My Amazon Guy

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We did a podcast with Welcome to Growth with Jonathan Lyman and Dillon Carter and these guys were a blast to talk to. So we invited them onto the My Amazon Guy podcast to talk about how they are launching a coffee brand. 

How to go live
See Amazon as an acquisition channel. See high life time value from repeat orders.
Just getting started in Amazon. 
Found source for roaster local and 30% cheaper per bag than the next cheapest on the list.
Why choose Amazon over some other platform?

Dillon owns 
Vendrive.com - wholesale resellers. 
Goaura.com - Repricing tool.
Decision making - successful business vs having employees. Difference between running an Amazon product ecommerce business vs SAS company.


Get Amazon Consulting at https://myamazonguy.com/

#KenmoreCoffeee #LaunchingAmazon #StartingSellerCentral #JonathanLyman #DillonCarter #Vendrive #Goaura

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Framework - Agency Best Practices

Below is the most important conceptual framework of the MyAmazonGuy Agency. Every task you work on should follow these basic parameters.

1. Understand the Scope.
   1. Review contract terms if new project
   2. Review request from client/Steven.
   3. Ask questions if anything is unclear.
   4. Raise flags if you think project will take a long time.
      1. Example: You need to complete a storefront for a client but they have 1000 skus.
      2. Solution: Use best selling products, examples from each category, but do not list every single sku.
2. Complete the work.
   1. Complete the task to the scope.
   2. Most clients are comfortable with us making changes and going live prior to their review. When in doubt, ask Steven. And ask the client for permission to go live.
      1. Example: Draft of EBC or storefront, then ask Client to review and go live.
3. QA it (Quality Assurance).
   1. QA your own work by reviewing whether the completed task is what was requested.
   2. Have either Steven or another person review the work.
4. Report the work back to the client
   1. Build an email showcasing that the task was completed.
   2. Screenshot of before and after if it is visual
   3. Link to where the work can be seen. ASIN detail page for example.
   4. If it’s a text change to titles, create a google sheet listing the before titles, with another column for proposed titles, so the client can review the work before we implement it. 
   5. Call to action
      1. Is there anything requiring approval, ask the client to approve, ask the client for feedback etc. If the email is just informative, no CTA required, otherwise be sure to always ask for something.

Further Context:

• Action strategy
  • All actions boil down to 3 types
    • Do it
      • If the action takes less than 2 mins, just do it
    • Delegate it
      • Are you the right person to do it? If this is going to take a lot of time, consider delegating to VA team. And document to Asana.
    • Defer it
      • If the action will have no positive impact, don’t do it.
      • If the action will have modest impact, but is not worth doing now, document it on asana. Schedule it for later.
• Why are we doing something
  • To increase sales
  • To make the client happy
    • What do we want the client to understand? Feel? Expect? = Outcome vision
  • To make Steven happy

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Priorities shift a lot, so how do you know what the most important action is to take right now? Here's our prioritization tree that we use at My Amazon Guy.

1. Stranded/Closed Listings - Anything that prevents an active item from selling.
   1. Suspensions
   2. Listing yanks
   3. Policy violations
   4. Hazmat
2. Shipments -Items that need to ship into FBA. Keep at 60-90 day supply.
3. Account Launches, data work to get items into Amazon.
   1. Day 1 client delivery - competitor research
   2. Day 2 keyword search terms
4. Weekly reporting
5. A+ & EBC/Storefront launches.
6. Advertising checkins - weekly
7. Waiting on client responses use following methodology
   1. 2 Day Mark - Follow up with email
   2. 7 Day Mark - Follow up with phone call and email
   3. 14 Day Mark - Follow up with phone and email

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Pros & Cons of Hiring An Individual Employee vs. An Agency
When your company needs additional “hands on deck,” the first option most companies think of is to hire another employee to join their company. While that may work for many companies, for others the cost of hiring someone and adding on another full-time salary to an already-tight payroll may not be an option. However, the need for additional help does not go away.

Before a company makes a final decision, it’s time that they sit down and determine the pros and cons of hiring another full-time employee.

