Josh Hadley 5:25

amazing. sounds absolutely incredible. And I think like you said, I think it’s like an opportunity to kinda like, recharge, right? I feel like when I take those breaks, you kind of like, see life in a whole new perspective, especially when you’re traveling and seeing new things. It’s experiencing new things as well. And you come back with a new perspective, I think, to business, which is really what I want to kind of center our conversation around, you’ve got so much experience, you know, you live the corporate life, right? You were acquired, you helped acquire a business in your corporate career. And then on top of that, you then helped exit your own brands, or you exited your Amazon brands, you’re building new brands as well. And so I think you have, you’re able to kind of look back from a mountaintop or peak, so to speak, and look back on the journey with a new frame of reference. And so to our listeners that are all, you know, primarily seven figure sellers that are looking to kind of scale their business, they want to go to eight figures and beyond. I want our conversation to really focus on like, all of those strategies, things that you’ve learned along the way of, hey, I remember I did this, I’d probably do this differently in the future. So with that being said, Adam, you know, maybe we’ll kick it off with as you exited some of your Amazon brands in the past, what are some of the things that the biggest lessons that you learn from that, that you would maybe advise other people that are either getting ready to exit or trying to scale their business? That you would, you know, provide them with insight to say, hey, maybe steer clear here up, steer clear of this? Or maybe go in this direction? Yeah, that’s

Adam “Heist” Runquist 7:04

a good question. And I can kind of answer that, I guess, strategically, tactically, which is probably what the root of the question is. But, you know, the interesting thing for me has been the more philosophical question, which I’ll kind of get to, I think, on the strategic tactical side of think, especially now in kind of modern Amazon, you know, it used to be you could be an everything store and sell stuff across different niches to different customers. And you can still do that, I guess, to a certain degree. But that kind of brand building on Amazon is harder to exit. Now, just as things have gotten a little bit more sophisticated, as you know, the belts have tightened up a little bit in the acquisition space. So I think for me, starting with the end in mind, if that is your goal to exit, you’ve got to kind of think about well, who would want to buy my business? And why would they want to buy it. So currently, I would say that folks are looking for more cohesive brands that doesn’t need need to be a Nike, and you don’t need to have 30,000 followers on Instagram, all that stuff, but you’ve got to have a specific emotional feeling and a specific customer that you’re developing your products for and that you’re speaking to, and that helps solidify your position on Amazon and makes them more tangible asset that isn’t just about price, which is, is important to people buying. I think the other thing that has definitely changed, you know, when I exited, you know, you could get away on the low end with about a $300,000 earnings, you know, to 500, that was kind of a pretty common sweet spot for a lot of folks that were exiting. I think now, the aggregators in private equity sellers and other folks they want it to be it’s the same amount of work to acquire a company that’s doing a million a year is is 10. For the most part, obviously, the risk dynamics change a little bit. So they’re looking for minimum 500,000 EBIT. But really, it’s that million plus EBIT. So you’re kind of having to build a business, that’s in the three plus million dollar range. So I think, you know, to start out, if you’re looking to exit, you’re going to want to have a business that’s cohesive, where you’ve got thoughtful differentiation around both the brand and the products are developing. So yeah, and then the second thing is, is you really need to right size your business to get as many qualified buyers to the table. Right. So that’s a $3 million-plus business. So I think those are some of the cornerstones that folks should be building today. I think the other thing that gets lost on people is, you know, you see, especially in the space, a lot of vanity metrics, screenshots of revenue. And you know, I did this on Prime Day and all that stuff, my eight classes this, what ultimately matters is how much money your business earns. And so you’ve got to have a fairly curated unemotional perspective when you’re looking at your catalog in your business. And there’s undoubtedly going to be skews that are more of a drag on your cash and your business. They just don’t generate enough profit and the multiples multiples are based on profit for most brands. And so I think that lens towards profitability being pragmatic and unemotional about, you know, how you want to pull the levers in your business, which products you focus on what’s actually driving profitable in your business, and then you’ve got to have a 12 month lens, right? Typically, you know, unless you’re a hyper growth brand where you’re kind of factoring in you know, additional growth rates. Sometimes you can get that as part of the exit experience, but most brands are going to be valued based on their history. specifically the last 12 months. And so, you know, if you don’t want to think, Hey, I’m going to sell my business now in two months, and then you really haven’t curated the business to optimize profits over a 12 month period. So having that, that timeline view. So that’s the answer pragmatic question. I think the other other thing I would say is, and this was lost on me a little bit, which is why do you want to sell and build a business in the first place? Intrinsically, it’s been one of the most fulfilling experiences in my life, I kind of had that soul calling you I spent longer than I wanted to, I think in corporate, but I always had that gut feeling like there was a different kind of life made for me. And it happened to be the stars align with points in my career and experience where I just everything kind of aligned, I’m like, You know what, I just gotta go after this thing. And the pursuit of that kind of soul calling was incredibly rewarding. But I always had numbers and outcomes, as I started to kind of see things realized themself. And I’ll tell you, I thought that the exit experience and that kind of, you know, reaching the top of the hike was going to be you know, have a have a pretty big burn after the fact and kind of changed my life after and it certainly has, but I’ll tell you, it lasted about a couple days, you know, and then it’s kind of get you kind of get the so what and, and I’ve come to realize that you’ve got to get your your core needs met, like it’s nice to not have to worry about money to be able to pay your mortgage, you know, if you’ve got a family, take care of your kids, all those things that you kind of need to have, so that money isn’t a stressor in your life. But once you have those things met, then you got to realize who you are as a human being and what you care about. And typically business isn’t going to be that certainly, if you’ve got very outcome specific, external drivers that are that are what kind of makes you happy. And I think if you don’t have that lens, that’s not going to solve it for it, you’re still gonna have to look at the mirror and figure out who you are as a human being. So I think the philosophical questions are equally important as the strategic ones when you’re looking to build and scale and exit a business.

Josh Hadley 11:47

Yeah, I couldn’t agree any more. And I know, I’ve heard that numerous times, right? So many people think that, Oh, my life is just gonna be completely changed when I exit my business. And yeah, you ride that high for a couple days. And you’re like, Okay, now, what? Will the same person like nothing’s really materially changed, other than what’s sitting in my bank account? Right? Yeah. And you know, it’s a lot of introspection. So I think you hit the nail right on the head there. So I’m interested, Adam, you’re launching, you’ve launched a new brand radio that you’re public about, I think you’ve also got a couple other brands that you’re working on as well. Is that true? Yeah.

