Intuitive Business Management & Weighted Blankets

April 14, 2020

Elizabeth Grojean

Founder and CEO of Baloo Living

Listen to the podcast

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

• Why being able to disconnect from work is important for Elizabeth & how she does it
• Elizabeth explains why people should take an Amazon course as opposed to just watching YouTube videos
• Eric explains how to find trusted & verified courses on Reddit
• Where Elizabeth goes to find trusted Amazon courses
• How Elizabeth researched and then started her business selling on Amazon without PPC advertising
• How to manage your business when your Amazon product becomes trendy & demand peaks, and then suddenly demand drops
• Elizabeth explains how her weighted blankets work & their benefits
• Elizabeth’s new product, the Sleep Stone Mask with healing crystals
• How Elizabeth came up with the idea for the innovated sleep mask
• The main sources of Elizabeth’s sales
• How Elizabeth found her PR company
• Can Amazon sellers leverage the sale of their highly-priced products & outperform other sellers based on quality, customer service and thoughtful design?
• The 4 Ps of marketing & the 4 Ps of Amazon conversion
• What Elizabeth did to differentiate herself from other weighted blanket sellers on Amazon
• Other products Elizabeth’s company offers to consumers & her future plans
• Elizabeth shares her tips & best practices for running a successful business
• How to get in touch with Elizabeth Grojean

In this episode…

Amazon is a great channel for e-commerce enthusiasts. Some sellers, however, are not always immediately sure of what products to sell. They have a great desire to be entrepreneurs and set up an online store but have no idea where to start. In such cases, being innovative becomes crucial and one way is to recreate or add value to an existing product.

While vacationing in Bali, Elizabeth had a great business idea of selling weighted blankets. She flew to China to get stock & started selling on Amazon. Her marketing background helped her create stunning listings and she made over $20,000 in her first month. Thus Baloo Living was born.

Elizabeth Grojean runs a holistic wellness self-care company. In this episode, Elizabeth is interviewed by Eric Stopper about selling her flagship product, weighted blankets, her new products like the Sleep Stone Mask, her secret recipe for running a successful e-commerce business, and how she differentiates herself from her lower-priced competitors.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Buy Box Experts
• Baloo Living 
• Sleep Stone Mask 
• Reliable Education Amazon Courses 
• eCommerce Fuel Community 
• Million Dollar Sellers Community 
• Brandon Young’s Private Label Course 
• Jungle Scout 
• Elizabeth’s Interview on the Life Athletic Podcast 
• Push the Envelope PR
• Elizabeth’s email: [email protected]
• Baloo Living on Instagram 
• Elizabeth Grojean on Instagram 
• Elizabeth Grojean on LinkedIn 

Sponsor for this episode

Buy Box Experts applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage their clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of their clients’ business fundamentals and their in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace. 

The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity in the marketplace–not only producing greater revenue and profits but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload. 

Buy Box prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management. 

Learn more about Buy Box Experts at BuyBoxExperts.com

Episode Transcript

Eric Stopper 0:18
Welcome to the Buy Box Experts podcast. This is Eric Stopper. Today’s episode is brought to you by Buy Box Experts Buy Box Experts takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. We’ve got a team of consultants and let me just tell you guys, Amazon has been weird. Actually, Amazon is just weird. It all is always weird. And they’ve always got weird policy changes that are happening. And we’ve seen people that have lost a lot of their rank over especially through 2018 following q1 like everybody’s sales seemed to tank. And we found that it has to do a lot with keywords and the way that you’re advertising for them. And so please and come and come and talk to our team. We’ve got a All these all these guys here with me and gals are our professional consultants and we want to help you increase your revenue on Amazon. So go to BuyBoxExperts.com click on the free analysis button it’s completely free no strings attached. We are limited on how much time that we have so we may start charging for it in the future. Today, we are joined by Elizabeth grudging, the founder and CEO of Balu living a company that she started while living abroad in Bali. She was she managed to grow the company to over six figures and under three months. She is an expert marketer and has worked in some incredible businesses, I would encourage you to go check out her LinkedIn. her former colleagues say that she has shown this incredible talent to manage cross professionals from designers to copywriters to merchandisers while also managing projects, from concept all the way through the release. So Elizabeth is very much an expert, right. She understands how business works, how different groups are able to interact with each other, and to succeed. And so, Elizabeth, welcome to the show.

