Conversations with Alexander Johnson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexander Johnson

Alexander, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Well that’s both a short and a long answer. In short, I knew I would start a business right after I graduated, so I just went into one of the first things that came to mind.

The longer answer is a friend from high school approached me and we concocted a bit of a wild idea to start a food truck for supplements and sports nutrition products. We didn’t have any money, so we started buying and selling products from distributorships on eBay. Then we built a website more similar to bodybuilding.com back in the day called MixtNutrition.com. From there, we had a rep say they had an account doing half a million dollars a month on Amazon. I said, “You mean half a million a year, right?” Well, he meant a month, which was shocking to us on our way to about 100k in yearly sales. So we started selling on Amazon, starting helping brands, and now ten years later have a staff of 40 and lifetime revenue of over 150 million through Amazon (and growing).

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It could have been worse! We were fortunate to be in a good industry at the right time. It certainly always didn’t go right, but we learned from our mistakes and kept our eyes open for places where we could pivot.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As the company changes, you have to change as a person and as a leader. The saying goes “What got us here, won’t get us where we are going.” I think this is a fundamental truth that most entrepreneurs can never accept, which limits their ability to grow their business past a certain level. The start up behaviors (Do it all myself, don’t delegate, control all the departments and quality) don’t translate to the business of scaling a company (delegate, build teams, build replicable processes, etc). In fact, they can be the exact WRONG things, which is confusing because you had been rewarded for it in the past. The dog had been trained to sit and he gets a treat, now all of a sudden he is getting slapped. It’s hard to reconcile in many ways.

So I guess I would say that over ten years I have specialized in a variety of things, but I have always tried to mold and adapt to where the company needs me most. I am proud that I have continued to learn and attempt to be what is best for the business throughout, even if that was not always the particular thing I liked doing most.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I think Ecommerce will enter a bit of a more mature phase. I think the last 20 or so years were the “wild west” phase and I anticipate that comes to an end. i think that will be a good thing overall for the industry and will allow it to grow in a more mature stable fashion.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://MixtSolutions.com