Episode 65
Let’s visit another marketplace in today’s episode with Miro Posavec. Miro is an experienced seller at Walmart, selling health and wellness products for the last few years now. He will help us navigate the Walmart platform online, talk about the value that it offers to both sellers and buyers, and share tips to successfully start our eCommerce business.
Listen to Miro to better navigate Walmart’s eCommerce platform!
[00:01 – 05:25] Opening Segment
- Let’s get to know Miro Posavec
- Walmart vs. Amazon
- Miro weighs in
[05:26 – 12:59] Walmart Fulfillment Services
- How’s Miro’s 3PL experience at Walmart?
- Choose Walmart Fulfillment Services!
- Miro tells us why
- Want some Amazon refunds? Check out Getida
- Promo code: FTM400
[13:00 – 23:23] Opportunities at Walmart
- The smart move that Walmart is doing right now
- The opportunities at Walmart that you should know
- Listen to Miro’s strategy to drive traffic to his store
[23:24- 35:48] Valuable Online Presence
- Miro shares his outlook about the future of Walmart
- The tremendous value Walmart offers that Amazon doesn’t
- Don’t miss Miro’s advice on starting your own business
- Where to start? Amazon? Shopify? Walmart?
- Your no. 1 priority in starting an eCommerce business
[35:49 – 41:35] Closing Segment
- Get to know Miro more in the Fire Round!
- Connect with Miro! Links below
- Final words
Tweetable Quotes:
[Walmart is] building trust with the customer and that’s a good long-term strategy.” – Miro Posavec
“If you wanna be successful, you just have to be persistent.” – Miro Posavec
Resources Mentioned:
Email miro.posavec@gmail.com to reach out to Miro or connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
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Email us –> support@firingtheman.com
David 0:00
Real quick before we get into the show, I wanted to share a new service called Getida that Ken and I have been using that has made us over $10,000 in Amazon reimbursements. The service requires no monthly subscription, and getida collects a small percentage of the money they recover for you. It takes less than five minutes to set up and works on all Amazon marketplaces. Go to getida.com GETIDA, and enter promo code FTM 400. That’s FTM for firing the man 400 to get your first $400 in reimbursements commission free. How much money does Amazon owe you?
Miro Posavec 0:42
The biggest opportunity people don’t understand is when you search for something, right? on Google, one of the first things that comes up is a product that Walmart is paying Google ads for. Okay. So why would you pay Google Ads when Walmart is doing it for you? Walmart’s doing a very smart thing is they’re offering people returns no matter what. Now as the seller, you’re kind of screwed on that. Right? But what happens is they’re building trust with the customer. And that’s a good long term strategy. It’s one smart thing that Walmart is doing. They’re not pissing off the customers because it’s a new platform. Like 45% of the people that buy on Walmart.com have never bought online before. Someone said that Amazon is a very big, high maintenance pain in the ass wholesale account. And that is actually a great analogy for it. Because that’s exactly what it is. Right?
Ken 1:38
Welcome, everyone to the firing the man podcast a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more then join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts serial entrepreneurs David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
David 2:02
Welcome everyone to the firing the man podcast on today’s episode, we are joined by Miro Posavec. Miro has over a decade of ecommerce experience and is just a wealth of information in today’s episode we get into Walmart and Walmart fulfillment services where he has been selling for four years. Ken, awesome episode we just got done recording it. What did you think?
Ken 2:25
Yeah, you know Miro is a great person funny, super charismatic. And, you know, it was one of my favorite episodes in a while, you know, we did, you know you and I, David are getting into Walmart, we’re kind of in the early stages and Miro has been there four years, and we kind of did a deep dive into Walmart, you know, you and I both believe it. Walmart’s the game to play this year. Get in there if you’re not in there. And and we did a deep dive in there. It was a great episode. What are some takeaways for you, David?
David 2:50
Yeah, absolutely. You know, he talked about how you know, Walmart is still kind of in their infancy stage in terms of like serving us third party sellers and talked about a lot of his frustrations and issues that he’s had. And so this is an awesome episode. If you’re thinking about selling on Walmart. This is one you’re not gonna want to miss. Welcome to the show Miro. First things first, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Miro Posavec 3:14
Hey guys, thanks for having me on. My name is Miro Posavec. I’m an old guy. I’ve been in business since I was basically 18 years old. I’ve been in different industries. I came into this online commerce backwards. Everybody else gets into online, I had a product line first. And then I kind of thought, Okay, I’m gonna try distributing it through the online channels. And the online stuff just blew up on me. So I’m in the health and beauty space. Been on Amazon for about six years. I’ve been on Walmart for the last four years, I was one of the earlier Walmart guys. I’m also on Shopify. And that’s what I do. I do wholesale as well and private label. But most of what I do is just direct consumer.
