From Mortuary to Marketplace: A Journey into E-Commerce

Erica Greenhalgh's transition from the funeral home industry to becoming a top Amazon seller is nothing short of remarkable. In this episode, we uncover the unique twists and turns of her career, beginning with her early days aspiring to be a dental hygienist, her unexpected entry into the funeral business, and ultimately, her leap into e-commerce. Erica opens up about the struggles she faced, the countless hours she invested, and the pivotal moments that shaped her path to success. With six associate degrees under her belt, her story is a testament to perseverance and the power of pursuing unconventional opportunities.

We also talk about the nitty-gritty details of Erica's journey from a failed business to grossing $200,000 in her first year on Amazon. She shares her strategies for securing wholesale deals, managing a home warehouse, and the art of transforming poorly listed products on Amazon into top sellers. Erica's expertise in navigating the complexities of the adult product category on Amazon offers a unique perspective on the challenges and rewards of this niche market. Her ability to build strong relationships with small brands and address issues like minimum advertised pricing has been key to her success.

Our conversation also explores the broader landscape of e-commerce, from compliance with Amazon's advertising policies to the potential of expanding to platforms like Walmart and TikTok. Erica's passion for her work and her humorous reflections on her unconventional career path make this episode a must-listen. We wrap up with a look ahead, eager to reconnect with Erica next year to see how her journey evolves and the new heights she aims to reach with her innovative strategies and tools like Helium 10. Join us for this engaging and insightful episode that promises to inspire and entertain.

In episode 585 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Erica discuss:

• 00:00 - From Funeral Homes to Amazon Success
• 00:39 - Unique Amazon Seller Stories With Erica
• 06:36 - Transitioning to Amazon Sales Through Books
• 07:24 - From Funeral Home to Adult Products
• 09:47 - Wholesale Account Setup Success
• 15:01 - Growing Brands in Adult E-Commerce
• 16:43 - Sales Goals and Profit Margins
• 21:22 - Product Placement and Advertising Strategies
• 24:21 - Strange Incidents While Selling on Amazon
• 27:47 - Amazon's Advertising Guidelines Explained
• 28:30 - Amazon Strategies and TikTok Opportunities
• 33:34 - From Funeral Homes to Novelty Products

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Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we've got one of the most unique sellers we've had on. She started off her professional career running funeral homes, then transitioned to selling books online and doing retail arbitrage and now she grosses over $2 million a year selling adult products. How cool, is that? Pretty cool, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits. For more information, go to h10.me/profits. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Seller’s podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we've got somebody who's a first time on the show and I actually just met her on a one-on-one call a couple of weeks ago here at you know, if you guys don't know this, you know Helium 10 Elite Program. One of the many benefits other than just you know being able to get training with Kevin King and weekly round tables and stuff? Is you get to book one-on-one calls with myself and Carrie and roundtables and stuff? Is you get to book one-on-one calls with myself and Carrie? And I started hearing about her business and a little bit of her story. I was like you know what? Say no more, because I would love to learn more about this from the podcast. I love just bringing in people who I meet at conferences and other ways who have unique Amazon stories and this definitely, I think, is a unique Amazon story. So, Erica, welcome to the show.

Erica:

Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. Now, where are you at right now in the US of A.

Erica:

Currently I am in just a Mesa, Arizona, a little suburb of Phoenix. So, we are fortunate enough to have a little cabin up north that we could escape the heat from.

Bradley Sutton:

But isn't all of Arizona pretty hot?

Erica:

No, we're up in the mountains, so we are, we get lots of snow and pine trees and get to enjoy all of that, okay.

Bradley Sutton:

I didn't even realize there was places like that around there. Okay, not bad. Now is that where you were born and raised in Arizona, or you come from somewhere else?

Erica:

For the most part. So, I was born in Tucson, I spent all my teen years in Salt Lake City and came back as a young adult and have been here ever since.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool. Where did you go to university?

Erica:

You know I have six associates degrees because I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. So, I'm a professional college student.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. hey, before I actually do have a bachelor's degree, but I got it like, oh my God, like 15 years after I graduated high school, just because one of my companies I was working for at the time paid me to go do it. I was like sure I'll do it. But yeah, I have, like from local junior college, I've got like six different degrees. It was. I loved it, it was fun, you actually learn stuff, instead of having to take a whole bunch of just like general ed and stuff like that.

