Josh Hadley is the Founder and CEO of an eight-figure e-commerce business called Hadley Designs. Hadley Designs is an online graphic design boutique where customers can choose, design, download, and print home decor and invitations. Josh is also an e-commerce business consultant and the host of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, which is dedicated to helping brands exceed eight-figure profits.
Before starting Hadley Designs and eComm Breakthrough, Josh graduated with an MBA from the Lassonde New Venture Development program at the University of Utah. Josh then took his talents to Dallas, where he honed his business, marketing, and project management skills as an executive for American Airlines.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Josh demonstrates a live audit with the first winner of the eComm Breakthrough strategy audit giveaway
- How to create Google Ads and the best way to maximize ROI from external traffic
- The best strategy to eliminate much of your competition
- What is the best way to build your product’s brand?
- Why product differentiation can impact your price line
- How to create product innovation
- How does your product benefit your customers?
In this episode…
The Amazon marketplace is a popular selling channel because it offers sellers many benefits, including customer reach, Amazon’s reputation, and reliable fulfillment and shipping.
Despite the positive benefits Amazon offers its sellers, understanding how the platform works can be intimidating for beginners.
Over the past weeks, eight-figure e-commerce seller Josh Hadley has shared his journey, which is a great success story despite the growing pains he experienced early on. The creation of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast is one of the ways he’s giving back to rookie sellers, and he’s giving away one monthly comprehensive strategy audit worth $10,000 each month.
In this episode of the eComm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley sits down with Charlie McKenzie, an Amazon seller and the first winner of Josh’s strategy audit session giveaway. Josh demonstrates a live audit where he explains the best Amazon strategies that target a specific niche. Josh talks to Charlie about product innovation, sales copy that guarantees customer solutions, and product testing to maximize profits.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- eComm Breakthrough Consulting
- eComm Breakthrough Podcast
- Email Josh: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com
- Hadley Designs
- Hadley Designs on Amazon
- Tyler Gregg on LinkedIn
- Ampd
- Kevin King
- Brandon Young
- Data Dive
- Sales Tax Handbook
- In Order To Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey To Freedom by Yeonmi Park
- Scale Insights
- SellerBoard
- Seller Systems
- RoboQuill
- Simply Noted
- Amazon Vine
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven figure ecommerce owners grow to eight figures. Of course…
Listen, Charlie Mckenzie
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.
As a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com with the subject line “Strategy Audit” and tell me why your business should win the free audit for the chance to win and don’t worry, if you don’t win the free strategy audit this month, you’ll automatically be entered for future months.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:04
Welcome to the eComm 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. Join Josh Hadley, an eight-figure e-comm business owner and investor, as he interviews highly successful business owners get ready because you’re going to learn specific actions you can take today to help your business reach its full potential and leave a lasting impact on the world.
Josh Hadley 0:37
Welcome to the eComm Breakthrough Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Today, I’m speaking with Charlie McKenzie, and we have recorded a live strategy audit session for you today. This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven-figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Charlie, I started Hadley Designs in 2015. And I grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Of course that made getting that that path to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to be. At times I doubted myself whether I had the ability, or if I had a real brand behind myself that I could actually grow to eight figures, I wish I would have had a guide along the way that would have helped me grow faster, and avoid a lot of those stumbling blocks that I ran into. If you’ve hit the same plateau and you want to know the next steps to take in your business, then go to eCommBreakthrough.com. (That’s e COMM With two M’s) to learn more. And as a special bonus to my podcast listeners. This month, I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. Email me at Josh@eCommBreakthrough.com with the subject line “strategy audit” for your chance to win. And don’t worry, if you don’t win the strategy audit this month, you’ll be entered to win for future months to come. So send those emails and let me know that you’re interested in getting that free strategy audit session. And today, I’m excited to introduce you to our first free strategy audit winner. That’s Charlie McKenzie. Charlie, welcome to the podcast.
Charlie McKenzie 2:15
Thanks very much for having me on. Josh. I’m excited to be here.
