Josh started his career at American Airlines (AA) and spent 5 years in their MBA leadership development program. Josh’s experience at AA further refined his leadership abilities and strategic decision making skills. While employed at AA Josh and his wife Becca started Hadley Designs. As the CEO of Hadley Designs, Josh led the business to gross $100,000+ in revenue within it’s first year and in 2022 Hadley Designs crossed the eight figure mark, grossing over $10,000,000 in revenue.

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, standing still means falling behind. In a recent episode of the Ecom Breakthrough Podcast, host and eight-figure brand owner Josh Hadley pulls back the curtain on the real struggles and breakthrough strategies that have propelled his business from the brink of collapse to new heights. This episode is a masterclass for e-commerce entrepreneurs looking to scale beyond seven figures, with a special focus on leveraging TikTok Shop, affiliate marketing, and integrated sales funnels across Amazon and Shopify.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley shares his journey overcoming business setbacks and reveals his proven strategies for scaling e-commerce brands on Amazon, Shopify, and TikTok Shop. He details how he rebuilt his business using TikTok Shop affiliate marketing, building a network of creators, and optimizing sales funnels. Josh emphasizes the importance of creator partnerships, viral content, and subscription models, offering listeners a step-by-step blueprint for driving growth and profitability in today’s competitive e-commerce landscape. He also provides actionable tips and resources for brands seeking to break through stagnation and achieve lasting success.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

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 Hadley 00:00:00  Here’s where most of you are going wrong, and what I think was the reason why that agency sucks so bad. Okay, number one, you have to reach out to creators that are actually in your niche.

Intro 00:00:21  Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough podcast. Are you ready to unlock the full potential and growth in your business? You’ve already crossed seven figures in sales, but the challenge is knowing how to take your business to the next level.

Host 00:00:34  Welcome to the stage, Josh Hadley.

Josh Hadley 00:00:38  All right, everybody. How’s everybody doing? This is the last speaker of the day. You guys ready for me to be done? I can walk off the stage now if you guys are like, I got a plane to catch. All right, let’s have everybody stand up real quick here. All right, I’ve got a question for y’all. So get up, stretch your legs a little bit. Gibran crushed it. These are hard acts to follow. By the way, you have Hudson, Jay Hunter and then here’s me. So sorry you have to end with me.

Josh Hadley 00:01:06  All right, so number one, I’ve got a question for you guys. Okay. Number one, stay standing if you’re dealing with any of these issues. All right. Go ahead and sit down. If none of these things apply to you. Number one, overseas sellers are ripping off your listings and taking your sales. Number two, your margins are disappearing thanks to FBA fees, returns, tariffs and race to zero pricing. You’re burning out. Trying to juggle everything in the business. You’re dumping more into PPC but struggling to stay. Stay ranked and number five knowing that you need to diversify off of Amazon, but you’re not sure exactly where to go or how to do it. Yeah, most people still standing. All right. Go ahead and take a seat. So this I was in your guys’s shoes, like, literally the exact same time last year. I was in your guys’s shoes feeling those same pain points Earlier last year. Our business was facing year over year declines. Everybody is always up talking about.

Josh Hadley 00:02:05  Like their growth, they’re crushing it. Things are going great. Well, last year things were not going great in our business at all. Okay. And I’m going to share that story with you guys today. And how hopefully I can inspire you guys with some actionable takeaways that you can go implement in your business to help you guys get on the path that you need to be on to help, to keep scaling. All right. So what if I could share with you guys, how could you how you guys could escape that Amazon hamster wheel that we’re all on right now? That just seems to get harder and harder year by year. Okay. Today I’m going to show you guys three things. These are the three action items I hope that you guys walk away from today. Number one, how the exact playbook that we used in order to get 200 K and GMV just in the month of July. Number two, how we did 200 K in Shopify as well. Okay. In the month of July.

Josh Hadley 00:02:57  And then number three, what we’re doing now to make Amazon our most profitable channel. Okay. And I say that with at the beginning of 2024, I was making this much money on Shopify and I was making this much money on TikTok shop. All right. So first of all, who am I? Who’s this guy up on stage? First and foremost, I’m a father for husband to a beautiful wife. My wife and I worked together in the business. It’s our favorite thing to do. we’re an eight figure brand. Have been for the last three years. And I’m also the host of the E-com Breakthrough podcast. That’s the podcast that I share actionable strategies to scale from 7 to 8 figures in the exact journey and playbook that we’re implementing in our business, to scale to nine figures. All right. So I want to take you guys back to January of 2024. All right. This is probably one of the hardest times that I’ve had in my business, hands down. As everybody knows, TikTok shop came out in like the fall of 20 of 2013.

