March 27, 2024 • 47 mins
Embark on an entrepreneurial adventure with Kusha Karvandi, a trailblazer in the realm of Amazon e-commerce, who joins us in this episode to unravel the secrets of his astounding success. From his initial step into the competitive world of Amazon with BFR Bands to his latest revolutionary software, Kazam, Kusha's journey is a testament to the power of innovation and strategic thinking. Discover how this Inc 500 entrepreneur transitioned from managing a health club to dominating the massage gun market with his brand Vibe, and gain insights into the nuanced decisions that lead to selling businesses while maintaining a profitable seller account.
Kusha isn't just about creating top-selling products; he's also a pioneer in optimizing Amazon advertising campaigns. With Kazam, his AI-driven SaaS tool, he's changing the game for sellers seeking to boost profitability and climb the organic rankings. Tune in to learn how this sophisticated platform can manage your PPC campaigns by weighing a product's organic placement, ensuring your advertising spend is as smart as your business decisions. Plus, get a peek into the evolution of this software, designed to grow with you and your Amazon store by integrating crucial feedback from its users.
In this episode, we also tackle actionable strategies to amplify your brand presence on Amazon. Kusha delves into the intricacies of keyword placement, the effectiveness of A-plus content, and the strategic benefits of the Amazon Transparency program. Whether you're a rookie or a veteran in the e-commerce space, these tactics will sharpen your approach to niche selling and fortify your intellectual property investments. So, if you're ready to elevate your Amazon business and ride the wave of e-commerce success, this conversation is the resource you've been waiting for.
For more information about Kazam, please visit https://gokazam.com/
For more information about Phelps United, please visit https://phelpsunited.com/
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:18):
Hello everybody, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to
Planet Amazon, where we talkabout all things Amazon.
I am super excited for ourepisode today because we have a
great guest.
His name is Kusha Karvandi andhe's an Inc 500 entrepreneur
with remarkable history oflaunching and exiting several
seven and eight figuree-commerce businesses, so this
(00:39):
could be a lot to learn from him.
He has over a decade ofexperience in scaling brands on
Amazon, and Kusha has masteredthe art of driving sales through
advanced marketing strategies,data analysis and impactful
branding.
But he's got a new venture, andhis recent venture is Kazam.
It's a revolutionary AI-basedSaaS tool and it's transforming
(01:01):
the way Amazon advertisingcampaigns are optimized.
It offers users significantprofitability and organic
ranking improvements.
Now he'll talk more about thatand I'm really interested about
that.
But first, welcome to the showand thanks for joining us today,
kusha.
Awesome Thank you for having me.
So first of all, where are you?
(01:21):
I keep on forgetting.
Kusha Karvandi (01:23):
Yeah, I'm in Scottsdale Arizona.
Adam Shaffer (01:25):
Ah, so soon to be super hot.
So there's so much I want totalk about, and I definitely you
know selfishly.
I want to talk about the SaaSplatform because what you offer
is what I need, and what I need,I think, is what tons of other
1P and 3P sellers need, andthat's help in getting more from
our advertising.
But tell us a little bit aboutyou and how you got into this,
(01:51):
and tell us about some of thesebusinesses that you built and
sold.
Kusha Karvandi (01:53):
Sure, yeah, the journey started a little over a
decade ago.
My experience has always beenworking in the gyms.
At the time, I was a healthclub manager and personal
trainer back then, did that forabout five to 10 years, and then
, basically, I had seen anarticle in the Journal of
Strength and Conditioning forsomething called blood flow
restriction training, which Ithought was such a weird concept
(02:16):
.
I thought, why would you everwant to restrict blood flow
during exercise?
And as I went further down therabbit hole, I realized that
there was actually a lot ofresearch behind this methodology
and how it was.
You know, helping people notonly with rehab, as well as
muscle gain and whatnot, and youknow, being able to make gains
while lifting light weights.
And so I basically decided that, you know, I wanted to create a
(02:38):
product for something like this, because I couldn't see
anything in the marketplace thatexisted People in the
bodybuilding community wereusing, like wrist wraps and knee
wraps and such, and so Ithought, you know what there
needs to be, something that's alittle bit easier, that you can,
you know, tie by yourselfalmost like a tourniquet with
one hand.
And so my wife and I, you know,we designed something very,
very simple in the beginning, asimple strap, and we didn't know
(02:59):
anything about e-commerce atthe time.
And so we I think it was reallymy wife who discovered Amazon
FBA and we just kind of by, justby accident, really just kind
of launched on there because,just it's a little bit easier.
You know, as as most Amazonsellers probably know, it's a
little bit easier to get trafficinitially from Amazon than it
is to launch your own Shopifystore and try to launch Facebook
(03:19):
ads or TikTok ads and so forth.
There's a little bit more, youknow, nuance to do that versus
Amazon.
Especially back then it wasn'tquite as competitive as it is
obviously now.
That was a great launchpad.
I was able to get that brand offthe ground.
It was called BFR Bands and weran that brand for, you know, I
think we ran it for like five,six years, you know, almost
(03:39):
seven years, before we sold it.
We sold it, I think, in 2020.
And yeah, that was my first.
That was actually my secondexit.
I exited a different brandbefore that, which I'll mention
in a second, but yeah, basicallyit was a wild ride because it
started as like a side hustlethat I was doing that while
working in the gyms, then endedup leaving that job doing some
(04:01):
consulting, and my Amazonbusiness was still a side
business at the time and theneventually, just over the course
of a year or two, it became afull-time thing and I focused on
that business pretty muchfull-time.
And then, by chance, we kind ofsaw an opportunity to launch a
product in the massage gun spaceand that was called Vibe and
(04:22):
that was kind of a competitor toTheragun.
And this is like when massageguns were like early and new and
you know, this is, you know,probably six years ago, seven
years ago, and, yeah, basicallyran that for about 18 months.
We scaled that brand to abouteight figures, like within 12
months or so, and we sold it 18months after creating it in 2019
(04:42):
.
So that one was kind of astrange deal because I built it
to be separate from the BFRbands brand.
I kind of set that up as aseparate brand, separate thing
so that I could separate it fromthe core products, because it
was a little bit different andit was more ancillary than you
know, a core product to BFRbands.
So I exited that and then, yeah,2020 sold the bfr bands.
(05:03):
Um, then I?
I, when I sold the bfr bandsbrand, I actually kept the um,
my seller account and theproducts in it at that time,
which is not I don't think it'scommon when you sell yeah, no,
you sold the brand, but youdidn't sell the the 3p account I
didn't sell the account, yeah,which is not as common, I think.
Probably the buyer kind ofregretted that at the time.
I think they were just very Ithink they're very anxious to
(05:24):
buy the products.
You know, at the time theyreally were trying to grow and
buy as many brands as they could, so they were making a lot of
different deals that theyprobably aren't doing now.
But, yeah, I ended up.
I was able to keep the accountand so I kept.
I excluded a lot of otherbrands of mine and I didn't have
a ton of existing brandsoutside of that, but I did have
(05:46):
some other, you know, smaller,different brands, all in the
health and wellness space thatI'd kept and I added some new
brands to it after I exited in2020.
And then basically scaled someof those and scaled some of the
new ones and the existing ones,and then I sold that portfolio
of brands in 2021.
It was about a year.
(06:06):
Almost a year and a half laterit was ended 2021.
And then, yeah, basically sothat was my third exit and then
I at that time I did have tosell the seller account ended up
creating a new seller account.
I did keep some SKUs, so Ididn't, even though I sold the
seller account.
I didn't sell all of the SKUsagain.
(06:31):
I did retain a few SKUs, ahandful, that were very minimal.
And then again, same thing,2021,.
I launched a series of newbrands and I still have this
seller account.
Now scaled that to over sevenfigures, now multiple seven
figures in the last year and ahalf, almost two years now.
Adam Shaffer (06:43):
So you've been selling on Amazon all along the
way with different brands.
These are, would be, privatelabel brands that your products,
your proprietary stuff.
You started in the gym.
You're a gym entrepreneur andyou came up with a bunch of
great health and fitnessproducts.
Yeah, exactly, the restrictingblood flow.
You'll have to tell me aboutsome time, but I don't know how
that works.
But I remember when I was a kidwe used to kind of joke each
(07:06):
other until we passed out.
I don't think that'srecommended, but anyway, it was
kind of pretty stupid, butthat's great, I mean incredible
success.
When you were starting thesebusinesses, were you starting
them with the thought that youwere going to sell them or were
you just starting them with thething like this is cool, I can
make some money?
Kusha Karvandi (07:29):
No, I started it because I was at the time, you
know, um, my wife and I we'vebeen together since high school.
We've been together since, uh,you know, 21 years now, and so
we got married young, we gotmarried and we were like 20 I
was 23, I think she was 22 um,so, yeah, we, we basically have
always kind of been of themindset that, like, eventually,
we'd want to, like you know,raise a family and be able to be
free and do our own thing.
I knew I had to get out of this.
You know the gym industryanyone who's worked in the gyms
(07:52):
as a trainer and health clubsknows that the it's quite a
hustle.
You're there for long hours.
And at the time I was managing Iwas managing a gym in downtown
San Diego called Fit Athleticwhich is kind of like a equinox,
so kind of like a equinox, sokind of like a lifetime pretty
large gym.
I had like 70 employees.
You know it was a 50,000 squarefoot facility.
It was a really, really bigheadache of a gym.
(08:13):
I had like 30 trainers.
It was a lot and I was training.
You know, I wasn't getting paidto train but I just love
training so much I had a fewclients.
I was training myself to justto kind of lead by example and
that sort of thing.
And yeah, it was just as a lotof hours.
I would literally get upsometimes at 3 am and get ready,
go to work 5 am when they open,get home at like 7 pm and I
would do that like six and ahalf days a week.
(08:35):
Like the only day I really tookoff is maybe Sunday, and even
then I was still kind of goingin there.
So I was working a lot and, youknow, my wife and I were like
there's no way we're going to,how are we going to raise a
family like this?
And she was working full-timetoo, for a different employer,
and so I'm like this is just notgoing to work.
We got to find a way out ofthis and sure enough.
And I think one of the bestthings I did was working at that
gym, because I was working indowntown San Diego and you meet
(08:57):
a lot of these entrepreneurs atthe gym, a lot of successful
people, and some of the people Imet were in e-commerce and I
was like this one guy, a friendof mine, this guy Drew, he was
in the gym like three times aday.
I'm like what's this guy?
This guy's like not workingever.
He's in the gym three times aday.
What's he doing?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
here.
I'm like this guy's killing it.
Kusha Karvandi (09:14):
Yeah, I'm like how is this possible?
It was like just you know it ofattraction I don't know what it
is Something you know reallybrought me to connect with these
different entrepreneurs and,and you know, the rest was kind
of history.
I ended up connecting with afew of them and then ended up
(09:37):
getting some mentorship from afew different you know good
entrepreneurs, e-commerceentrepreneurs, and and so I just
I knew that long-term, I'm like, if I want to have, like have
freedom of lifestyle and freedomof time and freedom of
geography to be able to livewhere I wanted to live or travel
or whatever it may be, I can'tbe tied down to trading my time
for money in a job like this.
I got to get into somethingwhere I'm working for myself.
E-commerce is great because youcan do it from anywhere.
Adam Shaffer (10:00):
What a story.
What a great story and veryinspirational.
That is the American dream,right Like this is it?
You know, and that's what Ilove about Amazon, and you know
there's about two millionbelieve it or not sellers on the
platform.
Outside of brands that sell toAmazon.
There's a bunch of us, you andothers that are selling and
building a business, and in theold days, if you wanted to start
(10:23):
selling retail, you had to gorent a store and get out a store
and get all that.
But now you can, if you, if youknow the game and you can play
the game right, you could builda business on Amazon and then
you could port it over and do aShopify or do something like
that.
So I think it's, it's just, itis great and it's great for
entrepreneurs that want to builda brand and build a business.
So thank you for yourinspiration to you know from
(10:46):
from me and from everybody.
