Marketing E-Com Brands

Zahra  

So welcome to another episode today I'm speaking with the CEO and chief visionary officer of Seller Fuel Jason Hsieh. Now what you might not know about Jason is that he started his first brand it was an Amazon brand called LakiKid in 2016. And it was through that experience that he gained that he went on to open up Seller Fuel, which is a unique marketing agency that caters to e commerce business in the kids toys and games niche with their tremendous app is helping brands profitably scaled to reach new milestones through conversion optimization, profit optimization, and external traffic guys. We're gonna have so much fun digging in to what he is best at and really learning how you can scale your business. If you're struggling to make traction in the digital market, Jason is here to tell us how to get it done.

Jason  

Yeah, thank you for having me, it's gonna be a fun conversation, we'll see how it goes. 

Zahra  

Yes, you already so much value even before the call, Jason was giving me tips on how to up our podcast and how to get more listeners in the live game so he's full of value. I can't wait for you guys to hear everything that he has. Can we kick this off by you telling me just a little bit about yourself and your brand story and how LakiKid kind of was a gateway for you to come out with Seller Fuel. 

Jason  

Of course, so let me take a step back and just share a little bit of my personal story. I'm from Taiwan, myself, my wife's from Japan so I do speak Japanese and Chinese fluently, English is my third language. So sorry for my accent, I don't have a perfect American accent, obviously, however. So back to the story here when we used to live in Japan back in 2007 , our son's got diagnosis was autism and ADHD while living in Tokyo. Tokyo is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. And Japan is well known for being the one of the most technology events country however, back then in 2013, we can only find two therapy center out of the entire Tokyo Metropolitan politan area for our son to go to. So as a dad and as a husband, I need to come up with a plan because man is known to solve things and fixed up. So this is where I jump in and be the problem solver. I am okay, let's come up with a solution, I'm going to move my entire family to United States or better opportunity with therapies and treatments and all the other potential opportunity, I mean chances so my son can live a life full of possibilities. However, after we moved to the United States in 2015, only to find out the insurance company here in the United States suck so bad. It'll pay for any of the therapy that we needed for our son so guess what, being a problem solver I stepped up to my shoes again. Okay, how can I solve it this time back then in 2015, I was working in corporate finance is decent six figure income make about 100,000 a year however, I have three kids, my wife doesn't work living in Seattle back then is not cheap. And I don't have the additional cash to pay for the service, that's where I was starting to research. Okay, what are the side hustle was the side gig I can do to make additional income to pay for my son's therapy and that's where I run across the E commerce business model. And I try everything in the first year back in 2016, I was going to like Goodwill and buying used textbooks and flip it and sell it on Amazon is called in E commerce was on your E commerce entrepreneur. A lot of entrepreneurs I know also started was that business model because it's the most cheapest way to get your foot into the door selling on Amazon was selling on any platform is to buy it on like Goodwill's thrift store or Walmart or the clearance aisle and try to flip it I did that for the year. However, that business model is not scalable, I burned myself out. Job and every single weekend I was spending like five six hours shopping for a used textbook. That being said us textbook back then is super profitable, I can buy a used textbook for $5 and sell it for $50 on Amazon as a 10 times my like costs is really profitable but it's not easy to find a used textbook that is actually profitable back then. I will go to Goodwill I have like a scanner attached to my phone i'll walk in and scan every single book on the shelf for like three to actually I get really really efficient at the end I was able to scan the entire store for like two hours. I will scan the entire store and find maybe usually I can find sometimes up to 50 or 100 per store depends on of course depends on the book. The more we're the book title is the more profitable it is actually last like production a production book is never profitable fiction book is sucks do not buy a fiction book if you want to do avatar always go for nonfiction, any book that you don't even understand what the hell the book is about. Those are the prophets one those are the ones you're looking for. Those are the knees. Yeah, because people are also searching for online because they couldn't find anywhere else. So that was my business model for years, then I got burned out then in 2017. Okay, I have some in initial investment because I did it for a year I got about I was gonna make 100,000 or so just doing textbook for a year. And I use that to fund my first private label business which is lucky get LakiKid here, what we do is we design sensory products for kids with autism, ADHD, and sensory processing disorder and also for older people. Some of our products can also help us dementia and also Alzheimer's. Well, of course, the name is called LakiKids are we mostly advertised to kid but some of the older you know, population also use some of our sensory product because there's some little bit of an overlay with like dementia and Alzheimer's and sensory issues a little bit. So I didn't know that that's a lot of people don't want to share it was that so? So that's how I started a business back in 2017 but it's not easy for my entrepreneur journey. Let me share one story that is very personal, I might get a little bit emotional sometime when I share their story. When I first started my brand LakiKid back in 2017, the very same year, my daughter got a diagnosis was leukemia, which is a blood cancer, those of you doesn't know. So that was I will say the darkest moment for my family for myself and my wife for the rest of the families. And of course, my older son will have special needs, obviously, the special needs doesn't go away. And my wife was was also pregnant during that time when we heard so I believe whatever won't kill you will just make you stronger. So I want to share that story because right now my daughter is like fully in remission to recover, and everything is great now but during that two and a half years, almost three during the cancer treatment my life was hell yeah, it was so bad. I don't even know how I survived. I will wake up by in the morning, go to work, come back and then work on my business and sometimes also need to take time off on work so I can take my daughter to go to do her chemotherapy on time on the weekend. Sometimes a weekday depends on hospital, it was just crazy. So yeah, well, if I can do it, anyone else can do it, so that's why I want to share this story. I also do personal coaching for like business ecommerce entrepreneurs. I have a few coaching clients, I will just say it is I will call on people's BS Yeah, like if you say Oh, my heart is my life is so hard. I have a day job. I have two kids and I'm busy BS I went through so much more. I was able to do it, you can do it too. So I always say like, you want to give me BS I'll give you like 100 times more because I went 200 times more harder than you ever can imagine. So anytime people say oh my heart, my life is so hard, I'm not fit for this visit all 100 was in bullshit is all in your mind. Let me share the second story so 2017 2019 my daughter finally finished her treatment. That's where business started finally taking off because I have more time to work on the business, guess what quantity 20 Hap COVID majority of my customer is what teachers buying from school or having to go to school. I think all our listeners know in 2020 every single school in the United States has shut down within a month my business go from $50,000 a month to 5000 a month, what the hell is he destroying my business? Like he just turned my entire life upside down in 2020 I was on the edge of bankruptcy and the divorce was 300,000 in debt so no BS I survived that. If you give me any BS, I just going to share my story, I overcome all that. And I also run across a very powerful business management principle that I like 100% fan of because it literally changed my entire life is called EOS entrepreneur operating system. Business management philosophy instead of a tool that serial entrepreneur called Gino Wickman, developed based on his own experience. I was listening to a podcast like the one we're doing today, the host of the podcast talking about the book and I was very very intrigued because back in 2020 I was in a running a business the business was running me. I have no life the business was like dominating my life because I have no process the business as much as I have few people working for me. So I'm a freelancer and I'm organized another day jobs this is a complete mess. So I spend about six months not just reading but also fully implement us to my business is what undertone month I go from 300,000 in debt to doing over 600,000 in revenue under 12 months because of us because the way I was operating a business was wrong. I wasn't running a business, I was like no just like a kitchen chicken wasn't like the head cut off running around. We call it in our team, the batting cages, you stuck in the batting cages and you have no so how do you start playing defense and start playing offense when people are hurling balls at you all day and there's nowhere to go? You're just in that so accurately and right now the book Traction is my business Bible, I put it on my desk every single day and I read this book cover to cover five times already. We have we, we give that book away when we do speak well, when I do speaking engagements, that's the book that we give away to entrepreneurs. That powerful. Yeah. You know, whoever answers a question in the audience, have a copy. And that's actually one more free tool, I always recommend it for people that's looking into us go to a website called organizationalcheckup.com is this is a website that designed by us pretty much what it does is a free business assessment that will take you about 15 20 minutes that you can do that will give you a clearer picture on where your business organization is at, based on the US model out of the six major components is are you on track? Or are you like way off track, let me share my number. When I first implemented when I first ran into us, when I did the assessment, my business was operating at 55% efficiency overall, in all six major components, people vision tractions, all the six components. Right now, two years later, I just finished the quarterly evaluation, we are operating we have a team of tall people right now operating at 90%. In organization efficiency two years later, it doesn't happen overnight. Of course, it's not that easy to fix everything. But we have gone a long way. And that is really what I think, empower and help with the success with my own ecommerce brand. And also the success with Seller Fuel, which is my a digital agency, which I started at in December of 2021. Because I realized all the things I was doing for my brand, none of the Amazon Seller I was talking to was doing they need help. I was I started agency because one of my friends they usually start agency and how about other people then okay, sure, let me start. I'm just like, go in and start something so that's kind of my origin story. I love that you shared that story because I think that it's so easy when you know, you're on a podcast to talk about all the wins, it's a lot harder to talk about the struggle. But I think it's important for people to know that everybody has moments like if you're in a moment like that, we're all there. We've all been there, we all might be there, we might have been there last week, and you never know but when... The social media have trainers to only share the positive. That's why every single pose you see on Instagram, Oh, this guy is like super fit is like under 10% body fat like this girl is like, like when we're beginning and all that stuff. That's not really real, is it?

