How To Sell 30 Million Per Year On Amazon, with Casey Gauss

Foreign.

You're listening to Freedom Fast lane presented by capitalism.com. this is the show about building businesses and investing the profits so that you can live life on your terms. And now, your host, the future owner of the Cleveland Indians, Ryan Daniel Moran.

What's up fastlaners? I'm so stoked. It's Ryan Daniel Moran and today we are going to talk about what it takes to build a third $30 million business based on Amazon.com now why that number? Because today's guest has five clients that do $30 million a year or more on Amazon.com alone. We're gonna be joined by Casey Goss. He is the founder of Viral Launch. First things first, I want you to know I am not affiliated with Viral Launch. I don't make any money. If you go over there.

I just wanted to hear his perspective on what's working for some of their clients because I know they have some really big ones in the space. Now, Casey and I don't always agree. We have a few different viewpoints on how a business should be run, but we run very different businesses. Casey sees a lot of commodity style businesses. I build brands, I specialize. And I think the reason why I have helped create so many millionaires is because we have focused on the brand building aspect. Casey's clients and a lot of Casey's process has been more of a cash flow business. And if you have been listening to Freedom Fast Lane for a while, you understand the difference. But what the heck do I know? Because I've never run a thirty million dollar a year business. I've run a ten million dollar a year business. I'Ve never run a thirty or even a hundred million dollar business as one of his clients does. And you're going to hear about that process. You're going to hear about what it takes to, to build that type of business. And some of these businesses did not exist two years ago.

Whoa. So we're gonna unpack that, we're gonna go into what that looks like and we're gonna talk about what's working now in terms of these, these types of businesses, physical products businesses. A couple notes before we get into it. Number one, if you want to see some case studies of these types of businesses, subscribe on iTunes or on YouTube to Freedom Fast Lane TV. You can search for it on YouTube by just typing in. FFL TV or on iTunes is in the business section under video podcasts. So we do a case study every single episode where we look at something, what they're doing well, what they're not doing. We look at the products, we look at their marketing, and I talk about how they could make more money. Number two, if after listening to this episode, you want to build one of these businesses, and I don't know why you wouldn't head over to freedomfastlane.com Bootcamp for our brand builder Bootcamp. Or if you're already selling products but you want to do more, join the tribe@freedomfastlane.com tribe, where we can help you get capital, we can partner you with implementers, we can do all kinds of really cool things. Plus, you get to hang out with me and work with me and some of our most successful students. All right, with all that said, you're really going to enjoy this episode with founder of virallaunch.com, Mr. Casey Goss. Today, I am joined by the owner of viralaunch.com, casey Goss. Casey, thanks for hanging out with us.

Hey, Ryan, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Hey, I wanted to have you on because you've seen.

Just about as many businesses as anybody in kind of the e commerce world in the Amazon space come through and do well. You've also probably seen just as many failures as anybody. And I wanted to get a good grasp of what's working right now and kind of how we got here. So from a high level, could we start off by talking about, you know, what are you seeing work right now? What is really driving business growth in the Amazon e commerce circle? What do you see hot on the docket right now?

Yeah, so, I mean, I imagine most people in the Amazon space are well aware of the review tos change of October 4th, or maybe, maybe it was the third now, but anyways, yeah, so like, that really changed the game. And people call it like gaming the system. I call it playing the game. The rules are there and playing within those rules is totally fine. It's just a matter of, like, how hard you want to go. But like, with those rules being changed, there's definitely. So there's two camps, right? So there's the guys that have just like millions or just a ton of capital that they can just throw at products. And before, you know, the TOS update, it was a lot easier to bully.

Now that, now that the. Now that the playing field has changed.

Sorry, dude, I'm struggling.

But all right, so let me help you out here. It used to be really. It used to be really, really easy to kind of game the system before October 3rd. I remember because it was my birthday. So I remember the Big review update. So. But now it's, it's. I don't know if you'd call it an even playing field or like a more difficult playing field. I know a lot of people consider a more difficult playing field, but the people who have won are kind of celebrating it. What's different now from your perspective with all these people who are still doing viral launches and are still looking for every hack possible to find their foot in the door, how are you seeing the game different?

Yeah, so, I mean, the game has only slightly changed. So reviews are important from.

