Amazon FBA M&A in 2026 | Interview with Empire Flippers

What's really changed in the Amazon FBA buying and selling world since 2016? We interview Greg Elfrink, Director of Marketing at Empire Flippers, to talk about how the M&A market for Amazon businesses has evolved — and what that means if you're thinking about buying or selling one today.

We discuss:
✅ The most common misconception about buying or selling an Amazon business
✅ Valuations
✅ Real success stories — and cautionary tales — from the Empire Flippers marketplace
✅ Where the Amazon business buying/selling space is headed in the next five years
...and more!

🔗 Learn more about Empire Flippers: https://empireflippers.com/
🔗 Connect with Greg Elfrink: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregthewriter/

Transcript

0:00 Hi everyone. This is Joy from the Get Reviews team. Joining me today is Greg, Director of Marketing at Empire Flippers. Greg joined the company back in 2016 and has since worked his way up to lead marketing, vision, and strategy across the business. Over

0:17 nearly a decade with the company, Empire Flippers has grown to be one of the largest curated marketplaces to buy and sell online businesses and websites. Greg, welcome. Thanks for joining me. I'll just pass it on over to you if you want to just kind of give a short

0:33 introduction about yourself as well.

>> Sure. Yeah. So, as you said, head of marketing over at Empire Flippers. I joined the company back when there was four people. I was employee number four. Uh, the person that got hired with me, we always like debate on who was number

0:49 four, right? Uh, I was number four. But I got to see the company grow from a pretty small business all the way to the largest curated M&A marketplace in the world. And a marketplace is it's funny as a marketers. I always think about positioning, right? Marketplace doesn't

1:07 necessarily describe us as well as I would like. So, uh I think we we have a marketplace for sure, but that's more of our marketing tool to sell businesses. We're really closer to M&A intermediary because every deal you see on Empire Flippers is represented by us. We market

1:25 the listing. We go out to the buyers. We find the valuations. We negotiate the deal, help you structure the deal. We even help you manage the deal post exit, which almost no one does. Uh so like if you sold a a $4 million business, you got three million up front and then a

1:41 million paid out over, you know, XYZ terms, we help you even manage that. So we're there for the entrepreneur end to end during their exit plan and on the vice versa. I would say we're also the most newbie friendly when it comes to people buying businesses. So I got to

1:56 see tons of growth over the last 10 years. Like when I first joined the company, I remember uh our one of our co-founders, he told me, uh Greg, it all changes at this level. you know, we're trying to sell $150,000 deal as the biggest deal on our marketplace to now

2:10 like uh I think it was either earlier this year or a little bit before a little towards the end of last year, we sold a $1.5 million deal. So quite quite a difference from 10 years ago.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And again, I know we just kind of talked about, you just

2:25 mentioned like the past and being at Empire Flipper since 2016, but I'm curious, is there any what would you say are like some of the biggest shifts you've seen in who's actually buying and selling Amazon businesses today versus five and even 10 years ago?

2:42 >> Yeah, is a great question. And so 10 years ago, I think the people that were buying were the mad lads on Blackout World and Warrior Forum, like people who were obsessed with the whole internet digital business stuff. And I would say that was the reason why a lot of these

2:56 businesses just didn't sell for as much as they could have back then because it was a maturity thing, right? Uh, as you go into 2020, the buyer persona changed significantly because that was the advent of the aggregators, which anyone who's been in FBA game for a long time

3:11 probably knows quite a bit about them. I always joke that we're the stepfather of the aggregators because we were the very first ones to ever sell an FBA business. Like we would used to fight with Amazon's customer service. We like, "No, you can't sell accounts." Like, "We're

3:25 not selling an account. We're selling a business. You can't legally prevent this entrepreneur from selling their business." And they're like, "Oh yeah, that's different." Right. So we actually like paved the way for a lot of these aggregators and pretty much every

3:36 aggregator that started that raised you know sometimes tens of millions of dollars the place they would get their initial deal flow would be from us uh before they start competing with us to try to build their own like private deal flow right uh I would say now after the

3:50 bubble uh popped with the aggregators for whole bunch of reasons I would say it's a mixture of much more mature much more savvy entrepreneurs mixed with a little bit of private equity, family offices, and certain funds. So, we still have that, but I do think the bell has

4:08 swung a bit back to um peer-to-peer sales. And what I mean by that is like you're an FBA entrepreneur, you go sell your business, there's a higher chance than a few years ago that you'll be selling it to another entrepreneur.

