#721 – How to 3X an Amazon Hemp Brand!

David Mead, a seasoned professional with nearly five decades of experience in the electric utility sector, shares his extraordinary leap into the world of e-commerce. After experiencing the benefits of a hemp-based pain relief product, he embarked on an unexpected entrepreneurial path, purchasing a hemp seed oil company, which has since flourished under his leadership.

Listeners will learn how David, working in conjunction with his Scale Stories mentors, made strategic decisions that propelled his brand, InMotion Products, to remarkable success. By upgrading product images and refining the brand narrative, his company not only witnessed a surge in sales but also faced the enviable challenge of stock shortages. David’s story underscores the significance of mentorship and collaboration, highlighting how external expertise in areas like Amazon advertising catalyzed growth and prevented him from feeling isolated in the e-commerce landscape.

Through candid conversations, the episode sheds light on the crucial role of innovation and adaptability in brand management. David’s humility in seeking external insights and his emphasis on data-driven strategies offer invaluable lessons for any business owner aiming to rejuvenate stagnant sales. Whether you’re an established seller or just starting out, the strategies discussed, backed by tools like Helium 10, reveal how minor adjustments can lead to significant business growth. Join us for a compelling discussion that promises not only to inspire but also to equip listeners with actionable insights for e-commerce success.

In episode 721 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and David discuss:

• 05:50 – Motivation for E-Commerce After Retirement
• 09:01 – Exploring Paths to E-Commerce Success
• 12:31 – Sales Breakdown and Online Platforms
• 16:01 – Business Growth Through Product Innovation
• 20:50 – Learning E-Commerce Selling on YouTube
• 23:58 – Brand Growth Through Collaboration and Innovation
• 25:49 – Significant Sales Increase Through Listing Optimization
• 31:36 – Expanding Market Reach for a CBD Product
• 37:58 – David Discusses Brand Growth

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we talked to a brand owner that got into e-commerce almost 50 years after he entered the workforce and he’s had steady sales as a six-figure seller. But with the help of a team of experts, we’re going to show you how he’s now on the way to 2X or even 3X his annual sales. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think you ever had FOMO when we talk about all these money-making features and tools that Helium 10 has. Or maybe you’re a platinum subscriber. You want to level up to get the advanced historical Cerebro feature or the advertising things that we have on the Diamond plan. Well, this is a deal you’ve been waiting for Black Friday all the way through Cyber Monday. This whole week you can save 35% off up to 12 months of Platinum. You don’t have to pay for the full year in advance. You can just do it month to month or 12 months, 35% off, upgrading from Platinum to Diamond. Biggest deal of the year. Now the extra money you guys are going to make by using the tools that Helium 10 has more than what’s going to make up for what you pay on the subscription. So, if you don’t have an account yet, you want to sign up to Platinum, make sure to go to h10.me forward slash Black Friday Same link. If you already have a Platinum account. You want to sign up for the Diamond account. H10.me forward slash Black Friday to save 35% off up to one year. And you know what, as an added bonus, anybody who signs up for the diamond plan on this deal. And then you mentioned to customer service this podcast, or that you heard about this from Bradley. I’m going to hook you up with my personal sourcing agent that I use to get all of my Amazon and TikTok shop products in China. So what are you waiting for? H10.me forward slash Black Friday.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we’ve got a serious seller here first time on the show, And he is other one in our series of contestants, I would say on our Scale Stories where they have graciously come and opened up their business and information and opened themselves up for help from our mentors, and we’re going to be following his journey along the way as he’s trying to 2X, 3x or even more his sale. So, David, welcome to the show today.

David:

Good to be here, Bradley, nice to see you.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you are currently down here near me in San Diego, right or South Orange County?

David:

Yep, South Orange County. Yup

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, where were you born and raised?

David:

I was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. 

Bradley Sutton:

And so a wolverine fan

David:

Yes, yeah definitely.

Bradley Sutton:

You said that hesitant

David:

No, no, no no

Bradley Sutton:

there’s a little bit of hesitant

David:

What goes along with that? is an anti-Ohio State fan that just comes in, just like Ohio State hates Michigan.