A social proof standpoint. Right. So like if I go search Vitamin C serum and I see everybody has 1,000 reviews and there's one listing that has 100 reviews. As a customer, the thinking is that that product is inferior and has fewer reviews for a reason. Right. And so the ability to drive reviews seemingly at will with these giveaways prior to the TOS update, it was, it was very easy to just push yourself up there and you look extremely popular, extremely relevant from the outside customers perspective. And that's not the case, but people are still. The thing is, is like, it's still a level playing field because like now nobody can drive reviews kind of at will. And so what we see is, so there's two camps and so here's where I was trying to go is basically there's those guys that just run like viral launch for, you know, they're pushing 100 units a day for 90 days just to keep themselves at the, at the top of the rankings to drive enough organic sales, to drive enough reviews from there. And they just bully and bully and bully their way until they have a competitive number of reviews and are able to sell well organically. And then the second camp is people have really kind of gone into these niches where they're just finding these home runs and just pushing them. Where you have 50 reviews is competitive and you're selling at 1,000 units a month. And what we see working for larger sellers is instead of hoping like each one product is going to be a home run that's going to, you know, pay out 100k a month, what they're doing is they're going and finding 10 of those products that are making 10 to 20k a month, that have very little upfront cost in terms of giveaways and in terms of like fighting off competition and they just push those. And so there's like, yeah, it's kind of shifted and there's. The guys in the middle have kind of found themselves in limbo. Where they're trying to make things work, but it's getting increasingly difficult to like differentiate, differentiate yourself from the competition, at.

Least in terms of gaming the algorithm. Right. I mean if you've, if you are bulletproof coffee, you don't care about what keywords you rank for. You just care that you can send an email and drive as many sales as possible, which is why I think audience building is so important. But you mean the guy in the middle who's like floating around on page two for major keywords and is sort of trying to tap his way forward, is struggling a little bit because you have these other people who are spending a bunch of money to blitz for certain keywords, Is that what you mean?

Yeah, yeah. So the guy in the middle is the guy who can't find the home run products that have little upfront investment but do like competitively or relatively high volume sales. And he's also not the guy that has a ton of capital that can bully the system. So yeah, so he's the guy in your case that would like his only chance for success is driving that external traffic.

Right, got it. And how are you seeing if at all the algorithm respond differently? Is it still dollar launches still work like they used to and it's a numbers game? Are you seeing that that's not the case? What if anything has changed in terms of ranking for keywords?

So really not too much has changed. So one thing, and I know that we had talked about me talking about this on the podcast, is so like a lot of people talk about sales velocity and they think that the algorithm is largely concerned with sales, like the rate of sales at a given time. So it's like, and it makes sense from a high level or you've run a particular launch or maybe a couple of launches. But what we see when we really get into the. So to give a little bit of context, we track keyword ranking for like 2 to 10 keywords associated with the title or not associated with the title for every launch. We've run a little over 14,000 launches today. So we have a ton of like keyword data we understand. We track like sales price, discount price.

Duration, number of units and everything. So we have it pretty dialed in. So like basically Amazon is tracking sales history in these buckets, right? So like a one day bucket, two day, three day, four day, seven day 14, 21, 28, 30, 60, 90. So like, so they're tracking sales history in these buckets. And so if you're not filling up buckets correctly, then then you don't have enough strong sales, strong enough sales history competitively to like maintain your rank. And so before, like in the very early days of viral launch you would push and Amazon wasn't, wasn't factoring in the longer sales histories nearly as much. So, so it seemed like sales velocity was, was the answer, right? Because like at the time, great velocity in sales and you're able to hit ranking and maintain ranking well. But what we're seeing now more and more is Amazon is waiting that longer sales history. So like for example, sellers will see.

They'Ll push themselves up for five days and.

But okay, so here, here's a better example is like so there's sellers for vitamin C serum, right? It's a high volume product and the top three guys, let's just say for the sake of example, have been sitting there for the last six months selling just like very high volume. And you try to run a promotion to outsell them. And so on a per day basis your sales velocity may be better than theirs. But because your 60 day, 90 day sales history isn't nearly as strong, you're not able to outrank them. And so what we see is like if you try to outrank these guys to have a great 60 day, 90 day, 180 day sales history, it's going to take a lot on your end, not just velocity.

To push them out. And on the flip side what we see is if you run a.

Like if you run a seven day launch for example. So like we found that seven days is a sweet spot. So we think it hits all of that seven day bucket, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 days. And then when you get into the seven day, the 14 day bucket seven days after your launch is concluded, then you're still hitting that like sales history bucket, I guess. And so what we see is versus you getting yourself pushed up in the ranking and then falling right back down, you're able to maintain that rank for longer because again you have better sales history compared to those that are ranking underneath you. But if you don't sell well organically because your sales history, the average per day sales over time start to drop. If you're not selling well organically, then you start to decrease in rank.

So what I'm hearing you say is that sales history makes a bigger difference than ever in terms of where you rank. So Amazon is going to take kind of that predictability of sales over just spiking it once in a while. But of course none of this matters if your reviews are terrible. If you have a, if you have a crappy product because then people aren't going to buy anyway and that will crush your long term sales history. So you just float back down to earth. That's what I'm hearing you say.

