Brian Williams, and he leads Primal Power, a new energy bar company, the first grass fed, pasture raised beef liver energy bar that tastes amazing. He is known for using a unique tripwire sales funnel to build DTC brands and large qualified lists of buyers. Prior to Primal Power, Brian ran then exited G-Sight a firearms accessories company and has invested a lifetime career in eCommerce dating back to 1997 when he was the CMO for an early eCommerce company uBid.com.

Brian Williams, Brian is a member of the MDS (MillionDollarSellers.com) community of 7, 8 and 9 Figure eCommerce Founders. He is also an Investor Owner in Health, Wellness and Fitness CPG brands.

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Brian Williams, leader of Primal Power and an e-commerce veteran since 1997. Brian shares his expertise on scaling e-commerce brands beyond Amazon using tripwire sales funnels and strategic demand generation. He emphasizes the importance of understanding customer needs, leveraging grassroots marketing, and creating compelling offers to pre-qualify leads. The discussion also highlights the benefits of subscription models for recurring revenue and the use of social media advertising to drive traffic. Brian’s insights provide a roadmap for 6-7 figure business owners aiming to scale to 8 figures and beyond.
Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

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Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin Keene, Aaron Cordovez and Michael E Gerber, author of the E-myth. Today I am speaking with Brian Williams, and we’re going to be talking about how to scale off of Amazon using tripwires and sales funnels that are going to create a massive moat around your Amazon brand. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s e-comm with two M’s and let’s turn your dreams into reality. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Brian Williams.

Josh 00:00:45  He leads Primal Power, a new energy bar company, the first grass fed, pasture raised beef liver energy bar that tastes amazing. He is known for using unique tripwire sales funnels to build DTC brands and large, qualified lists of buyers prior to Primal Power. Brian ran, then excited the excited G site, a firearms accessories company, and has invested a lifetime career in e-commerce that dates back all the way to 1997, when he was the CMO for an early e-commerce company called U bid. Com. Brian is also a member of the Million Dollar sellers.com community MDS for seven eight figure and nine nine figure e-commerce founders. He is also an investor owner in health, wellness and fitness CPG brands. So with that introduction, welcome to the show Brian.

Ben 00:01:26  thank you, Josh. And thanks for making me sound a little older than I thought I was.

Josh 00:01:30  That was my whole goal, was to make you feel like a dinosaur, man. So I did it good. but but for really, if you’ve been in the e-commerce game since 1997, I mean, you were there before computers were even invented, before the television was a thing.

Josh 00:01:44  Right?

Ben 00:01:45  So they just, you know, they just been invented, right?

Josh 00:01:48  Okay. Okay. Because some of our listeners were not even born yet in 1997. You know.

Ben 00:01:53  I know, I know.

Josh 00:01:54  It’s true. So love it. All right, Brian, all jokes aside, super excited to have you on the show because what I love about your experience is like you have experience of how brands succeed off of Amazon, right? And I see these as like, really, they’re two different skill sets. A lot of people that got started in the kind of like the amazing Selling Machine category was, hey, how to run an e-commerce brand on Amazon, which is all about demand capture, right? People are searching for these keywords. I just need to have a better widget than this guy and better reviews and prettier images. And I’m going to take that sale, right? Right. It’s a completely different ballgame than demand generation, which is what true DTC is all about. Which means how are you going to stop people in their tracks, whether it’s in their email inbox, whether it’s SMS messaging, whether it’s blog post SEO, or whether it’s Facebook ads, right? Those are the different ways that you’re going to be able to draw people into your, your, your funnel or your e-commerce website.

Josh 00:02:43  And being able to generate that traffic and that demand is a whole other skill set that I would frankly say 99% of Amazon eCommerce brand owners don’t have that and don’t understand what that actually means to get this traffic off of Amazon. So you’ve got that wealth of wisdom. I’m super excited to have you on. So, Brian, what’s on the top of your mind right now in the e-commerce space, knowing that Amazon is getting more challenging, right. It’s more competitive than it’s ever been. It’s only going to trend that direction and increase in fees year over year, etc.. So what’s on the top of your mind and kind of where is Brian playing, especially with your new energy bar?

Ben 00:03:18  yeah. Thank you Josh. So yeah, it’s a it’s a great question. And it’s a really important topic for our community. because like you said, as things get more expensive, have more competition, more regulation and rules, it becomes more challenging to base your entire livelihood in your business on just Amazon.com. And and you know, it’s not a new topic.

Ben 00:03:40  This top has been discussed for a long time. that being said, if you’re if you’ve always done Amazon. Right, so you come from that, that that Amazon World where maybe you started in 2014, 2016, 2018, you know, and and things were going great. And you’re just used to that. Making that transition to running a Facebook ad to your Shopify store can be not only daunting, frightening, and frustrating because it doesn’t work the same way. You’re like, why isn’t this working? It works great on Amazon, why isn’t it working over here? And like you said, it’s a completely different mindset when you’re creating, when you are creating demand for your product, for your offer versus you just fitting it in to the demand that’s already there on Amazon. And so yeah, so I’m happy to dive into some some specific strategies or techniques or stories of how we’ve done this successfully over the years.

Josh 00:04:23  Well, I love that. Well, let’s go ahead and maybe dive into that. And I think maybe you can provide some background as well as to like of all companies you could be involved in.

