Effective Amazon Selling Strategies for Success | Kevin King

Effective Amazon Selling Strategies for Success | Kevin King 00:00:02 Hey everyone, it's Rob Stanley with the EconWiz podcast. And today I have a very special guest and somebody I actually have been watching for quite a long time in the Amazon world. I have Kevin King. Kevin, thanks for being on the show. Yeah, I'm glad to be here, man. It's nice to see you again. Yeah, you too. So those who aren't familiar, and gosh, I don't know where you've been, if you're not familiar with Kevin King, an eight-figure seller, coach, speaker, I mean, probably any event you go to, he's usually speaking at. And absolutely honored to have him on the show. And I got some fun questions for him. And of course, we will cover Amazon and all the things that probably people are wondering about how you became so successful. 00:00:44 And just to start it off, let's just dive right in, Kevin, if you're good with that. Sure, sure. So let's go with, do you feel that some new sellers are looking for kind of like a quick win product? And what advice do you give to those people that are kind of just looking for that? Hey, I want to find that product. Win instantly, yeah, I think a lot of people are misled by a lot of the the trainings that are out there, the people doing webinars and YouTube videos, and they show screenshots because they're trying to make it look compelling, 'look, look', how much money I made in such a short amount of time, and it's usually false information. They might have actually generated that money. 00:01:23 You might see a screenshot from someone that shows you $50,000 in the first month or more, but what they don't tell you is that those were all rebates or giveaways, and they're actually upside down $20,000. They just make it look like, or they leave numbers out. They'll go through profit calculations and say, 'Look, you can buy this for, there's a really popular guy out there right now that they'll show you, you can buy this for $2 and sell it for $20. And that's an $18 profit per unit.' He leaves out the Amazon fees. He leaves out the storage. He leaves out the shipping. He leaves out the feedback software. He leaves out every other thing and paints this rosy picture that just simply is not true. 00:02:04 And so a lot of people get really misled, thinking this is a field of dreams, and they can quit their job in a couple weeks and go sit on the beach and just check the app on their phone. Every time it rings like a cash register, and be set; it just doesn't work that way. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. Everybody I've talked to that has been successful, they put years in and kind of the grind, right? Like they've grinded it out. They've learned, they've gone through the process. So yeah, I a hundred percent agree with you. And that's great information for any, any new seller or somebody. either new to selling or looking to start selling on Amazon. 00:02:39 So, I mean, I've got a company right now that we just started, you know, I've got several Amazon businesses and I have one right now with some partners that we started in April and we've invested a million dollars in excess of a million dollars in this company. And we're not taking a dime out. I'm not paying myself. I'm working 12, 14 hour days on it, seven days a week right now to get it up and going quickly. And we're not paying ourselves, not even a salary until sometime next year. Uh, so that's, I mean, so, and that's cause we're working and turning everything back in, uh, into it. So, um, it depends on your goals. You know, the number one other question always comes up with, with this is how much money do I need to start this business? 00:03:21 You know, you could start it with a thousand bucks or 5,000 bucks, but you need to temper your expectations because if you're starting with a, a small amount like that and anything under probably $50,000 is a small amount. You can definitely do it, but it's not going to take off. You're not going to be able to cash flow it. You're either going to have to come back. If you start with $5,000 and you're very successful, you're going to have to pretty quickly come back with another $10,000 or $20,000 or $50,000 to follow that up pretty quickly to keep it going. Or you're just going to have to say, look, I'm happy selling five or ten units a day. 00:03:53 That's all I need. I only need to make $500,000 profit a month, and I'll just grow this slowly. I'm going to keep my regular job and I just need a little side hustle, side money. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that's the reality of it. You'll hear people all the time say, 'What can you start this with?' And so they'll hear, 'Well, you can start this with $5,000.' And then they think, 'Okay, that's all I need.' And $5,000 three months from now, I'm going to be rich. It just doesn't happen. I mean, there's the rare exception where someone gets a winning lottery ticket. Most people that started will tell you even some of the bigger gurus say, 'Uh, we started this company with 20 grand and now we're doing um, you know, $ 4 million a year.' 00:04:34 They probably did start it with 20 grand, but what they don't tell you is a month later or two months later, three months later, they maxed out a credit card, got a loan. Their rich uncle helped them out. Something happened there. Their factory gave them terms. Something else happened to keep that going. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I started my business back in the nine late nineties, uh, with like 300 bucks, but Just to cover what Kevin was saying, I was still working a full-time job and it really didn't go full-time on it for a year and a half. So I had to keep building on it. Any money that I made, I was putting back in the bank account. 00:05:07 So the reality is I started the business with more money because I just kept putting that money in the bank to actually start the business. So, you're 100% right on that. Great information. How strong is the public's overall trust right now in Amazon platform for 2020? What's your opinion on that? I think the public generally, overall trusts Amazon. I think there are some people who just like with PayPal or just with eBay, they've had a bad experience. They have a bad taste in their mouth. Something was late. They got a bad product. You know, they got something that was not authorized. It made them sick, you know, or whatever. Got a counterfeit thing. So you're going to have some bad experiences. But generally overall, I think people really are favorable of Amazon, the public side. 00:05:50 And most of them don't understand it like we do. You know, we see all the little wrinkles and we see all the little twists and turns. And, you know, I was just talking to someone the other day about showing them some reviews and they're like, oh, look, we got four verified reviews. And I was like, yeah, look at the little flag that's next to it. It says early review program. And they're like, yeah, well, what does that mean? So that's the public doesn't understand. You know, we understand what that means that you paid for that review, basically. You know, you paid Amazon for that review, but they don't understand that. So we understand it differently and we see things a little bit differently. And even me as a shopper on Amazon, you know, I'll evaluate things different. 