Ep. #1125 - The Future of Ecommerce Search

Andrew Morgans  00:00

Hey, what’s up Hustlers. Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle. Today, we’re going to be talking about the future of Ecommerce search. And I’ve got one of the top startups out of Seattle. And before I even make that introduction, today’s episode of Startup Hustle is powered by FullScale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult, Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably and has a platform to help you manage that team. Visit fullscale.io to learn more. Justin Leigh, out of Seattle, welcome to the show.

Justin Leigh  00:33

Thanks for having me, Andrew. First-time, longtime listener, first-time guest. So it’s a real pleasure to be here.

Andrew Morgans  00:38

Well, awesome. Glad to have you on it didn’t know your listener before the show. Wouldn’t take in as much time telling you about the format. But I’m, I’m excited I shared a little bit of my story with Justin before the show, and we just have so much in common. Definitely around a passion and a hate for Amazon, probably. We’re gonna get into kind of kind of that and what we do. And a lot of times it’s solving those pain points for everybody else is really, you know, what we do? So we will get into the show talking about workflow labs, I definitely want to get save some time on the show to be able to get into what exactly you guys are doing to help sellers and or health agencies and people on the platform. But I’d like to get started just knowing a little bit more about you, Justin. Obviously, being there in Seattle, you’re exposed to Amazon, even potentially before a lot of other people in regards to just like this monstrous beast that was that was coming up and just hearing about it. But where did your entrepreneurial journey start? Even before Amazon? Did you have startups before this one? Will you know, did you know? You wanted to be in business right out of school? Like, where’s your journey began?

Justin Leigh  01:41

Sure, yeah, I actually remember the exact moment I decided I was gonna start a company. So you know, to go way back away ways to date myself here coming out of business schools back in 2005. And we were back, my wife and I went to business school back East. And so our folks are going to investment bank, our friends, our investment banking companies, and other things over there. And we were like, Hey, we’re gonna go to Amazon. And they’re like, the bookstore. Like, why would why would you do that? Like, that seems like a weird thing to go do 2005. For me, it was a pretty small company at that time, but we did. And it was pretty, it was a pretty cool place to be very data driven very much come up with an idea, execute your idea, test it grow, learn, super empowering. So, you know, a great testing ground for someone who wants to start a company later, like you get to make decisions and validate your decisions. But I remember I was in this meeting one time, and and they said they have the same folks that work at Amazon. It was what would what would WW JD? What would Jeff do? And I was like, he would leave he would start a company would not be in this meeting. So for like what it was supposed to be like think like an owner and think like, what can Dr. Amazon afford? Like he would start a company and I was like, Oh, the stock price is $32. This company is going nowhere. I’m going to start my own company. And so I left and started an agency called IDEO click at that point to help brands went on Amazon.

Andrew Morgans  03:08

That actually sounds a little bit familiar to me. I need to hear more about do click. For some reason that name and I don’t say that I like that name just kind of sounds familiar to me. So talk to me a little bit about what that first idea was like, and did your wife leave with you? Or leave knows?

Justin Leigh  03:23

Think? Well, thankfully, no. Thankfully, she stayed there for another 10 years because stock price obviously grew from $33. So at the time, not a great financial decision to leave Amazon. Luckily, she stayed there 10 years so so that that worked out. Okay. So I started I do click I do click was a Managed Services Agency, very similar to what we’re talking about here. And we manage the Amazon business for about 400 brands had 150 employees. And we were just you know, it was a great time right place, helping brands understand what is a nascent? How do you fix? How do you create a catalog? How do you how do you grow business? While Amazon was adding categories, and it was a pretty wild ride. Pretty cool. Did that for 14 years.

Andrew Morgans  04:06

So from 2000 Give me a timeline here, just a little bit of like, what those years were like, yeah, so

Justin Leigh  04:12

that was so I left Amazon and started that in 2008. So from 2008, until last year, I was driving it started I do clicking was was driving, I do click, and it was great. It’s awesome. You know, a people managed services, business we were just chatting about this is, is great. You’re about as good as your last business review that you did with the client. And so I said, what would be really great is if we had some technology that removes the mundanity from the people’s lives that are in managed services or on the client side trying to deal with all of these daily tasks of Amazon. So that’s why we focused on how do we take all of those things that people know how to do update, nascent and suppress the nascent handle third party variant that’s problematic. And of course, how do you take all of those things? have programmatic ties that knowledge, and then apply that knowledge through software so that you get a truly scalable way to to manage your business with Amazon.

Andrew Morgans  05:09

So let’s say I love it like that, sorry, that can’t be the end because I was like, I want to know about the business. But that also makes sense why your agency is so familiar, just like, you know, you were just you just exited, or, or were in that until last year. So quite a bit of time I joined the might, you know, I’m 12 years into Amazon and didn’t work there. You know, didn’t work at corporate Amazon. So just have been working in parallel to Amazon, so to speak. But I’ve seen the whole journey and the evolution of categories being added in I think I was the first to sell like, Chicago steak company. Like, I remember that idea. And just being like, okay, we’re trying to sell this food on dry ice, like, there was no, no one else doing that. There’s nothing to model like, you know, we just got really creative with it. It was fun. The new categories coming out were fun. And jumping into them was also like always new, like new. Okay, new opportunity, new opportunity, new opportunity. 150 people, I think we’re, you know, my team’s around 35. So quite a bit larger operation 400 brands, like I can just imagine, you know what that was like up until last year, and I see you smiling. So I think like, you probably got outside of that you got out of the agency. And it’s been a good thing. But like, you know, talking about that journey, those 14 years like right and and what you guys are solving for now, talk to me just a little bit about that journey being in Seattle. You know, for me, on the services side, it felt very much like I was a trailblazer like a machete out in front clearing the way like there was no one really talking about agencies helping brands on Amazon, people being into paying for that service. There was no demand for it necessarily, at least outside of Seattle, where I am, there was not people like banging on my door to be like, you know, let’s help on Amazon. Things like Amazon SEO weren’t. Those weren’t things no one was writing about that talking about those. You know, holistic ecommerce attribution, all these things that come come about? But But I feel like you’ve been there before me in regards the timeline for this, like, what was it? What was it like in early days, just just some insight for me, with this idea that you had, whenever you left Amazon, and started your own company, what were those first, you know, few months years, like really getting brands building an agency getting people around you that believed in what you’re doing?

