#745 – Their 8-Figure Amazon & TikTok Shop Brand

What does it look like to go from barely being able to pay the bills to building a $20 million business? In this episode, Bradley Sutton sits down with Josh and Becca Hadley, the husband-and-wife team behind Hadley Designs, to unpack the journey from side hustle beginnings to a multi-eight-figure brand. Their story starts with custom wedding invitations, a few early Amazon experiments, and a whole lot of late nights spent building together after work.

Josh and Becca explain how their different strengths helped shape the business from day one. Becca brought the creative talent, teaching herself graphic design and designing every product herself, while Josh brought the entrepreneurial drive and business strategy. Their first real breakthrough came when they turned their invitation design experience into physical products, launching recipe cards on Amazon and quickly realizing they had something much bigger than a small side project.

But their path was anything but smooth. When COVID hit, their party-focused business dried up almost overnight, forcing them into a painful but necessary pivot. That shift led them into the early education space, where a new line of preschool posters completely changed the trajectory of their brand. Then, years later, another financial crunch pushed them to rethink growth again, leading them to TikTok Shop, where they found success by building real relationships with creators instead of chasing one-off influencer posts.

This episode is a masterclass in resilience, reinvention, and long-term thinking. Josh and Becca prove that growth does not come from avoiding hard seasons, but from responding to them with creativity, focus, and action. Whether you are trying to survive your next setback or scale beyond Amazon, this conversation shows that the biggest breakthroughs often come right after the moments when quitting feels easiest.

In episode 745 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Becca, and Josh discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction
• 01:05 – Josh And Becca’s Background And How They Met
• 03:00 – Early Marriage, Day Jobs, And Learning Graphic Design
• 04:20 – Josh’s First Amazon Experience Selling Textbooks
• 05:47 – How Wedding Invitations Became A Real Business
• 07:09 – Launching Recipe Cards On Amazon And Selling Out
• 08:25 – Their First Full Year On Amazon Hit $1 Million
• 11:17 – Why Josh Stayed At American Airlines For Five Years
• 12:27 – How COVID Forced A Massive Brand Pivot
• 15:49 – Building A $20 Million Business Across Platforms
• 17:09 – The $300K Credit Card Bill That Changed Everything
• 20:29 – Why TikTok Shop Became Their Next Growth Engine
• 22:08 – Building An Affiliate Army Instead Of Chasing Influencers
• 29:46 – Balancing Four Kids, Full-Time Work, And Marriage
• 31:42 – How Helium 10 And Data Guide Their Growth Strategy
• 41:53 – Josh’s Framework For Scaling Beyond Amazon

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we talk to a husband and wife combo who went from the brink of not being able to pay their bills to a multi-eight-figure business. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. It’s a completely BS-free, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this looks and sounds a little bit different. I am not here in my studio, as you can probably tell if you’re watching this on YouTube. I’m here in Nashville, Tennessee, my second time here.

Bradley Sutton:

My first time was just like a few weeks ago at another conference. I don’t know, went 46 years, 47 years without going here once and twice in the last couple months. But I’m here for the first, kind of half first time, but first time together as a couple. The Hadley family here in Nashville at E-Com Mastery. Welcome to the show, guys.

Josh:

Hey, excited to be here with you, Bradley.

Becca:

Yeah, thank you.

Bradley Sutton:

Josh has been on our podcast before. He’s been in our trainings before. But this time, I wanted to do a little bit different angle. Well, now we’re on the Serious Sellers Podcast. We’re not here to do a webinar or training like we do on the AM/PM podcast. We like to hear brands’ stories. And so that’s what we’re gonna do. So first of all, you guys live in Texas now. Is that where y’all were born and raised? You see how the y’all just all of a sudden came out?

Becca:

It was very natural, yeah. No, we both actually were born and raised in Utah, and then we moved to Dallas about 12 years ago or so. Josh started working in American Airlines after we graduated, and we moved out to Dallas, Texas, been there ever since.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, where did you guys go to university?

Becca:

University of Utah.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, Utes, all right, all right. Used to be a rival of San Diego State, but then they changed conferences. What did each of you study?

Becca:

So I studied early childhood education, so to teach preschool and early years like that.

Josh:

At the University of Utah, I studied finance for my undergrad, and then I did my MBA immediately following that. I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, and Becca has always been like a creative at heart. Like growing up, she has won multiple art contests, and growing up, I was always the kid on the corner of the street with the candy stand.

Bradley Sutton:

A good pair, a good pair. Now, were you high school sweethearts, college sweethearts?

Becca:

We were college sweethearts. We actually met on the corner of the street at college, and Josh started talking to me. If you know him, it’s no surprise, and it was, I mean, a big journey from there, but.

Josh:

Well, I was trying to get her to join my business club that I was trying to start up, so it was the DECA organization there in college, and we had nobody joining the program, and so I was literally handing out flyers that morning. So instead of asking for her number, I was like, hey, do you wanna join my business club? That was how we met, and she came.

Bradley Sutton:

Great pickup line. I like it, I like it. So when you guys got married, how were you supporting yourselves during that time?

