Two Amazon Sellers and a Microphone

– Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 49 of Two Amazon Sellers and a Microphone. Today, Kris and I have a very special guest on with us. Mina Elias, AKA the Egyptian prescription.

– That’s me.

– Mina, how you doing?

– Good. Good. Life is good, man. I’m in California, I can’t complain.

– That is… We have better weather there than we have in Kansas City right now.

– It’s hot, I can go to the beach right now. Sorry guys.

– Thanks for joining us Mina, we’ll see you later.

– That’s about all you can do though, is go to the beach right now, you can’t do anything else. It’s a crazy time we’re in, but man, we’re gonna have fun talking. For those listening, Mina has a lot of energy and he’s passionate about all things Amazon. We’ve had some conversations in the past and it’s fun. So we’re excited to pick your brain. We’re gonna talk about PPC, some of the things you’re into right now but, just real quick you wanna let everyone know a little bit about your background, how you got in the Amazon space, and just some of the things that you’re doing

– Let’s do it. So yeah, my name is Mina Elias. Basically background, quick background, born in Egypt. That’s why I’m the Egyptian Prescription. I was raised in Dubai though, and in 2011, I came to America for college, you know, typical, keep my parents happy, get the best education, best job. Got my Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Master’s Industrial Engineering. So got all the education. Worked in corporate, worked for chemical safety company, a consulting company, worked for a medical devices company. So kind of did all the corporate stuff. And after like five years, I just started hating my life. I think the turning point for me was I was waking up, I started my last job I was a project engineer, moved up to a project manager. I was managing $12 million in projects. And I was waking up every morning, 4:30, hitting the gym at 5:15, going to work 6:15, driving till 7:00, working 7:00 to 4:00, back home by 5:00, you know, going to MMA. I was like, this is not a life, this is a like jail pretty much like, it might as well, right? So that’s when, and at the same time it just so happened that I was listening to “Rich Dad Poor Dad” and I was kind of like, dude, this is a scam. This isn’t like a hamster wheel, you know? And I really believe that the books that you read, it depends on when you read them. Because there’s like “The 4-Hour Workweek” when I read that, I was in such a different place that it didn’t make any impact for me. But when I read “Rich Dad Poor Dad” it was kind of like, wow, like this flip switch. So I was like, okay, I’m gonna start my own company nothing to do with Amazon. I had no idea what Amazon was or any Amazon business stuff, none of that stuff. So, it was September 2018, I was on vacation and I was looking for some protein on my phone. And my dad was like, “why don’t you make your own protein?” I say this story all the time. And I looked at him, I was like, I don’t know, man, like I make my own stuff at home. He’s like, “Yeah, but make it and sell it. Like you’re smart, you’re a chemical engineer.” And I’m thinking I’m like, I can’t invent like a new protein or anything. But then I was like, let me see how feasible it is, to make a better protein since I’m already making a better protein and I’m obsessed with supplements. Like I have a full cabinet you’ll see like back there, which one? Yeah, right there, like the whole thing, supplements. Top and bottom, just like an addict, supplement addict. I would go to GNC, spend hours there. I remember when I was a kid I would go and talk to the people there and ask them, I was like, what does this do? What does this do? Why is this one better than this one? And they would hate me ’cause they knew like I was leaving with one supplement. 15 years old leaving with one supplement asking like four hours worth of questions. And the sale is for salespeople. So I was just always super addicted, making my own stuff, reading like so much, like clinical study after clinical study. How to increase the Sustrone, how to perform better, how to do this, what the creatine does. Maybe I can mix creatine with something and I’ll be more synergistic, like stuff like this non-stop. And then I’m like, let me look at the feasibility of creating a supplement. And I did like a quick little like feasibility analysis on like a napkin. Okay, the raw ingredients combined cost $5, with the bag and the sticker and the scooper and everything. And so if I sell on Amazon my competitors are selling it for $25, $30. Win, right? I’m gonna make five times my money back. So I was like, that’s it, I’m doing it. I called that friend and I said, how do I get a company like LC or whatever? He’s like, “Oh, just go to legalzoom.com it’s $400 that you get it in like a week. And I was like, that’s it, it’s that simple? And then, so I incorporated the second I got home to America, I think October 10th. So like a couple of weeks after we had that conversation incorporated. And then I posted on Facebook and, “Hey, I have a new supplement company.” And then this guy hits me up and he’s like, “Hey, we have an MMA event. I can hook you up with a free booth.” And it was, I think like an incentive, they get you in there once, and then you could probably pay for the booth next time. But he was like a friend too. So I went in there and within those from October 10th to November 2nd, I got bags, I got scoops, I got the powders, I mixed it in a big tub. Put it in the bags. I went to a like a friend who’s a designer from college, for 250 bucks she made a design for me. I put the stickers on the bags, HydroLite, and then I didn’t even… I think I sealed the bags. Not even sure if I sealed them fully, I just ziplocked them. And I went to the conference, or the sorry, event with 40 bags and I sold 25. And everyone was like, where can I buy this? And I was like, dude, I didn’t even think about that. Like I can’t tell them, go buy it in Connecticut when we’re in Rhode Island. I can’t tell them, like send me an email on the website, like who’s gonna do that? That’s stupid. I didn’t even know how e-commerce works. So I said it’s gonna be on Amazon soon. The launch is gonna be soon. So I said, cool, went home, and then binged watched everything there is to know about Amazon. And I got nowhere. And so I was like, okay, cool. I picked up the phone, I was at the Chiropractor, then like the next day or two days later I picked up the phone and I called Seller Central. I said, “Hey, I wanna sell supplements on Amazon. Like, how do I do it?” They said, “Oh sir, happy to help you. I’m going to send you a package right now.’ And basically, it was instructions on how to sign up for Seller Central. And after that, I signed up, I was like, okay, what’s my next steps? They’re like, “Okay well, here’s how you get Ungated go to add a product, listing limitations apply, and then send us your certificate of analysis invoice and some pictures.’ And I said, “Okay cool, I don’t have a certificate of analysis and an invoice.” So I hit up a company and I said, “Hey can you send me a certificate of analysis and invoice for this product? I wanna see like, and a quote. I wanna see if I’m gonna get it done with you guys.” They’re like, “Okay, cool.” They sent it to me and I sent it to Amazon. And Amazon rejected it like four times. And then on the fifth time, they’re like, “Okay approved.” And I was like, wow I’m finally approved to sell supplements on Amazon. yeah, I mean, I got rejected a bunch of times, but eventually, I knew if you just stay persistent you’ll eventually like, it’ll go through. So it went through and I’m like, okay, like this is the real deal now. I actually have to figure out how to sell these supplements. So I remember, one of the guys that I got the bulk ingredients from, I sent him a text I said, “Hey, can you mix these for me in this formula? How much would it cost per unit?” And so we went back and forth and he’s like, “Oh, it’s gonna be $5 a unit.” I was like, wow, like this guy is gonna do it for cheap. And I said, okay, and how many can I make? Can I do a hundred? He’s like, “yeah sure, a hundred.” I’m like, okay, I’m gonna send the contract. And then I hit up my dad I said, “Yo, can you send me a contract?’ He’s like, “cool, cool.” He sends me this contract that has like force majeure and all this shit, and I don’t know anything about it. And in the fine print, it says, in the terms, it says, 20% down, net 45. And I didn’t even look at that. I didn’t know what it was and I sent it. And then he comes back and he’s like, “Hey, I’m wondering if we can do 30% down net 45?” And I said, “Okay, one second.” I asked my dad, he’s like, “Yeah, yeah, that’s good.” I say, “Okay yeah, it’s good.” And then I asked him what that was like, “what’s net 45?” He’s like, “well, it means you pay the balance 45 days after shipping.? I was like, wow, I just got like a really good deal. Not even knowing, I didn’t even know, I thought like you gotta pay for everything upfront. So lucked out with that contract. And then I remember like I started, I got into the Amazon Groups. I’m like, how do I do this? How do I do that? How to do this? And the only thing that I really knew how to do, is to create PPC campaigns, like auto and manual, and like with big bids. And I knew that like, just like, try and get a bunch of reviews. So for like a couple of months, literally all I did was, make mistakes and try and get reviews. And finally this girl, Courtney, she was my friend’s sister. She was working for this company that ran, like maybe like a 15 million or $20 million a year Amazon account, and she was managing it. She’s a hundred percent responsible for it. And I was like, Oh wow, like, this is crazy. Like can you give me tips and tricks? And she kinda like didn’t have anything. She’s like, “I don’t know, we put the products up and they sell it.” Because they were CPG products. But she was like, “Hey but if you want to learn more, there’s this, you know Tinuiti? I don’t know if you guys know Tinuiti, but they’re like, there’s this company Tinuiti, they’re having a conference. It’s called the Ad NYC, it’s in New York City and it’s 300 bucks early bird pricing. So I said, okay, I’m in. 300 bucks, took the day off work. I went there and man, like dude, I learned so much. So there were so many like experts there, like from Tinuiti and from like 8:00 AM to like at least six or 7:00 PM nonstop I would go one by one to every single person. Hey, what’s up Jennifer? How’s it going? Like, I really liked your talk, can I ask you questions? And then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like ask and write notes, notes, notes. Okay, move one to the next one, move on to the… And literally like hit every single person from Tinuiti. Every single person who attended the conference who knew anything, like I literally sucked knowledge out of them. Went home and just like, bam, bam, applied, applied, applied. I took action, I didn’t ask questions. Like if someone said they did something, I just thought about it, I said, does that sound like it’s something reasonable? If it sounded reasonable at the time, I just did it. And I made so many mistakes, but I learned so so quickly. And fast forward now, 2020, I have multiple supplement brands. It’s going super, super well. I’m teaching people how to do PPC because that’s kind of like the only way I was able to kind of get ahead in supplements. super, super competitive going against like, Optimum Nutrition, Caspari, BSN, like these people are like a hundred million dollar brands. And so for me, it’s like okay, I need to really learn PPC. That’s the only thing that’s gonna drive any sales for me. And so I did that and also I differentiated by being very competitive in pricing. And I definitely had the best product. I definitely had the best formula, but I also wanted to differentiate with pricing. And it just so happened that Amazon buyers really care about price. It’s kind of like that type of marketplace. So what’s successful there and continue to build more brands.

