#318 – Unique Facebook Shops And Amazon Selling Strategies From A Husband/Wife Dynamic Duo

In this episode, Bradley welcomes back Chelsey and Stephen Diaz of The Rainmaker Family. Listen as they talk about unique selling strategies in Amazon and different marketplaces like Facebook Shops. Mindset hacks and why it’s essential to take some time to know yourself and your “why” to produce incredible results in business. For Chelsey and Stephen, it’s all about helping their community of “Rainmakers,” working smart together, and seeing each other grow.

In episode 318 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Chelsey, and Stephen discuss:

• 01:45 – The Bet On Yourself Book Challenge
• 05:00 – Motivating Their Community Through Challenges
• 09:00 – As A New Amazon Seller, How Can I Challenge Myself?
• 11:30 – Take Some Time To Know Your Why And Who You Are
• 14:25 – Big Opportunities Selling On Facebook Marketplace
• 19:00 – How To Start Selling In The Facebook Marketplace
• 23:00 – What Other Platforms Can You Find Success In?
• 26:00 – Using Hand Raise Posts To Get Reviews
• 30:00 – Cool Success Stories From The Rainmakers Community
• 33:30 – Owning Digital Real Estate Inside Groups, Blogs, Videos
• 39:00 – Work Smarter Together And See Each Other Grow
• 40:00 – How Can Entrepreneurs Promote Work-Life Balance
• 42:00 – Stephen And Chelsea’s Thirty-Second Tips

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’re gonna bring back a couple of popular guests who are gonna talk all about some very super unique mindset hacks for entrepreneurs, as well as some unique strategies for selling it on marketplaces, such as Facebook shops. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think. 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 a completely BS-free unscripted, and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon, Walmart, or e-commerce world. We’ve got a couple of serious sellers back on the show. Some of my favorite guests, Stephen, Chelsey how’s it going guys?

Stephen:

So good.

Chelsey:

It is going good. We’re so excited to be here. We love getting to chat with you, hearing what you’re up to and yeah, it’s gonna be a good show.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, thank you for coming back. I mean, time flies, it’s been like almost a year and a half since you guys were on the show last. So we have a lot of catching up to do, but right off the bat, I wanted to ask you something because it’s fresh in mind and since I don’t plan these out and I don’t write things down, like I know I’m gonna forget about it if I leave it till later in the episode, but just a couple of days ago, I recorded another episode with some rainmakers family members Elizabeth and Sharon, and I forgot which one it was. See, my memory’s usually bad, but, but one of them mentioned how they’re kind of doubling down this year on kind of like their core products and like, you know, trying to focus and do some nurturing. And the reason I’m bringing this up now is because she said, oh yeah, it was because of this challenge that Stephen did at the beginning of the year or some book or something about mindset that inspired her to kind of you know, double down on what’s working. Does any of this ring a bell? Have you any idea what I’m talking about here?

Chelsey:

It totally does.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Please educate myself and the audience about what inspired her to take that path in.

Chelsey:

So last year we did in our big Facebook group, and then we’re doing it again, actually right now. It’s called the bet on yourself book challenge.

Bradley Sutton:

That it is.

Chelsey:

And so Stephen, I think found this book-

Stephen:

12 months to 1 million. Ryan Moran. So he’s founder capitalism.com and it’s his book about taking his business from, from zero to 12 million on Amazon and exiting the business. But the idea behind the challenge, we don’t explain how this challenge works. Cause it’s a little weird. So basically I’m like, yeah, we can recommend books, but no one’s gonna read. ’em Like, I’m the guy who buys the book and puts it on the shelf and just like never reads it. So I was like, let’s make it fun. So we have a challenge in our group over like, okay, let’s do a book club. We’re gonna read a book together. Cuz I read this book. I was like, it’s so perfect for Amazon sellers. And so we were like, how about this? Put down your credit card number. We’ll buy you the book for free.

Stephen:

You don’t pay a dime. If you read the book, you get the book for free. You don’t pay a dime, but if you don’t read the book, then you pay $200. So that’s why we call the bet on yourself book challenge. And we did this last year, we had like, like over 500 people who said they were gonna read the book which was awesome. Crazy awesome. And the people that didn’t read the book paid $200 a into a pot and then we give the money away at the end of the time, to feel that read the book. So it’s extra motivation to to get through the book. But yeah, the book is really all about leaning into your customer avatar, you know like who’s that person that you’re really called to serve with your brand and really just like don’t after that and then expanding out.

Stephen:

I think a lot of people sometimes have like a poverty mindset, almost like a scarcity, like, oh, if I make it so specific for that really specific person, like what-if it, like this person over here wants to buy it? Are they gonna feel like they can’t buy it? You know? But really like there are so many people in the world when you go hyper niche on something, you almost become the best in the world. If you’re the only person that’s serving that specific person at that high level, with that product, it becomes the best product for that niche, and it can expand out from there. So that’s why the book really encourages. And so it does shake some people up sometimes because sometimes they just find random products to sell online and they haven’t thought through the branding side of things as much. And so I think that’s why she was probably extra motive. They had to go, you know what? I have some flagship products here that I think I haven’t reached the ceiling on. Like I haven’t like got ’em in front of all the people I need to get ’em into. And it’s definitely a fiery way to start the new year.

