Craig Brockie: Handling Compliance or Patent Issues in Your Amazon Business

Speaker A: You're listening to the Million Dollar Sellers podcast with your host, Nick Schuquette. Today's show features another amazing entrepreneur who has found success online. Now let's learn what it takes to be a million dollar seller. Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to the Million Dollar Sellers podcast. Today we've got Craig Brocki on the call. Thanks for coming on, Craig. How you doing today, man?

Speaker B: Doing awesome, Nick. Great to be here.

Speaker A: Got all your crypto notifications turned off and all that stuff?

Speaker B: Indeed. I think we're going to be safe and sound for 30 minutes here, so.

Speaker A: Cool. Cool. All right, man. Well, uh, where are you calling in, uh, from today?

Speaker B: Clearwater Beach, Florida. I live in an area called Island Estates. It's right before the beach. It's a boating community. So we've got a few jet skis off the backyard here and, uh, a boat club membership. So we get to take out boats whenever we want. So that's pretty good. I like the lifestyle here. It's a lot hot, A lot hotter than it was in Newport beach and especially Canada where I grew up.

Speaker A: Okay, nice. And how long ago did you move down to Florida?

Speaker B: That was at the end of 2018 and I was really glad to be here during the last year when things were getting crazy in California. A lot more free over here.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they just changed some things here in Virginia beach and, uh, for the better, um, you know, in my opinion. So it's been nice. Um, yeah, so yeah, man, that's nice down in Florida. So you got a boat, you get out on the water pretty often?

Speaker B: Uh, probably once a week. I enjoy it a lot. Um, I got these sit down jet skis that are pretty fun, but we also have a stand up jet ski that's a lot of fun. I never grew up using stand up jet skis, but I used to do a lot of water skiing. So it kind of, it's kind of in between wakeboarding, water skiing and jet skiing. You get to fall in a lot and take jumps and stuff. It's pretty fun.

Speaker A: Nice, man. Yeah, I love getting out on the water just like on anything I possibly can, you know, just, uh, for sure. Just feel so good being out there, man. Uh, yeah. So, so let's dig into your, uh, your journey in business a little bit, man. Uh, you know, when did you with entrepreneurship, you know, was Amazon your first thing or was it something else?

Speaker B: Well, I did websites. Started doing websites in 1996, actually, way back when when you actually had to convince someone that they needed a website. So that was when I was 21 years old, started a business with a partner back then and had to learn how to sell. So I guess the first major skill that I had to learn was how to close deals and, you know, get people interested in their own business enough that they'd want to promote it with you and trust you enough to do it. And so that was up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is super cold, very conservative place. It's like a farming, farming community basically. I mean it's a city, but it's really agriculturally based. And then found them to be really conservative. Then I started going back into Ontario where I grew up and uh, pitching hunting and fishing lodges to get them tourists down for fishing and hunting and stuff. So that's where I really cut my teeth. And that's when I got into SEO. And basically, uh, 1997 or so is when I got into SEO. The main reason is because we had a client who happened to be a friend of the family and he was just so frustrated he wasn't getting business from his website and he cut out some other advertising spend to make room for his website. So I felt really bad that he wasn't getting any business. So I would even search for his website and it would come up as Untitled Document in the search engine. At that time it was probably altavista or Infoseek or Excite or one of those ones. It was way before Google and Yahoo was around then, but. And then I realized, okay, wow, we need to actually put some keywords in here and put things in the right places to start ranking. And I started seeing some of the tricks the guys that were ranking at the top of the list were using just like you and I do today on Amazon. As we look and we see who's ranking at the top and what are they doing differently and how can we emulate some of those things and do them better? So that's. I found that SEO is super important skill to learn back then. And then we kept on running that till about 2006 and then tried to get into another business online and that kind of failed. So I just kind of retired for a little bit, then ran out of money and realized, uh, I needed to get back into business. Started doing, um, reputation management, online reputation management. And that was so, so, but really tough gig. And then at the time I met these people who were part of my church and they had no past Internet experience. This is 2015 and they were just killing it on Amazon and they'd never run, um, E commerce or done anything online before. I Was like, wow, if too green people can kill it on Amazon, I should learn something about that. So signed up with asm and my wife actually studied the ASM course while I was running the reputation management business. And then over time I just took that over and today we've got a great team of executives here and doing over $10 million in sales and really have uh, a good thing going on.