– That might be the best story I’ve ever heard.

– Yeah. It’s crazy man, I just like very winged it. Very winged it.

– Well, I got to touch on a couple of things here, number one, I wasn’t lying about how much energy and passion you have. I think everyone can see that and hear that, if you’re listening on the podcast right now I mean, your passion is amazing, but also, it’s a motivating story. And I know you talk about this a lot in terms, and you do a lot of great work where you’re motivating and encouraging other people as well. But you launched in 2018, at that time it was ultra common and it still is to hear that, Oh, Amazon saturated–

– Oh yeah, it was.

– And you launched and maybe one of the most competitive categories on Amazon.

– It was November 22nd when I launched. So it was right before Black Friday, Cyber Monday. So it was even worse. So yeah, it was a perfect storm of everything bad.

– But my point is, that should encourage it. You can always launch and be successful at any time in any niche in e-commerce and especially on Amazon. You’re proof of it, it should motivate people. Yeah, are you gonna pick some dud products, or are you gonna make mistakes? Are you gonna do different things? Yes for sure, but if you take an attitude like yours, where you just steamrolled it, man, you did. It was like–

– Yeah.

– Yeah. And I think that’s really critical, because if you overthink or you delay or you try to do too much… If you research, research, research, and never act, act, act, you’ll just gonna spin your wheels. And you’re a testament to that.

– I think the one thing that separated me from everyone, was I didn’t know about going to these keywords and search, it must have this search volume, but not this competitor. All I did was I created a better product. It was simple, I had a problem and I created a solution to that problem, and my problem was I was a fighter and I was on keto and I was losing insane amounts of electrolytes. And I was literally like, I would get the chicken stock and like dry scoop it and swallow it, just to get like 2000 milligrams of sodium in. And so I said, dude, there has gotta be a better way. I searched for sodium supplements and everything like that on Amazon, nothing. And I was doing keto like in 2017, 2018. So I was like, not like super early, I had a coach who did it in 2015, but I was pretty early on the keto scene. And after like so much resistance, I’m like dude, let me try it. And it really worked for fat loss but I was losing electrolytes hard and not having those electrolytes and doing like training, like MMA training, it’s too much. So I basically created a product. I didn’t want sugar, I didn’t want any fillers, and didn’t want it to be too expensive. And so it all starts from creating a solution to a problem. And so that’s what I did. And then from there, I mean, you could do anything.

