319 : Kellon Ambrose – Gaining the slight edge can make the difference in your Amazon business
Again I love when someone finds their way selling in this ever expanding ecommerce world. Kellon combines Dropshipping on Amazon (Which is changing!) and dropshipping on Shopify. He is having real success off of all channels and is figuring out what we all need to do.
Mentioned:
Everyday is a Saturday Podcast
Sponsors
Gaye’s Million Dollar Arbitrage List
Transcript: (note- this is a new tool I am trying out so it is not perfect- it does seem to be getting better)
Stephen: [00:00:00] I’m excited to talk about my sponsors today, Gaye Lisbey’s million dollar arbitrage group. Amazing, amazing group. This is a teacher. This is Gaye, she was a teacher. She is a teacher. Still. You need to learn. This is the type of environment you want to be in because she’s going to help you understand why, and I think that’s the hardest part of this business is understanding why. Why is the red one popular when the green one isn’t? Well, there’s usually a reason and what gay does is probably parse that better than anybody and she’ll explain the reasons for those things. I think that’s really powerful. Yes, she puts out a list. You’re going to get a good use of that list if you get in the group. Now here’s the deal. The group isn’t always open, right? So you get on the waiting list and you can join the waiting list through my link.
Stephen: [00:00:46] Doesn’t cost anything to get on a waiting list and if you like her service, which I find that most people do that, that’s why there’s not so many openings. Um, you’ll be with her for a long time. And so it’s amazing freedom.com. She’s part of Andy Slam. It’s group amazing freedom.com. Forward slash momentum. And you’re going to get in the waiting list. That’s all I can get you on right now. You can use my name and see if that gets you anywhere. But what I like about in the uh, what I like about what they teach in that group or the things that are going on, you know, the current things. I’ve seen a lot of stuff going on about stores going out of business. Well here’s where an opportunity is, here’s why you want to do this. Hey, be cautious about this, you know, with toys r US coming out, you’ve got to think about this and that’s the learning that you need to do.
Stephen: [00:01:30] And Gay is better than anybody else I’ve seen. So I’m amazing. Freedom Dot com. Forward slash momentum will get you to the waiting list. Then hopefully I can get you in the group and then you’re going to see me in there and we can chat anytime you’re ready. Karen lockers, group solutions, the number for ecommerce solutions, four ecommerce.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you 50 bucks. Karen’s our account manager. We recommend her to everyone because she’s done so well for us. I mean that’s quite frankly the reason we’ve been paying her for last few years, but she’s become an important part of our team. Her and her team are so involved in our account. I just see the emails coming back and forth, hey, we did this for you. I just saw two listings today. I’m like, wait a second. Why did they show up?
Stephen: [00:02:09] I did put any listings up. They got a. They got a set off to the side by Amazon and they reactivate them for me. You know what I mean? That’s the stuff that just happens when you have a strong team and I can’t recommend Karen enough if you use my code. Momentum. Karen pays me. I don’t want to hide that. Of course we all know that, but you’re going to say $50 and it’s a great opportunity to really, really build out your team with somebody you can trust. That’s why I recommend them. So solutions four ecommerce solutions, the number four e-commerce dot com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50. Oh, and by the way, she’s going to do an inventory health report. Why is that important? Well, guess what fees are going up. Is your inventory health number declining like ours is?
Stephen: [00:02:57] Well, here’s why and what they can do. What I like is I get a spreadsheet from them and it says, Hey, here’s a bunch of inventory. Here’s what we recommend. And I’m like, Yep, read refund. I mean a delete a return to us, blah blah, blah, whatever it is and it’s or destroy and it just happens. That’s what I like. The other thing that I have Karen helped me with a lot is creating new listings. We do a lot of the research ourselves. We upload our images and then boom, magically the listing goes live and I don’t have to worry about it. Those are the services that Karen offers. CanNot recommend her enough solutions. Four ecommerce.com forward slash momentum. Save 50 bucks. Use My code. You save $50 a month every single month and it’s a great service. Plus you get that free inventory health report. I think it’s a really powerful way, so I can’t.
Stephen: [00:03:45] I’m so excited how many people have been joining her because I see it and I’m excited because the messages I get from people saying, hey, this is great. I finally feel like I can focus on something else because Karen and her team are watching this for me and I highly recommend her. Next up is scale a seller lambs and scope and we’ll set it wrong. It’s, it’s amazing. I mean, it really is amazing when you sit back and think about, hey, I want to get this product up and it similar to this product and that’s, that product does well. Well therefore, if that product does well, they have the right keywords, they’ve chosen things correctly, so guess what? You scope and you could see all that stuff and that’s what the most powerful thing in the world is to copy somebody who’s done it right.
Stephen: [00:04:28] That’s what you want to. You want to take advantage of that, right? I mean it’s, it’s fair to see and so therefore you can take and apply it to your listing and immediately get that same benefit. That’s what scope does for me. Sellerlabs.com, forward slash momentum. It’s going to save you $50 on the service. Oh, by the way, it’s free to try. So sign up, try it and say, oh, this is how it’s done. Boom. And then you’re going to. The light’s going to go on and you’re going to be like, man, I can get my products out there. I just can’t wait. Can’t wait. So are labs.com forward slash momentum? The other day I bought another domain. Yes, I bought it the other domain. It’s almost like A. I’m admitting guilt, but it’s because I had an idea and it was something that was a pretty good idea I think is going to go pretty far.
Stephen: [00:05:18] And so what do I do? I go to try Godaddy.com forward slash momentum and save 30 percent. So domains aren’t very expensive. You get a few services, it adds up a little bit and I usually buy three years. I usually by privacy, by the way, I recommend that to buy that, you know, it’s not that much money, but when you can save 30 percent it makes it that much sweeter and it makes it easier when you’re buying domains and especially if you buy a bunch of domains. I am a domain collector and so I do tend to do that, but that 30 percent makes it a lot easier and I use godaddy because what I like is I can pop in and address, I’m thinking and it’ll say, nope, nope, could try this version or try this extension and then boom, there it is. Hey, you better hurry before it goes away and the right, you know, and so try Godaddy.com, forward slash momentum save 30 percent.
Stephen: [00:06:07] Also want to mention about grasshopper. Who was that? Just talking to somebody the other day and they were like, Oh yeah, use this company called grasshopper. I’m like, Dude, did you buy it through my link and save 30 percent? Hello? No, they missed that. So save 30 percent. It’s try grasshopper.com. Forward slash momentum. No surprise there, but you’re going to save 30 percent and what the real cool part about that is they’re using it for their private label business and it gives them virtually a second phone on their current phone without having to get another number. They can make up a vanity number. They don’t have to go and do all the grief and sign loan contracts. Pretty easy stuff, and so if you’re creating a brand that you want to identify, you want to look professional, you want to look like a real company. Grasshopper is a great tool. It’s an app you put on your existing phone and boom, you now have a customer service to. You now have a sales department. You’d have a manufacturing division. You could forward it to somebody else. You can have it go to different voicemails, different departments, and it’s all included. So try grasshopper.com, forward slash momentum. Save 30 percent.
Cool voice guy: [00:07:13] Welcome to the ecommerce moment. Didn’t bond gas. Will we focus on the people, the products, and the process of ecommerce selling today. Here’s your host, Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:07:27] Welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. This is episode 300 and Nineteen Kellen ambrose. I’d love Kellen story and yeah, I get a little squishy in it because I think the way he is designed his business for his life had hit this current time is working for him. He would tell you it’s not perfect. He still trying to improve it. Um, however he’s got time to improve it. He’s got time to work on it. Why? Because it’s intentional with the rest of it. And so that sounds so stupid, right? It’s like, but you know, I think about it in my warehouse. I’ve got so many projects going that I can’t get anything else done. I can’t add any more responsibility. But when you’re intentional about the rest of that stuff and you say, nope, nope, nope, I’m not going to do this. It frees up that time.
Stephen: [00:08:11] And I think Kevin’s a really good example of somebody who’s done that has figured out all the along the things that he’s tried, all the stuff that we’re doing and said, nope, nope, nope, nope. Don’t want to do that. Don’t want to. Yes, I want to do this. And then really optimizes that so then he can now work on this other thing and we get a, you know, I confuse a few things in the middle. He sets me straight, but we get to some, some really good advice at the end, some really good. I’m not heard this phrase or this book called the slight edge and I, the more I listened to that in my mind, I’m saying to myself, you’re right. It really is a slight edge, right? Good degrade. I have that sitting on my shelf with the difference between good and great is like 10 percent, right?
Stephen: [00:08:50] The slight edge is even less than that, but that slight edge is enough of an advantage over time. And this continuous improvement, that Cohen speaks up to small improvements every single day, built this snowball over time. Very, very strong. Um, and again, I apologize for confounding a few things, but I think we get to a really good place. Let’s get into the podcast. Alright, welcome back to the ECOMMERCE momentum podcast. Very excited about today’s guest because I think there’s some lessons here for us to learn. I, again, I think you know, what you want to do, where you want to go is up to you. Right. And you can look at others and say, Oh, I have envy, but then again, that’s not me and that’s where I get to a lot where I like, oh man, he’s doing some cool stuff, but I know I’m not an outlier. There he is, therefore I can or she is right. In this circumstance though, I think there’s somebody who’s starting to figure things out and he’s figuring out his lane and his figured out probably the optimal way to approach it. And that’s what interests me. Kellen ambrose welcomed. Kellen.