Yep, exactly. And more and more. I mean these other conversion factors are becoming increasingly important. Right. So like as your competitors start to get better images, then the market expects better images and then if you, if your images aren't there, then you're not able to compete. Same with price. One interesting thing that I mean, so we don't have enough like data to be conclusive. Exactly. But I'm starting to see it in is like review quantity where that used to be like.

You know, an absolute deciding factor. If you had significantly less reviews than the market relatively, then you just won't be able to convert. And we're starting to see that happen a little bit less in so much as like, you know, we see some guys that have 50 reviews and everybody else has 500 to 1000 or something like that. And it's really interesting. I don't know, like I said, if it's just something that we're seeing and it's random or temporary. But yeah, I don't know. So like, I don't know if it's, you know, consumer confidence going in Amazon. Like, you know, I bought X number of things from Amazon and I've had a good experience so this thing will probably be good because it's, it's coming from Amazon. But yeah.

So you mean you're seeing products do well that don't necessarily have a ton of reviews, whereas before the person who had a thousand reviews usually was king of the hill.

Yep, exactly.

Got it. Cool. So you're running these tests all the time. Like you've got people who are, I don't have any idea how many daily users are sending product through viral launch. But from, from your perspective, the, the guys and girls who are at the top, they're at the king of the mountain. What are they doing differently than everybody else? Is it just the number that they give away over a series of time or are there other things too?

Yeah, so like I think it's a couple of things and from our perspective it's like success on Amazon is a pretty simple process. Right. And I think that it comes down to the 8020 rule and I think that the guys who are more successful are constantly focusing on the 20% that drives 80% of the results versus the guys focused on the 80% that is only driving 20%. 20% of the results. And so the guys that are really killing it are the guys that have the process in place to find great products at a great price. They build a great listing right off the bat. There's no, like, you know, I'll just throw this up here and if it doesn't work, then, then we'll change it. They build a great listing in terms of content, in terms of photos, they put together their review funnel to the app reviews, push the product like crazy through viral launch or maybe they have their own engine to do that and they just push and they just push and they lose money on the up front, but they understand the return on the backside. And so and they just rinse and repeat and they build the team around just that simple process. Like, yes, sponsored ads are important, but they're not nearly as important as organic traffic. If you have a great listing that's going to convert well again, depending on the market, but you'll be able to maintain those ranks and drive plenty of sales. And then even if you just have a mediocre PPC guy.

You'Ll do like, incredibly well. And so the guys, like I said, the guys that are killing it, the guys that understand that model and they're not the ones like, you know, just messing around. I don't even, I don't even have a good example. But the guys that are just like messing around on like just the small things are like upset because, I don't know, like Amazon screwed them out of like a return or something like that. And like, yeah, those things are important and yeah, they add up. But if you're spending, you know, 20% of your time on Facebook groups, like complaining with everybody else about how stuff's not fair. Good luck, you know.

Well, I have heard, I have heard people complain that they're getting slaps on the wrist or warnings about running launches. What has been your experience with something like this? Is this a serious concern or is it overblown?

Slaps on the wrist from Amazon?

Yeah, when Amazon says, like, you're, you're giving away too much product or there's worries about all the reviews from discounts going away and Amazon kind of tracking this and it, and, and blasts and launches not being appropriate or being a. There was in October, there was a big concern that blasts were not in, you know, were not in line with terms of service. So what, what's your opinion on this from like a manipulation of, of, of BSR standpoint? What's, what's your interpretation?

Yeah, so. Well, a couple of things. Obviously I'm super Biased. So I don't think that for outside listeners, I would be a good person to ask, but I can tell you from experience. So, like, for example, we've. I can't. I don't know how many thousands of launches we've run since the TOS update. I know Q4, we ran, I think, just under 3,000, but basically, like, we've never had a client get in trouble for anything like this.

So, like, no slaps on the wrist or anything like that. A couple of things is, like, one, we've never been a review service. And so when the TOS change did happen, we basically just changed a little bit of language on our buyers page and we were good to go. We were never down or anything like that. And then in terms of manipulating bsr, so that is definitely in the tos. The thing that I don't quite understand is, like, well, and I posed this in the blog, right? So, like, I always try to be, like, very candid about what, like, what my questions are. Like, I'm always trying to be skeptical, and I never want to be offering a service that could potentially get someone in trouble or ruin their business. Like, that's the antithesis of what we're trying to achieve. So anyways, yeah, it says, don't give away too many coupons to inflate your. Your sales rank. And it's like, well, we don't care about improving your sales rank. Like, BSR has no impact on sales, on future sales. It's just an indicator of past sales. And so, yeah, I'm not sure we haven't had any issues. So we kind of, like, continue to proceed as we are. If we were to have anybody get suspended, we would be the first ones to, like, shut down and make sure that what we were doing was okay. Yeah, I guess that's kind of where we stand on that.

You mentioned that you're not a review service, but you also mentioned at the top of the call that people tend to get reviews from this service. So.

