Andrew Youderian
That’s a good, I would say.
Jeremy Weisz
Like the patient with the kids during COVID, during virtual schooling, yeah, sometimes I would need to read that card a couple times.
Andrew Youderian
Like I think every every parent does for sure. I would say the ones that are hardest for me, are probably like the exercise one, like keeping my body in shape three times a week, I have a lot of discipline in some things. physical exertion, especially when I’m pushing up against physical boundaries. Unless I’m chasing a ball or there’s some kind of competition involved is really difficult for me, I did CrossFit for like three or four months before the pandemic hit, and ended up not sticking with it. Because partially because of COVID shut things out. But also partially because I felt like it was tearing my body apart. I always felt like I was like eight years old. But the thing I loved about it was the competitive aspect. Like you’re in there, and I’m super competitive. And so that part having some kind of competitive force to help push my body was cool. But so I would say that one the the keeping my myself in shape, I would say the other one is probably I’d say the other one is probably putting money to work in ways that make me nervous but not afraid. Just because I tend to be very risk adverse. And it’s there’s been like the number of times I’ve been like, Oh, I should have done this, or I should have done that. And then I don’t take any action on it. And I see Shopify stock go from 30 to $1,000. You know, I see the plot of land, I was thinking about buying double in price in my old Montana neighborhood like, those kind of things. Yeah, it just hard for me. So I think getting over taking more risks, calculated risks, especially when I feel so that’s why I kind of came up with that phrase, like do things, make investments that make you nervous, but not afraid. And I feel like that’s, you can’t make a good investment without being a little nervous about it. Because then there’s no risk, there’s no reward. But if you’re afraid that probably is a signal that either you haven’t thought through something, or you haven’t thought through something well enough, or there’s a ton of risk. So long answer your question, but those are probably
Jeremy Weisz
no, that’s that’s, you know, you mentioned two things that you missed out on a plot of land, a Shopify stock that may have made you nervous of buying, what was something you didn’t in the past, it doesn’t have to be in the past year, but something that you you realize this is making me really nervous, but you leaned into and actually, it, you ended up doing it?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, I think a number of things. You know, recently, it was probably investing more, just investing more into the markets. So I bought, like when the when the markets were, you know, falling apart in March, April, I put not nearly as much as I’d hoped to. But I put some money and then recently did an ETF capital deal that put a good chunk of money into that that, again, wouldn’t have done it and wouldn’t have brought other investors in if I didn’t think it was a great opportunity. But it was a good chunk of money. And it’s you know, it’s you’re never sure how those things are going to end out. Even when you do a lot of diligence, you know, that people bought a house in Tucson recently. It was a second property. Bitcoin was another one at one point bought a little bit of that. So it’s Yeah, I mean, it’s that kind of a bunch of different things, but getting better at at trying to make those those investments.
Jeremy Weisz
You mentioned eCommerceFuel Capital, right. If you’re watching the video, you can see I’m on eCommerceFuel. And I want you to talk about a few of the components of eCommerceFuel. Obviously, there’s the private community aspect. There’s the eCommerce Capital, and there is a podcast, talk about the eCommerceFuel Capital and why you started it and how it works.
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, so eCommerceFuel Capital is it’s a group of investors led by myself that looks to invest in promising interesting e commerce companies. And I started it because I tend to see I tend to get a decent number of interesting opportunities that kind of just come across my inbox from seeing store members that community members that want to sell or Or maybe software companies that I get to talk with early and they’re doing interesting things. But yeah, just a lot of different, interesting opportunities. And I also know a lot of people, especially in 2021, when interest rates are just, you know, rock bottom, that are looking for some interesting compelling places to put their money. And so I kind of thought about those two and thought, Hey, this is an interesting opportunity to marry those two and also be able to invest myself. And so that’s that’s kind of how was born?
