#529 – Increase Amazon Profitability in 2024

35 minute read

Published: January 23, 2024

Modified: January 26, 2024

Ever wondered how the savviest of e-commerce entrepreneurs keep their profit margins healthy amidst rising industry costs? Buckle up as Benjamin Webber, a true maverick in the Amazon FBA realm, rides through the podcast to share his unique tactics. He’s not just playing the game; he’s changing it by using his own truck as an Amazon carrier, slashing his shipping expenses, and keeping his company’s financials robust. With a 10% hike in gross sales and an ever-expanding team, Ben breaks down the logistics of becoming an Amazon carrier, the operational efficiencies that keep his business ahead, and why sometimes the best move is to quite literally take the wheel of your product distribution.

The chessboard of global e-commerce is complex, but Ben is a grandmaster at maneuvering his pieces. He unveils his strategies for managing inventory across continents, discusses the art of optimizing check-in speeds, and serves wisdom on tackling geographic conversion issues. His narrative takes us through the meticulous dance of manufacturing diversification—from Asia to the Americas—and the savvy logistics of East Coast shipping. As Ben’s company eyes a leap into Amazon’s global marketplaces, he lays out his blueprint for facing the squeeze of shrinking margins, fortifying supplier relationships, and negotiating like a pro.

In a world increasingly driven by AI, Ben has mastered fusing technology with human creativity. This episode isn’t just about listing optimization and tweaking ad strategies—it’s a glimpse into an advertising revolution dictated by sponsored rank and AI’s role in it. And when it comes to product development, Ben and his team are tapping into AI to conjure up innovative solutions to everyday problems. It’s a thrilling ride through the intersection of data, technology, and human insight, where Ben exemplifies the adventurous spirit of online selling. Join us, and let your e-commerce curiosity be captured by his exceptional vision and trailblazing tactics.

In episode 529 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Ben discuss:

00:00 – Amazon Carrier Strategies and Profit Margins
06:45 – Optimizing Amazon Stock Check-in and Distribution
09:08 – Inventory, Manufacturing, and Global Expansion
10:52 – Product Warehouse Benefits
15:43 – Amazon Advertising and Listing Optimization
16:52 – Analyzing Conversion Rates and Product Quality
24:31 – Factors for Retiring Products
25:33 – Warehouse Efficiency and Competitor Analysis
31:50 – Using AI for Product Development
33:52 – 2024 Tips and Unique Strategies

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got a popular guest back on the show, Ben, who’s got very unique strategies, such as he made himself an Amazon carrier so that he can deliver with his own truck his FBA replenishment orders 15 minutes away from him for free. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image, or Amazon changed their shipping dimensions so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. You’ve got a serious seller back for, I believe, the second time here on the show, Ben. How’s it going, man?

Ben:

Good, how about yourself?

Bradley Sutton:

I’m doing just delightful. So I take your North Carolina, which is why I switched hats here at the last second rock in this Charlotte hat. Here Is Charlotte where you’re at, or what part North Carolina are you on?

Ben:

Yeah, I’m in Charlotte.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, been out there long yeah.

Ben:

I came here in 2002 and never left.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, all right. So if you guys want to get more of his backstory, guys write this down episode 379. We went a little bit more into his background there, so we’re not going to go too much. You know more into. You know how his superhero origin story, want to catch up and see what cool stuff he’s been he’s been working on. That was a great episode, by the way. In there he talked about how he had a three million dollars in retail arbitrage sales and he has his cult following now in the Amazon world on the speaker circuit. A lot of cool stuff we talked about in that episode, including you know how to hire for your Amazon businesses and whatnot. But let’s just catch up. You know now we’re in 2024. You know I think the last time you’re on the show was like end of 2022 around there, so it’s been, you know, full year. How was your 2023?

Ben:

It was good. Our big priority was expanding obviously expanding product lines, and then just figuring out the best ways to manage what we have so that we can grow and scale as efficiently as possible.

Bradley Sutton:

How many employees are you guys up to now?

