#286 – Juggling Family Life and Growing 6 Businesses to Exits

Are you unsure how to juggle your Amazon selling business with family life? In today’s episode, we’re talking to a family who has made it work for them. Izabella Ritz is back along with her husband Ivan, and her daughter Liza to discuss the dynamics of a family with different careers, from having a 9 to 5 job to being an entrepreneur.

Also in this episode, Izabella will share her stories about the six Amazon brands she grew for exits. Plus more tips on how to manage, start, and grow your Amazon business.

In episode 286 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Izabella Ritz with her his husband Ivan and daughter Liza discuss:

• 2:08 – Izabella Brings Her Whole Family To Amazon Selling Conferences
• 5:10 – What Are The Benefits And Drawbacks of Selling onf Amazon If You Have A Family?
• 8:30 – The Difference Of Having An Entrepreneurial Parent/s
• 11:00 – How Izabella’s 16-Year-Old Daughter Got Interested In Amazon
• 12:00 – What Is Ivan’s Role In His Wife’s Business?
• 15:00 – You Have To Treat Your Family As Your Team
• 20:03 – Can You Still Contribute To The Family’s Business Even If You’re Not Interested In It?
• 23:50 – Preparing Six Amazon Accounts For An Exit
• 26:00 – How The Pandemic Affected Izabella’s Amazon Business
• 30:50 – Izabella’s Tips For Managing An Amazon Business
• 43:19 – How To Get In Touch With Izabella’s Agency

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Are you a current or future Amazon seller, but unsure how to juggle that with family life? Like being a spouse or parent? Today, we’re going to talk to a family who has made it work for them. We’re also going to talk to the matriarch of the family who has grown six Amazon businesses to the point of exit. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

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 for every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happened to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts

Bradley Sutton:

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 and Walmart world. We’ve got somebody back on the show. Who’s been here before Izabella, but we’re doing something a little bit different today. We’ve got her family here because I want you to talk about a different side of Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

And the fact of the matter is, there’s a lot of people out there where it’s usually just one person in the family who might start. Maybe it’s the mom, the dad, the husband, the wife maybe it’s one of the kids. And what happens is the rest of the family, in the beginning, might not understand fully what’s going on with this Amazon thing because it’s not a normal thing, but you know, questions I get sometimes is, “Hey, should I get help from my family in my business?” Or How do I balance family life and work life as an entrepreneur when it’s not like a regular nine to five job and how can I support my spouse? You know, maybe I’m the Amazon seller. How do I support my spouse? Maybe I’m the non-Amazon seller spouse. How do I support my Amazon selling partner? There’s a lot of questions. So I figured like, we’d have a good example of this because I’ve been at some conferences lately. And the interesting thing that I noted is that Izabella brings her whole family, you know with her to help out. So I was like, you know what? This is an interesting angle. So go ahead and everybody else and introduce yourselves so that everybody knows who’s on here.

Ivan:

My name is Ivan, I’m Izabella’s husband. And Liza is here too.

Bradley Sutton:

How old are you, Liza?

Liza:

I’m 16 year old.

Bradley Sutton:

Has your mom been an entrepreneur or like an you know, doing this kind of thing as long as you can remember?

Liza:

Yeah, actually, precisely like that. She’s literally grown me to a little entrepreneur.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it. And Ivan, you’ve only been married for, is it a year now?

Ivan:

Yup, just over a year.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. Congratulations. Happy anniversary. So you knew, Liza was born in this, but you had a choice, you knew what you were getting into. Cause you met her when she wasn’t an Amazon seller. Right? Liza didn’t have a choice, but you did.

Ivan:

I should’ve known on the first night we met because she, it was, it was late in the evening and she was still on the phone making things happen. And I was like, oh, okay. Maybe she’s just, you know, some work came up, but no, that’s, that’s the battle rhythm, you know, that’s an everyday thing. So, but yeah, I definitely came into it and it was actually one of the things that like really clicked with me then like I saw that somebody was so passionate about what they did and it was a risk-taker and a world maker type of person.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Now, what do you do? Like you have a day job yourself, right?