Zahra  

But it also like I think it really you know, there's something that you said in the beginning and the image, as you were telling your story it kind of like came up throughout is that there's something in it for you like failure is not an option, like failure is a stopping point. It's not a destination for you and you can see that like then this happened and I was like crap it's not good.

Jason  

One thing a lot of the especially the E commerce entrepreneur, they don't realize a lot of people I know that start in commerce because they just want a mag okay 5000 $10,000 additional per month because one of the gurus on YouTube say it's very easy to make money using E commerce bullshit is not easy is hard. So when they picked a product to launch, they will find that most easy product to launch. And sometimes the product they are launching or developing or creating, they don't even freaking use, they have like no zero personal connection with the product. So guess what, when the scenes get tough, they gave up they give us so easily because there's no connection whatsoever was their brand was everything they do as a business owner is just like I'm in the business to make money when you only have that single motivations where the house is dry when life throws hard stuff at you. You're just going to give up and damn, I was just doing it for $5,000 a month, I can just give it up. I'll go back to nine to five and I'll be fine you know, many entrepreneur, one of my agency clients, she gave up on her business after two years because things get hard.

Zahra  

You know, I'll say this and just to, I guess, expound on what you're saying is we see it all the time. You know, so we're in the branding business and so we brand you know, and we do a lot on E commerce, and you can tell the difference, you know, between a brand of somebody who's invented something who's created something who's designed something that or sourced something that was out of a need that they had or that they saw for others. And so there's like an impact, you know, and so, versus you know, somebody who's just you know, doing a dropship thing.

