When you've been in business for multiple generations, learning new
skills like the world of e commerce and Amazon can be
tough. What do you do first? Who do you hire? Will
you cheapen your brand or hurt your relationships if you start selling in a
new way? Our guest today talks about those questions
and more, including some great ways to make sure that Amazon
doesn't just build sales, but it builds entrepreneurial skills
in your team as well. Plus, Henry will share his
ideas about how building a brand on Amazon is a lot like building an
audience for this podcast. All this and more coming
up on this episode of Building Unbreakable
Brands.
Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast where we talk to
business leaders with a generational mindset. I'm Meghan lynch.
I'm an advisor to family businesses and founder of Six-Point, a
brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their
past while evolving for the future. Today, my guest is
Andrew Morgans. Drew has 14
years of experience in entrepreneurship and working with brands on
Amazon. He and his team at Marknology have worked with
hundreds of brands on Amazon and e commerce, including some
Fortune 50 companies. Welcome to the show,
Drew. Thank you, Meghan. It's good to be here on the show,
and it's good to be talking again. Yeah, yeah. Always enjoy our conversation. So I'm
really looking forward to this. I'd love
to. I think there's kind of, like, two pieces
of who you are that I'd like to bring into the
show. The first is your
expertise in e commerce and selling on Amazon, because I think that
that could be really valuable to listeners. And then the second is more
of, like, your personal story, story and journey with
marknology. So I think let's start with the
expertise and see if we can give folks some value
and takeaways right off the bat, and then we'll get a little bit more into
your backstory. So
I think, I know that there's millions of e
commerce podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff with a lot of
tips and tricks, but our audience
is generational brands, like brands that
have been around for, in some cases,
5100 or more years and so well
before e commerce was a thing. And so I'd
love to kind of just, like, pick your brain a little bit from that
standpoint of, like, brands that
have existed and have skill sets and teams
and processes that have nothing to do with e commerce and
how they start to evolve to take advantage of e
commerce and some of the, like, things that they
should be thinking about. And
I'd love to kind of start with like some
mindset questions because I feel like when I'm talking to generational
brands, some of the things that they get tripped up on are
not so much the technical how to's, but more about like
the mindset of how they approach. So I'm curious,
from your standpoint, is an existing
brand with a long legacy, is that a
plus in the e commerce game or is it a
roadblock? But
without just answering yes or no? I think that
it's a good thing, but it's a good thing with expectations
of there's an unlearning that has to happen and just the way you've done
things before in order to, you don't have to change all of those things,
but you have to change an unlearning in an area in regards to e commerce.
Like, so you've done things your way, you've done things a long
time. There's a reason you're still around because things have been great,
you've been working them. But there's a difference in a brand made for e
commerce and a legacy brand trying to make that leap into e commerce.
And so there's just a lot more patience required. I
think a mindset of like, I
don't know what, I don't know and I'm open to like,
learning what that looks like. You know, I love working
with, you know, let's say in this case a legacy brand over. I
think of it as an advantage because they know their products, they know their customers,
they know their brand stories, they know what they do well. They know, you
know, they've got manufacturing down. They've worked out all of these different
things through the years that now will not be a problem, if that
makes sense. These are things that build off of. And in the other
side, sure, maybe it's more e commerce forward. This other brand is more e
commerce forward. And they've been thinking e commerce since they were created five years ago
and they're trying to come into Amazon, there's still a lot of that
stuff they're working out or fixing or. So
it's one thing I've always said with, when it comes to Amazon is,
you know, how you want to be a seller or how you want to approach
e commerce. You get to pick the problems that you want. You get to pick
your problems. Do you want to sell through resellers, you want to sell through wholesalers?
Do you want to sell direct? Do you want to sell to Amazon directly?
Do you want to sell just on your website and not on Amazon? Because each
one that you choose comes with a different set of
problems and obstacles. And
so are there more obvious
paths out of those problems or
options that you think suit a legacy
brand or a brand with kind of like a strong operational
foundation, but maybe not kind of like the e commerce chops?
Well, in regards to Amazon. Okay, so e commerce is
more broad for anyone listening. That could include, like Walmart and Target
and Chewy.com and Wayfair and Home Depot.
So e commerce is not just website and Amazon. It's kind
of like these marketplaces, your website or Amazon. But in the context of
Amazon, there's a big, big part of being
successful on Amazon that is operational efficiency.
Okay? If you're always doing pallet in,
pallet out, it's a learning curve to understand how to ship products
either into Amazon in bulk or on your website, shipping to individual
customers or whatever that looks. That's a big hurdle for a lot of brands that
have never done that before. For now, if they're good at operationally, they're going
to adjust just fine. It just is a change. Right? So
I would say on the operational side of Amazon, and there's a lot of, like,
data scientists, a lot of those, like for our workweek, people
that, you know, engineers that can actually
do very well on Amazon because their mindset is just
operations, operations, organization and operations. And so they will be
successful to a certain extent. And then there's another side that is like,
well, it's one thing to sell to Walmart in
a vendor relationship and have that relationship, or to Home Depot or to
Sunfresh grocery store, Hy Vee, that's a one on one
relationship. You make that relationship, they help you sell in those stores or help you
sell in 50 stores. Whenever you're selling an e commerce, you're really selling
one to one. And for a lot of legacy owners or
founders that have never done that before, one is like talking to
another colleague that's like on my level, owner to
owner or vendor manager to manager.
