How to Scale from $0 to $80 million on Amazon with Adam Feinberg from Web Deals Direct

Ecomm Breakthrough

All right, everybody, I've got an amazing special episode in store for you all today. So, I've partnered together with the Firing the Man podcast, and Dave and Ken, who run this podcast, have done an amazing job and interviewed Adam Feinberg. Adam had a nine figure exit just a couple of years ago, and he dropped some massive knowledge bombs as to the actionable steps that he took in order to grow his brand, big enough that he had a nine-figure exit where the majority of his revenue was coming from Amazon. So, there's a lot to dig into today. Okay, so make sure you take some notes. And then when you're done with this episode, make sure you go follow Firing the Man podcast by David and Ken.

Adam (00:00:44) - You have to if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to keep your expenses reasonable and you have to be willing to take risk. And if you don't take risks and take chances, you're just not going to succeed over the long haul. Kind of following strategies correctly pays off.

Adam (00:01:02) - We also invested a lot of money in advertising and building up our brands, which I think is really, really important on Amazon. I kind of learned from it that it's kind of better in a lot of instances, to be the big fish in a little pond than like, the eighth best fish in a big pond. Amazon.com once you have momentum, if you're in the top couple listings in the category, you don't want to give it up no matter what. So I would start and people would laugh. There'd be like your air shipping, solar lights, and the solar lights cost $15 to air strip and you only make ten bucks on each one. Why are you doing that? And I said, it's worth it because we don't want to lose our rank on Amazon.

Intro (00:01:43) - Welcome, everyone, to the Firing the Man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you were capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day.

Intro (00:02:01) - And now your host, serial entrepreneurs David Schwimmer and Ken Wilson.

David (00:02:06) - Welcome everyone to The Firing Man podcast. On today's episode, we have the privilege to interview Adam Feinberg. Adam is the CEO of Web Deals Direct and Amazon FBA business that is home to more than 30 brands. Adam recently sold his business to perch, a technology driven commerce company that acquires and operates top Amazon third party sellers and other direct to consumer brands at scale, resulting in an impressive nine figure earnout. We are really excited to share Adam's story and knowledge with listeners today. Welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam (00:02:40) - All right. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here.

David (00:02:42) - Yeah, absolutely. So first things first, tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to where you are today.

Adam (00:02:49) - All right. Well, I used to be in the IT consulting business, and I have a wife who's a physician, and I have two big kids now. My daughter is a freshman in college, but about 10 or 11 years ago, we figured our lifestyle didn't work.

Adam (00:03:03) - And as well as I thought I was doing, she told me my job wasn't important. So you stay at home so I could have either been a stay at home dad, or I had to figure out something to do that worked with carpool drop offs and soccer, little league and karate class and all that. So I started running an SEO company at home. I put up a website. I learned a little bit about ranking in Google, helping my wife with her business, and some of her friends with their businesses. And I got lucky with it and put a website on the first page for a bunch of search terms like SEO company, SEO, agency, SEO services, and built up an SEO company up to about $3 million annually for about 4 or 5 years. I have a partner named Richard Bell, and he talked me into expanding the SEO business into the UK in 2012 or so, and we were going along merrily. Google made some changes. It started to become a little bit more difficult as a business to get small business customers competitive and Google rankings.

Adam (00:04:10) - We were looking for something else to do. My friend Richard had a chiropractor friend who was selling swim goggles and swim caps and making more money than he was being a chiropractor in 2014 and was making fun of us, that he was doing better than we were with this little side gig, but kind of invited us along at the same time. So I told Ritch to quit doing SEO and to look into this. In 2014, I gave him a gigantic budget of maybe 25,000 bucks. I said, turn it into $100 million. And six years later, here we are. But, you know, there's a couple of things in between then that's pretty much the background of how we got into Amazon. E-commerce was just kind of a side thing, as we saw that digital marketing using search engine optimization was kind of a declining and more. Difficult and challenging business and adventure.

Ken (00:05:02) - Yeah, that's pretty awesome. So, Adam, you mentioned you have been an entrepreneur for about 11 years. Is that correct?

Adam (00:05:08) - That's correct.

Ken (00:05:09) - Awesome. So did you have any fears about jumping over from corporate life to an entrepreneur, or was anything holding you back, or did you just dive right in?

Adam (00:05:20) - I was absolutely petrified. I always wanted to become an entrepreneur. My dad was an entrepreneur, my grandparents were an entrepreneur. But we kind of grew into living at our means, living the Washington, D.C. area. Even with my wife being a physician and me having a pretty senior position at Accenture. We would spend every dime we have. So kind of the thought of jumping into corporate life kind of scared the hell out of me. To be honest, one of the things that really made it possible for me to become an entrepreneur was in 2012, we moved to Charlotte. My wife took a new job, the Charlotte Market for doctors, a lot better than D.C. so we kind of got a four for like double the salary and half the house price. So it was really life changing for my ability to kind of be able to take a chance as an entrepreneur.

Adam (00:06:16) - When we moved down here, and it kind of gave me a second chance at it. I had some ups and downs in the SEO business when I had my first down in 2012, and that kind of was kind of the leading factor for me to move to Charlotte. I plan to get another job in the IT business, and the only thing that prevented me from doing that now is I had 15 years of telecom experience, and it's a banking town in Charlotte and no one really wanted me. So I was sitting at home with nothing to do. I figured I give SEO another punt, so that's kind of where it's at. But really what helped me is my wife was able to cover all the expenses. We went from having like a 4 or $5000 mortgage down to $1,000 a month down in Charlotte. And I really think that really having a manageable expenses is really super duper key in becoming an entrepreneur at first. And I really had to produce nothing other than my wife said it was deck and vacation money.

Adam (00:07:15) - So I think that's really is something. I was super lucky about that a lot of other entrepreneurs don't have. a lot of my friends that sell on Amazon, even some that do it full time, they started doing both a full time job and like an Amazon side gig, and I was able to do the SEO business as a full time business. And then the Amazon business is a full time business.

David (00:07:37) - Okay. So knowing what you know now, what advice would you give yourself at the beginning of that journey?

Adam (00:07:44) - Really? Well, I think like the biggest, the biggest things are you have to if you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to keep your expenses reasonable and you have to be willing to take risk. And if you don't ...