln and I keep saying, I was glad that that's happened because now I've built like a massive following on linkedin, tons of great connections there. Really, the people that you're meeting on linkedin are people who are in business right there, not just like tire kickers on facebook were like, oh yeah, I'm interested in amazon retail, I'm gonna kick the tires, Oh, I, you know, I sourced this one product that was a failure and I moved on. The people on linkedin are established right? They've been doing it. Um, or at least they're, they're more serious in, in getting things done. So I think that's an, that's an awesome uh, tip there. So I want to pivot a little bit too on the more professional side of things. You were talking a little bit about like branding and packaging and things like that. But I think that that's an afterthought right? When somebody starting, especially if they started on the online world and they want to transition into retail, packaging on amazon is usually pretty basic. Um, and not very exciting. So do you suggest that people should try to start out with some really great packaging, um, and branding? Or do do you think you should prove the concept, you know, on the, on the, on the other channels and once you prove that concept, then maybe go into new iterations on, on packaging and branding. [00:09:53] spk_1: So I think here's what I think, I mean, if you're already having a brown or whatever, blank box for amazon, why don't you brand it? Why don't you do it? Something, you know better? And if you're already doing it better and becoming like, you know, day by day becoming a better, better brand or more, you know, microbial brand, then you should also keep in mind that you're gonna have retail at some point either tomorrow or yesterday or in the air. It doesn't matter. But thinking about that you might want to think, okay, is my product something that is going to be on the shelf or it's going to be hanged or it's going to be stuck, how it's going to be presented. And if it is hanged, then you would want to, you know, create an option at least for J Hook so that they can, at the end of the day being hooked. You know, Or if it, if it's not, then you have, you would want to think about what attributes you want to show on the box, on the outer packaging and everything. And that's something that is easy to do. So on your next batch on Amazon. Uh, coming to Amazon, you might want to say, Okay, I'll take whatever, 2030 pieces and I'm gonna put them in in my warehouse and their gonna be packed with the new packaging. All right. And I'm going to have them as simple as two up and ready for whatever happens for retail space. Okay, that's on that side. As for branding. I mean, I think the most basic thing and the most, you know, beginner point is to look at at colors. Now, colors is something that you can, you know, there's a color per persona or persona per color, you can find it very easily in the internet in terms of, you know, if you look at, For instance, if I'm selling like baby products, what are the colors that baby lives, right? And it's not necessarily those green, yellow and red that everybody sees on toys. There are more colors and better colors. So if you search a little bit in google, you can find those colors and they say, okay, here is where I start to build my story. I'm going to play with those Colors and I'm gonna look what is going to be the train's this year and next year. And the trends are all over Google, all over the place, trends. You can say some people are predicting for 20, Okay, so you're gonna know what's coming up next and you're gonna say, Okay, I'm building my brand on that direction. My logo is going to be related to that. My packaging is gonna be related that and obviously the website is going to be related to that. So, you know what? I'm trying to give you a quick view talking about a catalog. So this is like, this is like a typical written catalog. Not really exciting. And those products are super basic. I actually didn't didn't, I wasn't sure I'm gonna work with them because it's too basic. But we ended up doing create cells. I don't really know how it happened. But anyway, you know, the lifestyle images here are very basic. As you can see, it's a little bit, it's even like trying to be boring, okay, they're trying to be boring? But in between, you could understand And I built that, that catalog with them. Um mostly on my side. But you can see that all information that needs to be here is here. Immediately. They realized that there is colorful options on the, on the side here. And they see all the, you know, attributes that they need to see and everything in pricing and whole surprising and so forth. And if I look, but this is something casual. Okay, because these products are cardio. And if I look at the last catalog I did on my own private level, this is this was my own brand. You can see here, Dad, it's different in terms of, you know, it's trying to get you attracted all the time and it's trying to surprise you all the time. It's trying to be unique all the time. The colors are, the background is changing everything is changing all the time. There's, you know, those infographic or whatever you call it. Uh images in between and and you know, the whole focus here is showing like, I'm sorry, what did I do? I clicked something wrong here. I think I clicked something I shouldn't hold on the screen sharing is power. Oh, okay. We're good. It's [00:13:52] spk_2: recording. [00:13:54] spk_1: So anyway, the thing with that, that I was trying to say is that you have to match your catalog and your branding and your website to your products to what you saw. It could be boring. It could be exciting. It could be crazy. You know, dogs, cats, stuff like that. It has to be something funny. It has to be something like, because that's what dogs are about. That's what cats are about. That's what, you know, animals in general are about giving us good feelings. So that's what, you know, light feeling. So anyway, I think you got the point. [00:14:21] spk_2: Yeah, no, I love that. And some of the other things that, you know, people might want to look into when they're coming up with those kinds of things are industry leaders, right? You know, if you're in the technology space maybe looking at Tesla or you know, looking at people