Seneca Hampton of Hampton Adams: Five Things You Need To Know To Run A Very Successful Amazon Business

As a part of my interview series about “Five non-intuitive things you need to know to run a very successful Amazon business, I had the pleasure of interviewing Seneca Hampton.

Seneca Hampton is an entrepreneur with multiple 7–8 figure businesses, from eCommerce to Logistics, Consulting and Speaking. Seneca’s recent appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank demonstrates how he built Hampton Adams, an online eCommerce-based business that serves a rapidly growing 600,000 customers, has produced over $15,000,000 Dollars in Revenue, has zero employees and only demands 30 minutes of his time per month. All from scratch with $700 dollars to his name. Connect with Seneca on Instagram or YouTube.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you share with us the “backstory” about what brought you to this specific career path?

When I was 22, I decided I wanted to figure out how to make money and stop living paycheck to paycheck. I embarked on a journey and consumed a ton of content, books, webinars, seminars, podcasts, you name it. When I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, it changed everything for me. One of the things in the book was that if you can get paid to learn, then you’ve won — you’re winning. I always kept that in my mind — I get paid to learn. The other thing was that if you can make money while you’re not working, you can become wealthy because your income is tied to your time. I set out to try and find what this could be for me.

I had been doing customer service for about four and a half years at Apple and got really good at it. At the same time, a colleague introduced me to some guys who were selling light bulbs on Amazon. I realized with Amazon, you don’t have to be standing in front of people and using your time to make sales. Once it clicked, I spent the next two to three years working. No exaggeration, 80 hours a week. I became obsessed with how to sell on Amazon. I went from customer service to VP of Marketing in no time.

Once I learned the science of selling on Amazon, I set out on my own. I was looking to sell something that I was passionate about and could build a business around. I grew up playing football, my dad was my coach, and my mom was a nurse. She was always taping up something, sticking us with a syringe, or making some medical concoction for something. Sports medicine seemed fitting, so I set out to improve athletic tape. I just listened to what customers wanted, and I went through about 40 factories to find the one I found. The rest is history.

Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about selling on Amazon.com?

I have sold in over 20 different top product categories and have launched over 1,200 products on the platform. Additionally, I have optimized, fixed, updated, changed and improved over 5,000 products are the platform. I’ve also sold over least a quarter of a billion dollars worth of products on the platform just through the companies that I’ve helped grow. I started my own company with only $700 selling low ticket items that I’ve been able to grow into a eight-figure business.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

I appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank and met with the sharks about Hampton Adams. On the show, I explained my goal was to become the “go to” sports medicine brand for athletic tape, and I was thrilled to receive great feedback from the sharks. While I didn’t receive a deal, the experience of meeting the sharks, gaining new connections and receiving their advice made it all worth it.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I started, I tried to write reviews for my own Amazon products. Amazon immediately shut this down. The lesson was that there are no shortcuts to succeeding on Amazon, and they take their reviews very seriously. Right now, I have over 20,000 reviews for my athletic tape, which is very important to the credibility of selling the product.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

I’ve been doing a lot of consulting recently with people who want to get onto Amazon. These entrepreneurs have a brand but don’t know how to move their products onto the platform. They don’t understand how Amazon fits into their current business model, and they’re afraid that Amazon will take up all their sales. So I’m creating a program where those people have a “done for you” service to help streamline the process. I will sit down either side by side with someone or as a group, and we’ll walk through the process together. So for the people who are already on there, but they’re doing six figures a year or low seven, I’m helping them get to high seven and eight figures.

Ok. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. You are a seasoned Amazon expert. Can you share with our readers five, non intuitive, insider tips, in order to be as successful as possible on Amazon? Please share a story or example for each.

Treat the platform like a competition and not your landing page: Don’t treat your Amazon shop like a website; compare your reviews with your competition and see what they offer. For example, say you are selling an iPhone case on Amazon, and you wrote really cool copy, but no one cares on Amazon. You have to look at the platform from the customer’s perspective and identify what others are offering their customer. Sometimes a seller will only provide a product but completely ignore other factors such as price, reviews, and negative reviews. What else a buyer gets with the product (e.g., instruction, manuals, videos, access to a group, etc.) and so on. Amazon customers are not looking at the platform from a brand perspective. They’re looking at it from a value perspective.

Direct Response Marketing: You want your customers to make an immediate decision and convince them why your product will provide their desired outcome. You need to provide more certainty for your product than your competitors to customers whether it’s better or quicker to arrive.

Uncomplicating Advertising on Amazon: Advertising is not as complicated as people make it on Amazon — it’s keyword and product-based. Amazon is very straightforward and favors short keywords, which drive most of the sales. Once you can master the right words and images, your product will begin to appear on Google searches which will then convert sales to Amazon.

The ranking is more valuable than profitability: This will upset some people. Still, Amazon’s rankings are similar to Google’s — there’s a value associated with where you fall on the search page. Many people make the mistake of becoming fixated on their profits that they forsake their ranking, but it’s a catch-22. You can’t make sales if you don’t have a good ranking. You appear higher on Amazon’s algorithm by converting more sales.

Benefitting Amazon’s bottom line: Amazon wants a customer who will make multiple purchases in one shopping cart. For instance, if you find a way for customers to buy five markers, then Amazon will reward you by ranking you higher and giving you better visibility.

Amazon sellers have a reputation for being great guerilla marketers. Do you use any clever and innovative marketing strategies that you think large legacy companies should consider adopting?

Yes, “creating offer depth.” Many companies want to sell their product solely because they think it will solve the customer’s problem. It doesn’t, because the product is only one piece of the puzzle. For instance, someone who buys shoes to climb a rock doesn’t just want to climb a rock. They are rising because they want to feel accomplished. Legacy brands should think about how they can continue to sell other resources along with their product and tap into why a specific person is buying their product from the start.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

There are two. The first I heard was when I was 21 and unhappy with life. I was told, “You are where you are in your life because you choose to be.” At first, this was very upsetting because it forced me to take responsibility for how my life looked and felt. It took power away from other things, circumstances, or people. The second was from the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The author says, “It’s not; you can’t afford it. It’s how can you.” Those quotes changed my life because they make it clear to me that my life is what I make it. It’s all based on my choices and beliefs.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

There are two. The first I heard was when I was 21 and unhappy with life. I was told, “You are where you are in your life because you choose to be.” At first, this was very upsetting because it forced me to take responsibility for how my life looked and felt. It took power away from other things, circumstances, or people. The second was from the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The author says, “It’s not; you can’t afford it. It’s how can you.” Those quotes changed my life because they make it clear to me that my life is what I make it. It’s all based on my choices and beliefs.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I have a few! First, I would say Elon Musk because he is so mission-driven, and I’m very impressed by it. I would also want to meet with and shadow Marcus Lemonis from The Profit because the way he does business is so effortless and just rolls off. Then I’d like to meet Ben Horowitz, who wrote The Hard Thing About Hard Things, because he understands business.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!