Justin Leigh  07:33

Yeah, and, by the way, I take no credit for any of this. All the success that we had ideal click was it was driven by the people that joined and were much smarter and better than me at all the things that we did. But the early you asked about the early years, the early years, were just, I would I can only describe as perhaps a shit ton of bad ideas. So like they they all kind of seemed like a good ideas at the time, like we did these brands, stores and Facebook stores, you’d have to really kind of dig through the internet to, to find those things. But taking these shoppable experiences and livered leveraging Amazon’s back end fill orders and all of that. And it was great, you did a ton of gave me a ton of learnings. Once you start interacting with Amazon, and watching what happens to their data and then doing some correlation between that data and sales, you start to really understand the machine of how Amazon converts traffic to sales and sales to profit. And so you know, we just got to do everything wrong for four or five years. And through that process of doing things wrong. We learned what right things there were and then added some folks to the team that just had tremendous amount of knowledge both about brands and about product categories and about the managed services business in general. When that all came together, it was you know, just the perfect time as Amazon is adding categories to put all of that knowledge to use. It was a kick, you know, you mentioned some of the products that you guys have have focused on and went on. And it was awesome. You’re like, Alright, here’s a mattress company. How are we going to sell mattresses online, we can figure it out. If it can be done, we can do it. Right it’s it’s still not easy, but common.

Andrew Morgans  09:16

You know, I opened up a pillow I think the other day and it was just like this big and just I remember the first time thinking about like, you’re going to order a mattress online like you know, probably like our grandparents were like when they’re thinking about just like oh, you’re buying something online like for me is like about to buy a mattress online. How does that work? Like is it going to be small as a kid’s mattress like, you know, fun stuff?

Justin Leigh  09:41

Yeah, I had this guy who had been the category lead for for tools and house were in a kind of done a tour through kind of that area of Amazon. And you would always say, Bill, he was he was amazing guy and he would always say Well, that looks hard. You should try shipping until We were like, okay, it can’t be as hard as shipping these brands. They’re huge. They’re heavy, they’re fragile. So nothing is as hard as shipping a toilet. And he’s like, we sold lots of toilets. So we can sell that to, like, great.

Andrew Morgans  10:12

We will will I need him on my team? That sounds like, I’ll connect you. Yeah, no, but I think I had, you know, 10,000 conversations of talking to brands or sellers of like, trying to tell them about the opportunity, and just not really having all the case studies or all the, you know, the traditional marketing materials to be able to really convince people of something, you know, but I remember the first time selling men’s formal suspenders on Amazon, that was a fun one, I probably talked to him for six months, you know, 99 bucks, $120, a pair, not the hot topic, like JC Penney, suspenders, but like some nice formal, thick, you know, and as someone in the Midwest, we don’t have that many like men’s fashion boutique, like, you know, stores, you’re gonna go to like the mall, you’re gonna have some stores on the plaza here in Kansas City Express or something like that. But there’s just not really a lot of options. So like, but it doesn’t mean people aren’t in suits, it doesn’t mean people don’t want these things, you know, we’re just not in LA, we can just pop in somewhere and get like, just exactly what you want a niche, you know, so for me, it was always made tons of sense to buy stuff online, you know, for someone else that might be in a more populated area, they’re like, I don’t know, if people are gonna spend 120 on Amazon LIC on their 999 or 99. On hot topic, men suspenders, you know. And proving that use case was a lot of fun. We, we did several 100,000, the first year, which for him that didn’t think the idea would take off at all, it was like that was success for us. But that those times now, there’s so many products on Amazon, that it’s harder to find something that’s not there, you know, entirely, I can remember in the early days in category for opening clothing is still behind apparel still behind in my opinion, but tools and hardware, if anyone’s listening, great category to be in? I think it’s a great category to be in. No, but fine. And I think like one thing that’s interesting, from your perspective is just like having worked at the parent company yourself, and working with people that come from there. What was it like kind of doing your own thing and still having your wife work there?

Justin Leigh  12:14

That’s, that’s a interesting question. You probably have to ask my kids. We were it’s funny. Like, when my kids were little, or they were in my office. And they were like playing in this in this white room in this, like, on this whiteboard in the conference rooms. And I like kind of popped in was listening to them. And they’re like, Okay, we’re going to have a meeting. And we’re going to talk about how we’re going to sell more toys on the Toys R ‘s website. And they’re like, you know, like four and six, you know? I’m like, oh, maybe maybe my kids have been over ecommerce. So I guess, to answer your question, it’s probably not that healthy. Like, it’s just a little too much ecommerce. I like ecommerce, it’s great. But you know, my kids should focus on saving the world or curing cancer, not necessarily selling more more toys on a toy platform.

Andrew Morgans  12:57

What I will say is that being good at sales can help you in any role Fair, fair, even if they’re like saving dinosaurs, future times haven’t been made, you know, being good at selling whatever you’re doing will be good. So,

Justin Leigh  13:11

and it’s true. And the nice thing about e commerce is it’s it’s math like you’re doing you it’s about logistics and thought processes and like and doing the math around how it’s actually going to work and, and, you know, it’s not just convincing someone to put it on truck and put it on a shelf, you got to work through the whole process, if you want it to be successful. I remember one of the brands we’re talking to at one point said, Hey, we’re, why aren’t I winning on Amazon. And we’re like, because you’re bottled water. And they were like, but I’m the number three brand or maybe to brand and involves water, like we should be the top top water on Amazon, like you cost more than 15 cents an ounce to ship, your ASP your average sales price, you know, it’s kind of like 10 or $15, it could be 100 You’re still gonna be losing money, you got to do the math. So we were always about

Andrew Morgans  13:59

plastic bottles empty and time to fill them up.

Justin Leigh  14:03

This is dehydrated water. So all you have to do is add your own. Although we did so a lot of water bottles and that’s a great business as well on Amazon.

