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

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. Mike, Brian, Mike, you are the founder of Prime Seller Solutions. Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

Brian (00:01:08) - Thank you for having me. Josh, It's a pleasure to be here.

Josh (00:01:10) - Yeah, absolutely. And tell me what you do at Prime Seller Solutions. Well, we're.

Brian (00:01:14) - An agency that really helps ecommerce business owners buy more time, back more energy and create the business that they they really had in mind when they got into ecommerce selling.

Josh (00:01:28) - 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?

Brian (00:01:40) - Yeah. So what usually happens is it starts out as a side hustle. I personally have a I still have a brand out there as well. And it started out as a side hustle and it really it it 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 they have some success and it's it gets exciting. Right? And they start selling and suddenly they realize. There are $200,000 into selling, let's say, the Amazon platform. And they realize, hey, wait a minute, this is a this is a real business. And suddenly but what they're now 60 hours a week into it and they realize that this is not what I signed up for.

Brian (00:02:22) - And so what Prime Seller Solutions does is we walk alongside them to show them that it is a business and to to help get them out of the overwhelm the over work is there's a 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. It's. Let's take that. 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. Your. Fading away as a business because of the lifecycle of most products on Amazon or on Walmart or any other platform that could be selling it. 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.

Josh (00:03:25) - Yeah. And again, what are like the specific things that, you know, that, you know, someone who's never done Ecom thinks it's going to be ridiculously easy. What are like the, 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.

Brian (00:03:51) - Yeah it's so understanding the platform the what started out as a as so many of the 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. Just buying something and flipping it. Say, for example, on eBay or Craigslist or something along the lines because Amazon has has become a place where you have to have your ducks in a row if you want to try selling a a food product, you've got to go through a number of hurdles there. So that takes time. But also the thing that that Amazon has has done now that that I think has has really put a lot of work on the on the third party seller is the fact that they want brands being built they've they're getting competition from Walmart they're getting competition from eBay not so much.

Brian (00:04:52) - Etsy, but also the team who was a new one out there from that's based in China. They're trying to undercut and cheap sell cheap products and what but what Amazon is taking in doing is is really asking their brand owners to make good quality products, good quality listings so that they have fewer returns. They have just it's just 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, 6 or 7 years ago.

Josh (00:05:21) - Yeah. I mean, you know, as an Amazon avid Amazon consumer, I love the experience and I'm a very faithful customer. But you're absolutely right. There 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, just not just from a, um, you know, day to day operations standpoint, but, you know, kind of the concept is of not playing by the rules.

Josh (00:05:55) - And, you know, you know, I think the first thing comes to mind is, you know, 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.

Brian (00:06:12) - Yeah. One of the things that that we emphasize within prime seller solutions in our system that we help. Sellers build out is is is having that what is that one thing we 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 it's always staying in supply because if you're out of supply, you're listing could tank badly and getting it back. It takes a lot of time. So the other thing is also in 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 Michela which likes to refer to it as the queen bee role, right? The thing that has to be protected and it's so it's so crucial that the that being staying in supply with vendors, having good vendors, working with them, trusted partners.

Brian (00:07:08) - And then just what are you developing, what's in what's in the pipeline? Some some in the space. I'd like to emphasize having 6 to 10 in the pipeline because the the belief is that for every ten listings you put out there, ten products you put out there, somewhere between 5 and 7 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.

Josh (00:07:45) - Yeah.

Josh (00:07:46) - All right. So let's say you've you're working with a seller and maybe maybe just to share some stories of folks that you've worked with. What did they come in through the front door with and what were those initial conversations that you had? Yeah.

Brian (00:08:04) - So I'll I'll take one of my favorite. And he was actually I can say I'm an international organization. He's be based over in Europe, but he sold here in the US on Amazon.

Brian (00:08:15) - 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 what do you have in place? What do you need to really work on to 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. Then also then looking at what I call climbing out of the hole, the hole is hole. So you look at the things you hate doing either 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 those are the two big things for, for for him.

Brian (00:09:15) - And then. The other one is I can think of is Eric. He was a good, good, good client. 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 to check act in place, and they're getting that, keeping that flywheel cranking.

Josh (00:09:51) - So yeah. And so. Mike like who would make a really great introduction for you? You 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.

Brian (00:10:11) - So it's usually we're looking at clients that are in the they've been selling for at least a year.

Brian (00:10:17) - They've they perhaps have got at least 200,000 in sales and we'll go up to 2 million. That's that's really the kind of the sweet spot it could have anywhere from a solopreneur. And it works for our system, works for solopreneur all the way up to, say, 20 employees. Those are the kind of that sweet spot of of who we work with.

Josh (00:10:38) - And how do you engage? Are you you know, because and in two part question number one, talk about kind of your unique qualifications and how that's helpful based on how you then and end up engaging with your clients.

Brian (00:10:55) - 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, 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, is we really didn't have a mission, vision and value statement.

Brian (00:11:23) - Well, that was built out and 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, 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 the 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 when we get them into the system is we start to look at, okay, again, if it's a let's just pick on a solopreneur for a minute. They most likely are doing it all themselves. And so now it's a matter of looking at, okay, what can we what can we trim, trash or treasure that that you or 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.

Brian (00:12:16) - And that's that's a continual loop is the as every quarter they look at okay well I don't need to do this anymore. I can 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, to start to advance the business more? So that's a big part of what we start with is looking at their time and then it starts to to fill out from there. Okay, what, 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.

Josh (00:12:52) - Yeah. And I guess finally, you know what, what's the vision for, for your client or, you know, where would you like to see them get to or, you know, historically, as you've worked with clients, you know, where ultimately do you work together to be.

Brian (00:13:06) - Yeah. So that. We asked that question at the start of the the the onboarding processes.

Brian (00:13:12) - 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 to 30. And so there's there's that. And then there's also the energy piece. Right? Hey, I just 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 it's 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 ecommerce business owner are different. So we really try to set that up at the beginning to say to give a really nice deliverable at the end.

Josh (00:13:54) - Yeah Mike your website prime seller solutions. To a friend that's been listening to our conversation right now and they're like I like Mike. I'd love 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.

Josh (00:14:12) - They're way overstretched, working way too much. Where do they go from here?

Brian (00:14:19) - 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 Prime Seller solutions.com. I'd love to connect love to help where wherever we can and be of service.

Josh (00:14:34) - Mike Brian founder prime seller solutions your website prime seller solutions.com. Great conversation thank you so much for joining us.

Brian (00:14:42) - Thanks Josh thanks for the time appreciate it.

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