Norm Lanier 5:48

Yeah, so I don’t think it hurts to ever have another set of eyes from someone that is, you know, in the same marketplace and, and understands your business, right? Because it’s one thing to talk to a CPA or a bookkeeper or someone about your business and stuff, but they only understand it from the numbers side of things, right? And so they really don’t understand what what levers do you have at your disposal that you can pull. And so in the conversation going back and forth between us, over the last couple of hours, we really dug into the business and and broke things down. And I really took away some, some key points to start focusing on. You know, just talking about advertising, I’m not spending enough on advertising, that was something that came out of this meeting. This, like, you know, there’s a lot of headroom there where we could be spending more on advertising to drive more bottom line growth. And that’s probably the biggest lever that, you know, came out of the conversation. But I haven’t gotten that insight from anybody else. And I’m certainly not going to get it from a bookkeeper or CPA. So this has been really super valuable digging into the business and going under the hood, from someone that lives in the same world that I do and and understands the language and the things that that really can make an impact on the business.

Josh Hadley 7:22

Yeah. And I think that’s a great summary, Norm. One, one thing that you had mentioned at the beginning of the call, you know, if we could wave a magic wand, what would you like to see improved? Right, in your business? Well, that would be the profitability. Sure. Right. You had mentioned that, you know, you had seen over the last couple of years since COVID, you’d seen some pullback in consumer spending, you’ve been struggling with that that profit margin and being able to grow it and maintain it and, and identifying like, what are the levers that actually impact that bottom line? Now with you have over 7000 different skews? So you’ve got a lot to handle, right? This isn’t just like, so I’ve got five skews. Here’s where we’re at like this is this, there’s a lot that you could dig into. One of the things that we talked about is that taxonomy of value. And we talked about focusing on the levers that can provide the outsized returns, compared to everything else, I want you to kind of reiterate, you know, maybe to our audience, what that means, what your takeaways were, as it relates to the levers that you have to pull in your business. And, you know, do we spend time on all 7000? Or how do we determine where we’re going to spend our time because we have a limited amount of time, my team has a limited amount of time, what’s their, what do I do in order to actually impact the business? Yeah, and

Norm Lanier 8:51

one of the big things also was in this was a great insight, because my business has always been, I’ve never gone after huge products that had a huge amount of competition. It was always the, as we refer to them as the bong hit, to get to first base sort of thing, right? And you don’t have to make a huge amount of money on each product when you’ve got 7000 skews, right. But that being said, I’ve been in this business long enough to that, you know, that attitude is probably preventing me from reaching the full potential just because at this point, it takes as much time and effort and resources for my employees and myself to launch a product that is not only going to sell a couple of units a day, and instead where I should be focusing is really drilling down and putting more effort into looking at each product or each product idea. And which ones could be that you know, double, triple A home run, sort of sort of product. Because again, it each one of these products that we add, adds another layer to the business of complication. And so at this point in time, it’s probably I need to shift my mentality from easy base heads to things that are really going to move the needle much more than what I’ve been focusing on.

Josh Hadley 10:24

Yeah, normally summarize that perfectly. I think that’s a big mindset shift that a lot of entrepreneurs need to have, in order to shift and go from seven figures to eight figures and beyond. Because, you know, the saying is, what got you here is not going to get you there. Right. And with our business, it’s been that way, we started our business by finding very niche opportunities, where it was only maybe two or three sales a day, right, lots of bump hits, we’re flying under the radar, there’s no Blackhat competition, there’s not a whole lot of competition in general, right now, you know, fast forward that that originally built a $5 million business that was like, Alright, hey, look at this. But then when we wanted to say, hey, how do we go from seven to eight figures that we then had to identify, hey, look, how many product opportunities are ahead of us? We can’t do all of them. We have a fixed amount of time and resources. So why don’t we start focusing on the ones that actually can provide an outsized return? What if we could find products that are doing 20 to 50? To 100? sales a day? What could that do, because it’s the same amount of time to do keyword research, it’s the same amount of time to do the product copy the same amount of time to do PPC management for something big as it is, relatively speaking for something that small. And then you also talked about here, Norm, is the complexity with your supply chain. So why don’t you tell our audience why that that is more complicated in your aspect, because you’re running a warehouse, you’re running, running a manufacturing plant, all at the same time. So talk to me why, you know, that adds complication to your business?

Norm Lanier 12:13

Well, since we are manufacturing everything, if we’re doing really small quantity, so obviously, we’re in the printing business and, and so we’re printing on various materials. But it comes down to how you know, it’s quicker to print 100 of something of one thing, then, you know, two things of 50 different items at once, right? As far as shipping in and creating labels, and packaging, and all of that, because we do all of that internally. And that makes us kind of unique, from a lot of you know, Amazon and e-comm sellers, and that we are manufacturer, so being able to concentrate on a few items that we can crank out a huge quantity for, it’s obviously more efficient. And it gives us the potential also to drive costs down and buying in bigger volumes and things like that, also.

