#294: Beer, Bulls, & Community: How Manny Coats Built & Exited Helium 10 - Now NFTs

#294 - Beer, Bulls, & Community: How Manny Coats Built & Exited Helium 10 And Is Revolutionizing Another Industry Unknown Speaker: What's up, everybody? Welcome to Episode 294 of the AM-PM Podcast. On today's episode, we have Manny Coats, one of the original co-founders of Helium 10. We're going to be talking about some of the origin stories, how it got going, how it changed a bunch of lives, and what he's up to today. And in fact, when he tells you what he's doing now, and you take that information, And you apply it to the Amazon business, it's going to completely revolutionize how you launch products and rank products on Amazon, I believe. So stay tuned. This is going to be a jam-packed, information-full episode. Hey there everybody, a new voice here on the AM PM podcast. Maybe you recognize my voice from the freedom ticket from some of the talks I've done at conventions all over the world or different podcasts I've been on. My name is Kevin King. And I'm your new host of the AM PM podcast. You know, Manny Coats began this podcast back in 2015 and did a great job for about three years before he exited Helium 10. And then Tim Jordan for the last couple years has carried the torch and done an awesome job, brought on some really good guests and had some amazing content. I've always been listening to it and every week looked forward to seeing what he had next and now it's my turn. So at least for the next while I'll be hosting this as long as you guys are subscribing and liking and downloading it. We'll keep marching this thing forward. I'm going to bring a little bit of a different twist to it. I'll bring on some We're going to talk about a lot of things, Amazon, a lot of things, e-commerce, a lot of cutting edge stuff. And as most of you know, I'm an OBS guy. So when our guests come on, there's going to be no corporate fluff, no beating around the bush. We're going to tell it like it is. So it's going to be awesome. I'm excited to be here and I'm looking forward to delivering some amazing value and some awesome entertainment for everybody. We'll have a new episode every single week. Be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform where you listen to and make sure you don't miss a single episode. Today's episode is going to be awesome. Welcome to the AM PM podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Manny Coats. How are you doing, man? Long time. No here for most of this audience. Speaker 2: I know I'm excellent. How are you doing? Where are we? Speaker 1: Where are we? I know it's kind of like a deja vu here, isn't it? Speaker 2: It is. Speaker 1: How does it feel to be a guest on the podcast that you created? Speaker 2: I think it's full circle. It's awesome. I remember when we started, it was like pulling teeth to try to get you to come on the podcast. You said, I don't want to talk to people. This is my stuff, my knowledge. And then look at you here. You're actually hosting it now. Who would have ever thought? If I told you this back in the day, you would have been like, you're crazy. Speaker 1: I know so those of you that don't know who Manny Coats is, Manny is the one of the co-founders of Helium 10 and he started this podcast I think it was like in 2015 and he was just documenting his journey back then there wasn't a Helium 10. And I think I, I found it because that's when I was starting to sell as a third party seller. And I was just like thirsting for knowledge. And I was just like any podcast I could find. And I found Manny's and it was like, uh, this is refreshing. This is a guy like telling it like it is, you know, and he's documenting and this is what my sales are. This is what I did. So I think I picked it up on about episode seven or so. And the podcast evolved over time as Manny documented his journey, starting Helium 10 and then He got so busy that he couldn't do the podcast anymore in 2018, I guess. And then it kind of switched over to a different podcast that Bradley's doing now, Serious Sellers. And then AM PM was brought back with Tim Jordan. Tim hosted it for a couple of years and did a great job. And now here I am hosting it. And I have the original creator of the podcast right here. Manny, I remember that time when you called him, I think it was, How this all started, people always ask, someone asked me today earlier, like, how did you actually get into this business? Or how'd you get into like teaching and speaking? And it's all your fault. You're the reason that I did it because I remember in like the spring of 2016, I think it was, your podcast was still pretty young and you had a, you started a Facebook group and then I was, some people were posting in there and I didn't like what someone were posting because I just felt that that's not the truth. They're posting, you know, this is how you, you do a landing page or this is how you mark, I forget exactly what it was. Speaker 2: I remember what it was. I remember. Do you? Speaker 1: What was it? What was it? Speaker 2: So you were in a group and I don't remember what Facebook group it was and people were talking. I mean, everybody kind of parrots and repeats the same thing and it's like, okay, I know this. I know this. I know that. And then there was this one dude, Kevin King, right? He had a picture of a dog for his profile picture and you responded It was about posting Spanish words. Remember that you were posting Spanish words to drive some extra traffic. And I thought that I wonder if that really works. And I remember that was really cool. And then from there, I don't remember the full details. But I remember we started talking. And I was like, man, this guy's got a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, you know, that's finally somebody refreshing, that's just talking about all kinds of new stuff. And then I mean, you did not want to do it. But after talking quite a bit, we got you on the podcast. And I think even then you were like, man, this is going to be an afterthought. I think you were in your garage, like packing boxes or something with your phone sitting on a box or something, because it was so bad, the audio. Speaker 1: But the content was great. Yeah, that was, that was, I remember, yeah, it was kind of an afterthought. And we just recorded it. And then it came out. And then like, boom, all of a sudden, I started getting all these calls from other people want me to go on their podcast. And that's just kind of what started and that just evolved into a Me speaking a lot of events and then we hooked up, you know, I've never, some people think I'm part of Helium 10 or I own part of it or something, but that's never been the case. I've just been friends with you and Guy when y'all first started it and we did some stuff together. We started what back then was called the Illuminati Mastermind. It's now called Helium 10 Elite. And we started that as a like a little mastermind group, the three of us. And I think you guys were on it for like the first few months. And then Helium 10 just started on a rocket ship climb. And you guys got so busy that you just had to like step away from that and just focus on growing Helium 10. And I just kind of took that over and it's kind of evolved to this day. Speaker 2: And still to this day, some of my favorite trips and events and doing stuff were those actual work events, right? Going out to Hawaii or going out to Mexico and doing that stuff. It was super fun because you get to hang out with your friends. You get to hang out with people that you're hoping to change their lives for the better. And at the same time, you're doing this crazy fun stuff. Speaker 1: So you guys took, you grew Helium 10. What do you think was the success to actually getting, I mean, Helium 10 today is like, it's gone way even beyond, you guys took it to a high level and now it's even like gone even crazy. I think something, you know, the valuation of assembly, the company that bought Helium 10, they've aggregated a few other companies into that. It's like over a billion dollars now as a valuation. What