– I don’t know if you’ve heard him Dustin, but he said, “All gas, no brakes.”

– I love that song.

– But that story is great because you’re figuring it out. Like, I leaned on my friend for graphic design. Then I leaned on my friend for Amazon knowledge. And you just kind of kept going through these walls that you had to go through. Like a lot of people would stop. They would just say, I’m done, I don’t wanna keep doing this anymore, I tried, I don’t know how to learn it, I’m just gonna give up. And that’s what I think separates entrepreneurs on Amazon is you’ll get all these surges to come in, Yeah, they could be great. And this is why you’re so open about your brain. Like, yeah, come on, come on board. But I’m gonna out-hustle you,

– Exactly.

– I’m gonna hustle you, help out the market you, ’cause I know that I’m not gonna stop.

– That’s my thing, I will never quit. Everyone around me, I’ll outwork everyone. ‘Cause everyone around me will quit or die before I do. And I won’t like, I just will never stop ever. And so that’s like, I know I’ll never fail because maybe my product doesn’t work, maybe my brand dies down, whatever. I’ll just keep going to the next thing, to the next thing. And I’ll keep getting better. And a lot of people will blame everything else but themselves. And I think one of the pros of being in MMA is the coach is always telling you, if anything happens, that’s on you. I’m just your coach. Like if you didn’t eat enough, that’s on you. If you didn’t cut weight the right way, that’s on you. If you didn’t drink enough water, that’s on you. If you didn’t show up the training every single day, that’s on you. And you know that like there’s always something that you missed. Like I can never show up and say, Oh yeah, like I’ve been 100% perfect. No, because I know that there’s this one day that I eat McDonald’s and I know there’s one day that I kind of like was kind of tired, and I said, let me skip out the little cardio session and then I’ll come for the technique class. And so it’s very, very full accountability. And so transferring that into business, it’s like I never look around and say, Oh, it’s Amazon. Oh, it’s the industry, Oh it’s whatever. Oh, it’s my competitors, it’s always me. Because guaranteed if you bring Elon Musk and you put him in HydroLite, he’s gonna make it 10 times bigger. And it’s not because he has some sort of like magic touches, ’cause of who he is. And so that’s why I’m always like 100% full accountability on myself.

– That’s huge, ’cause the people who listen to this podcast, you either sell on Amazon or you’re getting ready to sell on Amazon. There’s thousands of Mina’s out there, that will out-hustle you if you don’t do it yourself. Like your competition is doing things that he’s doing. If you’re just sitting on the sidelines, thinking all this is very obvious, throw a few keywords up here, maybe make a few images. You’re gonna get out-worked by guys like him.

– Yeah, or maybe you just say, Hey, let me go to Fiverr and get some guy to do product research for me. Or let me go to Fiverr and have some guy do my PPC. I’m like amazing, please do so I can take all of your sales, ’cause this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.

– So during this whole journey, I mean, we’ve all had ups and downs. I hope you’ve had ups and downs at least–

– Yeah, I have had a ton of them.

– What are some of those good stories like? What’s a thing that you’ve learned in the past that you could like to tell sojourner, Hey, watch out for this or don’t do that.

– Okay. So my first a hundred units on Amazon, I did not have them inspected. And 60 out of the hundred broke during transportation. The bag kind of broke at the bottom. There was a hole and all of the powder fell out. So that was one thing that very early on I learned, never cut corners on your inspection. those negative reviews, you will never, ever remove them. My first ever negative reviews still on there. Like once you lose a customer, you lose them forever. They’re never coming back to you. Even if it’s like one small, bad experience they’re never coming back to you. So basically always do your inspections. That’s the one thing I learned early on. Have everything in writing. There’s so many times where, and I’ve seen other people where like you negotiate something, you talk about something and you don’t put it in writing, and you think, okay, we agreed on this, but unless it’s in writing, I might have good, a good conscious and I’m like a good guy, but other people might not. Other people might like not to care. And so always get everything in writing. The third thing is, I would say, be incredibly careful who you partner with. I don’t know who you guys have partnered with in the past, but you know, dude, it’s crazy. You don’t understand, but it’s pretty much like a marriage. And you have to understand like, to me to this day, I can’t say that I’ve ever, like some people they talk, they’re like, wow like Fernando, you know Fernando Cruz, Nick Young they’re partners, and the way they talk, I’m like man, I wish I had that, but I’ve never come close to that, because if you have bad partners, like not only is it like a drain on your business, it is a massive emotional drain. Takes a lot of energy, you have to deal with these people every single day. Working is gonna feel very unfulfilling, if you have to deal with people that you, you know. And so I always tell people like, if you’re gonna work with someone, there has to be a hundred percent an even exchange of value, that you have to match each other’s energy. Because if some guy’s really hyped up and the other guy is like, come on man, like, I’m not really into that. And you have to look at your partner, his beliefs, and his mindset. I’ve seen too many people where the partner has limiting beliefs or a partner has, like not the right mindset, and it just brings both of them down. Like if one or the other of the partners has a limiting belief, if one or the other is, you know, too slow or whatever, just one of those like negative kind of traits, it’ll bring the whole team down. Even if you’re like up here, and even if they’re just like down here, it’s not like you guys are gonna meet in the middle, It’s like you’re gonna go all the way down. So be very careful who you partner with. I’ve kind of learned that the hard way. And I definitely know I’m very, very careful who I partner with. Especially like after 2020, it’s kind of like, Okay, I really gotta be careful who I’m… Because initially you don’t have any kind of opportunities, but eventually like you get to a point where you’re starting to get a lot of opportunities. A lot of people are coming to you saying, I think we can do this, I think we can do that. Let’s do this, let’s do that. The opportunities become a lot, and it’s very important to say no. And so that’s another thing like I said yes to too many times and it’s hurt me. So it’s very important to know when to say no. Like not every opportunity is a golden opportunity. What I would do is I would, every day like ask yourself, is this going to bring me towards my goal? And if you don’t have like a very explicit goal written and it doesn’t have to be a monetary goal, it has to be like a full picture of your life. And I would say, okay, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. Paint a full picture of your life. Like the apartment you live in, your friends, your family, the time, what you’re doing, what you’re eating, how you look, everything. And every single thing you do every single day, should obviously, not every single thing because we’re not perfect. But most things or every single thing that you do every day Should be pushing you towards that dream life that you’ve painted. It’s almost like your GPS, and you put that destination. If you don’t know that destination perfectly, you’re not gonna get there. So start with the destination. And the destination is not like a number of money. I mean that number of money is there, but that’s like, if I gonna describe your entire life, you don’t start by saying, well I have, $150,000 in the bank. That’s not the first thing. You say, okay well, I’m living here, I look like this, This is my significant other, this is what I’m doing. This is how I spend my weekends. That’s what you have to build. And then everything you do works towards there. And so when those opportunities come ask yourself, is that gonna get me closer? Is that something that I wanna do? Or is it getting me further away from my goal? Or is it not just getting me further away? Is it just not getting me closer? And if it doesn’t get you closer, but it’s a time commitment, then it’s taking time away from things that you can do to get yourself closer.