Andrew Morgans  14:12

I think a lot of private label businesses like did very well with those tumblers and you know, water bottle type of products the gym the fitness area for sure was like one that was like pioneering Amazon private label brands and we were talking earlier about a large water brand that we’re working with. So you know, things have changed and I think that the Amazon customer as well as changed a little bit in regards to understanding that they can be paying more on Amazon to get something for convenience instead of just those like low bottom prices, you know people are chasing. Okay, let’s let’s change gears just a little bit. And before I do, shout out to our sponsor FullScale.io Finding expert software developers doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you visit full scale.ai We can build a software team quickly affordably use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs, and then see what available testers, developers and leaders are ready to join your team visit full scale.io to learn more. So 14 years in, in the agency exited in 2022 or just started the new products in 20. To

Justin Leigh  15:20

2020 Yeah, 2022 the company was sold to commerce IQ I had left just previously. So I’ve been doing this for for just a little over a year now.

Andrew Morgans  15:30

Okay. And so you jumped right back in, by the way, you jumped right back in. And I don’t always hear that, you know, I hear a lot about just like kind of trying to figure out what I’m gonna do or what the move is, it sounds like maybe like thinking about a less of a people or services managed business and more of a SAS was just like, you know, it’s something that crossed my mind as well, because you’re just like, look, I love what I do. I love ecommerce, I love solving problems. But people is a whole nother game. Right? It’s a whole nother game to be great at people managing people get the right people in the right things and just a lot more emotional than than it is the tech work. But you started a workflow labs in 2022. What was like? Where did the the initial idea this, I guess, come from this is it’s something that you had kind of like been sitting on for a while that you wanted to do and just needed the time? Or is it something that you know, when you just started saying, hey, what do I want to do next, like, you know, this came to die, this came to life.

Justin Leigh  16:25

Yeah, and I think it’s one of those kind of hit the nail on the head earlier, the grass is always greener, if you’re running a services business, you’re always like, wow, it’d be great if this was a product, and we could just scale the crap out of it. And, and like add features and just everyday be making it better and better and better. We’re in a services business, you know, you’re kind of really much kind of reinventing the wheel and executing again, and again, you don’t kind of get that let’s add more features forever kind of thing, you get the product. So I was wanting to do that. And the thing I know well is setting up and managing products on Amazon. And I still think people don’t do a very good job of it. It’s the fundamental thing you have to do to be successful on Amazon or any ad in the E commerce platform. It doesn’t matter how great your marketing strategy is, if your UPC is wrong, it doesn’t matter how awesome you’re off Amazon retail media ad plan, powered by AMC is if you if your titles wrong, or you don’t have any one of another 1000 of different defects in your product that causes friction in the system. Yeah. And so we’re like, great, I know this really well, I think the world could benefit from having some of them and Danity, we talked about this a lot. It sucks every day, you have to log in and check on your ticket. So check on the site looking for all these problems, it’s terrible, people are not meant to spend their day managing a ticket queue. And so we said we can free them from all that with a bit of software. And I think everyone can use it. And I think it’ll make it all work run faster. And we can take advantage of the future faster. If we could have the day to day details automated and resolved. And so, you know, we talked, the point of the podcast is the future of search, I think that that’s going to be a big deal. And you can’t get there if you don’t have the fundamentals managed correctly. And so that’s, that’s what we did here with labs. And you know, it’s great, like the folks that I’m working with now, or I’ve been working with for, you know, over five years than doing the same sorts of things. And so it’s what we geek out about are like, hey, what do you do to unsuppressed the nation in this category? When this particular and indoors, you know, been triggered? Well, let’s figure it out. And then let’s put in software. So it’s been, it’s been a pretty, pretty fun process.

Andrew Morgans  18:39

I absolutely love that. And I’m excited. I’m honestly, I didn’t know the software before the podcast, and I’m just excited to learn more about it and dig into it, even as an agency and see how I can help my team. You know, it’s definitely something that as you’re building, you know, account managers are getting poached, we’re in a tough time right now, even as an agency, just keeping your people training your people get them qualified. There’s always a bigger brother somewhere that can come and take your your role players, you know, so finding software that can kind of help you assist with that is is very, very important to you know, not just the brand, maybe dealing with it, but the agencies that are working with the brands to do it, you know, we’re trying to keep top talent. And you’re not going to keep top talent if you’re making them just button clickers, either. You know, so you got to get them working on things they want to work on. So they feel like they’re they’re having fun, you know, in their job like I’ll still love ecommerce I’m years in as if I’m not doing certain things in the business that I don’t like, right? Ecommerce. I still enjoy it. I love it. I love fixing problems. I love brand building. I love storytelling. I love all the aspects of EECOM but nobody likes fixing variations and template changes and you know, it’s very just hard to find, but very nuanced. So I think you guys are solving a really big problem and a big pain point for a lot of agencies.

Justin Leigh  20:01

Yeah, I think you’re you kind of nailed it. And I think there’s a bigger conversation going on right now like, what do humans do? Like what are humans good at versus machines? And that question I think is going to evolve rapidly. But the things that I think humans do really well is they have inspiration and creativity and flexibility. And they have the ability to create things that don’t don’t yet exist. Like, that’s what humans are really good for. What they’re terrible at is like doing monotonous tasks incredibly accurately at high rates of speed. At every hour of the day, machines are really great at that. So I want all

Andrew Morgans  20:34

the motions, I think that that get in the way, you know, yeah.

Justin Leigh  20:38

So I want to be in this space where we’re enabling humans and removing those tasks and doing it an ever increasing rate of speed. So I like E commerce, and I like the our ability to apply that kind of be part of that trend. I think it’s pretty cool.

