Josh Hadley 3:18

I’m excited to have you on Amy, we first met back at prosper a couple of years ago, you invited a group of friends to go to lunch. And then I was in the midst of this new group of friends that you had met. And so I love that you are always one thing I admire about you. You are always networking with people and talking and social butterflies, so to speak. But there’s so many people that know and respect you because you are so outgoing. So thank you again for that lunch couple of years ago.

Amy Wees 3:50

Yeah, thank you for the lunch. You know, it was so great to get to know you. One of the things that’s great about going to these e commerce events, is there’s so many opportunities to network. And you know, you just grab a couple people and say, Hey, you guys want to go to lunch and talk. And that’s what we did that day. And I got to learn more about your business. And we really had mastered the hiring process, which is something that is so tough for entrepreneurs to go from self employed with business owner and have that joy that comes with being a business owner. And so you started talking and sharing and I was like, wow, and you ended up coming in our mastermind group and talking about your processes. And that was so impactful for our group of people that are on the same path and your processes for for hiring honestly, I mean, I’ve paid for courses on this. I’ve read so many books on this. And you really simplify the process and you helped me in my own businesses. So I have to thank for that.

Josh Hadley 4:56

Awesome. Well, I’m happy to hear that. Hey, it doesn’t matter what the content is until you start taking action. So I’m happy to hear that you’ve been able to have some success with hiring there. Now, Amy, you have so much going on? Why don’t you give people kind of a lay of the land of what all you’ve got going on, because you have your own e commerce brand you’re working on. You have the consulting company, you also are involved in the sourcing and from Mexico, and all of those trips that you’ve been putting together that I’d like you to talk about. And then last but not least on Facebook, because I’ve seen your posts there. You also, you know, loan out to rent out your vehicles on Turo, we could have some, we could have a whole podcast just on your story there. But Amy, why don’t you give everybody a quick rundown of what all you got going on?

Amy Wees 5:45

Well, I you know, it’s so beautiful. Having the world, the cars, there’s so many things you can do. And back, I’ve been selling on Amazon, myself since 2007. And, of course, as a hobby, not as a major business or anything, I was in the United States Air Force and just started flipping my textbooks saw that little selling yours here. But on Amazon and I was intrigued. I’ve always been somebody with a little side hustle or side learning thing going on, I like to learn new things. I’m a sponge. So I have a little bit of a squirrel chasing problem.I like to learn new things, and I’m never afraid to go after them. And so one of my skills as an entrepreneur is honing that really, you know, focusing on those things that are making the most impact and keeping, you know, each pipeline kind of moving along. So yes, I’m an Amazon seller, myself and a brand owner, I invented a product in the cat space, they invented better way to clean the cat litter box, based on problem I was having. And that’s kind of what started the rest of my businesses. Because when I was bending this product from scratch, I ran into so many roadblocks. You know, I tried out for shark tank I you know, I don’t think I knew that. But I don’t think I knew that that portion. Well, that’s it. That’s a story in and of itself. I know, right? I, you know, I was I built my products, I built a 3d printer I started I realized that I couldn’t source from China, because it was too expensive. The product was too large. So that was another hurdle to overcome. I had to source in the United States. And I was like, Well, how am I called all these factories, and none of them wanted to give me the time of day because contract manufacturing really isn’t a huge thing in the US. Of course, if you if you’re sourcing something that’s already been made here, like principles, or, you know, facial lotion, or something like that, it’s very easy to just white label something in the United States, but private label to find a manufacturer, that was a huge hurdle for me to overcome, I basically had to pitch a business that really didn’t even have legs yet, in order to get a manufacturer to take on my product. And so I ran into all these hurdles, I contacted design companies to help me get my design manufactured in CAD because my product is plastic and needed to be injection molded. And I hold these design companies wanted $30,000 to turn to my drawing into another drawing. And you know, Josh, I, as I’ve been in a vale dominated career field, most of my life being in the Air Force. And, and I’ve done a lot of things that would intimidate a lot of people. And so I don’t give up very easily. I’ve failed a lot and you know, in the military to kind of teach you to keep moving, you know, and, and so I just decided, look, this is really making me mad that I’m running into so many roadblocks here. This can’t be impossible. Brands bring new products to market all the time. So I just let that feel me, I let him motivate me. I was like, I’m gonna figure this out. And I’m going to share with anybody who will listen along the way. And that’s what I did. So I started sharing, I just started going on Facebook, in YouTube and being like, this is what I learned about today. This is what I talked to this person I learned this, you know, whatever. And before I knew it, I started gaining a following and people couldn’t believe I was giving away all this information for free. And I didn’t care you know, I was like people join me. This is a lonely journey, though. Like let’s figure this out together. And yeah, started writing listings to pay off my titles cost me 42,000

