Neil Twa on Scaling E-Commerce Amazon FBA Strategies and Sustainable Growth

Episode Overview

Neil Twa is a distinguished entrepreneur and e-commerce strategist, renowned for his expertise in building and scaling brands within the Amazon FBA ecosystem. As the CEO and co-founder of Voltage Holdings, established in 2019, Neil has been instrumental in launching, operating, and acquiring e-commerce brands, with a particular emphasis on Amazon’s Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program. His journey into the e-commerce realm began in 2012, following a successful tenure in the corporate sector, including a significant role at IBM. Since transitioning to e-commerce, Neil and his clients have collectively achieved over $100 million in sales, primarily through Amazon FBA, underscoring his profound understanding of the digital marketplace.

Before venturing into e-commerce, Neil honed his skills in technology and business development during his time at IBM. His passion for technology and problem-solving was evident early in his career, and his tenure at IBM provided a solid foundation in corporate operations and strategic planning. However, after being laid off from IBM, Neil seized the opportunity to pivot towards entrepreneurship. He initially delved into online marketing and lead generation, assisting businesses in enhancing their online presence and customer acquisition strategies. This period was pivotal, as it allowed him to develop a deep understanding of digital marketing, which later became instrumental in his e-commerce ventures.

At Voltage Holdings, Neil has developed a unique consulting model that emphasizes a ‘pay-as-you-profit’ approach, reflecting his commitment to shared success with his clients. This model has been particularly effective in guiding entrepreneurs to build profitable and sustainable e-commerce businesses. Under his leadership, Voltage Holdings has not only focused on Amazon FBA but has also expanded into multi-channel e-commerce strategies, including platforms like Shopify and TikTok Shops. Neil’s comprehensive approach to brand building encompasses product research, innovative marketing strategies, and leveraging data analytics to identify profitable niches. His dedication to client success is further exemplified by his role as a mentor, where he has successfully coached over 500 entrepreneurs, many of whom have achieved six, seven, and even eight-figure revenues.​

Episode Transcript

Neil Twa: You decide that your first sales channel is Amazon FBA? You should understand that it’s any business component or any multiple channel of that which would be beyond Amazon later on, say, TikTok shop or DTC or your, you know, your own thing like Shopify store or whatever. Then you have to consider it a 3 to 5 year minimum venture.

Kevin Rosenquist: Hey, welcome to Pay Pod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments in fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. My guest today is Neil Twa. He’s the founder and CEO of voltage Holdings, a consultancy that has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs launch, scale and ultimately exit successful Amazon businesses. Neil’s 5 to 5 product launch playbook has empowered brands to achieve incredible growth, reaching six, seven and even eight figure revenues. But in a space crowded with gurus and big promises. Neil stands out with a unique hands on approach that champions long term sustainable business success over quick wins. Today we’ll explore his strategies for thriving in the constantly evolving Amazon ecosystem. Talk about what it really takes to build a successful FBA business, and uncover the lessons he’s learned from helping sellers navigate both triumphs and setbacks. Joining me now, Neil Twa. I’ve heard it said that Amazon FBA businesses or fulfilled by Amazon businesses are the digital age’s equivalent of mom and pop shops. Do you agree with that?

Neil Twa: Yeah, to a degree. It just defined mom and pop shop. Everybody thinks of it as the five and dime on the store where, you know, they work a few things and it’s quaint and it’s kind of whatever, but very true. I have a mom and pop shop right now, too, but it does eight figures in sales. So you have to kind of define what you mean by mom and pop shop.

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s a good point. It’s a good point. I mean, I think it’s just like it’s where people sell their stuff. You know, I think that’s kind of like what people are.

Neil Twa: Yeah, I would say eBay aligns with that and we’ll explain. We’ll talk about why I think the difference is between maybe FBA and the private label, and maybe at eBay and Etsy, you know, flipping products on, on Facebook feel like people selling their stuff. Yeah. And that phraseology or in phrasing versus what is a, you know, a private label brand building for an exit, an opportunity, a growth. Right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. How difficult is it for little guys to carve out niches in a marketplace dominated by larger corporations? Yeah.

