#477 - Hijacked Amazon Trucks + TikTok Shop Strategies

Today we talk about the completely new and revamped AMM podcast and Serious Sellers podcast. And we talk AI strategies and we hear from Carrie who had a whole container of her Amazon product hijacked on the freeways of California like a Fast and Furious movie. Hello everybody and welcome to the AM podcast. My name is Bradley Sutton and I'll be your host. And this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon, Tik Tok shop, and Walmart private label, and how to generate recurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the AM and the PM, hence the name of the show. Get it? AM PM podcast. And as a matter of fact, this last weekend, I was in Connecticut as a referee for a huge sumo tournament with 4,000 people. And even though I wasn't working in e-commerce, I was making money. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. And guys, for the first time, we are here. We are doing, I guess you would call this a simalcast. This is a special episode on a special day that we normally don't release podcasts on, but this episode is duplicated on the AM PM podcast and the Sirius Sellers podcast because we are about to enter a new era of both podcasts at the same time. And to help us, you know, go through this, we've got our other co-host of the podcasts and weekly buzz, Carrie Miller and Shiovali Patel. Welcome to our show. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us on. Now, before we get into all the new changes that are happening on the the both of these podcast, uh guys, make sure to stay tuned for that because it's very important. um you know some of the podcasts that you've been listening to like Weekly Buzz is moving to another one and and other things are moving around and so it's very important that we get to it and you guys know the new schedule and stuff but let's just do like we always do on both of these podcasts and talk some strategy and and just e-commerce in general. Carrie, let's start with you. You've had quite a year on Amazon. Yeah. Including some things that would be great for the Fast and Furious 11 movie. talk about your fast and actually what happened was from the Fast and Furious first ever movie of a truck being hijacked with your products. So can you tell us a little bit about what in the world happened to a container of your Amazon products? Yes. But yes, it has been a very interesting year. So the first thing that happened this year, not only we had tariffs that were introduced, which was a challenge, but then um this truckload, we actually moved, we're moving our warehouse from Marino Valley to Reno, Nevada. And so we have um we were working with Main Freight and that was our 3PL and so we're just moving it. And basically we hired a trucking company to go in and and ship there's be four truckloads of our stuff up to this new warehouse. Um, and so we were were actually doing it in increments just to make sure that we had available inventory. So we kind of split it up so that it was um just a smarter way to do it. And so we did the first truckload and the first truckload uh they loaded it up in Marino Valley and this was the email that we got. Um it says, "We have some unfortunate news. Received a notice from the carrier that it is possible that a load was stolen andor transloaded. The carrier booked on this load had their identity compromised and was impersonating them. While the load was tracking, the driver or bad actor turned off their location. The fraudulent party is now contacting the carrier holding the load hostage for ransom. So basically, we had an entire truckload stolen and they said they were possibly holding the truckload uh hostage for ransom. It says, "We contacted the shipper to provide the driver log information with the correct truck, trailer, and motor carrier information in order to report the stolen cargo to the local police department. Unfortunately, this is the extent of the information we have and will advise as more details arise." Do they think it was like some South American gang or something like that? They even had some suspects or or was they just speculating? No, but I've actually talked to some other people and I actually talked to uh just some other kind of well-known people in this industry that work with like an agency owner, some other people who who've said that bigger brands are just taking huge losses on this um and that this is a kind of a newer thing that's happening and what they're doing is they're stealing these truckloads and they're just going straight to um Mexico. It's especially in Southern California, it's super easy to get go straight to Mexico. I mean, we're what like an hour from the border there. So, it's like, all right, I'm going to be on the lookout here in San Diego, and then when I go down, my dentist is in Mexico. If I see a lot a very organized cartel or big gang, and they're all wearing these great socks that that Carrie has. Well, now I know that Carrie is not sponsoring these these gangs, guys. If you ever see that, no, she is not involved in in criminal the criminal underworld, but that those are the ones who are responsible for hijacking on the streets of LA a container of Car's Amazon products. But did that result in you guys like, you know, seriously speaking here, did that result in you guys like running out of stock of those things? I imagine that was probably like a few months of inventory, right? The challenge was we so we had $40,000 worth of inventory stolen. That's 40,000 of what it would have been before the the um tariffs, but then after it was more like a 70,000. So, we actually got recovered $40,000, but then when we had to repurchase it, it was much higher amount. So, was definitely okay, you know, you know, it's not that great, but I do have some recommendations for people. The trucking company that we hired, they they