#423 - Skateboards and Amazon Tools: Carrie Miller’s Take on Selling Smarter

#423 - Skateboards and Amazon Tools: Carrie Miller’s Take on Selling Smarter Kevin King: Welcome to episode 423 of the AM-PM Podcast. My guest this week is Miss Carrie Miller from Helium 10. We talk about her journey into this e-commerce ecosystem and what she thinks about where it's going, where the opportunities are right now with Walmart and TikTok and some of the cool new features on Helium 10, as well as a whole bunch of other really fascinating stuff. So I think you're going to really enjoy this with Carrie. And happy Thanksgiving everybody that's listening to this today on Thanksgiving or maybe you're traveling over this weekend and listening to this while you're on a plane or driving. I hope you have a great holiday weekend and if you're a selling, hope you have a killer Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Enjoy this episode with Carrie and talk to you soon. 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. Mm hmm. Kevin King: Miss Carrie Miller, how are you doing? Finally, we get you here on the AM-PM Podcast. It's about damn time, isn't it? Carrie Miller: Yeah, I would say so. I was wondering how long it would take. Thanks for having me. Kevin King: The first one, I took this podcast over two and a half years ago now. So, this is Thanksgiving week. So, this is November. This is coming out on November 28th. So, happy Thanksgiving to everybody because today is Thanksgiving if you're listening to this on Thanksgiving. Or happy Black Friday and Cyber Monday as well if you're listening to this over the weekend while you're traveling on the airplane. I took this over, this is the podcast that actually got me my start in this business. I would not be doing a Helium 10 Freedom Ticket or Helium 10 Elite or this podcast if it hadn't been for this podcast. Because when Manny Coates started Helium 10 with Guillermo Pio back in late 2015, Manny was a seller selling diffusers and socks that said, If you can see this, quit whining or something like that. Carrie Miller: Or bring me a beer or something like that, right? Kevin King: Yeah, something like that. And he started the podcast to document his journey. And then he was developing some tools on the side to just help him with his, because he had a background in software, to help him in his business. He's like, what if I just put these out there? What if I put my tools out there? And I remember him calling me and like, Kevin, actually before this, I was stepping ahead of myself. He started up with a podcast. He had the AM, well, no, it's called the FBA High Rollers Group. I think it's still around, I don't know. He had that group and it was a pretty active group and I was posting in there and he saw me post and said, hey, you should come on the podcast. This was like March of 2016. And I was like, no, no, I'm just a seller. And he's like, no, dude, just come on the podcast. So I went on and you know me, sometimes at Helium 10 they gotta censor me. They're like, you don't have to have babysitters. Like, Kevin, you can't say that or we gotta mark this down, make sure we edit that part out because he said something he shouldn't say. But I just said it like it is and it just resonated and it just took off from there. And then two and a half years ago it came full circle and I took over the podcast and I had Manny on as the first guest. Carrie Miller: So good. Kevin King: On that podcast. So I'm happy to have you on as well. Carrie Miller: Thank you. Yeah, it's funny because I actually was listening to Manny back in the day too. And I started using Helium 10 probably 2016, it was 2017. Whenever the keyword tools came out. Kevin King: So you're working at Jungle Scout and using Helium 10. Carrie Miller: Yeah, I wasn't working at Jungle Scout yet at that point. I actually learned how to sell on Amazon on YouTube with the Jungle Scout's Million Dollar Case Studies. And so I was like dog sitting. I had these terrible sales jobs. And I was just like, I worked for Clear Channel. And there were just all these kind of limitations they put on me. And I was just like, I got to do something else. So I was dog sitting at this house that had a theater. And I just was over and over watching all this content and just writing notes. And I learned how to help my dad who took over basically a skateboard brand that was failing and was selling on Amazon only like $200 a month. And I was like, I can figure this out. So I just learned how to sell on Amazon and yeah, I went from there. Kevin King: So was your dad an entrepreneur when you were growing up? Carrie Miller: Yes, he actually started a credit card processing company in the 80s when it was like just switching over from the little thing. Kevin King: Yeah, I used to have one of those little with a little metal plate and you turn those into the bank as a like a check. Yeah, wait, wait, seven days for it to hit your account. Carrie Miller: Yeah, so he started a company that did the credit card processing when they turned to like electronic terminals. That was a big business. Yeah. He had an ATM company as well. He sold both of those in the early 2000s. So yeah, he basically built a nationwide company. So yeah, he built a sales force from the ground up. He was an engineer before. And he worked for somebody else and he was like, I can't work for anyone else because he's very, very strategic, very smart. He knows how to how things work best, you know, just putting systems together. And he just was like, I can't work for other people. And so he. He went out on his own. And it's funny because he actually, the way he found his business partners was through the newspaper. They're like, we have an idea. And on these, you know, I think it was like classified ads or something. We're looking for a business partner type thing in the newspaper. In Tampa, Florida. So that's where we were living. Kevin King: This was for the skateboarding thing or this is for the credit card processing? Carrie Miller: No, this is for the credit card processing back in the 80s. That's how it was kind of like, you know, there wasn't really internet stuff going on. Kevin King: Yeah, there's Uplus Classified Ads. I actually ran some of those. I'm old enough to have run some of those, like looking for investors for my calendar business or something like that. Carrie Miller: Yeah, exactly. Kevin King: Call me at this number. Yeah, I know exactly what those type of things. Yeah, I know exactly about that. That's so funny. So once he sold in the early 2000s, you said, how did he get into the skateboarding stuff? Carrie Miller: It's basically our neighbor and friend who his son actually started the skateboard company in like 2007. And his dad invested, you know, a few million dollars into it and the son kind of squandered it. And they did a lot of parties and a lot of like red carpet, like skater event type things. And they just squandered away the money. I mean, and so basically in 2015, he asked my dad if he would help him kind of dig it out of the ditch. And I'm talking, they had these, his son and this other guy had Take a $200,000 deposit for an order that was coming from overseas and they just spent it all. Kevin King: Not on inventory, they just took the money and spent it. Carrie Miller: Yeah, they just spent it. My dad and Mark had to figure out, make sure to pay for it, get this order and then basically just kind of build it out of all kinds of things. They also weren't paying the sales people. They didn't pay any of the other employees. There were vendors who hadn't been paid. So, you know, because we were selling boards and so after took it over, obviously, but they weren't they weren't