Josh Hadley 2:19
Awesome! Well, Charlie, before we started hitting the record button here, we went through almost an hour long, you know, free strategy audit session, where we dove into a lot of stuff that you’re working on with your brand, you have a really unique brand. And you’ve actually got more experienced than just running this running this one brand that we were able to discuss, you’ve got another brand, kind of on the side, you’re doing some retail arbitrage as well. So you’ve got you’ve got a lot of fishing rods in the water, so to speak about your lines in the water in multiple places. But I think you’ve got a lot of potential with this brand. So just so everybody knows. His brand is in the pet supplies industry. All right. And it’s a product that that provides a lot of benefit to some pet owners. So he’s gotten a lot of potential, and especially within the market that he’s in, he’s got a lot the people that he serves, you know, they’re a loyal fan base, they care about their animals, and they want to protect them. They love them. And so I think like you’ve got an amazing opportunity ahead for you, Charlie to create a real brand that you’ll be able to exit one day, if you take the right next step. So at this point with Charlie Charlie’s brand, he’s got one SKU. Well, he’s got multiple skews, because he’s got some size variations in there. But he’s got one product that is generating the sales for this brand. One of the first things that we looked at for your brand, Charlie was keyword research. And you’re doing a great job of implementing the right search terms in your product title. In fact, you’re crushing, you know, the competition in terms of the exact match keywords that you’ve got implemented in your title. And therefore, you’re actually ranked on the first page for many of those keywords. However, you’re not in the top five positions, right, on most of those keywords. And so we then went through and discussed Alright, so what are some strategies that we can employ to you’ve already got traction, you’re obviously indexed for some of these big keywords. How do you move them up into that one to five, you know, organic ranking position? One of the things that we talked about was PPC. And Charlie, you know, you’ve started dipping your toes in the PPC waters initially, we talked actually a couple months ago, and you were not running ads on Amazon. And, you know, I told you like, Hey, you should definitely start running some ads on Amazon because it is going to impact your organic ranking. You’ve been dabbling a little bit in that my record foundation to you from our session was that, you know, create some exact match keyword campaigns for those keywords that you’re trying to rank for number one, but then number two, one of the things that we’ve found a lot of success with in our business is product targeting ads on Amazon. And so rather than just throwing it up against because with your particular product, there’s, there’s other competitors that have different design variations, right. And so, rather than just saying, hey, mine’s beige, I’m gonna go advertise on this pink one, or this blue one, you, the customer that’s looking for a pink product, they have a specific thought in mind, right? Same thing, if somebody is looking for blue, like there’s a reason why they clicked on the blue listing. So when it comes to setting up your product targeting ad campaigns, one of the things I would definitely recommend is only targeting those competitors that have the exact same color that you have, and you’re gonna get better performance that way. And what Amazon loves to see is if you can steal sales from those competitor listings, you will shoot ahead of them on the organic ranking side. And that will allow you to increase your ranking a little bit faster there. In addition to that, we talked about some external marketing that you could be using, and that is Google Ads. I know you’ve tested this in the past had about a 200% A-cost there, which isn’t great, obviously. But we talked about an additional tactic that you could use, that could increase that performance, because Amazon is definitely rewarding external traffic, right. In my prior one of the prior podcast episodes, we had Tyler Greg, of Ampd on the episode, and he shared some fantastic strategies of how to create Google Ads. And the best way to maximize, you know, the return on investment on those. One of the big takeaways from that episode is that rather than just driving traffic to your current Amazon detail page, it’s going to be better to create a store landing page for yourself. But in that store landing page, you recreate almost the exact way that your detail page looks on Amazon. And there’s a specific section on the store builder page that allows you to basically recreate that detail page, that’s exactly what you’re going to want to do. And the beauty of driving that traffic to your store landing page that is literally identical to your detail page is that you’re able to remove all of your competitors. Because one of the tips or I guess one of the statistics that Tyler shared on that podcast episode is that 30% of external traffic going to Amazon or from the Google Ads ended up being purchases on Amazon. But of that 30%, I would argue to say is probably 5% or less, we’re actually buying the product that they first came in to Amazon looking at. Instead they got distracted with other competitors or ended up finding something completely different on Amazon that they ended up purchasing. But there’s a lot of high search intent, or you know, a lot of people that will convert on Amazon from external traffic that’s proven in the data. But what you need to do is remove as much of that competition as possible. And hopefully that will increase some some of those conversion rates. Charlie, we also talked about, you know, product images, product copy. And we’ll dive into that a little bit further. But I want to hear from your perspective, after we went through that strategy audit session. What were some of the big takeaways for you or aha moments, some of the action items that you’re going to be implementing?
