The best Amazon conference I attended this year.
Contents
Know Yourself, Know Success – Stephen Peterson – ecommercemomentum.com
- Bio
- Fba seller since ’11
- Ebay seller – 4000+ skus
- Bought dvd stores out.
- What would your spouse or significant other say about your commerce business?
- Text stayinlove – 44222 – you get the download of the audio and get signed up for the newsletter
- Text Rocky2017 for the slides.
- 205 Interviews
- Someone sells on 16 channels? Is it worth it?
- $17 million dropshippers that operate at 4%?!
- Trends
- Less RA
- Lots of stores closing
- More OA
- Tactical Arbitrage – it’s a lot easier to scrape data
- More WS
- Legitimate business, thinner margins.
- Wholesaler’s get 8-10 emails
- Go to a trade show.
- Send them a letter? (Physical letter?)
- You’ve got a problem, I can fix that for you
- Everyone’s doing that conversation
- They’re sick of it
- Relationship building
- Much more PL
- You want Brand Registry 2.0
- Eventually you want to sell your brand
- There are companies that buying Amazon businesses, putting them in a portfolio, and taking out a dividend?! ***
- Lots of ebay
- Allows you to get rid of stuff that you can’t get rid of on Amazon
- Other channels
- Jet
- Walmart
- Less RA
- 5 Key Action Steps
- 1- You need to invest in yourself through conferences and meetups
- Meet people and invest in courses?
- Karen Locker – $3000 per year to manage Amazon account
- Everyone here has a story
- Bob Steele, quiet, introverted
- You’re going to change a life today
- 2- Networking/partnerships are the biggest thing you can do to grow quickly
- Andy + Wilkey
- Jason + Devan
- Stephen had a problem-
- Dan Thompson at Private Label Retreat
- Here’s my manufacturer, you can use my name
- Wholesale 50% markup
- 30% Distributor – buy at 30% sell at 50%
- Dan Thompson at Private Label Retreat
- Your missing skill set, she might have.
- Old-timers have already experienced the problems you have.
- Fastest ways businesses accelerate.
- Andy gave away 50% of his business to his 24-year-old nephew Nathan. Biz grew 4x
- Gave away 30% to Liran.
- 3- Helping others will bring you back much more than you give.
- 4- You have skillsets from your previous career- adapt them to your business
- Sales – get those WS accounts on the phone or trade shows
- Graphic designers (?)
- Dan Wentworth 100% RA – soon PL
- If you can solve a problem, you’ve got a product and business.
- o 5- Set bigger goals.
- If you operate a million dollar business, you have to operate it differently from a half a million business
- You can’t do it all alone, you need to buy time
- Bookkeeping
- Payroll
- You can’t do it all alone, you need to buy time
- Make decisions from a million dollar POV than from a half mil POV.
- If you operate a million dollar business, you have to operate it differently from a half a million business
- 1- You need to invest in yourself through conferences and meetups
“Building a 7-Figure Brand on Amazon” – Andy Slamans and Liran Hirschkorn – Amazingfreedom.com
- Intro
- Broke ice with story about back home – sexual towns
- Build camaraderie with story on how Andy got started stalking Chris Green
- Met Robyn Johnson at first ASD. Robyn’s a youth worker. Talked with Robyn for 3 hours. Patiently answering newbie questions. Dan (wholesale guys) has helped Andy with informal mentorship. Jeff. Nate McCallister (there’s million ways). Casey from Viral Launch.
- Success Stories
- Todd launched a PL product and sold all 1000 units within 3 months- $35k
- Anyone can do PL, you just need the right system and steps.
- There is a massive shift happening
- What is going to happen in the future with Alexa when people don’t care about brand?
- Beat a brand because I looked at reviews and went to manufacturer to make changes
- ** Big brands aren’t reading reviews- that’s our advantage
- Liran – built a million dollar PL business starting from 2016
- Has PPC course
- Started off doing RA – in order to scale transitioned into PL
- Willow & Everett – They only have 11 products – they do $150k month.
- Why PL?
- 1- Increase Margins
- 2- I make the decisions & control the supply chain
- 3- The ability to agile and move faster
- I beat big brands
- I optimize and customize my listings to beat competition
- 4- I control the price. No MAP.
- 5- I’m the only seller on the listing
- 6- I can wholesale my products to other sellers
- Recoup cash flow immediately by sharing buy box with other Amazon sellers I know. Pay premium.
- I have a product, this is how I’ve sold the past 14 months, this is what I’m estimated to make
- Sell 1000 units- make $5000 on the sell like a WS, recoup cash flow.
- 7- Ability to get into retail
- Working with a consultant that’s reaching out to buyers at major retailers like Costco.
- Just got back from a licensing show. Pitched a major brand to license their name to use on my products
- 8- Potential to sell my brands
- Interesting conversations
- Casey works with $20m – $30m sellers. Build brands on Amazon for 2-3 years and sell it for a lot.
- So what’s the process?
- 1. Identify products with the following criteria
- Customer demand
- Keywords and data that customers are already searching
- Limited competition
- Profitability
- Perhaps the best source for this is Amazon itself
- Look at best-seller categories and go deeper into niches
- Best-sellers
- Categories
- Customer demand
- 2. Find a supplier
- Use alibaba – found most suppliers
- Look to differentiate, add value, make our product improve upon products already in marketplace
- 3. Prepare with keyword research & amazing listings.
- Images + copywriting – 2 most important things for ecommerce
- Amazing photos- lifestyle images
- I Increased my conversion by 12% on my best-selling product with 1 photo change.
- Andy failed to optimize a listing.
- First thing i do is look at the images, how can I upgrade these images.
- Immediate increase in conversion. Dropped right back to the 1000-2000 rank.
- Didn’t change copy or anything else but the image.
- Take great photos
- I Increased my conversion by 12% on my best-selling product with 1 photo change.
- 4. Launch your products on Amazon
- Your goal get to the first page of search.
- My discount promo stack – Stack attack
- Multiple promotions on a listing
- Customers buying 2 at a time for the discount
- 1. Identify products with the following criteria
- What’s the best way to get started?
- Inner circle community?
- Special RMRC Offer
- Amazing Freedom Course ($2500 Value)
- PPC Blueprint Course ($1997 Value)
- 6 Months Inner Circle Group ($1000 Value)
- Image Optimization ($129 Value)
- Listing Optimization & Keyword Research ($699 Value)
- 1 Free Month AMZprofessional ($149 value)
- 1 Free PRoduct Launch with Viral Launch? ($300 Value)
- Total Value $6774
- RMRC Offer $399/6 months (or $1997)
- Liran will setup PPC – Campaign 1 product – $1000 value
- Several hours of keyword research
- Record how I set up sponsored ad campaigns
ASIN & Catalog Strategy: The Proven Methodology for Dissecting your Catalog and Maximizing Profits – Peter Kearns – www.peterkearns.com
- Bio
- Worked for Amazon for 3 ½ years. New seller recruiting.
