May 25, 2022: Amazon Happy Hour with Lesley Hensell and Kevin King

May 25, 2022: Amazon Happy Hour with Lesley Hensell and Kevin King 00:00:00 Hello, everybody, Amazon sellers. Welcome to our Amazon seller happy hour. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Leslie Hensel, co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, who is your sponsor. And today I have with me a super special, very exciting guest. Kevin King. Okay, Kevin's done so many things that I don't even know what to intro him for, but the thing I know him best for is Billion Dollar Seller Summit, which I know a lot of you out there are familiar with, but he's also had several online businesses. He's sold on Amazon. He's sold direct to consumer. He's just done all the things. Hey, Kevin. Hey, how you doing, Leslie? Nice to be here. You're just up in Dallas, I hear. Yes, yes, absolutely. And, you know, so you're like famous in the Amazon world, which is exciting, right? 00:00:56 And I love it that we're both right here in the great state of Texas. So we're bringing all of our Texan mojo to the show today. That's right. We say there's a difference, though. You see, I grew up in Flower Mound, which most people don't even know. If you're not from Dallas, you don't even know where that is. You don't know what it is either, do you? Absolutely, I do. Because I moved to Arlington, which is just down the road. But then I moved to Austin. So I came here behind the orange curtain. And, you know, I'm an Aggie living here behind the orange curtain. And it's all good. Austin's a good place. In fact, I have today my Longhorn glass going because I did go to a Longhorn baseball game at 9 a. 00:01:43 m. today, which was quite the experience and had a good time because the good guys won. But, you know, we can still agree to like each other even though. That's right. We can get along except a couple times a year. Now it's not just in a few sports, but it's about to be in football again. I want y'all to join the SEC. It'll be so much fun. It'll be a lot of fun. Maybe Thanksgiving's aren't the same without that. Yeah, we used to have that whole burnt orange and maroon thing at our house. Like some of my cousins were the other team. And so Thanksgiving would get really heated. Yeah, my wife actually goes, she's a student right now. 00:02:24 At UT, a grad student there, and she's doing some stuff, and she brought home a little toy for the dogs, a little Longhorn toy for the dogs, and I told Mike, you know, we have a couple dogs, and I told one of the dogs, like, tear that thing up. You're welcome to tear that thing up. So I'll tell you the hardest thing for me is I have a kid who wants to be a meteorologist. And so his top two potential schools are A&M and OU. And as a Longhorn, that's really tough for me. But he still wears the burnt orange shirt just for me. So, Kevin, you know, my first question for you today, because this is something I get asked all the time. 00:03:03 And so I would love to hear what your answer is and what you tell people, because you've been a seller for a long time now. You've been around the block. You've been in on this Amazon thing for quite a while. And people are really asking me lately, is there still opportunity on Amazon? I mean, I get that question every single week. Is there still opportunity on Amazon? Is it too saturated? Am I too late? So tell me what you say to that. Yeah, no, you're not too late. Is the opportunity the same as it was six or seven years ago when Amazing Selling Machine came out and a few other courses and they told you just go, find an opportunity using some software tools, go to Alibaba, stick your own name on it, maybe make a couple little modifications and throw it out on Amazon. 00:03:49 Those days are gone. It still exists, but it's a lot harder than it used to be. It exists primarily, those types of opportunities still exist on the very low end or the very high end for the most part. But the middle of the pack or any kind of commodity stuff, it's extremely difficult. But the opportunities on Amazon are still huge. i think there's a shift in what people have to be thinking about as far as how that what products they're going to launch i mean if they're launching brand new things that's one thing if they're bringing stuff to the market that's you're they're just a wholesaler distributing stuff that's already on there buy box sharing uh you know it can be good it could be difficult um with with a lot of products with a big review remote around them uh if there's a lot of saturation it can be difficult but i mean i'm involved in a company um you mentioned i do a lot of things it's called products of bonds 00:04:39 and steve simonson and i what we do is we for big sellers we actually find product opportunities so as i'm searching for stuff for my own brand sometimes i find things that just don't fit you know i'm not in the automotive space but i might find a good opportunity automotive so we take that uh we have some proprietary tools that we use we've developed uh using brand analytics and some of the other stuff that amazon gives you and then we overlay that with helium 10 and data dive and some of the other really good tools and i can still find opportunities but it's becoming harder I mean, We have certain criteria on those where they've got to have a certain contribution margin of $50,000 or more a year or we don't touch it because it's just not worth our time or the investment. 00:05:19 But for some people, you know, if I'm a guy just trying to make a little bit of extra, I'm not trying to do this as a living or build a huge company. I just need to make some extra cash. Or maybe I don't live in the U. S., I live in Pakistan or Colombia or Costa Rica or somewhere. five hundred thousand dollars a month in profit could be life-changing there's still plenty of opportunity but for that for the person who's been working a corporate job and they want to quit they want to come in amazon they want to build a huge business there's still a tremendous opportunity too it's a different model uh it's more you got to look more in the branding you gotta look more in the differentiation um you gotta look more at uh uh it takes more money to do to do that so if you're really trying to build a true business the days are starting with a few thousand bucks 00:06:03 in building that into a multi-million dollar empire is difficult i'm not not that it can't be done but it's extremely difficult you need to start with a lot more money now and it takes a lot more it's it's costing a lot more to you pay To play basically with PPC and everything, so it's difficult but but is is it still there? Is it? Jump the shark, absolutely not. The opportunities are huge. Still, on Amazon, it's just a different mindset. Well, I completely agree with you. And especially in the area of specialty goods and products, there are always going to be specialty items that people cannot go get at their Target and their Walmart. Target and Walmart have limited shelf space. So do all the drugstores and the grocers. 