Episode: 93
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Marcia Reece, Raja Hamza Rasheed, Mark Koncz, Simon Booth and Dr Koz Forensics Detectors, five loyal fans of Lunch with Norm.
Subtitle: Meet the Fans!
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-93-meet-the-fans/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm..Norman Farrar introduces Marcia Reece, Raja Hamza Rasheed, Mark Koncz, Simon Booth and Dr Koz Forensics Detectors, five loyal fans of Lunch with Norm.
This episode will talk about the experience of our guests with Lunch with Norm and The Beard Nation. We’ll be getting to know the people behind the keyboards and usernames, and diving into their personal life, business, and what they have planned for 2021.
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!
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Norman 0:04
Hey everyone, 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 0:23
All right, well today we have a very special episode, we have fan day and the more I learned about the five guests that are going to be on here, the more incredible it was for me. Wait till hear some of these stories and who has been listening and actually part of the Beard Nation? It’s incredible. I can’t wait. So anyways Kels, where are you?
Kelsey 0:50
Hey, welcome everyone.
Norman 0:51
Oh, there you are broken mic. You’re gonna sign or what?
Kelsey 0:57
Is it not working?
Norman 0:58
Oh, it sounds like you’re going through an electrical storm or something. But that’s fine.
Kelsey 1:05
Okay, we’ll have to make that. Alright. So let’s get started. We got a bunch of things going.
Norman 1:13
Kels, I’m going to probably have to just go over this right now. So right now I’m in the fetal position, while Kelsey goes and fixes his mic. Anyways, it was working two seconds ago, trust me, we’ve got a special show. Not only do we have the five special guests that we’re going to be talking about, but we also have that giveaway. So at the end of the show, we’re going to be giving away a set of Airpod Pros. So you had to enter the contest prior to the podcast. But at the end of the show, we are going to be giving that away. Also just wanted to touch on a couple of things, a bit of housekeeping. If you are listening to this on a replay, you can skip ahead, you didn’t win the Airpod Pros. So anyway, if you are on my personal page, flip over to Lunch with Norm, a.k.a The Beard Guy, and you’ll be able to hear the full episodes, highlights and other forms of content. So waiting for Mr. Kelsey to come back on. Hopefully his mic is going to be okay.
Kelsey 2:18
Is it better?
Norman 2:19
Hello? No, you’re absolutely broken up staticky. So yeah, not sure if it’s your headset or not. But anyways, let’s welcome some of the people here, Tom. Hey, great to see you. Nathan, great to see you and anybody, this will be a fetal position show probably in the next few seconds if Kelsey can’t get back on. But anyway, why don’t we just sit back, relax, Yep?
Kelsey 2:53
Is it working out?
Norman 2:54
It’s working now.
Kelsey 2:57
Okay perfect. Okay, sorry. So we have all of our guests going. It’s a live show, this happens. But we made it. So we have five awesome people, we got Dr. Koz, we have Marcia, Simon, Mark, and Raja. So we’re going to do this kind of like a single interview style. We’ll bring up one at a time and we actually have a bunch of different giveaways. I think we have a total of five or six, including some chocolates, some seal detectors. A foam, I believe it’s a foam copper bond sanitizer. Marcia will explain, we got a bunch of different stuff. But it’s gonna be awesome. So yeah, enjoy the show. We have Dr. Koz up first. So I’ll bring them up.
Norman 3:46
All right and Hey Andrew, where are you in the world today? Usually or Ethiopia or something like that? Doctor Koz, how are you sir?
Koz 3:55
Mr. Norm, doing very well. Thank you.
Norman 3:59
It is a pleasure to have you on. I know that between all five of you, you seem to be on every podcast and always ask some really great questions. So Hey, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing? Oh, by the way, thank you. We received a little package the other day, and really appreciate talking about quality products. I mean, everything that we talked about in this podcast you have in your products. So congrats.
Ko 4:29
Well, thanks Norm. Look, actually, what you’re talking about is the kitchen leak detector, and the CO Detector and I was just telling Kelsey, we’ll be giving two packs away today. So that’s up to you guys to figure that one out. But thanks for having us on Norm and you know what? I actually went through a list of all the nuggets and bazookas you’ve been giving us the past month. Kevin King, Wilfried with search, PPC with Dan Petterson, Tony Zagare with eBay. These are things that he’s actually helped me with personally. Carlos Alvarez with Amazon live, yourself of course with press releases. The past three weeks, I’ve gone very, very strong and press releases, great return Norm. Thank you.
Norman 5:18
You’re very welcome.
Koz 5:19
Also Craig darling, my friend, Google My Business 10:30 another tutorial with him private. So Norm, you’re bringing massive value not just to the community, but to people like myself. You’re taking us from here to here and anyway, so I’m Dr. Koz. I operate the forensics detectors Norm to answer your first question. We do a lot of different guests detectors, very techy geeky stuff, very high tech electronics that not many people specialize in. I’ve been doing it for over 20 years, we sell carbon monoxide detectors to a variety of different industries. Nitrogen dioxide detectors, toxic gas detectors, and they are off the shelf products but a portion of my sales are specialized products that folks have to consult and call and we have to specialize the products for certain situations. But that’s basically it no matter what we do. We try to use Amazon, we’re heavy on Amazon at the moment probably at 40%. Selling through Amazon, which as you can see behind me we’re doing our own warehousing. So we ship directly, merchant fulfilled, we have FBA and Shopify and thanks again to Tony, he got me into eBay, he inspired me to go to eBay, which was a good call. We have the Shopify integrations with Walmart, which is small, but still something there.
Norman 7:00
Hey, Doctor Koz. How did you find getting onto Walmart? Was it easy, was there a long waiting period? What did you think of that process?
