Amazon Business Mastery: Long-Term Profitability and Suspension Survival Tips

Prepare to navigate the treacherous terrain of Amazon Seller suspensions with none other than Lesley Hensell, co-founder of Riverbend Consulting. As we chat,  Lesley shares her wealth of knowledge and practical tips, from her impressive career in business consulting to her hands-on Amazon selling experiences. Her insights are a beacon for sellers lost in the Amazonian jungle of complex regulations, guiding them back to the path of success. We also delve into her admirable humanitarian endeavors and the buzz around her upcoming book, "The Amazon Incubator," a must-have for any Amazon entrepreneur looking to conquer the marketplace.

In Lesley's words, this book is really more about making Amazon serve Amazon Sellers and their goals. What do you, as an Amazon Seller, want out of Amazon? How do you choose your method of selling? Are you a hustler who wants a side hustle and this is never going to be your main business? Are you a brand builder? Are you someone who wants to be a remote worker? Lesley walks sellers through how to choose what works for them and their personal goals that they can support sustainably over time.

 Lesley shares tales of extreme suspensions, like the seller who inadvertently listed grenades and how they made their comeback. She wraps up with strategic insights on optimizing an Amazon business and the smart outsourcing of key tasks to refine operations, highlighting the importance of developing strong SOPs and leveraging Amazon advertising to make products stand out. 

To learn more about Lesley, please visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleyhensell/ 
To learn more about Riverbend Consulting, please visit https://riverbendconsulting.com/
To learn more about Phelps United, please visit https://phelpsunited.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam Shaffer, where we explore the world of Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. Join us as we delve into the latest strategies and tactics for successful selling on the world's largest online marketplace.

Adam Shaffer: 0:17

Hello, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to Planet Amazon, where we talk about all things about Amazon. Today we have a great guest. I'm going to talk about some great Amazon topics and an awesome new book that's coming out that you guys are going to need to get because it's a must have, for sure. So I want you to introduce and get things going and introduce you to Lesley Hensell. Lesley is co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, who we've met because we've actually met with them to try and help us with some stuff in the past. They have 85 employees and they solve problems for e-commerce sellers.

Adam Shaffer: 0:55

In my case, it was Amazon. Lesley oversees Riverbend Services team and she has personally helped hundreds of sellers get suspended accounts and agents up and running on Amazon, which is a very hard thing to do and is very complicated, and you need to know how to do it, and Lesley and her team know this. She's been an Amazon seller for more than a decade and what I learned about Lesley is she's a lifelong Longhorn fan and she earned a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. She volunteers for a Wish with Wings, a Wish granting organization for little Texans with a life-threatening conditions, and she serves on the board of directors for Halley's Heroes, which funds bone marrow matches and medical research for kids with cancer and critical illnesses, and with all that, she just wrote a book which is amazing. Well, welcome to the show, Lesley.

Lesley Hensell: 1:58

Thanks so much, Adam. I'm thrilled to be here.

Adam Shaffer: 2:00

Wow, wow. You've done a lot and you do a lot. But again, where I met you originally from James Thompson, who introduced us together, and we talked to you about some things that we might need help with. But I know from the circuit that you've been helping tons and tons of sellers on Amazon fix some of the problems, and so I definitely want to talk about your book, but let's first talk about you and the biz. So tell us I mean, I did that introduction, but give us the real story, give us the Lesley Lesley

Lesley Hensell: 2:31

So I really care about one thing. I'm very boring and very simple. I care about kids, and especially my own kids. I actually started as a seller on Amazon in 2010 because my older kid is on the autism spectrum. I was a full-time business consultant at the time and my kiddo was failing at school and we decided to homeschool him. But when you do a whole lot of homeschooling at therapy a kid who needs therapy every single day it's very expensive, and so I couldn't just quit my job in homeschool. Even with my husband working, we had to pay for all this therapy Amazon, and so one of those original Amazon mommies that the reason I started doing it was for my kids, and so my husband would work during the day. He'd come home, I would go source inventory and then on the weekends we would ship it all to Amazon.

Adam Shaffer: 3:22

What were you selling? What were you selling?

