#337 – BDSS 2023: Amazon Titans Share Their Top Secrets & Powerful Strategies – Part 1

#337 – BDSS 2023: Amazon Titans Share Their Top Secrets & Powerful Strategies – Part 1 00:00:00 Welcome to Episode 337, Part A. That's right, this week we have two parts. Today we are releasing Part A, and tomorrow, you don't have to wait another week, but tomorrow we're releasing Part B. That's because we have 11 of the speakers that are going to be at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in June, June 11th to the 15th in Puerto Rico. More information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit. com. They're sharing some cool stuff, some of what they're going to be talking about, and they're sharing some cool hacks and actionable stuff in this episode and the one being released tomorrow. You don't want to miss this. And don't forget, there's also a webinar coming up on the 18th of this month (April), if you're listening to this in 2023. April 18th. 00:00:44 It's a totally free webinar where we're going to be doing a hackathon with cash prizes. You could participate or you could just sit back and listen. It's totally free. It's at billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Enjoy this episode and the one coming up tomorrow as well. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. 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. First up, I've got my good buddy, Steve Simonson. Steve, how are you doing, man? 00:01:41 Oh, I'm doing so well. It is me. It's your old buddy, Steve Simonson. How about that? That's right. And you still don't know nothing about nothing, right? That is a fact. And unfortunately, I proved that again and again. I don't know why the heck I'm having you come to Puerto Rico to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit when you don't know nothing about nothing. Well, that's a good question. We could ask our buddy Socrates, who said the only – I'm paraphrasing here, but something like the only people who think they know everything are the fools and the best of us think that they or realize they know nothing in the big picture. So my know-nothing-about-nothing really is a ripoff of Socrates. So if you want to talk philosophy, let's go to Puerto Rico. 00:02:24 There you go. But in fairness, you have a couple championship belts from BDSS under your shirts there, so to speak. At the last BDSS in August of last year, your team actually won the scavenger hunt competition. Because at BDSS, it's not just about listening to a bunch of presentations. We actually do a lot of cool networking and cool competitive things. Because as you know, entrepreneurs are super competitive. And so your team actually, in a lot of this, I think they attributed to you, your strategies on how to tackle everything, won the entire event. That was fortunate. They did give me probably more credit than I deserve. But the truth is, we definitely love the idea of scavenger hunt. 00:03:12 I actually had to be talked into it a little bit because I'm like, 'Oh, I don't want to be outside in the sun all day.' But everybody said, yeah, let's do it. And it was turned out it was extraordinarily fun. And we are hyper-competitive as entrepreneurs. So the moment I was like, 'yeah, I'm in.' And then it's like, I'm reading every line of code on that scavenger hunt sheet. And I'm like, how do I hack my way to number one? And we got lucky because we didn't win by much, but we did prevail. And in one of the previous events, I think it was like maybe 2021, you actually placed second in the speaker voting. At the end of each BDSS, we have the audience vote on who they thought made the best presentation. 00:03:51 There's a cash prize for the first place and the second place. And your talk, which scared the bejesus out of a lot of people, I think, into actually voting, you know, like, holy cow, that was really good information. We had never heard anywhere else, and you got second place. Yeah, I didn't threaten them if they didn't vote for me. I just happened to hopefully deliver something. They said, wow, that that's something. By the way, that's around 18 months ago. I think you're right about that timeline. And many of those predictions laid down have come true already. They have. It was like you're like crazy. You're a fortune teller there. You should have put the money on Steve. Put the money on Steve. Yeah, the crystal ball apparently is not first-place material, but silver medal, I'll take it. 00:04:36 Exactly. So what's, I mean, you recently did retirement 2. 0, which I think that means instead of working 120 hours a week, it's like working 60 hours a week or something. Basically. Basically, yeah. You divested out of a few businesses and cut off a few things, but there are a few things that have taken your time, that have come up that are just taking your time. Besides spending time with entrepreneurs, which you love doing, you go to a lot of different things, and you love just hanging out and shooting the breeze with entrepreneurs. There's this AI thing that you messaged me last week and said, I said, hey, have you been checking this out? You say, oh, boy, have I ever. 00:05:13 You know, I just spent 10 hours today and, you know, whatever it was, the previous days, I'm really digging deep into this. What are you seeing out there? And I think this is something that you're going to be talking about at Billion Dollar Seller Summit-is what are you seeing, how this is going to change everything? Well, to be honest with you, I have been absolutely covered up in AI stuff. We've done machine learning stuff for a long time where we've taken data sets and trained machines, you know, how to make some of the predictive patterns better and so forth. But AI transcends that. And it is the most significant thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect it will be the most significant thing any of us see in our lifetimes. 00:05:56 In terms of the world has changed, like this was the point that the pivot was made between, you know, kind of machines being used as tools to the machines becoming the forefront of productivity. And, really, you know, if I summarize the title of my talk, it would be something like 'How to cut 50 percent of your staff and double productivity or keep the same staff and quadruple productivity.' It's significantly better than anyone could imagine when used correctly, when done properly. There are plenty of downsides to it and problems, but it is the most exciting thing. And we're piling every part of that into every piece of software that we create. And it's a game-changer of like an order of magnitude higher than anything I've ever seen in my life. 00:06:43 So, how is this? different than you know people the buzz out there in the amazon world and the e-commerce world is use this to analyze reviews use this to help you with your ppc maybe you can write a better title get different suggestions on your bullet points and stuff what what you're going to be talking about is not that stuff right it's going to be no no different there are many tactical wins people can do right so the if somebody says yes i can enhance my title or my listing or my bullet points There are plenty of those tactical level things. By the way, I got bad news for everybody. China now is going to write things just as well as you, if not better, by literally typing in the prompts in Chinese and having it come out in English. 