#309 – Seller Hacks From Helium 10 Elite Members At The Sell And Scale Summit
In episode 309 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Helium 10 Elite members discuss:
- 01:45 – Alina Vlaic Joins The Conversation
- 02:15 – Alina’s Backstory And How She Got Started In E-commerce
- 03:00 – Ranking Before Versus Ranking Now
- 08:20 – How Much Does AZRank’s Services Cost?
- 09:50 – What Is Helium 10 Elite? And What Values Do You Get Out Of It?
- 12:45 – Focusing On User-Generated Content
- 13:50 – Elite Seller Hack From Alina
- 15:00 – Abe Chomali Joins The Conversation
- 16:30 – The Quality Of Content At The Sell And Scale Summit
- 17:30 – Abe’s 30 Years Of Selling Experience
- 19:30 – His Passion For Amazon Advertising
- 20:45 – Advertising In Amazon And Walmart
- 21:00 – How To Get In Touch With Abe Chomali
- 21:45 – Elite Seller Hacks From Abe
- 24:00 – Talking About The Collective Minds Society
- 26:30 – Edgar Hortado Joins The Conversation
- 27:00 – Running A Dog Rescue And Building An Amazon Brand Around It
- 29:15 – The Brand’s Story Carried Edgar’s Business To Success
- 31:50 – Learning How To Properly Build The Business
- 33:55 – Series Of Unfortunate Events Affected Their Potential Exit
- 35:40 – Elite Seller Hack From Edgar
- 26:22 – Martin From Colombia Joins The Conversation
- 37:55 – A Lot Of Sourcing Opportunities In South America
- 39:25 – How Martin Got Started In E-commerce
- 40:35 – Learning From Project X And Freedom Ticket
- 42:48 – If You Want To Build Something Great, You Got To Invest
- 43:44 – The Big Challenges For Foreign Sellers In Amazon US
- 48:19 – This Week’s Motivation Quote From Kevin
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 309 of the AM/PM Podcast. Today, we’re coming to you from the Sell and Scale Summit that happened last week in Las Vegas. Amazing event over four days. You know, on the first day we had a Helium 10 Elite workshop. So before the summit began, we invited all the Helium 10 Elite members to come for a special afternoon where we had some awesome speakers, and some great networking, and what I did is I just grabbed a handful of people as they were coming in and out of the room and did a quick little interview with them and asked them to share a quick little nugget and something of value with you. So that’s what I wanna share with you today. Enjoy this episode, and don’t forget, if you are not a Helium 10 Elite member, there’s gonna be a webinar on November 3rd, and there’s gonna be a webinar where we’re gonna be sharing a whole bunch of hacks totally for free. This is a free webinar that’ll be for everybody out there. So it’s coming on November 3rd. Look for a promotion or a post in the Facebook groups about that and I hope that you’re able to join us on that free webinar where we’re gonna talk about Helium 10 Elite and share some really cool strategies. But in the meantime, enjoy this episode.
Kevin King:
What’s up everybody? I’m here with Alina Vlaic at the Sell and Scale Summit. She just came wandering by, We’re getting ready to do the Helium 10 Elite training, it’s like a four-hour training. You’re speaking at this, at the Helium 10 Elite thing?
Alina:
Yes, Yes.
Kevin King:
And are you speaking at the main event as well?
Alina:
Yes, as well.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Awesome. So what are you hoping to see at this event? This looks like it’s gonna be a pretty big event.
Alina:
I love it. The whole thing. I think it’s gonna be great. I love the fact that the booth hall is very small and compact so people can actually talk. I love the fact that I’m seeing a lot of sellers. I think it’s gonna be very educational and a lot of people beginners and advanced are gonna have a lot of stuff to learn and meet people. Networking is the most important thing.
Kevin King:
Now, you come a long way for this. You come all the way from, Romania, right
Alina:
After just getting back three weeks ago.
Kevin King:
Is this a direct flight to Las Vegas, or do you have to go through London?
Alina:
There was a direct flight but I had some stuff to do in Chicago, so I landed in Chicago two days ago and then flew here. But from here, I’m going back home directly.
Kevin King:
Wow. Awesome. So tell people what you do. I mean, you’re a seller, plus you do some services. Tell everybody what’s Alina all about.
Alina:
So, Alina is all about selling. We’ve been selling on Amazon and Walmart. We own multiple brands. When I say we, it’s me and my husband. And also–
Kevin King:
You’ve been doing that for how long?
Alina:
We started starting playing with it in 2017, but actually started doing it in 2018, beginning in Europe, and then we moved to Amazon.com, which is the real thing, and got messed up big time, our first product, which is how AZ Rank was born, actually. AZ Rank was my first agency is, it’s still there. It’s my first agency. We used to do ranking. We still do ranking.
Kevin King:
What do you mean by ranking?
Alina:
That’s a tricky question.
Kevin King:
What do you mean by ranking?
Alina:
Yeah, so ranking–
Kevin King:
You can talk about the old and how things are having to change.
Alina:
Yeah, things have changed a lot. So we used to do the search, find, buy, and consult sellers on what keywords to choose and stuff like that.
Kevin King:
How did that work? So, someone that’s just listening, I’ve heard of this search, find, buy. How did that actually use to work?
Alina:
So for your product to go high in the ranks on Amazon or whatever other marketplace, you need to be on page one, right? So in order to be on page one, you need to create some demand and to show Amazon or whatever marketplace that your product is good. So then we’d have some people searching for a specific keyword, finding your product among everything else, and then choosing it to buy and through those purchases, you got ranked. It’s basically what every person does when they go shopping, right? It’s the normal thing.
Kevin King:
And so your company helps people?