Josh 00:04:30  Right now, you’re in an energy bar company. So why is that? Because I think one of the important things for our listeners to understand is like the vehicle that you choose to jump in, in terms of the actual like, product category you’re going to be selling into, and the different like, what’s the total addressable market for this category makes a big difference to whether you can scale to 100 million or if actually 10 million is really big in this small category you decided to get into. So, Brian, with all of your experience, why are you in the energy bar space and is there an Amazon play to this? And is there a display to this? Is there a TikTok play to this? Tell me the story.

Ben 00:05:05  Such a great question. And it’s really great because a lot of my Amazon friends are like, you’re crazy to go in a space like that. It’s so impacted and like, like, why would you do that? And it’s because they’re looking at it from the myopic view of an Amazon business.

Ben 00:05:17  So when you look at it, though, from a brand perspective and like what you’re saying, like the market perspective, it’s a completely different perspective. And so in this particular energy bar is made with a very high trending base ingredient, which is liver, which for a lot of people, especially in the States, have kind of a visceral negative reaction to eating liver.

Josh 00:05:39  And yeah, you know, Brian, I’ve just been waiting for somebody to make a liver bar. I have been waiting for that.

Ben 00:05:45  Well, good. Well, I’m happy to send you some of our product. and, and we made it taste great and that and that’s the cool thing. The challenge we have is how do you get people to taste it? and so and that goes into the whole tripwire funnel concept. And another reason why I got involved in this particular brand, with the with the inventor of this product. So we’re not looking at it from just an Amazon player. We’re not looking at it from a B2C play.

Ben 00:06:02  We’re looking at this as an omnichannel, $100 million, potential company, because this is a product that will be in retail. This is a product that can be on the shelves at Costco. This could be a product that’s on the shelves at Whole Foods, in addition to the other channels like Amazon and TikTok and target.com and all these other places. And it’s it’s in a category that that caters to people into things like biohacking, things like endurance athletes, things like holistic nutrition, people that are concerned about eating clean ingredients, not eating artificial anything. We don’t even have natural flavoring in our product because that’s just a disguise for artificial stuff. So, and so it’s a bar. It’s a product that is, that is following this trend line of human beings who want to eat a certain way, and they want to do it as conveniently as possible. So that’s why I’m involved in this. It has it’s not because there’s so many other energy bars out there. And I’m crazy to go into this. It’s a uniquely positioned product.

Ben 00:06:52  And we’ll and we will attract the demand for that using, what we know about these trends and what people are, what a large group of our population is interested in ingesting. Perfect.

Josh 00:07:01  Well, I think that’s a perfect segue to sharing. Like, okay, so how you’re going into a very competitive space on Amazon, if you were just looking at the data, you’re like, dude, you’re insane. Like this. This market is completely saturated, low margins. You’re an idiot. So with that being said, what your approach. So and then let’s talk about like let’s talk about the tripwire funnels and the dedicated sales funnels that you may be having. That’s going to be the actual magic that sits behind the scenes that nobody else really sees.

Ben 00:07:27  Absolutely. So I’m even going to start a little before the tripwire funnel first. And why, why, why we’re doing this. So we literally have, for the past six months been attending at at places where we can vend, meaning we can sell our bar in person to who we feel and felt at the time and now know our, our, our tribe, our customers.

Ben 00:07:49  So we’ve been popping up a literal like pop up tent with samples of our bars, at marathon races, at Ironman events, at Tough Mudder, at pickleball tournaments, at cycling races, places where biohacking events, at places where we believe our our target customers are both to make sure that they like the product and that they are really interested in having it, eating it on an ongoing basis. So we did some literal grassroots work. So we know before we even go big online who our customers are, what they like and what they say they like about this product and what makes them tick. from a from a buyer persona perspective. So that is potentially an unusual thing for maybe some of the listeners here to do. So literally go out into the world and experience how your ideal customers receive your product.

Josh 00:08:34  And so that’s you’re doing something that’s not scalable. Brian.

Ben 00:08:37  How scalable. We knew that wasn’t scalable, but we also knew it was the it helped us build that foundational information so that that we can then take it to a scalable model.

Ben 00:08:45  Exactly. Now the phase we’re in.

Josh 00:08:47  No, I love that. And I think that that’s like, do the work that other people are not willing to do, because that’s where like the gold sits behind those doors of doing the hard things that that puts you out of your comfort zone, that aren’t necessarily scalable. And I think especially when you’re starting a new brand, you’ve got to do the things that aren’t scalable first and then figure out what it like, what is your angle into the market. And then, as we know, like e-commerce is a very scalable thing. You’re doing the non scalable stuff now to build up that demand in that momentum so that you can turn on that e-commerce flywheel and then it will scale. So I love that. So continue.

Ben 00:09:17  So now now now that we know what who our customers are what what makes them tick, what they say I mean, we’ve got hundreds of videos of people saying wonderful things about our products. We have. We also have we’re building our our library, if you will, of assets that we can use in the scalable side of the business, right on Amazon, on Facebook, ads, on TikTok shop, and then eventually into retail.

