#726 – Chinese Mafia Problems to 500 Amazon Launches: My Amazon Seller Story

Bradley Sutton has never taken a traditional path into e-commerce. In this episode, he shares how a childhood split between California, Japan, and the Philippines, early public speaking in multiple languages, and an obsession with being “different” led him from Korean car parts to nationally ranked sumo wrestling and international Zumba tours. Along the way, a “Crazy Sock TV” YouTube persona racked up tens of millions of views and proved that you can turn fun, strange ideas into real opportunity.

Bradley then dives into the Amazon chapter of his story, scaling a phone case business to 1,000-2,000 orders per day, running his own warehouse, and facing a surreal crisis when a business partner was kidnapped by the Chinese mafia over unpaid factory debt. That experience forced him to rethink partnerships, visibility, and risk. With almost no money, he flew to an Amazon conference, slept in a rental car, and decided to go all-in on understanding launches, keywords, and ranking. He launched hundreds of products for brands and eventually joined Helium 10.

From there, Bradley breaks down what he calls the “Maldives mindset”: getting obsessed with the game, using your unique advantages, and turning weaknesses into strengths. He shares case studies, such as Demon Slayer-inspired party products and wooden egg trays, that win in “saturated” niches by being unique, as well as how he utilizes Helium 10 data to revive demand for out-of-stock winners. He also opens up about a heart attack that left him clinically dead for 15 minutes and the regrets that come with kids growing up fast, reminding entrepreneurs that health and family matter more than any sales chart.

In episode 726 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about:

• 00:00 – Sumo, Zumba, Amazon grind teaser
• 03:20 – Childhood travel, Japan, and public speaking
• 06:50 – Korean car parts million-dollar hustle
• 10:50 – Zumba weight loss and Crazy Sock TV
• 14:40 – Phone case boom and FBM chaos
• 15:55 – Partner kidnapped by Chinese mafia
• 21:30 – Discovering Amazon product launches
• 24:50 – How Helium 10 discovered Bradley
• 29:50 – “Maldives mindset” and loving the game
• 33:40 – Demon Slayer–inspired products and niches
• 41:30 – Regret, family time, and perspective
• 43:20 – How to be featured on the podcast

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we go into my backstory in life in e-commerce, ranging from being a nationally ranked sumo wrestler, traveling the world as a Zumba instructor to launching over 500 products on Amazon and everything in between, including how I was once dead for 15 minutes and also another time where I once had to pay over $50,000 ransom to the Chinese mafia to get one of my business partners released. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Seller’s podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free organic conversation about serious strategies, serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And this is our first episode into our new format where here on the Serious Sellers podcast, we only have one episode a week and it’s going to be with a seller or a brand.

Bradley Sutton:

Sometimes we might have on somebody maybe from like Amazon or TikTok, but no more like service providers or people pitching their courses or their services. Nothing wrong with that. We still are going to have these people on our podcast, but that’s going to be saved for our more educational podcast on the AM/PM podcast. So, if you guys are not subscribed to the AM PM podcast, make sure to subscribe now because you’re still going to get a lot of like educational videos, even about Helium 10. I’ll be on the AM/PM podcast a lot too. Whatever you’re watching this on, just go AM slash type AM/PM podcast and make sure to subscribe and put your notifications on.

Bradley Sutton:

But here on the Serious Sellers podcast, we are strictly going to be featuring real life stories of actual sellers and brands and what we can learn from them because we’ve always been about serious strategies for serious sellers, right? So we got to talk to these serious sellers and actually I didn’t want to be the first episode, but the one who was going to be on this first episode, she got sick and we had to postpone that. So I was like, you know what? I got to step up. And you know, a lot of, you know, some of my backstory, but some of you are newer to the, maybe the Helium 10 world here and don’t know too much about me and my selling journey and just my life story. And so just like we learn about other brands and sellers, we’re going to learn about me today.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so here we go. Hope you guys are going to find this interesting cause I’ve definitely lived a, an interesting life. Kind of like the, the Dos Equis guy from those commercials before. But anyways I was born actually in California. Orange County, Fountain Valley is where I was born. Was raised there for a few years. I’m, my father’s American. My mother is from Pasay City in the Philippines and we travel a lot from an early age. That’s why you guys probably see how much I travel nowadays. Well, it got into me at an early age. I had been to probably like 40 countries by the time I was before 10 years old.

My dad had a business in Japan since before I was born. And so, we would travel there a lot and even live there for a few years when I was like nine, 10, 11 years old. I lived in Japan.

Bradley Sutton:

One thing that kind of like brings us to the current times that I can trace back to when I was a child was I was doing public speaking a lot from an early age. Like from the age of like four, I was, you know, speaking at church and different things in front of like a hundred people or more English or Spanish, even Japanese for a time. And so that was one of my skills I honed early on. And that’s probably why I feel comfortable being on stage now or doing podcasts and things like that. So, so shout out to my parents for helping me, you know, to do that at an early age. School, I went here in California, you know, to like elementary, junior high and high school. But upon graduation, I didn’t go directly into college. I actually was while I was still in high school going to like a junior college. And so, I actually had an AA degree already by the time I graduated high school.

