#58: Hybrid Work Model - How Companies Are Adjusting

Date: November 2, 2020

Episode: 58 

Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Vinnie Fisher, an Entrepreneur, Best-selling Author and CEO of Fully Accountable.

Subtitle: Good people plus good process is equal to success

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-58-hybrid-work-model-how-companies-are-adjusting-w-vinnie-fisher/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Vinnie Fisher, an entrepreneur, best-selling author and CEO of Fully Accountable.

Vinnie Fisher has been growing 7 and 8-figure businesses for almost 20 years. He shared marketing tips and discussed the new hybrid work model for businesses.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• 5:44 : Vinnie’s background
• 6:55 : What is the Hybrid Work Model?
• 10:47 : Vinnie’s Tips for Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced Sellers
• 17:18 : How to protect yourself when going to deep in a sales channel
• 23:55 : Choosing your channel based on your target audience
• 30:13 : Reaquiring customers and Benchmarking
• 36:18 : Influencers as affiliate marketing
• 41:25 : Growing your organization
• 43:55 : Direct to consumer engagement

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Explore these Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinniefisher/detail/contact-info/
• https://vinniefisher.com
• https://fullyaccountable.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/vinniefisherfan
• https://twitter.com/VinnieFisher
• E Myth by Michael Gerber
• https://manychat.com/ 
• wecare@fullyaccountable.com

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Norman  0:01  

Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands.

Norman  0:19  

I really didn’t know what to expect with that music compared to on Halloween all of a sudden, my two kids decided to come up with that interesting composition. I wasn’t sure if we’re gonna get back to normal or not. But anyways, today, we’ve got a really great show for you. I’m going to be joined by Vinnie Fisher. He’s the CEO of Fully Accountable. Vinnie and I are going to be discussing his business hybrid work model, and wait to hear, it’s very interesting and how many companies are adjusting to the new norms, no pun intended, of 2020. So again, in today’s episode, we’re going to be diving into the 2020s hybrid work method, and how it differs from remote work. We will also be talking about tips to help maintain a healthy work life environment. But before we get to Vinnie Kelsey, where are you? 

Kelsey 1:17

Hello. How are you?

Norman  1:20  

The vampire out thing today. You really went out from that.

Kelsey 1:27  

I’m glad you enjoyed it. Just wait for Christmas. 

Norman 1:32

Okay, well, I dressed up as the Travelocity Gnome. But nobody came for Halloween. So I just sat, I think that’s how I’m always gonna dress up now. 

Kelsey 1:42

I think we need some pictures of that.

Kelsey 1:47  

But before we get off topic here, we should pull it back to following us on social media. We are Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. If you are watching this clip, and you’re missing out on something, you can always go back to the YouTube page. Right now it’s Norman Farrar, where you can find all the full episodes and highlight clips that go out every single day and if you want to listen to us, and you don’t want to see our faces, you can listen on Spotify or Apple Music or Apple podcasts. Just search Lunch With Norm and join our Facebook group. I’m going to pull up the link right now and add it to the chat.

Norman  2:30  

I guess the other thing, just before we get started as well as if this is a replay, just go ahead and skip ahead and just get right into the meat of it and for those watching on my personal profile, you can always head over to Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy. That’s my fan page and you can check out whole episodes, highlights and videos and Kelsey, what do you always tell me to do? Always reinforce? 

Kelsey 2:57

Smash that like button and ring bells. 

Norman 3:02

Subscribe and ring bells. 

Kelsey 3:04

Yes, that’s right. Oh, it looks like Dr. Koz is joining us from Los Angeles. 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow. 

Norman 3:11

Oh, come on. Take the knife out of my back. 

Kelsey 3:14

Yeah, we got our first snowfall today, actually. So that’s exciting and yeah, so let us know where you’re watching from. 

Norman 3:23

That might be exciting for frosty, it might be Frosty’s magical moment, but for these old bones, not so much. 

Kelsey 3:3

You look like Santa. So. 

Norman 3:34

Oh, thank you.

Kelsey 3:37  

That’s it for me. 

Norman 3:40

All right. If you have any questions, just throw them over in the comment section and we’ll get right to them. If we don’t, we’ll make sure we get to them after the podcast. So like always, sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. All right, Vinnie. Where are you?

Vinnie 3:57

Hey, Norm.

Norman 3:58  

How are you? 

Vinnie 4:00

Good, brother. Thanks. How are you? 

Norman 4:02

Good. You were telling me just before the show used to live up in the Buffalo way? 

Vinnie 4:06

Yeah, I lived there for eight years and went to undergraduate a little community or not Community College. The school in that community called Canisius College is a Jesuit school. I lived there for eight years. Deb and I, we started our journey and family before I shipped off to law school in Ohio but yeah, as a buffalo guy for I’m a New York guy my whole life but I was a buffalo guy for eight years of that time. 

