#341 – What Private Label Sellers Can Learn From Big Brands With Andrew Morgans

#341 - What Private Label Sellers Can Learn From Big Brands With Andrew Morga Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 341 of the AM-PM Podcast. My guest this week is Andrew Morgans. Andrew grew up in Africa but lives in the U.S. now. He's done quite a bit of travel, hasn't been to quite as many countries as I have, but he's pushing and he's been to 60 some odd. And today he's one of the top managers of some of the biggest brands in the world when it comes to Amazon, from Nestle to one of the, he got to start with one of the divisions of Adidas, a huge plethora of of big name brands and he is the caretaker for everything they do on Amazon. We're gonna talk about that, talk about travel, talk about a whole bunch of really cool stuff in this episode. And don't forget also the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is coming up in June, June 11th to the 15th in San Juan, Puerto Rico. You can go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com and get information on that. Hopefully I will see you there. But in the meantime, enjoy this episode with Andrew. 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: Andrew Morgans, welcome to the AM PM podcast. It's an honor to have you here today. Speaker 2: It's an honor to be here. You know, we recently connected and got a chance to meet each other and share a meal. But I have obviously known of your conferences and your events and obviously your expertise for a long time. So I'm honored to be on the show. Speaker 1: I appreciate you coming on, man. I knew your name, but I hadn't put a name to the face. And like you said, yeah, we were out at Prosper and we got invited to a dinner. I think Paul Barron organized this dinner at this Bazaar Meats, which was a crazy, crazy place to go and eat. And then you and I were sitting next to each other and we started chatting. We're like, holy cow, man, we got to get on each other's podcast. You host a podcast as well, or you're a co-host, I guess. You got a few others all about e-com. What's the name of that podcast? Speaker 2: Startup Puzzle. Startup Puzzle. So for the Amazon community, I am one of four hosts. We post five days a week. So my episodes come out on Tuesday. I cover all things e-commerce, Amazon, startups, software. Just all the stuff we're doing and loving in Ecom. But there's a couple other hosts there that cover just like software startups, nonprofit and minority owned businesses. So we kind of cover a variety of topics. We were at one point we were a top 15 business entrepreneurial podcasts in the world I think last year. It's growing, it's a lot of fun and I'm excited to get you on there as well. Speaker 1: Awesome. I'd love to come on. We'll make that happen. So you've got, you know, you had an interesting background. You were talking when we met at dinner, like you grew up in Africa, right? And then you like bebopped all over the world for quite some time. Tell me about that. Speaker 2: Yeah. So I think, you know, in the econ space, it's not uncommon for people to be travelers and nomads and things like that. But, you know, you go back, A few years and that was pretty irregular to be someone traveling like that if it was a digital job. I grew up to missionary parents. I was born in Montreal, Quebec. My parents were there learning French and they had went to seminary school and had a desire, a calling, I guess, so to speak, what they would say, to be in French Africa. There was not a lot of missionaries that spoke French that were there at the time. It was before social media, before all these things happened, you know, and it was really kind of seemed like it was a simpler time where it was really about just A place that didn't have education or didn't have support and people wanted to go there and help. So, I grew up shortly after Montreal where my parents learned French. I was in Cameroon, the French part of Cameroon as a kid. I mean, cement hut, no window, no screens, no electricity. Speaker 1: The true National Geographic experience. Speaker 2: In the bush. The bush, as they say. You know, and I don't think a lot of American, at least Americans like my age, can ever talk about being without electricity. You know, it's pretty rare to be able to go. And I do have a slight fear of bugs now, I won't lie. It can be pretty traumatizing. But no, long story short, Cameroon, Botswana, A short amount of time in Moscow. What I remember the most is essentially my teenage years through 16 years old in the DRC Congo and came back to Kansas City in early 2002. Went to high school for two years, went to Hawaii for four years for college. I got a computer science degree back to Kansas City in 07 and Kansas City has been home since then. Speaker 1: So, how did you actually get into this e-com stuff? You're bebopping all over. I mean, going to Hawaii for four years, that was some nice living for four years. Then they go back to Kansas City. How did you end up doing e-com? Was it to start when you're in Hawaii because you couldn't get crap out there and you had to order everything in? How did you get into it? Speaker 2: I took a chance at a startup. This was maybe 2011. I went to a startup in Tampa Florida we were selling car parts online as employee number three so it's like an older gentleman that been good at business you got a web guy. Then he got me based on my degree and having worked at MasterCard. That is when I first had my encounter with Amazon and eBay. I was putting these car parts online, contacting manufacturers, distributors, to the point of going into Chrysler Dodge Jeep and taking photos of all their OEM parts and putting them up on eBay, cataloging them, concatenating excels to make descriptions for 5,000 products at a time, really the ones that made Amazon ugly in the beginning. And, you know, but we did over a million dollars in sales and I was hooked almost from day one of really thinking about how to create these combos on eBay for trailer hitches and trailer lights and, and, okay, I'll put this together in a package with a blue border on eBay. And I can beat the competition because if I'm bundling it, I'm $30 less than everybody else. And I was just hooked with Ecom. I didn't know that it was Amazon at the time. That really was going to get my focus. But just the idea of being able to work at any time of day, put a product online, maybe in 15 minutes or something, get in a sale. I was like, this is, and marknology to me is a combination of two words, marketing and technology. And I think Ecom sits in the middle of both of those. And I know that's a lot, that's a lot, but how did I get there? For me it was, you know, it was a trial and error. I didn't know it was something I wanted to do right away. I kind of fell into it and then once I tasted it I was like, there's no looking back. Speaker 1: So you did this for this other person. When did you actually branch out on your own? Speaker 2: Okay, so one year there at this startup, did over a million in sales on eBay and Amazon, took a job at a toy company, a medium-sized toy retailer, 300 employees or so. Eight retail stores and I was the e-commerce manager. So I went from like a startup, just a startup employee with no real title to an e-commerce manager where I was over at a small department and I was getting to work inside of a more sophisticated company. It wasn't this private label seller, wholesale thing that was really going on at the time that was really growing on Amazon. I was, from another aspect, I was behind a brand, a real company that had brands and trademarks and had a marketing team and a catalog. They were trying to go from catalog being one of the biggest toy catalogs to a Being more of an online company because their retail stores were failing. I do feel like this is a difference for me and a lot of people is that early on, I saw from the inside of a company like that, all the hard conversations that had to be had to really make progress on Amazon. It was customer service, treating Amazon like the stepchild. It was the warehouse and fulfillment center needing to prioritize Amazon orders so that we hit our metrics. It was the conversations with accountants and the finance team that were, you know, always pushing back because Amazon was too weak reporting and they couldn't get good reporting and they hated it. They didn't