- PSA – RA is not dead, RA is key to Amazon’s strategy
- PSA – PL is the fastest selling segment in Seller Central. Amazon is pivoting for PL. Seller central was for resellers. These tools are for private label. They launched EBC. Brand Registry 2.0. USPTO (trademarks) and copyrights. PL is going to get harder too if it follows Amazon’s history. PRobably good to get in earlier
- 15+ years in advertising, marketing, retail and ecommerce
- Amazon seller since 2013
- Amazon marketplace leader for 3+ years
- Worked with brands like jcrew, discovery channel, coach, the seattle times, amazon services
- Goal setting
- What are your goals for 2017?
- Hint- it should be a number
- How are you going to achieve this goal?
- Hint- Your answer must be based on data
- What are your goals for 2017?
- Amazon Services
- Ran baby, beauty, grocery, hpc, and PCA
- Looked for gaps in the catalog. Brands that are under-represented. Members of my old team that are reaching out to ebay sellers to
- .ca – Don’t
- Worked with over 1500+ sellers
- Those sellers have done $500-700m
- Involved in 6 “Jeff Bezos” escalations
- Got a Jeff B. Thought “I’m going to get fired!”
- But you’re not doing anything this weekend but write a 6-pager
- Use these instances to deep-dive into what’s wrong
- You used to be able to get UPC exemptions
- There were 1600 sellers waiting for UPC exemptions
- Email blasted them.
- Upstream – answering the 5 Whys?
- Why did this guy have to call and email?
- Through 1 email- had to redesign entire team. It’s a big portion of how Amazon does their business today.
- WOW- that’s great business strategy- that attention to customers
- Earned Amazon MBA
- Big data is worthless
- “Big data is not about the data” – Gary King, Harvard University
- Explaining that having access to big data is important but the real value is the analytics
- $15MM to $40MM
- While at Amazon I was responsible for strategic planning in the consumables categories
- Write planning doc and present to Directors and VP
- They read over the doc and make edits
- My goal was to go from $12MM to $25MM
- They change my goal from $25MM to $40MM
- While at Amazon I was responsible for strategic planning in the consumables categories
- How am I going to take $12m to $40m in one year with a bunch of sellers that have never sold on Amazon?
- Analyze the data
- Interpret the data
- Established strategy
- Work backwards from your goal – REVERSE ENGINEER
- $12mm > $40m
- What data am I looking at and how am I interpreting it?
- Brands with incomplete catalogs
- Brands that are doing amazing but don’t have their full catalog on Amazon.
- A9 search with no sales
- What are people searching for? Can actively see that if you work at Amazon?
- No listings or underdeveloped browse
- Tents and browse trees?
- Low BSR w/ frequent stockouts (?)
- Stockouts? Ask Peter for more info?
- Zero or low FBA offers
- Brands with incomplete catalogs
- What do I do with this data?
- I find the RIGHT sellers
- Selling these types of products and brands
- That will generate the sales velocity to achieve the goal
- I create a strategy that will achieve this goal
- What data am I looking at and how am I interpreting it?
- Working Backwards
- My “Addressable Market”
- $40m goal =
- $50k annual GMV
- Established businesses, old-school CEOS, getting them to reform
- Offering 1260 ASIN
- Launch 800 sellers with the RIGHT catalog and product selection
- $50k annual GMV
- Strategy
- You need to use the same data-driven strategy to achieve your goals
- Every ASIN has to perform at an established velocity and performance
- Your catalog is divided
- Missed stuff
- Business Reports
- Detail Page Sales & Traffic by Child Item Report
- Located in Business Reports
- This report is going to be the foundation for establishing goals and strategy
- Sessions (Traffic to your ASIN)
- Unique IP address in 24 hour period
- Sessions percentage (sales conversion)
- Are you converting your traffic to dollar bills
- Buy Box % & Sales
- Does not report profit
- Detail Page Sales & Traffic by Child Item Report
- ASIN Strategy
- Sessions minimum of 1k per month (97m unique visitors to Amazon and you’re fighting for traffic)
- 1000 sessions w/ 10% conversion = 100 units per month
- Session conversion: minimum 10%; 30% is good; less than 10% is BAD
- 100 units per month x $29.99 missed
- Profit: You MUST establish a profit range 10-50%
- Only way to grow business is to have cash flow
- Positive Profit Contribution – stuff they’re selling is driving cash flow
- Buy Box (resellers): Establish a floor for BB share
- Start getting off ASIN if you can’t have BB more than 25-50%
- Sessions minimum of 1k per month (97m unique visitors to Amazon and you’re fighting for traffic)
- ASIN Strategy – missed second slide
- Not Meeting Goals
- Sessions – Increase sponsored products, update keywords/search, off-Amazon advertising
- Session Conversion – Fix detail page, images, bullets, title, product reviews, adjust pricing, run promotions
- Buy box- adjust pricing, run promotions, fba , stop selling
- Profit- Stop selling when you can no longer maintain profit range
- All Asins are not created equal
- Head, torso, tail – Goal is to get your entire catalog to perform like your head
- Head Selection = Top 20%
- Most important ASINs in your catalog
- 80/20 rule – Pareto principle
- Generating 80% of your sales
- High velocity ASINs
- Profit can vary – 10 – 50%
- High competition
- Never run out of stock
- Never get suspended
- This is your goal for every ASIN
- Torso Selection
- The middle of your catalog ~70%
- This is where you start making adjustments
- Business can sustain stock outs, ASIN suspensions
- Slower velocity
- They’re either going down or up
- Profit range tends to be consistent
- ASINs can either improve with making adjustments or
- ASINs are ending lifecycle and heading to tail
- The Tail
- The bottom 30% of your catalog
- Why are you selling?
- Tail section is CRAP (Can’t Realize and Profit) ASINs
- Must eliminate CRAP as these ASINs have run through its lifecycle
- It’s time to stop selling or it’ll cripple your business
- Head Selection = Top 20%
- Establishing your strategy
- This strategy can be used for ws, arbitrage, and pl
- The strategy is a starting place. IT doesn’t have to be the same
- You just need a strategy
- Where do you start?
- 1000 sessions? 500 sessions?
- 10% Session Conversion? 50% Session Conversion?
- 10% Profit? 30% Profit?
- Some Advice
- Stop thinking of your business as a business that is going from $12m to $40m
- Start thinking of your business as a $40m business that is underperforming and you need to make changes immediately.
- You need to shift your mindset.
- How much space do I need?
- How much money do I need?
- How many people do I need?
- Is this business underperforming- you start looking at your business in a different way and start identifying gaps and finding solutions
- Q&A.
- Amazon has A9 – you can’t get in and see what’s searching for, it’s proprietary information.
- Get these extensions
- Keepa.
- How Many?
- Amazon’s sourcing is inconsistent. They go in and out.
- Keepa will show you Amazon’s history
- Just because Amazon’s on a listing doesn’t mean you should avoid it. I know sellers that wait until Amazon sells out and then ride it.
