Increasing the Value of an Amazon Business 10x in 2 Years

Mihkel Moosel is an experienced entrepreneur and Amazon growth consultant who has successfully built three 7-figure businesses on Amazon and sold more than 100 products in various industries. Currently, Mihkel is the Founder and Head Amazon Expert at Digital Merchant, an Amazon partnerships agency that builds 7-figure online stores for both brands and manufacturers.

In the past three years, Digital Merchant has scaled its personal Amazon brand from $0 to $350K a month on Amazon and has additionally grown five 6-figure accounts and two 7-figure accounts. The company has also boosted a client’s revenue 10 times through its expert SEO, pay-per-click, and positioning strategies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Mihkel Moosel talks about starting the exit process with Quiet Light after experiencing burnout from his Amazon business
• The two approaches buyers take when acquiring a business
• How Amazon’s review score rounding process resulted in Mihkel losing a sale
• The practical—and effective—steps Mihkel took to transform his business
• One of Mihkel’s tried-and-true branding strategies: US-based manufacturing!
• How do you find the motivation to keep your business running after a potential sale falls through?

In this episode…

Are you eager to sell your business, but aren’t sure if now is the right time? While many entrepreneurs want to make a profitable exit, it’s important that a business is in good shape before a sale. So, how do you know if it’s time to sell—or if it’s time to sit down, crack your knuckles, and get back to the daily grind?

Transferability is one of the core pillars of creating a valuable business. However, timing is an incredibly important aspect of transferability—and sometimes your preferred exit schedule just doesn’t work in your favor. If this happens to you, don’t give up! Instead, take this as an opportunity to scale, improve, and continue to profit from your business. By waiting for the opportune moment, you can make a business transfer that results in greater profit and a smoother sale.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Mark Daoust sits down with Mihkel Moosel, the Founder and Head Amazon Expert at Digital Merchant, to discuss the ins and outs of transferring an Amazon business. Listen in as Mihkel explains how waiting to sell his business actually increased his profits and boosted his brand. He also talks about his entrepreneurial burnout, the sale that fell through unexpectedly, and the proven strategies that helped Mihkel’s company explode. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quiet Light
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• Mihkel Moosel on LinkedIn
• Mihkel Moosel on Facebook
• Digital Merchant
• Mihkel’s email address: [email protected] 
• Bryan O’Neil
• Decoded: The Science Behind Why We Buy by Phil P. Barden

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Mark Daoust 0:29

Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Quiet Light Podcast. Today I have Mihkel from Digital Merchant on this episode. I’m excited to have you on Mihkel, because your story is a little different from what we normally have. In the Quiet Light Podcast. I know, just recently, a few episodes ago, we had previous clients on that exited their business for a seven figure exit. And that’s obviously a story that’s fun for us to tell. It’s great for us to tell because we get to show you you know what we’re able to do a Quiet Light. And all that in today’s episode, we’re going to talk to Mihkel, who was a client of Quiet Light, but ended up not selling his business and is better off for it. So a little counterintuitive as to what we’re going to be doing and talking about today, which I love. I love this angle, because it always catches people by surprise that we would even bother to talk about this. But I think it’s super important to do. Just as a reminder, this podcast is brought to you from Quiet Light Brokerage, we’ve been doing this for 14 years at this point, helping entrepreneurs sell their businesses. And this involves planning the sale of your business which can occur several years in advance. In fact, I had a call earlier today with somebody who I talked to 14 years ago, right when I started Quiet Light Brokerage. And so please feel free to reach out if you ever want a valuation of your business. To us, we’re happy to provide that evaluation, just to give a check in on the potential value of your business and where it is. So with no further ado, Mihkel, thank you so much for agreeing to come on the podcast. I’m super excited to share your story.

Mihkel Moosel 1:59

Yeah, thank you, Mark. Thank you for inviting me.