Bradley Sutton:

Now just along those same lines, you know, whenever I come across different groups, whether they be groups that have courses or training programs and things, I always try and look at what they’re doing differently than others and that might be the reason for their success. And you guys are probably one of the most successful communities that I know of. And one of the things that I noticed you guys do differently are these challenges. So can you talk about like how many of them you do? Like what is a challenge and, and why they seem to motivate people more like you’ve got 500 people in 2021 or 2022 to read a physical book? That’s just like mind boggling, you know, like talk about challenges.

Stephen:

Oh man.

Chelsey:

Yeah. We love challenges. And it gives people a good perspective about what this business is. We teach about selling on Amazon FBA and creating the right mindset and all that. I think sometimes there are things out there that like will over hype something, you know, like I think I can get excited about a lot of different things like, oh wow, I see this opportunity. But sometimes you don’t know like what is actually involved in the process. So the challenge it’s several days long. We do these big live pushes throughout the year, every once in a while, but we, our challenge, you can go through any point as well and it creates this healthy pressure to actually get through the material to create a why statement. Why do you wanna create passive income? Why do you wanna run this business? And also like here is what it outlines. Like we talk about Helium 10 the software, like, do you have the time? Do you have the money? Do you have the right mindset to invest in business? What else would you say, Stephen?

Stephen:

Yeah, the challenge is like, it’s basically, you could think of it like a course that you know, like in the movies it’s like this message will self destruct in three minutes. That’s what it is. It’s basically a course with a self destruct at the end. So we basically take people through with the challenge. So they train them, but the videos go away at a certain amount of time. So usually it’s about a week or two it’s like, you gotta get through the videos. So we give away crazy value that you might find in, you know, multi thousand dollar courses in a short period of time if they’re there live or they able to watch before the videos go away. So that motivates people to go like, oh man, like I can do this. Like I can trade my time for this thing and they’ll get through the challenge.

Stephen:

It’s the same kind of spirit, I guess, as the bet on yourself, book challenge, it’s like, how can you bet on yourself and give yourself healthy pressure to actually motivate yourself, to kinda get out of the, you know, the day today? I think so many like if you look at course completion stats, I’m sure you guys can see on. Even Freedom Ticket, it’s like so many people sign up and don’t even watch a single module, you know, unfortunately, like we believe like in the breakthrough that Amazon really can carry for people’s families. And so like, if we’re really gonna help them like we have to find ways to help them. And sometimes it means point a little bit healthy pressure on them. And so challenges really do that. So we do a lot of our training in that kind of own format. Of course, you can buy lifetime access to the videos and you know, like have ’em forever, but it does, like we see so many more people actually learn and take action on the content by having that healthy pressure.

Bradley Sutton:

And you have the like prizes and things too like I swear, I’ve seen you guys give like cash money to people through used stuff or like, oh yeah. Ipads or something like that.

Chelsey:

You have to, people love gotta motivate them winning free things. Yeah. So the further along you get in the challenge, you unlock bonuses, bigger reward things that will help you in your business or help you with your mindset in this business. As well as, yeah, we love giving away.

Stephen:

Chelsey is the prize queen.

Chelsey:

We give away MacBook pros, air pods, lots of really fun things. Like it’s fun to do. I love giving away stuff. So-

Bradley Sutton:

I mean, I think that’s something that, you know, like let’s say I’m a little bit more of a mature Amazon seller. I’ve built a team, but a way to motivate your employees, you know, to have different challenges. But then, here’s a question like, let’s say I’m a newer Amazon seller. I’m not part of the Rainmaker community, not part of another community that has these motivational challenges. What are some things that I can do on my own to just like challenge myself? Now me personally, I don’t even know the answer to this question because I’ve always been one of those that does need that group. You know, like I, I was just on your podcast. Real quick question, what’s the name of your podcast?

Stephen:

The Rainmaker Family Show.

Bradley Sutton:

Rainmaker family show. So depending on when this is airing, my episode might be there, but you’ll hear me in that episode talk about how I had lost 70 pounds over a few months. And, and one of the main ways was, was I was doing Zumba, but I mean, the Zumba was, is what the exercise I was doing to lose weight. But the reason that I stuck to it and lost so much so fast is I was in like this biggest loser challenge at work. And then we all put in money. Right. And then plus there’s just competition level. And it was like, I cannot lose this. You know, it’s not like it was a $10,000 or something. It was probably like, you know, four or $500, but I had to put like a hundred dollars down. And then just because of that though, and just because it was with my coworker, I was like, I’m not gonna lose. I’m not gonna give up. Like I do every other time.

Bradley Sutton:

And guess what? I’ve never done a biggest loser contest since then every three months, I’m like, I’m going on this diet and I’m going to lose weight. I’m great for a week. Boom. You know, DoorDash is there on day seven. And I’m like, I’m gonna give in. So whether it’s about weight loss or whether it’s about your Amazon business, if I’m not part of a community, which a lot of people now are not like I do, you know, Helium 10 doesn’t even work at the office. We’re all remote. How can I stay motivated and challenge myself?

