The Amazon Strategist Show

How to Thrive in eCommerce: Navigating eCommerce Beyond Amazon

• The Amazon Strategist Show • Season 3 • Episode 75

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Unlock the secrets to thriving in the evolving e-commerce landscape with insights from Greg Elfrink of Empire Flippers. Greg shares his seasoned perspective on why waiting for another asset bubble could be a mistake and explains how market conditions still offer better opportunities than pre-pandemic times. 

In a bold take, Greg challenges the over-reliance on Amazon FBA, advocating for a diversified approach that includes direct-to-consumer strategies. By expanding beyond Amazon, businesses can regain control over customer interactions and enhance operational value, especially when eyeing future sales. 

This episode is packed with strategic insights for those looking to acquire successful businesses and grow their wealth. 

Episode Highlights:
0:00 Market Trends in Selling Amazon Businesses
11:39 Strategies for Buying Successful Businesses
24:16 Diversifying Risk in Amazon Businesses
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Connect with Greg and Empire Flippers
Website: https://empireflippers.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmpireFlippers/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregthewriter/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/adsenseflippers
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Connect with John Cavendish
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgcuk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohncavendish
LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/thejohncavendish

Know More About Seller Candy
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy/
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Speaker 1:

The more you can own the customer lifecycle, the better. I will always recommend to do as much as you can to turn these big tech giants we rely on into just a traffic channel.

Speaker 2:

Hello, I'm your host, john Cavendish, and welcome to season three of the Amazon Strategy Show. The show that's all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills just real, practical strategies for your Amazon business. Today, I'm joined by none other than Greg Elfrink from Empire Flippers. Greg's a friend of mine and he's also based in Ho Chi Minh City, vietnam, where I was based until two months ago. Now I live in central Vietnam, so, from the oil fields of Alaska, greg has become one of the most influential speakers in the e-commerce industry, talking about strategies on how to maximize the exit of your e-commerce business, actually, and many different types of online business. Today, he joins us to share about where we are in the selling cycle and if it's a good time to buy or sell your Amazon business right now. So, greg, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for having me, john. I'm glad we were able to get on each other's podcast For everyone listening to. If you want to hear john's wisdom, check out my podcast. But uh, yeah, man, good to be here always, always a pleasure to chat with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you too. And um, yeah, we did it two days ago, so if you're interested in the story of seller candy, you can go and pick up the empire purpose podcast. I'm sure it's got a great uh optimized name, being that greg is the marketing manager oh, la Lauren takes care of that.

Speaker 1:

We'll be relying on her, I guess.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So we are now in 2024, september. We had the huge boom when everyone was throwing down getting rich. Then we had a lull. Whereabouts are we now between the highs of 2021 and the lows of 2023?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I think we're in a weird spot. So when it comes to buying or selling businesses, people can do it in a up cycle or a down cycle. The moment that they stop doing either is in moments of uncertainty, which for the last, I would say, two years, we've been in a pretty uncertain market. As the COVID hangover ends, as the asset bubbles pop, as you know, capital becomes more expensive all this kind of stuff right Now.

Speaker 1:

With that said, buyers are coming back. Buyers are buying businesses again. They're being much more conservative than they used to, which is good, because they were honestly like you know my take on it they were pretty stupid in the asset bubble. They were like doing crazy dumb acquisition strategies and just like way overpaying and like from a broker perspective and seller perspective, that's great, but from a buyer perspective, like it was a very bad strategy, right. So they're doing better. They're coming back.

Speaker 1:

Due diligence is taking longer. So like back in the heyday, like we were selling a million dollar business once per week, like now that takes like 90 days to 120 days to really get that deal go through and it's not terribly uncommon for a buyer to say, hey, I want 45 days of due diligence and that turns into, you know, an extra two, three months of due diligence on top of that. So much slower, but uh, overall, uh, like I talked to a lot of sellers and they'll say like, oh, I'm gonna wait until the next moment, like that. So, and I think this is a very bad thing to do and ultimately a foolish thing to do I'm not saying that from like a bias of what I want you to sell with me. Of course I do. But the reason why I say that is if you look at multiples back in 2019. So I've been in this industry for a little bit over eight years now brokering businesses. I've helped sell over 2000 businesses, built a buyer network in the billions right. So I've seen a lot of different business models and seen a lot of trends come and go, and in 2019, the multiples were extremely low compared to 2020 to 2022. Now we're in 2024, inching towards 2025, and we're in a quote unquote pretty down market compared to where we were. But if you look at the multiples today versus 2019, they're significantly better, like like night and day difference, so it's still the second best time to sell.