Speaker A: Nice man. That's pretty cool. Uh, the reputation management is that kind of like authority building, like your, your presence on the Internet positioning?

Speaker B: Yeah. What that is typically what we would do in for prospecting is look for people that had some like I look at doctors, lawyers, anything, anybody who's high net worth or businesses that had some sort of negative report or something showing up at the top list. And we also did some advertising too for people looking for reputation management. But the cost per lead on that, I think it was, it was close to $2,000 per lead to get a uh, reputation management client using Google AdSense or uh, AdWords. Sorry. But um, yeah, it's a really tough gig because trying to clean up the first page of Google results and get all the negative stuff out of there, you have to push a lot of positive pr. You know, you can do Forbes articles and all these kinds of things but it's expensive, takes a lot of time and there's still no guarantee that you're going to be able to push all the negative stuff out of there.

Speaker A: Nice man. Yeah, that does sound difficult to do and that's still like something I'm navigating a lot. Is that SEO marketing, uh, more traditional world versus Amazon, Um, have you been able to leverage that experience? Do you do PR stuff for your products?

Speaker B: Well, very unlimited scale. We do so well on Amazon. Within Amazon we do some paid Google advertising with Quartile, but it's not anything like a home run. We don't do organic SEO right now either. So that's something that I've talked to some of my old reputation management guys and they pitched me on it and um, I see the benefits of doing that, but we just haven't really ventured out of that yet into that.

Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I was wondering man, because external traffic seems to be kind of like the hot topic in the Amazon space right now. And I know I'm kind of driving myself crazy thinking about all the different ways I can make that happen. Um, I've seen some guys, seems like they have some good results with the PR stuff. Um, but yeah, I haven't really picked one to go with just kind of doing more traditional stuff on Amazon.

Speaker B: And I mean within the Amazon ecosystem you can run a really good business. Obviously you're really dependent on that traffic. And the pay per click costs have come up a lot in the last year it seems, but, um, it's still very profitable. Obviously what we've been doing with our business to expand it is obviously getting new products, but we like to build new variations of existing products. If we have a winner, we have three hero products really right now, and then a new one that's up and coming as a hero product. So once you have that best seller badge and that a high number of reviews, several thousand reviews, or tens of thousands of reviews, I find it's really easy to come into there and add a new variation and take that variation, put a different title and different keywords on that, and actually go after a whole different keyword universe on that new variation and launch it, um, under that and with all the power of the existing parents variation combination, it just, you launch with a lot of power and a lot of strength and then you have a whole other way of feeding new visitors into your listing in a, uh, keyword universe that you weren't necessarily doing very well in until you launch that new variation. So that's one of the things we do. Back in that good old SEO days, we were basically blackout SEO. We were spamming the hell out of the search engines and actually Google traffic was coming in hot and heavy. We're doing, uh, over 200,000 unique visitors a day on average. And it would go up to 300, 400 at times. But 200 was kind of like the low end. But we had thousands of websites and it was all about just spattering as many keywords as possible and just broadening that keyword universe as much as possible. And I find with Amazon, um, that's really successful also. It's just some people might be selling a bottle opener and then they're doing all the things to do with bartending and bottle openers and that kind of thing, but maybe not really looking at gifts for men who have everything or Father's Day gifts or whatever, those keywords that could apply to that where they're not going to be kicking ass all year long, but you might get these seasonal spikes and we do really, really well at Christmas because of the giftability and focus on gifting with our keywords and our products.

Speaker A: Nice. So when that time comes and you're ready to, to focus on some other keywords, are you relying on PPC for the most part to do that or do you do any changes to the listing itself?