00:07:23 The playing field just got leveled in the most terrifying way possible because one of our biggest advantages over, let's just say, foreign competitors is our native ability to speak English and to position a market. The better they get at it, anybody, whether it's, you know, they're from China or, you know, Australia or anywhere else in a foreign market that all bets are off. It's now even at least in English. And that that part is I'm going to try to give strategies how to avoid ceding the territory any faster than necessary. I mean, you told me like at a recent conference, I think it was at the Prosper show. You said that this AI stuff is like the invention of fire. I think you said. 00:08:04 It's that revolutionary and there are a lot of people that aren't on the bandwagon yet. They just see the evil side of it or they just poo-poo in it or they played with it a little bit. But the power and where it's going and how fast it's moving is mind-boggling. I just can't even imagine. So this is not like the Industrial Revolution, you know, going from steam to electricity, which was transformative. This is not the invention of the PC, which has created. Business and productivity, and it's not like the cell phone uh or the advent of the internet; this is like fire or the wheel-mankind will never be the same. I initially thought it was hype because, like, how could there be that many headlines about this topic in such a short period of time? 00:08:50 But it turns out it's it's not hype. If you use it correctly, there's plenty of ways to use it poorly, by the way. But if you use it correctly, it will change everything forever in just about any application I can think of. And some of them, it destroys the entire industry. So for the people that are in Puerto Rico that hear your talk, and I know it's evolving and things are probably going to be added in the last second as this industry is constantly changing, what are they going to walk away with at the end of that? What are they going to be like? Welcome to Episode 337, Part A. That's right. This week we have two parts. Today we're releasing Part A, and tomorrow, you don't have to wait another week, but tomorrow we're releasing Part B. 00:09:32 That's because we have 11 of the speakers that are going to be at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in June, June 11th to the 15th, in Puerto Rico. More information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit. com. They're sharing some cool stuff, some of what they're going to be talking about, and they're sharing some cool hacks and actionable stuff in this episode and the one being released tomorrow. You don't want to miss this. And don't forget, there's also a webinar coming up on the 18th of this month, April, if you're listening to this in 2023, April 18th. It's a totally free webinar where we're going to be doing a hackathon with cash prizes. You could participate or you could just sit back and listen. It's totally free. It's at billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Billiondollarsellersummit. 00:10:18 com forward slash webinar. Enjoy this episode, and the one coming at you tomorrow as well. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. 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. First up, I've got my good buddy, Steve Simonson. Steve, how are you doing, man? Oh, I'm doing so well. It is me. It's your old buddy, Steve Simonson. How about that? That's right. And you still don't know nothing about nothing, right? That is a fact. And unfortunately, I proved that again and again. 00:11:13 I don't know why the heck I'm having you come to Puerto Rico to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit when you don't know nothing about nothing. Well, that's a good question. We could ask our buddy Socrates, who said the only – I'm paraphrasing here, but something like the only people who think they know everything are the fools and the best of us think that they, or realize they know nothing in the big picture. So my 'know nothing about nothing' really is a ripoff of Socrates. So if you want to talk philosophy, let's go to Puerto Rico. There you go. But in fairness, you have a couple championship belts from BDSS under your shirts there, so to speak, because you actually, at the last BDSS in August of last year, your team actually won the scavenger hunt competition because, you know, at BDSS, is it's not just about listening to a bunch of presentations. 00:12:05 We actually do a lot of cool networking and cool competitive things because, as you know, entrepreneurs are super competitive. And so your team actually, and a lot of this I think they attributed to you, your strategies of how to tackle everything won the entire event. That was fortunate. They did give me probably more credit than I deserve, but the truth is. We definitely love the idea of scavenger hunt. I actually had to be talked into it a little bit because I'm like, 'Oh, I don't want to be outside in the sun all day.' But everybody said, 'Yeah, let's do it.' And it was turned out it was extraordinarily fun. And we are hyper-competitive as entrepreneurs. 00:12:44 So the moment I was like, 'Yeah, I'm in,' and then it's like, 'I'm reading every line of code on that scavenger hunt sheet.' And I'm like, 'How do I hack my way to number one?' And we got lucky because we didn't win by much, but we did prevail. And in one of the previous events, I think it was like maybe 2021, you actually placed second in the speaker voting. At the end of each BDSS, we have the audience vote on who they thought made the best presentation. There's a cash prize for the first place and the second place. And your talk, which scared the bejesus out of a lot of people, I think, into actually voting, you know, like, holy cow, that was really good information. 00:13:23 We had never heard anywhere else, and you got second place. Yeah, I didn't threaten them if they didn't vote for me. I just happened to hopefully deliver something. They said, wow, that that's something. By the way, that's around 18 months ago. I think you're right about that timeline. And many of those predictions laid down have come true already. They have. They have. It was like you're like crazy. You're a fortune teller there. You should have put the money on Steve. Put the money on Steve. Yeah, the crystal ball apparently is not first-place material, but silver-medal, I'll take it. Exactly. So what's, I mean, you recently did retirement 2. 0, which I think that means instead of working 120 hours a week, it's like working 60 hours a week or something. Basically. 00:14:08 Basically, yeah. You divested out of a few businesses and cut off a few things, but there's a few things that have come up that are just taking your time. Besides spending time with entrepreneurs, which you love doing, you go to a lot of different things, and you love just hanging out and shooting the chum with entrepreneurs. There's this AI thing that you messaged me last week and said, I said, hey, have you been checking this out? You say, oh, boy, have I ever. You know, I just spent 10 hours today and, you know, whatever it was, the previous days, I'm really digging deep into this. What are you seeing out there? And I think this is something that you're going to be talking about at Billion Dollar Seller Summit-is what are you seeing, how this is going to change everything? 00:14:48 Well, to be honest with you, I have been absolutely covered up in AI stuff. We've done machine learning stuff for a long time where we've taken data sets and trained machines how to make some of the predictive patterns better and so forth. But AI transcends that. And it is the most significant thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect it will be the most significant thing any of us see in our lifetimes. In terms of, the world has changed; this was the point that the pivot was made between machines being used as tools to the machines becoming the forefront of productivity. And really, if I summarize the title of my talk, it would be something like how to cut 50% of your staff and double productivity or keep the same staff and quadruple productivity. 