- Seller Central problem
- Open ticket. Always start with an email.
- If you start with a phone call- the associate won’t dictate/annotate
- Start with email- follow up with phone call and reference case number
- Documents live on past the author. I’m going to write it and that’s how I’m going to continue to follow up
- Might be pushing something to the wrong audience. You’re the wrong team. This has to be transferred to another team.
- Open ticket. Always start with an email.
- Amazon Game of Thrones
- 3 teams with different goals and objectives and they do not communicate
- Retail team- trying to get selection.
- Trying to get the best- head 20% of stuff and don’t want the 3rd party getting in on it.
- It’s important for Amazon that Nike’s on the site
- Amazon can control when the next Air Jordan’s are available
- If I can’t buy it on Amazon, I’m going to an image competitor and buy it from them
- Third party team – Peter’s team
- Seller performance – they just care about the customer. Seller performance team is there to protect the customer experience.
- Amazon has created an amazing channel
- They have over 300m customers and they need to protect them
- Amazon associates are encouraged to have a selling account so that’s the only way to understand the experience
- Retail team- trying to get selection.
- Amazon expects you to know YOUR business
- 3 teams with different goals and objectives and they do not communicate
- Best way to get response – Do everything between pacific hours. 8-5pm. Follow the sun policy? If you’re going to request a call-back always do it in that period.
- Amazon environment = hands-off
- Would rather deny good seller than approve bad
- These people are overwhelmed and probably did not get enough training and don’t know the tools
- Don’t be afraid to escalate and push back
- You’re right, it’s ok to be right, this is 100% accurate, this is my source, this is their contact information, call them.
- Amazon leadership principles – 14
- Have backbone, disagree, and commit
- You’re wrong, here’s why you’re wrong, reinstate me.
- Do it politely in the right way.
Brand & Category Gating – Why Wholesale is the Future of Amazon
Was 20 minutes late to The Wholesale Formula talk
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- Account Assurance & Reliability:
- Brandgate
- Month view
- 15 total sellers to 7 in less than 1 month
- Price goes up, going to sell more units, higher buy box percentage, better reviews
- Would be able to get back on the listing really quickly, raise price, and then they will follow suit on higher price. Reset that raised the price.
- Once these brands are gated, it’s much easier to get rid of bad sellers, because they know who they are.
- Month view
- 4. Predictable Cash Flow
- Replenishable Inventory
- Reliable Forecasting
- Growth Projections
- Everything you’re building is based on systems that can be scaled
- 5. Tested and Proven- Amazon Payments Screenshots
- 2012- ~$900k all RA
- 2013- ~$900k
- 2014- $1.2m – Started WS
- 2015- $3.9m – All WS
- 2016- $6.7m
- Student
- Josh Blake
- Benefits of Wholesale FBA
- Scalability
- 2016 Orders
- 284,045 Orders
- / 262 Business Days
- / 8 Hrs/Day
- = 136 Orders/Hr
- Way you scout products = system
- 2016 Orders
- Scalability
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- If it doesn’t pan out- don’t buy it again
- Customer Service
- You don’t have to deal with much customer service when you’re FBA
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- Outsourcing – Remove Yourself from the Business, Work on your own time
- Prep Centers
- You can hit 7 figures without ever packing something for Amazon
- Software
- Wholesale Formula – Buy Box Scope?
- Keepa
- Junglescout
- Price Checker 2
- Virtual Assistants
- Wholesale guys have 7 VAs
- Work from Anywhere
- Prep Centers
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- Q&A
- How much of $6m is profit?
- Gross profit = 17% before overhead
- How many employees? How big?
- 7000 sq ft warehouse
- 6 employees
- 4 processors that prep
- 1 guy works on restock
- 1 General Manager
- When getting ungated? What do they look for in an amazon seller?
- Ask them what they need? What are your problems? What are your frustrations?
- Open up a dialogue and see where the problem is. They might not know where they have a problem.
- Wholesale distributors?
- Few brands that don’t sell products themselves but uses a distributor
- What questions do you ask? How can I saw you money buying your products?
- Every time we open a relationship with a vendor- we ask for discounts every time
- Three separate parts of transaction
- When you’re trying to set up relationship
- When you have relationship
- Understand their goals on Amazon. What are they trying to accomplish? Then you can start working towards it.
- Whenever you do something for a vendor, take screenshots. Constantly talk to them about their brand and their performance on Amazon. Constantly looking for feedback. This is all the things I’ve done, is there anything else that you want?I did these things for you- what else do you want to see?
- Approach with mindset, how can I serve you first. They will genuinely want to work with you more because they know you care about them.
- How much of $6m is profit?
Top 10 business and accounting mistakes made by eCommerce sellers. Anna Hill, CPA
- About me
- Graduate University of Alabama, masters in statistics and accountancy
- Live in Atlanta
- Reseller since 2014
- Started Accounting We Will Go in January 2015. Currently over 6700 members. Group files for helpful documents, guides, and templates
- Currently selling home textiles (bedspreads, table runners, tea towels all sourced from India)
- Why did I end up going to India in February 2017?
- I tried finding inventory sources online using google searches – fail
- I tried using a reputable sourcing agent based in New York CIty and India – fail
- Conclusion
- What does going to India have to do with accounting and the top ten business and accounting mistakes made by ecommerce sellers?
- Mistake #1- Sellers do not understand the difference between good debt and bad debt
- Good debt- use good debt wisely and it can give you a financial edge, providing the flexibility to seize opportunities you otherwise couldn’t afford and ones that could push your business to the next level
- Bad debt- Bad debt is any debt that exceeds the rule of thumb of the 20% ratio. Most experts recommend keeping debt below 20% of assets. That means you should not owe more than 20% of the combined value of cash and unsold inventory. This could vary seasonally (preparing for Q4 for example) but please know this ratio. This is why a balance sheet is crucial.
- A benefit of good debt is credit card points which allow us to seize opportunities we otherwise couldn’t afford. Duane Malek.
- A real life example of good debt and the use of credit card points:
- We paid for the inventory sourcing trip to India mostly with credit card points and as a bonus were able to add on some vacation time while we were there
- Business class ticket for this trip would have been about $4500 each. Got free biz class tickets to India.
- Mistake #2- Sellers are afraid to get out of their comfort zone
- Do you stick to what is easy and what you know? Do you wonder why you do not have the success you’d hoped to have by this point?
- If you aren’t prepared to take risks, you have no business being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship is fundamentally linked to risk-taking
- Missed a sentence
- Getting out of the comfort zone
- 1. Risk-taking is inherent in entrepreneurship
- There are different types of risks:
- Ambiguous risks – involve some knowns and some unknowns, which complicate your decision making process. Most business risk
- Getting out of my comfort zone- Ambiguous (some known and unknown) risk
- Mistake #3: Sellers concern themselves too much with other sellers’ (sales, warehouses,
- Do not worry about what others are doing, saying, posting-
- Comparison is the thief of joy
- Real life example
- Seller had over $1,000,000 in sales in 2016
- Seller was posting sales screenshots
- What was truly going on behind the scenes
- What I knew that others didn’t know
- Seller had about $300,000 in inventory going into Q4
- Seller had $25,000 cash going into Q4
- What I knew that others didn’t know
- Please do things your own way
- Mistake #4: Sellers fail to understand that operating an inventory based business is hard. Quit your whining.