do you think was the key to your success? Is it right time, right place? Or is it because the way y'all did it? Or what do you think made Helium 10 And what it was? Speaker 2: It was hustle. Hustle. No, but there was a lot of things. Hustle was one of them, right? Grinding like crazy where everybody else that I knew had just regular eight-hour days. We were putting in 18, 20-hour days, nonstop, seven days a week. So we were able to compress the learning curve and the testing and everything we were doing down to much smaller time groups. So instead of it taking six months to figure out something, we worked so much we could actually test things out in 30 or 60 days. And I think that timing was pretty good. Like the market was, I mean, it wasn't new. There was already tools out there that was already podcasts out there, but we did things differently. Like there's no tool out there that actually had everything in one place. Right. So if you, and I remember that, cause that was frustrating. I was like, well, I want a ranking tool. I got to go over here. And if I want to go get a keyword tool, I got to go over here. And if I want to do keyword research, I got to go get out over here or whatever it was. Right. So we had to do that, uh, like that jumping around. And we thought, what if we can actually put everything under one roof? Right. And what if we could have a podcast, and the podcast actually came first, but what if we could have a podcast that actually spit out the truth instead of what everybody wanted to hear, which is, oh, it's easy to become a millionaire, which it's not, right? There's a lot of things you got to do to get there. And so I think by putting it all together, having the right team, Guillermo as the co-founder was perfect, meeting you early on, right, and getting the training going and all the things that we did, I think it just all came together. I don't know, it's just one of those weird things like trying to replicate that again if we would have went back in time would have been difficult because everything just kind of fit perfectly, I thought. Speaker 1: You think part of it was actually partnerships too? You were able to partner well and do some stuff well? Because I remember the first time when you came out to Austin, the first time we met in person, I did the podcast and we talked by chat or by phone. And then you're like, Hey, I'm making a trip out. I got a business meeting in Austin, which is where I'm based. And you came out to visit some guys here. And on that trip, we have an interesting story. You might be able to tell a little bit about that as well. But do you think those partnerships were part of the key to the success? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everything. I mean, I've been asked this question before and it's difficult to pin it down to one thing. Getting on stage and speaking and you become kind of insta-famous in the space, that opens up a lot of doors. Having the podcast actually opened a lot of doors to where if you have a podcast and you reach out to somebody that normally wouldn't talk to normal, regular, who knows who they are kind of thing. If you have a podcast, they're like, oh yeah, I want to get on your podcast and then you can have a conversation with them. And then maybe you can structure something out of that. So there was just so many different things. Like I said, meeting you was a big thing because eventually you ended up doing all the training for Helium 10 that became so popular. The podcast that we did, I think was something that jumpstarted a lot. I think that podcast episode got forwarded around so much and people are like, you got to listen to this. This stuff is good. And so people started paying attention because you're kind of a no BS guy. I'm a no BS guy. We just kind of put it out there. Those things were good. I think pricing was also important for what we were doing, right? Keep it affordable. We weren't greedy. We, one of the things that we ever did, or one of the best things I think we ever did was that we had a money back guarantee where a lot of companies didn't. So when we were doing it, it's like, if there's anybody at any point ever that's unhappy with, you know, what we're doing, our service, whatever, let us know. We don't want there to be an unhappy person and we give them their money back. So I think that helped that there were, you just didn't have people that said anything bad about us. Cause we were just, you know, we're delivering, we're making sure everybody was good. Speaker 1: And that first time that we met, we got to tell that little story because a lot of people haven't heard this story. So, so Manny calls me, I think it was like June or July or something, 2016 says, Hey, I'm coming out to Austin. You're going to be around. I got some business meetings. Like, yeah, I do. I'll be here. I'll pick you up from the airport. He's like, well, you know, don't worry, you know, I got it covered. I'd take an Uber or something. I'm like, no, no, I'll come and get you. We'll go eat some barbecue and it'll be a good time. And so I think you reluctantly finally agreed to that. And I picked up Manny, we went out and ate some barbecue and then we decided, hey, you know, we're going back to my. You're welcome to stay here tonight. Guillermo was coming in, I think, the next day for these business meetings. And you're like, all right, cool. I'll stay here. And then we opened up a bottle of whiskey or something, I think, and drank a little bit of that. And then we decided to head into town and meet another friend of yours. And we had a night out where there was beers and And alcohol and all kinds of stuff, good food. You ended up, we both ended up a little bit liquored up, I think about four o'clock in the morning and come back and crash. Speaker 2: I'm not a drinker. And you were literally, boom, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, you know, all right, I'll have a drink here. I'll have a drink here. We went to like nine different places. Speaker 1: Yeah, we were like walking around in the hot summer heat of Austin just it was, you know, our backs were soaked in sweat. It was just one of those nights, but I'll let you tell the story from there after we came back. Speaker 2: You're doing great. Trust me. Speaker 1: So we go out that night. I think we went to a restaurant about four in the morning and you were talking to the police, you know, sitting next to us eating some pancakes or something. And we're like, Manny, it's okay. It's okay. So we get back and Manny just crashes, just crashes. And then the next day he was supposed to meet Guillermo for these business meetings at the hotel where they're going to stay the rest of the trip. And what had happened is Manny basically passed out. We went to bed at four or five in the morning or something. And you know, this was like noon. It turns out that Manny's girlfriend was trying to find him and he wasn't responding and so she was starting to freak out. So she calls Guillermo who was driving in at that point from Houston, said, have you heard from Manny? He's like, no, I haven't heard from Manny. And she's like, well, I don't, he went to. Out there and this guy that we don't know has a dog as his profile picture. We don't even know what the guy looks like. He picked him up. I haven't heard from him. I wonder if he's kidnapped. I wonder if he's like bound and gagged and stuck in a basement somewhere. And so Guillermo starts freaking out and somehow Guillermo figured out where I live. I don't remember exactly how that was. And I just remember Guillermo coming to my door, knocking on the front door, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I opened it up and I'd never met Guillermo before either, but I think I'd seen a picture or something. So I was like, Hey, he's like, Hey, Manny here. And then Manny comes about that time stumbling out, you know, all hung over and like, Hey, what's up? And it was an interesting, interesting time. Speaker 2: Yeah, that was funny. You have those blackout shades in the room. So to me, it felt like it was still six in