So yeah, so I started writing listings on Fiverr. And I had a snack, you know, cybersecurity before. So I had to have this SEO niche where I know how to take keywords and take basically a very saturated product and assign new keywords, help people sell out. So I was doing that with all these different listings, I would just find new keywords for them. And all these people who were hiring me on Fiverr to write their listings and selling out of the saturated products were going, how would you do that? And can you teach me? And I kept saying no, so it’s like, I don’t consult, I still have my full time job for the Air Force. I’m still working on launching my own products, and figuring out in touring and sourcing and all those and manufacturing and all those things. And, and finally, I said yes, I was like, okay, okay, whatever. 50 bucks, maybe online, let’s do it. And before I knew it, those people started having massive success. And I was like, Okay, I this is the thing. So that’s how amazing it home was born, I had a domain name, I built the website over the weekend, just to get off of Fiverr, Fivver’s fees are so high. And I just really enjoyed helping people and being on this journey with others. So I continue to build that community. And then I started getting people to China on sourcing trips. And here we are at least two years later, taking people to Mexico now and owning my own trade show in Mexico.

Josh Hadley 11:30

Awesome. What a journey. And I love that, you know, similar journey to myself Where you know, you are working full time, as you got your business started, right? You didn’t just jump in cold turkey, you’re like, This sounds like fun, let’s just jump in, you know, I loved you know, my job at American Airlines, I continue to call it, that’s my venture capital that I received, right, because that’s what paid the bills. That’s what allowed us to keep moving forward and reinvest in the business time and time again. So I think that’s an important principle for people is that, you know, go in methodically, you know, don’t jump ship, just because you have one good idea. One night, it’s like, go prove it out. Because you’re gonna face a lot of obstacles, just like you talked about, Amy. And that’s what I would love to dive into. I would love to you know, prior to this podcast, we talked about a few of those mistakes you’ve seen other people make and some of the challenges you faced in your own brand. And so let’s discuss some of those mistakes. And then also the successes that you see people having as you do consulting for them. But before we dive into that, let’s go ahead and talk about your most recent obstacle that you faced with your own products. And, you know, what have you done as a result of that? And any advice you would give to the audience?

Amy Wees 12:49

Well, yeah, we talking about, it’s q4, the most amazing time of the year and my best selling product has been out of stock for over a month, at least $40,000 lost.

And that really, really sucks.

So, you know, there’s been so many supply chain changes with with Amazon, right, so we had created a shipment Amazon just with your new shipment. lamps, I guess you could call it. And this has really caused problems. In fact, I went to Amazon celery, which is a conference in Seattle, and just to meet with Amazon, shipping people and talk to them and get some solutions. Because we were having so many problems where they would give us a pickup time we have our own warehouse, like right, very close to our home. And that’s where we keep all of our inventory and everything like that you have a loading dock and everything. So we ship right out of San Antonio, Texas, and we were you know, creating our shipping plans and Amazon would assign pickup timeframe, eight hour timeframe on a day. And they did not give a phone number anything to call like nothing, you can’t give them a phone number. There’s nothing you’re just expected to be available for eight hours. You have a warehouse but we don’t come in it. You know, it’s like storage, right? It’s not so anyway, we go there and we put up signs and it’s called as pickups you know, and luckily there’s another business there. It’s actually our gym. So they can call us if somebody shows up. And so we’re just trying to figure out alright, how do we either for eight hours and