All right. Welcome to this episode of Monetizing Your Mental Capital. I'm your
host, Will Christensen, and today I have Rachel Miller here from Pagewell.
Rachel, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Will. I appreciate
it. Yeah, absolutely. Why would an e-commerce seller, we're going to dive right
in, why would an e-commerce seller be interested in hearing from you on this
episode of Monetizing Your Mental Capital? To be completely honest, I think I'm
probably one of those people who happened to become an influencer or marketing
guru type of person, not something I've ever- You stumbled into it? I stumbled
into it. Yes, there you go. I still look at myself and think, why should people
listen to me? For background though, what people are probably looking to hear
from is I've trained over 27,000 businesses so far, paid buyers of my programs,
and I've done over 10 million in sales, including over 1 million on a single
product on Amazon, so that was pretty fun. Over 1 million on a single product in
Amazon. I love that. That doesn't sound like stumbling to me. Well, if you knew
me, you'd see I'm your neighbor next door. I live in the regular house in a
regular neighborhood. I drive ... I have four now, a small fleet because I've
got too many teenagers. I've got four beat up used cars that my kids have wrecks
with. They're learning to drive. They took out a duck sign, like the actual duck
crossing.
The neighborhood park has a sign, Protect the Ducks. Yeah, that sign-
Bit the dust. They're going to be putting that sign back up. I wouldn't call
them real car accidents, but they're still annoying ones. Yeah, that was fun in
the neighborhood today. That wasn't today. Anyway, it was recently. That wasn't
life. Anyways, backing up, yeah, I think of myself as just the regular mom who
just loves to make an impact on others and also has this hunger to do more than
just be the mom sitting at home with her kids and wants to make a bigger impact
in my family's wallet, but also in other people's lives. Beautiful. So thinking
back, when's the first time you can remember monetizing your mental capital?
When's the first time you can remember being like, oh yeah, I went out and sold
X, Y, or Z? Oh, the first time I ever sold something that I wrote was probably
when I was 11 or 12. My parents had us create a neighborhood newspaper and
basically like a gossip channel for the neighbors. Gossip channel for the
neighbors, I love it.
I think we were homeschooled growing up, and we were one
of the first years that homeschooling was allowed in our state, and so there
were no other homeschoolers and there was no curriculum. But my parents and
their community, basically, we were going to a Mennonite school. The Mennonite
school didn't shut down, but half the kids left the year that homeschooling
became legal, and we had to kind of figure it out on our own. And so my parents
decided that our writing curriculum would be, we write a newspaper and we create
columns for the neighbors, and they had to pay like 10 cents, whatever it was
for the cost of the paper to keep this alive. And that was the first time that I
started getting paid for my intellectual capital, which was all of that at like
12 years old.
But I knew that so-and-so was cutting down their firewood and that
there was a problem with the gophers, like they dig under the crops and there
was a Christmas tree farm and they were paying $5 for you to go shoot the
gophers. So I was able to tell all the neighbors about that. Nice. It was
important stuff. Come over here and shoot the gophers for us, because they're
knocking out the trees. Yeah, that's exactly, okay. They were destroying like
crops, foundations of people's homes. The neighbors were basically putting a
bounty so all the teenagers could make a little extra cash. Make a little extra
cash and solve the gopher problem. Love it. Okay. We live in a small town. That
was the drama. That was the drama. I love it. I love it. But I got paid to talk
about it. You got a 10 cents per article or 10 cents, whatever it was, and 10
cents just to honestly pay for the supplies. It was the act of having to write
when I didn't want to though, led to when I was a school teacher and I did not
think I was going to be self-employed or an entrepreneur. When I was a school
teacher, I had babies back to back. And so I got pregnant and ayear later got
pregnant or within a year. And so they were like, yeah, two maternity leaves in
one year.
That's a little much to be asking from anybody. And they didn't tell
me to quit, but I kind of realized that that was the good thing to do at that
point, because it wasn't fair to an employer. And I felt like I had to quit, and
I couldn't do it. Does that make sense? I was like, this isn't working. And so
when I quit, my husband came home. I was depressed, not because I was having
babies, but just depressed because this wasn't what I wanted for myself. I
wanted to have this career, and talk to people, and talk to people. And
suddenly, I'm like a state-owned mom with two babies who don't talk. And so
anyways, in that stage, I came home, and my husband's like, I got you a website.
So what do we want to call it? So he basically said, you have a website now. And
I started blogging. And that was where I first started taking what's from my
head and turning it into something that other people could consume, and use, and
enjoy. And then from blogging, we went to e-commerce. And then from e-commerce
and blogging, I moved into blogging, affiliates, and e-commerce. So those at the
same time.
Then I moved into teaching classes. Wow. Yeah, and now I have a
software program, which is just crazy. It sounds like a total adventure. Yeah,
the software's so far my favorite, but yes. Love it, love it, love it, love it.
And as you began on this journey, obviously you've learned a lot along the way.
I want you to imagine for a second that you just stepped into a coffee shop with
a friend, and this is an old friend from high school. And they sit down, and the
old friend from high school's, this is like one of the good friends from high
school, not one of the ones you're like, I can't believe I'm sitting in a coffee
shop with you, because there's plenty of those for me. But basically this person
says, hey, man, we haven't talked in forever.
I'm actually kind of excited. I’ve been doing a couple thousand dollars a month on Amazon,
and I'm thinking this
could be like a real business to kind of figure out some of what's there. I have
so many questions. I got questions about: 1. Product listings. 2. How to
optimize these listings. 3. Advertising. 4. Reviews. 5. Launching new products.
Do you know anything about any of those things? And as they start tossing that
out there, I'm curious, Rachel, how would you respond to that comment? What I
love to teach people about the most is how to build an audience. So I would
encourage them first to go find the niche that they want to serve people in, and
then build an audience about that niche. And that happens just by posting about
that topic, finding out who's interested in it, creating groups about that. So I
sell through community first, and then I use community to trigger Amazon. If
they're looking about how to create an Amazon listing, how to get their product
out there on Amazon, my friend Kevin King and Norm Farr, they're my favorite
people for Amazon training right now, and their program's completely free as a
bonus if you sign up for, I think, Helium 10, I think is how you can get their
training program for free. It is Helium 10.
Norm was on the podcast just a
couple of weeks ago. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, and about a year ago, well, it's
not quite a year ago, six months ago, Kevin King was on the show. They're
amazing, amazing humans. I love them. And so I would tell them, if you want to
load the particulars of how to get a product listed on Amazon, don't listen to
me, go listen to them, because they have the most up-to-date information. My
stuff has been on Amazon, and frankly, I haven't optimized the listing in years,
and I'm not the person they'll go to for that. What I do think is important,
though, is that you have an audience, because if you just have an Amazon
listing, that doesn't mean you control the buyer. It doesn't mean you can
remarket to customers.
You kind of have a one-hit wonder. And I know that
because this right here, okay, they're a tangled mess because they're just a
tangled mess, but I actually was selling essential oil jewelry for the longest
time on Amazon. And I don't know whether it was my supplier or what happened,
but I actually had where all of a sudden, my products, which I actually designed
them, so I sent them to designs, here's the look, here's how it's gonna work. I
found my entire product line copied with another brand. They did what's called
like a brand hijack. Does that make sense? Where here'sthe product, and now all
of a sudden the packaging's the same, da, da, da, da, and someone else is now
selling this. That happened because I didn't have protections in place because I
was new, but it also happened because I didn't own the customer base. So that's
something I would go back and tell everybody when you're starting: make sure you
have a way to capture their emails, to capture who that person is that you're
collecting so you can remarket them for another sale. Because the reality is,
who freaking cares if they took the 900 people who were buying my essential oil
jewelry?
Because I could also sell, oh, where's the rest of it? I guess I can't
find the rest of it. I had them in a drawer, but okay. The other one is
something my kids really love and it's this like leather bracelet. So every now
and then I find it gone and it's in my teenager's rooms. I could also sell the
essential oil bracelets or the essential oil little bottles to go along with the
necklace. So I didn't, I lose one product. I still have my whole brand. I still
have so much more that I can offer even if whatever happens. Now, in this
circumstance, it was somebody else that like started selling these. But in other
circumstances, it could be that you lost permission to sell that item. And now
you need a way to sell the rest of your inventory through Shopify or through
your own sales page. You can't get it if you're stuck and you don't own the
customer base.