Koz 7:10
It was straightforward actually. I think I was listening to Seller Sessions with Danny and someone said, Yeah, there’s a plugin and integration into Shopify. I popped it in, and bang, everything was up within Walmart instantly. It was just everything was sucked into Walmart and I was up 24 hours and it was very seamless, very painless.
Norman 7:36
So you didn’t have to go through the application process?
Koz 7:41
No actually, there was an application process, but for whatever reason it was very quick. I was up very fast. It was painless. So that’s basically Norm, folks like myself we don’t have any support anyway, other than yourself and some other folks that I’ve personally listened to very, very carefully. I’ve been listening to you for over three years Norm.
Norman 8:12
Three years?
Koz 8:14
Yeah. I remember first seeing you in one of the podcasts. It was live and this man with a beard comes on and everyone’s like, Norm, he’s got five factories in China. He’s got 10 brands, is doing eight plus figures. He’s got two Lamborghinis. I’m like, I have to check this guy out and follow him very carefully.
Norman 8:36
I don’t have Lamborghinis. I can tell you that. Not my style.
Koz 8:41
You’re a very modest man. Actually, I listened to you on Danny’s podcast a few days ago. You’re a very modest man.
Norman 8:49
That’s funny to hear. Oh, yeah. I was gonna say three years ago. Did I even have a beard? But Yep, it’s been grown for a bit a matter of fact, I was just telling Marcia this. I almost lost the whole beard and I don’t know if you saw back then. But I came out looking like Yosemite Sam. Because I had burnt them during a barbecue or grilling and yeah, all right here we got and all it was was like this and I look like yeah, the cartoon Yosemite Sam. So I’m really curious. Well first of all, Tony Zagare has been absolutely fantastic too. I mean, I know he’s helped a lot of our listeners just Hey, people reached out to him and they got advice from him and he’s awesome. ebay. eBay is one of these hidden treasures. eBay guys, like eight years ago, or 10 years ago, everybody was selling on eBay and it turned out to suck. It really did. It was a horrible platform for people selling brands. I got off of it. Everybody I knew got off of it and how Amazon is streaming a lot of private label sellers right now, but they’ve come back and not only are they helpful, you get a dedicated rep. Integration like through ink frog, or whatever you want to use is Uber easy. They have brand pages, they have all sorts of things that you can sell and one of the podcasts I was saying that we had a client that had hazmat issues five times in a row, and we took three of their products and ended up selling $150,000 a month on eBay. Now, I mean, these were good products. But even on Amazon it was, I think they sold a little bit more on Amazon. But eBay killed it for them. That doesn’t happen. That was a homerun for eBay. But yeah, when you said eBay and all these other outlets, it’s great. I’m glad you got that exposure. I’m glad Tony was able to help you out on that too.
Koz 10:57
Actually all these people are inspirations. I actually didn’t follow up with Tony. But again, the point is you’re planting nuggets in folks like myself, and we go off sometimes, we do contact for example, I have contacted Craig. I have not contacted Tony, but the process he inspired me with was so easy and we got into eBay. Thanks to Tony. So kudos, Tony. Cheers, mate.
Norman 11:23
I hope he’s listening. So I know Tony’s product too and actually we all went showing up at the door one day, and it’s incredible. Like I thought it was a good branding guy. Tony knows how to package cool. Yeah, his product is incredible. So if there was, Oh Kelsey. Okay, so what are we doing?
Kelsey 11:47
I’m just throwing it in, we’ll have like three more minutes, and then we’ll go up to the next one.
Norman 11:55
Okay. All right.
Norman 11:57
Let’s see. Man oh man. Chill, I give him a timeout. But if you think of something that you got off the show, I know you said a few things. Was there any one single piece of information that’s really helped you out?
Koz 12:15
Let me see. I don’t think there is one, to be honest. As I went through my list of my favorites, and I was thinking about this exact question the past few days. I just love when you bring the quality guests on. They give us the bazookas. You wanted another name for nuggets, the bazookas and actionable items and those folks like Kevin King, yourself, Wilfried, Tony, Craig, there are so many quality people you’re bringing on that give that these actual blood and I know sometimes it could be superficial or it could be a repeat, but we need that information to be repeated multiple times. So keep doing a great job Norm and thank you. Thanks again.
Norman 13:05
Hey, you’re very welcome and thanks for coming on.
Koz 13:09
You bet.
Kelsey 13:11
Okay, awesome. So thank you, Doctor Koz. Next I believe we have Raja so all right. Raja up. Okay.
Norman 13:23
Hey, how’s it going, sir?
Raja 13:26
I’m really awesome. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show and how about you Norm?
Norman 13:32
I’m doing okay, so before we get into it. Guys, if you want to hear some really cool things that are happening, our fans, we’ve got four more to talk to today. Wait till you hear some of their stories. It will blow you away. I was shocked to hear some of the stuff that’s happening. Like Raja here, he’s very well known all over and we’re getting into a couple of nuggets here in a second from him or bazookas. Tony, or Tony. Dr. Koz all right, bazookas do sound a lot better than nuggets. Anyway, look, if you’ve got people that want to learn a bit more, here’s some really incredible stories about brands building their Amazon, or Shopify or eCommerce stores. tag them, get them on, get them listening to today’s episode, because it is cool. It might not be our typical guests. However, these are fans that have done incredible things with their brands and Raja, you’re very well known in the eCommerce world. So why don’t we talk a little bit about you and what you’re doing?
