- Anatoly Spektor
- eCommerce Entrepreneur
Notes:
- Started 3 years ago
- Selling 200k year
- Jungle Scout and Helium10
- Spent 10k on the first order buying Green Binoculars
- PickFu
Sponsors:
- Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!
- Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software
Links:
- https://www10millionjourney.com
- https://www.instagram.com/anatolyspektor/
- https://www.instagram.com/10millionjourney/
Transcript:
Charles (00:00):
In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Anatoly specter about his journey from zero to $200,000 a year, selling on Amazon. This is a business of e-commerce episode, 151. [inaudible] Welcome to the business of e-commerce the show that helps e-commerce retailers start launch and grow their e-commerce business. I’m your host [inaudible] and I’m here today with Anatoly specter, and it totally is a serial entrepreneur, six figure, Amazon seller, an it consultant, and the host of the 10 million journey podcast, where he shows his experiences scaling his Amazon business from 200 K to $10 million a year. And this episode, and totally gets really into some numbers on his business, which I think is super helpful. He does into when he started, how much it cost, some initial product runs, how much he’s making today and where he’s hoping to go and how he’s hoping to get there.
Charles (01:02):
He’s super transparent, which I think is very helpful when you’re listening and taking advice, because a lot of it is contextual. If someone is giving you advice, you kind of need to know, is this advice for a new seller or someone doing a million a year? He kind of gives exactly what advice you would do at what step and what he has done. And I think it’s super helpful. So let’s get into the show and follow along right to the end where he gives some real helpful tips to both new sellers and also folks scaling the Amazon business. So Hey until you, how are you doing today? Amazing. How are you doing good. Awesome. To have you on the show. Your journey is super interesting. I’ve been doing some research about it and just kind of looking at talk about some of the numbers. So as far as an Amazon seller, and we’re talking before the show and just kind of getting into some of those numbers, I think it’s going to be super addressed in a kind of go into so real quick, you’re an Amazon seller, right? That’s kind of, that’s your main focus? I mean,
Anatoly (02:05):
I like to call myself online through preneur and Amazon is the way I make sale these days. But yeah most of my revenue comes from Amazon
Charles (02:14):
And you’re currently in you kind of, so you have a podcast and you talk publicly about the number is where you’re at. Right? So that’s yeah,
Anatoly (02:20):
Yeah, yeah. I created a podcast to sort of document my journey, how I scaled my business to $10 million. And I’m still in the process right now in the beginning, about 200,000. And I’m moving to a million who have charged me for that and then 10 million. So they’ll come in to everything. I pick up brain. So other preneurs who are several steps ahead, or some of them multimillion dollars hundred million dollars businesses. And I just talk to them and pick up their brains to help me out and off. My last question is always, what can you give me as an advice I’m read here is how much you’re making is what I’m doing. Tell me, and then they give me advice. So you’re lucky. I’m pretty lucky first.
Charles (02:55):
Nice. yeah, it’s a dual purpose podcast and you’re helping other people, but getting advice. So I love that you aren’t, so you’re a 200,000 a year right now. And most of us like 90 plus percent is Amazon product sales, right?
Anatoly (03:09):
Yeah. Yeah. We do have a Shopify store, but it’s like minimal because we were focused just on Amazon these days.
Charles (03:15):
How long did it take you to get there so far?
Anatoly (03:19):
So it was hit or miss. So first product we launched for the last about $10,000. And then we recouped a little bit because the product wasn’t that good. So we launched a product when we thought this is amazing. I was about three years ago. So we started about three years ago. We went for the, one of the online courses to get us started with my wife. She’s my business partner. And then we sort of thought, okay, let’s launch the green binoculars because it’s like, well, it met all the criteria. There’s lots of green binoculars from idea as well. You have a light green color,
Charles (03:47):
Green binocular, like literally the color
Anatoly (03:50):
Green binoculars for kids. Yeah. So the keyword was grieving for kids and we’re like, people like green binocular for some reason. So we should launch those. But at that point I was just starting out with a business. Right. You had a question,
Charles (04:02):
How did you, where did you come up with the thought green, but not like why not red binoculars.
Anatoly (04:06):
Yeah. Yeah. So essentially you go for like keyword research and you see what people look on Amazon. And then at that point, I don’t remember exactly what we’re doing. We’re doing it differently now. But at that point we found the kids, binoculars for the keyword, people are searching for, if you put kids binocular. So on Amazon, I don’t know if now it’s still true. But for years ago there was whole bunch of grain binoculars with sort of with this blue things on the side, like ribbons. And we’re like, that’s a good product. Everybody sells it and they’re making money. We should launch the same thing. And my brain didn’t work the way that I needed differentiate or be different or offer something more. I don’t know why, I guess when you start out, you make those mistakes. And then we ordered a bunch of them and they did not sell well. And it took us a year about to just sell them at cost. And we sort of, yeah, lost a bunch of money, but we, I guess it’s $10,000, but they learned a lot. So I think it’s worth it. Instead of going through a business school, I just did some freak for a year and I had so much knowledge that allowed me for next product, not to make this mistake and start earning money.
