Transcription

@0:32 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)Hello everyone and welcome to The Shades of Entreprenurship - this is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Romero, I'm really excited about this conversation because he is actually helping to look into Americans, the Latin American country specifically with our e-commerce.

So before we get into all that, Romero, go ahead and introduce yourself.

@0:46 - Ramiro Velasco

Tell us what you do. Tell us your company name. Totally. So I'm a Romero from Go of Ants. We...

I don't know. I've been in the e-commerce space for longer than I can't admit. It kind of is a...

to me, it's a weird thing to dedicate your life. But know ultimately it's really fun. So I've been in the commerce space for about eight years Worked at an agency for a long time Helping other, you know helping people sell a lot and then it kind of felt weird like why am I not selling a lot like I'm helping at burnouts?

So we like eventually decided hey, let's let's get let's look at Mexico and see like what the market looks like because I'm here And I'm look there's lot of trends with that we'll get into it later, but We realized that there's just a huge e-commerce market space in Mexico and we started going after it and now I am selling which is nice It's funny how You learn To get really good at something by working on it for other people and you're like all right now It's time to do it for myself.

You know, think this is an experience that is a universal for everyone But yeah, I engineer by by school not by trade marketing by trade, you know and Yeah, just feels good to to be doing something I like it's it's a weird combination of

problem solving and also creative thinking, right? think we can all relate to everyone in the e-commerce spaces. And everyone in the entrepreneurial space finds that balance for themselves.

yeah, little bit about me. do a little bit of everything.

@2:16 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I like it. One of the things that you seem to have a very unique experience because you're an engineer, but then you say you're marketing by trade, but you're also a co-founder, right?

And then you actually even mentioned before we got on the show, you actually went to school in the UK before coming back to Mexico.

@2:33 - Ramiro Velasco

Yeah. Tell us little bit about that experience. So the UK will always hope I have a special place in my heart.

I haven't been back in about four or five years. But I built a family there. I built my friend group and people that you live with for years and so on.

But it was definitely a shocking experience, even when I go back into the little bit of a shocking experience, comes to And it's almost like taking a step back technology wise.

So 2012 we were already ordering our toilet paper on Amazon and then I get back to Mexico in like 2017 And it's like do we trust like that it will get to your house And I was like oh we're we're behind right and this happens with everything I went back to the UK about four or five years ago and They looked at me like I'm a monster because I had cash.

I was like, oh, I owe you some money I obviously have international dresser.

@3:22 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I'm with drawing money, right? I'm like here you go and they go ill What do you do?

@3:25 - Ramiro Velasco

This is all contact less now, and I was like, oh I'm behind and now we're catching up now We're starting with a conflict lesson in Mexico But um it really has led to sort of the way I say is like it expanded my panorama or expanded the vision that I sort of had For business entrepreneurship is being in different places being exposed to all kinds of different ideas I lived in Indonesia for two years and I noticed them creative solutions to Um traffic, you know what they do they just do motorcycle taxis you get a motorcycle They come to you send the bag to give you a helmet and you zip through traffic.

I come to Mexico the PVP market, anyone that's in either trading or video games will know PVPs for players as player.

And what I mean by PVP market, it means the, the pie isn't growing as fast as it used to be, which means every sale you get is a sale that your competitor isn't getting, right?

where, when the, when the market's expanding, we'll, we'll be able to catch new consumers coming onto the platform, right?

And it's, it's in much easier sell because there's no brand loyalty because they're open to exploring and so on.

So Amazon over the past couple of years has really shifted from this SEO focused, you know, make decent enough images on fiber that we, no one really likes and just pump ads into it to know, okay, hold on, let's be strategic.

Let's look at your business model. Let's look at the communication. Let's look at actual, like, from a marketing standpoint, what story are we telling into limited now it's nine, but no one's going to click it.

So the limited five, six images. We're actually going to get across to the consumer. How are we making our text actually readable?

Because all of us have bought something on Amazon without reading the bullet points. Because are you joking? You gave me a 500 word essay to read.

And this is an impulse purchase that was $7 that I just needed. I'm not going to do this research.

know? So really taking this approach of treating it like a legitimate business outlet, a legitimate, let's call it like another retail outlet.

