#382 – From Estonian Streets to Global E-Commerce Success: Egle Raadik’s Amazon FBA Journey & more!

#382 - From Estonian Streets to Global E-Commerce Success: Egle Raadik's Amazon FBA Journey and Seven-Figure Exit Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 382 of the AM PM podcast. My guest this week is Egle Raadik. She's from Estonia and she's a big seller in the US. She's had a big exit. We talk about that and some of the pain points and some of what she went through. Very stressful times actually during her exit. But she got through it and now she's in the process of running three new brands that she also plans to sell. Great inspirational story today from a really hardworking lady. That's just crushing it on Amazon. Enjoy this episode with Egle. 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: Egle Raadik, welcome to the AM PM podcast. It's so good to see you again. Speaker 2: Good, good to see you again too. It was London last time when we had a chat, so I'm so happy to connect again. Speaker 1: I think it was and I think we were at some like Danny DJ's typically at his events like on the night after the event and I think we were there and we were talking for a long time as me and you and several people. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this moment Estonia Mafia just made a circle around you and we didn't let you go. Speaker 1: You didn't. You didn't. You just captured me there and you're like convincing me like you got to come to Estonia for the event and then I never heard a word after that. I don't know what happened. You had to do a trade. You had to come to the billion dollar source. I would come speak in German. I never heard anything after that. Speaker 2: That was the trade and I wasn't ready to travel at this particular time. You know, I'm running three Amazon companies. So I'm not like away from it all. So it's been very busy. Speaker 1: But you did take some time away. You took a little, I saw like on social media, back in, maybe it was the summer of last year, summer of 2023, you actually took a little bit of time, right? Were you able to get away? You went to Mexico or somewhere. Speaker 2: I was in Mexico and also I've done crazy thing like a personal solitude month in Spain. And that was after an exit. So me and my team, we founded four Amazon companies and we sold one two years ago. But this exit story, it's just so crazy. So when we managed to pull it off, I just needed to unblock for like 30 days and just leave everything I know. And that was the Spain thing. But the Mexico, Mexico experience is more like for female entrepreneurs, you know, when we're executing every day and we're being in charge, there is a place in like a female body that wants to have the feminine embodiment part back in you. So I was kind of getting in touch with that in Mexico. Speaker 1: Well, that's awesome. I mean, I think that's important. A lot of people, all they do is work, work, work. They don't make time for themselves. And the fact that you did that, I think is super important. More people need to do that. Were you totally able to disconnect or were you still having to check in? Was your team able to handle everything? You could just disappear for 30 days. Speaker 2: My team of seven, eight people together with me is eight people. Right now, we run three Amazon companies. They are so autonomous on what they do. We do have a COO also in place. I was able to be completely off-grid for 30 days in Spain. I blocked all my apps. I didn't check anything. I only had one book and my phone, which was only in calling and SMS mode. In emergency case, you could reach me, but I could not check on any emails or any social media. Speaker 1: That's awesome. That's awesome. So what was it like when you came back was it because I know like every time I go to a conference or something I come back it's like I got to catch up on so many things. It's like you feel you're nice to be relaxed and you come back and you're like overwhelmed. Everything waiting for you. Speaker 2: But for this time we already had COO in place so that took a lot of stress off my shoulders. Speaker 1: Hey, what's up, everybody? Kevin King here. You know, one of the number one questions I get is how can you connect to me? How can I, Kevin, get some advice or speak with you or learn more from you? The best way is with Helium 10 Elite. If you go to h10.me forward slash elite, You can get all the information and sign up for Helium 10 Elite. Every month I lead advanced training where I do 7 Ninja Hacks. We also have live masterminds every single week. One of those weeks I jump on for a couple of hours and we talk shop, we talk business. I do in-person events. Helium 10 Elite is where you want to be. It's only $99 extra on your Helium 10 membership. It's h10.me.me forward slash elite. Go check it out and I hope to see you there. For those of you that don't know, you're in Estonia, right? Speaker 2: Yes, it's a northern European cold and a little bit dark country, but we're very E-centric, so everything is digital. Speaker 1: Yeah, I've actually been to Tallinn, Estonia, and I liked it. I mean, the wall that goes around the city and when you walk into the downtown part, it's like all that old medieval kind of stuff. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of UNESCO heritage thing. You really step back to the medieval scenario. It's really fun. Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when I was there. It's been a while since I was there, but y'all are just switching over to the Euro, I think. Speaker 2: We must have been here a long time ago. Speaker 1: 10, 12 years ago. Yeah. Speaker 2: Completely changed. I mean, we are as a former Soviet country. So we are catching up with you guys really, really fast. It's been 30 years since we've been free. So we're still running to get you. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of entrepreneurship in Estonia. Even back when I was there, the advancements, a lot of people think of like the old Soviet countries that broke off as, you know, backwards or whatever. And it's not. It's very forward thinking, very high tech. Speaker 2: Because this is the only way how people could actually create and that's the way how we can catch up with you, the Western world, America. We need to step into our power and we need to start creating ourselves and that means that we need to create companies. The salary work only is not enough sometimes to catch up and create the wealth that we have been missing so long time. Speaker 1: Now your background though before you got into this whole Amazon game running three different companies like we'll talk about that in a minute but was didn't you do something of journalism or something? Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a master in journalism. But before I started that, I actually tried to study gene technology. Don't ask me why. I mean, I cannot imagine myself running around with white outfits and being in, you know, with all these little glass jars and chemicals and things like that. I was like, after 30 days, I was like, no, I'm not. Just get me out of here. So I just escaped to being an au pair in Minnesota in States. And after that, yes, I thought that let's get like a general education, which is journalism and media. So I do have a master's, but I do not like to consume media. I don't like to participate in written media. I'm very comfortable on being like on a podcast and doing filmings, but I don't know why I studied it. I guess you just wanted to understand the world really. Speaker 1: So did you ever actually work in that field or you just kind of you did for a while? Speaker 2: I was rather like managing different departments in a big media outlet. Speaker 1: So in Europe or in the US? Speaker 2: No, in Estonia here in Europe. Speaker 1: So you came to the US and were in Minnesota. You did some studies as well as your au pair stuff here? Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just a babysitter. You know, I just had to get away from this gene technology thingy. So that was kind of like a gap year from the high school to becoming a real grown-up person. Speaker 1: Okay. So then what did you actually end up doing? What were you doing before you got into the Amazon game? Speaker 2: I am a hopeless case really. I think after all these middle management positions I held in big companies, I was always holding a sidekick and just not one but maybe five different companies I was running in different times. When having children, when doing the salary work and they didn't really Come on logically one company was doing interior architecture another one was doing touristy you know. I was doing stuff to buy and sell in tourist shops. Another company was doing digital advertising and then I was also coaching a little bit. I did something else as well. I just can't remember anymore. They just all came one after another. I was just kind of what I'm trying to say is I was searching and I wasn't putting myself in a box that I have a media background. Maybe I start to produce content or maybe I start to be a blogger or something. I was just all over the place and I just want to encourage people to take the borders away from yourself and just, you know, whatever calls you, go and try to do it because in my case, from going from interior architecture to, I don't know, digital marketing, it's completely different era. But nowadays, all the information is available and if you have passion, you can just get yourself up to speed in some time. Speaker 1: Awesome. So these were for other companies, you're working for other people, but then you at some point started doing, you had started like a digital marketing agency. Speaker 2: Yeah, from the side, as a side gig, yes. Speaker 1: By digital marketing, what does that mean? You're running Facebook ads, you're doing SEO or what were you doing? Speaker 2: Yeah, all of that. I was a company like they call men and the dog, just me and myself, but I was doing this big, the TV tower, the maritime museum, the big objects here in Estonia who were launching their presence. So I had some big clients, but it was just me doing all of it. Speaker 1: So did you find out about selling e-commerce or Amazon and specifically during that time when you're doing the digital marketing or did that come a little bit later? Speaker 2: That came when me and my then-husband, right now ex-husband and business partner, we decided that we want to take a cap year completely away from Estonia. We went to live in Asia. We were living in all possible countries in Asia, in Vietnam, in Cambodia. We were in Kuala Lumpur and then we ended up in Bali. Then I was just swimming across this woman in a pool. She was a police assistant. And she started to share about that she's selling for $3,000 a month, she's selling a popcorn chocolate pizza in Amazon. I was like, what is that product? And what is that platform? Like, I need to dig deeper because I've never heard of something like that. And I kind of feel like, you know, from all what she said, it sounded complicated and it sounded like, I started seven years ago, so there wasn't too much information around in 2016, 2017. I had to put all the puzzle pieces together by myself mainly. I liked it because I like to venture in places that other people haven't been occupying so heavily yet. That was the thing that got me started with Amazon. Speaker 1: Did you take a course from somebody or did you just learn by watching what was available back in 2016? Yeah, I just learned. YouTube videos and a few Facebook groups and stuff like that? Speaker 2: Yeah, you just became big when I started. You were in this group and then you popped up as a celebrity. I remember watching that from the side. I did. Speaker 1: I had no intention on actually going down this route. I actually started, uh, some people heard the story, but I started with this podcast, the AM PM podcast that I'm now hosting. And, uh, yeah, Manny Coates was running helium 10 and asked me to come on it. And I was like, no, I'm just a seller. I'm just trying to launch some brands. Like, no, come on. And it's like, so I did. And now look what I'm doing now. Now I'm hosting the damn thing. Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Manny's podcast was my favorite. I listened to every single minute he put out. So that's how I got started, actually. That was my support. Speaker 1: That was me too, back in 2015. I mean, I watched, I think it was amazing.com. I think it was AMZ4 back then. And they did a series of videos, like four different videos to pitch you on buying their $5,000 course. And I was like, I don't need to do this. I've been doing this. I already know all this. So I just launched it myself. But to consume content, like you said, I was actually listening to the AM-PM Podcast. There's only like three or four of them. In the software tools, there's very few out there to do your keyword research. It was kind of a figure it out on your own kind of thing. Speaker 2: Yeah, so these were the times where we were able to listen to every single podcast out there for Amazon, I remember. Speaker 1: Is there another one now? I was counting the other day because we're working on a tool right now to actually summarize them all for my newsletter for a special tool like a weekend edition and there's 117. Podcasts and AMs that I know of. I'm sure there's some that I don't even know of, but 117 in English. It's a totally different environment now. So you met this girl in Bali. You were swimming. She says she's making three grand a month and so you started diving into it. What was your first product that you launched? Speaker 2: I was kind of like a fruit basket thingy. I did, I mean, fruit basket was the kind of the first product that I actually succeeded on and my definition of succeed was like I was selling three units a day. Unknown Speaker: So I was like, wow. Speaker 2: Because my background was that I was trying to launch baby bandana drooling peeps and I failed miserably because I entered already back then there were such a thing as saturated market. So that was in 2017, it was definitely saturated market. So I was just thinking, yeah, but my designs are cuter and my listing is better. No, when you don't earn and you don't know how to get to the first page, I mean, all of us, we are going to learn this sooner or later with a hard way, right? And then you just keep away from heavily saturated markets. I was doing this Trulink Pips and I was doing something else. And then, you know, we kind of started with my ex-husband. We started to like to produce also in Indonesia. And that was a crazy, crazy adventure because we had all these wooden arrows and clothing and, you know, decor and clothing basically. So we loaded up like a whole container while doing fruit basket. Speaker 1: While you were in Indonesia, you loaded up like resources yourself, not on some website or something, but like going