E-commerce Progress: Based on 1-on-1 Amazon coaching

[exclusives88]

It's ironic, I had a whole section about this in my last post but deleted it because I felt it was the least relevant information to those reading. Plus my post was already extremely long. I have had several people ask me this question and I can only tell you my thought process leading up to how I came to the decision...be it right or wrong.

First, and most importantly to me, I prefer not to think my actions as giving up so much as I see it as shifting focus. During the training I had bounced around a bit in selecting a product to move forward with and eventually settled on the exercise bands. They met the criteria and had potential, so I sent about 30+ requests or so out to manufacturers ( I don't remember the exact number off hand, but it was a fair amount), interviewed about 15 of those manufacturers and chose 3 that I felt were worth while actually getting samples from. Of the three I ordered samples from, the one I ordered my initial inventory from was the only one I felt offered a quality product compared to what was on the market. However, once I got rolling with them, it was headache after headache.

At that point I was deep enough into the training and didn't want to start over because I wanted to get as much knowledge as possible from the class in the 3 month period allotted for the training. I figured if I was going to make the bands work long term I would eventually have to find a new manufacturer because some of the games being played with me were unacceptable. It was right about that time that Eskil had started talking to me about other potential opportunities and he also felt it was a good idea for me to move on based on what was taking place.

That's the back story and to more specifically answer your question, I find that personally I do not perform well by spreading myself across multiple ideas at once. I had a limited funds and was already invested in getting product number two in the works. I also didn't want to start the process over with the bands by having to find another manufacturer, especially when I was already investing time, money and energy into my next product. Had I felt the bands were a killer idea that I really had something special going with, sure... I would have done whatever it took to get back on track. But for me, exercise bands are not the answer.

I get that this may not be the most logical decision, especially since I had already done a lot of the work up front. I also get that it's easy to just order another round and throw them out there to see what happens. However, something about that didn't feel right to me. Quite frankly, I think it's just how I am wired, for better or worse.

Regardless, I have been moving forward at a much better pace on my second round and have been pushing hard to try and get as close to 20+ reviews out of the gate as I can. Overall I am having much better flow and I think I am working with something that has greater potential, if done right. We'll see. The second and third products are in a HIGHLY competitive market, so I am about to get a gauge of what I am really made of I think!

Any update on your progress on your new product line? I enjoyed reading the writing

 

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[thorn]

Any update on your progress on your new product line? I enjoyed reading the writing

Thanks for the nudge. I have been hiding in the dark for a while, but long overdue for an update on things. I do have plans on putting together one soon.

 

[thorn]

Update Time

Not gonna lie. This is a pretty hard post for me to write. I think it’s because failure is a hard thing to put into words without it sounding like a bunch of excuses. And then there is the fear of losing the respect of your peers. Especially when I was that guy coming out of the meetup in March that was all “Rah Rah, we can do this! Let’s all commit right now to our success stories for next year's meetup!” Heh. Kinda funny in hindsight.

In any event, I will do my best to skip the BS (yea, right, you know you are getting a long post from me!) and try to get to the point.

Chasing the Dream Money

I truly believe the biggest thing that set me up for failure was that I let myself believe that I was solving “needs” when in reality I was just slapping my label on an unoriginal product, altering it slightly and expecting to retire in 5 years. I believed that I could use Amazon as a platform that would launch my business and then I would evolve it into something “real” if I just followed the system laid out by so many others. Sure, there is money there. No doubt in my mind. Probably even lots. The problem was, that I never stopped to see if I was actually solving a need.

So how do you define “failure”?

One thing I can tell you is that I don’t believe failure is a red number on the bottom of a spreadsheet. I failed because I started chasing the latest trends in categories like supplements and beauty (yea, I know...great places to be, right!?). I thought I could seize a small piece of one of those multi-billion dollar industries. I assumed the recipes for success were laid out for me by others and that I just needed to follow the plan. I read books on what to do. I took courses. I listened to every podcast that had the word Amazon in it. But no matter what I thought I knew, I lacked innovation and true value in my products. I thought that by making a 15% change to an existing product that my twist on this idea would look SO much better to the average consumer that they would just gobble it up by the hundreds or thousands. The bottom line was that no matter what action or what steps I thought I was taking, I really had no business playing in the industries I was trying to break into.

As time passed, my growing disinterest and frustration created a lack of enthusiasm for the project. When I started to hit the typical walls one hits when building a business (manufacturing delays, unresponsive graphic designers, communication barriers, building a client list, marketing, etc.) I just couldn’t dig down deep enough to push through. And let's face it, Amazon is ripe with opportunity but it is getting harder and harder every day to compete. The barrier to entry has been lowered and Amazon knows it. The landscape is changing and if you are 110% in, which I wasn't, you are going to get left behind. In general I felt like I was getting washed out to sea and eventually I let the tide take me out and drown me.

