Grant Martin, TorkStrap’s president, understands the importance of safe and reliable cargo transport. In fact, his motivation to create TorkStrap came after a minor incident involving a bungee cord that went through his father’s hand. From that moment on, Martin made it his mission to develop a safer, faster, and more simplistic solution for cargo transport and he created his own retail website proving there’s substantial revenue to be gained outside of Amazon.

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

 In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Grant Martin, founder of TorkStrap, a company known for its patented strap device enhancing safety and efficiency in load securing. Grant shares his entrepreneurial journey, including the inspiration behind his product, challenges faced on platforms like Amazon and Shopify, and strategies for growth. Key topics include cash flow management, leveraging credit cards for extended payment terms, and effective marketing through video content. The episode provides actionable insights for scaling e-commerce businesses, emphasizing innovation, financial management, and strategic marketing.

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

1. Master Inventory and Cash Flow Management: Regularly monitor inventory levels and manage cash flow strategically by using credit cards or extended payment terms to avoid stockouts and stabilize finances. For instance, consider using tools like the Amex Plum Card to extend payment cycles and align expenses with revenue inflows.

2. Adapt and Leverage Platform-Specific Strategies: Understand and adapt to the requirements of each sales platform, like Amazon and Shopify, to optimize visibility and balance revenue streams. Knowing Amazon’s fee structures and competitive environment, for example, can help you manage inventory effectively and keep fees in check.

3. Invest in Customer-Centric Marketing and Pricing: Develop engaging, data-driven ad content that resonates with your target audience, and experiment with pricing to maximize profits for reinvestment. Additionally, focus on owning the customer experience through your website by offering incentives and superior service to drive loyalty and repeat purchases.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

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

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

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

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin Keene, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Stephen Pope from My Amazon Guide. Today, I am speaking with Grant Martin, the founder of TorkStrap, a patented strap device, and we are going to be talking about the strategy audit that we just conducted with him. We’re going to be talking about things like cash flow, negotiating with suppliers, talking about his strategy to generate 50% of his sales through Shopify, and then the other 50% on Amazon. He has built up a successful business, and we’re going to be diving into his business itself. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure e-commerce companies to eight figures and beyond. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth.

Josh Hadley 00:00:48  So if you or someone you know is ready to scale, looking for an investment partner or looking for consulting, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s e-comm with two M’s. And then let’s turn your dreams into reality. So we want to welcome Grant onto the show here. Grant, thanks for joining me here today. Thank you for having me.

Grant Martin 00:01:04  I am so excited to unpack the knowledge bombs you just dropped on me. You blew my mind over and over again. Thank you. Josh.

Josh Hadley 00:01:10  Well, thank thank you for reaching out. So, Grant, why don’t we maybe start with kind of your brand story? You’ve got a patented product, and you’ve built out a series of products for your brand TorkStrap. So why don’t you give everybody a lay of the land of your brand and what got you to where you are today?

Grant Martin 00:01:23  Yeah, thanks. The quick and dirty story of the product is I worked construction with my father as a young man, and my father hated ratchet straps.

Grant Martin 00:01:31  And he. All he would use is bungee cords. And these things are dangerous. They break windows, they go flying all over the place, and ratchet straps are confusing. So one day I saw a bungee cord come loose and the metal hook lodged into my dad’s hand. And my dad was rough and tough. Whatever construction Midwest, he pulled it out and kept on working. But something didn’t sit right with me that day, right? And it was like the enough is enough moment. And I’m a 17 year old kid and I have this idea, so I start prototyping it in a couple of days, go by and I’m showing dad and he’s really it’s really cool, really cool. And I’m like, yeah, it’s cool. Right? And then you just move on with life because you’re 17. What do you do with this information? You call yourself an adventure, Pat yourself on the back and you think, oh, I could slap a patent on that and get rich, but I’m going to go chase jobs and girlfriends and all that good stuff.

Grant Martin 00:02:13  Well, fast forward to, after a dozen years of working construction, Covid hits us all, and I find myself a new father who has to be out in the field ten, 12 hours a day while all these other adults my age are now working from home. And I realize that’s not an option, then I kind of start looking at the value of my time and how I make income and my trade off for time for money. And I realize I need some sort of vehicle to make income more efficiently. I start a YouTube channel about lawn care because like, you don’t know what to do. You just start something. You think maybe money will come out of this one day? quickly. I was flush with like 50 subscribers. Five zero. Right. And I thought, oh, how do I monetize this? And then you’re looking into t shirts and hats and all these kitschy products, none of it really providing any value to anyone. You don’t have enough brand enough clout to turn a profit.

Grant Martin 00:02:58  And that’s when I realized to be a successful e-commerce seller, to make money at any venture, it’s all backed by product, and it has to be a unique product in order to be able to make a margin on it. You can’t go to Walmart and buy a candy bar for $2, then turn around and sell it for 225. There’s no margin in it because you did no work. So that’s when I went into the little notebook that we all have of invention ideas in our in our phone, and I thought which of these is most feasible? And of course, this strap idea came up. Now I started prototyping and making iterations. And then fast forward through a lot of blood, sweat and tears. We’re now three and a half, four years later, and I’m happy to say we’re breaking $1 million in sales a year via Shopify and Amazon and a little bit of wholesale. So that’s where we were, and that’s where I’m at now.

Josh Hadley 00:03:40  I love that, and I think that’s such a fantastic journey.

