Top takeaways from 7 figure sellers in 2022⎜ 7 Figure Seller Summit ⎜ EP 218

Ryan: What's up everyone. Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host, Ryan Cramer. And this is Crossover Commerce presented by PingPong Payments. The leading global payments provider, helping the sellers keep more of their hard earned money. Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crossover Commerce. I'm your historian Cramer. And this is my literal corner of the internet, where I bring the best and brightest in the Amazon and e- commerce space. Thank you for joining. If you are the... This is the second time you've joined me today. Of course, every episode of Crossover Commerce is presented by PingPong Payments. What is PingPong Payments, we're a cross border payment solution, helping people save more of their time and money when it comes to sending or receiving funds. What's that look like pay your suppliers and manufacturers or your distributors with localized currency. It's really easy. It's free to sign up and you're going to put percentage points back to your bottom line, which of course makes everyone happy. If you're an entrepreneur just getting started, or if you're growing your business internationally, you're going to want to check out PingPong Payments. Go ahead and go to usa. pingpongx. com/ podcast to go ahead and sign up for free and catch all past 217 episodes. Again, we've done this already once today on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and today is lucky number two, just because we're a global company. We are going to go on the other side of the world this morning. We were talking to California. Now we're going to be talking to Japan and bringing back friend of the show. The one, the only Gary Wong of 7 Figure Seller Summit. If you haven't heard of 7 Figure Seller Summit, where have you been at? They have been continuous or consistently over the past two years, I think plus ranked as the number one virtual summit when it comes to Amazon and e- commerce sellers. That's right. This is the number one ranked virtual summit. I should say that everyone continuously says great content, great value worth my time, money and effort. And we wanted to bring on Gary over the course of his research and his understanding and his expertise. Bring him back this year and talk about some of the learnings he took away from the top sellers for 2022. And of course share some of that content with you. So we're going to buzz through this today. A short, sweet little pull behind the curtain. If you will, episode 218 of Crossover Commerce. So just wanted to leading up to the 7 Figure Seller Summit. Welcome Gary Wong of 7 Figure Seller Summit. Gary, thank you for joining on Crossover Commerce once again.

Gary Wong: Thank you Ryan, for having me. I'm super excited to be back and it's great to be here.

Ryan: Yeah, well you said it's the third meeting of the day. My man, it's early for you, but this is your time to shine. We were talking about this pre show. This is your busy year where you're putting on this great content where lots of different sellers all over the world are contributing to. I know we're excited to be part of it once again, but what's it like once again to... This is the sixth summit, fifth summit. What summit inaudible.

Gary Wong: This is number six.

Ryan: Six. You're going to have to add another seven to next year's summit. That's going to be a great tongue twister. I love that.

Gary Wong: Yes. Yeah.

Ryan: For people who may not be aware of the summit for example, if they're new to e- commerce or they're just trying to grow their business, tell us how this got started this iteration of a virtual summit. How did this come about?

Gary Wong: Yes. So I'm a seller myself. I've been selling on Amazon ever since about 2015, 2016. And I've been building my own e- com business over time. I actually first got started in e- com in the mid two thousands, around 2005. I started selling on eBay. So I mean, eBay was like the Amazon 15 years ago. And the whole landscape has changed, but I first created 7 Figure Seller Summit in 2018. At that time I would fly to a lot of in- person events because I always try to learn from other successful sellers. Right. Just stay ahead. But then we had life changing event, my wife and I got pregnant with our son and she was expecting and I was grounded. So I couldn't physically fly out to,...

Ryan: You were grounded.

Gary Wong: I was grounded literally.

Ryan: Almost like you're in trouble. Yeah.