Elizabeth Grojean 2:09
Thank you, Eric. Thank you for having me here. It’s really I’m grateful to you for giving me an hour to talk about myself and my business and take my head out of sort of, you know, the day to day minutia that we’re all usually working on.

Eric Stopper 2:23
So that’s a that’s probably the best place to start. Right. So we are all super grinding all the time, the people who are listening to this hopefully they use this podcast as a as a time to just cut loose and and relax from the busy day. It sounds like that’s something that’s pretty important to you being able to disconnect from work and get in tune with yourself.

Elizabeth Grojean 2:47
It is I it’s something I’m always working on. Um, you mentioned briefly that I started the business when I was in Bali, and that’s sort of the extreme opposite of how I live now which is based in New York in our office. So, so I’ve gone from sort of extreme relaxation and realize how creative and how productive I could be in that space to being back in the city now and really, really proactively looking for ways that I can find and bring kind of balance back to my life. Because I know for a fact just from observing myself over the past two years that when I can get myself out of the business, I’m a lot more creative, happy and productive.

Eric Stopper 3:33
Get yourself out of the business that that reminds me of. I don’t know who said it, but there’s a there’s a prominent business professional. I think they’re here in Utah, where they go to Hawaii every year for like three weeks and they they mail their phone, snail mail their phone to themselves, so that they’re disconnected from it is that kind of the idea here is just to lift above the clouds and get into your own head.

Elizabeth Grojean 3:54
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I noticed after q4 last year that you know, I have this plan. pattern have sort of before my eyes even wake up before I’ve even become conscious. I’ve already become the business in my own mind. And I’m not giving myself any personal space to be a human to breathe and you know, be human. So, after the holidays, I booked a one week trip and went to a yoga retreat in Honduras, the coast of Rotana, and I just woke up the first morning and thought like, wow, yes, this is what I needed and just gave myself that time and I don’t I’m not like that person you mentioned that could be without their phone for days. I definitely stay connected to it. But I think for me personally, putting myself in a different environment is the best way to sort of decompress and relax and chill for a little while.

Eric Stopper 4:46
So that is amazing. I want to I want to table that part of the conversation for a little bit. But I want to in plain view, because the folks that listen to this podcast, right, these are these are business owners. These are business Professionals is your account managers. These are ecommerce managers, CMOS VPS. We’ve talked with, with dozens of them about exactly what they do take day to day. And they really care about success stories and being able to replicate that for their business. Right? They want to, they want to apply the best practices and and hit homeruns. Right, like everybody’s just swinging for the fences that listens to this podcast. So we want to be better business owners, specifically, we want to be better Amazon sellers. So can you walk me through? You’re in Bali, right? You You came up with this idea. You went and found you sourced these weighted blankets. And then you listed them on Amazon after taking a course right? You bought a course?

Elizabeth Grojean 5:48
Yes, I took a course. It’s called reliable education offered by a guy that’s based in Australia. There’s a little bit funny. his audience is pretty targeted towards Australia and he’s trying to explain to them how big the United States is and how big Amazon is as if they’ve never known. Which is cute. But he had a lot of great information and really painted a broad overview that helped me understand, like a starting point, because I know you can easily get lost in YouTube videos. There’s never a middle or an end to that, and I needed that structure. Okay, so, of course I,

Eric Stopper 6:24
yeah. Well, I was gonna say, Would you recommend that everybody takes a course as opposed to just watching the thousands of YouTube videos that are out there on Amazon?

Elizabeth Grojean 6:32
Yes, I would say there are so many people trying to make a living as gurus offering tips and tricks on Amazon, especially on YouTube. Find a trusted source that that you can vouch for by other successful sellers, and then go deep on their philosophy at least you’ll have a point of view and then from there, you can pivot you can create your own point of view, but I say take a consistent approach to start

Unknown Speaker 7:01
Are you on Reddit? Do you do you frequent Reddit?

