#446 - Danny McMillan's Insights on Adapting to Industry Shifts

#446 - Danny McMillan's Insights on Adapting to Industry Shifts Kevin King: Welcome to episode 446 of the AM-PM Podcast. My guest this week is none other than Dream 100 member Danny McMillan. Danny's been around this game for quite some time. He's a thought leader. He's leading the way when it comes to research on Amazon's patents and scientific papers when it comes to Cosmo and Rufus and all the AI changes. He also hosts an event, Seller Sessions, one of the most popular events in the European market. And he's got an agency and some thoughts on what's happening in the agency world right now. This is going to be an interesting discussion. I hope you enjoy this talk with Danny McMillan. 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. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King: Mr. Danny McMillan, how are you doing, man? Good to have you here on the AM PM podcast. I think it's been a been a day or two. Danny McMillan: Yes, it has. You gracefully took care of me over in in Iceland. So thank you for that. It was lovely to come over. Kevin King: It's good to have you have you over. I mean, it was just a short little hop, you know, what's it like to go to a conference where you don't have to have jet lag? Danny McMillan: Yes, it's refreshing really, wasn't it? I mean, Prague isn't going to give you jet lag, but we'd already just done Prosper, didn't we? I mean, you came straight in and put on an event, and it takes a lot out of you to do that. Kevin King: Two events. Danny McMillan: Two events. Yeah, yeah. Kevin King: I'm three at MDS, Prosper and then a podcast show with Norm. Danny McMillan: Yes, indeed. I don't know where you get the energy. Kevin King: And a few weeks before that, we did a Market Masters in Austin. It's a lot. That's for sure. I mean, you know, you produce events. You have one coming up, Seller Sessions. It's one of the top events in the European market. You've been doing that how many years now? About seven, eight? Danny McMillan: 2019. So yeah, we've been going six years. Kevin King: Oh, same as me on BDSS. I thought you started it before that. Danny McMillan: No, the podcast started at the beginning of 2017 and then it was 2019 that we did the first one in terms of the conference. Kevin King: Yeah, you're doing, and they've always been one day. No, you did a two-day event once. You did a woman one, right? Danny McMillan: Yeah, so what happened was we did June 1st 2019 was the first Seller Sessions and then we had COVID and I moved the date six times. It cost me about 40 grand because you had to keep laying out money and obviously COVID changed. Then we did that 21 in the October and that was the one that Yeah, no, then we did that one just that was the first event out COVID because it's like that little week or so gap. So yeah, we were you know, they allow open and it was safe to for the distance in stuff and we fell into that and I think was the first out the traps in terms of confidence, but I did move it six times because I was over What's the word for it? You know, not overconfident. You just want to get back. So you go, look, do you know what? I'm just going to book it and then we'll see what happens. And I had to move it six times. But we got it out. It was great because people hadn't been out properly, you know, it's the first time. And then in 22, we did Branded by Women. What we did is we did seller sessions on a Saturday and then did Branded by Women on a Friday. Kevin King: I was at that one. Danny McMillan: Yeah, that was 22. Yeah. So you were there because you were there with Isabella. She was leading that with Sharon. So yeah, that was 22. So we did the two one-day conferences together and then a lot of people, we subsidized the ticket and it means it could roll into two. So people come for like workshops and VIP dinner and the Friday drinks. So by doing that and being able to do a cooped-in price for that event and that, it kind of worked well together to do the both. Kevin King: Now, the events in Europe are different than the events in the U.S. They're usually quite a bit smaller when it comes to the Amazon world, and there's not nearly as many of them. And from what you've told me, they're a harder sell. It's harder to get the Europeans to come out to events than it is to get the Americans. Danny McMillan: Well, I always say this because we do have American friends who come over and go, I'm going to go to the U.K. and then end up with 12 people down in Manchester and you never see them again. Because what it is, and I don't mean that in a funny way, like UK is tiny, right? And if you think, when you all got the mindset of the US, you look around, right? There's conferences, there's events on all the time, yeah? And it's a bigger country, there's more per capita of the sellers. And what happens is you find in Europe, like half my audience, they fly in. So they're coming from Estonia, Germany. Spain, Italy, Romania, and then the other half will be UK. And what I've noticed is part of the reason, you know, we just sold our sixth one out. It's incredible we've done that considering the market. Kevin King: Congratulations. Danny McMillan: Thank you. But part of that reason is one, we're small. We're 200 or less. Now we're at 147 because we've got all the workstations now. So it takes up more capacity in the venue for the layout. And I say this to people because what they do is they go, Dan, you should do it every three months, every six months. Now, if I did that. Then you don't have that demand, because everyone goes, oh, I'll go to the next one. I'll go to the next one. And I won't name names, but someone tried to do that a couple of years ago, about 18 months ago. Amazon stuck 350 grand behind it, and they went off and done all these events. Kevin King: Yeah, they did a little tour around the world. Danny McMillan: Yeah, and the problem with that is... Kevin King: It didn't work. Danny McMillan: Well, it's not just that part of it. There's many factors, as you know, putting on an event, right? A lot of people will look at seller sessions or look at a billion-dollar seller summit, And I've had people in the UK because I've helped them bow out. I know someone who booked somewhere over the O2. It wasn't the arena or anything. But he said, I looked at Seller Sessions and I thought, I can do that. And I started putting my tickets out, put them out. They were a bit more than yours, Dan. They were $4.99. He didn't have anyone on line up and stuff. And he said, He contacted me one day, he said, Dan, I just don't understand. I said, first thing, I've had an audience, right? And the second thing, you've not put anyone on the lineup. You've looked at what we do, the mechanics, and think that works. And I say that because for you, do you remember we used to joke, like, you had the old school websites, like a notepad. And I always said, like, it's because you're Kevin King, right? Because you built those relationships. It's almost like, well, I can do websites like that, but other people that don't have the branding or have the support or built a community and stuff like that, you can't just stick on events and expect them to fill out. And the second thing is for us in the UK, it takes a year to do that, that build, right? And the thing is, I mean, I've probably been doing events just as long as you. I did my first event in 94, so this is my... 31 years I've been putting on events on and off. I didn't do them every single year, but I have done since 2019. But I put on my first events and I've done and co-promoted even a Wembley Conference Center, Revelation for a label I worked with. We've done some bigger events as well, but I did a lot of smaller events throughout that period as well. But this has been more of my most consistent part. But after years of doing events, you realize it's about experience. It depends on your experience is going to be different to mine, right? In terms of what you do and the way that you do it and the way that we do it here, but you have a character as part of that, right? So people are buying into something that they can get their head around. It's not just generic. There's something about it that they like, which attracts them. And that is part of doing events because you know this as well, like events are a zero-sum game. The moment you've got a half-empty venue, the customers don't come back. They go, well, this is ****, right? And then you're not going to get the sponsors because the sponsors are going to nickel and dime you. So, well, the last one didn't, you know. How about we knock that down by, you know, 75% and we'll see how you get on. Do you understand what I mean? So what we do is a zero-sum game if it's like, you know, atrocious. So events are hard and they're harder now and they'll carry on getting harder to do. I don't know if you agree. Kevin King: I agree. There's a big change in both of us. You're pivoting. We'll talk about that in here in just a second. You're pivoting this year in the way that you're Doing seller sessions, I'm pivoting next year in the way