Ben 00:09:35  And so, so now so how do we get people to, to, to buy this product, especially a product that we know initially they may not want to even buy or taste because of this, this liver, which is, you know, for those of you that don’t know, liver is one of the world’s most bio rich bio makes makes it makes the vitamins and minerals more bioavailable than than than almost anything else. But it’s not tasty, and it’s difficult to prepare to make it tasty. And so people don’t want to do that typically. So here’s here’s how the tripwire works. And it’s always worked this way. You give away something for free in exchange for information. And a very, very, very, very, very small transaction. And I’ll explain the details of this. And you use that as your primary advertising vehicle. And although we are using our product in this case with primal power as our free thing to give away, it doesn’t have to be your product. And I’ll explain how you can use this really powerful, magical tripwire funnel even if you don’t give away your product, which is what I did in the previous company.

Ben 00:10:35  And and so but what you’re doing is if you do this properly, and I’m happy to explain some of the details, here you are. You’re qualifying your pre-qualifying, the people right up front. So you know that there are likely a very good fit for whatever it is you’re going to sell to them before you start advertising your main offer. And this is the big distinction between someone who has kind of the Amazon only mindset versus moving and shifting to the B2C mindset is on Amazon, you’re basically buying a keyword you already know. The buyer is already pre-qualified themselves. They’re typing in the name of your product or the the benefits of your product. They know what. They know what they’re looking for. By and large, all you’re doing on Amazon, not all you’re doing, but what you’re mostly doing on Amazon is you’re just making your product look like the choice to make on off of Amazon. You’re actually creating the demand, right? People aren’t necessarily typing on Facebook. The name of your product are not doing that.

Ben 00:11:23  Right. So it’s like, how do you get and pull all the billions of people off of that platform or a different platform that are your exact customer fit? And and that’s where the buyer comes in. You give them something for free, more or less. And I’ll explain the more or less that, you know, if they take it, they’ve they’re pre-qualified. So I can give an example. Now if you want to.

Josh 00:11:42  Know I love it. So you’ve you’ve got my appetite. What it sounds it sounds very interesting. Now I want to get into the nuts and bolts. Like how do you create a successful tripwire. Because here’s I’ll poke a hole in your thing and say, hey, well, why am I giving away free stuff to these people who aren’t even buying anything from me? Right? I can’t like, I’m not venture backed. I don’t have millions of dollars to go waste and flush down the toilet to go build my list. So, Brian, how does this work? Do I have to be venture backed?

Ben 00:12:07  No, you do not.

Ben 00:12:09  In fact, oftentimes it’s far less expensive than running than launching a product on Amazon with a big paperclip campaign.

Josh 00:12:13  So I’m interested. All right.

Ben 00:12:15  There’s the tease. So here’s how it works. So there’s multiple steps to an effective profitable tripwire funnel. The first step is that free thing. But but let me explain how this works. I’m going to use the example that we used in the firearms accessories company first, because this may be even more relevant to more of the listeners than giving away your product for free, which is what we’re doing in the promo power business. So we sold an accessory to help people train with their with their firearm. That was our product. It was a $150 item that we sold. We’re obviously not giving that away for free, but what we do is we knew that our customers had to be two things. They had to own a firearm that was a requirement for our product, and they had to like to shoot it at a shooting range. Those were the two qualifiers, Like if I had a roomful of those people, then I could likely sell half the room on $150 thing.

Ben 00:12:58  So the question is, how do I find those people? How do I pre-qualify those people? So what we did is we gave them something. We knew that all that someone who has a firearm or likes to train at the shooting range would want, and that is free shooting targets, free range targets, those big range targets that you see that you hang up on the shooting range. And we created all kinds of cool designs, fun designs that people, people thought were neat. And we gave those away for free. We didn’t sell these. That wasn’t our product, but it qualified all the people ahead of time before we offered them our product, because we knew that they at least met those two criteria. And the nice thing about those is they’re paper. So they’re very inexpensive to print and make, and they’re also very inexpensive to ship. So the cost of delivering that free thing, our tripwire, we call it that free target, was very, very low relative to other things that we could have done.

Ben 00:13:38  And and they don’t pay nothing for it. They actually pay for shipping. So we charged in that case $1.99 to ship it. And we do that for two reasons. One, it recovers a little bit of our cost, not all of it because you have add cost and you have all that other costs involved and you have handling costs, what have you. but it also captures their credit card. And when you have someone’s credit card in cart, you can then do some other wonderful things with with what’s called a one click upsell. And this is where the magic really happens. So the first step is that we call it a free plus shipping offer. Free product. Pay a little bit for shipping. It can be a dollar. It can be $1.50. It could be $2. Something that makes sense to that. As soon as they get that, they get the wait don’t leave page. And we’ve all seen these before. But wait, there’s more, right? The infomercial guys back in the 80s, we’re great at this.

Ben 00:14:22  We can do this online too, with tools like Clickfunnels. And there’s even some add ons to Shopify that you can use for stuff like this. But wait, there’s more is what we call our one click upsell page. And that one click upsell can actually be your product, and it probably should be because you’ve already pre-qualified them. You know that they meet the two, the two major or the three major criteria. Now you one click, upsell them with a with a big discount that they will never see again right there in the cart. And all they do is they just click a button and it gets added to that order automatically. And if you do your job well and you’ve really thought through this after, you’ll have to do a lot of testing and things like that. Of course, if enough people take you up on that one click upsell. It should almost, if not entirely, cover the cost of all your advertising to bring them to the tripwire. It may not be profitable at that stage, but it’s like getting free customers and your product out into the marketplace.

Ben 00:15:07  So that’s how you can do this without having venture capital, without having, you know, a big a big pile of cash. is that that first, next step is that one click upsell. But it doesn’t stop there. But I’ll stop there just to see if you have any questions about that. About that.