Rather than, oh, this is just where we kind of put our stuff up and let it sell. It's just, I think, where a lot of sellers are faltering.

Where it's no longer, oh, well, I found something in Alibaba. Look, and that will work. That will work for a lot of people.

You find the right niche. Good for you. did your research beforehand, whatever. Good. But for the most part, it really is now a, okay, there's people pouring entire days into single percentage points in conversion rate.

right like this is a highly competitive market. So when you ask me how we're doing things or how like I've done this in the how I've seen success, I really attribute it to thinking like a consumer.

You sit down and you go, bro, I'm not reading this. How much of this SEO is important? Oh, we can actually cut this and all right, cool, let's make it look nice.

Hey, your image, like for example, very simple tip. No additives. It's like, okay, that doesn't help me. What does no additives do for me or for like my pet or for like, you know, whatever.

And then you're like, oh, actually, no additives at least to healthier gut health. Okay, cool. Let's say that and then say because it has no additives.

And these little just constant changes that you're testing are helping you build up the macro image, which is what's your business model, right?

okay, you know, while we're losing money on the first sale for every consumer, that's Because we're building a recurrent return customer base.

Let's figure out the lifetime value of client. All of these conversations aren't really being had when we're looking at Amazon.

Because people are like, chuck ads on it, fix the SEO. So that's how I've seen really consistent results and it's something that I'm very, very proud of in my sort of Amazon career.

@8:19 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

One of the things you mentioned was the lifetime average cost of a customer. I think that is not spoken about enough in the product in the development world and in the sales world, right?

When you're trying to create a sales, I've talked to about the sales funnel before folks. Right? Essentially, how much when you have a sales funnel, right?

You're trying to get somebody awareness of your product or awareness of something that you're trying to sell or service.

And then you get them down to a loyal consumer. How much did you spend on average to do that?

That's what that means, right?

@8:53 - Ramiro Velasco

yes. And then you know what happens? What you'll see is like sellers be like, well, they're already a consumer.

Why would I advertise to them? by what I advertise on my own keywords. it's like, your competition is willing to spend 150% of the cost to steal that customer.

You should be able to spend eight. come on. We fought so hard over this consumer. Let's just keep them in the loop.

Let's give them a discount. Let's reach out via email campaigns. Let's just make sure that we're not losing people because we want to make a couple extra percentage points in profit.

Like, what are we doing? And these are a lot of things that sellers refuse to look at. it makes sense, think a lot of Amazon sellers, a lot of Amazon business is bootstrapped.

So you're used to thinking of every single penny as incredibly valuable. But you get to a point where it's like, you know what?

have to zoom out and see that this penny that you're putting in is because you're getting eight pennies more.

Like, we have to be willing to have these conversations.

@9:51 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So. Right. Now, let's kind of talk about you kind of mentioned, essentially you're building a brand on Amazon.

@10:00 - Ramiro Velasco

right one how do you do that how do you build a brand on Amazon what are some tips okay this is fantastic um I'm going to diaper a little bit because I'm perfect hair current us um sort of practices to Mexican practices because these are completely different and Latin American practices because it will think they will absolutely depend on where your average consumer is in their shopping behavior right like from what I mentioned earlier I was in the UK in 2012 already buying stuff on Amazon I think we saw the incredible growth from about 2016 to about 2020 actually 2020 like pandemic was massive for Amazon but we saw this just constant influx of new buyers okay these markets exist with love in a space on which consumers already are willing to come into Amazon to search for solutions for problems you know like I have my neighbors dog poops on my lawn I'll go

What do Amazon and go like dog poop remover and then see what I can find in Mexico and in America, we're not there yet.

Because what I'm going to do is I'm going to Google it and then I'm going to go try to find it.

@11:12 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Right.

@11:13 - Ramiro Velasco

OK.

@11:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Right.

@11:14 - Ramiro Velasco

It's like, what can I do for my neighbor's dog poop and we like you look it up and I'm like, oh, there's this product.

All right. I'm going to try to find it online or I'm going to try to go look at a retail.

You're not going to Amazon for solutions. So these are very different markets in the US. Look, you got to you got to make sure that you're sure the branding, the design has to be very strong because it's the.

