Q4 Is Closer Than You Think: A Guide to Selling Seasonal Products (Follow the Data Ep. 30)

Q4 Is Closer Than You Think: A Guide to Selling Seasonal Products (Follow the Data Ep. 30)

It’s never too early to start thinking about Q4. And with Q2 already under way, we’re one quarter closer to the holiday season. As Q4 approaches, you may want to consider sourcing seasonal products. Seasonal products aren’t for everyone, and they certainly aren’t for the faint of heart. But if you choose to take the risk, there’s potential for huge reward.

Show Notes

  • Find a seasonal product to sell using Product Discovery. Use filters like Best Sales Period to look at seasonal products to jump on now.
  • Serious about planning ahead for Q4 and potential seasonal products? Check out our Q4 Prep Guide.
  • Successful seasonal product have successfully written listings. Make sure yours is optimized whether with Keyword Research or a professionally written listing
  • Don’t forget your product photos. You can always ask your supplier to send a production quality sample ahead of your inventory to make sure your photos are ready to go before you launch.
  • Once you have a seasonal product in FBA, you need to get ranking quickly.  Set up a launch the right way with the help of an Amazon Seller Coach. Contact one today at service@viral-launch.com
  • Wondering how Keyword Research works? Let Amazon expert, Cameron Yoder, walk you through the tool.
  • Give us a call, and you could be featured on the podcast. Our number is (317) 721-6590

Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
Nice.

CASEY GAUSS:
Did you see my fact checking on George from MerchantWords?

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, I did. That was funny, dude. Come on. Did you put that – yeah, you put that in –

CASEY GAUSS:
The marketing chat.

CAMERON YODER:
– in the marketing chat. That –

CASEY GAUSS:
I’m just a fact checker. BS caller on that.

CAMERON YODER:
[Unintelligible 0:00:17.8] just because no product is selling more than 30 units per month on average. Swinger anklets.

CASEY GAUSS:
Come on.

CAMERON YODER:
Wife. Anklets, oh man.

CASEY GAUSS:
Hot wife anklets. Nobody is searching that, bro.

CAMERON YODER:
Dude. Wait. How did you – oh, no, never mind. That dude –

CASEY GAUSS:
Get the heck out of here.

CAMERON YODER:
Come on, man. Swinger anklets. Are you kidding me? Ugh, man.

CASEY GAUSS:
Good?
CAMERON YODER:
Yeah.

CASEY GAUSS:
Ready?

CAMERON YODER:
Yep.

CASEY GAUSS:
It’s never too early to start thinking about Q4, and with Q2 already underway we’re one quarter closer to the holiday season.

CAMERON YODER:
As Q4 approaches you may want to consider sourcing a seasonal product. Seasonal products aren’t for everyone, and they certainly are not for the faint of heart. But if you choose to – oh, whoa, to the – but if you choose to take the risk there’s potential for huge reward. I’m Cameron Yoder.

CASEY GAUSS:
And I’m Casey Gauss, your hosts for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with more than 8000 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

CAMERON YODER:
In this episode we are going to walk you through the timeline for sourcing a seasonal product using a Q4 example. You’ll see it’s not too early to start your product research if you’re serious about selling a holiday, quote, hotcake. We’ll also talk you through basic inventory planning so you can stay in stock all season and outsell the competition. Let’s get started.

CASEY GAUSS:
Let’s find those hotcakes, Cam.

CAMERON YODER:
Hotcakes. Let’s get us some – let’s get some holiday hotcakes in here. It’s almost comparable to bread.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, no pun intended – pun intended.

CAMERON YODER:
No pun intended, yes.

CASEY GAUSS:
All right. What’s up guys? So Q1 just got done. Early April, you know, it’s like April 10th today, so first third of the first month of the second quarter of the year. So you know, when Cam and Becca came to me with this idea I was like guys, it seems a little bit early for that, but Cam was walking me through kind of the timelines and, you know, I don’t know if we’ve talked about just how great seasonal items can be or, you know, a lot of people – I think a lot of the kind of traditional sourcing gurus say stay away from seasonal products. I 100% understand why. The problem is that there is so much opportunity for seasonal products. We see some guys just absolutely killing it. I don’t have the stats, but there’s this guy, Justin Ligeri. If you want to check him out he claims to be the seller to have the first one million-dollar day. I almost want to say that he had a two million-dollar day, but anyways, he at one point had the largest two-week payout. I mean this guy is just killing it because he focuses, I think, almost exclusively on seasonal items, and it’s because people come in, and they spend an insane amount of money for Halloween. I think that’s his biggest month, or his biggest season. People spend just crazy amounts of money on these seasonal items, and there is so much opportunity. The downside is that it is seasonal, right? So if you are selling Santa hats you’re probably not selling Santa hats very well in July. So if you say, you know, I’m going to sell 500 Santa hats a month and you plan out, you know, six months of inventory, 12 months of inventory, you’re going to be sadly mistaken come, you know, July, June, you know, August or whatever, like when sales aren’t there. So if you are doing this you need to take a very data-driven approach so that you are making the right decisions.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, I really think that seasonal products in general – and seasonal does not – also, I don’t want you to necessarily think that seasonal means just in December, or just Christmas, because again, seasonal can mean, or does mean, a spike at really any point in time in the year that’s consistent, that follows a trend.

CASEY GAUSS:
Valentine’s Day-related products.

CAMERON YODER:
Or like Halloween.

CASEY GAUSS:
Pool floats.

CAMERON YODER:
Pool floats, yeah, yeah, Christmas, whatever, something that’s seasonal, spikes consistently at some point in time in the year. Like – seasonal products tend to follow the mantra of like high risk, high reward, right? And in this case you can use data to decrease the risk that you’re taking and really be smart and intentional about your decision. At the same time really the big risk – the goal of a seasonal product, not with everybody, but typically is to have enough inventory in Amazon, get to Page 1 for the primary search terms and sell your inventory during the full period of time, during typically the spike month or spike – whatever period of time that spike is, and then maybe not hold onto that inventory the rest of the year because that’s going to cost you money. So the challenge and the risk becomes ordering enough inventory at the right time, getting in Amazon at the right time, ranking for that item or those items at the right time, and having enough inventory, being in the right spot to capture those spike sales. That is – it’s a lot to think about, and I actually know just like – and Casey you probably know a lot of people that do pretty well with seasonal items. I actually know someone who has been selling seasonally and is actually trying to get out of selling seasonal items.

CASEY GAUSS:
Oh, why is that?

CAMERON YODER:
He is – according to him, he doesn’t really like the stress that comes with it.