Speaker B: Well, you know, Easter is really strong for us too. Christmas is really strong for our products. Cause they're really kid oriented products. Sports and outdoors get their kids off the cell phones outside having fun. So if anybody out there has uh, young kids, you want to get them off your phone, our product line would be right up your alley. But anyway, we do change titles from time to time. I was really reluctant to do it in the old days because sometimes your title would get locked and then you wouldn't be able to change it again. So I would leave for instance the keyword Christmas in a variation title all year long previously, but now we'll sometimes rotate it into Easter or more summer oriented keywords. We just make sure that we remember and we keep a log of which title and which keywords we've rotated out of. So when the new season comes back we can rotate back into those keywords. Because the thing about variations, and you'll see this in Helium 10, when you look at your rankings, when you have a whole bunch of variations, only one variation shows up for any particular keyword. M. You know, if all of them were separated and not in apparent that you might get multiple listings showing up there. But when they're under a parent, you only get one that's ranking at the top. So we were very careful to make sure that say something's ranking really well for a gift related keyword for 10 year old boys or something like that. And we end up shifting the title. We make sure that we shift it back before Christmas to what it was so that, you know, everything's lined up. Because it seems like Amazon's algorithm, it seems to us at least to have some sort of historical. It sounds like an elephant that never forgets where it's, you know, it seems to memorize what used to do well and they'll at least try you up in those areas again. And if you, uh, I could be totally wrong. This could just be Craig's voodoo. But it seems to us that, you know, if you've ranked really well for something in the past, you should make sure that you don't really abandon that. And if you do abandon it somewhat throughout the year to make sure you come back to it again.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I think that's a great tip, man. I know some people lately have mentioned, you know, changing up titles based on, you know, seasonal keywords or maybe something caught your eye in a PPC campaign and you want to try popping that into your title and seeing how it Works. But yeah, I like that you've, like, we keep a flat file, like a backup, you know, kind of like a restore point on a computer. But, uh, I like the idea of having those titles saved as well, so you can kind of just plug them back in, uh, when you're ready to do that.

Speaker B: Yeah. And our sales have been down a little bit lately. Like, we were up triple last year, so it was just a blockbuster year for us. And then right up until about where Covid picked up last year, we were up triple this year also. And then once we got to that anniversary date of COVID we've actually been down a little bit. So it's first. You know, we do have some new product launches that are going to take up the slack and get us back into a growth phase again. But I wanted to. I always like to make sure that my same skus are up year over year and always growing. So one guy I've been really kind of intrigued about is Steven, uh, Pope, the. My Amazon guy. Have you ever heard of him?

Speaker A: I recognize the name. Yep.

Speaker B: Yeah, he does a ton of YouTube videos and they're actually a really affordable agency. So, um, and the guy, he used to be a chess teacher. Like the game chess and really good at chess. And then he also used to be an SEO expert too, and now he's running an Amazon agency. So I just hired them yesterday to do a audit on my account and see if there's any SEO things that were maybe missing or not doing well enough because it seems like I might actually hire them as an agency and give them one of my asins. Sorry, one of my hero products is not performing that well and just see if they can do anything better with it. Because, um, you know, he's running over 160 accounts. We're running like two accounts, so there's a lot more data to pull from and. Seems like a really sharp guy.

Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I'll have to check that out.

Speaker B: No financial incentive referring. Yeah, I haven't even hired him full time, so I'm not endorsing him either.

Speaker A: So that kind of reminds me like, um, I forgot to ask, when you, when you started out, uh, on Amazon, you met those two guys. You said we're doing well. Um, was your first brand that you launched, the one that you still have, like, what did that early stage look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, the first product we launched was a, ah, sport towel. Like a microfiber sport towel. And that was pretty lackluster and we ended up discontinuing it. It sold really well. At Christmas as a stocking stuffer. But that was kind of it. And. And then. So we kind of let that one go. And then our next product ended up being a home run. So we've just kept on expanding out, uh, more and more variations of that, hitting more and more keywords, getting more and more reviews, you know, maintaining that bestseller badge. And I guess before I forget, I want to mention too, I'm going to take a little segue here, but say you have a listing that has 10,000 reviews on it and a bestseller badge in the US or even if it doesn't have a bestseller badge, say you have 10,000 or even a few thousand reviews and 4.5 or 4.3 rating right now. It's so easy to go into Canada, uk, Australia, Japan, all these markets, and all the US Reviews are pretty much moving over into those markets. So like about, uh, this time last year, we saw that change. A friend of ours tipped us off that, hey, we used to have this ugly duckling in Canada that did no business. And all of a sudden our US Reviews came over and were showing in Canada, and our sales just went through the roof. So we really did a lot of global expansion last year, too. So we're now all over Europe with the Pan European program, which really helps because you get the prime shipping everywhere, uh, uk, Canada, we're also in Australia and Japan. Now, they're not big markets for us, but my feeling is that if you can crack the code and get in there while you have all those U.S. reviews and establish yourself and get the rankings and get the momentum and get the reviews, even if they pull away those US Reviews, you'll be the guy standing strong there. So I suggest if you haven't gone into those countries, you do so right away, because who knows how long that opportunity is going to last, because it could be something that's temporary.