I'm doing BDSS because there is a change. One, there's a ton of events and people have to choose. They can't just go to everything. And then a lot of them are just cookie cutter. Like you just said, they're just the same old thing. They're not really an experience. I mean, as you know, you've been to a couple of BDSSs. We make them a total experience. Danny McMillan: I mean, look, let's look at you. I'm like 7'11 compared to you guys. Do you know what I mean? You're high roller events. So, I used to joke about this with a female. I said, look, you know, you've got Instagram. And like we do get a fabulous, do you know what I mean? With the other end of the market and own it. Does that make sense? So, and like you do very luxurious events, but that is your thing. And that's what makes it what it is and why people go. Cause no one does events like you. Yeah. You're not cooking. Kevin King: There's no one, there's no one even remotely close. I mean, the closest might be Titan from some of what they do from a production value, but it's completely different. It's a completely different deal. Danny McMillan: That's a network, right? That's a network. And it's a different vibe to what you do. People buy in to Kevin King and people have listened to the podcast. I'm not Kevin King, but what people have told me is they look to me and go, Dan does his best to bring the best he can, right? And that's the bit that they support, whereas people come because it's Kevin King for you. Do you understand? So there is a difference between the two. You've got a much bigger audience, as I've always said to you, like you're the gatekeeper of this industry, pound for pound, you're the guy. So when the ball moves, it normally moves for you. Does that make sense? Kevin King: I guess that happens in some cases. But yeah, there is a lot of influence through the different things that I do. That's right. That's for sure. Danny McMillan: Yeah. Kevin King: So in the conference space, though, I'm seeing, you know, like you just said, there's a lot of people that try it and they do it and they lose. They do one. They realize this is real work. They lose a lot of money. But you've made a shift in both of us. I have a new event now called Market Masters, which I don't know if you saw if you were in the room when we did the demo in Iceland or if you were away. Danny McMillan: I'd love to. Yeah. Kevin King: That event is becoming my flagship event now because it's so powerful because when you go to conferences, a lot of people are like, what's the difference? I just watch this on one of these free things online or watch YouTube videos or I listen to these speakers. Sometimes the talk is good. Sometimes I'm bored out of my mind. Sometimes I'm in the hallway and I miss it or I have to go take a phone call and I miss it. Why am I going? And then I'm being spoken, these speakers are speaking at me versus speaking to me. And so now, I'm doing this Market Masters event where someone sits in a hot seat. It's not on a stage. There is no stage. There is no PowerPoint presentations. There's no TV, no nothing. They sit in a boardroom, basically, and I curate based on their needs. They fill out this long questionnaire based on their needs. I curate seven or eight experts. It could be Dream 100 people. It could be different people. They come in and they spend two and a half hours with them going up and down in a very structured, organized, curated way, their business. And at the end of the day, of each one of these, the people that they leave there were like, man, I got an action plan right now of exactly what I need to do specifically for me. I just didn't listen to 10 presentations on stage and only two of them applied to me. And then they have the rest of the weekend to go and network with these people, plus about 20 other experts in addition to the seven or eight that were on their hot seat panel over the weekend. And it's powerful. And then the experts get a lot from it, too, that are participating because they're learning from other experts in these sessions and stuff that they didn't know. Extremely powerful. And you're kind of switched seller sessions this year to be more or less of a stage presentations, is my understanding. You hear people say we're going to do workshop format, but we're going to everybody bring your laptops and whip them out and we're going to do hands on. But a lot of times, those things are not executed very well and it turns into a mess. But I know you and I know the way you're doing things. I don't completely understand exactly how you're doing it. So maybe you can explain. Like you said, there's confusion with the website and you had to change it because people were confused. What is it? Danny McMillan: Yeah, they thought it was a speech. So basically, I used to teach audio engineering at the two leading London schools, Alchemy and Point Blank. I was there for like 10 years. So I come from a teaching background. And when you've got complex subjects, there have to be means and ways to break them down. And the VARC model is as old as day, right? So visual, auditory, reading, and kinesthetic is through doing. So these are all your touch points in terms you learn. Some people learn more through visual. Some people, like developers, they like to read documentation, right? And some people learn passively or they listen to a podcast, et cetera. But there is a way, if you mix all those together, it helps because if you're in a conference, for instance, or any note-taking, when you write down notes, you retain that in your short-term memory, yeah? But then the application part and the visual part will help with the long-term memory. Now, the way that we've designed it, every part of it has a live element. So people work on their laptop. We've got a ClickUp document that's been designed into a full curriculum for each section of the document. And so, whilst they'd be there hands-on, so Jeff, I'll give some of it away now, he's breaking everything down on a mill road board and going into detail what he's helped, what, 30 sellers get to like eight figures. He's worked in, obviously, he had his own brand in COVID. He peaked at 60 mil, but then sold after that, and then he invested in a tea brand that's on Amazon as well. And so if you imagine, if he's going through and he's breaking down the whole structure, and he's well known for this, he does a lot of work for agencies in the space, for scaling and software companies, just to make sure they're dialed in. So he's very good at that. But if he's sitting there and he's just talking, you've got no context, right? So when you're in front of your laptop, and it changes through everyone's different sessions, because they're not just the same way of doing things. If he's speaking and he's going through it, you can see on the screen, you can open the mirror board there because you've got your own copy of it, but then it's got all the curriculum as well. So all the sections of the mirror board will all have the text as well. So you attend this conference... Kevin King: Explain a mirror board. People that don't know what that is, what is it? Danny McMillan: Oh, okay. So if you think like a mind map, there's many softwares out there. Mirror board is an example. We have a demo account. You can use them for free because the idea, even like with the tools I've built, They're all free. You haven't got to add subscriptions and tied in to stuff as well. So basically, he would do, he'll map everything out in a very, very structured way and helps with the comprehension because Jeff is very good at getting things across and explaining. Information in plain English. And then what will happen? Let's say you're the head of the brand. When you go home, you've got this long document, which is also like an SOP. So you haven't got to train your staff. You haven't got to write up the notes. You can give it to them. And if you...you know like when people leave a conference, they'll come back to their notes three weeks later. They've lost context because they go, well, I got the slides, I took some pictures, and I wrote some notes. And then you believe you know enough about it, and then you don't, and then you don't execute. So the idea with the document as well is you're able to pick that document up in 12 months' time, even if you haven't looked at it, because of all the walkthroughs and everything else, it's all in there. You'd be able to execute on it. Does that make sense? Kevin King: It's almost like a whiteboard that just scrolls down and it has all the notes and everything, all the demonstrations and everything in there. Danny McMillan: So basically, you've seen like with a ClickUp document, so inside of the ClickUp document, they'll be all in sections. So you add like the introductions. I've got like a demo on the website that me and Wynna did a short one for Carbon 6 last year and it worked very well. So you will be hands-on, but then there are some people going to take a break. Do you know what I mean? Or not keep up with that part. But what we do also is what's called shadowing. Because in a classroom, let's