Neil Twa: Great question. And it is becoming increasingly difficult. I’ve been at this for 12 years on the Amazon channel. And there’s the Wild West days of, you know, everybody suddenly realizing that, you know, Amazon FBA or fulfilled by Amazon is which they deliver the products. You may get it when it shows up at your house 3 or 4 times a week. Right. It’s just we use that system, right? Uh, to what was eBay of the day and these kinds of things that I think a lot of people sort of saw have in their mind is that I can just sort of flip products, arbitrage products, you know, shop my way to wealth and these kinds of things, which are kind of short term profit gains, short term opportunities. But nobody wants to buy a job. So in the end you can’t really scale those businesses. And over the last ten, 12 years, Amazon’s have moved everything towards brand building. So they’re making efforts, you know, year by year, month by month in some cases to really push all of it towards brand management, trademarked brand registrations and actual, you know, products that are created and can be validated as created by the business. So it’s changing the effect of mom and pop business from, I’ve got stuff I can maybe fly and make some money a few thousand a month reselling products on Amazon to them, pretty much shutting those stores down, stopping most recently bundles with brands that are maybe larger corporate brands that people are taking and kind of arbitraging into bundles and putting into Amazon. They’re shutting that down because the brands are like, hey, you know, you can’t put Clorox with another brand that’s a competitor’s and put it as a bundle.

Neil Twa: We don’t like that. We don’t want our brand touching somebody else’s. And that’s one of the things that the system has allowed to date. So people have taken advantage of it as a kind of a side hustle flipping kind of business model. But the real opportunity for a side hustle to grow a business into something that becomes a real business that has an intrinsic value, a salable asset to it, a base in which. In two and three and five years, I could sell this thing its private label brand building. And so, with the mom and pop aspect of your question, yes, it can’t be done, but you can’t think about it in the same way as a side hustle or a hobby business. You need to think about it as a real business. This is the first channel I’m going to deploy whatever capital is necessary, and you’re one to take over my market share and compete in a marketplace, a free market economy like Amazon that allows you to compete head to head with big brands and in some cases outmaneuver them, which we’ve been able to do because they don’t always know how to use the system well enough, and we can outmaneuver and innovate our way around them to create competition in that marketplace, which is awesome and even equitable or above. In some instances, we’ve beaten Amazon at its own game in some of the products they sell. So when you know how to take advantage of that, then it really gets down to the time, energy, attention, and money required to actually make it become a real business for you.

Kevin Rosenquist: So you’re you’re a you’re a coach and a mentor as well to these to to these people that are trying to get into or looking to get into semi passive income opportunities.

Neil Twa: Almost automated income. I call it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Almost automated income I like that. How do you redefine or reframe the concept for success for new entrepreneurs who might not be aware of the challenges in sort of the grind that is associated with scaling an FBA business? Because, I mean, I would imagine you run into a lot of people who are like, think it’s going to be kind of a breeze, especially if they get in, you know, get in with a guru like yourself.

Neil Twa: Yeah. Well, they hear a lot of that stuff from the online Hopium guru people. And I’m, I don’t do that. So I don’t really subscribe. I don’t have a course in that kind of stuff.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah,Yep.

Neil Twa: We’re an incubator of both new and existing brands or even DTC brands doing 30 million a year that come and say, hey, we tried the Amazon channel, we can’t figure it out. Can you help us? You know, figure this out. So we’ve been very good at the practitioner space around FBA specifically for growing, you know, seven, eight figure brands and three and four years. Right. So really, what I want people to consider is that if they start a business and, you know, an e-commerce company first and foremost, and you decide that your first sales channel is Amazon FBA, you should understand that it’s any business component or any multiple channel of that, which would be beyond Amazon later on, say, TikTok shop or DTC or your, you know, your own thing like Shopify store or whatever. Then you have to consider it a 3 to 5 year minimum venture, right? You have to be willing to say, okay, year one, I’m going to learn, grow. I’m going to deploy the benefits of that, which should be returned as quickly, of course, as the return on that spend. I can manage or dial in, but I really am looking at growth and scale in years three, two, three and four. And with that understanding, I need to know what it takes to deploy the time and energy and attention required.