It's sort of the mentality of retail. If you pick up my product, I'm already halfway there. Like if you're walking, then I'm sure you've heard of liquid death water company.

@11:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Oh, yeah.

@11:50 - Ramiro Velasco

just said, hey, man, if you pick up my can, I'm already winning. That's a really strong sort of initial approach, but then also tree consuming.

Whereas like the shadow them. This is why this product helps you. And it's what I was saying here literally.

I sell, I don't know, dog treats. I'll see you the same example. This dog treat is a single ingredient.

How does that help my dog? not entirely sure. Well, I've actually dedicated six images to show you why this is better than healthier teeth, shiny or fur, like all these things.

And you go, oh, those are the things I want. That is a solution that I'm being sold. When you combine that with really great design, and then you make sure that the SEO, instead of stuffing it, go, all right, what are the top keywords that are probably going to help me?

Cool, I'm going to chuck them in and then make it readable because I'm already going to spend on ads.

I'm already going to get the people in here. I need to have them convert, especially the Amazon algorithm has involved to be like, listen, you convert, I'll get the people to you, right?

So when you start. sort of playing around with this, you start building a really strong brand that you can actually transition.

I've worked with people that have used the Amazon success to leverage retail deals, to leverage shark tank deals, to leverage because they can go in and go, hey, look at what we're doing on Amazon.

We're already halfway there. Whereas in Mexico, it's completely different. And in Mexico and Latin America, is, all right, we have to do all of this, but also we need to be indexing on Google.

We also need to be reaching out to social media influencers. We need to be communicating that it's not only, hey, you want this product, but you want this product, and you can get it online.

And right now, it's a little bit tougher, but luckily, the competition is so low that it's very easy to be getting those top spots.

So our sort of our gamble isn't, you know, what right now we're going to be the biggest cashflow driver for your company, but it works setting ourselves up to grow like the US did over the past, you know.

years. We want to be the 18,000 review garlic crusher and go from there. But yeah, that's great.

@14:10 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Now, what would you say because you're mentioning there's two different targets now, right? have the Mexican target or the Latin American target, right?

And we have the American target, right? They're all Americans, but just remember that folks were all Americans, right? But Latin American American.

Now, with that said, what are some of the challenges that you see, you know, kind of for a foreign brand either building into United States or vice versa?

@14:36 - Ramiro Velasco

Oh, okay. I have a question for that. Would you, because there's two approaches, there is consumer behavior and what makes that difficult for there is a literal logistical bureaucratic challenges.

Do you want me to go one vote?

@14:53 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Let's go with the consumer first. Let's go with the bureaucratic because I want to say let's just rip the bandit off because that's

@15:00 - Ramiro Velasco

This is the folks. This is probably more valuable right now.

@15:03 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, listen to that. So let's do that part Totally.

@15:06 - Ramiro Velasco

So here's what's gonna happen for most brands trying to sell in Mexico I Keep saying Mexico rather than Latin America because Mexico is right now our biggest focus And Latin America's a little bit just it's gonna be little tougher And I don't think any American sellers should be shooting straight for Brazil, right?

it's just a little bit more possible Here's what most brands are gonna experience. Hey the remote fulfillment program on Amazon is available And they'll test it out in the Mexico doesn't sell it's all like four units a whatever What you're not seeing is a thousands of consumers coming into the platform and going oh delivered in a week I don't want that.

Oh, I have to pay 150 pesos delivery plus taxes like I'm not interested This isn't the price you gave me and the other thing for people that are actually Taking this into account and drop

their prices and being competitive, then they go into Seller Central and then they'll see the fees that Amazon's taking for a remote fulfillment and you go, oh, that's also not worth it for us.

So that will be the general, like 90% of time, the first step into Mexico. You see that you go, okay, let's try to send to FBA.

Why? Like it makes sense. Amazon goes, absolutely. Here's your . Let's create the shipment. Can you just real quick give me your tax ID?

And that's where a lot of sellers go, oh, I don't have one. And then that's where a lot of the the product falls through.

And I would like to preface as I was saying, for 99% of sellers, getting a tax ID is probably not worth it.