00:06:28 My wife will come to me sometimes when she's buying something and if she's a little bit uncertain about it, she'll say, Kevin, can you, can you help choose the item? Because I know how to look at the reviews properly to analyze them, the, the, uh, and analyze the split of a parent-child, see which one's actually got the reviews when people are reading, all that kind of stuff that the public doesn't have. So they're not aware of some of the issues that we are, so they still trust it quite a bit. Yeah, I agree. Living in this world, I definitely, when I go to buy stuff, I look at it quite a bit differently than most probably do, and I'm sure you do too. Yeah, I do. I analyze stuff probably quite a bit differently. 00:07:06 I was just buying something the other day, and the reviews were, There's quite a few negative reviews on it. There's about 20% negative review rate. And I was like, man, I'm not going to buy this, but it looks cool, but I'm not going to buy it. So I took it into Helium 10 and split the reviews up and looked at it. It turns out most of the negative reviews were on one particular variation of this parent-child relationship that was not the one that I wanted. And the one that I wanted was mostly positive, but Amazon doesn't let you split that. So I had to use Helium 10. So I went ahead with the product and it turned out to be okay. Yeah. 00:07:40 But yeah, I've run into a situation where I was looking to buy something personally, went way back into the reviews and found out that they were selling a completely different product. Like it was something like green tea or something like that. And now they built up the, uh, you know, built up the reviews on it and then turned around and sold like a wireless earbuds or something like that. And I was just like, wow, how crazy is that? It just, you know, that manipulation or things like that, it kind of gives Amazon kinda a bad taste to people who do buy on there, you know, because they're manipulating the reviews on it. And people that do that, I mean, obviously, our hope is that, you know, Amazon catches those or people do and it ends up like going away. 00:08:24 But not always. You have to remember, though, too, those things do happen. And every time it happens, the Wall Street Journal or someone writes a negative story and they get a quote from Amazon, Amazon's always like, 'Yes, we're on top of it.' It's just a small fraction of our audience that this happens to. And it's true. It's a very small. I mean, we're hyper aware of it because we're 50, 100, 200,000 active. There's a couple million people selling on Amazon, but in the communities online that are discussing this, there's a couple hundred thousand probably. We're hyper aware of it, but you got to remember there's 100 million plus people speaking. So we're just a little blip of the ones that are hyper aware of it. 00:09:04 And then I think Amazon has probably an unwritten rule of there's a certain level of tolerance that when you get that big, there's just going to be. you know, that stuff's going to happen and they'll, they'll do what they can, but it's sometimes it's pop a mole and they just, they just, there's, it's kind of like when you do an inspection of your products in China, you know, that you have a certain threshold. If there's a few little strings hanging off on three of them out of a hundred, you may let it go. Versus if there's seven of them are really damaged, you're going to, you're going to hold the shipment and check everything and fix it. Amazon might be kind of the same way. There's a, there's a threshold where. 00:09:41 And to us, it affects us because we're sellers and we're like, this sucks. But to them, it's like, it's no big deal. There's 99. 5 million other people that don't care. 100 million or whatever. So you have to put everything in perspective. Yeah, and it really depends what that defect is, right? If it doesn't affect the overall workings of the product, then you're probably fine with it. But like you said, if it's smashed or has actual damage to it, then that's a whole different story. We're not trying to bash on Amazon. We're just trying to give everybody some information. Is it still a good time for people to sell? With all this crazy stuff going on, I see popping up on a lot of the Facebook groups and stuff like that. 00:10:22 Is it a good time to start selling on Amazon? Should I start selling now or did I miss the boat type thing? What's your opinion on that, Kevin? The best day to start on Amazon might have been yesterday and the second-best day is today. No, it's still a great opportunity. You know, in 2013, 14, when this private label kind of model, 2012 really, this kind of little private label model that a lot of people are doing now started taking off and was being taught amazingly. One of the guys who kind of launched that, this model, you know, it was a lot easier. There wasn't as much competition. You didn't have to do as much 00:10:57 work. It's harder now; there's more work involved, but there's still tons of opportunities and Amazon is growing and growing and growing, so in the past, you might have or you might see an old YouTube video that says look for something that's under a $3,000 BSR, um, and so you might be looking well I can't find anything I can sell under a $3,000 BSR that's not too competitive. Well, Amazon has grown so much; you know they're almost doubling year over In the last couple years, they've more than doubled. So what used to be a $3,000 BSR might be a $6,000 or $7,000 now. So you can have products that are not big sellers that are still making a nice, healthy chunk of change just because Amazon has grown so much. 00:11:38 I have a product right now doing five figures a day that's got a BSR in the 5,000 to 6,000 range. And it's not a $500 item or something; it's not a $10 item, but it's under $100. And it's still doing well. So the opportunity is great as long as you do your homework up front. Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you 100%. But what are some of the pitfalls that you've seen with new sellers when they do start to sell? I mean, I know there's probably multiple ones, and we talked a little bit about. You know, yeah, people can start with smaller amounts or versus like a bigger amount, but like when people come to you or when you're, you know, talking about selling on Amazon, I'm sure there's gotta be kind of a theme that you see that new sellers like mistakes they make or pitfalls they, they run into when they start selling. 