Sep 8, 2020
On this episode of Quiet Light, we speak with Jon Elder, who had a
seven-figure exit and now guides others on their startup journeys.
We discuss the start of his Amazon career; his new business, Black
Label Advisor; and how he guides his clients to success.
Topics:
- Why he got into an Amazon business.
- How his conservative spending affected his start.
- What he negotiated in the sale of his business.
- Who his current business helps.
- How his methods have changed since he started.
- Why you should consistently innovate.
- Creating experiences for customers.
- Who his typical client is.
Resources: Black Label Advisor Jon@blacklabeladvisor.com Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com
Transcription: Mark: Starting an
online business and an Amazon business, that can be tough, right?
There are a lot of mental challenges in that and especially those
first couple of years; there are a lot of decisions you have to
make in order to be successful. You have to think about how much
inventory should I be buying in that first year, how much should I
be investing, how many new products should I be launching, all
while not seeing a lot of cash in your pocket, because any money
that you bring in, you're typically reinvesting in that business to
be able to help it grow. And so, there are a lot of challenges
through those first few years and I think a lot of people get
drowned down mentally during that time because there are just so
many decisions to try and make as you're growing a business. Joe,
you had Jon on the podcast to talk about that. He went through
this. He went through a successful exit, and now he's training
people on that startup process. How to start up an Amazon business,
how to build brands and make those decisions a bit more clearly,
have the right mindset as well going through this to make sure that
you have some resiliency through that process.
Joe: Yeah, Jon reminds me of us and what our
website says which is a bunch of entrepreneurs with a bunch of
crazy, been there, done that experience. That was a terrible quote
from our own website. I should have had it up and read it.
Mark: It’s something like that.
Joe: It’s something like that; a bunch of people
that have done something.
Mark: We're just a bunch
of guys and Amanda.
Joe: And Amanda, she runs the
show. Jon, he had a mid-seven figure exit and it was a substantial
and life-changing one that will probably change a generation or two
of his family. And he did it through building an Amazon business
the right way with multiple brands in one Seller Account. Not that
that's the only right way. There are many ways to do it. But he's
sharing his direct experience. He's not the typical guru if you
will. And I shouldn't say that because we have many friends who
would be considered gurus that are actually really good at what
they do. But he's been there, he's done it, and now he's going,
okay, look, I can help people. I truly, truly can help people. And
he set up a system and a process to help people understand how to
identify the right product, not just from maximizing value and
return on dollars but upon doing that, you're going to be happy and
satisfied with working with you and your cash flow; how long the
launch process really takes, how often you should launch. He never
used any launch services or anything like that. There are a lot of
steps that he's set up and he goes through and he's working with
people one on one. And I thought it would be beneficial to have him
on the podcast because he does have a crazy amount of done there
and done that experience.
Joe: Hey, folks, Joe
Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us.
Today we've got somebody that had an incredible exit, one in the
mid-seven figure range. Jon Elder ran an Amazon business with
multiple brands. Jon, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast.
Jon: Yeah, thanks for having me, Joe.
Joe: That was a short but powerful introduction if
I do say so myself. We don't read fancy intros here. Jon, can you
give the audience listening a little bit of background on yourself
so they understand who you are and why you're here?
Jon: Yeah, of course. My story is kind of similar
to a lot of people in the sense of I wanted to get more out of life
and there is always an entrepreneurial spirit in me. And so, 2014
is when I started on Amazon and I was also working on a corker
construction job and I honestly thought I was going to be in that
type of career the rest of my life. I went to college for
Construction Management and so it's a pretty high profile, very
successful career. But the scaling of salaries is driving me a
little crazy and so I wasn't okay with just getting the 5%,
switching companies maybe down the line. So, I got into the Amazon
world because I thought it was a really great opportunity. At the
same time, I’m really conservative so I didn't go in with a large
amount of capital. I started with roughly $5,000 and I got my feet
wet in the golfing category. Some of that is due to just my general
interest in sports and it was a product that there weren't a lot of
competitors in that category. It was something I was interested in
and something that I thought I could innovate a little bit in that
category and become the leader. And within a year I actually did
become the leader. I became the number one seller for that specific
product.