Andrew Morgans  20:53

I love it. I love it. I couldn’t agree more. I think as a CEO of my company, and kind of the gatekeeper to sales in regards to like, who we onboard or who we take on as clients. It’s it’s of the utmost importance for me to keep the team working on projects that inspire them, that they’re having fun, they’re feeling challenged, and not not challenged, because they can’t get a variation template to upload, you know, challenge to push their skills and brand building and you know, communication and on all these other human things. Like something that I think most agencies tried to scale out of, and they tried to automate and you know, but automating doesn’t mean just outsourcing to, you know, the Philippines or India or Pakistan. That’s not what automating is in your agency, like, these are still team members doing great work, doing a lot of stuff, like what is that human element that we do better? I remember, this is like, Duh, but just talking about like saving time for your team and getting them working on the right things. Like I scaled his brand from over seven years, from 500,000 to 17 million. We were in 11, International marketplaces on Amazon, one of the first like brands to really be crushing internationally, they had like five skews. So it was a little bit. And we had a lot of PPC spend going to just those five, it taught me a lot about not really needing SKU count or acing count or diversifying your PVC across all the products. Like what if you took all that and just boom, hammered two or three ASINs and just was the best? And what was the potential now was just a lot different than the other brands, I have 1000 nations that are pushing me to do half, you know, lackluster work in order to get everything done? You know, it was like, what if we just like obsessed about the you know, and it was it was it was kind of fun for me. But I remember, when I first started engaging with them, they had a lady in their business and older lady that was legitimately replying to every customer with an Amazon message like thank you like the like kind of a copy and paste. But they were, you know, if they were at 95, and we were doing 17 million, or even a million Think about how many transactions were happening, right. And I think at the time, it might have been like feedback whiz, or you know, feedback, genius or something at the time. But I remember having the Convo and really understanding what they were just telling me about this lady, you know, because I didn’t expect that was what was happening. They’re telling me that they obviously sends out messages. And I just kind of like took this pause and I was just like, well, for 9095 a month, I can just get a message, custom message sent to all these customers and she can do something else. And I had to say it delicately because it wasn’t like they were stupid for doing that. They just right, they just didn’t know what was available out there. They knew that was important to reach out to customers. And it was also one of those moments where I’m like, I’m not trying to take people’s jobs like no part of what I do has ever been about like getting rid of this sales guy or this distributor this or that. It’s always been about just like, how can we make the business run better and like just find something else, you know, there’s something better that we can be doing that allow these tasks if they can be done by automation, or a robot or technology. So funny little story there. But I just remember like, it was that awkwardness? Like we’re everyone’s on the Zoom call and you’re just like, I’m sure they’re paying her more than 9095 a month. Right, you know, so there’s like, obviously, a lot of savings. And then they you know, they obviously found something else for her to do at the company. Yeah, but just those funny moments where like you said, you’re trying to build a business where, you know, you’re able to give some of that back to to employees or brand builders and I couldn’t agree more. You know, there’s certain issues we

Justin Leigh  24:40

ran into that with our clients, you know, with our clients, you know, we work with agencies is how we go to market. And we ran into that sometimes they’re like, Well, we have a really, really great catalog team. And I’m like, I know you do and those people should be interfacing with their clients. You have a tremendous amount of knowledge in those people and it’s sort of wasted having them do the same repetitive tasks all the time. So have them spend less time checking on their Amazon cases and have them spend more time talking to the client helping the client understand how should I be thinking about my product so that I have less issues? Or

Andrew Morgans  25:12

podcasts or? Yeah, all types of things with their knowledge, right? Like, I mean, I do a lot of it. But if my team members weren’t doing other things, they have plenty to say, like, you know, and I would love all of them to be doing content, if possible, like, you know, hey, I’m, I’m the catalog, guy, Martin ology, or whatever. And this is what I do on a daily basis, and, you know, share tips and give value. And there’s so many things that team members could be doing if they weren’t doing some of those things. So tell me how it works a little bit, let’s take a little bit of time. In case we’ve got some agency owners on here, I think we’ve got a little time. So I’m an agency, I’ve got 4050 brands or so we onboard with you guys. How do you know if you have all these separate accounts and things like that? How do you plug in what does plugging in look like in regards to getting help from those things?

Justin Leigh  26:03

Yeah. So the way kind of our system is designed to work is we have a platform, you know, it’s a website, it’s a portal, it also is supported by API’s and web hooks. So in some cases, we’re interacting with technology providers, and they’re saying, like, they syndicate content that some either can’t syndicate variations or something like that. So those very key variation requests would come to us via API gets registered by our system, they give us the information along with that request that they need. And then our software, grabs it, and then starts handling whatever that task, whatever is required in order to handle it. So in some cases, our system will log into Amazon and cut a case to Amazon, or our system will log into Amazon and navigate through the US UI, and put the information where it needs to be validated, make sure we get a success message or we’ll hit Amazon’s API, whatever a person would do, in order to resolve the whatever issue came in is what our system our system does. So some folks come technology providers come to the API, our managed service partners, we have a portal so they can log in and see all of their clients create an issue for any of their clients, they can expose that UI. So it’s it’s organizational aware. So if one of your clients logged in, they would just see here’s all the all the issues that that Mark Knology is working on for us and the current status, and we expect them to be all done. So providing total transparency, to all of those, all those issues going on with Amazon, making it easy to ask for new stuff. And we also do a lot of audits. So it’s constantly looking at the account and looking for triggers that we think will cause future problems. Okay, a great example is like that, over the last 14 years, we’ve learned what words, if that are in your con in your content are likely to cause a suppressed ace. So we’re constantly looking through all of your products and saying, Hey, this particular word is sometimes problematic, you might want to change it, because if you don’t, you might get suppressed in the future. So it’s, it’s making recommendations like that. I think the you know, as we look at it, the most important thing is that you don’t have to stay up to date on what all the best practices for Amazon are, you can put whatever requests you want in system, and we’ll do it. And then we have a team behind the scenes that are automation runs, but it doesn’t always doesn’t always work. You know, sometimes Amazon has changed something. Or sometimes this is a process that you’re asking that we have, right the first time fix first time fix totally, then our team does it, we record what we do, we push that to our product team, and then turn that into software going forward. That’s so that’s sort of it, you know, I’d like to say it’s, you know, AI enabled, next gen thinking, but no, it’s just executing the fundamentals of what’s required to be successful on platforms like