Gary Wong: Yes. So I thought rather than being left behind on the sidelines, why not invite these 7 Figure Sellers to teach me online what they're doing and to teach everyone else online. So that was the creation story behind 7 Figure Seller Summit. We launched it in 2018 August and this is the sixth edition of 7 Figure Seller Summit. It's really designed to help Amazon and e- commerce sellers build scale and exit their businesses for 7 Figures. So we have a super stack lineup. We have about 30 speakers. And this year we feel that the theme is 2022 is the wild west in e- commerce. Right. So on one hand, we have all of these golden opportunities. Amazon is blowing up, e- commerce continues to boom. Exits, especially Amazon businesses are red hot. So you were seeing multiples five X to even seven X, which is insane. But on the other hand, there's all these potential pitfalls, just like the wild west, right? There's a lot of uncertainties. The rules are changing. Amazon TOS rules are changing, supply chain, the perfect storm, the high shipping costs are continuing and PBC costs are increasing, increase in competition, you name it, right. So we're really inviting real 7 Figure Sellers and e- commerce experts to show how they're surviving and thriving in 2022. So that's the real mission for our summit this year.

Ryan: That's a great topic. I think I heard this too. A lot of people call 2014 and 2015, the wild west of e- commerce and it comes full circle, right. With the perfect storm of all these uncertainties like you mentioned, just hopefully, no one is going to get into... Was it as the draws or the stick them up or any fights in the west or the inaudible or anything like that? No one gets into fights.

Gary Wong: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's inevitable because even if you don't want to, sometimes that bad guy just comes around the corner, it could be an Amazon suspension or it could be this, that, and the other things, so...

Ryan: Sure. You might have to fight for your business. And that makes a lot of sense too.

Gary Wong: Yeah.

Ryan: But since you talked to so many people that's amazing that you can just tap into your network and you can grow something like that where it's, Hey, I think what you have 40 speakers, is that correct? crosstalk

Gary Wong: We have about 30 speakers. I've interviewed over 153 since the last event. And yeah, I'm just super fortunate to be in this position where I'm able to almost have a virtual coffee with a 7 Figure Seller or an 8 Figure Seller that exited their business, learn about their super powers and also uncover some of the mistakes they made along the way. I mean, I'm always fast in it by that because, as the saying goes, a smart person learns from their mistakes. A wise person learns from the mistakes of others. So, we're really sharing a lot of these real world stories of sellers, building scaling and exiting. And I think that, just maybe being able to see around that corner, what that other seller did. Oh, that's something I got to watch out for. I don't want to make same mistake myself as a seller. So I think that's super valuable. And again, as you mentioned, Ryan, we were very grateful that we were voted favorite Amazon conference in seller poll two years in a row, actually it's both online and offline. So we only have one vote and we were voted a winner. So every conference we get about 3, 500 people that register to attend, you can get a free pass anywhere in the world where you are. So, if you are in the states or Europe or Australia, Singapore, India, Japan, it's open to everyone. So I think that's the beauty of it.

Ryan: Yeah. Well, and that's the beauty of eCommerce I'm going to reshift around on my street. See you real quick, that's BEV commerce and that's because it is international and not everyone has the exact playbook, but if you collectively, like you said, you've interviewed 130 plus people since the last summit, you start to paint a really nice picture of what's working. What's not working and what's going to be successful moving forward. Amazon's not stagnant, it's constantly shifting you are a seller as well... Are you still selling? I always forget if you're still selling.

Gary Wong: I am still selling. And I'm in this myself and juggling the summit as well. I mean that's one of the things... inaudible jump ahead, but a quick sneak preview, that's one of the top takeaways as well.

Ryan: Well, that makes sense. Let's jump right into it. You have some takeaways. I think you mentioned beforehand six. I would like to hear what you have for us and all the listeners who are tuning in today.

