#469 - Why 90% of Sellers Are Missing the Real AI Gold Rush

Welcome to episode 469 of the AMM podcast. This week I've got my buddy Norm Ferrar on the show. We're going to be talking about all the changes that have been happening in the last several years, including what's going on in AI, the advantage of going to events, uh his experience with uh trying to be an influencer and uh what you should be thinking about if you're dealing with influencers, as well as uh an underlooked thing that a lot of sellers just aren't doing that they should be doing. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to the AM PM podcast. Welcome to the AM podcast where we explore opportunities in e-commerce covered. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, plus this is the podcast for Money Never Sleeps. Working around the clock in the A.M. and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? I said, are you you ready? Ready. Let's do this. Let's do this. Here's your host. Here's your host, Kevin King. Kevin King, Norm Ferrar, welcome back to the back. I said back to the AM PM podcast. How you doing? Yeah. You know what? This is number two. Yeah. You were on what about three years ago, I guess. And you're I don't know if you know this or not, but you're the very first guest I've had repeat. Wow. an honor. That $30 went quite a long way. And either that or I'm super desperate. One or the other. I I It might be the desperate. Uh what you've been uh what have you been up to, man? What what's going on out there? There's so many things happening right now. Uh with the AEO side, with just authority side, like talking about press release. I'm sure we're going to get into that again, but there's just so many things that, uh, were old school marketing that's coming all the way back and all the new things that are happening. So, uh, so like 3 years ago when you had you on, I think you were you were managing some clients. Yeah. And you, I think maybe you were like, I don't remember if that's when it was or not, but you're like, I'm going to do this Amazon live. I'm going to sell hundred things or something or $100,000 or I forget what it was. And uh but you still doing any of that stuff? You know that it was the 100,000 follower challenge? Okay, that's okay. And and what I found out so we were doing podcast at that point three times a week and I wanted to do something. So it was either going to be doing a a million-doll product challenge or at the time which was really hot was the influencers. So I thought, okay, I got a beard, I can do it. Uh well, you know, it turned out to be really hard work and we were doing okay. Like there was months we were making $4 or $5,000, you know, maybe even more on certain months. But what I found myself, what I thought was going to be okay was, oh, you know, I had a a system down. Products would come in, I'd have my scripts ready, I'd do them all on a Saturday. Well, one of the things that leads kind of to today is I set up a workflow that I didn't realize, you know, how powerful it would be. And it did allow me to do a lot of of of um streamlining with the influencer uh products that I was doing live. But, you know, we got the product to come in or once they the person signed off on the product, we had it automatically. It's a trigger. it automatically um went up to our spreadsheet. We got their link. We summarized the link. The summarized link would go over to a script that we created for Tik Tok. It would take it, break it into 15 second, three 15 seconds um scripts, three 30-second scripts, do the same thing with reals, do the same thing with everything. And then at the end of the day, I would have like a sheet that I'd have to do for the product. and then a sheet for the other product. And what we would do is we would prompt it, you know, saying what are the benefits? We'd show the competition. We'd show the the their product. And I really didn't realize it, but at the time it really wasn't chat GPT. It wasn't even really around at that point. And that's what it turned out to be. It was kind of our AI workflow that we had created uh in Zapier to get this to all work. And it went really smooth. The problem was, this is a long story, you know, a long- winded story, but at the end of it, it was a hard work. If I wanted to do that full-time, I could make a lot of money, but I didn't want to make a lot of money. It just took way too much work, way too much effort. And we were doing commission. We're trying to figure out what's the best way that we could do this to be fair to the client, which was we'll do this for free, but if we sell anything, we get 15 points or something like that was just really hard to track. You know, new new appreciation for creators and influencers, 100%. 100%. So, anybody who's trying to do it and they think it's easy, well, you know, if if you're if you're smart or if you're greatlooking, if you've got you got to have something different. And I did think, you know, Kevin, I thought I had a beard. And I thought that was my USP. And when I was doing a lot of this stuff with Amazon, um, with one certain platform, all I would do is show my beard. I wouldn't show my face. I would just talk about nobody saw my face and that actually you know I've still seen those kind of kicking around which I thought was kind of fun but um yeah I really do have a lot of respect and it to do it right it does take time they don't have to be polished but they've got to look unpolished but you've got to get the message across and that's the talent. Let's flip that now. So after you being on the receiving end Yeah. of people shipping you their product and people asking you to to to promote it. What do you what do you see that people can take away from that? People listening like, "Hey, when you when you reach out to an influencer, don't do this by all God. Do this, this, and this." But what do you what did you what are some dos and don'ts that you appreciated when people would send you stuff? Well, what I didn't appreciate was blanket emails. So, you know, I like I don't need feminine hygiene products. you know, don't send me anything for that. I I don't need it. Uh, you know, cosmetics, I don't need it. Uh, take a look at what I'm selling. So, you know, oh, somebody's actually taking I'm a bald-headed big beard guy. Well, send me some beard oil. That would be that start. I'd take a look at that. But one thing that was um that I think we could take away from this is that all these blanket just if you blanket somebody and just like a