Mark Daoust 2:02

Yeah. Now you work with Bryan O’Neil. And Bryan is a broker with Quiet Light. But he’s also our CTO. But this is back when he was doing quite a bit more of the brokering side of things. This was back in 2018. How did you find Bryan in the first place? And what I really want to get into even beyond that is why were you thinking about selling the business and any background you can provide on the business please do obviously, confidentiality is important. So you know, be as vague as you want, or as specific as you want on that. Yeah, sure

Mihkel Moosel 2:37

thing. So I started my Amazon business in 2016, somewhere on March, February, and I was about to sell my business with Quiet Light, I applied it in July or August of 2018. So almost two years after I started, the reason I wanted to stop was because I was just frustrated. I had not maybe made the best decisions. This was my first venture ever as an entrepreneur, and like a traditional career background before that, and, you know, made some mistakes, I was frustrated with Chinese copycats, I was frustrated with some of the competitors I was frustrated with my business partner who we had really different ideas about work ethic and and you know, the perspective of the business. And and so the easiest way to just get out of it. I was just like, almost burned out, the easiest way out, seem to just sell the business and start something new from zero. And then I heard I think on AM/PMPodcast, Joe, Joe Valley talk about selling business and he’s at Quiet Light. And then I wrote to you guys right after that and, and I got got connected to Bryan, who is also a fellow Estonian so that that was fun.

Mark Daoust 3:55

That’s fantastic. It’s a big world, but it is a small world at the same time. You’re on that process that you went through, I haven’t actually caught that as being a good reason to sell, you know, because oftentimes people will come in, they’ll ask financially, when should I sell my business? how big should the business be? And my answer, that’s always the same don’t like if you’re making good money from the business and you enjoy running it, why keep doing it. But the burnout that you went through, like that is often one of those warning flags that I tell people look out for because your business is going to go one of two directions at that point either. Either you survive that burnout, which can be really difficult to do, or you’re gonna hang on to it and thinking grind it out, and then you’re gonna end up with something that’s probably not worth much at all. So it’s one of those areas that can be difficult to decide whether or not you want to sell it sounds like you are at the point where like you’re throwing your hands up, let’s get rid of it. Let’s let’s get that next few years revenue in my pocket, right?

Mihkel Moosel 4:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Mark Daoust 4:52

So how did that that sales process go from the beginning this was a I don’t want to get specific with the prices. This is a a six figure transaction kind of mid range lower mid range six figure transaction. Right?

Mihkel Moosel 5:07

Yeah, I mean, I can talk about the numbers too.

Mark Daoust 5:09

I don’t mind. Sure. Okay, go ahead.

Mihkel Moosel 5:11

Yeah. So, so the valuation was at $210,000. So not too much. I think the final offer was at 191 95, or something like this. So a little bit lower plus inventory, of course. But yeah, initially, when we started, we look through the numbers, the P&L, isn’t everything, Bryan actually told us to wait a few months to, you know, clean out the P&L a little bit to make it look a bit nicer. And yeah, then then we went through several several calls, with some people who were like, really interested, but for some reason, they dropped off. There were like funds, who really low balled, like, at like 1.5 X of the multiple and and, you know, finally, there were two guys with real estate background who wanted to get into the online business world and, and they liked the brand, they liked the idea. The business seemed like feasible enough to to try out, that’s the first thing. So that’s why we’re interested. And we started started closing on deal.

Mark Daoust 6:16

Yeah, that that process of talking to buyers, and seeing some of them come in at different prices, I mean, it can be such an emotional rollercoaster, especially if you’re done with a business where you’re getting frustrated with some of those offers, as they came through, or were you pretty well prepared to expect, you know, that things are gonna come in at different points? And this is a process?

Mihkel Moosel 6:39

And now, yeah, well, I wasn’t expecting some of that, that’s for sure. Because, like, at the end of each quarter, like your hopes are really high up, because the buyers, they’re like, you know, they’re saying really good things about your business, how you’ve been, like, such a good business owner, and you’ve been, you know, so smart, and you know, all these things, they say, but then at the end, the evaluation of the price point that they offer, like, doesn’t really reflect that, oftentimes, and you know, there can be two things like, you know, 111 thing is that, you know, they try to get a good deal. And, and the second thing is, like, maybe you’re emotionally too attached to your business that you see as more valuable than it really is, which is also, you know, some something you can, you know, for falling into a trap.

