#405 – Getting Rich on Amazon in 2024: There’s More To The Story with Robb Green
What happens when you bring together some of the brightest minds in business to share their secrets to success? Join us as we reconnect with Robb Green, a veteran Amazon FBA seller who has exited three businesses and now leads a vibrant mastermind group. We journey back to our 2016 weekly mastermind meetings and trace how these gatherings have shaped our entrepreneurial paths, highlighting the invaluable role of community and networking in our e-commerce ventures. Robb reveals the magic behind his current mastermind, which convenes in stunning locations like Hawaii, and underscores the power of collective insight in navigating the complexities of industries like e-commerce.
Have you ever wondered how the most effective mastermind groups operate? We dissect the essential elements that foster a productive mastermind culture, from ensuring members are both contributors and learners to maintaining a structured approach in presenting business challenges. Discover how diverse methodologies, such as curated expert panels, can provide targeted solutions and drive business growth, creating a collaborative environment akin to having your own board of directors.
Curious about the real journey behind building successful e-commerce brands? We share candid stories from Kevin and Robb’s journey into Amazon-selling, starting in mid-2015, and the lessons learned from both our triumphs and setbacks. Our conversation spans the strategic intricacies of managing cash flow, understanding unit economics, and leveraging platforms like TikTok to boost visibility and sales. We also delve into the transformative role of AI, exploring how custom GPTs can revolutionize business operations and why staying ahead of tech advancements is crucial for long-term success. Tune in for a rich tapestry of insights that can propel your e-commerce business to new heights!
In episode 405 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Robb discuss:
- 01:24 – Masterminds and Networking
- 08:09 – Evolving Mastermind Value and Structure
- 12:41 – Innovative Networking Event With Top Influencers
- 13:28 – Lessons in Building E-Commerce Brands
- 17:47 – Product Category Influence on Pricing
- 21:51 – Narrow Focus in E-Commerce Strategy
- 28:11 – Cash Conversion Cycle in Amazon Business Operations
- 32:01 – Forecasting Returns and Profitability on Amazon
- 36:52 – Future of AI in Business
- 44:16 – E-Commerce Seller Trends and Updates
- 44:26 – Leveraging TikTok for E-Commerce Success
- 49:50 – TikTok Shop’s Impact on E-Commerce
- 52:35 – Business Owners and Case Studies
- 55:29 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 405 of the AM/PM podcast. My guest this week is Robb Green. Robb has been doing this about as long as I have. I think he actually started selling a couple months before I started selling as an FBA seller back in 2015. He’s exited three companies, runs a mastermind, really good financial guy. Really good on top of everything. I think you’re going to really enjoy this episode and get some good practical advice out of it. Great guy to catch up with. Enjoy this episode with Mr. Robb Green. Mr. Robb Green. Man, it’s been a while. We’ve known each other. We go back a ways.
Robb:
We’ve known each other for quite a few years, Kevin. Old school, we’re both in the old school.
Kevin King:
When was that? We were in a little weekly mastermind together? Was that like 2015, 2016, something like that?
Robb:
I want to say like 2016. Right before Illuminati started, that mastermind, I mean that was back in the day. I mean it was an idea to get a bunch of people together high end, and I want to say 2016, 2017. It’s all blur now, Kevin.
Kevin King:
There were some players on that. I mean, I remember that this was a free mastermind, I think it went to the guy that was organizing. It ended up charging for it down the road, but for like the first year it was basically you had to know somebody to get in, get invited in, kind of get tapped out on the shoulder, and we would meet. I think it was every Tuesday, for an hour or two and just talk, talk, you know whatever’s going on. But looking back at some of the names that were in there that went on, some of them have disappeared now but some of them have gone on to big things including yourself. It’s pretty cool back then.
Robb:
Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, you know, it was kind of a precursor. I co-founded my own mastermind that isn’t paid. It’s, well, we all share the costs. Essentially, nobody makes any money off and that was we’re in our seventh year of doing that and that has been probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, because everybody comes and tries to add value to each other, right. We get together three times a year, do monthly calls. I just think the value of a network and having a group of people that you can go to with problems is absolutely, it’s invaluable.
Kevin King:
You guys have like ramped it up because y’all are like balling. I saw y’all get to Hawaii, I think to Maui or Kauai or somewhere, and y’all were in a plane. Everybody like met in LA or San Francisco or somewhere over there.
Robb:
No, we didn’t rent it, Kevin. We don’t rent the jet.
Kevin King:
Oh, okay, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry, don’t mean to offend there. Someone owns the jet.
Robb:
Yeah, yeah, we didn’t rent it. Now my buddy, Mike’s, got a Gulfstream and so we all went to Seattle and then took his Gulfstream over to Hawaii and then we stayed at his house in Hawaii, which when I go over there we’ll be there again. You know, we were just there this summer actually again. So it’s fun, man, it’s a fun trip. So we did the Mastermind Hawaii and did a bunch of fun stuff we’ve done all over the world, but you know we try to stay mostly here in Scottsdale where a few of us members are located, and then people all fly in for it.
Kevin King:
So which part of Hawaii. Did you go to this year?
Robb:
We’ve been on a lot as a family, like this summer and then last summer and three summers ago. Kailua, it’s the eastern part of Oahu. It’s just all the way to the east by Lanikai Beach. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
Kevin King:
Just did the Billion Dollar Seller Summit back in May in Kauai and that went really well.
Robb:
Love that. Grand Hyatt. We did Illuminati there, Kevin, a few years ago.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you spoke.
Robb:
Spoke at that one. Wife and I got married at that same hotel actually.
Kevin King:
Oh, did you at the Hyatt Regency, the Grand Hyatt, that’s right. Yeah, you spoke. We did a, back in the day before it’s called Helium 10 Elite, it was called the Illuminati Mastermind. And I remember Manny and Guy set that up and I think their first training was in February of 2017. And you came on very early and Manny was like who’s this guy? Robb Green, man, he’s got some cool techniques and cool tactics. He’s crushing it. We’ve got to get him on the show. And you came on and presented some stuff. And then in January, I think it was 2018, we did an event in Hawaii and you’re one of the speakers out there at that event.
Kevin King:
I agree with you, though, on this mastermind. Speaking of that, you know I’ve always been hesitant when someone says you got to fork over money. You know, there’s a few other masterminds that are out there right now that I’m in and I don’t pay for any of them, because some of them are three grand, five grand, a nominal amount, but they charge some of the other people. But when they come to me I’m like, no, I’m not paying because I feel like a lot of times I’m giving more value than I’m getting, and so what I-
Robb:
That’s a great point
Kevin King:
If masterminds, where the people are at a higher level than me and it may not be necessarily be an Amazon specifically, but I don’t. Why should I pay to provide value to other people? They should be paying me. So if they want me in their mastermind, there’s a few I’m in, they have to comp me in. But there is one that I just did. It’s not in the Amazon space, it’s Perry Belcher’s Driven. You know it used to be the war room and they split up into different parts and he’s got driven and I’ve been to a couple of those as a guest, paid for one five grand to go, and the other one I was comped and then I just recently paid the 30 grand to actually join that and that’s the first time I’ve ever actually paid money to actually join a mastermind because I get in there.