Josh 00:15:19  Yeah. No, I love that. So really what you’re able to do is ideally I think like is the strategy to ideally just uncover and acquire customers at breakeven costs.

Ben 00:15:29  And that’s, that’s the primary initial strategy with the tripwire. Yes okay okay. But but now this ties into something you you mentioned early on is why did I pick an energy bar. Yep. So let’s hear about that. Now the answer to that question is going to become really, really clear because I don’t want to break even right. In my business. I want to make a ton of profit. So so picking the product And the features of that product make a big difference. And so an energy bar is a perfect example of a product that people want to get every month or every couple of weeks subscription.

Ben 00:16:00  We call it Subscribe and Save on Amazon. So the one click upsell in the energy bar company is to do that. And so let’s say your product I’ll just use our example our energy bars for one box or 3595. It’s pretty expensive energy bar I like dealing on the top end of the market for margin reasons and other, other reasons. Our offer on the one click upsell is to get that box for like $14 or $11 on a subscription, because we know that the like the bar if if we pre-qualify them well, and if they just stick once for another order on the subscription, we’re profitable. So having that subscription built into the bar can really, really, really help. It doesn’t. It’s not required. It worked really well in the in the firearms accessories business as well. But we didn’t have a subscription per se in that business. But our product was a high ticket, enough item that it worked. but if you have anything in the supplements, food or anything that has a subscription. The tripwire is is beautiful.

Josh 00:16:55  I love that. So tell me more, because you and I have talked about subscriptions in the past and why they’re so important as a business model, because you’ve got recurring revenue, okay. That’s going to be coming in through those subscriptions. You also have the opportunity to wear, even if they’re not on subscription. Maybe it’s reoccurring revenue where they’re going to just come back and buy it when they need it. Right. So it’s not a one time you buy this product and you’ll never need it ever again type of thing, right? so walk me through the different like subscription type companies that you’ve been a part of in the past. And why? Why did you decide to settle on this energy bar and give me the pros and cons of different, like business models that you’ve seen over the past decades of your experience in e-commerce?

Ben 00:17:35  So, so the type of subscription model I like are ones where they’re getting something at least once a month, or the product lends itself to being consumed soon enough that they would like, that they would need a refill, or they would need to, restock on a monthly basis.

Ben 00:17:49  It doesn’t mean everybody will just your product can, can, can fit that. But that’s not that’s not every product. I mean, like water filters is another example of something that, you know, you would need to buy again, or toothpaste or toilet paper or, you know, any number of different, different consumable products. Right? All lend themselves to, to a like you. What you said, Josh a recurring type of a purchase, something that wears out batteries, I mean, anything like that. So, so, you know, those models are fantastic. I mean, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of them. it’s just now that I’ve done this for my career, I’m choosing what I believe to be. This is the least path. The least resistance path. and so the product, this product is energy bar product meets all those characteristics. it’s on a trend line of things that are going up. and it looks like it’s gonna continue for a long time. It has at least that monthly recurring feature.

Ben 00:18:31  and you mentioned competition. Yes. There’s a lot of energy bar competition, but there’s no overseas competition. I’m not dealing with any of that stuff. and so I in this probably final brand for me in my career, I just didn’t want to deal with with overseas foreign competitors that can break into this market. and, and that and that was something I was looking for. Again, doesn’t mean you can’t do this with those products, with those those products that you probably should be doing these, doing tripwires and things with those products because the foreign competitors won’t be doing this for sure. so, I don’t know if that answers your question, but.

Josh 00:19:04  Yeah, for sure. So then what? so what’s your Amazon play here? Well, and maybe even before we get to Amazon talk to me about like so we’ve got this tripwire funnel. Where are you running ads like how are you getting traffic to this question.

Ben 00:19:15  Yeah. So we start with meta. So Facebook and Instagram because it’s such a huge audience.

Ben 00:19:20  And the algorithm that Facebook has created for advertising has just gotten better and better and better and better over the years. I mean, you know, a lot of people were, confused or frustrated when some of the targeting features got got removed or less effective. but their algorithm has gotten so much better that it doesn’t take long for the conversion pixels that you get with a Facebook ad campaign or a Instagram ad campaign to start training the algorithm so that your ads get seen more and more and more and more and more by people that are likely to take you up on the conversion metrics. So we have a conversion metric obviously on the take rate on the free trip wire, we have a conversion. We have a conversion pixel on the take rate for the people that upsell. And we have a conversion rate on something I haven’t mentioned yet, which is what we call profit maximizer. So people that either take or don’t take the upsell, we actually make another offer to recover profit as well. And so we can then optimize in Facebook as automatically optimizing those campaigns based on those conversion pixels firing and on the back end when we retarget them on Facebook and Instagram.

Ben 00:20:11  those conversion pixels also fire. So we know, okay, someone that didn’t take the tripwire, they just gave us their shipping information and their name and their email, during follow up emails and text messages when they buy, that also gets rolled up into the conversion data. and one thing I did not mention, and another reason we like using Facebook and Instagram initially is a lot of people, will not buy the tripwire. They’ll come to your landing page, they’ll see the free thing. We use a two. This is an important, important strategy is we use a two part order form. The only part of the order form they see on that landing page is it says, where do you want us to ship your free fill in the blank? You know, you’re free in this case energy bars. And they put their name, email, phone and full shipping data and they hit send me the button literally says send my free bars and they hit that button. But that’s part one of a two part form.

