1451 – The Biggest Small Business Incubator with Riverbend Consulting’s Lesley Hensell

01/26/23 • 20 min

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks to the CoFounder of Riverbend Consulting, Lesley Hensell. Riverbend Consulting provides services to assist sellers in navigating the complex rules and regulations of the Amazon marketplace. They may offer guidance on product listing optimization, account management, and compliance with Amazon's policies. Lesley shares that having a presence on Amazon is crucial for brands as it is one of the biggest platforms for e-commerce and offers a built-in audience of millions of potential customers. Being on Amazon can also help brands grow their business through its powerful e-commerce features, such as search optimization and customer reviews. The platform can also be seen as a small business incubator, providing resources and support for small businesses to reach and grow their customer base. Key points from the Episode:

Overview About Riverbend Consulting
2 Reasons Why Amazon Sellers Get Suspended
Tips on Becoming an Amazon Choice
Amazon SEO versus Google SEO
2023 Insights About Amazon

About Lesley Hensell: Lesley is co-founder of Riverbend Consulting, whose 85+ employees solve critical problems and offer effective growth strategies for sellers on Amazon and other ecommerce platforms. Lesley oversees Riverbend’s client services team. She has personally helped hundreds of third-party sellers get their suspended Amazon accounts and ASINs back up and running. Lesley leverages two decades as a small business consultant to solve the underlying business issues in online retail businesses, resulting in improved operations and profitability. She has been an Amazon seller for a decade, thanks to her boys (ages 20 and 15) who do most of the heavy lifting. A lifelong Longhorns fan, Lesley earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. In her free time, she enjoys hiking and volunteering for A Wish With Wings, a wish-granting organization for little Texans with life-threatening conditions. About Riverbend Consulting: Their team comprises ex-Amazon employees and Amazon professionals who will guide you through the tedious Amazon reinstatement process. They help thousands of Amazon sellers in reactivating their accounts and ASINs following a suspension, deactivation, or ban. With thousands of accounts have been reinstated due to inauthenticity, review manipulation, product quality, policy violations, and other reasons. They provide excellent ongoing services like account maintenance, seller account protection, FBA reimbursements, and Amazon account and ASIN reinstatement. Their clients come for the appeals but stay for the continuous services, which include:

Reimbursements, ensure that FBA sellers receive every dollar owed to them by Amazon.
Account management includes bad feedback removal and customer service communications across several platforms.
Seller Account Protection, in which we monitor and respond to performance notifications to ensure the account remains healthy - Account audits for potential acquisitions
Project-based consulting services include pick-and-pack engineering, warehouse management audits, and customer service audits, among others.

Links Mentioned in this Episode: Want to learn more? Check out the Riverbend Consulting website at https://riverbendconsulting.com/about/ Check out Riverbend Consulting on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/riverbend-consulting-amz/ Check out Riverbend Consulting on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RiverbendConsul Check out Riverbend Consulting on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/riverbendconsulting/ Check out Lesley Hensell on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleyhensell/ Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time! More from UpMyInfluence: We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE. Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you.

Overview About Riverbend Consulting
2 Reasons Why Amazon Sellers Get Suspended
Tips on Becoming an Amazon Choice
Amazon SEO versus Google SEO
2023 Insights About Amazon

Reimbursements, ensure that FBA sellers receive every dollar owed to them by Amazon.
Account management includes bad feedback removal and customer service communications across several platforms.
Seller Account Protection, in which we monitor and respond to performance notifications to ensure the account remains healthy - Account audits for potential acquisitions
Project-based consulting services include pick-and-pack engineering, warehouse management audits, and customer service audits, among others.

Previous Episode

1450 – Launching with Ignition’s Derek Osgood

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the CEO and Founder of Ignition, Derek Osgood.

Ignition is a platform that helps companies create structured launch plans by providing tools and resources tailored to the launch process's specific communication needs. Derek advises businesses that treating each launch as a smaller version of future launches can help owners establish a defined process for launching new products or services. This approach helps ensure that each launch is well-planned and executed, and helps identify areas for improvement that can be applied to future launches.

Additionally, having a tiered launch process that can adapt to different types of launches can be beneficial, as it allows the company to tailor its approach to the specific needs of each launch.

Key points from the Episode:

What is Launching?
Insights on the Launching Process
Disadvantages in Using Simple Platforms
Ignition versus Project Management Tool

About Derek Osgood: Derek is a former marketing exec turned founder, building Ignition – the collaborative GTM platform helping Product and Marketing teams to get new products to market faster and more effectively. Prior to founding Ignition, he was an early hire at Rippling where he stood up the Product Marketing function and helped scale the company to $20M in ARR. As a Product Marketing leader everywhere from startups to major brands like PlayStation, Derek has launched over 100 products and his products have generated over $1B in revenue. Now he’s building the platform he wished he had along the way.

