Episode Summary
In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA, Izabela Hamilton talks about the American dream fulfilled by Amazon. Izabela is the founder and CEO of RankBell, a leading service solution for ranking products on Amazon, shares her life’s journey into e-commerce.
Knowing what to do in life is actually one of life’s biggest questions. But there are those who believe that everything happens for a reason, and if you want something bad enough, then the universe will conspire to make it a reality for you. Yoni Mazor of Prime Talk talks about how destiny can shape your path into e-commerce.
In today’s episode, Prime Talk has teamed up with Izabela Hamilton, the founder, and CEO of RankBell, a white-glove launching and ranking solution for Amazon sellers. RankBell helps Amazon sellers increase their rankings and boost their sales, which in turn leads to better profits! Partnering with RankBell ensures that your products reach the right audience, your profits grow, your position in the marketplace is established, and above all, that your precious time is used for other more important tasks.
Izabela Hamilton takes us on her incredible journey from rural Romania to her fortuitous adventures in America and beyond, exploring all the stations in her life which led her to create RankBell. So if you’re an Amazon seller who wants to rank up and improve your business, or if you’re simply looking for a sign that you’re doing what destiny says you’re supposed to be doing, then this episode is for you!
Learn more about RankBell!
Learn about GETIDA’s Amazon FBA reimbursement solutions.
Find the Full Transcript Below
Yoni Mazor 0:06
Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of Prime Talk. Today I’m really excited to have an extremely special guest. I’m having Izabela Hamilton. Izabela is the founder and CEO of RankBell, which is a leading service solution for ranking products on Amazon. So if you want your products on Amazon to rank higher, hopefully, make it to the top. That’s it. She’s a place to go. Izabela, welcome to the show.
Izabela Hamilton 0:28
Thank you, Yoni. I’m so excited to be here. We should have done this like years ago, but you know, it’s never too late. Perfect time. Perfect place. Right?
Yoni Mazor 0:38
Everything is at the right time. So I think this really is the best time. And today’s episode is really going to be all about you, the story of Izabela Hamilton, and you’re going to share with our audience, everything, you know? Who are you? Where are you from? Where did you grow up? How did you begin your professional career all the way to where you are now. So without further ado…
Izabela Hamilton 0:57
It’s a lot. It’s a lot, you know, I’ve lived a long time.
Yoni Mazor 1:00
Yeah, I’m buckling up, my trunk is ready, I have a cup of water, we’re gonna dive in. And without further ado, let’s just jump right into it.
Izabela Hamilton 1:08
Thank you so much. This is very exciting. And I’ve watched most of all your interviews and I know you go very deep, so I have to be prepared. You know, I didn’t do a meditation before but we’ll just we’ll just see what comes out of it.
Yoni Mazor 1:21
We’ll see. Natural, all natural.
Izabela Hamilton 1:22
Let’s do it.
Yoni Mazor 1:24
Alright, so you’re born and raised in?
Izabela Hamilton 1:26
Romania, Romania, shout out to Zalau. So a lot of people you know, oh,
Yoni Mazor 1:33
Hold on, hold on, how do you spell that? To help our post production?
Izabela Hamilton 1:35
Z A L A U – Zalau
Yoni Mazor 1:39
Zalau
Izabela Hamilton 1:39
It’s very, very tiny, very tiny. And every time I meet somebody and they’re like, Oh my god, you’re born in Romania. They always say one of these two things. One, they say, Are you a gymnast? And I say no, sorry. Or they say but are you a vampire? So that question sometimes, you know, I kind of lead because there’s
Yoni Mazor 1:58
Oh because of Transylvania and Count Dracula, the whole story?
Izabela Hamilton 2:01
Exactly because I am from Transylvania. So I may or may not be a vampire. That’s yet to me yet to be seen.
Yoni Mazor 2:08
Now we’ll kind of see if we can discover that. Okay, so I don’t want to butcher the name. But Zeloi? What was the name of the village, the place again, the town?
Izabela Hamilton 2:17
Oh, Zalau, Z A L A U.
