← Built Online
Built Online
90. Mastering Amazon: Proven Strategies for Conversion and Traffic with Daniela Bolzmann
00:56:37
Loading summary
Transcript120 lines
- [00:00]
A
One is the conversion piece, which is, you know, making sure that your listing converts well and that it's positioned well and that it looks great. And the second piece of that is the traffic piece, where now it's good to go. We know it's converting. Let's drive as much traffic as we can, and let's, let's then refine the traffic to make sure that we're, you know, spending our money the best way we can.
- [00:21]
B
Welcome to Built online. I'm Cody McGuffey and this podcast is all about one thing. Building the business of your dreams. Selling art, teaching classes, starting a blog, launching a brand. Whatever your passion is, we show you how to turn it into real income. I created Everbee to help anyone with a dream start and scale a business. And we now serve over 800,000 creators all across the globe. On this show, we bring on real entrepreneurs who've done it. They share their secrets, they share their failures. The exact steps that you can take to get started. What if you can get one golden nugget out of today's episode? And it's the breakthrough that takes you from just dreaming to actually living a life on your terms. At Ever be, we believe that every human is a creator, and every creator should own a business. Daniela, how are you?
- [01:08]
A
Doing well. Doing well.
- [01:10]
B
We made it. We're here with some technical difficulties starting it out, but we made it.
- [01:14]
A
We are here thriving.
- [01:16]
B
Cool. Let's dive in Amazon. That's what we're here to talk about today. You have a super cool background and I'm personally curious, like diving into like your brain, exploring Amazon, exploring split testing, conversions, all this stuff. First, I would like to hear about your background a little bit more. Just like maybe the 32nd spiel that you have in your head and that way everybody can kind of understand the context of who Daniel is. Would you mind?
- [01:44]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Great. So my journey started out years ago. I actually also have a tech background. After exiting that tech startup, which was an on demand delivery, a totally different space pre. Pre Uber Eats, I ended up wanting to get an E Comm and I found it very exciting. My background was purely in marketing, so I was a full stack marketer and I really wanted to get into the E Comm space, but I didn't know if I wanted to do direct to consumer marketing for E Comm or if I wanted to try to understand Amazon. And it was around the same time that Amazon acquired Whole Foods. And I was very lucky in that my family had a very large CPG business. I jumped in and asked if I could spearhead some of the sales on Amazon. And it was something they were also interested in testing. That was such a heavy lift for me as a full stack marketer that I realized how challenging it was going to be for brands day in and day out. So after that I opened up a full service Amazon agency. After two years of pulling my hair out trying to learn all the things in Amazon because it is such a beast really. And after doing that I realized that our specialty really lies in the creative side of Amazon. So we switched to focusing on the organic conversion side of Amazon and becoming really a master at that specific piece of the Amazon puzzle. And that's what we do today for over 150 brands every year. Most of them being direct to consumer brands and CPG brands.
- [03:23]
B
What for? First, anyone that doesn't understand what CPG is, would you mind like explaining like an example of a CPG brand, like what that means?
- [03:30]
A
Yeah, so it's basically products that are consumables. So it can be things like your toothpaste or the snacks that you buy for your home or anything that you buy like on a recurring basis. That's about 80% of the type of brands that we support. Although the other 20% just happens to be other random categories of products.
- [03:50]
B
Does it really matter for you? Like it seems like it probably wouldn't matter so much CPG versus non cpg. Right.
- [03:55]
A
What matters to us most is if they're brand minded. So as Amazon sellers I typically think there's two types of Amazon sellers. There's the type of sellers that are buying things from China, changing the color of the box and then calling themselves a brand which to me as a private label seller they tend not to be brand minded or be thinking longer term they're usually trying to make quick wins which I completely understand. Amazon has been great for that. It's just not the type of client that we tend to support really well. We do well with brands that are investing in content. They have, they have, you know, esthetically appealing shopify websites. They, they really understand the value of putting forth great creative from, from the beginning and, and how much that can make a difference in conversion. And so that's, that's the type of brand that we support.
- [04:50]
B
I love it. It makes sense too. I kind of alluded to this earlier. My first E Commerce journey started with Amazon FBA and I was I guess by your category would be a private lab, private label seller. Like I went and sourced a product, I didn't change a whole Lot. I tried to change as much as I could, but like you, then you run into issues of cost and changing molds and you're just like, okay, well that's not worth it to do it yet. So then it's like, okay, I'm gonna change the logo, I'm gonna change a little bit of the packaging, change the box, and call ourself a brand. And that's pretty much probably where I fell into when I started my journey.
- [05:25]
A
And you know what? Like, that works for a lot of people, though. That works for a lot of people. And that's the way that all the courses were teaching people to grow their brands in the beginning on, on Amazon. And now it's just shifting at the moment because so many people did that. And now it's become kind of a copycat type of, of strategy. And so really to stand out, we noticed that brands really need to have a unique product, unique packaging, unique, unique reason for why they believe they should be in the world. Right. And if, if they have all those things, it's, it's just a recipe for success and it makes, it makes our job a lot easier. When a brand comes to us and they're very clear about who they are and, and what they're putting forth and, and it just, it's like for us following a recipe, like they're giving us the recipe, all we have to do is follow the recipe and, and then ultimately it, it gives them their best brand presence on Amazon.