Bradley Sutton:

I say Japanese and international business. But upon graduating high school, even though I was like your typical Asian nerd, you know, 4.7 GPA, I think I had like 1250 or something on my SATs and, you know, complete straight A student. Didn’t do any sports, nothing like that. Just all about the books. You would think somebody like that goes directly to college. But my family was never like, no, not like you need to go to college in order to be successful. They actually encouraged me not to, you know, go to like a four-year university at the time. And so, what I did actually when I graduated high school, I already had like my AA degree from when I was in high school and going to the junior college. I went, I moved to New York about a year after I did about a year where I was like a volunteer kind of like not really missionary. I don’t know how you would call like a minister kind of thing. And then I moved to New York to like where religious headquarters office was in Brooklyn. And I lived and volunteer there for about two years.

Bradley Sutton:

Really wasn’t making money, but, but all my expenses were covered and I was working just like in, in like a building services department, something completely different, but it was fun and it was nice to live in the city. And then I moved back to California and I was like 21. Got married at the time and already had a kid. That’s why my kids are so old. They’re 21 and 24 now. But at that time, and that’s when I first started getting into the entrepreneurial world. I first started working like as an executive assistant, which is like a secretary for like the corporate headquarters of hot dog and a stick. But then from there, while I was working there, I started this side business. And here’s the thing.

Bradley Sutton:

This is how my entrepreneurial brain was always working. And this applies. A lot of what I’m talking about today, guys is going to apply to the Amazon world and e-commerce and even the things that don’t necessarily directly have to do with e-commerce. It’s like a mindset. We’re going to talk about mindset a lot in this episode, but anyways, I, this was around the time when the fast, the first fast and furious movie came out and everybody was like fixing up their cars. Me, I’ve always liked to be different. And so, I didn’t want like a muscle car, like an American car that some people were doing. And I also didn’t want to have what everybody else had, which was like a Japanese, you know, like fast and furious car, you know, the Hondas and Toyotas and Nissan’s. I like Nissan’s and stuff. Skyline was always my dream car to have, which I actually do have a Nissan Skyline now. But anyways, for my regular car, I was like, I want to be different. And so I went with a Korean car.

Bradley Sutton:

Now this was in the days where Hyundai and Kia were like had a bad reputation, but I got a Hyundai Elantra and I was like, Hey, I want to like soup this up and turbocharge it and get cold air intakes and carbon fiber hoods and body kits and all this stuff. But there was almost nobody who had parts for the car in America. But I realized I was like, wait a minute in Korea, Hyundai’s and Kia’s, these are like the Hondas and Toyotas of Korea. And so, there’s gotta be, you know, companies that have parts over there. And sure enough, I found a couple of companies who were exporting, willing to export, you know, like body kits and stuff like that to the United States. And I ordered some stuff and immediately I was like, wait a minute, there’s an opportunity here. So, this is where my entrepreneurial brain was working as a 20-year-old. And I was like, wait a minute, this is taking months to ship. It’s super expensive. And you know, people don’t trust companies that are based outside of the country, you know, like, you know, sending money overseas and things like that. So, I was like, maybe I can partner with this guy. So, I emailed that guy, this company still exists by the way, it’s called shark racing. Um, shout out Samsung, the owner of that company. But I emailed him, I was like, Hey, I’m order. I’ve been ordering some stuff from you. This is cool, but we should partner up because I think you could go a lot bigger if you had like a presence here in the United States, a warehouse, let me open up a warehouse for you. Let me run your us operations and, and you can pay me obviously, but, but also I’ll get some free parts and, and it’s, you’re going to be benefited because your business will boom with a local operation.

Bradley Sutton:

So that’s what we did. I opened up a 3000 square foot warehouse here in California when I was, I think it was like 20 or 21 at the time. And we’re importing containers of Korean fast and furious kind of car parts. And we, we got the business up to like a million dollars a year, which was, you know, like five X what it was. And so that was kind of like my first taste of, of running my own business. It obviously got so big that I quit my day job as an executive assistant. It was just full time doing that where we sold on doc a.com website and we sold on eBay and we were just importing lots of, uh, lots of products. And that was actually the start of me working with Korean companies off and on for a good 15, 15 years or so. Um, I did that for a while, but, but the kind of like market went down for that and I had to pivot because people, you know, there was like a recession and people weren’t really having money for car parts and stuff. And so, I started like diversifying into, into other things.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, around, you know, a few years later, I started getting into sumo wrestling. I told you, I lived in Japan for a few years when I was younger and I really fell in love with sumo wrestling at the time and I was already a little bit bigger for my size. But, um, I started going really hardcore into sumo wrestling because there, I found out there was amateur sumo wrestling. And so really dedicated myself to that and got pretty good. You know, I, I eventually, one time I got third place in the United States for one of the weight classes. Um, and, and even MTV true life did like a documentary series, uh, on me about, about sumo wrestling. I was really, really into it. Um, what happened though was like, I would maintain my weight higher, which ironically, I’m back at that weight now, but wasn’t very healthy for me. And so I had to lose a lot of weight. And what I found out, what I found to do that I liked to lose weight was doing a Zumba fitness. I was like, I don’t like being on a treadmill. I don’t like going to the gym, but I went to the gym once and I looked into this fitness journal. I was like, wow, what’s this, this cool music that everybody is dancing to. And I was like, Hey, this is, this is pretty cool. Um, let me start doing it. You know, I was like in a room with 50 beautiful women and like a couple dudes. I was like, this is a good ratio for me. And so, I was like, well, let’s, let’s do this Zumba thing.