Charles (05:05):
So what did you pay for in college? Were you pay quite a lot and you know, if you’re actually kind of do it, the math, right. You pay for it. And then you’re like, I don’t even remember anything about that. So you start looking at like, you know, spending that kind of money. You’re like, actually it wasn’t like the worst. I mean, consider it other, yeah. It’s not as bad as you make it. People make it out today.
Anatoly (05:24):
I think it’s one of the best things I did, to be honest, like looking back, I tried, I learned how to create corporations, how to deal with Amazon, et cetera, et cetera, how to sort of be a team. And yeah, I think the best kind of files and I invested so far,
Charles (05:38):
I think a lot of people, cause you said you have to have a chorus. And a lot of people I think do that. And then they get stuck in taking courses and like, they take a course, but then they just take another course and then like, and they ended up spending the 10,000 on courses and you know, you do one and then it’s like, all right, now let’s go time. Let’s do this. I’m a hundred percent. Yeah, that that’s
Anatoly (05:58):
A biggest problem. But for us, we just, well, when Olin, we paid about $5,000 for a course. So it was expensive course. And it was the most money I would pay. And I did not have a lot of sort of, I’m not like a millionaire or someone. I would just like it consultant six figure like salary, but not like I could not just waste $5,000 and say, Oh, this my for courses, no, I were really invested in it in the course. And we moved Fred I guess it wasn’t a really good course, but it did not sort of work an our way. Cause if you choose some pro that works and if you think you need to always, when you sort of get the course, you need to think with your head like, okay, this is for many people, but you need to adjust to your situation and then think more than that. So, I mean, they don’t teach you in a course, but essentially you need to think how they differentiate, how I be different, how, what value can break, et cetera, et cetera. But instead of just doing like blind Q research, but at that point I was like, data, data means power. I’ll just find a date that I’ll figure it out the way and we’ll work. But now I know. So after Elizabeth the dollars, I know.
Charles (07:01):
Yeah. I mean, so actually first on the course is a few things to unpack here. Would you, you hear a lot of people fall on both sides of this one. Is that something you’d recommend was the 5,000 price point too much? Like how do you looking back? How do you feel about that?
Anatoly (07:16):
Yeah. I, I actually feel that it was a good investment, a hundred percent. So what we learned, we were able to recoup where the next product pretty easily. So I recommend you go all in. So if you don’t have money for the course, but you want to launch a product and you, you are short in cash because I had some savings. If you don’t have it, don’t buy a course, go to YouTube checkout. You can find all this information on YouTube. I’m the kind of person that needs guidance, especially in a start like I’m okay. Funny and stuff like that. But setting up corporations and legal things and setting up Amazon and seeing how shipping works, I need somebody like, I need a structure. So for me course was really good. But for many people I know and people, I interview on my podcast who most of them didn’t take courses to make millions of dollars. So it doesn’t have to be a course, but if you like me likes to be handheld, I would buy.
Charles (08:06):
Okay. So, Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. A lot of people also like a hundred percent against it or then a hundred percent for itself. It’s good to hear.
Anatoly (08:13):
Yeah. I’m somewhere in the middle.
Charles (08:16):
We actually an accurate place to be. Right. That it’s good for some people not, not perfect, everyone, but good for this song. So yeah. Take the chorus. She’s going to do some keyword research. Well, you said that right? The agreement Oculus. How did you actually, were you just sorta really searching on Amazon or was it like a process of that as well?
Anatoly (08:33):
At that point? Yeah. They have an algorithm. I don’t remember how they teach it, but I can tell you how I do it now because I think everything is, is getting old. So whenever I tell you how I did that, nobody could use it anyway because I was in changes all the time. So if you want, I can tell you how I search for keywords these days.
Charles (08:50):
It’s fine. I was trying to launch a new Facebook ad campaign right before this. And I’m like, Whoa, like it’s different compared to like two months ago, this is really different. Okay. I gotta figure this out again. So yeah. So let’s have a keyword research, I guess if you were doing it today, if you were starting off,
Anatoly (09:08):
I’m just going to say I’m not guru or like a millionaire or professionals. So what I’m saying is that works for me. And it works. Like I launched about three products and two of them are making a hundred thousand dollars for me. And one of them, we have defected items, so we cannot sell it, but it was selling about 30 a day without any reviews, just because we found the right keywords. So this is as much as I can tell, like my expertise though. I’m not a guru by any means. So listen, everything is an asterix.