Yoni Mazor 2:19
So born and raised in Zalo Romania. You grew up there. You went to school there, junior high school, that was the whole…?
Izabela Hamilton 2:25
All of that. Yeah. And, you know, it’s interesting, because when I was born, I, you know, I grew up in a communist time. And I mean, I don’t know if I should say how old I am. But I was, I’m, you know, I’m there. And I was in the communist era. And I grew up, I went to school, I remember, you know, seeing the President on TV like the only time…
Yoni Mazor 2:51
Just a sign up for the listener, Ceausesco was like a king over there. He was a tyrant. And he had, I believe he built the largest house or presidential residency in the world, just you know, to be super flamboyant. So you got a chance to see him, that was probably something to be remembered. Well, how big was the town, for example, give some context, how big was it? Was it rural, was it citylike?
IS 3:16
So no, so my town, it’s surrounded by I think it’s maybe like 20-30,000 people. But it was all surrounded by villages. So it’s our little city, it’s villages, and then you drive. And then there’s another city, and then there is in the mountains. We are by a very small mountain. And that’s the beauty of Romania. You have mountains everywhere, and valleys and lakes. And it’s very, very pretty. But I was saying, as I was saying, you know, I grew up in that era. So in my head, I didn’t know there was other countries out there. So the way, you know, the way we were kind of held down..I was young. I was..
Yoni Mazor 3:55
Of course. If your world is very narrow. And that was your cosmos. This is where…this all you know.
Izabela Hamilton 3:59
Exactly, very small. And, you know, we had the communist president and you know, he wanted us to remain in Romania. Nobody gets out. He really wanted to, like build his population. He wanted us to have a million kids and to continue the legacy. And you are right, he did build the biggest Parliament House and it’s huge. I went two years ago, in Bucharest and saw it and that’s what he wanted. He wanted to show that he has this like, power and it’s really it’s really beautiful. I mean, it’s beautiful story, but he was a little bit you know, uh cuckoo.
Yoni Mazor 4:34
I know it wasn’t a happy ending for at the end of it, he got toppled down and got executed, I believe. And I know, you know, a whole communist, you know, a system kind of collapse. But um, so let me ask you about your parents a little bit, what was, you know, what kind of industries they were involved in, when you were growing up?
Izabela Hamilton 4:52
So my dad did construction, and he was working with like different companies and so there were a lot of Italians coming to Romania at that time, because everything was so cheap. So they wanted to like start building different things. So they would build houses and they would build warehouses and my dad somehow got connected with it, which was good because that was like our good period of time where actually my dad made some money. My mom, and almost 99% of the women in our city, they all worked in a factory. And the factory was like, a clothing-making factory and….
Yoni Mazor 5:28
Apparel, clothing. Yes.
Izabela Hamilton 5:30
Paid very little. I mean, very, very little. Worked over time, I would barely ever see my mom, I would barely ever see our dad. So I have two siblings, and all three of us like we would go to school by ourselves, we would come home by ourselves.
Yoni Mazor 5:42
Were you the youngest, oldest, the middle?
Izabela Hamilton 5:44
I’m the oldest and the smartest.
Yoni Mazor 5:49
Seems like you’re also probably a pioneer.
Izabela Hamilton 5:50
Yeah, hopefully, they’re not gonna listen to this one. But it’s true. So you know, we all had the key around our neck, like our generation is called the generation with the key around their neck. You know?
Yoni Mazor 6:02
The one that’s kind of the loop collar with all these colors. Yes. Rubber one that snaps.
Izabela Hamilton 6:09
We had out there at different designs, but he has that was one. So we all had it, we would go inside the house, we would, you know, feed ourselves, we would have to clean and we were very little but it wasn’t just us. So in my head, you know, I was like, Oh my god, like, it’s just something didn’t feel right. Like, okay, why are we just born and all we have is to work, I barely see my parents and then I’m going to school and I’m going to get a job so I can work 24 hours and then die. Like it just seems so sinister to me, even as a young child, so I started developing this idea in my head like, there must be something else out there. So I started having conversation with my dad. And he started telling me about this place, it’s called America. And basically the way he described it, Yoni, I thought like they were like rivers or honey and honey and milk. Like he described America as that. But he had never been here either, you know, impossible. Like you couldn’t even go to our neighboring country.