Speaker A: Right? How much of a. No, no, I totally forgot the question that you did ask, man. Um, hey, I'm wondering, like, uh, how much did you rely on on Amazon to help you get your products over there? Like, logistics wise, I know they'll kind of reach out to you and say, hey, you should launch on this marketplace and we'll help you do this.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Well, what we did do is we hired them. They helped pay for all our legal compliance in Europe to get Pan European set up. So that was about €5,000 or something like that that they picked up the tab on. And that was kind of nice. I mean, we got hammered hard this year because we weren't ready for Brexit. And so when the inventory got separated, we weren't set up ahead of time for that. So that was an error on our part. But now that we're back up and running, like our sales are just crazy in Germany and um, yeah, exceeding our expectations. Uh, in terms of logistics though, like whoever's doing your logistics now and your compliance, you can just get those people, just give them a target. Say, I want you to open up pan European next. Or I want you to open up Canada next. Canada. Super easy to do and most guys I think are doing Canada these days. But

Speaker A: yeah, we were doing the, we got on the North American remote fulfillment program a while ago and that worked out well. But now it seems customers have gotten savvy to the uh, they don't want to pay the extra customs and taxes and stuff. So now you've got a lot of sellers just setting up shop, you know, in Canada with some inventory and sending it into FBA there. And we're actually in the middle of doing that now ourselves.

Speaker B: Yeah, we used to do NARF also. And I think it's safe to say that whatever you're doing now, if you actually get your inventory in there with 2 day shipping and no customs and all that BS, you're probably going to 5x at least your sales on what you're currently doing in Canada. We tried to get into Mexico also, but it seems to be a lot more red tape involved with actually getting your product into Mexico and actually having it distributed from Mexico. So we haven't quite got there yet. But I've been really, really happy with Canada. Uk, Europe and even Japan is picking up now. It's crazy.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've been thinking about Mexico, man. I visit there often but man, like I, I see the way people drive down there. Like I don't know how much I trust my, my stuff on a truck, you know, a big Amazon prime truck on their roads down there. Um, love visiting there. But yeah, I've been thinking about that lately, uh, as well. Like how it's just a, it's just different down there, you know, man, it's just different. You get a good amount of sales through the uh, the NARF program.

Speaker B: Still down there though, I don't think we get much at all, honestly. In fact, one of the problems I had with NARF is it didn't seem to include all our ASINs. So it seemed to be very selective in which things it would include and which it wouldn't. And maybe that's why our statistics increased so much when we actually got our inventory there and got everything active. I can't, maybe some guys really do well with narf, but if you're doing well with narf, if you can think of having two day fulfillment on everything all across the country, you know, it's just going to get better.

Speaker A: Yeah, those global marketplaces really seem like a no brainer right now, man. It's like it's the dot com market so getting so competitive in a lot of spaces. Um, I hear a lot of people talking. They're like just looking at the UK marketplace and they're looking at these other opportunities and taking off with those. It's crazy how much opportunity there is, uh, when it comes to Amazon, man, I'm starting to really think that there's not enough people selling stuff for the amount of people that want to buy stuff. I mean it's, it's just crazy how much people shop and people love spending money and the Internet has just made it so easy and Amazon makes it just effortless. It seems like even with things like clothing and fashion and stuff where people used to, they want to go in the store and they want to try that stuff on and see how it feels. Well, we know that on Amazon you can order something, try it on, mess it up a little bit, rip the tags off, send it back and get a refill. So they've made it easy.