Speaker 1:

And the reason why I think it's foolish for a lot of sellers to wait is, uh, for that another asset bubble is because it probably won't happen, because that in order for that to happen, you need, like several black swan events all working together, historically cheap capital global wide, a pandemic that's forcing the function of everyone going to online purchases. You know, incredibly booming market, uh, high employment rate, remote work, like all this stuff that needs to come together to recreate that scenario. So I say that again, not to get a seller to sell with me, but to say, like, if that's your goal, like you might miss out on millions of dollars waiting for something that likely won't happen again. But yeah, so that's where we're at with the market. Still good, it's wounded, recovering, uh, deals are happening. It's just happening more rationally now versus what it used to do so yeah, oh yeah, I saw some crazy, crazy deals.

Speaker 2:

Some of our friends and some of our clients just got acquired all cash three to five x. So yeah, crazy, crazy good deals for them. That's great for them. So what were the kind of average multiples or the range multiples in 2019 compared to now for, specifically for Amazon e-com businesses? Amazon centric e-com businesses?

Speaker 1:

Sure so for your audience if they're used to annual EBITDA multiples like the 1,4x. Just to be clear EF we always price things in monthly, so my mind thinks in monthly multiples. So don't be shocked when I say these numbers Just divide them by 12.

Speaker 2:

You'll get the annual EBITDA 48 50x please.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're the only ones who price it in that way. So I know someone grew up on the EF Kool-Aid if they're saying like 48x versus like 4x. But yeah, during the height of it all, man, like we saw some deals literally go for 65x. I mean we're talking about like a large SaaS company multiple. I mean we're talking about like a large SaaS company multiple that is being applied to a small Amazon FBA business.

Speaker 1:

And this is what I mean about irrationality, right, because there's a lot of flaws with the Amazon model. Like there's a lot of value in it too, but not that kind of value, at least not in the way that business was set up, right. So I think during the height we were seeing between 45 and 55x was like decently common. If you're above seven figures in terms of your valuation now if you go lower than that, then you're really inching closer to like 37 to 42x around there. Um, nowadays I would say smaller deals will probably be between 30 to 35x and bigger deals would like so over a million dollar valuation will probably be closer between 33 and 40x okay, so you're talking in the old yearly multiple terms, 2.5 to 3x on the smaller end.

Speaker 2:

Uh, three, I didn't catch the last number, but like 3.5x on the higher end, 3.5 to4, yeah, yeah and this is like some people will look at it oh oh God, that's so low.

Speaker 1:

But like, if you look at all business brokering so not just in the digital space, but like you know your mom and pop shop in UK or America, like your local plumber or whatever almost all SMBs get a valuation between one to four X annual EBITDA. So this is what I mean again, like we're just back to normal, basically, and it feels painful because actually, as far as digital businesses go, way better than it was in 2019. Because in 2019, you'd be lucky to get above 2x, because not a lot of people really trusted online businesses. Like when I first came on to EF in 2016, we were known as the 20x guys. You divide that by 12 is not even 2x, because everything we like only sold for 20x and we would have to tell sellers like no, we will price it higher, but no one would buy higher because there's like no trust in digital assets.

Speaker 2:

so now there's a parity with digital businesses like there's never been before, uh, with more brick and mortar businesses I wonder if that number, the overall number, is brought down by the fact that a lot of the businesses SMBs are sold, you know, are boomer businesses that they just want to get out of a 1X so they can get something out of the asset they built for the last 20 years.

Speaker 1:

So that's part of it, but there is more other mechanics going on there. So, with a lot of the brick and mortar businesses, most of them honestly can't even be sold, so they're never even going to get to the one four X or like zero X, right, like it's an impossible business to sell. Like my dad he owns a multimillion dollar real estate agency firm in Alaska. If the asset value of that is $0, cause he's the only producer, what are they buying? There's nothing to buy. So, uh, like a lot of businesses are that way, so most businesses just out of the gate don't even qualify to be able to be sold. So there's that, uh, but a lot of the boomer stuff, like, like that is being talked about a lot, but there's a bit of overhype in that too. Like a lot of those businesses are being sold on the cheaper side because, again, they ran out of energy to grow and maintain it. So a lot of them are declining.

