#368 – Izabella Ritz: A Russian Entrepreneur’s Pursuit of the American Dream

#368 - Izabella Ritz: A Russian Entrepreneur’s Pursuit of the American Dream Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 368 of the AM PM podcast. This week, my guest is Isabella Ritz. Isabella is originally from Russia where she was a successful entrepreneur. She came to the United States in 2015 not speaking any English and she taught herself English by learning how to sell on Amazon and now she runs a very successful agency and she's got some really cool and fascinating stories and approaches to how she does Amazon. I hope you really enjoy this episode and don't forget be sure to sign up for the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter at BillionDollarSellers.com. It's totally free, new issues every Monday and Thursday. Enjoy! Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast, Izabella Ritz. Look who's here. How are you doing? Speaker 2: I'm doing great, Kevin, the king. Speaker 1: It's good to have you. You know, the first time I actually heard about you, I think it was with Bradley Sutton. He was doing, I think you came on the Serious Sellers Podcast. Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Speaker 1: I remember I was driving somewhere, running an errand. I think I'm going to the post office, taking some packages or something. And here's this girl with this accent saying she's from Russia and has this big Russian community and she's talking about profit margins and stuff on there. Do you remember that podcast? Speaker 2: I do remember this podcast. I remember how we've been filming this podcast and I was actually in the same room before we moved out from this house to Virginia and now we came back and now I have a different background. Yeah, that was, I think that was my first milestone that I achieved, like Bradley Sutton is asking me some questions and I'm going to see a serial seller podcast. Then the second one we did, I think in 2021. And now I'm here first time with Kevin the King. Speaker 1: Yeah, first time on the AM-PM Podcast, but it's about time, right? I mean, your background is pretty interesting, pretty fascinating. We'll talk a little bit about that. So you originally, you grew up in Russia and you came to the US as an adult, but you were pretty successful in Russia, not necessarily in Amazon or e-commerce, but doing other things like interior design and And you kind of hit your ceiling over there where it was like, I think you told me one time, it's like, you know what, I'm making so much money, it's actually dangerous how much money I'm making. And it's not a good thing that I'm being this successful. Can you tell us a little bit about that? About your background? You've been an entrepreneur since you're like a little girl. Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for that. So, yeah, I'm in the United States, I can talk these things on record. Anyway, back in Russia, you have Genuinely speaking, some limits when you're making money. And I was, my first business was a business training studio and I had a web design studio and an infographic studio and like some other studios. Like I realized at some point that they have such a proven track record of different type of the agencies that I even didn't know about it until I started thinking about it, like what type of the businesses I was doing. And interior design, I was doing for almost 14 years and I sold this company three times and I created it three times. Speaker 1: The same company three times or you create three different interior design companies? Speaker 2: Three different interior design studios because in Russia you don't have non-compete agreement and you generally speaking can create the same business. And I was feeling so bad by recreating the same business one more time because I'm like, damn, I sold this business, these people and I was watching how this business is going after I sold it. And the first time I saw this business, the lady said, okay, we're shutting down the website. I'm like, you cannot do it. You can shut down the website. This website is bringing your clients. This website is actually generating your leads. You're having two contracts a day. You cannot shut down the website. She said, I don't like how it looks like. I'm like, damn, this blonde blue eyes lady decided to have the interior design studio without knowing how to run the studio. And I was waiting till this company that I created and I sold will probably die. So I will not have any this bad feeling by creating the new one. And when I saw how she killed the company, I was super sad, but I'm like, okay, so now it's the empty field again. I can fill it out because I missed it. At first, I didn't want to do it again and then I missed it. So I created this design studio again and it was successful again. And then I sold it again and I'm like, no, I'm never doing it again. That's it. It's over. And then it was the year of 2010. And my friend came to me and she said, what are you doing right now? I'm like, well, we're running a couple of businesses and we're doing construction and we did something else at this time. And she's like, can you help me to do the interior design studio? I'm like, well. I think I can, yeah. And I helped her to do the interior design studio and we became partners and then she backed out and I stayed with this studio again. I'm like, okay, so I guess I have this business one more time. And we had an office in the very center of the city, Moscow, next to Red Square. But we had a limit of how much money we can make before someone will knock on our door by asking, like, listen, you're making too much. You probably should share the amount of money you're making. And now I would have to give up my company. Or give up my company or to share the profits. And I really didn't want to do it. So as many of like Russian entrepreneurs, I believe they still do that. You're doing pretty much, you're not charging people officially. They're not paying you straight to your bank account. They're bringing you cash. And I remember I still have my Louis Vuitton bag that I was going in the metro, in the subway, and this Louis Vuitton bag was filled with cash, with a lot of cash. And I was opening at some point, I'm like, damn, I'm scared to be in the subway with this amount of money. I probably shouldn't be. I shouldn't look that fancy. And I was scared. So anyway, and I tried to make it right. I tried to pay taxes. I tried to Be honest and transparent, but it never worked because people are coming to you and they're saying, I want to pay you cash. And I'm like, OK, you want to pay my cash means I cannot be transparent here. I cannot be transparent there. So the system works the way where you have to hide something. You have to always protect something and hide something. And it's pretty stressful, stressful when you're coming home and you have to always Look back, like if someone is following, if someone is not following, so it is not cool. And at the same time, I was traveling a lot. I was traveling all over the world and I was living, before United States, I was living in Bali and Thailand and Spain. And I was thinking, I was considering to move to one of these countries. But something came up and we decided to explore United States and we came to United States and I got lost because I