Chelsey:

Absolutely. I think my take on this, and then, then I’ll hear what Stephen has to say. I think have to know what motivates you like Bradley. It sounds like you’re motivated by like money and some healthy competition. So doing things around that recently, Stephen and I just as business owners and now our whole team is doing this. We took this assessment and I know there’s tons of assessments out there that can help you understand yourself and like, what are your core motivator and all of that. And we took this assessment called the DISC test D I S C and it really goes over your core motivator. So I would encourage people to start with that. Like, why are you motivated? What is gonna help you see growth? Where are the areas when fear and all those negative, what-ifs come up. Like, how do you react to that? So I think knowing yourself, doing a little self assessment to figure out what is the best avenue, what systems do I need to put in place to be successful? So that’s what I would take first. It’s so much a business and entrepreneurship is like growth, self growth, who you become in the process. And so you have to take some time to understand your or why and who you are, I believe to be really successful.

Stephen:

Yeah. And I’ll be totally transparent with you Bradley. We are not experts in all areas of life in challenging ourselves, Chelsey always gets on me with the workout thing, because I’m like the guy who, like, I get all hyped. I’m like, I’m buying the mountain bike. I’m like, I’m gonna work. And then I’m like ride the mountain bike for a month. And it’s alike, now my bike collects dust. And I’m like, I got a roller. It’s always the expensive things. Right. so, but I’ve definitely found, you know, some people are motivated by pain and some people are motivated by pleasure and you gotta figure out which one of those. And so sometimes it’s setting up a bet for yourself where it’s like, and maybe it’s not a painful thing, but maybe it’s like you and some friends are like, Hey guys, we’re gonna pull some money together.

Stephen:

And if we don’t complete this thing together we’re gonna donate the money to this cost. So maybe it’s like pain of money leaving your bank account, but you feel good about the cost. But for me, I think it’s pleasure, honestly, that’s where I found actually it just going to the fitness thing, most successful with stuff that’s just fun, you know, that I like actually enjoy. And so we have a little skate park in the backyard. That’s really fun for me, you know, as long as I’m not sending myself to the hospital, which I’ve only done once I got excited during Olympics week, you know, I got inspired, but like that’s super fun for me is like, you know, challenging my self on the skate ramp. I recently, you know, again, these are still expensive things but got the Oculus quest I’ve been playing ping pong on there.

Stephen:

I’m like sweating with this stupid VR headset on, but like stuff like that, I gotta find the fun in it. The pleasure for me, that’s more motivating than the pain of like, well, if you don’t do this, then like you’re gonna be unhealthy. Like that doesn’t motivate me as much. I need to have a pleasure thing or a reward. Rewards are super big for me. Or it’s like, if we do this thing, then we’ll unlock this reward even though we could, we could get the reward now, but it’s just like having something out there like that it really helps motivate. So, man, this is a good question, cuz you gotta find those motivators so you can keep yourself going. Even in the times when things are hard. And I always joke with people like they’re like, what’s the success rate of like, you know, sellers on Amazon and I’m always just like, well it’s a hundred percent, you know, as long as you don’t stop. Right. The biggest thing is holding people back is stopping. So if you can just power through, when those things come up by having motivators, then you will be successful.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. All right, now let’s switch to you know, from kind of like mindset to just, you know, actual e-commerce strategies now. One of the things that stands out, from our previous conversation, unless I’m confusing with somebody else, but you guys had some unique strategies as opposed to selling on Facebook. Are I still promoting those strategies to your students and like what is working and not working right now with using, is it called Facebook marketplace? Is it what it’s called?

Stephen:

That’s right. Yeah. So Facebook marketplace definitely still a big opportunity. Right now it’s a relatively newer, you know, Facebook’s been around but like e-commerce platform, right? And whenever there’s like something new that a platform comes out with that platform will favor it. So for example, when Instagram comes out with reels like if you do a reel, you’re gonna get a lot of engagement cuz they wanna promote that thing. And so that’s what Facebook marketplace is for Facebook right now. It’s like kind of their newish thing. And even newer than that, it’s called shops. Like having a shop on Facebook marketplace is a new thing. And I do believe they’ll take a swing at like becoming like a Shopify. Just cuz that’s Facebook’s kind of mantra, right? It’s very similar to Amazon. Like they wanna take over the world and get their hands as many things as possible. Right?

Stephen:

So a lot of our rainmakers are using shops to not only build brands that attract their ideal customer and sell their own products. But also they do drop shipping to fund their Amazon businesses. So this is super random, but you know, they will find products all over the internet on different sources and they will list them on their Facebook shops. But the cool part of this is like, let’s say I’m launching a dog brand, right? You can create a Facebook shop in literally minutes about, you know, I’m gonna sell dog products and you could list a bunch of products from all over the internet and dropship them all while attracting your ideal customer to the shop while you’re in progress of funding your own private label product. So they make some quick cash. It’s more time intensive of the dropshipping thing.