You Quitter!

This is part where you are thinking something like “you don’t have love the product or the industry and you just have to be passionate about the process” or “you gave up too soon you lazy a$$!” Well, maybe there is truth in both of those statements. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how I am wired. It’s now how I think either. And quite honestly I am tired of trying to force feed myself those lies. Maybe it doesn’t apply to everyone, but I need to be passionate about what is I am doing. I need to believe in my products and that they are in some small way changing the lives of my customers for the better. I need to be excited to tell my friends and family what I do. And most importantly, when I look in the mirror I need to be proud of what I have accomplished. Selling the latest variation of some manufacturer's $4 skincare product for 800% markup isn't getting me to that place either. It may pad my pockets for a bit, but that's not my end game. Not everyone approaches things that way or shares those same objectives. And not everyone should. My blueprint is my blueprint and doesn't have to work for you. Maybe I am in the minority and I will miss out on millions because of how I think. Maybe golden opportunities will pass me by every which way I look. Maybe I am not setting myself up to be a fastlaner. I guess we’ll see.

Ok Mr. Overly Dramatic, where to from here?

Now, there is one opportunity I am truly excited about and that is that for the first time in my life I am seriously considering pursuing writing and treating it as a business. I know it sounds like a bandwagon thing with the supposed gold rush on self publishing (which I do believe is more or less over) but I have long dreamed of becoming a writer. The problem is that I have always been too afraid to put myself out there on any level and pursue it. But I do feel if I view writing as a long term game and approach it with the passion and respect the trade deserves by doing my best to continually create quality products, I have a much greater chance of setting myself up for success. The ironic part is that I was VERY close to putting everything else on hold in my life to pursue writing last May but my fears got the best of me and I decided to pursue Amazon selling.

There is another small development that is worth mentioning, but for now, it remains a back burner consideration. In the last month or so I was approached by the owner of my current company. He had asked me if I would be interested in buying the company in roughly five years. I have been giving plenty of time to think about this and I am not sure where I stand yet.

The company I am referring to, the one I call my "slowlane job", bought out a business I started. In many ways I still kind of view it as an extension of my original business because we do the same thing I was doing, just on a larger scale. Essentially, and they had the resources and I had the intellectual property. My old company basically operates as a subdivision of the larger company and when they took me over were were doing 500-750k in sales per year. Since the takeover 4 years ago, I have been able to grow my division to over 3 million a year in sales and aid in growing the entire company from a 6 million a year business to approximately a 10 million a year company. It’s an interesting proposition but I am not sure it’s for me yet. Their exit strategy hasn’t been fully revealed yet (I know the owners’ plan, but not the numbers) and I am afraid I won’t be able to successfully separate my time from the business. That said, there are ways to be creative and quite honestly I come and go as I please currently. We’ll see. It's not the dream, but if nothing else, it is an interesting proposition.

Final thoughts

If there is one major takeaway that I learned since my first post in this thread it is that I need to remain true to my process, stop chasing shiny objects and continue to pursue things that spark my interests and get me fired up. (Okay, three things). Those beliefs are the same beliefs that I founded my first brick and mortar business on and I had a decent amount of success with that. I truly believe that when I tend deviate from that path it never ends well for me.

I do consider my Amazon project a failure, but my journey far from over. I feel I have grown a good bit along the way too. If I have any advice for those reading this, it is to stay true to yourself in whatever you do and follow your instincts. Unfortunately for people like me it sometimes means that you will have to make three lefts just to go right.

I don’t think I will continue to update this particular thread simply because the thread title suggests progress related to an Amazon business. I will however continue to answer any questions here, if there happen to be any.

Hopefully soon I will be able to share my next steps and continue the conversation with you in a new progress thread.

Thanks for reading and best of luck to you on your own journey.

 

[FeaRxUnLeAsHeD]

 

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[KLaw]

Thorn. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. It is truly appreciated. I think it would be extremely valuable and interesting to get @Eskil take on what you could have done differently to improve your chances of success. Mainly, from his mentorship perspective. Obviously. I would need to approve of his sharing this publicly. It would be a very unique and hopefully honest analysis. Thanks again for sharing and the best of luck to you.

 

[thorn]

Thorn. Thank you so much for sharing your journey. It is truly appreciated. I think it would be extremely valuable and interesting to get @Eskil take on what you could have done differently to improve your chances of success. Mainly, from his mentorship perspective. Obviously. I would need to approve of his sharing this publicly. It would be a very unique and hopefully honest analysis. Thanks again for sharing and the best of luck to you.