– And that goes with like surrounding yourself with around the right people. And that’s what you do now, you have a very good network. You have a good network, and you’ve got to surround yourself with people who are like-minded

– That’s Oh, that was, okay. So I love that you touched on this. That’s like the number one biggest, biggest thing that changed everything for me. And it’s who I surrounded myself with. So I remember before I started when I was just like MMA I was living with like normal people. They would like smoke. They would eat pizza during the week. And when I moved, I didn’t move actually, when they moved out and two of my friends who were fighters moved into the house, it was a game-changer. Because if one guy is down, the other guy is up, and is like, come on bro, let’s go. If one guy is eating dirty, the other two are like, come on, what are you doing? Like making fun of him. So having that, and now when I went into business and I started like surrounding myself with all the right people like I look at these people, you know, there’s so many people I look at and I’m like, man these guys inspire me. And it’s constantly like, I’m not looking at someone and they’re like in their nine to five or whatever, or they’re at home, like the content. No, like these people are all alike, they’re technically like in my mind out hustling me. And I’m like, dude, I got to push the pace. Like I don’t have their knowledge, I don’t have the resources. The only thing that I have is my work ethic right now. So I have to outwork them because I’m gonna get like left in the dust type thing. So a very good point, Kris.

– Man, Oh, you’re motivating me right now.

– Dustin usually talks more than this.

– Yeah, I’m listening ’cause I mean, it’s so interesting. You brought up a good point earlier. You’re talking about sometimes you read a book and it’s about the timing of reading the book. I mean, you talked about “The 4-Hour Workweek” read it, read a lot of books like that. “Rich Dad Poor Dad” all those. And a lot of things like when you hear pillow talk mode like you are motivating. a lot of the stuff you said it’s not new. You didn’t invent a lot of that stuff, but it resonates and when you’re surrounded by that type of person and you look for that in the people that you want to be mentored by or hang out with. It’s certainly been for Kris and I, I’ll speak for myself. But when we decided to do the podcast, we started to bring in. I mean, Kris and I have been Amazon seller since 2013. Since we started the podcast, I’ve learned more in the last two and a half months about Amazon and about different tricks and motivation and things, opportunities that are available than I ever knew previously. And I’ve been doing it for years. And so I mean, I just could see you for having that passion and surrounding yourself with the right people and constantly putting stuff out there to help others. ‘Cause now, I mean, you’ve got a course that’s helping others. You’re all over the place, giving out good knowledge and stuff. So you’re onto a new project right now.

– Yes.

– Do you wanna talk about your project and the sort of the way that you’re going about this as well?

– Yeah, this is a project I’m hyped about. Because it kind of ties into everything that I wanna do and everything that I love. So I kind of approached Samer, and I like Samer has, a Samer Brax he has a YouTube channel all about Amazon FBA. And me and him, he was one of the people that I surrounded myself with when I was making that jump from being a nine to five into, getting into the Amazon world. And he was one of like two or three or four very few people that I surrounded myself with. And because we were all kind of in this together and we were all motivated each other, we helped each other out. So I was telling him, man, I’m working on my personal branding. I wanna be more known, well known in the community and you need good content. And I have an amazing idea. And this is kind of like the passionate stuff that I love doing. I said, what have you documented me taking a product from zero all the way, as a supplement, obviously. ‘Cause, that’s all I care about. From zero all the way into launching on Amazon, getting reviews, PPC, all that stuff. And then documenting every step of the way, and at the same time, we can show everyone, and if it fails, it fails. If it succeeds it succeeds. So it’s fully transparent. And then to take it a step further I said, what if we took that product and we launched it on Kickstarter? Because there’s so many people saying, you know, you need money to make money. There’s too much of an investment volume. I said, okay, what if we just fundraise the whole thing? Like from the beginning pre-sale, obviously we’re gonna need a few grand to make the video, whatever. Probably not even a few grand, but I’ve been doing it now. So I’m thinking like a maximum of a few thousand before the Kickstarter and everything is up and running. And I said, what’s a few thousand? Like if you can save a few thousand like just work a little bit harder and you’ll be able to save a few thousand and we’re just spending the money on a high production value. So I said, I wanted to take the whole thing, and show everyone like here’s step by step how to do it. And then add the drama element in there, which is like we don’t know what’s gonna happen. Like this brand is like launching in front of you. You can go look it up on Amazon. You can buy it on Amazon, whatever. And so, partnered with him. We went back and forth for a very long time. And the product that we’re going with, is a new tropical coffee alternative. Personally, I love coffee, I don’t drink it. It’s incredibly addicting and I stay away from anything that’s addicting. But I do have it once a week on Saturdays, and I do have it on vacations. So that’s kind of on vacation that helps me like, not eat as much, so not to get fat. But I love like every Saturday going, I usually go surfing. After surfing. I go to this Plaza next to my house, it has Starbucks. I get a nice nitro cold brew, sip it in the sun and it’s like the most beautiful ritual that I have every Saturday. And I wanted to do that, but I was like, what if I could do it with something that was so much better? And Samer wanted that too. Samer loves coffee. And he likes waking up drinking that coffee. So he said, what if we could take all these like natural ingredients, mushrooms, like nootropics, like lion’s mane, chaga, reishi, cordyceps, mix them with, cardamom, cinnamon, turmeric all that kind of stuff, black pepper, and make it into a latte with like some cacao and some coconut cream. and basically make this like coffee alternative that will super good for you. So instead of it like harming you, it helped you. And you could drink it every day. It could be your new morning ritual, that you wouldn’t have to feel bad about. That wouldn’t get you all jittery and wired up. And so we started the brand mural, and today we kind of announced it to everyone on Instagram who’s following us. I’m like, Hey, we got the kind of the first logos. And we’re like, Hey everyone, we wanna run a poll, see which logo everyone likes. And I’m very excited because we got like a bunch of sponsors involved, we have PingPong payments. We have Thrasio sponsoring the series. Helium 10, GETIDA, we have a Pickful. And so a bunch of really cool people that are going to sponsor the whole thing. And really I love the fact that we’re doing this as a series because in every step of the way, wherever there’s a resource, I think having the series will allow us to get that resource. So if I came to you guys and I said, Hey, you’re experts at like having a PPC software or whatever, do you wanna come on the series and talk to us and then get that free consultation from you? That’s one way to do it. So I’m really looking at, me and Samer are bringing in, experts at sourcing, experts at shipping, experts at an inspection, experts in Kickstarter. People who’ve done this before. Like just all these different things, maybe holistic nutritionists, maybe a little bit off-topic, but kind of just bringing in all these experts to leveraging that and sharing the value with everyone. But at the same time getting the consultation for our business. And I think it’s gonna be a really cool, just like a case study for everyone to see, Hey, you can like genuinely create a solution to a problem, make it better than everyone wants to solve, launch it on Amazon, get the money upfront by using platforms like Kickstarter. I mean, really all I need is $6,000. And if you think about it, that’s 200 units. All I need to sell is 200 units. Don’t tell me you can’t sell a good product to 200 people, because if you can’t, then your product sucks. Like I’m sorry, but it’s 200 people. Like I mean, it’s not hard, and once that’s going, we’ll just kind of like, I’m gonna reinvest everything into the business and wherever I can, I’m gonna share like, here’s what we’re doing with cashflow. Here’s what our pianos are looking like. And all this stuff, all the dirty nasty stuff that no one ever wants to talk about, or everyone wants to see, I’m willing to break it up to people and explain it to people. Because at the end of the day, like I personally, I’m not afraid of competition. I don’t think that competition exists because it’s too big of a pie. Amazon, there’s too massive of an audience for any one person to take your sales. And so that’s why when people are like hiding the products all this stuff, I’m like, dude, even if I knew your product I don’t think I would take the time to go and source it from China, or wherever. Like, come on, I’m too busy even trying to make one product work, you know?

