#302 - Howard Thai, The Professor of Amazon, Spills the Beans

#302 - Howard Thai, The Professor of Amazon, Spills the Beans Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 302 of the AM PM podcast. In this episode, I speak with the professor of Amazon, Howard Thai. We talk about some of the crazy tactics and things that were going on a few years ago and some of the differences between Asian based sellers and Western based sellers. Plus we talk about how you need to really think about your business different now as an Amazon seller or an e-commerce seller and some really cool things about some stuff that's happening over in Pakistan. This is going to be a great one. Enjoy. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. 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. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: The professor of Amazon, Howard Thai. How are you doing, man? Welcome to the AM-PM Podcast. Speaker 2: Thank you, Kevin, for having me on. Speaker 1: So, Howard, why do people call you the professor of Amazon? You know, I see all your Facebook posts and all your emails and everything out there and that's kind of how you've become known. Where did that come from? Speaker 2: It's actually in like the 2017-ish. When I was in China, Zhongshan University, I was kind of teaching. Some course to the university, just a couple of course and talking about Amazon and e-commerce in the US and that's where I guess the professor came out from. Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember when I first learned about you, I think it was from Leo. Leo was at a, I think it was like a Manichat conference or something like that here in Austin and we were at dinner and he's like, oh have you heard about this This mastermind that's going on in Vegas, this guy from China, this professor of Amazon guy is coming over and bringing all these people and it's going to be this advanced level stuff. I was like, how do I get into that? How can I go to that? He's like, I don't know. It's like invitation only and you got to fill out this form and all this stuff. I'm like, well, hook me up. And then I remember reaching out to you and I was like, who's this professor guy? And I reached out to you and And then you said, yeah, yeah, come on, come on. I think there's a few people that were like, no, don't, don't, don't let Kevin come. We're going to have be sharing a bunch of secrets. You know, he might, he's teaching a course with his, I think back then it was called Illuminati and now it's called Helium 10 Elite. He might, he might share some of those secrets in there. But you're like, nah dude, come on out. Just, here's the bank account, send me some money for your ticket and come on out. And I remember we went out to this mansion in Vegas and it was cool. You had a good little group of people there, some very advanced, some huge sellers. Sellers doing like 100 million plus. And just, you brought in a couple of guys from China and a few people from the US were speaking. And it was just some really high-level stuff. So that's kind of what you're known for really is these high-level masterminds, these elite groups, you know, you have the elite, what's it, the elite seller society that you do. So how did that come to be really? Speaker 2: Well, it was, I think it was like 2018 where I first had my first mastermind. Not a lot of people knew about it, but it was actually based in Shangri-La, Shenzhen, so Fujian district. So we had announced like we're going to have a private mastermind with about, you know, we're going to have groups coming from all over the world to come and talk. But majority is we'll have like Chinese sellers too and Western sellers, right? Because it was never done before. So it was always about like a black box, how China works. My goal is always how do you bring like both sides together, you know, skills and the whole entire different kind of ranking, different kind of techniques to one place. So that's where we had all these people from China came over, high level, I mean advanced people. And then we had also, we also had like people from all over the world. We had like Israel, we had India, we had like US, we had everywhere, everyone from everywhere coming over. Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember now, it's jogging me once you said that, that was the first event because I remember I was at somewhere else and a couple other people that I know in the space said, hey, we just, we were over there in China for, maybe they're there for global sources or they're there for some other thing and then you are having your deal. And they went to it and they're like, man, this was like incredible. Afterwards, we sat in this room with this guy who was just like doing crazy numbers on Amazon. They're doing all this like black hat type of stuff, all this crazy stuff back then that was going on. And this wasn't at your event. This was like, you know, out at another restaurant or something. They like, yeah, this guy took us to this place and showed us this whole phone bank of stuff, like all these things that crazy things, you know, Amazon, I mean, like the Wall Street Journal and some others have since done stories on it. But it was, it was some crazy, crazy stuff that was going on. So like you said, the Western people were good at marketing and good at building listings and all that kind of stuff. And the people from Asia were really good at figuring out how to kind of manipulate the algorithm and the system and stuff. The two sides kind of wanted to know what each other was doing and wanted to learn and it was a really, really cool mix of philosophies and techniques that came together. Speaker 2: Correct. A lot of the, you know, currently right now and before, the Chinese are really good with strategic and actually analytical and very, very detailed in origin on exactly how to Rank products, you know, when you're talking about conversion and everything, on my first mastermind, we already talked about that way before anyone really talked about conversion rate, you know, in order for you to get your products up. So tactics, you know, like a lightning deal, best deal, how to rank those deals onto the, like the deals page, you know, that's something that no one really knew about in the Western world. Speaker 1: And these guys said these guys in China