Norman 4:30

So hopefully you were there during the I’m gonna say it, people are gonna disagree but the Buffalo Bills Dynasty. 

Vinnie 4:38

Yeah, I was fortunate enough to have season tickets during those years and one of my sad but notorious claims to fame was I gave my playoff tickets away for the combat game. So I was it was a gorgeous 60 degree day in Buffalo and I was listening to Van Miller, the voice of The Bills while washing my car and my buddies had my tickets to the Houston Oilers game that I didn’t go to. 

Norman 5:08

Oh man, I remember watching it. But anyways, ah, go Bills. I’m still a Bills fan. I live up in Toronto.

Vinnie 5:16  

I got the Bill’s like, there’s a reason why that cultish following exists. Even though I, for 20 years, been really more of a Browns fan, I grew up a Giants fan. So I’ve got all kinds of issues, but I think The Bills have a warm spot in my heart, too.

Norman  5:33  

Yes.

Norman  5:35  

Hey, why don’t we just dive in a little bit about your background, if you can just give us a summary about what your background is? 

Vinnie 5:44

Yeah, my biggest part of my background is a husband of 25 years. I have four beautiful children, Deb and I have four teenagers who are either adulthood, teenagers or practicing such and I’ve been a business guy right from the beginning. I’m professionally trained as a lawyer at a law practice, a corporate M&A practice, where I learn a lot about the small and medium sized business. At the end of the day, though, when people look at me, they know of me as a good marketer and I think there’s a lot of accuracy to that and so I’ve had a journey in the digital space where I’ve owned a few larger brands. Broke one tragically, sold another one and here I am again, doing it again and we also in addition to our current operating company, I’m that guy who develops and creates and builds teams and ideas and so we have a portfolio of companies as well that I sit as the chairman of the board on, in addition to my responsibilities here, Fully Accountable.

Norman  6:48  

So Fully Accountable. You talk about this hybrid work model. Yeah. Can you tell us a bit more about that? 

Vinnie 6:55

Yeah. So, this business, I’m not an accountant, I am not a CFO, I’m not one of our controllers. Most of the things you’ve ever seen me, Bill, have been a problem, solution orientation. I’ve had a problem and I wanted to solve it. I’m no different. In this business. I had a health supplement company where we sold, our largest product was a woman’s face cream called Pure Bella. But we sold supplement products to consumers in North America, both US and Canada and while I was operating that business, we were doing mid stage eight figure company, and I had no relationship to my bottom line. We were profiting 8% when we should have really been profiting about 22%. Well, that migration, that change in my thinking as a leader of our company, led to us launching fully accountable after we sold Consumers Choice and when I was going through that, I was kind of considering what type of model we want to be and I started looking at traditional accounting firms and I noticed they were very building centric, and who they got for talent and people they hired and, like, I want to do this differently. So in 2014, actually, really February 15, when we launched to the world, I wanted our model to have a corporate model, as well as what we now call Homeys. People who are controllers and CFOs that live in other parts of our country, mostly US,  some Canada and we set out to do that. People thought we were nuts that now fast forward to 2020 and we look like overnight successes.

Norman  8:37  

A couple of weeks ago, we had Tim Francis on and Tim’s a great guy, and he talks about, you have to know your numbers, but he’s not so much on the accounting side. He’s on the Amazon side, know your PPC numbers, just understand where you are losing money or how you can lose money, how you can bleed. This is on the other side of the fence and this is more, if I understand this correctly, your company or when you talk about this hybrid work model. This is more on the accounting side, isn’t it? 

Vinnie 9:17

Yeah, so we really run the back office of eCommerce and tech companies. So to put some understanding, think fractional CFO and controller, the four positions that are necessary in an accounting company, right, the data analyst, the bookkeeper, the controller, the CFO, we offer the package to do that for companies. So we’re the workers and where we’re different. Tim is a friend I like Tim, there’s this dashboard mentality that has kind of grown up in recent time because of technology, that if you’ve got the right tools, you can learn real time information, but that hasn’t replaced the need for high production and accounting. So we say, we tie to the bank account, not to some piece of software that says something. So the variances between what the software says versus what shows up in your bank account. We live in that part of the world, what’s cash in your bank and so our team would operate their operating high transaction businesses from the accounting and finance side. 

Norman 10:20

So Vinnie, most of the people that are, we’ve probably got a third, a third, a third, from a beginner, completely new to Amazon. Intermediate, as well as people that are advanced. Can we go through some of the things that people should be looking for and I’m talking about, let’s just start right at the beginners. Beginners, intermediate, and then some advanced tips.

