Best Practices for E-Commerce Brands with Rob Stanley

Intro (00:09):
Welcome to Innovations and Breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein, talking about the evolutionary, the revolutionary, the inspiration and perspiration, and those aha moments that change everything. And now here’s your host, Rich Goldstein.

Rich (00:34):
Rich Goldstein here, hosts of the Innovations and Breakthroughs podcast, where I feature top leaders in the path they took to create change. Past guests include Ryan Deis, Joe Polish, and Jason Flatland. This episode is brought to you by my company, Goldstein Patent Law, where we help you to protect your ideas and products. We’ve advised and obtained patents for thousands of companies over the past 29 years. So if you’re a company that has software or product or a design you want protected, go to goldstein patent law.com where there are amazing free resources for learning about the patent process. And you could schedule a call with my team@speaktolarry.com to explore if it’s a match to work together. You could also check out the book I wrote for the American Bar Association that explains in plain English how patents work. It’s called the a b a Consumer Guide to Obtaining a Patent I have with me here today, Rob Stanley.

Rich (01:26):
Um, Rob founded two successful seven figure online e-commerce brands, and he has more than 20 years of experience in e-commerce and marketing. He previously has, um, produced several successful podcasts. He’s hosted several successful podcasts and is a YouTube certified expert with a previous channel that had over 48 million views. He’s also a China sourcing expert, and he’s visited more than a hundred different factories. Uh, Rob is currently chief evangelist at Kaita, which is the global leader in Amazon, F B A reimbursements and Refunds. Um, at Kaita, he’s affectionately known as the Money Man, and anyone who’s ever attended an Amazon trade show event knows exactly why. Um, and, um, I keep saying Rob, but to me he’s Robbie. So I am happy to welcome my friend Robbie Stanley to the podcast. Welcome, Robbie.

Robby (02:18):
Thanks, Rich. I appreciate that. Yeah, it’s absolutely great being on. And I have that your book by the way, if, just so everybody knows, I do have your book Awesome it for quite a few years. Awesome.

Rich (02:28):
I, yeah, I appreciate that. I hope maybe you read a little bit of it too. A lot. I, I,

Robby (02:33):
I cruised through it.

Rich (02:34):
<laugh>. Okay, good, good. Um, that probably puts you in the 80th percentile, <laugh>, but, uh, but awesome. So, um, so yeah, I mean, I’ve known you, um, for, for a number of years now, like working in the Amazon space and working with Kaita. Um, but I’m really curious about, um, about previous to that, the different companies that you kind of founded, grew or involved with. Um, so tell me a bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how that all got started.

Robby (03:05):
Yeah, for sure, Rich, uh, yeah. So my entrepreneur journey actually started probably around 19 97, 98. Uh, I actually had a eBay account in that’s I still own, that’s from 1998. And I was just actually, uh, used to go to electronic flea markets, pick up stuff and resell it, fix it. Um, kind of really got heavy into, uh, the Palm Pilot back then, and was learning how to take that apart, put up a, uh, website on how to take it apart, which there wasn’t many websites back in 98, 99. Uh, that actually led into a full-blown let’s sell online instead of on eBay by 2001. And by probably July of 2001, that actually turned into a full-time business. And I left my IT management position, uh, here in Silicon Valley and started doing that full-time selling basically Pompe and electronic parts, uh, through my website, which was called Get High Tech back then.

Robby (04:04):
And, uh, that kind of evolved through different generations of, let’s call ’em like the, the early cell phones, right? The, uh, motor erasers, the, uh, oh gosh, the Blackberry line, the trio line there. There was just all these crazy different models out there. But, uh, you know what really kind of reinvigorated thing and got me kind of going again, even though I was, I was running that consistently was in, uh, June of two th uh, late June, 2007, the iPhone came out. And I was very intrigued on that. Uh, prior to that, we’d been doing like these pictures and take aparts, uh, that you know, how to take apart items, but with pictures. And we were just starting to evolve into doing videos on take apart videos for the different product line they were selling in different parts we were selling. And when that came out, I was like, you know, I really want to be one of the first to get all my hands on one of those, take it apart, show everybody how to take it apart.