Jeremy Weisz
How can someone get involved in that? Do they have to be? Because I know with your community, you are there’s it’s a paid membership? Right? It’s close pay membership, if you want to be a part of the community, there are certain qualifications people have to meet. Do the people in the eCommerceFuel Capital have to be a part of the the membership to how does it work?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, that’s a great question. Right now, we’ve got about 15,16 people that are going to be the core members. And right now, it’s not publicly open, I don’t think I’ll ever make it publicly open, I have, especially after this first deal that we did, I think in future deals, I’ll definitely consider opening it up to the broader private community. But it will always it will always stay something that at least at a minimum, you’d have to be a part of the community, or within my close network to invest in. And I think I think that’s just because just like anything in business, you want to know that people you’re investing with and are in business that you’re in business with, and having quality partners and investors is, in my opinion, a lot more important than having bigger investors or more of them. So yeah, being part of the community, or just getting on the email list and getting to know me is probably the one of the best ways to do that.
Jeremy Weisz
How can you talk about the deal, even if you can’t name companies, just generally, how did it work? And what happened?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, so we, we had a friend of ours, a friend of mine, that I have known for seven years. Plus, she’s actually one of our was one of the founding members in eCommerceFuel, was looking to sell her business. And she called me up to talk about a few things and ask a couple pieces of advice. And in the process of doing that, I thought, Hey, this is a really interesting business. Just had, you know, margins were interesting, good repeat business. It was in the, in the, in the home products space. It was primarily on Amazon, which was something I wasn’t looking for. But knowing this woman, she just runs an extremely tight ship. And so my confidence that was kind of proven out and due diligence was that she built a very white hat, great review rankings, stuff. So we I ended up, you know, taking a look at it, and through a bunch of different kind of conversations, partners, with two other people. Two other good friends also from eCommerceFuel, that have known through eCommerceFuel one is running the company after we just closed on this about two weeks ago. But a little bit more than if you haven’t really talked about this publicly, a whole lot, but at all. But one of them that is running the kind of the business for the first year or so has a lot of deep ecommerce operational expertise. One of the parties came in also has a ton of e commerce experience, but he personally guaranteed the note in exchange for for a chunk of the company. It was an SBA loan, and then we had an investor pool of about a dozen of us that came in to invest in it. So and yeah, it’s looking for looking forward to improving it growing it, you know, trying to grow off Amazon as well. And we’re pretty excited about it.
Jeremy Weisz
It makes perfect sense, right? You have all the elements inside your community to really run and grow eCommerce companies. And and I want you to talk about why do people join eCommerceFuel the community? One of the reasons is for the networking and the people. And you we were talking before we hit record, and I said what are some interesting stories about relationships are forming you were mentioning another company that exited. What happened there.
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, it was a guy I can’t name. The name just said a being courteous to confidentiality for that company. But there was a member who had spent the last, you know, five to 10 years, maybe longer building a really meaningful eight figure business. And he was looking to sell. And he actually ended up after talking to some private equity people and some other folks. He ended up selling to somebody inside the community that he’d met at one of our live events at our UCF live event. And so, and it worked out really well as someone who has, you know, been a part of multiple transactions where I have known the counterparty the buyer or the seller. It just makes the deal so much easier, because 80% of the process is trying to figure out the intentions of the buyer seller, they have good intentions in mind. What are they telling me and if you go in there with an existing relationship, it makes it so much better. So, so that was really cool. I mean, he had a great asset. The other person had a great investment and the process wasn’t horrific. So yeah, that was a recent one that comes to mind.
Jeremy Weisz
Why do you why what are the reasons people join?
Andrew Youderian
I think You know, I think the the reasons people join and the reasons people stay, I think are probably different. The reason people join is to be able to tap into what I believe is the world’s largest community of seven and eight figure ecommerce brands. And the hub of the heart of that isn’t in a private forum that we have. So we’ve got 1000s of comments, you know, each and every month, if you go in there, and, and you know, chat about or ask a question about just about anything, you’re going to get an answer from Amazon Prime to, maybe you have to fire an employee, and you’re worried about liability to, you know, all of a sudden your container costs and your shipping costs just went through the roof because of COVID and everything else. So how are people getting around that. So I think the immediate access to knowledge is probably the biggest driver, but people stick around because of the relationships that they make. And even if they’re just virtual, we’re pretty careful about the type of people we curate. And let remain members don’t say that it sounds really arrogant when I say that is a better way to say is we don’t put up with people that are rude or dismissive, dismissive, or arrogant or condescending. And one of my greatest joys, is to be able to, if there’s someone who’s not a good fit, and they’re continually just being toxic, is to politely show them the door, because it just it makes, it makes for such a better to have the ability to do that, and maintain a great healthy community where deep relationships and trusting relationships and friendships can thrive. I think that’s probably why people stick around for the long term.