Bradley Sutton:

You can’t be a Padre fan and a Dodger fan. Yeah, yeah, it definitely comes. One of you, an Auburn or an Alabama. I get it. I get it.

David:

I didn’t get

Bradley Sutton:

Where did you go to college?

David:

I didn’t get my NBA at USC. So that’s the new, that’s my new.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh well, that’s interesting. Where did you go for your first four years?

David:

I went to Cal State, Long Beach.

Bradley Sutton:

Ah, so you went from a oh shoot. Hold on, hold on Cal State, Long Beach. I like do sumo events there at the Pyramid all the time. It’s like something like the beach or something like that, the local or the mascot the beach. There we go, and then you became a trojan after that okay excellent, excellent. And um what did you, what did you major in over there?

David:

My undergrad was business and then I got an MBA from USC

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So right after that, did you get into the business world, or what was your gainful employment back? When you were a young college guy.

David:

Back then I worked in the electric utility business. I worked for a company. I’d just come back, actually, from an assignment overseas working in Brazil building a power plant down there, and then got assigned to Southern California Edison plant around Long Beach at Terminal Island and then went and finished my undergraduate studies at Long Beach and went to work for Southern California Edison actually.

Bradley Sutton:

Whereabouts, in Brazil, were you?

David:

A place called São Luís do Maranhão, which was right up by the border, right up by the equator, actually pretty far north, pretty primitive area.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you uh pick up Portuguese?

David:

See all the Portuguese

Bradley Sutton:

Oh very impressive. All right, excellent, excellent. And then, um, you went and worked at, uh, the San Onofre power plant or something.

David:

No, I didn’t work at San Onofre, when I was in the generation business the part of the business where you generate power and then, halfway through my career, I went into the distribution business, which means all the towers, poles, everything about distributing the electricity to your house when I retired well, actually, several times along the way, I had people that worked at San Onofre. When I retired, all of the distribution and transmission business was under me.

Bradley Sutton:

So how long did you work before retiring?

David:

I was in that business for probably 43, 44 years.

Bradley Sutton:

My goodness, you must have started when you were five years old.

David:

I was younger when I went to Brazil. yes,

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So then you retired, and I think this is one of the keys of why your story really resonates with a lot of the viewers of Scale Stories is people think about e-commerce only if you’re in the era when you were just a recent graduate or hey, you were into tech or something back then and hey, that’s who should be getting into e-commerce. But here you had a full career that spanned decades, and what did motivate you to get into e-commerce?

David:

You know it is interesting because when you retire you start thinking about what you know. Of course, I play a lot of golf and I do like to do that. I can’t golf all the time. I was working on my house up in Washington with my brother and we were doing a remodel of the bathroom pretty extensive work and my shoulder was sore. So, my brother said, hey, I’ve got some stuff that I think works pretty good. I tried it and I said man, first thing I said and this is what a lot of people say when I give them my product is it’s supposed to work that fast because it seemed to relieve the pain pretty quickly. It seemed to relieve the pain pretty quickly. He said I’ve got a friend who just started this company. It’s a hemp-based pain relief formula, something I hadn’t really heard much about. I’ve heard about hemp and its values, but I hadn’t thought about it. So he said I think they’re looking for investors.

David:

Now, being recently retired, you’re kind of in the investment world. You have money that’s set aside to invest to provide you income. So it wasn’t something I really thought too much about. But I said I can do a little bit. Maybe I’ll get involved, as I did, the fellow that created the company was a doctor. He really knew a lot about the product. But I started getting more involved with the business, so a career of managing projects and people and financials, and then my degrees and the things I knew. I saw that there were things I could add, so that just got me more involved. Didn’t know a lot about Amazon. I knew we were starting to sell on Amazon. Didn’t know how you did it. Didn’t know much about even producing the product.

Bradley Sutton:

What year are we talking about?