Elizabeth Grojean 7:05
I don’t go to

Eric Stopper 7:06
Reddit very often. Okay? The reason that I asked is because there’s this system inside of Reddit and this and this goes for everybody, right? Because if, if you want to find a trusted course, I feel like that can be pretty hard because all these Amazon gurus are trying to try to make a buck so of course, they’re gonna make a course. One way that you can find and validate people is reddits. Like forums, their discussion forums for Amazon FBA and Seller Central and there are a few other ones. They have a verification process that says this person has made more than X amount of dollars on Amazon verified like $1 million seller, and those guys are on there all the time just posting and giving advice and so people listening to this like, that’s one way that you can go and find these trusted sources but for you Elizabeth how right now if you wanted to just enhance your your Amazon knowledge is second, where would you go? How would you? How would you verify that?

Elizabeth Grojean 8:05
myself personally, I’m a member of two communities that I find to be extremely valuable. One is called e commerce fuel. And the other one is million dollar sellers, which is specifically Amazon sellers. And they’re closed groups, but they are a wealth of information. So that’s where I go. But someone else that I recommend who is more available is Brandon young. He teaches a course which I think is really affordably priced and killer analytic knowledge on private label business.

Eric Stopper 8:37
And that’s and that you don’t do any reselling. Right. It’s all it’s all private label your own.

Elizabeth Grojean 8:44
Yeah, it’s all private label.

Eric Stopper 8:46
Okay, so you source these products, and you took this course Well, you probably took the course and then you source the items. I’m guessing you identified the market using Jungle Scout I understand. Yeah. Then from there, give us the story help us understand. I know this is this is having you look back few years but help us understand how you grew this thing. And where you were surprised? You know where it just kind of like took all my gosh. Yeah,

Elizabeth Grojean 9:19
yes. Okay so i’ve you know as you mentioned I was going this typical route I took a course I downloaded Jungle Scout I was combing through Excel spreadsheets back end data on Amazon to find an opportunity. I think I was doing my search for products that retailed over $50 and maybe had I I don’t remember what my other criteria were. And as you mentioned, Mike, my niche is weighted blankets, which has since exploded, it’s highly competitive. It’s one of the top 50 search terms on Amazon some months. And there’s massive competition in that market. At the time, though, two years ago when I saw the data, I saw several sellers doing six figures plus when I went to the page, I could see them Based on the photography, the English or lack thereof that this was a niche where if I knew what I was doing with great photography and really a heartfelt brand, I think specifically for this product, it’s something that resonates with people who give more thought to sort of the intentionality behind the product because it is a self care tool. I don’t think that’s holds true for all product niches. But this one specifically I really connected with. It was a clear opportunity. And I my goal at the time was if I could take, if I could take, you know, a few thousand dollars from a few of these sellers and maybe do 10 or 20,000 sales per month, I would that would have been beyond my wildest dreams. So that was my goal. And

Eric Stopper 10:45
it went like and then I mean, you do blew that out of the water.

Elizabeth Grojean 10:50
Ba Na Na s so I was in Bali, and that made it really easy to just hop a flight to China. I know you don’t necessarily lots of people have never even gone to China they work with their suppliers from Many years it’s not necessary. But it was really easy for me to just go to Canton Fair, which happened to be two weeks from the date that I saw the niche. So I met a supplier there and I placed an order a small order I think that the total was $20,000. But the unit cost at the time was like $45 I was getting you know, giving away information. But I I placed what for me was a tremendously huge order of $20,000 which turns out my supplier and I no longer work together we parted ways because they really work with big box retailers. So I placed the order we had a couple of delays. We had some quality control issues we missed Chinese New Year. It was you know, so hard for me to miss that i did i think that’s maybe happens a lot, especially to first time sellers. So we had a delay then finally we shipped into Amazon and started selling right away without any Kind of PPC, I had beautiful photography and I had great keyword research. But that was it. So we did $20,000 in sales our first month and then 50,000 in the second month, all just organically on Amazon.

