In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley shares how the COVID-19 pandemic caused a devastating 90% overnight sales drop in his Amazon party supplies business — just as he’d bought his dream home and left his corporate job. Facing financial pressure with no safety net, Josh pivoted boldly, launching educational homeschooling posters that quickly became bestsellers. He shares three key lessons: focus on what’s already working before diversifying, build a cohesive brand, and take calculated big risks. Josh also emphasizes saving profits for emergencies, illustrating how resilience and adaptability helped him scale to over $20 million annually.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Websites
“Etsy“: “00:08:09”
“Facebook“: “00:08:09”
Key Concepts and Strategies
“Printable Files”: “00:08:09”
“Virtual Party Invitations”: “00:08:09”
“Stay-at-Home Family Celebration Party Kit”: “00:08:09”
“Educational Posters”: “00:10:57”
“Whole Life Insurance”: “00:22:03”
“S&P 500”: “00:22:03”
Lessons Learned
“Do not diversify too early”: “00:14:51”
“Focus on building a cohesive brand”: “00:16:41”
“Be willing to take risks in competitive categories”: “00:19:12”
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction & Background
Josh introduces himself, his business background, and the premise of the episode about overcoming a 90% sales drop.
00:00:55 Pre-COVID Life & Buying a New Home
Describes family situation, decision to buy a larger home, and the excitement and anxiety of making a big purchase.
00:02:44 Closing on the Dream Home & COVID Hits
Details closing on the new house in late February 2020, and the immediate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
00:03:39 Immediate Impact of COVID on Business
Explains how COVID caused gatherings to stop, leading to a 90% overnight drop in sales of party supplies.
00:05:27 Financial and Emotional Pressure
Discusses the stress of a new mortgage, loss of business income, and having just left a corporate job.
00:07:18 Initial Scramble & Early Pivots
Shares the first attempts to recover revenue, including printable files, virtual invitations, and new product ideas.
00:09:00 Experimenting with New Revenue Streams
Describes launching a family celebration kit membership and turning off Amazon ads due to poor performance.
00:10:01 Gradual Recovery & The Big Pivot
Outlines the slow sales recovery and the decision to make a bold move into educational posters for homeschooling.
00:10:57 Launching Educational Posters
Details the launch of educational posters in late August/early September 2020, quickly becoming a bestseller.
00:12:55 Lessons Learned: Focus on What Works
Reflects on the mistake of focusing on Shopify over Amazon, and the importance of doubling down on successful channels.
00:15:49 Lessons Learned: Brand Cohesion
Discusses the lack of a cohesive brand and the need to define and serve a specific customer avatar.
00:18:14 Lessons Learned: Take Bigger Risks
Emphasizes the importance of focusing growth, taking bigger swings, and not playing it too safe with product launches.
00:20:07 Action in Crisis & Doubling Down
Encourages taking action during tough times, experimenting, and doubling down on what works to drive recovery.
00:22:03 Preparing for a Rainy Day
Advises saving profits, investing in safe assets, and building a financial safety net for future downturns.
00:22:56 Conclusion & Final Encouragement
Wraps up with encouragement to focus on proven channels and make bold moves when facing adversity.
Transcripts:
Josh Hadley 00:00:00 I lost 90% of the sales in my business overnight. At that point, I felt like my business was done for. It was time to close up shop and find something different to do. Today I’m going to share with you the exact strategies, the tactics, and the lessons learned that I implemented in the business to be able to resurrect it from the dead and to get it where it is today of generating over $20 million in annual revenue. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. First and foremost, who am I? My name is Josh Hadley. I’m a man of faith. I am a father of four and a husband to a beautiful wife. I have been selling into e-commerce space for over a decade, doing multi millions in revenue on different sales channels such as Shopify, TikTok, shop and of course, Amazon.
Josh Hadley 00:00:55 And I am also the host of the number one business strategy Podcast in the e-commerce space, and that is E-com breakthrough. So what drove a 90% decline in my sales? Well, before we get to that point, I have to tell you the story of where my wife and I were at at that specific moment in time before the 90% decline in sales happened overnight for us. Well, this was January of 2020, and my wife and I were looking at needing to move to another home. And that was because we had kind of, frankly, outgrown our existing home. We knew we wanted to grow our family. We had a three bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, two bath house. We had two kids at the time, and we knew we wanted to be able to expand our family and continue to grow. And, you know, especially working from home, that three bedroom, two bath house and being 1900 square feet became really small, really quick, especially trying to run a business out of the house.