Raja 14:41
Sure. So the very first thing is that, like right now, I’m running an agency called ecommanagers.com. We are providing A to Z Amazon account management services like which actually starts from finding the profitable products till after sales services like which includes a content, ranking, PPC my favorite topic and after sales services, which actually includes a customer services and like that, like we actually give a very strong hand holding sport to a newbie to make that person or to make that seller have a real experience in that particular stuff. So if you are someone who is having no product in your industry or in the Amazon or in any kind of eCommerce business, so we actually have them from start to tail and so this is our like we are doing right now under the brand of eco managers. Along with that I also own another website that is called eCom stories with Raja. So eCom stories are actually giving more and more information about the real heroes of the eCom industry. One is in front of me, Mr. Norm Farrar the Beard Guy and there are these other heroes as well. So I’m trying to keep shooting them and like sharing their stories how they build on like, right now we have a guy who is in the eCommerce industry, when there is a no eCommerce, no Amazon are known for actually see Amazon to go on and till now, Amazon is making the billions and billions and becoming the wealthiest company in the world and this is the guy who actually see Amazon to keep on going. So that’s one of the valuable things in my eyes.
Norman 16:27
Great. Now let’s talk about, I’m gonna put you on the spot for a sec okay, because I know you’re great at this. How do you find best selling products? Where are the opportunities?
Raja 16:38
Yeah, it totally depends upon, like how we’re gonna grant eyes that particular thing. When we are talking about the finding earnings, or the high ROI products. So that actually depends upon the different values, and different criterias. Like we in house, we have the 30-35 different filters from their product should we pass on and we actually use different kinds of the tools as well, like the most favorite and the most well known tool in Helium 10, Viral Launch, Jungle Scout, they are the tools which actually help us to find profitable products and along with that, we have the our in house manual process as well, which actually help us to find the highest ROI products. So this is how we can find the hot selling products.
Norman 17:22
Very good. So what about your top three strategies to develop an Amazon business?
Raja 17:27
Yeah, that’s the same question which I actually asked to you in my show.
Norman 17:32
I want to get it right back at you.
Raja 17:36
Yeah, and that episode is going to be aired very soon and I will post that in the group as well. So my opinion, the top three strategies to build up a perfect Amazon business. So that actually concludes the three main things. Number one is that you need to have a very unique and a value added product with you. The second thing is that like how you’re going to present that particular product on your listing, how you’re going to present your product in front of the potential buyers and the third thing is that how you’re going to capture the space in the mind of that particular customer, like how you’re going to brand that particular product or how you’re going to market our particular products. So I think that these are the top three strategies. A unique value and what’s your presentation? Like how are you going to present that particular product and the third thing is how you can create a marketing strategy or a branding to give a recall value to the customers. So these are the top three for me.
Norman 18:38
This is great, because I get to interview you instead of you interviewing me. So Hey, out of everything that you’ve heard from the podcast, is there anything that stands out or were there any guests that stood out in your eyes and why?
Raja 18:58
Yeah, there are a lot of different guests who actually give me that particular kind of stuff and they actually stand with that particular thing. Right? Like I actually talk with them in terms like what kind of the things you were actually following and what kind of things you have right now. So there are a lot of different guests like my favorite of which is mine. Most ever like previously you also do the episode with that particular resident PPC Person Mr. Brian Johnson. My first episode is actually with Brian as well. So there are a lot of guests who actually make a lot of value in me and in the community as well and one of those particular values is in front of me, Mr. Norman Farrar.
Norman 19:44
I’m gonna turn red. Kelsey, somehow you have to warn me there’s got to be like a button or something that you’re coming on.
Kelsey 19:56
I know, maybe next time we do this.
Raja 20:02
There should be a like 10, 9, 8, 7.
Norman 20:06
There we go.
Kelsey 20:10
So I do want to just do a quick shout out for the prizes today. We have a bunch of different things. We got a box of chocolate, we have CO detectors, you have a cool sanitizing phone patch for your phone, $25 gift card. So we’re gonna put this in a giant thing and just keep picking winners for the show. So if you are interested, this is for US residents only and you need to put #beardnation. So if you’re watching right now, #beardnation. We already have a couple people entering. But there’s a ton of cool stuff happening.
Norman 20:46
At the end of it of course we’ve got the biggie, which is the Airpod Pro.
Kelsey 20:53
So yeah, I think we’re at that time. So thank you so much, Raja. If you have anything else to say about your business or anything.
Norman 21:03
Don’t you cut Raj off before I thank him.
Norman 21:05
Raja? Raja’s frozen, I think. Anyways, frozen Raja, thank you so much for being part of the community and coming on today.
Kelsey 21:20
Alright. Thank you, Raja. So we have Marcia up next.. Oh, we’ll hear from her now and we’ll end this thing. Is it Marcia or Marsha?
Marcia 21:39
Marcia spelled CIA like Marcia on the Brady Bunch.
Kelsey 21:44
Perfect.
Norman 21:46
I hate when he wins.
Marcia 21:49
I love when Kelsey wins. I’m always fighting for Kelsey.
Norman 21:54
Now Marcia, you have an incredible backstory. Do you want to just touch on that, but people don’t know. They don’t know. I mean, it’s incredible when we started talking, and you told me Oh, let’s go through it. So let’s start off with the Chalk story.
Marcia 22:19
I’d love to. I love products. I love bringing simple, affordable, effective products to market that solve ordinary problems. Back in the 1970s, my daughter was little, and I didn’t let her have battery toys. I believe a child’s batteries up here and I wanted her to use her creativity in her mind. But back then, the only chalk existed with a little thin sticks that came out of China and they were dusty and dirty and stained and broke and they were full of lead. So I went to a place called a library, nothing online back then and I started to research how to make chalk and I came up with this phenomenal formulation that’s never been duplicated and I introduced sidewalk chalk to the world. I grew it to five factories, three in China, two in the US. I was one of the first Western women to go to China in the 1980s. It was a trip of a lifetime. We sold to all the mass market brick and mortar. I sold Walmart chain wide when they had 66 stores and I had to get this newfangled thing called a fax machine to accept their orders. Then in February 1999, the company had exploded. We had 72% global market share, and I sold it to the world’s largest toy company and then we put together the six person launch team to bring Power Rangers into our distribution system and it went to a billion dollars in 14 months.