Then you're like, well, I know what Walmart cares about. I know what Target cares
about. I know what Amazon cares about. I don't know what Sally or Jim or
Bob or whatever exactly cares about. So there's
that hurdle of, I guess, like knowing. It's like almost getting so granular
that you know what your customers want. I think that's a super healthy thing for
a business to know and understand. But it's also a huge leap. If they've
never done that before, they've never on that one to one level. So,
you know, a legacy brand could have great brand awareness on
Amazon. And if there's already a bunch of people searching for their brand or resellers
selling their brand, that's a huge advantage. We're going to come in, we're going to
automatically get search traffic, we're going to get organic traffic. There's going to be people
knowing about us. It's not as if we're launching in a new market. No
one knows of us. We've been here, we've been established and things like that. So
kind of a big question, you know, but I think that it kind
of is on a brand to brand level. And what I do know about legacy
brands, family owned businesses, businesses have been here a while. They have their way of
doing things. It's like you think about a gentleman,
like, you know, as we get older, it gets harder and harder to change our
ways, so to speak. And I think the same thing can be said of a
business. Like as we get older, it gets harder and harder to change our ways.
So when I'm working with them, I definitely think of like, it's a custom
solution to figure out what their particular things
are, what their challenges are, what their opportunities are. Even their opportunities
and challenges both come in a custom kind of way. So it's, it really has
to be relationship, it has to be a good relationship
with us and them to be able to communicate what those needs are, what those
obstacles are and then create a custom solution for them. But I definitely
see any business that's been in business over ten
years as a huge plus to our relationship. Yeah, for
sure. Yeah. So one of the things I hear you saying is almost that
they need to start thinking about
a change in their customer. Right. That if they mostly
sold through wholesale channels
and had those wholesale sales relationships where it's kind of
like a one to many opportunity,
the way you're pitching the product, the way you understand your
customer and their needs is really different than
that direct to consumer relationship. So even if
you have been in business 100 years and you feel like, oh, I
know exactly what my
one to one or my kind of like one to wholesale customer
wants and needs, there's almost this
beginner's mindset that they need to just start over and
think differently about, oh, I might find out
that the consumer on Amazon cares about something
really different than what I'm used to talking about. And so how do we start
to shift the messaging? Exactly. And
it's your trying to broaden your horizons as a business that's why
you're looking to e commerce. You're trying to find more opportunity. And I'm just saying
that mindset wise, that opportunity comes with a lift.
That is, I need to know what the actual people want
or what they're searching for. And it's an opportunity because it might help you develop
more product. It might help you come up with ideas of improving your product. There's
all of these advantages to having that relationship, one to one, but yes,
very much so. Instead of just knowing exactly what the buyers at Best Buy
want and developing product for the buyers at Best Buy because you've been doing
it for 20 years or something like that, you're now thinking past that
buyer. And so you need a partner like Mark knowledge or someone in house or
someone on your team that's now taking the place of that
buyer, so to speak, to know what's cool, to know what's trendy,
to know what the customers of that marketplace want. Yeah,
yeah. And I mean, speaking about
relationships too, I feel like one of the other big
roadblocks that I hear with, with legacy brands, particularly around
Amazon, for whatever reason, is that it feels
like a loaded decision. Like, it, like,
oh, if we start selling on Amazon, it's going to
somehow damage those wholesale relationships
or damage the perception of the brand or
have ripple effects that maybe they
don't really understand. Like, I find that there's not a lot of
data around the fear. It's just this like fear of like, oh, if we go
onto Amazon, it's gonna have negative
consequences for us in some way. And usually around
relationship. Is that something that you've either either
seen actually come true or that you've encountered
brands being worried about? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
One, it is a fear mainly because this space is new. Like, I've
been doing it going on 15 years I've been in the Amazon space. So
I've seen a lot, but it's changed drastically from when I
started to where it is now. And the level of expertise that you're getting
either on your team or you're hiring or you're finding to help you do
that, might not know enough to think what are all
the repercussions of launching on Amazon and not
understanding our wholesale relationship? Like, so a lot of brands
that have never sold an e commerce don't have reseller agreements
with their distributors. They don't have any agreement in place that says
you can sell on your website, you can tell sell on your brick and mortar,
but you can't sell on Amazon where we also can be or you can't sell
in some of these general marketplaces that everyone else is. So a
reseller agreement is something that a lot of brands haven't thought about but that they
need with their distributors and their wholesalers. The other thing is
a lot of people are selling to maybe one distributor that's then selling to a
whole bunch of wholesalers and they have no real control over who all those wholesalers
are. So they don't know who's selling really. They just don't really have a handle
on it. It's kind of been like, I want that one to one relationship and
then they have the one to many the same way. So it's like
one is just understanding, you know, how your business is Randhennen two
is having honest relationships with them that say like, look, we value this
relationship, but e commerce and Amazon is also important
to us and we need to, we need to see what that opportunity is. You
know, the biggest, you know, the biggest loss of money, I guess, of revenue for
a business is to sell to a distributor or wholesaler that then is selling
on Amazon and taking advantage of that marketplace when you could do it directly. They
don't, they're not getting any advantage off of Amazon if they have their own brick
and mortar, they have their own website. Amazing. But if they're just selling on a
general marketplace, that that should be the brand. The brand should own
that so that they can know that. So I guess what I'm trying to say
is there's a whole lot of different scenarios based on kind of how the company
is set up. It comes down to communication and knowing how
to have those, those communications. It could be that you choose one
wholesaler that can, that can represent you on Amazon or two, or
maybe they get, they're getting a certain line of your product but not other lines
of product. Or maybe you're giving them exclusive deals on certain things but
not on other things. Or maybe there's standards that they need to maintain.
