Broad Match Show - Who Hates Rufus?

Broad Match Show - Who Hates Rufus? Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome back to Seller Sessions. We haven't done a broad match show in a very, very long while, I think. How long has it been, Adam? Speaker 2: Man, I feel like it's been at least a month and a half, maybe two months, maybe three. I don't know. Speaker 1: Yeah. Have we done one this year? I'm not sure if we have. Speaker 2: We haven't done one this year for sure. Speaker 1: All right. So we do a feature length. Yeah. Welcome back, Adam. What's going on? Speaker 2: Dude, I've felt as good as I have in a long time, which has been really nice. I think, as you know, kind of behind the scenes, it's been interesting and challenging and dynamic three years for me. But yeah, I've kind of been testing out Austin this winter. Six weeks here kind of like November through kind of December. And then I've been here for about a month and a half and I'll be here through the end of April. And man, it's an amazing town. Like obviously a lot of econ people here, you know, Kevin King lives here. Ryan Moran lives here. Vanessa Hung, like a lot of people in the space that a lot of folks know, but it's just a really cool dynamic city. Lots of live music, great food. You know, it's 30 Celsius right now, which is pretty, pretty sweet. So kind of mild winter temperatures, but Yeah, man, you know, one of the questions you ask in a lot of your interviews is like, you know, the darkest, you know, what's the darkest? What's the dawn? The darkest before the dawn? Speaker 1: What is the darkest hour just before dawn? And we all have them, don't we? Yeah. Speaker 2: So I feel like I'm coming out of my dawn. Dawn's been rising nicely and seeing the sunset. So it's been fantastic and a lot of cool stuff going on in personal life and business has been going really awesome. So good all around, man. I appreciate you asking. How about you? Speaker 1: All good this it then. I've kind of mentioned the stuff on the podcast before, but I kind of come out the blocks late this year with the start point of Seller Sessions because I had the Rufus thing that we had to do. So everything got kind of pushed back by about two months and I never expected the world of pain that was waiting for me. You know, building out your own ticketing system that we built last year, right, which was delayed. Hence, we didn't have a Christmas party. And we have SOPs. But literally everything we touch, we broke. And so I've spent... Do you know what Murphy's Law is? So for people don't know Murphy's Law is when anything you touch turns to shit. I think I told you a little while ago, I was over at, I was looking after Kata's house for like 10 days while she was over with family in Chile and the peak of the moment come and I'll kid you not, I got up in the morning because I'm a, you know, early riser. This is before 8 o'clock in the morning, right? So I'm up and this is in the first 90 minutes. Say I'm up at 4.30 So because I'm staying at Katter's, I don't have access to the studio, right? And I think I messaged you that morning and told you the story and I'm going to do it from the top of my head. So I got out of bed. I didn't want to wake Cheryl up. So I grabbed my laptop and I thought I'd take the laptop downstairs. So I get downstairs. Laptop is dead, right? So I thought, OK, I know what I'll do. I'll go back upstairs with the laptop. I'll grab the power cable. I'll go to the spare room and I'll go and work in there. So I'll go to the spare room, take the laptop, set it up, plug my headphones in. Headphones not working. While this is going on, we've got my dog, my cat, two cats, Three dogs. And if you imagine, because I've got up and gone down already, they're barking. So I can't work from the spare room. So I get my charger for my headphones. And my laptop I go back downstairs. I walk into the kitchen and I step in dogs week And I'm thinking you've got to be kidding me, right so Your dog or a cat's dog. Speaker 2: I don't know Unidentified urine unidentified canine urine at this point. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So I got up, you know, it's a little puddle it dogs We that's just the way it is, right? So I clean that up and then I think right okay now I'll start work and fed the dogs because obviously they're up there barking don't want to wake Cheryl up. So then I then plug in okay where am I going to plug in the computer right because the plug sockets or where they're placed she's got an open plan kitchen. So then I think, OK, I'll have to sit up the breakfast bar and then work like that. And I thought, that's not going to work. Right. So I spent 20 minutes walking around thinking, all right, where am I going to plug the laptop in? Because if I leave the dogs to start barking again, Cheryl wakes up. So then I've gone. Oh, I know where one is. There's one just on the bench and table. I've gone under there. One of the dogs has done a little poo. So I've had to pull the table out and clean that up. And then I then plug in. I'm about to start work. I opened up a software which has got about a year's worth of data in it. All gone. So then I have to contact the person before we'd started. I had to contact the person