Josh:

Yeah, so when we first got married, I went and did, well, two things. I went and did door-to-door sales right after I graduated, because I was like, I know I can make a bunch of money just real quick, right before I actually start working full-time. So we did that. In the meantime, Becca wanted to get into graphic design. She had always kind of been interested in it, but as you heard, that was not the education she went into. So Becca, you can tell a little bit more about that story.

Becca:

Yeah, so I had a full college scholarship, which was awesome, and everyone told me that my scholarship would be wasted if I got an art degree. And so I was so conflicted, which is part, I always loved business as well, which is why I went to the business club, actually, is because I was like, well, maybe this can be my major. But I always loved kids and teaching as well, so that’s the route that I went, and then when we moved to Dallas, I interviewed at like a few preschools, and I was like, this is not what I want to do.

Becca:

And so thankfully, Josh had his job in summer sales, and so I ended up starting to teach myself graphic design and taught myself everything. I’m completely self-taught, went through a bunch of courses and started doing just a bunch of free work to get started and figure it out.

Bradley Sutton:

And for you young people out there, that was before Nano Banana and things like that. This is like literal graphic design, okay? Interesting. Now, when did you, who was the first to discover e-commerce and what was your first entry into the e-commerce world?

Josh:

Yeah, so that was me, and that went all the way back to even college. So Becca would always get her textbooks completely paid for, so she would get brand new textbooks, part of her scholarship. And so for me, I saw that as a money-making opportunity because as soon as she was done, those books were really nice, still really new books, whereas my books, I was like buying the oldest edition I possibly could, but still get by in the class, and it was probably tattered and worn. But it was just flipping the textbooks on Amazon was like my first foray into it.

Bradley Sutton:

What year are we talking about here?

Josh:

This was 2012. Yep, so Amazon was still very like textbook-heavy marketplace at the time. And then we, from there, like we had kind of like dabbled. I’d always like, I’ve been an entrepreneur at heart, but that still didn’t like light the fire under me of like, oh yeah, I’m gonna be the next big textbook seller. Rather, you know, we went, got into American Airlines, and for me, I was always listening to podcasts. So funny enough, like Jim Cockrum, The Silent Selling Machine, that was the one like podcast that I would like listen to. And I was like, oh, maybe there’s money to be had on Amazon.

Josh:

And we tested a bunch of different, like just random crap on Amazon for quite a while. But in the meantime, Becca had been designing wedding invitations for clients. So that’s honestly like the genesis of the brand is Becca was designing some wedding invitations for a friend, and just because she was like learning, and her friend was like, this is so good. I need to be able to like, I need to pay you for this. It’s so good. And then for me, obviously, I was the business guy, and I was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, that’s a business right there. And so instead of doing anything on Amazon, actually like we got started first by doing custom wedding invitations. And it got to a point where we were so busy, like Becca had like a six month wait list just to work with her.

Bradley Sutton:

People delaying their weddings just to be able to use the expert at the invitations. Interesting, okay. And so at what point did you take this now to Amazon? Was Amazon the first place where you were selling these online?

Josh:

Yeah, no, we were just, so Becca would actually have to custom design everything. So people would like send their information, then they would go back and forth. Becca’s working with the mother of the bride. That’s always a lot of fun, right? So Becca was like, yeah, this is getting like too cumbersome.

Becca:

Yeah, I mean, every design was brand new. You’re going back and forth so many times. And then the sad thing is, is once you were done, the design was done, right?

It never went anywhere. It was only used once. And we would get people that would come back and be like, oh, well now you can do my baby shower and different things.

But the money’s really only in weddings for custom design. And so then Josh, from listening to his podcast was like, well, maybe we can get some designs printed and put them on Amazon. And so we actually started off, our first product was a recipe card. And do you want to tell more, I mean, it sold out, it was.

Josh:

Yeah, so our first product, and it’s like super random, you’re like recipe cards of all things, but we went into recipe cards because one of the funny things that brides wanted, they would reach back out and be like, hey, I need recipe cards for my bridal shower. Can you make them match the invitation? And I was like, well, there ain’t no way we are custom designing recipe cards for you because you’re not paying a few thousand bucks for these. And I was like, but we can take our best performing designs or like the top trendy designs. We’ll make some generic, you know, kind of recipe cards. So that’s what we did. We came out with three SKUs initially. And I was like, there’s no way recipe cards sell. And I had, like I said, I had dabbled enough on Amazon up until that point that I was like familiar enough with like the FBA program. So I was like 200 units of each, that’s a big bet, right? And so we send in 200 units and we sold out within like the first like 60 days. And so that was where I was like, holy crap, this is a heck of a lot better than creating these custom designs for people.

Bradley Sutton:

So what in your first year of selling on Amazon, you know, these physical goods, what was your gross sales? It was just a side hustle at that time.

Josh:

Yeah, so our first full year on Amazon, we did over a million dollars. Wow, so you jumped in and now what year are we at? So that was 2016 was when like the fall of 2016 is when we first like launched and did that test. And then from there, once I saw the writing on the wall, I was like, we’re done with the wedding clients, it’s time to go all in. So we just kept coming out with like SKU after SKU after SKU of different products. So a lot of them were like fill in the blank party invitations.