>> Yeah. And I'm curious in terms of out of

4:25 let's say the Amazon businesses, right? Is there a specific category that you see very very popular now versus maybe a few years ago? Uh it might be different in terms of categories, type of businesses.

>> Yeah. So this is a question I get asked

all the time like what's what niche

4:43 is hot Greg? Like tell me where I need to build, right? And it's a disappointing answer because there isn't one. like uh I've done this data study multiple times over the years both with like SEO businesses, e-commerce stores, SAAS, you know, whatever just because

4:57 like maybe there is something in niches, right? And the data always comes back to not really. It's pretty well divided. Like the most important thing is do you have a quality business in your niche? And if the answer is yes, then usually doesn't matter what your niche is. There

5:13 are some exceptions, but usually those are very short-lived exceptions. And I haven't really seen that play out in the FBA space in a big way other than in supplements which is always like kind of a trend of the week thing or in the finance space if you get outside of FBA.

5:27 So like crypto for example had its moment in the sun. But I don't usually recommend people to focus too hard on category because the fact is you have a really good business with solid fundamentals you are going to attract good buyers.

>> Yeah, I love that. And I'm curious for

5:44 what would you say is the biggest misconception people have about buying or selling an Amazon business?

>> Well, on the selling side is very easy. It's the valuation. Uh most entrepreneurs, so I've done a little bit over 200 transactions now. So our marketplace has made over 96

6:03 millionaires. Like at the moment of exit, like we cut them a check for a million dollars and up, right? Um, so I would say the biggest misconception is your own valuation. There are so many times an entrepreneur comes to me saying like, "Hey, this is what I want to sell

6:18 for and this is what I'm making." And the this gap is massive between what they think they're going to get versus what they're really going to get based on what they're making, right? Um, I often joke I break an entrepreneur's dream every week so I can help them wake

6:33 up and actually become rich. Like, this is what you're actually worth. You're still going to be a millionaire, but you're not going to get this crazy uh Silicon Valley style exit.

>> Which is why I always tell entrepreneurs, you should talk to someone like me. It doesn't have to be

6:46 Empire Flippers, doesn't have to be me. You just talk to other business brokers, talk to other intermediaries who like years before you're even ready to sell. Because I promise you, if you're like most entrepreneurs, you're going to be astounded like you're not as valuable as

7:00 you think. But if you do it quick enough where you have a long enough time frame, you can start putting in the stuff you need to do to actually get closer to what you thought you were worth. So that's probably the biggest misconception on the sell side. on the

7:14 buy side. It usually comes from people who are uh watching a lot of YouTube uh videos like you know Cody Sanchez or a few of my personal friends who do videos about buying businesses and they think they can come in and do this insane like jiu-jitsu deal structure where they

7:30 don't have to spend any money to like get the deal like through creative financing all this stuff. And I'll just say like my friends who do videos like that, they're right. You can do that, but it's a very advanced strategy and it's not for the faint of heart. It is

7:45 very hard to pull off and you're like if you've never bought a business before and you think you're going to do a no money out of pocket kind of deal, which is what is usually called like you're operating on hard mode for your acquisitions and I wouldn't recommend it

7:58 because you also weaken the business by doing those kind of deals. So it's very much an advanced strategy. should not start you should not buy your first business with that strategy.

>> And I'm curious for the sellers that you work with and you kind of have to give

8:13 them the realistic overview of, you know, selling their business and their valuation. What would you say is like the common reaction you get from the sellers? Are they very surprised? Are they disappointed? Do they kind of just want to ignore you and, you know, not

8:29 listen to you? and they're just so firm on their valuation and their business.

>> Well, it's like uh the five stages of grief, right? So, because it's their baby, right? They built this.

