Episode Summary
Boosting healthy living products on Amazon FBA with Sarah Dajani – In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA – Sarah Dajani – VP of operations – Boosted Commerce – Sarah shares her journey into the Amazon FBA space. At Boosted, we are acquiring a select group of Amazon-based brands & private-label FBA businesses that are uniquely positioned for growth in 2021. Boosted is committed to transparent and speedy transactions – in less than 45 days.
About Sarah Dajani of Boosted Commerce. Everything we do at Boosted puts the end customer at the forefront of our decision-making. By pinpointing the category leaders in the e-commerce space, we empower the brands who “get” their customers and are devoted to consistently delivering products that matter and outperform customer expectations. Boosted Commerce is very focused on a quality-driven, boutique experience for the sellers we acquire, the products we scale and develop, and the end customers that we serve.
GETIDA is actively dedicated to improving the overall operations of Amazon FBA sellers. We’ve developed robust auditing software that keeps track of your Amazon FBA inventory transactions, refunds, seller data analytics, and FBA reimbursements easily and clearly. We maintain an agreeable, established relationship with Amazon, and our dedicated case managers draw on that relationship when filing FBA reimbursement claims on your behalf.
We not only identify potential FBA reimbursement claims, our case managers file and follow up on all of your Amazon cases, providing a premium quality service for you and your business. You can join GETIDA for free and quickly discover the FBA reimbursements data on your Amazon account, get free consulting on how to improve your Amazon business, and much more!
Find the Full Transcript Below
Yoni Mazor 0:06
Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of primetime today. I have a special guest. Today I’m having Sarah Dajani. Sarah is the VP of operations at Boosted Commerce. Boosted Commerce is a special company. It’s an e-commerce aggregator, focusing on purchasing Amazon businesses in the better for you living space, which includes a bunch of categories like food, health, and wellness topicals. And, you know, things that are really good for you. So Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here. Our pleasure, really. So today’s episode is going to be the episode of Sarah, the journey all about you, you’re going to share with us. Where are you? Where are you from? Where’d you grow up? Where’d you go to school? How’d you begin your professional career all the way to where you are today. So I guess without further ado, let’s jump right into it. Sounds great. Thanks. Alright, so let’s begin. Where were we born?
Sarah Dajani 0:58
I was born in Florida. We grew up in Florida out on the beaches actually on a little island on the Gulf beaches. It’s called Treasure Island.
Yoni Mazor 1:08
Did you grow up in Treasure Islands? It sounds like a theme park or something.
Sarah Dajani 1:13
Well, it sounds like a theme park. And in fact, it’s not too far from Disney World. So I had a really charming upbringing. There was very much Island life. Everyone was laid back. I spent weekends on the beach. You know, it was a great place to grow up.
Yoni Mazor 1:30
That’s amazing. So is this considered the Orlando area?
Sarah Dajani 1:34
No, it’s not considered the Orlando area is considered sort of the Tampa Bay area. So very warm, balmy, it’s a big retirement community kind of fits the slow vibe very different from where I am now in San Francisco.
Yoni Mazor 1:50
Gotcha. San Francisco. I was there not too long ago, a great place. But okay, so your parents what kind of industries where they’re involved in? What brought them to Florida or that place, for example?
Sarah Dajani 1:59
Yeah, I know. I mean, they were just sort of hardworking Floridians in the academic and medical spaces. So I mean, nothing particular to Florida, but they you know, they loved it there. It was warm. It was sunny, you know, is a great place to sort of call home.
Yoni Mazor 2:18
That’s great. So Alright, so you grew up in that area and during school, or did you do anything that was entrepreneurial? Any special things? You did activities, sports, community health, and wellness, and Beauty?
Sarah Dajani 2:30
Oh, yeah, no, yeah, sure. From the moment I started schooling, I was sure I was gonna end up here. Yeah, you know, growing up in Florida, it’s, um, it’s one of those places where you, you’ve got to do sports to kind of have a social life. So I mean, yeah, it was, which is, in a way, it’s great. Because you learn how to work as a team, you learn how to function under pressure. A lot. So my true love was basketball. But I also, you know, got to try out volleyball, swimming, track and field. Tennis.