Bradley Sutton:

And so, I started doing that and lost like 70 pounds in just a few months. Um, and then became an instructor in that. And here’s another part of the entrepreneurial thing is I always want to think about, all right, how can I make this work for me or can I make money off of this? Can I take being unique and actually profit off of it? Um, at the same time while helping people. And to me, that’s like the ultimate job. And that’s been something that’s a theme throughout my life is I try and have these jobs where it’s so fun that I would literally pay to do it, even if I wasn’t being paid to do it. So like Zumba, for example, I used to pay to do Zumba and now I was like, hey, I’m entering a world where I can be paid and where it’s a job where I’m like changing people’s lives for the better. And Zumba was that, like, uh, I was, you know, as an instructor, I was like, hey, I can help people get healthy like me and lose weight. And to me, that’s like the most fulfilling job I could have. And Helium 10 kind of like became that for me, you know, later on where something I used to pay to do, I was being paid to now use and helping people change their lives for the better by helping them start businesses.

Bradley Sutton:

So lightning kind of struck twice. But anyways, that was kind of like my motto in life is how can I have a job that is so fun? It doesn’t feel like work that I literally would even pay to do it, let alone be paid to do it and change people’s lives. So anyways, I became a Zumba instructor and I was thinking I would learn routines from like these YouTube Zumba personalities. And I was thinking, I was like, you know what? These guys, I might never see know who they are if I saw them on the street or if I went to a Zumba conference or convention, like they would just be like any random instructor. I don’t even remember a lot of their names and stuff. So I was like, I want to start being a YouTube Zumba instructor to get my name out there. But how do I make myself known? And so, what I did was I created this character which was called crazy sock TV. And I would wear like one crazy sock on one leg and I would wear one crazy sock on one arm and then made that my personality where people didn’t remember the name Bradley. But that YouTube channel blew up. I had like 30 million views on there, which you know, that was like 15 years ago today. That would be like 300 million views or even more. But I was never a good dancer and I’m going to talk a little bit about this in a second about how this can be applied. This mentality can be applied to e-commerce, but I took like a weakness and I made it a positive. Like my weakness was I wasn’t a great, great dancer. I was decent. But I took that and made myself like resonate with people more because instead of like being in all of this like professional, professionally trained dancer who is doing moves that they could never do, they would see this like ex Sumo wrestler, regular dude and be like, hey, I relate to this guy.

Bradley Sutton:

So anyways, I, I leveled that up, had millions of views. People would fly me all over the world to do classes and stuff. And that, that was fun, you know, for, for a while doing the, the, you know, Zumba fitness. Now around that time too, I pivoted away in my professional career and this is like mid 2010s where I started working for, again, some of those Korean companies that was attached to a phone case company out of Korea and they started to sell on Amazon, right? So this is like 2014, 2015 and really got heavy into that. This was right, right around the time people were just really make, starting to make money hand over fist. And these guys that I was working with, they didn’t know anything about what they were doing, but they just kind of like stumbled into ridiculous success. At one point, like in 2015, 2016 or 2015, really we were selling like a thousand to 2000 phone cases a day and it wasn’t even FBA like all FBA, like 75% of it. We were shipping from my own warehouse here, FBM. We had this machine that would print out the labels onto these bags and I would be the one packaging these, I would be shipping out like up to a thousand to 2000 orders a day of phone cases that were being sold on Amazon. People were just buying it left and right, but they just kind of like, like kind of like lucked into the situation where they didn’t really know keyword optimization, optimization launches and PPC and stuff like that. They were just kind of like flying by the seat of their, their pants.

Bradley Sutton:

And so that was going for a while. But here, here’s one of the first crazy stories is, is one of our business partners that we had at the time, there was three of us. He was doing some shady stuff in the background with factories in China that we didn’t know about. Um, like, like basically stealing money from one of them and then like going to another factory. We had no idea. But what happened was he got kidnapped by the Chinese mafia because he didn’t realize the factory that he screwed the brother of the owner was in the Chinese mafia, one of the Chinese mafias. And this is like straight out of a movie guys. And so, I got a call that he’s like, hey, we kidnapped him. He’s we’re holding him ransom. Um, you’re going to have to pay us the money he owes us, which was like, I don’t know, 50, $75,000. And I’m like, I don’t have that kind of money. They’re like, all right, that’s fine. But for him to release, you’re going to have to sign some paperwork that you’re going to pay us this money over the course of whatever, I don’t know, six months or a year. So, they had like the Chinese mafia guys, they’re connected. They actually have California based attorneys on retainer.

