Amazon Strategy
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Ash Roy and Greg Cassar Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Greg Cassar: 00:00
Amazon doesn’t allow you to track conversions like when you got a sale from an outside traffic source so it is a little bit harder and they don’t allow you to do remarketing except for if you’re a big seller and you’re using their tools. So Amazon, the only way we do that is like we drive traffic from the videos out on social media about key products. We do like Facebook video view ads and we send them in but we can’t really track and measure. We can just see that if we turn that off, their sales go down and the social buzz goes down and that kind of stuff.
Ash Roy: 00:35
Welcome back. This is Ash Roy. I’m the founder of productiveinsights.com and the host of the productive insights podcast. And I’m delighted to have Greg Cassar back on the podcast from Rainmakerpartner.io. Now, Greg recently was on the podcast and he talked about some high level strategies around building a successful online business and we talked through the various kinds of business models, starting with a local business where you’re trading your time for money and then a more services based business where it’s a little bit higher end. Then we talked about having an information product business, which was a bit further up the line way. You’re not trading time for money as much and it’s a bit more leveraged. And then we talk about Amazon and SAS being at the top of that succession where you build something that is more of an asset and something that tends to generate income more on automatic.
Ash Roy: 01:29
In this episode, Greg and I are gonna dig a bit deeper into the tactical aspects of building an Amazon based eCommerce business that will enable you to create a lifestyle that Greg currently enjoys, which means that he is free by 9:00 AM every morning from all his commitments that generate his income. And he is pretty much free to do whatever he wants to do with his time after that. So I’m sure all of us would like to establish that lifestyle. Uh, it isn’t something that’s gonna happen overnight. I’m not gonna lie to you. This is not one of these get rich quick schemes. It takes a long time to do it. It took Greg about 15 years and I suspect it would take most of us around that long. That said, Greg has worked with some of the smartest people online, including people like Ryan Deiss, Ezra Firestone, and many others, several of whom have been guests on this podcast. And so I’m delighted to have Greg back on once again from Rainmakerpartner.io. Welcome back, Greg.
Greg Cassar: 02:34
Hey, thank you. Actually, it was a great introduction. I hope I can live up to it.
Ash Roy: 02:39
Well, thank you so much for being on the show, Greg. I’ve known you for about five years and it’s really been a pleasure every time we’ve met. Um, and so thank you for coming back on. So Greg, let’s talk a bit about how you have used online strategies and really leveraged your journey of 15 years to culminate in your epic success of $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months. Can you talk to us about that journey and can you also bake in where you see yourself in two years time?
Greg Cassar: 03:12
Yeah. Gotcha. So I guess it didn’t, if you look at it like for example, the last that business you’re talking about is, um, I’ve got some amazing partners in the physical products space. These gentlemen based out of the U S and they do a lot of the like product importing. And then I focus a lot on the selling. Yeah. That story is, we did do $1 million in Amazon in the first 12 months, but if you look at like the last 12 months, it’s like 2.3 million or something to that effect. So it’s just sort of really, yeah, scaling, scaling exponentially and probably realistically only just getting started compared to where it’s going to end up because you can literally hit a global, you can hit a global marketplace.
Greg Cassar: 03:49
I did importing, you know, like a couple of times and different products and things that I was going to sell myself, but one of the things I figured out was I wrote really wasn’t really that great at it. Any of you make a mistake, it kind of can be expensive. You know, you’ve got a container load of goods coming in from China or whatever and if there’s a problem with it, you might lose 30 grand and that kind of stuff. And then through often, you know, like masterminds and events, which is actually, I met you at through events as well. Yes, events and masterminds are just amazing because you don’t know really who you, you know who you’re going to meet there. And so through a mastermind met a folk, met a guy who then introduced us to other people and we met up with these business partners who were amazing at the product side and they were doing well in the physical products in brick and mortar retail like Walmart, et cetera, but maybe weren’t as strong online.