in the industry that are kind of leading on the, on the bleeding edge of design and, and, and branding and get some great inspiration from them. Um, the other thing that's I've looked into before that I think I find it super interesting is coloring in terms of driving emotion. Right? So I guess red is a very strong color when it comes to food products. Right? So like coke is red. Um, you know, a lot of red and like Mcdonald's santa [00:14:58] spk_1: claus is red. You know why santa claus is red? [00:15:00] spk_2: You [00:15:02] spk_1: ever heard the story? [00:15:04] spk_2: You [00:15:04] spk_1: know the first time they did the, the image with him and everything, it was with coca cola and since then it stayed, it stayed like white and red. I just heard this week never. [00:15:14] spk_2: You know what I might have heard that? Yeah, that's interesting. But yeah, so I mean I just searched food, retail, marketing, color red and, and I got a, you know, a bunch of articles, so just do some googling, there's some really interesting stuff in terms of psychology when it comes to coloring. Um, and, and things like that and then, you know, also like I said, check out industry leaders to, to get some really cool ideas in terms of, of forward thinking, colors and designs. Uh, you know, for like you said baby or whatever kind of niche that you're in. Um, I'd like to go back to, you know, a lot of the people listening probably are not doing retail right now. Um, and you know, don't even know where to start. So what are some, you know, major perceived hurdles, you know, when you're, when people are just starting their journey about thinking that they want to start getting into retail. [00:15:58] spk_1: So again, it's built on the six points that I mentioned, but you have to, I'll answering two points, you have to consider yourself as a micro brand. Even if you have the most basic items on earth, like whatever, you know, stupid cable to charge your phone or whatever it is, you want to look at it as a, as a brand, you don't want to look at it as a product and when you look at it as a brand, it's your own baby, you want to develop it. You said, okay, I have this cable, what else can I do? Oh, can I do a denim denim color cable? Can I do whatever Pink and red cable, you know, with lions going across it or something special? Can I just do a special packaging? Can I do something different? This is branding. Now, that's number one. Number two, I want to share with you guys that I mean the majority of my business and I'm a little bit glitch in from the, from the, from the topic. But the majority of my activity right now and that's where my business focuses on sales selling the brands like getting orders. That's where I do my money. But then at the other hand, from the other hand, I always want to see more brands in my field and I want to sell more brands because it's never enough. So what I do is I look at different brands from amazon and I'm like, you know, some of them are not really ready. And I was thinking for a long time about it until I established the service and the service I do is like taking them putting them into a to you where they are getting on one side as an online, you know, online oriented uh, brand and pulling them to the other side of the tunnel with my sources as an offline and online brand meaning I'm doing as a service, the rich already thing and why am I doing it? So I'll be able to sell more brands because if I don't do that, I will just sit there and wait for people to do that themselves, some of them would do, but some of them would not. So I'm just saying that, but you have to think and again, as a brand on your products and I don't, I wouldn't be bothered about finding contacts because you know, as long as you're heading your brand into a certain direction, you know how it is. I mean, I mean it's a little bit, a little bit strange to say it, but the universe is there and he's listening to you and saying, okay, that's where you wanna go. I'll give you the solution, you know, to open the door. Don't worry about the door. Just keep going to that direction, the doors will get open. Um, that's it. That's how it happened to me because I was like, you know, I didn't know those whole 60 retailers when I started this whole thing, they just, you know, one thing led to the other. So yeah, [00:18:29] spk_2: yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love that my wife and I are just finishing up some miracle morning and you know, and you know, things like the secret and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff. It seems really hokey and kind of weird, but a lot of it really works. So, you know, as long as it works then why not? You know, [00:18:46] spk_1: Right, [00:18:48] spk_2: so the other, the other thing I'm interested in is in terms of, you know, especially with the thing we weren't going to mention on this podcast, you know, people are all freaked out about it again. Um how is that affecting, you know, supply chain and not only that, but you know, the relationship between you and the retailers. So you know, the retailer calls you to say, hey, we want 10,000 units of, you know, widget X and you say, okay, well I'll get on that. You call your supplier. They say, oh yeah, it's going to be three months. How are you kind of, are you trying to find new manufacturers? Are you trying to find go to India and diversify your, your supply chain? You know what countries you're sourcing for kind of how are you navigating that right now? [00:19:30] spk_1: Okay. So I'm I wanted to run away from production sites so I'm not dealing with that. And I think there's so many information at least that I know that amy could give everyone about suppliers in general. It's always good to have more than one supplier. And when you get an order from retailer, that's not the point on the line where you want to start and go ahead and search for suppliers because you're gonna get, you're gonna get, it's gonna get screwed, that's for sure. You want to be up and ready when you, when you get yourself to the retailers and here's the thing if you get your foot in into retailer stores and if you do something wrong you're gonna be kicked out at least for two years and you don't want that to happen. You want everything to go smooth. So that's why you have to have a very