So a lot of them are just, they're just distributors that had access to the
product. They're not actually e commerce pros. And so you're leaving a lot of money
on the table by not having optimized listings or not launching new product
correctly or not tracking the data. So it's kind of really
understanding what model you're in. Are we starting at blank and we can
just really protect it and do all the right things from the beginning, have the
conversations we want to have, make sure we ensure map
pricing is correct. I, you know, having that or it's, it's
already out there. It's a mess. We need to clean it up. Which way do
we want to go forward? I can tell you that
countless, countless, countless times we have pushed
wholesalers or resellers off of Amazon, let the brand go, direct
themselves on Amazon, and not missed a beat in regards to
revenue, and only seen more increased profit. Because instead of selling at 50%
or less, or whatever that is, to that wholesaler, we're now selling at 100% of
retail and managing the relationship ourself. The
difference is just a distributor that's selling on a whole bunch of
different marketplaces and a whole bunch of different avenues and ensure they've got the
logistics and operations down to sell your product. But they're not true e
commerce pros. And so I think just
a lot of opportunity left on the table. So I think it's a fear that
you just need to have an expert to help walk you through. Honestly, if it's
a real fear for you and your business, um, talk. It's like talking to
a doctor or a coach and saying, hey, this is where we are.
These are some of the, the situation. This is where our wholesaler, our resellers
are, um, are they already on Amazon? Are they not on Amazon? Do we
have, like, you know, reseller agreements in place? Do we not, do we want those?
Do we have map pricing? Do we not have map pricing? All of them can
be navigated. That's what I can tell you, is that all of them can be
navigated. It just takes a custom approach, I think. Yeah,
yeah. And it sounds like probably just
that a lot of the fear likely comes from not knowing
what the options are or also not knowing
what the potential solutions to the problem might
be. So it starts to kind of build up in people's minds versus, like, it
sounds like, you know, just kind of spreading it all out on the table and
looking at it kind of releases that anxiety.
It's nothing that's done overnight, like people for, I guess people just, like,
assume it's like, I got to rip the band aid off and remove all my
wholesalers and do all that thing. No, very often it's
a year process. It's a year of getting ourselves set up so
that we can backfill behind them and make sure we're stocked so we're not just
ripping the rug out from under them and then having the conversations, maybe
giving them a six month Runway before we take over. And there's so
many different ways that you can do it. That's not just like wham, you know,
if you know that you need to be there eventually, you know that your e
commerce needs to grow for you to be a business that's sustainable
and these are avenues you want to take. Okay, let's move
into that relationship slowly. You know, I think everyone
just thinks of it, like, what I have to do right now. Oh my God,
that would be impossible. We would upset so many people. And it just doesn't have
to happen that way. You know, it's just you can
meticulously move through the issues.
You're listening to building unbreakable brands, the podcast all about
brand stewardship and crafting an enduring legacy. I'm speaking
with Andrew Morgans, who has 14 years of experience in
entrepreneurship and Amazon. Drew loves building
teams and being part of a team and absolutely loves e
commerce. So, Drew, I'd love to just talk
a little bit about. Okay, we talked a bit about mindset, but to talk a
little bit about technical skills and this idea
of building a team. So let's say the
company historically has expertise
in a variety of different areas, but it doesn't include Amazon, it
doesn't include e commerce. How do you start going
about building a team, building that
expertise in house or with a
partner? Yeah, so Marknology, like, you
know, humble plug here. But really just to explain why I built the business
is like, you know, I've really built mark knowledge to bolt alongside
another team's team. So we're like a fractional, we're not
just marketing because we help with operations and everything. Right? So we're a fractional team
that helps with these things because I found that so many
companies are lacking all of those pieces. Maybe they have
one piece, maybe they have two pieces, but they don't have all of them. They
don't have a writer in an advertising or media buyer
in a designer for the marketplaces or someone that can move
through all the admin and the customer service. So Marknology is
essentially built not to run everything hands off for someone.
It's to bolt alongside another team. Like we work in partnership
like that. That's why I say I like building teams. I like being part of
a team. And that's kind of how we built our business. If you're going to
build an e commerce department in house,
let's say one way would be to hire
for that. Probably doesn't have all the experience. Built an agency.
Talk to that agency, tell them that you're trying to build an in house team.
Let them educate that team and then let them take over. But let's say you're
just going to do it all yourself. Hire for it, not partner with an agency
or a consultant. Think about what you do have and what you're good at.
Okay, so if you have an operations
person, great. If you are the solo entrepreneur
wearing everything, okay, great. But know what kind of, what you have
to bring to the table and then say, what are all the things that I
need to solve for to be good at this thing that I'm
doing? Maybe that's, maybe that's reading YouTube. By listening to
YouTube, they're reading a book or something. But figure out what those pieces are that
you either have or you don't have. Maybe that's a design team for
graphics. Maybe that's someone that can write some SEO and product descriptions.
Maybe that's someone that can understand and learn how to send product into FBA and
get them back. Maybe it's someone that's good at advertising on Google and your team
that can try to take on the advertising in Amazon.
Regardless, not understanding what someone has as far as on their team
is important. So, like kind of, it's almost like, let me, let me see what
I have on my team, see what kind of the hierarchy I have and see
what could fit there. A lot of times it's like one person that's done their
social media or their digital marketing and they're
having to do everything and they're wearing all of the hats.
That's the realistic situation. Even the biggest companies, I think, in
America, some of them have four or five people on their e commerce team.