>> Of course, there's a lot of So, there's a thing in selling a business,

8:44 especially if you're the like the original founder of the business, I call it emotional equity. So, the reason why entrepreneurs overvalue their business is because the business has done amazing things for them, right? maybe allow them to quit their job, like go travel the

8:58 world, go do all this, spend all this more time with their children versus being in some office, right? So, it allow it has done all this amazing stuff, which is very emotionally fulfilling, which raises the value in their head. But for the buyer, they're

9:12 looking at the cold clinical facts of your P&L, of your traffic, of your profit by SKUs, your COGS, all this stuff, right? That's great. it's done all this good stuff for you, but the buyer is not buying it based on the emotional fulfillment you had, right?

9:25 They're buying it based on what has it done and what can it possibly do for me, right? So, I think that's where the initial gap is. So, usually people are like, "No, you're wrong." Like, no. Like, okay. Okay. Well, let's talk through it. Another thing that uh a lot

9:38 of sellers will say like, "Well, my friend sold sold his business for 6x." And then I always ask them like, "Well, what was your friend's business?" And it's usually going to be this like you know doing 15 million uh in a year in revenue and stuff like that as MR it's

9:55 been around for like 10 years all this stuff like okay well this is a very different world in terms of business valuations versus where you are because that's the other thing people often don't get like well my friend selling at 6x why don't I even though like you know

10:10 all the fundamentals are similar is usually because it's scaled up right like scaled up businesses are just going to get bigger multiples. It's a different world. Uh then I always ask like, well, how many of these businesses has your friend sold? Like, well, just

10:23 that one. Like, okay, like he's in the investment banker u atmosphere over here. You're in the lower middle market atmosphere over here. So, these are two different worlds in terms of the valuations you can expect. And eventually, people come around. They'll they'll sometimes go to

10:38 other brokers and um depending on who who you go with, like there's a lot of good brokers out there, but there's a lot of bad brokers. Sometimes they will promise you the absolute world and always tell them like look if you go shopping totally fine just don't sign

10:51 anything because a lot of times brokers they will tell you or really any M&A guy they'll often tell you oh yeah definitely your valuation is worth that much just to get you to sign the exclusivity now you're stuck with six months to a year as they whittle you

11:06 down and exhaust you back down to reality. So be careful if you do shop around.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And I guess sticking to the selling side, if whoever is watching this and want to, you know, sell, let's say, their business, you know, whether they're Amazon business or

11:23 maybe just their e-commerce business in the next year or two, um, what would you say now is something that they what would you say is something they really need to strongly consider or maybe something the first thing that they should do even?

>> Well, the first thing is be clear on

11:38 what what you're trying to do. So selling a business is combined with both your business your business goals but also your life goals like your personal goals right so like ask yourself does this make sense like what am I going to do with this like I I have a friend he

11:53 has a agency that is probably valued around $45 million and I also told him like hey think about what you're going to do after you sell the agency and it stressed him out because he didn't know and really he didn't even want to sell the agency he just thought he did so he

12:06 did some uh you know soulsearching realized hey actually I don't want to sell I love like great, don't sell that. So, you should only sell when it matches uh your goal. So, think about it like does this materially get me closer to my business and my personal goals. So, the

12:22 answer is no, you shouldn't shouldn't sell at all.

>> But even if you don't want to sell, I still recommend talking to a business broker, getting a professional evaluation because a lot of times what makes your business more sellable is also the things that make your business

12:36 more profitable anyways. even if you don't sell like people talk about exit planning a lot. I was just talking about this with a friend. He does a ton of exit planning for seven figure, eight figure companies and so on. And he doesn't call it exit planning because

12:49 that always makes people think like I got to sell so he calls it something else because good exit planning is just really building a good business, right? So I I think it's always good to get a professional evaluation uh especially if you're two years out because now you can

13:03 do stuff to affect the valuation before you sell. M interesting. Okay. And I would say on the opposite side, on the buyer side, um is there anything the buyer maybe if there's a buyer who is interested in acquiring their first business, their online business, Amazon

13:21 business, is there anything that they should also be reconsider or that they should be considering when acquiring uh I guess a business?