Josh Hadley 00:03:42  And I love the fact that you have a patented product. And because of that, I think like you have unlimited potential with this brand. There’s a lot of listeners and even myself included, that I don’t have patented products and so many people like desire that. So kudos to you and your kind of creativity, ingenuity, coming up with that and figuring out a way to solve people’s problems. And it seems like there’s definitely a market for your product. how long have you been on Amazon and Shopify?

Grant Martin 00:04:07  Right. So I got on Amazon as soon as I could. This is probably back in 2021. And at this point I’m experimenting with like sending one master carton or six units, maybe 12 units to Amazon FBA and then sitting at home, you know, like a doofus watching my Amazon account. When, when is the inventory going to get populated and how fast is it going to sell? And then you sit there and watch it sell and you go, oh, I should send some more. And this pretty much defines the first year of my Amazon journey.

Grant Martin 00:04:29  Is this bumper cars, right. Get inventory and watch it sell out and try to get it back in again. Never being stocked, not having a best seller, even a good seller ranking of any sort. so that’s where Amazon started. And it’s always kind of been the backbone of our sales. But also I’ve sold 50% or tried aim to sell 50% on Shopify in my own store. What you helped me realize was I’m not heavy enough into Amazon. And I guess the reason I was withholding was because of this idea that Amazon is the puppet master and we’re the puppets and all the fees that we face. However, there are ways to, leverage things like you taught me about today, different pricing models specifically for Amazon to balance yourself out. To answer your question, I’ve been on and off of Amazon since 2021, and I still have a tumultuous relationship with them.

Josh Hadley 00:05:14  I think, well, I think everybody does. Right. And this is you know, we’ve I’ve recorded a lot of podcast episodes already this year that have already talked about, you know, hey, Amazon fees are increasing.

Josh Hadley 00:05:24  And guess what? They’re only going to continue to increase. But guess why they’re increasing. And guess why they’re only going to continue to increase. Because they’re the only shop in town where you can list a product and you’ve got just hungry buyer intent customers looking to actually purchase something. Right? Whereas and you know this because you’re a Shopify store owner, how easy is it to drum up top of the funnel interest in traffic for your products? It’s a expensive. And then you’ve got to have, you know, you have to get good at website design. You have to get good at conversion rate optimization. You need to make sure that your your website, like always, stays updated to seasonal changes. You know, to make it look like it’s active and building up reviews. And how do you establish credibility? Why should I buy from this site? How do I know I’m actually going to get my product right? Amazon already has that trust factor built in. They’ve already got those people. So while we all Pooh Pooh on, you know, Amazon’s fee increases, at the end of the day, there’s not many other places where you can go to get so much intent search traffic.

Josh Hadley 00:06:17  And I shared this with you as well when we had, Brett Currie on the podcast, he was saying even the people that used to do those, you know, as seen on TV, they used to do those late night infomercials, now they still do them, but guess where their sales come from? And it’s not from people calling the phone number they anticipate, and they know 50% of their sales after running that infomercial are going to come on Amazon. So Amazon has been the default Google search for anybody looking for a product. So Grant would you agree disagree. What are your thoughts on that I.

Grant Martin 00:06:47  Agree I always tell people, a lot of people will come at you and say, like an investor from early on. Let’s as an example, some investors, they wanted they loved what I was doing. They wanted to be a part of it, and they were talking about how the Amazon was robbing the customer experience. And, you know, you’re making more money on Shopify. I said, you got to understand the conversion rate of Amazon.

Grant Martin 00:07:07  I don’t fully understand it, but I understand it’s better. And that’s a good way to just put a broad strokes description on their conversion rate. It’s better. Okay. So to say that if I send five people to my website and five people to Amazon, I’ll have 50% disbursement between those orders. No, the five people may all buy on Amazon, but the five people you sent to Shopify, they’re they’re window shopping. They’re kicking the tires. Then you may not get one conversion at all. So we are playing in their world and we have to be friendly. And what you helped me learn today was you got to know every single number and line item to understand when it’s profitable or not. And it’s not to say that sometimes Amazon isn’t profitable or has worse fees, it’s just you got to adapt to it and maybe raise your prices accordingly so that you’re profitable on all your platforms.

Josh Hadley 00:07:47  Yeah. And especially if you have a patented product. Right. One of the things we talked about is like, raise your darn price because you have people that really can’t compete with you.

Josh Hadley 00:07:55  And if people want your type of product instead of the old, you know, strap that everybody’s been doing the ratchet straps for so long, then you’re the only game in town. So that’s what I love. So Grant, we’ll double down into these numbers a little bit further. But why don’t you give people like the lay of the land, you know, how did you come across my podcast? What were some of the challenges and pain points you’ve been facing that led you to, you know, sending me an email and saying, hey, can we jump on a call?

Grant Martin 00:08:19  Yeah. So I’ll start with the pain points. The pain points is cash flow in a small business. candidly, I have two employees who make fair salaries, and then I have myself, who is supposed to make a fair salary but somehow never does. And not that that was the main issue. I really wanted to grow and grow healthy, and I’m very much of the old school mindset. I come from a small midwest middle class house, chop up credit cards, you know, no debt.