want to mess with it. To the graphics and photography team. Not having bandwidth for Amazon to get me photos and graphics that I needed. They had the catalog and these deadlines to push out. So you talk about having an agency now that works with brands and manufacturers and sellers to do these things. My first interaction with that was from inside a company where there's a ton of resistance, but we still did 1.6 million in sales that year. So back to back years, I have these million dollar sales years that I'm the only one touching the keyboard. So it's like, there's not a lot of things out there in jobs where you as a solo person are able to tell, I made these changes and this happened or I grew this. And that was the case for both of them. And I really realized that this wasn't a team thing. This was like, this really wasn't me getting, you know, paying attention to this thing. And I got 20 cent raise that year. And it was like, you know, I think I got half of it. So it was 400 bucks and the other 400 like later on. And I just had this moment that was like, this isn't going to get me where I want to be. I want to travel the world. I want to I honestly, and I wanted to be the best e-com, because the best e-com guy that there was, I wanted to be the best. And I wasn't going to get there if they weren't sending me to training and I had these raises and I couldn't get time off. And so that's when I freelanced. I started freelancing. I read a blog, a financial blog that was like, don't just get a second job, which I'm just a worker. I almost work harder, not smarter too often, too often. Okay. I just, I'm a workhorse, like a blue collar guy in a white collar world kind of mindsets, how I described myself before. And, uh, I, I, but I, this blog said double down on what you're, you're passionate about or what you're trying to do in your career, what you're trying to, what you're trying to accomplish. And that kind of just, you know, sparked me a little bit. I didn't have mentors. I didn't have any business people I ever knew. I'm on my own, you know, and I was reading this blog and it was like, so I got on Upwork. Upwork, you know, freelancer.com, Elance, and I started finding little Amazon projects. Speaker 1: This is like 2014, 2015? Yep, before, yeah, 2014. So before all the agencies, before all the, most of the software existed, is it the early days when it was amazing.com and people going through, going through that, trying to navigate and figure out their way? Speaker 2: You're exactly right, Kevin, and I. I personally feel, and I could be proven wrong, but I feel like I was maybe one of the first that was not doing a course, that was like trying to do consulting, you know, and there wasn't anyone out there I was modeling. I didn't come from an agency background. I didn't see, there wasn't a community really at that time. There weren't people like really, no one was calling it Amazon SEO because there was search, find, buy, giveaways and all these other tactics for launching products. People weren't focused on Amazon SEO. And so during this time, I started freelancing and I started working on some cool projects and I'd make 500 bucks a weekend or something like that. Speaker 1: These are just like individual, not big brands or anything, just like individual sellers that just are trying to figure it out. Speaker 2: So it was individual sellers mainly, private label guys needed me to help them with a template file or help them with some category restrictions or things like that. But I think I was one of the only at least US-based consultants on Upwork at the time. Offering any Amazon services and all I was saying is, hey, I'm an e-commerce manager by day. I'm doing a lot of this in my day job and people would post like kind of what they were looking for. And I think people were choosing me because I was US based and they liked that I had a day job. I'd say, hey, I know how to do two out of four of these things. I'll just be honest. And be like, I'll learn the other two, like, let me help, you know, but I'm just want to be upfront that I only know how to do two out of four, we'll figure out the other two. Okay. And so I was learning by cranking out these projects, really. And, you know, wasn't making hardly anything at the time, but it was more than a 20 cent raise. And it was like, you know, it's better than bartending every Friday and Saturday and Sunday or something like that, you know, to try to get ahead. And I was loving what I was doing. Well, something crazy happened. So I wasn't amazing at that time. I was just intentional about focusing on Amazon. If that makes sense. I was just, that's what I wanted to work on because I was working on it. I was, I was seeing the results of it making people a lot of money and I was just like, this is really cool. And Upwork bought Elance or freelancer.com, maybe both of them, but it bought Elance. And when it did that, it combined my reviews on those platforms and it jumped me up to the top 10 in the world in digital marketing, in the digital marketing category. And I was the only Amazon consultant in the digital marketing category. So I believe it was a combination of the reviews, right? And like, you know, then putting those systems together, but it essentially jumped me up there. But once I'm up there, I started, I got a few clients like Adidas and Suiza. Speaker 1: And, uh, Adidas and they were, they were fine. They found you on, on Upwork. Speaker 2: To me, it's a testament of just, there was no one else doing this. Like if you know what I'm saying? Like if there was, they would be with somebody else. They had, A marketing partner at the time and that was like I came in kind of like white labeled by them. But I got to talk to Adidas directly and in the Adidas project to be specific, it was Adidas that just acquired a company called MyCoach. It was like that Fitbit smartwatch. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And they needed help building out their listings. They didn't want help with PPC. So this was a plus pages before everybody has a plus pages, right? Speaker 1: This was like something back then or something. Yeah. Speaker 2: It was EBC. You had to be vendor central. There was no brand registry for sellers. Honestly, it was like right when PPC came out. So 2015, probably 15, 16. I'm going to town on the listings and what I saw was that's helped direct my company and how I do things now is I saw the value of really good content on Amazon. Adidas had really great content. Adidas compared to Nike, Adidas is blowing Nike out the water on Amazon because they fought with Amazon. Adidas embraced Amazon. Adidas has these beautiful pages and I've been working with private label sellers but private label sellers weren't really investing in content or listing photos or any of that kind of stuff. A lot of it was just take what they've got, get you up there, maybe some supplement companies. Speaker 1: Do it as cheap as possible. Find someone on Fiverr to do it for $20. Speaker 2: Well, I'm a data guy that's actually passionate about e-com and this and you know, I'm learning the system. I'm loving it. Well, I see the data metrics change whenever I put these A-plus pages in place and I see like these great Adidas photography. It was hard for me to ever get that out of my mind. For the next, you know, I've been building my technology for nine years now. Early on, I saw the value of great content on Amazon. Whether people believe me or not, I'm like this stuff is the difference in a great conversion rate or not. So one, my technology, like I always knew that from the way I came in, like I just saw the power of really good content. And then two, I saw mismanagement of PPC by this firm that Adidas had. And I'm just one of those guys that like, for better or worse, I got to do the right thing. I got to do things the right way. I just, I can't, the shortcuts don't really, I don't even want to try the shortcuts. I want to do it the right way. And I saw them mismanaging this PPC spend. So even though I wasn't hired for it, I was like, I beg, I beg like eight times basically. And I'm not a beggar, but I was like, can you please just let me like, can you let me just fix this? Speaker 1: Like, you know, like, and this is one of the super easy to, this is the bait. I mean, basics of all basics of P PPC back then. Speaker 2: Thank you. Yes, it was very basic. And