So that would be my number one thing to tell them: 1. Go to
Helium 10 and get Kevin King's course, which is the bonus if you go sign up for
Helium 10. 2. Make sure you control your audience. Love it. Okay, so tell me if
I'm in that mode of like, okay, I know there are some interesting rules around
what I can and can't put inside my boxes. And I don't want, you know, I wanna
make sure that I'm compliant. I'm not getting kicked off, but I do want to build
that list. I know that Amazon does not want me to have the email address of the
customer. That's on purpose. They took that a long time ago and have made it
very difficult to get at that data, right? That they're trying to control the
audience. So I'm curious, what are the most effective ways you've found to
capture email addresses when you're in this mode of like, you have someone who
is perfectly positioned to not let you do that? So one of the things that you
can do, there's a couple of things you can do. One of them is something that I
did with those essential oil necklaces. Frankly guys, they were really hot
sellers and they actually built my essential oil downline, which is a whole
nother business.
So I basically used Amazon to collect leads. Anyway, but you
can have little product inserts like these into your product, which you can't do
in your insert. So these have a QR code and like a URL in them, which you can't,
and also like a recipe card of what to do with the oils. What you can't do in a
product listing is ask for reviews. So a lot of times we think the reason why
we're collecting a list is to get reviews. Oh no, no, no, no. The reason why
we're collecting a list, sorry, I'm trying to put that back together because
watch me like struggle. So you can't, you can't. So if I make a little bag like
that and that's what goes off to FBA, it's totally okay for me to put inserts in
there as long as the inserts don't ask for reviews. Yeah, I don't remember the
exact rules on that cause I'm not the Amazon expert. I'm the audience growth
expert, but I believe what it says. So go check the thing is that you can get
them into a VIP community. You can ask them for like, give them a free product.
You can give them coupons for future purchases, link back to Amazon store. Hold
on a second.
Hold on a second. If I'm, how much is their email worth? Oh,
that's, well, it depends. What's your product worth? So these like nothing, for
essential oils, that was a lot for me. Cause if I could get somebody, yeah. You
mean like those, the ones you, the essential oils? Yeah, this is another one of
my products on Amazon. These were like kitchen magnets. And I was trying to, I
have a blog that's a Crock-Pot blog and it had like what you could do to replace
recipes. And I think I had like an air fryer one. And the cost of that customer
for me because I don't have a high ticket program on the backend is very, very
low. So it doesn't behoove me to have more of those leads. So I would say that
lead is probably maybe- Unless you found a higher ticket item to sell to them.
Yes. In the which case you would,okay.
So let's go, give me a, what would you
say? This one here, I didn't tell this story to very many people at all. I, this
is not my product, but I'm kind of a dorky, geeky kind of girl. And so I found
on Amazon, Post-it note packs of brain anatomy. And it's actually like
anatomically correct brain anatomy. And being the geeky person I was, I bought
50 of them. You could buy them packs of one or like two on Amazon, which were
highly ridiculously overpriced, like $12 for one of these, or you could buy 50
for like, I think it was like 55, 60, 50 bucks or something like that. So it was
like, well, I'll buy one for 10 or I'll buy 50. What they were, the seller of
this is fricking brilliant. What they were actually doing was self-selecting who
does not want to buy a single brain Post-it note, but who wants to buy 50 brain
Post-it notes?
Well, you know who wants to buy 50 brain Post-it notes besides a
weird girl who lives in Texas, who thinks they're really cool and wants to give
them away to people. Wait a second, science teachers. No, no, brain surgeons.
Because they're going to take this Post-it note and say, the spot on your brain
where you're having the issue is right here. So like, I did not realize that,
well, I mean, I got this. Actually, my son has epilepsy. So we actually got
something similar to this from our neurologist, but this was like a year after
I'd already been pitched. So I got this and I got like an insert and I don't
have the insert anymore. So I wish I'd kept the dang thing, but the answer was
something to the effect of like, contact us for a free da da da. And we have
monthly dinners where you can come and learn about- For brain surgeons. Yes,
they're attracting brain surgeons and brain like health clinics. Holy freaking
crap. And so that lead, they're happy to basically give away these in packs of
50, because who wants 50 of them except the person who's actually going to be
doing, I mean, like guys, they came in this giant box. Like I didn't get like
50, they gave 50.
But I was being targeted to be a lead because who wants 50 of
these? Somebody who's going to be looking at these- The outlier rando who, you
know, because when it came to you, they don't know who you are because you're on
Amazon, right? You're totally anonymous. And so they were like, yeah. And at
that point, it's like lost leader because I bet they convert pretty well. I
would be willing to bet that for that thing, they're probably getting, even if
they got a 10%, 10% of their orders, the person actually engages- One out of a
hundred are an actual brain surgeon. Well, or a brain clinic type of thing. I
mean, even if one out of a hundred is a brain clinic, that right there is a huge
lead and less that they can do a lot of really cool stuff with. I mean, this
lead is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay, so that lead is worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the insert- Yeah, because what are they
going to sell them? They're going to sell them one of those like robotic surgery
tools that's probably like $7 million tool. Yeah, and they need a way to build a
relationship.
So this is fascinating. If you consider what you're selling on
Amazon as an audience building tool instead of a vehicle to make money, all of
the sudden you create new vehicles. And Amazon is a search engine. So when a
doctor is going to search for a doctor's office, I need new, whatever it is,
what does a doctor's office need that no one else needs? And they put that
product on Amazon. Well, now they're able to attract that lead because of the
search engine power of Amazon, which was pretty freaking brilliant of them.
Okay, so that is fascinating.
Let's imagine that I was selling fidgets. This is
something I often use as an example because I've got plenty on my desk. So I
have this guy that's like a- Oh, it's pretty. It's super fun. I love this
fidget. It's one of my favorites. It's got these gears on it and spins really
nice. This thing's like a $15 fidget, which my parents and my family have
figured out that I like fidgets and so I get lots of them. I've got probably 15
more here I could show you. But let's imagine that I was selling this fidget on
Amazon for $15 and what am I? And this individual, obviously they don't know
much about me beyond that I like fidgets. So maybe they've identified me as
someone who has ADHD. Like, I don't know. What would be the strategy? Let's say
that that's your old high school friends sitting across from the table and
they're like, yeah, I sell $15 fidgets on Amazon.
I make a couple thousand
dollars a month. And you're like,oh my gosh, you need to be building an
audience. What are you doing with product inserts? And they're like, what are
product inserts? And you're like, oh, standby. What would you tell them? Well,
just thinking off the top of my head, what I would do for them would probably be
something where it's, this is one of the inserts that I had in one of my
products. And I would say, make something like this, but make it a scratch,
scratch off ticket. And it would be a, which of the following defines you? ADHD,
scratch it off. Love playing chess, into like, geeky toys. A mom, I just bought
this on a whim. Like, and then they get to scratch off, which one's them? Why
scratching it off? Because the ADHD person wants to fiddle with all the things.
And then underneath each one of those scratch-offs, I would have a QR code to
their surprise.
Okay, so it scratches off, gives a QR code to the surprise. Oh
man, you would hug yourself. And then you have a different one for each type of
person because one of them's a little bit different. I would scratch off every
single freaking one of them. You would, and you'd click on all of them because
you're a click, that's what they. Well, honestly, I'd be like, I'd be so
impressed by the insert. I would be like, I need to like do all of these. And
see, the fascinating thing is like the ADHD one, like I scratch it off, QR code
pop up. And it's like, hey, we've got this other fidget that we'll send you for
free. Enter your email address and address here. How much- You can do something
like, we're going to send you a Starbucks card. One out of a hundred people who
clicks on this. So somewhere in here, you might be getting a Starbucks card.
They're going to keep going.
Okay, so my next question, oh my gosh. You don't
want to do it every time too, because every time, well now they're expecting it.
