Episode 31 – Amazon Success Stories: From Restaurant Server To 7-Figure Amazon Seller By Age 24

Everyone loves a good story but nothing beats great Amazon success stories, right? Which is why Helium 10’s Director of Success, Bradley Sutton, is so happy to welcome his next guest, Tatiana Buree, to the microphone. Besides being a market leader and an authority in her product niche, Tatiana’s story is even more impressive because she became a 7-figure Amazon seller at the age of only 24, starting out with no prior e-commerce experience. How cool is that?

In episode 31 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Tatiana discuss:

• 00:35 –  An Introduction To Tatiana
• 01:35 – The Freedom Of The Laptop Lifestyle
• 03:15 – How Tatiana Got Started In E-Commerce
• 05:40 – Her Interest In Online Businesses
• 07:05 – Her Beginnings With Kindle Publishing
• 09:05 – How Kindle Publishing Changed Her Limiting Beliefs And Mindset
• 10:45 – Tatiana’s Investment In Amazon Education/Training
• 14:00 – Her First Products – Lessons Learned
• 16:05 – Her Current Product – Serving A Greater Mission
• 18:10 – Her Customer-Centric Business Growth Strategy
• 19:20 – Social Media Presence – The Impact On Her Brand
• 22:30 – Becoming An Authority In Her Niche
• 25:40 – Building A Social Media Following
• 27:10 – Leveraging Influencers – The Power Of Warm Traffic
• 29:50 – The Buying Experience – Purchasing Online Vs. Brick And Mortar Stores
• 31:05 – Tatiana’s Experience With Shopify vs. Amazon
• 34:15 – How To Contact Tatiana

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you listen to our podcast.

Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation. 
• SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today meet Tatiana, who went from being a restaurant server to making seven figures on Amazon by the age of 24, and how becoming a YouTube influencer for her own brand with 15 million views helped her get there.

Bradley Sutton: How’s it going, guys? Welcome to another episode of The Serious Sellers Podcast. And, today, I have a really cool guest. My good buddy, my sister from another mister, Tatiana Buree. Tatiana became a seven-figure seller at the age of 24, and she has some great tips and tricks that she can share with us that helped her get where she did and where she is right now. Tatiana, how’s it going?

Tatiana Buree: Hey, Bradley, it’s going really well. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really excited to talk to you today.

Bradley Sutton: So am I. So, first of all, you’re actually talking to us from Panama right now, right?

Tatiana Buree: I am. I have moved over to Central America. I’m established here. I’m now a Panamanian resident, and I’m loving it.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. So that’s the first thing. I’ve actually known that for a while, and if I asked you this before, I completely forgot the answer, but what motivated that? Was it just to be living in other countries and nice places over there, or do you have a family there, or how did you just decide to say, “Hey, I’m going to go ahead and get a house in Panama.”?

Tatiana Buree: Well, first of all, that’s the beauty of this laptop lifestyle. You can live wherever you want to live and really not have a lot of strings attached, and you have that mobile lifestyle. And, so, I want to take advantage of that. And the last three—last year, last two—years and the next two years, I’m going to be traveling a lot, and I want to travel to all these different countries. And so I figured with this lifestyle, living elsewhere can better serve me. So, Panama is just a really great hub for traveling, lots of flights that are actually out of here—short flights—and also, it’s a really great place to save on your taxes. So, because I’m Canadian, in Canada, we do have a very high tax rate. And because I was never in Canada, I was traveling all the time. I felt it wasn’t being put to good use, and so I figured, “Well, while I’m traveling for the next two, three years, it’s a great place for me to spend my time and have this as my home base.” And yeah. So it works out really well. I save a lot of money. I get to enjoy Panama, embrace myself in a new culture, learn Spanish, learn Salsa. So that’s been really fun.

