In this Prime Talk Podcast Video Sponsored by GETIDA – David Dayon - Co-Founder & CEO - AmazonXperts - A leading management agency for Amazon sellers, shares his personal journey into eCommerce and provides insight as to how to seize opportunities when selling on amazon.
Selling in the Amazon marketplace can be challenging at times. You may get frustrated or quit altogether. But that doesn’t always have to be the case! PrimeTalk host Yoni Mazor discusses the ins and outs of Amazon sales and marketing consultancy.
In today’s episode, PrimeTalk has an up close and intimate conversation with David Dayon - the co-founder and CEO of AmazonXperts, a boutique sales and marketing consultancy providing individualized and custom services for new and veteren Amazon sellers. AmazonXperts offers two tracks of services: pay as you go and full management.
David Dayon shares his business experience and divulges how they shaped his career path. He also shares with the audience how his agency, AmazonXperts was created and how it can help all kinds of marketplace sellers, big and small, to improve and develop their businesses. So if you’re stuck in a marketplace rut, or have a budding interest in developing your ecommerce business, tune in today for some sound advice and interesting stories!
For more information on AmazonXperts check out their website: https://amazonxperts.com/
Get more info about GETIDA's Amazon FBA reimbursement solutions.
Yoni Mazur 0:06
Hi, everybody, welcome to another episode of PrimeTalk. Today I'm really excited to have a special guest. Today I'm having David Dayon. David is the founder and CEO of AmazonXperts, which is a leading Management Agency for Amazon sellers. So David, welcome to the show.
David Dayon 0:22
Yes, Yoni. Thank you for having me.
YM 0:24
Our pleasure, really. So today's episode is really going to be all about you: the story of David Dayon. So you're gonna share with us, you know, who are you? Where are you from? Where'd you grow up? Where'd you go to school? How did you begin now? Your professional career?
DD 0:36
The origin story?
YM 0:38
Yeah. So without further ado, let's jump right into it.
DD 0:42
Let's do it.
YM 0:43
Alright, go ahead.
DD 0:45
Ok, so I guess to start the story properly, we got to go back to the retail arbitrage days on Amazon.
YM 0:53
No, no, no. Where did you grow up, even before that? The story about you! Not just the businessman, we’ll get to that.
DD 1:00
Ohh ok, I grew up in Oakcrest, New Jersey. On a road called Old Farm Road.
YM 1:09
Sounds like you, you lived the farmer’s life.
DD 1:12
It used to be a farm for hundreds of years before we got there. But yeah, we grew up on Old Farm Road in Oakcrest, New Jersey, otherwise known as Deal, New Jersey.
YM 1:23
Ahhh Deal, New Jersey.
DD 1:23
Yeah, it was like five towns or six, seven towns and then, it's just the most popular one is Deal, and everyone knows Deal.
YM 1:30
But what makes it special? What's special about that area? Besides the farms 100 years ago? What makes it famous now.
DD 1:36
I guess the wonderful SYs we got living down here. We got the Jersey Shore. It's
YM 1:41
SY? What’s SY for the audience that’s not familiar...
DD 1:45
SY is for the Syrians.
YM 1:47
Yeah, got it. So yeah, so it's a very affluent Syrian Jewish community that lives in the Deal, New Jersey area, it's on the beaches. Many, you know, Syrian Jewish people come in the summertime, they have beach houses on the beach. So it's very popular destination. But you live there, you know, all year long.
DD 2:04
We're one of the select few, not few anymore, we’re growing, but we're one of the select few that you know, live here all year round, and we get our peace and quiet in the winter months. You know, we get to stay in the office and work late and float away and then and we get plenty of action in the summertime, plenty of parties and like you said beach, beach houses and you know, boats and know anything you can think of.
YM 2:29
It’s an amazing place. It’s the perfect combination of, you know, working hard and playing hard. Hard day at work, especially in the summer, you reach out to the beach and see the sunset, sunrise or sunset? What do you get over there?
DD 2:39
You get both. You get both.
YM 2:40
Nice, beautiful, yeah. Okay, so this is, uh, you know, where you grew up? That's where you went to school? Did you graduate?
DD 2:48
Graduated? Yes. Went to college in Brooklyn, New York. Those are some fun times, went to college for psychology, actually. Nothing to do with Amazon.
YM 2:59
And what year did you graduate from Brooklyn College?
DD 3:03
Graduated from Brooklyn College, I didn't graduate. I got my associate's degree and I left in, I think 2014.
YM 3:09
DD 3:22
Yeah, so yeah, so I was telling you about arbitrage. That was actually my first job. Before I was in college. I worked with the family business, we pretty much were running, you know, Amazon business, for fashion accessories, mainly watches. We did some nice numbers. We had a very successful business. But then arbitrage slowly got less and less until I think all together it kinda died.
YM 3:47
And what the year that you got into the mix? You know, of you know, of this business, especially on Amazon.
DD 3:54
I actually started out as soon as I was old enough. I would get...my summer internship was in this company. My brother was one of the owners. And I just started out in the summers, every summer for a couple years.
YM 4:08
So instead of going to the beach and partying, you actually took the liberty of…
DD 4:11
It was actually, it was a great job though. If I could have stayed there, that would have been awesome. But it was a, you know, summer, a summer internship, temporary. It was great. But that was my...
YM 4:21
What was your first summer there? Which summer of which year? What was your first summer there?
DD 4:27
I don't know. I'd have to, I'd have to look back. I went to probably 10th grade or I don't know I'd have to...
YM 4:32
10th grade is what? 1995? Or like 2015?
DD 4:37
No, like, 2000s...I don't even know. I have to check. It's great. It was a long time ago.
YM 4:43
Fill out that resume, you know, we'll check it out. No, no worries. So how many years did you do there? I guess until you say you did it all throughout college. That was kind of the dynamic.