Jeremy Weisz
So it’s all about culture, I mean, in a company in a community, and if someone tolerates that, then it leads to more people like that, or more conversations like that. So I totally get it. And I, you know, it’s a great community, I mean, I’m a part of the community, you allowed me in the community, thank you for that. And most of you don’t know, Andrew, like, my background is, is in biochemistry as a chiropractor, and I started, you know, supplements, like 10 years ago, like when most people were not doing anything, and someone told me about your community. And so it’s, it’s great. I mean, the people are super nice, super friendly, I need to go in and more reminded me when I was doing research today, like I need to just go in it more. And it’s, you only get what you put in. So it’s like about participating and going in and, and engaging as well. People are super active and really engage, you know, engage with other people and help really are there to help other people, which is what a community is there for. And, you know, one of the I want to talk about popular threads, what you have found is popular threads, because you’ve been doing this for a long time. And I was watching an interview with you yesterday that was from I think, 2014 or 2015. Given. And you said one of the the key piece of advice that you’ve seen in the group was about pricing. And talk about that, and what were some results because of that.
Andrew Youderian
I a thread that pops up recently, as someone who was running a really a case study, that’s one of the things one of the things too, we have our core values as reciprocity. So for all our new members, we, we require that within 30 days, they can write and post a case study to contribute something to the kind of the product group. And so we get a lot of great case studies in the community. A big thread that somebody wrote up a couple of year and a half ago at this point was about how they took their business and focused more on profitability versus revenue. And they shrunk their business in some senses, but they also raise the prices quite a bit. And I’ve experienced this in numerous businesses on multiple occasions, where people entrepreneurs have this innate terror of raising prices, because we feel like if I think there’s an innate terror, always kind of low level and the lizard brain for entrepreneurs, that everything is gonna fall apart, and the wheels are gonna come off the bus and you’re just gonna be left with nothing. I think, at least a lot of people have that. I think I know I do it sometimes. And so you think about raising prices, and that kicks into overdrive, like my revenue, and my sales are going to just dry up. But usually my experience a lot of other people’s experience, especially if you do it in a smart way. raising prices is hands down with the best things you can do for your business. There’s no other lever in your business that you can pull that will have as dramatic and as quick of a impact on the bottom line is raising prices. And so that was that was played out in this case study this, this member shared, it’s you know, and a lot of the advice that people shared about that as well was one of two things. I think it was a big thread that was going on it. The biggest thing was most people who did raise prices did not regret it. It ended up being a huge benefit for their business, both from the increased margin but also from less the, you know, the decreased work that was required to generate those those sales. And then the few people that raised prices and regretted it. They shared how they raised prices. It didn’t improve their profitability, and so they reverted them and went back to life and nobody stormed their business and nobody would know it. You know, shame them on social harm, no
Jeremy Weisz
foul, right?
Andrew Youderian
It was not a big deal. So I think, yeah, raising prices, at least testing pricing is probably the biggest thing people overlook. And it’s huge.
Jeremy Weisz
What’s another popular thread that sticks out over the years that? No, it doesn’t have to be, it could have surprised you could have not been because you really see what people are really wanting and talking about from the inside view. Right? What’s another popular thread that you saw that, you know, had a lot of people engaging with it? Because it hit a chord inside the community?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, I think so I’m looking at some just kind of, on the private side, our all time most recent threads Michael Jackson is Who’s the man behind one of the men behind econ crew, he did a great case study on selling his business that was super popular. We had a thread I rolled out where we said that to be a member you had to contribute at least somewhat every year otherwise, you wouldn’t couldn’t remain a member, just because it came back to our core value about reciprocity. And that was really popular, one member who hit the million dollar mark kind of a little bit earlier in our life when when we had some smaller brands and they still do have some great smaller brands. And just that was super popular. What else case studies on selling businesses, some of the threads are really interesting that are have nothing to do with e commerce, we had one that talked about addiction recently, and some people being really, some people really being open and vulnerable and sharing their their struggles with that and how they were able to overcome or or deal with those things. people leaving Amazon, some of those people talking about stuff like you know, golf, what people love to talk with our cars, what kind of cars they drive, it’s a mix of like there’s all these random things in there to about just as not as just as much lots of interesting lifestyle ones, as well as e commerce but it’s all over the board.