Charlie McKenzie 8:47
Yeah, well, thanks. That’s all great advice. I think one of the biggest things that I think that can provide value to me in my scenario with a relatively low SKU count catalog, we’re expanding out now but bringing that storefront and running the Google ads specifically to that storefront and recreating the detail page. And in order to be able to maximize conversion and not pay, you know, for wasted ad spend when people click off of your your listing is definitely something that I think could help. I know, Amazon is focusing more on valuing external traffic in terms of being able to rank organically. So yeah, definitely creating that storefront, even with a low SKU count. You know, I’m gonna get on that. And then targeting campaigns haven’t had the best of luck with them. But at the same time, they, you know, if you’re stealing sales from top competitors, as you mentioned, Amazon is going to, to be able to reward you and rank you better if you’re able to, to compete on those other competitors listing. So getting back into the product targeting campaigns, and as opposed to just exact and auto, I think will really be able to help us scale up and as we move and work catalog and get more effective that PPC so yep.
Josh Hadley 10:03
Yeah. Those are some great takeaways and, and as it relates to product targeting, right, is that always the silver bullet? Not necessarily, right. It’s always worth testing. But one of the important things is that as you add competitors into your product targeting ad campaigns, one of the things that you can do is like set up your criteria that says, hey, if I get 30 clicks from this competitor, and no sales, I’m just going to turn it off. And so with us, we have 1300 skews, like so we’ve had to create really strict rules and guidelines. Otherwise, you know, it just be sifting through the weeds for us on an ongoing basis. And so, create those rules. And guess what, if it doesn’t meet the criteria, then you turn it off, and you’re like, hey, at least it was worth the test. I’ve done this for all of the competitors. So just have some guidelines, whenever you’re, you’re conducting any tests, Charlie, knowing that you have, you know, a low SKU count right now, you talked about that, you’ve got other variations that are going to be coming in, that you’re going to be setting that up. But we also talked about product innovation, right. And how we don’t want to just create kind of like me-too products. Right now you’re at the very early stages of your brand, it’s an exciting time. But one of the best ways to build out your brand is launching products on an ongoing basis. Like whether you’re a seven-figure, eight-figure seller, one of the best things you can do to grow your business is keep launching new products, new product, new product, new product, and getting into different, you know, spaces with inside that brand, right? What are some related products, because as you do that, you know, ideally, when you’re first starting, you know, start with some of those products that are cheaper, and obviously have lower MOQ. So that you can just test test stuff out real quick, see if it works, and your risk is a lot lower that way. Now the returns might not be that that huge, but don’t be so determined that you need to have a homerun or hit homeruns on every single product launch. If you can hit single after single after single after single, like you’re going to score some runs here. And that’s honestly how we built our business. To begin with our first you know, three or four years, we didn’t launch any home run products whatsoever, there were no there, we didn’t have any hero ASINs in our business. Rather, we had a lot of products that we launched that we’re only making like two to three sales a day. Like for most of the audience, they that’s kind of laughable numbers right there, I got, I would never support a product like that. But like because we were hitting those singles and doubles on occasion, it allowed us to gain more profit, then start investing and getting into some of these much more competitive categories, where we have been able to take some homerun swings, and actually hit some home runs at the same time. So Charlie, going back to kind of that that product innovation conversation that we had, what were some of the takeaways, or aha moments that you got from that?
Charlie McKenzie 13:03
Yeah, well, being introduced to Amazon and kind of coming from an arbitrage background. You know, being able to look cross marketplace and understand where the arbitrage opportunities lie on Amazon, you know, itself because like you said, you’ve got a particular niche and group of people that are maybe looking on, you know, on very specific domain websites for very specific styles that they want, you can take a look at those, those domains and figure out what’s working well on those sites, and then look at the arbitrage opportunity and look to see if there’s the same thing going on in Amazon. If there’s not, then you know, you have a very higher likelihood of success by knowing that, that there’s an opportunity there that’s currently selling on another marketplace that you can bring to Amazon and innovate your brand through. So that’s definitely great advice. And I think Etsy and some of the bigger specialized domains, looking at what’s working for them, will help me to take my brand to the next level. So
Josh Hadley 14:01
Yeah, I completely agree. And I couldn’t recommend this more. Whether you’re listening to this or for you, Charlie, specifically, you know, go to where the majority of your customer audience is hanging out, right? Where do most of them shop now, again, a lot of customers do shop on Amazon, but what I found is like Amazon’s probably one of the last places to get product innovation from right, like there’s actually not a lot of unique, cool ideas that come to Amazon first. Instead what you find is like, you have direct DTC websites, right Shopify stores or big web, you know, corporate websites that have been around for a while. Those are where, you know, new ideas first come to the market. Same with Etsy, right? That’s where new ideas and anything that’s like design driven for sure, is going to come to the market. And so one of the best ways to to really grow your brand instead. Aren’t dominating in any marketplace, especially on Amazon is going and finding something that’s trending somewhere else. And bringing it to Amazon. We have done that with repeated success time and time again, we get really excited when we look at product niches that we’re about to get into one of the biggest, like criterias that we use to determine if we’re going to go into that product market is do we see a gap in the market from what’s trending on Etsy, Pinterest, and, you know, specific websites, like if we’re looking at going into daily planners, right? Just do a quick Google search for daily planners, bring up that top website from Google and see like, what’s, what’s the best seller here on this website. And if you see, like, wow, nobody has anything like this best seller on Etsy, or on Pinterest, or here on this other TTC website, you can bring that to Amazon, and just start crushing your competition. So definitely recommend taking a look at those other websites, getting some inspiration, then continuing to innovate, bring new styles, new designs onto Amazon that people haven’t seen. And it’s gonna be a lot easier for you to compete, rather than just on price, right? How, Charlie, how much do you feel like you have to try to like compete on price for your product right now.