Bradley Sutton:

So, I went up to LA, met with the Chinese mafia attorney and basically had to sign my life away almost that I would, you know, pay this money or else they’re going to come after me. Like I had no like legal obligation at the time, but I had to put myself legally on the hook to, um, to like get my business partner, you know, despite what he did, like he’s a human being, he had a family. I was like, I don’t want him to, who knows what’s going to happen if I don’t do this. So, I literally had to like kind of like sign my life away almost for over $50,000 to get him released. And then yeah, over the next six months or so, I, I paid off that, that bill with, with company money. We, you know, we just were selling out of the phone cases and stuff.

But that, that is a lesson first of all, for, for all of you, you could have like a personal friend that you’re doing business with or a business partner, um, family member, even know what, understand what’s going on throughout the whole company. Like don’t let somebody be doing their thing so much where you don’t know anything about like the sourcing of stuff where they could just like go and do something crazy. Cause no matter how much you trust somebody, people can fall away and do crazy stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

And that’s definitely what happened here. So anyways, obviously after that, I’m like, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. Like obviously I don’t want to keep doing business with this guy. And I was having some, some maybe disagreements with the other, you know, partners. I was just like, you know what? I kind of like want out of this company. Um, I’m going to go do my own thing. So we kind of dissolve the company that we started and all three of us kind of like went our separate directions. And this was around 2016, 2017. At that time, I was like, hey, what is this Amazon thing? Like I didn’t know too much about it. Even though we had a multi seven figure Amazon business, I really didn’t know what was going on outside of how to send FBA shipments. And so, at this time I was listening to this Amazon podcast. It was by Kevin Reiser. I forgot what it was called, but he, I just happened to hear on there. He, um, hey, we’re doing this, this, this Amazon conference in Chicago.

Bradley Sutton:

So, it’s 2017 early 2017. Yeah. It was called Zahn squad live or something like that. And so I didn’t have almost any money at the time. I barely had enough for a plane ticket. I registered for the conference, took the plane ticket, didn’t have enough money for a hotel. So I rented a like a $30 rental car and I slept in the car during this conference. And that conference kind of changed my life. I was like, I had no idea the entire Amazon world of what it was and, and how, you know, what ran it. And it just fascinated me. And I’m like, I can do this. This is what I need to be doing. So, after that, I just dedicated myself to, to learning about Amazon. One of the first things I did was sign up for the Illuminati mastermind. That’s what now is called Helium 10 Elite. I heard Manny Coats, the founder of Helium 10 and Kevin King doing a webinar. I was just like, man, the knowledge on this is next level. I’m not even a seller right now, but I want to be a consultant for Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

So that’s all I was like, hey, that’s where the money’s at. Let me be a consultant helping people. I’m like, I want to level up my knowledge. And so, um, I joined Illuminati mastermind. It was $3.99. They didn’t even include Helium 10 in those days, but it costs $3.99 a month. But I was like, Hey, I need to surround myself with, with pros. And so I did that by the way, guys, now Helium 10 Elite, it actually comes with Helium 10. It’s only a $99 add on. So, it’s like the same, the same good deal that I was paying $3.99 for you get now for $99. So if you guys have a diamond plan, add the elite, you get one-on-one calls with me. You get one-on-one calls with Carrie, you get group networking, you get monthly trainings with Leo Segovia and other experts. We get in-person workshops, uh, the whole nine yards. It’s definitely worth it. So, so go to h10.me/elite. But anyways, it’s called Illuminati in those days. I joined it. And the part of Amazon that really fascinated me was launch. And so, I became like a launch expert. I would use this, uh, service, uh, ZonBlast, which was the people who did the conference. And, and I was like, became like one of their top users because I was launching products left and right, mainly for a lot of Korean companies. And even the, the company, you know, my former business partner, not the one who was kidnapped, but the other guy I would work with. And I became like an expert in like, giveaways and, and search, find, buy and, and two-step URLs and, and all of those things. And I was just launching hundreds, literally hundreds of products for a lot of like even top key beauty brands that, you know, skin food and Innisfree and a bunch of ones that are like multi-multi-million dollar companies. Now I was helping launch some of their first Amazon listings and, and got a really good reputation, like the, the industry, uh, for, for that.

