Episode 184
On today’s episode we are joined by Carlos Alvarez who is a well-known speaker, podcaster — as the founder of the Wizards of Amazon podcast, and founder of the largest Amazon Sellers meetup group in the world, located in Miami, Florida.
For those of you who missed it, Carlos was a guest on our show all the way back in April of 2021. His episode remains one of our most downloaded episodes of all time. In this episode Carlos shares his beginnings in entrepreneurship where he details one of the most epic business stories we have ever heard. We do not want to spoil the story so you should listen to episode 19…however, I will mention that it involves millions of live insects in his apartment, an unsupportive landlord, an eviction, several struggles, yet ends with an amazing outcome.
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00;00;43;09 – 00;01;06;04
Speaker 1
Welcome everyone to the Firing the podcast. On today’s episode, we are joined by Carlos Alvarez, who is a well-known speaker, podcaster as the founder of Wizards of Ecom Podcast in the founder of the largest Amazon sellers Meetup group in the world, located in Miami, Florida. For those of you who missed it, Carlos was a guest on our show all the way back in April of 2021.
00;01;04;12 – 00;01;28;23
Speaker 1
This episode remains one of our most downloaded episodes of all time. In this episode, Carlos shares his beginnings in entrepreneurship, where he details one of the most epic business stories we have ever heard. We do not want to spoil the story for you, so you should listen to episode 19. However, I will mention that it involves millions of live insects in his apartment in Unsupportive Landlord in eviction.
- Belsky, Jared (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 248 Pages - 02/14/2019 (Publication Date) - Mahopac Publishing (Publisher)
00;01;25;14 – 00;01;40;28
Speaker 1
Several struggles yet ends with an amazing outcome. In today’s episode, we will be diving into Carlo’s business ventures in 2023 and discussing how he is evolving with the ever changing landscape of eCommerce. Welcome back to the show, Carlos.
00;01;38;23 – 00;02;00;22
Speaker 2
Thank you so much for having me back. And I love that intro.
00;01;41;09 – 00;02;00;22
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Absolutely. So. It’s been a while since we’ve talked. What’s been going on with you and where are you focusing your energy in 2023?
00;01;49;15 – 00;02;18;29
Speaker 2
My God, everything like things seem to just be happening so much faster. But I would say starting with some of the broad strokes with it, so still selling, which is great. I probably I don’t ever see myself stopping the actual selling some of my motivations for selling have changed. I exited three of my brands in a roll up in the beginning of last year, I think right before what we can safely call a great pulling back from aggregators.
00;02;12;06 – 00;02;40;15
Speaker 2
How about that? So I was able to exit. I was able to get the money up front, thankfully. And yeah, I those are the broadest ones. Still happily married, still, you know, a super grateful father and love everything become awesome.
00;02;24;11 – 00;02;59;19
Speaker 1
The last time we talked, we, we focused a lot on Amazon. And I know that you are very heavily focused there. And so from our standpoint, it feels like things are getting tougher and tougher. We’ve got rising fulfillment fees, capacity restrictions, Chinese competitors, supply chain issues, PPC costs are on the rise. I could go on and on. What are your thoughts here?
00;02;44;02 – 00;02;59;19
Speaker 1
What are you doing to combat those challenges?
00;02;45;25 – 00;03;17;13
Speaker 2
So, I mean, first of all, everyone’s dealing with that. I don’t have a magic bullet to like just deal with those things and not some of the ways that I’m dealing with it is I’m focusing more on higher ticket price products so that I think that’s the best way to combat the rising cost of PPC, which there’s really no way to control that.
00;03;02;12 – 00;03;32;15
Speaker 2
You can’t stop doing PPC by design, but just higher ticket items seem to absorb a lot more. I like doing a lot of content creation, so for brands and what what that really looks like for me lately is being able to drive a lot of traffic off Amazon to Amazon. And it was always, it used to be this thing where it was like, Man, it’s just it’s just cheaper to just run Amazon ads.
