Adrienne (00:01.852)
Hi everybody and welcome back to the She Leads podcast. I'm so excited to share my next guest with you. Her name is Leslie Hensel and she is the co-founder of Riverbend Consulting with 85 employees that solve problems for e-commerce sellers. I'm so interested in hearing about this because e-commerce is such a hot topic. I actually do some
work with somebody who is, who has an e-commerce business. She's amazing. And her name actually happens to be Leslie as well. But Leslie oversees Riverbend service team and she's personally helped hundreds of sellers get suspended Amazon accounts and ASI ends up and running again. She has been an Amazon seller for more than a decade. So tons of experience.
She's a lifelong Longhorns fan, and she has earned her bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. Is it Go Aggies? No, Hook'em Horns, sorry. Oh, the Texas A&M is Go Aggies, sorry. Oh my God, that's terrible for all the Texans listening. Leslie volunteers.
Lesley Hensell (01:13.206)
Hook em horns!
Lesley Hensell (01:18.69)
Ha ha ha.
Adrienne (01:23.932)
for A Wish with Wings, a wish-granting organization for little Texans with life-threatening conditions, and she serves on the board of directors for Haley's Heroes, which funds bone marrow matches and medical research for kids. So welcome to the She Leads podcast, Leslie.
Lesley Hensell (01:42.314)
I'm so excited to be here. Thank you.
Adrienne (01:45.308)
I am so excited to talk to you because e-commerce is definitely an area that you see sort of like plastered all over Instagram, like get rich quick, just find a product and sell it and you know, kick back and go to Bali. That's not the reality, I'm sure.
Lesley Hensell (02:04.162)
Ha ha.
It's so true and there are so many, shall we say, scams and come-ons and courses and they end up being thousands and thousands of dollars and you don't necessarily get what you pay for. However, the lifestyle part can come true. There are a lot of e-commerce sellers out there who work very hard at their businesses, but they can work from anywhere.
Adrienne (02:32.548)
I love this so much. So how did you get into e-commerce? Because I mean, I don't really know the timeline, but you know, did sort of this online selling world, did that really start to get popular about 10 years ago?
Lesley Hensell (02:47.778)
Yes. So what really changed things in the Amazon world? So I've sold on eBay forever. A lot of people, other people have to. But what really changed, I think, in the e-commerce world was when Amazon introduced, fulfilled by Amazon fulfillment by Amazon and also known as FBA. So that is where as a seller, you can ship all of your goods to an Amazon warehouse and they pick, pack and fulfill the orders for you.
Adrienne (03:04.03)
Hmm.
Lesley Hensell (03:16.002)
That was a real game changer because a small seller who cannot fulfill all their orders each and every day could act like a big seller and have that two-day shipping promise to their buyers and have that great shipping experience that Amazon provides. Amazon started that in about, I believe it was around 2005, 2006. I started selling on Amazon in 2010.
Adrienne (03:26.783)
Hmm.
Lesley Hensell (03:43.76)
And that's when FBA was really starting to get hot.
Adrienne (03:47.366)
Yeah, yeah, that is so interesting. So, so were you an eBay seller and had like a full-time job? Like take us walk us back to sort of where you started and how you got into this whole world in the first place.
Lesley Hensell (04:04.45)
So I have been a work from home person since before it was cool. I've worked from home for about 23 years now. And what I had done was my husband and I knew we wanted to have kids and we wanted to be at home or at least me to be at home some of the time so that I could go to all of the plays and all of the things at school and show up for all the games, all that good stuff.
Adrienne (04:10.128)
I love it. Wow.
Lesley Hensell (04:31.562)
So I started my own consulting business doing old school consulting. That's what I had always done is old school business plans, marketing plans, all that stuff. And then we had kids and my older son was diagnosed with autism and a bunch of learning disorders. And we figured out that school was just not working for him. I'm sure you've known one of these kids, they try and try and school just does not work.
Adrienne (04:40.697)
Mm.
Adrienne (04:52.48)
Mm. Yep.
