You and 4,300 subscribers will enjoy this newsletter or or I’m putting Great Aunt Sharon on speakerphone near you.

Welcome back friend!

And a big welcome to the +58 new readers this week!

I’m Selling.

I’m selling a kitchen and home brand right now. Everyone has to get rid of their brand eventually. You either sell it, give it away… or you die with it LOL. Getting ready for the sale forced me to stop pretending the business was cleaner than it was and deal with what buyers actually care about.

Here’s everything my business exit advisor told me to do:

1. Strip the business down to the actual brand
I cut anything that wasn’t core. Non-branded SKUs, side experiments, revenue that looked good on a dashboard but made the business harder to understand. I even fired a couple wholesale clients. It hurt short-term revenue, but it made the asset obvious. Buyers want to understand what they’re buying in minutes. Confusion equals risk. Risk gets discounted.

2. Fix the numbers for real (not cosmetically)
My bookkeeper cleaned everything up. Proper SDE. Accurate COGS. Monthly inventory tracking (annoying, but necessary). Amazon, Sellerboard, and accounting all reconciled to one version of truth. Then we built a clear explanation for the trends. Are sales up or down. Why. What was a one-off issue, what was structural, and what a new owner could realistically improve. Buyers don’t just buy numbers. They buy whether the story behind them holds up. The STORY matters.

3. Package risk before buyers find it themselves
Inventory turnover. Returns. Damaged units. Supplier concentration. Working capital needs. Every weak spot documented with context or a plan. Buyers are conservative by default. Gotta explain the risk.

Getting a brand ready for sale isn’t complicated. It’s just doing a lot of small annoying tasks for an extended period of time.

Need help? Reply to this email.

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✅The Instant Value Section (IVS)✅

(aren't you glad you opened the email now?)

Huge thanks to my friend Igor Nuhanovic and his mustache for supplying this week’s IVS. Igor runs Amazonia PPC and is super knowledgeable and helpful with all things PPC. Thanks, Igor!

A Free “Anonymous” AI PPC Analysis Tool

I built a free audit tool that runs entirely in your browser.
No servers. No data sharing. No email gates.

I know there are many people who are afraid to share anything about their business, so this one is fully run in the browser and cleared once you close the window

You upload your bulk files and get a full campaign breakdown in about 10 seconds.

It shows what’s working, what’s wasting spend, and where performance actually drops across Sponsored Products, Brands, and Display.

It’s basically how I audit accounts, just automated and free.

Get it here

ex-Amazonian Tyler Wallis shared this and it clicked for me immediately (isn’t it nice when that happens?)

Amazon used to be simple. Someone needs something. They search. They buy.

That’s changing. Now people see something first. A post. A video. A recommendation.
Then they go to Amazon and search.

Amazon doesn’t really create demand. It catches it.

Most brands still act like Amazon is the starting line. It’s not. It’s the finish line.

The ones doing well understand where demand actually starts, build messaging that works outside Amazon, and let Amazon respond instead of forcing it with ads.

Let me repeat for emphasis:  “Instead of forcing it with ads”

If you’re still trying to make Amazon do all the work, it’s going to feel harder every year. Bring demand with you, instead.

Why vacations aren’t the goal

I (Max) was back in Costa Rica last week. When I was there, nothing felt urgent.
No Slack pings. No inbox fires. No busywork. Just sun, slow mornings, good food, and time with Rob and his family.

When things slow down like that, a question shows up that is easy to outrun at home.

What am I doing this for?
Why am I building this business in the first place?

These questions are the entire point of the Selling From the Beach Manifesto. Not freedom in theory. Not “someday.” Now. We do not work toward vacations. We do not ask permission to step away. We build assets that run whether we are sitting at a desk or watching our kids play in the sand.

When we work harder, our families benefit.
When we step away, the business keeps moving.

Travel has a way of stripping things down to what actually matters. When the day-to day falls away it becomes obvious whether you simply built yourself a new job or a company that supports the life you want.

Problems still exist. Decisions still matter. The difference is ownership. The tradeoffs are yours. So is the upside.

The manifesto is motivational, sure, but that is not its real job. It is a filter. If your business cannot support where you want to be, how you want to live, and when you want to work, it is failing. Not later. Now.

We are not building businesses to escape life someday.
We are building them to live it now.

Are you?