Bradley Sutton:

So that was kind of like my first entry into the Amazon world being like somebody who actually knew what they were talking about, as opposed to just the guy who was packaging a thousand phone cases a day. And, um, that’s how I got discovered actually by Helium 10. I started using Helium 10 later. I didn’t, I wasn’t using Helium 10 in the beginning. I didn’t even know about it. Um, I was using other tools like Jungle Scout, um, because that was just the best of what I, you know, what, what I could see at that time. And I’m going to talk a little bit about that later, about how Helium 10 kind of discovered me. Cause it, it’s also kind of like what I think is, is a good mentality to have when you’re getting into something is to be super passionate about it. Now, as a matter of fact, let me, let me just go ahead and switch and talk a little bit more about this, the e-commerce mindset that helped me get to where I am today. And I think can, can help, you know, sellers out there. And so the first thing I want to talk about is I call this like kind of like a Maldives mindset, right? It’s just a name I made up. And the first step is like really develop a passion and a love for the game. You know, like that was what I did when I was into the fast and furious cars. And like, I had a passion for it and I was able to start a successful business because of it. Well, like I said, I became super passionate about a certain aspect.

Bradley Sutton:

I didn’t want to be like a Jack of all trades in Amazon, but I was like, let me be a super passionate expert about launches. And so you can see some of these posts I would do in Facebook, Facebook groups. Like here’s one I did in 2017 in the, in the ZonBlast group where I was talking about different, you know, launch success stories that I had. This is almost like 10 years ago now. And then what happened was after about a year of me kind of getting a reputation, because I was so passionate about launch, Manny Coats the founder of Helium 10 like slid into the DMs and he was like, hey, um, it’s really cool that, that, that you’re working on these accounts. Uh, we’re actually looking for, for a product ambassador. You know, can you come hang out with us one day? And I was like, okay, sure. I’ll come out. And, and why, why did he like send me this message too? Well, I would be all over the Helium 10 Facebook groups and like ripping people new ones because they were putting out misinformation. Like here’s a post from 2018 I did. I was like, ah, getting tired of all the nonsense I see on here about people saying giveaways, do not work or that Helium 10 numbers are useless, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I would just go off and look at, look at, look at this post. You know, Manny Coats is the one who liked it right here. I had 233 comments. And so, I would just had this reputation of being that guy who was really loud mouth, but knew what he was talking about and use data behind it. And so, it got on the, it got on the radar of, of Helium 10. And a few weeks later after this DM, I was actually working for, for Helium 10. Now, like I said, the story is getting passionate about the game itself.

Bradley Sutton:

I was passionate about launch, but then even when I started selling on Amazon, um, I became passionate about certain aspects of it. This was a couple of the products was one of the first that we launched with project X, like a coffin shelf and a tray, like two things I don’t care about at all. Like I’m not a spooky person. It’s kind of like morbid to me to make coffin shelves. Uh, I don’t even like eggs. Like I eggs literally make me sick. And here I am making a product about eggs. Um, but I became passionate about these products. I became obsessed with, hey, what would somebody who wants this kind of product use it for? What would they like about it? And, and so that is so important guys, when you’re launching products, even if you don’t have an original passion about it, like I did about Korean car parts and stuff, you’ve got to make yourself passionate about it after the fact, because that’s when you’re going to be able to do a good things.

Bradley Sutton:

The next thing about I like to talk about is on this Maldives mindset is use your preexisting assets or skills. All of us have something that gives us a leg up on from other people. All right. You know, for me, like I said, from an early age, when I was young, I was doing public speaking. And then, so I took that and then became, you know, like now I’m doing podcasts, uh, and, and speaking on stage. Um, I use my son as an example. He, uh, was, he’s my height, you know, six two and wasn’t great at basketball at the time. Um, but then he was like, hey, how can I use my height as an advantage? And he that transformed his game and he became one of the top basketball players in, in San Diego. And so, you know, we all have different things that we are good at. Um, one thing I had was a warehouse. I had a house that had a warehouse. And that was what I used in order to join up with those Korean guys. And they kind of like took over my house and like, hey, you know, not anybody can just have a warehouse that’s like almost for free. And so, you know, we were able to, to, to turn that into like a business opportunity for me. Everybody, everybody has something that not is not common that not everybody has used those things to your advantage, uh, in work.

Bradley Sutton:

And another thing that’s kind of like more unique, I think is turn your weaknesses into strengths. All right. So, what do I mean by that? Some of my weaknesses, I told you before, I was not a great dancer, but that’s could be seen as a weakness, but no, I turned that into a strength. I turned the fact that I wasn’t a professionally trained dancer into a character that people could resonate more with even more than the professionally trained dancer. I mean, you can’t imagine how the professional Zumba instructors got so mad at me that I was so popular, even though like there were 10 times as good a dancer as me, but you know, I just resonate with people. Um, when I was doing sumo wrestling, it’s actually a disadvantage to be so tall actually. Um, but I would use my advantage of having longer reach to like keep people away from me. Like just little things like that. I turn weaknesses into positives. I’m, uh, while I have a lot of speaking experience, I’m not like a super clean speaker. Like sometimes I’ll stutter and things like that. Instead of that being, um, like something that was a weakness, I turned that into a positive. You see what the whole concept of the serious seller’s podcast is how I say it’s, hey, this is a organic conversation, you know, that we have. And so like, I think it works, you know, even though I’m not like, Oh my God, the most eloquent person in the world. Again, I took a weakness and turned into a positive, hey, we’re just regular people here having conversations about selling on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Right. Here’s a, here’s a funny one that you guys probably don’t realize. Like I’ve got this like super nappy hair, like very messy hair that never wants to comb. So, for me it’s actually easier to wear hats so I don’t have to comb my hair and I look presentable. But now I, that almost became like my, my, um, like go to persona in the Amazon world. Everybody knows me for that guy who wears a whole lot of crazy hats. So even something small, that’s another weakness. I was able to turn into a positive. And so, what about you? Do you have weaknesses? Like, like are you more of a people person instead of a number person? Or you know what, guess what? You might have an advantage over the typical analytical person because you’re going to be able to understand your customer avatar here. The, the, I have pictured here, um, like coffin shelf that I was selling. People didn’t like at first how small it was and also how small the egg tray. Like there was actually a few bad reviews about that.