Again, we're not at the point where the Whoopfax volume is there to where the headache, the $30,000, you're going to have to put into building a local business entity finding the accountant to comply, finding the legal representative.

So all this, getting documents app has sealed and sending them. It's realistically not worth it, which is why we are doing what we're doing, which we can talk about later.

So a lot of projects just sort of die there, where it's like, you know what? We looked at and this conversation that we're constantly having.

It's, look, we looked at Mexico. Wasn't really worth it. Of course, it's not because the barriers to entry are huge.

And you don't even know how your product will perform. I talked to someone that went through everything and didn't get an accountant.

So you never, never filed taxes. And you come around.

@17:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yes. Yes.

@17:50 - Ramiro Velasco

End of the year comes around. He gets hit with a tax bill. He goes, I didn't even make this much money.

What can I do? I like, you kind of, you go back in time. Right, you know, so it's just there's too many steps in the way, I think, for your average seller to even be considering it, which is a shame because, again, our business started because I'm in Mexico.

I don't like there's so many brands that I can't get exactly because of this, you know. So those are some of the logistical challenges you'll run into.

Like, look, just an example, we set up a business entity and it took us two months to get an appointment at the tax, at the IRS.

it's, it's sat in Mexico. Two months, because it wouldn't give us a date. They're like, ah, we're full, we're fully booked.

We had to pay someone to constantly refresh the page until it was available slot and then put us in and it was like, hey, the meeting's in 12 hours.

It's like, oh my God, I would just like, got everything together and ran, you know, like, I literally, I got an 11 a.m.

live at 11 p.m. going, Hey, your meetings tomorrow at 11 a.m. Oh, oh, you just put all the doctors together and ran in, right?

So, it's not realistic to expect sellers to want to, you know, like it's a great opportunity. It's honestly like Mexico's going to end for the next 10 years is going to be incredible.

But it's not realistic to expect people to go through with it. And then you come in and then we haven't talked branding yet, but you come in and your branding is not working.

Your consumers aren't there. The traffic isn't showing CPC is 80% cheaper. That's amazing. But you're not converting. And it's just so frustrating because the value is there and it's literally just it's like having a USB C and then just having like the only USB like tradition like, you know, to plug in and you're like, oh, need a dongle.

@19:44 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Like, you know, and that's I think that that kind of analogy is a great example of how you build a brand too, right?

It's like you just essentially cur you basically were able to create analogy that everybody relates to about a problem that

Everybody has but that's completely completely different from the actual situation that we're talking about but it's pretty synonymous as far as like the issue, right?

Everybody knows that thing I that damn dongle another great example because you kind of mentioned brand and kind of building that is that AT&T commercial I absolutely love that new AT&T commercial when they talk it when they're on the airplane and they're talking about All of the things individuals go through on getting an airplane and like oh yeah You have to spend extra money for this and then you have to you know The extra cost for food extra cost for water and AT&T is like you know We don't do that here and it's like everybody has that same feeling again to completely separate industries Right, but basically creating a story about a pain point that they're solving for you You know now one of the things I remember you also mentioned was what things that you guys currently do in Mexico So we'll get back on the brand piece or surely but things that you currently do in Mexico, right to to really kind of grow

because you were seeing so many of these issues with the Amazon fulfillment and all these other things.

@21:04 - Ramiro Velasco

So what is it that you guys do? Oh, we, okay. We basically looked at this and said the barriers to entry are way to high.

barriers to entry meet are good for businesses in general. It's fundamentally anti-competitive behavior, sure, but it also is opportunity, like spaces where you need this.

I can solve this and help people. And this is sort of our mentality is like, what are we solving?

How are we helping people? We realized that we can do it all. Once you build that, once you go through that giant hurdle of setting up, you're kind of just set up.

So we figured we can help brands get in by us acting functionally as distributors. Like distribution is not a new business model.

It's still growth existed, you know? This is not a new idea. But we said, look, ultimately, Mexico is an un...

Proven market Latin America is an unproven market, but you know what it is also it's 666 million people Like spread across like 20 countries or whatever 22 countries.

I believe oh my god. I'm gonna sound so ignorant. No, I Scratch that across a sum amount of over 20 countries um And it's okay.