And so it's almost just like everyone's overwhelmed, everyone's having to learn
everything. And I realized that
quickly. Wow. E commerce doesn't stop. It just continues
to evolve. And so you have to have almost like a learning team as well.
If you have someone that had skills five years ago and they haven't leveled
up, those skills today, they're outdated. So it's really, I guess, just
a true assessment, an honest assessment of you and your team and
where you're at, then finding or identifying what those areas are that you
think you'll need. Okay. And then saying what, what kind of time is
that? Okay, do we have the resources or not? And then, and then
trying to solve for those things. I know that's kind of a vague
answer, but there really isn't one person I think that you can hire
that can fill the whole team. So it's, it's really, you need to identify those
pieces kind of see what we can do ourselves and then say, where do we
need help? Yeah. One of the things I love to do, both with
my own company and with clients, is to do, like, a
gap analysis of exactly that, of, like, really paint the picture of
where we want to be or what success looks like, and
then really paint a picture of where are we now? And then
it almost starts to answer the question for you. Right. Of like, oh,
right, we want to be here. We're here. What are the building
blocks that we need? And I know
for you, one of the things that you are
a strong believer in is
that kind of like a more slow and steady
approach of what's the next right step, and not to assume that you're
going to close that gap really quickly. I'm
curious, as you start to look at
teams or gaps or what those next
opportunities are, how do you help figure
out what is that next right step? Whether it's a brand coming
onto Amazon for the first time or looking at how mark
Knowledgey can help a team kind of like, take that next
level. How do you go about figuring out, like, what is the next
thing to do? Some of it is just through
onboarding and really communicating with them about where their pain points
are and where they've struggled. Have they tried to launch and just can't find the
resources? Have they tried to launch and just don't have the expertise? That's a completely
different thing, resources versus expertise.
Sometimes they have an entire creative team that's amazing. They just
already have a crazy schedule and there isn't any time for Amazon, like, you
know, or they've already got a great media team, but they,
they're not willing or have the bandwidth to come over here. So it's like
a lot of times we find ourselves where I'm asking them questions to say,
what's the we? Maybe you know what to do, but you just can't get it
done, so to speak. And so it really comes down to those first
few questions with them. If they haven't launched at all, it's a lot easier because
they haven't come across any problems, problems yet. And so I'm like, essentially,
who's on your team? Who's going to have the bandwidth to meet with us, talk
with us, give us assets, give us, you know, give us feedback on what we're
doing, give us cost of goods? Okay, we have that resource.
Now let me be your guide, your project manager, and tell you what to focus
on. Like a coach that's different than coming into an operation that's
already going and trying to say, hey, what are the gaps that we need to
fill first? Because they might have a major issue
happening with, like, a top selling asin or a top selling product that's down
or a new product that needs to come to market really quickly. And I
see, you know, I need to know that through communication with them and then the
normal things that we would do take a backseat to that emergency when we're coming
on board. So it really comes down to just one. I mean, I can look
through the account and get 70% of probably what I need as far as, like,
what we should focus on. The rest of it comes from just having great
communication with them, conversations of having done this 15 years and
kind of knowing what to ask. And I, you know, were you guys
struggling? What do you feel good about? You know, sometimes, you know, you'll see
an account that grew by a million dollars year over year. And I talked to
them and they're disappointed, you know, whereas if I, if I hadn't talked to them,
I'm like, wow, okay, a million, you know, 100% growth. Wow, it's incredible.
And they're like, yeah, but my boss, you know, me and my boss, we set
projections and we were supposed to be at 5 million. Okay, well, now they have
a sales problem when, when really, if I hadn't talked to them, it just looked
like they crushed it. So it really just comes
down to really understanding the team or the person on the other
side of the call their goals,
saying, okay, if this is the goal, if it's profitability, okay, let's do these
things. If it's top line sales, let's do these things. If it's simply
getting our first sale, let's do these things. So kind
of a strategy based off of goals and
then identifying those goals through communication. Yeah. I
do find that one of the
things that people often skip over
is that goal setting piece that they'll
jump onto a platform like Amazon
with very vague
expectations or not a real clear picture
of what success looks like.
Have you seen companies do that? Or like, what
to you is like the most important piece about answering some of those goal
setting questions? It's very common, I think, as human
beings, we go do a lot of things without clear goals set.
Very rarely do I go to the grocery store and have my complete list written
out, because as an example, or the gym. I know I want to
go. I know I want to spend a certain amount of time, but what am
I trying to do in here? Um, you know, the difference in having a goal
versus not is the difference in feeling, feeling, um,
accomplished or not. Right. So, as an agency, it's very important for me to
stay in business or stay in partnership or stay in relationship by saying, hey,
what are your goals of me and what are our goals together?
Um, so that we can have a benchmark of are we moving toward them or
moving away from them? You know? And so sometimes we even have software to help
us do that with profitability or certain things like that. Because if they're saying
they're not making money on Amazon, what does that mean? You know, what, what are
we, what does that mean? We're not making money. You're not making enough. You're not
making any at all. We're losing money. You know, that's. Sometimes people have so.
Such a hard time articulating that, especially if they're already overworked before we get
there. So part of having a good team and a good partner is simply
having a team that proactively is going to help you set those goals. And if
you say, I don't know what we should be doing, Andrew, help
me. We will. We will say, hey, here's a goal right in front of us.
Let's get to a two to one roas on ad spend. Let's try to get
subscribe and safe numbers up. Let's try to get to break even in profitability.