Ivan:

Yes. So I’m currently an active duty Marine, so anything that’s said on this podcast is my own personal opinion and does not reflect the views of the Marine Corps, the Department of Defense, and the United States government in any way.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s get that out of the way here. So that means he can be crazy here and he’s not gonna get in trouble for it. Alright. Now, what year again, Bella, did you start selling on Amazon.

Izabella:

2015.

Bradley Sutton:

2015. So Liza was 10 years old? There we go. I love it. Now, what, you know, obviously you’ve been, you know, I remember when we were on the podcast before, you know, this is not your first entrepreneurial endeavor Amazon you’ve been doing. And just like Liza said, it was kind of, she was since she was born, you’ve been doing different things. What, what did you do before Amazon, again, for people who didn’t hear your last episode?

Izabella:

I think I don’t remember if we talked about it. My first business, like actual business, was a business training center at my 17 years old and they sold it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yup. I remember that. That was obviously well before not well before, but a little bit before she was born now, what would you say is the benefits and I’m talking to you, Bella, what would you say is the benefits of having a job like Amazon, where you kind of set your own hours and be at home and what’s the drawbacks, you know, ‘cause it’s not always just one way. There’s always two sides of things here, but let’s first talk about the pros, like as a, as a mother, as a wife, what are the benefits of having a job? Like, Amazon and obviously, you know, you have an agency now, but just thinking in general, just when you were just an Amazon seller, what did you like about that?

Izabella:

Beneficial is I think that just because you can, you can manage everything that you are doing based on the family interests. Like, for example, I haven’t coming back from work and he’s saying, okay, it’s a family time stop and I can stop and we can do like family stuff. It’s beneficial for family when like we have to go somewhere and I can manage my timeframe, my timeline. And I can always switch my tasks or delegate something else to someone else. So, I’m not dependent nine to five and family feels it, and my family knows sometimes like things come up. My daughter is, Fina my younger daughter she’s coming and then she’s like, I have tennis class, what are you doing in front of the screen? I’m like, oh, I’m so sorry I’m coming. I’m just jumping into the car. So I don’t have to go to any meetings and talk to people or like do reports or something else. So, everything is always with me again, worst case scenario. I can grab my laptop and do something in the car, like when she’s forced up.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, now what about any drawbacks though?

Ivan:

That sword cuts both ways, right? Because the, with that flexibility, you know, and with a certain type of personality, who’s always hard charging and trying to get stuff done now. You have to be equally driven to make time for family, right? Because then everything becomes about business. And, and everything. You, you, you’re not fostering the relationships that underpin the very business that you created. Right. So it’s, you know, tonight is an exception, right? But typically from like 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, everybody puts their stuff away and it’s like, okay, we’re talking about non-work stuff. How was everybody’s day? Like, what is it that we want to do this weekend? Where do we want to travel. Because we have to like– the flexibility and the financial wealth that comes from building something like that. It doesn’t matter if you, you know, you don’t have your loved ones to share that with.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I think I speak for a lot of people or we all speak for a lot of people who have families out there that one of the things is like, yeah, you have time to go take the kids to tennis practice or something. But, the thing about a nine to five job is there’s always a start and stop, you know, like, Hey, I’m at work from nine to five, but at five it’s done, you know, like I’m going home and there’s nothing, but like, there’s no real off, you know, when you’re an entrepreneur, you can just keep going because it’s not like I’m off the clock, you know? So, so that definitely, you know, if you don’t have good time management, that could be the case.

Bradley Sutton:

Liza, what about you? Obviously, like you said, you’ve grown up in this, but I’m sure most of your friends do not have Amazon seller parents. What would you say is the difference you see, like with your family life, as opposed to some of your friends where they’re one or both of their parents have just like typical nine to five jobs?

Liza:

Definitely mindset, and the way the function day-to-day lives. Normally I see closed minded people. So they’re not open-minded to new ideas or neither are the like, inclined to do something more than they do.