David:

2016, 2016. when I first got going with it. So I’ve been nine years with this company now. Over some time, I took over more and more of the management of it, invested more money, saw where there was opportunities and eventually got to a point where I felt like, if I wanted to continue to do this, I would offer to buy out some people and kind of take over the company. So that’s what I did. I saw that it had a lot of potential and so, through some financial dealings offering to buy out some people I felt like if I could get the whole company, it would be worthwhile for me to put more effort into it. So that’s what I did.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so this is what I did and, uh, all right. So this is a. This is an interesting path. It’s not, you know, oh my goodness, has never happened in the history of e-commerce. But this is one path where, hey, you know, yeah, sure, you can go and start from scratch uh, an Amazon or online business, you know, finding some new product maybe you’ve never had before. Or you could actually go and potentially looking to invest or purchase a, an existing brand right, there’s not just one way to success. And you picked the way that that worked for you, and you know, the part of the part of it I like is that it was a product that you yourself had experience with, and so, you know, I’ve always said it’s great, you know great, when you’re trying to start a new product. Sure, it’d be great if you could be passionate about a product, but the odds that, where the opportunity is something you’re passionate about or know about, is very low. But with existing businesses, you can literally pick something that already is successful or has some kind of established sales and, who knows, maybe it is something that you happen to be passionate about. Now this product line comes with, I don’t want to say stigma, but there are issues with it that has given you, or given the brand, some troubles over the years, and the fact that it’s a hemp-based product but doesn’t have CBD in it, because that’s not allowed. But talk about the product a little bit and the product line.

David:

Yeah, the base product is hemp seed oil, which is made from the seeds and you’re correct no THC. Um, there’s like three steps in in that particular type of product. One’s a hemp, one’s a CBD. Now CBD is also uh. Is low, so low in THC. It’s actually legal in all states. It’s not. It’s not a THC product, it’s not, it’s not marijuana, but uh, but it does have traces of THC. So that’s a little harder. Amazon doesn’t allow CBD to be sold on its site. Um, I sell it off my website everywhere because it’s legal. It’s some of the larger, like you know, Amazon’s a little more conservative around that, but hemp seeds is fine. If you get into the THC, then you’ve got to be licensed and it’s illegal in some states, but a lot of states have already legalized that. But that also makes it harder for you to advertise in some cases. Facebook, Google are are careful about that. Banking is has been careful. It was a. It was a chore to do that for a while and now I have a bank that’s a normal bank that does that. I pay a little extra. I pay a little extra for them to monitor my website, make sure I’m not selling something I’m not supposed to. Been a great relationship. I was able to work that out and we’ve had some things with Amazon, not so much about the hemp. Like everybody else who sells on Amazon, you have to make sure that your wording is right. I can’t say it does things it’s not supposed to do. So it’s been kind of a give and take with Amazon, but we’ve been pretty smooth for the last three or four years, so it’s really good.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, when you bought the brand originally, what was the sales breakdown? As far as, was it 100% Amazon? Did a certain percentage come from the website? Were you on any other platforms at the time?

David:

Yeah, let’s just say that it’s greater than 95% been Amazon since it began. We do our website. Like I said, it’s sometimes hard to advertise for a website. The thing about Amazon is everything is taken care of right. I mean fulfillment and advertising, returns, everything and a lot of this. You guys, people watching this, you know this for a fact. But as I started to get into it, it was pretty amazing. And then all the data they give you and how you can manage your stuff. Um, mostly we did retail for a little bit. I think we were a little early with the retail. There wasn’t much going on in stores and, uh, that didn’t really work out as well as it could. Um, I do a little bit on others. You know I do a little bit on eBay much, but just like the product to be out there if anybody’s interested, and then my website does get some action.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, I’m just wondering what was the structure? I don’t need details or anything, but for people who aren’t familiar with buying a brand and things like that, how did the structure work? Was it just like a one-time payout and you just get everything? Or was it kind of like a joint venture where the old owners still had a little stake? There’s no one way to do this, but just out of curiosity, which path do you take in this endeavor?

David:

Well, it kind of starts with the fellow that started the company. He was a podiatrist, randy, dr Randy Nordyke, and he had friends that were interested, so he ended up with about 20 investors, right. So there was a whole bunch of people that I had to communicate with and deal with, small investors. It’s an LLC, so they’re all silent investors. Randy, of course, and his son were the majority owners, and so I started buying in until I got up to where I was like number three on the list, right, but eventually I was managing them.