Greg Cassar: 04:38
And then we sort of had that conversation about, well hang on, I’m not that really that good at designing products and importing them and maybe you guys aren’t as strong as us in selling them. What about it? We hitched our wagons together as like, I think James Schramko talked about like a catamaran type model where we’re both going in the same direction and we’re connected. Yes. And it’s really like that one plus one equals three. And so we started doing that and really it just work straight away. And his company had amazing products. And then when you applied like a black belt level of skill to them. Yeah, it really, it really blew up. And we had, we had an eCommerce store with Shopify, which is, which is amazing. And we also had um, an authority blog and we also had an Amazon presence. And really I talk about a multi-leg stool.
Greg Cassar: 05:22
And one of things we mentioned in the last thing was you don’t just want like one thing you, you really the worst summary business is one. And even physical product and an econ business. Ultimately you really want a couple legs to that stool. So you really do want, and this is the thing I learned from Yaro Starak which is you need something that’s sticky, you know, something that people come back to cause that’s like a big or authority blog, you know, in that space. It’s great to have your own ecommerce store. And I use Shopify as a platform. And then, but 51% of the buyers are actually on amazon.com we talk about the U S so we were building out the Amazon. But after awhile you get to the point where we were doing so many things but we couldn’t be everywhere. We’ve got this saying, and he or she knew who chases two rabbits catches none.
Greg Cassar: 06:05
And so we weren’t really able to do a great job on the eCommerce store as well as the Amazon at the same time. And for every one sale on, we were getting on the eCommerce store, we were getting say 20 on Amazon. So we decided, well, you know, like we need to, yes we need to do the eCommerce store, but why don’t we just pocket for awhile? It’ll still make a few sales, but just not get that focused on it. Let’s do a really good job on one thing. And then once we’ve smashed that out of the park, you know what I call given enough energy units then and only then when we come back to the eCommerce store, and we’re going to pick up the eCommerce store in, in July. So we really doubled down on, on the Amazon, and in the eCommerce space.
Greg Cassar: 06:44
And even though I’m an Aussie, we focused on the U.S. first because the same marketing effort in a bigger market, when you get on a winner, it amplifies, right? So 10 times bigger market. So once you started getting on a winner, then you know it was really good. And then, I hope things we did on on that, but they were able to clone that. Like I mentioned before, we could come to Canada, we could clone the Mexico, we can clone to five countries in Europe. There’s five marketplaces in Europe and that allows you to hit like 39 countries across Europe, that kind of thing. We’d be close in Japan, we could clone to Australia and there’s a couple others we haven’t done yet. Such as, you know, Brazil, China and India, which are on the roadmap. But it’s much easier to do English speaking stuff.
Ash Roy: 07:24
Absolutely. And it’s also, you also gotta be very cognizant of cultural issues. I was born and raised in India and I can tell you that, you know, if you want to transact with India very often, at least back when I was there, very often they would say yes, but it would really mean no. So you really, you really need to understand the subtleties and the idiosyncrasies of that particular culture. And yes doesn’t always mean yes, they often are just being polite and they just want to either end the conversation or they want to be agreeable, but they’re not really going to necessarily deliver. So you need to be very aware of cultural nuances when you’re dealing with completely different cultures.
Greg Cassar: 08:09
And the other part of them that I didn’t know that about you, that you are born and raised in India, so learning something new every time. That’s great. The other thing we found was that we got translations on, in this case on Fiverr, but they were all we called Chinglish. They kind of looked right, but they were a mix of multiple languages and nothing really started selling because if you lose the trust, yeah, you lose the trust of the buyer, then they go, Hey, something doesn’t feel right here, I’ll go elsewhere. You know what I mean? So we were doing that and now even though we rolled out like right across the globe, within a year, we’ve actually got to come back to those non-English-speaking ones now and say, okay, what are we going to do to get those site listings? You know, really, really done well. So it’s proper by a native speaker, not just by someone who can do a bit of German, you know what I mean, or that kind of thing.
Ash Roy: 08:59
Exactly, and I’ve come across very similar challenges when it comes to even things like getting content written. Because if you, you may speak the Queen’s English, but if you’re not from that particular culture, you won’t be able to speak conversationally and often a lot of copy these days is written in a very conversational tone.
Greg Cassar: 09:21
Yeah. Gotcha. That makes good sense.
Ash Roy: 09:24
So, Greg, you’ve had a lot of success. Clearly, in the last 12 months, you’ve gone to $2.3 Million in annual revenue from $1 million in revenue in the prior 12 months. So you obviously got a fantastic trajectory going here. What is working for you right now? What products are you selling and where do you see yourself in two years’ time?