Gary Wong: Absolutely. And again, these are just my personal takeaways after interviewing all these 7 Figures Sellers, and e- com experts. Everyone is unique in their business, in their journey. So for me, the first takeaway has to do with mindset and your day one of the summit is all about the mindset and the fundamentals of the 7 Figure Seller. And especially right now in the wild west, things are very unpredictable changing so fast. I feel that resiliency speed. It's almost an execute or die mindset, right? You can't just skate on by anymore. And it's almost like going back to the wild west, it could be like a dual, like a shootout, right? Sometimes that bad guy, that competitor, or that rule change or that new increase in the shipping price, you have to react very quickly, right? Otherwise you need to pivot quickly. You got to focus on the speed. If you're too slow to react, you could get blown away. There's a lot of competition out there with the big aggregators. It's very difficult if you're just going to be really slow to react. So one example with this is with launch strategies, right? So late last year, Amazon had their terms of service change. No more rebates allowed, no more search find buy allowed. So, if some sellers used that before, if they use the same strategy today, you could risk getting suspended, right? So the rules are changing just like in the wild west. So we've invited 7 Figure Sellers to share their updated 2022 launch strategies like Chris Rawlings, he's a 7 Figure Seller. His new launch strategies doesn't use any of the rebates and search find by. We're seeing other sellers like Sharon Evan. Who's a 7 Figure Seller based in Israel, she's focusing her launch strategies using PPC. So she's sharing her PPC launch with buying intent in mind. So we're seeing sellers really adapt. I feel successful sellers are like speedboats, right? They pivot very quickly in the waters. They're like that fast shooter, reacting very quickly so they can come out on top. So I would say number one is really the execute or die mindset resiliency and speed. You can't just get on by anymore.

Ryan: I love that. That's a great mindset. And Chris obviously had great teachings with, I believe with his brain, but also with the tight network. And then Sharon, obviously friend of the show, we have great episodes with her and then just content. So yeah, like you said, there's a mentality change that Amazon had of you can't do this anymore with launching new products, you got to adapt and change out like this Bebo mentality, definitely on the same page, top takeaway in number two, Gary.

Gary Wong: Yes. Take away number two is one thing that really surprised me, Ryan. Traditionally, there's that saying, you don't want put all your eggs in one basket. You want to diversify spit out your risk, but after talking to these 7 Figure Sellers and e- com experts, one thing that surprised me is that successful sellers are focusing. They're just focusing on one to two things that they can do really well. Maybe it's their superpower. And then they outsource all of the other things. They don't get distracted. Okay. So for example, there's all these different shiny new objects out there, right? I mean there's the new, maybe that new social networking thing or there's this new opportunity. But I find that successful seller is to really focus on one to two things. And one of the sellers that I interviewed was John Elder. He's a 7 Figure Seller who recently exited his business for meet 7 Figures in his session at the summit from a seven to five job to a 7 Figure exit. He shared his story. It really took him a solid five years to build up his business to that level before he could exit. And rather than getting distracted by shiny new objects, he really focused on the one and two things that he did well. And for him, his main mission for his business was to research the right products to add to his product line and also to launch them successfully. He did them the right way. He didn't use any of the black hat tactics. Okay. And then one thing that really impressed me was he was working full- time for a solid three years as he was building his business. And he had a newborn in his family. So him and his wife had their hands full. And he focused on those one, two things. And he had to make some sacrifices, right. He sacrificed his lunch break, during lunch, everyone out else went out, he sat in front of his computer and answer customer messages. At night he sacrificed Netflix. He sacrificed going to the gym, right. Even had to explain it to his wife, honey, I got to spend one hour talking to my Chinese supplier overseas right. To really build the business. So he sacrificed a lot. He felt he got up to a certain level. He was really burnt out, but he really focused on those one to two things, rather than spreading himself too thin with Amazon business, he outsourced his PPC. So he said rather than spend hours and hours digging through all of the data on reports, he outsourced it out that saved him time. So he can focus on growing his business. He outsourced his bookkeeping. Right. It's very important that you got to know your numbers, especially if you want to exit. So he outsourced that out as well. So, I feel the key takeaway, he really focused on growing his business. It took him a solid five years. He focused on just the one, two things, focused on adding products to his line, researching new products, making sure they launched successfully not neglecting them. And then ultimately he was able to exit his business for meet 7 Figures.

Ryan: Yeah. John is fantastic. We've had him on too with his company and his new consultancy and it does take focus. Like you said, you can get shiny objects and drum in and pivot one way you want to be on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or not just on social media, you want to be on which marketplace. And there's too many different ways to get lost in all this. And it is difficult in that notion to just really buckle down and focus. I think I saw something recently of head down, notes to the grind stone for six months and then emergency what will happen to don't get distracted with that. And I thought exactly if that quote right, when you were talking about that, Gary makes a lot of sense to me simple, but a lot of people do get distracted with what's the new thing that's coming down the pipeline, but good stuff is...

