In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Michael Maher, founder of Cartology, an Amazon brand management agency. Michael shares his journey from managing a Starbucks to becoming an Amazon seller and agency owner. They discuss key strategies for scaling on Amazon, including the importance of product reviews, compelling visual content, and diversifying product offerings. Michael also recommends Gap Selling and My Utmost for His Highest, highlights Zapier as a productivity tool, and praises Brett Bohannon as a respected Amazon expert. The episode offers practical, actionable advice for e-commerce sellers looking to grow their brands.

Timestamps:

Introduction to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast (00:00:00)
Host Josh Hadley introduces the podcast, his consulting service, and today’s guest, Michael Maher from the agency Cartology.

Michael Maher’s E-commerce Journey (00:03:07)
Michael shares his story of hating his job, starting with reselling on eBay, and eventually launching on Amazon.

Early Challenges and Lessons on Amazon (00:06:11)
Michael discusses his initial struggles on Amazon, including a near-suspension, dealing with inaccurate negative reviews, and learning by doing.

Impact of Chinese Sellers and Business Failure (00:08:18)
Michael explains how Chinese manufacturers entering the market led to the downfall of his first Amazon business due to competition.

Actionable Takeaway 1: Product Reviews (00:09:03)
Dissect customer reviews to improve your product. Fixing defective inventory is more important than short-term cash flow for long-term success.

Actionable Takeaway 2: Creative Content (00:10:58)
Use images to visually convey the solution your product provides. Add keyword-rich text to images for better organic ranking.

Actionable Takeaway 3: Product Diversification (00:13:09)
Focus on bringing new products to market to avoid dependency on a few items and ensure long-term business growth.

Final Thoughts on Actionable Takeaways (00:14:28)
Michael adds the importance of cutting losing products to free up cash and mental energy, and embracing controlled experimentation.

Most Influential Book (00:16:10)
Michael recommends “My Utmost for His Highest” for personal challenges and “Gap Selling” for improving his business sales process.

Productivity Tool Recommendation (00:17:44)
Michael highlights Zapier for automating tasks between different software, saving significant time on administrative work like scheduling and lead management.

Respected Figure in E-commerce (00:19:37)
Michael recommends following Brett Bohanon (“The Amazon Cowboy”) for his practical knowledge and live learning cohort, “Amazon with Brett.”

How to Connect with Michael Maher (00:21:18)
Michael shares the best ways to contact him, including his email, LinkedIn, and the Cartology agency website for more information.

Links and Mentions:

“Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting“: “00:01:00”
“Ecom Balance”: “00:02:00”
“Outsource School“: “00:02:00”
“TierPeak“: “00:05:00”
“Zapier“: “00:17:54”
“ClickUp“: “00:17:54”
“Calendly“: “00:18:50”
“SquadCast“: “00:18:50”
“Make (formerly Integromat)“: “00:19:32”
“Amazon with Brett“: “00:20:52”

Books
“My Utmost for His Highest“: “00:16:21”
“Gap Selling“: “00:16:21”

Additional Mentions
“The Longer Game Podcast“: “00:02:00”

Transcripts:

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 King, Michael E Gerber, author of the Emmett and Howard Ty. Today I’m speaking with Michael Maher, the owner and visionary for Cartology, a custom done for you services agency that provides full spectrum management for brands on Amazon. And we’re going to be talking a lot about the experience he has in seeing what is actually working today to help scale brands on Amazon, and we’re going to dive into those specific strategies. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. Listen, Michael, I started my business back in 2015 and I grew it to an eight figure brand in seven years, but I made a lot of mistakes along the way. That made the path of getting to eight figures take a lot longer than it needed to. There were times where I had self-doubt in myself as a leader, where whether I could actually run and lead a team of people, or whether my business could actually survive on the Amazon Marketplace, or if we would have the cash flow to be able to purchase new products in order to continue to grow.

Josh Hadley 00:01:11  I wish I would have had a guide along the way that would have made getting there a lot quicker and easier to help me navigate around those stumbling blocks I ran into. So to our listeners, those of you who are running into similar obstacles or you’re hitting plateaus and you want to know the next steps to take your brand to the next level, then go to Ecomm Breakthrough Comm to learn more. That’s ecom with two M’s. And as a special bonus to my podcast listeners, this month I’m giving away one $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit session at no cost. All you need to do is email me at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com and in your subject line say strategy audit and then plead your case as to why I should choose you and your business to work with this month. Before introducing today’s guest, I want to give a big thank you to Nathan Hirsch and thank him for referring Michael as a guest for the podcast. Nathan Hirsch is the CEO of Ecom Balance, an online bookkeeping service for e-commerce and digital businesses, as well as Outsource School is a membership teaching business owners how to hire effectively online.