Charlie McKenzie 16:22
Um, pricing is definitely something that we’re always trying to manage, you know, looking at how your business ends up being valued at the end of the day in terms of profit, you know, that’s why we’ve been a little hesitant on the on the PPC side. But yeah, pricing, we are, were luckily able to negotiate, you know, great rates with our supplier. And I think we come in pretty competitive, we’re kind of that middle of the road option. So we’re not super premium, but we’re also not, you know, just trying to push a ton of volume being one of the lower price, you know, competitors on the platform. So I think, you know, making sure that you’re not on either end super luxury, or super cheap. That’s kind of our strategy. So interested to hear what you think about that?
Josh Hadley 17:03
Yeah, I think one of the first things is that if you don’t have a differentiated product, right, one of your only ways to compete is going to be with price alone, right. And so price becomes a huge factor. And your business becomes that much more risky, in terms of being able to be disrupted by competitors, if you’re just relying on price alone, right. But if you’ve got product design, or you know, especially if you’re able to get some design patents, on your products, or even getting a utility patent on your product, that’s where the greatest rewards are going to be. That’s when you can charge that premium price. And so I think that goes back to that conversation we’re having with product innovation, right? That’s ideally where you want to be spending the majority of your time. And when it comes into product innovation. You know, one of the other things not only looking at other marketplaces, which we talked so much about, one of the best things that you can do is go to Reddit, or go to Facebook groups, wherever your audience is hanging out, and start asking questions about that particular product, say, hey, when you have this issue, and you look for XYZ product, you know, what is it that you feel like is missing in the market? Or, you know, what do you wish these products had, but they’re missing. And as you get to know the customers more number one, you’ll be able to build your own email list from doing like, you know, generating surveys and something like that, which will allow you to launch quicker and more effectively and actually build a real brand. Because one of my other episodes we recorded was with Kevin King, and that is exactly what he talked about, he had mentioned, like long gone are the days of you being able to just, you know, launch something out of your garage for 500 bucks, it’s a me too product doesn’t really have a brand behind it. I’m just selling this, you know, let’s say tumbler, just for the heck of it. Right, and I’m just making some money, those days are like coming to a close. And you’ve got to build that real brand. And that real brand starts to come to fruition when you actually have an email list when you have an audience that you can communicate with outside of Amazon and, and whatnot. So that goes back to that product innovation, right? Yeah. So identify, communicate with your customers, build an email list, you know, send a survey links into Facebook groups into Reddit forums, start gathering email addresses, and start communicating with customers get some ideas and maybe they’re not even ideas for the specific product that you are selling right now. But if you get into that particular niche in that audience, you can ask them what are some of the other products that you would like right? That it’s maybe not specific to the current product you’re selling? That could give you another good indication of like, Hey, here’s where I should go next in when I start launching new products.