they were just, it was like one of these firms where it's like, if you don't spend the money, you lose it in the marketing department, probably like, you know, just like spend it as long as we're spending it, we're okay, budget allocation or whatever. And I am just like from A poor family, like, you know, you don't misspend money. You see all this waste. You don't throw away money. Like who does that? That's negligence. That's, you know, that's bad. So I pushed and I got them to give me their two worst products. To manage that that winner, it was a Q4. And I outperformed this firm by like 400% a cost and just all this kind of stuff. And, you know, it didn't like land me this huge contract or anything like that. But in my mind, it was this validating kind of light bulb of like, Drew, you don't know everything about all this, but you're like outperforming, you're working for some of the bigger brands of the world right now. You're outperforming any agency that they have there simply because these people aren't even focused on it or trying to learn Amazon. They're just trying to do Google techniques or whatever the case was. And so yeah, you said, was it private label sellers most of the time, but I also worked with some big brands there. And you know, long story short, I got a few private label sellers, a few brands that were like, will you stay on and manage this for us like on an ongoing basis, like 500 a month or $800 a month back then. And, you know, I only needed like five or six of those and I was, you know, I was making a lot more than I was as an e-commerce manager here in the Midwest. So that is the longest answer possible to how I got into the Amazon thing and kind of how I made that leap and went in for myself. But I did have that early background, almost two years as an e-commerce manager. From inside a bigger company with four brands and really seeing. So then when I started to go sell my technology to these brands, these manufacturers, I like had these conversations. I'd already had some of these conversations internally. And so that was really kind of how I came at it was knowing what kind of conversations they're going to have to have internally and then trying to speak to them about it. Speaker 1: And so now today, your company has grown. How many employees do you have now? We are around 45, somewhere between 45 and 50. And you manage or have a say in some of the biggest brands on the planet and what they do in e-commerce and specifically on Amazon, right? Speaker 2: Yes sir, we do. Speaker 1: Are you able to name any of those brands? Speaker 2: So, you know, we work with Nestle. So Nestle would be one of our biggest. We manage their content, their digital shelf. So Target, Walmart, Amazon. So everything from, you know, storefronts, A+, PDP images, like, you know, the whole branding, storytelling elements, all of that. Mayo Clinic, one of my personal favorites. Getting to work with Mayo Clinic, Mayo Clinic had a had a part in saving my dad's life when we were coming back from Africa. And so he was there in and out for two years, like as a patient. And, you know, 10 years later, I'm getting to work with them. And they have a lot of books, so you know, author titles and things like that. So we've been working with Mayo Clinic there. All the way down to Kevin Hart's Bruch and Nikita Dragun's Dragon Beauty. These are influencer bands. Bobby Parrish, FlavCity. That's been something I've really wanted to learn as we know the off-Amazon part is super important. Building brands on Amazon, what is that impact of a big influencer pushing it? So that was a personal want to learn, want to grow. Those are some of the brands that we've been working with. Speaker 1: So, how's it different working with these big brands versus, like you said in the beginning, you're working with a lot of private label sellers. Today, do you still work with any private label sellers or is it all just primarily the big brands? Speaker 2: So, not to be prejudiced because I love my community, okay? I love Amazon sellers. We come from the same, you know, background. We're aware of, you know, we all want to be entrepreneurs and build our own thing. What it came down to was I wanted to be the best at Amazon. I wanted to be the best at e-comm. I want to be, you know, not saying like I got to be better than you or this or that. I just want to be as good as I can be and really know this stuff. And to me, the Amazon seller had like some cognitive dissonance about something. And I just couldn't, as I started building out my agency and getting work and wanting to not churn clients and keep clients and build them and get success, it's like a lawyer, you wanna choose winners. You wanna have a winning record, so to speak, as a DA or whatever. That's kind of how I felt as an agency. If I'm not churning, if I'm picking the best brands or the ones that will be successful, my employees are gonna have the better time, my business is gonna be healthier. So as the Amazon industry started maturing, The Amazon sellers were just resistant to investing in off Amazon tactics. They're resistant to investing in content. I think I've been pushing content for three or four years now, if you look at my content, way before a lot of other Amazon industry experts. And now everyone's talking it, but for the longest time, I couldn't get these sellers to invest in content. It was not something they wanted to invest in. And a lot of other like I would say like freelancers or graphic designers, they would maybe get hired to do an Amazon project, but they weren't like Amazon experts studying Amazon all day, every day. Okay, so that all that being said, as well as China being one of the hardest, you know, competitors on the Amazon space, in general, like Amazon, Chinese sellers, not just for black hat tactics and all that you might hear, but they've got Biggest, best supply chain, access to products, their pricing. Knowing that, a lot of Amazon sellers that really pioneered the Amazon space were private labeling product from Alibaba or going to China and getting product, things like that. Well, that also meant that they're getting it from the source, from someone that can do it themselves at a cheaper price. I don't like to lose. So it was like, you know, if I work with American made stuff, for instance, that's product differentiation built in. If I, you know, deal with American manufacturers going, you know, going direct on Amazon, well, they have a great price point, they're going to have the best chance of a good margin and a healthy Amazon store if we get it right. I have to educate them a bit more and it's a little bit slower. But once the manufacturer makes the decision to work with you, they're not changing every two seconds either, right? They're like more long game. And so I just started thinking about the things that matter to me and the things that I think you need to do to be successful on Amazon. And then I started thinking about some of the major challenges on Amazon, which is like Chinese price points. So many people buy a product and then there's a Chinese seller selling it for less and they can't lower their price to match them and they're screwed. So it was that like, I'm tired of trying to convince people. What to do that's right. And I just want to, I want to build brands and be the best at it. And who's gonna, who's going to do that with me? Who cares about all these other things that we can learn together, push the envelope. And that's really what it was about. So I have If you're an Amazon seller and you care about brand, you care about holistic e-commerce, you care about longevity, you care about building something sustainable, a good business model, you're not a jerk, and you care about the same things, we can be a fit. If you're an Amazon seller and you're all those things, we can be a fit if you're trying to build a brand with those things. If not, we're just not really the best fit. We're not going to be the best fit for you if you're just wanting us to change prices and upload some listings. You know, we're brand builders, we're strategists. Speaker 1: That's where I see a big shift right now on the private label side of things. It was marketed in the beginning as like you said, just find an opportunity, go source it on Alibaba, stick your logo on it and go to the beach and check your bank account every two weeks and it should be a