selling. They weren't paying like the vendors who sold the wheels and the trucks and all that stuff. And so really, really kind of crazy. So basically they, you know, my dad just dug it out of a hole. Kevin King: Do you see massive opportunity in it? Carrie Miller: Yeah, he saw a lot of opportunity in it. Kevin King: This kid's running in and he's just effing it up. Carrie Miller: I think he thought it was fun too, just learning a new business. Once we started selling, it started climbing and growing every single year. Then 2020, we sold out of everything. Kevin King: These are actual boards? Are these accessories? Unknown Speaker: They're boards. Carrie Miller: They're skateboards, like street decks and long boards. They're made out of bamboo so they're very flexible and so they actually last a lot longer. We've kind of gotten the construction down for the bamboo and then there's long boards as well. Street decks for skaters that do half pipes and all that and then also long boards as well. Kevin King: Do you skate yourself? Carrie Miller: No, I'm actually a rollerblader. So I can do actually a lot of, I can do ramps and everything like on rollerblades, even still, I still rollerblade. But yeah, it was, it's just, it's a cool business because there's all kinds of cool designs on the boards and it's been really fun. Now that the market's kind of trending down because people are into the electric. So we've gotten a lot of people asking, hey, are you going to do electric? And we just really don't want the liability of it. And just hasn't been something we were interested in doing. We kind of looked into it. We had some samples that we had like a full electric boards. But we were just like, I don't know. Kevin King: I'm surprised you haven't gotten into it because you're super competitive. I can just see you in roller board derbies or something like that. I mean, you're super. I mean, every time at a BDSS when we do the contest, I'm like, all right, what's Carrie going to be? She's going to be calling out somebody. She's going to be like. And we did win. Carrie Miller: I did win in Puerto Rico. Our team won those tug-of-war things against all the other guys, like all these big guys in my kind of scrawny-looking team. We beat everyone. Kevin King: That's right. You had a strategy. Someone dug in, right? Whoever was on the end dug into the sand on the beach. Carrie Miller: Yeah, so it was Jordan from Profitable Pineapple and he basically was in the back and he was like telling us when to pull and we would just all pull at the same exact time. And so the other people were kind of pulling the whole time and then they would lose their strength. So we were just like kind of pulling in increments, pull, pull, and we won. It was really... Kevin King: So you didn't get distracted by Leo without his shirt on? Carrie Miller: I think everyone did. Men and women, I think, mentioned that. Kevin King: That was so funny. Cassandra was there. Carrie Miller: That's what I remember most. Kevin King: Cassandra was the social media person for Helium 10. So she was there taking pictures. And I just remember looking over at her. She wasn't participating. She was just taking pictures. And she had the biggest smile on her face. And she came up to me afterwards and said, Kevin, I don't care if I die tomorrow. I've gone to heaven already. This has been the greatest event ever. With Leo over there without his shirt on. Carrie Miller: Andy is the nicest guy ever. So it's just, yeah, it's just so funny. Yeah. I saw men and women just kind of jaw dropped in that moment. Kevin King: That's funny. Back when I was with Manny, before I started doing BDSS, Helium 10 actually had an event called Illuminati. Helium 10 Elite used to be called Illuminati and we did two events. The way it worked is we did the first one in 2017 in Cancun in May. That's where I met Norm. That's where I met Leo. That's where I met Janelle. I met a lot of people at that. We were 55 people and we charged almost $10,000. The way it worked is if you were a Illuminati member, it was $300, call it $400 a month, but every month you got X number of points. You could apply those points towards your ticket price to come to Cancun. The price if you just bought the ticket was like $10,000, but every month you were a member, to keep you being a member, to keep you from canceling, you got, I forget what the number was, I don't know, 400 points or something like that. So if you've been a member for a year, you basically come for half price, get a $4,800 discount. It became a mess just to keep track of all that. We got rid of it. But we did that event in Cancun and then we did another one in Kauai actually at the highest in 2018, January 2018. Then Helium 10 just started taking off like crazy and Manny and Guy were like, we don't have time for nothing. We're just trying to grow this thing. It's just booming. So we quit doing it and that's how, when they stopped, I was like, well, I want to keep doing this. Mark was helping me produce them, the Illuminati, so I was like, they're like, okay, you can do this, but you can only have 50 people at your BDSS, because we're going to do this big event in Vegas, which didn't actually happen, selling scale, until like several years later. But we don't want you competing against us, so you can have the small little thing with 50 people. And so that's how BDSS started in 2019. It's like that got put into my contract and that I could do that. Now it's 150 people. It's been raised and raised and raised. That's how that started. But I remember in In Kauai in January, I can say this. I'm not saying anything bad. She's totally fine with it, but there's a friend, a seller at the time was openly gay. She's proud of it, so this is nothing. I'm not going to say anything bad. I remember Leo came on stage and she just sat in her chair just with her jaw open. I was like, Elena. Carrie Miller: I guess you changed her. Kevin King: What's going on? She's like, I don't care. I'll go straight for him. I could just sit here and watch him read the phone book. Carrie Miller: That's amazing. Kevin King: I don't know what he's saying. He's saying something about a bunch of scientific stuff about A9. I don't get it, but I don't care. Carrie Miller: That's funny. Kevin King: It was the funniest thing. Unknown Speaker: I love that. Carrie Miller: That's so funny. Kevin King: And so Leo, for those ladies listening, if you want to see one of the hottest guys in the space speak on stage, he's going to be in Iceland April 4th to the 9th at the next BDSS speaking. So if you want to come and just watch. And he's actually won before. So this is not just eye candy. This is actually a really smart guy that really knows how to do stuff. Carrie Miller: I always learn so much from him. I've learned a lot from him over the years. Kevin King: You're dog sitting. It's back to your story. You're dog sitting looking for something to do because you were a teacher before too, right? Didn't you teach? Carrie Miller: Yeah. So I was a teacher in the early 2000s basically when I graduated college and I was a teacher for five years and then I got kind of recruited from basically one of my students' moms who is actually funny. When I was at Accelerate, I saw that student. She's working as an Amazon account manager now. So yeah, she's like 24, 25. And so I saw her and it was really, really great. But I worked for her mom for like five years. And it was a skincare company just doing sales mostly like a lot of inside sales. But then I also would travel to different spas like she was her products were in like Ritz Carlton's and Waldorf Astoria. So I traveled to these locations and train people on how to sell the products