Stephen:

All the while they’re starting to engage with their existing buyers. And what I’ve been encouraging people to do is after you, cuz it’s all via messenger, like you’re arranging this sales and things like that is, you know, when someone buys, let’s say this lease, you’re dropshipping off your shop. Then you go, Hey this is random, but we’re launching a new product soon. Would you like to be one of our early beta testers? I would love your feedback as we’re developing this product and you invite a percentage of those people who bought your other dropship products into something like a Facebook group community. And that’s where you can start to really stack the deck in your favor with that ideal customer. Because I think this is something that’s gonna become more important than ever on Amazon is like Amazon knows who is buying your products.

Stephen:

Like they know their buying habits. They know if they’re a dog owner or not. And so when you’re launching a product, I know there’s a lot different launch strategies, but having actual people in the niche buy your products like it’s so much more powerful. So that’s what some of our Rainmakers are doing is curating these people by drop shipping, other products, creating some cash funding, their private label product, and then launching their product to those same people who already know like them and trust them and they can oftentimes launch at a profit because they’ve kind of stacked the decks from months with these people.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, interesting. So then when you say the dropshipping means like you’re just buying in that retail prices, but you just have enough of a markup to make it worth your wow on the Facebook shops. And even with that markup, you’re still finding people willing to pay those prices then?

Stephen:

Right. Pretty crazy. And like the first time we heard about this like we were like no way this works, you know, but it’s been pretty wild to see. I mean, I was just talking to, we have a coach in our community who really kind of owns this method. I’m not, I don’t have my hands as much into this method as well, as far as like a funding method, but she’s really owned it and really doven into it and does it daily and helps other people do it in our community. And I mean she was like, just tell me a story of someone who made $50,000 in profit last year by building one of these shops and hiring a VA, Virtual Assistant to totally automate the thing. And so all they do is list products from all over.

Stephen:

They mark it up, maybe $10, $15. So the margins are pretty slim, but there is a population of people who just like hanging out on Facebook and they’ll pay a little bit extra to have that shopping experience on Facebook and never leave that platform. It’s so interesting to me that these people won’t go and just Google this product and find it somewhere else for cheaper, but it’s that convenience factor that we’re offering. But beyond that, I believe it’s just great, my market research to start talking to people in your niche and getting feet on the ground with that niche. If you’re not super deep in that niche, you know, and you’re building a brand, you wanna talk to the people because then when you actually launch your product, you’ll be able to speak their language and launch at a profit.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Does it require like you to have a business page in order to start that, or I can do that on my own personal profile, or what are some of the requirements for starting a Facebook shop or just using Facebook marketplace?

Stephen:

When we started it, we just did Facebook marketplace, like use your personal account, literally just like grab products from different sites, and we would usually go to the reviews of those products and find like kind of customer images and just throw those on Facebook marketplace, sell it for profit. But we’re seeing that now that Facebook has launched the shops kind of aspect of things, they are preferring that. They’re giving more traffic to that and so you do need a business page on Facebook, which you can it up, you know, like a page you can like, and then you can create a shop underneath that page. And you know, you can have multiple shops. That’s the kind of fun part. Like you have multiple pages. So we have a lot of Rainmakers who, like, they got multiple shops in different niches that they’re building and it’s pretty fun to see. It’s pretty, it’s definitely like, I compare it to the early days of Amazon. It’s very much the wild west right now. There’s a lot of opportunity, but there’s also just like random glitches and, you know, they’ll shut down your shop for a day or two, it’s just that world. So if you take a step into that world, just know it’s a big opportunity, but it’s also the wild west.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, does Facebook shops or marketplace take a comission like how Amazon takes their 15%,

Stephen:

I believe Facebook wants you to take payment through their platform and that’s how they’re gonna make their commission on the sale. We used to like take payment on PayPal or something like that, but Facebook has a payment platform now that you can basically Facebook pay people and that’s where they’re gonna make their commission. So it’s all about just figuring out those right numbers, figuring out how much margin you need, and building it in there. But yeah, most people, you know, they’re probably only making five to $15 per sale, you know, but the cool thing with Facebook shops is when you hit a product like we call it when a product hits, you know, the algorithm likes it, you could sell like a hundred plus of those in one day. And then all it comes down to is fulfillment. Just like, can you copy and paste the addresses into the thing? And a lot of times we use Virtual Assistants to do that. Like more the labor intensive part, there are some software and things like that can help automate some of those things. But again, it’s so early that it just-

Bradley Sutton:

Sounds like something Helium 10 needs to get into.

Stephen:

Yeah. It’s not as mature as like, you know, dropshipping in general. But yeah, it’s also a great way to test products. Like I’ve been telling people that now is like, when you order a sample from your manufacturer, don’t order one sample order 20 samples, right. And then take some of ’em and throw ’em on Facebook marketplace. Just so you know, even on your personal account, if you’re getting a lot of engagement on that thing, you might have a clue. Like this is probably a good thing. Right. It allows you to test stuff out with like a lot less, like, I mean, you could even just take a photo of the potential product, put it on Facebook marketplace, pretend to sell it. Then when someone wants to buy it, just be like, oh, sorry, we’re sold out, but just do it to build confidence in yourself to go like, okay, I know this thing’s gonna work.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Interesting. Now, you know, obviously, for your community, the main marketplace is Amazon FBA. And then sounds like a lot of our people are doing Facebook shops too. What other marketplaces are some in your community finding success on, be it like you Etsy, Wayfair, Instagram, or any of these? Maybe not what you would typically think of when you think of e-commerce.