Mark Daoust 7:28

And I think from a buyer standpoint, it can be really difficult, right, because we talk about this a lot in in working with buyers, which is, you know, there’s two approaches. One is to, you know, think the the seller and appreciate what they built and make sure that you show appreciation for that. That’s one side. The other side is that some people try as they try and knock down the business. But that leaves, you know, people that are selling in this weird position of thinking, Well, why are you even looking at this thing, right? Like, if you if you hate my business much, if you want to just tell me everything? That’s wrong, first of all, forget you. And second of all, like why are you even on the phone with me if you don’t like it? So you have to walk that that line, I think and show proper appreciation and, and all that that interesting feedback, and insight into kind of what was going on in your mind as you got some of these offers. I’m no stranger to that. The first business I sold, we listed This is before I started Quiet Light. We listed for $365,000, in the first offer I got was 75,000. So I’m familiar with what that’s like. And it’s you know, it’s a roller coaster, it was a punch in the gut. And, you know, you quickly learn market forces are what they are. And hard to go against those. Right. So you went under offer, and you went through a lot of the process of due diligence. And then, you know, what we hope doesn’t happen happened, the deal fell apart. Talk to me a little bit about what happened leading up to that LOI being broken and falling apart.

Mihkel Moosel 8:58

Yeah, of course. And, well, basically, everything was nice. And you know, we did the due diligence. There. They had, they had like an expert Amazon seller, who was like, like an Amazon guru who verify my business. I’ve even seen him in different webinars and podcasts before so I was like, okay, like, he said, it’s, you know, it’s good, it’s good business. They had their accountants look, go through everything, said everything checked out. But what happened like and basically we were about to finalize the deal and but what happened was like, right about that time before, like, you know, final signature and and, you know, transit transaction. The review score for the best seller product, it went from 4.3 stars to 4.2 stars. So visually on Amazon, it means from four and a half stars to four stars. So this really meant that 30% of the people Lying in se is overnight. And it was really hard to explain it to the buyer that, you know, this sometimes happens, like, it’s gonna probably go back up because it had happened before. And it’s it was like going up and down like this, but they got really scared. And I really don’t blame them for it. Because if if I would look at a basis like that, from like, pi standard perspective, like neutral perspective, and I’d see something like this happen like, right before I buy, you know, I’d be, you know, scared to that maybe there’s something sketchy going on. So I don’t blame them at all. So but this is, this is why it fell through here. Those a

Mark Daoust 10:36

quarter point rounding on the stars, right? It’s so frustrating that that’s the way it works, you get 4.25. And it looks like four, it’s somewhat understandable to I mean, we find that buyers in the lower six figures tend to be more sensitive to bad news, then then those at higher dollar points. So it’s not terribly surprising, although it’s a shame. You know, your story is one that it’s not common, thankfully, right? having broken deals doesn’t happen a lot. In fact, over the past two years, we’ve averaged about 1.2 LOIs needed to get up close, that means, you know, signed otherwise, when we take into account something that may have been broken or falling apart. So it’s a fairly rare event that that happens. And, you know, in your case, it worked out for the better. And this is one of those things where we look at it. And there’s always this decision when you are looking to sell. And like I said earlier, when you’re when you’re burnt out of Should I just run the business? Should I try and work through this and grow it? Or should I sell it and for you hanging on to the business? This is a blessing in disguise. I’m sure you’re frustrated. The deal fell apart. You know, I mean, that’s never fun at all. And I’m sure Bryan was frustrated as well as well. How long did it take after that fell apart for you to decide that you’re going to go a different direction than trying to sell How long did it take it can recover from from the letdown.