The Deep Dive (Premium Content)

Amazon Newsletter Recommendation: Just a Seller Newsletter

Just A Seller is a newsletter my dude Charles Chakkalo writes from the seller’s seat, not a guru’s. He still runs a warehouse, deals with inventory, ads, and Amazon headaches and writes exactly how operators actually think. How they really think. Highly recommended.

Virtual Multipacks (VMPs) Finally here?

You may have heard of VMPs.

They are similar to Virtual Bundles, but simpler. Instead of bundling different SKUs, Amazon bundles the same unit into multipacks when you only have one SKU.

Example:
You sell a 1 lb bag of flour.
Amazon automatically creates a 2-pack, 3-pack, etc.

You get higher AOV. Customers get the quantity they want. Amazon makes more money.

Everyone wins.

Amazon announced VMPs at the 2025 Accelerate Conference in Seattle, but so far they have barely rolled out. I have only seen one live listing in the wild.

There is now another pilot starting January 23 (this Friday).

To check if you have any VMPs, wait until Friday & go to Manage Inventory and search for:
“VMP_”

If you see results, Amazon created them for you automatically.

For more details on the program, click here.

The Top 3 Credit Cards of 2025

Our friend Eli “The Travel Guy” Facenda just shared his top 3 credit cards for 2025.

If you don’t know Eli, he’s obsessive about travel, points, and squeezing real value out of money you were already going to spend. This isn’t theoretical. This is years of flying, booking, upgrading and testing rewards programs.

We talked through a lot of this on his interview with Rob. If you missed that, it’s worth checking out.

We’ve recommended some of these cards before, but it’s a new year. That makes it a good time for a credit card audit.

Quick reminder. US credit cards are simply better. Better earn rates. Better perks. Better protections. If you have any way to qualify, you should at least explore it.

Here are Eli’s top three for 2025, and why he uses each one the way he does.

1. The Marketing Growth Engine: Amex Business Gold
   This is his weapon for big spend like advertising. It earns roughly 4x on every dollar in the right categories, which turns normal operating expenses into future travel and flexibility. Business growth now, optionality later.

2. The Workhorse: Capital One Venture X Business
   This card handles everything else. Payroll, software, office spend, random expenses. Simple setup. Flat 2x back. No thinking required. It just runs in the background and stacks points.

3. The VIP Pass: Amex Business Platinum
   This one isn’t about earning. It’s about leverage. Lounge access, upgrades, Clear, TSA PreCheck, hotel perks. Last year alone, Eli saved over $10,000 in benefits. Travel stops feeling like friction and starts feeling easy.

Hold onto your butts, we’re driving in Costa Rica

Driving times in Costa Rica look short on Google Maps. They are not. We took a drive that took 1.5 hours and was only 50km (31 miles). Add in massive potholes, single lane roads pretending to be highways, traffic & cows wandering wherever they felt like, we didn’t get anywhere fast. I also spent a lot of it gawking out the window because the place is incredibly beautiful.

Things really went sideways when we accidentally took what Ticos (locals) casually call the Monkey Trail. Sounds friendly… should be good, right? 😅 

Narrow lanes, washed out sections, potholes you cannot avoid, and Ticos driving with the full confidence that you will get out of the way. It felt less like a road and more like a suggestion. At that point it was very clear why everyone rents SUVs.

Also.. ENDLESS speed bumps. Whoever is in charge of the speed bumps in Costa Rica is certainly serious about their job.

We were not prepared for any of it. We forgot to give the three year old Gravol and ended up making several unscheduled roadside “stops” to let everyone reset.

But… I’d still take it over a highway drive across Canada.

• Toys R Us’ deathknell

• Ungating becomes more difficult

You should read this article by Molson Hart because it’s a sharp lesson in how the legal system actually works for founders. This is a truly unbelievable and depressing story about a guy with an Amazon brand and the failure of the US justice system.

He describes how a straightforward trademark dispute over his Brain Flakes product turned into a seven year legal war that cost over $1M, not because he was wrong, but because the other side could delay, counterpunch, and never stop. Courts, venues, motions, and even bankruptcy filings become weapons, not paths to resolution. The story reads less like a business dispute and more like procedural exhaustion, where you cannot quit, cannot win cleanly, and cannot afford justice on a normal timeline. The takeaway is uncomfortable and clear. In lawsuits, truth matters less than stamina, money, and who can keep the game going longest.

Truly worth 10 minutes of your time. Give it a read.

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To your success,

Rob & Max