Overcoming Amazon's Seller Support Challenges with John Cavendish
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People are pulling back on marketing spend and you know because they see the pain coming they think the pain is coming and you know as they say one way to guarantee your future ends up like that is to stop spending money on marketing. It's all going to be okay. If you're going through hell carry on as they say and like start trusting people. So tell me your name and tell me what you do in this crazy world of Amazon. My name is Sean Cavendish and in this world of Amazon we deal with seller support. So uh

Our belief, or my belief, is the worst part about selling on Amazon is dealing with Amazon themselves. So we take away the pain of dealing with seller support. The company's called Seller Candy. So you are doing a lot of things in this Amazon world, working with a lot of Amazon sellers. Where do you see the biggest pain point being for Amazon sellers in the next 12 months? In the next 12 months? So, I mean, the pain keeps coming and coming and coming, doesn't it? So seller support was getting better, and now it's kind of maybe going downhill a little bit. But...

Everything is getting locked down. So updating listings, pushing updates through. I mean, it's just taking longer and longer for Amazon to respond and also for Amazon to do the updates in the system. So the big pain is just sucking time, sucking time away. A lot of people are talking about expansion opportunities on Amazon. And they're thinking kind of largely between other Amazon marketplaces and then other marketplaces in general, the T-moves, the TikTok shops, the Walmarts.

Do you have any advice for people on whether they should be thinking about those other platforms or specifically which ones they should or shouldn't be? On my side, no. I mean, to be honest, that's not my wheelhouse. That's not my expertise. I mean, what I see and what I've seen through my friends and also our clients that run agencies, because we work with a lot of agencies, is that people are pulling back on marketing spend.

And, you know, because they see the pain coming, they think the pain's coming. And, you know, as they say, one way to guarantee your future ends up like that is to stop spending money on marketing. My big thing for this year is spending money on marketing. I mean, I've heard awesome stuff about TikTok shop. I've heard that Walmart is actually picking up now, which, you know, wasn't really happening a year or two ago. So, you know, I can't offer my expert opinion on that. But that's still good insight in there. Yeah.

If you could go back in time to when you first began your entrepreneurial journey and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be? It's such a journey though, isn't it? Because entrepreneurial journey is almost like a personal development journey. And I am not the same person I was 10 years ago when I first started a business. Like I didn't have the war chest I have now. I didn't have the ability to take the risks I have now. Because my first business, I was doing supplements on Amazon back in 2015. It'd be a $10 million business if I started in it.

because I would know how to double down, how to hire the right people, how to do all that stuff. If I was going to start out again and give myself advice, I think it would be like, it's all going to be okay. If you're going through hell, carry on, as they say.

and like start trusting people because you know as I started hiring team I got amazing like EA executive assistant and the better people I get the more I'm like I know like and trust and love the people I work with I think that's the coolest thing about entrepreneurship is it's not really a job if you're hanging out with people you like and

making money, doing fun stuff. If you weren't doing this Amazon stuff, what would you be doing? If you're starting at zero without much cash, I don't think Amazon is necessarily the best way for you to make money in 2020. There was a gold rush in Amazon mid 2010s, right? But now with the way that you can directly connect to people, reach out, if you have some experience and some skillset,

With the experience I have now, I would be saying put together an offer, go to market with something that you could market and sell, build up your cash flow and your war chest before you start going into things like e-comm unless you really have good guidance from someone like yourself or an Amazon coach or just somebody to hold your hand along the way. I think there's too many bros selling drop shipping in Amazon now through social media.

Most of the people I knew were out in 2018, 2019, like dropshipping and everything like that. So it's a cycle. Can you give a specific example of how community has helped improve your ability to do business or shape your business or maybe how you've worked with community to support other people's businesses? I love community. So I think, I mean, this is just my ethos, is that I think we get most connected to the communities that bring us the biggest step forward in our lives.

So I think I shared with you when we were out at the Astermind a few months ago. But there's a couple of communities in my life which have like, because it changed me so much as a person, I'm so connected to and I really want to be a member of. One of them is the Dynamite Circle, which is this group of like, call it the DC because Dynamite Circle sounds a bit crap.

But it's a group of online entrepreneurs. I joined them in 2014. And most of my friends that I met all over the world are doing it. And the reason I love it is people in different business models, they're all making it work. They're all living off their businesses, traveling, doing cool stuff. So whether someone's making like two grand a month or two million a month, you get to see how they're applying like a real, legit strategy that's working. And it's not just a bunch of people who want to start a business, a bunch of cool business owners, and you can go and do fun stuff and travel and they're not all addicted to just

Ball in. All the time. If you could stand on a stage and give one piece of advice, one tip, one tactic to every Amazon seller in the world, what would that one thing be? Margins. Carbon 6 last year was the year of profitability, I think, wasn't it?