00;03;23;27 – 00;03;49;17
Speaker 2
Well, that’s that’s changing a lot. So the costs that it takes, the learning curve that’s involved with just like a more robust content creation process, heck with the roll out of charging. And I like that eliminates some of the overhead that you’d have in trying to pull off content and to scale. That’s that’s been a big priority as well.
00;03;43;01 – 00;04;03;01
Speaker 2
Amazon PPC costs again going up have a lot to do with now why Google ads to Amazon is is such a sexy thing so I’m doing a lot more Google ads to Amazon stuff and yeah, looking for if I’m looking for a product now I’m going to say I want a higher ticket item. And if it’s not a higher ticket item, then it’s something that has a long life term lifetime value.
- George, Peter (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 246 Pages - 07/30/2022 (Publication Date) - Peter George Public Speaking Inc (Publisher)
00;04;00;25 – 00;04;36;27
Speaker 2
So I’m thinking this is not just going to be on Amazon play at some point, it’s going to be off Amazon. But either way, you know, the cost to acquire a customer is a real thing. My margins are going to be a little less if I’m not on a higher ticket product. So if that’s the case, I want to make sure this person keeps buying for me over and over.
00;04;15;27 – 00;04;36;27
Speaker 2
And this time I don’t have to pay to acquire them. So I would say like those are the main points of how I’m combating, combating and awesome.
00;04;22;21 – 00;04;36;27
Speaker 1
So a couple of things you said there. I want to dive into a little bit more. So when we when we talk about higher ticket items, are we talking 50 to 100, 100 to 200? What kind of seems to be the sweet spot there?
00;04;32;29 – 00;05;01;12
Speaker 2
Definitely over 50, but I would say over $100 is a real sweet spot. Yeah, it’s still a very, very sweet spot. I mean, assuming your product cost is not 85 bucks, over 100 bucks, and there’s a lot of products out there that you could sell for over a hundred bucks that you can get for 2030.
00;04;46;11 – 00;05;01;12
Speaker 1
Okay. Sometimes not always, but sometimes higher ticket items are larger. So have you been playing in the oversize space at all?
00;04;53;00 – 00;05;49;02
Speaker 2
I like the oversize space. I mean, I don’t I don’t like, say oversize or die. But I’ll tell you what, if somebody wanted to approach private label and sourcing and needed like didn’t have the time to go through all these courses and all this other stuff, I would tell you the quickest path to like finding a product that fits is show me an oversize product or show me a fragile product or show me an oversize fragile product that like if you could just take into consideration the packaging and everything else that’s needed to protect it.
00;05;20;09 – 00;05;49;02
Speaker 2
In the case of being fragile or deal with oversize, it’s higher fees, but you also sell it for more, You have significantly less competition.
00;05;26;22 – 00;05;49;02
Speaker 1
I really like that. And and one thing that I’ve noticed in a lot of courses, they will teach product $20 or under fits in a backpack. And I think as a result it’s a super competitive space. You’ve got a lot of new sellers there. And when I look at some of the first products that that we launched, they were in that neighborhood.
00;05;44;23 – 00;06;07;01
Speaker 1
And so I really like that. Another thing I want to dive into is off Amazon content. So two things here. So you mentioned Google ads. Can we kind of talk through what are some off Amazon channels that you’re using? And then can we talk about the type of content? Is it blogs? Is it videos? What type of content seems to be working best for you?
00;06;02;26 – 00;06;42;10
Speaker 2
And all of it? I’ve really have my toes in the content creation space for a long time. The big change for me is not embracing content creation, but rather just stepping on the gas a little more and being direct with it. Something else I’ve noticed and a lot of people I know that I’ve just kind of grew up with in the space through the years, a lot of us seem to be like treating even an Amazon business and talking about it when it comes to content, almost as if we’re saying all businesses should have should consider themselves almost like a media business.
00;06;32;14 – 00;07;00;20
Speaker 2
In a way, it’s a leap. But you consider yourself almost like a media business when it comes to creating content. I think the people that do that really well are going to excel. Some people do it and they just stick to YouTube, for example. But if you’re doing that, say on YouTube, but you’re also considering here’s an example.