Robby (04:58):
And, uh, what I ended up doing was learning a lot about YouTube, uh, was a very kind of weird, uh, time with, for YouTube back in 2007. Uh, a lot of unknowns. Uh, so what I ended up doing is waiting in line, got ahold of the iPhone, and within a couple hours of getting that brand new iPhone, we took it apart, shot the whole video on how to do it, had it up online. By that Friday night, uh, went home and I think I kind of actually forgot about the video for a while, <laugh>, because by Sunday I was looking, and I think we had like 80,000 views on this one YouTube video on how to take apart the first iPhone. Now remember, I didn’t even have parts for this thing, you know, it was more just showing people how to do it. But what ended up happening was kind of a, a residual from it, meaning that people that came still had some of these older devices and they were like, well, I’ll buy the part from this person and I’ll fix it. ’cause he also has videos on how to take these other items apart, like blackberries and things like that. So that company actually, uh, was my first time going into entrepreneurship. Uh, and basically just a box. Lemme just ask

Rich (06:01):
You a question first, um, about that. So you took the iPhone apart, what? Did it work after you? Um, yeah, you

Robby (06:07):
Did. I actually still have it.

Rich (06:08):
Okay. ’cause when you talk about residuals, I’m thinking of the residual that you have to keep paying on that at and t contract <laugh>, and it’s not working anymore.

Robby (06:16):
<laugh>. No. So when you first bought, when you were, when you bought the very first iPhone, you could actually buy it outright. You could actually just do a cash buy on it. Oh, you could. And that’s what I did. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Okay. So I actually, uh, did a cash buy on it, and I actually still own it. It’s, it’s in a box somewhere around here. That very first one, I think it’s four gig, if I’m not mistaken.

Rich (06:36):
Four. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think I, maybe I had the eight, um, the eight gig one. Um, but yeah, and, uh, I waited on lying that first day too. And it’s funny, what happened to my first iPhone is, um, there was a snowy day in New York. Uh, I had my phone in my jacket pocket, my big giant jacket, which I called my dad coat because it was just like, you know, the type of coat you’d expect a dad to have, right? Yeah. Um, and I was, um, I was, um, snow blowing. I had a snowblower and I was running the walkway. And then I was like, where’s my phone? And then I found, I remember on the first iPhone, there was like a little black boot at the bottom. Yep.

Robby (07:17):
There was,

Rich (07:18):
I found the black boot in the snow <laugh> <laugh>. Oh, geez. And then a few feet away in the pile, I found the remains of my iPhone, uh, that it had run through the snowblower. Um, and it kicked it out. And, uh, the screen was shattered. And like, you know, it’s like the, the electronics were all exposed and all of that. But if I pressed the home button, the screen actually turned on. It actually worked, even though it was like destroyed. It was still functioning after going through my snowblower. So That’s hilarious. I think I might still have that somewhere too in a box, but I think yours is probably more valuable than mine.

Robby (08:01):
Yeah, yeah. Mine’s been taken apart and put back together a few times and, and my wife even used, I think at some point. Yes. But, uh,

Rich (08:08):
Yes. And I derailed your story, so let’s get back. No, that’s okay. You saying that I was looking for real company.

Robby (08:13):
Yeah. Yeah. So that was our first company and, and that just kept evolving. As the different iPhones came out. We just kept pushing out more and more videos, getting parts for ’em. Uh, probably at one point I was the biggest supplier, uh, direct to consumer, uh, for iPhone parts of the United States, uh, third party wise. And, uh, that just, yeah, that kept evolving. And, and we really started, you know, peaking around 2010, 11 on, uh, sales and everything. The business was going great. Had probably 14 people working for us. We had a warehouse, uh, which we actually owned, uh, a warehouse. And, uh, you know, around that time though, you gotta remember Rich, that a lot of these people started like opening little shops to repair your phone for you around that twenty eleven, twenty twelve timeframe. Uh, and, and that’s when we started seeing things slow down.