DD 4:52
So no. So I was basically working for this internship. I quit the job mid-college, so I was still doing college and this job. I ended up saying, alright, this is what I want to do. It wasn't what I wanted to do. I ended up coming back to Amazon. But that's part of it I guess, what happened here. So. So yeah, so I mean, I went to college. And then after I went to college, I was looking for a job, I ended up saying, I don't want to graduate and become a psychologist, I wanted to just go back to Amazon and just get a regular job. So I went out and I got a job for an Amazon seller. I was brought in to help increase the business, I was able to do that. And then after I was there for about six months, I got another opportunity...
YM 5:34
And this is the same year that you graduated, in 2014?
DD 5:38
Yeah, from college to this job. And then after I was at this job for maybe about six months, I basically went to a consultant agency, this is the I always consider arbitrage selling, you know, helping one amazon seller, that was one business. And then you have consulting and that was a whole nother business. That it's, you know, helping multiple people advance their business on Amazon. I mean, I started out for one company in New York. And it was an amazing opportunity. It was an amazing experience. I started out as an account manager, I quickly climbed the rank. And then, you know, we had hundreds of Amazon sellers as clients, and we were doing great work for all of them and definitely helped me shape a lot of what I do today. I was there for about a year and seven months to be exact.
YM 6:27
So you started, which year did you start there?
DD 6:30
Let me just get you some info for me. I'm not good at stuff. So like, I'm pulling up my official, official resume, give me two secs...
YM 6:38
Haha, you got to pull up the LinkedIn for us live?
DD 6:41
Yeah, I can't believe I don't remember it. So I have to just... sorry.
YM 6:43
That’s alright, that means you're busy in growth, that's really good. If you, if you're not even looking back, it means your full, full gear, you know, moving forward. That's okay, in almost two years, a year and seven months, and you said you felt that there's a clear distinction between helping an Amazon seller, either with arbitrage, or you know, a private label seller and or running their own brand.
DD 7:03
So yeah, so we actually don't do arbitrage. Like I moved away from arbitrage. And I took a very, very big turn against it. I don't believe in it.
YM 7:10
Consciously? Or, you know, looking back, you realize, yeah?
DD 7:14
No, consciously.
YM 7:15
What was your, what was the dynamic internally for you? What did you realize that made you feel like, you know, what? I see my future in building brands and in private label, as opposed to moving big volumes, and tremendous volumes with top, you know, top-aligned brands.
DD 7:28
So you probably remember this, but there was a time when you would search for any popular product, and you would get multiple products you'd use. For example, type in G shock watch, and a specific, you know, ga 100, or one on one of those numbers. Anyways, you type in sku and you would get 5, 6, 7 offerings sometimes on the product, as soon as...
YM 7:49
Meaning on the listing? When I go on the listing? And when I go on the listing?
DD 7:51
No, no, you type results, you type in the search results, you type in a search term, and you're going to get seven different listings, the same thing, essentially, but just seven different people got there and offered the product. Then Amazon started to look, to get more, you know, series and the crackdown on those guys. And that's kind of when arbitrage started to die a little bit. You know, more and more people were being forced into one listing, Amazon was actually locking out anybody who didn't have invoices, or you know, it was a lot of paperwork you needed. A lot of the people doing arbitrage ended up going out of business or just, you know, moving into another business. And as soon as that happened, and we realized, hey, private label sellers have so much more control. You know, we realized that that was the future. More importantly, I mean, there are people who are still doing arbitrage and maybe it's not completely dead, but at least us, at least as a consultant agency, we did not want to be, you know, fighting a losing battle. We wanted control over the brand, we wanted control over the products, control over the future. And then I would say the same thing as Vendor versus Seller Central. We'll get to that I'm sure, but we also have the same mindset. Vendor Central is a thing of the past, Seller Central is a thing of the future, and if you argue that. Right now, where are most of the sales happening? And the answer to that is Seller Central so it
YM 9:08
Yeah, the sales grow the sales momentum, the opportunity to really control your destiny, but get a fantastic amount of return on your investment in terms of time, resources, money, and just you know, yield because there's so many nozzles and tweaks you can do on your listing, on your account, on your marketing, that will create tremendous growth as opposed to obviously reselling. We're just reselling brands and how much you can do to market it. Right? It's already, because you're feeding off the marketing of the big brands, or Vendor Central where usually Amazon buys inventory from you in bulk, you know, wholesale, and then they really control the flow of the marketing and it's very hard to optimize your presence on the Amazon Marketplace as a brand. So you're able to see all these components and you know, make a clear decision. I see where the growth is, where the future is, and I'm, you know, I'm full gear into that position. So let's help you with the, you know stationing or the visiting stations. When did you transfer to the next station after doing a one year seven months with, as I know, with the consulting agency?
DD 10:12
So yeah, I'm looking now on my LinkedIn. So it looks like I was there from December 2016 till April 2018. And then in April 2018, I moved over to another management firm, I actually made a partner there. That was a wonderful experience as well. I was there for seven months. And then in October of 2018, I left that company for creative differences. And AmazonXperts was formed. I knew my partner Jake Shweky for my whole life. We're family friends and grew up together in Deal, New Jersey. Yes, actually, we both live in Oakcrest, New Jersey, but otherwise known as Deal, New Jersey. So yeah, we grew up, he lives literally around the corner from my old house on Old Farm Road. And basically, he was looking, he was in between things, looking for something. And it was just a good opportunity. We, we... together we formed AmazonXperts.
YM 11:06
But AmazonXperts, the way you spell it is Amazon, and then instead of E X, P E, R, T, S, it's just X, a big X.
DD 11:15
And there's actually a funny, there's a funny reason why we called it AmazonXperts. We call it for short AX. I don't know if you know the TV show, Billions AXE Capital. We kind of try to emulate that a little bit. Bobby Axelrod.