So you got to help meunderstand how did you bridge
from building products to nowbuilding software?
Because that's what I thinkyour platform is.
It's software that helps peoplebuild their business.
Kusha Karvandi (11:00):
Yeah, and basically, I've been wanting to
build a SaaS software for a longtime, just because I love
software.
I love, I love software, I lovedifferent tools that can help
make your business moreefficient.
And again, it goes back toanything that can help you have
more freedom of your lifestyleand freedom of time.
Because I was doing everythingwe do, I knew that, you know, I
need to build something, youknow, with AI built into it.
Obviously that's a trendy thingright now, but I also, you know
(11:32):
, wanted to build something thatyou know was going to have
longevity to it and become kindof an evergreen tool that people
would be able to use and makeit evolve.
You know, I see a lot ofsoftwares I've used where they
haven't really they get lazywith it.
The owners don't changeanything, there's no real, you
know, reiterations of anythingnew, no features for a long time
(11:55):
.
So with this I already, kind ofwhen I built the software, I
actually mapped out like 10 newfeatures that I want to launch,
you know, step by step.
First, I don't want toovercomplicate it and make the
user experience too complex.
So in the beginning I have justone core feature, but over time
we're going to drip out newthings as well, as I want to be
able to take user feedbackquickly.
We have a lot of integrationswe can talk about to connect us
with the end user so we can getcritical feedback of what do
(12:17):
they want to see, what thingscan we improve or add or change,
so we can move really, reallyquickly with this and launch new
things.
So, in a nutshell, what isKazam?
Give us that core thing, so weget it.
Yeah, so Kazam is basically anAI-based Amazon advertising
(12:38):
software that takes acombination of AI and all the
rule sets that I've used tomanually run ads for myself and
clients over the last decade tobasically run your entire Amazon
PPC for you, and the uniqueaspect of it that it does that
no other PPC software does thatI've seen is that it takes into
account your organic rankings ofyour products.
So, as we've seen over time,amazon's just gotten more and
(13:02):
more expensive.
The PPC costs keep going up.
They have new fees.
If you have inventory instorage for too long, they
charge you fees, and now if youhave inventory in storage not
enough in storage they chargeyou fees.
They're charging you feeseverywhere, every which way they
can go, and it makes sense.
It's a public company, theyhave to make sure to continually
find ways to add revenue and Ithink they're going to always
(13:25):
find ways to get more out ofthird-party sellers, inevitably
over time.
So I thought with this, if wecan factor in your organic
rankings, then we can customizeyour bids and your budgets so
that you're not spending as muchon things that might be
redundant.
If you're selling a dog leash,for example, and you show up
really well for a dog leash forlarge dogs and you're already,
if you're selling a dog leash,for example, and you show up
(13:46):
really well for dog leash forlarge dogs and you're already at
top of search, then maybe itdoesn't make sense to also run
PPC for top of search.
That might be super competitiveand expensive for a keyword
that you're already ranking for.
I mean certainly you obviouslycan do that if it benefits you
and you're getting a halo effector, you know, increased brand
awareness and exposure to doboth.
But usually I find when I cutcertain ads or I have those
(14:09):
redundancy, I end up maintainingthe sales.
So it leads me to believe Ididn't really even need to run
those ads or at least certainlynot at the bid cost that I was
in order to maintain the samerevenue.
Adam Shaffer (14:20):
So I want to make sure I got this right.
So I have a product I'm rankingI don't know 150 on the BSR for
my subcategory, whatever it is,and your software is following
the ranking, looking for ways toincrease the ranking obviously
the goal to get to number one ornumber five or whatever it
would be and so I'm trying towrap my head around this thing.
(14:42):
So what is it actually doing?
It's trying to find this wordwill help you increase your rank
.
Kusha Karvandi (14:49):
Yeah, exactly, it's basically doing a few
things.
It's looking at where you are,so it's driving the bids and the
bid adjustment is being drivenuntil you reach basically top 10
rankings.
Until you reach basically top10 rankings.
So once you get to the top 10,which we know that that is where
(15:09):
you're going to see asignificant threshold and
difference in conversion.
Organically, that's when itstarts backing off the bids, it
starts bringing that cost down.
Adam Shaffer (15:18):
So it's like a governor or something.
It'll get you up to 10 or 8 orwhatever it is, and then it'll
take the pedal off the gas alittle bit and then maybe you'll
put the pedal back on the gasand it just keeps on moderating
to keep you and optimizing tokeep you in that top 10.
Kusha Karvandi (15:35):
It's like cruise control, basically on a car,
like you know, the car in frontof you speeds up Yep exactly.
Adam Shaffer (15:42):
So so how?
I mean how does it work?
First of all, did you writethis Are you a software
developer?
Kusha Karvandi (15:52):
No, I wrote basically all the rule sets and
the concepts behind it and thenI worked with a team of software
engineers and a UX UI designerto basically put it all together
and, design-wise, I think thatit still has a lot I think can
be improved.
I want to continually make itbetter.
That you know.
It still has a lot I think canbe improved.
You know I I want tocontinually make it better.
Um, but in terms offunctionality, it functions
flawlessly.
It functions exactly how Iexpected it to and I think over
(16:12):
time, like just like we've seenwith ai it just gets better over
time as it learns so is it likean api that it connects to
seller central advertising andyou manage.
Adam Shaffer (16:22):
You manage in the software, you don't manage on
Amazon.
Once you do that right.
Kusha Karvandi (16:25):
Yep, exactly, yeah, you manage everything in
the software, yep, and we evenadded recently added a new
functionality where you canbasically pull in your existing
campaigns.
So if you're a seller who'salready had a ton of campaigns
that you've been already runningand you want to apply some of
the rule sets inside thesoftware and have it kind of go
on autopilot in the software,you can do that.
You can pull those in in yourdashboard and you can set those
(16:49):
rule sets and it willautomatically apply it with
regard to like min and max, bidand target, roas or ACOS and
that sort of thing.
Adam Shaffer (16:57):
What's the difference?
I mean not to you know, wehaven't talked about this, but
what's the difference betweenyour software and, like you know
, I've done, like you know, theHelium 10 and I've done Sellazo
and done Feedvisor and all theseothers, and some you have to
pay a fee for and some it's justa platform.
(17:19):
What's the big difference, whatis the major differential
between your software and allthese other softwares?
Kusha Karvandi (17:28):
Yeah, I would say three main things.
I would say number one cost.
I mean, cost is something that,as an Amazon seller, I'm always
conscious of, because everytime I add a software, I feel
like I'm getting gouged another$500 or $1,000.
Adam Shaffer (17:41):
Me too, man.
Kusha Karvandi (17:43):
So, yeah, cost was a big consideration and so
for most sellers they'reprobably going to, depending on
how much they're spending.
They're probably going to be onthe $200 plan, you know, 200
bucks a month.
So for 200 bucks a month it'slike having somebody run all
your PPC and that's hard to findan employee who can run your
PPC for 200 bucks a month.
So, you know, cost is a bigconsideration.
(18:07):
The second was what I mentionedin terms of the organic rankings
and managing that profitabilityfor you.
And then the third is justreally how uh, you know how it's
just really dynamic in terms ofthe campaigns it's building.
So it's not just like runningone campaign, it's going to run
and create a series of campaigns.
And then one thing it also doesis it will automatically do
things for you that you don'tneed to do manually, like in the
past I would manually have togo through and look at like
(18:28):
converting, high convertingsearch terms, and I would take
those search terms and put themin new campaigns and just to get
more granular and increaseprofitability.
And the software will do allthat automatically.
It'll identify search termsthat are actual customer search
terms that are converting, orASINs that are converting, and
it will create new campaigns totarget those specifically to
(18:48):
help you get a little bit moreprofitable and scale up.
Adam Shaffer (18:52):
So for a brand you can have multiple different
campaigns running and it decidesif it's a new campaign or not,
or you decide.
Kusha Karvandi (19:02):
No, it will decide.
It will basically create aseries of campaigns when you
launch.
Basically, we have like onetype of theme.
It's called the quick starttheme.
That's the initial theme thatyou'll see in there when you
sign up, and this is designedfor someone to basically I don't
want to say set it and forgetit, you know, because you never
really want to do that with yourads, but that's kind of what
it's designed to do.
(19:22):
Is you just somebody who wantsto really focus on what they're
good at, which is the marketingand the product development and
the customer service and thatsort of thing?
Focus on that.
Let the software really focuson the ads.
And so you just click a button,you select your SKU that you
want to advertise and all youhave to do is basically put in
like a couple of parameters likeminimum, maximum bid and
(19:45):
basically your target ACOS forthat, based on whatever your
margins are, and that's it.
You click that, it turns thatSKU on and now, with that SKU on
being in advertised mode, withthat being enabled, the system
will start creating newcampaigns for that specific SKU
and then, over time, it willkeep creating new campaigns
based on the performance.
Adam Shaffer (20:05):
And the level of expertise within Seller, Central
and advertising.
Is this for a basic novice thatcould get it going and start
using this thing?
Kusha Karvandi (20:15):
Yeah, I designed it for beginners beginner to
intermediate that's who it'sreally mainly designed for.
But then even myself, beingmuch more of an advanced seller,
having done this for a longtime, I've added other things in
there, other customizations.
If you want to get moregranular, you can.
You can actually go in there.
If you want something that's,let's say, you're a beginner and
(20:37):
you're like, okay, I just wantto get this up and running, you
can get it up and running in acouple clicks.
You just pick your skew, youadd those three, three variables
like your, your min and max bidand a target, a cost, and
you're up and running.
That's it.
Uh, but if you're somebody who'slike you, know what I need to
get a little more granular, Iwant to get in there.
I have a little more experiencewith advertising.
You can do that.
You can go in there and you cantarget certain competitors.
(20:57):
You can put in things aroundyour brand.
If you want to target certainkeywords, you can put negative
targeting.
If you're like, okay, I want itfor sure, I want to have
negative exact for these certainkeywords or ASINs, you can go
in there and do day parting,seasonality, all of that you can
go in there.
Adam Shaffer (21:14):
Could you have it do that for you, like, without
knowing how to do the dayparting, without knowing how to
do the negative campaigns.
Could you say I want a negativecampaign, I want to do day
parting and it figures it out?
Kusha Karvandi (21:29):
Some of that it will do by itself, but the
seasonality and the day partingis not automated yet.
That's something that you know.
Yeah, I haven't reallyexperimented enough around that
to know whether that would helpor hurt, and so, yeah, I don't
know if we want to launch withthat yet.
But again, yeah, this is all.
This is a feedback orientedsystem.
So if users say, hey, you knowwhat I would love if you could
make some of these features youknow more automated, then we
will certainly do that and we'regoing to obviously be gathering
(21:49):
a lot of data too and we'll beable to see you know hey, this
is this would be a safe featureto make automated.
Adam Shaffer (21:55):
Do you find the people that are using it
continually ask more questions,or do you think they're figuring
it out on their own?
Do they need?
Kusha Karvandi (22:04):
hand-holding.
Yeah, no, I would say mostsellers are pretty silent when
it comes to their business.
They don't really ask forenough help and I'm always happy
to be a resource and, you know,and help the community and
anybody who's watching this.
To anyone who reaches out, I'mhappy to answer any questions
and help in any way I can,because I know the struggle.
(22:24):
I know, especially as I've seena lot of these forums and
Facebook groups the majority ofcomments and sentiment I see
around selling on Amazon.
Just it gets worse over time.
People get more frustrated andI know the feeling of the black
hole of seller support, thesabotage by the Chinese sellers
and such and other sellers whoyou know seem to play by a
different set of rules, and so Iknow the feeling.
(22:46):
And so I feel like, because ofall that, that sellers are
generally kind of just doing iton their own.
They're not asking for help,but definitely ask for help.
I think that's a mistake.
It's always good to you know,figure out what needs to be done
and don't use the Amazon sellerforums as a way to get help, or
, you know, or ask questions orvent.
I feel like that's a prettyuseless place.