Joe: And you have a job the whole time,
Jon, or did you quit?
Jon: Yeah, actually I worked
full time until 2016.
Joe: Excellent. Okay, that’s
good to hear.
Jon: Yeah.
Joe:
That's what I like to hear. It's a less risky path for people.
Jon: Yeah, I'm married, I have a son and so their
needs actually come first. I had to make sure that I wasn't putting
my family in a bad financial position. So, yeah, I definitely
worked with factories in eight. I spent a lot of hours. My wife was
very sacrificial, allowing me to spend all that extra time. We used
to have conversations about this that we’re building a business in
the future and there’s some sacrifice that has to be made for that.
And that’s just part of life. Anyone who says that it’s easy and it
doesn’t take that much time is a complete lie. It’s a lot of work
and very, very stressful but it definitely paid off.
Joe: Yeah, you’ve got five brands over that time
period as well, not that just one?
Jon: Right and
part of that story is just pursuing products that I had an interest
in. And not all the brands were successful. Some of the brands were
definitely not successful but thankfully the vast majority of my
brands took off and became leaders in their respective categories.
Joe: Okay, so just to review and just to
understand fully who you are, what you've done, because we're going
to talk about some of the nitty-gritty here. But in the last year
that you sold the business, you did about six and a half million in
revenue. You ran the business side by side with being a new dad and
a full-time job for a couple of years before you exited. You had
five brands and ultimately you sold for mid-seven figures. We're
not going to give away the detail here, but an amount that is a
life-changing figure that would have taken you 20 years in your
construction business to earn probably maybe even more, right?
Jon: Oh, yeah.
Joe: Over the over
the five years or so that you were running the Amazon business, I
always love asking this question and it's a tough one because you
haven't done the math yet but did you take and make more money as
you were running the business; take more cash out of the business
for you and your family during that five-year period, or did you
get more when you sold the business?
Jon: Oh, I
definitely got more when I saw the business. One of the driving
factors behind the success of my business was the vast majority of
the money; any profits that we got were reinvested. That helped us
launch products faster. It helped us launch new variations faster
and so that allowed us to grow the business very, very quickly.
Joe: You must have taken something out for
yourself, though, I would assume.
Jon: Oh, yeah,
definitely.
Joe: Just enough to live off of, was
your wife working?
Jon: No, my wife is a
stay-at-home mom. In 2016 when I went full time with Amazon, the
goal was to pay myself a salary that mimics my salary at my job and
then as the business grew to continue to scale that up from there.
And of course, at Christmas time because of the sales and the
profits there, doing things like small bonuses and things like
that. Yeah, the money that I paid myself definitely increased over
time. In the first two years, I paid myself very little just
because I was obsessed with growing the business. And honestly,
from the very beginning of starting the business, I had a number in
mind for my exit someday. A lot of people will say they have vision
boards mine was a very specific number. It was in the multiple
seven figures and everything I did in the business was geared
towards that end goal. And so that's everything from having all my
brands under one seller account, all my bookkeeping, just keeping
everything clean, strong tax records.
Joe:
Preaching to the choir, I love that. I love all of it. That's
great. It's a clean and easy deal. Did that enable you; was your
buyer and SBA buyer or were they a cash buyer?
Jon: He was an SBA buyer and the package deal for
that was kind of interesting. Roughly 75% was upfront cash and then
the rest was split between the seller note over five years and then
an earn-out in perpetuity. And so that actually wasn't originally
in the contract and with my lawyer at my side, we negotiated that
to be perpetuity so I'll get the money eventually.
Joe: Wow, that's fantastic. That part of it was
probably outside the SBA guidelines though, yes?
Jon: That's completely outside the contract.
Joe: Good, good, good. Understood. Okay, so you
learned an awful lot, you had five brands, some were successes,
some were failures along the way, and you’re now helping other
people as well. What are some of the basic tips that you would give
somebody if they're just starting out? So this podcast, even though
you had a multiple seven-figure exit, even though you've operated
five brands, you're really focused on helping people that are just
starting out more than anything else. What are some of the basic
things that somebody should look for if they're, let's say, either
starting out or if they're buying a small Amazon business, that
might be a couple of hundred thousand dollars in total value?