Ken 3:53
I’d like to dig a little bit into the Walmart piece. So recently, you know, one of my brands got approved to sell on Walmart. So got some shipments going in there. And I’m just kind of getting integrated in that. So can you explain some of your experiences with Walmart, good, bad, and then versus Amazon?
Miro Posavec 4:08
Okay, so let me kind of give you an idea of where I’m coming from on this. At the last Amazon conferencr I went to, all the Amazon people kind of arrogant and they’re kind of ignoring me, right? Soon as I said, I sell on Walmart. They’re like pulling me in buying lunch, buy me dinner, pretending they care about me as a human being right. And Walmart is the only platform that Amazon is really afraid of in the US, because they have such a high volume like they already have so much infrastructure built. And like more importantly, when they talk about Amazon they talk about trust trust trust. There’s people that trust Walmart, like I’m not a big Walmart fan personally. But they have a huge base of that middle income American consumer that just loves them. Like people just love them some Walmart, right. So you’re new to the platform. Congratulations. Here’s what I’m gonna tell you. It’s amateur hour there. Okay, you gotta be patient. Okay? No matter what happens, like people bitch about Oh, Amazon is slow, dude, you will send a request and you will get a response A week later. Okay? Like, they’re just really slow. When you see some, you know, meth head looking guy on the loading dock in Walmart, okay? At night, they put a headset on that guy and they make him tech support. Okay? So I’m telling you that it’s the wild wild west, it’s amateur hour. But it’s good because it presents an opportunity, right? Like this level of complexity and difficulty creates a barrier entry for your competitors. Like I was part of the initial cohort of people that got on to Walmart early, I’m telling you, 80% of them were like, screw this screw Walmart, we’re gonna go back to Amazon where it’s easy, we know what to expect. So that difficult is a barrier to entry, which is good. So my advice to you is have a six pack handy or a bottle of wine, whatever your preference is, and just understand that they’re learning and they’re building as they go as well.
David 6:07
So I want to talk about, you know, our expansion plan in 2020. We went onto eBay and went on to Etsy, and really the barriers to entry there weren’t very high from an inventory standpoint, because we could drop ship out of our Amazon inventory. Now, as we move towards expanding on to Walmart, one thing that initially we thought was we’re going to need to build a relationship with a 3PL. And recently we learned about Walmart fulfillment services and we know on Amazon, right, they give preference to FBA inventory, right, you know, you get that Prime badge, your conversion rates tend to go up. And so what has been your experience on Walmart as it relates to either using a three PL or using that Walmart fulfillment service?
Miro Posavec 6:53
Okay, so here’s, I’m gonna give you a couple of cautions and just kind of show you my experience. Okay, we have a three PL we work out of here based in Florida, I’m in Florida, I had a three PL problem, I had a three PL out in Utah, and they had a fire ended up having like a million dollars in inventory just stuck for the last year on that. So by some miracle, I was able to kind of get through that. So my first advice is get three PL that’s close to you if you’re gonna get one, right. If there’s a problem you get in your car and you go and you deal with it. Right. So I got on Walmart, using my three PL and we offer like two tiers of shipping, the regular shipping and the second day FedEx, which is expensive, right? When we went to second day FedEx, our sales jumped up like 30 40%. So here’s the order priority. Priority number one offer that second day FedEx. I mean, you got to jack up your price, you got to eat it, but that second day FedEx is going to make the difference. Okay, that’s level one. Level two, get on Walmart fulfillment services. Okay, the good thing and if you’re an Amazon, Amazon is limiting your replenishment stuff, just like right now we’re in the process. Like, as we’re talking of sending like 80,000 units into Walmart fulfillment services, there’s no limits. There’s no like real hazmat stuff. You send them an order. And you actually get an email back from some guy and like, Hey, dude yeah we’ll take your stuff and like it’s real amateur hour. But I would say like our sales one of the reasons that I got on Walmart, like Walmart’s been kind of up and down for me for the last three, four years. And back in October, we went from the two day okay, so I went through two days over the summer and then went to the Walmart fulfillment services, right? Our sales have more than doubled every month since October. Like we’re actually projecting Walmart to beat our Amazon by March.
David 8:47
Very nice. So, as a follow up to that do you think going right into Walmart fulfillment services is the move or do you think it’s going with a three PL and then getting into wfs?