I have no problem with anyone sharing their thoughts about my process and what I could have done differently. My perspective is that these types of threads on the forums are designed to help the readers grow or see things in a different light as they work through their own struggles. I like to think we put ourselves out there in an effort to help others, so I am all for it. Keep in mind though, much of what I went through with Eskil was only during the first 3 months or so out of the roughly 15 months I spend on what I keep referring to as "my Amazon project." After that, he slowly dialed back and I was on my own.

 

[FeaRxUnLeAsHeD]

I think you need to STFU in your head and scale your sales.

I hate to be harsh but the difference between success and failure in your current endeavor is just putting your head to the grinding stone and making the sales.

Every skill you will learn in this endeavor will carry on to your other businesses: Ad copy, customer service, sales, marketing, social media, finances, accounting. Everything.

You say you aren't filling needs? Ask the 80+ people who bought your product.

You're either going to learn the skills and the lessons and learn to push ahead beyond frustration and roadblocks, or you're going to learn the habit of being a quitter in every endeavor you start because you always back down when shit doesn't work out.

Just think about it man. I'm sure you've made up your mind, but at least reference this once and a while in the future and try not to find yourself becoming a habitual quitter.

 

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[ddall]

Thorn, in my humble opinion I echo Chris' thoughts.

I think this is more a sign you should pivot and iterate rather than close up shop and go into creative writing. Ultimately if your end goal is to create wealth and income independence you may be closer than you think. With writing...well frankly this endeavour not only seems saturated but incredibly difficult and time consuming with the upside potential being comparably (to ecomm) very limited. Just be aware of shiny object syndrome and be hyper rational about what you desire.

 

[thorn]

@ChrisJHarrington and @ddall - I appreciate the honest feedback and quite honestly I expect(ed) more echoing of the same sentiment from others. I also think that if you take the suggested approach and apply it to most things, you greatly increase your chance of success. As a matter of fact, it's the same mindset I took on when I built my first business. There were times when I could barely feed myself, my house was on the line and we had no idea how we were going to pay the bills...but I put my head down and pushed through. But it wasn't fear or the need to persevere that allowed me to keep pushing forward. As a matter of fact I was truly blind to the negatives at the time because I was so legitimately excited about what I was doing each day that I couldn't stop to consuming what the industry was teaching me.

However, in order to truly understand why I am looking to move on, it may help to understand a little on how I got here. My situation may be a bit different than others on this similar path. Four years ago I received a buyout offer on my first business that was not an up front cash payout. My buyout was structured in a form of a profit sharing agreement that linearly scales with the growth of the company that absorbed mine. At the time, I saw nothing but unlimited potential for growth and lots of dollar signs and a promise that I could focus on what I enjoyed while leaving the mundane business tasks to others in the company (paying taxes, dealing with shitty employees, payroll, accounting, etc.). Plus, from an earnings perspective, it was a serious upgrade and so far all of those promises have been kept. What I failed to understand at the time was that the agreement really didn't provide a way for me to separate my time from my work.

As I get older I view building wealth as only one component of what I define as true success. Wealth provides opportunities to pursue the things you enjoy but you also need time. Now, as I continue to grow and look for new opportunities, I have realigned my goals. Perhaps its because I have a family now. Perhaps my perspective on life has just shift. But the bottom line is that I need to build a location independent business that not only excites me, but will at some point allow me to separate my time from my earnings.

Amazon is a powerful platform and in theory offers many of those things. It provides a great means for anybody like you or I to quickly launch and test a product and make quick money. Even a rinse and repeat approach to launching products on their platform could net a six figure business,or more, as long as you are willing to continually look for new products. And as mentioned, there are valuable skills and lessons to be learned as you move through this process. But let me make something clear (and this not really directed at anyone in particular, just an observation) and that is that if you don't view Amazon for what it is - just one of many platforms that you can sell YOUR product on, you exponentially increase your odds of failure. And guess what...if you are just selling another group of relabeled products from china or a knock-off supplement with your logo on it, your time in the spotlight is limited. Trust me. You aren't building a fastlane business. And that's ok, but let's call a spade a spade.

And that's why I decided to move on. I realized I wasn't offering up products that somebody couldn't copy and make a few minor changes to and then list under their own label. I wasn't creating the next paint brush cover or Stayblcam. If someone walked in tomorrow with slightly deeper products, even if their product was crappier, they could just buy more reviews than I had and drastically affect my bottom line. Sure, the Amazon algorithms would catch up with them eventually, but then the next guy will find a new way to game this system and I am right back where I started. I also got tired of chasing down every ebay seller who re-listed my product for $3 more than what I was trying to sell it for and then tried to make it look like they were the brand owner. I got tired of group after group of ASM'ers flooding the market and driving the prices down. I got tired of battling fake reviews from competitors. Quite frankly I got tired of the whole rat race that Amazon has become. Now, I am not saying there isn't still great opportunity there, because there is. And I do realize taht even if combined, all of these are not legitimate reasons to up and quit. But I can say when you have already lost interest in you products and what you are doing, these things sure as hell are gonna help pull you out of your rut and give you a reason to refocus. But the one thing it did do for me was allow to step back and look at what I was trying to accomplish and what I found was that if I am going to spend countless hours pursuing a dream, I sure as hell want to enjoy each step of the way.