– Yeah. And I totally hear that all the time we talk to sellers and like, oh, I don’t want to give out my product. I’m like, man, listen, if I wanted to go out there and source it, I don’t think I’m gonna go through all the trouble. I got my own stuff to worry about it. I’m not trying to worry about your stuff.

– It blows me away, but if it makes you more comfortable, I mean, all right, it makes me more comfortable.

– Well, I’m sure you’re gonna do good. I mean, just based on the last conversations we’ve had with ya, it doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be a flop. I mean, I’m sure it’s gonna be all right. You’re gonna see your way through. So when you do, when you talked a little bit earlier about PPC, I know we only touched on just a little bit, but I know you have a passion for PPC. I’ve seen you in groups, I’ve seen you on YouTube. I know you have a passion for it. I wanna talk about some strategies and like campaign structures. And like when I’m launching a new product, what am I doing first? Am I just doing a simple auto to manual? Or am I doing different types of mask types? What’s your strategy there?

– Cool. Okay. So yeah, let me talk about that. I’ll break it down. So basically, like I always say Amazon is 50-50. It’s 50% convertibility, 50% discoverability. The convertibility is basically when someone if you think about having like a coffee shop, convertibility is how good your coffee is. Someone goes in and then they see it. And when they buy it, are they gonna like it? So that all goes to like your listing images, your price number of reviews, all of that stuff, the content of the page, that’s your conversion. And then the other 50%, think of it as the foot traffic to that coffee shop or how many people are visiting your listing. And so that’s where PPC comes in. It drives all of that traffic on Amazon to your listing. Now the end goal for PPC for me is to find every single keyword and ASIN possible, that anyone who might be interested in my product, is either typing in the search or clicking on if it’s a listing and capture all of that. So initially I got to discover keywords, discover ASINs, and then target them all. And obviously, they’re not all gonna be profitable, but we need data on them to determine if it’s gonna be profitable or not. Obviously, you can use your common sense. If something is irrelevant, it’s not gonna be profitable but we don’t know until we test almost everything that might be somewhat relevant. So we start off with, four auto campaigns, close match, loose match compliments, and substitutes. I break them up because I don’t want the performance of a close match and loose match to be together because I know that the close match will definitely outperform the loose match. So as soon as the close match at a certain bit is performing well, I wanna scale that budget. And I don’t want the loose match or like the compliments to hold me back. And I know substitutes is gonna perform well too. So I break them up, the second that I set up a bit for them, The second that I see that they’re doing well, I start scaling the budgets for whichever one is doing well. And similarly, if it’s not doing well, I keep the budget the same and just slowly lower the bid. Now, what do I use as a starting budget? Generally, I recommend at least a hundred dollars. Anything less Amazon just sees that or not if you go 95, it’s not gonna make a difference. But I mean, I see people doing 15, 20, $30. And I just think Amazon looks at that and it says, how many clicks can this person afford? Okay, they can afford between 10 to 20 clicks. Let’s not show them enough. Let’s show them very little because they can only afford 15, and we don’t wanna kill their budget. With me they see a hundred they’re like, okay, this guy can afford a hundred clicks. Let’s show him at least like in 50 places. Now it doesn’t mean that you’re gonna fully exhaust your budget unless you set a really high bid. So that’s why I always say start low and then we’ll work our way up with the bids. Now after the four auto campaigns are launched, three manual campaigns, one keyword campaign, one broad, one phrase, one exact for that main keyword. And that considered like a loss leader, or it’s like just keywords that I’m dumping money in, because they’re my main keywords. They’re going to improve my relevance. They’re going to drive a lot of impressions. They might not be profitable off the bat, but eventually, they will drive a lot of impressions for me. Which will eventually result in sales. Then I do the same thing with the top 10 keywords. What I’ll do, is I’ll find my top 10 competitors going to Helium 10, Cerebro, Reverse Easton look up, pull up all of their keywords, do nine minimum ranking competitors. So get the intersection of all of those 10 product keywords and then sort by largest to smallest search volume. And I’ll take those top 10 largest most relevant keywords and run them again. One broad, one phrase, one exact. So that’s four autos, three main, and then three of the top 10. So we’re talking what? Three, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, so 10 campaigns so far. Then I’ll go into doing category campaigns. So I’ll go and look at all of my competitors’ categories, target those categories and refine them so that I’m targeting only products that are more expensive and three stars or less. That is like low-hanging fruit because it’s like they’re more expensive than me. They have three stars. If anyone clicks on their product and then sees me, they’re gonna go with me because you know I’m better, I have a cheaper price and maybe I have four or five-star reviews, but they know for a fact that this person’s reviews suck. They’re willing to at least take a risk with me. Then I’ll move on to branded keyword campaigns. So branded keyword campaigns is anything that has HydroLite or MMA nutrition in it, broad phrase and exact. I’ll run that because you’d be surprised how many people actually looking for you, with your own keywords. If you it somewhere, like the last thing I want is to talk to my friend Justin and say, Hey, Justin, I just launched HydroLite, okay, cool. And then like Jordan is listening in the back, and then he goes and types in HydroLite and doesn’t find it, because I’m not running… Organically you’re still probably not there, but they’re not gonna find you, because you’re not running PPC. So I wanna be like on my own keywords right off the bat. Then if you have multiple skews or multiple products I mean, you’ll target your own product. So I’ll create a product targeting campaign targeting my own products. Because again, when someone clicks on my listing and scrolls down, I wanna block as many positions as possible. If you look at the genius brand or you look at Bulletproof Coffee, you’ll see if you click on one of their listings and scroll down, the sponsored positions are all blocked by their own products. So it’s almost like essentially upselling. And then you block other competitors away from you. And then I think that’s pretty much all I can think of, there might be one more that I’m missing, but anyway–