Bradley Sutton:

What in the world. What kind of vocabulary have you been to a close minded and they are not inclined. I don’t know. I don’t think I talk like that when I was 16. This is a, this is pretty impressive, continue.

Liza:

Yeah. I think those are like they’re not inclined to do more than what they’re set out to do. Like when I ever have a conversation with people that like, oh, like, yeah like I do this and this and this in business. And then they’re like, but you’re only 16 years old. And then my next question is, but what’s stopping me. Like, they’re like, the point is, is that you you really don’t have limitations just because you’re much younger. Like your brain could keep growing. And like, the reason people are so set back is because they don’t realize the potential that they have.

Bradley Sutton:

Now. How old were you when your mom started teaching you things about any of the businesses she’s worked on? Be it be it the agency, be it Amazon, or just anything in general?

Liza:

I think she ever purposefully like directly taught me about Amazon. And if I have to be honest, I almost despise the idea of Amazon when I was much younger. And that was simply because in my head, I was like, this is way too hard. This is too complicated. I do not enjoy numbers. I’m going to go and paint like 80 pictures in the garage. And that’s exactly what I did. She actually got me an $800 easel, and I spent like hours a day just painting and blasting music. But I think I indirectly learned from what I heard every single day, every single webinar, she wrote a book which was actually kind of like almost proofreading. And she’s like..

Bradley Sutton:

Do you speak Russian? Okay. It’s got a little bit to say, aren’t your mom’s webinars in all Russian only. How are you listening? And I didn’t read. Okay. That’s cool.

Liza:

Yeah. So I’m also just like knowing Russian and both like English also helped me out a lot because then like I learned from her both when she was with a Russian audience and then transitioned to American audience. Right? But I mostly started to learn when I was shown the intricate ways in which you could use creativity in the world of Amazon. And I could use my character to manage a project. And even though I didn’t really enjoy logistics, I literally, like, I was, such a math deep for a very long time. And then it got ruined for me two years ago. And like, I’m like, absolutely not. And she showed me a different angle and that’s when I actually truly started to learn about Amazon and all the different angles of it. And it’s just like, ended up being the way that I looked at it.

Bradley Sutton:

So it wasn’t like forced on you or anything. It kind of like at first he didn’t like it and she didn’t push it, but then you were just around it so much that it kind of started peaking your interest and then, you know, exactly you started getting into it more.

Liza:

I think she must meant for me to start liking Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

That was her master plan. What about you Ivan? Like, obviously I’ve seen you helping out when, when Bella has a booth, you know, for her agency at like the Prosper Show or, you know, White Label Expo or things like that. Is that the extent of how you help the business? Or do you also do things there at home on your off hours?

Ivan:

I do. And it’s mostly like, it’s a two-fold thing. So the, the nature of my day job has made me very process-oriented cause it’s very operations heavy. And so I help a lot with the back office type of stuff. So information management, automation, like, you know, the ins and outs of the business. Right? So I do that. And then I kinda, I’m kinda like Liza where I’m one of the creative monkeys and cause I did a lot of art. I do music too and do that type of stuff. And so sometimes, you know, I’m in the shower or I’m working out or we get ideas and you know, we go into the office, which is the idea lab and we talk about it and we develop things from there. So whether it’s like changing strategy, changing approach, or ways to find products or anything like that, that’s also where I contribute there. And because it’s almost like getting a fresh pair of eyes, right? Because she’s got almost 20 years ago or, you know, I’m sorry, 21 years. I’m so sorry. Let the record show 21 years, right. 21 years in this industry. And like I’m coming at it with, from a completely different perspective. And so just getting a fresh pair of eyes on things sometimes helps.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now before we say goodbye to Liza and Ivan here, and then we get back to Bella, I would just like to ask, you know, each of you, you know, kind of like, let’s actually start with Bella here. Like what would be your advice to people in your shoes? And when I say your shoes, you’re a partner, you know, you’re a spouse, you know, doesn’t matter that you’re, if you’re the mother, you’re the father you’re or I mean a husband or wife, you’re a mother or a father. There are other people who are in very similar situation. As you, as far as their, either one of those things are there’s somebody’s spouse. There’s somebody’s mother, there’s somebody, his father and the rest of the family is not really into Amazon at all. How, what, what’s some advice you have, you know, it could be about work-life balance. It could be about mindset. It could be about time management. What would you have to say to those people out there who might be wondering how they can balance all this like you have?