CASEY GAUSS:
I see.

CAMERON YODER:
And it takes a lot of – and that’s not to deter you at all it. It just takes – for him, at least, it takes a lot of upkeep. Like he has to be really intentional, and it takes a lot to be intentional about ordering the right amount of inventory or knowing which market to go into. And so this, again like we said from the intro, is not for the faint of heart. However, it can get very profitable for you. And so okay, let’s actually talk through maybe just even the basic timeline of what you should expect when even just starting to think about a seasonal product. So when you’re starting – let’s say – let’s use – if you – actually, if you’re in a good spot to bring out your calendars on your phone, go ahead and bring out your calendar. We’re going to –

CASEY GAUSS:
If you guys are still into the physical calendars, you need to pull that off your wall.

CAMERON YODER:
Desk calendar also.

CASEY GAUSS:
Desk calendars.

CAMERON YODER:
Whiteboard calendars.

CASEY GAUSS:
Pocketbook calendars.

CAMERON YODER:
There are no excuses here. You should be able to find a calendar somewhere. Pull out your calendars. Let’s use December as our, let’s say, peak month. Let’s say we’re going, or we want to source a seasonal item in December, okay? If you’re sourcing a seasonal item in December and you don’t know what that seasonal item is, I am suggesting – we are suggesting that you start thinking about, you start researching seasonal items in April, which is this month, okay, and May. So that means that you should start researching your product, or you should start thinking about sourcing a seasonal product now and over the next – over the next month and over May itself.

CASEY GAUSS:
And I know – I do this as well – I know you’re all thinking. Oh no, I have plenty of time. Seasonal, like Q4 products, you know, really start picking up in December, late November so I have plenty, plenty of time. And if you’re that person I imagine you may have gotten hit with the Chinese New Year and maybe ran out of stock or, you know, maybe you had some issues and missed out on money because of that. Guys, first off, if you are finding the right products it is going to pay off like nothing you’ve ever seen before, hopefully, and anyways, now is the time. This is why we’re having this episode so early.

CAMERON YODER:
You really want a five- to six-month lead time for something like a December, a December-specific seasonal item. Now there are a couple different factors that go into that. Again, one of those is just kind of extended communication with manufacturers. You want to make sure that you’re finding the right product and also shipment times are extended, take a little bit longer leading up to the Christmas month or months just because a large majority of a bunch of sellers are trying to get their inventory into Amazon. So just to clarify, you do want – again, you want that five- to six-month lead time. However, that five- to six-month lead time should be – you want to give yourself basically five to six months before your inventory needs to be in Amazon. And I’m talking like the day that it gets into FBA. And if your – we’re going to speak a lot about in generalities for this episode. Like each market is going to be different, right? However, for most products that peak – most seasonal products that peak in December, typically sales start to pick up from kind of a low trend around October or November, typically maybe the second half of October.

CASEY GAUSS:
It really depends on your product.

CAMERON YODER:
It does. It does. And again, we’re just speaking in general.

CASEY GAUSS:
Candy canes I think pick up like end of September, like early October or something like that.

CAMERON YODER:
Yes, yes, and we’re going to talk about like maybe more specifically how to kind of catch that upswing. But generally let’s just say October is when your products should be in Amazon. So count five months back from October. One, two, three, four, five. That’s May. Six would be April, okay? So April-May is when you should start researching your seasonal products for December in order to get them in in October. So let’s break down – let’s break down these months, okay? April and May. This is what we’re suggesting that you’re performing all of your thought process, your maybe financial – you’re looking at your finances. You’re looking at your finances to see what you’re capable of, and you’re using something like a product research tool like Market Intelligence or Product Discovery to kind of try and find at least a list, or a list of options for products for you to source in December, okay?

June and July, those next two months, these would be basically – these would be months where you are contacting the manufacturers. So in this case you are – you found your products, right, and you’ve gone to something like Alibaba and you try to find a manufacturer for your seasonal product. And again, this is June and July. Ideally, ideally, again, every market is different, right, but ideally by the end of July you would be placing your order, right? And that means that you maybe pay your initial payment on something like Alibaba and you start production for whatever the number is going to be for your seasonal product. And that gives August and September and even some of October as a lead time for your products to be produced and ship, again, by – this is taking sea freight into consideration – and get them into Amazon hopefully by the end of October. And all things considered best case scenario you even maybe get your products in at the beginning of October or even a little bit before that. Like that month, having those products in that month will not hurt you. It’s always – in this case it’s better to have it in as early as possible I think but not too early, and that’s why kind of September and October are good months for you to get your products into Amazon. Once they’re in – oh, go ahead, Casey.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so the only thing with that is I believe October-something is when they have long-term storage fees. So they’ll really hit you with the storage fees. So like Cam was saying, you absolutely have to make sure that you understand when sales start coming in. And even like, so let’s say it’s at the very beginning of October but you want to, you know, avoid as many of those long-term storage fees as possible. Start using a third-party warehouse. This is something that we’re planning on talking about a bit more here coming up. But anyways, like be really strategic about it. Don’t necessarily just send it into Amazon. This is kind of as a side note. Or let’s say sales really pick up in November but you want to make sure that you’re able to get your inventory in, send it to, you know, a third-party warehouse or something like that.

CAMERON YODER:
There’s actually – a side side note – there actually is another option for people, and you need to check with your manufacturer to see if they can do this. But I know there’s a couple sellers who will produce – they’ll manufacture their items in the manufacturer’s place in China, and the manufacturer will store the items for them for a pretty low fee, or actually for free sometimes –

CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha.

CAMERON YODER:
– until they need it to ship.

CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha.

CAMERON YODER:
So if you can do that, I mean just even start that process as early as possible, and – well, whichever makes sense for you. It costs [money 0:13:29.8].

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, you also have to think from like capital gain tied up and everything.

CAMERON YODER:
But that’s just another option for you to consider as you’re producing items for seasonal products or even just in general. I know a lot of sellers who do that themselves. So we talked about – we talked about, we talked about – so again, generally, just generally, generally speaking, April this month like right now do your product research. May, do your product research. Maybe start conversations around the end of May, or June, or July, and then get your products ordered around July, maybe the end of July. Have them ship around that time, or like ordered – your order is in. Maybe they’re being manufactured and produced and shipped hopefully right after that period of time to get in around October.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and a lot of people are like okay, I need to sell the products that are going to kill it in for the Christmas period. What about Thanksgiving? What about October? What about all the other holidays that come through that? What about all the lesser-known holidays that are coming through those times? Like definitely – again, there is so much money to be made for those Christmas sales, but there’s so much money to be made for every other holiday. So just want to keep reminding you not to – like for the example, it’s a lot easier for us to use like Christmas as that example, but there’s so much option – so many options out there.