Josh Hadley 00:02:18  Today, I’m excited to introduce you all to Michael Maher. Michael is the owner and visionary of Cartology, a custom done for you services agency that provides full spectrum management for brands on Amazon, from catalog optimization to advertising. To international expansion, Cartology takes your brand story and translates it into an elevated brand awareness, revenue and profitability on the Amazon Marketplace. They help Amazon business owners play the long game, developing strategies that are custom tailored for your unique goals so that you thrive. He is also the host of the Longer Game podcast and his podcast is about the future of retail. With that introduction, welcome to the show. Michael, why don’t you give us a little bit of your journey and what got you to where you are today?

Michael Maher 00:03:07  Well, like you, Josh, I also ran into a lot of obstacles and learned stuff the hard way. And my story started back in 2010. I hated my job, man. I mean, it’s it’s that simple. The job I was working at the time was just not fun.

Michael Maher 00:03:22  I was managing this. I was managing a coffee shop for Starbucks, and I, I graduated school, I was like, I don’t know what I want to do. And so I just kind of worked my way up there. And after I’d been there for about a year, I was like, this sucks, I hate this. I had pressure from my boss. I had a supportive district manager before, but then she left and this new one came in and she was trying to either get you to be her puppet or she was she was firing you. So it anytime I gave feedback like, hey, this isn’t working, this isn’t good. It was like you’re being negative. I was like, I’m trying to improve something. I’m here doing the work. I’m showing up. So I just felt like, you know, wasn’t appreciated. And the pay wasn’t that, you know, great, if I’m honest. Anyway, so I had experience selling music here on eBay. I’m a musician, and I would go and buy maybe like an old drum machine or synthesizer and would go to like a pawn shop and there would be something there and I’m like, oh, I’d go look it up on eBay.

Michael Maher 00:04:18  They have no idea what their and this is before reverb or anything like that. They had no idea what they were, what they were selling. They weren’t a lot of pawn shops. They’re selling now on marketplaces like a reverb or, or eBay. But I would go and see, okay, I could sell this for way more, look up completed items, had a buddy that I would do that with, and knowing that I had that skill set, I had another friend who had started, I mean really just buying generic goods, reselling stuff on eBay and then Amazon. And I was like, dude, you got to show me what you’re doing. I need to get out. I need to do something. So he walked me through the business side of things. And much smarter guy, I think, than I. He was an accountant. It’s a really understood some of the financial stuff. He was like trying to explain what a balance sheet was to me. And I was like, why would you put something in over here and take it out over here and leave it in the business? Like, just just no clue.

Michael Maher 00:05:09  That was I didn’t go to school for business. That was not my that was not my forte. So he walked me through that process. I took a couple grand to Vegas with me. Talked about Vegas earlier, but I went to the ASD show. I invested a couple grand in some inventory. At the time, there was a research software called Tear Peek for eBay. I don’t even know if it’s if it’s still around, but I would go walk the floor. And at that time, people did not want you selling their products on Amazon or online. They were avoiding that like the plague. They thought it was bad. And now, from what I hear, you go to those shows people are dying for you to like, oh, please, you know, do this. Help us, help us grow. Because they realize how so many times have changed in the past 13 years. But I invested a couple, a couple grand in some product and worked that for about a year, just eBay alone and, you know, had a conversation with my wife and was like, at what point, you know, do I leave my job when it when is it a good idea? And I was like, okay, well, if you can prove enough income and you can actually take a paycheck then and, you know, replace what you’re doing, then that would be that would be a good place to start.

Michael Maher 00:06:11  And so after about a year, I was able to take a paycheck and I was like, all right, I’m getting out of here. As soon as I left, I launched on Amazon and man, it was a quite the learning experience from the very beginning. I remember, you know, selling something and I didn’t ship it right away. And I’m pretty sure Amazon like almost immediately suspended me. And I was like, what’s going on in? My buddy was like, dude, you can’t mess around. You have to be really on top of it. And I was like, okay. So, you know, learned grew in that space, started I mean, before even private label was a thing, starting a sort of like a private label business. Over time, over the course of six years, as I had that business, I eventually developed a brand. It was like a health and fitness brand and we had this gym timer. It was like an interval timer, something that made me like a CrossFit or an MMA or something like that gym would buy, and that was a really great seller for us.