Grant Martin 00:08:42  We don’t owe people money. No, no, no. And I’ve had to break that mold. And I started opening up conversations with, like, my Amazon account manager about like, you know, maybe credit card hacking or something. And it felt dirty. It felt like I was going to see a loan shark, you know, a guy chewing on a toothpick, flipping a coin. And he says to me, Grant, that is so funny. You bring that up. Check out Josh. He just had an episode where they broke down credit card hacking. Listen to this episode. I’ll be honest, Josh, I don’t listen to a lot of podcasts, but. And I let weeks and weeks and weeks go by before I accepted his offer. In fact, he rung my bell again and said, did you listen to that show? And I said, all right, all right, all right. Within five minutes of listening to the show, I was feeling clarity. I was feeling like someone was kind of almost hearing my thoughts, hearing my pain points.

Grant Martin 00:09:26  And very soon, the guests that you had on, I apologize. What was his name?

Josh Hadley 00:09:29  John Dirks.

Grant Martin 00:09:31  John Durkin quickly started breaking down these levers to leverage cash flow and capital. And then you double down because you’re a wizard with credit card hacking, scheduling, stacking. And man, at that point I finished the show and I went straight home, got on the laptop, and I sent you an email because I’m like, dude, we are a seven figure trying to break into eight. Figure your speak in my language here. I got to know more and that’s what brought us together.

Josh Hadley 00:09:54  Awesome I love that. And you know, I like I said, the cash flow aspect of any e-commerce business is like the lifeblood of the business. You will live and die by what you do with your cash flow and the optimization thereof. There are people that go bankrupt because they’re growing so fast, and they leverage everything they possibly can, hoping and praying everything will work out, but then it blows up in their face.

Josh Hadley 00:10:15  And you’ve got also other people that you know aren’t willing to, you know, experiment with leveraging debt and things like that that aren’t able to actually grow their business. And it plateaus because they’re not willing to to take that next step. I’m right in the middle ground of all of those things, right? I’m very conservative in nature, but we’ve been able to bootstrap our entire business, and that’s because of just little one inch hacks that you can take in order to optimize cash flow. So Grant, we talked about that during your strategy audit. What are some of the takeaways that you came away with in regards to cash flow?

Grant Martin 00:10:46  Well, first of all, I do feel less that I have a cash flow issue. And what I mean by that is these answers were kind of they’re kind of the pencil behind your ear, but you’re looking all over your desk for this pencil. You open my eyes to what was right in front of me, these payment terms, the timing of billing cycles. And when you put these payments down.

Grant Martin 00:11:06  What I learned is that in any business, you come to points in the year where you’re trying to tear up, may that be an inventory and marketing. They all go hand in hand, right? You’re trying to tear up. You’re taking a business that was doing $100,000 in revenue a month to $200,000 of revenue in a month. Your income from January doesn’t match what your ambition is for February, March, April. So what I learned was, when I’m about to tear up in these different parts of the year, it’s usually one big chunk of the year. Leverage the payment terms of these different cards. That’s that will help solve the cash flow issue. And then the other side of that coin is leverage cards on smaller expenses, too, because those add up and I didn’t even know you educate. We all know about rewards, right? We hear it all the time. I had no idea there was opportunity to get 3% cash back on my ad spend. yeah. I mean, this sounds like a credit card commercial, but it’s just very simple stuff that is so common sense.

Grant Martin 00:11:57  And it’s a low hanging fruit for e-commerce operators like yourself and.

Josh Hadley 00:12:01  Yeah, yeah. And I love this grant because what you were doing, I think there’s a lot of people that maybe either don’t admit it or they, they just don’t understand how much opportunity there is to leverage a credit card smartly. So let’s talk about some of those credit cards that we discussed that I think are very powerful in the the tool chest of an Amazon seller. So the first one is going to be the Amex Plum card. And funny enough is we were on this call, you know, you you’re like, hey Josh, since I listened to your episode, I’ve already got it. And so I love that you like Grant just because you’re like taking action. Like, that’s that’s obviously half the battle. So like, kudos to you on already taking all those actions. But here’s the here’s the gist of the Amex plum card, and we’ve had to use this as well. You’re not going to get any like reward points from this, okay? However, you’re going to be able to extend your payment terms by an additional 30 days.

Josh Hadley 00:12:48  So instead of having a normal like 30 day payback window 25 to 30 days after the credit card statement closes, that now gets pushed to 55 to 60 days. Okay, so the hack is here. So how do we get to 90 day payment terms just by using a credit card. It is by making sure that if you’re paying a supplier invoice or you’re paying a big deposit, maybe it’s an ad spend, right? If you can have that charge, hit your credit card. On the day that new statement begins, you’ve got those 30 days until that statement closes. Then you’ve got if you’re using the plum card, you’ve got another 50 to 60 days until the actual due date is for that. Let’s say it’s a $10,000 payment for your ads. You’ve got that extra 60 days. So now that cash doesn’t actually leave your bank account until 90 days later, even though the charge happened 90 days previously. So Grant you would you kind of, like, poked a hole in this and or tried to poke a hole, I guess I would say.

Josh Hadley 00:13:40  And then I’ve also had other people that have asked me the exact same question, which is, Josh, am I not just perpetually kicking this can down the road? What are your what was kind of my response to that question there, Grant? And did I answer that question like, do you still believe like just kicking the can down the road? Is this credit card thing even worth it?

Grant Martin 00:13:56  Well, you got to understand, Josh, I’m the kind of guy you can answer my question with 100% fluency. I may still falter from understanding it a little bit, but you did do a good job with that. And essentially what you said was, if you can leverage cash flow before you are paying for the inventory or that item, that expense, that is where you’re going to see growth. Now, fundamentally, I can understand that getting cash in hand, getting things moving. I guess you could explain it in a little more detail as to why specifically that’s so important. And for instance, I can start making money off of my $60,000 order from China quickly before I have to pay for it.