Speaker B: That's actually one of the problems we have with our product. And we get. Because it's a gift item, in my opinion, because it's a gift item, we do get some returns obviously. And one of the problems we have is that Amazon will, you know, people don't want to pay for return shipping so they'll say it's defective. So that's a big pain point for us. Even though we have proof that it has not been opened or hasn't been even tried. Like they haven't even put the batteries in the product to try it. They'll mark it as defective. So we put in a whole what's called reverse logistics. It's basically inspecting your returns. The other thing is, uh, when we allowed Amazon to dispose of our product, they don't destroy your product, they dispose of it. And by disposing it, they sell it to a liquidator in most cases. And what people do is they buy up your product pennies on the dollar and then they're selling shit on your listing. And for us, paying the extra 50 cents or whatever it is or I don't know the extra cost for them to ship it to you. I think we pay maybe a buck a unit or something to have it inspected and then we keep a whole statistic of, um. Well, you said that this ASIN had 10 defects this month, but actually five of them were unopened and two of them have been opened, but the batteries weren't open, indicating that it hadn't been even tried. Therefore we open up cases. So I don't know if anyone's getting hit with those NCX alerts where it says negative customer experience. Well, we like to be proactive about that and really know what's true about the defect rate. Plus, obviously if there is a problem, you want to take it up with your supplier and really hammer that out. So it's not an ongoing issue. But, um, I think that's super important, especially to keep hijackers or resellers off your listings selling shit to your customers. Because if it is a defective product and someone did get it from a liquidator and they throw it up on your listing as used, you know you're going to get an unhappy customer. I don't think that's worth the risk.

Speaker A: Yeah, man. I think you touched on two things that are pretty critical there for people, like the having Amazon dispose of your inventory. And I think they have some other program too. Um, but I noticed I started out reselling, so I was very, uh, dialed into the buy box and how it rotates and sharing it with other sellers. When I started doing private label, uh, on one of our accounts, I saw my buy box percentage going down and I'm like, what the hell? Why is my buy box percentage going down? I created this product, it's mine. I don't sell to anyone else. And it was fricking Amazon selling warehouse dam damaged products on my listing for like $30 cheaper. Um, and just completely messing us up, man. Like that. That was really frustrating to see and figure out because Amazon positions it as, hey, we're gonna help you out with this new program. And, uh, it doesn't, it just doesn't help you out. Uh, and the other thing that uh, that you touched on was the negative customer experience thing. And I think that's something a lot of people don't really know where to find that. It's in that voice of the dashboard or voice of the customer section, um, in your account performance section. And yeah, we're also very proactive on that as well. Uh, but what frustrates me about that is you can't find out who left the feedback. Um, have you guys found out a way to Kind of like. Because what we've done is, like, um, we had one product we were selling, uh, it said, like, large container on the title, and we had variation. So some of those variations would not be considered large. They would be considered like, a small. And, uh, we. We got an NCX for that because, you know, Amazon customers, they see large, and even though they could pick the variation, there's still some mix up there. So we just took large out of the title. Um, but we didn't really have, like, a course of action to reach out to a customer and say, hey, sorry, you know, we want to send you a replacement or something like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, you know, my finger's not really that close to being on the pulse on that line, but, I mean, if what you're saying is the case, then I don't. I can't. Just thinking out loud. I don't know how you would actually identify the customer identity, but there's probably some MDS hacker on here way smarter than me that can just say, oh, you just do bloody blah.

Speaker A: Yeah, I just. It's weird how Amazon, you know, they expect us to take action on certain things, but it's like, well, you know, you're not telling us who the customer is that left this feedback, so we can't really, you know, we're limited in what we can do because, um, I'm with you, man. Like, you got to be proactive about those things. And when you. When you represent yourself to Amazon, it's like. It's like going to a court, man. And, you know, like, Amazon's the judge, the jury, the executioner, the attorney. And you've got to really have everything documented, um, to prove to them that you tried to do everything you can. And we've found that NCX thing, like, when you do a plan of action or something like that, they want to know that you looked that ncx.