Ben 00:20:53  Once they hit that button, they get to the next part of the form, which is their credit card expiration date, CVV and send my free bars, right? That’s always on the second part of the form, and about 50 to 60% will do that part, but the other 50% won’t. But you have all their data, so you use all that to as you’re building your list. This is the list building part. And then you take that list and you keep uploading it into Facebook to create lookalike audiences and direct targeted audiences to retarget all those people on Facebook. And you email them and SMS text, text message them until the cows come home because you have nothing else to lose. Just keep, keep, keep, keep marketing them with your offer. and so all that data you feed, you keep feeding into the machine and the algorithm gets better and better, better and better and better. So you don’t have to really worry about targeting. Targeting will happen for you in just in several weeks by running these campaigns.

Ben 00:21:41  And the budgets that we start with aren’t that big. I mean, we’ll start with 100, maybe $200 a day. to to as we, as we optimize these funnels. So it’s not like you’re like I said, you don’t need a bank full of cash to start this. You know, I don’t know anybody that launches products on Amazon for less than $10,000 pay per click budget in the first month. Yeah, you can do you can actually do this for that or less on on on a buyer funnel.

Josh 00:22:01  So what’s your tech stack that you’re using to do that.

Ben 00:22:04  Like what text message app.

Josh 00:22:05  know your tech stack. So like what? Like what software are you using? to, like, host those those lead pages or sales funnels.

Ben 00:22:12  So we use so we use Clickfunnels for the, tripwire funnel. we use Clickfunnels classic, by the way. There’s Clickfunnels 2.0, which is the newer version. We use the the legacy version because that’s the version that has an API to Shopify, which is the next part of our tech stack.

Ben 00:22:26  Clickfunnels 2.0 does not have that that direct API to Shopify. You can use Clickfunnels 2.0, but you have to create either Zapier or some other kind of custom code to make that happen. So then Shopify is where all the orders that are that occur in the funnel on Clickfunnels get sent to Shopify. so that they’re all, you know, in the same area, and it ties into our inventory and our PL and all that other stuff. And then we use Klaviyo for all of our email and text flows from all, all the orders. So we have the very, very, very basic version of Clickfunnels. We’re not using Clickfunnels for any of the email and text messaging stuff. We’re using Klaviyo, which is what we’re using for our entire DTC business anyway. Perfect. That’s the basic text.

Josh 00:23:01  I love it. And where are you shipping your orders from then?

Ben 00:23:04  From a freebie in the States. Okay.

Josh 00:23:07  Easy enough. All right. Love it. Juicy nuggets of wisdom there. All right, so then lead me into what are you doing on Amazon or TikTok.

Josh 00:23:14  Stop, if at all anything. Or is it all just going through this? these tripwires to begin with.

Ben 00:23:19  Great question. So because we’re building this as a brand, which I highly advise anybody listening that they think of that concept. And if you don’t know about brand building, really get find people that can help you with this. So we look at places like Amazon.com, Walmart.com, target.com. no differently than we would look at a retail store. It’s a channel to offer our product. And so our Amazon strategy is we know that a large part of our customers, any customers, are going to be more comfortable or want to buy your product on Amazon. So we just look at it like a channel, an important channel in the whole mix of all the channels that that this product or any product that I’ve, that I’ve worked with will be sold in. yes, we do, you know, some as much as we can do, you know, Amazon optimization, image stack optimization, pay per click ads on Amazon, all that stuff.

Ben 00:24:02  but we’re not relying on it, to do to be the only way people are going to find our product on Amazon when you start running Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all Google, all these ads online off of Amazon, your Amazon sales are going to increase because people are going to type in all those wonderful branded search terms and buy your product. And I discovered this, actually in the previous company where we were running, if you can believe this print advertising, we were running podcast advertising, we were running TV advertising, radio advertising, to drive, these free targets. Okay. And then we put our product on Amazon, and it just started selling, like, immediately without any honeymoon period, without any paperclip, in fact, and we were like, wow, all this off Amazon stuff has driven interest on Amazon for what wasn’t even available, and as soon as it became available, people started buying it. And so that was when I really got all right, you know what? Amazon is a great channel, but it’s not the end all be all for for the brand.

Ben 00:24:56  It is a channel. just like a retail store is a channel. and so that’s how we look at it. So the strategy on Amazon is simply have it available for sale. and if you have a subscribe and say, you know, a centric product, obviously, you know, do that, take advantage of of all the different Amazon, features, you know, that you can with your product for prime days and all that, all that, all that stuff. But but the thing is, you can actually maintain a lot more margin on your Amazon sales by having all this offline work happening for you, because you don’t have to disconnect your stuff the way your competitors will need to, because people are coming to Amazon looking for what you are selling. They’re not looking for the competitor. They’re looking for you. They’re looking for your products. They’re typing in your brand name. They’re not going to buy your competitors product if they’ve already been preconditioned to buy your stuff off of Amazon. and if you’re profitable off Amazon, then it’s just it’s a wonderful thing.

Ben 00:25:40  So we look at Amazon as like any other channel.

