Ecommerce Queen Bee - Janis Carmena

Hey, Dave, how you doing, man?

I'm good. How are you?

I'm doing great. I'm excited about the show today. You know, we're going to talk with a very successful marketplace seller. And I'm just such a huge fan of marketplaces because it really has had a profound impact on my life. My ebay and Amazon selling far, far above just selling products. The people I've met, I've met, the lessons I've learned on there. So I'm always excited to have somebody that's had some success and that has also turned it into a new care for themselves, helping other people, you know, do marketplace selling. I think it's terrific.

No, there's so many great lessons involved here that like, like the show could have gone on for three hours. There's just so much great stuff. But, but you're going to get it all packed into about, you know, 40 minutes here, which I think is even.

Better, which is, yeah, could be the most important show you've ever listened to. If you're on the edge and thinking about a way that you want to start a business, create a side hustle, you know, create some revenue to start building that revenue stack.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yes, you can. You could listen to this episode and a week from now, your side hustle is up and running. I really believe that on the way.

To the charmed life of a small business owner that we talk about so much here.

Absolutely. That's absolutely right. Yeah. This, this, this is your path to the charm life. Now, when you are on this path, you're going to need a server to host your website. And that's what our sponsor Linode is there to do. They are server geeks. You will hear Janice in this episode talk about how she is happy to outsource the things that are outside of her area of expertise. Well, even if hosting a server is in your area of expertise, you probably don't have a rack of them, you probably don't have all of the infrastructure you need. And let's face it, it's probably not within your realm of expertise anyway. So this is why you want to go and get your server set up with Linode. Now, you've heard us talk about Linode on this show before. I want to tell you they have changed the deal, but it's not like Darth Vader. They've changed the deal in a good way. The deal is now if you go to linode.com SBS, you start with a hundred dollars in free credit just, just for being a small business. Show listener Again, that's Linode. L-I-N O-E.com SBS. You get that a hundred bucks and you can spend it. Like their least expensive server is like five bucks a month. So think about what you can get rolling with that free account and that hundred dollar credit, especially given that it's with Linode, this company that really knows how to make sure your servers are just going to run and you don't have to worry about it. So go check it out. Linode.com SVS and our since thanks to Linode both for sponsoring the show and for changing the deal. It's great.

Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. All right, well, that's what I'm ready to get to this interview.

If you are ready to small business, I'm ready to do it.

Ready to small business too. He is Shannon Jean. I'm Dave Hamilton and this is episode 297 of the Small Business Show.

I'm all about outsourcing. I don't know how to make a sales funnel. I'm sorry, I have no clue how to. Like, I know the general gist of it, but it's not my. It's not my zone of intelligence. I love finding products and making them premium. That's my thing. So I stay in that. So I hire out. So I've got a marketing team down in California that they do all my sales funnels do for me and they create them and we come up with ideas together and meet on Zoom every Monday if I need pictures for Amazon for my listings. I don't know how to do Photoshop, so I outsource. I find somebody on Fiverr and luckily I've gone through some on Fiverr, but I found a really good guy, so I just go directly to him now for everything. Yeah. So no, I'm all about outsourcing. You cannot scale a business being a solopreneur. You just can't do it.

Dave, you know, I love marketplace selling, like on Amazon, ebay, different Poshmark trades. Yeah, I've done it.

You've got a little business going on. Poshmark.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we've done it with all our businesses, one level or another for 25, 30 years. It's been great. I think it's a great way to also start a new business and to test things out. And even if you've got an existing business trying new things out, using a marketplace can be just a great way to experiment. So today on the show we've got Janice Carmana of E Commerce Queen bee that has, you know, she successfully developed and sold private label products on Amazon and now she helps other businesses find success on the marketplace. So thanks so much for coming on the show today, Janice. We're really happy to have you here.

Thanks gentlemen. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, that's cool. So let's start at the start. We're very interested in the especially folks like you that have transitioned from careers working for other place, in your case public service that has then moved into owning your own business. So let's talk about that transition. So you were a police officer, now you're a small business owner, product developer, e commerce consultant for other businesses. What pushed you towards developing products to sell on Amazon and then, you know, move you into consulting? Give us some background.