00:06:46 But there are specialty goods that people want and need. And there may not be enough of a market in your town. But there's enough of a market in the United States or in another country. I've got a special needs kiddo that we had to buy a lot of learning supplies, manipulatives, all these things when he was younger. Oh, my goodness. If I couldn't find it on Amazon, I couldn't find it. So, I still believe now buying like baseball trainer equipment is right. Um, it's so much easier to find that on Amazon even at Dicks they don't have the specialized things or at Academy, so I still think for creative people, I think there's still a lot to be done. 00:07:26 I mean, a good example is I just did a promotion for my Billion Dollar Seller Summit where we did a mailing and we need to get some little binder rings, little round binder rings because we we had like a 10 pieces of paper uh on this little flyer the way we did it and we need to put them together, whole punch, and then put a little binder ring in it. I went to Office Depot and Hobby Lobby and a couple of places here and I couldn't find the right size, but on Amazon, there's 10 different people selling it. You know, so you're right that the specialty stuff, there's still a huge opportunity. The niches that Amazon has grown so much in the last five years, even though more than double or tripled in size in the last five years, the deep down are, there's better opportunities there. 00:08:07 You know, it's 2015. If you were selling left-handed bats for one-eyed people or something, you might sell one or two a month. But because Amazon has grown so much and so many people go to Amazon to find that, maybe now that market is 10 or 15 or 20 a month just because people are conditioned to go there. So it just depends on what your goals are. If you're happy selling 20 a month of that, that's not going to support your life. That's not going to pay your bills. But if you have 10 or 15 or 20 or 100 of those types of items, it can. Uh, so it's it's a different mentality uh and 00:08:41 but the opportunities are still still huge and some categories it's it's difficult uh because there's such a review moat around those products or there's uh about review modes I mean there's like five or more people that have a over a thousand reviews that's that's difficult to compete with or there's a pricing mode where there's a lot of people that sell on Amazon that actually they have cash flow but they don't have profit so there's a lot of companies including a lot of Chinese sellers uh especially the factories that they sell at such a low margin that you can't compete um you know when I'm looking at products, I look At where? Where's where the seller's based, and if it's over $650, based in China, I usually don't enter that market because they just have a huge price advantage because what they're selling it to you for, they can sell it on Amazon for and still make almost the same money. 00:09:31 So it's difficult. But there's lots of opportunities. I mean, I'm doing something. One of my companies right now, one of my companies is seasonal. And every year, it's grown every single year for the last 20 years. It's been selling on Amazon for over 20 years for that product. And every year, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. It's a very seasonal, specific item. And there's competition, but nobody just likes us. And we've built a following where people are coming back and looking for that every year. Then, one of my other businesses we're doing stuff uh, we're marrying Web three with Web two, we're doing stuff in the NFT space and sustainability and and tying that all together uh to launch on Amazon. 00:10:09 Another one of my companies is We Went, the branded route, we're doing dog life jackets uh, and if I just launched a dog life jacket and came up with Kevin's brand of dog life jackets, it might be pretty difficult because there's Outward Hound, there's a bunch of companies that have a lot of reviews, they've been around a long time, they have a lot of trust, so to compete with that. We went out and we did a licensing deal with Body Cloth, that's the surfing company uh, you know? You'll give you six; you know the licensing fee is six percent uh, that would probably spend a lot more of that in a cost you know um, to give them that away so I was like, 'We'll give you six percent you know, in order to use your name and that gives you instant credibility and people are searching for that already. 00:10:48 It also allows us to use tap into their network of athletes and stuff that'll post it on their Instagram and push it for us for free. Uh, they're also because they do so many other deals, they also are in all kinds of stores, so they can open the doors for getting into retail and uh, you know, like they're getting us on Martha Stewart right now, uh, for example, you know it would be difficult for us to do on our own, so things like that, so you just have to look at it differently and if you look at it differently, there's still plenty of opportunity. See, I absolutely love the licensing strategy. That is something that I have a couple of friends who sell on Amazon. 00:11:25 They've used it very successfully with the types of products that, like you said, if you were just launching your own generic brand or brand new brand that has no name recognition, golly, it would be hard to have any penetration. But they got the right licensing and they were just off to the races. Yeah, I mean, it can be that's an area where a lot of people. Are missing right now and you know you can't go out, and don't expect to go out, and get the Disney license or something like that, uh, right off the bat if you haven't been doing licensing. But you can get, you know, the army, or you can get some of the second-tier or third-tier licenses, and that's a great place to start, and it can give you a really good moat, and really good way of differentiating uh, and leveraging those audiences' love that, okay. 00:12:08 So since you have a lot of experience in D2C, I want to jump there for a second because the same thing it's the same question is coming up now of what about D2C? That was great during Covid; is that over now? Is anyone going to be able to to do Shopify and succeed? Are you hearing the same kind of kind of panic feelings because things have leveled off, no. I mean, no, D2C still works; it's a different model though, uh, than Amazon. Amazon, you already have all the eyeballs there, so you gotta learn how to use the software tools, excuse me, sorry, have to learn how to use the software tools, uh, to actually Find what people are looking for on Amazon, because the eyeballs are over there when you're doing D2C. 00:12:51 You gotta have you gotta bring the traffic to you gotta bring the eyeballs to you, so you've got to know how to market or you gotta have an audience already for that that you can leverage, a customer list that you have from uh stuff that you've built over time, I mean one of my businesses, the one I talked about, that's seasonal, we it's we do both, we sell on Amazon and we'll sell uh you know four We have four different products that we do, And they're into the hundreds of thousands of dollars each per month on Amazon during the holiday season. And then we also do D2C on that because I have a list of 16,000 people who have been buying from me for 20 years. 