Joe Junfola: What It Takes To Build A Million Dollar Business

Foreigners. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. My name is Ryan Daniel Moran, and today we're going to be doing something a little bit different, and it's also going to be something really, really exciting. I'm excited about it. Anyway, I don't know how you feel, but we're going to be interviewing one of my tribe members. His name is Joe Gianfola, and Joe has been extremely successful and actually has had a far faster success curve than most of my students inside of the tribe. And the people inside the tribe usually have really fast success curves. So I asked Joe to come on the show and share what he thinks he's done differently than most people who are building businesses right now so that those of us who are building new businesses can model what he has done. And also, I wanted to know what he was doing differently so that I could better mentor other people who are coming through the tribe. He says something very interesting that, in fact, I'm gonna. His entire success has boiled down to one thing. I'd normally share with you what it is beforehand, but I want to see if you catch it through today's interview, and I'll say what it was at the end of today's podcast. Hey, before we roll into today's show, I want to bring your attention to something. Freedom Fastlane has been rocketing up the itunes charts, and I know I say that just about every week, but as I say this, we're just cracking the top three 15 in business. As of right now, I'm in the top five in marketing, and I could actually really use your help. If you have found value out of Freedom Fast Lane, it would mean a lot to me if you and I would become official if we could define this relationship by you officially becoming a subscriber. And all you need to do in order to subscribe to Freedom Fastlane is head over to itunes, search for Freedom Fastlane, and then click subscribe free. It doesn't cost you anything except about three seconds. And it allows me to rank higher in the itunes store, which allows us to spread the message of freedom and entrepreneurship to more people. Really, the whole reason why I do the Freedom Fast Lane podcast is because I feel like we have something to share and something to grow towards together. This also opens up things like speaking gigs and opportunities like that for me, which is if you can't tell where I thrive the most. So as a personal favor to me, would you go over to itunes, search for Freedom Fastlane, and hit subscribe free? It'll take you two seconds, and you and I can become official. So if you found value out of these shows, it would really mean a lot to me if you would just go ahead and do that. It helps me rank higher in the itunes store. And right now, when we've got this momentum is when we need the most. So I'd really appreciate it if you go and do that. And in fact, right now I'm doing a little bit of a contest where I'm giving away free Kindle Fires to random subscribers, doing this through October 3rd, which is my 27th birthday. And I'm doing this because you may already know that we are the product of the thoughts in our head. But do you know what influences our thoughts? Where do our thoughts come from? Well, they come from the books we read, the people we hang out with, and the things we listen to. And that's why I created Freedom Fastlane to elevate people's thoughts. And I thought, how cool would it be if we gave away Kindle Fires so that people could also elevate the things that they read while they're elevating what they listen to? So I'm doing a little contest where I'm giving away free Kindle Fires randomly to subscribers. And if you want to participate in that, head over to freedomfastlane.com thoughts that's freedomfastlane.com thoughts. You'll see what you need to do to enter. And it basically requires you going over to itunes and clicking subscribe for free. So if you would do that, I'd appreciate it@freedomfastlane.com thoughts and also in itunes, just search for Freedom Fast Lane. Thanks for listening to my pitch. And one quick thing before we go into Joe's interview. Joe is a member of the tribe. I'm going to be doing the tribe for free as a bonus for purchasing amazing selling machine through my link, which is gonna be opening in mid October. And it's the last time we're gonna be doing it this way. So if you wanna be interacting, getting mentoring from myself, from people like Joe, from my partner Sean, from some other people that we've had on Freedom Fast Lane, now would be the time to do it. And you know how I feel about the market right now, based on a previous podcast called Amazon.com prophecies where I think that it's still a wide open west for new entrepreneurs, but the window's gonna be closing in six to eight months. So now is the time to build this business, if this is what you want. All right, there's my pitch for the day. Now let's Go into today's podcast with Joe Gianfola.

Hey, everybody. Ryan Daniel Moran here with Freedom Fast Lane. And today I'm really excited to be doing something a little bit different. We're going to be interviewing one of our own. We're going to be interviewing a buddy of mine, Joe Gianfola. Joe, thanks so much for hanging out with us.

Thank you for having me.