Ben:

So we have the warehouse and then we have an international team. So collectively we’re between 60 and 70.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now what was you know, just from a gross sales overall, all channels, if you were to compare 2023 with 2022, how did you guys do?

Ben:

We’re up maybe 10%, so it didn’t really push too hard this year.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, something that I think a lot of sellers might have said compared in 2023 to 2022, is profit margins were down due to increased cost, whether that be inflation or cost of goods, Amazon fees, PPC how was your profit margin?

Ben:

Yeah, it definitely went down a little bit, not as bad as I guess a lot of people have. That I’ve talked to have run into. But one of the big things that helps us and I think we talked about this before is just that because we are in Charlotte and there’s a CL2, the CL22 warehouse is in Charlotte we’re able to deliver a lot of our own inventory. So we’re a last mile delivery driver or delivery provider for Amazon. So we don’t have to pay to ship in to Amazon. We pay somebody $15 an hour to drive a truck with 12 pallets and they’re 20 minutes from our warehouse. So as far as the inbound shipping costs and those expenses, those don’t really hurt us too badly.

Bradley Sutton:

So that whole, so you ship everything then from your manufacturing to your warehouse and then so that that quote unquote landed cost that ends up being your cost to Amazon as well. Essentially, yeah, how did you even know that that was possible to do?

Ben:

Several years ago we were about to stock out of. As you know, we sell a lot of fourth quarter products and kind of joke toy products, and we’re about to stock out of one that we sold between 800 to 1000 units a day, which is a fairly substantial issue. So we actually loaded up a cargo van and drove the cargo van to Amazon, talked to us our way through the front gates to deliver it and they took it and so we did that once. Then we did it again and we got through again the third time. They’re like no, you can’t do this and so like, okay, but somehow we have to be able to do this. So we looked into Carrier Central and figure out how we could become a last mile carotter, which is incredibly easy. It takes about 15 minutes to fill out a form and then you have to show that you can back in and out of a parking spot Incredibly easy. So in that January we bought a truck and the rest is history from there. But it was. It came about because we were about to stock out and panic and we’re like well, what’s the worst that can happen?

Bradley Sutton:

So then theoretically you can also do this service for other people, that you would be the carrier and then other people can just store their product here at warehouse and then you would deliver. But for now you just pretty much do it for yourself. Is there like was there any kind of minimums? Like, hey, you have to have a dock high truck, you have to, it has to be this size, it has to be order, you know, like it has to be at least X number of pallets, or what kind of requirements was it.

Ben:

So basically it had to be palletized and it required a dock high truck, and I forget there was. There’s a code you have to send them that you get for just having a truck, so it doesn’t really matter, you’re going to have it anyway. But dock high and palletized products. And what we did was we looked up what the largest truck that we could buy without having to have a CDL was, which in North Carolina, is a 26 foot box truck, and so that holds 12 pallets.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you have to have, like a company that’s a registered trucking company or something?

Ben:

Nope, I actually had a friend who was trying to do this for some of their products because they were just the same issue where they’re about to stock out and Amazon wasn’t checking them in fast enough. And one of the benefits of what we do is and this is I don’t know how long this will stay that way, so I’m probably going to jinx myself by saying it, but our stuff gets checked in faster than anybody else’s. So, like this year, we had stuff that we delivered in December that was checked in three days late.

Bradley Sutton:

We were able to pick that exact DC to get the stuff into when you’re creating your transfer shipments.

Ben:

There are a number of softwares that you can use that let you pick and direct where you want it to go to.

Bradley Sutton:

But what is that? So that’s not something that you can do on your own, just in seller central.

Ben:

It. Well, yes and no, it’s not something that you can directly do, but typically if you’re sending case packs in, they’re going to try to send that to the largest distributor center nearest you or distribution center nearest to you. At least that’s what we’ve seen Even before, like when we weren’t using a software for it. We’re sending about 65 to 70% of our case packs all went to Charlotte, so they’re still trying to keep stuff. As far as the case packs that, they’re just sending them to the nearest large distribution center. At least that’s how it worked out for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, have you looked into, or do you know yet, how this change to their shipping program is going to affect you, if any at all, with this whole thing where people now have to pay if they’re only sending it to one location? I mean, even if that’s the case, it’s still got to be better. I’m assuming that you’d still choose that.