Michael Maher 00:07:05  Just happen to find a good supplier and was able to, you know, sell it, mark it up, but had a really good even like extended warranty, like, hey, you have a problem in the next year, we’ll, you know, we’ll refund you in full, we’ll replace the item for you. Just experienced a lot of stuff that there wasn’t a ton of regulation on, or a lot of notifications on, like there’s so many different sources now to say, hey, what happens when I lose the buy box? What does that mean? And there was a there was not a lot of that information. So just kind of figuring out as you go running into a lot of the issues that people still experience today, someone leaving a negative review and it’s not accurate. Like I was selling iPhone three cases and someone was like, this doesn’t fit my iPhone for it. And I was like, yeah, of course it doesn’t. It’s the wrong kind of case. And so you know Amazon’s like we’re not going to take that down because we we think it’s valid feedback.

Michael Maher 00:07:54  And I was like, okay, well that’s stupid. But you know there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. So just a lot of hard knocks. But also I had my friend that I could reach out to like, hey, what are you seeing? He’s still a very successful seller. Continue to grow, and has expanded his product lines in business. And so I’ve been, you know, happy to to to see him grow. Back in 2015, though, Amazon opened up the marketplace to China. So they were right around that time, like 2015, 2016, a ton of Chinese manufacturers started selling direct to the consumer, and they came in and sold my product basically at my cost. And I had a couple products that were really driving sales. There’s a lot of things in hindsight that I’m like, I wish I would have done this, I wish I would have done this, I wish I would have done this. But when it came down to it, they came in, basically usurped a ton of my sales and I did not have the cash flow to to support that, to say, okay, well, I can continue to either not pay myself, or bleed money.

Michael Maher 00:08:48  It just was not an option. And there were a lot of financial mistakes that I made along the way that I didn’t have, like a savings. I didn’t have stuff that, you know, I think you really need to survive and thrive in those hard times because there absolutely will be those difficult times in business.

Josh Hadley 00:09:03  As we begin to wrap up here. Michael. I like to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three takeaways that I’ve noted is actionable strategies that people can implement. But Michael, I would love to hear if you think I’m missing something. So number one, one of the things that you talked about at the beginning was product reviews and caring about the customer’s experience. That was one of the mistakes that you had made earlier on in your journey. And we talked about how significant, going from a 3.5 star rating to a four star from a four star to a 4.5 star rating can have on your product. And so my recommendation and advice for everybody is to actually dive in and dissect the product reviews that you are getting.

Josh Hadley 00:09:53  And although some people can, you know, give outlandish reasons as to why your product didn’t work. Listen to the customer. And I think one of the most important things is that if you see something going in the wrong direction, you know, make sure that you get in touch with your manufacturer. You correct those things as soon as possible, if that even means you’ve got to ship out all of that inventory that just went in, that will be more important than trying to sell through a thousand units that are defective. Sure, you can make your money back, but is not going to benefit your business in the long term. If you now move from a 4.5 star down to a four star, it will have a long a more negative long term impact on your business than that cash flow would have had for you.

Michael Maher 00:10:41  So that’s actually take the reviews personally. Yes, you have to get it emotional to remove the motion component. Like, how can I make this better so that people can actually enjoy more? And then you’re going to feel better about that.

Michael Maher 00:10:53  But if you take it personally, it’s going to be really hard to to be open to that feedback.

Josh Hadley 00:10:58  Yeah. 100% agree. Action item number two here is going with the creative content that you talked about. People aren’t reading the bullets. People aren’t reading that your description either. The only thing people may read is maybe the beginning of your product title. Okay, so what are people doing? They’re glancing real quickly through all of your photos. And so here’s the key part. It’s not just about creating a bunch of lifestyle images, although that is important. It’s being able to convey the solution and the ideal state that that customer is trying to achieve by purchasing the product. Right. So if they’re if they’re purchasing a yoga mat. Right. Is it, you know, is it because they don’t want to sit on a hard floor? It’s more than that, right? It’s probably more like they’re now getting into this yoga lifestyle that’s like. Increase your flexibility, right? And it’s like, okay, the mat may not be giving you that increased flexibility, but it’s providing that foundation for you.

Josh Hadley 00:12:02  Right? So you’re appealing to their higher senses and appealing to what it is that they’re actually trying to solve. You talked about the ibuprofen example. It’s not just ibuprofen that they want. What they really want is to remove their migraine or their headache that they’re having right now. Right.

Michael Maher 00:12:19  And so it is the gap between their current and future state. You need to assess what that is. And you need to show them what the future state looks like.