subcontract out. So, if you talk to a trucking company, you want to make sure that they have their own employees, their own drivers. Um because I know a lot of trucking companies do this, but this has become a huge problem. Um and I know that other people have dealt with this. Or if you're, you know, able to somehow get some air tags into your load, that might help as well. But the sad thing is, especially in California, that the police do not act quickly. Like they've never even acted on it. There was no there was no movement in terms of um the police trying to figure out what happened to it. It was just gone. So I I thought it was crazy though. I'm like ransom. What are we like done in South America? This is crazy. That was a bad story. Uh Nashali, you had a similar bad story on your Amazon product where it was more let me call it mainstream problem as opposed to a you know shipment getting hijacked by terrorists. But uh you had some big quality issues that kind of like killed one of your listings, right? It Yes, correct. And it was a great product too with 45 plus% margins. So thankfully that built in some space for me to to do something with the actual product. gave me some time to think about what to do next. But I did end up having to pull that product from Amazon because I was getting so many returns simply due to the quality and this product. The next question you might be thinking is, well, did you do an inspection check? I did and it failed that inspection check, which is why I waited until that product had better quality. You know, it actually passed the inspection, but even then, by the time that the product arrived and people were receiving that product, they were not happy with it. So, I did have to to take other measures. If it passed the ended up passing, like can you go to the inspection company? Hey, why did you guys pass this the second time or still sucks this product? Is that something you can do? I definitely could, but at the end of the day, right, the product's already been received. Yeah. And we already have it. And I ended up pulling the product, whatever was at the the Amazon facilities to my house, and I was able to inspect that product myself, and it was quite literally falling apart. I did a in-person event here actually in Raleigh where I took some of the the products and I put them out and as it was sitting outside people would open it and it would fall apart in their hands. It was like the worst thing. Like I knew that there some of the quality had an issue but I didn't expect it to fall apart that way just sitting there. So that's how bad it was and thankfully I've I've taken steps to pivot that that brand is still very much alive. It's just not on Amazon. Hey guys, are you in Southern California and interested in an advanced in-person Helium 10 workshop? We are opening up our elite workshop in Irvine, California to anyone who would like to come. It's first come, first serve until it sells out. It's on December 16th in Irvine, California from 10:00 a.m. to 400 p.m. And one speaker is going to share about how he went from zero to 1 million sales on Tik Tok within a year. And he's sharing his exact strategies. Another speaker will be talking about answer engine optimization and how you can get your products more visible on AI searches. And Bradley is presenting a brand new way to make listings. So come and listen to these highlevel presentations and network with other local top sellers at Helium 10 headquarters. For tickets, go to h10.me/q4 workshop and use code elite 100 to get in for free. We'll see you there. Now, now Shiovali, like like one thing I think you're still not going to like I I have your product stored at my warehouse. You haven't asked me to throw it away, but um correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you have a plan where you're going to almost like flip the complete game and and you had offered like a course with as a bonus for the product, but now you're switching and like offering the course is the main product and then you're going to almost like just give away some of these defective things. Is that was that am I oversimplifying your game plan there or can you get give us more detail? That's absolutely correct. Last year I was a really big proponent of saying you should sell a digital product with your physical product. I still very much believe that because I think that's the whole reason that that brand had success on Amazon why it flew off of the shelves. It wasn't because necessarily I just did great product research with Helium 10. I think beyond that it was the the perceived value that that product came with. It was hiked up because people said, "Oh, you're not only just getting a product, you're getting an experience out of it and it's a great gifting opportunity because of it. I also offered live coaching classes." Now, what's really cool is that's the reason I had great profit margins and that's why when things went wrong, when there was a quality issue, I have that backup plan of being able to change out that marketing component. So, this year has been very much about it's been very much about just setting great foundations and making sure that you're selling a digital product with the bonus of a physical product. So, all of my funnels have been set. We're prepared for Q4 and looking forward to a brilliant closeout for the year because of that. However, it's not on Amazon. So, now I've been very much experimenting with Google ads primarily. What's the general flow of how this course and then the product like like what's your go to market strategy? Uh like how are people going to find this offer? You are you going to market places with it like Tik Tok or is it just going to be on a Shopify website? And then what's like the hook and and at what point do people know that they're getting this this package or this this makeup, you