not pick up and Amazon doesn’t show up. Their carrier does not show up the whole eight hours nothing. And so we call we open a case. aid the provider up go Do you have is a new pickup date two weeks later. And it’s multiple carriers. It’s not just one, it’s multiple carriers. So you know, one carrier can be picking up a shipment going this way, and another carrier picking up and going this way. So we ended up merging fulfilling some of those products. And we couldn’t wait two weeks, we ran out of stock. So the merchant fulfilled some products. And we had 81 units. So for them to pick up, and which was the other ship, well, the wrong carrier picked it up. So the wrong carrier picked it up and then ended up. And because it was the wrong, I think Aaron are assigned to it. And so we had to track that down, get them get Amazon to assign a new Arn to it, then they dropped it off to that fulfillment center with the proper error and on it, and it took over a month to get checked in. In the meantime, our other stuff in China was delayed, we had one, we have one components of the product. So this product is made in the USA, but there are different components that we ship in from other countries can’t get everything in the US. Yes. And so we’re waiting for you know, we had some delays in China, there’s been a lot of COVID, delays, stuff like that. So you’re waiting for these, this one component to get shipped in and, and then also waiting for those units to be checked in at Amazon. And so yeah, basically, Mr. Cooper, and it was it today, those of the 81 units became available. And luckily, our other shipment should be here any day now. And then we can be fully in stock again, but between, you know, supply chain challenges in the US working in factories in the US, I’m trying to actually move my factory from the US to Mexico right now. Because it’s like sometimes nine weeks lead time, sometimes it’s 13 weeks lead time, it is very difficult to work with the supplier in the US, there’s no negotiation, there is no prices go up, the prices go up, at least for a plastic injection product, you may have more control if you’re white labeling something or doing other things. But in my case, it’s been very tough working with the US. And so you know, as much as I would love to continue it, I’m I’m looking for other alternatives. Just like every seller, you should never put all your eggs in one supplier basket. So maybe I keep working with the supplier in the US. But then I start some operations in Mexico to kind of add some diversity, and then, you know, eventually move things over. But that’s what I’m working on right now. And those were some of my lessons learned. So what could I have done? I really, in terms of troubleshooting this, one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned in the military is, it’s, you know, as long as you learn something, as long as you learn, and you identify, we call an instructional fix for whatever problem you face, and you don’t repeat the same mistake over and over again, then it’s actually a win, because you can prevent that thing from happening again. So now what we’re working on is identifying, okay, what we have done in this situation, one, we could have made sure that we weren’t going to run out of stock versions develop products. So at least what we had supply chain issues with Amazon, we could have continued to merchant fulfill instead of being completely out of stock. So that was a lesson learned there, we’ve implemented a new inventory tracking system, by demand strategic called stock flow. It is incredible. It’s even for seasonal products. It identifies your sales peaks, and it tells you exactly how much stock to send into Amazon every week, pause your sales data, everything like that. So we’ve been utilizing that. And that has really, really helped us. So the rest of our products, which we’ve had issues in the past, staying in stock and making sure we’re sending enough into FBA. And all of that have remained in stock, all of q4. So that was our instructional fix. That was our lesson learned. And, and we look forward to in the future, not running into this issue. Again, worrying about the things that we can control. We can always control Amazon, we can control version of bill, we can control our inventory. And so we’ve implemented fixes for that.