realized that I don't know English at all. Like I can't speak. I knew this, this and this, that, that and that, hi and bye and that's it. And I was facing the situation when people been asking me, okay, what's your social security? I'm like, what's that? So, what is your credit score? I have no idea what it is. So, to rent an apartment here, I had to have, I believe, 12-month worth of my rental to show to the property that they have this money on the bank account, so I'm able to cover the expenses. Luckily, I had this amount at the time and I started searching like, what am I supposed to do? Like, what business can I have here? And what are the obligations? I realized that I don't have to ask anybody if I have the limits of the revenue. Because I don't have them. I have the tax brackets. I learned that later, but, but I have, uh, like I don't have any limits. I don't have hide anything. And I was asking, okay, so now I have money on my bank account, uh, my business bank account. So how can I, uh, use this money utilized for myself? And someone told me, you just. Charge the card and you use this money for yourself. I'm like, it's impossible. It's impossible. My head could not understand that I can charge the bank card and I can use with my personal purposes without being scared. And that was such a transformation. And like, even by saying it right now, I think it's so weird, especially after I was living here for so many years, I understand it sounds so stupid and weird. But it's a reality, like people come in here, they keep trying to hide stuff. When I meet some like new immigrants from Russia or Ukraine, they keep trying to do that. I'm talking like, guys, you don't have to do this, it's normal. They're like, can you pay me cash? I'm like, no, I am paying you zelly or I am paying you. I can transfer you, I can use Venmo, but can you pay me cash? I'm like, no. I need to deduct money that I pay you. Otherwise, I will have to pay taxes. Then how are you going to pay taxes? Because if I'm not deducting this amount, I have to pay taxes as my income. And people cannot get it. And I understand when I came here, I couldn't get it. So this is like the very interesting part that I went through when I was facing the reality of absolutely different mentality. Mentality that is not just the sentence structure, it's the whole economic structure. Lifestyle, housing, everything. Everything was so different. And yeah, answering your question about success there. Yeah, I was successful there. And I'm sure if I would stay, I would be somewhere where I would have to share my income with the government. And I don't know actually if I would be alive or not. Speaker 1: What year did you actually come to the US? 2015. 2015. So you came in, so just eight years ago, you didn't speak hardly any English. Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: So did you learn? Did you take classes here? Did you just learn by just immersing yourself or watching TV with subtitles? Or how did you learn it? Speaker 2: That was very interesting. People like the people that have been living here, they said, OK, you have to go to library. Library has free classes for people that want to learn English. I went to the library after three classes. I realized that I'm already ahead of everybody. OK, I need something advanced. People told me, you have to watch TV. And then by watching TV, I always feel itchy because by watching TV, I'm wasting my time that I can be productive. So I watched a couple of movies with the subtitles. I'm like, whatever. So I need to do business. I will figure out my English. And I actually started learning my language by learning Amazon account, Seller University. When I find out, okay, let me try to do business on Amazon and I pulled up the account, Seller Central, and I started learning stuff about Amazon inside of Seller Central. I just went through the help. I went through like how to create the listing, what I supposed to do, first step, second step. And if you remember Amazon in 2015, that was pretty simple. Speaker 1: Were you reading it or taking it like things you didn't understand using Google Translate? Speaker 2: I was using Google Translator. Yeah, I was using Google Translator and I tried to understand as much as I can. And I was translating again and back and forth. And I had a lot of notes that I was trying to, I was building this schemes for myself to understand, okay, if I do this, then I have to do this. It was just, I was diving in and I didn't want to learn from any, uh, Russian gurus because I have this belief. If you are not in the place where this business is happening, it's probably something off. So I'm like, no, if I'm going to learn from somebody, I will learn from somebody here, but I can't learn from somebody here because I don't know language. So go and do yourself. So I was learning myself how to do that. And I remember when I went to my. First seller con it was in 2019 and I was listening to people from the stage and I remember Ezra was speaking there too and I was taking notes and I was literally translating while they speak what they're talking about. So in 2019 I was already understanding people but I couldn't understand a lot of terminology still. So this is how this just, I was learning on the go and the moment I got married, American guy, this is where my biggest improvement happened, where I was, I realized that, okay, so I guess now my English supposed to improve from day to day and this is where I am right now. I'm probably a little bit nervous and I'm repeating myself, but I think I'm pretty fluent and I can speak from the stage and I still have a lot of grammar mistakes, but I can make myself understand. Speaker 1: You're doing a really good job. I mean, for someone that didn't speak at eight years ago and you taught yourself by starting on Amazon and that's pretty cool actually. So what got you into Amazon? So you came in 2015, I guess you said you got married to an American later on, but who I know is a great guy. But in 2015, I guess you came here with somebody else and. Speaker 2: Yeah, I came with my ex-husband and with my three children. Speaker 1: Was he Russian or was he... Speaker 2: He was Russian, yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: With my ex-husband, with my three children at the time, with one stepdaughter and my mother-in-law. So I have this whole train of people and all adults didn't work. So I had to... Speaker 1: How did you... Did you come in on tourist visa or did you come in... Speaker 2: Yeah, we came on B1, B2 visa. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: And I had to take care of those people and I was like, okay, so what business should I do? What business should I do? And I was literally Googling and some Russian people here, they're like, okay, let's do this business. We can help you out. I never actually disclosed it at any podcast and anywhere, but this was the auto business. And they're like, okay, we're selling cars on, buying cars on auctions. We can make you a lot of money. And I gave them 100 grand, and I really believed that it was going to work. And it didn't work. So I lost this 100 grand of the bad. And I realized that like, okay, now I don't have anything to invest. And I don't have an income here. And I didn't have an income from Russia as well. So at this point, I have to figure it out. And I found that people are doing Amazon. And, uh, I, I was really lucky that my product, my first product work, this was silicone wine glass that I didn't know how, I didn't know that they have to customize. I didn't know anything. Speaker 1: I just- Did you see like amazing.com or something online or what? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: Just watching YouTube videos or just seller, just seller university? Speaker 2: Just Seller University. Just Seller University and I went to read the blogs and people were saying you have to ask people for their reviews. I was there when we had to like, we've been listing products, adding reviews and getting sales. So that was super simple. And by investing five grand, I got 14,000 on top. So I got 14,000 profit. To tell you how I was happy is like not tell you anything. I was like really jumping, screaming, yelling. I was happy that like, okay, I'm in America. I found a business that can work and I understand because I have the ground with the CEO, I have big background with the agencies, with the graphics, so I understand how I can improve it. What I didn't know that products supposed to be customized. What I didn't know is the approach to work with the suppliers. So all this stuff I had to learn in between 2015 and 2019. That was like a very hard time where I was learning something that I never learned before. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll tell you a little story. When you're in that learning process, and this is not to pick on you, I'm just, in that learning process, when I heard you on that podcast with Bradley, I think it might have been 2017, because you had like a Russian community. Speaker 2: Yeah, I still have this community. Speaker 1: But you had like a little Russian community, you're like training Russian people, and it's still when you're in the process of learning. And I remember Bradley asked you something about profit margins. And you said some crazy number on a profit margin. I was like, that doesn't add up. She's leaving something out. I was sitting there listening to the podcast and I messaged Bradley. You probably actually knew. It's just the way you said it was like you're leaving something out. And then a few years later, like 2021, I guess it was, I invited you to 2021 or 2022. 2022, I invited you to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. And when Bradley saw the list of speakers, he's like, Kevin, you know who that is, right? You know, Izabella? I said, yeah, I've met her and she's smart. She's like, you remember, that's the same person that you told me like five years ago on the podcast. I'm like, oh, yeah, well, you know, she's smart. She's good enough to speak on the stage. So it doesn't matter. But yeah, that's I always remember that. Speaker 2: That's funny. Speaker 1: Look, now you're on this podcast and now we're here and you're speaking on the stage and everything. You know, it's funny how these things happen. Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. And by the way, I was mixed up. I didn't understand in English the right definition of... Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what it was. That's what exactly. I realized that later. You just had your words and things backwards, you know, because it's not your native tongue. You're still learning. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like my husband saying, you know, sometimes she just say things. You have to ask her what she actually mean under what she said. So, you're absolutely correct. I'm not even deflecting. Speaker 1: So, you know, recently I had a guest on the AM-PM Podcast, Kat of Pips from the UK and I was talking to her and it's like, how did you get into this Amazon space? And she said, I was listening to Danny McMillan's seller sessions and someone had recommended this podcast and I was listening to it and it happened to be you, Kevin. I was listening to the podcast and I was like, this sounds pretty cool. And I was like, I think I can do this. And that's how she ended up getting into Amazon. Then she's on the podcast. So it's kind of funny how in this world, in our little world, how all these things happen. Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Speaker 1: And it also illustrates why you got to get out there. I mean, you're a big proponent of getting out to events. Your company sponsors a lot of events. You guys get out to a lot of stuff and it's a small world and there's so many people that don't get out of their house and don't leave. And I think they're just leaving opportunities on the table like crazy. And sometimes it's You would go to a show and maybe you come back and like, well, that was, that was okay, but I didn't make any buddies. I didn't make any business partners, but it's, it's a, it's a long-term play. You know, it's, it's building, building that, that, uh, those, those points that you can, those that you can cash in at some point. And, uh, I think you're a perfect example of that because you started selling 2015, then you leveraged that into learn, you learned it would head in and then you built a Russian community, right? Can you talk about that a little bit? Speaker 2: Yeah These communities started I believe in 2016 and I was saying I'm not going to teach anybody how to do business on Amazon and because I had the community back in Back in Russia and that was pretty big community back in those days and I. Speaker 1: These are Russian Amazon sellers or Russian e-commerce sellers? Speaker 2: No, just Russian entrepreneurs. They've been following me for years and they've been always asking me like, listen, how it's there in America? What is going on? Tell us more, tell us more. Speaker 1: This is a group you started or it was somebody else's group and you participated in it? Speaker 2: No, that was my group. That was my group because also I was teaching people since my 17. So my teaching, my coaching practice didn't go anywhere for years. So I came to the United States and I said, okay, I'm not coaching people anymore. I don't want to do it. Speaker 1: So you were coaching in Russia in addition to the interior design and all the other stuff you're doing, you were coaching entrepreneurs on how to be entrepreneurs and how to better their lives. Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's a little bit confusing here. So my first coaching was about how to create the trade show and this is how I get into the business in general. To tell a long, very long story short, I was working, when I was 17, I was working for the manufacturer, like huge, huge manufacturer. And they told me, okay, listen, now you have to create a trade show. I'm like, what do you mean I have to create a trade show? I have no idea how to do that. What is the trade show? And they told me like, okay, listen, now you have to go and learn. And we don't care how you're going to do it, but you have to do the trade show is like, I think two months. And I'm 17. I'm really, I just got into the college. And I'm working and I'm learning and now I have this freaking trade show that I have to figure out how to do. I learned also how he's teaching people. And I was just like, how much did we pay? We paid $350 and it was $19.99. The end of, no, hold on, 2000. That was the year of the 2000. I'm like, okay, so we paid $350 for me to learn from this guy. I did the trade show, I got my practice. I came to the company that hired this guy and I said, okay, now I have practice. I want to teach people how to do this trade show because, and I'm going to like, I want to do it the same, the same price as this guy. And they're like, okay, we don't have enough of teachers, enough of coaching people, go and do that. And I got so happy, I got so excited, I was super nervous. But I did it and they invited me again. I'm like, okay, so now you're paying me 350 a day and I like for two days, it's 700 bucks, but you're charging people. You have like, I think they have like 16 or 20 people. I'm like, okay, so what if I will create the company that will invite speakers that will speak and that will teach So I found one of the best coaching people in the industry and we've been teaching people how to do the contracts, we've been doing the corporate trainings, we didn't do any B2C, we've been doing only B2B, so we've been selling corporate trainings for the companies. And we had so many different topics from like how to do the trade show to how to close clients, how to find clients, how to do the right conversations and like many of them. And then I sold this company when I was 18, but I never stopped teaching people. And I was teaching people for years. It was just nonstop experience. Speaker 1: Not trade show stuff, but just entrepreneurship and whatever was the thing at the moment. Speaker 2: Usually it was applying on the business I was doing at the time plus the classes I was doing in the past. And this is how just the experience was building up. So like, I got this experience, I got this experience, and I was just like translating it out there. Then I came here and I'm like, no, I'm not teaching people how to do business on Amazon because first of all, I don't know yet how to do it myself. And second of all, it's English and I'm not really fluent here and to translate it to Russians, their mentality is different. So that was a lot of no-no's. But I ended up in 2017 to do my first class when we crossed our first seven figures. It was the end of the year and I started teaching people how to do business on Amazon. Speaker 1: Russians. Speaker 2: Russians, yeah. There have been Russians, there was a lot of Russians here and that was pretty hard because it's, I was always... Speaker 1: So these were Russians in the U.S. or these were Russians in... Speaker 2: Russians in the U.S. plus Russians there. So they've been... Speaker 1: Ukrainians probably too. Speaker 2: Ukrainians, Russians, people from Kazakhstan and like all over the world. And the toughest part here for me was to teach people how to do it right. And for me, it's been always important to have a success rate. Because when you're teaching people, and I hate when these fake gurus do that, they are teaching with the purpose to charge and they don't care about success. Which generally speaking, you don't have to care about people's success because the purpose of the coach is to Translate the knowledge to make sure the person received the knowledge. But this is my thing. I always care and I cannot sleep well if someone is not succeeding. For me, it is like for my mentalities is super bad. Like I can't sleep normally. And this is how agency came out in 2019 because I decided, okay, instead of like teaching people, let's just do it for people. Especially the agency worked out pretty well when it was COVID and we've been sitting home, we didn't go anywhere. So everything we've been doing is just, we've been doing agency and we've been doing our Amazon. Our Amazon was pretty cool in 2020. It has been happening with Russian speaking people and this is how Russian community has been growing. We had a lot of successful stories. We had a lot of successful screenshots when people have been launching their private labels under my supervision. And of course, the supervision was improving from year to year because we went from like One type of the main picture to a different type of the main pictures when we started testing them and etc. I was improving my coaching sessions as well, but it took so much time. And when you teach people, you cannot guarantee people that they will receive information on the way how you want them to receive information. And when they're receiving information, you cannot guarantee that these people will implement it properly. And this is where those links are failing. And this is something that I still, like, if someone will ask me, how would you fix it? I don't know. But people are having these blanks in between, like, I learned from somebody, the moment they learn from somebody, now they don't know how to implement it properly. Or they're adjusting some actions how they can implement it, and then they're not doing it correctly. And this is the failures happening. And when we created the agency, our success rate went up. We still have some unsuccessful stories, of course. It will not be truth if I will say we have 100% success rate. Absolutely not. We have failures. But the success rate went up, it became easier to help people, but it became more expensive. Of course, because by helping people, you're literally, you focus everything you have into this help. So people are paying you for your experience and to be hands-free. So we even, we've been calling Amazon hands-free at some point and then I decided, no, it is not true. We cannot do Amazon hands-free because we're not running Amazon for them. We're helping them to launch their Amazon. To the launch point, like we can help with like first couple months of sales, but then they have to run their business. So yeah, this is something about my coaching and my Russian community. Speaker 1: So, but now it started with Russians, but now Ritz Momentum does, it's not just Russians, it's anybody now, right? Yeah. Speaker 2: I have an American husband, so he taught me how to speak English, now it's Americans. And the biggest challenge was actually to switch from Russian speaking community to English speaking community. And to gain trust here, like to talk to Kevin King, to talk to Bradley Sutton. It was so challenging and to prove out there that like, listen, here's the girl, well, not the girl anymore, from like Russia that came here and she wants to be with you guys on the same stage. Speaker 1: That's someone you're successful where you came from and you have You know you're good, but you didn't have the confidence yet because the language barrier, right? Speaker 2: Language barrier and I had to have some like successful stories. Like if you ask me, can you show me your successful sellers on Amazon? I can't pull that up. And if you ask me, can you show me unsuccessful stories? I also can't pull them up. Speaker 1: We all have those. If you've been doing this a while, you have some. We have war stories. We have unsuccessful stories. But you've turned it into It's almost, it's a family affair. Your daughter, your 17 year old daughter is like actively involved. Isn't your husband doing like, this is like the whole family. Do you have your baby doing stuff? Is the baby posing for pictures? Speaker 2: My babies, I'm waiting till someone will reach out to me and say, listen, I have the baby product. Can you do some pictures? I am waiting for that. So if you guys are listening out there, I will do it for free. Just to