Vinnie 10:47  

Okay, let’s start with some of the really what I would consider, everybody should do. Oh, by the way, the way I see basic, intermediate, advanced, maybe you use different words there, but think advanced should have everything that the intermediate and the basic have, right? The idea of advanced, if the growth of your company is such that you’re ready for some of those more sophisticated things, then let’s talk about the basic stuff that everybody should be doing, right? So if you rely on Amazon as a marketplace, and all your traffic is organic in nature, then what you’re relying on is ranking, your page optimization, as well as your reviews and those three things dictate the activity to your page. That’s pretty marketing, yep, got it. Check the box. What we also say is, wait a minute, it says you’re doing most of your relationship with Amazon at that level organically, that you’re paying a cost to acquire the customer in the FBA model with Amazon. So you should be tracking, then integrating and seeing that in relationship to the privilege to get organic sales. You’re still paying for the customer, you’re just paying for it in a different way and so the acquisition cost of a consumer is a critical thing to measure whether you’re basic, or bigger, or even bigger than that and so to me, that’s the number one thing that should be measured and what’s unfortunate sometimes with Amazon businesses is you leave that category as zero, when really your cost to acquire, while it doesn’t look direct as an indirect expense in the percentage you have to pay back through FBA cost 20 to 30%, based on your model and so to me, that’s first one. Second one is, managing an inventory, right? If you’re selling a product, you still have inventories to manage. So your supply cycle, like your chain of overturning an inventory, whether it’s sitting on the warehouse floor of Amazon, or direct ship from your own company, so a management process for like calculating and managing your inventory, super critical and then of course, I think of the top 10 list of things that I when I operate my companies, I want to know refund rate. I want to know the lifetime value. But before I even get the lifetime value of a customer, I care about my shopping cart value. It’s hard to really figure out lifetime value if you’re a newer company. So I care about average order value, the amount of what I can do to add to that shopping cart. So the interesting thing in the digital world, you either get that customer the first time and you spend a bunch of money re engaging that customer or you have some type of model of reoccurring revenue and so that also needs to be tracked as well and so well, we will share with the show with our guests, but we have a kind of a Top 10 KPI Marketplace Amazon thing that we would measure if we were operating your company and so look forward to that gift at the end of the show, but kind of a thing we measure and would recommend you measure if you’re that type of business. 

Norman 14:01

Okay, very good and yes, there is going to be that gift at the end of the show, which Vinnie is going to be offering so stay tuned. Hey, I just noticed that Simon piped up here. It’s not a question but a lockdown. So hey, Simon, sorry to hear about that. I had no idea. I heard there were a couple of countries that were just skyrocketing with this sort of second phase. But sorry to hear that, keep staying tuned. Stay tuned till the end. Now you have even more of a reason to listen to the Lunch With Norm. So, okay, now Vinnie, any more insight or tips that you can give our sellers? 

Vinnie 14:44

It’s interesting. Amazon is a channel. It’s a wonderful channel and I’ve thrived well in my products, businesses using Amazon as a channel. What’s interesting going on right now  is it’s an entirely separate channel from other direct to consumer channels and so, I had a guy ask me literally as soon as Friday of last week. Hey, I’m really strong in Amazon, I’ve got room to grow there. But I want to consider opening up another direct response channel, what would you recommend and what I said to him was, I would recommend you go deeper in the room, you can grow in Amazon and now go create a whole bunch of other resources to try to expand or create your offer to work outside that platform. Now, the reason I say that is, I think that businesses need to go deeper before they go wider and so the thing that is the secret weapon of Fully Accountable is we stood for a niche. We are the largest in what we do in our category, because we clearly know who we work with. We work with eCommerce businesses that are doing seven figures in revenue and where they’re fractional or controller CFO or back office operator for that type of business. Now, can you be that clear when you have an Amazon channel? Absolutely. You are relying on your organic optimized listing, as well as the culture of reviews and the quality of the product you have. Well, there is room to not only grow the page ranking, but also to increase other things like re occurring revenue or ads on Amazon, I see right now this temptation to grow multi channel, and I would say go deeper before you go wider.

Norman  16:36  

That’s an interesting comment. Because if I talked to 10 different people, you would stand out because most people are saying, Hey, you got to get onto Shopify, you gotta get on eBay, get on here, get on there and I understand what you’re saying and that’s interesting. So if you’re getting deeper, how can you protect yourself and that’s been the question that everybody’s been asking with Amazon just randomly suppressing listings. How do you protect yourself, so you know that you’re gonna have a good fourth quarter rather than somebody calling it a false infringement claim?