Speaker B: So we keep a spreadsheet of all the cases that we open reporting the false defects that aren't defective, so that when we get an ncx, we just. So, okay, well, here. Here's all the cases. Here's all. We tally up all the results for them. We say, boom. Um, you know, 50% of the stuff that's reported as defective is not defective. Therefore, please, you know, reinstate this product. Whether that helps or not, I don't know. But if we ever get to the point where they're actually wanting to take us out and completely eliminate the asin, I think, you know, that will help in terms of showing that we're really on top of it. And that their statistics aren't necessarily accurate.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that that one to be helpful. And someone else on the account health team pointed out the customer concessions, uh, report to me as well. Um, and you can find some stuff in there. But yeah, man, they make it difficult to find the stuff they want you to. Uh, when you're writing those appeals and trying to get a listing back up or an account reinstated, uh, they don't always make it easy for us.

Speaker B: Yeah, Um, I did want to mention a couple of things before we, uh, move on like this before we end the call at least. But, um, I did sign a deal recently to sell my company, so that's pretty exciting. And then, uh, right before I signed the deal, I got hit with two patent infringement issues, like allegations. And so that's been kind of interesting. So if anybody's having to deal with patent infringements, I've, uh, got a lot of experience on that now and how to, how to deal with that. And obviously, if you just go to a lawyer and you're lawyers, they benefit from having controversy and fighting because the longer they can stretch something out in a lot of cases, unless they're working on contingency, they like to have conflict. So one of my suggestions is if you ever get hit with the patent infringement, is try and find out who the owner is and contact them and get in communication with them directly. And I did that with this one guy, and it turns out we were 100% infringing on his patent. I had no idea this patent even existed. I did hire a lawyer before launching the product, and he didn't find the patent.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: I mean, that sucked. But turns out the guy was super cool. He wanted to shut me down. He wasn't looking for a licensing agreement. He just wanted to get me out of there because I'm a direct competitor. And I said, look, man, we're selling the same product, but give me a chance here. Let's have a conversation, and maybe there's room for a Coke and a Pepsi. That's how I put it. I'm happy to help you. Boom. Your sales. I can see a lot of things with your listing. You're not fully optimized. And we end up having a conversation. And on our first, very, very first Skype video call, before the end of the conversation, I'd added so much value to his business that he actually, he thanked me. He thanked me. If that's too loud, we can pause and come back.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think we're Good.

Speaker B: Okay, good. Anyway, while we're on that first Skype call, video call, he actually thanked me for infringing on his patent.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: He basically offered me the rest of the year to sell his product, to sell our product that infringes on his patent, no questions asked. And I also introduced him to the same buyer that's buying my company and that buyer wants to buy him too. So basically the patent issue is going to go away because the same company is going to own the, uh, patents and both products. And then on top of that, which was kind of cool, is we just helped him with some ppc. We helped him with some, um, keyword stuff. His whole search term field was blank. He had a content, but the descript, the description was completely blank. There's another tip, guys. If you have a plus content and you haven't gone back and taken the old description field and splashed a whole shit ton of keywords in there, you're missing out. So what we did is we took basically our keyword list, threw it in his description, gave him some really good titles, helped him with his images, infographics, put, put a better video in where, like in his image stack. Uh, and he, he contacted me this past weekend. He said, oh my God, my sales have gone up 5x. Now I'm going to be running. Now I'm going to be running out of product and like, I need your help with logistics now. So I put him on the phone with my logistics guy. So, okay, here you got all this shit coming in when you're going to airship some, we're going to fast boat some other. But bottom line is that if I had just hired a lawyer and my lawyer said he's not infringing on your patent, or he is infringing on your patent and just trying to create some controversy, I'd be out a whole bunch of money and probably be on my way to being shut down right now. But if you actually communicate with the guy. I met a guy really early on in my business career and he used to carry a business card with him, his own business card, but on the back of it it said business is people. And I'll never forget that. I'll always remember that. He said, like, as Amazon sellers, sometimes it seems really impersonal because we're dealing through a platform and we don't see that person on the other side. But you got to always remember you're dealing with a human on the other side. They've got problems, they've got things they love in their life, things they're not so happy about in their life. And if you can actually communicate with that person on the other side of the phone and find out really what they need and want and fill that need. This guy turns out when he found out he could sell his company for a minimum 5x multiple, he was just super stoked. And then all of a sudden, I'm his best friend and now I've boomed his sales and he'll be telling this story for the rest of his life, I'm sure, how he came after some guy for patent infringement, and I ended up selling his company and 5Xing his sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, man, that's amazing. And it's amazing what can happen when you just pick up the phone and just talk to someone. And I love that you mentioned that card that says business with people on the back of it and how that's just stuck with you. And now you've got this great story to tell and you've impacted someone's life in such a positive way and it helped you out as well. Like, it's just a beautiful thing when you see stuff play out that way where everyone, you know, walks away a winner.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's fun.

