What You Should Do to Protect Yourself as an Ecommerce Brand Selling in the Current - Paul Rafaelson

Hey guys, Triple Whale is now offering post-purchase surveys absolutely free. Go check it out and enjoy the episode. You know the most powerful lobbying organization in America? You know what it is?

It's the one that gives you 20% off the Outback Steakhouse or 10% off the Outback Steakhouse. It's the American Association of Retired People. Is it really? Yeah, it's one of the most powerful lobbies.

They lobbied for the Medicare pricing negotiation law that just passed along. You know why? Because there's just a lot of the retired people. We're back.

I'm Sarah Levenger. This is the Pit Stop Podcast. If you've been listening, I think we've all kind of just had our minds blown and I'm feeling terrified about taxes. Don't be scared.

I'm lucky I have a very good CPA. He is a lawyer slash CPA. Very smart man, does all of these tax things for me. But I want to know for the bigger e-commerce brands that you work with, what is your feeling on what's coming up next?

How can we protect ourselves from just a legal standpoint from all of these different things that we don't have knowledge of. And to your point, probably we'll never be able to have knowledge about all of it. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to discourage people.

I think it's really still a great time to be an Amazon seller. I mean, these are people, I've got clients who are making, people with barely high school education, making three, 400 grand a year, flipping from TJ Maxx at their retail arbitrage, or clients who I knew who were making barely eking out a hundred grand in 2017, who sold their business for 10 billion in 2021 during the aggregator boom, which is something we were a part of. So we were helping our clients. So like, there's still plenty of money to be made and there's a way to play at stake.

But what I think really needs to happen. So I really get it. I encourage people to do business. But you know, again, utilize services like mine.

Like literally, this is why I make it $99 a month. It was like, why not just get a little bit of advice? Like why not ask a lawyer? An ounce of prevention for goodness sake, an ounce of prevention, right?

Most of the clients who were in the most trouble with like states on tax issues or any issues at all, usually it's because they didn't ask a lawyer ahead of time. Like if they'd just gone to me for 15 minutes before they made that one decision, like the whole thing could prevent it. And that to me is the same. And that's what we're trying to prevent.

But, you know, I think we'll take a lot of awareness. Like if you look at the Isabel Rubinas case, okay, so you've got this mom, minority woman owned business owner, minding her own business, pun, no pun intended, in Illinois, you know, running her own shop. And we've got thousands of these stories and she and in comes Gavin Newsom, gruesome Newsom, right? Who, you know, gets caught forcing COVID restrictions, but then goes to the French laundry himself and doesn't wear a mask.

Right. And, you know, going after this woman and poor woman in Chicago. And I've got thousands of those stories and you've got people being persecuted. Like where's that social media megaphone?

Where's that AOC saying like, you know, we literally have programs in the government to promote these programs, which have been a boom for women and minority owners. Like statistics are out that they've been a particularly great boon for women minority-owned businesses for immigrant-owned businesses especially because e-commerce is it really is the closest thing to like blind commerce like like judgment-free commerce right like they're always like you know i used to work at walmart you see those pitch rooms right and you can only imagine like you know if the buyer at walmart maybe he's a little hungover because the arkansas razorbikes didn't have a good game it in walks this woman from new york trying to pitch her wares and maybe doesn't like the way she's right because all that bias that goes into this right you wonder how that All that unfair stuff that we hear about in the news, none of that exists in Amazon or in e-commerce.

You go to market. Anybody can sell to anybody and anybody can buy from it. Right. And you're judged by the merits of what you do, not who you are.

Very much the equalizer. Very much the great equalizer. And that's what I love about e-commerce. And so me as somebody who has zero social media savvy, I think we have negative followers on Twitter.

I think people actually like, I'm that bad. right but as somebody who knows what needs to be done like i know that we can form like as e-commerce sellers like you know the most powerful lobbying organization in america you know when it is it the one that gives you 20 off the outback state bills or 10 off the outback state bills it the american association of retired people is it really Yeah it one of the most powerful lobbies They lobbied for the Medicare pricing negotiation law that just passed the law.