YM 11:30
So A, X, AX. Yeah, yeah. Bobby Axelrod, if anybody hasn't seen the show Billions, on Showtime I believe, it's a great show for entrepreneurs to see how, how do you, you know, deal with challenges and pressures on very high levels? Great acting and great performance. So yeah, yeah, it's about money, about the hedge fund. How do you, you know, make all these marketplace beds? And, you know, deal with the pressures from law investors, stuff like that? You know, I guess organizational politics, a lot of drama. You know, it's Hollywood style, but it's very effective. In terms of entertainment. So yeah, AXE Capital is the hedge fund that they're running over there. But I believe it's spelled a x e, right? So you took a little twist on it and said, you know, AmazonXperts, A X, so you're not gonna be able to, it's not Amazon, and then experts with EX.
DD 12:20
So, also Amazon owns Amazon experts with an E, like, amazon.com. So
YM 12:25
Yeah, so if you go to Amazon experts with an E dot com, it takes you straight into Amazon. But if you didn't, Amazon, yeah, Amazon experts omit the E that takes you to your website.
DD 12:33
Just shows you Amazon's one day planning on doing management too. That's what, that's what I
YM 12:39
Yeah I know, I know, they bought a lot of domains. So amazon books, 60amazon.com. And sometimes when they bought other websites or other companies, and they've essentially swallowed their activity. So if you will Google or Google these companies, or put the domain name, it takes you straight into Amazon. So I read about it. You know, so throughout history, they bought a handful of companies and businesses. So the ones who kind of faded away never survived. And then they swallowed into Amazon. So would you, you know, but the domain name and just go straight to Amazon. And some people think, sometimes it's an issue with their browser, but they don't realize it’s Amazon funneling the business right into whoever owns it, which is, in this case, Amazon themselves. Okay, so you meet Jake, your current partner, and I guess to share with us a little bit of his background experience. You know, I understand the momentum was good, the opportunity was good for you guys to team up. And you know, set up a new track. I know, both you as partners and as entrepreneurs, managing your own destiny and helping others. What was his background?
DD 13:37
So yeah, so his background, he worked at a company called the Moret Group…
YM 13:43
How do you spell that?
DD 13:45
M O R E T group, the Moret Group. And, and he basically, he was there for maybe seven years, as far, as a partner there as well. And he pretty much dabbled in Amazon a little bit, we definitely had a little bit of an Amazon boot camp when we, when we first started our first couple months, because it was some things that you just learned from the consulting world, his, the company he worked for, had one Amazon account, but like I said, having one Amazon account and managing multiple Amazon accounts, it's great you have like a very good solid foundation. And ultimately, I was able to do well at the consulting firm, because I had experience selling on Amazon, but it was really, you know, there's a whole new set of skills that you have to pick up, you have to, you know, look at an account and more of a have a, you know, alike a further level, like maybe not so in detail, you can get lost in the detail sometimes. So it's kind of enough to be able to, to kind of just step into each account every day and see what you can do to make things better. That's, that's definitely part of the process, part of the training, and part of what we need to do here in order to do our job for our clients. So it's just, you know,
YM 14:53
It makes a lot of sense, a different approach. How do you really, you know, as soon as possible, as efficiently as possible, you know, our daily input, you know, move the needle up, you know, for these classes as opposed to have one account, we'd dive in and dive in, dive in, dive in. And like you mentioned, get lost and really not moving the needle, because we're just lost into all these corners, where you're just keeping the effectiveness and the highest level and managing modular amounts of accounts. So what was Jake's experience with the other firm? What was his I guess, point of strength? How do you guys compliment each other?
DD 15:26
Yeah. So he has a very strong attention to detail. He was involved in the logistics, which is something that he heads up right now, he was involved in inventory management, which is something he heads up right now. And pretty much he oversees a small team. Right now he's overseeing a big team, very, very, very much complimented what he's doing now. And he, I mean, I go out every day, and I talk to the clients and I make sure that everyone's you know, being dealt with, and I and everyone has an audience, and everyone has a strategy that's being planned and followed. And then ultimately, Jake is the one making sure that it's being executed. He's always in the office early, right, way before me, he's always in the office late, you know, after me sometimes, you know, I'm more of a night owl, he's more of an early morning person. But for the most part, he's entrenched into his world of operations, we'll call it. And in order for me to be able to do my part, he's doing a very good job at his part, which, which allows me to do my job.
YM 16:25
And you focus mainly on, I guess, the growth and business development for your agency, but also for your clients, of course, in general?
DD 16:33
Yeah, I would say my main focus is growth of my clients. I definitely take, my agency takes a second seat to that, my main concern is growing my accounts. Thankfully, we don't have many, we're more of a boutique firm, we try to, you know, reserve a partnership for what, you know, the true cream of the crop, the people who...
