Interview with Alex Richard - Founder at Walmart Automation Pro

 Alex Richard helps people get involved with Walmart as sellers on their marketplace and take advantage of when people purchase from the Walmart marketplace. 

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Guest - Alex Richard
Host - Carl Grant
Producer - Seth Grant

Transcript

Carl Grant: 0:07

Welcome to Rainmakers. I'm here with Alex Richard, CEO of Walmart automation Pro. Welcome. '

Alex Richard: 0:14

Thank you so much called pleasure to be here.

Carl Grant: 0:17

So I like some I was looking over your site and studying what you do. And, and I'm fascinated with this. So you don't actually work for Walmart, you have your own company. But you use Walmart as a platform like others would use Amazon as a platform. Correct?

Alex Richard: 0:35

Correct. Yeah, we help people get involved with Walmart as sellers on their marketplace and take advantage of when people purchase from the Walmart marketplace. You know, it's people like me and you that they're purchasing from we help them become those, those sellers.

Carl Grant: 0:51

Yeah, so so I'm a big online shopper, I hardly ever go to the store. And so, my, my to go to places are Amazon, and Walmart. And, and so I started to notice that there's people selling stuff on Walmart, and it seemed odd to me. And so, you know, I get it on Amazon. Like, it's that's been a business model for a long time. Explain, is it just like what Amazon does? Or is it different?

Alex Richard: 1:16

Well, it's, it's similar in a way, but the thing is, is that Amazon has obviously taken over that ecommerce space for a long time now. And Walmart, in contrast, they have done very well offline, right, they have a, they have, I can't remember the exact statistic. But they say there's like a Walmart, from every city in the United States within like a couple miles or something like that. So they've really done well there. And in the past couple years, they noticed that they wanted to compete with Amazon online. And in January 20, they opened up the doors to everyday sellers to jump onto their marketplace and start selling because what they noticed they didn't have is the same product selection, they only had around 15 million products, whereas Amazon had over 350 million. So for them to catch up. They needed sellers, although they are much pickier than Amazon, on who they allow on their marketplace. But they are letting more and more people to try to compete against Amazon in the next couple of years.

Carl Grant: 2:20

Alright, so I've got a product, and I want to sell it on Walmart. And I haven't a clue on how this works. So how do you help me.

Alex Richard: 2:31

So essentially, we do two things. One, typically is we help you get set up as a seller on Walmart. So you need if you don't have prior experience, selling on other platforms such as Amazon, or eBay, or even just ecommerce in general, you'd, you'd have a very hard time getting approved as a seller on Walmart. So we have over a lot of testing found out strategies on how to get you approved, because even if you have the best product, if you're not approved on their marketplace, you can't really do anything. So we help you with that first. And once you've gotten approved, and you're now on their marketplace, our our main thing is automated solutions. So we help people get involved in a way that they're not, they don't really have to do anything, our team finds all the products for them, they sourced the products, they do the fulfillment of the products, we have warehouses, for handling all the returns and everything like that, we typically do all of it for our clients. And the way we make that work is we just do a share of the profits for all the work that we put in. So that's how we do it typically where we're sourcing the products now, and we wouldn't necessarily help you with the, with your specific product, because that would be a different model. But it is something we can guide you once you're approved on how to get set up and actually, you know, find success with your own products.

Carl Grant: 4:01

Well, that's interesting. I didn't realize this, I did watch the video of the fellow who is on your website where he had made his first 100 bucks. And then, you know, they're like four videos. And then you know, he had his first $50,000 month and I'm like, that's not bad. You know, he's doing Yeah, well, so. So walk us through that scenario. What did that fellow do? Who went from 100 bucks to 50,000 bucks? And how did you help him?

Alex Richard: 4:26

Yeah, so it's that's what's really crazy is because we're basically hiring a lot of teams of people and employing people overseas to do a lot of the fulfillment work that takes all day It takes a lot of people to find that many products to work to get to those high sales volumes. So essentially, when somebody starts with Walmart, they can do something that we got it's you can have w Fs, which is a Walmart fulfillment services, which would be kind of the equivalent of Amazon FBA. That's not the model that we choose. And the reason we don't is because when you're going that route, you have to purchase all your inventory upfront, and then wait for it to sell. And that makes the operation a lot, it requires a much higher level of liquidity in cash to be able to operate everything. Whereas in contrast, what we're doing is we're using a drop shipping model, meaning that the only time we purchase a product is once a client on our Walmart store has actually purchased it first. So they would go ahead. And our team has, of course, found the right products from different suppliers. We take all the photos, the information, the descriptions, and then we rank them on the Walmart marketplace. And only once they've sold, do we go from the supplier and ship it directly to your Walmart client, thus, meaning that you never had to purchase a product and not to call it a massive risk. But you didn't have to front all that capital before having the product sold.

Carl Grant: 6:04

So the guy who the you know, the guy I'm talking about, right, the the four videos I watched before I got on this. So what did he do in that process? And then, and then what share of that revenue did you get? It's fascinating to me.

Alex Richard: 6:17

Yeah, yeah, he Well, it's funny to say it, but he did nothing really, what he does and how he benefits or like we benefit from from this together is that you can only have one store per person on the Walmart marketplace. So considering we've mastered the form of getting a store to scale, now we offer it to your unbeliev, you're speaking about Christian. So he will use Christian as an example. He now uses gets another store using his name and his information. So it's his store. And he uses his credit or buying power, whichever way to purchase inventory once it's sold, because Walmart pays you every two weeks. So even though we know the money has been paid to us, it's going to take two weeks for it to arrive in your bank. So that means during those two weeks, if you sold for $25,000, you needed to have 25,000 to purchase that inventory. So usually people will utilize credit, considering that they're going to get paid in two weeks. So it doesn't, it doesn't rack up a balance or anything. So that's where he comes into play as he's using his credit. And he is using his name to create a new store, as we're ramping up the sales every for him. In that case, let's say 50,000 in that month, six, or we take 60% of the profit and that would go to him. And then 40% of the profit would go to our team as a management fee. And that's all we would do on an ongoing basis.

