Episode Summary

In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA – David Storey – Founder & CEO at AFBTS.COM – talks about Seller Discretionary Earnings (SDE) and making an Amazon exit. David details his professional experience at Draeger, working with Deep Sea Robots ROVs, and shares his personal journey into e-commerce.

About David Storey of AFBTS – | dave_storey@afbts.com

 

David Storey started selling his first Amazon FBA business and realized how much value could be added by optimizing his business for maximum exit and value.

He has helped over 40 Amazon sellers maximize the value of their businesses and is looking forward to helping you to do the same. 

Amazon FBA Build to Sell will help you create and implement an Exit Plan that will skyrocket the value of your Amazon business.

Find out more about GETIDA FBA reimbursements.

 

Find the Full Transcript below

Yoni Mazor 0:06  

Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of primetime today I’m excited to have a special guest. Today I’m having David story. David is the founder and CEO of Amazon FBA Built to Sell also known as AFBTS. AFBTS is a unique coaching program for Amazon sellers to build their business and make it optimized for sale. Okay, so the way it’s constructed is, you know, it’s ready to be sold in a snap in a beat and also ready to be sold in the most valuable position possible. He’s going to share more with us about that later on. But in the meantime, David, welcome to the show. Pleasure, to have you. So today’s episode is gonna be all about the story of David’s story. And you got to share with us, you know, who are you? Where are you from? Where’d you grow up? How’d you get a professional career until we end up to where are you doing today? So I guess without further ado, let’s just jump right into it.

 

David Storey  1:03  

Yeah, start right from the beginning. Got it. Okay. So born in northern England in the UK. Now pretty much lived out all my life. And a lot of traveling but I’m

 

Yoni Mazor  1:13  

If I’m not mistaken was Liverpool?

 

David Storey

No, it was Newcastle. 

 

Yoni Mazor

Newcastle, sorry. Yeah. 50 miles on the west, right? 

 

David Storey  1:19  

Yeah, It’s 50 miles south of the Scottish border. Right in the north of England. Beautiful place. One of the most beautiful places in England. Yeah. Castles and beaches and lots of things to do and see, it’s good.

 

Yoni Mazor 1:32  

You live in a castle or No?

 

David Storey

No, no. But the castle just up the road. It was where what’s his name? Harry Potter was filmed there. Yeah. So that’s where I was born. And my father and grandfather was an inventor. Father was an engineer. And I kind of followed in their footsteps. And I always knew I wanted to be an engineer. So went through school. Didn’t do like, what you call the A levels in England, I went straight to college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which was engineering. So when got my qualifications and engineering degree, I went to go to University. University in Newcastle. state local. Did a degree in manufacturing systems. So it was mechanical engineering.

 

Yoni Mazor 2:30  

Yeah, I want to touch a little bit if you may, if I may, your father and grandfather. So what kind of products were they designing? Or what were they working on?

 

David Storey 2:38  

They’re both farmers. But my granddad used to design like devices for making jobs easier on the farm. He’s got a patent on a special system for mixing and taking particles out of grain, you know, grains. Yeah. So he designed this special thing and got a patent on that.

 

Yoni Mazor  3:00  

Yeah. To relief, I guess he had to pull apart the parts of it. I think the big adventure in America back in the old days was the cotton gin, right? When you pick up the cotton, you know, seeds is a very thorny, without the gin, we’re able to throw it all into this machine. You know, roll it with the hands to get the economy the good part and the bad part in the Arab world to really scale production and also prevent all this all the scratches and cuts and bruises that people used to get in something like that. So that was kind of the design there to make sure that to scale up the ability to separate the grants from all these components. So your father was working on stuff that he works on also in farming.

 

David Storey  3:40  

Yeah, he was a farmer. And then when I was back, when I was born he sold the farm, dad decided to be an engineer.

 

Yoni Mazor  3:47  

And What year did he sell the farm just to have some context?

 

David Storey  3:54  

The year before I was born in 1973.

 

Yoni Mazor  3:59  

So you were growing up he wasn’t a farmer anymore. It wasn’t farming, it was more into engineering.