blanket email, you're not going to get results. If you take the time to at least take a look at what the person's selling or or their style of selling, then that's a big bonus. If you like some of their content, that's a big bonus. And this is this is the biggest thing. If you think a creator is just going to do it for the product, you're wrong. Really, bad creators are going to do it for free product. There has to be compensation. You have to And the other thing that I didn't like, and I saw it, not so much with me, but I saw it with some other creators I was interviewing, um, is that people took their, uh, their, uh, creative and put it all over their other channels. So, for example, you know, you might do an Amazon live or you might be doing something in on Tik Tok. All of a sudden, it shows up in Instagram or over on YouTube. That's not fair. And people that intentionally do it, that's just unethical. But, um, uh, that's the one pet peeve that I really hated, that people think that, oh, you know, I can just take all this creative and put it somewhere else, you know, like with any of my other social media. But the people that were clear and the people that took time to take a look at what I did um and maybe followed uh that was great, you know, and I'd appreciate that. Um for the most part, I took a look at product that I wasn't big enough that it would just be, you know, stacked up in my inbox, but I would take a look at everything that came in. And if the stuff looked like it was just on a form letter or a form email, I would just put it in the in the trash. What's What's like one of the weirdest things and one of the coolest things that you did? Uh let's see. One of the coolest things I did was this um purifier. It was an hydrogenator, I think it was called. It it in injected hydrogen or uh oxygen into water and I sold a ton of them and I I couldn't believe it. Like Kelsey comes, he goes, "Oh, you just made 5,000 bucks." I'm going, "What?" On this on this really cool It's called Purify. And um so it's like a water bottle, but it has a little thing on the bottom that No, it's um it's it's if you kind of think of a blender. Yeah. So Yeah. and you put a quart of water in and then it it starts to bubble and then there's this vortex that starts to happen and starts turning different colors. But um it sold itself uh that was probably one of the coolest things. Other things that uh I liked uh was just some of the cosmetic things. So, one of the ladies and I said that, you know, don't send me cosmetics. But one of the fun things I did is I started to learn a lot about um cosmetics and the different step process which really helped me with my product opportunities. I saw that there was huge opportunities for ju just just putting different types of cosmetics or supplements together. And I'd have people come on and they would, you know, show me how to put on this makeup. And I thought it was kind of funny because I'm putting on makeup and my, you know, my my re uh my moisturizing cream and but the funnest one I think I had um and we still have the masks are those red light masks. So I was working with two very large companies that you would you would know right now and I got like I have a suit of red light therapy, you know. I have it for my knees. I have it for my ankles. I have it for my arms, my hips, you know, my back, my face. And uh Connie, you know, she has her set and we still use it today. So, that was a lot of fun. And just looking like I could go sometimes all you need is a quick visual and to go on to Tik Tok with one of these masks and start talking just kind of normally. Yeah. Boom. The beard starting out from the mouth. That's that's it. You know, uh, something else that's happened, I guess, along the way since I talked to you last was you got you're now what what do they call it? You're like a a som for cigars or uh you got like some you're like one of only like a handful of people in Canada or you said like 30 or something. No, five five five people in Canada that are like official what what's the ter correct term for it? Um, they are called certified cigar somalier tobaconists. So, what does that mean? That means you know a ton of stuff uh about cigars. A little. Yeah, just a little. So, you know, we we actually one of the first times we met uh was over a cigar. It wasn't the first time, but you remember in Hawaii we sat on the beach and we started having a cigar. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I kept having to move the chairs back. Yeah. Cuz the tide was coming in, right? But cigars is something like people right now, some of them will be listening and going, "Oh my god, cringe. No way. Cigars bad, taboo." It's also something that's very social. So, and I'm not going to get into it, but cigarette tobacco and cigar tobacco are two different things. Um, and we can debate that all day long, but what it does, and you've been with me in these environments where you go in and you're either smoking a cigar or you go into a cigar lounge and you could talk about anything. And sometimes that comes up. And what this was, and I don't want to get into politics or anything like that, but there was a time when you could be on one side of the fence and the other side of the fence and have a talk without hating the other person. And I find that when you go into one of these lounges or when we meet up with a group of people, sometimes that happens. And there's never been a fight. There's never been somebody walking away. It's kind of like just a fraternity, you know. We call it Brothers of the Leaf and it is a true fraternity. It's uh you know, you sit there and not just men, there's a lot of women that are also getting more involved with this cigar culture. Um and I love it. I can sit down, you know, I go outside, I sit down for an hour, hour and a half, collect my thoughts, come back, do my work, and it's kind of just like a ritual. Some people so associate cigars with like having a baby and celebrating or, you know, something from the movies where it's a mafia guy's always got one hanging out of his mouth. Yeah. Or or it's a uh some successful businessman. Uh you know, they have the the cigars and a little thing of whiskey over in the side. But it goes way beyond that, doesn't it? Sure. It's a whole it's part of so like it's a social um cultural uh I don't want to say I I don't I it's just a part of society that if you get into um the cigar world it's a whole other world. It's not just oh we're going to go somebody had a baby it's for