Kellon: [00:09:49] Thanks Stephen. Thanks for having me.
Stephen: [00:09:51] I think that’s a fair statement. Would you agree with that you’re kind of optimized this ecommerce business for you so you can get to where you want to go. Is that fair?
Kellon: [00:10:04] Yeah, definitely. I mean, um, I prefer the, uh, um, you know, the drop shipping model, um, you know, I know we were talking about before the call, it’s kind of some people, it has this negative stigma I think, um, sometimes, but, um, it’s really, uh, it can be a legitimate business, um, you know, when you work with manufacturers directly and you’re drop shipping just like a target would or Walmart, um, you know, you have that same type of relationships and um, yeah, just, I like having the location independence. Um, so I don’t have to, you know, I could have a warehouse and have, um, you know, three employees, four employees and a forklift and you know, all that stuff, but that doesn’t interest me. I like being able to run my business from wherever I am. Um, that’s one of the greatest things that I, that the freedom that it gives me is what I really like about it.
Stephen: [00:10:57] I think, uh, I think now, right? I think, hey, we’re all mature to it now. Right? In the past we didn’t understand it were like, wait, somebody’s selling my product over on Ebay and from Amazon and we’re like, wait, who is that? But wait, they’re selling it at a higher price. How’s that? How’s that work? How, how could they, they must not sell any right and build it right. And so we get. I think we’re all mature enough now. We’ve all seen in enough for quite a long time, so special last several years with the software as it gets more sophisticated, there’s more and more of that. And what I keep seeing for most people is, look, they’re buying your product and selling it for you at the price you want. Smile, take their money and move on. Right? As long as they’re not hurting the brand, it’s not like you’re saying, you know, you’re not undercutting, undercutting the brand for sure.
Stephen: [00:11:37] Right. And so, so all that stuff aside. The other thing though is as fees continue to go up, I was just having this conversation with Andy the other day, you know, we’ve got pretty low cost warehousing and we, we are looking for one or two more private label people to come into our warehouse. And so the thing that we keep thinking about is offering seller fulfilled prime because the only thing Amazon’s going to do is 100 percent raised their fees, right? They have to, their storage space is going to get more costly as their employees, as you suggested with employees and forklifts and insurance and warehousing that costs goes up. Guess what? They’re going to pass it along. And so the drop shipping model today is more attractive, especially as you’re trying. So let’s say you sell a look. Um, what am I looking at my desk?
Stephen: [00:12:24] I’ll find something. Pair of scissors, right? And do you want to add or you sell 20 different pairs of scissors? You want to add tape? Well, you might not want to carry tape, but your customers want scissors and tape so you can drop ship that tape along with your scissors on your. And your own site, your catalog, you’ve now filled in something you you’ve given a better experience to your customers is, even though I’m saying I think this is a different world today, I think it’s really changed within the last year as Amazon has matured and said, wait a second, we’re not warehouses were fulfillment companies there. I mean, isn’t it kind of the same thing? I mean it really is. I’m sorry, can you say that one more time? The whole thing or just that last bit, but your point that you’re trying to get across.
Stephen: [00:13:11] My point there is, is that it’s much more acceptable. It really has to be acceptable to fill out your catalog. Right? So if you’re doing your own website, you need to have products that you want people to stay on your site and buy your stuff. Well you can’t physically carry all the products, so therefore you fill in your catalog from other people and drop shipping is a good technique. Again, because Amazon is going to charge so much for storage. It’s not that dissimilar anymore. That’s kind of what I was trying to say. No. Yeah, there’s definitely more and more people coming on the drop shipping scene I would say. And um, you know, I guess we’re going to get into this later, but um, you know, with the shopify model, um, you know, it’s, it’s your own site, so everything you have to drive your own traffic. Um, and there’s a lot more. Um, I’m sorry, I’m kind of messing up.
Stephen: [00:14:04] No, no, no. I get it. I said a lot and I apologize for saying so much. Everybody’s doing steep. Shut up and let them talk. But here’s the deal. I just want to, I want to drop the stigma because I see more and more people adding shopify into supplement their product, their, their current products. So I make a board game. I know somebody who made a board game and they’re very successful with it. Well, they want to add some other things because people are also buying x. If they don’t bring that to market, they can fill it in with my product. They get a percentage of that sale. Therefore, they, when they don’t have to invest in creating my product because I have it or I have a patent on it or whatever, it’s a win win in that scenario and I think it’s, it’s a different approach today and I think more and more people are saying I can fill in my cattle, especially as, as, as you say, we’ll get to shopify later when you build your off site, when you build your site, you want to have as much and many products as you can there to keep people interested, to get as much revenue as you can from that customer.
Stephen: [00:15:03] Um, interesting. Now tell me if this is fair. In the old I’ve had, I’ve had several large drop shippers on and they quoted a rate of around four percent and I know that’s a broad statement. When all said and done, they earn about a four percent a net income on drop shipping. Have you experienced that?
Kellon: [00:15:24] You know what, it’s funny that you bring that up because I remember I was at the Rocky Mountain reseller conference and you said that last year I didn’t go this year and I’m on Amazon. I’m, yeah, like I think that’s true for some of the really high volume people where they just, they have a, you know, a big bank roll,
Stephen: [00:15:44] thousands and thousands and thousands of products.
Kellon: [00:15:46] I mean it’s like some people just go for the numbers game and they might go for three, four percent. I personally don’t have, I would say on Amazon, uh, the drop shipping return is probably about 10 to 15 percent for me. I actually have some products where I’ve made 100 percent profit, believe it or not.
Stephen: [00:16:10] Great. Sustainable though. I mean because I get that we all have those outliers, right? So I mean I go and I buy a member of frozen, right? We all bought that frozen crap from target or Walmart and then sold it at three times the price and you made 100 percent return or 200, but it wasn’t sustainable. But you’ve been able to find drop ship products that you’ve been able to sustain for a length of time and earn those kinds of results.
Kellon: [00:16:32] I mean, as far as like the 100 percent, like that is not like a regular thing. So it’s an outlier. Okay, alright. That’s fine. But I would say on average it’s probably about 10 to 15 percent I would say are my margins.
Stephen: [00:16:43] Well that’s significant because I say this and Andy would agree with me is that generally, okay, generally most people see around a 17 to 20 percent return from their Amazon business. Now I’m going to qualify that and say those of us who have a warehouse, have employees, have insurance, have all those extra costs. That’s what we see. So, you know, it’s not that dissimilar and I guess it’s because you’re more specific in what you’re choosing. Is that, is that a, a way to say it?
Kellon: [00:17:15] Yeah. So I have, um, I have uh, some va’s, so I have a total of seven va’s. And um, let’s see. I would say four of them. I’m pretty much look for products all day long. They just scour the Internet to find products to list, um, and we do have pretty strict criteria so it has to be a certain rank, um, you know, a certain amount of sellers so they might work all day long and some days they might find two items, um, you know, there’s been days where they found, you know, 10 or more items, but I would say on average it’s um, they might find like three items a day, but it’s because of the, just the criteria I have, it has to be strict because I don’t want those, you know, I don’t want that two percent, three percent margin, you know, I’m trying to go for something that’s a little bit better.
Stephen: [00:18:15] Does that help or hurt? I mean, first of the three a day, is that between all four or seven of them? Now? That’s just one person. Okay. So you can do so for you to pick up 10 to 12 items a day, five days a week. I mean that’s, that’s material quantity. I mean that’s 60 on him. So a week. Does that offset, is that offset because you take products out because you know the lifespan, you know, you were making that 10 to 15 percent and now it’s down to one or two percent. You’re like, okay, gone now. Next.
Kellon: [00:18:44] Yeah. Um, so I’ll, I’ve built it up to um, you know, there’s been times that I’ve had over 3000, maybe $3,500 and then um, you know, when we look back at our inventory, a lot of it is, um, they didn’t really go through the criteria laid out so, you know, we’ll sit back down and then just kind of build it back up and then dwindle it back down and build it back up. But right now we’re kind of in a building phase. So I mean we had up to like 3,500 at one point, um, last year and then we brought it down to maybe about a thousand products and now we’re starting to just kind of ramp things back up and hopefully have a nice. I’m nice sized, uh, inventory by, by q four.
Stephen: [00:19:28] So. So one thing you mentioned there is that you, you’re, I guess the staff who brought these things didn’t follow your criteria or the criteria changed. I mean, that’d be a separate issue. Have you put a control in place this time to prevent that from happening again? I’m like, I mean, do you have a. because I see a lot of people have a head va, which is kind of a weird term, right? But that person then vets the others to make sure that they all meet the criteria. It’s the double check kind of thing.