>> This is going to sound super self-promotional, but uh again, I would say talk to a broker. Doesn't have to be

13:34 me. doesn't have to be me, but talk to a broker if you've never done an acquisition before. There is a lot of traps and usually not because the seller's being nefarious is like a very easy example. A lot of times when we get businesses, we ask the uh the

13:48 entrepreneur, how many hours do you work per or work per week, right?

>> And a lot of these entrepreneurs been running the business for four, five, six years like, "Oh, I work like 10 hours a week." And so anniers like, "Wow, I'm going to buy this business is making me

14:01 like 80 grand a month in profit. only have to work like 10 hours a week. Sign me up, right? I'll go line up all the financing I need to to the hilt to get this business. But the thing is like that entrepreneur is working 10 hours a week because they know it like the back

14:16 of their hand. And they're probably doing a lot of stuff in the business that they don't even think of as work, you know, just like checking emails or whatever that are extremely important for running the business, but in their mind it's not work. It's just second

14:27 nature, right? So when you go and acquire a business that whatever the seller is telling you the amount of hours they're going to work, you can pretty much like 3x that because you're learning and you it's a high stress learning because you just put out all

14:39 this money, right? So it's very important to come in with that mindset. And the reason why I say go with a business broker is again because a lot of YouTubers and you know personalities online talking about M&A, they'll often say we hate brokers. And the reason why

14:53 they hate brokers is because you're going to pay more all this stuff. There is some truth to that, but again, if you're a firsttime acquirer, why make it why go on hard mode? And if you're afraid that you're going to overpay the for from a business broker, like just

15:08 remember this one deal we just had. This guy, it was so he bought a business from us for $180,000 an Amazon FBA business. 22 months later, he was back on our marketplace selling it for over seven figures. So in 22 months he made over a million dollars probably just from the

15:27 profit of the growth of the business. Now ask yourself like do you think he's if he overpaid by 50% which obviously he didn't but let's say he overpaid by 50%. Do you think he's like pissed off right now? He just become a millionaire in the last 22 months. Like no he's fine.

15:41 Right? So, like that's another thing about buying. Like it's okay to make some mistakes or even overpay a little bit when it comes to acquiring business because unlike real estate, you can grow past your mistakes pretty dramatically versus like buying a a rental property.

15:56 You're pretty locked in

>> in terms of how much money you can make, right? There's a very low ceiling. But with businesses, you can usually outgrow your mistakes. And it's always worthwhile to go with a good broker because they can help you avoid a lot of the newbie mistakes.

16:10 >> Yeah. And in terms of you know um do you have kind of a general idea right now of the people who are acquiring businesses right the online businesses do you see I know you kind of mentioned this in the beginning but is there any like noticeable trends that you're noticing

16:27 such as like oh I'm seeing a lot of for example just you know regular corporate employees that are you know wanting to quit their day job and start you know continue like an entrepreneurial business or acquire a business and just run it from there. Or maybe for example,

16:42 retire um people who have retired but now they want to kind of spend their time on having some sort of online business where they have some sort of side income or like you mentioned PE funds, family businesses. Curious is there kind of uh what would you say is

16:56 like the buyer ideal or the buyers that you're seeing especially at Empire Flippers? Yeah,

>> it's funny you mentioned retirement. We just sold a deal a few days ago and they left us. I think it was on TrustPilot. Like, thank you so much, EF. I've retired for for you helping me sell my

17:13 business. So, that was cool. Um, in terms of the buyer pool, I'd say on the lower end, so sub 200,000, you definitely get a lot more like corporate middle management or, you know, like like me, I used to work on an oil rig and I taught myself internet marketing.