Adam Shaffer (23:06):
Oh wow, that's good advice and so when it comes
like some of the softwarethat's out there, you can get
like a managed version of itwhere they help you and they'll
have somebody.
Do you do that or you don'tneed to do that with your
software.
Kusha Karvandi (23:19):
With no, with ours, you don't.
I mean we do offer, you know,different plans and some of them
offer, you know, higher levelsof support.
But, honestly, in any, any ofthe packages right now, you know
, because we are fairly newright now, you know you'll have
increased, you know, basicallyaccess to me and my customer
support team.
So, anything that somebodyneeds, if they have questions,
you know we're going to offerthem more support.
If they're on the higher plan,obviously they're going to have
(23:41):
a little bit more.
You know, facetime with us andthat sort of thing if they need
it.
But honestly, they don't reallyneed it.
I mean, it's prettystraightforward.
The functionality of thesoftware is designed.
I designed it to be very, veryeasy because I didn't want it to
be so complex where you getconfused, and because when you
get confused, you don't, youdon't take action, you get
paralyzed.
So I wanted something where youcan, you know, get in there,
(24:02):
you know, select your SKU andget going and that's it, and let
the system do the work for you,cause that's really what the
point of the software is.
Adam Shaffer (24:09):
So a lot of this is.
You know we're talking aboutPPC.
Is there any advice to thelisteners and sellers on amazon
on uh affecting their organicrankings, like is it just to
make sure your content's good,and blah, blah, blah?
What anything you could say onorganic?
Kusha Karvandi (24:28):
yeah.
So on the organic side, themain thing, you know amazon's
algorithm is always changing andI think they are integrating
some more ai into theiralgorithm.
I've noticed like when yousearch in the search bar, for
example, I've noticed it willstart to try to show it'll
auto-populate products that arepurchased in the past and that
sort of thing.
It'll try to do that.
So I noticed they're doing somenew things, so it's always
changing.
(24:48):
But I think that what stillworks is making sure that you
have your primary keywords inyour title and the first bullet
point, your primary keywords inyour title and the first bullet
point.
I think those are stillweighted the highest.
I don't think you need torepeat keywords.
I see a lot of sellers do that,where they repeat certain
keywords or phrases.
I don't think that's necessary.
I think it just needs to be inthere, that the word itself
needs to be in there, and then,yeah, and then making sure.
(25:09):
The most important thing is justgoing through and scrolling
Amazon and compare, hedge yoursearch result of your product to
the other search results.
How does the image look If allthe other images are kind of
full width and the product takesup a ton of the space of the
pixels of the image, then maybeyou should do the same thing, or
(25:30):
maybe you should do somethingslightly different to stand out.
So you got to look at thatimage, because the image affects
the click-through rate a ton.
Then the title would probablybe the second thing in terms of
the copy, not just the keywordsbut the actual copy to catch the
person's attention.
What are the keywords that needto be in there, that maybe
they're not super high rankingkeywords but they might help you
convert because they helpcreate clarity in your product.
(25:52):
So having those keywords there.
And then I would say the otherthing would be price point.
You know how are you priced andyou know I saw somebody made a
suggestion I saw a while backthat I think is actually a great
suggestion which is usingclippable coupons with a high
percentage discount 30 to 50percent and the reasoning behind
it the theory was that a goodchunk of Amazon customers don't
(26:17):
remember to actually like clipthe coupon.
So they yeah.
So you get a huge click throughrate and conversion, but it
doesn't actually impact yourmargin as much because maybe
only half the people actuallyclip the coupon.
Adam Shaffer (26:31):
Yeah, no, I that that I get for sure that's a
good one.
And what?
What about the actual A-pluscontent?
I mean you would use all themodules, fill it out, if you
could get the premium content.
Get the premium content.
Yeah, the premium is prettyeasy to qualify for.
Kusha Karvandi (26:46):
Yeah, it used to be a little bit more difficult
to get the premium and then overtime they made it pretty easy.
I think pretty much anyone canget it.
If you have a registered brand,you can get premium A plus.
I think you have to have whatlike five A plus regular A plus
submissions and a brand story onall your ASINs and then that's
it.
And one thing one little hackaround that too is that you can
just duplicate.
(27:06):
Like if you don't have fiveproducts and you're like well,
how am I going to get five Aplus submissions?
I only have one product, youcan literally just duplicate the
single A plus page you have,duplicate it five times and
it'll get approved instantly andthat will qualify for your five
submissions.
Then all you need is your brandstory, apply it to all your
ASINs that it applies to andthat's pretty much it.
I think every Friday theyautomatically assess and you'll
(27:27):
get it unlocked.
But that premium A-plus is amust because I think that makes
the brand stand out so much more, especially if you're in a
competitive space.
I think that's really key,especially having video in there
.
Video is key because noteveryone will see or watch the
video in the carousel area.
So I think having video inthere is really, really key,
having a comparison table if youhave other products to be able
(27:49):
to cross sell and upsell,because not everyone will know
that you have other products atdifferent price points
potentially.
I think that's a big part of it.
The other thing I will mentiontoo is that if you have issues
with like hijackers and thatsort of thing, one hack I'll
mention is that you can enrollin like transparency and in
transparency.
You just need to have aregistered trademark.
(28:10):
It basically in any country andI didn't know this because
transparency is a, is a, youknow, is a global program so you
can get a red like in the US ifyou get a registered trademark.
It could take you like a yearor two to get a registered
trademark, even if you try tolike fast track it.
It takes a long time, but inGermany you can get a registered
trademark in like two weeks.
(28:30):
Their system's a little bitdifferent there.
You can basically file for it.
I think I got mine like threedays.
It was registered in like threedays in Germany and then what
they do in Germany is like it'sregistered, so you can then use
that registration to get Amazontransparency and then protect
your brand from hijackers andthat sort of thing.
And then, I think like a month,within a month or something
like that, or two months, theypublish it for opposition.
(28:52):
So as long as nobody tries tonegate your trademark
registration there, it basicallyregisters and you're good.
So that's one kind of hack.
You can't really use thattrademark to enforce your brand,
like if somebody's infringingon your trademark or something
in the US marketplace.
You can't use a Germantrademark to do that, but at the
very least it's for brandregistry.
Adam Shaffer (29:10):
It's fine right.
Kusha Karvandi (29:11):
Yeah, you can use it at least for transparency
.
Adam Shaffer (29:14):
Yeah, we use IP Accelerator in the US to get the
brands going.
It takes you can, you don'thave the trademark.
It still takes a while to getthe trademark, but you can be up
and running on brand registrypretty quick.
But going to transparency, youjust got me thinking like so we
work with some brands that again, so we don't actually make
products Like we're not theprivate label, we're an
(29:35):
accelerator.
So we'll work with brands andhelp them sell on Amazon and
several of our brands are in thetransparency program.
But it's different.
You know, there's somethingwhere there's serial numbers and
there's something with thislabels.
Are you talking about thebarcode labels or you're talking
about the serial numbers?
Kusha Karvandi (29:51):
Well, it's kind of.
But with transparency, what youhave to do is it's a serialized
system.
So what they do is like, likewith the regular UPC barcode on
your product, upc barcode is thesame on all your units.
If you send a thousand units toAmazon, that barcode is exactly
the same.
With uh, with transparency thebarcode, it's going to show a
number on it.
That number is basically yourUPC Usually it's what I see and
(30:13):
that you that number looks thesame.
So it might at first glance.
You look at it and you're likewell, all these barcodes are the
same, these transparencybarcodes, but it's actually a QR
code and the QR code is unique,so it's serialized.
So every unit has a differentserialized QR code, even though
the number below it on thatsticker, that transparency
sticker, looks the same.
So yeah, it's a serializedsystem that basically every
(30:37):
single one is unique.
So when you enroll intransparency, you have to go
into the transparency portal andthen you have to basically
download um, however many codesyou need uh for your next order.
So if you're going to send,let's say, 10,000 units to FBA,
you go into your transparency,you request 10,000 codes and
then it will give you two files.
It'll give you a CSV and a PDF.
(30:57):
You send that to the printingcompany I use, like Avery in
China.
You send it to Avery Denison,they'll print it and they'll
ship it to your supplier inChina, and then that supplier
will then put it on all yourproducts, for example, and then
they'll send it to FDA.
Adam Shaffer (31:13):
I think I'm a big believer in it.
It's just something that youneed to you know agree that
you're going to you know committo, because if you're selling in
other channels it's not alwaysthat easy.
But I agree, I love it.
You've been helping some of thebad actors on Amazon, so your
(31:38):
product is really focused onoptimizing advertising, getting
the ranking up.
But I'm sure you were sayingearlier and I cut you off that
there are some other featuresthat you're building out.
So what are some of the coolnew stuff that you're going to
add?
Kusha Karvandi (31:52):
Yeah.
So I have things like that.
Well, just in terms of rankings, if somebody's like oh, you
know what, I really want tofocus on these keywords, just to
rank quickly.
I want launching a new brand,I'm launching a new product and
I want to get these ranked forthese particular keywords as
fast as possible.
No-transcript.
(32:26):
Want to go after dog leash,which is extremely competitive
because a short tail, you knowhigh volume keyword.
Maybe the system is going tolaunch a ton of campaigns around
these longer tail keywords thatare semantically related.
You know best dog leash, dogleash for large dogs, dog leash
for small dogs, so forth.
So you have a long list ofthese variety of keywords that
(32:46):
contain variations of thosewords in them and the idea is
that it's basically sendingsignals to Amazon's algorithm
that you're relevant for theprimary keyword and it tends to
work really well.
I mean, I've seen you rankingwell, you know doing this
manually.
I've seen ranking well forshort tail target keywords
without even targeting thatkeyword directly, like without
(33:07):
actually even and I just want tomake sure I got it right.
Adam Shaffer (33:10):
So you're saying, by targeting these long tail
words, you'll get the short tail?
Kusha Karvandi (33:14):
Exactly, yeah, amazon's finding you relevant
for the short tail keyword whenyou're getting sales through the
long tail keywords.
Adam Shaffer (33:20):
Okay, I didn't realize that and so you've
probably seen it all.
What are some of the biggestmistakes, biggest advertising
mistakes people make, of course,when they're not using your
software.
Kusha Karvandi (33:31):
Yeah, I would say the most important thing.
This is the most importantthing by far.
Whether you're focusing onrankings or you're focusing on
getting immediate visibilitythrough PPC, you got to make
sure that your listing iscompetitive and so in the
beginning, PPC is a great placeto get your visibility and get
traffic, because you could be atthe top of page one through PPC
(33:52):
from day one without runningany rankings campaign, because
you're just paying per clickyour advertising.
So in that case you can be alittle bit more aggressive.
I would try to be aggressive inyour pricing or your offer.
Maybe you have bonuses orsomething like that to make your
offer more appealing.
Or just make sure yourcreatives are really good.
You have really strongcreatives video creatives, as
(34:13):
seen in badges, whatever it maybe to have a lot of social proof
to maximize the conversion.
Because in the beginning, themistakes people make is they try
to go after rankings andkeywords where they're not
competitive enough, Like all theother.
Competition at the top of thepage has like 10,000 reviews and
they have like two reviews.
So that's the one piece ofadvice no one gave me in the
beginning that I wish I hadknown before.
(34:34):
I wasted a lot of money ontrying to rank is.
I remember ranking products inthe beginning being like, wow,
I'm ranking like top of the page, number one or top five, and
then like a few days later Iwould drop completely off the
face of the earth.
I'm like what happened?
I was ranking like why isn't itworking?
But I didn't realize that like,just because you rank doesn't
mean you're going to stick, evenif you're selling the exact
same thing as somebody else,Even if it's slightly better
(34:56):
than the competition, even ifthe price point unless the price
point is like drasticallybetter, and even then you still
have to have a comparable numberof reviews.
So I think the thresholds areusually around, like, if
somebody has like 20 or 30reviews, you need probably at
least like 10 reviews.
You know, to be competitive, Ifthe top competition has, you
know, somewhere around 100 to900, some reviews, you need at
(35:20):
least 100 reviews to becompetitive.