- [06:12]
B
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, a unique product typically is a unique differentiator. Is, is kind of be a moat for a while, I imagine, in the, in that kind of space. Like my. I have a really good friend who has been selling on Amazon for years and he's always engineered his products. They've typically been made out of wood. And so it was fairly easy for them to kind of like, be different, like be purely different. Versus when I think when, when I was launching my brand, it was a plastic. Right. So changing like a plastic mold was going to cost so much more at the time, at least for me. And it was just like, wasn't on the table. And so it's interesting. So anyway, I wanted to take, kind of take all this. Beautiful. So thank you for that. And I kind of have an idea for how I want to structure the conversation and I want it to be around a specific type of person. And I'm going to call her Rachel. And she has a hair tools brand, so she like, literally made like, hair dryers and she's made them better. And she's made her. Made them unique. And she's a hairstylist. She has, like, some unique background in this. And then she, of course, has, like, supporting products such as, like, brushes and all the other things that you can think of. I mean, you're a woman, I'm sure you totally can understand this. And she already has a website. She's started. Started her website. She has some sales, she's got some momentum. She's doing some wholesale stuff through other salons and things like this through her connections. But she hears about this Amazon opportunity and she's like, I think I need to be on Amazon. But she's overwhelmed. She's like, this is a beast. You have, obviously, Amazon fba. So, like, there's a storage aspect of things, but then there's also like, okay, now I have my product there, I have inventory. How do I get to sell through? How do I even create the sales? How do I rank amongst all these, like, big competitors? So she's like, almost, like, overwhelmed. Can we, can we use her as a case study? What do you think?
- [08:13]
A
Sure, that's a great idea. We've worked with many Rachels.
- [08:17]
B
Cool, let's do it. So ask some questions on behalf of Rachel.
- [08:20]
A
Yeah.
- [08:21]
B
So first of all, why should she consider Amazon as a sales channel?
- [08:26]
A
Yeah, that's the first great question to ask. And one is, if your customers are already asking you if you're on Amazon, that should be an indicator. But two, more than 60% of online shopping is happening on Amazon. So it's really great to know that you have control of your own traffic and you own that on your website. I recommend every brand do that. But it's also great to know that there's demand already happening on Amazon and that you might not even have to work as hard for it if you're just listing your products on Amazon and having your own simple other strategy of driving traffic on Amazon. So that is there. And for a lot of brands that sell products that are like a hair product, where we know people are searching for it, it's not like you're reinventing the wheel or inventing a new product that nobody knows about. If the demand is there, you can generally assume that you're going to capture at least part of that. So the question is, how much of it? How many other players are in the space? How much competition? And is it going to be worth your while? Right. So how much demand is there? Is it worth the investment for you? Maybe. I've had brands that, for them, the investment Wasn't worth it. But they knew they needed to be on there for brand presence. So they set up their Amazon with all the bells and whistles to look like a million bucks because they were raising money. They knew that they were also selling on their website and getting the product out there, but they knew that if people heard about it, they might not actually even get to the website, they might go search for it on Amazon. So they were listed on. They were on their own website and on Amazon right out the gate. I've had brands that have been selling on their own D2C websites for many, many, many years have never even had a need to be on Amazon. And one way or another, they've decided to make that, make that investment and move over to Amazon. And there's some things that you want to think about as you're doing that to understand what is the right strategy for you.
- [10:18]
B
And what I'm hearing is, is you support this idea of own your website. That's beautiful, that's great, that's preferred. And look at Amazon as a significant sales channel, just like you would look at ebay, potentially, if ebay was for your market or Etsy or other marketplaces. Those are sales channels. But you should always on your website. Do you support that type of thinking?
- [10:38]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. For instance, I have, I have a small brand and I have my product sitting at, at a separate warehouse, but I also use Amazon's warehouse for my Amazon orders. Right. So I use both. I, I have my own website on Shopify and I manage that. And then I have my own Amazon listings and I manage that. It's its own. They're basically two different channels on the same product.
- [11:03]
B
Beautiful. Okay. And so Rachel has, let's say, let's say five different products, right? And she's got a flagship product, let's call it a hair dryer. And which products should be. Should she be starting with on Amazon? Let's. Assuming she's already said, okay, the opportunity is worth it. I can create $5 million in revenue through Amazon potentially. And for me, that's worth it as a brand. Or for Rachel, it's. That's worth it. Now, does she go take all of her products and list them on there, or does she pick one of her flagship products? Where does she go from here?
- [11:33]
A
So there's a couple of different strategies for this. Amazon really likes it when you are launching products over time. So you can basically, like get favorable traffic from Amazon when you're not launching everything at the same moment. The other way, like when we Think about our process with our creative team is that it makes a lot of sense for you to go through the process of setting up one product and doing it really well so you understand how the ecosystem works, what your strategy is going to be, and then using that cash flow from that product to slowly launch the other products. And you're going to have your template or your format of your creatives and the process that you went through to strategically list that product correctly with your SEO and your positioning and you can use that framework to basically help you do the other ones quicker. But doing more than one product at once when you aren't familiar with Amazon can be a little bit risky, especially if you're not hiring a team that knows what they're doing. So I always recommend go through the process once and do it really well. Understand the ins and outs of it. And then you can add other products over time, which Amazon is going to like anyways.
- [12:42]
B
Okay, and then so sounds like start with one product. Does it matter which product to start with?
- [12:48]
A
Here's the other kicker. When it comes to your products, you might not even want to list them the same way that you list them on your website. So for instance, you might want to launch the hair dryer with three different other accessories that are like add ons on your website, but you might want to just like add them into a bundle on Amazon because maybe that would sell better because people are searching for those specific pieces. So if they're searching for each of those three pieces and they get driven to your listing which has all of the pieces plus the hair dryer, yours might be the preferred value option, which is what Amazon shoppers are looking for anyways. So I mean, that can be a really interesting strategy on Amazon specifically. The other reason is that Amazon is also scanning your website and competitors websites to see if anybody's selling the product cheaper. Like for instance, if you have your product listed for $25 on your website and you're listing it for $30 on Amazon, Amazon's going to see that and they're, that's against their guidelines and they're going to want the preferred pricing. Right. Or at least a match. So you're going to want to make sure that you have something that's either not exactly the same, so they can't really compare apples to apples or be able to match that price.
- [14:06]
B
I see, okay, so maybe she launches with the hair dryer plus the brush and also maybe two brushes, something like this. So she goes, she says, I'm gonna go do this. How Much should be she. How much should she be expecting to invest in getting live, Getting this product live on Amazon, considering inventory, maybe agency costs, like help, help from professionals to help her get alive? What do you think she should come in with the mindset of it's gonna cost me this much?