Bradley Sutton:

Everything like kind of like stationary and paper based and stuff. And was this made in USA or?

Josh:

Made in the USA because like, again, we had a manufacturer that was doing all of our wedding invitations. So that’s what like led us to be able to say, hey, let’s just keep doing the stationary thing. We have a great manufacturer here in the US and like the turnaround time, part of the reason why we were able to grow so fast is because we had a US manufacturer. Our turnaround time was two weeks, right? Whereas most people are waiting three to four months to get something from overseas. So that was like really well allowed us to grow.

Bradley Sutton:

At what month, if at all in that first year did now Amazon become your full-time and you stopped whatever you’re doing during the day?

Josh:

I stuck at American Airlines for five years while we built that up.

Bradley Sutton:

Making a million dollars in.

Becca:

Working on his iPad during the light. He would come home during lunch too and we would work together. And then every night we were working together on the couch. We’d put on a show, kids in bed and we would sit and work. And it’s our hobby together, still is, but we would do it every single night. It was fun.

Bradley Sutton:

So who was putting more work into the business at that point? If he was working a day job, like would it be you designing since you were at home and then he would just do what he could on the Amazon side?

Becca:

Mostly. I mean, I would design all afternoon, all evening. I mean, we would work solid five, six hours at night. So I mean, he was still doing a lot, but design’s always been all me. I’ve designed all of our products.

Bradley Sutton:

Any of these original stuff still selling or you guys have all gone through so many iterations by now?

Josh:

Yeah, they’re still selling.

Bradley Sutton:

How can people find your brand on Amazon?

Josh:

Hadley Designs.

Bradley Sutton:

Spell that out for those.

Josh:

H-A-D-L-E-Y Designs. Awesome, awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

And so how can they find one of your original products just to kind of like time machine that?

Josh:

We have not refreshed our recipe cards, so go check them out. There you go.

Becca:

How cringy though.

Bradley Sutton:

Over time, I mean, obviously now, fast forward, I think you guys are doing eight figures. You’re not just doing recipe cards. Talk about the evolution of what kind of product, how did you expand? Did you try anything out that didn’t work out? But you don’t do eight figures by sticking with your first recipe card product. So talk about that.

Josh:

Yeah, so I mean, it goes back to, you asked like, when did you jump full time into Amazon? And so the reason why I stuck at American Airlines for five years was kind of twofold. Number one, it’s all about cashflow. So in the e-commerce space, anybody that’s in the physical products business, like cashflow is your biggest constraint, like bar none. And so for me, we were able to grow because every dollar that we made immediately went back into brand new products. And so because like, I remember speaking with one of my good mentors at the university.

Josh:

And he was like, dude, your job is your venture capital. And he’s like, you have six figures of venture capital coming into your business every single year. He’s like, keep pushing on that and use all of, live off of your corporate job, but then keep pushing everything back into the business. And that’s what we did for five years. So like every year we were like doubling or tripling the business. But it came back to, you know, you talked about like the pivot of the business, like where do we get to now we’re a decade later here, like we’re no longer like a recipe card brand or a party invitations brand. And really like we got slapped in the face in 2020.

Becca:

Yep, so when 2020 came around, we had, I can’t even know, I don’t know how many SKUs we had in the party space. All we had kids parties, bridal showers, wedding invitations, wedding, thank you cards, all the different things for all those types of parties. And so when COVID happened, our business literally dried up overnight. It was terrifying. We had just bought our dream home and literally overnight, March 12th, everything was, it was done. We were terrified, we didn’t know what to do. My oldest son was in preschool at the time. And so then obviously preschool wasn’t happening.And so I started teaching him at home, had my background in preschool and really just kind of dove all in.

Becca:

And so I was making my own like lesson plans and products for him, made a set of like posters with like the alphabet, numbers, colors, shapes, all those basic concepts for preschool, right? And we had, I mean, we did, we’re doing a lot of Zoom calls with family and friends and everyone was like, what are those? Where’d you get those? I want those. And so we were like, well, maybe there’s some opportunity here on Amazon in the homeschool education space. And obviously during COVID homeschool became a very big thing. And it was from there, we launched these posters in a very competitive category and it completely changed our brand. They did very well. They became a bestseller very quickly, which was huge for us. And so since then we have really pivoted to become an early education brand. We’re all about screen-free hands-on learning for kids.

Josh:

Yeah, I think like the biggest lesson learned from that though, Bradley, is anybody that’s selling in the e-commerce space, like there’s always gonna be like random black swan events or something that’s not going to go your way. And we have multiple stories where like, we’ve had to like make necessary like pivots in the business. But every single one as painful as it’s been, has been the thing that has slingshotted us forward to a whole nother level that we never would have anticipated otherwise.

Josh:

And so what do you do in those circumstances is like you have to keep pushing forward, but exclusively focused on growth. And the reason why the COVID scare like became like was so scary for us is like, I had just quit my job six months earlier, right? And so I was like, it was 2019 when I said like, oh, we’re going all in on this thing. And COVID was just around the corner. But because our back was up against a wall, like we had like, I remember when we launched the posters, it was kind of like our last ditch effort of like, here’s what we have left. And then after this, I think-

Becca:

Go back to summer sales, that was literally the conversation.

