Building Unbreakable Brands

When you've been in business for multiple generations, learning new

skills like the world of e commerce and Amazon can be

tough. What do you do first? Who do you hire? Will

you cheapen your brand or hurt your relationships if you start selling in a

new way? Our guest today talks about those questions

and more, including some great ways to make sure that Amazon

doesn't just build sales, but it builds entrepreneurial skills

in your team as well. Plus, Henry will share his

ideas about how building a brand on Amazon is a lot like building an

audience for this podcast. All this and more coming

up on this episode of Building Unbreakable

Brands.

Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast where we talk to

business leaders with a generational mindset. I'm Meghan lynch.

I'm an advisor to family businesses and founder of Six-Point, a

brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their

past while evolving for the future. Today, my guest is

Andrew Morgans. Drew has 14

years of experience in entrepreneurship and working with brands on

Amazon. He and his team at Marknology have worked with

hundreds of brands on Amazon and e commerce, including some

Fortune 50 companies. Welcome to the show,

Drew. Thank you, Meghan. It's good to be here on the show,

and it's good to be talking again. Yeah, yeah. Always enjoy our conversation. So I'm

really looking forward to this. I'd love

to. I think there's kind of, like, two pieces

of who you are that I'd like to bring into the

show. The first is your

expertise in e commerce and selling on Amazon, because I think that

that could be really valuable to listeners. And then the second is more

of, like, your personal story, story and journey with

marknology. So I think let's start with the

expertise and see if we can give folks some value

and takeaways right off the bat, and then we'll get a little bit more into

your backstory. So

I think, I know that there's millions of e

commerce podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff with a lot of

tips and tricks, but our audience

is generational brands, like brands that

have been around for, in some cases,

5100 or more years and so well

before e commerce was a thing. And so I'd

love to kind of just, like, pick your brain a little bit from that

standpoint of, like, brands that

have existed and have skill sets and teams

and processes that have nothing to do with e commerce and

how they start to evolve to take advantage of e

commerce and some of the, like, things that they

should be thinking about. And

I'd love to kind of start with like some

mindset questions because I feel like when I'm talking to generational

brands, some of the things that they get tripped up on are

not so much the technical how to's, but more about like

the mindset of how they approach. So I'm curious,

from your standpoint, is an existing

brand with a long legacy, is that a

plus in the e commerce game or is it a

roadblock? But

without just answering yes or no? I think that

it's a good thing, but it's a good thing with expectations

of there's an unlearning that has to happen and just the way you've done

things before in order to, you don't have to change all of those things,

but you have to change an unlearning in an area in regards to e commerce.

Like, so you've done things your way, you've done things a long

time. There's a reason you're still around because things have been great,

you've been working them. But there's a difference in a brand made for e

commerce and a legacy brand trying to make that leap into e commerce.

And so there's just a lot more patience required. I

think a mindset of like, I

don't know what, I don't know and I'm open to like,

learning what that looks like. You know, I love working

with, you know, let's say in this case a legacy brand over. I

think of it as an advantage because they know their products, they know their customers,

they know their brand stories, they know what they do well. They know, you

know, they've got manufacturing down. They've worked out all of these different

things through the years that now will not be a problem, if that

makes sense. These are things that build off of. And in the other

side, sure, maybe it's more e commerce forward. This other brand is more e

commerce forward. And they've been thinking e commerce since they were created five years ago

and they're trying to come into Amazon, there's still a lot of that

stuff they're working out or fixing or. So

it's one thing I've always said with, when it comes to Amazon is,

you know, how you want to be a seller or how you want to approach

e commerce. You get to pick the problems that you want. You get to pick

your problems. Do you want to sell through resellers, you want to sell through wholesalers?

Do you want to sell direct? Do you want to sell to Amazon directly?

Do you want to sell just on your website and not on Amazon? Because each

one that you choose comes with a different set of

problems and obstacles. And

so are there more obvious

paths out of those problems or

options that you think suit a legacy

brand or a brand with kind of like a strong operational

foundation, but maybe not kind of like the e commerce chops?

Well, in regards to Amazon. Okay, so e commerce is

more broad for anyone listening. That could include, like Walmart and Target

and Chewy.com and Wayfair and Home Depot.

So e commerce is not just website and Amazon. It's kind

of like these marketplaces, your website or Amazon. But in the context of

Amazon, there's a big, big part of being

successful on Amazon that is operational efficiency.

Okay? If you're always doing pallet in,

pallet out, it's a learning curve to understand how to ship products

either into Amazon in bulk or on your website, shipping to individual

customers or whatever that looks. That's a big hurdle for a lot of brands that

have never done that before. For now, if they're good at operationally, they're going

to adjust just fine. It just is a change. Right? So

I would say on the operational side of Amazon, and there's a lot of, like,

data scientists, a lot of those, like for our workweek, people

that, you know, engineers that can actually

do very well on Amazon because their mindset is just

operations, operations, organization and operations. And so they will be

successful to a certain extent. And then there's another side that is like,

well, it's one thing to sell to Walmart in

a vendor relationship and have that relationship, or to Home Depot or to

Sunfresh grocery store, Hy Vee, that's a one on one

relationship. You make that relationship, they help you sell in those stores or help you

sell in 50 stores. Whenever you're selling an e commerce, you're really selling

one to one. And for a lot of legacy owners or

founders that have never done that before, one is like talking to

another colleague that's like on my level, owner to

owner or vendor manager to manager.