00:12:30 Probably number one is they're underfunded. They don't account for all their expenses. That's like buying the Freedom Ticket, the training that I do for Helium 10. It's included free with anybody that has a Helium 10 account that I go through. There's a detailed spreadsheet in there that's like seven panels and super, super detailed to account for every little expense, trademarks, every little thing that most people don't. So it really paints a picture. We get a lot of questions like, 'Well, the ROI on the spreadsheet is really low compared to what these other tools are telling me my ROI is.' What's wrong with the spreadsheet? It's nothing. It accounts for everything. So a lot of people actually don't, don't come into it with enough money or they don't plan. 00:13:10 They don't understand the cash flow down the road, what they're, what's going to really take to grow something. The other one is people don't differentiate, you know, they do their homework using viral launcher helium 10 or whatever their tool choice is for doing research, jungle scout, whatever. And they don't differentiate the product. They think differentiating the product is including a free PDF or, or changing the color or something. And you can't, you can't do that. You've got to completely, you, you've got to make it your own. Um, just being another has, has been as a, as a, you might do okay for a month or two, but it's just a recipe for disaster. And so you have to differentiate, you have to put a little, a little bit of a moat around you. 00:13:53 And otherwise, your chances are pretty slim. And then a lot of people also, they get dollar signs in their eyes and they just want a bestseller. And they don't always realize that, like I just said, sometimes something that sells 5, 10 a day instead of getting all greedy is way better, less competitive, maybe doesn't take quite as much money to get everything up and going, but you can work and turn the money faster. And you string together some of those instead of having one product have 10 that sell, so one product that sells 50 a day and it's super competitive and people are clipping at your heels, have 10 products that sell five a day and sit back with a lot less problems. You're not going to have a bestseller. 00:14:35 You're not going to be able to brag to someone that, you know, look, this product's doing $100 ,000 a month, but who cares? You know, it's all about how much you put in your pocket at the end of the day, not how much sales you do. That's 100% true. I think sometimes people are too focused on those other things like being a top seller. Hey, my focus when I ran my business is what did I make? What was my bottom line on that? How much did I net on that? You know, because I could sell, you know, just like you said, I could have five items and be netting, you know, 100 grand a month. And I could have 100 items netting, you know, 100 grand a month. 00:15:09 Really, I'll take the five items because you're right, a lot less headache, a lot less customer service, usually, usually. So, uh, yeah, that's, that is some great information and I'm glad you shared that because I think a lot of people don't necessarily look at that way. And, uh, but the people that have been in the game for a long time, they do. And that's something people should think about. Yeah. So I keep going. I got tons more good questions for you. So that's great information. Thank you. Um, what about when you're researching a product and looking for kind of a good product? Let me give you a little more to that. Because I know you use the Helium 10 tool. 00:15:44 But I'm kind of talking about like with me, I kind of had certain categories I looked in and kind of looked at. And it was maybe because I had a little more experience in those. So do you kind of look at it that way, too, that, you know, hey, based on past products you sold or similar-type products, you'll kind of focus on a category to start investigating to find, you know, another winning product going that route? Or do you have something different you do? If it's a brand, if it's not necessarily. When I first launched, um, doing the FBA model, I've been selling on Amazon for 20 plus years, but when I first launched the FBA model in 2015, I started with five different brands, five different categories. 00:16:24 Um, and, but now I have another, you know, one of my other companies is very focused on the dog niche. Uh, another one is very focused on something in the, uh, in the, the health niche. Um, so those companies, I would not be selling automotive under, and one that's focused on the health niche. And I'm not going to be selling beauty products and the one that's focused on the dog niche. So, yes, I will expand out. But I don't just look at – it doesn't have to be – if I'm selling a dog toy, it doesn't have to be another dog toy or a dog bowl or a dog leash. It can be something for the dog owner. So it can be – so I will expand out in that way. 00:17:00 So if I notice that all my dog lovers that are buying my – let's say I'm selling a – dog bowl they're buying my dog bowl these are also people who love to uh to go hiking with their dog i might and i see a need i might come up with a you know some sort of a apparel item or something that's really not in the dog niche but it's for the human you know here's a i don't i'm just making something up here here's a jacket that you wear you know it has 20 different pockets on it so you can keep all your different dog treats and poop bags and water and whatever 00:17:35 whatever I'm just so that wouldn't in the dog niche that could be in the clothing niche so I would expand out but I go after an avatar or a person and what else would that person buy that's along these same lines because I know if they're interested in dogs they're probably going to be other dog related stuff but they might also have an interest in something else and I can garner that but that's usually you're going to have a bigger audience that you Can segment it that way. But when you're first starting, if you don't have a niche and you're just like getting into this, I wouldn't limit yourself. I mean, the only place I might limit myself is if some of the products are gated. 00:18:11 You know, it's about 30 some odd products on Amazon, or categories, sorry, 30 some odd categories, main categories. And there's a few of those require some special permission. And Amazon lists that for you on their website. And it's called gating. So you have to show proof that you. Some of the extra proof to be in those, like automotive is one of them, for example. And so I might skip that in the beginning if I'm brand new and avoid a few of those just to avoid the extra work and hassle. Then later on, once you get your feet wet, then come back and maybe do something in those. Yeah, that's great advice. And I mean, in the podcast, prior podcasts, I've always recommended. Probably don't get into the iPhone case accessory business right off the get go either. 