Eric Stopper 12:14
You didn’t spend a dime on PPC in those three months. No, that’s, that’s incredible. So I’m sure a lot of people who are listening to this are they probably paused and started yelling a little bit, probably a lot. They probably started screaming a little bit and they probably called their ecommerce manager Why can’t we do the same thing? Is that feasible? Today? Could somebody serendipitously find one of these one of these breaking markets and fly over from Bali to China and source this product and hit the Chinese New Year right like and not get the Coronavirus and launch a product on Amazon and do this kind of same success and in 2020

Elizabeth Grojean 12:59
I will I would say that everything is always possible and not as a cliche. I would never bank on that. I was never betting on that to happen, but I know it continues to happen. Just before I moved to Bali I went to a meetup here I met a woman who had quit her job selling on Amazon and under two months because she discovered fidget fidget spinners before anybody. I mean, these things are gonna always happen. The world’s not done inventing things. It is just a matter of timing, and taking action, and I think luck.

Eric Stopper 13:28
How How do you avoid? This is this is a deep multi layered question, I think. How do you avoid what happened to fidget spinners? Because if you look at like Google Trends, for instance, that that lady probably made like a whole bunch of revenue all at once because the Google Trends is like a straight line, nothing and then it goes to 100 in all regions, all of a sudden, and then the next month and a half, it’s gone. It’s like back down to nothing. So how You picked weighted blankets Was there any Was there any fear that that was gonna be the same thing like oh big trend but then it just dies off as hype

Elizabeth Grojean 14:09
yeah that is definitely something that’s on my mind I think that this is a product A lot of people are talking about and discovering right now and there’s definitely going to be a peak to this product as you know demand will peak but I I relate to it and because I know it does so much good for so many people. It’s not a product that’s going to go away it’s just gonna even out of it. Just like we still buy shoes and shirts and bedding and all kinds of commodities and consumables. It will continue to exist. I think fidgets spinners were definitely a crazy thing.

Eric Stopper 14:43
Yeah, definitely a fluke kind of glitch glitch in the matrix. And luckily the the parent category for like fidget toys themselves is still is still pretty strong. People care about that. And there’s like businesses that have started making these like little cubes that you can Turn based on what you’re doing. It’s, they’re pretty cool, shameless plug for whoever is selling those.

Unknown Speaker 15:06
So

Elizabeth Grojean 15:07
my strategy right now is to take advantage of all of this interest and all the site visits that we’re now building off on our own website and the customer base that we’re building and launch new products, because there’s a certain momentum that that we have at the moment that we really want to grow on.

Eric Stopper 15:23
Now in a I think it was a life and life athlete podcast that you were on like, yeah, like

Elizabeth Grojean 15:32
life athletic,

Eric Stopper 15:33
yeah, life athletics. So that was a really fun conversation that you had and and you talked about, I mean, you talked about a bunch of different stuff on there. It’s an hour long I would I would encourage you guys to go and check it out. But you you talk about how these products are inherently beneficial, right? Like they the benefit that they give is more than just the dobutamine from you know from having a cool shiny toy is actually giving you a physical benefit. is is that the is that the core thesis of Balu living and how you run your business?

Elizabeth Grojean 16:10
Yes, in terms of the product approach, we’re looking at things that provide comfort and support us in living healthier, more natural lives. I, I think that we are designed there’s, you know, you can study human performance, you can look at the way man adapts in different settings. There’s things that we all fundamentally need. And then there’s things that are contrary to that just based on the way we live our lives in cities, or in the modern world, so time with nature. weighted blankets, for those who don’t know how they work, they provide a deep pressure to the body which calms the nervous system down and all natural. It’s like being held or hug. It’s a very kind of primal response that we have that’s automatic that helps people with anxiety and sleep. So looking at things and products that can provide a holistic approach to helping people feel better, whether it’s a placebo effect, you know, with the intention and the design of the product or if it’s, you know, more physical like the way that weighted blankets work.