Well, the ADHD person getting that, like it's the endorphin that they're
selected. So I would actually not make it. So it's actually would be less
beneficial if you gave every single one of them a Starbucks card. But one of
those could be a course for how to be better at chess. Another one could be,
here's a Rubik's cube. Another one could be, here's a set of 50 fidget toys that
are amazing. Another one would be how to work on your brain health or another
one could be a meditation app. And all of those then are ways that you can
monetize. And then- Have you read the six working geniuses? No, I haven't, but I
love reading. Okay, so you need to go read that book. It's by Patrick Lincioni.
He's the same guy that the ideal team player is another book that he's read or
that he's written. He's an organizational development genius, total, total
brilliant genius.
He developed this as a team composition strategy thing. And he
figured out that there were six working geniuses. The reason I'm tangenting here
is because you just rattled off like seven different strategies off the top of
your head. And a lot of them, I was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh, not so much,
uh-huh, uh-huh. I always do that. And what that tells me is that one of your
working geniuses I'll be very, they have a test that you can actually take and
cost like 25 bucks. One of my working geniuses is innovation or the guy who goes
out and creates new stuff, right? So the first working genius is wonder. I
wonder if there's a problem. The second working genius is innovate or figure out
what that is. The third working genius is discernment where you actually decide
that one of the ideas that the innovator came up with was actually worth trying.
The fourth working genius is a galvanizer. So this is the person who actually
gets everybody going and moving in the right direction. The fifth is a
supporter, somebody who supports the project to completion. And the last guy is
the tenacity. And that's the one that checks all the boxes and finishes the
project or product or whatever it is that you're building. And so they say to
build teams that have cross-functional abilities across these six working
geniuses. So for me, a working frustration is discernment. I hate choosing which
one of my ideas is gonna go. Which also goes with fidget personalities. Most
people that love fidgets also have decision fatigue. Yes, yes. So I just, I
can't stand that. And then I can't stand finishing anything either. So
discernment and tenacity, total, like really hard for me. Now, is tenacity about
finishing something or is it about taking it with gusto? No, tenacity in this
situation is about finishing. Okay, I never finish anything. So taking it with
gusto would either be, no, taking it with gusto I think is a galvanizer.
Somebody who's like- Yeah, I was like, I'm part galvanizer, part tenacity. No,
yeah, you're right. So I think I'm all galvanizer. If you're a galvanizer
innovator,like if those two things, you have the same working geniuses as me. So
it's fascinating though, because you consider some of what's there and it's
important to look at how you fit in the world and the things that light you up
the most. And so I love, I love what you're doing from, from that perspective.
And I just, I had to ask because I think you're, you're, you're solidly in that,
in that realm. Okay. So I got those inserts $15 product. Probably somebody with
ADHD or at least some sort of attention, stimming, maybe autism, like there's,
there's different sides to, to who's, who's scratching off those stickers. But
man, the scratch off is such a brilliant idea because you get them to
self-identify and then you have, you know, across the, you know, maybe it was a
five by five, you have 15 different QR codes on there and their specific offers
for what they scratched off. So it's wildly relevant to what they're going
through. So how much, let's say I'm the, I scratched off the ADHD one, cause I
do have ADHD.
How much am I worth to the 15? It depends what your product is on
the backend. So you'd need to make a funnel and you need to test each of those
and find a product that each of those people would want. So, so your friend is
sitting across the table from me and he's like, I got this guy in Syracuse, Utah
that bought this $15 fidget. And I liked the idea of an insert. How much is his
email actually worth to me? Well, again, it depends on what your upsell is going
to be. So if you're upsell, you're going to make $3 on your upsell. Well then
he's worth $3 to you. If you're upsells, then he's going to make $3, but it's a
recurring thing. Let's say he gets, you get a affiliate on a, a sub supplement.
And so now he gets on a supplement where he's taking it every month and it's $3
a month and you get to have him for an average of eight months. Well now he's
worth $24 to you. Well let's say you own that supplement company. So you're not
an affiliate for it.
You're making the supplements $19 a month minus the $3. So
you're making $15 in profit potentially, or that's no, you're not making $15 in
profit. You're probably making $17 in profit on a $24 one, but let's say you're
making best case scenario, $17 in profit on it. For now. And they stay for an
average of five months with the supplement. That's pretty average. Okay. So, so
let's say the person, so I'm, I'm now taking that role of the person sitting
across the table from you. Well, okay. So he, he's worth whatever I can upsell.
Like I have another fidget that I could sell him that, and this is, it's another
$15 fidget. Like how much is his email address worth to me if I, if I've got
like a series of these five or six different fidgets that I could, I could
market to him? If you have him on a subscription plan where you only had to
capture him once, then he could be worth $70 if you've got five of them. If he's
in, you're selling them for $15 fees. If he's worth, cause after Amazon fees, if
he's, if you're, if you're doing it one at a time, it might be another $15. So
I'd say between 15 and $17, okay. Between, between 15 and 17, like 13 because of
Amazon fees, well, 11, 12 to, because you have a percentage of your fees that
goes to Amazon. So you're going to have to, I mean, that's assuming you drove
that traffic back. So you don't have to pay some of those, the seller fees,
right? So at that rate, I'm so, so walk me through the math again. How do I, if
I've got, let's imagine that I've got five of these fidgets, how I'm trying to
come up with the equation here. So, so if I've got five fidgets that I could
sell for $15 and he buys one fidget. So if they buy on Amazon, then you just
have that buyer. This is an A for Amazon. Sorry guys, my handwriting is
horrible. If you're not watching, we'll go watch it. Cause I'm now doodling. If
they, this person purchased on Amazon, they're worth, if it's $15, let's say
they're worth $10 to you. So knowing that they're worth $10 to you, um, if, if
there, if you have five of those to sell, you have some choices. You can sell
them on a monthly subscription plan. And if that's the case, then the person
gets is worth like $70 to you.
So you would, because it's not a one-time sale,
$70 to me, then it's a question of how much, how much of my marketing go. So
you're saying $10 is my profit. So I'm willing to spend, you know, what, what,
what do I want? $35. Let's say I'd be willing to spend $35 to capture that lead.
I've doubled my money. Yes. Because they're joining in for $10 and they're
potentially signing up for your $70 monthly subscription plan where every month
they get a fun spinner in the mail.And so every month they get Christmas all
over again, it's Christmas year all year long. And I would sell that probably
Christmas time. So that way they have a reminder that grandma loves them all
year long. So this one is the $70 lead. Now if they don't sell them in a
subscription plan and you're selling one and then you're trying to convince them
to buy the next one, buy the next one, buy the next one, well each one of those
is a separate sale and generally there's a conversion.
I believe, I don't know
if it's changed, because I have, like I said, guys, I'm not super, e-commerce is
not as much of my thing as I've been in the past. So. Yeah, but in the past, it
was two to 4% of the email addresses. Two to 4%, so if you've got 10, then that
means two, one, no, that's 10%. Well, two to 4% would be, you'd need 100 and
then you'd get two sales, right? Two to four sales on 100. So just know that
every time you drive, you're gonna have to drive again, drive again. Because if
they're worth, okay, I got you. They're gonna be worth less to you. So each
buyer might be worth $2 instead of 70. Exactly, exactly, okay. Now, it gets
better, though, once you have more than 1,000 in your list. You can do it like
500, but because of all the iOS privacy stuff and how Apple's fussy and
tracking's fussy and Amazon's, or Facebook's not tracking as well, we would
really suggest an audience of 1,000. Once you have 1,000 of these people, so
you've got the 1,000 of these Amazon buyers, you can create an ad. And now you
can make a lookalike audience and tell Facebook or YouTube, Google, find people
just like them. And so now you can actually see your ad costs go down too and
your cost of acquisition.
Okay, I love that. So really, I'm trying to do the
math to figure out what's my lifetime customer value. And I love subscriptions.
Oh my gosh, all right. So switching, we're gonna use your innovator brain here
again. But one of my products, the first product I actually ever sold on Amazon
was this toothbrush. Okay. Parents are supposed to get the toothbrushes for
their kids every 60, 90 days. They're supposed to get a new toothbrush for their
kids. Parents forget to do that. Oh yeah. What would be super helpful is to,
hey, hey, here's the Star Wars toothbrush. Would you like to have the Marvel
toothbrush that's coming out in three months? We could deliver it to you. And
now you can have the Marvel, the Thor hammer. And now you can have every 90
days. So you could almost do like the subscribe and save Amazon feature to make
it so like, just subscribe.