Yoni Mazor 3:09
You were playing, what was the framework you were playing in basketball? Was it the school team or was it just a league?
Sarah Dajani 3:17
Yeah. It was the school team as the varsity school team, you know, Junior Varsity and then varsity school team. And what was your position? Did you play which position? I was forward? I was tall for my age. So I was the de facto forward.
Yoni Mazor 3:32
You know, me, I know, I don’t even know, I never played for a team. So I played whatever position I ran on the court for that moment. I love basketball.
Sarah Dajani 3:41
Yeah, yeah. It was a great sport. It was a great way to be part of the Florida culture. I mean, everyone’s outdoors all the time. My school was a really small school, but it was all outdoors. I mean, I said, except for the classrooms, the classrooms themselves were just like, literally just rooms dotted around a big open outdoor courtyard. And so we had lunch outdoors, all of our breaks were outdoors. Even our lockers were outdoors. Yeah, yeah. So it was, I mean, it was just an outdoor lifestyle. What’s the rain situation. Does it rain alot? Yeah, it rained, it rained a whole lot. So when it would rain we would have the classrooms all like these, these elevated sort of sidewalks with just a little awning over them. So all the kids would eat there or if it was really bad, they put us in the gym and we’d eat lunch in the gym.
Yoni Mazor 4:38
Yeah, so I’m glad to hear this is a gym which means you played basketball in the gym, not in the rain. Correct?
Sarah Dajani 4:42
Right not in the rain, but our practices which were brutal. Were outside in the Florida weather so that was tough.
Yoni Mazor 4:51
Pretty intense. Wow. Alright, so a side question. What’s your team? You know, basketball team.
Sarah Dajani 4:57
Oh, I As I go into the Miami Heat, although I have to say that I’m not a big professional basketball follower, I played it a lot when I was younger and I still love playing it, but I never really got into following the NBA too much.
Yoni Mazor 5:13
If you’re in the business, it’s hard for you to kind of follow it. I hear what you’re saying. But what about w MBAs? Agnostic? No agnostic, like no, gotcha, gotcha. All right. Good. So sports as part of your life, which creates discipline, a community approach, working in teams, that’s really good. You graduated high school and this is the same place all this is in Treasure Island. A place to call home?
Sarah Dajani 5:37
Yeah, no, it was great. It was all in Florida. I was really lucky to have a good school, you know,, applying to college and all of that. Part of it is about working hard and studying and getting good grades and stuff,. Part of it is about having a good college counselor. A lot of people just aren’t getting you know, in their high school. I had a college counselor and in my school, I was very lucky. She was fantastic. And she taught me how to apply to colleges. So I applied and got into a handful and ended up going to Princeton University up in New Jersey.
Yoni Mazor 6:21
Not too far from me. I’m in Teaneck, New Jersey right now in the studio. Oh, great. So yes, Princeton is part of Jersey in a way. It’s also a small trivia, I think also Jeff Bezos, that’s where he attended as well. Right?
Sarah Dajani 6:34
I think so. I think you are right. Yeah, Princeton’s got a pretty kind of fancy alumni roster, including actually Michelle Obama, which she doesn’t talk about very much. But she did mention it in her book Becoming so I was pretty happy to read.
Yoni Mazor 6:53
So I think also Albert Einstein back in the day, that’s where he also taught or something like that.
Sarah Dajani 6:58
I believe he taught there. Yeah, Princeton has a very strong mathematics and physics program. I actually went into Princeton wanting to be a math major. It was my thing in high school. And when I went, all of the students were something called Math Olympians, which basically means that they would compete in international competitions on math. So for students like me coming from a high school…
Yoni Mazor 7:29
It seems like they invested their time in math instead of basketball, so you’re like, Okay, I gotta I gotta pick it up.
Sarah Dajani 7:34
I was out of my league, I thought I could go to Princeton and learn math and just get better and better. And it wasn’t. The competition was insane. I mean, my classmates, for their further junior and senior thesis were writing textbooks with professors. And so these people were just incredible in their fields.A lot of the students were coming from around the world. Yeah, yeah. It’s one of those programs where you do get students from all over the world, which obviously, I mean, that’s one of the great things right, and you’ve got people from all over the world, and you’re really competing
Yoni Mazor 8:13
So you’re competing on a global level, with top of mind the world. Everybody is aspiring to go to Princeton, which has a famed, you know, Mathematical Sciences section, or division in the university. So it’s a good, interesting place to begin getting a high level education. So why did you start in person? I want to start attaching chronology into the mix.