Bradley Sutton: Nice. All right. Yeah. We’re going have to have you and Stefan come in, and we’ll do some Salsa together. I love that. Alright. Anyways, so that’s a great story about—just as an example as an effect of this kind of business—what are the kind of things that you’re allowed to do with. If we’re working a 9 to 5 job in an office, first of all, we’re not making a salary enough or where we can just go and decide, “Hey, let me just go get a house in another country.” At the same time, we don’t have the freedom to just up and move unless we’re a remote worker. So this is just a great example of what can happen when you do things the right way. And that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about. The “right way” is different for many people, and I just want to learn today about what was right with you. You became an amazing seven-figure seller at a very early age, but that was at 24 but when was your first, I don’t know—what’s the fancy word? You might speak French, so you might know  I want to say foray or well, I don’t know what the word is, but how was your first entry? Do you know what word I’m trying to think of? How do you say that? Your first entry.

Tatiana Buree: So how did I get started?

Bradley Sutton: Yeah, but I want that fancy French word though. I forgot what it was. But anyways, how did you get, sort of… what was your first entry into e-Commerce at all?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah. Okay. So, I think it was in 2015 when I first entered the world of online business, and prior to that, I had no experience at all. I didn’t know that people actually could make a living with online businesses. I didn’t know what that was. And I personally didn’t even own a computer, so I had an iPad at the time. And I had all these limiting beliefs, of course, all this conditioning from growing up and other people’s beliefs imposed on me. And so I wasn’t really into this. And I thought, “People who have an online business—it’s not reliable.  Who knows what can happen, and there’s not a lot of certainties; there’s a lot of scammers and all that stuff.”

Bradley Sutton: Let me just interrupt really quick. I want to kind of set the stage here in my mind, but you said around 2015, so I’m assuming you were 19, 20, 21—around there. Now, at this time, were you in university or were people pushing you to pursue higher education or what was that set up like at that time?

Tatiana Buree: I was 20 years old, and I was in university. I was studying Political Science and I was maybe in my second or third year. And yeah, so I was– my parents wanted me to finish university and work in the parliament of Canada because I speak some French. So it’s a great job. And having a government job provides a lot of stability, right? And so that’s kind of the path, the route that I was going on. And I was also working part-time as a server at a restaurant because I had a big student loan to pay. So, whenever I was not in school, I was working. So that was kind of my life and there was a lot of fun. There was no travel and that was fine because I knew that this is the path, this is what everyone does, this is what all students do. And I didn’t really realize that there were other paths that I could take. And so it wasn’t until I met Stefan—who’s now my fiance—and I met him, and he had this whole blog, this whole online bliss business. And I still didn’t understand it when I met him for the first six months. I had no idea what he did. And finally, I came to the understanding that, “Oh, he makes money from blogging and he makes money from being an influencer and having courses and things like that.” And so the idea of starting an online business was intriguing to me because I saw that he had this laptop lifestyle where he was able to travel whenever and wherever he wanted and now that I was his partner. I felt I was holding him back because he wanted to go to all these places, but I was in school and I had a job. So I really was not able to have that flexibility to travel and kind of partake in these experiences with him. And so then I really felt, “Okay, it’s a must that I figured out a way to make money online so that I can support myself so that I can at least join him in his travels and we can have these adventures together.” And so finally I gave in and I decided, “Okay, I got to figure out.” There are different ways of making money online. It’s not just one way. It’s not just selling on Amazon. There are different ways. And so I tried, Kindle publishing, which is something that he had done for many years. And so I tried that and I kind of liked it.

Bradley Sutton: What is that? I actually, I’m not even a 100% sure what it is, but I’m sure many listeners might not know what that is. So just briefly, what is Kindle publishing?

Tatiana Buree: So you know Amazon kindle, right?

Bradley Sutton: It’s the book reader thing? Right?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah. So reading books on your Kindle, and you can have all these books on your Kindle. And then there are people who self-published books. And so you can self-publish books; you don’t have to write the books yourself. So if you’re not someone who is an author, you can outsource that to ghostwriters, and you can turn it into a business. So you add value to people by writing books that are kind of factual books, step-by-step books. I was trying to specialize in the dog-training niche at the time I had a little puppy. And so I was really excited about learning how to train my dog. And so I would hire ghostwriters who had the experience, and the dog training niche to write books for me. And then I would publish them, and basically, you put them up on Amazon Kindle and it creates revenue for you. And so they’re 99 cent books, but obviously, a lot of people buy them because they’re so cheap and then you get that monthly income and yeah. So it’s a very easy way to kind of ease into this online world. And it’s very low cost, low-initial investment for someone like myself who had basically no money, that’s a really great way to kind of get your feet wet.