Adam “Heist” Runquist 12:26

So the the business I sold wasn’t home good space. So it was roughly about two years from from actually launching the first product that I exited that. So it was a fairly quick turnaround around the middle point to building that business. About a year into that one, I realized, Hey, this is I, I’m frickin’ obsessed with the business model. And I had a ton of fun building that business. But I didn’t really care so much about the products or the customer. I’m a pretty avid cyclist and mountain biker, that’s kind of my world. I’m the customer, I understood it. So I’m like, you know, this next one I want to do, which I kind of did at the same time I was growing that other business, I’m like, I want to go after somebody that’s me. And so I built out a primarily a cycling accessories business. So that’s been about three years old. So one component of my time is, it’s kind of seeing that one through, it’s about three years old. And it’s been a fun journey, building that in a different way than I built my home goods business. And then I’ve had kind of a similar introspective view on okay, hey, what’s what’s next for me in terms of what do I want to build next, I’ve really tried to tap in especially having the extra experience going through some things that, that were achievements like that what next question, Who am I etc. And, you know, I was drawn back to my experience as a kid, that first time riding a bike, and the freedom that came with it, discovering who I was, as a kid, and, you know, kicking out with my friends going out for six hours, I was in the 80s, where, you know, we didn’t wear helmets, and we, you know, our parents had come home when the street lights are on. But that emotional experience, looking back was a pretty profound threat in my life. And it certainly carried me into adulthood. And in terms of running bikes now. So I wanted to try to innovate around that first bike for kids, and really, you know, galvanize that experience for other people and give them a unique brand and product to be able to do that. And so, you know, we’re starting out with the kids balanced bike, which is, you know, how kids typically learn bikes now without training wheels, and there’s a whole fleet of other stuff down the line with helmets and other accessories. So it’s a bit more of a soul project, but also leaning into the experience that I’ve had with physical products brand on the retail side, as well as on the e-comm and Amazon side.

Josh Hadley 14:17

I love that I love that you’ve been able to kind of merge your passions right into your businesses as well. And that’s, you know, why you exited, you know, in the home goods, space, and now, you know, kind of playing in the space that you’re super passionate about. I think that’s what every entrepreneur like really aspires to do, you know, is trying to create something around something that they truly enjoy. But I’m interested to hear your perspective, Adam, after the exits that you’ve had, what are the strategies that you’re implementing in your brands right now, I know with radio, the balance bike, you’re just about to launch on to Amazon, right? You’ve already been selling this cycling accessories brand on Amazon for a while. So tell me about like what are some of the strategies that you’re implementing now you’ve seen the Amazon game change, and it will continue to change over time. So what is it that you’re actively working on? What do you see as the biggest levers that can make the biggest impact in those brands? Yeah.

Adam “Heist” Runquist 15:14

And I think it’s a good question. And it’s really important to be cognizant of the channel with which you’re, you’re deploying your products and understanding the dynamics that are shifting, I got into the game around 2019, with my own brand, so so a little bit before you, you certainly saw the early day Wild West of Amazon, but there was still a decent amount of that going on in 2019. It was, you know, the rebates, giveaways, you know, those kinds of funnels, you could kind of get away, frankly, with somewhat mediocre products, somewhat mediocre imagery. If you understood how to rank and those tactics and keyword stuff that could get you organic ranking, you could build up reviews, you’ve got your MO and you could kind of carry on about your business. I think the business is much less about those alley loops now, which is like, hey, what’s the latest thing that might last three, four months, and kind of hacking your way to organic ranking. What’s ultimately changed is I think the drive of COVID demand and the spike in e-commerce as well as physical retail getting retracted during COVID. It’s force a lot of larger players to get into the Amazon channel, they can’t ignore it anymore. And I think also that professionalization of the space is brought in more sophistication. And when I say sophistication, it’s not rocket science. But I would just say it’s a more professional approach to selling products, developing products, etc. I think the other dynamic at play here is is that you know, there was in terms of, you know, the organic first page of Amazon, there was, you know, maybe for sponsored ads, maybe a mass had ads, and then the rest was organic. Now, it’s significantly more taken up by ads, you’ve got editorial recommendations and other things that basically really, you know, unless you’re the top three or four spots on organic, you’re probably somewhere around the middle of the page. And so I think that’s forced a knowledge of pay per click, how to understand the organic versus paid, what’s driving rank, what’s profitable, what’s not, and being thoughtful about that. And then I think the final kind of leg that I think has changed, and not a lot of people like to talk about this, but it’s a certainly a big part of the business, which is the operational supply chain side of things. How do you do your demand planning? How are you shipping your products, which are warehousing strategy, you’ve now got to go to three Amazon DCS? How do you make that cost effective on trucks. And so for me, the main shift has been from these Alney, up three, four month hacks where operations were fairly simple, you can kind of get away with being 70%. Solid to you got to get back to Falciani. It’s not rocket science. But you’ve got to have thoughtfully developed products that are really differentiated, that have longevity, you’ve got to understand your customer, you’ve got to speak to your customer. With World Class imagery, you’ve got to speak your customer in your bullets, you’ve got to understand very pragmatically what keywords are driving rank and what are converting, you’ve got to really understand and dial in your pay per click strategy. So it’s much more back to basics, but the basics matter a lot more than they used to. So with that, I would say a lot of my focus now in radio is a good example, which is how do I develop a bike that’s different, that is hard to replicate? That takes a significant amount of technical skill to develop, you know, we’ve got utility patents and stuff in the line there for additional kind of emote. But more than that it’s understanding the customer, right? Who’s buying it? How do I develop my product? With that in mind? What are the images that I use to help them click on the listing and ultimately convert on it? What are the keywords that really matter? And frankly, getting out of the price game, I still think you know, Amazon’s probably always going to be a pre priced centric game. I mean, you see the top three to four products on on organic search, they’re probably not the best products, but they’ve probably been around for quite a while have reviews. And they’re frankly, just really thin margin, low price products. If you don’t want to play that game, and most can’t, and most frankly, it’s just an uninteresting game to play, you then got to understand, well, why would somebody buy my product? And that’s where I think that emotional experience that brand building, finding out ways to convert with a higher priced product may be around the middle of search, and how do you make the economics of that work? And kind of having that in mind. So So that’s been a shift. And then I certainly think given the paperclip complexities and how significant that is, as a cost to the overall business, I think most people’s product cost is probably the biggest 25-30% of their class, but right behind that is going to be you know, 15-ish percent on Amazon spend. So how do you do that efficiently? How do you do that effectively? And what are some cost arbitrage ways to get the clicks, views and conversions that don’t rely on Amazon and that’s really where the external traffic strategies and some influencer stuff comes in. So really putting my back into that a lot more in addition to companioning that with kind of efficient thoughtful Pay Per Click

Josh Hadley 19:42

Yeah, I think what you just talked about there you eloquently laid out everything well, in terms of like everything that an Amazon seller needs to be thinking about and I think that Long gone are the days of the quick win hacks that you can just ride the you know, wave for the next couple months and then be half in, look for something else. In the meantime, what you talked about those kind of that professionalization that has happened in the Amazon space. And I think that is the biggest like mindset shift that a lot of the Amazon sellers that are currently just like solo entrepreneurs right now kind of need to have is they’re going to be fighting up against teams and large corporations that have dedicated, you know, marketing agencies and, and PPC, you know, specialists that are laser focusing in on their PPC strategies. They’ve got creative teams, right, they have, like entire creative directors that are responsible for the way all of the images look on Amazon developing the a plus content, in addition to the storefront. So there’s so much to really like, focus on on Amazon. So my question to you, Adam, would be like, if you have a solo entrepreneur, right, and maybe a couple virtual assistants that are helping them? Where would you recommend that they start in terms of like, trying to professionalize their own brand?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 20:59