00:18:57 I live that world and it's very difficult and it's probably not something you want to take on as your first product, even though a lot of people see it very tempting because there's lots of cases sold. It's usually not not a great first product and you have to have a lot of money to really jump into that area now compared to in the past. It's a cheap people attracted to it because I can buy these things for. Quarter or 50 cents and sell them for 20 bucks and but they don't realize that a lot of other people are seeing that too and it's super ultra competitive in there, but like supplements, uh phone, iPhone cases, anything that's uh a lot of stuff if you go to Amazon look at the top 100 BSR your best sellers um those are areas for a new a new person to stay away from. 00:19:42 So if something's in the bestseller list, that category, I would not, if you're new, if you've got a lot of e-com experience, you've been doing this for 20 years and you really know, okay, maybe, and you come with some good money behind you, maybe you can go in there and compete. But if you're a brand new person, I would steer clear of anything that's in the top 100. Steer clear of anything that's given as a source of products from any training company that says, here's a list of 100 hot products on Amazon or whatever, or some PDF. Don't run as fast as you can from those. Anything that someone shows you in a demonstration video, like the guys at Project X at Helium 10, they did a couple products and a case study, and then all of a sudden there's a bunch of other people doing the same thing. 00:20:23 People just copy. Don't do that. One of those people might actually be successful, but then you're going to have just a ton of people that are not. They're going to end up losing money and say, 'this Amazon thing doesn't work.' Yeah, no, that's really good. And yeah, that Project X is great. Tim's awesome. Bradley's awesome. They do some great information over there. I watch it sometimes too. It's good to watch and it's fun to see how they're diving in so deep and giving real examples. That's really cool stuff. So, for some of the sellers out there, do you kind of feel that Amazon is being responsive enough to the seller's needs right now? I mean, we're always, I mean, this shifts, right? It seems like it shifts. 00:21:08 Like when things were with the coronavirus, it seemed like they were kind of like backing off and letting people, things go a little easier, right? Like they weren't necessarily suspending people on certain things. They can just give you a warning. But do you kind of feel like that they're still kind of listening to the sellers or where do you see that kind of going? I don't think a whole lot has changed. I think, Amazon is still a shoot first and ask questions later platform for the sellers. Everything is about the customer. Their whole focus is all customer. They don't care about the seller. You go to China like JD or some of the other big markets over there. They're seller first, customer second. Amazon is the opposite and there's nothing wrong with that. 00:21:54 It makes me as a buyer know that anything I buy from Amazon, I can return it or I'm not going to have a problem because I'm always going to win. But from a seller's point of view, they haven't been the best. And part of that is that they're just too big. I mean, there's just too many moving wheels and the way they've compartmentalized everything. One department doesn't know what the other one's doing or they cross over. I mean, I just, for this new company, I had a product. I have someone at Amazon that I work with, not someone in seller support, but someone that actually at the Amazon offices in Seattle, a real human being with a brain that has access to my account and can accelerate stuff. 00:22:39 But on one of these products, we've had it taken off five times by Amazon. Actually, this is a restricted product. You're not allowed to sell it. It just takes the whole listing down. And I go to seller support, and they're like, okay, it's just going to take a while. We've opened a ticket, or they give me some canned answer. I go to him. He's like, OK, let me accelerate this up. They get it, but he gets it back on, and then happens again, and then happens again. That's a function of them just being too big and growing too fast and too many working parts. So that's part of it. It makes us feel like they don't care. I think they actually do care more than it appears, but they are vague on purpose a lot of times. 00:23:23 So that gives them a little bit more flexibility and legal coverage. But I think what's happening now with the state of California and the state of Washington and the U. S. and then Europe. is going to force some changes because there is some stuff that's being done. That's just not right. And I think you're going to see, you know, brand brand analytics that came out last year was example that they were accused in the press of doing a few things. And so here you go, we're going to give you a little bit more information. And I think you're going to start seeing more of that happening. They're going to start being a little bit more friendly, but it's just a beast. I mean, you just. you got so many moving parts and so much going on. 00:23:58 It's, it's hard to manage. It's so, there's always going to be some people that feel, feel like Amazon doesn't care. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we might also see, you know, some of the liability fall back on Amazon too. You know, especially in the 1P department. I mean, you know, they had that whole thing going down with the, I think it was a dog leash or a pet leash and they're, you know, being, I don't know. sued or something or somebody's going after Amazon because they couldn't go after the seller or something. Yeah, they lost that case. Oh, did they? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but we're seeing it creep back up again in different forms of, you know, basically Amazon's being looked at for liability. 00:24:39 I mean, I kind of look at it as, you know, there's a reason like on eBay, I'm selling my own product. Amazon or eBay is not selling my product for me. On Amazon via 1P, Amazon's now the seller of it. If they buy it from me and they put it in their warehouse, and they sell it under their name or through them, then they should be a little bit liable for it. I'm talking specifically on the 1P side. If you look at Walmart or any other big retailer, to get into Walmart on their stores or Walgreens or CVS or any of the big, Bed Bath & Beyond, you've got to provide all kinds of documents of insurance that name them. Cover them. 00:25:18 And like you said, if someone buys a dog leash at Bed Bath & Beyond and it hurts them, they're probably going to sue Bed Bath & Beyond and they're going to sue you as a manufacturer. Then you as a manufacturer are going to indemnify and help cover Bed Bath & Beyond in most cases. Amazon hasn't done that. I mean, if you go back for years, Amazon's actually had it in their seller agreement. If you read that big, long thing when you sign up for an account, you have to have insurance. You have to have both product general liability, which is $500, $600 a year for most people. Some people, it's a little bit more. And then you have to have product liability, which is completely different. 