Eric Stopper 17:14
So, you’ve built a brand of these people, right? You you collect emails, you collect customer data on that podcast as well. You mentioned that every time that you’re getting a sale in the in that first year, you were just doing a dance every time because these were strangers that were taking a chance on you and it was it was so yeah, credible. Right.

Elizabeth Grojean 17:37
Honor, right, that someone would, I don’t know. It’s interesting. Like, what is money? What is what is the business anyway, you’re trading something with someone and you’re becoming part of each other’s lives. You could say,

Eric Stopper 17:49
Yeah, I get the same fulfillment for anyone that has ever sold like livestock before. That’s a really emotional process. And it’s it’s like value for value. Very, very tangible like I’m giving you a chicken in exchange for like you know you’re gonna help me build my fence we had a farm growing up so this there’s kind of a lot of there’s a lot of ways that I want to attack this concept at the surface. We’re talking about building brands that are inherently beneficial to the end consumer right like you You bring them in you sell them one product, and they’re your they’re your core you love them, you would love to just go dancing with them. And now you you have the opportunity to build the business past your flagship product. And understand you do have some other skews but you’re launching a new one here pretty soon. Can you can you tell us about that and how you arrived at that specifics that that product that you want to sell?

Elizabeth Grojean 18:47
Yes, thank you for asking me about this. I’m really excited. We’re calling it the sleep stone mask. And what it has is the pocket above the eyes where you can put a crystal which would be placed Write over your third eye chakra. And interestingly enough, that’s where the pineal gland also sets which regulates your sleep and wake cycles. So there’s quantum science on Being Well, I’m not a scientist please don’t quote me, but I do believe in the power of intention and then and, and the energy that you can be feeling and crystals and so this is a sleep mask with an added benefit of something that you can personalize for yourself.

Eric Stopper 19:28
And these, these these products that are they meant to be used together like my weighted blanket and my third eye chakra like sleep mats. I’m just wondering how Zen and like, using these blue Living Products, you know what I mean? Am I gonna transcend reality and really like, never

Unknown Speaker 19:46
see you again?

Eric Stopper 19:47
Yeah, just becoming theory. Oh.

Elizabeth Grojean 19:51
Yeah, so we’ve we’ve heard people in our team that had been using the sleep mask with the crystal and had just like really crazy dreams. Any good way? Oh? Yeah, so it’s anecdotal. But it’s definitely fun to experiment with the sleep mask with or without crystal. It’s like blocking. It wraps all the way around your ears. It’s very soft, and it just feels really nice.

Eric Stopper 20:16
So product development choices. Everyone always asked me right, I probably consult, I don’t know, 100 businesses a week. And every single one of them even the ones that are established, they’re like, Eric, tell me what’s hot on Amazon. Right? Like, what can I What can I build that’s going to be really popular. It has a lot of search volume, and there’s not a lot of competitors, right? Like they’re just asking for the keys of the kingdom. And what I tell them is, I follow Elizabeth, because what you’ve done is you’ve taken an existing market sleep masks, and you’ve incrementally innovated one fundamental aspect of that sleep mask in order to carve out an even an even deeper niche. Was that the strategy right? Take an existing one and make a slight change. How did you arrive at this being the product to do?

Elizabeth Grojean 21:09
Yeah, thanks for calling that out. That is exactly what I did. I saw how well one of my competitors was doing with a weighted sleep mask, which they launched as an also product like an add on, but they were surprised and shocked by how large the sales volume was in the millions of dollars in their first year. And I definitely wanted to do something unique that would be our own and not copy or annotate. And so that’s where I got this idea for the crystal it’s unique. It’s not been done elsewhere. It’s a sleep mask, but it’s it’s something that makes it special so exactly right. Like what you said it’s a huge market.

Eric Stopper 21:45
And if anybody doubts this whole chakra thing, um, so I I’ve done chakra meditation for now seven years. And it’s actually pretty incredible and these niches right this dad is a market. I am in the chakra meditation market, if you can service me and you can service you know a lot of these people that Elizabeth is selling to, you’ll do well, right? They’re searching for things like I was talking to like an ice fishing company. This this past week. And guys, you don’t get there are so many ice fishermen buying so many products and there’s like this whole world that exists. If you can just get into that, like Elizabeth has done with with this, you know, holistic wellness self care company, you’re going to be a big winner. So like my hat goes off to you, Elizabeth definitely. In that one of the one of the articles or podcasts as the very beginning and for a long time 95% of your sales came from Amazon right

Unknown Speaker 22:51
now,

Unknown Speaker 22:53
has that maintained?