Kellon: [00:19:59] Well, um, one thing that I always tell people when they get into va, some people find, which I think this is, this was surprising with the conferences I’ve been to, like some people seem very intimidated by hiring a va. Um, but when you hire your first va, you just work with them a lot and like really pretty much more like mimic, like everything that you do, your cloning yourself in a way, um, and you really work close with them for like a few months and then once they get up to speed every other va you hired, um, they can, they’re like the manager or the head va so you don’t have, you don’t have to work with them as the other ones that you hire as much because that will, that primary one’s been trained so well.
Stephen: [00:20:43] So they filter. Do yoU use that va then to help you hire at this point or, or no?
Kellon: [00:20:50] Yeah, like I, you know, I used to use a online jobs.ph and um, you know, once you start hiring, once you get like one or two good va’s most of the time they have friends or family. Um, so I haven’t used online jobs.ph and um, a few years now because they always know someone that’s they recommend and they’re putting their name on the line. So they want to, they want to bring someone good on, so I’d haven’t had the need to really use that anymore.
Stephen: [00:21:17] So uh, so the first couple you had to do it that way, but then as you get a, you know, what you expect, they know what to expect and they’d be like, hey to somebody else, I’ve got an opportunity that might be. I think that’s a smart move because like you said, they’re invested in that person’s success. Good or bad.
Kellon: [00:21:33] Yeah. They don’t want their, they don’t want to bring someone in and look bad.
Stephen: [00:21:37] Plus they don’t want to have to carry the load for him. right. I mean cause that’s the other issue.
Kellon: [00:21:42] Yeah,
Stephen: [00:21:43] sure. Yeah. I want to work any harder because I brought you on to pass. I’m not interested. Okay. So, so va’s have helped you find. Are you using any specific software? I know there’s a lot of cool software out there that does stuff.
Kellon: [00:21:56] Um, yeah. So I use a, I use api eagle or I don’t know what it’s called now. I forget they changed names. So we used that for repricing. Um, we use the inventory software, it’s called geogrid. Um, there’s a lot of issues with scu grid right now, but um, we were not having problems that I’ve seen other people have, so we use those. We also use a tactical arbitrage as well. Um, and that helps a lot. It helps, you know, with, with bonding, you know, you don’t find a lot of products, I’m sure it’s like that with fba to like do a scan and you set your parameters and you might not find a lot, but it’s not, a lot of times you’ll find a product that will kind of lead down the road to another product that you can use, um, or that you could, it’s kind of similar, that kind of. Or it gives you an idea like, okay, let’s, let’s go after something like this.
Stephen: [00:22:52] Let me, let me dig there for a second. Because like, I used to use price checker too and I have tactical arbitrage to you, but please check her too. I used to use and I’d run 28,000 skews, throw it right. I get a catalog from a vendor and I go to a trade show, so I get this catalog digital and if it wasn’t digital I converted to digital using some software. All right, so I got that, got the upc, the price. Right. And then match that against amazon’s database. It would spit out that variation, you know, the whatever the parameters I put in saying, hey, this percent return and this dollar amount, whatever it is, and this rank and it would spit out a list. Is that kind of the similar process that you use to help find products to drop ship? Is that kind of similar?
Kellon: [00:23:33] Yeah, pretty much. Um, I think what we do, and it’s so funny because I haven’t even logged on there and stay there long because I’ve trained them up to have a couple of years. They use that strictly and I, I don’t even, I haven’t logged into tactical arbitrage in a few months, but I believe from what I can remember, I think what we did was we would just find a, a um. Oh, we would use a, what’s it called? Um, storefronts
Stephen: [00:24:03] stocker program, storefront stalker. Yup,
Kellon: [00:24:06] yeah, yeah. And uh, we would find a lot of times you can just tell certain sellers that primarily drop ship you can just tell by their, their handling time a lot of times and, and uh, you just extracted or their license and uh, you know, see what you can find. He set parameters and see what you can find. Um, now I will say that we’re actually getting away from ’em
Stephen: [00:24:29] well because that’s only a race to bottom, right? I mean because the only thing you can offer different than me is a lower price fair. It’s really all you can do, right? Because the only difference is that you and I, if we’re selling the same product and neither one of us controls that, we don’t own it. The only thing you can do different than me is offer a lower price to get ahead of me. And so then it just back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And it goes.
Kellon: [00:24:50] Yeah. Or sometimes people just fall off, like maybe they run out of money. That happens too. But really like that kind of, that model is, you know, it’s getting more difficult as you know. Um, so we’re, we do have some wholesale accounts that we drop ship as well, so we’re kinda transferring, transitioning more into that.
Stephen: [00:25:10] And so you find an account you find and you say, hey, I’d like to sell your products and um, I’d like to sell them as a drop shipper,
Kellon: [00:25:19] right? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I have a, uh, I have like a demo site for my amazon store and it’s just like a kind of like how they teach in the,
Stephen: [00:25:29] the wholesale formula. Sure. I have a third party site, a lots of times it’s a shopify site where people could say, hey, where did you sell? I sell here. Oh. And I also sell on amazon.
Kellon: [00:25:39] Right? Yeah. and I don’t even, I don’t even sell on that site, but it’s just for show and uh, that, that’s primarily how you get a lot of accounts. Um, but yeah, we’ve gotten a few like that. Some are doing pretty well. Um, but that’s, you know, a lot more sustainable to do it that way.
Stephen: [00:25:57] Well, let me ask you a question about this because I remember, I think it was fred mckinnon, I’m not sure what it was, him or someone else who said this, and they said these are large sellers. They said one of the biggest challenges that they see coming in, in drop shipping for them is the customer service side because people are so sophisticated and so used to buying online now they’re not afraid to ask a question, you know, and so they then have to reply to these questions because it’s not like they can shoot the message over to the other vendor, they have to deal with it. and so when you’re dealing with high volume and you get, you know, one question per hundred orders when you’re dealing with thousands of orders, that’s a lot of questions. And so they didn’t have that cost structure in place and it started eating to their four percent margin. Have you seen that in your world? Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: [00:26:44] Customer service is, can be a pain. Um, and honestly I have everything outsourced as far as placing orders and listing products and repricing. Everything’s done for the most part. You know, I still have to step in like I still check up and everything every day, but the customer service is the one aspect that I have a hard time giving up because it is so important. Um, there are some sellers that have all of it, outsource, they outsource all of that stuff and they have the, you know, like all the, they have like an 800 number that goes to the va skype name and they’ll answer calls or, or make calls out and do that and you know, that, that, those, those types of va’s you have to pay more. Um,
Stephen: [00:27:29] and then just cut into that margin. It has to. Now I’ve seen some people do chat bots because that’s the new thing right now where it’s a chat bot that comes in and it’s your picture, like, hey, how can I help you? And it has a, like a zen desk with all as many questions as they can get. Have you tracked the questions you get? Are they similar?
Speaker 6: [00:27:45] Generally? Um, yeah. So like a lot of. I have a whole spreadsheet of responses that I can just copy that whole response and paste it in. Um, might have to edit a few words, but there are certain things that I can just copy that whole response and paste it right in and be done with it.
Stephen: [00:28:05] Okay. All right. So not too bad. So, um, the other challenge that they said was this was a growing thing is that people kind of buy and didn’t have a lot of buyer’s remorse or you know, I sell shoes for example, and I get shoes back all the time. That’s one of the highest return item and homicides seven. No, you gained 400 pounds, you’re not a size seven anymore, you’re size 12, whatever. And so I got to eat that. Right. And so that stuff comes back on the shopify, around, on the drop shipping model. they said that that was one of the big challenges because then I guess the merchandise comes back to you and then you have to return it back to the drop shipper. Is that the kind of, the way it works
Speaker 6: [00:28:41] sometimes it is like that. Yeah. Not all the time. Oh, okay. They can return it directly to the supplier, but um, but sometimes, yeah, I do have, I have stuff. I’m looking at it right now in my house about a 10 boxes here. Things that I need to figure out what I’m going to do. I’m like, sometimes it’s past the return that I can return to the supplier. So a lot of times actually I’ll sell it on. I’m like um, offer up. Um, and I don’t know if you know that app, it’s called offer up or there’s one called um, let go, let go. I’ve sold a lot of stuff like that. Um, just to kind of get rid of it and I’ll take it, I’ll sell it for a loss. Just if I can get a little cash in my pocket and not, you know, that’s fine with me if I can, if I have to do that. So that definitely have to do that sometimes.
Stephen: [00:29:27] So you mentioned that it’s harder to find products and stuff and I assume this is because the software just makes it easier, right? The things that, the art of it. Let me say it that way is being replaced by the digital data version of it because I’m sure the data is more accurate than the art and so more and more people are doing that. Um, do you feel like the walls are closing in on? Somebody used that phrase for ra and they’re like, look, it’s not dead. It just feels like the walls get a little closer to me sometimes. Is that what it feels like for you?
Kellon: [00:29:55] Oh yeah, definitely. It’s getting more and more difficult next why I’m diversifying into other things now. So, um, I don’t like relying on one, uh, like amazon’s great, you know, amazon is the reason why I was able to leave my job about three years ago and uh, you know, been full time since. But um, you know, amazon terrifies me too. I mean, I’ve seen them just completely flipped people’s world upside down and um, you know, it, it’s, it’s scared me to take action and to diversify.