and just how to use them in general so that they could sell to clients and also just training them on how to do facials and stuff like that, which I'm not an esthetician, but I was like, I'll learn it. I'll figure it out. So I did all that for about five years. And then I was trying to branch out, do more outside sales with Clear Channel. I was kind of really hindered by them because there's only 118 billboards in San Diego. And so they were like, yeah, you can sell billboards here and you can only sell to local people. But then there were all these national campaigns that took most of the billboards. So I was kind of left with a very small bit. And people, when I was reaching out to them, they were like, well, can you do digital? I don't want to spend 10 grand as a small business on a billboard, you know, because there's no real proof of ROI. It's just kind of impressions of people driving along the road, whatever road it's at. So it was a really tough sell. And then I remember they came up with geofencing, which is probably a really great thing to use now even. But the geofencing... Kevin King: I did Accelerate. Carrie Miller: Oh, you did? Yeah, geofencing is the coolest thing ever. And so they came out with geofencing. And I was like, I can sell this with like, no problem at all. I was just like making my list. And she was like, Oh, no, you can't sell geofencing unless you sell it with a billboard. And so I was like, Okay, well, That's not going to work. Whereas, I mean, I was seeing dollar signs. I was like, yes, this is, I can sell this to anyone. You could sell it to, you know, even as just like thinking as a teacher, you know, the tutoring places, you could do geofencing around schools and advertising for tutoring or anything. You could do whatever you want, any kind of service, wherever your target market might hang out most, you could advertise. So I basically quit that and I was kind of like at a loss in trying to figure out what else to do. And that's when the whole situation happened with my dad taking over the company. And I was like, well, I can figure this out. $200 a month on Amazon, I would sell that in an hour if just doing inside sales, maybe less than an hour. I would sell it just no problem. And so I was just like, that's so funny that they can't even sell more than $200 a month. And so I just learned it all on YouTube. So YouTube University is where I know I learned everything, basically. Kevin King: Real quick step back on geofencing. So we passed over that, but some of you listening may not know what the heck, which is like geofencing, what are you talking about? So what geofencing is, is it uses basically the same functionality that your map uses on your phone to know where you are, to guide you through the satellites. You can actually put up a perimeter through around a building or around a location like anybody that passes by a billboard, anybody that goes to a Dunkin Donuts and you go on a map online. There's some that you have to pay a lot of money and there's some that are self-service and you just draw a map. I did it at Accelerate in Seattle. So we had Whatever, 3,000 Amazon sellers. I was like, this is my perfect audience to sell something to. So I actually went online, paid a service and I paid like, I did like $50 a day as a test. I was testing it. And then I drew a little red box around the little convention center and any phone that passes through that gets picked up. I don't know who you are. I don't know this is Carrie Miller just passing through, but it knows your You're mid or all the IMI, EIA, whatever the, whatever the phone data, the anonymous data is. And then it basically, it's kind of like a pixel. It pixels you. And then I can start serving you ads for a long period, for whatever I want. So anybody that passed through, they know it's going to pick up everybody. It's going to pick up the janitor. It's going to pick up, you know, anybody that passes through, but you're getting a very highly targeted group of people and you target them with ads and these ads show up on, you know, if they go to Drudge or they go to CNN or they go to, Good Morning America or whatever banner ads show up and you can also put them on YouTube as pre-rolls. This person has to be watching their lunch or something, watching the YouTube and you can do all kinds of cool stuff with it. It's not the cheapest way of advertising. The cost per lead can be kind of high, but it can be extremely targeted and effective. And then I was like, okay, this is cool for three days of Accelerate, but I want to keep targeting these guys for like another week. How can I do that? Does it create like an audience? And they're like, no, it's only like those three days that you're advertising. They said what to do is just take that little red box where you drew it around the convention center and draw it around like a single post in this convention center, like just a tiny little, like one by, One foot by one foot area. And maybe something will pass through there occasionally, but you don't care, but that way I'll still running to the, they'll keep running to that other audience that you've built over three days. So it's, it's pretty cool technology. And a lot of people do that for targeting, you know, competitors will target their competitors. Yes. And it can be effective or at least for general brand awareness. Carrie Miller: Yeah, it wasn't that expensive in 2015. I'm sure it went up over time, but do you remember how much it cost per lead? Kevin King: Well, yeah, I was doing newsletter signups. It was costing me about $8. Okay, yeah, that's pretty expensive, yeah. My normal cost on a Facebook ad right now is about $278. I could probably refine that. It could be the ads I was using if I wanted to dive deeper and do some testing because when I started doing Facebook ads, it was like $550 a lead and now I'm at $278 because we've refined it. We'll probably do the same thing with the geotargeting. Carrie Miller: Yeah, I mean, you could do it for all kinds of different products too, you know, like, say you, you know, were just like, you know, in doing like a kayak, something selling a kayak or outdoor things, you can just kind of geofence an area where people are doing that, like in San Diego, there's like the whole, the whole beach area, you could, you know, say, hey, I'm selling kayaks or whatever it is, you can kind of advertise them, you can do it with products too. Kevin King: I thought about doing it at a college football stadium. You got all these young kids trying to sneak alcohol in little flasks and stuff. And there's people that sell the fake shampoo bottles and fake whatever on Amazon. And I was like, you should just target a freaking 100,000 student game, one of these big Southeastern conference games or something. And you could probably generate some sales targeting one of those stadiums. There's all kinds of cool stuff you can do. I actually covered this in the Billion Dollar Seller's newsletter. I talked about what I did at Amazon Accelerate back in September. So if you check out one of the past issues of that, you can see that. So you started So you started helping your dad with the skateboard stuff and around the same time you actually worked for Helium 10's top competitor for a little while too, right? Carrie Miller: Well, no. I actually was a freelancer. I worked for FreeUp, if you remember. Kevin King: Oh, for Nathan? Carrie Miller: Yeah, and I was one of the, probably, I think I was one of the first ones. I'm not really sure. But yeah, so basically we would be on Skype and jobs would kind of drop into Skype channels and I would just grab them and I would optimize listings for people. So I was writing and basically