Time is precious. Spend it doing what you enjoy, period. I want to be passionate about what I am building and not just blindly following the pack. I want to learn and I want to grow. Sure writing may be hard to get into right now and a lot less lucrative than selling physical products. In some weird way I sort of welcome that challenge. But understand I am not leaning towards writing because I believe it could be a gold rush. I am doing it because its something I have always wanted to pursue and never had the balls to do. And I also believe that if you are passionate about your business and produce a quality product (this part is KEY with the emphasis on quality), you can succeed in ANY market.

So I appreciate the feedback so far and who knows, maybe one day I will revisit physical products when I can maintain a fresh perspective. But for now, I have to follow what I feel best serves my own interests...even if it may not be the shortest path to success. I please allow me to reiterate that what I am doing here is what I need to do and is not necessarily a recipe I would recommend for anyone else.

 

[MTF]

I get what you mean by your decision, @thorn, and I agree with you.

Many people here only look at how much money a business makes and disregard how it makes you feel. Yes, it's egoistical to put your needs over the needs of your clients (when you move on because the business doesn't fit you), but I believe we're not launching businesses just to make money no matter the cost.

For me, the emotional cost is oftentimes MUCH more important that the money I can make. For instance, if a business requires me to have dozens of phone calls a day (something I hate), no amount of money will change the fact that I would be miserable.

I like what Felix Dennis said about it:

Enjoy the business of making money. The loot is only a marker. Time
cannot be recaptured. There is no amount of pie in the world worth being
miserable for, day after day. If you find you dislike what you are doing, then
sell up and change your life. Self-imposed misery is a kind of madness. The
cure is to get out.

Say what you want about following your passion vs solving problems, it all should start with enjoyment. My business (writing books and helping self-published authors) is not exactly my passion (I wouldn't do it for free), but it fits my personality. As long as you know how to provide value, I think it's only an asset to be at least a bit passionate about your business (and a huge liability when you're not).

A year ago I had a software business that turned my life into a nightmare (I have a progress thread on the inside). Some people here also told me that since I got revenue and the business grew (and the idea was sound), I should keep going. I decided to sell it and move on. I couldn't have been happier with my decision. Now I not only make MUCH more money, I also MUCH more enjoy what I'm doing ("MUCH more" is an understatement as I hated my previous business).

But the bottom line is that I need to build a location independent business that not only excites me, but will at some point allow me to separate my time from my earnings.

Self-publishing is not exactly a business. You will have to release a new book every few months (and ideally, every few weeks) to grow your income (or at least keep it on the same level).

 

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[thorn]

@MTF - thanks for the response.

Say what you want about following your passion vs solving problems, it all should start with enjoyment. My business (writing books and helping self-published authors) is not exactly my passion (I wouldn't do it for free), but it fits my personality. As long as you know how to provide value, I think it's only an asset to be at least a bit passionate about your business (and a huge liability when you're not).

I think this about sums it up for me and is probably a much better way to say what I wanted to. Even if you don't do what you are passionate about, at minimum IMO, you need to find something that fits your personality.

Self-publishing is not exactly a business. You will have to release a new book every few months (and ideally, every few weeks) to grow your income (or at least keep it on the same level).

I am obviously only looking to jump in at this point, so I know little about what to expect, but I think self publishing could be viewed as a business, although it doesn't have to be. You create a product. You have to market that product. You build or find an audience that will pay for your product. You learn what you audience craves more of through feedback and then decide if you want to tailor your next product to further serve that audience or pivot and create a new product for a new audience. In my mind, from a 10,000 foot view, it's not much different than any other business out there. However, what is different is the product itself and journey between each of those key points. And that is what I am looking to change. I truly believe that in today's day and age you need to be able to connect with your customers on a personal level to be truly successful. The internet is so full of "me-toos" and people are starting to see through that.

I also want to point out that I am not entering the self publishing industry because I think it will be easy. Truthfully I am scared out of my mind and I think it will be the hardest thing I have done to this point. I have so much respect for those that can sit down and earn an income from their words. For me, I just want to earn $1 from my work and then go from there.

At this point, I am starting to venture into whats sounds like a first post in a new progress thread...