Ben:

Yeah, it’ll cost us more now, but it’s still better to deliver to ourselves. The bigger issue, honestly, was the minimum stock levels. Because we’re able to deliver so quickly and because we know that Amazon is checking in so quickly, we’ve been able to run very, very, very lean, and that’s going to get.

Bradley Sutton:

They’re going to punish you now, right?

Ben:

So now we’re going to have to put. Over the last month we’ve been having to send way more inventory than we ever had before in because we have to meet the minimum stock requirements to not get charged, though I had the fees there, so that’s honestly the bigger issue for us.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you ever taken a look at in Helium 10, at our inventory heat maps to see what they do with your inventory day by day and then how long it takes them to distribute? Because sure, you can get it checked in, but if everything just sits there in Charlotte for a week and then all of a sudden somebody’s in Portland and their buy box says yeah, two weeks delivery date, then that might be conversion issue for certain geographic areas. Are they getting your inventory out to the country pretty fast?

Ben:

Usually within two weeks, but it is something where there’s definitely some gaps, where we have been not fulfilling the West Coast, for example, is efficiently, as we probably could be.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, what about the fact that you’re I mean I’m assuming you manufacture your stuff in China, India or where you?

Ben:

manufacture it. So we have manufacturing in China, Mexico, India, Canada, the US and I want to say Vietnam as well.

Bradley Sutton:

So what about the stuff coming from Asia, the fact that you’re not, that you’re sending it to you in the middle, not completely in the middle, but is it coming to the East Coast port first, or is it coming to California?

Ben:

We send a lot of it through Savannah Georgia.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay, and so, even if it wasn’t going to your warehouse, is that where you’re routing it? In the old days, if you were going directly to Amazon, it would still go to the East Coast first.

Ben:

We always sent directly to our warehouse just for having the flexibility. For a lot of our products there are varying pack sizes and we’ll repackage as needed in the warehouse to make sure that we’re filling the ones that we need to. So we’ve always sent it to ourselves first For that reason. Then also just from a flexibility standpoint as far as inventory management, where if you send it from China you’re basically going to have to send in 90 to 120 days to make sure that you’re covered or just have constant orders going. If we send it to our warehouse first, we can keep the Amazon fees lower for storage by storing it. For what amounts to about? I think last time we calculated it we’re paying like $6.50 a pallet or $7 a pallet, something like that, to store it at our warehouse. So the amount of money that we’re saving off of the Amazon fees by storing it to ourselves and then sending in smaller shipments versus sending in the bulk ones that a lot of people do.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, makes sense. Yeah, I was worried a little bit at least. Like, wait a minute, you know like some of your savings might be gone if you’re still having a bring things into the port and like California. And then you got to ship it all the way Right, stick it on trains or trucks to go all the way to North Carolina. But the fact that it’s coming into already on the East Coast, that doesn’t make it too bad. Okay, so that’s pretty cool.

Ben:

Honestly, that’s one of the things that we’re looking into for 2024 is seeing if we want to find a 3PL out on the West Coast so we can send some inventory there for the heat map issues that you were bringing up, where we can send stuff to the West Coast DCs from there and then keep doing everything else from Charlotte so that we can make sure that we’re covering the country. And also, if there’s a way to bring stuff in and have it on the West Coast already, then it just makes things easier.

Bradley Sutton:

Now what other you know? We’ve been talking about Amazon USA. What other Amazon marketplaces are you selling on worldwide? And what about other domestic here in the USA marketplaces like Walmart, tik Tok, etc.