Lesley Hensell (04:57.586)
So we decided to homeschool him and do a ton of therapy, very expensive therapy. And because of that, I still needed the extra income from my job, from my work for all the therapy, but I needed to be at home, like focused on him all day long. So I heard about selling on Amazon. And so my husband and I developed this exhausting but effective routine. He would go to his day job. I'm home with the kids doing the homeschooling.
Adrienne (05:02.946)
Hahaha
Adrienne (05:13.176)
Yeah.
Adrienne (05:17.393)
Hmm.
Lesley Hensell (05:26.782)
And then when he came home at night, I would source inventory, nights and weekends. And then as a family, we would ship all of the inventory to Amazon FBA on the weekend.
Adrienne (05:36.6)
Oh my God. Oh my gosh. That's amazing.
Lesley Hensell (05:38.494)
And it worked great. It was tiring, but so rewarding. And as a side benefit, our kids learned about owning and running a business hands-on, because when my younger one was two years old, he was putting stickers on inventory and they both, as they've gotten bigger, because now I have two young men and they can lift all the boxes, manage all the inventory, arrange it all on the shelves.
Adrienne (05:54.371)
Hahaha
Adrienne (05:59.867)
Oh yeah?
Lesley Hensell (06:05.858)
create shipments by themselves to go to Amazon or to individuals that we sell to when we merchant fulfill, they can pretty much run the entire business. We still, even though now I have this big consulting firm that I run, we still have our Amazon business as a family business. And now instead of paying for special needs school, it pays college tuition for that special needs kid.
Adrienne (06:29.336)
I love this so much. God, what an incredible gift that you and your husband gave your kids. Like that is so neat. I mean, talk about a homeschooled education. Like you gave him a homeschooled MBA. That's awesome. Oh my gosh. I love this story so much. And I love that you are truly an entrepreneur. And so
It's also, I also really admire the fact that you have your consulting business where you're giving advice to other people. And I want to dive into that. But you're also sort of keeping your hands in the thing that you are helping other people with. So you haven't stopped because things are changing all the time. And if you don't have your sort of hands in that you are not going to know firsthand what that's like.
Lesley Hensell (07:23.958)
Oh, that is exactly right. And especially in e-commerce, things change so quickly. The way that Amazon operates is always changing. And if you don't, my business partner and I both sell on Amazon as well as running Riverbend. And then a lot of our employees are ex-Amazon employees. So we really want to give the best experience to our customers. And they can't believe that if I don't sell on Amazon that I understand what they're going through.
Adrienne (07:32.208)
Hmm.
Adrienne (07:43.066)
Ah.
Lesley Hensell (07:53.362)
and understand their issues and problems. And I am truly a believer, even though it is more challenging now to sell on Amazon than it was back in 2010, I am still a believer that it is a great opportunity for a side hustle, for replacing a full-time income. There's still so much opportunity out there on the platform. So I'd be a little hypocritical if I wasn't taking advantage of that too.
Adrienne (07:53.436)
Right.
Adrienne (08:03.585)
Yeah.
Adrienne (08:18.556)
Yes, I love that. So, oh my gosh, I want to ask you a million questions that are probably are more Geared toward Riverbed consulting, but can you tell us so you have 85 employees? So that's a really sizable company amazing How many clients do you serve?
Lesley Hensell (08:41.058)
So at any given time, we have about 1200 active clients. And then we've served thousands more than that who cycle back through to our business. We have some clients who are on monthly programs where we are helping them keep their Amazon account healthy, providing them with virtual assistant services, something where they're active right now, but then we're the problem solvers. So we have other clients out there,
Adrienne (08:45.903)
Oh my god.
Lesley Hensell (09:09.934)
clients and new clients who have a one-off problem and come in for us to solve that for them.
Adrienne (09:15.888)
That is so amazing. So, you know, Riverbend, you help solve problems. Do people also come to you if they say, listen, I don't exactly know how to start this e-commerce business, but I have an idea. Do you help people that early on?
Lesley Hensell (09:31.97)
So for that, it's not really a paid service of Riverbend. For that, it's more like people reach out to me, usually through LinkedIn or Facebook. I'm on all the social platforms and I love talking to small business owners, entrepreneurs, e-commerce folks, people who want to have the side hustle. I am happy to talk to people, have conversations, give suggestions. I've been doing this a really long time.