Then you're like, well, I know what Walmart cares about. I know what Target cares

about. I know what Amazon cares about. I don't know what Sally or Jim or

Bob or whatever exactly cares about. So there's

that hurdle of, I guess, like knowing. It's like almost getting so granular

that you know what your customers want. I think that's a super healthy thing for

a business to know and understand. But it's also a huge leap. If they've

never done that before, they've never on that one to one level. So,

you know, a legacy brand could have great brand awareness on

Amazon. And if there's already a bunch of people searching for their brand or resellers

selling their brand, that's a huge advantage. We're going to come in, we're going to

automatically get search traffic, we're going to get organic traffic. There's going to be people

knowing about us. It's not as if we're launching in a new market. No

one knows of us. We've been here, we've been established and things like that. So

kind of a big question, you know, but I think that it kind

of is on a brand to brand level. And what I do know about legacy

brands, family owned businesses, businesses have been here a while. They have their way of

doing things. It's like you think about a gentleman,

like, you know, as we get older, it gets harder and harder to change our

ways, so to speak. And I think the same thing can be said of a

business. Like as we get older, it gets harder and harder to change our ways.

So when I'm working with them, I definitely think of like, it's a custom

solution to figure out what their particular things

are, what their challenges are, what their opportunities are. Even their opportunities

and challenges both come in a custom kind of way. So it's, it really has

to be relationship, it has to be a good relationship

with us and them to be able to communicate what those needs are, what those

obstacles are and then create a custom solution for them. But I definitely

see any business that's been in business over ten

years as a huge plus to our relationship. Yeah, for

sure. Yeah. So one of the things I hear you saying is almost that

they need to start thinking about

a change in their customer. Right. That if they mostly

sold through wholesale channels

and had those wholesale sales relationships where it's kind of

like a one to many opportunity,

the way you're pitching the product, the way you understand your

customer and their needs is really different than

that direct to consumer relationship. So even if

you have been in business 100 years and you feel like, oh, I

know exactly what my

one to one or my kind of like one to wholesale customer

wants and needs, there's almost this

beginner's mindset that they need to just start over and

think differently about, oh, I might find out

that the consumer on Amazon cares about something

really different than what I'm used to talking about. And so how do we start

to shift the messaging? Exactly. And

it's your trying to broaden your horizons as a business that's why

you're looking to e commerce. You're trying to find more opportunity. And I'm just saying

that mindset wise, that opportunity comes with a lift.

That is, I need to know what the actual people want

or what they're searching for. And it's an opportunity because it might help you develop

more product. It might help you come up with ideas of improving your product. There's

all of these advantages to having that relationship, one to one, but yes,

very much so. Instead of just knowing exactly what the buyers at Best Buy

want and developing product for the buyers at Best Buy because you've been doing

it for 20 years or something like that, you're now thinking past that

buyer. And so you need a partner like Mark knowledge or someone in house or

someone on your team that's now taking the place of that

buyer, so to speak, to know what's cool, to know what's trendy,

to know what the customers of that marketplace want. Yeah,

yeah. And I mean, speaking about

relationships too, I feel like one of the other big

roadblocks that I hear with, with legacy brands, particularly around

Amazon, for whatever reason, is that it feels

like a loaded decision. Like, it, like,

oh, if we start selling on Amazon, it's going to

somehow damage those wholesale relationships

or damage the perception of the brand or

have ripple effects that maybe they

don't really understand. Like, I find that there's not a lot of

data around the fear. It's just this like fear of like, oh, if we go

onto Amazon, it's gonna have negative

consequences for us in some way. And usually around

relationship. Is that something that you've either either

seen actually come true or that you've encountered

brands being worried about? Yes, yes, yes, yes.

One, it is a fear mainly because this space is new. Like, I've

been doing it going on 15 years I've been in the Amazon space. So

I've seen a lot, but it's changed drastically from when I

started to where it is now. And the level of expertise that you're getting

either on your team or you're hiring or you're finding to help you do

that, might not know enough to think what are all

the repercussions of launching on Amazon and not

understanding our wholesale relationship? Like, so a lot of brands

that have never sold an e commerce don't have reseller agreements

with their distributors. They don't have any agreement in place that says

you can sell on your website, you can tell sell on your brick and mortar,

but you can't sell on Amazon where we also can be or you can't sell

in some of these general marketplaces that everyone else is. So a

reseller agreement is something that a lot of brands haven't thought about but that they

need with their distributors and their wholesalers. The other thing is

a lot of people are selling to maybe one distributor that's then selling to a

whole bunch of wholesalers and they have no real control over who all those wholesalers

are. So they don't know who's selling really. They just don't really have a handle

on it. It's kind of been like, I want that one to one relationship and

then they have the one to many the same way. So it's like

one is just understanding, you know, how your business is Randhennen two

is having honest relationships with them that say like, look, we value this

relationship, but e commerce and Amazon is also important

to us and we need to, we need to see what that opportunity is. You

know, the biggest, you know, the biggest loss of money, I guess, of revenue for

a business is to sell to a distributor or wholesaler that then is selling

on Amazon and taking advantage of that marketplace when you could do it directly. They

don't, they're not getting any advantage off of Amazon if they have their own brick

and mortar, they have their own website. Amazing. But if they're just selling on a

general marketplace, that that should be the brand. The brand should own

that so that they can know that. So I guess what I'm trying to say

is there's a whole lot of different scenarios based on kind of how the company

is set up. It comes down to communication and knowing how

to have those, those communications. It could be that you choose one

wholesaler that can, that can represent you on Amazon or two, or

maybe they get, they're getting a certain line of your product but not other lines

of product. Or maybe you're giving them exclusive deals on certain things but

not on other things. Or maybe there's standards that they need to maintain.