- [14:33]
A
It's a really good question. And I have to say, in full transparency, there's agencies out there that charge $10,000 a month. There's agencies that charge $3,000 a month. And it's really about finding the partner that is going to be the right one for you. For us, we don't actually work on a retainer model. So the way that we work is we work on a project basis. So if. If Rachel comes to us and she says, I just want to launch this one product this month, and then maybe in like two months, I'll be ready to launch like three more or two more for us, we would say, okay, that first SKU is going to be $5,000. We're going to help you get it set up. We don't actually help you send your product to the Amazon warehouse. We have a bunch of tutorials that can show you how to do that. There's a bunch of YouTube videos to show you how to do that. But we are specifically just handling the creatives and the uploading of the content to Amazon so that you can start selling on Amazon.
- [15:31]
B
Okay, so she would own that.
- [15:33]
A
Yeah.
- [15:33]
B
Okay.
- [15:34]
A
That you go to an agency for.
- [15:36]
B
Perfect. What are the things outside of that? For example, sending the product literally from my warehouse or my garage, Rachel's garage, to. To the Amazon FBA warehouse. So that's, that's one piece that's very important. There's obviously the content side of things, which is that's what Mindful Goods Co does. And what are the other pieces of this that she needs to do just to get live.
- [15:58]
A
Just to get live. Well, first, setting up your Amazon account, which is pretty straightforward. It's going to be, I think, $30 a month, $40 a month, something like that. You're going to need to submit all of your tax documents, any certifications for your product, just to show anything that Amazon asks for. To make sure your brand is legit, your product is legit. Once you make it through that process, there's going to be an ungating process where, let's say you sell in, in hair dryers. I don't know if this is like an open category that anyone can sell into. So you're going to want to make sure that you are able to list in that category and that you are approved for that. So sometimes that can be something that holds brands back. The next thing is, is going to be setting up your listing and shipping your product, which usually happens in tandem around the same time. Right. Because you have to have a. A basic, like a shell of a listing to be able to start shipping your product to fba.
- [16:53]
B
I remember that.
- [16:54]
A
And then once you have the listing up, then you're going to want to start considering what your budget is going to be for advertising.
- [17:02]
B
Okay, so it sounds like there is the setup process, which includes, let's call, inventory, the contents process, which is like getting your listing, making it look pretty, making it look nice, making it look like it's going to convert. Like you look like a legit brand. And then there's the traffic piece of things, which is a separate thing, which is like, how do I actually get people to come to my listing? Which is a. Probably a separate. A deeper separate discussion on ranking and all that good stuff. Do you see it that way as well?
- [17:30]
A
Yeah, it's. It's set up. And honestly, the setup part is kind of like, once you do it, once you kind of know how it works and you're like, okay. Like, it, it seems overwhelming in the very beginning, but it's. It's one of those things where you go through the motions. Once you're like, okay, I get it. Like, it's like for me now, when I go to, like, put new inventory in Amazon's warehouse, it takes me five minutes. Like, I go to my, my warehouse website and I'm like, ship to Amazon. Boop, boop, boop. Done. You know, so it's. It seems really difficult when you're first doing it because you're like, oh, you don't understand, like, the Amazon interface. But then once you do it, you're like, okay, good. So it's one of those things where it's not set and forget, but it's the same kind of principle of like, okay, it's like getting over the learning curve. And then you're like, okay, I got it. You know, it's one of those things that you should do it so you know how to do it. But then you're. You should have a va or someone that does it for you. Like, it's that simple, beautiful. And then, and then after that setup piece is done, then I look at it as two steps. One is the conversion piece, which is, you know, making sure that your listing converts well and that it's positioned well and that it looks Great. And the second piece of that is the traffic piece, where now it's good to go. We know it's converting. Let's drive as much traffic as we can and let's, let's then refine the traffic to make sure that we're, you know, spending our money the best way we can.
- [18:46]
B
Okay. How does Rachel. So she has this product and again, it's a hair. A hair dryer and two brushes bundle product. And let's assume that she's competitive, competing on price, or like she's comparable. She has a good product, so that's good. But she's, like, not even showing up on, like, page one, page two, page three, page whatever. She doesn't see herself. What does she do? To start with, I understand, like, she can run ads, but, like, what does she do? How does she. How should she view this?
- [19:13]
A
So I never look at it as you should be driving ads first. For me, that's really a conversion issue. So we need to go back to basics, right? And the way that I explain the basics is really in three simple steps. One, how do we make sure that we're getting found in search? That really comes down to SEO. And SEO is going to be changing. We can talk about that as well with Rufus, but it has not. It's. This is the tried and true formula. It still works today, making sure that you've done your keyword research and that you've infused that copy throughout your. Your listing. And that's your title. The bullets that are in an Amazon listing and then on the back end of your Amazon listing, which you don't see unless you're inside of the Amazon, it's called Seller Central is Amazon's portal. On the back end, when you're setting up your listing like you would in. In even Shopify or Etsy, on the back end, it says you know different places for different keywords, Right? So you want to make sure you're doing that when you upload an image. You want to make sure your keywords are there. So that's the first thing. And the highest weight that Amazon gives you in terms of showing up is the words that you're putting in your title. And you also don't want to be keyword stuffing. You want to make sure that you're not repeating words, that you're very clear about what you're saying in your title, but it's also driven by whatever keywords are most relevant to your specific product. Right? So that's the key thing right there. And you'd be surprised how many people haven't done that? Right. And that's why they're not being shown like just that one step. We've seen countless numbers of entrepreneurs that have Shopify sites sell really well on Shopify. They copy paste their Shopify website to Amazon. And that is not the formula. You have to go and look for the Amazon specific keywords that are related to your product and make sure that you're pulling that in. There's different softwares for doing that. Like Helium 10 data dive is one that we use as well. We use both of those, but those.
- [21:04]
B
Are Jungle Scout in the past too. Jungle Scout was a mage player there too. Cool.