had figured it out. I mean through trial and error through sometimes Access to different kinds of information. They had figured out this is exactly what you got to do and this is exactly how the system works and they had really broken down the A9 algorithm like if you do this and you do this and you do this it's going to rank. It was very insightful stuff and there was a lot of gameship going on back then you know that kind of thing it still happens you know from place to place today but it's way way less than what it what it used to be and Amazon's cracked down you know there was there was people at one time you know Inside information coming out of Amazon in India and China and other places, you know, and there was all kinds of, you know, the search find buy stuff they've cracked down on, some of the other ranking techniques they've cracked down on. So now, would you say it's more of a level playing field or from what you know or what you've seen out there, is there still a lot of differences in between the way a Chinese seller approaches selling on Amazon and a Western seller does? Speaker 2: So currently, let's say first, let's go back and talk about the China side right now, what they're currently doing, because the most recent, like where all these big sellers got suspended for Review manipulation or other things where you talk about the biggest sellers out there on Amazon got suspended and they're still that the counter is gone. Okay, the brands are gone. So China started to understand this is not the right way to do business because it's not sustainable. So what they're doing right now is really clean. They're like really clean. They're looking into external traffic. And they're also looking at Shopify, other venues instead of Amazon. They're not putting all their eggs in one basket anymore. So this is what they're doing. So I would say I can tell they are doing really good on TikTok right now. They're doing really good on advertising on TikTok. So coming back, yeah, it's different now in the China side when they're doing Amazon. Speaker 1: What are some of the most shocking things that you could reveal that were going on a few years ago maybe that was like holy cow that they're able to do this or do that. Most of it doesn't exist anymore but what would you say are some of the things that really were kind of eye-opening? Speaker 2: I would say probably you know how When they were saying about ranking, you know, Chinese are able to, they're very mathematical and they know a lot of those algorithms, how it works. So with knowing all that, they would, you know, try to kind of rank products without even having too much purchases at all. You'll see them going up in the first page of Amazon without even having to even have any sales or even in reviews for the matter. Speaker 1: Yeah, they had figured out like add to carts and they were doing like wish list stuff and they were doing like, you know, like the little heat map things and there was brushing that was going on. There's all kinds of crazy stuff that was that was going on that Amazon really is cracked down on. It gave them a competitive advantage at one point. That's why a lot of Western people were curious like what the heck is going on. Not that they wanted to do that and most of them didn't do that, but they wanted to know what was going on. What are they up against? What are they competing against? And so I think that's why a lot of Western people are like, hey, I want to know this stuff. You know, how hard is it going to be for me to beat someone that's maybe playing by a different set of rules? Speaker 2: Correct. That's probably the reason why so many people go to the mastermind that I had in the very beginning, because they want to understand why these Chinese sellers are having an edge. And also, I believe it was mainly because maybe they were getting attacked or something, and how we were able to make sure that what was needed in order to protect yourself. That was mainly what we were teaching during those masterminds. So you don't want that you have your business from from like eight to nine figures and then all of a sudden become nothing based on people attacking you and stuff. Speaker 1: That's one of the things that I was most curious about because you know there were sellers based in Asia that were actually targeting accounts and like you know changing out the pictures. They were somehow being able to you know go in and change out the main photo from you know a Resist I remember don't one there's one this is resistance bands and they would change out the main photo to like a pornographic picture or something like that and just and immediately get a listing suspended you know it's their top competitor and they were able to do all kinds of crazy stuff so when I went to one of your events I was like I need to know how the heck are they doing this and how do I prevent it exactly like you just said And the answer was, you know, you need to get your own first party account, a vendor central account. And if you have that, if you do this, this and this, you can protect against that. And that was what was important to me is because once on Amazon, once you hit a certain level of sales, you become a target by a lot of people, not just people from Asia, but people all over, you know, your competitors get jealous, they want to take you down, right before prime day, they want to do, you know, crazy, crazy stuff, and you need to know how to protect yourself. There's so much money that's flowing on Amazon. It attracts good people and some of the worst of society as well. And so you have to know how to play, be offensive and be defensive. And that was one of the things that you were teaching is, look, this is how to be defensive. You shouldn't be doing this stuff because you could put yourself at risk, but you need to be defensive. And this is how to defend against it, which was really, really cool. And what I really enjoyed. Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I always tell people like, you know, If you want to understand how to do computer security, you have to understand what the hackers are doing in order for you to build software in order to detect malware or other things like that. So it's really important to understand the basics of the principle of how these attacks are getting done. I mean, honestly, it's not all about China attacking this worldwide. Everyone's attacking, not just China, you've got India, you've got Israel, you've got UK, you've got like Germany, you've got Russia. Everyone is, and especially in the US, US, if you talk about it, US, China doesn't even sell in the US for supplements. But they're just getting attacked left and right in the supplement space based on actually probably the US people, or US against US. Speaker 1: What do you think the difference is in sellers from Asia versus Western sellers? I mean, not so much in the black hat or the tactics, but just in general, the mindset. Because I remember going to events, and this is pre-COVID, so I'm sure these aren't happening now, but maybe they are. But I went to an event and it was like two, it's a Sunday afternoon, it's like 2,000 people in this room in Shenzhen. Amazon type people. Some of them were sellers, some of them worked for companies that were selling on Amazon. And there was like tons of these going on like every single weekend. You don't, I mean the conference in the US, the biggest one is like Maybe prosper or sell in scale it's about to come up you know 1,500 people and that's what this was like and that's like once or twice a year or something like that on that level. It's just like every single weekend and do they see this as a huge opportunity to get ahead? Is it the competitive nature of the culture? What is it that you see the differences between the two cultures in selling in e-commerce? Speaker 2: I feel like in China There's a more of a sharing kind of environment. You see all these events, you see thousands and thousands of people, you know, like just every week, you have two or three of these, you know, events all over the country. And then you have in the US, you see like, like the big sellers, anyone that are big sellers are actually, they don't really have a lot of good employees. It's usually the seller themselves or the owner themselves are the one that knows the tricks. of the trade. So they don't want to share to even their employees because they're scared that employees will actually learn this and actually go in and open their own shop and do the same thing. So you see all these big sellers in the US western side are always holding on to all the secrets. And also as well as I want to point out Chinese sellers are very good at analytics. I like skills, to analyze what is going on, analyzing the niche, they're really great at product selection, they're great at analyzing why is the ASIN that is not doing too good, how do you improve the rank without even having to do too much PBC in a white hat way, so there's a lot of ways that They look at things in very detail. I'm talking about in minute detail that the Western sellers don't really do. So that's the reason why if you go head-on with exactly what to do, a lot of the Western sellers don't really know exactly what it is. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's one of the reasons like when I'm doing product research on Helium 10 and I'm looking at x-ray, it'll show you what country on there that the seller is based in, based on the registration with Amazon. Before we didn't really have that information, before Amazon made that public as part of a couple years ago, it was always in Europe and some other countries, but it only came to the US recently. And now when I see that, when I'm doing product research, if I see that a particular category on page one is more than like 60-70% sellers based in China, that's something that gives me a big red flag. I'm like, you know what, these guys have a major competitive advantage. One, who knows what kind of techniques they might be doing or like you just said, they're analyzing stuff in the most minute detail using Custom tools that are only in Chinese, stuff that we don't even have, that's doing all kinds of crazy stuff. And they also have a competitive advantage with sourcing. I know you just recently posted a TikTok video where a fellow's talking about the disadvantage that American or Western people have in sourcing, that there's two different prices. You know, when I go to Latin America, I always say, you know, and I go into a store, you know, a local little convenience store to buy some water, there's the gringo price and there's the local price. And, you know, my price is usually a little bit higher and the same thing happens a lot on Amazon. So the Chinese-based sellers that are over there in China speak the language, that have the know the culture, that have the connections, they often can get lower prices. And this TikTok video that you just recently shared showed, you know, I think the guy was talking, it could be as much as 30% in some cases if you don't really know how to do it. So what are some things that Western sellers can do to try to help when it comes to the sourcing side of things? Speaker 2: Honestly, a lot of western sellers, they try to go directly to the factory. So directly to a factory is great but there's still a communication and there's still kind of a culture barrier like you said before. It's one thing that you've seen that person. It's one thing that you go into those maybe KTV or drinking with them and stuff like that. That's another thing. But then Chinese sellers do all that as well as they speak the language. It's like someone that is not able to speak the same language as you. And you're trying to communicate. There's always a barrier, right? So it's also the way they talk to each other, the way that they help each other. And it's like, let me help you do this without any string attached. But in and then you kind of didn't the factory itself will will say okay, you know He offered to help me with this now I have to offer to up one more to to give that look good and I will help him even more so One thing goes another I'm helping you do this You're gonna I'm gonna try to help you even more and do this so then you have this kind of like a favor thing that they do so it's kind of like showing face so in the community so if you want to get better price you just have to drink with them talk to them go visit them more often and have a presence in China because a lot of the times A lot of Westerners can't even get any terms because they're not even based in China. There's no way they can go after you when you're in the US and you don't pay, let's