Jason  

Yeah, let me share another story because I do a lot of competition analysis with my brand. Yeah, eight out of 10 my competitor on Amazon, they're not even parents, they don't have kids and obviously they don't have kids with special needs and they are selling products for kids with special needs. You see this connection there, they are just in it for the money. They don't care of the people, they have no interest whatsoever on serving the people that's using them. Why don't they just want to make money on the opposite, I don't even want to make money. I just want to make an impact when you, when you're coming from that perspective, the money will follow natural.

Zahra  

That's exactly what I was gonna say is that we have a saying, you know that you have to show up, if your brand is focused on money, you're gonna be bored. If you are focused on your brand and your vision, the money will follow, because that's what creates, you know, brands of impact. And I think that you hit it right on the head when you said that what you had there as a parent of an autistic, you know, special needs child was your competitive advantage to understanding the psychographic nature of these buyers, you could give them the brain of the buying behavior of your consumer because you know what they struggle with. So not only could you source a better product and create a better solution, but you also knew how to speak their language because it's your language, you know, and you understand what words they need to hear what explanations they need to see what photos need to happen. 

Jason  

Yeah. And because you'll be surprised how common you happen, I will talk to a brand owner that have a pet brand that doesn't even own a pet, I will have a brand owner that sell product for babies that never had a kid. You know, there's like so much disconnection, because there's so many gurus, so many courses out there to teach you to use a software tool like Jungle Scout, you have the intent, like those Amazon product research tool to find the product that's profitable. So you can make money that's like the 100% wrong mindset. That's why so many people fail like that's, of course, on those courses, they're not going to show the people they failed, they only showed like the remaining one that actually got lucky and survive.

Zahra  

Yeah and I think that there's like, you know, some of those tools, they're great if you're double checking what you wanted to, like, this is what I want to make, is there something there, or here's a list, which of these do I connect with, but that just blindly like, Hey, I get a great price on this. There's a huge markup, that's my guy, like, that's terrible.

Jason  

That is 0 out of 10, Amazon Seller I talked to that's exactly how they find their first product. Well, actually how they find all the products.

Zahra  

Yeah, and it's crazy, because Amazon is changing how they support brands in a way that's almost weeding out that mentality, you know, there's a lot of a lot of priority and a lot of support to companies out there who are trying to build the brand. So just to like, start off, I want to, and I say start off, although we've had like a tremendously amazing conversation, even the spark, and I love that you've shared all of that about your entrepreneurial journey, because I think it's so important, I really do. You know, I think 90% of what happens in business happens up here, you know, and if you're not in it here, then everything that you do, you know, follows. And so you said something at the beginning, and it reminded me of the very first business coach I ever hired that I couldn't afford, but I did it anyways, that's investment I ever made. But I think we've all had those moments where it's just blind faith, you know, and I remember I was doing exactly what you're talking about, like I was whining oh, like, oh, like we do such good work and we try so hard. And we really value the customers, we want to make a difference. Why does it feel like I just can't get it, you know, going, I was like, I just can't do it. I don't know, understand, what am I doing wrong? I'm coming up, I'm showing up, I'm working hard. I'm delivering quality like what? So he lets me have my Wine Fest, right and then he's like, so then quit, like just pack it up. You're clearly not cut out for this and of course, it got like super offensive and I was like why you told me that?

Jason  

Well, you need people that can call you out on your BS.

Zahra  

Yeah, but true because it was a mindset thing and then and I was like, Well wait a minute, like, I'm not ready to quit. He's like, well, then stop talking about what you don't have and figure it out, you know, and it was just kind of like that. And as you were talking about your story and how you know, things kind of fell, you know, for you in the order that it did hearing you talk about like, you could see that mentality, you could hear that mentality coming out and you just kind of like, well, this happened. I guess there's one more thing to figure out and I think it kind of speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit of if you are going to be a CEO, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you are signing up for life of problems and obstacles. And so if you shift your perspective on what that means, it's just the next cool puzzle to figure out instead of it being the next thing you're trying to avoid desperately, I think it really does make a huge difference and how not just your results, but your experience along the way and I think that that's really important for people to be reminded of that.

Jason  

Yeah 100% man, we're weirdos 1% I didn't realize yeah we were. Yeah, you need to think differently because just look at how many entrepreneurs is in the world, less than 1% of total US, I mean world population, if you want to be the 1% that means you need to seem like the 1%. If you think like every single person that you meet, you will just like any single freaking person you meet in your day job and good luck stay in your nine to 5. Yeah we're the 1% man if you want to be the 1% you need to sync like the 1% that you say I was mindset. 

Zahra  

I love that. So talking of now I want to kind of pivot a little bit to you know your jam here which is the E commerce space of marketing of course how like can you talk to us break down the difference for those people who are maybe either ready to launch a brand and they're thinking like well do I go retail first and I go ecommerce, what's the difference? Should I have different strategies like what would you say to them and how do you break down you know, the two worlds.

Jason  

I will still usually recommend people always launch on Amazon first because Amazon is actually the greatest wells equalizer in human history because think about it over 50% of all online shopping is done on Amazon. And Amazon give you a chance to sell your product using their platform was like very minimum fee and they have the existing shopping buyers that have credit card on file is willing to pay right away with one click a button and Amazon also have a program called Fulfilled by Amazon where Amazon do all the freaking work for you. You're just shipping pallet we're shipping boxes are shipping container, Amazon will pick pack and ship your product to Amazon's customer and Amazon will take care of return and Amazon to customer service. So the only thing you need to do as a business owner is to find I mean either find or design a product that is not available on Amazon yet don't be another me to product there's so many meeting product of me to product business model you work on I started because back then you can buy review on Amazon that was like a wild west back in 2016. You can do anything on Amazon now you couldn't do any of that you'll get suspended right away if you tried to do that. So as the E commerce I guess Amazon Marketplace and E commerce marketplace get more and more saturated and sophisticated you as a business owner also need to grow and be more sophisticated alongside with it. However, the most easy way in the most easy marketplace to launch is still Amazon regardless hand down number one, Walmart is still less than 10% and of Amazon for E commerce and look at how big Walmart is the only 10%.