Grant Martin 00:14:33  And then when I have the cash, I pay for it. What if I have the cash already? Why wouldn’t I just pay for it now? And I’m not challenging it. I just need your help.

Josh Hadley 00:14:41  Yeah, I love that. So now we’ll get into some theoretical kind of like investment advice at the same time, which we actually didn’t talk about a lot in the strategy audit. But let’s, let’s say this. So I’m going to answer the first question with this. Right. Let’s say you’re just using the credit card only for Amazon advertising expenses just for simplicity’s sake right now okay. Am I Josh, I’m going to have to pay these bills no matter what down the road. Now that is true. However, almost every business has a seasonal peak. Typically, for most e-com businesses, it’s Q4, they’re going to have a seasonal peak. And guess what typically happens? Everybody gets super cash poor during the months of November and December. AD spend just increases. It spikes like 3 or 4 x.

Josh Hadley 00:15:22  And also they’ve had to place inventory orders a couple months before that. And so now I’ve spent all my money on inventory. And now I’m also spending all of my money on ads. But guess what? Amazon is still yet to pay me out, right? I’ve got it’s a two week cycle and then there’s a whole back period too, especially during Q4. So it may be if I start a sale, if I generate a sale, it may be 30 days until that cash is actually in my bank account. Right. So what this does is it flips the script. Okay. So when that ad spend starts to spike, instead of that ad spend leaving your account today, that ad spend will leave your account 60, 90 days from now. Right? And in between now and then. So let’s say it’s the beginning of December or let’s do Black Friday, right? My ad spend I5X to my ad spend. Would you rather that ad spend leave your account now. Or would you rather that ad spend leave in 60 to 90 days.

Josh Hadley 00:16:12  Because guess what, you’re not going to get that money from Amazon for those Black Friday sales for another two, three, four weeks. Right? So the whole strategy is this, right? It really helps you in times of where like severe cash crunch hits you. And that’s during like seasonal peak periods. Okay. So that’s number one. Like if you’re just if you’re a constantly evergreen business and there was no seasonal spikes. Yeah, you’re perpetually kicking the can down the road. It’s the same every single month, but nobody’s businesses like that or very few. So that’s answer number one. Now answer number two is let’s now involve, you know you’ve got some supplier invoices as well right. Now I could pay these with cash right now however if you could layer in and get terms with your supplier. Right. So maybe it becomes net 30, net 60. And I could then also pay with a credit card and extend those. Guess what happens. Let’s say I’m able to push out the payments between supplier financing and the use of a credit card.

Josh Hadley 00:17:04  I don’t bank the money doesn’t actually leave my account for 90 days. Yeah, okay. What that allows you to do. And in today’s environment, there’s some decently high yield savings accounts still available, right. You can still get for maybe even 5% interest on your money. Okay. And there’s also there’s, there’s, you know, you could get into some other sophisticated stuff, maybe more risky, you know, hard, hard money lending type things. But then you’re you’re kind of leveraging yourself, but you could even get 10% back. Now, this is exactly what all these banks do. Right. So you’re just it’s changing your mindset. And it’s really flipping your mindset to say, like, I’ve now got access to let’s say it’s $100,000 in inventory purchases. I’ve got $100,000 that I can now invest in, I own, and I can earn interest on that money over the next three months. Okay. And as long as it’s interest free. Right. Like, I make sure I pay my credit card by its due date and the supplier terms.

Josh Hadley 00:17:58  That’s interest free. I’m now coming out ahead. Even if it’s 1 or 2 percentage points. You do that over and over and over again and guess who wins, right? It’s you. It’s a compound effect in it snowballs. Now that just means like you need to be proactive in managing your money. And way too many people are not proactive. And instead they see the big checks come in from Amazon. They’re immediately going out and go and buying cool toys or whatever it is with it. And so it’s just like, how how smart can you be with this money and making money in the margins? So Grant, does that make sense?

Grant Martin 00:18:29  It does. You know, and I love that you lay it out that way. It is very clear. And I think it’s funny. You know, I come from a construction background, high school education, all. I never even ran a lemonade stand. So the logic when you start a product business is my logic was I’ll spend three grand on the first order from China.

Grant Martin 00:18:46  I’ll turn that product over and sell it for 6 or 7 grand, and then I’ll take the extra money and I’ll put in another order. And I’m making three grand profit a month. Well, then marketing comes in in storage and inventory and time and all that, and pretty soon you’re lopsided on that, that logic of buy it and sell it for double and run away with the money. It almost never works that way. And you have to be. So, as you said, you have to plan, be proactive, understand where your money is going to be and when. When is the hard part and you can prosper. And I got to say, we’ve we’ve been lucky. We have a product that sells well. We’re able to turn our cash in a relatively short amount of time, but it’s still it’s always felt like something’s missing. It’s really hard to say to your wife, we did $1 million in sales and then her to come back and say, then why did you stop your check for four months? It’s not a good feeling and it’s all because of timing.

Josh Hadley 00:19:32  Yeah, that’s exactly right. It is all about the timing in there. So, Grant, is there anything else that we haven’t yet touched upon in regards to cash flow, some mindset shifts that occurred to you as we we discuss this today that you think we should share with our listeners?