Greg Cassar: 09:46
Yeah, so on the product side, the actual specifics don’t matter as much. It’s really about getting the right formula and recipe. So it really comes down to psychology and math. So psychology is like, do they want it? And then the maths is, can I be profitable at that, at that price point, you know, that kind of thing. And would they, do they want it, there’s another part of it as well, which is are they searching for it or can we target those people and put a message in front of them? So all marketing, it’s very, very important, you know, either are they searching for it or can we target them? So if we look at the product side, we like, we avoid anything that’s big in size and that’s bulky because we don’t want it to be like big to store, which is expensive.
Greg Cassar: 10:27
We don’t want it to be big to ship, which is expensive or so heavy descend. So we try and avoid those. We also really like, we liked that price point from $25 through to $100 or more than a hundred and they might have to get the permission from a hubby or the misses or whatever, you know, that kind of thing to buy it. Whereas like if it’s $80 or $60 or whatever, then I’m the, I could work well it’s more of an impulse buy that way. Yeah. Good. That’s a great word for it. Yeah, I think so. And then less than that. So listen, that $25, it might be hard to be profitable. You do see people selling stuff less than $25, but I think, you know, it is harder. Um, so we kind of like look at that. And another thing is most people talk about niches.
Greg Cassar: 11:07
You know, we really focus on mass markets, so because the same marketing effort, you know, gives you a better result when you get here, when you get on a winner. So that’s kind of like what we do on the product side. You asked about like where do I see myself in two years time? Yes. Much of the same to be honest because like I’ve mentioned before, I’m an overnight success, 15 years to get to here. I’ve now achieved that for internet lifestyle, full freedom, so more, more of the same as on that entrepreneurial journey. Definitely a focus on health and wellbeing, you know, peace, happiness, that kind of stuff. And definitely doing more in the eCommerce, Amazon software as a service, I’ll probably still do a lot of teaching, giving back and now I don’t really have services, whatever to, to promote or anything to that effect. But just giving value.
Ash Roy: 12:01
Right. You also talked about not selling very bulky products and I think that’s a great point. If I put my accounting hat on, which I do occasionally confess to being a CPA, from time to time, the cost of goods sold would go up because your inventory costs go right up. Because storing large products does cost a lot. Now I do know that there are other facilities, there are other options these days you don’t have to store your own inventory, but at some point if the inventory is being stored somewhere, it is going to add to the cost of the product. So that is another good reason to sell smaller products that are easier to move as it were. Okay. So how can business owners who are considering the eCommerce market look to get a start in the eCommerce market if they’re just at the beginning of their journey?
Greg Cassar: 12:54
Okay. So in that regards, I think the first step always is education. So just geeking out as much as possible. Learning about e-com, learning about Amazon, going to, yeah, going to events. It all really is going to start with education so that you don’t make expensive mistakes. If they’re already a good marketer, they may never do like what I did, which was the win-win partnership partner with someone who has already got a great brand and that kind of thing and promote their products for them and then take a small slice of it that works great or can learn the other side, which is okay, this is a market I really want to serve. Here’s a hole in the market or here’s an opportunity I see in the market. This would really help people. They want it. So I’m going to either find one for example on alibaba.com and put my own brand on it. Um, and then you know, important that kind of stuff and sell it as my own brand or, yeah, so really that’s the two main ways you can either import it or you’re gonna partner with someone else. And so their products, me personally, I do this, the partnering one just because I’m not as strong in that whole importing side and I’ve got reasonably good marketing skills
Ash Roy: 14:04
back when I did my MBA, we used to call that core competency. So if you’re particularly good at something and you have a competitive advantage over the rest of the market because you’re so good at it, then it makes sense to focus in on that and partner with somebody else who’s got a complimentary core competency. So you might be good at importing and maybe you know, procurement and you know, acquisition of cheap products and they might be good at supply and delivery. So you have a marriage that is made in heaven and the, I don’t like using this MBA term, but the synergistic benefit actually does happen in this rare instance.