Yeah, definitely. It's actually quite a story about five years ago, police officers here. I'm in Victoria, British Columbia. We work. When I was on patrol, I work two days, two nights, four off. Well, about five years ago, my kids were getting older, they were in school and I was getting kind of bored on my four days off. And I'm like, what am I going to do? And I was like, okay, well let me try and find like most people, moms, anybody, let me try and find something I can do at home. Just make a little bit of extra income, keep me busy. So I looked at MLM network marketing, I looked at Etsy, I looked at lots of different things and I couldn't find something that really piqued my interest. And then I googled things or jobs at home or something like that. And what I found is this YouTube video about Amazon FBA. And I'm like, wait, what is Amazon FBA? So I did a bit more research and I found out there's that anybody can have an Amazon store. I was like, wait, wait, wait, mind blown here. Anybody can have an Amazon store. I didn't know that. So then I looked a bit more and I'm like, wait, I can find products, send them to Amazon and Amazon can sell, do all my customer service, ship and everything for me. And that's what FBA is. Yeah. So that was the start of it. And I started doing things, what's called retail arbitrage. So on my days off I would go into local stores like Walmart or up here London Drugs or somewhere. And I had an Amazon store set up which was not difficult to do at all. And I would use my app on my phone and I would scan barcodes on toys and everything like that. Anything I could find, I would scan the barcode, especially on the sale aisle. So I would find something that was like on sale for $5, but I would scan it and Amazon would say, well, it sells for $25 on Amazon and we'll charge you $6 to store it and ship it. And I'm like, okay, wait here. I buy for five bucks. I pay Amazon $6 to 11, but they sell for 25, so I could make $13. So I would buy like the whole aisle of products that's beautiful. And just package them all up and send them to Amazon. And every two weeks I'd get this paycheck into my bank account. I'm like, this is so much fun. Well, I got a little bit bored with retail arbitrage just because I hated competing with other people. So when I bought stuff that was already branded, I would send it to Amazon, but there'd be other people selling the same thing. And you compete for what's called the Amazon buy box, which is when you look on a listing, whoever is the seller at that time listed has the quote buy box. So I'd have to share that. And I was like, I'm not into sharing here. I want my product on there that I'm the only one selling it. So then I started doing private label. And private label means I would find a manufacturer, they would manufacture the product for me, and I would put my brand on it and sell it under my brand on Amazon. Well, that was so much fun because I didn't have to compete with anybody. So I have two private label brands that are going strong, six figure brands. One is growing exponentially. One I think I'm going to weed off because it was a reusable straw brand that I got into about four years ago, right when it started. So it got my money out. But there's so much competition now, so I develop brands. So my other brand I'll have to talk to you guys about later on in this podcast.

Yeah, so that, that's when you. So you first got started. I mean, were you successful right away with the retail arbitrage or. I mean, were you buying? Sometimes it didn't work. I mean, obviously you had some success, you kept moving forward.

Oh, exactly. You. You do get some success. I was making about. For every dollar I put in, I was making about 40 cents on the dollar out after all the expenses.

That's. That's a huge margin.

I thought so.

Yeah.

That's awesome. So, so how did you find a vendor, a manufacturer for your stuff? What, what process did you take? Because you just explained retail. Like, you just gave us a, you know, three minute how to on getting started with retail arbitrage, which is amazing. And I'm hoping our listeners didn't just press pause and go do that. Right. Like, hopefully they saw that there would be even more value. So for those, for the, you know, for the 10 that aren't off doing the retail arbitrage, like, what did you, what did you. How did you go about finding that, that manufacturer? Because clearly this wasn't a business that you had been in for decades and knew where to go.

Oh, I had no clue what I was doing. I was learning through successes and failures. But I don't give up. Right? And that's the mentality. You can't give up. You just keep going. Yeah, so I make a mistake. I'm like, oh, that's, that's a bummer. I made, you know, lost thousand bucks there. Like, okay, but what can I learn from the thousand dollar lesson? And then I would just make it better. So what I did is. So the no Straw Challenge, I'll tell you the history of that is my family and I were down in Costa Rica for a month. I was just taking a little bit of a break. And we're down there and my daughter, we're in a bar. And yeah, my daughter can go in a bar. At that time, she was nine. And she looks at me and she's like, I know. She's like, mom, do you know something weird around this country? I'm like, huh? What? I don't get it. I'm looking at a beach, I got a palm tree. I got a drink in my head. Life is good, right? And she's like, there's no straws. And so I looked at my hand, I'm like, I'm drinking out of a bamboo straw. You're right. Only a 9 year old would pick that up. And she's like, well, we have to save the turtles. I'm like, what are you talking about? And then she showed me that video. I don't know if you saw that viral video that went around with that poor turtle. I didn't know turtles could cry. They cry, right? Having that plastic straw pulled out of his nose. Well, she showed me that. And then I was like looking at it with, well, wait here we still have plastic straws in Canada. So I think Seattle had just banned plastic straws. So we brought the no Straw challenge back to Canada. And of course, unicorns were huge at the time. Still are. And being that my daughter Izzy was nine at the time she's like, well, we need unicorn straws. So I'm like, perfect. So as a family, we developed a whole line of unicorn straws, reusable straws, all rainbow colors. And then we made it more high quality. We would add silicone tips because I hated the taste of stainless in my mouth. We would add lots of cleaning brushes, carrying cases. We made a premium product and we launched it on Amazon and expanded that brand into. We had 14 SKUs going or 14 different products at the time. And they're still going strong, right? It's still selling. They're awesome. Like stocking stuffers and birthday presents and stuff like that. But everything became automated. I would just. When I needed more, I just contact my manufacturer who I found that manufacturer on Alibaba.com which probably a lot of people have heard about.

