Shownotes
Is it too late for you to have RA in your business? I talk with Dan who runs a virtually 100% RA multiple 7-figure business in multiple states. So he would say no it’s not too late. He would also tell you it is not easy. Sure buy an item and sell at a higher price. Works right. Well start adding zero’s and employees and multiple states to that and it gets complicated. Fortunately (he would say he was blessed with this opportunity) he was prepared by his corporate life to take on such a monumental undertaking. Strong family (Smarter wife ) and real focused discipline in team building has paid off.
Mentioned:
Dan’s previous Interviews,: 172 , 297
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Here is transcript- It is automated so it is not perfect but it does seem to get better over time.
Dan: [00:00] As most people in Amazon know that they’ve somewhat SLPs, but it’s a flowing system. This, the shipping, you know, they’ve had different types of shipping. Inventory labs will change something or, or seller central will change thing. So there is some flexibility in it, but basically they’re the same. Yeah.
Cool voice guy: [00:17] Welcome to the e-commerce momentum podcast where we focus on the people, the products, and the process of e-commerce selling. Today, here’s your host Steven Peterson.
Stephen: [00:30] Hey, it’s me. It’s Q4 got to bring up my Amazon seller tribe. Um, this is probably, you know, one of the last chances you’re going to get to join this year. So I’ll run this for a couple of weeks. But, um, the, the good news is you could still get in, right? They are allowing people in, but at some point they’re gonna cut it off. So I suggest you join today. Try it with 14 days for free. Okay? So you don’t like it, you don’t get value drop. Um, however, don’t only measure on the value of what you’re buying, measure on the value of the impact it has on your business. And what I love about this group, the Amazon seller tribe is the amazing way they invest into your business. They will help you with all the questions. Go out and check out, uh, amazing freedom.com forward slash momentum dash arbitrage.
Stephen: [01:14] Look at the testimonials. Those are real people. Reach out to them, right? You can kind of figure out who they are and go out and figure out, uh, an SM. Is it real? Are they really helpful? Will they help my business? And you will be blown away again. You get 14 days free if you join through my link only and they do pay me. So I don’t want you to, I don’t mislead anybody. Um, but I believe in him. I’m in the groups, you’ll see me and you’ll get to talk with me too. So amazing. freedom.com, forward slash momentum, hyphen arbitrage. I know it’s a lot momentum, hyphen arbitrage. And you’re going to get 14 day free trial on the daily fine list. Make a purchase, get your money back and then say, huh, I can do this again. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat.
Stephen: [01:59] Amazing. freedom.com forward slash momentum arbitrage. They are going to close it. Q4 is here. It’s going to happen. Get ready. Welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. This is episode 410 I’m bringing back, Dan Wentworth can never get enough to end Wentworth. You know, eh, I’m going to kind of at a loss because I sit back and I think about our first interview years ago and how, you know, I thought to myself, man, what an outlier. The way he was able to take this, you know, his experience of being a DM, run an a whole bunch of stores and apply it to the business. Man, it’s just amazing. But then I watch him taken, develop people and get the best from them, really strong leaders and get them to give you their best. That’s such a talent. I don’t have that. That is, that is a talent.
Stephen: [02:47] Very rare to find. And he was able to do that. Now, um, it blows my mind to hear why they’re up 40%. And so you’re gonna have to listen to the episode to hear it, but it will blow your mind when you sit back and think about it. It’s very, very logical and it’s not reactionary. It’s intentional. And I think that’s the, that’s quite frankly the reason that they’re doing so well. They’re very intentional in what they do, but it’s not just Dan or Michelle, it’s everyone on their team and that just doesn’t happen again. It’s intentional. Let’s get into the podcast and welcome back to the e-commerce momentum podcast. We’re excited about today’s returned guest. I’m, this is his third time on the show and it’s funny, it’s been more than a year and change almost. Well, it’s a definitely a year and a half since we last chatted and at that point his business was exploding and you know, it was all about people and development and, and what they brought to the team. Um, and now you’re up a measly 40% from a huge number. Dan Wentworth. Is that true? It is, yeah. We’re having a good year. And by accident, just, just luck would have it. Right.
Dan: [03:56] Yeah. I think things are going well.
Stephen: [03:59] What’d you say? You know, let’s start with this because you know, last time we chatted it was all about staff development and people taking on key roles and that kind of thing that that hasn’t changed, right? That consistency in the last year and a half when you look at your leadership, it’s pretty much the same. Correct.
Dan: [04:13] It is. It’s leadership hasn’t changed. But as we brought these people on, I’d say probably with the fruit of that that we’re now reaping is that those seeds that will plant that is that they’re starting developed, taking over a brand or adding brands to our line up. So we got basically our core brands are pretty flat or up slightly, but we’ve just added a lot more.