Alina:
Yes, our company helps facilitate that by helping them choose what keywords to go for, because a lot of people are uneducated about that. And also we have a pool of people and the ways of doing that safely and nicely with very good results. Until now I have more than 5,000 launches.
Kevin King:
And you actually, through that process, you helped like Helium 10 actually come up with the formula that they use for how many you need.
Alina:
The new CPR. Yes,
Kevin King:
The new CPR. You helped do big testing for like a year or something around that, right?
Alina:
Almost two years.
Kevin King:
Almost two years to figure out.
Alina:
It was a lot of data.
Kevin King:
This is the formula that is closest to what you really need.
Alina:
Exactly, Yes.
Kevin King:
And so then last year in 2021, Amazon said, “Uhuh no more.”
Alina:
Let’s just say it’s, they said no more because of certain specific things, not the whole process. That’s the way I see it. But certain specific things like rebates, for example, the rebate key is gone. So yeah, they shut out a lot of stuff, including links and super URLs that people used to use. So because of that, we had to pivot and we had to change the whole thing, the way we do it. So now we found a workaround, but I’m a very honest person. I’m not gonna tell you. We reinvented the wheel. We just found some workarounds to be safe. We’re not re-doing rebates now. We’re just paying people for their services. People are doing surveys, which are very complex and very good. For example, you are in my pool of people.
Alina:
I’m not telling you what keyword to go after. I’m letting you choose where I’m giving you note keyword at all. So it’s not searching term manipulation, it’s, I’m not directing you towards straight direct a specific keyword. And then after that, I’m gonna ask you a ton of questions about the listing. Do you like the photos? What photo do you like? Why do you like the photos? Which photo do you like best? Do you think there’s another photo? What do you improve about this product? But the listing itself, so each person spends a whole big amount of time and a different amount of time on the listing.
Kevin King:
So it’s a ton of feedback that you’re getting.
Alina:
A ton of feedback. I’ve got sellers completely changing their listings after that feedback, because 90% of the people said, your main photo sucks, and your third one is the one I like best. So then he took the third photo, put it there, and conversion started increasing a lot of facts or suggestions for colors, for variations. I don’t like this, this pink sucks. You should do the other pink, or you should do the green or stuff like that. So that’s a ton of feedback they get along with the ranking. But the thing is, I have always an advocate for this. Even when the classical search, find, buy was in place. I don’t do one keyword. I didn’t like the campaigns with one keyword. You know, Sarah’s going on the main keyword. I always recommended do five keywords, slower, lower volume, maybe, or even all big ones at the same time with the same number of units, because bringing more traffic and diversification tool, five keywords instead of one, you’re gonna get ranked on another 50 keywords. So it’s like what Amazon likes diversification, not just, I mean, in some niches, you need to go to certain keywords, but most of them it works this way. So our campaigns actually work much better now after the TOS change because everybody, I don’t take campaigns for one keyword, so it has to be a minimum of three.
Kevin King:
So these are products that haven’t been launched yet. So people have built their listing out and they’re ready to launch it. And they come to you to AZ Rank.
Alina:
Still AZ Rank. Yeah.
Kevin King:
So they come to AZ Rank, say, Hey, I need some feedback, I want some people to gimme some opinions on this. And then they, they do that and they have, they go buy the product to get the product, and then they give the feedback and they give a big report, and then it’s up to the seller whether you change the listing. Yeah. But because they’re buying the product through the process, it starts the moment. I’m going exactly where you’re not just down on page 300, you’re starting to show up and start to move up.
Alina:
And very naturally.
Kevin King:
Not leaving reviews or anything like that. So all completely terms of services?
Alina:
Completely terms of service. I always stayed away. People who listened and worked with me know that I always say no to reviews.
Kevin King:
Is that expensive? Is it expensive to do this? It like depends on– How does it work? How does that work as a seller?
Alina:
In terms of costs to us?
Kevin King:
If I’m a seller, I come to you and I say, I wanna rank. I want some feedback on my new product and to help it get going. What’s that gonna cost me?
Alina:
For each unit given away, because you’re still giving it away, and the feedback gotten from it, and this whole process of ranking, So for each unit we start at $9. And this can go down depending on how many and how complex is the process. But usually starts at $9. So when you do your math for the campaign, you should take the cost of the product, which is 20 bucks, add $9, my fee, and then that’s the actual cost. But you get some of that back, because–
Kevin King:
Yeah, you’re getting it back as a sale.
Alina:
As a sale, exactly. Yeah.
Kevin King:
So how long does this whole process take? Typically, if I come to you and I say, Okay, I got my product, I’m ready to go.
Alina:
It’s very different. I don’t have a standard thing. Everything is custom. Each product, each campaign, everything is custom. So if your product is new, it might take 10 days. If your product is like two years old and you’re trying to reboot, it might take one, one month, or four weeks, depending on, everything is custom per keyword, per product. So we don’t have just a pattern, like taking the CPR divided by eight and doing that every day. No, everything is custom. What’s included? Also, the consultants for this are also in that fee.
Kevin King:
And you’ve been in a Helium 10 Elite for a while, right?
Alina:
Over a year.
Kevin King:
Over a year and you’re pretty active. I mean, you do you come into the weekly meetings, weekly and everything. Can you talk about what the value of that is? As, as there’s a lot of sellers, you know, that are in Helium 10 Elite, and there’s a lot of people that are listening to this that, like, what is the Helium 10 Elite? Well, Helium 10 Elite as I explained at the beginning of the show, is for people who want that edge, that next level, to help grow their business. And, and we provide a lot of stuff, but what do you get out of it when you come on? Like either the monthly training or when you come on the weekly and the monthly one that I do, The Q and As and round tables.