- [21:08]
A
Yep. Jungle Scout is like another Helium 10 data dive is is like them, but doing a couple things more advanced, a little bit different. So getting that in is step number one. The step number two is once you're showing up in search, how do we then get people to click on our our listing instead of all the other competitors that show up on that page? Right. And that really happens. Like the biggest thing that you can do to control that is the main image, which is the product on white that shows up next to all the other products in the search results. Because you can't like, yes, you can change your title and that's going to help a little bit, but you might not have too much flexibility with your price. You may or may not. Right. So you can test that. You may not even have that many reviews when you first launch. So that might not help you in the very beginning. You can sign up for Amazon's vine program, which is going to help you get reviews. But. But that's not going to be overnight. Right? That stuff happens over time. And so if you don't have too much control with that, the one thing you can control is your main image. And so what we do with our process is we recommend at least having two different concepts of a main image that have a few different elements. Right. We want to have make sure we're using vibrant colors, that the product looks as big as possible. Maybe we consider a photo versus a render. Maybe we have some eye candy, like some little ingredients sprinkled on the side or a hand coming into the frame, or just little elements that kind of catch the eye that make you look different. Maybe you're putting your product at an angle. Maybe you have the cap off or the dropper coming in. Or for the hair dryer, maybe you show the hair dryer at a really crazy 3D angle. You know, maybe you have the cord extension wrapping to the Side, So it's like kind of drawing the eye, you know, on the frame where, like, maybe the other ones are just showing a flat lay. So you want to kind of see what is the competition doing and how do we do something either better or different than what they're doing to really pop and stand out. Maybe she has. Maybe Rachel has multiple colors of hair dryers. So maybe we want to test using PickFu to see which color is really going to draw the eye in those search results and use that one as the main image. So those are some things we like to think through really thoroughly because that's step number two. After getting found, get them to click into your listing with that main image. And then the third step, once they're in the listing, how do we get them to convert? And this is where the Visuals matter does. 90% of what we take in as humans is done through visuals. So we need to make sure that every single image that we have on the screen is not just showing something pretty. It's also telling you the thing that you need to know in order to buy the product. So if I'm a consumer and I know that I need a hair dryer that has the little diffuser extension because I have curly hair, I want the ceramic ion, because for some reason TikTok told me that's really important. I want the. The black color because that's the color, the stuff that I like in my bathroom. And I also want to make sure that it has dual voltage so I can use it in Europe and in the US I better make sure as, as an entrepreneur, that I know that the shopper is looking for those four things and that I show those four things as fast as possible on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth image. Right. And so those are the things that, that, that you can pull from Amazon data and understand really well what the consumers are specifically looking for. You can create that checklist and you can make sure your visuals speak to that all the way down the page from the product images to the A plus content to your storefront.
- [24:33]
B
Does this sounds like all this stuff mostly happens in the images, not necessarily just the product description, Is that correct? Like you mentioned, it needs to be in the first couple images.
- [24:41]
A
Absolutely, absolutely. And we look at it in a couple different ways. Right. Because sometimes the A content, which is the part to explain to people what that is. If you go to an Amazon page and you scroll and you. And you first looking at the images, the square images is what are called product images, basically like a carousel. But if you scroll down. And this is on desktop. If you scroll down, there's another set of images that kind of feel like banners that take up the whole page. It's almost like a landing page. The wee wee design is like a photo, full landing page style, top to bottom. And that section, that, that landing page section is really called A plus content. Sometimes that shows up on mobile above the product images. So both sets of content are very important for conversion. And for me, I think it's okay to even repeat. Like, if you know that your customers care about five things. Like usually customers care about five to ten things max. So if you narrow it down to those five things, you know, 80% of the purchases are tied to those five things. Just repeat the five things in the A plus and in the product images. Maybe you're explaining it a different way, showing it a different way, but you're essentially. Yeah. Different angles, showing different. Like there's multiple ways to say the same thing, but the concept is still the same of what you're trying to communicate. And some people might digest it differently when they see it a different way. So you definitely want to play around with that. And that's, that's massively critical. That's the, I mean, the kind of data that we're seeing is brands that are increasing sales up to 1100% by trying different creatives on their Amazon pages.
- [26:18]
B
Wow. So like that's, let's say in real numbers. Let's put it in real numbers. So if somebody's listing is creating like a thousand dollars a month, that's 1100%. That'd be right over 10x. Like, that's. No. While doing well over $10,000 a month in revenue. Just that one product.
- [26:33]
A
And that's because split testing different. Like, that's not unheard of. Like, that's, that's the norm of what we're seeing. Like 82% of clients that we work with are seeing increases in sales of at least 20%.
- [26:44]
B
So simply because their positioning of the product on the Amazon site.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah, it's the positioning. It's, it's those three steps altogether. Right. It's, it's, it's making sure. Because if you don't, if you just jump to step three, you're not going to see that. Like, you can have the most beautiful images in the world, but you don't have any organic traffic coming through. So it's really not going to help you. Right. If you completely skip step two. Nobody's coming into your listing, so you're showing up and nobody's coming into the listing. So then they're never even going to get to see the pretty visuals. Right. So it's kind of like you need all three. When we're rolling out those steps for clients, we're actually testing each step as we go because we want to understand, okay, let's do the, the copy first. Make sure we're seeing some, some, some trending, some things trending in the right direction. Once we have that, we're like, great. Now let's start testing the main image. Once we see that we're trending in the right direction with the main image, we're like, great. Then we move on to uploading the product images in the A plus. Sometimes we do them together, sometimes we do them separately, but that's essentially how we roll that out. And if you've gone through that process and you're seeing the natural organic traffic and conversions coming through, then you can, you can put the pedal to the metal and turn on the ads.
- [28:00]
B
You know, what is a good conversion rate and what is not a good conversion rate? Like when, you know, it's like, okay, I could optimize this for Amazon.
- [28:07]
A
So it's, it's really category specific. But if you're in a category that's, that's, if you're, if you're selling a product that's not a very high price product, usually 20% is a good place to be. Um, but if you have an expensive.