If they have over 1000, youneed to have at least 1000 and
so forth, because it's reallythe psychology, Like if someone
goes to Amazon, they search akeyword and all the competitors
have, let's say, 5000 reviews.
You know if you're at like 100reviews, you're probably not
going to take away a lot ofmarket share and it'll be hard
to maintain those rankings.
(35:40):
You're going to have to berunning continual a variety of
different campaigns to keep andmaintain that rank at that level
.
So and that may, not be aproblem.
Adam Shaffer (35:49):
So, kusha, you brought it up, man, but how do
you go get all those greatreviews?
Because that's not a simpletask.
Kusha Karvandi (35:55):
Yeah, I mean.
So basically, in the beginning,you really got to leverage as
many sources as you can, andTikTok is a great channel.
A lot of people are talkingabout TikTok as being the gold
rush, although I am a littleconcerned around maybe TikTok
being banned, and so I wouldn'trely too much on just TikTok.
Who knows, don't know if that'sgoing to be there or not.
Adam Shaffer (36:14):
But social media.
Kusha Karvandi (36:15):
Yeah, social media influencers are a great
way.
In the beginning you have to becareful because I know a lot of
sellers are reaching out toinfluencers directly to get
reviews.
So I'm sure a lot of thosebuyer accounts are flagged and
you don't want those buyeraccounts associated with your
seller account if these peopleare leaving reviews on
everyone's products and thatsort of thing and it's going to
negatively associate with youraccount.
(36:36):
So you want to try to avoidthat.
What I would recommend is tryto go after these micro
influencers who aren't reallyinfluencers at all, People who
have like maybe a hundredfriends on TikTok or a hundred
followers, you know, maybe undera thousand I would say
threshold in terms of followerson like Instagram or TikTok.
Those would be a good place tostart because those are people
who are, like you know, pseudoinfluencers.
They just have mostly friendsand family that are following
(36:58):
them.
Adam Shaffer (36:58):
So back to the long tail again, right?
Kusha Karvandi (37:00):
Yep, exactly, exactly.
You go after those, you getthem to buy and you know, and
then, um, you know, get them toask them to leave a review as
well.
That would be a good place toget that going.
Vine can be good too, but Ihave found that Vine can
backfire.
If you're, if you're veryconfident in your product, you
know and you have a lot of good,if you have good product
packaging and inserts and thingsthat really maximize the
(37:21):
customer experience.
Because Vine, I feel like, islike 50% of Vine, is around the
unboxing experience.
Like they're judging you basedon the unboxing, I feel like,
and if they have a greatunboxing, like that's like half
the battle.
They're like, okay, I love thisproduct, that'll get you like
at least four stars right there.
But in general, I found that,like Vine, reviewers generally
tend to be more critical thanthey used to be, and so you know
(37:44):
you can get up to 30 reviewsinitially with Vine, and the two
issues are that number one, itcould take, you know, god knows
how long before you get those 30reviews.
There's no way to really controlhow long that will happen, what
timeframe.
And number two, like you mightget all four star reviews and if
your competitors are all likefour and a half stars or higher,
that's not going to really helpyou competitively.
So that can be an issue initself and sometimes I've seen
(38:06):
it backfire, where you get a lotof one star reviews for some
reason from Vine, so that can betough too, and those those
reviews are weighted a littlebit higher, so it can be hard to
overcome that, even if youstart getting a lot of organic
reviews over time.
So I think definitely theinfluencer route is a good way
to get going.
And then obviously, thelong-term evergreen.
You need to have some type offunnel, like you need to have
something through your product,your packaging, your inserts
(38:27):
that leads them through sometype of a funnel in order to be
able to interact with thecustomer and ask them to leave a
review.
I think that's really the onlyway long-term.
Adam Shaffer (38:36):
And you talked about it earlier.
You got started on Amazon, butdid you do Shopify?
Kusha Karvandi (38:48):
I did yeah, I still do Shopify and you know,
one brand that might be aFarbans brand was like half
Shopify and I mean I like theplatform a lot.
Adam Shaffer (38:52):
I mean I like Amazon for the audience it
brings you, but I love thefreedom of Shopify and, you know
, I think maybe your conversionrate will be better on Amazon
just because it's Amazon andpeople are there and people
might not know your site.
But I do think there'ssomething about having that
relationship with the customers.
Kusha Karvandi (39:09):
Yeah, it is, it's way and it's like you know,
it's a definitely it's a longerterm strategy because it's
definitely a learning curve andit's completely different than
Amazon, like learning how tobuild your Shopify.
Like, if you think about Amazon, amazon's already kind of laid
out the whole page for you.
So in terms of the userexperience, the customer
conversion experience, all ofthat's already taken care of for
you With Shopify.
(39:30):
You know, obviously Shopifydoes some of that, but you have
to, like, design it.
You have to design your theme.
You've got to design the wholepage, the creatives and
everything.
You have to design your theme.
You got to design the wholepage, the creatives and
everything.
You got to do all of that.
Um.
And then you got to think aboutfulfillment, like, are you going
to use fba to fulfill yourshopify orders?
Are you going to use, like,ship bob or something like that
to fulfill?
You have to think about that.
You have to think aboutcustomer service with fba.
(39:50):
Fba is doing mostly customerservice and in the rare instance
they the customer needs morethan they reach out to the
seller.
But even even with my brandsthat was doing you know my one
brand that was doing like eightfigures I would only get like a
handful of messages a daythrough Seller Central.
I think Amazon FBA was handlingmost of the customer service
outreach.
Adam Shaffer (40:10):
And Shopify, you're on your own.
And again I digress, but I meanI do like Shopify.
So, like, circling back to theKazam platform, like I'm
definitely going to try it, Iwant to, I want to do it.
So if, if somebody wants to try, it is there, is there like a X
amount of free day trial, or isit?
Is there a monthly you can getin and out if you don't like it?
(40:33):
And is there a monthly spendthat you have to spend in
advertising to use it?
Kusha Karvandi (40:41):
Yeah, so basically you know you have
every.
We have three plans.
Every plan it's kind of basedon how much you spend on Amazon
now in terms of basically likethe thresholds for the different
plans, but basically ourstartup plans 197 a month and
it's up to $10,000 in monthly adspend.
And then the next one up is$397 a month, that's up to
$50,000 a month in ad spend,which is probably I mean, those
(41:02):
two are going to cover themajority sellers.
And then the third plan, whichis $547 a month.
That covers up to $200,000 amonth in monthly ad spend.
And all three plans come with aseven-day trial.
Adam Shaffer (41:13):
So you get a seven-day trial.
Do you have to sign up for ayear, or can?
Kusha Karvandi (41:16):
you do a month to month.
Yeah, and they're all month tomonth.
There's no yearly contract.
Adam Shaffer (41:27):
That's great, Okay , Well, I'd love to start
wrapping it up, but I reallywould love to get some final
thoughts for people that areeither getting in or on the
Amazon platform.
You know, maybe some uh, yourwords of wisdom.
Kusha Karvandi (41:37):
Yeah, I would say the the the one thing for me
.
I've never done drop shippingor wholesaling.
I know that might work for somepeople.
Maybe get, especially withwholesale, if you can get
contracts with certain suppliers, certain brands.
You know that I think thatmight be lucrative.
It's not something I've everreally been successful with.
Uh, my success has always beenin, like I would say, stay in
your niche like something youknow.
You have to stay in your circleof competence.
(41:58):
A mentor of mine called it likeyour success signature you stay
in your niche like somethingyou know.
You have to stay in your circleof competence.
A mentor of mine called it likeyour success signature.
You stay in that realm of likewhat you know really well.
And mine's always been healthand fitness and I find that,
like, if I were trying to gointo like office products or
something random like that, Iwouldn't be as successful in
those niches because I don'thave the depth of knowledge that
I've garnered through healthand fitness.
(42:18):
You know I have, like you know,almost two dozen certifications
as a trainer, that I've trainedover 10,000 one-on-one hours
with clients back in the day.
So I have a lot of knowledgearound where the trends are
going with health and fitness,that I can be kind of ahead of
the curve, kind of like theWayne Gretzky of like go where
the puck is going to be, notwhere it is.
(42:42):
That's, that's the mindset youhave to have is, like, what's an
area of your expertise, thatyou, you have knowledge, that
you almost have that insiderknowledge that other sellers
won't have.
Especially the Chinese sellerswon't have that depth of
knowledge.
Usually they're going to justkind of copy a product, whatever
the top seller is in a category.
They're going to kind of copythat and undercut them in price,
that sort of thing usually.
So try to go into it knowinglike, okay, can I find a niche?
(43:02):
Number one, that I have thatintricate knowledge.
Number two, I would recommendstarting with private label.
You know, to keep your costslow, to test the viability.
So you find a supplier, whetherit be through Alibaba or a
trading company, whatever it maybe, and then just launch
something with a low MOQ that'scomparable to the competition,
ideally with something to makeit a little bit better.
(43:22):
So you're not just competing onprice.
Make it a little bit better.
Add a bonus, multi-pack,whatever it may be, add
something to it to make it alittle bit better, or maybe a
small design element to make ita little bit better, without
investing heavily in tooling andmolds.
Get it going and then, onceyou've proven it after the first
month or two, then you can sayyou know what?
(43:43):
Okay, I'm going to now workwith some engineers.
You can hire some engineers andget the engineers to create the
CAD files for you, which arethese kind of manufacturing
files, design files, that youcan then give to your factory
and say hey, are you able tocustomize this product further?
I want to make these changes orI want to make this new version
.
What would that cost?
To create the mold and thetooling to manufacture this?
(44:04):
That would be the next step.
And then you'd want to startbuilding some intellectual
property around that Like.
One thing I would recommendfrom there on top of that would
be to sell the product for alittle bit first, before you
invest in the intellectualproperty, unless you're, like
certain that it's going to bereally valuable.
Because I've invested in a lotof things ideas that the
(44:25):
products were just kind of so-soor didn't sell very well, and
it was kind of too late.
I'd already invested so muchinto molds and tooling and IP,
and then I had to just basicallyphase out the product because
the market didn't really care.
So it's better to let peoplevote with their wallets on
Amazon.
If they buy the product, ifthey like it, then you know okay
, this is the product that Ishould go get a designer utility
(44:46):
patent for it, and so forth.
Adam Shaffer (44:48):
And you think it's not too late for somebody to
start up on Amazon today.
It's not too busy, not toocrowded.
Kusha Karvandi (44:52):
No, no, I think it's a good and a bad thing,
because it's definitely muchharder than it was, obviously
five, 10 years ago.
It's definitely much morechallenging with more
competition.
But the good thing is, if youcan be patient and you're
willing to take the time tolearn and look at this as a slow
game, it's not going to beovernight.
It might take you six to 12months to get this thing really
going and profitable, more orless.
(45:14):
So if you look at it from thatperspective that hey, this is
not the get rich quick schemethen I do think that this is a
very viable strategy, becauseonce you're in, then a lot of
other people on the other end ofit, on the other side, a lot of
people are going to give up.
And now you're in, you'resuccessful, you're making money,
while everyone else is like, oh, amazon's too hard, it doesn't
work anymore, I give up.
(45:46):
So it's almost a good thing now,whereas in the past it's like
everyone was jumping in becauseit was so easy, yeah, so so,
kusha, how do people contact youand how do they learn more
about Kazam?
Tell us about ways to get toyou.
Yeah, so our website isgokazamcom, that's
G-O-K-A-Z-A-Mcom, and then myemail address.
You can email me at info at gokazamcom.
Uh, and those you know.
Any questions for me will berouted to me and I'm really
happy to help really answeranything.
Uh, you know that that peoplehave questions about.
(46:07):
I also have ownership in anagency called launch titanscom.
Launch titans does it's like afull service agency as well, and
one thing we help with is, youknow, helping people basically
build different funnels, likecustomer engagement funnels, as
well as with engineering.