Yeah, I think there’s, there’s probably three different areas, I think the first is product development. And I think this is probably the one that’s least talked about, but going to become much more critical. Again, if you kind of feel rewind to three, five years, whatever your number is, you can basically white label product for the most part, now you might find a unique manufacturer or a product that’s not out there. But with very little tweaks, you could kind of take your your brand and aligns with that product, you know, do the box, do the insert card, do the the label on it, make it yours, and launch it on Amazon, I think that that strategy still works certainly in the in products that do less in revenue, because they’re little bit less competitive. But I think if you want to have longevity, and when I say longevity, if you want that product to be fairly defendable for two to five years, which is really where you’re going to need to be from a cash flow, kind of net contribution margin standpoint, you’ve got to be thoughtful about what’s actually different. And that doesn’t need to be again, rocket science, it could be subtle tweaks. But I think that you’ve got to make different enough products that align with who you’re trying to sell for, and really understanding when somebody types in those keywords that matter for that product category. And you look at what else is on there. How is the product that I’m developing, going to stand out? Why is somebody going to click on it, why is somebody ultimately going to buy it, especially if it’s, you know, slightly more higher price than what’s out there. And you’ve got to be more thoughtful in product development. So for me, you know, what, maybe used to take a couple months of, hey, I’m gonna find 15 different suppliers for this thing, I’m gonna order 15 samples, you know, within a month, I’ve got all those maybe tweak a couple things, get the box design, and then two months are ready to go to production. I think the product life cycle in terms of development is now probably more in that five to seven month range, where you’ve got to be a little bit more distinct about it, you might need to get some molds made, you might have three, four iterations of the product to get it right, you might have different material choices, you might layer in patent strategy to that. So I think pillar number one is, is focusing more of your thoughtful energy on product development. Because if you get that right, honestly, everything else is easier, you know, rankings easier, paper clicks easier. Conversion rates are easier, like if you get that right, it makes things substantially easier. So I think that should be the fundamental focus, again, with a very customer centric lens. When you’re developing that. I think the second thing is really listing optimization. And it’s a dynamic effort that occurs over time. Historically, I think it’s been an effective strategy to look at 50 100 200 keywords and really, you know, run really wide, I think the game for me has changed a lot more where there’s probably going to be five to 15 keywords that really matter. For most products that are really relevant, that are really going to convert that you’re really going to actually spend money on pay per click and that you’re really going to rank on. And so being thoughtful about understanding which ones to include which ones not to include how that changes over time, how you’re monitoring those keywords, what you’re doing to drive incremental benefit to them, how you’re backing in or backing off of pay per click spend on those. So I think like a very concentrated keyword strategy is important. On the listing, obviously, imagery is a big thing to making sure AB testing stuff. So I think pillar number two is just that listing, optimization activity. And then I think the third is is around traffic, right? Which is understanding what proportion of your sales are driven by organic and how can you get more of those? How much are you spending on pay per click? And where what’s the best way to put your back into pay per click when you need to take a step back? And then are though, are there those arbitrage opportunities where and this is where I think a lot of sellers can make a lot of benefit for their businesses, which is how do I not rely on organic? How do I not rely on on Pay Per Click distinctly? And what can I do to drive my own traffic that’s much more cost effective than what’s available on the Amazon platform. And that comes in the form of primarily, I would say Google ads is the biggest one but you’ve got YouTube ads in the mix now some other paid spend and then leveraging influencers and other strategies to kind of drive both the algorithm sales and organic rank using non traditional Amazon strategies.

Josh Hadley 24:47

Yeah, I love that. I love those kind of like three actionable takeaways you already laid out for people, right? You’ve got first that product research and development I think is so crucial and I love what you talked about. If you can crush it in your product r&d, right, it makes launching the product ranking the product, everything else. So much easier because you’ve got a unique and differentiated product. I think all too often way too many sellers are still going back to the courses that were pitched back in 2020 or 2015, early 2010, right. And it was all about like just kind of creating a me too product, right? Just find something that’s selling well, and put your own brand name on it, right. So I think like Long gone are those days, and you’re really fighting an uphill battle. If that’s kind of like the way you’re approaching your new product development. Right now, I want to dive into a little bit more of the nuts and bolts of these three strategies that you laid out for us, Adam, when it comes to product research and development, knowing that it is so important. Are there any like software tools or like strategies that you’ve seen, that you and your team have been able to implement to, you know, come out with something that’s genuinely unique? It allows you to file a utility patent or even a design patent and kind of make those moats bigger around your brand? Yeah,

Adam “Heist” Runquist 26:07

I think probably one of the more interesting ones. And this is, again, why when you focus on the customer, and if you are the customer, and you understand that niche pretty distinctively as a user of those products. I actually don’t start most of my product research on Amazon, you know, I’m not typically using software, I’m not on there looking at, hey, what else could it what’s frequently bought together a lot of those other strategies that that other folks use, and they’ll certainly work. There’s a lot of ways to displace this. But the strategy I like better is to basically think about okay, I’m getting I wanted to build a business around kids bikes. Okay, well, what are all the things that kids are going to need when they get into biking? Okay, well, they’re going to start out on a balanced bike, that’s what they’re going to start out on. Yeah, you know, about four years, or they might even start on A, if they’re one years old, they might start out on mandalas, four wheeler trikes, that’s really the starting point, then they get into a balanced bike, then they’re going to get into a small pedal bike, and then they’re going to graduate to another one in three, four years, they’re going to need helmets, they might need lights, they might need tassels, like for me, it just starts out with really reverse engineering, the customer experience on what products they need when they’re on their journey. And I did the same thing with my cycling brand, then I started to think, okay, let’s use balanced bikes as an example, is there anything I could do interesting, that could make a difference. So I haven’t even looked at Amazon at this point. Once I feel like I’ve got something a lot of this is pulling on threads, and some of them lead to nowhere, some of them lead to something interesting. And then they lead to nowhere. Some of them you keep on pulling the thread, you’re like, Okay, I think I’ve got something here, then I’ll go on Amazon. And I’ll think about, hey, what’s the keyword that someone’s going to type in? Again, it’s not super brand centric in terms of keywords unless you’ve got an omni channel brand, but what are the generic keywords that people are going to type in? And then what’s showing up on that page? And what you’re typically going to see is some form of I would say, 40 sellers typically, that are the the lowest price products that are going to be cascaded across that organic search. Okay, well, how am I going to make mine interesting it, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50% the cost of that, and would somebody actually be compelled to buy, and then you’re gonna run into another layer of products that is branded players that again, sell in Rei, that sell in all these other places, and Amazon has one of their channels, but they do pretty well because people trust the business and they’re willing to pay up for that. So I like that sweet spot in between those two, which is, I feel like I’m within range of those ones that are low cost providers, but I can use my brand, use my imagery, use those other things that matter from an emotional experience and a customer lens that can make them pay up. And that also has a feeling a vibe, even if they haven’t heard of my brand, which they likelihood having if they’re searching on Amazon that engenders trust that a bigger brand would, but you’re 20-30% less the cost of those bigger brands. So I love that sweet spot in between those two things. And then it’s just about running the math, right? Like, Hey, can actually make this thing work doing some some rough sample costs, from suppliers running the math on Hey, do I have enough margin here, given all the dynamics of Amazon to make this thing work? If it checks those boxes, then it’s about okay, well, how can I actually conceptualize this potential differentiation idea that I’ve got and bring that to life? So in the case of the balance bikes, you know, most of them are rigid bikes, they’re typically going to be kind of cheap aluminum. I don’t know about you, I don’t have kids, but I wouldn’t want to put my kid on a, you know, $50 bike from a brand. I don’t know if that’s called Jaguar or whatever the name of it is, like, I’m willing to pay up. Yeah, yeah. And, and I’ve heard of Strider bikes, which is, you know, one of the big players and that’s what most people buy. But that’s also a fairly boring design, even though I trust the brand and it’s 120 bucks. So for us, it was like, okay, we can do a design differentiation, we can use new material choices, we can make the colors unique, couldn’t make the thing look damn good. And engender trust from a brand that visually represents who I am as a consumer. So that’s kind of the thought process. So for me, I like to start off of Amazon just kind of reverse engineering, the customer purchase patterns, what they buy, seeing if I can differentiate then I’ll go to Amazon, see if I can make the math work. And sometimes you get shut down at that point just because — just there’s too many reviews or there’s too much going on that it’s hard to justify, or you don’t have the budget to justify going after that. And then really finding unique factories. Because the other one, we spend quite a bit of time now. And again, kind of focusing on a niche that you understand you build up a Rolodex and a playbook over time of finding those suppliers that are maybe off the beaten path a little bit that you can truly build a unique relationship with that you can get unique terms and build unique products.

