001: Welcome to the Brand Fortress HQ Podcast! Meet Your Hosts Jon, Mike, and Matt

Speaker 1: 0:00

All right. So this is our background episode for our first podcast for brand Fortress HQ, and what we're going to start off with is just giving a little bit of background on each of us. So my name is John Stogen. I'm the founder of First North Marketing, an Amazon focused marketing agency. We have Matt. If you want to introduce yourself real quick, Matt.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Yeah, my name is Matt. I've been in the e-commerce game for about 10 years now. I'm a brand owner. I also work for an agency who does similar to what John does.

Speaker 1: 0:31

And then we have Mike.

Speaker 3: 0:34

Yeah, my name is Mike Kaufman. I've been in e-commerce for almost 30 years, been selling on Amazon for about nine years and work a lot with post purchase process and list building and whatnot.

Speaker 1: 0:48

Awesome. So the goal of this first episode is really to just spend five to 10 minutes each on our backgrounds, because a lot of people who are listening to this are probably going to wonder you know who are these guys that are talking about building their brands. You know where do they come from, what drives them or drove them to start on brand Fortress HQ. So I'm going to start and I'm just going to walk, you know, for five to 10 minutes kind of through a little bit of my background, so that way people know just where I'm coming from when we have our whether it's our you know tip episodes or interviewing guests, that type of stuff. So, personally, my background I grew up in a tiny little town in Western Minnesota no stoplights, tiny little graduating class 34 and started with like a lot of kids, I think, as a you know, 80s growing up in the 80s and 90s, training baseball cards around 10. And that's really how, you know, my brothers and I kind of selling, buying, trading baseball cards, were able to afford some of the cool things that our parents didn't have money for. So I still actually have a Game Boy that I traded for baseball cards from way back in the day, along with the Terry Bradshaw rookie card. That's pretty cool and that really kind of started my journey into entrepreneurship and being very interested in it. You know my parents were gave me enough guidance that they told me I needed to go to college, but had no idea what I should go to college for or how to pay for it. So I ended up walking on for the Air Force ROTC program. My freshman year earned a full ride scholarship by the time I was a sophomore and then after graduating I commissioned as an intelligence officer, spent four years on active duty working with cargo aircraft and then the next 10 years full time in the reserves and really, you know, kind of an odd entrepreneur in the sense of I didn't, you know, start out at 1819 as an entrepreneur. I kind of took a different path and then kind of came back to entrepreneurship about 2017, where I raised $10,000 on Kickstarter for especially food products and then launched on Amazon and built a six-figure e-commerce brand around that and was running that until the pandemic in 2020. I had a lot of friends that were local entrepreneurs, that were in the consumer package, goods space and mostly wholesale, had seen the things that I'd done on Amazon and, because of the pandemic. Basically, the stores that were ordering their products had dried up overnight and so they had kind of dabbled in this Amazon thing and but hadn't had, you know, really any success with it, so started asking me for advice and how I got interaction. I shared a lot of things that I had learned and they said that's fantastic, can you just do it for me? And that's kind of how I accidentally started. And then I started working on Amazon marketing agency called First North Marketing almost four years ago and then today we're. You know the agency is really focused on engineering profitable growth for Amazon businesses and I continue to work in the Amazon space. As far as you know, BrandForscher HQ, I'm really excited to be part of co-founding this, because I think that Amazon and e-commerce space in general has gotten a lot more competitive over the last few years. It's changed a lot and I think that entrepreneurs, in order to be successful, you know, really need to have the best strategies and blueprints and you know, working with you, matt and Mike, you know, I think between the three of us, we've had some amazing conversations over the last year on how to build brands and how to continue to compete even as things change on Amazon, because we're in the trenches every day, you know, building our own brands or helping other brands succeed, and I'm excited to share you know, really the strategies and tips that we learned from this, because I know we get so much from each other. And then also, as a part of this podcast, we're going to be bringing on guests as well that have a ton of experience and expertise that are going to bring, be able to bring some more, even more strategies to the table for our audience. So that's a little bit about me. Who wants to go next and kind of give a little bit of background of themselves?

