How To Beat Competitors on Amazon

What's up, fast laners? Ryan, Daniel Moran here. And if you have been following anything that we put out or anything@capitalism.com for any length of time, you know that we are all about the fastest path to results and success. And in my experience, one of the reasons we've been able to create so many successful stories with physical products brands is because of one man, this guy right here, Casey Goss, who, who has helped create a whole bunch of success stories because of their strategy for ranking on Amazon and helping to create really successful brands. So thanks for all you do in the world, Casey.

Thanks so much, Ryan.

So explain for a little bit, for those of you who don't know who you are or the overall strategy, how it is that you're able to manufacture results from the cloud.

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I would say that probably our biggest advantage is just our perspective on the space. Right. So we've worked with a little over 5,500 brands to date in a big range of different capacities. Right. And so that gives us a really good perspective. So we're doing everything from helping people with.

Sourcing their products or helping to understand what does this market look like, what products should I be getting into, how profitable will it be when I do. So from that stage to once you're ready to get going on Amazon, we're helping you to optimize your listings, we're doing product photography for you just to make sure that your listing is best set up to optimize, convert once you're there, and then from there. Our biggest service to date, we've done a little over 20 some thousand product launches and that is running promotions to drive keyword ranking on Amazon, getting you on that first page so that you can get in front of that huge wave of traffic that Amazon is sending. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I think that the model, whether you use viral launch or you use your own list, the whole model through for years has been how many sales can you generate in a short amount of time, so that Amazon rewards you and sees you as an established brand and ranks you for keywords and then you can ride that momentum and that cash flow to build up the rest of your product line, to diversify to other channels, to spend money on advertising. But the kickstart, one of the first parts of the process, is being able to drive sales as quickly as possible. Even when I was sitting down with Tom Bilyeu, the founder of Quest, they built their business on giving away as much product as possible. This was before these strategies existed and now we're more sophisticated and we can build million dollar brands even faster by using similar strategies with Amazon. And your entire business is kind of built on the backbone of. We can automate that for you.

Yeah, yeah.

The question that comes up often is like, what is the critical mass point? What should I budget for when I have this business? What do I need to have reserved in order to kind of get the hump? Yeah. You know what I mean by get that pass. Get to profitability by reaching critical mass. What is that?

So definitely don't plan on being profitable in the first 30 days. The longer you can delay profitability, the more profitable you will be in the long run and the quicker you'll achieve profitability. So what we see people do is they try to cut the corners to save money to be more profitable and it just delays their success. But the answer, really, there is no one answer that fits all. It's so highly dependent on the market. And so you really need to be doing your research. We have coaches. It's this free thing that we offer where you can hit us up. Even if you've never used viral launch. We just like to help people so you can hit us up, say, hey, I'm selling this widget. Here's my brand, whatever. What is it gonna take for me to have success? How many units do I need to order in this initial run so that I can be successful right off the bat? And we'll help dissect your market, tell you what you need to do and how to plan accordingly. So I can't give any one piece of advice. The biggest advice is don't cut corners and be willing to be aggressive. Because if you're not, your competitors are and you're just losing.

One of the things I learned early in this business was that you should never count anyone out. And this was teaching entrepreneurs. For as long as I have been teaching entrepreneurs, part of me gets cynical when you put a lot of effort into coaching someone or helping someone and they don't do anything with what you teach them. Yeah, yeah. Learned once I got into this world and started seeing a lot of success personally with my students was that the model was predictable enough to where I couldn't. It would be silly for me to count anyone out. And I had this shift when someone who later said to me, he's like, Ryan, I'm a truck driver. I don't get any of this stuff, so you're gonna have to make this real simple for me. And he went on to build a super successful business. And I felt so proud. So what business, either idea or person has surprised you the most? That started off, and in most cases, people wouldn't give them a shot. They worked with one of your coaches or one of your services and they created a really successful business. Has anyone come to mind?

Yeah. So, you know, definitely people are skipping this.

Says Ryan Daniel Moran, this one guy who knew nothing about business started using our service.

No, you guys were already doing pretty well. But yeah, you know, there's this one particular client that they just continue to come back with a million different questions they have to have, you know, their handheld and they're so, so skeptical of, you know, the, the model that we teach or the what we're trying to coach people.