 

David Storey  4:03  

I lived on the farm because I lived in a big farmhouse. But he wasn’t a farmer anymore.

 

Yoni Mazor  4:09  

Got it super unique, you know, 100 years ago, farming was probably the largest industry. But you know, bounce 100 years afterward, it seems like such a niche industry to be in right? Because you got e-commerce you got as we are we’re part of, and you got high tech, in writing code and computers and just an abundance of other industries. I grew up since the birth of you know, the technological improvements of the past century. Alright, so the University of Newcastle, when did you graduate? 

 

David Story 4:37

Ah, 1998 I think it was1998.

 

Yoni Mazor 4:42

1998 you graduates and what’s your next station? 

 

David Story  4:46  

I had a year out in a company German company, which one called Drager. they manufacture breathing apparatus for firemen divers ministry Ministry of Defense in the UK and then the big headquarters in Germany do…

 

Yoni Mazor  4:59  

How do you pronounce How do you spell the?

 

David Story  5:02  

D r a g o but you’ll see the names and hospitals because they manufacture breathing devices and incubators and the really high quality and face masks and full the full hazmat suits and everything.

 

Yoni Mazor 5:19  

So when you dive in, I have a scuba diving license. So and you have you know, you need to stay as I guess for three minutes under the five-meter realm to decompress, right? Because you have what you call the nitro, or you got to balance out that the oxygen so if you don’t do that you can get like nitro poisoning, and you got to go to the special decompressing pressure. That’s what they manufacture?

 

David Story  5:39  

That’s what they do in Germany. I didn’t work on that equipment. Mine was that the fireman firefighters, I was concentrating on.

 

Yoni Mazor 5:49  

Cool stuff. This is super, super high-level stuff, though.

 

David Story 5:52  

Yeah, so I had the year out there, then I got my degree then they rang me up, I was on my way on holiday in the run-up and said, David, you want a job? So I had a job straight away when I got back from holiday looking for…

 

Yoni Mazor 6:05

You were working in the UK or in England or you had to go to Germany?

 

David Storey 6:28

In the UK. As you imagine the equipment has to be of the highest quality because if it goes wrong, someone could die. So that process, very process-driven, very high attention to detail. Really using the best techniques, the best equipment to come up with some just fantastic design. So I really loved that. I saw it as a product designer, designing the face masks and the regulators or the backpack or the systems or the hosing. You know, everything that goes with it, loved it.

 

Yoni Mazor  6:44  

Back in the day, what was that when you start working there?

 

David Storey 6:48

It’d be 1998. 

 

Yoni Mazor 6:55

When you as soon as you graduated, and back then you were designing all these procedures manually with sketches or you’re already using software and computer design. 

 

David Storey 7:03

I’m not a very good graphic designer, but I’m a good engineer in terms of 3d CAD, so

So the graphic designers would sketch up stuff they now put it into the 3d card and they would make prototype models and we’d test them in the labs where dog testing facilities big cages in the dark who has to crawl through and smoke-filled with all the equipment on testable usability. So I came up with some good patent designs, my own unique things like I’ve got a patented a firefighter, so firefighters when the climbing of ladders, imagine it’s hard that tight shoulder straps are made a special device that allows the shoulders to move with like a swivel pointer the buck.

 

Yoni Mazor  7:41  

Guys, so stay flexible. Yeah. So their ability to climb and use the shoulders is as if they’re not even carrying anything correctly. Yeah. That’s cool. And it was all yours or you had a whole team around this. But design pattern is on your name for looking to the record that says respect much respect. Very cool. All right. So how many years have you stayed with that? 

 

David Storey 8:03  

Be Seven, eight, possibly eight, or nine years? Yeah. So So I advanced into a different role. I’ve answered the senior engineers, I was running a design team. And then as I was leaving, created the whole new winning projects, great the whole new project management system in the company, and then decide to leave 2007.

 

Yoni Mazor  8:31  

2007, close to nine years in the mix, you leave, what was your next station?