celebration. Sure. That's definitely a part where most people have their first cigar and throw up once or twice. Uh but when you get into it, it's kind of sitting down. You're enjoying it. This is something that's taken six 10 years to make. 300 people have touched it. It's, you know, and all sterile, but uh you know, you're looking at this perfectly rolled cigar and then you have this whiskey that's, you know, might be aged. And if you do it correctly, if you smoke it correctly and you enjoy it, then you sit down and you watch. I've seen people completely stressed out. I'm sure you have too, but I've gone into lounges and I'm just there by myself having a cigar and I can remember uh one time in particular, I was drinking at the time. So, I had my drink and I had my cigar and I was just sitting down relaxing and this guy was completely stressed out. came in, he got a drink, he got a cigar, and it was like soon as he sat down in these big plush chairs in the cigar lounge as he sat down, you almost saw the stress go right off his back. And in fact, we ended up talking and nothing about what he was stressed out about, but we were talking about something else. And that's what I love about it is you can take somebody that's in the worst like having a terrible day, sit down, have a cigar, talk to people. We've done it many times where how many times have strangers come up to us. We're sitting there having a cigar together at an event. Yeah, we met some I met through smoking cigars. I met some met like Dan Dan and several people. I mean, I could probably list off a bunch of people that I've met because of smoking cigars because it's an instant fraternity. It's an instant um brotherhood or sisterhood uh right right away and it's calming. It's not like drinking alcohol where you're getting, you know, progressively worse and worse and you don't know what you're going to say and you're mumbling and stumbling. Cigars, yeah, they can a good heavy cigar can give you a buzz, but it's a different kind of thing. It's a chill. It it gives you you're doing something because you're smoking, so you're not getting bored as you're talking. There's something something to it. I mean, how many Amazon events have we been to? Was that one in Chicago where we're like, "Oh, yeah. We're going on this balcony and anybody meet us and we had 20 25 people out there. Some smoking, some not. Some on the sellers cruise." Yeah, that was the one I think where there's about 30 people all gathered around. And again, some smoking, some not. And I mean, if you don't want to have the smoke, um, then you know, fine. And most of the time too if you're outside even better because then the winds just sit the opposite way the winds are blowing. Yeah. Um but uh I find that billion dollar seller summit too. Remember we're all out there on that balcony on the Driscoll. Yeah. So there's a lot of Amazon sellers uh will enjoy a cigar from time to time and enjoy that bonding. Yeah. Take a look who was there. by the way, there were so if if you just started selling and you went to that uh BDSS and this happens, you know, to any major event, but the guys that are out there, oh, you know, they were all, if you take a look at it now, what I would call all tier one either sellers or service providers. And what a great way to network. Yeah, it is. It is. It is a great way to network. And it's a Yeah, it And we did it at in Hawaii, too. Remember we had set up that tent and it was kind of raining at the BDS in Hawaii. Um that was crazy. Um but that's why, you know, you and I are are doing an event in November uh in Tampa, which a lot of people don't realize Tampa is the cigar capital of the world. It's not Miami. It's not Cuba where a lot of people think it is. It's actually Tampa. and that culture there. It surprised me when we went to check it all out and kind of do the whole weekend that we're going to be providing everybody. We went there and it I think I told you I was like, man, when you come to Austin, there's a barbecue place on every corner and we're known for our barbecue. You come to Tampa, there's a cigar lounge in every corner. You know, in Austin, we have I don't know, three cigar lounges, four cigar lounges for city about the same size as Tampa. They have one on every corner. They must have 50 of them there and including like the number one in the world in an old church. And so you and I decided that hey, let's set up a weekend for people. Doesn't have to be an Amazon seller. It can be anybody. It can be your friend. It can be any anybody. And let's just no presentations, no stress. just three days of a handful of people and 20 people or so going to about 10 different cigar bars, doing a cigar cruise, learning how to roll cigars, seeing the history of it. Uh if any of you are interested in that, um there there might be a spot or two left. It's collectivemindsocciety.com. collectiveminds with two ansocciety.com. You can check that out and and maybe even join us. What else are we we doing at that? Well, hopefully we'll do the uh cigar tasting. And I'm not talking about eating it, but it's uh the nodes. So, at the So, I'm trying to see if we can get that set up. We're going to the museum, which is so interesting. Uh we went there. We explored it. But what I learned is that you don't have to go very far. You don't have to fly 90 miles from Key West to go to Cuba. There is an official like Cuba. There's a piece of land in Tampa that's owned by Cuba. Yeah, that was so cool. I I had no clue that that existed. Yeah, I didn't know that existed either. But what is it about these events like this, you know, the collective mind society event that we're doing or but it there's no talks or presentations, but you still that you're bonding with other successful people and as you're sitting there smoking a cigar for a couple hours, you know, you never know what's going to come out. Hey, have you tried this AI tool? you done this or that? What is it about events? I mean, at the time of this recording, you're flying off to an event. Y, you know, I just went to uh Accelerate in September and and uh I spoke at a couple other events. And what is it about going to events? There's a lot of people listening to this that don't really go to events, so maybe they go to one per year. They've been to one in three years. Why should sellers get out and go to a couple or handful of events a year? Well, I think it's really important um you know, like-minded people, they get together and you become um part of the network. So, you know, you you always