So, Joe, we met as a result of you being inside of the tribe and I have, I nominated you as tribe member of the year this year. Congratulations.

Thank you, good sir.

It's now public that Joe was one of our more successful students. He was tribe Member of the year this time around. And really what I wanted to do was just to hear a little bit about why you think your rise to success has been so rapid compared to some other people. There's a lots of people who want to have a physical products business or want to be involved in Amazon, but you kind of took it by the throat and said you are mine and you just, you've gone right to the top. So what I'd like to do to start is you have some entrepreneurial experience beyond when you and I met in the last year and beyond being involved in Amazon. So would you tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey?

Sure, sure. A little over five years ago, July of 2009, I got started online basically just looking for a small income stream. I was making like, I don't know, 400 bucks with the GI bill. 27 year old student.

So late July 2009, I got involved in affiliate marketing. I had read about it for six months prior and I remember my first campaign, it was actually to an auto blog, if you remember those. Basically just scrapes data, sends it into WordPress. I ran that on AdWords, AdWords, PPC to a acai berry offer. And I made like 50 bucks my first day and I was hooked.

Within two months, three months, I was doing five figures a month. Did the affiliate marketing thing until 2011. I switched over to E Commerce, which made sense because by then I was looking at this as a long term thing. E Commerce particularly makes sense because it becomes a sellable business. You can sell it down the line, which I did in a couple of cases recently. The most recent being, well, now I'm in the middle of a sale now actually.

That contrasts with affiliate marketing, which I was doing before that. And you can't sell that. You can't sell that business. It's dependent on your skill and it's also dependent on.

Driving traffic and leads to other people's offers. And I wanted to own those offers so E commerce made sense. And I should note, I actually became aware of the whole Amazon thing with, and I'm sure you'll know this name, Amazon Money Machine, time ago. Yeah, I don't know If. Was that 2011?

I, I think it was 2012.

Okay. Yeah, time flies, man. What can I say?

So you had some background in kind of tinkering around on the Internet is basically how things started to the point where you're like, hey, okay, I know that there's cash here because some money shows up once in a while. Let me channel that energy into building something that is sellable and something that can operate far beyond myself.

Exactly. You're much more eloquent. But yes.

Well, thank you. So let me, let me ask you this.

You joined the tribe, we started building some Amazon based businesses. What I want to know is what did you take from these other businesses that you applied to this business that caused such rapid success? And I'm curious because people ask me all the time, look, I don't want to be the Amazon guy, I just happen to have Amazon based businesses. But people ask me all the time about advice with these types of businesses. And one thing that I see is there are some people who have rapid, incredible success and some people who just kind of stutter along. And I want to know, what was the difference for you? I know what it was for me. But for you, what do you think was the difference in your rapid success compared to somebody who has been plugging away at this for a while but is still kind of struggling?

Yeah, I think a couple of things. First, in the first three or four years, first four years that I was full time online again since 2009.

I got really used to being able to launch things very quickly and aggressively promote them and get them if not profitable, but at a minimum get the revenue flowing pretty quickly. I've done that for pretty much everything up until now, including now.

In terms of skill. I definitely, it's funny, I haven't noticed until I actually started on Amazon and I started seeing what other people, other newbies, if you will, are doing on Amazon. And I've noticed that I actually have some decent copywriting skills. I'm not a fan of writing, period, but I actually, my listings tend to be a little bit better than what I've seen out there. So I think that has definitely helped as well. And that's something that in my opinion comes with time. I don't know if you can necessarily produce a course or something that teaches you overnight with one click how to.

Let me brag on you a little bit more than you're bragging on yourself. Let me, let me, let me help you out here. What, what you said briefly there about you were you're willing to get the revenue flowing even if the profit margins weren't there right away. I am of the opinion that that is why you had this rapid growth process and why I have had the tremendous success I have had. I am of the opinion that the more effort, the more that you invest in a business when it's first starting in order to get things moving, the more successful you are in the long term. I'd like for you, we can massage this and talk about some specifics later, but I'd like for you to kind of tell the story about when you first started infusing your business with some hustle in order to get the revenue going because you're in some really competitive markets, but yet you had a. Almost like a shooting star rise to the top in a competitive market. So talk a little bit about that process of investing up front and where that led you now compared to when you first started.