And so I really like to help. And what I've found is there are so many families like mine that they need to use Amazon or eBay or some other side hustle to solve a family problem. So I'm very empathetic to that. And if you need to solve a family problem because you can't handle your terrible job anymore, but you still need to pay for your kids, whatever it is, or wanna go on vacation, or need to get money in savings or pay off debt, I mean, that's...
Adrienne (10:12.232)
Mm. Yeah.
Adrienne (10:23.651)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (10:29.738)
I love to kind of pay it forward on those kinds of things. Another thing I just have to mention about a family problem, my younger child... We have two wonderful but very challenging boys, and my younger son had cancer when he was eight. At the time, we were super active on Amazon, and so I had a ton of product at the Amazon warehouse. You know what was magical about that?
Adrienne (10:47.009)
Oh, God.
Lesley Hensell (10:58.11)
I have a VA who watches my account and answers customer service messages. But for six months while we did chemo and surgeries, I was getting every two weeks a payment from Amazon for all the inventory that was already sitting there. So it was almost like semi-passive income that we'd done all the work. We had it all there. And when I wasn't able to do as much consulting, we were all tired all the time. It was so awesome every two weeks.
Adrienne (11:17.46)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (11:27.802)
know, a couple thousand bucks hits the bank account. It really gave us peace of mind. So there are so many ways to use this business model and it really can be of great assistance for families. It is not just like a small business thing or an entrepreneurship thing. Of course, you can use it in those ways too to expand your brand. So many ways to use Amazon, but it can be a problem solver.
Adrienne (11:30.832)
Mm. Yeah.
Adrienne (11:52.849)
I, Leslie, that's such a great, that's so beautiful. And first of all, I just have to ask your son is healthy. And
Lesley Hensell (12:05.342)
Oh yes, now he's 16 years old. He's a high school football player who's six foot two and 250 pounds.
Adrienne (12:10.656)
Oh, amazing. Wow, well, that's the most important thing in the world beyond all of this business stuff. But so I'm really, really happy to hear that, thank God. I do love, really, really love and appreciate everything that you're saying because I think it's so difficult for...
people who, you know, both of them are working and there are so many hardworking people and there are so many expenses that just pop up and come up and to be able to rely on something else where you're not necessarily trading your time, your, you know, one hour for this much hourly. That is a game changer that can really help families. It can help, you know, people who are
single who are trying to build their future. I mean it really is for everybody and because she leads media is so focused on women and women are the heartbeat of a family but Because we're so focused on women and they're there You know the pay gap exists and everything it just seems to me that this is a solution that almost like everybody should undertake somehow so
I definitely want to talk about Riverbend Consulting, but I would love for you to maybe share some either wisdom or pieces of advice for women entrepreneurs. Let's say they're starting their business in a completely different realm, but they need some money coming in. How would you suggest that they get started with building an e-commerce business to just get some money flowing?
Lesley Hensell (14:05.474)
So the way that most people start out on Amazon is retail arbitrage. And that's where you're finding products at your local retail stores. It's usually big stores like a Walmart, the big box stores. And you're finding products there and you flip them on Amazon. So you're finding things that there's a spread between the price you're paying and what people will pay on Amazon. That is pretty typical. It's a good hustle. It's something that's even better if you have...
some true outlet malls near you. And when I say true outlet malls, I mean the ones that actually have discounted and discontinued products, not just lower quality products or the same retail price as the regular store and they call it an outlet mall and it's not. If you have the discounted outlet malls, you're actually buying directly from the brand then, right? Because the brand's name is on that receipt.
Adrienne (14:37.642)
Mm.
Adrienne (14:51.658)
Yeah.
Adrienne (14:58.788)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (15:01.958)
which makes your chain of custody for the product airtight and you can sell that anywhere. But for women, I have an even better suggestion because women are great at relationships. A lot of women don't realize it, but they are natural salespeople even though they think they are not because they're really good at asking questions about people's lives and how they can help. It's just a natural function.
Adrienne (15:08.616)
Thanks for watching!
Okay.