Alina:
Well, I always like to say, I get a lot of questions, a lot to this question too. So I always say it’s, it’s my favorite mastermind. It’s every week like our calls, but that’s just one part of it. So it’s, it’s a very strong community of sellers that actually help. It’s a lot of content from you and Bradley and all the other people in there. You have learned, you have networking, you have, you can just like the message, everyone, at every moment asking them a question. And if they know I’ve seen that they’re actually sharing. So it’s not like just, I don’t care about this one. Like, there are people out there doing that in other groups, but I didn’t see that here. And I don’t know, for me, it’s, I stopped looking at everything else.
Alina:
I mean, I didn’t search for other masterminds or stuff when I found Elite, and also you get all the new stuff and the good stuff from Helium 10 earlier than all the other people. And for example, for me personally, the Sales per keyword, which I get now is Cerebro and all the other tools. So it’s showing me the sales for each keyword, it’s a lot of help as a seller and as a service provider too. I bet a lot of agencies doing PPC would be interested in that feature.
Kevin King:
And you’re speaking here, so Heating 10 at the Elite does a quarterly workshop every three months, sometimes in Irvine. This one, they’re actually doing it here at Sell and Scale in Vegas. And you’re speaking, have you spoken at a lot of other events?
Alina:
I’ve spoken at a few, like, not that many, but I’ve spoken at a few. This might be my biggest audience so far though because I’ve seen a lot of chairs in the room. But I’m a little bit nervous, but I’m wearing pink because it’s a strong color and everybody is–. I mean, they’re saying they like it. We hear we’re speaking about something else, which is really cool. In regards to press articles, I won’t give up too much so for the content to be here, but BDSS next year.
Kevin King:
That’s right. You’re speaking at BDSS next year in Puerto Rico as well.
Alina:
And we have one more very, very cool thing I want to share with you. We’ve been starting to do user-generated content at AZ Rank. I’ve seen the most beautiful photos and videos from this, like normal people. I don’t know what, this is just advice I’m not telling you this, just to have people come to me to do that, just go to regular people. Do your user-generated content. Don’t necessarily go to influencers because they’re so amazing, so genuine. It’s incredible.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I just saw that I was just watching American football just yesterday on professional American football, and some of the commercials that people are paying half a million dollars or a million dollars for a 30-second spot. Now, some of these big brands are using user-generated content in their com as their commercial, their entire commercial. So they’re realizing that, hey, we don’t need to go out and spend, you know, 50,000, a hundred thousand, a million dollars shooting this fancy commercial, let’s just get it from our users. And some of them are really, really good. And it resonates better. And it’s a big thing right now, and it’s gonna become a lot bigger. So that’s cool that you’re starting to get into some of that. Well, Alina, I really appreciate you stopping by here at the little table.
Alina:
Yes, thank you for having me.
Kevin King:
Give a little bit of insight before you go, what’s one quick little hack you could give the audience here? And one quick little nugget of information that sellers out there should know.
Alina:
There’s a new way of doing A+, and I’m not talking about the A+ premium, which is on everybody’s lips right now. Go check. Golly, everybody knows who go is like apple cider gummies from golly, check how their A+ is done right now. It’s not like all kind of blocks, it’s just five big blocks with everything in those blocks. It looks so much better. It’s so much more natural for the human eye and apparently smarter people than me say that converts a lot better. So that can be actually done like now,
Kevin King:
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thanks again for taking a few minutes here. Good luck with your talk today.
Alina:
Thank you so much.
Kevin King:
Next, just walking by, I just grabbed Abe Chomali. Abe just walked by and I said, “Dude, you gotta come on.” You gotta come on, cuz this guy is one of the smartest guys out there. He runs an agency, he does a lot of stuff in the space. Abe super happy to see you here, man.
Abe:
Well, thanks for having me. This is I’ve been here for about an hour. I’ve seen five different people that I haven’t seen in a year and every conversation has been like, great.
Kevin King:
Do you get out to a lot of conferences or do you pick and choose or how do you pick and choose what to go to?
Abe:
So I try to be in the room. I try to go to most conferences. My business is helping sellers with advertising. So I want to be in the rooms where sellers are at. I like to learn things from the speaker’s cuz there’s always a little bit extra something I can use to make my work run better. And I like to speak to sellers to see what things are affecting them, what things I might be able to help with, and what things nobody can help with. Like, it’s interesting to learn about sellers and selling from the viewpoint of the sellers.
Kevin King:
So do you get more from listening to the presentations or do you get more from the networking or is it a combination of both?
Abe:
It’s a combination of both. And some events the networking is much better. In some events, the speakers are off the charts.
Kevin King:
What are you expecting here at Sell and Scale, what do you think? They’re organizing this show a little bit differently than a normal show with all the yoga and all the way they’ve got the scheduling and everything. What are you thinking about how this is gonna go?
Abe:
I’ve been playing with the app. They have that Hova app Yeah. If I pronounced it correctly. And part of what I did is try to build an agenda of the things to do. And I kept running into the error where the session I want is bumping into a session I already registered for. So that tells you a lot about the quality of the content. The speakers are great and there are definitely speakers I haven’t seen every other place. So that also says a lot.
Kevin King:
And today is the first day, so the event actually hasn’t started officially yet, but right before we’re doing this, the Helium 10 Elite-like workshop. And how many of these have you been to in the past?
Abe:
So this is actually gonna be my first Helium 10 Elite. I became an Elite member a month ago. The training has been interesting. This in-person session promises to be excellent. And just overall it’s been a step up just like I try to be in every room. I try to learn from every resource and Helium 10 Elite has been great for that.