Let's try to get to 10%. Let's try to get to 20%. Let's try to
get to 30%. If the brand doesn't know where they're
going or what they should be doing. Cool, then let me
lead type of thing. If not, tell me what you want and I'll
help you get there. Yeah, yeah. I think that that is
so important. I just hope that
listeners hear that both that,
number one, I love the example of you can go to the
gym and spend time in the gym, and, yeah, I mean, you get a workout
in, you might feel okay, but that's so different than going in and being like,
okay, I've got a workout plan that I'm gonna run.
And how you feel when you leave
the gym is a totally different mindset.
And I feel like, again, if you don't know what you should be
doing in the gym, you would go to a coach and they would help you
say, like, okay, here's a workout plan. Week one, this is what you need to
do. And so I think for people to
understand that that same option
is available for them for almost any aspect of their business.
Like we're specifically talking about Amazon. But I feel like
that skipping over the goal setting and just jumping straight into the gym
is like one of the most common things I see.
People kind of have a vague idea of what they want but they don't really
have a clear sense of what success looks like. That coach is going to say
like are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying to like get wedding ready?
Are you trying to gain mass and gain muscle? Are you trying to just have
like, you know, healthier heart rate? Like, you know, like what are
you trying to accomplish? And then they're going to help you go get that with
a different set of goals you're going to do. Trying to gain muscle mass, it's
going to be different than trimming your waist or sometimes they go hand in
hand, right? Yeah. Like profitability. I think within Amazon,
you know, for anyone not that doesn't know all the different areas
of Amazon, there's a lot of agencies or softwares that solve one part of
that. They'll solve advertising, they'll solve the content, they'll solve
SEO content writing, they'll solve like case resolution management,
they'll solve review, gathering all these things.
Martinology is a full service agency because I believe all those things work together and
we just try to offer, we offer all of that as one
service. But there's very much individual experts
and firms built around that. What I'm saying is that each of those areas
as well needs its own set of goals and KPI's, the
overall account goal could be profitability. Well, how do we get there? We work on
sales and getting more views and eyeballs and traffic
and we also work on conversion rate and customer retention
and these types of things. So you could have goals of trying to improve
our conversion rate and you could have goals of improving our branding or
market share or you could have goals of
reviews. Let's try to get our reviews to a certain level. Or you could
have, let's try to get new to brand customers. Let's try
to improve our subscribe and saves. Let's go out there and see top line sales
like what we can do with PPC. We're trying to grow sales and stay
profitable. So each like, you know, we could say, hey, I want to, we
have a thousand listings and I want to get ten new
SEO rewrites done per month where I'm like, I want
our listings to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Make sure we have
keywords in there that are driving sales for us. We have a lot to do.
So what do goals look like for us? Well, we're going to improve
SEO. It's going to take us twelve months to get through
120. We're going to at the same time work
on starting to run advertising on each of those
skus as we get them rewritten and feel strong about them.
And let's also make sure that the listings that we're rewriting that we're doing with
advertising have a full stack of images. Or like, you know, let's,
let's, let's make sure the storefront's getting updated as we add new products.
So think of it as like a moving organism.
You know, that we have goals all over the place, that a good, a good
team or a good manager on the inside of a company or on the outside,
we're probably working together. Like, honestly, it's a good manager on the inside and a
firm like us working together. Just say what needs our attention
first, what does a goal look like for three months, six months,
nine months, twelve months? And then as we set those a
benchmark, are we moving toward them or moving away from them? Are
they getting done or not? You know, that's the only way to really tackle Amazon,
I feel like, is to really set those goals, go out there and get them
and set them in an attainable way. Like, you know, times people are like, I
want a five to one roas when they're at a one to one. So anyone
that doesn't know, it's like, spend a dollar to make five or turn on as
spend well, okay, but like, can we set a goal from going from
one to one to one to two and then one to three and then let's
get, let's feel accomplished as we move toward that goal. You know, and
um, maybe even reassessing and saying, we initially had a goal of five
to one. I feel like on this platform, a healthy one, a healthy, realistic
goal for us is three to one. Okay, if that's the case, how do
we adjust to still make this platform work for us? And just being
flexible like that, being, having that entrepreneurial hat on as you're learning a new
area of your business, if we're talking to like, legacy brands and being like, look,
this is an area that's new for us. Instead of being so used to
being amazing at everything we do, this is a new thing that I'm
learning my mindset around. It is like, I can do hard
things, I can do new things, I can still learn new things. I think, like
you said, that mindset thing of starting with it is. These are all new goals
for me. These are all new challenges for me. I want to get some
taste of success early. Yeah. Yeah. I
do feel like for companies that have this
generational piece, oftentimes they are
the most entrepreneurial in G
one, the first generation, because that's the founder.
That's when everything's brand new. And then by the time you
get to the second 3rd generation and
beyond, you can sometimes lose that
muscle. So it almost sounds like if you thought about
entering a new channel like Amazon,
entering the world of e commerce, becomes an opportunity
to bring back that entrepreneurial muscle that maybe
might have atrophied a little bit within the company and
really start to build new skills around it that, yes,
serve you well to build sales on Amazon,
but then also could apply to other areas of
the company. Just make you more entrepreneurial overall. Is that something that you've ever
seen happen? 100%? Like, I'm glad you're
glad you brought that up. That's like, it's amazing because I would love to talk
about oftentimes I'm seeing. I have
two clients in my mind right now, like from last, speaking to them last week.
One of them is a daughter that is like third
generation. Um, her dad's business
closed in 2020 as a restaurant. A series of restaurants closed them,
um, as a legacy project, like taking it forward. You know, they made a good
amount of money on the sale to exit, but she's taking their sauces
and turning it into an e commerce brand and like carrying that forward. Okay, so
a lot of times I'm seeing third or fourth
generation, honestly, like kind of getting the entrepreneurial bug again.
