Adam Weiler is the CEO and founder of Sunken Stone, a performance-based Amazon marketing agency in San Diego, California. Since opening their doors in 2017, Sunken Stone has helped more than 100 7-8 figure brands generate over $100M in sales. Sunken Stone, is a Top-500 Amazon seller, has shipped over 2 million orders on the platform, and now helps over 80 brands successfully grow and scale their business by using the Amazon sales channel.
Adam is an experienced entrepreneur, visionary, and mentor. In addition to Sunken Stone, he's founded other companies including a non-profit called CablesForCauses and a mobile solar panel company called StrongVolt. Adam received both his Bachelor’s in Political Science and MBA from San Diego State University and still volunteers at the University’s Lavin Entrepreneurship Center to help young entrepreneurs launch their ideas and businesses.
In this episode, Adam shares his entrepreneurial tendencies in his childhood, how he essentially built his own store and put it up on Amazon, his agency beginnings, Sunken Stone’s version of a foot in the door offer, and why he doesn’t take on Amazon-only brands anymore.
This Cast Covers:
- How Adam and Sunken Stone helps more established e-commerce brands build a presence or scale on Amazon (02:15)
- Why it’s so difficult to manage an Amazon store as compared to other platforms (03:06)
- What young hustler Adam was into at 12 years old (03:48)
- His journey from a bunch of sales jobs to agency life (05:55)
- A marketing hack he used to do back when he sold drugs in his teens (07:14)
- Building his own online store before Amazon even existed (10:17)
- How he took one Amazon brand from a six-figure run rate to an eight-figure run rate in six months (11:01)
- A lead-in offer he learned from Will Ford which was instrumental in creating Sunken Stone (11:58)
- How they came about the feather test (12:35)
- How Sunken Stone has evolved marketing and process-wise (15:11)
- A drastic difference before and after adopting and modifying the feather test (15:25)
- Why the customer isn’t always right and why sometimes choosing your team over a client is the right thing (19:59)
- Why Joey hates the phrase “the customer is always right” especially for agencies (20:30)
- Why most agencies struggle to hire and train salespeople which ends up in underpricing and losing your profit margins (22:53)
- Adam talks about their merger with another agency to become a bigger player in the space (28:50)
- Having internal resources that could be acquired as separate entities and businesses that could close more deals (32:22)
- Why it’s always good to create marketing wind off Amazon and optimize your Amazon store (33:15)