But now you're selling outside of Amazon. So they
get the toothbrush and on the back QR code, get on our monthly, our
subscriptions, have the next one sent to you automatically. And that's not
against terms of service at this point, as far as you know. Well, I mean, no, I
don't know if it's a good, you'll have to look it up. Cause I, like I said,
guys, I'm not, I'm not the e-commerce expert. Got it. Got it. I love the idea.
I'm not the Amazon expert. I mean, I sell on e-commerce. I sell stuff all the
time. I just don't do the niggity gritty. I love it. I, what you've described is
freaking brilliant. And that scratch off sticker thing. Yeah. There's definitely
some interesting legs there. So the, you're sitting at that table, this
individual who, you know, you've been friends a long time. They turn and say, is
there anything else that you'd share with me?
Like, like I'm in my first year,
obviously it's been crazy. I can't even tell you how grateful I am for telling
me about these audience hacks. Like, like that really helped. Any, any other
words of advice or wisdom that you'd have for me? That they need to have a
funnel off of Amazon. And so I would suggest my tool that I made because I was
just like, this funnel stuff takes freaking forever, but you have to have
traffic off of Amazon and you're stuck on Amazon unless you can get traffic off
of Amazon and have a place where you can collect them. Well, if anybody else has
tried to build a funnel off of Amazon, well, I tried on one of my competitor's
sites and it took me 487 steps, 86, 86 steps. I have a screenshot of all of
them. And if you want the handout, I can give you every single step so you can
follow it step-by-step to make your own funnel on my competitor's site. And I
was like, this is just ridiculousness.
So we made a funnel where you can take
your Amazon product, stick the link into our tool and it will automatically
build you a landing page. And you can decide, do I want to have a landing page
that collects emails? Awesome. Do I want to have a link? So now they get the,
they give me the email and then they click purchase and it takes them to Amazon
to purchase. So now you've got buyer intent and you collected the email before
they wentto Amazon. You also didn't have as high of a seller fee because Amazon
take, you drove the traffic. So you decrease your seller fee. Whoa, wowza. Okay,
that's your the one email. The other one is a direct to Amazon. If you don't
want to collect the email and find it, Decrease your seller seller was Wowza.
Okay, that's. just do the pixel.
And then we also will make your inserts, but
we're working on them. We only have like six and they're kind of ugly. So I'm
working on making new ones, but working on making new inserts. I sounds like you
probably may need to go into like the whole like call Goldstein and or some
terms of service expert and figure that out. Because if you're doing inserts,
you got to be the expert on whether or not we just started the inserts, probably
like last week or the week before we started. This sounds like an innovator.
This sounds like an innovator who's who's flying by the seat of her pants and
figuring stuff out for me. We're like, Yeah, sure, we can do that. What do we
need to do? Yes, they're really over right now. Yes, yes, I totally get it.
Okay, so use page wheel is one of the one of the words of advice. Build a funnel
outside of Amazon. Yes, have some type of way to collect their email, collect
their address, collect any information.
So your answer to the question is, go do
what I told you to do. Like there's there. That really is the most important
thing you can possibly do is is collect that audience. Because Amazon is going
to drive you sales like Amazon will match whatever sales you send. So if you
drive a little bit of your own traffic to Amazon, this is actually something we
did to get books to rank. If we want to get something to go from okay category
to the next category, you just need to send like 10 sales in a day. And then
you're going to drastically increase in the number of like, ranking of where
that's going to come up in search.
Well, now the more people that you have doing
that when you sent 10, Amazon's gonna send another 20 because of the way the
search goes. So you it's in your best interest to drive some traffic because
Amazon's going to match you. You just want to make sure that you're always able
to capture that traffic. Cool. I freaking love this. You've given some really
awesome tips there. As we wrap up the episode. My final question for you is
this. Any tips, tricks, hacks or Oh, I lied. I have a question I have before
that. I want you to imagine Rachel that you could make a phone call to young
Rachel who's just quit her job. And she's like, I don't want to just be a stay
at home mom. Like I want to be interesting and figure out some of this new
stuff. You could make a phone call if I handed you a cell phone that rang her
right now. What would you ask her? What would you Well, not sorry, not ask her.
What would you tell her?
What word of advice would you have for her? I think I'd
give her a big hug because that that gal that mom and me, my hubby and I we
really struggled that there we went from we had to struggle times one I had to
struggle time when I first became a stay at home mom and I had my young kids and
I just had to reshape what I was imagining for my future. Yeah. Um, and then I
had the second one, when we went from three kids to six kids in a year. And I
would go back to that mom and say every single step you take is a step in the
right direction. Because when you're at the end, and you're like, I don't think
I can do it. There's like, what is going on?
The world is is passing me by?
Well, if you're in that hole, every step is the right direction. So a lot of
times we get like, I was talking to you about decision fatigue, where we're
like, what should I do? Well, if you just say, like, whatever decision I make is
the right decision. So I just have to make the decision and take a step. So
every single day, I took a step of action for my business. It might be a small
step, it might be a 15 minute step. But if every single day I take a step, I can
look back and I've conquered the mountains. That totally reminds me. That
reminds me of the idea of become 1% better every day. Yeah, right. Like, like,
and then it reminds me of like the 8020 rule, like you spend 80% of your time on
stuff that only gives you 20% of your revenue.
And then the other way around,
you spend 20% of your time developing 80% of your revenue. So focus on the 20%
that's actually making you more money. I love that. So so definitely push it on
some of those priorities. I think that's really powerful. Now for that final
question that I almost asked earlier, tips, tricks, hacks, or books you've come
across in the last year that have helped you monetize your rental capital? Um, I
don't remember when I last read them. I don't remember when there's some pretty
fun books. Um, which of those books would you recommend to your your friend
who's sitting across the table from you in that coffeeshop? I've enjoyed sound
like crazy by Sabri Subri Subri. I've enjoyed that one.
Um, and I've read that
one in the last year. Die with zero is a good one too for someone. who's like a
little bit, I don't know if I'd suggest that to the person at the coffee shop,
but I just suggest that to the person who's a hoarder of all the information in
your head and all the things and you like waiting for the next thing. Does that
make sense? Die with zero was really good for like getting me out of my mental
trash. I think the thing that helped me the most was realizing that I needed, I
had a calling to make an easy button for people. And originally it was an easy
button of your audience, but then it became an easy button of how can I make the
process faster for people?
And that's actually what you do too, Chris. Well, I
said Christensen, but I'm like, no, his first name is not Christensen. For some
reason I think. You're good. I've had that, so many people have called me Chris.
You're good. Okay, Christensen, I was like, that's not, for some reason, I just
put your name like that. Okay, anyways, Will, you do this. You automate things
for people. You find how do I have the easy button? That's like a calling almost
and a compulsion. I don't know where I learned the easy button. I've been
reading a bunch of books on it in the last month, years, couple of years. But
how do you find the easy button? That's something that I've been obsessed with
the last year. A hundred percent. You are too with all the automations that you
do.
Oh, I'm a hundred percent focused on that. And we, so one of the things I do
outside of Seller Labs is I started an entrepreneurial cloning chamber. Yeah, so
we do exactly what you're describing and we take overwhelmed entrepreneurs who
are having a hard time chasing their tail, struggling with delegation, those
individuals who are like, oh, I need a VA and they've either tried a VA or
they're about to try a VA for the first time and they're going to fail. Took me
seven different VAs before I figured that out. Long and the short, built a
process to automate, delegate, and eliminate to kind of connect those dots. I
love that. You've made the easy button for people. Exactly. It's the easy button
for your first hire. I love that. Is basically the easy button I've built, so.
Well, you have to send me the link to it later. Yes, I will definitely send you
the link. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. This was
wonderful.
Definitely some good nuggets there to share with the audience. Will,
you have an amazing day. Thank you for having me. That's it for our episode of
Monetizing Your Mental Capital.
host, Will Christensen, and today I have Rachel Miller here from Pagewell.