Lesley Hensell: 3:25

So that was back in the Wild West days. Right when you could do, you could sell anything. So I would source all kinds of garbage that now you can't get away with selling, like liquidation inventory from the banana box grocery stores, and I went to old school book sales like library book sales, and would buy thousands of books that we would flip. So hard work, backbreaking work, but a great way for us to pay the bills and me be able to stay home and be focused on my kiddo. It was fantastic and during that I met a lot of other settlers and some of them were people who got in trouble with Amazon, had problems with Amazon and because of my old school business consulting background, that was a niche that I could move into and start helping sellers instead of other kinds of businesses.

Adam Shaffer: 4:16

So that's great. So you kind of shifted from selling to now consulting and helping. And I know you guys do a lot of stuff at River Bend and I don't mind. You know you could plug the biz. I don't mind that at all. I think it's great because your service is great. But the biggest thing that when I think of you guys, I think of oh man, I got an ASIN suspended, I got millions of dollars of inventory sitting up at Amazon. I can't actually just pull it out of there and how do I get this thing going again? I mean, and that's kind of your sweet spot. So tell us about the sweet spot of your business and then you can talk about the other services.

Lesley Hensell: 4:56

So suspended ASINs and suspended accounts is where we meet most of our clients and a lot of folks. When their account goes down or their ASIN is suspended, they try and appeal it first themselves, and they may or may not be successful. When they aren't, they're really not sure what to do, because Amazon holds all of its investigative methods as proprietary data. They don't tell you, they don't give you a lot of hints, they're not super helpful and sometimes you're breaking rules that you don't even know you're breaking, or it's a false positive, and with false positives, sometimes you really need someone outside of your business to help you walk through how to solve that.

Lesley Hensell: 5:36

Amazon is not seller friendly. They talk about being the most customer-centric business on earth, but they are not seller-centric. And because, when you think about it, my business should not even really exist. We should not be here. We're only here because it is so difficult to deal with Amazon. So that's what we do. We are in the trenches with clients. We analyze their business from the outside, help them figure out what the problems are and when those appeals don't work, we help them escalate inside of Amazon to get the issue fixed.

Adam Shaffer: 6:08

So there's got to be a common story that you see. I'm sure there's the odd stuff, but what's the main reason? You think that, or you're seeing that Amazon sellers are getting suspended or having listings knocked down.

Lesley Hensell: 6:19

The top ones right now for accounts. It's linked to accounts and a lot of those are false positives. So that's where Amazon believes that your account is somehow related to an account that is not allowed to sell on Amazon anymore. That might be an account you had 20 years ago when you were in a completely different place in your life. It might be some old roommates account, or it could be someone you don't even know and it's a false positive. It is a bad investigation and you have to prove the negative and newbie, something. That is you know how everything old is new again, inauthentic is new again. So back when I first started working on appeals eight, nine years ago, inauthentic was the number one reason you got suspended and then that kind of went away and Amazon would just suspend your ASIN for inauthentic. That's gone on for years. Well, now inauthentic is back for account level and in some cases they are accusing people of counterfeit and stolen goods. That's really tough.

Adam Shaffer: 7:16

Yeah, I mean, when they get it right, it's awesome. But we've had it where it was completely legitimate. We're authorized by the, we're selling it for a brand, the inventory is fine and they're saying, no, it's counterfeit and we're not Like, here's all the information and it still took us a month to get the product fixed. So are you seeing more false positives or more legitimate stuff?

Lesley Hensell: 7:45

So there's plenty of both to go around. In general, what I've seen over time remains true and about a third of the cases that come to us, our clients did the bad thing. And about a third of them they made a mistake or they operated their business poorly in a way that had a bad result. They didn't really do something bad and evil, they just there were mistakes made and it resulted in a suspension. And about a third of the time they really didn't do anything wrong and we have to convince Amazon of that.

Adam Shaffer: 8:18

So you don't have to tell us the secret sauce. But how the heck do you do it Like? What do you? What's some of the basic things you do to help them get unsuspected?