Gary Wong: If I can just add one more thing to that point on the focus.

Ryan: Yeah, go ahead. Add one more thing.

Gary Wong: Even talking to potential buyers. I interviewed Gwen Sylvester from Thrasio and she says that buyers actually, they like to see that if you are doing one or two things really well, rather than spreading yourself too thin, trying to expand to that new marketplace, maybe if it's a new marketplace, you spend dozens of hours every week, and you're only adding, one to two percent to the bottom line. I mean, that's not really attractive. I mean, someone like a Thrasio would much rather see you focus on your core competency growing that brand on that main Amazon marketplace. And then even though you may have some chronical weaknesses, I mean, those could be opportunities for an aggregator to come in to fill those gaps because they have their team of experts, right. To bump up your supply chain or bump up your PPC, whatnot. Right. So it's actually, it could play to your favor and that it could be making your business more attractive if you really, just focus on those one to two thing. So it actually, it comes full circle because if a lot of sellers are thinking about exiting, it may be beneficial. So this is actually contrary to previous years before Amazon business were so high. We were taught to diversify, expand on Shopify expand on Walmart. I'm not saying that you shouldn't do that. I'm mean every business is different, but take a look at your main strengths guys, focus on those one to two things to really get that the highest ROI on your time.

Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah. It goes back to keeping it simple, keeping it easy and I mean, very basic nature of going back to the basics. I guess top takeaway number three, Gary, is that dovetailing to another one?

Gary Wong: Yes. Yes. So top takeaway number three is something that can really help your business. And that's building a mode around your business. So many, 7 Figure Sellers have, said outright that they're building a mode around their business or alluded to it. So if you think of one of those medieval like castles and you have that body of water surrounding it, right? So it's a lot harder for the bad guys to come in to penetrate it, to penetrate your business. And there's many ways that sellers can do that. Some of the ways that we've seen in the past at seven figure seller summit is some sellers are making their product very hard to copy, one way to do this was with rapid product development using hacks, such as 3D printing. It could cut down development times, from weeks to days, one of our summit speakers, Chris Davey, he's a 7 Figure Seller based in Shenzhen. He does that with his products. Other ways could include personalization... Personalizing your products in ways that your competitors can't. One of our speakers, Jordan Lindberg, who sells in the funeral product range. He has north of seven figures revenue per year. He offers custom and graving of his products, which are very hard for competitors to duplicate. And then by doing something as simple as that, he can actually mark up his products price by 30%, think about that. What if you're able to do a simple tweak to mark up your products by 30%. Other ways to build a little more around your product include legal methods, such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, to really protect your IP from unethical competitors. So even if you're not a 7 Figure Seller, small solopreneurs can use these methods as well at low cost. You can talk to lawyers that do this and this is actually one of the things that can boost your evaluation as well. A lot of these things we're keeping the end game in mind, right. Having these type of trademarks, IPs, these modes, buyers like that, and that could boost your multiples. So it could have an exponential effect on the value of your business. Other methods to build on mode include product licensing. This is more advanced tactic to build a mode around your business. 7 Figure Seller Paul Miller, he owns cozy phones. He told me that licensing a big name, like Disney's frozen, or even George Foreman, with those grills back in the day, or even your favorite sports team, that not only prevents copycats from selling your product, but also has the bonus immediately getting in an audience, fans of these things. So, these are all ways to build a mode. And one of my personal favorite ways to build a mode around your business is to build an audience or build a list and Evans Lee and his business partner they've raised over$ 980,000 from crowdfunding using Kickstarter Indigogo. And then he says that many Amazon sellers, they have a competitive edge in knowing how to do deep customer research and product development with suppliers overseas, but they may be leaving some of that on the table if they're not building a list. Right. So if you were to apply these same skills to crowdfunding in your next product launch, you can instantly build an army of backers with emails that you will own. That's something that Amazon would never share, the emails of their customers. And if you have that list, you can market to them. And then that could be another way to build a customer... It's almost an unfair advantage. If you have a list that you can launch to every time, right. I mean, versus on Amazon, you don't really have the customer data. So these are all types of product modes that can improve your business and also your valuation. So that would be the third big takeaway.