Adrienne (15:20.772)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (15:30.686)
of how a lot of us are built, right? There are businesses in your town that sell products, but they don't sell them online. And it might be a retailer who's created their own version of something, their own special candy, their own special beauty product, some kind of retailer in your town that they've invested in making that. Or it could be businesses like in a business park in those light industrial areas.
A lot of those people sell industrial products, business products, but everything is through a distributor. Nothing is sold online. A lot of those people would love to have their products selling online. It's just another channel for them. You can go to them and say, I want to be your exclusive seller on Amazon. So if you will make a deal with me, give me your best wholesale pricing and allow me returns if certain products don't work.
Adrienne (16:12.146)
Mm.
Adrienne (16:19.488)
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Lesley Hensell (16:29.182)
I'd like to return them to you for some reasonable thing, 90 days, 120 days, nothing crazy. You let me be your exclusive seller on Amazon. A lot of them will jump at the opportunity. In that case, you're really more like a traditional e-commerce marketer. Your job is to get on Amazon, create a beautiful detail page, great photos, nice copy, test some ads.
Adrienne (16:36.188)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne (16:48.744)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (16:57.346)
but you're not competing with 20 other sellers on the same product where the price keeps going down because you're the exclusive seller of this stuff. And don't think I'm crazy when I talk about business and industrial products, businesses buy from Amazon too. There are so many business and industrial products that do really well on Amazon. So just a tip for women, natural networkers out there, going to the boutique or the candy shop that's down the street and your little
Adrienne (17:06.664)
Wow.
Adrienne (17:13.936)
Yeah.
Adrienne (17:18.152)
So, just a simple thing, you can have a little bit of a room there. We have both...
Lesley Hensell (17:26.754)
you know, your little hometown, Main Street. There's a lot of opportunity. I've got a candy store down the street that does that freeze dried candy and they don't sell it online at all, but they have their own freeze dry machine and it's all their brand. It is ripe for the picking, something like that to put that up on Amazon.
Adrienne (17:36.005)
Hmm.
Adrienne (17:41.976)
Oh, wow.
Adrienne (17:45.832)
Oh my God, I love this. And that is information that I don't think anybody would think of their own, especially the light industrial park. And like I think about my husband has his own business and he's always buying things on Amazon that he needs, like, cause you know, they do like installations of stuff and they might need a part really quickly and Amazon just has it. And so he just orders it from.
Amazon he's getting deliveries all the time. So that makes a lot of sense, but I never even thought about Like who are the people that are selling that right? That's incredible This is that's such great advice plus, you know The whole ecommerce world setting up the Amazon pages and everything that you just said is not it's not easy You know in order to have a beautiful page with great copy and wonderful photos That is not easy to do you have to?
work at it. And I think that's what you said, you know, in the beginning about, you know, there's like scam artists out there and everything. You know, this is not, it's not the easiest thing, but once you sort of figure it out, it can be lucrative, like you're saying.
Lesley Hensell (19:02.994)
Right. And think of it this way. Think of it as streams of income. I saw a statistic that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. Well, your Amazon business kind of needs to be the same way. What if you could find seven products to sell and each of them sold 50 units a month? So when I say, can you sell 50 units a month of this product? That isn't that daunting. If you had to sell 50,000, that's daunting. But if you have to sell 50 units, that's not crazy.
Adrienne (19:06.76)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne (19:11.186)
Mm.
Adrienne (19:26.906)
No.
Yes.
Lesley Hensell (19:32.722)
If you have seven of them, suddenly you're making a good living. I know a lot of sellers who follow that model that some of them are private label where they develop their own product and their goal is only 200 units a month for each product. You're not going to be a millionaire off one. You get 20 of those going. You could be a millionaire. It's really limitless. As you can see, all of this is on your own time.
Adrienne (19:34.791)
Yeah.
Adrienne (19:47.96)
Hmm. I love this. Yes.
Lesley Hensell (19:59.466)
You're not punching a clock for anyone. You figure out when to go to the Chamber of Commerce meeting and network with these people. You decide when to invest the time in your pages that you're developing. It's really on your schedule, as long as you're just maintaining that account or hire a virtual assistant for hardly anything. They're very inexpensive to watch that account every day. Otherwise, it's all on your time.