Bradley Sutton: Well, this is, I had no idea where we are even going to talk about this idea. I haven’t seen all. I’m sure, maybe you’ve made videos talking about this, but this is the first time I’ve heard any of this actually, of anybody doing this. So, that’s kind of a really cool thing about how you know someone can get started. So how did those dog-training books work out? Did it generate some enough revenue for you to be able to quit your restaurant job?

Tatiana Buree: No, it didn’t. But what it did do is it started to ignite this motivation within me. And basically, this new belief that “Hey, this is something that is interesting. This is something that can work.” I can actually create an online business and make money passively or semi-passively. And so I did get those dog training books, the point of where I was making $500 per month consistently. And that’s when I realized, “Oh my gosh, I could be sleeping and someone in a different part of the world is buying my book and I’m making money.” And so having that realization really shifted things with my mindset. And so, with that business, I could have taken it further. I could have scaled it. I know Stefan’s brother, he scaled that business to $40,000 a month, which is pretty cool. But I wasn’t really excited about it and I figured that, if I really am going to put in my all, I do need to have some passion for what it is that I’m doing. So yeah. So then, I decided to look at different things and I discovered selling products on Amazon, and I had not really been an Amazon shopper. I live in Canada. Amazon.ca is not as great as amazon.com. But I had heard about it, and so I thought, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if I had a product that I created myself and someone else purchases it? And they saw value in it and they got excited to receive it at the door. The idea of this business was really just very beautiful to me and I just really liked how it worked. And so I invested in a course in a training program, which I do think that it’s kind of the best way to go about it. I know that a lot of people try to start this business with YouTube information and Google. And as much as even myself with my YouTube channel, I try and add as much value to people as possible with my content sharing, how to get started and sharing tips and all that stuff. I still don’t think it’s comprehensive enough. And this business is a real business. And so just like you go to school to study and learn, and you go to school for a doctor so that you know what to do when it comes to surgery. It’s the same thing I feel with this business. If you want to really build a real business and scale this business, and you need to build it with a solid foundation, and I think that you need a comprehensive step-by-step course to do that. If you just want to make a couple extra hundred dollars on the side, maybe a thousand dollars on the side, then you don’t need to invest in a course because you can find information from Google and YouTube to do that. But I’ve just had so many people now that come to me after they’ve tried this on their own, without any proper training and they’ve lost money and they’ve gotten disheartened, and they don’t want to continue the business. And so that’s just been my experience. That doesn’t mean that’s a fact, or that’s the experience of everyone. That’s just my experience. And so I believe that investing in your education is one of the best investments you can make. And so I was fortunate enough to have invested in a training program that was really great. And so I learned from that exactly what to do. And so I just followed it step-by-step, started implementing things. And I think that was one of the best things about my personality is that if someone tells me to do something and they tell me that this is going to help you make an extra amount of dollars or help this many people, or this is the results that are going to render you, I do it. I don’t question it, I just do it. I try it, and then I get results for myself and I to see what the outcome is. And so I started just taking massive action. And, so started just between work and between school. Whenever I had free time, I would work on this business and I didn’t have much money to invest, only about $300. That was my initial inventory, including shipping. And, that $300 turned into a business now that generates over $120,000 per month.

Bradley Sutton: So your first product was the niche that you have continued to sell, which is the waist trainers, right?

Tatiana Buree: No.

Bradley Sutton: Guys, guys, I hope everybody understands. Tatiana can attest to this. I am not pre-asking these questions. I’m learning what she’s doing right live with you guys here. So tell us how it is. Correct me, Tatiana.