YM 16:52
Right, it's interesting, because you, as you just mentioned, you, you call it a partnership. And then when you take a client in, you don't see that just as you know, a service or something like that, it's you really, as you mentioned, it as a boutique you, you realize there's a level of partnership here, not that you own the business, but on the marketplace management level. And in creating a sustainable growth over time, you see it as a partnership, because you're going to need the inputs from the seller, whatever resources that are needed, whatever resources are needed from your organization, and both organizations are, you know, a partner together to, to supply those resources, and synchronize in the best level to create, you know, growth momentum, you know, over time. So that's an interesting approach that I do find, you know, from your words, you know, just now, with this, I guess the nuanced difference between how you see your structure and position, you know, I guess compared to maybe others out there that who are more about, you know, we need as many accounts or clients as possible, we're servers them, you know, make cookie-cutter approaches, stuff like that, you know, even for yourself, it's more, it's intimate, is deep is long term. It's all about really moving the needle every day, but long term, and create some sort of sustainability and the partnership level. And like you mentioned, a partnership,
DD 18:11
It is a partnership, and everybody that we work with, on a full management level is getting me to talk to so there's no other account manager, everyone we work with, gets my time, we set up, you know, meetings throughout the week, or phone calls throughout the week. And we make sure to, like we sit to follow up strategy, we plan a strategy, we implement a strategy, the most important thing is to stick to the plan. If we want to tweak the plan, that's okay. But we have to stick to the plan. That's something that I could say until I'm blue in the face. But yeah, I mean, it really is a partnership. And it's in its truest form. Because we are partnering up with the client to make sure that they get what they need for the business. They give us what we need for the business, and that they're growing. I always tell my clients if we're not growing month over month, then I'm not doing my job. And of course, we need certain things in order to succeed, we can actually boil it down to four things. The four things we need from our clients are as follows: We need obviously some information. So we're going to ask them not, Amazon has a whole big flat file, they ask you for hundreds and hundreds of data points. We boil it down to maybe seven or eight data points, we ask you for UPCs, product dimensions, product weights, material types, any available product and features, you know, some very, very basic information and then we'll take that basic information and build out a full flat file that Amazon actually needs. So again, number one is product information. Number two is inventory. So we don't actually touch the inventory. We just tell the client “Hey guys, we're sending in for the first time this item, send an X units of each color, each style, its size”, whatever it is, and they shouldn't they send it in and then every week we're going to revisit their inventory levels and let them know replenish the following styles based on your sales based on your inventory levels.
YM 19:52
When we say replenish, you mean the FBA model, fulfilled by Amazon, and where the your client, the brand, the seller, the manufacturer
DD 19:58
If I woulda spoken to you a year ago, I would have told you another thing. I told you, we push very much away from arbitrage. We push very much away from vendor. And I would have added another third thing to that list: FBM. Then Coronavirus happened. And now all of my clients have a hybrid model. That's just the way it has to be today. But yes, I would have..
DD 20:19
A hybrid model means there is FBA, fulfilled by Amazon, and FBM, logistics and then fulfilled by merchant logistics. So it's a hybrid model. So on the marketplace, you're, you always have a backup in case each one of them, you know, has a little bit of inefficiencies. But okay, so you mentioned there's information, you mentioned that you need, inventory. The third thing is?
DD 20:42
Third thing is approvals. Because it's not our business, it's the clients business. And in order to spend any money on marketing or advertising, in order to list any product for sale, and decide that something should be sold for 19.99, who am I to decide how much to sell their product for, I'll suggest the product price, then they'll have to approve it. And then once they approve it, we'll set it in place. So any money being spent, or any decision that has money, as a, you know, like money related, you know, I guess results, we're going to make sure to get approvals from the client. So
YM 21:14
Financials, the approvals on the financial level, you know, especially when it comes to pricing, and what’s the fourth component?
DD 21:21
Fourth, and final thing we need is a point person, someone in the company to work with to get these three things from. Ownership. So obviously, there's going to be this, you know, let's just say we need to ship out some goods, and we don't have a contact in their warehouse. It's that point person who we're going to be in touch with and be like, hey, let's say his name is John, “John, you're my man. Help us get this shipment out”. If we don't have that Inside Man, we are pretty much, our hands are tied. And we cannot do a good job, we can't really.
YM 21:48
Ownership on the relationship, somebody to own the relationship between, you know, the seller, but also you guys.
DD 21:55
We call it a point person, which is someone who does not need to be doing this full time, but definitely should be at least dedicating a third of their time to this, this is something that needs you know, I mean, we need people to be on top of it. And if we it's a lot of times that the difference between success and not success. Ultimately, I don't have a point person, that would be a reason why I would say, okay, you have everything you need, you have a you know, all the information you need to start, you have a product sitting in a warehouse, you don't have somebody who's going to help me get all this stuff done. And we'll wait until the company can hire, you know, find someone, hire them. And then we have someone to work with to get all this information. Because even if they tell me, even if somebody who owns the company tells me, I'll be your point person, it always ends up being something else happens, they get too busy, we don't get what we need, and our hands are tied. And that's just we're not looking for that if somebody doesn't have a point person, we’ll just tell them, Hey, we have a pay-as-you-go, service model, you're free to choose any of our services, and any combination you want. And if you purchase them in bulk, or if you purchase them reoccurring, then we'll be happy to work with you and give you a good price. But we don't need to partner with you. We don't need to manage your entire business, if you're not going to give us what we need to succeed. And that's just what it is a recipe for success. So that's what we're looking for. Those are the four things. And that's all we need. Everything else is handled by us. If we ever have any questions, like we'll handle customer messages, or when somebody requests to return something, or to get a refund on something, we’re you know, we're gonna ask the client, hey, this guy asks for a 50% refund on this item. And if he tells us, hey, you can give him a 50% refund. And in the future, anybody who asks for a 50% refund on this item, you can give it. Sometimes they'll tell me the whole account. And we'll apply that rule for everything. But of course, if somebody wants to be able to say, Hey, I don't know if I want to give a refund every time, let me know every time somebody reaches out because again, if you leave it unanswered that could result in a negative review or something. So, people, some people say no, I want to be notified of when I have these situations come up. And if that's the case, again, that's another thing the point person is going to do for us. Some clients might have different preferences and say no, no, just refund anybody whenever they reach out because the alternate ending of that is getting a negative review, which they don't want. So really, it's really customized to each client's approach. But we have the system and the protocols and the team, more and more importantly, in place to get all these things done and to provide the full management option for the people that we believe we are the right fit for. And I say that the people we believe because we have to believe we’re the right fit as much as they have to believe they're the right fit. And I think that's something that we introduced to the whole Amazon consulting world where it's not like we're auditioning for them. It's more like, this is what we do. These are our proven clients that we've done it for, who we've had success with. And we don't do this with everyone. So instead of us pitching you on why you should choose us, there's not that many good service providers out there. So why should we choose you and that's really what we do. And that's really the dynamic that we try to establish because that's what we believe and we really do want to only partner up with the people that really do make sense. We're not looking to waste anybody's time and we're not looking to have our time wasted. So... That's kind of that's kind of..