Josh 00:25:43  I love that. And I love that you just hit on like a really important point, which is like, you don’t have to play that price game on Amazon as much if you have a bunch of off Amazon demand generation traffic going on. And here’s what I love to know. Where did you say, Brian that like, hey, when we ran the podcast or when we ran the TV ad or when we ran the Facebook ad, we were directing people to Amazon and that’s where the magic was, right? Quite the opposite. You’re doing, hey, come buy my tripwire, right? Or come buy my product here on the Shopify. But yes, you’re going to see my Facebook ad, but guess what’s happening? Like Amazon’s becoming one of the most trusted e-commerce platforms of choice. I would argue it’s 30 to 50% of people that see a Facebook ad. And I do this myself. I will be like, that’s cool. I won’t even click the button to learn more on Facebook.

Josh 00:26:30  I’m just going to stop. I’m opening up my Amazon app and I’m searching for that product for sure. How often do you feel like, what percentage would you say is happening? And then here’s here’s what I love about this, Brian. You know how search find buy has been a big ranking strategy in the past for Amazon sellers, right? And now has turned into a black hat tactic. Okay, well, guess what happens if you have a product that you’re showing ads to on meta and it goes to a Shopify sales funnel, but they don’t actually go to the Shopify sales funnel, what if they just stop at that ad and pull up Amazon? They’re like colorful posters, right? And then they’re looking for what they saw on Facebook. So guess what this is. It’s the new search find buy. You want to know how these brands are getting ranked better right. It’s because they’ve got some off Amazon traffic that are basically doing those same principles where we felt like we were hacking the system, but now it’s just like, this is just good business practice and you’re going to shoot up through the ranking.

Josh 00:27:21  So give me your take on that. And like, how often do you feel like what percentage of people see an ad somewhere else but end up coming to Amazon, even though like your attribution, being able to tie two and two together is like nearly impossible.

Ben 00:27:32  It’s super high, Josh, and it’s probably that 30% is probably a good estimate for that. And you know, we we know that the, the Amazon sellers, we’ll call them as a category that are focused at least Primarily on that channel that are now running. TikTok shop ads and TikTok shop sales are seeing that direct correlation. Right? It’s like, and you do, I know you do. This will be sat together in a TikTok mastermind together. And you even talked about this. So, so yeah. So when you it’s like, oh, wow. We run TikTok ads and our Amazon sales go up. Right? So like the same thing is happening when you run a print ad or a Facebook ad, and it just wasn’t as obvious before, maybe to some of the, Amazon sellers that are listening.

Ben 00:28:04  But it’s got to be at least 30%. And and you’re right, it is the easiest way to do search, find buy. And it’s completely compliant with all terms of service. So there’s no risk of of any any negative Amazon retribution on that. And and they’re looking for either like you said the type of product. But they’re or they’re looking for your brand. And so you’re just getting so much recognition on Amazon when that happens. And the conversion rates are super high. and at that point fine. Let them buy from Amazon. Right? Yeah. Here’s the other cool thing. We will often we will often use the list that we capture regenerate from the tripwire funnel that may have not bought yet from us. Or maybe they did. And if we want to do like an Amazon launch, we will just use that list. And so imagine having a list of 10,000 people who, you know, are already predisposed to being the kinds of people that might that that would buy your product. And then using an Amazon attribution link to launch a launch, something else.

Ben 00:29:01  I will tell you that I’ve done that several times, and your ranking strategy is complete at that point. So for real, it’s because they’re going to go right to your product using an Amazon attribution link from your email list, which Amazon loves. When you do that, and they’re going to buy that, some of them are going to buy your product and you’re just going to go, doot doot doot doot doot doot doot. So do that during the honeymoon period. Wow. It’s powerful.

Josh 00:29:25  Brian I love this. So I’m thinking of the brand owner that’s listening to this. They got started through the Amazing Selling Machine back in the day. They’ve been on Amazon since the Aeon of time here of Amazon. And it’s just getting harder. They like what we’re saying, but they’re like, I don’t even know where to begin. So Brian, what would you say to our listeners that are like, they’re all on Amazon. They like it. But it’s always the execution of it is always easier said than done, that’s for darn sure.

Josh 00:29:47  So walk us through and walk that brand owner through. How to actually begin building your off Amazon demand generation machine.

Ben 00:29:55  So it’s a really great question, Josh. And, it’s not an easy answer because, you know, probably like when that person started their Amazon business, you had to like just jump into the pool somehow, right? Whether you went to an event, or you, you got some coaching from another successful Amazon seller that that showed you the ropes or you just did it by trial and error. you know, during this, podcast, you know, we’ve given kind of a good framework for the different steps and the tech stack and things like that that are involved. And there’s a lot of little details, right? Like literally this morning, early this morning at 5 a.m. my time, I was on a call with a developer, you know, working out one of the little details for the new funnel that, that, that we’re launching and and so where do you start and where do you go? So, I would say get involved in a group of people, you know, Josh mentioned that I’m a member.

Ben 00:30:38  I’ve been a member for four years with MDS. Get involved in a group like that where people are doing this kind of stuff and talking about this stuff and collaborating and and problem solving and helping helping each other get unstuck. so obviously I’m biased for a great reason that MDS is the group to become a part of. I’ve been a member of it for a long time, and now I lead the community. So, so, you know, you know, that that’s probably the best bet, for if you’ve never done this before. The second, the second best thing is to just try it, like, just do it and, you know, get yourself a Clickfunnels account. They’ll, you know, they do have some support there. you know, hopefully you have a either a WooCommerce site or a Shopify site and you have a developer that you trust, and you know, and talk to them about this. So have them watch this, this podcast, if they understand, you know, from a technical perspective what’s necessary.