Josh Hadley 00:01:49 And so we were trying to find like, where is the place that we need to be? Well, it came one Sunday. We were driving around and we stumbled upon an open house, and we went into this open house and we felt moved upon to move into this house. Now, this house was almost triple the size of our current home. This was figuratively like a dream home for us. It was in a dream neighborhood. We got to still attend the same church and be around the same family and friends that we were around at the time. And so we felt like with that, like this was our godsend. This was an answer to prayers and we need to go close on this home. And so although this was a very exciting time, it was also very nerve wracking for me because this was the biggest purchase that I was ever going to make in my life. I had never had a mortgage, a need to take out a quote unquote a jumbo loan for a mortgage, ever. And this was a lot of money, all of the money that we had been saving up for.
Josh Hadley 00:02:44 And, you know, basically taking profit from the business was going to go to a big down payment on this property. Well, guess what? We did close on this property of February 28th, 2020. And as many of you know, what was just around the corner was going to be Covid and basically the lockdown and the shutdown to the world as we knew it at the time. And so my wife and I, I remember this like it was just yesterday. My wife and I were there at target late at night just before, like it was closing time at target. And I remember, you know, thumbing through on my phone just kind of like the news and things like that. As I was waiting in line and I saw the information where it was, I think it was the jazz, it was the Utah Jazz and some other team. Maybe it was the Houston Rockets, I’m not sure. But that game was canceled and the NBA literally canceled that game before it was about to tip off.
Josh Hadley 00:03:39 Like people like people were in the stands. And I remember saying, oh, this is not good. And sure enough, the next day the NCAA came out and said, hey, yeah, by the way, this year we’re not going to be doing March Madness. And then as we know it, just a day or two after that is almost where everybody learned that they had to, like, start working from home. And all of a sudden the world came to a screeching halt. That was the experience I felt with Covid. And guess what happened to our sales on Amazon? Well, our sales completely dried up 90% overnight. Now, you may be asking like, why in the world where most people that were in the e-commerce space in 2020, they look at Covid as this massive boon year. It was the year where they were up 200 300%. Their biggest challenge was not a lack of demand. Their biggest challenge was, hey, I don’t even have enough inventory to sell. That demand is so high.
Josh Hadley 00:04:29 But the bummer news is I’ve got to go pay really high container rates because, like, everybody’s trying to bring in so much inventory overseas right now, our sales went down 90% because unfortunately the products we were selling were all party supplies. We had baby shower games, we had baby shower invitations, kids birthday party invitations, thank you cards and wedding invitations. And guess what? People were no longer gathering and they had no need to gather. And so the only thing people were doing at the time was they were holding virtual birthday parties, right? I think all of us can, like, distinctly remember, like the weird things that we all did during Covid. But like, our sales dried up literally 90% overnight, and I truly had felt like the business was going to come to a screeching halt. And I shared the earlier story of like, where my wife and I were at at the time to magnify, like how impactful like this whole situation was. It’s one thing to have gone through Covid and a 90% decline in sales overnight.
Josh Hadley 00:05:27 When you have a little bit of like cushion and wiggle room in your bank account and you’re like, okay, well, we could at least survive for a few months. Well, that was the opposite for me. I had just closed on the the home of our dreams. We were kind of pushing the envelope to get into this home, and it was something that we felt like we were stretching for, but yet we felt like God called us, you know, into this home. And so it was all sorts of like confusion and to be honest with you at the time, I remember, like in my prayers, almost saying like God, why did you do this to us? Like you knew Covid was about to happen and you led us to go close on this home, right? Close on this home. Put me in this really, really difficult situation where I’ve got the highest mortgage expense that I have to cover now on a monthly basis. And I just watched all of my funds fall away.
Josh Hadley 00:06:15 I watched my entire business fall apart. This also comes on the hill. Let’s add a little bit more pressure on this. This also comes on the heels of I had just left my corporate job at American Airlines only six months prior to that, and I had stuck around at American Airlines. We’d been building our business on Amazon for the past five years up until that point, and I had kept writing things out at American Airlines for as long as I possibly could until I, I couldn’t take it anymore to the extent of like, I feel like it was like stealing more time from me and being able to grow the business. Well, I decided to leave American Airlines just six months before Covid happened. And I kept hanging on because, hey, one day there’s going to be a big recession or something in the economy, and hey, at least I will have a corporate job to fall back on. Well, obviously my back was up against a wall when I had no corporate job. The Amazon business that I had been running and trying to sell products on had basically dried up overnight, and it put me in the most difficult spot I had probably ever been in in my life up until that point.