Neil Twa: If I’m willing to dedicate, you know, whatever time I’m willing. How long is a piece of string? Because people are always like, well, how much time does it take? Well, how long is a piece of string? It really gets down to what I’m willing to cut. Okay. Some people are like, well, I’m going to cut my string this long and it has to stay this long. And if it doesn’t stay this long, then I can’t do it or it’s not of value. And I would say, you know, someone else is willing to cut their string this long, which means you’ve already lost your competition in your mindset before you even start it. So you have to get into the right mind of saying, you know what, if I get into this, I’m going to do it. I’m going to stay until it is successful, and I’m going to find out how to make it successful. And I’m going to take whatever time is necessary to change this. As our motto says, do something for 3 to 5 years that no one else is willing to do. So you can live like no one else afterwards.

Neil Twa: So if you’re willing to put that energy and attention into it, you’ll dedicate whatever is necessary when doing correctly and understanding a process and a, you know, a procedure and a and a playbook, if you will. Then you understand that your time can be reduced out of operational roles and into more C-suite roles, like what we call a C-suite CEO operator, which means I have operational understanding. But then I can place trusted individuals into those roles contractors, not even employees who can do those specific 5 or 6 major functions of this business and pull myself up into maybe five hours a week of oversight with standard operating procedures, etc.. It’s possible for someone to manage 2 or 3 of these businesses at scale when you put the automations in place to do it, but it does take that upfront work, and those who are willing to follow the process and do the upfront work will ultimately surpass people who are, you know, thinking that the marathon is this long, when the marathon is really this long, and somewhere around mile 13, they’re willing to give up because, well, it’s just too hard. Mhm. But any business is hard. Life is hard to choose your hard. Yeah. Choose your hard.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s a good way to put it. I totally agree.

Neil Twa: Yeah. Like it’s all hard. You just have to decide which is harder than something else. And I was literally having this conversation with my 14 year old earlier about making decisions. And we were just in the coffee shop. I had taken them down to get their teeth, and I went down there to help out because mom was with the other kids and we went to grab a coffee and she was having a hard time choosing which coffee. And so as she grabbed and finally chose which one, and then we stood back, I was asking her what you know, what was going through her head in that decision process. What were you thinking? And it wasn’t really at the end of the day about the decision process that she was struggling with. She could make a decision. It was about the outcome, the unknown. Will I like this? Did I make a great choice? This is the one I’m going to get, and if I don’t like it, then what will I have?

Kevin Rosenquist: Fomo. What will I wish I had chosen something else or.

Neil Twa: Dad’s not going to buy me another coffee, so I’m stuck with the one I got. I don’t have any cash on me right now. And so what I get is what I get. Am I going to be happy with that? And that’s building, you know, mole hills and mountains and mines. And we decide to make sure we only build, you know, moles, we can kick a mole over. It’s pretty hard to move a mountain. And I was telling her, you know, obviously you don’t have the faith to move the mountain right now, so maybe just try to figure it out as a mole hill. Try to start small, try to see your wins as something that is small in the process, and accept the outcome no matter what it is, and then figure out how to change it. If it’s not right, right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Fix it next, fix it for next time, fix.

Neil Twa: It’s the next one. And that really gets down to any business you do, okay. Real estate, online digging ditches or e-commerce. You’re going to have to work through those challenges and overcome them, understanding that you invest in the knowing or you invest in something, you know, if you’re going to go after ecommerce, you’re going to invest in the knowing because it is a changing, evolving and growing opportunity that has huge upside potentials. Huge. This system, just as Amazon is one channel, 8600 units a minute, 8600 units a minute are moving through that channel. There’s a huge amount of opportunity. It’s a freaking miracle. The thing even works. Tiktok shops are now busting through, you know, live streams at 5,000,000 in 3 hours. That’s insane. Man, that is insane. Yeah. So there’s a huge upside that I don’t think people will wrap their minds around, because there’s a lot of short term FOMO kicking in. And e-commerce is not a short term FOMO thing.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, I mean short term FOMO even. It’s why we can’t decide on what to watch when we’re going through our streaming platforms. Right?