Zahra  

Well even we have clients that come to us, you know brand claims that come to us and they're eager to do retail you know bricks and mortar I always say like start on Amazon.

Jason  

You can always do later if you even make it happen on Amazon, there's no way you can do brick or mortar you just die.

Zahra  

Yeah, and they want to see right so unless you're doing small local regional chain, you're trying to get into big bucks they need to see the proof of concept anyway that way and you're screwed until you generate something in Amazon to do it.

Jason  

So I love that my suggestion was Amazon that's own I called it Seller Fuel if all of you as my agency of course. So here are the three pillars I asked every single clients or potential clients that they have to optimize pillar number one conversion optimization if your Amazon listing is not converting minimum at 10% on Amazon. Your Amazon listing sucks sorry to hurt your feeling but you need some work to do get on your bar and design work means your photo properties under par you probably don't even have a videos. You have like keywords probably didn't even do the proper keyword research and also your EBC also stands for Enhanced brand content some people call it a plus content which is the long product description in the Amazon sessions that need to be fully optimized for desktop and mobile that's a special layout you have to use otherwise when people are looking at your listing on mobile devices you will be so small people can then read. So defeats the whole purpose so having that says you know to get that just number one once you get that listing optimization and you're converting over 10%. Now go to pillar two profit optimization is your overall Amazon business or I don't call it Amazon business actually Amazon should be one of the channel for your business do not call yourself Amazon business owner because you are more than that. You are not like Jeff Bezos dog that you're working for him you are your own internet business. You're just using Amazon as a channel so for your Amazon channel, your we call it contribution margin. Okay, so for those of you that's kind of new that doesn't even understand what your contribution margin is, contribution margin is calculated very simply your selling price on Amazon that just make the math easy quantity dollar then your FBA fee means how much Amazon charge you to fulfill each of the order to Amazon Prime buyers. It depends on the product you can range from $3 to $10 depending on how big it is how heavy it is that just make the math easy sweet out. So then there's also Amazon referral fee usually for most of the categories 15%. So $20 15% of that so your target so right now we have only dollar minus three minus three that means your current contribution margin is 14 before Amazon advertising and you see an ad minus your cost. So the cost is the cost that you pay to your supplier. If you are sourcing in China, then you also need to include your import three cars and import duty per unit, you add that up and minus that for $20 product you probably will can source it for $5, so three plus three plus five. Now your current cost is $16, you have about $9 left that you can play around with that's where then you add to the advertising costs. Because just like everything else Amazon does, they try to monetize everything. You wanted to have any kind of success on Amazon, you must run Amazon ads, unfortunately, that's not even a choice. There's not even an option, because every single competitor of yours is running it. If you don't run it, you just get killed man, don't go back to your nine to five. So yeah, so you need to add all four number I just mentioned and then that is your true contribution margin per asin, and asin is Amazon term, but some people call it SKU, or SKU per asin is the same. So you want that number to be 25% or higher if your contribution margin is not 25% or higher, then you have a lot of work to do. There's a lot of additional optimization, maybe you're overpaying on your costs, maybe you're overpaying on freight, maybe your PPC sucks, and you don't know what the hell you're doing for Amazon advertising, which is something my agency can help you with. But we only have kid brand of course, we are like hyper focused as the agency because I also run a kid's brand, which I'll talk about as the third pillar, which is external traffic. Do you have an email list? Do you have a social media following? Do you have an SMS or text messaging list? Do you have a push notification list, I have all that for my brand. I have 30,000 emails, 10,000 SMS, I don't know how many subscribers we have for the push notification right now. But we also have 100,000 on Instagram, we can drive all those followers who are potential buyer to Amazon anytime we want. That's why when I launch products, no one can compete are these in my little niche. No one can really compete when I launch a product because I don't know that's maybe one competition that also have a decent size this outside Amazon that's close to us. But no one else besides me and the other brand, no one else have what I have built.

Zahra  

I want to just highlight that if you didn't hear it, his third pillar, because I just like what the students from a loudspeaker is your off Amazon brand and marketing that is so critical. So many people are just focused on Amazon but we see it all the time. You know, like you said, this isn't an Amazon brand, it is a brand. It has to exist independently of itself and so one of the things that we work a lot with is like even in the unboxing experience, because the thing about Amazon is that it gives you a lot of stack doesn't give you any customer contact info.

Jason  

Customer, not yours so you know, what is the analogy I always use for those of you that only sell on Amazon, you get a slot machine that Amazon assigned to you is a casino. And just like any Casino in Las Vegas, who always win the house, the house always wins they can take and they can kick you out of the casino anytime when your account got suspended. Guess what, you're out of the casino. You're banned. You're on the blacklist.