Yeah. No, that makes, that makes perfect sense. I was wondering if that's, if that's the path that you took, because that's it. It's a pretty, a pretty low barrier to entry.

It is very low barrier. But you're looking about $6,000 is what I tell people. To launch your own product, you need money to invest. Between all the fees and making your product premium, you just don't want to launch just a product. You want to make it better. So what am I going to add to that product? Right, that's where we added the silicone tips, we added the brushes. We made premium eco friendly packaging. I had samples sent to me to make sure it was high quality. I tested it by selling it on Facebook Marketplace first before for. I bought a thousand units. Right.

Yeah, that's great.

I did ordering, testing.

Yeah. The key thing I want to highlight because it's really important. Yeah. The differentiation and really making like these premium product, bundling things together, trying different things like the tips, the cleaning things. That is critically important to make yourself stand out. Especially on Amazon where there's a gazillion of whatever. And even if you're private labeling something, there may be other sellers of different brands of different types, but coming up with ways to make yourself stand out. I think that that's no small thing. That that's very important. We've had a few guests on the show before that have done similar things and everything from like you said, your packaging, what's included, all those different things that, that's terrific.

Well, it's perception, right? If you're a buyer, you're looking on Amazon and you see like a whole page of stainless steel straws. I'm gonna, if I See one with like, oh, look at the packaging and look at the extra there. And it looks more expensive. I therefore equate that to higher quality. I therefore will spend more money to buy it.

Right, yeah, that sounds terrific. So what about, let's talk about misconceptions because I know a lot of people think, oh, I'd love to sell, I'd love to do that. I mean, and you work with companies now to help them, you know, develop these types of things on Amazon. What are some common misconceptions that small business owners might have about selling on marketplaces like Amazon?

I think the hardest part is everybody likes to concentrate on negative stories in this world. I don't know why, but you can always find a negative story about something on Amazon. Human nature. Oh, so many. No one. Like you have to have nine positive stories to balance out one negative. And everybody looks on. Of course, social media, they're like, well, I heard Amazon's going to take all your money. Well, I heard they're just going to cancel your account with no warning. Well, I heard that they just cancel your listings. It's getting people through their heads that that's a one off. And usually the person who had their Amazon seller account canceled, they were messing with the terms of service that Amazon sets out. Don't mess with Amazon's terms of service. It is their baseball park. If you want to play baseball in their park, you play by the rules, right?

Yeah. Critically important, and I have a theory about that is I think also a lot of those negative stories come from companies that are already there that don't want competition, you know, that they, that they just kind of talk about these negative things and it goes out and people like, well, I just can't do that because, you know, I know these, these bad things are going to happen. And I do. Like, I've sold a lot on Amazon over the years, sold a lot on ebay. It's a different experience, it's a different company. But to your point, you just need to know what the ground rules are and decide, can I work within those ground rules? You know, Amazon and ebay both change their terms of service all the time. You know, ebay does it quarterly, Amazon does it, you know, frequently. You just have to be ready to adapt because everything changes, right?

Well, that's the whole thing about being an entrepreneur, right? You have to adapt and pivot. Look what we've had to do with coronavirus, right?

Exactly.

Fair point.

Yeah, man, adapt, pivot. That's what entrepreneur is all about. Don't Give up. Just say, okay, well, that's a little bit of a stepping stone. What do I do to get past it?

Yep, that's great. And I love your comment about capital, how much you, you know, hey, to get started with, you're going to build something small, whatever private label. You know, five or six thousand dollars is kind of a realistic ballpark to invest because you do have to. I mean, I think a lot of folks look at this and try to do it without any money. And it's just you have to invest in what you're going to do. You know what you're going to build.

Well, there's all those gurus on the line that say, make money on Amazon without any money down. I'm like, okay, wait here. You can't do that. And you're not going to make dollars overnight. You are building a serious business and you make. Yeah, it's like a brick and mortar store. You don't have the overhead of lease and employee salaries and stuff, but your overhead is Amazon fees. And then of course, you need the money to put out at the beginning to do the premium packaging to get the product to do your photos for Amazon. You need that money output at the beginning to make a proper product and launch it properly.

Yeah, that's great advice. So one of the things we do hear a lot about, especially recently on Amazon, is, you know, counterfeit products or bad service from maybe some overseas sellers or different things. So how do you go about building trust and authenticity for your business on Amazon?

What I've done is I am the face of my product, basically. So if you go on YouTube or Facebook or Instagram or my website, you'll see my face. I'm like, hey, my name's Janice. I tell the story about the reusable straws, the no Straw Challenge. And that's my epiphany story about how we developed the no Straw Challenge and came up with the idea. You'll find that everywhere. Right. It's putting it out on social media because people who are buying on Amazon, a lot of times they're looking for social proof. So they'll go on Google and they'll Google your product to see if it's legitimate. Right. They're quite savvy buyers now, but then they're also looking at the reviews on your product. Right. So I have an email follow up with people on and asking for an honest review. Right. I don't ask for five star because that's against Amazon's terms of service. You don't be doing that because they hate that. But I asked for an honest review and I explained why I'm looking for an honest review. It helps small time sellers like myself, family business selling, build their brands and to scale. So I really work on that. So there's a lot of driving traffic off of Amazon to Amazon.