Josh:

Yeah, it was like, maybe we’re going back to like doing door-to-door sales or like looking at another job. And so it was our last effort to say, can this work again? And it worked massively, like quickly became a bestseller selling, you know, with the party invitations, you were lucky to sell like one or two a day. But because you had so many SKUs, it like is like, oh, well now we’re selling hundreds of units a day, but it’s across so many SKUs, which is very complicated to manage by the way, from inventory standpoint. But what did I know when we were first getting started? But then when we launched this product and we’re now doing hundreds of units a day, I was like, oh, this is what it looks like. This is how people have hero SKUs and things like that. So that was really like a massive pivot for the business.

Bradley Sutton:

So fast forward to what I would assume would be your most successful year last year and for a full year 2025, what did you end gross sales across all the platforms? Yeah, 20 million. 20 million, wow. At what point did you not become or the only designer, like where you started having to outsource because there was just so much to do?

Becca:

So I am still currently the only product designer. However, we added to our team probably five, six years ago. I have a handful of assistants that will help me with all the listing images, the main images, kind of those more like busy work type stuff. I am the only product designer still at this point.

Bradley Sutton:

Amazing. Even a $20 million business, you still have the time. How much time are you putting into the business nowadays?

Becca:

I work full time still, yeah. Four kids, work full time, juggle it all. It’s busy, it’s exhausting, but it’s fun.

Bradley Sutton:

What platforms are you selling on now?

Josh:

Amazon, TikTok Shop and Shopify are our biggest selling platforms.

Bradley Sutton:

Any other Amazons as far as market or North America versus Europe or something like that?

Josh:

No expansion on the Amazon platform itself. And again, like for us getting onto TikTok Shop and even on the Shopify, this came because like all of the overseas competitors just continue to flood the market. And so it really stemmed from 2024. January of 2024, we had $30,000 sitting in the bank account and a $300,000 credit card bill due.And that was the first time that like we had to dive into our own personal bank account.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you say $300,000 credit card?

Josh:

$300,000 credit card bill.

Bradley Sutton:

That is a credit card bill.

Josh:

Using Amazon ads, right? Which maybe we cannot use those credit cards anymore. But yeah, that like our back was like similar to the whole COVID situation. Our back was extremely up against the wall at that point in time. And so that’s like January, 2024. What had just launched Bradley? Just a couple months before that, fall of 2023.

Bradley Sutton:

TTS.

Josh:

There you go, TikTok Shop had just launched. Now we had been going back and forth and going to a lot of events and people were like, oh, hey, TikTok Shop is all the rate, like this is gonna be it. And so, but nobody had really done it yet, right? But everybody’s talking about it. And so there was an agency that I had met and was like, oh yeah, take our products, like let’s go and let’s do this thing, right? So we pay them literally thousands of dollars a month. And they come back after like two months. So this is still in January. All right, I’m sorry, sir, but nobody is interested in your products.

Josh:

Like we couldn’t even find a soul on TikTok that is interested in even getting a free sample.However, we did find some people that if you wanna pay them a few thousand dollars, sure, they’ll talk about your videos. I was like, no, heck no, I am not doing that.

Like that’s influencer marketing and you could do that on Instagram, Facebook all day long. And so that like, so I basically chalked TikTok Shop up as a loss. And it was because of that $300,000 credit card bill hanging over my head that I was like, Amazon is no longer working for us the same way it was because all the overseas competitors, the only game they know how to play is just to drop prices.

Josh:

And so you’re just seeing margin compression after margin compression. And again, honestly, if that’s your MO, like, I’m sorry, but like that game, you eventually will get killed because like, here’s what happens. Amazon just recently introduced their new fee, right? 3.5% on top of existing FBA fees for the gas surcharge. Guess what? We have premium pricing on our product. We can absorb that. We’ll raise our prices and be just fine. But like anybody else that’s like considering like, oh, I’ve got to compete with these overseas low cost sellers. It’s like, that’s not your MO. And so we knew that and I was never gonna play that price game. But for me, Bradley, it was actually listening to one of your podcasts that became like a massive unlock for us.

Josh:

And it was, I’d played in an old man’s hockey league. So if you need some fun entertainment, go to your local hockey rink on a Friday, Saturday night at like 1030 at night. It’s late, it’s not good hockey, but I have a great time. So anyways, it was during this really, really dark time that I had been praying for guidance and saying like, our business is broken. God, what is the next step? What do we do first? And it was on the way to hockey. I’ve always put on a podcast and it was Bradley and he had a stationary brand on the podcast that had just crushed it on TikTok shop. And I was like, wait, all right, they’re in that space. Why not me? That was number one. On the drive back home, I was again, randomly thumbing through podcast, just hit play on one. And lo and behold, it was somebody else in the stationary space that had gone viral. And I was like, okay, that’s my sign. And so since then, we like went all in on TikTok shop.