Kevin King:
There’s a few Amazon guys but these are people that are email experts, Facebook experts, some of the top people in the business, and then it happened to be in Austin, the last one that I went to back in April where I joined, and so I live in Austin, so I invited people over. I have a house downtown, a penthouse downtown. I invited about 30 people over, and out of that came even better relationships. So when hey, thanks for inviting me to your house and providing some beers and stuff, anything you need I’m like you know on Facebook anything you need email marketing all your emails aren’t getting delivered. Let me take a look at it. I’m not going to charge you. These are like the top experts in that. You can’t get that anywhere else, and so I know you’re big on that too. You want to talk about that a little bit, about the value of masterminds and Zoom calls.
Robb:
I think you and I had the same kind of experience. You know, I think it was like 7,500 bucks a ticket. It filters out people a little bit, right, and so there’s some benefits there from the filtering perspective. But when Pablo and I started the No BS Mastermind, one of the key characteristics was that when you do pay a lot of money, a lot of people not guys like you and I, but a lot of people just show up to take because they’re like I wrote a check, I paid the money, I’m just going to sit there and receive.
Robb:
And so we were thinking through, like how do we prevent that from happening, right? And so what we did is we asked a bunch of people and of course, you got a bunch of guys you and I know can’t follow rules to save their life who we have to ask to not come back to the mastermind anymore because they can’t show up on time and things like that, and so those kinds of situations. But also we started voting, and so the idea was, if you’re not bringing value on a regular, consistent basis and you’re in the bottom three a couple of times in a row, we’re going to ask you not to be in the mastermind again, and so that helped us.
Kevin King:
It was like Survivor Island. Somebody gets voted out.
Robb:
Oh, we were brutal, listen.
Kevin King:
Sit around a campfire and write it on a piece of paper and here’s Robb up at the front. All right.
Robb:
I still get flack.
Kevin King:
You do get to make a speech and just say one of you is going to get saved and one of you is not going to get saved. You get to make a speech and what you’re gonna do.
Robb:
For some reason, I don’t get a lot of the benefits but I get a lot of the bad stuff that comes with mastermind so people blame me for the group voting a lot of time. So I’ll go to a conference. I saw you a few months ago out in Vegas and I still run into people who used to be in the mastermind and we asked them not to come anymore and I still get heat from the about getting kicked out five years ago.
Kevin King:
I think I know who you’re talking about.
Robb:
Oh my God, it never stops, buddy, it never stops. So it’s just like I get all. I’m like, listen, we voted as a group. Like this wasn’t me making the decision, I just had to deliver the bad news. Like we all voted, including you and your friend and anybody in here, and like you were last again. Like, what do you want me to do? So that is really that evolution has been really beautiful.
Robb:
Like we’ve now have 11 core members and then what we do, Kevin, is we bring three to four guests every mastermind that we’re looking to learn something new. That last one we did in May was around TikTok shops on TikTok. So we brought in some guests that were really crushing it on TikTok and really dialed in to what’s happening with shops and everything like that. So maybe we want to have a focus. It’s not all just Amazon. There’s a lot of e-com, DUC, Shopify, a lot of different stuff. One guy has moved on from Amazon to multifamily so he’s a multifamily investor. So it’s just been a really good group. But it comes back to building those relationships like you talked about. So if I have a problem, I can call someone and be like hey, man, dude, I’m really struggling with this thing. Can you help me with this? And that’s the true value of the mastermind, in my opinion.
Kevin King:
So what makes a good mastermind? Mastermind goes back to was it Napoleon Hill or somewhere like that that actually had the idea? And you hear a lot of people throw that word around and all it is a conference or it’s a presentation or something. But what actually, In your experience with year 11, what is it like, structurally like if someone out there is like, yeah, you know what I’m looking for a mastermind to join, or I’m thinking about, I’ve always had the idea to start one. What should they be doing or looking for?
Robb:
That’s a great question. The one thing we’ve learned is you got to protect the culture, so you’ve got to have the right type of person. That isn’t the guy who’s just a taker, the guy that shows up and doesn’t tell anything about it, doesn’t share anything about what he’s doing and he’s just there extracting from other people. Right, that’s not the good fit. It’s the person who says hey, this is what I’m doing, this is what’s working, this was not working. I’m not afraid to say what’s not working, like, have some humbleness and share your problems because that’s how everybody kind of gets better. I tend to facilitate our mastermind, you know, and just keep it moving. And we have a timekeeper and we have a chef and we have an assistant. We try to keep it moving.
Robb:
But the main thing is half of your presentation time is built around you getting value from the group, like a Board of Directors, and the other half is you giving value to the group so that you have something they can take away with them and either do themselves or give to their team to actually execute on that plan. And that has been the structure that’s really worked the best, and I mean everybody in the group. We’re pretty ruthless again about voting and like kicking people out. But the really thing is, the big thing is like everybody gets tremendous value out of it and so it’s okay. You know, hey, you don’t want to do this anymore, you’re going to go do software or multifamily. You don’t want to be part of the group. You know it’s not a, we don’t take it personal, it’s more how can we add value to everybody in the group and grow together. And we’ve seen that happen a lot. It’s been fantastic.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I’m taking a twist on the mastermind concept, but I’m actually copying a guy named David Gonzalez. He does the internet marketing party. I don’t know if you know him or not. He’s big here in Austin and does some sometimes at TNC and some stuff like that. But he did this concept where he started it last year and now he’s doing it every quarter, where he gets like seven or eight people that are having a pain point in their business. Maybe it’s TikTok shop, maybe it’s should I go to Shopify. Maybe it’s I don’t know how to scale, or maybe it’s we’re not closing. We’re only closing two out of 30 calls. You know what are we doing wrong, whatever it is.
Kevin King:
And he brings, they pay to come in and then they sit in the hot seat and then he curates experts based on what their pain points are. So he goes out and he curates five to seven experts I’ve been on the panel a couple of times for him and it’s structured. He moderates it for about two and a half to three hours and the first 15 minutes is they talk about their business. This is who I am. Hey, I’m Kevin King. I sell this. I’ve been doing this. You know, whatever the next 45 minutes. Those experts ask questions and if they veer off of that like, start giving solutions, he’ll stop them. And then the next hour, hour and a half is solutions like this is what you’re doing wrong. Tell me what you’re. How do you open your calls when you’re doing a sales pitch? Oh, we say this, this is our script. Nope, that’s totally effed up. You need to do this, this and this. Oh, you want to go to Shopify. Why, what would you know? Going into the weeds and usually by the end of this person sitting in a hot seat, sometimes it’s in tears and just has to take a moment because it’s so impactful for them, it’s so enlightening for them and you have some of the top people in the space.