into the local craft shops and little craft people. Speaker 2: We rented this scooter and we were just driving around. They have like an industrial street over there where they have the small presentational shops. So it was dusty. It was really I'm hot and you're just driving from one place to another and then you see these Mercedeses and then these big guys are coming out and just going in and the doors are closing, nobody else gets in and you understand these are the big guys, the big buyers. And then we go sweaty and looking like average and don't even know how to negotiate and going and waiting when the doors open so we can enter. But we loaded the container. I did all the research. They were not saturated markets. Two mistakes here. The containers papers from Indonesia were done wrongly. So we couldn't really enter all the products to America. So we had to abandon most of them. Speaker 1: So you were doing clothing from Indonesia? Speaker 2: Indonesia. Yeah, we did like decor and clothing. So we just had like... Speaker 1: Bali is known for more decor, right? There's a clothing there too. Speaker 2: They have clothing too. I wouldn't say Bali is the best place. I would go for Java to source clothing. The rest of Indonesia, Bali, it was just accessible for me. So that's why I did it. But the reason why we did the Indonesian project at all was that we were getting cocky. You know, you don't need too much to get cocky. I had these three sales of a fruit basket today and then we had another like office product that we discovered at the time that right now is sold as a full portfolio for multi-million dollars. And we were like, yeah, the sales are coming in. Let's just, you know, let us go there and just let's blow up, let's just invest as much as we can. Let's ride on the edge. And we were losing like 25 grand when we started out because, you know, we just weren't able to handle that such a speed and also the paperwork. Speaker 1: How did you finance it in the beginning? Was it just your own money or did you have? Yeah. Speaker 2: That hurt. That really hurt. Because at this time, we had three kids and we were building a house and being away from home and having all these costs of plane tickets and three kids and five people traveling and stuff. It wasn't easy to put aside like 30 grand to start a business. But in Estonia, luckily, we do have the maternity leave for like 18 months where you get your full compensation. For the salary. So most of it actually went to the Amazon black hole that I received from the state. Speaker 1: Well, 18 months of full salary. Yes. Speaker 2: So I mean, that's a good place to get started with any entrepreneur. Wow. Speaker 1: That's that's amazing. That's that's incredible that they do. That's that's I never even heard of 18 months of a full salary from maternity leave. That's cool. So you were starting this in Indonesia and Bali. And then so this one kind of didn't work. What what did you pivot into something else or do you just keep at it and keep persistent and kind of figure it out? Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of lowered my ego. I lowered expectations that I know it all because that's how I felt really. So I went back to the drawing board. I started to look, you know, where we made all the mistakes. I definitely went back to sourcing from China so the papers wouldn't blow up on you and then not to launch many products in the same time when it's just you and maybe 25% of your partner helping you. You can't do 20 products in the same time. It's just way too much. So I just went back to the drawing board and I discovered the portfolio that we sold and it was an office category. So we really started to develop that. Speaker 1: That was like 2017, 2018 when you started that? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: And that's the one that you just, you sold in 2022 or 2023? Actually 2020, at the end of 2020. Did you sell it to an aggregator or a strategic buyer or? Speaker 2: Aggregator, European aggregator. Speaker 1: European aggregator? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You said that was a seven figure exit? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: How many SKUs were in that? Speaker 2: We're kind of having always the same formula. We're having about 25 SKUs. Each of them need to do about $17,000 to $25,000 a month, you know, with a net profitability for 20%. And since we figured that formula out, that's like a medium multi seven-figure exit over there. Speaker 1: It's about $5 million. Speaker 2: Yes. I mean, you can do your math. Even though we can't talk about the numbers, but when we figured out this formula, before that we failed with having a hero product because Amazon shut it down on this office category brand that we sold and that was doing really majority of the revenue. And then for our kind of like a winning formula, we figured out that we do not want to have hero products. And the reason why Amazon shut it down was really silly. It was like a category issue. You know, they're having these huge databases. They're moving data. Something gets stuck and you can't unstuck it yourself. You're just against AI. The human on the phone says that, yeah, manually I'm changing it. And then when the big data starts to. Run the cleanups or something. They shut you down again. So we were at the middle of actually in an exit process when this happened. So that was like a 12 month delay to our exit because there was nothing to sell. But thanks to that, we figured out that we no longer want to build portfolios that are heavily reliant on hero products. So that's why we're doing 25 SKUs and about 20,000 apiece. And that's what we're doing with the next three companies now. We're almost feeling like a kindergarten, you know, just bringing up these little companies to a bigger company and then handing over to somebody who wants to take them from there. Speaker 1: I think that's a really smart approach and that's one of the approaches I advise a lot of people to do is don't try to... too many people have 80% of their sales come from one or two products. Speaker 2: And it's so dangerous. Speaker 1: It's so dangerous and some people have been successful with it. I know people that had one or two products and they exited with one or two products for a large amount and it's worked for them but for most people it's too dangerous and also I always tell people Don't shoot to be number one. Usually a hero product oftentimes is going to be one of the top one or two or three best sellers in a category. And I always say that depending on the category, if it's a really sub niche, that's maybe okay. But for most, you don't want to be there because you're just a target for hackers, for people Price wars for all kinds of crazy stuff. So your approach is 20 to 25 and just be middle of the road, steady. You don't have nearly the amount of issues and that's the way to do it and you basically prove that out with what you did. Speaker 2: I mean, we figured out that this is so much less stress, including way how to do business. Amazon is high stress level entrepreneurship. This is not for people who love to be chilled. This is a way how you can actually survive in this battlefield. When you're going under the radar, not running against the bullets and stuff with your flag out, hey, here I am with all this amazing revenue coming out in a black box and stuff like that. No, you just want to be secret, quiet, unsexy, doing all the products