Neil Twa: Like, like you said, an hour going.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, all of a sudden I’m like, I don’t really have time to watch a movie anymore. I have to get to bed.

Neil Twa: We all struggle with that decision, right? And so the hardest part of that is just realizing that you go ahead and hit play and you watch the first 5 or 10 minutes of it and you decide you don’t like it, you go watch something else. That’s the beauty of on demand. When we went to a blockbuster back in the day, you didn’t have that choice. You picked out two videos. You liked those suckers. If you didn’t like them, you’re hosed. You watched it anyways.

Kevin Rosenquist: You watched it anyway, and you sat through that garbage. You’re like.

Neil Twa: Okay, this is a trainwreck. But I paid money for this. I have to watch it because now I got to return it. No, screw the whole thing. I gotta rewind it to.

Kevin Rosenquist: I gotta rewind it or else I’m gonna get dinged.

Neil Twa: So there was a lot of barriers to that requirement to make sure we made a choice and then accepted the outcome. With the digital age, the outcome is a few seconds of disappointment, and for some people, that few seconds can feel like an eternity.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, absolutely. What are some of the biggest struggles that you see with new entrepreneurs that come to you and want to start a business.

Neil Twa: Yeah. It’s what I call the emotional cycle of change. Okay. We all have, we all get it. It’s something we’ve managed. It’s something I managed at large scale at IBM. It’s something I manage in our business. It’s something we manage with every new person or every business that wants to scale another channel and is looking to open up the next level of opportunity. And that is, well, I’m excited. There’s a huge amount of opportunity. We’re climbing this hill and it’s like, man, this is going to be great. It’s life changing. I know why I got here, I know where I want to go, I know what’s happening. And the first series of events that don’t go right are the first challenges they run into. They start sliding down the backside of that. If they’re not good at coping mechanisms, if they’re not good at dealing with problems in overcoming challenges, if they build a brick on a virtual wall in their mind, and every time they run into a little problem that doesn’t go as fast as they want, it doesn’t end up the way they want. Maybe the data doesn’t work right and they have to start over again. They build walls literally out of bricks in their mind until they sit down and look at this giant wall that they’ve built and they end up in where we call this a valley of despair. Okay? They end up in the valley of despair with all this, you know, mindset built on walls.

Neil Twa: And they look at it right. I laughingly say, it’s like going out into the desert, drinking the sand, thinking it’s water because they get lost in this quagmire and they’re down here in this valley of despair. It’s like all their hopes and dreams are lost. And they spent money and time getting to this point. Yet they have no output. And they get frustrated and they get confused and they’re like, what’s happening? The goal there is to try to avoid that valley of despair. The goal there is to get through and realize that everything I’m talking about is in your mind, because there’s a process by which I’ve taken people through this step who are doing 16,000,000 in 4 years on their businesses, and there’s other people that have taken it through who are doing 5 million, and there’s other people who are doing 40 million, and there’s other people who didn’t make it at all. Right. What are the differences between those people? I tried to weed them out of the process as much as I could by challenging them and making them go through an application process and a risk assessment profile to try to qualify down to the operator level status, the type of profile of person who will see challenges and overcome them. Every once in a while they get a little confused and I get a little confused by the way they talk. And I think, okay, maybe they got this straight, right? They kind of tried to convince me that they, you know, were doing the right thing, thinking the right thing, and going to act the right way.

Neil Twa: And in actuality, when faced with those first challenges, they built huge walls in their minds in the process, and they gave up because it was too difficult. And I’m like too difficult. I grew up with a vet from the Vietnam who did two tours in the Navy. The dude was like, suck it up, buttercup. Like, you know, he was like, get out there and figure this thing out. I don’t want to hear you complain that you figure out how to get past this problem. Like he was tough. Yeah. And he built some really good coping mechanisms into me. And I try to instill that into folks who I think at times because of the, the culture of the world, the food system, the ease of technology and the money that can be made in different ways, and just the simplicity of the way our life works now versus the way it worked 100 years ago, it got people into this idea that some of these things are much more complicated, difficult and impossible than they think. And I’m like, well, go out and dig a ditch for a week, like go out for 40 hours a day and dig ditches. You’re going to find out what you’re complaining about. In the process of learning. This business is a lot easier than doing that work, right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned having an exit strategy and all that. Absolutely. I think a lot of people, you know, want to build something to sell quickly. And you guys I was when I was looking looking you guys looking up voltage. It seems like you guys are more about long term sustainability and you know, and then while still aiming for a solid exit strategy, but maybe looking at it through a different, different lens. How do you convince people that your method is going to be successful if they stick to it and don’t try for the, you know, look for a quick cash grab?