CAMERON YODER:
It’s really important that you find what you’re lead time is going to be specifically for that product or that market that you’re interested in because that’s going to give you the most accurate representation. But let’s say – let’s go to – let’s talk about ranking.

CASEY GAUSS:
Okay, yeah.

CAMERON YODER:
Let’s talk about ranking. So getting your inventory into Amazon is one thing, but also we want to make sure that you are ranking your product on Page 1 at the opportune time. So Casey maybe talk about like when the most opportune time is for that.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and the reason we want to kind of talk about this now is one, just so you understand the process; two, so that you understand how easy it can actually be to seize the sales that are coming up because there may be some questions in your mind around like well, you know, will I have enough reviews? Will I actually be ranking by the time the sales come? Like will I miss it? And then, you know, three, we also want to make sure that you are ordering enough inventory so that when it comes time for that season you’re able to run the promotion because you have the inventory necessary to doing it.

So if you take this approach, so I don’t have specific numbers, but I was at an event late December, I believe, CapCon, Capitalism Conference in Austin by Ryan Moran, one of my favorite conferences to go to. Just a lot of my friends or, you know, clients or whatever, are part of that audience. So it’s always cool to catch up with them. But a friend of mine, he’s been selling, I don’t know, for at least a couple of years. He also just spoke at Amazing’s conference. SellerCon is what it was called. Anyways, this guy came to me and he was like dude, your – I had a podcast recently, or I had a podcast right before then, and he’s like dude, your podcast kind of changed my whole Q4. And I was like oh really, why? Like you didn’t tell me that. And it was because we gave him this tip on how to run promotions coming up to Q4, and he like absolutely killed it before. And so it’s very simple concept once you understand it, but if you haven’t thought of it I think we covered it in a different podcast, but essentially what it is is going, using Market Intelligence to see, or some tool where you’re able to see historical sales, where you’re able to see, okay, over the course of a year when does – when do sales really start to spike for this particular keyword or for this particular product? So let’s take candy canes. So yeah, let’s say sales start to increase, you know, in October, but let’s say every year right around the first week of November – let’s say second week of November is when sales really start to spike. So what you need to do is you need to go to November 1st, you know, a week before that, 10 days before that, 12 days before that, and you need to start your promotion. And through that promotion you’re going to be driving extra sales to drive that keyword ranking. And so by that second week of November your product’s ranking at the top of Page 1. And when all that additional traffic starts coming through they’re finding your ASIN. They’re buying it. And now you get to ride that wave of traffic.

And so essentially what we see is you get on top of the wave. You get to ride it up as more and more traffic comes through. You maintain your rank because everyone’s coming and buying yours versus what we see some people do, and I had people come up and say you know they didn’t have that great of a Q4 because they didn’t get their inventory in time – true story – they didn’t get their inventory in time and so they tried to ride, or they tried to swim up from underneath that wave all holiday season, and they just missed out on a ton of sales and spent a lot of money. And what that looks like is they didn’t get their inventory in until the second week of November, third week of November, and sales had already boosted, and now they were running promotions trying to catch up to everybody else. But the sales were so much higher organically than what they were willing to do in their promotion, and it was just a mess.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, so the thought process of having inventory in, in this case, by October is, again, generally speaking when those sales for a lot of December-specific products start to increase. And if you have your inventory in by around the middle to end of October, that’s when you have your inventory in. That’s when you start promotions because, like Casey said, when that traffic starts to pick up it becomes more difficult for you to rank in those positions. It takes a little bit more. And the goal here is not to get in too early, and it’s not to get in too late. It’s to get it right at the right time, run a promotion, get to Page 1, and then organically just write it up.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yep.

CAMERON YODER:
And that’s what in this case, again, generally speaking, if you have a seasonal product in December having your inventory in by October or early November, depending on your market, will allow you to start a promotion seven days before that increase to get at the top and to ride the wave up into the heavens.

CASEY GAUSS:
Unfortunately you can’t see Cam demonstrating it with his –

CAMERON YODER:
My hands are – I’m doing a reverse dab right now.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yep. Not to be confused with a reverse ASIN.

CAMERON YODER:
Not the reverse ASIN, but the dab.

CASEY GAUSS:
Oh man.

CAMERON YODER:
What should we talk about? Numbers specifically, do you think we should give exact numbers, number of units? Like what if people are asking –

CASEY GAUSS:
How long has this gone?
CAMERON YODER:
This is 6:14? Oh, dang, I don’t know the time. I think like 20, 20 to 30 minutes I think.

CASEY GAUSS:
Maybe that’s enough just to get people thinking.

CAMERON YODER:
Just to get people to think. Yeah, yeah.

CASEY GAUSS:
Maybe we can just cover like make sure that the – did you already say the trick is to get just enough inventory? You don’t want to get too much?

CAMERON YODER:
Right.

CASEY GAUSS:
Because now you’re stuck?

CAMERON YODER:
I did, but we should iterate – we should reiterate that point.

CASEY GAUSS:
Okay.

CAMERON YODER:
Okay, do you want to do it?

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah. Yeah, just as a reminder – we can’t put enough emphasis on this – so I think why Cam’s friend he was talking about at the beginning of the episode is so stressed during this period is, again, if you don’t get your inventory in time and you miss out on riding the wave up, you’re going to be left with so much excess inventory because you’re not hitting the sales volume that you were anticipating. So you don’t want that to happen. You also don’t want to order, you know, 1000 units. But you sell through that thousand units a week before the peak season even, or you know, peak sales even get there, meaning you left so much money on the table. So the real trick is using data to understand how much inventory you should have, being able, being willing to plan for a best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and on both sides. Worst-case scenario that we didn’t order enough inventory, worst-case scenario that we ordered far too much. Then try to figure out what each of those look like. Do some kind of risk/reward calculation. If we order too little inventory, here is what that means. You know, we’re only going to be able to profit, you know, two grand or something for this month, or on this product for that month, or for the season, whatever. If we order to much inventory well, if we order five – let’s say if we order 5000 units we know we can at least sell 3000, but the extra 2000, like that would eat up all of our margin if we’re not able to sell it for the next, you know, couple months. And there’s ways that you can liquidate that to try to get some of your money back. But anyways, really try to figure out what is the goal of this? What do you think is the best-case scenario potential, and trying to work back from there. Okay, we’re okay if we had an extra 500 units, are we okay if we ended up having an extra 1000 units or whatever, so that you understand what kind of risk you should be taking with your inventory.