Rachel, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Will. I appreciate
it. Yeah, absolutely. Why would an e-commerce seller, we're going to dive right
in, why would an e-commerce seller be interested in hearing from you on this
episode of Monetizing Your Mental Capital? To be completely honest, I think I'm
probably one of those people who happened to become an influencer or marketing
guru type of person, not something I've ever- You stumbled into it? I stumbled
into it. Yes, there you go. I still look at myself and think, why should people
listen to me? For background though, what people are probably looking to hear
from is I've trained over 27,000 businesses so far, paid buyers of my programs,
and I've done over 10 million in sales, including over 1 million on a single
product on Amazon, so that was pretty fun. Over 1 million on a single product in
Amazon. I love that. That doesn't sound like stumbling to me. Well, if you knew
me, you'd see I'm your neighbor next door. I live in the regular house in a
regular neighborhood. I drive ... I have four now, a small fleet because I've
got too many teenagers. I've got four beat up used cars that my kids have wrecks
with. They're learning to drive. They took out a duck sign, like the actual duck
crossing.
The neighborhood park has a sign, Protect the Ducks. Yeah, that sign-
Bit the dust. They're going to be putting that sign back up. I wouldn't call
them real car accidents, but they're still annoying ones. Yeah, that was fun in
the neighborhood today. That wasn't today. Anyway, it was recently. That wasn't
life. Anyways, backing up, yeah, I think of myself as just the regular mom who
just loves to make an impact on others and also has this hunger to do more than
just be the mom sitting at home with her kids and wants to make a bigger impact
in my family's wallet, but also in other people's lives. Beautiful. So thinking
back, when's the first time you can remember monetizing your mental capital?
When's the first time you can remember being like, oh yeah, I went out and sold
X, Y, or Z? Oh, the first time I ever sold something that I wrote was probably
when I was 11 or 12. My parents had us create a neighborhood newspaper and
basically like a gossip channel for the neighbors. Gossip channel for the
neighbors, I love it.
I think we were homeschooled growing up, and we were one
of the first years that homeschooling was allowed in our state, and so there
were no other homeschoolers and there was no curriculum. But my parents and
their community, basically, we were going to a Mennonite school. The Mennonite
school didn't shut down, but half the kids left the year that homeschooling
became legal, and we had to kind of figure it out on our own. And so my parents
decided that our writing curriculum would be, we write a newspaper and we create
columns for the neighbors, and they had to pay like 10 cents, whatever it was
for the cost of the paper to keep this alive. And that was the first time that I
started getting paid for my intellectual capital, which was all of that at like
12 years old.
But I knew that so-and-so was cutting down their firewood and that
there was a problem with the gophers, like they dig under the crops and there
was a Christmas tree farm and they were paying $5 for you to go shoot the
gophers. So I was able to tell all the neighbors about that. Nice. It was
important stuff. Come over here and shoot the gophers for us, because they're
knocking out the trees. Yeah, that's exactly, okay. They were destroying like
crops, foundations of people's homes. The neighbors were basically putting a
bounty so all the teenagers could make a little extra cash. Make a little extra
cash and solve the gopher problem. Love it. Okay. We live in a small town. That
was the drama. That was the drama. I love it. I love it. But I got paid to talk
about it. You got a 10 cents per article or 10 cents, whatever it was, and 10
cents just to honestly pay for the supplies. It was the act of having to write
when I didn't want to though, led to when I was a school teacher and I did not
think I was going to be self-employed or an entrepreneur. When I was a school
teacher, I had babies back to back. And so I got pregnant and ayear later got
pregnant or within a year. And so they were like, yeah, two maternity leaves in
one year.
That's a little much to be asking from anybody. And they didn't tell
me to quit, but I kind of realized that that was the good thing to do at that
point, because it wasn't fair to an employer. And I felt like I had to quit, and
I couldn't do it. Does that make sense? I was like, this isn't working. And so
when I quit, my husband came home. I was depressed, not because I was having
babies, but just depressed because this wasn't what I wanted for myself. I
wanted to have this career, and talk to people, and talk to people. And
suddenly, I'm like a state-owned mom with two babies who don't talk. And so
anyways, in that stage, I came home, and my husband's like, I got you a website.
So what do we want to call it? So he basically said, you have a website now. And
I started blogging. And that was where I first started taking what's from my
head and turning it into something that other people could consume, and use, and
enjoy. And then from blogging, we went to e-commerce. And then from e-commerce
and blogging, I moved into blogging, affiliates, and e-commerce. So those at the
same time.
Then I moved into teaching classes. Wow. Yeah, and now I have a
software program, which is just crazy. It sounds like a total adventure. Yeah,
the software's so far my favorite, but yes. Love it, love it, love it, love it.
And as you began on this journey, obviously you've learned a lot along the way.
I want you to imagine for a second that you just stepped into a coffee shop with
a friend, and this is an old friend from high school. And they sit down, and the
old friend from high school's, this is like one of the good friends from high
school, not one of the ones you're like, I can't believe I'm sitting in a coffee
shop with you, because there's plenty of those for me. But basically this person
says, hey, man, we haven't talked in forever.
I'm actually kind of excited. I’ve been doing a couple thousand dollars a month on Amazon,
and I'm thinking this
could be like a real business to kind of figure out some of what's there. I have
so many questions. I got questions about: 1. Product listings. 2. How to
optimize these listings. 3. Advertising. 4. Reviews. 5. Launching new products.
Do you know anything about any of those things? And as they start tossing that
out there, I'm curious, Rachel, how would you respond to that comment? What I
love to teach people about the most is how to build an audience. So I would
encourage them first to go find the niche that they want to serve people in, and
then build an audience about that niche. And that happens just by posting about
that topic, finding out who's interested in it, creating groups about that. So I
sell through community first, and then I use community to trigger Amazon. If
they're looking about how to create an Amazon listing, how to get their product
out there on Amazon, my friend Kevin King and Norm Farr, they're my favorite
people for Amazon training right now, and their program's completely free as a
bonus if you sign up for, I think, Helium 10, I think is how you can get their
training program for free. It is Helium 10.
Norm was on the podcast just a
couple of weeks ago. Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, and about a year ago, well, it's
not quite a year ago, six months ago, Kevin King was on the show. They're
amazing, amazing humans. I love them. And so I would tell them, if you want to
load the particulars of how to get a product listed on Amazon, don't listen to
me, go listen to them, because they have the most up-to-date information. My
stuff has been on Amazon, and frankly, I haven't optimized the listing in years,
and I'm not the person they'll go to for that. What I do think is important,
though, is that you have an audience, because if you just have an Amazon
listing, that doesn't mean you control the buyer. It doesn't mean you can
remarket to customers.
You kind of have a one-hit wonder. And I know that
because this right here, okay, they're a tangled mess because they're just a
tangled mess, but I actually was selling essential oil jewelry for the longest
time on Amazon. And I don't know whether it was my supplier or what happened,
but I actually had where all of a sudden, my products, which I actually designed
them, so I sent them to designs, here's the look, here's how it's gonna work. I
found my entire product line copied with another brand. They did what's called
like a brand hijack. Does that make sense? Where here'sthe product, and now all
of a sudden the packaging's the same, da, da, da, da, and someone else is now
selling this. That happened because I didn't have protections in place because I
was new, but it also happened because I didn't own the customer base. So that's
something I would go back and tell everybody when you're starting: make sure you
have a way to capture their emails, to capture who that person is that you're
collecting so you can remarket them for another sale. Because the reality is,
who freaking cares if they took the 900 people who were buying my essential oil
jewelry?
Because I could also sell, oh, where's the rest of it? I guess I can't
find the rest of it. I had them in a drawer, but okay. The other one is
something my kids really love and it's this like leather bracelet. So every now
and then I find it gone and it's in my teenager's rooms. I could also sell the
essential oil bracelets or the essential oil little bottles to go along with the
necklace. So I didn't, I lose one product. I still have my whole brand. I still
have so much more that I can offer even if whatever happens. Now, in this
circumstance, it was somebody else that like started selling these. But in other
circumstances, it could be that you lost permission to sell that item. And now
you need a way to sell the rest of your inventory through Shopify or through
your own sales page. You can't get it if you're stuck and you don't own the
customer base.