Mihkel Moosel 12:09

Yeah, same night, like, the same night I decided, like, like, I got so angry. And and but I got like emotional angry. And and, and but I felt there was nobody else to blame. But myself because, you know, maybe the business wasn’t actually that good as I thought like so so I decided like a few hours after that I decided, Okay, I’m just gonna fix all those single things that took down the valuation that I, you know, look bad for the buyer. And I’m just gonna say sell it like six to 12 months down the road. I’m just going to fix those issues. And it really meant that over the next few days, I had to confront some brutal facts, like, I had to list list out everything, we sucked that so you know, basically from products to systems to, you know, the stuff that we’re doing and and start to slowly redo that process to, in order to to make it good, for example, you know, the review problem. So the decision that I did was that I took that I dropped the Chinese suppliers, and they started using US based suppliers. So basically what happened is, is the margin it went down like a lot, initially, but the product quality, like went up. So the same product that was at 4.2 stars, it’s right now at 4.7 stars, so and it’s like best seller, so it grew over time, up and up and up and, and other products, they work the same way. So like after six months or a year, I started looking like hey, I don’t want to sell this business right now. Because it’s going really really well. And and this last year 2020. We did over 3 million in sales already. So and and and also got an offer for over 2 million from from a private buyer, but we’re not selling at this moment.

Mark Daoust 14:02

Yeah, you know, this is this is something that’s so cool about the exiting process and the valuation process, as well as hopefully you get sort of this hit list of things to improve in your business and what you talked about, I’d love to go more into detail, but one of the things he did to fix a business because, you know, we’re talking 2018 we’re recording this here early 2021, January 2021. So we’re talking about a year and two years, right? In fact, here’s a little bit more than two years, two and a half years or so, to bring this business from where it was to almost actually more than taxing the value of the business. Which is, wow, there’s a lot of that that’s a ton. But this exiting process, you know, having a good business to sell is usually having a good business to run, right? I mean, these two things align really, really well in the marketplace is brutally honest to you about what’s wrong with your business and what needs to happen to improve it and just the valuation process will We go through evaluation, that’s often what we look at, right? Where are you going to get knocked down in the marketplace, you know, nothing personal to the people we talked to. But we want to help improve that value. So I love that juxtaposition of how you increase the value of the business using the feedback that you got. Let’s talk a little bit about that, about that process of connecting the value of the business here in two years. You already talked about moving from Chinese based China based suppliers to US based suppliers, which I think most people listening to this would would be scared to do. How did you justify that move? And then it’d be interested also, in some of the other big items that you looked at that that really made a difference?

Mihkel Moosel 15:46

Yeah, well, it wasn’t an easy decision. But the frustration like, like that, that specific decision came from, from the fact that I just saw competitors coming with worse products, but buying reviews and just pushing them up. And, and the new way, it was crap product that they were selling. But you know, I couldn’t do anything about it. So I thought, Okay, let’s do it a little bit differently. So let’s source from USA, let’s, let’s branded as Made in USA, like, you know, patriotic, made in, made in USA, and all that. And, and it and it worked. But it wasn’t wasn’t that easy, because the products were perfect in USA eater, like, it took us I think around 10, to 12 rounds of three iterations to that product, to make it good. Finally, that was a like an 18 month, pretty grueling process, you know, you had to go go through, the second thing we did is we just started adding more products, like the big decision was like, we had one product that was doing like, 30 40% of the sales. And you know, if that loses value so much, that’s, that’s a big red flag for the buyers. So basically, what we did is, is I took a decision that Okay, let’s launch one new product each quarter. So and, you know, started doing that, soon after that, we started launching two products a quarter. And now recently, we’re doing four to six products a quarter, you know, these are all source developed, made unique, but our team has grown as well. So it’s not only me doing this, of course, it’s a team of people who was in the background. So these are some of the things. The main thing is, is is product quality, like nobody wants to buy crap. Like, it doesn’t matter if it’s from Amazon, or if it’s a business, like, when I look back at the business now, like two, two and a half years later, like I can be honest, like, probably that isn’t wasn’t business wasn’t even that good at this moment. Like, it looked good to me that I was like, really biased. Because it was my baby.

Mark Daoust 17:55

You know, reminds me of a study I saw, which said, if you want to beat a competitor in the marketplace, you can’t be marginally better than that than your competitor. Studies show you have to be at least seven times better. And where that seven times better comes in is your customers bias for the established brand. But then the other part of that seven times comes up from the owners bias towards their own product thinking that is better when it probably isn’t. Right. Yeah. Interesting. But do you advertise that you manufacture in the USA? Is that part of your marketing strategy? Yeah, yeah, it