know, bag package that that's going to be shipped to them? Like like talk talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So, the way that it's positioned right now is you get a course, learn how to master makeup for your face, for your features. A lot of makeup courses out there, they teach you about all the trends that are working in the space right now. People get very excited about the trends, but truthfully, everybody's face is different. And you also want versatility in your day. Some people want to just get ready for their workplace. Some people want to actually go out for a date. Some people want to feel confident in their skins for a promotion. It's just very different. I have this lady who actually bought the product on Amazon. She shown up to every single live coaching class I've ever had. And when I stopped doing them because I was like, "Ah, well, the the the people that are coming to the live coaching class has kind of dwindled down and I had some things going on in family that took over priority." She actually reached out and she was like, "I want to know what the next step is because I've realized that your product has the thing I need in my life." cuz she has immense social anxiety. And so she was telling me that the product not only changed her life, but she sees it as the vehicle that's going to get her to the next level for her own life. And she asked me what more she could she do. And so that's when a second tier came into our marketing plan, which is now going to be a subscription model for the live coaching segment. So you have the original basis still, which was built all when the product went live. You have the digital product, you have the physical product, but now people are buying the digital course to master makeup for their face. The first 500 customers only who are based in the US get the bag. Now, I said 500 because of course we've had some quality issues, and I just honestly don't know how much of the quality is bad, but I know that there's at least a good 500 that I can definitely just give out. So, it's marketed as a freebie. and then anybody else that wants to do more than one live coaching class because now the the base plan is just one live coaching and then if they want more if they want lifetime or if they want to do like a 12week program that's a different additional cost. Carrie over the last couple of years you you've been talking about looking into other countries for manufacturing socks and things like uh I believe you know you've taken a couple trips to Turkey and you might have looked into Vietnam or something. I believe you were making them in China first, right? China. What first of all what was it in uh reason for you and your dad to start looking into other countries? Was it tariff related? Was it quality related, price related? What did you end up doing and how is it how has this transition been working for? I think the first time we started looking was just just to diversify um where our manufacturing is just in case you know so that you you know something happens with one country you still have the other options. Um but then uh and that was I think it was two years ago that we went to Turkey the first time. Um, but then recently it's become the tariffs because the tariffs were just they're just really unstable and it's just not easy to predict and so we've moved everything to Turkey. When did that happen or like when when were you 100% in Turkey? Well, we still have some inventory left. We had a shipment come in from China. We still have some products that are that were actually sitting over there from like every time we try to ship them the tariffs kind of go up. So, we're trying to I think there we're going to ship them soon here. Um, but we've just been trying to get them at the right time and uh and so basically all the all the new orders are going to to Turkey. Now, what's the difference? I I don't need like dollar and cent exact, but like percentage- wise up or down the manufacturing cost difference between for your product Turkey and China and then the landed cost, you know, which would include the shipping and tariffs and and stuff like that. Shipping wasn't actually as as bad. It was actually less in some circumstances, but um and tariffs obviously less and tariffs are less. Um but overall it ends up being less because of the tariffs, but in terms of what it was before, I don't know the exact percentage, but um it's definitely more expensive in Turkey. So it's um you know, we're definitely cutting into those margins and then it's challenging with more fees going up. So it's a it's a balance. We've had to raise our prices a little bit slightly. But the quality you think is better? I think it's amazing quality. Yeah. I've tested a couple of them. You you guys who uh follow me on my Serious Sellers podcast Instagram will see me do my leg room check. And whenever I take my shoes off, there's my bamboo socks uh right there. That's pretty much I wear it anywhere to play basketball. I wear it to church cuz there's black ones there. Like like that's I don't wear anything other than bamboo socks anymore. All right. Before we get into the the next, you know, strategy or or e-commerce information, let me let you the listeners out there know the first change that we're doing with the podcast. And that is the weekly buzz that you guys always hear on Serious Sellers podcast comes out in the past, usually every Thursday or every Friday. It's a quick, you know, 15, 20 minute episode with whatever is happening in e-commerce, all the news you need to know about things that affect you. and we give you guys a strategy of the week that could be or about Helium 10 or or other things. We also give a um you know let you know what new features that Helium 10 has because we're always adding things. That 20-minute episode will now move to the AMM podcast and it'll be on