00:25:51 A lot of people don't understand that. That can be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per year, depending on what you're selling and how much you're selling. And most people don't have it. Amazon actually states in their seller agreement that they give you three months. So after three months of selling, it's $10,000 or more. So if you're kind of small, they don't quite enforce it. It says $10,000 or more for three months. You must send these documents to this address in Seattle and you must do this and send all this insurance. And they haven't been enforcing that. And I think what you're going to see because of some of this is they're going to start to enforce that. 00:26:27 And so I think they're just trying to figure out how are we going to do this. We've got a couple million sellers. Are we going to suspend them all if they don't have the document? Are we going to just make all new people do it? Are we giving them a grace period where they have 30 days to get this to us or we're shutting down all their listings? Something like that's going to happen. It has to. And they may start vetting products a little bit differently. I mean, right now I can put anything up on Amazon and 15 minutes from now, as long as my account's clean, it's live. And that's creating a problem with people selling, you know, the EPA just last about 10 days ago came down on Amazon and eBay for all these unauthorized products making all these claims for the coronavirus, saying that it kills bacteria or it's effective against coronavirus or all these different claims that are completely untrue. 00:27:16 None of those products have got official EPA certification. If I was selling those products on Walmart, they wouldn't make me send the EPA certifications. Amazon doesn't in most cases. So I think you're going to see a big tightening up coming that may make some sellers uncomfortable. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that we're definitely going to see that in a lot of different categories are going to get affected by that and a lot of sellers will too. But I think overall, it's a good thing. It's going to protect the sellers better. It's going to protect Amazon better. Well, not to shift away from this because I love what we're doing, but you got a lot going on and I want to talk about some of these things you have going on? 00:27:58 Specifically, why don't you tell us about what you have going on? I think it's a new venture, new company with Steve Simonson. And why don't you let everybody in on kind of this thing, this new business you got going? Yeah, so Steve and I partnered up in a company called Product Savants. It's at ProductSavants. com. And the whole idea of it is we see that the biggest. the two biggest pain points for most people are sourcing a product or finding a product to sell. What's a good opportunity. And then sourcing that product. You know, a lot of people might go to Alibaba or global sources or get on a plane, go to Canton Fair. And that's great. You can find some sources that way, but that's not the best, best way. 00:28:40 So, and I'm, I'm, I'm my, I'm very good at using the tools to find product opportunities. And I just have a little intuition on some of it. And I, so I can, Some people say they spent six weeks or six months. I just can't find a product. There's just nothing out there. I'm like, give me a couple hours. I'll find you something. That's my skill set. I will go in and I'll find a product that looks like it has a good opportunity. A lot of times I'm doing this for myself because I have several other companies selling on Amazon. I might come across like what you talked about earlier. I'm looking for dog products. But I come across something just in my research, just following a rabbit hole that's in the health and beauty niche. 00:29:22 And I'm like, that looks pretty cool, but that just doesn't fit with what I'm doing. It's going to take some money. You know, maybe I should do it, but that means I got to divert money from my dog stuff to this and I'm losing focus. So let me stay focused on the dog thing, but I got this health and beauty thing. So then all I can do is I can then give that to Steve, who Steve has a team in China that has. uh, you know, collectively a hundred plus years of sourcing experience, a big team over there. Cause he's been importing hundreds of containers a month, uh, for, for a long time. So he's very, very, uh, well versed in the whole ways that everything works in China. 00:29:57 Got a big team. So I give it to them. They can go out and then find the right factory for it. They're not just going to Alibaba or, you know, they have all the sources. They speak the language. They're getting the locals' price, not the, uh, not the tourist price like we get. They're getting all that kind of stuff. They'll find it, find the good factories. They'll vet the factories. They'll come back to us and say, 'Here's what we can get it for.' Here's how you can differentiate it, blah, blah, blah. And then Steve and I go through them again at that point, and about half or more of them fail. We're like, you know, they just can't get it at the price we need it at, or MLQ is too high, or whatever it is. 00:30:36 There's some reason that we just back off of it. But then the ones that make it, then we create a report. I create a pretty detailed report. Like these are the keywords. This is what we think you can do conservatively in sales. Here's the competition. Here's the market. It's like a 15-page report on this product. And then you can actually buy that product. So we don't tell you at Product Savants what the product is. So we'll tell you this is in the health and beauty category. And we think it can do, whatever, $100,000 a year in sales. You're going to need $20,000 investment to get into this, we think, comfortably, to have enough for your first couple inventory runs. Do you want this product? 00:31:18 And if you say, 'Yeah, I'm in' health and beauty. I would love to have that product. And we tell you the size and all that, but we don't tell you what it is exactly. And then you take it, you sign some agreements, you pay a fee. It's a percentage of what the first year's expected income might be. And then we turn it over to you. And so we turn over the product to you with the report and the factory contact and everything. And then it's up to you to actually go out and take it from there. We're not involved in helping you launch it or write the listing or anything. It's up to you. So, we don't want new sellers. It's only for people who are experienced. 