large deposit. And those days are pretty much over. I mean, there's still some people doing that on some scale, but It's not really sustainable long term. Amazon's been shifting to this with brand registry and emphasizing brands and all the brand content and you can only get these features if you're actually a true brand. So they've been pushing towards that and it's difficult though because a lot of people don't teach this. It's not the quick and easy way. It's a long path. It's a much more expensive path. to do it. And like you said, you know, in imagery, it's people eat. I've always said people eat with their eyes first. And I've been selling FBA since 2015. I've been doing e commerce for a lot longer than that. But it's always been about the imagery. I mean, I have a partner in one of my businesses that's a photographer, a high end fashion photographer. So he know, I mean, I've been around this and I know the value of great imagery, great video, great content. And there's not an instant payoff all the time. Sometimes you see it, you know, like you said, you put it up on the A plus content and overnight you can see a difference. But for some people it's not an instant payoff. So it's hard for them to get their head around that. Why should I spend, you know, I was spending $5,000 plus per day on a photo shoot for my private label brands. You know, custom photo shoots with custom models. And that was my business partner in another business giving me a heavy discount, you know, on his rate and stuff. And other people would look at me. You're freaking crazy. You know, I can just go drop my picture and have someone on Fiverr do this for 50 bucks, you know, drop it in a kitchen kitchen and it'll look fine. It's like, no, it won't. No, it won't. Speaker 2: I just got tired of that conversation. It's like I got. Speaker 1: It's crazy. Speaker 2: It's like if you say, hey, my price is 250 an hour, you know, as a consultant. And someone's like, well, like, are you working like 250? I'm like, I'll pay 50 an hour, like, you know, like, and you're like, I want to spend zero time convincing anyone of my value, you know, in the same time, like, you know, I grew up religious, very religious family that was like, be very passionate, you know, Pentecostal. So they're like, you know, they're, they're, they're out there. And I hated pushing Christianity on people. I just hate it. If you want to talk about it or you want to talk about price or whatever, I'm open. I'll talk to you about that at that time. But I hated pushing. I don't like pushing stuff on people. I think that might be where some of it comes from. That's why I was resistant to that for really just, I tried for quite a while, but it's like, look, I'm not going to convince you. I'm not here to debate or argue. I know for a fact after having done this for so many years that this really, really matters. And being from a missionary family, I think I'm from a family of storytellers. So that aspect of just storytelling with your content, as well as I'm I'm very competitive. I'm very, very, very competitive. I might come off laid back, but I am that person that's never really been seen. That's always trying to win, you know, kind of thing. And so I'm very competitive and I'm a gamer. So I was seeing what is the best way to beat a Chinese brand on Amazon, right? Is what everybody fears. Like everybody's like, Oh my God, well, the Chinese sellers and like everyone deals with fear. And I just think about like, okay, so what's my pivot? What's my opportunity? What's my, So what's my strength? The third strength is price point. Is it quality? Do I do wood products? I'm not going anywhere. I'm not going to quit. So I got to figure out how to beat them is kind of how I felt. The way to beat them was with better branding. So what I found that the Chinese sellers can do, they can imitate very, very well. They can imitate and copy and do product like that if it's a simple product, okay. But if I choose this lane that's not super easy to knock off and I'm able to really story tell and create an emotional connection with customers and do kind of what here in the West and the US, we like to be sold. We like to be emotionally sold on stuff. We like to be tied to it. That's just our culture. It's not like that in other parts of the world. I'm not sure everybody knows that if they haven't traveled the world. It's quite a bit different. And I was like, that's our strong suit. That's our angle on, you know, how to build a brand. What we can do better than the Chinese sellers in general is sell to the Western culture, is brand build, is story tell. Speaker 1: And they don't understand that you asked the successful Chinese sellers, like, how do you do this? Like you said, they can imitate, they can look at the data, but they don't understand what it, they don't understand the TV shows. They don't understand the culture. They don't understand what it, what it want, what, What we want and people are saying now with like AI, well, the Chinese sellers are going to have advantage. It's going to be no more, you know, what they call Chinglish or whatever in the listings where it's poorly written. But that still doesn't fix the cultural issues and knowing exactly how to push those right buttons, like you said, we like to be sold. We like that emotional connection and it's hard for them to understand that. It's not part of their culture. And that's why some things work there, work well there. You know, the video, the selling stuff via video is huge business in China. It's just not taking off here. Amazon Live and all the others have been trying to do it. It's just, it's not sticking. It's cultural. You've got to play into that cultural side. And then like you said, you're giving yourself the best competitive advantage. You're dealing with brands that already have a moat around them, that already have, they're willing to spend the money, they understand the long-term value of investing in great content and great marketing. And it's a whole different animal. But at the same time, dealing with some of these corporations, probably sometimes you want to pull your teeth out. Because it's not like dealing with a private label seller who's nimble and can switch on the fly or make a decision really quickly. Sometimes you're like, like you said, you had to go back to them eight times or whatever on that PPC. You're like, come on, this is what we need to do, but you gotta get 26 people to sign off on it. And sometimes those people, they're Harvard MBAs and they're Princeton grads and whatever, they think they know everything and they don't know shit. And so how do you navigate that? Speaker 2: Well, to be fair, when I was talking with Adidas, I was like 25 years old and I've got a couple of grays now. So, I've got a couple of grays now and I feel like it is just a little bit different conversation 10 years later in regards to age and them listening and the industry maturing and things like that, just in that regard. So, imagine just no one was talking about any of this kind of stuff and you've got this 24-year-old from Kansas City, nobody from nowhere trying to tell you how to change your business and do your things. That was part of it, right? It's just that age and experience and maturity. I knew what I was talking about. They just, you know, took them 10 years to listen. But that's been the story of my life. But you know, another thing is, Amazon was pioneered by these like techie guys or girls, like, you know, techie people, meaning like, You have to be able to figure out the back end of Amazon, Seller Central. And yeah, you had to do supply chains and operations, but it wasn't built by these creative branding types. It wasn't pioneered that way. So it was pioneered kind of by the guy in his basement or the guy on his computer or the guy like, you know, up late at night with China and that kind of stuff. These like creative branding types have been laid to the platform. Okay, because Amazon didn't give those types a lot of creativity to do any of that stuff. Well, like you said, Amazon is going this way of brand registry and Amazon Live and Amazon The TikTok version of Amazon now, I forget what it's called, and Amazon posts and all these things. I noticed that way back with Brand Registry 1, right, like 2014, 15 or whenever that came out. If you're actually obsessing about this stuff and you're not