say, you think we're the workshop, only one or two people. Well, there's six of us and we've all been working on this since January. So we know each other's content. So that allows you to shadow the room as well. So while, say, Sim's up there, me, Warner, and everyone else is walking around, and it's much more integrated, it's much more interactive. Because when you're, like you said, you're not talking at people, you're discussing with them as you're going through it. And because you've got like an hour and a half or whatever, it might sound like a lot of time. But you've got to allow more time for the comprehensions and the shifts there, and for them to do things and demo things in the room. They won't have to log into their Seller Central account. That's the whole thing. We've spent six months building this. How do we implement this? We have to think, when you're a teacher, you have lesson plans. Part of the lesson plans is you start with the end in mind, so they know what the picture that's being built. I'll give you an example. If I was demonstrating mixing down a record in the music college, I would play the track. And then I'll play the track and then I go, okay, this is what we're working to. And then I'll break it down. I bring in the kick drum, the hi-hat. Do you understand what I mean? So you start with the end in mind and by the time they walk through it, they get to the end and they get something similar. Obviously, they don't have to mix it. Kevin King: What about people that are at different levels? Danny McMillan: Well, that's the whole thing. That's why it's been designed that way as well. There are going to be people at different levels. And so if people do drift, it doesn't matter so much because they're not going to panic because they've got all the documentation and they can walk through it. You know, like with my section with the tools, you've got all the screen grabs, you click on the link, you access the tool, you do what you meant to do, you upload, it's all there. Do you see what I mean? I would demonstrate it, there are sample materials, so they don't have to log in to South Central. So let's say one of the tools uses a .csv file, okay? And it's got listing information, et cetera, et cetera. They upload that they can see how the tool works, the tools being explained. And so you basically everything is designed so that you can do it there. You can be efficient about it. Yeah, we're not going to sit there and read out science papers and talk about the Bayesian update. That's not what we're doing. What's happening is we're sharing all the stuff that we do. So if there's a situation where It gets voted in like, say, Sim does something and it's similar to Matt, but Sim does it better than Matt, yeah? Then Sim's version goes in because he's had more impact with that on his business. Does that make sense? Kevin King: Yeah. So it sounds like speed dating for Amazon sellers. Danny McMillan: It definitely sounds like speed dating for Amazon sellers. But yeah, so we're experimenting with a format. And why the switch? Kevin King: Why the switch? Danny McMillan: Because I can't keep getting up every year to do the same thing. If I'm not on my game or interested, I can't get up for it because it's a grind for me. Like that January to March, April, May is just a grind, right? Kevin King: Why do you do it? Why did you start Seller Sessions? Why do you continue doing it? I mean, you said you have a small margin on it. Danny McMillan: At the moment, I have a small margin. So what's happened is over the years, I've not put my ticket price up. It's the same group in $299, $349, and $399. And then over the years, where we've had to move venues and increasing costs, my margin starts to disappear. So I'll give you an example. This year, the current venue, which I'll leave, what I tend to do, I do dry hires and bring all my people in. Then I own the show in that sense. So I do a dry hire. But what you'll find, and I've had to advise a few people in this, like people do conferences in Germany and stuff, they never make any money because And it's not just about making money, right? But if you're doing events and you don't have a software and you're using that as a marketing tool, as a loss leader. See, right now, a lot of events that you go, well, that's a marketing spend, yeah? If you've got a network and you're signing people up or you've got a software. Kevin King: Yeah, it's lead gen. Danny McMillan: It's lead gen, right? Yeah. So even if you break even or whatever, that's fine. But I treat it like a proper business. Why do events if you're not going to make a profit? There's a difference between that and being greedy. But what's happened is, perfect example is like the venue, they sit down and they'll look around and go, right, he's having it right off. And then it's, we need to do the food next year. And I'm like, I don't know if you can compete with my catering team on the pricing and that. She said, no, we can't do it. We'd have to do the, I went, all right, I'll tell you what we'll do. Let's do open book. And I showed her my spreadsheets, open book, invoices, everything. And I said, just so that you know, I'm not trying to be that guy that's like, yeah, I only paid X, Y and Z. I gave her the invoices and the breakdown of the food. And when I handed it over, I said, that's what I paid in 19, 21, 22, 23. And then this year, it's gone up slightly by a little amount. And when she looked at it, she went, I can't get anywhere near that. I said, I know. I know you can't get anywhere near it. And this is why we're going to have this conversation where I buy a car off you for 10 grand. And when I turn up, you say, no, it's 20. And then you go, well, I feel a little bit slighted by this. I'm now going to set fire to 10 grand. You know, that's how I had to explain it to her. So, lo and behold, obviously, because of the headache of finding a new venue, it's things like that that drives it, Kevin. Now, I've got a situation. I'll close the venue next week. I've got a venue for next year and we'll go back to not having everyone They're hands in my pocket and I get the opportunity to choose whether I want sponsors or not. It'd be a choice because right now it has to subsidize the low price tickets. Does that make sense? Kevin King: You know what my favorite part of Seller Sessions is, right? I've been to a couple. My favorite part are the two security guard guys. Those guys are always so serious. I'm like, Danny, you're one of the only events where there's like, these two guys with little radios over their ear and, you know, talking to each other and like checking everything out. I was like, man, is it that bad? And I think you explained to me once, well, there's a lot of money in this room. It's always like, it's so, it's like something out of the movies, like something out of a James Bond movie or something. Danny McMillan: Do you know what? The ladies love it because it's like they get them to walk them across, you know, flank them and take pictures for Instagram. They turn them into their own pets. You know what I mean? Kevin King: It's awesome. Danny McMillan: So yeah, it's not anything to do with vanity or anything else. I've been in the promotions game 31 years and I've seen the unseen when it comes to events, the good, bad and the ugly. And when they are, and it's never normally on the event, but it's around the event. And my thing is safety first. So if someone goes, why have you got those guys? So one day I had to explain. These guys are not as expensive as you think. And I interviewed a couple of Security people and I'm thinking, they'd be standing behind me if it went off. They'd be hiding behind me. How can I put someone out there like that? There was one guy, bless him, and I show respect to my older generation. He wouldn't turn the camera on. I'm thinking, this guy, he's got to be in his 70s, 80s. And he sounded like really serious. He knew his stuff and everything. I said, can you turn your camera on, please? He turned it on. He knew why, you know, and I don't want to judge him. I said, look, I'm not going to judge you. We can discuss this. You've got other team members, you run the team. I was happy because of easy experience. The second thing is, you don't want people on the door that are aggressive and you want them to be invisible in a way if anything happened, no one really notices. And when you've got ex-special armed forces who do royalty protection, they do Premier League, they look after premier football players, And they've got that attitude where if you come to the event, I know you say they look scary, but people love them. They have conversations, hello, how are you doing? Because they're like normally regular guys. They may look serious, but they're good gentlemen and the crowd like them and they build relationships. I know that some of my friends speak to them. I was actually at Catter's a few weeks ago. And a friend of mine came to London and I'm thinking why is Ash phoning me? I think it's a bit weird and it's miles off from the conference and they both popped up on the phone just