Kevin King:
So I’m actually doing this in September and it’s a mansion with like 11 bedrooms in and out of Lake Austin. It’s called the Gatsby mansion as a helipad pickleball courts. It’s like bringing out the chef, bringing out everything, and then I’m curating the Dream 100 that I do for my newsletter and people that are outside of that that if I don’t have someone that’s an inducted yet, I’ll reach out to them. Hey, you want to come and you get a little bit of mastermind element just hanging around and then these people directly help and impact other people, and it’s never been done like this and I think, if I can convey the concept properly, get one under my belt, I think people are going to really, really, really like it. That’s what I’m trying to do. Your background before this whole Amazon when you got into Amazon, what? 2014, 2015?
Robb:
2015, I went live middle of July of 2015, I think went live on the first product.
Kevin King:
You’re about two or three months before me. I was November 2015, I think, when I went live as an FBA. So I’ve been selling since 2001. But there’s a whole difference. It’s more of the 1P model, but not in the FBA game but you were pretty major in sales or something before that weren’t you.
Robb:
My last job I had was I worked for a big medical manufacturer, so I did sales like corporate sales, managed the West Coast for them, and then before that was finance. So finance and sales background. And, like you, before I got into Amazon private labeling, manufacturing our own products I did drop shipping since 2011. So I’d been doing a lot of drop shipping and been doing AdWords on my own and got on the Amazon platform in 2015. And it’s been very good to me.
Kevin King:
Now, you’ve built up a few companies. You’ve actually had a few exits too, right.
Robb:
Yep. Sold three brands started at handful.
Kevin King:
To aggregators or to private individuals?
Robb:
Two were typical private investors who wanted to buy the brand and then live on the beach, which you know how it doesn’t work out. And then another was to an aggregator in 21. And I’ve made stuff in the US. I’ve done China a bunch. You know we really shifted this last, I’d say last six months or so away from China more North American manufacturing, you know, subscription products, a lot of the China products. We’ve just found the margins haven’t been there to maintain the additional fees by Amazon or the ad spend. So we’ve shifted a lot over the last like six to 12 months, towards more manufactured in North America.
Kevin King:
So you sold the companies and then did you start new ones, or these ones that you had before that have just grown and you didn’t sell them, or after you exited?
Robb:
All through the years, I’ve started a bunch of them, right. So, and one thing I like to talk about, Kevin, is, like the ones that didn’t work, nobody talks about that stuff. Everybody likes to brag about the ones that do work. I’ve started a bunch of brands that didn’t work, Kevin, and I’m not afraid to say it.
Robb:
I did one where I was a number two seller of patio lights back when that craze happened, like 2016 to 2019. I was number two seller and then margins got down to where the Chinese sellers were selling it for my cost. So there was no margin left. So I just shut down the business, sold through my inventory but had a good three-year run with it. So understanding the life cycle of a product or a brand is really critical to understanding that. So we’ve had some that didn’t work out. We’ve had some that did work out. It’s been a really good experience to really identify where my strengths are, where the team’s strengths are more brand building. I think that was a mistake. I didn’t really build real, proper brands. Recently, we engaged in a full design agency for the first time and I did it and I was like I’m an idiot. I should have done this in every one of these brands. Before I was an idiot for not spending the 30 grand in the past.
Kevin King:
Some people say, though, when you do that, they’re afraid to do that. It’s like what if this doesn’t work? I lost $1.5 million in 2020 on Amazon with a brand called Germ Shark. We got into the hand sanitizer business.
Robb:
I remember that.
Kevin King:
And we did it proper. We did it completely right with proper branding, proper money, everything on it. We were the poster child, even our business. Our SaaS guy at Amazon is like you’re the poster child for a seller. And we still had massive problems with the algorithm. We did a whole case study on Steve Simons and I in one of the previous BDSSs. For an hour we showed the whole case study of how we lost money Because, like you said, a lot of people only talk about their successes, they don’t talk about their failures and you learn a lot from the failures.
Kevin King:
And just because we both fail, that doesn’t mean Amazon’s a bad business. I’m going to go on to the next shiny object. No, this is a great business, but most stuff doesn’t work. But, like you said, with this price suppression over the three years with the lights, is it branding, is the way you insulate yourself and protect yourself from that, or is it changing? I always say the money’s made in the sourcing, not in the selling. Is it doing exactly what you did? Let me get out of China and get into Mexico or the US or somewhere else where you’re making difference in margins. Maybe it’s shipping or taxes or whatever it may be.
Robb:
I have a couple of thoughts or lessons I’ve learned on that. First of all, I want to say Steve’s one of my favorite people that I’ve met in this space. I was in Steve’s mastermind seven, eight years ago.
Robb:
And love Steve. I saw him a few months ago. Steve’s one of the nicest guys in this industry. But the lessons learned? I think it’s really product category dependent. I mean, Kevin, are you going to go buy a beauty product for $3 because it’s cheaper? No, I mean, I don’t want to put something for three bucks on my face, but I might buy a milk frother for three bucks because it’s like, is it that different than the one for 20? It’s probably similar. So I think it’s really category or product dependent on can you sustain that marketing? And then I think of it like a range right, and then the quality brand can be at that premium of that range. I’ll use a great example. I think Mary Ruth’s Organics, David and his team and Jay do an absolute amazing job of being a premium branded product with content, with the messaging, with all the product quality. And Mary Ruth’s is a great example of sustaining high premium quality pricing in the marketplace when there’s been some compression but they’re in a category that can sustain that.
Kevin King:
They’re doing like 300 million a year.
Robb:
They’re big. Yeah, Jay comes to the mastermind. Usually every other mastermind, he’s a guy-
Kevin King:
Jay Hunter?
Robb:
Yeah, yeah.
Kevin King:
Yeah, yeah, he was just at BDSS in Kauai and David. Actually, I did a second event after BDSS called Level Up, which is not Amazon, and David spoke at that. You know more about mindset and about what it takes to get to that level and how you got to shift your focus and shift your thoughts and everything. But yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt there.
Robb:
No, no, yeah, Jay’s the best. I love Jay, he’s in it. He’s the CMO, right? He’s running all the marketing. He’s running supply chain too, I think still. But anyway he he’ll come like every other mastermind and share with us what he’s doing, and then learn from us, obviously, too, and share what’s going on. Perpetual guests over the years who don’t want to come every time, and maybe not a good fit every time, but every third time or other times. But I think they’ve done an excellent job of the branding, the whole story, building that around it.