This this is giant Uh, sort of gold mine of value that we provide because we're really coming at it from not even for our clients We're looking at this from the perspective of how are we helping consumers improve the cause the consumer experience, right?

Um, so there's a giant gold line of value that we can be providing Um, if we can just figure out the right keys So we had to set up a hologistical Logistical infrastructure to be bringing stuff in from the us into Mexico Uh, and then a hologistical logistics infrastructure to be delivering products Uh Taking into account that we have too much

I could place this with BA isn't really feasible for us because we have Mercado Libre de as well doing more volume than Amazon.

And then it was like, but yeah, okay, great. You did the importing, you did the labeling of the approvals, like, oh, because we also handled approvals.

You know, like if it's a restricted product, what do we need to do? do we need to do on our end to be able to sell it?

There's a lot of the, like, ultimately the onus is on us. Like if we're selling something that's like harming people, we are the importers, you know, like we are getting in, we're responsible for this.

So how are we making sure we're covering all our bases? And then you get it on platform and it's like, and now how are you selling it?

So we looked at this giant amount of work that needs to happen. And we said, we can streamline it.

Like internally, we're good at processes. We can figure out how to scale it and then just take the headache from clients.

It's like, listen, uh, There's a gold mine. There's a huge barrier to entry the risk reward is not worth it If I lowered the barrier to entry the risk reward is now worth it now I can take that coin flip to see what the market's gonna get to me because it's all the odds are in my favor, right?

and We're functionally like the way I like to see it is We're not proving the market because again Latin America is an unproven market, but we're making The attempt worth it and worthwhile and interesting You know What are tactics that you use to lower the risk of entry?

Okay, so couple of things We have to understand where the barrier to entry is right and it's not only capital investment in setting up a business entity and doing all of this stuff It's also a huge time investment There's a huge opportunity cost and all the and all the work that you're putting in to get into the country And then there's of course inventory opportunity costs or inventory risk

It's like all right now I have this I'm getting across the board. This is something I've never done before How do I make sure that it's safe and even then what would it if it doesn't sell so?

The three just add up to a little bit too much We've cut the capital investment by you know 90% because it's no longer this like 30,000 dollars to get in it's like hey We have a simple set of feet to make sure that we're covering all of our bases and then we're good to go We're covering the compliance see the red well the compliance risk by making sure that we're A being compliant across the board sort of with the product but be with taxes You're not lively.

You're not liable for any taxes ever so we're good on that front and third we've lowered sort of the inventory Risk by saying hey we can start out small Ship a couple cases down and we'll try it out Why because we have the ability with the bond that we do to send it to Texas like a couple cases will Palatize it and get it in and you're such

not putting three pallets to make the numbers work, you know? So across the board, the idea was like, the risk cannot, well, no, the reward is there.

How are we making that risk? I traded for a living for a long time, which I hate that I talk like this, but how are we minimizing this risk to make the trade worth it, you know?

@26:23 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, no, I mean, it makes sense. And I think that's exactly how entrepreneurs minds really think, because at the end of the day, we are trying to minimize our risk, right?

We're trying to scale, but we're trying to minimize risk. And we were using a lot of these different metrics to kind of identify like, hey, are we actually improving?

Are we scaling and what's the cost of the scale? And are we going to remain profitable? Because that's the end goal, right?

It's true profitability. It sometimes doesn't start that first year or two or three, sometimes, right? And sometimes you do have to pivot.

So it's always good to kind of get out there and collaborate and connect with other folks now. One of the things we're talking about earlier too was brand.

Specifically, I just mentioned collaboration. Talk about collaboration and partnership marketing.

@27:08 - Ramiro Velasco

Talk about building a brand. Talk about how does that work? Totally. You mean on the business side, Business side.

consumers. On the business side. That's actually, I'm totally willing to be open here. I would say that's probably one of my weakest points, luckily, and partnered with a really good friend of mine that is infinitely smarter than I've made in this.

He handles the parts of the world. Like, man, I don't understand branding to consumers. I don't understand branding to businesses or promoting to businesses.

But what we're doing is really, look, we stepped into the space. We worked on this business for a long time, serving stealth mode, making sure that we had all our ducks in a row.