Josh Hadley 00:04:01  And in the fall of 2013, there were people pitching, hey, we can we can get you set up on TikTok shop. We can get you guys crushing on TikTok shop. Sure. Take my money. Let’s do it right. So guess what I did? Signed up with this agency. And then three months go by with this agency. And the agency is like, I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve reached out to thousands of creators and there’s not one there’s not one creator that wants a free sample of your product. That was their response. But we did find some people who’d be willing to make a video for you for like a few hundred bucks each. And I was like, no, no, thank you. In addition to that, here comes January of 2024. And guess what? We had consecutive product flops that did not do well on Amazon. And then in addition to that, I watched my bank account go nearly down to zero. And for the first time ever, I had to take money for my own personal bank account and invest it to go fund payroll.

Josh Hadley 00:05:03  That’s not a fun feeling to to have as a business owner. That’s where I was at. It got to the point where I felt like there was no other option but to pray. That’s what I did. Kneel down, cried. And I’m not an emotional man. But I cried, and I prayed to my father in heaven asking for how do I get out of this mess? Well, once upon a time I had a thriving Amazon business and I was going to scale to the moon with it. All of a sudden, like, the parking brake was pulled up and we were stalling and in fact, moving backwards with no end in sight. Competitor after competitor, just knocking you off, driving down the entire prices of the market. That’s all I saw. Now, at the time, I also play old man’s hockey league. So if you want some real fun entertainment. Go to your local hockey rink. Like a weekend night at 1030 at night. Watch some old guys play hockey. It’s not a beautiful site, but it’s something I enjoy playing.

Josh Hadley 00:06:04  So I would go. I was playing hockey and I drove my truck. This is 1030 at night. I’m alone and as I always do, I always put on a podcast to listen to on my drive. And so one of the podcasts I just stumbled upon as I turned it on was talking about a stationary brand that was scaling up on TikTok shop, and I was like, oh, that’s cool. Like, I tried that. That’s that’s nice. It’s interesting that they’re also in my niche. That’s that’s a coincidence. All right. So go to the hockey game. Well guess what. On the way back from that hockey game again, randomly choosing a podcast to listen to, I choose a different podcast. And yet again, it’s a stationary brand that’s scaling on TikTok shop. And I can tell you the number of times I’ve heard a stationary brand in any e-commerce podcast, and it was probably those two times alone. And so I knew that was my message from God. That was like, time to pull up your pants and go figure out TikTok.

Josh Hadley 00:07:05  Shop yourself. And so that’s what I did. He gave me that enlightenment. And so my encouragement to each of you is that whatever issue you face in your business, he cares. And he’ll enlighten your mind because he did mine and all the credit I give, all the credit, everything that’s happened since then, we’re up 100% year over year. All of that is due to the inspiration that that came from that moment. So today I’m going to share with you guys what led to that path. All right. Now I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got 20 minutes left and I’ve got 100 slides to walk through. There ain’t no way we’re getting through all of these slides where we’re going to be, like, able to dissect all this, but would you guys like access to the slides at the end? Yeah. Okay. So that means we’re going to go like lightning speed. And you might be like, hey, I’ve got a question here or there. I want to leave some time for questions at the end, but know that we’re going to be moving pretty quick through all this stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:08:05  All right. Okay. So here we go. This is the exact process that we have used in order to generate over 40 viral videos. Now, at this point with with creators, and we’ve been able to amass an affiliate army that has over 2000 loyal brand ambassadors, what I call them. Okay, so this is our TikTok strategy 2.0. Some of you may have seen me speak at Kevin Qing’s Billion Dollar Seller Summit earlier this year. This strategy has already been updated since then. Right. Like that is how fast TikTok shop is moving. So you’re getting like the exact stuff that we’ve been then tweaking and refining up until now. All right. So as you guys all heard from Jay Hunter and you heard from Hudson as well is we use Yuka AI. Like that is our outreach bot of choice. Okay. I told them I was coming. I also know their founders, Jeremy and those guys. And I was like, would you like a plug? I can tell. Here’s the here’s your promo code if you want to use one.