Charlie McKenzie 19:57
Answer the public is another great Great reasons like counting, read it. I’ve done a little bit of research with that. So,
Josh Hadley 20:05
Yeah, what other research have you done, you know, Charlie, for yourself and new product ideas,
Charlie McKenzie 20:10
I’m just, you know, mostly keyword research, I love Data Dive, I would consider that to be my specialty is just focusing on keyword analytics and understanding how to write the best copy into the best places on to your listing in order to be able to redeem the maximum amount of raking, organic ranking juice potential out of your listing. So that’s why, you know, we’ve got a relatively, you know, lower review count compared to the top ranked competitors on the first page, but we’re able to still somewhat hang with them because of a great listing design, I think, yeah, that’s, that’s where most of my research has gone, I definitely need to focus on developing the catalog and understanding where there are gaps in the market based on style and functionality. And add some some products like that. So get my my brand store built out as well. And one of the another thing that you mentioned that I thought was great advice was don’t focus on being the best version of your competitors, but focus on the root of the, you know, the root problem that your product solves. So, right now, I don’t think we’re doing a good enough job of really reaffirming the purchase intent behind why the original reason why that customer came to Amazon and looks for our product, we’re doing a lot of comparing ourselves based on features to our other competitors, which is something that I, you know, really wanted to emphasize that we were better than our competitors. But at the end of the day, we needed to, to emphasize and reaffirm why the customer is coming to purchase our type or type of product to begin with. So implementing that into some of the image stack, I think, was a great, great tip that you gave me. So
Josh Hadley 21:51
yeah, yeah, we did we spend a lot of time talking about products, copy, sales copy in his bullets, as well as in the product listing photos, in and of itself, right. Now, Charlie, for the most part, your product? Well, your product doesn’t have a design pattern on it, right? It doesn’t have a utility patent on it. And there are other competitors that have a similar style, and, you know, similar color of product, correct. So to that extent, you know, you have been focused on like, Well, how do I convey that minds a little bit more durable, or a little bit more premium, and a little bit better than the competitor? To your credit, you know, go ahead and talk about the bag that you added there? Because that is a way to differentiate your product? How did you get that idea?
Charlie McKenzie 22:41
Yeah, so just customer discovery and understanding kind of the way in which this product is used on daily basis, we realized that it was being stored a lot of the times in a sticky box and was getting dirty and dusty, and, and kept didn’t really have a place. So we were able to get a quarter of waterproof buzz cinch bag, you know, with our product for, you know, a couple cents extra landed per unit. So wasn’t that big of a deal. And now we’re able to advertise that, you know, in the main image as an accessory that sold along with our product that no one else does Amazon. So I think we’re seeing better conversion. We’ve had some, some people mentioned us they appreciate that. So yeah, that’s that’s just putting a bag around it has as has helped us.
Josh Hadley 23:27
Yeah, yeah. It’s all about how do you differentiate yourself from the competition, you’ve done a good job by adding that bag on your main image, because as you scroll through page one, nobody else is showing the product with an accessory, right? Nobody, you’re the first one to be doing that. So you’re already going to be catching some eyeballs there, which is fantastic. Let’s go back to the product sales copy that we were talking about. And having that mindset shift of just talking about feature feature feature feature feature of the product and how this is so much better the than the competitors. Instead, what we found a lot of success with is speaking to the heart of the customer, right? What is it that they are like, Why are they hiring I like to call it like they are hiring this product to solve a problem in their life. Right? So you’ve got to think through what what are they trying to do? What is their end goal when they get this product? Is it to elevate their their lifestyle? Right? Like if you’re getting a Louis Vuitton bag, right? It’s like because I want to show off that either I have money or that I’m somebody of affluence or I you know, I’m stylish, right? Like the status, right? That’s a status symbol for them. So that’s the way Louis Vuitton communicates to their customer, right? They know the underlying why the reason why people are purchasing those products is so that they have the status right elevates their status. So a good example of this is like our desk calendars. Right? One of the things that people saw what we saw in the reviews time and time again, and this is one of the best places that you can go, to really understand what is the core need or problem that your product is solving for people is going to take a look at those reviews. So what we found is that so many people were saying, because I have this desk calendar, now, I no longer miss important events, like my son’s soccer game, we saw that come up time and time and time again. Now a desk calendar, that’s a fairly broad audience, it could be a business professional, it could be you know, a male, it could be a mom, it could be, you know, anybody, it could be at a doctor’s office, right. But what we found is there were a lot of customers that were using it for their personal home life. And so in one of the sales copy, we use the phrase, never miss an important event again, right. And then we had a picture of a kid holding a soccer ball pointing to the calendar with a big circle around it soccer game 9am, right? That is now conveying to the customer, like the reason why they want a desk calendar is because stuffs probably starting to slip through the cracks for them, right, they want to be a little bit more organized. They want to stop missing events, you know, all of us as we get busy, it’s easy for stuff to slip through the cracks. And that’s what we identified as we communicated with customers as we read the reviews. And so we tweaked our sales copy, we create a product listing image that specifically addresses this benefit, not a product feature, but rather a benefit that the customer is going to receive. And that resolves that core issue or problem that they were experienced experiencing to begin with. And then we added that as our first bullet point, like the first five, seven words of our entire bullet point are never missed an important date again. Then we go on and yeah, we’ll say hey, this desk counters this size and premium paper it’s made in the US, okay, blah, blah, blah. Those product features are good. The customers do need to understand that, but hit him in the heart first, right. Get him to be like, That’s exactly right. That’s exactly what I want this this product to do for me is to resolve X y&z Anything else you want to add to that, Charlie, that was a takeaway for you?