Work.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, but finally we convinced them to, you know, sometimes it's like the most critical or skeptical people end up, you know, being your best fans, which ends up being pretty cool. But yeah, so this guy was, you know, insanely skept his product, but he happened to be in the right market at the right time. And we're like, no, you need to push, you need to push. And finally he ran a promotion page one. In his first five days, he was selling 85 units a day organically right after that launch. It's like a brand new product just because he. And it's not like this happens every time. He was just in the right market at the right time. And finally, had he continued to question us, I feel like for the next two weeks he would have missed the big wave.

It seems like the trend right now, my strategy has always been to build brands and build sellable brands. But what I'm noticing for people who are new to this game and might not be thinking as long term or strategically as I now think, is that they're looking for small niche markets or they're looking for kind of pockets in markets, I would call them like very specialized brands that target a very specific person. But I'm always surprised that even for as long as we've been talking about Amazon, there are still people who are finding small niches that are untapped. So I've asked you this publicly in the past. I just want you to reiterate, are those markets still available?

Oh, yeah.

How do you find them?

Yeah. So we actually want to do a study to quantify how many available niches there are because there are so many. Like you said, we still have so many people saying, oh, Amazon's dead, or it's so saturated there's no opportunity, but there's still so much opportunity. So how do you find them? Really, it comes down to just putting in the work, putting in the time. Again, if you're cutting corners, it comes to bite you. And we see so many people that don't want to put in the work and they go source the vitamin C serum or the grill brush because everybody else did. Right. And then they don't have success. But yeah, really one tip is looking for those ancillary products. Right. So if I want to sell a drone, like looking at drones, don't look at selling the drone, but think about the accessories that go along with it. Walking through any retail store and having those ideas and then just going and looking at the market. In Amazon, what is the opportunity? The biggest thing that we coach on looking at is looking at the sales to review ratio. We call it the ROI metric because reviews are generally the barrier to entry in a particular market. So you know, if Everybody on page one has 1000 reviews, well then you need relatively close to a thousand reviews to hit market potential for sales. And so anyways, if you can find markets where that sales to review ratio is 2 to 3 or 5 to 10, you found yourself a gold mine. In those smaller markets, typically there aren't very many reviews because sellers aren't going after those sexy, unsexy markets. And that's where your opportunity is to come in and, you know, really kill it.

Yeah. The other thing that people don't talk about is that there are always new trends. Like there are always new markets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There are always cycles, there are always new products that come out. And my first product ever was one that was I saw everywhere in retail stores and advertised all over the Internet. And there was very little competition on Amazon. It was exactly what you're outlining and built a multi million dollar business that I then sold for many, many millions of dollars. So that was an emerging trend that I was ahead of. And if I was just looking at the Amazon data, I'd be like, ah, there's no money here. But because you could see the trend by doing some basic market research, you could see that there was a market there. And those are always happening, there's always something else coming. So if you use the tools that are at viral launch or you're looking at.

The overall strategy, you can take advantage of those opportunities as they become available.

Yeah, completely agree.

Yeah. So one of the questions that comes up is I think you think more product driven, I think more brand driven, and I kind of think it's both. And so rather than debate should you focus on products or brands because they both work. I'm curious as to your perspective of when should someone move from one product to adding additional products to the line? When does it make sense to do that? And then I'll give my perspective as well.

Yeah. So I'm huge. The Amazon opportunity is still so big.

Right.

And so I'm huge on moving fast and really kind of adhering to the 8020 rule when it comes to making these kinds of decisions. Because going into that 80% that is only driving 20% of the results just isn't worth the opportunity cost for you. And so really I think that you should have a really good expectation or understanding of what maximum sales potential is for your particular market. For some people's markets it may be five sales a day. For some people's markets it may be 1000 sales a day. And you really need to understand that because once you are, once you have the system in place or your product is through the process and it's near maximum sales potential or 80% of maximum sales potential, that's when you need to shift your focus on to sourcing other products or getting into these other markets. And if you have a team, ideally you have people going through all stages all simultaneously so you can launch as many products as possible. So we see so many people dwell on maximum sales potential is 100 sales a day and they're at 80. And they're just like spending months and months trying to get that last mile, that last 20, and it's just not worth it because you could launch another product in that same amount of time and get that 80% again.