Fridays. All right. So, if you're listening to this on the Serious podcast, you rely on the Weekly Buzz to get your e-commerce news. Make sure to subscribe to AMM podcast right now. Uh just whatever you're listening to this on, type AMP PM podcast. If you're already if you're listening to the amm podcast right now, obviously you don't have to do that, but if you haven't subscribed there, hit the subscribe and then hit the bell button so you can get notified for new uh for new episodes. But starting I think this week, this week will be starting this week or next week, the weekly buzz will be moving to the AM PM podcast, which by the way, you're like, "Oh, is Kevin King going to do No, Kevin King's last episode was last week. We talked about that on the Serious podcast a little while back. We thank him for his service. He he has done more AM podcast episodes than anyone out of all the hosts. I've only hosted one episode of the AMM podcast, I think, way back when when I first started. Manny Coat started it. He did about 150 episodes or so. Um 180, I think. And then we had another podcast host, Tim, who did about a hundred or so. But Kevin did over 200 I believe episodes. So we definitely thank him for all the great uh hosting and all the guest that he has had. Back to Shiovali now. Um you're known to to have a lot of strategies with KDP and stuff. So let's just skip over that. You you have a lot of content out there for KDP. Let's talk about some of the newer things you've been getting into. You know, we have a lot of tools for creators and influencers uh at Helium 10 for Tik Tok shop. And so you've decided to like, you know, kind of like hop in and kind of understand the other side of the aisle where where you're basically an influencer slashcreator. So uh first of all talk about what it took for you to um qualify like you know not just anybody can just say hey I want to be a Tik Tok creator and and Tik Tok gives you a badge. Like what did you have to do to qualify and then talk about your journey so far once you became a creator what you've been doing and and is it generating money etc. Yeah. So, I obviously working at Helium 10 have access to a great amount of resources and when we were coming out with all these things, I thought, you know what, why not see how the other side lives and we have the content, we know how to be on camera. So, I went in and I started posting content that I already had in my camera role. This is for for TikTok. Before we even cover the eligibility, I want to talk a little bit about the process to to get there, which for a lot of people, they think, "Oh, I got to I got to get on camera. I got to like post stuff." Carrie will even attest to this. She's literally just shot something and like posted it and it's gotten decent views. You can shoot videos off the cuff or you can do what I did, which was just go into my camera roll and find a video to post every single day with uh the information that you want to create an audience in. Sometimes it's just something fun. You can do a diary style thing. I know that I have interest in stuff that's related to money, business, finance, and investing. And so that's kind of where I went with it. I took my old content, posted it, and then made the description and the niche relevant. Of course, you want to have great profile photo, great bio, really tell people what the value is in following you. Sometimes that's as simple as entertainment. But my goal was really to get to 1,000 followers because that's when you get access to Tik Tok's creator pilot program. That's not the full-fledged affiliate program. full for the full-fledged affiliate program, you need 5K followers, but for just getting started out, 10,000 is enough. Now, this isn't going to be readily shown to you inside of your notifications or if you're checking out your monetization programs. You'll have to go into creator insights in the search bar and then click the advanced the the top banner that you're seeing. And then when you go through and you select it, you'll see the eligibility, which is going to be the 1,000 followers. It's going to be you're at least 18 years old. And then there's a third criteria which I can't think of off the top of my head, but it is pretty simple. The biggest drawback is literally just the 1,000 followers, which you can do very easily. For me, it took 12 days. So 12 days of posting one video a day. I know a lot of people out there say post three to five times a day. There's a girl out there who was posting 25 times a day. That is absolutely okay, but that takes a lot of time. And something else to to know, I' I've found a lot of really interesting things when you're posting is some people will go on and if you find a video that does really well organically, you can either put money into it or what you can do is post that same video again because the way that Tik Tok works is it pushes it out to people and if they watch it, it continues to keep pushing it out if they're seeing engagement on it. I would recommend turning off the toggles for, you know, your contacts seeing it. Facebook syncs happening because then it's going to be the people that are in your network seeing it first, whereas I find it to be more beneficial if it's getting pushed out to people that I don't know. So, that's a little bit about how I got into the Tik Tok creator pilot program. Since then, I've started adding products to my showcase. Bamboo Sports was literally one of the first products that I added because like Bradley, I I mean, outside of, you know, shameless self-promoting Carrie, I I just think the product is great. And so I added that plus I added some stuff I was using on my day-to-day. So for example, makeup. I know I wear that when I'm doing content. It's really easy to tag products like that when you're posting your own face. Um other things that I just really believe