00:31:56 So, uh, you have to have some experience selling on Amazon because we get a little, little royalty on the backend. Uh, so we, we want you to be successful and that's where we, we spend a lot of time and put a lot of resources into it and we're counting on you being able to, to take this and run with it. Uh, so that's how we cover our costs of doing this. And so that's what Products Advance is. And it's, uh, we launched it in March of this year, and earlier this year, if you're listening to this in 2020, and it's, um, It's done very well. Yeah, and I think I watched when you guys first initially came out and said, hey, this is what we're doing. I jumped on that video and I was watching. 00:32:34 I was like, wow, that is a great idea. Like, I mean, I wish I thought of that in the past because it is absolutely awesome. I come across stuff all the time that I'm just like, I just don't have time, right? It's a great concept. I got all the resources for it. I mean, I've been to 100 different factories. I know where I can go get it, but I just don't have the time to deal with it. And yourself and Steve, same way, right? Everybody's got stuff going on, but I think it's an amazing idea. It's great for somebody who's been around and knows what they're doing, and they just maybe are lacking a little bit of the research and just need a product to add, and they're in that specific category. 00:33:10 I know when I talked to Steve, I think you guys had the first initial one somebody picked up. How many have you done since you guys launched? Yeah, we have – there's about 15 or 20 out there right now. Nice. Yeah, and we did one guy as a beta – two people, actually, as a beta test. We announced it that we were going to do something like in early of 2019, and it took us about a year before we actually came out and made it public. But, yeah, we had a couple people do a beta just to make sure – we wanted to prove the concept, make sure that we weren't being foolish here. And he's, he's come back to us for more. He's extremely happy. That's awesome. 00:33:50 But he was able to take it and modify it a little bit and, and do it. And he's got a whole new brand as a result of it. So that's, that's great. That's, that's really incredible. And I love that story. And it's such a great idea. What about, you gave a little bit on the, like the process of picking the person. Do you guys follow up on that? Like, do you verify funds? Are you checking this person's background? I mean, kind of what you do to pick the right person for this category or product. Well, yeah. I found a beauty product, and we tell you it's doing $100,000 a year. We give you the basic stats, and you say you want it. You might pay us $5,000 or something up front. 00:34:30 You pay that $5,000. Then you send a contract. The contract spells out everything, the reports that you're going to have to give to us and how everything works. If you have any questions about that, we answer them, and then you sign that. And then once you've signed that, then Steve usually will give you a call and actually make sure he can tell in 10 or 15 minutes of talking to you that you actually know what you're doing. And we've actually refunded money on three or four people. And some people are like, no, don't worry. I got this. I'm good. But we're like, this is going to take a little bit more. It's better. We don't want to take your money. 00:35:12 We don't require like, Hey, send us screenshots, send us all this, you know, send us a finance. It's not, it's not a, it's not that kind of in-depth check, but you know, talking to somebody, whether they, they know what they're doing or not in this space, you can ask the right questions and how they answered can tell you a lot. And so that's, that's kind of how we vet. And it's so far it's been done well, you know, this is not thousands of products, so it's, it's manageable. There are other companies out there that do this, you know, there's four or five of them that you can go to them for a product for a lot less than what we're charging. 00:35:46 But it's just, I've seen some of the reports and some of the stuff they do and it's, I'd be careful. Yeah, yeah. On average, how much time goes into selecting this winning product between you and Steve when you guys are getting it together? I'm sure, you know, some you might find faster or have a little more knowledge of, and then others you have to do a little more research. But on average, how much time do you guys put in to kind of find this winning product? I've never added it up exactly, but I think for every single product, I mean, between, if I just had to guess, between my time, Steve's time, the time where we're talking about together, and his team's time, the sourcing team's time, it might be 100 plus hours. 00:36:30 And this is people that know what they're doing on top of it. I'm not spending, it's not 100 of my hours. Total. It's, it's gotta be into the hundreds of hours. Um, and from experienced people. So you're getting some of the best, some of the, one of the, some of the best of the best, uh, to take a look at this. It's not a guarantee it's going to work. I mean, so far, knock on wood, we haven't had a, something blow up on us, but, uh, sometimes, uh, somebody just may not execute or the market conditions could change. So it's not a guarantee, but on my, my personal products, I typically have about an 80% success rate. Um, On the product. So we're hoping that we can, we can hit that same success rate on our next projects. 00:37:13 But like, for example, one of the ones that we, we announced back in March that someone gobbled up, it was right place, right time for them. We had actually found that product in September of last year and it was a good product then. And then when the Corona virus hit, it became an exceptionally good product. It wasn't face masks or PPE or anything like that, but it just was in a space that blew up. So that person that got that had a huge leg up, just, and I'm hopefully they're, they're out my out now because they should be killing it. Nice. That's awesome. Well, we're going to shift a little bit here on the podcast to you, your background. And I want to talk a little bit about it. 00:37:52 I've lived some of that time frame in that era, but why don't you kind of let everybody know what was e-commerce like? In the late 90s and early 2000s? And kind of how is it different than it is now? Yeah, I mean, I started. It's a big question. Yeah, it was. I mean, first, the websites looked pretty bad. If you go back and even look in the Wayback Machine of like Amazon's, you know, they looked pretty bad. There was a bunch of text everywhere, not too much pictures, a bunch of flash video. That was a popular thing back then. I remember. I remember, you know, you didn't have video content at all. I mean, if you did, it was supposed to stamp size and it would stop and stutter and stop and stutter and audio sucked, real audio player. 