saying hi. They become friends. Do you know what I mean? So it's all down to safety for me. It's a premium price for a good night's sleep because when I do the events, it's always with me. My main thing, does everyone get back safe? Because we do party, we do drink, and it's London, so they're more party-party than, say, some other countries and cities. You know when they roll up, do you remember that year when I think it was Anthony Lee and Casey Goss rolled in six o'clock in the morning. I was banging on his door, he's meant to be on stage. Have you heard that one? Kevin King: Yeah, I heard that one, yeah. And you're usually DJing until late in the night. Danny McMillan: Yeah, yes. Kevin King: Are you doing that again this year? Danny McMillan: Yeah, I think I'll put Vinny on as well because he gets, I know it gets a mixed response, but now you've set off a little trend. There's like all these DJs now at these events. Have you noticed? I started doing it. Kevin King: I always remember the BDSS where it was a few years ago here in Austin and it was, I think I invited you to DJ and then Leo's like, hey, you know, I can DJ too. I'm like, all right, I'll bring both of you. Both of you were like, Who is this guy? Does he actually know what he's doing? When you got here, you came in like we're sorting out equipment and doing some testing and then you both realize like, all right, the other knows what they're doing. And then when we went on to the boat, it was almost like it was this competition beforehand. And then when y'all got there, you're like, all right, this is pretty cool. We can compliment each other. And we did that boat thing and then we got rained out. So we were like, and I remember we were like, all right, that's it. Sorry. We got to call it early this afternoon. And then you or Leo or both of you, I think came up to me and Mark and like, is there somewhere else like at the hotel? Cause y'all were having so much fun. Everybody's having so much fun. Like, is there somewhere where we can like just get a room? We thought about it and Mark found a studio and we set up this little impromptu rave. That was really cool. Danny McMillan: It was a photography studio, wasn't it? Kevin King: It was a photography studio. We just improvised in a matter of a couple of hours and set up this whole little party and you and Leo went on. That was cool. Speaking of other things, You're seeing some big changes in the agency business too. I mean, you've had Data Brill for a while now and you've got one of the top data scientists in the world working with you as your partner and you guys do some amazing stuff, doing a lot with Juana and Andrew on all the Rufus and Cosmo stuff. But I know we were chatting recently and you sent me a couple of messages about what you're seeing happen in this agency business and how It's just becoming just dog after dog in that business. What are you seeing happening in this agency world? And you're making a few pivots, you said yourself, around what you're doing there. I think a lot of people don't realize what's happened. Can you just explain that? Danny McMillan: So me and Ellis, it was actually seven years in March we've been going. What you'll notice now, like when we started, look, competition's good, right? Because it raises, competition raises and it's better for everyone else. But what you've got is we've now got a market where there's, what, maybe over a thousand agencies, if not more. Kevin King: I've got 868 on a list. Danny McMillan: Yeah, but that's been curated. Kevin King: Yes curated so there's a lot of other a lot more that I think that someone told me it's three thousand Who was it Tom Shipley? I think yeah, I said he's they got a list of like 3,700 people that have a shingle off that says they're an agency. Danny McMillan: There you go, right? And they come in all different shapes and sizes Yeah, as you know, we've some are Pakistani guys and some are big huge agencies with he goes across the scale. Yeah, so A number of things happened is because of that as well and the changes in the market, the agency space is a commodity business. So you'd bounce from one to another because there isn't much separating them. And I know I joked with you, but it is kind of true, right? You've got two things. You either got to develop something, which is what we're working on at the moment and accept that because it's part of evolution. You've got to have something that separates you. Like when we started, We were one of the only agencies in the space that built our own technology, you know, and we had the advantage because Back then, you've got the percentage of ad spend if you're going to use software or it's not software managed, right? And that doesn't mean leave software to run. We've developed every line of code since we've started, right? So if you think we have flat rates, we've got Dr. Ellis, which I'm lucky to have. You know, he splits the atom. You don't mind him being your account manager looking after stuff, as an example. And then what will happen, when you look at the space, You can't pay engineers like Ellis. Ellis is the co-founder and we pay ourselves our salaries. We're not paying ourselves huge amounts of money or anything. But if you put him out on the market as an engineer, you're looking at the top end of 175. Now, if you've got to pay an engineering team and then pay under a grand or whatever it may be per head if you're not running a sweatshop like some of them, then you've got to think that the numbers are not going to add up, right? But then over time, that's changed. Yeah, things evolve. Software has changed. There's ones where they've removed the percentage of ad spend because that's a killer for sellers, right? Because that ends up getting passed on to them. And then as you've seen over time, margins have been squeezed. It's more competitive to do PPC. And our experience is we've always been fine because I gave you the example, right? We are not super expensive. We're middle. We always focus on seven-figure sellers. I've never taken on anyone below seven-figure sellers because I don't believe you should do that because the sellers should be keeping their money in their business for growing their business to get to a stage where they actually need to output that as a department if they wanted to. And keep the money for inventory. So what we experience is we had a very, very low churn rate. You know, my customers, I've had six years, not three months, six months, because they're not being promised magical strategies that don't exist from a sales team. But what's happened over time, because me and, you know, some of my clients, you know, so we've sat down and we have a joke, like weekly joke is what's the magical strategy of the week. And now that's kind of developed is like, Right now, the only thing, and agencies won't like me to say this, right? You're going to be separated by something that you do is different from others, right? Or it's your sales team. They're going to be the two demanding factors. So what you'll find, and I've seen this, and as I said, we sit down and we've got magical strategy of the week, and the clients will have a joke about it. And we go back and forth. But as you've seen things going on, there's more panic out there. Yeah. And obviously, and it should be rightly so, depending on what your views are. Agencies are getting the **** kicked out of them on LinkedIn because the old divide and conquer because you have to have an enemy for this. Like if we look at it, everyone loved the aggregators because it gave them really good opportunity to exit, yeah, until it crashed. So then you have to cycle. Aggregators get the **** kicked out of them. Then we add the giveaway thing. They all got the **** kicked out of them. Currently, it's the agencies. They'll get the **** kicked out of them. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, but it cycles. People need We've got a lot of stuff to get on, right? And then something else will come along. Everyone shits on Amazon for the sneaky fees and that. Do you understand what I'm saying? So when you add all of those in the mix and then you've got sellers who are struggling and eventually they want to believe in those strategies. Do you understand what I mean? It's like you get to a point, it's like, well, I'll give you a go, even if they don't kind of believe it. There are good agencies out there, I'm not going to lie, but there are shocking people. Actually, about 18 months ago, I'd done a 10,000-word article breaking down the whole agency model from magical software that you do 12 months deal in, and now that all breaks down and stuff like that. So it gives people education to know what do you want to pick. I'm not interested in selling it to people. I want people to come to me and I solve the problem. If I can't solve their problem, you need to go somewhere else. Because at the end of the day, their business is the most important thing. So what's happened over that time, we've been okay with that and no churn. And then we lost a very big client and then two after that. And then it was like, right. And then I had to do layoffs. But what I did was I had an option. You go carry on on this path. Me and Ellis knew that we need to adapt anyway. All it's done is put the accelerator button on to do that. And I had to let some staff go, but what I've done is I've helped them. They're all out getting interviews and hopefully by the end of the month, they're all employed. So Karma's taking care of that. And then me and Ellis are going to... Do what we're doing now. We still got the agency and we're still going to be doing PPC because we're still servicing our customers. But we do realize this and there's a few, you know, some of the younger guys in the space have come to me and sit down and give them a bit of guidance because they're concerned, right? You know, they've got factor in CFOs in, you know, to make sure ends meet. But I do see a thing which will come up where If you're trying to scale but you've got this churn because a lot of people churn and don't believe what you're reading. Kevin King: They last about two or three months on average or something like that. Yeah, I think what happens either because they feel you're not performing or it's not something was over promised and under delivered. Yeah. Or someone else just comes in so they'll do it cheaper. Danny McMillan: Absolutely. And that's fine. Like competition's healthy, Kevin. Right. It needs to be in place. So I'm not bitter or anything. I'm like we we did this as we did for seven years. And we add a position. Do you see what I mean? But when you've seen the changes in Amazon and the price is going down, it's not good enough to go, oh, yeah, we're going to start taking on, we'll do listing optimization. And one of the reasons we never ever did full service, I actually looked into it and I thought, for me personally, I can't speak for other agencies, I'm like, For what though? Right, so PPC plays a role, right? So that could be anywhere from 15 to 35% of your sales. Roughly, yeah? Depends on... So you're still playing a role in generating sales. So it adds value. But if you look at full service agency, how many of them do product development? How many of them are dealing with the headaches of logistics, shipping and everything else? So what are you left over with? You're going to have daily routine checks on Telecentral, right? You're going to do some listing optimization. I mean, how many times are you going to optimize the listing? Every month? For how long? Three years? Let's be realistic, right? You don't optimize the shit out of something that works. You optimize it to the point. Where you've got it where you want it to be and then you optimize when it drops Yeah, so unless you're not measuring and I've seen people do that like just upload images. Oh, hopefully it does well I've just changed the main image. I'm like you haven't even run an Amazon experiment. What's the matter with you? Do you know what I mean? Like you can't do that because that will just crater people's businesses. So you've got that and I looked at that model and I'm trying to think of his name, ex-Amazonian, had a successful agency and I think he still has, really nice guy, Brad, you know him as well. Kevin King: Brad Moss. Danny McMillan: Brad Moss, right. He was one of the first to scale back then. We're talking 2019 because we launched in 2018 and I was looking into What do we do? Do we do full service? And I just couldn't see any value in it. Me personally, I can't speak for anyone else, right? Because I'm like, how many demand, a lot of the stuff, not now, but a lot of stuff, if you think back then as we've evolved now, if an Amazon seller's got 60 hours a week, they're putting into a business on average, 45 to 60 hours a week. How the fuck are you going to be able to do what they do and you're managing 10 accounts? It's not scalable. Kevin King: It's hard to get good people to I've always people always say who's a good agency. And I always say what depends. I mean, someone's gonna have a good experience with this one and someone's gonna have a bad experience. It's all who you get. It's all who you get in that agency, whether that person is, you know, there's, there's a lot of factors there. So I can't say this is the best agency. Danny McMillan: There's two things there's the agency competent, right? Let's let's have it right. When you look at it, as much as you can pretend otherwise, BBC has got more complex, agreed, right? But at the end of the day, it's an amplifier. And then what happens when you're at top of search and the person doesn't buy? You've been amplified. There's two parts to this. That's why you have to be selective. Because someone takes on a client and you know if it's not going to work pretty much straight away. I've seen over a thousand accounts. Your job is to turn that down, thank them, give them some guidance, not take on that and then promise them. Because at the end of the day, and I've asked this question and hopefully you'll be the one person who can tell me a better metric. Can you tell me, and I've never asked you directly before, is there a greater metric that will move the needle than understanding your customer objections and then having the ability to fix it? No AI, nothing. Remember what I just said. Kevin King: You got to know the psychological triggers that motivate your avatar. If you know that, it's not... copy is copy. Ads are ads and everything else, but you have to know, you have to, you should spend more time fully understanding getting inside the head of your, of your ideal customer, what their pain points are, what their pleasure points are. And once you understand that, then everything else comes later. And most people do it the other way around. Danny McMillan: Absolutely. Kevin King: Or they don't, they don't know, they don't even know what the, what the, that stuff is. Danny McMillan: And understanding, yeah, the understanding of customer objections doesn't bring you any guarantees, but it reduces the pain. And if you consider time is money, Let me give an example, right? This is how it generally works. People will do their research, AI, otherwise, very diligent. They're like scientists, ourselves, right? They're really good and they take the time and what they do is they go and look at someone else's reviews, right? And do all the other things. They understand the market, the customer, who their customer, their profiling. Then they look at the competition. They'll look at their reviews and say, ah, I've got an idea here. I'm going to build a better mousetrap, right? Based on their reviews. Then they go, I've done all my research now. I've built a better mousetrap. I'm good. They're all going to buy this and then they take it into production. Kevin King: Better doesn't mean... Danny McMillan: And then they build this mousetrap, this Frankenstein mousetrap in most cases, respectfully. I'm not talking because it's hard to innovate from scratch, right? So they build something better, better quality, all these kind of things, add all this complexity, change the color, whatever they're doing, right? So they've done all of this research and then they go and blow a load of cash on a launch, load a PBC, right? And they're entrepreneurs. So what do they do? My gut says this is right. Keep going. All right. Another five grand, 10 grand. Bam, bam. Because entrepreneurs, what do they do? They're single-minded. They ain't going to listen to people. They got there for a reason, not through listening to everyone. Unfortunately, if they spent two, three, four hundred bucks and then said, put it in front of a number of people and said, what are your objections to buying this product? So you've just done all this dough on everything else. You've blown a load of cash. But you didn't do that bit. And that would have been something that helped you with all the bleed on PPC and everything else. Because just because you built a great product, just because you use post-purchase reviews, two different things, a customer objection and a post-purchase review, two completely different things. Why is that? They've already bought the product and they go, I love it. Or this is the piece giving my money back or somewhere in between. There's no objection to buying it. They got over the hump to buy it. They just felt it was great or they felt cheated in a way because they go, I didn't expect that. It's not good quality. Do you understand what I'm saying? If you're able to get the customer objections and then work out how you can measure those and do some stuff where you may be able to optimize and improve, that will do more to your conversion rate than pretty much anything else. Because in order to have a conversion rate, you need to make a sale. So, if you're at top of search and no one's buying or less people buying, what happens to your conversion rate? So, therefore, that metric for me is undefeated. I'm asking people, is there a better metric than that? And again, I'll say, it doesn't mean it's guaranteed because you might find it's not fit for market. The only thing for that, you know, you could put that to bed, you know, like the idea is when