Ryan Daniel Moran argues most Amazon sellers lack creativity and miss millions by not building brands or targeting specific audiences. The real money goes to those who innovate and serve a defined customer base instead of competing on price alone.
Questions this video answers
May 15, 2018.
Vega protein company; sold for $450 million to WhiteWave (circa 2010, as described).
Nested Naturals founders Kevin and Jeremy (example cited).
Onnit (Aubrey Marcus mentioned).
Chapters
The.
Lack of creativity in the.
Amazon physical products world right now astounds me. It astounds me how uncreative and lazy people are getting right now.
This video is for people who sell physical products online. Specifically if you're on Amazon and if you sell shopify.
If you do funnels.
The opportunity that people are overlooking right now, the amount of opportunity people are overlooking is crazy. I was reading a couple reports today about some brands that are selling for hundreds of millions of dollars. I was reading about a sunglasses company that's valued at almost $2 billion. Sunglasses, physical products. I really like to look at what food brands do because food brands, food is like.
Most people who are not creative will think of it as a commodity. Coconut oil is. Coconut oil is coconut oil, right? Or protein powder is protein powder is protein powder. But Vega protein company sells for $450 million to White Wave in like 2010 or something.
There is, there is this opportunity right now. There's almost a golden age, a golden era for physical products brands to get really big and to sell for a whack ton of money. And the reason is because there's money everywhere and the distribution is everywhere. Like do you realize how valuable it is right now to have the distribution of Amazon.com to be able to put a listing up on Amazon.com to drive traffic to it, get reviews and get customers for life? It's never happened before. That's absurd. And yet the creativity of people who are just like, oh, there's money selling spatulas, I'll sell spatulas. It's amazing how uncreative people are being because it's just so easy right now. And I'm concerned for those entrepreneurs because they're gonna get crushed and a lot of them are already feeling crush.
There's a lot of talk right now about it being harder.
Markets being consolidated, prices going down, reviews are harder to get. What did you think was gonna happen?
I remember a couple years ago when a lot of the Amazing.com crowd was starting to see some success and no one wanted to talk about their products because they're all the same.
They're all using the same manufacturers. No creativity at all.
I talk about brand building on physical products because at the very least, minimum viable creativity would be identify your person that you're serving and the three to five products that they buy and build a brand for that person. Because we're going to, the market is going to go more and more micro brand. It's not going to go more commoditized. It's going to go. You are buying an identity. So if you can be the coconut oil company for Paleo Crossfitters, now you've got a market. Go get the person and figure out what they want and already buy and give that to them. That's how my mentor Travis calls it. That's how idiots get rich. Because you don't even have to be smart. All you have to do is identify the crowd, identify the person, give the product to that person.
And then go get more products to give to that person. You don't even need that many customers.
But people.
But people just want to, like, find out what's selling. And then they're like, I'll just sell, sell the same spatula. That's. That's not how you build a company that you, that you exit for millions of dollars. It's not. It's just a lack of creativity, is just.
Please understand.
That you are living in this golden era of there's capital everywhere, there's distribution everywhere, there's opportunity everywhere. And so few people are bringing value to that opportunity. And the few that are are just exploding. They're just exploding. Cause it's so easy, right? I shouldn't say it's easy. It's not easy. Takes creativity and hard work and timing and luck. And if you do that, you're among the few. But everybody, not everybody. I shouldn't speak in generalities, but there's a lot of laziness going on in the physical product world. A lot of it. And I just need to give a warning to those of you who sell on Amazon or Funnels or Shopify you, that if you're not bringing new value, if you're not bringing some sort of innovation, if you're not at least targeting a very specific person.
You'Re about to get smashed. You're about to get smashed and.
It'S time to do something about that. It's time to get really clear about who your customer is and how you serve them or what unique differentiation you bring to the marketplace. Because it's going to be real hard for you if you don't like the golden days of just selling dumb things on the Internet that everybody else is going to sell that windows closed.
Now. You have to be a real entrepreneur. And this is the time where you are defined. If you're a real entrepreneur or if you're an opportunity seeker.
That'S it. So I just hope people get that. Because if they get that.
There'S so much money out there and there's so much opportunity right now, and it's just waiting for you.
Can you tell me a story about a backroom member who built a real brand and they're serving like a very defined audience.
The example that comes to mind is the nested naturals guys, Kevin and Jeremy, and the thing they. And they did the. I don't mean this in a negative way. I mean they did it in a minimally viable way, which was they started with products that were selling, they found an opportunity, they pursued the opportunity, and then they decided to go after the person. And the person was, you know, in some cases, it's the leader of a family. They're after family people. So their content, their targeting, their marketing is after the leader of a family because that person is making buying decisions for the whole family. So what is that person buying? And they went after that. And that pivot is one of the reasons why they've been able to hire really good people and build a cool team and a cool culture and sell a lot of product.
Had they just gone after selling same stuff, they wouldn't have been as successful. They might have still done really well. They were early, they were aggressive, they've done a great job, they're smart, they have great branding. Another example, not a backroom member, but Aubrey Marcus from Onnit is a great example of this. They have great profit margins because they're after the total life optimizer. That's a very distinct crowd. It's a small crowd. It's not everybody. It's a small crowd. That's why they sell kettlebells and brain boosting supplements. Those aren't related, but it's to the same person.
So I just. I was worried that people will make that pivot and they're gonna have a hard time if they don't. But if they do, there is much more movement to the upside. We might say it's a lot more money and happiness and providing real unique value. A lot more happiness and money.
And it's a really hard game trying to just take from the pie, that's all. I don't mean that in an esoteric way. I just mean, like, that's just reality.