00:13:26 And some of them don't even have a credit card. They still send checks and money orders in the mail. Wow. And so we probably get $100,000 of sales every year just checks and monies from November to December, checks and money orders in an envelope in the mail. And so that audience is there. We have that audience and they've been with us for 27 years and they just keep buying until they basically, they die or something. They just keep buying every year because it's a calendar product. So, they need these calendars. They want them for the wall every year. So, the DDC is still there, but it's different. It's a different type of marketing. It's a different structure. Uh, you know Shopify is huge; it's, you got to deal with the fulfillment, you got to deal with more aspects of it. 00:14:12 I mean, Shopify just bought Deliver; so you know they're bringing some of that in there's our Shopify has partnerships with like Facebook and with like JD. Com and the, and China, there's, there's a lot of advantages there, so the opportunity is there too. But you've got to know how to bring the people to you; either have the people or know how to bring them to you, so it's not dead at all. Um, and you know there's a lot of people doing well with drop shipping during the pandemic, they were doing um, you know, because Amazon was out of stock, so some people were going to shop, you know, the Shopify-type stores, to actually buy it, because they actually had it, uh, but not that's not dead at all. 00:14:48 But it's a different business model and I tell people, you know, a lot of people always they start on Amazon, like I need to get my uh Shopify store up, you know, I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket and I always say like yeah, but you put up your Shopify store unless you know that's not Going to add too much to your bottom line unless you're going to focus on that it's a different marketing uh and you're better off to go open up in Canada on Amazon than you are to probably open up a Shopify store, but you should probably open up a Shopify store just for legitimacy, just you should have it, because there are people who will type in your name and just want to see is this guy, this company legit, and just the fact that it's there, um, can help you, but it doesn't mean you're gonna make a lot of sales on it. 00:15:30 Yeah, agreed, you can have the nice branding there so that you do look legit. And now, if you really want to, Amazon has that new 'Buy with Prime' feature that they're rolling out. So if you don't want to hassle with merchant-fulfilled orders because you've just never done it, you can just have the orders fulfilled from your Amazon store anyway, since it might be just a few a month. And that's very smart by Amazon. It's got a lot of people shaking. That's a very smart move. When the pandemic started, they didn't have enough warehouse space. So they invested heavily the last two years. And I don't know what the number is; they doubled or tripled their number of warehouse space in square footage. And now they're realizing, hey, we actually overbuilt a little bit. 00:16:14 So they're leveraging that and doing this shop with Prime, which delivered some of the other 3PLs are not liking that because it's direct competition to them. But Amazon is very good at that. That helps a lot too, and that's one of the barriers a lot of times when you go to the Shopify site is I'm like, even me if I'm ordering I'm like, 'Man, I don't know when this thing's going to show up.' With Amazon, I know it's going to be there in a day or two, unless it's in some cases takes a little bit longer, usually a day or two. And I know I got a problem; it's easy to deal with when you're going to some other website, you don't have that same trust or that same but with Prime and then you can even have the uh pay with you know pay with the Amazon checkout, you could, the whole process could basically be everything except Amazon. 00:16:58 com and then take it 15 as a sales commission yeah it's it's i think it's much easier for the seller um it's definitely food for thought on the fee structure if you're doing real volume through your shopify store but if it's small volume i don't think it's even a question to me to just not have to manage that channel separately and let amazon manage the fulfillment for you but but a lot of volume might be a different story i mean people used to ask me if i'm advertising on google should i send that to my shopify site or should i send that to amazon that's why i give amazon the commissions but and i 00:17:35 used to say if you're doing shopify you should send it in most cases to your to your i'm sorry if you're doing google ads you should most cases to your shopify site so you don't have to pay the 15 and you own the customer you get the name but even with amazon now you can still get the names you know tax jar and some of the stuff you can there's still a backdoor way to get actually names and addresses but now with the way amazon's done it with With the increase in rank on Amazon, if you had sent social signals so it's coming from Facebook or it's coming from Google they give you a little bump in your rating rankings on Amazon and as well as the 10 referral bonus back uh that can make a big difference uh and also now I say send it send it to Amazon 00:18:19 and get that extra boost there because that extra boost will help you with the organic side of Amazon and all the traffic that didn't come through your efforts and came through just coming through Amazon naturally. Well, and if what you're worried about is diversification, which is a reasonable concern that people have, I've talked to sellers who have actually gotten a reasonable number of sales through an Etsy if they have a specialty product or an eBay store or, you know, other platforms that drive their own traffic for you instead of Shopify where the Shopify store where you're making a massive investment for very little return. Yeah, Etsy, Walmart, eBay, all those are, there's a whole list of others. 