– Are you doing any sponsor brand? If you have it are you doing any sponsor brand video or anything like that?

– Sponsored video, yeah. I’ll launch sponsored video right off the bat. Sponsored video performs really well, but I’m assuming like a lot of people don’t yet have sponsored video or maybe they’re not brand registered, but yeah, for sponsor brands, I’ll run my main keywords. I’ll run my top 10 keywords. And then for sponsored video, I’ll run a video obviously on all of my main and top 10 keywords. But the thing with that is, you need to have a really good video or not really good, but you need to have a good video. So I know a lot of people if they’re starting out they don’t, but if you do have a good video, definitely run it on the main keyword and top 10 keywords. So then I’ll let seven or 14 days pass, depends on how much money you spend. I spend close to a thousand dollars a day on PPC on one account. So I’ll let like a week or two pass, and then I’ll go into the search term reports. And then all of those keywords that might, auto broad and phrase are discovering, but I have not launched their own campaigns, I will create new campaigns and start launching them. And I’m launching like an insane number of campaigns. Like there is no limit to the number of campaigns that will launch and are only do 10 keywords per campaign. The reason I do that is, Amazon will look at what the top performers are in your campaign and only run traffic to that. Like if you have a hundred keywords in your campaign, why would, like logically, why would Amazon go to a keyword that is complete trash or has no search volume and run it? It won’t, it’ll go to the one that has the higher search volume and the better performance and run there. So when you keep your campaigns up to like only 10 keywords, you’ll constantly get visibility on all those keywords that you’re running versus if you didn’t. Now with that being said, I just wanna quickly touch on the structure of the campaigns. It’s always one campaign, one ad group, and then the 10 keywords. The reason I don’t do multiple ad groups is because I believe that you don’t know where Amazon is sending the budget to, so it could send it 50-50, or it could send it 90-10, and we don’t have data. We don’t know and I don’t like the unknown. Because if I don’t have control over it, then I don’t know what’s going on. So I’ll avoid it, I’ll just keep it a straight line. I’ll avoid any multiple ad groups. Now with that, like I said, I’m gonna keep pulling out all of those keywords from the search term report, run as many campaigns that I can. And then I’ll go into the bulk sheets. In the bulk sheets, I’ll download the bulk sheets. Bulk sheets basically take all of your data from the campaign manager puts it on a spreadsheet, very easy to look at and manage. Initially, it’s overwhelming. I will download a video on YouTube very, very soon explaining bulk sheets. ‘Cause I feel like too many people just don’t know how to. But basically, we go into the bulk sheets and we’ll go, we’ll highlight everything in column B. It’ll tell you like what the record type is, You can cook, you can filter it, and then show only your keywords and product targets. And then that will only show you all of the keywords and product targets that you’re running. And then from there, you go into the bid, you can look at the AcoS, and then you do a very simple comparison, is my ACoS above my target or below my target? Or if it has no ACoS, like is it getting, a certain amount of clicks and no sales or not? So if it’s above my target ACoS, I’ll explain what your target ACoS, generally what I do. But if it’s above, then I’m lowering it by like 5 cents. If it’s below, I’m leaving it the same. If it’s like really low, like less than like 15% ACoS, I’m bumping up like 3 cents the bid, just to get a little bit more traction. If I’m getting more in seven days, if I’m getting more than five clicks and no sales, I’m lowering the bids. And anything lower than 200 or 300 impressions I’m increasing the bids by 10 cents just to kind of keep bumping it up and get a little bit more impressions. Now, what is a good target ACoS? Okay, for me when I’m launching, I’m okay like, doing it at a low loss for PPC because it’s an investment into getting visibility and traffic and sales and conversions. So I’m okay with two times my break-even. So your break-even basically, if your product costs $5, Amazon fees are $5, that’s total $10 and you sell for 20, so your profit is 10. 10 divided by 20 is 50%. So when I launch, that 50% is is my margin or break-even ACoS. I’m okay launching at a hundred percent ACoS. So anything over a hundred, I’ll optimize under a hundred it’s cool, for the first few months, after that I drop it down to 75 to keep kind of the momentum going, but like let’s try and like bring it a little bit more closely. After like nine months, I’m down to 50%, that’s my break-even. I’ll probably do that for another nine months. And then 15, 18 months into the product being released, I’ll drop it to 60%, so maybe 60% of the break-even. So maybe go down to like 35% or something ACoS and try and get it there, because remember true measure is not your campaign manager ACoS, it’s what your total ACoS is. So simply take your PPC spend on that product and divide it by your overall sales, PPC and organic. Trust me, I want you to try turning off your PPC and see what happens to your overall sales, they’ll plummet. So I’ve tried it many times in the past. If you have a product that sells without PPC, you’re lucky, you’re a lucky person. But personally, I’ve only done it ever once, and it was with a ton of social media influencers and brand ambassadors. So we’re spending money there. So it’s kind of like, you need to drive traffic somehow. Remember you need to get that foot traffic to your store. So with that being said, that’s kind of my overall strategy and that’s what I’ll do.