Josh:

We went viral within our first month after we personally ran our TikTok shop ourself. And then from there, we just continued to double down on that. So Bradley, I have thanks to you that we got really like, we went beyond Amazon. And that has been like the biggest boon to the business. And now like, as we look at like, the whole thing that we’re trying to do right now is grow to a nine figure brand. And we’re documenting that journey. That’s part of like why I do my podcast, Econ Breakthrough is because it’s documenting that journey of like how to scale beyond like Amazon and scale from eight to nine figures.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you spoken at conferences before this one?

Becca:

I spoke at Prosper.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So I haven’t seen you speak and I didn’t get a chance this time either. What were you speaking about?

Becca:

So here I was talking all about our TikTok shop strategy, what we’re doing with creators, building relationships with them. We’re really trying to build an affiliate army of loyal brand evangelists, building that moat around our brand and have the group of creators really building our brand with us.

Bradley Sutton:

How does that set you apart? I mean, I agree with you, but others might not know about what’s good and what’s bad. Like, why is that important?

Becca:

It’s huge. The creators right now, they have so much power to get your brand out there on TikTok, across other platforms. But the thing is, is they’re brand hopping all over their place. They’re getting one sample and they’re never posting again. And so by really creating that loyal brand evangelist, you’re getting a person who is posting multiple times about your brand. They’re thinking about your brand in the shower, right? They are sharing it with their friends. They’re super enthusiastic and they’re loyal to you. They’re not gonna hop to the competition. And by having that affiliate army, we are able to get thousands of videos going out, thousands of sales from each of like over, going across all of them, a handful of sales from each of them is leading to thousands of sales a day. And so we feel like we’re building a moat around our brand, protecting ourselves from competition, but also having all of these people talking about our brand across multiple platforms is huge. It’s really snowballing to build up our brand reputation, having people know about our products.

Bradley Sutton:

What are some of the unique things you’re doing to main, or first of all, cultivate, start the relationship and develop them?

Becca:

Yeah, that’s the whole thing that I talked about. And Josh actually has a whole episode on it on his podcast as well. But we have our creators in different buckets. So as soon as they receive a sample that they request on TikTok shop, we are immediately following up with them, thanking them, making sure that they are posting that sample. We are getting their information so that we can talk to them off of TikTok. The TikTok shop DMs are just a black hole. You’re never gonna hear back from people. And so that alone is huge because they’re just being flooded with spam messages, especially from overseas business owners and stuff. And so we’re getting them off of TikTok so we can actually build a real relationship with them. So we’re getting them in a WhatsApp group. And with that WhatsApp group, we’re really trying to have it be a community that they can come to. Because as you talk to TikTok shop creators, they’re lonely. A lot of them are trying to make this their full-time job. They run into issues and they don’t know what to do. With our space, it is a lot of moms and grandmas and teachers and so super social and wanna have that network.

Becca:

And so our goal with our WhatsApp is that we’re able to create that safe community for them. And within there too, we wanna have multiple touch points so that we’re staying top of mind. So they’re like, oh yeah, those are the people I wanna post for. They are taking care of me. Because a lot of these creators, if they get a video that goes viral, even with like a big brand, that brand doesn’t even say a word to them sometimes. There’s no like, oh my gosh, thank you. It’s just missing that touch point and really having them be a creator forever. They’re missing that opportunity. And so we make sure that we really take care of them as we have a whole onboarding for them. We want them to get to know about us and our brand. What makes us unique? Who are we? We really are a husband and wife team behind the brand. I joke around like we’re the Chip and Joe of design. That’s what we do here on Amazon and across Shopify and things.

Becca:

And so that we want them to know who we are and fall in love with us and know who they’re supporting. Instead of supporting overseas sellers, they’re really supporting a mom, a former preschool teacher. All of our products are truly like safety tested, made with care, developmentally appropriate given my background. These are products I use with my kids, right? And I want these creators to know that. And then that really has them become brand evangelists. We walk through different like mindset trainings for them because it’s hard to be a creator. It is a roller coaster of a lot of times you’re in a big low of like, I’m not getting views, I’m not getting sales. And then you’ll get that dopamine hit of that one like viral video, but like there’s huge gaps in between. It can be six months, nine months. And so it’s hard. And so we try and focus on mindset and we like to send them different tips.

Becca:

Like we really give them the hooks that are working for our brand and our space and trying to provide them with the value they need to succeed too. Like we truly want them to succeed. When they do, we do. Everyone, all the boats rise in the harbor, you know? And so we’re trying to provide them with those tools to be a better creator in general. And because of that, they want to stay loyal to us. And as we continue to come out with products, we’re always launching new products. We have this whole army of people that are ready to try them out, share them with their friends and like shout from the rooftops how much they love them.

Bradley Sutton:

You guys are probably giving out hundreds of samples. How do you determine who gets in this special WhatsApp group?

Becca:

When we onboard them and we’re reaching out for their information, once we get that information, we’ll put them in the group.

Bradley Sutton:

And even before sales. Oh, interesting.

Becca:

So we’ll bring everybody in. And then we have our different buckets that we walk through of our different touch points. Once they’ve posted their video, once they’ve made certain sales, once they’re posting somewhat regularly, we’re there in one bucket. And our goal is to move them up to be posting regularly and getting higher GMV. I don’t know if you want to add to that.