who's a friend of ours and say, all the data's disappeared. And he said, it's all right, I'll speak to the engineering team and give it a push. And then they'll load it back into the software. It did come back, but that was a snapshot, right, of every day for 10 weeks. And that was just the two hours in the morning. That isn't the rest of the day and the other days and anything else. So you have to laugh about it. But that was a combination of this is out of control. Why me? Because normally you have a bad day, maybe a bad week. I had that for 10 weeks. But he's cleared now so Murphy's Law can go fuck itself, and I'm glad I'm through it. But yeah, it was just annoying. It's like running through glue. Everything you do is just slowed down. So anyway, I gave a long story and it probably sounds really boring. I just thought it was outrageous of every single of those steps. Do you know what I mean? And I think with If we get into the woo-woo, when you push, push, push, sometimes you push things, it goes further out. So sometimes you have to take a step back. Does that make sense? We're entrepreneurs. Unknown Speaker: We're going to go hard. Speaker 1: We're going to go hard. And then the more you push, the more it goes away. Sometimes you've got to let things come back to you. Do you know what I mean? Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that, man. I mean, one thing that I've kind of, I mean, I've always kind of felt this, but it's definitely been reinforced specifically the last six weeks for me. There's times where you got to grind and you just got to like, whatever, clinch down on the mouth guard and go after it. And that's just the way it is. And it maybe feels tense and forced and anxious and all the rest of it. But I 100% agree, man. There's something about when you, the hardest part is paying attention to the flow of life. Like, cause it's very easy to ignore, especially with the noise and motion and all the things that we've got to do. When you take that moment of pause and you surrender to the flow of life as it should be and as it really does feel authentic to you, that's when things go, not easy, but they go. They flow and it's all aligned. But yeah, those seasons of life when you're clanging your paddles and kind of pushing upstream and getting one foot up and getting knocked eight feet back, it's a tough season. But I agree, man. There's something to be said about surrendering to the flow of things. But yeah, I'm glad you're coming out the other side of it. Sounds intense. I remember I was chatting with you when that happened and there's a lot of moving parts going on here. Speaker 1: Yeah, that morning, because it was a lot of important work for a sit down and to go through all the, like, you know, prepare all the data to go through it and he'll come back. So that was all fine. And that was like, just to give you, it wasn't like, yeah, oh, sorry, Dan, you had to clean up poop. You know, poor you. I'm just giving you the irony of the first 90 minutes of the day that just went on for 10 weeks in that kind of vein. So you kind of get to that point, you're like, why do you fucking bother? But there's one thing, and I always say this to Warner, be the cat. Do you know what that means? Speaker 2: No. Speaker 1: What happens if you chase a cat? Runs, it runs away. Right. So with a cat, you let the cat come to you. When the cat wants attention, let the cat come to you. And if you apply that to most things, most guys don't get that because of the connotations around it. But there's a metaphor in there is like, you have to let things come to you. Right, which means is like you bring them in versus you chase after it because generally when you chase things, what normally happens? It goes further away. You get annoyed, you get frustrated, right? You know, like sometimes you push, push, push, but then you go to bed, you wake up the next day, everything kind of reformulates and you're back to normal again. But you realize it's because you keep pushing. So yeah, I think we're going on a bit of a spiritual run here so might cut this bit but But I think that's the thing is you've just got to just go with shit and just move forward Yeah So let's think what's been going on this end other than People thought that seller sessions was a speed dating event, which was hilarious So, yeah sorted out I mean look I just don't know where it came from, but clarity trumps everything. So we sorted all that stuff out. So that was fine. The good thing is with Seller Sessions, people just go, I sell a session. I just buy a ticket. That's the beauty of the loyalty that we have. But because we get something like 46.9 or 47.1 return over the years, you know, like come back to Seller Sessions. So that's the good thing. But you still want to sell out all the other tickets. So you don't want to give people a misconception because it's not the whole audience that come back. It's half, right? So that's been good. So we've adjusted the message, redone all the landing pages. And so that's good. Sort out this ticket platform. We end up selling a few tickets at the wrong price, let's just say, because we changed the product types and the variations. So that was good. A couple of coupon codes blew up. And yeah, it's the day in the life of a promoter, really. So we'll actually probably get on to do some real things with the conference instead of that. So what I'm excited about at the moment, I've just been, I showed you off camera, building out some tools. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing stuff. Speaker 1: But the, yeah, so we've got the one with Jeff Anderson, Juano, and of course, the little genius Anthony Lee, who never gets his flowers, and he should. One of the best when it comes to AI. I don't know what people, I don't know what they, why people sleep on him. That guy's a fucking genius. Speaker 2: Well, he's been doing it for four years. Like, I mean, starting with the NFT stuff, but he's gotten, yeah, the technical side of that emerging technology. He's definitely one of the best. Speaker 1: Oh yeah. I mean, you know, he's yeah, flawless. Um, so yeah, we've got this, um, quarterly acing tool that we're dropping, I think, Why don't we roll that out at Prosper? Because where we're at the moment, because of the beauty of no code, we can actually build tools that don't exist for what we do on the stuff that we're doing. And one of the things, as I said to you at the moment, I watched a show off screen about relevancy is the tools I'm trying to build at the moment, which at Seller Sessions, I'm just giving them all away. It's going to be part of everything of the new format. What I want to do is that I want to build grunt tools, which means is that the person using them doesn't have to think about it. So everything I, when I build stuff, I feel that in most cases, do you want to learn a new platform, get the learning curve, come up the strategy, then measure it? No. Sellers just want, does that work? Do I press a button and the magic happens? So everything I, it's not possible. Whenever I build stuff now, I frame it this way. How many steps do I take to press the magic button? It just happens because that helps me remove steps, you know, and it's just a framework. So there'll be probably about half a dozen tools I'll have ready for the guys. And these are not just like custom bots, you know, which are cool, but these have user interfaces as well. So I'll have those ready. But what I'm really keen, which I can't talk about the technical details of, but now that I'm on board with Data Dive as a consultant, I work with some of the engineering team and I submitted an 80-page document methodology. I have to be careful with my words because of confidentiality, but I'm excited about that as well. There's some... Speaker 2: Super exciting. Speaker 1: We might see some stuff Or might not because at the end of the day, they make the final decision. But might see some stuff in the next six to eight weeks roll out. So keep an eye out there. I won't say where it is and what it's for. But yeah, I'm excited about that. Yeah. Speaker 2: And I think honestly, I think just to step in on that topic, I think There's been a lot the last six months especially on the whole Cosmo Rufus ecosystem and obviously you and Juana and others that have been kind of chipping in and have put together an amazing catalog and an encyclopedia of what it all means and kind of dissecting the science literature. I think the challenge in our space is I feel like most of the brand building entrepreneurs that are in our ecosystem and that come to events and that we watch these podcasts and things like that. They're skill sets are usually oriented around, first of all, just having entrepreneurial balls. Sorry to be crude about it, but that's a big part of the game is just being able to say, hey, I think there's something here. I don't have all the information. I'm just going to go for it and go for it. I think that's been a foundation of the success of most of the brand builders. And then maybe they've got some other specialty, whether it's like they're great at designing products, they're great at traffic, they understand all the technicalities of Amazon listings and how to run pay-per-click and kind of arbitrage traffic, all those things. I think the gap that we face the last six months is that the world is shifting underneath our feet with the technicalities and the backend and the science of Amazon. And there's resources again that you guys have put together. I think the best resource in kind of understanding what it all means But it's also just like, holy shit. I'm just like, I'm a ballsy entrepreneur that just goes after it and figures it out. And like my head's spinning and I'm losing brain cells trying to figure out what this all means. And so I think The next wave in the next six months for me is taking all of that pretty dense information and making it more actionable and accessible, which again, the tool that you showed me and some of the stuff that you guys are cooking up does that, which is like, okay, I get it in thesis. Things are changing. I get that, you know, Cosmo is changing a lot of the algorithm of Amazon. Rufus is changing some of the customer experience and shopper experience. I still don't really know exactly what I need to do with this listing that's five years old and that's turning $200,000 a month and it's losing $20,000 and I need to figure out what's happening. I don't know what