Stephen:

Yeah, definitely. And I apologize. I’m doing a lot of the talking. I’m definitely the nerd in the relationship, and so I geek out on the numbers and the tech and Chelsey is the mama of the group. She’s more the trendsier. And like, I find the data and I bring it to her and she makes it look pretty. So just interrupt me if I’m talking too much.

Chelsey:

No, you’re good. I’ve seen-

Bradley Sutton:

Dynamic duo. I don’t know. We’re not gonna say who’s Batman. Who’s Robinson. The tag team here.

Chelsey:

Yeah. I would say our rainmakers are, some of them will adventure out into Etsy. I know recently I just saw testimony pop up of that working really well. And then quite a few of our community members will start like their own Instagram accounts to create like that following or even like private Facebook groups. Like one of our moms, her niche is like moms who are breastfeeding. And so her Instagram, although she products on Amazon, that’s where she started specifically for them. She’s creating content and has a Facebook group where they’re engaging and all of that. So I know those are ways that some of our moms are doing stuff as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, cool. Now we’ve talked before about how, you know, Amazon TOS changes and strategy changes. One of the things that’s just a consistent thing that everybody always needs to be worried about is getting more reviews, especially those initial reviews. And of course, at Helium 10, we’ve got tools like, you know, Follow-Up where you can automate the request review, or even send a custom message. But in general, like what are some things that are working as far as being able to build those reviews? Like are you guys using insert cards or, just going above and beyond on packaging or what are you guys doing to help with the review?

Stephen:

It’s getting trickier and trickier for sure. I think the favorite tool is definitely the Seller Assistant tool from Helium 10. That’s been, I would say working the best right now, as far as like a more automated, you know, kind of hands off method. One thing we’re experimenting right now, so it’s not as battle tested, but just as like more like, I don’t know, for some reason we lean into the Facebook platform, our communities are built on Facebook. There’s just so many groups on Facebook of potential people that you can sell to. And so, like, for example, we’re launching a brand in the mountain bike niche, and there’s like, literally mountain bike groups, you know, all over the United States where it’s like, SoCal mountain bikers, or it’s like Northern California mountain bikers, or it’s Orange County.

Stephen:

Like just in California, like we found 12 of these things. And so just starting to engage more in those groups, we call ’em hand raise posts. So we do posts that kind of generate interest and get comments. And then we just start conversations with those people via messenger and build relationship, actually kind of making it less transactional and more relational. Now there are ways to automate this and outsource it. You know, you can use ManyChat bots and things like that, but we do a lot of, you know, Virtual Assistants kind of nurturing people, asking questions and then ascending them to either buying a product, you know, supporting a launch or something like that. So we find when you do it that way, they’re way more willing to leave a review when you ask them like, Hey, can you leave a review for this thing?

Stephen:

We’re not incentivizing them to do that. The other tip, and this only works, if you have like, kind of a, some sort of message with them, you know, it doesn’t really work with email as well is just like, we call it going out a small yes. First before a big, yes. And so, like, you wanna date someone before you ask them to marry them? So, like, we just say stuff like, we also do some funnels and things like that. So for example, if someone buys through the funnel, they’ll get a message from my business partner and it’s like a selfie video of him on a trail with his bike. And he’s just like, Hey, I just wanna thank you so much for your purchase. Now real quick, I know this is a little different, but like, I have a super quick favor to ask you, would you be willing to like, do a quick favor for me, if you do it, like, I promise I’ll hook you up, you know, like he says something like that, but we’re just being very vague about what it is on messenger.

Stephen:

It might just be like, Hey real, can you do me a favor? Like, that’s the small, yes. It’s not like, Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you leave a review? Right. It’s just like, Hey, can you do me a favor? And then they say, yes, they’ve already agreed to doing the thing. You know, before you even tell ’em what it is. So it’s just like, everything is just going for the next tiny yes. So even when we’re like instead of going like, okay, Hey, click this link and leave a review. We’re like, Hey, here’s a link. Can you just check to see if the link works? Like, it’s just a different way to say, click the link. And then you just like holding their hand through the process. So it’s, again, it’s like, you have to do it once to kind of map it out.

Stephen:

But then once you have a script, you can have a Virtual Assistant do that. And it’s just like, I had a guy do this to me to get us on a podcast. And like this guy, like, you know, he, he didn’t have a huge following or anything like that, but he just started with that. He was like, Hey Stephen, can I ask you a quick question? And I said, yes. And then all of a sudden now I feel obligated to keep saying yes, he just kept asking little yeses and all of a sudden I’m gonna be on a podcast guest, you know? . Yeah. And it’ll be fun, but like, it’s all about that. Small. Yes. And relational. I think that’s a big thing. So the more you can do that, whether it’s a product insert that takes them, you know, to some sort of texting chat, you know, or whether it’s a Facebook messenger thing built like off of a Facebook group of your ideal person. Or if it’s a video, you know, that you send people if they opt into your website. So having that like relational aspect, I think people are so sick of like just the automated stuff. They just want human connection again.