Pros to an Individual Employee:
The person hired works exclusively for your company.
You have their undivided attention as they do not have to work for several companies at one time.
The only fee you have to pay to hire that person are those associated with their salary and benefits.
May make budgeting easier.
Cons of Hiring an Individual Employee:
The individual can only work so many hours (if your company needs more support, one person may not be able to do all the necessary work)
One person will have limited working knowledge and skill sets.
Teaching an individual employee all the new skills you need them to know could take quite a bit of time.
You have to pay the person’s entire salary and all their benefits which could get costly.
On the other hand, you could hire an agency that specializes in that specific area of expertise and engage them to do the work you need. This way you won’t have to worry about the one person you hire having enough work or too much work to handle. Here are some advantages of hiring an agency to do the same job as an individual employee would do:

Advantages of Hiring an Agency:
You get the expertise and knowledge of multiple people working for your company.
Those employees are specially trained in what their agency does making them “experts” of some sort in the industry in which they work.
Multiple employees mean that they have more work hours to put towards your projects and business needs.
Hiring the services of an agency is generally much cheaper than paying an entire employee’s salary plus all of their benefits which saves your business money.
Agency is the Best Choice
The agencies come out being the best choice as they are usually are a lot less expensive than paying someone’s entire salary and their benefits, which can get exceptionally costly. More employees working with your company means that have you have a versatile group of workers that help your business get things done. Moreover, many agencies have a plan that only requires you to pay for the work hours and services you will use based on your business needs. That can also help save you extra money.
https://drumcreative.com/hiring-an-agency-vs-individual-employee/

Which is the better option: Boutique or Full-Service Agency?
You and your business need to define your budget, values, current needs, and growth potential before deciding on the right type of agency. Both options can provide valuable marketing solutions for your business.

If you are focused on quality and personal attention, then the boutique agency is your ideal option.

Boutique agencies will take the extra time and focus on learning your situation and world, designing a marketing plan customized for your company, and then execute it and provide education on ongoing improvements.

These agencies are also much more responsive and attentive to your continually changing needs. 

But if you are operating on a lower budget and do not have the time to talk through marketing ideas throughout the week continually, you could elect to go with the full-service agency.
https://www.breaktheweb.agency/agency/boutique-agency-vs-full-service-agency/
#Agency #VA #Virtual Assistant #MyAmazonGuy

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Just in time learning: Learn it literally right when you need to execute it. Scale of No Return: Build a business that has to operate at a higher level and can never go back or it will fail.

• The downside is it could affect planning, may be rough around the edges.
• The good-side to it is you execute in an agile fashion, focus on specific areas, and let the action dictate the strategy.
• In today’s age there’s massive amounts of information and just in time learning is hotter than ever. I think the biggest struggle is locating good sources of information that are qualified for what you need to know when you need to know it. This is why our clients generally hire us as experts to come in and fill gaps and teach because it would be more cost effective to pay us than to spend hundreds of hours trying to learn what we already do in minutes. 

Another topic I’ve thought a lot about this past month is the Scale of No Return.

• I’m coining this phrase, I google exact match on this phrase and no one is using it like I intend.
• What I mean by Scale of No Return is when you’ve built something that becomes so big and so powerful, it forces you to run the business differently and you can never return to how you were previously running it. It’s the scale that forces you to systemize and organize things, and you’ll never go back to the way you used to do things, because literally you can’t. Your scale is so big and the complexities are so much higher that you’re forced to operate at a higher level.
  • Why does this matter? Because everyone listening to this podcast is trying to scale, and scale quickly. Growing is good. We’re all growth hackers. 
    • But what happens if it works? I mean really works. Are you planning for success?
  • My phone is ringing off the hook the past 80 days. I’m struggling to keep up with both acquisition and maintain operational excellence. You look at other ecom players like PayPal, I tried to chat Paypal today and it was a 5 hour chat wait list.
  • I ordered an office chair, I’m talking luxury office chair from the the mercedes bendz version of office chairs, and I disliked it and tried to return it. It took 7 days for the company to get back to me and that was literally the fastest they could do. 
  • Operational strains right now a real thing. 
    • Gold hit $1900 this week. That’s up from $1700 from earlier this year. And up $100 in the past 48 hours.
    • Supply chains are breaking down.
• I believe the economy, especially as it relates to supply chains and ecommerce is at a collective scale of no return. This black swan event called COVID is going to make things change. Force them to change and never go back to the way it was.
• Businesses are making decisions today that are rapidly changing. They can’t keep up.
• The reason I’m keeping up is I put systems in place, hired up, and spent 200 hours creating a scientific method to build a culture, classify candidates, and build a profile to hire the right people to execute my vision.
• Some of you listening might ask why I would share all of this? Why share anything that could be a weakness, or if it’s a strength it’s a trade secret. That’s because I made the decision to be an authentic tell all agency. We grow sales. That’s where I want to hang my hat with clients. I know if I can grow my clients sales, they will keep paying me. And it’s working. Sales are up considerably for our clients, and quickly based on results. We onboarded one client 2 weeks ago at 40k in weekly sales. We got them to 57k a week already in under 14 days. That’s hard to replicate, but we do it again and again because I SOP’d my entire business. It’s a never SOP building process. 

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Every story starts with a stranger comes to town or a man goes on a journey. Today we talk to a man who has gone on an Amazon Journey and we’ll ask him what went right, what went wrong, and where he is heading next. Running an Amazon business - all that credit is on you. But so does the demand and risk.

