From MASSIVE Failure To A $40M/Year Ecommerce Business With Gary Nealon

Gary Nealon is an incredibly successful ecommerce seller and entrepreneur.

He has built one of the biggest brands in the kitchen niche, a business known as RTA Cabinet Store. In 2017 alone, he scaled his company to $40 million per year in sales.

Gary also runs his own consulting company which is dedicated to helping people scale their ecommerce businesses and maximize their profits.

Ready to discover how Gary Nealon went from MASSIVE failure to a $40M/year ecommerce business? 

Watch the video below:

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

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Gary Nealon is an ecommerce expert.

In our interview together, we talked about his journey to success. In particular, how he built an ecommerce empire from scratch and what he learned along the way. Let's dive in!

Do you mind sharing how you got started in the ecommerce world?

My first dive into the ecommerce space was an epic failure. Before I started RTA Cabinet Store I had a great idea that I was going to buy a business. I started that business when the economy turned in the U.S. I ended up filing for bankruptcy within one year. That was a big blow. It was a combination of bad timing, bad numbers, and I didn't know how to buy a business to begin with. From that experience, I knew that I never wanted to work for anyone again. I ended up launching the RTA Cabinet Store.

Originally, I had approached my business partner's uncle who was a vendor of cabinets.

I asked him if I could build him a website. He told me that the cabinets would never sell online. I ended up launching the site myself. Eleven years later I ended up having a healthy exit on a $40 million dollar business.

Did you start your business on Amazon or were you selling everything on your own ecommerce store?

Most of your audience probably started on Amazon. We did use Amazon, but we used it in a different way. We started with an ecommerce store. Believe it or not, our first traffic source was Craigslist. We were posting ads all around the country. Once we scaled to a certain point, I knew that we had to diversify our traffic so we moved into paid advertising.

We knew that Amazon was really good at driving traffic.

The line of thinking was, “How do we grab those leads and bring them to our site?” We looked for products that matched our clienteles profile, like bath accessories or kitchen cabinets. Keep in mind that we didn't want to sell these products. Rather, we simply wanted to capture the leads and bring them to our site.

Why do you think content marketing is so important for Amazon sellers?

When I talk to Amazon sellers they don't realize that they are already creating content, whether it's their sales copy or other avenues. That's content that can be redistributed in other places.

Amazon is really good at driving traffic from paid ads and other places.

However, there are people that can absorb your content from other platforms, like Reddit, Medium, Pinterest, or Instagram. Why not take the assets that you already have and put them out into the world?

What type of content do you create for the niche that you’re in?

After three years, it became really hard to write content about kitchens, so I had to come up with different ways of creating content. We started looking at forums and blogs for our niche. Also, we started tracking all of our customer questions. We realized that if people are asking questions, there's a need for a piece of content about it.

Our customer service team would create a log within a given week.

We would see if there were any synergies that we could create content around. In addition, we started looking at competitor listings on Amazon. If people were complaining about a product, that would be a natural thing for us to talk about. We wanted to show our audience the ways in which our products were doing things better. There's a lot of ways that you can take what's already in the marketplace and spin it into different pieces of content.

What were some of the challenges that you faced along the way?

Just when I thought we saw every issue that could come up, another one would slap us in the face. The first challenge was the logistical side of things. Our product was challenging. We had to make the buying process as easy as possible for the novice, but then also as quick as possible for the professional.

We ended up creating three buying paths based off of people's skill levels.

The guys who knew nothing and the guys who watched DIY shows and thought they knew what they were doing. Lastly, the professionals who knew what they were doing and wanted to get through. It was a hurdle to create a unique buying experience for everybody. We didn't want to turn anybody away that was a potential customer. Once we figured that out, it made it easier for us to talk to the different types of buyers.

Our second challenge was inventory management. My background was logistics. I worked in that area for 10-11 years. I thought I could figure it out myself. Originally, we had a drop-ship model. We were using distributors all over the U.S.

That was the first time that the company almost went bankrupt.

We went from not having any inventory to having to carry $4-5 million dollars worth of inventory sitting in a warehouse. When you have that many SKUs you don't carry a lot of one particular SKU. We had a really hard time trying to calculate our inventory. At one point, we decided to go back to a drop-ship model and relied on people who were good at managing our inventory. Our job was solely to drive traffic to our site and handle the marketing.

Is there a certain mindset that has helped you overcome business challenges?

The failure hit me really hard because prior to that, I had a really good job. It was my rock bottom. Once I knew what it looked like, I knew which direction to go in. Rock bottom taught me so much. I had no money to my name and I was like, “As long as I'm above that, I'm good.” That was my mentality.

Running a business is challenging. Everyone has their own skillset. Mine was marketing. I encourage you to stick with what you're good at. You can't be good at everything. Hire quickly for people who have different skillsets from you. When I was able to do that, my business really scaled up.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started with an ecommerce business?

Don't go all-in right away until you can cover your income, plus. You will need to grind. Successful people work 80 hours per week. In the beginning, you're going to have to sacrifice something, whether it's your free time or family time. Pace yourself. There are one million opportunities out there and it's easy to get distracted.

Find one avenue to start with and become great at it.

Once you do, hire someone to run your business and move onto something else. That's the biggest mistake that I see people make. They want to be everywhere but you can't unless you have support behind you.

How can people find out more about you?

You can go to my website, GaryNealon.com. I do a brain dump every week. Nothing to sell. Just giving you any of the information that we have learned over the last 11 years. If somebody can learn from me and not make the same mistakes that I made, I'm happy with that. We get a lot of great feedback from people saying, “Thanks for sharing this.” If it makes an impact on you, let us know.

This is how Gary Nealon went from MASSIVE failure to a $40M/year ecommerce business.

His story is proof that anything is possible. If you aspire to become a successful entrepreneur, I encourage you to learn from people like Gary who have masteted their craft. I hope his entrepreneurial insights have inspired you to create the business of your dreams!

Want to leverage the power of Amazon FBA to generate financial wealth and freedom? CLICK HERE to get instant access to my free training!