- [28:20]
B
Product, you're going to $99 hair dryer. Yeah.
- [28:22]
A
You're going to see a much lower conversion rate. And that's okay. You know, that's okay because you're not the, you're not the $20 hair dryer.
- [28:29]
B
You know, so the hair dryer, let's call it 99 on my, on my site that means that I'd probably bring it with a bundle, let's call it $99 again on Amazon. And that, that conversion rate for that specific product listing would probably be 5% maybe. And that's probably good. 10% maybe.
- [28:47]
A
Yeah. And, and even, let's say even if it is 5%, then it's just looking at incrementally getting better over time. Right. Because maybe you're gonna get, you're gonna think of other bundles. Maybe you're gonna think of a different way to communicate your creatives. Maybe you're gonna get better at your ads. Maybe you're gonna figure out some other sort of marketing with TikTok that's gonna drive more traffic. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Right. So it's all of these little other hypotheses that you can test over time. But the key is just getting that foundation to where it needs to be and you can actually see what others are selling in your same price range, you know, so you can use that as a benchmark and understand, do we have a whole lot of room for improvement? Are we kind of. Are we kind of at the right place? You know, Love that.
- [29:33]
B
Maybe a little bit off topic. On topic, but maybe a little bit. Side, side note, is ranking still, like, ranking strategies, like, still a thing on Amazon? I haven't sold on Amazon. Totally. Is okay. It probably just got worse. It probably got like more in depth, more scientific.
- [29:47]
A
Probably, right, Totally. To be honest, it's, it's not a fair even playing field because there's so many Chinese sellers that just, you know, flood things with fake reviews and, and, and just push a bunch of PPC out the gate. There's, there's, there's really two types of strategies for launching that I see brands go through. There's brands that like, work right out the gate. They're just dumping tens of thousands of dollars into ppc. And there's brands that don't do that, that just slowly, incrementally grow over time. And that's okay too. But I think it's really easy to get wrapped up in the, in the. Let's just dump a ton of cash because some brands have that, some brands have VC capital, some brands don't. And that's okay too. You know, it's okay to Rachel win.
- [30:31]
B
Could Rachel have a chance to, like, sustain in this Amazon world, considering.
- [30:36]
A
Absolutely. We actually worked with a Rachel that specifically sold hair dryers and brushes. So it's funny you're using that. I know that's funny, but she's been selling on Amazon for over 20 years.
- [30:46]
B
Her name's actually Rachel. Is it?
- [30:48]
A
Not Rachel, but it's a Rachel. And she has been selling on Amazon for over 20 years. And the thing that's happening with those types of sellers is they got very lucky early on and they didn't really have to do much to their listings. And then they noticed people are coming in, stealing market share, doing better product listings. So slowly over time, she's noticed her Amazon sales are going down and she's like, wait, what's going on? Well, now you have more competition. Now you have to actually work for it, you know. So we went in and we helped her basically redesign her pages and make her look like the brand that she is. She's been established for over 20 years. And now her, now it looks like that now she looks legit, you know, so it's just basically reaffirming her, her hold on her market share and trying to get that back.
- [31:31]
B
But a brand new Rachel coming in to Amazon and today in 2025, she has a chance still. She just needs to play her game.
- [31:40]
A
Still a chance, absolutely. We had another Rachel that came to us, different category. So this was like a couple years ago, so let's just say like a year or two after Covid. But still, still people were just really into like wellness products. They still are, right? But it was like really hot right after Covet. People are like doing everything for like their health. And so she had a, it was a CMOS product. It's a CMOS gel type product and that was like super popular because it was supposed to help with like clearing out your nasal passages and all of that. People that have like that long Covid, they were doing that to like do something healthy. And we knew this product was hot. We could see it was trending on Amazon and on TikTok. And for some reason when she launched from, she, she had a successful Shopify website and wanted to go to Amazon. But when she launched on Amazon, she wasn't getting any sales and so she was like, can you please help us? Like, what's going on? We took a look and just realized that it was one of those copy pastes from Shopify where she just copied the description of her product, put it into Amazon, put a couple images and was just like, okay, why is it not selling well? It's because you have to do a little bit more work than that. Like I said, Step one, step two, step three was not done at all. So we did step one, two, three with her. Within 30 days, she saw a 600% increase in sales. And so that's just a matter of like the basics, the fundamentals. If you just do that, right, there's no reason why you shouldn't capture at least a little bit of the market on Amazon if there's demand, right? So it's, it's, there is still an opportunity. I think a lot of people, a lot of naysayers are like, Amazon's pay to play. It absolutely is pay to play. It's, it's becoming harder and harder. A majority of the of the listings that show up on page one are sponsored ads. So. And that has increased like drastically over the last few years. So it is harder and harder to get your product shown organically, but it's not impossible for Brands to be sustainable and be successful. On Amazon, that same brand launched with zero ads. They've since launched two more products. They look at Amazon as a 100% viable channel and they are now running ads. So you don't necessarily have to have to just go full force out the gate. You can test the market, make sure it's working for you, reinvest your capital into ads and then launch products like they did.
- [34:06]
B
I love that. Where do people learn more from you, hear more about your strategies, work with you directly? How does that typically work? Can you go into some of that stuff?
- [34:18]
A
Yeah, so I don't do anything one on one at this point. But our services are project based like I mentioned. You can go to mindfulgoods Co. We also offer what's called a mini audit. So if you feel like you're at that place where you're stuck, where you've tried launching on Amazon or you are on Amazon and you're just not getting the sales that you expected, you can drop us the link and we will have either myself or one of our creative directors go and show you exactly 1, 2, 3 that we talked about on this on this webinar. We will do the 1, 2, 3. But specifically with your listing to say, okay, step one, these are the things that are missing. And we will show you line item by line item. So you can take that video and send it to your designer and have them follow it or you can hire us. So again, that's at mindfulgoods Co, at the very bottom of the website there's an option for the mini audit so you can get that there. And then I publish a lot of insights on our newsletter and case studies on our website. Metrics on our website, tons of split testing metrics that are in aggregate across all our clients every year. We update it every quarter. So we share that on our website. And then I'm very active on LinkedIn as well.