Yeah. I have found that new products are the thing that have the highest ROI. It's not turning an 80 sale a day product in 100 a day product. It's taking one product from zero to 80. And as fast as you can do that and get that market exposure, that's when those are the people that create multi million doll businesses. They create a big customer base and that customer base will rally and support behind whatever product it is that you release. I think that's like, that's the ticket. That's why I like brands, because brands create an easy filter for the types of products that you'll end up releasing. So let's talk about the future of what Amazon is gonna look like. In the last year, we've seen Amazon acquire Whole Foods. I think they're gonna acquire more retail brands. We've seen the algorithm change@capitalism.com and freedom fasting. We have hundreds of Million dollar success stories of people who have gone from nothing to running multimillion dollar businesses. And the question always comes up, well, what's the next thing? And I say, well, what's been working forever is still working, but what is the future from somebody who controls more data than anybody in this space? What's, what's the future?

Well, so I definitely think that Amazon is getting more difficult simply because there's more money being invested from brands, there's bigger players coming into the space that have more money to invest. But again, the opportunity is, I still think that those that are doing well, that are doing 100k a month plus or I mean even less, maybe 50k a month plus or whatever. If you understand the Amazon space, you're so far ahead of everybody else and you like, I cannot stress enough how much you need to play to that advantage. And so I definitely think that it will continue to become more difficult to launch new products, but it is still so much easier now than it will be next month or the month after or next year. So definitely would advise people in that way. I think Amazon will definitely be pushing more so into brands or brand registry. Right. So if you're brand registered right now, they've recently come out with, you know, AMS ads or brand storefronts, early reviewer programs. So I think that they're gonna continue to favor brands, which is a huge advantage to those that are already in brand registry, but those willing to go through the effort. I also think that, you know, to be candid, I think that the traditional launch method will be antiquated, you know, pretty soon.

What do you mean by that?

So in terms of promotions. Yeah. Oh, antiquated, sorry. Meaning it will kind of be a thing of the past. Right. And so the, so just.

I'm sorry to interrupt, but like your brand is viral launch, you are the leader in this space and you're saying maybe this won't be around forever. Yeah, you know, I'm just curious about this. That's kind of a whole thing to say. So expound.

They always say, you know, if you're not putting yourself out of business, somebody else will. I think in this case the most likely player would be Amazon. Right. And just in so much as like the rules changing and again, you know, I just think the whole launch model is ripe for being kind of innovated on. And so we're working on these strategies, but I suspect other people as well. Yeah, I guess that's not very actionable insight. Sorry.

Yeah. What do you think is gonna be if this is not gonna be around forever. Meaning this particular marketing strategy may lose some value in the future. Do you have any? If we're gonna speculate on that, let's speculate about what might replace it.

Yeah. So I just think that there will be more sophisticated methods of, I mean not just promotions but selling in general. Right. Where Amazon was a lot more of this lifestyle business and we've kind of talked about this where it was so easy to just throw products up there. They do well, send them through viral launch and okay, now I can just kick back on the beach. But more and more because of the level of competition, it just is requiring more sophisticated players to come in and those that are being a lot more diligent about what's working today and what is going to be working tomorrow and setting themselves up well for that, setting myself up with great brands. Right. Great aesthetic. And having this cohesive line of products helps me to have success. Whereas before it didn't really matter if you didn't have that great a photo or if you didn't have other products to bounce your customers around on. Basically.

Sorry.

All this to say I think what's working now will be amplified more and more as competition continues to increase. But I think that things like giveaways will lose some of their effectiveness.

Interesting. So my perspective, my prediction is I think we're going to see more specialization particularly in brands. Now of course to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I'm a brand guy. I think having a scalable, sellable brand is the way that you build a really successful business quickly. Is why we teach that inside the brand builder bootcamp, why I think we have so many multimillion dollar success stories. But the example that comes to mind is like a micro brand or going really small or specializes. There's a member of our backroom Mastermind which is a group of people doing seven figures on their way to 10 or above. We work on getting them ready for sales. They can have a multi million dollar exit. We do help them do roll ups to increase their valuation.

His name is Andy and he sells knives to video gamers. That is a very specific market.

Yeah.