Vinnie 17:18

It’s a business to run, right and so the reality is, we have, good ideas that can qualify as distractions, and most good operators, when they look at the idea of another channel, it’s a defensive hedge instead of a growth idea. If you want to grow another channel, not from a defensive hedge standpoint, but because you want to develop expertise to add expansion of customers, great. Can you afford the distraction, as well as the capital investment to do that? Great, then add that into your planning. But as a defensive hedge, the reason I don’t love it is because it’s going to become another distraction and there are hundreds and thousands of business examples where people will dabble in other areas, and they’ll destroy their company. Four out of five businesses run out of cash, 82% of companies run out of cash flow and most of that is investing in distractions. They’re good ideas there just wrongly timed and so businesses that thrive will expand, but also will build up cash. Right now, there’s a big change going on directly to consumers. It used to be you’ll do everything you can to get someone’s eyeballs paying attention to a digital acquisition, so they were buying online. Well, with the shutdown, the mass adoption rate to people buying online has changed behavioral aspects. So the brands and the micro brands that are going to thrive and do more than survive, are not going to look at the defensive edge, they’re gonna look at growth as categories.

Norman  18:56  

It’s interesting what you were just saying there because if I take a look at a lot of Amazon sellers, even when they spread out to multi channel, it’s squirrel. It’s just shiny object syndrome and when you do take your eye off the ball, that can happen if it’s not done properly.

Vinnie 19:21

I would say Norm, just to go back and forth with it, that can happen. It does happen. 95% of companies don’t see their 10th anniversary in business. What’s the reason? It’s because it’s like you’re an unruly teenager. Kelsey is a great guy. But when he was an unruly teenager of yours, he had just enough knowledge that he thought he knew everything and went out and did all this crazy stuff and you as a good dad knew he’s gonna come back down to earth and we’ll be able to get through that stage. Well, businesses go through that. They get just enough cash flow. They become the unruly teenager and they start chasing all these things. I’m that guy. I get the fear of missing out on multi-channels, but when we look at the numbers, we’re measuring and benchmarking people’s success. There’s a reason that 42 cents of every dollar is overspent either acquiring the customer or reacquiring your customer and most the asked to do with the channel envy where you’re spread too thin, and it’s the whole argument that I make, that I’m watching businesses do, you need to cut some of those channels out and go deeper. Now, I love the idea of adding one or two. But this idea of being everywhere to hedge against Amazon is anti stability of the business.

Norman  20:31  

It’s interesting, we had Tim talk about this quite a bit, it was cash flow and we had a client that came on and he was an eight figure seller. The problem was, he was doing everything themselves and because they did everything themselves, they didn’t understand how the experts worked and they lost. We saved them $800,000 in shipping fees in a year, just cash flow, I should say cash flow, but by breaking it up and doing their shipments in intervals, rather than all one time, it didn’t have to tie up so much capital and so we were able to do that and why? Because my partner is an expert in that, in logistics and supply chain management, just like with you. But people are afraid to spend money, and they spend it in the wrong places. So I love what you’re saying, getting somebody on board, going deep, like going deep and then managing it properly. Especially if you’re a seven or eight figure seller, you’re there. What makes you think that you can just do this on a whim? 

Vinnie 21:45

Well, you got there. But Norm, in defense of that guy, he got there that 8 figure plays by himself, not just speaking to another, probably someone we both know who is a great guy. He’s living almost eight figures in Amazon and he has spent no time, money or resources, investing in the development of his operations, he’s very lean, leans on the FBA structure, and runs a very lean organization. Well, the reality is, most businesses that are about to hit, you are above seven figures in revenue, let alone eight have infrastructure. I would tell you, Amazon people, if you’re there, start investing in that. Because if you want to go into other channels, and you think all the sudden that you’re going to start managing things all by yourself, that’s the problem that happens, you run a very lean operation and next thing you know, you start adding complexity to it and I believe in people over process. But without good processes added to good people, you’re never going to win that battle in your brand management, you’re going to be overtaken by distraction and dysfunction.

Norman  22:52  

100% agree. Michael Gerber, E Myth. I’m a graduate of the E myth Academy. Changed my life, goes back 25 years ago, and writing processes and making things automated and scalable. But it’s the process that makes everything flow, couldn’t do what I’m doing without processes. Yeah, learning how to delegate and having quantifiable reports, knowing when and how things have to change. But anyway, Kelsey, I think we have a question from Dr. Koz. 

Kelsey 23:31

Yes. He’s asking what are your top five channels/marketplaces?

Vinnie 23:37  

Okay, let’s start with the fairness of that question that we’re going to build off Amazon as the big boy. Let’s just start there. Let’s accept that. I know, there’s some of our listeners or watchers, who’s gonna have friction with that. But let’s just agree that Amazon has that spot.