Yoni Mazor 7:07
Yes. It was called the Iron Curtain back in the day, you know, the world that was pretty close to the eastern Eastern Bloc, Communist Bloc. Yeah. So the the notion was that America is a land of opportunities. It’s paved in gold. And this is what he might have said, you know, as you’re growing up, okay, so let me understand this. You did junior high, high school, you graduated, where’d you go next, after you graduated high school?
Izabela Hamilton 7:31
I finished high school and for Romania, the schools are very, very tough. I mean, they’re extremely tough. So to be able to go into college, that’s like with a scholarship you need to not only have perfect scores, I mean, perfect A’s all throughout, but not only the score for the test, throughout your high school, too. So they would count the four years, plus the tests of the scores, plus, plus plus…a million things. So a school wasn’t that like, big deal for me. I mean, I made it like I was good. Like, I liked a few things. I love math, I love psychology, but I thought that chemistry and physics and all that, so my scores weren’t that high. They were just like, kind of like average, mediocre. And then when I went to the college, though, I got in, but not on scholarship, I got it with, you know, you have to pay. And there was we didn’t have any money. So I stayed in my city. And I was like, you know what, that I’m going to apply to the school, they had this program in our city, it was called something about custom, like you were able to work in customs, you know, like, where they tried the passport and all this. So I was like, you know, this sounds like a great opportunity. Like, I wouldn’t mind it.
Yoni Mazor 8:44
So customs you’re saying like when there’s a product being imported to Romania?
Izabela Hamilton 8:49
Correct. Correct. So I went to that school for two years. And one of my teachers saw that I was like, you know, quite smart. I was interested. And when we finished those two, they’re called, I think it’s like professional school or something.
Yoni Mazor 9:02
Professional colleges. Yeah, for a specific industry and occupation.
Izabela Hamilton 9:05
I don’t know if they have this here in the US but in Romania, it was a big….
Yoni Mazor 9:09
I think they have this for like, for the medical field when you want to be a certain assistant for radiology and machinery, stuff like that they have these special colleges. I know at least here in New Jersey they have, so yeah, good point.
Izabela Hamilton 9:18
Yeah. So I went there. And, you know, I, I was offered a position after I finished my school from my teacher, the professor that was teaching us and I started working at the local…
Yoni Mazor 9:31
What year did you graduate and start working?
Izabela Hamilton 9:33
Um, 2000…so I came here 2003. So this was in 2000.
Yoni Mazor 9:41
The year 2000. So you graduated out of that, you know, professional college and you dive into the world of imports and customs, working for the government?
Izabela Hamilton 9:49
No, so it was a local office in our city. So it was just a private business, but they had a deal with the customs so any truck that would come from Hungary or you know, Italy, or whatever it would come from, instead of going to the border, they will just let them through with a seal on the truck and with paperwork, and they will say go to the nearest the customs office was was our city. So they would come there, all the trucks and we would open the seal, we will do their customs paperwork and all this. And I really liked that I was very young. And I was starting to make pretty good money, but it was so much pressure.
Yoni Mazor 10:27
So one second, so, this is a private company that the government gives it authority to essentially handle all the processing of the customs, so you can actually validate that it’s there. There’s nothing, no fishy business and stuff like that. And you charge a fee for that service. So it makes it for commercial companies much faster and smoother and less bureaucracy. That’s kinda the thing there?
Izabela Hamilton 10:46
Exactly 100% right. And it was fun. But I was the youngest one working, there was a lot of pressure, like you couldn’t make mistakes, like, a mistake would cost us like a lot of money. And we were always under observation. It was…I had to mature really quickly, you know what I mean, to be in that position, and it was good again, it was making money, but I was working from like, 8am to like, 8pm every single day. It was a lot. It was a lot for me.