Josh Hadley 30:25

And those are all really great insights. And I think just one thing to add on to that is, you know, you talked about having a Rolodex of manufacturers that you could reach out to, right, that’s something that’s built over time, right, and so maybe a product that you’re initially looking at, right, and maybe it leads to nowhere, first off, right, and maybe run up to a dead end, but you’ve reached out to a few factories, right? And, and you now have some contacts, right? You never know if those contacts or those experiences will actually come to play out in your benefit down the road. And so it all goes back to that, you know, we talked about like seeing failures, so to speak, as stepping stones to success. And I feel like for product research and development, I think that statement is even more true, because you should be experimenting with a lot you should be trying out a lot you should be serving, talking to customers and trying to get to the heart of really what you talked about Adam is like, how can you serve the customer better? Right? Like, at the end of the day business is very simple. If you just approach it from the frame, or from the mindset of look, I’m trying to serve somebody, right, don’t have that somebody in mind. And then whether it may be you go interview those type of people. And so yep, I love everything that you talked about, did you ever serve a you know, parents with young kids? Yeah,

Adam “Heist” Runquist 31:47

100%. So, you know, obviously a one to three year old kids not buying the bike unless they’re sophisticated and somehow know how to use a credit card at that age, which is highly unlikely. So it’s gonna be the parents, right? It’s gonna be the mom or the dad or the grandparents kind of gifting it to them. So and then we kind of started to understand who purchases and obviously, all three of those different segments buy bikes for kids, but it tends to actually be the mom, surprisingly enough that purchases the product. And most of the time, that doesn’t mean that a Dad’s not our grandparents not. So you got to have, you know, a wide enough net that catches their attention. But our focus in terms of understanding the pain points was moms. And so we had kind of a what we called a Lululemon mom avatar, which is somebody that’s, you know, in that 30 to 38 year old range that has a busy life still likes to be cool themselves probably takes their kids to the park follows a bunch of their moms on Instagram, there’s a bit of narcissism mixed in there, which is like, you know, their friends are looking and judging them. They’re looking and judging their friends. I mean, just getting into psychology, it’s real. But so we reached out and had a number of conversations with folks to say, hey, here’s the name of the brand. Here’s some logo options. We started there with brand identity. But then as we started to hone in on the product concept, I wanted to understand what are the psychological hot buttons to press to make them convert. And I think that that comes from either pain or pleasure, right? They either want an ego stroked, which again, gets into some human psychology, that’s not necessarily talked about, but it’s true. And where there’s pain points and fears, right. And so obviously, it’s covered, kind of starting off with the fears, people you know, that have a two year old kid want the bike to be safe. So you’ve got to engender trust, with the quality of the product that you’re making. But then there’s got to be like, you know, one of the things that, again, these are words that are coming from our customer avatar in those conversations where it’s like, you know, I take my three kids to the park and my youngest, I’m carrying their bike and they’ll ride it for five minutes. But then inevitably, they’re gonna get bored, they’re not going to ride the thing for two hours. So they end up holding, like taking it and when you got a stroller, and you’ve got two other kids and knapsacks, and whatever else, so we were like, Okay, that’s a hot button, right? Like carrying a bike. How do you make that more seamless? So we have the shoulder strap, we had it more compact that you can actually tuck it underneath the stroller, and really playing in that, like, you know, the the voice of the customer, like, you know, your kid’s not gonna ride this thing full time. What do you do next? So like those kind of hot buttons matter, right? And then really kind of tying into even though it’s ultimately the kid that’s riding the bike, we all had an emotional experience growing up, we can most of us remember the first time we rode a bike. And for most people, that’s the first time they felt freedom, independence, all those emotions that I described with my own experience. So how do you tap into that? And another fear that came out in our conversations was that people have to parent using screens, they don’t want to, but that’s the world that we live in. It’s kind of like a give a kid an iPad. And that distracts him for a little bit. I’m busy. I got my own stuff going on. Maybe I’m looking at my own phone. And so how do we change that dynamic such that kids want to go outside and ride their bike versus being on a screen, and then that is a healthier experience for the kid but it’s also a good thing for the ego of the parent. They feel like they’re raising their kids in a way that they were raised. And so again, this has nothing to do with bikes, right. This has to do with the human experience, the struggles that we have as human beings, the egos that we have the fears that we have the things that we want to do and be fulfilled as individuals and or in this case, parents, and so, so yeah, very much I think it’s important to psychologically understand who your customers are, why they make the decisions they make as human beings, and then how does that relate to their product purchasing decisions for what you’re actually building?

Josh Hadley 35:16

Yeah, I love that love how much time you spent with those customers, you obviously intimately know who that end user is right, you know, their fears, you know, their aspirations. So I love that you did that much research. And I think that’s what’s going to set you and your brand apart. So I hope our audience takes notes from that. So let’s dive into number two here, which is product optimization. You talked a lot about that. And I’m kind of curious from your experience, maybe with your current brand that you have as well, like, what are the tools that you’re using to a track keywords? Or how do you identify which are the five to 15 keywords that you really want to hone in on for PPC that, you know, give you the biggest return for your efforts? So how do you know kind of where to focus in terms of keyword optimization and PPC optimization?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 36:10