Zahra  

Yeah, you know, it's funny that even before we got into Amazon, even with a bricks and mortar, as we say, you know, it's great to have social media, use the hell out of it. But you always want to have direct access to your customers, you always want to have that email list because that's the thing that whether you get blacklisted, blackballed, you know, suspended, whether the algorithm changes, you have a way, and that is the most consistent way that you can build that brand loyalty within. So when you're talking about, you know, that one time purchase, turning into multiple purchases, cross sells, you know, creating value on demand for them, you could launch a product tomorrow with no social media channels because of your email list and they're fans of you. These are already customers are people who've had interest in you. So they already love what you do, and believe in the quality of your brand and your product. So anything that comes up, it's like you get this like, that's my stuff, like is it you know, because you've built that brand, they're following you. They're googling you their email, you know, getting emails directly from you and that's so powerful, even if you want to go into retail space, because that's the one thing they look at. They're like, hey, we see you making 2, 3 million on Amazon every month. But how are they going to know that you're now found in Target or Costco or Walmart because you gotta wait to tell them.

Jason  

Exactly. Amazon's very protective, yes. And that's actually the reason why I designed the new program we just launched last month called Seller Fuel, a celebrated program, which is six months 100% down for us services for kids and baby brand, or any brand that's selling to moms or teacher because that's kind of who our audience are. And we do all the three pillars, services or services related to the three pillar I just mentioned, as part of the accelerator program over the next six months. Actually, we're so confident with the brand that enroll into the program we guarantee to increase your brand's monthly revenue by $20,000 by the end of the six months otherwise we work for you for free until we do. That's how confident I am. Of course we are very selective with the brand we are working with. We need to make sure it is the right fit for our VIP buyers. So I will just go on to talk a little bit about the most unique part about our accelerator program, which is external traffic because the other three to pillar to be honest, every single other Amazon marketing agency can do it for you like let's like 1000s of PPC agency 1000s of Amazon account management agency. But guess what none of those agency have 100,000. These are moms and teachers I do because I also run the kids brand, so I'm really leveraging that and trying to do really provide that as a service for our clients. And what we do is when you if you do get approved to join our program, you get access to our entire 100,000 buyer list. And then we'll use our list to feature your product on one of our live stream show that which I told you about because I want to give a nice stream show. One of the live streams that we do weekly is called sensory deal, you can go search sensorydeal.com is one of my domain every single week, we'll feature one of the kids products in front of our 100,000 buyer list and say, Oh, this week, I'm interviewing this brand owner and he's going to talk about his product and we're gonna do a special deal for our only our list. We're only for our deal group this week, only a limited quantity go buy now. And when we go live, we go live on Facebook, YouTube, and also Amazon. Amazon live is a brand new live streaming channel, Amazon launched a few years ago, but you can also get additional eyeballs to Amazon live. And of course, to have an Amazon live account you need to get special approval which we do and what is more is we also provide six months of micro influencer campaign management. How does it work, I have a group of 160 ambassador, ambassador for my own kids brand I built over the year pretty much I have a army of moms, though, what they do is they will go to Amazon, buy your product and full price but we do not ask for review. Because we'll get into trouble with Amazon, we'll get suspended, you have nothing to do with reviews, we just ask them to buy. So they can take a picture of your product and post it on social media and take a video of your product posted on TikTok, Instagram, Youtube shores and then our social media team is going to verify it and reimburse the ambassador, that's our program, we do that for all the products as part of the services as well.

Zahra  

And you know, for those of you guys who are listening that are unfamiliar, we use the term user generated content, micro influences the same thing. And actually micro it for those of you guys who are kind of toying with this idea, it's actually the best way user generated content has a higher conversion rate than those big mega influencers. We do marketing campaigns, we see that all the time, we get a much higher, you get a higher viral, you know, especially if you do like organized campaigns where people are doing like specific hashtags. And they're all kind of circling in this one timeframe, the same like specific content, all from these micro influencers. It takes up way more than paying mega bucks to sell.

Jason  

Because it's more authentic, you're talking to real people not like fancy influencer, that doesn't really care about your product as much because they just want to get paid $5,000 to being a post, that's why. 

Zahra  

100% so that is a fantastic idea, like we use it and it works tremendously well. The other thing is, is that it's even more intelligent, have a way to do it in moms, because moms are like smokers man, we all hang out together. We're always willing to lend somebody something that we've got recommend something because parenting is hard. And when we find something that works, or we find something that gives us a little bit of relief or improve, you know, our lives or kids lives in some way, like we are all about calling up our small little network of friends and like, hey, you've got to have this thing. I just, you know, we're texting each other we're sharing links, we're sharing videos.

Jason  

That is also true for teachers, which is yeah, I'll make this mountain teachers. 

Zahra  

Yeah, there are small groups out there that they're just tight, you know and there's a high degree of trust factor there. So really intelligent way, like really super smart.

Jason  

And one more thing I haven't I forgot to mention as part of the survey program, we also do fully manage Amazon product launch only channel when we do product launches over about two weeks period, email, SMS, push notification, social media and ambassadors account and live stream. So six different channel using our legs, you don't need to lift a friggin finger, we do everything for you. So this is almost unheard of in the E commerce space, because no one has what we have.

Zahra  

That's pretty cool and so let me ask you this. I want to backtrack a little bit about the Facebook, I'm sorry, the Amazon live. So talk to me a little bit about how that works and how you guys find success with that. Do you hire people to talk about it? Is it just the brand owners get in? How do you get that approval? Like what's that look like on the back? Yeah and look if anybody do it you have to go through an approval process.