Izabella:

One, I got Liza in my life. I said to myself, I will treat you as my friend. And this is my partner. And yes, of course I’m being a mother and I am disciplining her sometimes as older, she is as less, but you have to treat your families, your team and partners, because you can change businesses. You can change friends, but your family is your team, it’s your support, it’s your castle. So it’s your fort. And if you can be a really, if you can build a partnership with your family, this is the key to success. It’s like my personal opinion.

Bradley Sutton:

Anything you would have done differently, like start earlier, or you think that everything kind of, or start later, or you think everything has kind of worked out quite nice?

Izabella:

You know, I think it just depends on the people and personalities and some people can start early. Some people later. They only think– I really want people to understand that you can never be able to live the same unit then the same day in the same night. People supposed to appreciate every single second of their life. Because as a older ww are, we won’t be able to have the same opportunities as we have, like a day ago. So just if you have any opportunities right now, and chance is, don’t think that you can make it tomorrow. Like do it right now. It’s actually something that off Ivan all the time, because when I’m asking him to do something, he saying to me tomorrow. I’m like, don’t tell me that, because it’s like, it’s a week point for me, everything is today and right now we cannot do anything tomorrow. Again, sometime people cannot wake up tomorrow, so everything is today and now. And, and no pressure, of course, no pressure, but no.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. And what about you Liza? Like what you know, there’s other kids out there, you know, whether they’re younger or whether they’re teenagers, like you, who might have one or both parents who are entrepreneurs as opposed to the traditional work. So like, what would your advice be for them as far as how to make you know, home life, you know, good and not stressful?

Liza:

I guess, like you could attack this from different angles as a matter of like, if you’re working in a family or if you just want to do it for yourself. As cheesy as that may sound, the biggest advice that I would have is don’t let your age or the disadvantage of society standard, push you back and tell you that you can’t do it because the world education system told you. So, because it’s absolutely incorrect and you can.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright. And what what would you have done if anything differently, like, you know, w would you, do you think you started getting with the family business at the right time? Would you have wanted to start earlier? Would you have wanted to one more year of not having to worry about work and stuff?

Liza:

I think what I realized when I got into this is that the earlier you start the better and in business speed is everything obviously, so is quality. And the purpose of education is not knowledge, but action. And I realized that the faster that I took, what I have learned and applied it to my life the more successful I will be. I think that I have made the right choices to get here, because I know that if I started earlier I would have started it with almost like this saying from what I’m doing, but I started with passion and genuine interest for like what it is that I wanted to do for our agency. And that’s what keeps me going, because I’m actually excited about what I do.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. That’s important to any, anything that people do in life, I think is if you’re passionate about something, the quality of what you’re doing is going to come out better, because it doesn’t feel as much like work when you’re passionate about it. What about you Ivan? There’s plenty of people out there in your shoes where they have a husband or wife who’s, you know, this entrepreneur or Amazon seller while you’ve got the day job. How do you, kind of ease that transition where one person is doing one thing, one person has a completely different working style. How do you make you know, how do you have happy wife, happy life?

Ivan:

Well, there you go. Now, so I guess it’s kind of threefold. So the first portion of that is that to echo off of what Izzy was saying, it’s all about the team, right? So it’s about what are you doing to contribute to the team? Maybe, you know, let’s say I wasn’t interested at all whatsoever in anything e-commerce related, right? I can still contribute to the team by making sure that like, I’m there emotionally that I’m there to help out in the, things that I can help out with to make sure I’m making a contribution. Right? So that would be the, for those that like want to keep it separate and then just don’t have a genuine interest. There’s still contribution to be made to the team. That’s not necessarily germane to the business. The second part of that is if you’re going to venture into it, maximize strength and mitigate weakness. And what that means is there are things that Izzy can do that I cannot do. And there are things that I can do that she is.