He's an executive with broad marketing knowledge and talents. His skill set was polished while running massive P&Ls at PlayStation and constantly performing at startups. It includes all aspects of marketing, such as go-to-market, segmentation, product positioning, user acquisition and engagement, integrated offline marketing, digital performance marketing, creative development, and product management.

About Ignition: It's a collaborative center designed with Product Marketing Alliance to manage GTM activities from start to finish. It assists Product Marketing and Product teams in increasing internal alignment by centralizing launch plans, assets, and execution in a single, visible source of truth, which automates internal communications and predicts whether products will ship on time or not.

Ignition has embedded tools to help you execute tasks such as conducting pricing research, monitoring competition intelligence, and recommending planning modifications based on your goals, allowing you to produce better plans faster. Ignition is backed by some of the best investors in the valley, including Bling Capital, Hiten Shah, Jack and Max Altman, and executives from Uber, Opendoor, TechCrunch, Sentry and others. Our founding team has extensive experience building at high-growth, industry-leading companies like Rippling, Facebook, Craft and PlayStation.

Tweetable Moments:

02:33 - "You need to understand who your competitive landscape looks like, why the thing that you're building is better or different from that."

10:14 - "It's never going to be perfect. But ideally what you have is you have frameworks where you have a tiered launch process where you're able to adapt to different shapes and sizes and types of launches with different objectives."

Apply to be a Guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur: https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guest

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Want to learn more? Check out the Ignition website at https://www.haveignition.com/

Check out Ignition on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/haveignition/

Check out Derek Osgood on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekosgood3/

Check out Derek Osgood on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ozbad03?lang=en

Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!

More from UpMyInfluence:

We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur.

Next Episode

1452 – Learn, Do, Teach with Ann Carden

In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks with the Podcast Host, Strategic Consultant of Expert In You , Ann Carden.

Ann is a consultant and coach who specializes in helping people turn their expertise into a successful consulting business. Her unique top-down approach allows her clients to earn six figures by leveraging their suite of services. Her approach has helped many of her clients earn six figures by leveraging their expertise and turning it into a successful consulting business. Her clients have achieved this by having a clear value proposition, a robust suite of services, and effective marketing and business development strategies. Ann's top-down approach has proven to be highly effective in helping her clients turn their expertise into a successful consulting business. Her clients can tap into their expertise's full potential and earn a significant income by doing what they love.

Ann pointed out that one of the challenges many business consultants face is the sudden shift from employee to business owner. Starting a business requires a wide range of skills and knowledge. Many individuals with an employee mindset may need to gain the necessary experience to take on these responsibilities. She also gave crucial tips to help coaches and consultants position themselves for business growth and success. On top of that, she emphasized understanding the buying behaviour of high-ticket clients and the steps coaches and consultants can take to convert these individuals into sales.

Key points from the Episode:

How to shift from an employee mindset to a business owner?
What are the tent poles of business growth for coaches and consultants?
The Fastest Path Into Creating a Full Time Income
Leveraging Suite of Services for Revenue Growth
Where to Look for Bigger Ticket Clients?

About Ann Carden: Ann is an interactive motivational speaker, strategic business coach/consultant, 3x author & #1 bestselling author, CEO of A. Carden Inc., and current business owner of Carden Business Consulting/Coaching Solutions and Expert In Your Marketing & Media Agency. She is passionate about helping entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals, have greater success in their business and lives, through strategic business growth, powerful marketing & sales strategies, and success principles.

Ann’s expertise is derived from more than forty-one years in business, marketing, and sales success. Thirteen years in corporate business management, and over thirty years as an entrepreneur and business owner - building and selling five previous businesses. She has educated, influenced, and impacted hundreds of thousands of professionals through keynote speaking, podcasts, virtual stages, workshops, seminars, programs, coaching, and digital platforms.

Ann has been featured on ABC, NBC, CW, and FOX, as well as many other online media outlets. Her articles have been published in multiple media sources, such as Small Business Trendsetters and Business Innovators Magazine. She was also chosen by the Six Figure Coach Magazine as one of the top 125 business coaches in the world. She has recently been inducted into Who’s Who In America for Entrepreneurship and Who’s Who In America for Professional Women.

About Expert In You: Expert In You is a company that specializes in helping individuals and businesses build expert authority brands that stand out in their industry. The company's strategic approach is designed to help clients get noticed, establish themselves as thought leaders, and ultimately grow their business. In addition to brand development and thought leadership, Expert In You also helps clients with business development. The company works with clients to identify potential clients and develop strategies to convert them into paying customers. This includes training and support for networking, sales, and marketing activities.

Expert In You's strategic approach is designed to help clients build an expert authority brand that stands out in their industry. Clients can get noticed and grow their business by developing a solid brand, establishing themselves as thought leaders, and supporting business development.

Tweetable Moments:

00:48 - “The impact I have is I want to help people turn their expertise, their knowledge, their skills, everything that they come with into a coaching and consulting business to help other people.”

02:14 - “And I think that's where a lot of coaches' and consultants' hearts come from. They want to help others not make the same mistakes and fast...