What'S going on there? I didn't quite catch how those two work together.

Oh, yeah, well, one, sorry, I don't remember the context, which I said that. So basically, people do get some reviews from using us. A couple of things. Like, one, we're not able to track what those review rates are to some. Some people have reported that we don't. Like, they haven't gotten any reviews from us. Some people have said that they've gotten a good number of reviews. Really, it's up to the consumer. And to that point, Basically Amazon has limited it so that a customer is only able to leave 5 unverified reviews per week. So there's like that threshold. And yet at the end of the day like, oh, I think the context was that large clients, they, they like push and they're getting 100 units away for the first like 90 days. And, and so a lot of those reviews are coming from organic sales because they're ranking, they're pushing to maintain those ranks. Yeah.

Okay, got it. Well, is there anything else like, I mean it seems to me like Viral Launch or other blast services, as I've always recommended, are just a piece of a total marketing strategy. Like if, if you hope that you can run some blasts and launches and hope that that's all it's going to take, you're misinformed because you have to have those reviews, you have to have a good organic sales strategies, you have to have good products. This is a piece of the marketing strategy. When you're advising a client, how are you recommending that it be piece of the overall marketing strategy? Is there other things that you think need to be involved to maintain rankings and sales? Or are some of your clients only using blast tactics and giveaway tactics as their primary marketing budget? I'm just curious what you see some of your clients do.

Yeah. So in terms of marketing budget, are you referring to driving traffic?

Yeah, I mean when my marketing budget is to building audiences and selling things to those audiences and then, and then we mix in some launches and blasts in there in order to maintain and increase rankings. But I'm curious if some people have different strategies and if they just go all in on giveaways. So I just want to know where you see it fitting into a total marketing plan.

Yeah, so if I can be. Well again, I'm biased. My view of marketing is very limited that being exclusively to buyer launch really. But anyways, to give some more context, like our largest client, they do across their accounts, just about 100 million on Amazon alone. And they're pretty new on Amazon. So anyways, those guys for example, they're relying almost exclusively on giveaways. And so from my perspective, going out, it depends on how you're building the list and driving this external traffic. But that's a part of the 80% that's driving 20% of the work. It's like if you can outsource the giveaway to someone like Viral Launch, that can just drive the traffic to help you drive the rankings to then get the organic sales. And again, if you're converting well enough Generally you're going to be able to maintain that rank. And so being able to hand that off to somebody that can do that for you and not having to build that list, maintain that list and then like work that list saves you a ton of time, a ton of effort, and then it allows you to just focus on growing the other aspects of sourcing brand new products, building great listings, etc.

So yeah, so two things here. One, I slightly disagree because I think it's a piece of a total marketing plan because I want to have the customer list. I want to be building something that is scalable and sellable rather than just ranking and taking sales. But the second piece of that is. Did you say that you're. That they do $100 million across their account? Because then I'm just wrong and I'm, I'm proven wrong.

So. So yeah, well, they have multiple accounts. But yeah, dude, like, and that's the thing is like I want to say of guys that I know personally and I know pretty Well, I know five guys over 30 or 40 million and most of them are doing just this. Like they don't, they don't. The thing is they figured out Amazon, right? Like they figured out how to do Amazon. They don't know how to do E commerce inarguably. Like Amazon is the state of e commerce. Like 36 or 7% of e commerce sales happened on Amazon in Q4, I think it was. So like they figured out this Amazon algorithm. And the nice thing is that Amazon drives all the traffic for you. That's a whole part of selling online that you don't have to worry about at all. And so to me, and from what I've seen, my perspective is that if you figure out Amazon and these other marketing tactics aren't a part of that, that streamlined process, then you can absolutely kill it. And really it's just a matter of how much you want to step on the gas. Now I saw a brand go from 0 in June of 2015 to 30 to 40 million in 2016 just doing this model.

Would you say those numbers again? You say from 30 to 40 million?

Yeah, last year.

That's pretty incredible. I guess, I guess where I sort of have a different opinion and I'm certainly not going to argue with 30 million to $50 million. But I guess where I would disagree is if I think it still requires you having a brand and you having something bigger than is just Amazon. I think, I think we're wasting our time if we're not collecting that customer data and Building a long term relationship with that customer so we have something of value that is building up. I guess my fear has always been that if Amazon makes a change to their algorithm, then that business that spent all this inventory and time building up to $40 million could go to who knows what. But if they have the list, they're still in business and they do well. So I'm sure you get that a lot. Like what if Amazon makes a change? How do you respond to that as somebody who is in the business of working with Amazon exactly as it is and responding to the changes. So how do you respond when somebody says, well, what if Amazon makes a change?