So a lot of them are just, they're just distributors that had access to the

product. They're not actually e commerce pros. And so you're leaving a lot of money

on the table by not having optimized listings or not launching new product

correctly or not tracking the data. So it's kind of really

understanding what model you're in. Are we starting at blank and we can

just really protect it and do all the right things from the beginning, have the

conversations we want to have, make sure we ensure map

pricing is correct. I, you know, having that or it's, it's

already out there. It's a mess. We need to clean it up. Which way do

we want to go forward? I can tell you that

countless, countless, countless times we have pushed

wholesalers or resellers off of Amazon, let the brand go, direct

themselves on Amazon, and not missed a beat in regards to

revenue, and only seen more increased profit. Because instead of selling at 50%

or less, or whatever that is, to that wholesaler, we're now selling at 100% of

retail and managing the relationship ourself. The

difference is just a distributor that's selling on a whole bunch of

different marketplaces and a whole bunch of different avenues and ensure they've got the

logistics and operations down to sell your product. But they're not true e

commerce pros. And so I think just

a lot of opportunity left on the table. So I think it's a fear that

you just need to have an expert to help walk you through. Honestly, if it's

a real fear for you and your business, um, talk. It's like talking to

a doctor or a coach and saying, hey, this is where we are.

These are some of the, the situation. This is where our wholesaler, our resellers

are, um, are they already on Amazon? Are they not on Amazon? Do we

have, like, you know, reseller agreements in place? Do we not, do we want those?

Do we have map pricing? Do we not have map pricing? All of them can

be navigated. That's what I can tell you, is that all of them can be

navigated. It just takes a custom approach, I think. Yeah,

yeah. And it sounds like probably just

that a lot of the fear likely comes from not knowing

what the options are or also not knowing

what the potential solutions to the problem might

be. So it starts to kind of build up in people's minds versus, like, it

sounds like, you know, just kind of spreading it all out on the table and

looking at it kind of releases that anxiety.

It's nothing that's done overnight, like people for, I guess people just, like,

assume it's like, I got to rip the band aid off and remove all my

wholesalers and do all that thing. No, very often it's

a year process. It's a year of getting ourselves set up so

that we can backfill behind them and make sure we're stocked so we're not just

ripping the rug out from under them and then having the conversations, maybe

giving them a six month Runway before we take over. And there's so

many different ways that you can do it. That's not just like wham, you know,

if you know that you need to be there eventually, you know that your e

commerce needs to grow for you to be a business that's sustainable

and these are avenues you want to take. Okay, let's move

into that relationship slowly. You know, I think everyone

just thinks of it, like, what I have to do right now. Oh my God,

that would be impossible. We would upset so many people. And it just doesn't have

to happen that way. You know, it's just you can

meticulously move through the issues.

You're listening to building unbreakable brands, the podcast all about

brand stewardship and crafting an enduring legacy. I'm speaking

with Andrew Morgans, who has 14 years of experience in

entrepreneurship and Amazon. Drew loves building

teams and being part of a team and absolutely loves e

commerce. So, Drew, I'd love to just talk

a little bit about. Okay, we talked a bit about mindset, but to talk a

little bit about technical skills and this idea

of building a team. So let's say the

company historically has expertise

in a variety of different areas, but it doesn't include Amazon, it

doesn't include e commerce. How do you start going

about building a team, building that

expertise in house or with a

partner? Yeah, so Marknology, like, you

know, humble plug here. But really just to explain why I built the business

is like, you know, I've really built mark knowledge to bolt alongside

another team's team. So we're like a fractional, we're not

just marketing because we help with operations and everything. Right? So we're a fractional team

that helps with these things because I found that so many

companies are lacking all of those pieces. Maybe they have

one piece, maybe they have two pieces, but they don't have all of them. They

don't have a writer in an advertising or media buyer

in a designer for the marketplaces or someone that can move

through all the admin and the customer service. So Marknology is

essentially built not to run everything hands off for someone.

It's to bolt alongside another team. Like we work in partnership

like that. That's why I say I like building teams. I like being part of

a team. And that's kind of how we built our business. If you're going to

build an e commerce department in house,

let's say one way would be to hire

for that. Probably doesn't have all the experience. Built an agency.

Talk to that agency, tell them that you're trying to build an in house team.

Let them educate that team and then let them take over. But let's say you're

just going to do it all yourself. Hire for it, not partner with an agency

or a consultant. Think about what you do have and what you're good at.

Okay, so if you have an operations

person, great. If you are the solo entrepreneur

wearing everything, okay, great. But know what kind of, what you have

to bring to the table and then say, what are all the things that I

need to solve for to be good at this thing that I'm

doing? Maybe that's, maybe that's reading YouTube. By listening to

YouTube, they're reading a book or something. But figure out what those pieces are that

you either have or you don't have. Maybe that's a design team for

graphics. Maybe that's someone that can write some SEO and product descriptions.

Maybe that's someone that can understand and learn how to send product into FBA and

get them back. Maybe it's someone that's good at advertising on Google and your team

that can try to take on the advertising in Amazon.

Regardless, not understanding what someone has as far as on their team

is important. So, like kind of, it's almost like, let me, let me see what

I have on my team, see what kind of the hierarchy I have and see

what could fit there. A lot of times it's like one person that's done their

social media or their digital marketing and they're

having to do everything and they're wearing all of the hats.

That's the realistic situation. Even the biggest companies, I think, in

America, some of them have four or five people on their e commerce team.