Robby (09:00):
I stayed probably should have pivoted. So if we’re gonna talk about, like, you know, being on the lookout for ways that you can expand your business, I kind of messed up and I should have pivoted to also doing wholesale. And I missed that opportunity. I stayed with the direct to consumer because of the videos. And the videos we’re pushing all these, you know, sales. So just to kind of mention that too, at one point, the videos I was creating from YouTube were actually generating about a hundred thousand dollars in gross sales from our website direct. So all this free content, technically free, because even though my time to actually do these videos, it was actually generating a hundred thousand dollars a month in sales, uh, from these videos. That’s, and just to be clear, ’cause everybody’s gonna say, oh, is that from Google? ’cause there was like a shared revenue back then?

Robby (09:45):
Uh, no, my shared revenue, because I always wanted no ads on mine except for my own sort of built in ad uh, on the video. But, uh, when the videos got old enough that the parts were kind of, you know, not, the videos weren’t getting as many views, I’d switch on the ads from Google. So I would say, you know, we, there was months we were getting anywhere from six to $8,000 a month, uh, you know, at, at its peak, uh, just from the revenue, from the videos. And then of course, we’re still driving a hundred thousand a month or six figures a month from those videos, directly from people buying from us. So again, uh, as those shops came into play, though, business started to slow. So at that time it was like, okay, I need to pivot again. Where do I, where do I go?

Robby (10:26):
Luckily, a, a good buddy of mine had been running what we called an import company back then, uh, not necessarily referred to as an Amazon business as we do now. And he was basically saying, you know, Hey, why don’t you buy into half this company? Uh, I think between you putting time into it, me putting in time to it, we could probably build this up to be something. And I was like, yeah, why don’t we, uh, why don’t we do that? So he shot me over a number, which I agreed to, and I cut a check for it, got the paperwork going. And within that first year, we went from, gosh, I think it was about a half a million dollars, uh, to over a million dollars just with that first, uh, first year. And it probably wasn’t even a full year, to be honest.

Robby (11:04):
And it was a lot of that had to do with going to Canton Fair, going to China, looking to source products. Now, just to make it clear, that was a separate company and that was probably more targeting Amazon, eBay, other marketplaces, uh, but probably also mainly on that eBay, Amazon, uh, thread or marketplace that we were selling on. So that was kind of my second, uh, company. Uh, prior to that, I’d, I’d had a couple investments. I wouldn’t say that I was really entrepreneur other than investing into a couple companies that I had, uh, taken a chance on and exited from, but those were small exits. Uh, but yeah, it was, things kind of kicked off. So basically my entrepreneur started in 98, and my Amazon career started in 2012. Uh, really on the Amazon side, I was more responsible for doing sourcing, finding new products. Uh, we had other team members, uh, and other owners that kind of ran the day-to-day, understood how to do the, uh, listings and things like that. So that, that kind of led it into that whole, uh, kind of inter intersection of those two companies, uh, running parallel together and running both of ’em at the same time.

Rich (12:11):
Yeah, absolutely. So you’re one of the OGs of, uh, of launching products, um, through e-commerce. Uh, how have things changed? How have things changed from then to now?

Robby (12:22):
Yeah, it’s, it’s a lot different now. It used to be, uh, you know, when we first started, it was kind of the me too products, right? You just find a product, slap your name on it, put it on Amazon, and it, and it sells. And even from that 2012 time period going forward, we, we saw that already getting harder and harder to do. So we were like, okay, what features can we add? Or what can we find that’s different? Uh, we gotta start creating a brand, a brand around it, or making it unique. So I, I would say, you know, between even, let’s call it 2012 to 2018 was kind of when I was mainly selling on Amazon all the way up till today, uh, certain things have not changed. For instance, finding a unique product or building a unique product, making sure it has unique features, uh, you know, that it’s something that stands out, even if it’s technically taking a already existing product, but going to the factory and saying, Hey, let’s add this x, y, z feature to it, um, that has not changed.