Vinnie 23:55  

I think a channel and a marketplace are different things. I want to be really careful. Right? So, I’m a marketer, I think about lead gen and where the audience is and I would say, that’s a tough question. Because everyone’s channels are going to be a little different based on the type of business you are. So for example, I’ve loved the supplement space in the health industry. Well, our friends at Facebook don’t love supplements, for policy reasons. So I’m always in this battle with Facebook, as it relates to our health supplement company and our clients are, that’s tough. But in AdWords on Google, while we may not be able to expand above a certain number, there is such a forgotten space in AdWords as it relates to being able to acquire customers profitably. It’s funny, when people went towards all Amazon, they forgot how valuable our friends at Google and AdWord placement is and so the reason I bring up that as a friction is, I believe in channels based on audience and so back to my discussion about niching and understanding exactly who your addressable market and who your avatar is, is the channel will change. So if I sell a product that is very women based and it’s going to be either recipe or art based, I would probably use Pinterest as a massive channel to drive leads, the reverse is true. If it’s not women based in my audience, I’m probably not using Pinterest as a channel and so if my audience is older, then I’m probably leaning towards Facebook and less towards Instagram and Talker, Tik or Tweet or anything else and so the channel is really dictated dock by who your audience is. But when I look at it, just kind of straight up there, each channel has their value. I’m more afraid of people being in too many channels, and also the wrong channels and not being in five. My recommendation is being three or less and winning those massively and if you are, then you’re the size of a company that can afford individualizing your channels and add in a channel four and five. 

Norman 26:11

If your profile or if your audience and you’re right, you have to know your audience. If you don’t know your audience, you’re throwing good money out the window and the more defined that audience is, the better. If that’s Facebook, I mean, just drilling down on the interest side of things when you’re doing ads. But building and this is, I don’t know if you do this, we do this. I’m an old school marketing guy. So we build personas. So if we talk about Frankie, or Mary, or Sophia, we know that elevator pitch that we’re going to give and that’s going to fit. Like you said, Pinterest, if you’re marketing me on Pinterest, sorry, I’m not gonna be responding. But my wife, she’s on Pinterest all the time. 

Vinnie 27:06

Yeah, right. Four out of five people on the internet that are women are on Pinterest. That’s like, that’s a place you got to address if you sell some type of product that’s congruent to the marketplace of Pinterest and so I couldn’t agree more like we have eCom Eric and eCom Angela, and we have a full avatar to those two people and it’s important. Because once you know your addressable market, your copy gets better. We live from a Fully Accountable standpoint, in AdWords, like search people are looking for us. We sell a need, not a want and so because of that, we were in places like search categories and we used retargeting. If I’m a product company, I’m probably more of a want than a need and so since I’m dealing with consumerism, I’m going to be places where I’m coming top of mine. So I love Instagram and Facebook and these places, but I don’t love them as the people that I sell to aren’t there.

Norman  28:06  

Perfect. Exactly. So I think I can’t see very well, Kels as you know but Tony’s there. 

Kelsey 28:13

Yes. Tony is joining us. He says, Hi guys, great info. Do you recommend Klaviyo for lead generation? 

Vinnie 28:22  

I think it’s good. Everybody has their flavor of choice for their email service provider and we went in under the hood and looked at Klaviyo real deep, and test drove it and we found that it’s its inbox and some of its quality scores were comparable and so I’d say to me, that it’s not disqualified. If you like it as a tool, then to me, it’s about making sure it fits like within the matrix of what you’re doing. So I like Klaviyo. What I would give is what I think a more complete answer that hopefully you’re looking for is how do I use that in a way as it relates to how I’m using retargeting, or how I’m using my chat system? Today, there is like, I think Ryan Deiss probably the most credited for this octopus effect, where you have to have it be part of an entire strategy of your lead generation and so, I love email. By the way, everybody newsflash, it’s still the number one way we make revenue as business owners on the internet. It’s not other ways and so if you’re not using email as a strong part of your strategy, then you’re probably an early adopter jumping into other click things and so I love that Tony, that you’re thinking about Klaviyo his lead gen. It just fits within it and it’s a good tool. We like it. It’s robust. It does other eCommerce things in addition to just lead gen. So hopefully, someone on your team is using some of those tools as well. 

Norman 29:53

Yeah, we just call that the Blitz. We want to hit from all angles, not just one. If you’re just using one, you’re definitely missing out.

Vinnie 30:01

Yeah, no doubt. 

Norman 30:03

Okay. Dr. Koz has a comment. 

Kelsey 30:06

Yes. He says, Hey Vinnie, can you break down some recommended target ad costs, ie percentage of sales, etc? 