Josh Hadley 19:33

Awesome. Now, Amy, I love that you’ve taken away some, you know, some adjustments in your own processes in order to overcome those obstacles because that’s what I feel like is one of the most important things, just as you mentioned, is being able to learn from the mistakes or the challenges or the roadblocks that you face because if you just say, hey, Ooh, thank heavens we made it through this time. We made it through just by the skin of our teeth or, or maybe we actually completely failed. And if you’re just like, well, we’ll try again next year, right? It’s like, one of my favorite tenants or core values that we have in our business is never kind is never relying on what’s worked in the past to do it again, right. So just acting as though what worked in the past is going to work the exact same in the future. And vice versa, if it didn’t work in the past, expecting that, well, that was just a weird nuance. So we’ll just follow the same process next year. But hopefully, those those problems don’t arise again. So, hey, that’s important for the audience to take away, but I love what you talked about in terms of, you know, diversifying your risk with manufacturing and supply chain, and you’ve been able to find a lot of that in Mexico. So why don’t you tell us more about Mexico? Why have you been so invested lately into some, you know, sourcing for Mexico?

Amy Wees 20:59

Well, you know, it’s really, uh, we used to go to find out all the time, you can go twice a year during Canton Fair times. And, and I still source from China, I love my manufacturers in China. They’re wonderful people, they’re very efficient, really great. So I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with China. But at the end of the day, one of the biggest things that all of us have to realize is that we have options and and that, you know, we don’t ever, whether it comes to only selling on Amazon, putting your eggs all in that one sales channel basket or only using FBA, what happened during the pandemic, everybody who was only using FBA, their stuff got stranded. Meanwhile, we tripled our sales because we were able to merchant fulfill. So that’s, you know, a huge learning thing. And so many people are learning that the restock limits we talked about that, you know, like, hey, maybe we need to start digging more insane, these other sales channels so that we are able to drive more traffic to Amazon, and even greater restock limits now that things are changing, right. So I think it’s important to never put all your eggs in one basket and to always know what your your options are. And so mes was a natural solution potential solution. If we look at injection molding and manufacturing around the world, Mexico is number two and injection in right. So you know, when we look at even electronics, Latin America is just as high in electronics manufacturing as China is. And a lot of people don’t realize that one of our speakers on the Mexico trip. He’s a he’s a engineer, and he specializes in helping electronics companies move their supply chain from China to Mexico, big companies, like Seagate have completely moved manufacturing defects. So Chinese factories, major factories in China are now reopening new facilities in Mexico. why it makes sense, right? It makes sense. You’ve got free trade, as long as your product is 70%. Produced in Mexico, you’ve got the free trade. So that’s a wonderful opportunity there. You actually have lower labor costs in Mexico than you do in China, China, labor costs have risen. And you have a highly educated and motivated workforce in Mexico, which that is also changing in China quite a bit. We’re all finding with our factories, and you know, talking with my factory owners, every year after Chinese New Year, a lot of their employees do not return. It’s very hard for that because e Commerce has really taken off in China. And so a lot of these used to be you can walk through a factory in China a few years ago, and they didn’t have you know, they didn’t sell in the shops nowadays, that’s nearly impossible to find a factory that doesn’t sell and so workforces evolving in China, and it’s causing some some issues in terms of supply chain, not only for labor, for quality control, you know, so there’s even the Chinese are looking for alternatives to different places to open up factories and things like that. So I think all of us have to evolve. We look at any company that does not evolve with the times what do we find, you know, we look at like the toys are real stories and look at, you know, the top 50 retailers in the United States of America also have ecommerce websites. So it’s very important for us to pay attention and make sure that we’re looking at okay, what’s next? And also when we look at you know, how many issues do we have with with ports being backed up and with our, with our supply chain just Being at a complete stop it. And we were all talking about man for q4 This last year, you better get stuck in by August, because there’s no way that’s over timeframe is dead because there’s so much a, you know, work back up and everything prior to this import. So this year, it was a little bit better, we had some ketchup, but we really need to be paying attention. And so for me, I’m right here in San Antonio, Texas. I traveled to Mexico a lot. I love Mexico. And I can always see all these things, even here in San Antonio, made in Mexico, right on grocery shelves and everything. And I’m like, where are these factories? You know, being a sourcing expert and all these other countries. I’m like, Oh, am I not understanding what’s going on? The potential in Mexico. And so I thought to myself, there’s no you can’t really find these factories on Bama live don’t have a web presence. They haven’t needed to. So we thought, you know, my pregnancy, Jordan and I, we were like, Let’s just go. Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s take people to Mexico. Let’s go. Let’s discover it herself. See what’s going on? Well, little, little degree. Now there aren’t any multi category trade shows in Mexico. There’s no you know, if you can find these huge automotive trade shows, plastics trade show through gifts or toys, you can find that that’s great. But if you multiple categories, like global sources, or ASP or Canton Fair enough going to find that so we crazy entrepreneurs, what did we do? We said, let’s start. And it’s been a wild ride. It’s been a wild journey. Our first event was in June, and we had over 700 sellers show up for that. And just over 100, suppliers show up for the trade show. And it was so wonderful to learn about all the capabilities in Mexico and, and the breadth of the people. And to truly just start this journey of figuring out what sourcing. So

Josh Hadley 27:07

that’s awesome. Well, it sounds like you found a problem. And you’ve created that solution to that problem. And I’m excited to see how that New Mexico style Canton Fair grows over the next few years. So thanks for starting that. Amy, for all of us other sellers. The other thing I would love to dive into here, Amy is as people come to you asking for help in their businesses wanting to grow their brands, what are some of the mistakes that you are seeing, and maybe some case studies that you can share people that have come to you with problems? What type of problems are you seeing sellers making,