Jon: So it sounds cliché but follow your passion.
That's something that I tell my clients and friends and family who
are interested in starting an Amazon business. Do something that
you're generally interested in. And it doesn't have to be your
ultimate passion. For example, golfing was never the ultimate
sport. It was just a general interest in it. But go into something
that you have some sort of interest in because at some point you
will have hurdles and you will have issues with your business. So,
for example, you might have to spend a couple of hours on a Friday
night talking with one of your factories about resolving quality
issues on a previous purchase order. You got to be invested in that
product and if it's not a product that you're interested in, for
example, I would never go into women's makeup because I have zero
interest in it. I just don't know if I would be totally in it once
I hit those bumps in the road.
Joe: Yeah, and I've
heard people say just the opposite, except for that part of the
bumps in the road. So you could be product agnostic, but it helps,
it's not an absolute requirement, it helps, as you're saying, to
have some passion about the product. If you're going to end up on a
call at 11 o'clock on a Friday night with a manufacturer on the
other side of the world to work out some kinks in the detail, if
you're not passionate about it, if you're not interested, if you
hate it, you’d probably think about doing something else.
Jon: Yeah, and I think along this subject too it's
even deeper than that. I mean, so often, you’re going to have other
competitors for your product. There is so much innovation and
improvement in your product that takes place over time. Personally,
I wouldn't want to be looking at makeup and spending hours and
hours and hours trying to get a better formula because I just don't
care about it. One of my other product lines was an outdoor kid's
product. The mission behind that brand was actually to encourage
kids to rediscover the great outdoors. So many kids are on tech now
and they spend hours and hours inside on the Switch and on iPads
that; and this is how I parent as a dad, too is I encourage my son
to go spend hours outside.
Joe: How old is your
son?
Jon: He's five.
Joe: Okay,
wait until they're teenagers. It gets even worse, man. It gets even
worse. They’re playing with friends all the time it’s just online I
tell you. So, yeah, have some passion about what you do. There's no
question about it. You started with 5,000 bucks. Are you helping
people that haven't even picked a product yet or those that have a
product idea and has sourced it and are really just trying to
figure out how to how to get some traffic on?
Jon:
Yeah, obviously it depends. Some of my clients definitely have
product ideas and they're already innovating and they want to go
into a category where it's going to be truly unique and different.
And then others are still in the brainstorming stage. My job is to
just advise and help them along the journey all the way through
sourcing and getting on to Amazon and launching. But there is so
much that goes into the product research phase, and that's what I
tell people, is just expect to spend hours and hours researching
and researching because this is your money you're talking about.
And some people take out loans. This is real stuff. You need to be
100% sure that you're in it for the long haul with your product.
So, it comes down to researching the estimated revenues for that
product. The thing that made me the most successful was innovating
products that had some negative reviews. So I would harness all
those reviews and fix all the problems.
Joe: How
do you do that with the manufacturer on the other side of the
world?
Jon: It's pretty incredible. I actually
never visited any of my factories. I had four factories and it was
all through phone calls, Skype, and emails.
Joe:
And it worked, not a problem. So are you working with a product
innovation firm that's doing industrial design work for you or are
you just sketching it out yourself and asking for innovations from
the manufacturer?
Jon: No, actually, the
innovations were things that; again, because I was in product
categories that I had a deep interest in, I was able to innovate
myself.
Joe: And do you then just put a drawing in
front of that manufacturer and say can you do this?
Jon: Exactly. Yeah, sketches are really useful,
and then something that blew me away was how intellectual or
sophisticated the Chinese factories were. They actually had 3D
modeling engineering guys in-house. And I worked with some big
boys. The factory for the golfing product that I sold, they
actually supplied some products for the PGA Tour. One of the keys
to my success was working with factories that were not starting out
their journey as a factory. These were very established factories
that sold products to Walmart and brick and mortar companies.