Jon Elder is a Black Label advisor and grew his Amazon business to more than 10-million in sales but has since sold it off in 2019. Jon joins me now, thanks for coming on the My Amazon Guy Podcast.

1. What went right
   1. Star conservative. No battery, no supplement.
   2. Picked categories with only 2 sellers, and medium amount of sales.
   3. Improved product and marketing.
   4. Move slowly.
   5. Ordered samples from multiple factors.
   6. Speak as if you are the owner of a large company.
   7. Stick to your passion.
2. What went wrong
   1. $80-120 item high seller made big mistake and got credit out to launch too many color variations. Launched way too many colors with flops. $20 a unit.
   2. Launching too many categories.
   3. Focussed on too many brands.
   4. 25% of products failed
3. What have you seen change this past year
   1. Branding is now more important. A+ content. AOV.
   2. Focus on product packaging.
   3. Amazon went from bare bones platform to branded atmosphere. Videos. 
   4. More competition
   5. Highest cost was in PPC
   6. Made in America
      1. Hard to find factory for test order
   7. Quality of product and customer service is way up

Bio:

Jon Elder is the founder of Black Label Advisor, a custom tailored consulting firm specializing in Amazon FBA that helps sellers optimize their business and dramatically increase their sales and profit margins.  

He first got his feet wet in the Amazon private label world in 2014 while still working in the corporate commercial construction industry.  He has always had a passion for entrepreneurship and working at the same job the rest of his life was just never enough.  He launched his first product and soon grew his FBA business to over $10 million in sales between five well known brands.  In late 2019, he sold his entire FBA business and lived to tell his story.  

In his time off, Jon enjoys spending quality time with his wife and son in North Texas. It's not uncommon to find him walking the local trail network or at a BBQ joint.   

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When you sell an item online, what happens to that package? Today we talk to a package tracking expert. Riche Devine Head of Partner Marketing at Route.

• Before we talk about the journey of a package, first what is Route and what do you guys do?
  • What’s the journey of a package?
• Why should sellers care about the last 3rd of a package journey?
  • Conversion
  • Loyalty
• Monday announcement IPI score going to 500.
  • Opportunity to win sales where your competition stocks out.
• 2 Day Shipping or SFP is really expensive. Do you see speed as important to the customer and can effective non FBA methods meet the 2 day threshold that is the customer expected bar?
• The Route App automatically connects to everything you’ve ordered from all your favorite retailers while allowing you to visually track your packages, anytime, anywhere.

“One and done” should be a phrase that online retailers avoid like the plague. Unfortunately, far too many online retailers have settled with this approach when it comes to their marketing engine. They dump thousands of dollars in upfront costs to convince prospects to stop by their store, but as soon as shoppers click “buy,” you can hear the aforementioned marketing engine sputter to a halt. Read more at https://route.com/blog/customer-lifetime-value-for-ecommerce-3-ways-to-increase/

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How do you systematize your business and make delegation easy which increases your scalability? We talk to Trent Dyrsmid, Founder of Flowster, host of the Bright Ideas podcast, and founder of a multi million dollar reseller that ranked #254 on the Inc 5000 list in 2019.

Get your free Growth Accelerator Pack (Value $299) at https://flowster.app/myamazonguy/

• Tell me your Amazon story.
  • Started as an Amazon affiliate program about 10 years ago.
  • Then did private label. Didn’t go well.
  • Eventually went well when I automated systems, hired full army of system admins. Sent hundreds of brands an email. Week after week. Delegated everything that preceded replying to onboarding brands. 
    • Negotiated pricing
    • Winning an account
    • Then pushed off to rest of team, PO, sending money etc.
    • Focused all time on closing deals.
  • Account more profitable now than it has ever been.
• How did processes help your business.
  • Amazon reseller system
    • Have to source new products
      • Identify competitors
    • 4% of Amazon resellers do more than 100k a year on Amazon.
  • Ability to hire VAs for low cost.
    • Create a list, large list of competitors.
    • Product extraction
  • Who makes the products, how to get in touch with them?
    • Send them an email
• Why went into reseller model instead of private label?
  • Product investments
    • Private label - expensive. 
      • What should I sell?
      • Source
• 15-20% gross margin target.
• Risks
  • MAP
  • Amazon 1P
• Every brand will tell you we don’t want any more Amazon sellers
  • Salesmanship and research come into play. Listing not optimized. May no ads from incumbents. Product review negative response. Room for improvements. 
    • “I agree you don’t need more, you need less, and the reason I’m calling you is because current sellers aren’t doing a good job. They aren’t bothering to run ads, seo, design. When I search the phrase ‘apple slicer’ and your competitors are winning, no one is doing these good things like ads/seo.” 
• How did you win an FBA slot with a brand that has 4-5 resellers already?
• Flowster
  • 400k in first week to sell my process of workflows.
  • Hired a tech guy to make Flowster.
    • Spent year writing code. October 2018 app ready for marketplace.
  • Every business has the problem - highly repetitive set of processes to make the wheels go round.
    • Marketing agency: Prospect/content/hire/social/ad campaigns - same thing over and over again.
    • Amazon sellers: source products, load, optimize, advertise, re-orders.
  • Create work flows - checklist. Cake turns out according to the recipe.
  • Super detailed.
    • Memories not needed
    • Training time = 35 seconds.
  • Scale
    • Google sheet - static instructions.
      • Interactive works better in Flowster. Specific individual and give it a deadline.
      • Multiple people.
    • Video
      • Recipient 10 min video - have to rewatch it repeatedly.
      • Changes to processes - editing video sucks.