Adrienne (20:20.101)
Yeah.
Adrienne (20:24.589)
This is so good, Leslie. So talk to me a little bit, just jumping over to Riverbend Consulting. So people do run into issues and problems. And that is sort of what Riverbend Consulting is all about, helping those e-commerce businesses to solve various issues. What are some of the issues that come up?
Lesley Hensell (20:51.234)
So it's really funny because if you are a newer seller on eBay or on Amazon or on Walmart, this isn't what anyone ever wants to talk about, but it's good to understand it so you can avoid the things that will get you into trouble. So a lot of it is based on customer complaints. If someone complains about one of your products to Amazon, Amazon will then come to you and say, hey,
Adrienne (21:08.4)
Yeah.
Adrienne (21:12.901)
Hmm
Lesley Hensell (21:21.13)
We have a problem. Now, it's not based on one complaint usually. It's usually multiple complaints. But they'll come to you and say, we've had complaints the product's inauthentic, or it's in bad condition, or it's expired. And it's incumbent upon the seller to disprove this. So the most important thing that you can do as a seller is to always have your invoices in place.
Adrienne (21:34.71)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Hensell (21:51.77)
Just because it's an online business doesn't mean it's not a real business. It's a real business. You got to set up your books. You got to track your mileage and expenses and you need all of your invoices where you can readily access them because you give Amazon the invoice. It proves this isn't counterfeit. This isn't inauthentic. This isn't expired. Sometimes you can tell by the dates on the invoices.
Adrienne (22:15.533)
Yeah. Right.
Lesley Hensell (22:17.794)
And so you just have to be at the ready to give that information because there are a lot of false complaints. There are also buyers who just didn't understand the product, so they're frustrated. They didn't feel like it matched what they thought they were buying. We all have these challenges sometimes. I know I've done it. Oh, oops, I thought I was getting something else. Sometimes they blame the seller. So you can have ASINs, which are just products. An ASIN is kind of like an Amazon's version of UPC.
Adrienne (22:28.36)
Sure.
Adrienne (22:34.191)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne (22:47.461)
Yes, okay.
Lesley Hensell (22:48.803)
So you can have an ASIN suspended from Amazon until you prove it should be selling. And you can even have your entire seller account taken down if you have enough complaints. So really important to keep all that documentation and to make sure that anything you ship either to Amazon or to a customer is in the condition you would want it to be if you were giving it to your mother.
Adrienne (22:54.349)
Mm-hmm.
Adrienne (22:57.616)
Hmm
Lesley Hensell (23:13.762)
for her birthday because we all know mothers are very picky and they notice the flaws. That's kind of their job sometimes, at least mine does. And so they're gonna see that it was scratched or dusty or faded or the box is dented and did someone else already open this. You need to make sure that the condition is the pickiest person in your life, that when they got it, they would know it was brand new. That's really the key.
Adrienne (23:19.585)
Yeah. Yes.
Adrienne (23:32.625)
Yeah.
Adrienne (23:39.972)
Hmm. So people come to your company with a variety of these different issues, maybe saying, hey, we have this problem. We didn't realize we have this problem. How do we unwind this? What do we do to rectify this? And is it that they're just so busy or maybe like you said, they haven't put the things in place. So you help to put systems in place for them. What are some of the
solutions to the problems that people are coming to you with.
Lesley Hensell (24:11.89)
Most of our clients, the first time they walk in the door, it's because they are suspended from Amazon or their ASIN is suspended from Amazon. So we're catching them at that problem stage. Also, Amazon is, think of it like the biggest government bureaucracy ever. I know they like to say that they're like the super lean entrepreneurial company. Well, they have a labyrinth of regulations and rules that it's hard to even know them all.
Adrienne (24:20.318)
Yeah.
Adrienne (24:28.709)
Mm.
Lesley Hensell (24:40.526)
and they're very siloed and they have a lot of turnover. So when you submit your appeals to say, hey, please unsuspend my account or unsuspend my ASIN, it can be challenging to get the right answer or to even get them to answer you. So we have a bunch of ex-Amazon people and a lot of folks who've worked really hard to develop processes and how we write the appeals. I've done this now for 10 years.
