[Ecommerce & Top Agency Series] Tripling Amazon Sales With an 80/20 Approach With Kamaljit Singh

Kamaljit Singh is the CEO and Founder of AMZ One Step, an Amazon creative and marketing agency that enhances product listings to boost sales for Amazon sellers. Starting with retail arbitrage, he quickly moved to establish a successful private label brand, eventually selling it in 2018. Kamaljit’s agency has created over 100,000 infographics for Amazon sellers, specializing in conversion optimization and branding. In 2022, he strategically expanded his empire by acquiring Kenji ROI, another leading Amazon agency. He is passionate about leveraging his Amazon expertise to help e-commerce brands enhance their online presence. 

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:37] Kamaljit Singh discusses how AMZ One Step helps Amazon brands elevate their conversion rates
• [04:36] Kamaljit’s journey from an Amazon seller to an Amazon agency owner
• [06:47] The impact of the first critical hire of AMZ One Step
• [09:41] The challenges and successes in selecting products for Amazon retail
• [15:29] Essential tools every Amazon seller should master 
• [17:49] Kamaljit explains how to identify and solve constraints in your business for greater efficiency
• [25:50] The best practices in systemizing operations and creating a CEO dashboard for business oversight
• [33:23] Strategies for revamping sales teams to double new sales with proven processes
• [36:37] The value of networking and masterminds
• [41:34] Kamaljit’s motivations to acquire a competing agency

In this episode…

Have you ever wondered if there’s a secret to rapidly increasing online sales without spending a fortune? What if the answer lies in a simple tweak to something you might be overlooking? How can such a small change propel your business forward at lightning speed?

Kamaljit Singh, an e-commerce expert, delves into his approach to enhancing Amazon listings for better conversion rates and his journey from an individual seller to acquiring a competing agency. He shares how identifying constraints within an organization can lead to significant improvements, the importance of systemizing operations for growth, and the nuances of structuring a company acquisition. Through his firsthand experience, Kamaljit demonstrates that attention to detail, especially optimizing a product’s main image, can dramatically increase sales traffic on Amazon.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Kamaljit Singh, CEO and Founder of AMZ One Step, about optimizing Amazon sales and strategic business growth. Kamaljit discusses how AMZ One Step helps Amazon brands elevate their conversion rates, the challenges and successes in selecting products for Amazon retail, essential tools every Amazon seller should master, and his journey of acquiring a competing agency.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Kamaljit Singh on LinkedIn
• AMZ One Step

Special Mention(s):

• Saddam Hasan on LinkedIn
• Curtis Schick on LinkedIn
• 80/20 Sales and Marketing: The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More by Perry Marshall
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M Goldratt and Jeff Cox
• Great CEOs Are Lazy by Jim Schleckser
• Kenji ROI
• Helium 10
• PickFu
• Intellivy
• Sellerboard
• Closers.io
• Yoni Mazor on LinkedIn
• GETIDA
• Brandon Young on LinkedIn
• Data Dive
• Alex Hormozi on LinkedIn
• Leila Hormozi on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “Does God Exist? with Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “The Five Hats Effective CEOs Wear To Succeed With Jim Schleckser of Inc. CEO Project” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable moments:

• “People don’t buy products on Amazon, they buy pictures.”
• “If you change your main image, that can double or triple your traffic.”
• “The purpose of the main image is to increase traffic on your listing, but also to decrease the irrelevant traffic.”
• “Focus on your process, not on the outcome.”
• “The CEO dashboard is a simple Google Sheet but a game changer.”

Action Steps:

1. Leverage main image optimization: This significantly influences click-through rates, which can double or triple your sales without major investments.
2. Implement a CEO Dashboard for KPI tracking: Ensure accountability and alignment with business goals to address operational inefficiencies and promote informed decision-making.
3. Adopt a systematic approach to sales training: Ensure consistency and high performance among your sales team.
4. Utilize product research tools: Identify profitable product opportunities and minimize the risk of launching unsuccessful products.
5. Engage in masterminds and networking for growth: This engagement fosters innovation and partnership opportunities, helping to overcome business growth plateaus by leveraging collective knowledge and experience.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Kamal Singh of AMZ One Step. You can check them out at amzonestep.com. Kamal, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. We were actually talking about 80/20 before we hit record. Perry Marshall was on and he has a great book, 80/20 Sales and Marketing, one of my favorites. That’s a great episode to check out. Since this is part of the top agency series, I had Jason Swenk on. Jason Swenk talked about building an agency to eight figures and selling it, and then how he had been buying up agencies. Actually, Kamal purchased an agency too, so we’ll talk about that. Another good one, Kamal, was Kevin Hourigan. He’s had an agency since 1995 so he talked about the landscape of the internet, of business and of agency at that point throughout the past couple decades. So that was an interesting one. Check them more out on ispiredinsider.com.

