3x Amazon Exits. Started in SEO, went to FBA, now head of growth at Brightshift Commerce
Austin, Texas
Joined March 2012
- Tweets4.9K
- Following485
- Followers2.4K
- Likes21K
This is a very very good article about using a low ticket sales funnel in a local services business.
FB Ad -> Low Ticket Service -> High Ticket Sale
Full article below - Austin Business Review - written by Ethan Brooks
austinbusinessreview.com/he-…
Another day, another automotive business with high net profit margins.
A lot of people overlook this space but I've seen multiple 7-8 figure brands with 30%+ net profit margins in the automotive after market niche.
Lots of enthusiasts and hard to find parts.
David Holmes retweeted
JUST IN: Elon Musk unveils the Tesla Roadster by launching it off a ramp before the car flipped in midair and safely landed on the ground.
The car is a collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX.
One of the most insane things I've ever seen.
Been trying out a bunch of side projects in my free time recently.
And it looks like we’re starting to get traction…..
If you're in a crowded space in B2B
One thing you should start doing is tracking hiring trends in your industry.
Who is growing headcount and who is declining?
Use it as a directional indicator for who to model your GTM strategy after.
As you can see below, I'm dissecting Company A's GTM funnel right now because they've experienced massive growth.
Meanwhile Company B is stagnant/declining.
As always - use as one signal don't use it as the whole picture.
Then throw all of the screenshots into GrokBot and use this prompt:
I'm looking at hiring trends in the [insert your niche here] to see who's winning right now.
The theory is that if they are hiring more people then something about their go to market strategy is working.
I want you to research each of these companies and try to determine where they are getting clients from.
Are they running ads (check facebook ad library), are they posting a lot on linkedin/instagram/youtube (if they are, make sure to mention the platform that they are seeing success on), are they on podcasts/tradeshows etc?
I want to see what's working for all of these companies in terms of getting clients.
Do research on each of them and then come back and tell me what you found
Affirmations work extremely well
Do you want to see if your business model is dying or in a bubble?
Once a week, look through Empire Flippers/Flippa/Quiet Light Brokerage
And count the number of businesses for sale.
When you start seeing the number of businesses for sale go massively up (it will be obvious), it’s probably a sign to start heading for the exits.
I’ve done this every week since 2019 and the pattern recognition you develop is incredible after a while.
Faceless YouTube channels are dead on arrival now.
Amazon KDP businesses are mostly wiped out.
Pure Amazon FBA businesses mostly died out in 2023.
Look for the patterns!
Honestly these are ‘liquid game’ for guys.
Give me a case of these and a month in NYC and I’m coming back to Austin with a wife.
@TJ_Bongiorno really cooked with these.
Moved to Austin knowing 3 people: a DJ, an autistic person, and a guy who (honestly) didn’t like me that much.
Made all of my friends playing volleyball.
Find what you’re interested in -> do it with other people
Boom, friends.
When I moved to Miami I didn’t know anyone.
From the outside looking in, you’d think I’d just magically befriended everyone
What you’d miss is all the times I had to show up alone, when I didn’t want to. The nights I’d go to bed sad/lonely bc I wasn’t invited to things, only to wake up & force a smile on my face to do it all again…
Simply SHOWING UP is a superpower. Bend the world to your will.
Incredibly easy to see how Haus is winning at the apparel game
1. Placed an order September 27th
2. Immediately get order confirmation email (standard)
3. Then I get another email from the founder of the brand giving me 15% off for an additional purchase (would ship with my order if used immediately).
This is after declining 3 post purchase upsells.
4. Then I get a text from “Jared” asking about the delivery. Innocent question so I answer.
5. “Jared” texts me the next day with another discount code incentivizing another order.
6. Constant updates about the status of the order.
7. Somehow it gets delivered in 2 (?) days direct to my door
(my apartment has doormen which normally take all packages)
8. Post purchase get email from founder saying thank you and giving discount on another order.
All in all, one of the best post order confirmation flows I’ve seen recently.
Geo arbitrage continues to work because of regulatory burden.
Amazon UK is continually 5 years behind Amazon US just because nobody wants to deal with VAT.
Spoiler alert? It’s worth it to go international once you’re $10m+ in annual revenue.
My mentor taught me that geo arbitrage will always be the thing that makes money
You just copy whatever is making money in the west, make it a little bit better and more local, and sell it in other countries
Me and a friend grew to $350k mrr making a malaysian openclaw alternative and we pretty much just stole the whole playbook
There are literally endless opportunities like this
Sub <$3M in revenue, most businesses have a problem where they don’t have the money to pay for higher salaries but they need those advanced people to get to the next level.
There’s 2 things I did to fix this while growing my agency:
1. Fractional work
Hiring is expensive and a bad hire when the entire company is only 6 people can be deadly.
I’d offer paid project work during the interview and then a 2-4 week probationary period where I’d pay them an hourly rate for 5 - 15 hours/week. Often they would keep their existing job while we did this probationary period.
Low risk for me and them, high reward.
2. If you can’t compete on salary, you need to sell them the vision.
What I would tell people is
“Hey, I’m going to teach you more about Amazon in 1 year then you’ll learn in 3 years anywhere else. And I’ll support you in your career even after you leave”
I had to sell the vision because I didn’t have the money to pay massive salaries.
It’s an unique struggle to small businesses in my opinion.
Amazon will never reduce fees but I do think Amazon is reaching an equilibrium with sellers.
Seller sentiment has turned increasingly negative and it seems like Amazon is (finally) taking notice of it.
Amazon still needs sellers and if too many sellers leave, it is a threat to Amazon.
Moving forward, I expect fee increases to be smaller than before and offset with additional concessions for sellers in different areas.
Anybody know who’s running this offer? Or any background on it?
Hit my DMs.
Very curious about this. It appears to be scaling up