Josh:

Yeah, the main thing here, this is where most people like, this is where they look over the majority of like TikTok shop affiliates. And it’s all about the activation of them. Not necessarily like, again, our playbook in 2024 was like, send out a bunch of samples and hopefully somebody goes viral. Like that was the playbook, right? But now we have like five distinct stages that we walk creators through. And so the first stage is just like, fall in love with the brand, get to know us, and you’re going to hear a lot from us. So you’re going to get to know, like we’re going to be sending you creative briefs. We’re going to tell you exactly what’s working. We have fun little challenges that we do. It’s like, hey, earn your first $20 gift card with Hadley Designs by posting 10 different times, using three of our creative brief hooks that have already been proven to go viral. And then make sure that you produce $50 in GMV. And if you do that, we’ll give you $20, right?

Josh:

And so like, it’s this like micro challenge that people are like, nobody else is doing this. And we’ll jump on like Zoom calls once a week. Becca does that. With all the creators. And it’s that differentiation. So anybody that’s listening to this, like if you want to have success on TikTok shop, the good news is it’s never been harder and it’s never been easier all at the same time. And I say it for this reason, if you’re a North American seller, I would say like, that is your biggest advantage. And you’ve got to lean into it and you’ve got to be public about yourself. Here’s the mistake most people make here, Bradley. Most people got started on Amazon. And then they’re like, oh, well, TikTok shop, everybody’s killing it over here. So I can surely, all I have to do is take my Amazon listing, go post it over on the TikTok shop, give out a few samples. And that’s the recipe for success. And what we have learned is affiliate marketing in and of itself is running a completely different business model and playbook to what like led to our success on Amazon, right? Like totally different capabilities and it’s all about relationship management. And that’s what Becca does such a good job of.

Becca:

Yeah, and so our goal is to make them feel special, make them feel heard. Again, on these, so I meet with them once a week and on this, we will have like live audits on the call. You can submit your video. I’m showing like new product sneak peeks. I’m asking them for their opinion on products. And the goal is to build that relationship. We’ll send them gifts. We will send them bonuses. We have fun contests. Like I, for Christmas, I did like Becca’s favorite things. And so it was like, it’s like a big Christmas activity for women, right? And so the winner got a basket of my favorite things. And just adding that personal touch is everything. And the overseas sellers can’t do that. And so you are building this moat around yourself because the halo effect on Amazon is huge. And so we’re able to still thrive on Amazon. We’re still profitable on TikTok shop, but we still are able to thrive on Amazon on top of that.

Bradley Sutton:

You guys are a family run operation. You said you had four kids. I had my hands full with just two. How can you be this full-time graphic designer, community overseer here and be a mom and a wife and juggle all that?

Becca:

It is a huge juggle for sure. And there are different seasons where you’re busier to any moms and parents out there. But I would say time management is so key and protecting your time and staying focused during that time. And so we love the book, The One Thing. And so making sure you’re getting your one thing, we’re time blocking. So I time block my time. I have certain times where I have a nanny come over for a few hours. And what’s so key is that I am super focused during that time. I can’t be like hopping over to Facebook or TikTok or whatever. I need to make sure that I’m focused in my one thing and getting my work done during that block. And I’d also say on the flip side, when I’m able to be with my kids and it’s like my family time block, it’s so important that I’m super focused there. Like I’m not replying to messages. I’m not answering emails. I’m not trying to multitask. That’s what I’ve learned is being very present in the timeframe that I’m in. And every Sunday I go through and I schedule my whole week, my different time blocks. You have to plan ahead and have those goals. And then throughout the week, I have to stick to them. And I have help. It really does take a village. I do have a nanny that comes and helps me.

Becca:

But we make sure that we have that balance where family time is always the most important. Josh and I do try and go on a date like once a week or once every other week. That’s super important too. But the best part for us is that we do run the business together. And so we’re able to talk about the business, travel together. That’s been such a blessing for us. But I think just the most important thing is protecting your time and being very dedicated to the time block that you’re in.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. All right. Well, Becca actually has an Uber to the airport to catch. So we’re going to pause this, let them say their goodbyes. And then we’ll be back here with Josh.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. What year about, or what part of the journey did you discover Helium 10?

Josh:

Man, I want to say this was in the back. This is in the good old days of the Illuminati. So it was, I think, 2016, 2017. It was early, early on in my journey.

Bradley Sutton:

Illuminati was the former name of the Helium 10 Elite program back then that the founder of Helium 10 did. And so how did your use of Helium 10 evolve over the years. I mean, almost 10 years now using it.

Josh:

Yeah. I mean, it’s evolved immensely. I mean, the first thing was utilizing it for product research. Now we actually use Market Tracker 360 is a big thing that my entire team, they’re always looking, they’re tracking what’s happening with the competition. They’re tracking what’s happening, just our markets overall, like our sales rising for the entire, like all of our competitors, or we seeing an increase in search volume or a decrease in search volume in certain niches. So yeah, heavy, heavy users of TikTok or TikTok of Helium 10. And again, a lot of your guys’ new TikTok tools we’re starting to use as well, especially what I’m most interested in is like the ads aspect and the financial aspect. And I know we’ve been working together on that quite a bit because that is like a dark hole right now on TikTok shop.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. TikTok, it’s kind of a little hard to see. Are you profitable? You know, like how do all your costs, you know, tie in? And so that’s what we’ve been trying to work on. And thanks to your team too. So what before, you know, Market Tracker 360, which is a fairly newer tool in the last few years, what were some of the main tools that your team was using?