- [35:26]
B
Beautiful. Do you think that, do you think that Rachel would be a good customer for you guys? Like meaning for herself and for, for you guys? Like, would it be a good fit based on. Okay, so even if she's not necessarily live yet on Amazon or she should be live on Amazon first.
- [35:43]
A
You don't have to be live on Amazon yet for us. We want to know that the brand is, you have your products ready to go, you're selling well on Shopify and that for us is a great indicator that you're ready for Amazon because you've already gone, gone through the motions of establishing your brand. Properly.
- [36:00]
B
Okay, what does selling well mean to you? Like, is that a conversion rate or is that like she made a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars or she made her first thousand dollars on her website.
- [36:10]
A
For us, we're typically working with brands that are doing at least a half million dollars a year.
- [36:16]
B
Cool. So 500, 500k in revenue. Typical. Some sort of track record that. Okay, there's product market fit. Like you've your product actually serves a problem, customers actually like your product and you're ready to scale to another channel. Amazon being that channel. That's like the perfect customer.
- [36:31]
A
That's the ideal customer. We have worked with customers that have launched absolutely brand new products to Amazon, but they have come from us. Like they're proven entrepreneurs or they know the space really well and they have all their ducks in a row. Like they're like, I got the product, here's the packaging, here's the images, here's like, it's just like they've already done a photo shoot or it's like they are very much like ready. So that's what we look for.
- [36:57]
B
What should Rachel expect, like when she uses a service like yours? Like I know it's project based, so it's like a, it's a typical thing to kind of quote on the spot but like give a range like zero to whatever thousand dollars. Like what should she be expecting for.
- [37:11]
A
For us, it's anywhere from 3 to 20,000 is usually a typical order for us, depending on how many SKUs we're working on, if we're doing a storefront or not. Because there's a difference between the product listing and the storefront. And yeah, it's one of those things where like I said, if you do one, we always recommend doing one first and then you can come back to us at any point and add on. And our add on prices are actually drastically lower than our package rates.
- [37:36]
B
Sure. So because you know about them and the brand and cool.
- [37:40]
A
Exactly.
- [37:41]
B
Amazing. I have a couple questions to wrap up and then we can jump off from there. You ready? Some rapid fire questions. All right. Favorite business book?
- [37:51]
A
Oh my gosh, I have so many. But for your audience, for your audience specifically, I will say design your life. Because for me as an entrepreneur, it was the first one that. It was the first one that helped me prototype my life and my business into the dream life that I wanted.
- [38:16]
B
Is this by the author, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans?
- [38:21]
A
Yeah, it's, it's, it's a really interesting book because it's not, it was a. I Think it was a course at Stanford that they turned into a book. It was like the most popular course they ever had. And so many people wanted to take the course, they just made it into a book. They also have an online course that's completely free that I took as well. I highly recommend you take it. It's phenomenal. But the cool thing about it is it's not just a book that you read and you put down. It's every chapter gives you like a homework assignment, almost like you're in the, in, in the course. And they're very like self reflective homework assignments where you're trying to understand like, do I have the resources to, to make like this dream life, this dream life, this dream life happen? Like, if I had three dream lives that I could go after, which one am I most suited to do? Which one should I do first? And then it teaches you exactly how to prototype it. Like in the next 30 days or 90 days, like dip your toe in the water before you go all in. And that's actually how I ended up starting Mindful Goods. I had three different prototypes of businesses that I was considering. I, I made a little like mini 30 day plan for each one. I dipped my toe in the water. I just followed the steps in this book and then ultimately I ended up here.
- [39:32]
B
Sounds like you're living your dream life.
- [39:34]
A
I, you have no idea. I absolutely am.
- [39:38]
B
You know what, it sounds crazy. Like it sounds crazy to maybe some people that are not living their dream life yet or they're like, oh, that must be nice. Um, I think a lot of people listening to this actually, they either they've either designed their dream life or they're on their way. They're on that path.
- [39:53]
A
Yeah.
- [39:53]
B
Um, they're probably just starting to figure out like, lifestyle design for me. Fortunately, I figured out like, I heard about this thing called lifestyle design like years ago and location freedom and time freedom and financial freedom, like all these things. And I just like attached myself to it pretty quickly and, and I pinch myself. Um, very often. My wife and I, we kind of look at our life and we're just like, damn, nothing's perfect. Like, perfection is not in the question. But if, if there was such thing, it's pretty damn close, right? And there's lots of problems and chaos everywhere. I'm building a startup for God's sakes. But that's my, my, it's my version of like my lifestyle design is like ideal. And so it's very cool. And congratulations on building your life that you're really Proud of.
- [40:35]
A
That's you too. You too. I honestly think the people that are not there yet, they're, They're. They can absolutely be there. I believe everyone can be there. Like, maybe, maybe you and I were probably more suited to it as entrepreneurs. Like, I'm. I'm always like a risk taker, but even for me, I fell into, like, a slump of. Of, I'll say total depression. I was completely burnt out for my last. My former career in tech. And coming out of that, it took a lot for me to, like, reassess my life, rebuild, rethink of, like, what do I actually want now, you know? And that was one of the books that I read. Another one that was really less business, but more about, like, getting the confidence to do it, was trying to remember the exact name of the book, but it was like something like, like, you are fucking awesome or something like that. And it sounds so silly to read a book like that, but sometimes you need to be reminded. You need to be reminded how freaking awesome you are and how unique you are to this world. And to realize that you're so special, you're so unique that you are destined to find your path. And if you just have complete 100% conviction that it is going to happen for you no matter what, and you. You burn the bridges behind you and just go full steam, it happens. It absolutely happens. And that's what happened to me. Like, I was so down in the dumps and I. I never. I had never gone through that ever in my life. I was always confident in my career, fell down into the dumps and. And just like, really had to, like, climb back up. And it was like, those two books that really set me on the right path.