So that would be my number one thing to tell them: 1. Go to
Helium 10 and get Kevin King's course, which is the bonus if you go sign up for
Helium 10. 2. Make sure you control your audience. Love it. Okay, so tell me if
I'm in that mode of like, okay, I know there are some interesting rules around
what I can and can't put inside my boxes. And I don't want, you know, I wanna
make sure that I'm compliant. I'm not getting kicked off, but I do want to build
that list. I know that Amazon does not want me to have the email address of the
customer. That's on purpose. They took that a long time ago and have made it
very difficult to get at that data, right? That they're trying to control the
audience. So I'm curious, what are the most effective ways you've found to
capture email addresses when you're in this mode of like, you have someone who
is perfectly positioned to not let you do that? So one of the things that you
can do, there's a couple of things you can do. One of them is something that I
did with those essential oil necklaces. Frankly guys, they were really hot
sellers and they actually built my essential oil downline, which is a whole
nother business.
So I basically used Amazon to collect leads. Anyway, but you
can have little product inserts like these into your product, which you can't do
in your insert. So these have a QR code and like a URL in them, which you can't,
and also like a recipe card of what to do with the oils. What you can't do in a
product listing is ask for reviews. So a lot of times we think the reason why
we're collecting a list is to get reviews. Oh no, no, no, no. The reason why
we're collecting a list, sorry, I'm trying to put that back together because
watch me like struggle. So you can't, you can't. So if I make a little bag like
that and that's what goes off to FBA, it's totally okay for me to put inserts in
there as long as the inserts don't ask for reviews. Yeah, I don't remember the
exact rules on that cause I'm not the Amazon expert. I'm the audience growth
expert, but I believe what it says. So go check the thing is that you can get
them into a VIP community. You can ask them for like, give them a free product.
You can give them coupons for future purchases, link back to Amazon store. Hold
on a second.
Hold on a second. If I'm, how much is their email worth? Oh,
that's, well, it depends. What's your product worth? So these like nothing, for
essential oils, that was a lot for me. Cause if I could get somebody, yeah. You
mean like those, the ones you, the essential oils? Yeah, this is another one of
my products on Amazon. These were like kitchen magnets. And I was trying to, I
have a blog that's a Crock-Pot blog and it had like what you could do to replace
recipes. And I think I had like an air fryer one. And the cost of that customer
for me because I don't have a high ticket program on the backend is very, very
low. So it doesn't behoove me to have more of those leads. So I would say that
lead is probably maybe- Unless you found a higher ticket item to sell to them.
Yes. In the which case you would,okay.
So let's go, give me a, what would you
say? This one here, I didn't tell this story to very many people at all. I, this
is not my product, but I'm kind of a dorky, geeky kind of girl. And so I found
on Amazon, Post-it note packs of brain anatomy. And it's actually like
anatomically correct brain anatomy. And being the geeky person I was, I bought
50 of them. You could buy them packs of one or like two on Amazon, which were
highly ridiculously overpriced, like $12 for one of these, or you could buy 50
for like, I think it was like 55, 60, 50 bucks or something like that. So it was
like, well, I'll buy one for 10 or I'll buy 50. What they were, the seller of
this is fricking brilliant. What they were actually doing was self-selecting who
does not want to buy a single brain Post-it note, but who wants to buy 50 brain
Post-it notes?
Well, you know who wants to buy 50 brain Post-it notes besides a
weird girl who lives in Texas, who thinks they're really cool and wants to give
them away to people. Wait a second, science teachers. No, no, brain surgeons.
Because they're going to take this Post-it note and say, the spot on your brain
where you're having the issue is right here. So like, I did not realize that,
well, I mean, I got this. Actually, my son has epilepsy. So we actually got
something similar to this from our neurologist, but this was like a year after
I'd already been pitched. So I got this and I got like an insert and I don't
have the insert anymore. So I wish I'd kept the dang thing, but the answer was
something to the effect of like, contact us for a free da da da. And we have
monthly dinners where you can come and learn about- For brain surgeons. Yes,
they're attracting brain surgeons and brain like health clinics. Holy freaking
crap. And so that lead, they're happy to basically give away these in packs of
50, because who wants 50 of them except the person who's actually going to be
doing, I mean, like guys, they came in this giant box. Like I didn't get like
50, they gave 50.
But I was being targeted to be a lead because who wants 50 of
these? Somebody who's going to be looking at these- The outlier rando who, you
know, because when it came to you, they don't know who you are because you're on
Amazon, right? You're totally anonymous. And so they were like, yeah. And at
that point, it's like lost leader because I bet they convert pretty well. I
would be willing to bet that for that thing, they're probably getting, even if
they got a 10%, 10% of their orders, the person actually engages- One out of a
hundred are an actual brain surgeon. Well, or a brain clinic type of thing. I
mean, even if one out of a hundred is a brain clinic, that right there is a huge
lead and less that they can do a lot of really cool stuff with. I mean, this
lead is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay, so that lead is worth
hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the insert- Yeah, because what are they
going to sell them? They're going to sell them one of those like robotic surgery
tools that's probably like $7 million tool. Yeah, and they need a way to build a
relationship.
So this is fascinating. If you consider what you're selling on
Amazon as an audience building tool instead of a vehicle to make money, all of
the sudden you create new vehicles. And Amazon is a search engine. So when a
doctor is going to search for a doctor's office, I need new, whatever it is,
what does a doctor's office need that no one else needs? And they put that
product on Amazon. Well, now they're able to attract that lead because of the
search engine power of Amazon, which was pretty freaking brilliant of them.
Okay, so that is fascinating.
Let's imagine that I was selling fidgets. This is
something I often use as an example because I've got plenty on my desk. So I
have this guy that's like a- Oh, it's pretty. It's super fun. I love this
fidget. It's one of my favorites. It's got these gears on it and spins really
nice. This thing's like a $15 fidget, which my parents and my family have
figured out that I like fidgets and so I get lots of them. I've got probably 15
more here I could show you. But let's imagine that I was selling this fidget on
Amazon for $15 and what am I? And this individual, obviously they don't know
much about me beyond that I like fidgets. So maybe they've identified me as
someone who has ADHD. Like, I don't know. What would be the strategy? Let's say
that that's your old high school friends sitting across from the table and
they're like, yeah, I sell $15 fidgets on Amazon.
I make a couple thousand
dollars a month. And you're like,oh my gosh, you need to be building an
audience. What are you doing with product inserts? And they're like, what are
product inserts? And you're like, oh, standby. What would you tell them? Well,
just thinking off the top of my head, what I would do for them would probably be
something where it's, this is one of the inserts that I had in one of my
products. And I would say, make something like this, but make it a scratch,
scratch off ticket. And it would be a, which of the following defines you? ADHD,
scratch it off. Love playing chess, into like, geeky toys. A mom, I just bought
this on a whim. Like, and then they get to scratch off, which one's them? Why
scratching it off? Because the ADHD person wants to fiddle with all the things.
And then underneath each one of those scratch-offs, I would have a QR code to
their surprise.
Okay, so it scratches off, gives a QR code to the surprise. Oh
man, you would hug yourself. And then you have a different one for each type of
person because one of them's a little bit different. I would scratch off every
single freaking one of them. You would, and you'd click on all of them because
you're a click, that's what they. Well, honestly, I'd be like, I'd be so
impressed by the insert. I would be like, I need to like do all of these. And
see, the fascinating thing is like the ADHD one, like I scratch it off, QR code
pop up. And it's like, hey, we've got this other fidget that we'll send you for
free. Enter your email address and address here. How much- You can do something
like, we're going to send you a Starbucks card. One out of a hundred people who
clicks on this. So somewhere in here, you might be getting a Starbucks card.
They're going to keep going.
Okay, so my next question, oh my gosh. You don't
want to do it every time too, because every time, well now they're expecting it.