hold on. What does that mean? So that means you didn't necessarily make a video for it. It's like you made a random video, but then you you tagged a product. So there are some stipulations to that. You want to have the product in shot, but because I literally have a brand that's about makeup, I had content with makeup products in video already. Got it? So, just make sure that you're you are reading the terms and conditions, you are staying compliant. If Tik Tok is saying that you're promoting something, you will need to have some sort of show. Maybe that's not the entire product, but at least like part of the product. And so that way it people know that that's actually a promotional video for that product. Um, but you can go in and add it add it to your showcase. There's a few things that can happen when you're even adding products to your showcase. Maybe you already have them, so you don't need to to get a sample. But other times, you'll be able to access that from Tik Tok Studio and go in, check out shop, see if it's a refundable sample if you've made three sales or something like that. So, you'll still pay for the product upfront, but then later on once you've made a few sales is when you'll actually be able to to get that product refunded to you. The the price point for that. I think this is a good place for me to also talk about the the hot videos resource that Helium 10 now has because you can go in and find videos that are doing really really well for a product and copy the script. Of course, this is not just as a creator, but also as a seller. I think this is a really great thing to do because Tik Tok is top of funnel. Like a lot of people are on there to scroll, they spend their time. They get entertained on the app. They're not looking necessarily to buy, but a lot of us do end up buying. aka me when I bought a walking pad a few nights ago. But if you find a video that's doing really really well or if you're going in and you're saying, "Hey, I want to, you know, have that halo effect on Amazon," a great place to start would be Tik Tok. We have all the resources for you to kind of link all your your your listings to sync them over to Tik Tok shop. And then you can use something like hot videos to figure out what sort of videos are popping off for influencers and then take that script put it into chat GPT come up with something similar and then create that for your own products be it using AI using your own voice your own product or even going to 11 laps for uh AI voice and then meshing it with arads arc AADS is is an interesting site I've been exploring recently too. Okay. So that's uh that's interesting there. I'm going to ask you about AI in a second, but okay Carrie um again more negative stuff from you, but but but your business was taking a hit in like profitability and and other things this year, but I I think you have stopped the bleed and perhaps you know even improved it from where it it was. So what what was happening uh w with your brands uh you and your dad's brand on on Amazon and how were you able to kind of like stop the bleed? We had an agency that we switched to um in January and um they was actually doing fine until about May and then in June um we had a competitor that kind of flooded the market with a ton of money. You could see that there was a ton of advertising going on just they had money to just cover everything and they were also you know I'm in a really competitive niche so it's not an easy easy thing to do right in in general in this particular niche. Um, and so we had a competitor just completely flood flood us out. And at that time also, um, our ads, you know, what happened, what what I can see in hindsight from looking at doing some audits on our ads is that two of our most profitable campaigns were shut off by the agency for no reason. Um, and then on Prime Day, we also shut off the ads and then they were supposed to be turned back on, but that that was actually a really bad idea. You shouldn't do that ever on Prime Day. you should always just let it keep going. Um, and so, you know, we really lost our traction and it just kept going getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. Um, and so we basically just got rid of that agency because and here's the thing is maybe some things happened with an agency and um, they, you know, do whatever they can to solve it and they they work with you and that we're like, "Okay, we're all problem solving. We're trying to figure out what happened here. Let's make sure we get these sales back up." They did not do that. They were like, "Oh, no, it's fine." you know, they didn't really care. Um, and it was really really they sounded like that on the call. They're like, "Oh, you know, you ran out of stock, but it was like one skew that we had no stock on. We had completely, you know, we had we kept our stock." And so it was pretty much that tone. Yeah. It was really frustrating and infuriating to be honest. And so I find that, you know, it's fine when when maybe a service provider, they make mistakes or there's something that goes wrong, but it has to do with how they address it, how they communicate with you, and how they work with you. And so this particular agency did not do any of that. They did not care. And it was extremely frustrating and upsetting. And so, um, basically I said, "Hey, I've got to just take this over and figure this out. I'm really good at keyword research, so I already have that part down." So then then that was our journey into the outsourced to optimized series that we had and basically about taking over your um business and I think everyone should understand how to kind of audit your business and what's really cool with Helium 10 is you can actually see things very easily very easily in sellers um in in seller central or in the campaign managers it's it's harder to figure things out because you can't