Norman 23:53
Okay, so that was just like almost just something common that you just said. So you sold the chalk and by the way, I have to thank you. My driveway was covered with your chalk many, many days because of Kelsey and his brothers. But you got involved with Power Rangers and what was that? You just kind of got a billion dollars in sales.
Marcia 24:21
In 14 months. We have nine factories around the world. It was the craziest of times all those buyers that I had worked my tail off to get a phone call to, they were now calling me begging for a product which we didn’t have enough but I learned a lot. I learned so much about consumer buying habits and demographics and how to find the right colors in the right packaging all the old fashioned way. The next product Norm that I brought to market again filled a need, the gel filled wrist dress that goes in front of the keyboards and the mouse pads. I invented that product and I licensed it globally to piece logic out of Boulder, Colorado and they took it national, then I did products for companies in Montreal and Cambridge, England and Germany and Europe. I helped a lot of people bring their products into the American market. So I was on top of the world until I fell off. I developed a deadly Mrsa staph infection in the lowest part of my spine. I was fighting the battle of my life for six months. I had final rites twice, six surgeries and had to learn to walk again and that’s when I became crazy about finding a way to kill germs that didn’t use chemicals that were all natural and I went back to the way I know how to make products. I went back into the studies and the millennials before and I found out the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans used copper to kill germs. So I started to research that and came up with a product line and started a company called Staywell Copper. We manufacture copper patches that go on the back of iPhones, we carry 80% of our germs on our hands. This kills 99.97% when you touch it. We touch our phone 2,714 times a day on average and when you’re using your phone, this copper is by your eyes, your nose, your mouth. The warm, moist places where germs get into your body. So we came out with our phone patch. We came out with a fabulous copper roller that you can wear around your neck, you can hook it on your keychain, you can rub it between your hands to kill germs, none of those chemical hand sanitizers. You can use it on the keypads at the bank and anyone today as part of Norm’s Bearded Nation, if you go to our website staywellcopper.com and you order a roller, I will send you a phone patch free. My gift today is just for Norm’s people. But I also want to thank you and Kelsey for all you brought into my life. I’m an old brick and mortar girl. I’m the grandmother of the team today. I don’t know a lot about eCommerce but I learn every day. On October 29, I started a promise to myself to walk every day so I listened to a podcast while I walked to make it go faster and somehow Norm, I found you. I don’t even know how and I’m walking trying to text questions and I misspelling things then trying to walk in text and so I actually put 10 o’clock Monday, Wednesday and Friday on my calendar and I set my timer on my phone to ring so I don’t miss your show. I’ve learned so much from Craig Darling and from Diana hypnotic copywriter and from that Kevin guy who tells me about Amazon and I don’t know all your people yet but I love listening and even if I just get one nugget, it’s always something that I can challenge my team with I heard this on Norm today, why don’t we do it and all my team knows about Norm now. So we’re in the process of bringing copper to the world to kill germs all natural. No chemicals, lasts forever. That’s kind of my story. If I die with the product plan in my hand, I’d die very very happy. I love bringing good products to market.
Norman 28:32
Wow, that is awesome. Like I said, the five people we have are all incredible. What a story. Oh, and you know what? To top everything off Marcia, I gotta love you even more. Your husband is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Marcia 28:52
He is. They used to be the Colorado Rockies.
Norman 29:02
Oh, well. We don’t talk about that here in Canada, we say Montreal Canadians but what the heck?
Marcia 29:08
Not a lot of your players back in the day.
Norman 29:11
Yes.
Norman 29:14
But anyways, so many ties to Canada. We love them very dearly. Cory Ceric, who played for The Avalanche actually rented the house I own in Colorado when he was playing for the Avalanche and invited my husband and I down into the locker room. Well, Ted went into the locker room of the Avalanche, I waited outside. But nice wonderful people from Canada.
Norman 29:37
I think so.
Marcia 29:40
You can keep the snow and cold. I’ll keep my Arizona Central.
Norman 29:45
I hate the snow and cold. But one other thing that I wanted to talk about, and that’s understanding your product as well. Because when we were talking a little bit before the show, I didn’t know this so you can get copper but if you don’t do your product research and you don’t understand it, people will lacquer it so that the aesthetics are beautiful. We don’t want that.
Marcia 30:06
Right? My pencil holder is a mosque on your beautiful Copper Mug, gorgeous, won’t kill one single germ, because the minute they lacquer it so it doesn’t tarnish, they sealed in copper’s ability to execute the DNA of germs. It all works by killing the DNA so it doesn’t reproduce, and all copper is not created the same. Ours is medical grade, antimicrobial copper. It’s made in the USA, we use seven veterans in our assembly currently, and it’s all made from recycled copper. So we’re doing our best to be responsible citizens and not destroy our beautiful planet, yet keep our people clean. We have 200 people in our focus group who have used our product since March of 2018. No one has any kind of cold for months. Pardon?
Norman 31:04
Not even the virus?
Marcia 31:07
No. Don’t tell the FDA that.
Norman 31:08
Alright, we’ll keep it to ourselves. Marcia, thank you so much. It’s been great.
Marcia 31:15
Love to Awesome.
Norman 31:18
Thanks. I will talk to you soon, Marcia.
Marcia 31:22
Thank you.
Kelsey 31:24
Okay, next up, we have Simon. So I’ll go ahead and bring Simon up on screen. There he is.
Norman 31:32
There’s the man.