Ben:

Honestly, we haven’t pushed that hard on the non-domestic Amazon sites just because our logic has kind of been well, the US is the largest market. If we’re able to successfully sell something here, we’re going to be more successful than selling something in another market. So we would rather come up with a new product to sell in the US versus taking the time and energy to push externally. But that is something that started to change over the last year. We are in Canada, we’re in the UK and we’re going to expand through Europe over the next year as far as Amazon, and then we have our own Shopify sites for all of our brands, and then we do a good bit through Walmart as well.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s your strategy, like you know, going into 2024, now that margins are decreasing, I mean, are you raising? Are you planning to raise prices? Have you raised prices? Trying to cut costs in unique ways? Pull back on advertising? How does somebody you know, because it’s not like you know, this is just something that you’re facing, like we talked about earlier. A lot of people are facing it, and some worse. Why do you think, other than the shipping thing, you haven’t been hit as hard as others. And what’s the plan to you know? It’s not like costs are going to go down anytime soon. So how are you going to? You know, stay above water.

Ben:

Yeah Well, I mean, one of the things is, before we started the podcast, you and I were discussing how you were just in China and like going and meeting with your manufacturers and actually having those conversations, you can get better rates, you can get better terms, you can get a lot of benefits. You can also see what they can and can’t do and find a lot of products that you can make with the same manufacturer. And the more things you buy from one manufacturer, the better rates you’re going to get on each of those orders. So going directly to your manufacturers and talking to them is a way that you can massively improve your, your costs and also the terms you have. Like, with some of our, some of our manufacturers, we don’t pay until 90 days after the products has come to our warehouse.

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you been with those manufacturers?

Ben:

I like to ask for some Wow yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

And have you visited them there in where they’re at and got out to meet and stuff like it?

Ben:

And met their family, took their kids presents like or we’re very close with them. But it’s something that you can like you, that’s something that you can build. And again, even if it’s somebody that you aren’t close with, the more that you can, more you buy from them, the more likely they are to give you better rates, better terms etc. So that’s one thing. As far as the advertising goes, one of the things we started really pushing over the last probably six months is just kind of figuring out what are where our product deserves to be ranked based off of price, quality, everything else compared to our competition on specific keywords, and adjusting our advertising based off of that. So if we look and we say like, okay, we’re really the fourth best product on this keyword, we’re not going to push heavily for our with our advertising to try and get to the number one spot, because eventually we’re just going to drop back down to the number four or we’re going to have to keep spending a ton of money. So we’ve adjusted our ad spend to match where we feel like we should be on that keyword and if we drop below that then we’ll raise it. But if we’re there we’ll leave it basically where it is, and that’s actually significantly improved our profitability, because we’re not spending as much to rank up on something that we won’t stick. Because you’re not going to stick at the top, then why are you trying to get there? It’s not going to, you’re just wasting money.

Bradley Sutton:

So are you like you know? Obviously, like you said, you know, price is an easy, easy one to know. If you quote unquote deserve to be there. You’re looking at, like conversion rates by keyword and search, career performance or things like that, or what are some other factors other than just strictly price?

Ben:

Yeah. So we’ll buy every single product and bring it to our warehouse and do comparison tests so we’ll look and see like okay, this one, like, let’s say, we’re selling a paper plate we can see like, okay, if we put sauce on this for an hour, it leaks through Ours doesn’t. So for the sauce we rank better than them, or the size that it takes or the amount of weight they can hold. It can hold as far as food, things like that, where you’re just testing to see the quality of your product versus theirs. So it’s not just the quality of the listing and conversion, it’s also the quality of what you’re actually offering to the customer.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of somebody doing that. Where it’s like at the keyword level, how do we stack up so that we deserve you know to. You know like, like a product could do really well, like in that situation, for like a keyword like heavy duty plates, or you know big meals or some, or for you know watery foods or something like that, whereas maybe another one would be, you know, floral looking plates, where it’s more aesthetic and you could rank or you could rate, I should say, differently for each keyword.