And so it's almost just like everyone's overwhelmed, everyone's having to learn

everything. And I realized that

quickly. Wow. E commerce doesn't stop. It just continues

to evolve. And so you have to have almost like a learning team as well.

If you have someone that had skills five years ago and they haven't leveled

up, those skills today, they're outdated. So it's really, I guess, just

a true assessment, an honest assessment of you and your team and

where you're at, then finding or identifying what those areas are that you

think you'll need. Okay. And then saying what, what kind of time is

that? Okay, do we have the resources or not? And then, and then

trying to solve for those things. I know that's kind of a vague

answer, but there really isn't one person I think that you can hire

that can fill the whole team. So it's, it's really, you need to identify those

pieces kind of see what we can do ourselves and then say, where do we

need help? Yeah. One of the things I love to do, both with

my own company and with clients, is to do, like, a

gap analysis of exactly that, of, like, really paint the picture of

where we want to be or what success looks like, and

then really paint a picture of where are we now? And then

it almost starts to answer the question for you. Right. Of like, oh,

right, we want to be here. We're here. What are the building

blocks that we need? And I know

for you, one of the things that you are

a strong believer in is

that kind of like a more slow and steady

approach of what's the next right step, and not to assume that you're

going to close that gap really quickly. I'm

curious, as you start to look at

teams or gaps or what those next

opportunities are, how do you help figure

out what is that next right step? Whether it's a brand coming

onto Amazon for the first time or looking at how mark

Knowledgey can help a team kind of like, take that next

level. How do you go about figuring out, like, what is the next

thing to do? Some of it is just through

onboarding and really communicating with them about where their pain points

are and where they've struggled. Have they tried to launch and just can't find the

resources? Have they tried to launch and just don't have the expertise? That's a completely

different thing, resources versus expertise.

Sometimes they have an entire creative team that's amazing. They just

already have a crazy schedule and there isn't any time for Amazon, like, you

know, or they've already got a great media team, but they,

they're not willing or have the bandwidth to come over here. So it's like

a lot of times we find ourselves where I'm asking them questions to say,

what's the we? Maybe you know what to do, but you just can't get it

done, so to speak. And so it really comes down to those first

few questions with them. If they haven't launched at all, it's a lot easier because

they haven't come across any problems, problems yet. And so I'm like, essentially,

who's on your team? Who's going to have the bandwidth to meet with us, talk

with us, give us assets, give us, you know, give us feedback on what we're

doing, give us cost of goods? Okay, we have that resource.

Now let me be your guide, your project manager, and tell you what to focus

on. Like a coach that's different than coming into an operation that's

already going and trying to say, hey, what are the gaps that we need to

fill first? Because they might have a major issue

happening with, like, a top selling asin or a top selling product that's down

or a new product that needs to come to market really quickly. And I

see, you know, I need to know that through communication with them and then the

normal things that we would do take a backseat to that emergency when we're coming

on board. So it really comes down to just one. I mean, I can look

through the account and get 70% of probably what I need as far as, like,

what we should focus on. The rest of it comes from just having great

communication with them, conversations of having done this 15 years and

kind of knowing what to ask. And I, you know, were you guys

struggling? What do you feel good about? You know, sometimes, you know, you'll see

an account that grew by a million dollars year over year. And I talked to

them and they're disappointed, you know, whereas if I, if I hadn't talked to them,

I'm like, wow, okay, a million, you know, 100% growth. Wow, it's incredible.

And they're like, yeah, but my boss, you know, me and my boss, we set

projections and we were supposed to be at 5 million. Okay, well, now they have

a sales problem when, when really, if I hadn't talked to them, it just looked

like they crushed it. So it really just comes

down to really understanding the team or the person on the other

side of the call their goals,

saying, okay, if this is the goal, if it's profitability, okay, let's do these

things. If it's top line sales, let's do these things. If it's simply

getting our first sale, let's do these things. So kind

of a strategy based off of goals and

then identifying those goals through communication. Yeah. I

do find that one of the

things that people often skip over

is that goal setting piece that they'll

jump onto a platform like Amazon

with very vague

expectations or not a real clear picture

of what success looks like.

Have you seen companies do that? Or like, what

to you is like the most important piece about answering some of those goal

setting questions? It's very common, I think, as human

beings, we go do a lot of things without clear goals set.

Very rarely do I go to the grocery store and have my complete list written

out, because as an example, or the gym. I know I want to

go. I know I want to spend a certain amount of time, but what am

I trying to do in here? Um, you know, the difference in having a goal

versus not is the difference in feeling, feeling, um,

accomplished or not. Right. So, as an agency, it's very important for me to

stay in business or stay in partnership or stay in relationship by saying, hey,

what are your goals of me and what are our goals together?

Um, so that we can have a benchmark of are we moving toward them or

moving away from them? You know? And so sometimes we even have software to help

us do that with profitability or certain things like that. Because if they're saying

they're not making money on Amazon, what does that mean? You know, what, what are

we, what does that mean? We're not making money. You're not making enough. You're not

making any at all. We're losing money. You know, that's. Sometimes people have so.

Such a hard time articulating that, especially if they're already overworked before we get

there. So part of having a good team and a good partner is simply

having a team that proactively is going to help you set those goals. And if

you say, I don't know what we should be doing, Andrew, help

me. We will. We will say, hey, here's a goal right in front of us.

Let's get to a two to one roas on ad spend. Let's try to get

subscribe and safe numbers up. Let's try to get to break even in profitability.