Vinnie 30:13

Yeah and so actually, this gift we’re going to give you in the end to tease it. I have somewhere we’re going to break that down for you in extreme detail. But let me speak about it at the level of us listening right now. It is factual, that 42 cents on average of every dollar is spent acquiring a customer. By far your largest expense in acquisition of a consumer in direct response and direct to consumer and what does that mean? We’re sending someone to a shopping cart. Marketplaces, because of the reach that someone like Amazon provides, you have a lower cost to acquire, but you still have a real cost because you’re paying back the king, and FBA a big chunk of that, so maybe your 30%. But the largest expense, by far is acquisition of the consumer and even right next to that is reacquiring your customer, just because you get them once doesn’t mean you might not have to go back to them again and if you’re somebody who’s a one and done and you have to record them all the time, then you’re going to measure whether or not how much you’re spending to reacquire or reengage that exact same customer who bought from you once right behind that in the product world is this idea that we spoke about earlier by Norman and his partner and their expertise, it’s managing your inventory. I’ll tell you, I watched so many people get excited about their offer popping and the first thing they do is they go buy as much inventory because they want to get their price down to their cost of goods sold and today, with the tech stack out there, I think be very careful about over buying inventory and managing a ratio where you can either on demand or quarterly or maybe even something closer to monthly manage your inventory load is that going to be fiscally better for you than buying these big, massive dumps and hoping for freight to show up and then run out. It’s so much volatility. So that would be the next thing I measure and then it’s a function of things. Right? So I believe in the idea of benchmarking. Benchmarking is something I didn’t understand. It’s this idea of measuring you against yourself now versus yesterday, last month, last quarter, last year, and then also benchmarking against the industry you’re in. So for example, that health supplement company had, it wasn’t it’s I knew that the industry would have supported about 22 to 25% is my profit margin, that I would have realized that my 8%, I was losing 14 points a month. So if I’m running what I consider a traditional Amazon Marketplace, my margins plus minus 30% and I’m making 15%. Like, gosh, darn it, I better know where my leaky bucket is leaking, so I can address those issues and the only way I see to effectively do that is to take that P&L statement you have and benchmark it against yourself as well as the industry.

Norman  33:08  

Great answer and one of the things I like to add to is, for me, I love recurring revenue. So what ends up happening, it’s a little bit different model, because I’ll spend a lot more to acquire. For me, I like to go up to breakeven, first time buy. If they’re buying my soap, great, I’ll give it to them, basically. I’ll spend as much as I need to break even to get them to buy it. But once I got them, then they’re hooked and you know what? It’s like press releases. So we work a lot with press releases and it’s like press releases. It’s one and done. So many people are like Oh, it didn’t work. Well, why didn’t it work? Because you didn’t use it properly and that’s the same thing here. If you’re not going back and sending something to your client, an email, a text message, something to acquire that customer. They might not remember who their soap guy was. 

Vinnie 24:16

Absolutely. It’s so noisy, right? The beautiful thing about technology today is it’s allowed more people like you and I Norm, to enter the marketplace as an operator, that has also made it noisy and as a result of that we need to fine tune and improve our marketing message. If you think about even before all this world shut down, direct to consumer as a category was still lower and what the theorists thought what should have been the adoption rate by now and so you and I, were trained at a time where we spend every dollar we can just to get him to be a customer. I think we’re about to see a change in our industry, where cash flow is really going to win the brand day and what I mean by that is, I still would spend $1 to get $1 to get a customer, just the old school marketer in me. But there are things that are going to matter, engagement reengagement, how much my inventory is going to be? The people that can actually acquire a customer and not give every dollar away, can afford to do things, to re engage, ad reoccurring. This next journey of direct to consumer isn’t going to be about convincing people to buy online, it’s going to be about taking advantage of the adoption rate.

Norman  35:39  

One of the other areas that people aren’t really looking into and Paul Baron came on and was talking about this through. It works through the Facebook Messenger, but you could do it yourself just doing Google searches, but that is creating or finding nano influencers, and getting them to be brand ambassadors. So now it’s free. You get them to promote for you, you get them to buy the product, basically at full value or a few points off. They’re spreading the word and it’s just new school, compared to old school marketing, which I absolutely love. 

Vinnie 36:18

Well, I’ll tell you this. I mean, people know me. They’ve known I’ve been around awhile my kids called me OG, but I made my first run, my second and my third run on affiliate marketing. I think of affiliate marketing as a sales force. They’re doing the legwork for you. I quite honestly look at the micro influencer as just another version of affiliate marketing. They’re doing the work and so to me, when you look at real strong brand deployment, affiliate marketing is probably one of the best weapons in digital marketing and it blows my mind how people are not running to affiliate marketing as a way to grow, expand their brand. 

Norman 37:02

Absolutely. 100% agree. Kelsey, is there another question? 

Kelsey 37:06

Yep and just to let you guys know, it is about 12:42. 

Norman 37:10

We got five minutes. 

Kelsey 37:12

Okay and so what’s your top email marketing Shopify app?