00:19:05 But to be honest, for most people, I mean, there are a couple exceptions, but for most people, even if you add all those up, if I'm on Etsy, eBay, and Walmart, it's still a fraction of what Amazon is right. So, it's having your eggs in one basket; you still have all your eggs in one basket because if Amazon goes down, you know they get 60 70%, 80% of my business in most cases, if not more, and you're still uh up a creek without a paddle on that, so it's that's why I say it's a lot of times it's better to actually diversify to Canada, Amazon Canada, because you already know the system. If you get suspended in the U. S., you're not necessarily going to get suspended in Canada. 00:19:41 So, it's not a universal suspension. You know, if something bad happens to you for some reason. And Canada can add 5% to 10% pretty quickly. Then, you know, you could test that. And then you can go to Europe, to Germany or the U. K. If your product is – not all products are appropriate for that. But if your product is appropriate for that, you could go there where the competition is less. And you could add another 20, 30 percent to what you're doing in the US, if not more. Right. And I think a lot of people don't realize how much opportunity there is in Canada because a lot of sellers just haven't wanted to deal with, you know, the tax issues and the setup issues. And so they just don't do it. 00:20:22 And if you if you do it through Amazon's program, they eat too much in fees. So you have to really set it up the right way. And they're they're worried about all of the things. But, you know, there are great outsource companies out there. There's people who will talk you through it. There's ways to get it done and still establish some kind of a first mover advantage. There's still plenty of room in Canada for first mover advantage. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity in Canada. You're exactly right. A lot of people don't want to set up or go through the hassles or they don't understand how to do it. But it's not that difficult. You know, you can do it in a couple hours in the afternoon and be set up, and start shipping into Canada. 00:21:00 It's going to cost you, you know; you can't use Amazon preferred rates to ship into Canada. You're going to have to; it's going to cost you a little bit more, but you can charge more too. And the people in Canada are used to that. They're like, 'all right', I'd rather pay for it and get it tomorrow or the next day for the local Amazon Prime in Toronto than to order it from the US side, have to wait a week or two for it to show up. Right. Because it's, oh gosh. And shipping y'all; you got to do FBA in Canada. Yeah, because shipping from the US, your metrics are always terrible if you have any amount of volume-your metrics end up being terrible and skewed by just a few orders that end up on a train, not kidding. 00:21:37 So much mail in Canada goes on a train, and then it will go for hundreds of miles on a train and then into some you know tiny little village and it will take two weeks, and your metrics are blown. Yeah, I have clients who we've worked through this many times as you can tell. Well, they have a new deal where you can actually test Canada from the U. S. If you want to just test it, that's the city. Because you can actually pay all the duties. In the past, if you shipped something to Canada, a lot of times the customer, when they received it, they'd be hit with fees. They'd be hit with important fees. They'd hold it at the post office there in Canada, and you’d have to go and pay some money to get your package. 00:22:18 It was a pain in the ass for a lot of people. But now you can ship from the U. S., and everything goes into Coral Springs, Illinois. Uh, and you can actually prepay the duties and taxes on this side through like stamps. Com or one, or ship station, or something like that and so it's seamless for the customer. Now it's costing you more than if you were doing FBA in Canada, but you can at least test the waters uh and if you have enough margin and maybe just you want to, and you're set up to do it, you could just mess with it from here. But it's a great way to test the waters for Canada or the UK or Germany or anywhere, it's a new thing I just started within the past uh past years when it's kicked off, but I think stamps. 00:22:55 Com and ship station just recently integrated in the last couple months and then you ship everything into Coral Springs Illinois, it actually spits out a label that says Coral Springs and then they can tell by the tracking number exactly where it's going and then they consolidate everything repackage it I mean re-label it and then send it on to its destination and it can be more efficient and more cost effective and more efficient in delivery. That is super cool. And you're not going to have all the abandoned packages, right? Because that's the worst part is that some people never pick it up from the post office. And so then you eat the shipping. Yep. Yep. Coming back to you. Super, super painful. Yep, exactly. Okay. 00:23:38 So if you have a seller coming to you right now who says, Kevin, my margins they're suffering because. Inflation is killing me! I'm paying more for everything; the shipping from China is killing me. What do I do? I'm going to go to business mentor. What are you going to tell them? You might go to business you're going to have to figure it out, I mean everybody else is in the same boat but the problem is you have some people that are you know, you need to raise your prices on Amazon by a couple bucks to cover these extra costs but your competition isn't, uh, because either they're willing to take the hit or maybe they had inventory come in at a lower price six months ago and so they're still selling through that. 00:24:20 It's a very tough thing to do. If you've got to raise your prices, you've got to raise your prices. Even if you're going to sell less temporarily, you have to make adjustments. One of the things we're doing is we're switching a lot of our manufacturing to Mexico. You can't switch everything there, but we're switching that to Mexico, and the cost per unit in Mexico is higher. Because just their system isn't as good as China's as far as labor and stuff. But even though the cost is higher for the actual goods, the shipping costs are lower and the time frame is lower. So we get it back on that side and there's no duties. There's no 25% Trump tariff and no other duties on it that could add significantly to it. 00:25:04 So that's one of the things that we're looking at. But that's a shift that takes six months to a year. It's not something you can typically do overnight. But the cost, yeah, that's a tough one. It's going to knock some people out of business. I mean, you can cut costs. You may have to cut your overhead some, or you may have to cut back on, you know, some of the other costs that you've been doing, some of the more less necessary costs. I mean, you could say going to an event maybe is, yeah. Some people could argue that's that's a really good investment because they're going to learn something there that's going to two 00:25:42 or three five times and other people they they don't participate as much out of it so it depends, that may be something you have to cut or some other other things or you gotta have people wear more hats and adjust I don't have a magic answer for that um but it sucks and it's it's affecting everybody so it just doesn't affect everybody at the same time, Right. That's a good point that someone may have landed their stuff for cheaper earlier. Excellent point there. But I do love that you're moving some stuff to Mexico. I think that's a great strategy for people if they can find manufacturing in Mexico or in the U. S., You know, a long-term advantage is that you're cutting your freight rates right there. 