we're on Amazon, You build through SKUs, right? Keep growing, put out more products, you refine it, and then you find a way, the quickest way to get away with the products that failed at the lowest impact possible and the fastest speed, yeah? So you launch, you keep, you lose. You launch, you keep losing. You find a cycle in there, right? And this is why a lot of brands will die if they're not launching new products and they don't have a product pipeline. But just that bit there, skipping that Kevin, It's really fundamental, right? You've decided what the customer wants. You've decided to build something based on someone else's products through post-purchase reviews. Yet you ask no one, what is your objection to buy my product? And do you know what? Kevin King: The number of people to ask on that is not a mistake people make on that point. As we ask the people that don't buy, why did you not buy my product? And that's the wrong thing to do. You want to ask the people who did buy, what made you almost not buy this? Danny McMillan: That's a good question. Kevin King: That's a big difference in understanding and people make a lot of times that they go after the wrong side of that. What made you almost not buy? Not the people who didn't buy, why didn't you buy? Because those people might not have bought anyway. They're just gonna say something. But the people that bought, they bought, they overcame something. But what did they overcome in their mind and what do you need to do to double down on that objection to make sure other people don't back off? Danny McMillan: Yeah, because basically you're looking for patterns, right? Let's say you do it 100, 200, 300 people. If you ask him and product opinion boys and others, it's an iteration process as well. Like you can also do it pre-launch. So you can mock up the product. Kevin King: And have it simulated and get some ideas of oh, yeah, there's certain things you won't say I'll give you I used to do dry testing Yeah back in the day because you can use product opinion or pick through and tell of your and those guys and that's good You should you get a base idea But at the end of the day you people speak with their wallet people will say one thing and do something I agree. Danny McMillan: That's what I used to do. Kevin King: I used to do split testing with with pricing on a website where we would One price was $19.95 and one was $9.95 and they had to actually go through the whole process, enter their credit card and everything and then we just didn't charge them. We just held it and we just did a test that way but that way they went through the motions and we knew okay for sure which one works. Danny McMillan: Look as I said there's no guarantees but I'll give you some examples that you probably would never really find out. We had a situation once where a client was, usual one, leading the market, right? And couldn't work it. It just died off. Blamed, you know, like Chinese come in and couldn't recover it, couldn't recover it. And it's got multivariations, right? So we run some tests, custom rejection tests on it. And what we found out is I really like the green widget, but I prefer the color pink. So what happened, because this had like 5,000 reviews, and that was always the winner, right? It's like the focus was on that, but it was the wrong focus. The reason why the other people bought the other product is because they preferred the color pink. And to address that, it didn't recover fully, but to address that, they led with the pink. And then they performed better. You would never have found that. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because you're looking in the wrong places. And that's what I mean by, you do enough tests and, you know, you do 100, 200, 300, 400 people, and 30, 40% or more are saying, yeah, but I prefer the pink. I prefer the pink. I prefer the pink. And you're like, well, I don't. I've got a pink skin. Should we leave with that version? Do you know what I mean? The pink variation, sorry. It's things like that that you don't find out. And when you spend six months spending, dropping a cut the ground on, you know, maybe updating your A-plus content and stuff, are you guessing? Oh, I better get more images done. Let's get the new, let's move that over there. Let's get some more lifestyle images. Let's do that. Let's change the bullet points. That takes time, especially if you're going to test it, right? Well, that didn't work. That didn't work. It might be a few hundred dollar test. Now, what we should understand as well, a lot of people don't test and the expectancy of the results of tests. Like, you know Dorian Gorski, yeah? You know Dorian? Number one in the world, in our game, when it comes to stopping the scroll. I'd like to see anyone challenge that. He's been doing this 10 years. He cut his teeth doing Ash Thompson, who hit 100 million the next year. You've met Ash? Kevin King: Yeah, yeah. Danny McMillan: He does all sim stuff and highly respected. He has got to a point, he's got it down to a fine amount, that he has got it down to 60% failure rate of his tests. So every 100 tests he runs, 60, don't move the needle or fail. And that's 10 years. And that's good. Do you understand? I think with the expectancy, someone runs it and goes, that shit, that didn't do it. That's crap. And that's the problem. It's you refine it over time, like every other process. And I think we're moving, we have to move more towards this now. You know, it's like you're going to have full stack engineers in your Amazon business, especially Not made for Stacks Jr. and some prompt engineering work. You know, you're going to have a tech team working with you from your data to your listings. You've seen this first hand, right? You know people that have set up automation. They've got N8N running or make.com on the lower level to use Appio. That's where we're moving. Kevin King: That's all the AI stuff. And you've been diving deep in some of that too with Juana and Andrew with some pretty deep dives on Researching, analyzing the research papers and what's going on with Rufus and Cosmo. Where did that come from? What made you decide to do that? And you put out some really good breakdowns of that. Danny McMillan: Yeah, I mean, back in 2020 is where I got interested in it. And I don't know where he is, but for me, I remember when I was with you and Steve in Australia a couple of years ago, I've always said, look, science isn't about being right. It's about Get into the truth. It don't matter who gets there, you have won wins, right? And thank you to you because it's been ignored for the last four years until pretty pictures appeared and they called it Cosmo. So suddenly it was acceptable. Science paper has become acceptable because Cosmo was like a coloring book, right? Because it had some pictures. So that becomes... Yeah, and now we've got the dog with Rufus, which is some interesting stories I have to tell you about that. The situation with that is I really wanted to understand and it took it does take a long time right because I heard you on the on the podcast we won and said like people venomously opposed to the honeymoon period doesn't exist and everything else and the thing is they should have that opinion because that's what they see. I'm not here to question you. I'm not here to tell you you can't I'm just going Okay, look, there is a 10,000-word article, there's two patents, and I've charted everything you call the honeymoon period from 2015 in paper form. You've read it, Kevin, and we spent 200,000. That was Andrew Lee that coined that term, by the way. I know. And he's also the one who denounced it as well. Kevin King: Yeah, exactly. Danny McMillan: So the thing is, is you're going to get a thing there and people get pushed back. And I don't mind being wrong and I'm not trying to be right. Like if people say, I don't agree with that because such and such, it's a beautiful discussion, right? I mean, I had that clown world moment on LinkedIn with an idiot last year who offered the MMA fight, but it's like, but that wasn't about anything other than attention seeking. Do you know what I mean? Because you see this. I won't, you know, go into it and keep bringing it up. But you're going to get some people just want the attention for the sake of it. Some people are bought into it. And I totally understand why. Look at the oxymoron of this. The honeymoon period is an observation. But it doesn't exist. But it exists only as an observation. Let me explain. Right. So it's called the cold start. Yeah, so you go to an Amazon engineer and you go, oh, yeah, the honeymoon period. You have no fucking idea what you're talking about. So the honeymoon period is an observation that was created by us. And what we try to do is sketch out that observation. So when you drop an article to explain that, people, it gets their back up. So basically, it's like I'm gaslighting to say there's no honeymoon period, even though the honeymoon period doesn't exist. I mean, do you understand what I'm saying? And I'm not. We don't do this to gut people's arses and, oh, let's piss that person