Norman 31:36
Isn’t that incredible? A billion dollars in sales from the Power Rangers and then it was like, do you remember the gel foam rest? I got about five of them in the back there in a drawer. But anyways, Simon, you are one of the most active people when we go live and also in the group. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Simon 32:05
Well, I am active because I don’t get out much because I’m locked down. I’m in the UK and so I run a business. I’m into my 18th year and I run it’s called Kitty Moto. It is essentially a balanced bike brand. We developed and created the balanced bike market. When I started this, there was no one else on the planet doing balanced bikes, or balanced bikes, or kids bikes without pedals, or stabilizers or training wheels for a two to five year olds, and now there’s like 1000 competitors, and they’re all like kind of similar but I still do pretty unique ones. I make them look like motorcycles. So they’re quite different. I supply pretty much every single motorcycle brand. There is Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha all of the big names I label for them. So I also have my own brand. I’m essentially a B to B. So it’s been distribution, wholesale, brick and mortar. So a little bit like Marcia, where I’m relatively new to eCommerce. But the start of the demise of the high street retail has kind of pushed me into a whole new direction. My business was on a high in sort of 2015, 2016 and then 17 was a pretty dismal year. We saw one of my biggest customer, Toys R Us, they went under and then there were like a whole slew of retailers that just just went under.
Norman 34:01
When they went under, did you lose money?
Simon 34:04
We lost money in the fact that we lost orders. But fortunately, I didn’t have any stock in there. I’ve know people that had they were just before Christmas. They were like yeah, just send us containers and we’ll be fine and then after Christmas, they shut the doors and they didn’t get paid. But luckily, I didn’t lose a great deal. But, we lost about a million in sales. So that hurts.
Norman 34:34
Yeah, millions. That would hurt. Yeah. Okay, so each one of our guests so far have had these really incredible stories you included. Let’s talk about Dragon’s Den. So, in case you don’t know, Dragons Den started in the UK, came over to Canada and then turned into Sharks Den. So the Dragon’s Den, if you go and check it out, it’s the exact same concept with some of the same people that you see from the Canadians show like Kevin O’Leary. Now it’s Sharks Den. So tell us about your experience there. That must have been a little scary.
Simon 35:18
Well, in 2011 I went into Dragon’s Den in the UK and it was an interesting experience. I was offered an investment, turned it down eventually. So I didn’t go into it, didn’t go in with them and think, given any of the equity away and didn’t take their money. But what it did do, it gave me massive PR coverage. BBC 10 million viewers, it just cracked open doors to every single big box retailer and that changed the dynamic of the business for the next six, seven years. Yeah, it definitely opened up quite a few doors and if you talk about PR, and I’ve been doing PR forever but that was the single biggest PR exercise that and it still kind of works to this day. It’s on YouTube, it’s hundreds of 1000s of views. But yeah, that particular day was, that was a turning point for us.
Norman 36:34
Wow. So from that point, getting on to eCom. So you’ve gone through the bricks and mortar, then you decided to go on to the eCommerce side of things. How did you do that?
Simon 36:45
Well, I was already supplying a lot of resellers. So there was an awful lot of Amazon, eBay, and all sorts of other eCommerce resellers that were my customers and we were doing well into like a million in sales through resellers on Amazon and it’s like, these guys can do it, why can’t we do it? It’s not gonna be that difficult. But for years, it was like, this is just too difficult. Let them get on with it, this is so much easier. I rather have one customer that buys hundreds of 1000s of pounds worth of gear rather than having to deal with 50,000 customers that just buy one thing at a time. It’s much easier to outweigh one customer that buys a lot rather than lots of customers that buy one at a time. But with the demise of retail in the high street, and there’s been a big shift from brick and mortar to online. It was really a kind of herring, having to look at this and being forced to go more direct to consumers and so I started doing that in 2019, just looking at it, it was still only about between two and 5% of our overall business. Well then, we had a pandemic and we kind of forced everything to change, we had to just completely restructure what we did. So that was when I started looking really up in the game on our Shopify and on Amazon and I have to really give absolute credit to Danny McMillan, who’s an absolute star and if it wasn’t for his live podcasts back in March last year, I would have just gone absolutely insane. I mean, so I started following Danny podcasts, and that’s where I saw you first and all that. So then started following you, but all of the knowledge, the information, insights that just the experts and the expertise that you and Danny share and that has elevated me from zero to , understanding to a certain degree how eCommerce and especially Amazon works. So now we’re almost a year later, 10 months later, Amazon and Shopify site probably equates to about 20% of our overall business. So we’ve gone from 2% to 20%. It’s quite a significant increase.
Norman 39:49
I do want to give a shout out to Danny as well over at Seller Sessions. He has a fantastic podcast. It runs at 11o’clock Eastern Standard Time. So you can always catch that and come over to Lunch with Norm.
Simon 40:08
I listen to Danny then come over here.
Norman 40:10
But anyways, he has a wealth of knowledge. He actually encouraged me to do the podcast. I don’t know if you know that, but I was saying, Oh yeah, we’re just doing some YouTube stuff and he goes, Norm, you’re gonna make this a podcast and so anyways, yeah, I have a lot of respect for Danny and what he does. So I’m glad you listened to it. He’s a good guy.
Simon 40:33
It’s great. It’s all of the experts. I’ve got in touch with a lot of them and I don’t know much about anything at all and so I kind of outsource stuff. I try to delegate as much as I possibly can. So a lot of the guys that are experts in their field, I mean, you might as well get the best of the best to do good stuff. I’ll never know how to do PPC. I want to know the PPC, as good as the best people to do PPC.
Norman 41:06
That’ such a great point,
Simon 41:08
I get it. Do I want to do it? Can I do it? I’m like it’s just I mean, analysis is so complicated and get someone else to do it.