Ben:

Exactly and it also helps you figure out which way you want to direct your, the copy and photos and everything that you’re putting out for the listing, as you see like, because I mean, everybody is doing competitor research before to figure out, okay, how can I say that I’m better than this one? But if you don’t keep doing that throughout it, you’re going to get passed off. But also, if you look at it on a keyword level, like we’re doing, you’re able to save a lot of money on advertising by not bidding on things you shouldn’t.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, speaking of listing optimization, you know that was one thing that we focused on the last episode I remember. You know you talked about. You’ve got some listings that are 100% puns and a different, you know, and that helps with your conversion and stickiness of customers. What are you like? Are you guys using AI? That’s something that’s just kind of blown up, probably since the last time we talked. What other listing optimization strategies you’re doing in the last year?

Ben:

Yeah, and, like you said, ai is massive. I mean the ability to identify a customer avatar immediately, to put the reviews in and pull whatever, extract whatever data you need to from it with like quickly, efficiently, and to have essentially a professional copywriter write your listings for you. One of the things that I enjoy doing, which has led to some good results and some terrible results is to pick like a few famous copywriters or famous advertisers that I find interesting and then have them have a conversation about the product. So if you say, like these four people discuss paper plates and why someone would buy them, and then they go through and the AI talks like those people and has a conversation, and you can see people who are way smarter than me discussing how they would sell it, why they would sell or what they think people would be directly interested in and how they would position it, and so I like doing that. Also for coming up with brand names If you have like the top branders in the world, you can just say have these people discuss what my brand should be if I’m selling X product. So kind of expanding outside of just saying write me a bullet point with the including these keywords with 250 characters or less and yada, yada, yada. Trying to like, think outside the box a bit more, to be more unique, because at this point anybody can use AI. It’s trying to figure out ways to use it in ways that other people aren’t yet and especially trying to get add to what the AI is doing, add emotional language to it, because AI is okay at emotional, but not great. So if you can put something in that appeals directly to the customer while still using the the pitches from the AI, we’ve had really good success with that.

Bradley Sutton:

Now what, if anything is, would you say, is the biggest difference when you’re taking one product from Amazon and making a listing on Walmart, Like, have you seen something that definitely works and something that you always have to change because it’s completely different on Walmart, or is the general structure always pretty much the same and you’re just doing the little things that you know, the little requirements that Walmart has, in order to differentiate it?

0:21:40 –

Yeah, I mean we are trying to obviously match what Walmart says, but it just seems like on Walmart you want to be way more direct. Like, keyword stuffing doesn’t work as well there. It seems like there, at least for us. It hasn’t May for other people. But just being more readable and fluent with the way that we create the listings has led to better results versus just trying to stuff too many keywords into it as we possibly can.

Bradley Sutton:

What else are you doing differently Something we haven’t talked about in this episode or the last one, I mean, you know to manufacturing in USA and keeping respectable profit margins. Having 70 employees, this is not something that, you know, like any Amazon seller can achieve. There’s got to be some more other unique things that have helped you reach this level. What do you think those are?

Ben:

Now you’re putting me on the spot. I think the you know that I have three main partners that I’ve worked with from the start and I think one of the things that we’ve done really well is division of labor and creating the SOPs and the backbone for everything that we need in order to run the business, so that we don’t have to be involved in the day to day as much as we used to and had to at the start. So we are able to look into things like Amazon fee changes. Look into things like okay, how can we get to China and improve our costs and fees there. Like having the flexibility by building a powerful team to and like our team is. I mean, I would say our VA’s are probably smarter than me, so they’re better at the job that I am at this point. So like being able to get to that point where you’re able to have the flexibility to scale mentally going forward has been massive and we actually like, from the start, the way that we kind of divided it was, we had one of my partners was focused on incoming products. The other was focused on running the warehouse. My role was mostly building the products on the marketing side, and then we had one person whose role was essentially figuring out how we’re going forward. His job has always been to push things forward, to figure out what we need to do and then having him he is very, very good at systems so he’ll be able to come in and look at what we’ve done and see the systems we built and say, no, you all are idiots, change these three things. That’s going to be much better.