00:15:39 It is significantly. better than anyone could imagine when used correctly, when done properly. There's plenty of downsides to it and problems, but it is the most exciting thing. And we're piling every part of that into every piece of software that we create. And it is a game changer of like an order of magnitude higher than anything I've ever seen in my life. So how is this? different than you know people the buzz out there in the amazon world and the e-commerce world is use this to analyze reviews use this to help you with your ppc maybe you can write a better title get different suggestions on your bullet points and stuff what what you're going to be talking about is not that stuff right it's going to be no no different there are many tactical wins people can do right so the if somebody says yes i can enhance my title or my listing or my bullet points There are plenty of those tactical level things. 00:16:32 By the way, I got bad news for everybody. China now is going to write things just as well as you, if not better, by literally typing in the prompts in Chinese and having it come out in English. The playing field just got leveled in the most terrifying way possible because one of our biggest advantages over, let's just say, foreign competitors is our native language. Welcome to episode 337, part A. That's right. This week we have two parts. Today, we are releasing part A, and tomorrow, you don't have to wait another week, but tomorrow, we're releasing part B. That's because we have 11 of the speakers that are going to be at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in June, June 11th to the 15th in Puerto Rico. More information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit. 00:17:17 com. They're sharing some cool stuff, some of what they're going to be talking about, and they're sharing some cool hacks and actionable stuff in this episode and the one being released tomorrow. You don't want to miss this. And don’t forget, there's also a webinar coming up on the 18th of this month (April), if you're listening to this in 2023, April 18th. It’s a totally free webinar where we’re going to be doing a hackathon with cash prizes. You could participate or you could just sit back and listen. It’s totally free. It's at billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Enjoy this episode and the one coming at you tomorrow as well. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. 00:18:05 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. Here's your host, Kevin King. First up, I've got my good buddy, Steve Simonson. Steve, how are you doing, man? Oh, I'm doing so well. It is me. It's your old buddy, Steve Simonson. How about that? That's right. And you still don't know nothing about nothing, right? That is a fact. And unfortunately, I proved that again and again. I don't know why the heck I'm having you come to Puerto Rico to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit when you don't know nothing about nothing. 00:18:55 Well, that's a good question. We could ask our buddy Socrates, who said the only – I'm paraphrasing here, but something like the only people who think they know everything are the fools and the best of us think that they or realize they know nothing in the big picture. So my know-nothing-about-nothing really is a ripoff of Socrates. So if you want to talk philosophy, let's go to Puerto Rico. There you go. But in fairness, you have a couple championship belts from BDSS under your shirts there, so to speak, because you actually landed at the last BDSS in August of last year. Your team actually won the scavenger hunt competition because, you know, at BDSS, it's not just about listening to a bunch of presentations. 00:19:40 We actually do a lot of cool networking and cool, like, competitive things because, as you know, entrepreneurs are super competitive. And so your team actually, and a lot of this I think they attributed to you, your strategies of how to tackle everything won the entire event. That was fortunate. They did give me probably more credit than I deserve. But the truth is, we definitely love the idea of scavenger hunt. I actually had to be talked into it a little bit because I'm like, oh, I don't want to be outside in the sun all day. But everybody said, yeah, let's do it. And it was turned out, it was extraordinarily fun. And we are hyper-competitive as entrepreneurs. So the moment I was like, yeah, I'm in. 00:20:22 And then it's like, I'm reading every line of code on that scavenger hunt sheet. And I'm like, how do I hack my way to number one? And we got lucky because we didn't win by much, but we did prevail. And in one of the previous events, I think it was like maybe 2021, you actually placed second in the speaker voting. At the end of each BDSS, we have the audience vote on who they thought made the best presentation. There's a cash prize for the first place and the second place. And your talk, which scared the bejesus out of a lot of people, I think, into actually voting, you know, like, holy cow, that was really good information. We had never heard anywhere else. And you got second place. 00:21:01 Yeah, I didn't threaten them if they didn't vote for me. I just happened to hopefully deliver something. They said, wow, that that's something. By the way, that's around 18 months ago. I think you're right about that timeline. And many of those predictions laid down have come true already. They have. They have. It was like you're like crazy. You're a fortune teller there. You should have put the money on Steve. Put the money on Steve. Yeah, the crystal ball apparently is not first place material, but silver medal, I'll take it. Exactly. So what's, I mean, you recently did retirement 2. 0, which I think that means instead of working 120 hours a week, it's like working 60 hours a week or something. Basically. Basically, yeah. 00:21:44 You divested out of a few businesses and cut off a few things, but there's a few things that have come up that are just taking your time. Besides spending time with entrepreneurs, which you love doing, you go to a lot of different things, and you love just hanging out and shooting the chum with entrepreneurs. There's this AI thing that you messaged me last week and said, I said, hey, have you been checking this out? You say, oh, boy, have I ever. You know, I just spent 10 hours today and, you know, whatever it was, the previous days, I'm really digging deep into this. What are you seeing out there? And I think this is something that you're going to be talking about at Billion Dollar Seller Summit – what are you seeing, how this is going to change everything? 00:22:23 Well, to be honest with you, I have been absolutely covered up in AI stuff. We've done machine learning stuff for a long time where we've taken data sets and trained machines how to make some of the predictive patterns better and so forth. But AI transcends that. And it is the most significant thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect it will be the most significant thing any of us see in our lifetimes. In terms of the world has changed, this was the point that the pivot was made between machines being used as tools to the machines becoming the forefront of productivity. And really, if I summarize the title of my talk, it would be something like 'How to cut 50% of your staff and double productivity or keep the same staff and quadruple productivity.' It's significantly better than anyone could imagine when used correctly, when done properly. 00:23:20 There's plenty of downsides to it and problems, but it is the most exciting thing. And we're piling every part of that into every piece of software that we create. And it's a game-changer, like an order of magnitude higher than anything I've ever seen in my life. So how is this? Different than you know, people, the buzz out there in the Amazon world and the e-commerce world is that this to analyze reviews, use this to help you with your PPC maybe you can write a better title, get different suggestions on your bullet points and stuff. What I'm going to be talking about is not that stuff right? It's going to be no, no different there are many tactical wins people can do right so the if somebody says yes, I can enhance my title or my listing or my bullet points. 