Because if you mess up a shipment on day one, you're pretty much done. Right? we did a lot of testing, lot of dry runs, a lot of...

When it was time to come to market, we started getting introduced to people and people were just aggressively trying to sell you things.

And it was so uncomfortable. And I was like, my whole mantra of what I do is like, I need to be okay with myself, right?

So I was going into these calls and was like, there's no way you feel good about yourself. Like, we just talked for half an hour and you just try to sell me your product or like aggressively came after my mailing list.

And that's not interesting to me. So we had dozens and dozens and dozens of introductions of, to people were just like, hey, man, this is what we do.

But right now we're trying to figure out where we fit into space because we're in the e-commerce space and e-commerce space just has every single solution known to man.

And it's this massive ecosystem. And it's just a very non aggressive coming in and being like, hey, is there a way like, first I want to see where I fit.

First I want to see who. Oh, I feel like I can build a trusted partnership with where it's like alright this guy's acting in my interest I can act in his interest you know and in a very Positive open it on this way And that's just giving us great results honestly right now where it's Being direct and being hey man like I really appreciate this time.

I don't think we're gonna be able to move forward because you know Deep inside I'm just like I can't trust you But then being like hey man like let's let's talk about your personal life for a bit because we have a good vibe and you know your wife and your trip and whatever is sick cool let me refer people to you Because I trust you and if you can be like that with me I can trust my clients to work with you You know I have no problem giving you that seal of approval like that is my my voice Because I we've built up a real partnership, you know and that's where we're seeing really good results I think anytime it's like hey man We do Russia and that we would like to do an email swap online

All right, talk to my partner. He's more clever But I'm not gonna feel too comfortable with this, you know, and ultimately that's all we have like that's all we have in this space It's like who am I post who am I posting on LinkedIn, right?

who am I? If I keep posting garbage like sort of like just spam no one's gonna see me So yeah, very true now Let's let's give it little bit to what you do know because one of the things you mentioned, know, you are in the e-commerce space One of the things you also highlighted that I want to pull out again When you're talking about branding on Amazon is you're not using video, right?

@30:37 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You're using still images, right? So so let's talk about how do you build brand on an e-commerce website that focuses like, you know, building a brand to consumers?

@30:47 - Ramiro Velasco

Yes. Oh my god. This is so hard because Every talk to you they go. How can we get our videos up?

And it's like look well, they're up But no one's looking at them like I'm I'm here to buy something

In 15 seconds, do not show me your minute long video on why this is a good product. So you're immediately a no for me, you know?

So look, video is an incredible tool, but video in my experience, it's either kept for ads to get the click, like on the search results page, or man leave it on TikTok, leave it on Instagram.

Like it has to exist. It will give you some percentage points of consversion, like absolutely. And Amazon will like your listing better and it'll give you a couple of like, right?

But don't make it your focus, because we're here for quick, concise storytelling about your brand. And if I'm scrolling on TikTok, I'll watch your video, absolutely.

And like 80% of my life is a lie, 80% of my time is on TikTok, know? Put it on TikTok, put it on Reels, send me that traffic to Amazon.

Great. But it's just a different language on this platform. So make sure the images are catchy, absolutely, but make sure that you're getting to the point straight away.

Do not give me too much text. Do not give me, I would rather have a really ugly before and after picture of your product of like, of like the use of your product than a really well designed with a lot of text of like, why it's good.

Look, show me, oh my God, that's a result. You got sick. Let's get it. Respect your consumer's time, I think would be the way to put it.

Respect your consumer's time. Respect that they're busy people that just want to in and out they want the solution and you're going to start seeing much better conversion rate.

honestly, everyone I don't think I don't think most businesses are doing the stuff in house. I think like most accessible businesses are doing it through an agency and I'll say talk to your agency about this.

Be like, hey, man, you know what? I don't think that the story we're telling like, or rather, is the story we're telling sufficient to get the clicks to get the conversion rate.

And that you're going a throw in for a loop.

@33:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, and I admit, folks, you know, I'm not sure you guys use I never watch the videos on Amazon to your point on never watch the videos.

Now, now with that said, where do you see the e-commerce space?