Yeah, a couple of things. First, I want to give the argument from like the customer's perspective. And by the way, I definitely don't think that you're wrong at all. And I, and I think that's a great like avenue and strategy probably for the majority. But I do also kind of want to give the flip side, flip side of like what I've seen the most successful people do at least, at least from now. And so basically at the end of the day, somebody has to be ranking on page one, right? And so as long as you're confident in your ability to be that person, to understand it's a game. And so there's always going to be a way to play that game. And if you're a player, like you're going to figure that out, right? And so like that's what a lot of these guys and they, and by now, I mean they have the resources, they have the connections, they have the ability, the engine to do that, no matter. I mean these guys, like, they're always well connected. They, they just really understand it. And so it's definitely a risk. And like, you know, I've seen these kinds of accounts get suspended. Generally they're pretty quick at getting them back up, but it's, it's not fun. But and so my other argument to that is kind of again, like, if you can grow that quickly by doing.

If you can grow that quickly, then I think the opportunity cost is still potentially wasted on these outside channels, running Facebook ads and stuff like that. Depending on the makeup of your team, depending on the makeup of you as a person and what your strengths are, again, if you figure out this algorithm, just push it. And I know guys that have sold brands that don't have those customer lists, they just know how to kill it on Amazon. And I've also seen some really cool opportunities for big name retail from people's ability to Absolutely. Kill it on Amazon. I mean, the more Amazon grows and is like a force to be reckoned with in the E commerce space, the more your brand or your business on Amazon is taken legitimately.

And so, yeah, you mentioned that you've seen some people get suspended. Can you comment on what people get suspended for? And is that at all related to being super aggressive with things?

So this particular case, it was like our largest client, they got suspended and as actually a pretty dumb reason, it had to do with like, reviews. And someone on their customer service team basically just said something in an email correspondence that they shouldn't have.

Okay, that's a pretty simple fix.

Yeah.

Yeah. I find a lot of people's concerns over what could go wrong in business kind of. Kind of unlike over the top, it's a little like people are afraid to take risks about what would happen, rather than taking a risk for the hope of what could happen is a little bit silly to me. So what would you recommend to the person who is first starting out? To the person who is, you know, has products up, they look up and there's these dudes who just run the show who have the first page locked down and are two years ahead of them. What would you say? What advice would you give somebody who was starting out as seeing like, oh, this is too, too saturated, or, you know, whatever the heck that means. How would you advise somebody who is just starting out?

Yeah, so a couple of things. One, you just have to be so careful about who you listen to. Like, there's. There's so much misinformation in the space and it's really frustrating to me. Right. Like, I really care about people and helping people. And so when I see, like, some of these, you know, quote, gurus taking advantage of people simply because they can get money out of them.

What are you saying about me, Casey?

No, not you. I really respect you. I really respect Greg from Jungle Scout. There's some other people as well, but there's some, like, you know, Manny from. But, like, anyways, there's. There's so many and it's so easy to. Problem is, like, a lot of these gurus will launch like one or two products. They'll see, like, things happen to work for them and then they just, like, go from there. And every little experience that they had, they document and they detail out. And it may have just been a fluke or it may have just been a particular instance that happens in that one neat niche that they're in or something like that. And it's like, when you take the thousand foot view, like this is the same argument with sales velocity versus sales history, right? It's like if you're on the thousand foot view, you see sales velocity, you take the 10,000 foot view, you see sales history, right? And it's like that's the same thing. You know, you see your sales increase and then you go check your BSR and you see that your BSR has increased. And so then you think that if you increase your bsr, you'll increase your sales. And so then they coach that. And we have guys come to us all the time who they are ranking super well, but they're just not converting. And they're like, oh, I got to do a launch to increase my bsr. And we're like, no, like that's a waste of units. Like you're already ranking for your main keyword. It's like that's the goal of the giveaway, not to increase your bsr, but they'll waste money. They'll pay us to do it. And it's like. And then the end result isn't there still. And so anyways, basically to get back to your question.

I don't have a good answer for figuring out who to listen to and who not to because really, it's tough. But that would be number one. And then number two, if you don't have the capital that these big guys do, then it's all about finding the right product. Because given the right product, you can have a couple thousand dollar investment and you can really kill it. You just have to be very intentional about that. You're kind of like positioning, making sure. Some other things that we see sellers make.

Bad decisions on a lot of the time is just those sourcing decisions. So finding products that they try to, you know, it's like a grill brush, everyone's selling a grill brush and they're like, I'm going to be different. And then they throw like LED lights or something on their grill brush and then it's like twice the price. And then they wonder why I can't sell one. No one cares about the LED lights. And then two, like no one is going to pay twice as much for a drill brush. They just want to clean the brush. And it's five bucks for this brush. So it's like that's, that's another order they have. They're making a dollar of margin per unit and they're selling 500 units a month. And it's like, yeah, $500 a month is great, like as a supplementary income. But you can't grow anything off of that.