17:28 Know those type of people want to escape that into a whole new life. that is something we serve all the time, right? Um, so that's something we see a lot. Uh, I would say they're not as common and the reason why isn't because it's a not it's not because there it's a small

17:43 group. I think their own fear, their mindset keeps them from like pulling the trigger, right? To them, they think like spending the $150,000 or $200,000 on on a business is like, oh, you know, what if everything goes wrong? Like, well, you'll learn valuable lessons, but most

17:58 of the time acquisitions go pretty well. So, It's hard to get over that fear, right? Or if you've never done anything entrepreneurial. Um, in terms of the most common buyers we see, that was kind of what I said earlier, which is what the that peer-to-peer sell. So, other

18:13 entrepreneurs, usually they might have a portfolio a little bit further ahead of you or they see some kind of synergistic thing with buying your FBA brand for what they're doing over here, per se. I wouldn't really call them a strategic. That's a little bit different. That's

18:27 much much bigger. uh usually the best people to sell to. But I would say in terms of who you'd see on our marketplace and who you'd see with buyers in general, other entrepreneurs, they that will be the most straightforward deal. Uh if you're looking at it from a sales angle, like

18:42 as a seller, then there's the private equity or private equity backed people and they are buying for cash flow. And then the very high end, you got strategic. So that $13 million deal we did, uh we sold that to an international electronics retailer. So they were a

18:57 multinational conglomerate and to them the cash flow is less important versus how this puzzle piece fits into the giant that is their conglomerate. So they're also willing to pay the most out of anyone.

>> Yeah. Oh wow. And um why do you think interest in owning an online business

19:16 rather than starting one from scratch has grown the way it is now?

>> Oh, I think it's just a super sexy concept. You know, it's like uh no no money down real estate. Who wouldn't do it, right? But but again, it's a very hard strategy to do no money down. But

19:31 the cool thing with acquisitions is it genuinely is way less risky than starting a business from scratch. Like you're buying like let's say an FBA business, you know, uh you want to start the next garlic press 2000. for any old-timer FBA, you'll love the garlic

19:49 press stuff, but uh like you that cost of getting all the garlic presses is probably going to be at least 20 grand just to get the product in. Not to mention the design and figure out like how you're going to do that. Then you got to do the ads and you write the

20:04 description, get the reviews because right now you have no reviews, right? No customers. And like you're looking pretty close at like probably a $50 - $80,000 investment when all is said and done. And this is before you even know if anything even works, which the

20:18 biggest reasons why businesses fail, I'm a marketer and so I'm a bit biased here. In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why businesses fail is no product market fit. Like you do not figure out a way to bring your product to the market and you don't figure out a

20:33 way to do it sustainably where you can break even and actually make money to like buy your coffee at Starbucks, right? like versus buying a business, you're often looking at a business been around for say four, five, six, seven, eight years, right? Like we sold a

20:46 business not too long ago, I think that was like 15 years old. Like that's like dinosaur land the internet.

>> Uh but you have 15 years of a P&L of things being stable. There's this thing in M&A called Lindy. I think it's called the law of Lindy or Lindy's law where if

21:03 something's been around for five years, then there's a pretty good chance it'll be around for five more years. Now, you should never make an investment decision based on that. is like rule of thumb. Like this is a known quantity over here buying this $2 million business that has

21:18 like a eight-year track record of stable growth versus starting a business over here with your garlic press 3000 where you have to spend 80 grand before you even get the opportunity to test if it works are very two different scenarios which is why acquisitions in general

21:35 tend to be safer in my view. You're basically going from a 50 to 70% failure rate with a startup to like a 50 or like a 50 to 70% success rate with an acquisition. And there's a bunch of ETA studies your audience can go Google entrepreneur through acquisition but by

21:52 like Stanford and Harvard that shows it's just safer.

>> Yeah. Awesome. And I know you already gave a lot of great um examples, but um do you have any for example like favorite success stories or one you know that's really memorable to you that uh from someone who maybe even sold or

22:11 bought through Empire Flippers?

>> Yes. Uh I saw that question and uh it made me laugh because I instantly thought of this memory. So in marketing we always want to do attribution like is our money being spent well and all this kind of stuff and in M&A is extremely

22:28 hard task you're dealing with long sales cycles and all these different attribution point of views and you're deal with a low quantity of deals too right uh and that's coming from us which were like one of the most highest volume brokerages in the world in my view so we

22:43 had this very funny conversation with management about attribution and then a couple weeks later one of my friends who I've going back and forth with on Facebook at the time for probably like I don't know two years about him selling his business. He finally did it. He put