@33:12 - Ramiro Velasco

You know, where are those trends in the future? What are those future trends look like? US or Latin America?

@33:18 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Let's do both. Let's do both. I want to do both.

@33:21 - Ramiro Velasco

Let's do the US first in Latin America. The US, I think, is once or an incredible growth base started slowing down, then we get hit with a pandemic and it just went even higher.

I think we are at a point where there's absolutely opportunity on Amazon, like what you have to be clever about it.

And I think that for the time being, we have to start looking at Amazon as less of a get rich quick scheme.

But and more is a Walmart, right? It's like, all right. It's just easier to get on, but I have to do everything myself.

I have to compete over the sales, you know, like manually and figure stuff out. And I don't think that's going to change.

I think as time goes on, these young markets get solidified and mature and become just a look, the volume is there.

But you got to be clever about it and you got to be smart about it and you got to like be pushing for it.

So I think the trend in the US is just going to be continue to scale, sure. But business wise, we're going to start seeing or we're going to keep seeing this trend of businesses slowly over time realizing, wait, this is actually really important to pay attention to.

So you're going to have full in-house things like I keep running into this, which is like, I don't know, I sell a million a month and I kind of hope like my one agency does everything.

And it's like, you're selling a million a month, you should have an in-house team that is coming. communicating with your agency, right?

you need to treat this as a legitimate part of your business because it is a legitimate revenue driver. Like you're trying to squeeze out the extra pennies when it's hurting you in the long term.

So that's for the US, for Mexico and Latin America, it's the exact opposite. For Mexico and Latin America, right now it is.

Close your eyes. Throw it on and just let it scale. We are in 2017 Amazon US 2016 Amazon US where it's we're seeing and you know, America wise sort of like macroeconomic.

We're seeing very positive trends that we want to ride. Mexico is set up to grow. I don't know if anyone that's listening is familiar with the exchange rate, but we're getting paid 1735 pesos to a dollar.

It hasn't been that low in eight years. The trends for growth in the country are just ridiculous. Everything from

proximity physical land border to the US, meaning we overtook China as the US and the UN training partner, remote jobs, letting dollars into the market.

There's just so many things, interest rates, right now we have an 11.25 interest rate in Mexico and yet we're not slowing down.

So it feels like Mexico is set up for a very, very strong next five to 10 years. And when we compare that, when we add to that, the strong digitization of consumers that are slowly flooding into the platform, right now it is a growing pie.

It is not a PVP market. Right now it is a I need to be in, I need to be setting up.

I don't expect like we're like, what we're seeing on average for clients are Mexican sales are 11% of your US sales, which you're like, all right, take a free 11% sure like, why wouldn't I?

But the question is, where's it going to be in five years? And.

@37:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

to a issue that that goes on around there. Now that's kind of what the e-commerce is going on. What about, what about what's up with you?

What's going on in your future? Where, what do you plan to do the next five years?

@37:40 - Ramiro Velasco

I plan to keep working like crazy. think I would personally have very ambitious goals for life, which I've kind of toned down.

When I started running this business, I felt like I'm gonna work 12 hour days for like the next 10 years and yeah, as we're gonna, and then I was like.

Actually, that's my thing to do, so to being happy. I don't want to, you know, wake up one day and go, well, I overworked, right?

But for the time being, I absolutely, I'm liking the base. And I think that's really important. Right now my day, you know, start to nine.

Then at five 30, I'm in the gym by seven 30. I'm out and I'm back to answering emails and working.

it's nice, you know, partner, she's like, when do I see you? And I'm like, I'm really sorry. Like we need to schedule time.

Like there's a communication thing here that we need to happen. But for the time being, man, I'm loving this.

I'm loving every single day having to figure out new things. Every single day is a different headache. Every single day, you know, no one's looking at like, hey, where were you?

Why weren't you here? Like, so that's really nice. Immediate plants, I'm moving to Europe next year. That should be good.

because I don't like Mexico. I've just, I've been my entire life. I've lived in 10 countries so far. And it's like, all right, I need to go out, reset, and then come back.

that's going to be a good trip. And scale, scale, because this business has so many add-ons that we want to be running.