that are not really glamorous, stuff like that. That's why basically we've been sticking with the B2B categories. I'm doing the things that business buyers need. But that's so funny. In Estonia, all the guys, we have a really strong community over here. All the guys are doing feminine things like facials and shampoos and stuff like that. The women that I know, we're doing metal and plastic and industrial. What is going on? Speaker 1: That's funny. Yep, whatever works. I mean there's some really big sellers in Estonia so that's obviously working for it's a very good that community is very tight and very and there's Latvia too also has which is next door over there that has a quite a big community as well right? So what's the third country that's over there? It's Latvia, Estonia. Speaker 2: Lithuania. Speaker 1: Lithuania, that's right. All three of those actually are pretty strong in entrepreneurship and it's pretty strong in Amazon. Speaker 2: That's true, but we don't really communicate amongst like Baltic states or amongst other companies or other countries. It's more like internal and then when we go to conferences, it's more like international community. Speaker 1: Was this the brand you said that it was an adventure to sell it? Is this the one that you're talking about that you went to Spain afterwards? Speaker 2: Yes, I was broken after selling this company. Speaker 1: It's because it's your baby or because... Speaker 2: It's my baby, but listen, we had Northbound Group helping us and they did an amazing job. And they said, yeah, guys, let's exit. And then our hero brother got shut down by a really stupid category issue that we were fixing basically. Three, four, five months. Yeah, four or five months for sure. Speaker 1: You were under LOI. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: And your Hedo product. So you were already kind of celebrating and doing the work. You're like, all right, I'm going to have a bunch of money hit my bank account soon. And then all of a sudden, boom. Unknown Speaker: I know. Speaker 2: I know. I wish this experience to nobody. Honestly, I don't. I can shed some light on what happened. So anyway, we were in the middle. We had many, many prospects that we could sell to. We were already sent out all the presentations and we were ready to go. And then we lost like 75% of the revenue, which is like, oh my God, what are we doing? We are paying the consultants. We are already thinking that we don't want to let the team go. We are starting two new companies. They are taking only expenses. They're not bringing anything back. At the same time, we're losing all the revenue. How do you navigate this? There is no profitability. The COVID hits as well, which is another thing. It's almost like a perfect storm. I might be making a mistake. When did I exit? Anyway, it also collided with we lost the main product and then the COVID hit as well. So when we got it back for like seven days, we were selling amazing because we were dominating this niche. We got it back and then the COVID hit and this main seller, you know, it lost kind of the appeal for the customer because there was the office category thing and all the business buyers, they were sent home. And at home, people did not really need the office set up in that way that we were catering to. We were battling really heavily with trying to convince Amazon that we are in the right category and also then figuring out that we are completely flatlining our business. Even when we get the hero back, the COVID has flatlined our business. Buyers don't want to buy a company which is flatlined and lost the profitability. So then something like we got a piece of advice. I think that's really what broke me. But that's also what saved us was that the consultant said that Egle We know this is COVID. We know you're going to get your product back. Just keep battling. But sit down and close yourself to your home. Don't come out. Create an additional portfolio of that which is making a profit of 500,000 a year. Show me this profit. So we are going to package this with your broken company, which you're fixing right now. So we can have like a forecast for the buyer, which is proven by the data and you know, the searches and the volumes and actual benchmark products over there. But you only have three weeks time. I mean, you don't have that much time. And I had three kids at the moment, I was like, you know, already separated, but I was parenting them. And I mean, I had, it was almost impossible to do. And I just told my ex that, listen, just forget about me for three weeks. Let me close myself to my room and to my apartment. I did, and I figured out how to make 500,000 profits with actual Amazon products. We packaged it. By this time, we got the product back to the market. We didn't break down anymore, but that was almost I would say 18-month progress, that process that we were so broken, so hopeless. We were missing about 300K every month to pay our Chinese suppliers. It was so hard to pay the salaries for our two new companies, people working over there already. Not even talking about keeping the old company running. So that was really something that I would not advise anybody to go through, but that comes with entrepreneurship sometimes that you don't know if you're going to survive or you're going to, you know, you don't know if you're going to lose your home or no, because I mean, my home at this time was worth like 150,000 euros and, but we were owning 300,000 to Chinese suppliers. So like, if I lose my home, it's not going to really help anything. I mean, I'm still in trouble. Speaker 1: So you were able to work yourself out of that. That's awesome. Was your ex, was he a partner in that company? Speaker 2: He still is, yeah. Speaker 1: And the two new ones as well? Speaker 2: Yes, yes. Speaker 1: Okay, so you're on friendly terms. Speaker 2: Absolutely. We agreed that we are going to do conscious, uncompelling. So this is something that people teach already too. So this is a beautiful process if anybody needs to. You can just Google and that's a good way how to be a strong partner from what you had before. Speaker 1: So you're actually not divorced then? Unknown Speaker: We are. Speaker 2: We are divorced. Speaker 1: I thought conscious uncoupling was, because I just went through a divorce as well. So I thought that was actually where you would, you separate and you don't live together necessarily, but you come together occasionally. Speaker 2: I think it's a term in the United States for that. It's living apart together. Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. That's it. I'm getting there. Speaker 2: Conscious uncoupling is like, how can you preserve everything that's wonderful in your relationship, but let's go with love and ease, what doesn't serve you and your partner anymore. And just keep nurturing the children and the friendship and in our case, the business and the partnership in that, but giving him free for another love. Anybody wants to be loved. So, yeah, I mean, that was a beautiful way to figure it out. Speaker 1: That's really cool. What's that like actually working with your partner? I mean, you went through a lot there together. I mean, it's almost like you almost lost it. It's like almost losing a child or something, you know, with the business and the stress and where you are traveling around and then you have the stress of that and then you're able to get through all that. That's pretty strong of you. That's pretty good. Speaker 2: That's pretty crazy. I remember one episode. We just lost the hero and we were so stressed out. He was willing to do all the phone calls to support center. In Estonia, you have to start doing them 4 p.m. because you guys wake up in states. It was dark and it was about We're at the same time right now. It's just getting dark, like 4 p.m. anyway. We were thinking, oh my God, we're just so miserable. Let's go to a place that's a little bit warmer. Even when we are so miserable trying to save this company, at least we have sun shining on us and the kids can be on the pool. We can be sitting on the phones and troubleshoot all this thing. It's just going to be so much merrier. Then we decided to go to Turkey. We had this wonderful all-inclusive resort. Speaker 1: You're taking your whole family, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole family, the three kids and we went together. And that was the early days of conscious uncoupling. So we thought that, yeah, we can still do it together, get through it together. And we went there and it came out there is no internet. There's no way to do a Skype call without the internet. I mean, it's going to be so expensive to use your European roaming to call to states. That's not possible because we all know, you know, calls with support center and IRS, they're like 60 minutes for sure. I mean, you have to be sitting there and that would be handing up like many hundred dollars per call and you have to do like 50 of them to troubleshoot sometimes. So we were like, yeah, we have all the sunshine, but we are even in a bigger trouble right now. So, my partner, he figured out, next to this grand piano, there is a tiny bit of internet that's enough for Skype. So, he was sitting the whole day. He was just sitting there, dialing the number. And then, he put it on the loudspeaker so I could hear. And he was just saying, yeah, you're going to be served next. And let us get you through the agent. And the craziest moment was that he's been trying to reach this agent for like four days and he heard the message, we are connecting you to the real human agent right now. And the phone call dropped. Speaker 1: Oh no. Speaker 2: I mean, and the company was just breaking down any minute because the hero was down and you know, we were needing this cash and Amazon was writing, you know, guys, you have about 70,000 units in a storage. It's been sitting there for three months. How about we just go ahead and destroy it? No, you guys closed it. You can't destroy it. I mean, if you destroy it, basically you're going to destroy me because that's all we have. We were just sitting on this inventory. So we were just thinking it's no point to call. We just went to the pool, went to the sun, you know, hanged out another three days, came back and then just dived into this crazy phone call sessions again and then eventually we managed to Bring the company and bring the hero back to life. Speaker 1: Now why in the world with all of this would you do it again? Some of your friends might say you need to go to therapy. After going through all of this, 70,000 products stuck and they want to destroy them and your life is going through all this and now you're doing it again with three other companies. Do we need to send a doctor over to you or something? Speaker 2: I was in heavy therapy. Why do you think I had to go to Spain to turn off all the earthly communications? I mean, I had a reason to do a solitude. Forgiving in the right mind. What are the chances that such a mayhem can happen to one person again? I think my insurance policy is pretty good because the chances for me to go through the same mayhem are very small because I've gone through it already. Speaker 1: And even if it does, you know how to deal with it. And so you know exactly how to. I mean, that's what people always say. They'll start on Amazon and it's like, oh, this doesn't work. You know, that's that's so like five years ago. This is this doesn't work. I'm like, no, it works. I lost one point. Well, me and some partners, I personally lost 300 grand, but $1.3 million during COVID selling on Amazon. And people are like, why the heck would you keep doing this? Because it's the best business opportunity that's ever existed in humankind if you do it right. And like you said earlier, entrepreneurship, you're full of ups and downs. And that's not for everybody. If you're not willing to take risk and to live on a couch and do whatever you got to do to get there, then you're probably not going to get there. Speaker 2: I heard your story losing more than $1 million. When I heard that, I was actually kind of in the middle of my mayhem and I was like, listen, Kevin is going through that. I'm going to get okay. I'm going to be just okay. Mine is like four times smaller trouble than he's in. So that was a support. Speaker 1: I mean I didn't almost lose anything but between us we lost that much and but I had a loan with like Sellers Funding. Unknown Speaker: Now they're called Sellers Fi. Speaker 1: They changed their name but really great company but I had a loan I personally guaranteed I have my reputation also because I'm public out there. There's no way I could let that go. Out of my pocket, I was paying $15,000 every two weeks out of my own personal account to pay that off. They ended up working with me. They knocked it down, called and said, hey, we're closing this company. I've got to switch the payments to my personal account. Unknown Speaker: Can we knock it. Speaker 1: I'll pay a little bit more interest. Can you knock it down a little bit just to ride it out? And they did. They worked with me really well, but paid the whole thing off. But I'm still doing it. I'm still selling. And I think that's a lesson for a lot of people is don't give up. Even though it can be stressful at times, the opportunity Are huge. So are you building these new three companies to sell them as well? Is that your intent? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: So now you know how to do it from day one. So you've been through the process of what documents do you need? What are they going to look for? So it should be much smoother selling for you. Speaker 2: Should be, but we still made a bunch of mistakes. Maybe something I want to share with listeners and watchers right now is We had this another, like a second, like a first company started like pretty well. The problem with the first company is like we hit seven figures pretty easily. It maybe took 12 months, I don't know, 14 months. We were like up and coming seven figure. And then I was looking at the profit and loss and I was like, where is all the profit? You know, what's going on? And that was like two years ago. So that was a lesson number one. I don't think nowadays business in Amazon is any more possible when you don't do category optimization, you don't do size optimization, and you also don't consider the velocity sweet points. The reason why you have to be a product that's not necessarily more expensive than your benchmark product or the Chinese is that The BBC is the most profitable unit in Amazon, you know, ecosystem right now. It's more profitable than Amazon Web Services. Speaker 1: Forty plus billion dollars in profit. Speaker 2: I think that's crazy. And that's, you know, all the people who are jumping in and learning from the old system that launched with BBC and BBC needs to be like integral part of your business. But I would say that That