Miro Posavec 8:57
i was absolutely recommend going into walmart fulfillment services like when you go on all the Walmart group posts and all the Walmart things okay. What they’re doing is everybody is bitchin. Delivers this, delivers that I think delivers overwhelmed. I don’t think they’ve got the infrastructure to do what they gotta do. Like they have a good deal on the FedEx thing where you’re paying like three, four bucks a package. I’m paying eight bucks a package like my stuff is little, right. That’s my stuff. And I think eight bucks for a second day FedEx. So I would say your move right off the bat. If you already have like, we use three PL for our Shopify fulfillment. So we’re able to activate our entire product catalog basically in five minutes. Right. What we’re doing right now is we’re doing an order of top seller so we have our four top sellers in Walmart fulfillment, and it’s trucking. I call it Walmart FBA but so like you can’t get these words out of your head, I call it Walmart FBA. But Walmart’s opportunity, I think Amazon’s opportunity, someone else I I tell people Because I’m in health and beauty, and you guys all know that Amazon’s just a bitch. They’re like, someone will say, oh, my bottle was open. It’s like no your ups guy drove their truck 80 miles an hour, then they’ll mark it as used all of a sudden this product gets marked as inactive and blocked and you do all this crap, right? Walmart doesn’t care. They’re just putting it on there like, we don’t get stuff removed from Walmart. It’s awesome.
Ken 9:26
So right now I’m on the waitlist for the WFS, the you know, the Walmart FBA Walmart fulfillment services. So whenever you signed up for them, was there a waitlist for you? Or did you go right in? I know you mentioned, you know, right now, it’s kind of the Wild West on Walmart, and just trying to look at like, you know, did it take a month to get on the waitlist or what?
Miro Posavec 10:46
Okay, so we got approved for it in March or April of last year. And we’re able to send shipments in October. So I’m going to suggest fulfill out of the three PL for now. Okay, and make sure do that two day shipping, because I’m telling you it’s not like it’s a 10x difference between the two day shipping and the UPS like the el cheapo shipping. It’s a big difference in your sales.
Ken 11:13
Yeah, that’s the highest on my priority right now is to get that, I’m using deliver. And I think they call it the two day tag or something. You’re saying you saw a 30% increase once you enabled that?
Miro Posavec 11:26
No, no. A 3x increase.
Ken 11:28
3x?
Miro Posavec 11:30
Yeah, yeah. When you go from the one thing that Amazon has done to the market, they spoiled everybody, right? Like people order stuff. And they expect it like in the bigger cities. Like they get their stuff in a couple hours. I’m in a small town in Florida. And I order stuff on amazon prime. It’s there the next morning, right. And people have that expectation now.
Ken 11:51
last bit on that is so for the FBA sellers that are listening, can you describe the Walmart fulfillment services? And is it close to FBA in terms of like creating shipment, shipping them in, that kind of stuff?
Miro Posavec 12:02
No. It’s really not, you know, it’s weird because you think they’d be better at it. But basically, you’re creating a packing slip label for the box, right? You stick that on the box, and then you got to do your own ups, shipping, you buy your shipping through Shopify, however you buy your shipping, you put it on the box, and you go in there. I mean, it’s not as slick like Amazon’s really got theirs dialed in, like you can sit there and you can like, ship 100 boxes, and just set 100 boxes, case, whatever else and boom, right? With this, you got to do all the Walmart’s shipping labels first. You have to go by hand and do all the actual shipping labels. So it’s an extra step process. And it’s clunky. But it’s, you know, it is what it is right.
David 12:49
Sorry to interrupt the episode, you may have heard Ken and I talking recently about a new tool that we’re using for Amazon refunds. Now I have used other refund tools like this. However, I can tell you in the first seven days, they scrubbed the back end of my Amazon account going back 18 months, and found $5,000 of refunds. And the nice thing about this is, it’s my money, Amazon made a mistake and they are just auditing my account. The other thing I really like about this tool is there is no monthly fee, they only charge a commission if they are successful in getting you your money. Go to getida.com GETIDA and enter promo code FTM for firing the man FTM 400 this is an awesome tool. I can’t say enough good things about it. Now back to the episode. So I want to talk about the stereotype of Walmart, and as a little bit of background I sell, I would say premium products. There’s a saying keeping up with the Joneses. Well, my target market is Mrs. Jones, right? Someone who just likes expensive shit. And I’m happy to sell them that expensive shit. And so, you know, I live in small town, Missouri, and I’m not ragging on Walmart. But if you look at the typical clientele in Walmart versus say like a whole foods, it’s a different type of person, generally. And so do you see, you know, with Walmart online, is that stereotype following, you know, the brick and mortar, Walmart stereotype? Is that translating to the online space, and also I just want to like confirm, like, Am I way off on my interpretation of Walmart? Like, is that the same thing in your area?