filter but we have a way you know within Helium 10 that you can take a look and see things pretty clearly and pretty easily. Um, and so yeah, that that's something that I would recommend that everyone knows in there like like what were some of the things that you changed where it immediately gave you or the bad things that you stopped like what in the world what were they thinking? Why did they do this? And then was there anything in particular? Yeah. So the first thing was just trying to figure out those campaigns they had paused some campaigns so you could see that oh these campaigns were doing really well. Why are they shut off? That's number one. Um, also there were some high spending campaigns with, you know, terrible, terrible a cost and there were a bunch of words in there that were wrong. Um, also we have different types of products, right? So keywords for campaigns should be related to that product, but they were just kind of blanketing and they had edited some campaigns and there were um wrong creatives were in there. So creatives that should not have been with specific products were it was basically the wrong creatives. So they had wrong creatives. Um, one thing, another thing was, uh, I noticed they were doing VCP VCPM campaigns and that's like these display ads and you basically pay by impressions and it looks like they're doing super well, but Destiny pointed out to me that that's not necessarily um, the case and that so it's basically these display ads show on your actual listing. Um, and so if you know it's basically a defensive thing. So you're not paying by click, you're paying by impression. So if you've got a lot of people coming onto your page, you're paying a lot more for this, but it's attributing sales even though it shouldn't be attributed to those, if that makes sense. So just kind of these kind of weird different campaigns that um we were able to see. But um yeah, targets was a big thing. You know, okay, this target we've got, you know, 20 clicks and no sales. We need to turn this one off or we're targeting these asens and it's not working out. We need to be turning these off. You can see that very very quickly. So, those are that's just a few of the things, but there were there was actually quite a bit that was going wrong and I really think that that's why it's important to kind of understand what's going on and um being able to kind of follow along and having Helium 10, you can just kind of go in and monitor it. That's a good segue. You mentioned outsourced optimize into let me talk about the rest of what the new podcast situation is for all our listeners out there. So before we would have kind of like strategy sessions about a specific like Helium 10 tool or about a topic like we have shows that we have tacos Tuesday. It's a it's a monthly training about something about advertising and right after it's a ask me anything. Uh we have a monthly show called AIM AI monthly where it's about AI and the world of AI and how it intertwines with e-commerce that is going to the AMM podcast. Uh we have a monthly general training with Ask Me Anything and uh we also have one show called Tik Tok Thursdays where it's all about Tik Tok and so all of those shows previously were on the serious sellers podcast. Now that'll be the second episode of the week on AMM podcast. I already said that the weekly buzz will be on podcast and the main host will be Shiovali. Uh Carrie will be there sometimes, I might be there sometimes, but now you guys can listen to that on the AMM podcast. And that all kind of like goes to the roots of AMM podcast. In the beginning, Manny was talking about his story about selling on Amazon and that was around the time he started Helium 10. He'd talk about some Helium 10 tools uh that were helping him grow his business. And that's the main crux of what we want to do on the AMM podcast is to show, hey, you can make money throughout the AM and the PM. And here uh is the strategies that can help you do that. If you have questions, that's why there's going to be ask me anything. We'll have it actually live. A lot of these episodes will be live on YouTube and and other places you guys will be able to sign up for. And we also need to know what is going on in the world of e-commerce. Uh and that's why we're going to bring you guys the news. And so since Manny, you know, would have those news things, we're going to have the news also on the AM PM podcast. So what is the Serious Sellers podcast going to be? Here's something interesting. There will be only sellers now on the Serious Sellers podcast as guests. We've always had sellers as guests, but but we'll intertwine experts uh on there and service providers and things because they're knowledgeable people, but now Serious Sellers podcast will only be one episode a week and it's going to be dedicated to like talking to real brands, uh people who aren't, you know, trying to sell you something or a course, which would there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Helium 10 sells courses, you know, nothing wrong with that. But we wanted to have like a safe space where it's like, hey, let's just listen to the people um who who are in the trenches like you guys and what they're doing, what works, what doesn't work. Like we we talked about some things today with Carrie and Jioali. Some negative things have that have happened um and and h and and how they're succeeding uh you know ser with their serious strategies for serious sellers. That's our motto still on the serious sellers podcast. So that is going to be every Monday starting next week. you'll have a serious sellers podcast where you're guaranteed you're not going to be sold to uh from a service provider. We're not going to be talking about like Helium 10, but it's strictly uh about stories of sellers. And so, if you're an AMM podcast listener, that's what you've been used to on