And, like I said, if you’re taking a data-driven approach, something like Market Intelligence, you can go back and you can look at historical sales. How long did that – when did that spike start? You know, what is kind of the volume underneath that curve? So what were the sales through that peak week and then descending down so oh, it looks like, you know, sellers were selling 5000 units over that brief period of time. So now you know, okay, I should be ordering somewhere around 5000 units, maybe I’ll order 6000 just in case because the margin would absolutely be there. I’d much rather bet on potentially making more than losing the, whatever, money on the thousand units. So anyways, Cam can probably recap better than that.

CAMERON YODER:
No, no, I think that’s good. The bottom line in this episode we just want to get the idea in your guys’ mind to start thinking about Q4, Q4 seasonal products right now because right now is the time to start doing your research if you’re not sure or if you’re not sure which product you want to pick and/or if you had a product last year that might be good this year and/or might not be as good this year. So just start thinking about it. Start doing your research now and really start digging into possible seasonal products for you to source. Oh, I start. Well, that is all for this week. Thank you again so much for joining us here on Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information on how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube.

CASEY GAUSS:
If you’re listening on Apple products please leave us a review and/or rating. Guys, we all know how tough reviews are on Amazon and also how critical they are. Same is true here. Reviews help other people to find our podcast and hopefully give them deeper insights, better data so that they can make better decisions in their Amazon business. If you’re listening on SoundCloud leave us a comment. We appreciate all the feedback for the show and everything that you – dang it.

CAMERON YODER:
That was good.

CASEY GAUSS:
We appreciate all the feedback for the show so much. This show really is for you all, and your input helps us understand how we can do it better at what you guys are looking for, how can we help you essentially.

CAMERON YODER:
And also, if you know a fellow seller who is using suggestions from their keyword tool to determine how many units to give in their launches, send them our way. We want to be a resource for sellers and the information source in this space, so please tell your friends, tell your family, spread the word and share the show.

CASEY GAUSS:
Thanks again for listening, and as always, if you want to be featured on the show, have an Amazon-related question or an idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721- 6590. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.

CAMERON YODER:
Got ‘em.

CASEY GAUSS:
Kevin David messaged me.

Brock Johnson on Being an Entrepreneur and Winning on Amazon (Follow the Data Ep. 17)

Brock Johnson on Being an Entrepreneur and Winning on Amazon (Follow the Data Ep. 17)

Get inside the mind of entrepreneur Brock Johnson. He’s well known in the Amazon seller community for his incredible success with solar eclipse glasses this past summer, but he’s been flipping products and chasing down entrepreneurial pursuits since he was 9 years old. He has been featured on the DailyVee (episode 367) and has his own successful YouTube channel where he shares his tips for Amazon FBA success.

Listen on iTunes   Listen on Stitcher

Follow the Data Show Notes

Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
What’s up, everybody? We are live today with Brock Johnson. I’m here with Casey. Casey, say hello.

CASEY GAUSS:
What’s up, guys?

CAMERON YODER:
So Brock, Brock is a seller on Amazon, and he’s involved with a lot of different things. And so we’re just
going to run through some questions. The purpose of today and the purpose of these episodes, which
we’re going to be doing month-to- month, is to inspire you with different stories.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and if you guys haven’t heard of Brock Johnson you may possibly be living under a rock. This guy is
blowing up right now, and so we just thought he was the perfect fit to bring him on, provide some
inspiration to you and just show you, you know, how tangible or attainable kind of these lofty goals that
you may have, just are – if you put in the work and you’re, you know, you’re logical about your
processes. So yeah, Brock, thank you so much for coming on, dude.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

CAMERON YODER:
Okay, well, we’re going to start just with some awesome questions just for you to explain yourself and
your story. First question is something we’re going to be asking everyone when they come on the show
is have you always considered yourself an entrepreneur?

BROCK JOHNSON:
That’s a tough one. So I have. I guess in retrospect now I would consider myself an entrepreneur, but I
didn’t always think of myself like that. But even since the age of, what, 9 or 10 I was – I was using my
mom’s eBay account to so all my friends’ video games. Then I was also playing on all these online games
like World of Warcraft and stuff, and I was more focused on the economy and flipping stuff on auction –
I was actually flipping stuff on the auction houses of these video games. And then in college I was like
buying and selling pennies. So I was doing this all the time, but I never thought it would be a full-time
thing until it came to where I had to get out of college, and it was like well you either go get a job, or you
start a company, or you do something. And that’s when I was like all right, I’m an entrepreneur. But I’ve
always been one.

CAMERON YODER:
That’s when – so when you got out of college and you started considering going into other jobs or other
fields, that’s when you said hey, I guess I kind of am an entrepreneur?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, yeah. Well, when I really did it was because I never really had a job my whole life because I had
always found ways to make money. Like I was card counting in casinos, or you know, just doing my own
side hustles and flipping stuff. But then it was when I got an internship, that’s when I – the decision was
made.

CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha.

BROCK JOHNSON:
I was like wow, this sucks.

CAMERON YODER:
So okay. Well, that’s a good response. Thank you for that response. Can you explain just a little bit about
yourself? Can you tell us where you’re from and what your experience was growing up, like if you had
siblings, or if you did well in school what your favorite subjects were? Just give us some background info.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I’m from Minnesota, born and raised here. I’ve got two sisters. With school, I don’t know, I did
all right in school. I never really tried, so I had decent grades, but then I started to do bad. I ended up
with like a 2.9 in high school or something. But then I went to college, and when I would apply myself I
always did really good in math classes or physics and stuff like that, but to be honest I was known as the
worst person. I never attended. I went to less than 50% of my coll– I have a full math degree, so I went
through all the advanced math classes, and I went to less than 50% of the classes because I hated it. Like
just somebody teaching me. I just wanted to go learn it. And so I would actually like do the tests, and I
would go to a math test, and I wouldn’t go to any of the classes, do any of the homework, and then 24
to 36 hours before the class I would just go and just read the textbook and teach myself everything and
stay up for 36 hours. And then I would go and get like a B on it. So like I’ve just always been like nobody
teach me; like I’m just going to go and like immerse myself in something.

CAMERON YODER:
Did people ever try and call you out on that, like hey man, I noticed you’re not going to classes. What’s
the deal with that?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, people called me out all the time. And so would my teachers. But I was really good at making
excuses.

CAMERON YODER:
Right. Right, no, yeah, yeah.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Excuses that you can’t call out or just like coming up with stuff.