Adrienne (24:45.361)
and that they're very silent and the demo is really good. So would you say that you're killed to say thank you to the others who are alive?
It can be challenging, but it's the right answer. Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (25:08.862)
of writing appeals and getting it to the right person at Amazon so that we can get our sellers back up and running. And then like you said, part of that is working with the seller to put new systems in place. It's part of the problem that you didn't have good invoices. Here's the standards you need to look for. Here's how you store them. We make a lot of suggestions. Or like I've had people who they had their own warehouse that was making a lot of mistakes when packing orders.
Adrienne (25:23.802)
Here's the standards of the middle core, here's how you store the A, there's a lot of suggestions.
Lesley Hensell (25:37.098)
So we talk about how to set up the workstations for the order pickers and how to use technology and how to prevent those errors. So a lot of going back and fixing stuff, but the goal is to get them back up and running so they can start making money again.
Adrienne (25:41.864)
Wow.
Adrienne (25:53.109)
I love this. So your co-founder is, is that your husband who's the co-founder? Oh.
Lesley Hensell (26:00.082)
No, my co-founder is a past client. And when I was just working on my own, getting people unsuspended, he was referred to me. And he had been down for a couple of weeks and had used another consulting firm and they couldn't get him reinstated. And I got him reinstated on one letter. And a few weeks later, he came to me and said, hey, we should do this as a business because he's...
Adrienne (26:03.998)
Ah!
Adrienne (26:20.348)
Wow.
Adrienne (26:25.477)
Ah.
Lesley Hensell (26:27.01)
He's got the Amazon background, but he's really strong in sales and marketing. And then my strength is in service and operations. So we thought it was a good team and we've been together six and a half years now. It's kind of funny. We're like the Mutt and Jeff of Amazon. He's a really young guy from Brooklyn and he's like really tall, skinny guy, and he's an observant Jew. And I'm like evangelical Christian girl from Texas who is...
Adrienne (26:31.613)
Mm.
Adrienne (26:45.518)
Is he?
Adrienne (26:53.897)
Oh my gosh.
Lesley Hensell (26:55.426)
short, especially next to him and much older. And so we're we really are like, how would we have ever met if it weren't for Amazon? I don't think we would have. But we share a lot of the same values and a lot of the same background with selling. And we have such a good time working together.
Adrienne (27:12.464)
This is incredible, absolutely incredible. So when you first started out, and I ask this question because so many women that listen to the podcast want to also understand, like, how do you go from yourself and a co-founder to having 85 employees in six and a half years? Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like for you? And maybe some challenges in growing from
you and you having the expertise to bringing on other people that may have other expertise or you can't do it all anymore with 85 employees. So can you just talk a little bit about your growth experience?
Lesley Hensell (27:57.142)
Such a good question. When we started out, we had four people, myself and my co-founder. And then we had an administrative person who would onboard clients and handle all of the payroll type fun things. And then a wonderful person, Kelly Johnston, who was ex-Amazon, who had 10 years at Amazon, who is kind of our processes person.
Adrienne (28:13.581)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (28:24.89)
So, we brought a processes person in right at the beginning. And at the beginning, it was Joe would sell them, Leah, our admin, would onboard them, Kelly would do all the background research on the account, and I would write the appeals and manage it going forward. And it was tight and it was really hard, y'all. And we had a period of time where we were like, we don't know if we're going to make it. I mean, I think every business goes through that where you have a lean month or two.
Adrienne (28:29.073)
Mm, smart.
Adrienne (28:41.808)
Wow. Oh yeah.
Lesley Hensell (28:54.498)
where the founders don't get paid and you just don't know if you're going to make it. What we did was every single marketing thing and advertising thing that we tried, we documented it and if it didn't work, we would change it and A-B test it immediately.
Adrienne (28:57.188)
Yeah.
Adrienne (29:10.372)
Mm. So smart. Mm hmm.