buttons to push. I don't know what to change. The scientific back end information processed in a way that's digestible for that brand builder entrepreneur that maybe doesn't care to or doesn't want to piece it all together and burn their brain cells to figure it out. I think that hasn't been solved yet. And so whoever solves that and it sounds like you guys are on the road map to that. Speaker 1: What is there's a few. We haven't solved it. No one is. But we're trying to do our best to do that. So you've got to look at a couple of things, right? It seems that he not give an example of an irony is let's look at Rufus. Everyone loved Rufus. Right. And then we dropped the blueprint, which covered a lot of stuff that not people had experienced. And after about nine weeks, the tide has been turning. Like when I was in Prague with Warner, when we did our thing last week, we had a slide, Who Hates Rufus? But there's a bit of comedy in that. Why is that? Because, you know, LinkedIn can be a bit of a clown world. Let's be honest. And people begging for page impressions. So a lot of it is kind of straw man arguments, you know, throwing rocks to get page impressions. You know bit low this week. What kind of controversy can I? Put together, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, don't have to know who can I take who can I take who can I take in my post to get more people to see my stuff? Speaker 1: Yeah, I know the yeah, so you yeah, so It's just screams of desperation most of the time. There were some good people in there do content amazing But there's some fucking clowns Which is just laughable. So you get some more tech Rufus and then what they do is they frame it and Like, people are saying that Rufus is taking over. It's not. It's not. Right. And I've never said anything other. It's an additive to what you're already doing with optimization. Right. So let's say. And I said this. Look, if everyone in the room pulled out their SOPs, about 80 percent of it will be the same. The other 20% won't be because there'll be stuff where you'll die on that hill and back it up. And other people said, no, that's useless. That's pointless. It's the 20% there is where you're making the adjustment because the foundation doesn't change. Right. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So I think it's key with any of this stuff. People got to understand it's not a zero sum game. We're not all in the realm to semantic and we're moving away completely from word to word lexical matching. Because in order to serve semantic in terms of queries, it still uses lexical for the retrieval results. Do you understand what I mean? When results are retrieved and shown, okay, and they're ranked, that requires lexical because it has to be passed through the query module. And that's when it's broken down into the matching types, which separates to understand this in layman's terms. So you've got to understand is that we're having in this shift, People need to put out content and get eyeballs. And if the numbers are low, what else are you going to do? What sells? Sex, controversy. And so, you know, one part of LinkedIn is great. The other part is just clown world, right? But it is what it is because they're looking for attention. So the point I'm trying to get around to on that. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So we had a nine-year honeymoon period. Now, Rufus has got nine weeks, so it just goes to show that the tide is turning. But what's beautiful about it, every week when this happens on LinkedIn and the clowns are out, Something new happens with Rufus, you know, it ends up on the desktop and da da da. But in the day, we are probably wrong most of the time when it comes to experimenting. It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to be right or do you want to try and get to the answer? Because science isn't about being right. It's about getting to the truth. And that's what's missed on people because we operate off proven strategies, right? You know what a proven strategy is. It's a moonshot from a thousand tests and you handpick what's best and then you insinuate that's going to happen to you. You're going to get a 200% uplift in conversion on your product. It's not true. So if you look at that and then you combine that with science and it might be that Amazon is tested across 40 million versus someone who's done a proven strategy from their single account on their single product with their observations. That is still trusted more than anything to do with science. That's why the mind boggles. If I present in that way, do you understand what I'm saying? There's nothing wrong with proven strategies. They are a basis for testing. You could go, OK, I like that. Let's see if we can test for it. But to assume you're going to get 200 percent uplift. It's not going to happen. There's too many different moving parts. Do you understand? So we all have to battle in this gap. Speaker 2: We're in the gap. There's like two different things that I've been kind of thinking about this specifically as it relates to Amazon. Number one, which you just hit on, which is most of the strategies, technical inferences, tactics, whatever else, they're very contextual, meaning it depends on the