Kevin King:
Now, are you a seller as well, or are you just providing services through the agency?
Abe:
So I only provide services for sellers. That said, I have about 30 years of selling experience. So I sold from 1991 all the way up through about 2018.
Kevin King:
On Amazon, well e-commerce–
Abe:
Even before e-commerce. In 1991 there was no e-commerce. We used to advertise in the back of camera magazines with a big phone number and a list of items, and people would call us to have us send things to them.
Kevin King:
So you’ve been doing direct response basically for a long time. The old way we–
Abe:
Call it a mail order.
Kevin King:
Yeah, yeah. Mail order direct response. That’s my background too. I’ve been doing it since college since I think 1988, I put my first ad in the back of a computer magazine or something to sell a bar program.
Abe:
Computer shopper magazine. Every month the mailman would complain about the people who had to carry that five-pound thing around.
Kevin King:
It was huge. But that thing, generally, still to this day, people still don’t understand that that business still exists. You know, people think all these young people think everything is on the internet, everything’s on Amazon. But I have a business that I’ve talked about before that I still get six figures a year. It’s seasonal every holiday season with checks and money orders in envelopes. People write out an envelope, put a stay up on it and send it through the mail. And it just boggles people’s minds. And no, it still exists. In one of my businesses, I sell a crapload on Amazon, and we sell a crapload by sending out a flyer through the mail to a mailing list. And those people send checks and money orders and envelopes. Oh yeah.
Abe:
The direct mail people are still in business and they’re still doing plenty of business. They’re essentially what holds up the USPS at this point.
Kevin King:
It is, and it’s even better than used to be because you, and I know 30 years ago it got flooded with running lists and people started calling in junk mail and stuff, but now a lot of people backed off of it. And now it’s, it’s much more wide open and you can stand out even easier than you could in the past if you know what you’re doing.
Abe:
I don’t do it at all simply because it has become so niche that I don’t have the bandwidth to work on it. Amazon advertising is complex. There’s a lot going on and there’s a lot connected to it. And that takes up my whole day from morning tonight. When people wanna talk to me about Google ads. I have a guy for Google Ads, people wanna talk to me about printing inserts, here’s a guy for inserts. I know about all the things, just like I know about direct mail, but Amazon ads fill up my whole day.
Kevin King:
So you’re doing ads for like big companies, small companies. Is there a certain threshold they gotta be at to actually work with you? Or what do you specialize in there?
Abe:
So I work with sellers from small to large. I work with top hundred sellers and I work with people just getting their products off the ground. It takes a different skill set in each situation, and I have a built-out team that can help different sellers. The most common price point or the most common selling point is typically people doing about a hundred to $300,000 a month in sales. Those sellers are typically the ones who have grown to the point where they might have been doing ads themselves. They built up a nice business, they’ve built up enough traffic that there are things to optimize. Whereas somebody who’s very tiny, we’re just starting at a point where Amazon doesn’t even understand what their product is. And it’s gonna take a lot of spends for Amazon to figure that out.
Kevin King:
Is it just Amazon or do you also do Walmart and some other platforms as well?
Abe:
I do Walmart. Walmart is definitely, is in its early stages and we’re feeling it out. I’ve had conversations about this before with my team. I’ve had conversations with Walmart staff in which we try to figure out the things that are working and build on them, try to figure out the things which are not working, and fix them. And it’s still sort of everybody’s figuring it out if that makes sense.
Kevin King:
So if someone wants to find out more about your agency, how would they do that?
Abe:
So, the name of my company is XP Strategy X, like X-Ray P like Peter strategy. You can find me at xpstrategy.com. I’m on all the social media places Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You can message me in any of those places and I’ll be happy to talk about ads or troubleshoot or see if we’re fit.
Kevin King:
So what’s one thing that the audience listing that they’re messing up in their PPC right now and one thing that you see over and over, like, man, people just keep screwing this up. If they could just get this one thing right, it would make a huge difference whether they use an agency or not. What’s one little trick or tip that you could share that would really help some people out there?
Abe:
I’ll actually give you two. So the first thing is there isn’t a clear organization. I go into lots of accounts that don’t have a portfolio set up, that don’t have a clear naming structure set up so that you can easily tell all the campaigns associated with the product. Doing that first step of cleaning things up, just so you can view how your account is doing, makes an enormous difference right off the bat. The second thing is, lots of companies who will have close variations of a product will all chase the same keywords instead of choosing, which really is their hero product. In a lot of cases, there’s only one product that is really gonna take the top search or really has the best conversion rates among your six different SKUs that are similar and they know which SKU that is, but they keep adding extra similar products.
Abe:
They keep adding a four-pack and a six-pack and an eight-pack, and they throw the same amount of money into advertising all those extra versions when really the one pack will do best because it’s the lowest priced and it’s what customers need the most. But to bring that example a little bit further, they’ll say, Wait, the one pack, I make a dollar after all my costs, the six-pack I make $14, throw all the added money at the six-pack. The problem is that although they see some sales for a six-pack, they won’t get clicks for a six-pack because it’s $79 while every other competitor is $14.95. You’ve gotta bring the shopper to the page and then encourage them to spend more.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Now I’m gonna see you again in just a few weeks. Something that Norm and I are doing is Collective Mind Society we’re doing an experiential mastermind at the F1 track and you and your son are coming out. You were just telling me a little bit about something just a second ago. I said, Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let’s talk about it on the AM/PM Podcast. So that’s gonna be a really cool event. It’s like 12 of us. We got this private cabana right on the top of turn one, it’s like first class all the way at the big F1 event. What are you looking forward to on that?