Robby (13:18):
Those things are still what you need to do in order to stand out in the Amazon world. Uh, what I would say has changed a lot, uh, Rich is probably a lot of the social media aspect of building an entire brand, right? So, uh, people go on there, they start selling on Amazon, uh, and what they need to kind of do next that I’ve seen, other than the, the P P C and optimization of the listings, you know, the standard things, which pretty much were still true back when we were selling, when I was selling, sorry, uh, my company, uh, is now you gotta build out a little more of a story behind it. What’s the story behind it? What’s story behind the company? TikTok videos, Instagram, uh, YouTube channel. Like, there, there’s kind of a bigger thing there that you’re trying to build, not just this company to sell on Amazon, but a GLO sort of a global company, or at least a, you know, a bigger perspective of a company.

Rich (14:08):
Yeah. It sounds like also driving traffic, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So like, um, like where, um, you don’t want to just rely on the Amazon search engine to, um, um, to get you in front of customers. You want to actually drive customers there.

Robby (14:25):
Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s where that YouTube comes into play. Uh, for me personally, not just YouTube, uh, you know, a lot of people, Rich already have these videos built into their Amazon listings, right? It’s almost mandatory nowadays that you have a video built in there by taking that one, that one video per product, and building a YouTube channel, taking those existing videos and somehow, like, making them fun or interesting and putting ’em on like a reels or shorts or Instagram or TikTok. I mean, it’s already there, but people are so focused just on Amazon and selling there, because I get it, most of your, probably money’s coming from that, but you wanna look at a bigger perspective. If you’re looking to sell, first thing I’m gonna do, if I’m buying a company, I’m gonna, I’m gonna Google it, I’m gonna look for it. And you want to own all those names, right?

Robby (15:09):
The YouTube channel with your name, all the social media with your name, but you wanna see videos and more about the company, not just, oh, look, I can’t find ’em anywhere other than Amazon. Uh, so that’s where that really comes into play, is being able to do that. And that does drive traffic because as people research and start doing, searching into a brand or a product that they bought, they’re gonna, they’re gonna go to Amazon to buy it. I always do. I go search Amazon to buy a product, but when I bought that product and I’m interested in either a feature or how to replace a battery on it or something as simple as that, I’m gonna Google that because most of the time that will not be available in the Amazon product listing. So you want to have that video to be able to build out that bigger brand, uh, from using the, you know, that information and maybe even making customized videos on how to replace a battery on it.

Robby (15:56):
How does function works? Uh, you know, or it maybe somebody, um, I gave a great example one time that, uh, we were selling these like T lights, right? These L E D T lights, and when you got ’em, you had to unscrew ’em and take out the little plastic insert because they were waterproof. You couldn’t just do a pull tab because water would get in there, so you had to unscrew it, take out a black tab and screw it back together. I went and made a video for our company on how to do that, and it was like, and guess what? Less returns, less customer frustration. It was a very simple video. And, and people could even Google it and just find that video on YouTube and, uh, you know, be able to basically figure out how to fix it or get it ready to go either way.

Rich (16:35):
Yeah, either way. Um, what about ai? How is AI changing, uh, marketing?

Robby (16:41):
Absolutely. So, I, I feel AI is such an early thing right now, uh, that we have a long way to go with ai. AI could be used so many different ways. Uh, you could, and, and I’m gonna say with a little caution too, because AI is good, but you have to understand some of your product or things I’m gonna describe and not just take AI’s word for it. So for instance, if you’re trying to adjust your title and you’re asking, uh, you know, like a chat g p t or something to make you different titles, you’ve gotta understand the keywords that are being put in there to be able to make sure that that, that that’s not being written incorrectly for you. Maybe it’s mentioning something that you shouldn’t be mentioning, or even in the product description or the bullet points. You gotta understand that product enough where, and the reason I’m mentioning this, Rich, is, you know, we don’t wanna see somebody go just buy a bunch of pro, buy a product, put a bunch of money into it, bring it in, have chat, G b t, write the title, the description, the listing, the keywords, and think that they’re gonna make, you know, millions of dollars.