Andrew Morgans  28:42

Amazon. And like, to anyone listening, it might sound simple, but like, actually, what they’re fixing is something that might a suppress listing or something like that might be something that takes a team member off of something else that they’re doing, it becomes a red alert, in a business, it can be their MVP, ace, and it could be a product that’s doing 80% of revenue, you know, being down 2448 72 hours, it can be, you know, catastrophic for some brands, you know, so it’s whether you fix it that amount of time or not, you still have to jump on it and let the client know that it’s getting fixed, it’s getting resolved. We’re working on it, it’s in progress, we’re doing what we can to fix it. And then you just, you know, you deal with what you have to deal with. But it’s definitely not something that’s like, yeah, that’s 48 hours in our queue, we’ll get to it soon. You know, these types of things are like things that disrupt the rest of what you’re working on a lot of times, or can be the difference in being profitable that month, they’re not, you know, a main maybe they’re, they’re cruising along and this one is 20% of their, you know, their profit or their sales for that month these so it’s a press listing, sure that some of them are not hurting the accounts that much some of them can be just like, you know, major holes in the ship, so to speak. And so these are like things you got to jump on. And you have to have team members that maybe this is first time that they’ve done this one too, and they have to go be able to fix that, you know, that’s something we tell clients is like, we don’t know everything. But like, you know, we have more experienced than most out there, and we will do our best to figure it out, you know, we’ll do whatever it takes to figure it out. Because the only answer you can really get, you haven’t seen every problem that can come up on Amazon are continuing to change. Sometimes you don’t even know what’s happening. If you’re taking on new accounts, with old outstanding issues, there’s all types of stuff happening there that you just don’t really know until you get in there and get your hands dirty. I mean, I’ve seen him was every scenario you can think of, you know, and 12 years of doing this, like as far as just like, what to expect, and some of them are our major, major issues, like I’ve gone to arbitration with Amazon over, over, like, you know, store suspensions or ACE and things like that, that were just like really crippling a business knowing that we had the right paperwork, we were the real brand, but we maybe we were five years late to Amazon and things are confused and messed up. And, you know, so just giving a little color to anyone listening in, like what exactly the software does, for an agency or a brand, if they go to market through agencies is this is where you need your expertise in your company, you can say like, you know, a variation fix, like just just off the bat suppress listings and variations getting them right or wrong. Getting them fixed are like major roadblocks in you know, account fix UPS cleanups, getting them where you want them to be, are you dealing with vendor Central and Seller Central? Are you dealing just with sellers, that clean Seller Central only, like, you know, are you dealing with international ASINs that are causing problems and other international accounts are, you know, doing one thing, right, I think variation in a eu account can can affect the US, depending on what you’re doing. Like there can be just these weird things that come up, that if you like, have to have your top lieutenants working on these issues, on top of everything else, that they’re doing just as a major, you know, profit suck inside of an agency. So if you made it simple, I just wanted to add a little color to like, you know, what that really means on the ground? And, you know, it’s a simple solution, but to a difficult problem or a real problem.

Justin Leigh  32:11

Yeah, totally. And, you know, in the agency days, sometimes, you know, join a call listening and like, oh, my gosh, we have a moment, you know, you have half hour an hour to talk to a client, we shouldn’t be talking about product development, or marketing strategy or something that’s going to help them grow the business. Instead, you spent the first 20 minutes like giving an update on you know why that variation has or has not, you know, deployed correctly or deployed doesn’t get broken, like this is terrible. So our goal here is, you know, we call it zero minutes, we want that account manager to have to spend zero minutes before the call prepping on the issues, in order to be able to speak intelligently to the client about everything going on. And we want them to spend zero minutes after the call, going and doing all the follow ups around all this stuff, you should just be able to do everything in real time and have it be seamless and easy. And it’s been your time talking to people about that stuff that can change the business.

Andrew Morgans  33:03

No, I love it. And honestly, the flat files, what you’re doing now through API and automation, you know, a lot of times has been taught and spoken about as flat file work. Because a lot of the changes that happen inside of this marketplace that we know as Amazon is flat file work, you know, getting templates to go through getting content to change, getting brand registry to change, getting some of these items, specific things to change, you had to be a wizard, so to speak, at flat files. And they have changed a ton through the years, you know, they can they continue to evolve and change. And just something that, you know, for the longest time, I avoided all automation software, these like feed file software’s or things like that, because they were doing 70% quality of what the listing should be on Amazon and I just had a problem swallowing that, you know, so it became cool this software does this is referred to as this you can push all these brands products to Amazon, but 70 70% Is that something that we’re happy with that we’re not because we’re trying to be the best? You know, and so that meant manual work, and having to explain to people why shirt, you could pay this for this software, we’re gonna have 70% Well, that extra 30% or 20, even 10%, that extra 10% of data makes a difference on these marketplaces, getting the data, right, getting it accurate, whether that’s return rates, whether that’s like, you know, Amazon’s internal checkboxes of what makes a good listing, whether that’s, you know, maximizing your SEO are getting the right keywords in there, whatever the case might be. I don’t need a bunch of blanketed tags from a Shopify website coming in through a feed file, and being my back end search terms on Amazon. You know, this was a difference in the early days, everyone wanted to do it the easy way.

Justin Leigh  34:47

But some of those errors difference, some of that, like 30%, those arrows are prominent, those are forever, like you mess up and asin until essentially or UPC, you’re never going to get that back. So you have to be the level of accuracy and detail is crazy high, just to not mess up your business?

Andrew Morgans  35:03

Yeah. And people don’t know that, you know. And so a lot of times at the beginning, what we really got is I feel like people now know how difficult Amazon can be. And so they’re more, they’re more. What’s what I’m looking for, I’m more apt to like work with an agency to get it right than they used to be in the past, where they’re like, This gotta be easy. Let’s try this little software says I can automate everything from eBay to my Amazon listings. And all these brands were just pushing products into the catalog. That was like with lackluster information. And it’s been years of cleanup by agencies like ours, honestly, getting not not just to come in and market and do a great job. But to clean up. You know, that 30% That was maybe wrong, or as much as you can, you know, trying to get that to the 100% how the listing should

Justin Leigh  35:45

1. Totally, yeah. And they pay for it and chargebacks and everything along the way. Hey, I have a question for you on Product Search. Okay, so I am, you obviously know that space incredibly well, you’ve brought a lot of brands to market, you’ve grown a lot of big businesses, the thing that I keep thinking about is in using the chat AI tools is that that is fundamentally different than keyword search. And so Amazon are kind of really broad keyword matching shopping to the forefront 9095 with the with the grid, get 1000s and 1000s of products that did a character match against the keyword that I use. But the cool thing now is natural language processing and iterative search. I don’t have to match the keyword anymore, like the concept of baby dog, and puppy are really the same things and natural language can understand that. And the fact that I can now give context around what I’m asking for, instead of just walking into Home Depot and yelling doorknob, you can be like, hey, I need a doorknob on my patio. And I’m like, alright, you need a lock, and it goes on outside. So those two things I think will fundamentally change not just how customers shop on Amazon, but who’s winning on Amazon, because all the folks that build their business by winning one or two keywords at really high velocity, you know that that might just all go away. So just kind of curious to know if you’re thinking about that, or, you know, if you guys are