Mihkel Moosel 18:29

works really well, because we’re the highest, basically the highest option for most of our products in our niche. And we have, well, we do have the highest review scores as well, or the same as, like the second highest person. But this Made in USA, it works works really well for us. And there’s, there’s lots of small things actually, like that’s that you can change with perception even, which is like really good. But yeah, you know that that’s worked really well for us. And another thing that we actually did, you know, thinking of right now is because we had to launch so many more products in order to have like an even portfolio. So if something drops off, it’s not the end of the world. To do that you have to develop systems. Like this is the thing that’s called slps. That was a big process to I mean, there were there were four of us in our team back at that time. And it took us five months to write out like 120 pluses apiece for every process we were doing. So it would be repeatable and the quality would hold like every time we do it. We develop the like a product pipeline. So like the biggest problem that usually happens with with with sellers in six figures is that you get you fall in love with your product and you start ignoring red flags. Because you know, you feel you’ve done so much work. you’ve invested so much into this product. How can I let it go now and and you start coding cutting corners, you start lowering your, your numbers or your standards. But if you have a big list of ideas all the time, like we had five, like, if we if we had 25 ideas out of which, like five to seven made it to the sourcing step out of which one made it to the market. So if you have that, it’s no problem, the numbers don’t run out, you know, you have like new products right away that you can take and start the process. Again, it’s not emotionally painful anymore. You can like, be irrational about the decisions you do.

Mark Daoust 20:37

You know that the idea of expanding product line is one of the most basic things you can do. But it’s also like one of the more effective things you can do. I want to talk real quick, though backup to the slps. Are you using any specific software to develop those SOPs? Are you relying on video are you relying on on some SaaS software to do it? Are you just writing it up in in Google Docs or other word processing? How do you How are you it’s hacked that portion? Because I think people get a little unsure about how detailed they should be with those SOPs. how tight should make those verses loose and open to interpretation?

Mihkel Moosel 21:13

Yeah, so we have everything in Google Docs. So like, I’ve seen some more advanced systems. But up to this date, we haven’t seen any reason to change it yet. I mean, we might have to because when the bigger the catalog gets, the harder is to manage in different folders. So that’s kind of annoying sometimes. But what we do is we create like a master SOP list, like in an Excel with descriptions and links to each of their sub SOPs. So you can open the master list and go to the right SOP at any time. So it’s really, really easy. For some recipes, we have checklists. Initially, we thought we’re gonna do checklists for everything. But that’s not necessary. It’s just overkill. Initially, we thought, let’s do a video for everything. That’s also overkill, you don’t need that. We only have like, five or six videos for like more complicated processes. So

Mark Daoust 22:06

that makes sense. You know, with video thing I like the video because it’s easy. But the problem with the video side is if you’re the one using the SOP, sometimes you just need one reminder of I need to do this and watching a five minute video is such a waste of time, as opposed to looking at checklists where like what came after this step and just look that up right there off. They’re

Mihkel Moosel 22:27

not five minute videos, either. They’re like more like 15 to 20 minutes, and you know, try to find this right point. So yeah,

Mark Daoust 22:34

you’re skipping all around, and you just wish it out. That makes sense that the product development side of things. So before, when you initially sold the business, you had something of a unicorn, Ace and a unicorn product that was really kind of the best seller, right? Are you able to share? Or do you remember? What percentage of sales that made up?

Mihkel Moosel 22:57

It was like 30 40%. Okay,

Mark Daoust 22:59

so it was it was a big seller in your overall catalog? How many different products were you selling at the time? different agents? About?

Mihkel Moosel 23:08

Five or six?

Mark Daoust 23:10

Okay, so a pretty, pretty small, and if you’re able to share, how many? Are you out today? Approximately?

Mihkel Moosel 23:17

36, 36? Yeah,

Mark Daoust 23:18

so you’ve you 10x the business but you have not 10x the product line, but you have increases significantly. Right? That that makes that makes a lot of sense. If you were to create, like, you know, as far as the things that had the most impact, you were I said, the quality, increasing the quality of the product. Obviously, quality increases the ratings, ratings, increases your visibility and Amazon’s ability to recommend you and people’s influence your conversion rate, right. So people are influenced by high ratings, expanding the product line. What I want to know if there’s anything else that is kind of like top of mind for you to say, here’s what we did, that really made a big difference. So you mentioned that as well. But I’d also like to get from you what you think may have been the most impactful out of those three, to have really been turning the corner. When did you notice that your sales, you know, really starting to ramp back up?