Abe:
Oh, boy. Honestly, the biggest thing I’m looking forward to is bonding with my son over the past year or so, he and tons of other people have become big fans of F1 and because he turned 21 around Covid, we didn’t really have a chance to do a big age 21 things. So this is our chance to do that. And he’s been over the moon about it.
Kevin King:
Oh, he’s gonna have a blast. I mean, he’s gonna have the best meal he is ever had. We’re sending in this kitchen at this one restaurant, literally in the kitchen. They’re serving us like a nine-course meal one night, took a banner like totally first class with like amazing breakfasts and lunch and it’s got Wi-Fi and couches and everything. And there’s no better way to do an event than the F1 and it’s first-class all the way it’s gonna be. So it’s gonna be amazing.
Abe:
Listen, we are so excited. I mean, I’ve known you for years. I know that you do things the right way. I enjoy going to nice restaurants and I know that I’ve seen you talk about the food experiences you’ve had. So I know that we’re on the same wavelength with some of those things and I’m really looking forward to experiencing it with you.
Kevin King:
And I bet your son knows who Marshmallow is. Do you know who Marshmallow is?
Abe:
So I know who Marshmallow is. He has seen Marshmallow and when he saw the social media post that you put about, you know, sitting up close and personal with him, my son said this is gonna be lit.
Kevin King:
I’m like, Yeah, we have a VIP table with bottle servers right in front of the stage, you know, 10, 15 feet in front of the stage of this VIP event. So it’s collectivemindsociety.com if anybody wants to check that out. I think there are one or two spots left as of this recording. But it’s gonna be an amazing time. But Abe hey, I appreciate you stopping by my little table here at the Sell and Scale.
Abe:
I appreciate it, man.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Thanks, man.
Abe:
Thanks.
Kevin King:
Hey, look who it is. It’s Edgar Hurtado. Edgar, how you doing, man?
Edgar:
Good, good. How are you doing, Kevin?
Kevin King:
All right, man. So what are you here doing? What’s going on, man?
Edgar:
Look, I’m out here helping out, actually a friend Alina. But I actually love Helium 10 and came out here to learn and network.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Are you selling on Amazon?
Edgar:
I’ve been selling for about six years.
Kevin King:
About six years. And how’s it going for you?
Edgar:
It’s going very well, actually. It was something we didn’t plan on but actually turned out to be a blessing.
Kevin King:
What do you mean by something you didn’t plan on?
Edgar:
Well, my wife owns a, a dog rescue, and every month I was dishing a thousand, $2,000 trying to help the dogs and save dogs outta my own pocket. A friend of mine said, “Why don’t you combine her story and create a product for Amazon?” I was like, “Amazon?” And next, you know, we started off with one product and it’s been life-changing ever since.
Kevin King:
So, wait, so let me back up a second. So you were running a dog rescue, and you still are. Just taking dogs that might have been an accident, or astray dogs, or out of shelters and then rehabilitating them If you have to and then finding them new homes. And then to do that, you were robbing Peter to pay Paul to help fund some of that?
Edgar:
Well, actually it was us who were funding it and sometimes we get donations or things like that. But most of the time we’d have to come out of our pocket every month.
Kevin King:
And then someone said, “Hey if you just do this e-commerce little thing, you could probably find this whole thing and make some real money and really take this to the next level.” So what was the first product that you actually came up with them?
Edgar:
It was just a dog toy. Right. And I didn’t know anything about Amazon, so I started doing a little research. A friend of mine helped us and we just made some dog toys a little bit better. And we started in I’ll never forget this. We ordered our first product in August. Got it. Sometime late October. We were sold out by December.
Kevin King:
Which was like 2016, 2017?
Edgar:
2017. And which was a great problem. And then we ordered a lot more and sold out again and just kept adding different products, different SKUs, and we’re up to like 15 skews and growing
Kevin King:
All dog toys or have you expanded?
Edgar:
And now we’re branding out different lanes.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Do you mind sharing the name of the brand or do you wanna keep it?
Edgar:
Don’t care. It’s Pacific Pups Products.
Kevin King:
Pacific Pups Products. That’s awesome, man. So do you actually use that in the marketing and stuff, or the portion or all the profits, or what percentage goes back to the–
Edgar:
A big percentage goes back to our rescue to fund it. And ever since we’ve been doing that, we’ve been growing also with the rescue, which is called Pacific Pups Rescue. And we’ve been like tied up with Buzzfeed now. We got a lot of celebrity actors that are helping out with what we’re doing now. And yeah, so just answer your question. So most of the products that we sell, we give a big chunk back to the rescue.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome, man. I think that’s an important thing that a lot of sellers miss. A lot of sellers get into this business, especially on Amazon, and think, I’m just gonna make a bunch of money for myself, and they don’t really care. But if you come up with a cause that people believe in, and by people buying a product that they need for their own purposes, like people are buying your toys for their dog, but at the same time they’re doing good for some other dogs. It just, it resonates with a lot of people and a lot of people just love the fact that they can be part of a community or part of making a difference and that’s something that a lot of people when they’re developing the products and their ideas that they just, they don’t think about. I think you kind of just fell into it in a way, but a lot of people should be thinking about how can my product really gives back and help, and it can make a huge difference and people will support it and get behind it and it can really take it to the next level.
Edgar:
And it has since the story came out. And that’s how I was saying, so Buzzfeed, like, we, we do a lot of things with Buzzfeed through the rescue because of the donations, because of the story. My wife had little show on Hallmark because of the rescue. She’s a huge animal rescuer, so she all it was her thing. Like, we have to get back. We have to get back. And like I said, a large, large sum goes back to fury purchases that we make monthly.
Kevin King:
So you’re doing seven figures?
Edgar:
Oh, yeah.
Kevin King:
Or eight figures.