Greg Cassar: 14:43
Check out the big, check out the big brains on Ash. You were joking before about the accountant thing thought you just, when you try to meet ladies, you tell them you’re a chartered accountant because they find that very interesting. Oh please tell me more.
Ash Roy: 14:58
No, actually that’s one, that’s a great way to repel the ladies because they think you have a personality of a lamp. Oh, you’re being sarcastic. See, I don’t even have a sense of humor when we got it. Exactly. When you go and study accounting, they just beat it out of you. They just, uh, turn you into a lamp boys . So there you go. My only redemption was that I went and actually did an MBA, which actually did infuse some personality into, into me. Anyway. So coming back to talking about growing your business and doing so in the eCommerce space, do you recommend revenue share deals?
Greg Cassar: 15:35
Yeah, definitely. For me then that’s what we’ve done with the, yeah, with the partnership. But you’ve got to have something that you can have value that you can add. So you need, if you’re going to be the product person, you have to have a great product. If you’re going to be the marketer, then you have to have a high level of skill. I think if you’re an a newbie marketer, it’s okay to partner with a newbie importer, but it’s not really fair for a newbie market and a partner with a established brand or vice versa. You know, that kind of thing. So you kind of need to match up with people who you’re on a similar skill level too, which is why I say you know, you are your most important asset and invest. Yeah, investing in yourself first. But we mean partnerships, revenue share deals is great so that you can, for example, they’re already going along like this. And then as you add your input in, as you scale them up, you just take a small slice of the growth. And that’s a very, very fair model and very low risk for, for both parties. So I love that model.
Ash Roy: 16:33
But the interesting point you made, and I think this is a very important one, is you need to be able to bring enough value to the table for the relationship to be equitable. Because even if you pretend to be able to bring a lot of value, if the value isn’t there, it is, it’s gonna come undone very quickly. So I agree with your point. If you’re a beginning marketer, then partner with another beginning marketer, but be very clear about what you’re going to bring to the table, what they’re going to bring to the table. And importantly, when you do strike struggle, revenue share deal, you need to have everything in writing. You need to have it very clearly articulated. I highly recommend getting it looked at by a lawyer. I know it’s not cheap, but the point is if you can’t afford to get a lawyer to organize the revenue share deal, then maybe you don’t want to be going into it just yet. I’m not saying handshake deals don’t ever work, but I’m just saying that they can go South very quickly because it becomes a lot of you said he said, she said and it just ends up degenerating very quickly. So that’s a word of caution with revenue share deals, you really need to be very clear about your structure and, and have it documented.
Greg Cassar: 17:43
Yeah, who’s doing what. One of the things we, one clause we built into the bottom of our revenue share deals is saying like this is version. So say for example, you and I were doing a deal. We lay out in plain English, this is what Ash is going to do, this is what we’re going to do, this is the terms, you know, that kind of stuff. And then at the bottom, we had a clause saying this is version 1.0 or disagreement. As the business matures, there’ll need to be future versions of the agreement. And so, uh, like on, I’ve got two main partnerships and on both of those we’ve modified the agreement one or two times by having that in place. Otherwise, it becomes this very rigid. Traditionally how contracts were always done. Hey, you signed up, you’ve got to deliver, you know that kind of thing as opposed to the true win win component.
Ash Roy: 18:29
Yeah, you know, marking the evolution if you like of the deal and acknowledging that this deal is version one and it’s going to run for a certain period of time, but then when we reach the end of that time that we agree on that this version will be relevant for. Then we revisit that agreement and then we go into version two which brings up another important point. I think revenue share deals are best made with some kind of a timeframe in mind because if you just have something that just goes into the indefinite future, well it becomes a bit like how long is a piece of string. The other thing I also think that’s very important about a revenue share deal is very clear agreements on how you’re going to exit the deal and conditions that will cause the deal to become null and void.
Ash Roy: 19:18
For instance, if one of the partners decides to behave in ways that are unethical or that are not aligned with the values of the other. And I agree that you can’t legislate around all this stuff 100% but there has to be some kind of an out. Because if I go and start doing really dodgy stuff online, you may not want to be associated with me and you might, you would need to have an out and yes, you know, there has to be some agreement around that. The other one might be, if I decided to sell my business, what happens to the deal? And you know, do you get paid out? How does that get played out? So these are the important things to consider.