using Helium 10 keyword research to do the optimization and Scribbles as well. I don't know if it was called Scribbles then, but Frankenstein and Scribbles, like I would do debut. Kevin King: Frankenstein and Scribbles were the first names of them, yeah. Carrie Miller: So I would deduplicate the keywords and make sure I had all the single words in there. Also make sure I wrote in the phrases and the title and the bullets and everything. So I was definitely, you know, I was doing a really thorough job of keyword research. And I would, I did pretty well with that. And so I kept getting more and more jobs. And so I was kind of upping my price over time. For me, though, it was kind of difficult because it was very isolating. I was just always writing by myself, just writing, writing, writing. I'm an extrovert. So it was kind of like draining to me, to be honest. But I definitely used my sales kind of mindset to be able to write those listings. And I think that was kind of gave me like a leg up because it's not just, you know, writing copy. It's, you know, what are the benefits of this product for people? Why would anyone want to buy this? You have to really kind of Push what it is that people would want to buy this product for and you keep refining it as well looking at reviews and all that stuff. So and I work for some agencies too that would be working, you know, optimizing big brands like I did a lot of Arm and Hammer, a lot of big pet brands and I optimized their stuff and they actually just said, hey, you can use our Helium 10. So our Helium 10 subscriptions, I guess you'd say, then it was like you could only use a certain number of times every month. It was like you can use Cerebro, you know, however many times based on your plan. And so the count would go down. But yeah, I used all that. And I remember one guy I was doing, he was he was selling like 2 million a month on Amazon on On lights and lighting. And he was like, I'll pay you $5,000 if you just tell me your strategy because he just didn't want to pay me anymore because, you know, I was getting paid like 50 bucks an hour and he had tons of listings. And so, uh, he, uh, he was trying to pay me and I didn't give my secret, but literally the secret was Helium 10 using the tools. And honestly, the tools we have now are even better. We have a listing builder AI and it kind of analyzes your listing based on, you know, how your competitors do and just all the keywords that you utilize. So it's, it's more, It's more robust and so if anyone hasn't checked out the Listing Builder AI, it's amazing and you can definitely really, kind of like we had a Freedom Ticket person the other day, Daniela, she was talking about kind of giving yourself scores and adding all these keywords in there. We basically have a lot of that stuff in our Listing Builder AI, which is really cool. Yeah, but I was just optimizing listings and sitting alone doing that. Sorry, what? Kevin King: When did you start working for Helium 10? Carrie Miller: 2021 so I basically helped build the jungles market which is the freelancer site so because I had such. I had been doing freelancing work for such a long time. So I basically was hired just for customer service. And I really did it because I was kind of just wanting interaction. And so I built it by just kind of, and I really was only supposed to be customer service. But I was basically putting ads in all the Indeeds, like every city. I was looking for actual freelancers to build that part, and then also marketing just to actual sellers that we have these services and stuff. And so I did that and then they they're like, Oh, you know a lot about Amazon. So, you know, then I kind of moved into a different team and did their Academy stuff that's on the on the Jungle Scout thing. And then I I quit there about like, I think 2020 maybe. I don't remember. And I was working on my business with my dad. I was like, I really don't want to work for anyone else. And then Bradley reached out to me and I was like, oh, I guess I could. Because it was going back to like me being lonely again, you know. Kevin King: So it was like… But Bradley's the one that hooked you into Helium 10. Carrie Miller: He did, yeah. I think it was the same kind of idea. I was in the groups like, you know, answering questions and things like that. But he said he saw me also on YouTube on Jungle Scout. So he was like, oh yeah, let's just have a chat. And I was like, well, can't hurt to have a chat. And I always have been a huge fan of Helium 10. And I was using Helium 10 while I was at Jungle Scout because Jungle Scout is very basic. So they basically had an extension and that's Where they kind of started and it didn't really go much beyond that in terms of like innovation and things like that. They've got a few things but Helium 10 has really been the leader and the innovator in the space. I really don't think any other tools compare. Kevin King: It should be called like Helium 30 or something now, right? Not Helium 10? Carrie Miller: Yeah, and I just love the tools coming out, too. The historical trend is my favorite tool. And we're coming out with a monthly comparison where you can do more than one month of historical data. And so you can just get all this data for more than just one month at a time and just start seeing where you're lacking in keywords, where you're kind of falling off, like where you were ranking. And then all of a sudden, you fell off. You can kind of see it in a three-month period now. And I love the tools that we have. So yeah, there's so much that you can do with Helium 10. It's just amazing. Kevin King: And hopefully I'll see you on December 12th on the webinar I'm doing. Totally free webinar. You can find out more information by getting my newsletter at BillionDollarSellers.com. It's a totally free newsletter. All the details about the webinar will be on there. You don't want to miss this webinar. It's going to be something that will get you thinking. It's going to be awesome. I think the latest stats from last year that I saw was Amazon did about $750 billion. That's third-party sellers plus what they're doing on the one piece. So you might look at their balance sheet. It says we took in $492 million, but if you add in the sales that actually the third-party Because Amazon only reports their revenue part of that. They don't report the total gross of that. But when you add in that total gross, it's like $750. Walmart was like $100 billion. So it's an eighth of the size, basically, of Amazon. And TikTok Shop was like $20 billion. This was last year, 2023. So I'm sure in 2024, those numbers have shifted some. Amazon's probably even got more of a lead, if I had to guess. But TikTok has probably come up. But TikTok's total... If you put that in perspective, TikTok's total sales for 2023 were a Black Friday, Cyber Day weekend for Amazon. And that puts it into the scale in perspective. But the opportunities on TikTok, like you said, are huge right now. Is Helium 10 planning on doing any kind of TikTok tools or anything? Carrie Miller: Yes, we are. In the works. Kevin King: It's in the works. Carrie Miller: Yep. And, you know, we'll obviously always have content that goes with it. We already have a lot of great TikTok content, you know, even on the AM PM podcast, too. We've had some people talking about TikTok shops. So we'll have, you know, even more content and teach people how to do it. And so I think there's definitely some good things coming. So, yeah, I think that's a good opportunity. And I kind of like to push people where the sales are. You might as well. Kevin King: What do you think about the people say, what do you think is going to happen with this government thing