Elizabeth Grojean 22:55
I know it’s changed a lot. What happened initially was very just lucky for us. We had a publication approached us about doing an affiliate revenue article and I said, Yes, they asked for 20% revenue share. And when that article published, it blew us out of the water. So we went through all of our q4 stock within two days in 2018. It was complete, I could just have never seen another article since that time even do close to the revenue that that one piece has done. And I don’t understand why what makes it different, but they just must have done a supremely good job at marketing it as a revenue driver for themselves.

Eric Stopper 23:36
They didn’t pull back the curtain and let you know why. I mean, I would be doing an article with them every every week, right? Like, isn’t that the way?

Elizabeth Grojean 23:46
Yeah, they continue to feature us in their emails and on their articles which they refresh and update and reshare. So it continues to bring revenue for us, which is amazing. But that’s the moment that we went from being 94 5% on Amazon to being almost 100% on our own website for that period of time, because we were sold out on Amazon in the article link to our website. Sure. So now since then, and they have been working with a really great PR company over a year now, and we’ve invested in SEO as well. So we’re seeing about anywhere between 40 to 60% of our sales go between Amazon and Shopify. It’s always it’s always tipping back and forth, depending on where where the promotions or specials are. And we do offer free shipping and it’s for most states, it’s two days from our own website as well using a third party fulfillment on East and West Coast. So I mean, yeah, so we were on Amazon for people who prefer to shop there, and we’re on our own website for people who prefer to shop there.

Eric Stopper 24:49
Okay, I mean, there’s there’s also I

Elizabeth Grojean 24:51
would say, at this point in time we are buried I mean, we are not a top seller on Amazon by any means only because our price point And, you know, we’re just we’re not playing the race to the bottom that a lot of the competitors are playing on Amazon in terms of price.

Eric Stopper 25:08
So that is that is the perfect transition for all the listeners. I want to work with Elizabeth really badly, but we are on Amazon first, right? So a company has to be able to see like, yes, we’ve got we’ve got blue ocean, we we want to really focus on Amazon and allocate our resources that way. And I haven’t convinced Elizabeth yet. And I’m gonna try a little bit harder on this podcast just just by digging into by digging into some of that because I think this will be really fun. Because you mentioned that you were lucky that you kind of hit this swell and I mean even this PR company, how did you get in touch with with them in the first place?

Elizabeth Grojean 25:50
Just randomly they have mine with another another beauty brand. She hadn’t worked with them but she kicked him over she said hey, you know they’re doing a holiday gift guide special. So I think gave it a shot.

Eric Stopper 26:01
And it was just the best decision ever 20% revenue share for that revenue article is that pretty typical?

Elizabeth Grojean 26:08
That’s I think that would be pretty high. Actually. 20%. That’s the most that we’ve paid. But it’s also it’s, it’s on standard.

Eric Stopper 26:17
Okay. Where is who is this PR company? By the way, just for like, the listeners to go and try to find somebody new. You’re allowed to say?

Elizabeth Grojean 26:26
Sure, sure. Yeah, I can give their name. They’ll love me forever. They’re called push the envelope. Okay, Michael and Sabrina dibella. They’re located in New Jersey outside outside New York and they specialize in beauty and fashion.

Eric Stopper 26:39
Okay, very cool. So, the discussion of Amazon, right? You sell your price point is it’s like 60 to 100% higher than then the typical average price weighted blanket that sits right around like $40 on Amazon right?

Elizabeth Grojean 26:55
There. They’re going as low as I’d say 40 to 60. But I think the main brands are selling between 70 and 90. Okay. And we are priced at 149 to 169.