YM 25:01
Got it. So what's interesting to me is to understand, you know, you guys started about two years ago. And, you know, it sounds like this. It's a, it's heavily focused on processes, meaning identifying, you know, the best formulas and recipes, almost for every type of component for the business to make it really work, and work tremendously well. Right? So was this already something you were carrying in your belt from, you know, the past experiences with your other jobs that you had other positions? Or, you know, past two years, you as you said, you know, what, I'm, you know, I'm going independent, I'm gonna do this by myself, then I'm gonna have to have this, and you and Jake, maybe together formalise this together as a concept, as a recipe for success? And what was the dynamic there?
DD 25:44
So I would say that it's definitely going to be a combined approach. I mean, some of the things that we formed AmazonXperts with, with proven methods and proven ideas that I was able to learn over the years. I mean, I personally, this is going back from the arbitrage days, I personally have like my own little manual, little Amazon manual. It's long retired by now, because we have SOP systems. And all I mean, this started out is just…
YM 26:12
That little manual was your SOP book? You know...
DD 26:17
It was my SOP book. It was my book for training, I would follow that to train somebody in, I trained a bunch of people over the years. So yeah, it was like everything, it was messy. It was just it was I mean, I knew everything was, I think it was like 60 pages. And it was just everything that I ever, it was like from how to set up a promotion on Amazon, to how to get a best deal. I mean, anything you can think of like PPC insights, you know, any anything you can think of that would help an Amazon seller, I called it like my Amazon manual, I had an idea that one day I'd sell it or something, but everything changes so much on Amazon. So, but now we have such a great system and such a great, you know, protocol in place, like you were saying, yes, it's very much about finding the lead, identifying where what type of funnel he's going to go into, and then very quickly pushing him towards that funnel. If we believe that somebody is not meant for full management, I'm not going to talk to them. I don't they don't they don't know me anymore. My full management clients get me someone on the pay as you go service model gets the rest of the team or somebody else on the team.
YM 27:22
Right, let's talk about these two tracks. Right. So interesting. So when you launched the agency, off the bat, you had two tracks, or was really the main track was full service? And then over time, you realized that, you know, not everybody's gonna be a good fit, right for this partnership, this strategic partnership. But you know, there's fixes along the way you can fix them with, you know, images and listing optimization, all these things that, you know, touching go right, so what was your approach there?
DD 27:47
So I was sitting there for, I don't know, three, four years already, doing meetings, having meetings with hundreds and hundreds of people. Both firms that I was a part of, had much more, were much bigger, and they signed many more accounts than then we're looking to, I would say that they weren't necessarily boutique firms that, I pride, I pride AmazonXperts on being a boutique firm. So I would say that even with their non-boutique approach, they were still leaving so much business on the table. I remember meeting with, in one month, I don't I can't even say a number, a lot of people, sometimes two, three people a day, meeting with them, understanding everything there was to understand about them. And at a certain point, you know, I was the guy that would meet with all the potential accounts and I remember meet, I remember meeting with so many people and saying, there's nothing we can do for these guys that don't want full management or that we don't want full management. So and honestly, most of the people were like, “Oh, no, I'll give you a percentage to give you a monthly retainer. And then I'm not interested”. So it was, at the end of the day, there's a lot of people who didn't like the agency model, and they just wanted services. And I was, I had a front-row seat to me watching business, by business, by business pass us by because they didn't want to sign on the dotted line. And I realized that there was a tremendous opportunity for pay as you go services. So yes, day one, we launched AmazonXperts. We had two models, one model was full management. The other model was pay as you go services. Believe it or not, pay as you go services kept the lights on in the first couple months. Pay As You Go. So I remember, we like walked, we formed the business in, I think November, December, we went to CES in January. We went to January. And we were just selling services. I remember meeting with, I don't know, we approached a bunch of, we did research on who was there. We approached a bunch of people. We struck out with a few we landed...
YM 29:38
So just to touch base a little bit. So CES is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, happens usually every January, right in Las Vegas. Major, tremendous humongous show
DD 29:45
It's canceled for this coming year. But yeah.
YM 29:47
The COVID, the COVID era, but before the COVID era, so you try and strategize, said I'm gonna go to the show. I'm going to target, you know, a few key, you know, Amazon sellers that I think I can be, you know, very useful for them.
DD 30:00
Most, most of which were SYs. That helps. That helps.
YM 30:07
Yeah, I guess you have to go all the way to Vegas to meet them. But...
DD 30:12
Yes yes. No, you know, we weren't going to their offices, we were gonna go walk the show, approach them, get an audience with the owner or the guy running Amazon. And then I remember like just one after the other closing, closing, closing. And CES, by the way, when it comes back, the best trade show you can ever go to, by the way really, really, I don't think I met anyone who ever went and didn't say I'm coming back every year. And it is amazing. So anybody listening, CES is a worthwhile show. Definitely, definitely. If you have what to do there, there's definitely..
