1671 – Unleashing the Full Potential of Your E-commerce Business with Prime Seller Solution’s Mike Bryan

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0:58with us right now mike brian mike you are the founder of prime seller solutions.com mike thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me josh it's a pleasure to be here yeah absolutely and tell me what you do at prime seller solutions well we're a an agency that It really helps e-commerce business owners buy more time back, more energy, and create the business that they really had in mind when they got into e-commerce selling. So for someone that doesn't do e-com, can you explain maybe the typical lifestyle of someone that's just kind of going into it by default and what that ends up looking like from a day-to-day schedule?

1:40Yeah. So what usually happens is it starts out as a side hustle. And I personally still have a brand out there as well. And it started out as a side hustle. And it really, for some, it's like, well, I want to replace my income with this business. And what happens is a lot of times is they have some success and it gets exciting, right? And they start selling. And suddenly they realize they're$200 ,000 into selling, let's say, on the Amazon platform. and they realize, hey, wait a minute, this is a real business. And suddenly, but they're now 60 hours a week into it and they realize that this is not what I signed up for.

2:22And so what Prime Seller Solutions does is we walk alongside them to show them that it is a business and to help get them out of the overwhelm, the overwork, is there's a system behind it all. And there's a system from everything from starting from, hey, let's take a step back a moment and look at what's the mission, vision, and the values of this company. It's like no other company, I should say, let's take a step back and say it is like just any other company in that you have to have systems in place to grow the business. Because one thing that most sellers will find if you're not growing, you're fading away as a business because of the lifecycle of most products on Amazon.

3:12or on Walmart or any other platform that could be selling on. Competition will catch up and there's no doubt about it. So it's either you're growing or you're dying and you have to stay up on it. And so that's why having a system in place is so critical. Yeah, and again, what are like the specific things that someone who's never done e-com thinks it's gonna be ridiculously easy? What are like the actual, what's the actual activity that they find themselves doing? And particularly, I'm curious about what are those activities that folks way underestimate just how much time it's going to take to do?

3:51Yeah, it's so understanding the platform. um the uh what started out as a as so many of the uh sellers let's pick on amazon for a moment since it's the biggest platform people get into that and they realize that there's a lot more to it than just what is uh just buying something and flipping it say for example on ebay or or craigslist or something along the lines because amazon has has become a place where you have to have uh your ducks in a row. If you want to try selling a food product, you've got to go through a number of hurdles there. So that takes time. But also the thing that Amazon has done now that I think has really put a lot of work on the third-party seller is the fact that they want brands being built.

4:45They're getting competition from Walmart. They're getting competition from eBay. Not so much Etsy, but also Timu is a new one out there that's based in China. They're trying to undercut and sell cheap products. But what Amazon is taking and doing is really asking their brand owners to make good quality products, good quality listings so that they have fewer returns. They're trying to build out a really quality site. And I appreciate that, but it's also a lot more work than it was, say, six or seven years ago. Yeah. I mean, as an Amazon avid Amazon consumer, I love the experience and I'm a very faithful customer, but you're absolutely right.

5:30There are instances as well that if you can't keep up with what Amazon's expectations are of you as a seller, that carries some risks. And Mike, I don't know if you can underline just how important it is, not just from a day-to-day operation standpoint, but kind of the consequences of not playing by the rules. And I think the first thing comes to mind is if you start falling behind with your customers, that can start lead to a lot of negative reviews. And then, of course, that's just that can become a death spiral. Yeah. One of the things that we emphasize within Prime Seller Solutions in our system that we help sellers build out is having that, what is that one thing?

6:26We call it the machine. What is the one thing, that flywheel that you have to keep cranking? And I look at it as twofold. One, it's always staying in supply because if you're out of supply, your listing could tank badly and getting it back, it takes a lot of time. So the other thing is also then product development. As I mentioned, if you're not growing, you're dying. And so having those two things really the point of emphasis, I think Mike Michalowicz likes to refer to it as the queen bee role, right? The thing that has to be protected. And it's so crucial that staying in supply with vendors, having good vendors, working with them, trusted partners, and then just what are you developing?

7:11What's in the pipeline? Some in the space like to emphasize having six to 10 in the pipeline because the belief is that for every 10 listings you put out or 10 products you put out there, somewhere between five and seven are going to fail. And so, or they'll be average, they'll be so-so, but having to have something in the pipeline all the time is critically important. And obviously having it in stock, because you can develop all you want, but if you don't have it in stock, what good is it? So, yeah. All right. So let's say you've you're working with a seller and maybe maybe just share some stories of folks that you've worked with.