Josh:

I mean, X-Ray, the keyword tracker that we could boost a bunch of keywords. Our challenge is we had 1600 SKUs. So it’s like I can only use my boost very selectively, right? So I think we’ve always been subscribed to like the top end tier of Helium 10 since forever. But yeah, I mean, it’s been pretty basic at the end of the day, just a lot of X-Ray, a lot of Cerebro, a lot of the keyword tracker and then the finance aspect as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, some tools, it’s easy to see the ROI or like money. Like for example, if somebody is using one of our advertising tools and they’re able to bring down their A costs or increase their sales by, you know, harvesting keywords and stuff, it’s easy. Oh, wow. Look how much this was worth it for me. But some of those other tools don’t have direct ROI per se, like Keyword Tracker. Hey, tracking my keywords, that in itself doesn’t actually get you, you know, more money or discovering keywords. How would you be able to put like a monetary value on what using those tools has meant to you?Because obviously you wouldn’t be using it if it didn’t have a positive impact on your business.

Josh:

Yeah. So it’s funny. I, you know, had a conversation with another seller yesterday and I talked to like, she was wondering, hey, how do I, if I give PPC management or brand management for managing my SKUs and their rankings on Amazon, if I give that to somebody and I give them a KPI, it’s like stay ranked number 10 or whatever. If I give them that KPI, and then they fail at it, is it too little too late? Right. And I was like, great question. So here’s what you need to do. If those that think all entrepreneurs are like, nobody can do it better than me. Right. And so sometimes like delegating can be a real challenge, but here’s the focus. You need to measure the leading indicators of the business, not the lagging metrics. And that’s what like Market Tracker 360 and the keyword tools, like any movement in the keywords, like it’s going to like raise a signal to us. Right. And so it’s something that we’re tracking every single week. And so we have a bunch of like connections to pull whatever data we’re getting out of Helium 10 into Power BI and to kind of like reshape it for ourself so that I log in every single Monday morning and I have what’s called the CEO dashboard.

Josh:

And in that CEO dashboard, I see every single team member and I can see what their leading indicators are for their role. And so that way I know whether they’re winning or they’re losing in their role. And maybe there’s some spots where we’re not doing as good as we would hope. So it’s either going to be green, yellow or red. And if anything’s yellow, it’s like warning sign, go look into this. And they have to provide like context as to why it might be off and why they’re not hitting their number. But then from there, like we’ll dive into it and then create an action plan. And so that’s like that’s honestly how we’ve been able to scale data is extremely important. So how do I like, how do I monetize this? Can I be like, oh, the ROI, man, is it 20 X ROI? What I would say is like data is the foundation of everything that we do. And if I don’t know my numbers on TikTok, if I don’t know my numbers on Amazon, like you’re just flying blind and a lot of entrepreneurs do that and they’re stuck with like, they look at their bank account and be like, it’s either higher or lower at the end of the month. If it’s higher, I win. If it’s lower, I’m losing. And honestly, that’s the worst lagging metric that you could look at.

Bradley Sutton:

So what’s an example of actions you’ve taken that have affected your bottom line based on data from like, you know, keyword ranks? Because not us old school people, we think everybody knows the value of tracking keywords, but people new to the game, probably what’s tracking keywords mean or looking at the market size. So you mentioned, hey, now you’re looking at this in the morning with your dashboard.

And then what’s an example of an action plan that ended up definitely having an effect on the bottom line?

Josh:

Yeah, so utilizing like Market Tracker 360, here’s what we do. Like every single week, we’re going to look and say, oh, it looks like competitor X, Y, and Z just jumped up and they gobbled up a couple extra points of market share. So then I’m going to want to know what happened. Why did they gobble up a couple extra points of market share? So again, using Helium 10, I’m able to actually go see how much money that, not how much money, but like how many of their sales theoretically came from advertising. Right. And I can see like how aggressive they’re being, like how often are they in the sponsored listings for a bunch of different search terms. So I get to know like, oh, maybe they’re doing a big PPC push. Like I know a lot of my competitor strategies. Some of them like don’t spend any money on ads and all they do is run like the low price game. And that’s the only thing that they do. And then I’ve got other competitors who are very heavy with ads. And so we get a look at that. Then we’re going to go monitor like anything going on externally. Right.

Josh:

Are they trying to drive external traffic? Are they driving traffic from like meta? So there’s a bunch of different tools that you can use to find, even if they’re not running it from their brand account, like they’re running it on like some dark, you know, account that’s not actually there, but they’re driving traffic to Amazon under their listings. Same thing on TikTok shop. It’s like, are they doing anything on TikTok shop? How well are they doing on TikTok shop? And then from there, like you can find out like even Helium 10 has this right where you can reach out to creators that are repping your competitor’s products. Right. And so it’s like all of our strategy, like what my team will do is like every Monday they log in, they look at their own reports and then they set their own game plan based on whatever the data is showing them. So a really good example is, hey, it looks like a competitor is boosting their sales on TikTok shop, right? Because like we’re losing market share now. And so the action plan is, OK, let’s go move.