00:24:04 There are plenty of those tactical level things. By the way, I got bad news for everybody. China now is going to write things just as well as you, if not better, by literally typing in the prompts in Chinese and having it come out in English. The playing field just got leveled in the most terrifying way possible because one of our biggest advantages over, let's just say, foreign competitors is our native ability to speak English and to position a market. The better they get at it, anyone, whether it's, you know, they're from China or, you know, Australia or anywhere else in a foreign market that all bets are off. It's now even at least in English. And that, that part is I'm going to try to give strategies how to avoid ceding the territory any faster than necessary. 00:24:51 I mean, you told me like at a recent conference, I think it was at the Prosper show. You said that this stuff is like the invention of fire. I think you said it's that revolutionary and there are a lot of people that aren't on the bandwagon yet. They just see the evil side of it or they just poo-poo in it or they played with it a little bit. But the power and where it's going and how fast it's moving is mind-boggling. I just can't even imagine. So this is not like the Industrial Revolution, you know, going from steam to electricity, which was transformative. This is not the invention of the PC, which has created business and productivity. And it's not like the cell phone. 00:25:31 Or the advent of the internet, this is like fire or the wheel; mankind will never be the same. I initially thought it was hype because, like, how could there be that many headlines about this topic in such a short period of time? But it turns out it's it's not hype. If you use it correctly, there's plenty of ways to use it poorly. By the way, but if you use it correctly, it will change everything forever in just about any application I can think of. And some of them, it destroys the entire industry. So for the people that are in Puerto Rico that hear your talk, and I know it's evolving and things are probably going to be added in the last second as this industry is constantly changing, what are they going to walk away with at the end of that? 00:26:12 What are they going to be like? How do you hope they feel or react? Well, my number one takeaway aspiration is that they say to themselves, 'This is not bad news. This is positive because now myself and my team are going to have a roadmap on how to utilize different techniques. So it's not just Chat GBT. It's not just mid-journey or stable diffusion, or I could name a hundred other AI engines. It's the method and how you use it. I'm also going to give a formula that we've been developing in how you make AI work for you the right way. And I think of it in terms of mathematics, but it's an input formula to generate a certain output. All of this is good news. 00:26:56 Every entrepreneur that I know, that I've met over these many, many years, they're smart, they're aggressive, they like change, they can cope with stuff, but they'll get on board very quickly. It's their teams that we have to help augment that. And so I'm going to try to share all the techniques that I can that will say, here's why it's important. Here's why it's transformational. And here's how you get your team on board. And here's how you maximize it. It's; it really is something else. And you already had me excited. I'm already looking forward to this talk. I'm like, because I know when you when you get into something, you get into something. I mean, you like you master it and like, at the next level. So I'm super excited. 00:27:39 So those that are maybe out there that have never been to a BDSS, what would you say to them? What's the experience like or how's this? There's tons of conferences, lots of stuff, lots of stuff happening in June. Why should this be one that they, even though the price tag is a little bit higher than the average conference, why should this be one that they consider? Well, from my perspective, first of all, it's always a highlight of my year. Every year going to BDSS, I come away with learnings. I come away with, you know, relationships and fun memories. And that that will deliver enough ROI on its own. It's a 10x ROI for sure. But this year has the potential to be 100 times ROI because, you know, I know myself, I know some of the other speakers where we are not just competitive, not, you know, like I don't really care if I win the money. 00:28:27 In fact, I donated the money to Empowery, but I do like to win. Right. And so my my my mission is to have everybody go. That was something I didn't expect. I've heard a lot of headlines. Now it's coalesced. And so not just myself, but I know every other speaker is on board with that same plan. So, you know, anybody who thinks about it, I would stop thinking and start booking and getting it done because I will be there and at your service, as they say. Awesome. And you're also going to be on a webinar we're doing on April 18th. So I've got a bunch of the speakers that are going to be in Puerto Rico and we're doing like a hack contest. 00:29:06 It's going to be a really cool and you might actually share a little tease of what you're talking about, right? You mentioned you might have a few little slides or something that you can show people like they can walk away with something. Yeah, I'm going to give you a checklist on this webinar because they're very small amounts of time on that webinar. But basically, it's a hack that. that trains ChatGPT-4 to create superhuman-level mid-journey prompts. So mid-journey is a diffusion image creation that's amazing, but it gets extraordinary. And I'm talking about superhuman level if you make the prompts right. Well, why should we make the prompts? I got a bot trained to make the prompts, and I'll show you exactly the steps to training your bot to do the same thing. 00:29:48 And again, it can absolutely transform the way you create images. That's on April 18th. It's totally free. So if you just go to BillionDollarSellerSummit. com forward slash webinar, you can sign up for that webinar. Hope to see you there. Steve, I'll see you there in just a few days. Thanks, man. I'm there. My next guest on this episode is Leo Scovio. Leo, how are you doing, man? It's good to see you. Kevin, how are you? Nice to see you again. Yes, I'm doing great, actually. You know, I'm now in Miami, no longer in Canada. So I've been enjoying the good weather, except for the past couple of days it's been raining. But other than that, it did make a difference, definitely, in the way I live day by day. 00:30:33 Your whole mindset is probably different now, right? Going from the cold to the beach and the beautiful people and the beautiful scenery and everything. Absolutely. I think, you know, it took me a while to, I think for my body actually, to get adjusted to the different type of weather. Because, you know, I was used to, you know, for the past 14 years to living in the wintertime in cold weather, right? And now it's been sunny every day. So I think, you know, my body needs to adjust, but I'm loving it though. So you're going to take it to the next level. I mean, you're on the coast, but now you're going to take it to an island for the Billion Dollar Solar Summit. You're going to go from the coast of Miami. 