Speaker A: And how many people just wouldn't have picked up the phone? You know, so many. So many of us just won't pick up the phone. We won't make that call.

Speaker B: Right. Or they'll contact a lawyer and the lawyer reaches the other lawyer. And it's just, you know, once you get the lawyer on the line, they have to talk to each other. I think, like, for you to talk to the guy after the lawyer's involved, it's trickier anyway. Yeah, it's always good to jump, get in communication with them first and find out what they need and want. And it might not be as bad as you think. Now, I also got hit with another patent infringement issue. I don't know if you have time. Do we have time to talk? Yeah. What time is it here? Okay, good. Another guy is actually. He's what's called a patent troll. I don't know. Have you ever heard the term patent troll?

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: It's basically someone who has a frivolous. Like, it's a patent. They have a patent, but it's really frivolous. Their allegations that you're infringing on it. But they're basically just trying to threaten you, saying that if you don't give us some money, we're going to litigate and you're going to end up wasting so much money litigating that you might as well just give us some money, basically. So, I mean, fortunately, this guy also runs a business and he's not just like 100% patent troll. He does add some value in life, in business. But I was able to use this story that I had with this first seller, Amazon seller, who I was infringing on his patent, and I just handled the hell out of the situation. Really added a lot of value. And I said, look, man, um, I'm not going to pay you the money because I'm not infringing on your patent. I've had many opinions saying that I'm not infringing on your patent. So, like, that's not going to happen. But I mean, talk to this guy who I've helped, and he's gonna, he'll tell you that I'm a good guy. And, you know, if there's a win win here, instead of us suing each other and stuff, maybe there's a way that I can help you out as well. But, you know, this guy has a way less leverage with me in terms of being able to shut me down. But he could also cost me hundreds of thousands, if not over a million dollars of litigation fees if you, if push came to shove. Anyway, this guy seems like a bit of a douchebag, so I'm not sure if I'm going to help him so much. We'll see.

Speaker A: So is that for, like, it was a different product, I'm assuming, than the other product?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. And then someone, the previous owner of the patent, actually alleged we were infringing on the patent way back in 2018, and at the time we arguably were infringing on the patent. So we completely redesigned the product and now another guy bought the company and he sees how well we're doing because we have a best selling product. We probably have sold $10 million worth of this one product to date. And he's thinking, wow, if I could just get a percentage of all those sales to date. And he's looking at Helium 10 projections, which are way higher than my real sales. So he's thinking like, man, if I could just get a sliver of those sales, I'd, uh, get a few hundred grand at least. And then they argue something called the doctrine of equivalence. If you're not actually literally infringing on the claims of the patent, one thing they can do is they can claim, well, you're not using the exact same things, but you're using equivalent things to that. So therefore we think that you're still infringing so that's what these guys are doing with me.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: My lawyer's not having it and I'm not having it.

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I love the way that you're approaching these situations, man. Just like, not really reacting in a bad way, just kind of keeping an open mind and trying to turn in a different direction. Uh, that's great.