Let's try to get to 10%. Let's try to get to 20%. Let's try to

get to 30%. If the brand doesn't know where they're

going or what they should be doing. Cool, then let me

lead type of thing. If not, tell me what you want and I'll

help you get there. Yeah, yeah. I think that that is

so important. I just hope that

listeners hear that both that,

number one, I love the example of you can go to the

gym and spend time in the gym, and, yeah, I mean, you get a workout

in, you might feel okay, but that's so different than going in and being like,

okay, I've got a workout plan that I'm gonna run.

And how you feel when you leave

the gym is a totally different mindset.

And I feel like, again, if you don't know what you should be

doing in the gym, you would go to a coach and they would help you

say, like, okay, here's a workout plan. Week one, this is what you need to

do. And so I think for people to

understand that that same option

is available for them for almost any aspect of their business.

Like we're specifically talking about Amazon. But I feel like

that skipping over the goal setting and just jumping straight into the gym

is like one of the most common things I see.

People kind of have a vague idea of what they want but they don't really

have a clear sense of what success looks like. That coach is going to say

like are you trying to lose weight? Are you trying to like get wedding ready?

Are you trying to gain mass and gain muscle? Are you trying to just have

like, you know, healthier heart rate? Like, you know, like what are

you trying to accomplish? And then they're going to help you go get that with

a different set of goals you're going to do. Trying to gain muscle mass, it's

going to be different than trimming your waist or sometimes they go hand in

hand, right? Yeah. Like profitability. I think within Amazon,

you know, for anyone not that doesn't know all the different areas

of Amazon, there's a lot of agencies or softwares that solve one part of

that. They'll solve advertising, they'll solve the content, they'll solve

SEO content writing, they'll solve like case resolution management,

they'll solve review, gathering all these things.

Martinology is a full service agency because I believe all those things work together and

we just try to offer, we offer all of that as one

service. But there's very much individual experts

and firms built around that. What I'm saying is that each of those areas

as well needs its own set of goals and KPI's, the

overall account goal could be profitability. Well, how do we get there? We work on

sales and getting more views and eyeballs and traffic

and we also work on conversion rate and customer retention

and these types of things. So you could have goals of trying to improve

our conversion rate and you could have goals of improving our branding or

market share or you could have goals of

reviews. Let's try to get our reviews to a certain level. Or you could

have, let's try to get new to brand customers. Let's try

to improve our subscribe and saves. Let's go out there and see top line sales

like what we can do with PPC. We're trying to grow sales and stay

profitable. So each like, you know, we could say, hey, I want to, we

have a thousand listings and I want to get ten new

SEO rewrites done per month where I'm like, I want

our listings to be gone through with a fine tooth comb. Make sure we have

keywords in there that are driving sales for us. We have a lot to do.

So what do goals look like for us? Well, we're going to improve

SEO. It's going to take us twelve months to get through

120. We're going to at the same time work

on starting to run advertising on each of those

skus as we get them rewritten and feel strong about them.

And let's also make sure that the listings that we're rewriting that we're doing with

advertising have a full stack of images. Or like, you know, let's,

let's, let's make sure the storefront's getting updated as we add new products.

So think of it as like a moving organism.

You know, that we have goals all over the place, that a good, a good

team or a good manager on the inside of a company or on the outside,

we're probably working together. Like, honestly, it's a good manager on the inside and a

firm like us working together. Just say what needs our attention

first, what does a goal look like for three months, six months,

nine months, twelve months? And then as we set those a

benchmark, are we moving toward them or moving away from them? Are

they getting done or not? You know, that's the only way to really tackle Amazon,

I feel like, is to really set those goals, go out there and get them

and set them in an attainable way. Like, you know, times people are like, I

want a five to one roas when they're at a one to one. So anyone

that doesn't know, it's like, spend a dollar to make five or turn on as

spend well, okay, but like, can we set a goal from going from

one to one to one to two and then one to three and then let's

get, let's feel accomplished as we move toward that goal. You know, and

um, maybe even reassessing and saying, we initially had a goal of five

to one. I feel like on this platform, a healthy one, a healthy, realistic

goal for us is three to one. Okay, if that's the case, how do

we adjust to still make this platform work for us? And just being

flexible like that, being, having that entrepreneurial hat on as you're learning a new

area of your business, if we're talking to like, legacy brands and being like, look,

this is an area that's new for us. Instead of being so used to

being amazing at everything we do, this is a new thing that I'm

learning my mindset around. It is like, I can do hard

things, I can do new things, I can still learn new things. I think, like

you said, that mindset thing of starting with it is. These are all new goals

for me. These are all new challenges for me. I want to get some

taste of success early. Yeah. Yeah. I

do feel like for companies that have this

generational piece, oftentimes they are

the most entrepreneurial in G

one, the first generation, because that's the founder.

That's when everything's brand new. And then by the time you

get to the second 3rd generation and

beyond, you can sometimes lose that

muscle. So it almost sounds like if you thought about

entering a new channel like Amazon,

entering the world of e commerce, becomes an opportunity

to bring back that entrepreneurial muscle that maybe

might have atrophied a little bit within the company and

really start to build new skills around it that, yes,

serve you well to build sales on Amazon,

but then also could apply to other areas of

the company. Just make you more entrepreneurial overall. Is that something that you've ever

seen happen? 100%? Like, I'm glad you're

glad you brought that up. That's like, it's amazing because I would love to talk

about oftentimes I'm seeing. I have

two clients in my mind right now, like from last, speaking to them last week.

One of them is a daughter that is like third

generation. Um, her dad's business

closed in 2020 as a restaurant. A series of restaurants closed them,

um, as a legacy project, like taking it forward. You know, they made a good

amount of money on the sale to exit, but she's taking their sauces

and turning it into an e commerce brand and like carrying that forward. Okay, so

a lot of times I'm seeing third or fourth

generation, honestly, like kind of getting the entrepreneurial bug again.