Miro Posavec 14:34
Oh, yeah. Well, Walmart here is sketchy as hell. I mean, you know, you walk in and, like one night I had to go get some milk or something late at night because I want to have my coffee in the morning. And, you know, there’s some cashiers asleep in a booth in the corner and, like, there’s sketchy people selling drugs. No, no, so you’re saying, hey, Miro, my demographic is this yuppie consumer, right? And the answer I’m going to have for you is, there’s a lot of people that like Walmart, and I don’t know what it is, but I will tell you this, my top 10 selling products on Amazon are completely different than my top 10 selling products on Walmart completely different. I sell stuff on Walmart that I’ve never sold on Amazon. It is just a different consumer. I’m gonna say generally probably the lower end. Now another thing that you’ll hear a lot of pissing and moaning on the group’s is about returns, that Walmart returns are higher. Okay? Our website returns are super low. Like for our industry, we have a very low return rate, right? Because I’m in supplements and stuff. On Amazon website, my Walmart returns are higher, okay? Now Walmart’s doing a very smart thing is they’re offering people returns no matter what. Now as the seller, you’re kind of screwed on that, right. But what happens is they’re building trust with the customer. And that’s a good long term strategy. It’s one smart thing that Walmart is doing. They’re not pissing off the customers, because it’s a new platform, like 45% of the people that buy on Walmart.com, have never bought online before. And just chew on that for a little bit. Right? That means these people have never bought shit on Amazon, they’ve never bought stuff off a Shopify site, like this is a new experience for them. So that level of trust is huge. Right? Now, the thing is, some of these people, I think Walmart also appeals to a lot of old people, you know, you’re thinking like the lower income, we also have a lot of old people. And old people have money. So like, when I went in there, I saw kind of a higher end, like my supplements usually sell for 40 bucks a bottle right? Now I gotta because I’m paying for two day shipping and stuff. And I haven’t had I’ve had some squawking about the price, like, you’re gonna have Walmart customers complain. But nothing like eBay, like, I keep trying to close down my eBay site. Because it’s just, I swear to God we have like a 30 percent return rate on eBay, I mean, I would like to just like, hit a button and blow up Ebay. And I keep trying to cancel my account and they keep opening it. I keep, like, it just, it’s miserable. So your return rate will probably be higher in Walmart than it is on Amazon, but you will have a different product mix, you will have a different consumer and not better or worse, but different and be ready for that.
David 17:16
That makes a lot of sense. And you know, as I think of like income distribution, it does fall on a bell curve. And the really fat part of that bell curve, right is the American middle class. And that Walmart model fits that beefy part of the bell curve. And so, yeah, I like what you said about that.
Miro Posavec 17:36
Like, you know, it’s funny because I sell health products, right, and my health products work for animals as well, right. So we have a couple wholesale clients that buy off me and they sell. And it is crazy, like, we’ll have people, like, I get some feedback from my wholesalers. And people will not like they won’t spend it on themselves, but they’ll spend it on, you know, the kids or their pets or whatever else. So just, it’s about what their priorities are. So I would absolutely say, you know, get on Walmart, kind of stick a spot for yourself, and just go through it because like I said, it’s rough around the edges. They’re not smooth over there.
Ken 18:14
Yeah. So a couple of comments that Miro and David both you guys have made earlier and made me think, you know, David, you said like Walmarts a Fortune 10. You know, and Miro, like Walmart is the, to me, it’s like everybody says, oh, Amazon is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. You know, to me, it’s like, Walmart is the 1000 pound uncle in the other room, and they’re kind of opening the door, you know, they’re kind of they’re on their way in. And so it’s like, so much opportunity, like Miro, you mentioned it’s the Wild West, I’d like to dive a little bit into listings like how are you, you know, you’ve been on Walmart four years now, how are you driving traffic to your listings? Are you using like traditional, like SEO tools like say like a helium 10? Or a jungle launch for your listings? And are you are using PPC or does that even exist on Walmart?
Miro Posavec 19:01
Well, first of all, I appreciate you overestimating my abilities as a sophisticated seller. Thank you for that. So what’s been happening is we’re using a tool called CED commerce, to pull our orders in, right. Now remember, I said this Walmart platform is evolving. So they’ve just changed all their data fields. So all my descriptions have gone to crap from the last import. Right? So we’re actually in a process right now of creating a procedure and I’ll send you guys a link. One of my friends mica is a genius of Walmart. She has a free checklist on how to format your listings in Walmart, which actually we’re going to follow. So I’ll give you guys that information. I’ll send you the link for it right. Yeah, perfect. So highly, highly recommend that. Also, I’ve got a pay per click guy that does my pay per click on Amazon. And the guy’s a robot. He’s not even human, right. And we’re still dialing it in. But the pay per click is a big factor in sales. I think on my last report I spent, I think about two grand and I got about three grand in sales, right directly, but the reporting isn’t there yet. So what happens is, I’m getting more of a halo effect. So that 2000 I’m spending, I’m seeing about a 10 or 12 grand increase in my sales, based on that spend alone. But the reporting doesn’t give you that information yet. So if you guys want, I will share my Amazon Pay Per Click guy with you, too. He doesn’t officially offer it as part of his service. But he’s been running it for me and the guy is just He’s really good. So I’d recommend him out to people.