- There are many tools and techniques th
- Dabbawalla. Six-sigma rating?!! 1 error in 6 million transactions. Dabbawalla = HBS case study & TED conference.
- Mistake #5: Sellers are not doing proper due diligence before signing up for courses, classes, and tools that may not be the best use of funds
- Mistake #6: Sellers get distracted, try too many things, don’t pay attention, and as a result, give up too soon
- One Simple Idea book recommendation – Stephen Key
- Mistake #7: Sellers do not incorporate a consistent accounting routine. They procrastinate and then have no idea of many key metrics:
- How much they hold in unsold inventory
- How much they have in debt
- What their CoGs is
- How much they have spent in non-inventory expenses (general and administrative)
- Solution: Incorporate a monthly accounting routine
- 1. Import transactions from bank and credit card providers
- 2. Categorize transactions (this means indicating in your accounting software what each transaction
- 3. Record the amazon payment to reflect the fact gross sales – fees = cash in bank
- ** ??
- 4.
- How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
- Mistake #8. Sellers make the mistake of being impatient when learning accounting. Learning accounting is similar to learning a new language, it is the language of business
- 1. Take a f
- Mistake #9. Sellers fail to be grateful for the opportunity to manage and grow an ecommerce business.
- Mistake #10. Sellers forget to consider that they should do what they love. What is your why?
- onlinesellercpa@gmail.com
- Mistake #1- Sellers do not understand the difference between good debt and bad debt
Q&A
Sourcing
- Liran- you can do it from china as much as anywhere else. You don’t need to go to India
- I source 100 units from a chinese supplier. For USA manufacturer it was a min of 5000 products.
- Jeff- Higher priced products you might be able to source them in the USA
- Find something that’s only sold locally and bring it national.
- WS = salesman oriented
- I’m in the top 1% of all Amazon sellers, we did x amount of business in 2016. Then you get their attention. Different strategy became known, an expert in the space. They’ll come to you. Land a wholesaler and say… Who they’re looped up with. Research the industry?
- Toyfair was stopping only online sellers from even registering
- Eddie- Find a vendor that you want to work with- they’ll get you into the show
- Toyfair was stopping only online sellers from even registering
Va’s
- Bob
- Account maintenance, repricing, forecasting
- Amazon flip searching
- Xpath creation
- I use Nathan’s Vas?
- If you’re in a seller plateau- see how you’re spending your time
- Eddie- no VAs? Very detailed set of instructions?
- Liran – have a VA but for sourcing- I do it myself.
- $70k product, 2-4 hours of research. If by air, one prep center. If by both, LA prep center.
- Product sourcing is where you make your money?
What is the biggest issue in your business?
- Liran- Cash flow. Bring in a new product. Order 1000 units. Sold 200 units. Going to lose out of stock soon. Only recovered some money but you need to place a new order right away. The more sales I have the more cash flow issues I have.
- So we wholesale some of our products. Get cash upfront and share buy box.
- Taken Amazon loans
- Asking for terms from their chinese suppliers? Now I have 90 day terms with them. It is possible for Chinese suppliers to give you terms.
- Eddie- Logistics.
Tools
- Jeff- Slack. Maybe I should make a slack for my company
- Trello
- Liran – Evernote
- Eddie- Calend.ly
- Robyn – Asana for project management
- Shoeboxed
- Workflowy.com? Coach uses it to give action plan
- Upwork – for hiring people
- Camtasia for quick videos for VAs
- Jing = free screen sharing, 5 mins videos
- Software supplier- send video of what’s happening
Business Development
- Eddie- When you take the initiative to meet face-to-face but build relationships, it might not be immediate, but a few months down the road, someone will follow up. Focus not on success rate but the quality of my interactions.
- 48% of sales never follow up with prospect. Only 10% make more than 3 contacts.
- Ask Eddie for those statistics
- 48% of sales never follow up with prospect. Only 10% make more than 3 contacts.
- Lady- Just get 1 wholesale account and that could make your whole biz- that’s a home run. It just takes a handful of home runs to build multiple 7-figure incomes.
- Jeff- It’s not about the person you met but the person you haven’t met yet. 4th degree connection. Don’t look at the immediate, look where it can go over time.
- Bob – Wholesale marketplace.
Freight Forwarder
- Liran – Flexport
- Eddie- Service Shipping, local
- Jeff- I use Eddie
How to get rid of product? Two ways to bad buy: 1. Bad or 2. Restricted
- Liran – at the right price, you can pretty much get rid of anything. Send all my returns to a person, they list on ebay. I get 70%, they get 30%. Central Wisconsin Prep also has same service. She also has a consignment booth, flea market, whatever
- Eddie- building relationships and getting documentations upfront
- Bad buy- Too many sellers get attached to their inventory. Liquidate it. Take the loss, recoup it, and put it in something that will make you money
- Jeff- Time value of money.**
- Sell on ebay or donate it to a charity/organization
- Bob- Get rid of it on ebay
- Post it in facebook group. Who’s not restricted and wants to buy it.
- They just send me the labels and paypal.
- Send stuff to an auction house? Auctionation? Shipped directly to auction house. He gets percentage and I get a check.
- Swap.com
How to launch PL products?
- Liran- Bundling private label bundles?
- Run a sale, PPC, lightning deals.
- Jeff- Facebook live? Build their own communities so they can drive traffic to their listings. Listen to recording with Scott Voelker? Rachel Miller? She has a course on building and driving Facebook traffic.
- Product reviews don’t really matter. It’s just sales velocity and ranking?
Tips
- Bob- Don’t undervalue the person sitting next to you at a conference.
- Doing $50k-100k splits with people he met
- Taking action.
- Beauty because it’s small, inexpensive, and ships easily. What else is small, inexpensive, or ships easily?
- Eddie- Be willing to trust other people
- Jeff- pivot or persevere. Push through it and keep going or change. MAKE A DECISION. Analysis paralysis = bad.
Sourcing products not on Amazon
- Eddie- Variations of successful items
Trade shows/Conferences
- Liran – Go to smaller niche trade shows where there aren’t that many Amazon sellers
- Eddie- Resonate by Seller labs?
- Ecom Chicago. Do 1 conference every quarter.
- Jeff- If you’re at a show and you’re doing more talking than listening- think what other show you can go to.
- Be a small fish in a big pond.
- Even if you outgrow a show, you’re still here because your friends are here.