Norman 41:20
Yeah and you can absolutely learn how to do it. If you really are expanding your sales, I take a look like Brian Johnson, I was talking to him the other day about certain accounts that I have. He has that expertise and even if you want to learn like we try to provide, Okay, go over there and get your training. You can go over and like, I think it’s a Sponsored Ad Academy. Check it out. I mean, you can really learn and do it all yourself or you can just get a little bit of knowledge. So you’re aware of the direction you want to tell the expert where to go. Or you can just let the expert do it and you have to be careful with experts because there’s a lot of experts that blow hot air.
Simon 42:09
There’s a few there’s about a billion hours of YouTube hot air.
Norman 42:12
Oh my gosh, yeah. Hot air in abundance in some cases. But anyways, sir, thank you for being part of the community and thanks for coming on to the podcast today.
Simon 42:25
Well, thank you very much for having me and thanks for the wisdom and all of the knowledge bombs, as well. There’s another one.
Norman 42:33
There we go. We’ll get a few of those in today. Yeah. So anyways, thank you Simon and keep it up. I’m always looking, and I can see the questions coming in from you on the side. So keep that up please, love the engagement.
Kelsey 42:52
Alright. Awesome. So we have one more guest left. This is Mark, and I’ll be bringing him up. Now there is the man.
Mark 43:02
How are you doing?
Norman 43:03
Doing good. So just before we get started, we got a bunch of giveaways today in the US. I know we have a fairly large international crowd. So that’s cutting the size of the giveaways down but we do have a bunch of prizes today. So Beard Nation, #beardnation. Kelsey is coming up with an idea. He’s gonna interrupt me again. Yes, sir?
Kelsey 43:29
So one of our sponsors is Brit chocolate. Brit Treats.
Norman 43:36
Oh, almonds.
Kelsey 43:37
Yeah. We’ll get back to the interview shortly. I don’t want to take away your time, Mark. But I’m just going to quickly share my screen and just show you guys what one of the guys
Norman 43:49
They got a great product, talking about granderie.
Kelsey 43:52
So we have our licorice giveaways. The Brit Treats, Quality Street, one kilogram tin gift set. We have Brit Treats’ two box sets of licorice, all sorts and a Brit Treats multipack selection box of British chocolate with 33 bars. So this is part of our giveaway. We’re going to be giving away one of these each. So that’s going to be pretty, pretty nice.
Norman 44:24
I’ve had a few of those. I think I’ve added a few pounds to my waist or inches to my waist. But anyways, okay, so Beard Nation and it’s not only that there’s also a bunch of others and Alan went to bed before I could thank them. But yeah, really appreciate you donating those prizes to today’s show. Sir.
Mark 44:43
How are you?
Norman 44:44
I see your face all over the place.
Mark 44:46
I’m waiting for a restraining order to come in the mail. I feel like yeah I track you around a little bit. So yeah, we haven’t crossed paths a lot. But till I receive that restraining order, I’m gonna keep following you.
Norman 44:58
Hey, keep it up. So how’s it going?
Mark 45:01
Oh, very good. How about yourself?
Norman 45:05
Doing great. Today, we were really looking forward to today’s episode. I don’t think like when we see these comments coming down the side and people are they’re right, or asking us some questions. Our community doesn’t know what kind of quality like you could be a beginner and that’s what we’re hoping you can learn something from these podcasts. You can be an intermediate seller, you can be an expert, you can be on Shopify, you can be on Amazon, you can be just a social media person, but we’re trying to give content but when I see people that are fans like every one of the people are incredible sellers. We had no idea when we reached out to you guys, we had no idea that you do what you do. Hearing these stories, I’m blown away.
Mark 45:55
I’m definitely the beginner, the newbie of the group, that’s for sure. But yeah, like you said, some of the stories are insane. Marcia, that blew my mind and like she’s just lurking around here comment, you have no idea of the story behind that and it’s incredible.
Norman 46:14
Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about your story.
Mark 46:19
Like I said, I’m definitely representing the newbie of the group here. By far there’s a lot of experience there kind of a little bit overwhelming with everybody else. But yeah, one year ago, I came across Amazon and started thinking of ways, I think like a lot of Amazon newbies began, Hey, let’s find a way to kind of supplement your income, make a couple of extra dollars on the side. So I guess come into it as I come across Project X, Tim Jordan’s Project X, yes. So I started following that. As a matter of fact, I was on the beach in Mexico, when I came across this and I spent the rest of the vacation and my wife reading next to me on the beach, and I’m watching consuming Project X episodes. Then started following up from there learning more how are we going to do this? Is this possible? Answering all those questions and just like Simon, I came across you on Danny McMillan’s. Seller Sessions when he was doing his, during the pandemic, the lock in you did with something 50 straight shows or some crazy amount? Yeah, it was incredible, great content and I came across you on here and I’ve been following you ever since and I guess recently, I eventually joined Tim with the Centurion League. Tim Jordan, right?
Norman 47:44
Yep, exactly.
Mark 47:45
Well, lo and behold, you get brought in and that was incredible. Yeah, so like I said, That’s, I guess, a little backstory of why I follow you around a little extra there, besides the normal Monday, Wednesday, Friday Lunch with Norm.