Jeremy Weisz
I want to talk early on Andrew of starting eCommerceFuel and what your thought was then what it is now because early on, you are producing content and if you check out this page, this is just the you know, the e commerce community page, you have a sense of humor about you have a certain way of copywriting which I think is fun and funny like at the top of this you could see warning reading this page will make you want to join eCommerceFuel really bad. Right? And
Andrew Youderian
so I have to interrupt you I wish I could take it. I feel like this though does embody because I am kind of tongue in cheek I like to I wouldn’t call myself a super serious person. But I have to give credit to Lianna Patch over at Punchline Copy for this because she she was the one who wrote wrote this copy on this page did a great job.
Jeremy Weisz
The best copywriters in the world. Andrew, I think I’ve interviewed over 120 at some of the top copywriters and direct response marketers, and the best ones get a lot of their material from their client. You know, so I bet you said this at some point, or, you know, I’m not not giving credit to that person. I’m sure they’re great. But she probably or it’s a he listened to you and wrote an amazing, you know, copy for the page. How did you first start? What were you thinking early on with eCommerceFuel, you know, what was it gonna be? And what did you do?
Andrew Youderian
Early on, it was, hey, I’ve got some experience in e commerce running these niche e commerce brands, there’s no one talking about this on a covered small kind of independent business standpoint, I should try to do something with this knowledge. And I wasn’t sure what I didn’t know if it was selling a course or starting a community or what it was. So very beginning, I went to the woods in Arizona in Prescott, Arizona and rented a cabin for two weeks and did nothing but create this like 60 page PDF that I poured literally probably 100 hours into, on how to pick a niche and how to launch an e commerce business. And because I knew that if I wanted to do something, I should build an audience first and build connections and network and build some kind of presence online and a fear the best way to do that the fastest was to create something really valuable and give it away for free. And so create that PDF, put it on the website, start blogging, people started passing that that PDF around and got a lot of traction actually helped build the email list and build the website. And then so I did nothing for the first year except for write content, probably post, you know, blog every other week and tried to spend, you know, meaningful amount of time on those blog posts and shared them and yeah, and so really, first year was built on building credibility with no other agenda. And then I launched the community as well as a paid course about a year into it. And over the course of about nine to 12 months, I realized that the community was what I really wanted to focus on and from the get go I I made the decision to try to to have some kind of threshold for membership. I think early on it was really low was like you have to have a business of those $50,000 per year in sales. And over the years. We’ve bumped that up to a million dollars as a minimum but I know knew that having people with skin in the game that had some level some threshold of Hey, if I’ve gotten in here, I’ve wrestled with us, I saw some of the problems I have some gumption would make for a stronger community over the long haul. So yeah, that’s kind of the early stages and decisions. And that kind of grew from there.
Jeremy Weisz
So the evolution, so were you wanting at that time go, I’m gonna doing committing for a year is no joke, Andrew, you know, you were talking with Andrew Warner, who’s a friend and Mixergy. And you were saying, if you want to get into a, you know, sudden hit lucrative business model, right away, building community is not it. Right, it takes a lot of time. And energy before you get traction. And so early on, were you thinking I want to start a community? Or I want to do a course on this or because you dedicated a year, right before you launch something? Yeah, I
Andrew Youderian
definitely. I mean, from the get go, I knew that I I was hoping to be able to monetize it in some way, in a way, assuming I could, you know, add value through that that product. And I thought about courses, I thought about community, those were in the back of mind, I just didn’t know what, you know, I didn’t know if those would be the right, the right thing to do. And so I had them in mind, but I hadn’t crystallized them fully. So definitely were there but but wasn’t sure.
Jeremy Weisz
What was a big turning point with the community. So you start off, you’re blogging for a year, you’re releasing content, you’re building the community. What was a point that you’re like, Okay, this created a lot of traction, maybe decision you with community mentioned, continuously up leveling the maybe the type of business, caliber of business in it, what were some other decisions you made that really helped you build the community?