I completely 100. I just got butterflies like thank you. Someone else says it besides Ryan Daniel Moran. And my classic example is I'm a super fan of Quest nutrition. I'm also a super fan of Julian Bakery. One day I bought Julian Bakery over Quest because of a certain ingredient that was not in Julian Bakery and they had like 35 reviews. I didn't care. I found them by searching through for a keyword. They ranked well enough and their product was different. I didn't care about reviews, I didn't care about price. I bought on product. And so few people, like so many people just focus on their marketing and they forget that first you have to have a really great friggin product. So how do I, how do I have my spatula rank above all these other spatulas? Get a better friggin spatula like actually do something different.

You've got me on my high horse here, Casey. Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying it. I want to switch gears just a little bit because I want to dial into your business at viral launch a bit because I've watched you guys develop. I remember when you told me you were going to launch the business and I was like I'm not so sure, I'm not, I'm not so sure it's a good idea and you proved me wrong. But I've watched you build a team and kind of build PR and make a name for yourself and I'm curious what that transition has been like from you being just a mad scientist that is curious about algorithms to having a whole team that is running this operation. What has that transition been like for you.

Dude?

I mean you're an entrepreneur. I mean it's the dream right? Like to go from like having this idea and just like pulling all these all nighters, like hoping it's going to work and hoping you can pay the rent or whatever to like you know we have a team of 19 people that are like, some of them are developers that we pay like significant amount of money and like we have a sick office downtown Indianapolis and it's, it's insane man. Like so there's like a difference between me and a lot of people in the spaces that like a lot of people in the space just want to have that like passive income where they're able to like chill on the beach and still be making money. And like my personality is like I love to work hard and I'm the guy that will not sleep for three years so that I can Sleep the rest of my life. Not that I really plan on retiring, but, like, yeah, yeah, that's me. And so, dude, it's been insanely stressful. I got married last summer, but it's been. I love to learn and I've, like, learned an insane amount. We went to the same college. I dropped out my junior year. I taught myself, like, programming and decided I was done with school. Like, I wasn't really learning anything. And. And it's like, initially it was super tough. Like, everybody judged me and thought, like, you know, I was just this dropout that was going nowhere and wasted all. You know, I was, like, running track and stuff and, like, wasted all these things. And it's like, no, like, I just had a bigger vision and I knew what I was really going to be able to accomplish.

Yeah, that's funny. You and I did go to the same college. Indiana Wesleyan University. And my junior year, I thought about dropping out because I was an entrepreneur. I finished and you dropped out. People told me to do both. People told you probably to do both and we both made it. So, yep, there you go, kids. School is not important. You can be rich and famous.

So. But what about the team building and infrastructure piece? Because a lot of people work behind computer, Internet people, but they do that because they don't want to have a team. You found something that worked, you scaled it, but now you've got a big team of 17 or 19 people with overhead and a downtown office. Like, that's not an easy transition. How did you start to develop that team and actually turn this into a real company?

Yeah, well, it's kind of out of necessity, right? So, like, I couldn't handle customer service anymore, so I bring somebody on to help me do that. And then. And then another thing is, like, I'm huge on collaboration, so that's why I'm not. We definitely have some people that work remote there as well. But, like, I like collaboration. So, like, I love the sharing of ideas. And in, like, I. I get it. It's the 21st century. Like, you can totally do that online. But there's something about being in proximity to one another, especially on, like, a daily basis where you can share that energy. You can share those ideas, get feedback, like, instantly. You can, you know, feel and see someone's body language. So I love that aspect. But yeah, like, really, it's just been growing. Like, dude, we've been super blessed with viral launch, and it's just. It's like going insanely well. And, like, I'm so thankful for the Opportunity to be helping so many people. And that's what's cool about this space is it's still like relatively juvenile in so much as like product photography. There was nobody offering great product photography that we could point people to. And so when people weren't getting conversions and we're like, well, your images suck. Like, that's why, like, we weren't able to help anybody by like suggesting somebody else. So we had to bring on a photographer. Granted, Indianapolis is not the best place for a photographer. So it took us like months and months and months to find somebody. Then it took us months and months to find the second person. And then the third person, like, she just came to us. But like.

Yeah, I guess I don't like the infrastructure. So fortunately I'm not a very structured person. I like, like ideas and I like energy and stuff like that. And so I have a right hand guy. His name's Darian. He's like the VP and he handles all the payroll and he handles like a lot of the, like, recruiting, like HR and like finances and stuff like that. And so really we wouldn't be operating without Darian. And he kind of just allows me to like, call the shots and like, call the ideas out and stuff like that and kind of like facilitate this from there and really like what we've done to date and cut me off on numbers. But like, we're really focused on building like the foundation. And So I think 2016 was really the year of laying the foundation. And this year is like really the year where we try to be aggressive and we really try to grow. So yeah, so like, I'm super pumped to see what that looks like. And in terms of culture, like, culture is so important to us. And like I said, like, I really care about people and I think that that speaks like volumes or is going to help you like, grow a team and a business so well, because these people aren't here just to like check in, check out. Like, I'm making sure they love what they're doing. I'm making sure that they have opportunity to grow in whatever context or respect they want to. And it just allows them to like, love what they're doing. Like, it's my goal for everybody to like, absolutely love what they're doing. I'm not looking at them as like, you know, pawn on chessboard. Like, I'm hoping that. So basically, like, our positioning is a launchpad to success and that doesn't apply just to our clients. It's like, it's like everybody that's A part of the viral launch team. What do you want to be? Let's, let's, let's achieve that together kind of a thing.