00;06;50;12 – 00;07;18;13
Speaker 2
So there’s there’s a podcast. I don’t know if you listen to it, I think it’s amazing called Shopify Masters. There was a show on there. I don’t know if you heard the episode where it was this this guy, he created this YouTube channel, I think like a million subscribers, but you don’t have to be in a million. And his thing was he would just like go up to people on the boardwalk or wherever and say, I’m going to I’m going to let you smell to colognes and you tell me which one you like better.
00;07;11;09 – 00;07;36;08
Speaker 2
And I think in this case, since it was colognes, he asked more women than men. And then the women would kind of weigh in and say like, hey, which one they like better and why? And he just did this. He did these videos and people thought it was super cool to get people’s reaction, you know, especially it was like, oh, you know, he gave this reaction.
00;07;25;22 – 00;07;50;18
Speaker 2
So he grows this channel nowhere near a million and decides I’m going to come out with my own line of cologne. And based on all this feedback and all these like cologne profiles, I’m going to share that with people who make this and I’m going to say, Come up with a cologne. That would be the perfect cologne for the office that says, like, maybe available but professional.
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Spaulding, Tommy (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
00;07;44;00 – 00;08;09;01
Speaker 2
And it’s like, Yeah, yeah, all this other stuff, it creates this. Can you guess how much he spends in ads every month to sell this his per his colognes and he’s an eight figure business so could you take like a rough guess.
00;07;53;28 – 00;08;09;01
Speaker 1
Eight figure business? I’m going to guess somewhere in well, because you brought this up as an example, I’m going to think maybe near zero. But on the surface I would, I would. Yet it’s zero.
00;08;01;26 – 00;08;23;28
Speaker 2
It’s zero zero in ads. So I don’t think I don’t think I have the source to, like, get that to happen. But you know what? I want a trend in that direction. So with content embracing video a lot and racing a lot of blog content, my I would say my like sexiest channel for content creation is actually email newsletters.
00;08;19;21 – 00;08;39;03
Speaker 2
So email newsletters are phenomenal. They let you incorporate like normal if you have a physical products like I have a product, I can only stay in this lane and I sell a product. But if you have a product and for simplicity’s sake, you’re on the show, let’s just say it’s a it’s a cooking. Let’s use a garlic press, right?
00;08;34;00 – 00;09;02;15
Speaker 2
So you have the garlic press. You’re obviously not going to write articles about how your garlic press is made. No one’s going to subscribe to that newsletter. But you could come up with a recipe newsletter, which you’d have to get jazzier than that. But if you did, all of a sudden now your newsletter opens up to other monetization opportunities which can help fuel your business like you’re running something like that.
00;08;52;12 – 00;09;17;20
Speaker 2
I bet you somebody who has a like a neutral sense, like they’re going to want a one of these like constant glucose monitoring things that go on the back of your arm. They’re going to want to advertise there because, you know, the type of food that you’re talking about in like that, and that’s our avatar. So it opens the door for you to monetize in different ways.
00;09;07;10 – 00;09;34;28
Speaker 2
It forces you to collaborate with other people in your industry, in creative ways. And when you’re in that collaboration, it turns it into like a, Hey, I got this product, You mind pumping it out to your audience? You mind if I got this? It becomes a much easier conversation because you’re just perceived differently. A lot of times you say, Oh, I’m an Amazon seller.
00;09;22;15 – 00;09;34;28
Speaker 2
It’s like, Oh, I just got this visual of you and your mom’s basement behind the computer, you know, plugging away at your keyboard content in that regard is, is super important for me.
00;09;30;27 – 00;09;48;03
Speaker 1
Definitely. I really like that when we talk about off Amazon. But when you initially said that my mind immediately went to Walmart and our own website. When you talk about off Amazon, what are you referring to and what, what do you think presents the best opportunity.
00;09;45;26 – 00;10;05;18
Speaker 2
Currently off Amazon for me has been I don’t want to be a hypocrite here. So like has been other marketplaces I started I really drank the Kool-Aid when I started and again it was a different time. We’re talking about over 15 years ago so I really drank the Kool-Aid on don’t have like this was a thing back then.