Bradley Sutton:

I turned that weakness into a positive even. Um, you know, I could have just made the coffin shelf bigger, but no, what I did with in my listing was I was like hair here. It’s purposely a small coffin shelf guys so that it can fit in small spaces and doesn’t take up too much space on the wall. The egg tray, I was like, hey guys, our egg tray is so small and compact that it will fit in your refrigerator egg tray. Unlike others that don’t fit there. So again, I took negative reviews and negative feedback about the product and actually turned it into a positive, right? So again, the message to you guys is out there is don’t be hindered by your weaknesses.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, not every weakness can be turned into a positive, but I guarantee a lot of this stuff that you never thought if you think about it long enough and you never would have in a million years think that, oh man, this debilitation or this weakness I have could be a good thing and work for me. Some of them can, if you think about it long enough, like a lot of this stuff that I just talked about, you like people probably never would have felt like, how in the world could that be like a positive or a negative or something? One last aspect of this is one time I even had a bad batch of products. And so you might be thinking, how do you turn that into a positive from a negative? I, there was a bad paint job on the coffin shelves. I took all of that and sold it on Etsy as like a bad batch paint job and it actually worked. I got all my money back from the factory for those coffin shelves, but instead of throwing it away, sold it on Etsy for 50% off and just said, hey, this was a bad batch of stuff and sold out within like three days, you know, like a hundred coffin shelves. So again, don’t always let your negatives kind of like stop you think first, can you turn into a positive somehow? Another part of this mindset that I think has helped me is develop a healthy competitive spirit.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So, we did this book early on at Helium 10 called the four disciplines of execution. And it was all about, you know, giving yourself like scoreboards and things like that and goals. And that’s how I’ve kind of like run so much of my professional life is numbers and trying to reach certain, certain goals, you know, whether it’s, you know, market share for my, my products or podcast downloads, you know, daily listeners. You know, I remember my son once saw that he was only a few points off of winning the scoring title for San Diego.

And so like, he scored like 30 points in his last game just to, to beat the next guy, you know, have a scoreboard out of, of different aspects of your business, of your life, really listen to that book, if you can, the four disciplines of execution. And that’s how you’re going to like get ahead in a lot of things is have competitions with other people. You know, they might not even know about it, you know, like set goals and with yourself, like set personal goals and it makes things more fun and gives you something to always shoot for as opposed to just looking at, you know, numbers in and out, like, hey, all right. What’s my sales for today? Hey, what’s my ACoS? No, turn into a game. If you can’t get competitive about it, that definitely helps. Now, something I’m going to always be asking my guests is specific Amazon strategies that help that, that they think they’re doing that that’s unique.

Bradley Sutton:

And so, a couple of things I want to talk about is product research. Product research is getting harder because there’s just so many, so much competition compared to before. Think about being unique. Remember I told you about, like, I’ve always tried to do unique things, sumo wrestlers, Zumba fitness instructor. I’ve had pets that are pigs and goats, not dogs. You know, like I’ve always tried to be unique, but take that mentality a little bit to Amazon. So how I did that was I was thinking about stuff that people wouldn’t compete with too much. And so, one recent thing I did this past year, there was a movie coming out in America, an animated movie called Demon Slayer. Maybe you guys are familiar with it, but I was like, I could go get a Demon Slayer license. But I’m like that. I don’t have time to do that. It’s very expensive. I don’t think the opportunity is that big. But is there something I can do that would resonate with Demon Slayer fans where I didn’t have to use the Demon Slayer name necessarily. And it would make me have products that I could sell at 20 percent, if not higher than regular people with a product that didn’t have Demon Slayer theme and basically have no competition. And so I tried that. I made some like paper plates, like a plate set for like Demon Slayer themed parties, like a rave fan and straws. And basically, they all had this kind of like green and black checkered look to it, which anybody who knows Demon Slayer immediately kind of like associates that with the lead character.