Neil Twa: Yeah. So really it’s the idea that I’m, you know, I’m looking at individuals who typically have a longer span of life. They’ve got multiple kids. Usually they’ve been married for more than ten, 15 years. They’ve got some history under their belt. So they’re usually pretty pragmatic about the way they think about life and money and finances and time and reward from time. Right. So in that way, I’m talking to people who understand that 3 to 5 years is not very long. It’s hard to think forward 3 to 5 years. But if I tell you what, you know what happened in the last 3 to 5 years, you can tell me really easy and how fast it went, right? I went really fast, right?

Kevin Rosenquist: Especially the older we get. Right?

Neil Twa: Yep. So if you can think of it from that perspective of how fast the last 3 to 5 years moved in your life, okay. Then you know, the next 3 to 5 years are going to go just as fast. So you realize that 3 to 5 years is not a long time in the business building world. In fact, 80% of all businesses fail in the years four and five. They fail because they’ve done the improper work in years one, two, and three to set themselves up for sustainability through years four and five. And that comes from not understanding the numbers, not understanding the profitability, not understanding the operations and cash flow, not understanding how they make money and repeating that process because they skipped over some of the learning and some of the fundamentals of the business were not taught to them, or they did not understand it long enough to give themselves a runway of time capable of meeting the outcome. In this case, it would be building a business that has an equitable outcome. And in 3 to 5 years, these businesses are worth a lot of money when you do it right. And if you’re thinking about the exit, you know, and from the beginning with the end in mind, and you know that in 3 to 5 years is my exit plan. So I’m going to plow everything, time, energy, intention, money into the next 3 to 5 years.

Neil Twa: Because when done correctly, okay, the business profit is worth three, five, ten, 15 x the profit in the business. That’s a potential life changing opportunity when you do this correctly. But you got to put that first work in so that 3 to 5 years, not 3 to 5 months, is the way you really need to be thinking about how this works. You’re one. I’m in building, you’re two. I’m growing. You’re three. I could be scaling. Maybe by year four I could be in scaling. But what does that mean? It means I’ve learned the process over the first 12 and 24 months. I’ve actually had to make money where my profit is, how I expand into my product lines, how I expand into multiple channels beyond Amazon, into a full holistic e-commerce company that has an intrinsic value in it. Okay. The IP, the brand ability, the emotional connectivity, the people who are on, you know, Amazon, subscribe and save the people who are on Shopify subscribing every, you know, six months to my products. I look at the value of the person that I have in mind for those product bases and for that brand. And I’m saying, you know, could I pull this out in three and five years? And what is it worth if I do that? It’s not a lot of time, because once you learn that skill set, you realize there is the ability to do it over and over and over again.

Neil Twa: And once you understand, it’s about the data first and the products second. When my people eventually come into an epiphany is they can sell anything in a box to anybody, they come to realize that their direct response marketers, and then they realize that they’re not selling on Amazon. They’re selling an e-commerce company as a direct response marketer. They’re not selling on TikTok. They’re a direct response marketer. When you realize who you are and how you’re speaking to the language and whatnot, then you actually understand the right metrics and the right things to focus on and the right revenue generating activities we call gas that actually impact the bottom line of the business and keep you moving past years four and five, should you want to cash flow it and out to year six and seven because you want to gain additional value, additional market share, a higher evaluation of of opportunity to sell the business for a lot more money. Okay. And you understand how you’re going to get there after you get through at least the first year I do a 12 month engagement minimum, because I know that’s what it takes for people to learn and earn how to do this, and they make money during the process. You don’t wait four years like a college degree and then go get a job.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, right. Right, right.