00;10;01;01 – 00;10;26;15
Speaker 2
Don’t have your own website. The way to succeed is get really popular on these marketplaces and then these big box retail stores like Walmart and everything. They’re going to reach out to you and they’re going to want to carry your products in the store. And that is how you get rich. We went out of our way to make sure there was nothing on our sites that said Add to Cart or anything like that.
00;10;18;09 – 00;10;31;24
Speaker 2
And we did that for years, so much so that we got in those stores. We actually really built out a strong model of wholesaling. So it was really weird. So like we have this Amazon listing, it’s ranking, we know how to rank it, and then it was like we were really hurting on cash flow. I was like, You know what?
00;10;31;13 – 00;11;07;13
Speaker 2
It would be nice to just flip this whole thing really fast before it leaves the port and then reorder more and take advantage of volume discounts. So we would find people that are Amazon sellers say, Hey, look, this things, this thing’s ranking. I speak the language, I know why it’s ranking. I’m going to keep it ranking. Do you want to make a little vague on this?
00;10;48;28 – 00;11;26;06
Speaker 2
Do you want to resell it at this price? And you’ll make a profit of blank. But you need to buy like 600 units. I promise I won’t have more than four sellers on the listing. So I was able to ramp up really fast doing that, but I never got into the Shopify, I never got into all that. So Shopify, WordPress, I have a lot of WordPress sites, but Shopify is a is a major focus of my right now as far as off Amazon.
00;11;09;27 – 00;11;26;06
Speaker 2
So like if we, if I’m blessed to come back on the show in a year, I’ll probably going to tell you like, hey, this is what we’re doing on Shopify.
00;11;15;06 – 00;11;26;06
Speaker 1
Okay, just so you know, you have an open invite any time. We love having you on the podcast and always leave with with so much wisdom and so and.
00;11;22;25 – 00;11;35;03
Speaker 2
You guys are some of my favorite people and you have the coolest name podcast in the world. How would I not come?
00;11;26;18 – 00;12;19;22
Speaker 1
Hey, thanks me and I sure appreciate it. I sure appreciate it. So just as we’re talking about website traffic, we’ve been in our businesses, we recently hired a really someone really good at email marketing and we’ve got hooked up with Klaviyo and if I think of like avenues to a website that has been our, our best avenue and so we’re getting to the point where I think we would prefer almost one sale on our website over to Amazon sales.
00;11;50;23 – 00;12;19;22
Speaker 1
You don’t have this like looming anxiety about your account getting shut down because, you know, unintentionally broke terms of service. And so that’s something that is going to be a focus area for us as well. And so we should have a powwow in a year and see where we’re at because it seems like, you know, what we focus on tends to hopefully have good results.
00;12;09;18 – 00;12;19;22
Speaker 1
And so but I have found there’s a saying from the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. It’s not the case with websites. You got to drive traffic there somehow.
00;12;18;15 – 00;12;49;26
Speaker 2
No you know emailing like will side trip here. I don’t know if you’re using something probably be the hottest thing I think right now for rapidly growing an email list something called spark loop. What spark Loophole to Spark was actually just acquired by ConvertKit. So I think we’re going to hear a lot from Convert. I used to use ConvertKit a long time ago.
00;12;34;02 – 00;13;06;07
Speaker 2
I’m a HubSpot user now, but what Spark Loop does is they’re connected with all the email service providers. Like if you, if it’s a webinar or if it’s a ConvertKit, if it’s a Klaviyo, whatever, they’re they’re already connected. And what they do is say somebody subscribes to firing the man email newsletter. The back end of this says unless you excluded it, the back end of this says, Man, if you like this newsletter, you’ll love these and it’ll show three or four other newsletters that are in the same niche or complementary, so it rapidly grows.