heard birds of a feather flock together. But the other thing is everybody who goes to one of these events, you know, it could be one that's $49 or it could be one that's $5,000, but you're putting your own money in to learn and to become educated. And while you're at this event, the person next to you or the person to the other side of you, they're doing the exact same thing. And I know just from the times I've gone to events, I get to network with people and I go out if they're having a networking lunch, we'll go. And Kevin, we've done this before. We've gone to a podcast event and we didn't know anybody. And then by the time we left, we knew like a hundred people. and we got names and numbers of people in the industry to to help us with either services that we needed. Um, but it's just the ability to, you know, get in there, understand um, just understand your industry better, but also the education. The education part is so important. The networking part is even more important. And I'll tell you another thing. If you go to an event that you have this going on sometimes we went to a a high-end event in Paris in some 9th century castle and where we really we learned a lot from the event itself but sitting around that fire uh having a drink or smoking a cigar and just sitting there telling stories and maybe the odd thing about Amazon might come up or e-commerce and I'm telling you the nuggets like that we picked up from some of the people that were out there were crazy, but you're breaking bread with people. You're smoking. You're you're laughing. And that's completely different than seeing somebody on stage or just talking to the person next to you. And uh that's why uh when you get a chance to do this, make sure you go to the networking events, make sure you go out to dinner, get a few people together, go out to like if you're in Vegas, go to a cirusle show, do whatever, but get to know people. And that's when things will start to click. Well, a lot of people will say, "Well, yeah, that sounds great, Norm, but that costs money. I I got to fly there. Even if I'm in the States, I'm going to fly from uh Atlanta to Vegas. You know, that's going to cost me 400 bucks and three or 4 hundred bucks for a hotel for a few nights. If I'm if I'm not staying in the nicest place and some more for food and Ubers, my time in my ticket to go to the event, depending on what it costs, I'm in this several thousand bucks. I just don't have several thousand bucks right now to do this. Um, I'm just going to watch some stuff on YouTube or watch one of these seller summits that are free. Uh, well, you get what you pay for. That's one thing. Uh, and you know, you don't know who the person is if you're just watching on um on YouTube. Uh, you know, and usually if you're on a webinar, uh, the free stuff that you you get some tips, you know, usually some good tips, but there's usually something that you got to buy at the end. And you're not going to get something for nothing, you know. it it's just a fact of life. And I I I'll tell you when I first got into Amazon uh I went in I went to the ASM event which and I bought the course uh from Jason Flatlin. Um and then they had an event and it wasn't cheap. Uh it was I think 9,000 bucks and it was in Malorca but everybody that I met in I did a mind map on this and I put everything back and after Malor one week after Malora I I knew these guys uh they're called uh Helium 10 and uh there was a guy there Kevin King I wrote him and I said hey uh can I get this discount? Nope. So I had to pay full price to go out to Cancun. And so I put everything together. It cost me 40 grand for everything by for my hotels, my meals, my so everything together for those two weeks. But I probably made in excess of seven figures over a three-year period from the people that I got to know. and I could call you, you know, and we weren't great friends back then, but you know, in belonging into the uh the forums, going to other events, really getting to know more people, but getting to know the top of the top. Anybody who's going to put 9,000 or $10,000, yours was, I think, nine uh 8400, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. But you still had to get there. There was a lot of costs involved, but I got to know just tons of people. Uh Dimma was there. Um uh Tor Rabinovich, Ezra Firestone, like all the top of the top uh that ended up Yeah. Yeah. That's why I tell people like the Helium 10 Elite workshops. Those of you listening that are Helium 10 Elite members, uh go to the quarterly workshops. I mean, don't just do the stuff online, but actually go to the quarterly workshops as well. There was just one just recently before Accelerate and every 3 months they do another one sometimes in Europe even. Um um so try to get out to those as much as you can. But hey, besides besides the event stuff, what what do you see is the biggest change that's happened in the last couple years from a seller's point of view. You have tariffs that are putting squeeze on a lot of people. You have Chinese sellers the more and more of them coming in and kind of like if you don't have a big moat around your product, it's harder. the aggregator wave is gone to make that quick easy money and exit. Um, I see a lot of sellers out there kind of freaking out and crying and I've had other leaders from other groups and stuff reach out to me, hey, you kind of seeing this in your communities, too. And I'm like, yeah, what what do you see is big that's changing and scaring people and what they should be paying attention to in the selling world? Well, what's new is old and what's old is new. That's the thing. Hey, back in the day, if you wanted to start a business, you'd have to invest a quarter million dollars into property, stock, you know, putting everything together just before your launch. Today, I still look at it, maybe it's because I'm older, but I saw what it was back then, and I see what it's uh like right now, and I still get excited that people can still make it. But if it's a quick buck, well, you might have that odd home run, but it takes work. And I um I was thinking about people like making that quick million just before the aggregator uh boom, but you remember we'd go and we'd see all these young guys and they made their million and it was their first million and they you know they they weren't quite humble, you know, they they were a little cocky and they didn't have to do anything and it just kind of fell in their hands. Well, it's not like that. You got to build that brand. You