Yeah. Which is just as common. And just to harp
on that, Trenton is another guy, a close friend, taking his father's
business. That was medical. Like
medical devices, like a wrist brace or an ankle brace
or a back brace, things like that, that you would get at the doctor's office.
And they used to sell doctor's office to doctor's office. So different
packaging. It's all about relationships with the private
offices more that relationship, like we talked about, completely different
than selling to the person buying on Amazon. That's fitting it themselves
and those kinds of things. He's wanting to push the business into e
commerce. It hasn't been easy because we have all of these things to
fix, like the images and the size charts and returns.
But we've gotten profitable in the last five months, which is a huge success story.
First, we got top line sales, 30, 40, 50,000 a month. On Amazon. And
then we were like, then let's get profitable after we figure out how to sell.
Yeah. And so we're going through that and we just got profitable. But those are
both third generation family owned
businesses where the, the new, the
new regime, so to speak, the new leadership is like, I want to take
us into a new area to try to bring life into the business. What I'll
say to that, so that that happens frequently with us is I'm sure
they can lose it. They, maybe they don't know how because they haven't done it.
But I do feel like the bug is, is in there like the entrepreneur
bug. But I think when I talk mindset, sometimes it's
not even getting the person listening to this that's excited about e commerce in the
right mindset. It's that you have to be the advocate to the old leadership.
Yeah. Yeah. And you have to help dad, help mom,
help uncle, help whoever get to
where we need to be to be successful on those platforms. And
you're the communication barrier there. Like a lot of them, I know, are not in
full control of the business at that point. There's still dad on the board, there's
still mom on the board, still family on the board, and they're having to, like,
say, hey, I want to do this thing, guys. This is the mindset we have
to have. We have to be patient in this area. We have to think about
prioritizing these things. Yeah, sure. We have Sally over here
that does social media, but that doesn't mean that she's able to manage, you know,
10,000 a month in PPC spend on Amazon or something like that. And
so that person is the advocate to the old guard.
And that was a mouthful. But I wanted to kind of explain like one, actually,
I see a lot of that. They want that entrepreneurial spirit, but what I
know and I don't necessarily always see and know in the relationship is they're having
to go back to dad, back to mom, back to the board, and
continue to sell them on their new idea over and over and over to get
buy in. Right. Yeah, it almost becomes, you
know, I think it also kind of goes back to goal setting and alignment there,
too. We're making sure that
the, you can put, I think one of the
best ways to make that sell internally is to be able to
say, okay, this is what we're trying to achieve as a company,
as a family, as a brand, and
this is how Amazon fits into that and rolls up
to it. And this is what it might look like, so that everybody
kind of understands why it's
not just something that's like cool or
trendy, but it's something that's actually serving the
goals of the business, whether that's longevity,
or building sales or building profitability
or R and D or whatever it is. I think
that there's lots of different ways that it could roll up into that.
It's essentially a lot of times the family or the
board or whatever that relationship looks like in that company is
the PE firm, right? Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, is that it's
almost like pitching for investment. Every fiscal
year you have to get buy in. And some of that comes down to setting
good expectations and so the investors or the family can see the
progress and the end goal in mind or how we're going
to get there. You're having to constantly sell to them and oftentimes, let's
say that we're the agency trying to execute on that. I'm not getting
to talk to that board or that, whatever.
So it's the mindset of the founder, whoever's
championing like the e commerce, to then
understand it very well, to then be able to communicate it back. Yeah,
yeah. But what a cool skill set to be
able, like, as a next generation leader of the company. Like
that's, that's like
an expensive degree at a good business school,
to be able to communicate that well, to put together a plan,
to put together a team, to get metric, to really kind of create
the pitch deck and what a
cool opportunity as a way to build skills that
not only benefit the family and the business,
but also would benefit you. You could take those to any company and
it would be the same thing. You know, you could pitch up the line at
a Fortune 500 company and it would be the
same thing of like, you know, what are we investing in and how and why?
So, yeah, I think some comes down to
picking a good partner, just like any relationship. And if you pick the right partner,
they're going to understand what your goals are as
a third generation, you know, CEO or C
suite or founder, like now taking the family business, like, you know, a
good partner is going to understand the conversations that you have to have internally to
get buy in on this, whether you're the decision maker or not, and help you
do that, help you, help you relay that message back,
help you set goals, help you like, understand where we are and
what, what a good expectation is around it. To
me, like, we're talking about partnership and relationship and like, to me,
that's what it is, and if it's a good one, they're helping you communicate. My
job is not just to sell a bunch of stuff on Amazon. It's to
help us get Runway to get to that point where we're selling a lot of
stuff on Amazon. You're listening to Building Unbreakable
Brands, the podcast all about brand stewardship and crafting
an enduring legacy. I'm here with Andrew Morgans, whose
company, Marknology, is also a family business.
So, Drew, I want to just kind of switch gears a bit. We've been talking
a lot about Amazon and your expertise there
and how companies can make that leap. But I'd like to just talk
a little bit about Marknology and your journey
as an entrepreneur. Who
else? What other family members are in business with you at
Marknology? Well, when I started
doing Amazon services, if you want to call that Amazon
Consulting, no one understood what it was. No one was going to school for
it. There weren't courses online. There weren't youtubes. There weren't blogs on
it. There was me. There weren't vas
overseas, at least not that I had access to getting trained or anything like
that. So for the longest time, I was a little too early.