Lesley Hensell: 8:27

So a really important thing to know when you're communicating with Amazon is to remove 90% of the emotion. People get very upset and angry or sad, and that is a reasonable response. But when you correspond with Amazon, you have to remember this is just someone's job reading these letters and trying to follow their SOPs. So emotion has to be removed. Except for Gali. I'm really upset. I'm afraid I'm gonna lose my business. Those kinds of statements Also they don't care how long you've been in business, they don't care how much you sell on Amazon.

Lesley Hensell: 9:05

They don't care about any of that. I'll leave all that out. A lot of how we solve the problem is we tell Amazon how to solve the problem. So we say, hey, this is what you said we did, here are the things we've done to fix it and here's what we need from you. That's essentially the formula. So, like when we have escalations, that we go to different teams, or even in cases in everyday business with Amazon where you can't get them to do what you need them to do, in a case, you need to explain here's my problem. Here are the steps I took to fix it and they didn't work. So I need your help. Please do this thing. It also helps we have a lot of ex-Amazonian employees, so they know a lot of times the magic words of the internal process, or what they refer to it, inside Amazon that mere mortals outside of Amazon like me don't know.

Adam Shaffer: 9:56

I was gonna ask if you have like a go-to at Amazon that you go to, but they turn the people over so often. But I don't know, is that something you guys have?

Lesley Hensell: 10:03

So it's really not kosher to go to sources inside of Amazon. They're especially now because there have been several consultants in the business who have paid bribes to people inside of Amazon and now have convictions for doing so. So we have to really never go that route, because we never wanna have that appearance of impropriety, even if we're just asking questions. So what we do is we just help our clients. Amazon also won't speak to third parties about an account. They only wanna hear from the account owner. So we help our clients with the right language, the right email addresses, the right requests from Amazon. They do the back and forth communicating, but we fed them all the information they need.

Adam Shaffer: 10:51

We've had some friends in the industry that actually had to go to legal. Do you guys ever get involved with that at all? Is that not part of it?

Lesley Hensell: 10:59

So we have certain cases that we do escalate to the Amazon legal team. We have times when we work with a client's attorney and we'll actually go both routes at the same time. So we will take their legal documents, help them, Amazonify them in some ways and they will send to legal, and then we go to the non-legal departments at Amazon. Those are few and far between and usually specifically around legal issues. Generally speaking, once you've brought an attorney in, Amazon's like whoa not talking to you anymore.

Lesley Hensell: 11:34

So unless it's something that belongs in the illegal arena, like you've been accused of a crime at Amazon with your Amazon account, or like money laundering or, if you like, intellectual property issues those are appropriate to bring in legal. A lot of times for intellectual property we'll have an opinion letter written by an attorney and then present that along with the appeal. So, but for the most part, using a lawyer just makes the Amazon back off and say not talking to you anymore, bye.

Adam Shaffer: 12:04

So two no-nos don't go directly to talk to your friends at Amazon and once you get legal, it changes the game a little bit, it changes the relationship. So I get it for sure. So let's note that the other question I had is you know, I just wanna live a clean, happy life and not have problems. What should we do to make sure we stay out of trouble? Like, how do you avoid this?

Lesley Hensell: 12:29

So one interesting thing Amazon has put in place in the last couple of years is they have this new account health rating and if you go into your Amazon account and you look under performance, it has the scorecard. And that scorecard lists everything that they consider bad that you did in your account, and so those might be intellectual property violations or accusations have been authentic, whatever those might be. It's really important. So used to, before they had this scheme, I didn't tell people to appeal every ASIN. Now, unfortunately, I do. It is really important that every ASIN that pops up in there you appeal.

Lesley Hensell: 13:09

It doesn't always take a ton of work. A lot of times all they want is your invoices. Submit the invoices because if you are responsive to them, you are showing that you care and that you want to solve the problem. And the other important thing I recommend is that you look at voice of the customer all the time. I know there's lots of false positives in there, so, believe me, I get that there's so much garbage in voice of the customer, but there's also a lot of good data and sometimes you can solve serious problems with your ASINs before they come to the point of enforcement and also improve your profitability because you solve those problems.