– I like that. And what I really like is the timeframes you said. It’s not like wait two to four weeks. This is like months, like nine months. You’re gonna run it at a 90% or like a 60% ACoS, and you’re running it because you’re trying to get organic ranking and improve your ACoS. So a lot of people will make this mistake and they’ll run a campaign and they’ll be two months in, and I’ll be like, it’s trash. And they’ll just give up on it. Just begin showing how persistent you are. You’re just going to keep it running. And it’s gonna even itself out eventually ’cause your organic ranking is gonna go up which is gonna drop the ACoS down.

– And I always have an eye on my sessions, my unit session percentage of my total ACoS. So my sessions should consistently be going up. My unit session percentage should, as my reviews go up, go up and then kind of probably plateau somewhere, I prefer over 20%. Over 30% is really what I’m shooting for, but I’m okay with anything over 20%. You’re not always gonna have really good products. I have some products at 60 and 70%. So it shows you that there are some products that can convert really well. And then I’m always looking at my total ACoS And again, that number usually starts high. My total ACoS should definitely not exceed 50% after like a few months in. Because after a few months in, if it exceeds 50%, it means I’m operating on a loss. I’m okay with operating at break-even. And so you’re my PPC breaking, My PPC ACoS might be 75, 80%, but my total ACOS might be right in that 50, 40% range. And that’s okay because it just means like whatever money I’m making, I’m just paying to my manufacturer to bring more units in. So I’m okay with that, you know. And eventually, my total ACoS will slowly, slowly go down until, what I’ve seen is bad times, it’s 20%, good times its 12% that’s kind of my range. And then I’ve seen CPG brands go down like four to 6%. Destiny can probably speak better because she has a lot more CPG experience. But the only people that get that low, I think are CPG. But if you’re a normal person, building a brand, not in stores, not like branded that well, you’re probably going to be on a good day 10 to 12%.

– And you’re in the repeat order business, right? Like subscribe and save. So would it be different, would your strategy be different if it was just a one-off product that I’m only gonna buy one time?

– You know, it would be slightly different. I would not have, I guess, I mean, I would probably be less aggressive. Because I know if I capture a customer once, there is a large chance that they’re gonna come again and an order. But if I were not a repeat order of business, I guess, I guess I would be less aggressive. I guess I would definitely have to kind of like rethink it, take a step back and kind of say, okay, maybe this is your one-time order. So maybe after three months, let’s try and shoot for close to a break-even ACoS And at least I’d rather like kind of get a little bit profitable and or at least break-even, or a little bit profitable and work my way up from there, versus with me, I’m okay being a little bit more, not profitable for a while because I know these people will eventually come back and I can hit the same people again and again.

– That’s interesting, but I also think you’re exactly right about being less aggressive. But if it’s a product that gets bought once, like we’re talking about, your competitors can’t operate at a loss either. So one thing that makes competitive categories like a supplement category in there, is because there are repeat buyers. So you’ve got savvy competitors that are willing to lose money on the first sale to acquire a customer. So it just drives up the cost per click and what you have to bid, and your average ACoS is much higher. And I think it’s–

– The value of the customer is way bigger because they know, I know that these big brands they know, they’re like, we’re okay spending like $80 to acquire one customer. Just understanding what the customer lifetime value is.

– Man, your PPC plans I mean, that is so thorough. I mean, Kris and I talked to you all the time about PPC plans and we hit on a lot of those tactics that you’re talking about, but I mean you’re putting out the that’s the full slate right off the bat, that you’re, you’re doing. That’s impressive, and it’s helpful. And not only is your PPC strategy impressive, if you designed it if you spend a lot of time mastering it. But that you’re also now helping people with their PPC. I mean, you’re teaching this strategy, and what a resource? Just to kind of tie this all back in, you just like Kris and I, we’ve been able to launch and grow our businesses because people have put this information out there. We have lots of people that we’ve followed and mentored and you did. And now you’re able to give that back and provide quality too.

– I don’t want anyone to struggle the same way I did. I mean, I did it the hard way, but not everyone has to. And it’s information, it’s like not cutting anything out of my body and giving it to people. It’s not gonna hurt, let everyone win. Trust me, there’s so many billions of dollars in the world. Like everyone can have a lot, don’t worry. You just have to work really hard.

– I love that attitude. And I think if you are going to get into e-commerce or sell on Amazon or if you’re in it, you to have that attitude. The Amazon pie is growing by leaps and bounds.

– Especially because of COVID.

– Yeah, especially ’cause of the pandemic right now. So I mean the tiniest of tiniest sliver can be an enormous amount of money on Amazon. And yeah, you’re right, I mean, there is, I love that you talk about, there is no competition, it’s just done better, and the competition is gone. That’s really fascinating.

– Yeah. Just keep always the customer in mind, always keep trying to provide a better solution and more value to the customer. And a lot of people get in this to make a quick buck, but I’m like, no, I’m in this because I mean, I want the supplements mainly. So I’m doing it for myself, you know? And so I’m adding value to these people’s lives by making these better supplements, better suited, no sugar, like crazy artificial stuff. Like just stuff that I can personally drink. I know other supplement companies are putting really bad stuff in their supplements and you know, getting away with it because the FDA doesn’t regulate. And Amazon’s trying to be a little bit more stringent now and requesting like more aggressive testing and stuff like that. But I mean, dude, like you can get away with a lot. Amazon’s really big they’re not that tight. They let everyone on. I mean, they let me on after four times of applying and the same paperwork four times they let me in. And I’m like, all right, I guess they don’t run a tight ship. Like I thought.

– I love that you got somebody on the phone at seller central, that’s even more impressive.

– Yeah. I don’t even remember how I did it, because now I think you have to have the app, but I have no clue. I think all I did was I kept Googling Amazon seller, seller support phone numbers. And then somewhere, somewhere, somehow I got it.

– The old trick was you could call the Amazon customer, you could call the customer service line–

– They can transfer you?