Ben 00:31:21  but yeah, you’re going to need some help, for sure. And, you know, I don’t have an agency that does this for other people, so, so, but, you know, I’m, I’m easily findable, you know, if you if you if you meet me at an event or reach out to me, I’m happy to at least give you some, some guidance on how to get started.

Josh 00:31:36  Yeah. And I think ultimately, like, it’s always the who, not how. Right. Yeah. And especially if you’re very successful on Amazon and doing well there, focus on the who. Who can I bring in to run the strategy? Right? If you’re just scraping by on Amazon and it’s barely providing you, you know, enough income to to survive on your own, then you’re probably not going to be able to hire that growth marketer or somebody that can really take that, that rocket ship to the next level. So what does that mean? Like, you’ve got to get your hands dirty, just like Brian said, right? Join those communities, start doing things yourself.

Josh 00:32:04  So I see it as like two different approaches based on where you’re at in your own business. So, Brian, is there anything else that, we haven’t talked about today that you think like seven figure entrepreneurs need to know if they want to scale to eight figures and beyond?

Ben 00:32:18  we’ve we’ve covered a lot. I mean, there’s obviously we can get into all kinds of other eight figure topics. there’s a lot of hot ones these days. but I think this is, I think we’ve covered a lot here, Josh. And hopefully, given your listeners something at least to consider, and, and potentially take a part of your effort, your team, your budget, and invest into learning how to make this this work with your product. And and I will just just to kind of, you know, where it starts is really understanding who it is that buys your product. really understand like what is it that, is a requirement even for them to, to be, to buy your product and, you know, in the case of the primal Power liveaboard company, the requirement is that they, they either are eating a carnivore diet.

Ben 00:33:06  Right? And everybody is eating a carnivore diet. Perfect fit. We know that for sure. is into biohacking, because those people tend to understand this particular product and these clean ingredients, endurance athletes, marathon runners, 100 mile cyclists, people that, that, that sign up for Tough Mudder or Ironman competitions, those kinds of people. and so really know who they are and then use that information to create the, the sexiest no brainer tripwire thing that you can deliver to those people that, you know, that those people were going to are going to want this. and and that. And then when they get it, they’re essentially pre-qualifying. So that’s where it all starts. So take a lot of time, a lot of energy and invest there first, which is mostly just time. And if you need to pop up a pop up a tent like we did and still do at events that you might find your customers at and just get get live feedback from them. don’t be afraid to either do that yourself as the business owner, or have other people go out on your behalf.

Ben 00:34:01  The learning from that is is incredible.

Josh 00:34:04  Love that Brian. Use some things up really well, and I’d love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. Here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something here. I think Action item number one is get focused on demand generation for your products off of Amazon. I think that is the number one priority for any Amazon brand owner or even just e-commerce as a whole, but especially if you’re an Amazon brand owner right now. I will tell you this much if you want to make your life easier on Amazon, you want to start dominating your category. Maybe you’ve lost some ranking from some competitors. You’ve had to start playing those price wars. If you can focus on generating traffic and demand for your product off of Amazon, that will solve most of the problems that you’re experiencing on Amazon right now. Just natural evolution of let’s say you’re on TikTok, right? That TikTok video that goes viral or those ads that you’re running will bleed over onto sales on Amazon.

Josh 00:34:56  Same thing for meta. Same thing if you run a podcast ad or even a TV ad. And I think that a lot of us have neglected that in the Amazon ecosystem, and it’s become very apparent to me that it’s like sales cures all, and you want to know the fastest way to move the lever and impact your existing products on Amazon. Go off of Amazon and go build a funnel. It’s not just it’s not just advertising to go directly to Amazon. It’s building your brand off of Amazon. And that should be your number one priority. Action item number two is take the steps just like Brian outlined today, which is like look, roll up your sleeves and get dirty. Right? So if you’re not familiar with what Clickfunnels is like, there’s a lot of courses from Russell Brunson on how to run these sales funnels. Right? But if you can dive into them and just start throwing things together, just like you did when you first launched on Amazon Start. You started throwing stuff together. You started with testing a bunch of different products.

Josh 00:35:44  Some of them flopped, right? Some of them took off. And it’s the same principle. But just see it as the number of funnels that I create is analogous to the number of products that I’ve listed on Amazon. Right? Like, we know you could grow on Amazon if you just list more products. Well guess what? I know you can grow off of Amazon if you just create more funnels until you find the funnel that actually works. And then action item number three is focus on your business model. Right. And can you can you identify a way to introduce subscription or membership into your existing business model. And if you can, it starts to unlock a whole nother world of possibilities. Being able to fund that off Amazon advertising. And guess what? You could even play the low price game on Amazon, because guess where the magic sits behind the scenes and this membership model and reoccurring revenue. So Brian, those are my three action items for people. Anything you feel like I missed there.

Ben 00:36:31  That’s perfect.

Ben 00:36:32  Josh great summary.