Yeah. Which is just as common. And just to harp

on that, Trenton is another guy, a close friend, taking his father's

business. That was medical. Like

medical devices, like a wrist brace or an ankle brace

or a back brace, things like that, that you would get at the doctor's office.

And they used to sell doctor's office to doctor's office. So different

packaging. It's all about relationships with the private

offices more that relationship, like we talked about, completely different

than selling to the person buying on Amazon. That's fitting it themselves

and those kinds of things. He's wanting to push the business into e

commerce. It hasn't been easy because we have all of these things to

fix, like the images and the size charts and returns.

But we've gotten profitable in the last five months, which is a huge success story.

First, we got top line sales, 30, 40, 50,000 a month. On Amazon. And

then we were like, then let's get profitable after we figure out how to sell.

Yeah. And so we're going through that and we just got profitable. But those are

both third generation family owned

businesses where the, the new, the

new regime, so to speak, the new leadership is like, I want to take

us into a new area to try to bring life into the business. What I'll

say to that, so that that happens frequently with us is I'm sure

they can lose it. They, maybe they don't know how because they haven't done it.

But I do feel like the bug is, is in there like the entrepreneur

bug. But I think when I talk mindset, sometimes it's

not even getting the person listening to this that's excited about e commerce in the

right mindset. It's that you have to be the advocate to the old leadership.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have to help dad, help mom,

help uncle, help whoever get to

where we need to be to be successful on those platforms. And

you're the communication barrier there. Like a lot of them, I know, are not in

full control of the business at that point. There's still dad on the board, there's

still mom on the board, still family on the board, and they're having to, like,

say, hey, I want to do this thing, guys. This is the mindset we have

to have. We have to be patient in this area. We have to think about

prioritizing these things. Yeah, sure. We have Sally over here

that does social media, but that doesn't mean that she's able to manage, you know,

10,000 a month in PPC spend on Amazon or something like that. And

so that person is the advocate to the old guard.

And that was a mouthful. But I wanted to kind of explain like one, actually,

I see a lot of that. They want that entrepreneurial spirit, but what I

know and I don't necessarily always see and know in the relationship is they're having

to go back to dad, back to mom, back to the board, and

continue to sell them on their new idea over and over and over to get

buy in. Right. Yeah, it almost becomes, you

know, I think it also kind of goes back to goal setting and alignment there,

too. We're making sure that

the, you can put, I think one of the

best ways to make that sell internally is to be able to

say, okay, this is what we're trying to achieve as a company,

as a family, as a brand, and

this is how Amazon fits into that and rolls up

to it. And this is what it might look like, so that everybody

kind of understands why it's

not just something that's like cool or

trendy, but it's something that's actually serving the

goals of the business, whether that's longevity,

or building sales or building profitability

or R and D or whatever it is. I think

that there's lots of different ways that it could roll up into that.

It's essentially a lot of times the family or the

board or whatever that relationship looks like in that company is

the PE firm, right? Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, is that it's

almost like pitching for investment. Every fiscal

year you have to get buy in. And some of that comes down to setting

good expectations and so the investors or the family can see the

progress and the end goal in mind or how we're going

to get there. You're having to constantly sell to them and oftentimes, let's

say that we're the agency trying to execute on that. I'm not getting

to talk to that board or that, whatever.

So it's the mindset of the founder, whoever's

championing like the e commerce, to then

understand it very well, to then be able to communicate it back. Yeah,

yeah. But what a cool skill set to be

able, like, as a next generation leader of the company. Like

that's, that's like

an expensive degree at a good business school,

to be able to communicate that well, to put together a plan,

to put together a team, to get metric, to really kind of create

the pitch deck and what a

cool opportunity as a way to build skills that

not only benefit the family and the business,

but also would benefit you. You could take those to any company and

it would be the same thing. You know, you could pitch up the line at

a Fortune 500 company and it would be the

same thing of like, you know, what are we investing in and how and why?

So, yeah, I think some comes down to

picking a good partner, just like any relationship. And if you pick the right partner,

they're going to understand what your goals are as

a third generation, you know, CEO or C

suite or founder, like now taking the family business, like, you know, a

good partner is going to understand the conversations that you have to have internally to

get buy in on this, whether you're the decision maker or not, and help you

do that, help you, help you relay that message back,

help you set goals, help you like, understand where we are and

what, what a good expectation is around it. To

me, like, we're talking about partnership and relationship and like, to me,

that's what it is, and if it's a good one, they're helping you communicate. My

job is not just to sell a bunch of stuff on Amazon. It's to

help us get Runway to get to that point where we're selling a lot of

stuff on Amazon. You're listening to Building Unbreakable

Brands, the podcast all about brand stewardship and crafting

an enduring legacy. I'm here with Andrew Morgans, whose

company, Marknology, is also a family business.

So, Drew, I want to just kind of switch gears a bit. We've been talking

a lot about Amazon and your expertise there

and how companies can make that leap. But I'd like to just talk

a little bit about Marknology and your journey

as an entrepreneur. Who

else? What other family members are in business with you at

Marknology? Well, when I started

doing Amazon services, if you want to call that Amazon

Consulting, no one understood what it was. No one was going to school for

it. There weren't courses online. There weren't youtubes. There weren't blogs on

it. There was me. There weren't vas

overseas, at least not that I had access to getting trained or anything like

that. So for the longest time, I was a little too early.