Amy Wees 27:45

I can say the biggest issue that I see is that people do not know their numbers. You know, I think all of us were bright eyed and bushy tailed when we started a new business. And we are in love with the idea of making a lot of money and getting that freedom. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Like, that’s what’s going to drive you to keep going. It’s very scary to take a leap on your own. But a lot of the people that’s one of the first things that I go over with people, it’s like, what’s your landed cost? How much are you paying your supplier? Who is your supplier? Do you even know who they are? Or have you just had a chat conversation on Alibaba? So the thing is, we all know nowadays, we really need to differentiate our products, we need to have a way of protecting them. We can’t just copy other people’s products. And it’s very tough to just white label anymore, because sellers are smart, and they’re now protecting their copyrights. They’re doing design patents, they’re very, they’re getting smarter, right. And so not only do we need to take the time to differentiate and learn product development and learn negotiation, learn how to vet fires and really develop those partnerships. But also, we need to understand how we’re going to become profitable and the costs that are involved. So 90% of the mistakes that I see people make when they come to me is they don’t really know where the money is going. They know that they’re not making any right Amazon holds on 50% of it anyway, right? It’s not reserved. But people don’t realize that this isn’t scale game. And we need to know our numbers. And you don’t have to be an accountant. I highly recommend you hire one. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to be aware of your numbers. You need to know what your costs are. You need to know how to run your numbers. In terms of understanding how much is this How much for this unit. This is called unit economics for this unit or this view. How much is it costing me to acquire a customer or advertise how am I So is how much profit Am I making? On average? How do I calculate? You can actually calculate that very simply with some basic reports. So I usually run through that with new clients from the very beginning and say, Okay, what are what’s our landed costs? And do we have enough from landed cost to retail price to actually be profitable. And what I like to see is a minimum 7x multiplier for products. Now, unless you’re selling a ton of volume, right, if you’re, you’re playing, if you’re making your own Walmart on Amazon, you have a ton of skews and you know, got a narrower margin, but you’re making a lot of sales and your advertising cost is lower, that’s great. But if you’re new brand with one or two products, you need to make sure that you’re number one, differentiating in a way that matters to the customer so that you don’t get stuck in a pricing review. Or number two, making sure that protecting your supply chain. So you actually understand your manufacturer is the end, you’re vetting them, you’re not having just an Alibaba chat conversation, you’re doing real negotiation, that supplier is your partner, you have contracts with that supplier, so that you’re able to actually protect your supply chain demo suppliers that are selling against their own clients is astounding. It’s just insane. So if you don’t have those contracts, I’m actually in litigation in China right now with one of my suppliers. Oh, wow. It is, it has been a long road. And I’m so grateful to have my attorney in China, I’m so grateful that I set up contracts from the very beginning. But a lot of the problems that I told sellers with stem from their supplier, knocking them off stem from having enough margin and not even understanding who their supplier is, you can’t have a contract with a trading company, they’re sourcing for about three. So even if if you’re just white labeling something and you could have protected your copyrights or whatever, then you can get away with the training, that’s okay, you can have a basic contract with them. That’s okay. But if you’re developing a product, you want to make sure you’re not sourcing that through training, because you cannot protect it. So these kinds of lessons, these are the things that we need to learn from the beginning. So many people are just starting Amazon, you know, brands brands on Amazon, and just watching some YouTube video, teaching them to source it for $5 off of Alibaba and sell it for $15. And then before they know it, by the time they come to me and you do their numbers, realize of losing money with presale, they’re paying Amazon Seller products, and the amount of people that I find this with is us County. So now I think that’s the big question. So if you’re here, you’re listening to this podcast, and you’re like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not one of those people. I’m not making any money. I mean, I’m making sales, but I don’t know really what’s going on? How do we turn it around? And this is what I work with people. So what we do is, first of all, we look at your spiking, can we recover any money? Can we source this product for a lower price and maintain the quality? And you know, do you have enough margin to make money on this product? And if not, can we fix that margin? The second thing is based on your sales goals, is there enough space in the market? So a lot of people will come to me and I want to make you I really need to be making 20,000 20,000 a month on this one product. And I will ask you what are you basing that on? Is there another competitor, they think you can steal market share from you know, we all have these great tools? You know, what are you basing that on? Sometimes people don’t know, they just kind of willy nilly pie in the sky, you know, so we need to use data and look at the data that’s out there and say, Okay, this competitor is, you know, some of my closest competitors are making X, Y or Z. I realistically think I can steal some of that market here with the following tactics. And so we’ll identify those tactics, right. And then we’ll get to work taking some of that market share. If you don’t, if we get together and we don’t see a way where we can steal market share where we can grow this product, then we need to go back to the drawing board and change our Strategy. Right? If we can’t recover costs, if this is just a pricing review or product and we need to move on and do better, maybe we can expand the product line to changing up the products slightly. We could differentiate a little bit more we could resource it from a new supplier. A lot of people just totally missed the opportunity of variations and multipacks I mean that alone can just total. I know, Josh, from your brands, you’ve done that to, you know, just the nth degree to you know, so like looking at your existing products that are selling well, your kings, your cash, kings and going, how can I build on this right? Can I sell it into two? What’s the buyer behavior? Right? Can I change the colors? Can I offer more on that same listing with that same supplier that’s already doing really well for me. So looking at those opportunities to grow your brand, knowing your numbers, and then making sure that you’re paying attention to your supply chain, and you’re differentiating in a way that matters to the customer. If you do that, from the beginning, you’re going to have an incredible chance at being very successful in this business.

Josh Hadley 35:49

I love that. Amy, I want to dive into you and mentioned you know, as you kind of take a look at the market, you said hey, can we identify some tactics to maybe steal share away from some of our competitors? Do you mind going through a list of what maybe some of those tactics might be for people to have in their mind of strategies when they enter a new market of ways that they can penetrate and gain market share?