Charles (09:35):
Yeah.
Anatoly (09:36):
So there’s a tool I use and there are many tools are still like called jungle scout to get keyword research in Amazon. I use the one called helium 10. I’m not there. I feel it. I just use a tool. So the tool allows you to take your competitor listings and find out what they rank for. So, and also it allows you to, just to search for products. So, but I don’t search for products anymore. What I do search, I search for keywords. This tool allows you to put some criteria. I want products to be, I don’t know, maybe from $2,200 it sells, I dunno, maybe a couple of thousand ad monitor, let’s say, or a day, whatever you want, you put some criteria and I do put some criteria and then it spits out me some keywords, okay, this keyword, there’s a lot of products that meets a criteria.
Anatoly (10:22):
And then I looked for every keyword and I tried to see on the Amazon page, there are enough products that have demand. So another one, like the first two, but like on a Donald, that page, something is selling there. That’s selling well. And then if I see that’s the case, I’m trying to think, how can I be different? Often there are keywords that people don’t target, but those keywords bring money. For example, a hypothetical example. If I would be searching for binoculars to somebody would look for orange binoculars for girls. And then if I type this, I would say there’s search demand, but not too many people offer that. So this is amazing. Nobody does it. And that’s how I found some of my products. Nobody would offer exactly this thing. So I would go and I would build whatever people need and I would give it to them.
Anatoly (11:07):
And there’s enough demand for it. And the tool helium 10 will tell you how many searches there are. Or if you are an Amazon, you can do brand registry and literature, your brand, and Amazon will give you the data too. So you can use both. So I tried to use both Brennan raised to nine months on a helium 10. It will just show me the demand. So I’ll find the [inaudible] that are sort of have opportunities in them already. So we were searching for something, but nothing satisfies that. Let’s say all a medium, I don’t know, dominium clock. Everybody’s looking for voting. Like when you type only medium clock, it would be like food and clock or it’s two clock, but not only medium clock, I would build a millimeter and clock. I will give it to people. That’s a weird example. I know what people, well, I mean your plugs, but sort of like you can go with material with color, whereas shape anything. So you would, if you go to the tools, you’ll see a people search for something, but not some people like some, some keywords does not have enough sort of supply, but there’s a demand. So this is what I tried to find and just bring it. And that, to me, that was the best because I knew what people like
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Charles (12:59):
So I’ve been around for a while with SEO and things like that. And going back to like Google and maybe 10 years ago and goals, that was what you did, right? You kind of just look for what are people searching for and what pages are not created yet. It turned out now. So, you know, five, 10 years later everyone’s figured that out. Right? So everyone basically wrote all those pages, but I think e-commerce still in a place where that’s not done yet. So there’s not the, you know, aluminum clock for 12 year old girls, like when someone’s searching for that thing. And like, somehow that’s not created yet. If that was a blog article, right? Like how to do whatever ever wrote that already. Like somehow
Anatoly (13:36):
Yeah. Creating content as much faster, creating condoms and it’s much cheaper, I guess. Yeah. So that’s, that’s why, but if this one does not work for somebody, there’s another tip and this is one from my guest. So this is not mine, but I use it right now because one guest told me, Amazon is about 12 months behind some other platforms. So some other platforms might already have something trending. Well, Amazon is still picking up because people in Amazon like to sell what sells on Amazon, they don’t look outside of Amazon. So if you just do and look outside of Amazon to places like Etsy or like eBay and see what’s trending there, you can find something that is not the phenomenon, launch it and see if there’s demand again. And if there’s not too much competition launch it in Amazon and then you’ll get those sales on Amazon. And then if you’re sort of a first or second, you’ll get enough reviews to, to stay there. So maybe another good option.
Charles (14:29):
Yeah. I think one thing I seen a lot of folks do very, very well is just not going down Google trends. And sometimes the trend is more on the news topic, but you can extrapolate from that search term, what will people want to actually buy? Right. So there’s pandemic. And then, you know, it’s 2020 here. So you say, Oh, and sanitizer or, you know, whatever that happens to me. So you kind of, if people are searching for COVID, then you start jumping until what Potter sent me by when they’re staying at home and just using that as your thought process. And like you said, you’re going to get there. You know, people will search for a big number today. They’re going to be buying hand sanitizer tomorrow. So I think that’s an excellent kind of tip to just get ahead of where people’s minds are. Ash.