If somebody's like, hey, youknow what, how do I take my
private label product and thenbuild some concepts and ideas to
(46:29):
make it better, and then, onceI have that idea, how do I
actually make the manufacturingfiles, the CAD files, the
tooling, how do I find thefactory?
We can help with all that aswell.
Adam Shaffer (46:38):
That's awesome.
So you're an inspiration to meand to everybody that's
listening.
So thanks so much for yourinformation.
We wish you luck and we'redefinitely I'm definitely going
to start trying your software.
So thank you so much forjoining us today and you know
let's keep on talking becauseyou know there's definitely a
lot there, and please come backand join us again.
Kusha Karvandi (47:01):
Awesome.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
Welcome to the Planet Amazon podcast with Adam
Shaffer, where we explore theworld of Amazon and other
e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Adam Shaffer (00:18):
Hello everybody, I'm Adam Shaffer and welcome to
Planet Amazon, where we talkabout all things Amazon.
I am super excited for ourepisode today because we have a
great guest.
His name is Kusha Karvandi andhe's an Inc 500 entrepreneur
with remarkable history oflaunching and exiting several
seven and eight figuree-commerce businesses, so this
(00:39):
could be a lot to learn from him.
He has over a decade ofexperience in scaling brands on
Amazon, and Kusha has masteredthe art of driving sales through
advanced marketing strategies,data analysis and impactful
branding.
But he's got a new venture, andhis recent venture is Kazam.
It's a revolutionary AI-basedSaaS tool and it's transforming
(01:01):
the way Amazon advertisingcampaigns are optimized.
It offers users significantprofitability and organic
ranking improvements.
Now he'll talk more about thatand I'm really interested about
that.
But first, welcome to the showand thanks for joining us today,
kusha.
Awesome Thank you for having me.
So first of all, where are you?
(01:21):
I keep on forgetting.
Kusha Karvandi (01:23):
Yeah, I'm in Scottsdale Arizona.
Adam Shaffer (01:25):
Ah, so soon to be super hot.
So there's so much I want totalk about, and I definitely you
know selfishly.
I want to talk about the SaaSplatform because what you offer
is what I need, and what I need,I think, is what tons of other
1P and 3P sellers need, andthat's help in getting more from
our advertising.
But tell us a little bit aboutyou and how you got into this,
(01:51):
and tell us about some of thesebusinesses that you built and
sold.
Kusha Karvandi (01:53):
Sure, yeah, the journey started a little over a
decade ago.
My experience has always beenworking in the gyms.
At the time, I was a healthclub manager and personal
trainer back then, did that forabout five to 10 years, and then
, basically, I had seen anarticle in the Journal of
Strength and Conditioning forsomething called blood flow
restriction training, which Ithought was such a weird concept
(02:16):
.
I thought, why would you everwant to restrict blood flow
during exercise?
And as I went further down therabbit hole, I realized that
there was actually a lot ofresearch behind this methodology
and how it was.
You know, helping people notonly with rehab, as well as
muscle gain and whatnot, and youknow, being able to make gains
while lifting light weights.
And so I basically decided that, you know, I wanted to create a
(02:38):
product for something like this, because I couldn't see
anything in the marketplace thatexisted People in the
bodybuilding community wereusing, like wrist wraps and knee
wraps and such, and so Ithought, you know what there
needs to be, something that's alittle bit easier, that you can,
you know, tie by yourselfalmost like a tourniquet with
one hand.
And so my wife and I, you know,we designed something very,
very simple in the beginning, asimple strap, and we didn't know
(02:59):
anything about e-commerce atthe time.
And so we I think it was reallymy wife who discovered Amazon
FBA and we just kind of by, justby accident, really just kind
of launched on there because,just it's a little bit easier.
You know, as as most Amazonsellers probably know, it's a
little bit easier to get trafficinitially from Amazon than it
is to launch your own Shopifystore and try to launch Facebook
(03:19):
ads or TikTok ads and so forth.
There's a little bit more, youknow, nuance to do that versus
Amazon.
Especially back then it wasn'tquite as competitive as it is
obviously now.
That was a great launchpad.
I was able to get that brand offthe ground.
It was called BFR Bands and weran that brand for, you know, I
think we ran it for like five,six years, you know, almost
(03:39):
seven years, before we sold it.
We sold it, I think, in 2020.
And yeah, that was my first.
That was actually my secondexit.
I exited a different brandbefore that, which I'll mention
in a second, but yeah, basicallyit was a wild ride because it
started as like a side hustlethat I was doing that while
working in the gyms, then endedup leaving that job doing some
(04:01):
consulting, and my Amazonbusiness was still a side
business at the time and theneventually, just over the course
of a year or two, it became afull-time thing and I focused on
that business pretty muchfull-time.
And then, by chance, we kind ofsaw an opportunity to launch a
product in the massage gun spaceand that was called Vibe and
(04:22):
that was kind of a competitor toTheragun.
And this is like when massageguns were like early and new and
you know, this is, you know,probably six years ago, seven
years ago, and, yeah, basicallyran that for about 18 months.
We scaled that brand to abouteight figures, like within 12
months or so, and we sold it 18months after creating it in 2019
(04:42):
.
So that one was kind of astrange deal because I built it
to be separate from the BFRbands brand.
I kind of set that up as aseparate brand, separate thing
so that I could separate it fromthe core products, because it
was a little bit different andit was more ancillary than you
know, a core product to BFRbands.
So I exited that and then, yeah,2020 sold the bfr bands.
(05:03):
Um, then I?
I, when I sold the bfr bandsbrand, I actually kept the um,
my seller account and theproducts in it at that time,
which is not I don't think it'scommon when you sell yeah, no,
you sold the brand, but youdidn't sell the the 3p account I
didn't sell the account, yeah,which is not as common, I think.
Probably the buyer kind ofregretted that at the time.
I think they were just very Ithink they're very anxious to
(05:24):
buy the products.
You know, at the time theyreally were trying to grow and
buy as many brands as they could, so they were making a lot of
different deals that theyprobably aren't doing now.
But, yeah, I ended up.
I was able to keep the accountand so I kept.
I excluded a lot of otherbrands of mine and I didn't have
a ton of existing brandsoutside of that, but I did have
(05:46):
some other, you know, smaller,different brands, all in the
health and wellness space thatI'd kept and I added some new
brands to it after I exited in2020.
And then basically scaled someof those and scaled some of the
new ones and the existing ones,and then I sold that portfolio
of brands in 2021.
It was about a year.
(06:06):
Almost a year and a half laterit was ended 2021.
And then, yeah, basically sothat was my third exit and then
I at that time I did have tosell the seller account ended up
creating a new seller account.
I did keep some SKUs, so Ididn't, even though I sold the
seller account.
I didn't sell all of the SKUsagain.
(06:31):
I did retain a few SKUs, ahandful, that were very minimal.
And then again, same thing,2021,.
I launched a series of newbrands and I still have this
seller account.
Now scaled that to over sevenfigures, now multiple seven
figures in the last year and ahalf, almost two years now.
Adam Shaffer (06:43):
So you've been selling on Amazon all along the
way with different brands.
These are, would be, privatelabel brands that your products,
your proprietary stuff.
You started in the gym.
You're a gym entrepreneur andyou came up with a bunch of
great health and fitnessproducts.
Yeah, exactly, the restrictingblood flow.
You'll have to tell me aboutsome time, but I don't know how
that works.
But I remember when I was a kidwe used to kind of joke each
(07:06):
other until we passed out.
I don't think that'srecommended, but anyway, it was
kind of pretty stupid, butthat's great, I mean incredible
success.
When you were starting thesebusinesses, were you starting
them with the thought that youwere going to sell them or were
you just starting them with thething like this is cool, I can
make some money?
Kusha Karvandi (07:29):
No, I started it because I was at the time, you
know, um, my wife and I we'vebeen together since high school.
We've been together since, uh,you know, 21 years now, and so
we got married young, we gotmarried and we were like 20 I
was 23, I think she was 22 um,so, yeah, we, we basically have
always kind of been of themindset that, like, eventually,
we'd want to, like you know,raise a family and be able to be
free and do our own thing.
I knew I had to get out of this.
You know the gym industryanyone who's worked in the gyms
(07:52):
as a trainer and health clubsknows that the it's quite a
hustle.
You're there for long hours.
And at the time I was managing Iwas managing a gym in downtown
San Diego called Fit Athleticwhich is kind of like a equinox,
so kind of like a equinox, sokind of like a lifetime pretty
large gym.
I had like 70 employees.
You know it was a 50,000 squarefoot facility.
It was a really, really bigheadache of a gym.
(08:13):
I had like 30 trainers.
It was a lot and I was training.
You know, I wasn't getting paidto train but I just love
training so much I had a fewclients.
I was training myself to justto kind of lead by example and
that sort of thing.
And yeah, it was just as a lotof hours.
I would literally get upsometimes at 3 am and get ready,
go to work 5 am when they open,get home at like 7 pm and I
would do that like six and ahalf days a week.
(08:35):
Like the only day I really tookoff is maybe Sunday, and even
then I was still kind of goingin there.
So I was working a lot and, youknow, my wife and I were like
there's no way we're going to,how are we going to raise a
family like this?
And she was working full-timetoo, for a different employer,
and so I'm like this is just notgoing to work.
We got to find a way out ofthis and sure enough.
And I think one of the bestthings I did was working at that
gym, because I was working indowntown San Diego and you meet
(08:57):
a lot of these entrepreneurs atthe gym, a lot of successful
people, and some of the people Imet were in e-commerce and I
was like this one guy, a friendof mine, this guy Drew, he was
in the gym like three times aday.
I'm like what's this guy?
This guy's like not workingever.
He's in the gym three times aday.
What's he doing?
Speaker 1 (09:12):
here.
I'm like this guy's killing it.
Kusha Karvandi (09:14):
Yeah, I'm like how is this possible?
It was like just you know it ofattraction I don't know what it
is Something you know reallybrought me to connect with these
different entrepreneurs and,and you know, the rest was kind
of history.
I ended up connecting with afew of them and then ended up
(09:37):
getting some mentorship from afew different you know good
entrepreneurs, e-commerceentrepreneurs, and and so I just
I knew that long-term, I'm like, if I want to have, like have
freedom of lifestyle and freedomof time and freedom of
geography to be able to livewhere I wanted to live or travel
or whatever it may be, I can'tbe tied down to trading my time
for money in a job like this.
I got to get into somethingwhere I'm working for myself.
E-commerce is great because youcan do it from anywhere.
Adam Shaffer (10:00):
What a story.
What a great story and veryinspirational.
That is the American dream,right Like this is it?
You know, and that's what Ilove about Amazon, and you know
there's about two millionbelieve it or not sellers on the
platform.
Outside of brands that sell toAmazon.
There's a bunch of us, you andothers that are selling and
building a business, and in theold days, if you wanted to start
(10:23):
selling retail, you had to gorent a store and get out a store
and get all that.
But now you can, if you, if youknow the game and you can play
the game right, you could builda business on Amazon and then
you could port it over and do aShopify or do something like
that.
So I think it's, it's just, itis great and it's great for
entrepreneurs that want to builda brand and build a business.
So thank you for yourinspiration to you know from
(10:46):
from me and from everybody.
So you got to help meunderstand how did you bridge
from building products to nowbuilding software?
Because that's what I thinkyour platform is.
It's software that helps peoplebuild their business.
Kusha Karvandi (11:00):
Yeah, and basically, I've been wanting to
build a SaaS software for a longtime, just because I love
software.
I love, I love software, I lovedifferent tools that can help
make your business moreefficient.
And again, it goes back toanything that can help you have
more freedom of your lifestyleand freedom of time.
Because I was doing everythingwe do, I knew that, you know, I
need to build something, youknow, with AI built into it.
Obviously that's a trendy thingright now, but I also, you know
(11:32):
, wanted to build something thatyou know was going to have
longevity to it and become kindof an evergreen tool that people
would be able to use and makeit evolve.
You know, I see a lot ofsoftwares I've used where they
haven't really they get lazywith it.