00;13;03;04 – 00;13;22;22
Speaker 2
Your email lists like to the tune of an extra thousand subscribers per month. It’s powerful and it’s stupid, affordable. So like, check it out. But sorry, I went on a little side note. I thought it was worth mentioning to a fellow email marketer.
00;13;13;21 – 00;13;43;03
Speaker 1
Absolutely. No, we’re just I would say we’ve spent about six months on this and I had not heard about Spark Loop, but I know what I’m doing this afternoon, so I’m going to check that out. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, you know, Carlos, in terms of networking, I would say you got to be one of the best in the industry through your meetup and through conferences and through the seller.
00;13;33;09 – 00;14;01;17
Speaker 1
Cruz Which I want to get into a little bit later, you’re talking to a lot of Amazon sellers, and within that group, there’s got to be some people that are absolutely crushing it, right? So what are they doing? Like, is there what’s the smart money doing or what have been some things that you’ve noticed as you talked to that the different sellers?
00;13;49;17 – 00;14;19;29
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a phenomenal question. Some of the answers I don’t think are going to be that obvious. And I’m part, like you said, the meet up massive community. Plus I’ve I’ve developed these Calling it a mastermind makes it sound like there’s a process to get accepted or something like that. It’s not it’s just it’s a mastermind. They’re like a bunch of these mini masterminds.
00;14;06;04 – 00;14;32;25
Speaker 2
I’ve been joined over the years of some of the top sellers in the space. Like, that’s indisputable. Like, that’s public information, you know? Plus, just the meet up really gives me access to some of the people that it’s like, you know what, in two years that’s going to be the top of the food chain, if you will. There’s several things that they common denominators at that point that everyone is dealing with.
00;14;26;16 – 00;14;50;17
Speaker 2
So content creation we covered. But it’s shocking how many people are saying, hey, this is what we got to do instead of us trying to chase down somebody on sick talk, let’s just build a team and we’re going to be that person that they’re chasing down on TikTok lean operating systems. Like there’s a lot of great information out there now like traction, rocket fuel and stuff like that.
00;14;44;28 – 00;15;11;02
Speaker 2
But having an operating system in place in your business that actually is going to save you a lot of money and allow you to explore some frontiers you wouldn’t otherwise do. Internal Dev I don’t know if this is a guy that has made this easier, but like building some stuff internally, not building out like a full suite, like a jungle scout or a helium tent.
00;15;03;12 – 00;15;27;05
Speaker 2
But instead of having these four softwares that don’t act well together, but it’s kind of like that’s what we got to deal with. It’s like, you know what? Let’s just build this out. We don’t need it to look pretty. We just need it to work. So a lot more people are just building out stuff internally to help them get to the next level.
00;15;16;08 – 00;15;56;29
Speaker 2
Licensing is something that’s really, really sexy right now and licensing with a twist. So like licensing, I call it like licensing and licensing acquisition. So that term doesn’t exist. Licensing acquisition is like what I call it and it’s for me what that is, is a really great example would be seen prime water with like Logan. Paul I don’t know if you followed that.
00;15;34;00 – 00;15;56;29
Speaker 2
Okay, so content creator knows nothing about launching a product, knows everything about building a community and a channel and creating content. Somebody decided to partner with Logan. Paul And you’re not going to go out there with your new play idea and connect with Logan Paul but you don’t need to. So they connected with Logan. Paul and now pretty much any supermarket you go into, any gas station, you go into prime water and now prime energy drinks are in there.
00;15;54;12 – 00;16;19;02
Speaker 2
So for me, that’s kind of like an acquisition of an influencer. And you’re not you’re not you’re not buying their company. So that’s maybe a bad description of it. There might be I’m sure there’s a better one. But what you’re doing is you’re saying, Hey, building a big community and email is super important, building a channel super important, building a channel, and all these social media platforms super important.