Grant Martin 00:19:44  Well, we I kind of danced around it earlier. There’s sometimes opportunity to increase your prices. You mentioned with a patentable product, but I think that goes for a lot of products is if you’re you have better pictures, if you have more videos on YouTube, all those things leverage that justify your higher prices to increase cash flow. That’s your biggest lever to grab Ahold of because you can do all these minute things points here and there, and those are percentage points at a time. But to jump up by by a quarter, you know, you’re looking at drastic changes. So you help me understand that. And I think you’re right I think we can put inventory into Amazon and just up that price 5 or 10 bucks, whatever it is.

Grant Martin 00:20:19  And that’s better than chasing your tail just in the hopes of a really, really good conversion rate. You can have a perfectly okay conversion rate and the profit to match it, and you can relax a little bit and enjoy the freedom of cash flow.

Josh Hadley 00:20:31  Yeah. And especially if you have a defensible product like yours and you’re generating. So a lot of your sales from Shopify come from meta ads that you guys are running. Right. And so you’ve got UGC content like people are sold on this product idea. I know people are pausing that scroll on Facebook. They’re going on to Amazon, they’re looking at your product and they’re buying it. And to be honest with you, they’re not really considering other like they’re not stopping their experience to be like, I need another ratchet strap. It’s because you have a very differentiated product. And so when you have that much of a differentiated product, you need to be charging a premium for that product. there is a so we had him on the podcast, great business mentor.

Josh Hadley 00:21:06  I was in his mastermind group called War Room. So Roland Frazier, one of my earlier podcast episodes, one of the things he does whenever he acquires a new business, the first lever that he pulls is he raises prices, and that immediately provides a net profit benefit back to the business, and it allows him to pay himself back faster. And he is all about how do I acquire businesses with no money out of my own pocket? Okay. And he does that from these simple strategies, because most entrepreneurs are afraid to change their prices or to increase their prices. And so test, test, test is the end of that is the name of the game here. And especially if you have a defensible product, you should have a very healthy profit margin. And it definitely needs to be more than two x what you’re buying that product for, as you stated.

Grant Martin 00:21:53  Yes, I learned that two more is better always.

Josh Hadley 00:21:56  So I love that. All right Grant. So let’s shift our attention a little bit more now to, you know, what’s been working for you on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:22:03  What’s been working for you on Shopify? What were some what are some of the pain points you express there and what were some of my recommendations?

Grant Martin 00:22:10  Yeah. So generally our sales funnel is we run meta ads. They drive a lot of traffic to our website. And as you help me realize, they drive the other half of it to Amazon. And that’s why we see a 5050 split between our Shopify and Amazon sales. Now, what’s happening on Amazon is we’re competing with people against people who are one and two day delivery via Prime. Now, it’s no big secret that you want to be on Prime. You need to be on Prime. And we’ve never been able to keep inventory in Prime because we sell out just too quickly and we don’t have enough inventory, frankly. Which part of what I’m working on with all this cash flow. So what you help me realize is, hey, you know, light bulb moment. If you’re selling out too fast on Amazon, the prices can come up and you don’t know where the potential is with this product because you’ve not been fully stocked with your suite of products in Amazon.

Grant Martin 00:22:53  And the really big takeaway or the key key that you gave me was I could sense it’s based off of that 8020 principle, right? We have three products that are performing well. That’s where most of our sales and profit are coming from. Forget the other six. Just get those three always FBA stocked and Amazon and make that your lifeblood. That was really valuable for me to see and hear. And it was things I had seen and heard. But you pointed them out. You put a highlighter on it. Josh. And it really helped me understand where my time and attention should be.

Josh Hadley 00:23:25  Yeah. And and so to the listeners, I mean, some of this stuff may seem basic, but here’s the stuff that I find happening time and time again, and it’s even my own business, right? It is so helpful to have a third party, a new set of eyes come in here and be like, why are we doing this? Like, what if you just changed just one little like, dial this level, lever up just a little bit more, and it can make an outsized return for the rest of your business.

Josh Hadley 00:23:48  What I love the most is that you’re generating so much traffic and interest just from your meta ads alone. And I know that, like one of the biggest things you guys focus on, on your Amazon stuff is like branded search. Is it up? Is it down? How is our branded search doing? And to be honest, most Amazon first sellers like don’t really think about their Amazon branded search. They’re not. They’re just playing the keyword game. In my winning on this keyword. Am I losing on this keyword? So the fact that you’re already generating 50% of your revenue there on Amazon leads me to believe, like, if you could even double down even further on your meta advertising and even generate more sales going to Amazon, right? But like you said, it all comes back to that cash flow constraint of can I get enough inventory? And and so there’s powerful measures. And I told you right. Take those 20%, those winning products. Those are the ones you should make sure you never run out of stock on.

Josh Hadley 00:24:35  And the other six, you know, if you run out of stock. So what. Right. You can play the bumper car inventory game on those ones. And it’s not going to be as impactful to you.

Grant Martin 00:24:43  Definitely 100% man.

Josh Hadley 00:24:45  What are some of the takeaways and why? Why have you seen success on Shopify? Because I know a lot of our listeners are very envious that you have 50% of your revenue coming onto Shopify. So why don’t you walk people through, like, what does that funnel look like? And what are you guys doing to generate 50% of your sales on Shopify?