the morning. You know, but it was whatever it was 1, 2 PM because it was pitch black in there. But yeah, that was that was a fun trip. That was that was exciting. They literally did think that something happened because you you were kind of in the beginning back then that you didn't have much of an online presence. Like there were no pictures of you like nobody knew what you look like. I mean, I did after I met you. But up until that point, you know, I didn't and it was Yeah, they thought that I was in some kind of I don't know, sex dungeon all tied up or something. It was Crazy. Speaker 1: Yeah, it was crazy. Speaker 2: So that was the beginning days. Speaker 1: As the beginning days, then it became a tradition at every event, we would always do fireball shots. So it just evolved into a good friendship and a good business partnership. And then, then you guys just grew the thing. And you decided what made you decide to like, hey, it's time to exit this. I remember you coming to me and saying, Hey, Kevin, what do you think if we We sold this business like, I don't know, man. I never, I never done that before. I don't know anything about it. And I think it was Scott Dietz actually that came on the Illuminati, which is now Helium 10 elite and talked about selling your business. And I think that one, you might've been thinking about it before then, but that kind of like, uh, rang some bells to you guys, you know, like, wait a second. And then you went out to a war room event and like, uh, learned a bunch of stuff there to how to build the business the right way. And then you guys decided, Hey, maybe it's, it's time to exit. What, what led you to that, that process? Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, at this point, we had really built up a solid team. Boyan was now, at this point, was leading the tech team. It was solid. It was awesome. And it was getting to a point where it was just growing. It was quite big. And the next point for us was going to be to build this thing to IPO. So we had already been working on the company now for over half a decade and putting in crazy, crazy hours. And it got to the point where this was going to be the next step and it was going to be, uh, maybe it's going to be outside of our, you know, our comfort zone in terms of what we've done, the whole IPO and building on that, that kind of thing. And we had already put in a lot of time. Like I said, we were putting in double shifts essentially. So even though it was five, six years into this, we were, you know, to us, it felt like it had been a decade and the valuation was now at a point in the company that it made sense that if, Hey, if we were going to exit, you know, this would be a, A very, very, very exciting, nice day for us, right? And we would be done and we could do whatever we wanted. And yeah, we just talked about it and it, you know, when an offer came in, that made sense. We discussed it, said yeah, and moved on, and that was in 2019. It's funny because it happened in 2019. I'm like, all right, cool. I've been busting my ass like crazy so much that I'm ready to go travel the world and do all the stuff that I've been doing because I've been working nonstop. Then COVID hits, boom, and just shuts the world down. We're like, man, I can't do anything now. I got paid really nicely, and here I am in my apartment stuck. So yeah, that was bad timing, I guess, in that respect. But yeah, we were super happy with it. Speaker 1: So did y'all go out and actually deliberately try to sell it or were people knocking on your door and you just took what looked like the best offer or what were people coming to you? And because you guys weren't taking anything, hardly any out. I know you and Guillermo were just like dumping all the profits back in. Y'all were like spending crazy on Facebook ads and just really focusing on building this business up and taking very little as a salary or anything out. You weren't out there spending crazy money or anything like a lot of people do. So were people knocking at your door or did y'all go out and hustle it? Speaker 2: No, a lot. Yeah. So towards the end, when we were already at this point, when we were starting to talk to different companies, it was just kind of like in the beginning, there was hardly anything. And then suddenly, boom, it was company after company, venture capital firm, like it was just nonstop companies coming after us saying, we want to acquire you, we want to talk to you, we want to be and the numbers were crazy. Like we didn't sell to the highest that the number, the biggest number, we wanted to make sure that whoever was going to come in, And was going to acquire the company was going to continue the vision. Everybody that was the company would, would be treated well, it was going to, it was actually going to be something that continued to build up into something humongous. And it has, right. So about, like you said, the valuation of the enterprise now that owns Helium 10 is north of a billion dollars. And, and then hopefully the IPO and It's a really cool thing to say, we started something, hopefully, let's say it's public and we're like, you see that company right there? We started that thing when we were You know, we could barely rub two nickels together because we were pouring everything back into the company and you know, and just not traveling and not spending and being really thrifty with everything we did and guerrilla marketing and like we were really watching every dollar to get there. And we never took I don't know if you know this, but we never took any venture capital to build up the company. So when we exited, we owned 100% of the company, which is fantastic. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, like you said, you didn't go with the highest bidder, you went with Assembly, but Assembly was a new company, weren't they? At that time, they had just kind of formed to kind of do this, am I correct in that? Speaker 2: Sort of, yeah. I mean, we interviewed a lot of companies, a lot of companies interviewed us, I guess it goes both ways. And we felt really comfortable with Assembly and the management there. And yeah, ultimately, we thought that's the company that we chose to go with. Speaker 1: Cool. So so you built this company up. This is not your first rodeo. I mean, you've been an entrepreneur your entire life. I mean, I think going back into the late 1990s, you had a what the twisted humor website, which is like a comedy website. And then you went into from there into doing some CD ROM type of security stuff. And then you went into there to the gaming industry. And that kind of evolved into selling on Amazon and then building up Helium 10. So you've been doing this software business and this, this, this tech stuff since the early days. Uh, that that's correct. Speaker 2: Yeah. I was in the internet in 99 and went through the whole.com stuff, got into the, uh, mobile gaming space, uh, after that, or actually we were doing PC software, um, before that, um, yeah, then the mobile gaming space. And then from there we got into, uh, the Amazon space, Helium 10. And, and then also during that time, crypto was starting up pretty good and yeah. We're always trying to jump into new technology. It's super fun. Speaker 1: When you exited Helium 10, like you said, you wanted to travel, but then boom, here came COVID and you couldn't really do much. So what did you start doing? I mean, were you sitting around the pool drinking margaritas all day or what were you doing during those couple of years if you couldn't travel? Speaker 2: Yeah, no, the pool is definitely closed. But we, yeah, so obviously, you know, we had a very nice payday. And, you know, I'm at home a lot. And so I was like, well, what do I want to get into that would be really interesting and exciting. So I started looking into the investment side of things, right? Like, what am I going to do with the money? I don't want to just sit there. So I got into venture capital, I started really looking to startups, right? Because we were a startup, we went through that whole process. And I thought it