22:56 his business up on our marketplace and a day after we like launched the business to our email list of buyers, he he shoots me a message. So this is like 24 hours later and his business was like exactly a million dollars or just right around exactly a million dollars and he

23:13 sent me a message like, "Dude, you changed my life." Like, "Oh man, he must have gotten like a really good offer already. That's crazy. I like I looked in our dashboard like, "Yeah, you got a great offer. Someone paid him all cash like all within 24 hours of going live,

23:29 right?" And I asked him, "Why did you decide to finally sell with us?" Because you you always like been nervous, you know, you didn't know what to do, like you don't know which way to go. And it's he told me, "I always see your poetry on Facebook and made me it always makes me

23:45 think of Empire Flippers because I write poetry on novels for fun and I just post on Facebook for the hell of it, for the fun of it, right?" And so I bring that screenshot back to our management like call me the seven figure poet of M&A, you know, how are we going to attribute

23:59 this, right?

>> But yeah, that that story always makes me laugh.

>> Oh my gosh. And is your friend still in for example the online business space?

>> So he does like this is one of the things about selling why I always tell people to like think ahead because when

24:19 you sell a business you come into this area that I call the doors of possibilities which is all these doors that you didn't even know existed. Now that you've sold this business and you have, you know, a million, two million, $3 million in liquidity is probably the

24:34 most amount of liquid money you've ever had in your life, right? All these doors that you didn't know exist suddenly start opening up. Now you can go do all these things you didn't even know exists. Like I I have a friend, he sold uh probably 18 very small businesses

24:48 with us over the years and used that money to leapfrog into becoming a hosting company that goes and acquires hosting companies, which is a very competitive space. But he was able to use our platform to basically become his own uh private equity backer because we

25:03 made him selling his side hustles, right? So uh he that guy that I mentioned the story, he's off to bigger and better things.

>> Wow. And do you notice that a lot of the sellers, you know, who exit and now they have liquid cash, do you notice that a lot of them tend to invest into

25:21 purchasing another business or do you notice that a lot of them just completely exit hands clean and they're completely out? Do you notice anything uh do you notice any trends or um patterns?

>> Yeah, actually I have a a whole framework about it because it's so

25:37 common. I call it the asset flywheel. So basically you sell say a $3 million business and then say it's say Amazon FBA business then you take two million of that to go and acquire say two other FBA brands that were be a little bit like they're smaller than what you had

25:55 just sold but you already know the road map of how to get to that three four million X and you just did it right. So you go and buy these smaller businesses that are similar to what you just sold. They're probably different niches or whatever and you build them up and then

26:08 you come back to me and start selling them again. Because the one of the big secrets that people never think about in M&A and it can make you incredibly wealthy if you really put effort into this is selling a business one time. If you bootstrapped it and found it

26:24 yourself from scratch, that's like a three to six year journey because you need a lot of history, right? But if you sell that business and then you come to me and buy two businesses, I've sold the same business like a year a year and a half after they acquired because that

26:42 year like the moment you buy the business, you inherit the five years that the other founder had, right? So now you can go do all your growth stuff, stabilize it, get that new 12 month of profit, come back to me and sometimes sell it for two, three, four times of

26:57 what you bought it for, right? Uh because you you inherit all the previous years. You don't have to wait the five years. You already have the five years.

It's like time traveling, right? So I always joke the people who make the most money are actually the business buyers

27:09 because a seller might do one exit. business buyer. Like the seller might do one exit every few years versus a prolific business buyer might be doing an exit every year.

>> Right. Right. That makes sense. And I'm curious, is there any story that you

27:26 know I know it was a success story that you shared, but on the flip side, is there kind of maybe a story that maybe sticks with you? um something that maybe have disappointed you or maybe something it just maybe the seller or the buyer didn't turn out as to what they expected it to be.

27:46 >> Yeah. So, so it's always important to also, you know, be realistic about the stuff. Failure is, you know, a real possibility, right? Uh I always tell anyone that works for me in marketing, we cannot promise like passive income dreams or anything like that. Like

28:00 that's just not real. I always say we're merchants of opportunity. We're going to be we're like if you buy from me or sell with me, it is an opportunity to change your life. That's what I'm a merchant of. That's what I'm selling. Now, the opportunity might change your life in a

28:13 very negative way because it's business is risk, right?