00:38:39 But yeah, I was back, I remember even when Google started, I remember someone's like, 'Ah, I was using AltaVista and some of these other search engines. And someone's like, hey, go look at this Alta, this Yahoo thing. It's like a plain white page with a search bar said. Google or something. I'm like, what the hell is this crap? And then, you know, I'm used to directories and lists and whatever and type something in. I was like, oh, I found some cool stuff. I remember when, you know, Google now makes their money on the advertising, the clicks. But before Google, before they did that, there was something, what was it called? Bid Plus? No, what was it? Shoot, I'm drawing a blank on the name. There was another company, GoTo. 00:39:20 Yeah, that was it. GoTo. Oh, GoTo, yeah. Uh, go to that actually, you could bid and it was a penny clicks uh, penny two cents, I think five cents, you're like, 'Oh, I'm spending a lot of money, five cents you're like oh i'm spending a lot of money five cents a click.' Um, that started doing this advertising platform so selling e-commerce back then was different. I mean, I i think I sold my first thing; I think I opened my Amazon buyer account in 1999. Every time I log into my order history, it says 'go back and look' -it's interesting to go back and see what I bought 20 something years ago. Um, and then eBay around the same time. And when I first started selling, I wasn't doing storefronts through those. 00:39:58 I would actually, I would sell on eBay sales. You recall uh, I think I upgraded my CD collection. Uh, was it my, my, uh, DVD collection to Blu-ray and sold all my old Blu-ray old, uh, DVDs. I remember, uh, I think switching the CDs from record albums or something, selling a bunch of those on there. And, uh, I would go into Amazon and they had the 'sell yours' thing. And so I would sometimes sell, sell on somebody else's listing my, my used copier or my used, whatever it might be. Um, and, but then I also had a storefront, my own website. Uh, but it was nothing compared to what you can do now is, is, is super simple. Do you remember what platform you had your own website on by any chance? 00:40:45 I know, uh, We developed our own. We had a newsletter service and we had some photo stuff and a membership site. And we had like 20 servers. I remember each of these servers was like four grand a piece. And they were little 350s or something. Slow as heck. And we had to string them all together. And you didn't have all the raids and all the systems you have now. The blade servers and everything. And our ISP bill was like $8 ,000 a month for a T1 line. or some crazy freaking number like that. And we had a business that we would get sometimes. Back when Howard Stern was on regular radio before he went to Sirius, we had some guests go on his show a few times, and it would just blow up our websites. 00:41:36 I mean, they would just literally crash. We'd have to have our guy standing at the rack space or whatever the place was back then. flipping the switch because we couldn't do it remotely, you know, to restart the machine. It was, it was crazy. And I remember we used to have a newsletter. We sent out emails and people would sign up for this newsletter and we would send them out on the 24 hours a day. Every hour, we'd stagger them out, and people could choose the time they got them. And we were sending out 300,000 emails a day. And this is before spam, you know, so everything was getting through and open rates were crazy, ridiculous. We could sell almost anything through there. 00:42:14 And I remember even back in the day figuring out what day is the best day of the week for someone to get an email. So I would always-I figured it out. It was Thursdays and into Friday morning because I guess Fridays' people got paid or something. So I did all these testing. And so, we would always send out our promotional stuff on Thursday nights. So, whatever we were trying to sell, you know, whatever the sale of the week was would go out on Thursdays because that's for whatever reason. Thursday night into Friday was the best day to make sales. I don't think that's true anymore in the day of Amazon, but it was back then. So yeah, it was quite a bit different. It was completely different. I lived that era too. 00:42:55 And it's funny all the names you bring up, Rackspace and stuff. Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, with us on the emails, we were always selling products through our website. So we found that it was always the first Monday of the month because everybody got paid on the first. And usually we waited until whatever that first Monday was. And then this, I think it was the 15th or 16th of the month was always really good. I can't remember. It's been a while now, but yeah, I'm sure those things are not quite the same. It's just like in direct mail. I mean, my background is direct mail before all the internet stuff. I did a lot in, you know, what people call junk mail or whatever. And that, which still works today, by the way, it's highly effective still today. 00:43:33 A lot of people think it's a dinosaur, but it still works. But back then, You'd always want a time to be right after a holiday, and I think it's probably still true today. If you even pay attention to your own stuff, here in the States, right after a holiday like Memorial Day or July 4th or something, look the day after and notice how the one or two days after, normally you'll see an uptick in the amount of advertising mail you get because it's scientifically proven that people are buying right after a holiday. Right before the holiday, you won't. Unless it's very holiday-focused, unless it's a Memorial Day or July 4th sale or something, you won't see something before it, but right after it. And there's a reason for that. Yeah, absolutely. 00:44:19 I, one of the things for us, because I had, I don't know if I got to tell you, but I had an iPhone business that we were one of the iPhone parts businesses. And we're at one point, the biggest iPhone parts seller provider in the United States. And we always found that Sunday evening and Monday were the biggest sales. And we started figuring out it's because people would drop and break them on Saturdays or Sundays and start looking for how do I repair it or where do I find a part for it? So, yeah, some of that's knowing your market, right? Like knowing your market really helps. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, though, is I'm sure you've had lots of mistakes, right? Like we've all made mistakes through businesses. 