Sarah Dajani 8:32
Yeah, sure. I started in 2005, at Princeton.
Sarah Dajani 8:37
Got it. So 2005 straightaway into getting a degree in math, or what was the mindset?
Sarah Dajani 8:42
Straightaway into math, I started with multivariable calculus and linear algebra, sorry, not linear algebra. But we started going into vectors and multi multi dimensions pretty quickly with my first set of classes. And I just realized very quickly that I would have to dedicate all of my time to studying math, and eventually follow the path of being an academic or someone you know, at some very highly technical, you know, Corporation focusing on mathematical applications, usually in physics. And in fact, that’s what my exams were, they were kind of these questions, asking, you know, about theoretical applications of the mathematical principles, we learned about physics problems. And I wasn’t interested in physics. So I had to within the first couple of years figure out, you know, what I wanted to do, it’s what everyone does in college, right? You kind of go in there thinking one thing, you end up doing something else. Sounds like a classic case. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, by the end of my time at Princeton, I had dabbled in international relations, public policy, history and journalism. And what I had discovered was the ideas of, of what our global economy was creating in the world. And what it was creating was a lot of income disparities between different populations, especially when you see certain countries that are really technologically advanced, they’re raking it in right, their GDP are phenomenal. They’re able to create value at a rate that’s really different from, from, from other countries, kind of similar to what you’re seeing with Amazon, and what it does with technology versus the brick and mortar retail companies. But when I saw that I, you know, I got interested in how do we alleviate poverty in places that don’t have access to the kinds of things that we have the privilege to have access to.
Yoni Mazor 10:55
this is all during college, you had this epiphany or this, so that was drawing you to look into that.
Sarah Dajani 11:02
Yeah, it was through one class call that I took, I only got around to taking it my senior year. And it was called social entrepreneurship. And it was taught by a visiting preferred professor from the University of Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California. If I remember his name correctly, I believe his name was John Danner. And what he talked about was all of these new businesses that young people were coming up with, to help raise the income of those who needed it most. And it was, um, you know, they would come up with, you know, lights that were solar power that would provide, you know, evening time, light and villages in Africa, which would, you know, drastically increase people’s ability to produce and make income and increase safety and, you know, improve health outcomes and all sorts of stuff, just from like a solar-powered, you know, powered lamp. And I got, I got really interested in that, because I’ve been studying all of these public policy methods of improving income abroad. My senior thesis was on USA ID initiatives abroad.
Yoni Mazor 12:09
What’s USA ID
Sarah Dajani 12:13
USA ID, is the governmental agency in America that provides aid packages and relief packages to countries abroad.
Yoni Mazor 12:21
So USA, they also call USAID or just ID? Yeah, you can. Yeah, yeah. Some people call it USAID. Yeah, as well.
Yoni Mazor 12:28
So on a global mission to eliminate poverty, and then through all countries, and supplied any kind of aid that, you know, the superpower also knows the United States can aid.
Sarah Dajani 12:37
So, you know, if, you know, what happens is that often these aid packages are limited by the same inefficiencies that, you know, any sort of government initiatives are limited by, and that’s what my, I learned through my senior thesis, we had everyone in prison history to the senior thesis that is that’s around, you know, 200 pages long. And that’s kind of what I discovered with this class on social entrepreneurship. I was like, wow, the private sector is to save the day private sector solutions to these global problems. So I started getting interested in that problem as college was over, I had to get a job.
Yoni Mazor 13:16
Okay, why did you graduate? Let’s put some time stamps into that.
Sarah Dajani 13:19
- I graduated four years later, in 2009.
Yoni Mazor
Okay, what was your first station? I just want to put context out there 2009, the major economical kind of collapse of the subprime mortgages that went bust. So at least the finance industry in the economy has gotten kind of sluggish, what was your first position? 2009 after college?