Yoni Mazor 11:15
But while you’re doing it, you’re still living in the same town? Or did you move to another town?
Izabela Hamilton 11:18
Oh, no, I was still in the same town. And I was still actually taking some classes at night. Just for some things that I wanted to learn extra. I’ve always been interested in studying. I’ve always been interested in studying how the mind works and all this. I don’t know, I just had that inside of me. So um, I was working late or night. And no, I was coming out from my school, from my night classes. And I was walking home because the city you can probably walk from one side to the other in like an hour. So where I was, like, it will take me maybe 20 minutes.
Yoni Mazor 11:53
So charming. It sounds so lovely, you know, a nice town, you can walk across it an hour. There’s a university, a school.
Izabela Hamilton 11:58
Everybody knows each other. You can’t do anything, everybody knows what everybody’s doing. It’s so true. So yeah, one night I got out of the class and I was walking home and I remember it was so cold. It was like super, super winter. And I was walking home and I just looked up at this. Like, there was a light, you know, a lamppost on the road. And I saw this little note and I was getting closer. I was like what is that? And I kid you not, Yoni, this is what it said on it: Do you want to go to America? Call this number. Freaky.
Yoni Mazor 12:36
So where your father was dripping tea the whole time, you were growing up on this, you know, this belief that America is a land of gold and honey on your way back from work you said?
Izabela Hamilton 12:47
So I worked and then I went to school. And then I was walking home tired, cold. There was…It was like, I need a miracle or something.
Yoni Mazor 12:55
And the United States of America came knocking. As an opportunity on the pole in the night and in a freezing winter in your town, a small town in Romania.
Izabela Hamilton 13:05
That is why I think either I’m special or somebody else is looking out for me because even when I look back, I’m like did that really happened to me because that’s…
Yoni Mazor 13:17
Divine intervention for sure. Okay, so you saw this and what happened? What do you do with this information?
Izabela Hamilton 13:20
I took the number, it was just a number I took the number I wrote it down quickly. I ran home. I said: Dad I’m going to America. He’s like yeah, sure you’re going to America. I’m like yeah, look, there’s this number let’s call. So we waited until the next day, we called them and they said they have their office, this company in the next city over to us and now we’re away. And they told us that if I want to go to US I need to have a driving license. I need to have $1,000 which we didn’t have, all this stuff right? They wanted to make sure that we qualified before we got there.
Yoni Mazor 13:51
Well, but what was the context of sending you to America or what was the…?
Izabela Hamilton 13:57
It’s an au pair. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it So it’s like a nanny program. That’s why, you know, they wanted us to have, you know, the driving license because you get to America you have to drive the kids to school and you have to do really different things. But I really wanted to go so I begged my dad. I was like please like this is my chance like this sign was for me like impossible I don’t know who put it there but it’s definitely for me. And it wasn’t like a professional ad or nothing. It was just like…it could have been a scam. I could have been so for organs.
Yoni Mazor 14:34
Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, for me for my kind of instincts I would probably not believe it. I would probably keep going. But you didn’t do that. That’s admirable. You took a leap of faith and thank God it worked. It seems like it worked out, we don’t know yet, but we’re gonna see the story soon.
Izabela Hamilton 14:47
Yeah, I mean, I think like that happens a lot in my life. Like if I really want something somehow things just work out and they just magically appear.
Yoni Mazor 14:56
So tell me also which year did this happen to you because you started working around 2000 so this was the same year or this was further ahead?
Izabela Hamilton 15:02
No, this was in 2002.
Yoni Mazor 15:04
You’re already two years into your position. You’re starting a career.
Izabela Hamilton 15:08
Yes, yes. So 2002 and this was I think, November the 7th…No, I think it was like November, it was cold, it was snowing, it was already like winter. And then I went to their office and they said, you know, um, you know, this is the things that you need, just make sure that you have all this paperwork, vaccines and some other crazy things that they needed. And I was like, Dad, like, what are we going to do? $1,000? Yoni, back then, it was like somebody’s salary for a year.