Jason  

So our workflow is very simple, I'll show why now as well. We started the Amazon process about three months ago, so we're still pretty new in Amazon on live things Amazon have a lot of regulations that something you can say and cannot say on Amazon live. But just go read a freaking long very long term of service before you start of course otherwise they will take your video down obviously so one thing you cannot do on Amazon live is an engineer website obviously and you cannot show on your screen your like URL and stuff and you cannot try to ask people to sign up for email lists because you are on Amazon obviously. So that's like a different caveat of the thing you cannot do but what you can do like what how we do it is I always just interviewed the brand owner like they will share their story a little bit then they'll go right into product demonstration. Demo the product live on Amazon and also on Facebook on a different channel then usually we just talk about discount. The thing was Amazon live is if you set up the coupon code correctly is going to display people can see the coupon code they can just click on it your auto apply to Amazon account then they buy right away they must make it as easy as possible for people to give them money that's how it works. You need to get approved by Amazon to have an Amazon Live account if you're already selling on Amazon and you're also brand register it's much easier to get an Amazon Live account. If you're not brand registered the second way you can get Amazon Live account is to called an Amazon influencer program you need to have a thing. It depends I don't quote me on it I think you need to have like 5000 maybe 2000 I don't know why there's a requirement nowadays you need to have a minimum amount of followers for a few different social media channels to qualify as Amazon influencer then you will get an influencer account. And this is how a lot of Amazon influencer make money is to do Amazon live stream reviewing products and then they can also post a picture of like them using the product on their like Amazon influencer account. It looked like the Amazon influencer store format really was picture and you can also take video of the product and upload it to your channel. So any of those three or four I think there's one more one more thing and do any of those three or four different screens that people click on Amazon pay you a commission as an influencer.

Zahra  

Yeah, because they have their own like affiliate and so they get their kickback. So if you're on a budget that might be a good way.

Jason  

I just remember the fourth way is you can also make a Amazon like a shopping list and post it on your influencer program channels on Amazon, you people buy anything on your list you also get paid a commission so that's forming ways for influencer account. Now for the brand new accounts being saved brand accounts a little bit different than the influencer account. The brand account you can only feature will list your own product. So the account I have is an influencer account, not a brand account, because we have one account with 100,000 followers. So you need to qualify to be an influencer account.

Zahra  

So talk to me a little bit about a little bit about launching so you could talk to meant to that a little bit earlier. If you've got an E commerce brand that needs to launch you know as far as a marketing gameplan I know we talked about like making sure that you're and I agree with you the your conversion rate being 10% I am still floored every day just when we do market research and competitive analysis how many brands like if you're a vitamin company and you don't have a picture of the nutrition it's like that baffles my mind.

Jason  

Oh yeah, you need to fire them.

Zahra  

Even in a in a bricks and mortar with the first thing you do is you grab it and turn it over. It's a one on one, but it's crazy. So absolutely like that can be you know, and you know, you see that all the time that you know we work with with companies that have like they're using Google PPC, and they're running ads to a specific product. But then when you click the link, it takes them to the homepage, not the product add to Cart page. You see those things so absolutely looking at your conversion rates to see like is there a smoking gun? Is there a leak in the boat somewhere, it's pretty obvious you know, we say like it doesn't do you any good.

Jason  

It's the same three pillar there's the optimization, profit optimization then external traffic to Amazon like crazy then you launch your product like this.

Zahra  

Digging into that last one that external market, what are the top three things that they should be looking at if they had to prioritize like okay, no.

Jason  

Email, email, email, email, email, email is not dead even though everyone and I agree 100% it is all lies so they can sell you a course or you can buy something from them and know that email should work you work with email should be one of your core pillar. All the social media followers should get converted into some kind of email list in the long run.

Zahra  

Anybody who told me email is dead I sent a link to Jeff Walker.

Jason  

Yeah I know him, product launch formula.

Zahra  

The grandfather, like you tell him that's awesome. And so tell me right now in your opinion so like we've got an expert here. I want to pick your brain a little bit. In your opinion, what's making the biggest difference for brands right now in the Amazon space? How are brands able to communicate with their consumers that they're not just another knockoff brand, they're not just another you know, cheap item.

Jason  

I talk about your story everywhere. So for my brand, you can search for my brand, you know, I've seen you put a link, in the show notes. If you see my brand on Amazon, you will see there's a video about my story that I share in the beginning of this podcast and also like a written version of my story in my EBC as well. And then when you go to my Amazon store is there again is like my story everywhere, because you know what people love to buy from other people not on nameless brand, most Amazon brand nameless brand, you don't know who the hell is making this product. Maybe some random guys sitting there pajama with some random guy in China, you don't even know who they are, will make those products. So if you can make, of course, it does require you to take a little bit of step being vulnerable a little bit sharing your story, but why do you even become entrepreneurs to begin with you is about taking that uncomfortable step to share your story publicly, because you are here to make an impact on earth not to just make money, right? So you have to share your story and that's actually one of the number one thing all the people that's listening should be doing if they are not already doing. 

Zahra  

I think that 100% true and not just from like a personal moral, ethical belief system that I which I think we're hitting on, but also it makes logical sense, right? So like you were talking about in those Amazon lives, like you're interviewing the the CEO, and what happens, like what do we do whenever we hear something interesting, our culture has trained us to go down the Google deep dive. So if I hear about your story and your brand, I'm like, Oh, that's so cool. I wonder what the you know, and instantly my curiosity is piqued, and it might even be while I'm watching the Amazon live, I'm googling you and your brand name to like, and then I'll come across the website. But like, it's just, you know, aside from all the, you know, it's 100% true. And, you know, the authenticity and I believe all of that but even if you strip all that away, it just makes logical sense. We're wired to be curious about things that we're interested in and no one's interested in, you know, nothing, it's beyond the product, right.

Jason  

Yeah. Nameless brand on Amazon doesn't work anymore. 

Zahra  

Yeah, it used to, but and I think that, you know, Amazon is tapping into what consumers are responding to, because they're creating incentives like buy. Now, those new things like small business.

Jason  

Yeah, small business. Yes. Yes. 

Zahra  

You know, and so they're keyed in because they understand that, you know, we talked about like marketing sophistication and now we don't just have unemployed every year, consumers get more and more informed. They're more intentional about what they buy. They research, they have 13 tabs open before they make a decision, right.

Jason  

So going back to your expertise based on my experience. If you're brand new, if you brand your brand correctly, you can still like one of my products I started selling on Amazon two years ago for this particular product, you can search for it, it's called fidget marble maze. Two years ago, no one was selling this particular product product yet on Amazon, when we first started, we are the only one now there's whole bunch of copycats on China or random seller, but guess what, I'm still selling two or three times the price and I still outsell them every single day.

Zahra  

100% you know, the stuff that I always give for that is Coca Cola, right? So there's every every drugstore has their own version of generic Cola, but Coca Cola has it. And so the reality is, is that brand leaders people who are the non generics, right, the Coca Cola is of the world and the Apple's not only do they on average sell for 40% higher price point than their competitors, but they typically own more than 50% of the margin, which tells us that more people are willing to pay more if they value it and they believe and they trust it and they like it than that they don't and so that's just so you know. If you've done the work of building like because of what you built with LakiKid now, that's an investment into your brand because now they're just fans of LakiKids. So whatever you put in front of them, whatever products that you put it from now until the end of the earth, right, they're much more likely to buy it if there's a latchkey kid version of whatever products out there, they're gonna buy yours versus someone else's.

Jason  

I really do, I don't think a lot of E commerce entrepreneurs do is I call my customer and talk to them for like 20 30 minutes just because I want to talk to them. How are you doing, they keep buying my name is Jason Hsieh and the CEO of this company, can I have a minute of your time so I can chat. I just do that randomly, you know, because, you know, because I love to talk to people as you can tell and like extrovert. But this is allow me to do a couple of things. First, customer stratification also, all of our research is like, oh, what kind of product are you looking for recently, anything. My company can help me with the marble maze, I found it by talking to one of my customers two years ago.

Zahra  

Yeah and even just learning their language. What words are they using to describe things? 

Jason  

Yeah but unfortunately, you couldn't do any of that if you only sell on Amazon though. 

Zahra  

I was gonna say that so go to step number three outside Amazon external marketing, yeah, step three.

Jason  

You don't even know their phone number. You don't even actually Amazon don't even share their last name with you anymore. I think it's only first name and nothing else.

Zahra  

Very difficult to like, whenever we do like a brand audit for some of our e com clients or Amazon clients, if they don't have an email list, or they don't have anything else, we're stuck with just the Amazon demographic, and then we will physically comb every review, you know, verify, but not everybody, even if they read it, and they're verified purchase, they don't always leave comments either. It's a lot harder to go back and rebuild that understanding of what the brand is and give a solid, you know, audit or evaluation on it without those other pieces so 100%.

Jason  

Those are the Amazons customers, not yours, that's why.

Zahra  

Yeah, we're trying to sneak into the back door and figure out what they know about your company and your purchases. Okay, so before we do the fun part, which is although has a lot of fun, because the rapid fire questions is any final words of wisdom about being an E commerce entrepreneur and having a really smart, effective, efficient, EOS driven plan for marketing. 

Jason  

So there's only three major areas you need to manage really, really well as an E commerce entrepreneur, I have been spending majority of the time talking about marketing as to more area operation. And finally, you can do all the marketing in the world, you can be the best marketer on planet Earth. But if you're out of stock, guess what, zero, fat zero sales finance, you can do all the marketing, you can be in stock. But if you don't know your number, and you're selling at a loss again, it was then zero minus. And I see so many entrepreneurs, especially ecommerce entrepreneurs struggle in the attitude area a lot as well. They keep on selling other stuff and that was me two years ago, before implementing us, I keep on selling out of stock, I lose all the momentum. Now I need to relaunch once the product is like a vicious cycle you get into and also I run out of cash when you run out of stock to because I have I lose the momentum. Then I have all this inventory that's sitting in one of my CPO warehouses was sitting in Amazon that's not selling at the last city that you was because I want out of stock for like two weeks.

Zahra  

Yeah, even on the labor front like even as an agency managing workflows, how many hours how many revisions like understanding all of that is always a learning process. I remember you bring to mind a story, one of the first clients we ever did, they were in a in a big box, where they were trying to get into big box, they were local, you know, chain and they wanted help with their, their, basically their pitch deck to get in, you know, to get in to a larger chain. And as we were going through the brand evaluation of the brand audit, we were looking at, like we were doing the deep dive and you know, and one of the things that we found was that they were still manually making they were small batch crafting, you know, I said well, if you go into sprouts, they're gonna they're only going to let you in if you can stock all 119 of their stores. And so you need to have a process what is your like what is your cost? How's it because it seems you know, my husband happens in my husband's shop so I was looking at her process and she makes the protein was I'm like, there's no way you're making money here. Like I don't know, I'm not in finance, but I can tell you and so I've said well here like I referred heard, you know to to a CFO with a go work with them figure out what your COGS is figure out what your labor is and see what your margin is. Because once you start selling wholesale, you need a much larger margin to be able to cover that the logistics. 

Jason  

That's why in our current accelerator program even so it's 100% down for you regarding marketing, operations and finance we provide coaching for that.

Zahra  

That's amazing because I think that's a big deal breaker because she came back to me she says you know what, I was losing like I can't even remember like 65 cents.

Jason  

You'd be surprised how many business owners don't know their numbers.