Anatoly (15:11):
No, the other one would be if you won the third one would be to look for complimentary things. Like if a, so let’s say binoculars, Amazon shows you what this is bought with. So they can be bought with a West, explores the West. I remember buying it with explores West. So launch subject to compliments a good product or bundle them together. But bundling is not the best because you sort of drive the price down. So ideally you would find some good opportunities that people like buy this item with something else. And then you get to the original item, but for like a bag of door, you first make your supplemental thing popular. And then when you build a brand on it, you can build, you can launch your main thing and you’ll have attraction. So that will be another way. I would say there are many ways, but those would be some can come to my mind.
Charles (15:58):
I want to circle back to what you said at the beginning. So you launched her green binoculars, right? And you said it was undifferentiated going into that, on what you mean by that and why you wouldn’t do that again. Okay.
Anatoly (16:10):
Essentially my mind was, and I think it was definitely wrong because everybody’s selling green binoculars and there are demand for it. So I will launch green binoculars, but I would sort of, I did a little bit of differentiation. So I added a little bit magnifying glass, a little magnifying glass, and then changed. Exactly. That was my point. Like, why should I want it to like my supplier sentence, sell this magnifying glass. And then I was made that really nice cover for it, like like a box where I put it all. And that was that. But I did not do a research people by magnifying. Lots of them are not, I did not do any research of that. So, and the green binoculars, like to rank them while somebody needs to choose yours against somebody who has green binocular with hundreds of reviews.
Anatoly (16:54):
So why would, it’s a very good question. If you are playing to selling your thing, just Photoshop your product into Amazon or any market anywhere for the shop next year competitors and ask yourself, why would somebody buy this? And then what I sometimes do, I just take those products and just put them in line without tenure reviews, anything. And then I show it to people and say, what do you buy this? And if people say yes to mine, I would launch it if now, no, because if you cannot perceive you to buy this one without seeing any reviews or anything or prices, then when you launch something and you don’t, your price might be not ideal because they have bigger quantities. And you sort of, I don’t know, your product might not be as superior as theirs or something like that. Then people won’t buy yours. They’ll just not buy yours. They need to buy yours. If you’re, if you’re also just better, for some reason, I might be talking to a different group. So if you’re showing this to a different group and you’re up to a different group, it’s fine, different audiences, but just same thing as not working, doing the same things, not working
Charles (18:01):
Had, I guess, in here from pic Fu while back, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them.
Anatoly (18:04):
I use that tool. I use that tool actually. That’s really good. They’re pre expensive for new sellers. I’ll be honest, but yeah, it’s amazing. You can put a, you can split test your things. You can put yours against your competition, give it to girls who like green binoculars and then they’ll choose one.
Charles (18:21):
I always think of that. I was talking to the founders and it reminds me of the you know, you see on TV like that, people behind the glass and you’re looking and seeing like, what do you think of this one? What do you think? It’s basically that except the online version. So you can, are you think of migraine binoculars verse, there is a whatever. And you can, like you said, get a audience of girls that are into, but not, I dunno, like some girls are until like outdoor stuff and put this in front of them and they can tell you what picture they like and it’s without price, without title and that right there. So instead of having to learn on Amazon, you get to learn ahead of time. Like, does this even make any sense? So I always thought that was a cool, a cool, yeah,
Anatoly (18:58):
That’s an amazing tool. I highly recommend it. I first, but for this tool, this is like the last step. When, before you need to make sure that when your friends or somebody who knows you, don’t tell them your product, just put them on a father shop and make sure before you pay, it’s pretty expensive. It’s amazing tool. It just, just pretty expensive to do it. If you’re sort of iterate many, many times, so find, find something that works and then test some big, they’ll give you feedback, then update it and then try them pick for again. But starting with big food might not be the best way because you will lose lots of money without getting much of insights. Because, well, if you, if your friends I’m not choosing yours, so I don’t know if random people, but it needs to be the same audience. You need to show it to people who you are selling for. Like, if you’re selling, I don’t know, baby closes. Show it to moms instead of to just your, your buddy, John, who doesn’t have children and likes to drink beer. And that’s all he does that might not work.
Charles (19:53):
No, he’s not the best audience on that one. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you started doing that. You put an Amazon, you spent 10,000, right on the first order of green binoculars. Is this from, are you private labeling or like, how exactly are you going to do this?