Erica:

So yeah, it was. It was awesome for me. I have dyslexia, I always really struggled in school and so, for whatever reason, learning finally clicked for me in college, and so it kind of became like look, I'm not dumb, see what I can do.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Now what? Did you have a theme of what you were taking, though? Like, did you have some kind of goal in mind, like hey, I would like to work in this? Or you just like, hey, I want to learn.

­Erica:

Yeah, from a young age I wanted to be a dental assistant, dental hygienist, so, ongoing to dental hygiene school, I moved out at 17, because you know everything at 17. And I found myself completely broke and not having a clue what to do. I remembered a girlfriend of mine. We took a health science occupations class in high school and part of the class was to get up and job shadow somebody in a medically related field, and she had done a funeral director and in the back of my mind I was like, well, that's cool. But I knew what I was going to do. And I then had an opportunity. I walked into a funeral home that was next to the college, wondering how I'm going to pay my rent, and the gentleman spent about three hours with me. I put my name in a local newsletter and, lo and behold, a few months later I was offered a job at a funeral home as an intern, and also.

Bradley Sutton:

So, then, what you had chosen as your shadow, whatever day was the funeral home.

Erica:

No well, I had chosen other medically related careers. A girlfriend of mine did funeral to done, had job shadowed a funeral director and I always thought that was cool.

Bradley Sutton:

So, this is it almost sounded like you, just randomly. It was kind of getting kind of morbid there for a second. I was like, yeah, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, so I went into a funeral home.

Erica:

I was like wait, wait, wait, where's?

Bradley Sutton:

this story going here.

Erica:

That is exactly what happened.

Bradley Sutton:

I had no idea what I was going to do.

Erica:

So, I just walked into the funeral home going, well maybe there's an opportunity for a job here, like, let's explore this adventure in life. Okay, so there is a little morbidity to it. There's no family history. There's none of that. So, I fell in love with the industry. I love serving families. I love every aspect of it. It's my true passion. But unfortunately, that job is a very high demand and very high stress, so there's no margin for errors within that.

Bradley Sutton:

So, you started working full time there when you were still in the junior college.

Erica:

I did, yeah. So, I completely did a 180 and started going a different direction in life and worked in the funeral world, had some kids, stayed home for a while and went back into the funeral world. And the funeral home I was working for at the time was a fantastic family run funeral home here in Arizona and unfortunately, the gentleman who had started it began to age out, needed to take care of his wife who was also aging, and the people he left in charge were just cutting corners to make a dime and I really felt that they were going against everything the business was built on. And so, I left there and a former friend business partner of mine was like hey, I'm selling books and shoes on Amazon and making like a thousand dollars a week doing it. And I was like that sounds fantastic. I can sell books and shoes and figure this out.

Bradley Sutton:

What year are we talking about? About more or less?

Erica:

This was back in 2015, 2016.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so almost 10 years ago. Now, I think I asked you this before, but the funeral home did they have a Ghostbusters like a Hurst that you could drive?

Erica:

We did. In fact, my business partner that I started the e-commerce business with we had a custom coach made that was old timey looking. It was pretty sweet. It was Rosewood is the company Rosewood Coach and got to pick out custom colors and all the details and it was pretty awesome.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So, working at the funeral home, you're like, hey, this is not what it used to be, and so I'm open to other ideas. And then you hear about Amazon, and then so your first entry into it was it books, was it arbitrage? How did you just kind of get into Amazon?

Erica:

It was a little of both. So it was kind of getting our feet wet going out and I would buy lots of books off of Craigslist and I had a Ford Explorer at the time and I would load up every ounce of Squarespace in that Explorer with lots of books that I could buy and figuring that out and it was just learning the pieces and putting it together of you know how to find what's what will sell on Amazon, how to find what won't, where your margins are going to be. It was a really fantastic place for us to start to get a full understanding of the Amazon game without a ton of investment required.

Bradley Sutton:

Were you still working at the funeral home and started this, or did you already leave and then now this is your only income, or what was that transition like?