Lesley Hensell (29:17.814)
We would let it run as long as you have to let it run. Like when you change an ad campaign on Google, for example, it takes a few weeks to have enough data to know if it's working. But as soon as we knew, it was time to change it or say double down on it. With processes internally, I'm so grateful that we hired someone with a process orientation at the beginning, because as soon as we had enough clients,
Adrienne (29:32.28)
Yeah.
Adrienne (29:36.84)
So grateful that we hired someone for the process when we needed some help.
Lesley Hensell (29:45.578)
Um, she started documenting absolutely everything that we did. So I had appeals that worked and we started saving those into folders. And I started record, I created presentations about each appeal type because there's like 25 appeal types. So I started creating presentations and I would record them and have a video, have a PowerPoint.
Adrienne (30:00.252)
Hmm. Oh my gosh.
Lesley Hensell (30:10.474)
and have an outline that then Kelly would create for each appeal type. So as we onboarded appeal writers and started adding to the team, they had all of this background information from me. And then Kelly, as the documenting person, would do a lot of the training with them one-on-one. So we always wanted them to have that library of materials to return to if they couldn't remember, but then they had her to ask questions.
Adrienne (30:29.846)
This is incredible.
Lesley Hensell (30:39.05)
We built our business remotely. We live on Slack. Slack is wonderful, as long as you don't get sucked into it where it takes all your time. As I have grown as a founder to have responsibility over more big things and fewer of the small tasks, I've started muting Slack channels. I cannot say enough how important that is, that as you grow in the business, you start muting the day to day.
Adrienne (30:43.193)
Mm.
Adrienne (30:49.9)
Yeah.
Adrienne (30:59.901)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (31:06.986)
Slack channels and focus on the bigger stuff. That is absolutely huge. And then my controversial, somewhat unpopular thing that I will say is we have grown our business across multiple continents. So about half of our workforce is in the US and half of our workforce is overseas. We have employees in the Philippines, excuse me, and in Costa Rica.
Adrienne (31:16.524)
Yep.
Adrienne (31:23.069)
Okay.
Adrienne (31:30.564)
Mm-hmm.
Lesley Hensell (31:34.49)
So, the Philippines is an amazing resource for Amazon sellers. There is a huge community of virtual assistants in the Philippines who know more about selling on Amazon than your average American seller. Because their standard of living is different and their currency is different and just their cost of living, you can pick up a VA. You can pay them.
Adrienne (31:49.437)
Amazing.
Lesley Hensell (32:01.438)
extravagantly for where they live for very cheap here. So you can hire people for $5 an hour, $6 an hour, and they consider themselves very well paid. I do know people who pay VAs two or $3 an hour, I consider that like way too low, even though they can live on that, but not well. But five or six bucks an hour, and they tend to be very loyal employees, they have great English.
Adrienne (32:07.57)
Yeah.
Adrienne (32:14.524)
Wow.
Adrienne (32:22.78)
Yeah. Yes.
Lesley Hensell (32:30.106)
They have a similar work ethic. They're culturally, they have a lot of similarities. Costa Rican employees, we have those because they are ex-Amazon, because Amazon is invested heavily in Costa Rica and the Philippines. But Costa Rica is another great place for Americans to go to get VA help. They have very similar culture, same work ethic, and they also, their English written and spoken puts a lot of Americans to shame.
Adrienne (32:40.24)
Oh, nice. Wow. Yes. Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (32:59.546)
They are not as inexpensive as the Philippines, but they are cheaper than US-based people. By diversifying across multiple marketplaces, we also help ourselves with weather. Our US employees are all over the United States. We have people in Washington state all the way down to Florida, so all across the US.
Adrienne (33:04.964)
Incredible. Okay.
Lesley Hensell (33:24.298)
But then our international employees, there's typhoons, there's cyclones, there's things. And we do have backup generators and things for our offices in those other countries. But we like having these diverse geographies. So if the Philippines goes down completely, we have support from the US and Costa Rica and vice versa. A couple of years ago, I'm sure you all remember there was a huge ice storm in Texas where I live.
Adrienne (33:28.26)
Yes.
Adrienne (33:43.986)
Yeah.
Adrienne (33:50.564)
Yes.