Andrew Youderian
I think of two answers to that. The first is, there’s probably not one that was like this just explosive atom bomb moment that, you know, transformed the business that was really a, you know, kind of like building through 1000 bricks kind of process. The closest one I can think of is probably having our first live event. So our first live event happened after we’d been the community had been, you know, live for a year. And there’s something that happens when you get people together in person, you know, you you connect with people. And just so deeply you can you build trust, at an exponentially faster rate in person than you do online. And so I think that was probably a pretty seminal moment for the community in terms of getting people together in person to connect to talk. And it’s used a lot of relational glue, if that’s a phrase, I can use a lot of trust and rapport. And that was a big one. I think that was our first live event. We’ve, up until this last year up until 2021, which we’re not having an event for obvious reasons. But up until then we’ve done them every year and they’ve done yeah, they’re a huge, huge part of what makes I think our community work in tech and yeah, and have the trust of that does.
Jeremy Weisz
You’ve been doing events for years, what structure works the best? You know, as far as because I know there’s speakers and breakouts. What do you find works the best for your community. When you have the event?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, we’ve done. We have, especially in the last two or three years really shifted more to show shorter punchier, keynotes, make people I think even last even one year, we did, I think 15 to 20 minute keynotes. So really making people be concise, deliver a lot of value in a short period of time. As I say this, we’re probably We’re at 28 minutes on this, this podcast. So forgive me for being hypocritical. We’re not
Jeremy Weisz
a conference so people can watch us asynchronously.
Andrew Youderian
It’s true. But yeah, I think short punchy, keynotes. And trying to and breakout sessions, we usually do a combination of keynotes breakout sessions, kind of choose your own adventure, smaller discussion based conference. And probably the biggest thing is creating space and moments for people to be able to connect one on one deeply. So we, we try to do a lot of kind of matched networking. So at meals or at lunchtime, sometimes we will definitely kind of see see people together or have like topic based tables. We’ll try to connect to people when we can, but I think that’s the we use a mix of all three of those. But I think the most important one is trying to either proactively introduce people or or get people into the same area so they can introduce each other, connect with each other on whatever topic that is, or just leave a lot of space and create environments where people can do that naturally. Because those are the biggest value as you get into conferences. It’s the relationships. I think everyone knows that when they go to conferences.
Jeremy Weisz
You know, there’s a recent episode, Andrew that you did, at the beginning of the year, managing a stressful six months. And in there you talk about, you know, the ECF capital deal. You talk about running the community, talk about Overlander So talk about Overlander for a second.
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, so Overlander is a site overlander.com is, is a site that I was a lead a team on launching in December, I guess, November, we launched just before Black Friday. And it was a joint partnership between a company called Auto Anything, and then a company called Expedition Overland. And I generally don’t work kind of on a consulting basis, I never do. I haven’t since I launched eCommerceFuel. But I was kind of approached by drusen Aki who is the CEO of auto anything, he’s a longtime good friend. And they were looking to get this, you know, get the site off the ground. I happen to know also the, the owners of Expedition Overland this crew that I’ve claimed or saw they’ve been traveling for, you know, the last decade all over North America and the planet. And I also love to travel, I’ve got this old van I like to travel around in and so between the people and loving the space, and also seeing some opportunities for growth personally and professionally, just from getting my skill set, you know, stretching myself, because we had a pretty big team that was gonna be a part of this probably, you know, anywhere from 15 to 20 people based on how you measure it. Yeah, I just had to do it for six months. So dove in and we launched it in late November,
Jeremy Weisz
what was a piece of advice, you remember that you gave them that helped move things along, or they found helpful.
Andrew Youderian
I don’t know if it was a piece of advice, my mandate coming in was to really spearhead the project to get it off the ground. So I was responsible for coming up with a brand with a unique selling proposition, helping guide the catalog selection, helping kind of think through the marketing, and just being responsible for getting it launched on time from a high level. So I think maybe the biggest began, I wasn’t giving advice, per se as much, I think probably my biggest role was just diving in and getting stuff done and trying to make decisions that moved move the project forward. But the biggest thing that that I think was maybe helpful was just saying, like, here’s, here’s what we need to focus on, here’s what the brand needs to be about, which it’s a brand that focuses on higher end quality overlanding care that the site can really stand behind. And so I think that was probably the biggest thing, from an advice perspective. But yeah, I was more giving advice, probably, you know, wasn’t necessarily what I was doing, per se.