needs to be overlooked. We cannot go to a market situation where the first page is heavily populated with very similar products and you going there with $2 more expensive product that has a better value proposition But organically wouldn't sell as many as, you know, the top velocity products are selling. That means that you're missing out from the organic visibility, which anyway is really hard to get. It's like, what did they say? 67% of the purchases are done on the first page and first pages. Basically, 80% of BBC slots. Our only chance actually to get organic purchases is to occupy positions one to four or one to five depending on your screen width. If you don't consider that and you're only relying on BBC launches, I don't think this game is really profitable and that's what happened to us. We had to kill a bunch of products that were wrongly and in a wrong, I would say in an old business model way launched and we had to start seeking for markets that are not so saturated. So right now we would never ever launch a product when the market is saturated. We don't do products that there are more than like half a page of direct competitors because we need the organic visibility. It's a bit insidious not carrying us too far. It just eats everything you make. Speaker 1: Are you developing your own products from scratch or are you still finding stuff and modifying a little bit and putting your brand on it or are you actually creating original totally differentiated things? Speaker 2: We've done both, but it's easier and faster to still modify the products. We've done both. We've done original and patented development and stuff like that. But I would say as speed, you know, marketplaces and different search terms populate with competitors pretty fast and you have to be quick. So developing products from scratch could be a little bit too slow. It could take you up for a year if you're, you know, bouncing the samples and trying to figure out the configuration and stuff. Doing the modified product still takes you six months, which is slow. When you see the keyword being populated with competitors and you want to put your foot on the first page so you could be able to stay there. So yeah, I would say the modified products are still an option in Amazon because they're also sometimes offering you a cheaper price point. Sometimes the patented products, unless you're doing something really amazing. The development cost is really high and if you're really taking the money back from Amazon, I mean the price point is going to be away from the sweet high velocity first upper and first page spot. Speaker 1: But what about when you're just modifying a product, maybe you, like you said, you want to find where there's not a lot of competition, but you find something that's four or five and it takes you six months to actually get this product to market. And then 10 other people are doing the same thing at the same time as you, because they're using the same tools. And when you launch all of a sudden, where'd all these other guys come from? They saw the same thing. So how do you deal with that? Speaker 2: Since our products are a little bit below visibility, we don't do this crazy, you know, seven, like six figure, you know, products. We do 17 to 20k per product. We don't aim for necessarily higher revenue volume. These products are not so heavily populated. Speaker 1: How many 20k per month? Speaker 2: 17 to 20k per month. That's revenue. So as profitability, we don't want to do anything that in net profitability makes less than $4,000 a month. So I would just give a little hint for somebody who is, you know, there's so many people keeping products out there that are doing maybe, I don't know, $1,000 a month as a profit, but you're doing all this logistics and, you know, communication with your factory and development and don't do it. Just go for where the money is friendly to you. Speaker 1: I have that rule. I have a rule. Mine's $3,000. If it doesn't do at least $3,000 in bottom line profit, net profit after six months, and then I kill the product. A lot of people are like, why do you do that? It's like, because one, I don't want to manage 100 different products. It ties up cash flow. I can take that money and reinvest it somewhere else and try to get something that's going to hit my targets and have better cash flow. That's interesting that you're doing the same thing. Speaker 2: We're a little bit tougher and that's also the reason actually why we do not, and maybe that's really unpopular statement I'm about to do right now, but we no longer do European marketplaces. We are only in US because Europe, like with the previous company we sold, we had to hire extra people to run all the logistics and stuff. Do service all these different marketplaces and do all the VAT and things. At the end, at the bottom line, you're looking, you're doing maybe 5% or 10%, but why? Just put all the effort to US and find the lucrative markets in US marketplace. The taxation situation is just so much better in US and you can keep your own team that you're having right now. You don't have all this monkey business, sending 200 units to UK and 200 units to Germany and repeating that with 20 SKUs. We are away from Europe right now, even though I'm living in Europe and I should be promoting that. Speaker 1: Do you do only Amazon in the US or are you doing anything, Walmart or Shopify or TikTok or any of the other? Speaker 2: We are extremely Pareto. That means we only focus where the money is mostly. Like all the things you mentioned, like TikTok, yes, if you have emotional products, we're doing B2B products. They're mostly not TikTokable. So our Pareto is only in US, in Amazon. Speaker 1: So if it's B2B, do you have a lot of business, do you have the whole business discount set up so that are people ordering multiples for all lollies, they're not ordering single, there's multi-pack, so they're ordering 50 or something? Speaker 2: Yeah, that is true. But the better hack, like, we don't see people buying, you know, stack of 50. But the better hack is when you're starting to see people Like the business buyers coming and they're starting to leave reviews and maybe pictures of like in a warehouses and stuff and you can really understand that this is away from like a garage or stuff. Then we start to package these sets into a set of two or set of four and we actually see that business buyers like to buy these kind of sets more than they like to buy for different products. Of course because of the savings we can pass on to the customers. That's a better idea how to make money. Speaker 1: What do you think are some of the challenges for people that are not based in the U.S. and selling in the U.S.? What were some of the challenges you had to overcome not being a U.S. resident based here? Speaker 2: We're doing some of the products we are doing are They're not thousand dollars right now, but we're considering products that are like five to six hundred dollars. And we have an issue that, you know, if I would be living there, I could have that return sent to me and we could kind of refurbish and see what's wrong. But right now we have to use a service provider for sure. This is pretty expensive. You're pretty much you're going to make a zero profit sale, but it just, you know, brings you the sourcing cost back basically. But that's an issue. You cannot see what customers are sending back. Speaker 1: So is that the only issue is just dealing with returns or