YM 30:42
So if you are a retailer, you go to see the show, if you’re a wholesaler go to the show, if you want to help out the marketplace, your agency goes to the show. Tremendous opportunities all around. So we're all gonna pray that the epidemic ends as soon as possible. So we can go visit Las Vegas and the show as well. Just a little touch about I guess, the Syrian Jewish community because, you know, it's, uh, it's, you know, the Jewish community in general, in the United States, it's, you know, it's a small community, it's maybe six or seven, probably five, or six, or seven, maybe million Jewish people all around the country out of almost 300 million-plus, you know, citizens of the United States where, you know, we’re around 2% and inside the Jewish community, there's all these streams, right, there's all these types, and the Syrian community is obviously they came out of Syria, some, you know, most of them, you know, a few decades ago, now recently from because of the Civil War, just to put into context, because the past decade has been a harsh Civil War. But what their, I guess, very, I guess, in the New York area, where they're kind of known for is their ability and in terms of retail, they're very, very successful retailers, you know, it from the brick and mortar world, but they also were able to penetrate into the e-commerce world. And so they're very well, well, well known to have tremendous ability to provide, you know, wholesome goods for, you know, really good competitive products and do extremely well with retail. So, I guess that played, at least for yourself, coming from that background, more confidence, when you say, you know, I'm gonna target, you know, these top of the line retailers, because they're not small players, they're in the 10s, or hundreds of millions of dollars, some of them are even the millions, but you have enough confidence to come and say, I have a few years of my under my belt, knowing this marketplace intimately, Amazon, I know, I can do something better for them. And you take that confidence and take that certainty, you pitch, you present it. And you said your ability to open them up wasn't it wasn't necessarily at the offset, creating a partnership where they’re full-time clients. Rather was a fix and go to give me an opportunity. Let me optimize something. So it touches, with us a little bit on something that you optimize for them. And what well, maybe some of them converted eventually to a partnership or?
DD 32:43
Oh boy, I love that question. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. So first of all, anybody who, we walked that show, and we actually offered a few free services that day, that first CES show we ever walked as AmazonXperts, some of which are very good friends of mine today. clients that repeated, came back, we did one free service for them. They, we did a, thank god, a great job, they reordered 20, and then every month another 20. So I mean, that's like just one amazing story. And some guys who stayed as pay as you go service, service clients.
YM 33:15
Repeat business on the service level?
DD 33:16
Repeat business, it was amazing. And again, some of these guys are very, very close, we're very close with them right now. I consider them more friends than clients at this point, you know, working together very closely for two years. On the other hand, we have, well I’ll just give you one example. I can't say names or give you a listing to look at, but I'll just give you an example. We had an item that we met these people, we knew them also long, long time family friends, that didn't hurt. But still, nobody's just looking to throw money at anyone and we had to earn our way in. So we approached them and we told them we do image optimizations, which is our fave, my favorite service that we offer, possibly my, our most popular service. And we approached them, and we showed them a listing and we said this is your bestseller. And we said if we were to optimize just the images on this listing, we believe that your conversion rate will go up, we believe that your BSR will get much much healthier as...
YM 34:13
BSR is your bestseller's rank on Amazon.
DD 34:16
Yes. I love how you're always explaining. I'm assuming everyone knows all the terms and everything and you're always explaining..
YM 34:23
That’s my job, don't worry about that.
DD 34:25
Okay, so yeah, so we had a goal. And they were at, they were already doing amazing, this you know, very well recognized brand and, and a listing that's been selling since the early days since like..
YM 34:37
Right, so my answer for them was like, you're not gonna surprise us. We're doing tremendously well. How can you even top where we are right now?
DD 34:44
And they were at 6000 in clothing, shoes, and jewelry. So they're on the clothing counter.
YM 34:48
Alright. Yeah. If you saw the top 10,000 it's a solid business, good rank, good rank.
DD 34:53
So we actually told them our price, and we ended up, of course, and as any SY would do, they said, Let's get a discount. And we said we don't do discounts. And they said, Okay, how about this? Give us a discount. But then if you get us to a 4000 BSR, we'll double the price.
YM 35:16
Oh, after the fact?
DD 35:18
Yeah, yeah if you get results, so give me like, it was like a 10% off or something. It was like a, it was something symbolic, that's like, yeah, we could have done it. But we have a policy, we don't give discounts. And they said, and if you get us to a 4000 BSR, which we were confident we could get them, then they said they would double the selling price for us. We were pumped. I remember going like, wow, if you double it, we ended up making the decision to not offer the discount. As little as it was, we did not offer a discount. We said no, we said pay us the full price. And if it gets to better than 4000, we don't want to pay anything more than the actual price. We actually got the item to 600 and clothing, shoes, and jewelry.
YM 36:02
So they took it, they took the offer. They said alright.
DD 36:07
You know they did. They paid us in full. We did not do the double. We didn't do, the “get a 4000 and we'll double it”. But we were able to get them the way, way better than 4000.
YM 36:15
That’s a wild story. Yeah, I'll take it with me. I'll keep they are
DD 36:20
They are currently fully managed clients.
YM 36:22
And that led to a full conversion? Oh, that's big. That's very big. So not only you're not undersell yourself on there, you know, even though you're extremely confident and you had the opportunity to make more, right? This is what it is. Yeah, long term shape for no bending, no, no left and right and up or down. Here's, you know, the path is right in front of us. This is what we can do. This is a, this is what we expect to get in return. You repeated, you know, a bunch of times, and because, you know, entrepreneurs, by definition, retailers are very shrewd, and we tend to negotiate or, you know, retailers tend to negotiate because what's the job of a retailer, buy low, sell high. You know, it's all about the price points. And you know, always trying to go negotiate to get better terms. So that's expected of many retailers to kind of come and do as a buyer and shopper for solutions. But you know, SYs,, also known as Syrians, are exceptionally successful in negotiations and they're very, very sharp negotiators. But you withstand the heat and in return you not only were able to perform above the expectation, which was you know, get up to 4000 you got up to 600 there was so, so impactful. They said let's go all in, let's go into partnership where now it's not just you know, a few dollars on a listing level it's more it's more about whether there's a partnership where you manage the marketplace and you bring results on a daily basis so that's a phenomenal story of testing your character your business, I guess ethics, your business stance and you know the way you will stay astute and true to your mission forms and policies and and when because of it because sometimes you know, you take a loss. Take care and then there's no partnership, there's nothing, you have something in your pocket and then boom.
DD 38:06
Now they know you're saying all that, makes me sound so amazing, but I had very good advisors making sure that we stayed, you know, to the true course.
YM 38:15
Touch with us about the advisors. Like, give us an example.