Charlie McKenzie 27:29
No, I think that’s great. I think that’s, that’s great advice, being able to speak and reaffirm the person 10 think is very obvious, but maybe sometimes get lost in the granular details of, of keyword research and out competing competitors based on features. So yeah,
Josh Hadley 27:48
Awesome, awesome. The other thing we talked about briefly was about sales price, right? And testing different sales prices. Because one of the things that you can do to influence sales, is to decrease your price if you want to try to improve that sale through rate or your conversion rate. But you have to do this. In very isolated tests. We talked about this a little bit, because you’ve got to be able to ideally, test this when all other variables can be set aside. So that you can conclusively say like, because I changed the price XYZ happened. So you’ve got it, you can’t be testing out images, you can’t be testing out copy. You can’t be sending external traffic to your listing at this time. Like literally like you, you look for a period of two weeks. And in addition to this, you need to make sure that you’re doing it during a period of the year where you know, there’s not a lot of huge seasonality swings, if you’re like coming off like the tail end of your big seasonal period, and then you test another two weeks later, and like sales have just dried up. Well, that doesn’t mean the test was wrong. It’s just like you hit the tail end of the seasonal season. So try to mitigate all of those different variables, and then test the price alone. And that’s it, make sure everything else is isolated. And one of the best recommendations and this was again, one of our other previous podcast episodes was with Roland Frasier, I would definitely highly recommend that you go listen to that podcast episode. He mentioned that when he acquires ecommerce businesses, one of the first things that he does is increases prices, he increases prices, and he increases and sometimes doubles the profit overnight and immediately pays for that entire acquisition, because many of us I think, are a little apprehensive to increase our price. But what happens is, you know, if you’re the low price leader, right, and you’re selling your product at 999 Well, it might take you 2000 sales to generate $500 in profit. Whereas if you sell it at 2499, then you only need 200 sales To generate $500 in profit as you’re starting, and especially as you’re struck, starting to scale your business, and you want to go to eight figures, and beyond, cashflow is extremely, extremely important. And if you’re that low price leader, and you’re doing a lot of volume, but making a small margin on there, you’re going to run into cashflow issues, you’re going to need external financing, things are going to get more complicated. So for small business owners, one of the most beneficial things I think you can do is test raising your prices on an ongoing basis. And, and get, you have to get to know what that price elasticity is. So that you genuinely know, hey, 2499 is where I make the most profit. Because as soon as I go to 2599, guess what happens? My sales go down. And yeah, I’m making more profit more than you know, I’m charging more, there was that much of a difference in the number of units that I was selling, that it it offset, you know, the increase in revenue that was being brought in? So I had to go back to 2499? Because that’s the sweet spot, right, where I’m maximizing the profit. So there’s a lot of different business strategies out there. But as you build out a brand, that’s one of the biggest recommendations I would give you. So you don’t run into cashflow issues. Any other thoughts you wanted to share with that, Charlie?
Charlie McKenzie 31:23
Totally Yeah, for instance, we were testing out a price of $18.46 in Central Texas, you know, after that was the highest price that we could charge to get a true cost of under $20. When you factor in sales tax, and you can use a site like salestaxhandbook.com. And look at you know, where a lot of your sales are coming from in particular states and take the average, you know, total sales tax rate and then apply that to your prices. But at the same time, lowering our price to that $18.46 value might have not been worth it in terms of the total number of sales of extra sales, we’re able to generate from that decrease in price versus the you know, the loss and margin. So, you know, like you’re saying, it’s, we’re all apprehensive to increase prices, but with the with inflation and shipping only going getting more expensive. It’s that’s a, that’s one thing that you do have control over, there’s very easily manipulated and can be tested. So
Josh Hadley 32:22
Yep, totally agree, Charlie, we’re gonna talk about you know, your favorite software tools, some of the cool hacks that you’ve implemented into your own business,
but any other takeaways that you had, from our strategy audit session that you want to share with the audience?