Josh 00:36:33  Awesome. All right. So Brian, we’ll ask you the final three questions. Number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Ben 00:36:39  So I’ve read a lot of influential books. I’ve been on Earth probably a lot longer than many of your listeners. So I’ll tell you that I’m rereading this book right now, and I’m gonna hold it up, because you asked me that you were gonna tell me this question. It’s in my backpack, and it’s called Don’t Believe Everything You Think. And the reason that this is one of the most influential books is because, all of us, suffer from the thoughts that are in our head. And we make up these stories about how challenging something is or, or what or what have you. And it’s all just made up, and we do to ourselves. And this book will help you unlock, potentially unlock the ability to rid yourself of those, limiting beliefs and those limiting thoughts to open up the space that we want as, especially as entrepreneurs, to create, you know, a wonderful things in our businesses and in our lives.

Ben 00:37:22  And so I would say, don’t don’t believe everything you think is, is is the most influential concept in the book I have.

Josh 00:37:29  Fantastic. I have not heard of that book before. So I’ve got it on my list.

Ben 00:37:33  It’s a thin one. You can read it in a weekend. It’s such.

Josh 00:37:34  Perfect. I need the short ones. Does it have lots of pictures in it?

Ben 00:37:37  I don’t have a lot of pictures. Yeah, but it’s big type. Love it.

Josh 00:37:41  Good. All right. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool or ChatGPT prompt that you’ve been using.

Ben 00:37:47  So, you know, I’ve pretty much stuck with ChatGPT as my LLM. so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll talk about ChatGPT. But you can use this idea with any LM so ChatGPT Gemini cloud AI, whatever you’re using. and that is this after I’m done. Whatever it is you’re creating, whether it’s an email campaign or a social media campaign, images, whatever. you know, a whole business model.

Ben 00:38:08  I always end that, or even throughout the prompting with something that goes like this. hey, what am I not asking that? If you were me or you were creating this, you would be asking what question? What’s the what’s what’s the 1 or 2 questions I haven’t asked yet that you think I should be asking? And so that’s the prompt. And so and and you will be I’m usually like happily amazed at what questions the LLM in this case ChatGPT comes back with. It’s like, oh yeah, I didn’t think about asking that question. and usually it’ll just answer the question anyway for you. But that that’s the prompt is what question M have I not asked to create this, that you would ask if you were, if you were, if you were me?

Josh 00:38:44  Love that. I think that’s a that can unlock a whole other world and rabbit hole of, of different, you know, ideas and strategies that can come to your mind. I love it. I’m going to be using that one, Brian.

Josh 00:38:52  Cool. All right. Final question. Who is somebody that you’ve been impressed with lately that you’ve seen them do something cool, whether it be saving an agency that saved a bunch of PPC costs, or a contractor that designed a really cool website, who’s doing something interesting that you’ve noticed recently.

Ben 00:39:07  So I’m going to do a shout out for actually one of our MDS members, and that his name is Parker, SD. And, you know Parker.

Josh 00:39:14  I do not know him.

Ben 00:39:15  Personally. Well, so Parker is just he’s young and he’s brilliant. And, I actually reached out to him when we were developing our advertising campaign for Primal Power. and he has this whole, concept of creating really, really engaging hook, hooks for your ads, especially on TikTok and Instagram and reels and things like that. and he also has a really, really great way of explaining, the power of not delivering on the promise until the very end of your, your, your advertisement. So and so many times it’s we have this tendency to like, say, you know, here’s, here’s your problem and, and here’s how you fix it.

Ben 00:39:53  And it’s like, and when your ad is over in five seconds, even though it might be a one minute long video, but they’re not gonna listen to the rest of it because you’ve already you’ve already delivered the promise. And so, Parker asked, if you don’t know who he is, look them up, follow him on Facebook. he’s super, super bright. And, I don’t have time to go into his whole concept of hooks and all this other stuff here, but, it’s it’s such a needle moving thing. Once you dial that in, especially if you’re running, reels or TikTok ads or any kind of video advertising, to promote your products, is to understand that concept of hokum. And another interesting thing is the hook does not have to have anything to do. In fact, it often doesn’t have anything to do with your product. I’m going to share one of the hooks for you.

Josh 00:40:29  I want to hear some of these.

Ben 00:40:30  And primal is, what would happen if a tech billionaire in a cave cavewoman had a baby.

Ben 00:40:36  This is what the baby would eat. Love it. So. So it’s like, So anyway, there you go.

Josh 00:40:43  Fascinating. Brilliant. All right, well, maybe we’ll we’ll have to see if we can get Parker on the podcast. That’s pretty.

Ben 00:40:48  Cool. He would be an excellent guest.

Josh 00:40:49  Love it. Brian, if people want to follow you, they want to learn more about you and follow your journey. Where’s the best place people can reach out to you and follow you at?

Ben 00:40:57  I mean, I’m happy to give my phone number. I’m happy to, you know, whatever, whatever works. So I’m, you can call me or just follow me on. My most active social platform is Facebook. I’m Brian Williams, I’m wearing a cowboy hat on my profile picture, at least for now. Or just call or text me (702) 600-1470. you know, I attend a lot of e-commerce related events as part of my role with MDS. So, you know, definitely if you’re coming to any event like that, text me.

Ben 00:41:20  I might be there. and I hope to see help! See you in person. And don’t ever hesitate to say, hey, I heard I heard you talking with Josh about tripwire funnels. You know, here’s my idea. Like, I’m happy to. I’m happy to help.

Josh 00:41:30  Awesome. Brian, you’re a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing that with us all today.

Ben 00:41:35  My pleasure.