And it's just a matter of get this one running semi autonomously. They start building the next one, start building the next one, start building the next one, because we do really have a five-year plan for every business that we want to tie into this business.

To sort of improve the experience without charging anyone extra, you know? It's exciting.

@39:41 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

No, a part of Europe moving to.

@39:44 - Ramiro Velasco

A Portugal.

@39:45 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Oh, perfect. You know what?

@39:46 - Ramiro Velasco

I'm going to be actually out in Greece. Oh, really?

@39:49 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Maybe we'll connect. I'm heading and flying out to London, then going to go to Greece for a week, and then probably out to Paris and head home.

So we have to fight two weeks.

@39:58 - Ramiro Velasco

very nice.

@39:59 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Live in the highlands. But yeah, you know, it's kind of funny. You mentioned that exchange rate. So folks, that's a good point.

Uh, if you have Mexican pesos sitting in your drawer, they're losing value. Uh, you should probably take them in because the pesos actually coming up or as far as the other around the range rate price, right?

@40:15 - Ramiro Velasco

So, so just think about that, you know, the mixing, sorry, just to go into that. We, because we handle all of our accounting and pesos, our clients are making way more than we originally projected because we, we started this at 20 pesos a dollar.

So we're like, hey, suddenly margins are 15% higher because of the pesos strength and it's like, all right, this feels really good.

It feels really good to be sending out this cash.

@40:39 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, definitely. Now, now for folks that want to get in contact with you, they want to learn more about, in fact, you, you know, you've been on other podcast shows, how can they kind of hear more about you?

@40:48 - Ramiro Velasco

How can the where's your website? How can they contact you? I'm going to preface this by saying that we came up with a business name before we knew how to pronounce it.

We just started looked nice because I want say means progress or advancement in English, sorry in Spanish. So we said just a bunching but we're like that's really hard of a hands like it's not.

So we added a go to it and go a vans but it literally was just like it looked nice and we did like the branding and we're like oh that we're in love with it.

So if anyone wants to find me you can go to goavans which is geo ava and ce.com and the contact us form the schedule of call form it all goes to me which is getting a little bit daunting right now.

It's just a little it's too much going on but no look ultimately after we're at an agency for years and years you realize you'd rather have it's my calendar up there because we really need to make sure that this makes sense for everyone.

Right like we really need to make sure. that this project is gonna be good for you. It's gonna be good fit and it's gonna actually, you're not gonna be upset with us.

So we're turning away lot of people because they're like, hey man, this isn't gonna work. And I'd rather not sell you something.

So and that's a call that I have to make myself. That's why I'm still on these. So if you ever wanna reach out, email, schedule a call, whatever, through the website, it's me personally.

@42:26 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Perfect, in fact, folks, this is a great time to plug the shades of entrepreneurship newsletter because if you forgot all this information, this information will be on the newsletter.

We'll go ahead and plug that in. In fact, if you're so generous, Patreon is another location that you can actually go and support the podcast for as little as $5 a month.

You can go ahead and just support the podcast. That's how we go and keep this thing moving. That's how we get the branding out there.

That's how we get the marketing. And that's how we make sure we go ahead and pay all these little fun little operational costs in the backgrounds.

But Amir, thank you so much for coming on the show.

@42:58 - Ramiro Velasco

there anything else you'd like to say? before we get out. Um no Gabriel honestly just thank you for having me.

Has like I had such a good time. I know I tend to talk quickly sometimes.

@43:08 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So thank you. Oh you're great.

@43:09 - Ramiro Velasco

No. But um no I had a fantastic time. think you you really hit on all the things I like talking about which is always dangerous.

Oh it's perfect.

@43:21 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Well but I'm a little but last go. Thank you so much again for coming on the show. Really do appreciate it.

Well I'll definitely hit you up later this year.

@43:27 - Ramiro Velasco

Maybe we'll connect out in Europe. So folks again don't forget to follow me at the visit at the shades of e.com.

@43:35 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

You can also visit us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook at the shades of e. And you can also check out Reels on our YouTube channel.

So go ahead and look up the shades of entrepreneurship on YouTube. And then thank you again. William Earl for your time.

Everybody else have a great night. L the you