CAMERON YODER:
Right. I mean the thing is you had that drive to go out and learn and do it and do it for yourself, and
that’s what you did, which I think is – that’s so inspiring. So you talked about this before, but before you
started selling on Amazon, before you got involved with Amazon, can you give us the full picture again
just of what the process was that led you up to that point?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I was selling on eBay. Well, first internship, wow, life sucks. Don’t want to work for somebody
else because there was no correlation between my efforts and what I got in reward. And I didn’t have
the choice of what I did. So that’s what led me to e-commerce. And then at one point I was trying to
build a tech company to start out, but then I was like ooh, this is a long, hard path, and I have no
experience and no capital. But so I got onto eBay, and that was great, but then eventually I got banned
from eBay for life because they just have – like they have metrics. And if you don’t meet these metrics
or you don’t respond to people or like just one or two people flag you for something you can just –
they’ll just decide oh, we’re done with you.

CAMERON YODER:
Interesting.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, yeah, but then so then I was flipping stuff, and I just watched some YouTube videos of people
doing retail arbitrage. And then that’s where I heard about Amazon, and then I tried it out a little bit,
and then it was like oh, there is some money to be made here.

CAMERON YODER:
And so you, when you first got involved with Amazon you were doing retail arbitrage?
BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I actually did retail arbitrage for, on and off, for about two years.

CASEY GAUSS:
So people just looking at getting started on Amazon, a lot of people kind of suggest jumping into retail
arbitrage to build up their capital. Would you – do you feel the same?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I absolutely do because you learn – okay, you get paid to learn. So there’s a lot of things about the
Amazon platform that you just need to get into the thinking mode about how do listings work on
Amazon, what do people buy, and why don’t they buy things? So when you’re picking up hundreds of
items a day you see, oh, well Walmart charges $30, but people are only willing to pay $9 on Amazon.

That’s weird, why? Oh, well it’s because it’s just this private label, or it’s this brand product, but nobody
wants it. Or this listing is bad. So you learn all these mini lessons, and then you find one that does sell,
and then it’s wait; why is it cheap in the store and expensive on the intranet? Oh, there’s maybe some
value here. So I learned, you know, hundreds and hundreds of lessons through doing retail arbitrage
that a lot of people don’t talk about. But you know, just learning. And then when you get into the
seasonality, too, that’s where I learned a lot was oh wow, you can actually make – it’s like the price of
these things skyrocket near Q4 because there is a limited supply. So you really learn a lot of supply and
demand lessons, too.

CAMERON YODER:
Interesting. So okay, we know about the solar eclipse glasses, but a lot of people listening might not. Can
you talk about a bit of what happened with that and kind of what led up to that point?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so I had been doing wholesale and whatnot, so I did retail arbitrage, and that I did more so
wholesale when RadioShack went out of business. And thousands of stores went out of business around
the country, and so I went to all of those, and I went to about 400-ish literally across the whole country
and was able to build up good capital through that. But then they ran out of stores. And then I was doing
wholesale through them, and then the Chairman of the Board who was like this billionaire sent me an
email threatening he was going to sue me for like buying and selling their – because they were selling it
on Amazon, too. They had just learned how to do it. But I had a repricer and they didn’t. So they
couldn’t win the buy box. And then like they had this big meeting, apparently, at like their headquarters,
and they’re like what is going on? Why can’t we win the buy box?

CAMERON YODER:
This guy, Brock Johnson, he’s the reason.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, apparently they were talking about me in this big meeting. And yeah, then they sent me some
threatening emails. So that was wonderful. And then I was like all right, I’m done with this. I want to be
– I want something scalable that nothing can take away from me. And that’s what led me into this. So I
just decided okay, I’m going to do private label, and it just so happens that right when I made that
decision I got – well, before that I went to China, went to the Canton Fair, started to learn everything I
could about private label, and then didn’t end up getting any good product ideas or sourcing abilities,
but then when I came back some guy sent me a random email just about this time that I made this
decision I’m going into private label. It was like a one sentence email saying oh, are you interested in
solar eclipse glasses? They’re really hot in the United States. And I was like sure, send me some
information. I’m interested. But he never responded to me. But that’s when I went and I looked into the
opportunity of the solar eclipse, and I was like you know I think this could be something big. So that’s
kind of how I led into the solar eclipse.

CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha. So then yeah, so then can you walk us through okay, I stumbled across – first off, did you ever
reach back out to that guy that shot you that email and said thank you so much for what you’ve done?

BROCK JOHNSON:
No, I need to. I need to. I’ve thought about it many times in my head, but I should because yeah, that
was a very valuable email.

CASEY GAUSS:
So we haven’t mentioned the stats yet around like what happened with solar eclipse glasses. So people
unfamiliar with you are still like okay, solar eclipse glasses, like big deal. Who is this guy? Can you give us
a little bit of the stats and then kind of go through like how you went from, okay, the idea of solar
eclipse glasses to I’m a king on Amazon?

BROCK JOHNSON:
So basically – okay, so the numbers, I did $6 million in sales in the first six months, and it got really crazy

CAMERON YODER:
Wait, wait, hold up. Say that again.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I did $6 million in sales in the first six months private label.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, that’s what I thought.

BROCK JOHNSON:
And that’s with over a 50% profit margin.

CASEY GAUSS:
Geez.

CAMERON YODER:
Wow.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, that was absolutely crazy. So basically yeah, so it goes from idea to oh, this could be a big
opportunity. And then that’s where, you know, it gets hard now. You [could run 0:10:49.7] number. So
basically there were rough– when I got into it there was about 20 people selling, but they didn’t have
the best designs, in my opinion, of these glasses. And you know, these were cheaper glasses, but you
could like put your complete unique design on them, and they were so cheap that you had to sell them

in bundles and packs. That was the only way to make it profitable on Amazon. So there was a lot of
creativity that I see that could be done. So then I looked at just how many people were going to view
this, and it was tough at the time because there were not – barely none were selling, and there was 20
people.

CASEY GAUSS:
What month was this? When was this?

BROCK JOHNSON:
This was – when I found out about it was January 27 th .

CAMERON YODER:
Okay.

CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so January 27 th I found out about the opportunity. You know, wasn’t selling much, but I ran the
numbers, and it was literally going – every single person in the United States was going to see a partial
eclipse at least. I didn’t think that anybody would watch the partial eclipse, to be honest. I was wrong.
Everybody watched the partial eclipse. But I just took the assumption, and I ran, and there was 10
million people that lived under the total eclipse. So like how could you not look, like watch that? If it’s
going over your head, this happens – this is a once in a lifetime event. So I said all right, there’s 10
million customers here. Let me capture 1% of it. And then then that’s all I need, 1% of 10 million is
100,000 glasses. If I could find a way to make a dollar per glass I would make $100,000, and that would
be jacked. I would be jacked.