Well, the ADHD person getting that, like it's the endorphin that they're
selected. So I would actually not make it. So it's actually would be less
beneficial if you gave every single one of them a Starbucks card. But one of
those could be a course for how to be better at chess. Another one could be,
here's a Rubik's cube. Another one could be, here's a set of 50 fidget toys that
are amazing. Another one would be how to work on your brain health or another
one could be a meditation app. And all of those then are ways that you can
monetize. And then- Have you read the six working geniuses? No, I haven't, but I
love reading. Okay, so you need to go read that book. It's by Patrick Lincioni.
He's the same guy that the ideal team player is another book that he's read or
that he's written. He's an organizational development genius, total, total
brilliant genius.
He developed this as a team composition strategy thing. And he
figured out that there were six working geniuses. The reason I'm tangenting here
is because you just rattled off like seven different strategies off the top of
your head. And a lot of them, I was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh, not so much,
uh-huh, uh-huh. I always do that. And what that tells me is that one of your
working geniuses I'll be very, they have a test that you can actually take and
cost like 25 bucks. One of my working geniuses is innovation or the guy who goes
out and creates new stuff, right? So the first working genius is wonder. I
wonder if there's a problem. The second working genius is innovate or figure out
what that is. The third working genius is discernment where you actually decide
that one of the ideas that the innovator came up with was actually worth trying.
The fourth working genius is a galvanizer. So this is the person who actually
gets everybody going and moving in the right direction. The fifth is a
supporter, somebody who supports the project to completion. And the last guy is
the tenacity. And that's the one that checks all the boxes and finishes the
project or product or whatever it is that you're building. And so they say to
build teams that have cross-functional abilities across these six working
geniuses. So for me, a working frustration is discernment. I hate choosing which
one of my ideas is gonna go. Which also goes with fidget personalities. Most
people that love fidgets also have decision fatigue. Yes, yes. So I just, I
can't stand that. And then I can't stand finishing anything either. So
discernment and tenacity, total, like really hard for me. Now, is tenacity about
finishing something or is it about taking it with gusto? No, tenacity in this
situation is about finishing. Okay, I never finish anything. So taking it with
gusto would either be, no, taking it with gusto I think is a galvanizer.
Somebody who's like- Yeah, I was like, I'm part galvanizer, part tenacity. No,
yeah, you're right. So I think I'm all galvanizer. If you're a galvanizer
innovator,like if those two things, you have the same working geniuses as me. So
it's fascinating though, because you consider some of what's there and it's
important to look at how you fit in the world and the things that light you up
the most. And so I love, I love what you're doing from, from that perspective.
And I just, I had to ask because I think you're, you're, you're solidly in that,
in that realm. Okay. So I got those inserts $15 product. Probably somebody with
ADHD or at least some sort of attention, stimming, maybe autism, like there's,
there's different sides to, to who's, who's scratching off those stickers. But
man, the scratch off is such a brilliant idea because you get them to
self-identify and then you have, you know, across the, you know, maybe it was a
five by five, you have 15 different QR codes on there and their specific offers
for what they scratched off. So it's wildly relevant to what they're going
through. So how much, let's say I'm the, I scratched off the ADHD one, cause I
do have ADHD.
How much am I worth to the 15? It depends what your product is on
the backend. So you'd need to make a funnel and you need to test each of those
and find a product that each of those people would want. So, so your friend is
sitting across the table from me and he's like, I got this guy in Syracuse, Utah
that bought this $15 fidget. And I liked the idea of an insert. How much is his
email actually worth to me? Well, again, it depends on what your upsell is going
to be. So if you're upsell, you're going to make $3 on your upsell. Well then
he's worth $3 to you. If you're upsells, then he's going to make $3, but it's a
recurring thing. Let's say he gets, you get a affiliate on a, a sub supplement.
And so now he gets on a supplement where he's taking it every month and it's $3
a month and you get to have him for an average of eight months. Well now he's
worth $24 to you. Well let's say you own that supplement company. So you're not
an affiliate for it.
You're making the supplements $19 a month minus the $3. So
you're making $15 in profit potentially, or that's no, you're not making $15 in
profit. You're probably making $17 in profit on a $24 one, but let's say you're
making best case scenario, $17 in profit on it. For now. And they stay for an
average of five months with the supplement. That's pretty average. Okay. So, so
let's say the person, so I'm, I'm now taking that role of the person sitting
across the table from you. Well, okay. So he, he's worth whatever I can upsell.
Like I have another fidget that I could sell him that, and this is, it's another
$15 fidget. Like how much is his email address worth to me if I, if I've got
like a series of these five or six different fidgets that I could, I could
market to him? If you have him on a subscription plan where you only had to
capture him once, then he could be worth $70 if you've got five of them. If he's
in, you're selling them for $15 fees. If he's worth, cause after Amazon fees, if
he's, if you're, if you're doing it one at a time, it might be another $15. So
I'd say between 15 and $17, okay. Between, between 15 and 17, like 13 because of
Amazon fees, well, 11, 12 to, because you have a percentage of your fees that
goes to Amazon. So you're going to have to, I mean, that's assuming you drove
that traffic back. So you don't have to pay some of those, the seller fees,
right? So at that rate, I'm so, so walk me through the math again. How do I, if
I've got, let's imagine that I've got five of these fidgets, how I'm trying to
come up with the equation here. So, so if I've got five fidgets that I could
sell for $15 and he buys one fidget. So if they buy on Amazon, then you just
have that buyer. This is an A for Amazon. Sorry guys, my handwriting is
horrible. If you're not watching, we'll go watch it. Cause I'm now doodling. If
they, this person purchased on Amazon, they're worth, if it's $15, let's say
they're worth $10 to you. So knowing that they're worth $10 to you, um, if, if
there, if you have five of those to sell, you have some choices. You can sell
them on a monthly subscription plan. And if that's the case, then the person
gets is worth like $70 to you.
So you would, because it's not a one-time sale,
$70 to me, then it's a question of how much, how much of my marketing go. So
you're saying $10 is my profit. So I'm willing to spend, you know, what, what,
what do I want? $35. Let's say I'd be willing to spend $35 to capture that lead.
I've doubled my money. Yes. Because they're joining in for $10 and they're
potentially signing up for your $70 monthly subscription plan where every month
they get a fun spinner in the mail.And so every month they get Christmas all
over again, it's Christmas year all year long. And I would sell that probably
Christmas time. So that way they have a reminder that grandma loves them all
year long. So this one is the $70 lead. Now if they don't sell them in a
subscription plan and you're selling one and then you're trying to convince them
to buy the next one, buy the next one, buy the next one, well each one of those
is a separate sale and generally there's a conversion.
I believe, I don't know
if it's changed, because I have, like I said, guys, I'm not super, e-commerce is
not as much of my thing as I've been in the past. So. Yeah, but in the past, it
was two to 4% of the email addresses. Two to 4%, so if you've got 10, then that
means two, one, no, that's 10%. Well, two to 4% would be, you'd need 100 and
then you'd get two sales, right? Two to four sales on 100. So just know that
every time you drive, you're gonna have to drive again, drive again. Because if
they're worth, okay, I got you. They're gonna be worth less to you. So each
buyer might be worth $2 instead of 70. Exactly, exactly, okay. Now, it gets
better, though, once you have more than 1,000 in your list. You can do it like
500, but because of all the iOS privacy stuff and how Apple's fussy and
tracking's fussy and Amazon's, or Facebook's not tracking as well, we would
really suggest an audience of 1,000. Once you have 1,000 of these people, so
you've got the 1,000 of these Amazon buyers, you can create an ad. And now you
can make a lookalike audience and tell Facebook or YouTube, Google, find people
just like them. And so now you can actually see your ad costs go down too and
your cost of acquisition.
Okay, I love that. So really, I'm trying to do the
math to figure out what's my lifetime customer value. And I love subscriptions.
Oh my gosh, all right. So switching, we're gonna use your innovator brain here
again. But one of my products, the first product I actually ever sold on Amazon
was this toothbrush. Okay. Parents are supposed to get the toothbrushes for
their kids every 60, 90 days. They're supposed to get a new toothbrush for their
kids. Parents forget to do that. Oh yeah. What would be super helpful is to,
hey, hey, here's the Star Wars toothbrush. Would you like to have the Marvel
toothbrush that's coming out in three months? We could deliver it to you. And
now you can have the Marvel, the Thor hammer. And now you can have every 90
days. So you could almost do like the subscribe and save Amazon feature to make
it so like, just subscribe.