Speaker B: Yeah. The worst thing you can do in those types of situations, in my opinion, is creating antagonism, you know, making the guy think he's stupid or an ass or insulting them or some way, or, you know, disregarding something that they're saying. So do my best to listen to what people have to say, acknowledge them, so they at least feel like, you know, I've looked at their point of view and, um, try not to disagree. But I guess that's the other point in any kind of disagreement is try something. Try to find something that person has said that you can agree with. You might not agree with 100% of what they said, but if there's 10% of what they said, agree with that. Yeah, that's what. That's what selling is all about, is finding points of agreement, increasing that amount of agreement until they agree with what you have to say.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I like it, man. Definitely some, uh, art of negotiation there. It sounds like a little bit, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And just trying to get along with people and genuinely help people. And that's the last thing I wanted to mention to the MDS members. I think this group is fantastic. I get so much value out of it. Uh, I made at least an extra $2 million in sales last year thanks to Two Guys. Michael Patrone. I don't know if I pronounced his last name properly. And Keith Nander. I've done shout outs to those guys already online, but never in a video. But if I hadn't had those logistics hacks last year in November and December, we would have stocked out, wouldn't missed out all kinds of sales. So appreciate those guys. And there's just that kind of value there all the time. And one thing I really like doing is helping other people with their problems. So I find it's way easier to solve other people, help other people solve their problems than it is to solve my own problems because I'm so mired in them. Maybe you found this also. Like, someone tells you a problem, the solution just seems so, so simple to you, maybe. But because they're so mired in the problem, they maybe they don't see the solution. So I love talking to guys. And so if anything comes of this. This interview in this podcast where guys feel comfortable reaching out to me and we can do a quick conversation. And they just say, hey, man, I'm struggling with this right now, and whether I can help you or not, it'd be interesting to have the conversation. Uh, I'd love to see if I can help guys and ladies in the MDS group.

Speaker A: Yeah, man. The power of the networking in the group continues to blow my mind on a regular basis. And, like, every time I come back from an event, I'm just so, like, focused and motivated and, you know, just so excited for, like, the next event. And it's almost like I don't want to let people down at the next event. It's like I want to come to the next event with, like, some great thing that happened or some great thing I figured out, and, like, it just keeps me going, man, year, uh, round, um, and, you know, big shout out to a lot of the, you know, like, Anita and Iri, uh, for this past year through Covid, like, keeping the virtual events going while we couldn't meet in person and. And really just fostering that environment where we continue to be open and honest with each other, man, because it's. I think you're. You're spot on, like, solving your own problems. You're like. You kind of get blinders, you get tunnel vision, and you. And you miss stuff, and it can be upsetting.

Speaker B: It can be upsetting at times, too. Like, you're, you know, there's m. Emotion that gets tied into it, whereas when you're detached from it, you can see it without that emotional, like, upset, you know?

Speaker A: Well, man, you know, you're definitely a valuable member of the community yourself. Um, I look forward to hanging out with you again in person. I think we. Well, we hung out in Utah, right?

Speaker B: Yeah, man, that was amazing. I want to do one shout out to Ian, too. Ian Sells. He gave a tip on PPC there that I think. Not think I know was quite a contributing factor as tripling our sales last year. Obviously, Covid helped, but I don't think everyone's sales tripled because of COVID last year. So the PPC definitely helped, like, the tips that he was giving just about ppc.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we met in Utah. We hung out. It was great. I wish I could have made it to Puerto Vallarta, but just didn't work out. But I'll definitely make the next one for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, man. Well, I'll definitely be there, man. Looking forward to hanging, uh, out with you again, um, before we Let you go, man. Why don't you give the audience one piece of advice? Like if you had to go back and start over, what's something you would do differently?

Speaker B: Uh, in Amazon specifically, I would say expanding variations quicker. We had a best selling product that was just one color variation and it just killed it. We had the best seller badge and we were doing super well, but now we have eight, and we'll soon have 11 color versions of that product. So now we're just the total number one in that space. We have the most number of reviews and no one can really touch us right now. Each variation is going after its own set of keywords. So all together, they just feed so much traffic into that listing. For instance, we have a pink version and we focus more on female keywords to do that one. We have a blue version and not to sound stereotypical, but we focus more on male terms to do with that one. And boys and stuff. But they're all driving traffic into this one listing. If we had picked that up sooner and done that, I mean, our sales would have been huge, even years ago, man.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, great tip. Uh, appreciate you handing that one out, man. Um, Craig, thanks so much for coming on, man. It's been great chatting with you. Uh, really looking forward to seeing you again soon, man. And just, uh, thanks again, man. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker B: All right, take care. Thank you.

Speaker A: Are you a million dollar seller looking to network with like minded entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurs apply for membership now at milliondollarsellers. Com. Leave us a review and subscribe now so you don't miss out on next week's episode.