is there some other challenges that you see in your community and stuff that people have? Speaker 2: No, I would say doing a business like I have three US companies. It's the bookkeeping is super easy. Their tax issue. We have Estonia, US have a tax treaty. I don't mess with any taxes when dealing with US. I am absolutely good. Speaker 1: So these three companies, are they all in the B2B space, in the office space, or are they in different spaces? Speaker 2: Two of them are in B2B and one is in personal health category. Speaker 1: So when you exited, you didn't have a non-compete or you are in totally different categories than what you're in Alaska? Speaker 2: We have a non-compete, but we are absolutely different categories. Speaker 1: And when you exited, you didn't have to stay on for a little while and actually advise them for three months or six months or something like that? Speaker 2: We did six months. We actually demanded, really strongly demanded that one of our team members will be employed by the aggregator. They refused and honestly to clear up all the mess of them being out of stock, not knowing what to do, where to get the packaging. They're having, you know, people working in Asia and then people working in Europe and not being able to communicate in timely manner. It was resulting in such a mess and then not having like your own guy in the team. I'm directly sitting with the team. I think anybody who exited one, two, three years ago, they experienced the same thing. It just flushes down the toilet. Even when you're sitting by their side digitally six months and trying to advise them as much as possible, this big machine that an aggregator is, it's just not going to be able to be as I'm flexible and fast and it's not even able to listen to you when you say something to it because it has many people who need to look it over and not just one person that used to be in your team and can be really agile and quick about reacting to something. So we had the traditional losing 50% of the business case. Speaker 1: That's going to be hard though going from calling your own shots and knowing what you're doing to actually trying to answer to somebody else. That's clueless. Speaker 2: I know, but listen, after going through all this mayhem, I was actually so happy to get the responsibility off my shoulders and somebody else was dealing with all the marketing and restocking and developing new products and stuff. Honestly, I just got so sick and tired of this category when being so deep down. And on my knees with it, so I was happy to hand it over. So I didn't have like romantic cry, you know, I want you back. Where are you? I want to go all the shots. No, I'm neutral. You do what you have to do. Speaker 1: Did you have an earn out on that or did you? Speaker 2: We had an earn out but it's pretty hard to earn when you're losing 50%. Speaker 1: I was going to say, those earn outs a lot of times don't work out. That's why I would say that whatever money you get on the closing day, expect that to be all the money you ever see. Unknown Speaker: Yes, that is so true. Speaker 1: Anything else is a bonus. Speaker 2: That's a tweetable, yes. Speaker 1: Also, don't forget the billion Dollar seller summit is coming up on February 20th to 22nd. That's right. We've got 18 incredible speakers Next-level stuff. You're not gonna hear on podcast or at any other convention not recycled content. Everything is live Nothing is pre-recorded you get to interact with them live Q&A's a hat contest a tools contest for cash prizes It's gonna be amazing. Hopefully you'll join us billion dollar sellers summit comm and BillionDollarSellerSummit.com Now you also, besides running these companies, you also are in, like you said, you organize a group of sellers there and you actually do an event as well, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have a strong community and people want to learn so in every the beginning of June we have international in English conference called Ambition. In Estonia we have lots of international sellers participating. It's about 300 sellers coming all together and this year we kind of focus on Like last year, we did like how to get the margins back. So it's not like people coming randomly and teaching you whatever they want to teach or sharing their stories, but everybody is giving their best nuggets on how to get your margin back or, you know, how to pivot if you need to pivot. So we've been doing that for five years just to support the community. You know, putting out any event is not really for profit. It's more for like sharing, coming together and sharing the energy and the vibration. Speaker 1: So this is your event or you're in partnership with some other people? Speaker 2: I invited another Amazon seller called Michkel that you also met in London to be my partner in it. So we're doing it two of us. But I would say doing this is a lot of work. Unknown Speaker: But that's a lot of work. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: So you have one coming up on June 4th, I think it is, right? Something like that? Speaker 2: I think next year is June 8th in 2024. Yes. So we're always doing SONA. We're always doing fun like go-karting and cocktail masterclasses and stuff like that. So there's always stuff going on. Speaker 1: Now this is the event that's in English, but you also do other meetups that are in the native language, right? Speaker 2: I do for my own very close community. I have a very high level, like a community that I take care of. It's like a It's like a lifelong membership. I'm not disappearing anywhere. I'm doing that, but since it's in Estonian, I want to support the local community. The reason why I'm doing this is that I feel like people here need to catch up with you guys and the Western Europe and stuff. I want to give my contribution to that. I'm teaching them in Estonian. I cannot market this course outside Estonia and honestly I don't really need to market. Just people find me and I just take them and we bring them to the market. Speaker 1: Estonia is a small country. How many sellers, what's it like 5 million, 7 million people, something like that? Speaker 2: Oh, it's 1.3 million. Speaker 1: Okay, I was way overshot. 1.3 million, but the percentage of sellers to that is really high. Speaker 2: It's really high. Speaker 1: It's over a thousand that are actively selling, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Our larger community, I think, is 4,000. Everybody who's been active is definitely 1,000. And seven, eight-figure sellers is less than 100. But for per capita, this is still very high. Speaker 1: And most of them are selling in the US market. Speaker 2: All of us are selling in the US market. We don't really bother with Europe all that much. I mean, some of us do, but we, I mean, US is Pareto principle. I mean, 80% of money is US and we are used to being agile, fast. And, you know, not to sit around like I recently just I was presenting my story and my nuggets to Swedish community. And I really like and they're just getting started, you know, they haven't been active at all. They're like late bloomers. And, you know, I'm pretty sure, you know, few brands in from Sweden, they're doing amazing, like branding, but they're more like off Amazon. They know really how to keep community together, how to do social media marketing, how to do design, how to do value proposition. And at the same time, they don't know how to do Amazon because they've