got to figure out what's working. You got to go with the trends, too, because we know right now um authority, you know, what's what's happening with Google. You have to be in authority and you have to learn what they're picking up on. So, you got to be up on what's happening with the SEO, with AEO, and we talk about that all the time. But even press releases now, you know, we found that that uh like I've been in press releases 15 years, I don't know. I've I've used maybe even longer and I've always used them, but it's come back so strong, especially now you put out a press release. This is one way that you can get into the LLMs if it's done properly. And the LLMs, in case you don't know, these are this is like ChatgPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini. And I showed you the other day, I called you and I said, "Look, I just did this for a brand." And within five hours, we were the number one keyword that came up in all of the LLMs. And it was shocking, but it's just taking control, becoming the authority. We've talked about uh uh something that Dennis Yu taught us uh a little while ago about Google knowledge panel and how important it is to have that spiderweb of people um w with Google knowledge graph Google um Google business profile is still huge. So if you tie all these together and you tie in a few press releases and you are the authority. So with Google knowledge panel I'll just go back to that for a second. super easy to get as long as you're an authority of something. So, if you have a social media following, if you have um some sort of service, if you have a brand, you can go in and apply for Google Business Panel um knowledge panel and you'll have to get verified. You'll have to take a picture with your passport and send it in. It takes about two to five days. And if Google says you're verified, you're verified and now you're shown as an authority. Your your panels are shown differently in the search engines when somebody searches your name. So there's a lot of different things going on, Kev. And just in AEO, we're just starting to hear about this. And how can you be see how can you be shown in the uh uh people always ask or where are they getting their information? Well, you know, agencies are good for that. Uh you can do it yourself, but you know going to Reddit, going to Quorum, um doing here's another one that Dennis you said and I don't see a lot of people doing go into the people always ask. See what those questions are and just keep digging into those questions. Those are all the questions people are asking. Take a one minute 30 second to one minute video every day and publish that. And guess what? You're going to start getting ranking and authority because you're answering questions that people are asking and you can get that information free little research by just going to people always ask and digging down. Isn't that cool? That is cool. Yeah, that that's an easy technique that any product seller think can do. You can take them off of Amazon. You can take them off of like answerthepub.com. You can take them off of a lot of places. Well, a lot of people though are saying, "Yeah, this AI AI or AEO or GEO or whatever you want to call this stuff sounds either." Uh, they're all saying this sounds great, but you know what? Um, that I don't I don't think that many people are doing that right now. I'm going to stick with what what I've been doing. And that there is some truth to that. The foundational stuff of making sure your listing is optimized, making sure the keywords are there, making sure all this stuff, you still got to do that. But at the same time, there's another layer you can put on top of that that optimizes you for the a the AI, the roffuses, the cosmos, the outside stuff. What are you seeing people doing around around that if anything? Well, first of all, for people that think, oh, it's, you know, it's too early. There's a group of us and that might make up 10% of sellers. It might make up 15%. But we're the innovators. We will take we will take the chance. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. We'll probably pay a little bit more. And then everybody else also follow, but guess what? The innovators were the ones that went to Amazon back in 2012 and 2013. And when everybody else came in, they were already there. They were in Amazon. They were rock solid. As long as they kept had the review mode going and everything. Exactly. Exactly. So, as long as they had, like you said, the foundation, they could build on it and everybody had to eat their dust. And that's what we're doing right now. Those people who are getting and laying the foundation in the LLMs, uh, becoming the authority, doing everything that you need to stay ahead of the game, it'll be so much easier. And we know it's going to be easier. Like, take a look at technology. You know, the old the old computers. I remember this when you had to install and you have a batch and a config file and you had to figure out uh to not to slow down your computer what would be first and what would be second, third, fourth, fifth. Then in 1995 uh Windows came out with plug-andplay. You just plugged it in and it made it that much simpler. And will that come? Probably. But right now there's a lot of things that are going on that we got to do manually. And we're going to uh I don't know about you, Kev, but I I think I know uh you're not going to stop at just kind of just getting out there. You're going to get in with two feet and you're going to be the innovator. Yeah, I I agree with you. I think right now is the opportunity when it comes to whether it it's on Amazon or off Amazon to get positioned, get that early early positioning in AI and kind of ride that wave. And there's it's not going to be any easier than it is now to get that positioning. It's only going to get harder and harder just like Amazon became harder and harder to actually sell on. And then I think also what do you think about, you know, there's a lot of people listening to this that are probably just Amazon sellers. What? And that used to be everybody said, "Oh, just focus on Amazon. That's what the aggregators want. They just want asens." But now you talk to some of the aggregators that are still around. They're like, "No, we wanted companies. We want brands." So what where should people be looking besides Amazon? Should they be looking at Walmart? Should they be looking at Tik Tok shop? Should they be looking at Shopify? What What should be their their next steps if they started on Amazon