Robby (17:43):
You’ve gotta understand Amazon, you have to understand your product, and you have to understand the quality of the title description, keywords, uh, P p c, that’s being done to understand if you’re doing it correctly. But AI’s been amazing. I’m gonna, I’m gonna give another one for you, Rich. Uh, that it, it’s still evolving. It’s not perfect yet. So a lot of people are always asking about lifestyle images, and I have seen a couple tools, uh, one of them people can check out. It’s called booth.ai, B o o t h.ai. It’s still coming up. It’s, it’s, it’s evolving, but basically you can isolate your product and then you could generate immediately a bunch of lifestyle situations that your product’s being used in. And I think that’s like super cool that they are taking a product and putting it into a lot of situations. Then you could basically have a bunch of pictures now, probably not good quality enough pictures yet to be able to use in a listing, but, uh, you know, maybe a Pinterest or on a website or something else that, where you’re, you know, talking more about the product, uh, I, I could go on, there’s so many AI AI tools out there right now that are just changing the way things are done.

Rich (18:50):
Hmm. And, and, but it sounds like what it requires adult supervision and not just any adult, but like an adult with marketing savvy. So like, you have to be able to look at and say like, Hey, does that headline make sense? Uh, mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I mean, I’ve had it write headlines and looked at and said like, wow, this, they wrote some really good headlines. But it, it takes that discernment, I guess, to to, and not just taking for granted that it did the right thing. It’s correct. Um, you know, one thing that I, I’ve learned about AI is that if it doesn’t have, if it can’t find an answer, it will make one up. It always gives you an answer. Um, so that could be a little scary that you don’t know when it’s gonna fictionalize something simply because I couldn’t find the answer to it.

Robby (19:36):
True. We were just talking about before we came on the air, I, I gave Rich my, uh, my little bit of a bio, which I technically had wrote for, uh, LinkedIn mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, uh, Rich was kind of mentioning, Hey, it sounds better if we make a little change here and there. The way I saw it though, Rich, the one that I originally wrote without any, uh, Chat GPT help was way worse than the one I gave you. So <laugh>, I was kind of always looking at it that way, right? Like, it was better than what I wrote, and obviously it, it said what I was trying to say, but it wasn’t perfect. And, and that’s kind of what we’re getting at. Just be careful with ai. It’s, it’s not perfect, but it can definitely help put you in the right direction.

Rich (20:12):
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Um, so I mean, you have a lot of knock, you have, um, excuse me, you have a lot of marketing and entrepreneurial knowledge, but I happen to know you don’t want to be an entrepreneur, um, anymore. And, and do you want to tell me a little bit about that? I’m real curious.

Robby (20:28):
Yeah. So when I, when in 2018, I had an opportunity to sell that iPhone business, and, uh, was actually to a competitor who went into the, uh, wholesale area and was doing 10 times what I was doing. Great guy though, had an opportunity to sell my business to him, and I said, this is a great opportunity to sell it to him, to him. And he was just buying me to get me out of the way, to be honest. So I went ahead and sold that to him. I was really focused on the Amazon business. Uh, there was an opportunity to kind of, uh, step away from that business and exit. And, uh, so I was able to do that. And I actually kind of retired for a little bit, uh, probably a good six months, uh, came back from being in Europe. The wife wanted to be a real estate agent.

Robby (21:09):
The kids went back to school. My wife turned to me and goes, why don’t you start another Amazon business? And I was like, man, I just got done doing 20 years of literally running a business, you know, dealing with, uh, with employees and things like, I’m like, you know what? I wanna look for a startup company. Mm-hmm. I said, because to me, being at a startup company gives me that opportunity to do what I love, uh, to be there, put the hours in, watch a company grow, but there’s things, aspects of entrepreneurship that, you know, depending on the type of entrepreneur you are, I wasn’t, my jam really wasn’t like making sure payroll was done and making sure that we’re always making money and talking to employees and hiring, firing, and all those things were, and, and, and not working weekends, because if something happens at the company or the website, I gotta handle it.

Robby (21:55):
So I was like, you know, I’m gonna look for a, uh, a startup company. I I live in Silicon Valley. So I started doing some research. I came across, uh, a couple different job opportunities. One of them who you actually know was, uh, feedback whizz, uh, had an opportunity to go in there. I think I was technically employee number one if you take away, uh, both the co-founders, uh, I was kind of employee number one, came in as chief marketing officer, uh, gave me kind of a chance to get back into working for somebody again. Uh, kind of learn the SaaS side of the business. And also being a service provider gave me a great opportunity, uh, big shout out to Hanson and Aarons for giving me that opportunity over at Feedback whizz. And, uh, spent a couple years, uh, working there. Uh, it got to learn.