just say, if you got terms. How do you do that? They don't feel safe. But if you're based in China, you have an office, anything happens, they can actually go to your office and say. Unknown Speaker: You owe me money, you know? Speaker 2: So it's a different story in that case. So a lot of people in the Western or that are buying products in China doesn't have this kind of advantage. As well as the culture, as well as going there as often as possible. You go there once a year, maybe Global Source or some kind of event that you go over to China once a year. They go over often, like maybe even if you're based in Shenzhen and your product is in Shenzhen, maybe once a month or more. And drink tea with them, talk to them, how's your wife, how's everything. So it breaks down a lot of the upfront thing. After a while, you become best friends with the supplier. That's where that's going to lead to. If you're going to be a best friend with the supplier, how can you not give them a good price? How can they not give you a good price as a seller? So that's what we're looking at. That's what you see. Speaker 1: So that's what you see too, like a lot of people don't want to, western sellers don't want to use a sourcing agent. They're like, well I have to pay the sourcing agent a commission or they're going to add something to the price and I just rather go direct it. But what you don't realize is a lot of times the price, like whether they add something on top or whether the factory kicks them back something, it depends on the arrangement you have, it's still oftentimes going to be better than anything you could get on your own, even once all those fees are in. Plus you have someone like on the ground there managing it and And that can really stay on top of it for you. And that's what I think a lot of Western sellers just don't look or they don't even know. How would a Western seller even find a good sourcing agent? Speaker 2: There's a lot of sourcing agents out there. We also do sourcing for big sellers as well. We're based in China. I have an office in China that does that for a lot of the big sellers as well. Speaker 1: China was where a lot of, and Amazon kind of courted this, and they kind of backed off of it a little bit, but they were courting sellers from China and factory selling direct to try to get better prices to the consumers on Amazon. And so that's one of the reasons a lot of sellers based in China started to sell on Amazon. But one of the things I'm seeing right now is there's another country that's actually taking over, and that's Pakistan. It seems like in Pakistan, you know, there's a Facebook group that has over a million people in this Facebook group that are learning, either selling on Amazon, learning how to sell on Amazon, or they're being VAs for Amazon sellers, and they have an advantage over the Chinese-based sellers because they speak English. You know, English is one of the languages that the younger generation, at least in Pakistan, because it used to be Part of Britain that actually speak speak some English so they have an advantage there. What are you seeing? I know your company Signalytics is doing some business with Pakistan. What are you seeing going on right now in Pakistan and should we be paying attention to either utilizing that as an asset as a Western-based seller or what should we be considering there when it comes to e-commerce and the Pakistani-based seller community? Speaker 2: So within Pakistan, it's a growing community. If you recently looked at marketplace polls, they're the top three of the most sellers in Amazon. So, what I can tell you is there's two groups, right? Like a Facebook group that actually has over 1 million Amazon sellers within the community. There's one that's called Enablers. That's the one that group that is 1.2 million, I believe, that Bradley Sutton actually went over and they kind of Hosted him to speak within the crowd. I think one or two times. I don't remember. There's another group that is about 1.1 million sellers in the community. It's Extreme Commerce. It's by Sunny. So, we talk to him and their group a lot as well as the other enablers as well. So, we know that community and what we do in Pakistan is actually helping the Pakistan people to teach them how to teach them about Amazon and trying to train them, getting them better at doing Amazon and because they're I mean the government and the country is not doing too good right now because of the inflation as well as the currency devaluing so much but we're trying to help the country out and they have the best, one of the best amazon employees out there I would say because a lot of, it's hard to find Employees that knows Amazon and at a good price because in the US, everyone that really knows Amazon, like I said, they want to keep everything to themselves and they're the owners and you can't not hire. It's hard to hire an owner, an entrepreneur, right? So over there, it's a lot easier to find talent and that's what we do. We do an RPO, which is a recruitment process outsourcing. We help Sellers, we're talking about big brands, big aggregators out there and other companies to help them find a good fit. So there's a lot of talent there, I would say. We have an office there in Pakistan that sits A lot of our employees that we kind of find for the company that we kind of help train the employees on what they need and what they want. So it's pretty good environment to find people over there. Speaker 1: In the past a lot of Amazon sellers have used the Philippines and in some cases India for programming and stuff, but a lot of cases it's been the Philippines is where they've gone for VAs because the Filipino people, they're hard-working, they're fairly loyal, they speak English. Do you think that Pakistan is going to overcome or has it overtaken the Philippines as like the go-to spot now for good quality, well-trained VAs for your business? Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong, Philippines is great. We actually have employees in Philippines. We have an office also. We have also in Pakistan and also in China. And also the US. So they're great at communication. Like you're talking about like emails, you're talking about like on phone calls, like those call centers, you know, they're great at that communication wise. India is great with tech, like developers, you know, IT, very technical. But in Pakistan, it's more on the analytic and marketing side, you'll see a lot of. So there are different skill set in different countries. It's not like Pakistan is good at everything, but I would say that what we're looking for as an Amazon seller, to find talent to help you grow, that Pakistan is, they have what we want. Analytics people, brand managers, PPC people, really good people out there. Speaker 1: And by Western standards, they work fairly inexpensively, because I think The average wage in Pakistan is like somewhere four or five hundred dollars a month, something like that. So if they can make a little bit more than that where they're selling on Amazon or actually, you know, being a VA and helping somebody out as they're learning as well and make more than that, they're super eager and super hardworking and want to really help themselves and their family. Is that what you're seeing? Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. They're very excited. They want to learn. They want to also support their family. If you want to find talent, really good people in Pakistan, we don't suggest you try to lowball at $400, $600. We do pay pretty good when we hire because we want to keep them as well as make them don't have to worry about too much on them trying to survive. So, if you're looking for a good person, it's going to be a little bit more than $400, $600. So, what would be a good person's salary? Speaker 1: If I came to your company and said, hey, help me find a VA in the Philippines, what should I expect to pay? Speaker 2: So, depending on the arrangement, but let me tell you, for us, when we come in, we pay at least $800 for an entry-level grant manager. For a team leader or something like that, we would pay up to like $1,300. For someone that could lead a team, those are just the basic how much we pay. We pay more than the industry standard, but we just making sure that we keep them long term. Speaker 1: Cool. And now you, your background, I mean before, right now you do, you have a service based company that help called Signalytics.ai that helps sellers. I'll let you talk about that. You're doing this thing in Pakistan, but before all that you, and you also, you know, you do these big events. You just did one a few months ago in Paris. Paris that I went to you know Howard ran this castle on the outside of Paris and Had all these top sellers come for this like three or four day mastermind there. That was really really cool So you're doing that kind of stuff, but before all this you actually were a seller So can you you so back? We're back in the hoverboard days or something like that, right? Where you kind of got caught up in that mess Can you tell us that little little story about and I've seen pictures where you had a huge warehouse like in LA like You're driving around on a forklift or something like that or some crazy picture. I don't remember what it was, some crazy picture. Can you tell us a little bit about the backstory of the professor before he started doing all this helping other sellers? You were a seller yourself. Speaker 2: So yeah, I started selling online. In 2003, right after college, computer science, and I didn't know what to do with all my books and my software that I had from the school. So, UC San Diego, and then I thought about, hey, let's sell it on eBay. So I was selling it on eBay and it was really easy. So I was able to like sell a lot of everything that I had that I didn't want to get rid of because I was graduating and I didn't need it anymore. So that's where I started that entrepreneurship with e-commerce and then after that I was, then I came in and had a like a partnership with someone regarding selling ink cartridges. That's where I started selling on Amazon, eBay and later on we manifest into other countries. We were selling all over the US with all the marketplaces back then and then we were selling worldwide with all the other marketplaces like Price Minister, Rakuten Japan, we were selling Price Minister and All the different countries back then before anyone could even think about selling multi-international marketplaces, but we were doing really good in UK, Amazon, eBay, all the ones out there that was doing pretty good volume. Then after that, We started, uh, you know, wholesaling products out, um, where we have to actually import it in and, uh, kind of consolidate. So after that, I thought about it, I was, we, we wanted to like have an office. So I jumped, uh, I jumped the gun and, uh, took my wife, me and her to Shenzhen, China. That's where we started Amazon in 2009. So and then then we had an office, we grew the office up to 150 people from China and US warehouse. The warehouse had like maybe 22,000 square feet. We had big racks, forklifts and everything and we were packing, shipping, doing like maybe 23,000 orders a day. I believe so. That was the highest point. We had 23,000 orders a day selling on different marketplaces and also it was a peak. That was the peak. So that was really interesting because we were one of the oldies, right? We had to have a warehouse. Marketing and customer service, it's not like right now. Amazon FBA is so much easier now. You only focus on marketing mainly. Of course, purchasing, but marketing is the main thing that you focus on. But before, as a seller, we have to do everything. We had to have a warehouse. We had to ship it out. All those headaches. Speaker 1: You're like a top 100 seller on Amazon back in the day, right? Speaker 2: I was, in all of Amazon, I was probably a rank 35, but I always tell them rank a top 50. It's easier than top 100. So what happened with that business? Speaker 1: Did you end up selling or did some big disaster strike and you had to move on or what happened with that business? Speaker 2: So what happened to that business was that we were doing good. We're like nine figure seller. But to a point where in 2000 and I think it was 15 or 16 regarding the hoverboard incident where we were the bestseller. We were talking about we're selling a thousand hoverboards on a normal day, right? Maybe 500 pieces of hoverboard in the US side. And another 500 pieces in the rest of the world on, you know, Amazon or eBay or whatever marketplace that we're selling on. Even, I think it was Newegg, we were selling on Newegg at the time. So, we were