Adam Shaffer: 13:49

You know, I mean, maybe it's just me, but I used to worry and I stopped worrying about it because there's no way to deal with it, but sending an invoice, we always used to think, oh, so Amazon's now going to know our source, they're going to have all the information, they're going to know what we pay for. It Is that? Is it just like me and my paranoia, or do you think that's any of that's real?

Lesley Hensell: 14:08

So my rule with Amazon is it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you. So there's only one situation where that is something to worry about, and that is with private label products. The good news is Amazon has now been caught and everyone knows it, and it's part of the FTC litigation against them that they have in the past taken supplier invoices for private label products, gone to those suppliers, knocked off the products, created an Amazon Basics version and now they've gotten in trouble for it. So at this point in time I don't think that's a worry, because the daylight has been shined onto that issue and two years ago I wouldn't say that.

Adam Shaffer: 14:57

Yeah, okay, I feel better now. Thank you, Lesley. And then you know I see so much weird stuff out there. If you want to call them black hats, like, what should the sellers know about black hats that are out there? You live this.

Lesley Hensell: 15:12

If you're new to Amazon, there are certain categories that you can stay away from that tend to have many more black hats and competitive problems. The number one most dangerous category is supplements. I know supplements are extremely attractive because the margins are amazing, which is also why they have all the black hats. So supplements are really difficult. A lot of electronics also has a lot of black hat activity from overseas and electronics. That's the first thing to know.

Lesley Hensell: 15:43

Secondly, is you've got to do brand registry. If you have your own private label products, your own branded products, if you don't go through the brand registry process, you're just asking for it because people will knock off your products and there's nothing you can do. If you go through brand registry, at least you have your trademark. That you've done. Amazon has a record of your brand and you can do something to try and protect yourselves. There's not really a defense against black hat, except you have to have someone monitoring your account all the time. So if you don't want to be a slave to your account, which you don't want to be, you need a VA. You need some other team member who is in your account every day looking for any kind of activity that speaks to a black hat.

Adam Shaffer: 16:30

Wow, good info. To wrap up on the suspension stuff, just for fun, what's been the most difficult or weirdest suspension you've been able to solve and win?

Lesley Hensell: 16:48

The most ridiculous suspension yeah the most ridiculous one. Because they never should have been reinstated, and I got them back in one appeal. It was a seller who listed grenades hand grenades on Amazon.

Lesley Hensell: 17:03

Come on yes. So what they did was they were a Sports and Outdoors seller and they were doing blind drop shipping. That's the approved kind of drop shipping, where you have a supplier that they are shipping all the orders for you under your storefront name. And they uploaded an entire Sports and Outdoors catalog from a supplier who sold weapons, and so he had gun parts, he had all the illegal knives and he had items that are only sold to the federal government law enforcement agencies, including grenades of various kinds. The whole freaking catalog like 15,000 listings. He just uploaded it, and so I got him to take down all the listings. We appealed and we got him back.

Adam Shaffer: 17:48

So Amazon suspended this seller because they uploaded grenades. He could never Could he have supplied the grenades.

Lesley Hensell: 17:58

So he could have sold one on Amazon, but his supplier would not have shipped it Because that would mean that they're a federal firearms dealer, and a federal firearms dealer isn't going to drop a grenade in the mail to Adam Schaefer. They know that they're only going to ship those to governmental agencies, but he still uploaded and created the listings. It's just like if you uploaded a listing for cocaine. It's really the same kind of thing, right.

Adam Shaffer: 18:26

Well, you probably get a lot of demand, but anyways, tough to shift and I'm not looking forward to the grenades showing up, but it would be pretty cool to get. Wow, that's wild. So let's change the topic, because you're so busy with your family and your business, but somehow you wrote a book. But then I found out that you've been writing books, you've been a writer for quite some time. So give us a little story on your writing background and then tell us about the book. The Amazon Incubator.

Lesley Hensell: 18:58

So my background. My first jobs out of college were as a reporter, and I worked as a business reporter. I was a sports reporter, I was a general like murders and fires reporter on the city desk, did all the things and then gradually moved over into business pursuits. Well then, when I had little kids, I wanted to be home with them and so I started doing a ton of freelance writing because that is a great way to make a living and not have to be on someone else to schedule when you've got toddlers hanging on your legs. So I would go straight magazine articles and news pieces and advertorial. And then I started ghostwriting books and I go through several books for business owners, lawyers, advocates out there, various subjects and had a great time doing it. But it's it's really fun now because all those books that I wrote, none of them ever had my name on them.