What is life like as a CEO post process setup, relationship building. Processes give you Freedom. Became entrepreneur because freedom is the biggest value.

Culture - transparency. People want to be treated like human beings, fulfillment, valued. Process help culture because less chaos, and less frantic, less fire fighting easier.

What’s next for you. Scaling software monthly revenue. 5,000 users in about 20 months. So to get to 100k monthly recurring revenue by the end of this year. 8k in growth budget a month. 

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For entrepreneurs, being a business owner selling on Amazon is the only path they seek. For others, there's desire to tack the corporate track, being an eCommerce marketing manager of Amazon. Today we talk to an aspiring Amazon eCommerce marketing manager Jacob Privette about his path. Jacob is a former agency employee at My Amazon Guy. And he's seen both sides of this equation.

Jacob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacobprivette/

Jacob thanks for joining me, as I understand it you just got married a couple weeks ago, how's the married life?

Let's talk about your Amazon and eCommerce background to qualify to you our listeners. What have you accomplished in your career?

If someone else wanted to start their career on Amazon right now what you advise they do, and why is it go work at My Amazon Guy or another agency?

What skills have come in handy that you wouldn't have predicted?

• Google Sheets
• Excel Sheets
• Calculating financials is so important. How profitable is something. How does something affect my bottom line.

What's the the difference between growing a corporate Amazon client vs your own hustle.

• Every bat swing has to be super calculated. If get it wrong $1,000 here could have cascading effects.
• Quantity of decision makers goes up significantly.
• Find alignment
• Expectations 
• Omni channel 
• MAP Pricing
• Distribution Control

Let's talk culture and working with people. When building an Amazon account with a omni channel corporation, it's not just you and and seller central is it.

• Number of employees affects culture
• Make employees feel valued
• Goal setting
• Growing Relationships - even harder remote.
• Crystal Knows - used to see people's personality with LinkedIn app: https://www.crystalknows.com/app/register?profile_id=9ad986c4-2fdb-417c-8337-6ab71cf12bbf&tasks=accept_referral%2Cnotify_inviter

Relationships

• Ecommerce is a tight nit community.

Best class in college that no one should miss

• Organizational behavior - psychology of business.

What do you wish you had learned years ago?

• Be yourself. Emotional authentic. 

What's the last book you read and what did you get out of it?

• Reddit: How to motivate social distancing. 

Another reference material: "Getting Things Done."

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How do you know when to burn your ships, quit your full time job, and make Amazon full time? We speak to Todd Welch, host of the Entrepreneur Adventure podcast and Amazon Seller.  Todd left his job too early in the process and ended up going back to his 9-5 job. He's still working in fact. He shares his mistakes and advice to know your numbers before you make the leap yourself.

• Now hire a bookkeeper. 
  • After all expenses.
• Can’t just look at top line sales.
• Got $60,000 into debt.
• Now that I know the numbers, back at topline 130k per month. Snowball it ongoing.
• Took Amazon to purchase more product.
• How did the business model change after you had the bookkeeping in place?
  • Now all wholesale. 
  • 15% profit margin good number in wholesale world.
  • 2 week budget
• In the beginning too much money not enough products. Later too much products and not enough money.
• ROI 60%. 26% margin. 
• Listings collect dust
• So how do you know when you should quit your job?
  • Book: Profit First, for ecommerce sellers. https://www.amazon.com/Profit-First-Ecommerce-Sellers-Money-Making/dp/0960028315
  • Take salary out 3 months before you quit, take money out, see if business can run. 
• Debate of debt
  • Scale. Risk vs reward.
• Product failures
  • Didn’t differentiate
  • Too low price - $15 
• Seek unique stuff
• How did it feel to fail, how did it feel when you went back to work?
• Plan to go back to full time soon?
• You may also like “So you married an Amazon Seller” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmeKKY9r7o

Find Todd at https://entrepreneuradventure.com/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeNVgygMlCnOYRf_799fLqg

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