Well, I'll be honest, it started before I even got on Amazon and before I even picked a product.

I think I had mentioned to you before in the past, I had actually watched Tribe videos from last year, late last year. And so I was immediately in the mindset of get reviews, get reviews, get 50, 100 views, as many reviews as possible. And so I was like completely focused on reviews. And you can't get verified reviews without sales. Right. So my mindset was always from the start, push the reviews, push the sales. And also I fully expected to go a minimum of three months, more likely six months, before I even saw any return on my investment.

That's just a mindset thing, I think. And it worked out really well because by the end of month one, I was seeing a return. But it was basically just getting myself in the mindset of having to invest literally and potentially for a period of time, experiencing a loss on the P and L sheet.

But I think that's the main thing. If I had come into it, if I had started on Amazon expecting in a week to make a profit, honestly, I'd probably be like a lot of people out there that are kind of just.

Fumbling on page 10 for their terms and have 10 reviews and barely getting by or potentially losing money and ready to give up.

Now, this is something I preach and this is something that I Think most business owners get that you invest a lot up front in order to get the systems and the sales and the cash flow in place. So over the long term, you're incredibly profitable. But to a lot of people who are a new business, a new entrepreneur, they're looking at this as their first splash into something that's not a 9 to 5 job. The idea of going into the negative is. Sounds really painful. It sounds like it sounds really bass ackwards of why would I spend money to get sales and not have the sales cover what I'm saying? Spending. I knew this, I knew this was a scam. I knew it didn't work. So it makes sense when you talk to me about this. Joe, would you explain why it's so important to spend that time up front in order to get those systems and that cash flow going? And explain it to somebody who's like, hey, this is my first business and I'm trying to figure out how much I'm gonna have to spend into this thing before I'm profitable and I can finally quit my friggin job.

Well, I think a lot of people fall into the trap of looking at a short time horizon. They probably look months out, whereas I, at this point, I'm looking years out before I picked products. It was already in my mind that five, ten years down the line, I want to be in a position where I can sell this business. When you have that kind of a time horizon.

The small numbers, the $3,000 for inventory or maybe doll loss every day for a week in ads as a means of getting reviews to boost you in ranking, they become unimportant.

It's all a matter of what you're comparing it to. Right. Some people will say, I'm spending $10 to make five at the beginning.

That'S scary to them. So they stop. Then two months later, they're no longer spending any money and they're making 10 grand a month, 20 grand a month, and that, that is the difference. I'd be curious though, what was your position? I don't know much about your businesses before the Amazon stuff, so tell me a little about. Were you financially comfortable? Was this a little bit of a risk for you? Where were you at? Because some people come in, they're tense and they, they don't have the, they don't feel the emotional freedom that you had in order to make really good decisions. And to that person I say, wait, it's not a good time for you.

Yeah.

So I want to know what was, what was a position you were in coming into this to have clear thinking and making good decisions?

Yeah, I'm. I was in a very comfortable position, admittedly, both financially and just from a mindset.

Perspective.

It wasn't a big struggle to put money down towards inventory, to be able to test the market and then scale up from now. I can definitely understand when people say, I only have this much money, I can't put any more towards it. Is there somebody in the tribe that was talking about with this and he's in a similar position, I think. And you know, it's tough when you're in that position because I completely get it, especially when you have a family. I mean, I have a son, he's almost one year old. My wife is pregnant with our second due in January. And so even though I'm doing really well, it's always in the back of my mind that basically one word, security, just kind of protect what you have.

And so I definitely understand the concept of not wanting to risk that money. But again, it comes back to time horizon. If you look at a one month horizon, you're done. You might as well just not bother.

The same is true in anything. The stock market. If you have to make money in the stock market a month from now, just play blackjack. If you want to make money in real estate in 30 days, you know, just flush money down the toilet. Whereas you can, if you have a 10 year horizon, you can throw a rock at the stock market and usually win. Same with real estate. You can throw a rock at a house and usually win.