good, you know, split chain up and ready. So I I don't want to talk that much about the supply chain because again there's so much so much information out there, especially on amazing at home that I know that is there. Um But yeah you want to have everything up and ready when you get in terms of talking about, you know the correspondence with the buyers. Most of the correspondence I would say 95% is by emails. Another, I mean it depends on the retailer but some of them are using E. D. I. Which is you know an online system that is transmitting orders and packing list and all these, you know paperwork between both sides because they don't want to count on emails if anything goes wrong. And E. D. I. Is something that also can connect from you to them and from them to their warehouse directly through the L. And everything. Um So that's the majority of the correspondence. The important thing is in the beginning until the point where you get the purchase order is to communicate properly and when I work with my vendors, I'm doing it like, you know, hand in hand with them in a matter of that. Sometimes they send an email, but normally they would show me the email before that if they're not really sure how to respond or if they respond is good. But at the end of the day, you know, it's people behind those computers and it's not, you know, it's not robots. And even if you do some minor mistakes or using, you know, some ridiculous language, which are things that is happening too happening to me with vendors, it's still okay. You can always, you know, move forward. Although that so yeah, but emails is the majority [00:21:44] spk_2: cool. So what we always like to wrap up with our some personal development, uh, you know things that you're doing right now in terms of personal development for you, you know, any books, podcasts, any, anything that you, you know, some kind of special meditation kind of just uh, you know, general life boosting that you're, you're doing right now. Anything like that [00:22:06] spk_1: on my side. Uh well the only thing I'm doing, I wouldn't call it spiritual besides praying because I'm jewel and I'm praying every morning. I think, I mean look my morning looks very very, I don't know strange to other people at least I started my morning well five am my guy is waking me up like daddy, I want to drink something. But anyway, 8:00 I'm in the gym and doing crossfit the same. Well Amy does, she's doing it at 6:00 I think I'm doing it am I'm lazy. Um, and when I'm done an hour later I'm in the synagogue for an hour. So I'm like getting, you know, I'm getting like pants right out in the morning, like getting having family first of all, then I'm having, you know, everything I need from my body, you know, getting in shape and you know, struggling with, with barbell and stuff like that. And then the third thing I'm getting the salt side from the synagogue. I'm sitting there one hour praying everything in school and then boom, I'm on my computer at 10, 10 20 yeah, that goes until well now it's 12 12 At night, so it's not, it's right, [00:23:08] spk_2: right. Yeah, I know, I don't know many entrepreneurs that, that, that aren't working, you know, late into the night. I know my wife and I are always, you know, we, we try to at least get out of the office at home and you know, sit up on the couch but where both of us are on our laptops, making calls, you know, doing emails and that kind of stuff. So I totally get that. Alright, well taylor, we've come to the end here. It's been awesome. Avenue, Thank you so much. Let people know how they can get a get a hold of you. [00:23:33] spk_1: Well there's my website, retail dash empire dot com. Uh, if you look at the website and I think amy, I believe you have the link, but does retail ready service on the left side if you wanna, if you want me to look at your, you know, brand and tell you what I think. If it's, you know, if there's an opportunity and start to communicate with me or there's also the contact me, the contact page on my site that, yeah, you can contact me in so many different ways. Very easy. I have a US number, an Israeli number. What's a telegram you name it? Wait, [00:24:06] spk_2: wait, wait. There's still people on twitter. You haven't been banned yet. [00:24:11] spk_1: Well, I'm, no, I haven't been banned yet, but I'm afraid to be so, So that's why I had to get, get our, whatever the name of that is. [00:24:19] spk_2: Get yeah. Get, get her, get her, get her. Yeah. I don't know. There's so many of these days is like a new one every day. That's, you [00:24:26] spk_1: know. [00:24:26] spk_2: Yeah. It's hard to keep up. It sounds like, uh, you know, Tiktok is the only one that, you know, you can get on and kind of get away with just about anything, [00:24:36] spk_1: right? So I don't have. Yeah. [00:24:41] spk_2: Yeah. It's, it's one of those ones where I, I guess I'm getting too old to like understand it. Right. I'm like, I don't quite get it. So that's when you know you're getting old. Hey Taylor, thank you. Thank you so much for being on. Really, really appreciate having you and um yeah we'll we'll we'll have to have you on again. I know that we could have, we could have kept going here uh because there's so much to talk about there so we really appreciate it. [00:25:09] spk_1: Yeah, something got stuck in his microphone. You're muted. Amy [00:25:12] spk_0: oh no we lost Andy, I don't know what happened that was okay. Well good thing that I am recording this session and you know, thank you everyone for being here on the seller roundtable. We're gonna hit stop on the recording and the live stream and um thank you guys so much for reviewing, rating and subscribing. We love you guys, thank you for your votes in the cellar pole. We appreciate you so much and we'll see you guys next week on the civil roundtable. Bye everyone. [00:25:45] spk_1: Bye everyone. Thank you. [00:25:47] spk_0: Thanks for tuning in, join us every [00:25:50] spk_2: Tuesday at one PM Pacific Standard time for [00:25:52] spk_0: live Q and A. And bonus [00:25:54] spk_2: content after the [00:25:55] spk_0: recording at cellar roundtable [00:25:57] spk_2: dot com, [00:25:58] spk_0: sponsored by the ultimate [00:25:59] spk_1: software tool for amazon [00:26:00] spk_0: sales and growth seller S C. O dot com and amazing at home dot com