>> Uh and I have a friend, he bought a $200,000 uh dollar business from us. It was a media company, not an FBA business. Uh so very heavily relying on Google SEO. and he bought it and literally a month after the deal was

28:30 closed, Google changed their update, destroyed the entire business. He lost $200,000 in less than 30 days. That was the business I sold him. Uh, now we're still friends because I never promised anything. I always tell people anything could go anyway, right? The numbers are

28:46 in your favor usually as an acquirer, but that doesn't mean the numbers always work out. And I think anyone who goes to acquire or sell a business or really get into business at all needs to be comfortable with failure because that's always a real possibility.

28:59 >> Yeah, absolutely. And you're right in the sense that you can still buy a business that has maybe years of success, but sometimes it might not turn out in ter in terms of like what you expect and there is always that chance of failure.

>> This is exactly why Lindy's law while it

29:14 is a useful law, it should not be a law. It's more like a guideline, right?

>> Absolutely. Yeah. Awesome. And you know, I have kind of one final question for you and um Greg, I'm curious in terms of you know, where would you say is where do you see the Amazon business for

29:30 example buying selling space um you know in five years? Do you have maybe like any predictions just because there's been so much change around Amazon right now and I feel like you've definitely seen everything maybe from the beginning. So I'm curious what do you

29:45 think is going to happen in the next five years? I I personally think FBA entrepreneurs are going to become multi-channel entrepreneurs and this is advice I give to everyone by the way. Uh but I do think like people who are really going to cut it and stay around

30:01 and go even bigger are going to do this which is where they view Amazon as a useful marketing channel rather than as their business. See, like we've been talking about Amazon FBA and most of my sellers, they identify as an entrepreneur as an Amazon FBA seller,

30:16 which I think is a bad mindset. I think they should identify as a direct to consumer entrepreneur. And Amazon is a very useful marketing channel, but that shouldn't limit you to just Amazon, right? There's Walmart, there's all these other places, there's your own

30:30 Shopify or Woo Commerce store. Um, and I truly believe that multi- channel is the way forward. And I think in the age of AI with, you know, Amazon being rented land versus own land, I think that will most likely happen. And I think you guys are doing some help there

30:47 too to get help the FBA people not to be on rented land because they're you're helping them build their email list, all that kind of stuff with the inserts and stuff. So, uh, I think that's the future multi- channel.

>> Yeah. And I completely agree with you.

30:59 Even a few months ago, we attended the Prosper Show. And I know Prosper Show in Vegas, it's kind of specialized towards like Amazon sellers, but what was really interesting is there some of the biggest sponsors there were Walmart, Shein, um, Coupang, which is a Korean marketplace

31:19 actually. It's a market um like Amazon of Korea.

>> I was shocked. I was like, what are you guys doing here? you know, um, but I'm starting to after talking to a lot of the sellers there, a lot of them seem to be also expanding into multi-channel like you mentioned,

31:34 they're not just solely relying on Amazon. They are expanding into other marketplaces such as like Walmart, Target. I would say another big one that we're seeing a lot right now is like TikTok shop

>> and a lot and you can see that a lot of these outside marketplaces are also

31:50 trying to grab the attention of these Amazon sellers and try to bring them over to their marketplaces as well. So, it's definitely something interesting that I've been seeing right now. Yeah,

>> this is breaking news just for your uh show here, but we finally sold our first

32:05 TikTok shop. That was a a bit of a hassle to figure out how to migrate those, but now we know how to do it. So, you have a Tik Tok shop, the Empire is ready to help you.

>> Congratulations. And I'm assuming even with a lot of the businesses that or a

32:20 lot of the sellers that are, you know, putting up their business for sale, do you notice that there's common trends of for example, there's more popularity around like TikTok shop or Walmart or even Target instead of just sticking with Amazon?

>> I would say Walmart is bigger than it

32:37 used to be. I mean, Tik Tok shop obviously massive, right? I wasn't even around a few years ago. So, it's massive growth there for sure.