Andrew Morgans  37:09

totally implementing AI into our business ASAP, and I want brands to know that we’re doing it early, instead of being 234 years down the road and being like, oh, yeah, by the way, our writers use AI or this or that, right. So we’re working hand in hand with software’s now, like Jasper AI, and different ones that you might have heard of, to implement, like our 10 years of methodology around writing good listings, and content, and actual like, so there’s this flow of like writing great sales copy, which is more of what you’re talking about, like, I’m looking for a doorknob or don’t you know, I’m looking to replace something on my door is more of like, sales copy, it’s flowy. It’s like, you know, in context versus like, you know, in on Google for so for so many years, the search was, what are the best doorknobs in Home Depot? Or what are the best doorknobs at affordable price, you’re going to get a list of 10 of the best top 10 doorknobs you’re going to click through and maybe takes you to a website or something like that, you ask questions. And Amazon has direct response, right? So it became this. If I type in doorknobs, knobs for doors, door handles, handles for doors, home doors, closet doors, like what are all the things that like people might be searching around this product I’m selling and I’m going to take the top 10 based on maybe a 555 rule or something like that, where it’s like small, medium large search volume, I’m not going to be able to take the top spot. So I’m gonna start with small medium and work my way up. You know, that kind of thinking. And then like once you’re up and you’ve got a product moving, maybe it’s now time to change and go after those top five that you weren’t at the beginning. And so you’re just you’re making all these changes all the time, right? Instead of really just selling like I’ve got this amazing brass doorknob that like I think is a great price and gets made right here in the US and you know, we’ll have a tea tomorrow if you want it and I’ve got a deal if you buy three like instead of salesmanship and like doing it, it’s like really changed and so I say all that to say there was a difference in Google there was like this if I just keyword stuff on Amazon that doesn’t get the job done either. People learn pretty quickly like that was like you know, we felt like That was Chinese list sellers like that was all just coming straight from China keyword stuffing based on research and having VA somewhere just like keyword stuff these instead of understanding how to sell though Americans Americans like to be emotionally sold to like sweet talkers. We’ve been watching Hollywood since we were kids. You know, we want to be sold to and I think that comes through in common language. What will be interesting is, you know, I believe that with video right now on Amazon, with video with image, alt tags, image descriptions, image titles, the images, like let’s say it’s a blue A baby wraparound towel, right? And if you have a blue baby wraparound towel in the image, and that’s what they’re searching for. You stay in a better search relevance, okay? So it’s like, Amazon now has a scanning software, those scanning images for like, what you’re selling to see if it’s in those images, you can be more relevant. And that’s a little secret trip tip for anyone listening. But I think that now that I know that it’s that that sophistication. I mean, I think it’s honest. And so you know, I’ve been, if you have images, like the captions, they might call it like, for the hearing impaired, right. But what we know is it’s also just preparing us for Voice Search. And, and Amazon’s choice, and no one is voice searching like, doorknob handle wooden, right? Like, no one is voice search. Don’t know me, if you understand, like, how big they’ve been pushing Voice Search, and like, you know, getting captions and videos, and these types of things like that, it makes complete sense to me that that’s right around the corner, if not hear already, what you’re saying, which is being able to say Alexa, what’s the best podcast, podcast mic, or Alexa, I want to podcasts kit for beginners. And it pairing like, you know, reviews along, like, you know, comments in the reviews, along with the video in the text, and really just trying to give you the best product because I believe that Amazon is and always will be built for the end consumer. And so if they lead with that, then it’s not about us figuring out how to hack and sell products and rank for them. And whatever it’s more so about justing, adjusting to what’s best for the customer. Instead of being like I don’t want to change, I don’t want to change, I don’t want to change like this is how we’ve always done it, it’s how we’ve always done it, you’ll be left behind. But if you’re like no actually selling the product around context of what they’re actually looking for, and then showing them the right product. And it being what they’re looking for not because I tricked them by ranking for this keyword to show it to them with this being what they want. I think that’s the best.

Justin Leigh  42:04

Totally, it’s kind of like, in some ways, it’s, it’s nicely freeing from this system that was never like the way customers shopped, or the way brands were used to building a brand building brand equity and talking to consumers. So that’s kind of freeing and nice. I think the part that we’ll do that matches up is it’s just a lot more to do. Like they’re gonna have to be super fast at understanding what the changes are on the platform, and what are your new options? What are you new ways to create content to talk to customers? And how do you deploy it, you know, faster, more accurately, all the time, and get better at telling the story. So, you know, that’s always

Andrew Morgans  42:41

so I’m excited about it, if I’m being honest, like my attitude toward it is difficulty breeds opportunity. And so, I’m always looking for opportunities and where stuff gets hard, I lean into that, maybe almost to a fault. But like, you know, taking on the Amazon problem was a hard problem. Like, you know, I spent, I personally am 25 30,000 hours working on Amazon, you know, my sisters that have worked with me join me here three or four, they’ve got 20,000 hours, like combined, or 60,000 hours or so, on solving this problem. Like it’s an obsession in some ways, you know, you just learn as you go, you have fun with it. But I’ve been pushing the content, storytelling, emotional connection through Amazon, what people see as just as white pages with white background images and like, no brand, I’ve been pushing what are all the ways we can just push that to the limits, with emotional content, through images through a plus pages by making the modules flow into each other. And, you know, so pushing those things. So for me, I love getting away a little bit from the gamification of things in regards to just like, Okay, if I do PVC on this keyword, and then I switch it here. Now, let’s just sell the best products, you know, with the best stories, the best content, the best reviews, the best experience. And the nuances supposed to be the technical, it shouldn’t drive everything else.