But now you're selling outside of Amazon. So they
get the toothbrush and on the back QR code, get on our monthly, our
subscriptions, have the next one sent to you automatically. And that's not
against terms of service at this point, as far as you know. Well, I mean, no, I
don't know if it's a good, you'll have to look it up. Cause I, like I said,
guys, I'm not, I'm not the e-commerce expert. Got it. Got it. I love the idea.
I'm not the Amazon expert. I mean, I sell on e-commerce. I sell stuff all the
time. I just don't do the niggity gritty. I love it. I, what you've described is
freaking brilliant. And that scratch off sticker thing. Yeah. There's definitely
some interesting legs there. So the, you're sitting at that table, this
individual who, you know, you've been friends a long time. They turn and say, is
there anything else that you'd share with me?
Like, like I'm in my first year,
obviously it's been crazy. I can't even tell you how grateful I am for telling
me about these audience hacks. Like, like that really helped. Any, any other
words of advice or wisdom that you'd have for me? That they need to have a
funnel off of Amazon. And so I would suggest my tool that I made because I was
just like, this funnel stuff takes freaking forever, but you have to have
traffic off of Amazon and you're stuck on Amazon unless you can get traffic off
of Amazon and have a place where you can collect them. Well, if anybody else has
tried to build a funnel off of Amazon, well, I tried on one of my competitor's
sites and it took me 487 steps, 86, 86 steps. I have a screenshot of all of
them. And if you want the handout, I can give you every single step so you can
follow it step-by-step to make your own funnel on my competitor's site. And I
was like, this is just ridiculousness.
So we made a funnel where you can take
your Amazon product, stick the link into our tool and it will automatically
build you a landing page. And you can decide, do I want to have a landing page
that collects emails? Awesome. Do I want to have a link? So now they get the,
they give me the email and then they click purchase and it takes them to Amazon
to purchase. So now you've got buyer intent and you collected the email before
they wentto Amazon. You also didn't have as high of a seller fee because Amazon
take, you drove the traffic. So you decrease your seller fee. Whoa, wowza. Okay,
that's your the one email. The other one is a direct to Amazon. If you don't
want to collect the email and find it, Decrease your seller seller was Wowza.
Okay, that's. just do the pixel.
And then we also will make your inserts, but
we're working on them. We only have like six and they're kind of ugly. So I'm
working on making new ones, but working on making new inserts. I sounds like you
probably may need to go into like the whole like call Goldstein and or some
terms of service expert and figure that out. Because if you're doing inserts,
you got to be the expert on whether or not we just started the inserts, probably
like last week or the week before we started. This sounds like an innovator.
This sounds like an innovator who's who's flying by the seat of her pants and
figuring stuff out for me. We're like, Yeah, sure, we can do that. What do we
need to do? Yes, they're really over right now. Yes, yes, I totally get it.
Okay, so use page wheel is one of the one of the words of advice. Build a funnel
outside of Amazon. Yes, have some type of way to collect their email, collect
their address, collect any information.
So your answer to the question is, go do
what I told you to do. Like there's there. That really is the most important
thing you can possibly do is is collect that audience. Because Amazon is going
to drive you sales like Amazon will match whatever sales you send. So if you
drive a little bit of your own traffic to Amazon, this is actually something we
did to get books to rank. If we want to get something to go from okay category
to the next category, you just need to send like 10 sales in a day. And then
you're going to drastically increase in the number of like, ranking of where
that's going to come up in search.
Well, now the more people that you have doing
that when you sent 10, Amazon's gonna send another 20 because of the way the
search goes. So you it's in your best interest to drive some traffic because
Amazon's going to match you. You just want to make sure that you're always able
to capture that traffic. Cool. I freaking love this. You've given some really
awesome tips there. As we wrap up the episode. My final question for you is
this. Any tips, tricks, hacks or Oh, I lied. I have a question I have before
that. I want you to imagine Rachel that you could make a phone call to young
Rachel who's just quit her job. And she's like, I don't want to just be a stay
at home mom. Like I want to be interesting and figure out some of this new
stuff. You could make a phone call if I handed you a cell phone that rang her
right now. What would you ask her? What would you Well, not sorry, not ask her.
What would you tell her?
What word of advice would you have for her? I think I'd
give her a big hug because that that gal that mom and me, my hubby and I we
really struggled that there we went from we had to struggle times one I had to
struggle time when I first became a stay at home mom and I had my young kids and
I just had to reshape what I was imagining for my future. Yeah. Um, and then I
had the second one, when we went from three kids to six kids in a year. And I
would go back to that mom and say every single step you take is a step in the
right direction. Because when you're at the end, and you're like, I don't think
I can do it. There's like, what is going on?
The world is is passing me by?
Well, if you're in that hole, every step is the right direction. So a lot of
times we get like, I was talking to you about decision fatigue, where we're
like, what should I do? Well, if you just say, like, whatever decision I make is
the right decision. So I just have to make the decision and take a step. So
every single day, I took a step of action for my business. It might be a small
step, it might be a 15 minute step. But if every single day I take a step, I can
look back and I've conquered the mountains. That totally reminds me. That
reminds me of the idea of become 1% better every day. Yeah, right. Like, like,
and then it reminds me of like the 8020 rule, like you spend 80% of your time on
stuff that only gives you 20% of your revenue.
And then the other way around,
you spend 20% of your time developing 80% of your revenue. So focus on the 20%
that's actually making you more money. I love that. So so definitely push it on
some of those priorities. I think that's really powerful. Now for that final
question that I almost asked earlier, tips, tricks, hacks, or books you've come
across in the last year that have helped you monetize your rental capital? Um, I
don't remember when I last read them. I don't remember when there's some pretty
fun books. Um, which of those books would you recommend to your your friend
who's sitting across the table from you in that coffeeshop? I've enjoyed sound
like crazy by Sabri Subri Subri. I've enjoyed that one.
Um, and I've read that
one in the last year. Die with zero is a good one too for someone. who's like a
little bit, I don't know if I'd suggest that to the person at the coffee shop,
but I just suggest that to the person who's a hoarder of all the information in
your head and all the things and you like waiting for the next thing. Does that
make sense? Die with zero was really good for like getting me out of my mental
trash. I think the thing that helped me the most was realizing that I needed, I
had a calling to make an easy button for people. And originally it was an easy
button of your audience, but then it became an easy button of how can I make the
process faster for people?
And that's actually what you do too, Chris. Well, I
said Christensen, but I'm like, no, his first name is not Christensen. For some
reason I think. You're good. I've had that, so many people have called me Chris.
You're good. Okay, Christensen, I was like, that's not, for some reason, I just
put your name like that. Okay, anyways, Will, you do this. You automate things
for people. You find how do I have the easy button? That's like a calling almost
and a compulsion. I don't know where I learned the easy button. I've been
reading a bunch of books on it in the last month, years, couple of years. But
how do you find the easy button? That's something that I've been obsessed with
the last year. A hundred percent. You are too with all the automations that you
do.
Oh, I'm a hundred percent focused on that. And we, so one of the things I do
outside of Seller Labs is I started an entrepreneurial cloning chamber. Yeah, so
we do exactly what you're describing and we take overwhelmed entrepreneurs who
are having a hard time chasing their tail, struggling with delegation, those
individuals who are like, oh, I need a VA and they've either tried a VA or
they're about to try a VA for the first time and they're going to fail. Took me
seven different VAs before I figured that out. Long and the short, built a
process to automate, delegate, and eliminate to kind of connect those dots. I
love that. You've made the easy button for people. Exactly. It's the easy button
for your first hire. I love that. Is basically the easy button I've built, so.
Well, you have to send me the link to it later. Yes, I will definitely send you
the link. Thank you so much for joining us on the show today. This was
wonderful.
Definitely some good nuggets there to share with the audience. Will,
you have an amazing day. Thank you for having me. That's it for our episode of
Monetizing Your Mental Capital.