Norman 48:02
But this is what I like to see. So first of all, you can be and this is what’s so great about what can happen during a pandemic like this. You can either choose to take action and go and do something and then within a year, you can actually have an incredible business built up, as long as that the actions there, you have that property capital. So there’s a lot of people that wave money in the air, get rich quick. You gotta make sure that you have the money. I hate to see people or hear stories that people threw their last dollars in the product that didn’t take off. But going and doing it, you can make money at this, you can have this some people like we’ve talked to people in Centurion League, that it’s their side hustle. They do this, they have a full time job and they want to get to that next point and we just had where somebody did Darren, so Darren Reynolds, he just left a very good paying job because Amazon took off for him. So this is real and it is something that you can listen to this podcast, or you can listen to the other people’s podcasts like Seller sessions and take up a mastermind, and get that knowledge. One of the things I would highly recommend, for those of you that haven’t, maybe check it out. But make sure that you have proper, like a proper course or something that can give you the ins and outs of Amazon first before you just jump into it. Because we try to give you the best content possible here. But there’s a lot of stuff out there that I heard something the other day about giving incentivized reviews or giving out products. It was a giveaway to get incentivized reviews and I’m sitting there going, Anybody listening to this is gonna get killed and believe it or that I think that was on Clubhouse, which is a brand new platform, anybody can talk on it and we have to be careful. The main thing is, I’m really happy that you’re part of this community and you’re learning. So why don’t we talk a little bit more about what you’ve done? So you hear a few people here, how did you build your business over the last year?
Mark 50:30
Yeah, it’s one of those things, you can take bits and pieces from everybody, there’s a bazooka, gold nugget, whatever you want to call it, people are dropping all over the place. So starting fresh from nothing, essentially is what I did. I can kind of build my business using what made sense to me and kind of take nuggets from one person one nuggets from another person. Doing so, I launched my first product in August. So we are a little over five months since I launched my original project. Unfortunately, I was out of stock for two of those months. Supply chain, it was just a little more successful than I had anticipated, which is a good problem. But in Amazon, not such a great problem. But actually being in stock three out of five months, I’m nearing six figures in sales. So I’ve had some really good success and now like you said previously, it’s kind of scaling, what are we going to do now and what’s the next step? So we’re looking at additional products, I’m going to add a variation of my original product, which should be launching, once it gets through customs, hopefully here in the next month or so and then it’s building onto more, building onto your brand, start building the brand. So that’s really kind of been the mindset over the past, let’s just say that’s my mindset changed from, let’s just make a couple extra bucks here and let’s do a side gig. Okay, let’s build a brand here. Joe Valley the other day, let’s think about selling the thing, what’s going to happen down the road? Let’s back it up a little bit here and it’s really coming from we could actually make a business and this could be a livelihood, or it could be the future here.
Norman 52:29
Right and I’ve heard more success stories coming out of Amazon. So I’ll hear people say, Oh it’s get rich quick, it’s this and that. If you put your mind and effort and you get the product, you do your proper research, it’s very simple to do proper research, right? Competitive research, you can compete with anything on Amazon. If you take the packaging side and the perceived value side, you can get probably more than the average person out there and then if you drive traffic to your listing, or use PPC, you get sales, and it’s a beautiful, it’s really a beautiful perpetual cycle once you get into the swing of things. So anyways, I’m glad you’re involved with it and man, you’re crushing it having that many sales right now in such a short period of time.
Mark 53:29
Thank you. Thank you. As I said, the community, huge part of that along with the Centurion League and team, which I know you don’t plug anything, but I’ll go ahead do that for you.
Norman 53:41
Okay, well thank you, Mark. So Kelsey, can we bring everybody back on just for a sec?
Kelsey 53:46
Yeah. Let’s get everyone.
Norman 53:53
Man, everybody’s still there. Okay, first of all, is there anything any of you want to ask any questions for Kelsey or myself? Not sure if there is. If there’s not, we’ll just move over to the prizes.
Marcia 54:11
I didn’t know what Centurion League was, but I see Kelsey gave me a quick answer.
Norman 54:16
Oh, yeah. So I like Tim Jordan and I, everything about this Centurion League right now. You’ll see Tim, it was Tim’s group. About last month, a month before he asked if I wanted to join it and so we’re building out a new platform and it’s really a very inexpensive platform to get extra mentoring. So you can come in eight times a month, get Monday phone calls, our Q&A and then we have guests or we try to dig into strategies every Thursday. So anyways, right now it’s $99 a month which is very inexpensive compared to other groups out there, we don’t want to gouge people. So if you want to go one step further, check it out. But yeah, we don’t typically talk about the Centurion League, although once it gets up and it’s ready and the new group is ready to go, I’ll be talking to it a bit more. But it’s a good group. Marks here. He knows what we do every week,
Mark 55:20
Great community, great group.
Marcia 55:23
Also, thank everybody. I see all of you Monday, Wednesday and Friday with your comments, but now I know you, and I’m excited to get to know you more and I want to thank you for your stories you shared. I love it. Everybody on the planet has a great story.
Norman 55:42
Isn’t it great? Guys, you blew me away. Every single one of you and I’m sure the group in general and I know there’s a whole bunch of others here that have great stories as well. But man, you blow me away, all of you. Thank you for listening. Thanks for being part of the community. We really appreciate your support, and we appreciate who you are. It’s great.
Simon 56:10
Can I just say something?
Norman 56:11
Yeah.
Simon 56:14
These guys have ambition, passion and I mean, you’ve got Marcia who’s brilliant and just amazing group of guys and thank you for bringing everyone together and stuff that you do.
Norman 56:32
Hey, we appreciate it. We couldn’t do this without you guys. Alright guys, let’s get to the Wheel of Kelsey unless he’s gonna interrupt me.
Kelsey 56:42
So before that, me and Simon were talking beforehand, we think it’s kind of a cool idea to kind of have like a little case study with the Lunch with Norm podcast. So Simon actually, has started a business or it’s in the works.
Simon 56:59
I’ve got my established brand that’s been around forever. But I started up a new brand, well, it’s not a brand. At the moment, branding is something that people recognize and I’ve got a product that has a logo on it that’s trademarked and I intend to make it into brand and use eCommerce as the method to a channel to get back to the consumer and it’s going to be a start to exit project. So there is an exit strategy of working back and set up the entity, the Amazon, eBay account, by Facebook, all completely set up and ready to go.
Norman 57:55
Oh my gosh.
Simon 58:01
So hold on a year or two.