Josh Hadley 00:09:04  All right, here is exactly what we’re doing. Step number one. Create a list of creators. All right. Here’s where most of you are going wrong. And what I think was the reason why that agency sucks so bad. Okay. Number one, you have to reach out to creators that are actually in your niche and your audience that actually care about your product. I think that is personally the secret magic behind all of this, because if you’re just doing the spray and pray approach, it’s like anybody, anybody with a warm body that’s just requesting a sample, I’ll give it to them, I promise. If that’s the approach you take, like, man, you’re going to be having to send like probably 10,000 samples out a month just to try to hit like 100 that are your core Demographic. Okay. So how do you do this. So there’s two ways you can do this. On TikTok shop. You can go into the TikTok seller center into the affiliate tab. And in there you can actually put in keywords.

Josh Hadley 00:10:03  So you guys are all Amazon sellers. Go ahead and put in the keywords what works well for your product, put in your top keywords and guess what you’re going to do? Do the same thing on Yuka and it’s going to find people that have ever talked about that type of content, or whether those type of keywords are in their bio, etc.. Okay. And then you’re going to click this button that says like, create a list. All right. Here we go. So we’re going to rinse and repeat that with multiple keywords. And this is the way it looks inside of the TikTok shop account. And in TikTok shop you can download the CSV file of those creators and then upload that CSV file into Yuka. Okay, tracking with me so far. We got our list ready. All right, here we go. You ready for a secret hack? All right, here we go. I need some more enthusiasm. All right. There we go. By the way, Matt Costin. Happy birthday.

Josh Hadley 00:10:58  Everybody say happy birthday to Matt Costin. There you go. Good shout out. All right. Here’s the secret hack. Okay. If you guys use Kayla data. Okay. If you go to Kayla Data, you can find your competitors. And then guess what you’re going to be able to find from your competitors. All the creators that have ever posted or generated any money for that product. Guess what you can do? You can download that list of creators. And where do you think you should upload that list of creators to your list in Yuka. Right. So how do you defend this? Right. Because I know there’s probably competitors in here that are like, oh great, I’m going to go steal all of Josh’s competitors, right? It’s like, go ahead and try because here’s what we’re doing. That’s exactly what Hudson is doing. My my creators are attached to my wife and I. They love our story. They join weekly zoom calls with us. They love us. I’m not worried about them going to go do the next beauty brand or the next, whatever it is.

Josh Hadley 00:12:00  Okay, that’s how you defend against this. Just so you guys know. All right, upload the list of creators that are promoting your competitor’s products. Then set up a bot to message your creators. All right. So you’re going to go ahead and click the new bot button. All right. And then this is the message there’s there’s five different ones you could send out. But we use the message. Plus the target collab has worked the best okay. And then go ahead choose your bot name the date range etc.. All right. Next can configure your bot. So this is where you’re going to select which product okay. We want to manually review all sample requests. I do not want to auto approve them. And I’ll tell you why. Okay. All right then we’ll set up our commission. Percentages could be 15 and then five for the promotional ads. I know Mary Roos is doing higher, but it’s five for us on the. Anything that’s sponsored. Okay. Then you’re going to customize the messages.

Josh Hadley 00:12:54  This is like the message that we send out. Okay. And then what’s cool is there are actually follow up messages that you can configure. So it’s not like you get one shot reach out. No. You can actually configure follow up messages until they hopefully reply to you okay. Then six you’re going to send that bot to one of those lists that you created right. So go ahead select that list and then that’s it. You go ahead and push the start button. And then that lit that’s just going to run that bot reaching out to all of those creators for you on your behalf. Now when I first started this back in February of 2024 by myself, I was manually DMing all these people. It was painful. So this is this is definitely the easy button. So definitely do that. All right. So here’s what’s going to happen next. Step number seven creators are either going to message you directly and be like hey great. Yeah I would love to work with you. Or they’re going to request a sample in TikTok shop.