Josh Hadley 13:14

Yeah, I mean, that’s a that’s a great takeaway. And what I think our listeners and every business owner just needs to take away in general, is sometimes when when your backs up against the wall, and you want to figure out, maybe your business has become a little more complicated than it needs to be a really good thing that you could do is just take a step back and identify what’s the 20 and 80% rule in my business, what skews or what type of products are actually, you know, in the 20%, that are driving 80% of my revenue, right? Because you could probably remove those 80% of the Year skews that are only generating 20% of your revenue. And you probably wouldn’t notice a big difference. In fact, it would probably free up your team’s time frees up your time and mental, you know, capacity of, of added stress to feel more free and nimble as a business. And you see it as a learning step. You don’t see it as a failure of like, Oh, now I’ve I’ve got to kill all these skews. It’s like yeah, you are. But you’re doing that in order to free yourself up. Because now you’ve basically done all these bumps, you’ve been able to test out the waters. That’s the beauty of having 7000 skews. You’ve tested out the waters so many times Norm that you can take a step back, and you can easily identify. This is where I win. And this is where I repeatedly win. So I’m going to continue to double down in these areas and it will make your business a more simple, which is honestly more appealing to somebody that’s going to acquire you right? But then number two as a business owner, imagine the the you know, freedom and the lack of stress that you’re able to explore against when you just get really good at doing something instead of being a jack of all trades, master of none, so to speak. Yeah, Norm. I know I’m preaching to the choir here for yourself, because you’ve been around the block for a long time you’ve been in E commerce, you’ve been on Amazon even longer than I have. I would love for you, Norm, to maybe share your insights with the audience. Other seven figure sellers that want to get to eight figures and beyond? Why don’t you kind of just dispel some of the myths that you’ve, you’ve tried and you’ve tested in your own business that has still kind of left you where you are today still lacking and kind of wanting more in your business just to help them maybe avoid those same obstacles and stumbling blocks?

Norm Lanier 15:47

Well, the first thing that comes to mind there is is focusing on what brought you to the dance, right, because I was involved with a group with you know, we lean started leaning in real heavily into Shopify. And it was working to a degree up until the point where the iOS change came in privacy, things that Apple implemented, which took Facebook advertising, really into the toilet. And we tried to, you know, we worked with our agency for a long time on that, trying to write that that ship, and it finally just came to the point where I’m not making any money, why am I doing this and putting all this effort, and so forth into it, and we weren’t going small on it, we were going big. And he had put a huge amount of time and effort. And it took away resources and focus, right? It’s, you know, you don’t know until you try, but it was one of those things that we kind of fell into, there’s been so much talked about, you know, the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket and so forth. And you know, diversity is not a bad thing. We have other channels that we do well on. But we certainly got distracted for a couple of years, I would say, with with trying to make that work. And anybody that is, you know, doing well on Amazon, and has this idea of of going, you know, diving into the deep end of of trying to set up their own store and so forth on Shopify, I would I would recommend some caution on that. Because it’s easy to set up a store. getting traffic to it, though, is a whole new ballgame. And that’s one of the things you lose focus on being on Amazon because Amazon has all the buyers coming to them looking for the products that you’re selling. Once you’re out on your own little island shop by Island, trying to get any kind of visitors to come to your site is expensive. And that’s one of the things that people would push off on really downplay is how difficult that is. marketplaces exist for a reason, because they have eyeballs. Right? And yeah, it’s not cheap. But when you start having to actually spend four, to acquire customers, you understand that what you’re getting with these marketplaces a lot of times is a real value when it compares to trying to do it on your own.

Josh Hadley 18:21

Yeah, it’s so true. And Norm, I shared with you that was honestly one of our biggest mistakes, right? Everybody kept preaching like diversify, diversify yourself, what if Amazon suspend you one day? Well, and norm I think you’ve actually even experienced that, like you tell us like, what’s your experience with Amazon suspensions? Like, you still have an Amazon business today? So obviously, you’ve made it through the Why don’t you maybe rest some of our fears aside, if you wouldn’t mind sharing that? Yeah, that’s

Norm Lanier 18:49

the funny thing. I’m in a large group with a lot of really high end Amazon sellers, million dollar group. And I put out the question one time, it’s like, does anybody actually know someone that was suspended that didn’t actually ever be able to get back on Amazon? And almost nobody said yes. And the few people that did say yes, were that these people were just literally just scamming people. It was, it was just so Blackhat It wasn’t even funny. So I getting suspended on Amazon. Yes, it exists. Yes, it’s frustrating and nerve racking, and all of those sorts of things. And I’ve gone way out of my way to make sure that that doesn’t happen anymore. So I sleep a lot better at night than I used to. But it’s not a reason to abandon Amazon or really take your focus off of that, in my opinion. I just don’t see that there is a good alternative to Amazon, where you should be putting more attention. I mean, there are marketplaces we sell on Etsy and we do well there. Were on Walmart almost not exist. You’re on eBay almost non existent. So you have to pick and choose where to put your focus. And we don’t put any focus on Walmart, it’s there, we have products there, and they sell, and we ship them out. But we don’t put any effort into dry trying to drive additional sales there, just because our time is so much better spent focusing on Amazon, optimizing, right. So that’s been why the last year, it’s like, that’s what we’ve been digging into deep is just optimizing everything. Our listings are key words, our back end operations, where we’re spending our money, you know, all of those sorts of things. Because the competition’s not going to become less, let’s hope the economy becomes a little bit better down the road. And so sales go up in that area. But realistically, things aren’t going to get any easier going forward. So the only way to survive in any kind of long term business is just getting really good and efficient at what you’re doing, and figuring out where to spend your time to move the Levers as much as possible in your favor.