Yoni Mazor 15:37
In Romania, or in your town. A year worth of work just to send you? Just to apply? Or this before tickets? Like, what’s the economics?
Izabela Hamilton 15:48
They had it all included, which was good. They had the visa, they had the flight, you know, sending you to the family, which was good, but still, it’s like, where are you going to get $1,000 so my dad was able to, you know, borrow that for me because he didn’t have $1,000 and he actually got $1100. So he paid for the program $1,000 and I went to the interview in Bucharest, it was my first time in a big city. I had never left my town. Never left my town.
Yoni Mazor 16:18
Really? 2002 was your first time in Bucharest. Wow, after college. Yeah, yeah.
Izabela Hamilton 16:25
And, you know, I got there. Like, we went on the train. And it was cool that it was like we were…we were bored like you know, we were just normal, your normal average people in Romania. So I got there. And I remember we were waiting at the embassy. And we were waiting outside and it was cold. Then every single person that would go in front of me, they would come back crying. And I was like, Oh my god, like, how am I ever gonna get the visa? Because they got denied, denied, denied.
Yoni Mazor 16:51
So you’re at the embassy, all these people coming in for a visa crying because they got denied?
Izabela Hamilton 16:56
Yes, of course, this is the opportunity of their life, like you either make it or you don’t. And if they deny you, then it’s very hard for you to come back. Like they would see that you were denied at this day by this place and they will always deny you. So I was like, Oh my god, oh my god, I want to go to America. And then I would be like, I will just be afraid. I’m like, Oh my god, like, what if they deny me but on the other side is like, but that sign was for me. Like I was meant to come here. So I would calm them down. And then until they called my name and like I had this hat on Oh my God, I looked terrible. My hat on. And I went like, you know, like one of those rain on a cat that you see on the street now. And they’re like, so you want to go to America? Like in broken, super broken English, barely any, I’m like, Yeah. What are you gonna do there? I want to work for a family. Like, who knows what else I told him. Oh, but what do you want to do when you come back? Because the program is one year. You know, you have to return after that time. Yeah. So they wanted to see where my mind is going like, Am I going to stay over my visa and become illegal in America? Or am I going to return? I said, of course. I’m going to come back. I want to open like a kindergarten and I want to do this. And there’s of course in my head. I’m like, as soon as I’m in America, adios! I’m never coming back.
Yoni Mazor 18:13
At least you’re honest about it. Now, after the fact.
Izabela Hamilton 18:16
But of course, I’m like, Yes, of course. I’m coming back. I’m gonna do. And you know what? I got accepted by some miracle. And by God’s will, and you know, it was…I’m telling you, was meant for me to come to America.
Yoni Mazor 18:29
So on the spot they said, you’re good, boom, here’s your stamp. Off you go on your merry way. Okay, so this is 2002. And yeah, how quickly did you get out of town? Two months? You’re probably super excited. You’re probably walking on clouds.
Izabela Hamilton 18:43
I was scared. Yoni, I had never left my family. Never been. I’ve never even been on nothing. Like I never drove until then. Like, so I got my license. I did everything. And then I was like, Oh my god, like, in my head. I was like, so I’m leaving my family. My brother, my sister, my friends, my boyfriend. My little boyfriend. I had that, and I was like, and I don’t know, when I’m gonna come back. When that feeling hits you. It’s, it’s like, oh my god, like, I need to, like, I cannot be a kid anymore. I can no longer …So and oh my god, like…
Yoni Mazor 19:24
So where did you land? Where did this take you? Where are we heading to?
Izabela Hamilton 19:28
So um, first they bring you to New York. And you go to a three day orientation and they send you to whatever family that picked you. It’s like they pick cattle or something, you know, like, Oh, this person here, this person here. So…
Yoni Mazor 19:42
And this was just for the New York area or they’re across the United States?
Izabela Hamilton 19:44
For everyone. They go to New York. They do the orientation. They sent me to Lincoln, Massachusetts.