Ryan: Yeah. Going back to licensing. I remember when I was selling direct to consumer back in 2014, 2015, our main objective was... And what got a lot of people excited was licensed sporting goods. So it was anywhere from MLB and NCAA, NHL, you name it. We had a whole website dedicated to fandom and products that sound ridiculous in the notion of a Garden Om or a garden flag or something where you slap their logo on there, or slap a team name on there, gold, and people would just be fanaticize about it. So like you said, license going back to frozen or Disney or any other license product, such a great way to build a mode around it. If you have that relationship and partnership available to you.

Gary Wong: Yeah. That's right. And then that could lock out a lot of the competitors as well. Right? You see pretty few.

Ryan: Pretty easy find ripoffs if you'll.

Gary Wong: Yes. Yes. I mean, ripoffs.

Ryan: Yeah. I was going to say, ripoffs anyone that tries to emulate your product. Well, if it's licensed, obviously you can protect yourself in that regards and they're not licensed too, sell your products in that regard. So it builds that, protect crosstalk.

Gary Wong: I mean, you could file a lawsuit, right? Because you have the legal right to the product license. You can get that taken down.

Ryan: Absolutely. Very cool. I mean, as always, that makes a lot of sense building that mode, or like you said, protecting that barrier, your treasure or whatever you want to do to protect the castle, protect your business. Makes a lot of sense to me. We got more, I know we're just halfway through this. What else do we have as you takeaway there.

Gary Wong: So this comes to number four and this has to do with scaling. So scaling is the focus of day three of the summit. And when I interviewed a group of... I pulled a group of about 37 Figure Sellers recently, I asked them, what was the top mistake that you guys made? And a number of them admitted that they hired too late, right? They hired too late. There was one of the sellers inaudible. She's a 7 Figure Seller based in Estonia. She said that was one of the top mistakes, not hiring soon enough, not outsourcing quicker, trying to be a superwoman, which results in working in your business rather than on your business. And she admitted trying to do too much herself is still a problem. But once she realized that she started to list any tasks that she was doing repetitively, anything that she did three to four times a month. And I think a lot of people listening out there, I mean, maybe this is something that you guys can do as well, right? If you aren't outsourcing, if you aren't creating SOPs, anything that you repeat three to four times a month, this will become a list of future tasks for your future employees, right? Or your contractors. And then by doing this, she was able to begin creating standard operating procedures or SOPs and taught them to her hires. And then she shared in her vision that we as entrepreneurs, we're actually creators. And we are always... Our role is to bring more money in. So we're hired to bring in new money, so we need to buy more time. Okay. So that's why we need to hire people to help us. I think that's a really great call. We are hired to bring new money, so we need to buy more time. That's why we hire people. So not only hiring people, but other ways that sellers are saving time, as they scale is using automation and delegation, right? So automation, there's a number of tools out there for e- commerce and Amazon sellers. Then there's also services out there as well. One of the tools that I use is century kit, century kit is a tool for Amazon sellers. Literally it will monitor all of your listings. If someone changes one of your images, or if your listing gets suppressed, or if the category changes, it will instantly flag it and send you a email. Even before seller central will inform you. So there was a time a few years ago, one of my listings, for some reason, it was a kitchen product, but it got reclassified into the adult category. And the listing was suppressed. Immediately I got an email alert from this tool and it's a lot faster than, checking my listings every day myself, or having a inaudible. So I think automation is one of the other ways that you can scale your business to save you time and other great ways to scale include delegation. There's services out there. For example, for Amazon reimbursements, inaudible is one of the top services. And according to their founder, most Amazon sellers that they begin to work with can get a reimbursement from Amazon about one to 2% of their annual Amazon revenue. The reason is because Amazon, oftentimes they're not perfect. They'll lose your FEA inventory. They might mismeasure your product size and they'll overcharge you as a result. So oftentimes, sellers like me, we're so busy, we don't have time to audit all of the numbers. So you either automating or delegating these things, it makes sense, right? So you can get your money back. You can focus on the one or two things that grow your business. Of course there is a cost to that. But I think if you keep in mind the big picture, these tools, they can save you time and money. So that way you can scale your business, whether it's hiring or automation, this way you can work on your business and not in your business. And especially in 2022, because we have so many new tools out there, they didn't exist even just a few years ago. So I think it's really valuable opportunity for 7 Figure Sellers and even up and coming sellers to reach that level as they scale.