Speaker 3: 5:12

If I can happen here, I guess. So again, my name is Mike Kaufman. I actually have been selling things for a good portion of my life. I actually started way back in middle school. I used to in the neighborhood where I grew up. I used to make homemade slingshots out of rubber, tires and whatnot, so I used to sell those for five bucks a piece and sold quite a few of them. So that was my intro to entrepreneurship, I guess. But I took a little hiatus from that for a while, until college. I went to college. I had a double major in math and polysine with the full intent of becoming a lawyer. I always enjoyed the arguing. Well, let's just say, I enjoyed arguing and I was very good at it and I normally won. And so I figured, well, might not make money at that and I thought I was going to make a million dollars. And it became clear to me while I was in college that if I went that road it would be the only thing I ever did and I wouldn't have a family, I wouldn't have anything else, I would be doing that every hour of every day and I just knew it was going to be a bad road for me to take, so I took a little detour on that. I enjoyed tutoring, so I actually added a focus on secondary education. I graduated with an education degree. I taught for a couple of years. I'd now turned to high school and at the same time, I started a lawn care business when I was in college. To pay the bills and why not? I worked out in the summers and while I was doing it, I started selling organic fertilizer because I wanted to do fertilizations. But I started selling it online as well, and so I got an online business and that was going relatively well, and so I continued doing that. After college and while I was teaching, I decided I did not want to go back to teaching until I didn't need the job, because the administration that I worked with was horrendous and I was afraid that any school that I went to might be the same way. So I wanted to teach the way I wanted to teach, and if they decided to fire me, fine, fire me. I don't need the money. So I decided I was going to continue the business until I had enough money that I could teach and not have to worry about it. So I continue selling online. I've been selling online ever since About 2012,. I got a little concerned about the product that I was selling. The company whose products I was selling online Started looking for other alternatives. I sold t-shirts online and tea spring was a big thing and ended up selling on Amazon. So watched a few webinars, looked like something I could do and so built a brand off of that, been doing it about nine years and back then it was Wild West. Selling on Amazon was relatively easy back then, especially for somebody who already knew how to sell online. I mean, amazon was just an absolute breeze to sell on back then, and now it's a whole different ballgame. It takes a very different skill set than it took back then and a different approach. You definitely can't approach it the same way that you did back then and I think it's more getting to the point where it's just getting back to basic good business principles and applying them in new ways based on the new economy and e-commerce and whatnot. And so building lists, building brand loyalty, connecting with your customers, understanding their needs and all of those things are valuable and I think Amazon's sellers for the most part have neglected that and I think it's time that we stop neglecting that and start focusing on those things. So I'm excited about Grand Fortress and what we're trying to do for sellers in terms of helping them to understand those basic strategies and components that really set you up for success Long term, whether Amazon tries to shut you down or not. If you built that list, if you've got a good, strong customer base of loyal customers and you have their contact information and you engage with them and they're loyal to you, then you've got a resource that you can take wherever you want and you can make money, no matter how you want to do it. So that's me.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Just out of curiosity, mike, what year do you mind sharing? What year you started selling online?

Speaker 3: 9:57

96.

Speaker 1: 9:59

OK 96.

Speaker 3: 10:02

Back when computers were barely computers.

Speaker 2: 10:05

I was going to say was there even an online back then?

Speaker 3: 10:08

You know it's funny, aol, aol man. That's where I started. It was really funny. So the first computer I had, the very first one. My wife, her father, gave me his old computer when he got a new one. And it was an old, it wasn't color screen, it was the old five and a quarter floppy disks, that sort of thing. I used it to write my papers in school and whatnot. So I mean it was great. But then my upgrade. I went to Best Buy and I bought a Packard Bell, which probably nobody listening to this even knows what a Packard Bell was or is. But I bought a Packard Bell. I bought it on credit, like a six month, same as cash, something or other, and I turned it on and it started talking to me and I was like, dear, dear, you got to get in here and listen to this thing. The computer's making a mistake. So that was my introduction to what was ostensibly a real computer.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Nice, nice, well, and I think one of the takeaways that I take from that, too, is that you've been doing this since 96. So building a brand, whether you're doing it online or anywhere else, the vast majority of the time it is not an overnight process. It is. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint.

Speaker 3: 11:27

Yeah, absolutely, and it's trust. It's always. Every business that I've ever had, no matter what it was, even back selling slingshots, it was still trust. You know, like I mean you think about it, a slingshot, like I mean, if I'm going to buy a slingshot from somebody I don't want it, you know breaking and snap me in the eye or something. I mean you got to trust the person that you're buying from. See, it's the same thing. It doesn't matter what you're selling. And every, every product I've ever sold, I've always sold trust in myself and or my brand first. That was always the first line.

Speaker 1: 11:56

So yeah, and I think that's a big part of what brand fortress HQ listeners can expect out of this is is that we're going to be talking about strategies that are about building your brand in the long term, not you know quick fixes or you know hacks in order to trick the system. They're going to work for a week or a month or whatever it is we're looking at. You know how do you build your brand for long term success.