just had kind of like a life. It has been so good. So you don't have to be agile. But why the community here in Estonia is so big that we kind of need to get off our butts and really need to serve our own needs. Like nobody else is going to do it. Like when we got free, the state didn't have money. I mean, you just by yourself, of course, right now, I mean, we have this 18 months of maternity leave of full coverage and stuff, which we've caught up. But in a personal level, I would say we still have some running to do. So I'm just giving back and I'm doing my best to help the local, northern, European, dark weather, mostly winter, surviving people. At least make some money while it's cold outside. I would like to do something with our time, right? Speaker 1: Right. Is most of your team Estonian then? Estonian. Speaker 2: We have one Filipino, but we never went down to this route to hire only overseas people. We want to see each other's faces. We want to have heated arguments together. We're having so many meetings in our room together every day, weekly, so we don't want to give up that. It has such a big value to be able to discuss, to take the sample, having three people around the table and just take the sample. In pieces and see how you can make it smaller, how you can make it more durable or more sturdy. Sturdy is something people in Amazon are so, I think this is the most used word in a review. I want it to be sturdy. It's not sturdy enough because we're all trying to make cheaper things and then stuff starts to break down. So you're just trying to figure out things by looking and being in your own, you know, each other's energies. Speaker 1: That's cool. So what's it like? I mean being in this space is male-dominated and you're a woman that's very successful, driven woman in this space. What's that? Is that challenging at times when you're dealing with all these male egos and this male testosterone and everything? What are some of the challenges around that? Speaker 2: For me, the main challenge is when I go to international conference, I just cannot party as hard as you guys are partying. I am such a hopeless morning person. 11 o'clock, I am so sleepy. You guys are able to consume all this alcohol and being on the top of your energy like 2 a.m. and I'm like, I cannot speak another word. Speaker 1: It's crazy. I know. Some of these events, especially like Prosper Show, there's parties to three or four every night. And sometimes multiple parties. I don't know. I always say Amazon sellers, they work hard and they play hard. Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I figured that, gee, I can't keep up with that. But otherwise, being a woman in a masculine sphere, I would say it's you feel really held and really supported. And I would say it's one of the best experiences in entrepreneurship I've ever had. I have not met an Amazon seller who kind of looks down on me or something just because I'm a woman. So it's more like they want you to succeed too. They're asking, you know, my experience because my perspective is different. My way of approaching business is different. So we are kind of complementing each other and we having this monthly masterminds with the top sellers here in Estonia. Me being the only woman over there, I see that I can bring a different perspective to the masculine way of problem solving, just to see this thing differently. Speaker 1: So what is your superpower? What is it that makes Egle, what is Egle's superpower? What's your X factor? Speaker 2: I would like to think that I'm always searching what's available next or what's possible next. Something I was talking in Sweden, for example, you're developing products. And let's take a cat bed. And you're going for the cat bed niche and you really, really, really want to do a cat bed. Fine, do it. I don't say stop, even though it feels really saturated. But a disclaimer, it's not if you know what you do. So when you start reading reviews, the reviews tell you that people want to remove the inner lining to wash it. People want, they're mostly like a fabric, some like a tome looking. A bed so the cat feels like hidden. And when people wash it, it kind of collapses. It doesn't go back together. It's kind of like not good. It's just so cheap. And then when you take all this feedback from the reviews, you are going to end up developing maybe a plastic or like a strong case and then removable linen and stuff like that. And you know, all the review issues have been addressed. And at the same time, and now that's what I've been discovering lately and that's been really serving us good, is that you cannot rely on reviews as a first thing on product development. Nobody, and you can check it up, nobody in Amazon, in Helium 10, This is showing this is searching for a durable cat bed or, you know, linen removable cat bed. Nobody's searching for that. But the reviews are telling that this is what people are missing. Instead, what people are searching for are cat beds, which look like strawberry or a frog or a pineapple or like a Japanese dish. But the reviews don't say that. So like that's kind of the cutting edge that we are really pushing our companies to now think and grow in the product development from the first place. We don't care about reviews. We care about the search terms and we do product development according to the search terms and only then look what the reviews say. And this is a completely different thing than most of us are ever taught. Speaker 1: Well, Egle, this has been awesome. I really appreciate you taking some time today to share with us, share your story and share some of your thoughts. This has been really cool. If people want to follow you or learn more or come to your event next in June, what's the best way to reach out or get or see what's going on? Speaker 2: You guys can just find me on Instagram, I guess. I don't really have a website or anything. I'm just a seller. I mean, I'm not out there. So find me on Instagram, Egle Raadik. So I'll say hi. I'm always happy to share and talk to fellow sellers. So let's connect. Sure. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, thanks again for coming. Speaker 2: Yeah. Thanks for inviting. I was nervous because this podcast means so much for me and I've been growing up with you guys. So thank you for having me. Speaker 1: Great chat with Egle there. I hope you enjoyed our talk today. If you want to find out more about her event that's coming up in Tallinn, Estonia in June, the way to spell that, I'm probably pronouncing this wrong, but Ambizion, but it's spelled A-M-B. IZ, like zebra, I-O-N. So if you Google that, you can probably find out all the information about her upcoming event in June. And don't forget, make sure you've signed up for my newsletter, BillionDollarSellers.com. We'll be back again next week with another awesome episode. Before we go today, I've got some words of wisdom for you. And today, they're actually not my words. They're the words of Bruce Lee, the famous Bruce Lee. He was talking about pushing himself and that's kind of what Egle has done here and so I think this is kind of fits in line with her mentality and her approach to things. Don't fear failure. It's not failure but low aim that's really the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail. Again, Bruce Lee said, don't fear failure. It's not failure but low aim that's actually the crime. In great attempts, it's glorious even to fail. We'll see you again next week. Okay.