CASEY GAUSS:
How did you get to the number, though, of the number of units that you would order for the first time
or for the first couple times?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so what I did for the first time was, well, I just bought what I could afford.

CAMERON YODER:
Right.

BROCK JOHNSON:
I could have afforded a bit more, but so I started out with a $7500 order, which was 25,000 glasses.

CASEY GAUSS:
Oh wow.

BROCK JOHNSON:
That’s what I – yeah, so that’s what I started out with, and that was like I was like at first thinking I don’t
know if I’m going to be able to sell all these. But then I was thinking of – what I always do is I go through
the worst-case scenario. Okay, well if nobody buys my listing on Amazon I could hard call schools and
businesses and sell them in big packs at wholesale price, and I could probably get my money back. So I
like to look at worst-case scenarios, and if you can get your money back and there’s a huge upside, then
okay, this is a good opportunity to go into. So I had calculated how many hours it would take to call up
businesses, and it was like okay, I could get rid of these in a couple days or a week. So I’ll buy 25,000 and
see how it goes. And then they started to sell really well. So then that’s when I was like oh, okay, I’m
onto something here.

CASEY GAUSS:
When was it that they started to – sales started to pick up?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Sales? Well, I started in right at the end of March, beginning of April, and they were doing good. I don’t
remember exactly how much I was selling then, but it was, I mean I was doing probably $1000 a day at
least, like right off the bat. So that was great. And then I got up to a lot more per day. But to be honest
the sales really – well they started to pick up in June, and then they launched – they [took off 0:14:35.4]
better in July, but then I found that there’s this human procrastination curve, essentially, like that’s true
for all seasonal things, something about 30 days until an event. So like a mental trigger goes off in
people’s heads, and that’s where it just skyrockets.

CAMERON YODER:
I want to touch on one aspect that I think a lot of sellers get hung up on in both the just seasonal,
sourcing seasonal products, but also just sourcing products in general, and that’s risk. You talked about
it a little bit. When you had kind of that backup plan where you said okay, if I run – or if people don’t buy
my listing then I’ll just go call people and cold call people or whatever, go to schools and sell them
directly. But what would you say to sellers that are getting really hung up on risk when entering markets
maybe they’re not familiar with? What advice would you have for them?

BROCK JOHNSON:
If you’re entering into a market that you’re not sure about and you want to look at the risk, what I would
say that you should do is just, is there some utility? Are you doing something unique? Is there like – are
people – does this product like sell on eBay? Like could you liquidate this somehow? That’s kind of what
I look at on the risk side. Are you doing something different that’s a value add? And if there is demand
there and there’s some form of liquidation and you’ve done something different, you’re going to be able
to sell it, especially if there’s any room for margin on Amazon. I just don’t see why you wouldn’t be able
to slowly sell one unit a day over a year and a half. Like you’ll sell it eventually.

CAMERON YODER:
What was your differentiating factor then for your glasses?

BROCK JOHNSON:
So for my glasses it was one, they were actually good and real, and they were certified, where 98% of
my competitors were not. So that was the biggest one. They all had theirs made in China, and mine were
made in the USA. And mine actually – so they had the certification. Made in USA made a big difference
for people looking at their eyes, but then I also had just really, really good design. So I went to 99designs
and I actually had professional designers like – if people aren’t familiar with exact – well, who’s not
familiar with eclipse glasses, okay? And maybe if you weren’t in the USA because I know people watched
all around the world. Basically they’re like these cardboard glasses or something. And so you could print
whatever design you wanted on them. So I specifically put types of images and logos that would
correlate to space and the eclipse the best. So like certain ones were made towards kids, and they had
certain images that would really be appealable to children and all these different sects of people. So I
made all these different designs, and then the bundles and then just had the best, you know, really the
best photography. That was how I differentiated on glasses, but then I also had goggles. So those were
way better sellers because nobody made goggles. So these paper glasses let in a bunch of light, so I
made these more, you know, super, the super eclipse viewers per se.

CASEY GAUSS:
And there was, I don’t know, super eclipse Armageddon or whatever where you know a lot of the
glasses were taken down, but some people were still up, and they were allowed to charge like a much
higher price. How did you kind of fare through that process?

BROCK JOHNSON:
It was rough at first when you get an email from Amazon – because I had bought – I went off of this – I
kind of made a forecast model that showed that everybody was going to buy in the last couple weeks
because everybody procrastinates. So I had hundreds of thousands of glasses, and like they just arrived,
and I’m shipping them into Amazon, and right as I’m about to ship them all into Amazon they send out
an email saying they’re taking down all eclipse glasses, basically, because there’s bad ones. And I was
pissed because I had been warning them for months. I had called them over 10 times, sent them
countless emails warning them they’re going to make people blind. Take down the competitors, and
then they’re going to say okay we’re just taking them all down.

So yeah, then everybody freaked out. We all dropped our prices to the floor. And so that was really
rough, but then eventually, okay, so they wanted a certification for every glass, but so we got the
certification done for like our main one, but then if you got a different design we didn’t get the
certification done for the new design because it’s just like a different color on it, you know? But so that’s
where I thought I was really screwed because I had all these different designs and only one certification.
But what they ended up doing was they actually kept mine up, most of them. Some of them they took
down, which was frustrating. But I was able to provide that certification, stay up, and everybody else got
taken down. So a lot of private labelers from the United States had sourced from China. They didn’t

actually have the real certs, so they took their listings down. And then they refunded all of those
customers, and then a month and a half later they made all of those sellers front the bill for that. So they
had to pay for the product. They had to pay the Amazon fees. And then they had to pay the entire listing
price back.

CAMERON YODER:
Oh man.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah. Like I can’t even imagine.

CASEY GAUSS:
So were you able to raise your price during that period where fewer sellers existed so that like helped
margin?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I definitely was able to raise the price then because well, you know, then now it was just us real
sellers. But I had still done a lot of revenue up until then. Let’s see, I believe I had done, until that time, I
think 2.5 million, and then this happened, and then –

CAMERON YODER:
I’m going to shift our focus a little bit here, but I want to ask one last question before we get off of the
subject of solar eclipse glasses. And that’s through all of your experiences with this product and the
different products that you sold on Amazon and are selling on Amazon, what one piece of advice would
you have for Amazon sellers specifically?