doing really good, but eventually, we were doing so much that Containers coming in, you know when you on the Amazon when you do stuff you roll with it, right? The more sales you have, the more inventory you need to buy and then it just keeps on rolling. You try to roll over and everything. So it grows more and more and we're at a point where when the disaster of people trying to make a lot of money on the hoverboards, they have the cheap quality products which led to explosion. And everyone, the government started like cracking down saying that you cannot import these dangerous goods anymore. So that's where you get like boatloads of hoverboards weren't able to come into the country. And we were having Amazon at the time. They actually stopped everyone from selling it, told everyone that bought it before to return it. Without any problems. And in the Europe itself, they told everyone to just throw it away. You don't need to, and then just without anything, without saying, not all hoverboards are bad. They don't, you know, some people have different quality, right? So we had all, we were strict on quality control. We had to test everything before we shipped it out. But some, a lot of people just had really cheap wiring and also the battery was really cheap in order to make more profit. That's where it hit us the most. We had so much getting made at the time in the factories, and we had so much that was shipping out to the customer, and we had so much money that was sold already. Everything that was sold, a lot of them was returned back, open-boxed, reused, and everything that was flying over there couldn't get to the end-user or couldn't sell anymore. And we had factories making so much more That we couldn't even send it out anymore, so it went to like... It was like a standstill where all this inventory wasn't able to get out and I got returned a lot. So that's where we actually did really, really bad where we lost a lot. So then from there on, my wife was really sad because we had to sell a couple of properties in order for us to be able to, you know, be able to float the boat, you call it. Speaker 1: So then you just, with that big hit, that's a major hit with all those losses of stuff that's deposits already made to the factory, inventory you can't sell, getting hit with all these fees coming back out of your account for all the returns and stuff. So you had to dig into your own pocket to help cover payroll and help cover a few things and at that time did you just say, okay, we'll just wind this thing down and move in a different direction? Speaker 2: Yeah, then I said, okay, I'm getting older now. I can't take this kind of risk much. I'm like 44. So I have to make sure my wife doesn't get stressed out anymore. Because when you sell on eBay, you sell on Amazon, you get kind of stressed out a lot because you might get your account suspended anytime, you don't know when. But for me, it's okay. I can handle it because I've seen it so much that it doesn't really affect me too much. But I can't really stand it when my wife gets stressed out. That's the only thing that I can't handle because how can I affect her life? It's okay if I can affect my life, but then if it affects her life and then she's sad and I feel bad. So I stopped what we were doing, which is selling, and started doing this thing that was teaching, like professoring, you know, out there. Speaker 1: How do you see that going in the future? There's tons of courses out there now, there's tons of masterminds and events. How do you stand out? How do you make sure that you can continue doing that? I mean, I have the same issue with the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. You've been to quite a few of those. I'm going to see you here again next week at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. What do you see as the challenge there in teaching? There's so many YouTube videos. There's so many things that it's old information. There's new information. There's a lot of people trying to do high-level and low-level. How do you carve out something in that space that you can sustain that? Speaker 2: I mean, so we actually had before when we were doing masterminds, it was four times a month, a year. So every quarter we had one, but we had less and less because it was a lot more work for the masterminds. But in reality, I wanted to focus more on the business itself, Signalytics. So that's why we had less, but there is a lot of like, Stuff that we don't know as e-commerce, right? We only know Amazon side. A lot of the sellers only know Amazon side. They don't know about the other like Shopify. How do they get traffic? How do you get internet marketing or affiliate marketing? All those other marketing style, we're still just touching the edge of e-commerce. There's so much. Social commerce, there's so much stuff that we don't know as Amazon sellers that we can actually teach. I'm breaching the gap between Shopify sellers and Amazon sellers so that they could actually learn from each other. This is another thing that we can start going towards as instructors, as trainers, because there's a lot that we don't know. Speaker 1: I agree with that. I think there's been a focus on Amazon-centric selling and why worry about selling anywhere else. Amazon's got all the eyeballs, you can make enough money on Amazon, and you can. And even the aggregators have kind of shifted. At one point, they were only buying Amazon-based businesses. They didn't really care if you had Shopify or anything. And then there's other people that are saying, It's great to expand to Shopify or to eBay, but Amazon is still going to be the bulk of your business. So if your Amazon account gets shut down like you just said, you're still going to be screwed because it's so much. And that could be true, but if you go back and listen to last week's AM-PM Podcast with June, she's based in Hong Kong and she's developed a company called Catalyst that does iPhone cases. And they're crushing it with their iPhone cases. And her sales are 50% Amazon and 50% off Amazon. But one of the interesting things that she said is Amazon, they don't do a whole, they don't do really much PPC on Amazon. They don't, they're not going to be on page one for the results because they're a higher priced phone case, but they do eight figures a year selling phone cases because