Robb:
Can branding solve all your problems? Absolutely not, Kevin. No chance. You’ve got a crappy category or a crappy product. Even worse, you have no chance of just good branding outperforming that. I think it all comes down the way I think about it. Back when we started in this venture years ago, you could get one or two things right and win. Now you’ve got to have a checklist. You not only got to win on product, on brand, on sourcing, on Amazon, on TikTok. I mean you got to get it all right because it’s just gotten more competitive like everything else does. You can’t just win because you got I was early in a product. I mean there’s a lot of guys I know. They got lucky, they were early and fortunate and then haven’t been able to launch a new product since. It’s been years.
Kevin King:
No, yeah, they were right place, right time. You see that happen. These aggregator buys it for their and these guys don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground and they don’t know how to do anything. They’re just right place, right time. We’re able to build a moat and just coast, basically. But they think they know what they’re doing and some of them in fairness, there are some that are really good, but a lot of them. I see that happen over and over and I see this the flip side, where a buyer, like you said, the guy just wants to go on the beach and listen to his phone, ding, ding, ding. They come in and they ruin it. I don’t know, on your businesses, the ones that you sold, have some of them just been ruined to the ground?
Robb:
Running to the ground, Kevin.
Kevin King:
Ryan Moran had that happen. Ryan Moran sold a business, I think it’s 2018, 2019, somewhere in that timeframe for 16 million. It was testosterone powder and some other supplement stuff. He bought it back just recently for $400,000 and he’s going to resurrect it.
Robb:
Most of the buyers, most of the friends I know that have sold. In most cases they’ve run it into the ground.
Kevin King:
Why do you think that is? Do you think the buyer? Do you think the buyers just get into this just aloof and not knowing or not realizing that this actually is a real business, or what do you? It takes a special skill set. Do you think it’s because you and I we have? We’re like these guerrilla marketers, we’re like in the trenches, we’re like wearing a bunch of different hats, and now we get to a point where we’re not doing everything. We got a team, like you said. You got someone to help you turn on the lights there in your studio. You got a team that’s doing stuff, but we still know. We still like know the fundamentals and the basics, and do you think that’s missing? Or why is it that so many fail?
Robb:
Yes, I think it’s context. I think that you know two problems. One, the independent person who comes in and says I want to buy a cash flowing business and make money has most likely doesn’t have the breadth of knowledge and maybe they have some sales experience or they have some marketing experience, but then you’ve got to and they take it on to be like a solopreneur and they like have to wear all the hats. I’m like, wait a minute, how do I deal with Amazon? How do I? Oh, this doesn’t work, right. I mean, shoot you and I know what we’re doing and Amazon’s a pain in the butt to work with.
Robb:
A lot of times, like I got to, I messaged some people today about a problem on Amazon and I know people at Amazon I have to message directly to get answers. It’s crazy. We got money. We know M&A. We’re going to buy a bunch. We’re going to systematize it. Well, it’s not car washes, right. Each of these businesses has some unique aspects to it and I think the guys that I’ve seen at least that have done really well. They centralized around a category, right, they bought all health and they’re like I know how to do health, I know how to do supplements, I know how to get them into Walgreens. I know how to get them in CVS, and so they stayed in with one vertical. I’ve seen those guys do better than the people that bought everything under the sun, because I think that knowledge doesn’t accrue across categories as well as you would think it does from an outsider’s perspective.
Kevin King:
Yeah, that’s a good point, I agree. I agree with you on that. A lot of aggregators that are surviving are exactly that. They’re hyper specialized. There’s been a big shakeout and there’s going to be some left standing. They’re not all dead in the water, but the ones that are doing well are the ones that specialize and pared back and realized this is not a Harvard NBA game, this is a down in the trenches guerrilla marketing game and you got to be nimble and quick because things change.
Kevin King:
I mean, you look at when we started I remember the rule of thumb back in like 2016 or 2015 was okay, if you’re selling a product for a dollar, Amazon’s going to take about 30% of that in fees, shipping fees, commissions, whatever. You got about 30% cost of goods sold and the balance roughly 40%. But that’s no longer the case. I mean now, I think the latest showing that Amazon’s taken about 55 to 60 percent and so those margins are getting squeezed. How are you like? You talked about it briefly earlier, but it’s going a little bit more detail how are you dealing with that with moving to on shoring, where things actually might be more expensive or they don’t want to do smaller runs of stuff? You know you call up a factory in the USA. I need 15, 2000 of this device and they don’t even return your call. Yeah, when you got 20,000, give us a call, but we’re not going to touch it. It’s not worth our time.
Robb:
Yeah, the old adage we lose money but we make it up in volume doesn’t really work, Kevin. So that’s the problem, I think, is that I think and I’m a finance guy, I’m a numbers guy, so for me it goes back to the past. You didn’t have to be dialed in, you didn’t have to know your cogs to the penny, you didn’t have to understand your ACOS and your tacos to that level that you need to now. Now you have to be ruthless around pennies because they’re adding up so fast because Amazon got a new fee for inventory placement or a new fee for this or understanding TikTok shops and their algorithm and how their fee structure works.
Robb:
I think understanding it to just being I call it a real business owner. I think in the past you could maybe kind of be a hobby and you could kind of ride that wave, and now it’s like all right, you got to run a real business and you got to know all aspects of your business because there isn’t enough margin to be sloppy is how I think about it. So it’s like, all right, can I have good unit economics? And it comes down to unit economics by product, by SKU. I mean you got to get down to that level, understanding those unit economics, and is it sustainable? And can I build a brand around it with positive unit economics? That’s how I think about it.
Kevin King:
How do you decide to get rid of a product, even if it’s profitable, or do you?
Robb:
I’ve done this a lot in the last year. To be honest with you, it’s trend analysis. For me it’s like all right, we had a great product. That was. I think we were like 40 bucks I’m not exaggerating, Kevin. Everybody was 15 to 25. Now we had 4.8 rating, over a thousand reviews. Great product. We did all. We have good branding. We did all the things we could do. We were like the sixth or seventh bestseller. And you look at our numbers, it’s a giftable product. You look at our sales last December and you look in our profit and you look at our sales and our profit two Decembers ago, two Christmases ago. Significantly less, maybe half the sales and a third of the profit and you’re like, do we think that trend line is going to change? I’ll be honest, I don’t. I don’t think that for that product in that category was going to change.
Robb:
So we made the decision to sell through inventory as opposed to trying to deal with propping it up or getting to zero. I don’t want to be in a business where I’m just turning over revenue. One of my favorite sayings of all time is revenue is vanity, profit is reality and cash flow is sanity. And everybody talks about revenue. It’s like listen. At the end of the day, if I’m just turning over revenue and not making any money, I mean, I get if you want to sell and there’s maybe a viable path for that. But generally speaking, I want to be profitable on a regular, consistent basis on every SKU. And is it trending in the right direction?