Ivan:

She said, though, she said, I didn’t say it, right. I want that to be recorded that she said that I’m not me. Right. and so, you know, that goes back to the teamwork thing, like play, play to your strengths and so that you can compliment each other and really contribute to the business and then not to be kind of a negative Nancy at the end, but, you know, everyone argues. Everybody is going to argue no matter what. So if you’re scared of, I don’t want to ruin my relationships with my family members, because we’re just going to argue about money and all this stuff like that, the fear is there. It’s going to happen. The point is get over your ego. It’s not personal. You’re there, it’s you as a team against the problem, not against each other. And so you really have to go into it with that mindset. And when you mess up, own it, don’t take it personal, you know, and like an entrepreneur dust yourself off and keep moving forward. And that’s how you have to make it happen. If you go in there and you take a personal and you start arguing with each other, it’s not going to work and you’re going to end up destroying both.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Alright, good stuff. What guys, you know, you definitely are our proof of one way, not the only way that things can work out with you guys, that it kind of worked out on the agency side, as opposed to necessarily, you know, the Amazon side. I was kind of different, you know, since my kids were like six years old, I had them putting FBA stickers onto packages. I was, I was doing child labor to the fullest, but there’s different strokes for different folks. There’s no one way, but the point of this is that, you know, out there, I know sometimes there’s this, this idea that man, this is so weird to the rest of my family, this whole Amazon thing. Like how do I make them understand? Or how can I make this work? Well, here’s an example of a family. Who’s definitely made it work. So thank you to Liza and Ivan. And then you guys can go ahead and have the rest of your night together. And then I’m going to talk to Bella about some Amazon stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

Let’s talk about basically updates. Since the last time we talked, you were last on the episode or early last year or a little bit before then. And so how are, you know, I know you’ve always had other things going on. We talked about agency, you know, you’ve had coaching and things like that. But you still actively launch new products on Amazon and maintain your business, or are you mainly focused on other sellers now helping other people?

Izabella:

So we sold all accounts we had, we did an exit, and right now.

Bradley Sutton:

How many accounts did you have?

Izabella:

We’ve had three that we sold. I kept one account just for kids when they want to play, It’s like really not making a little money, but people, it gets out playing when they need extra money. It was wanting to say about it. And she probably didn’t seem to have a chance. She’s she and her sister, they are doing sometimes I’m there, but we have right now six seller accounts that we are preparing to exit.

Bradley Sutton:

Six accounts? And so you had started each of these separately. Like, why did you have six accounts? Like it was completely different brands? or why didn’t you do it on the same account? Just curious.

Izabella:

Completely different brands. And we want to scale and sell every single one individually. So, it’s like six different businesses.

Bradley Sutton:

So you still have these six? Or you already sold them?

Izabella:

We sold three and now we’re working on six extra.

Bradley Sutton:

And like, just to regular people? Or did you sell to like an aggregator? or who did you sell it to?

Izabella:

So the three we sold to the regular people. Not, well, not like regular people. Entrepreneurs.

Bradley Sutton:

Regular people, as in not one of like Thrasio or something.

Izabella:

Those six, we’ll see how it will go. Because like, literally want to say wanting to see how it’s working out. I’m not going to mention all the brands name. I mean, the aggregators and companies, they’re pretty famous. So we talk with some of them and we’ll see how it will work out in like six months. Maybe we will sell to them. Maybe it would be to regular people. But generally speaking, the idea to create and sell is so good because I was able to apply my skills from Russia when I was creating businesses and sell those businesses. And I didn’t think in the beginning that I actually can apply it on Amazon too. This idea hit me one and a half year ago again, I’m like, oh, why not? Let’s do it. Yeah. And it’s working pretty cool.