the way they market off of Amazon with their, with their social media, with their TikToks, with their, their, their press releases and all the other stuff that they do. And Amazon just becomes the shopping cart of choice, uh, for some of their customers. And that's something that I think like what you just said, uh, is important for a lot of Amazon sellers and where I think some of the masterminds and stuff are going to start going to us. It's not just going to be just Amazon content, but start thinking about more of Amazon as just a one main channel and significant channel, but you got to really build true brands. You know, it's, it's much more difficult as Howard knows now, the, The old days of just go find something on Alibaba or 1688 and stick your logo on it and sell it is much more challenging now and you really need to learn how to build true brands and really have a whole marketing system in place and that's what Signalytics does. Tell me, you started Signalytics, it does influencer marketing, it helps you with keyword research and what is Signalytics and how do you help sellers? Speaker 2: So, we're considered a full-stack or full marketing agency, meaning that we do from A to Z, meaning we even help product selection from China. We have a China warehouse. We help their logistics from China, which is a lot cheaper than a lot of average sellers can get. We go in and we can even send it to your FBA, your warehouse, as well as we can actually help rank your products. We do it from A to Z, right, to a lot of sellers. So, ranking, we go, we do like a DSP, which is a Amazon DSP. We do Amazon PPC. We do Mediavine. We help you put your products on deal sites. We help you with like SEO, listing optimization, we help with images, videos, we help recruitment where we talked about before, right? A recruitment process outsourcing for you. So we do like A to Z, full-fledged, you know. So that's what SignalX does and we mainly work with the big sellers. We're talking about like Xiaomi, we're talking about the big aggregators out there and a lot of the big sellers that are within our community as Elite Seller Society. So we do a lot. We just don't Push ourselves out there that much because not everyone can actually use our system because it's just like there might be too small or whatnot. We're pretty picky with who we work with. We don't pick, we don't work with everyone. Speaker 1: Where do you see this going? Where do you see this e-commerce, Amazon thing going a few years from now? Where do you see it? How do you see it evolving? Speaker 2: So we have, we do have a lot of Shopify sellers that we're helping with, with their Amazon. So it's going to be a bridging the gap. I see that more of the Shopify people out there are good with marketing and maybe Facebook and stuff are coming into Amazon and Amazon people are going into to like Shopify or their own website and stuff like that. So they're going to be learning more than just Amazon. I see that Amazon seller needs to start learning New things in order to survive within the Amazon ecosystem because there's a gap between Amazon and Shopify is getting closer and closer. So you will have to know a lot more about social commerce and TikTok and other places where these are called like real marketing. Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think it's, you're going to have to be much more, you're going to need to know Amazon and you're going to need to be much more rounded in the marketing and all the other marketplaces and diversify out and create true brands. And that's, that's what Signaletics helps people do is, is really not just be an on Amazon business, but, but a true brand that's out there that can stand the test of time, whether Amazon goes away or Shopify goes away or whatever, whatever new marketplace or channel shows up, you're prepared and people know you, know you by your name. Speaker 2: Correct. Having different marketplaces that you're selling on and different countries and also your website, right? You want to diversify more in the new age of selling on e-commerce. Speaker 1: Well, Howard, I really appreciate you coming on to the AM-PM Podcast. It's been great to have you here. I'm looking forward to seeing you next week at the The Billion Dollar Seller Summit is going to be a good time to have some cigars. You know, sometimes people always ask me, they see you post something, you know, my plane was delayed, headed to Phoenix or something and you see me make a little post like, yeah, it's probably the rats chewing on the hydraulics or something and people are like, what is this thing with rats and Howard and Kevin? So can you tell the people what is this thing about the rats that I'm always bringing up rats and And we have one other story we'll have to wrap it up with after the rats, but what is it about these rats? Speaker 2: Oh, I had this, um, it was my first US mastermind in Las Vegas in a mansion. This guy, right, this guy was sitting next to me all of a sudden, like, say, do you see a rat? I'm like, what do you mean? This, this is a mansion where there's no rats here. And then he says, yeah, I just saw one. He ran across the floor and stuff. I'm like, no way. And I'm looking around like, like, like, like, like a. Like someone that was like thinking that he was for reals. And he said, look, look at this muffin. It's like, it looks like bitten, you know? You know, I don't know. Maybe, I think you were there, right? Kevin, can you maybe, maybe you can tell them who that was. Speaker 1: That might've been me messing with you. Speaker 2: This guy. You should tell them about the other one too, as well. The one that you were trying to mess with me on. Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that one I actually wasn't trying to mess with you on that one, that one just was. So Howard, I did the first Billion Dollar Seller Summit was in Austin back in May of 2019 and Howard came out and one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to bring one of his buddies that he knew over in one of the big sellers in China. They could come over and kind of just say from the Chinese seller perspective what they're doing and stuff and so this fellow named David came with Howard, flew in from China and he brought an interpreter with him because his English was a little bit broken. This hotel that we used was called the Driscoll Hotel in Austin. It turns out that this hotel, it's a really old, it's a kind of old-school Texas hotel, you know, it's kind of a, reminds you of like a hundred years ago, like, you know, big cowboy-ish kind of over-the-top place, but it's got a lot of character to it. But one of the things that it's known for is it's actually, on the haunted tours of Austin, that's actually one of the stops where if you do one of these haunted tours of haunted places, They actually stopped there. And what happened is, Howard, we just assigned rooms, you know, at random or whatever. My producer Mark did. And Howard got this one room and for some reason, I forget, it was your birthday, it was the numbers, or it was bad luck, or what was it? You end up changing rooms? How did that? Speaker 2: David, the Chinese seller that I brought over from China to come over to the event to speak, he had my exact birthday number, which is July 10th, which was on his little, which is key card, which is the room. And he gave me my birthday. Speaker 1: So 7-10. Yeah. So he gave you, so you all ended up switching rooms. You were in one room and Because he was in room 710, which is July 10th, he gave you that room and so y'all switched rooms. And then I remember a couple days later, it was one evening after some of the talks, we're sitting down, it's probably 10, 11 o'clock at night or something, maybe later. And a handful of us are sitting down in the lobby just shooting the shit. And all of a sudden we see David hauling ass down the stairs, you know, with this wide-eyed look running straight up to the reception desk. And you know he's trying to communicate with the reception desk but his English, he was having a little bit of difficulty because of his English explaining what was going on. And so Mark, my event producer, got up to go make sure he was okay because, you know, he's one of the speakers, one of the VIPs. And he gets over there and what had happened is the room that Howard was supposed to originally be in, that David now had been voluntarily switched to, is actually the room on the Haunted Tour. And so right outside this room is like a shrine, like a doll and some pictures and stuff. And like a hundred years ago, somebody or a couple people were actually murdered in this room. And so David was laying in the room trying to go to sleep and all of a sudden he says that that these ghosts up here and tried to start talking to him and he was freaked out. He was completely freaked out. He's like, thank God. They were trying to speak to me in English. Thank God. I don't speak good English. I only speak Chinese. They couldn't mess with me. But he ran down to the front desk to see about getting changed or what to do to get stuff out of there. And so it was a pretty funny situation. And then Howard was like, well, Kevin, I think you were trying to mess with me again. You know, you did this rat thing, you're trying to mess with me. It was just pure coincidence. It might have looked like I was trying to mess with him, but it was just pure coincidence. And so it was a funny time. So the next day we actually showed some slides in the early morning presentation for David on how to get a ghost detector off of Amazon. There's ghost detectors you can buy on Amazon and everything. It was a pretty fun time. Speaker 2: I remember that. I still don't, I believe you, Kevin, that you didn't do anything on purpose. I feel like it has to be, it can't be a coincidence. I wish I was that lucky, you know, I would have been, like, I would have won the lottery or something like that. Speaker 1: Well, I promise you there's no rats and there's no ghosts at the Fairmont next week for the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, so I promise you you'll be safe. We just have some nice cigars ready for you to smoke. Speaker 2: Oh, I love those. I love those times where we sit around and smoke our cigars and talk about things Amazon and good stuff. That's the best part out of it. Speaker 1: It is. I mean, that was my favorite thing at your event in Paris is sitting around that campfire till 3 in the morning just, you know, talking with people and just hanging out, you know, drinking and smoking cigars and just shooting the shit. You know, that's my favorite part of these events. Well, Howard, again, I appreciate you coming on, man. It's been a pleasure. You're a good guy. I always enjoy hanging out with you. And thanks again. And we'll see you shortly. Speaker 2: Thank you for having me here. Thanks, guys. Speaker 1: I hope you really enjoyed my talk with Howard Thai, the professor of Amazon. I really like doing these for you. Let you be a little fly on the wall and listen to us have a little conversation. You don't want to miss next week's episode. Next week is my Billion Dollar Seller Summit. It actually starts this Sunday. In Austin, Texas, the live event, there's also an option for online. If you're not able to make the live event, check that out. But I'm going to be having some nuggets. I'm going to be asking some of the attendees there to give me a quick, short little one or two minute nugget of information as they check in. I'm going to be sharing those with you on the podcast. So it should be a lot of action packed, just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, cool information for Amazon and e-commerce sellers. So be sure Don't miss next week's episode and also don't forget to check out the Helium 10 elite mastermind that we do every month for Helium 10. It's a monthly training where I come on and I speak and I bring on three additional guests and we do a live training. We also do roundtables once a month, so be sure to check out Helium 10 Elite as well. And just to leave you with this week's golden nugget, one of the things that I really believe in is that life is about the experiences you have and the people you meet, not the physical things you buy. Life is about the experiences you have and the people you meet, not the physical things you buy. Because just remember this, you'll never see a U-Haul behind a Hurst because you can't take it with you. You'll never see a U-Haul behind a Hurst because you can't take it with you. The experiences you have and the people you meet, those last a lifetime. Physical things don't. We'll see you again next week. Take care. Unknown Speaker: Music playing.