Lesley Hensell: 19:58

So gotta admit it's exciting, after you've written hundreds of thousands of words, for other people, to write a book of your own and actually have your byline. I was very fortunate that I had a publisher contact me out of the blue and that my editor had been at an Amazon conference where I was a speaker at the Accelerate Conference in Salt Lake City and he had seen me speak there and said I am looking for someone to write a book about how to sell on Amazon. I think it's an underserved category in business books. Most of the stuff is self-published not that there's anything wrong with that but it doesn't have any support of a real publisher. And so are you interested and he'd also seen that I've been a writer in the past I was like heck, yeah. So we wrote this book. It's with Skyhorse Publishing and it's distributed by Simon and Schuster and it comes out January 23rd and it is called the Amazon Incubator Grow your Business or Hatch a New One.

Adam Shaffer: 21:01

I already pre-ordered it already this morning. So I'm very excited and so I mean how long did it take you to write this? Because I mean, I think about it like what do you write? A page a day?

Lesley Hensell: 21:13

So it took me about five months to create the first draft and what? I'm a big believer in time blocking, so that's the only way that I manage all of my different obligations. I have so many different hats that I wear inside of Riverbend, that I've got my Amazon seller business, then I've got the kids, then I've got my nonprofit obligations, so the only way I make it through the day is to have these blocks of time. So I would block off two hours a day, monday, wednesday, friday, and then four hours on the weekend, and that's how I got it knocked out.

Adam Shaffer: 21:48

So you did four hours on the weekend. I mean I can't get a minute on the weekend without somebody on top of me making me take them somewhere or go to gymnastics or tennis or whatever. That's amazing. But I mean I do a time block and then I wind up doing something else. So you're very disciplined, very impressed Cool.

Lesley Hensell: 22:07

It's taken me several years of using time blocking to get where I actually do the thing Seriously. And you know what I've done, also on Slack. I know we are all slaves to Slack, those of us who work in large organizations. I've muted all these channels and said if you at me I'll answer, but otherwise I'm ignoring you. So I've had to do a lot of adjustment to my other work mechanisms so I can focus.

Adam Shaffer: 22:31

I got to copy that, so tell us about the book. I mean it's cool, it's about Amazon, but it's not like your typical get rich quick on Amazon book right?

Lesley Hensell: 22:43

And that's really what I'm most excited about, because there are so many courses out there and methods and you know you can make tons of money in four hours a week and a lot of these guys who want you to get a Lamborghini like the goal is to get a Lamborghini and a great watch. My book is really more about making Amazon serve you and your goals. What do you want out of Amazon? How do you choose your method of selling? So, are you a hustler who wants a side hustle and this is never going to be your main business? Are you a brand builder? Are you someone who wants to be that remote worker? Any of those will work on Amazon. So I kind of walk you through how to choose what works for you and your personal goals not my goals, not some course creators goals your goals and then build that Amazon business that can support those goals over time sustainably.

Adam Shaffer: 23:41

So you got to figure out where you want to get to, what's your goal? Because if you're not willing to commit you know 40 hours a day to this thing, you know what's it going to be. And is it a hobby, is it a get rich quick scheme? What are you trying to do? And then what are you trying to sell? I imagine do you try to give advice on what to sell and what not to sell?

Lesley Hensell: 24:03

Yes, absolutely. And I also talk about time commitments, like you're saying, and what it takes to get to different goals on Amazon. Like, if you want to be someone who's opening a new brand every six months and adding new products every few weeks, that is a full time job. But if no one sits down and explains it to you, you're not going to really get it. And Amazon I think part of what is so challenging is this whole build.

Lesley Hensell: 24:30

An e-commerce business model has only been around for a blip in time. There have been accounting firms for hundreds of years in Europe. Right, these things have existed. We all know how lawyering works, but the idea of how to run an e-commerce business as a real, viable business is relatively new. I've met way too many sellers, and this is part of my motivation.