Ken 20:41
Perfect. So you’re saying that, just so I can wrap my head around this. So $2,000 in spend and you got $3,000 back, but you’re saying the reporting is not super advanced, but you noticed, like a tacos metric of a $12,000 in total sales?
Miro Posavec 20:57
Right. Now, what happens too is when Amazon like right now, when you get a sale from Amazon, and this sale is from a pay per click ad, they actually decrease your score a little bit, right? which, to me sounds stupid. I mean, someone bought it, someone bought it, right? But that’s what Amazon’s new algorithm is doing. Whereas Walmart’s algorithm is saying, Hey, you know what, we see that you’re supporting your sales. So we’re going to give you an asymmetrical bump in ranking and support because you’re trying too.
David 21:30
and that’s how it should be, you know, I have noticed on Amazon PPC, I’ve been running that for about four years. And it seems like for a particular product category, it seems like the supply and demand of keywords, you end up selling at breakeven a lot. So if you’ve got a 20% profit margin, well, then magically, you end up at a 20% acos. And I’ve always justified that and you know, I’m okay, selling at breakeven, as long as this is driving organic sales. And now that Amazon has kind of switched that my metrics for acos have changed, right? Like I am no longer willing to sell at breakeven, I need to be bidding on profitable keywords, because I’m not getting that organic bump that I should be. And so that’s refreshing to see that Walmart is taking, you know, a different approach there. So one thing that I want to dive into is fees, man, I was looking at my 2020 financials and the amount of money that I paid Amazon in referral fees, fulfillment fees, you know, everything storage fees, it eats up a ton of margin. And so what has been your experience there with Walmart?
Miro Posavec 22:38
Okay, so here’s what happens. And I love this because all these people, don’t get me wrong. I’m very, very grateful to Amazon, because Amazon has been a great customer acquisition strategy for me, right? But I tell people, you know, Amazon, like, I was counseling some guy in Europe, and he’s doing a, he’s doing his own Amazon site. He’s buying a laptop bag for 10 bucks and trying to sell for 25 on Amazon, right? And I’m just like, Oh, my God, like you know, I felt physical pain for this guy. Because, you know, Amazon’s taking half your money. You know, they’re taking half, we did the fees, we did the fees number really strictly in terms of Walmart. And I think on a 38.99 item, I get an extra 60 cents on Walmart than I do on Amazon. Now this is exclusive of pay per click not including shipping, I’m talking just pure sales fees, right? So the Walmart fees are a little lower. But what I find is, when I get like, if I get a certain sale, let’s say I got a $20,000 sales number on Amazon, right? I’m getting a check for half that. Like there’s no way I’m ever getting a check for more than half that, that’s been my experience. on Walmart, I’m getting, I’m gonna say on that same 20 grand, I’m getting probably 13 or 14 grand more, you know, there’s still some gray area there because we’re selling some out of our own warehouse and covering all our shipping. So there’s some gray area there, right. But I do think that Amazon’s heavy on the fees. And one thing that I noticed too with Amazon is they’re still in the process of squeezing the little guys, right? Like, I met a bunch of guys in Amazon, that were doing clothing, right? And one guy was doing like, eight, 9 million a month in clothes. And his net was nothing, by the time he paid for returns and everything else, this guy was just making a good living. But I’m thinking oh my god, if I was doing eight, 9 million a month, well, you know, I’d be dancing naked in the street. Okay, and I can afford bail. Like, are you kidding me? Like, are you kidding me right now? I’d be one of those guys with a picture of a, you know, with a Bugatti and fronting yeah this is life. Right, but it’s crazy.
Ken 24:50
You know, Bezos is saying is what? your margin is my opportunity, you know,
Miro Posavec 24:54
It is. and it’s hard because something that happened and you know, this does not need to be a, you know, let’s bitch about Amazon stage, but 75% of the new sellers on Amazon this year are direct Chinese. And I’m thinking these poor guys have bought into these five or 10,000 or courses that buy shit off Alibaba, put a sticker on it, and then sell it on Amazon. These guys are toast like there’s no differentiation there.
Ken 25:22
Yeah, I definitely agree with you. The game is changing, you know, and definitely see, you know, Walmart opening up some competition I think, you know, for sellers like us, I think it’s good. It’s good to have Walmart kind of scaling into the, into the space. And, you know, hopefully it’ll be a better opportunity for us.