Robby (22:40):
Got to go to some of the trade shows. I never really went to kind of learn, you know, get to meet everybody again. Met Rich, I think I even had you on the podcast back then, uh, if I’m not mistaken. Yep. Uh, pretty early on. Probably not anywhere near the quality of podcast we do now, but that’s a whole nother story, <laugh>. So yeah, there, that’s, that’s why I, you know, I, I kind of was just, it, it’s been amazing being on the service provider part, uh, side of the table. And I have to say that probably also has to do with the people I’ve worked with and the companies I work with. Uh, you know, transition from feedback whizz to AC crew, me, uh, Don over there, great, shout out to Don, uh, great guy and got to meet him, learn a bunch about, you know, kind of the FinTech side.

Robby (23:21):
And, uh, but the marketing department for me over there wasn’t probably the right fit. I’m not too much of a FinTech person. Uh, so I did have an opportunity to actually, uh, interview with Gatta, which is kind of a, a little bit of a long story, but I’ll make it quick. Um, I had been asking around, had Yoni on my podcast one week, the second week I’m talking to Mina Elias, and Mina goes, uh, why don’t you interview Tita? I said, are they looking for somebody? And he’s like, no, but they need you. And so I got ahold of Yoni and we got on a call and he is like, who’s this person you keep telling me to hire? And I’m like, it’s me. And uh, long story short, him and Aton flew out, uh, to San Francisco during the pandemic. We had an amazing, uh, time talking to each other and just discussing strategy.

Robby (24:04):
And at that time, Gato was, gosh, probably under 50 employees, came over there as C M O and, uh, kind of just never looked back. And, you know, when you find that right company and, uh, to work for and the right people to work for, it’s just amazing, absolutely amazing. Like we’re Yoni Aton and the rest of the, uh, Gaia team absolutely incredible to work for. Same mindset, uh, you know, a lot of, uh, flexibility to just be me and, and take some of that entrepreneurship, but use it for gata. Uh, but again, you know, I got weekends free to go golfing and, you know, I get to travel the world, but we can, we can go in that a little bit more.

Rich (24:41):
Yeah, absolutely. And, and you took the words out of my mouth. I was, that was kind of the lead in of like, why you don’t want to be an entrepreneur and how that Oh, anymore rather, and how that’s led you to being like, in a great situation with great people at a great company. And like, you know, a lot of times, um, someone who has been an entrepreneur don’t think that it’s possible to go back and to not be the founder. Um, but, um, that, that their path towards success and happiness is through another venture. But like, you know, that you made that choice really landed you in a, in a, in a great situation for you and them.

Robby (25:21):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s been absolutely incredible and, and finding that right one, you know, and that’s the way I kind of felt was when I was leaving a crew, me, I was actually interviewing with two or three companies and, and, uh, all three of those companies by the way. And, uh, good team to be in one, but the other two companies just as amazing, great people probably would’ve also been a good fit. You know, it was just really kind of narrowing in and honing in on where does my skillset work the best? Uh, where am I gonna be happy and where are we gonna be able to kind of, I’m gonna be able to come in and, and kind of give that my experience that things I’ve learned and help also build the company at the same time. And, uh, you know, somebody that would give me that freedom to do that and Right. Yoni, aan, and Max gave me that.

Rich (26:03):
Yeah. And I, I, I think that it, it’s, it’s something that more entrepreneurs should consider, um, to take their talents and apply it somewhere where it’s needed, which isn’t necessary, Lee, like running your own show. Right? Absolutely. So, and you know, just to, for clarity, I mean, we’ve talked about investments before, like, it’s not that you lost everything and you need a job now, like you did okay for yourself, and you wanted to find something interesting to do where you got to really, uh, express yourself and utilize your talents and and that’s what you found.