Yeah, so I think one of the strategies that we use, and luckily, you know, Amazon, had to to them, I know sometimes they can be our worst enemy and our best friend, but they’ve come up with a lot of really insightful data that has really made that easier and made it real for folks. But there’s frankly, not a ton of great software in terms of the incremental keyword tracking. I mean, there’s, there’s some feature sets out there, but I have yet to find one that truly captures what we want to do. So we we use a tool that I kind of basically gave a good buddy of mine, Brett Bercow, who’s amazing with Google Sheets. And he’s kind of a tech nerd and, and does a lot of the heavy lifting on making things simple, but within Google Sheets, and so we use a tool that kind of CO built with him called metrics. It’s me t Rix. It’s FBA. excel.io. ethic is the name of a site. But what we basically do is, is we’ve got a daily tracker, with all the metrics that matter from organic impressions, to clicks to conversions, same thing for pay per click. And then we typically take 20 of the keywords that we believe matter at any given time. And we basically track those on a daily basis. So we know how many impressions, how many sales, how much profit, what Pay Per Click was, and then we know the rank tracking on a daily basis across those 20 keywords. And I think that you do have to look at things in aggregate over a period of time. And I think daily is the best way to do that. And so, one distinct strategy is we track stuff every day. It’s not a simple way to do it, but we’ve made it I would call it semi automated. I like Google Sheets, too, because you can kind of chop some data up and do some more customizable things that software tends not to enable you to do. And then what we really do is like, you know, I don’t do that I don’t look at it daily, even though we track it daily, but I’ll typically go in, you know, I get daily and weekly reports on my business, in my email, too. And if I see something trending down, okay, it’s 20% down, and we, you know, this week versus the previous week or this week, same period last year, what’s going on there? Okay, well, impressions are down, or sessions are down, okay, well, why are sessions down? Or maybe sessions are the same or up but conversions down? Why is that and then that’s when those additional layers of looking at that keyword centric ranking data helps to kind of paint a picture to diagnose those things. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the keywords. Sometimes it’s you know, your competitor got a badge, or they priced differently, or you priced differently, or there was some seasonal spike that happened, etc. But what that the keyword tracking in aggregate over time enables you to do is paint the picture of where you’re gaining or losing ground. And what are the keywords that matter? Which ones do you want to defend? Which ones do you want to improve upon? Which ones are you actually comfortable letting go? And so we have basically monthly strategies on on keywords. So as an example, one of the things I like to do is, which is a little bit counterintuitive for a lot of folks. But if we’re actually doing well on a keyword, call it top three positions, I like to try back it off and just say, Okay, we’ve achieved this, we’ve been running steady state one, two or three spots for the last month, two months, whatever. And you can see that with daily tracking, what would happen if we didn’t spend money on that keyword on pay per click? Let’s just take a knee for three weeks and see what happens. Do I maintain that organic rank? Or do I lose it, sometimes you’ll lose it and you got to turn that back on. And back to the drawing board. Sometimes though, you’ll find hey, I can actually either shut off or significantly reduced Ben because I’ve got organic predisposition. And I can use that money either to bank and profits or I can use it to experiment with graduating other keywords. The other thing that we like to do is if a keyword is outside of those top five spots, especially if it was in top five previously, we’ll do like a for this month, we’re going to turn on Google ads, we’re gonna actually put our backs and beef up the budget on a single keyword campaign for that word, and check back in a month and see what happens with that keyword over time, and can I get it bumped back into that top five spot? And then I would say that there’s these these other keywords that emerge that either are new and your new brands are just ones that didn’t initially catch your purview maybe a year and a half ago when you started analyzing the product that you’re not paying attention to at all, and uncovering those hidden gems, those new keywords that you hadn’t thought of and how do you graduate those into the mix? And build those out? So for me, it starts with daily tracking. And then I think there’s distinct strategies based on how your rank for those specific keywords that you can implement to either optimize your profits and or optimize your organic rank. Yeah,

Josh Hadley 40:14

I think that’s fascinating. Tell me more, a little bit more. If you are outside the top five, right. Let’s say you previously were, you’ve started to slip. Tell me more about the strategies that you employ. You said you’ll light up your PPC exact match campaign. Right. And then you’re also turning on a Google ads campaign. I would assume that with Google ads, Amazon doesn’t see what keywords are coming from Google. Right. So it’s just more of a generic Google, you know, campaign, obviously, with multiple keywords. Is that correct? Are there any other things that you’re using to try to regain ranking when you’ve lost it?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 40:51

Yeah, it’s fairly simple. I mean, first of all, I guess even going back a step is how has that keyword optimized in your listing? And is it significant enough that you want to introduce that to a different layer of your listing, or maybe added if it doesn’t even exist? So maybe it’s in a bullet? What happens if I bump it to the title and again, this is where you’re going to look at ones that maybe I’m just not ever going to convert on this word, and you drop those off the title? There’s things like that that happened. But one might be Hey, where’s this keyword in my listing as it resides today? Can I bump it into what’s potentially more significantly, algorithmically beneficial spot? So that’s kind of step number one. Step number two is fairly simple, right? It’s like, okay, this is, you know, what we’re spending on the Cuba and I love single keyword campaigns. For the most part, I think one of the things with focusing on a more finite list of words, which I do believe is the new Amazon, that doesn’t mean that we don’t target a lot of other ones and have other strategies. But, you know, we’re typically running 15-20 campaigns that matter, so you’ve got a single campaign. And that gives you a lot of incremental benefit that you can play with top of search percentage, you can play with it or bids, you can play with your overall budget amount. I mean, it starts with budget, right? If I’m capital, the budget and the economics are clean, then just beef up the budget and spend more money you’re gonna get more impressions, more sales? Or maybe it’s a conversion issue. Well, why is it not converting? Well, with that word, can I do something with my image or my bullets that helps convert for that specific search term? And is it worth me editing my listing to do that? Maybe you play with price, there’s other things that you do at the keyword level. So some of that else comes into play. But really, it’s just coming down to changing your bids percentage of, of placement and or your overall budget. In terms of Google, there is an actually don’t I might misspeak here. But I believe that there are some threads that carry through from Google ads, we’ve started to use a tool by carbon six, for this called pixel me, that helps automate things sets up attribution on the back end, etc. And what we will do is we’ll actually set up single keyword campaigns on Google as well. And I believe that there is some data that carries through from Google ads to Amazon on that. So I believe that there actually is some benefit from that standpoint. But But that’s it, man. It’s fairly basic stuff it again, it’s not rocket science. But I think the biggest thing is, is most people aren’t paying attention at that level. They’re not paying attention to what’s slipping what’s not. And they’re not willing to AB test, and hey, this next Thursday, and we do this for all our products, right? Okay. So for this 30 day cycle, we’re going to do this with these three keywords in this with these three keywords. Okay, here’s where we are. Now, here’s where we’ve been Team, you guys go deploy it, I’m gonna check back in a month, we’re gonna review the analysis and see what happened. I think that experimentation, that curiosity that that tweaking, and these are subtle tweaks, they don’t take a lot of time, don’t take a lot of thought, but constantly tweaking, that’s where you make, you know, a 2% gain here, 3%, gain there, etc. But if you’re doing that every month, for every single product, you carry that out over an annual period, and you’ve got orders of magnitude more optimization than most people have their business. Yeah,

Josh Hadley 43:37

I love that. Well, it sounds like you definitely have a full team that helping you execute on these strategies. Tell me more about, you know, what your team looks like? Do you have kind of like a, maybe call it a brand manager or a product manager that is overseeing those daily metrics and coming up with those strategies, then? Yeah,