Amy Wees 36:15

Well, I know people can’t see me right now. But when Josh mentioned that my face just lit up, because this is my favorite part. I love making sales. i The word planner, use the word fighter. Yes. Let’s go. So I get very excited about that. Let’s get into it. The first thing that you need to pay attention to is your pricing. Right? Think of this page one your customers page one for your medium to long tail keyword, how can you improve your place? There are several ways to do that. The first and easiest way is SB o guys, we’re in E commerce, right? If the customer can’t find us, they can’t buy. I have a client that makes a she makes a dog bowl. It’s very custom. It’s really cool. And so you know, we found that medium to longtail keyword, we found her customers page one. And she was nowhere to organically or in PPC advertising. So I’m searching just like the customer would and I’m looking at the page and her practice so much better. It’s cooler, it would totally stand out it would totally converts at a better price. It looks better. It’s awesome. So I’m like, Why isn’t she on this page one. Okay, clicking through looking at it. She was on page three, organically, her ads were no nowhere to be found. What a lot of people don’t realize is if your organic rate sucks for your customers page one, your ad placement is going to suck too. Because PPC goes off of relevancy. If you have the highest bid in a PPC war, but your product is not relevant. Your placement for your PPC is going to stop, stop. The first thing that you must do is play the SEO game. So you know, we got to put our little hacker hats on and we need to look at those keywords and you need to look at okay, are we playing? Searching? Are we looking super relevant for this medium to long tail keyword to the search engine. So with her, I noticed you didn’t have this. This was like four or five, the word keyword phrase anywhere in her table in tax reasons intact are so important for SEO and relevancy. And so a lot of times when I’m reviewing listings, I do three listing reviews for people. But when you when I look at a listing, and I look at the potential for relevancy, I’ll see individual keywords smattered. Throughout the listing that does nothing for the search engine, it does nothing for relevancy. When that search engine crawls your listing, it’s looking for those keywords intact, those keyword phrases intact, and it’s going ding okay, it’s relevant for that theme. It’s relevant for that. It’s very, very relevant to that, right. So all I did with her listing, she had a lot of keyword phrases intact, because it’s super order listing. Okay, so and, you know, looked great, but this was for stolen for a little while, right? So we’ve identified those page one keywords, right. And all we did is change that keyword phrase, put it in our title, which is on page one, the next stage for sale. So that’s it right making that one little change. So and then what happens with PPC, I have another client who’s in the UK, who’s done millions of retail sales and unique, awesome product. He came to me and he wanted me to audit his PPC provider. And I do that a lot and get into people’s PPC campaigns I’m in I’m in SEO now remember that like I love this stuff, right? So I you know, I’m looking at his PPC and I’m like, actually, it looks great. Like all your major keywords are here, and you’ve got placement modifiers here and some like there’s something gone to PPC. I went and looked at his listings, no keyword phrases, and no kind of important. Not. So what we did, we rewrote his listings made sure that they were playing to the search engines super relevant, super in order to keywords right and what happened all of a sudden his PPC ads on page one on top of page one all in all the most important places because now listing is irrelevant. So if you’re spending a bunch of money on PPC and you’re making all your your sales from PPC, and you’re not making organic sales, it’s because your listing optimization sucks. It’s because your product is too competitive, if you can’t answer the question, if you’re on your page one, but you’re not converting your customers page one, but you’re not converting. And you can’t answer the question. Why would someone buy from me and not my competition, and you’re not showing that in your photos, you’re, you’re not going to win the war. So in some cases, I have to tell people, Look, guys, this product has no potential, like, it doesn’t matter if we optimize the heck out of the listing, there’s no reason you’re in a price, there’s no reason that a customer is going to buy from you and not the competition. And that is one of the core principles that a lot of people don’t understand. And they’ll continue, instead of letting go of that duck, or making that slight change, it’s going to make them stand out on page one, even changing your packaging and making it retail ready. Putting that in your main image can set you apart. So that’s really what it comes down to that tactic alone. That’s how you steal market share. You get relevant with your search engine or your customers page one, and then you make sure your placement rocks and you make sure you’re converting show me the money that Jerry Maguire pictures that I put on my PPC training, like show me the money I don’t pay for clicks that don’t work, right. And I want to have amazing, organic. So those are some strategies.