Neil Twa: First year, how to make money with this process. And you learn how to grow the process. And then you have to unlock your abundance mindset. You have to realize the amount of traffic and people that are purchasing on e-commerce now is absolutely nuts.

Kevin Rosenquist: It is.

Neil Twa: It’s insane how much is out there for you when you get Ahold of it.

Kevin Rosenquist: The most people who come to you, is it people who have, you know, maybe they already have a product and they want to get it online, or sometimes people come to you and just want to start from scratch. Like they don’t even have an idea yet. Do you, do you.

Neil Twa: Don’t really have an idea because I’m going to train them and condition them on a process of what the heck to sell. And really, it’s going to be on the training of the data, identification of the avatar, validation of the data set, competition, market share, opportunity, upside potential of the product itself based on other products already selling in the market. Because we’re not going to invent, we’re going to innovate. So you don’t need a product. We’re going to discover the product. And this process, okay. What we call our greenlight process is going to identify the profitable products with competition, upside volume of traffic and keywords online that says as many people are buying it this much. And here’s how much market share I could potentially take over. If I launch a product just like that one, and test the market and see if I can sell it. And from there they learn the process of identifying who that person is. Is it a 40 year old female who likes to, you know, cook or a man who likes to cook and they, you know, they love the kitchen. They like a particular kind of food to cook. They want it to be gluten free. They like these things. You literally develop this avatar and you target your products and information directly at that avatar and learn how to speak to them correctly and your upside potential, it becomes huge. So we actually train them through that process. They don’t need to have a product. They don’t need to invent a product. They don’t need a patent on a product. What they need to understand is what’s a good product that is profitable and how can I sell one of them.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah okay. That’s interesting. And I mean things that consumer behaviors change so rapidly. I mean we see that all the time especially on Amazon. And it continues to evolve. How do you see the future of e-commerce changing in the next 5 to 10 years.

Neil Twa: Yeah that’s a great question.

Kevin Rosenquist: How can sellers prepare for that too? that is.

Neil Twa: It future proves the past. So they go past where backwards. And we look at the last 3 to 5 years of dramatic change we’ve had online, and the huge adoption curve that occurred in the first quarter of 2020, which was a mass adoption of online Uh, buying and Amazon and all the platforms. Even my 6780 year old dad was on. It was on. Yeah. Stuff. Oh, yeah. All right.who had never bought online before but had to due to circumstances, created this huge adoption. So we saw a shift. All right. A shift in the usage of, uh, mobile applications over desktop. So mobile purchases surpassed desktop. Um, that’s shifting a certain kind of demographic, a buying a time and market, how fast they purchase and where and what type of information they’re looking to glean before they come to Amazon and buy a product. Okay. Where they’re getting their information and peer information groups from or other traffic or Facebook or wherever it’s coming from, to kind of build that audience conversation in their mind, and then they go to Amazon to buy it. So Amazon is a demand capture platform now. So in the way that it’s capturing demand, it’s sort of shifted this year. And I foresee in the next two and three years as they turn into a direct response media company by 2026, meaning that their profit for their online media and paid traffic and advertising will surpass their bread and butter right now, which is their warehousing and data warehousing AWS. The profits by 2026 are going to surpass. So they’re becoming a data mining analytic engine. They’re using AI and technologies called Rufus, Amelia and Cosmo being the change in the way that they adapt information. And it’s going to start turning into sort of like the minority report of online marketing.

Neil Twa: So when you go and it’s going to start following you, and if you’re watching an Amazon Prime and a commercial pops up and let’s say you’re watching a documentary about Yellowstone, well, they’re going to show you fly fishing equipment and other things that are relative to your portfolio, to what you love as a hobby and what they think you might like, and predictably program through AI and large language models. And then because you’re watching that documentary, they’re not going to show you a vacuum cleaner. They’re going to show you the latest fly fishing equipment. Right? And it’s going to change the way online marketing really works as Amazon adopts this huge data engine of products and data and purchasing into large language models, and this is going to shift a lot about the results, the way people consume products and information for purchasing and the way they, you know, reach this demand capture. Now that is occurring on Amazon because of app platform marketing is going through the roof. So even with their latest connection to TikTok, I see this in the next year changing things very dramatically because they’re going to allow what was a pretty fierce competition last year, and is now a collaboration to allow you to purchase Amazon products directly through TikTok shops, right. So that connectivity is going to open up that demand creation times ten, maybe a thousand, because that’s what TikTok is delivering right now. Demand creation. What they’re having trouble with is demand fulfillment. But since Amazon’s FBA system is the sixth largest logistics company in the world, they’re like, well, if you can’t beat them, join them.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, yeah.