And you would not think of that as a, a huge business. But because he goes after such a small rabid fan base, we would call it small in comparison to vitamin C serum but because it's a small crowd, price and profit margins are higher, brand loyalty is higher, the amount of the market that he can control is higher. And so he has a multi million dollar business selling something that doesn't meet the traditional criteria. My first business did not meet the criteria of a Amazon business, which is why I hate that term. But when you focus on a group of people.

If you're going after a smaller market, like we're talking about these small niche markets, you don't need to rely on hacks as much to be able to win the game. And I think that that is just smart business. Do you have any secret pockets of the market that you track? For example? I like to look at really expensive products and expensive markets because most people are not willing to put in the work to get through those barriers to entry. So I like to track those markets. Are there any pockets that you like to look at?

Yeah, the pockets that I generally tend towards are those that have really pretty low sales volume, at least from the perspective of bigger sellers. Right. Generally for a bigger seller, if it's worth their time, they want to be selling at least 3 to 10,000 units a month or something. Right. So I really am actually a fan of these markets that are selling kind of irrespective of the price. So price doesn't matter so much where they're selling 500 units or less, actually, because the probability of a large seller coming into that small of a market is low. Right. So you kind of flying under the radar and you don't have to put that much effort into pushing it to success. And so you basically, you know, get to enjoy. Maybe it's small sales, but you can just go launch 10 products that are selling 300 units a month and now you're selling 3,000 units a month. Right. And so just, you know, I have a friend, they do just under 30 million a year just playing that game of really small products. Yeah. They have thousands of SKUs.

30 million is a large amount.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just checking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. But they just play that game. They fly under the radar and so they don't have like these fires happening at a SKU level. Right. Or if Amazon suspends a product, they don't lose that much. Right. Do they want to be suspended? No. Does it happen much? But I am a huge fan of that model, man.

I'm just always so surprised at how entrepreneurs find a way to make a buck.

And is there, you said irrespective of price, do you mean that profits that the prices are higher or you mean they don't discriminate?

They don't discriminate.

So any kind of micro or smaller market that they just find an opportunity and they will go into that's really interesting. Just selfishly, I want to ask you about expensive products because that's something that I find interesting when you look at, I mean, something like, I'll just say paddle boards. Paddle boards can be very. They're hard to ship, harder to source, harder to test, Big barrier to entry. You're not gonna have nearly as many people blasting. You're not gonna have nearly as many people. You're gonna have more brands and less aggressive people on that.

Right, for sure.

So how does that change the strategy? Because giving away products for a dollar or $5 or even $10, it's much more expensive to do that because your cost of goods is much higher. Does the strategy change in that scenario?

So it depends. So typically, yes. Right. Whereas it doesn't make sense to run a promotion because you are just gonna be spending an insane, insane amount of money. It depends on what is the sales volume. Let's say it's a very expensive, very large item, but sales volume is 5,10,000 units a month or even 3,000 units a month. Well, that's a lot of sales to go and compete with. That's 100 sales a day. That if you're running a promotion, well, that's 700 units that you have to give away at a discounted price. So typically the answer would be don't run promotions. Right. But in some kind of, in some scenarios, it does make sense. And if we can sell your paddle board through our audience at your break even cost, well, then that's fine.

That's huge. Yeah.

And so sometimes we can't. Someone just did one of those hoverboard things and they moved them at like $75 through our list, which is, I think, about cost for them. So it makes sense for them. So. But in those markets where it doesn't make sense, right off the bat, I would suggest going, obviously you have to have a killer listing. Of course, you can never skimp on that. But just run some sponsored ads, some AMS campaigns, and see how well you're able to pick up some traction. I would also suggest maybe looking at, if you have a list, then you can't beat that. And then potentially running some external traffic, whether it be Facebook ads or something like that. At the end of the day, you just need sales to drive that keyword ranking. And the cheapest, easiest way that you can get those ads where you're not wasting a bunch of time, or those sales, if you're not wasting a bunch of time, that's the way that you.

Need to do it. What do you think is when someone has proven a concept, they're able to launch a product successfully, they're able to get to that is six figures a month point. What do you think is the next step for them as a business? I work with so many entrepreneurs who get stuck at that point. I consider it my job inside the back room and inside of the tribe to help people start to make that pivot and build what I would consider a real business from here. Like, great, you figured out how to sell product. Now let's build a real business. But does viral launch fit into that strategy to help them grow? And what do you think is that pivot point for people who are already at that point want to go bigger?