Josh Hadley 42:02

I love that what a great, what a great summary. And I love that you shared some practical case studies with us. So many tools that people can use and dive into. And I know you have a lot of courses and teachings that you’ve shared with that. So I encourage our audience to go check out Amy, if you want to dive deeper into everything that she was talking about today. Maybe this has been such a fun conversation. I’ve learned a lot along the way. And I hope our listeners have to. Before we wrap things up, I love to leave our audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. So here are the three takeaways that I noted. Let me know if you think I’m missing something maybe. All right. So action item number one would be understanding your numbers. And so I think that is so crucial for anybody we’ve had a few accountants in the past. On here we’ve had Tyler Jeffcoat with Seller Accountants on here as a as a recent episode, I would go check out his episode, because he lays out the guidelines, maybe some targets that you should be shooting for towards your you know, what should your average cost of goods sold be based off of your retail price? What should your tacos or your a cost be? Right? And then even what percentage of your total revenue should Amazon fees be right? And so he gives all of those examples, along with what the aggregators or somebody that’s looking to acquire your business is looking for in those numbers. So if you have really good numbers, that obviously an aggregator or somebody that wants to acquire your business finds interesting, then that means you’ve got a healthy business. And so I 100% echo what Amy talked about, with physical product brands, cash flow is king, it is so so important. And if you are paying Amazon to sell your product and you’re not making a profit, you’re gonna go out of business really quick. So if if that’s a concern, and that’s on your mind, and you don’t know exactly how much margin you’re making, from every product, sell at a SKU level basis, start doing that today because that will fundamentally change your business and allow you to scale to eight figures and beyond. Action Item number two is talking about is really going back to the supplier and making sure that you look at you look at every component that’s going into the manufacturing for your products in evaluating whether you are truly getting the best price. Amy shared a lot of great examples. Make sure you’re not just working with like a trading company that’s then the middleman between the manufacturer and you can’t have contracts there. She talked about, you know, maybe even diversifying some of your manufacturing so that you don’t have Have all your eggs in one basket, she talked about manufacturing in Mexico. So use those opportunities to try to get the best price possible. And it’s not just a chat that you’re having, you know, whether it’d be on Alibaba or WeChat, or something like that, make sure you create relationships with your suppliers. I know, for us, our suppliers that we have are our biggest partners in our business, we’ve been with our main manufacturer for seven years now, and they are a partner in our business, I want them to succeed, because when they succeed, it will allow us to continue to succeed, and vice versa, they want us to succeed, because that will drive new business for them. And we have a great relationship with them. So get to that level, where you could call up, you know, the owner of your manufacturing partner, and, and give them a call and talk. Because that’s what we’re able to do with our brand. And it makes a huge difference. Last but not least, would be evaluating the markets that you’re selling into. Amy, you did a good job of helping everybody answer this question of us need to go in and say, why should somebody buy my product, rather than what is currently out there on the market, there’s a lot of courses that taught I think the me to method of, well just go find a niche that selling really well. And then go find somebody to private label that product for you slap your brand on it, and bam, you’re just gonna be printing these millions of dollars, and there’s so much more that goes into it. It’s not just you know, slapping your brand on top of something, it’s truly bringing something unique and different to the marketplace. As Amazon gets more and more competitive, that message is going to remain even more important, because you’re going to need to continue to innovate. One of the interesting things to to know on that AMI with AI, the introduction of AI and ChatGPT, and all of the fun that things that AI are going to bring to the world. Some people can be fearful and be like, oh, you know, I’m gonna lose out to the bots so to speak. But here’s one thing that I’ve learned is that they’re not the AI is not as good with creative concepts, as the humans are now eventually that may change. But for the next five to 10 years, we as humans, are going to be the ones that can innovate faster, then the robots can, the robots are really good at taking what’s existing, and following patterns. But we as humans should be looking at how do we innovate? How do we differentiate? How do we take bits and pieces from other, you know, inspiration to create something new that customers want? So anyways, a boost of encouragement for anybody that’s worried about AI, in general. But, Amy, those are my three takeaways from today’s episode. Is there anything else you would add?

Amy Wees 48:04

I think you nailed it. That was such a great summary of everything that we talked about. I would just say that remember, a lot of people when they hear me talk about product development, and you know, inventing something, they think that they have to invent something to succeed. And I would just say that there’s so many different ways to get creative. And the key is in connection with the customer, which AI cannot build a connection, but we can, right? So the key is in that connection, so how can you connect? And that can be through your branding, your packaging. You know, there’s there’s so many different ways you don’t always have to invent something new. You can diversify. Like we were saying, you’re just adding different colors or multipacks. Or, you know, just different things. Look at look for those easy ways to expand on what’s I love that

Josh Hadley 49:00

that’s a good, a good point. You don’t have to create something that’s never been seen before. But creating something different. Right. So I love that AB All right, Amy, I have my final three questions. I want to go through here with you that I love to ask every guest. So question number one is what’s been the most most influential book that you’ve read and why

Amy Wees 49:21

I’m so many. I mean, so, so many along my journey, you know, of course like books like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, he helped with the mindset in the beginning because, you know, I grew up in a very blue collar, family, you know, and I didn’t really know that there was this whole other side of freedom. So that was really great. And beginning to learn from and then as I grew in my businesses, anything by Mike McCalla Watts was really good clockwork but then the E Myth Revisited that book really good I mean, the rear made me realize, you know, it gives so many practical examples of how to grow your team and how to go from self employed to business owner. And I’m proud and proud business owner now, you know, I can go on a trip and not bring my laptop, I can, you know, count on my team to run things long gone. And I just, there’s so much freedom and so much beauty in that. And so I would encourage anyone who’s struggling with that, to read the E Myth revisited, I think it’s fine. My goal herper. That was a personal side. The book, the inner Bipin Ash has done so much for my personal growth and just realizing that, you know, I am not my thoughts, and that I really, you know, just really helping me, personally, and spiritually and emotionally. And that book was really a game changer.

Josh Hadley 51:03

Those are awesome recommendations. And I’ll second what you talked about there with the E-Myth and Clockwork, those are two of some of the best books that I’ve read, to reshape and entrepreneurs mind as to how you need to start working on the business instead of working in the business with very practical ideas of ways that you can start doing that now. And my goodness, it’s made a world of a difference is my wife and I, I think read clockwork about two years ago. And we’ve slowly been implementing those things into our business. And that’s honestly, what’s allowed us to scale so much faster. All right, question number two, Amy, my favorite question here is, what is a new software tool that you’ve been using in your business, or maybe it’s an existing one that you’ve been using for a while that you feel is a game changer in the E commerce space?