Erica:

You know what? I had left the funeral home, I had about six months of income, and so it was one of those decisions that I either had to make this work and or it didn't, and I had to move on. So, I was just coming off of another failed business. I guess I'm an entrepreneur at heart and always looking for the next. I knew that I was capable of doing more, and so I was a little down. To be honest, I wasn't feeling great about things in life. I had left the funeral home, just had a failed business, and so this was kind of a I have nothing left to lose and all or nothing, and so I made the best of it over six months and was able to more than replace my income at the funeral home and decide to run with it and see how far I could take it and where we could go.

Bradley Sutton:

So, in that first year of selling on Amazon, or first of all, was it only Amazon, or were you also selling other websites? Or we're just talking about Amazon here?

Erica:

I was exclusively Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

How much did you gross in the first year and then profit off of that?

Erica:

I want to say, in our first year and I apologize, I don't have numbers in front of me we did about $200,000 our first year.

Bradley Sutton:

So how much like were you spending eight-hour days, kind of like, or more or less, or.

Erica:

Yeah, I would say about six to eight hours a day and more. A lot of that was figuring out. What's your strategy going to be? Are you going to do online arbitrage? Are you going to do in stores? I would go and spend hours just scanning every possible thing in any store that I could, just to get an idea of what are some restricted products, what are categories that needed gating. And as I began to do that, the first year or so I realized it was a hustle to go out and find that deal, like sometimes you struggled and sometimes it was a complete mess and you would spend days with nothing. It was a complete mess and you would spend days with nothing. And so, we began to look at different wholesale accounts of I'd like to prefer to pick up a phone and just replenish my inventory rather than going out and hustle to find it. And we set up random wholesale accounts with probably 20 different companies, seeing what worked and what didn't?

Bradley Sutton:

What was your line? Like you'd cold call them and then just say how would you get them on board.

Erica:

Well, to be honest, I think that I purchased a course of how to set up wholesale accounts I want to say it was like $1,000 or $1,500. And in turn they're like here's this list, and I think I bought a list off of them and they're like but be prepared to be told no 90% of the time. And I was like, yeah, no problem, I'm willing to make all these phone calls and see where it goes. And so, as I began to make these phone calls, every single person said yes to setting up a wholesale account. Now, I think times are a little bit different today than it was back in 2016 when I did this, but all they wanted was our reseller certificate and bam, we had a wholesale account. And so, then I was overwhelmed by these massive catalogs and I want to say we were selling everything from baby pacifiers to nun chucks and nail polish and everything in between. There was no rhyme or reason between what we sold. Using FBA, so everything was FBA.

Bradley Sutton:

So then, did you have your own warehouse, would you need to get all this stuff in and label it, or you would have these companies send it to Amazon for you.

Erica:

No, I had a card table set up in my bedroom with my computer and my label printer and it was absolutely ridiculous. You know, I'd fill my entire living room with boxes and it was one at a time opening them up, and I couldn't even afford the $8 pickup for UPS to come get it. Then I would load my car and carry all of it in. And it was. You know it was a hustle.

It was an adventure bootstrapping it, figuring it out, you know.

Bradley Sutton:

less labor-intensive kind of than the retail arbitrage where you're actually having to go out so much, you know, at least you could do it from your house and things like that right and no scotty peeler injuries so saved okay and then how? Did that progress? Did you just kind of like transition to only wholesale and cut out the books and arbitrage?

Erica:

We did so we transitioned into wholesale exclusively, and at that time we began to see a lot of these manufacturers had map pricing in place. So minimum advertised pricing. Minimum advertised pricing. So, if your item is supposed to sell for $49.99, I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that it's selling for $26. And by the time I was doing the math, I'm like these people are making pennies and I just couldn't understand this. And so, then I began to speak with our wholesaler more, and they began to tell us how frustrated these manufacturers are that nobody is taking care of Amazon and how upset their brick-and-mortar stores are, that people could go online and find it for less, and how they're losing out on money. And I would also find incorrect information and incorrect images. And so, I began to really pivot our business, seeing a huge hole in the industry between manufacturers and the e-commerce space. And so, I approached these manufacturers and I said, hey, what if you were to give me exclusivity on your product in exchange for me managing it on Amazon? And it's a win-win for everybody. I will do it for free. If you don't like me, you can fire me. I won't make you sign a contract or anything else.

Bradley Sutton:

When you say manufacturers, are these the same people that you were buying stuff from wholesale? And you're just like hey, can I have exclusive? Or were you buying from distributors? And you're like let me find who's the real manufacturer.