BROCK JOHNSON:
You’ve got to do your research. If there is certifications, you need to do your due diligence because if
you’re not checking out your supplier and vetting them, a lot of, unfortunately, Chinese suppliers will lie.
I went to China, and I was trying to source – because my true passion is like LED lighting, and I was trying
to source it for the longest time. But it just never seemed right, and I wanted to get UL certification
because that really protects you in a lawsuit. And none of the Chinese sellers would – like they wouldn’t
really have it, or some of them would have it, and I would go talk to them, and then they’d be like oh
yeah, we have UL and there would be UL on the product. And then I would go to their factory, and so
then I would ask for the actual certification and they didn’t actually have UL. They said oh, we could get
it if you order a large enough quantity. So basically they were going to sell it to me with the UL sticker on
it and never actually have the cert.

CAMERON YODER:
Wow.

BROCK JOHNSON:
And same with the eclipse glasses. All those got shut down. So if you’re selling something that’s
potentially dangerous, check that out. But just to protect your liability because it doesn’t matter how
many millions of dollars you make. Burn down one apartment, and it’s all gone. So and then do
something different. Like just make a, you know, small change, or catch a trend. Or you’ve got to do
something more unique to compete. Like you either get in early, you make a new mold – or you don’t
even need to go as far as making a new mold. Do new colors, a new bundle, a new marketing pitch, like
now you’re making clothes, but these are close for vegan. I just used the product discovery tool
yesterday. One of the top idea scores was clothes for vegans.

CAMERON YODER:
On the rise man.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, just so like you know, I think gone are the days of literally just sticking a logo on it. But there is still
lots of opportunity, but you’ve got to do just a little bit more than a logo, I’d say.

CAMERON YODER:
That’s good. So I had said I was going to shift focus a little bit. Sometimes when sellers, or when people
get in in the Amazon space specifically and they sell a ton or they see the potential they shift their focus
solely to Amazon. And I want to ask has your focus solely been placed on Amazon, or have you now kind
of broken into a couple different areas of focus?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, so there’s – you know, Amazon was great for the growth and everything, and it has the best
wealth building opportunity that I see out there. If your main goal is to literally just grow your business
and build as much capital as possible, I would say to just stick it on Amazon. Like that’s it. That’s all you
need to do. But I guess where I’m going now is I’m going for more of a – I had this realization, okay, I can
easily build up $100 million of wealth by just selling on Amazon. The opportunity is there. But it wasn’t
what I was particularly extremely passionate about. I love it, but just to just solely do that is whatever.
So now I’m really focused on building – I’m still selling on Amazon, and like don’t get me wrong; that’s a
main thing. But now I’m trying to build a whole brand. So not just on Amazon, but also getting to
Shopify, into software, so literally building an entire brand and then going into personal branding, and
then also social media. So all of these five work together to make a brand that’s truly that value of like
that perceived value. So I don’t care what happens on one platform. I don’t care about the – you know, I
can charge a premium price, like Apple can charge a premium price. Nike can charge a premium price
just because it’s, you know, it’s there, and it’s got that value. So I’ve kind of diversified a little bit. But
Amazon is still there.

CAMERON YODER:
How did you come to terms with your passion because some sell– so sometimes what happens is people
get in the space, or any marketing or business space in general, right, and they see the money potential

and the value proposition that’s there, and they push their passion to the side for a long time. How did
you come to terms with the fact that you knew what your passion was and you’re pushing towards that
now, and you’re not necessarily pushing money to the side, right, but you’re also pushing for your
passion? So what did that process look like?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Well, what it came down to was just making that large sum of money and not being happy. That’s what
it came down to because you’ll hear the thing that money brings happiness, but it’s true. Some lessons
you can’t learn until you feel them. Like some things you just have to experience. So by just getting that I
was like okay, you know, now I know this. I don’t need to just push and maximize ROI. But I mean I’m a
finance and math guy. I’m not going to sit there and just retire or whatnot. I’m still going to make over
$1 million a year every single year. I’m trying to go for like five, six this year. But like don’t care if that
happens, you know. So now I’m more focused on the impact that I’m going to have on the world and
doing things that make me happy. But it just, it literally some things you’ve just got to learn for yourself.
But what’s great is you kind of have to get on this path where you have to get financially free first. Like
it’s hard to go from a 9 to 5 job to passion. So go out there, start hustling, building skills as an
entrepreneur, building up capital, and then eventually once you’ve built all these skills, these lessons
and you have all this money, now you can start to go at that passion. And I think that’s actually an easier
path to getting to where you want than to start out and just go from nothing to all right I’m going to
make a full time at my passion.

CASEY GAUSS:
As a side note kind of on the selfish side, okay Amazon sends you $6 million in payouts, or whatever, you
know, 50% was profit, so $3 million. What in your mind – what is the first thing that comes to mind as
this is the first thing I’m going to buy with my $3 million?

BROCK JOHNSON:
I bought like a chocolate bar, and my wife really wanted a camper, so we paid like $12,000 for a trailer
camper, like a vintage-looking one. And that’s it.

CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.

CAMERON YODER:
I love it.

BROCK JOHNSON:
You know, like oh well, no, what I thought was I can now fund a software company that I’ve always
wanted to build.

CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha.

CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.

BROCK JOHSON:
That’ was like – and so I put like $250,000 into that, and then I just started investing money into myself
by going and seeing Gary Vaynerchuk, going to Tony Robbins events, joining the platinum membership
there and, you know, just making investments into myself, things that are going to make me happy and
grow more. That’s kind of it.

CASEY GAUSS:
Heck yeah, man. I love it.

CAMERON YODER:
I love it. So you talked about –

BROCK JOHNSON:
I’m not going to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo.

CAMERON YODER:
Wait. Say that again.

BROCK JOHNSON:
I’m never going to buy a Ferrari or a Lambo.

CAMERON YODER:
No?

BROCK JOHNSON:
No.

CAMERON YODER:
You talked about Gary Vee and Tony Robbins a little bit. What – who are some of your role models?
Who are the people that you follow closely and really try to emulate?

BROCK JOHNSON:
I’d say Elon Musk, Tim Ferriss, Dave Asprey, Neil Degrasse Tyson. Yeah, those are some of my – oh, Gary
Vee, Tony Robbins. Yeah, that’s kind of who I listen to and what I emulate.

CAMERON YODER:
Do you try to split your attention between all of them, or is there kind of one or two that you follow
really closely?

BROCK JOHNSON:

I’d say the one that I follow the closest – well, it used to be Dave Asprey because that completely
changed my life. So I’m really into biohacking and just optimizing every part of my biology to get the
most out of life, so I’ve always got energy. You know I’m running these 16- to 18-hour days, just like – so
that’s huge. But then I’d say recently now it’s Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk that are – that I listen to
the most.