would be interesting to go in and review the decks that people have for, you know, whatever their pitch deck for whatever it is that they're trying to raise for. And then eventually I found syndicates and I found just different ways of speeding up the processes and funds and things. And ultimately, Long story short, over the course of about a year, I ended up investing in a couple hundred companies. So that became it was fun. I'd wake up every morning, I'd go through, you know, a ton of different deals, I'd see what made sense. And I would invest anywhere from $2,000 to, you know, $100,000, depending on the deal, most of them were relatively small in the beginning. And then over the course of between then and now, I've invested in over 600 companies, and I've invested, you know, large, much larger amounts into into companies that I did back in the day. And it's funny because I can look back at some of those deals back in 2019, the very small deals I had One of the biggest successes I have is where I invested like three grand and it's worth something like 240 grand or something like that right now. To me, that was super fun. I now have a network of syndicates. I have a network of venture capital firms and VC guys. They are now sending me deals that are handpicked because I was just getting too much deal flow. I just didn't have time to go through everything. Now, I'm just like, hey, just waiting to you have something that you think is going to be the next unicorn. I know you get 10 deals a month or whatever, only send me the one that you think is the best. Now, I can take it easy a little bit, look at those, decide if I want to invest, and then I'll put a larger check into it. That's why I'm saying now I'm putting in bigger checks than I did in the beginning because the deal flow has slowed down, but I'm actually investing bigger amounts into the better deals. It's cool. I love it. It's fantastic. Speaker 1: And at the same time, you're dabbling a little bit in crypto because I remember you telling me, Kevin, you got to take a look at the, you know, a few different coins that you're looking at and a few different things. And so you're dabbling a little bit there as well, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, not crazy amounts. I was already in, I've been in Bitcoin now for like seven years. I've been in it for a while. So Bitcoin, I kept accumulating. I was dollar cost averaging. You know, well, I don't remember what the timeframe was, but every month I think I would be putting a little bit of money in. And then there were some other alt coins, I guess, that I was getting into that I felt would be interesting. They would have some potential and sure enough, some of those like really took off, you know, like 10,000 X. And so I still hold those, you know, I was able to take out a lot of profits on those. But for the most part, I stick to probably three different cryptos, not including Ethereum, which I use, you know, for the NFT space. But yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. Speaker 1: So, this has kind of evolved into something that you're doing right now that I want to talk about that I think is really freaking awesome. And it's something that I think a lot of Amazon sellers need to pay attention to. And I know at the beginning, when you started this project we're about to talk about, you didn't actually want to mix the two worlds. When you kept pushing me a little bit, Kevin, hey, you should take a look at this. I remember we had dinner back in January and you were talking about, hey, I'm working on this new project. I was just like, yeah, I just don't get it. I don't understand it. But then I started looking into it a little bit more in March of this year for one of the companies that we're doing on Amazon. As a lot of people know, on Amazon, it's becoming more and more difficult to launch a product. One of the things is you've got to build communities of loyal followers. You know, people are using Facebook ads or they're using the search, find, buy and all that stuff. And Amazon has cut a lot of that away now and made it much, much more difficult to do that. And so I started taking a look at, you know, seeing what you were doing. I joined a, you had a discord group for this project you were doing. And I look in there and I spent a little bit of time with it. And I was like, I talked to my partners on this Amazon company that we're doing, we're doing stuff in the sustainable field. So we're doing stuff with, with a, products out of sustainable things. So, you know, taking bottles out of the ocean or the rivers and converting that to, to materials to actually make life jackets for dogs and, and plastic bags and all kinds of different things. And we already have a few of those products launched up on, on Amazon already, but it's becoming harder. They're very competitive niches. And so it's becoming harder to actually compete and to launch those. And so when I saw what you were doing, I was like, you know what, wait a second, maybe We should take a look at this crypto space and actually at a concept called NFTs. Maybe there's a way we can actually tie these NFTs into building a community that has some value, that can then help launch products on Amazon, and then people on Amazon find out about this community, and they come and join that community, and there's rewards, and there's a whole cycle there, and a whole flywheel. And so we started investigating it, and we said, holy cow, we can do something really cool here. And as we started to dive deeper into it, we're like, this is amazing. And I'm going to be talking about this at the upcoming Billion Dollar Seller Summit in August, and I'm going to be talking about it at sale and scale The Helium 10 event happening in September in detail, and I think this is revolutionary and how Amazon sellers, if you do this right, there's a lot of different applications to the NFT space. But if you do it in the way that we're doing, I think it can do huge for your business and building brands and launching products. And I'm super hot on it right now. And one of the things I'm doing is I know Manny and Guillermo are successful with pretty much everything they touch. And so I'm following what they're doing right now. And they launched a product in the NFT space called the Bulls and Apes Project. I'll let Manny talk about it, but after a while, like Manny said, they retire, they're doing some investing, but sometimes you get bored and you're looking for what's that next thing. They didn't really want to start and work these huge days again. I don't think two shifts and all that, but they said, hey, there's this new space. We kind of disrupted the Amazon space back when we started Helium 10. There's this new space where there's a lot of issues in the space and there's a lot of there's some good things and there's a lot of bad things. What if we came into this and revolutionize that space? And that's the project you're working on now. And if you can talk about that and tell the audience a little bit about that, that that would be great. Speaker 2: Yeah, a little background. We mentioned earlier, you know, I was in web one got Worked through that, got through Web 2, all the really cool tech with Web 2 that everybody is used to today. And now we have what's called Web 3. And the NFT space, which is now part of Web 3 and the decentralization of everything, and eventually all of us being in the metaverse, was super exciting to me. Because I was part of all these little technological jumps, and even including mobile gaming. Because before mobile gaming, it was crazy. Everybody now is using their phones for everything. So what we decided to do. It's getting to an NFT project and a generative one where there's 10,000 actual NFTs in a collection. And think of it kind of like baseball cards or any kind of collectible where you have 10,000 unique pieces and people can actually go in and they can collect these things. But we wanted to do something different. We thought, well, how do we leverage our background, what we're good at, to actually do something