with the people that say, no, you're wasting your time, get on TikTok. It's not going to be around very much longer. Carrie Miller: I think it's going to be around. I think they're going to work it out. Kevin King: I do too. Carrie Miller: I think, I think that that's just, yeah, it's too much money. You know, our, our country doesn't want to lose that and neither does China. So they'll work it out. Kevin King: I think the past, you know, if it gets nasty, I think someone will end up buying it. Bezos might even buy it or, Microsoft might buy it, but someone or Oracle, someone is going to buy it. But the Chinese are saying, well, if they buy it, the algorithm doesn't come with it because that's our secret sauce. Carrie Miller: That's the secret sauce. And you know what? Yeah, it's really interesting because it's a lot more free, too, than other like things don't get taken down as easily as they do on like Instagram. Kevin King: There's stories that actually will argue differently from you with that. Yeah, there's some things that... Someone was just telling me yesterday that they watched a documentary on TikTok and they're showing how the Chinese government manipulates everything that's on there. So if you go and try to post a video about Tiananmen Square, you know, the big tank and stuff. They censor that and they censor a lot of stuff, but things that they don't want to censor that cause strife or unrest or arguments among the American population, they actually keep it on there because it's a disruptor and they actually want that to keep there. They want those opposing venues. That does make sense. The argument of the show was that China is using this as a weapon to actually weaponize social media so that you have these factions of people that You know, you have the Trump people and the Kamala people and they don't like each other. And when Trump wins, all the Kamala people cry and Harvard University says, cancel classes because people can't just take it the next day after the election, which Harvard actually did. And so that's what they're actually after, is actually creating that kind of polarization. With the hopes that eventually long-term, this is a long-term play, over 5, 10, 15, 20 years, this fractures and weakens the United States. So that's the argument against it because the algorithm is so powerful to do that. Carrie Miller: They probably own our media companies then too because the polarization there is pretty insane. I think that there's a lot more than just TikTok and my algorithm is a little different because it's like I'm really into health stuff. So I'm into like I learned about like I told you about black seed oil. I figured out black seed oil and just a lot of health stuff. So the algorithm is so good. It's like it's pushing what you want to see. So if people are kind of really into the political scene, they're going to get a lot more. Kevin King: I would say if you want to know someone's personality, like, you know, I recently got divorced and so I'm like, next person I date, I joke about this. I'm like, I'm going to say, if I'm serious about it, I'm like, can I see your phone? Why? It's like, I just want to scroll your TikTok for a few minutes and I'll learn everything I need to know about you. Carrie Miller: Exactly. Yeah. But I will say I do agree that it's very manipulative with the emotions and the The polarization is pretty bad. So hopefully we can figure that out in the next, I don't know how long, 10 years. Kevin King: How much have you bought off a TikTok shop? Carrie Miller: I've only bought one thing and I was disappointed. So I actually, I'm one of those people that will find it on Amazon. So people are always like, oh, you know, what about Amazon? I think that it always lifts up Amazon sales because I trust Amazon way more. Like for example, I basically got this like, it was like a natural essential oil, like oil thing. And it was like for hair and nails and all that stuff. And it came from China and it was supposed to have all these essential oils and it did not have the smell of those essential oils. It was just like some weird, I just threw it in the trash. And I was like, I don't know how to return this. I don't know how to deal with it. So I just basically just was like, I'm throwing in the trash. And I think they've kind of cracked down on shipping directly from China because you have to do two-day shipping. But I was just like, you know what? I don't trust this. And so I'll find it. There was a mop that I saw. It's like a spin mop. And I was like, I need a mop. So I found the exact one on Amazon. And you just look at the brand name. The brand name's on there. You just look at the brand name. And I just go straight to Amazon and find it there and buy it there. I think I've purchased quite a few things that I've learned about on TikTok on Amazon. Kevin King: Yeah, I have too. I had enough purchase on TikTok shot because it's just so easy. Just boom, boom and you're done and you continue watching videos of cats do somersaults. Carrie Miller: Yeah, I'm more skeptical though because I know like e-commerce and I just don't feel like it's there yet. So I was like, you know, Amazon's got it down. Kevin King: What do you think is going to happen with Teemu and Amazon's knockoff, their attempt to compete? I know you cover this because you sometimes do the Helium 10 Buzz. You cover some of the stuff when you do the weekly Helium 10 Buzz and stuff. Carrie Miller: You mean how they're going to do? Kevin King: How you think Teemu is going to do and how you think Amazon is going to do with this new low-priced Teemu competitor store. Carrie Miller: So Amazon with the Timu competitor, I think that that's pretty, I think I was a little frustrated because they should allow US sellers to be able to do the same thing if they're going to allow Chinese sellers to do it. Because we can do the same thing, you know, drop shipping from China as well. And so I wonder if they're going to open it up to everyone or if they're just testing it with the Chinese sellers. I'm not sure. But with Timu, they're kind of wanting everything to be in the US. So I feel like they're maybe kind of going towards more quality and That kind of thing, but I'm not really sure. I just think that because they want to sell products. That are here already in the U.S. that they might be looking more for kind of the U.S. sellers for kind of more profitability that way. Just kind of that customer service, you know, addition there. I don't know how many returns they get, but I know that people say the quality overall hasn't been very good. And some people are like, oh, I don't care about the quality. It's fine. So I'm not really sure where it'll go. I personally don't buy on TMU because I don't like to buy just junk stuff. And so that's I don't know how many people feel that way and maybe they realize that and they're like, okay, well, we want U.S. sellers on there because I know you sent stuff out there. They're trying to recruit U.S. sellers because we can really control the quality because we might have the same product coming from China, but the U.S. seller is going to insist on the quality. Like for us, we insist on the quality. I've gone back even with the same product that we launched in 2018. I'm going back and back and saying, this pre-production sample is off. We need to make sure to make these changes and will not accept them to start production until we get the exact thing. And then we also have inspections as well. So there's that level of quality that comes from the US sellers that is not there with the Chinese sellers. Kevin King: Someone at Timu, I don't know if this is true or not, but someone at Timu, one of the business development