Greg Cassar: 19:54
Absolutely. Spot on.
Ash Roy: 19:56
Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about holistic advertising. I talked to Ilana Wechsler about this and she had an expert at it. She talked about using Google and Facebook holistically, again, to get the synergistic benefits of the, of the two platforms. I also spoke to Ezra in episode 55 Ezra Firestone and he talked about Shopify and he’s often on Shopify. He’s used that platform with great success. So can you share with us some strategies around how to use Shopify and Amazon and Google shopping and all these platforms to your advantage, you know, do, what do they bring to the table? Maybe Facebook will be like for hyper read, hyper-targeting, you know, how do we make all these things work together?
Greg Cassar: 20:39
Great. So like if you look at the Amazon side, Amazon doesn’t allow you to track conversions like when you’ve got a sale from an outside traffic source. So it is a little harder and they don’t allow you to do remarketing except for if you’re a big seller and you’re using their tools. So Amazon, the only way we do that is like we drive traffic from videos out on social media about key products. Would you like Facebook video view ads? And we send them in but we can’t really track and measure. We can just see that if we turn that off, the sales go down and the social buzz goes down and that kind of stuff. So Amazon’s a little bit more difficult. But with that holistic marketing type of approach that Ilana talks about, and then I also advocate Google and Facebook are really other two biggest sources of traffic and they do work, they do work well together.
Greg Cassar: 21:24
So you might be able to draw, generate awareness on Facebook and then people are switching for the brand and then you have a brand search turn up and people convert or people hit the website but they don’t buy. You can show them remarketing ads on Facebook as well as remarketing ads on Google, you know that that kind of thing. Often with e-commerce as well, one of the biggest channels we use is Google shopping, which are those like kind of like image ads at the top, say type in buy vacuum and they will show, might show five vacuums across the top and it’ll show the picture and the price and that kind of stuff. Those ads work amazing. That’s a proper money machine. Like where you put $1 in, it’s a bit out four, six, you know, [inaudible] does $26 you know, for every dollar we put in that, you know what kind of thing.
Greg Cassar: 22:11
Yeah. So it’s like in the medical product space. Yeah. So that is a great spot to start. You know, Google shopping, get that working. But then you might have remarketing via Google, but then add on remarketing via Facebook. And with both of these platforms in e-commerce, you can also do what’s called dynamic remarketing, which means that as they’re navigating around the web, you can show them a banner ad effectively, which shows them the products that they’ve been looking at and jobs them to, you know, to buy those. Again, it’s just pulling them from a feed and it’s remembering that Ash looked at this vacuum and that vacuum. And so when he goes off onto the Facebook or when he goes off onto a navigating around the web, showing that banner ad with our logo might have a positioning statement and those two vacuums on it, if that makes sense. So it does. That can be very, very powerful remarketing.
Ash Roy: 23:03
Okay. Now there’s one thing I’m not clear about though because you mentioned Amazon doesn’t really like advertising on the other platforms and they don’t kind of promote it. So I think what you’re saying is if someone sees my product on Amazon, then I can remarket to them or retarget them on Google or Facebook respectively. But then where am I sending them to after that?
Greg Cassar: 23:22
No, if you, sorry, I may not have been clear on that one. If they hit your site, they hit your product on Amazon, you can’t remarket them. Amazon does as you get, as you become a bigger salary in Amazon, you get account managers and they do have premium services. You can, you can remarket them back to your Amazon product listing. So they see you out on the web and you show them a banner that brings them back to your Amazon listing. Whereas like with the Shopify, you literally can, they hit your website, you can show them ads on Facebook and on and on Google. That’s basically the way, the way that it works.
Ash Roy: 23:55
Okay. So I’ve got a specific use case. I’m going to ask you a question. Okay. One of my members is actually the founder of www.thedogline.com (I think dot AU) and he sells dog collars. How would he be able to leverage these strategies to increase his profitability in a relatively short space of time?