Tatiana Buree: So my first product, the reason I say $300 turned into $120,000 per month in revenue is because that $300 was reinvested. All the profits I earned from that initial $300 had been reinvested in my business ever since. I’ve never taken out any external loans or any additional money from friends or family. It was just that $300 and so $300 put it into inventory. That inventory rendered me a profit on Amazon, put that profit back into inventory and slowly, slowly, it grew to the point where it’s at right now. But the first product that I had was not the product that I’m selling now. The first product I had was a very small, very inexpensive product because I needed something that wasn’t expensive. I didn’t have enough money to source a product that was $6 a unit. So the product I sourced was called a Konjac Sponge. And, a lot of people probably don’t know what this is. It’s a natural beauty sponge, comes from the Konjac root. It’s a Japanese product. And, it was 10 cents a unit. So, it was cheap. And basically, I said, you know what? This isn’t going to make me millions of dollars, but what it is going to do is this can teach me the process. I’m going to learn the process. And so I used this first product as my teacher. It was my training tool. And so I learned, okay, all the steps that I need to do to source on Amazon. I made a lot of mistakes. I failed a lot, but it didn’t cost me too much money because I didn’t invest too much in the beginning, anyway. And so, it was just a great lesson. And so that product though, it ended up making me around two or $3,000 per month consistently in revenue. So I was excited about that. And that led to another product, which was a Mascara and that product also made mistakes with it. Learn what may be topical products, products that you put near your eyes, maybe that’s not such a good idea to source that from China. Maybe that’s something that has a really high liability risk and I don’t want to have those responsibilities. So I decided, “Okay, I don’t want to source this product anymore.” But that product also did make me more revenue. I was doing $5,000 a month with that product. So again, as with every product I started to learn more and just reinvest those profits back into the business. I didn’t pay myself for the longest time because I knew that if I paid myself, then that’s money taken out of the business and potentially then my business won’t grow as fast. And then that led me to my third product, which is the product that I’m selling now.

Bradley Sutton: And, that’s the waist trainers. And for those who don’t know what waist trainers are really quickly, what kind of product or what does it do?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah, so my brand is called Luxx Curves and we sell body contouring garments for women and the waist trainers, they do a number of different things, but basically, a woman’s body changes a lot throughout her lifetime with stress and hormones and pregnancy. And so the waist trainer’s help kind of bounce you back and ultimately help women just feel confident in their skin, and kind of ignite that feeling of confidence, and that feeling of embracing your curves, embracing your hips, embracing that feminine figure. And so that’s kind of our mission with our business. It’s not just really selling products, it’s really about building a community of empowering woman. And so I think that’s one major thing with the business that has helped, is really tapping into the community and finding a way to serve a greater mission.

Bradley Sutton: Excellent. Excellent. Okay, so this was your third product and it started taking off and this is kind of the brand. The other two products don’t sell anymore, right?

Tatiana Buree: No, no, not anymore.

Bradley Sutton: So then just with this one niche, you hit the seven figures a couple of years ago, or was it last year?

Tatiana Buree: Last year. I got in 2018.