Bradley Sutton:

So last year, you know, since Amazon was your only you know marketplace, how are you affected during COVID? Like, did you ever have to stop selling on one of the accounts because you weren’t able to send inventory or you were, you weren’t really affected by that?

Izabella:

That was huge story. It was May, I believe April or May. And we had about, I believe 5,000 inventory on Amazon, or like something about it. And nothing is like shipping and it’s been like about a thousand orders, hold it on Amazon. So I’m like, okay, let’s just build the order removal and let’s try to ship it there ourself. And we’ve been packing by 300 pieces a day.

Bradley Sutton:

You mean like, Fulfilled by Merchant?

Izabella:

Yes, it was something crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

In your house or do you have a warehouse?

Izabella:

Yes, we’ve been shipping from home because I don’t have a warehouse. We’ve been always selling, like FBA.

Bradley Sutton:

So you had like big truck delivery of your inventory directly to your home? Your neighbors didn’t get mad or like what’s these trucks?

Izabella:

No, we have neighbors, we had good neighbors there. And for the, like, we’ve been fine, but what we’ve been doing, it’s been like couple days, a couple of times a day, UPS, USPS, as sometimes we’ve been driving there. Sometimes they’ve been scheduling because scheduling this deliveries we’ve been talking to suppliers who will ship in everything only by detail because UPS was working, UPS was working terrible. So it was such a mess, but we survived with the like great revenue even looked in stock like couple of weeks. I was just trying to figure out what to do. And then like, we’ve been packing and shipping and packing and shipping. And I was feeling myself that I am a warehouse worker and they have new profession. And everybody had been doing stuff like even dealing with who was 5 and a half years old at this time. I think we’re six and a half, no six and a half. He was helping to seek the slips on the boxes.

Bradley Sutton:

That sounds like my old days, you know, I was shipping like three, four or 500 orders a day, but I had a machine to do it. How were you guys printing labels and stuff that you have a thermal printer?

Izabella:

I bought a laser printer.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay. That’s good. Alright. I’m going to give you some, some scenarios now. You’re technically still selling on Amazon, but you’ve also doing, you know, when you have an agency, it’s almost, even though it’s, maybe it’s not your account, it’s almost the same thing as, as like, you know selling on Amazon A to Z. So like, what is your do you have people who come to you who don’t even have a product yet? You know, obviously agencies, sometimes you think, oh, I’m going to hire this person to manage my PPC or handle my listing listing. But do you have people who come, Hey, I don’t even know where to start. I need a product.

Izabella:

99% of people who are coming to us, they’re exactly like that.

Bradley Sutton:

What are you serious? That’s crazy. People are getting lazy these days, Bella, but I guess that’s good for your business.

Izabella:

I definitely appreciate people for coming after some courses. And after some failure, when they actually understand how it’s hard and they’re like, you know, I need someone to hold my hand where we’re saying, you know, we’re not holding hand, but we’re helping you out to start faster and better. And at this very moment, I I’m sad when people are coming and they do not understand what Amazon is. And I’m trying to give people like some ideas, what to read, what to check before they will actually appreciate what we’re doing. Because when people are saying, oh, you’re just doing the product research or like, oh, you’re just designing the product. Well, yes. You know, so it’s like when you’re trying to explain to people how many actual factors involved in the launching and succeeding as a product on Amazon.

Izabella:

And when you’re like trying to explain, it’s not just a product, it’s also target audience, keywords, [inaudible]. And the like, and at this moment, you’re trying to not make few, make people feel bad that they don’t know stuff and they don’t understand it. And not also overwhelmed them with the information. So answering your question. Yes. We have a lot of people who do not understand anything and who wants to start their business on Amazon and for coming and saying, okay, I have money. I want to quit my nine to five. Some of the people at Prosper came to us and they said, you know, I quit my job. I have savings, help me out.