guys, told me they don't care about the Chinese sellers. Like, what are you talking about you don't care about? That's like your core of your business. We use them. We use them to get market share, to do all these cheap, cruddy products and to get stuff in, to get known, to get market share. And our goal now is to do exactly what you just said, is to flip it to US-based sellers where it's better quality. And so that was what he said. It was a deliberate play against the Chinese. I'm not saying that they're not going to continue doing Chinese sellers, but they said that that was just a stepping stone. We don't care as much about them as we do actually getting quality US sellers that'll sell higher ticket items and not just the junk. Carrie Miller: Yeah, that makes sense to me because if you want people to order over and over like they do on Amazon, you don't want junk. Because I order from Amazon because I get pretty good quality stuff most of the time. And if I don't get a good quality, I'm going to return it. So they're probably feeling that same thing as like, oh, we could sell all this junk, but we're not going to be profitable long term because that's not what people want. Kevin King: You said you don't get junk on Amazon, but there's a lot of junk on Amazon. So I think it may be because you're a seller and you know the other side of these listings and you look at listings. I think us as sellers look at listings in a different way than the average person. We look at it and go, that's crap. I'm not ordering that. Or this is a black hat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not ordering that. I think as a seller, once you're in this game, you actually shop differently on Amazon. Carrie Miller: Yeah, I also look at the reviews to see if a ton of them just appeared all at the same time. And, you know, just random strategies like that. But yeah, I look at the copy and see how it's written and. Kevin King: Yeah, well, I think we shot differently. So that's why you're not getting junk. Carrie Miller: Yeah. Kevin King: Because you know how to filter it properly from the other side. Carrie Miller: That's true. That's true. Yeah. So I think that's a good idea on Timu's part to go more quality. I actually like the idea of going back to what it was like 50 years ago where we would buy. I mean, I wasn't around 50 years ago, but like Anyone would buy something and it would last. I remember my dad had a cooler that was 50 years old. It was so old, but it was still working super well. Things didn't just break after three or four years or two years or one year. You buy a TV every four years, it's pretty much you've got to replace it and things like that. That would be a cool step in the right direction if we had these higher quality products that lasted a long time. Obviously, not for reorder rates. Kevin King: What do you think is going to happen if Trump, you know, some of the stuff that now he's going to be president, some of the stuff he was saying he's going to do, if he actually follows through on it and does 60% tariffs and 25% tariffs on Mexico and 10 to 20% on the rest of the world and all this kind of stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Carrie Miller: I think that's going to encourage a lot more manufacturing in the U.S., which is a cool thing, too, especially, you know, for think about the car industry. I 100 percent don't want my car to be manufactured in China or anywhere else. I want it in Detroit, Michigan. I want the high quality standards. That's the kind of thing that I want to. And so I think that, you know, they were going to build a bunch of plants in Mexico and they're like, well, I guess we're not going to do that now. So they're, you know, keeping that industry in the U.S. I think that It will bring back a lot of industry and we actually were already thinking about how we can manufacture our products here as well. And so there's that piece to it. But in terms of, you know, the actual taxes, it's not going to be on the retail price, but usually it, you know, it kind of just gets passed on. Kevin King: Well, yeah, if it's a $5 landing cost and it's a 60% tariff, there's already a 25% tariff that most people don't realize and maybe a duty on top of that. So it could be another 2 to 20% or something on average, but let's just call it 5%. So there's a 30% on average. That's being added now, so if it's a $5 cost from the factory, already we're at $1.50. So if we add 60%, it's going to take it from $1.50 to $3. I mean, I don't know that he said he was going to raise it that much. Carrie Miller: I think it has to do with negotiation. Kevin King: Yeah, he said as high as 60%. Carrie Miller: I think it depends on the country. Kevin King: China is 60%. Carrie Miller: China, he said specifically 60%. Kevin King: China specifically is 60% and then there's other countries are 10 to 20% depending on the country. Carrie Miller: And then Mexico is 25. I think he's playing the game of like, hey, you guys are, you know, taking advantage of our exports to your country and charging the taxes. Kevin King: That's a negotiation thing. I don't think it's going to actually get, there could be some changes. I think you should expect some changes, but Trump is the type, it's just like when he was elected the first time. He's like, we're going to build a wall to keep the Latin Americans out and Mexico is going to pay for it. And people made fun of him, but that's just negotiation. That's an outlandish thing, just to establish a frame of reference and then you negotiate off of that. And then it makes it look like the final negotiation is a much better deal where maybe they weren't going to pay anything and we were going to have to build it all out of our taxpayer money. And because he said that and because he played the game, they're like, maybe we should help out here. And so in the end, they, I don't know, they pitch in a hundred million bucks or something. Carrie Miller: I think people forget that he wrote the art of the deal. Kevin King: Yeah, exactly. I mean, so that's, that's, you know, whether you, we're not trying to make this a political talk, a podcast, but whether you like Trump or dislike him, you know, the guy has a lot of personality things and you can make a case that he's a total asshole. But from a business point of view and from what's good, there's a lot of good things. And he gets panned a lot for some of the crazy stuff he says, but a lot of that's very deliberate. And it's to actually get the result that we actually want in the end. But it comes across as this guy's crazy and lunatic and who is this? And if you go back and read some of his, like you just said, Art of the Deal, I've read, this was 30 years ago that I read it when it came out. Carrie Miller: That's what my dad read. Kevin King: I read his books back then. This was before there was any political stuff or any of this other stuff going on. It was smart business. Back when he ran the first time, this guy He's had X number of bankruptcies. He has this and that. You're gonna have this guy lead our country and he's done bankruptcy. Yeah, that's actually smart business the way he did it And just there's just a lot of misconceptions there whether you you like the guy or not like the guy That's okay. You know, you don't like his morals. You don't like his personality, but he gets stuff done as a business person That's I like people that get stuff done as a business person, but I don't like paying a 25% tariff on my goods, but that gets passed on and that's just part of the game. Carrie Miller: I think it's just kind of standing up for our country and it's kind of all working together as a whole. We're here to be respected and not