Robby (26:38):
Absolutely. Yeah. And speaking of that, so, you know, one of the things that I was lucky to do is, you know, when I exit, we were able to take, my wife and I were able to take some of that money and diversify that out. Uh, you know, there, she actually still stayed with the business, which she’s still there and still, uh, doing well with it, and they’re looking to exit, actually again. So that’s really cool. Uh, but with me it was like, uh, you know, as we kind of went along and I, and I got into these amazing positions, we were able to kind of diversify me personally, uh, with my wife being a real estate agent, we decided to diversify into the, uh, real estate area, buy some houses, some Airbnbs, uh, you know, some single family houses and we’re, we bought a condo.

Robby (27:20):
So, you know, we’ve definitely diversified out, uh, which gave us, you know, we’re, we’re looking at that long-term game, just like Rich. I I think everybody should do that, even when they’re running a business. You know, what’s, what’s your long-term? Is it, is it to exit? And then even if you exit and you get all this money, what are you gonna do with it? You know, if you wanna start another business, that’s great, but I wouldn’t always rely heavily on Amazon always being the one. And just like some of the sellers are starting to realize that, hey, maybe I go to other marketplaces and it’s not, it’s a bad thing. Amazon could still be your core and maybe you’re looking at like a Shopify or starting your own website through Shopify or other marketplaces. I just went a different route of going, you know what? My wife’s got a a real estate license. Let’s go that direction to look for that residual income. As we keep getting older and as we look at, you know, kind of growing our co our, our, my family’s, I’m only getting weeks away from here from being empty nesters, so I’m probably in a different situation than others. Yeah. But, uh, it’s been great.

Rich (28:16):
That’s awesome. And, um, and so like, yeah, let’s, let’s give a little plug for yoni and, and, uh, Eton and um, and for gata. So tell me, tell me a bit about Kaita and what, what you guys do over there.

Robby (28:30):
Yeah, so Gata helps Amazon, f b a sellers get refunds and reimbursements when there’s issues in Amazon’s warehouse. So, just a quick example, uh, if you ship a thousand units in, and Amazon says that they only got 990 units, there’s a discrepancy of 10 units there, we help you fill out all that paperwork to be able to get you a refund back on those missing units. Uh, there’s also things like misc, categorization, weight and measurement issues. Uh, the list literally goes on and on. Uh, gatta has been around since 2015 doing this. So we’re one of the most experienced companies in the industry that will find you the most refunds to be able to help you get back the most money in the F b A seller space. So that’s, that’s basically what

Rich (29:12):
We do. And it’s all driven by, like, in other words, what someone pays is driven by, uh, what refund you get for them. Yes. So they don’t have to pay for your services, basically, you, you get them found money and then, um, and you keep a piece of it.

Robby (29:28):
Absolutely. So we’re a performance based company, which means you don’t pay anything, you don’t sign a long-term contract. Only when we get you money back, we take a percentage. And if we spend 10 hours and Amazon still says no, we eat that 10 hours of work of trying to get the money back, it doesn’t cost you anything. People are so trained for the, uh, cell phone scenario, right? I’m, I gotta pay every month no matter what, that it’s kind of refreshing when we tell people that we’re performance based and if we don’t perform, they don’t pay. So it’s a, it’s a rarity in, in the world nowadays.

Rich (29:58):
Awesome. Um, and so speaking of money, um, there’s the money man, and, uh, absolutely. You know, so, um, how did that come about?

Robby (30:08):
Yeah, I’ll, I’ll give you the quick scenario because that probably a whole nother episode, but I, uh, actually back when I was at Feedback whizz, um, i, I don’t know if you saw me Rich back then, but at one of the, uh, shows I showed up as the Feedback wizard, I had this crazy idea to come in a Wizard outfit. I

Rich (30:24):
Remember that. I think that was in Prosper.

Robby (30:26):
It was, it was, it was in Prosper, I think around 20 18, 20 19. Uh, I was at Prosper. I was in a Wizard outfit. Nobody even knew who I was because full beard, full everything. You couldn’t even tell what I looked like. And, uh, but it, it was getting attention. Everybody wanted a picture. Everybody came over to get a picture. And of course we’re scanning badges, scanning badges as people are coming over. And so, you know, I wanted to take that same concept and, you know, after coming out of switching jobs a few times, ending up at Gatta and coming outta c i d you know, there was a summer of, uh, was that 2021, if I’m not mistaken, uh, that, uh, prosper did their show July, 2021. I had this, yeah, July, 2021. And I was just like, I had this great idea of, of a money suit.