Chelsey:

I even saw like someone who this person has a huge following. So her audience, when they got this message, she was like, so excited, but she was doing a book launch. I don’t know if she was self-publishing or whatever, but I love the concept that she did. She was able to like, send those personal messages, like Stephen talked about, like to these people using their name, like she’s on the couch, nursing her baby doing this. And the people were freaking out cuz they’re like, oh my God, it’s Jenna. Like, I can’t believe she’s doing this to me. And she didn’t do it with everybody, but it was like the first whatever. So I think what Steven touched upon is you can just thinking outside the box of that and creating engagement and dialogue and yeah, I think building a brand and having a presence on Facebook and Instagram can only help you, especially when you’re launching.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Now you mentioned earlier, like, you know, some testimonials everybody likes to hear success stories and that’s the cool thing, you know, I obviously interview on hear a lot of just personal people. Like, Hey, what’s your personal you know, Amazon story or what have you been succeeding in? What have you been failing in? But when you’re part of a community like you guys are. You guys get to hear 500 times the amount of stories. So what are some that stick out in your mind that maybe I haven’t, you know, I’ve obviously had, you know, a number of individuals from your Rainmaker community on this podcast. Maybe somebody that, you know, hasn’t been on here that you can you know, recount some of their cool stories that have happened over the last year or so.

Chelsey:

One that comes to mind is a woman named Deb in our community. And she is incredible. She’s a retired music teacher. And I believe she joined our program right before she was about to retire. And she had seen somebody else have success with Amazon, from our community. So she just knew it was possible. She held onto that. Like, I know that this is possible and wanting to create something more for herself in retirement. And so she knew the process worked and she did launch one product probably like a year ago. And it didn’t go as well as she thought, but she had to really wrestle through these like negative what-ifs, like what if this doesn’t work for me? what-if I’m too old? what if I’m not tech savvy enough? And she just has chosen to put all those negative what-ifs to the side.

Chelsey:

And she’s such a powerful voice in our community because of her mindset. And she just like, I know this process works, I know that Amazon FBA can work for me. And I’m not gonna think about the what-ifs I’m just gonna keep pushing in, keep persevering. And so this last, I believe it was November. She launched her second product and has had such success with this product. It’s about I think, to sell out. So that’s the, like a tricky thing that she had no idea to expect. Cuz it’s just been selling like hot cakes and the design is beautiful and it’s just this heart and this love. And every time I see Deb go on and share about her journey, everyone roots for her. And it’s so incredible to see that. And I think it’s just a good picture of like, you know, Amazon can work the first time. Yes. But sometimes it’s like the training ground to get you to where you wanna be and you have to stay focused on what-if the sky’s the limit she says and what-if this is like the best thing that’s gonna be for my family and it’s that transformational process. So that’s just one story that comes to mind. I love Deb. I feel like I sit and have a cup of coffee with her and talk for hours because she’s just so full of wisdom and such an inspiration.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So back on the nerdy side then, so Stephen, some of the strategies that either in, you know, in your own Amazon business or some of your students has been working of late, you know, be it PPC or launch or whatever.

Stephen:

Yeah. I’ll tell you one of the strategies I’ve been geeking out on. Like with all of our businesses, and I call it like owning digital real estate. So, you know, we do a lot of off Amazon stuff as well, funnels and things like that. Of course, you can drive ads from anywhere on the internet directly to your Amazon. But if I can get people to a funnel where I can increase the average order value with some upsells or some ways to offer more value to them, I find I can spend a little bit more on those places. And so this is something we’ve been experimenting with and also challenging our higher level rainmakers to dive into. Is like, there’s so places to get attention on the internet. And sometimes it just takes thinking outside the box to find those places.

Stephen:

So, I mean, I could riff off a couple of them just to give your audience some ideas cuz some of these it’s just like, man, you do some of these things and it could drive business to your brand for years. So owning digital real estate is basically like there’s, you know, there’s properties all over the internet. This isn’t like buying a metaverse land or anything like that yet. Maybe in the future, maybe next year, we’ll talk again. But like, you know, for example, these mountain bike groups, a lot of these mountain bike groups they are owned by just random people. They’re not businesses. They’re just like someone who started a group, right. And those groups have real estate. So if you think about the, you know, the group, what is the most valuable real estate? It’s probably the banner, that’s the first thing people see, it’s probably the description.

Stephen:

So can I own part of that? You know? And so this kind of creates a conversation of like, imagine if I am a, you know, sponsor brand of the month for some of these Facebook groups and all that means is I pay them just a little bit to put my brand and a link to my funnel or QR code in their banner, you know, and they get stoked cuz I’m paying them $25 a month or something, you know, like some of these people are more business minded, but some of ’em just like, this is like a hobby, you know? And so how could I own like hundreds of these groups across the United States? So like every single day, I mean you can go on Facebook search for groups. You can literally see how many posts are in that group every day.

Stephen:

It’ll be like 35 posts a day and you can just see like man there’s activity there. How can I drive some of that activity to some of my other things beyond that, if you find a group that’s really profitable, you can acquire that group. Like you can approach that person and go like, Hey, this group looks pretty big, looks like a lot of work. You want me to take it off your hands? You know? And I mean, a lot of people will sell a Facebook group because it is a ton of work. Especially if it’s something they start on the site and they’re not monetizing it. You can be, yeah, you totally stay in the group, but our brand will now take over this group and manage it and use it to drive traffic. So that’s just one place, Facebook groups first page of Google, of course, like, you know, that’s something that a lot of brand owners are leaning into more of the Google attribution stuff.