Justin Leigh  44:05

Right? It definitely was in the driver’s seat for a long time. I did traffic analysis at Amazon back when I was there. And I can tell you quantify at least in the consumables categories of Amazon. Like it didn’t matter what was below the fold, like the things that drove sales in terms of conversion. Were you know, is it is it in stock? Is it going to ship in two days prime eligible, you could just say that captured those two concepts. They’ll drop your conversion rate from 18% down to about 4%. And then the title and the image the price after that, like the differences in conversion were kind of insignificant. But now like I think there’s there’ll be an opportunity for us to kind of be a true us for Amazon to be a true utility to the to the shopper and help them find better and better products and

Andrew Morgans  44:50

their game as long as adjusting the you know, I’m just seeing them go through iterations and they found kind of like what there’s always going to be people that are always trying to show All right. And so Amazon, I went to school for networking and security and computer science and got a computer science degree. So my background is kind of like, finding hackers, right in securing stuff. And so like, you know, even even if I did Blackhat, the beginning figuring stuff out learning Amazon, we’re definitely white hat now and realized early on like, that is not the way to go to build brands. And to look for like long game brand building what’s existed since the beginning of time long, long, brand building, thinking of the customer. First, it’s not about the seller first, just selling online, was new and novice. So you know, for the I think the first marketplaces, we’re thinking of the sellers first, like eBay, and how to take pictures easy and things like that, but it’s really about the consumers and building trust. And that’s what Amazon did for the rest of ecommerce is build trust. And it was that two day shipping, I guess, what I’m saying is that I think the customer that is on Amazon is evolving, as well as Amazon, where it’s not just the people looking for deals are looking to get it super fast, or get the cheapest item. Now we have luxury items, we have tick tock content creators where people are just browsing on Amazon. So direct response, wherever you’re just like clicking exactly what you want, and buying it because you were reading it out of a blog list. You’re now Oh, I’m just perusing the shopping and, you know, Amazon fashion and different things like that. And it’s just creating a little bit different of the customers that are coming to the platform, instead of just those ones that are going to be driven just by those things. I don’t know, I’m excited to see the change, I needed to keep evolving, or else everybody else will just keep copying me. So we gotta have something to innovate into. And now that’s just a joke. But I liked the innovation, I liked the evolution of it. You know, change is always a little scary. But I think if it’s better, like if you think about it from like, that is better, that is better. If it were if it worked in that way, that would be better. And that’s why I have a team so that I don’t have to learn all the changes all the time super quick all by myself. You know, the I built a team, instead of being a guru on an island somewhere, I was like, I always knew I wanted to be part of a team that was better at other stuff. And I’ve got a team around me just like you said, you said, you know, your success was built on the team and the people you hired, I feel very much the same. And they’re really good at that shit. So, you know, I feel confident, I feel confident.

Justin Leigh  47:19

That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I haven’t

Andrew Morgans  47:22

question I was very unique. And I had a lot of fun with that one. Thank you. That’s, that’s definitely new. It’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be fun to figure it out. So what do you think? What are your thoughts? Just as we round out? Like, what are your thoughts, I guess, on the same topic, you know, and solving for that speed, I guess in regards to surge?

Justin Leigh  47:46

Yeah, I don’t know. Yeah, I don’t think anyone really knows yet. recently read an article, Amazon’s just started hiring for the people that are going to determine how the system works. So it’s a little bit too early for us to say, to be prescriptive, and say, you know, this is what brands should do. Ultimately, the one, the thing that’s obvious they’re gonna have to do is brands are going to have to learn how the natural language models and how the AI thinks inside every retail platform. And it’ll be different across every retail platform, and you have to have an understanding of of how it works. And then all of those models are going to be based on some sort of data. And that data is going to be constantly learning so that the retailer is up to speed on how customers shop and what’s relevant to them. And brands are going to have to figure out how do I inform those learning models, about my products, you know, it’s sort of like back in the day, the brand would show up at Walmart with light and do the line review. And they just show up at Amazon sometimes too. And we’d put the products on the free shelf because we didn’t know what to do with them. But like you can’t walk in and like explain to the retailer, why your products are great. You’re not going to explain to the retailer, you’re going to be explaining to an AI a dataset of natural language model that says this is why my product is great. Now you can go talk to people intelligently about my products.

Andrew Morgans  49:01

And I’m doing that now. I think they’re doing that now with influencer marketing.

Justin Leigh  49:05

Yeah, I think influencer marketing is great reviews are another like source of IT product content. These are all pictures, these are all these are all pieces of the puzzle. But there’ll be more. And as your consumer evolves, you need to figure out how do I learn from my consumer and get those learnings into my content and into my influencer? You know, how do I make my whole ecosystem around my brand moves really fast? Because that’s, you know, that’s the future is the speed of relevancy.

Andrew Morgans  49:31

I think we’ve tasted a little bit of this in regards to international expansion and localization in those markets and being kind of forced to do that. Like selling in Amazon, Germany, Amazon, Italy, Amazon, France. There’s localization and there’s localization even within Germany, right. And localization here in the Midwest, like some people will say soda, some people coke some people say gonna get a pop, right? Like those are three different ways I guess of referring to the same thing. And it’s based on where you are geographically like Like how you refer to those things like do you say supper? Do you say dinner? Right? Do you say a meal based on where you’re at in the country. And so I think that localization piece is kind of already at play. And this is just going to be the next step into that. But if I go into, if I have an amazon.com listing, and I go into Google Translate, or Amazon’s translation services, and then put that into an Amazon Germany listing, I’m still very far from where I need to be. Okay, so I know AI is going to speed a lot of things up. But, you know, what I found is if I went to, there’s different partners that do localization and language translation, a couple of big ones that do it in the Amazon space, if I go to them and translate my listings into German, or into Dutch, and then, and I do the same thing with my PPC, the conversion rate, and the difference in from my images to my SEO copy to my PPC is like night and day. So it’s not just like getting the right words, or whatever it’s localizing to the to those areas and how they talk and how they search can be the huge difference. So I just see that at scale. You know, it’s like, think about the brands that are selling, they were all selling shampoo and body wash, they used to sell it to women, mainly as a target market, they went through to the shopping stores to buy the stuff, whatever. And now we got manscape and ballsy brand. And we’ve got all these like male focused, body care, body wash type of products, it’s just everything, it seems like every man wipes and dude wipes and everything is just getting super niche. And I think that’s kind of the same thing is going to just come into the marketplaces as a starting with the products that will come into the marketplaces so that we’re finding in the same way, at least, I’m theorizing with you and having fun doing it.