Joe: Yeah. For those listening one of the
additional options is Gembah,
www.Gembah.com. We had Zach on the
podcast here. It's a product innovation company, its industrial
designers that can do that. If you're not good at drawing and
innovating, they can do that work for you so that you present a
more professional look to the manufacturer. Okay, so advise number
one, spend a lot of time on deciding what product and product
categories you’re going to go into because this is where you're
going to be spending all of your money in the future years, yes?
Jon: 100%, and all your time.
Joe: All right, let's just say we picked a great
product. What's next? I mean, is it simple photography, put the
listing up, look at basic stuff in terms of recommendations from
Amazon? Are you using a launch service like Viral Launch or are you
using some other launch service or a combination of different
things?
Jon: Yeah, for launching, I can get into
that in a second. So, the next step that worked really well for me
was doing a ton of screening with the factories. And then what I
would do is I would do three final samples and we're dealing with
weeks and weeks of communications here. Like this is a long process
to make sure that my factory is the best of the best. So I would
test the factories over email and I would ask oddball questions. I
would also come across as the VP of Logistics or the VP of Product
Innovation. So I would definitely present myself as an image of a
large corporation. They never thought that I was a mom and pop shop
in the States. But getting three samples from three strong
factories was really successful for me.
Joe: Three
samples from each or one sample from each?
Jon:
Sorry, one sample from each factory. And then I would stress-test
those products, use them, inspect them, see how they feel in my
hand. I would do all those types of things. I ask friends and
family what they thought of the products. That was a very common
process. And then I ended up after taking in all that data,
deciding on my final factory.
Joe: This may be a
basic question, but I assume you're paying for the sample and
paying to have it shipped, right? They’re not sending free samples
and free shipping.
Jon: Correct.
Joe: So you're going to spend several hundred to a
thousand dollars in just reviewing product samples I would assume,
depending upon product cost of course?
Jon: I
would say a couple of hundred.
Joe: Expected, and
that's an incredible investment that you have to make, right? You
can't just look at some stuff and get one sample and off you go.
Jon: Yeah, so it's common to see that everywhere
right now. It's like you can skip all those steps and you don't
need to worry about that. There is some time and money upfront that
is going to save your butt long term. 100%.
Joe:
So then if you've got the product samples; let's say you want to
innovate on all three, let’s say they’re pretty close but you want
a thicker grip on a handle or something like that, are you asking
the manufacturers all three just to see how they respond and react
and work with you in terms of innovation?
Jon:
100% and part of that is also testing how flexible they are as a
factory and how easy they are to work with.
Joe:
Okay.
Jon: If they put up a big fight and complain
about things, that's going to be a red flag for me. In the
factories that I ended up working with, the answer was always yes.
Their response was yes, we can do that. Yes, we want your business.
Yes, yes, yes. Those are the guys that I ended up working with. The
ones who caused issues for me and said, no, we can't do that,
that's going to cost $5,000, I just got rid of those guys off the
bat.
Joe: All right, so what's next? You've tested
three manufacturers. You chose a product, you innovated the
product, and you’re at the point where you've got the final
decision on what you're going to invest your money in. What's next
after that?
Jon: So at that point, you have your
final sample, and hopefully you have that in hand, typically
production, depending on how many units. My test unit order was
always 250 units, sometimes 500 units. So what I would do is while
production is happening, whether that's two weeks or four weeks, I
would have my final sample sent to a professional photography firm.
In the very beginning, I actually took pictures myself and had a
designer kind of edit my pictures and pump up the colors a little
bit. But later down the road, when I was launching product after
product, I'd send the products to a professional photography firm
and have them do the enhanced brand content just to tie in the
branding for my product. Because in the beginning, I sold a lot of
random products, and then as time went on and I got more educated
on it, I realized I need to be establishing my brand. I need people
to come to Amazon for that specific golfing product. I want them to
see my name and think quality and fantastic customer service.
That's what I wanted them to remember about me. And so part of that
is beautiful packaging, part of that is beautiful enhanced brand
content. I had videos as my seventh picture on the listing.
Joe: I was just going to ask that. How many of
your listings had videos on them, all of them?