Anatoly (20:09):
So we first we spent about 4,000 or $2,000. I remember. And then we ordered them from China. They took existing ones. They put our label in, they put like their private label and then they would ship about, I think 200 units or some point of that. And then they would not sell, would run some ads. And at some point they start selling about like five a day or maybe six a day. I think our competitor went out of stock or something happened for a couple of days. And we’re so happy. We’re like, well, we’ll run out of stock soon. We’re selling so well. And then we ordered fall in more, maybe a week of sales or something like that. I don’t know. So it was sort of trending a little bit and we’re like, yes, we’re going to be rich. We need to be order more.
Anatoly (20:47):
So then when you invested more money and then it stopped selling and yeah, so essentially that’s, but they were sold them in, in a year. So the next Q4 in December, they did sell but much cheaper. We probably made about, I don’t know, six, $7,000 back. So it wasn’t that bad. What we spent lots of time. And we, by that time, we already had a second product because we realized what we did wrong. And we’re like, okay, binoculars are fine. We’re not going to sell them. And then we we looked at supplements. We’re like, okay. We S how would we differentiate? So we took two different supplements, so people would buy this and that. And they would put them together in one capsule. So people don’t even have to buy two bottles. They would buy just a single bottle and it will have enough for like both of them.
Anatoly (21:34):
And they will always buy two together. And nobody at that point come, and when we launched it wasn’t meeting. So we would start selling well, unfortunately at some point, Amazon suspended the product because they like, yeah, I wasn’t licensed suspended. Like they have bots and then they look for stuff and it’s just spend you, and then you need to sort of prove that you’re innocent. So they said, we’ve had some claims that are not true, which in supplements is very important thing. We did hire lawyers and we looked at all this, there was no claims. We removed everything, but like dealing with them, took us about six months to get us back. And unfortunately, when we were back, there was lots of other people selling this because people see, wow, this isn’t the opportunity. And we were not able to come back because the timing also is very important.
Anatoly (22:18):
So we just we sold it, but not, not really good. And then at some point we’ll just drop the product. Then we had, at that point, another supplement that were selling much better about 10 to 15 a day with about we’re selling it for about 34, I think, or $30. And we’re making about $15 of profit. So it was really good product. So I guess after the ad spend, maybe it’s like $10, but still like a lot of really good margins, like 30, 40% margin. So what’s a good product. And we, we still sell this product and we went murmuration of that product and we have two products each, each making about a hundred thousand dollars a year. And then we’ll launch the third one where get the facts. So
Charles (23:03):
The, so the first one, the supplement is always interesting as with Amazon, you’re guilty until proven innocent. They can just come down and random Lehner and that’s why a lot of these marketplace, that’s the double side of it, right? Where yes, you get a lot of orders. You have an audience in a right there, but if they decide you’re wrong, you’re wrong and you have to approve that you’re not wrong. So that’s but do you sell out of those shoes? Those are done or?
Anatoly (23:28):
Yeah. So we were able to get us back because we didn’t, nothing was wrong with our product. Nothing was wrong with our listing. It’s just, they picked something up and then we were like this ballsy where like, we’ll prove them wrong instead of just removing description and saying, okay, you arrived, blah, blah, blah, which we did in the end. We’re like, okay, why don’t we just the description, tell them that we did remote. We removed them, they put us back and then we put the prescription back and they never touched us again. So our thing was correct. They just, I don’t know their support is sometimes also we are, they, I don’t know the, the, they give you to one person to another, they don’t look at your case that much. It was just like a mess, I guess. But yeah, we did sell those out. So this product was profitable. The second product was profitable, but too much competition on that point. And yeah, I don’t know. We didn’t want to, and it was selling that good cause I was always right now thinking of what I’ll probably keep that product. But at that point I was like, I’m looking for this big product that would make me a million dollars. And now I’m more in that camp of halftime products that can make you in total million dollars because if one gets suspended, at least you have nine more. So,
Charles (24:35):
So actually first and making me think, I interviewed a long time back e-commerce Chris and he’s, he used to work in that Amazon department that does those suspensions, and now he works with Amazon sellers to help them during that suspension process. So that was a good job linked to that, just cause it’s very if this is happening somewhere else, it’s actually kind of useful to watch and just see the insight process though. But so now you’re going back and saying, instead of having your one blockbuster, you’re just looking at finding your product that makes, you know, a hundred, 200,000 a year. And just doing that 10 times basically. And is that kind of the path? So the path is to 10 million. That’s kind of, is that the 10, the 10 million journey, right?
Anatoly (25:18):
Yeah. 10 million journey. Yeah. It’s a 10 minute journey cause I’m scaling it to 10 million year. So the idea is for a first million it’s actually tactical. There’s nothing like, Ooh, special about it. It’s like you find the product that they’re selling about. I don’t know, 20, 30 a day. And then they need to cost you about 20, 25 to 30 bucks, something like that. And then if you find that, you know, five, six of them, you’re making a million dollars and I’ve got clear with me. I’m not really good at math, but this is, this is exactly that. So you, you start up each rate until you find those products. It might be variations of a product, but product and total should do like about 20 to 30 sales a day. And then this is how I get the first million dollars when I do though, then 10 million is a little bit harder because, well, theoretically, you can do it. Yeah.