Sarah Dajani 13:37
Yeah, that was a tough time. I mean, I remember it the year before going to Lehman Brothers for a recruiting event.
Yoni Mazor 13:45
If you guys are asking what Lehman Brothers? Exactly. That’s a big banking firm that was over 100 years old that got melted away due to that, you know, financial disaster of subprime mortgages that collapse. Well, yeah, so that didn’t work out with Lehman Brothers. That’s a good thing. It didn’t work out. But where? Where did you find yourself in 2009, in your first job after college?
Sarah Dajani 14:04
Well, so I, I kind of did the same thing I did when applying to colleges, I tried to apply to a lot of things to make sure I could get something good. And so I went two routes. One route was I applied for a bunch of academic scholarships, like the Rhodes Scholarship, the Marshall scholarship, and that my aim with those scholarships, was to try to take all of the training, I had gotten an international policy, and then move it forward through academia to start really developing these ideas of how do we build bridges across countries to really help people that are most in need. Those are really competitive scholarships, and the people I was competing against were remarkable young people. The second group of applications was basically all consulting. Alright, that’s good. Okay. And that’s a very typical postgraduate path, because it essentially teaches you the skills you need to learn business. Learning how to think sets you up on a career path for success without narrowing your focus at all. It’s really a great sort of first step postgraduate. And what happened was I got far in my scholarship applications, but I didn’t win any scholarships. And instead, I actually got a great job at Bain and Company.
Yoni Mazor 15:19
I was about to say BCG Boston Consulting Group, or Bain. And that was kind of my two guesses.
Sarah Dajani 15:23
Yeah, you know them. Yeah, they’re sort of the big three, and that was one of them. McKinsey is one of them? A third or give me the big three. Yep. McKinsey is the third. Yep. And so what I did was I just launched me into the first phase of my career. I look at my career in three chunks. The first phase was this sort of learning the basics of the business phase, right. Like, at the end of college, I realized private sector solutions to public sector problems, right. But I had no idea about the private sector, I had been doing all policy work. So then I was like, okay, gotta learn about business when it’s a Bane. And then that was boot camp that was heads down, you know, work, Excel modeling, you know, research calling companies trying to figure out so I was able to work in both the Dubai offices and in the Silicon Valley offices. So you want to live in Dubai? Yes. I want to live in Dubai. Oh, when was that? That was 2009. So that was right after the financial crisis hit and all the USPS offers were getting rescinded. I decided this is the right time to go to Dubai.
Yoni Mazor 16:36
So early beginning with Bain early beginning, you already got launched to the Middle East to Dubai. Yes.
Sarah Dajani 16:41
Yeah. Right right away. I mean, I had never lived outside. You know, I grew up all my life in Florida. And then it was like New Jersey, New Jersey was a culture shock for me, by the way…
Yoni Mazor 16:52
Really, okay, okay, we got to stop for a minute to talk about that. Living in New Jersey. Now. I’m not a native but I’m gonna be here for quite a while so I’m not sure what was the shock for you. So what was the shock from Florida to New Jersey?
Sarah Dajani 17:04
It may not be what you’re thinking Yoni. But the reason I was shocked at the diversity, just a crazy amount of diversity. I mean, you’re getting people that New Jersey race, right. It’s New Jersey, New York, essentially
Yoni Mazor 17:17
New York. It’s cosmopolitan. You got everybody from everywhere, just together. Yeah. Oh, man.
Sarah Dajani 17:23
It was incredible. I mean, like I said in Florida, if you wanted to kind of fit in you had to do sports that were outside all the time. It’s hot. But then, going to New Jersey, for me, was a culture shock. But think about it, I remember my first time ever in New York City, age 18. Eyes wide open. Oh my God, we went to the M&M store. My roommate took me to Chinatown. And we ate Peking duck. I mean, this is for me…
Yoni Mazor 17:53
That was your real treasure island, not treasure. Island, on one hand, was a big Treasure Island when you’re 18. It was a culture shock how international it is how diverse it is, how robust it is, it’s very eye-opening to any person, honestly. But they’re coming from Florida, where it’s, it’s much more I guess homogenic and, and laid back. And it requires you to play sports. And you can find yourself in so many ways. This area, you can be sports, it can be academics, can be being an intellectual, being a plumber, whatever it is, there are all communities around that as well. Exactly. And then to go from there to Dubai.