00;16;10;17 – 00;17;00;09
Speaker 2
How long is that going to take me to do? Especially if I don’t you know, if I that’s not my strong suit. Why not partner with someone? Like why not approach somebody with a solid business idea? And I’m sure almost everyone listening to this show, it’s like you may not realize it because maybe you haven’t spoke on stage, but you’ve run circles around everyone that you’re passing by every day on this topic of Amazon, including that person with a million subscribers on YouTube, maybe especially so being able to go to them and say, Look, you’re ready to put the capital into this endeavor anyway, we go to this person and say, Hey, by the way,
00;16;40;12 – 00;17;11;16
Speaker 2
you got to put half good on and say like, Hey, look, I got this idea. I want to do this. All of my people are watching your channel. Here is a generous, you know, equity partnership as part of this. And this is like what I respect of you. It’s a no brainer. So a lot of a lot of I don’t want to say bigger sellers, but a lot of the people that we’re talking about now, including myself, I’m on this mission is is doing this not just reaching out for influencer, but almost influencer acquisition.
00;17;02;14 – 00;17;25;08
Speaker 2
Everyone’s talking about like right now, some of the easiest ways to make money is just being savvier with your taxes. Hiring a tax planner like that’s some of the low hanging fruit right now to get a big boost in your money. And then the final one, I’d say that’s very common is I feel like I feel like aggregators have done something amazing.
00;17;20;15 – 00;18;04;23
Speaker 2
Right. And it wasn’t their intention, but they did something amazing and that is they allowed some of the sharks in a good way, like the sharks in this Amazon space who are operators of these businesses to validate that they are the most important piece in all of this. And you can’t just get 50 businesses and throw around economies of scale terms and think that you’re just going to like, you know, grab some people who’ve never dealt with this before and scale.
00;17;43;20 – 00;18;04;23
Speaker 2
And that’s not how it works. So now we know this like it’s been that we were doubting. We’re like, oh, they got all this money, they know what they’re doing. They must know more than us. Like, let’s just tap out. But now they wait a minute. I know how to do what you did, didn’t know how to do.
00;17;54;26 – 00;18;22;12
Speaker 2
And I can acquire businesses too. So I’m seeing a lot more of these bigger sellers acquiring businesses, not turning themselves into aggregators, but instead saying like, Hey, you’re in my niche as a complementary product. I want to build out this line. It’ll take me four years to do it or I can acquire you.
00;18;08;21 – 00;18;38;14
Speaker 1
Absolutely. There’s there’s a lot of stuff I want to I want to dig into. But on, on the topic of, of kind of validating the operator, I definitely feel that way. It was about two years ago, back during the aggregator craze where Ken and I had a discussion and I said, Man, there’s a lot of finance pros that are good at raising capital.
00;18;26;26 – 00;18;55;24
Speaker 1
And in fact, I talked to several of them and, you know, they typically came from an Ivy League background and had a background in business, but not an Amazon business or an e-commerce business. And it is different. I remember thinking like, you know, is this my ego? Do I think I’m special? Or because I feel like I’ve developed a skill set here?
00;18;48;03 – 00;19;11;03
Speaker 1
But they seem like, you know, I’ve got no Amazon experience. I’m going to go buy 50 companies and do exactly what you’re doing. No problem. It just seemed to me like, Man, I feel like you’re going to have some issues up the road and if that was the case. And so, yeah, you’re absolutely right. There are two other things I want to dig into The licensing.
00;19;05;25 – 00;19;25;12
Speaker 1
You talked about a a attractive equity deal. What would that be like? Like what would be a real life scenario? Say, I’m saying I’m an influencer, I’m a cooking influencer and I have a million subs and you’re you’re selling the garlic press and you approached me. How how does that conversation go?
00;19;21;26 – 00;19;42;23
Speaker 2
I’m not going to give you a fluffy answer, but every niche is different. I’ll tell you like what matters, and then I’ll give you the high end number. Right. But how different? Like how many creators are in that space? How difficult is it to get to that level that that’s that’s assigning a greater value to that person? How active is that person in their channel now?
00;19;39;06 – 00;19;59;04
Speaker 2
Right. Is there a channel on the up if we’ve seen it? Like the example I like to give is Cuban cigars. Like everyone still talks about Cuban cigars, but Cuban cigars kind of stopped being really good cigars a while back. But everyone still start. They are smoking the label. And are they are they still trending up? How involved are they?