off. Let's say there's no honeymoon period for some attention. Why would we waste 200 hours and then give it all away? It's because we want people to move forward with what's going on out there. And when you do things like that, people are going to push back, and that's fine, right? And they're going to ridicule you, they'll talk about you behind your back, and that's absolutely fine. But as you've seen yourself, Kevin, things have changed. Yeah, so every time we got Rufus the dog and and clown world kicks off, what happens is it ends up being in the search bar. Oh, this ain't going to take off. Two days later, it's in the search bar. Oh, this and then something else happens and you're not going to stop it, right? And then they'll go. The same people that will say that will then say, yeah, no, I've been on this a while now. Yeah, you know, and it's like, no, you're not. You're just switching sides. So we stand where we stand. Warner and Andrew, and there's a few of us, we're trying to push things and trying to find easier and easier way to break it down. So when we did Rufus, we took the learnings from doing the cold reality of the honeymoon period, because there was a certain person I highly respect It was like, it was a bit dense. I struggled to read it. And I'm like, well, that's useless to do another article and no one can understand it. When your end goal is to help people understand and give it away so it becomes useful. That's why Rufus was a lot different to the last one. You could easily read that and digest that versus that. And that's our goal. We're trying to get better at doing that. How do we get the information over to people And let them make up their own mind, but don't feel a way about it. It's like, oh, he's just trying to be clever because we're not. It does take time to break that stuff down. And it takes time to learn how to break it down and then trying to deliver it, you know. So that's where we are with it. And again, because of you, we're not still in the dark ages because you put you on. Kevin King: I feel that it's the future and it's the writings on the wall for it. And you see this. It's slowly. Like you just said, people deny it. Then two days later, here it is in the search bar. It's coming. And I think there's a lot of sellers. Something I've been saying is there's a lot of people doing millions of dollars of sales right now that are not paying attention or and including software companies that, you know, some of the biggest names in space that are are not really paying attention and people are still going by the old way. And right now you got to kind of ride the line between the two. But if you're not preparing to move to this new reality, a new way of doing things, you're half your $5 million a year in sales is going to go to $500,000. And I think you're going to see a shakeout just like you're seeing the shakeout in some of the agency business. I think you're going to see in the next few years A big shake out there and on top of that, you have this whole agent stuff like you just touched on where I think that's going to make that up. Make.com automations or Zapier is the easiest, then Make.com is the middle one. Danny McMillan: Kevin, we'd be on that now. Kevin King: NAM is the detailed one. Danny McMillan: We'd be on that now. We're at Skynet level. We're talking about autonomous on your computer editing videos. I've seen it online. Kevin King: I mean, just look what just happened with ChatGPT with what you can do with photos a couple of weeks ago. I mean, that put a lot of people out of business, software companies out of business. It's going to get to – I don't think a lot of people realize this. The people that are on the cutting edge of it understand where this is going and how fast it's moving. But the average Amazon seller, their idea of AI is use ChatGPT to analyze my reviews or to help me write an email or something like that. They don't get beyond the little basic core. Danny McMillan: Things, how this is going to revolutionize everything in the next five years, or sooner, I actually got excited last night I got Milan one of my engineer guys, and because 3am right, I'll start today but last night. I looked at it because with Claude, you can make Claude autonomous, but the problem with it is I've set it up in Docker and then we programmed it in with the terminal because I'm hoping like, oh great, so Claude can do this as well. So I'll give it some actions. I'll start with clearing up my Google Drive, et cetera, et cetera, and then see where it goes from there. Because the stuff I've seen and I've signed up for the research release, so I'm waiting to get in. But I mean, we're talking about editing videos in Premiere Pro. This level on your desktop. Kevin King: No, no, no. I mean, just yesterday, I was trying to Embed something in one of my apps, you know, and so I'm searching online. I'm looking through their support docs. I'm looking through everything. How do I actually get this embed code to work? Yeah, and I couldn't find anything. So I was like, let me just take a screenshot of this error message that's coming up with all that and throw that in the ChatGPT and say, how do I fix this? And it came back with, here's five things to try. Do this, and number four worked. Danny McMillan: Yeah. Kevin King: I mean, it knew better than any human could and gave me the answer just like that. And I know a lot of people are at that level, but that's just a basic thing of what these things can do on their own autonomously. And just like in the agency stuff, I think you're going to see a lot of change in agency business. The ones that survive We're going to be much less people. And you're going to have a lot of these agents doing this. And I think the people like you said, what's your differentiating factor on an agency? I think it's the people that are on the cutting edge of the software and the technology that are always one step ahead are going to be the ones that win, not the ones that are a commodity doing the same old stuff. Danny McMillan: Yeah. And I think we have to also, and I'll try and explain this in a positive way, is Right now, engineers are far from scared of AI. And the reason being is not because they are. One, it empowers them. The other thing is, even with me with the no-code platforms, I'm sitting here building apps that work functional in the browser like apps and useful, well, at least I hope they'll be useful, that I'm doing and then I get my engineering team to pull over. So, with the tools of building facilitations, I've got them all in there and I just send them the code and then From there, we can work from there. But the point I was going to get to, you know, like you said a couple of weeks ago about the prompting. What it's allowed to do, and it's amazing, is it gives you that next level up. Let's say that... Are you any good with Photoshop, Kevin? Like a whiz? Can you do drop shadow? Kevin King: Yeah, I can do the basic stuff. I'm not a whiz, but I can do the basic stuff. Danny McMillan: Okay. So imagine what you can now do with ChatGPT by articulating an eloquent prompt with the right details. You get an output, right? So what's happened is the output's changed. It's got better. So you get excited. So let me give an example. Let's say you buy your images off Fiverr, Upwork, junk shit that you get on now. And there would be two reasons why you buy them. And not everyone's blessed with an eye for design because they're brilliant at everything else. Their design might not be their thing. So they might go, oh yeah, that looks good. And then when they prompt something, they go, that looks amazing. So, what they've got is an improved output. We said this on my pod a little while ago, Mark's a photographer. He started talking about aperture and those kinds of things. Who's going to get better output? So, let's talk prompt engineering. A junior developer with three years of experience in a couple of languages and a vibe coder, who do you think comes out on top? The difference between two, well, the levels, the domain knowledge. Kevin King: The one that has the experience is the one that comes out on top. Danny McMillan: However, the good thing about the other person is the input. So they might not get what you're... Kevin King: They know how to prompt it. Danny McMillan: It's the ideas, right? Kevin King: Yeah. Danny McMillan: So we're in that gap, right? You're in that gap where you've got no code, but you can't fix it when it starts to go off if you know nothing about coding. You have to get that person to help you to fix it and correct it, right? But you're getting the output. Yeah, and then an engineer would need to clean it up so it's functional. Then if you've got a seller that's prompting their images, great, because it's going to be a better output than they could do in Photoshop if they're not a designer. So you go, great, saves money. It doesn't mean that image is good. It's good to you because of what you know and the nuances around design, right? So if you're an engineer, You would see prompting, there's, you know, not that they're all snigger