The owners don't changeanything, there's no real, you
know, reiterations of anythingnew, no features for a long time
(11:55):
.
So with this I already, kind ofwhen I built the software, I
actually mapped out like 10 newfeatures that I want to launch,
you know, step by step.
First, I don't want toovercomplicate it and make the
user experience too complex.
So in the beginning I have justone core feature, but over time
we're going to drip out newthings as well, as I want to be
able to take user feedbackquickly.
We have a lot of integrationswe can talk about to connect us
with the end user so we can getcritical feedback of what do
(12:17):
they want to see, what thingscan we improve or add or change,
so we can move really, reallyquickly with this and launch new
things.
So, in a nutshell, what isKazam?
Give us that core thing, so weget it.
Yeah, so Kazam is basically anAI-based Amazon advertising
(12:38):
software that takes acombination of AI and all the
rule sets that I've used tomanually run ads for myself and
clients over the last decade tobasically run your entire Amazon
PPC for you, and the uniqueaspect of it that it does that
no other PPC software does thatI've seen is that it takes into
account your organic rankings ofyour products.
So, as we've seen over time,amazon's just gotten more and
(13:02):
more expensive.
The PPC costs keep going up.
They have new fees.
If you have inventory instorage for too long, they
charge you fees, and now if youhave inventory in storage not
enough in storage they chargeyou fees.
They're charging you feeseverywhere, every which way they
can go, and it makes sense.
It's a public company, theyhave to make sure to continually
find ways to add revenue and Ithink they're going to always
(13:25):
find ways to get more out ofthird-party sellers, inevitably
over time.
So I thought with this, if wecan factor in your organic
rankings, then we can customizeyour bids and your budgets so
that you're not spending as muchon things that might be
redundant.
If you're selling a dog leash,for example, and you show up
really well for a dog leash forlarge dogs and you're already,
if you're selling a dog leash,for example, and you show up
(13:46):
really well for dog leash forlarge dogs and you're already at
top of search, then maybe itdoesn't make sense to also run
PPC for top of search.
That might be super competitiveand expensive for a keyword
that you're already ranking for.
I mean certainly you obviouslycan do that if it benefits you
and you're getting a halo effector, you know, increased brand
awareness and exposure to doboth.
But usually I find when I cutcertain ads or I have those
(14:09):
redundancy, I end up maintainingthe sales.
So it leads me to believe Ididn't really even need to run
those ads or at least certainlynot at the bid cost that I was
in order to maintain the samerevenue.
Adam Shaffer (14:20):
So I want to make sure I got this right.
So I have a product I'm rankingI don't know 150 on the BSR for
my subcategory, whatever it is,and your software is following
the ranking, looking for ways toincrease the ranking obviously
the goal to get to number one ornumber five or whatever it
would be and so I'm trying towrap my head around this thing.
(14:42):
So what is it actually doing?
It's trying to find this wordwill help you increase your rank
.
Kusha Karvandi (14:49):
Yeah, exactly, it's basically doing a few
things.
It's looking at where you are,so it's driving the bids and the
bid adjustment is being drivenuntil you reach basically top 10
rankings.
Until you reach basically top10 rankings.
So once you get to the top 10,which we know that that is where
(15:09):
you're going to see asignificant threshold and
difference in conversion.
Organically, that's when itstarts backing off the bids, it
starts bringing that cost down.
Adam Shaffer (15:18):
So it's like a governor or something.
It'll get you up to 10 or 8 orwhatever it is, and then it'll
take the pedal off the gas alittle bit and then maybe you'll
put the pedal back on the gasand it just keeps on moderating
to keep you and optimizing tokeep you in that top 10.
Kusha Karvandi (15:35):
It's like cruise control, basically on a car,
like you know, the car in frontof you speeds up Yep exactly.
Adam Shaffer (15:42):
So so how?
I mean how does it work?
First of all, did you writethis Are you a software
developer?
Kusha Karvandi (15:52):
No, I wrote basically all the rule sets and
the concepts behind it and thenI worked with a team of software
engineers and a UX UI designerto basically put it all together
and, design-wise, I think thatit still has a lot I think can
be improved.
I want to continually make itbetter.
That you know.
It still has a lot I think canbe improved.
You know I I want tocontinually make it better.
Um, but in terms offunctionality, it functions
flawlessly.
It functions exactly how Iexpected it to and I think over
(16:12):
time, like just like we've seenwith ai it just gets better over
time as it learns so is it likean api that it connects to
seller central advertising andyou manage.
Adam Shaffer (16:22):
You manage in the software, you don't manage on
Amazon.
Once you do that right.
Kusha Karvandi (16:25):
Yep, exactly, yeah, you manage everything in
the software, yep, and we evenadded recently added a new
functionality where you canbasically pull in your existing
campaigns.
So if you're a seller who'salready had a ton of campaigns
that you've been already runningand you want to apply some of
the rule sets inside thesoftware and have it kind of go
on autopilot in the software,you can do that.
You can pull those in in yourdashboard and you can set those
(16:49):
rule sets and it willautomatically apply it with
regard to like min and max, bidand target, roas or ACOS and
that sort of thing.
Adam Shaffer (16:57):
What's the difference?
I mean not to you know, wehaven't talked about this, but
what's the difference betweenyour software and, like you know
, I've done, like you know, theHelium 10 and I've done Sellazo
and done Feedvisor and all theseothers, and some you have to
pay a fee for and some it's justa platform.
(17:19):
What's the big difference, whatis the major differential
between your software and allthese other softwares?
Kusha Karvandi (17:28):
Yeah, I would say three main things.
I would say number one cost.
I mean, cost is something that,as an Amazon seller, I'm always
conscious of, because everytime I add a software, I feel
like I'm getting gouged another$500 or $1,000.
Adam Shaffer (17:41):
Me too, man.
Kusha Karvandi (17:43):
So, yeah, cost was a big consideration and so
for most sellers they'reprobably going to, depending on
how much they're spending.
They're probably going to be onthe $200 plan, you know, 200
bucks a month.
So for 200 bucks a month it'slike having somebody run all
your PPC and that's hard to findan employee who can run your
PPC for 200 bucks a month.
So, you know, cost is a bigconsideration.
(18:07):
The second was what I mentionedin terms of the organic rankings
and managing that profitabilityfor you.
And then the third is justreally how uh, you know how it's
just really dynamic in terms ofthe campaigns it's building.
So it's not just like runningone campaign, it's going to run
and create a series of campaigns.
And then one thing it also doesis it will automatically do
things for you that you don'tneed to do manually, like in the
past I would manually have togo through and look at like
(18:28):
converting, high convertingsearch terms, and I would take
those search terms and put themin new campaigns and just to get
more granular and increaseprofitability.
And the software will do allthat automatically.
It'll identify search termsthat are actual customer search
terms that are converting, orASINs that are converting, and
it will create new campaigns totarget those specifically to
(18:48):
help you get a little bit moreprofitable and scale up.
Adam Shaffer (18:52):
So for a brand you can have multiple different
campaigns running and it decidesif it's a new campaign or not,
or you decide.
Kusha Karvandi (19:02):
No, it will decide.
It will basically create aseries of campaigns when you
launch.
Basically, we have like onetype of theme.
It's called the quick starttheme.
That's the initial theme thatyou'll see in there when you
sign up, and this is designedfor someone to basically I don't
want to say set it and forgetit, you know, because you never
really want to do that with yourads, but that's kind of what
it's designed to do.
(19:22):
Is you just somebody who wantsto really focus on what they're
good at, which is the marketingand the product development and
the customer service and thatsort of thing?
Focus on that.
Let the software really focuson the ads.
And so you just click a button,you select your SKU that you
want to advertise and all youhave to do is basically put in
like a couple of parameters likeminimum, maximum bid and
(19:45):
basically your target ACOS forthat, based on whatever your
margins are, and that's it.
You click that, it turns thatSKU on and now, with that SKU on
being in advertised mode, withthat being enabled, the system
will start creating newcampaigns for that specific SKU
and then, over time, it willkeep creating new campaigns
based on the performance.
Adam Shaffer (20:05):
And the level of expertise within Seller, Central
and advertising.
Is this for a basic novice thatcould get it going and start
using this thing?
Kusha Karvandi (20:15):
Yeah, I designed it for beginners beginner to
intermediate that's who it'sreally mainly designed for.
But then even myself, beingmuch more of an advanced seller,
having done this for a longtime, I've added other things in
there, other customizations.
If you want to get moregranular, you can.
You can actually go in there.
If you want something that's,let's say, you're a beginner and
(20:37):
you're like, okay, I just wantto get this up and running, you
can get it up and running in acouple clicks.
You just pick your skew, youadd those three, three variables
like your, your min and max bidand a target, a cost, and
you're up and running.
That's it.
Uh, but if you're somebody who'slike you, know what I need to
get a little more granular, Iwant to get in there.
I have a little more experiencewith advertising.
You can do that.
You can go in there and you cantarget certain competitors.
(20:57):
You can put in things aroundyour brand.
If you want to target certainkeywords, you can put negative
targeting.
If you're like, okay, I want itfor sure, I want to have
negative exact for these certainkeywords or ASINs, you can go
in there and do day parting,seasonality, all of that you can
go in there.
Adam Shaffer (21:14):
Could you have it do that for you, like, without
knowing how to do the dayparting, without knowing how to
do the negative campaigns.
Could you say I want a negativecampaign, I want to do day
parting and it figures it out?
Kusha Karvandi (21:29):
Some of that it will do by itself, but the
seasonality and the day partingis not automated yet.
That's something that you know.
Yeah, I haven't reallyexperimented enough around that
to know whether that would helpor hurt, and so, yeah, I don't
know if we want to launch withthat yet.
But again, yeah, this is all.
This is a feedback orientedsystem.
So if users say, hey, you knowwhat I would love if you could
make some of these features youknow more automated, then we
will certainly do that and we'regoing to obviously be gathering
(21:49):
a lot of data too and we'll beable to see you know hey, this
is this would be a safe featureto make automated.
Adam Shaffer (21:55):
Do you find the people that are using it
continually ask more questions,or do you think they're figuring
it out on their own?
Do they need?
Kusha Karvandi (22:04):
hand-holding.
Yeah, no, I would say mostsellers are pretty silent when
it comes to their business.
They don't really ask forenough help and I'm always happy
to be a resource and, you know,and help the community and
anybody who's watching this.
To anyone who reaches out, I'mhappy to answer any questions
and help in any way I can,because I know the struggle.
(22:24):
I know, especially as I've seena lot of these forums and
Facebook groups the majority ofcomments and sentiment I see
around selling on Amazon.
Just it gets worse over time.
People get more frustrated andI know the feeling of the black
hole of seller support, thesabotage by the Chinese sellers
and such and other sellers whoyou know seem to play by a
different set of rules, and so Iknow the feeling.
(22:46):
And so I feel like, because ofall that, that sellers are
generally kind of just doing iton their own.
They're not asking for help,but definitely ask for help.
I think that's a mistake.
It's always good to you know,figure out what needs to be done
and don't use the Amazon sellerforums as a way to get help, or
, you know, or ask questions orvent.
I feel like that's a prettyuseless place.
Adam Shaffer (23:06):
Oh wow, that's good advice and so when it comes
like some of the softwarethat's out there, you can get
like a managed version of itwhere they help you and they'll
have somebody.
Do you do that or you don'tneed to do that with your
software.
Kusha Karvandi (23:19):
With no, with ours, you don't.
I mean we do offer, you know,different plans and some of them
offer, you know, higher levelsof support.
But, honestly, in any, any ofthe packages right now, you know
, because we are fairly newright now, you know you'll have
increased, you know, basicallyaccess to me and my customer
support team.
So, anything that somebodyneeds, if they have questions,
you know we're going to offerthem more support.
If they're on the higher plan,obviously they're going to have
(23:41):
a little bit more.
You know, facetime with us andthat sort of thing if they need
it.
But honestly, they don't reallyneed it.
I mean, it's prettystraightforward.