People. I invest heavily in real estate and stocks and people think I'm crazy. And I say, what are you talking, 10 years from now I'm gonna think you're crazy and you're gonna think I'm rich and arrogant. So which side do you want to be on? So I know what I say to a person in that situation, I would. It's just somebody who's got a family and they're looking for security. I ask them, okay, is there a way that you can go into a business like this without touching what you already have? By protecting. Protecting what you have. How can we get either new money or an investor or some way to splash into this business without touching what you have and new opportunities come into mind for them. What do you say to that person who is like, I need to be protective of my assets, but I still want to start a business, but I want to make a change, but I'm afraid of losing what I've got? How do you talk to that person.

Well, first I would propose if you're afraid of losing what you've got, perhaps it's time to get another income stream. Maybe that person is in a position to maybe pick up a part time job, get a little bit of extra income coming in. That way they protect what they have and then they're working towards.

Putting together a business alternatively. Look, there's not a lot of. You don't need a lot of money to start on Amazon. I know you're speaking more generally about business in general, but for Amazon in particular, you don't need a lot. I mean, compared to opening up a Subway or something or.

Any franchise or anything of that sort, it's a small fraction of the funds. You can literally start with 500 bucks. That's not terribly difficult to come up with, especially over a few months time frame. Saving money on the side. Saving money, you know, cutting down on your cell phone bill or something. We all know everybody has a cell phone bill that is way too high. I can speak for myself on that one.

You and me both, buddy.

But basically scrapping, you know, hustling, you know, people, you know, I'm hustling making sales. You're hustling with your, what, three businesses. Yeah, start the hustle before that, you know.

Right. That brings me to my next question for you, Which I agree 100% by the way. I think so many people discount what 500 bucks or a thousand bucks can do. I started my first business when I was 18 years old on my parents dial up computer in my living room before I went to college with less than a thousand bucks. It was my graduation money. It was new money. I was like, I wonder if I can plant some seeds in here. So don't discount what.

Today a few thousand dollars can do. But Joe, you've gotten to the point now where you've got the first business that you built. And I was there in the tribe meetings watching you build this thing week over week and we watch it explode. Now you've branched out. You've got three different brands, you've got several different businesses, each with multiple products in them. And I want to know how do you manage your work time and your mental bandwidth on so many different projects? I have to be very disciplined with this. But every time I talk to you, you seem calm as a cucumber. So how the heck.

That'S true? I mean we. I can hear the baby in the background. I mean, you've got other things to think about that I don't got to worry about. How do you manage your time and stay entrepreneurial when you've got so much going on?

Well, two points. First of all, that's something I've been working on since five years ago. Since I started, I tend to want to control everything within my business. So I've had difficulty passing off a lot of the tasks that can be passed off to VAs and such. That's something that's on the agenda. Hopefully by the end of this year, I can start outsourcing a lot of stuff. But I pretty much do everything within the two main businesses that I own and I do a good bit of the other business that I own with my mom. But that being said, I'm taking an 8020 principle with this. I don't have sites. If you go to my sites, man, I have a basic shell of a site on one. I have a squeeze page on the front page for the other. Same thing for the other. For the other brand. I'm pretty much only focusing on getting the sales, getting the reviews, running Amazon ads. I am running AdWords, but that's something I, you know, log into once a week. At this point, I am not worrying about social media. I am not worrying about building up how to site. I'm not even worrying about getting, you know, a phone call system, going to get reviews that way. I'm just kind of, I'm. I'm focusing on the nuts and bolts at this point.

You're focusing on things that have worked for you in other businesses or things that you've seen to directly impact sales and you're forgetting everything else.

Exactly.

Yeah. There's so much noise about all the things that we can be doing in business or even, you know, it's funny, there seems to be an 8020 principle in everything. Like in working out, you can read a bunch of fitness magazines and a bunch of fitness books, or you can go lift heavy things and stop eating crap.

Yes.

Which. Which is pretty much. It's not even 80 20. That's like 99, 1 1% of things gets 99% of the result. You've taken it to the point, and you even helped me see this, when you really started to launch your business, that just focusing on sales impacted so much without having to worry about everything else coming into your business. How did you identify the things that you were gonna focus on that you thought would produce the most direct result? Because some people have one skill set and some people are reading a bunch of different business books and a bunch of different programs and taking everybody's advice and they're like, I don't know what I'm gonna focus on in order to kind of kickstart this thing. You knew you were willing to go into the red. How did you come up with the strategy and the things that you were going to focus on that you're like, this is what I'm going to drive home and I'm going to forget everything else.