00:26:23 If we have another issue like COVID, you're not going to wait as long for your stuff. And in general, you're not going to wait as long for your stuff, although the cost structures are more. Of trade-offs there, yeah, you call a lot of people in the US and say 'I have a 500 mlq' and they'll return your call versus China; you know, they'll do that. So it's it's a whole different mentality manufacturing system here, but if you're doing enough volume on stuff, uh, there's lots of opportunity in Latin America and the US, but on the smaller side, you know, 500, 000 mlqs, China's way better set up for that, and a lot of people in the US won't touch that. 00:26:56 Yeah, that's that's a really great point, um, and and then another Another thing I think a lot of folks haven't necessarily considered is, a lot of small Amazon businesses, they get very friends-and-family-y the way they're running things, and are there things that you can outsource to a VA who is in Mexico? or in the Philippines? or in India because you can cut some costs there. I always hate cutting labor, but labor is expensive, especially if it's U. S.-based labor or if you're growing; you know, if you're growing, there's so many opportunities to say, OK, even we're growing, but our margins are tighter. I know a lot of Amazon sellers who were in this spot where they're actually selling more, but their margins are getting tighter and tighter. 00:27:41 So if I'm going to hire a person, what do I hire them for? Well, what can you outsource? I mean, we talk about it all the time on our team: what can we move somewhere? What would what's the cheapest resource you can do that thing? Yeah, yeah, and U. S. labor is expensive sometimes. It's worth paying for the U.S. s labor you know like an executive assistant or something maybe it's worth having us that knows the customs and knows the where their way around but other things it's way cheaper to you know to do it in the philippines or somewhere else in most cases OK, so if I'm you talk to the very beginning, I'm like circling back to the very beginning of our conversation and you were talking about software tools. 00:28:22 I know you're a Helium 10 fan, but for people who are out there looking for new products, they're trying to figure out margins. They're trying to figure out what makes sense for them with PPC. Can you share some of your favorite tools and what you like to use? I know you've got proprietary stuff, but the things that are out there on the market. Yeah, Helium 10s are really, I think it's the best tool, you know there's Jungle Scout, there's some others, but I think Helium 10 is the best overall suite of tools is the best, but it doesn't do everything, uh, the one that I think that any serious seller, uh, should have is Data Dive, uh, it's from Brandon Young, it's Data dot dive, I think it's a website, it sits on top of Helium 10, so he's got an agreement with him in 10 where it sits on top of X-Ray and it's what he built himself, uh, he used to do this in spreadsheets, like 00:29:07 I remember he and I were speaking in China, like three years ago, to a group in China, and he was showing them how he's doing these spreadsheets. It was complicated, a lot of work, and a lot of VAs doing it, but he's automated that entire process. I think he's got like 24 programmers working for him right now, or data guys, I think over in Eastern Europe, and it's growing. But what they're doing is really, really good. And it looks at the opportunity. It'll take the X-ray data, filter X-ray. It pulls some of the data from Helium 10, it pulls some data from KIPA, it pulls some data from Brand Analytics. You tie all those together and it creates like these 10 different tabs right now, it's in a Google Sheet, but they're about to have it moved into a standalone program. 00:29:45 But it creates all these tabs and shows you all the op, shows you all the keywords-the ones that the sellers are missing on, the ones that they're making-on how good are they at Amazon? And so you can instantly so i can i can instantly see if I'm looking at a product opportunity that I find in our tool, I run it through Data Dive and within two minutes it'll tell me how good the top 10 sellers are of that product. They'll tell you some of these guys are really good at Amazon-that means they're they're really sitting on a lot of the keywords, they got their listing built really good, they they're hitting all they're firing them all cylinders and all the little things you gotta do on Amazon. 00:30:16 And they might say two of them are good and one of them is weak-well, that's a market it's gonna be difficult to tap if it's gonna be difficult for me to break Into that top top 10 on that market versus if I see something where, uh, out of the top 10. And you can do as many as 20, but if I say something out of the top 10, eight of them are weak, one of them is good, and one is very good. That's a huge opportunity. I can come in there with a very similar product because I know what the heck I'm doing; I know how to rank on the right keywords, and this tool shows you what they're missing it shows you everything. 00:30:46 Like, look, they're screwing up by not targeting these 27 keywords and by not doing this, uh, and and you can go in there and fill those gaps and you can do very well. So that's why there's a lot of still. opportunity on Amazon, even in some of the competitive stuff. It depends on how good that competition is. Some people are making money despite themselves because they just right place, right time on Amazon. You know, you see sometimes a listing with one photo that's just crushing it. How the heck is this thing just it's not a big brand name. It's just because there's nobody else competing or it's on the one keyword that it needs to be on. 00:31:24 But there's 70 other keywords that are all driving sales, and they're not maximizing-you can come in and maximize on that, and eventually build your way up to probably compete with them on that one big keyword. It shows you all the roots; it shows you that's the best tool out there right now. The other one I use is i use something from Trynkuru; it's a private mastermind tool. He's got some good tools, and I use a one aspect of Viral Launch, it's called Market Intelligence. I use a couple of their little reports just because Helium 10, as of now, doesn't have those in it. I'll probably add them. I probably don't need that anymore. But those are the ones I use. And I have a couple of Chrome extensions that I use-we do stuff for me when I'm doing product research. 