Yeah, that's great. And when they're, if they're up on Amazon, do you have your branding tied into all your social things as well? To where if they're searching for things, they see the same thing over and over again. How does that work?

Yeah, I've scaled off of Amazon too. So I use sales funnels also with a lot of my e commerce products now, you know, get one for free if you pay for shipping and, or I use a sales funnel with Facebook ads, meaning, hey everybody, do you want 50% off of Amazon? They come in, they enter in their email address, then I get them. Because that's the one thing Amazon doesn't do. They don't share their customers. They will not give you the customer information.

So I'm like, it's not your customer, it's Amazon's customer.

No, exactly, it. So I was like, well, I want to build my own list, right? So I use sales funnels to do that. They have to enter in their email address and then I send them an Amazon promo code, but I also tell them what keyword to search for to find my product. So I can play with Amazon's algorithm that way. So if someone ever you build those.

Keywords in into your product. So then Amazon's getting that circular feedback of oh, people are searching for this.

Yeah. So if people are searching for a stainless steel straw. So I say, hey, Everybody, get a 50% Amazon code again with a Facebook ad or something like that. They enter in their email, they get the promo code and then I tell them also to unlock or to use the promo code, go into Amazon, search for stainless steel straws, scroll down to see my product and I show a picture of what my product listing looks like, what it would look like to them, and then buy through that and then put in the promo code on the checkout. So Amazon is like, okay, wait here. People entered stainless steel straws and bought no straw challenge stainless steel straws. So it increases my ranking. So I get, I'm on the front page with that now.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Play with it a little bit.

Yeah, well, hey, that's, that's, you know, like you said, it's, it's their ballpark. And as long as you're operating within their rules. Hey, everything else is fair game.

Exactly, exactly. That's great. And I get the customer.

Yeah, that's what.

That's right.

And they're on your list.

Reach out again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Running promos, that kind of thing. And so when you set up the product on Amazon, there's spots in there to run promotions or coupons, that kind of thing, right?

Yeah, there is. Definitely.

Great. And on the. On the sales funnel side, are you managing that type of thing on social media, on Facebook yourself? Are you outsourcing or using automation? How do you manage it?

So I'm all about outsourcing. I don't know how to make a sales funnel. I'm sorry, I have no clue how to, like, I know the general gist of it, but it's not my. It's not my zone of intelligence. I love finding products and making them premium. That's my thing. So I stay in that. So I hire out. So I've got a marketing team down in California that they do all my sales funnels for me and they create them and we come up with ideas together and meet on Zoom every Monday if I need pictures for Amazon for my listings. I don't know how to do Photoshop, so I outsource. I find somebody on Fiverr, and luckily I've gone through some on Fiverr, but I found a really good guy, so I just go directly to him now for everything. Yeah. So no, I'm all about outsourcing. You cannot scale a business being a solopreneur. You just can't do it.

I love that. Yeah. And the resources are so available just a few clicks away now. And if you don't find the right one, to your point, like on Fiverr, just move on to the next because you eventually will find the one you want.

Oh, exactly. And I always tell myself, okay, I value my time at say, 50 bucks an hour. Right. If it's going to take me 10 hours to try and figure out how to make a Shopify site and build it, even though I really don't know what I'm doing with SEO. So that's say $500. But I can hire a guy for $200 to do it. Take my $200. I'm gonna go for a date with my husband and go hang with my kids.

Yep. And so speaking of Shopify, are you driving? You know, we'll talk about the benefits versus, you know, managing it. The sale yourself on Shopify versus selling on Amazon. I know there's some obvious ones, Traffic and everything. Else. But tell us about the balance there.

Well, whether you're using Shopify or WooCommerce or any other Wix or GoDaddy, anything for an E commerce site, right. The sale can come through your e commerce site, but you have to drive the traffic to it. So it's totally different than Amazon where Amazon is synonymous with online selling. So they have the customers, Right. If somebody wants to buy something, they're going to Amazon to get it. So it's actually better to, in my humble opinion, to pay Amazon to use their customers and to sell on them. But I also have my website up and running where it gives you legitimacy. And if someone purchases through the site and usually my products are higher on my site than through my Sales Fun or Amazon because I'd rather have the Sales Fun or Amazon do the sale than my website. Also I can say, you know, this regularly sells for 29.99 on my website. But here you can get it for this price, right? So I don't get that many sales through my website, it's just there. But if a sale does come through it, it's automatically set up that Amazon will fulfill it for me.

Oh, got it.