take my baby to someone else's listing. So Elisa, she turned 18. She's an adult now. She's making her own decisions. I don't have to be there at all. But it's a joke. So she was watching me doing Amazon for like, again, since 2015. And she was always saying, I don't want to do what you do. And she saw me doing business in Russia and she loved it. She saw like how I was running, not hundreds, like 50, 60 people at the same time. And we had so many clients that was so visible because we had a huge office here in Orlando. We have like pretty small space, but we have it. And She was watching me and she said, no, I don't like what you do. I will never do what you do. And then when she turned, I believe 16 or closer to 16, she said, listen, can I try? I'm like, well, if you want to try, try. And she substituted within the time, she substituted two people, two adults that been doing their job poorly than she was doing at her 16. And that was very hard to admit that like she's so talented because as mom, you don't want to praise your child so much by saying, my child is the smartest, my child can do stuff. Usually you're down, at least me, I'm downgrading. I'm like, no, she's not ready. No, she's not there yet. No, she's supposed to be under control. And like, uh, I have to check every single thing that she's doing. And then I realized she doesn't have to be supervised on the way how I get used to supervise these adults. And she's probably one of these like thousands of people that can do her job better than adult. And she's doing it pretty good. So the results that she's showing, the approach she learned, how she's working with clients and she's working with our designers. So she's our project manager. If she will decide to quit tomorrow, I will be without my right and left hand. So she's a really important person in the agency. My husband, he was a Marine. He is a Marine. Marines are never in the past. He resigned this year. And when we've been thinking what he's going to do and we've been thinking and thinking and thinking, he said, you know what, like I have skills. He got some offers from financing companies and he said, the skills that I have will be much better to help grow our agency. Let's just do it together. I'm like, okay, that's amazing. Like I love to do things together. So now we have this just out of nowhere, I never planned it. So now we have kind of family based business where we all holding our hands and helping each other to struggle, to grow, to hustle. So yeah, we can name it as like family based business. Speaker 1: I can tell when I see you guys at events and you're all there, you're all running as a team. You all kind of know your place and your job and your duty and it's just clicking, which is really cool to see. No one's like a boss bossing someone else around. Everybody just knows what they need to do and when they need to do it and they take care of it. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Speaker 1: That's really cool. So you're still selling right now too, right? You still have the agency stuff or you still actually have active seller accounts selling? Speaker 2: I still have several actual seller accounts. We launched back in 2021, we launched six brands, three died immediately. I'm like, okay, that's not going to work. Three of them are still okay. One of them probably will grow into something. And if I will do everything correctly, like we do with our clients, because we're literally not putting a lot of focus into our Amazon account, then we probably will exit in 2025, I think, 2024, 2025. Speaker 1: So the agency is the goal to build that and then sell it or what's the plan? You sold all your past agencies and so is this one? Speaker 2: You're absolutely correct. Pattern cannot be changed. I think I don't believe that pattern can be changed that fast. I think we will grow agency to some extent and we will exit it maybe also like 2025. Maybe they will actually come together as a package with the Amazon seller central account because I strongly believe you cannot be a service provider if you're not selling on Amazon. It's just impossible. You have to keep up with all this PPC and with the updates and listings. Like seriously, almost every other day when I'm logging into their account, I'm like, damn, something new again. They change some stuff. So you have to keep yourself updated and all the software that we use, they're all linked to Amazon. They're linked to Amazon Seller Central and this is where you see all the dashboards, what is going on and et cetera. You have to sell to provide services. There's no way to go around. I don't believe in service providers that don't sell on Amazon. The agency, I don't know, probably will sell it with the account too because that will be like, listen, this is where you sell, this is where you learn and this is where you implement. Speaker 1: Well, you see a lot of service providers, not all, but a lot of service providers are failed Amazon sellers. I mean, there's so many service providers and software companies in this space now. When you started back in 2015, when I was starting too as the FBA model, I've been selling on Amazon longer than that but FBA, this did not exist and now there's a lot of people that get into it, they either fail as a seller and they switch to an agency or they get to and sometimes it's not they don't fail because they did something wrong, it's sometimes they fail because they ran out of money and they're like I can't cash flow this so let me do an agency where I can sell digital air and sell my time and I don't have to invest all this crazy money in inventory and take a risk that someone else pay me up front. What makes Ritz Momentum different than the 500 other agencies out there that will do your listings and do your copy and help you with launch something? What makes you guys different? Speaker 2: Great question. I know that right now there are plenty of agencies that are doing listing copywriting and seal copywriting and they're increasing conversion. This is not our main thing. I know that we do it great. I know that we can guarantee the results will be improved if one client is coming to us and they're saying like, this is my listing. Can you do something? And we can project how much we can improve the listing and how much money they potentially can make after the improvement. We can even split the payments by saying like, listen, you don't have to pay us in full. Let's make a deal that you will pay us after you will see the improvements of your listing. If we're really confident in the product and in the potential. There are agencies that do the same. We do reverse engineering. We're learning the audience before we do some type of the movements into the, before we'll start to improve something, we have to learn who are we selling and why we're selling and what are we selling before it will be just BPA-free, FDA-approved, stainless steel or something else, right? So we don't put just features. We're selling experience on the listings. Our main thing is that we're doing the product research and product development and product validation for people. This is our strength. So we're finding and validating the products that people want to sell. And we're helping them to sell on the way how they will be profitable to make sure they are winning their market before they go