Robby (31:08):
I didn’t know what exactly all about it, but I was like, I’m gonna find a money suit. I’m gonna bring attention to us that we’re there to get refunds. And I told Aton and Yoni, I said, I got this great idea. You just gotta trust me. Didn’t even tell ’em what I was doing. So I went on, uh, Amazon. So that’s where the money suit came from, if anybody’s wondering. It came from Amazon, uh, went on Amazon, bought the money suit, bought all these accessories, show up the first day at the hotel room, a Yoni and Eton’s hotel room, knock on the door, go in and they’re like, oh my God, that’s crazy. That is the coolest thing. And I’m like, got all these accessories, putting everything together. There’s actually pictures of Yoni trying on the different hats and stuff while we’re trying to figure it all out.

Robby (31:45):
And, uh, we kind of come out the door, we go downstairs, we’re walking over to the Prosper Show, and I’ll never forget this. Aton goes, this is either gonna be the coolest thing ever, or it’s gonna fail miserably. And I remember before we even got to the entrance of Prosper, I’d already had to stop for two or maybe three pictures, and he is all, this is awesome <laugh>. So <laugh> that’s so that we, we didn’t even call it the Money man back then, by the way. We, we were like, refund guy, what do we call it? So it took a couple of shows showing up in the suit to actually come up with Money, man.

Rich (32:16):
Right. And, and the suit itself has changed over time. You actually now have custom tailor made money Man suits, correct?

Robby (32:24):
Yeah, yeah. So the, the suit that we see is actually an off the shelf, but it’s been tailored direct, uh, directly to me. The hat was something that came with it. Uh, I have a Gatta gold chain that says Gatta that I got. Um, and then it’s evolved. So I started finding, like, you remember Rich in July, it was like a hundred degrees in Vegas. And, and this thing is not thin, let’s put it that way. It’s not a thin suit. It’s very thick and it’s very, and I sweat a lot in it. So I, I started getting invited to go to these other things and different parts of the world where it’s nice and warm. So there’s actually a, a money man, uh, uh, bathing suit, money man, polo shirt, money man button up shirt. Uh, there’s all kinds of money, man stuff, uh, you know, depending on the climate where I’m gonna be. But the Suit’s kind of, uh, stands on its own. Just got done wearing it, uh, the last couple weeks when I saw Rich. And uh, that was always fun. ’cause it’s always fun to see the reaction when people have never seen it. So,

Rich (33:18):
Yeah, absolutely. No, that’s awesome. And, I don’t know, like what an Amazon show would be without the Money Men there. It’s like you’ve become ubiquitous and uh, um, and uh, you know, anyway, it, um, so much fun. And uh, um, if people wanna learn more about you or get in touch with you, how do they go about doing? So,

Robby (33:40):
Yeah, so I have every channel on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, I’m on all those. LinkedIn’s probably the best for professional contact. Uh, it’s, I think it’s under Rob Stanley, r o b ss, t a and l e y. And then of course, if anybody’s interested in checking out Gatta, we do have a special offer for the show, Rich that alls they need to do, they get that first $400, try us out. Like we said, there’s no contract, no nothing. It’s, uh, gtida.com/moneyman. So gtida.com/moneyman, all one word. And they get $400 to try us out. And again, uh, you know, after the $400, if they wanna leave, they can keep the $400 a gift from us. And, uh, but we prefer, hopefully they’ll stay because there’s lots of money there to get them down the road.

Rich (34:24):
Awesome. Fantastic. Well, Robbie, thanks so much for, for taking the time to, to be on the show. It’s really great, um, seeing you as always, even though I saw you a few days ago. But <laugh>, I’ll see you in a few more days from now. Absolutely. But it’s always great seeing you, and I just really appreciate you taking the time to be on the show.

Robby (34:42):
Thanks, Rich.

Outro (34:49):
Thanks for listening to Innovations and Breakthroughs with your host Rich Goldstein. Be sure to click subscribe, check us out on the web at innovationsandbreakthroughs.com and we’ll see you next time.