David:

Now we also were one of the partners was the person that owned the store on Amazon, and after a while I said you know, there’s just, and we had borrowed money from our investors. And at some point, I said you know, there’s enough debt here and enough people that I don’t. I’m not sure we can make this work. Looking at it as a business, I said we’ve got to, I’ve got to do something. If I’m going to stay involved, I’ve got to do something. So I made an offer to buy out people at you know reduced amounts, certain cents on the dollar, which was a good deal for them, because the company had some issues around it whether it was going to be viable going forward. I said if I can do that, then I think I can make this thing work. The debt will be gone, there’ll be less investors, I’ll have a bigger share and more responsibility, of course, more interest in going forward, and I ended up buying out all but a few.

David:

One of the people that stayed involved was Randy. Randy’s, the guy that knows the products, knows how to. I mean, as we’ve been going through this, we’re talking about doing new products. That’s his passion, that’s what he loves, that’s what got him started. It wasn’t to run a business as much as it was to build these products. So that’s a good place for him and he’s still a very important partner for me.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Interesting, interesting. Now your top seller is this Roll-on product. Was that product one that was already selling when you took it over, or that was like a new product you had added after you bought the?

David:

Yeah, we sold a cream and a tube that uh for cream, that was the normal one and looking to add some, some other products. Uh, we came out with the roll-on. Um, the roll-on. Very quickly uh started passing the cream and now represents 90% of our sales.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow, okay. All right. Now one of the reasons why you put yourself out there to be a candidate on this series was your sales, for a couple of years had been kind of stagnant. I’ve got some rough numbers here from Helium 10. Let me go ahead and see if I can pull some of it up here. Our last year, looks like, was about 140,000. Might have been something similar in 2023. And this is not any numbers to be embarrassed of, with only one major SKU and one product that does five 10% of the main one. That’s actually pretty good, but I think you understood that you were just maybe scratching the surface, especially the fact that you were only on Amazon and weren’t even using all of a lot of the advertising at your at Amazon’s disposal. And so you know you’re like, hey, is there a way that I can increase the sales? And so, you know just, you know a little bit of a long story short.

Bradley Sutton:

When we look at this year’s sales, we’ve already you know, since, since your first episode and since we first started doing things right, you know, a couple of months before we filmed that first episode, a couple of things that we did this summer in upgrading your pictures, and we are already at looks like year-to-date $155,000. We haven’t even hit the main part of Q4. So we have already surpassed by like 10% or so your sales. But the thing I think that’s interesting about this is, for a decent part of the second half of this year, some of the things that we did to improve your account. It made your sales go up so much that you have been out of stock for I know you’re out of stock right now of your main roll-on, but how long earlier this year were you out of stock like? Was it 30 days? Was it 60 days?

David:

More like 60 days yeah and

Bradley Sutton:

So total between that first out of stock and the out of stock in the last few weeks. Are we talking 60 days or even more than that little?

David:

Yeah, more than 60 days, 75 days probably. Well, I’ve been out about a week now, so almost two months before and now, and that’s the key. I mean you just talked about trending, right, I was probably in the 130 one year and then a 140. So, I had really good trending around what was happening, right. Then you got started and messed it all up in a good way.

Bradley Sutton:

In a good way.

David:

It’s not a problem

Bradley Sutton:

I mean it’s hard to project, but if you had enough stock and hey, the reason it’s not great to run a stock but it’s a great problem to have, as in the reason is because your sales are just, you know, flying through, flying through the roof. I mean, for like three, four years you had such a predictable business, you, you, it was like clockwork for your orders, and then all of a sudden, you know, we tweak a few things and sales are booming. But I would say it’s probably reasonable to say that this could have been, uh, you know, around 200,000 by now, which would have already been, like, you know, a 40, 50% increase without the year even being finished. And so, who knows, you know, like we only had half a year to do some of these edits and you could have potentially hit, you know, 225, even 250,000. This is the heavy time of the year.

Bradley Sutton:

So this just shows what a few little tweaks you know can do and we have just scratched the surface on our kind of like refresh of your, your brand. Now, on the show, you came in and we’re very open and if people watch the episode. By the way, guys, if you want to watch this episode more, just go to YouTube type in Helium 10 Scale Stories and you’ll be able to see the episode and learn a little bit more about David. But talk about your experience on the show. You were very vulnerable and saying stuff you know, like when they would say, hey, why haven’t you done a brand story on your page? You’re like what’s a brand story like? I don’t even know what that is. But talk about your experience a little bit. What were your thoughts on going through that process?