Ryan: I agree. I think one to 2%, if you asked anyone to add it back to your bottom line without too much of a hassle and there's nothing you have to do. I think a lot of people, I think they say yes.

Gary Wong: Yeah.

Ryan: I don't think there's too many people to say no in that regard. So shout out to inaudible. We actually have inaudible tomorrow, so we'll be excited to hear more about that more in depth tomorrow. So if you're tuning in and you need to mark that down, we just released the details on that. So make sure you subscribe to our channel as well. So but Gary, I know we're running a little on time, but what about tip five on that?

Gary Wong: Yeah. Tip five is... With all of the high costs, we're seeing this here in the wild west, with shipping, with the raw material costs, the PPC costs, you guys, everybody really needs to focus on profitability. I mean, you really have to know your numbers. It starts with supply chain. One thing that a lot of sellers overlook I find is the negotiating with your suppliers, right? I mean, the price, some sellers may have gotten an initial price quote that they got like two years ago and they have grown over time. And there's so many economies of scales that can be achieved. You may be able to get a better price quote. And then at the time that we're talking right now, we're just wrapping up Chinese new year. If you're sourcing from China and the suppliers are coming back, one of the little known factors is Chinese companies, they operate by the Chinese new year. So their financial calendar actually ends pre Chinese year and the new calendar begins after Chinese year. And that's the time a lot of suppliers, manufacturers will adjust their pricing. So you may be in for a price increase. But so the key thing is be prepared. You could really have to know your numbers, see how much, if they come at you, you have to negotiate that, right. There's also many other things you can negotiate with your suppliers, payment terms, cashflow is key, right? We're seeing lead times now, inaudible, you can get a container from China. I mean, if you place an order, you can get it within 60 days. Now we're seeing 120 days, right. Look at your cash flow, negotiate, better payment terms. I can go on for a long time about this because this was something that I've really been doing for many years, but just one quick example that I'd like to share with you guys is, look at ways to cut your cost of good sold. And sometimes you have to think outside the box, right? I interviewed Ken Wilson and David inaudible. These are two seven figure sellers based in the Midwest America. And they previously sourced from China, but then they found a way to move their manufacturing to the US. So they shared and at the 7 Figure Seller, their complete road map, how they self manufacture in the US, even though the labor costs may be higher, they were able to cut their bottom line product landing costs. And they also saved on their delivery lead times. So they cut their lead time sourcing from China, which took about four months down to four days. Think about it, four days delivery. crosstalk Yeah. They literally bought out their neighbors barn across the street. And then they clean it out. It's a super fascinating case study, but ultimately they lowered their product landing cost this way. Obviously not every product can be made in the US, but there could be an opportunity. So it goes back to the first big takeaway, right? Resiliency. You got to execute quickly pivot, right? Maybe if your supplier partnership is not working out, look at alternate waves, right? So you got to know your numbers and other tools like PingPong, right? PingPong is an excellent example. If you're selling internationally, if you're paying, if you're sourcing internationally, if you want to pay your overseas suppliers, PingPong offers super competitive rates. You can lower your money transfer wire fees. And also if you're selling internationally in Europe or Japan, you can bring back those foreign currencies back to your home currency at lower fees. So even if you can save a couple percentage points there, that's still money back in your pocket. So it's so key right now with the high cost. You got to focus on profitability.