Stephen:

So beyond that, just like paying for Google Adwords, I’m looking for keywords in that niche and like who are the bloggers who are like on those keywords? Like if I’m like, like searching the best blah, blah blah product who has the blog post of like the 10 best things and same thing with YouTube, Google and YouTube are very similar. And so on YouTube, there’s kind of like a hierarchy we go after. It’s like, okay, a full video feature from someone that’s all SEO optimized and you know, that’s the most amazing and most expensive thing. Right? Second, most expensive is like a shout out in a video. But the really easy one that we’ve been going after is finding existing videos that are already ranked where it’s like, you know, here’s like, I’ll just use Rainmakers, for example, Rainmakers we, we help moms launch on Amazon.

Stephen:

And so, you know, we’re looking for moms who are looking for work from home opportunities. So if I go to YouTube and search work from home mom opportunities, and I see that there’s a rising video on the front page and she has 10 opportunities in that video, I’ll reach out to her and go, Hey, how do you feel about putting a bonus 11th item in the description of your YouTube video? And it’s such a simple thing and how I’ve gotten like those type of deals. I just reach out to those people again with a small yes. And I go Hey, can I just take 30 seconds to share with you a simple two minute thing you can do on this YouTube video to increase your revenue on it? You know? And they’re like, yes. Right. And then I tell ’em about our affiliate program.

Stephen:

Can you just put a bonus 11th thing, you know, in the description of that video and imagine doing that on a lot of videos, again, it’s just trickle, but like YouTube is a very evergreen platform. And then the last thing I would talk about with owning digital real estate, I guess just a mindset is focus on evergreen, like focus on things that don’t just go away. Like don’t pay for an Instagram story shoutout that’s gone in 24 hours, try to negotiate with people to like pin you in their story highlights. So you’re there forever or put you in a link in the bio. And you can see this in a lot of businesses. Like we, we went through a good hello, fresh phase, you know, do you know, hello, fresh and blue apron. We would always get the free, like whenever they did the freebees like we do the freebees and we, you get a hello fresh box in the mail inside that box is a bunch of product inserts, not just for their brand, but for a bunch of other brands, you got like a wine voucher in there.

Stephen:

You have like this other thing. And so like, who else is growing in your niche that you could grow with? And you could bolt your business onto theirs and they could bolt their business onto yours. So this is a different concept, Amazon, how could we actually have product inserts that promote a bunch of people and then have all those people promoting us. So as they grow, we grow. Even in email sequences, when someone buys my product 10 days later, Hey, if you love our product, you might love this brand too, and we do email swaps. So these are like free things, basically, you can do where it’s like, we might as well just do what people are already doing, work smarter together and see each other grow. So that hopefully gives your audience some ideas on some ways to own some digital real estate, whether it’s in someone else’s business or somewhere on the internet in evergreen form, that’ll help your business grow.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. I love it. Love it. Now, before we get into your, I mean, that was some great strategies there before we get a 30-second tip part of this show, just a last question I kind of had was, you know, you guys run a podcast together, you know, your Amazon business together, a full community and training course. You’re also parents, you know and, and a family like anybody who gets into the entrepreneurial career, like a lot of their struggles is that transition, you know, like when you work for the “man” or work in the corporate world, it’s a pretty set schedule. Like, all right, get to work at eight, leave at five, you know your day is all planned out, very structured, right? But how can entrepreneurs, who, who are, you know, families like yourself? How, how do they keep that work balance? What has made it work so well for you guys? Would you say?

Chelsey:

I mean, it’s a constant thing. We’re reevaluating for sure. We have one little guy he’s two and we have one on the way. So when baby number two comes, I’m sure there’ll be more discussion about finding rebalancing and everything. I mean, Stephen and I, like, we love what we do. We get up the morning excited. It’s what drives us the impact of not just what, you know, our business has done for us and what we’ve been able to do, but more than that, the people that we impact. So there’s definitely that aspect to it. But there’s always moments where we have to like turn off business and as our son gets older, I think we’re learning more and more to have healthy boundaries. And so that means, you know, at a certain time in the evening, right now it’s around like 5:30.

Chelsey:

I usually end work earlier. Stephen needs to be done by then to be with our son Kaizen and no phones at the table. Like I would say, weekends are very sacred for us. We’re not like planning meetings or doing anything like that. We have set aside family time and you just have to fight for that connection. So I think it’s constantly reevaluating and we do in a lot of ways have sort of set work hours. And I think as our kids get older, those will be even more strict. Cuz it is important to protect your family connection. What would you say, Stephen?

Stephen:

Yeah. We definitely work around our life. That’s something that mentors in our life have really encouraged us this year is look at your life first and what you want your life to be and then build the business that supports the life. And so this year as Chelsey, we’re having a baby in March, you know, it’s like we started there and we’re like, what is our business? Where do we want to be in March so that we could take two months off and not worry about a single thing? And so we worked our way backwards from there and that totally redefined how we were pushing this year in different areas and who we were hiring, like what leadership do we need place to totally step out. You know? So looking at your life first and not letting the business run your life, even this, like during these podcasts, like it’s nap time for Kai.