Adam “Heist” Runquist 43:56

again, this kind of goes back to a philosophical question. And I think that a lot of people chase growth for growth’s sake, and a lot of this is you go to and I felt that a lot my life, right? Okay, we should I’ve built a seven-figure business. Now I gotta build eight one. when people that do an eight figure, well, how do I get to 50 million and then it’s like, you’re kind of on this sedonic treadmill. And you got to step back and ask yourself why. And I’ve done a lot of soul searching on this, because why I got out of corporate was, I had seven-plus hours meetings a day, I had to drive 45 minutes to work to and from, I had, you know, at my peak, probably 40 employees and probably seven direct reports that I had one on ones with every single week. And while that was certainly fulfilling in one respect, because you get to see other people flourish and get fulfillment in their careers and there’s a lot of joy that comes with that leadership. I wasn’t happy doing that. And you know, I got into this because I wanted time freedom. I wanted to be able to ride my bike and ski and build businesses. I thought were cool, but there is a point where you got to ask yourself, how big do you want to get and why do you want to get that big? And so for me once my again, once my personal needs were met, I’m like, I would much rather have a smaller, simpler structure that makes me happy and makes me doing things that the majority of the time I want to do. And for me that complexity that additional employee base, I’ve seen in my life just derive less happiness as much as I’ve gotten fulfillment from the leadership side. So we’ve got a pretty simple team. I mean, I’ve got somebody that focuses more on the operation side, somebody that focuses more on the traffic side, I’ve got kind of a manager that helps oversee a lot of the day to day leadership and stuff. So I can kind of do more diving in and diving out, we’ve structured a lot of automations, with the data reports, and systems such that I can come in and see something in five minutes on a daily email, make decisions and off to the races versus having to dig into each component myself. And then we’ve basically strategically use a lot of vendors, that makes sense. So all of our creative stuff, we outsource, there’s a lot of other other things that we outsource as well. So I would say on the one the two main pillars of the business, that involve employees, one is going to be I was called traffic, which is people that are focused on their running that Daily Report On ranking. They’re running analysis on where our competitors are with keywords. So they’re really focused on what’s happening with our sessions, conversions traffic, they’re running all of our pay per click campaigns, they’re doing the external stuff, influence our strategy, all the reach out that we do across four or five different areas off of Amazon. And then I’ve got another pillar that’s much more ops driven, which is customer sorting with customer support, making sure that we’ve got mechanisms in that review management, we’ve got a lot of specific strategies on curtailing negative reviews and instigating new ones and metrics around that. The biggest one and operations, frankly, that a lot of people don’t pay a lot of attention to but there’s probably more money there than there isn’t pay per click, which is demand planning. So having really thoughtful demand planning processes, where’s my inventory? You want to have the right amount without burning cashflow. But you know, not, but not too much. Where you’ve got some issues going on. So really thoughtful about demand planning, where’s our product? When do I need to reorder? Where’s it warehouses? What’s the most efficient way to get it into different warehouses? So that ops piece is kind of another pillar. And then we basically supplement creative and a lot of those other things using vendors. And then where I step into the business is much more in terms of, I’m kind of the canary in the coal mine. So I’m looking at that data that we’ve constructed, that I see daily, weekly, monthly, and making decisions based on that I’m making decisions based on the bookkeeping, that gets done by third party. And that’s where I’m like, Okay, let’s try this. Let’s try this. I’m seeing this, why is this happening? I’m asking the questions. I’m probing, I’m instigating the tasks that we want to do, I’m instigating the projects, the activities. And then I’m also thinking more philosophically about product development and growth. And so that’s a lot around what are the new products, we’re gonna launch a lot of our strategies last couple years has been international expansion and or expansion and other channels. So I play that role. Number one, I enjoy that stuff. That’s where I actually it doesn’t feel like work to me. So I’m trying to work orchestrate my workflow such that I enjoy 90% of what I do. And then keeping the business and the team structure in terms of both systems and number of employees such that I’m good with this, you know, I’m making enough money, I’m able to travel in Europe for five weeks with looking at my computer, once every couple of days, I just got back from a month in Vancouver, I’m doing what I want to do as a human being and I’m getting fulfillment out of my business. And it’s generating enough money that my team is fulfilled and happy and making their lives enriched, I’m building something that I’m proud of, I’m able to share with others and help impart that wisdom like that, to me is the sweet spot. And like, I feel like when you focus on that fulfillment focus, the money comes a performance comes in or right size you for the things that you want in your life. And so, yeah, in a long winded way, that’s the team structure and kind of philosophy around our built businesses.

Josh Hadley 48:30

Now yeah, I absolutely love that. I love that you went back to like that philosophical questions like, Well, what do you want? Right? Do you want to try to build this next, you know, corporate behemoth, right, that we’re going to 100 million and, and more or is it like, like, I don’t need a that much money. And be I really don’t want to have to build out the team. Yeah, that would be required in order to get to, you know, that level. And so I think everything that you just shared, I think there’s a lot of golden nuggets in there. Adam, as we start to wrap things up, I want to touch on this last and final thing traffic. You’ve been talking a lot about, you know, some of the influencer partnerships or kind of like, creating a framework around how you can go and approach these influencers, to, you know, become brand ambassadors and things for you. So I’m interested to hear your thoughts in terms of like, what strategies are you implementing right now to reach out to influencers to get them on your team to become brand ambassadors and things like that. Tell me more about what you’ve been doing on the influencer space?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 49:35