Josh Hadley 00:13:48  Okay, so here is what we do immediately following that. So you’re going to see their message request their sample request. We’re going to message them personally. And then in here we’re going to say hey congrats your samples approved. We’re going to say that to everybody. However I want their email address. And I want their phone number right off the bat. I’m not actually going to approve them yet. I want their email address and their phone number. Why do you think that is? These people get thousands of DMs on TikTok every day. Your ability, if this person goes viral, to be able to reach back out to them is like slim to none. Okay? And this is also the magic of like bringing them into your community, right? So why do we want their contact info? Many creators never post after getting the sample. Creators are getting spammed by bots all day long. TikTok doesn’t share their personal contact info with you. You want to be able to communicate with them off of TikTok.

Josh Hadley 00:14:46  You want to double down on creators that actually go viral. You want to get their permission to reuse their content and create an email newsletter with contests to keep them engaged. All right. So what we have set up is as soon as we get their email contact info, we’re automatically putting them into an email flow. Okay. So they’re going to receive automated emails following up with them until they reply that they have actually posted content. So the tech stack. So these are like the these are the messages that we’re sending. Again you can get the slides but Gmail and Streak is how we have this configured. So it’s just running streak. It’s a Google Chrome extension inside of Gmail. Super easy. All right. So let’s go through some FAQs real quick. What should my commission rate be. So for us 12% on the open plan, 15% for targeted collabs, 5% for any of like the sponsored ad videos. Okay. do we pay them a per video fee? Like join brands? I know Ian’s in here.

Josh Hadley 00:15:47  you don’t, frankly have to use them to pay per video fees, but they’re a great place to actually start. You can get into the cold start method with them. but no. Mary Ruth talked about this. Hudson talked about this as well, which is it’s all commission based right out of the gate. Okay. Do they need a large following? No. Okay. Similar to Hudson’s playbook, it has been micro affiliates that have been crushing it for us. Okay. And and the good news is, we’re. For many of these people, we’re their first, like, crack at it. Okay. Which then again, guess what? They’re going to stay with us longer than they would any other brand if we’re their first, brand to go viral with. Okay. So the audience size doesn’t matter. What level of GMV should they have before we approve them? At the end of the day, I don’t think the GMV requirements really matter because if you can get them in as somebody just like Hudson talked about, nine months of not making any GMV, but now it’s their top performer.

Josh Hadley 00:16:48  That’s the magic that sits behind this. And most of you I know, I’ve heard your guys’s like, everybody’s like, oh, I don’t I don’t approve anybody. This is not doing at least 10,000 in GMV. They’re a crappy creator. Bullcrap. That’s why I’ll beat you, right? Because I’m willing to go work with these people and nurture them and develop them to have thousands of affiliates. Okay? That’s where you can win. All right. Do I need to provide them with a content brief? So who here would like to get 30 pieces of content out of one sample that you ship out to these creators? Yeah. Raise their hands. Some interesting people. Okay. We just started testing this out, like, literally three weeks ago, and it’s been performing fantastic. All right. Before approving the samples, this is the new message we’ve been sending out. Okay. Thanks so much for requesting our viral product. Blah blah blah. Here’s a here’s a brief about our product. Please confirm once you’ve read once you’ve read this Okay, so now I want to see who’s willing to take the time to actually read the brief about our product.

Josh Hadley 00:17:50  So then they’re going to say yes. Hey, I read your brief. Thanks for reviewing the creative brief. All right. We have we have internal data across 5000 creators that say like, hey, we you need to produce at least 30 videos before you really start making money. Okay. We want to fast track your sample. So please fill out this form and we’ll fast track your sample because we have a long wait list. All right. Guess what? My guess what my document looks like or that I sent to them. They have to fill this out. Here’s where the magic sits that we’ll get into part two. All right. First name, last name TikTok. Handle phone number. By requesting these samples, you agreed to give us 30 pieces of content in 60 days. And then the last piece is where the magic really sits there, giving us unlimited usage rights right out of the gate for all their videos. Okay, now we’ll approve them. So do we currently send out a lot of bots right now? No, we don’t have to anymore because as soon as you get momentum on TikTok shop, we’ve got 500, at least 500 sample requests every day that are coming through every day.