7:56What did they come in through the front door with and what were those initial conversations that you had? Yeah, so I'll take one of my favorite. And he was actually, I can say I'm an international organization. He's based over in Europe, but he sold here in the US on Amazon. And so one of his big things was, I just want to take two weeks off and not have to worry about the business. And so we sat down and really looked at, okay, what do you have in place? What do you need to really work on to speed that process up so that you can start to remove yourself from the business more? And it really starts with looking at time audits are really an important part of that.

8:40Then also then looking at what I call climbing out of the hole. The hole is H-O-L. So you look at the things you hate doing. Either they can be cut or delegated. Things that are okay, but they need to get delegated. And things you love. And that's that 20 % sweet spot or that place of unique ability or zone of genius, as some might call it. And so we really helped get that. And then also the big thing for him was metrics because he really had no nothing on the back end to say, hey, how's the business doing? What are the key metrics we should be looking at? And so that's what we those are the two big things for him.

9:15And then the other one is I can think of is Eric. He was a good, good, good client. And his was also in that metric space because he was flying fast and furious, getting a lot of stuff done, but he didn't have really an idea of, okay, with all this activity, what's it resulting in? And so we worked really hard on getting his metrics set up and functioning to the point where he's having this weekly meeting with his team, getting that rhythm going so that they have a plan, do, check, act in place. And they're keeping that flywheel cranking. So, yeah. And so, Mike, like who would make a really great introduction for you?

9:58You know, I don't know if it's kind of more need based or, you know, kind of where they're at or what stage they are in business. You know, obviously, they've probably already got some momentum, I would imagine. Yeah. So it's usually we're looking at clients that are in the they've been selling for at least a year. They perhaps have got at least 200 ,000 in sales. And we'll go up to 2 million. That's really kind of the sweet spot. It could have anywhere from a solopreneur. And our system works for a solopreneur all the way up to, say, 20 employees. Those are kind of that sweet spot of who we work with.

10:38And how do you engage? And a two-part question. Number one, talk about kind of your unique qualifications and how that's helpful based on how you then end up engaging with your clients. Yeah. So I bring over 20 years of operational leadership for manufacturing, light manufacturing, printing, paper converting. And then I've been on selling on Amazon for the past six years. And so with that, I've really looked at what are the where where do people get tripped up on? One of the things in the last organization that I worked in is we really didn't have a mission, vision, and value statement. Well, that was built out.

11:25And that really worked, was wonderful from the standpoint of being able to say, hey, this isn't me being critical of what you're doing, employee. This is what we value. And so that it's a matter of finding those fits for people, right? And that's what part of what we do is to try to help the seller realize that, hey, this is what you value. So let's live up to that or you're not living up to that. Right. And that's so. So what we do then is we get them into the system as we start to look at, OK, again, if it's let's just pick on a solopreneur for a minute. They most likely are doing it all themselves.

11:59And so now it's a matter of looking at, okay, what can we trim trash or treasure that you really need to keep doing from a treasure standpoint, or you need to transfer that to somebody else so they can take care of that? And that's a continual loop is that as every quarter they look at, okay, well, I don't need to do this anymore. I can hire somebody for that. Let's transfer that. And then auditing their time again, and coming back and looking at, okay, audit. transfer, fill that. Now, what time can I be spending to start to advance the business more? So that's a big part of what we start with is looking at their time.

12:39And then it starts to fill out from there as, okay, what other systems do we need to fill out? And then what are the metrics? So those are kind of the key points that we walk alongside with our clients with. Yeah. And I guess finally, what's the vision for your client or where would you like to see them get to where, you know, historically, as you've worked with clients, you know, where ultimately do you work together to be? Yeah, so that it, we asked that question at the start of the onboarding processes, where do they want to be, right? When we get into the time audit, we quickly find out that they're spending 60 hours of their time, and that could probably be trimmed back to 30.

13:22And so there's that. And then there's also the energy piece, right? Hey, I just like to be able to go home to be able to spend time with my kids and have the energy and not have left it all at work. So it really is a journey that we want to walk through with our clients to make sure that they're getting to the point where they would like to be. Because everybody's journey is different. Everybody's motives for being e-commerce business owner are different. So we really try to set that up at the beginning to give a really nice deliverable at the end. Yeah. Yeah. Mike, your website, primesellersolutions.com.

13:59To a friend that's been listening to our conversation right now, and they're like, I like Mike. I'd love to kind of figure out what might be possible here because, you know, maybe all they know is they're getting stressed out of their mind. They're way overstretched, working way too much. Where do they go from here? Yeah, so you can, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find us at Prime Seller Solutions over there. Reach out to me there. You can reach out to me at Mike at PrimeSellerSolutions.com. Love to connect, love to help wherever we can and be of service. Mike Bryan, founder of Prime Seller Solutions, your website, PrimeSellerSolutions.com.

14:40Great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. Thanks for the time. Appreciate it.

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