Vinnie 37:17  

Yeah, there’s a few of them out there. The ones at the top of the marketplace, they’re kind of all the same. I have a philosophy that I use with my team, I want the persons who are going to use them to use them. I think there’s a mentality going on in digital right now, about who’s got the competitive edge in automation and who’s got the best tool. I actually think, who are the people using the tools, what they have to their best level. Right now, there’s this kind of thing going on that people are over buying tools expecting their things to change. I wish so many people put more energy into the content of their email as they would which tool they’re using. Because those ones that are rated are all very competitive. I don’t actually, honestly, I’m tipping my hand, say this one versus that one, I would say use one of the ones that best fits your organizations and you can ask your friends on Facebook or a small network you have and I’m sure Norman, his team would have a big strong opinion about that. But regardless of which one you use, to me, I would really critically push into this automation thing that’s creeping into teams that somehow here’s a set it and forget it mentality and I think it’s watering down the quality of engagement and content.

Norman  38:38  

I talked to people about understanding or learning more about apps. So Excel is the best one. So they put a plus sign, equals, you get your sum and that’s about it and if people only knew the power of that spreadsheet, and what the time it could save, and then you apply that to all these different apps that are out there. It’s incredibly powerful, but they’re useless until you either find an expert, so go out and outsource it to an expert. Yeah. Or sit down and watch the bloody training videos.

Vinnie 39:19

Do the work, right and so learning without execution is just a dream.

Norman  39:25  

Right. 

Vinnie 39:27

Part of the problems with tech today is like I think there’s not enough people pushing into execution. They just want to dream about the automation that’s out there. Also, we get dashboard envy and suddenly we think we’re going to solve the problems of our converting or lack of converting offer by having the whiz bang next tool and maybe we could work on dialing in on the Avatar and the addressable market and how we communicate with him or her.

Norman  39:56  

I see Tony’s got another question and we’re getting right down there, by the way. 

Kelsey 40:02

Is messenger marketing with ManyChat’s still doing well? 

Vinnie 40:05

Yeah, I think all of them. I mean, ManyChat, just the tool, I think, I love the idea of the spider web effect. To me, ManyChat can be used, it’s a pickup rate. So, in the early days, when I had my own shopping cart, I would use Amazon as an exit strategy. If you were leaving my page, I would pop up a coupon to get you to go to Amazon to buy off Amazon, I still love that strategy. I like ManyChat in the footer of email. I like ManyChat in the delivery, it’s a pickup strategy, where I can automate my deliverables to the consumer, and look at it as another way to create communication. If you look at stuff out there that says 7 to 10 times someone needs to see your stuff and to be a buyer. Well, that’s true and there’s these throttles on algorithms that say that every 7 to 10 gets throttled. Well, if you extrapolate that out, you might need 70 to 100 impressions on somebody before they become a buyer. So every tool that you can add to the arsenal, like ManyChat is only going to make your engagement or your retarget activity that much better. 

Norman 41:13

So Vinnie, I know we’re tight for time today, you’ve got a hard cut off in a couple minutes. Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we got to let you go?

Vinnie 41:25

I think the thing that I like to do is that I love how Amazon is a marketplace that has allowed business owners to get into seven figures with a very lean team. But that next stage of growth requires adding people into your organization, whether you do that on an outsourced model and you let the heartbeat manage outsourced resources, and agencies where you build and develop internally or a little bit of both, which is where I tend to believe that is critical to operational growth. Like this idea of automating your way there is going to run up against a wall someday, because you’re not going to be able to sell that business, because you will trap yourself into a high paying job if you’re the only one pulling the levers. So I would double click on that, as you continue to grow out your organization unless you just plan to always run it yourself. But if you really want to truly sell something, and you’re the only one there, you’re gonna have a problem if you haven’t grown that beyond your shadow and so I have a gift for you Norm, I told you about that I want to give to everybody and it’s at fullyaccountable.com/lunchwithnorm. In there, I wrote a book called the CEOs mindset. It’s a best selling book that helps you with this exact idea of growing your business beyond your shadow. We also wouldn’t want  to give you false prophets. It’s not the top line that patients which keep in your pocket at the end of the month and so we really care about that and then we’ve given you resources of critical KPIs and what I would do to use internal versus external resources as I develop my operational team.

Norman  43:02  

That is an incredible bonus and thank you so much for offering that.

Vinnie 43:07  

You’re welcome. I love it. I love your energy Norm. I like people like The Beard Guy and, whatever, I’m on this mission right now, where we’re doing quite well, we’re exploding because of the marketplace and what’s going on. But we’re at the stage where our mission is to double the profit margin of 10,000 companies. Well, we’re not going to be the service provider for all of them. So if we can provide resources to help you develop that and have that and some will work with and some will won’t, then we’re going to get that much closer to our mission if we can get more people doing that. 