Robb:
So we make a decision based on just the data, like, hey, are we going the wrong direction? Is there anything else we could do to change it? Or has the market changed? I’ve seen some people with some products that for lack of a better word the product is shipping air, it’s a plastic molded product, it’s bigger, and so they’re shipping air. And then shipping costs are higher and the compression is happening in all these different phases. So just understanding where that margin compression is happening is it at the sales price? Is it at the cost structure? Is it in the shipping cost? That’s how I think about it. And then really making an assessment, because I don’t want things that are not. You know, they’re so short lived. I’m not a fad guy. I don’t love the fads and popping in and out. I’d rather have something that’s at least durable for a few years if I’m going to make the time and investment into it.
Kevin King:
A lot of people don’t understand the difference between cash flow and profit. As a finance guy, can you explain for those listening what’s the difference between cash flow and profit?
Robb:
Yeah, sure. If I buy something for 10 bucks, Kevin, and I sell it to you for 20, I in profit, I’ve made 10 bucks. But you don’t pay me for another six months I have no cash flow. I have a negative 10 cash flow because I paid the 10 bucks to make the product but you didn’t give me any money. And cash flow kills more small and medium businesses than anything else, because and I feel I’ve always felt this way a lot of the training courses are really good in this space. That’s one aspect they don’t talk about enough.
Robb:
It’s like all right, well, how do I budget for my first order I’m going to order? Back in the day I’d order a thousand units of a $3 product and they’d say, oh, you can start with 3000 bucks, okay, great. But if it goes well, your second order is 3000 units, your third order is 10,000 units and you’ve only got a tiny bit of that money back because lead time to manufacture, shipping time, Amazon time how long you know, Amazon holds for up to two weeks to pay you. So most people that don’t have a finance background don’t think about it that way. And there’s something called cash conversion cycle. It’s how fast do I take my dollar out and get that dollar back, because that shorting that cash conversion cycle is critical to requiring less cash to spin up the business and it’s a concept that even by getting terms from your supplier that can change your cash conversion cycle dramatically and give you the ability to scale up faster without having to pour all of the cash out into the business and make a large investment.
Kevin King:
What are a couple other things that can help you cash flow wise? I mean, terms are one thing.
Robb:
Terms are huge.
Kevin King:
What about even doing smaller orders. Instead of ordering 5,000 units because it’s 20 cents a unit, cheaper, order 2,000 units. That’s 10 cents a unit more and with the cash flow difference is tremendous. I mean, how much you’re tying up your money. I mean are there other things like that that you can look at too?
Robb:
Yeah that’s a great question. So I remember you know there’s a tendency to always want to go bigger to save the money on the per unit cost, right? And I didn’t have enough respect for supply chain management when I started doing this business and I’ve got a few friends, close friends of mine. One does supply chain for Microsoft, the other one does it for Honeywell and I remember talking to them back in like 2015, 2016. I’m like listen, like this sucks, I don’t know how to figure this out. Like I got to figure out do I order a 20 footer? Do I order a 40, a 40 HQ? And they said, listen, forecasting demand is always difficult. We have the same problems you have, just on a larger scale. Just add a few more zeros to the end. Right, a lot of zeros to the end, and so a lot of zeros to the end. And so a lot of times I would just break down the analysis and say, like you’re saying, I can order 2000 units and I can put those in a 20 footer.
Robb:
What are my cost structure, including shipping? Or I could order 5,000 units and put it in a 40 HQ. All right, what’s my costs? What’s my shipping costs? Now, how long does it take to get my money back. What are my storage fees costing? I’m paying monthly pallet size. Getting to that level of granularity and understanding that can make or break a lot of these smaller businesses, because the fees add up so fast that you end up with a product that looks profitable in the beginning, Kevin, and you end up with something. Four months later, you’re like man, I’m losing money on this product, right, and those are the kind of details that I think your average Amazon seller or private label business owner maybe hasn’t had the experience of digging into or looking at. That I think are really catching up to people now because they don’t have those bigger margins to kind of like make up for the lack of specificity around the financials.
Kevin King:
When you’re looking at a new product, is there a rule, back of the napkin, rule of thumb, a profit margin you’re looking at?
Robb:
We look at ROI.
Kevin King:
I mean multiple. So is it, if I’m going to buy this for two, I’ve got to be able to sell this for 10. And then I got to be able to sell X amount to cash flow it in this certain way. Or how do you analyze a new product?
Robb:
I look at return on investment more than anything else ROI so an example would be ROI Return on investment. So if I buy a product, let’s use China for example, I buy a product for two bucks in China, okay, and I can sell that product for, let’s just say, 12 bucks on Amazon, for example, right, Amazon’s going to take, oh God, five bucks out of that. Maybe six bucks out of that on a $12 product, right? So let’s say it takes six bucks, we’ve got $6 in gross proceeds left, right? Well, that means I’m making $4 in profit. That’s a 200% return on investment. So that’s outstanding. By the way, that would be a dream scenario. If you’re getting triple your money back. It’s a 200% return on your investment. That’s amazing what I’ve noticed.
Robb:
I did some advising to my buddy Mike with the plane a couple years ago and he bought some brands and one thing that was really fascinating we bought a great brand, that $175 product. It was crushing and we made some tweaks to the business and blew it up. The return rate was so large, Kevin, that hadn’t been modeled out on Amazon. It was in the teens, teens, oh, wow. And so that affects profitability in a significant manner, right?
Kevin King:
Most people don’t factor that in when they’re doing their forecasting. I put in a minimum of 3% on everything I do and if it’s clothing or I know it’s going to be higher and you can get that information. Now, on the industry, average people are like well, how do I know what the returns are? Well, if you have a shitty product, you’re going to get a lot more returns. But let’s assume that you have a decent product and what’s just the standard of people changing their mind or buying something extra? You can actually go get a gauge by looking at the, you know, in Brand Analytics and some of the other search query performance report and some of the other reports on Amazon actually show that by category and subcategory. Now, so you can get those and you need to model that in and kind of like what you were saying, too, about these courses. Ever since the Freedom Ticket started in 2017, that I’ve done. I’ve actually had a rule and it’s modified in the most recent version, 4.0, that came out this year, but the old rule was that you need two and a half times your. You should not spend more than two and a half. You need two and a half times your initial inventory investment.
Robb:
I like that.
Kevin King:
It’s like how much money do I need to sell on Amazon? I’m thinking about starting on Amazon. I saw Robb’s crushing it. I’m his uncle. I need a little side hustle here, Robb. What do I need? And I got 10 grand. Is 10 grand enough to get started on Amazon? I’ll be like probably not. If you want to make a little bit of beer money, you could do 10 grand. But to make a living and have a true brand, no. And you hear stories of people that start with 10 grand. They sell for 3 million later or something. I’m like, yeah, there’s more to the story they’re not telling. Maybe they started with 10 grand but their rich uncle gave them a loan. Or there’s more to the story. They had a credit card or something. Well, in that 10 grand, I say divide that by 2.5. So 10 grand divided by 2.5 is 4,000 bucks.