Josh Hadley 00:07:18 But here’s the highlight of the story, and these are the actual tactics that I want to share with you of the things that I did in my business, to be able to resurrect it from the 90% death spiral that we were on, and how we slowly grew that back. And now we’re generating over $20 million a year in annual revenue. So here are some of the things that I tried to do in my business. As soon as that 90% decline in sales happen, to try to resurrect it and get it going, as any entrepreneur would, when your back is up against a wall, it’s almost like you’re blindfolded and you just need to start throwing punches because, like, you’ve just got to find a way to scramble and like, basically hustle yourself and grind back to where you were at before. And so sure enough, that’s what I did. I thought of every possible way that I could make money and that I had known up until that point. So for me, that was, hey, we were selling some, like, printable files on Etsy.
Josh Hadley 00:08:09 Hey, let’s go do more of that. But let’s maybe make it more unique to, hey, virtual party invitations. Let’s go do that. We were already in the Amazon space on the party supply space, and so sure enough, we did that exact same thing. We started saying, all right, well, if regular party invitations are going to the wayside, let’s go with drive by party invitations or virtual kid’s birthday party invitations that people would still mail out so that they could come have a virtual hangout birthday for their son or daughter, whatever that was. And so like, we just had to start, like, innovating with, like, all right, if this is what the world’s going to give us, we got to try to make some lemonade out of these lemons. And so we focused on what was lying right in front of us. In addition to that, we started just kind of taking some wild swings that we had never taken in the past because like all I knew is I we just needed to bring in more revenue to the business.
Josh Hadley 00:09:00 I just didn’t know in what form or fashion that revenue was going to come in the form of. One of the things that we had experimented with was creating this kind of like stay at home family celebration party kit. That was like a monthly reoccurring membership. And so that’s something that my wife and I, we put out so much content, and we would go live on Facebook over and over and over again to try to sell this kind of like digital membership. And it was okay. And it did bring in a little bit of revenue. But none of those actions really made too much of an impact in the overall. Like, we had lost 90% of our sales on Amazon. We had basically turned off ads on Amazon to save whatever amount of cash that we could, because the conversion rates were atrocious. The click through rates on our products were really bad, and unfortunately our products were not deemed as essential items when Amazon was prioritizing, you know, those essential items that needed to be shipped out. And so slowly but surely, as as everybody knows, like the world began to slowly come back to normal.
Josh Hadley 00:10:01 And so what turned out to be a 90% decline in sales after a month was only an 80% decline in sales. Then it was a 70% decline in sales. But things never really shifted into we until we made one wild bet where we went all in on one specific product, which was basically our Hail Mary, and we said, this is our last shot of trying to go into our any product category on Amazon. And if this is not going to work, I don’t know what the future holds for us, but like this is going to be our last, like final attempt. And it was our last big swing when we were launching just some of those like basic party invitations and things like that. Those were like hitting little teeny bunts like it was making a small impact to our revenue and bringing in a little bit more money, but nothing of consequence, nothing that would make up that 90% decline in sales. So what we did is we found the products that were actually moving significant volume and what was happening at the time.
Josh Hadley 00:10:57 Well, everybody had to start homeschooling their kids. And so as we were looking at the data, just like we had done in years past to try to launch new products on Amazon, we were looking at like, hey, what’s moving and trending online? And so sure enough, homeschool products were moving. And so we looked at one of those categories and it was like educational posters. And we said, well, these have a lot of attention around them right now. They’re selling thousands of thousands of units a month. We’ve never gone into such a competitive category. But you know what? There’s no other alternative because they’re like the party space that’s basically no longer existent at this point in time. And I’ve got to bring in cash and whatever amount of cash I have left in the bank, I’m basically going to be reinvesting it into this brand new product launch in the hopes that it will pay off. And so that’s what we did. I remember distinctly my wife designing these educational posters and we launched these in September.
Josh Hadley 00:11:52 I want to say is that around the end of August, the beginning of September of 2020, and within the first 30 days, that product became the number two bestseller, and that was competing against products that had thousands of five star reviews, thousands. And we had zero reviews. So what was it that people liked? They resonated with the designs that we had. We had a uniquely differentiated product that was different than anything anybody had ever seen in that marketplace, and all the competitors were just kind of like knocking off themselves. Similar designs, but changing the number of posters that you could get in a pack. They just thought that, oh, if I gave people 50 posters, they would they would choose my product. But nobody really innovated on the design side. And so when we went into the market with a very uniquely differentiated product, that’s when it hit. And when it hit, it hit in a very, very big way. I remember ordering like it was just a thousand units to begin with, and after that we had to then order 10,000 units.