How to Add an Additional 6 Figure Profit Stream to your Amazon Business without Importing Anything from China
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- Rule of 5 Guys
- Where we started from
- Had to let go a staff of 8 FT people
- Had to close 6000 sq ft warehouse
- Had to find a way to outsource fulfillment
- Had to find new products to fuel business
- Was selling consumer electronics and accessories but that market was fading? Don’t know if that’s true
- Had to find new ways to find customers
- Epiphany #1: Move 100% to Private Label
- 4s gauntlet?
- Breakthrough #1: Make seling passive
- 2:
- 3: Get rid of all unprofitable items
- 4: Kept cash with the 30-30-30 method (profit)
- 5: Aggressively Launched New Markets
- Epiphany #2: The Cedar Moment
- Step 1: Research
- Step 2: Relative sized brand in the same home accessories range.
- Step 3: What are they doing with this brand? Are they global, just US?
- Step 4: They are just a US seller
- His dad(?) used to distribute?
- Go to trade shows Do you sell in Ireland? Where is Ireland? Yes you can sell our products
- Could we sell these items in Europe?
- Bringing American brands to Europe is not easy
- Brand didn’t even exist in European market
- Contacted, immediately accepted and sent an order form.
- Here’s what we saw
- Lower sku minimum orders
- Smaller investment per line
- Slash lead times by more than half (based on PL lead time)
- Exponentially accelerate flip-time
- Reduce Product Research Time
- ** By saying we bring to other Europe- big brands are more willing to speak with them
- ** Why the fuck would you go from being a successful PL seller to importing brands to European markets?
- Epiphany 3: It works.
- There is more than one way to scale our amazon business and this will add firepower to our growth
- Private Label Realities:
- Higher MOQs
- Bigger Investment Required per Line
- Longer lead times
- Takes longer to scale
- Must start from scratch each time
- The 3 Secrets – The engine behind the system
- Secret 1: I can add another 6 figure profit stream to my business by selling just 1 unit of a product per day all while putting $1k in my pocket every day
- Wtf does this even mean
- Secret 3: Finding invasion ready suppliers and brands with perfectly suited products is extremely simple, you can find a new brand every day…
- Secret 3: leverage people
- Blue ocean = new markets
- Secret 1: I can add another 6 figure profit stream to my business by selling just 1 unit of a product per day all while putting $1k in my pocket every day
- Secret 1 breakdown
- We’re looking for a company with 20 products
- 1 sale per day in european countries
- Looking for average net profit of $2
- = one company, $30,000 profit per month
- 5 brands x 20 products x 1 sale per day
- European population is 330 million.
- Secret #2 Breakdown
- Brands vs products
- Product Portfolios vs Single Items
- * Only looking for 1 sale per day v Home runs
- Leverage shelf ready stock
- ** Made in USA is prestigious in Europe
- Ironic
- Step 1: Amazon. Com
- Step 2: Brand in category
- Be aware of cultural differences
- Be aware of electronic items- different plugs, Amazon does not allow including converters
- Step 3: Find the gap in UK
- Is this brand operating in UK?
- Start green-lighting products
- Step 4: Negotiate & import
- Licensed products in USA that are given the green-light to sell in Europe
- If you buy a container, we’ll give you exclusivity to sell on Amazon
- Is Amazon really going to take care of my product on their platform?
- Step 2: Brand in category
- Here’s what you will see
- You can order box quantities of stock
- Will be < $1000 per order (multiple items)
- In stock on Amazon in 5 countries twice as quick
- How do European taxes, import fees, export fees, and everything else work? ._.
-
- Ability to use credit card to order
- Double down with supplier credit terms
- Remember you are your supplier’s golden ticket
- Secret 3: Leveraging other people’s resources
- Pioneers
- Perception is reality
- Epiphany 4
- Investment Timeline
- European distribution tactic
- Day 1- order with supplier credit
- Day 30- pay order with cc
- Day 45- in stock
- Day 60- sold out
- Day 60- pay credit card
- PL
- Day 1: money down to supplier
- Day 120: in stock
- Day 180: sold out
- European distribution tactic
- Epiphany 5: PL Backend (These guys are sharks)
- We had real data on our products
- This gave us immense power
- Knew that these types of products sold well
- Could then look for PL suppliers & order MOQ
- Had the opportunity to improve the offer + profit
- * boring simple products that have been around a long time and will still be around a long time
-
- * They built relationships with American brands and then just burned them and started producing it themselves? I mean technically, I think that’s what most PL people do, but this seems so wrong for me to build that relationship and then kind of nuke it like that
- What I don’t like
- I like what they’re saying, but I don’t like how hard they’re selling. They’re selling hard. If it works so great, why are they selling it. If it’s a blue ocean why make it red ocean?
- They also don’t mention how much smaller the amazon european market is compared with american amazon.
- The amount of increased legal restrictions with the things you can sell. Need to get European certifications.
- Are Europeans as consumer friendly as Americans? What’s the population class breakdown by country?
- How long does it even take to do this analysis and then get them sold in Europe?
- Free training- marketplacesuperheroes.com/rmrc2017
- Clickfunnels link
- Q&A:
- Also how do you navigate the importing tariffs and legal issues of these separate countries or is that simple under the EU?
- How to fulfill
- One fulfillment center in UK
- European Fulfillment Network – able to fulfll orders automatically to Europeans countries
- Ship it from London to Berlin to customer directly
- MCI- Multiple Country Inventory
- Do not sell in Europe with your LLC. You must register for your VAT right away. You have to register in Germany, France, right away.
- Set up UK company and then you can do everything from there. Get tax advantages
- Factor reporting taxes? IRS?
- Brexit?
- Amazon just built a fulfillment center in northern ireland
- I know that Europe has more consumer protection laws than the USA. Are there any categories that you avoid like groceries, personal health & beauty, electronics? How do you obtain those for your American suppliers?
- For electronics there are different american and european certifications. IF you’re bringing products to the European market how do you navigate the different certifications that they need- because I presume they don’t have it yet?
-
- Child protection
- Materials like plastic
- FDA type?
- They don’t have to conform
- If it has to be ingested, beauty creams, avoid
-
- When you sell globally don’t you also open yourself up to more risk? Like currency drops, crises, tiny depressions etc?
Scalable Systems: The Foundation of a Million Dollar Amazon Business – Trent Dyrsmid, brightideas.co
- I want to build an Inc 5000 company.
- Creates exposure for you as an entrepreneur as well as your business. Getting on a list gets you interest in getting your company bought
- My 3 step formula for building a $1m company
- Step 1: Find a mentor
- Rule 1. Never lose money
- Rule 2. Never forget rule No. 1. – Warren Buffett
- Step 2: Pick a business model
- Picked wholesale because I hate losing money.
- It’s easy to lose a lot of money in PL
- Picked wholesale because I hate losing money.
- Step 3: Execute (Start swinging)
- One last critical decision-
- The Founder’s Start – good movie?