Stephen: [00:30:31] So that’s not a fear for you. That’s just a smart business model saying I’m not going to let one person control my future. I’m going to control it with these multiple ways. I think that’s a very, very healthy and I think that everybody should take that approach and just say, hey, what if. Right. What if
Kellon: [00:30:47] amazon makes they, it’s there. I think I heard this analogy. It’s their sandbox. So right now in life happens, right? I mean, yeah, there’s sometimes they, they’ll make weird decisions sometimes that got us nowhere. And um, I just, I just, uh, it just scares me into like I haven’t had, I’ve, I got when I first started selling five years ago, I got to spend it initially, but I’ve never, I haven’t had any problems since then.
Stephen: [00:31:13] Yeah. And so you straighten up your act, you get a little more attentive because it’s funny. We talk. Who is I just talking about this, the rules that are in place now, we’re not in place. Back when I started, I guess somebody was at a warehouse the other day and we were sitting around talking to them. The rules that are in place today were not in place when I started selling. So therefore I’ve got all those bad habits, but they weren’t bad habits back then. I mean, I don’t really. I’d buy a store, I’d buy all their inventory, sent 100 percent of the inventory in amazon. That’s the way it was now. Now I can’t right now you can’t. Um, and I mean, you know, we’d send a thousand of an item in, you know, you can’t, it would sit there forever and it’s, they didn’t have fees. I didn’t pay any fees, but it’s different today. And so. Okay. So is that my fault? Is it their fault? It’s nothing. It’s evolved. And so having an epi plan, when, when, when you were getting into amazon, what were you thinking? what was it going to be for you when you started?
Kellon: [00:32:06] Um, well, I guess I’ll go back to, uh, when I got into ecommerce in general. so when I first started, I started on ebay. I think a lot of sellers on ebay. At first they’re a little more forgiving with mistakes. I’m an ebay. I was working a full time job and uh, I was actually drop shipping on ebay and uh, I’ve built up, um, a good amount of monies that I saved. I didn’t touch it for about a year and a half
Stephen: [00:32:33] because it was a side hustle.
Kellon: [00:32:35] It was just a side thing. Yeah. Just so I was just saving it and saving it. And then, um, and then I, I purchased a course that taught you how to not only sell on amazon but how to outsource. And once I started to outsource, that’s when I realized that the leverage that I got and I realized that I can actually do this full time. So I would say about started selling on amazon just like three or three or four years ago. Um, I, and he’s like january. And I think by the time I hit, like june was when I actually made more money in june that I made it my full time job.
Stephen: [00:33:16] And this was, were you doing retail art? But at that point?
Kellon: [00:33:19] Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and then I was like, wow, I think I might be able to do this. And, and I told myself, I said I want to see some consistency. Um, so then july came around and I made double what I made in june, and then I was like, well, I’m definitely going to do this, but I don’t know when work. One day I used to manage a restaurant and I was at work one day and I came in at 12, I worked 12 to closed and I came in right in the middle of a lunch rush. And all these employees called out. Um, we weren’t set up for lunch. It was complete chaos. And about a half hour there I, uh, I gave my notice and I’m previously, like, I’m usually pretty conservative. So that was a bold decision for me. And after I made that, you know, after I told them, told the gm and then he told the regional manager, so when he told the regional manager, then I was like, wow, this is really real. And, and I thought to mySelf, I hope I made the right decision. And uh, as the day went on, more and more things were getting messed up. So I was like, yeah, I made the right decision,
Stephen: [00:34:23] you know, thinking about that because this is important to understand. Do you think you were running away from something or running towards something?
Kellon: [00:34:34] Uh, I would say both. I mean, interesting. Yeah, I was, I, I’m. So, I manageD restaurants for like 11 years and to be honest with you, I hated it the entire time and I thought I was pigeonholed in this industry and I’m
Stephen: [00:34:49] because you didn’t see anything else, right? That’s your norm, right? Everybody works shitty hours. Everybody works weekends. That’s just normal, right? I miss all the holidays. People are going to call off. It’s just, you know, we hire, you know, these type of people, whatever that means, right? I’m not quality but it, whoever they are that type and therefore that’s what we’re going to get. And therefore that that’s the cost that comes along with it.
Kellon: [00:35:10] yeah. I thought I was kinda like, just stuck in this industry. I used to call my mom every sunday night I was at work and I would just complain about how he did my job and she still brings that up to this day.
Stephen: [00:35:20] And what did she say to you? What was her advice then that you didn’t listen to? Clearly because moms are smart and have. Go ahead.
Kellon: [00:35:25] Um, she, she really, she didn’t really have much to say. I don’t think she had an answer because I didn’t really have like a direction. She was more so there just to listen to your mom and listen, but kind of going back to what you’re saying. And then when I started to sell through ecommerce side, I enjoyed it and I, I enjoyed the uh, I enjoy like, like drop shipping in general. It’s kind of like you’re making money out of thin air and in a way that’s what it seems like.
Stephen: [00:35:54] It’s much more passive than fba for sure. Yeah, it’s pretty. It can be, yeah,
Kellon: [00:35:57] pretty passive. I’m for sure. I’m not, not 100 percent, but yes, like you were saying more. It’s more passive than fba and I’ve done. I’ve done plenty of fba, uh, you know, I’ve done retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, wholesale
Stephen: [00:36:14] and so private label, so I mean, you’ve done all of it.
Kellon: [00:36:17] Yeah, private label failed miserably, but uh, I definitely want to take another job at that. Again, I really see a lot of potential in that model and I know a lot of people doing really well with, with private labels, so I’m definitely gonna do that again.
Stephen: [00:36:30] Well, all the things that you’re learning and drop shipping apply to private label, right? I mean bringing a product to market, bringing somebodY else’s product to market, making sure that the customer services in place, making sure all those things digitally and handling all that stuff. They all apply to private label, so you’re in it, you just, you’re only in one segment of it. You just got to figure out the other two or three, the fact that you’ve already, you know, how to pack up things and get It to market. Matter of fact, you’ve inhabited advantage because you’re so not wanting to touch product. You’re not going to end up having a warehouse full of private label products either. You’re going to make sure that that gets out source. Those are all skill sets, a very, very strong skill sets and I would argue, um, and I know most people who are listening to this who are really successful private label are saying you’ve got these vas trained, the fact that you understand how to hIre a va and train them, you could have them searching for private label products very simply.
Stephen: [00:37:16] So to me, I always say this and I think I qualified in the beginning, you have figured out a way to optimize for you this business so you can focus in on other things. That is a very strong skillset because many of us steve flop around from piece to piece to piece, got a warehouse, got private label, got wholesale, got. I don’t do anymore but, but got a warehouse full of other stuff. I’m like a mentor that I’m using right now. So steve, you’re dragging that around like an old girlfriend and ex-girlfriend, this inventory. And he’s right. You’re not because you’ve optimized that because you said, nope, don’t want to do that. That doesn’t mean you failed. That doesn’t mean that your model is better or worse than anybody else’s. It’s yours and I, I applaud it because you have figured it out for you.
Stephen: [00:38:06] When you think back to when you started and the excitement you had that when you know, you went to target’s end cap and you scan and you found a product that went in and sold and that excitement versus now where, you know, it’s four year later, now you’ve got responsibility, right? So now you have to make money. Back then it was a how. So you didn’t keep it, you made it or you didn’t, right. It was probably, it didn’t matter. Right back then. Now it really matters. How different is the feeling though, for today versus four years ago? Um, no. Is it a grind for you now? Is it like, oh, gotta go gotta, go to the salt mines, got to put my head down and find something, blah, blah, blah. Oh, okay. So it’s not bad. It’s not doom and gloom. It’s not. You’re not working in the restaurant business any more mentally. Right? You’re not back there.
Speaker 6: [00:38:57] No, no. I mean, I think it’s a, you know, some days, I don’t know, I think every, every entrepreneur experiences this, but, you know, it’s hard to bring it every day, you know, it’s, that’s why it’s important to surround yourself around people that are doing the same thing. Um, so yeah, like I’ll go through periods of time that I’m like, I’ve done a lot of traveling the summer so I can kinda kinda keep the business going along. Um, you know, he keep everything floating along and keep it running. Like it’s just, you know,
Stephen: [00:39:31] what are you grateful for that or do you still get doom and gloom sometimes. Maybe because I think that that’s a very key point, the fact that you get to travel and do all those things and it’s humming along, man. How many people get to say that? Yeah, it’s,
Speaker 6: [00:39:47] I’m totally grateful. That’s cool. Yeah, I’ve definitely, uh, I definitely practice gratitude and you know, um, ever since I got into this business I’ve really gotten into self development and just, you know, just being grateful for where I’m at.
Stephen: [00:40:04] Well, what do you do for self development? Uh, you know, give us an example of stuff that you do and, and be real. I know it’s hard as a guy, I get it, but it’s true.