And so, what I what I did was I launched a bunch of products that I would never launch on my own, like straws. Straws is saturated market. Paper plates is completely saturated. Fans are saturated. I think there was a couple other products, tablecloths I launched to as a test, as like a case study of can I get index for keywords that I didn’t have in phrase form in the listing? But then what happens when you come in with something unique like that? And it was a success.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So what I did was obviously I couldn’t use the actual phrase Demon Slayer or Kimetsu no Yaiba, which is the Japanese name, but I got index for Demon Slayer. How? I would put like demon somewhere in the listing like, hey, do you want to be a demon party planner? And then like somewhere else, another bullet point or something, I’ll be like, you know, you can be the ultimate slayer and something like I don’t remember exactly what I did, but it was something similar to that. And I was able to get index for Demon Slayer. And then I just sent a whole bunch of traffic to those keywords of Demon Slayer, you know, with advertising. And so, I got to the top of the search results for a lot of like Demon Slayer related keywords. And now, you know, like straws are going for, I don’t know, maybe like seven bucks, eight bucks for a lot of the Chinese companies.

Bradley Sutton:

I was selling straws just with this other, you know, design for like ten, eleven dollars and doing well, you know, selling them because I wasn’t competing with just regular people ordering straws. Anybody who is a Demon Slayer fan. I was the only product they would buy because like, oh, that’s perfect for my Demon Slayer watch party that I’m going to have. Same thing with the plates and everything. So, number one is I was able to get into niches that were competitive and saturated and not have to worry about the competition. Am I competing for, you know, placement in, you know, party straws keywords or, you know, party plates or rave fans? No, nobody’s going to buy my product. They don’t know about Demon Slayer. Like I don’t even try on those keywords, but I specifically am showing up even in those some of those keywords, because if somebody is looking for like rave fan, not they probably don’t even know there’s a Demon Slayer fan out there. But then what they would do is they would see mine in the search results of like, oh, man, that’s so cool. It’s like that’s my favorite anime. And they’d be willing to pay 20 bucks for mine when they could get an identical one that has just some generic design on it for like 12 bucks or 13 bucks. And so that’s something that you can think of is be unique either in like the kind of product you have or maybe the material where you can now get into saturated markets. I’ve been doing this for years. The last you know, I did a whole brand was it was bamboo products and bamboo products taking products that were saturated, but it was all metal or plastic or wood. But then let me make a bamboo version.

Bradley Sutton:

And then somebody who’s really into bamboo, they’re going to buy my product for more expensive than everybody else. And because it’s like the only one that’s bamboo, that wooden egg tray I showed at the time, everybody was doing plastic egg trays, ceramic egg trays. But I saw a need for like wooden egg trays. People were buying it on Etsy, on Pinterest, people looking into the rustic vibe. And so I was the only one at the time with a wooden egg tray. So, when you guys are doing your product research, don’t just completely disregard niches that might look saturated. Think about can you come in with a unique angle, right? Don’t violate trademarks or anything. I didn’t violate any trademarks, you know, with the Demon Slayer stuff. But think about a unique angle that kind of gives you a moat around the competition. And that has been probably like 20 percent of my product launches in the last three or four years have been all of that angle where I’m going into saturated niches but with something unique where I don’t have to worry about the main competition.

Bradley Sutton:

Another thing you can do is look for products that have gone out of stock. You know, in Helium 10 with Blackbox and like the Brand Analytics tool, you could look for products or you could track products where they might have been popping off like six months ago or a year ago or two years ago. But now you notice they’re out of stock. You know, like you can upload lists of top selling products from before and then cross check in Blackbox and look at the sales and say, oh, well, these products got banned for some reason, like the seller got suspended or just ran out of stock or something. And that’s another thing that I’ve been doing. And I’m actually going to be launching something on Project X account, a coffin makeup shelf. A year ago, there was a coffin makeup shelf that for like two or three years was dominating. It was like outselling our coffin shelf like five to one. It’s something completely different than a regular coffin shelf. It’s shaped like a coffin, but it’s for makeup. And I was like, I’m not going to get into that niche because, you know, this guy’s just completely dominating.

Bradley Sutton:

But then I noticed, you know, using Helium 10, I was like, this guy went out of stock like six months ago and nobody has come up and kind of like took his place. And so we’re going to be launching something in the next couple of months that’s going to be a cool case study on, hey, can I resurrect the demand for this product even though, you know, nobody is, you know, nobody’s buying it. So, it’s basically going to be, hey, can I get traction? Can I recover the momentum that this other seller lost because he went out of stock or went out of business or whatever? And so that’s another kind of way to get back in is like look for products where the top sellers, they have stopped selling for whatever reason and try and go after their old market. Now, obviously, you need Helium 10 for that, you know, shameless plug, but it just is what it is. Helium 10 is the only tool where you can have the kind of time machine to go back and look at what was selling in brand analytics. The only tool where you can go back and see what somebody was selling. The only tool where you can use the Cerebro historical where I can go back and see what exactly were the keywords that this coffin makeup shelf was getting sales from way back in the day. So that’s another strategy that I think is somewhat unique that I’ve been that I’ve been using a lot. You know, overall on Amazon, I’ve been selling. I just started selling when I started at Helium 10, like back in 2019. I’ve dabbled in arbitrage and wholesale and drop shipping. But overall, I’ve sold about five million dollars on Amazon.