I was doing this on my own, and I started just getting really busy

and overwhelmed with the amount of work I was getting. And

so my sister was in engineering school, my older

sister, and we grew up in Africa together. She was 18

when she came back. I was 16. So we're a close family, but

she was going to getting her master's in Florida at

USF. I was in Kansas City. And I just

was like, sis, like, I need help. It was a lot of excel

spreadsheets, CSVs, and I was like, vern, I need help. So while

she was going to school, she started helping me remotely from

Florida, like crank through a lot of these projects. And so she was kind of

the first, my first employee or first partner, whatever you want to call

it. And then, you know, if we've been doing this, I think

she moved year four, year five of the business. She came, she, like,

finished engineering school and honestly gave up that career to

come help me build mark knowledge. So Veronica was, was number one employee

and sister to join. Shortly after that, my younger

sister, an absolute genius. Uh, we were lucky to get her.

She was in school for equestrian science and really working with a lot of like,

champion horses in Ocala, Florida, and really pursuing. We grew up

kind of like Tarzan kids, you know, so it just makes sense, if you think

about it like that she was working with horses and she's

absolutely amazing with animals, but she came and joined

and really switched up what she was doing in life to kind of join what

me and sis were doing. We were just, like, growing this thing. I'm like, I

think I'm on to something, guys. Like, I'm winning with some brands like this.

It just seems like it's hot. Like I need help. So there's. The first two

were my sisters, but since then

I've got a cousin

that's joined us now for the last five years, and

I've retired my mother and my dad,

actually. It's all like a weird story in some ways, but my parents grew up

overseas and they were teachers. They were english teachers in

French Africa. And so I had my dad help

me with our SEO team, our writing team, our content team,

and really helped me create some processes in there for training and for educating.

So everyone's had a little bit, has touched it a little bit. But right

now I would say I've got two sisters

and a cousin, and my mom

helps us with a lot of things, if I can put it that way. She's

not officially an employee, but more so, like,

she's not going anywhere. So she's here all the time and helps us is.

She's absolutely a saint. So I guess that makes

five. Yeah. Yeah. That's. How has it been working

with siblings in the business? I know

that can be tough. There's been challenges later,

you know, at the same time, oh, my God, this

entrepreneurship is so hard. And I would not

rather have anyone else in my corner but them. They're

willing. The lows, the highs. It's not just like they're abandoning ship or taking

a paycheck somewhere else. They could be paid very, very, very

well. Both of my sisters, the older and younger one, combined, we have like

60,000 hours on Amazon. And I'm telling you, you can take that to

a company and get paid pretty well with that experience. So they've

stood by me. It's been an amazing experience. And

honestly, our family was kind of like in all the four corners of the

world, so to speak, for a while, post Africa years and things like that,

going to college, moving away, and this brought us back

together. And honestly, like, I absolutely love it.

I get to work with, they're my best friends as well, so I get to

work with my best friends. Building something that's changed

our family's legacy, changed our family's, like, path, like,

in ways that I can't even share on this podcast, probably without getting a little,

like, emotional about it, just in a big, big way.

And sure, there's challenges around maybe

letting someone go that someone on the team doesn't want to let go or

like someone needing to level up, that's not leveling up or

someone taking a break when they need to push or just

family things, but always done with love. And I think

that kind candor kind of concept, and it's something we've all learned.

I think one thing it's really done for us is

we respect each other in a way that we couldn't have

done if we hadn't built this together. We would have loved each other and respect

what each other did, but we wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known about engineering.

I wouldn't have known about equestrian science in the same way or whatever, but I

get to see them be great every day. And there's a respect

level that I think we have that a lot of other families might not have.

Just so I don't know if I can leave it at that, but it's

just, I love it for the ups and the downs.

Yeah. Yeah. I do think that you learn so much

when you're working with family, and

there are those opportunities that I think it always gives

families the opportunity to let the struggles bring them

closer or let it become

something that drives them apart. And it sounds like you guys are walking that line.

Well, to let it be some glue. We went through wars

together in Africa, like, legitimate war zones. Like, we lived in

Congo, Africa. We, like, you know, so as far as a family

unit, you know, we have always, like,

binded together in the hard times, there was nowhere to run. So, like, our

default setting is to, like, come together and, like, figure it out together.

And I think it's almost like an entrepreneurial superpower,

growing up the way that we did and then going out and get educated and

then coming back together and, like, building something together. Yeah.

I think as much as I've, like, feared what

could happen, and you hear all of. I mean, all of society is like, especially

in 2024, is like, you know, family can't work together

and, like, you know, and I just completely believe differently,

and it helps to have very good people. Right?

Like, I can't judge everyone's family and everyone's siblings around greed and

around all those types of things, but with my family, there's,

there's none of that, really. So we have, we've always had the same mission in

mind, which is to build a legacy. We actually call this the Legacy

chapter. Right now, we've had legacy in the past, and our families, our families

go all the way back to the beginning of this country. Like, my

sisters, they have the Daughters of Liberty certificates and things like that. I'm very proud

of that, that we've just been here a long time and

like, so the family has had legacy, like, if that makes sense.

And it's came and went and comes back again and goes away again. But

for us, like, this is a rebuilding of our legacy as a family. And it

started with wanting to take care of my parents. And then from there it's just

grown. There's 25 of us, right? So there's

20 plus that aren't family members that now we

feel like we're building legacy together. Love

it. You're listening to Building Unbreakable Brands, the

podcast for leaders with a generational mindset. My guest is

Andrew Morgans, who helps people sell things online.

As Andrew puts it, it's kind of like a game, but for making money.