Josh Hadley 00:18:53  So it’s one of those flywheels. It’s like the Amazon flywheel, right? You get ranked and it just keeps coming and it keeps coming. Okay. All right. So how do we fulfill these orders on TikTok shop? We’re just using MCF. Okay. Right out of the gate. We started with MCF. We’re testing FPT now, but just MCF works. We’re using base comm to integrate all of that. They’re very established, especially if you’re trying to scale omnichannel. great partner to work with. All right. Part number two. This is where the real magic happens. We’re going to be going quick through this, okay. We add all of those creators to our email newsletter. Most of you have heard about having like a newsletter to send to your customer list. These are my most important customers. I see each affiliate that’s on here add an extra two zeros behind it. That’s how many people I’m actually influencing because they can go take it to their to their audience. Bring in 100 customers for me.

Josh Hadley 00:19:46  Okay, so every creator goes through a welcome flow of seven emails. They get to know our brand. They get to know our story. They get to know my wife and I. They get emotionally attached to us and our mission. Okay. Welcome flow trains the creators. How to create good videos. We’re talking about the hooks. We’re talking about the script. We’re talking about add to carts and, like the calls to action we want them to include. Okay. And then we’re having a month. We have monthly newsletter content. So this is kind of like what we’re sending on a monthly basis to them. All right. What do these emails look like. This ain’t pretty. But that’s all that I got. that’s just me. Like cutting and pasting a few different things. Okay. We’re using beehive as the tool to actually run these emails. It’s very inexpensive and that’s why I like it. Okay, so what type of content are we sharing in these newsletters? Upcoming flash sells spotlighting creators when they go viral.

Josh Hadley 00:20:42  That also adds is inspiration to my existing creators sales, scripts, hooks to use, announcing monthly contests, contest winners, contest leaderboard updates, and then new product launches. What do I do with my VIPs that actually do well? We text them because we have their phone numbers and we create personal relationships with them. So when we just had our fourth child a year ago, like we’re sharing those updates, hey, just wanted to let you know the baby was born, right? Like, it’s that level of emotional connection that you have to your top guys or girls. Okay, then we have a WhatsApp group as well. All right. What’s been our best contest that we’ve run so far? This affiliate kind of like GMV ladder. The more GMV they produce more extra like bonuses they can make. This one’s performed really, really well for us. And you can see these stats here. Yuka. Within Yuka you can run these contests and it tracks everything for you seamlessly in there. So that’s how we track everything.

Josh Hadley 00:21:43  All right. What’s been. And then again, just taking a page out of Goliad. No positive book can. We ain’t giving out Lamborghinis, but a couple hundred bucks goes a long way for our our moms. All right, and then this is a separate strategy, but really interesting one. Found this from Josh snow. And what snow teeth whitening is doing is basically they’re bringing on a cohort, cohort, cohorts of ten creators at a time, paying them $250 or so a month for 30 pieces of content. They keep the top third that produce over 5000 in GMV. They cut the rest, rinse and repeat over and over again. So different strategy. Thought was worth sharing. All right. Sounds like a lot of work. Is that really necessary? I would say yes it is. especially if you want to have success. Right. You got to do the things that most people aren’t willing to do. And to be honest with you, most people aren’t willing to do everything that I just talked about.

Josh Hadley 00:22:37  It is a lot of work. It’s seriously a lot of work. Okay, but that’s where the success is. don’t miss the gold rush. We are truly in the TikTok gold rush right now. It is the creator gold rush that we are. All you guys all miss the days of like I wish I would have been on Amazon 2010. This is it for TikTok and TikTok’s maturing faster than Amazon ever did. Definitely. Okay. All right, so there we go. We have covered 0.1 and I’ve down to five minutes left. So we are going to be blazing through the rest of this stuff. All right everybody stand back up real quick if you want. If you want to have success on D to see your own Shopify site, WooCommerce, or you’re already succeeding there, you’re already doing well. You just want sales on D to see. Some of you just want sales only on Amazon, or you’re an agency and you don’t want to see sales. All right okay. So keep standing. If you’re already making more than $1 million a month on Shopify or DTC.

Josh Hadley 00:23:44  These are the people that are going to come up and finish my presentation. No. Who was left? Who was left standing? All right. Okay. I have been trying to freak and crack the code on Shopify. Literally, like I’ve loved Shopify from, like, eight years ago. Ever since the day I began e-commerce and on Amazon. But Amazon was the only thing I could actually get to work for the first time ever. Because of TikTok, we unlocked Shopify and I’ll show you exactly how we’re doing it. Take the viral videos. Anything that does over 100,000 views on TikTok shop, and we immediately run it as an add on meta. And why can I do this? Who has usage rights on every single one of their videos? Okay, I don’t even have to ask. It’s already there. Okay. We immediately light it up. We’ve done this over and over again. Five Roas out of the gate. Okay, here’s how it works. Create your ad in meta. Okay. Literally just taking a UGC content okay.