Josh:

If they’re moving this product on TikTok shop, we can do the same thing. So we will go light up a bot, right? To go reach out and say, hey, let’s go rep this product and eat with all of our existing creators. That’s why we have them all in like WhatsApp. Go to them and say, hey, here’s the new product to focus on, get some samples out there, give them some hooks to utilize and then let them go to town with that.

Bradley Sutton:

So what would happen if all of a sudden there’s no Helium 10? You couldn’t use it. Your team lost access, no replacement. Like, how would that affect your business?

Josh:

I’d be flying blind, like 100 percent. But like, it’s no joke. Like, I think that’s the challenge is like in the world of AI that we’re living in right now and everything like Claude Code came out with. Everybody’s like, this is the death of SaaS. And I don’t see that being the case because here’s what happens. You need to decide, are you a physical products brand owner or are you a SaaS company? Because like, if you think that you’re going to and again, this is not a pitch for Helium 10, but like if you think you’re going to go vibe code Helium 10 to like this weekend, like sure, you might get some API connections built in and maybe you get some customized dashboards built. But guess what happens next week? Bradley, does the API stay consistent? And is the formatting always consistent?

Bradley Sutton:

Nope, nope. It’s going to break many times over.

Josh:

Oh, so it’s like then you’re just debugging the software and then you have to have like data like the data actually has to be validated and you’re looking for errors and it’s like, well, now you need a data scientist to actually make sure like this is actually legit. The numbers mean what they mean. I’m verifying. It’s like, OK, so like this whole data component, like it’s a sleeper. Is it the sexy side of business? Like, no, it’s not. But it’s where all good things stem from, right? Every single one of our weekly plans is built off of what the data is telling us.

Bradley Sutton:

Last 30 or 60 second strategy, maybe something you’re sharing here at the conference or something that we haven’t talked about today.

Josh:

Yeah, so what I’ll be talking about at the conference is beyond Amazon. And what are the stages? There’s six different stages in order to properly what I would say, like scale your business beyond Amazon. So I’ll give you the watered down version in 30 seconds. How’s that sound?

Bradley Sutton:

That’s good.

Josh:

All right. So in 30 seconds, here are the six stages to scale beyond Amazon. Number one, you’ve got to lock down Amazon, which means you have repeatable processes and playbooks on Amazon where you as the business owner, you’re maybe only working five or 10 hours a week in the weeds on the business. Once you’ve unlocked that, now you have the capacity, right? Because you freed up 30 hours a week to go do more. So the stage number two, the easiest like next lever to pull. And is this going to double your business? Probably not, but it will add some incremental revenue and it’s just an easy add on, which is joining different marketplaces. So this is like the Shein. This is the T-Moves. This is the eBay’s. This is the Etsy’s of the world, right? So get your products listed on those websites, the Walmart’s, right? Most people are experiencing like five to 10% of their sales on those different marketplaces. Well, do all five of those marketplaces. Maybe that gets you like a quarter of what you’re doing on Amazon. So 25% is not bad. But the reason why is because like operationally, it’s the exact same as Amazon, right?

Josh:

Then from there, stage number three is where I would scale internationally. So we ourselves, we skip the international stage three, but it’s that’s the next easiest one, depending on the nuances of your product, obviously, to say, all right, we’ve already got established operational capabilities on Amazon and supply chain here in the US. Now, hey, team, go do this for Canada. Go do this for the UK type of thing. Then the next, so stage number four, this is where I would say, like you lean into TikTok shop. And why is TikTok shop stage four and not stage two, even though there’s so much noise around TikTok shop? As I mentioned, TikTok shop is a totally different like business model. It is not easy. Not easy at all.

Josh:

So, but what I do see TikTok shop being is it is the content machine and you get to know better about your products. Like what are the actual pain points and the hooks that are driving conversions? Like why TikTok is a platform. It’s not a sales platform. It’s more of a platform for entertainment. So if somebody buys something that’s significant, you stop them in their tracks well enough for them to pull out their credit card in the middle of being entertained. So that’s a really good signal. Then what we’re going to do, stage five is we’ll take those signals from our content machine. Then we’re going to, now we know all of the ad angles that we want to hit on meta. So that’s what opens up Shopify for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. All right. So for those who are on their way to Friday night hockey and not watching this on YouTube and they can’t see your shirt and hat that you have here, how can people find your podcast out there?

Josh:

Yeah. So it’s Ecom Breakthrough, Ecom with two M’s. And as I mentioned before, really, I’m just like, there’s nothing else on the podcast. There’s no ads. There’s no nothing. It’s literally just me sharing our journey, the decisions we’re making to scale from an eight figure brand to a nine figure brand in actionable takeaways from every episode. We’ve had you on the podcast. Yes.

Bradley Sutton:

So go find my episode out there. Well, Josh, thank you. And then please extend my thanks again to Rebecca. It’s great to have you on. We’d love to see how close you get maybe next year or the year after to that nine figure mark and wish you all the best of success.

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