I was doing this on my own, and I started just getting really busy
and overwhelmed with the amount of work I was getting. And
so my sister was in engineering school, my older
sister, and we grew up in Africa together. She was 18
when she came back. I was 16. So we're a close family, but
she was going to getting her master's in Florida at
USF. I was in Kansas City. And I just
was like, sis, like, I need help. It was a lot of excel
spreadsheets, CSVs, and I was like, vern, I need help. So while
she was going to school, she started helping me remotely from
Florida, like crank through a lot of these projects. And so she was kind of
the first, my first employee or first partner, whatever you want to call
it. And then, you know, if we've been doing this, I think
she moved year four, year five of the business. She came, she, like,
finished engineering school and honestly gave up that career to
come help me build mark knowledge. So Veronica was, was number one employee
and sister to join. Shortly after that, my younger
sister, an absolute genius. Uh, we were lucky to get her.
She was in school for equestrian science and really working with a lot of like,
champion horses in Ocala, Florida, and really pursuing. We grew up
kind of like Tarzan kids, you know, so it just makes sense, if you think
about it like that she was working with horses and she's
absolutely amazing with animals, but she came and joined
and really switched up what she was doing in life to kind of join what
me and sis were doing. We were just, like, growing this thing. I'm like, I
think I'm on to something, guys. Like, I'm winning with some brands like this.
It just seems like it's hot. Like I need help. So there's. The first two
were my sisters, but since then
I've got a cousin
that's joined us now for the last five years, and
I've retired my mother and my dad,
actually. It's all like a weird story in some ways, but my parents grew up
overseas and they were teachers. They were english teachers in
French Africa. And so I had my dad help
me with our SEO team, our writing team, our content team,
and really helped me create some processes in there for training and for educating.
So everyone's had a little bit, has touched it a little bit. But right
now I would say I've got two sisters
and a cousin, and my mom
helps us with a lot of things, if I can put it that way. She's
not officially an employee, but more so, like,
she's not going anywhere. So she's here all the time and helps us is.
She's absolutely a saint. So I guess that makes
five. Yeah. Yeah. That's. How has it been working
with siblings in the business? I know
that can be tough. There's been challenges later,
you know, at the same time, oh, my God, this
entrepreneurship is so hard. And I would not
rather have anyone else in my corner but them. They're
willing. The lows, the highs. It's not just like they're abandoning ship or taking
a paycheck somewhere else. They could be paid very, very, very
well. Both of my sisters, the older and younger one, combined, we have like
60,000 hours on Amazon. And I'm telling you, you can take that to
a company and get paid pretty well with that experience. So they've
stood by me. It's been an amazing experience. And
honestly, our family was kind of like in all the four corners of the
world, so to speak, for a while, post Africa years and things like that,
going to college, moving away, and this brought us back
together. And honestly, like, I absolutely love it.
I get to work with, they're my best friends as well, so I get to
work with my best friends. Building something that's changed
our family's legacy, changed our family's, like, path, like,
in ways that I can't even share on this podcast, probably without getting a little,
like, emotional about it, just in a big, big way.
And sure, there's challenges around maybe
letting someone go that someone on the team doesn't want to let go or
like someone needing to level up, that's not leveling up or
someone taking a break when they need to push or just
family things, but always done with love. And I think
that kind candor kind of concept, and it's something we've all learned.
I think one thing it's really done for us is
we respect each other in a way that we couldn't have
done if we hadn't built this together. We would have loved each other and respect
what each other did, but we wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known about engineering.
I wouldn't have known about equestrian science in the same way or whatever, but I
get to see them be great every day. And there's a respect
level that I think we have that a lot of other families might not have.
Just so I don't know if I can leave it at that, but it's
just, I love it for the ups and the downs.
Yeah. Yeah. I do think that you learn so much
when you're working with family, and
there are those opportunities that I think it always gives
families the opportunity to let the struggles bring them
closer or let it become
something that drives them apart. And it sounds like you guys are walking that line.
Well, to let it be some glue. We went through wars
together in Africa, like, legitimate war zones. Like, we lived in
Congo, Africa. We, like, you know, so as far as a family
unit, you know, we have always, like,
binded together in the hard times, there was nowhere to run. So, like, our
default setting is to, like, come together and, like, figure it out together.
And I think it's almost like an entrepreneurial superpower,
growing up the way that we did and then going out and get educated and
then coming back together and, like, building something together. Yeah.
I think as much as I've, like, feared what
could happen, and you hear all of. I mean, all of society is like, especially
in 2024, is like, you know, family can't work together
and, like, you know, and I just completely believe differently,
and it helps to have very good people. Right?
Like, I can't judge everyone's family and everyone's siblings around greed and
around all those types of things, but with my family, there's,
there's none of that, really. So we have, we've always had the same mission in
mind, which is to build a legacy. We actually call this the Legacy
chapter. Right now, we've had legacy in the past, and our families, our families
go all the way back to the beginning of this country. Like, my
sisters, they have the Daughters of Liberty certificates and things like that. I'm very proud
of that, that we've just been here a long time and
like, so the family has had legacy, like, if that makes sense.
And it's came and went and comes back again and goes away again. But
for us, like, this is a rebuilding of our legacy as a family. And it
started with wanting to take care of my parents. And then from there it's just
grown. There's 25 of us, right? So there's
20 plus that aren't family members that now we
feel like we're building legacy together. Love
it. You're listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the
podcast for leaders with a generational mindset. My guest is
Andrew Morgans, who helps people sell things online.
As Andrew puts it, it's kind of like a game, but for making money.
