AS 78: How Shawn went from Mcdonalds to 100 Million + Sold in e-Commerce

In this episode you'll learn:

* Shawn's tale of rags to riches

* How Shawn went from selling hamburgers at McDonalds to having sold 100 Million + in revenue generated

* How to choose a market

* How to brand build products

* What products to not go for

* How to source directly in china?

* How Shawn deploys strategies for launching new products

* How to use AMS or Amazon Marketing Services and why it's important

* Products that Shawn goes for, high and low end

* Mistakes and lessons learned from Shawn

* Trips Shawn take to China

* And all the wisdom I was able to extract out of him within 1 Hour

And lots more!

David Aladdin:  Great to have you on show.

Shawn Heart:  Hello, how’s it going David nice to meet you.

David Aladdin:  Can you take us to the beginning, before your first selling. What happened?

Shawn Heart:  I come from a small town, in central Indiana. Decided I was a little bit too lazy to work and too nervous to steal so I had to start business you know, that was the next best thing. So, short story long I started importing fresh cut flowers from South America and selling those literally on the road side you know as a teenager. After school I would just go park my truck on the side of the road and be doing my homework as I was selling flowers for about 6$ a dozen that we imported for 2$ and just fell in love with the idea of creating value and being able to buy and sell. You know back then my marketing strategy was pretty simple. Before I even was introduced to the word marketing, I basically just threw a huge benefit on a road sign that said "Roses ahead. 6$ per dozen" which was unheard of you know, so on strictly on price because back in those days in the early 90's you know, the cheapest flowers you could buy for your wife or girlfriend were about 30 or 40$ a dozen. So 6$ a dozen was like almost too good to be true and that’s really how I got my started in my business world.

David Aladdin:  What year was that by the way?

Shawn Heart:  That was 1991, somewhere around in there. Yeah.

David Aladdin:  I’m guessing, I’m guessing you had a lot of girls wondering where they can flowers with you.

Shawn Heart:  Well I was known as the Rose Boy in high school which is not that cool. What happened was, I only had one job David. I got a job when I was 16 years old at McDonalds and you know the reason for the job was to be able to put gas in my car and pay for insurance. So I worked a couple of weeks at McDonalds and had my first pay check and it was 84$ and my brother had just dropped out of school about a month prior to that and my dad said "Look you can even get a job or start a business". So he introduced him to a business where he could buy fresh cut flowers from a local whole seller for about 3$, 3.50$ a dozen and sold them for 6 to 7$ and how we found that.

Every Friday on his way home from the office, he would stop at this old lady who was on the side of the high way selling flowers and just got talking to her and she told him "you know I do this just to supplement my income".  So when my brother dropped out of school you know, like I said you can either get a job or start a business. This is my older brother so he said "Ok, I’ll start a business". So he tells him about this flower deal and we are all laughing at him you know, because there was really, my father was the only entrepreneur in my family, he was an independent insurance agent. So everyone was like, you know factory workers living it, the American dream of working for 35 years and retiring with a gold watch and a pension so it was really outside of our normal thinking.

So,