00;19;54;13 – 00;20;17;04
Speaker 2
How good have they been in the past? Any time they have pitched a product or a service that they believed in because they need to be good at that? And is this product going to be a product that’s going to alienate a lot of their audience? Like there’s a I don’t know if you follow this YouTube channel called Yes Theory.
00;20;08;23 – 00;20;33;04
Speaker 2
It’s an amazing channel’s not business related. So I like anytime I’m in like my Pomodoro stuff and I need to like, turn off for a second, I’ll like, flick that on. And they have like opposite, like 6 million subscribers. And then all of a sudden somebody inside said, Hey, let’s monetize our channel. And they decided to come out with a course that was like five K on how to create content.
00;20;26;03 – 00;20;53;23
Speaker 2
Their followers went berserk. They hated it. So like, what’s going to be the pushback if a product comes in? You’re so you weigh all that and then there is no chart at the end of this that says, Well, you’re a creator. You should only get blank. And creators don’t go out there and say what their how that deal was structured and what they’re getting.
00;20;42;14 – 00;21;11;22
Speaker 2
I’ve heard it from a really good authority that Logan Paul got 20%. Personally, if I was starting, I’d give 40% like, you’re going to pay that. Like it’s not going to like disappear on you. Like you’re talking about you have this product and all of a sudden on day one, look at Joe Rogan and what’s that supplement? I really like it.
00;21;00;17 – 00;21;11;22
Speaker 2
I always forget the name of it.
00;21;01;23 – 00;21;11;22
Speaker 1
Athletic greens.
00;21;02;19 – 00;21;30;17
Speaker 2
Well, athletic greens is one too, but he’s got another one. And it’s like a it’s a nootropic that helps you focus. I take it it’s alpha brain. Alpha brain. Yes. I tell you, it’s amazing that does that. Good, because I’m Joe Rogan, right. So say you have your supplement, you have the option to get Joe Rogan. Like what percentage wouldn’t you give?
00;21;16;17 – 00;21;43;18
Speaker 1
That’s a good point. And I think one thing that I really like about this pitch is it’s a percentage. And so if you flop, you know, 40% is zero zero. You know, we’ve approached a couple of influencers in our niches and oftentimes they like a flat fee to endorse your product. You need to pay X, and that’s a that’s a risk write in.
00;21;37;05 – 00;21;59;04
Speaker 1
And and so by entering into more of this partnership and there’s a percentage, you decrease your risk. And when you run in a business that’s you can find areas to decrease risk that’s that’s a good thing. So very good. Now one other thing it’s come up a couple times during this podcast is a I’ve heard a lot of people say this is going to change the world.
00;21;55;03 – 00;22;14;11
Speaker 1
This is going to eliminate, you know, X percentage of of white collar jobs. And to us, I’m not sure if we’ve really made up our minds on how it’s going to change. However, I can say I like it and I want to know more about it and I want to use it more in our business. So what are some ways that you’ve are leveraging A.I. and what are your thoughts on it?
00;22;14;00 – 00;22;30;28
Speaker 2
When I first came out, I was almost offended. Like the content creator to me was a little bit offended because it was like, These people are coming up to me now in my group and saying, I’m just going to I’m not going to create content the way you’ve been talking about. I’m just going to ask this thing to spit it out.
00;22;27;01 – 00;22;51;06
Speaker 2
So I think there was like an immature human side of me that like knee jerk reaction didn’t like it. And then I was like, kind of like how I feel about Tik Tok And I’m like, Man, for a while I was like, I hope this thing goes away before my daughter is older. You know what I mean? Like, like I want this thing to disappear with, with.
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00;22;42;16 – 00;23;07;29
Speaker 2
I was like, is this thing is this thing going to go the way of like, Bitcoin goes up and down is a fidget spinner or like, what is this? I think we’re at a point now where it ain’t going away. It’s getting better. It’s a it’s a reality. It’s in our lives. It’s a it’s going to be a major disruptor.