Edgar:
Close, mid-six-seven mill a year last year.
Kevin King:
That’s incredible, man. That’s really awesome. How big of a team do you have now?
Edgar:
Just my wife and myself and one employee.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. Everything made overseas or you making–
Edgar:
Everything overseas. We’re looking into Mexico as we speak. But right now, everything is in China. We’re looking to expand elsewhere cuz we’re a little nervous about that in China, trying to get products, and like last year with the whole supply chain and things like that killed us. I mean, it absolutely destroyed us, but right now to answer your question, everything’s in China.
Kevin King:
So when your buddies said, Hey, you should look into this Amazon thing six, seven years ago, did you take a course or did you just throw something up or what did you just–
Edgar:
Spaghetti and wall and it stuck. Yeah. Yeah. And it stuck. And then after that just kept going and going and going. And we didn’t know what we were doing. I mean, we didn’t run a PPC campaign for the first three. I didn’t know what PPC was for three years. I didn’t run one PPC campaign in our number of first, second, and third products. Where first and second best sellers for like two and a half years.
Kevin King:
So you literally just took the product, you found, Hey, let’s do this one toy. You found a supplier in China, wherever you brought over 500,000 of ’em, something like that. And just stuck it up there. And did nothing to launch it, nothing. It just, and just the story itself. Yep. Enough people found the story and one or two people stumbled on it somehow and then they said, This is really cool. And they probably told somebody else. And it just, it kind of probably just organically expanded and now you’re crushing it.
Edgar:
Yeah. We’re doing very well. And now I know Amazon and I’m learning it, I love the community, and like I learned from you and other people, and I just love this community. At the same time, we now we’re trying to take this into being a real business in the last few years. You know, like, Oh, we gotta learn this, retired my wife, retired myself, and this is what we do now. But at the same time, it was amazing, honestly. It’s amazing.
Kevin King:
That’s an incredible man. That’s awesome. That’s a good job on that. It’s a good cause I’m a big dog lover myself and big into the dogs. I have some dog products myself. And that’s awesome. So once you decided, wait, this is you threw the spaghetti on the wall as you said, and it worked, and then you’re like, I need to actually learn this. What did, what did you do? Did you start going to conventions? Did you start watching YouTube videos?
Edgar:
All of it. Well, YouTube
Kevin King:
Podcast or–
Edgar:
Podcast listening to you listening everybody, if you associate yourself with people that they already know what they’re doing, then just copy what they’re doing. That’s what it is. Oh, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. And if you have my whole thing in life is always just, everything’s based on relationships. So as I got into the community, I got accepted a little bit more and I learned a little bit more. And now I could say a lot of these people are actually my friends. A lot of ’em are. And so you get bits and pieces from everybody and if they see that you putting the effort forward and you really wanna learn a business, that’s what happened. So we actually learn it and you keep learning, you know.
Kevin King:
So what made you decide to come to this event?
Edgar:
Oh, Helium 10.
Kevin King:
Helium 10. Come on now. Right. Come on. It’s Helium 10?
Edgar:
That’s it. You know, and just meet people and like I said, help my friend Alina, but just learn and network. This is always a good community around Helium 10, I think one of their, one of the best tools out there. We use ’em tremendously all the time for everything that we do. And you know, there are some good people around here. I’m just looking at all these faces out here. I’m like, Man.
Kevin King:
What do you hope to take this? Do you hope to sell this at some point in as well?
Edgar:
Last year we had like, many, many offers on the table from aggregators. And I was like, What’s the aggregator? Right. So but we decided to sell. We decided to expand a little bit more of the business and create different avenues, different lanes, and different products, not just toys. So, who knows? We’ll see
Kevin King:
Why did you decide to do that when you could have taken a bunch of money off the table when especially when the aggregators last? Right now it’s down. But 2020 and 2021, it was like crazy multiples. And you could have taken some serious cash off the table and even reinvested that and done this again. Maybe. But why did you decide, Hey, we’re just gonna stay the course and what was that?
Edgar:
I’m gonna tell you what it was. I think in October, and September there were a couple of offers on the table actually written. And I got a little bit ingredient and said, Look, I wanna run through Christmas and see if I can get the Christmas, that’s when we sell the most. And that’s when we had an issue with our supply chain. So we didn’t have any product for three months. Oh yeah. It killed us, Kevin. They killed us.
Kevin King:
So that’ll kill your numbers. They’ll scare them.
Edgar:
Not that it didn’t scare them, but they still offered us. But now they wanted to take it over the last 12 months. I’d like the company’s not worth that. It’s worth a lot more than them just because we didn’t have supplies. Then for three months, the numbers dropped. And it’s funny you even asked that question. Cause I actually got a text from ’em about an hour ago. They still wanna meet. I met with ’em in New York as well too. They’re always on there. Are you willing to you guys ready? I’m like, it doesn’t make sense for us now because if they’re gonna go over the last 12 years without making it an exception, then why sell? So it was a little bit of greed to answer your question. Should have sold.
Kevin King:
Well, you never know. You always saw us sell. When you’re on that, when you win the Super Bowl, that’s when you retire.
Edgar:
That’s when you retire. You don’t keep coming back.
Kevin King:
You don’t keep coming back. Well, some people, some people here to go. You keep coming back and then you get divorced. Yeah,
Edgar:
There you go. Almost, almost
Kevin King:
Yeah. Well, man, that’s awesome, man. I really appreciate you stopping by and telling your story, man. So what’s something out there that you think people that maybe are listening to this, that hasn’t started yet, that is maybe they were kind of in your place six, seven years ago. What’s one little piece of advice you could give them?