00:31:11 To the island of Puerto Rico, where you're going to be trying to defend your title. Because at the last in-person Billion Dollar Seller Summit in August, I think there's this Italian dude that was up on stage and walked away with the $5,000 cash prize as the best speaker. I think that guy might have been you. So you got a little bit of a pressure on your back to defend that title, right? That's right. That was me. And it's going to be hard this year. As I see, the lineup is obviously amazing, as expected, but I will definitely do my best, Kevin. I have a good presentation that I'm working on, and so I'm excited for it. How do you feel like how is speaking at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit different than speaking at some other event? 00:31:57 Is it the pressure because you're all competing or is it the level or what is it? How is it different? It's the level. You know, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you're going to find sellers that, you know, have their skin in the game. Right. Versus some other conferences, maybe where you have people attending that don't really understand that they're just new to the game. Right. So at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you know, the level is very high. Impress the attendee with high-quality content, which is not easy, obviously, right? So if you do a good job at delivering that content, people would appreciate it. So what are you, what are you, I know you don't want to let the whole cat out of the bag just yet, but what are you working on that you are hoping to share in June at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in Puerto Rico? 00:32:40 Welcome to episode 337, part A. That's right. This week we have two parts. Today we were releasing part A, and tomorrow, you don't have to wait another week, but tomorrow we're releasing part B. That's because we have 11 of the speakers that are going to be at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in June, June 11th to the 15th, in Puerto Rico. More information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit. com. They're sharing some cool stuff, some of what they're going to be talking about, and they're sharing some cool hacks and actionable stuff in this episode and the one being released tomorrow. You don't want to miss this. And don't forget, there's also a webinar coming up on the 18th of this month, April, if you're listening to this in 2023. April 18th. 00:33:24 It's a totally free webinar where we're going to be doing a hackathon with cash prizes. You could participate or you could just sit back and listen. It's totally free. It's at BillionDollarSellerSummit. com forward slash webinar. BillionDollarSellerSummit. com forward slash webinar. Enjoy this episode and the one coming at you tomorrow as well. 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. First up, I've got my good buddy, Steve Simonson. Steve, how are you doing, man? 00:34:22 Oh, I'm doing so well. It is me. It's your old buddy, Steve Simonson. How about that? That's right. And you still don't know nothing about nothing, right? That is a fact. And unfortunately, I proved that again and again. I don't know why the heck I'm having you come to Puerto Rico to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit when you don't know nothing about nothing. Well, that's a good question. We could ask our buddy Socrates, who said, you know, the only some I'm paraphrasing here, but something like the only people who think they know everything are the fools and the best of us. Think that they or realize they know nothing in the big picture. So my 'know nothing about nothing' really is a ripoff of Socrates. 00:35:01 So if you want to talk philosophy, let's go to Puerto Rico. There you go. But in fairness, you have a couple championship belts from BDSS under your shirts there, so to speak, because you actually at the last BDSS in August of last year, your team actually won the scavenger hunt competition because, you know, at BDSS it's not just about listening to a bunch of presentations. We actually do a lot of cool networking and cool competitive things because, as you know, entrepreneurs are super competitive. And so your team actually, and a lot of this I think they attributed to you, your strategies of how to tackle everything won the entire event. That was fortunate. They did give me probably more credit than I deserve, but the truth is. 00:35:49 We definitely love the idea of scavenger hunt. I actually had to be talked into it a little bit because I'm like, oh, I don't want to be outside in the sun all day. But everybody said, yeah, let's do it. And it was turned out it was extraordinarily fun. And we are hyper-competitive as entrepreneurs. So the moment I was like, yeah, I'm in. And then it's like, I'm reading every line of code on that scavenger hunt sheet. And I'm like, how do I hack my way to number one? And we got lucky because we didn't win by much, but we did prevail. And in one of the previous events, I think it was like maybe 2021, you actually placed second in the speaker voting. 00:36:26 At the end of each BDSS, we have the audience vote on who they thought made the best presentation. There's a cash prize for the first place and the second place. And your talk, which scared the bejesus out of a lot of people, I think, into actually voting, you know, like, holy cow, that was really good information. We had never heard anywhere else. And you got second place. Yeah, I didn't threaten them if they didn't vote for me. I just happened to hopefully deliver something. They said, 'wow, that's something.' By the way, that's around 18 months ago. I think you're right about that timeline. And many of those predictions laid down have come true already. They have. They have. It was like you're like crazy. You're a fortune teller there. 00:37:07 You should have put the money on Steve. Put the money on Steve. Yeah, the crystal ball apparently is not first place material, but silver medal, I'll take it. Exactly. So what's, I mean, you recently. You did retirement 2. 0, which I think that means instead of working 120 hours a week, it's like working 60 hours a week or something. Basically. Basically, yeah. You divested out of a few businesses and cut off a few things, but there's a few things that have taken your time, that have come up that are just taking your time. Besides spending time with entrepreneurs, which you love doing, you go to a lot of different things, and you love just hanging out and shooting the chum with entrepreneurs. 00:37:48 There's this AI thing that you messaged me last week and said, I said, hey, have you been checking this out? You say, oh, boy, have I ever. You know, I just spent 10 hours today and, you know, whatever it was, the previous days, I'm really digging deep into this. What are you seeing out there? And I think this is something that you're going to be talking about at Billion Dollar Seller Summit is what are you seeing, how this is going to change everything? Well, to be honest with you, I have been absolutely covered up in AI stuff. We've done machine learning stuff for a long time where we've taken data sets and trained machines how to make some of the predictive patterns better and so forth. But AI transcends that. 00:38:26 And it is the most significant thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect it will be the most significant thing any of us see in our lifetimes. In terms of the world has changed, this was the point that the pivot was made between machines being used as tools to the machines becoming the forefront of productivity. And really, if I summarize the title of my talk, it would be something like how to cut 50% of your staff and double productivity or keep the same staff and quadruple productivity. It is significantly better than anyone could imagine when used correctly, when done properly. There's plenty of downsides to it and problems, but it is the most exciting thing. And we're piling every part of that into every piece of software that we create. 