Jon: The two largest brands had videos and that
was kind of like a cost decision because the videos that I went
with were extremely high production videos. And not everyone has to
do fancy videos. The reason why we justified that was those brands
were very, very large. We're talking big revenue numbers so it was
something that I felt was needed.
Joe: You didn't
do that out of the gate on that first golfing product I assume,
right? Plus, it was 2014. It probably wasn't an option for you.
Jon: No. I don't remember the year that they
allowed videos on the listing. I think it was maybe starting to
happen in 2017-ish but yeah, in the very beginning you were locked
out of everything. You had a paragraph for your description; you
had bullet points, and then seven pictures. That was it.
Joe: Yeah. Okay, so now you've ordered products,
you ordered 250 units, spent a couple of hundred bucks on samples,
you got another final sample you sent off to a photographer. It
doesn't sound like you've got a whole lot of money left if you're
starting out with five grand. I guess it depends on how much
product cost is.
Jon: That initial investment can
range drastically. My first product in the golfing category, I
sourced it for a dollar a unit.
Joe: Well, that
makes a difference, that it explains it right there.
Jon: Yeah, exactly, it makes a huge difference.
And I did that on purpose just because I'm so financially
conservative that I wanted to learn the logistics process of Amazon
and if I did screw something up along the way, whether that was
customs or something at Amazon, I wanted that capital invested a
tad small.
Joe: And if you were in a competitive
space that would have meant the barriers to entry in terms of cost
are pretty low. A year later you said you wound up with the top
listing, but did you start to see competitors come in pretty
rapidly after that?
Jon: Oh, yeah, 100%. And I
think what drives that is people see a new seller take over that
category and then they see all the revenue go to me and then they
think, oh shoot, I'm going to mimic him and I'm going to come in
and take some of the revenue. And that's part of life is you have
to; and when I mentioned innovation, you have to be constantly
innovating your products. So I ended up adding a special device to
my golfing product that actually had a patent for it. No one else
could do that but that was kind of like an additional tweak I did
for the products that made my listing unique and different from all
the other listings. That's just the harsh reality of Amazon is once
you become a category leader, you will have a lot of other people
come in and mimic you.
Joe: And the way to fight
that is to innovate.
Jon: Innovate, be the best,
and when you think your pictures are good just get even better
pictures.
Joe: Yeah, I hear you. All right, so now
we've got the product. You've ordered it. You are starting to have
your photos done. What's next? I had mentioned launches and systems
and things of that nature, where are you helping your clients and
advising them to go from there?
Jon: I'm different
in the world of Amazon because most of my products; actually all
the products were done organically and so my strategy is a little
slower than other sellers.
Joe: Let's define what
you mean there organically.
Jon: So for example,
never using services like Viral Launch or other services where
you're paying discounted rates or using websites to launch your
products.
Joe: You simply put the listings up on
Amazon use Amazon Sponsored Ads and off you went?
Jon: It's a little more than that.
Joe: It always is. I'd like to simplify things and
dumb it down but I know it's a lot more complicated than that,
yeah. But no launch services, nothing like that?
Jon: Right and so what was really beneficial was
really actually humorous autoresponder emails. So we use a service
called Feedback that was really, really successful. Alongside that
doing a little bit of a giveaway through the early reviewer program
and then just pumping PPC, to be honest with you. And so typically
we do like slightly reduced cost for the products to be priced a
little lower; nothing too drastic because that can mess up your
Lightning Deals down the road. So we would reduce it a little bit
and just funnel a ton of money into PPC. And then we had an
autoresponder series on average two to three emails.
Joe: So explain the autoresponder part because you
don't have control of the customer. This is after they buy the
product? I’m confused on the autoresponder part.
Jon: This is right after someone buys the product.
So one email goes out three days after they receive the product and
then another one goes out seven days and another one goes out 14
days. And those are all tweets specifically to be kind of funny. So
many people open up emails and to be honest with you, most people
don't open their emails very often. So having a really funny title
for the email and then the actual body of the email being short and
sweet and using a joke or something about the product was really,
really helpful.
Joe: I got you. So, you're not
breaking even upfront, I assume, because you're spending a lot of
money on Pay-Per-Click.