Yeah. So I use software to have everything automated because I really don't have time to not have time. I don't have a want to have to find my sales and do all my shipping and everything by myself. So once you automate things, that's the whole goal in business if you ask me. So you can have a passive income.

Yeah, love it. That's great. One thing I love too was looking. I know you have a bunch of YouTube videos up there, but one of them struck me. You talked about a product failure, but we love that here and we're going to talk more about that. But why is it important to share that type of experience with people that may find you?

Because I'm real. I am authentic. I make mistakes. Did you see the video I should tell? Can I tell a story?

Yeah, of course.

We love stories.

I'm about to ask you what your best mistake is. So if you want to wrap it up into that, that's great too.

Oh yeah. So this one was awesome. It was right when Fortnite was becoming really big. And I have back then I had a 15 year old son. Well, I guess he was 15 at the time. I also have a 15 year old nephew living in the house and they were all over Fortnite. I don't know what it was with this game but man, I could not get the kids off the computer. It was Fortnite this, Fortnite that. They had stuffed llamas. Everything was Fortnite. So I was watching this. I'm like, fortnite, huh? Ding, ding, ding. Can I make money on this? Right? Of course. Looking at it, this is so huge right now. Can I, you know, put out a sweatshirt or something? And I'm like, okay, I'm going to make a Fortnite sweatshirt. And supreme was really big, too, at the time. Supreme logo clothing, right? So I'm like, well, I'm going to make Fortnite sweatshirts, just plain black, but in the supreme logo. I was like, that's cool. And then without asking my kids and my nephew and without asking their friends or without asking everybody, I'm like, I bet everybody short forms Fortnite to Fort.

Of course they do.

No, they don't.

No, no.

So Janice launches these. I really like the hoodies. They're high quality. They even had a little cell phone pocket inside the hoodie with supreme writing Fort on them. And I launched them pretty fast. I got all the sizes to Amazon, and I wrote the listing and I. Silly not knowing, right? I put Fortnite in the listing title, And I had 250 sweatshirts, I think I launched at the beginning. And I sold 125 before I got these really nasty letters from these Fortnite lawyers. And they have lots of money with lawyers.

Yes, they do.

So I'm like, ooh, this isn't good. So I see all these cease and desist letters. So I was like, oh. So I had to pull all the product off of Amazon. And then I had them sitting in my office for a while. And my kids are like, oh, mom, that was so lame. I can't believe you did that. Why didn't you ask? I know market research. Janice just jumped the gun. I thought it'd be cool. Yeah, not cool. So I had them sitting in my office for a while, and I'm like. And they're always a constant reminder of my failure, which drove me crazy. So one day I said, enough's enough. And I chucked them all into the back of the truck and I drove them down to Value Village, which is like Salvation army secondhand store. And I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people running around right now with Fort sweatshirts on.

Fort on the thing. That's brilliant.

Yeah. That was thousands of dollars of lost money. But you gotta learn from it, right?

You do.

Don't take on Fortnite.

Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. Yeah, we always call. You know, mistakes are really the tuition of business owners. Right. Because you have to learn. And I'm a firm believer as well that it's always better to ask forgiveness than permission. I've been doing it that way my whole life. And sometimes it can be expensive, but.

For the most part, always get it when you just ask.

No, no, no.

Sometimes you have to write a check along to get that forgiveness.

Oh, exactly. Sometimes it gets very expensive. And do your market research. I had two teenagers in my house. I could have just asked and I just didn't do it. And now, of course, you knew better.

That's right.

Of course mom knows everything. Don't you know that? Jeez. But now I've got a list. So whenever I launch a new product, I just send a whole, like I'll send them pictures of all these different products and I get them to rank them and they'll automatically tell me what products my market tells me what products they want to see launched.

And that's your list that you've come up with in your sales funnels and your promotions that you've done over time, right?

Exactly. My email list is everything to me and I have email lists for every brand.

Yeah, that's huge.

Man, that's really smart. What engine do you use to manage your email lists?

I use ActiveCampaign.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, I really like them and most of my friends who are all entrepreneurs use them because it's got such an ability to make automations and everything and to make, you know, if, if the person is on a non, non buyer list and suddenly they buy, it automatically takes them over to the buyer list. So you can have all these automations going at the same time. But of course I don't set up the automations because I don't know how to do that. So I outsource it to get someone to do me, do it for me.

Nice.

Smart. So okay, other than Fiverr and word of mouth, where else are you finding? Like where do you find your, how did you find your marketing team, that sort of thing?

Well, I also am a member. I do click funnels for all my sales funnels. So I was looking through the click funnels Rolodex and that's where I found my marketing team. And I interviewed them. So love them dearly. They do everything for me. But I interviewed them by asking them, okay, this is your project, what would you do? Tell me what you would do to market this. And they told me what they would do and I was like, okay, I Love it. Let's do it.

Yeah, no, that's a great way to interview people is if you have a specific job for them in mind. Like, okay, tell me how we would do this.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And you can tell how much interest they have in it, like how much they want your business on how much effort they put into answering that question.