cool? Because it wasn't a money play. Venture capital, It is way easier, at least in my opinion, way less time than getting into the NFT space. For us, it was more of a legacy thing. Guy and I talked about it and we thought this space right now is full of so many holes and so many scammers and so many problems that what if we could actually create something that becomes kind of like a Like a benchmark, something that other projects try to achieve so that two years from now we can look back and say, Hey, see how this is, how the space is really cool right now. We were a part of that. We helped clean this up. We helped do this stuff. So, so one of the problems with the NFT space is that. Everybody, I shouldn't say everybody, but almost everybody when we started was anonymous. So if you're investing in a project, you don't know who that person is. You don't know if they're, you know, a man, a woman, 50 years old, 15 years old, if they're in the US, or even if it's a real person at all or anything like that, right? So you're dealing with, you know, Skinny Puppy 12, or whatever the name is, and you're investing money into this stuff, right? You're putting money into their project. And they have all these roadmaps and things that they say they're going to do and they promise, but then they end up doing what's called a rug pull. They make it look really cool. They do the most minimal amount of effort. They take all this money in, which is mostly Ethereum. So it's crypto that comes in. And that's anonymous as well. And then they disappear. The project dies and everybody loses and they move on to something else. And the person who owns that wallet can then cash out and go do stuff. So we thought, First of all, let's try to let well if we do our project, we're going to docks ourselves. So we're going to we're going to We're going to announce who we are. We're going to have our LinkedIn profile. They can look us up. I mean, I'm all over the place, right? I'm in podcasts. I've talked about my entire life. I'm there. That's the first thing. And second of all, we thought, well, we can pre-fund this whole thing, right? So a lot of companies, a lot of these people that are putting these projects together, they're creating these NFTs and they have to get to the mint date, which is that's the date where everybody is actually buying these NFTs and all the money's coming in and it goes into a wallet, right? Like a MetaMask wallet, whatever wallet that you have set up. And then they have funds that they can use to market the business and build the business. And it's kind of reverse. It's the opposite of what you do in real life. If you're going to start a business, you go out and you secure funding, then you run your company. This is like, let's start this company, and let's try to get the funding by getting to mint. And then by then, hopefully, we have enough money, if it mints out, to do what we need. So we thought, let's skip that process. Let's make it so that we pre-fund the entire podcast company and the mint for the first couple of minutes so we don't need the money. Then when the money comes in, let's do something cool with it. Since we don't need it, what could we do that would change the space? We thought, what if we reverse the risk for everybody? What if we could get rid of the rug pulls? What if we can secure those funds that everybody's paying for their NFTs and put them into a smart contract that locks them up so that we can do an Ethereum money-back guarantee? Essentially, we're giving everybody six months, that's the way we set it up, six months to evaluate what we're doing to see that we're delivering on our roadmap and what we're saying. If you don't like it, you can come back within six months and you can connect to our website with your wallet, click a button and you get your Ethereum back and then the NFT goes back to us. Nobody in the space is doing this, so we're like, Why aren't they doing it? Well, that's the reason. The space is so young that there's not a lot of money or big companies coming in that are funding these things. So we started doing that. Then, of course, it took way longer than we thought to actually create all the art and get all the tech in place. And we were hoping to launch back in March. And we didn't launch until the end of May. And we started entering into the, I don't know, a bear market, the crypto winter as we're going in. As of today, right? Crypto market is a bloodbath. It's really, really bad, right? And so people are like, you shouldn't mint right now. It's the 31st of the month. It's before payday. It's a bear market. Your price is too high. You have way too many mints. It was just like everything was against us. And we're like, no, we're going to do it. And we launched. And yeah, we minted out. You got a lot of people. Luckily, you got the word out just in the nick of time. And we got a lot of Amazonians to come in and get into the project, the Bulls and Apes project. It's awesome. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like I told you earlier, I started looking into this a little bit more seriously in March. And then in May, we started ramping up what we're doing. And then I saw that Manny was about to do his launch. And so he reached out and said, Hey, if you know anybody in the Amazon space that might want to get involved in this, we got just a few days left. And I took a deep dive into their project. And they're really doing it totally different than anybody out there. There's a lore video, like this whole creative, like a comic book type of storyline. They've created all these, like you said, 10,000 different bulls. And later, there's going to be, I think, 10,000 different apes that are introduced. And these bulls are like trading cards. They have traits and it's almost like it's gamification. So it's not just buy an NFT and hope the price goes up, you know, like the Board Ape Yacht Club or something from last year there, where people bought these things for a few hundred bucks. And now they're worth, you know, well, right now with ETH down, but they're worth two, $300,000 or more. Some people paid millions of dollars for them just for the right to do that. And so what Manny has done and Guillermo have done is, and their other partners, has created not only something that should go up in value, but there's a gamification to it. And you know, like my wife is super into the gamification and you got to match up these bulls to like, if you got, they got guilds. And so you have to have a North guild or South guild, East guild, West guild, it's kind of like villages. And if you can collect two from the same guild or the same village, you can, you can mate them and you can create additional NFTs after a certain amount of time. Along with something called meth, which you earn the longer you keep these bulls, the more of this methane, kind of like a bonus thing that you earn that you can combine all this stuff together. And you can create teenager bulls out of thin air, basically, that could be worth money. So your initial investment might turn into who knows what, because you can create all these additional NFTs out of it that are going to have value because they're rare. And so there's all these different traits. It's kind of, you know, we need like three podcasts to explain the whole thing here. But once you get your, you know, it took me a while, but once I got my head around it, I'm like, holy shit, Manny has taken everything he's learned in the past, from his days of running WebOne stuff with the joke site and everything, to the software stuff, to the gaming businesses that he and Guillermo did together, to the SaaS business of Helium 10, and the way they did the customer service. He was talking about that basic A lifetime money back guarantee kind of thing that they had and applying that to this whole new industry and gamifying it and the artwork is amazing. There's a lot of crap artwork in the NFT space, little stupid drawings and I'm like, who the hell is going to buy this shit? But It's really, really cool and the way that it's 3D. It's like, you know, it's like a