Mihkel Moosel 24:15

Oh, there’s one more thing out of stock, like good inventory management. And that can ruin a valuation?

Mark Daoust 24:23

Well, absolutely. I mean, the vast majority of businesses we sell, I think, have had some sort of inventory issues within you know, a few years. It’s so hard. I mean, this is one of the downsides to ordering from China again, is that especially if you have to ship on the water, you know, you’re looking at this three month minimum sort of lead time for Oregon product and can be really hard to get that that right. Yeah, I’ve mentioned this easier with with us based suppliers.

Mihkel Moosel 24:50

Yeah, but but if I had to still point out at least, only one thing that will be product quality, like if your product can hold for four and a half, two five star review score like literally everything you do everything, like from conversion to ranking by pay per click, everything becomes multiple times easier, like it becomes so much easier. And the product has to differentiate as well. So not only color, but there’s actually so many little ways you can make the products better. Like, if you if you take the time to read like two or three books on buyer psychology related to physical products, or like a product development book, ABC book like that, then it puts your mind ahead of competitors. Because most Amazon sellers, they still think in terms of Okay, let’s change the packaging, let’s change the color. And you know, that’s the product development. But there’s so much more you can do that’s actually not that expensive to do. And, and and it has a big impact. I’m going to put you on the spot. Do you

Mark Daoust 25:53

have a book that you’d recommend? If not, you can email me later, I’ll put in the show notes. But if you have one now, that’d be great.

Mihkel Moosel 26:01

I’ll send you their picture and image later. I can’t remember the name of it. But I do have it on the shelf there.

Mark Daoust 26:08

Okay, very well, we’ll put it in the podcast notes for anyone that wants to know, and we’ll see if we remember to get it in the email blast that goes out as well as a recommendation because I think that’d be that’d be good for people to listen to. And something that I’ve had a lot of these conversations I’ve never heard anyone make that suggestion, I think is a great suggestion. Because you’re right, so many people do, they’ll they’ll talk about their unique product. And what they really have done is just a different color combination, or different packaging, right in that they don’t worry about the actual product quality itself. But that’s an art into in and of itself. I want to go back over to the psychological side and your mindset, right? Because going into the sale, what led you to this desire to sell the company was frustration with everything it sounds like I mean, it sounds like you woke up to this business kind of dreading working on it. When the deal fell apart, you had a you had to turn the corner to say, obviously, I’m going to work on this, but more importantly, to stop hating what you’re doing. Right. And that’s, that’s a difficult corner to turn on. Did that happen right away for you? Or did that take some time?

Mihkel Moosel 27:16

No, it took time. And it took help. That’s one one extra thing. One other decision that that that I can consciously at that moment is to hire help for the business. So I was very lucky, I found a person who is an our CEO and partner in the business as well. That was really dedicated, excited, wanted to learn and was I wanted to do it well. And he was very detail oriented. So he took over a lot of the product development and inventory and problem solving side. So this like, like, it’s almost like a load fell off your shoulders. And, and and the moment this happened, the business became so much more fun to do again, like it wasn’t like an overnight turnaround. But, you know, initially when you bring bring on a new person, at least for me, like the first three, four or five months, it was actually harder than before. Because besides managing the business and you know, saving it from going into ruins or burning or whatever, and growing it, you had to teach someone else to do it as well. So but there’s like, at month three, four. So, you know, you start feeling that you’re not carrying all of the load anymore. And this is a really big like as an entrepreneur, it’s a really big relief moment. You feel like it’s working. What the writing the books it’s through.

Mark Daoust 28:40

It’s the age old advice, right? outsource what you hate or hire what you hate doing. It but but it is true. Absolutely. Today in the business, what what keeps you up at night? Or you know, what, what are you looking at that you think you could improve? Not, not from like a business standpoint necessarily, I don’t want to give away your secrets. But more from an entrepreneur. I love what I do standpoint, what would get you further along that path? Do you think or are you at a point where like, I just really like what I’m doing right now.