just a businessman trying to create an agency because you see an opportunity, which is fine, but if you're actually an operator, like someone that cares about it, likes to tinker, has like figured it all out yourself, maybe you have a team now, but you did these things yourselves in the early days, it's a little bit different. And I just like when you're working 100 hours a week at the beginning, I'm a little bit more like 60 hours a week now, you know, because I love this stuff. But when you're working that many hours times this many years, you start to, you're not predicting the future, you're just so in tune with what's going on that you see the trend and where it's going. Right. And so that's what I'm getting as like, I saw this move to content branding. Why? Because I saw a little bit bigger than Amazon. I saw a little bit bigger, a little bit longer game than Amazon. What has been around since the beginning of time? Storytelling. What are all the big brands that are successful in the world have in common? They have a great brand. They have great logos, great assets, a great story. And building sustainability and those types of things. Okay, it should be no different on Amazon. Maybe there's a small window of time where you could do that without that and find success. It's going to come back to what's always been tried and true, which is, you know, building a good business, good branding and storytelling elements. Don't just build yourself for one avenue, but think about the big picture. How's this work on website? How's this work in retail? How's this work in social? How's everything work together? And sometimes I think too big. But you know, I really feel like kind of seeing that and as well as the approach of like, what's best from my side of building the agency, what's best For the brand, if I'm being hired to represent them and tell them what they should be doing, my advice should be like, not what's easiest, but what's best. And from that, from that aspect, as well as you know, I've now worked with 400 plus brands, probably across my career. And the difference in seeing wins, failures, All these lessons that you get from 400 different attempts and being like, wow, that one brand really took off and it sold or because they had amazing D2C site before we started working with them. Or this brand did amazing because they had people searching for their brand on Amazon because they were in retail. And then once we optimized the listings, boom, it exploded. Or this brand did amazing because our margins were so fantastic because it was US manufacturing with a fast supply chain. You start making this kind of list of like, What were wins? What worked? What worked? And you have this failure list too, and you're like, well, we never got the good photos, or we had cheap branding, or we had a product that they knocked off before we could get it going, or we had a bad supply chain. And you kind of just start making this list of the wins and losses. And for me, it was on that side. Two more things to add to that. One, a lot of the private label brands or brands with investors were a struggle for me. Because what they're looking for, the timelines, the speed, the lack of being able to see what works and then pivot and then see what works and then pivot to get it right, to pivot to get it right, to optimize, which is what you really need, I think, on Amazon to get a listing really dialed in is several iterations of that product before it's like where it should be. And, you know, investors are like, I need projections and maps. We have people we have to respond to. And this is even before the aggregators. They're just pushy. Versus a brand builder, someone that cared to build the product, you know, because of passion as a family business or like these husband-wife teams. Those were the teams that I found a lot more success with than the run quick investor types that I'm like, It was going too fast. The expectations were wrong and we were losing projects whenever we'd have a relationship here. Well, it's really an investor over here that's guiding the ship or calling the shots. And to the upmarket stuff, I don't know. I think it goes back and forth. You have these Harvard types that are, some of them are very, very scholastically educated and they're very smart. Speaker 1: But there's a difference between smart and being tactical or being guerrilla knowledgeable. There's a difference. Speaker 2: And I think some of it came down to being able to communicate. I had to get better at communicating why I needed them to go against what they had known before. You know, a company like Nestle, they've got a media buying team, they've got a content team, they have all these separate departments inside the company. Well, an Amazon business runs, all those departments are in one. That's what the Amazon marketplace is. You've got PPC and content and supply chain and they all have to work together. Well, inside a big company, they're all separate and they don't all necessarily answer to each other or talk to each other. And so you have to know that from the outside how to communicate with them because the content team isn't going to care about PPC or media buying. They're just like, that's not my job, right? At the same time, I struggle or my team struggles with private label sellers where maybe we're still talking to the person that set it up or built it or organized it. And while they're smarter and able to move faster, a lot of them are hard-headed and won't listen to any wisdom or advice from someone that's been doing it 12 years. And so because they know it, they've done it themselves. Why should I have to pay for something I know I can do myself versus the non-private label sellers or founders that I feel like they respect our knowledge a little bit more. They respect, they're like, they're not trying to be a do-it-themselves, build their own business. They simply want to, they're the e-commerce manager, the marketing director that's responsible for the Amazon channel. And so while they care, It's not something they're trying to learn or do. And so there's just a little different dynamic there when you're like working alongside as a partner. Coaching is one thing because you tell them it, they go and do it, you know, or that. But if you're an agency working alongside a brand, you need that collaborative back and forth, you have to be able to respect each other, you have to be able to, you know, we're getting paid to give them And so, you need that trust in your team to be able to do your jobs right. And so, when I'm signing brands or clients or whatever, I'm definitely looking for that kind of like personality, that type of like, you know, who are we going to be working with? Are they going to be able to accept advice from females? Are they going to be able to accept advice from my team? You know, if I'm not the one giving it there directly. I've said a ton but I'm super passionate about this subject and the way I built it because it really does matter and I've really been very intentional about the type of clients I try to work with because I want to win. Speaker 1: How does it work when you work with these big brands? Is it based on a retainer and a flat monthly fee or is it based on a percentage of sales or if you're doing their PPC, a percentage of how much you change the numbers or a combination of all that? How does it typically work? Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a, it's a combination. I try not to make it too complicated and over nine years as someone that somewhat pioneered it, I feel sometimes like I'm like, can someone check my answer on that? But like, I didn't definitely didn't have anyone that I was asking, like, well, how did you quote your services? You know, I didn't have anyone that I was like, well, how did you build your model? How'd you build your agency? That didn't exist for me till much later, you know, 18, 19, 2019, maybe, you know, for me at first, it was, I believed that I started, I got hired a lot for PPC in the beginning. Okay, so it was out, you can almost build a brand around PPC if you're doing it right, because it's affordable. You didn't need to have good SEO or even good images at that time. There was less competition, great PPC could get you going. And I didn't even need search, find, buy or view manipulation, whatever. If you had good SEO and PPC, you could organically rank pretty easily, you could crush it. And so that's what I was doing. I started to realize, well, there's all these other things that matter. And so, you know, started fixing all those other things too, like as far as like variations and get the price right or get the coupon set up for them or get, you know, get SEO in the back end and search like all of these other operational things that matter. So to just do PPC, I had to count on the client. Or whoever was hiring me to fix those things. Well, that's not gonna happen. Okay, I'm gonna start doing those things too. Okay, now, you know, then it was like the content piece. Well, can you do that for us? Can you hire someone? Okay, I know that this really matters. If I get the content right, my PPC numbers look way better. Because the conversion rate goes up. So it was like, well, my PPC results and standards are really relying on this. I can't just focus on this. And so for me, I have built a full service agency because I really felt like you need to be in control of all these dials to really be good or at least have someone in charge of those dials. You can't just leave them or else I'm not going to be as good as I can be. Like I said, I like to do things the right way and I like to be competitive. I want to kill it. I set it up as a full service agency almost from day one, except for content. Content has come a little bit later. It was like a full service retainer at that time. It was like, what do I need to do to get them to say yes to be able to bite off this budget and then also be able to do all the things we should be doing? As my team has grown, we definitely have a la carte services. As far as if you want content or you want PPC management or you want SEO listings written or whatever the case, we can do that now. But I didn't have a big enough team to be able to have all these different custom ways we were working with people. I was like, it's kind of like this or nothing. Well, as the business has gotten more successful, as I've started some of my own brands, as aggregators have come to the space, as a bunch of different things have happened, it's really changed a lot about what people are open to as well. For us it was, I have profit sharing only, I have where we bring capital to the brand and then we split profits 50-50. They do all their own PPC budgets and inventory and I just get a percentage of sales. I like to do basically like a retainer with a kicker. So, a retainer with profit sharing based on profit, not just top line sales. So, one thing about us I think that's different is we actually are looking at profitability and helping brands get more profitable and dial in their numbers and figure out where we're losing money and where we can gain money and not just growing a business. It's like let's run a healthy business. I love a good incentive percentage based on if we get results. Let's say they're at $10,000 when we meet them, 5% of anything over $10,000 or something like that of profits plus the retainer. That's just a little bit safer. But I've been able to take a lot more risks and try a lot more things as someone bootstrapped that really put everything back into my business for a very, very long time. It just wasn't ways I could take risks with a lot of brands, just doing stuff like that. But as we get healthier and a bigger team that I can count on to help me with some of those things, we've definitely got a lot more models going. I like it. I'm still that kind of ADHD, like to try a lot of different things and see what works. And, you know, there's the patterns of the world out there. There's all these different types of models that have been very successful. I just didn't try those early and I'm kind of trying those now. Speaker 1: One of the things that you've deliberately done too is you've set your agency up and your business up to give yourself freedom of location. And one of the things that I know you love to do is to travel. How many countries have you been to? Do you know? Speaker 2: Yeah, I have been to... I'm 36. Okay. I'm 36 for context. Um, I have been to 67. That's really good. Speaker 1: That's about 66 more than most Americans. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That's right. Most Americans, their, their idea of, uh, of, uh, uh, international travels going to Cancun or, or, or taking a cruise in the Caribbean. Speaker 2: I honestly think this is like the secret sauce. Like if I can just like as a person, person to person, anyone listening to the podcast, Growing up abroad as a kid, I definitely saw how other people live on the other side of the world, you know, and maybe one of the worst is the fourth world country DRC Congo. Massive country. The country of Congo is half of the United States. So if you put it on a map, on a real map, it looks smaller, but on a real map, it's half of the United States. A massive country with just war, civil war and, you know, hunger and 99% unemployment. So I came back to the US with like an extreme amount of gratitude. Built in and perspective built in to me as a kid, just being here and being like, wow, I'm so blessed to be here and so grateful to be here. I say that humbly to just say like, that's a secret weapon in entrepreneurship. And, you know, just be grateful for every day and like, you know, get your perspective right and keep going. And when the failures come or the losses come, just it's all about mindset and, you know, getting your getting your perspective right. But that all was done for me without my dollar, without my set of funds. My parents took me around the world. So by default, I saw those things. And it wasn't vacation, guys. This was like roughing it. I'd never been on a vacation in my life, so I was in my mid-20s. Roughen it like you know, but I saw I got these gifts and then later in life I'm working at that toy company. I got two weeks a year vacation I would spend those to go to see my mom in Florida because I'm a mama's boy And I'm just really close to my family. We went through a war together. We're very close And I was just like not happy. I was Working really really hard felt like I should have earned my time to be able to travel and see some things but there's no way I'm going to Going to Italy for the first time and not seeing my mom for a full year. It's just not going to happen. Like I'm going to be home for the holidays and see her or whatever. So, um, I was like, I have to change something. I have to figure this out, you know, and it wasn't just the finances. It was like, uh, the freedom to go to, to, to choose where to work. And this was, it was not common to work remote at that time. You just, there were, you know, even 2014, it wasn't no one, not everybody was working home from with a computer, you know? And, uh, So I built my life intentionally to be able to travel because I believe in 2023 and beyond. That really travel and experiencing other cultures and other ways of living and really seeing how blessed we are to be here in America, for better or worse, you know, we have our own issues, but it's still a lot better than a lot of places. And there's nothing else that tests you as a man or woman more than, you know, being in a country, you don't speak the language, you don't have a plan telling you everything thing to do, you might be driving the other side of the road or public transport and just Having to navigate and figure things out and kind of push yourself to be uncomfortable is a secret sauce. And especially when you're sacrificing maybe your money or your savings or your time to invest in travel. Anyway, I'm not sponsored by travel. For me, it's the source of my inspiration. It's where I've met most of my closest friends that I'm still in contact with. Some of the best people I've ever met have been while traveling. And that probably didn't happen until Finally, being able to take my first trip to Germany for a round trip flight for 300 bucks or something, I found out a deal and started traveling again. Because between us, when I left Congo, I had guns in my face. My dad was dying. We had been stopped and halted by the military. Had to call a friend. I got a friend in the government to come and They release us to be able to catch our flight. They take off, they have emergency landing, pull a terrorist off the plane. Chaos, Kevin, if I'm being honest. And so for me, as much as that was built into me, there was a part of me that was very much afraid of being outside my comfort zone, of being in a foreign country, again, maybe without my parents, doing it by myself or with my sister. But once I conquered that again in my late 20s, I mean, I was back. I just, you know, fell in love again. I fell in love with it again. I don't know if it's passed down from parents or what, but you know, there's been no looking back. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to say I've been to 94 countries. I used to travel. Started my first was when I was about 16 or 17. My parents sent me on a trip to with the school. It's like a three week trip to Europe and we went to like five countries. That was my first. And then I'd been to the border of Mexico since I live in Texas with my parents. But then I did a bunch of travel. My mom worked for American Airlines, so I could I had free passes. So between like 17 or 18 when I could go on my own when I was in college, I went to school at Texas A&M. I would drive to Houston which is like an hour and a half away or so and almost every weekend catch a flight somewhere. I just have a blank ticket from my mom and whatever flight back then, the airlines didn't control the seats as well so there's more open seats. And I just, whatever flight I could get on, whether it was go to Hawaii for the weekend or go to Salt Lake City for the weekend or go to Atlanta, whatever it was, I would do it. And then one of my businesses, we did a lot of photography, so we're traveling all over the world doing, shooting models and shooting high fashion stuff and everything, and that was cool. But then when I turned 40, I was like, you know what, there's a lot of places I wanna go, it just doesn't make business sense to go to. I wanna go to Bali, but, Doing a photo shoot in Bali is just not really in the budget. Speaker 2: Economical, yeah. Speaker 1: So I'm like, I wanna go to Bali. So I said, you know, I'm gonna take the next year and I'm just gonna travel. I set up my business. I had 16 people working for me in a big office. And I'm like, you guys, I'm leaving for a couple weeks every month for the next year. And I went by myself on some trips. Some trips I took family or took friends. But that one year turned into seven. Because the more you travel, the more you wanna know. And so, I've been all seven continents. There's still some places I still want to go. You were talking before we started this. I have a map behind me and another one you can't see that has all the pens of where I've been. And I believe that travel is the best education you could get. There's nothing better than travel. Life to me is about the experiences you have and the people you meet. And there's no better way to do that than to travel and to take away a lot of your prejudices, to see that this world is not all like you, and to also, like you said, appreciate what you have in the U.S. In 2018, 2008, I actually considered, like, I was tired of a bunch of the crap in the U.S. and it wasn't nearly as bad as some of the things now, and I was like, maybe I'll move somewhere. Subscribed to International Living Magazine and I was looking at places and almost moved to Panama, the country of Panama. But then when I made my pros and cons list, I couldn't beat the U.S., even with its issues. And especially as an entrepreneur, I'm like, what's the most important stuff for me? It's running a business, starting a business, being, having my own freedom. There's no place else that you can do that better than the U.S., period, in the entire world, period. So I was like, I need to be in the U.S. So I that's one of my goals is at some point I want to start a foundation actually that actually Gifts money to younger people to travel you know in Europe. They have that that that break year What do they call it the we're between like high school and college where a lot of people they backpack around Europe? But I want to give it to where people from disadvantaged places in the US can actually Go somewhere where they don't speak the language, they don't understand the food, they don't know what the heck is going on. Because that's true travel and and experience that and I'll bankroll that for them because it's going to change them for the rest of their life. When you see the news and something's happening in Israel, or something's happening, you know, in the DR or whatever, you've been there, you understand it, you relate to it, you relate to the people. It's not like just seeing it in a movie. Speaker 2: It gives you empathy, it gives you all types of things. Speaker 1: I think it's the most important thing anybody can do is to travel and don't just One time my parents, they went to China, back before China really opened up. And then I went in 2008, I think for the first time, right before the Olympics. And I came back and my mom's like, how'd you like the food? I said, it was excellent. She said, well, when we went, it wasn't that good. All we had was rice and chicken. I said, where'd you eat? She's like, in the hotel. They said, that's where the safe place to eat is. I'm like, no, no, no. You gotta get out and eat like the locals and go. I mean, one of the first things I do when I go to a foreign country is I go to a grocery store and just walk. I may not buy anything in there, but just walk up and down the aisles, you can get a sense of the culture and the way they live. Sometimes I'd hire private guides in some of my places, just to take me around, just to make things more convenient. I wasn't backpacking necessarily, but they would take me, and by the end of a week-long trip in the Philippines, the guy's like, hey, you're buddies with these people, and they're like, come to my house. My wife and my 10-year-old daughter, they're gonna make a meal, and you sit on some plastic chairs and a tiny little, 10 by 10 hut or whatever and they borrowed you know a couple chairs from the neighbor because they didn't have enough and you sit there and eat a home-cooked meal and really experience that culture. You got to get out and do that and it changes your aspects on business, your aspects on life, what's important to you, everything. I couldn't agree more with what you're saying. I would encourage everybody listening to take advantage of what you're doing. Most of you that are listening to this are Amazon sellers. Take advantage and set up your business so you're not working 60 to 100 hours a week and change the desk and get out there. And even if it's for a week a month or a week every three months, get out there and go somewhere. Expand your horizons and it's going to make a huge difference in the quality of your life and in your business. Speaker 2: I think it's made me a unique entrepreneur in regards to just like I've been to enough places that I can think so outside the box in comparison to most people that I'm around because I've just seen so many different people living their lives differently that like my ability to see perspectives is broadened. It's heightened. It's by default. So I'm like, look, I can go to college. I can read books. I can do all these things. There's nothing like, you know, I landed in an Airbnb in a Or something like that in a foreign country and one day I'm walking north, one day I'm walking south, one day I'm walking west, east, you know, I want to be out there in the neighborhood walking around seeing what's going on. Speaker 1: I have a buddy that tells me, Kevin, you have to go down every alley. Let's just go walk down the street. But you're like, no, what's down this way? And you're like, yeah, I want to see. And I think from what this all plays a role in what you're doing for your company, I mean, you're talking about branding and empathy and getting into the mind of other people. And most people can't do that. They can't actually do that. They can't put themselves, they can't create. That true branding, unless you've experienced a lot of things, you can create true branding for people exactly like you, perhaps, but there's, the world is not exactly like you. There's a lot of variants out there and actually do true branding and true brand building. You've got to be multi, what was it, be the word, not multi-dimensional, multi-cultural, multi, you know, I don't know. There's probably some better words for that, but it's crucial. Speaker 2: It's crucial. It's why I built an agency, because for me, I could dabble in those