Pixar movie or something, the way they've done it. And then there's this whole gamification. So you have this, these worlds with these bulls, and then you're going to have these worlds with these apes coming and who knows what's going to happen. You know, they've got some ideas and it's going to be, it's going to be very interesting. Speaker 2: So a lot of projects that come out. We'll eventually come out with tokens if they make it to that point, if they don't die out. And sometimes it takes a year, who knows. Most projects, I would say 99% of projects never have it. We wanted to make sure that we had tokens from the beginning. So we have the methane token, right? We got Bulls, we thought the methane token would be kind of a fun play. But it's an ERC-20 token, just like an Ethereum token or one of the many, many tokens that are out there. So, it'll have value at some point, right? It's part of our ecosystem. We don't know what the value will be. They hit the market in about two weeks on July 1st. And by owning a bull, we set it up and we have to be very careful about how we do things because of SEC regulations. But by holding the bull, you're not staking it, by having these bulls in your wallet, You start generating these methane tokens, these ERC20 tokens every single day. Each bull generates 10 tokens per day, so 300 tokens per month. And then you're using those tokens to actually mint new characters like Kevin was just mentioning. But what we thought was cool, and you just alluded to it a little bit here, We thought, okay, even with all of this, even though you can create new characters that you can then either can either keep them or because you can use them for even additional characters down the road or you can sell them for profit or you could do whatever you want. We thought, how do we make people live a better life? We call it live your best life, right? And so holding one of these NFTs, right, that you just paid $300, $400 for, It's kind of like your American Express black card, it's an entry to our club, right? It's our inner circle, we call it. So you're part of the inner circle, you're part of this community, you're part of, you know, 2000 people that are now at least at this time, At the time we're doing this podcast, part of this circle that you now can leverage for networking, and for hanging out, and for fun, and for in real life events, and all that kind of stuff. And as Kevin mentioned, we have experts in various areas. And where I feel like I'm pretty well versed is the venture capital side. So I'm investing in companies, like I've invested in OpenSea. I've invested in Metamask or the Consensus, the company that owns it. I've invested in SpaceX, over 600 different companies, right? I can bring these deals now to the inner circle, okay, that they normally wouldn't be able to get. Even if you're a venture capital or angel investor, you can't get some of these deals unless you know either one of the founders or somebody that knows a founder or you're part of a Some kind of venture fund that actually has access to it. 99.9% of people that can't get these, we're bringing these deals to them or we're planning to bring these. We just started this. I think the first deal is going to be happening here in the next few weeks. You have an opportunity to invest in it if you're an accredited investor. You have to qualify for that with them. We're not the middlemen, by the way. We don't go in. And try to, you know, get in the middle there. We say, this is the deal. My name is Manny. I put my money into this. I like it. I, you know, I think it's cool. Do your own research. And if you like it, go talk to this guy over here at this company and, you know, and they can set it up for you. So that's where we're at. It's cool. Kevin, you have all the gamification that you were saying that your wife is in love with. That's amazing. You have the lore and the story. We're trying to build things up so that we have IP. We're going to have swag, clothing. Maybe there's going to be film work. There's going to be all kinds of stuff. Then we have the token. So you're building stuff just by holding this. And then the metaverse is coming, right? The metaverse is coming. And when we're all in that metaverse, we plan to be there, wherever that's going to be. And you're going to have all these methane tokens. You call that math, right? A lot of people call it math. That's the short version, which is perfect. It's funny. Like don't take my math. Unknown Speaker: Don't take my math, man. Speaker 2: It's my math. Go get your own math. So we have this. It's my stash. Right. So you have your math and then you'll be able to use that also in the metaverse to You know, depending where we're at to like buy stuff there, whether it's property or character augmentations, or stuff like that, because it sounds crazy to think, oh, we're not going to be in the metaverse. That sounds silly. Those are the same people that said that about Facebook when Facebook came out. Why would anybody spend so much time on Facebook? Nobody wants to know what everybody else is doing. Like, no, you know, it was crazy. And now it's Twitter. And then you got all the social media, right, with TikTok and everything else. So it's super cool. This is just the first step. And yeah, we're excited. When the apes come out, they will be synergistic with the bulls. And if you guys are curious, it's called the Bulls and Apes Project, bullsandapesproject.com. You can check it out. It's never too late. It costs, actually it's funny, Kevin, I don't know if you did the math. I'm sure you did. You're really good at this stuff. But it costs more in terms of US dollars to mint on mint day than it costs right now to go buy it on the secondary market at OpenSea because Ethereum has come down so much in price that if you go and convert your dollars to Ethereum, it costs, I think it's like 300 bucks to buy one now or it was like 450 on mint day. Speaker 1: Yeah. Because Ethereum has fallen in price, and I think that's going to go back up. One of the reasons I didn't get involved in buying in Bitcoin or buying in Ethereum or some of these other altcoins is because, to me, it's almost like hedging against the pound or the dollar to the yen or something. It's almost like currency exchange, or you're betting on something going up. But the beauty about It's singular. But the beauty about NFTs and a project like what Manny is doing with the Bulls and Apes Project is that not only does the NFT have value, but you get the value and the fluctuations in the underlying crypto below it too. So you could just like he... They have a money back guarantee. It's too late for that right now. But if you were on the first day and you got... You minted before they sold out, you would have a six month money back guarantee. So you could buy that for 0.1%. 1.7 ETH, which was roughly, like he said, $350, $400, somewhere in that range. If you're on the white list and you bought it before they sold out, that value, just by holding it, if Ethereum goes up and you just say, okay, I don't like what they're doing, I want the money back. If Ethereum doubles, they're not paying you back in dollars, they're paying you back in Ethereum. So right there, you could have made $700. So that's the beauty about NFTs is you got two different places where you can potentially make money on. That's one of the things I like. You have the community and you have a lot of other things around it. They say that right now, this space is basically like the internet in the late 80s, early 90s. It's moving at a very fast pace. A month in the crypto world is like six months or a year in the real world or something. It's moving very fast, but it's in its infancy. I think that if you take a look at what Manny is doing and what some other people are doing, there's a perfect place here for the Amazon community. That's why we're talking about this here. If you want to just dabble in it and you don't know what this is, you could go to his project, which I endorse, and you could take a look and see what they're doing. You could get involved, maybe