Are you okay with some brown nosing?

Okay.

The focus, like I said earlier.

It came largely from you're constantly pushing the getting the room.

You're allowed to brown nose me. Yeah, you can toot my horn on my podcast all you want.

Yeah, that's probably 80% of where my drive and focus came from, to be completely honest with you.

Like I said, that was where my mindset was from the beginning, before I had even picked niches and long before I had even named the second brand.

Beyond that.

Requires a little bit of history. I launched a e commerce site back in late 2011 and now I used SEO solely and as you probably remember from those days, it was pretty easy to rank.

And I ranked that e commerce site one that did mid five figures revenue within two or three months. So I knew. And where I'm going with this is basically I didn't on that particular property, I didn't focus on social media. I didn't focus on YouTube, marketing videos or press releases or anything of that sort. I built a site, I put the products in the site, I ranked the site because that's where it affects the bottom line. You get visitors, you get sales. I focused on the things that directly, you know, impact my bottom line and I'm continuing to do that now. And that's where my mindset was, you know, before I even got started on Amazon.

So Joe, this is what I like about you. You have a history of identifying what is directly going to impact sales and going full force towards that activity without being distracted from that activity. When everybody else thinks that sounds really nice. Every, everybody likes to say, yeah, I just want to get my sales, but I think in order to do that, I got to do this and this and this and this and this. You are a perfect example of somebody who is like, I'm gonna own that principle and drive forward towards this just straight head on. And the result for you has been incredible. You've gone from zero to a mid six figures business in far less. It's been like six months for you. So was there ever a time in which you were tempted to get distracted and deviate from this plan or have you Just been able to clear your mind and focus in on that 80, 20 principle.

I think the only distraction has been on my to do list is to actually create a website.

Because people do visit the website, but that I've, I've been so.

Focused on getting reviews, getting sales, focusing on ads, that I have not been distracted by.

Stuff that doesn't impact the bottom line to a substantial degree. Such as? An obvious example is social media, which is something that for some reason a lot of people like to focus on early when you're in a launch phase, which I don't think is necessary.

Just to recap this, we're talking about Amazon because Joe has an Amazon business. He's a member of the tribe, which right now is heavily focused on Amazon. I have an Amazon business. So we talk a lot about that on, on freedom fast lane. But this is true in any business where if we're looking at the point at which we see as successful, the point we want to get to and we focus on what sales we need in order to get there, we just need to drive home that one metric, what is going to immediately impact sales. But so many business owners get caught up in all these distractions that deviate from the one goal of generating sales and getting to that point where we have enough consistent cash flow and revenue coming into our business where it sustains itself. Joe, I think the fear that most new entrepreneurs have that they're never going to get out of this place where they're spending more money than they're making as a result of their efforts. You are my current poster child for the results of what happens when you invest up front to get sales going and then it will carry over. But I want you to tell me and the rest of the audience, at what point did it switch? At what point? What point were you investing a lot but not getting the result that you wanted, but then it switched to where you were getting more sales and more profit than you were spending and then it took off, you know, exponentially. Where was that point and what happened when it started to shift there in Amazon?

Or do you mean just business in general?

Let's stick, let's keep it with Amazon for now.

That's a tough question. I, I, I'm not, this is, it's gonna sound silly, but I'm not sure I had that point. I've been, I've been riding a rocket ship since I, since I launched.

And this is, what I mean specifically is you, you did a launch and you did certain things where you were kind of going into the red. So you were spending more than you were making, but at some point you had to start making more than you were spending or else you'd be broke and on the streets and, you know, we wouldn't be doing this interview today. So where was the switch from where you started making more money than you were spending compared to you were trying to kick start the thing and spending money trying to get it moving?

It came less than a month in and it came after having established the name and the brand on Amazon in the form of reviews, good reviews at that, and gaining rank. And there's a whole lot of other tactical stuff that went along with that. But from a strategic perspective, it came when you have social proof in the form of reviews.

So just by focusing on that and stimulating some sales to get ranked in Amazon search rank, that's when things switched over.

Yeah. Yeah.