taken advantage of. And everyone else, if they're going to tax us, we're going to tax the imports. So that's just kind of the way it works. But I kind of hope we bring some manufacturing back to the US to get higher quality products overall that last a long time. Because I think a lot of those American companies have kind of moved out to China. Even Apple, they're all manufactured in China. If we could manufacture more here, I think that we could have higher quality products that last longer. It's funny because I'm a millennial and people are always like, oh, the millennials, they're not as successful as the boomers or this, that. I'm like, yeah, but the millennials have to literally pay for stuff all the time that breaks. We have to keep buying stuff that maybe my dad. We inherited a TV. Kevin King: That's part of the business model though. That's the business model is they don't want the stuff to last. They want it to break. It's a recurring revenue. Carrie Miller: It's a recurring revenue, but if we start manufacturing in the US, you'll get some quality stuff. We can export it worldwide, and it's better for everyone. But I just think it's so funny because I'm like, yeah, we have to literally buy stuff over and over and over again. When our parents didn't, we inherited our TV from our grandma, and we had it for like 10 or 15 years after that. Kevin King: You still have one of those big box TVs that takes up half the wall? Carrie Miller: Well, we did. We did until the early 2000s. Kevin King: Yeah. Carrie Miller: So it was a huge, it was sitting on the ground and it had like a built wooden thing around it. It was like, you know. Kevin King: And a string for the remote control, like you had to stretch across the living room. Carrie Miller: Well, we actually had a remote too, but. Kevin King: But the remotes had a string, they weren't infrared. Carrie Miller: Yeah, so I mean, I just I think that could be a really good thing. It's just those high quality products that manufactured made in the USA. I like that idea. Maybe it's just a dream. But I like the idea of not buying things over and over again. I like the idea of innovation and quality products. And that's that's kind of where I'm at. But I'm, I'm hopeful and excited for the future. I think that we the future is bright. I think I think that's I think there's a lot of good things on the horizon. Kevin King: What do you think about the importance of like you said that you watch YouTube videos in the beginning, and then you kind of got lonely. And that's why you started doing some consulting and that's why you did some stuff with Jungle Scout and that's why you can when Bradley called you. You came to Helium 10 because you're kind of just like, okay, I need to have some social place station. I'm an extrovert. What is it about events that you think is so important? And being part of a group like Helium 10 Elite, or you go to some events, you go to some of my events, you go to some other events in the industry. What do you think about the importance of doing that kind of stuff is? Carrie Miller: I think there's something, I feel like there's something like psychologically about it. It energizes you to get around people that are in the same kind of thing, doing the same thing as you, and you can relate to people a lot better. But, you know, for example, Elite, we meet every week, either on the roundtable with you, or we have an Elite networking call, and everyone is able to kind of relate to each other on a different level. You know, if I try to talk about this with other friends, they're like, yeah, yeah, Carrie, like they just like glaze over, you know. But these are kind of your people where you can get energized, you can get ideas from them, they can help you with issues. And when you go to conferences, you're learning more and you're networking and you're building a group of people that you can learn from and they can learn from you and you can kind of share ideas and kind of grow all together. But there's an energy that comes when you're kind of revived and refreshed, when even though you might be tired, you're excited about new ideas. Whereas if you're by yourself, you kind of just get into this mundane, like tired feeling. And you kind of lose energy, you lose momentum. And I think it's really, really good to get around people. It's just like even at Helium 10, I'm going into the office next week. And whenever I go to the office, I am always re-energized and more excited about the things that we're doing with Helium 10 too. After going in and being around everybody in person. So there is just something really special about being in person. I think we're meant to be like, I think physiologically we're just meant to be around people and being around like-minded people is an amazing thing. So I don't recommend just, you know, wearing yourself out and going to a tons and tons of events, but finding the few that, you know, you know, that are going to be good and high quality events and focusing on those. Kevin King: A lot of people say when they go to these events, they come back with all these ideas. And then what happens is a lot of times they end up implementing zero. They learn all this cool stuff and like, that's cool. I need to do that. But there's so much they get overwhelmed. They're like, there's 10 different things I just learned at this Helium 10 Elite quarterly webinar or this BDSS event or whatever. And they end up doing none of them versus they should just pick one or two of them and implement those right away. Do you have any advice for what you do when you come to a BDSS event or when you go to an event and you pick up something? Carrie Miller: So it's funny because I was talking to Janelle Page about this. And she basically said she wasn't allowed to go to another event unless she implemented one thing that she learned from the last event. I thought that was a good rule. You have to at least implement one thing from that event before or you can't go. I think that's probably the biggest thing is finding at least one thing and just not allowing yourself to just keep going to conferences and just wasting. Kevin King: How many BDSSs have you been to? Four? Carrie Miller: Yeah, I think so. Kevin King: Sure, but you haven't been to the Market Master's Think Tank yet. Carrie Miller: No. Kevin King: Yeah, that one, we'll have to get you out in February. You'll have to be the Helium 10 representative or something. Carrie Miller: I would love that. Kevin King: I think it conflicted with Accelerate or something this last time. The next one's in February, February 20th to 24th, so you should come out and be an expert on that. Carrie Miller: I would love that, yeah. Kevin King: I think you'll, this event is, you know BDSS, so you know how we do those, but people, this was a 10 out of 10 by everybody. At one point after it got over, I was like, holy shit, maybe I should just do these and quit doing BDSS. Carrie Miller: Really? Kevin King: Because it's that impactful and not only on the 12 people that sat in the think tanks that paid to be there and to get this advice, but the experts. Because I was a little afraid because I had 12 sessions and each session had six to seven experts on it. So basically the people that paid to be there, they would tell me these are my pain points. I need to know X, Y, and Z, and then I would go find experts that could help them with that. Maybe they said, I want to launch on TikTok shop, so I made sure Michelle Barron-Smith's there and Janelle's there or whatever. And then maybe they said, one of their others, I'm looking to exit my business. So all right, Scott Dietz, you need to be there and so on. And so I curated it, and I was like, these