Speaker 3: 12:23

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 12:25

So with that, Matt, I'll turn it over to you for your background.

Speaker 2: 12:30

Yeah, so I did not have the traditional entrepreneurs starting the businesses at 10 years old, like a lot of us did. You know, I had kids pretty early on, and that was my life for many, many years, and I went. I was an IT for what feels like a lifetime ago, but that's kind of right out of high school I was jumped into the workforce to provide for my family, so I T for over a decade, and I worked for a lot of big companies. The last company that I worked for was a big marketing conglomerate, and I got laid off actually the day before my wedding Actually a couple days before we were leaving for our wedding and it was a good buddy of mine that laid me off, and it was a whole big deal, and what I realized back then and I kind of knew this leading up to that was that, working for a big company, I'll always be just a number, and I probably had my first business idea about a year before I got laid off from that last job, and that was about 2013. That first business was a healthy meal prep business that solved the problem that I had, and so I didn't have any business experience at the time, though, and it was a food service business, which is a really hard industry, really really hard industry, with razor thin margins. And you know that was my first kind of foray jumping into the deep end of a business and it took a lot of resources to get that business off the ground. I mean blood, sweat and tears for many, many years. You know I fast forward about six or seven years I burned myself out on that business. I mean, I was a one man band. I was, you know, besides the kitchen team, I was the sales, I was marketing, I was the food prepper, I was the person that went shopping when they needed something, I was the delivery driver. So you know, what I realized about five or six years in was that I was really. I was one man band and if I got hit by a bus, that business was coming with me and my family wasn't protected. So I was looking for additional streams of revenue about 2017 and landed on Amazon a whole bunch of different times for different reasons, you know, one being the upfront capital investment to get a business like this off the ground and then also not being tied to a physical location. That was super important to me at the time because I was handcuffed to that meal prep business. So I, from about 2017 to about 2019, I call it kind of my school of hard knocks I was just selling random products on Amazon. You know, I pretty much everything that can go wrong went wrong. I dealt with patent violations and all kinds of crazy things in my first couple of years of selling products on Amazon. I launched my first brand in 2020 and that's actually when things started to click. I knew by that point how the Amazon platform worked. I knew how to list products. I knew how SEO worked. I knew how to run advertising. But when I really started building a brand and actually started solving problems for a person that involves physical products in one way or another, that really changed how fast I was succeeding on Amazon. And you know I chose a category that I'm interested in myself I sell barbecue accessories and you know I am a part of that target market and what I learned in my meal prep business? I've learned how to kind of piggyback along with the popularity or another person's audience. I guess you can call it. Crossfit was really who our target market was for our meal prep business and I just grew our business by going to CrossFit gyms. Similarly, when we started our barbecue accessories brand, I looked for Facebook groups that were already existing that were filled with people like me that weren't just cooking, you know, burgers and hot dogs for their kids on the weekend, but like checking briskets at two o'clock in the morning, like those were. Those were my people and those are the people that ultimately I end up selling products to. And you know, what I've learned is really understanding your customer throughout all of these different businesses that I've had. And when you understand your customer, you it's easier to speak their language and it's easier to solve problems with the products that we launched to them. So that's kind of what we've done over the course of the last decade or so. Building brands is is not necessarily building the audience ourselves, but you know there's a lot of other audiences out there that either you are offering something that compliments that what they're already doing, or you know there's like group owners that don't aren't monetizing their audiences. So that's what I've kind of learned over time, but the benefit is still the same. You know Mike says spent time and put a lot of hard work into growing his audience for his brand and the benefits of that are I mean, I don't even know if you can count if you asked Mike to count the benefits of having that audience and launching new products and getting reviews from existing products and user generated content and word of mouth and all of these things like what I've learned kind of on the back end of making these relationships with these people that already have these audiences, is really what the power of that is. And you know, once you have that audience and it doesn't matter the channel that you're on yes, amazon is probably the best place to start a physical products brand, but once you get there Walmart and Target and all of these other, your own website you know like there's a lot of other places and when you have an audience that you can mobilize and that trust your brand and knows you and you're solving problems for them, it's a lot easier to get on those other platforms, to kind of start that flywheel spinning. So you know, britt, I, john and I have been having these conversations for almost two years now, which seems crazy to me that we've been doing this and we brought Mike on and he's been such a great addition to these chats. But you know, we realized about a year ago that you know, these conversations that we're having are really valuable and you know people people need to really understand what it's like and what success on Amazon looks like is building a brand and building a moat around your brand, and those are the kinds of things that we've been talking about for the last almost two years in these groups and I'm super excited to get this out and you know, we've been recording them now, which is crazy that we weren't from the very beginning. But like actually getting people to hear the kinds of things that we're doing to grow the brands that we work for and the brands that we work with is super exciting for me. Awesome, yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:31