00:39:16 And it's a game changer, of like, an order of magnitude higher than anything I've ever seen in my life. So, how is this? Different than you know people the buzz out there in the Amazon world and the e-commerce world is using this to analyze reviews use this to help you with your PPC maybe you can write a better title, get different suggestions on your bullet points and stuff. What what you're going to be talking about is not that stuff right it's going to be no, no different there are many tactical wins people can do right so the if somebody says yes I can enhance my title or my listing of my bullet points There are plenty of those tactical level things. By the way, I got bad news for everybody. 00:39:55 China now is going to write things just as well as you, if not better, by literally typing in the prompts in Chinese and having it come out in English. The playing field just got leveled in the most terrifying way possible because one of our biggest advantages over, let's just say, foreign competitors is our native ability to speak English and to position a market. The better they get at it, anybody, whether it's, you know, they're from China or, you know, Australia or anywhere else in a foreign market that all bets are off. It's now even at least in English. And that that part is I'm going to try to give strategies how to avoid ceding the territory any faster than necessary. I mean, you told me like at a recent conference, I think it was at the Prosper show. 00:40:41 You said that this stuff is like the invention of fire. I think you said it's that revolutionary and that people there's a lot of people that aren't on the bandwagon yet. They, they, they just see the evil side of it or they just poo-poo in it or they played with it a little bit, but the power and where it’s going and how fast it’s moving is mind-boggling. Ah, I just can’t even imagine. So this is not like the industrial revolution, you know, going from steam to electricity, which was transformative. This is not the invention of the PC, which has created business and productivity. And it's not like the cell phone. Or the advent of the internet this is like fire or the wheel like mankind will never be the same, and I initially thought it was hype because like how could there be that many headlines about this topic in such a short period of time but it turns out it's it's not hype. 00:41:34 If you use it correctly, there's plenty of ways to use it poorly by the way, but if you use it correctly it will change everything forever in just about any application I can think of and some of them it destroys the entire industry. So for the people that are in Puerto Rico that hear your talk, and I know it's evolving and things are probably going to be added in the last second as this industry is constantly changing, what are they going to walk away with at the end of that? What are they going to be like? How do you hope they feel or react? Well, my number one takeaway aspiration is that they say to themselves, This is net good news. 00:42:11 This is positive because now myself and my team are going to have a roadmap on how to utilize different techniques. So it's not just ChatGPT. It's not just mid-journey or stable diffusion, or I could name a hundred other AI engines. It's the method and how you use it. I'm also going to give a formula that we've been developing in how you make AI work for you the right way. And I think of it in terms of mathematics, but it's an input formula to generate a certain output. All of this is good news. Every entrepreneur that I know that I've met over these many, many years, they're smart, they're aggressive, they like change, they can cope with stuff, but they'll get on board very quickly. It's their teams that we have to help augment that. 00:42:58 And so I'm going to try to share all the techniques that I can, that will say, 'here's why it's important', 'here's why it's transformational', and 'here's how you get your team on board', and 'here's how you maximize it'. It's; it really is something else. And you already had me excited. I'm already looking forward to this talk; I'm like, because I know when you when you get into something, you get into something. I mean, you like you master it and like and at the next level. So I'm super excited. So those that are maybe out there that have never been to a BDSS, what would you say to them? What's the experience like or how's this? There's tons of conferences, lots of stuff, lots of stuff happening in June. 00:43:36 Why should this be one that they, even though the price tag is a little bit higher than the average conference, why should this be one that they consider? Well, from my perspective, first of all, it's always a highlight of my year. Every year going to BDSS, I come away with learnings. I come away with, you know, relationships and fun memories. And that that will deliver enough ROI on its own. It's a 10x ROI for sure. But this year has the potential to be 100 times ROI because, you know, I know myself, I know some of the other speakers where we are not just competitive, not, you know, like I don't really care if I win the money. In fact, I donated the money to Empowery, but I do like to win. 00:44:17 Right. And so my my my mission is to have everybody go. That was something I didn't expect. I've heard a lot of headlines. Now it's coalesced. And so not just myself, but I know every other speaker is on board with that same plan. So, you know, anybody who thinks about it, I would stop thinking and start booking and getting it done because I will be there and at your service, as they say. Awesome. And you're also going to be on a webinar we're doing on April 18th. So I've got a bunch of the speakers that are going to be in Puerto Rico and we're doing like a hack contest. It's going to be a really cool, and you might actually share a little tease of what you're talking about, right? 00:44:59 You mentioned you might have a few little slides or something that you can show people so they can walk away with something. Yeah, I'm going to give you a checklist on this webinar because they're very small amounts of time on that webinar. But basically, a hack that. that trains ChatGPT-4 to create superhuman level mid-journey prompts. So mid-journey is a diffusion image creation that's amazing, but it gets extraordinary. And I'm talking about superhuman level if you make the prompts right. Well, why should we make the prompts? I got a bot trained to make the prompts, and I'll show you exactly the steps to training your bot to do the same thing. And again, it can absolutely transform the way you create images. That's on April 18th. It's totally free. 00:45:42 So if you just go to BillionDollarSellerSummit. com forward slash webinar, you can sign up for that webinar. Hope to see you there. And Steve, I'll see you there in just a few days. Thanks, man. I'm there. My next guest on this episode is Leo Scovino. Leo, how are you doing, man? It's good to see you. Kevin, how are you? Nice to see you again. Yes, I'm doing great, actually. You know, I'm now in Miami, no longer in Canada. So I've been enjoying the good weather, except for the past couple of days it's been raining. But other than that, it did make a difference, definitely, in the way I live day by day. Your whole mindset is probably different now, right? Going from the cold to the beach and the beautiful people and the beautiful scenery and everything. 00:46:28 Absolutely. I think, you know, it took me a while to, I think for my body actually, to get adjusted to the different type of weather. Because, you know, I was used to, you know, for the past 14 years to living in the wintertime in cold weather, right? And now it's been sunny every day. So I think, you know, my body needs to adjust, but I'm loving it though. So you're going to take it to the next level. I mean, you're on the coast, but now you're going to take it to an island for the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. You're going to go from the coast of Miami to the island of Puerto Rico, where you're going to be trying to defend your title. 