Charlie McKenzie 32:37
Just making sure to reaffirm purchase intent, really, you know, make sure that you’re gonna actually I pulled reviews from the top 10 competitors in our niche, but I think I’m gonna go back and pull maybe the top 100 reviews now, and then really do a deep dive and make sure that we’re understanding pain points. And using that, combined with some research from Etsy to program called Allura. I believe they can get you some estimated sales data on on Etsy, I looked into that, and combining pain points with opportunities across other marketplaces such as Etsy will be where I’m going to go to first in order to hopefully grow my brand doubt set us apart and, and make sure that we can start to develop some goodwill behind our name.
Josh Hadley 33:24
I love it. I love it. Well, Charlie, would you say that the strategy audit session was at least worth your time and beneficial?
Charlie McKenzie 33:31
Absolutely. 100% Worth worth it all the way. I should have been paying Josh many, many dollars per hour for this. But so I’m thankful to be here.
Josh Hadley 33:41
Awesome. Thanks, Charlie. Hey, so one of the I’ve got three questions that I want to ask you before we leave. And one of those questions is what is one book that you’ve read that’s been influential in your life and that you would recommend to other people.
Charlie McKenzie 33:56
So this book is not necessarily -commerce focused. It’s not necessarily necessarily entrepreneur related. But um, it’s a lady called the Yeonmi Park. And she actually first heard of her from an interview podcast interview with Joe Rogan. And I ended up reading her book after that it’s called In Order to Live. And she escaped from North Korea. And I think a lot of times whenever, you know, us entrepreneurs, single solo owner operators like I am getting a little overwhelmed with decisions and we’re having to make so many decisions on a daily basis to feel like things are caving in and and then you lose lose sight of really how good we have it year and how many things you really have to be thankful for. And I think I always remember when I’m feeling stressed out or there’s so much going on. I remember that book, remember her story and her story is incredible. It really makes you put things into perspective and realize that our problems are very small here and and it’s a motivating factor for me to be able to put put some stressors aside and then realize I’ve got it pretty good So,
Josh Hadley 35:00
Yeah, and that’s an important takeaway, I think, for anybody that that road. And entrepreneurship journey can be lonely at times and can feel like it, you know, some of the worst times in life you could be going through. But putting it into context, I think that’s great, because as entrepreneurs, we need to continue to persevere. So I’m gonna have to go check out that book. I’ve never read that book, and haven’t heard of it. So thank you for recommending it, Charlie, I think that’ll be super helpful. Another question, I want to ask you here is your recommended software, like what is one of the best software productivity tools you’ve implemented in your business? And why?
Charlie McKenzie 35:41
Yes, I think it’s really important to understand PPC on a manual level and how your ad spin makes an impact on your total organic sales that you’re able to drive to your to your listing, I have been using Scale Insights. But then, a way that I like to track organic versus paid sales. And the ratio between those two that I think is a little bit better than Scale Insights is called SellerBoard. And I’m sure many of you have seen it, but it’s, it’s just, it’s a pretty cheap and just analytics platform, and it pulls data really well from from Amazon, and is able to let you quickly diagnose where your ad dollars are being spent the most effectively and how to drive as many organic sales to your specific ASINs as possible. So I would say that and then Data Dive, you know, being able to implement keywords into the correct parts of your listing to redeem as much ranking juice credit. Like I said, that’s worked very well for me. And, and Brandon Young over there them, you know, they’ve developed that tool quickly, and I only see to continue to add tremendous value to my business in my situation. So
Josh Hadley 36:53
yep, yeah, we are, we are big fans of Data Dive as well. So definitely recommend Brendon young. He’s a future podcast guest interviewee and so I look forward to, you know, having him here and dropping knowledge bombs on Data Dive that is one of the most amazing software tools. So happy to hear your you’re having success with that, Charlie, like we our final question, what who are some of the like, the most influential people in the E commerce, Amazon space that you like to follow and listen to? And why?