So, you know, actually knowing your numbers, watching your numbers. When things are going bad, watch your numbers more closely. Measure more often because it's easy when things are going bad to look away. You know, whether it's shame or something in us, like, you know, as we talked about personal development, business is personal development. When things are going well, you default to your natural behavior.

patterns of what do you do when you're scared and that's what kills you and kills business because maybe you bail on it maybe you like pull the ripcord too early and that's where like having a mentor or community and someone you can vulnerably share with and say i think i'm losing the business think losing my mind maybe all i need to say is hold on you haven't f'd it yet

So you've sold some stuff on Amazon. You've helped a lot of other people sell on Amazon. What is the dumbest, most ludicrous or most ridiculous product that you've either sold or helped somebody sell? Sold? I never sold anything super ridiculous. Seen people sell. I have seen some great products. Is this like a family-friendly show? It is all truth. I haven't sworn yet. Truth. Truth. Okay. Yeah.

So, a story I told you earlier today, that's one of the funniest, I've got a load of them. But one of the funniest ones. So, just as I was starting my Amazon marketing agency back in 2019, before Seller Candy, before we exited and pivoted that model,

I was one of the first products and this guy was selling lubricant for guns. So we're in America, you know, everyone wants... Fire or... Oh, sorry. Of course, yeah, for firearms. Yeah, yeah. Firearms, guns. Did you have any heavy artillery, I assume? Alabama? No artillery in your house? Not in this house. Okay. So...

Yeah. So I was like, okay, do the keyword research, do the nice presentation to help them. So I do all the research. And if anyone wants to go there, I don't know if it still works, but type in gun oil into Amazon. Gun oil is the number one brand of men to men lubricant. So when you search for his product category, it's like lubricant firearm products, lubricant firearm products. I don't know if Amazon's fixed it yet, but that's what it used to be. And you know,

Gun oil. Gun oil. Amazing. Write it down. What's been the most exciting moment for you personally in your entrepreneurial journey?

I don't know about anyone else who's listening to this podcast, but I think that us, a lot of entrepreneurs, find it hard to celebrate things. And even when you're excited about something, the excitement passes, then you're always on to the next one, the next one, the next one. Many of my friends have become financially free, sold their businesses, and got depressed or gone like, what am I going to do next? Now I don't need to work anymore. So it wasn't about the success, it was chasing the achievement of success? Yeah, the feeling. But the success, like, you know,

Say you make 10 million bucks. You sell your company 10 million bucks to Carbon 6 and then you're like, okay, I'm free. How long are you going to be excited? Six hours? Six days? I mean, maybe six months. And then six months later, you're like, well, what's the meaning? Why was I doing that and what was I chasing? What internal need am I chasing?

And yeah, I mean, I've struggled with that in the past. So yeah, the other community I got super involved with was Tony Robbins. Yep. So I got, you know, that community is another one that made me a massive pivot and helped me focus more on appreciation, you know, move from expectation to appreciation, focusing more on appreciation and like living more in the moment, less in the

I must do more to succeed always more is more is more. Yeah. Because they talk a lot about rules and values. So like say my value is freedom or my value is success. And my rule of success is more than I have right now. Oh, that's a good one. And if that's your rule, then you can never feel success. Because my rule of success is it must be bigger always than I am at this moment in time. There is actually no way to ever feel success. Love that. Great. And the most important question of the day.

Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a hot dog a sandwich? No. Defend that. Defend it. Is a burger a sandwich? I think so. Burger's more like a sandwich, yeah. I live in Vietnam. Okay. So, banh mi. I'd say that's a sandwich. Where it's fully enclosed. Maybe for me the definition of a sandwich is having to be able to close at all sides.

If it doesn't have... So, like, encapsulated. Encapsulated, yeah. Cool. Because they have the... In, what is it, Northern Europe, they have open sandwiches, don't they? So it's like actually a piece of... They call it a sandwich, open sandwich, a piece of bread. You're just confusing me now. Yeah, yeah. They have a piece of bread with just the topping on it. Yeah? And it's like just, you know, a piece of bread with stuff on it. Yeah, it's an open-faced sandwich. Open-faced sandwich. So, yeah. So maybe a hot dog is a semi-open-faced sandwich. Perfect. Yeah.

All right. If people want to find you on the great interweb out there, where can they find you? They can check out Seller Candy, sellercandy.com. You can check me out on LinkedIn. I also have a newsletter, which I'm just starting out, where I start talking more about other business concepts. And I don't really have a good landing page for that, so just email me at john at sellercandy.com and I'll add you to it. But

Like I shared, Amazon is amazing and I've made a load of money through Amazon. But I want to help people on the journey from operator to owner and also from successful person to actually becoming a business owner. And I feel like

This is my ethos, sorry. Off topic again. We have business. You start a business, you think that your service or your product is the business. The service or product is 20% of the business, it's my belief. 80% is finance, sales and marketing. Finance, operations, sales and marketing. So helping people who want to start something and think, I'm going to make loads of money because I'm good at this. Well, yeah, but you'll drag yourself nuts if you do it like that. You build your product, you define the offer and then you

beat the hell out of finance sales and marketing to actually turn it into a legit thing you know so i want to help people on that journey awesome thanks for being on thank you so much