Ryan: Absolutely. Yeah. And you take everything that I talk about all the time with know your numbers, things change. You can either work with suppliers overseas and have that manufactured here in the United States or put together in the United States. There's a lot of different iterations again, the world is somewhat your oyster, but you have to know your numbers at the end of the day. If it's too much, you have to find a plan and B or C or D same with sourcing logistics. You have you... I mean, logistics wise, we saw a lot of people have inventory on the water. If it's closer in the United States, four day turnaround, that's not bad. I think every person would take that. They pay their arm in their leg. If they could get that at this juncture in their business. But I mean I'm assuming that leads into key takeaway number six of what you have.

Gary Wong: Yes. So the last takeaway, last one I'll least is exits in selling your business, which is the end game for a lot of sellers. If you look at a seller's like lifetime, like salary from a business, usually over 50% will come from the exit or selling it. So the key is to build a roadmap, build a roadmap to reverse engineer your exit, right? I mean, even right now as I mentioned at the top, we're seeing very high multiples just a few years ago, three X, multiple was considered really good. And today we're seeing five X to seven X, multiple. I mean, that's double what we're seeing that it's almost like the property market it's super hot right now, but you got to build a roadmap. Right? So I spoke with Paul Miller, he's the 7 Figure Seller. Also, he's the host of Amazing Exits podcast. And he shared one best practice is you got to put down your goal, how much money do you want to net at the end of the day, when you sell your business, for example, it could be$1 million in the bank, right? After taxes and give yourself timeframe. Let's say you want to do in 12 months, right? So you really got to break it down to the nuts and bolts. How many products do you need to launch within the next period? How much capital you need, make sure you have enough cash flow lending. You really have to reverse engineer. You can't just come as you go. And then just expect to exit tomorrow, right? I mean, the smart sellers they've really crafted this. They've built a roadmap in advance. And so we've interviewed a number of sellers that sharing their story that you guys can learn from at the summit. And then as an additional bonus for those of you guys that are already considering an exit. The most common thing that sellers overlook before the exit is with seller discretionary earnings or STE, and then more specifically our add backs. So what are add backs? These could be your salary. You pay yourself as a business owner, even your credit card points or software tools that you use, right. By adding this back, you're able to get multiple on every dollar that you add back. So I also, I highly recommend that there's a book out there by Joe valley. He's one of the co- founders of Quiet Light Brokerage. It's called the exit entrepreneurs playbook in one of the chapters there. He really lists all of the ad backs and he's a speaker on the summit as well. So that could add a lot to your bottom line, could be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. So take away number six exits, build your roadmap to your evaluation, make sure you consider all of these add backs as well.

Ryan: Absolutely. Gary, that's amazing as always. And when you drop these names, I'm so lucky to even just have a conversation like we do today with some of these guys. But of course, this is scratching the surface, man. This is the ultimate Ts of all the things you're going to probably be learning about in the 7 Figure Seller Summit. So for people out there that are saying, I'm sold Gary, where do I need to go to get all the great details? How do I do it like these great people? How do I do?

Gary Wong: Yeah. So, I mean, this is just the tip of the iceberg and we're happy to offer a free pass to everybody joining us today. All you have to do is go to 7figuressellersummit. com, and to get your free pass, we're launching February 28th, Monday through March 4th, Friday, it's a five day event. And then you can get for a limited time, you can watch the sessions every day where there's going to be a different focus from mindset fundamentals, to marketing, PPC, to scaling, to profits, to exits, and then something new that we're doing this year. We've listened to a lot of our attendees feedback and we're adding new coffee breakout rooms. So every day there will be a networking coffee hour every day at 1: 00 PM Eastern. And it's free to attend only if you get your free pass. So one of my favorite parts about going to in person conference is talking to other sellers, talking to the speakers. So sometimes serendipitously you meet someone, maybe you can ask them some questions about their business or even find a potential mastermind partner, ultimately for the long run. I think that could be super valuable. So, I mean, there's so many other things that we've added. We don't have time to mention all the details. So I highly recommend you check it out, get a free pass 7figuresellersummit. com, and also thank you to PingPong for sponsoring and supporting Ryan, give an awesome session presentation as well about capital management really cracking the code. I'm super excited for that. So I highly recommend that you guys check it out.