Yeah, I agree. If you can cultivate that culture, you have a vastly different environment. And Cameron Herold has been on the podcast would echo that statement. Casey, you mentioned that this is the year that you're really trying to be aggressive. If anything, do you want to make any predictions for what you think is coming down the pike? Any predictions about changes or what's going to be working in 2017? What do you see on the horizon?

Yeah, I'm not a good predictions guy. I don't like it because I think there's always like a million possibilities. 1 I follow this guy called his name is Scott Galloway. I agree with him in so much as he believes that private label brands will continue to prosper and people become less and less consumed or concerned with what brands they're purchasing from. So for example, I mean as people, as voice enabled searching and purchasing becomes more prevalent, like you don't care what brand your windshield scraper comes from. You're just order, you're just asking Alexa to order your windshield scraper. Right? And that, and that's like Amazon has changed that paradigm for us because we just went on and we thought that like the average consumer thinks they're buying from Amazon. They're not. Like, you know, they're not, oh.

Who is? Purebody naturals. Like, let me go do all this research on this brand. They're like, Amazon, show me a great vitamin C serum. And then they show them vitamin C serums. Which one looks interesting? Okay, the reviews are pretty good. A lot of the times people aren't even checking reviews anymore. Like, I'm like, this is what I think that we're seeing is that like people are just, they want it, they want it now and they have confidence in Amazon to give them a good item. So I think that like the private label brand or the branding aspect of it becomes less and less important, which I know is kind of like counter intuitive. Also kind of like contrary to what a lot of people preach in the space is like, they're like, oh, you gotta have a brand. I also don't think that quality is that important to people on Amazon is like, you know, you have to have a higher quality product. I generally disagree with that because like at the end of the day I think that the review rating for a product starts at five stars and kind of works its way down as you mess up. And so like your vitamin C serum Compared to the next person is probably about the same and you're going to get about the same rating. And so the fact that you paid $3 more to have a higher quality vitamin C serum isn't really going to pay off for you. You're just going to struggle because you can't compete on margins. I think that margins are going to continue to cannibalize because at the end of the day everybody's selling the same widget. And so how do you differentiate? Differentiate on building a great listing after everybody has a great listing, how do you differentiate price? And I know we talked about doing some unique factors in certain markets. There's just not that capability. I mean there's bundling but at the end of the day people want a vitamin C serum, they don't want a vitamin C serum in a makeup sponge or whatever.

Yeah, this is interesting because I think the opposite is happening. I see what I see from your perspective of if you're selling a commodity, if you're selling a scraper, if you are selling a vitamin D supplement, if you're selling the same thing as everyone else, then I think you are absolutely right. But I think the opposite of happening and maybe, maybe it's just the way that I build businesses is to say what new value could be added to the marketplace and then, and that branding is absolutely important if you want to win the long game. Which is why I follow the, I bring up the Quest nutritions of the world a lot. I will buy anything from Quest just because it's quest but it probably took some time getting there. But if I Google, if I google whey protein, I'm gonna buy whey protein because whey protein is whey protein. But if, if I find one and I like it and I buy another one of their products. Now I'm a super fan and I'm going to be a quest buyer for life. So I think, I think we both might be right. But they're very different business models. Selling commodities versus selling brands. I think it's easier to build a million dollar brand but it's hard to ignore with, you know, when people are selling $10 million worth of ice scrapers. So what do I know?

Yeah, no, I completely agree. There's like, so the branding aspect in terms of like renewables or like beauty. For example, if I see like I have this brand that I bought from before and it has this similar aesthetic when I go buy a similar item and I see that brand and I enjoyed the last product, I think you're a lot more likely to purchase that product. But if you go buy, you know you're looking to buy a journal, for example, you're going to buy whatever journal you think looks best. Right. And is within your price range. And so you don't care about brand. It just really depends on like what market you're in. I think branding in turn in helps with like selling your Amazon business. I think that acquirers are looking for that more than probably they should simply from, from like the logical, like typical business mind says, like you have to have a brand, you have to have value outside of what's actually going on on Amazon. And again, like, I just don't think that matters because at the end of the day it's like so like my argument to. And again, I don't think that you're wrong necessarily. I think that just given the right context, bringing new value to the market is like, I just don't think that really computes to make sense because at the end of the day it's like, I just want this widget that I'm searching for and I don't want to pay any more, anything more. And people aren't typically going on Amazon for discoverability or like to discover new things. They're going on, it's a query search. Right. So that, so they're looking for that specific thing that they just searched for. And if you're offering something different, yeah, maybe they'll buy, but that's not what they had in mind. So it's less likely.