Josh Hadley 00:12:27  You said it perfectly right there. So show them visually in lifestyle images and then add those specific captions on there. Another quick hack. This has been something that was, brought on by another seller, but Amazon is actually reading. They’ve got artificial intelligence and computer intelligence that’s reading the text that goes on those images. So if you really want to up your game, include keywords into those that the text that you’re displaying on your images because Amazon is crawling that and it can help index you and increase your organic ranking. So factor in those keywords not only into your bulletin description, but your images as well.

Josh Hadley 00:13:09  That’s good action. Item number three is focusing on what is going to move the needle the most in your business. You talked about this as kind of one of the mistakes, but you also kind of alluded to this with some of the the case studies that you shared here. One of the biggest things, in order to continue to grow and succeed on Amazon is continuing to bring new products to the marketplace, being less dependent on 1 or 2 that are everything in your business, because you may face a suspension of one of those ACS, or they just get D indexed or whatever issues that happen. And if you’re too reliant on 1 or 2 Asians, that puts you in a very vulnerable spot. And so, as you mentioned with the previous case study, you know, instead of bringing all all, you know, thousands of their SKUs, you brought on their top ten first, and then you continue to grow from there. And so my action item for people here is obviously start and continue to double down on those Asians that are winning.

Josh Hadley 00:14:11  But don’t neglect to continue to bring on additional SKUs to continue to grow and support your business. Bringing new products to the market is the lifeline for any Amazon seller. So those are my action items. Michael, do you think I’m missing anything here?

Michael Maher 00:14:28  I think that’s good. I, I’ve added something to to each one. I think the thing I would add to the last one is just get rid of this. If something’s not working, get rid of it. Again, less emotional attachment. It could be, especially if you’re not necessarily tied to a specific product. Like I said, if you’re a consumer goods brand and this is your product, sometimes you have less flexibility there. Maybe you need to iterate on the recipe if it’s food, whatever the case might be, but be willing to let stuff go because sometimes that dead weight frees up mental energy. It frees up cash. Even if you’re potentially, you know, you already have a sunk cost and you’re losing a little bit, you’re freeing up that cash to go into something else.

Michael Maher 00:15:07  and we all know space is limited to Amazon, so don’t hold on to stuff that that even if it’s like, hey, I sell a good amount of this, but the reviews are like the rating is like a three seven. And I’ve just noticed it’s declined over time. I’m spending more on advertising on this. I don’t know, I think it’s something that I’m just gonna cut loose and Amazon is is honestly a ton of experimentation. I mean, it’s controlled experimentation. But when we launch a campaign with someone, you know, I’m pretty confident of what I think I’m going to see, but there’s no way of knowing until until we until we let it loose. So it is an experiment in a way, but you have to. You have to keep a grip on it. It’s not just let things go and fly by the seat of your pants, but sometimes it’s, hey, let’s test this grouping because we don’t know what’s going to happen, but let’s divert significant budget to it to see if that’s going to work.

Michael Maher 00:15:58  So yeah, the experimentation piece is important. And maybe service providers don’t want people to know that there’s some experimentation that’s involved. But I think you just embrace that and are honest with people. And I think they’ll trust you a little bit more.

Josh Hadley 00:16:10  Yeah, I love that. All right, Michael, I want to dive into my final three questions that I’d love to ask every guest. Number one is what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Michael Maher 00:16:21  Well, I have one that’s like more personal life. but I also have one that I’ve read recently that’s been really helpful for my business. So if I look at those two books, I’m kind of I’m kind of obfuscating the question here, but, there is a devotional that I read every day called My Utmost for His Highest, and it challenges me. And I think that’s one of the things that I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is like, I need to find people, coaches, whatever the case might be, that challenged me, and maybe I am solidified in what I’m doing and it’s right.

Michael Maher 00:16:51  But maybe something helps me to change my perspective in my mind. And that’s something that challenges me every day. And I get something from it every day. And it helps me to kind of stay centered and in the right mindset, in the right frame of mind. The other book that I will say, and I’ve got a couple of books here on my on my desk, but it’s this book right here. Gap selling. by a guy named Keenan. And it has really changed. I’ve done a lot of work on sales process, but it’s really changed how I approach that as an agency. and it’s yeah, I can’t, I cannot recommend it enough. They’ve got additional content. They’ve got a trainer if you want to work with a trainer. I went ahead and did that, and I’ve just seen a huge improvement in my ability to, like, assess problems. See, can I, you know, can I fix this or help, you know, with this business problem and then actually, you know, win business from it.

Josh Hadley 00:17:44  I love that. Great recommendations. Question number two here is what is a productivity or software tool that you’ve recently been using that you feel like is a game changer?