things, but I cannot connect with every... So I have a very diverse team on purpose, so that we can come at things from a lot of different angles and perspectives and viewpoints. Religious beliefs and cultural beliefs and you name it, it makes us more diverse depending on what projects we're working on. And for me, like what I say to the audience is like, I'm from a family of five that made like $26,000 a year, like here in the US, right? So, as much as I got to travel on missions to work, which was a completely different perspective, you're out there, like I really saw, You know evil and struggle and and all that kind of stuff just like in the world in Africa But but you can get to that you can have a life where you're able to travel and have a high quality of life And without that I've built it for myself from nothing. I'm bootstrapped You know, I paid for my own college. I've like I've crawled my way up I wanted I was in my mind that I wanted a life where I would be able to travel and And I knew I didn't want to travel without being able to take care of my family first, because I knew I wouldn't be able to be happy on Bali. If I knew you know, my mom was was cleaning bedsheets or something like that, just personally. So I've not only am I doing this thing, but I've also done an honorable thing. I know you go aside, I just knew it. I'm just saying my why my intention was that But I was like, look, if this takes me nine years, 10 years, some people get it much faster. But I've been doing this, you know, e-comm thing for 12 years and mark knowledge going on nine. But I've accomplished a lot of that. And I'm traveling. I'm not just only, you know, retired my mom, I'm traveling with my mom, which for me is awesome. She's only done it the rough way. And so, you know, we've done a little bit of the fancy way, a little bizarre meets kind of thing. But no, I just say that to encourage anyone. My hashtag is WatchMeWork. If anyone follows me on social media or LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, whatever, it's WatchMeWork because I've wanted to show people. I'm not just all talk. I'm not just showing the flashy cars and the money or whatever. You could follow me for 10 years. You're going to see that I've been working to build a life that I want. And for me, that was putting travel at that list. So whether that's figuring out how to hack credit cards to get travel points at first or staying in hostels and doing it that way where it's super budget friendly and choosing all the cheap countries first so that you can do more of them than just choosing Italy. Which can be kind of expensive. I was doing Mexico and I was doing Colombia and doing Belize and Guatemala and places I could get to easier and cheaper and be able to afford it more. All of it was intentional. All of it was intentional. I've avoided countries that didn't have Wi-Fi because I couldn't work abroad there. I built a whole life around that. And along the way, I've just met the best people. You can constantly get centered. And, you know, you start to feel like a victim. You start to whine and complain about certain things. And you take a trip and you eat on a plastic chair on a dirt hut that's cleaner than most of the houses here in Kansas City, which is surprising to me. But, you know, growing up in Africa, the houses were always, even if it was dirt floors, they're cleaner, you know, and they have more respect for their things in a lot of ways than in some of our culture. And, you know, I came back here as a kid and was like, You talk about just like growing up abroad and like whatever. I came back here as a kid and I didn't, I had never seen the difference in, I'd never seen racism really until I moved back to Kansas City. You know, I was, any American I met abroad was just American. We were family, you know, regardless. And then you come back here and you're just like, wow, we have a lot to work on. But, you know, as well, I came back right after 9-11-2001 and a lady that actually saved our lives in Kinshasa, Congo, was a Muslim lady, the first Muslim I had met in my life, you know, I'm 15 years old, 14, 15 years old, this Muslim lady, Madame Malik, saved our lives as a family. I won't tell that whole story. So my first encounter with a Muslim out of Midwest Kansas City was like an angel. She was like a hero in my life. Right. And we come back here to a bunch of like disruption after 9-11 with what was going on and everything. And it was just like such a, an eyeopening experience for me. You know, I didn't even have to go through that. Overcoming my prejudice. Why? Because I'd already been exposed to a bigger thing, a big, you know, a bigger perspective. And, um, I can ramble all day, but you've got me on a hot subject that I love. You got me talking to Amazon. You got me talking to my wives and you got me talking travel. Speaker 1: So, um, we'll have to continue this on, uh, on your podcast. Speaker 2: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I, I really, right now I try, I base my life around traveling for e-comm events, which I love in the community. I love giving back to the community. Um, I remember when there wasn't a community, so. I'm thankful for it and someone else that cares about what I care about and I'm passionate about. And I travel for music because experiences to me, I don't think I've ever paid for a musical experience like live music or whatever that I've regretted. And it kind of just staples that trip in my mind. We do a bunch of things and memories come and go and whatever, but I can almost always remember how I felt in that country, usually in like a local environment, some kind of live music event. And for me, those are my highlights. Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of music, just in a couple of months, my wife and I are going to Tomorrowland in Belgium. The big EDM festival. So that's both our first time. So that should be pretty cool. Speaker 2: You surprised me. I underestimated you. I underestimated you. No, I absolutely love that. You just went up like 10 points in my book. Speaker 1: Awesome. Well, Andrew, this has been awesome. I know we could keep talking here for quite some time. We're both passionate about a lot of this stuff, but if people want to know more about your company or reach out to you for anything, how would they go about doing that? Speaker 2: Yeah, so super easy, guys. My website is www.marknology.com. My name is Andrew. If you hit me on the contact form, call me Mark. I'll still respond. You've just gone down a couple of points in my book automatically. So it's Andrew Morgans, at Andrew Morgans on Instagram, AMorgans, Andrew Morgans on LinkedIn. Obviously LinkedIn is professional. Instagram, I really like to just share my stories, my heart, my why, my thoughts, more like a journal there of sorts. But I love connecting with people. I get on these podcasts, not for business. I get on here to connect with people. So, share some value, share some stories, share some perspective. I love seeing other people trying to do the same thing and sharing that story with me. So, please reach out. I'd love to connect. Speaker 1: Awesome, Andrew. Appreciate it, man. We'll talk to you again soon. Speaker 2: Thank you, Kevin. Okay, we'll talk real soon. Thanks, everybody. Speaker 1: Andrew and I continue this conversation on his podcast, Startup Hustle. So be sure to check that out as well. Andrew has done quite a bit in his life and experienced a lot and helped a lot of people and very passionate about what he does. Passionate about building brands, passionate about travel. Someone right up my alleyway. That was a great talk with Andrew. Don't forget the Billion Dollar Seller Summit is coming up in June, June 11th to the 15th in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Hopefully, you can join us there. Information is at BillionDollarSellerSummit.com. Before we head out today, I'm just going to leave you with some words of wisdom. I actually grabbed this off of Andrew's website for his company, Marknology. He's got a quote up there from John Galesworthy that's pretty good. The quote says, a person is the sum of his or her actions, of what he or she has done, of what he or she can do, nothing else. A person is the sum of his or her actions, of what he or she has done, and of what he or she can do, nothing else. We'll see you again next week. Speaker 2: Okay.