 

David Storey  8:35  

Next, I went to a company that manufactures designs and manufactures deep-sea robots ROV’s, you’ve seen them go down to 3000 meters for 5000 feet.

 

Yoni Mazor  8:49  

Tremendous pressure right? 

 

David Storey  8:52  

Right with big manipulator arms and lots of lights and cameras and…

 

Yoni Mazor 8:58  

It’s basically 30 bar, right? Underneath the sea level. Oh, wow 300 bar. Yeah, every 10 meters is a bar. So 300 bars, that’s super, super-condensed. So we get super dark and icy you have to build the technology to create these vehicles and the robots. And what was the main purposes for the robots as far as you remember, it was just funny that Titanic…

 

David Storey  9:22  

The exploration of oil, so like big oil fields. But I was an engineer. This time I was a project manager started as a project manager working on projects and excelled quite rapidly through that company because it was a different sort of company. Remember, I was a very process-driven process led, this was a sort of new sort of unique company that had been just built up by some engineers. So I excelled really well and took on some massive projects took on the world’s largest ROV contract, supplying 30 ROVs to Brazil.

 

Yoni Mazor  9:58  

What’s called with that Well, companies out there. Would you call that? Petrobras? Yeah, Petrobras. Yeah, Petrobras? Yeah, Petrobras, right?

 

David Storey  10:06  

So these ROV systems, they’re not just an ROV they come with many different parts that go with them, ranging from a million pounds would be the cheapest one up to sort of 10 million pounds just for one system. Big, big ones…

 

Yoni Mazor 10:22  

How big was that contract? 30 vehicles with all the parts and components. How big was it hundreds of millions? 50 million pounds? Yeah. Got it? How long? How fast? Did you have to deliver it? Or execute on this? Two years? Wow, very cool. Um, alright, what’s the name of the firm or the company you’re working for?

 

David Storey 10:44  

That was SMD. Stands for soil machine dynamics, because they originally started making machines that deep-sea plows, plowing trenches in the ground, and laying cables. Fiber optic cables across the Atlantic. Yeah, they’re still doing that. They either get towed by ships, or they go into their own power. 

 

Yoni Mazor  11:08  

So how deep does it go? Those cables? Three, four or five kilometers? Some four? Yes. So think about it, guys, we’re probably having this, you know, on the cross Atlantic, you and I were having this recording zoom, we’re using the fiber optic infrastructure, which David really has had the privilege of being a part of that industry. We all take it for granted. But underneath the Atlantic, they’re sitting like miles and f miles, I don’t even know massive, massive cables, which I because it is corrosion and a lot of things that they create so many cables inside there, because there’s going to be parts of it pretty much gonna be usable over the years. But they keep on laying and more and more tracks right over the years.

 

David Storey 11:46  

The front blade cuts like cuts it really deep trench, you know, for three or four feet deep, and the cable gets laid and in the center, and then there’s a backfill plow that fills the trench back in over the top.

 

Yoni Mazor12:00  

It’s amazing. Yeah, so they’re actually using the grounds of the Atlantic Ocean to cover and protect these cables. It’s pretty wild. And based on all this, you know, having these amazing technological abilities called the internet, the cloud, you name it, we have it and the world is just becoming a smaller village. So it’s pretty cool. Alright, so SMD right soil machine dynamics, dynamics, how long you were there?

 

David Storey  12:28  

I was there about the same time maybe a bit longer actually. 10 to 11 years there.

 

Yoni Mazor  12:32  

So you also progressed any patents there as well? Or no?

 

David Storey  12:37  

No, that wasn’t designed. Oh, yeah. So I went from project management to head of projects, big project so much the whole project team,

 

Yoni Mazor  12:45  

Let me ask you this differently underneath you and the teams you’re managing or the engineers you’re managing any patents they created on your realm or know that over the years?

 

David Storey 13:00  

Loads, I dont know. We’re making new stuff all the time. Because they solve unique problems, these massive contracts. So yeah, so I eventually ended up as the Operations Director of that film, that firm. Also, running a big factory. So I really enjoyed that. So I had underneath me, I had a quality team. The projects team, supply chain, business improvement, engineering, and manufacturing.