Amy Wees 51:55

Well, you mentioned ChatGPT. And I’ve been playing around, I’ve been at Jasper Ember for, I think, over a year now. And I really have loved that for creating content. ChatGPT, I actually asked it for product ideas the other day, and it gave me some, you know, some kind of general product ideas. But those helps spark my imagination and get me moving. So I thought that was really fun. I’ve been using ChatGPT a lot lately, there’s so many things you can do with it. You can say write me a Facebook post with hashtags about the following subject, or give me a list of quotes for you know, for motivation, and give me a list of motivational quotes, those kinds of things. So there’s so many cool things you can do with it in terms of creating content for your audience and growing your brand that way. So I’ve loved playing around with the AI tools, Jasper and ChatGPT have been awesome. But in the E commerce side of things, I love smart scale. I mean, they know I’m one of their super fans. I love that tool, I use it on a lot of consulting calls, what’s different about it, is they really give you a view into the market that you don’t get with any other tool in the E commerce space. So you can look into stuff categories, and see who’s made this subcategory, you can actually see what variations are selling better, you can see where your competitors are getting their traffic from they have a traffic map where you can actually pull up that Asin and you can see where this strength of different traffic is coming from. And so I do this with clients a lot we’ll look at okay, you know, why aren’t you selling more than this competitor? What is this competitor look like a great choice. And you’re both on your customers page ones. Like you’re awesome. We reverse search with Ethan’s and you know, you’re ranking for a lot of the same keywords. But what are they doing differently? And that’s where I’ll bring it up at that traffic map. And we’ll go, oh, wow, they’ve got you know, a lot more strength coming from accessory products or whatever. So we can change the advertising Strategy to match or work more on external traffic strategies. So smart Scout, I love I love those guys. They’re really great. They have a seller map to where you can see what the biggest brands are, like on that brand. And you can actually see all the products that they’re selling. I mean about inspiration ideas, and yeah, I love it. It’s great. Check it out.

Josh Hadley 54:30

Amazing. That’s a great tool. Great recommendation. All right. Last but not least, who is someone that you admire or respect the most in the E commerce space that you think other sellers should be paying attention to and why?

Amy Wees 54:43

There’s so many. There’s so many Oh, my goodness, it’s so hard. Um, I think that you know, some of the biggest names that I’ve learned so much from really Joe Wrightsville Oh, that guy is a legend. He has been, you know, he’s been a consultant for many years. He sells on so many and helps clients on so many different channels. He has a Pinterest course like a free Pinterest course that helps you grow your brand. And he’s got so many awesome marketing strategies. He taught me how to create a web page for the Google doc like there’s just so many great things that you can learn from Joe Wright’s bold. You know, he’s been on my podcast a couple of times, and he’s always active in the seller group. So definitely check him out. He’s he’s really smart. And and I just, I love that guy. He’s great. And then I would say, oh my gosh, there’s so many i for PPC, I love destiny, which on and read to Java. Those are two of my favorite teachers of PPC strategies. Derek Orkin, he is incredible in terms of teaching, about content, everything like that. And his event, you know, AMZ innovate is really, really awesome. Um, so yeah, I think you know, and then there’s, of course, Danny McMillan doing cellar sessions for so many years. And he’s just brought on so many guests. And I learned a ton from Danny. I just go on and on and on. There’s there’s so many great, great people in space for sure.

Josh Hadley 56:28

Yeah, I agree. I know, it’s hard to pick just one because there are so many great people sharing great actionable advice and content. But thank you gave our listeners a few new ideas or names that we haven’t heard on this podcast before. So I hope that’s exciting for our listeners. Now, Amy, if people want to reach out to you, they want to maybe take, you know, an opportunity to have you take a look at their listings. Where should people be reaching out to you? Yeah, so

Amy Wees 56:57

if you’d like me to look at your listing free of charge, no strings attached. It’s just me being a nerd and looking at different things you can improve. I’ll share my screen and just give you a little overview. You can go to AmazingAtHome.com. Underneath the Services menu, there’s a little thing that says free listing review. So check that out at AmazingAtHome.com. And just submit your listing so I can get nerdy, it makes me happy. And hopefully it’ll give you some good tips too. And of course, you can always find me on any of those social channels, Instagram, Facebook, I’m at Amazing At Home. And LinkedIn. I’m there too. But yeah, come come visit us anytime and AmazingAtHome.com.

Josh Hadley 57:42

Awesome. Well, Amy, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today and have a happy new year and we look forward to continuing to follow you and what you do at amazing at home.

Amy Wees 57:54

Thank you Josh. Happy New Year to all listeners out there.

Outro 57:59

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