Ryan: Yeah, me too. We were talking about this pre show. Less than 24 hours we will be turning around and recording this great value app for people. And again, the names are just crazy. The people are bringing the content last year. I was super excited to be invited back. I'm really excited to share this insights as well for everyone who, again, it's for you to sign up and you can't really crosstalk.

Gary Wong: If I can just add one more thing.

Ryan: Yeah.

Gary Wong: One thing that sets us apart, because we do have a very high bar to reach because we were voted favorite Amazon conference. So with all of these speakers, I twisted their arms guys. I asked them, please present something unique, something new, not something you've presented, just last month at some other events. So these guys are bringing their A game and I'm super excited. A lot of these speakers they've spent so much time preparing their trainings, I think is going to be super valuable guys. So if there's just one thing that you check out this year, I highly recommend you join 7 Figure Seller Summit. So even though, I am the founder and host, I mean, that's crosstalk.

Ryan: No crosstalk.

Gary Wong: Yeah. I mean, that's my ambition. I really want to help you guys build skill and exit your businesses.

Ryan: Well, what is truly a great value add. And I think it is a testament to the programming that you put in, the people you bring in. Again, it's not stale. You bring in new people every year, almost half the people are new and you have people that are coming back that share different things. It's not a cyclical thing that people can just share just like Amazon people have to continuously learn and grow and build on what they've learned in the past. So that being said, Gary, if again, we already linked it out. 7figuresellerssummit. com is the website. How can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more, just connect with you?

Gary Wong: Yeah. Best way to connect with me is you can connect me over Instagram. It's my name, Gary Wong 8020 on Instagram. And you can connect to me by email as well, but my inbox will be a little flooded. So...

Ryan: You're busy, man.

Gary Wong: Yeah. I mean, I'll get to it, but the quickest way will be over Instagram.

Ryan: I know. I feel I have four different conversations going on with you and all the different mediums. So no worries here, but Hey Gary, thanks so much for hopping on as a friend of the show, I'm excited to present at the summit and really bring value again to all the sellers out there, but thanks very much for sharing your top takeaways from the 7 Figure Sellers on today.

Gary Wong: You are very welcome. Yes. And thank you for having me, Ryan and good luck to you, everybody out there. It is the wild west of e- commerce and we hope to be able to help you grow your business and see you guys at 7 Figure Seller Summit.

Ryan: Absolutely. Go sign up and thank you so much, Gary, for your time. This morning there in Japan friend of the show, Gary Wong of 7 Figure Seller Summit. Thanks everyone again, also for tuning in coming on Crossover Commerce. This is episode 218 of this amazing show. Again, apologies for the setup here. We're working on tweak, doing a little tweaks here, not the two additional studio setup that we have on episodes past, but it is all good here. Hopefully you guys took a lot of learnings from this episode. I always do. I always take notes with Gary. I'm here writing in the size below all my computers and monitors here. Just great content. I'm excited to be presenting for that. So make sure you go sign up today. Again, the links below. If you're listening to the show notes or listening to us, it's going to be available in the show notes and just subscribe to you the different email blast that Gary has. There's some much great content that he has that comes and fills your inbox. It's great content that you don't want to miss out on. So make sure you go and sign up for today. And of course, PingPong payments is there for that ride as well. Again, go sign up today. It's coming out quickly @ 7figuresellersummit. com with that being said, thanks for joining me for part two of today's podcasting episodes. We'll be back to tomorrow. Again. I alluded to earlier in the episode, back with Getida and Yoni Mazor, we're going to be talking about, let me go flash it up there. If you are auditing and reimbursements with Yoni Mazor the CGO, the chief growth officer and co- founder of Getida. He'll be on again tomorrow. That's it for me on episode 218, I'm Ryan Cramer, and this is Crossover Commerce. We'll catch you guys next time. Take care.