Erica:

So, I actually worked as a team with my distributor. I think that there's enough money to be made by everybody. Could I make more money going direct to the manufacturer? Absolutely, but he really opened those doors for me to the manufacturers direct, and so my agreement was you know, I'm going to continue buying it where I get it from in exchange for you know, everybody wins in this situation. So, the manufacturer wins, the distributor wins, and I felt like I came away a winner in that, and so we began to grow that way. we, I only do. I'm to the point now that I only work with brands that have brand registry done so that we could maximize and take advantage of all of the benefits that brand registry offers and it's grown.

Bradley Sutton:

At what point did you get into the adult products? Cause, that's pretty much all you do now, right? It's exclusively all you do, and how in the world did that transition happen?

Erica:

So, we found, as we began to look for local wholesalers because we're limited on funds and we had to keep our money moving we found one of our wholesale accounts was a rubber duck company and my former business partner was like, hey, I think they make a vibrator rubber duck. And so, we then discovered that there was a distributor here in Phoenix and reached out to them and that cut down a huge amount of our lead time because we could go and directly pick it up and we didn't have that extra delay in products coming in, because we were so new that tires were not something I knew to ask for or could get, especially as a new customer. And so, we started working exclusively with a distributor here and they're the ones who were fortunate enough to open up those doors for us directly working with the manufacturers.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then so did you like slowly just move everything in that direction because there was more profit, or how did that happen?

Erica:

You know, it became a passion to see these brands grow and I loved seeing these terrible listings with terrible images grow into something amazing watching sales increase. Their sales as a whole increase because brick and mortar stores were willing to pick them up more, without having that competition online and the low price, they said okay, well, as long as online is the same price as us, we're happy to carry it, and so it really builds the brand's overall health really.

Bradley Sutton:

And so, how long has it been now? how many years? Where are your kind of like, exclusively uh in the adult space?

Erica:

We started short in in 2016, so I'm in nine years, so it was right after.

Bradley Sutton:

So, it's been a while now.

Yeah, okay, which year was your peak, would you say. Was it during covid is? Is it every year you're growing, or did you have a peak a couple years ago?

Erica:

I've been extremely fortunate to grow every year, but definitely COVID was a massive peak, so during that time we owned two funeral homes and the e-commerce business. So those who are bored during that time.

Bradley Sutton:

So, you got back into the funeral home business then, after you had left that, yes, oh, hold on I skipped this part of the story.

Erica:

Okay, my former business partner had owned a funeral home in Sun City and we had partnered on the e-commerce business together. But I was the one who'd built the e-commerce business and we decided to open a second funeral home and said well if we're going to do that, let's partner on everything. And so, we did. Unfortunately, about two and a half years ago, we just went our own directions in life and I continued the e-commerce business and he went on his own direction.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting. What do you think you're going to end this year sales wise? If you know we're over halfway through the year, what do you you'll end up gross?

Erica:

I think we'll be a little over two million this year in gross sales.

Bradley Sutton:

Wholesales obviously different kinds of profit margins and stuff. What's your target? Profit margins, after all your expenses, of what you're trying to clear so that you know whether you can take on this product or this account. What do you target?

Erica:

Well, if Amazon would quit upping their fees, it would be a lot better. Our goal is around 30%.

Bradley Sutton:

Good Lord, that's a lot. That's more than private label even sometimes, yeah, interesting.

Erica:

yeah it's a niche that really, I think that anybody can go into. I don't know about anybody, but well, it's definitely an avenue that others can pursue. There’re so many small companies out there that really their attention needs to be focused on building their brands and marketing and expansion and growth that if you're able to reach out and add some value and take on this piece to them. A lot of the companies I work with are small mom and pop companies and they've really become family, and that's the part that I think that I love the most is the relationships that I have in the industry, so truly everyone has become family.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, are you still going out there and looking for more accounts, or is all your growth just from growing the accounts that you do have? What can you contribute your growth to?

Erica:

For the most part, my growth, I think, has contributed towards just doing the right thing. I don't pursue any new accounts. I do have people who approach me often and I'm very selective on who I work with at this point.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you at the point now where you know you had said before you only talk to people that already have brand registry. But are you the one who's like making the list, like, like, let's say that you know you've been working with somebody for a year and they're like, hey, I've got this you know, pocket rocket 3.0 that's coming out brand new launch. Now are you the one who's making the listings and organizing the photography and the launch strategy, that stuff, or you just work with okay and the launch strategy that stuff, or you just work with Okay. So, it's almost as if you're running it like a private label ,even though it's not your private label but it's like you're not just buying product and reselling it. You're doing the steps that a private label seller would do, okay.