DD 38:18
Yeah, I was just about to give my dad a shout-out. Everything, everything goes to my dad. My dad is of all the amazing Syrian, you know, negotiators or bargainers, I think my dad takes the cake, I could be biased, but he’s so...
YM 38:33
What's his name? What’s his background? A little touch on that.
DD 38:36
His name is Steven Dayon and he is a real estate mogul. He does real estate for a long time and thank god he's very successful at it, in the New Jersey, New York area and he has a lot of people who ask him his advice and I'm lucky enough to receive it on let's say a weekly or you know if I'm lucky sometimes a daily basis.
YM 38:58
Yeah on-demand basis. You know, so this I guess comes in as a package with the AmazonXpert. This is hidden...
DD 39:05
He's not coming to any meetings but yeah, he knows everything.
YM 39:08
Yeah, the wisdom or the mindset and the astuteness and the ability to see things long term. You know, real estate is usually a long-term game, you know, they're cyclical, they’re cycles, but there are sometimes difficult cycles, but as long as you are able to withstand them, you become extremely successful. And I guess he's probably sharing a lot of that. Excellent, very good. So you know, we're gonna, about to close off the episode very soon I guess. We touched on successes, we touched, you know, things that happened unexpectedly for the positive. Touch with us a little bit of the challenge that you guys are currently you know, face or have, you own your own business, you know, working for others. You're out there, you're performing every day. Touch with us a little bit of the challenges you experienced, and maybe how you try to overcome them.
DD 39:51
Scalability. That's easy, scalability, scalability, and then more scalability. The biggest challenge we've had, and continue to have in certain areas, is making sure that our business is completely scalable. It started out with our pay-as-you-go services. You know, notice how I, earlier in the conversation, I mentioned, anybody who does pay as you go services doesn't deal with me, it's not how it was. The face of the business used to be me entirely. And that was pay as you go, as well, as fully managed clients. Thankfully, we've grown it into a place where we have a project manager who handles all of our pay-as-you-go services. And then we have me who handles the fully managed clients. For some of my very close relationships, I might be involved, but I still don't handle most of it. And I'm just aware of projects when they're completed or when they're submitted. So yeah, I mean, you know, it started off just with the two service models we offered and building out a whole, you know, the team in place to manage that. But really just with everyone that's getting a full manage client, any of our full manage clients, you know, it's they're going to require our time, they're going to require, you know, our energy and our resources, more importantly, our team. We have an amazing team, that helps us, you know, carry out all of our tasks. As I mentioned, Jake, Jake, is overseeing this team on a daily basis. So scaling the team, and making sure that we had enough people on our team in order to, to, you know, keep up with demand of clients. I actually, again, going back to my dad, he was the first person and only person who was telling us, we had one team of five people. And we were so proud of it. And we were, you know, we were saying how we have a certain amount of clients, and there was a certain ratio for the client. And it was amazing. And, you know, we were even thinking of hiring another person to just keep it to the we always have more, you know, room for growth. And my dad told us something that we left that him and he's like, hire another team of five. And I said, Why would I do that? He said because you need two teams. And I said, Well, we can't afford two teams of five. So he said, look fine, then hire another team of three people. And ultimately, we hired another team of three people. We stretched ourselves very thin for maybe a month, two months.
YM 42:05
Financially, right?
DD 42:06
Financially. Yeah. And then, and then actually, we had an influx of accounts. And the only reason, the only reason, why we were able to handle that success was because my dad had the idea to tell us and it was almost like he pulled it out of a hat. He was just like, yeah, you should have two teams. And he didn't really give it much backup, or he just said, and he’s scary like that, he says these interesting things. Sometimes, he told us to hire a second-team, he gave us a couple of reasons why we should you know, just in case one team is busy or whatever went back what the team manager gets sick, whatever, all of which ended up happening or one time or another. But we ended up hiring that second team, a smaller team, ended up building it out, of course, over time, but that was just one of the like, you can look at that and be like, wow, you got really lucky. Or you can say, okay, we had we're lucky enough to have advisors, we're lucky enough to have the one above looking over us and watching over us making sure that we make the right moves. And then I guess another thing is going to be the day that I started. Not really a hurdle, more of an accomplishment also, but the day that I started up my Seder because I was traveling from New York when I was doing both of these consulting agencies.
YM 43:17
Sorry, the day you started what?
DD 43:20
The day that I started learning in the morning.
YM 43:22
Seder? Oh. Okay, so some context here for, about Judaism. So it gave us some of you know, it's for the audience that's listening, that they're not, it's not too diverse. About what this all means that will take us, what is that what is said? or What does it mean? What does that mean to you?
DD 43:35
Seder means I think it means like order or...
YM 43:38
Yeah in Hebrew it means order, just organization order, but it
DD 43:42
It means learning every day, Talmudic studies, I learned from eight, at 8 am till 9 am every day. And then I was telling you that when I was working in New York, I was traveling on a train for an hour and a half each way. So that's about three hours of commuting each day. And I just didn't have time. You know, Amazon's daunting. You know, it takes a lot of time out of your day, and I just didn't have time for a Seder. So the first thing I did, actually January also, not right away. It took me two months. But the first time I started Seder, which is January of 2019, I guess. So coming up on two years now. I remember I was, it was like it was a couple of weeks where I wasn't doing every day I was still not committing. And one day I did every single day of the week. It was a Friday morning. And my (Hebrew word) who was my learning companion, mentioned to me, he said, By the way, this is the first week that you did a full week. He said, And that's a hoot. You should close a lot of business. In this merit, you should close a lot of business. I am not joking you know my brother my and my three brothers, my father, were roshiloh’s grave, you're gonna have to explain the context on that one.
YM 44:56
Well, so. Okay, we have to do this on the spot. Because it's a lot of information very quickly. Roshiloh, you said, right, yes, there's a rabbi, you want to present the question to the rabbi. So that's what they did. They presented a question to the rabbi, right?
