Considering that John had always been interested in nutrition and supplements, he opted to stick with what he was familiar with. One of his first products was an effective garcinia cambogia weight reduction pill that was quite competitive in the market.
John was fortunate in that he was able to locate a U.S. producer that was manufacturing it with three additional weight loss ingredients, which was something that no one else on Amazon was offering at the time.
John placed a purchase for $5,000 worth of products, developed his own custom labeling, and put it for sale on Amazon. It took off on its own.
“And I realized from that experience that you have to be very different,” John said. “And you have to make an impact that people want. It’s really: are you disrupted or are you disruptive, right? You’re either the one losing sales or the one gaining momentum.
From that one product alone I learned to only focus on having products that are different than all the others. The first month I think I did about fifteen K in sales, and about five K of that was profit.”
When looking for a manufacturer to collaborate with, John suggests going above and beyond Google searches to locate the best match.
At a trade event, he happened to run into him. Finally decided on them after going out to dinner with them and getting to meet the people behind it. This allowed him to create some trust and rapport before making his final decision.
It’s a good thing, too, since one of John’s competitive advantages later on was his decision to move from capsules to gummies for practically all of his products.
Because there were so few manufacturers who could do this formulation, his Amazon copycats were unable to keep up.
John’s supplement company made one million dollars in revenue in its first full year of operation.
Year two brought in three million dollars. Year three had a total of four million.
And by the fourth year, it had risen to eleven million.
His triumph, however, did not come without its share of growing pains. He had a year-long period when he was continuously running out of products to sell.
Another instance occurred when he awoke one morning to discover that all of his reviews vanished.
It was a horrible experience.
The reason John began trading stocks was that he didn’t believe he would be able to recover from this ordeal.
It was also quite difficult to put together a group of people. John had a difficult time finding talented people.
When he did employ someone, they underperformed, and John felt as though he had to spend the majority of his time monitoring their every move.
Over time, he would get dissatisfied and dismiss them.
He has to improve his skills in areas such as hiring, onboarding, training, management, establishing expectations, and so on. (Or find someone else who specializes in this kind of work and delegate the task to them.) However, it was ultimately for this reason that John chose to sell.
Profits reached an all-time high in this period. He had lost interest in terms of growing his team.
It might take him years to find out what he needs to do, by which time the competition will have caught up with him. Why not cash out?
Why not give his kid to someone who would be more suited to care for it as he progressed through his life’s journey? That’s exactly what he did.
His Amazon supplement brand was purchased for an undisclosed sum in the eight figures.
Meanwhile, John is now working on his next eCommerce company, which he believes has the potential to be just as successful, if not more.