Ben:

So, like, being willing to constantly, always, constantly be improving on what you’re doing Is one aspect of it, but also always looking forward. So figuring out, like, how do we dodge whatever the next big thing is and I mean, if you look at the and I know you know Steve Simonson, but like whenever he’s talking, he’s always talking about, okay, what’s happening in China now and how is that going to impact things? A year for now, it’s two years, or now five years or now.

Bradley Sutton:

So even just looking ahead at stuff like that, where You’re able to make decisions that mean that you’re not going to be Sure changing yourself in the long run for a bigger game, now, I think something that successful sellers also have to know how to do is when to pull the plug on on products and everybody and this is one of those things that there’s not one size fits all, everybody has their own criteria. How do you guys decide what to what to retire as far as the product goes? Is it strictly just you know a profit margin? Is there a certain sales velocity that you need to to maintain? Is it you know? If the reviews dip below a certain you know point, what’s your decision-making factors on it?

Ben:

Honestly, one of the the biggest things we care about is how annoying it is to deal with. So just just being perfectly honest, because we do have, we do have a very wide catalog at this point Counting our kind of variations. We have over a thousand skews. So when we’re looking at things and figuring out what we want to do, if the way, if we’re sending it to the warehouse and the warehouse has to touch it four times, even if it’s making more money, we may want to cut that faster than something the warehouse doesn’t have to touch. So we look into not just the profitability of the product but also the profitability of the product compared to the labor, how labor intensive it is. And Also, if the warehouse people don’t like dealing with it, then and we’re not making much money on it and why keep dealing? Why keep doing it? So that that is one of the big things. But beyond that it is Almost exclusively profit, profitability. Like I don’t really care if I’m selling something a hundred, a hundred units a day, if I’m making $12 a day on it. I would rather sell one thing for $12 and a hundred things on the flip side, what is?

Bradley Sutton:

are the triggers where it’s like, hey, we need to Launch this product, or we need to launch this you know new thing for this brand, or hey, we need to launch a new variation? Are you guys just? Do you have a department that’s just constantly looking at new opportunities per brand, or or you’re looking for certain signals in a market? How’s that work?

Ben:

Yeah. So I mean we do look at every single review that we get and and. So if we see a lot of reviews come against saying I wish this were larger, I wish this were a different color, like the obvious things like that Are things that we that play into it, or we’re getting negative feedback saying there are all these issues, then solving the issues is a very easy way to improve on that. But the the other aspects of it are Just. If we look and we see a competitor come in and they’re doing something different and it looks better, it’s doing better, it’s taking sales away from us, then we figure out, okay, how do we beat that? What can we do differently? So a lot of it is competitor and customer driven, as opposed to Keyword or sales velocity driven you know you talked about.

Bradley Sutton:

You know you’ve Use helium 10 for years and your team has what. What is the number one thing you’re using helium 10 now for? And if you were to Join our product team for a few days let’s say you were to you were to be in charge of our product team what would be on your wish list on, like, how you would add something to helium-10 that we don’t have right now. That would make your lives as on the Amazon side, yeah, easier the conversion rate trends for that keyword For each individual product.

Ben:

So if you’re looking at it, you can see like, okay, this one is selling this number this month a day, but being able to go in and figure out if their conversion rate is moving up and down month over month, as opposed to just sales moving up and down month over month, because I think that the Conversion rate is just getting more and more important and at the keyword level, not just the overall conversion rate, but even at the keyword level.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, I’m dead. That’s definitely the top of my list as well. You know, once Amazon, you know, make search query performance available in the API, then then that’s like yeah, to me that’s like a must-have for sure. All right, so now I knew you. You know you were like a nationally ranked tennis player back in a. You still get on the courts every now and then. What were your main hobbies last year of? You know like, hey, you need to get away from the Amazon world and just, you know, enjoy yourself. Yeah, what were you doing?