David:

Like I say, I didn’t come into this knowing a lot about e-commerce or these types of sales or Amazon at all, so I was learning a little bit as I went along, which means you learn, you know certain things and I didn’t know enough even to dig in. Very impressed with the detail and how quickly when you guys were speaking languages I didn’t understand. I mean, these concepts were good, a lot of acronyms that I didn’t get, but it certainly made a lot of sense. I mean, talk about the brand story. I knew that we had, you know, I had trademarked the company and I knew that. I got in the brand registry and I saw a little blip because of that, but I didn’t know what was behind the curtain. What did that mean? How can it grow? I’ve talked several times about the name of the company. My company is In Motion Products and so I think about products. What more can I do? We got into some detail about what’s the best way to figure out. I want to put products. I want this company to sell products that provide some type of relief for people. You know, and some. I like the fact that I’m doing that.

David:

I think I told you in the original story that the business I was in was a utility business. I felt like that provided a very essential thing for homes, for people Right, and I liked the fact that this seemed that I wanted to build this company’s story around that. You know how can we make products. So with that in mind, the mentors start looking to see you know in that realm, what might you do? We’ve come across the couple that are I’m sure we’re going to be able to bring to fruition and they should be pretty successful. So that overall experience was I was sort of wowed and I think one of the things I said as we got finished was you know, I bought a bunch of people out which left me kind of alone. You know I’m running the company. There’s investors but they sit back and hope I’m good. Once we got out of that room, I felt like I had four or five other people helping me. That’s the way I look at it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, and that’s definitely accurate as far as what the case is. And it’s important, though, because some people might be like, well, why is this even noteworthy? But there are so many brand owners out there who get so haughty about their own brand or I know what’s best, or you know like what, why? You know why would I invite somebody else to. You know, look under the hood of my, uh, of my car here, you know. But the humility to be able to say, hey, I don’t know everything there. There might be some people out there who know a little bit more about, about some, even though that’s not their brand. So important because, you know, for a few years, you know, your sales were pretty steady, you know, not completely stagnant, but it wasn’t like whopping growth where you ran out of stock. You know, like is now, but you’re like, hey, I can see that there’s probably some people out there who might know a little bit more about Amazon advertising or what’s, uh, you know, good for my listings and stuff, so I’m open to it. So my advice to anybody listening out there is hey, be in that same boat, be open for having people help you. Don’t just trust anybody off the street or say, oh yeah, somebody slid into my DMs on LinkedIn and offering me optimization services. Let me go ahead and trust them and give them the keys to the kingdom. But no, if an opportunity for somebody who’s trusting the industry comes around and it makes sense for your business, by all means you should be open to that, like David here.

David:

Let me give a little preaching. It’s a lesson in leadership. Just because you’re the one that owns the company and you’re on the top of the chart doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of other people that see things from a different perspective and can help. You need to accept that help. When I left there, that’s what I felt like, boy. I’m lucky to accept that help and that’s what I left there. That’s what I felt like, boy. I’m lucky to get this help.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, very good, very good point. Now the goal, you know the mentors were like hey, let’s, let’s see what we can do to 2X or even more your sales. And so the first path which we have done some of it, not even all is like let’s optimize your existing listings. I mean, you’ve got products that are working, but have you completely tapped it out and your potential? And the answer was overwhelmingly from the mentors no, like there’s still a ceiling here that we can go.