Grant Martin 00:25:00  Yeah. Well, you know, early on I did a lot of really rudimentary research. I was a lineman. I had a lot of truck time and window time. Right. So I would listen to a lot of people talk about diversify your e-commerce efforts. Sometimes Instagram gets glitches out for 36 hours. So have a tick tock. Sometimes tick tock gets banned in the United States, so be heavy on YouTube.

Grant Martin 00:25:21  So I really instilled a mindset as to be really holistic against every platform that you’re on. You go on my Instagram, there’s about the same amount of followers as my YouTube and TikTok and Facebook and so on, and the efforts with my Shopify store were no different. And what I kind of instinctively figured was more people are prone to buy on Amazon, so I’ll shove all the traffic to Shopify and if they trail off and buy it on Amazon, so what? We also offer a hair better pricing on Shopify, a few other little incentives that if you’re really paying attention to the website, you’ll see, like, you know, 30 days, no questions asked. And our shipping and how we warranty things six months out on our website, whereas on Amazon, you don’t really know those types of things. So that’s that’s always been the focus is drive the traffic to Shopify, own the customer experience that Amazon’s sales will come whether you like it or not. Even if you’re FBM they’re going to come, they’re going to come a lot harder with FBA.

Grant Martin 00:26:12  But that’s how I’ve approached it and it’s really helped with cash flow. Shopify pays out daily. It’s really helped with my email list. It’s really nice to be able to shoot off an email on a Friday and make a quick 3000 bucks before the week’s over to get that next payout. Nice and juicy. It’s really cool to be able to tune and turn that dial as you please. The drawback is your conversion rate. You know you’re looking at between 1 and 3% for warm traffic. So you’re always fighting that, but you get a good conversion rate nonetheless. And if you have good, high engaging ads and the people are coming in high, you’ll get the sale and you’ll see success.

Josh Hadley 00:26:46  Yeah. What does your ad look like? Because I think that’s the secret sauce, right? If you had a bad ad, like, people wouldn’t be clicking and wanting to buy more. So what is your ad strategy then?

Grant Martin 00:26:57  Well, you’re absolutely right. And that is probably my biggest asset. I like film, I like camera work.

Grant Martin 00:27:03  I’ve never been an actor and never been in a commercial. Nothing. But it’s always just kind of something I’ve been interested in. And when I first started this product, I thought, well, how am I going to sell it for free? Because I don’t have a lot of margin here. I can’t pay 20% towards my marketing efforts, so how am I going to sell it for free? So I pulled out my phone and I just started filming what I was doing in the garage, making these straps by hand. What they do, why I did it, the dad story with a hook in the hand, trying to really connect. And after about three weeks of throwing stuff at the wall, I had a video go viral on Facebook or on a TikTok, and overnight I did $4,000 in sales. You’re talking to a guy who was making $4,000 a month. Talk about it. Oh my God, moment. So with that being said, I’ve continued to build on that work of always making organic, high reaching videos and then testing them on your organic platforms.

Grant Martin 00:27:51  What better way to validate a video than to post it on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube on the shorts and let the universe tell you you’ll know in three hours if you have a banger or not, and then put money behind it. A lot of people’s instinct is, oh, I’m going to hire a graphic designer and make a really good infographic about my product, and then run that as an ad. That is a really blind way to test whether or not an ad is going to work, and the only way you’re going to find out is by throwing a lot of money in the air. Now, you asked what these ads look like. What I found a lot of success in is speaking to the audience very directly on a video, and not even speaking. It may just be the text on the video. It may be a voiceover that’s done by I. Right? A lot of people are camera shy. You don’t always have to be camera facing. It can be a hands only video.

Grant Martin 00:28:30  It could be a back to the camera video with voiceover. But where I find success is saying this is what ratchet straps have been doing to you. And this is what how TorkStrap is going to solve that problem with a little bit of proof, end it with a bang. And maybe it’s for me, it’s like using a scale. The scale doesn’t lie. That ratchet strap lost 50% attention. The torque strap didn’t even lose 3% attention. Signoff. Sayonara, sucker. They click through and then they see the landing page. Well, I’m working on landing pages because of you, Josh. They see the website. They’re a little more convinced they don’t like the three day shipping. So they jump on Amazon. They hopefully they’ll see a two day shipping and then you get the conversion. That’s the idea in the workflow there.

Josh Hadley 00:29:06  I love that. So all of this is just kind of the your own UGC that you created yourself, right? It’s just kind of like authentic. This is me. This is the product and you’ve been testing it out.

Josh Hadley 00:29:16  Do you have TikTok shop?

Grant Martin 00:29:18  I do, and I tried it, I really did. Here’s what I’ll say about TikTok. Shop it. I listened to your guest with his workout equipment. He’s having a lot of success. I think he was defining that as, you know, maybe 5 to 15% of his sales coming from TikTok shop. I think that’s great. And if you have the patience to do it. But I will say they’re back in system, in my experience, was clunky. I worked with their rep, their brand manager rep, who really wanted to strap on the platform. I worked with him hand in hand for four weeks straight, and before meeting him, I’d been trying for a year. Account issues linked to this email access, products not linking. He really tried to get me active on there and get the products linked with Shopify. Finally we did and then the I would post a video that would usually be hi, engaging and link a product to it and it would get no views.