CASEY GAUSS:
Nice. Do you want to give some quick tips on biohacking things that have worked for you to help you be,
you know, at the top?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Take a cold shower.

CASEY GAUSS:
Nice.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Right there. Take a cold shower. Do yoga every single morning, or not – I mean it takes time to get there,
but you know I just do like 10 minutes of yoga every morning, meditate for a little bit, cold showers,
Bulletproof coffee, intermittent fasting. So I don’t really eat until like 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. I just
have this Bulletproof coffee. If you don’t know what it is look it up. It will change your life. You know,
just doing stuff like that. I really am focused. I have a standing desk. I have a triple screen set-up. I have
white boards all over my basement. So in physics, you know, the particle is affected by the field. And in
our lives we as human beings are affected by our environment. So by just really focusing on what you do
with your biology and how you shape the space around you, that will shape you then. And it’s a positive
feedback loop.

CAMERON YODER:
Nice. How much sleep do you get?

BROCK JOHNSON:
You know, it depends. I’d say on average about six, six hours.

CAMERON YODER:
Gotcha. For everyone saying you need eight, no excuses.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, I mean I do feel better when I get like – when I get a bit more. But it matters if I’m going – I’ll go
through like a period of grinding for a month or two where it’s just all on and then, okay, I’ll take a week
or two and, you know, recharge but then get back at it.

CAMERON YODER:
Of course.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so if you want to make $6 million in six months, be Brock Johnson. Sleep six hours a night.

BROCK JOHNSON:
No, if you want to do that you sleep like four.

CAMERON YODER:
Taking a look at where you’ve come from and where you’ve been and looking ahead now to 2018 and
whatever is beyond 2018, where do you hope to go from here?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Where I hope to go from here? I want to essentially go and have a giant estate in the mountains and
essentially to start kind of a retreat center out there. My wife’s a yoga teacher. And so just helping to
get some people just on track, like you know where they could just go for a bit and have this total
immersion, really like focus on their biology and their psychology and to just like revamp and kill it. So
kind of doing that, but mainly what I want to do is to just help other people’s lives by – there’s not a lot
of tools to focus on our goals, our bucket list, just the little practices that make our life better on a day-
to-day process. So I’m building out currently an entire physical brand around just personal development,
that whole area, but then also software around that. And then my personal brand digitally and then
building that up on social media and everything so that it’s this just one giant conglomerate that is
focused on making a better world and helping people just achieve their goals, but then making a profit
at the same time. So you know, like just then it all is just I feel good about. That’s where I’m going
towards.

And then eventually my overall goal is building more of an artificial intelligence company that’s
collecting our biometrics and just ambient data to help correlate all of these inputs to get somewhat of a
picture of what mood we’re in or just different things about our biology that may see okay, you know,
he was really productive during these times. What happened? What factors were there? Or he’s starting
to become unproductive. What factors could we change in the environment, like the music, the lights,
the temperature, just stuff like that, to essentially help people making like a big mother technology that
just helps make our life better instead of like right now where oh, like everything on your phone and
every piece of tech just wants to take your attention and sell that and make you become distracted and
not have a better life.

CASEY GAUSS:
I love it, dude. I love the, you know, focus on helping people to be motivated or be kind of at their best
performance or encourage them to be who they want to be. Before Viral Launch I was actually working
on an app somewhat similar. I called it [Live 0:35:02.8], and it was just all around providing some

incentives and some structure around like setting goals and helping you to put the plan in place to
achieve them. So I think it’s [sick 0:35:12.5].

BROCK JOHNSON:
Oh that’s awesome.

CAMERON YODER:
All right, so last question. I love asking people this question. How much of your success would you
attribute to luck, and how much would you attribute to your own hard work and intelligence?

BROCK JOHNSON:
So luck was finding out about the opportunity at the time that I did, and the life situation, that was
lucky. But what wasn’t lucky was going through, you know, 70+ suppliers, finding out everything that
was wrong with it, actually finding the right ones, doing all this analysis, all these predictions and
everything. So it also got lucky that they took down my other competitors right near the end. But it
wasn’t because mine was taken down, too, and I had to argue and fight. So you know, to assign a
percentage, perhaps 15% of it was luck. But if I wouldn’t have sat there and grinded it out, you know,
there was a day where I stayed up 60+ hours in a row. That was really rough. But you know, that’s not
lucky. You know, and that was over $1 million of it was actually that one day, like I don’t want to get this
going too long. That’s a pretty long story.

CAMERON YODER:
Sure, no, that’s fine. I think a lot of people, it’s easy for people to see a story and just attribute it to luck
or [dumb it down 0:36:45.8] to oh, well he got lucky. And it’s really hard. It’s really hard for people to
see how much work and effort really is put into building and establishing an entire business, entire social
media presence, etc., right? And stories like this, I – a personal goal of mine is always to pull out the
hard work that people have done in an effort to establish something wonderful and establish something
great. And I see that with you. I mean you’ve obviously put in a lot of hard work and so, yes, there was a
bit of luck involved, but there was a lot of work.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, well thank you. I really appreciate you pulling that out. And I guess, like looking at luck, so some
people could say it was lucky, but I saw over 100 other private labelers who found out about this
opportunity, and that just sourced from China, didn’t really do much, and they all lost, you know, tens of
thousands of dollars. So if the luck was just finding out about the opportunity you would hear – there
should be 100 other Brock Johnsons with this crazy story you’re hearing about.

CAMERON YODER:
Right. Well Brock, that’s all we have for today. I wanted to thank you so much for taking time out of your
schedule to be here with us, and there is a lot of value in everything that we talked about today. So
again, thank you so much for being here.

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

CAMERON YODER:
If our listeners want to keep in touch with you and keep in touch with what you’re doing, with
everything on Amazon and everything outside of Amazon, how can they do that?

BROCK JOHNSON:
Yeah, come check me out. I’m on YouTube, Brock Johnson, just look me up. You’ll find me. And then if
you want to follow – I just started my Instagram, so if you want to follow me on Instagram it’s
@officialbrockjohnson. That’s where – send me a DM on there, and that’s how you can get a good
response from me. And yeah, that’s how you can check me out.

CAMERON YODER:
It’s going down on the DMs, man. We will put all of your info in our show notes. So guys, if you want to
keep in touch with Brock you’ll be able to find it there. But thank you again, Brock. There’s a lot of value
in what we talked about today. We very much appreciate

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