Erica:

Yeah, so I'm doing all of those steps. These are their babies, so they've poured their blood, sweat and tears into building, grow them the way that they want to see it done. So, I don't do anything that they're not okay with. I work closely with everybody and provide them annual reports. Here's where they're at somewhat quarterly reports. Want to see growth. Here's where we're struggling. Here's a higher level of returns on this product. Let's try to figure out why, and so we really work together in growing this, and so I feel like it's a huge honor and a huge privilege to be given this level of trust.

Bradley Sutton:

Tell the audience about, like, some of the differences of selling in this category compared to, you know, the average category where you know you can pretty much you know, do anything you want. What are some of the restrictions as far as that goes in the adult category?

Erica:

Our biggest challenge is the lack of ability to advertise, so there is no advertising allowed. They are extremely restrictive on images. That's been probably my biggest challenge lately is that I'll have some images published on one variation and they block my images on another variation. Why, who knows? It's Amazon. We don't know why they do what they do most of the time and you know, language is extremely important. There's a lot of words that unfortunately, we can't use in writing copy.

Bradley Sutton:

You know like, obviously there's words that you know adult, words that a non-adult category wouldn't want to use, because then you get classified as in the adult. But you're saying, even if you are in the adult category, there's still limitations on the verbiage you can use.

Erica:

Correct, correct. And we're even behind a virtual black curtain, in that you can go into Amazon and there are listings that pop up who are not listed in the adult category and eventually you get caught. So, I really don't recommend it if you're looking for longevity on Amazon, but in order to even find sexual wellness products, you have to go under health and household and then you can begin to search for them, and a lot of times then even you have to hit sexual wellness to locate items.

Bradley Sutton:

Advertising, obviously, is what brings eyeballs to products, and especially when you launch, you might not be on top of page one right away. So, you use advertising to get to the top of page one and then hopefully, your organic rank increases. But then now, without advertising, when you have newer products like, how are you getting placed on? How are you getting to page one for your main keywords? Are you sending outside traffic? is it just a slow roll that that you know? You cross promote your different products, what's your strategy there?

Erica:

It's a mix between all of the brands. So, some brands um, I have one in particular that they've completely built their entire branding off of social media. So, he has a social media background and it's where he came from and he decided to do a product launch to see, thought it would be fun and see where he would take it, and had a ton of success with that. I have other brands that have been around for decades and so people are very aware of the brand name and pursue it that way, and we'll highlight items within the storefronts. We do some online advertising with different brands, so it's really different between what these manufacturers are looking for across the brand, so it's different with everybody.

Bradley Sutton:

The rest, though, of the whole Amazon journey is it pretty much similar as any other Helium 10 user like you're running Cerebro on maybe your competitors’ listings or tracking your keywords and things like that.

Erica:

Yes, so I'm back, new to Helium 10. It's been a few years and I'm realizing how much my business needed it. So there's a lot of tools and a lot of words and a lot of content, a lot of features that really I needed to get me to the next level, because I've been doing it for so long that you think you know what you know until you get to the point that you realize that a lot of the information that you used to use and used to know is dated and out of date, and so I'm missing the boat and, I'm kind of kicking myself a little bit now, realizing that I'm a little late to the game.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe you left some money on the table the last couple of years.

Erica:

Yeah, a little late, but then never right.

Bradley Sutton:

Is it now to the point? Obviously, you know $2 million of the products you're not labeling and stuff in your bedroom anymore. So, do you have a warehouse or do you just tell them, hey, put this sticker on your products and then send it to Amazon? How does that work?

Erica:

Yeah, that's exactly what I do. So, I have a couple of warehouses that I work with and they take care of all the fulfillment for me. So, I did seller FBA for a while. I was not a big fan, especially with Amazon's page view requirements and next day shipping requirements. It just got to the point that it was not profitable.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, seller, fulfilled prime where, where you, you have to deliver it to the customer in like a day or two. Uh, and hit those deadlines, yeah.