Bradley Sutton: Last year. And how many different SKUs, or how many different kinds of waist trainers, I don’t know much about this. I don’t know if there’s colors or sizes or whatever, but approximately how many SKUs generated those 7-figures?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah, so there’s quite a bit. And the thing is, when I started on Amazon, I started with one color. I started with only a few sizes and that’s it. And I wasn’t obsessing over, “Oh, I need to have all of these colors. I need to have all these patterns just so I can compete with my competitors.” No, I just focused on having what I could afford, and then waiting and letting the market tell me what they wanted. And so over time, as I built up this community and as I was actively asking people, “Okay, what is your feedback? What would you like to see?” And so over time, I’ve built up the product line to now having I think 10 different types of waist trainers. Each one has maybe five or six different colors and patterns, 10 different sizes. So, there are many SKUs, but that was built over time based on the customer’s needs, asking them exactly what it is they wanted. And at this point, I never release a product without asking them what it is that they want. So on my Facebook community, I’ll do polls and I’ll say, “Hey, do you prefer this pattern or this pattern? Do you prefer a class like this or a class like this?” And just getting their direct feedback because they’re my demographic. There are people who have purchased from me who better to ask them. I’d be foolish to think that the pattern, and the color, and the product that I think is best is what everyone else will enjoy.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah, that’s an excellent strategy there. So you talked about knowing what your customers wanted and in my brief, googling you and just analyzing your brand on there. I’ve noticed that you have a very, very strong social media presence, especially on YouTube. So, my question is, did the social media, did the YouTube, did the other social media things you do that have, was it when you started that you really started taking off, or did you start those things from day one with this brand, or can you tell me a little about the relationship between social media and your brand and how it helped and when it helps?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah. Yeah. So social media was huge for me. But I didn’t have it right from the get-go. So, right when I started signing these products on Amazon, I do not have many social media going on. And I would say that the most important thing is to have high-quality products because I launched my products, and turn on the PPC and did those, everything that you’re told to do. And it did well because people liked the quality. So they received the products and I had organic reviews, which really helped my brand and that’s social proof is so important on Amazon. But then what really kind of got it going and developed more brand awareness was the social media. And I believe that you really have to focus your time on social media these days. And if you’re not doing that, then you’re really missing out. And so the benefit I had with this product is that this was a product that I can really market myself personally as an influencer. And I know that this is not something that many people want to do, but you don’t have to do this. I’m just sharing with you what worked for me and what I did. And I’ll share with you some things that you can do if you don’t want to be the face of your brand. For me, I chose to be the face of my brand because I benefited from this product personally. I had great before-and-after pictures, and I could talk about it for days, and I was really excited and passionate about it. So I started the YouTube channel, and the great thing about YouTube is you can put a video out there, and for weeks and months and it doesn’t get views and you think, you know what? Nobody’s watching this, what’s the point? But you know what? Now when I look back at my most viewed videos, there are the videos that I put out there right at the beginning, the very first videos I ever released on YouTube. So the cool thing about YouTube is that it has this compounding effect. So, you just basically have to be consistent with it. So put videos out there on a weekly basis, and in the beginning not going to get views, you might not have subscribers, but over time, and obviously being strategic about the way that you release YouTube videos, keywords, SEO, all that. Over time, you’re going to start building a following. And more importantly, getting those views. Subscribers don’t matter that much on YouTube right now it’s all about the views. And especially for you, if your purpose is to drive people to your eCommerce store, then having views is more important than having subscribers. And so for me, when I started to do the YouTube, that really took a turn for my business because I became an authority on YouTube around my specific niche. So if you search right now on YouTube waist training, all my videos will dominate the search, that’s all my videos come up. And that’s because I did a lot of keywords.

Bradley Sutton: Was that organic? It’s not on Amazon? You do two-step URLs and try to send traffic to certain searches. But how does one become, like what you said, how does one become the “authority” in a certain niche, or make it more likely that their product or their channel or whatever is going to come up in the search results for a niche?

Tatiana Buree: You just got to be putting out content on a regular basis. And so what I did for me is I figured out, “Okay, what are my keywords? What are people searching for on YouTube when they search for this specific product?” And so what I did is, I did Keyword Research. First of all, my main keyword was waist trainer or waist training. And so at the beginning of each and every video, I had that keyword. So I’d have waist training and then I’d be, “How to put on a waist trainer, waist training, how to wash a waist trainer? Waist training, how to blah, blah, blah.” So whatever people were searching for, I would create a video about. So those direct searches on YouTube because YouTube will tell you what people are searching for. If you start to type in your keyword on YouTube, it will finish your sentence for you. And so you can create a video for each one of those searches that are most common. And so the more of that that you put out there, the more that you’re going to be dominating that keyword on YouTube. And, obviously your content has to be good and valuable and you want to have that watch time. But as long as you’re offering value than people who click on your video, they’ll like it, they’ll thumbs up, they’ll comment. And sooner or later your video starts to rank and it becomes an authority. And especially for those niches where right now there are no brands really dominating. So for example, with me, the waist trainer, there were random girls on YouTube who would review waist trainers and share the results. But there were no brands on there, nobody who was directly selling their products. And so if you’re selling something like, I don’t know, let’s say like, sunglasses, or whatever. And you’re a brand, you could– if there are no other brands directly selling sunglasses on YouTube, you could dominate that keyword and that niche.