Bradley Sutton:

So then, how do you do it? Do you just find a product for them or do you kind of like teach them along the way? And regardless of either way, walk me through your process of finding a new product here in 2021 for people.

Izabella:

Oh, this is my topic. How much time do we have left

Bradley Sutton:

Two minutes now I’m just playing.

Izabella:

Okay. I will try to visually, so Ofcourse we’re using Helium 10 and we’re looking for the product with the high demand and low competition. We can start with the Black Box. We can start just with some random stuff. And when we see that some products are actually good looking and we’re just starting to dig a little bit deeper and to find the right keyword that this product is actually selling. And when this keyword has given us the results, like 300,000, for example, that I was showing on White Label Expo, for example, like “gift for men”. And if you’ll go on Amazon with this keyword and you will check the page, number one, you will find out that actually market is empty. You will be able to find some like massagers, beard set, oils for beards, maybe some like shaving stuff and not really much cool things, but the keyword and the demand is 300,000. Just for one of these keyword based on Helium 10 of course.

Bradley Sutton:

You’re talking about search volume?

Izabella:

Yeah. So Twilio and the market is empty. And then when you understand that this market is empty, you’re trying to dig deeper to the like actual interest. And you can cover, there are some hobbies, like people like to play golf drink whiskey play poker, or like they need is ping pong. And then et cetera, like ideas are as farther your go is better. And then you are researching for the keywords based on the interest and what people actually buying. And then you find out that actually the market is still empty and demand still pretty big. And based on this, we’re also researching on the some similar platforms like Pinterest Etsy. And it’s not in there, but people keep researching. We are starting to create this product to close customer pain, buyer’s pain when they actual want to buy something.

Izabella:

And those type of products when you design them well, and you customize them well, when you’re giving people something that they want. Not, they just have to buy then you don’t have to have like thousands of reviews. You have to have just like maybe 5, 10, 15 to achieve your 10,000, 15,000 sales per month. Which was actually one of the cool ideas that we’ve been showing on the Project X. So yeah, this is like simply this is our approach, nothing super magical adjust data to custom approach. This is everything that we are doing. Usually it takes us a couple of days to do a little research, come up with a custom, another week for design and then we’re creating listing copywriting, selling copywriting. Selling copywritings, like we’re writing the actual selling text for each page for each feature for the listing. And then we’re doing the design and people are ready to start the production in China, ship it to the United States, Mexico, Canada, all over the marketplaces and start their sales in Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Are pretty much all of your new customers or people just starting, are you having to send their inventory first to a 3PL or as far as inventory restrictions goes, can the entirety of somebody’s first order nowadays still go directly to Amazon?

Izabella:

You know, we did not have so far any issues with sending to Amazon.com at all. And we don’t have restrictions at least up to 500 items per shipment. The restrictions that we do have some times when people do not sell well, some items and they come into us and they’re asking, okay, can you help me what I can do? And then like, yeah, we’re trying to help them out or like create new product for them and send it to Amazon. But if they’re not selling well, yes, they do have restrictions. But so far, everything that we launched is based on five pieces a month, which was still able to ship on Amazon monthly.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. What can you talk about product differentiation? You know, you can find the opportunity using the methods you talked about, but then, you know, you don’t want to have the exact same thing, but at the same time, you don’t want to make it so different that you’re not sure if this is going to work or not. So, what are some of the things that you’ve been doing when you’re in the product development side to make sure, you know, you’re not changing things too much from what the customer wants, but at the same time, you’re not just copycat copycatting, somebody else.