You know why? Because there's just a lot of the retired people. And they owe like 10% off at the Elbeck. Boomers at this stage.

Anybody over the boomer age right now holds like, I think I read a stat, like 70% of the disposable income in this country. Like it's just, they've just got cash to burn. It's like, we don't know what to do with it. Yeah, they pay 20 to 50 bucks a year for this membership.

And collectively, the organization becomes one of the most powerful organizations of Congress. Like, God forbid you are a Florida politician and you want to do anything negative to Social Security. Like, you're dead. You're dead.

OK, you're dead at the door. Yeah. Well, and that that goes deep into like something that I'm super passionate about, like consumerism, consumer behavior and consumer trends. And that goes kind of deeper into like how the country is set up from a people standpoint, because we have a whole lot of retired people who had children who didn't really follow the same path as they did.

So they just don't have the same sort of investments, the same sort of setup as their parents. I'm also slated to inherit a lot. There's a big wealth inheritance. Inherit a ton.

And that seems like the next big kind of discussion that's happening is what happens when the Gen Xers inherit all that real estate. Yeah, inherit all of that income. So that's something interesting. Which will be tax free.

But that's another discussion. Which is like, where is all that money going to go? Because that's going to happen sometime soon. Yeah.

But our point of view is like, could you imagine like there's a million plus e-commerce and Amazon sellers alone in the United States, right? If we got together, we put a, you know, a hundred dollars in the online merchant scale. Or if we put in the money and we had a dedicated team of lobbyists. Because here's what's the cool thing about Amazon sellers, for example, or eBay sellers versus eBay, the Amazon.

Okay. There's a lot of us, and there's something we can do that they can't. You know what that is? What?

Vote. Yeah, true. Good point. So you've got millions of voters who have one common interest.

We want a fair e-commerce economy. Yeah. Okay? And so when you go to Congress, and there's this thing called congressional math, right?

So if I call my congressman and say, this e-commerce tax thing was crazy. You've got to do something about it. He just thinks I'm a loony-toon. If two people call him up, he's still thinking, okay, maybe he just told his friends to do it.

And he's still a loony-toon. if three people do it if four people do it five people if ten people if ten people from a congressional district call up the it starts to go exponential to where they realize holy crap this is a problem and so with like a million amazon sellers and ebay sellers plus in every district right i can go to any congress congressional district theoretically i should be able to go to any district be like here's 20 people who give a crap here's 20 people who live in fairbanks alaska who care about this issue and you do that on a massive scale i mean we actually have the potential to be the most powerful lobby organization in the united states of america yes but it's like it just needs that social media that aoc style social media megaphone which when i started to treat it so because i used to do some lobbying when i was at walmart i couldn't and even at g like i mean i know how the game is played i was never told that i was going to be the one in charge with getting everyone all these like gurus and folks who like have their groups and you know they all said they'll do it but then they all of a sudden they felt very comfortable asking people to contribute money to a cause because they don't really understand it yeah they no problem asking them to contribute five thousand dollars to buy their course which i found odd but i won't go there that i think that's where kind of the entire basis of it runs e-commerce brands in particular are very uniquely tied to just how the government system is set up in this country and so if we if we do want to see good change and we want to like actually live our lives and scale our brands and our businesses one of the things that we have to do is not be afraid to get involved in the larger political system, which I find some people, not all, obviously, some people are very afraid to do because we don't know enough.

Like it's hard to get information and know who to trust, especially when it comes to politics. So what's your feeling on where should people go to get more information on joining something? We need we need I need a team. I need a team of like the people who are good so I can help provide the information and I can help And it not this is a very bipartisan Yeah Right There are there are Congress people in Arkansas and Congress people in New York who all agree that this is a good thing right Think about it What the one thing Okay So a lot of my clients right If it wasn for e they would be on government assistance right now.