- Are you going to be a one-person shop? If the income stops when you stop, then you don’t have a business. When you create a business, you get a paycheck. When you create something valuable– create equity.
- You need to be on the right-hand side. Your job as a CEO is to fire yourself from every job in that company as fast as possible- and the only way to do that is to be the chief systems engineer. I did every job in my company and now I do almost none of them.
- Step 1: Find a mentor
- Our results. Amazon one year.
- http://brightideas.co/monthly-profit-loss-reports/
- Worked 25-30 hours per week
- It’s about the lifestyle.
- Are you ready to discover our #1 system? Do not offer a course so take good notes or listen to brightideas.co/213
- Sourcing Stats Overview
- Every email sent failed 95% of the time
- First of all you won’t be able to do the volume and it’s discouraging
- My Sourcing Process
- Pricechecker 2
- Google Doc
- Zapier
- Hubspot Sales – CRM – free or $50/person
- Sequences, ability to have more than 1 email sent to an individual with a single click.Email FUNNELS.
- Calls
- Price Sheets
- If Opportunity, source product
- Process.st
- Checklists for everything
- Put a checklist, fires off a zapier, something
- Targeting Sellers
- We look at a seller’s total feedback store, 2000-20,000
- Don’t target 50k+ feedback
- How much feedback did they generate in the past 30 days because it tells you how well their products have been selling in the past 30 days
- We look at a seller’s total feedback store, 2000-20,000
- Analyzing a Seller
- Product Extraction w/ Price Checker 2
- Before we run the extraction, we check to make sure to see if the settings are updated to correct information
- Extract sellers list of products
- Price checker can do this?!
- Filtering/Editing Data in Google Sheet
- Once we have the excel sheet, we place the product into a Google sheet template that will use formulas and sorting colors to help narrow down the products further
- This process includes re-checking cells that PC2 has already populated
- Categories like the number of FBA
- Talk notes
- Paste data in left hand side?
- How many are in buy box contention?
- Buy Box Scope
- Have VA go through spreadsheet and ID products
- If there’s 2 sellers, and we’re the 3rd, what’s our sales?
- In dollars, how much is this product worth?
- Might not get 15% margin or sales estimates might be off
- Looking for a list of leads that I can send emails to
- Conditional formatting for different shades of green. As number gets bigger, green gets bigger.
- Talk notes
- Create the Zap – Part 1.
- Zap – part 2
- Find the contact data
- If the product passes our extensive list of benchmarks, we use sites like LinkedIn, Email Hunter, Facebook, and even Google to find contact information for the contact person
- Vice President of Sales, Sales leadership position, marketing leadership position
- If the product passes our extensive list of benchmarks, we use sites like LinkedIn, Email Hunter, Facebook, and even Google to find contact information for the contact person
- Top Problems on Amazon
- MAP violations/Unauthorized Sellers
- Negative product reviews
- Lack of content control
- Lack of understanding of the platform
- Too many 3P sellers = no control
- Getting beat by the competition/low sales volume
- ** SENDING 100 EMAILS PER WEAK
- 40% people who get email reply
- Go away, no more amazon sellers
- Here’s the account
- If they just send you price list- that’s a race to bottom
- You want the cases that say no. if they say no to you, they’re saying no to everybody.
- Have a great corporate website. Should not be an ecommerce site. What stuff would you have on your website? Really great website.
- Emails customized with unique information. Link to your website in the email. Want to go to your website.
- Etailz.com, semrush.com
- $100k brand, going to go exclusive. We’re going to pick 3 sellers and have an exclusive. Netrush. Pharmapacks. River Colony.
- Corporate website was impressive- they called me.
- Started competition 2 weeks ago, we want you to enter.
- Never would have gotten opportunity if we hadn’t sent email and didn’t have great website
- 40% people who get email reply
- Content is king
- Email Template
- We are an ecommerce
- First email is super simple
- Email Data
- Cadence
- How often should you be in touch? 3 days? 1 week? 10 days?
- When you get a reply be on the phone with them as fast as possible. Ideal when as soon as the email comes in.
- Content drip – we use our task manager in hubspot to send them helpful content. Top of mind with brands that didn’t say yes yet. Never know what’s happening in their world.
- I have won accounts, after the fact, because they’re in his contact drip system
- Double check the product score
- 21 point score card for products
- Over $100k/month after 5 months
- After reply no Amazon sellers, score the product, and check if it’s something worth picking up the phone for and going after
- Look at the brand
- 50 employees
- Can visit them in person? Relatively easily get face-time
- Vs 300 employee company in Florida
- How much is the brand doing per month on Amazon? Are they a $30k brand?
- $20k brand on Amazon is not a big brand, probability of getting a conversation with CEO pretty high
- Nobody responding to negative reviews
- Getting exclusive on $20k brand, cleaning up not that hard, easily clean up
- Easy 30% margin, $6000 per account. Don’t need too many of those to have a decent business.
- $80k brand might be harder to win
- Trent’s Phone Hack
- James Clear on podcast. brightideas.co/paperclips
- If you’re having phone fright, take 5 paper clips and just commit. Visual cue. Keeping yourself accountable. The phone is the most powerful tool by far. Don’t do trade shows because I don’t like traveling.
- Hubspot Sales
- Send and track all emails
- Make and track all calls
- Create notes of conversations
- Create follow up activity tasks
- Track all deals in pipeline
- Marketing & Sales Funnel
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel
- Notes-
- Record calls that they can listen to after the fact is helpful when training people
- Unlikely to win on first call. Might have to call 1st month, 3rd month. Create deal pipeline.
- Discovery calls. Getting forecast one how much revenue is going to hit the road.
- Hubspot Dashboard
- Create a follow up task
- Be mindful of the subject lines you use
- “Content Drip Do”
- Preparing to Make Your Call
- Prior to making a call, open the following tabs so that you have the talking points ready
- Main product listing with Jungle Scout (so you can easily see listing optimization, price, and SR trends)
- Tab with primary keyword search results
- Merchant words for primary keyword
- Sellers with inventory levels
- How many? Extension
- Want to know how the inventory is spread around?
- Who are those other sellers?
- Etailz has 4200 products. I saw that no one is responding to your negative reviews. Customers are thinking they don’t care or that it’s true. Why isn’t Etailz responding to those reviews?
- Be quiet. Let these questions sink in.
- Then they start asking a whole bunch of questions.
- Or you say, maybe it’s because Etailz has 4200 products and they don’t have the power to give you the attention that I can give you
- Watched one of your videos, read one of your blog posts, may be predisposed to listening to you. GRANT CARDONE stuff.
- Store link for seller with largest amount of inventory
- Negative product reviews sorted by recency
- Call script
- Hi my anme
- Never Give Up
- Content Drip
- In addition to the content dripping, you should find a reason to call and speak to them at least once per quarter
- Company wiki
- It’s been a few weeks, we’d still like to do business with you. In the past 3 weeks, we managed to help a customer completely eliminate map violations. If youre interested in that let me know. Photo
- PS: Vas count how many negative reviews. And then put in number. And then you can merge into the email. Personalized.