DD 45:10
No roshiloh’s grave.
YM 45:12
oh, it’s the name of the rabbi. Roshiloh’s grave. So there's rabbi, who was great. You asked you asked for? Where's your grave? In Brooklyn?
DD 45:19
No, it's in. It's in Ukraine or something. It's far away.
YM 45:24
Oh, Breslow. Yeah, so this is Ukraine
DD 45:28
And something, I don't know where it was, it was in Russia, Poland. Some, something like that.
YM 45:33
Oh, wow.
DD 45:33
So they went there and happens to be they were also there like, I think a couple of hours before or something like that, whatever it was, so that was also maybe a little bit to do with it. But we, anyways, I finished my Seder, my learning Seder. My first full week, and then I got four emails in a row, all you know, where, you know, contracts that they were signing or services that they were purchasing, in one minute, one after the other, the
YM 46:01
The abundance, the abundance. So as far as I understand, from what the components you're speaking about is, is your ability to focus hard and daily on the material, which is Amazon Marketplace, which is materialism, consumerism, buying, selling, making money and margins cause it very good, right? That's your professional life. But on a daily basis, you connect with your Spirit through spirituality, you make it, you know, a habit, you make it an unbreakable part of your day. And for the past two years now, so combining the spiritual and the material we see, you know, obviously, you probably will put you into some sort of a level of Zen, you know, a focus, confidence, knowing that it's often material, but you know, I know that, you know, there's a purpose to all this, you know, there's, you know, there's a world as humans, there's, no good things that we got to do, we got to create abundance, and you're able to even recognize immediately I was, you know, a few components, he did touch on your spirituality, how the abundance came right back. So that was an important component to do, to embed into your business life. And, you know, so that was a challenge because you mentioned, you know, having a header or having the opportunity to make this, you know, a routine was a challenge, and it's probably still is, it's a struggle. Got it. Got it. Very good. So I'm just doing a quick recap on David's story before we wrap up the episode. You know, born and raised in Deal. Got his degree, Associate's Degree in Brooklyn College, with psychology, even during college, you already had some experience working in the Amazon Marketplace, mostly with reselling, then he worked for a few, for a little while with an Amazon, another amazon seller as one account, right? And then it transitioned to the next position where it was an agency where they handled a multitude of layers of Amazon accounts, for you know, for their sellers for their clients. And then it took all this package all this experience, you know, met up with his childhood friend, Jake, and it said, you know, let's take a leap of faith, start from scratch, start from nothing. Layout two tracks, managed services, right, you know, pay as you go. And I know another track for, you know, partnering with the seller, with the brand, where we grow and you guys grow with them together for long term. Is that, this touch all the components? For the most part?
DD 48:15
Yeah, you got it.
YM 48:15
Got it very good. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. But you know, especially special, especially honest and in-depth, so I do appreciate it. Alright, so now we're gonna wrap up the episode with two components, right? The first thing is if anybody wants to learn more about you, and you know, contact you, give them a handoff. And the last thing will be is what is your message of hope and inspiration for entrepreneurs listening out there?
DD 48:38
So yeah, so anybody looking to get in touch, just go to the website, www dot Amazon experts with no e dot com and we have a little “contact us” form, you fill out that form, someone will get in touch with you. That's the way to, you know, get started, we’ll ask you for some basic, you know, account information, and then somebody will call you and or set up a call with you. And then as far as my message to Amazon sellers, I guess Amazon is continuously growing. You know, our business is helping Amazon sellers succeed. And if there's one thing that I've seen, it's that there is a recipe for success on Amazon. Anybody looking to sell on Amazon, there is a way to do it. Anybody who's sold on Amazon and maybe is stale at the idea or fed up with Amazon because we've met our fair share of people who are so finished with Amazon maybe it's that you didn't find the right approach or the right people to help you. Even if you have an in-house team or if you want to go with an in-house route we can still you know we can still help you guys and offer you pay-as-you-go services and make sure that you get the recipe for success. But I would say that it's something that, you know, anybody looking to build something on Amazon, it's something very doable. Thankfully, it's old data and the data is all available. And I mean I believe that truly and completely and You know, obviously you need to have inventory, you need to have an advertising budget, you have to have a decent-sized catalog. Of course, you need a quality product, and it doesn't hurt to give it a competitive offer. But you know, you get those things together. And I would say that there's you know, to build a successful Amazon business is not hard. So, you know, all you gotta do is get the right things in place to get that done. So don't lose hope. I know it, I've seen it hundreds of times. And it's doable. You got to get the right guys, you got to get AmazonXperts to help you out with, you know, you know, getting the right listing setup, you got to get good data to make sure you're not leaving any money on the table. You got to get these guys to give you videos, you got to get guys to help you with your PPC, everything, anything and everything you can do have a flywheel everyone knows the flywheel not everyone, maybe only you want to give that last..
YM 50:50
Flywheel effect, what, do you know, you want to spin a wheel, you know, you know, after the offset, it's a little hard to get it spinning and get it rolling. But once you do, you know, it's just it's actually harder to stop, it just keeps it going. And the more you even give a little push, it goes even higher, higher. So it's a flywheel effect that it's available to, I guess, to help you to, I guess, polish a little bit. The message is that opportunities out there, there's so much data available to recognize this opportunity. And there's so many solutions out there, a high level or high-quality solutions that effectively can help you, you know, get you to know, reach your targets and goals and have a successful online, you know, e-commerce business. So keep your eyes open. You know, keep the drive going. Do not lose hope, and reach out to the right people. And hopefully, you'll be on the right track to taste that, the taste of, you know, the tremendous success of e-commerce. Yeah, good. All right. You got it. All right. So thank you, everybody, for listening. We hope you enjoyed this one. Thank you again, David, so much. We wish you and Jake so much more tremendous success going forward to help everybody the next time.
DD 51:57
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.