Like they just, they're not cut out, right? We have a lot of disabled, a lot of clients with disabilities that cannot work nine to five, right? They love telling me the story. Like if it wasn't for e-commerce, right?

I have this disease, I have that, right? There's all those stories. I mean, everybody loves what this provides, but I don't think people really understand it. So what we need is we need help getting the story out.

As far as being afraid, it can be done. I mean, all organizations, online merchants guild.org, OMG, online merchants guild.org.

If you're a member, that's private. It's not public. We don't, we don't publish a member directory and say, here's all the people. You have the right to be completely silent and that's fine.

But we have a lot of members who have no problem speaking up and saying, I'm a proud member of the online merchants guild. And you can read our testimony that we've submitted in various different areas. I'd be happy to point you to that. But when we had a subcommittee hearing, a small business subcommittee hearing on taxes, let's say right before COVID, we had plenty of our members writing in to Congress and writing in their stories of how they were abused by tax authorities.

And so we can do it. It's just, we have the numbers. We just need, I just need somebody cool to help get it all over. I'm happy to do the technical work as a volunteer, but we need like that cool person with that social media megaphone who can get the attention and tell the story.

I think that's the basics of every brand ever, which is marketing. You just need somebody cool. You need good marketing. It really is.

It's a marketing problem. Yeah. You need good marketing. And it's not difficult to fix as long as you find somebody who's super, super involved, obviously, and very interested in pushing this rhetoric forward.

I also think it comes down to just education and that's difficult. You guys are probably, and this is the problem that I'm having too, about two years early, right? Like you're in the party early and you're ready to go. And the rest of us out here are just starting to understand how this is structured.

Yeah. And sometimes- Yeah, like we just won a lawsuit. Pennsylvania is saying that Amazon warehouses are not nexus in Pennsylvania, you know, under the US constitution. So that should have federal effect.

Yeah. All right. But unfortunately, it's a Pennsylvania courts interpretation. So no, it's only a Pennsylvania court.

So we're trying to go to federal court and we got kicked out of federal court, not because we were wrong, just because federal courts aren't supposed to hear those kinds of cases, even though we're like, it doesn't really help us to go state to state. This could take a long time. We do this. And so my point is, yeah, we're making headways.

We're doing things. We stood up for the price. Even in price gouging, we stood up for Amazon sellers because we said, hey, wait a minute. Yeah.

We said, wait a minute. We said, look, we're not against price gouging. Nobody should be selling from the paper for a thousand dollars. We got you there.

But let's be realistic. some of these price gouging laws are very like it's a little bit of an increment can cause problems i said but you know what we don't control state pricing yeah my price of you know i could be selling a hammer for 20 bucks and 10 states could say it's price gouging and 20 states can say it's not right so how can i sell on amazon if i can't control it and yeah so like we take up these cases and we love doing it and that's the fun stuff but we we are we're a little over time but now we have to get the cool people to come and join us and so this should be considered an open invitation if You want to be a person who changes the world, who wants to bring e-commerce into the purview of our government and actually elect people.

They can actually start funding campaigns for people who are going to acknowledge us. We want the next election of senators and congresspersons to be people who acknowledge who we are. We have the potential to be just as strong as the AARP. And that's what they elect.

They elect a lot of people. Yeah, they do. That's why I said you got to support that Social Security if you want to get elected right now in this country. because the AARP, and that's the stuff we have the power to do.

So I just want to meet those people. And I think the best analogy is of how you can really sort of like shame the sort of like think tank of all white men. And I apologize for, but that is the truth of who these people are. It's the multi-state tax commission who come up with these terrible ideas of how to tax small businesses is to shame them.

And it reminds me of the tampon tax from years ago. There was a big to-do. Do you remember this? That like all of a sudden a bunch of people realize like, wait a minute, it's basically a woman tax.