Speaker 1:

This is why you see, like you say, the no money down deal, which is totally possible, but the way they uh pitch it to newbies because I have to break newbies dreams every week who comes to me wanting to do a no money down offer it's like this is an extremely advanced strategy and extremely risky. Like you should only be doing a no money down strategy. If you've done like some normal stuff, you have some like normal acquisitions. If you've done like, uh, you know you have some capital, you like know what you're doing. Like it's not newbie friendly even though it's very sexy to a newbie to do stuff like that but yeah, so that that's kind of my take. Like, uh, the boomer stuff, yeah, it does drag down the multiple a little bit, but not as much as you might think. Like even they have to have a pretty quality business to be able to sell it if they're brick and mortar, because most of them just aren't sellable yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, we're not all gonna get rich on car washes and laundromats because otherwise there would be in the world would be inundated with just oh, it's the laundromats. It'd be like vietnam and coffee shops.

Speaker 1:

I'm so glad you brought this up so I will not mention names, but there is a famous influencer, uh, in my world that uh bought a laundromat using no money down like basically debt and one of my broker friends. He ran through the numbers and like she the person never said what, uh, uh, you know how much money she was making. She just like put the numbers up on there hoping no one would look into them, right. But if you look into the numbers, like you're losing like a hundred to six hundred dollars a month with the business and it's a laundromat, you know you're not going to go 3x a laundromat, right, it's very local, like there's things you can do to tweak it and like lower expenses, obviously. But it's not like a sas business or fba business where you increase your conversion and double your customers with the same amount of money. Right, it's just that's not the business model that can happen. So, yeah, there's a bunch of disinformation now, surprise, surprise yeah, I love the idea of those businesses.

Speaker 2:

You know you got a bunch of cash like. I love the idea of just buying. You know, after being in digital business for so long and it being so intangible, they're being like oh yeah, I mean it's here, we just make ourselves available and then people will come you?

Speaker 1:

you think that till the washers start breaking and you have to hire a high-end, 50 an hour technician to fix it?

Speaker 2:

oh yeah, or either you've got that, which is one problem, or you've got the problem of having a bunch of low-level employees, which is far worth far worse problem, because then you have to manage those people, which is my least favorite part of business.

Speaker 1:

If I was to do that, yeah, and in those businesses you often don't even have the margin to hire a higher level employee right, so you're always kind of limited. You have a skilled cap of what you can hire for, unless you own a bunch of them. At scale, everything changes, obviously, but just like one-off shop, yeah, it's uh rougher than twitter makes it out to say okay, all right, just realized I'm way off topic.

Speaker 2:

Let's get back on to online business no more laundromats. Um, we don't sell, though, don't worry. So we've been through. Yes, it's possible to sell now. Multiples are better than they were in 2019, which is awesome. Um, what about buying businesses like who is you know if you can share? I mean, who's your kind of mo for a buyer right now and what's their goal with buying?

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I would say our average buyer today is much like our average seller, just a little bit further along in the road. So at EF, we've always had like a smattering of different types of buyers, like the people want to become digital nomads, people want to buy side hustles, and then other entrepreneurs looking to grow through acquisition and during 2020 to 2022, we got a new segment which was private equity. Sorry, really coming in hard, and they're still there. Like we just sold a a closer to $13 million business to a multinational corporation. They were a strategic buyer, backed with PE funding, all that kind of stuff. So they're still there, but I would say the average buyer. So they don't have.

Speaker 1:

Like you deal with two different unrealistic things in my marketplace with two different buyers. You have the newbie who thinks like oh, amazon FBA, it's passive, I only have to work an hour a week, which, yeah, that's true. If you like, tweak it out and you like, systemize and stuff. But like there's going to be a weeks where you're working 80 hours a week because something goes wrong. Like this is business Right.

Speaker 1:

So they come in with a bit of the passive income dream, no-transcript trenches. Now they often don't give as sweet of a deal to the seller as, say, like the private equity does. Uh, they're not as bad to deal with with the newbies I shouldn't say bad, but there's not less handholding because they know what to do right, because of the newbies are a lot more. They have a lot more anxiety because it's a pretty big purchase, uh. So I would say any business over a million dollars between like one to three million dollars, uh like private equity might still be in there, but often it'll be just a higher level entrepreneur further along on the path and their goal is to grow through acquisition because, uh like, buying a business is the most legitimate shortcut to wealth in my view, and they totally get it.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, so can you expand on that a little bit? You know the benefit, you know the reasons for buying instead of starting your own business no, there's so many.