and they're trying to to be more omni channel? Well, that's it. Omni channel. I remember the day where if you were omni channel aggregators, brokers, none of them were looking at any of that except for Amazon. If it was Amazon focused, uh that's where you made your money. There wasn't an extra zero for anything else. Now you have to be omni channel and it's crazy if you're not because you still can wake up one day and all of a sudden you know you're suspended for something. So yes, Amazon for sure. It's a great channel. Uh but before even going into Amazon, you know, when you're building your brand, you want to think about a few things. And I'm one I'm not afraid of Chinese competition. I always said to you about perception. I've always believed in perception. This goes back way before this when I when I was doing a lot of other businesses outside of e-commerce. It's all perception. You know, you can get a lot more money just by doing your packaging differently or how they when they open up their packaging, how it's perceived. Like I call it unveiling the product. But that's one thing is just making sure that your packaging is good. Now, if you ever decided that you wanted to go into retail, you want to take a look at your brand and retail packaging. Maybe you could do that for Amazon as well. A lot of the times people choose to go into retail and they find out, uh-oh, I got a problem. I don't have my brand retail ready. Now I got a problem. And that's something to talk to your packaging people for. You can still have it on Amazon. It still goes out in the same box, but you just make a a few differences like a different configuration maybe. Um maybe you you um uh maybe you have it where there's certain information on the outside or it could be a hang tag or it could be something that will allow you to go right into retail. But also u the catalog, you know, very simple catalog uh very simple to do. So, uh, retail, I think, is one of the area areas that people are overlooking. And it doesn't have to be huge. You don't have to worry about cash flow. You can start out with mom and pops. And there's apps out there that'll find it. Um, you know, Apollo's one of them. There's any biz. There's a lot of companies out there, apps that you can choose and find out these mom and pop um stores in your local area. we all have them. So, you start there. And if you're selling beauty products or pet products, they'll buy a case and they're going to pay you upfront. That's the starting point. Maybe you hire somebody to go out and call a hundred of these and see what they do. Um maybe you go out and visit them in the surrounding areas on a Saturday or a Sunday. So, that's something you could start with. But Walmart's doing good. Walmart um now with their AI um Sparky I think it's called um they're they're they've been struggling and always in you know the uh eating Amazon's dust but they're trying their best and we've got Tik Tok shop and there's a lot of different platforms that are coming. I don't think that these are the three that in three years are going to be the only three out there that we we've got. I said this about Walmart years ago is that somebody is going to come up and compete against them. I didn't know how. They were so huge like I think there's a Walmart what every 16 miles or something. Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. And all of a sudden there's Amazon. There's a Walmart. Yeah. Within range of every person within six. Yeah. Yeah. So now with uh Amazon out there, who's going to be that new player? you know, I and I can't tell you that, but I got to keep the radar up. So, uh, Tik Tok shop, if you have the right product, Walmart Marketplace, uh, Amazon, of course, take a look at retail, take a look at the local shopkeepers, and if you do get into some of the larger, uh, retailers, there's lots of things you can do to help with your c cash flow, like factoring, for example. Um, but don't be afraid to take a look at uh at retail. It's a it's a great opportunity. What about some people that say they're following this AI stuff and you hear all this stuff about agentic AI and you have the the some of these browsers DIA and Cosmo from Perplexity and some of these others and that are doing the shopping for you and it's all agentic and it's agentic shopping and it's like go hey go search through my emails see what shoe these last pair of comfortable shoes I bought and go find me the best price out there and it goes through your emails says yep you're size 12 and 1/2 uh you like this and this um this is what you paid last time and it goes and finds it and even orders it perhaps on your case on your behalf and so you're not actually going to to the site to actually look and peruse uh or shop around or window shop. Um what do you think's happening in there in that? Do you think that's going to be something that grows and grows and grows and right now it's very small, but you think that's something that's going to catch on and to where you're going to see a a shift in maybe 30 40% of the people are actually going and and window shopping and looking around the other 60% of the buys, especially for commodity type of stuff or just robots. Yeah, I don't know when it's going to roll out. I'm sure it will roll out and it'll catch on fairly quick because the generation that's coming up, uh, they're going to be used to this, right? But the here's the trick with that is that as a brand, how are you going to get their attention? How are you going to like it's the AEO, it's how are you going to get noticed by Perplexity? So, Perplexity has the opportunity to show you as a brand, you know, or any of these like how how is your company, you know, how is your brand going to get recognized by Perplexity? And you can see right now they have an affiliate program going, right? So, you you show up on Perplexity and guess what? They're getting an affiliate and Chad GPG is doing that, too. They're going to have some advertising and stuff in there that's that's that's coming as well. So brands have to know or agencies have to know. And there there's so many crappy SEO agencies. I would probably say the high majority, 80% are crap. They don't know anything. Like they know old they they know old techniques that don't work nowadays. But if you're, you know, you get a company that's on the cutting edge with SEO that's doing things right, then you got a winner. And that's the same thing with moving forward with all of the AEO that we're talking about and the um and just getting