>> Uh I think wholesaling like actually getting to retail stores that's coming back more too. Uh I I feel I don't know

32:50 for certain, but certainly is a feeling I'm getting. Uh and then DDC, like owning your own channel. So, uh there's a thing I that I talk to e-commerce entrepreneurs about. I call it the halo effect. And I think more people are starting to do this. So,

33:05 basically, you're running, say, your Meta ads towards your Shopify store and like, let's say you're selling a pair of shoes. Someone sees it in the feed, they click, they go to your Shopify store, but for whatever reason, they don't buy your shoes. Right now, a couple weeks

33:18 later, they were still curious about buying shoes. Like, oh man, what was that shoe I saw? Then they'll go on Amazon, type in the thing that looked kind of like the thing they saw in the ad, and then they see your listing. That's the one I saw in the Facebook ad.

33:30 Right? So, I'm seeing a lot more e-commerce entrepreneurs going, "Let me focus on building on my land, but I'll still rent rent this land to catch the halo effect of people who didn't directly buy from me right away." Right.

>> Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We're slowly

33:46 starting to also notice a lot of sellers um build their own website and then they'll add the buy on Amazon button on their customers can just purchase there because you know Amazon still provides its benefits such as like Prime shipping right that one day shipping. So they'll

34:03 still try to redirect sales towards there but still have their landing page I would say for marketing and brand purposes

>> and it's great for boosting all the traffic that Amazon has to send your way. Right. So, I don't think you should drop Amazon. I think you should uh, you

34:18 know, manage it. B, it's a balancing game, right? And if you got a new product, I would definitely be putting it on my Shopify store with an add to the Amazon listing as well. So, I want to boost the algorithm on Amazon, especially when it's fresh, right? So, I

34:33 think that's a very good strategy.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Well, Greg, those are all the questions that I had for you today. Um, I'm just curious if you had any final comments, maybe where people can find you or where people can, you know, for people who are interested in

34:48 buying or even selling an online business, uh, where they can check, um, out Empire Flippers if you have any kind of final comments you want to share.

>> Sure. Uh, I mean, empireflippers.com, you can come check out the marketplace. If you want to reach out to me, it's just greg @ Empire Flippers or you can find me on LinkedIn. It's Gregory Alfrank and it's like the magical creature in a hockey rink. Combine those. That's my last name. Uh but any my final advice to an entrepreneur is like I I often like I grew up uh I grew up I was on the oil

35:20 rigs and I you know I hated that whole life and I taught myself internet marketing and I remember all the gurus talking about the freedom you get with uh being an entrepreneur and I think a lot of entrepreneurs that that's why they started their business for that

35:33 freedom and as they get bigger and bigger they're like where the hell is this freedom supposed to be? like I'm just like doing more and more of stuff. And I always joke that the gurus are correct. There is financial freedom in all this and lifestyle freedom. They

35:47 just forgot to tell you the last bit which is sell the business because once you sell the business, you derisk everything. Right now you you could still be playing the game, but you've taken major chips off the table. And the reason I bring that up is most

35:59 entrepreneurs wealth, especially once they become successful, 90% of their net worth is stuck inside of that business, which would give Warren Buffett a heart attack, right? Like diversify your funds or whatever. Um, I know he believes in concentrated stuff as well, but by

36:14 selling your first business is to me is the first real step on your entrepreneurial journey. It's not the end of your entrepreneurial journey. So fall in love with the process, not the product that you have. and learn how to sell multiple businesses. It will change your life.

36:30 >> Yeah. Awesome. That sounds great. And you know, just we'll make sure that we include all of the necessary information about Empire Flippers in the description. So, if you found this conversation useful, you'll uh be able to check everything out. And um yes, and

36:45 if you're also an online business looking to hopefully collect more reviews, you can always check out getreviews.ai as well. Um but thanks again, Greg, for joining me. And um I think all of your insights and your wisdom is going to be extremely uh useful for a lot of the people who are

37:01 watching this.

>> Hopefully if if your audience enjoys it, thank you. And uh go sign up for uh for the for the reviews software as well. Go get reviews and thank you for having me.

>> Thank you so much, Greg. Perfect. Bye.

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