Lesley Hensell (33:50.83)
And I have five people in Texas and two of them are admins. And we only have three admins. So two of our three admins were down because they had no power. Well, we had people in other parts of the US for backup, but also in the Philippines for backup and that as well. So I think it's important to diversify for costs, but also so if you're in a business that always needs to be on.
Adrienne (34:07.548)
So I think it's important to be more surprised. Yes. But also, so if you're in, at least just always.
Lesley Hensell (34:16.726)
It's very helpful that way. And seriously, y'all, any business you have, doesn't matter if it's e-commerce, if you need an assistant, I would strongly recommend you check out Costa Rica or the Philippines to find a virtual assistant. My personal assistant is mind-blowing. She will look for projects to do. She is on top of it all the time. And I believe she's about $600 a month.
Adrienne (34:19.594)
and seriously not any business. It doesn't matter if you're not there. You're there in this situation. Yeah.
Adrienne (34:40.774)
Wow.
Lesley Hensell (34:46.282)
and it's fantastic and she's just a great person and happy and loyal and wonderful and we're friends. I just can't say enough about looking overseas because you've got to protect your margins and you've got to protect your ability to keep your business up and that's one way to
Adrienne (35:00.838)
Yeah.
Adrienne (35:05.08)
I love that. Leslie, I feel like this has been a master class. I would like to ask, we have a community and she leads, I'd like to ask and we can talk about this separately, if you would be willing to maybe just share some of your advice with some of the women to really help them get started with selling on Amazon because the more that we can bring
you know, financial security into these women's lives, the more that they can start businesses, grow businesses, help their families, help communities. When women have an extra dollar to spend, they pour it into their community. And that just makes the world a much better place. So I just, I love the why behind the business. It's incredible that you have grown this highly successful business.
that you have done it from home, that you have been able to support your family and that you are truly an inspiration. I'm just sitting here listening to you and I'm so inspired by you. So thank you so much for everything that you do. And you mentioned before, but I'd love for you to mention it again. How can people get in touch with you?
Lesley Hensell (36:27.618)
You are so kind. You're gonna make me cry saying nice things about me. I really appreciate it. Would love to be part of the community. I am on all the socials out there. So I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Instagram. You can find me under Leslie Hensel, it's L-E-S-L-E-Y, H-E-N-S-E-L-L. And also, if you don't mind, I just wanna say for people who may be beginning,
Adrienne (36:30.216)
I'm sorry.
Lesley Hensell (36:54.474)
I wrote a book, it's distributed by Simon and Schuster, and it's called The Amazon Incubator. Grow your business or hatch a new one. And it is to replace those $5,000 Lamborghini classes. The $5,000, give me all your money, you get a Lamborghini. So for 25 bucks, it's a small investment and it gives you all the basics, how you start on Amazon, how you set your goals.
Adrienne (37:13.116)
Yeah.
Lesley Hensell (37:21.962)
and how you decide what your business should look like. So please check it out and you can find it at thea or at any of the major bookstores. I'm super excited about that.
Adrienne (37:34.084)
Congratulations, it's incredible to have a book. It just helps women to have credibility. It's something that I am very passionate about encouraging women to do. Write that book, get your expertise out there. We need more of it in the world coming from women. So thank you for that too. And I am going to get that book as soon as we hang up here. My son and I, my son who actually, my son goes to college in Texas. He goes to SMU.
And yeah, and him and I have been talking about starting an e-commerce business together as an experiment. He wants to learn how to do all of this. And I do too, you know, it's definitely something that I'd like to learn. So I am going to buy the book. I'm going to require that he reads it and then we're going to get to it. So amazing.
Lesley Hensell (38:04.398)
awesome.
Lesley Hensell (38:25.59)
That is a fantastic idea. And really, if you're an entrepreneur out there, encourage your kids, teach them how to run a business. Even if they work for someone else, they're going to be more successful in their life if they understand the boss's point of view.
Adrienne (38:41.248)
100% agreed. Such great advice. Thank you so much for spending your time sharing your expertise and just inspiring the She Leads podcast audience.
Lesley Hensell (38:51.83)
Thank you.
Adrienne (38:54.705)
Yay!