Josh Hadley 00:12:55 And I was like, I have never placed this large of a purchase order ever in my entire life. And so 10,000 units at the time was a big purchase order for us, but that was just to cover a couple months worth of of basically sales at that point. And so I want to share with you, like the tactical, like lessons learned from this downturn in sales so that you can apply them into your own business, because inevitably, all of us are going to face bumpy paths in the road of entrepreneurship. And when you’re on those bumpy roads of or paths, hopefully it’s not a 90% decline in sales. That’s definitely a black swan event, and it’s really hard to predict and prepare for those things. But I’ve got three tactical things that are lessons learned that I want to encourage you to be able to implement in your own business. Number one, Prior to the whole 90% decline in sales for us, we had been focusing most of our time and energy trying to build our business off of Amazon.
Josh Hadley 00:13:48 Yet, Amazon was the only thing that was actually working in providing revenue for the business. Prior to the 90% decline in sales, we were doing $6 million in annual revenue. Like that was a lot of money. And yet I had been told and warned by so many other people in the e-commerce space like, oh, you don’t want to have all your eggs in the Amazon basket, because Amazon could just wake up one day and just like, suspend your account. And so the whole two years, 2018 and 2019, leading up to 2020, my entire focus was like Shopify, Shopify, Shopify, and it was never working for us. In fact, the only people I ever hired for the business up until that point was just to go help build out the Shopify storefront and build out a blog and design more products for that new Shopify store that was making $0 of revenue. And so my lesson learned from that is man, had I just doubled down on Amazon and the channel that was already working and just put more emphasis on that channel, I would have had a double or triple the size of Amazon business that I would have had at that time.
Josh Hadley 00:14:51 It could have been an $18 million a year business on Amazon, and surely we would have been more diversified and better able to withstand. You know, I don’t think it would have been a 90% decline in sales for us at that point. It would have been maybe a 50% decline in sales. But because I took my eye off the ball before Covid happened and I was not really focused on the Amazon side of the business. Well, when Amazon took the 90% hit, I really felt it. And all those other kind of like pet projects, all the Shopify stuff and all the team members that I had kind of like hired for that. They all had to go to the wayside. And so it was a big wake up call for me. So the lesson learned there is do not that people call it like, hey, you need to diversify your income streams. You don’t want to have all your eggs in the Amazon basket. Yeah, now that is true. However, you do not diversify yourself until you have systems and processes established for the channel that is giving you the revenue and the success that you have today.
Josh Hadley 00:15:49 Because as soon as you start shifting gears and focusing on something else, like you’re going to get punched in the mouth. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I took my eye off the Amazon ball. We got punched in the mouth and everything fell to pieces. So again, lesson number one is do not differential or I guess do not diversify yourself too early and think that you need to go run away from something too quickly. Number two, we were kind of launching all sorts of products without a cohesive brand. So at the time before Covid happened, what were we? We were maybe a party supplies company, but I’m not really sure what type of like we were just selling like party invitations and baby shower games. So it’s not like we were doing a comprehensive like sweet of like part birthday party kits or anything like that. It was more just kind of like ad hoc party invitations and things like that. And so it really diluted our focus. And we had recipe cards. We had some calendars.
Josh Hadley 00:16:41 Like, it’s not like we just did party invitations, but like that’s where the majority of our revenue came from. And so like it just diluted the, the brand. And so like we were known for absolutely nothing on Amazon. In fact, people had no idea who they were even buying from. We would have friends that would buy from us, and they had no idea it was actually us until they got like the package in the mail. It’s like, hey, Hadley Designs, Rebecca and Josh Hadley, blah, blah, blah. And they’re like, wait, I had no idea you guys were on Amazon. And it’s like, we just done such a poor job defining what the brand is and standing for something. We were so wishy washy with our brand at the time. It was just like, oh no, I’m just going to launch this product on Amazon because the numbers look good and I just need to launch a new product and generate some money. And so it was more about just like hustling and grinding out and making an extra buck.
Josh Hadley 00:17:26 It was less so about like actually building a brand around a specific, you know, customer avatar. And that was the challenge for us. So again, when Covid happened, we didn’t have an audience to fall back on. We didn’t we couldn’t even say like, hey, Amazon might not be delivering our products, but hey, come get your virtual party invitations over here. We had nothing to fall back on because like, we didn’t have social channels, we had social channels, but there was no consistent brand messaging, so nobody knew who the crap we even were. All right. So that’s lesson number two. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur, you’ve got to focus on who you are serving. What is your brand all about? The days of just being able to, like, slap your brand name on some random product on Amazon and just make a quick buck. Those days are long gone. That that private label method is just like it’s history now. It’s all about brand building and standing up for something.