And this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the accountability, the strategy and the full execution. So Kamal, we’re kind of like the magic elves that run the background, kind of like you are for Amazon brands, except for we are for podcasts, and we’re running the background to make it look easy for the host and the company so they can create amazing content, amazing relationships, most importantly, run their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire on this planet and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I’m excited to introduce Kamal Singh. He’s a CEO and founder of AMZ One Step. Kamal actually acquired Kenji ROI, one of the leading Amazon agencies in 2022. He started selling on Amazon in 2015. And I find this is the case, Kamal people start off with retail arbitrage, then they build a successful private label brand, which is what you did, and you eventually sold it in 2018. And AMZ One Step and his team have created over 100,000 infographics for Amazon sellers, and they’re very passionate about conversion optimization, branding on Amazon and everything Amazon-related. So, Kamal, thanks for joining me.

Kamaljit Singh 3:05 

Thank you so much, Jeremy, thanks for the warm introduction. And I’m super excited to be here on your show, and excited to talk about lots of things today.

Jeremy Weisz 3:14 

I want to start off and have you just talk about AMZ One Step, and I’m going to share my screen so people can check out the website as well. And I especially appreciate you doing this interview, because I have time for this. You have a one month old so you’re sleep deprived, so talk about AMZ One Step, and what you do?

Kamaljit Singh 3:37 

Yeah. So what we do is we help Amazon brands make their listings look better and convert better. So we do product photography, videos, A-plus content listing, copywriting, 3D rendering, all sorts of good stuff. So which will help you get more traffic on Amazon and convert a lot more. So, people don’t buy products on Amazon, as they say, they buy pictures. So that’s what we do for e-commerce brands.

Jeremy Weisz 4:05 

You can see some of the cool stuff here. We’ll look at some of the white background. We see some bibs. We see some controllers, and then some videos here, as well some 3d rendering here, and then packaging. EBC designs, listing optimization. What was interesting is, well, I love this Hulk coming out in 3d How did you get into doing this in the first place? What made you just start the company?

Kamaljit Singh 4:36 

Okay, so, when I started as an Amazon seller before that, I was a student of a friend of mine. I was learning, like how to do trading and Forex exchange. So he was charging like, handsome amount of money just to teach people how to do that. And I did sign up for his course, but I did not find money. H value, or I was like, Okay, this is something not for me. I want to do something instead, something different, which is, like, more suited to my personality. So I heard of Amazon FBA years ago. So I searched for that on Amazon, on YouTube. So I watched like thousands of videos in a matter of like, two to three months. And I took action at the same time, created my seller account and everything. So my goal was always to learn it first and then teach it to other people.

So I learned it for like, first year. Then I was planning to teach others. So I created a community like in city of Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, even in Chicago. So I was doing like, meetups, like, in person, meetups, where people, it was quite a big thing before COVID, people would just come and meet and talk about, like, if they share common, common interest. So community started to build up. So I got, like, really, good students to teach them, like, how to do Amazon FBA. But at one point, you know, I was like, Okay, this is too much. I was getting calls at midnight, early mornings, you know, people were asking me question on how to do Amazon FBA. I did not have, like, a course, so I was like, okay, this is something not for me.

However, people were asking me, hey, who does your pictures, who does your video, like, who does your EBC? So I had a lot of people asking me about that. I’m like, okay, you know what? Here’s an opportunity to start an agency and just connect them, not connect like, just have everything under my umbrella. And then just I started to hire designers, video editors. So that’s how the AMZ One Step was born.

Jeremy Weisz 4:47 

What was the first critical hire for you?

Kamaljit Singh 6:47 

Critical hire was the customer success manager, the first one that we hired, and he was really good. His name is Curtis. And what happened was, when he initially took on a lot of fulfillment and operations, they were like, taken away from my hand, and I was like, wow, I got, like, so much of free time now I could spend somewhere else. So that kind of opened up new horizons, like, how much value, critical or like, an important hire could make in the business. So that was the first hire which changed the way I think about hiring right now.

Jeremy Weisz 7:28 

How did you find Curtis?

Kamaljit Singh 7:33 

I think it was on, indeed, posted, and we did some interviews. My partner did the interview. And he’s really good at finding people. So it was like, you know, we were not really sure, like, what kind of candidate are we looking for? And we know, we were like, grand, like, very fresh. So once we found him, like, it just happened by accident. So, but that kind of taught us, like, what kind of person we should look for when hiring in the future.

Jeremy Weisz 8:07 

So the very beginning, it’s the two co-founders, and you had some contractors helping with fulfillment. And then you had Curtis come on to help manage more operations and kind of the go-between everything. How did you meet your other founder Saddam?