Bradley Sutton: Literally, right now I have YouTube open as you were talking and I just started typing waist trained, and then the actual autocomplete, the first one that came up is waist training before and after. And you’ve got two out of the first three results here. And I’m looking at some of these views, “Holy cow, this one has just added two months ago and has 68,000 views.” And I see a video here that you added two years ago and has 1.1 million views. So, I’m assuming that some of these somehow went viral, and that must have really given your brand and your sales a boost, right?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah. You know, viral videos. I think viral videos are a little bit overrated. If I’m going, to be honest, I have another video on my channel that went viral, got over 4 million views, but, who are these used from? For me, to be relevant and used to be my target demographic. And so with that particular video, the 4 million views, it was not my demographic. And so those subscribers do not really, I’m not tailoring to men. And so a lot of that, those views came from a lot of men. And so, sometimes it’s good, but your goal is not to go viral. Your goal is just to put out consistent content and to build a niche following of people who are your direct consumers.

Bradley Sutton: Well what you just said is totally sending off sparks in my brain because it’s so similar to what I teach about Amazon. Right now I’m just thinking that wow, 1.1 million views, that’s amazing. But if it was just a whole bunch of guys, who just happened to see your video, “Oh wow, look at this video guys.” And sharing it with friends. Well, that doesn’t do anything for your brand or your product because they’re not going to be buying waist– it’s not all of a sudden that you created a waist training trend for guys. It’s the same thing with Amazon. Some people get so hooked on search volume, “Oh, search volume—the highest search is the most important. But if that is not relevant to your product, then it really doesn’t matter. I’d go for the lower searches that are definitely relevant to your product. And it sounds that’s a similar thing in YouTube where it’s not the quantity but the quality of those views.

Tatiana Buree: Exactly. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So that’s what it is. And, if you don’t want to be the face behind your brand, I think that leveraging influencers is so valuable. And so, say for example your product is waist training, but you don’t want to be that person. You can find other YouTubers who have 50,000, 100,000, 500,000 subscribers and find influencers who are within your niche, and reach out to them and ask them, “Hey, do you want to try out my product? Hey, do you want to do a try on a poll? Do you want to do a review?” Whether that’s offering them your products for free or paying them to do a collaboration. And so what that does is that you don’t have to actively work yourself to gaining those hundred thousand subscribers on your own. You can leverage other influencers who already have a following who know and trust them. And, so if that person now recommends a product to their audience, they’re much more likely to buy from that person who they already know they’ve been following for a number of years and they enjoy their content. So it’s not cold traffic, it’s warm traffic, right? And so it’s the same thing on YouTube as on Instagram. There are so many people who are trying to make a living as an influencer. And they’d be more than happy to receive free products or to get compensated for their time and their work, and it’s just a great opportunity for brands to reach out to these people. When I look at some of the top clothing companies for example Zaful. Zaful, I don’t know if you’re aware of them. They are not a great quality clothing company. I’ve ordered from them before, been massively disappointed, but they’re huge. And if you type them their name on YouTube, you’ll see why they’re huge. And it’s because they give so many products to influencers. There are 1,000,001 girls who do unboxing reviews, try on hauls, and so you can see that they have someone who is full time reaching out to influencers to get them to try their products, giving them products for free. And so it’s a really, really great marketing technique.

Bradley Sutton: Have you ever used that yourself, or since your personal channel is so successful you haven’t really had to do that much outreach?

Tatiana Buree: No, it’s the opposite. Right now, I just on-boarded someone full time for influencer outreach because when you type in waist training and you look at my channel, yeah, there’s a lot of videos about me and I am the face behind my brand. But it’s important to have variety. You don’t just want to see the same person every time. And also when it comes to my product, you don’t just want one body type. Every woman has a different type. And so if it’s always me showing how to wear the waist trainer, it’s not good. You need someone who has a different body type. And so we’ve been reaching out to many different influencers, all shapes, and sizes and having them to do reviews on YouTube and on Instagram so that they can represent the product. Because if you think of a potential customer who’s buying something online, it’s a very different experience than buying it at a retail store, right? At a retail store, they can see it, potentially try it on, touch it, really get to know the product. But when it’s an online store, there’s this sense of uncertainty, they don’t know how it’ll look, they don’t know how it’ll fit. And the more variety we have with influencers, the better it is for them because then they can see the product worn on other body shapes. Maybe someone who can relate to them on a better level. So it’s important to have as many different people as possible.