Erica:

Yeah, I did that for a while and then it just got out of control and unrealistic, so I went back to FBA and it's it. It's worked out well.

Bradley Sutton:

Any horror stories over the last five years you know other than you know. All of a sudden, they shut down one of your listings because of one of the images they don't like, but anything really like where the whole account has gotten shut down, or lawsuits over somebody saying, hey, I use this lotion and it made me amputate my leg, I don't know. Whatever the heck. Anything weird has come up since you've been selling on Amazon.

Erica:

Well, I mean, you always get crazy returns

Bradley Sutton:

how do you even take returns in this category?

Erica:

You're not supposed to. It violates. But somehow, they allow it. But I did have a very sweet lady write me a handwritten letter about how her brother bought her a vibrator and how she. Yeah, about how she appreciates the kindness and thoughtfulness behind it, but it's not really for her and it is not used and she would really appreciate if we would give her brother her money back.

Bradley Sutton:

yeah, that family might have some issues that that should not be the kind of thing you give to a sibling. Okay, interesting,

Erica:

She was in her 70’s and wrote this beautiful.

Bradley Sutton:

now it's even more interesting, oh my goodness gracious!

Erica:

So weird. So, I was like okay.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what about on the opposite side, any other funny story? Hey, because of these products you saved my marriage or something, messages like that, or just like something really cool that's happened, like amazing prime day, or you had a product go viral, or anything like that.

Erica:

Yeah, I've had some messages that they're lubed into riven time and so, unfortunately, they suffered severe chafing and they would appreciate if I could deliver on time. This was fulfilled by amazon, not me, but I was like well okay, I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry that you experienced this. Other than that, you know I've been shut down a few times. Unfortunately, some customers claimed they received inauthentic product or used product, which can never be the case based on how we operate and how Amazon operates. And so, you know, you're down for a day or two, you submit invoices, you're back up. So, as frustrating and as annoying as that is, you know it is fixable.

Bradley Sutton:

I haven't said anything that can happen to any um Amazon seller. Okay, what are you know, other than certain words that Amazon doesn't approve, and I'm assuming that Amazon doesn't necessarily give you the exact list. It's just kind of like a you'll know when you know, but what? What give you the exact list is just kind of like a you'll know when you know, but what? What if anybody else is getting interested in getting into this niche? how do you know what words not to use, like what images for sure you can't use Like what? What are some of the guidelines that people need to know?

Erica:

There are some guidelines within the back end. I think that they're extremely vague, um, but they do not like product images in hands, um, even textbook terms like nipples and footrests and things like that you're not able to use in your texts. The only trick that I've found into finding out what is okay and not okay is when you submit a plus content. So, a plus content then gives you the red flag. Red flag you need to remove this word. But as far as Seller Central goes and writing your copy and it not being published, you just have no idea and you open up cases and you get a very generic response back. Nobody tells you specifics and so really, it's been a trial and an error of what they'll allow and what they won't allow.

Bradley Sutton:

So, you mentioned A-plus content, so obviously, obviously that's allowed in your niche. Other, what about like things like virtual bundles or other things? Is it just that strict advertising, like there's no sponsored product, no sponsored brand ads, no videos? Yeah, video could never work in this niche.

Bradley Sutton:

But videos, but not advertise. Oh, so you have videos like for your listing.

Erica:

I do so. Not every product has a video, but there are quite a few videos that I'm able to post on the listings.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh well, that's kind of mind boggling to me, Like I would think that definitely that would be kind of hard to be able to have a compliant one, but okay.

Erica:

Yeah, welcome to Amazon, but you just can't yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

How about like amazon post. Are you allowed to do those?

Erica:

No, no posts. Um, I'm able to do brand stories, a plus content, videos, and then storefronts and storefronts, are you know? Again, you have to be careful with images and words that you use. It's like anything. Sometimes you submit it to Amazon and they'll say something is wrong with page one, and then you submit it again and page one is just fine and page three has an issue, and so you just go through and kind of whack them all until you get it to where it's okay.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you selling on other platforms as well, or just Amazon?

Erica:

We do a little bit of Walmart as well, and I just got my TikTok storefront approved, so I'm working on pursuing that as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. So, do you know what's the? Is that a lot is that kind of products allowed on TikTok shop?