The functionality of thesoftware is designed.
I designed it to be very, veryeasy because I didn't want it to
be so complex where you getconfused, and because when you
get confused, you don't, youdon't take action, you get
paralyzed.
So I wanted something where youcan, you know, get in there,
(24:02):
you know, select your SKU andget going and that's it, and let
the system do the work for you,cause that's really what the
point of the software is.
Adam Shaffer (24:09):
So a lot of this is.
You know we're talking aboutPPC.
Is there any advice to thelisteners and sellers on amazon
on uh affecting their organicrankings, like is it just to
make sure your content's good,and blah, blah, blah?
What anything you could say onorganic?
Kusha Karvandi (24:28):
yeah.
So on the organic side, themain thing, you know amazon's
algorithm is always changing andI think they are integrating
some more ai into theiralgorithm.
I've noticed like when yousearch in the search bar, for
example, I've noticed it willstart to try to show it'll
auto-populate products that arepurchased in the past and that
sort of thing.
It'll try to do that.
So I noticed they're doing somenew things, so it's always
changing.
(24:48):
But I think that what stillworks is making sure that you
have your primary keywords inyour title and the first bullet
point, your primary keywords inyour title and the first bullet
point.
I think those are stillweighted the highest.
I don't think you need torepeat keywords.
I see a lot of sellers do that,where they repeat certain
keywords or phrases.
I don't think that's necessary.
I think it just needs to be inthere, that the word itself
needs to be in there, and then,yeah, and then making sure.
(25:09):
The most important thing is justgoing through and scrolling
Amazon and compare, hedge yoursearch result of your product to
the other search results.
How does the image look If allthe other images are kind of
full width and the product takesup a ton of the space of the
pixels of the image, then maybeyou should do the same thing, or
(25:30):
maybe you should do somethingslightly different to stand out.
So you got to look at thatimage, because the image affects
the click-through rate a ton.
Then the title would probablybe the second thing in terms of
the copy, not just the keywordsbut the actual copy to catch the
person's attention.
What are the keywords that needto be in there, that maybe
they're not super high rankingkeywords but they might help you
convert because they helpcreate clarity in your product.
(25:52):
So having those keywords there.
And then I would say the otherthing would be price point.
You know how are you priced andyou know I saw somebody made a
suggestion I saw a while backthat I think is actually a great
suggestion which is usingclippable coupons with a high
percentage discount 30 to 50percent and the reasoning behind
it the theory was that a goodchunk of Amazon customers don't
(26:17):
remember to actually like clipthe coupon.
So they yeah.
So you get a huge click throughrate and conversion, but it
doesn't actually impact yourmargin as much because maybe
only half the people actuallyclip the coupon.
Adam Shaffer (26:31):
Yeah, no, I that that I get for sure that's a
good one.
And what?
What about the actual A-pluscontent?
I mean you would use all themodules, fill it out, if you
could get the premium content.
Get the premium content.
Yeah, the premium is prettyeasy to qualify for.
Kusha Karvandi (26:46):
Yeah, it used to be a little bit more difficult
to get the premium and then overtime they made it pretty easy.
I think pretty much anyone canget it.
If you have a registered brand,you can get premium A plus.
I think you have to have whatlike five A plus regular A plus
submissions and a brand story onall your ASINs and then that's
it.
And one thing one little hackaround that too is that you can
just duplicate.
(27:06):
Like if you don't have fiveproducts and you're like well,
how am I going to get five Aplus submissions?
I only have one product, youcan literally just duplicate the
single A plus page you have,duplicate it five times and
it'll get approved instantly andthat will qualify for your five
submissions.
Then all you need is your brandstory, apply it to all your
ASINs that it applies to andthat's pretty much it.
I think every Friday theyautomatically assess and you'll
(27:27):
get it unlocked.
But that premium A-plus is amust because I think that makes
the brand stand out so much more, especially if you're in a
competitive space.
I think that's really key,especially having video in there
.
Video is key because noteveryone will see or watch the
video in the carousel area.
So I think having video inthere is really, really key,
having a comparison table if youhave other products to be able
(27:49):
to cross sell and upsell,because not everyone will know
that you have other products atdifferent price points
potentially.
I think that's a big part of it.
The other thing I will mentiontoo is that if you have issues
with like hijackers and thatsort of thing, one hack I'll
mention is that you can enrollin like transparency and in
transparency.
You just need to have aregistered trademark.
(28:10):
It basically in any country andI didn't know this because
transparency is a, is a, youknow, is a global program so you
can get a red like in the US ifyou get a registered trademark.
It could take you like a yearor two to get a registered
trademark, even if you try tolike fast track it.
It takes a long time, but inGermany you can get a registered
trademark in like two weeks.
(28:30):
Their system's a little bitdifferent there.
You can basically file for it.
I think I got mine like threedays.
It was registered in like threedays in Germany and then what
they do in Germany is like it'sregistered, so you can then use
that registration to get Amazontransparency and then protect
your brand from hijackers andthat sort of thing.
And then, I think like a month,within a month or something
like that, or two months, theypublish it for opposition.
(28:52):
So as long as nobody tries tonegate your trademark
registration there, it basicallyregisters and you're good.
So that's one kind of hack.
You can't really use thattrademark to enforce your brand,
like if somebody's infringingon your trademark or something
in the US marketplace.
You can't use a Germantrademark to do that, but at the
very least it's for brandregistry.
Adam Shaffer (29:10):
It's fine right.
Kusha Karvandi (29:11):
Yeah, you can use it at least for transparency
.
Adam Shaffer (29:14):
Yeah, we use IP Accelerator in the US to get the
brands going.
It takes you can, you don'thave the trademark.
It still takes a while to getthe trademark, but you can be up
and running on brand registrypretty quick.
But going to transparency, youjust got me thinking like so we
work with some brands that again, so we don't actually make
products Like we're not theprivate label, we're an
(29:35):
accelerator.
So we'll work with brands andhelp them sell on Amazon and
several of our brands are in thetransparency program.
But it's different.
You know, there's somethingwhere there's serial numbers and
there's something with thislabels.
Are you talking about thebarcode labels or you're talking
about the serial numbers?
Kusha Karvandi (29:51):
Well, it's kind of.
But with transparency, what youhave to do is it's a serialized
system.
So what they do is like, likewith the regular UPC barcode on
your product, upc barcode is thesame on all your units.
If you send a thousand units toAmazon, that barcode is exactly
the same.
With uh, with transparency thebarcode, it's going to show a
number on it.
That number is basically yourUPC Usually it's what I see and
(30:13):
that you that number looks thesame.
So it might at first glance.
You look at it and you're likewell, all these barcodes are the
same, these transparencybarcodes, but it's actually a QR
code and the QR code is unique,so it's serialized.
So every unit has a differentserialized QR code, even though
the number below it on thatsticker, that transparency
sticker, looks the same.
So yeah, it's a serializedsystem that basically every
(30:37):
single one is unique.
So when you enroll intransparency, you have to go
into the transparency portal andthen you have to basically
download um, however many codesyou need uh for your next order.
So if you're going to send,let's say, 10,000 units to FBA,
you go into your transparency,you request 10,000 codes and
then it will give you two files.
It'll give you a CSV and a PDF.
(30:57):
You send that to the printingcompany I use, like Avery in
China.
You send it to Avery Denison,they'll print it and they'll
ship it to your supplier inChina, and then that supplier
will then put it on all yourproducts, for example, and then
they'll send it to FDA.
Adam Shaffer (31:13):
I think I'm a big believer in it.
It's just something that youneed to you know agree that
you're going to you know committo, because if you're selling in
other channels it's not alwaysthat easy.
But I agree, I love it.
You've been helping some of thebad actors on Amazon, so your
(31:38):
product is really focused onoptimizing advertising, getting
the ranking up.
But I'm sure you were sayingearlier and I cut you off that
there are some other featuresthat you're building out.
So what are some of the coolnew stuff that you're going to
add?
Kusha Karvandi (31:52):
Yeah.
So I have things like that.
Well, just in terms of rankings, if somebody's like oh, you
know what, I really want tofocus on these keywords, just to
rank quickly.
I want launching a new brand,I'm launching a new product and
I want to get these ranked forthese particular keywords as
fast as possible.
No-transcript.
(32:26):
Want to go after dog leash,which is extremely competitive
because a short tail, you knowhigh volume keyword.
Maybe the system is going tolaunch a ton of campaigns around
these longer tail keywords thatare semantically related.
You know best dog leash, dogleash for large dogs, dog leash
for small dogs, so forth.
So you have a long list ofthese variety of keywords that
(32:46):
contain variations of thosewords in them and the idea is
that it's basically sendingsignals to Amazon's algorithm
that you're relevant for theprimary keyword and it tends to
work really well.
I mean, I've seen you rankingwell, you know doing this
manually.
I've seen ranking well forshort tail target keywords
without even targeting thatkeyword directly, like without
(33:07):
actually even and I just want tomake sure I got it right.
Adam Shaffer (33:10):
So you're saying, by targeting these long tail
words, you'll get the short tail?
Kusha Karvandi (33:14):
Exactly, yeah, amazon's finding you relevant
for the short tail keyword whenyou're getting sales through the
long tail keywords.
Adam Shaffer (33:20):
Okay, I didn't realize that and so you've
probably seen it all.
What are some of the biggestmistakes, biggest advertising
mistakes people make, of course,when they're not using your
software.
Kusha Karvandi (33:31):
Yeah, I would say the most important thing.
This is the most importantthing by far.
Whether you're focusing onrankings or you're focusing on
getting immediate visibilitythrough PPC, you got to make
sure that your listing iscompetitive and so in the
beginning, PPC is a great placeto get your visibility and get
traffic, because you could be atthe top of page one through PPC
(33:52):
from day one without runningany rankings campaign, because
you're just paying per clickyour advertising.
So in that case you can be alittle bit more aggressive.
I would try to be aggressive inyour pricing or your offer.
Maybe you have bonuses orsomething like that to make your
offer more appealing.
Or just make sure yourcreatives are really good.
You have really strongcreatives video creatives, as
(34:13):
seen in badges, whatever it maybe to have a lot of social proof
to maximize the conversion.
Because in the beginning, themistakes people make is they try
to go after rankings andkeywords where they're not
competitive enough, Like all theother.
Competition at the top of thepage has like 10,000 reviews and
they have like two reviews.
So that's the one piece ofadvice no one gave me in the
beginning that I wish I hadknown before.
(34:34):
I wasted a lot of money ontrying to rank is.
I remember ranking products inthe beginning being like, wow,
I'm ranking like top of the page, number one or top five, and
then like a few days later Iwould drop completely off the
face of the earth.
I'm like what happened?
I was ranking like why isn't itworking?
But I didn't realize that like,just because you rank doesn't
mean you're going to stick, evenif you're selling the exact
same thing as somebody else,Even if it's slightly better
(34:56):
than the competition, even ifthe price point unless the price
point is like drasticallybetter, and even then you still
have to have a comparable numberof reviews.
So I think the thresholds areusually around, like, if
somebody has like 20 or 30reviews, you need probably at
least like 10 reviews.
You know, to be competitive, Ifthe top competition has, you
know, somewhere around 100 to900, some reviews, you need at
(35:20):
least 100 reviews to becompetitive.
If they have over 1000, youneed to have at least 1000 and
so forth, because it's reallythe psychology, Like if someone
goes to Amazon, they search akeyword and all the competitors
have, let's say, 5000 reviews.
You know if you're at like 100reviews, you're probably not
going to take away a lot ofmarket share and it'll be hard
to maintain those rankings.
(35:40):
You're going to have to berunning continual a variety of
different campaigns to keep andmaintain that rank at that level
.
So and that may, not be aproblem.
Adam Shaffer (35:49):
So, kusha, you brought it up, man, but how do
you go get all those greatreviews?
Because that's not a simpletask.
Kusha Karvandi (35:55):
Yeah, I mean.
So basically, in the beginning,you really got to leverage as
many sources as you can, andTikTok is a great channel.
A lot of people are talkingabout TikTok as being the gold
rush, although I am a littleconcerned around maybe TikTok
being banned, and so I wouldn'trely too much on just TikTok.
Who knows, don't know if that'sgoing to be there or not.
Adam Shaffer (36:14):
But social media.
Kusha Karvandi (36:15):
Yeah, social media influencers are a great
way.
In the beginning you have to becareful because I know a lot of
sellers are reaching out toinfluencers directly to get
reviews.
So I'm sure a lot of thosebuyer accounts are flagged and
you don't want those buyeraccounts associated with your
seller account if these peopleare leaving reviews on
everyone's products and thatsort of thing and it's going to
negatively associate with youraccount.
(36:36):
So you want to try to avoidthat.
What I would recommend is tryto go after these micro
influencers who aren't reallyinfluencers at all, People who
have like maybe a hundredfriends on TikTok or a hundred
followers, you know, maybe undera thousand I would say
threshold in terms of followerson like Instagram or TikTok.
Those would be a good place tostart because those are people
who are, like you know, pseudoinfluencers.
They just have mostly friendsand family that are following
(36:58):
them.
Adam Shaffer (36:58):
So back to the long tail again, right?
Kusha Karvandi (37:00):
Yep, exactly, exactly.
You go after those, you getthem to buy and you know, and
then, um, you know, get them toask them to leave a review as
well.
That would be a good place toget that going.
Vine can be good too, but Ihave found that Vine can
backfire.
If you're, if you're veryconfident in your product, you
know and you have a lot of good,if you have good product
packaging and inserts and thingsthat really maximize the
(37:21):
customer experience.
Because Vine, I feel like, islike 50% of Vine, is around the
unboxing experience.
Like they're judging you basedon the unboxing, I feel like,
and if they have a greatunboxing, like that's like half
the battle.
They're like, okay, I love thisproduct, that'll get you like
at least four stars right there.
But in general, I found that,like Vine, reviewers generally
tend to be more critical thanthey used to be, and so you know
(37:44):
you can get up to 30 reviewsinitially with Vine, and the two
issues are that number one, itcould take, you know, god knows
how long before you get those 30reviews.
There's no way to really controlhow long that will happen, what
timeframe.
And number two, like you mightget all four star reviews and if
your competitors are all likefour and a half stars or higher,
that's not going to really helpyou competitively.
So that can be an issue initself and sometimes I've seen
(38:06):
it backfire, where you get a lotof one star reviews for some
reason from Vine, so that can betough too, and those those
reviews are weighted a littlebit higher, so it can be hard to
overcome that, even if youstart getting a lot of organic
reviews over time.
So I think definitely theinfluencer route is a good way
to get going.
And then obviously, thelong-term evergreen.
You need to have some type offunnel, like you need to have
something through your product,your packaging, your inserts
(38:27):
that leads them through sometype of a funnel in order to be
able to interact with thecustomer and ask them to leave a
review.
I think that's really the onlyway long-term.
Adam Shaffer (38:36):
And you talked about it earlier.
You got started on Amazon, butdid you do Shopify?
Kusha Karvandi (38:48):
I did yeah, I still do Shopify and you know,
one brand that might be aFarbans brand was like half
Shopify and I mean I like theplatform a lot.
Adam Shaffer (38:52):
I mean I like Amazon for the audience it
brings you, but I love thefreedom of Shopify and, you know
, I think maybe your conversionrate will be better on Amazon
just because it's Amazon andpeople are there and people
might not know your site.
But I do think there'ssomething about having that
relationship with the customers.
Kusha Karvandi (39:09):
Yeah, it is, it's way and it's like you know,
it's a definitely it's a longerterm strategy because it's
definitely a learning curve andit's completely different than
Amazon, like learning how tobuild your Shopify.
Like, if you think about Amazon, amazon's already kind of laid
out the whole page for you.
So in terms of the userexperience, the customer
conversion experience, all ofthat's already taken care of for
you With Shopify.
(39:30):
You know, obviously Shopifydoes some of that, but you have
to, like, design it.
You have to design your theme.
You've got to design the wholepage, the creatives and
everything.
You have to design your theme.
You got to design the wholepage, the creatives and
everything.
You got to do all of that.
Um.
And then you got to think aboutfulfillment, like, are you going
to use fba to fulfill yourshopify orders?
Are you going to use, like,ship bob or something like that
to fulfill?
You have to think about that.
You have to think aboutcustomer service with fba.
(39:50):
Fba is doing mostly customerservice and in the rare instance
they the customer needs morethan they reach out to the
seller.
But even even with my brandsthat was doing you know my one
brand that was doing like eightfigures I would only get like a
handful of messages a daythrough Seller Central.
I think Amazon FBA was handlingmost of the customer service
outreach.
Adam Shaffer (40:10):
And Shopify, you're on your own.
And again I digress, but I meanI do like Shopify.
So, like, circling back to theKazam platform, like I'm
definitely going to try it, Iwant to, I want to do it.
So if, if somebody wants to try, it is there, is there like a X
amount of free day trial, or isit?
Is there a monthly you can getin and out if you don't like it?
(40:33):
And is there a monthly spendthat you have to spend in
advertising to use it?
Kusha Karvandi (40:41):
Yeah, so basically you know you have
every.
We have three plans.
Every plan it's kind of basedon how much you spend on Amazon
now in terms of basically likethe thresholds for the different
plans, but basically ourstartup plans 197 a month and
it's up to $10,000 in monthly adspend.
And then the next one up is$397 a month, that's up to
$50,000 a month in ad spend,which is probably I mean, those
(41:02):
two are going to cover themajority sellers.
And then the third plan, whichis $547 a month.
That covers up to $200,000 amonth in monthly ad spend.
And all three plans come with aseven-day trial.
Adam Shaffer (41:13):
So you get a seven-day trial.
Do you have to sign up for ayear, or can?
Kusha Karvandi (41:16):
you do a month to month.
Yeah, and they're all month tomonth.
There's no yearly contract.
Adam Shaffer (41:27):
That's great, Okay , Well, I'd love to start
wrapping it up, but I reallywould love to get some final
thoughts for people that areeither getting in or on the
Amazon platform.
You know, maybe some uh, yourwords of wisdom.
Kusha Karvandi (41:37):
Yeah, I would say the the the one thing for me
.
I've never done drop shippingor wholesaling.
I know that might work for somepeople.
Maybe get, especially withwholesale, if you can get
contracts with certain suppliers, certain brands.
You know that I think thatmight be lucrative.
It's not something I've everreally been successful with.
Uh, my success has always beenin, like I would say, stay in
your niche like something youknow.
You have to stay in your circleof competence.
(41:58):
A mentor of mine called it likeyour success signature you stay
in your niche like somethingyou know.
You have to stay in your circleof competence.
A mentor of mine called it likeyour success signature.
You stay in that realm of likewhat you know really well.
And mine's always been healthand fitness and I find that,
like, if I were trying to gointo like office products or
something random like that, Iwouldn't be as successful in
those niches because I don'thave the depth of knowledge that
I've garnered through healthand fitness.
(42:18):
You know I have, like you know,almost two dozen certifications
as a trainer, that I've trainedover 10,000 one-on-one hours
with clients back in the day.
So I have a lot of knowledgearound where the trends are
going with health and fitness,that I can be kind of ahead of
the curve, kind of like theWayne Gretzky of like go where
the puck is going to be, notwhere it is.
(42:42):
That's, that's the mindset youhave to have is, like, what's an
area of your expertise, thatyou, you have knowledge, that
you almost have that insiderknowledge that other sellers
won't have.
Especially the Chinese sellerswon't have that depth of
knowledge.
Usually they're going to justkind of copy a product, whatever
the top seller is in a category.
They're going to kind of copythat and undercut them in price,
that sort of thing usually.
So try to go into it knowinglike, okay, can I find a niche?
(43:02):
Number one, that I have thatintricate knowledge.
Number two, I would recommendstarting with private label.
You know, to keep your costslow, to test the viability.
So you find a supplier, whetherit be through Alibaba or a
trading company, whatever it maybe, and then just launch
something with a low MOQ that'scomparable to the competition,
ideally with something to makeit a little bit better.
(43:22):
So you're not just competing onprice.
Make it a little bit better.
Add a bonus, multi-pack,whatever it may be, add
something to it to make it alittle bit better, or maybe a
small design element to make ita little bit better, without
investing heavily in tooling andmolds.
Get it going and then, onceyou've proven it after the first
month or two, then you can sayyou know what?
(43:43):
Okay, I'm going to now workwith some engineers.
You can hire some engineers andget the engineers to create the
CAD files for you, which arethese kind of manufacturing
files, design files, that youcan then give to your factory
and say hey, are you able tocustomize this product further?
I want to make these changes orI want to make this new version
.
What would that cost?
To create the mold and thetooling to manufacture this?
(44:04):
That would be the next step.
And then you'd want to startbuilding some intellectual
property around that Like.
One thing I would recommendfrom there on top of that would
be to sell the product for alittle bit first, before you
invest in the intellectualproperty, unless you're, like
certain that it's going to bereally valuable.
Because I've invested in a lotof things ideas that the
(44:25):
products were just kind of so-soor didn't sell very well, and
it was kind of too late.
I'd already invested so muchinto molds and tooling and IP,
and then I had to just basicallyphase out the product because
the market didn't really care.
So it's better to let peoplevote with their wallets on
Amazon.
If they buy the product, ifthey like it, then you know okay
, this is the product that Ishould go get a designer utility
(44:46):
patent for it, and so forth.
Adam Shaffer (44:48):
And you think it's not too late for somebody to
start up on Amazon today.
It's not too busy, not toocrowded.
Kusha Karvandi (44:52):
No, no, I think it's a good and a bad thing,
because it's definitely muchharder than it was, obviously
five, 10 years ago.
It's definitely much morechallenging with more
competition.
But the good thing is, if youcan be patient and you're
willing to take the time tolearn and look at this as a slow
game, it's not going to beovernight.
It might take you six to 12months to get this thing really
going and profitable, more orless.
(45:14):
So if you look at it from thatperspective that hey, this is
not the get rich quick schemethen I do think that this is a
very viable strategy, becauseonce you're in, then a lot of
other people on the other end ofit, on the other side, a lot of
people are going to give up.
And now you're in, you'resuccessful, you're making money,
while everyone else is like, oh, amazon's too hard, it doesn't
work anymore, I give up.
(45:46):
So it's almost a good thing now,whereas in the past it's like
everyone was jumping in becauseit was so easy, yeah, so so,
kusha, how do people contact youand how do they learn more
about Kazam?
Tell us about ways to get toyou.
Yeah, so our website isgokazamcom, that's
G-O-K-A-Z-A-Mcom, and then myemail address.
You can email me at info at gokazamcom.
Uh, and those you know.
Any questions for me will berouted to me and I'm really
happy to help really answeranything.
Uh, you know that that peoplehave questions about.
(46:07):
I also have ownership in anagency called launch titanscom.
Launch titans does it's like afull service agency as well, and
one thing we help with is, youknow, helping people basically
build different funnels, likecustomer engagement funnels, as
well as with engineering.
If somebody's like, hey, youknow what, how do I take my
private label product and thenbuild some concepts and ideas to
(46:29):
make it better, and then, onceI have that idea, how do I
actually make the manufacturingfiles, the CAD files, the
tooling, how do I find thefactory?
We can help with all that aswell.
Adam Shaffer (46:38):
That's awesome.
So you're an inspiration to meand to everybody that's
listening.
So thanks so much for yourinformation.
We wish you luck and we'redefinitely I'm definitely going
to start trying your software.
So thank you so much forjoining us today and you know
let's keep on talking becauseyou know there's definitely a
lot there, and please come backand join us again.
Kusha Karvandi (47:01):
Awesome.
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Thank you for watching another episode of the
Planet Amazon podcast, where wetalk all things Amazon.
If you want to learn about howto accelerate your sales on
Amazon, visit Phelps United'swebsite at phelpsunitedcom.
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