– Seller, can you transfer me to the seller central people? And they would. I don’t think that works anymore. What’s that?

– I said, there’s so many tricks out there.

– Oh yeah, Oh, no doubt.

– That’s why you got to constantly learn. If I made this mistake badly when I started, is I just tried to research on my own and do it and launch it. I was very excited that I was gonna be a one-man show entrepreneur, run them out there. And I did not network enough early on. And I missed out on opportunities. It delayed my ability to do different things. So networking is the key, man. And be transparent, tell everybody here’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’m saying. People wanna help. They’re not–

– I see how many people show up to these meetups not wanna talk about, ’cause I do an Amazon seller meetup in LA, it’s monthly. And I see some people show up and they don’t wanna talk or they don’t wanna seem like vulnerable. They don’t wanna seem like they’re not doing as well. And so you can kind of see it. And I could sniff that stuff out like real quick. Like I can ask you a couple of questions. I can immediately tell like what this person has made of it. So why? Like if I tell people I make a hundred dollars a year or a thousand or 10 million, like, it doesn’t matter. Like at the end of the day, it matters how well you do. So it doesn’t matter what I think of you. You could tell me, Hey Mina, I’m failing on Amazon and I could be like, wow, this guy sucks. What does this matter? It doesn’t matter to your bottom line. What really matters is that you get information from me, that helps you make your bottom line better. And then you succeeded. Then who cares what other people think? And who cares if you think they’re a small seller? I don’t really care if anyone says, Mina is a small seller is a big seller, he’s whatever, it doesn’t matter. What’s in my bank account matters. That’s what I can actually, that’s my purchasing power. So that’s really at the end of the day I’m after the knowledge that’s gonna help me, grow that number and that’s it. I don’t care if my revenues, a hundred million and I’m making 100K a year, I’d be okay if it was 1 million, I’m making 500K a year, you know, that’s kind of like… So all those numbers that hype what people think, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the end of the day, your life. Remember that GPS, if you’re getting closer, that’s all that matters. If people think, wow this guy sucks at Amazon, you know, so be it.

– I love it. I mean, that’s the only way you can keep moving forward. There’s always gonna be naysayers and all that stuff, just ignore it and keep going. I love it. I love everything about it. All right, so just let everyone know who’s listening. They wanna see more of your content. They wanna get in touch with you, whatever. How do people find you? How do they find your course, contact you? Let them know all that.

– Cool. So Mina Elias on Facebook, M-I-N-A last name E-L-I-A-S. You can find me on Instagram @Egyptian_prescription_ Elias. That’s more of like my regular lifestyle. And then the PPC University, that’s the YouTube channel. And then the PPCuniversity.com that’s the course. I have a free course on PPC on there. So I have a free one and a paid one, get the free, look at the free one. You get a taste to understand like if you like what I’m teaching or not. And if you do great, then get the paid one. And then you get like everything, everything like step by step over the shoulder like breaking everything down. You can message me anytime ask me questions. I’m very accessible, so it’s not like hard. Just ask me a real question. Don’t tell me like, I wanna feel like you’re someone who wants information and we’ll take it, and then run with it. Not someone who’s just like dependent and wants like… I’m gonna give you the tough answers. Like, I’m gonna be the one who gives you the reality check. I’m sorry, but it’s not that easy, it’s hard, it’s tough. Nothing comes easy. You can’t do anything great if it’s easy.

– And I think more people need that, they needed a little kick in the pants sometimes to get going. So I like that attitude.

– Yeah, and I don’t tolerate anything negative. I see a lot of people, some people will message me and be like, man, like Amazon is like just not that good. I’m like listen if you say one more negative thing, you’re getting blocked. Like I have no time, I don’t need you to vent to me, go vent to your girlfriend or something. Ask me a stupid question, Hey, like is total ACoS or regular ACoS better, whatever. You know, just don’t vent to me.

– Man, I love it. It’s like all the people that get upset, Jeff Bezos worth so much money. You know like, all these people, you, Kris, me, we’re providing for our families because of that guy.

– Yeah. Literally. I bought my parents a car this year, paid all their bills. I’m living here working from home. None of this would have been possible. I was working from home before the pandemic. None of this would’ve been possible if it wasn’t for Amazon. And also I love ordering whatever, and it comes to the door two days later. So, be rich, go invent something as good as Jeff Bezos and then make a hundred billion dollars. and I was like, Oh, Amazon is killing small businesses. I’m like, dude, small businesses is killing small businesses by not being good enough. Like not giving enough value. If you could deliver in one day, I’ll buy from your business like that, is it?

– Or just move your small business on to Amazon.

– Exactly.

– It’s so true. I love it. This is why it’s fun talking to you. And we gotta have you back on, we’ll come up with some more down the road. We’ll get you back on many talks about the–

– Maybe after the Kickstarter campaign and all that stuff. ‘Cause I’ve never done Kickstarter this is my first time. The reason I told Samer I wanna do it is I wanna show everyone that even someone who knows nothing about it can be done. I even got the owner of, Oh, not Kickstarter. The owner of Jellop, someone who supercharges Kickstarter campaigns, I got him in an email. Literally, all I did was I reached out to him, and I sent a Zoom video. And like I mean, people will help you out. And so I don’t know anything about Kickstarter. Don’t know how it’s gonna go, but I’ve been studying other people and you know, we’ll see So maybe after the kickstart I’d be like, dude, this was awesome, we raised like $50,000. I’ll be like, yeah, man. Like I had to pay like, we only raised like $3,000. I had to pay two grand out of my pocket to get the money.

– So we will be one We will be one way that This is gonna be fascinating. Kudos to you for taking on that challenge. Being transparent like that, it’s amazing. Yeah. But after all that’s done, we’ll get you back on. I mean, this has been fantastic. I can’t–

– Thanks for coming on, man.

– Thanks so much. And everyone go to PPCUniversity.com, check him out on YouTube. Find him he’s all over social.

– Yeah. Anything I can do to add value, I’m more than happy to.

– Yeah, I typed in Mina into Google and it auto-filled the rest of your name.

– Yeah, it happened to me too, I typed Mina and it auto-filled PPC University.

– Yeah, I don’t think anyone gonna have a hard time finding that.

– I’m getting famous now.

– All right, we’ll let you go. Thanks for coming on, everybody. We’ll be back at this again tomorrow. So we’ll help you tune in then, have a good day.

– Awesome.