You know it's interesting, matt. You know one of the things that you mentioned which I think is really interesting. You know that. You know that you kind of are, you know your target audience. You're selling into a category that you're you know a part of and you kind of understand. You know, and I think there's a lot of value there in terms of you know, like one of the things you know and I don't want to get too far off the tangent of just kind of talking about you know ourselves and what our background is and stuff. But you know, like I sell pool cleaning tools. I don't own a pool. I owned a pool 20 years ago and I hated it and so so. So the interesting thing about that is one you can sell to an audience. You know you can sell a product that you don't necessarily know, but it's certainly easy to sell a product, to do a category that you do know. I think the one area where I have a benefit, you know even though it's not a category that I knew much about when I moved into it is that the customer base that we sell to they have a lot of the same values that I have and they're in the same age bracket, that I'm in the same income category, that I'm in the same you know. So it's like, even though I don't own a pool, I still have a very similar mindset to the customer base that I sell to, which again makes it much easier to write copy. It makes it much easier to write emails and things like that and communicate with them in a way that they understand. And so I would say to anybody who's listening if you're just starting out and you haven't built a brand, you don't know what you're gonna sell, you don't know who you're gonna sell to consider that you can make your life a lot easier if you sell something you know to somebody you know, but make sure it's something that people want. You always gotta make sure that what you're selling is something people want. You don't have to create a market for what you're selling, but if you can sell it to people that you understand and into a market that you understand, you put your way ahead of the game. You're already hit the ground running.

Speaker 1: 20:31

Yeah, I think that's a great point and I think this is a perfect example of the conversations that we have on a weekly basis, even outside of this podcast, of kind of talking about those. What does it look like if you are essentially user one of your product and what does it look like if you're not? And both of those can be successful, and it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who's starting either from zero or somebody who's starting a new brand. I think that same principle applies. I think every healthy brand needs to be launching new products, and so when you look at launching a new product, a lot of that same thought process goes into it of hey, if I am user one for this product, then it does give me somewhat of an advantage, but even if I'm not, then the more I really understand at a deep level that audience and that customer base and what their pain points are and what they want out of it gives you a huge advantage over all the other competition that's out there, especially on Amazon, where that competition is right there in the search results. You're just one policeman away on the left and the right from some very aggressive competition. Now there's a ton of opportunity there as well, and Amazon is still a great vehicle. But having those types of conversations of how do we break that down, so that way we're thinking about ahead of time so we can take advantage of positioning either that new brand or that new product in the best way possible and I think, mike, some of the conversations I've had with you as far as how you develop your products for your existing brand and tap into your audience and really not only get information from them but also get them involved in the development process, is phenomenal.

Speaker 3: 22:21

It's something that, honestly, previously I had never really done, that I had built businesses kind of based on trust and whatnot. I wasn't really doing a lot to build lists previously and really communicate with them regularly, and so that was a new thing. With Amazon, it actually sprouted very organically from the fact that we offer the warranty that we offer because we were doing registrations for the warranty, and then it just was a natural consequence of that. Well, okay, how do we get more registrations? How do we utilize that better? But what was interesting, though, is that, as we grew that list, and because people were so loyal to the brand because of the warranty, it gave us that opportunity where that very first launch that we did actual product launch. That's where the light bulb went off for me, because we walked through that process and it just it was very organic in terms of talking with customers and what would you wanna see and what kind of feature changes would you like? And who's interested in beta testing? And here's what the results were of the beta test. This is where our beta testers said these are the changes that we're gonna make as a result of what they said. Here's the next iteration. Who has to beta test that by the time you get to the point of actual product launch. The people on the list are so stinking excited for that product launch because they feel like it's theirs, like they built it, and so you would be amazed at how much easier and how much more profitable a product launch is when you launch it in that very organic way, like we run a 15, maybe 20% discount on our products to our list when we do a launch. So the product is profitable from day one. You know what I mean. When we do a launch, we're making money on the launch. Most companies aren't. Most companies will lose it.