What's the process been like? What's the growth process been like? Because again, you're in a pretty competitive market, so a lot of people could do what you did on a small scale and still not see a lot of result because they'd be your 50th down on the list. You continued to grow week after week after week. What do you think was the reason that you continued that growth? Was it the focus on getting good reviews? Was it your willingness to continue to spend in the red longer than most people? What do you think was the reason you continued to grow over the long term or medium term at least?

Yeah, well, that's. You brought up a good one. Spending into the red. My first brand, I actually think my ads are not profitable. I don't actually, I don't. I don't watch them. I set a high bid and a high budget and I just let it run purely because I just want to get that traffic. I want to get that traffic. I want to get those sales. I know how it converts and I want to get those reviews. So on the topic of being willing to spend in the red, I have that ability and I'm going to use that ability in order to basically bully my way to the top.

Would you explain that a little bit further for people who. That's a new concept to some people. Why in the world would you spend money on an ad that lost money? Explain that to people?

Because it's driving traffic. And my theory with Amazon is the more traffic, the higher the conversion rate on that traffic. Because ads, at least for me, tend to convert at a better rate than just pure organic traffic.

That's a main driver. If not the most important driver in ranking on Amazon. I'm not so sure that reviews are as important or seller feedback is as important. So what I'm doing is I'm getting traffic by any means necessary. So I'm basically abusing Amazon ads by bidding super high.

Setting my budget to a high amount. I'm constantly the highest bidder. I set like a $4 bid on a like a 50 cent cost per click.

I don't know if that's the exact number because like I said, I don't watch this thing. I haven't bothered to optimize ads at all. So I'm willing to spend as much money as possible until I'm in the number one position. And even then.

I may still go into the red on the ads themselves because it's offset substantially by pure organic sales. So at the end of the day, even though I'm losing, let's say, let's say it's 10, 10%, 15% loss on ads, I'm more than making up for it on pure organic traffic, which by the way, I am getting as a result of driving traffic and consequently sales and consequently reviews and gaining rank.

Yeah, I think this is the most interesting thing that you've seen said because I'm yet to hear very many people say they're willing to continually go into the red in order to keep things moving. I want to analyze this a little bit further, but first I want to ask is it just Amazon ads that you're willing to go into the red on, or are you also using that same approach with Things like Google, AdWords and the other places that you're advertising?

Well, I'd love to be able to answer that question if I could track results with AdWords. Unfortunately, you can't use a what is it Amazon associates link within AdWords. I don't want to risk getting my account banned, so I can't track that traffic. That said, I said I set a reasonable budget. I set a bid high enough that I capture, I generally capture the top three positions and I just let that run. I have no idea if I get any sales and I don't really care. It's just driving traffic and I know how the page converts in general on Amazon. And you know, traffic coming in from AdWords is obviously going to convert at a little bit lower rate probably, but I'm comfortable spending, I think it's a $30 budget on AdWords every single day just to get that traffic.

So I want to, I want to break this down a little bit further because to Some people, what we're talking about is crazy because you are, you are willingly and happily spending money, losing money on advertisements and you're crediting that as the success of your business. And this just doesn't make mathematical sense. But what I compared it to was when I started my first business was I compared it to a snowball where each sale to me was worth more than the $12 profit that I got for a couple reasons. One most important was because it was the potential for review on Amazon. And if that person turned into a review that was worth far more than $12 profit, that was worth probably 10 additional sales later down the road. And that compounded those 10 more sales that I got would be more reviews, which would be more, which would be more sales and it would be a snowball that kept moving and moving and moving. But in order to get, get it going, we had to kick it off with going into the negative. Now this is true in any business. This is not just Amazon. This is true. If you have any business in the world where you need reviews, on Yelp, where you need people talking about your business, where you need repeat business. And I don't know about you, but I'll sometimes spend into the red just to get a mass amount of customers because I know that they'll come back and buy more in the future. This is a perfect lead in. Joe, are you familiar with the idea of a trip wire?

Yes.

So why don't you give your perspective of a trip wire and then I'll refine it from mine.

Yeah, to my knowledge, it's a Ryan Dice idea concept, or maybe it's, maybe it's not his, but basically you get people in on a low cost, a low priced offer, you get their information, be it email or whatever, and then on the back end you try to upsell them on a higher priced product of some sort. Basically.