Grant Martin 00:30:04  It always felt like something was missing, always felt like something was broken. And then what happened was I stopped. Kind of did a little bit of an audit on my time, and I realized I’ve just dedicated a month to Tick Tock with no return, whereas I should have been focusing on YouTube. YouTube isn’t going anywhere. YouTube is Google. Google is YouTube. So I no longer give them my time because it’s a I can’t think of the phrase, but it could go away. As we all know and have seen in the news, it could have glitches. It could have issues. I don’t want to put that much time and stock in something as wishy washy as a Chinese app, to be blunt, that’s where I’m at with that, so I never made any money off of it. I lost a lot. I lost money because of the time issue.

Josh Hadley 00:30:41  Yeah, but are you still creating videos and posting them onto TikTok then?

Grant Martin 00:30:45  Of course, yeah. And I treat every video the same.

Grant Martin 00:30:48  I don’t ever. The problem is, if you design a video for TikTok and it doesn’t do well, that video is garbage to you. But if you design a video to be friendly on every platform and generally speaking, that’s just shoot it vertically, make it engaging, and it will do well on most of the platforms. If you design it for the TikTok shop and you try to be really salesy and there’s a glitch, that video is was trash. You lost half a day. And so every video I shoot, I have pretty strict rules. I don’t spend more than ten minutes on the video because it is a numbers game. There is a little secret sauce as to you know, how you structure it to perhaps go viral, but don’t invest hours. Don’t put money behind it. Don’t hire a camera crew. No no no. Just throw stuff at the wall and be sure you can post it everywhere because three platforms may hate it. And then all of a sudden YouTube shorts sends it to 1.2 million views.

Grant Martin 00:31:29  And there’s your there’s your sales for that week 100%.

Josh Hadley 00:31:32  And I love that strategy. So Grant, what we’ve started doing too is like it’s the same thing. I know it’s a numbers game, okay. And all you have to do is just keep posting. And TikTok is my favorite place to start the post. And then we we use repurposed house bio to then take that, and then it will shoot it to Facebook Reels, to Instagram Reels, shoots it to YouTube shorts as well. It can integrate with what’s it called, the other app. Anyways, I’m blanking on that right now.

Grant Martin 00:32:00  I would help you if I knew. I can’t think of any. Those are the four important ones.

Josh Hadley 00:32:03  Those are the four important ones anyways, so it will shoot it to all of those without you having to do anything. And my favorite thing, and we’ve been testing this out, is like, you don’t put any ad spend behind any of those videos until you see them go viral, right? You go once they go viral, then you know you’ve got a great hook and then you start running some ad traffic behind it.

Josh Hadley 00:32:20  So I’d be curious to grant if you could, even if you had your old TikTok shop, get into the advertising dashboard and create like take those viral videos and just run them as ads pointing back to Shopify only, right?

Grant Martin 00:32:33  We’ve experimented with that. But the sentiment has always been, you’re going to be more successful with those same exact videos on meta, Facebook and Instagram. And the reason is TikTok, because of their data restrictions and they’re trying to dance a fine line. You’re going to get better feedback and retargeting more accurate efforts behind the meta platform, because it’s got such a stronger backbone now, is that true? I don’t it sounds true. It makes sense. therefore, I get what you’re saying. I want to try it, too. Josh, look, we gotta try stuff, right? You don’t know until you try.

Josh Hadley 00:33:04  Yeah, but always be testing.

Grant Martin 00:33:06  Yes, but I really do believe in blue chip situations. Trust your googles, trust your metas. Trust your PPC on Amazon.

Grant Martin 00:33:14  If it if it’s new and catchy and 12 year olds are doing it as well as 80 year olds are doing it, I don’t know, you’re casting kind of a weird net there. Be leery.

Josh Hadley 00:33:22  I love that. All right, Grant, as we wrap things up today, what else? did we share? Any other golden nuggets that you feel like we should convey to the audience here?

Grant Martin 00:33:30  Oh, gosh, I don’t know. I do have to say, I think, product is important. Product is something, not overlooked, but it’s a step that you can’t really give somebody the secret ingredient and say, here’s how to go source a great product. And this all starts with products. So I this wasn’t something you and I talked about, but I do think that, don’t be afraid to go out and invent that new product. It’s not a scary thing like you think it is. You’re not going to get trampled by lawyers. There’s not going to be a man in a black suit knocking at your door, saying you’re an infringement of X, Y, and Z, and you can start slow.

Grant Martin 00:34:01  You can start develop that product, make iterations of it, have it manufactured, and that can be your Amazon product. And for me, that worked out really well. It wasn’t easy in the beginning. It wasn’t something you could grab and turn around and sell. It did take more footwork and but things that take longer to build are generally much stronger. And that’s what I’m seeing now when you mention it. Josh, I have a lot more leverage with price with the command, my key factors of value generally outweigh the competition because it’s things that they didn’t focus on. They didn’t patent, they didn’t innovate. So I think product is highly crucial.

Josh Hadley 00:34:35  Couldn’t have said it better. So Grant, at the end of the day here was the strategy audit worth your time?

Grant Martin 00:34:40  Oh, 100%. I mean, we we saw value within three minutes. You know, we were pulling out our notepads in a matter of no time between 3% cash back and the 8020 principle on our Amazon products. Yes. Josh, thank you very much for that.

