How do you systematize your business and make delegation easy which increases your scalability? We talk to Trent Dyrsmid, Founder of Flowster, host of the Bright Ideas podcast, and founder of a multi million dollar reseller that ranked #254 on the Inc 5000 list in 2019.
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- Tell me your Amazon story.
- Started as an Amazon affiliate program about 10 years ago.
- Then did private label. Didn’t go well.
- Eventually went well when I automated systems, hired full army of system admins. Sent hundreds of brands an email. Week after week. Delegated everything that preceded replying to onboarding brands.
- Negotiated pricing
- Winning an account
- Then pushed off to rest of team, PO, sending money etc.
- Focused all time on closing deals.
- Account more profitable now than it has ever been.
- How did processes help your business.
- Amazon reseller system
- Have to source new products
- 4% of Amazon resellers do more than 100k a year on Amazon.
- Ability to hire VAs for low cost.
- Create a list, large list of competitors.
- Product extraction
- Who makes the products, how to get in touch with them?
- Why went into reseller model instead of private label?
- Product investments
- Private label - expensive.
- What should I sell?
- Source
- 15-20% gross margin target.
- Risks
- Every brand will tell you we don’t want any more Amazon sellers
- Salesmanship and research come into play. Listing not optimized. May no ads from incumbents. Product review negative response. Room for improvements.
- “I agree you don’t need more, you need less, and the reason I’m calling you is because current sellers aren’t doing a good job. They aren’t bothering to run ads, seo, design. When I search the phrase ‘apple slicer’ and your competitors are winning, no one is doing these good things like ads/seo.”
- How did you win an FBA slot with a brand that has 4-5 resellers already?
- Flowster
- 400k in first week to sell my process of workflows.
- Hired a tech guy to make Flowster.
- Spent year writing code. October 2018 app ready for marketplace.
- Every business has the problem - highly repetitive set of processes to make the wheels go round.
- Marketing agency: Prospect/content/hire/social/ad campaigns - same thing over and over again.
- Amazon sellers: source products, load, optimize, advertise, re-orders.
- Create work flows - checklist. Cake turns out according to the recipe.
- Super detailed.
- Memories not needed
- Training time = 35 seconds.
- Scale
- Google sheet - static instructions.
- Interactive works better in Flowster. Specific individual and give it a deadline.
- Multiple people.
- Video
- Recipient 10 min video - have to rewatch it repeatedly.
- Changes to processes - editing video sucks.
What is life like as a CEO post process setup, relationship building. Processes give you Freedom. Became entrepreneur because freedom is the biggest value.
Culture - transparency. People want to be treated like human beings, fulfillment, valued. Process help culture because less chaos, and less frantic, less fire fighting easier.
What’s next for you. Scaling software monthly revenue. 5,000 users in about 20 months. So to get to 100k monthly recurring revenue by the end of
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