Ben:

So the US National Whitewater Training Center is in Charlotte so I learned how to whitewater kayak so I got a membership there. It’s a closed course that they controlled the the flow of the water, so it could be anywhere from a class 1 to a class 5, depending on the day that you’re out there with the rappers they’re going to be. So that was my kind of fun. It was a 10-minute drive from our warehouse. So go Do some kayaking and then they have Like. On Thursdays they had concerts and stuff so you can go Hang out and be around people.

Bradley Sutton:

Now Is that just a local hobby for you, but or or? Now that you know I knew you travel sometimes too, or have you know when you travel? Have you ever gone real like a whitewater kayaking?

Ben:

I have once and it’s way more terrifying. That’s what I was about to say.

Bradley Sutton:

That would be a little bit scary if you’re just doing a controlled environment one thing, but then to Be out there Okay.

Ben:

Yeah, when it’s big stuff of a controlled water flow, if you flip over it’s like, okay, I can handle this. If it’s not controlled, we’re the rocks. I don’t know what’s happening. I’m about to die, so that’s not quite as good. But one of the things I’ve tried to do Well traveling is trying to try and go fishing Everywhere I go.

Bradley Sutton:

What were some of your cool places you’ve been to in 2023?

Ben:

Yeah, so I went to Fiji for the first time, Wow did you stay in over water like a over? Sadly, no, that was. I was not on an island that was conducive to that, so I’ll have to. They’ll have to be added to my next trip.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s on my bucket list, fiji I’ve never been there.

Ben:

Yeah, it’s, it’s a beautiful place. I went to Estonia To the ambition event there, which I’d never, never been to Really Eastern Europe before, so that was a lot of fun to get to go and meet a lot of the sellers there and get to explore An area in a culture that I’d never gotten to experience. So I always enjoy getting to do stuff like that. Try to think of one more. I started in Greece in college and I got to go back there this year, so I’m going to go back and see what I saw in college and appreciated a bit more as an adult, from a historical perspective. Yeah, as opposed to the 21 year old kid who’s just like if alcohol here, I need all of it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, your priorities are a little bit different at that age, I think it’s like getting to go on an adult trip there was.

Ben:

It was a nice change.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, before we get into your final strategy of the day, if people wanted to reach you or find you on the interwebs, how can they find you out there?

Ben:

Facebook is probably the easiest. It’s just Benjamin Weber and I think I don’t have a picture of myself there. I think it’s a picture of the Frank Lloyd Wright falling waters house. So if you, if you see a Benjamin Weber with a house, that’s probably me.

Bradley Sutton:

Now we’re at the stage where we asked for your 30 or 60 second tip. You already gave us a doozy, you know, with that, looking at the how you rank at the keyword level as far as how you deserve to rank. So do you have another one for us?

Ben:

I mean, obviously everybody’s talking about AI now, but using that within your product development to expand on what you’re doing. So one of the things that we used to do with our Entire staff was, every day, as a kind of learning, mental strength, mental training exercise Say what are 10 things that you would pay $50 to never have to deal with again. Then we look to see if we can make products out of those, and so we had this massive list of Thousands of these. Now we do that with AI. So we’re going into AI and saying what are problems like, let’s say you’re in the kitchen category. You would say what are 1020, however many things you want to say things that people would pay 30 dollar, 10, what are 10 problems that people would pay $30 to solve In the kitchen, so they don’t have to deal with that every time they’re doing it and then see what results come back from that and look at the products that come from it. So it’s a way to get essentially consumer research via questions with AI, versus having to go in and look things up. So just using the, the AI as a creativity exercise can be Incredibly huge for coming up with new product ideas, and that’s where the last, like seven products that we’ve made have come from us Just typing questions like that into AI, and there are things that no one is selling on the market right now.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, ben, thank you so much for joining us Again. You’ve definitely given us some insightful tips and you’ve got some very unique things that nobody else is doing, you know, like being your own Amazon last mile carrier, and everything is less, less great, and so I’ll love to see what you do in 2024, and then we’ll bring you back in 2025 and see how things are going.

Ben:

It sounds good. Thanks for having me.

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