00:32:09 And that's pretty much it. There's so many tools out there. Every day I'm seeing another tool and another tool and another tool and another tool. There's aggregators now, like Carbon 6, that are aggregating tools. Um, right and and um most of those tools don't have a lot of subscribers, uh you know the big ones like Helium 10, I think they have well into the million maybe two million now installed, uh Chrome extensions they don't have two million subscribers every month but they have a huge reach, uh versus most of them have you know 100, 150, 200 users if that and and you got to be careful with those some of those are really good tools but some of them they just don't make it because it's expensive to do software. 00:32:51 It's, you know, you don't have the overhead of inventory, but software can be challenging and can be expensive. Yeah. And you've got to maintain it and update it. And Amazon changes all the time. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Staying ahead of Amazon is rough on those. Well, and that is such great information on Data Dive. Thank you for sharing that. You know, just the other day I had someone talk to me about coffee on Amazon. And I said, You know here's the thing. If you looked a few years ago, before Death Wish Coffee came out right and started just crushing it on Amazon, if you look at the big national brands of coffee, all their detail pages were terrible because some third-party seller threw them up there, and then maybe at some point the company came on and started selling direct, but they never really managed their A+ content. 00:33:42 They never really did any or enhanced brand content. They never really did anything with the listings. It is amazing how many major brands there are out there that even own their brand registry, that you look at their detail pages and they're horrifyingly bad. So I love it that you could go look at a tool like you're talking about and see these pages and say, you know what, it doesn't really matter that these guys are allegedly awesome because they're not doing anything with Amazon. They might in the future, but they're, you know, they don't do anything with it right now. They do have a leg up though. I mean, when you see that it's Folgers and they have one little image and it's no A plus or nothing, that doesn't mean you can compete against them because they've done a, they have so much brand equity outside of Amazon. 00:34:22 People don't care. It's when you find a market where there's not a big brands, there's not the Folgers and the big, huge brands in that market. Maybe there's one or something, but there's not a lot of them. And there's a lot of people with weird names or, you know, made up brand names or whatever. And that's where the opportunity is. And that's where the A plus and your bullet points actually matter is because to get the trust when you're not one of those big, you're not Folgers with 100 year plus history. That's where it takes. That's where the opportunity is. It's not necessarily in finding in the coffee where these guys just big brands aren't doing it right. And you come in and do it right. You think you're going to beat them? 00:35:01 Probably not. So there's two different things there. And you mentioned the brand names. Some of the overseas brand names are so bad. They're so bad that they're like a blocker. You don't want to buy the product just because the brand name is so bad. And it's so funny to me that they don't have some person in the US who's like, no, no, let's rename it. Well, they do that so that it's easy to get the trademark through. They know if it's some weird group of letters that makes no sense, that there's probably not going to be a problem with the trademark. And so that's why they're that way. And a lot of times it's they sell through the trademark process with the trademark office and they can just splatter a bunch of those over there. 00:35:45 And if a couple of them don't stick for some reason, they don't care and they just won't use them. But that's why you see that. But, yeah, it's typically sellers from China that are that are doing that. And there was a point where the U. S. trademark office a couple of years ago actually changed the rules and said you had to. What was the rule? I think you did have. You had to be U. S.-based to submit a U. S. trademark or someone in the U. S. You had to have U. S. representation. You had to be based here, but you had to have like a registered agent or something in the U. S. to file for a trademark in the U.S. 00:36:16 And right before that deadline, a lot of Chinese companies just flooded the trademark office with all kinds of these weird names, just trying to rush stuff through so they can have placeholders for when they launch. And that backed everybody on trademarks and added a couple of months' delay to normal people just getting their trademark approved. Oh, the unintended consequences of trying to clean things up. Okay, so Kevin, your best piece of advice right now to sellers out there, what is your number one thing you would tell them to be thinking about right now or doing right now or something actionable that they should be taking in their business right now? You've got to know your numbers. I mean, so many people I hear on podcasts, the guests, the hosts will be interviewing somebody. 00:37:05 What's your margins? Oh, I've got 40% margins. And they start saying, well, what's your landing cost and what's this? And I'm like, that's not 40% margins. That's 6% margins because you've got to know all your numbers. So many people don't know all their numbers. You've got to put in your tacos. You've got to put in your landing costs. You've got to put in your taxes and duties, your storage fees. In the Freedom Ticket that I do for Helium 10, we have an elaborate spreadsheet that's not just here's the five things that you find on Amazon's product little calculator. You've got to put everything in there. You've got to know your true costs. And most people don't know those. And so you've got to know those numbers. 00:37:43 And you've got to be willing to – too many people, they put a lot of time and effort into developing a product or bringing a product in, and they're not willing to let it go. Sometimes you've just got to let it go. And my philosophy is, you know, there's some people that, you know, especially like some of the guys up in Brooklyn and stuff, they like to have 10,000 products in their catalog and manage that. And I'm like, I don't want to mess with 10,000 products. Even if they're selling one or two a day, yeah, you get some big numbers. You just got a headache. I'd rather have 20, 15, 20 products maximum in any of my brands. 