 

Yoni Mazor  13:34  

It’s amazing. Yeah, so as far as I can see, you know, high-level engineering, long-term relationship, and contracts with you know, the clients, everything is very, very well crafted. It has a long-term vision, it’s not spontaneous, not, for now, it’s everything is you know, it’s high-level stuff, as far as I can see it, you know, with your experience so far with Jaeger, but also SMD. So it’s, it’s pretty impressive. Plus, you have your own patent underneath it underneath many, many patents. So even though you’re, you know, looking to the future with all these projects, constantly, innovation is taking place underneath the surface. Also, underneath the surface cables are being laid across the Atlantic, kind of the satellites for you guys. So, so you spent all these years there are any other special projects you want to mention, besides the Petrobras project, the 50 million pounds there are lots of big projects, but that was probably the biggest Got it anything revolves around the US, United States anything. And especially companies from the US Remember, you can recall?

 

David Storey 14:38  

Not that company, but the first company I did every tour of all the eastern western side of the states, including Alaska, I think I had 11 flights in eight days

 

Yoni Mazor  14:49  

And what was mission admission there? What was the purpose of that?

 

David Storey 14:51  

I was showing off the breathing apparatus. I designed a new and I took my team with me and we’re showing all the firefighters and we had firefighters in Miami crew Under like desks and things or testing it all out under the rug to Detroit and across Minneapolis and Robert Alaska and all testing it out and in the results.

 

Yoni Mazor  15:11  

And I’ll tell you one thing, the United States, really make it cool to be a firefighter. You know, if you ask a lot of kids, you want to be firefighters, because there’s all culture behind it. You know, I’m originally born raised in Israel, we don’t have that kind of culture. But the firefighters, you know, we have them, but they’re not that I’m a symbol, not much of a symbol. But here in America, they read symbols and you, if you’re able to excite them, that means you’re in a super cool, super cool stuff because they’re excited, to begin with, all the stuff and gadgets that they have is always impressive. You go to the schools and know my kids go to the schools. Firefighters come in once a year with all the tools and this and that and the chart, and they show the whole thing and they get really excited. It’s pretty awesome. Alright, so let’s talk about your next station after.

 

David Storey  15:51  

Yeah, so I always knew my plan. When I was 18 was I was going to start my own company someday. And I plan to go out and in industry, probably till I was about maybe 2829. As I thought I thought I would do that. And then some old company, but I was enjoying it so much that stayed a lot longer than what I was planning to. So anyway, it got to the point in soil machine dynamics where it was when the oil prices crashed. And lots of the contracts went dry. That was from 2017 to 2018. No 2014 oil prices dropped again, our prices crashed and lots of the contracts ran dry and we weren’t getting much work. So you’re having to make cutbacks and lay people off and it just wasn’t exciting to work there anymore. And I saw my way out.

 

Yoni Mazor  16:47  

Yeah, it’s worth mentioning that you know, the oil business or the energy business is cyclical. It comes with cycles, the boom and bust boom, and bust. So yeah, the grip you know, turn on the boom, and you can hear it and as the bus came in, you fell you know what, you yourself survived, the others suffered, but there was probably the time for you to I guess explore something that you were interested in even from the get-go. You mentioned you always had that in mind. There’s something on your own. So you saw that as an opening and an opportunity to do something on your own. 

 

David Storey 17:14  

Yeah. So I left, I went straight off the cliff, just walk off the cliff. I left and I’m sitting on Monday morning in the back of my bedroom thinking what have I done? What have I done, but I’m going to do it I just thought I just gonna do this and my idea at the time was to create because of my passion for product development. I also got a Master’s degree didn’t mention that I got a master’s degree in product development when I was in the first company very useful this is very so I thought I’m gonna create some unique brand new design that I’ve always wanted to do. I don’t know what’s going to be yet. So I’m starting to come up with ideas and things I had and I bumped into this guy that I used to know and he called me into his office he was at the company he said David I’m quite busy says I’ve got to go to a meeting he says he was really flustered and he says here’s a password and a login. Says what for? He says Amazon just Amazon, yes Amazon, okay so went back home and it was a…

 

Yoni Mazor 18:23  

Hold on, let me get this straight, this is after you resigned after you left your company. After resign it was just visiting your friend what he was he was working somewhere else. It was his own business. Yeah. Shout out. It seems like he’s the one Okay. All right he’s the one that brought e-commerce to your doorstep. So what’s his name?