Eric Stopper 27:07
And so on, on lots of the articles that I was reading about you. You talk a lot about the the quality of the products, specifically, Bluetooth, this is a this is a quote from one of the articles blue took off like crazy partly because we stand for the highest product quality, customer service and thoughtful design. So the main question that I would that I would have about like Amazon being a good a good place to focus resources is is it possible? If I if I have two good looking products in front of me, and one is provided by, you know, a seemingly Chinese manufacturing company who’s selling direct on Amazon, and one from blue and they’re significantly different price right, we’re talking 72 then a double priced item. Is it possible with the listings and where you advertise the product to be able to outperform the lower priced item using like product quality customer service and thoughtful design.

Elizabeth Grojean 28:11
saying all things are created equal in terms of the listing quality and how the brand represents themselves. No, can you use those aspects

Eric Stopper 28:17
to to win? Right? Can you make a better listing to beat them at a lower price? at the higher your higher price?

Elizabeth Grojean 28:28
Yes, I believe so. I think it takes some art and some talent. But yes. And I also think that prices is part of that equation. It’s one of the four P’s of marketing so prices signal in and of itself. There are people who want to buy the more expensive item because the higher the price is higher.

Eric Stopper 28:45
For piece of marketing, can you give us the breakdown?

Elizabeth Grojean 28:50
I think it’s price, promotion, promotions, and I

am blaming On my fourth p, price, price promotion and

Unknown Speaker 29:07
promotion position, right?

Unknown Speaker 29:09
I’m doing a quick quick, quick good.

Unknown Speaker 29:12
Yeah, no good. So, um, I don’t want to keep people waiting.

Unknown Speaker 29:15
I don’t know.

Eric Stopper 29:16
I mean, everyone else is probably looking looking it up too. So there and by the way, while while she looks up there are also four pieces of Amazon conversion that we found as a company. And those are pictures, price prime and proof. Right. So the reviews if you have really good reviews with really well written, you know, like feedback, then you’ll win the game. Right? Those are the four things that you typically need. Did you happen to find them? I saw you googling over there.

Unknown Speaker 29:41
Now you’re right. It’s place.

Eric Stopper 29:43
Is it place? Okay. Yeah. So place price, promotion, and product. Yeah. Okay, so we could win at the higher price, but the price is definitely going to play a role and so I’ll A lot of folks, they do try to use price as their primary marketing tactic on Amazon, they just they just cut the price down. So what is what is the first thing that you would that you did as you saw this, this really heavy competition coming into the way to blanket category? What’s the first thing that you did to try to differentiate yourself from everybody else on the platform at your higher price? Other than other than reducing price?

Elizabeth Grojean 30:31
Yeah, it’s been it’s been really reinvesting in photography. I think that is the ultimate number one place to really put your focus and attention for budding, there’s a lot you can do in terms of like lifestyle photography and lighting and might be harder with electronics. I’m not sure I mean, there. Of course, there are always things you can do to make your photography better. But going back to the very beginning when I was choosing my product, One of the things I was looking for was a product where aesthetics were important. So there’s a lot we can do with photography just alone to differentiate ourselves

Eric Stopper 31:11
is so you’re gonna asleep mass Do you have like a product development schedule and more innovative products that you’re looking at launching in the next in the next year or so?

Elizabeth Grojean 31:24
Yes, I have a third product on the horizon for this year.

Eric Stopper 31:28
You don’t have to you don’t have to give it away in case you’re worried about people that get it from you. But did it did you follow?

Elizabeth Grojean 31:37
Eventually inventing anything now that we have a brand we’re wanting to be able to offer things more options for people once they’ve come to our site?

Eric Stopper 31:44
And do you offer anything other than products as well on your website like like any PDFs, classes, learning counseling,

Elizabeth Grojean 31:53
we do have like a free gift with purchase. We send people audio files, download sustain bowls for the different chakras that were actually recorded by a friend of mine in Bali. He’s a sound healer and I’m a huge fan of sound as a healing modality. And so I think that’s a fun thing to share with people who may have just bought a bit a blanket for sleep. They’re like what sound healing, you know, was a fun thing to introduce to them. That’s all that’s all we’ve got. For now we have some more things are planning by I’m always looking for ways to sort of surprise and delight people not sell things necessarily. So the creations that we have coming that have that are sound or audio or downloadable, they’re going to be things that we share with our with our community.