the AM podcast. We've had a lot of uh sellers. Not everybody's a seller on here, but if you're if those are the kind of episodes you liked, continue listening to them on the Serious Sellers podcast every Monday. And we have YouTube channels for both of these guys. So, subscribe to both of them. You guys are are visual. We record everything in video. Uh, our video team, Andre and Nico and and Mel really work on a lot of good graphics to make the the podcast versions or the video podcast versions lively. So, just look up Sirius Sellers Podcast, Helium 10, on YouTube for the SSP. And for the AMM podcast, just type in AM/PM podcast and you'll find the YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe and turn notifications on. So that's our new format for podcast. One serious sellers podcast a week on Monday with sellers. Uh one podcast with a expert coming on to give a training and ask me anything on Wednesdays for the amm podcast and then Fridays will be the amm podcast weekly buzz. We're going back to the original intros that the amn podcast started with. We're trying to bring back a lot of like old flavor and remember our roots but also bring you some new things as well. So be exciting times for for our podcast here. Now back to Shiovali uh thinking about you know some strategies. You you've been experimenting a lot with with different AI uh tools and and things like what's an AI tool that you use that is not chat GPT or something that everybody knows about but something a little bit under the radar that people might be surprised when they even find out that that it uh exists but it can help them in their e-commerce journey. I've been experimenting more recently a lot with ArchiCADs and with Higsfield AI. What I like about Higsfield AI, actually I was talking about this earlier today with an elite member in in our office hours call and that was how do you really generate before and afters that are pretty consistent with the product? And one of the things you can do, this starts with chat GPT, is you can put in the the front and the back of a product and then an avatar and try to get a very hyperrealistic rendering of that person holding that product. From there, you begin to take that frame, reinput it back in, and get the next frame. And then what you can do is go over to something like Higsfield.ai and go into selecting cling.ai. So it it pulls from that and select the before image and then the after image and then write in the prompt that you want how you want it to transition over basically. So that's a little bit more of before and after and you can do it for four or five frames. So you have a short video that's kind of scrolling through and following that product through different um settings. So different backdrops. So it's an interesting way to create a a video. But then obviously there are stationary ones. So you have an influencer maybe talking in a car. And I've seen a lot of these because I was consuming mad amounts of content to see if there was a way to create videos with AI for specific products. Especially cuz I was thinking a lot of these um influencers, they're creating they need to get so much product on hand. They can't be necessarily buying all the product. And they're not. Cuz if you go and you watch a lot of these videos on YouTube where the influencers are um actually making great money with what they're doing, they're actually not even getting the product. They're doing exactly what I just said, which is starting with Chat PT and then going into something like Archads and saying, "Hey, take this avatar, take this product, and create an influencer that's sitting in the car that's just talking to the camera saying this script." And the script is completely from ChatGpt. Many businesses their success really depends on having great systems. And I think if you can find a AI system that really works for you, you have an endless resource of just videos that will do well. You can begin to create a lot more content. If you learn how to use the AI tools well, you will really end up with a great amount of content that you can put onto any of your brand pages and make sure that people really have the brand awareness for what it your product or your service really is. All right, before we close our episode, back to Carrie. Any last strategies you're either using or you've heard about that are intriguing that um you'd like to share with the audience? Um in terms of strategies, I think that everybody should be paying attention to Rufus like we've been talking about and uh optimizing their listings. Um we've seen some bumps with that. Um so just make sure you answer a lot of questions that the AI is basically providing to people. So, you know, when you look at Rufus, you can see what kinds of questions people are uh are asking and um so, yeah, just kind of making sure to start optimizing for that and start learning those kinds of things. All three of us are here, guys, because we're all now the new co-host of all of all these shows. And we've got a lot of exciting things, you know, coming up on both the AM podcast and the Serious Sellers podcast, which is why we we did this kind of like co-branded episode. But the bottom line, everything we do is uh designed to bring you guys the strategies that'll help you succeed in e-commerce. And when we say e-commerce, it's not just Amazon. The original AMP podcast is like 99% about Amazon. That's we're in a different world today in 2025, 2026 where it's about being on Tik Tok shop, it's about being on Walmart, it's about being on Shopify. And so that's the kind of stuff we're going to be talking about. How can you succeed online? subscribe to both of these podcasts and you will get the best strategy. So, uh Carrie and Shiovalia look forward to working with you on these uh new podcast and we'll see all of you guys in the next episode. Bye everyone. [Music]