- [42:20]
B
I really, really love that. Yeah, thank you for sharing that too. I think I agree with you completely. Anybody listening to this, if they're not, quote unquote, there. And there is not a destination, by the way, it's just like, it's. It's more of a mindset. And in my opinion, it's like I didn't arrive at, like, finally financial freedom, location, freedom, time freedom, and like, ultimate. Like, my life is great. It's like more of like a process, I'm noticing. Yeah, it is. And it just gets better and better, which is very cool and actually interesting to see this.
- [42:49]
A
Yeah.
- [42:50]
B
And I also don't want anybody to hear that this is. There's such thing as this perfect life either, because, like, life isn't like that. Um, it's more of, like, your perspective on. It becomes Perfect. It's, it's a weird thing, but. Next question. It's supposed to be rapid fire. Um, how many hours do you work in your business, you think per week?
- [43:10]
A
I feel bad saying the real number. It's your life. I know. Okay, so I'm. You have to realize too though, I spent many, many, many hours in the very beginning years working 10. I love, I love what I do. So I, I don't mind working nights, weekends, any day of the week. I, I used to work 10, 12 hour days like on this business. Loved it. Loved every minute of it. I still love it to this day. But I have a full team now, so 90% of what I used to do is, is now done by them. Maybe more if I'm being totally honest. So like there's, there's days where I work an hour and there's days where I work three hours. And I mean that's one to three hours is probably like the average at this point. If a team, we have a very small team though. So if a team member is sick or there's a family emergency or some, somebody's out, I'm back to my 10 to 12 hours or I'm back to my at least eight hours. Like I'm, I'm back in it because I'm helping everyone, you know, so there's periods of that as an entrepreneur, but I would say the day to day at this point is probably one to three hours. And that's my choice. Like, like, could I, could I scale this business even more? Sure. Could we take on more clients? Probably. Could, could I add on other things? Could I, could I like burn the candle at both ends if I wanted to? Sure. But I've kind of hit this point now where I'm like, you know what, we have a really solid team. We have great revenue, traction. People in the space know who we are. We're one of the top people in the space at this point. We spoke at Amazon's conference this last year. Like, we're one of the top providers and like we don't now have to chase deals that are not good for us, you know, so it's just kind of gotten into that place of like, life is good. Why don't we just enjoy it instead of constantly being in a hustle mindset, you know?
- [45:08]
B
Yep. I completely get that. I completely get that and I respect that too. And I think this, the quote that I kept thinking about when you mentioned this is like, you have a team and the way that I look about it and ever be Our company is. The idea is that we build the people, and the people build the business. The idea isn't about me doing everything because I'm actually not that good at lots of stuff. I'm actually pretty bad at lots of stuff. And, yeah, when you hire. When you get to certain stages, you get to hire experts that are 10 times better than you at certain things. In fact, it'd be. It'd be a shame for your customers if you'd actually do that rather than your employee, because they're really good.
- [45:46]
A
It can hurt the business, too, because you can become the Roadblock. I have to constantly assess, am I the Roadblock right now? Because I'm saying I want to do this, I want to help, I want to be part of it. Am I being the Roadblock? Because I may not get to it today, I may get to it tomorrow or the next day, but somebody might have done it better than me if I would have just let them do it, you know?
- [46:04]
B
But our ego gets in.
- [46:06]
A
Yeah. The other thing that I realized this last holiday season, so we typically have, like, a big rush of business right before Q4, obviously, but we turned away probably at least 100k in deals, and that was because, again, yes, we could have taken a lot of more deals. But then what does that do for my team? A, it's going to stress me out, but B, it's going to stress out everyone on my team. And that's the time of year when we should all be slowing down to enjoy time with our families and not be stressed out. And the last thing I want to do is stress out everyone else around me and cause more stress in my life. So we had to proactively say we're going to take the ones that are the 100% fit, the 80% to 100% fit, and everyone else, we're so sorry, we're just not going to take on new business right now, you know, and. And that worked out really well for us, to be honest. Like, we had the lowest rate of unhappy customers probably ever in Q4, because that's a very tense time of year for everyone. But it was also like a very happy time for most of the team. They got to be with their. With their family. Nobody was stressed out. And that's really important.
- [47:19]
B
How would you define a creator? So as a whole. And then there's a whole bunch of. In my head, there's lots of different types of creators. There's the tech creator, right. There's the artist creator. There is the content creator, obviously. Right. There Is the entrepreneur creator, just the business creator? And I'm curious how you define a creator.
- [47:40]
A
That's so interesting because I haven't actually thought of creators in that way because when I hear the term creator, I always think of like a TikTok creator, like a, like the UGC type of person that's doing their content online, like a content creator. But absolutely, when I think of entrepreneurs, for instance, for me, I don't think of myself as just an entrepreneur. I think of myself as creative entrepreneur. So I'm very, I'm very creative and I'm an entrepreneur and those two things come together. Right. So that is interesting. I haven't thought of it in that way.
- [48:12]
B
So would you define. So now what would, how would you define a creator?
- [48:16]
A
I don't know. I think it's just, I think it's just in my head that way. Then as a, as the creators on Tick Tock, it's just like embedded.
- [48:25]
B
Would you call yourself a creator? Would you call yourself a creator? If someone's like a good question.
- [48:29]
A
I call myself a creative creative, but I'm definitely a, a creator in the sense that I'm a builder, for sure.
- [48:38]
B
Interesting use the word builder too. It's very interesting too. I agree. I think a lot of founders and entrepreneurs call themselves builders a lot of times because we're building a business, like it's almost like we're building a house, right? It's like, it takes like effort and you put up sticks and like you, you have to nail them together and all this stuff. But it's interesting because like when I think about your lifestyle design, you created that lifestyle design like it happens through your, like your own manifestation, your own conviction, your own vision. You're creating that.
- [49:09]
A
Totally. Totally. Yeah. And that's for sure.
- [49:14]
B
Do you think that everyone should be a business owner?