Yeah. So I think there's a few things here. One, you definitely should be building a team, whether that's VAs or whatever, to get yourself out of the way so that you can continue to operate at a higher and higher level, right? Like, okay, you've gotten here, but now you need to go here and you can't stretch yourself that thin. So you need to put people in place to handle the things that maybe aren't your strengths or that somebody can just go do. Because it's a routine thing going and checking listings and making sure you still have the buy box or whatever. Those things you need to be outsourcing. So definitely putting the team in place and getting out of the way. The second thing is, we've talked about this, but people get to this point and they are so excited, but at the same time they're so fearful that they're going to lose what they already have. And so they spend so much time trying to protect what they have that they end up losing market share in Amazon and they really stop or they really lose kind of that steam that they have forward. And. And so I think the biggest answer is to launch more products. Right? Like people forget how they got to where they are. And the way they got to where they are is from launching products through this process they already know how to do. If you're selling $100,000 a month plus in sales, you know how to launch products on Amazon, right. So just do that more. If you have six products, launch six more products. Now you're at 200k or whatever.

I totally agree. But I also see the other side where people run into a point where they then become the bottleneck. Cause they can only handle so many products. What do you say to somebody in that situation?

Well, so would the answer of building a team help to solve that I.

Mean, that's usually my answer. It's like, all right, now we gotta teach you how to be an entrepreneur who actually runs a real business. Like, congratulations, you hit the next challenge in your life, which is figuring out how to run a real business. You actually did that successfully. You were on a team of 30ish people now, and you're like 12 years old, a little bit older. That is a hard pivot to make, especially when you're in your 20s. So what was that like for you?

I mean, it's a huge learning opportunity. So, yeah, in, like, that's a great way to put.

Was a great learning opportunity.

I'm really passionate about learning. So, you know, I aspire like everybody else that's an entrepreneur to have this huge business someday, right? And to do that, you have to learn a lot. You have to have a team to get there. So I'm excited to learn. What is it like to have 10 people? What is it like to have 20 people in office? All these things. Because that means I'm that much closer to that big business that I want to have, right? So, yeah, so that's why it's cool from a learning perspective. But for the most part, it's been pretty cool. We're at a really pivotal point. So like you said, in the next two to four weeks, we'll have 35 people, and we've kind of begun hiring adults, I like to say. So people that have worked at, you know, some Fortune 500s that have, you know, 15 years of experience or whatever, and they know how to do this. They know how to, you know, scale an engineering team or a product team or manage HR or whatever. So that's where there's a lot of learning. And I'm excited to learn from them as well. So, yeah, it's been cool for the most part. You know, it's like, okay, we need someone to write listings for people. Okay, so we'll hire someone that knows how to write listings or is a good copywriter. And then, oh, now that person's too busy. Now we'll hire another one. Okay, now we'll hire another one. So that's been pretty simple. But hiring for looking ahead, I think, versus defensive. We have all these customer emails coming in. So now we need to hire another coach or another customer success person. And that's pretty straightforward. But when it comes to, like, I want to hire a director of marketing or whatever, well, if I'm not a marketer, which I'm not, that becomes that much more difficult because now I need to hire somebody that isn't similar to myself or doesn't have necessarily this very specific skill set. Right. Shooting photos, that's pretty straightforward. So that's been huge on learning. And I think the big thing is just protecting your culture initially because if you have someone that may do the job well, but, you know, is terrible for the team, that's scary for everybody involved. So.

Yeah, I'm amazed. You talk about this like it's not a big deal, but this is your first real success as an entrepreneur and you've scaled to 30 people and have a real culture. Like how? I mean, I have not made. I have not built a team that big. I have not made that pivot. So, like, what are you doing that I. That myself and other entrepreneurs in my situation are not? I don't know, figuring out?

I just like to really plan ahead for success. Right. So, like, maybe we don't need a director of engineering right now, but he's going to help us down the road. So I don't know. But you've done that.

You've done this like you haven't raised capital, right?

Yeah. No.

And you've remained profitable.

Yeah, yeah.