- 110 Products Sourced in 6 months
- 69 Active
- 41 Dead
- Notes
- A. It’s a numbers game
- B. You always have to be sourcing products- if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backwards
- C. Exclusives is where it’s at.
- Sourced a new product that is a co-exclusive and that’s their newest top seller
- Q&A
- What’s your average man hour per account acquisition
- That is not something we currently track
- Futrly. Can create kpis for anything in your accounting?
- Corporate website examples
- Netrush.com – best website to emulate not copy
- Etailz
- Content
- Going to start having conversations and easily find what the biggest issues are. Create as much content as you can to address the questions or objections you’re getting over and over
- A lot of times you’ll be speaking with an influencer and not a decision maker. They will never be able to retell their story to their boss, so you give them a link or blog post so you can tell them in your words
- You should have fewer sellers, you’re right
- What do you do in 25 hours?
- Hired a fellow to do sourcing
- Looking at new applications to help systems become more efficient
- Network with other entrepreneurs
- Writing new content
- Thinking about strategies, as an owner, you’re always coming up with new ideas. Going for a walk, listening to podcasts, trying to get ideas
- Anything that’s not the day-to-day execution of your business, that’s the stuff you should be doing
- If you create the scorecard right up front are you losing opportunities with vendors?
- CEOs look for money all the time
- If it makes $300 / month let’s go for it
- Get price sheet
- Open up junglescout
- Click brand see all products
- Sort them by revenue
- Anything that’s $2000 month or more, dump into spreadsheet
- Cross reference with price list
- Anything with decent margin will buy
- If it’s only $180 per month- if i want an exclusive relationship, I want to carry as much of their brand as I can
- What’s yours process for training the VAs?
- We try to turn everything in checklists
- Give them a checklist, tell them to do that
- How do we hire VAs?
- Product extractions
- Just hire 5 people to do that
- Get specific set of instructions
- Best get the job, rest don’t
- Onlinejobs.ph / Upwork
- Product extractions
- Do you have a warehouse?
- Yet
- Can process for 17 cents per unit
- Idaho is cheap
- When a purchase happens
- Compliance
- Huge checklist
- Everything gets double checked
- All numbers
- I HATE LOSING MONEY
- Anything to mitigate the risk
- PO gets created
- Onboarding a new supplier, relationship building
- Adding product to catalog
- Repricing
- Spreadsheet
- TRELLO – zaps to create trello cards automatically
- Zapier – nerd porn
- Anything that you’re excited about?
- Brands having problems and all the races to the bottom that are happening- massive opportunity
- Amazon, Walmart, Jet, Ebay, bidding on us government contracts?
- Need to differentiate from other Amazon sellers
- Aggregate less than 7% revenue so pain in the ass but if it wins us another deal, than
- What other marketplaces are you on? It was important to them
- Last employee had experience selling to us government. Saw War Dogs. Why not?
- What’s your average man hour per account acquisition
- Largest Pl client is $100m. Did $35m last year.
- Can I ask Casey for his decks?
- The Algorithm to Success on Amazon
- The Amazon Advantage
- 62% of US households have Prime
- < 10% of retail sales are online
- It’s still so easy to build an Amazon business
- Qualifying Viral Launch
- Worked with 4000+ brands on Amazon including newbies and household names
- Launched 17,000 products
- Helped grow a client’s Amazon business to ~$100m on Amazon alone
- Continually track millions of products to extrapolate and observe market trends
- 3 Essentials for Amazon Success
- Essential #1 :Stop looking for the silver bullet – Illuminati Mastermind?
- You don’t need a bullet, you need an arsenal
- Sales-inducing copy
- Stunning photos
- Competitive reviews- review funnel
- Initial sales ranking
- Competitive price
- In-demand product
- Notes:
- People that are doing $30m- they’re not spending time on Facebook ads or Shopify. Getting in front of that traffic with a beautiful product and a great offer.
- Opportunity cost. Every product is a good product to sell but is it a good product for you?
- At any time you should be going as hard as you can on your Amazon business because it will never be as easy as it is today
- Increase the barrier to entry so it’s harder for competitors to enter your space- building those product reviews and sales velocity
- It used to be so easy to get reviews but now that’s changed. It’s usually slower to get started. Rules are always changing and things will get more difficult
- Keyword ranking and search algorithm is getting more complex which is making it more difficult to drive high volume of sales as quick as now
- Take advantage of platform at its current state
- So you need to start PL like right now.
- The pros have PL funnels. They launch one product, put it in the funnel and move to the next. There are PL funnels?!!!
- More notes:
- You should have a colon after the fifth word in your title because it helps google ceo. Listings are scientific
- Our titles are as long as possible because we want to take as much space as possible
- New market where none of your competitors has good photos or listings.
- Your competitors are going to be one-upping you, and you’re going to have to spend money to re-up them. So if you do a great job first time and remain market standard you won’t have to go back
- You don’t need a bullet, you need an arsenal
- #2: Know how to read the market
- 1. Pay attention to the market not a single ASIN
- Ran a promotion and that’s why they’re so high
- Make decisions based on market not single ASIN
- 2. The ROI ratio is the quickest indicator of market potential: Monthly sales/review quantity
- Barrier to entry = average # of reviews
- You need to have similar competitive number of reviews
- Reviews = greatest indicator of popularity
- * so look for new products/niches with low reviews?
- Pushed 10,000 keywords to the front page (how?)
- Looking for a ratio between 2 and 3.
- Barrier to entry = average # of reviews
- 3. Expect market average, but shoot for the top
- You don’t know what’s driving the sales for these top guys
- What are the different things that drive sales?
- The top seller might be ranked #1 for a number of keywords
- 1. Pay attention to the market not a single ASIN
- #3. Be Confident
- #4. Know Your Budget
- Get into a market where you can afford to be aggressive
- Case Study and Point
- High Volume 13: ~15,000 monthly searches
- Mid Volume 33: ~1,000-15,000 monthly searches
- Low Volume 6: ~1000 units
- $40k in first 30 days
- $42,853 sales
- 1892 units
- 1586 Orders
- #2: Identify the 80/20
- Build an efficient and streamlined process
- Make sure you:
- Outsource
- Build a team
- Find someone who’s really experienced in hiring vas and scaling like a startup thing that Nathan mentioned. Sean Parker hired a duo to build out the startup team.
- Remove yourself as the bottleneck
- #3: Be aggressive
- Launch, launch, launch
- Not every product is going to be a home run. So just launch.
- Don’t be afraid to invest
- You can rank any product for any keyword but you have to be willing to be aggressive
- Notes
- How to make confident decisions
- One client giving away 100 products per day for 90 days = 9000 days, but they’re selling 20k-30k products per month organically
- $5000 budget, $4500 on getting product into FBA, and then take months to get that sales velocity. Combine marketing and promotion expenses. Maybe for some markets you don’t even have to run a promotion because sales is so low. But for some you might have to give away 30k units for the first 60 days. You can be successful in any particular product- but it’s a function of how much money you’re willing to spend
- $2500 for inventory. Need to give away x units, that’s enough to build out listing and run PPC. Boom, can be aggressive.