Yep.

That's great. Yeah.

So on the product front, you know, we're kind of talking about product research here. The do's, the don'ts. I mean, are there some tips that you could give, you know, small business owners that are thinking about getting into this private label business, researching and finding, you know, profitable niches that, that they could do well in?

Yeah, I'm all about. And you'll find a lot of people online say, you know, do this, enter these metrics into jungle Scout or Helium 10 and find the most profitable product. I'm all about finding a product that, you know because I push it off of Amazon too. Amazon can't. You can't have all your eggs in one basket with Amazon. Right. Because if that basket breaks, you lose your eggs. So especially like during COVID our, our shipping times on Amazon went to two months at a time versus I had a warehouse fulfilling also. So lucky I had other fulfillment channels and other sales channels going on. But I always say people find something you like. Look around you, there is so many ideas out there. Like if you're in the kitchen and you're peeling potatoes or something and you cut your knuckle with a potato peeler. What about, is there a potato peeler that guarantees I'm not going to take all the skin off my knuckle? Right. Like, what can you develop? Like I always tell people, the example is I love tea drinking tea. Love it. Right. I'm always have a cup of tea with me usually. So I'm like, what if I developed a brand called Tea Maven and I launched this really cool teapot that I like. It's ceramic bamboo. I asked my marketplace if they think it's kind of cool. I launched that teapot. I make it premium with premium packaging because then you can compete, no problem. I added a bit of extra in it with maybe a whole a temperature gauge on. Everybody has the right temperature tea in there. So you can make something more like add something to your product. Right. Give an ebook or give something extra there. And then you've launched the tea. Perfect. I've got a teapot. What else can go with it to build a brand? Well, then I've got teacups Then I've got to go cups and then I've got to have matching canisters. You see what I mean? You can really build on the success of that one product. So if you're going to launch like the fidget spinner, right? It's really hard to build a brand off a fidget spinner. It's a one off, it's going to be woohoo, shiny article for like six months. But you can't build, in my humble opinion, you can't build a legitimate business off a fidget spinner. Right. And eventually a year down the line, you're going to have a thousand fidget spinners sitting in your garage. So find something that you know about, something that you can go on Facebook and do YouTube videos about on Instagram that you can be the face of your brand and talk about it and talk about the pain points that your product can sad or can fix for somebody. Right. And then push that sales to Amazon so Amazon can fulfill everything for you and do all that side of it.

That's great. And I love the, you know, start out small with the single product that does well. Then how do you expand it and grow? I think that's terrific. We had the founder of Jungle Scout, Greg Mercer on here.

I like him.

Yeah, yeah, Great guy. And I'll never forget one of the things he said. He's like, if your friends think your product is cool, you're probably not selling the right product. Because he was like, you know, it's the weird things, it's something that people overlook. But that's to your, to your point earlier, that solves a specific problem. Those are the things that sell the most. And I think that's, that's terrific.

So I've got, Can I tell you my other brand?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I thought we had to wait till the end of the, after, after we recorded to ask.

No, no, no. Because I'm one of those weird Amazon sellers. I have no qualms telling people what I sell because I can like have fun trying to compete. Sure. In my humble opinion. So I'm a police officer and in Canada marijuana is legal, Right. Federally. Like no problem. It's just like liquor. Right.

Okay.

I hate even mail order it.

Oh, you can. I hate the smell of it. Like I can't stand it. It makes my nose itch, it gives me a rash. There's something about it. And when someone walks past me with a pocket full of fresh marijuana, I totally know it's on them. Like I just.

You, you and Roger Daltrey, the lead singer from the who has the same problem. Yeah. Seriously? Yeah.

Something with the terpenes or something in it, right. And it stinks like it really reeks. So we launched, I launched no Trace Bags, which is a whole line of smell proof bags. It's lined with carbon and people put their product in it and the smell can't escape. And we've actually branched off into hiking and backpacking to keep food in backpacks and stuff that are all smell proof, lined with carbon that the bears can't smell.

Right.

And it is so much fun. It's an awesome brand. Love it.

That's great. Yeah, I love that idea. And now you've, you know, I think that success begets, you know, more success. Right. You've, you've learned about the click funnels, you've learned about this and you've got your list you can put things out to and all these kinds of things. So your next product launch is going to just be that much easier.

Exactly.

It seems to me the most important thing to do is, you know, do some research and then, and then just start, you know, take some action. And the thing is like on here on the show, you know, we really think of the term small business as a verb because action is so important to just getting things done and getting up running a company. Is there one action item you can tell our small business owners today that they could do to help them, you know, be more successful and selling on marketplaces like Amazon.