Charles (26:07):
Got you here. Won’t get you there. It’s usually kind of, once you do that, once you want to add the zero.
Anatoly (26:12):
Yeah. But then talking to a lot of people who are at 10 million Mark and my podcasts, they all sort of, they hint to me that this is not that AC you can just replicate it. So you’ll need to probably need to go. Why there may be go different countries probably go retail or something like that. So finding opportunities where you can establish relationships and this way it’s sort of grows to 10 million and then just have a brand, I guess, having a strong brand. So just focus more on a brand. And I brands are, what, what costs 10 million? Not like, like shops or small shops. This is where like Cornerstore shop. That has lots of different things. This is not like you’re telling me when Dell or your 10 and a dollar is like, I don’t know Starbucks. I mean, Starbucks is much more, but just, just like example, like a brand brand is like has loyalty while just stores. They do not. So building this loyalty and proving that this, what people should choose is I think a path to $10 million.
Charles (27:11):
Yeah. I liked, I liked that kind of approach. I’m taking little baby steps and you know, okay, we’ll go, let’s find one that sells this many per day. Great. Okay. I can do that. That means I can do it most likely a second time. Right. Like if I can do it once, let’s just do it again. And that gets you to a million and that’s probably gonna buy you all, some breathing room right on. Okay. Now I can go into this full time. The bills are paid maybe now. Okay. We need, we need to order a much bigger run, much bigger production. We need marketing, but we do all of these budgets, right. That you just can’t have, like when you’re worried about like a $10,000 buy you can’t, you know, you can’t invest in marketing or anything like that. You’re not there yet, but kind of scaling up to a million. Now you’re going to have enough profit to kind of throw off that, okay, maybe we can reinvest this and we can spend a year and figure it out. Right. And you can make that mistake. You can make a mistake again, but you can make a mistake at a whole different level versus the level, you know, before you worry about a $10,000 mistake. Now it could be a hundred thousand dollar mistake.
Anatoly (28:09):
Yes, yes, exactly. That, and it’s very tactical as I’m saying, like what I learned, and this is, I didn’t, I’m not there. So, but I speak to, I don’t know, hundreds of people who are there and they all have the same story. It’s tactical. You find a way how to launch one, as you said, and you launch more, you scale from there, the scaling ends again, a million dollars, maybe $3 million. Usually the scaling answer. Cause you need something more. Amazon is not the only vehicle who would get you there. And from there just yeah. Figure out the other steps, but very, very tactical.
Charles (28:40):
Yeah. I think you always have like retail arbitrage, for example. And everyone’s like, you can do it at work. And like, yes, it works. It definitely works. But everyone I’ve talked to, you know, in person and on the podcast, it’s a plateau, right? Like you can only do it. And I’m one of the guests I interviewed. He’s like, all I was doing is basically going to stores, filling up his trunk, sending to Amazon and waking the next day, just doing it again. And he just hit the sit and like, he was just a maximum of how much stuff he could fit in his trunk, like of his car. Like literally that is just flat-out and then you need to start building what you’re talking about.
Anatoly (29:13):
Yeah. And the other thing that is very important, I think for for me, that I focused on is building systems. So I really want to make sure that it’s replicatable. So I did hire a couple people part-time as like a contractor who worked with me and work on certain parts of the business. Cause if I work on everything, I wouldn’t be able to get there. So I really document everything I do. I go for first product, like we’re redoing this because I want to get in different niche. Supplement is very competitive and it’s hard to find more products. So I found a niche where I can find more products and I’m just going for a first product. Again, I’m recording everything on the video, everything I do. And then in parallel, my visual assistant goes and does the same thing with a second product.
Anatoly (29:57):
And then when I want to make sure it’s a system and if it’s all documented, this is a way of how are we going to scale this 2 million faster because there’ll be system. And it’s also something that if I’m going to sell the business, it won’t be me who need to stay there and support them. It will be bunch of like standard operating procedures that people will have. And they’ll just give it to any team because I want to make sure the way do it. It’s simple. So they will give it to any team member. They will do the same and they’ll be able to grow it more and more. So I think that’s another aspect. That’s very important that not too many people these days, for some reason, at my level of these speak about yeah.