Kevin King:
$4,000 is the maximum that you can spend to actually launch a product. Landed cost. So that means that. And then you got to go in and look at like can you sustain that? So you got to look at the numbers of how many units it’s selling. Are you going to try to be the third, fourth bestseller? What does that mean? Does that mean 10 units a day? Five units a day? You got to take that math into the 4,000, saying, okay, I need a three. It takes three months from order to having it in stock because of shipping. So I need X number of units. So you back all these things in. It’s a formula I give in Freedom Ticket.
Kevin King:
I won’t go into detail here, but you back that in. You’re like holy cow I need to find a product that I can land for a maximum of. I need 1,000 units. So that means my maximum is $4 per unit landing cost that I can spend on this entire product. Holy cow. I found this great opportunity using Helium 10 but I need more than that to actually do it. But it’s a good opportunity. I have enough money to do it. Well, you shouldn’t do it because you’re not going to be able to sustain it, like you said, if you’re successful, because out of that four grand, Amazon’s going to hold money for about three weeks and you’ve got to place that second order, probably for more units, and you’re going to have to be cash flowing this and you’re not going to have the money, plus some advertising costs and some other costs. So that’s one of the things that I teach and I’ve taught, because that used to irritate the hell out of me, and most of these courses gloss over that.
Robb:
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Kevin, I couldn’t agree more. Think it’s just, you know, a lot of people are trying to entice people with. You can start for a low money. I mean, we started a brand a couple of months ago, back in May, you know the one I hired an agency for opening order. First product a hundred grand. Yeah, just the influencer campaign on TikTok shops $15,000. So that’s 115. That’s no. And then that’s not including Amazon marketing, which we spent another $50,000 in the first couple of weeks on Amazon marketing. I mean we had $200,000 before a month ended.
Robb:
Right, getting very little back, by the way, in the beginning. Right, because you’re selling in, you’re waiting for Amazon to give your money back or getting your money from TikTok shops, and it just takes time. So I think a lot of people underestimate the cash flow needs of a business, and nowadays more so than even before. You know, five, seven, eight years ago you could start for a little bit less money, but now you’ve got to. You know Amazon is becoming more pay to play. You’ve got to advertise. You can’t be afraid to go in and advertise and get that flywheel turning for you.
Kevin King:
How do you think all this scuttlebutt about AI is going to change the way we sell on Amazon, or is it?
Robb:
Kevin, I’m on the AI bandwagon, buddy. By the way. I think you did an event back in May. It was awesome, by the way, the Misfits I think you did an AI.
Kevin King:
Yeah, we did. That was a really good webinar.
Robb:
Loved it. Loved it because I’m an early adopter Chat GP adopter. You know, chat GPT came out. I get a paid plan. Like the first week when custom GPTs came out back. I want to say, like in December of last year or something like that, within a week I trained a custom GPT to rewrite Amazon listings better than any employee I’ve ever had. Kevin, like I couldn’t believe how much, how easy it was and how much better it is than any employee I’ve ever had and the sales changed immediately when I updated the listing. So I’m a big agentic AI is what they call it and thinking of each AI as an agent with a specific task.
Robb:
An example would be like a Python assistant is a specific AI and give it a narrow group of tasks and imbue it with skills and then thinking about, like I’ve got an AI agent that does Python, I’ve got an AI agent that does listings, I’ve got an AI agent that does supply chain. I think that’s kind of where we are now, but also in the future, your team is going to be all the tedious, monotonous tasks, even some of the critical thinking tasks are be done by these AI agents, and then our job is to do the real critical thinking, add context, train the AI agent on. You know, the only reason that listing tool works so well is because I trained it on my data. I had all the information I’ve been doing for the last 10 years, so it doesn’t work without the context behind it. And so I think I mean listen, there are gonna be businesses with AI, Kevin. There’s going to be businesses that used to be. There’s no option. We’re not putting that genie back in a bottle, buddy.
Kevin King:
I agree and, like you said, you know there’s a lot of people saying, oh well, chat GPT’s gotten dumber and these things you know, and it’s an arms race out there, which you know is perplexity. Better is clawed, better is what’s better. But I think it’s exactly what you said. If it’s using general mass data, it can degrade, because the more garbage in, the more garbage out. But if you’re training it on your specific set of data for your specific need, like you said you’re doing, and you use the tools of AI, say this is the training set, instead of the whole world is a training set, which might be good for some. There’s purposes for that. But when you analyze it on your, this is this is how I write, right in the style of Robb Green, right in the style of XYZ brand. This is the data. This is the way we’ve done it for the last three years. Humans have done it. This is the way we want it. Now do it.
Kevin King:
It can perform magic, it can do amazing, amazing stuff and that’s where I think you’re going to see it go is a lot of hyper-focused robots that are doing very specific tasks. It’s not like an AI. That’s another human, that’s like a little worker that can do whatever. They can sweep the floor and they can clean the windows and they can take out the trash. It’s going to be this one’s very good at taking out the trash, another one’s very good at cleaning the windows and so on.
Kevin King:
If you know how to use those you call them agents that’s what people call them they can be super, super valuable and I think that’s where it’s going to go, and people that are not on top of this right now or think it’s a fad, I think are going to be left behind and with some of the changes that I think are going to be coming to the A9 algorithm around AI, I don’t know when that’s going to be, but there’s already. You know they’re testing different things now, but $5 million a year right now that are going to go to $500,000 almost overnight because they’re not staying on top of this stuff and preparing for the future.
Robb:
I couldn’t agree more with you, Kevin. I mean, I think that this industry in particular moves very fast. AI is just an accelerant on the speed of change that happens. I got a guy that’s in my strategic coach program that I’ve been in for a few years, and back in March he was telling me he owns a plumbing business and he’s big, he’s got lots, hundreds of plumbers. They fully implemented AI into their dispatch. They reduced the number of dispatchers, they got higher call volume, they got higher acceptance rates, they got higher AOVs. Like it changed his business dramatically when they implement it fully implemented AI in his business within a matter of months.
Robb:
And this is an offline business, not even an online business. I mean, listen, there are a lot of it’s that don’t want to, they think it’s a fad or you know, the internet’s a fad. I mean, give me a break, this is not going backwards, we’re only going forward. There’s no, it just seems foolish. And you know, maybe I’m an early adopter, maybe I was early on it and it’ll take a while for some people to come on board. But I just think people that are not fully embracing it with their head in the sand. I just don’t think being an ostrich on AI is a good way to go.
Kevin King:
Yeah, that’s why I cover a lot of it in my Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter. I’m covering you know people are like this is supposed to be in Amazon. It’s like no AI is part of what you need to be paying attention to and these tools. Talking about optimizing your listing, have you played with Amazon Comprehend?