Josh Hadley 00:34:53  Awesome. Well, happy to hear that, Grant. And so to the listeners, if you are interested in being able to win a free strategy audit like Grant one. Email me at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com and then I select one lucky winner every single month. to be able to go through an in-depth strategy on it. Like I invest a lot of time, I come prepared so that we can deliver some tangible results to you. So with that being said, Grant, as we wrap things up, I love to leave every episode with three actionable takeaways. So here are the actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I’m missing something. So number one, make sure that you understand the cash flow of your business. I think that is base number one. This can come in the form of a couple different ways, but that you can leverage credit cards to extend your payment terms to when that cash leaves the bank account. And again, for seasonal spikes when there is an increase in ad spend or inventory purchases, it helps you to be able to survive those without needing to go invest in all the other, you know, loan shark type offers that you see of, you know, loans that that people are willing to give out to you.

Josh Hadley 00:35:51  So I think you can get the majority of the way there through credit card strategies. And then secondarily, the most important partner in your business is your supplier and your manufacturer. Okay, so develop a established relationship with them. Get on good terms with them. And in return, after having years of paying your bills on time, develop a relationship so that you can then impact the net terms that you’re being, that you’re paying them. Can you get to net 30, net 60, net 90 day terms? Where is it possible for you to actually get the product in your hands, sell it on Amazon, and actually make money on Amazon? Even so, receiving it in your bank account before you’ve even paid for that product. If you can do that, that is how the bigger brands are scaling to eight figures in far and beyond, because they’re not constrained by capital. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is leveraging that 8020 principle. Right. So if anything for any business leader, if you could if you had a limited amount of time, focus on the top 20% of SKUs that are driving 80% of the revenue or profit in your business, double down on those and start testing different strategies that you’ve wanted to test.

Josh Hadley 00:36:56  Price should always be your first. Then do your main image. Then do some of your secondary images and your product copy. See what you can do to influence those, and obviously never run out of stock on those top 20% products. And then last but not least is double down on always testing and experimenting with video. I love, even with TikTok, be a new and shiny and who knows what the future of TikTok looks like. It is still one of the best platforms to have something quickly go viral. And so put it on there, test things out. And the beautiful aspect of this is if you have something go viral, even if it’s a creator’s video that you’ve partnered with, take that video and be able to start running ads behind it. That’s going to allow you to a get more sales on Amazon and be actually be able to begin building out your Shopify sales funnel. So Grant, those are my three action items for you after this podcast and hopefully for our listeners as well. Anything else you feel like I missed?

Grant Martin 00:37:48  No, you nailed it.

Grant Martin 00:37:49  That’s everything on my parameters and I can’t wait to get to work.

Josh Hadley 00:37:53  Love it. All right, Grant, so I’m going to ask you these three questions, which I didn’t prep you for. But you’ve heard the podcast. So number one, what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Grant Martin 00:38:00  You know, for me, coming from the background that I explained to you earlier, honestly, it’s kind of basic, but like Rich dad, Poor Dad really helped me understand where my money was going and paying too much in taxes. But I that’s a real estate book and I’m not a real estate bro. I can’t so bored by real estate, I hate it. So the next one would be four hour workweek and once again helping someone with no entrepreneurial family background anything put in the mindset of, one, what to do to make passive income, and two, how to trust other people to run systems so that you can have some freedom of time. I would have to say four hour workweek would be for me.

Josh Hadley 00:38:35  that one’s a great book recommendation. All right. Question number two. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and why?

Grant Martin 00:38:40  Oh come on, you change the you change the used to be software.

Josh Hadley 00:38:43  So maybe I got a software tool. Give me a software tool.

Grant Martin 00:38:45  All right. Well I’ll blend this into my prepared answer. you and I spoke. I’m not a numbers guy. Seller board stuff. I got it all. Don’t really like it. I make my team use it. I love Premiere Pro, love my Premiere Pro. Video editing is so important for anybody on this journey. Crank out videos on YouTube and the I that I like, it’s called, Auto Pod, and I’m able to automatically edit multi-camera videos in 35 seconds with an I switch from camera A to camera B based on who’s speaking. I love that I and you always got to give a shout out to ChatGPT. I used that thing like a like an old drum. Man, that thing gets beat to death on my computer.

Josh Hadley 00:39:24  I love that. That’s fantastic. All right, final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following in? Why?

Grant Martin 00:39:31  you know, I don’t follow a lot of people in the e-commerce space. obviously you. And then beyond that, what really helped me understand the, in the beginning, the intricacies of business, the money opportunities there are out there was a podcast called the How of Business podcast, and he could talk about a car wash one day in an ecom the next day, and a lawn mowing automated app to connect local lawn mowers to come to your lawn like an Uber. I love that, so I would say the How of Business podcast helped me understand. There’s a lot of ways to make money in this world and e-commerce. It’s a pretty attractive one.

Josh Hadley 00:40:04  Love it. Grant. This has been an excellent episode. If people are interested in checking out your TorkStraps and following your journey, where could they find you out?

Grant Martin 00:40:11  Yeah, you can check out TorkStraps at TorkStrap.com.

Grant Martin 00:40:16  We spelled it uniquely for trademark purposes. That’s TorkStrap.com. And if you really want to follow, as you can tell, I’m really passionate about inventing and developing and what took me out of a dark place in my life. If you want to figure out how to kind of fire up your own product or invention, you can check out the Invent With Me podcast on YouTube or any audio platform. And there we really unravel. Hey, I got an idea in the phone, what’s the next step? All the way up to seven figures and hopefully with Josh’s help, up to eight figures. So thank you man.

Josh Hadley 00:40:43  Awesome, Grant, thanks again for your time. It was a pleasure conducting the strategy audit with you and thanks for sharing with everybody else.

Grant Martin 00:40:48  Thank you Josh. Take care.