- [49:17]
A
No, I don't. No, I don't. Sometimes I can't help but want that for people because I see how much I enjoy it. But I've seen people that just, they don't enjoy it and that's okay. You know, like I, for instance, part of my team, I will say all of our creative directors, I specifically hire creative directors that already have their own businesses because they are, they, they typically, you know, stay in their lane, they run, they, they're operating their own businesses. They look at us as supplemental income. We would never be able to affi. To afford to hire full time creative directors in the United States and have the prices that we have for our clients. So we're able to get top tier talent for fractional rates. And they're very entrepreneurial, driven, they're very, very responsible. Whereas I have other team members equally as responsible. But they are so happy and content just knowing they have, they don't have their other businesses. They are just focused on this one job and that and they're really great at their one job and then they get to, they enjoy the rest of their life and whatever. As entrepreneurs, I feel like we sometimes let our work, our work is so infused in every part of our day that we let our work sometimes creep into family time and creep into this and creep into that. Whereas, like, that might drive some other people nuts. Like that's not okay. You know, it's not okay for some people. And I totally get that. You know, so for us, it's one of those situations where, I don't know, I've realized that like some people, it's, it's, it's great. They, they love having their own business. Some people know if somebody did want to have their own business, I absolutely want to support them to get there. You know, for us with our creative directors, I know they have their own businesses. So somebody comes to me and they're like, we need packaging design. I'm like, great, go work with this person. We don't offer it at Mindful Goods, but our creative directors that we've worked with for years, they do packaging design so you can go work with them directly. And, and awesome. You know, we just kick business back and forth to each other.
- [51:23]
B
Whereas, like, do you think the people that you, you found that didn't enjoy their business, do you think they could just be in the wrong business?
- [51:32]
A
Maybe, maybe. I, But I've had people tell me that they prefer a paycheck. They take comfort in knowing that they're getting a paycheck every two weeks. They can't handle the stress of not knowing how they're getting that paycheck when that paycheck is coming. Like that's too much for them, you know, and there's certain. But we all like, that's, that they're content with that.
- [51:56]
B
You know, I wonder. I, I asked this because it's a very. It's a hard conversation or it's a hard. I wrestle with this question a lot in my head because I personally believe that everyone should own a business.
- [52:10]
A
I used to think that. I used to think that everyone should own a business. And I used to want to help everyone own a business.
- [52:16]
B
Me too.
- [52:16]
A
I've just had, I've had so many people Just like, say things like that to me that, like, they are completely content. Another example. I'll give you a really good example. This is like a social experiment. This is like, you're gonna love this one. So I'm a. I'm a product of divorce. So I have two brothers from. I grew up in the States in California. I have two brothers who. Who are. Grew up in the States as well with me and two brothers who grew up in Peru. So both. Both parents, they divorced, got remarried, both had two boys. Boys are the same ages, grew up in different countries. My American brothers are very much the 9 to 5 working type. One has kind of wrestled with the idea of wanting to start a business, but doesn't fully. Like, he. He makes a very, very healthy paycheck at his career and hasn't really fully felt that he. And he has a family. So that's a totally different set of, you know, things you have to think about when you have kids involved. So it's like he hasn't been able to make that leap. Right. Another brother who has no interest in being an entrepreneur, is completely content working a 9 to 5 and just wants to find awesome 9 to 5 jobs. My two brothers in Peru would never work for anybody in their entire lives. They are a thousand percent. They grew up as delegators. So in Peru, the culture, in different social economics, in different households, you might have, like, maids or cooks or people working in your house. So you grow up delegating. It's like a natural thing. Whereas in the States, we don't grow up delegated. We grew up doing.
- [53:59]
B
No, I don't.
- [54:00]
A
You know, so if you grow up as a doer, you're naturally suited to solve a problem by, how can I do this? Me, how can I do this? Which is a pro and a con at the same time, if you think about it. Because delegation is a skill, right? My brothers in Peru, they never. The first thought in their head is never doing it. Is delegation always who, Which. Which, yeah, it's instantly like, who can get this done for me? Like, that is the very first thing in their brain, which it took me years to train my brain to get that way. It's still a struggle for me because I grew up. I grew up as a doer, but now I'm exposed to both, and I see how both are and. And I realize, like, what is right for me, you know?
- [54:44]
B
I love that. Danielle, thank you so much. It is. It's fun to talk about. I could talk about all day as far as, like, who should Be a business owner who should be an entrepreneur. Why aren't people entrepreneurs? It's like amazing life but it's also extremely challenging and it's a beautiful life, but it's also ugly at times.
- [55:01]
A
It's so great though, once you get on the other side of it, right? Like if you have your first taste of success. I believe that if, if every person started a business where they got their first taste of success, even if it all got wiped away the next day, they would still like know what that tastes like and they wouldn't be able to stop going for it.
- [55:23]
B
You know, I completely 1000% agree with you. I think as soon as people see will see the light, like if they can clearly see the light and then to the point where they don't just see it, but they actually believe it now internally, like they believe it in their heart that I can do it, then there's no way that they wouldn't go after it like and keep going. And. And I also believe that businesses don't necessarily have to be full time businesses anymore.
- [55:48]
A
Right?
- [55:48]
B
Like we just because you're a surgeon, like you're a heart surgeon, very important job. Like you can't really like run a business necessarily. I don't know. But the point was is like they should keep that job. They are passionate about it. But you could probably have a podcast or a course teaching other people how to do this thing, talking about the thing and you could probably monetize that thing. So you're a business owner but also you're a full time. Anyway, it's fun to talk about. Danielle, thank you so much for.
- [56:16]
A
Thank you so much. This is awesome.
- [56:17]
B
Yeah. Joining us.
- [56:19]
A
Super.
- [56:19]
B
Awesome. I will link to. For anyone listening to this or watching this, I will link to all Daniela's links that she mentioned earlier on the show notes or the description below. Daniela, excited to talk to you next time.
- [56:30]
A
Thank you.
- [56:32]
B
See you.