Like I pay tax I have to pay sales tax on something that I medically required to have And it it becomes a woman tax and it was just tax that on all kinds of products still so right and it like the shame of it alone was enough to get that resolved and and so we need those like marketers and social media mouthpieces and megaphones to just come and join and be part of this mission so this is an organization because there is hope absolutely i think we will win and actually should Nobody not.

I always say the ultimate burden on interstate commerce, which is what our constitution was written. Like, believe it or not, George Washington thought about this. Okay. They thought about this and they said, this can't happen.

And the ultimate burden on interstate commerce is you deciding not to do something in business because of this stuff. And that's what the constitution actually protects you. It just takes time to get through the system. And that's what we're fighting for.

I think that's like such a good place to end though, just because there's got to be a way for us to kind of come together and get more information and get involved. and to not feel as though we can't do anything just because we're in this system. Obviously the system can change and does constantly on a yearly basis. Absolutely.

So yes, if people want to get involved or like get to know what you guys are doing, where should they go? Like where, yeah, what's the easiest place? So if you want to get involved in a nonprofit and you want to come to me and say, hey, like we're ready to take the reins of this thing. You just let oddly the nerdy stuff, you do the coolest stuff.

I'm ready for that. That's onlinemerchantskilled.org, onlinemerchantskilled.org.

And then of course, if you need legal help, You can find me at Paul at Ecom.law or just my website, Ecom.law, E-C-O-M, it's not L-A-W. And we have this really cool program called SellerBasics.

com, which is really neat. It's $100 a month. It's like after your tax deduction, it's like less than three bucks a day. And it allows you the opportunity to talk to myself or other lawyers.

Anytime you need to ask a question or if you get a scary letter or something happens, you know, whatever the subject or you want to know, does the FTC allow me to make this claim about my product? Whatever issue it is, we're about Amazon or your account health. It's included in your $100 a month. And if your account ever gets shut down, if your ASIN, your listing gets shut down, or if you have a Shopify problem or an eBay problem, that's all included.

We'll do whatever we can other than litigation or arbitration, but we'll do everything in our power to help you. So that's just $3 a day before tax deduction. So check out sellerbasics.com if you really want the cheapest way to work with us and the coolest way to work with us.

So think of it as like, it's kind of like insurance, but we don't insure. You know, the only thing is we don't assure you a loss is that you're off line for many days. Yeah. You can't call insurance.

Yeah. Well, thank you, Paul. I mean, this was so much good information. It's really interesting to figure out and to just hear like how the bigger brands are affecting the smaller brands.

Obviously, you have a lot of knowledge. You have a lot, a lot of experience in this. So I appreciate your time. This was like super eye opening to me and hopefully like really helpful for these brands.

I mean, this is really fundamental and fun and interesting. This is the 20%. This is the pro bono. But I mean, obviously, if you're listening to this and you're like, do you have selling your business?

If you're thinking about, you know, we have a lot of unbiased advice we can give you because we're not brokers. We don't take a commission on your sale. Like we're just lawyers. We're lawyers.

We're here to give you advice and we see a lot. And to me, I think that's our advantage is that we just see so much. Like we have so much visibility. We have so many clients.

So many folks have been through those situations that you've probably been through and can help you and offer you that insight. So I encourage you to reach out and talk to us if you have any of those kinds of questions. So it was awesome being on your product. Thanks so much.

This has been a lot of fun. I'm so glad. We'll have you back sometime just because I think this is something we can definitely talk more into and get deeper into kind of what you offer. Also what the brands can do like now today to kind of not just get more involved, but to protect themselves.

Cause this is all stuff that's very relevant and will continue to be relevant as we move forward. So thank you. Absolutely. We love that.

This is so much fun. Thank you. So nice to meet you. Mesa is used by customers like Mudwater, Chubbies, and over 500 others who want to stop wasting time and money with repetitive tasks.

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