Jeremy Weisz
You have some in you know, some early on industry knowledge of this particular category with one of your brands. So, talk about starting that. Yeah, I
Andrew Youderian
mean, my first e commerce business ever was a site called Right Channel Radios, that sold CB radios of all things and pick the niche purely with a mercenary approach to what is profitable, like, Where’s there a lot of search traffic? Where are the old brands, you know, weak and unsophisticated, etc. And so yeah, I launched that ran that for eight years sold that. And yeah, that was so that was kind of my first foray into e commerce.
Jeremy Weisz
I think that could be a title of your book. I don’t know, it really fits your brand. But the mercenary approach, that’d be a good title for a blog post,
Andrew Youderian
a mercenary approach to ecommerce
Jeremy Weisz
or for for one of your podcast episodes, the mercenary approach? And, you know, at the time, you did drop shipping, right, and how is dropshipping changed as a business model, compared to what it was? Because I know you talked openly about one of the brands, you know, drop shipping at the time that whatever it was 10% margin or whatever it is, what how has it changed? And I don’t know if you have, do you have a way to emote? If someone else finds out what you’re selling? Do you have a moat or not? Yeah, it’s
Andrew Youderian
I mean, dropshipping has gotten exponentially harder. Since I launched in my house. I’ve launched in 2008. That first business which was a lifetime ago, pretty much, Grandpa at this point, the e commerce world. Yeah, it’s gotten a significantly harder and this is someone, you know, the Overlander site wasn’t entirely drop shipped, but a lot of it was. And and so I think, your moat, if you’re going to get into drop shipping, you have to have some, if we have to really be able to answer very well, why are we going to be able to do this any better than the other people that can drop ship these products? And I think the answer is you either have to have way more credibility, you need either need to have exclusive access to something which you can dropship items and still have exclusive access. Maybe you negotiate a an exclusive distributorship for your country or for your state or something like that. And that can work. Maybe you add just tons more information than other people do, where you have more trust or credibility with Overlander. The reason why, you know there’s a shot at that working well is you’ve got a lot of credibility from the, the people behind it Expedition Overland if you use this stuff, they know this stuff, the creative that they can use and the endorsements and the recommendations they can make come from their own experience. And they also can bring part of their own audience to that site, which can help. But yeah, it’s hard. It’s, it’s, it’s significantly harder than, than reselling stuff that’s either private labeled or completely proprietary. But then you also have the hard side of that business, you know, the charge sides of those businesses as well. But yeah, it’s gotten a lot harder.
Jeremy Weisz
There’s advantages and disadvantages, right, but so from the mercenary approach, okay, side I just like that phrase. Now. What were some of the products that you sold? Because you’ve you launched several product companies. One was the CB radio what were some of the other ones taking your mercenary approach to e commerce?
Andrew Youderian
Why would you choose CB radios was one at TrollingMotors was another one. sold some TrollingMotors?
Jeremy Weisz
Why? Why trolling motors?
Andrew Youderian
Again, mercenary approach totally just keyword based demand based and I thought that one was Yeah, that one didn’t work out quite as well in the mercenary front but the approach going into it
Jeremy Weisz
was we didn’t kill anyone.
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I sold a copious amount of Trolling Motors before I ever even saw my first Trolling Motor in person. Like that’s how bad it was. So I designed a product. This is more of just a personal interest and kind of scratching my own itch but a lot seatback organizer for for, for especially designed around for off roading heavy duty offering vehicles that can size maps. Those were those are the big ones I’ve been involved with over the years. So but yeah, mostly the mercenary approach. One of the reasons on the Overlander side to that I wanted to join on that project was to get a sense of how does a project change when you really deeply love the project that and the subject area that you’re that you’re selling into or involved with? And so that was kind of interesting, being involved in something that had much more knowledge and passionate about?
Jeremy Weisz
Are you into off roading? And all this? Well, yeah,
Andrew Youderian
yeah, I’ve got a kind of a four by four van, old VW van that we’ve taken Quentin, taken on some fun adventures personally, and also as a family. And so it’s, it’s a space that I know and enjoy a lot.