Miro Posavec 25:42
Now Ken, let me throw something else at you. And your question originally, which I ramble off, but I did not forget, was you asked if I do any supporting any advertising inside and outside of Walmart, okay. The biggest opportunity people don’t understand is when you search for something, right? on Google, one of the first things that comes up is a product that Walmart is paying Google ads for. Okay, so why would you pay Google Ads when Walmart is doing it for you?
Ken 26:11
Yeah, I agree.
Miro Posavec 26:12
That’s a tremendous value that Walmart is providing to it’s sellers that Amazon does not do anymore. Right? And not on that level. So what’s happening is, you’ve got that ability to create a lot of visibility for your product.
Ken 26:26
Yeah, I am, I’m going all in on Walmart in 2021. Getting both my brands in there, I think it’s a massive opportunity. Any other highlights of, you know, your experience selling on Walmart versus selling on Amazon that we haven’t really hit on?
Miro Posavec 26:41
One of the biggest things I’m gonna tell you on Walmart, first of all, be generous with the return policy, good customer service, usual stuff, right. But be diligent with it, because I got banned on Walmart for six months. Because what happened was, I was putting in tracking numbers on orders and their system had messed it up, right. And I wasn’t paying attention to it and all of a sudden, my order defect rate went to like 100%, late deliveries, because they didn’t have the tracking number properly. And they shut me down for six months. And there’s no appeal process. There is no methodology as much as Amazon’s methodology, and pathways are flawed. They exist. Does that make sense?
Ken 27:21
Yeah.
Miro Posavec 27:22
You know, so that’s the thing. So when you’re in Walmart, how are you fulfilling orders? Are you using an interface? Or what are you using? How are you fulfilling them?
Ken 27:32
So right now deliver until I get into WFS?
Miro Posavec 27:35
Okay. So my suggestion is, you have to automate the fulfillment process that has a direct link into the Walmart system, if you put the tracking numbers in by hand, you’re gonna get screwed. Okay, you have to have an interface. If you don’t have an interface, you’re dead in the water.
David 27:54
What interface are you using?
Miro Posavec 27:56
I’m using CED commerce. And that links in my Shopify site.
David 28:01
Got it. Got it.
Miro Posavec 28:02
And it is not sexy. And it is flawed. But it works. Like one of the things that happens, people are like, Oh, we have, you know, we’re having this fancy software. Shopify came up with their own interface to Walmart didn’t work at all, like we just crashed and burned. So you have to have an interface to pull orders automatically.
David 28:22
Now, one question that I want to ask you. And we’ve got a lot of listeners that are new sellers, right? They’ve sourced a product, they’ve got samples, they’re ready to launch. And you had mentioned that you are selling on Amazon, Shopify and Walmart. What would be your advice to the new seller? In terms of where to launch? and in what order?
Miro Posavec 28:44
Oh, it’s actually good that we talked about that, because one of my good friends is an inventor, and he invents all kinds of weird stuff, right? Like, he does paintball stuff, and he has the paintball space. And I told him I said, Do Amazon and Shopify at the same time, right. And the reason for that is if you can pick up some ranking on Amazon, it’s free money, and it’s gonna build customers for you. Right? But understand that Amazon is expensive, and it’s saturated. I was talking to an actual Amazon rep a couple days ago, because we’re expanding to other global markets within Amazon, right? And the guy said a funny thing he goes, yeah the US ecommerce market is saturated. All of our exponential growth we see happening in other markets. And that’s from somebody inside Amazon.
David 29:31
I want to dig, so I really want to dig in a little deeper on that. So did he point out which markets he thinks has the best opportunity?
Miro Posavec 29:39
Um, it really depends on the product. For me what I’m doing is this like you talked about your goals this year, our goal this year, I’m in supplements, right? So last year was just a record year we barely kept up. We had to move locations three times just because we kept outgrowing the space we were in. My goal this year is I want to diversify my footprint. Amazon used to be like 85 90% of my sales. And now it sounds like 40% of our sales, because I’ve pushed these other marketplaces, as well as built up my own Shopify. One thing I will tell everybody is your number one priority should always be your own website. Okay? You are merely a guest on Amazon, you’re merely a guest on Walmart, right? So build up your own customer base, make sure all your products are branded, have emails on them, have your website on them, because at any point in time, like I got banned by Amazon, my first year in there, they shut me off and suspended my account and all this other crap, right. And at the time, they were most of my sales and it really hurt, right. And in my head, I’m like, I’m not doing this again. Like if they turn around, they come with a competing product line to mine or something, and I’m out the door. It’s not put your money and energy and time into your own platform first. develop that first.
David 30:56
So one thing Have you ever seen the movie Field of Dreams?
Miro Posavec 30:59
Yes.