Carl Grant: 7:55

And so, obviously to to reach customers. And there's\ a whole network of relationships that come into play here and talk to us about how you've developed the relationships and how you've put this all together.

Alex Richard: 8:10

Right. So when it comes to the relationships, I mean, the biggest part here, so there's two sides is one on the Walmart side to get our products in front of the right people. And surprisingly, we didn't actually have to create a bunch of relationships there because Walmart has over 100 million unique visitors every month right now. And that number is growing drastically month after month. And we're able to take advantage of organic traffic there as long as we know how to optimize our listings and get things ranked. But to do all of this at scale, you know, if you were to do a couple products, it doesn't it's not that difficult. But when we're listing 1000 2000 5000 10,000 different products, you need to be able to have large teams doing this day in and day out. And for us to build those relationships. I came from a marketing back a digital marketing background where I started outsourcing a lot of people over in the Philippines and building teams there, which I think is an amazing business model. I mean over in the Philippines because of the difference in currency value. They're working for a lot less than we typically be able to employ somebody here in the US and for them. That's life changing income they're able to provide for themselves and their whole families. So as you and there's different places that we can find these employees but it is a very relationship based once you find one person that you work with in the Philippines, then you can kind of go through referrals and meet new people and train them on different systems. And I've found for me, it's been the most impactful thing ever to be able to partner with people from there and grow these operations with them. So that is the majority of the relationship side of the most of our business. And then we have a lot of account managers in the US who can help us with quality control and maintaining, you know, proper functions all throughout the operations.

Carl Grant: 10:09

So on the digital marketing side it when I was reading through your bio, it seemed like you have done a lot to be able to, to, you know, present a strong digital presence. And right, yeah, so, so talk to us about so a lot of the people I talked with on this podcast are really good at the in person, or zoom in the case of COVID era, you know, developing relationships, one on one with people and using networks of individuals, but you've managed to do this on on a on a digital scale. And how does that work?

Alex Richard: 10:44

Yeah, so I think, to me, I'm very passionate about the digital side, because I actually come from a very small town. I'm visiting there right now and visiting my family. And it's, it's a town of less than, like, 300 people. Our school is very small, and I didn't have a lot of networking to do in my personal city. So when I understood about online, I thought it was really interesting, because I could meet people from all over the world, the issue with online is just like in person, right? Your first impression is often everything, there's so much people people's attention span is so low, that you have to really make a good first impression. And I think, for me, it's a variety of things. And I've been able to establish, I'd say Instagram is the best place to have like a today's business card, people look at your profile, the aesthetic, the photos you have, it's kind of just looking at, okay, I can relate to this person, this person looks like a good individual to network with. And that's going to be their first impression. But once you get that in the door, now you have to build your credibility over time and show your expertise. And that's where diversifying over different social media platforms has really helped. So for us, we've built a good presence on YouTube. And I say, a good presence. It's actually we don't have a ton of subscribers on YouTube, I'm really fairly new to that industry. And it's not something like sometimes people get caught up with the vanity metrics of like subscribers and likes and everything, which I believe are important, but at the same time pushing out content that you know, you are an expert in, when people go and consume all of that they instantly look at you as the expert in your field that you would have not been able to portray without having pushed the you know, taking the time to build this content, and put it online. So I think that has been a major catalyst on how I've been able to connect with a lot of people. I got two more questions for you.

Carl Grant: 12:54

So the young people that are listening, and they like, wow, this guy, Alex is an amazing career, I'd like to do what he does. What recommendations do you have for them,

Alex Richard: 13:05

I would say very early on is to find somebody in the industry. That is that's doing it. Because when I look at the people I knew growing up, and even most people I meet, when I travel a lot, I've lived a little bit all over the world. And when I travel and meet people, you always get this like this saying from anywhere I've been people always say, Oh, well, in my city, you know, there's no opportunity here, it's over here, it's over there. Yeah, I hear that in every single city I've ever been in. And I find that it kind of is the case, there's only always going to be one to 10% of people that are really the go getters in every city. And if you can't find those people in your city, find them online and do exactly what they're doing. Maybe they're selling a course, on teaching you exactly how they learn what they've learned, maybe they have a book that you can consume, maybe they have a YouTube channel that they're putting a bunch of free content, learn what they're doing, and start applying the same exact thing. I'd say look at their profile, look at everything they've built, look at yours, and try to build your way up to that that spot and you're going to start having the same result because if you follow their footsteps, I mean, it truly is a copy paste industry. There's an abundance of income for everybody. There's plenty of people out there looking for something to serve them. And if you just take those steps, there will be some people who are just dying to buy your product or service if you've taken the time to build the authority.

Carl Grant: 14:40

That's great advice. So if somebody wants to sell through your platform, what's the first step? How do they reach you?

Alex Richard: 14:48

I'd say they can reach out to me on Instagram. I spend a lot of time on Instagram I answer all my messages there. That's @thealexrich is my Instagram handle. Or if they want to take a look and more of what we do on the Walmart side www.walmartautomationpro.com , they can opt in and actually book a call with me directly if it's something that they'd like to learn more about. or again, they just want to have a general conversation want to connect with me. I'm always happy to talk and connect with like minded people on Instagram is definitely the place to do that.

Carl Grant: 15:25

I'm gonna find you there. Alex Richard, CEO of Walmart automation Pro, thank you so much for joining us today.

Alex Richard: 15:33

It's a pleasure, Carl. Thank you for having me.