Greg Cassar: 24:16
Yep. So you’d started with good product listings on both the eCommerce store and on Amazon. So, cause you’ve got to focus on traffic first or conversion first. You always want to focus on conversion first, get the, get a good listing happening. Some people will go to Google, so you know to search for dog color, other people will go to Amazon. So that’s why you really want to have both of those, both of those there. Some people only buy on Amazon, so not having your brand there, they’re going to means that they’re going to find someone else, you know, like that kind of thing. Once you’ve got that, I would then add on things like Google shopping is the main one. You might want to test Google search ads as well. And then I would add that dynamic remarketing across Google and across Facebook.
Greg Cassar: 24:58
And then within Amazon I would also do these two or three main types of advertising that will put an ad up the top, within the Amazon ads platform, which is very, very powerful as well. And all this really comes down to track and measure. Hey, so we spent 10 bucks, we brought in 30 or $40 worth of revenue. Yes, we’re, you know, we’re good, we’re golden, you know, that kind of thing. But if we’re selling $10 dog collars, then it may be, you know, psychology, maths, it might be harder to get the math to work. So that can be an issue.
Ash Roy: 25:28
Another really important thing when it comes to advertising on Amazon is having good quality photos, which show the particular features that you’re trying to highlight and talks to the benefits that you’re trying to offer. Video also is important. So can you talk to us a little bit about that and how does one go about really getting good quality images and what are the dos and don’ts around that?
Greg Cassar: 25:53
Yeah. So we found that really, really does make a difference. Initially, when we got products up, we just had whatever images we had and got it live, you know what I mean? Cause sometimes there’s a lot to be said for just getting it out there and then coming back and optimizing. And now we’re optimizing a lot of things. So where we might organize a professional photoshoot of the product as well as lifestyle shots, you know the product being used, that kind of thing. And then often we’ll send these images off to our graphic designer where they might write benefit statements on the image and that kind of stuff so that the image, it demonstrates it, but it also might have sales copy on there. So say for example, it was a baby stroller, it might have an arrow pointing to the handle saying, you know, collapsible hand face back up in there.
Greg Cassar: 26:38
So you can make your images kind of tell a story as well. That kinda thing. We call those visual benefit images. And then, yeah, on the Amazon side, we’re really on both rather than just having a text description for your product, building out what I call visual sales copy, Apple does is probably best in the business where it’s got like an image, say off to the right, you might have writing off to the left and then in the next section they might’ve been image on the left and then riding on the right that left. Right. And just big beautiful sections so that, cause some people are very visual learners and they will just look at it and you know, skim their way through, you know, that kind of stuff. You can do that on your Shopify store and you can also do it on Amazon using a topic called enhanced brand content.
Ash Roy: 27:21
Now using those images on Facebook would be a problem, wouldn’t it? Because Facebook only allows you to have 20% of your image having written font on it. Is that right? Yes.
Greg Cassar: 27:29
Yeah, that is correct. You can do more than that, but then they, yeah, but then they slugged you. Yeah, that’s right. So you’re paying, you’re paying more for it. Yeah. You’re spot on.
Ash Roy: 27:38
So you can’t really use it as effectively on Facebook. You might have to, you know, do the remarketing on Google shopping. I don’t think there’s any central restrictions on Google as there.
Greg Cassar: 27:50
Yeah. Or on Facebook on that channel. You may just not want to put the writing on those images if that makes sense. So just use it more on your products, things and that kind of stuff. Yeah, that could work well. Yeah.
Ash Roy: 28:01
Okay. So clearly the holistic approach to advertising does work even in the eCommerce space and it works well in the eCommerce space. Let’s talk a little bit about the challenges you’ve seen people get that people face when they’re getting started with e-commerce and what works best to overcome them. And let’s make it really, you know, quite general. So if somebody currently is a coach or a self-employed professional that is considering dabbling in the eCommerce space, what’s the quickest way for them to just get started to see if it’s something they want to do?
Greg Cassar: 28:34
There is an option called drop shipping where you make a sale and then someone else sends it out for you. Like you ever got the product. That is a way to get started. I don’t recommend it necessarily like it’s harder to make the maths work and stuff, but researching dropshipping could be a great way to learn a very low cost because you don’t have to buy stock. Yup. And certainly I did that to test a few. Yeah, I did that to test a few markets. It all really comes down to education. So if you can find someone, and I would say like in some ways pick one or the other. Like so I’m going to get really good at Shopify e-commerce or I’m going to get really good at Amazon. Do you know what I mean? Figuring out whichever one you’re going to do first and then invest in courses, masterminds, whatever, go along.