Zahra  

She didn't know and all that so how do we gotten you like a volume you're in a situation where the more you sell the more screwed you are.

Jason  

Yeah you lose more money yeah. 

Zahra  

And again, I'd love in finance I don't have your background in that but it is one of those things where you know, we say that you know when you're doing when we're doing a like discovery call with a client or something. And if they say to me I don't have a marketing budget like well there's something in your notes wrong because you should have a marketing budget because.

Jason  

It's cool in E commerce called revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king. I don't know who say that. But he kind of resonate with me as an E commerce entrepreneur, you need all three and a lot of people only keep track of revenue, they don't keep track of how much profit and they don't even know how much cash on hand they have and then run out of cash.

Zahra  

Yeah, I just read that it's a book called Scaling Up and it's from one of the makers of lean startup at scale up and that's what he says is like if any any prioritizes that based on where you are in your business, I think like zero to 1 million is like cash is king. Once you have cash like that's what you should focus on once you've crossed the million dollar marker then you focus on profitability. Once you put you know and so like he kind of walks you through that but he says that most small businesses are so worried about you know the other things but it's an entity it's cash, you know, is what you need up to the first million.

Jason  

Yeah especially for E commerce company, you have no cash, how the hell am I going to order inventory?

Zahra  

Yeah, oh, absolutely. Oh, this has been tremendous, I've had a great time. Are you down for a little rapid fire questions? 

Jason  

Good, let's do it. 

Zahra  

Yeah. Okay, this is totally fun, there's no wrong answer. We'll just go through super fun. Okay, dream vacation.

Jason  

I want to go to Hawaii again. I haven't visit there for a few years, oh, that's where me and my wife met. We met in Hawaii on Hulu at a bus stop.

Zahra  

Yeah, that's fantastic. I love that favorite kid toy on the market right now. That was easy.

Jason  

LakiKid toy please visit lakikid.com for your favorite sensory toys. 

Zahra  

Love it. 

Jason  

Shameless plug, sorry.

Zahra  

We had to throw in it, it's okay. Hobby or habit you adopted during COVID.

Jason  

A habit, I left my day job.

Zahra  

That was the thing. Yeah so what is the favorite thing about your job.

Jason  

I get to talk to people like you. I love to talk to people that is in a similar vein with like wavelengths and really want to make an impact in other people's lives. And I can tell by talking to you, you also want to make impact on the client's life just like I do with all my clients. I really pour my heart and soul into the clients business and sometimes I do a whole bunch of different stuff for free because I just want to help them out.

Zahra  

That's crazy. Yeah, it's a wonderful thing to see the people that you're supporting, like, take off it just there's nothing like it.

Jason  

Because entrepreneur are the people that can make the most amount of impact in the world. 

Zahra  

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Jason  

Look at the impact that Bill Gates, Elon Musk, those two were maybe like, okay, Steve Jobs, like three people changed the entire world was everything we use nowadays is like three people. What the hell, how many people do we have on Earth, let's see people change the entire outlook of Earth pretty much as a humanity, go for entrepreneurism.

Zahra  

Yeah, I always say I was like, I may not be smart enough to invent the next you know, revolutionary product, but I could sure help them brand it.

Jason  

I love that. I love that. I love that you turn that into a meme and share it on your social media.

Zahra  

That's like, so what's the book that you're reading right now?

Jason  

Let's see, I'm reading another book in the EOS library called Process I believe so EOS have like seven SCA different books and just reading the latest book they just come out called Process so we talk about SOP workflows. That's part of one of the six components in us one of the core component is process.

Zahra  

Is clockwork one of them?

Jason  

No, it's by a different authors. It's not possible I read that too. I know I also read Profit First, I also read Profit First for ecommerce I read about one book a month.

Zahra  

I don't know if you how are you like Profit First but I got to meet Mike McCalla wits at an event that I go to every year. 

Jason  

Yeah, my business running on profit first right now as we speak. 

Zahra  

Yeah, it was great. I think we've pumpkin plan, but he is a tremendous speaker like honestly, really, really insightful.

Jason  

I really want to meet Gio Lukman in person. I have a main crush on him.

Zahra  

Tony Robbins bucket list this year. So that was the plan.

Jason  

The Process is a book I'm reading. 

Zahra  

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so Jason, how do we get a hold of you if we need help marketing our baby niche products or if we want to purchase some toys from your product and even just get more familiar with your brand? How do we find you?

Jason  

So for the E commerce business owner, you can find me just search seller-fuel.com, that's my website. We have a free Facebook group, you can join no charges. And I do live free training once a week on Thursdays, you know talking to people that you yourself will be talking to other you know, experts in different marketing or operations or finance that's related to ecommerce. And for those of you that are parents that is looking for buying like sensory toys, you can find our brand at LakiKid.com is spelled LA ki kid.com.

Zahra  

Well don't forget to support your impact driven brands. I don't like using small brands, small businesses because it's not small doesn't have to be small impact. Because they want to be don't forget to support and if you missed that or you didn't have a pen handy, don't worry. We're going to link it all up in the show notes page. You can just click away and browse away and connect if you found something really valuable in this you know, which I'm sure you did reach out to Jason or myself and let us know what you thought. Let us know what really stuck out for you what was what resonated with you. We'd love to have you back anytime. Jason.

Jason  

You can also send me an email directly at Jason@seller-fuel.com I don't check my email anymore, my executive assistant does but it is important she will for sure let me know and I I'll check it that's perfect.

Zahra  

Awesome well thank you again so much for all of your time and expertise this was a blast, I really got a lot of good info.

Jason  

Same here, the pleasure is all mine, thank you so much.