You'Re basically luring them in with a low priced product as a means of getting them to convert at a decent rate into a higher priced product or service.

Yeah, it's basically the idea that those who can spend the most amount of money to acquire a customer are those who win. Yeah, and we make that make sense by having a variety of different products that we can sell to that person. So with, with an Amazon business like Joe and I have, it's similar in the sense of we will spend money to get a customer in order to be high enough in a channel to where we're getting massive exposure that we're not paying for. So we'll continue to lose money on ads, because we know that we're going to far outweigh that with the exposure that we get from losing that money on those ads. It kind of reminds me, this is a silly example, but. But do you remember a few years ago when Oprah gave everybody a free some. I think it was a GM suv and everybody freaked out and it was all over the news. Oprah gave away a bunch of cars. Do you remember this?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Well, GM sales exploded after that. And. And it seems so silly. Why would you give away 300 free cars? Because it was an unbelievable stimulant for sales. And somebody actually put it. They're like, you can't buy that type of advertising. That is a very unique and powerful form of advertising. That's exactly what Joe and I are talking about, where we're investing into the red to get exposure into what will far outweigh what we're spending. So, Joe, I want to know, was there a point, though, that you kind of worried about that upfront investment? Was there ever a point where you were like, I am nervous to go into the red to do this because that's what stops most entrepreneurs. But it didn't stop you.

It didn't stop me because I didn't worry about that.

If you follow the system and you identify products that you know are selling, because Amazon willingly gives you this information.

If you pick well, if you pick your product well.

It'S proof of concept without having to invest any money, you see that other listings are making money. You can approximate it even with a few tools out there and with experience as well. But.

If you have that proof, like I did at the very beginning.

You'Re not going to worry, or you're not going to worry as much as you might if you're going in blind. So to answer your question, I didn't worry about it, to be honest with you. I wasn't worried about failing. It was a matter of when I would succeed. I assumed that it would be three or six months down the line, not a month later.

So you could see that there was volume in a business.

Oh, yeah.

You could see that there was profit in the business. And to you, it was just a matter of how long you would have to weather the storm before you achieve the results of everybody else.

Yep, exactly.

Yeah, that's. That's true. Again, I keep bringing it back to any business. If you people ask me all the time, what do you do about competition? And I say competition is a sign that there's market, there's that there's profit in a market. So there's lots of people selling something and there's lots of volume going towards it. That means that there's a lot of profit to be had there. What Joe did is he said, I see a lot of profit, so I'm just gonna step in here and weather the storm as long as it takes in order to to be profitable. Some of you heard the podcast I just did called Amazon Prophecies, where I make some predictions about where Amazon's going next. And I predict that in eight to 12 months, I'm saying by September of 2015, there's going to be a major consolidation of on Amazon where it's ruled by bigger brands. And in order to compete there, it's going to be exactly the same process of how long can you go in and weather the storm in order to compete with those big brands? It'll be the exact same process. The only difference now is that it's still a wide open west. As of right now, it is still wide open for people like Joe and myself and for you to go in and duplicate this process and capture a large amount of.

The market share. So I'll ask you, Joe, we've talked about competition, we've talked about Amazon expansions and the challenges, but also the opportunities that exist on that marketplace. With your mindset of focusing completely on sales and weathering storms. Until you own the market, do you ever worry about other people coming in? Do you ever worry about the marketplace getting over saturated in your space? And if you ever do worry about that, how do you plan to hedge yourself against it?

Good question. Yes, I do worry about that. When I picked my first product, my first brand, which currently brings in most revenue.

There were only two other products like mine. It was a pretty wide open space. But the particular product, the specific product that I wanted to sell, there were only two other sellers of it. Now here we are three, four months later, there's nine or ten, I think last time I checked in search results and they clearly all came in within the past two months as part of the most recent ASM course.

And so it does make me a little nervous. But I have a head start. I've ranked well ahead of them, I mean, just behind somebody who's been in this niche for over a year, actually about a year and a half, I think. And I'm actually outranking him on a couple of key terms. So I do worry about a little bit. However, my plan, my goal, is to quickly roll out additional products.