Jon: No, I’m definitely in
the red when I first started. Pretty much all my product launches
started in the red.
Joe: How long are they in the
red for?
Jon: Probably a minimum of six months
because I'm doing it organically.
Joe: So, how
many products are you launching in the first year; two or are you
going after more?
Jon: The first year was two
products actually.
Joe: So, if somebody is coming
to you with a little bit bigger of a budget and let's say they've
got 20 grand and they're really needing your guidance to get
launched and they've got an idea of the product. Are we still
looking at losing money or breaking even for the first six months,
eventually breaking and making a little bit?
Jon:
That is so dependent on the category that you're in. If you go into
a category where you're competing with guys that have 500 reviews
or a thousand reviews; let's say the top 10 sellers have a thousand
reviews, it's going to take some time and you're going to have to
burn through some cash. And the reason why is PPC gets more
expensive every single day. That's just the reality of it. And
everyone is competing for those keywords. And so, for example, with
my products, I always outbid my competitors for the top search
volume keywords, and the reason why is that that drove incredible
sales to my listing. And PPC was actually the highest cost in terms
of expenses for my business.
Joe: Do you know what
it was overall as a percentage of your revenue?
Jon: Oh, man.
Joe: I'm typically
seeing anywhere between 10 and 20%.
Jon: Yeah, I
want to say was more like 25%.
Joe: Okay.
Jon: If we're dealing with the PPC costs alone my
CPA would just look at me and be like, man, you guys are spending a
lot of money on PPC. But that's just the reality of the business.
Joe: But your CPA still has a day job? You get to
do whatever the hell you want at this point in your life, right?
Jon: Yes sir.
Joe: Then who is
right, you or the CPA? I think you were.
Jon:
Those expenses look kind of scary, but when you're looking at the
percentage of revenue, it becomes a little less scary.
Joe: Yeah. Now do all; I know the answer to this,
but not all product launches are going to take six months to start
to get traction and breakeven, did you have any in your five-year
stretch where you would see some just home runs out of the gate or
get some profitability within the first one to two months?
Jon: The kid’s product took off very fast and that
was a very organic launch. And the reason why was there were maybe
two or three sellers for that product and they had an inferior
quality problem. So if you go look at the reviews, the actual liner
of the material for the toy would just deteriorate like within a
month under the sun. And so we innovated and we got the best liner
possible, got UV-resistant liner and improved the product
drastically and that took off with beautiful pictures. We actually
hired some models; some family members actually took pictures with
the product and just focused on quality for that product. People
bought it and I realized, wow, this is like; it showed up in the
reviews, your product is as lasting a long, long time. And that
became very successful, very quick.
Joe: And it
was all from looking at other listings and the negative reviews
that those had and innovating and improving the product?
Jon: Correct.
Joe: Yeah, pretty
cool. How hard is it, though, to find a category where there are
only two or three sellers? It seems like an impossible task these
days, is it not?
Jon: So Amazon is definitely;
there's a lot more competition now. I think the secret's out about
FBA.
Joe: It might be, yeah.
Jon:
It's definitely harder now. I think that most categories are going
to have far more than two to three sellers and so what I always
recommend is even if there's seven sellers, you can break into
those market segments as long as you're not dealing with sellers
that have like a thousand reviews. If seven of them have 75 reviews
or maybe 200 reviews, that's something that you can definitely go
into and compete with. But there is always going to be a hole in
the market. There's always going to be a chance to innovate and do
something and spend the time to make the best product possible that
lots of other people aren’t going to do. And one example was
actually the leather goods category that I was in. It was
specifically for men. We drilled down all the way into the product
packaging. A lot of people don't do that. They would get their
leather goods products and they'd open it up from the box and it's
in a polybag, right? That's not an experience.
Joe: Right.
Jon: So our idea was
let's make it an experience for this person to open it up and sell
everything down to the custom packaging for the box down to a
branded tissue with branded tape. So whenever the person opened
this product up, they knew that they were receiving a high end,
high-quality product that was different from everyone else. So
that's just like; it sounds kind of silly, but no one spends time
with packaging and what does it feel like when you open up that
product at home?
Joe: It’s because it's not sexy.