Greg Cassar: 29:19
And you really want to have a proven formula or system that you can model rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. I think that’s really is the fastest track. And also think about what markets you know well or that you know, the needs of, or the ones that you can really feel the need of and then made sure that your product is like what we spoke about before. Small and got the right price point, they want it, all that kind of stuff. That’s kind of like the main things to think about, I think.
Ash Roy: 29:46
You talked about psychology and mathematics being the two key things. Work in one go to learn about these things in a good quality course that you can recommend.
Greg Cassar: 29:56
So like we both spoke about a mutual friend Ezra Firestone, I think, you know, what he teaches in e-com is very, very smart. I was in his mastermind for a year. That was awesome. And then on the Amazon side, the team at amazing.com, those guys, I don’t know them personally, but I was a member there for quite a while. And they had the amazing selling machine, which was really the course that launched this whole Amazon selling industry. I think those guys really know what they’re doing and yeah, becoming a member at amazing.com like I said, I’m not associated with them at all, but I think, both of those are two good reputable sources of knowledge.
Ash Roy: 30:32
Cool. So with Ezra, I know he does a lot of stuff on Shopify, but is it smartmarketer.com that he has this training on in terms of eCommerce?
Greg Cassar: 30:43
Yeah, I believe so. That sounds right.
Ash Roy: 30:45
Okay, cool. Well, I’ll link to both of those on the show notes. All right. So there’s a ton of actions that our listeners can take from this conversation today. The biggest things I would say for me were to really get an understanding of the psychology of your market, to make sure the mathematics works before you put a product on Amazon. You also want to make sure that if you’re going to do a revenue share agreement with somebody, make sure they’re at a similar level to you and then you can bring a lot of value and that they can bring a lot of value to the table. So one and one can equal three and trying to avoid using the word synergy there. We also wanted to make sure that in a revenue share deal there are very clear agreements around who will do what and when.
Ash Roy: 31:30
You can have versioning of your agreements so that you give yourself some room to evolve the agreement. As time goes on, you have some kind of time boxes or timeframes around each of the versions. You have an out clause. If one partner in the revenue share agreement starts to, you know, behave in certain ways that are not acceptable and you’re trying document that to whatever extent possible. If one person decides to sell their business, there has to be some kind of an agreement around how that revenue share agreement is going to be played out. Is it going to be bought out and what’s going to happen? We talked about remarketing and being able to use other platforms like Google shopping and Facebook remarketing and so on and so forth to augment what you’re doing on Amazon. We talked about some great places to learn about building your e-commerce knowledge and your eCommerce business. It all starts with knowledge and that is getting an education at our friend Ezra Firestone’s website, smartmarketer.com or amazing.com which has some fairly good content. Is there anything else you’d like to add, Greg?
Greg Cassar: 32:36
No, I think when you get on a winner run, you win long and really cut your loses short and something’s not working. Then be willing to say next and figure out where you want to go and scramble like crazy and make it happen. And like we spoke about before, the ultimate prize is freedom. So you know what, it’s really worth it
Ash Roy: 32:53
free after 9:00 AM I should make that the title of this episode free from 9:00 AM.
Greg Cassar: 32:58
Yeah. But for the other one, awesome.
Ash Roy: 33:02
So Greg, how do our listeners find out more about you?
Greg Cassar: 33:06
Okay, cool. A rainmakerpartner.io is a great resource with a whole bunch of free blog and then advertisingboost.com I do a lot of teaching there in the members area. That’s a great resource for business owners. You want a competitive advantage where you can give away free vacations and that kind of thing to differentiate yourself that software, the services go on like crazy.
Ash Roy: 33:30
So that’s www.advertisingboost.com. Okay. I’ll link to that in the show notes and rainmakerpartner.io, those are the two best places to get in contact with you. All right. Thanks so much for being on the show Greg, and uh, look forward to bringing this to our audience. I think there’s a ton of value packed in here. You’ve delivered as you always do. Excellent.
Greg Cassar: 33:53
Thank you very much. Always a pleasure to spend that time with you and, uh, to share knowledge as well. Thanks Ash. Thanks mate.