Speaker 6: [00:40:14] Adam is just podcast, you know, I listened to a lot of podcasts, like I walk my dog every morning. I always listened to like a, some type of motivational podcasts. It’s usually like a motivation through an entrepreneurial standpoint. Um, like, uh, the, the podcasts that I got into, um, at the very beginning was called every day a saturday. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that one.
Stephen: [00:40:32] No, no. Every day is saturday.
Speaker 6: [00:40:35] Yeah. And sam crowley is the guy’s name. Um, so he, uh, I’ve been listening to him since the very beginning since I got into all this. I still listened to them that to this day, um, there’s other, you know, there’s other ones, but I usually.
Stephen: [00:40:48] What does he do for you? So what do you get from that? Because I think there’s a bunch of people sitting there saying, you know, killen, I don’t have that freedom. I don’t have the ability to travel. I got, I got shipments, I gotta do I gotta do this, and so you’re able, because you have some of those same feelings as you said, but these things help push you through it. Give us an example, what you know, what you’re listening to and what that does for you.
Speaker 6: [00:41:10] Yeah, like a lot of things like for example, um, just like believing in yourself, um, you know, getting, don’t, don’t listen to the naysayers because you’re going to have people that sometimes it’s family, sometimes it’s like your, your closest friends. They, they don’t, they think they don’t understand what you do and they might kind of put a negative thought in your head
Stephen: [00:41:35] without a filter, right? Because they don’t have filters. Your closest friends and family, they’ll just say it like it is with no filter and you feel it.
Speaker 6: [00:41:43] Yeah. So it become like an, it’s you just become like a, like an outlier and you just, you can’t, you can’t listen to what they say, you know? Um, that’s why again, it’s kind of, it’s important to, to have like a circle of friends that do the same thing. It’s kind of the power of face facebook. It’s fUnny, I’ve met some great friends through facebook and you know, we, we have little masterminds and um, you know, sometImes it’s like I was saying earlier, it’s kind of hard to bring it every day, so I might kinda, I might be kind of just slacking off a little bit, but I see them, um, you know, they’re really working hard and they’re uh, they’re making stuff happen or listing products or they’re building out their site or whatever. So you see them doing that and it kind of lights a little fire under you and saying, hey, you need to get back to work because uh, you know, you see them doing it and it inspires me.
Stephen: [00:42:35] Do you cut those others, those negative people out of your life?
Speaker 6: [00:42:39] Uh, yeah, like I have. Well, I mean, have you, I mean I have some friends that I grew up with and I’m still friends with and um, you know, they, um, I wouldn’t say I’ve cut them out, but like I, I grew up in West Virginia, this small town in West Virginia now I live in baltimore even though baltimore is a bigger city, I don’t really have any friends here so I don’t have distractions. I don’t have a friend coming over and saying, hey, let’s go do this or do anything like that. I just, I’m just, I’m here and focus. I don’t have people coming by my house or anything. Um, but yeah, like I had to, I wouldn’t say cut them out comPletely, but just maybe limit the amount, might be a better phrase. Right. Eliminating the contact because they just don’t get it. They don’t understand.
Stephen: [00:43:30] Yeah. I think all of us have had that, especially with family, um, and the negative family because it’s the governments fault. It’s the guy, I don’t care who it’s somebody’s fault except for yours. Kellen, is it your fault? It is. If your business isn’t going good at you, right? I mean, you can blame your va’s if you want, but quite frankly that you didn’t train them. So when you accept that personal responsibility is really what you’re talking about, a, you get offended sometimes by that stuff, at least i do because it’s like, wait a second, you know what I mean? You know, when you were working your full time job, right? working the miserable hours, putting up with all that nonsense and you were going home and doing the side hustle, that’s not an excuse. That’s, that’s action. And when other people, I’m sure just, you know, woe is me, my job sucks, the world’s ending, blah, blah blah and no action. So whose fault is that tail? That’s their fault. Right? And I think it’s great to tune people out. Uh, like you said, you can’t cut off family, but tuning them out is very healthy. How do you. So you listen to podcasts, you listen to these things to stay kind of to offset that. How do you stay motivated? How do you go past that point now? I mean, are, are you in health? Are you into, you know, relationship developments and things like that? How do you get that motivation to keep you going to do more?
Kellon: [00:44:49] Um, I would say, um, so I used to be very active working out since I’ve started this business out, you know, I have slacked. I put on a little weight it keebler muscles. That’s about it. Yeah. I mean, I’ve sat in front of a computer a lot, but I can, I can say that whenever I, I do exercise or workout a lot of times it’s, you don’t feel like it at the beginning, but there’s never been a time that I’ve regretted it. and it always just, it helps with, uh, you know, just getting you, I’m inspired and, and you actually eat your production goes up a lot. So, um, I need to get better at that. I, I, I would say I work out a week at this time at this point, but yeah, I’d like to do it like maybe every other day.
Stephen: [00:45:41] I think it’s real. I think everybody’s, you know, we were in pre conversation, I’m in a kito group because I’m into that right now, but it’s still just a, again, likeminded individuals kind of we’re back to that network with your facebook groups. It’s likeminded individuals who kind of inspire each other that rather than look down the nose because they understand how difficult it is. All right, let’S move the conversation to shopify because the thing that interests me additionally about kellan, um, other than a story, don’t get me wrong, but it’s, it’s that you have put in your effort. Again, this is an intentional, unintentional model where he is limited time on this other stuff. We all heard that so he can work on his business. And one of the things that he’s been working on and having some pretty good success is shopify. Uh, it’s very impressive what you’ve been able to do with it. And I know there are outliers that have done 15 times. Yeah, I get that. but this is kelvin and kelvin saying, hey, I’m having a little success. So talk us through that a little bit.
Kellon: [00:46:37] Sure. Um, so now I’m doing, I’m high ticket drop shipping on, on shopify. So before I got into shopify I’m not really technically savvy honestly. Um, and I had to learn how to kind of build out a website, um, but I have manufacturer direct relationships or I drop shipped directly from these, from these manufacturers and um, I would say my average order value is probably around a thousand dollars in order low. So, um, yeah, like, I mean I’m not making a ton of sales,
Stephen: [00:47:18] but look what happens. It’s a good day.
Kellon: [00:47:19] Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, I’ve had, it’s, it’s definitely picking up momentum. Um, so I guess, you know, kind of to go, go over the whole thing. So basically what, what I’ve been taught is to, uh, you want to pick a niche so you kind of determine a niche that, um, that people like about. I’ll say for example, we’ll say refrigerators, I wouldn’t pick refrigerators and I’ll tell you why in a second, but you know, that’s an high ticket, high ticket product. So you, you might open a website and say, I’m refrigerators direct.com. And you list pretty much just refrigerators and you establish yourself as an expert in that niche and you might not be an expert at first, but you will become an expert because of a lot of times the customer service and having these relationships with these suppliers, you start to learn a lot and you, you kinda, you do become an expert and you can answer questions without looking them up later on.
Kellon: [00:48:24] But yeah, you kind of Searched for like a, a niche where you see a lot of demand, like people are searching for it and then you see how much competition you have and if, if everything lines up, there’s a couple of other factors. But if all that lines up, then you can just go for it. And um, you know, the niche I picked right out the gate, it, it’s working. So, um, I was pretty lucky on some of my friends that kind of got into it. They, uh, they didn’t pick good niches at first. So I was lucky with the niche that I picked.
Stephen: [00:48:52] Can we stop there a second? Because I think this is a good question. The niche that you picked and we’re not going to, we’re not going to expose it. Um, was it something that interested you and is that why you chose it? If you thought about, have you thought about why you chose it
Kellon: [00:49:06] to be honest with, you know,
Stephen: [00:49:08] really. I’m just hoping that it’s more than luck. I mean, I’m hoping that over the years you’ve seen something in this, you’ve seen your family deal with this issue or you’ve seen tv show. I don’t know what it is. have you ever seen it before? And thought, huh. And then later on in life, I’m just wondering if that’s a way to look back.
Kellon: [00:49:27] Um, honestly it wasn’t that way with this, but like when I initially did my research, I just had a list of different niches that were like high ticket.
Stephen: [00:49:38] What do you, just off the top of your mind or did you google most expensive products to buy?
Kellon: [00:49:44] Uh, so you can, like, a lot of times you can get ideas, you can look on amazon or ebay, you can go to the store, go to costco and just look around and you’ll see things. And you’ll be like, huh, I wonder if there’s a market for that and you just go home and um, you know, do the research and see if everything lines up. So I had a list of about 20 to 30 niches and I narrowed it down to a few, um, and then I just kind of move forward with, with one in particular.
Stephen: [00:50:10] And you had it, you know, you said something about going to costco and looking through. Here’s my theory on that. And somebody said this to me one time, like, look, there are a lot of, there’s a lot of research done on putting a product on the valuable space in costco, right? There’s a lot of research. So if it’s there for, there is a market for it, period. That’s it. There is a market for it now. It depends on how thick it is, the market, but there is absolutely a market or they wouldn’t have put it in their store dollar wise. You want to look at those higher end things. So I think that having that ability to take advantage of others who spent the money and done the research I think is very smart. Um, when you look back at your niche, did you, do you feel like you’ve taken full advantage of it or are you just getting started?