into the different LLMs. It's important. Well, another thing that I think a lot of sellers overlook and you you and I see this is email. I I know we we start when I started my newsletter a couple years ago, the billion-dollar sellers. Um people are like, Kevin, why are you starting a newsletter? Who nobody reads email? Um, my ex-wife even at that time said something to that effect and and I was like, "No, people actually email is still the best medium." So, I started the newsletter and now it's one of my most powerful influential things. You've done the same thing with the lunch with Norm newsletter and it it's grown and and it's doing doing well. Not only does it make money and and make profits, but that they they have influence and it can lead to other things. A lot of brands though are still maybe they send out a newsletter but that's really not a newsletter. It's a marketing email. Yeah. It's not really providing value. It's just announcing their new stuff or new promotions or whatever their crap. Um but if you do a real newsletter, but even beyond that, uh forget the newsletter cuz you know that takes work and effort and AI can help on some of that. But just sending emails to your customers, giving them something of value or or sales emails. So many people that you and I have talked to in the in the Amazon space, they either don't have a list of customers, they're just counting on Amazon and and sell the next guy and the next guy. Or if they have a list cuz they did product inserts or they generated some other way off of Shopify or whatever, they're afraid to email it. Like, what if I upset somebody? What if they say unsubscribe or um what if I bother them uh and they they get mad at me? And it just baffles my mind how many people have that attitude that email is dead or so 1990s and that I don't want to ruffle any feathers by sending emails are going to spam or someone complaining back to me. Quit sending this stuff. Um I get that now. I sent out some marketing emails in my head. one today a guy who's sent you know has been to done a few things and he said man this one this one advertiser of yours it's like it's like every all they every week I get an email from them uh well he knows that advertiser's name now and at some point he may buy something or at some point he may not but what are you seeing in the world of email when it comes to people doing e-commerce and what are some of the things they should they're doing wrong and they should be paying attention to well first of all I hear um emails dead. And I've heard that for years and my answer is it's not dead. It just smells funny. And that's good for us because people think, you know, there's no worth to it. There's tons of worth. I I was dealing with a um a brand that had 280,000 emails and it was a beauty brand and he he never sent out one because he thought he would annoy somebody. And I just I no matter how hard I tried, I could never get him to uh send out anything. Well, the truth is if you provide some value, it's not the it's not your typical email that's going out there. But if you provide value and it might be a um you don't see the promotion or it might be a slight promotion but more value within the newsletter, then that's great. If if you are um and Kev, we talked about this a lot, but if you could profile somebody, and there's lots of ways of doing this now, but you're a pet company, you want to know whether they um they have a dog or a cat, what size is the dog of the cat, you could even get down to the breed. Now, you're targeting them specifically and you might be talking to them about their St. Bernard and their large dog bed or that they maybe your dog bed company. And there's so many things that you could do. You're saying can combine the power of AI to to enhance the email data that you have to make it even more powerful. Yeah. And I don't even think all you need is um uh segmented lists, too. You don't absolutely need AI. AI makes it your life a lot easier for that for sure, but you could start if you want to start working with your email list and just sending out one. By the way, if you just send out one and nobody is answering and you're sending it from a new domain, even from your old domain, like your regular domain, maybe nobody's getting it. This is the biggest problem, Kevin, is that when you're sending out your emails, you don't you think that they're getting through, but the reality is if you're sending out a blast and you're doing it wrong, which probably if you don't know how to do it, you're doing it wrong. I can guarantee you probably 85% are going directly into spam or promotions. And it's just like it's just like putting up a product on Amazon. Say, I'm going to put my product on Amazon and and wait for it's like a field of dreams. Wait for the sales to come in. If you don't do the underlying stuff and the optimization and all that, then you're not going to have the same results. And the same applies to email. And a lot of people either don't understand that or don't know what to do. Uh and that can affect everything dramatically. Yeah. I showed you I sent you over this this um graph of a client that was going in and he wasn't found. Uh 85% were in spam. Nothing made it to the inbox. Nothing. It went to promotions. So there was that 15% that went in. That's the guy that says email doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the guy that says email doesn't work. And he's going to miss out or they're going to miss out big time. And you and I with our newsletters, what you in the 60% I get 60 anywhere from 58 to 70% open rates on my emails, my newsletter right now. You're in that same kind of range, right? On yours. Yeah. And we're always working it. So, we've just transferred our email. We're working on that right now. So, we're going over to a different service and now we got to work the list. So now we've got to go out, we've got to seed the lists and make sure that the um the open rate stays at that, you know, high level. But that's a lot of work that people, first of all, here's a tip. Here's the nugget. If you can write down a nugget for the day, it's don't send from your own domain. Yeah. You get a second domain. Have a second or subdomain or something. Yeah. And you always warm it up that second domain wherever you're putting it. What's warm it up mean people? Um it just means that you're sending out you're getting it warmed up. So you're sending out just a small amount of emails. Um getting them into the inbox uh adding seeds so you can building a