You know, not too much, but I’m kind of a one man show. And obviously, Helium 10 is my day job. And so really learned a lot from my selling. And I know I run my business a little bit different. I’m not really doing it for profit because I don’t have the time to like dedicate to do everything I should be doing it. But I do it for the fun of it. And so, I can provide a job for my kids. They’ve been working in my warehouse since they were like teenagers or preteens even. And I do it because that’s how I run all my experiments on what’s working with launch.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m going to have a new Maldives honeymoon episode coming up in maybe about three or four months to talk about, you know, what’s working with launch. So make sure to look out for that. But I told you how I got into this game, how I became an expert on launch. That’s still like my passion is launch and keyword optimization. Guys, keywords is still super, super important, even in the world where we have AI like Rufus and things like that. You can’t forget about having the right keywords. Now a couple of non-Amazon things that’s important. Each year I talk about something personal that has doesn’t have to do with e-commerce when I’m on the speaker circuit, like speaking on stage. And for a couple of years ago, I was really the whole year was talking about health. As entrepreneurs, we sometimes overlook our health. You know, we work at home. We don’t get out. We don’t exercise. We don’t watch what we eat. Sometimes super important, guys. That was me. And I actually had a heart attack a few years ago and was dead for 15 minutes.  All right. So until I was revitalized by the defibrillator, thank goodness my family knew CPR and was doing that for 15 minutes while I was dead. Otherwise, I might not be here. But that was the theme of what I would talk about on stage for a couple of years ago. I was like, hey, guys, don’t forget about your health. Watch what you eat. Make sure to exercise. There’s things more important than business. And I was a relatively young person at the time of having a heart attack. And so if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.

Bradley Sutton:

The thing I’m going to be starting to talk about this year when I’m on stage, like a new theme is something that’s also important is kind of like I’m almost becoming like an empty nester. Like my kids are still here right now. But my daughter, she was living in China for a couple of months. She speaks Chinese. Son trying is basically not at home a lot of the time because he’s trying to get married or whatever. And now, all of a sudden, I’m having like this tons of regret over the reality, like, you know, my kind of like life has been around my kids and they’re going to be gone soon. And it’s kind of like hit really hard where it makes you second guess like, oh, you know, of course, you got to work hard for your family. But, man, I wish I had more time when they were young. Wish I did this. Wish I did that. And that, you know, those of you who have been through this probably know what I’m talking about. Those of you who have younger kids or don’t have kids at all yet maybe might sound foreign what I’m talking about. But let me tell you, it’s probably one of the most painful things or difficult things I’ve had to deal with is picturing a life where my kids aren’t there. And so making sure that you don’t have a lot of regrets about how much time you spend with your family, I think is super important, because, again, as entrepreneurs or as people working really hard, like I’ve been working in Helium 10 and being an entrepreneur, time can get away. You know, like we sometimes work from what, 8 in the morning till 8 at night, right? Work hard, but make sure you have time for your family so you have less regrets when they’re when they’re out of the house. So that would be like my new kind of like theme I’m going to be talking about when you see me on stage. But I think it’s very important to understand that, you know, some of the moments you take for granted, they’re not always going to going to be there.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ve been here at Helium 10 now for almost eight years and looking forward to all the new stuff. You know, Helium 10, we were 15 people in a We work when I joined the company, and now we’re a conglomerate of like 700 people in offices around the world. And we cover enterprise customers with Pacvue. We are behemoth of a company in the small and medium business world with Helium 10. And it’s been a great run to be working with the most innovative company in the space. You know, nobody launches as many features as Helium 10 does, and we’re constantly innovating. And that’s the plan. You know, I’m working on stuff with it with a team that for 2026, it’s going to be super exciting. And so, guys, it’s been great to have you along for this ride. Now, you know a little bit more about my professional and personal history a little bit. And I look forward to bringing stories like this from other brands, other sellers from across the world to you guys. If you’re interested in being featured on the Serious Sellers podcast, or maybe a case study being done about your business, reach out to me. Instagram is usually the best place to find me. Look up Serious Sellers podcast on Instagram. Follow, slide into the DMs. You can also email my assistant, Mhel. He’s also the podcast editor here. [email protected][MADG1] . Tell us your story, why you’d like to be featured on the podcast. You don’t have to have like crazy stories like I did to be considered, you know, for the podcast. We just like hearing genuine, real life stories about how brands have scaled online, Amazon, TikTok shop, Walmart, etc. So please let us know if you’d like to be featured. And who knows, maybe I’ll be interviewing you soon and learning about your full backstory. Anyways, guys, hope you guys enjoy the future podcast that we have coming up. Don’t forget, subscribe to both Serious Sellers podcast and also the AM/PM podcast. You’re going to get all the education and stories that you need. See you in the next episode.

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