Speaker 6: [00:50:54] I’m definitely just getting started. There’s a lot to learn, especially when you’re, you know, when you have your own site, you got to drive the traffic. There’s different sources of traffic. Google, bing, yahoo,
Stephen: [00:51:05] and they’re different. Each one’s different.
Speaker 6: [00:51:08] Yeah. Um, you know, facebook, I don’t really do facebook. I do facebook retargeting ads, so I don’t because they’re high, they’re high ticket items like people, a lot of the facebook ads that you see a lot of times are for um, like novelty, like kitchen gadgets and stuff like that. Like impulse buy things. People aren’t going to impulse buy a thousand dollar item
Stephen: [00:51:31] going back to the refrigerator. So give me an example what you would do with the refrigerator and that’s a good example.
Speaker 6: [00:51:36] Like, like how it advertises
Stephen: [00:51:38] on facebook. What would that, what would a retargeting campaign look like for a refrigerator?
Speaker 7: [00:51:43] Um,
Speaker 6: [00:51:44] so, well, well let me backtrack, I guess to how you initially advertise. The biggest thing, the biggest reason why it works is you, you, um, you advertise through google product listing ads. I’m not sure if you know what that is, but there’s, I guess it’s like if you go to google and you type in refrigerators, like let me do it right now.
Speaker 7: [00:52:06] Um,
Speaker 6: [00:52:09] so if you type that in, you’ll see at the very top you’re going to see, it’ll say sponsored and it’ll have little images, little thumbnails of different people selling refrigerators. Those where it says sponsored, those are product listing ads.
Speaker 7: [00:52:23] Um,
Speaker 6: [00:52:25] so ideally the people that are searching for these types of products, they might type in ken moore. I’m six seven, one, two, three, right. They
Stephen: [00:52:36] replace the one that they have likely, right? They love this one.
Speaker 6: [00:52:40] Yeah. Well, and, and they, they already know. They already kind of like at the end of the buying cycle. So they go to google, they already know what they want. They fight that in. Those are the kinds of customers you want, right? Price, lowest price. yeah. And a lot of times they don’t, they don’t make that purchase decision the first time they visit your site. So that’s where the retargeting comes in. And facebook. So you just, you have set up to where whatever products they viewed, it’s like a carousel ad and they’ll um, they’re gonna see all these products they just viewed on your site. If they jumped around, it’ll show up on their facebook feed and you just say, hey, you know, we’re still here, come back and visit. Basically
Stephen: [00:53:16] it’s just that little pixel that you do in that whole setup thing. Is that kind of the way it goes? Yeah. All right. Yeah, I’m familiar with some of that. Okay. So, so you, if somebody found you, they come in, they look at you. Do you have the ability, and I don’t know facebook ads very well. I do some, but I’m really not that good at it. Uh, to Rachel Miller thing, that’s a name somebody should look up if they want to run facebook ads. So if you want to sell refrigerators, is there another way that I can say, uh, can I look for people who are interested in buying refrigerator? Do they get that specific or no?
Speaker 6: [00:53:51] What do you mean? Like the type of people who are looking for these?
Stephen: [00:53:55] Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess that maybe you’re saying it better than I am. So I guess you would have to then do. But that’s generic demographic, right? Oh, we’re looking for married couples who’ve been married for 20 years. I’ve lived in their home for longer than 10 years. They’re going to be looking for one. I guess that would be, but then you’re still just shooting in the dark, right? You’re getting a little more narrow, but it’s still shooting in the dark. And your case, you’re saying these people expressed interest. Now I’m going to be the one that closed the deal.
Speaker 6: [00:54:22] Yes.
Speaker 6: [00:54:25] So I mean initially how you kind of determined it as, um, use a keyword planner and you’re in google ad words. She might pipe in refrigerators and you’ll see it’ll display how many people are actually typing in refrigerators and google every month. And then if it’s a certain amount, you’re like, hey, there’s a lot of people looking for this or someone’s lobby, we’re looking for this, this specific product, and then you can, you can look through, um, the google shopping area of google where it’s like the shopping ads and you could see how many people are selling these. Right? And you can see people that have niche specific sites that are selling refrigerators as an example. So if everything lines up, then you know, it’s um, it’s a good niche to go into.
Stephen: [00:55:07] And again, no, I don’t think I’m clear on it because I think I might’ve messed it up when I said that. How do you get to those customers? You see it’s a good niche. You see it. So you put up your own little drop shipping site. It’s a landing page. It’s got all these refrigerators. Hopefully you have some content in there. Do you have to get those people to come to your site to then retarget them? Or can you retarget them because they’re at somebody else’s site?
Speaker 6: [00:55:30] No, they have to come to yours.
Stephen: [00:55:31] Okay. All right. So you’ve got to find a way to get them to your site. And so the retargeting is really helping you make the sale. That’s the, that’s really not bringing traffic to your site
Speaker 6: [00:55:41] fair. Yeah. I think, I think I heard a stat, something like 70 percent of sales are through our closed, through retargeting. I think somethinG like that.
Stephen: [00:55:52] okay. So that’s the sales. That’s the invisible salesperson at the end. So let’s talk about getting people to come to your site because as you said, you’ve got google, you’ve got being, you’ve got a million other search engines and you got to compete against amazon, which what did I read? Fifty five percent of all searches now begin with amazon as opposed to google being and whatever the other ones are, um, firefox or whatever. So. So how do You start like from a google? So, and that’s an area I want to bring. I wanT to bring people to my landing page with my refrigerator’s once I get them there, I know I’m going to try and sell them right up front or I’m going to retarget them. So that piece you’ve already explained, I think you’ve done a great job on that. I didn’t, but you did. How do I get them from google to that website? What are some of the techniques you use? And you don’t have to give away anything secret of course please, but stuff that you’ve seen that has worked or you know, that’s general.
Speaker 6: [00:56:45] Majority of my sales come from the product listing ads and kind of how it works is you can’t, it’s different from amazon as far as like, um, I’m like, you’re not creating an ad. Um, well let me back up a little bit. They have. So there’s text ads which is like if you type in refrigerator as an example and you go below the road, says sponsored has a little thumbnail images of the product below that you’ll see like here’s one for years and it has ad next to it. And there’s text in that ad that says like, like for example, sears, right? I’m looking at it says shop your way and save orders three 99 plus chips for free. Save 10 percent now price match guarantee. So you can fill up, fill up that stuff, um, you know, google will give you so much real estate to type in whatever you want to type.
Speaker 6: [00:57:38] I’ve made a few sales like that, but majority of them are from the product listing, um, or that’s just like the little thumbnail images and when you, when you, you pretty much stinkier your feed of like all of your products to google and you’ll see people that are good here. Google determines, you know, who clicks on your ads, right? Like they, they’ll kind of go when you go to your website and they’ll see what you’re selling and then you, um, it, you’ll see people that you’ll see what people are typing in and what they like. They might type it in. I’m like white refrigerator and they clicked on this one specific product, right? And that, that might be a good key word. That’s an okay key word. But, um, and this is kind of like amazon too, but you want to make, you want to really focus on your negative keywords.
Speaker 6: [00:58:25] So if someone tyPes in a wine cooler, well I’m not selling wine cooler, them selling refrigerators, they typed in wine cooler, they clicked on your ad of this specific kenmore product, right? Well, you don’t want people to type in wine cooler and click click on your ad. It’s a waste of money. So you make that a negative keyword so that your ads won’t show up for that anymore. Um, that’s what I do. Some people I’m actually working on the seo part, which is more, um, it’s more long term and it takes a long time to, to really get that in place at. It’s going to take a few months. Um, but I’m kind of chipping away at it every day. Some of my competitors, I see them, they show up really well through seo. Like if you type in kenmore six zero, three zero two right below the product listing ads, they just show up organically in search so you can see their website and their, their product shows up. So, um, I want to get
Kellon: [00:59:22] that free traffic to. So I’m, I’m working on that as well.
Stephen: [00:59:25] And so you just watching others and studying what they do and copying it back to this. So how do you get your. So you have this, you have your own website, it’s got all these products, how do you feed that into google? What does that fit into? What is the google thing that you feed into? And then what software do you use? And you don’t, if you don’t want to tell, that’s fine, but I mean, what’s that called? Were you sending into the google shopping cart? What does that, where they show those images? I don’t know what that is.
Kellon: [00:59:51] Um, so what I fiRst started out, I was, um, and it’s been awhile. I think I initially did this back in like february and I ran ads for a little bit. So you, you have to, um, you know, google’s got a couple of different things they have like your, your, um, I said it’s ad words, there’s the key word planner. Um, I still don’t understand, understand all of it. Um,
Stephen: [01:00:17] but it’s like to go shopping because it, it’s interesting. So I’m doing the same thing, so I type in on google. I’d put in refrigerator, hit, hit enter, and it was on all and then I moved over and there was an option for images, maps, shopping. So I clicked on shopping, now I’m seeing nothing but refrigerators. And so when I look at that, let me just look at this person. It’s coming through google.com/shopping/product. So somehow you’re feeding into that shopping cart or they have a shopping. this is how they make money, I guess, you know. right. Um, so you’re paying these customers, these people are paying for that ad. This is from target actuallY the top one I clicked on it and it’s from target. It’s a whirlpool mini fridge. And so target is paying to get that on that. Is that, is that right?