Speaker 1:

But I'll share a funny story to kind of highlight what I mean. Uh, I to be clear to your audience, I do not recommend anyone to do this. This is a very risky thing I'm going to say, but it happened on our marketplace and I think it's very funny and it shows the difference between starting a business and buying a business, I think, quite clearly. So we had this guy. He bought a very small business from us I think it was like $100,000. So it was a content site. You know, monetize your affiliate display ads. So he buys this business. It was quite competitive to get. There's a lot of people who wanted to buy. It was a very quality site and after he buys it, we haven't even started migrating it yet to him. So we open up a migration ticket to hand over the business to him from the seller. Right. He asked us, our team, like hey, was there a lot of other people looking to buy this? And we said, yeah, there was quite competitive. He said, well, I'll you want to reach out to any of those guys? I'll sell it to them right now, $115,000. No questions asked. They were like, uh, okay, so he reached out to all the buyers who wanted it. One of them, sure enough, did buy it for $115,000.

Speaker 1:

That guy owned the business for an hour and made 15 grand. Like he didn't have the asset he like it wasn't, it wasn't, like he basically arbitraged it. Right now, if you start a business, you're at zero traffic, zero money. You are not going to make 15 grand an hour. It's impossible. You have no history. There's no way to sell it.

Speaker 1:

Like the youngest, like that I recommend to sell a business is 18 months and even that is pretty short. There's not enough history. But when you buy a business, that guy only owned it for an hour but he owned five years of history within that hour. It's not like that history goes away because there's a new owner. It's still all there, right? So that's like one of the really powerful things of buying a business and what I mean by a shortcut. Like that guy literally profited off five years of work that he only had to spend an hour and show he had the money to acquire that hour of ownership, right, uh, so that's like the beauty of buying business. And again, for obvious reasons, do not recommend doing this Like it like. If that's your main strategy, there's a very high chance it won't work out worked out for him but that shows you the power of buying a business versus building interesting, just to dive into that a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Did that make him any money after? He paid did you have he? Did you pay you the 15, 10, 15 on that as well, and did he actually make anything in the end?

Speaker 1:

yeah, I think. I think he came out at like six or seven grand in profit after our commission, something like that yeah, which is like two months of what the business was making.

Speaker 2:

I guess, yeah, pretty close. Interesting, interesting strategy. I don't know if I would personally flip something for, like you know, 6% when if I'd spent all this time negotiating and finding and like, is it worth getting out of bed for that much money?

Speaker 1:

So if you're a newbie buyer, like I said, I don't recommend doing this. I don't remember if he was a newbie buyer or not. I think he might be because of the price. But deals like this actually happen all the time with M&A junkies, like they view businesses as their product, not as their assets, so they view themselves as a store of businesses, right. So I know people who will go and buy a $5, $6 million deal and it's not like an hour thing, like this guy, but it's basically the same concept. They will. They have a network of higher buyers. They got this deal at a low, low multiple because of negotiation. There's often like private, like a great example.

Speaker 1:

So there I was talking to a guy. He has a eight-figure marketing agency. I was telling him about an agency roll-up idea, uh, where you put white label seo services together and he immediately scoffed at it. He's like white label, no, they want in-house talent, like who's they?

Speaker 1:

And it is this bigger private equity that goes and buys big agent, big agencies, and they refuse to buy white label because they view it as low quality and like well, their view is actually our opportunity, because if you went and bought those white label stuff that they snuffed their nose at. Well, guess what you get to do? You're the owner. You just make it not a white label, easy, done like you. You use the white label to go acquire other agencies that have a better retail phase and then you package it up and you go to that agency. Hey, I heard you buy a really great agency, yeah, but no white label. Oh, don't worry, we're and like great and they'll go pay you like three, five X of a of a bigger multi. No, probably not five X, but two to three X bigger than what you bought it for. And that could all be done with like very minimal changes over a period of six to 12 months.

Speaker 1:

So this is what I mean. Like deals like this happen all the time. Another example would be I know a buyer he not with with us, but a different business. He bought a business uh, I think it was like three mil and he he got it for like two and a half the fair market would probably be three mil and he went to the leadership of the team, sold them equity as if it is at three million, because that's what it was going to be like after two months and he was able to bring down that uh, his own cash, uh intake pretty quickly and then within six, seven months he again sold it to a bigger private equity. So stuff like this happens all the time in the m&a world. But again, these are advanced things and I don't recommend someone starting to try to do this.