guys are donating their time. They charge a lot of money for consulting to do this. Yeah, I'm paying to put them up and feed them, but they're flying themselves there. I don't pay for airfare, so they're getting themselves there. I can't tell them they've got to work the whole weekend. There's four of these a day and they last two to two and a half hours each. And I can't say, so I was divvying it up like people get in two or three and the rest of the time they just hang out, chill, take advantage of the mansion, play pickleball, go in the pool, go hang out, do whatever. It's a cool place to do this. You're not going to get bored. By the end of it, we didn't have six or seven experts on a panel. We had nine or ten. Everybody was like, put me on another one. Put me on another one. Carrie Miller: I'm like, are you sure? Kevin King: Put me on another one because I'm learning as much by being an expert and contributing as the person sitting in the chair because of other people talking around the table. The time flew fast because everybody's there, at least for us, people like me and you, we're talking about what we love to talk about. So you look up and like, shoot, where did the two hours go? That was too much fun. So I would love to have you at that one as an expert. Carrie Miller: I'll put it on my calendar, so I will be there. Kevin King: Knowing you, I think you'll really enjoy it. Carrie Miller: I do. I'm usually in the front row at BDSS, always listening to everything that's going on. Definitely have learned a lot over the years. Kevin King: And you're trying to get your dad to come to Iceland, right? Carrie Miller: Yeah, I don't know if it's going to happen, but we're working on it. Kevin King: Well, you're coming, though, right? Carrie Miller: That's the plan. Yeah, that's for me. So I'm hoping to, anyway. That's what I think. Kevin King: That's in April. April 4th to the 9th. And then I'm doing Elevate 360 this year. Carrie Miller: I want to do that too. Yeah. Kevin King: I have the number one Google guy in the world speaking. Carrie Miller: Amazing. Kevin King: And I have the guy who made Mr. Beast famous, who actually was behind his whole YouTube strategy. Carrie Miller: That guy's crazy. Kevin King: He's speaking. He's speaking. Carrie Miller: Isn't Mr. Beast in jail or something? Kevin King: He's getting into some trouble right now. I'm not worried about that side. Carrie Miller: This is the guy that actually knew the marketing genius behind it. Kevin King: Marketing genius on the YouTube algorithm. Carrie Miller: Amazing. Kevin King: And so he's going to be speaking and there's a bunch of other other really cool stuff. So it's going to be from level up last year. This is going to be like even I'm excited. It's like, yeah, it's another level up. Carrie Miller: That's really good. Yeah. I was one of the original level up people. Kevin King: You're the guinea pig. You're in the guinea pig group. Yeah. We level up to see and we learn some stuff like, okay, this worked really good, but we need to do this and we need to change this. So we're making those changes on that. And that event's going to get spun out eventually, not tagged onto BDSS. It is now to help it grow, but at some point that's going to be its own standalone event. And it'll appeal to more than just Amazon people. It'll appeal to the entire e-com industry. Carrie Miller: I liked it because it was a small group though, because you really got to know people better that I've seen. There are some people that I've seen at industry events like Athena, but I never really got to know her, but I got to know her at that event a lot better. Just had time to kind of sit down with some of these people that are always, you know, they're usually busy doing other things. So it was really, it was really cool. Kevin King: Shoot, I'm looking up here. This has been too much fun. We're already past an hour. Bradley's going to kill me. He's going to be like, Kevin, quit making them so long. I'm like, yeah, but they're cool. What are you going to tell Carrie? You're going to cut on this. You go tell Carrie. It's all good. So if people want to know more about Ms. Carrie Miller, I guess they should just follow you at Helium 10 on LinkedIn or follow you or anything you want to tell everybody to go check out something coming up on Helium 10 or something that they need to make sure they do. Carrie Miller: Yeah. Kevin King: I mean, webinars or trainings or tools coming out or anything. Carrie Miller: Well, obviously, the Freedom Ticket webinars that you and I have been doing are amazing. Like with Daniella, this last week was just amazing. She talked about listing optimization and just things that people haven't always talked about and some of the things that I've been listening to. And so I think she brought a new perspective. But every month, we have the Freedom Ticket webinars. And I think that's a good place to go. We do have occasional other types of webinars, but we are coming out with new tools all the time. And like I said, our historical trend tool that, I think Abe Jamali said it's the literal, like the main reason he likes to use Helium 10 is our historical trend tool. And we're expanding on that and making it even better. And that's coming out in a few weeks. We are, our listing builder AI, I don't think has gotten the attention that I think it deserves. It's incredible. And if you are a big data person and you haven't ever tried Market Tracker 360 to kind of look at your overall market and trends, it's an amazing tool. So, I mean, there's a lot of things Continually coming, and I think just keep in touch with us. If you haven't signed up with our email list and things like that, you want to do that. But LinkedIn is a great way to follow me. I was posting for a little while, and then I kind of fell off. But I'm going to start posting, again, more content of things, specifically Helium 10, and ways that it can help you. Because Helium 10 is the biggest way that I've been able to grow over the years. And it's the way I helped tons of brands to optimize their listings. It's definitely the best tool. To really help you get out there. I don't know how anyone does it without, you know, those tools. So yeah, I'll continue to post content on LinkedIn. So just search Carrie Miller Helium 10. C-A-R-R-I-E Miller Helium 10 and you should find me on LinkedIn and you can just connect with me there and message me if you want to. Kevin King: Thank you so much, Carrie, for joining me today and chit-chatting. Carrie Miller: Yeah, thanks for having me. Kevin King: All right, we'll talk to you soon. Carrie Miller: Okay, talk to you later. Kevin King: Always a pleasure speaking with Carrie from Helium 10. You know, if you want to check out the Freedom Ticket, you can go to freedomticket.com. Or if you want to check out Helium 10 Elite, you can go to h10.me slash elite and you can join us for like the monthly webinar that she talked about on Freedom Tickets, totally free. Or you can join us at Helium 10 Elite where I do training every single month. I do a two-hour mastermind session. Carrie jumps on every month as well and Shivali and Bradley, so be sure to check those out. And check out the latest stuff in Helium 10, like the new AI optimized listing tool. Sounds really, really cool, so I recommend you go and check that out if you haven't checked that out yet. We'll be back again next week with another awesome episode of the AM-PM Podcast. I've got some parting words of wisdom for you. As Zig Ziglar famously said, if you help other people get what they want, you'll get what you need. If you help other people get what they want, you'll get what you need. Take care and we'll talk to you next week.