Justin Leigh  51:44

Yeah, I think this maybe this, the part that big brands will be scared of is used to measure your business by like, Oh, if my if let’s say my business is up 10% This month, or down by 10%? You’re like, Well, did I go out of stock? Or did I like lose an important placement, like now you’re not going to have access to that easy information. Because it’s not just a keyword it was, you know, these are generative searches. So you are going to need different and better tools to understand like, what’s driving your business? Am I no longer relevant to a consumer trend that I used to be relevant to someone else? Men were? What is that? What is that trend? It’s not a category? You know, it’s it’s a little, like a, a local trend in Germany could be swinging, you’re swinging your sails, and how do you pull apart and understand that, I think it’d be really interesting to watch. And I think a lot of opportunities for, you know, for companies like yours and, and others in the space will be created to help brands figure that out,

Andrew Morgans  52:39

you got to stay connected to the polls, and like you won’t, these old brands won’t be able to stay like, you know, basically like just winning off of their old reputation or their old momentum. And they’ll have to be like, well, if language is changing, we know language changes quickly, like we’ve gotten new words from rap songs, and all types of stuff that happens. And those become common language. You know, as they blend in, and our culture is getting more and more blended here in the US at least over time. You gotta stay relevant, you know. So you’re those agencies are going to fill the gap for those brands, I think by being like young and quick to move and, you know, able to adjust, but I think, a complicated subject, a beautiful one. But I think the simple version of it, anyone listening is you have like, if Amazon’s coming out with innovation or new things you have to jump in, you just have to jump in with both feet and figure it out. And understand what Amazon’s trying to do. Because that’s how you get the best, like, big perspective on what they’re trying to do as a whole in, in the marketplace. That is Amazon is by I’m going to jump into Amazon posts, and Amazon live and Amazon Inspire. And maybe we’re not doing them at like full tilt, like, you know, but we are in there. We’re learning we’re trying to pay attention, okay, they’re getting more into this like social spaces, content spaces, branding space, like we need to be there as well. And I think if you’re doing those things, listen to the change coming on Amazon, you’ll you’ll be okay.

Justin Leigh  54:10

I agree. But don’t Don’t jump too hard. Like I was on the reg team where we sold large sponsorships to brands that I’m pretty sure they never never made back. You know, I was there for xe shops in the Amazon phones and like, all over there to just like they test to learn, you know, brands need to be tested learning to and, and in ready to cut the you know, don’t put it all in test it. If it works, scale it if it doesn’t dump it, do something else.

Andrew Morgans  54:34

work with an agency that’s testing it for you.

Justin Leigh  54:37

It hasn’t tested that has experienced testing across to the brand so they’re getting some bigger perspective on what’s working. What isn’t awesome. I can …

Andrew Morgans  54:43

I could go back and forth with you all day. I’m having too much fun. But like as we end up the show, I’d like to end with two questions. One, what’s something you’re working on in the business that you’re super excited about in 2023? I know you guys are new so is probably everything but like something that you know specific you’re working on this fun, and then something you, as Justin are working on in 2023 that you’re excited about or moving into something unique for you. And then lastly, where can people find you and get connected? Sure, absolutely. I

Justin Leigh  55:13

wasn’t aware there’s gonna be tests, that was

Andrew Morgans  55:16

an opening, an opening, you can say, AI and be good. So

Justin Leigh  55:22

alright, so something that the business was really excited. I mean, if so, we’ve, you know, been doing this for about a year, and now we’re just hitting our scaling points. And now we are, you know, seeing our number of cases that we’re doing every week, kind of start start to skyrocket. And so all of the assumptions that you made along the way, when you’re starting a company are gonna get tested. And I’m excited to see which ones are wrong. So hit like, we’re like, Yeah, I’m sure that’s gonna happen. Like, no, it’s not going to be that it’s going to be something else. So now, now over the next couple few months is what we get to see what we’re right about wrong about it, start to make some decisions. So I’m pretty excited about that. And I’m excited about the number of hours we’ll give back to people through that process where they can spend their kids and playing with a dog and hanging on sunshine. So I’m excited about those things. Personally, you know, my, my kids are, I just heard this, I’m gonna go deeper than I expect to you on the show, I just heard the stat that you spend 93% of the time with your kids before, they’re 18. Before that, you’ll spend their entire lives. So after they turn 18, you only have 7% left. So I’ve got kids that are 12 and 14. And so right now, I’m excited about going to the plays in playing baseball with my son and having a little bit of a break from the service services and businesses take a lot of time. Product businesses do too, but you can schedule a little bit better. So I’m pretty excited to be on a schedule to spend some time with my kids. And we what was the third

Andrew Morgans  56:45

was attending? Lastly, where can we get in contact with? Oh, yes.

Justin Leigh  56:49

Workflow labs.net. Workflow labs.net, as our end would be happy to talk with you about anything Amazon related, or anything else really. It was really a pleasure. It was a pleasure, Andrew, this is great. It’s nice to hear from someone else who’s who’s gone through a lot of the same kind of challenges and learnings with brands and built some built successful products like you have, likewise.

Andrew Morgans  57:10

And I’m excited to honestly get to test the software and figure out what this what this can do for my agency in my team. So I will definitely have to connect after the show. Shout out again to our sponsor, FullScale.io. Do you need to hire software engineers, testers are leaders let Full Scale help they have the people in the platform to help you build and manage a team of experts at Full Scale. They specialize in building long term teams that work only for you learn more when you visit full scale.io. Justin, thank you so much for being on the show, sharing your story and your journey. I had some fun with the questions I’m not used to getting asked either. That was that was a lot of fun for me. And I’m like, what, how do I think about that? I don’t really know. But I have to double down on you know, just getting time. I don’t have kids in my own, but I actually have my parents back in my life. You know, just because of like work and we’re in the same city now is spending a lot more time with them. So trying to reverse some of that data, you know, switch it up if we can. So I 100% agree there and thanks again to our Hustlers and our listeners for tuning in. Really appreciate your guys’s attention. Hopefully you guys learned some stuff from this. And if not, you can always find us in the show notes. I’m gonna have Justin’s contact information there as well as mine, and we’ll see you next time. Thanks, guys.