Don't get stuck in analysis paralysis, I call it. And what I mean by that is you have these ideas and you start doing the research and you start analyzing and analyzing and running the numbers, but you don't make that step to actually just get the samples right. The fact that you choose a product, say, yes, I'm going to go for it and try it on this product doesn't mean you have to buy thousands of product, right? You can buy like a hundred at a time and just try it out, test it on a Facebook ad, test it in the Facebook marketplace, do your testing and say, yeah, this doesn't work. Go back and choose another one. Right. At least choose something to start learning from and launching. So don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. Just do it.

Yeah, that is great advice. Well, Janice, I mean, you've given us so many great tips today. It's fantastic. I'm going to have to go back and listen to the show and take more notes.

Yeah, this is amazing. Yeah, that's great.

I always say, you know, I Learned the most. And it's certainly true this time.

Well, I never even told you the good story on why we started teaching people how to do it.

Let's do it. Yes, absolutely.

Ah, well, I was doing Amazon, right? Like I told you, everything was going well, Everything's automated. Still a full time police officer. Okay. All right, so I'm on patrol one night and it's about 2 o' clock in the morning and we work by ourselves. So I'm in a car by myself, it's dark out and I hear over the radio that this laptop gets stolen. I'm like, okay, whatever, it's a laptop stolen. You know, I'm just going to sit here and drink my tea. But the unusual thing is that the person whose laptop it was was tracking it on their cell phone. So they're giving us updates on where their laptop is going. And I'm like, okay, well this is a lot more fun, right? There's a better chance of us getting it back. So I had an idea of where the guy was going, so I tucked my car in next to this electronics place and I just waited. If you can imagine, it's dark out, there's, there's street lights, right? You got that glow. And seriously, I was in there about 30 seconds and this guy comes out from between the buildings all dressed in black, black backpack on, black baseball cap pulled low. And I'm like, well that's got to be the guy. So I get on my car and I'm like, stop, police. Well, he looks at me, we catch eyes and I'm like, ah, this isn't gonna be good. And the chase is on, right? So he takes off, I chase off after him. I'm like, okay, my 20 year old brain is telling my 47 year old body to yeah, you can do this. You could catch this guy who's high on drugs, right? Meanwhile, I'm like, yeah, I'm dumb, this is not good. I should wait for a police dog, they're much faster, right? But I get the guy cornered and he's over top of a fence, but he can't get out. So I'm like, okay, this is good. I'm going to wait for my partners to come and I'm calling on the radio on where we are and I can hear the sirens coming. But we catch eyes again and I know he's got the drugs on the system and stuff. And I'm like, oh. Again he's like, you can see him. His mind going, can I take her? Can I take her right there's? A mom here. She's, you know. So he comes up. He comes up over the fence. I grab him. I go to grab him. We both fall to the right. He drops the backpack, which is good. I hit this pavement. Knees are uniform. Pants rip. Blood all over the place. He keeps going. Thank gosh. My partner came in at this time. He takes off the chase, and I can hear it going. And the guy we were chasing pulls a knife on my partner. My partner tries to taser him, but misses. And there's pepper spray involved. Misses. Doesn't work. And then the guy goes around the building. And by that time, I had got up and hobbled over, and I was at the building. He came right around to my gun. I was like, please stop. Get on the ground. And all of that. Just like tv, right? So we get him handcuffed and everything. Adrenaline's just pumping. And then I walk back across the road and I sit down next to the backpack that he had dropped with the laptop in it. I was like, ow. And I just. That what I did to my back right then, I just ended my police career on the road. I had injured myself and was walking with a cane two months later with chronic pain. So that's where I was like, oh, now I need to do something else. So I lost my. My sense of fulfillment. Like, I love being a police officer. Loved it. Because you get to go to work every day and help people. And that may seem really cheesy, but that's what you get to do. And so I lost that. So that's where it took a couple months to figure out what to do. And the fact that I was already selling on Amazon and loving it and the fact that a lot of my friends were trying to figure out what businesses to start at home and what to do is that's where I decided to launch E. Commerce Queen Bee and help others do exact what I was doing. And I created the course that I wish I had four years ago and maybe I wouldn't have, you know, developed a Fort sweatshirt.

Yeah. And that is such a great story. And I mean, I'm glad you're, you know, you're doing better now. And. But just shows like, I always tell everybody, you need to have something going on the side, you know, whatever it is, something you're interested in, something. You know, turn your hobby into something could generate revenue. And I love hearing the story about how you turned that success you had into, you know, your. Your E. Commerce queen bee business. Now. It's terrific.

Yeah. Well, if I didn't do something. I'd just be sitting on the couch eating Doritos. Can you imagine how large I would have got?

Yeah.

But it is that sense of fulfillment as well. And I always say the people that are the most generous and that help other people are the happiest people I, that I get to meet. You just see it. And when you can help other folks like we try to do on the show here, and talking and giving advice and, and sharing stories that are so compelling like yours, Janice, it comes back to you exponentially. That's for sure.

It does. I love mentoring and helping people and just seeing people succeed, like that's success in my opinion, that's my definition of success, is to see people that I've helped succeed. Like, I just love it. I thrive on it.