Josh Hadley 00:24:47  And then create a dedicated sales page. This is where most of us go wrong. Do not send them to your freaking home page. Don’t send them to your Shopify home page. That’s the stupidest thing you can do. Send them to one page where the only thing they can do is either add to cart or leave. That’s it. That is the only thing you’re sending them to. Okay. if you don’t create a dedicated sales page, you will fail. We’ve tested that. Okay, this is how we’ve turned a $25 product on Amazon to an over $100 AOV at times on Shopify. Okay. Product retails for 25 bucks on Amazon. We’re going to bundle multiple products together. In addition to that, I’m also going to include some digital products that they cannot get on Amazon. So I’m unique. I’m different. Amazon can’t price match, right. Any of that. I’m going to value stack this offer for more than what they could get on Amazon. Okay, then I’m going to offer multiple upsells before checkout okay Ezra talked about this yesterday okay.

Josh Hadley 00:25:57  Our current AOV for this funnel is 85 bucks. Okay. Turn to $25 product into an $85 product. That’s how you can actually make meta meta work because it will not work. If I are just trying to do this on $25 a AUVs. All right, but wait, there’s more. At the end of that, we get people to join our little club for ten bucks a month. They get future discounts, early access to new products. Take a product. I’m not in supplements, guys. I don’t have a consumable product. There’s no subscribe and save. I wish I had that. This is how we’re introducing subscription to the business. This is how your competitors will be like. I don’t understand how they’re so successful Because like the money that keeps coming in. Month over month comes from this reoccurring revenue stream. This isn’t luck. We’ve actually replicated this funnel with three completely, distinctly different products. Okay. All right. So that’s how we’ve done that on Shopify, TikTok, Shopee. All tracking with me so far.

Josh Hadley 00:26:56  Has this been good? Yes. Okay. All right. Last thing. Here’s what we’re doing now to make Amazon our most profitable sales channel. This is the way I view e-commerce moving forward, right? TikTok and meta. It’s all top of the funnel okay. It’s increasing brand awareness. It’s great. Shopify is like middle of the funnel. They’re interested in your brand. They’re curious. They’ll check out there for sure. Okay. But then Amazon like you know this the search intent is super high. They’re on Amazon. They’re looking for something they want to immediately by Amazon is definitely becoming bottom of the funnel. So here’s the changes that we’re making. Amazon PPC is becoming less and less important for us. During Prime Day, we turned off all of our Amazon ads for our most viral product, and we doubled the sales of our next closest competitor. Moving more ad spend to TikTok and meta is driving higher rankings quickly. Ranking is becoming easier because of the natural search. Fine by I don’t even have.

Josh Hadley 00:27:50  I’m not linking to Amazon. I’m not telling anybody to do anything. They just stop on Facebook and then go find my product on Amazon. That’s it. We can maintain higher prices than our competitors on Amazon with all of the TikTok. Okay. And in 2024, Amazon had a net profit margin of 6%. Not impressive. Not hot, not sexy. But this year we’ve already more than doubled that because of these efforts. Okay, that’s exactly what we’re doing to find success on on Amazon I think as it changes now. And that’s how you stay ranked. That’s how you don’t hit year over year declines because Gibran’s right. If you don’t launch new products and you don’t have external marketing, you will perpetually decline in market share on Amazon moving forward. I saw that that’s why January sucked for me in 2024. E-commerce landscape is changing. I don’t want you all to get left behind. Who do I think wins in 3 to 5 years? It’s the people that completely flip the script. Instead of arbitrage and keywords on Amazon, you’re now focused on demand generation, demand creation for your products, for your brand.