00:47:01 Because at the last in-person Billion Dollar Seller Summit in August, I think there's this Italian dude that was up on stage and walked away with the $5,000 cash prize as the best speaker. I think that guy might have been you. So you got a little bit of a pressure on your back to defend that title, right? That's right. That was me. And it's going to be hard this year. As I see, the lineup is obviously amazing, as expected. Welcome to episode 337, part A. That's right. This week we have two parts. Today we're releasing part A, and tomorrow, you don't have to wait another week, but tomorrow we're releasing part B. That's because we have 11 of the speakers that are going to be at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit in June, June 11th to the 15th in Puerto Rico. 00:47:52 More information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit.com. They're sharing some cool stuff, some of what they're going to be talking about, and they're sharing some cool hacks and actionable stuff in this episode and the one being released tomorrow. You don't want to miss this. And don't forget, there's also a webinar coming up on the 18th of this month, if you're listening to this in 2023, April 18th. It's a totally free webinar where we're going to be doing a hackathon with cash prizes. You could participate or you could just sit back and listen. It's totally free. It's at billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Billiondollarsellersummit. com forward slash webinar. Enjoy this episode and the one coming at you tomorrow as well. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. Welcome to the AM/ PM podcast. 00:48:42 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. First up, I've got my good buddy, Steve Simonson. Steve, how are you doing, man? Oh, I'm doing so well. It is me. It's your old buddy, Steve Simonson. How about that? That's right. And you still don't know nothing about nothing, right? That is a fact. And unfortunately, I proved that again and again. I don't know why the heck I'm having you come to Puerto Rico to speak at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit when you don't know nothing about nothing. 00:49:31 Well, that's a good question. We could ask our buddy Socrates, who said the only – I'm paraphrasing here, but something like the only people who think they know everything are the fools and the best of us. think that they or realize they know nothing in the big picture. So my know-nothing-about-nothing really is a ripoff of Socrates. So if you want to talk philosophy, let's go to Puerto Rico. There you go. But in fairness, you have a couple championship belts from BDSS under your shirts there, so to speak. You actually, at the last BDSS in August of last year, your team actually won the scavenger hunt competition because, you know, at BDSS, it's not just about listening to a bunch of presentations. 00:50:16 We actually do a lot of cool networking and cool, like, competitive things because, as you know, entrepreneurs are super competitive. And so your team actually, and a lot of this I think they attributed to you, your strategies on how to tackle everything won the entire event. That was fortunate. They did give me probably more credit than I deserve. But the truth is, we definitely love the idea of scavenger hunt. I actually had to be talked into it a little bit because I'm like, oh, I don't want to be outside in the sun all day. But everybody said, yeah, let's do it. And it was turned out it was extraordinarily fun. And we are hyper-competitive as entrepreneurs. So the moment I was like, yeah, I'm in. 00:50:58 And then it's like, I'm reading every line of code on that scavenger hunt sheet. And I'm like, how do I hack my way to number one? And we got lucky because we didn't win by much, but we did prevail. And in one of the previous events, I think it was like maybe 2021, you actually placed second in the speaker voting. At the end of each BDSS, we have the audience vote on who they thought made the best presentation. There's a cash prize for the first place and the second place. And your talk, which scared the bejesus out of a lot of people, I think, into actually voting, you know, like, holy cow, that was really good information. We had never heard anywhere else, and you got second place. 00:51:38 Yeah, I didn't threaten them if they didn't vote for me. I just happened to hopefully deliver something. They said, wow, that that's something. By the way, that's around 18 months ago. I think you're right about that timeline. And many of those predictions laid down have come true already. They have. They have. It was like you're like crazy. You're a fortune teller there. You should have put the money on Steve. Put the money on Steve. Yeah, the crystal ball apparently is not first place material, but silver medal, I'll take it. Exactly. So what's, I mean, you recently did retirement 2. 0, which I think that means instead of working 120 hours a week, it's like working 60 hours a week or something. Basically. Basically, yeah. 00:52:20 You divested out of a few businesses and cut off a few things, but there's a few things that have come up that are just taking your time. Besides spending time with entrepreneurs, which you love doing, you go to a lot of different things, and you love just hanging out and shooting the chum with entrepreneurs. There's this AI thing that you messaged me last week and said, I said, hey, have you been checking this out? You say, oh, boy, have I ever. You know, I just spent 10 hours today and, you know, whatever it was, the previous days, I'm really digging deep into this. What are you seeing out there? And I think this is something that you're going to be talking about at Billion Dollar Seller Summit, isn't what are you seeing, how this is going to change everything? 00:52:59 Well, to be honest with you, I have been absolutely covered up in AI stuff. We've done machine learning stuff for a long time where we've taken data sets and trained machines, you know, how to make some of the predictive patterns better and so forth. But AI transcends that. And it is the most significant thing that I've ever seen in my lifetime. I suspect it will be the most significant thing any of us see in our lifetimes. In terms of the world having changed, like this was the point that the pivot was made between, you know, kind of machines being used as tools to the machines becoming the forefront of productivity. And really, you know, if I summarize the title of my talk, it would be something like how to cut 50 percent of your staff and double productivity or keep the same staff and quadruple productivity. 00:53:50 It is significantly better than anyone could imagine when used correctly, when done properly. There's plenty of downsides to it and problems, but it is the most exciting thing. And we're piling every part of that into every piece of software that we create. And it is a game changer, of like an order of magnitude higher than anything I've ever seen in my life. So how is this? Different than you know people, the buzz out there in the Amazon world and the e-commerce world is use this to analyze reviews, use this to help you with your PPC, maybe you can write a better title, get different suggestions on your bullet points and stuff. What I'm going to be talking about is not that stuff right; it's going to be no different. 