Izabella:

Yeah it’s a really good question. So, first of all, when trying to research for the product let’s say form of the product that is already exists in China. So they don’t have to come up with any new shape and they don’t have to create any new mold and it’s not under a patent. Right. and what we are doing, we’re trying to create the design that never been before, based on American culture, if we’re going to sell, for example, in America, if we’re going to sell Mexico, or for example, Arabian emirates we’re creating something else. But let’s talk about Amazon.com right now. So when thinking about cultural stuff, what people will buy based on American culture, American humor, understanding like hobbies, understanding ideology, maybe some like religion stuff. And we’re creating this design on the way where people genius picking yes, 5% patent, and it’s already, not under patent. But what are we in a way where people will not do any copy paste or they will not want to do it because we’re creating the trademark before we start, before we launching any Amazon business, any product. So we’re not copy pasting, we’re not recreating the same designs. We’re not doing something the same or similar where we’re creating everything different. So it cannot be repeating product at all, but we’re not changing any shapes to make the production and the luncheon on Amazon simple and fast.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Alright. What about on listing optimization? You know, so what’s your best tips as far as, Hey, you know, I got the product, I obviously use Helium 10 for the best keywords. What is your strategy at your pictures and where you put what keywords and things like that for once you you’re ready to make your listing?

Izabella:

Okay. So here’s three components, it’s frontend, backend, and pictures. Let’s start with the frontend picture’s supposed to answer people’s emotions and questions immediately. I can tell them momentarily. So the moment person is looking at the picture. They supposed to feel I need it, this as exactly what I’m looking for. I want it, I’m buying it and every single picture is supposed to speak to the customer and to the buyer, because the moment they’re looking at the picture, they already make a decision. If they’re going to dig deeper and read, of course, some items like electronics, or sound like supplements, where people need to read some videos. Of course, it will be like second step to make a decision to buy this product. But generally speaking, 90%, they’re making based on what they see and what they read on the pictures. Then of course title, because if your title will match your search terms, PPC campaign will be successful.

Izabella:

We’re going to title my opinion. You have to combine your meaning, your keyword, and if your keyword could be long-tail, which will contain the main keyword I mean like high ranking keywords, medium ranking, keyword, and low ranking keyword. And it will be like one long-tail keywords in the title with the meaning. That’s awesome. You understand what I’m talking about? Yeah. So I hope everybody else too, because it’s something that like for the new person, it’ll be probably hard. And yes, we’re trying to match title with the terms, but then at the same time, with the time we are substituting keywords of the search terms to something, in addition the, like the like similar niches to give this listing more opportunities to rank and more opportunities for more indexing. Also one we’re doing and creating like bullet points and description.

Izabella:

We’re trying to make it interesting to read, not just feel it out with the keywords, but actually think about like, when people will read the description of this product, they really, that that will be third, fourth, and fifth or other, and step for their decision to actually buy this product. And there’s more information, right? Information put into your listing then less questions you’ll get on your listing, which is actually still helpful. But then at the same time, people are buying much better. And the conversion of the listing is better when you answer all questions of your potential customers and buyers inside of the listing. And yeah, the backend just support with the keywords that will help you to rank your product.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now we do also a 30-second tip TST. So what’s your best you know, maybe 30-second piece of advice for Amazon sellers. It could be about, you know, what we were talking about before family life, or it could be just an actual Amazon strategy. What do you have for us that you haven’t mentioned yet?

Izabella:

Well, high risk high potential. If you’re ready to risk go and do it, but do it smart. Don’t try to like go have, okay, I have money. I’m going to put everything and you’re not in a casino. So Amazon is a smart platform, be smart, play smart. And don’t think that Amazon is some magic where you can have like hundred dollars, which some fake videos about how you can invest hundreds of dollars and like millions just do it right. And do it smart, and then you’ll be able to succeed. So Amazon is very technical, it’s a platform. And if you follow the instructions, you will be successful seller.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Now, if people want to find you on the interwebs out there, either your agency, or just reach out to make sure that your husband and daughter aren’t being held hostage and forced to say the things that they’re saying, they want to reach out to you guys or whatever. How can they reach you out?

Izabella:

I cannot guarantee the last part, but they can reach me out at my Instagram @armagency, or ritzarm.com

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Awesome. Alright, well, thank you very much for coming on, you know, to show us a little bit of a different side of an Amazon seller’s life, and it’ll be great to see you at whatever conference you guys will be at next.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
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