They spend time on marketing and topline revenues and talk about it
with their friends because it's sexy. But packaging and good
bookkeeping and good branding and good photos and videos and the
profit is actually what puts you in the best position possible,
which is doing whatever you want at this point in your life.
Jon: Yeah, definitely. What's interesting about
that is the customers would actually talk about all the
nitty-gritty details that I spent time on. That would come up as
content and some of those reviews would be the top-rated reviews.
Someone left a review on one of the leather goods products and it
was this detailed long review with pictures and they went out of
their way to be like, I've never opened a product from Amazon and
the packaging was just stunning. So I was like, yes, it worked. And
so other customers who are on Amazon obviously see the top-rated
reviews and see that type of content and it definitely helps and it
soon became a leader in that category.
Joe: Cool.
Jon, we're a little short on time, but I wanted to ask you, what
are some of the biggest challenges you think folks are going to
face?
Jon: I think the biggest challenge is
definitely just not getting swept up in sexy products. I've seen
this online so much, just this huge push for going into
supplements, for example. I tell my clients, do not do supplements.
Don't go into that category. Don't do it. Don't do products that go
on people's skin. Don't go into products where you're ingesting
things. I'm always recommending kind of simpler products that are
very, very low risk. And don't go into knives; things where people
can get injured. So, just focusing on a product that you're
interested in and it's low risk. And that's always tough because
you see the revenues that other sexy products are bringing in and
people get swept up in that.
Joe: This is one of
the first times I wish I just hadn’t asked that question because I
sold; my own company was a digestive wellness supplement company.
I've got a good friend that's selling his makeup business for like
40 million dollars. We have, as a company supplement companies that
are under contract for anywhere from two to 20 million dollars. And
I think when they're when they're done right, they're done right.
Jon: Exactly, and I would never want to give the
impression that it's not possible. It's just my conservative nature
kind of stays away from those types of product lines. And you have
to be you definitely have to be a more sophisticated seller to…
Joe: These guys are. These guys are all very, very
smart, very good at what they do, have SOPs that’ll pass on to the
owners of the business, as did mine. And it's competitive, right?
It's that they are low barriers to entry cost-wise.
Jon: Extremely, you have to have big capital and
that's one of the barriers for sure.
Joe: Yeah.
Well, I think it is a nice; it's a low barrier to entry to buy into
the product category, but then you've got to rank and that's where
the additional capital and expertise goes. It’s very, very
challenging. All right, so how do people reach out to you? I see
its
www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com,
but ideally, let's talk about who your typical client would be and
how they reach out to you.
Jon: Yeah. So the
easiest way to reach out is to go to my website,
www.BlackLabelAdvisor.com or
you can email me
Jon@BlackLabelAdvisor.com.
My passion is to help other people replicate my story. So many
people I talk to you are they'll see my story and they'll say, oh
my gosh, that's a dream, you know? And I used to think it was a
dream too. And when I closed on the sale of the business, it was a
dream come true to see the money come through. It was an
unbelievable feeling that you just never think it's ever going to
happen. I have recommendations and systems and third party
companies I highly recommend. Along the way, I made mistakes myself
and my passion is to help people avoid those mistakes and grow
their business faster just because of all the experience I have and
just help them along the journey with the end goal of selling
someday.
Joe: Yeah, I like it, folks. Jon is not
somebody who can't so he teaches. He actually did it. He built an
Amazon business with five brands, sold for a multiple seven
figures, and now he's helping them. And that's what we do at Quiet
Light, we help first. We want to help you succeed. Strangely
enough, it actually helps us in the long run too, right? Somebody
listening in the audience hire somebody like John who has real-life
experience to give real-life advice to help them succeed in their
online business. That person will come around at Quiet Light
someday as well. So with that look around, who can you help? Help
out your neighbor, help your friend that's in the online space and
keep helping, it’ll come back around too in time.
Jon: Definitely.
Joe: Jon, I
appreciate your time. BlackLabelAdvisor.com folks, reach out and
connect with Jon if you need some help to help get your Amazon
business off the ground.
Jon: Awesome. Thanks,
Joe.