Speaker 1: 24:17

Well, and I think, I think you know, for the listeners out there, this is probably the biggest reason why they should listen to this podcast over you know, a lot of the other things that are out there is because we have such a great mix of experience. You know, mike, you have, you know, a brand that's well into the seven figures and growing and have some. You know what it looks like from that perspective, where, you know, matt and I are in the trenches. Well, first of all, either, you know, have had our own brand before on Amazon, still have our own brands, but then are also, you know, I work with a couple of clients right now that I mean they are brand new brands and they are going through the exact pain that you were talking about, which is, hey, we have a great product, we have a great idea, we have some friends and family. How do we build that into a business and into a brand using Amazon as that vehicle? And there is a lot of work that has to be done up front in order to, you know, build up those reviews, build up that sales velocity and a lot of marketing dollars that has to go into that if you don't already have those pieces in place, and there's a number of different ways to do that.

Speaker 3: 25:32

You know, I think Matt, I think Matt's a part, you know, like you know, partnering with individuals and businesses, organizations that already have an audience that clearly would have interest in your product, like I mean that's. There is no faster way, you know, to open that door to a good product launch, you know, and a good brand launch, than to have that sort of partnership because, one, you have access to the audience and you already know that they're, that they're your target. Two, you already have brand loyalty to whoever it is that you're partnering with, you know. So those individuals trust them. So if they're endorsing you, you have that kind of built-in trust that comes your way automatically there. And if you can find a large enough list, you know, to partner with, you know you can do. It won't be quite the organic launch, maybe, but maybe you know, maybe you haven't started that product yet, maybe you can use that audience to build in exactly the same way that we did, in that very organic way, so that by the time launch comes around, they also feel invested in that. So there's-.

Speaker 2: 26:37

So that's what. That's what we did. And so, similarly and this is what I said in my intro like you, you did the hard work of building an audience organically, which is hard work. You know. You did, you said, you know, yes, you kind of fell into it because you were offering a warranty, but that's still a list, that's still an asset that your business has. Like, I piggybacked on with someone that already had a group but just didn't have a list yet. So, like, we were able to do the exact same things. Like we asked the group what was the last thing you bought on Amazon? Like that's what we launched on Amazon and we had a couple hundred people that were waiting to buy it at full price. Like, not only did we make money in that launch, but we were selling things that we didn't even have to offer a coupon to those first initial buyers. And because they know, liked and trust us, because they were our audience, they naturally left reviews. Like I don't have to go and ask those people to leave reviews. Like they naturally leave reviews with pictures and videos because they know, like and trust us. So I experienced, I was able to experience the benefits of having the audience without having to build it and there's thousands of other audiences out there like that. That can help kind of supercharge your growth in the beginning, but then also create your list and be a win-win situation for the existing group or whoever it is, because you're providing something of value to their customer base.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Yeah, and the other thing that I would say, too, that I think is important for listeners to know, is that we see so much value in this having a list, whether using Amazon for that as your you know, your main channel to sell, you're using your own website, Etsy, whatever happens to be Walmart that we actually have a free course that we offer on our website for after purchase funnel, where we show you exactly how to set this up in order to have people opt in your list. What does that email sequence look like to jumpstart that process of at least getting an email? For you know, these customers that have bought your product love your brand and really want to interact with you, because that's where there's a ton of value. So anybody listening out there, you know that's one of the things that I would really encourage you to do is, if you don't already have a mechanism even if you're selling on Amazon in order to collect those emails. So that way, you are building your brand over time as you sell, you know, products to these customers. Definitely go check out that after purchase funnel program or blueprint program that we offer for free, because you're going to get a ton of value out of how to implement at a basic level that process for your brand to at least get started down that road. And with that, as we kind of wrap up for this first episode, is anything else that, Matt or Mike, that you want to add before we wrap up episode one?

Speaker 3: 29:19

I don't think. So I think the only thing that I would say is stay tuned for episode two, because we're going to continue the conversation about building audiences, so make sure you're here.

Speaker 1: 29:27

Yeah, awesome. And then I'll also throw in there that we have some, some amazing guests that we're working on booking as well as a part of this discussion and really the strategies and building blueprints for your brand going forward. So stay tuned.

Speaker 3: 29:42

What is that kind of tip? Tuesday, right that we're doing the next talk on building audiences, John.

Speaker 1: 29:49

Yes, yep, so be the episodes. Amazon tip Tuesday. So every Tuesday we'll have a short episode they'll come out that's going to be very, you know, focused on tips, and then we'll also have an episode that comes out, that's more, that we're going to have a guest on that's going to talk about different strategies and that type of stuff for, you know, building your brand, whether that's on Amazon and e-commerce and kind of beyond.

Speaker 3: 30:14

Super All right. Great Thanks, John. All right.