Erica:

They are. So, one of my manufacturers that I work with that's really how he's built his business. You just have to. There's a lot of guidelines and rules, so I'm fortunate to have a mentor in this area that's going to be able to guide me on that, because this is something new and outside of anything I've ever done.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, let me just warn you, you, you could potentially get real busy real fast, like, I know people who, within a couple months of starting on Amazon or a TikTok shop, already surpassed their Amazon sales, and I can imagine if that's I was curious, if it was allowed that this would be the perfect product for TikTok shop, because you know influencers, which is what it's driven by like your stuff could definitely go viral. So, okay, you might have to expand out your three-employee team there soon.

Erica:

So, that's, yeah, it's. It's totally new realm to me. So, I we'll see how it goes. What's the worst thing that can happen, right.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, right. So, you referenced that, hey, you're happier back using helium 10 now and that you've noticed already some things that you could have been doing before. What are some of those things I like? What have you know, even though you came in as like an experienced seller and then, not having used helium 10 for years, it's almost like as if you're a new Helium 10 user. So, what were some of the things that have already, kind of like changed up your SOPs on how you how you do things?

Erica:

So, I love your keyword tracking and I love competitor tracking. Those have been huge because I could never figure out what they were doing and I wasn't. That's been my biggest thing. And I also love my ranking on my product page of where am I scoring? You know, some of my listings. I'm like wow, I didn't realize how short I was falling here or copy wasn't displaying, and so I'm going through and re-digging through everything as I go and finding it's allowing me to completely clean up my product catalog and to maximize clean up my product catalog and to maximize every single word, every single image, every single phrase that I'm using to at least optimize where I'm ranking in keywords. If I realize I'm missing out on opportunities of advertising, but let's maximize what I can do.

Bradley Sutton:

What are strategies you think just here, in brief, like that you can say to anybody, regardless of what category they're in? That's really helped you, because it takes a special little something to be able to have a three-person team and manage the number of SKUs you have and scale it to this amount and at that kind of profitability. That's not something that just anybody off the street can do. So, what are a couple of things that you think are working in your favor here?

Erica:

I'm a big believer in always doing the right thing and never chasing money. So, I think when you do the right thing, the money follows, and so, unfortunately, I've seen on Amazon over the years that people try to make a quick dime and you do. You can make a quick dime on Amazon, but it's never works in your favor on the longevity of doing things. So that's my number one thing is to do the right thing even when people aren't watching it. You know, if you don't have manufacturers watching, if you know, no matter who's looking over your shoulder, to never do it to make a quick buck. And the second thing is I think that, no matter what the industry is, go and start having conversations. Whether you go to a coffee expo, find out local expos that are coming to town, and start having conversations with manufacturers and look for opportunities.

Bradley Sutton:

Are you planning to go to Amazon Accelerate in Seattle?

Erica:

No, I'm not going this year, unfortunately, I know.

Bradley Sutton:

Anybody else out there who wants to go. You can't get tickets from Helium 10, but just go to h10.me/accelerate, I think, is the link to go. But yeah, I was about to say it would have been cool to be able to meet you in person over there. If anybody is interested, we're going to have a special event that's normally only for Elite members, but we're going to open it up to a few others. So, if anybody's interested in registering, only register, guys. If you're going to go, use h10.me forward slash Seattle. We're doing an event on the 16th of September, the day before Amazon Accelerate. We'll have Kevin King there, Destaney Jeff from Amazon, Melanie from Avasa. We have a lot of cool speakers and some networking and partying to do. If you were there, you would have been the toast of the town, I think, everybody wanting to pick your brain on your interesting story there. But we'll have to meet up at another event another time. Well, thank you so much, Erica, for joining us and telling us your very unique story. There are some people that you can probably say I'm sure somebody else has done something pretty similar. There's probably nobody who has gone from funeral homes to selling books and adult products. I think it was really nice.

Erica:

I get you coming and going.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay. I wonder how many people throughout this had a that's what she said like in the back of their minds, or some puns like we could have had a field day with today's content, but that one was. That's a perfect way to end the episode there, I guess.

So, anyways, Erica, I definitely want to reach out to you next year, have after another year under your belt of selling, to see what new things you've learned or what new Helium 10 tools you're using and maybe did you hit 3 million or not, so look forward to bringing you back on the show sometime next year.

Erica:

Awesome, sounds great, thank you.