00:44:59 But kind of what is one of the biggest ones you kind of can remember and what did you learn from it that helped you going forward? Yeah, I mean, I had to declare bankruptcy in 1998, mostly for business reasons. And we had a business that was doing well, but we started with no money. And so we were having to cash flow it. And so the way I cash flow it is by, I had 16 employees or something at the time, is I didn't pay Uncle Sam their money. So, you know, you have employees and let's say they're making $500. A week and you're you're taking the taxes out, you know, so they're only getting whatever-350 and that's 150 you're supposed to send to the government, and then for social security you're supposed to match a little bit more. 00:45:43 Uh, I didn't send that, um, I used it to cash flow to buy more inventory, uh, and to keep the lights on and everything, and figuring that okay, I'll catch it up don't worry, but I couldn't quite catch it up and so after about a year, my employees started filing tax returns, getting refunds, and the IRS is saying, 'Here's your $3,000 refund,' but wait a second, we're giving you $3,000 and we never got anything over here from Kevin. This doesn't jive. They came knocking. And so when they came knocking, I had to go and confront that. I couldn't just run away. And so the way I was able to confront that is I just had to declare bankruptcy because that kind of froze it. 00:46:27 And you still had to pay it, but that bought me time. And so that bankruptcy messed up my credit. So my personal credit, because the business was a sole proprietorship. So that taught me, you know, make sure you do all your, you set your business up properly. Make sure you do all your protections in case something personal happens. And you can keep business and personal separate. And it screwed up my credit for like 10 years. I couldn't buy. It was difficult to buy a house. It was difficult to, you know, get much of a credit line anywhere. Uh, since, you know, that was 20 some odd years ago, uh, 20, 23 years ago or whatever it is now. 00:47:03 Uh, it's all, everything's good now, but that was a big learning lesson that, uh, I, you know, if I got into a bind again, I would do everything I could to avoid filing a bankruptcy. I know the laws have changed some since then too. So I think it's a little different now as well. Yeah. Wow. I, that's a, that's a biggie. That's definitely a biggie. Hear about businesses closing, but like something like bankruptcy, that's, that's tough. Yeah, that's definitely tough. Now, I, I mean, you sent me your bio and I was reading through it and I was, I did not know this personally, but I do know you do coaching and you have quite a few people that you do coaching with. 00:47:41 And I think if I read it correctly, like between all the people that you kind of coach, they're doing like a half a billion in sales. Is that correct? Yeah, it's actually probably more than that. It's probably a little bit older figure. But yeah, I mean, I do the Freedom Ticket, which is a free course if you have a Helium 10 membership, which is for new people. It's aimed at new people or people that just started out, and some experienced people really enjoy it too. And then I do the Helium 10 Elite, which used to be called Illuminati back when it started. And that's more for advanced sellers. It's a monthly training that I come on, I do some stuff, and then we bring on some guests. 00:48:17 It's every single month for the more advanced sellers. And then I do the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, which is my own personal event. It's 50 to 100 people. I had to cancel the one that was scheduled for here coming up shortly because of the coronavirus one. But we did two last year. And they were both held here in Austin. And the average in that room was about $8 million, $9 million a year on Amazon. So it's some big hitters. One guy was doing over 100 million. So I'm bringing top speakers from all over the world. And we meet for three days and network. And it's not your normal conference, a little bit different than the average conference you might go to. But it's all pretty high-level people. 00:49:04 So, yeah, if you added all those up, I'm sure it's over half a billion dollars. Wow. Yeah, that's amazing. I have heard of the conference and just some amazing people go there and show up there and you have to speak there. That's really cool. So, kind of speaking of speakers, Kevin, who do you kind of look up to in the e-commerce world? Like, who are sort of your mentors or, you know, if they're not necessarily directly a mentor, people that you just, you like to listen to and kind of find out what knowledge they're giving out that you can maybe learn from. I mean, in the Amazon space, I don't really have a mentor, but the person I think is the smartest in this space is Tyron Turku. 00:49:41 I think he's one of the smartest people in this Amazon space, so I pay attention to what he has to say and what he shares, both publicly and privately. As far as in the general e-commerce space, I don't have – or business space. Or business space. I wouldn't say I have, I don't read, I don't read a lot of bios or anything like that on people. I don't follow, you know, some people say, Oh, I follow Elon Musk or I follow, I don't do any of that. Um, so yeah, I guess I, I can't say that I have someone that's my idol or that I watch their move or try to mimic, uh, in, in the space. 00:50:20 I mean, there's, yeah, I, I don't, uh, I just kind of keep my head down and do my own thing and I'll read stuff, but I'm not particular. Um, I'm an information whore. I love to get information and read different things, but I don't read a lot of books. I have a lot of books that I should read probably, but I just don't have time to read them. You just segued into my next question perfectly, Kevin. So what areas of e-commerce do you feel is your weakest and how do you solve it not being your weakest or how do you solve it? In e-commerce, I don't know if it's my weakest. The thing I hate is the accounting side. I understand it. I have a degree in business from Texas A&M. 00:51:07 I got A's in accounting, so I understand it, but I just hate it. All the bookkeeping and all that stuff. That's the side that I don't like, but the rest of it, I've been doing this so long. I enjoy it. I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy it. I can't say that I have, there's a huge weakness. I'm pretty good at quite a few things. Yeah. Well, obviously you've been around a long time and you've kind of dealt with a lot of different areas. So you got to have kind of a little bit of each area. You have to have a little bit of knowledge and just to make sure everything's, you know, held together. So completely understand that. Well, Kevin, thank you for being on EcomWiz podcast. I really appreciate it. 00:51:55 And before we go, please plug anything you'd like. You're welcome to, uh, how do they get ahold of you? Uh, you know, talk about like your coaching, uh, any events that you're doing, even if they're online, that you have coming up. Um, yes. I mean, the probably the best way is just go to amzmarketer. com and that'll redirect to my Facebook and you just can follow me there. Um, yeah, I mean, I don't, uh, the coaching and the events and stuff, you know, billion dollar seller summit, or you can go to Helium 10 and check out the stuff I do there or go to, if you're an experienced seller, go check out Products of Odds that Steve and I do. And yeah, if not, that's cool too. We'll all be, I'll be fine. Well, I'll be sure to put, I'll put the links down in the description for you. And again, Kevin, thanks for being on the Econ Whiz Podcast. I really appreciate it. No problem, man. Thanks for having me. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel and for more information please visit feedbackwhiz.com.