on the market. So this is something that we do and I would say we probably only one company on the market that do it in full and like... Speaker 1: You give them the product or they come to you and say I have this product, this is my idea and you validate it or do you say, they come to you and say I want to sell on Amazon or I want to extend my brand and you make recommendations to them of what they should sell. Speaker 2: It can be both. It can be both. People are coming to us and they're asking, listen, I want to sell the toothbrush. Okay, let us validate the toothbrush, like the toothbrush that you have, will you be able to succeed with this toothbrush? And we are validating it through a different type of the software. So, we use all these tools for building relationships and between the tools to understand if we can make this decision towards the toothbrush, if you can actually sell it. Maybe you cannot sell it as a toothbrush keyword. Maybe you can sell it like a brown toothbrush with like, I don't know, some special handle or whatever. And the second part that we do, we're developing, when we're finding the product, if people come into us and they're saying, I don't have a product to sell, then we're building the product from scratch, the product that we found. But we have to make sure the product we found and we developed and we validated, we test it against competitors. And here's the very tricky part. So when we test the products, we have to test against competitor we want to win. We also have to make sure this competitor will be in the market in like three, four months from today. This is the approximate time when our product we develop will be on the market. And we have to make sure that other two, three competitors that are behind this main competitor, we're winning them as well. Because sometimes if you will be based on the big competitor, based on the numbers, Some small competitors are also pretty strong with the keywords and with other stuff, and they have some benefits that you're also supposed to go after. And they have some strength because of maybe influencers or brand awareness or something else. So you have to win pretty much all of them. And if you want them, you have a buffer for the next usually like 6-12 months to win the product, to win the market when you will be there. We also take into consideration the amount of reviews that you will have when you launch your product on Amazon, because initial up to 30 reviews by one program, It's supposed to be so helpful where people will have to buy your product because they want to, not because they have to. And when they will look under the competitor and into the Amazon. into the product that you are selling, they will choose to buy this one, the one we developed against the one that is having like 14,000 reviews on it. And you know, right now we don't know if Amazon will consider to suspend the amount of reviews and we will see ratings or we will see the amount of reviews and the ratings. So we don't know how Amazon will actually list the products on page one in the next couple of months. But up to right now, Amazon is still testing ratings versus amount of reviews but at the end of the day we still want the buyers to purchase the product because this product has been developed on the way how they want to purchase it. Speaker 1: Yeah, they say 21 is the magic number statistically for people to believe the reviews and once you hit 21 They'll actually believe it and then it becomes a game of, do I believe 21 reviews at four and a half stars or do I believe 10,000 reviews at four and a half stars? And people will typically go for the 10,000 at four and a half stars. So that's a big thing that a lot of people look at when it's determining how competitive this product is. If Amazon makes these changes that they're testing right now in India and the US and some other markets, they're doing some other stuff in India that a lot of people don't know right now they're testing. I think it's going to level the playing field if they actually make these changes permanent. I think it's actually a good thing for the customer. You have some of the bigger sellers pretty upset about it because they're like, I've been working my ass off and getting reviews and doing all this and now you're going to say that you're not going to show that I have 10,000 and this guy that has 21 or 30 reviews like you just said on the vine can come in and compete with me? That sucks. That's not fair. And I'm like, yes, it is fair. Because your product has an unfair advantage because your product may suck. This guy's new product may be better. Maybe he read all your reviews and he made improvements or made something different. He doesn't have a chance. And so the customer is not getting a chance to actually see a better product because of this fact. And so it's going to give, I think it's going to open the door, actually, if they make this permanent. And I think they should. Casey Goss actually talked about this years ago. If you listen to, he used to have a podcast called Follow the Data when he ran Viral Launch. That company's still around, but barely hanging on. And he talked about it, I think 2018, maybe 2017, 2018, about what he actually said, this is what Amazon needs to do. And it's basically what they're doing right now. I think it could actually open the door back up for more new people to get into Amazon. Because right now there's a big barrier. The reviews are the biggest moat. The aggregators were looking at how many reviews do you have? And it's the biggest moat around a product. And if that goes away, and now what they're doing with 90% of the people testing, 90% of the people said this, or 70% of the people didn't like this, it's going to make for better products and better experiences. It's going to change how we as sellers Do things and how you as your company is helping people find stuff. So are you, when you find something, are you developing these from scratch like some of the other guys do out there? Or are you finding, you know, if it's a toothbrush, are you helping design new molds and come up with new designs? Or are you just finding it on Alibaba or at trade shows or at the source and just kind of modifying it a little bit for your clients? Speaker 2: So when we do the product development, that's supposed to be based on what the buyers are looking for. So it cannot be like, listen, we're creating the product because we decided it's going to be just different. So we have to learn the customer avatar. And recently actually Datadive came up with a new feature when they're summarizing the experience of the clients and they're creating the customer avatar for you. Which makes it a little bit easier, but we still do it manually a lot. So if the person wants the toothbrush that will be ergonomically comfortable in their hand and they're actually talking about it, then we probably will consider this part as a part of the development. If people are not searching for any additional features and they're like, I just want to like leopard pattern, then we probably will create just the additional pattern, but you usually don't do that. We're trying to consider people's needs, accumulate all their needs into one product. And by talking to the supplier, if it's possible, where we will not be able to increase the cost of goods to the