don't get involved. Go do your own research and go see out there. There's a lot of junk. There's a lot of crap. Like you said, there's a lot of scams, but there's some really good stuff. The underlying technology of what you can do is amazing. If you take that and you apply it to the Amazon space that we're all in here for launching products and building community, forget the Facebook groups, forget the Manny Chats, forget all that stuff. This is where I think the future is going. I think every Amazon seller needs to set up and pay attention. At least you're all entrepreneurs, you're smart people, you're a lot of times on the cutting edge of things. And some of you have a decent war chest to deal with some of your bigger sellers have been selling. You need to take a hard look at this because like I said, at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and at selling scale in September in Vegas, the big Helium 10 event, I'm going to be showing you exactly how we are using this technology and NFTs and community building to launch products on Amazon and create this huge flywheel. Speaker 2: It sounds confusing right now. But so did the internet back in 98, 99, right? And then before that, it was really confusing. Um, so, and most people didn't even know what it was at that time. So that's kind of where we're at right now. Most people don't know what NFTs are. They don't know what that stands for. They don't understand it. They think, why are you buying a picture, you know, of something when you can just right click and save it. And so there's this crazy confusion going on with how that all works. So this will all start to make more sense as time goes on and people realize it. Same thing when I was talking about crypto. Back in 2015 2016 to friends, you know, they just thought you're crazy. Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense. And now they have big bags of crypto, right? So it's just a matter of time. You're very, very, very, very, very, very early right now, even though people will say, Oh, no, no, no, that, you know, it's past, you know, but there's nobody in the space. That's an expert that's been in this space for more than two years. That's how early it is. Right? Most people haven't even been in it a year. I've only been in it for like eight months. So yeah, it's, it's super early. Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a lot of ups and downs. Right now, at the time of this recording, crypto is crashing. My dad sent me an article today that says crypto billionaires losing 75% of their fortune or whatever. Are you sure you want to do this? There's some ups and downs, but the internet was the same way. We were back in the late 90s, early 2000s. There's the dot-com bust. There were a lot of scams and people were like, who's going to buy dog food over the internet? Pets.com. And look what came out of it. Google came out of it. All these, Amazon really emerged kind of weathered through that. Speaker 2: The real companies came out of it, right? That's what happened. Speaker 1: Exactly. That's what's going to happen now too in this space. And if you're early and especially applying it to your Amazon business, if you can learn the ins and outs by looking at Manny's project or other projects that are out there and learn the ins and outs and get yourself familiar with it, I think you're going to be in a really, really good position to really take your physical products business to the next level and just to just crush it. And you'll be early. And you'll be a leader and it's going to add... We've already talked to the guy that helped you guys when you did your exit, Scott Dietz at Northbound. He's on our advisory committee for our company and he's like, look, you guys do this right. You execute this right. It's going to add so much valuation to your business that it's going to be crazy. We're already seeing it right now. And he's super stoked about some of the stuff that we're doing and how it's going to really increase the value. And don't, you know, there's a lot of naysayers out there. Those are people, a lot of those are people that, you know, they might've got scammed because there are a lot of scams in the space, or they might be people that, that just don't understand it. But once you understand the underlying technology, and it's going to get easier. Right now, there's a barrier to entry to it. You got to be a little bit technical to learn how to set up a wallet and how to do all these things and to make sure you don't click on the wrong thing. But that's going to come down. It's going to come down to where it's as easy as swiping the credit card in the coming years, to where you don't even know what the technology behind it. You don't even know what blockchain is or NFT. You don't care. It's just the final end product is what's going to happen. And I think it's a great opportunity. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's funny because any new technology that comes out is always confusing. I remember you used to have to log in in order to get internet service. Now everybody takes it for granted. You have internet service everywhere. You don't have to log into anything. You have a Wi-Fi password, that's it, but you always have internet. I remember the days where you had to choose what browser you wanted to get so you can get on the internet. Now, every phone device has it. It's just automatic. I think at some point, I think you're right. A wallet won't be something you have to go get. It'll just come ready to go. You just have to fill out a couple of things. And then of course you have legislation. Legislation is going to come in just like the internet in the early days, right? It was a wild, wild west we called it back then, right? There's no regulation. Technology was moving way faster than regulation. And then you get away with doing a lot of crazy stuff, because you didn't know if you could do it or not. Like, can I send a million emails? Is that is that legal? You know, and now, you know, you have regulations for certain things there. And then we're gonna have that in this space, too. And it'll clean up. And then you'll see, that's when you'll start seeing really big money, institutional money coming into that space. It's already starting now. But you'll really see it coming in, and it'll be good companies building things up. And right now, we are going into it's a crypto bloodbath, right? Everything's kind of dumping. But that's when fortunes are made. If you're smart and you look at the right deals, you can pick things up at bargain rates, right? But you've got to get into project. You've got to quit having that FOMO moment where you're just jumping into garbagey projects because everybody else is doing it when it really doesn't have a backbone, right? It's like there's nothing there. There's no substance to the project. So find the good ones. Look at things like, for example, everything's crashing right now, but our price on our Bulls and Apes project is actually up, right? It's up from the white list. It's up from the public sale price. And I think it's going to continue to go up. So while everything is crashing, ours is going up. So it just proves that you just got to have a really good community. You got to have good systems in place. Speaker 1: So tying this back to Helium 10, what's one of the couple of the biggest takeaways you took starting Helium 10 and growing it and then exiting it? What's something that's some nugget that something that you learned or even a mistake you made that you learned from that the audience could take away from that? Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Yeah, there's so many. Man, I would say the biggest thing Like the first thing that comes to mind anyways would be team. I think right off the bat, if you don't have the right team for what you're doing, and maybe it's just you in the beginning and that's fine, but if you start bringing it on the wrong people, it's going to kill you. It's going to crush you. You got to get the right people on. And I remember very specifically as we added specific members to our team and they became the superstar. Of that particular position and those that are listening know who they are, right? You can just you can see the company expanding and growing and blowing up at that point. And those were really good moments. And we also remember the times where we had people that just It was frustrating because we just couldn't get them to perform the way we wanted to. And it just stifled everything. It just held everything back. And if you have a bad apple in your group, it just spoils it for everybody. So I would say team is probably one of the biggest things. And I mentioned in the beginning, I think you just have to love what you're doing. You have to have hustle and drive. And you can't do that if you don't love what you're doing. So make sure that you're not doing something you don't like. And get in there and go and try to get in early, Kevin, helps. Let me tell you that. Speaker 1: I learned that lesson seeing what you guys, I remember those days where I think, what was it? Index checker. We were like, yeah, I think you launched scribbles and Frankenstein and you're adding the 5k checker. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: The 5k checker. That's yeah. The 5k checker. And I think it was like two o'clock in the morning, one night you were in California and me, you and a gig, he was like sitting in a closet in his house because he had a young baby and I couldn't wake the baby or something. He's literally sitting in a closet behind the dresses or something, you know? And we're like checking this thing, like, we got to make sure this thing works. We got to make sure this works. I remember what we do. I think we tore down a listing. I had like a old listing. We didn't name it. We tore it down and put like, went to the dictionary and found all the letters that started with Z. Cause we're like, nothing's going to rank on Amazon that starts with a Z and filled it in. And we're like, okay, how many of them did it show up? And yeah, those, those days were, were crazy. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That was a lot of fun. Speaker 2: There was those epiphanies, like we'd see something and you're like, oh my God, like, look, it's working. The results are coming. I'm like this tool. And then it becomes one of those things like, do we want to release this tool? It's like super powerful. You can build million dollar companies off this thing. But yeah, no, we released it right away and people loved it. And that actually, that tool helped put us on the map for sure. Speaker 1: And you started it, you know, making stuff that you needed as a seller. So you started as a seller and this is stuff that I need. And then you showed it and you know, man, you've changed a lot of people's lives, you know, mine included, uh, you've changed thousands, if not tens of thousands of people's lives through the Helium 10. And it's gotta be a proud moment when you look back and I know you're not in that space anymore, but it's gotta be something that you're proud of. And you've, You've really, you know, people that are in, in Pakistan that are making, you know, $300 a month as their wage. And now they're using the software that you and Guillermo created to make 1000 or 5000 or $10,000 a month and change their entire family's lives. It's got to be something that you look back on and can take a great pride in and great honor in doing that. Speaker 2: It does. It means so much to us and we hear it even today. It's funny because we'll get on Twitter spaces and somebody will raise their hand, they'll come up and speak and they're like, hey Manny. Um, I'm one of the very first people that actually used Helium 10. I remember back when you had scribbles, you know, when it first came out and then they tell us how much it's impacted their life and that they're in a successful place now. And because of that, they're able to come in and become one of our whales in, in, you know, our project now or something like that. So yeah, that, that to me is this awesome. Um, I think, I mean, there's no better feeling than helping people. And, uh, that's what we set out to do with the tools. We try to make it as affordable as possible for everybody. And it worked and yeah, I'm super happy. Speaker 1: And now with the new project, the Bulls and Apes project, you're sitting back and you know, we just had a phone call the other day and you're like, ah, this is so cool. People, we never thought that we're going to do this and they're going to do this and they're forming these groups and these like little clicks and this is so cool. So it's always cool as a creator to see how people use and enjoy and get, get value and entertainment out of what you create. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I hope that people listening give us a shot to check it out. I think it's one of the, in my opinion, one of the safest projects you can get into just because of all the safeguards and things that we're doing. But yeah, it's fun. It's a really good environment. We got an incredible community. We have tens of thousands of people that love our project. And we have, like I said, a couple thousand people that actually got into our project and bought in and own bulls. They're very bullish on our project. I love that. And you're one of them. So yeah, thank you. Speaker 1: No, cool. Thank you. I'm looking forward to what the future brings. And Manny, I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing some time. And as the first guest of me taking over the AM PM podcast, we brought this back full circle from from when you started. It's an honor for me to actually be sitting in this chair right now hosting this and taken from someone who, you know, as we used to say, I learned everything I know from you about this space. Speaker 2: You're my best. Speaker 1: I'm your best student. I'm your best student. Speaker 2: I love you, man. You're awesome. And yeah, thank you so much for letting me be the the first guest on the new podcast. So yeah, thanks. Speaker 1: Awesome. Thanks, Manny. Appreciate you coming on, man. Speaker 2: Take care, everybody. Thank you, Kevin. Speaker 1: So how cool was that? Manny Coats, the co-founder of Helium 10, the original creator of the AM PM podcast, coming back full circle as a guest on his own podcast in the first episode that I'm hosting. That was really awesome. So make sure you subscribe and hit that download button because we're going to be bringing you some amazing episodes every single week. The next week we're going to be bringing on Brandon Young and Brandon and I are going to be talking about everything from ranking to keyword research to getting to page one to judging your competitors. It's going to be a lot of very actionable stuff for sellers of all levels. So make sure you don't miss that episode. And before I go today, you know, a lot of people know me as a guy who delivers nuggets. When I speak on stage, At different events, a lot of people really like it when I do, you know, 20 fast nuggets or people on the Helium 10 Elite, which is the training that we do for advanced Amazon sellers for Helium 10. We do a training every month. On that one, we actually, I do a seven nuggets every single month where we deliver some amazing, just quick bites of information. And so what I want to do on the I'm going to deliver you a little nugget but instead of it being Amazon related it's going to be more general business or life or just life related. I often hear different things that are said on TV shows or read something in a book and that's just a nice, good, concise way of saying something. And I take a note of those and I add those to my notes app on my phone. So, what I want to do is just share one of those with you at the end of each of these episodes. And so, that's what we're going to do right now. So, the one that I want to share with you for today and leave you with this golden nugget It is this one. Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. Think about that. Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. Have a great week and we'll see you next time.