Jeremy Weisz
What would you launch today? you’re launching a company, it’s you. You’re, you know, starting a team from scratch a product from scratch. What I know maybe niche you would go in what would you? What would you start doing?
Andrew Youderian
That’s a good question. In the e commerce space, specifically, or e commerce, e commerce fast? I thought about a few things here, I think I would I would be less concerned about the actual product. And I’d be more concerned about the criteria of the product. Because it’s, and I think one of the biggest things I would focus on is something that has a large repeat purchase cycle on it. So it could be
Jeremy Weisz
give me some of the criteria. So it has to be repeat buyer. Well,
Andrew Youderian
yeah, repeat buyer, I think reasonable margins at least 50% plus margins. Something isn’t horrendous to ship, you know, like shipping trolling motors for four or five years.
Jeremy Weisz
Anything easier than that?
Andrew Youderian
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that’s awful. I think those are some of the big ones. Because I think that you look at the market today. And you’ve got three or four companies that probably take up 80% of the web traffic, maybe 90% at this point from a from a shopping perspective, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instagram, either control the, the marketplaces where the shopping and, and they’re the gatekeepers, and just ad costs are going up and up and up and up. And, and so if you if you’re trying, if you’re selling a one and done product, or a one or two and done, it’s it’s really hard to make that work because your acquisition costs are getting so high. So yeah, and then having higher margins just means you can do so much more you can play with pricing, you can spend more on customers, you know, all this kind of stuff. So I would look for a product that I felt like I could develop something that fits those kind of those three criteria.
Jeremy Weisz
So repeat buyer margin, and then easy to ship. Yeah, any genre that you have an affinity to and that or are there any that you’d stay away from
Andrew Youderian
probably consumer electronics, I love you add one more product, I would probably try to make it at a minimum, your own private label product line of products, ideally, your own products that you could kind of sell because your margins will be better. You don’t have to compete against other people. It opens up places like Amazon to where you don’t have to, you know, club off all the other competitors without the bat.
Jeremy Weisz
So, yeah, I
Andrew Youderian
think that’d be another one. I would probably stay away from consumer electronics. Actually, I recently did an episode with Adam Liebe. Who’s made this incredible typewriter and he did it from scratch. Wow, beautiful consumer electronics product but and I think he would probably do it again. But he also kind of cautioned against what he Absolute, how difficult it is to create consumer electronics, because there’s so much that goes into it. So I probably would stay away from the consumer electronics space.
Jeremy Weisz
Any other spaces that you would steer clear of besides consumer electronics, I mean, it also, you know, it does create them, if you do dive into it, it’s harder, but you do maybe create a bit of a moat if other people aren’t willing to jump or jump through those hoops or walls or whatever. Other any other other spaces that you would avoid, just
Andrew Youderian
because I think beverages would be hard. You’re shipping them, you know, you’ve got inherent complexity with your shipping based on who you’re shipping them with. They’re heavy. You know, so high shipping costs. Probably you can’t charge a ton for them, unless you’re selling like a two year old brandy, you know. So yeah, that’s another one that comes to mind that I probably would be a little a little hesitant to get into unless there is real compelling reasons. Otherwise, no, I
Jeremy Weisz
like that. Because I mean, if you look at your checklist, right, repeat buyer margin, easy to ship private label. You know, you think of beverages, check. Yes. Repeat buyer. totally right. margin. No check. Easy to ship. Not necessarily a check.
Andrew Youderian
Your machine could be really good. I think it could be really good. But your after shipping margin would be horrific.
Jeremy Weisz
Well, yeah. I mean, I remember I was just I bought I love Kombucha, and I bought a wild tonic, kombucha this blueberry basil, like just saying to me off the shelf, and I grabbed it. And I’m on my way home. It was delicious. And it was a beautiful glass bottle. And I’m like, this must be so expensive. To make. It was $4.20 or whatever for the kombucha, which is not on the, you know, it’s not cheap in general, but it’s as far as it goes. And then I looked on their website because I’m like, I’m gonna buy more, maybe I’ll get a bulk discount. And they came out with these slim cans. And I’m like I knew it. They discovered probably I don’t know, I actually emailed the founder to have him on. So well. I’m going to ask him this question. Did you start is a beautiful bottle. But you’re going to slim cans? Right? Is it because it’s just way too much. You have to charge more. It’s you know, like you said it’s heavier. There’s so many reasons why it probably is not going to do as well on the margin goes down. Right?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah, I mean, that could definitely be a part of it. Although if he did it intentionally It was kind of brilliant because he got you in store captured you I know model. Like your exact words were sung to me from the shelf. Right like that clear and brilliant marketing. He got you to the website. Did you end up ordering anymore?