Instead. We're going to turn the mic now over to see what my
son Henry can learn from Drew by asking him some of, of his
questions as the voice of the next generation.
Hi, Drew. Hi, sir. How is selling
things online like a game? How is selling things
online like a game? Well, you know, like video
games where you have all of these quests.
Like, you have, like, you have quests and you can do these little side quests
or you can do the main quests. You know, a lot of times you have
to do the side quests to get enough, like, experience or, like, enough stuff to
go do the main quest. And I kind of think of, like,
tinkering on a website or on Amazon kind of
like that you have all these little side quests you can do to, like,
get your score better, your brand better, like, you know, get a
score here. How did you do on this area? And if you're doing
all the side quests, you get all the side quests done. It makes the
main quest a lot easier. So for me, that's kind of how I think about
it. I'm always thinking of every little challenge that I have when it comes to
selling online as a
game. And if I get the right scores, if I get the right answer, then
I can go on to the next stage. That makes sense.
Yeah. All right,
what's your favorite item that you've sold? My favorite
item that I've sold. That is a good question.
I think it would be my very first product that I sold
myself t shirt, and
I came up with this idea for a football and baseball
t shirt in one, and I really didn't know what I was doing at
all. So that's why it was kind of more special, because I was just
learning. And I basically
posted on social media, on Twitter my very first tweet I ever
made. I just posted a picture of my shirt, and
the local, like, news company
saw, like, saw my shirt and reposted it, and I got,
like, 200 orders in the same day, and I was just, like, just
starting selling online, and it was like, it was just
like chi ching, like a video game. It was like I was winning, and it
was just like, cha ching, cha ching, cha ching. And it was. It was a
really cool moment for me. I feel
like I can relate to that. Like, with the podcast, like, we put
about three episodes out, and after a
while, it's just like. And
just, like, more and more listeners and more and
more episodes and stuff like that.
All right. How often do you work? Is
it like a part time job or a full time? It is like
two full time jobs. Honestly, I work a lot
of because even when I'm done, there's
things I wish I could have done that maybe are not saying you have to
have this done today, but I just want to build the best business that I
can be or the best business that I can have. And a lot of times,
what I do as a business is I help other people's businesses. So it's like
a business that I have to help mine and help others. And so a lot
of times, I'm spending a lot of my time helping others. And so in my
free time, I choose to work on my business. A lot of times, you want
to. To call that free time, but I try to just
find fun ways of, like, since I'm working all the time, I don't have
a Henry myself. I don't have any kids, and I'm
not married, so I have a dog, and I have family that works in
my business, so it's all connected for me. It's a
family business. And so I find ways of, like, maybe
I'm working outside instead of inside, or maybe I'm taking a
small break to go eat lunch with mom or something like that and
coming back to it. But I work a lot, but it's. What do they
say? If you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life
or something like that? I don't know if that's true, but I will say
that time flies when I'm working, and it feels like it just
goes boom. It's like playtime's over.
So, yeah, I work a lot, buddy. I work a lot,
but I wouldn't have it any other way. Mm hmm.
All right. Um, that's all the questions is done.
I'm probably going to hand it over
to Meghan, but, um, yeah.
Oh, do you get in trouble if you call her Meghan instead of
mom? No, you guys, I call her mom. I call
her Meg. I call her Meghan. So,
yeah, so that's Henry. Thank you. Thanks so much for
answering his questions and for spending some
time with me here on building unbreakable brands. As always,
Drew, just really fun to chat with you and to hear a
little bit more, both about your expertise and your advice for generational
businesses and just learn a little bit more about you and
your family team, both your nuclear
family and youre a extended marknology family. So
thanks so much for spending time with us. Thank you. And thank you to
you and to Henry. If people want to
connect with you to learn more about what you're doing, where's the best
ways and places for them to do that? So I'm pretty active
on LinkedIn, just posting, engaging,
gathering content there. So obviously, as a business social media platform,
LinkedIn is great. Andrew Morgans, there's not that many Morgans with an
s, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding me through the list. But also
marknology.com, we have good examples of our
work, case studies, portfolio stuff. If you just want to learn more.
I'm on Instagram. I don't know if our listeners are on
Instagram, but that's kind of my personal social media, where I'm just posting
my travels and my trips and my mindset. It's less like
Amazon centric or e commerce centric. It's just more of like me as
an entrepreneur. So there's a couple different ways, I guess, to engage.
Right now, I'm in between podcasts. I'm excited to be on Meghan's. My
own podcast got sold early in the year so that you can't
just tune in and listen to me regularly. But hopefully I'll have something soon
so that I can start engaging again and talking about the thing that I love
so much. So thanks for having me on the show. And honestly,
I'd love to hear from anybody, whether it's just chatting, no
cost, nothing to risk there other than just getting to chat
about what I love and love helping other
people do, which is build legacy and build a brand that they're proud
of. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I highly recommend that listeners connect with you
on LinkedIn. You post some great content on there and yeah, just such
a great human and really generous with your expertise. So
again, thank you so much for your time and thank you for being
on Building Unbreakable Brands. Thank you.
That was some great stuff from Drew. I love this
idea of building new skills in a generational company
around e commerce or Amazon as being an entrepreneurial
endeavor of its own. That's so important because for a brand to
endure, keeping a sense of entrepreneurship and innovation is just
absolutely critical. So if you can look at opportunities
for growth like this as not just revenue opportunities,
but also ways to practice cultivating a true spirit of
entrepreneurship within the company, it's just such a valuable way to
think about it. If you enjoyed this episode, please be
sure to share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to rate
us and leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening to
building unbreakable brands.