Josh Hadley 00:28:58  Okay, so this is what I believe is the $100 million E-com playbook, okay. Launch new products, but specifically what we’ll do well on TikTok, I don’t even look at I don’t remember the last time I looked at helium ten, or even data dive or Jungle Scout opportunities. I just look at what’s trending on on TikTok shop. Okay, increase awareness for your products free. UGC with the potential to go viral is the biggest arbitrage opportunity that you can take advantage of right now. And the doors and windows closing every day and you get to increase the distribution of your products, aka sales channels, through TikTok and Shopify with retail. I love this quote from Alex Hermosa. I get happier about the harder it is, because I know that most people are not going to follow. Okay, that is very true in the e-commerce space. Amazon is never, ever been harder than it is today. But if you lean in and you do the things that most people won’t do. And the harder it is, I say good.

Josh Hadley 00:30:00  That’s why I’m happy to share my playbook with y’all. Because it’s hard. It’s a lot of work, but I know if you lean into it, you can have success there. And again, it’s going to be different for every single brand. So allow allow God to enlighten your mind. All right. But wait, there’s more. And I’m already. Over time, they’re about to kick me off. All right. If you want access to the slides, if you will subscribe to my podcast. If I get 75% of the audience, I’ll click to the next screen and I’ll give you the QR code. Does that sound fair enough? All right, go ahead, flip. Get out your phones. You got your Apple Podcasts? Spotify. I’m on YouTube. Just raise your hand when you’ve subscribed. Econ breakthrough. If you’re already subscribed, go ahead and raise your hand. I’ll do a little self-promotion. I grew up in the old days of Amazon where you could influence reviews. I could give 90% off coupon codes, get a free review, get my products moving on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:31:05  So that’s ingrained in me now at this point. All right, we got some more hands. We’re getting closer. Yeah, half of you are almost there. All right. Great. Well, guess what? I do have an incentive for a review. All right. If you will, leave me a review. One of the things that the QR code will not show you is our or is our creative brand. Brand brief. And I’ll share you literally like the exact one we’re sending out to our affiliates. If you just leave me a review and then come up to me after I’ll be walking around. Show me. And then I’ll literally like text you that link straight to it. And also will include the exact like Google form that we’re using that you can just copy and paste. All right. Is that fair enough. This is not Amazon. So I can incentivize reviews. All right there you go guys.

Inquiry 01 00:31:56  For everybody that wants inspiration on what to do on TikTok shop any what else would you recommend.

Inquiry 01 00:32:01  Like that’s not supplements. That’s not beauty and personal care. Because, you know, let’s say we want to do something different. Any any ideas of of what’s more niche focused on TikTok shop.

Josh Hadley 00:32:13  Well, I think I think it’s it can be anything. I mean, look at what Hudson’s doing with comfort, right? Or one of the top TikTok shop brands. Look at shark. Right. They’re doing vacuums. I think it’s pretty hard. Like, I would argue that TikTok shop is becoming a place where, like I would argue, almost any brand can find success there. But you’ve got to find your unique angle, right? If you don’t have a differentiated product, if it’s another garlic press that’s like just a garlic press, then there’s not even a story behind it. Yeah, you’re fighting an uphill battle, but I think the riches are in the niches, right. And you can use like kalo data to find like who’s who’s move in volume and then lean in that way.

Inquiry 02 00:32:52  So I was wondering, yeah.

Inquiry 02 00:32:54  You seem to be, like, there yet. Yeah. I think you’ll work with, like, you’re filtering the creators. Very picky. And I’ve started to do that, and I’m seeing that I’m getting creators that are making, like, better content more relatable. but your filtering process seemed like, like, most people would be like. Yeah, good. By like, do you think that you need to have virality already and be a, brand with awareness to be able to demand that much upfront commitment from them? Or should that be able to work for a brand like mine that doesn’t have awareness?

Josh Hadley 00:33:33  Yeah. So I, I literally use this playbook right out of the gate. So like the old fashioned way. It was just I had a Google form right out of the bat before I was like just asking for their email and phone number. I was sending them a Google form that was even lengthier, and I would only approve people that that came in there. So what it does mean is like, is everybody going to be in there and is everybody going to accept that? The answer is no.

Josh Hadley 00:33:56  However, like most people are just freebie seekers anyways. So like now you’re kind of like weeding out the people who are actually a little more committed, but it does mean the number of outreaches that you’re going to have to do increases. Right? Because no one for every 1000, you’re probably going to get like a thousand or, sorry, a hundred people to actually move forward.

Host 00:34:17  All right. Thank you, Josh.

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