Norman 43:42

Fantastic. I see one question snuck in, you have time for that? 

Vinnie 43:45

Yeah, let’s do it Norm. 

Norman 43:46

All right. 

Kelsey 43:47

Because of the 80-20 principle, besides Amazon, what is the second or third tool you would recommend people focus on? 

Vinnie 43:55

So I think someone in direct response marketing, direct to consumer engagement, you have to make a decision, are you driving them to your Amazon shopping cart, or to your own? Because if you’re going to drive them to your own, now you actually have to develop an offer, something that converts. If you’re driving a new optimized listing, that I only have to work on ad copy that gets to the part of that. So first and foremost, before you look at this idea of a tool, or a focus, am I driving more eyeballs to my Amazon Marketplace, or am I looking to expand my eyeballs and add more to my own retail cart? Let’s assume for the sake of that discussion, you want both. You want to expand Amazon and you want to add to your own retail cart. Well, those are different activities and as a direct response marketer who started my career, really without Amazon being one of my go to moves. I learned to write offers and get people to come directly to my shopping cart. So for me, I like both. I do inherently believe that I don’t want to be incumbent to one channel. I think businesses have to focus on single points of failure, just like I don’t want to have one processing account for merchant processing. I don’t want to have one bank. I don’t want to have one channel. I love the idea of adding a second channel. But before you get there, you got to decide, am I driving into my Amazon cart or am I building out a whole nother methodology and expertise in driving them to my own shopping cart?

Norman  45:30  

Very good. All right, Vinnie. Well, thank you for being on the podcast today. How do people contact you? 

Vinnie 45:37

I’m very accessible in vinniefisher.com. I have all my social footprints. We also developed, wecare@fullyaccountable.com. Drop us an email, go to our website, find us. We are very accessible. We want to help people and just take advantage of our resources at fullyaccountable.com/lunchwithnorm. Those are great resources for you to get moving and I just double dog dare you to start reading and take advantage of those. 

Norman 46:05

A double dog dare. There we go.

Norman  46:08  

All right, so I’m gonna let you go. I know you got to get on another call. But once again, thanks again and I got to I am going to have you back on the podcast. 

Vinnie 46:16

Thanks Norm, it was really great to be here today. 

Norman 46:18

All right. See you later, Vinnie. 

Vinnie 46:20

See you buddy.

Norman  46:21  

Alright, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the show today. I know I sat back and I learned a bit myself. Vinnie was awesome, and we’ll get him back on. But before we do anything else, Kelsey.

Kelsey 46:36  

Hello. 

Norman 46:37

Where did you go? There you are. Alright, what should we do? 

Kelsey 46:40

All right. Follow us on social media, if you haven’t already. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or on everything and if you’re watching now and you still haven’t, please hit that like button. It does so, so much good hitting that like. A share is even better, get more eyeballs on us and we are a podcast. So if you’re watching on or if you want to watch us on like Apple or Spotify, we’re on everything. Just search Lunch With Norm and yeah, we’ve got our Facebook page or our Facebook group. It’s still in the baby phases. It’s still growing. It’s right here, you can search us. It’s Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA & eCommerce Collective. You can join, there’s three questions you need to answer to get in. But other than that, it’s a great opportunity to ask your questions to Norm. Any advice, we’ve got former guests from the show on answering questions. So yeah, it’s a great place for anyone, Amazon, eCommerce beginner, intermediate and advanced.

Norman  47:53  

It’s for online sellers to grow their business and it’s not just me, it’s a bunch of people answering questions, all part of the group. So we’ve got a bunch of experts and we’ve got a bunch of people that are in the group that all contribute so trying to really grow that community and I guess, okay, to wrap things up, just please subscribe to our newsletter. It just came out today. It doesn’t suck. We have all sorts of content, comes out every Monday. Looks great. If you want you can go to normanfarrar.com or you can go to Lunch With Norm and just subscribe. So, next Wednesday is Cassandra appearing again. So Cassandra Craven from Helium 10. She’s going to be talking about social media and building influencers. Then we got Mr. King, Kevin King coming on for his November appearance. So I can’t wait. That’s on Friday and I think that’s it for now. Yup, go ahead Kels.

Kelsey 49:02

So if you do have any questions from today, or if you want to get your questions in for Kevin or Cassandra, you can head over to the Facebook group, where I made a post where you can put in your questions that you have towards either Norm or Cassandra or Kevin or Vinnie too if you didn’t get your question in in time. So yeah, you can fill it out there and I think that’s it. 

Norman 49:28

Okay. So remember to tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon, Eastern Standard Time and everybody, thank you so much for being part of our community. Thank you and enjoy the day.