Lesley Hensell: 24:54

I've met so many sellers who've really hurt themselves because they didn't set up their business with forethought and they didn't set it up as a real business, like, let's set up your books, let's account for your time, so at the end of the year you actually know if you made a profit, or how about this? How about you know every month if you made a profit? The number one mistake for Amazon sellers is they don't actually do their books. So this book walks you through some of those basics at the beginning, but then also some more advanced strategies too, so you can have a life. A lot about building SOPs and then how to outsource and who to outsource to, how to make those choices so that you're not just a slave to this business 24-7.

Adam Shaffer: 25:39

I was just about to ask you know, what's your thoughts on outsourcing? Obviously, your firm and our company is around to help brands and people grow on Amazon, but what I see is like you've got to be so good at so many different disciplines. You need some help. I think you need help anyway. So what's your thoughts on that? Because you've got to be good at merchandising, on copywriting, on creative, on advertising, on logistics, on all of that. So what do you say on that?

Lesley Hensell: 26:14

So there's a service offering out there called reimbursements and it's where a company and our company does this, where Amazon loses your inventory or they don't receive it, and then these companies file cases and they get your money back. I have never filed a reimbursement case in my business because I have someone who does it for me, because it involves a whole bunch of reports and spreadsheets that I have no interest in learning how to do.

Lesley Hensell: 26:40

And that's because I'm good at the copywriting. So why would I spend my time on the thing that I am not good at spreadsheets when I can focus on the things I am good at, even in Riverbend? I'll tell you a couple of months ago I hired a personal assistant, which I've never had one before, because I couldn't figure out how to delegate appropriately to someone. Now I delegate everything else in my business but, like the personal stuff, I couldn't figure it out. So I said I'm going to solve this. We're going to hire someone. Great. It has changed my life for the better, finding the right person in that position.

Lesley Hensell: 27:16

Running an Amazon business is just like that. You need to understand each process and understand the fundamentals of it and, in a lot of cases, build the SOP for it, or you can follow SOPs that are in the book for it. But then you've got to find a trusted resource you can hand that off to, because otherwise you're not focusing on what makes you money. You make money when you develop new products. You make money at the buy. You don't make money when you sell things. You make money at the buy if you don't overpay, so making great deals. You make money when you develop a brand that people are excited about. You promote it well. You merchandise it well. So, as the owner, that's really what you need to be focusing on, not the day-to-day tasks. Also, I'm a huge fan of outsourcing things that make you angry. So in Amazon.

Adam Shaffer: 28:06

I'll tell you.

Lesley Hensell: 28:06

What makes people angry is customer service messages. Answering people's messages makes people angry because a lot of times they're lies. They're people wanting something for nothing. Now some of them are legit and then you're mad because your shipping guy didn't actually ship out the package right. So it's like a source of anger. Anything that makes you emotional and angry. You've got to outsource it or you'll be a miserable person.

Adam Shaffer: 28:35

Yeah, I mean that's great advice. I gotta think through that a little bit more, because everything gets me angry, I don't know. But what? What's your thoughts on advertising on Amazon? Is it used to be that you know, back when you started it wasn't, it wasn't the key to success, but now it seems like it's part of the formula.

Lesley Hensell: 28:56

It really is, and it's very expensive. So I understand why advertising has become a necessary evil, but I don't think you should drop one dime into advertising a product that you haven't optimized your listing detail page. Too many people do it backward. They advertise a product that if someone goes to the page, they would not buy the product because the photos aren't good or there's only two, there's no lifestyle image, there's no video, there's no a plus content, it's badly written, there's no benefits orientation, and that's that's the number one thing that I see. Even with giant brands, they don't invest in the listing detail page being impressive and then they drop a bunch of money on ads. So do you need to advertise? Probably, but let's start with actually having a great product and a great listing detail page.

Adam Shaffer: 29:43

No, I agree 100%. That's good advice also. And and what about? So? Say you now have your, your content optimized and you feel like, okay, this is telling a really good story about the brand and the product. You know, what do you see? I mean, I see a lot of people spending a lot of money out there and it's hard because it's not like you have so much margin, but once you start spending 10 plus percent, it starts to get a little crazy, but that seems to be the norm. What do you see?