Edgar:
Join a community that’s already doing what you wanna do and just copy. Get a lot of lessons from them. You know, the thing I found is that this Amazon community is, it’s amazing. They’re willing to share their information, just get along, get ’em around. Somebody join meetups, come to these conferences and just meet people, shake their hands. Say, Look, this is what I wanna do. And, and some people will help you. Get the right information. There’s a lot of bad information out there, but there’s also a lot of good information. You just gotta get it from the right people. So. Cool. That’s pretty much it.
Kevin King:
Congratulations. Good job, man. Keep up the good work.
Edgar:
Appreciate it. Appreciate it.
Kevin King:
Thanks, man. I’m here right now with a Martin Botero. Martin, you came in from Colombia, Is that correct?
Martin:
Yes, sir. I’m from Colombia.
Kevin King:
Which part of Colombia are you from?
Martin:
It’s a small city. Really beautiful city with an awesome landscape. You can Google it. We have the best sunsets in the world. It’s called Manizales.
Kevin King:
A lot of people, I always run into this problem because my wife is Colombian, as I’ve told you before. And she’s from Colombia. So I’ve been to Colombia like 20-something times. So I’m pretty familiar with Colombia. But the first thing that always comes to people’s mind when you say Colombia is not coffee, it’s something else.
Martin:
Yeah, Yeah. I understand.
Kevin King:
Doesn’t like it just gets frustrating. I mean, because Colombia’s a beautiful place with beautiful people and a lot of people just totally misunderstand the whole culture and the whole people of Colombia.
Martin:
Yeah, for sure. I understand.
Kevin King:
Like it gets frustrating?
Martin:
No, no, it really, like, it’s a really beautiful thing to see your country prospering. Like Colombia’s not the same today as if, as what it was at the nineties. In the nineties. you can go and visit Colombia and you will find and, and know some country to like, with incredible cities like Cartagena, Medellín, Manizales, Bogotá, and people are really welcoming and, and that’s what makes a country great. How heartwarming are the people? How, how well they, they receive you. And it’s a country that has a lot to show to the world to export. A lot of people I know from in the Amazon business are going to Alibaba to source their products from China, from Asian countries. But there are a lot of opportunities in South America, and Colombia for sure is one of them.
Kevin King:
And Colombia has a lot of manufacturing. And they have a Medellín, for example, some people don’t, they don’t know how to pronounce that. They say Medellín or something just pronounced Medellín. That’s huge, a lot of people in e-commerce are based there. Americans and Europeans and Colombians, go there. It’s a huge city for like tech and for e-commerce. Just like a whole community there that people don’t realize that are just working from their departments or working from cafes and stuff doing e-commerce.
Martin:
Yeah. It’s great. Medellín, it’s a great place to be. Probably one of the best cities for me in Colombia. It was actually awarded as the most innovative city in the world a few years ago. It has had huge progress. And it’s a great place to live in, for example, in my city’s really close to Medellín where I live and there’s a lot of a big community of people from the US and Canada who go to teach in schools. And it amazes me how they all buy houses because they say, Okay, I wanna stay here living here because it’s one of the best places. And they’ve lived all over the world because they’ve been teaching like in Middle Eastern countries and in Asian countries, and they come to Colombia and they wanna stay living there.
Kevin King:
What’s that slogan? They say the only risk of going to Colombia is wanting to stay. Your only risk is wanting to stay. Yeah. So how did you get involved in e-commerce?
Martin:
Okay, so that’s a great question. Thank you. Well, back in Colombia, I have an apparel brand. So I used to sell online. That’s because it only sells online, but it’s something that I have only for Colombia. Only it only sells in Colombia.
Kevin King:
So online. What’s the big e-commerce marketplace in Colombia?
Martin:
It’s growing. Amazon is gonna–
Kevin King:
Amazon’s gonna be expanding there. Right now it’s Mercado Libre, right?
Martin:
Mercado Libre is the main website to buy online. Linio is another one. And it’s growing people are accustomed to buying online. That means it requires a lot of customer service online like WhatsApp and these kinds of channels of communication in order for you to help people feel confident about buying online because they feel it’s a little bit shady. Sometimes they’re not as used to as the Americans are to e-commerce but are growing and people getting more accustomed to it. And I have this problem brand back there, but I had some spare time. So I started Googling and I found Project X on YouTube And I said, Okay, no, I really have this background in e-commerce back in Colombia. I’m gonna apply it in the US I’m gonna get into the Amazon business.
Kevin King:
And now then you did Freedom Ticket. You said you’ve been methodically going through everything, and now you’re here at the Helium 10 Elite and the Sell and Scale event. So tell me how’s it been going for you? Are you still in the learning phase? Have you launched yet on Amazon? Where are you at?
Martin:
So I’ve been doing Project X and the Freedom Ticket step by step. There’s a different point of view between how you approach business and the way Bradley–
Kevin King:
There’s no one right there way.
Martin:
There’s no one right way. But I feel more, I feel like your way of doing, of your advice. I’m pulling more of your advice on the premium ticket. Right now I’m in the process of, I already have the brand. I already have the photos and the videos and everything. I have the listing ready in the listing builder in Helium 10, and I’m waiting for this, my supplier to send the first batch of products to Amazon. So to ship them. I already had to create an LLC here in the US in Wyoming, as you recommended with the Wyoming agents. It was really easy. It was, it was awesome for me to do that from Colombia online. Like it was really easy. So I’m, I’m, I’m in the starting phase. I’m in the starting learning phase is yet,
Kevin King:
So what are you hoping to get from an event like this? What do you hear about the network, you hear to learn, you hear for what’s your main goal out of this event? My
Martin:
My main goal is to find a mentor, someone who’s already really into this business who’s been in a lot of years selling through Amazon who can help me out because I’m starting that’s one main goal that I have. Another goal that I have is to do a lot of networks. I’ve already made a lot of people, a couple of people that I doing the line in the registry. I had the chance to say, held to a couple of people that are coming to the event to Sell and Scale. So networking, finding a mentor, and getting, I’m really invested in doing this right. Because I’m not thinking, doing some spare money. I wanna build a, I build something in the long term, so I wanna do things right. So I’m investing, this is, this is a lot of money for me actually because with the currency exchange nack from Colombia, I say it’s tough right now.