Charlie McKenzie 37:25
Yeah, so I mean, definitely going to be listening to this podcast more and more, Brandon, and in the inner circle and solar systems, I really respect that. I’ve learned a ton from them. I went to my first Amazon event in Austin, and met you. And so you know, groups like that and inner circle and Brandon young. And then also I started I don’t have it. I’m 23. So still pretty early on in on my journey, but I’ve already crushing it early on in life. I’ve got a friend named Nathan and he and I have developed some software tools to help us consistently find smart profitable arbitrage deals. So yeah, just just staying in tune still looking to learn still have a lot to learn. And Brandon and Nathan and then and then you as well. All meeting all these crazy, crazy Amazon people. And you guys have been tremendous added tremendous value to my business already. So
Josh Hadley 38:21
awesome. Well, that’s great. Is Nathan, somebody that other people would know? Or is he just a personal contact, you have
Charlie McKenzie 38:27
just just just another guy, just another seller just like I am, I am just a seller. So don’t don’t have anything to sell you or have haven’t worked in the Amazon space. Actually, I’m glad I’m going to do some consulting for a smaller, firm works with some brands here the next couple of weeks, hopefully start that up. So but I’m just a normal seller at the end of the day. So awesome.
Josh Hadley 38:47
I love that, Charlie, that’s fantastic. You’re not just a nor an ordinary seller. You’re doing some amazing things. And you’ve shared some amazing tips yourself and things that you were working on. So actionable strategies, I think that any seller can kind of walk away from this conversation with is number one, Product Innovation is key. One of the things that you need to continually be focused on if you have an E commerce brand, and you’re selling on Amazon and other marketplaces is continuously launching new products, because the shelf life of certain products, you know, I think get shorter and shorter as more and more competition comes on board. And so being able to stay ahead of that by consistently launching new products and not just launching me to products. We had a great conversation today, talking about how do you differentiate your product? How do you go find what’s trending on other platforms and bring it on to Amazon and that’s really where you’ll find a lot of success. Number two, we talked about your sales and in your sales copy on Amazon under understanding the customer why? What are they hiring this product to do for have in their life, identify that problem, and then state how that product is going to be the solution, we use the example of Never miss an important date, again, for desk calendars. So implementing that into your listing images and immediately on in your bullets, it will help increase the conversions as well. And then finally, we talked about price testing, and maximizing your price for profit, not just for, you know, the highest conversion rate, not just for the sales velocity per se, you want to make sure that you are generating the most profit at your price point. And so for anybody that wants to increase your profit, go and increase your prices, start testing it out. Even if you sell fewer units, you might actually be making more money. So run the numbers, run those tests and isolate those variables. Charlie, is there anything else you think we covered that we haven’t talked about that you want to share?
Charlie McKenzie 40:56
I think we hit hit on a lot of, you know, very good touch points that I can make actionable changes to and see the results of those, I think, some vine specific skews. We mentioned this before, but we’ve been able to really increase our average star count from Vine reviews upon launch by creating some Vine specific skews. And then adding some handwritten notes. You can use a service like Robo quill or Simply Noted to be able to, you know, maybe push that four star rating would have been a four star rating, but but then they decide to go to a five star tell them how much you appreciate their contributions to the vine program, like creating some vine specific SKU, and then adding some handwritten notes and just giving it a personal touch to hopefully kind of maybe be able to swing their opinion a little bit sometimes, as vine reviewers can be pickier than than average. So are we know they are? So that’s something that’s helped me?
Josh Hadley 41:54
Yeah, I think that I’m glad you shared that. Because I think those are also three really cool software recommendations as well, in terms of, you know, facilitating handwritten notes and the cool way that you’re implementing that using Vine. And I think I want to clarify this with the audience. But Charlie’s talking about is creating a SKU that is specific for Vine, because when they take images of the product, right, there’s going to be like a handwritten note, and maybe better packaging, and all of that stuff. That’s all good, because you want to impress those binary viewers. But then when you launch your other product, or your same product on Amazon, but you’re not going to have handwritten notes included in every package, that’s going to come with a new SKU, but then you’re going to merge those ASINs together. Correct, Charlie? Yep,
Charlie McKenzie 42:41
yep. All for the reviews. Perfect. Well, I
Josh Hadley 42:44
think you’ve dropped some good knowledge bombs on us, Charlie as well. Hopefully, this was helpful for yourself and for the audience. Thanks again for joining us.
Charlie McKenzie 42:52
All right. Thank you very much. I wish you best of luck with the podcast, so it’s very helpful.
Josh Hadley 42:57
Thanks, Charlie.
Outro 42:59
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