Lesley Hensell: 30:12

so I'm gonna be really nerdy here and Say I love when you are a newer seller or when you're trying to break into a new category. My favorite thing is long tail keyword campaigns. Long tail keywords are cheaper and Are they going to immediately boost you to the top of your category? No, but they will help you inch and edge your way up. They are more work, but when you're in a bootstrap phase in your business, you always have to make a choice between spending money and spending time, and this is one of those areas where spending time makes more sense over money. And I say spending time because you've got to research what those long tail keywords should be and then set up all these separate campaigns For your long tail keywords. I think that's actually a great investment of time. It's also something you can outsource to a younger person who's inexpensive even.

Lesley Hensell: 31:06

I've known people who've done this with family members. They've had their kids do these things. Research these long tail keywords instead of campaigns. I'm all about Cheap family labor. Yeah, because if I pay your tuition and living expenses, then you know you can work for me some. It's also a tax deduction, but my kids have worked in my Amazon business since the younger one was two and now he's 16, so this is normal stuff around my house. So I'm a big fan of the long tail keywords to try and get you started and get some traction, to even figure out what the right metrics are for your business, instead of diving in head first on super expensive keyword campaigns that make you be unprofitable on the products.

Adam Shaffer: 31:51

I love that you can get your kids to work for you. I, they said they're gonna work for me, and then I look and they're playing roblox or something it's. It's hard to keep them focused but maybe they're a little too young. But you know, but Riverbend, I think, was doing for a while Maybe and maybe you're still doing it I haven't talked to you about it was that you were getting articles written about products and placed out there. Tell us about that, because I think that's pretty cool when people read positive articles. I mean, obviously it helps.

Lesley Hensell: 32:19

So for a while, amazon had what they called editorial recommendations and they were articles that then would be Actually on the Amazon site, so redirecting to men's health magazine, for example, and the contents actually on Amazon. Amazon has discontinued that. They are no longer doing it. However, we do work with a partner who still has off-site content, so they will place articles and Major magazines that are relevant to your audience and then that off-site content. It Works with Google campaigns. You can have it redirect your Amazon listing and it's it's very useful because you're essentially boosting the power, using the power of SEO To boost your ranking on Amazon, on Amazon through articles redirecting to your product.

Adam Shaffer: 33:12

Okay, I mean that's cool. We, we tried, we tried it and then Amazon discontinued it. So, like, as we were about getting it up and going, it's like what? That's a bomber, because I used to love Seeing other people doing it. Like I want to do that too. And we finally got it going and boom, it's gone.

Adam Shaffer: 33:28

But I don't know why yeah, I know I mean on Amazon. What could be better like the top product of the year, the best Christmas gift or whatever it was it was. It was awesome. So I Straight away from the book. I'm sorry, so you know to get to on on the book. I don't want people to miss the importance of this book because it's not your typical, like I've gotten so many the Amazon jungle and every book. James Thompson's books were actually Pretty, pretty helpful for me, and so that's why I can't wait to get yours. But what are the things are people gonna be able to get out of? This book Is there. You know you talked about a little bit, but is it like the blueprint for people? Is it like this is gonna really help me organize my life so I can get my Amazon business going?

Lesley Hensell: 34:13

So each chapter is one topic for you to really think about how you want things to go in your business, and at the end Is a summary and then questions for you to answer and when you've answered those questions, you are creating that blueprint for how you're gonna sell.

Adam Shaffer: 34:29

Oh, so there's homework.

Lesley Hensell: 34:32

There is. There's homework, but it's homework that it's almost like creating a mini business plan. You know, traditional business plans are only useful if you intend to go get an SBA one.

Lesley Hensell: 34:43

But if you're an entrepreneur in an e-commerce business. You just need a mini business plan for some focus and to know what your goals are and how to get going, and that's that's really what this gives you if you complete through the whole book and, like You've worked with so many different people and you've done it yourself, what do you think it takes to succeed on Amazon?

Adam Shaffer: 35:03

like what? What is it? Is it just the passion? It can't just be that. I.