00;22;57;21 – 00;23;23;11
Speaker 2
And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I’m so not qualified to be like the authority on it by what I will say is, in my opinion right now, as a as a seller and somebody who has a massive like virtual and in-person team and being able to use it in a lot of ways, that it amplifies what’s already there.
00;23;14;11 – 00;23;44;27
Speaker 2
So if you’re a creator, you’re going to be a better creator. If you were a bad, lazy creator, it’s going to amplify your bad, lazy creativeness like it doesn’t. Hot topic in the Amazon space is creating Amazon listings with it. Yes, If you knew how to create Amazon listings and do keyword research, it is a dream. If you did not solve nothing, it’s just nothing.
00;23;34;18 – 00;23;57;10
Speaker 2
There’s a lot of other cool things. I think Chatbot is the one that we just think about the most, but like for example, with content creation and videos, YouTube channels like I’m approaching YouTube like this now, there’s chat, GPT four. I suggest everyone get that. And then something that I recently learned is there’s plug ins that you can add and subtract GPT four.
00;23;51;09 – 00;24;22;24
Speaker 2
So you go add these plug ins. So what I use is called video ask and it’s a video ask or ask video, something like that. It’s free. And what you do now is you go to your YouTube video that you’re like, this is similar type of content that I want to create. I see that this one’s ranking amazing.
00;24;06;24 – 00;24;35;01
Speaker 2
It has more views and, you know, whatever your criteria is and you pop it in and say, Hey, write me a script or this video with scenes and what’s going on, and it’ll do it in like 2 minutes. So it’s it’s like, wow. So I love it. I think people that have been in positions, if you’re been on a writing team and you’ve kind of been bottom of the barrel, I do the bare minimum to get by.
00;24;28;10 – 00;24;47;22
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think I think you’re out of a job. You probably should have been out of a job. It’s just people didn’t have time to focus on it. And you know what? You’re probably going to get into something you should have been in anyway because it obviously wasn’t that job. So I’m excited.
00;24;40;23 – 00;25;11;16
Speaker 1
Yeah, I agree with you. And that the amplification thing in particular is the other day I wanted to write an email to negotiate on our prices. I know that the yen has appreciated relative to the US dollar, and I probably could have spent 2 hours like, you know, figuring out the percentages and maybe making a nice graph. But I plug that into Chad and it gave me an awesome head start on an email to negotiate.
00;25;06;06 – 00;25;21;05
Speaker 1
And so I’m using it for little things like that. I’m curious on the listing creation. The chat gets married up with Helium ten. That’s what we’re using. We really like that. Curious what for? Like listing creation. Do you have any faves?
00;25;18;13 – 00;25;31;04
Speaker 2
No. See, I didn’t even know it was married up to helium ten. I didn’t. I didn’t know they had any. That’s news to me. It’s like I’m jotting it down now, off screen, like my hands are moving. Like, check, check this out. I can imagine how awesome that would be. I right. Have a team of writers for listings.
00;25;31;04 – 00;25;48;04
Speaker 2
We got a good system in place. I guess I don’t have enough trust in such. If it was like a blog article. Yeah, for sure. It was an Amazon listing. They were going to throw a lot of ad dollars out. I guess my trust level is not there with it. And what I do love it for is creating Avatar profiles before you create the listing.
00;25;48;04 – 00;25;54;26
Speaker 2
Like there are some cool prompts you could do to build out. Like who’s the buyer of this that that helps a lot in the writing process.
00;25;54;26 – 00;26;04;16
Speaker 1
I have not thought about that. I really like that though, and that does help put you in the right frame of mind when you’re writing, listing or creating content. I’m jotting that down.
00;26;04;17 – 00;26;12;04
Speaker 2
Ultimately, it boils down to it’s easier to edit a rough draft than it is to start one that that’s what it comes down to. Like, that’s that’s why it’s amazing.
00;26;12;04 – 00;26;12;20
Speaker 1
Absolutely.
00;26;12;21 – 00;26;14;03
Speaker 2
You don’t want to die on a blank screen.
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