Yeah, for sure. And I’ll kind of I’ll maybe caveat this with this is a playbook that I’ve yet to fully crack, especially on the more traditional influencer side of Instagram and Tiktok. So that’s the one that we’re really trying to get more sophistication around with radio, but there’s certainly some strategies there I can speak to as well as some other ones that we’ve definitely dabbled in over the years that are a little bit more off the beaten path. So I guess starting there, one of the things that I’ve liked do is, yes, Amazon is the largest product search engine in the world. Yes, that’s where most people start and finish their product purchasing decisions. But a lot of people still go to YouTube. And a lot of people go to Google. And so if you go in and you type in your product category into Google, undoubtedly, after you get through the the typical ads that you would typically see on Amazon, Google’s got those two, obviously, you’re gonna see top 10 balance bikes for kids, you’re gonna see all these articles from CNET, less known sites that have captured organic rank on Google for those search terms where people are actively making a purchase decision based on research. So a couple of years ago, I’m like, Well, how do we get into this? So one of the strategies that we deploy is, it depends on where the product is, in its lifecycle. If it’s a new product, certainly the first six months, we reach out to, you know, two to five of those a day. So we’ll reach out to these folks that have sites be like, hey, notice, you’ve got your top five balanced bikes for kids. Just wanted to let you know where this US-based brand, we’ve got 1,000 reviews on Amazon, my product obviously doesn’t yet. But if that’s the case, for years, we got 1000 reviews on Amazon, they converse, well, here’s where it ends, it’s one of the top performers, I noticed that you’re linking off to these other products, what is it going to take for us to get in the mix? And those are pretty easy conversations because you can help incent them with additional commissions that they don’t see because typically, they’re gonna get paid about two to 3% from amazon affiliate program, so you can beef up those commissions. What I love about that strategy on like, Instagram, all this like egos aren’t there, like, you know, your narcissistic and Instagram influencers, like well pay me $10,000 and all that. And like they’re much more demanding. These folks oftentimes don’t even need the product, right? They literally like okay, yeah, this is a cool product, I’m going to make more money from it, I’m going to plug you into one of those slots, we’ll see how it goes. So I think that active outreach for organic search results and lists is something that I don’t hear a lot of people do or talk about, that’s one of our things that we do. And literally, it’s just a numbers game, right? Yeah, having a discrete task list for someone in our team that on a daily basis is identifying and reaching out to those sites. The other one that I really, really like, is YouTube. So again, a lot of people are going to start their decisions on YouTube, how to teach a kid to ride a balanced bike, top bikes for kids, Strider bikes, whatever it is, you can, you can kind of get the idea. And again, once you pull on those threads, you’ll get a 30 other ideas that you can use. So we’ll basically reach out to those youtubers and one one avenue is getting your existing video they’re getting their existing video plugged in with so say they did a bike a video that has 30,000 views and gets 800 views a week, how do we get our link in there? And what can we do to incent that creator, the more likely approach though, is hey, we loved your video on this would love to see how we can work together to get a new one created. So those are typically pay to play. So you have to pay some amount of money there. And you’re gonna have to send free products. So that’s an element of it. But you got a couple of things, you got this evergreen source that may live on YouTube for six years, that’s going to steadily give you clicks and views. And those signals alone, even if somebody doesn’t buy are going to be beneficial for your listing. But ultimately people aren’t going to buy. And then you’ve also got content. So you can chop that up. You can use it in your ads on, on pay per click, you can use it in your listing, you can add those as videos and resources and Amazon posts, like you have this kind of 360 tangible assets. So I think YouTube is probably my favorite just because the evergreen component, you know, Instagram tick tock, you basically your flash in the pan for 24 hours, let be less than that. And you’ve got a similar cost structure, whereas YouTube doesn’t have that. So that’s one strategy. And again, if you go to the About page on these channels, and you go down to the bottom and go to view email addresses, you can basically see the email, that’s how we reach out to them. They limit you to I think five days so similar strategy can for these products for the net for the next three months, person next on the team, I want you to spend 20 minutes finding, identifying and emailing these folks, here’s the script and then they run that program for you, right. So those are what those are playbooks that we’ve instituted that are regular parts now the nuanced ways is this new form, which is more Instagram Tik Tok, which is more traditional influencers. And this is where I’ve been a little bit more thoughtful. Frankly, it’s not something that I really care about or love to think about. Although it’s a necessary evil, much like Amazon pay per click, I don’t really care about it. I’m not curious about it, but it’s something that you need to do. So one of the BBC gave a small amount of equity in this new business to somebody who knows that world well, they have kids inflatable tent business that has I think something like 100,000 followers on Instagram, their playbook exclusively to grow that business is to work with influencers. So I’m like, Hey, I’m gonna give up a piece of my business. Because I feel like there’s going to be a substantial magnitude of value for them to test their playbook as well as their existing Rolodex on this business that’s very relevant to what they do today. Plus, it’s something I don’t overall enjoy doing. So they’re executing so I think you might also look at a who’s somebody who knows influencer marketing, is there an actual influencer themselves, that I can be a bit more thoughtful and strategic about to bring them into the business. So that’s one of the things that we’ve done and instituted. Now the one that is to be determined is this playbook of regular outreach. What is the cost structure that makes sense? You know, free product, what’s the size of influencers. So we’re starting to see that play out, we’re starting to play a lot with and will with Tiktok spark ads. So if you find somebody that posts something on Tik Tok, you can actually get a little script of code and you can run your own ads on that actual video that has a link off to Amazon. So that’s one of the strategies and approaches. And then I think the final one again, kind of hat tip to my buddy Brett Bercow has built a lot of cool tools that we’ve integrated in our business. He’s got a site called I think it’s AMZ rolodex.io, I believe, but he’s basically scraped and analyzed the 8000, Amazon affiliate storefronts that exist on Amazon, these are people that actively promote products on Amazon, some of them do Amazon lives, etc. He’s got those spliced up by category. So we’ve also started to test that out, which is they’re posting stuff on Amazon, that video shows up on your feed your competitors feeds, and you get clicks on it, and you have additional content that you can chop up. So we’re starting to test that strategy out using kind of on site Amazon, storefronts and affiliates as well.

Josh Hadley 56:02

So man, I love that. Adam, this has been a wealth of information that you’ve shared, you’ve dug into a lot of different rabbit holes today. And I appreciate you, you know, really getting into the nuts and bolts of everything. And that’s kind of the purpose of the podcast right is sharing the actionable strategies. And so as we kind of wrap things up here today, Adam, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here’s the three takeaways that I noted. Adam, let me know if you think I’m missing something. Number one is going back to the list that you just shared, which is start first, with product development, your product research and development is your biggest lever that you can pull on Amazon. And so if you’re the CEO of the business, if you’re the founder like that is where you should spend the majority of your time thinking of and coming up with ways to better serve the audience that you’re targeting. Right. And so whether that is an influencer, mommy blogger, right type of Avatar, or whether it’s, you know, an older person, whoever your avatar is, get to know them get to know them. Well, Adam talked about the surveys that he had done. And you heard how well he knew his end user. That is how well you need to know your end user in order to have success on Amazon, and really just in general, in the e-commerce space for years to come. So that’s action. Number one, action item number two is getting into the basics of Amazon of listing optimization. And there’s a lot that goes into it. But how often are you AB testing your main image? Right? That is your greatest driver of click through rate on Amazon? How often are you actually testing your price, moving the price up to see if it can grow your profit moving the price down to see if you can grow profit by increasing the number of orders that you’re getting? And then in addition, like, what are your images look like? And what are your PPC strategies, and really, your PPC strategies need to layer in with all the optimization strategies that you were doing. And Adam talked about doing like one optimization per month, it’s like you, you work on one thing one month, see what happens with that lever that you just pulled, and then start creating that I guess your own Rolodex or library of tests that you’ve implemented. And you’re going to look back a year from now and be able to say, Oh, I’m finding a pattern when I changed the title or when I changed the main image, these things typically shoot my listing back up to the top. So that’s action item number two, actually implement those optimization tactics that you’ve heard a number of times. Final action item number three is driving external traffic. And this is I think, what is going to set apart the e-commerce, I guess, success stories. Five years from now, I think that Amazon is going to we’ve already seen that on page number one, 50 to 60% of the ad spots on page one are all ads, right? And so you’ve only got maybe 40% of the page for organic listings. So who’s going to win on Amazon and e-commerce in general, in the long term. It’s those people that know how to build an audience and create a raving fan base. And that can then direct that traffic to your listings, whether you’re trying to offer it on Shopify, or Walmart or Amazon, if you can gather the eyeballs and then direct that traffic. That is what’s going to set you apart in the future. Adam, is there anything else that you think I missed that we shouldn’t give as a takeaway from this podcast?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 59:38

No, man, I think you honed it in while I do a lot of talking and not a lot of thinking so I’m glad that you’re taking notes and remembering all this that we talked about. But yeah, it was fun combo, man. Great, great job leading.