Instead. We're going to turn the mic now over to see what my

son Henry can learn from Drew by asking him some of, of his

questions as the voice of the next generation.

Hi, Drew. Hi, sir. How is selling

things online like a game? How is selling things

online like a game? Well, you know, like video

games where you have all of these quests.

Like, you have, like, you have quests and you can do these little side quests

or you can do the main quests. You know, a lot of times you have

to do the side quests to get enough, like, experience or, like, enough stuff to

go do the main quest. And I kind of think of, like,

tinkering on a website or on Amazon kind of

like that you have all these little side quests you can do to, like,

get your score better, your brand better, like, you know, get a

score here. How did you do on this area? And if you're doing

all the side quests, you get all the side quests done. It makes the

main quest a lot easier. So for me, that's kind of how I think about

it. I'm always thinking of every little challenge that I have when it comes to

selling online as a

game. And if I get the right scores, if I get the right answer, then

I can go on to the next stage. That makes sense.

Yeah. All right,

what's your favorite item that you've sold? My favorite

item that I've sold. That is a good question.

I think it would be my very first product that I sold

myself t shirt, and

I came up with this idea for a football and baseball

t shirt in one, and I really didn't know what I was doing at

all. So that's why it was kind of more special, because I was just

learning. And I basically

posted on social media, on Twitter my very first tweet I ever

made. I just posted a picture of my shirt, and

the local, like, news company

saw, like, saw my shirt and reposted it, and I got,

like, 200 orders in the same day, and I was just, like, just

starting selling online, and it was like, it was just

like chi ching, like a video game. It was like I was winning, and it

was just like, cha ching, cha ching, cha ching. And it was. It was a

really cool moment for me. I feel

like I can relate to that. Like, with the podcast, like, we put

about three episodes out, and after a

while, it's just like. And

just, like, more and more listeners and more and

more episodes and stuff like that.

All right. How often do you work? Is

it like a part time job or a full time? It is like

two full time jobs. Honestly, I work a lot

of because even when I'm done, there's

things I wish I could have done that maybe are not saying you have to

have this done today, but I just want to build the best business that I

can be or the best business that I can have. And a lot of times,

what I do as a business is I help other people's businesses. So it's like

a business that I have to help mine and help others. And so a lot

of times, I'm spending a lot of my time helping others. And so in my

free time, I choose to work on my business. A lot of times, you want

to. To call that free time, but I try to just

find fun ways of, like, since I'm working all the time, I don't have

a Henry myself. I don't have any kids, and I'm

not married, so I have a dog, and I have family that works in

my business, so it's all connected for me. It's a

family business. And so I find ways of, like, maybe

I'm working outside instead of inside, or maybe I'm taking a

small break to go eat lunch with mom or something like that and

coming back to it. But I work a lot, but it's. What do they

say? If you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life

or something like that? I don't know if that's true, but I will say

that time flies when I'm working, and it feels like it just

goes boom. It's like playtime's over.

So, yeah, I work a lot, buddy. I work a lot,

but I wouldn't have it any other way. Mm hmm.

All right. Um, that's all the questions is done.

I'm probably going to hand it over

to Meghan, but, um, yeah.

Oh, do you get in trouble if you call her Meghan instead of

mom? No, you guys, I call her mom. I call

her Meg. I call her Meghan. So,

yeah, so that's Henry. Thank you. Thanks so much for

answering his questions and for spending some

time with me here on building unbreakable brands. As always,

Drew, just really fun to chat with you and to hear a

little bit more, both about your expertise and your advice for generational

businesses and just learn a little bit more about you and

your family team, both your nuclear

family and youre a extended marknology family. So

thanks so much for spending time with us. Thank you. And thank you to

you and to Henry. If people want to

connect with you to learn more about what you're doing, where's the best

ways and places for them to do that? So I'm pretty active

on LinkedIn, just posting, engaging,

gathering content there. So obviously, as a business social media platform,

LinkedIn is great. Andrew Morgans, there's not that many Morgans with an

s, so you shouldn't have a hard time finding me through the list. But also

marknology.com, we have good examples of our

work, case studies, portfolio stuff. If you just want to learn more.

I'm on Instagram. I don't know if our listeners are on

Instagram, but that's kind of my personal social media, where I'm just posting

my travels and my trips and my mindset. It's less like

Amazon centric or e commerce centric. It's just more of like me as

an entrepreneur. So there's a couple different ways, I guess, to engage.

Right now, I'm in between podcasts. I'm excited to be on Meghan's. My

own podcast got sold early in the year so that you can't

just tune in and listen to me regularly. But hopefully I'll have something soon

so that I can start engaging again and talking about the thing that I love

so much. So thanks for having me on the show. And honestly,

I'd love to hear from anybody, whether it's just chatting, no

cost, nothing to risk there other than just getting to chat

about what I love and love helping other

people do, which is build legacy and build a brand that they're proud

of. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I highly recommend that listeners connect with you

on LinkedIn. You post some great content on there and yeah, just such

a great human and really generous with your expertise. So

again, thank you so much for your time and thank you for being

on Building Unbreakable Brands. Thank you.

That was some great stuff from Drew. I love this

idea of building new skills in a generational company

around e commerce or Amazon as being an entrepreneurial

endeavor of its own. That's so important because for a brand to

endure, keeping a sense of entrepreneurship and innovation is just

absolutely critical. So if you can look at opportunities

for growth like this as not just revenue opportunities,

but also ways to practice cultivating a true spirit of

entrepreneurship within the company, it's just such a valuable way to

think about it. If you enjoyed this episode, please be

sure to share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to rate

us and leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening to

building unbreakable brands.