Michael Maher 00:17:54  Well, I would say most recently I have started I’ve always used Zapier in some capacity, but I’ve been leveraging the connections because we all got multiple softwares. Nutshell is my CRM and I’ve been attaching that to click up, which is, you know, another productivity software. But connecting those two things, when I create a lead inside of nutshell and now automatically creates a card, excuse me, automatically creates a card or a task inside of click up so that it can move through as it moves through the sales process. It will automatically do that. So that’s been super helpful. And I’m now I was actually before we even got on this, I was like, okay, how do I create a folder inside of Google Drive when this is open. Like how are these different things putting together when I for my podcast, as soon as someone schedules on Calendly, Xavier automatically puts a new session in squad casts and schedules a new calendar and right for them.

Michael Maher 00:18:50  That used to be something my assistant have to do, so that’s been a huge game changer. It takes time to to figure it out, and I’m not necessarily the most adept at it. But when you can figure something out, it feels like a huge win and it saves you. It’s that first order negative. Second order positive. I’m going to spend three hours trying to figure out how to set this up, but I’m going to save myself a ton of time in the long run.

Josh Hadley 00:19:10  Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. Zapier is awesome. We’ve recently started using Macomb. and that’s another version of Zapier, but it actually creates like entire flows. It’s a little more complicated to get set up, but once you get it set up, you can actually walk through an entire like SOP and visually see it. It’s a little.

Michael Maher 00:19:32  Make.

Josh Hadley 00:19:33  Yep. Make make.

Michael Maher 00:19:35  Check that out man. Check it out.

Josh Hadley 00:19:37  That. 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 and why?

Michael Maher 00:19:45  I mean, I was going to jokingly say, can I say myself? But that would have sounded so, so pompous.

Michael Maher 00:19:49  Totally kidding. someone that I really look up to and have gotten really close with, is a buddy of mine. His name is Brett Bohanon, and he’s been in the Amazon space for a while. He started as a seller as well and has done work for a lot of brands, agencies been, I think, behind the scenes in a lot of stuff that people maybe would know about, but maybe not necessarily know him. And he has a this really cool cohort of learning called Amazon with Brett, and he’s recently started calling himself the Amazon Cowboy. Let’s see if he’s still doing that when this podcast comes out. But he and I do an AMA once a month on on Twitter and it goes live on like LinkedIn and and YouTube. But it’s like, ask us anything about Amazon. He’s super knowledgeable. He’s got a lot of great practical experience, like dealing with flat files and stuff in this. Amazon with Brett. Amazon with Brett. Comm. he doesn’t just put together course information, but it is a live learning cohort.

Michael Maher 00:20:52  So I’ve had people on my team go and and be in this learning cohort to talk about what are problems we’re facing, all this kind of stuff. And I think that is a real not just taking a course and being in a power group, but talking with real people actually facing problems. And I know I’ve seen brands, I’ve seen people that work at agencies. Anyone can can get something from from this. And he’s, he’s just a good he’s a good dude and he’s funny too. So yeah. Brett. Brett Ohanian for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:21:18  Awesome. Very fun. Well, thank you for sharing all of your wisdom with us today, Michael. If people want to learn more about you and your agency, want to consider working with you, where’s the best people that people? Where’s the best place that people can reach out to you at?

Michael Maher 00:21:33  You can, man. You can email me directly if you want. Michael, I think you need help with Amazon. Think. Think. Cryptology. Cryptology is not available, unfortunately.

Michael Maher 00:21:43  I’ve tried. I’ve tried to acquire it, but you can email me directly. You can find me on LinkedIn. I think it’s. Yeah, it’s like LinkedIn forward slash in forward slash. I’m Michael Ma. You can find me on Twitter at Michael Jammer Instagram Michael Joseph Ma but any of those places are good. Feel free to reach out and and or just go to our website, think Comm and find out more.

Josh Hadley 00:22:05  They’re awesome. And we’ll link everything in the show notes as well to make it easy for people.

Michael Maher 00:22:10  Beautiful.

Josh Hadley 00:22:10  Michael, thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom with us. I know I’m much better for it.

Michael Maher 00:22:16  Oh thanks man. Thanks for thanks for listening. And, thanks for doing such a good job of introducing me and summarizing things. I told you I need to hire you just to bring me around on calls so you can do good, but. Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It was a lot of fun. It’s good to to talk this stuff out with someone else.

Michael Maher 00:22:32  That’s that’s knowledgeable.

Josh Hadley 00:22:34  Awesome. Thanks again. Michael.