Mihkel Moosel 29:14

Yeah, recently, what I’ve enjoyed is doing a podcast like this. I mean, it’s so thankful for inviting me. I did I did a podcast in December no sorry, November or December here in Estonia. So it was really fun like giving back and sharing like and and you know, people being thankful for it. So that was that was actually fun. And I’ve enjoyed it a lot so far. So as far as cool in the Amazon business side. Well, we’re trying to think of new levels. So you know, launching a new product or two new products, that’s kind of feels not boring, but if you’ve done it many times, it doesn’t feel like a challenge anymore. So what we’re now trying to do is we’re trying to work out the system, how to launch brands. systematically. So bring out pre defined products at once around like a buyer theme or like a buyer persona, and just target that group. And then six months later, bring out the new one to a different niche. So that’s kind of like a new, exciting thing that that you think, Okay, this could be like, really fun, fun to do next.

Mark Daoust 30:19

I absolutely love this story, I really do. I love the with with business. One thing that that just lights me up and gets me excited is, is the struggles that you have in a business of trying to turn those corners, right businesses have a tendency to grow, then plateau, then grow them plateau. And every time you reach that plateau, it’s like you have a whole new set of challenges on your plate as to how do you get to that next level. And when people sell their businesses, it’s often because they’ve plateaued at a certain level. And they may look at what that that next rise is. And take a look at it and say, do I want to do that? And oftentimes, the answer is no, I don’t want to do that. But sometimes it’s Yes. And seeing how that changes the dynamics of a business. And that’s exciting. That is so much fun to be able to see and and to experience that I know with quiet light, I’ve experienced that, you know, many times over, over the 14 years that we’ve been doing this. And it is fun. So I like your story. I love your story, just on that basis alone. You know, I’m quite sure that there are some people listening that would love to talk to you a little bit more, Mihkel and just kind of get your insights on things. Do you have a way for them to contact you that you prefer?

Mihkel Moosel 31:32

Yeah, sure. Either Facebook or email or Instagram is fine. My name is a little bit difficult to spell though because it’s not American.

Mark Daoust 31:43

As Mihkel it’s not, it’s Mihkel.

Mihkel Moosel 31:46

Yeah, yeah, so it’s [email protected] or you can find me on Facebook. Mihkel. My last name is Moosel

Mark Daoust 31:59

Awesome. Fantastic. I want to thank you for coming on. This has been just a lot of fun to do. And to talk to you. Do you have anything left that you want to say or anything that you’d like to share at the end here?

Mihkel Moosel 32:13

Maybe only one thing is that if you’re frustrated as well, then I think the best cure for frustration in the business is to take a really honest look at what’s going on and and ask your colleagues as well. Like what’s helping us right now the most is that we ask other colleagues in our business like, you know, what, do we suck at steel? Or what are we not so good at? What should we improve next? And, you know, there’s a certain level of extra frustration that comes from it, because like deep inside, you have to face those facts now that okay, you know, you suck at something. But there’s also a new level of excitement that comes with it because Okay, now you’re like, Okay, now you’re thinking, Okay, now we’re going up against the best guys in I don’t know, product photography. So you know, let’s try to beat them. Let’s see how it works. Let’s really figure this out. So I think this actually helps a lot their business wise, like, because it’s a long term marathon. And do you kind of have to make a series of decisions on top of each other to to make it

Mark Daoust 33:13

you know, Chuck in our company talks all the time about he says get ugly, fast, which means look at the bad stuff. And don’t be afraid to just jump right into it. It’s the best way to do to know how to improve the business. I’m going to take your inspiration that you just said as far as ask. I’m going to use it as a beautiful segue because that’s what I do. And I’ll ask those that are listening. Leave us a rating on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to. We enjoy getting those ratings. If you think that we suck, feel free to say so that’s fine. Although you can email me that as well. Or better yet, email, Joe, that that we suck but if you do like this podcast, in all seriousness, please do leave a rating leave a review. We always appreciate that. We appreciate you guys. Mihkel, thanks so much. I really appreciate you coming on.

Mihkel Moosel 34:00

Thank you Mark.

Outro 34:03

today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guests, email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.