Robb:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Altman has spoken at your events before. Altman’s a close buddy of mine, so we talk like every couple of weeks and he got me on Amazon comprehend last year and so cause I shared he I only shared my GPT with like two people and he was one of them. So I sent it to him and he used it on all of his listings and he saw noticeable results. He’s like hey, man, what if we layer comprehend on top of this and, so yeah, I think there’s so many interesting. It’s hard because if you’re not interested this is fun for me. I like learning new things and digging into AI, but for those people that aren’t interested in it, you just got to find somebody who is. You’ve got to find a who that can help you with this, because I just don’t think avoiding it is going to be the answer.
Kevin King:
What do you spend most of your time on. You’re running how many companies right now? Five brands right now. Are you CEO above them, or you step back and you’ve got people running them and you’re just playing with AI and given navigation and steering the ship with a creative direction. Are you still down in the weeds, you know, talking to suppliers or what are you?
Robb:
No, no, no, no, no weeds. More like high level strategic, I’d say so I spend. You know, I do podcasts as guests and hosting my own on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so all the recordings are Tuesdays and Thursdays for both. And then I got a full team here in the US and then overseas. We’ve implemented a lot of AI, so trying to implement the agents to do a lot of the tedious tasks and speed things up, but I spend most of my time just being curious.
Robb:
Honestly, what can I go and learn? I probably spend one to two hours a day on AI stuff, which is a substantial amount of my time if you really think about it. But I’m learning. I have a methodology where I think about when I want to learn a new task. I just get fully immersed in it.
Robb:
So I go find the best people, I sign up for all the newsletters. I sign up, I subscribe to everybody on YouTube. I get Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, whatever it might be, and I start just pulling information and then refining and cutting from there. It’s like all right, this guy, AI Jason on YouTube is amazing and he puts out something once a month, but he’s got great videos and I can learn this from it. Okay, well, I’ve learned that, now let’s move on. I need to learn about Autogen or whatever.
Robb:
So I just try to pull in information and instead of going out and finding it piece by piece, I try to make it like a fire hose where that information is just coming at me at all times and then I cut back from there and then level up my skills. It’s like back when you used to go to China and you walk through the trade show at Canton Fair and you’re like you know nothing about a product and by after talking to 10 exhibitors, you’re an expert in it because you just ask more questions and level up. That’s kind of how I think about taking on new tasks and learning new skills and AI. I mean what’s going to be more valuable over the next five to 10 years than AI?
Kevin King:
What do you think are the things that people need besides AI? Is there something else? As an e-commerce or Amazon seller, people need to be paying attention to delivery methods or the way you know cards or fees or what’s another hot topic does it take? You know what’s going to happen with TikTok shop. You know, back in April, you know some stuff came down where TikTok may actually be forced to actually make some changes.
0:44:34 – Robb:
Are you familiar with the Voice of the Seller program at Amazon? Have you heard of that? Uh-huh, yeah, so I’m in the Voice of the Seller program. So they’ve got, I think, a couple of dozen sellers that go to. I went back last year in November and December to Seattle and then you typically a small panel four to six people will meet with a bunch of Amazon execs and give feedback on the platform or the data analytics tools. So the one I went did in November of last year was all around SQP data and all the tools that they’ve shown and shared with us over the last couple of years and just give them feedback on that, get a feedback loop for them right from sellers.
Robb:
I think that you know staying on top of what’s happening on in that in the ecosystem is really critical and it’s funny back in April, it was the first time I’d ever said this out loud. I’d been in my head a little bit but because we were launching a new brand. TikTok first, Amazon second. First time I said it was back in April and I was like, yeah, that’s the only way to go. That’s the only way to go. You’ve seen all these brands blow up on Amazon from overflow from TikTok to Amazon and become the bestseller in a subcategory. They had no chance of ever becoming a bestseller in without TikTok, and I saw too many examples of it back then that I was fully committed to it.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, it’s a great discovery platform and it’s a great as people get more comfortable ordering from TikTok shop. You’ll see more orders go there but right now, you get a portion of them that go there but a lot of them still go to Amazon and it’s branded search and it’s just driving your Amazon results massively.
Robb:
We know Amazon values branded search and we know that I hate to use the word no highly confident. It influences the algorithm in a positive way. So that belief system then if we’re getting tons of traffic, that’s branded search and, by the way, has already been pre-sold, so it’s going to convert higher because they were pre-sold on a video. Enough to come to Amazon and look for it. It’s giving you conversion rate. It’s giving you search term volume. Branded search. It’s giving you all the stuff that Amazon wants. It’s going to rank better organically. There’s no other way about it. So if you’re doing that, that’s going to get the flywheel going at a rate that you’d have to spend millions of dollars in Amazon marketing to get to that flywheel moving. So to me it seems inevitable, Kevin, it really does. And not that Amazon is not critically important. But that TikTok first, the virality, the speed at which it can go viral is so mind blowing to me, Kevin. It’s absolutely bananas.
Kevin King:
And Amazon has been unable to duplicate that. They tried to inspire. They tried other stuff. They can’t even come close. Nothing is working. And you got Facebook now tying in, putting in to produce Amazon buys within the Facebook feed. They’re trying to compete against TikTok as well. So it’s going to be interesting to see how the social media platforms merge to make it more of a one-click type of thing to go to Amazon or to go to Walmart or whoever it may be, but I think it’s going to be Amazon. But I agree with you TikTok is something everybody should be paying attention to. There’s a couple of guys you know in this space that have newsletters. One guy in particular that I’m thinking of. That’s highly recommends in almost every newsletter don’t do anything on TikTok shop. You’re wasting your time, it’s going to go. You know, get rid of the Chinese. It’s not going anywhere. Focus on Walmart and Amazon, and I couldn’t disagree more with that.
Robb:
Well, and I will say this from my experience and I think Elon said this earlier this year when he was using TikTok, somebody asked him in an interview if he was using TikTok and he said I was, until I felt the AI reach into my brain and he’s like, when I felt that he’s like I stopped using TikTok. And I will say from using it, it is by far the best algorithm I’ve ever seen. Nothing is close. It is so good if you interact with it. Then I think about it this way, Kevin, this is how I think about business in all cases. When we started, we kind of rode the Amazon wave. Amazon was growing, rising tide lifts all boats. Well, TikTok’s algorithm is so good. How do I leverage the algorithm and ride that algorithm to get visibility and search and funnel and discoverability right? How do I let the algorithm do the work for me? How do I give TikTok what they want to help the algorithm do the heavy lifting, kind of like Amazon did over the last decade for us?
Kevin King:
I mean, look at this, compare the numbers. I think Amazon put out back in April or May said there’s 180 million prime members in the US. That was a statistic that came out. There’s 170 plus million people using TikTok in the US. So those almost correlate in a big way. So it makes perfect sense to do that one-two dance right there, where one’s got the massive fulfillment system and logistics and the other one’s got the massive traffic and eyeballs, and that algorithm that I always say if you want to know someone’s personality don’t ask them questions or interview them. Just say can I borrow your phone for 10 minutes to pull up their TikTok feed.