00:54:32 There are many tactical wins people can do right, so the if somebody says, 'Yes, I can enhance my title or my listing or my bullet points There are plenty of those tactical level things. By the way, I got bad news for everybody. China now is going to write things just as well as you, if not better, by literally typing in the prompts in Chinese and having it come out in English. The playing field just got leveled in the most terrifying way possible because one of our biggest advantages over, let's just say, foreign competitors is our native ability to speak English and to position a market. The better they get at it, Anybody, whether it's, you know, they're from China or, you know, Australia or anywhere else in a foreign market that all bets are off. 00:55:17 It's now even at least in English. And that, that part is, I'm going to try to give strategies how to avoid ceding the territory any faster than necessary. I mean, you told me like at a recent conference, I think it was at the Prosper show. You said that this stuff is like the invention of fire. I think you said, It's that revolutionary and that people there's a lot of people that aren't on the bandwagon yet. They just see the evil side of it or they just poo-poo in it or they played with it a little bit. But the power and where it's going and how fast it's moving is mind-boggling. I just can't even imagine. So this is not like the Industrial Revolution, you know, going from steam to electricity, which was transformative. 00:56:00 This is not the invention of the PC, which has created business and productivity, and it's not like the cell phone uh or the advent of the internet; this is like fire or the wheel-mankind will never be the same. I initially thought it was hype because, like, how could there be that many headlines about this topic in such a short period of time? But it turns out it's it's not hype. If you use it correctly, there are plenty of ways to use it poorly, by the way. But if you use it correctly, it will change everything forever in just about any application I can think of. And some of them, it destroys the entire industry. So for the people that are in Puerto Rico that hear your talk, and I know it's evolving and things are probably going to be added in the last second as this industry is constantly changing, what are they going to walk away with at the end of that? 00:56:48 What are they going to be like? How do you hope they feel or react? Well, my number one takeaway aspiration is that they say to themselves, This is not bad news. This is positive because now myself and my team are going to have a roadmap on how to utilize different techniques. So it's not just Chat GBT. It's not just mid-journey or stable diffusion, or I could name a hundred other AI engines. It's the method and how you use it. I'm also going to give a formula that we've been developing on how you make AI work for you the right way. And I think of it in terms of mathematics, but it's an input formula to generate a certain output. All of this is good news. 00:57:33 Every entrepreneur that I know that I've met over these many, many years, they're smart, they're aggressive, they like change, they can cope with stuff, but they'll get on board very quickly. It's their teams that we have to help augment that. And so I'm going to try to share all the techniques that I can that will say, here's why it's important. Here's why it's transformational. And here's how you get your team on board. And here's how you maximize it. It really is something else. And you already had me excited. I'm already looking forward to this talk. I'm like, because I know when you, when you get into something, you get into something. I mean, you like you master it and take it to the next level. So I'm super excited. 00:58:16 So those that are maybe out there that have never been to a BDSS, what would you say to them? What's the experience like or how is this? There's tons of conferences, lots of stuff, lots of stuff happening in June. Why should this be one that they, even though the price tag is a little bit higher than the average conference, why should this be one that they consider? Well, from my perspective, first of all, it's always a highlight of my year. Every year going to BDSS, I come away with learnings. I come away with, you know, relationships and fun memories. And that that will deliver enough ROI on its own. It's a 10x ROI for sure. But this year has the potential to be 100 times ROI because, you know, I know myself, I know some of the other speakers where we are not just competitive, not, you know, like I don't really care if I win the money. 00:59:03 In fact, I donated the money to Empowery, but I do like to win. Right. And so, my mission is to have everybody go. That was something I didn't expect. I've heard a lot of headlines. Now it's coalesced. And so not just myself, but I know every other speaker is on board with that same plan. So, you know, anybody who thinks about it, I would stop thinking and start booking and getting it done because I will be there and at your service, as they say. Awesome. And you're also going to be on a webinar we're doing on April 18th. So, I've got a bunch of the speakers that are going to be in Puerto Rico and we're doing like a hack contest. 00:59:42 It’s going to be a really cool and you might actually share a little tease of what you’re talking about, right? You mentioned you might have a few little slides or something that you can show people like they can walk away with something. Yeah, I'm going to give you a checklist on this webinar because they're very small amounts of time on that webinar. But basically a hack that. that trains ChatGPT-4 to create superhuman level mid-journey prompts. So mid-journey is a diffusion image creation that’s amazing, but it gets extraordinary. And I’m talking about superhuman level if you make the prompts right. Well, why should we make the prompts? I got a bot trained to make the prompts, and I'll show you exactly the steps to training your bot to do the same thing. 01:00:24 And again, it can absolutely transform the way you create images. That's on April 18th. It's totally free. So if you just go to BillionDollarSellerSummit. com forward slash webinar, you can sign up for that webinar. Hope to see you there. Steve, I'll see you there in just a few days. Thanks, man. I'm there. My next guest on this episode is Leo Scovio. Leo, how are you doing, man? It's good to see you. Kevin, how are you? Nice to see you again. Yes, I'm doing great, actually. You know, I'm now in Miami, no longer in Canada. So I've been enjoying the good weather, except for the past couple of days it's been raining. But other than that, it did make a difference, definitely, in the way I live day by day. 01:01:09 Your whole mindset is probably different now, right? Going from the cold to the beach and the beautiful people and the beautiful scenery and everything. Absolutely. I think, you know, it took me a while to, I think for my body actually, to get adjusted to the different type of weather. Because, you know, I was used to, you know, for the past 14 years to living in the wintertime in cold weather, right? And now it's been sunny every day. So, I think, you know, my body needs to adjust, but I'm loving it though. So, you're going to take it to the next level. I mean, you're on the coast, but now you're going to take it to an island for the Billion Dollar Solar Summit. 01:01:45 You're going to go from the coast of Miami to the island of Puerto Rico, where you're going to be trying to defend your title. Because at the last in-person Billion Dollar Seller Summit in August, I think there's this Italian dude that was up on stage and walked away with the $5,000 cash prize as the best speaker. I think that guy might have been you. So, you got a little bit of a pressure on your back to defend that title, right? That's right. That was me. And it's going to be hard this year. As I see, the lineup is obviously amazing, as expected