 

David Storey 18:42  

Steve Shoulder. He was working for another company and he bought Amazing Selling Machine and he tried to do it, but he didn’t have time to do it. So he said there’s a password and a login Dave. So I went home that night. I typed in the password. It was not hard. Matt Clark from Amazing Selling Machine in front of me. And I was just absolutely hooked. I couldn’t stop watching it.

 

Yoni Mazor  19:16  

Which was this, when this happened in 2014? Oh, so you were at SMD, about seven years? 

Yeah, so 2014. Steve, you know reaches out, he did the Amazing Selling Machine ASM. You run back in that night. You see the content and you’re hooked. Talk about e-commerce knocking on your door.

 

David Storey  19:46  

And I knew when I saw that it was product-based, and I could see the system behind it and knew that that was for me. So I just went to go and see him a few days later. And I said, Yeah, let’s do it. Just shook on it.

 

Yoni Mazor 20:00  

Okay, so handshake away you guys went into business well, partnership 50/50, something like that. Yeah, yeah. And what was what transpired then?

 

David Storey  20:10  

You know, he already got a product. Well two products one was the first one was a like a pressure gauge for automobiles? Yeah.

 

Yoni Mazor  20:22  

In the cars, automobile,s a pressure gauge for the tires or something? Yeah. So that was his first second product that was doing okay?

 

David Storey 20:30  

Yeah. It was doing all right. There wasn’t that much demand for that product at the time. And then he was on USA, Amazon, UK, both Amazon Amazon us first. And then he brought on this other one was a tire pump like a pneumatic pump with a digital display. 

 

Yoni Mazorr  20:50  

Yeah, tire pump, you know, it shows you the psi the pressure, right?

 

David Storey 20:56  

The psi, that one soon as it hit stock, it just boom, because it was the first private level one, there was only there was a couple of other manufacturers at that time. I think it’s quite well known in the USA. There might have been another manufacturer that was that’s like a household name. But they weren’t doing very well. They didn’t know what to do on Amazon.

 

Yoni Mazor  21:17  

Optimized the platform engage new auto rank a keyword and be discoverable on the platform. So So this, so this tire inflator, right, this digital one, that you guys, you launch it together or that you launch it before he came. What was that dynamic, though? 

 

David Storey  21:34  

He already found it. And it was coming into stock.

 

Yoni Mazor  21:37  

So he came in this way. This was already an active product on the platform frame. For Steve. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So when you came in what happened? What was the impact was the moment you came in?

 

David Storey  21:50  

What I did was spend a lot of time on the left, all the listings and information and the pictures, the images getting everything, like much better than it was?

 

Yoni Mazor 22:03  

How long did it take you a few weeks? A few months? A few years? I don’t know, just a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks. All right. And then what sales started booming or increasing? 

 

David Storey  22:11  

The sales of the pressure gauge were consistent, but the Tire Inflator that that thing just went straight out of stock just couldn’t keep it in stock. So we got another batch. This got another batch. And this is just before Christmas, this batch landed. And, and this is Christmas of 2014. And it didn’t come into stock. We’re really panicking because it was the end of November, December, Where the hell is it? Whether it was it was 100 and $110,000 worth of stock? Yeah, that’s pretty heavy. That just didn’t come to stock. Then Amazon said they’d lost it couldn’t find it. You can find all the stock and like why couldn’t find the stock? And then they said, Well, we think this will we’re going to not what’s the word? We’re going to reimburse you. We’re going to reimburse you for the stock we lost.

 

Yoni Mazor  23:09  

I think I know a little bit of something about reimbursement. I think.

 

David Storey 23:13  

We’re going to reimburse you for all the stop lo