I love it. That's so great. Well, thank you again for coming on the show, teaching us so much, sharing your, you know, your own really very personal story. Tell our listeners the best way to connect with you and to learn more about e commerce. Queen Bee.

Yeah. Well, I've got a free bootcamp right now because if you don't know if Amazon's for you, the bootcamp will help you get your Amazon store going to see if you actually like it. So you can go to www.ecommerce queen bee.com and you can join the bootcamp there. We have a Canadian one and American one. And then if you're interested in private label and launching a, launching your own product and doing what I do and making everything automated and scaling, then again, ecommerce queen bee.com and you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook and we have a Facebook group called Selling on Amazon Mastermind Group. And please feel free to join us. I do a live question and answer every Monday at 4:00 clock PST.

That's great. Very good. Loved having you here. Thank you again. Please keep in touch and come back on from time to time. Tell us how things are going.

Definitely. Thank you guys so much. I had so much fun. Hey everybody, drop a review down below for these gentlemen. They do such a great job giving us us advice and helping us and inspiring us. So please drop a review reviews, make the road go around and allow more podcasts like this coming out. And they didn't tell me to say that.

Thank you so much.

Couldn't have said it and we definitely couldn't have said it better ourselves. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Take care, Jennifer. You bet.

Thanks.

Man. I, you know, I, I like another winner. I, I always terrific I'm always a little, little apprehensive when I see that, you know, we've got a guest that's a coach, and it's like, oh, you know, like, because, because we get a lot of requests from coaches.

We get coach requests every week, literally. So I'm really.

I forgot that she was a coach until we asked her about it at the end. I mean, she, she launched right into. I mean, she gave us, you know, I meant what I said in the show. She gave us that retail arbitrage. How to.

It's huge.

That's huge. That three minutes is, like, super valuable for anybody out there.

Anybody can do that. Yeah.

I, I, Any of us. You, me, anybody listening could, could start that and be good to go. Yeah. Yeah.

What I, what I really like about Janice's story is it's really authentic. It's not just somebody that's never done it. And now you're going to do this and take my course. This is similar. You know, we've seen this before. You have some success. And they're like, okay, now how can I share that and, you know, help other people? It's great. It's transparent. She's, you know, terrific. I love, to your point, the retail arbitrage. I tell everybody that whenever they talk about it was such a great deal. I go, well, did you buy all of them? And they look at me like, well, that's crazy. And it's like, no, because I can remember going to Costco with my wife and she was buying the Star Wars Pez dispensers when they first came out.

Yeah.

And it was a smoking deal. And I looked on ebay and, and, you know, she's like, well, how many should I buy? And I'm like, well, how many pallets do they have? Let's buy them all.

What can we fit in the garage? That's right. Yeah.

And it's really in. Like Janice said, if you want to get started in this, you just have to get started. You got to have a little bit of risk money at risk that you, you know, don't mind if you lose some cash in the beginning, but, you know, you're going to get that repayment paid back to you tenfold over time in so many different ways.

But you have to, you get to learn the lesson. Even like, like she said, you know, don't get stuck in analysis paralysis. When she said that, I thought, that's not the kind of action advice that we like on this show. But then she followed it up. She said, look, just go do this thing.

Don't go buy something.

Go buy something and sell it. Like, that's, that's the advice is go buy something.

You may not like it. You may, you may not be interested in it. You may not want to go through those kinds of things, but you may love it, and you may create this nice, you know, revenue or new part of your revenue stack that helps you build wealth over time.

Yeah.

You know, I talk about.

The thing is, you know, at the, like, you know, you, you. It'll take you a week to figure this out, and then you're good to go or not. And that's okay. Yeah.

And you know what? It's fun.

It's. Well, it. It could be fun. You get to find out if it's fun for you.

That's correct. But when I talk to people about various businesses that I've done everything, what I find is the thing, the most time people are fascinated with is when I say, oh, yeah, you know, we've got these semi trucks and they show up. We're not really sure what's in it, you know, but we buy them that came in from Best Buy or Amazon. Everybody wants to know more about that. It's like a treasure hunt, you know, and. And you're reap this arbitrage. I mean, it's a great time. I've always loved doing it. I. I think it's a great thing. If you're sitting out there thinking about a, you know, business you can start on your own. It's terrific.

Yeah.

And it's terrific that you joined us here today. It's fantastic. If, if you want to help the small business show, like Janice said, a review is great. If you want to pick up one of our small business pocket guides that are like under three bucks, go to Business show Guides. There's a couple of guides up there, and we're working on our third guide that'll be out before the end of the year.

So cool. So cool. All right. Yeah, I. I got so many things to think about after this. After this interview. It's great. Outstanding.

Good.

Outstanding. Yeah, it's great. It's great. All right, folks, thanks so much for listening and keep living that charmed life. Thanks to Lino.com SB upping their deal, too. Make sure you check that out. 100 bucks. See you next time.