00:38:15 That way, it's easy to imagine if one of those products is not kicking off a certain metric, and for me, it's three thousand dollars a month in profit and contribution minimum after six months if it's not kicking that off, then it's not worth continuing. It's like stocks, you know, I want to have a finite portfolio and I can take that same money invest in something else that may have a better chance of hitting than to just keep selling that product and keep trying to manage it and dealing with the the page and anything negative reviews and keeping it in stock. And that's something else that a lot of people, they're not willing to let go of a product. So you've got to be able to sometimes kick the kids out of the house and move on. 00:38:59 And so that's hard for some people because it gets so tight to it. And know your numbers and know how to use the tools. I mean, really know how to use. Helium 10 or Data Diver, whatever your tool choice is, really knows how to use those, not just the cursory basics because they're super powerful. I wish I had these if these tools existed six seven years ago on Amazon; shoot, I'd be a multi-gazillionaire by now. Okay, so i I love that you use the metaphor of kicking the kids out of the house because I call these products ugly babies, because you know how everyone thinks their baby is beautiful and anyone else could look at the numbers and say, 'That is one ugly baby you've got there,' but they won't let it go because it's their baby. 00:39:45 So even if they're like, 'I know what's better. I know the other guy's product is not as good.' I bought it. It doesn't matter. Business is about perception, marketing and perception. Innovation and marketing are the two counter stones of all business, and marketing is perception, and perception is reality. And so it doesn't matter if your product is better and and then somebody else's if they perceive the other one to be better because it's got more reviews, it's sold been selling longer or it's a two dollars cheaper or whatever the reason is that's the reality. So you gotta be able you gotta be willing to move on. So then I know your numbers. What you're saying is that the screenshot from the Amazon app showing your revenue doesn't mean that you're super successful. 00:40:32 I know a lot of people that numbers show, you know, half a million dollars a month and they don't have two nickels to rub together. And I know other people that they show that shows half a million dollars a year and they're sitting pretty unhappy because it's kicking off, you know, whatever, $150,000 in their pocket because of their margins. You gotta know the margins, I mean, that there's too many people that get into this. I see students in the freedom ticket even though I teach them not to do this; they still do it; they'll buy something and the landing cost is eight dollars and they're selling it for $14. 99 and you're not making any money and yeah i've got a six, you know seven dollars, i'm almost 40, profit margin i'm like no, it's not what about the Amazon fees, what about this, what about the shipping at the end of the day you're giving money to Amazon's the only one making money. 00:41:18 And because they have cash flow coming in, it doesn't catch up to them until six months or a year later when they're like, wait a second, I didn’t actually make any money here. I thought it was because then I kept putting money in my bank account, but I wasn't actually, I was robbing Peter to pay Paul to build this. I just thought it was building pains, growing pains. And they don’t know their numbers. I mean, I have my product, one of my products, that seasonal one, our landed cost is a dollar, well, last year it was $1 . 52 and we sell it for 20. that's plenty of uh you know 00:41:49 amazon takes about five bucks that's huge margin in that and it's flat it's lightweight it's easy um my supplier this year uh we've printed in south korea and he got sent out for the quotes and he we raised the quantity by about 50 that we're making and he said i'm sorry i can't give you a better price even though you're doing more because paper costs and shipping because he sends a ddp to me so it's everything's taken care of So the price is going from, I think it was $1 . 58 last year, actually. It's going to $1. 66. I'm so sorry that we had to raise it. Nothing I can do. I said, don't worry about it. That $0. 08 is not going to kill me. 00:42:29 But for them, that's a lot of money. But for me, because I'm selling it for $0. 20, that $0. 08 is going to take a few thousand bucks off of my bottom line this year. It's not that big a deal. But by having those margins, that kind of stuff doesn't hurt me. And a lot of people don't have that. Right. And I'm with you. You need to know your numbers product by product. You need to know your product line or brand by product line or brand to understand the differentiation between the different things you're moving. And then you come to Jesus that I always tell people they should have is you also need to close your books every month, because even though that's not necessarily going to give you a snapshot of your year and profitability, because you've got money in transport right now and product that hasn't landed, all that jazz. 00:43:16 It doesn't matter. You still need to understand where you are financially all the time. Like bottom line where you are. And some people, they don't close their books until like February of the next year. Yeah. They don't, they have no idea throughout the year. They just know they have cash flow. Right. Right. And a P and O will give you that big jolt wake-up call real fast. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Good times. Good times. Well, that is excellent advice. I, I also just love it when. It's like a preaching to the choir, don't you love it when someone else says things that you're such a big believer in? I'm like preach it more, Kevin!' Just because I want to see people be successful. 