Speaker 2:

No, I love it. I mean actually I have another story. My friend did the same thing. You know some of my friends who sold fba. They bought in their fba business like 3x, thinking they were going to grow it loads off Amazon. They grew it significantly off Amazon. Well, they went from 10% sales to 30% sales off Amazon and the rest of the revenue kind of stayed the same. So it went up a little bit. But during that time the market went from 3x to 5x for that type of business. So they walked away with you know 3 million bucks and you couldn't do that if you were starting from zero in within two years. You know two, two and a half years, as you said absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And here's another crazy thing that a lot of people don't think about. So if you're a newbie buyer, I do recommend you like, like, buy a side hustle first and get used to the process. Use a broker. If you've never done it, doesn't have to be me, but like a broker can be quite helpful in what is often a confusing journey. But buy something small and be okay if you might lose that money. But once you get like your feet like wet and you get a taste of it like, one of the least risky ways to go buy a business is to buy a bigger business. Like, instead of doing a 200k business, try to buy a three million dollar business, because the bigger you get, the less fragility is in the business and the more leverage you have in multiple different ways. So a lot of people are afraid to go big, but often, in my view, when buying a business, the risk is in the smaller, smaller businesses.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, so actually I guess the question I would have if you said that to me and if I was that, if I was sitting in the buyer's shoes now, would be so assume I'm going to buy that business, that's definitely going to be debt, I guess, an SBA loan or something else. Would that be personally guaranteed in your experience?

Speaker 1:

personal guarantee is again. I wouldn't do it unless you are completely comfortable with losing everything. Never invest in anything. Anything could happen. Business is a risky game to play high reward but high risk. Right now, a good way to look at a personal guarantee is like if you think that is risky, you should probably not be an entrepreneur like you're like what you're.

Speaker 2:

I think it's risky. I wouldn't take on a personal guarantee that would wipe me out.

Speaker 1:

But you are. You are doing a personal guarantee. Right now. You're putting in your own money into seller candy. At any moment, a train wreck can happen and destroy seller candy. Now the reason why you view it differently is because you view the risk of it differently. It's the same risk Like you like.

Speaker 2:

The same risk like you like if you are, uh, the only difference is you don't have the leverage at the bank and most of the time, that's where I see that sorry, so I'm dropped.

Speaker 2:

That's why I see the risk differently. Because I can. I'm only risking equity value, not, you know, not whatever I have in the in the back. You know, if I've got seven figures in the back and I risk all of that, then that means that I it could completely wipe you out sure, but that the bank doesn't want to wipe you out.

Speaker 1:

They don't want to go and destroy a good creditor for no reason. That's the last thing they want to do. Often. If you have issues, you can just renegotiate with them and they will work with you.

Speaker 1:

I have a friend. He has an SBA loan right now. He bought a business and it went really bad like extremely bad and he was able to renegotiate his terms. Like does that happen all the time? No, but if you're going to use any kind of debt or any kind of loan, then you got to be okay with that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1:

Like personal guarantee is how SBA does it. But like if you go with private equity, which has way harsher terms, uh, than sba, minus the personal guarantee, so like you're giving up significant portions of the business, that, so again it comes down to risk. Like it, I personally don't. Like if you are confident in the business and you have skills, you have a track record of success, then I wouldn't let a personal guarantee stop you like I have another friend he's used the sba loan, uh, I think three times, and he now has a portfolio over 10 million dollars with like less than 30 percent debt on it so, and he was able to leverage that uh into those bigger businesses right so yeah, uh, again, I wouldn't recommend it for someone starting out.

Speaker 1:

But if you have the skill set, track record, all that kind of stuff, I want to let personal guarantees scare you away that's cool.

Speaker 2:

I think it'd be really cool to get him on your podcast and share his story sometime, because I feel like that's uh, that's an inspirational story so here's a guy you uh you'll have to google it because I don't remember the episode but there's this guy, uh, brett b shore.

Speaker 1:

He runs permanent equity. I think it's called permanent equity, maybe permanent capital, but anyways, uh, brent, he started his business by using the sba loan to buy I think it was a marketing agency of some kind, and he was and like, yeah, he had a personal guarantee on that too and like it did not start off easy for him. Like he talks about that story and is in his book as well, which I highly recommend. Uh, but now he runs like one of the biggest private equity firms in america. Like I mean, yeah, you could like, if you have two, three houses, yes, you can lose it, but like, if you're okay with that risk, you can also gain what brett has. Right, I'm not saying it's easy, but that that's the different levels of risk. Like he didn't, he used that personal guarantee, uh leverage, to build a, you know, 100 million dollar plus fund it period, I think like 10 years, so like relatively quickly.