And you've maintained a culture and hired all these people. This does not happen, Casey.

So appreciate it.

What are you doing?

Helping people? I guess that's the answer, right? That's the one thing that everybody on the team kind of engenders and that I'm really passionate about is just helping people. There's all these quotes. I don't have one off the top of my head, but if you help enough people, there's this quote, if you help enough people, then you'll get what. You get what they want. Then one day you'll get what you want. And I don't know who said that, but anyways, we're really passionate about helping people. And I think because we are helping people and sometimes to such a big degree.

Right.

Like we have all these case studies where in the first 3 months you go from nothing to 85k a month or something. Right. So in significant ways.

I guess the money comes in from that or something.

But I know a lot of people who get to maybe see seven or eight people and then their lives are completely monopolized of just managing other people. You just seem to have cruised through that stage and gone to like middle management. And now you're hiring C level people.

Yeah.

How'd you cruise through that so easily?

I think maybe part of it is just making sure we're hiring people that are good at managing themselves and then setting up a good structure of them reporting to you and then putting someone that is like, oh, good, this girl is really great at copywriting and she is very, you know, she is very organized. Okay, now you're the lead copywriter. So then all the other copywriters report to her. She reports to me. But I still try to have like a good relationship with all the copywriters because again, I think culture and having a team that's really excited about the vision. Yeah. On board.

So at first you're hiring for skill to create a service and then more people to support them and kind of the leading person on that team starts to emerge. They become the team lead and now you have your direct reports sort of emerging.

Like I like the safe bet. Right. So it's very intimidating for me to hire someone to be a manager from outside because, you know, I don't know if you're good at managing the team, if you're going to, you know, work well with me and the people there. And also I think you really need to understand the perspective of the people you're managing. And who's better to understand that perspective than someone that's been doing it for a while. And so a lot of people we kind of raise up. So this guy's killing it as a coach. Okay, now you're the lead coach. And that's cool because then we want to be the launchpad to success both for our clients and people internally. And so we give people this opportunity to come in at the ground level or at whatever level, but then become whatever it is they aspire to become. And so they're going to work so much harder and they're really going to put forth their effort, but they're going to be really responsible. So there's a lot less management on my end.

Yeah. I think the lesson here for entrepreneurs who are running six figure businesses is at some point to go.

From six figures a month to seven figures a month. If you want to make that pivot is you have to have support and most people don't get out of their way. You got out of your way and got people to really help you support, build this vision. And most entrepreneurs don't make that transition because they're so attached to the money in the bank, which I think is smart for a while. And then you have to make that pivot. And what I'm hearing you say is you hired for skill and then like this most skilled person emerged. And that's a model that I think physical product owners and Internet entrepreneurs can follow where they're starting to get things off their plate so that they can continue doing the things that produce the greatest roi and the best people emerge and those become the people that build the rest of the team. It's really a bottom up structure. Yeah.

You should be looking at hiring someone as like an upgrade. Right now. I have somebody that can do this thing now. I can do so much more. I get really excited about that. Yeah.

Good. I mean, I think we so forget that there's an ROI on our time and our energy and that by you focusing on the right things, it's the only way that a business really grows. Well, Casey, like, you have changed so many people's lives, including my own. I'm proud to have been part of your journey. I mean, I was hearing about the business from, from the infant stages and you have, you've blown everybody's expectations out of the water, both in the business success and also the impact you've had in all these entrepreneurs. I obviously believe that entrepreneurs are the solution to all the world's greatest problems. We need as many entrepreneurs as possible and you have created a lot of them. So thanks for what you do in the world, man. Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Hey, if you run a physical products brand or you have been listening to us talk, or you listen to me talk about this model for any length of time and you're ready to quit kidding around and get off the sidelines, then you can head over to Viral Launch and get both the support and all the services that will help you do that. Plus, our training is called the Brand Builder Bootcamp, which will show you how to identify who your market is, what your products are going to be, how to take them to Amazon. We're going to recommend that you use Viral Launch to kickstart your product promotions and get you to the level that you want to be as quickly as possible. So if you are wanting to follow that model or you know somebody who is, please share this video with someone who, you know, wants to be an entrepreneur or wants to get their business off the ground. Casey Goss, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thanks so much, man.

Sat.