Eric Stopper 32:33
So I want to give you the stage because I full heartedly believe in a very mindful, like almost gut following management style, where Yes, you look at data, but you also follow your intuition. And you use that in every single business decision that you make. And you empower your employees to do that. And it wasn’t always this way for you, right? You kind of have this journey that you’ve gone through to learn these best practices. To improve the way that you run your business, so give us kind of the give us the secret recipe, right? Like how can we become more intuitive in our businesses to find the same success that you’ve had?

Elizabeth Grojean 33:15
Yeah, I think that’s a wonderful question. And I think the first step in doing that is to carve out time to be quiet. And I think that can be one of the most challenging things in the world that we live in, because there’s so much stimulation. But for me, that that period that you know, going to Bali and all of that, what that represented and what, what the key takeaway from that was, was the space and time to be quiet. And it was awkward and uncomfortable at times, especially because I’d left my job so I didn’t have a way to present myself through my identity anymore. I didn’t have a thing that I did to prove myself in the world, or or something to hide behind. I only had myself and I really at that time felt almost like a failure because I thought I hadn’t figured it all out. And I was kind of going back to Ground Zero first square one. And now it’s really uncomfortable. But I had that gift. And so do that in our daily lives take five or 10 minutes, you know, there’s a lot of, you know, I think increasing popularity and discussion about the power of meditation. But that’s, that’s one of the most powerful things that you can do is start small and just find that quiet time and then through that, you’ll start to get more familiar with your own thoughts, be able to start to distinguish, you know, what’s the ego talking versus maybe your intuition telling you something that you need to hear? And that’s a relationship and I actually had a friend, give me some really gorgeous advice one time, which is that if you think of your higher power, your intuition or whatever relationship you could call it God, whatever that is for you. It is a relationship. And if you haven’t been nurturing that for a long time, you don’t have much a relationship there. So you can practice by talking out loud and saying, like, Hey, I’m here, I’d love to get to know you better. And I’m, you know, I’m shy or this is weird. But whatever you want to say to just start to create that relationship and, and be open to hearing something back.

Eric Stopper 35:25
I think that’s incredible, statistically 85% of you beautiful wonderful by box experts podcast listening people are over seven out of 10 in terms of stress in your day to day lives. When this podcast is over, don’t go to the next episode. I challenge you to give five to 10 minutes and let your and let your mind wander for a bit. And follow and follow what Elizabeth is doing in your business because I think that it’s very telling and she has been successful as a result and it almost looks like luck follows you. Do you feel like a pretty lucky person given the last couple years of your life?

Elizabeth Grojean 36:06
I would say it’s been ridiculous the amount of luck that’s come in the past couple of years. But I think the reason that is worked out is because I stopped trying to control everything with my mind. And I sort of decided to trust the universe and to follow the instructions that I felt like I was being given because you know, there’s those times and you get a clear direction on what you should do, and you argue with it, because it’s not what you want to do you disagree, but you’re still getting the sense of what you should do based on something that you know. And when I stopped arguing, and I listened to that there’s always a better reason. Like, there’s something coming that you couldn’t have planned for. Incredible.

Eric Stopper 36:44
Elizabeth, how do I send people to you to collaborate? How do people get in touch with you? Do they go to your website contact form? Let us know.

Elizabeth Grojean 36:53
Yeah, yeah, actually. So if you go to Balu, living calm and contact us all those emails come to our care inbox, and we have a really small team here. Fun fact my mom is on our customer service team, as well. So we’ll get those messages we’ll be right to be there. And the email address also is karat blue, living calm. And then another way to reach me is on LinkedIn, or Instagram. But you know, though, is easiest for me to manage. Perfect.

Eric Stopper 37:21
Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Unknown Speaker 37:24
Thanks for listening to the Buy Box Experts podcast. Be sure to click subscribe, check us out on the web, and we’ll see you next time.