Charles (30:33):
Yeah. I think it’s a system. It’s the businesses. The businesses ever wants to buy other ones with the systems, but the business you also don’t want to sell is the one with the systems. Right. Cause then it kind of just runs itself. So, and that’s the beauty of it, right? If you build the business that you don’t want to sell, that’s a business everyone wants to buy. And I think that’s processes where it’s not where you basically, aren’t just buying yourself a high end job. You are, you’re there to actually build the processes or build the business that builds the processes. Even, you know, even one step above that when you were just saying about niches, right. If you were talking to someone today and you’re doing a podcast on like, Hey, I’m sitting there right now, listening, maybe they just took the course. So they don’t, you know, maybe they don’t want to take the course or they can’t. What should they be looking at? What niches would you recommend or even how, what would you recommend as a thought process to find those edges?
Anatoly (31:26):
Yeah. Yeah. I think I have nothing as supplements, but there are some issues for me personally. First of all, I tried launching sounds of supplements and people there. I would still, I would get like lots of negative reviews coming from some Chinese side they’re fake. And they would like put my account in travel. So this niche just like supplements. They do have those issues. You find something great. And it’s easy for people to replicate this product because they will go into, hundreds of them will appear right away. You don’t need to have any malls or anything. You don’t even don’t even need to ship it from somewhere. You just, you can do it anywhere and it’s getting crazy. So,
Charles (32:04):
So you’re combining two things, right? If you combined the blockchain and human assets and glutamine, right? Like everyone else can just buy blockchain, amino acids, glutamine, and put them together and now they have essentially your product. Right. So, yeah.
Anatoly (32:18):
Yeah. So in supplements, the only way I guess together is maybe to find the crazy formula patented or hide it somehow. So people like yours or have a really, really strong brand that does it first. So it’s not as easy. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m not saying people should not do supplements. I interview lots of people could just supplements and doing very well for, I I’m mostly thinking it’s harder. Like I’m trying to find an easier path. And I was doing supplements for a while and I found that there’s so many issues with claims with like competition with everything. So it was like Santa Fe. It should not be that hard because I’m stressed out and I should not be stressed out. This business is a pretty simple model of many, many people do. You might think it’s crazy, but it’s pretty simple. That’s why they’re cautious for it.
Anatoly (33:01):
That’s why many people who are not as smart as me, even they, and I’m not the smartest person in the room for sure, but they’re even not as smart as me and they still do that. So I understand that there’s a simpler way. So simpler way is to go to niches that are not as competitive. And there are that don’t have those issues. For example, if you go to let’s say kitchen, and then you find some kitchen tools, well, they can be lightweight and they can be easy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then you can differentiate that as well. With supplements is very hard to differentiate. Your only differentiator might be quantity or strength or maybe packaging, but again, easy to replicate. But if you have like custom mold and create something cool it might be better. Also some supplements, you can’t even advertise in many platforms.
Anatoly (33:47):
So there are lots of issues with supplements that, that, that are innately hard. And then if you have supplements to cure something, you cannot say, tell about it because this is like a claim and stuff like that. So all those small things, they are irritating at least to me. So I’m, I’m looking at something like that. It’s easy that doesn’t have many parts. It’s not electronics. It is not hazardous something simple kitchens. The liability, I guess like, first of all, if you put it in like a socket in my burn or something like that, and I don’t know, it just, and then electronics is also prone to returns as far as I know. So a lot of people say, Oh, I don’t like this or whatever. And they return more, same supplement. People do return supplements. I’m getting lots of sort of returns. It didn’t work for me.
Anatoly (34:32):
I’m like, okay, it’s a supplement. It’s not like a magic pill. Like, I don’t know. So, so yeah, things like that. The batteries also Amazon, I think that’s not like batteries. It’s like hazardous and stuff like that. So you need to either sell them separate. There’s something that I haven’t dealt with battery. So I don’t know, but batteries and not a good idea as well, something sharp. I would not recommend something fragile, something very heavy. So I’m looking for something in the middle. That being said, if you find something heavy and it has really good margins, it’s fine. Or if you find something something that has batteries in don’t sell for the batteries, it’s also fine. So I’m not saying people should not do that, but there are easier ways, easier ways to find something. I don’t know, like this ball, for example, that’s a good example.