Bradley Sutton:

And so the very first thing we did, even before we filmed that, was like hey, let’s do a new photo shoot on your main products and see if we can improve like the click through rate and conversion rate, just by changing the main images and updating the A-plus content. And so that first one, that right there, just that was the reason for the big increase, you know, 20% or even more some days, 50% in your daily sales, and it’s just the numbers you know, like I believe you know we go through it in the episode, but I believe, like your click-through rate, meaning the number of people who saw your product in search results and then clicked, it was 12%, which was not bad, but then it went up to like 16%, 17%, and that one move that by itself represented about a potential $20,000 increase, you know, looking over for a year on sale. And so, guys, I hope that you know kind of like shocks your system there that when we talk about improving a brand, it doesn’t have to be oh my goodness, we have to completely give a complete revamp to see any kind of traction. Small things like that can have big impact, but on the flip side, you hadn’t launched any new products over. You know, for years since the roll on. Talk about the process that we went through trying to actually find a couple, and I think we did more than one new product that you are going to hopefully get out there and launch product that you are going to hopefully get out there and launch.

David:

Yeah, I mean, we made we. We had me and Randy had talked about different things and I think we gave the mentors a couple ideas and then they went out and started looking at you know, given the guidelines of you know, what are we looking for? What? What can my manufacturer produce? You know, and what would make sense manufacture and produce? You know, and what would make sense. We came across I mean the amount of research you guys were able to do very quickly to say that this looks like it’s. This is a product that’s out there. People want it. There’s a way to get into that market. There’s a way to get into that market, even some ideas around how we would get in being a little bit different, differentiating the product a little bit, one in particular, the cream, versus there’s not very many that are doing a roll-on type. So that’s probably the way to look at it, which means that we had to make some changes to the product itself because we knew it would work, but we had planned on it one way. So, yeah, I just think there was a lot of quick data available and then it was pretty easy for the three mentors and me to agree that, yeah, these are the ones we’re going to go after and that’s what we’re working on to do.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, and so that’s again. That’s another path. So this applies to a lot of brands out there Like hey, what do I do if I’m stagnant? Number one what are you currently doing? Can you make tweaks on images? We didn’t even talk about that in this episode, but making big changes to your advertising? We’ve been working with Vincenzo from Ecompsy on that, I believe, launching first ever sponsored display campaigns and some other things that we’re doing. And then the next thing is all right, what about product line extensions? You know you’ve got an established brand, um, and so we came across like a couple different product extensions, and one was in the in-motion hemp um brand. Uh, I believe, is that is that the one where, like, like the menstrual cream that we were looking into right one

David:

One is to kind of uh, modify and upgrade that formula for menstrual cream.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep. All right, so completely different path. Now, this is not. You were using the other product because of your golfing. Now you’re going in like a new direction and that’s very valid. Like guys, don’t just oh, I can only sell products that I would use for myself. I don’t think you have much use for menstrual pain cream, but you understand that that’s a problem for half the population out there, so nothing wrong with doing a product for that. And then there was some. Going back still to your original products, there were some things that we worked on. We put a coupon that was from Jason from Prime Team. I was like, hey, you need a kind of incentive for people to get on your subscribe and save because you can get people in continuity and it’s going to help your incentive for people to get on your subscribe and save because you can, you can get people in continuity and it’s going to, you know, to help your long-term LTV. So we worked on that.

Bradley Sutton:

And then you know, one of the other problems you had, like you said, being a hemp-based product and actually very interesting, we were supposed to have somebody from Amazon on your episode as one of the mentors, but last second we had to switch them to another episode because they couldn’t even be on your episode due to the country that they were in cannot have anything to do with hemp-based products, and so we had to switch mentors around last second because they couldn’t even be it. There’s a lot of problems with your product’s 100% legal in the United States, a hundred percent legal on Amazon USA. Uh, but there are. There are other things that have to do with advertising and so, and other marketplaces, like we, we’ve tried to get you on Walmart for a while, but Walmart just wasn’t having it. So we’re like, hey, maybe we can launch another brand that’s nothing to do with hemp, but potentially you could start getting some traction on. And so we chose another product that you were looking into that we’re going to launch on another brand. And then the last thing that we’re like, all right, this is what the path, the roadmap is for you was hey, you’re 95% Amazon business. What are some other marketplaces? You remember the first marketplace that we’re looking into getting you on?