Kellon: [01:01:03] Yeah. So, um, shopify, a lot of the other, you know, I’m like woo commerce and big commerce is another one. Um, magento, theY have like, it’s already kind of built up an end to the platform, like a shopify has a, it’s a way that you pretty much sink your feed to google shopping. You have to get an app wIth shopify. So it’s google shopping, that’s the term. Okay. Yeah. And you sync it to that. It’ll upload all your products. It takes awhile. I can take like 72 hours because they, they crawl your site to make sure, um, you know, what’s on the site as they want to see. Um, a lot of the pages, like your terms of service and your privacy policy, you have to have all that stuff in place where they’ll deny your ads. Um, but when I first started doing it, I was, I just kind of ran ads.
Kellon: [01:01:46] I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, um, but I kind of ran the ads and, and uh, you know, I would go in every day and make, you know, the negatIve key words and it got a little more targeted. I guess I made a few sales, but then I realized there’s other things I wanted to work on, like I wanted to work on. I’m like email flows and uh, you know, seo and getting more accounts and uploading more products. So at, uh, I, uh, I ended up hiring a, um, an advertising agency and they run my ads for me and they pay them on, I pay a monthly fee to them and I just tell them what I want to spend an ads been and they manage my account for me. Um, I could probably do better than them. I’m like, I have some pretty good training where they pretty much teach you how to do like a, like funnels of how to just kind of funneled from the beginning of the buying cycle to the end ending and it, I can’t really tell you exactly what it is because I don’t, I don’t, I haven’t really went through that too much because I have this advertising agency, right?
Kellon: [01:02:47] Like I’m profitable and making sales. So I’m like, wow, I have them run ads. I’m just focusing on one
Stephen: [01:02:52] other things, you know, what percentage of cost have you thought about that, how much you pay them versus how much revenue you get in and as a percentage, is it one percent, half a percent. Have yOu ever thought about that?
Stephen: [01:03:07] no. If not, it’s no worries. It’s a google merchant account. I went, I did go a little deeper. That’s a google merchant account you have to have, and I appreciate that. You know, again, this is where I think, this is why this is an interesting interview. Kevin Saying, look, this stuff’s cool, but I can buy time. I can hire somebody else to manage it for me because I’m not interested in this piece. I’m interested in the next piece. I want to bring a. Now I’m working on that and the fact that you’re not working down at this leVel, this technical level gives you the ability to 10 x the other stuff. That’s not dumb to me. That’s perfect. Unless you’re this guy who loves the google merchant and he loved being that guy, then you should do that. To me. I think all these things that you’ve done, that’s why I started out the conversation.
Stephen: [01:03:49] You have optimized it for you and you’re. You’re not perfect. You said it. You know, you’re like, hey, I’m not the best at it. I get it, but you’re doing it for you and it just. You keep figuring things out becAuse you created time that is masterful. I’m telling you to kill him. That’s a masterful. I mean I’m sitting here and all because you’ve done it for you and it’s not the same for me or it’s not the same for somebody else. And so to me, you know, you know, you put your head down, do the work. I appreciate that. So, so you’ve had some success, you see nothing. You’re scratching the surface. Do you see yourself moving more and more off of amazon, ebay into your own thing?
Kellon: [01:04:29] Definitely. I mean I kinda like, I guess the longterm goal is a lot of people that are in this high ticket space, high ticket drop shipping space with a lot of people do is they’ll build a store and they’ll just, you know, to really get it firing on all cylinders. I mean it takes awhile to take like upwards of like, I don’t know, like a year to get the seo and you know, good email sequences and all this stuff in place. But if you, if you keep your books clean and keep them separate, a lot of people will sell their, their stores. So like there’s a, there’s a couple of people I know that have the, they just call it like, it’s like an exit strategy, right? They’ll buIld up a store to where you know, it’s making pretty good income and they have va’s in place and it’s pretty good income. What’s that mean? Does just give us something
Stephen: [01:05:18] that you could say is that $10,000 a month or $3,000 a month?
Kellon: [01:05:21] Yeah. There’s a lot of factors on how you can sell it. Like um, I think I heard that it’s whatever your revenue is a month times like, I don’t know what it was like times 12 or something like that that you can sell it for, but you have to have some history. You can’t just open a store and be profitable in three months and sell it like I on to empire flippers or are. I’m sure you’ve heard of that site or a or a flipper. The other one. Yeah. Right. Um, but yeah, like I don’t know, like my store right now I’m doing maybe 40 to 45 a month, but I’d like to get it up to, I’d like to get up. I really believe I can do 100,000 a month in revenue and when I get to that point, maybe I’ll consider selling it because you can, I mean I’ve heard of people selling their stores for, I mean 200,000, 300,000, but it has to be a turnkey operation.
Kellon: [01:06:14] Like you’re selling it to someone to where you have va’s in place, like they do the customer service and they placed the orders, they answered the chat, you know, you have a chat option on your site. They upload products. So I mean you might have to do a little bit of work but you’ll, you’ll generally have like an interview with, with the buyer on like empire flippers and you explain everything. And Um, and yeah, like there’s people that just build it up, they sell and then they’ll build the next door and then they sell that store and they just keep doing that. But I don’t know, maybe I won’t Sell it. Intimidating to you though. No, I think it’s exciting.
Stephen: [01:06:51] Yeah. And see again, that’s why I love this interview because exactly. This is the part. As you sit there and find that’s what your. That’s the part you love. I can tell you get excited. I could hear your voice getting higher on that. Then I think it’s a very, very cool. No, I think it’s very cool that you have figured this out becAuse at the end of that, self awareness is so important because otherwisE you’re working in a restaurant working nights and weekends thinking you’re trapped because everybody’s saying, wow, you got a good job, kellen. Keep your head down. Someday you’re goIng to be the general manager. Someday you’ll be the district manager. Someday you’ll have a heart attack. Someday you’re going to end up in a grave from working those hours. That’s my opinion. But I had that. I ended that last part on. So
Kellon: [01:07:32] they talked to me about being a general manager and I was like, I didn’t tell them, but I thought to myself, I don’t want to be a general manager.
Stephen: [01:07:38] That job sucks, man. I don’t want that. So, so, you know, when you think about where you’ve come from, I mean, could you even see it when you started because you were scanning end at target and now to sit and look where and going to work a night shift or vice versa, whether you came home from work and you went and scanned over the 24 hour stores now where you’re at. I mean it is, it is night and day different, you know, I mean, you really have, you really take in and said, hey, I like this, like this, don’t like this, don’t like this. And you’ve gotten there. One of the things that I think a lot of people get stuck on is they listened to it so they’re going to listen to this. It can be like, oh my god, I should drop ship.
Stephen: [01:08:17] That’s it. That’s what I should do. Um, and I don’t know if you’re that person that has a shiny object syndrome because they’re hearing us into sound sexy, kaelin’s traveling and he doesn’t touch anything and it’s a turnkey operation and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t believe that I think works for you because it’s you and you’ve done the work because you like it. What’s your advice when people come to you and say, this sounds really great. Can I get started? How do I get started? Can you show me, you know, I got gotta I got three hours tonight. Can you get me started?
Speaker 6: [01:08:47] I’ve, I’ve had plenty of people do that and uh, it’s, it’s, um, I always, I mean it’s like with anything, right? Like if you purchased the course and I’m guilty of it too. I’ve purchaSed courses where I barely get involved. I spent all this money on a course and I’m barely even doing anything or I just kind of give up. But that’s the thing, you know, most people do give up really. I mean like if you purchase a, I’m going to use like the wholesale formula as an example. Like, I got that course and it’s a great course and I didn’t really do anything with it. I’ll be honest with yoU. It’s not their fault or your fault. That’s totally my fault. Fair. And I think like probably I’d be willing to say at least 95 percent of people that purchase that course, you know, they probably give up, right?
Speaker 6: [01:09:32] Like they contact these wholesalers, keep getting denied and say they don’t want amazon targets. Yeah. So they’re probably just like, you know, they just give up and that’s what most people do. They don’t, if you don’t get that instant gratification, you’re just like, oh well I guess just doesn’t work. But um, you just have to. A lot of is just believing in yourself, I think. And um, you know, again, like not surround yourself with people that are, that are already doing it or that are positive and push you and motivate you because it is, it is really easy to get those negative thoughts in your head and want to give up. And that it kinda goes back to like the self development. Just keep your mind, your mind primed and keep you, uh,
Stephen: [01:10:11] inspired and motivated. There’s something you said there that I want to make sure we hit on. You said that you have to surround yourself with people that are similar interests in that kind of thing. How do you do that? Because I get a lot of people that say, steve, I can’t find groups like you have. You know what I mean? I’ve got, I’m very, very fortunate. I’ve got an amazing group of friends that have come through this. PlUs I meet hundreds of amazing people and I get to talk to hundreds of amazing people, but I put myself out there. Right? You see me doing all this work, right all weekend and week number miss, how do you do it? How do you break into those circles? Because a lot of people don’t know how they’re shy. They’re, they’re afraid they don’t, they’re not as smart kellen, they’re not smart and they are in their mind, right? They have that self belief that everybody’s pumped into them, that you’re never going to amount to anything, you know?