Sarah Dajani 18:29
Now talk about an international city, right? I mean, I think it’s hard for a lot of people to truly understand Dubai, how international it is that there is no real main language there. Right. Like everyone speaks English, because they’re kind of like, Alright, we’ll get by with English. But you hear everything you feel here Hindi, Urdu, Filipino Arabic, everything you hear out there.
Yoni Mazor 18:55
The main language there is trade and cooperation, global trade. Exactly. It’s a major global trading hub. And as long as you have, you know, the goods to sell, and to buy and sell and great global business, I guess you do pretty well there because every language is available for you to connect.
Sarah Dajani 19:11
Exactly, exactly. And I went out there with the mission to teach myself about business to really, really learn about business. And so I remember I got off the plane, and I got in a cab and they took me to the hotel that they had put me up in. Now this is like more than 10 years ago now. Right? So Dubai was still heavily under construction, which means there was a lot of sand everywhere. Oh, my taxi can’t figure out how to get to my hotel because the roads aren’t built yet.
Yoni Mazor 19:42
Really so 12 years ago is that rule? Today is like a major beautiful skyline. You have the Burj Dubai, the tallest tower in the world. I think it’s celebrating its seventh year. Yeah. So you’re right at the verge of you know, explosion for Dubai. So it’s a bit more rustic than we imagined it today.
Sarah Dajani 19:58
Yeah, yeah, I would go rustic Yeah, more than rural, I would call it a little bit rustic. And this was part of this is a part of town is near media city that was still an t calm, which is an area that was really still under construction. So it was all said everywhere. So the guy drops me off at a gas station that’s like, kind of got a few barriers between me and the hotel. And I get my bags, right. It’s an international trip, and I’m moving internationally. So I have like two or three huge bags. And I have to drag them over these barriers and into this hotel. People are barely speaking English because the hotel is run mostly by Indian guys there. And so they were speaking mostly Hindi. And I just was like, what, what am I doing?
Yoni Mazor 20:44
That’s good. That’s a good experience, though. It makes you build your character.
Sarah Dajani 20:48
It builds character for sure. And so and so those first couple of years at Bain in Dubai, you know, I was just learning all the basics of business. I was at Bain for three years. So part of it was in the Silicon Valley office, I did a transfer.
Yoni Mazor 21:07
So hold on, hold on. So three years old. So let’s dissect it right. So how long was it Dubai trip or Dubai?
Sarah Dajani 21:13
The Dubai trip was about a year? A little over a year? Yes. Sorry. Sorry. Dubai was a little over two years.
Yoni Mazor 21:21
So okay, let’s hold that thought for a second. And then the third year was Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Silicon Valley. I gotcha. So in two years, did you pick up any language besides picking up the world of business, which is probably tremendous for you as Dubai is really on the rise? Did you pick up any languages? Any other skills?
Sarah Dajani 21:38
Yeah, I actually already knew how to speak Arabic and French, when I went to Dubai. And so I got home from school or what was it? Yes, I’m at home. My family speaks Arabic and French. And I got to actually learn that in Princeton, they had really great programs there.
Yoni Mazor 21:57
Hence to me, that could be from North Africa or it can be Morocco. Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt.
Sarah Dajani 22:03
I’m a mix of sorts living in North Africa. But primarily, I would say Egyptian. Yeah.
Yoni Mazor 22:10
Nice. Nice. Very good. So full disclosure, my father’s from North Africa, but a little bit west of there is Tunisia. So it’s also very possible they speak Arabic and French. So I do Arabic. I don’t speak French yet. Okay, great. Well, Tunisia is a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous country. So you felt more comfortable in Dubai, so that decreases your, I guess levels of stress, because as you know, I guess it’s supposed to be Arabic, the national language of Dubai, but it’s very international, so almost a million notice it. So French, also a very international language. That’s great.
Sarah Dajani 22:47
I happen to be in a Dubai office that was actually started by the same Paris office. So everyone in the office book French, and the senior management was all French. So that kind of again, you wouldn’t think about it thinking of Dubai, but I got huge French exposure there as well.
Yo