Neil Twa: So instead of trying to create their fulfilled by TikTok, which failed miserably the way that Shopify tried to create a shop. Shopify warehousing division, they’re like, well, I mean, let’s just partner with Amazon and let the products be fulfilled for them because it’ll solve a lot of our delivery and last mile problems, which is what they were trying to overcome and make challenges. Plus, they got the whole big ambiguity of being sued out of business, uh, because of problems they’ve had. So if they partner closely with Amazon, it almost becomes an acquisition partner possibility. Then in the next two years, TikTok might hypothetically, since we’re opening our ball here, crystal ball be acquired by Amazon. Should that occur.

Kevin Rosenquist: They will take.

Neil Twa: Well, possibly. I mean, if they get just think about the strategy of it. Like if I’m sitting at the top end of this thing, I’m trying to strategize. If I’ve got demand creation court, like I got it at 49% of the market, Walmart can’t even touch me right now. The one thing I’m missing really well, and they did poorly on their influencer platform side because they tried it and didn’t do very well at all. In fact, I got completely destroyed by TikTok, right? And the TikTok influencer program did absolutely just crushed it. Well, how do you combine those two things together? Right. And since they usually have a competitive advantage IP. And they don’t want to necessarily be acquired if they have such a great IP. But since TikTok is now facing down the federal government and issues of transparency and their ownership and problems, they are going to potentially be forced to sell whether they want it or not. It’s a sellable instance. So with them having a salable asset, who might acquire it, somebody who wants demand creation, who hasn’t done a really good job of doing that.

Kevin Rosenquist: If Amazon perfect when you put it that way, man.

Neil Twa: If Amazon pairs that up and captures that ability, then every 200 million Prime members, they have all those 200 million Prime members and suddenly do TikTok influencer style videos inside of their Amazon Prime app, or a combination of that through TikTok shop. You just opened up a huge affiliate harmony. Mhm.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. You’ve got some young kids. I’ve read before that some of the like the, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha that they’re, they’re, they’re, There. They’re seeing some trends that indicate that maybe they’re looking at in-person retail and being becoming more interested in in-person retail. Do you agree with that assessment?

Neil Twa: Well I do. And actually, where I know it is impacted by specific statistics is the direct response world of mailers and fliers and postcards, right? The largest and fastest growing demographic is the 18 to 25 year olds. Mhm. Yeah. They don’t get mail. They haven’t got it because they lived on the iPhone their whole life. Right. So now that they’re actually getting mail they love it and they’re actually the fastest buying demographic off of those. So that is a nonretail way for them to have a physical connectivity to a digital world in which they’ve been touched their entire lives.

Kevin Rosenquist: So that’s interesting.

Neil Twa: Flier to connect to. So they’re like, hey, this they’re buying off of that marketing. They’re the fastest buying demographic of direct response mailing. So if you have an e-commerce brand and you’re not looking at, hey, these products are really great and they meet the 18 to 25, 24, 25 year old demographic, you should be direct response mailing postcards to them. They love it. You can open that channel like crazy, get a couple of partners together to pay for the direct mailing so it doesn’t cost you anything and do like a co mailing and it won’t cost you anything. Direct market to them and send them back to your channels, Amazon FBA, Shopify or wherever you want to land them and watch that take off for the 18 to 25 year olds. So the retail component I know they’re telling, you know, tearing down malls and doing all this stuff. And Amazon has been talking about their stores and putting more stores out there for, you know, take your card and go through and buy whatever you want and boom, you’re out the door because you can, you know, Amazon retail stores are cool and they got the drop boxes and stuff. Now, um, that generation again just wants that connectivity. It’s one of the things they’re craving. My children are kind of beyond that. Out of my lowest is 12 youngest, I should say. My oldest is 16. I have four daughters, all in four and a half years. And so they’re kind of crammed into that generation. But they’re also, in my world, a generation that does not access the internet, uh, through a social media platform. They can access it through school, the Google Docs and things we use in email communications with our friends, but they don’t have any social media and they’re going to stay that way as long as I can help it.