Josh Hadley 00:18:14 And then my third and final action item is focus your growth and be able to be willing to play in bigger arenas. Up until that point, you know, I had told you like we had never gone into such a competitive category as those educational products and posters that we ultimately went into that saved our butts. However, I needed to learn that lesson, and I needed to really have my back up against the wall to be able to, I guess, really like, be willing to take that risk. To be able to say, hey, my back’s up against the wall. I have no other option other than to jump in to this really competitive space. But if I do it, it’s going to pay off in a big way. Now it’s also very risky and I’m not sure what the story would be like had that product not worked out. Maybe we would have pivoted to something else other than Amazon because it was. I felt like our last ditch effort, but the lesson that was learned there was like, I kept playing it, trying to play it too safe, bunt after bunt after single after single.
Josh Hadley 00:19:12 That’s all the products that I would just continue to release. And it was game changing when we went from a lot of SKUs, probably, I think at the time, 500 different SKUs that were all selling like one or 2 or 3 cells a day to actually having one product that’s doing hundreds of units a day. That was game changing for me and my business. And so the final thing that I want to leave you with, that I think is extremely important. If you’re ever in this similar situation, what you need to do is focus on growth and exclusively focus on growth. This is the time where just like you’re let’s say you’re in a boxing match and you’re blindfolded and you’re fighting your opponent and your opponent has you up against the the rope, so to speak, and you’re backed into a corner at that time, all, you know, and the only thing you can do is just start throwing wild punches. And so my recommendation for you is like, you’ve got to do exactly that. And for me, that’s where we had that breakthrough.
Josh Hadley 00:20:07 And it’s in the doing that the next step will reveal itself. So what does that mean if you’re an e-commerce brand owner it could be all right, well, if Amazon stopped working or if you got suspended on Amazon or something like that, go try to light up another sales channel as fast as you possibly can. Well, if that doesn’t work, like maybe it’s coming out with a new brand new product on a new Amazon account as fast as you possibly can. Maybe it’s you know, your brand is just like declining in sales year over year. Maybe you need to experiment getting into a new product category or expanding your entire product catalog. And so there’s a number of things that you can do. Obviously, AI is a helpful tool to like just vet some ideas. But the most important thing is like you’ve just got to take some swings. And what will happen is it’s kind of like throwing stuff at them. It’s like throwing mud at the wall and just seeing what’s going to stick, and then you’re going to go ride whatever actually sticks to the wall.
Josh Hadley 00:20:58 You just keep doubling down on that and you just you don’t stop. And that’s essentially what we did. We kept doubling down in that homeschool educational space in the rest of 2020, and then all the way into 2021, and it fundamentally shifted the entire focus of the brand and is to led us to where we are today. And so the last thing that I want to convey to you here is one of the most important things that you can do is always prepare for a rainy day. And if you’re listening to this, and if you’re used to just like either a taking a lot of distributions and cash from your your business to just go live kind of a lavish lifestyle. Or if you have really high expenses and you’re just like spending a lot of that money. My recommendation for you is like, start saving for a rainy day. One of the best things that you can do is start taking some of that money that you’re earning in profits. And I would take like at least 10 to 20% of your profits on an annual basis and go invest that into some, like really basic, easy, not sexy or flashy investments such as could be life insurance plans.
Josh Hadley 00:22:03 Okay. Whole life insurance. Not sexy. Not going to make you like. It’s not going to double your money very quickly. Right. That is a long, slow growth path. But it’s a it’s a bucket of capital that you could access if the crap ever hits the fan again. Right. It could be investing into real estate. It could be investing just into the S&P 500 and not trying to choose different like stock picks. Right. Because as we saw in Covid, the cruise stocks and all the travel related stocks got hammered. And then what happened to all the tech companies like they like quickly gained a bunch of market share in value. So with that being said, the most important thing that you can do is like every year, take some distributions, go put it into very safe and secured assets for you to just be able to sleep peacefully at night knowing that, hey, inevitably when the storms hit, I do have a little bit of a safety net and I have a little bit of umbrella when it starts to rain.
Josh Hadley 00:22:56 And so when you do that, you’ll also be able to make better decisions in the business overall. So I hope my my story resonated with you. Hopefully you don’t experience a 90% decline in sales, but if you do experience a decline in sales, the most important thing you can do is to focus on the channel and the things that were previously working for you before and double down. Maybe it’s time for you to make that bigger bet that you’ve been holding back from. So that’s my words of encouragement from you for you today. Good luck out there and we’ll talk to you next time.