Jeremy Weisz
Yeah, of course. Yeah. So the but on their website, the bottles aren’t even on there. So the same reason I bought it, it may be the same reason they I mean, they change it for a different reason. Right. But you’re exactly right. You know, it got me to see it. But you you
Andrew Youderian
I would say you bought it the first time partially cuz you like kombucha, but also because you noticed it and it was merchandised really well and branded well in the store. You repurchase that because it was a good quality product. Yeah, right. So the packaging after that initial time becomes less important. Not not important at all, but not as critical for getting you in the door the first time.
Jeremy Weisz
But it almost because it sparked my, my thought process, Andrew, because you mentioned like unless you start an eight year old, or eight year old, scotch or whatever. And that’s kind of what the look at had when it was on the shelf compared to the other bottles. Right? So it had that look. So maybe you have the look, but you don’t have the the, you know, the the that type of product. Andrew, first of all, I have one last question for you. But thank you, thanks for sharing your knowledge. Thanks for the community that you have lead and continue to lead. And I want to tell everyone to check out eCommerceFuel.com. I’ll pull it up here so people can see if you are watching the video. And you can check out everything that that Andrew is doing. You could check out you can see the podcast, the private community, and the eCommerce Capital, what he’s working on, and much more. So check that out. Last question. Andrew is about kind of balancing. I was talking with an entrepreneur. And he was like Jeremy, and he has a younger child. And he said, Jeremy, how do you balance kids and family in work? And you have three kids? And I said, I have no idea. I have two kids. I gotta be honest with you. I don’t know if I believe in balance per se. I don’t really know the answer to that. I’m still trying to figure that out. So I’m going to ask you, what do you do as a father of three? What is a kind of a day look like for you and how do you balance all this stuff?
Andrew Youderian
Yeah. typical day is Get up, have breakfast with the kids usually bike them to school, come into the office, work, head back around probably anywhere from, you know, you know, get back home probably around five, you know, anywhere from 330 to five, usually, you know, maybe four or five, have dinner with the kids for a weekday. So that’s in the family then. And then they usually go asleep. So that’s pretty typical day. I think, in terms of balance, it’s really hard as an entrepreneur to do this. And I think you’re never going to have perfect times of balance. Like, like you allude to that podcast last six months for me was working more than I have in a long time. And I still saw my kids good amount, but there was definitely nights where I was home late or just didn’t see them or was, you know, whatever it was just wasn’t around as much. I think in terms of balancing with a family, like, you just have to get ruthless. I mean, the first step is to be proactive about not over committing, like if you could do one thing, I think, to not just completely, you know, absolutely drop an atom bomb on your family life and have a meaningful work life, it’s not to over commit, because that’s when you get into problems. And you know, I’m the kind of person who I like to do my absolute best to follow through with commitments that I make. And so once you make them you can’t unmake them. So I think that’s step number one, I think step number two is being really ruthless with what you decide to do. I think the last six months for various reasons, I’ve, I’ve realized that so much of our success or failure or what we do in life is not how hard we work but what we choose to spend our time on. And so thinking really deeply about taking on new projects or specifically what you’re working on in your business is really important and then all the other stuff people talk about saying no delegation, you know, being efficient all these kind of things. I think those are you know, kind of tertiary but those would be the things I would say and it’s it’s hard I mean it’s really it’s not impossible but it’s it’s it’s a hard thing to do you can do it but it’s it takes a lot of intentionality
Jeremy Weisz
you know, everyone thank you Andrew everyone check out eCommerceFuel.com check out other episodes of Inspired Insider, check out Rise25 I appreciate all you thank you so much.
Andrew Youderian
Thanks for having me on. Thanks for listening.