or anything else like that, but there's a difference from prompting, running all the APIs and everything else and having that level because of what you can do with that and how you can put stuff together. Another example, we share a friend who was in, and he's worried about it, and I'm coming around to the point of this because the point would be important. Legal guy that was at your event, don't name his name, we had a private conversation and I said to him, look, you're a lawyer. I said it comes back down to domain knowledge, right? Like my lawyer, I can knock up contracts in ChatGPT, right? And my lawyer would pull it apart because you know all the nuances because he's a lawyer and you get fucked over. But to me, it looks bollocks, right? It's all in legalese and it looks great. So we've got that element there. And so the point I'm trying to get around to is domain knowledge will win unless ideas outweigh it. So the idea of the engineer, give an example. I was a record producer and I was a self-taught engineer. I put out maybe 50, 60, 70 records, two albums, mixed album, collaborations. As soon as I trained properly as an engineer, as I started teaching, I went through the ranks and technically become an engineer. I couldn't fucking write. Why? Because it wasn't exciting anymore. I knew how to make that baseline. I would spend three hours fiddling. Because I knew the parameters to change put it through the envelope and then low pass filter and check. Do you understand what I'm saying? So you've got engineers. If you look in the studio, you've got the record producer, you've got the artist, you've got the engineer. The engineer puts the output out, the sound, really good. But it's the producer that vibes up the musician. So they all kind of work together, right? So the engineer is not going to be very good as a singer doing falsetto if he's just some scruffy engineers. But he could do it. He just wouldn't be as good. And so what happens, you get an artificial lift through prompting. And that's not to downsize anything. And I think what we're going to come into is we get on to discussing Manus, right? So someone goes, Oh yeah, I'll just do this and build it on Manus and everything else. And they'll focus on this. So there's a couple of things to think about in terms of the focus. And it's the same with NAN. Are you gonna set up NAN to message back your mum through WhatsApp and, I don't know, some other application? Or are you gonna build something that's gonna move the needle and move your business forward? Are you gonna use them for the right things? And what I experience with everything that's going on with my business is, I literally solved everything I needed to solve, and I'm not a prompt engineer. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, bank holiday weekend, I spent 16 hours a day roughly, give or take, for a week on Manis. And I knew there was something in there. I burnt a shit ton of like tokens. I got my account and I just keep buying 39,000. I don't give a fuck, you know, you just spend, because you know, you get results. And with that, Because I was able to solve all my things because Manist gave me the opportunity, whereas some people might be going, oh yeah, we'll just do some copywriting and stuff. No, don't use it for that. You're an Amazon seller struggling at the moment. You need to come up with solutions. You've got things like Manist there. It's the questions that you ask. Yes, you want to be able to prompt, but you'd be surprised of how many problems you can solve. So, hence, someone come to me the other day, A good friend of mine, you would know him as well. He's struggling and I knew the phone call was, you got any money Dan? Like I'm struggling and da da da. And then I put him on to Menace, set a few things up for him. He's able to fix those solutions because he asked the right questions. So what I'm trying to propose to Amazon sellers is don't look at AI as a replacement for something. Use it to help you get out of this shit that you are in with margins. Instead of fucking around on Menace trying to do, you know, listing optimization, use it for that or waste of time. You might as well use Claude. Why burn all the tokens? But if you really want to think about improving your business, you've got to think about asking the right questions. Yeah? And that is something that I think people struggle with. They don't know what questions to ask because they don't know what the problem is to solve. And that's why it took me 16 hours a day going down rabbit holes till I come to the solution. And that solution was to solve pretty much everything that's going on around me. I've got a new venue for Seller Sessions next year so I won't have everyone's hands in my pocket. And I can choose whether to have sponsors or not. Because you know yourself when you put on events, you've got that pressure. Like last year, I turned down 22 sponsors disguised as speaking gigs. That's a lot of money. But as soon as you break that line, I will lose my Seller Sessions crowd and I won't be able to sell it out. So my thing is, how do I get back to before everyone's got their hands in my pockets and you're being leaned on and they've got some demands where you want to compromise. So another part of that, because I've given codes out to everyone that I've spoken to that have been struggling, go and do this and they're getting results, Kevin, because they're asking the right question. Kevin King: Well, Danny, we've been going here for a while. I think we could keep talking for several more hours, but this has been great. Appreciate you coming on and sharing everything from what's going on at Cellular Sessions and the event industry to To what's going on on the agency side, how people need to use AI and what's going on with Amazon. We've covered a lot of bases. Danny McMillan: Well, hopefully it's useful. I know it's not always orthodox with what I've just said there because everyone will speak about prompting and everything else. Kevin King: No, no, it's good stuff. It's stuff that people need to hear and to get their head around. Danny McMillan: Because the last part of that, sorry, just to cut in Kevin, the last part of that, where we're moving is We can get so much output from AI, but how do you have time to implement it, right? So I can see the domain knowledge thing. Think of like your accounts team, they're doing laborious tasks. AI whips through that, replaces all that. What are they? They're the safety valve. They're the main knowledge that's they come at the end to the checks and balances. And I think that's where it's going to be really powerful as well. Domain knowledge. It will reduce a lot of labor. But then we move to the mind economy that that experience is still valuable. So you can still scale. Does that make sense? A lot of people were. I like proud of themselves that they want linkedin sector 10 people that's 10 families at job and you're proud of yourself but for me it's like I. If you can use your domain knowledge, I think that's where the win is, and able to implement after and have the checks and balances in place, you're going to do very well. Kevin King: Well, if people want to reach out and learn more about what you're up to or read some of your papers that you guys are working on or what's the best way to do that or come to Seller Sessions or listen to your podcast, I mean, what's the best? Danny McMillan: Hit the podcast, sellercessions.com or on all the podcatchers. We're sold out now as of yesterday. Finally, yeah, so I've got to deliver that in a couple of weeks. But, you know, if refunds come up, I've got it on the website now where we sold out. You can put your email address in now when you come to the ticket page because people can still buy dinners for the conference delegates. But then if we get refunds, we put it out to the list and then mark them back and then transfer them over. To the to the new peoples on the list. Kevin King: So SellerSessions.com is the best way to get it. All right. Danny McMillan: Yes. Kevin King: Awesome. Danny McMillan: All right, Kevin. Kevin King: Danny, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming on. Danny McMillan: You're welcome. Thank you for your time. Kevin King: So I hope you enjoyed my chat with Danny McMillan. We'll be back again next week with another amazing episode. And if you like this episode, be sure to hit subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're listening to this on Apple podcast or Spotify. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and if you like this episode or any other episode, be sure to go and forward it to a friend and let them know about the AM-PM Podcast as well as Helium 10 Elite. You can always go to h10.me forward slash elite and find out more about Helium 10 Elite, which I host a training and a live call every single month. Before I leave you, just got some words of wisdom for you. While you're hustling and doing the grind, remember to enjoy it along the way. Because one day you're going to have no time to enjoy anything again. Take care and we'll see you again next week.