Speaker 2:

That's very cool, love it. Let's go check out that episode with Greg. All right, we move on to the next bit of the episode. Greg, so this is called the controversial take. So what's your most debatable or potentially controversial opinion related to Amazon or e-commerce industry, or the buy-sell business arena, if you want?

Speaker 1:

Well, probably personal guarantees, because I don't. I'm not as afraid of them as other people. I have a different mindset on that, having seen so many deals right. But outside of that, with Amazon FBA in particular, something I say that does kind of annoy a lot of my FBA friends is I tell them that they run a business with too much key man risk, and what I mean by that is you rely too much on one single point of failure. In their case it's Amazon. I have friends who are, you know, in the content space and their key man risk is Google, like the Google algorithm, right, and it makes your business such a slave to one big tech giant when you want to diversify that risk.

Speaker 1:

So I was talking to another amazon fba guy influencer in the space. Uh, just, you know, back and forth on facebook or whatever, uh, you know cool dude, he's been on the podcast too. Really nice guy, very smart. But he he told me, uh, like what should? Or he said, like what should fba people do? And I said they should diversify into ddc e-commerce, try to expand off the platform and really be focusing amazon as just an acquisition channel. Like, don't think of your business as an amazon fba business, think of yourself as an e-commerce brand that's more than just amazon. And he commented back like well, a lot of people can't do that and said I said like I agree, because Amazon does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, so your product might not be able to work out in the wild as easily or as good as it does on Amazon, but if that's your case, then that means you are inherently running a weaker business and that's a risky place to be.

Speaker 1:

So I always recommend to do as much as you can to turn these, like big tech giants we rely on, into just a traffic channel. The more you can own the customer lifecycle, the better. And almost everyone agrees with me. I wouldn't say that's controversial, but the way I'd say like talk about Amazon being such a massive risk is usually the controversial take, but I think we all see that right. Likeos, uh, announced those new fines, or new fees. I keep calling them fines. Increase it. And if you are 100 amazon fba, what are you going to do? You're going to shut down your business like you're going to pay the fit.

Speaker 2:

You're going to pay the fine, the fee. So he's gonna take it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, like there's like nothing you can do, versus if you have a ddc branch of your business, right, if you're selling I think I talked about on our podcast if you're selling a piece of shoes uh like shoes on a facebook ad right, they click it, they go to your shopify store.

Speaker 1:

They don't buy, for whatever reason it's in their mind they want these shoes. They forget your brand because who wouldn't? Like we forget, like I forget, what I did yesterday? You know they're not going to remember our brand unless we made a real crazy impact. Uh, so they go to amazon because amazon's the google of consumer search, right, and they find your shoes because you're on amazon, you're running ads, but only for your brand, so you're actually not spending that much money on amazon in comparison to other channels like those are the ones and now they buy your shoes. So, like that's how amazon should be used, in my view, cause Amazon takes all those customers, versus if you have the DTC store, all those customers belong in your ecosystem now, which is far more powerful, way more valuable when you go to sell too.

Speaker 2:

I love that take and I totally agree with you. It all depends, of course, with the for the listener, on the product they have, whether it's Amazon you know it is amazon centric and whether it can be taken off amazon. But if you don't want to sell and you don't want to expand more on amazon, I mean d2c is the is the place to go, and there's many, many resources out there for that, as well as the amazon resources. Yeah, the more you can do that, the better, in my view. Love it. So, greg, thanks so much for being on the show. Um, how should people uh, follow you online if they want to hear?

Speaker 1:

more. Yeah, uh, I mean you can just email me, greg at empire flipperscom if you wanted to talk to me personally. I'm usually pretty responsive on there. Uh, give me a couple days because I do get spammed a lot, a lot of guest post linkers wanting to sell me guest post links, uh. But uh, outside of that, go to to EmpireFlipperscom. I run a YouTube channel, just YouTubecom slash EmpireFlippers as well. Any of those you can reach out, leave a comment and happy to answer any questions if I can help or not.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, thank you. And so thanks so much for being on the show, greg, if you like the show and if you're watching, please go and like, follow and rate us if you're on a different platform. So if you're watching on YouTube, thumbs up or thumbs down, and if you're watching on Spotify, just give us five stars, or four stars, or whatever stars you want to give, definitely five stars except if you're on Amazon and you're asking for five stars, they will downvote you.

Speaker 1:

Amazon will be like crazy so I said that and I gonna get wiped out.

Speaker 2:

But no, thanks so much and uh, tune in for the next episode. Thanks for being here, greg. Thanks for having me, matt.

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John Cavendish

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