Kevin King:
I meant when I was dating my wife 10 years ago when I, 12 years ago when I first met her, the exchange rate was like that’s 1600 pesos to a dollar. And now it’s like 4,000 something. Yeah. It’s crazy. And the dollar is so strong compared to the Colombian peso right now. It’s, it’s insane. Yeah,
Martin:
It’s insane. So, yes, it’s about getting the best, I’m dreaming of this, I wanna build something great. I wanna make a living out of it. So I thought that I had to invest in this in the order I need to get to know the people that are in this business in order to understand it better.
Kevin King:
So what do you think the big challenge is for people that aren’t from the United States to sell the United States? People like English is not your first language. You speak good English, but English is not your first language. So what is the big challenge for a lot of people that when they decide, Hey, this looks like an awesome opportunity, but it scares the pants off of me because I’m gonna have to invest my whole $5,000 savings, or I don’t quite understand the culture in the US or how the things work. What are some recommendations you would give to people that might be thinking that? Yeah,
Martin:
So basically language barrier, it’s quite of a challenge, but Helium 10 has this Spanish version and there’s also the podcast in Spanish that will help you understand this better.
Kevin King:
And Freedom Tickets are subtitled in Spanish too.
Martin:
It’s titled in Spanish. Yeah, you’re right. And, but I think one of the main things is that like, if you’re in Colombia, in your office, and it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna start selling and managing everything in the US. Like how do I create a company? How do I manage my accounting? Like I know how to do that in Colombia, but it seems like the taxes and everything, it’s a little bit overwhelming. Everything that you will have to manage in, in a country that’s not your country, You don’t have any anyone there to ask a question to directly. That’s, that’s the part that I feel is more overwhelming. But I’ve been doing your Freedom Ticket step by step, and that’s why it feels like I’ve been able to manage every, everything so, so far, right?
Martin:
So as I told you before, I managed to form my LLC company Wyoming, which feels so bizarre for me. Like, I’m from Colombia, Wyoming. I had to Google, where is Wyoming. It’s gonna be–, but you’re giving everything so how easy, it’s step by step. So if you follow the courses, the Freedom Ticket courses, you’re gonna find out the answer for all these steps. And that has been really a relief for me. So for me, it’s kind of a take the time to follow the courses, take notes, go back. If you don’t remember something, go back to it and, and, and you will remember. And they will give you the answer. You will give them the answer.
Kevin King:
And the thing about Freedom Ticket too, is it’s free. So this is not some course for charging $5,000 or something if you have a Helium 10 membership at any level, it’s included at no extra charge. Yeah. It’s like 60 hours of training. It’s me plus a lot of extra other people that know a lot more about than me on certain subjects that coming in and doing stuff as well. And then we have the Helium 10 Elite, which is the next step up. So you decide to really go in, you decide to do the beginning course and let me go to the advanced level at this which is a Helium 10 Elite Exactly. Is what the event, you’re the conference, you’re about to go in for three hours here, where they’re gonna be talking at an advanced level. Do you understand everything that they’re talking about since you haven’t fully launched yet? Or, or is that just like, okay, now I’m seeing the big picture, some of this other basic stuff is now making sense and now I’m understanding the path I have to take? Is that what it’s helping you with
Martin:
What, Yeah, like sometimes when I’m going through courses, I know this is important, I pay attention to it, but I kind of take notes because I know I’m gonna have to get back to it in the future. I’m not in that stage yet, but I will have to get it. But it’s good to know that I, there’s to know where you can find information, where you can find in which part of the courses you can find something you’re gonna need in the future.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Well, I wish you the best of luck on everything, man. And keep working hard. You’re gonna, you get a great chance of doing really well.
Martin:
Thank you. Thank you. It’s really, really, really cool to meet you, man.
Kevin King:
Enjoy the rest of having the conference. We got so much amazing stuff at the Helium 10 Elite Workshop at Sell and Scale that we’re gonna actually do the second part of this. So next week, make sure you come back and check out part two of our hacks from seller sessions and the Helium 10 Elite Workshop. It’s gonna be another great episode next week with some brand new guests. There was just too much to cram all into one episode. So hopefully, while I’ll see you then, and don’t forget to mark your calendars again for November 3rd, that’s when we’ll be doing a free webinar for everybody. We’re gonna be sharing a lot of hacks and tips and strategies for the Helium 10 Elite. And so hopefully you will see me on that webinar on November 3rd, which is a totally free webinar open to everybody. Look for a post in the Facebook group soon, or look for an email coming your way with a link to sign up for that.
Kevin King:
So I hope to see you next week, but before we go, just a little quote to remind you like I’d like to do at the end of every single episode, you know, right now’s a bad time out. There’s a recession going on, prices are going up. There are a lot of people having trouble in their business businesses going out of business, but sometimes these are the times when fortunes are made. The rich know that downtimes are some of the best opportunities and the best times. And so I hope you are able to take advantage of that as well. But as Warren Buffet once famously said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” These are the times when you really find out who’s got a core business and who is strong and who is weak and was just limping along and kind of faking it. So, as Warren said, it’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” See you again next week.
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