Kevin King:
That’s a good way to think about it.
Robb:
See what comes up on TikTok and you’re gonna know that person. You know, I just recently got divorced and so I’m like I was joking with a buddy of mine. I was like yo, so what are you looking for? A new girl? I said I don’t know. But you know, on the second first date I’ll be cool. On the second day I’m like let me see your TikTok feed. I know everything about them right there.
Kevin King:
Are they into Taylor Swift? Are they into dog training? Are they into some weird fetish kind of thing? Are they into whatever? You can tell a lot by a person by looking at their TikTok feed.
Robb:
That’s a great way to think about it, because the algorithm has done all the work. If they like and they engage, the algorithm works, man. It works unbelievable.
Kevin King:
You look at Matt Rife the comedian. He was a nobody going to shows trying to get his foot in the door. Funny guy, young, good looking, 28, 29 year old started putting his crowd work up on on TikTok and started going viral and now he’s selling out arena, selling out the Hollywood bowl, selling out Madison Square Garden. It’s crazy what it can do. I mean, look what. I mean Taylor Swift is always a bit already a behemoth before TikTok, but it’s exploded her into the billionaires club. It’s amazing what it can do. And it can do a lot of things for e-commerce. What are you seeing that you need if you’re an e-commerce seller? Someone’s listening to this and they’re like, yeah, but I keep hearing all this stuff about TikTok but I just haven’t dug into it yet, I just haven’t made the time. What are a couple of first few things they should do or first few recommendations you would make?
Robb:
Number one understand, are your customers on TikTok and unless there’s very few categories, they’re probably not on TikTok. You know, really convinced me last year when I saw there’s a guy I think his channel is called like The Jet Business, so he sells private jets and he was telling the story and they’re really information.
Kevin King:
He’s like in a little office and got a big map of the world.
Robb:
Yeah, yeah. I love that guy. He started a couple of years ago and I remember hearing the story. I think last year we told the story. He’s like I got on TikTok. I did some videos. I was like, ah, who’s going to buy a private jet right within a couple of months? Somebody called him. He’s like hey, I want to buy a jet. He’s like what’s your budget?
Robb:
He’s like 20 million, right. I got a new customer who wants to buy a $20 million jet. I mean it can be almost anything, right. And then it comes back to how do I message? How do I find my avatar? Who’s on there? How do I message to them in a way that resonates with them? And then how do I use it to become a brand that they think about? First, and it’s discoverability, it’s reinforcing your beliefs of your brand and what your brand can provide with that customer. I’ll bring up Jay Hunter again. He calls it everywhere and electric. You want your brand everywhere and electric and you want it to reinforce what you believe about your brand and the imagery and how you’re trying. You can tell a story through video. I mean it’s just so powerful. I mean, I think the old ways are still going to be around but I just think this new, all-encompassing model with all the different tools is the way to go.
Kevin King:
You said you’ve got a podcast. What’s the name of the podcast, if people want to check that out? You said twice a week.
Robb:
No, we just do recordings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh, okay, okay, we got very original. It’s called the Robb Green Show, Kevin, so we got really original with that.
Kevin King:
That’s really original.
Robb:
We tried another name and I couldn’t find one that resonated, so we just stuck with that and what we try to do is a little bit. It’s not e-commerce specific, it’s really to scratch my own itch. How do I talk to other business owners about topics I’m passionate about? But we want to do a lot of case studies. We try to break down. For people like all right, I mean I believe it’s three things, every business right, it’s financials, it’s sales and marketing and it’s operations. So, where those are the three pillars of every business, I’m okay at operations, I’m great at financials and I’m pretty good at sales and marketing. So it’s like all right, can I add value? And then, what are the? You know, let’s break down a business. Can we add value to that that business owner? And then can we give some action steps.
Robb:
For other people that are listening to the pod like, oh shoot, you know we talked about the board of directors at like a mastermind before. But maybe there’s a little lesson. And what’s crazy to me, Kevin, is the people I’ve interviewed that are not your traditional business or maybe not e-commerce business. There’s always little pieces of it I can take away through the interview like man, what if I did this, how can I apply that to my business? And so it’s just trying to understand and get better at business overall and talk a little bit about health and relationships but really the business case study side because I don’t hear a lot of action steps in a lot of podcasts.
Kevin King:
That’s true. They’re just more fluff usually.
Robb:
Yeah, they’re too much fluff.
Kevin King:
Too much fluff or too much structured questions, yeah, so much of them are fluff. Or they got a list of questions they’re just reading through yeah, and you gotta get through. And a thing in a podcast, the thing that always bugs me is someone says you ask them a question or you lead them somewhere and they’re like that’s a great question, you know that. That response. I’m like that. I’m like, oh, why do they say that? Uh, it’s just one of my little things but, yeah, so that’s awesome, the Robb Green Podcast. So look that up on all your favorite podcast channels. Or people want to reach out to you another way? How do they do that too?
Robb:
Linkedin’s probably the best way. I’ve got a pretty good LinkedIn profile that I check regularly. Someone on the team checks it almost every day. Linkedin’s the other easiest way. But yeah, the Robb Green Show, it’s been a lot of fun. I think we’re probably 60-70 episodes in. It’s been a bit twisted and I’m a big believer. This goes back to like not being afraid to fail, like hey, just do it as an experiment, see how it goes, find out, get some feedback, tweak it, get some more feedback and just try to get getting better at it. But it’s been a lot of fun for me and that’s been the number one reason. The only way I’m going to do anything in my life now is am I growing? Am I learning, am I having fun? And I mean the podcast costs money.
Robb:
I spend money invested in every single month. There’s no monetization. It’s more about my getting fun. I’m building good network. I’m building great relationships with people. I’m hopefully I’m adding value to their business. I’ve had a couple of people that I think I’ve made a significant impact in their business because they just they needed fresh eyes on the business. That’s awesome.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. Well, Robb, I think you gave a lot of people here some fresh eyes and some good discussion. Good things to think about. Some good discussion, good things to think about. I really appreciate you coming on the AM/PM Podcast. It’s been great to catch up with an old friend other than just seeing you and passing hair there.
Robb:
Good to see you again, buddy.
Kevin King:
Appreciate it, man. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Robb. As you can see, he’s a really sharp guy when it comes to the operations and financial side of running an e-commerce business. Lots of great insights and good stories in there. We’ll be back again next week with another incredible episode, but before I go, I’ve got some words of wisdom for you. You want to focus on the people that are using your product, not just the product itself. So many of us just focus on the product and not the actual users. But focus on the people using your product, not just the product itself, and see what happens. And, speaking of seeing, we’ll see you again next week for another incredible episode of the AM/PM Podcast.
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