Anatoly (35:13):
It’s small, it’s lightweight. It’s easier to design. So you, your manufacturer will be able to build it because very often probably manufacturers, they will sort of, if it’s too hard, they’ll make errors and then it will cost you the business. Even with like supplements. We did like the whole run and the whole round was wrong. And now I have issues and negative reviews and like, it’s crazy. So it’s, it’s very important to testing and stuff like that, but also important to pick something easier that might not be like as not make as much money as other stuff. But if you combine them like given, you could have to brand brand around this niche, I think you will. You’ll do good and go specific. I think the more specific the audience you can get that is pretty wide. I guess it still needs to be specific, but not like two people. Like if you, if you go into, I dunno something very, very, I love only medium, medium clock people. Maybe there’s nobody who likes live video club. What if like ghost hunting? I never knew it’s a thing, but lots of people are into ghost hunting and this niche like makes millions of dollars for people. So stuff like that. So find a niche and then find how you can serve with them. I think it works well,
Charles (36:20):
Last question before we let you rotten. Cause this is always interesting on, and I think what order you do this, when you were talking earlier about keyword research or finding a niche, would you go on first on just going into jungle scout or helium 10 and just kind of throwing in keywords or would you first come up with, okay, I want to be in the ghost hunting niche. Now let me find keywords that perform well for those hunters. Like what direction would you,
Anatoly (36:45):
I actually do both. Like I can, like I have, which one would I do first? Ideally I would look at niche. So I think, I think, I think I look at niche now with lists Finks related to that niche. So it’d be like, okay, ghost hunting. What are other people like when they go on this, this, this, and that, then we’ll check it on Amazon. And then we’ll usually when I do check it though, other keywords popping out then like, Oh, maybe that’s niche has good. And then I would, I would sort of do research, but whenever I find one product that is good, I always try to find at least like four other ones that I could potentially sell to make sure. And if there’s like audience for this particular sort of style and stuff like that. So I was taught with a niche itself. But then I’ll go to keywords and then find good keywords for other niches. I would then go for keywords. So it sort of goes up and down. Yeah.
Charles (37:40):
Yeah. And, and like we’re saying before, you can first even start backing even further. I do your research on you know, SEO, wherever else, eBay, Google trends start seeing what? Okay. 10 decks. A big right now. Okay. What are some, what are some niches inside pandemics, right. Okay. Like, like sanitizing. Right? Okay. What are some things inside? Santa’s okay. Now you drill down hand sanitizer, obviously easy one, but maybe there’s some other,
Anatoly (38:06):
Just a disclaimer before people start jumping on, on the sanitizers, please go and do that. Amazon is punishing everyone who is trying to sell any of those essential things. Because I guess there was a lot of like price gouging and stuff like that. I don’t know. I wasn’t part of it, but I heard, I heard a lot of bad things happen to people who were were selling, but there are other things like if you think about pandemic, people stay at home more. So there’s home office things you can sell, or I don’t know people are with their families now. What, what the families do together. Maybe they play games and there’s a lot of things above that, the necessity things that Egan’s,
Charles (38:45):
I think that’s the thing, right? Everyone, the big one’s going to start everyone’s into a forest. That’s a blood bath right on the hand sanitizer. But if you start going down on Oh, board games or comfortable bathrooms to wear at home, like you start just going down, you’d probably still do. Okay. Right. And like you said, on the supplements, maybe that’s the blood bath and that’s where, you know, that’s what the $10 million seller is going to be. But on the folks selling like the comfortable bathrooms, maybe that ones where you can just make the nice, nice several thousand hundred a year and you get your orders and, and no, one’s really rushing into the bathroom niche right now and saying like, does dependent, let’s go all in a bathroom. So like maybe in your model, that is the way to go. Right. I’m just looking at those, not the first area. You’re not competing with TRL, but you’re competing with, you know, everyone else that’s staying at home. And that sort of thought process. I like, yeah,
Anatoly (39:34):
Yeah. A hundred percent. There’s a lot of niches that appeared from this. So I highly recommend people look at that. You are totally right. Just be like, look at what trending in terms of not like products, like don’t go for fidget spinners and stuff like that. Cause they will go up and down, but find the niches that becomes new, that never existed before remote working is something that people have not done before a lot. I mean, I was doing it as a consultant. It consultant for a long time, many people don’t. So now maybe you need like microphone, which you didn’t have before, or like headphones or something in a cushion for your butt to be comfortable while, while you’re doing your work. And lots of those things that, that we will can think of and definitely consider.
Charles (40:13):
Awesome. And it’s a good place to end it right there. Folks want to kind of find you fall along with that journey. We should, they do that.
Anatoly (40:19):
Oh, well you can go to 10 million journey.com. This is my this is the website that puts you all the links to all the places where the podcast is. And Instagram at 10 million journey. You can ask me questions if you like something on my podcast, that’s me questions full. And then I’ll be happy to talk. I talk to everyone there.
Charles (40:37):
Awesome. Thanks a lot for coming on or chatting.
Anatoly (40:40):
And you were out. I mean, yeah, exciting. I really like to thank you very much.
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