David 31:00
Okay. So Kevin Costner, he builds this baseball field in a cornfield in Iowa. And he says to his wife, if you build it, they will come. And, I have found with my website, I have built it, but they haven’t come in terms of customers. And so what have been some things that you’ve been doing in order to drive traffic to your website?
Miro Posavec 31:24
Now you’re gonna hurt my ego. So I do my first ecommerce site like 14 years ago, right? Never made money. I did WooCommerce and WordPress for a while. So finally, I found this indian guy that build on my WordPress site, like 10 grand a month, and I was like on top of the world, but all the stuff he was doing was blackhat. shady as hell. And our site got banned. Okay. I mean, if you put my business name into Google, it will actually block you like it was that bad, right? There isn’t one beautiful thing, find someone that knows what they’re doing throw money at it. We set up a Shopify site. And I hired some consultants to help me with it. And you know, it’s funny, because when you’re in the e commerce game, you know, they break your heart, right? You hire some marketing guy, you give him five grand, he blows it all nothing good happens. You’re like, I’m not gonna hire somebody again. And I’m working with some courts that are like Miro look, you know, suck it up, take it like a man. Like, I went through three Google guys, I found the guy that performs. I went through four pay per click guys on Amazon found one that performs. You set a goal for him the goal is realistic, they perform great, don’t perform, get somebody else. But the answer to your question David is, build up your site, not build it and they will come, you have to build it so that it converts, so the site builds trust, right? You have to do, it’s just the stupid, boring shit. Email Marketing, newsletters videos, I was shocked to find out we have like 2500 YouTube subscribers, like my products cover a wide variety of health issues. Like, you know, it’s hard to build excitement about diarrhea, but we try. You know? So the short answer is, it’s not gonna be one thing that’s gonna make your site perform, it’s going to be like, I’ll give you a perfect example. Okay, I did email marketing here and there, right? And I hired a guy to help me with email marketing. He goes, No, he goes, your emails have to look like your website, the logos have to be the same. The color scheme, the font, the consistency, the tone, and, you know, five minutes in I’m bored, because we all want that magical button that’s going to triple our business. with the website, it’s incremental improvements, like right now knock on wood, if Walmart shuts me off tomorrow, and Amazon shuts me off tomorrow, I can still live on my website, which is okay, let’s call it what it is. It’s nice having that set up, right. And something else that happens is, because my website is so good, people buy something on Amazon, and they’ll come to my website. Whenever Amazon does better, my website does better because people are saying, hey, this, you know, these things really worked for me. What else have these guys got? And they’ll go to my website.
Ken 34:10
So Miro, one quick follow up on that you just mentioned the three sales channels, Amazon, Walmart and your website. Just broadly, your profit margins from each channel. Do you drill into those and which one do you make more money on?
Miro Posavec 34:24
Yeah, I like I heard a great description. Someone said that Amazon is a very big, high maintenance pain in the ass wholesale account. And that is actually a great analogy for it. Because that’s exactly what it is. Right? We do a lot of wholesale to doctors because we private label for doctors, and that’s exactly Amazon, they want things a certain way. They’re really demanding. It’s a pain in the butt. And that’s how they are. So I would say in terms of profitability, my website’s obviously the most profitable, right? I got my cost per customer acquisition down to like seven to $9, depending on the month, right? Then you figure my average product sells for 38.99. I mean, that gives me a good margin, right? Because I’m a direct to manufacturing agent. So I’ve got a lot of room in there. So my number one profit margin, obviously is the website. Right. Next is Walmart, and then Amazon and then my wholesale accounts for terms of profitability website all day long.
Ken 35:28
That’s what Yeah, we’ve put a ton of time focus into that. And I like how you mentioned, it’s kind of, there’s no magic button, everybody is looking for a magic button, a magic elixir to drink, you know, something. But incremental steps, little by little, a lot of hard work, they add up in the end to a lot.
Miro Posavec 35:46
And look, I’ll be honest, like, I’m, I love the good ideas. I love the flash. I love the excitement. And that’s how it does it, you got to find some real like, one of my team members, she has a degree in mass communications. She will sit there like right now she’s redesigning our blog posts, right. So she’s created like a 40 page, step by step document on how the new blogs to be laid out how the keywords are put in where the videos go, like, two minutes into this conversation. I’m like, someone just shoot me. You know what I mean, like, remember, when you’re a kid and the teacher put on the overhead projector and as soon as you heard that sound go you’re out like a light. That’s what this is for me. But if you won’t, and you can’t do it, you got to throw money at it.
Ken 36:30
So Miro, you know, having you on the show, it’s been excellent. Before we get into the fire round. You know, you got a ton of experience in e commerce and you know, in brick and mortar and so what would you tell a younger Miro, like everything you’ve learned over the last couple of decades in retail and e commerce? What advice would you give to yourself, if you were just starting out again?