David:

TikTok shop.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, TikTok shop. So let’s see if they allow it and what’s going to happen there. But this is the same thing for a lot of people out there. If you not on TikTok shop and you have a like a demonstrable product, um, you know something that really kind of would come across in in video, uh, for, for creators to make something unique about it, like pain cream and stuff is definitely a topical, uh, you know product would definitely account for that. It’s definitely worth a try to try to get on TikTok shop as well. What is your hopes? You’re not Nostradamus, I’m not, but when we have you back on the podcast, maybe in a year, looking back at your 2026 sales, you have a fingers crossed number in mind for what you’d like to be able to say that you hit across all platforms end of next year.

David:

I like running the business and these are all chances you take, right? I mean, I took a chance to get going and I took a chance when we added a product. We’ll take chances all along. Love to get back on Walmart.com. I think we did that for a month and there’s no reason why we can’t. There’s some issues but I think we can get through. I’m very excited about TikTok shop. We got approved to get going. Like you said, we have to get the product up on there. But my issue of inventory right now is an issue which I’m sure we’re going to. I’ll be able to work through that. So I can say, you know, just for theatrics, I can say I want to double, I want to triple, I want to, but it’s more about growing, right? I mean, one of the fundamentals of business uh, I learned at Cal State, long beach was grow or die. You know you can’t just sit. Uh, I’d like to be competitive in this business, be in the group of people that are selling all the different types of products. You know in the top of that group, being successful in each of the products that we do. So you know eventually who knows. Sell the company possibly I mean a lot of big guys that build, are entrepreneurial and buy these things. But you have to build a company that’s worthwhile. People look at it and they think it’s worth something. And I’m not saying I wouldn’t do that. I’m not saying my daughter might inherit it, I don’t know but right now it’s enjoyable. It gives me satisfaction. It’s not about. You know, I retired. I was very lucky in the utility business. I’m okay. This is something that I would like it to be a kind of a business, a real business that runs and makes some money and people that are involved with it are getting something out of it.

Bradley Sutton:

Sure, sure and the process is fun too. Like I know you’re one of those guys who’s checking your daily sales like as much as you can. I know you’re on vacation last week I’m not sure if you’re doing it then, but hey all right wow. You know, I’ve seen you text me like oh man, I hit $1,000 today in sales. That never would happen, you know before.

David:

We hit a day since it started. That was three times my average last year. I mean it’s kind of crazy. Like you said, I don’t know what it would have been if I hadn’t stocked out, but you can sure calculate it and we reached.

Bradley Sutton:

but it’s fun, right?

David:

Yeah it is.

Bradley Sutton:

To have days like that, to be looking at the numbers and excited it’s the middle of the day. Whoa, look what I’m at the middle of the day. The whole process is fun. I’m not trying to knock on anybody’s careers, though. But, these are the kind of feelings you might not get if you’re working as an accountant or a mortician or you’re just crunching numbers or something. You’re just going there punching a time clock. Being a brand owner,

David:

And even no matter where you are in a really large company, you have some effect and some influence, but it takes a lot. It’s a network you feel like it’s yours, right? I mean, I enjoy it. I make the decisions, I live and die with, whatever I decide.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, well, you’re out of stock on your main product right now, but everybody else out there listening like you got one of the other products. You want to try out his stuff? Just look up InMotion Hemp on Amazon and I’m sure he’d appreciate a purchase, especially if you’re a golfer out there like David or have any other kind of chronic pains. After I hit 40, I definitely know all about that when I’m playing basketball and stuff. So give the products a try and watch his progress. You guys can use Helium 10 to kind of see what the estimated sales of what he’s doing out there. So we are definitely hoping to double the sales. We’ll go ahead and do some theatrics here, maybe even 3x the sales across all platforms.

Bradley Sutton:

We’ll definitely have you back on the podcast, maybe multiple times, chronicling this journey. And again, guys, go to YouTube, look up Helium 10 Scale Stories and find his episode and learn a little bit more about the process, because this isn’t just theatrics, this is real life. Guys, these tactics and strategies we’re using on the InMotion brand most of you guys out there are gonna be able to use. Doesn’t matter that if you’re in the topical business or you’re selling coffin shelves like me or something else. These are the steps you guys need to do if your sales start getting stagnant and you want to improve your bottom line. So, David, thanks again for being open to sharing your story and your brand with the world out there, and we look forward to helping you more on this journey.

David:

Thank you, Bradley. I really appreciate it.

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