Josh Hadley 21:04

Yeah, I love that Norm. And I think you kind of summarized everything really well there. And that’s what I love to do at the end of each of the regular episodes. But I’ll do that even for this episode. What are kind of the three takeaways and action items that you are going to be doing in your business based on this audit that we’ve done? Number one, I think we’ve shared a lot of insight into identifying the levers that actually make an impact in your business. And so for our listeners, what what do I mean, when we talk about levers, imagine all the things that you could focus on in your business, right? You could focus on driving external traffic, you could create a blog, you could invest time into, you know, social media content, you could invest time into Shopify, the list goes on and on and on. So how do you identify where do I spend my time, we talked about this norm in your annual planning, you kind of need to do your own analysis, and create your own hypothesis, right? Going back to science back in elementary school, create a hypothesis, right? If I do XYZ, I believe it could provide me with this return. And then if you go down all of those action items, or ideas, at least, that will start to help you prioritize what is going to make a bigger impact in your business, whether that hypothesis comes to fruition or not go in with an educated guess. So that’s action item number one, action item number two, is overall simplifying your business by focusing on the 20% of those products that are generating 80% of your sales and normally talked about all the effort that he’s done. Getting to this point, which is great, and understanding his numbers better understanding which products are moving the needle, we had a brief conversation where you even said, maybe I don’t need this other, you know, product side of my business, because the margins are low. And actually, most of my overhead and employee costs is associated with with those products. Imagine if those aren’t included in my top 20% of products that are generating 80% of the revenue. Imagine what that could do to simplify the business, right? So for our listeners, apply that to your own business, what’s the 2080 rule in your own business. And last but not least, we talked about the opportunity for PPC spend in Norm’s accounts specifically, he’s got a relatively low tacos percentage in the single digits right now. And if he were to I, I didn’t just tell him, hey, just go spend money just to spend money, but to spend money focusing on those 20% products, right, that are producing the 80% of revenue. And before you dive into that PPC, I said one key thing, that’s kind of a prerequisite norm before you just start spending money on PPC or doubling down on it, what do you have to do first and get really good at

Norm Lanier 24:07

it, you got to figure out exactly what the keywords are that are gonna move the needle?

Josh Hadley 24:11

Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve got a whole strategy that I’m sharing with Norm that walks through, how do you categorize those all the keywords, we’re talking about 1000s of keywords into four different buckets and categories of keywords, shops, and my shop, browse, browse specific, and the specific advertising strategies you should have for each of those keywords. That’s where he’s going to be able to provide an outsized return on his business with a minimal amount of investment of his time. So there’s kind of our summary norm. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience about how this audit went? Was it worth your time? To wrap things up here?

Norm Lanier 24:53

Yes, definitely worth my time. I appreciate everything that you digging into my business. So as we talked about earlier, I think it’s, it’s really good to have another set of eyes, look at your business, right, because you see it one way, it’s good to see someone that has the same knowledge base to be able to come in and say, here’s, here’s where some opportunities are to either add to or eliminate, you know, from your business. So having someone that can can do that. That’s knowledgeable because, as I mentioned, the having a CPA or bookkeeper looking at your numbers is really going to provide very little insight on how to change the business to improve it. And so in you, they’ve just been incredibly generous in the information that you’ve provided. And so I certainly appreciate your time, in helping me to gain better insight into my own business

Josh Hadley 25:52

world Norm. I’m excited and honored to have this privilege to have worked with you over the last few hours. And I look forward to maybe we do another podcast episode A year after right that’s like, All right, what’s happened in your business. And then hopefully, to see the progress that you’ve been able to make there. So hopefully, there will be a part two coming down the road. But Norm, thank you so much for your time. And for our listeners, those of you who are interested in having a similar experience like Norm has had where you’ve got a third party’s you know, set of eyes that want to come and provide you with insight of things that are going well and seem to be going well in your business and maybe some areas of weakness from another seller that’s hopefully been there and done that, my my job and the whole reason why I like doing these is to hopefully help other sellers like Norm be able to navigate around many of those obstacles and stumbling blocks that I ran into help him leapfrog over those and to crush his business and to continue to expand into that eight figure range. So Norm thanks again for your time.

Norm Lanier 27:03

Yeah, appreciate your time. Thanks a lot, Josh.

Outro 27:06

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