Lesley Hensell: 35:09

Really think it is all the boring things like having a plan and focusing and not being distracted, because there are so many people who sell on Amazon who are so successful and smart and they all have some strategy to offer and Many of those strategies are amazing, but you can't do all of them. You have to pick what you can actually implement yourself, what you can afford to do and what will move the needle in your business. So it's really comes down to focusing and, like an example in the book is let's pick three things you're gonna do in the next month and implement them. What can they be? What will move the needle? I know that's the simplest advice ever, but sometimes you need someone standing over you saying pick three things to do today, because it's it's like squirrel. There is a great PPC strategy, squirrel. That's a great idea about how to import goods. It's, there's always something right.

Adam Shaffer: 36:02

There's so much information being blasted at you all over, that's like it's hard to focus there.

Lesley Hensell: 36:08

I love to read it all.

Lesley Hensell: 36:11

Yes, but then how much of it is useful? Because if you don't implement it? I saw this great post on social media where this guy had this stack of books and it was like 52 books and he said I read one book every week for a year and you should read them all. They were all business books and all I could think was what did you implement out of 52 books? I mean, isn't it better to read three books and implement one thing from each book, Because you have to actually do the things? It's it's almost like you're just sitting on the sidelines watching the game instead of it being in. They're playing, you know. So pick the things you can implement and and it's hard in this industry there's so many videos and coaches and gurus that you just want to do it all and you can't.

Adam Shaffer: 36:52

That is awesome advice. I need to follow that, thank you. This is like talking to my therapist. This is awesome, and and so just say you know getting down to the end here. You know what's the? What are most people not know about selling on Amazon, like what? You know? What's the thing that's gonna get them caught? What's the thing that's gonna knock them down?

Lesley Hensell: 37:16

If you're new to Amazon, the thing you usually don't know is that Amazon will, out of the blue, ask you for invoices to prove that your products were new or to prove that they are authentic. And a lot of folks do not keep good records. And even if they have the invoices, they're not sure what matches to what product. They don't realize that they need to cover the sales from 180 days or longer and they end up in a panic because they can't provide this. Another thing folks don't realize is they get told to go do retail arbitrage, and I am not against retail arbitrage, I just understand the risks involved.

Lesley Hensell: 37:56

Certain brands will file intellectual property claims against you. That makes it somewhat risky. The more risky thing is where you're buying it. If you buy from discount stores that don't have a UPC, on the receipt they use an internal stock number. You can't prove what the product was that you purchased with that receipt. So it's the documentation of where you bought the product, how you got it and that that supplier is a legitimate supplier is of paramount importance. 10 years ago it really didn't matter. Now it is everything, and it gives so many people in trouble early in the business.

Adam Shaffer: 38:31

Oh man, we run into so many people that go to Costco and buy stuff on sale and bulk and break it down and sell it on Amazon. It's unbelievable, so that's really good advice also, wow. So, wrapping things up and kind of coming to the close of our podcast, what are the final thoughts that you want to maybe leave everybody with? And then let's make sure everybody knows how to get your book.

Lesley Hensell: 38:58

So Amazon is not get rich quick, it's just not. But it can be a sustainable, long-term business that helps you meet whatever goal you want. There are people out there who will tell you it's too late, it's not a good time to sell on Amazon anymore. Someone who works with Amazon's problems every day and problems sellers have every day I could tell you thousands of things wrong with Amazon. I will still tell you it is the best small business incubator in the history of the world. So I encourage people who are looking for that freedom, that flexibility or a way to fund some specific goals to really consider whether this is a way you can do it.

Lesley Hensell: 39:40

So if you want to learn more about the book, you can go to wwwtheamazonincubatorcom and there it has links to every place that you could want to buy the book. It is on pre-order up until January 23rd and we're going to have some nice bonus items too at the Amazon Incubator as well. So please go check it out. And also, if you go on over to LinkedIn or any other social media where you find me, please feel free to connect and to send me any questions that you have. I really love talking to Amazon sellers. It's the best part of my day.

Adam Shaffer: 40:14

Well, we love talking to you, Lesley, and thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a thrill to have you here and we learned a lot. Thank you.

Lesley Hensell: 40:21

Thank you. Adam.