Kamaljit Singh 8:28 

Yeah, so it was at one of those meetups that I was organizing. So he was like asking lots of good questions. You know, he really wanted to be successful at Amazon, FBA. Then at one meetup, I asked him, like, hey, I have this new startup thing going on. I think you would be a great fit. Let me know if you want to be a part of this journey. And he said, yeah, he’s a CPA. So he’s like, okay, I got to give my exam first. I got to prep for that. But after four months, I can come and join you. I was like, wow, okay, sounds good. So, like, that’s how I got him on board, through the same network that I created, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 9:08 

It’s all about relationships, right? Exactly, yeah. Let’s take a step back for a second. There is a couple things we were discussing before we record that is kind of instrumental, I think, in your success and one of the steps towards when you hired Curtis. So we’ll talk about some of those things that you’re thinking about in the business, which, in my opinion, this is stuff I think about too. So I’m looking forward to hearing your take on this. But when you started your private label brand, how did you figure out what to sell at the time.

Kamaljit Singh 9:41 

I watched lots of videos on YouTube. That’s number one. Learned a lot, but somehow I still failed my first two products. So I thought I knew everything just by watching videos. But that was not the case. I sourced a product, spent about $10,000 and then it turned out that that product cannot be stored at Amazon warehouse, because it’s a hazmat. It’s a hazard to Amazon warehouse. It’s flammable. There was, like, some flammable, like, chemical in it. No YouTube video taught that, like, that was, like, what was the product? This was, it’s called barometer, or it’s called weather predictor. Like, it’s a liquid in the glass, and then the flakes were just changed the shape depending on what weather is outside.

Jeremy Weisz 10:40 

So had a liquid inside that was flammable. And then they won’t allow you to store it in Amazon FBA.

Kamaljit Singh 10:47 

That was my first product, right? That failed miserably. I then ended up, like, selling it on Facebook. It took me two years to get rid of the whole inventory. That was one. The second field product was, I launched iPhone accessories. You know, people were complaining a lot about quality, because it was very performance-based. The product worked really well for like, five to six months, then it would just break down, right? So, I tested the quality, but I did not test the long enough cycle. So that’s where, like, I missed the mark. And like, okay, I should not go into performance-based products, right? And then my third product was kind of it’s called felt letter boards.

It was very popular, and I happened to be one of the first sellers on Amazon to sell felt letter boards. And those ones picked up, and they were like, really well. So that’s how I covered up for my previous losses, and gave me confidence to sell more. And at the same time, it’s a very cash incentive, business to run like, you need a lot of money in the inventory.

Jeremy Weisz 11:55 

Yeah, the more you sell, you have to buy a whole load of inventory, and then sell it. And then you need more inventory, the more you sell. So, yeah.

Kamaljit Singh 12:04 

Then you launch more products, right? Which is like, another cash flow thing. So I was like, okay, you know what? I don’t want to play this game. I would rather focus on my agency and sell this brand. So I sold that brand. I was very happy, but two years later, I found very challenging that my Amazon knowledge is kind of degrading. If I do want to run an Amazon agency, I need to stay on top of words brand new, up and coming. And the only way for me to stay up there is I have my own Amazon seller account. Then I ended up buying a different business, which is Amazon business, and then I still have that so it just helps me.

Jeremy Weisz 12:04 

Keeps your skills fresh, exactly, yeah, why felt boards? I’m wondering, What if you use tools and software as you recommend, from a research perspective now, but why felt boards, were you doing research at the time?

Kamaljit Singh 13:04 

It’s all maths, right? Random. It’s all random. It’s all like, trying to fit that product in the criteria which would like, not fail, right? There’s like, bunch of thing, you know, you can’t launch, anything which is patent or trademarked by someone else you can’t launch, whereas, like crazy competition. There’s like 24 different factors that I was like, comparing, choose it was kind of my checklist. Every product I wanted to make sure, like, at least 18 or 19 they check that checklist before I launched that product. So felt letter boards did check most of those, checkpoints that I look for in a successful product.

Jeremy Weisz 13:43 

What were some of those the checklists. Do you share the checklist on AMZ One Step? If not, that should be your next lead magnet or something.

Kamaljit Singh 13:54 

You’re right. That is so true, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 13:56 

So list them. Now we’ll turn it into — you could put it on as a separate lead magnet on the site. What’s that checklist?

Kamaljit Singh 14:04 

So, the product must be selling well, there needs to be enough volume, like people need to be, you know, searching for this, for that product, there needs to be less competition, but still a healthy competition. For example, review should be less than 500 for most of the sellers, and all of them needs to be making at least some amount of money. Sometimes you see on Amazon, only two people are making, like, 99% of the revenue, and everybody else just makes the remaining so, there needs to be equal distribution of revenue.

And then it should not be seasonal. It should be like, you know, little it should be over, like, $20 price point, otherwise you won’t have margins, right? It should not be patent, right? Nobody else should have a patent on it. No other big brand should be competing. You don’t want to compete with those big giants. So look for some something where you can build a brand. And one is where there’s, like, you can always launch future versions, like extensions of you can diversify. That is one part, and list just goes on and on, yeah. Yeah. So, like, I don’t have like, 24 all 24 on top.

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