Kevin Rosenquist: As long as you can do it. Yeah, as.

Neil Twa: Long as I can help it. Right. Because they’re young women in social media and young women and it’s like, wow. Like, I see what’s happening with some of my friends. And I’m like, man, a couple of them are like, I wish we could have pulled back our kids and never got them on social media. And I’m like, well, I’m not going to do that for a while. But I think that generation and I see it, they want that connectivity. Digital has been their life and they want to connect with other friends. They want to have a good social experience, not just any social experience. And so I see that kind of coming back. It’s like, you know, history repeats itself, man. There’s cycles of change. And it’s like, next thing you know, it’s going to be bellbottoms again, right? It’s like, that’s making a comeback. Um, and so I see us going back to, you know, small or retail stuff. I see a lot of the cafes and stuff popping up more where they’re having more connectivity to local groups and things that are kind of we’re down for a while, and now they’re sort of coming back and I see a lot of ability to connect physical products to that at the local retail level. That created a huge opportunity for businesses to create dual revenue streams of the local shop, retail shop that connects to that audience, that 1825, and also gives them the ability to purchase it online. Uh, is a real connectivity by bringing their brands in and giving them private label brand opportunities at the local retail stores. So those who are thinking about that connectivity should really be thinking about how they touch the digital aspect once they leave the building. 

Kevin Rosenquist: Yeah. Yeah. That’s fascinating stuff. What’s the best way for someone to get started with you? Sure.

Neil Twa: Um go to voltage Dmm.com. Voltage Dmm.com. Uh, check out the book if you want to learn the strategies of our almost automated income playbook. Uh, Kevin Harrington, uh, mentor, wrote the foreword for that. We’ve got 15 chapters in there from podcasts that talk about finance, building, e-commerce. The whole strategy of the five by Five playbook is laid out in those chapters. And other experts were interviewed for those chapters. Uh, it’s got resources and information in there to check out what we’re doing. And then if you feel so led, apply for one of the five positions we open each month to train operators. It’s a five by five methodology. I got to tell people up front, if you’re going to build an ecommerce business in our framework, you need 50 to 100 K a year, one, because we’re going to go after a seven and eight figure business by year three and four. So we’re not playing small. We’re also acquiring businesses. So I got to just throw this out here if you don’t mind for anybody listening. Go for it. We’re looking to acquire companies in the 10 to 20 million in revenue, minimum 3 to 5 million EBITDA. And we are going to acquire five of those by the end of 2025, is our current goal, where we work with a company called Patriot Growth Capital, which you guys can check out if you’re in the veterans space.

Neil Twa: It’s a veteran backed, owned, invested and will be veteran operated for the companies that we acquire. Voltage will be the operations partner. They are the funding partner for that. And it is all about businesses and mission around the veterans, bringing them in, training them how to operate and grow these companies and then giving them an exit in five years to acquire the company back from us while we help them build up the war chest needed to to make that acquisition, we can give the operators the ability to change their life. So that is a part of a business as a mission that we’re doing there as well. And you guys are welcome to check that out. And if you apply, you’re going to talk to me. There’s no sales team. There’s no sales force. That’s not how this works. I’m really looking for genuine people who want to build a real company. Come along, understand everything I’ve discussed, plus more, and have that opportunity in 3 to 5 years to build a real company. And what happens is we partner with them. And when we acquire these companies or work in our partnerships, our operators who are trained into CEO operator roles get an opportunity to do that with us. And that’s kind of the opportunity for the long play.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Well, Neil, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate your insight. And yeah, we’ll have to have you back on sometime after you acquire all these companies. And we can regroup.
Neil Twa: Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate you having me on, brother.