Speaker 6: [01:10:55] Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think like for me, like how I have made a lot, a lot of these relationships is a, you know, like I have, well I have a couple friends that I’ve kept in contact since the beginning of my ecommerce journey and we’re still friends and we might be doing thingS, but we still, um, you know, keep in touch. And then also if you’re in a facebook group, for example, I’m teaching you high ticket drop shipping, right? You might see people asking questions that are same things that you’re thinking about. So reach out to him like, you know, send them a private message like, hey, do you mind if we just do a little mastermind? Um, we have a mastermind with about five people were actually doing a call later today. Sometimes, like I feel like, you know, I’ll go on this call.
Speaker 6: [01:11:39] I don’t really know what I’m going to say. But every time we do these calls, when I get off that call, I’m always amped up because I see what they’re doing. And it just pumps you up, you know, you get inspired. You might be, might be doing something different than what they’re doing as far as like how you’re building your site or like I was saying earlier, maybe your slack and you’ve been kind of slacking off a little bit, but he talked to, you know, to joe over here and he’s, he is man, he’s fired up, he’s got a, he’s running ads himself and he’s, you know, he, he’s like, yeah, I got three new suppliers and been uploading products and it kind of tells you like, man, I need to kick it in gear and get motivated again. so I think it’s important to have people just kInd of pull you up, you know, when to say you stay on that, stay motivated.
Speaker 6: [01:12:23] I think it’s, I think it’s very powerful. The other thing is you can’t go into those groups negative here, but this one can I make I need to make $100,000 by the end of july. Carolyn, is that possible? No. Can I replace my six figure income this month and I’m losing my job next week? Can I do that? No, no, no, no. But if you go in with a positive attitude, hey, I’m really interested in learning, you know, that kind of thing. And I think what you just said too, is when you, when you see somebody else asking you a question that you thought was stupid in your mind because you didn’t want to ask it and you realize that the wheat other people are asking that same, it’s not stupid. And then that sounds like they’re at the same level I am. I think reaching out to them as opposed to reaching out to the guru and I don’t mean that in a negative Way as opposed to reaching out to the expert.
Speaker 6: [01:13:10] It’s less intimidating. oh, for sure. A lot of times the experts, they charge for their time too, so they’re not going to do, which is fair. Yeah, that’s fair. I understand because they’re getting private messages all the time so they realize, hey, I need to charge for my time. Um, but yeah, like it’s, it has powerful having those friendships. And I kind of back to what you were saying about, um, I don’t know. You’re saying something about being smart enough. I’m not, I’ll, I’ll tell everyone that’s like, I don’t claim to be smart, I wasn’t a good student in school, but what I have is I’m just hungry, you know, like I’m just determined and like I just feel like I get motivated by seeing other people doing it, especially if I feel like there are a lot like me and I’m like, well he can do it, why can’t I do it? So that motivates me a lot too and I just, I’m, I’m just, I’m terrified of going back to a job to fear and it’s funny, I just saw a tom donahue interviewed tai lopez, the guy with the cars and his girl or something like that. Right. And it was
Stephen: [01:14:11] interesting. They both made a point. One of them was yoU have to act out of fear. I think that was ty lopez had said that you really want to stay in that fearful mode because you don’t want to go back to that, so therefore you’re going to take action. That’s really what helps take action. And the other one, I think it was tom, bill, you said this, he’s like, look, you know, the longer you do this kind of stuff, you realize that everybody is kind of just feeling their way along. Nobody has a. No, maybe it was ty lopez. He said, I’ve never met a diety a day at t I don’t know how to pronounce that. Most people have no clue or, or just as lost as you even the successful ones in other parts of their life
Speaker 6: [01:14:46] thing. I noticed too. And, and I, I, I’ve been saying this for awhile, but a lot of people are, um, they might claim that they work 14 hours a day and some people do. I mean, some people really do work a lot, but I think a lot of people don’t. They just kind of put this portrayal out that they do work like that. But I think the key is to be consistent in your effort. Like improve every day. They know, some days you improve, a lot, some days you don’t. But as long as you keep pushing that needle forward, it’s kinda like the, um, I don’t know if you’ve read the book. Um, oh, not the compound effect, which is similar, but I’m thinking, oh, the slight edge. That’s one of my favorites.
Stephen: [01:15:24] No, I haven’t read that. I’ve read the compound effect. Darren hardy, the slight edge,
Speaker 6: [01:15:29] the slight edge. It is like when I, when I, one of my friends gave me the audio book and it’s just, it makes you feel like, wow, I can really do anything. It’s just about just, just pushing that needle forward, improving one percent every day and just keep doing that. It compounds over time, but the key is keep doing it.
Stephen: [01:15:46] Is that, what is that what you would credit your success with? Is taking a slight edge by continuous improvement? Small improvements over time?
Speaker 6: [01:15:54] Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. I’d like, some days I do get, um, you know, there’s periods of time where I just have a goal and I want to really crank out a lot of stuff and I do put in a lot of hours sometimes, but then there’s times that I don’t, but I, it kind of back to what I was saying, It’s just the whole point is just regardless of how much you improved, just just try to be a little bit better than you were the day before. Really.
Stephen: [01:16:18] All right. That was a perfect way to end it. Well, if someone has some more questions, has some follow up question. What’s the best way to get to kellen? There’s just messaged me on facebook, kellen ampers. I’ll put that lead to, you know, it’s very exciting for me again, because I watched from the sidelines, I’ve watched it, we’ve met a couple times and I watch over time people and I watched them Figuring it out and the intentional approach that you’re taking is very powerful. You could downplay it and you know, in any way you want, but it’s real. And again, to me, I admire somebody who saying, no, yeah, that stuff’s cool, but this is where I’m going and I’m going to do this because I’m valuing my time because I’m putting my time and effort over here. I’m going to make this site very successful, blah, blah blah. So I think it’s smart. I think it’s been very good for you and I think it’s replicatable for others and it’s not easy though, right? That’s just not easy. It’s just that small, slight edge. Love that. Ooh, I love that phrase.
Speaker 6: [01:17:15] yeah, it takes, it takes time. It’s not easy at first, but it’s, once you get everything built up and you know you’re, you’re running ads, I mean it gets, it can become pretty passive and fruitful really. But it’s not 100 percent passive. I take a lot of phone calls, people call me a lot from the website, have the 800 number linked to my phone and it’s a big purchase. So people want to ask questions, they want to end your new site to them. They want to make sure this is a, you know, this is legit, this, so you got to ease their mind and I would say 50 percent of my sales I have to close over the phone, but the other 50 percent is just passive. I’ll just get a sale.
Stephen: [01:17:54] That was a very cool and as technology improves, that’s only going to change probably to your advantage with chatbots and those kinds of things. So. All right. Very cool man. I wish you nothing but success. I can’t wait to hear how this goes for you. I can’t wait til you make that. You got to let me know when you sell this, if you sell this site because to me, again, I just think it’s cool that you built something. It’s like that inventor you invented something, you built it and then somebody else saw value in it and they bought it because they say it’s an artist who creates that sculpture. That’s kinda what it is. And in a weird way it really the same thing. So. Very, very cool man. I wish you nothing but success. Thank you so much. Thanks to you. So very cool.
Stephen: [01:18:34] It’s such a smart guy and humbled guy. Um, but you hear him putting the time and he’s on a call later on today with four or five other likeminded individuals where even if he can’t bring his a game, they’re going to help him bring his a game because they’re going to pull them up. He’s going to get inspired by them. How cool would that be to have in your life if you don’t have that? He gave solid advice. How to get that because that’s one of the questions. I’ll probably use this a lot. I’ll probably mentioned him a lot because people ask me all the time, steve, how do you get those people in my life? I can’t find them. Well, he gave it great example of how you find somebody that’s powerful. Now you got to do it right. I’m sure he was nervous the first time he did it.
Stephen: [01:19:13] But man, once that happens, that other person, if they’re asking the similar question that you thought was stupid to ask, uh, they’re in the same place you are. So that’s cool. So guess what, likeminded. Now you can, you got something in common and then maybe you could work together. Maybe you can’t, but you can start there and I just think that’s solid advice. It’s going to get you through the tough times because it will be tough times. This is not an easy business. What he’s doing is not easy. A lot of moving pieces and he’s figuring it out right, and so you can do the same thing. He commerce momentum.com, ecommerce momentum.com. Take care.
Cool voice guy: [01:19:45] Thanks for listening to the incomers momentum podcast. All the links mentioned today can be found that incomers momentum come under this episode number. Please remember to subscribe and like us on itunes.