Josh Hadley 59:49

Awesome. Well, I’ve got a page full of notes. That’s for darn sure. Now, Adam, I like to ask each guest the three following questions to wrap things up here. So question number one and I didn’t prepare you with these. So here we go off the cuff. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:00:07

That’s interesting. And maybe this is a bit of recency bias, because it’s one that had a really big impact on me this year. It’s a book by Michael Singer called The Untethered Soul. Again, as I’ve gotten a lot more into philosophically, better understanding my life. And businesses is really a spiritual vehicle. It’s a self discovery vehicle as much as it is a business thing. And I’ve come to learn it and understand that and how do I approach my life across all facets, including business that matter. And so Untethered Soul is just really good at it basically helps you realize that you’re probably not the person you think you are. So, you know, yeah, my name is Adam, I grew up in Canada, moved to Texas, was in corporate, did acquisitions, that led me to physical products. Now I do YouTube, you know, I mountain bike, all those, those are things I do, they’re not who I am as a human being. Also, the thoughts that you have on a daily basis, you know, we’ve all got this voice in our head, oftentimes, replaying a similar script over and over and over. Oftentimes, it’s not a kind voice. That’s not who you are either. So like, more deeply, peeling those layers back to understand who you really are, what you care about what matters to you. So Untethered Soul has been one of the most profound impacts in terms of a book and helping me understand who I am and what I care about.

Josh Hadley 1:01:15

I love that getting down to the root of like, Do you know who you truly are deep down inside? I think that’s an important thing that everybody needs to do some soul searching on. Question number two, for you, Adam, what has been your favorite maybe new productivity tool or software tool that you’ve been using, or maybe recently discovered, that you think is going to be a game changer? Yeah, I’ve

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:01:37

played a lot with this, in terms of trying to optimize my life, and frankly, build some discipline into my life. I think that’s one of the things that can kind of, you know, when you’re your own boss, you call your own shots, you can also get lazy and undisciplined. And I’ve certainly had to kind of rein that in over the years. But the biggest thing that seems to work really well, and it’s not software, and it’s, it’s not any kind of tech based thing, but it’s just a new philosophy that I hold myself to, which is the three things. So I’ve made a deal with myself, and you’ve got to make this deal with yourself. Because you’re the one that’s ultimately gonna hold you accountable, not some software reminder, which is, I need to do three things in my businesses every single day, that are high leverage in that matter, that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to check an email, I’m not going to sign an invoice like all the other stuff that you got to kind of keep the ship running, those things need to happen too. But if I do three things that matter right now my business that are highly leveraged, and that that one thing is going to have a cascade of benefits either for my team and or for my business for weeks, months, years to come by two, three of those in a year that’s, you know, north of 1000 things that moves mountains. So for me, it’s like every day, I made a commitment to myself that I don’t have a timer on it. I don’t have a thing on my Google Calendar, I don’t have a timer that reminds me, I don’t have an app checklist. It’s just like the morning I sit down and think about what are the three things that would really matter today. And I make sure that I do those by the end of the by the time I go to sleep, and then I do that the next day do that the next day. It’s tangible. It’s not overwhelming, because most people can do three things. And it’s simple to and it doesn’t have the same constraints of like, Oh, I gotta do this by 9 a.m. And I’m doing this by 10 a.m. So yeah, the three things that’s been the biggest, biggest benefit productivity wise for me. Yeah,

Josh Hadley 1:03:14

I think it’s simple, yet so powerful. I think so many people can get caught up and just like, well, I cleared out my email inbox today. Right? And it’s like, Well, did you actually move the needle? Yeah, I’m curious. Adam, like, just off the top of your head? Do you have any ideas as to like, typically, what do you find those top three, you know, value lever, like tasks being in your business? Is it making phone calls? Or is it like creating partnerships? What do you typically end up seeing those three become each day? Yeah,

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:03:43

I think like the first of all, I’ve tried to share the things I don’t enjoy doing, even though that those may be important. I think that again, I think doing stuff that for the most part you care about and that you that feel good and that you’re excited to do, it’s a lot easier to do those things. And if you match that, with them being highly productive, and being high leverage that matters. So I’ve, I’ve had to construct that as a starting point. I think that the one of the things that I’ll do is is I’ll look at the URL, analyze the business on where it’s at, whether it’s that day, that week, that month, and I’ll just think about what what do we want to test and do this month and kind of combing through the data, having that intellectual curiosity to follow those threads, and be like, Okay, I think that this might be something that’s interesting. And I’ll develop a concept around that, and then maybe pass on the team or execute on myself. So I think that’s one starting point. I think the other one is around the sessions and conversion of the business, you know, if you can impact a conversion rate, let’s say your conversion rate is 18%. And you get it to 20%. So that’s a 2%. Uplift, you run that math out over the number of sessions that you get over a year, that 2% left could be worth $90,000, which if you sell your business times for x, you do the math on that pretty quick. It’s a pretty substantial thing. So a lot of my thought now is around conversion rate and how do I really optimize for that and make sure that listen to Optimus is probably another area that tends to gravitate towards the top. And then the other thing is, is frankly, non Amazon specific. It’s what I’m doing with YouTube. It’s what I’m doing with the course business, affiliate stuff, there’s other other business projects outside of the Amazon sphere that I’m involved in and really care about and get fulfillment out of. So I just think about, hey, what do I want to know? Where’s my intellectual curiosity taking me? What’s a task that can really amplify that? And so I’ll usually have like a non-Amazon component. That’s one of the top three.

Josh Hadley 1:05:28

Love that. Thanks, thanks for letting me probe down a little bit, learn a little bit more about the way you think. Alright, Adam, last question here, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that you would recommend other sellers should be following? And why?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:05:43

Yeah, that’s a good question. And frankly, I’ve tried to manage my attention a lot more effectively. So I’ve done a little bit less of that than I would have maybe two years ago. But I’m actually got a ton of value from LinkedIn, honestly, like I’ve kind of lessened my focus on YouTube, in terms of Amazon e-comm specific stuff, just because there was quite a bit of noise there. But there tends to be some pretty profound, especially technical elements that are deployed on LinkedIn, a guy I love, just because he’s just crazy smart. And really thoughtful is John Derkits. Worked at Amazon and worked at an aggregator now builds in his own businesses just really, really thoughtful, intellectual, insightful stuff. I would say I’ll throw a couple of more in just because I know you asked for one but a couple that have impacted me is Joe Shelerud from Ad Advanced. Just the amount of data info he shares on Pay Per Click strategies is just awesome. So follow him. And then Mansour Noruzi is already is another guy that really keeps a pulse on all the Amazon tools, you know, the search query reports, how do you use it? How do you leverage those things that Amazon is coming out with? Seeing a ton of nuggets from seeing a ton of nuggets from him, so I throw those three on the mix. And don’t sleep on LinkedIn? Because there’s a lot of value being dropped there.

Josh Hadley 1:06:49

That’s awesome. Adam, thank you so much for your time today before we depart. Where can people follow you and learn more about you?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:06:57

Yeah, again, my pseudonym on YouTube, I deployed my YouTube channel while still in corporate so I was like, I don’t want to use my real name necessarily, but you can search Adam Heist on YouTube, you’ll find me there. Usually dropped a video a week ranging from interviews like this to deep dive masterclasses strategic stuff to just thoughts of the day. And then if you want to connect with me personally, send me a message etc. Just Adam Runquist on LinkedIn. You’ll find me there.

Josh Hadley 1:07:22

Awesome. Adam, thanks so much for your time is pleasure having you on the show?

Adam “Heist” Runquist 1:07:26

Dude, it was a pleasure.

Outro 1:07:29

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