Stephen: [04:35] Oh, Oh. So that’s interesting. So rather than, Oh, that’s interesting. Rather than, um, you know, taking an existing brand and pushing it further and you know, out reaching out, they were able to take and just keep it pretty steady and then take other ones and bring them in and replicate. Is that kind of the way?
Dan: [04:55] Exactly, yeah. It’s a very similar pattern that we use. We’ve, when we explore a brand, we’ll test it out, get to know the brand, and then some fail and we’re out. But others grow. And in probably 40% of our businesses from new business, uh, over the last 12 to 18 months. And different categories. Yeah. Some, some are similar categories and we’ve taken what we’ve known for the brands we’re in, but then it’s all some, a completely different categories. Yeah. That we had never touched before.
Stephen: [05:23] And in our pre-call we can’t, I don’t want to say the brands, but you’re talking about similar brands. So you know, if a Steve’s water bottle brand is selling well then Dan’s water bottle would likely sell well to. So therefore wash, rinse, repeat. Right. Same concept. Okay. Yup, yup, yup. Um, let’s talk about, I want to talk about successes of course, but I want to talk about singles because I don’t think it was like a miss. Like, so let’s, let’s talk about your operations. So first off, if somebody is interested in finding out about Dan, go back to episode one 72 and you’re going to hear as crazy story how he, he had a little bit of responsibility working for CVS, just a little bit a 17 stores. Uh, so that’s a little bit more than that, but he was a district manager and, and then he was able to apply that in this business. Right. By, you know, hurting type a cats. That’s really what you’re doing because leaders of each operation, you have three operations. Third, they’re type a and they’re like herding cats. Correct. Correct, correct. And so that applies coming from CVS over to this, um, leading leaders is way harder than it is leading. I don’t want to make this derogatory, but workers, it’s a different type of leadership, right?
Dan: [06:37] It is. It is. We, we, it’s funny you mentioned that because we’ve talked about that as we’ve had, um, as well, I think we’re gonna start getting into, now we have an operation in Chicago. We had an operation in California until recently. And then we have our, our strongest portion of our businesses here in Massachusetts and, and um, and Adam, I like, uh, VP said one time, he said, imagine if we were all here in the same building. I said, as good as that sounds, we’ve got all, we have all very strong personalities that like to lead our businesses. So to bring us all under one roof, while it might sound you bring in a lot of intelligence into one room at the same time we bring, like you said, type a personalities or
Stephen: [07:16] it’s herding cats. What percentage? And it’s a good question. What percentage of, uh, management would you say that you give each operation? So for example, you know, your Massachusetts, you’re there lots of days, not every day. Um, but I mean, is it 10%, you know, and the 90% is up to the individual of that particular location to get my question.
Dan: [07:38] Yeah, I do. Yeah. They’d given a lot of autonomy.
Stephen: [07:41] So I mean, could you, could you say it’s, uh, could you say a percentage? I mean, could you guess,
Dan: [07:45] say 90 10 is probably a pretty good one. So those a couple of ways we communicate. One is we have like a Slack channel. It’s like a discord or a Facebook messenger on steroids where we’ll communicate daily. So we’ve got some communication going there, but that’s not a lot of direction. That’s just up.
Stephen: [08:03] It’s just communication both ways, right? It’s both ways. Yep.
Dan: [08:06] Yeah. And then once a week we get together for about an hour and a half to two hours on a Skype call. We’ll bring all off full-timers in. So usually it’s about eight or 10 people in the meeting. Um, and that’s, and that’s basically where we’re giving direction and we’ll get feedback from the other branch too.
Stephen: [08:22] And so direction meaning what? Hey, you know, we’re going
Dan: [08:27] [inaudible] this week. This brand is down, this brand is up, the ROI on this particular brand isn’t cutting it. Are we making bad decisions? Chicago for example, you might be buying too much of this or, or you, you know, or, or you’re killing it an issue. You really need to pick up more. That type of thing. Analyzing the business I guess.
Stephen: [08:47] And I would say that’s one of the things that you do better than most. Um, and I’m making that broad of a statement. I guess I’m comparing it against me. Let me say it against me. You way better than so that way we don’t, I don’t wanna offend anybody cause I know there are outliers all around. And one of the things that I think is interesting that you use both inventory lab and scan power for your business where most people use one or the other. W when and you recommended me to add back inventory lab cause we use scanned power, been using it forever. I love Chris green and Paul Rutherford had been using them forever and I can do our accounting from it. It gives me a cost of goods and all that kind of jazz. But your comment was, um, and this is not a criticism of scan power, but inventory lab allows you to go back and evaluate how you thought you were going to do versus how you actually did.
Dan: [09:34] Correct. Correct. Yeah. That’s a great point. So we do like both tools. Um, we’ve used inventory labs from the gecko, so going on five years now, but probably our favorite part of enrich our lab is the analysis of our post sales, uh, business, you know, so, so it’ll break down supplier profitability. So we know how each branch is performing, how each brand is performing. And we’ll also, we can break down [inaudible]