- Launch, launch, launch
- Notes:
- Source a great product a great price
- Reviews tend to average towards the market average
- If someone expects a 3.5 star experience- they’re going to give it the average review rating that it has
- If it’s a 5 star product and they have a decent experience, they’ll give it a 4-star to a 5-star
- Fallacy: people think they need to source a higher quality product and think they need to charge a lot more money. Price sensitivity of market.
- Sourcing a product that is a great product but you need to be able to sell it at the same price as everyone else. How are prices trending? If the price has been declining 10% the last couple months. IF the market as a whole is declining, it’s going to be hard.
- Q&A:
- Their team
- Graphic design
- Photographer and studio
- 5 people that write amazon listing
- Product promotion that drive
- Largest contributor to keyword ranking is sales
- They have buyer list of 300,000 people that we drive sales.
- Low priced products that drive sales
- Did 18,000 launches, don’t know anyone who’s gotten a TOS violation
- First 7-10 days running traffic to fish oil
- Then another keyword
- Then keyword best for face
- After a month they’re ranking for the top 5 keywords and ranking for it
- That way they’re ranking way more than if they were just using PPC
- They have buyer list of 300,000 people that we drive sales.
- Tools
- Market intelligence
- Completely manage accounts
- Even if we have 0 reviews
- 10% reviews from the promotions that we drive
- Getting you ranked quickly
- You should be always running PPC
- Do you do any videos on your listing
- Large global retailers get account managers and they help
- Vendor express = videos, don’t like vendor express for
- If you have variations- drive sales to one variation or all variations
- Have to run promos for a keyword at a time
- How do you deal with hijackers?
- We have a cool program, blacklisted 35,000 accounts. Shut down potential hijackers?
- We use a variation of a super url, we’ve been using it since 2015
- Super url driving straight to landing page.
- Two step that sends to a page before the retail page
- Their team
Increasing Profitability on Amazon: For sellers and brands of all methods
- Managed Growth
- How can fast growth be a bad thing?
- Today we are going to cover
- Three ways to increase your profits this year before you get home from this conference
- 7 steps of increasing profitability
- Why you should stop procrastinating
- Knowing your break even point
- You need to find your break even point (Find it by the end of this weekend!)
- Bestfromthenest.com/calc
- Add your fixed expenses
- This is what you need to survive
- Yes there are a lot of assumptions
- Parkinson’s law – “Remember this: any project will expand with the time available to complete it without producing better results.” – Cyril Northcote Parkinson
- Method 1:
- Go through bank statement, Paypal, and use our Expenses Sheet to compile your expenses
- Pro Tip: Mark down charge date to help you get your 13 week cash
- Method 2:
- Use a service like AskTrim or a CPA to capture your subscriptions
- Then use Paypal and use our Expenses sheet to compile your expenses
- Bonus: Capture charge date
- ROI drastically changes
- Selling more doesn’t always mean more profit
- You have to manage inventory turn
- Slow moving inventory destroys your liquidity (access to cash) in your business
- If you are aiming for 60 days
- Any inventory over 90 days there was a mistake or miscalculation made
- It is important to look at those so you don’t make the same mistakes again
- Use Inventory Evaluation Template in Unstoppable Academy or Inventory Health Report
- As you grow, it is easy to grow your resources
- Work harder,
- Now what?
- Consider moving expenses to one card to monitor fixed expenses separate from inventory costs
- Separate operating expenses from inventory
- Not enough for inventory?
- Decrease Expenses
- Increase ROI
- Increase Turn
- Consider moving expenses to one card to monitor fixed expenses separate from inventory costs
- Changes to Sourcing Method or product mix can change your cash flow
- Changes Inventory Turn and increase storage fees
- Reduce liquidity to cash for expenses
- Longer the turn, the more capital you need for your business
- ** You do really dumb things when you’re in a corner- good or bad, your IQ drops 15 points
- Inventory Evaluation
- Repricing after 90 days ?!!!!!!!!! that’s crazy
- Looking for what isn’t working in your sourcing
- Look for patterns
- Closer look at top 10 grossing skus
- Are you really making the money you think you are?
- Include all costs
- Repricing after 90 days ?!!!!!!!!! that’s crazy
- Stranded, no listing, LTSF
- Stranded/No Listing Inventory
- Storage Fees and LTS
- Disposing of Inventory
- Donate items with no margins after LTS that have been repriced competitively
- Stranded/No Listing Inventory
- Seven steps for profitability
- 1. Intentionally profitable
- Set your goals based off of bottom line numbers. Include the profit, the number of hours, and overhead you want to carry
- Setting top line goals encourages you to increase gross without taking your bottom line into account
- Make sure you have a clear profit goal
- Other KPIs our clients like to measure
- Hours per week
- Total Invested (Including debt)
- Months of Cash Flow Available
- 2. Spend Less
- Spend less, make more tip
- Don’t wait until late July to look at items that
- 3. Strategic Scaling for sourcing
- Know your monthly and weekly spend for your plays and scores
- Mental health warning: Focus on plays or actions or you will feel like you are losing your mind
- * On the action that is going to have the predictable score
- Tip
- Example rule: I will only buy inventory that will turn in 45 days or left at least 65% ROI. I don’t have more than 40% of my inventory in one brand and less than 30% in one category.
- This week following my rules I will spend $16,000 shopping 4 days with at least 75% being replens using the ROI is over 75%
- 4. Managing Cash FLow
- 13 Week Cash Flow
- See the dips coming before it is too late
- Profit First
- Use the theory of smaller plates to be more resourceful with your money
- The envelope system for businesses
- 13 Week Cash Flow
- Managing Cash Flow
- Courage = feel the fear and do it anyways
- Courage: Do one brave thing today, then run like hell
- 5. Getting your financial house in order
- You can’t make smart financial decision without knowing how you are really doing
- If you want to sell your business or apply for traditional business loans you will need these
- Project taxes
- * Every time I feel like I’m going to level up I feel like everything is going to go out of control
- Getting your house in order
- Keep calm and hire a professional
- You don’t have to start with the Lexus of CPAs
- If you are grossing over $10,000 a month now- find out how much an accountant/bookkeeper is and figure out a way
- 6. Building your dream team
- Only way you can get a raise is to be more efficient
- Building systems for yourself and your team and optimizing them
- Building a team
- Document the process
- The try process
- Adjust the process
- Teach the process
- Optimize the process
- 7. Entities
- Sole props, LLC, S-corps, and C-corps- how to save 10k or more in taxes
- It is about having the right entity and using it correctly!
- Consult a professional
- The more success you have the less you can ignore your numbers
- 1. Intentionally profitable
wow…..excellent info….Thank you