Bradley Sutton: All right. Well this has been very when we’ve talked about things that I didn’t realize we talked about, and I kind of remember I told you when we first– I was like, “Hey, I’m not going to tell you what questions they’re going to ask, but I guarantee that just by the natural progression of this, some cool things are going to come out.” And I’ve just learned some really interesting things about YouTube and about the influencers. I love it. And, one last thing I would just want to touch on briefly, because I can’t believe we’ve already been 30 minutes here, but I know originally I, unless I’m wrong, you were exclusively on Amazon, but then you started to expand to other channels, namely Shopify, and how much of your business now is on Shopify versus Amazon, and what is the benefit of Shopify as opposed to Amazon?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah, so Amazon was a great platform to start on because when you’re starting, and you’re a nobody, you don’t really have a brand. Nobody knows who you are. When you’re on Amazon, you can leverage Amazon’s customers. They’re Amazon’s customers, but you get access to them. So when you first launch your product on Amazon, Amazon kind of wants to cheer you on. They want to boost you. And so you turn on PPC, and then all of a sudden your listing is at the top and people have more potential to view your products. And so it’s just a great platform to start on and to build that brand awareness. But once I built my brand, of course, it’s always growing. But once I built a small foundation, I said, “You know what, let me try Shopify.” Because for me, Amazon was very frustrating because of the nature of my product. I had so many sizes at that point. And my inventory kept on getting mixed up at the Amazon warehouse and whenever someone would buy my product and return it because the size didn’t fit, then it would immediately get discarded. Because with clothing in the clothing category, anything that has been returned, it’s considered used and you can only have new stuff. And so it became a kind of costly. And so I figured if I saw my own website, I’m going save a lot of money, and I’m also going to have more control. So I’ll be able to control my own return policy, have more rules around that, and save some money, but also build my own customer base on Amazon. As I said, those customers are Amazon’s customers. So your communication with them is very limited. And I really want it to be able to follow up with people, see what the results are if they’re liking the product, get their feedback. And it’s a little bit more challenging to do that on Amazon. So I moved to Shopify, and on Shopify, I was able to have people sign up to my mailing list. The returns, all of that stuff was sorted. And so Shopify has been great. So now I’d say about 80% of my sales are done on Shopify, maybe even a bit more. So it’s a much smaller percentage that is done on Amazon. And I’m not really focused too much on Amazon, but it still provides me with good sales every month. But, that’s the cool thing about it. It’s once you’ve established your listing, it kind of just works for you.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. I think that in itself might be another episode that we can do to talk about how you transitioned, and some of the details on how to run a successful Shopify business. Because I know that’s very interesting to a lot of our listeners. So, Tatiana, you have some great information here and I know you help other sellers, and if anybody wants to check out your brand, if some of those videos for your waist trainers, how do they find you on YouTube, how do they contact you to maybe get some help on selling on Amazon, or just being an entrepreneur. I know you have a lot of content out there that people can find you. So what are some of those ways?

Tatiana Buree: Yeah, so I have a dedicated YouTube channel for Amazon FBA. It’s called Luxx Biz, but I don’t know when you’re releasing this recording because at that time it might be called Tatiana James, because I’m rebranding it, but at the moment, it’s called Luxx Biz. So it’s all about Amazon FBA and I’m very active on there. So I respond to all comments. So if you have questions or you want feedback about something, that’s really the best place to reach me. And then in terms of the Luxx Curve side, if you’re interested in trying to waist trainer or checking out my website, it’s luxxcurves.com. Yes, two Xs, L-U-X-X curves.com, and then I’m also really active on Instagram. I respond back to my messages and all that. So that’s Tatiana Buree.

Bradley Sutton: Awesome. All right guys, thank you very much for this and for to the rest of you guys out there who have listened to this. I hope you guys are taking notes, because there’s some definite nuggets here of information that shows how somebody who started out, makings small money, and stuck in a maybe possibly dead-end educational track and restaurant job, and took a product that only needed an investment of $300 and now by the time she was 24 she was in seven figures and she’s a very successful individual. And congratulations for all your success, Tatiana, and I appreciate you coming on here and sharing some of those successes with the audience here, and hope we can have you back some time.