00:43:59 And you can catch your errors and your mistakes, and you know, rearrange and make things go better if you catch it early on. If you don't, you're already too far in the hole. So that's why I'm a big proponent of like you said, 'Know the numbers up front, exactly what's going on You have to. And if you're not good at that or that's not your thing, and you're the creative mind and you like doing the cool marketing stuff, and get somebody partner with somebody or hire somebody that's really good with those numbers. Otherwise, your chances of success are very low. OK, so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to tell people about your billion-dollar seller summit because it's so super cool, and it's not too far away. 00:44:39 No, yeah, I do two a year. I do one virtual. Uh, which is typically in February and I do one in person, which is uh coming up in August here in Austin, so it's a about 100 sellers, then once you add the speakers and sponsors and stuff in, and the reason it's 100 sellers is I'm limited by my contract with Helium 10, I do the training for Helium 10, so they don't want me creating some big event um and so it's limited to 100. So it's mostly it's an expensive ticket to come but it's mostly high-level sellers that come together and we share some pretty high-level stuff. The in-person one's the funnest. I like doing the virtual one, but the in-person one, just the networking, the fun that we have, the learning is second to none. 00:45:24 I mean, there's a couple groups out there that go at this level. I think the Million Dollar Sellers group and there's a couple others, but it's difficult to find anything else at this level where you have this many successful people in the same room. I'm very careful on the speakers. You go to a lot of events and the speakers are just, they're really not doing it. They're corporate people or they're just talking some fluff. The speakers at the Billion Dollar Seller Center are much more actionable and much more like do this, do this, do this. And if you're doing seven figures a year and you get one little tip out of it, it can add hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more, millions of dollars to your business. 00:46:04 And so that's that's what we go for-it's very high-level, very actionable, and very selective. Well, I know a couple of people who've been to our event who've talked about like making one friend, and you know, there's that saying about who you're going to be five years from now. It's the books you read and it's the people you spend time with, and yada, yada. And the thing about the people you spend time with-it really does matter. It's so hard to find knowledgeable people who can be your friends and your peers in this space because it's not like, you know, if you're an accountant, there's an accountant on every block that you can go meet. But an Amazon seller who's truly successful, that's much harder to find. 00:46:44 So I think a lot of times these events are also great to just find. that one person that you can, that's your new friend, that you try things out, you know, networking groups are really important. Yeah, no, the networking is the value to me. I mean, I was just at an event in Paris that Howard Tye did at this castle as a mastermind in Paris. And, you know, the speakers were good. He brought in some good people and sitting there listening to the stuff for a couple of days, taking some notes and get some good stuff. But the best stuff came out at the campfire. There's a campfire outside in this courtyard. sitting around 00:47:17 that campfire until three o'clock in the morning just shooting shooting the bird with people around people sharing stuff some of it you know personal or just fun stuff but some of the business stuff and that's where you make those relationships and that's where you know you learn i was like taking notes on my phone from at 2 a . M, you know around this campfire some of what these guys were saying: This guy's doing 70 million dollars a year; he's like he's doing stuff that I don't even know about or know how to do. And then you become friends with that person. So if you have a problem, at some point you can reach out and say, 'Hey, can you help me out here?' Or maybe you end up with business relationships out of those people. 00:47:55 A lot of people from the Billion Dollar Seller Summit end up in business together because of the friendships and the relationships they make there. So getting out, and if you're a big seller, getting out and going to these types of events is crucial. And not being the guy in the corner that just goes and goes back to your room at night. Socialize it and hang out with these people because like you said, um, they can talk the language and they enjoy talking about this; they can’t talk about this with their spouse or their friends or whatever because they just like what the hell are you talking about, um. So, um, it’s it’s nice to be in that space; they understand you, they get you; they’re entrepreneurs, they’re hard working they play hard and and um there's nothing better. 00:48:38 Yeah, I think that's the one thing we all have in common. All the service providers, the agency people, the sellers, all of us is that we all laugh and share a joke that, you know, I don’t have anyone I can tell stuff to because they’re all just checking out. They all just zone out. Like, what are you talking about? You Amazon nerds, just be quiet. OK, so people are interested in your training or your event. Where do they go? Well, it's billion dot com. That's billion dollar seller summit dot com. That's where you can get more information on that. It's not a fancy webpage. It's like a 1990s website. Just because I don't put the money into making a fancy website, people know me or know the events. 00:49:16 They know it's worth it. I don't need to resell them. As far as the training stuff, I do stuff for Helium 10. If you have a membership to Helium 10 at any level, you can get the Freedom Ticket for free. It's about 60-some-odd hours of training from A to Z on how to sell on Amazon. It's good to put your VAs through it or put your employees through it. Everybody at Helium 10 has to go through it when they first get hired over there. And some of it, I've had big sellers go through it and say, you know, half of this stuff I already knew, but I learned a lot and it's made a big difference. So it covers everything. 00:49:52 And I do their advanced training on Helium 10 Elite, which is more, it's a monthly, we bring on some guests every month and we do a more advanced training for them. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Kevin. This has been awesome. You give such a real-world perspective instead of theoretical. So many people, it's all theoretical, and you're in the trenches, so that really matters. I didn't mind sharing. Even though you're a longhorn, I didn't mind sharing. I had to hold a few things back. I can't give a longhorn edge, but I can tell you a few things. Hey, but I did admit that I would be willing to pay tuition to Texas A &M for my kid. I mean, that's that's right there. 00:50:38 That's what saved you right there. It also shows you how much I truly love my child. When you have a sticker on the back that says Aggie Mom on the back of your car, then I'll know you're good. I don't know. You left the dark side. Well, thank you again. This has been great. And thanks, everyone, for watching and joining us, whether live or on the replay. We really appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments for now or for future shows, please leave them for us. I've got an Ask Us Anything with Kelly Johnston coming up in a couple of weeks, and we are looking for some fresh new hot questions. As always, be sure to like and share and all those things so that you can get our new content every week. And everyone out there, happy selling.