Stephen:

So he takes a solid three hour nap right now. So we just crank out podcasts during this time and it’s not taking us away from him. So yeah, one of someone we interviewed on our, our show she said, she’s like, I don’t like to call it balance. I like to call it tilting, you know, where it’s like, you tilt towards the business and you’re fall on the business. But then you can tilt back to family and you’re fallen on family. You’re not trying to do both. It’s like seasons. It’s like you got this season, you got this season and it could be like, there could be a morning season, mid day season, and afternoon season like you, you just tilt. But that way you’re not like stretching your mind to two things at once. And you’re on your phone with your kids, you know, you’re fully there or you’re fully here.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s go to our “TST”, our TST 30-second tips. Like I said, you’ve already given us some strategy, both on the mindset side and on the, you know, actual, just, you know, Amazon strategy side. So maybe one each tip from both of you about whatever in the world you’d like to share with the world.

Stephen:

Okay. Do you wanna go first? Do you want me to go first?

Chelsey:

You go first. Cause mine will be end up being more mindset.

Stephen:

I’m looking at my watch cuz I can be a little longwinded. I’ll see if I can give you.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, sometimes you know the nice thing about calling the TST. Sometimes it ends up to be three minutes. With Kevin King, the T stands for 10 minutes.

Stephen:

But yeah. Okay. So the 32nd tip that I think will stretch your mind is how can you serve your people at a even higher level? Now, this is just a mental exercise, but it may translate into a lot of money for you and your brand. If they’re famous marketers who have said the person who can spend the most to acquire customer wins, right? So let’s say you’re selling $25 products. What does it look like to sell that same person a $25,000 product? Okay. It just stretches your mind. Now just a, like if you had to put on a piece of paper, what, what would I have to sell to that person for, let’s say $25,000 to really make them go, oh my gosh, that feels like a deal. That’s like a hundred thousand dollars product that I’m buying for 25.

Stephen:

And you start to create a list of these things, of how you could serve that person at a higher level. It starts to really stretch your mind. And even if you don’t sell the thing for 25, but you have someone buy a product on a product insert, they go into a funnel and then there’s a 2500 product, right. If one person buys that product, it increases the whole average cart value of, of everyone, you know? Like, and so just having some sort of high ticket thing in your ecosystem that you lead people up to can really allow you to spend way more on the front end. So we have one product like this, we’re experimenting with this on where it’s like, we don’t care about how much this product sells for on Amazon because it’s just a funnel into a higher ticket product on the back end that’s $5,000.

Stephen:

And so we can be so competitive on the price on the front end, cuz we know a percentage of those people will read the insert, we’ll scan the thing, we’ll go to the website and buy the $5,000 thing. And so this is a bigger strategy that like most Amazon sellers are probably even thinking of. But I like to think of like, how could I serve someone at a $25,000 level and then make it less, it just starts stretching your mindset and it might not be more things it might be education. It might be information, it might be experiential, it might be coaching, you know? How can you take that thing? You know, like how can we take the coffin shelf and then lead them into how to become a professional coffin maker course. I don’t know. I’m just coming up with some ideas from Bradley, but you get the idea, right? So how can you add a high ticket offer to the back end of your product to make like everything so profitable and you could spend crazy amount on ads because you don’t even care about the front end cuz you know, it’s gonna work out on the back end.

Bradley Sutton:

Super cool. Super cool. Chelsey, you got one for us.

Chelsey:

Yeah. I love the way Steven’s mind thinks I’m gonna keep it just a little bit more simple, whatever I feel like in business, you know, we’ve just opened up a new year here. Like whatever your goal is. Like, whether it’s you wanna hit six figures in your business or seven figures or get more reviews, whatever that is. I just want you to think about what are the steps you’re gonna take every single day to make that happen. Do you need to carve out, is it just 15 minutes? Is it 30 minutes? What are you gonna be super dedicated on today so that you can reach that goal? Because having that big audacious goal or even a smaller goal is great, but you need to have actionable items to get you there. So if it’s you wanna have better health this year, whatever it is. Okay. What are the actual steps every single day or every other day or three times a week that you need to do to actually get you to that definition of being more healthy or being more successful, whatever it is. So just having those things each and every day that you can do that you’ll actually get done and not be I’m gonna spend five hours a day when all you really have is 15 minutes.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it. I love it. All right. You guys are a wealth of information, so maybe somebody who’s listening to this wants to get more information or find you guys on the interwebs. How can they do that?

Stephen:

Yeah, you can check us out on therainmakerfamily.com or The Rainmaker Family Show if you love podcasts, we had Bradley on and he draw some fires to go check that out and we’d love to connect with you guys.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome thank you so much. For coming on here might be almost the end of nap time. So gonna let you go and we’ll definitely reach out to you in 2023 and see what’s new in your guys’ mindset hacks, and also Amazon hacks to love them all.

Stephen:

Thanks, Bradley. Talk to you soon.

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