Norman 58:05
That is incredible. Very cool. I can’t wait to see those results.
Kelsey 58:10
Yeah, so we’re gonna bring Simon back in six months from now. My phone’s going off. I’m bringing him back six months from now and check in and see how he’s doing and what actions he’s taking. But yeah, let’s get to some. Raja you’re frozen again.
Norman 58:30
His new name is Frozen Raja.
Kelsey 58:35
Alright, so let’s get to the giveaways. We got 7 giveaways and I’ll go ahead and share my screen. Just bear with me. Wheel of Names.
Norman 58:53
Wheel of Kelsey.
Kelsey 58:54
Wheel of Kelsey. We need a little song to this.
Norman 58:56
We have to ask your brother.
Kelsey 58:59
Alright. So I got a bunch of people here and we’ll start with one. So the first three will be for the chocolates in. Here we go. So 321
Norman 59:11
Remember we are doing the draw for the Airpods right after this. Okay, there we go.
Norman 59:25
Chocolates
Kelsey 59:33
Next for the licorice that’s from Brit Treats.
Norman 59:44
Tony Zagare.
Kelsey 59:45
Tony. Okay.
Norman 59:51
So he was listening today.
Kelsey 59:53
Yeah, he made a comment. Alright. Cathleen is going to win the big box of chocolate, the 33 set. Okay, and for the CO detectors.
Norman 1:00:14
Very cool product.
Kelsey 1:00:16
We’ve got Radd. So thank you.
Norman 1:00:24
The odds are getting better every time.
Kelsey 1:00:29
Okay, Zagare.
Norman 1:00:31
Congratulations.
Kelsey 1:00:33
For the copper patch. Marcia, if you get this.
Norman 1:00:46
Here’s gonna happen. Oh, there we go. Okay.
Kelsey 1:00:58
Okay, Lisa. Lisa from Noviland. Good.
Norman 1:01:07
I don’t think you have to spin Tom. Just do it. Just do it. We want to see if Tom wins.
Kelsey 1:01:19
Perfect.
Norman 1:01:20
Congrats, Tom. Yeah, we didn’t know.
Kelsey 1:01:25
Tom will receive a $25 Amazon gift card from our guest here, Mark.
Norman 1:01:32
Was Nathan part of that?
Kelsey 1:01:35
Oh, I think we missed Nathan. We’ll add something for Nathan too.
Marcia 1:01:44
I’ll give Nathan a phone patch, because I was going to give away too.
Norman 1:01:48
Okay, there you go. That’s pretty cool. Again, I was talking to Marcia just before this and yeah, some of the products she has are awesome. Alright, guys. So now it’s the big draw.
Kelsey 1:02:02
So this one I had to go in before. So we have the winner. It automatically splits the person out. I tried to reach out to see if the person wants to disclose his name, because all we have is an email and I haven’t heard anything back from him. But if he does, if he or she does want to disclose their name, I’ll give it but it’s an email that starts with back to me. So if your email starts with back to me at something, something that is the winner. So I reached out to them. So we’re going to be in contact with them and give that away. So congratulations back to me and that is the winner. We’ll have a giveaway again in the future, maybe a couple of months from now. But yeah, thank you to everyone who participated, we had over 350 people. We did a contest. So that’s awesome. It’s the first time we’ve done a big giveaway like this.
Norman 1:02:59
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Okay, look at that. We’re even pretty close to on time. My gosh. Oh, I see somebody in the background there.
Norman 1:03:18
Alright, everybody. So we got to do this again and I mean, just again, the Beard Nation, there we go. The Beard Nation. This is the community, we’re building incredible entrepreneurs, people that are just starting their businesses. Let us know, ask us questions. We want to help you. So and guess what? We’re not asking for anything. We’re not asking for you to pay anything. It’s free advice. So if you have questions for us, just go into the group, ask questions, and you’ll have not just me, all these experts and so many more people that can help you out. So, that note I think that’s it guys. Thank you for being on.
Speakers 1:03:58
Thank you.
Norman 1:04:02
See you later. See you Frozen Raja.
Kelsey 1:04:08
Alright, there we go.
Norman 1:04:09
Okay, that was great. Alright. So that’s it for today’s podcast. Do you have anything to add, sir?
Kelsey 1:04:18
For next week we have for Monday, we have Ryan Cramer coming on from PayPal on payments. He’s going to be talking about selling on international marketplaces and hidden fees and how to get on top. That’s our next episode. Yeah, we have our Patreon that we started. If you want to buy us a month a cup of coffee. We also the highest tier that you can do is 20 bucks a month and we’ll give you a mug when that comes in. Mark actually, I’m gonna throw you back in if you want to show off your mug.
Norman 1:04:54
Oh, you got one. Very good.
Kelsey 1:04:57
Relax, grab a cup of coffee. Alright and yeah, so we got a bunch of fun stuff. We’re hoping to do more contests, make it a real community and yeah, I want to say personally thank you to the Beard Nation. Everyone that’s joined the group, who’s watched an episode has commented, like and shared. It’s all been awesome. This is our first time doing it. We’ve never done this before and COVID kind of started this little project of ours. So it’s kind of cool to see how far it’s come and yeah, thank you guys.
Norman 1:05:29
Yes. All right. Thank you, Kelsey. There we go. A lot of thanking today. Thank you. Thank you. Anyways, Hey, join us every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time. Guys, we said a million times today. We couldn’t have done this without you. Our community is growing every single day. We’ve got tons of experts that are answering your questions. It’s not just Amazon. It’s online, any type of online selling, social media, digital marketing, you name it, building your brand, just inspirational stories. Check out the Beard Nation. The podcast is every week, we do it even if it runs on a holiday. So check us out Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Guys, enjoy the rest of your day and we’ll see you next time.