reputation kind of building your representation. So the domain the domain uh your domain is going to either be high um high, middle, low, or bad. And when you're first starting it out, it's probably going to be low. And so you're only starting out with a few emails. You're probably um there there are companies out there that they call it seating where they'll find really clean email addresses, send them out knowing that they're not going to go to spam, that they're going to go directly into the inbox. And over time, you start building that up and then you can start sending out, you know, 5,000, 10,000. But you're not going to do that right off the bat. It does take time. It's a longer term process. Yeah. I think email and a AI stuff are two things that people in the in the selling space, whether you're Amazon or Shopify or whatever, are not taking advantage of. But I built entire companies by off of emailing and emailing again and again and again. Yeah. And now with AI, whether you're optimizing, I mean, you need to be optimizing for Rufus and Cosmo. Yep. But that doesn't do any good if you don't have the underlying foundation of the keywords and that stuff fully optimized, too. So, they kind of go hand in hand. And and then for more and more people are searching on GPT and Claude and all that stuff now, doing product research there. And if you're not showing up there, uh, then you're losing out. And that's only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. I think I saw a study like about 20 30 something like 60 or 70% of all searches are going to start on, uh, on an AI platform, not on on Amazon search or on search. It happens now. It's it's small. It's like I think what was it during Prime Day? They said like 40% of the younger generation used Rufus to do some of their search and something like 20 18% 17% of the older generation did it. But the older generation usually catches up. But the but the young people are now they're doing voice search and they're doing they're doing uh voice, you know, they're talking, they're not typing anything and and then they're using AI and they're much more comfortable with it and they trust it. It's it's amazing how much, you know, I remember the CEO of Pattern was at an event recently and he said that as a gift of all these kids and when they turn 16, they give him a car and they make some recommendations like we think you would like one of these three. Pick one. And the kid didn't do that. They went they went to chat GBT and said, "Hey, I'm a 16-year-old blah blah blah and I like to do this, this, and this. What kind of cars would you recommend?" They came back with some different cars and she went with that over what her parents recommended because she trusted that more than what her parents said. And that's that generation and that's going to be working its way up more and more and more and if you're not optimized for that then I think you're losing out. So you uh what what you have a service or company that's actually doing some of that right now right? Right now yes uh it's called Dragonfish. Been working on it for a while and uh it's email service as well as the AEO service and a couple other things tucked in there but uh we're on it. What's that? Dragonfish.co or something like that or what's that? It's It's changed so many times. It's dfci.co. dfci.co. If you want information or some help on that. Um what before we wrap up wrap up here, we got just a minute or so left. Is there any other uh any other thing you're seeing out there that people need to be uh paying attention to in the Amazon space uh either right this second or what you're seeing across over the horizon? Well, one of the things still is listings right there. I don't think there's a there's still a lot of people that haven't taken the time to understand Amazon's new compliance. So, get out there, ask chat GPT. I did it answered and it was correct. Uh but uh just taking a look at images a lot of the images uh you know the knife company that I use there were it looked like a a package and a knife used to work looks now when I when I uh used um a product pinions um what's it called image image checker image checker yeah it said uh weapon and tower so I had to change that around yeah you can use Amazon attribution for that and inside Helium 10. Pikfu I believe has something uh like that too in embedded. But yeah, those kind of things are definitely stuff you need to pay attention to. But speaking of paying attention to if they want to pay attention to what's happening in the norm world, how do they get lunch with Norm newsletter? How do they reach out to you or anything like that? Well, uh if you want to hear the podcast, it's lunch with Norm podcast. That's live every Monday. And if you check out YouTube, last week's podcast will be published, edited, uh kind of flashy a little bit. Uh take out all the u NASCAR wrecks that happened during the live podcast. And then uh lw.news, that's lwn.news is where our uh you can find our newsletter. And then of course I have the marketing misfits, which is uh with you. We have really incredible people on every I think we publish every Tuesday and um check it out. Like the list is incredible. These marketers, business people, just people that if you listen to one episode, you'll get nugget after nugget after nugget. So that's at marketingmisfits.co or you can check it out on um on YouTube at marketingmisfitsodcast. are if you just want the the threeinut clips, the nuggets, you can go to marketing misfits clips and they're three minute and under clips. Awesome. Well, Norm, thanks for coming on and being my first returning guest. Uh, this has been cool. Yeah, it has been good talking with you. You want to go for a cigar? Let's go. Let's go for a cigar right now. I'll meet you in Tampa. All right. Very good. All right, man. I appreciate it again. Thanks for coming on. Yep. I always hear people say like selling online, e-commerce is dead. Uh move on to something else. I couldn't agree disagree more. I think the best opportunities are now. Is it easy like it used to be maybe on Amazon? No. But if you can utilize a lot of other tools outside of Amazon, like Norm was saying, going on to to retail or using email or using AI and doing all this stuff, the opportunities are immense. And we're at the beginning stages of some of these. And if you can ride that wave, you're going to have great success selling. Hope you enjoyed this episode. We'll be back again next Thursday with another edition of the AM PM podcast. Take care.