Yeah. So this, this is the difference here is you are describing the quote Amazon business. I'm going to find what's selling on Amazon, sell that thing and sell more of it. I am a brand builder. I take, yeah, I take a specific person. What do they want and what will serve them. I build an audience and then I use Amazon to close the deal and optimize for keywords. So that's, that's the difference. So I'm glad you said that because that makes they're the two, they're two different models with the same channel because everybody already has their credit card on, on file over at Amazon.

Makes sense.

Yeah. Casey, we're up, we're up against the end here. I so love what you guys are doing here. I'm just, I want to save the last minute or two. If you have any advice or final words from all the different tests that you're seeing through Viral launch, I'd like for you to talk a little bit about viral launch, what it does for people and then you Know any advice that you've got for somebody who's. Who's using a service like this?

Yeah. So advice first. And generally our, like, what we do backs up that advice first, either because we're biased and that's what we believe, or we're doing those things because we saw a need in the market. So, one, get great products at a great price that you're competitive, and then just stick to the model that I talked about. Build a great listing and then just push it. Don't be afraid to be aggressive, because that's how you succeed. If you don't have the money, then just make sure you're finding the right products.

And. Yeah, so, like what Varlaunce does. Exactly. We do everything now from help validate product ideas. We have a new tool for that. We help build great listings, arguably the best listings on Amazon. I mean, that's our goal. So in terms of writing the listing, people. People absolutely underestimate how important a title is on Amazon. Like, that's where your key. Like, we can rank for hundreds of keywords just by how we build a title and then pushing it. You can't just build a listing. We build great photos. We help with split testing. We do launches, obviously, and then we'll help you put together a review funnel.

So, yeah, pretty cool stuff, man. Thanks for all you're doing for all these businesses in the world. It obviously has helped me as a client and also serves our tribe members and our brand builders. So keep on changing the world, buddy. Thanks for hanging out with us at Freedom Fast Lane.

Thanks so much, Ryan. It was an honor.

If you're not jizz or jazzered up after listening to that, check your pulse. That was fun. I want to make a comment, though, here at the end about the difference between the two mindsets, the cash flow and the brand builder approach. Because there's merit in both. There's merit in either one. They're just different approaches. I was actually having lunch today with John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods. He's here in Austin. He spoke at Freedom Fasting Live last year. We just met up for lunch and we were talking about the two different mindsets because it's his opinion that a business is the best way to solve a problem, to serve a community, and all stakeholders benefit. When you have the type of business that's providing value in the world, your customers have value, you get value, your investors get value. Value. And there are also people who say all that matters is the money, because money is a beautiful guide for making a difference. I think the only real differentiation there is your timeline, your time frame. I believe in playing the long game because I'm after the Cleveland Indians and I want to build multi million dollar businesses. Some people just want a cash flow business. Either one is fine. Both approaches work. Casey kind of comes from a different mindset. I shouldn't even say comes from a different mindset. He's just seeing clients implement more of a cash flow mindset. I come from a brand builder mindset, but the strategies in which we grow those businesses are exactly the same. And it's what we teach inside of our brand Builder bootcamp. It's what we beat into the heads of our tribe members. It's what we talk about in the back room. And so regardless of what mindset you're in, the principles will often lead you to the same goal. I believe that you should have a really kick ass product. I really think that you should add value in the world at every area that you touch. Some people just want to make money and they both have value. I do think that by initiating a transaction you provide value in the world. If you listen to the previous episode with Matthew Tremalata, we talked about how he kind of felt bad about making money in a, in a kind of easy way. And I said you were still providing value because you were giving people the products they wanted to buy on the medium that they felt comfortable purchasing. Go back and listen to that one. If you haven't heard that episode, by the way, it's about how a former heroin addict now sells it for $50,000 a month by building a business according to the formula that we talked about in this episode with Casey Goss. I'll get off my high horse. If you want to build one of these, one of these businesses, head over to freedomfastlane.com Bootcamp join our brand Builder Bootcamp where you will learn how to go from zero to having a product up and selling it takes about 90 days. We'll walk you through that whole process and then set you up for a 12 months to 1 million plan for building a 7 figure business. If you found value out of this episode, spread it to your team. Spread it to people that you know. Subscribe on itunes so you don't miss a beat. And if you want to see examples of these types of businesses, subscribe on YouTube by searching for FFLTV.