Miro Posavec 36:52
I would say leave your ego at the door, if you are unwilling to do the work. To get to some level, you have to hire somebody. When I started this, like 12 or 13 years ago, Google ads were cheap, like I mean, but right now, the level of sophistication that you need to do to run an effective ad campaign is huge, right? And are you going to spend that much time, like when I first started with Amazon, I was doing pay per click, I was like, Oh, I’m gonna master this. You can’t master it. The rules change every day. My Pay Per Click guy when I first hired him over the course of like eight years on Walmart, I don’t know how long on Amazon. I created like a couple 100 campaigns. This guy and his team created 3500 campaigns in four days. And within three weeks, had whittled it down and brought my acos, now it’s ROAS, down like to a third of what I was spending, with like five times the results. So my number one advice to anyone that’s in this is develop a basic understanding of what you’re doing, but bring in proven experts, right? And you’re gonna get screwed, you’re gonna find some guy that talks a game, and you’re gonna write him money, and he’s gonna screwed up, and you’re not gonna go home and cry, right? You’re gonna say, Okay, this guy was a clown. Try the next guy. And that’s my number one advice to anyone that’s going through this business is as soon as physically possible, bring some experts in and pay them.
Ken 38:26
So David, any any last minute wrap ups before we go into the fire round?
David 38:29
No, let’s get to it.
Ken 38:31
All right. So Miro, we’ve got a couple questions here on the fire round. Are you ready?
Miro Posavec 38:36
Sure.
Ken 38:37
All right. Well, what is your favorite book?
Miro Posavec 38:40
My favorite book is actually a play called a man for all seasons by Robert bolt. Okay. And it’s about Sir Thomas Moore. And basically, it’s about a really, really stubborn guy. And the whole world is burning around him. And he’s like, this is what I believe. And I’m gonna find a way through this maze of bullshit to get where I want to go.
Ken 39:00
Nice. I like it.
Miro Posavec 39:02
He dies in the end, but you got to respect the effort.
Ken 39:08
Thanks for the follow up. All right. What are your hobbies Miro?
Miro Posavec 39:12
I like cycling, my big thing is traveling. I didn’t vacation for 20 years. And now I spend like a third of my time on vacation. I was in Europe twice last year. Even with the pandemic, I don’t give a shit. You know, I don’t care. I love traveling. I got my boys overseas now I have an excuse to go over more. I got family friends all over the world. So yeah, I love traveling.
Ken 39:33
Excellent. Last one. So what do you think sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
Miro Posavec 39:41
persistence. I used to be computer guy and I like to think I’m a pretty smart guy. And I’m not successful and resilient because I’m smart. I’m successful and resilient just because I’m just the blockhead and I just don’t give up and that’s it. You know, being smart gets in the way. You think you can do it. You think you can figure it out. No, being persistent if you want to be successful, you just have to be persistent. Like that’s it just be a blockhead just do not… run blindly forward. One of my really good friends not the sharpest tool in the book. And this guy took his house he converted a two car garage into two efficiency apartments. And this guy is living for free because he’s renting out his garage as Airbnbs. Like the guy has no sophistication and he just gets it done. He just does it.
Ken 40:27
yeah I like that advice excellent well Miro, you know really good having you on. The conversation was excellent you know tons of value. Walmart’s you know new on the block and yeah, just a really good conversation. David, you want to wrap it up?
David 40:41
Yeah, Miro. How can people get a hold of you?
Miro Posavec 40:45
They don’t man. I don’t want people calling me What are you talking about? You can find me on Facebook, Miro Posavec, MIRO POSAVEC. Yes, probably the best way to reach me. I, you know, it’s funny. I don’t really, you know, I used to run multiple locations of stores and stuff. And now I barely, like, I don’t really talk to people anymore. It’s actually kind of nice. I like it. But yeah, if someone has a question, I’m willing to talk to people. I’m cool.
David 41:14
Well very nice. Very nice. Well, thank you so much for being on the firing the man podcast and we’ll have to stay in touch. Thank you everyone for tuning in to today’s firing the man podcast. If you like this episode, head on over to firingtheman.com. And check out our resource library for exclusive firing the man discounts on popular e commerce subscription services. That is firingtheman.com\resource. You can also find a comprehensive library of over 50 books that Ken and I have read in the last few years that have made a meaningful impact on our business, for that head on over to www.firingtheman.com/library. Lastly, check us out on social media at firing the man, and on YouTube at firing the man for exclusive content. This is David Schomer
Ken 42:00
and Ken Wilson. We’re out.
David 42:17
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai