Welcome to the Physical Product Business Podcast, where you  learn from founders and elite marketers whom I interview to help you build and scale your Physical Product business.

In this episode, we welcome Kiri Masters, an entrepreneur, a self-identified Amazon junkie and the founder of Bobsled Marketing.

Bobsled Marketing is a team of experts that has helped established brands launch their products on Amazon. To date, they have already launched over 200 products.

Aside from launching Bobsled Marketing, Kiri Masters will share about her experience. Learn about how she started a bootstrapped product business, I Like That Lamp in 2013, started selling on Amazon in 2014 and finally started Bobsled Marketing.

Making her a finalist for the Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year Category of the Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

In this episode, you will hear:

This is episode is mostly about how to launch your brand. You will hear about how you can establish a brand and how to leverage to get yourself out there.

Kiri Masters will take us for a sneak peek of her book, The Amazon Expansion Plan. The book specifically covers:

-how to boost your sales on Amazon.

-how to properly optimize your product listings.

-how to protect your brand.

-how to leverage Amazon’s international marketplaces in the UK, Europe, Canada to expand your reach outside of the US.

Kiri will also share with us the other option of Amazon that not all of you might be aware of, this is the Amazon Vendor Express, where you will be able to consign your products and the product listing from Amazon will show that it is fulfilled by them.

She will talk about the pros and cons of the platform, why you should choose to start there instead of Amazon FBA and vice versa.

Guest’s Top Tips:

• Let’s jump over the meat of the episode. These are the top tips that you can expect from this episode.
• Kiri will tell us about how to build your brand not only on Amazon. Where it is better to kick start it first and why. As she says “Do not put your eggs in one basket.”
• Treat this as any of the opportunities you see to earn online. If you are not serious enough, and you are not ready to do the learning and some work, then the door will eventually close in your face.
• If you are looking for ways to validate your product, she will share about the benefits of using crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, and how it can benefit you.
• Unless you want to go hands-on and fully consumer direct selling your products on your website, on social media, on other channels, then you should make sure that you will profit even on a wholesale basis. Kiri will tell you why.
• When building a brand, having prior Amazon listings of your products can make or break what you are trying to do.

Parting advice – The Lightning Round

Hiring People

Kiri hires slowly. She uses the Topgrading process wherein she creates the highest quality workforce. In every hire, she makes sure that the person is the best candidate for the job, the skills, and the salary level and that he or she will add value to the team.

Indispensable Tools

She uses Google apps and Slack, she thinks she cannot do without these two.

Recommended Resources and Links

She advice people to read Napoleon Hill books, not necessarily books about business. But these books will teach you about your potential as a human being, because after all, it all starts with your mindset and your potential.

Key Takeaways (with timestamps)

(15:45) Building a brand outside of Amazon is a terrific idea.

(22:33) It just about doing the math, is the profit margin so much greater in using FBA etc.

(27:29) If you plan to sell your products in retail stores, they will look up your products on Amazon and look for reviews first.

(31:54) It can be beneficial to have a vendor and a central account. Because there will be some products that you won’t be able to sell on central and vice versa

(35:18) Forecastly, an inventory software. Their algorithms are advanced regarding inventory.

(36:42) Germany is the next biggest marketplace after the US for Amazon.

(41:27) Brand registry is a step that everyone should take