I've got something I plan to roll out this month. I want to roll out something next month. I want to roll out as many products as reasonably possible and as much as revenue allows for as a means of basically strengthening the brand. And I also, from a tactical perspective, I think having multiple products also allows for more stronger and quicker ranking as opposed to just having a fresh new brand, a fresh new account.

I'm kind of anxious to see when I release my next product where I wind up in search results for the. For the main keyword. I suspect I'll be much higher than where I was for my.

I promise you that's the case.

Cool.

Yeah. Well, let me. Let me throw a situation at you. Let's say that somebody starts selling a lot of your main bread and butter product and somebody's starting to creep up the rankings. And does that, does that scare you? And if somebody starts to eat into your market share, how do you plan or what is the vision that you have for differentiating yourself in order to keep sales going as they have been going?

Differentiation would come in the form of two ways. And I'm actually planning for this. On my first product, I'm going to add an accessory. I can't really talk about what accessory that is without giving away the product. But the 10 or so people that are selling this particular product, they're all pretty much the same. And I see a market for adding a specific accessory and really being able to differentiate in that way. There's also differentiation in the form of your listing itself. You'd be surprised how much pictures and title alone, not even description and bullets, but pictures and title can really affect the conversion rate. I modified my picture mid August and it bumped conversion rate from like 20% to like 26%.

Wow.

Which was. I was blown away by that.

So I think what you got right, Joe, was that you were willing to kick things off to the point where there were consistent sales and reviews and traffic coming in. You continually do that and you continually look to refine the things on your listing to get conversions in place so that you're staying ahead of your competition. And that is what business comes down to. It is about having a constant flow of customers and doing what it takes to position yourself to be getting those constant customers and new blood coming in. It's about giving them new opportunities to buy from you in the form of new products and new services and upsells. And it is the process that you're going through of tweaking and testing new things to see what brings you the most amount of new customers by just changing your marketing approach. And I think that is why you have stood out as a really shining success story from somebody who's gone from zero to extremely successful. Successful in a six month time.

Yeah, I should also say that I think in terms of planning for competition, I'm taking the approach.

That the more brands, the more products, the better.

I don't want to be in a position where 90% of my income is coming from one specific core, you know, one, one specific brand. That's, that's why I expanded into supplements. That's why I convinced my mom to launch a product with me. And so I'm just kind of spreading out, kind of spreading my, my risk, you know, across different brands, different products. And that's, that's another element of being able to weather any kind of a storm brought on by, by competition. Who knows, maybe I could get outranked on my main product, on my first brand by five different guys and bring it down to 50 bucks a day revenue. But if I have other products in place that are all doing well and other brands that are in place, I'm in good shape. I'm not going to stress over that.

Well, Joe, you have been a poster child for doing things the right way and you have been a great example of what happens when you just focus on the things that impact bottom line and the success that shortly follows after. So thank you for being such a good example for people who are starting new businesses and thanks for sharing some insight here on freedom fasting.

Thank you for being a great teacher and thank you for having me.

Thanks, Joe.

So if you didn't catch it, my big takeaway of why Joe has been so successful is because Joe is willing to outspend his competition. Joe is willing to delay gratification by investing as much into customer acquisition as possible. That is the key to any business when it's starting any business, the person who can spend the most to acquire a customer usually wins the game of business. That's why I think that it's so important if you want to have an Amazon based business that right now is your best opportunity. Because the acquisition of customers is very easy right now. Which means that the barrier to growing your business to that point where it's really, really profitable is really small. But it's not always going to be like that. We have about 12 months where it's gonna be really easy and we can build a successful business that carries us throughout our lives and we have a unique opportunity for that. If that is something that you want to be a part of. I am gonna be opening up the tribe here in a couple of weeks. Just make sure that you're subscribed to the newsletter over@freedomfastlane.com to hear about all the updates. Special thanks to Joe for hanging out with us here at Freedom Fastlane. And hey, I hope to hear you on an upcoming episode when you're really successful with your businesses, too. Hey, one more thing before I go. Remember to subscribe to Freedom Fastlane over at itunes. Just type in Freedom Fastlane and hit subscribe. And if you want to enter to win a free Kindle Fire, which I'm giving out to random subscribers through October 3rd, you can head over to freedomfastlane.com thoughts? Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you on the next show.