roof. So then we will include these features into the product. So it's never happening just because we go to Alibaba, search something and like look and what will be trendy. We're really learning what people want to have on the product. We are making sure that product development will not take people in production for like six months. We have to make sure it's easy to manufacture. So it will not be something like we have to create the mold that will be creating like, I don't know, for six months. So it's supposed to be still something simple. Speaker 1: Are you just doing the U.S. market or you do other marketplaces too? Speaker 2: We're trying to focus on U.S. If you will do everything, you will end up with nothing. We can validate product for Australia and Europe, but we're trying to be focused on United States. Speaker 1: So you do a lot of stuff to actually expand your knowledge out there. You sponsor events, you go to a lot of events, you try to speak at quite a few, you join high-end masterminds. I think you just recently joined Driven, which is like, was it 25, 30 grand, something like that, to join Grit Driven for a year. You're in the Offer Mafia that Sean has, where there's a lot of sharing. How much does that kind of stuff really help you in your business? Speaker 2: It does help. With Driven Mastermind, I feel myself as the stupidest person in the room. And that's challenging. I love it. Speaker 1: You actually want that. You never want to be the smartest person in the room. Speaker 2: That's correct. Speaker 1: That's how you grow. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. Speaker 2: That's correct. And that's why I joined because I'm like, I have to learn from these people. These people are like right here and I'm right there. Speaker 1: Now this is, for those of you listening, Driven is not an Amazon mastermind. Driven, there's Amazon, some Amazon sellers and people that sell on Amazon in there, but it's more of a general marketing. It's Perry Belcher's mastermind that's, it evolved out of the War Room, which is a digital marketer mastermind before that. And so it's, I like going to these as well because it's, I use them as brainstorming sessions. I can sit in these and I'll go to an Amazon event. I hardly ever sit and listen or if I'm listening, I'm not paying any attention. Um, cause it's just, it's stuff I already know or speakers aren't very good or they're just talking, they're corporate and it's this, it's nothing actionable there, but you go to something like this and it's, I like it because it's, there's a little bit of Amazon, there's a little bit of general marketing, a little bit of social media, a little bit of all these different, modes of actually selling and it starts giving you ideas. You're like, Oh, what if I took this? These guys are crushing it doing this on ClickFunnels. What if I took that and did this on Amazon or I took this element and this element, it's really good brainstorming. And I come away with it like, well, I need to take these elements from this other business and apply it here. And, or mix these principles together and that's how you stay cutting edge and on leading the pack instead of following the pack on things. So I think they're super valuable. And then like the Offer Mafia, they have monthly meetings, they have a meetup in Florida. And that one is good too because mostly it's other agency people. How do you get clients and how do you do things? And I've seen recently you've picked up on your social media, like you're doing a lot on TikTok and stuff. How is that going for you and what's that like? Speaker 2: What the TikTok is for us is not going anywhere, but my team is just experimenting with TikTok. And Kevin, you're the only one person that is telling me you see me on the TikTok all the time. You're my one follower. Speaker 1: I don't think I even follow you. I think it just... Maybe it's your phone when we went to dinner and we had an event together. Maybe it's your phone in proximity. You know how you ever go to a concert and then you're like, you know, you're at a concert. This happened to me. I was at a concert with my wife, my soon to be ex-wife at one point and we were watching Carlos Vives and there's a cute girl in front of me the whole concert and you know, I'm not you know, just naturally you see there's a cute girl dancing in front of you. Well, like later that nor the next day it comes up on my social media. Hey, you might know so-and-so and it's that girl. I'm like looking at she looks familiar. I'm looking. Oh, that's the girl that was in front of me. So it maybe that's what happened. Unknown Speaker: Maybe reading. Speaker 2: Yeah, their data is reading. Speaker 1: It's scary. Speaker 2: It's scary. It is scary. We are not having any business from TikTok. And I know we should do business there. We should do a better job. We are very good on Instagram. Instagram is like really giving us a lot of leads. We started recently doing LinkedIn. We've been doing outreach. Outreach didn't work for us, but I know it works for a lot of people of our mafia. So we are trying to do different. We're building funnels right now. We're really after driven event. I'm like, okay, we've been always thinking about funnels. We've been doing them, but like, Left hand somewhere there. So let's do it right. Right now we're building funnels that will be kind of evergreen that will work for us as another income stream. And yeah, those masterminds are keeping me in a tippy-toes because I see people that are more successful and they like it because you feel that you're not doing enough, you're not good enough on the good way, not on the way where you will beat yourself and you will put yourself in a depression mode, but on the way where you want to grow and you want to be out there And you will feel confident to hanging out with all these people because you are at least in a similar level. And those people are like top 1% of United States. So it's, it's important. Speaker 1: So coming to the US, you made a comment, I think we were at dinner one time about something that people take for granted. I think it was, I don't remember your exact words, but people that live in the United States take it for granted how easy it is or how good they have it here when it comes to entrepreneurship and business. Can you explain that a little bit or tell me your thoughts on that and maybe slap a few people upside the head here so they understand how good they actually have it? Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like, you know where to push the button, Kevin. So as an immigrant, from my perspective, I can tell people that have been born in the United States do not understand how valuable is an economy, how valuable is a free speech, how valuable is the opportunity that you guys have here. Because if you've been born in the United States, At your 18 years old, if your parents did a good job, you have a perfect credit score. You can go buy the car with zero payment down. You can go and buy any house you want with like 5% or zero down if it's your first time purchaser. You have opportunities to build business because banks are literally throwing money into you if you have a good credit score. You have open doors everywhere. You have free internet in the libraries. You have everything. You have free iPhones. Guys, you really have everything. Like country that I came from, you can buy the phones. I mean, right now something probably changed, but you can buy the phone only for the full price. So now let's just switch it. You can have a car only if you pay the full price. You can have a phone only if you're paid the full price. You can have a mortgage only if you pay at least 20 to 30% down. Let's now think how many people will be homeowners in the United States now, right? So how many people will be driving the car? How many people will have the phones? Then at the end of the day, if you file the taxes in Russia in total, you have to pay, I believe, up to 50 something percent. And then what are you going to have in the pocket? And this is where we're talking about like honesty and dishonesty and being transparent or not being transparent. So the opportunity people have here on their beaching that like, oh, it's not enough or, oh, government is not giving us enough of like food stamps or something. Russia doesn't have the definition of food stamps or like Ukraine or like other countries. It's just not there. Here, you cannot be hungry. You can go to the church and ask for money and for food and you can have it. It's just, if people don't have something, it's just because they're lazy and they don't want to do stuff and they don't want to have stuff. They choose to be poor. They choose to be in a bad place in their life. It's a choice. And for people out there who are not living in the United States, they don't have this opportunity that people have here and choosing not to have this opportunity. So this is something probably that a lot of people don't even understand. Speaker 1: What about though, a lot of people think that everybody wants to move to everybody, you know, you see it, people coming across the border from Mexico and people trying to get to the United States. And live the American dream. And there's a lot to that. I agree with you. I've traveled the world. I was married to a Colombian. I understand a lot more than a lot of people on that. And there is great opportunity here. But a lot of people don't realize that some people that come here, that immigrate here, Sometimes they come and they think, I'm just going to go to America and just start picking up dollar bills off the sidewalk. And those people are a little bit disappointed, but the ones that are coming in, they're willing to work. You know, you look at some of the Asian communities and stuff, the people that come here and they build up these businesses and just completely change their lives for their kid, for themselves and for their children and everything. And some of the Indian, you know, the programmers and it's from all races. The opportunities are great, but then you get to some of them, they're like, once they're here and they're in the American system and they're doing well, A lot of them actually get homesick and then you see some of them at some point either for family reasons, they got to go take care of a sick mother or father or they just start missing their buddies or their culture or their food and they end up moving back. Do you think you'll ever go back or do you think you're here, you're done and you're here for the long term? Speaker 2: Oh, United States is my place and I hear what you're saying. And I meet a lot of people here in the United States that are immigrants, never learn one word in English. And they're just like, don't understand what you're saying. And we can talk about it too, but regarding me, I never go back. Something that I have here, I will never be able to get anywhere else. I can travel to the different places and I can come back. We've been talking to my husband a couple of days ago. I'm like, imagine if you have $30 million And you can build any house you want at any place you want. It cannot be commercial. And he said, it's like, you know me, you're already not priming me to do business with $30 million. I'm like, no, it's supposed to be your primary property. And we've been doing this workshop and we decided that if we have the opportunity to build the castle, for example, it will be the castle in the United States. Because United States is like, it's a proven place for the opportunity for multiple generations ahead. This economy never changed. It's only getting stronger. And if you're smart enough, and not every single person is an entrepreneur, that's why people are coming back. People are coming back to something that they get used to, to the culture they get used to. A lot of people get used to suffer and they feel confident to suffer. I don't. I hate suffer. So yeah, I'm not one of those people that want to come back, but I know the stories when people are, they don't want to stay just because they have to work. United States is the country of capitalism. You have to work to have something. You can have something, but you have to work for it. So not a lot of people want to work. Speaker 1: True statement. Well, Izabella, it's been great. We could sit here and probably talk for another couple hours. We talked for like an hour before we even started recording this. We got to hit the button now. It's been awesome having you on here. If people want to learn more or follow you or find out about your agency or what you're up to, how do they do that? Speaker 2: That's so simple. It's LinkedIn Izabella Ritz with the Z and double L and Ritz Carlton or famous cracker, whatever you want to compare me to. And you can always go to our website ritzarm.com. And yeah, fill out the form. My team will reach out to you pretty quick. If it's a weekend, then on a Monday, first thing in the morning, and we will be happy to help pretty much anybody. We're here to help. Speaker 1: And you've got, even if you're a subscriber to the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter, when you first subscribe, you get a coupon book. And if you look in that little coupon book, I think there's something in there, a little Scooby snack from Ritz Momentum as well in that coupon book. So make sure you check that out as well. Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for this Kevin. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, I'm sure I'll be seeing you again soon, maybe even in Hawaii next year for the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you never know. And it's always great chatting with you. Speaker 2: Yeah, great to chat with you too, Kevin. Thank you for having me here today. Speaker 1: As Izabella just said, the opportunities we all have selling on Amazon are some of the greatest opportunities ever. And if you don't take advantage of that as an entrepreneur right now in this space, you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. It's a great talk with Izabella, fascinating story, amazing entrepreneur, someone that is really doing things right and doing things well and congrats to her. We'll be back again next week with another amazing episode. We'll be talking about aggregators and AI and a whole bunch of cool stuff with my guest. So don't miss that next Thursday when that new episode drops. Before we leave today, I've got some words of wisdom for you. You know, you get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve. That's Elon Musk that said that. You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve. Have a great weekend. See you again next week.