offer, the product. Probably 50 different variables at play for any given listing at any time. And so that in and of itself is going to be, it's not going to work all the time or with the same level of magnitude. So you got to have that thing. The second thing, which I think is most important is that, you know, playing in the clicks and the dramatic kind of layers of it is everybody wants the silver bullet and everybody wants the hack. And I think that what's happened with Amazon specifically over the last seven years is it's become. It's become an increasing game, and it always has been, but it's become an increasing game of what I call incremental gains, which is, and I kind of actually correlate this to cycling. I was in cycling for a long time. Actually, Sir Bradley Wiggins, a guy from the UK that won the Tour de France, talks about this a lot, but the difference typically between first place and last place in the Tour de France is something like nine minutes, 200 riders. The fittest, most successful cyclist in the world is nine minutes faster than the domestique that's just running water bottles to people. Okay, so what does that mean? Well, how do I win the Tour de France? Okay, well, I shave my legs and that gives me 0.5%. I get an aerodynamic test in bike that gives me 1%. My training gives me 5%. My nutrition and using ketones gives me another 1% agile. I think that's the game that we're in and that's absolutely the game that Amazon's in. Amazon's not deploying Cosmo and Rufus. To completely upend a platform that they've built over the last 20 years, that's going to fundamentally change how their business works. No, they're looking for a 4% improvement in conversion rate universally, which to them means billions of dollars. So I think for us as Amazon sellers and people in the ecosystem, number one, there's no, there's directional rules that are absolutely, I would say truths, but the magnitude with which they impact a particular ACE and situation moment in time is going to be very contextual. The second is that when we're trying to solve for the future changes as these incremental adjustments that Amazon makes to incrementally improve their business, we're trying to understand what are the incremental shifts that we can create and institute that's going to give us those marginal gains. I deploy one different thing and I do one thing and then all of a sudden I have 10x my business. That's not how this works. The mental frame for me in absorbing the headlines of people in the space as well as the information that comes out is, okay, we're in a game of marginal gains and those marginal gains are going to differ depending on how I apply it to my specific contextual situation. But we all have to level up, right? There's new chips on the table. There's new elements. There's new things that we need to be aware of and so I think the people that stay on top of it but also think about it in that way. I'm not trying to solve the world's problems. I'm not trying to re-engineer Amazon. I'm trying to get 1% here, 4% there, 0.5% there and if I do that with enough reps, with enough thoughtfulness, with enough discipline and enough action, that's when you've all of a sudden got a business that's up 15% year over year. But if you actually digest it and figure it out, it's not a silver bullet and it's much more dynamic than that. This is a video game that we're playing. That's what makes it fun, you know? Speaker 1: Yeah, and just to validate your point more, conversion optimization is iteration over time. There's never moonshots. Very rarely is there a moonshot, like very rare. You're talking one in one hundred, one in one thousand. Right. Let's say you optimize a listing. OK, you could use any tool out there and the methodology. Right. How many times and people have to be honest when they listen in the audience, it's a ratio. Like, say, for instance, when I do my attributes optimization, mine moved the needle one in seven to one in ten. And that's just attributes. That's not the listing. So if you take into consideration a third party software that's been around 10 years, You know, a thousand listings are optimized in there a week. How many do you think of those listings end up being hits? It's a percentage. This is why we have the 1% or the 5% or the 10% because if it truly worked like a proven strategy or something where what we said, you know, do this and this will happen. Everyone will be a seven or eight figure seller, but they're not. It's a one percent or so. And everyone's trying their best to get there or get to the next level. It's all percentages. Everything you look at, no matter how it's patched and marketed. If you look at testing, we've like, you know, Dorian. Speaker 2: I just finished a four month project with him, actually. So, yeah, I know him well. Speaker 1: Okay, so you know him well. Really straight shooter, right? He's been doing this 10 years. Best in the game. Find me somebody who's better than him and we can have a conversation. There isn't. His strike ratio is 60-40. So 60% of his tests don't come out how he would wish. 40% is fucking amazing. Amazing. And this guy is at the top of his game. If you get 20%, so this is why you do 100 tests, you get 20, you're doing really, really well. It's all in the ratios and volume. Speaker 2: Agreed. Yeah. Thank you. Speaker 1: So and until people sit with that and get that, they're not doing conversion optimization. They're just doing template stuff the Amazon way. But true conversion optimization. You've got to be a realist, okay? And you've got to set up your tests in a methodical way that you can measure it. Not, you know, just whack that on for a few days. Oh, that ain't working. Pull it. Not tracking. Do you understand what I mean? Like, you run a test and you go, it's not going in the right direction. You're not documenting. Well, that was shit. That didn't work. It's because you hadn't done it properly. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you bring that up because there's, again, it's a contextual game and there's outliers is the other thing. So like one of the things that we worked on with Dorian, which is just, I mean, he was even just like, we all, we had to kind of laugh at it at some point, but there was a product that probably does One and a half mil a month. So it's huge, huge volume, lots of data. So it's not like a lack of data or lack of impressions kind of thing. And it was an image that frankly wasn't great, wasn't high quality, almost looked like it wasn't shot on a phone, but it was like that level, like, okay, this is an easy win. We'll make some money and all the best practices, right? Pretty up the image, change the shadows, tried 3D rendering, tried higher end photography, tried putting the keyword on packaging, added some objects in there that correlate with some of the features, like all the things that you would do and every single test, there's probably five or six of them that we did and you would have bet $10,000 that any one of the ones that you put in front of there would have kicked the absolute crap out of the old image and the old image won every single time and I think that Again, this is a contextual game and I don't know what the theory is on this, but maybe it was like, because it was a product that played pretty heavily on value and price. And so maybe it looked too good for that customer that was looking against other, you know, call it price point sensitive items. And they're like, Hey, maybe that actually disqualified that higher quality image. I don't know what the theory is, but I think so whatever it is, is that. It's a dynamic, infinite game that's very situational. And the keyword is infinite, right? And it's always changing, always dynamic. But I think it's just being in the game, taking shots on goal. Wayne Grodzki, famous Canadian, said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. It's just how many shots can you get on goal? And it doesn't matter how many you miss. It's just the more reps you get, the more chances you're going to get to find some nuggets. And I think that's the game that we play. Speaker 1: And have the expectations say, look, I might have to do 10 listings before I moved the needle rather than do two or three and go, well, that's shit. And then have the expectations that there's a percentage will work and most won't. Speaker 2: And I honestly, I think that's a great point. I think one truth, which I do believe is the truth, is that the more repetitions that you put in, and the faster that you execute on the repetitions, you will win over the long term. I think that is a truth. So you don't know which ones are going to win, but if you're doing them quickly and you're doing, not to say haphazardly, but doing them, executing well, but quick. Speaker 1: quickly. Speaker 2: I think that's the game that we're in and the people that do have the discipline to do the most repetitions and to take the most cracks at it and to do it with speed and not overthinking, but necessary amount of thought, but not overthinking. That's the game that we're in. I think that is a truth. And anybody that tells you any different, again, and I get why they do it. It's like, hey, here's a cool case study that we went on and we'll get some more clients in our agency. It's part of the game, but... Speaker 1: Well, look, a proven strategy is like a case study. You go to date bill, there's case studies there. But the case study and the proven strategy are the same thing. What are they? You're putting your best foot forward. This is the good work and this is showing evidence of the good work. Nothing wrong with that. But what you got to be on the receiving end is go, aha, that's good work from a percentage of their output. Because you've got to be realistic with it as well. Do you see what I mean? So there's nothing wrong with proven strategies, nothing wrong with case studies, but they are what they are. And if you look behind it, and that's why I've been, I suppose, when I kind of, it boggles me when we talk about the science stuff. Now, it's taken a long time to get through. And I think once a lot of this science stuff is woven into the software tools and it's accepted, Then people are using it without knowing. And you haven't got to understand the breakdown semantic and the difference between semantic and semantic similarity. You'll just produce stuff. You'll press a button and go, oh, OK, that's written more leaning towards X, Y and Z versus, oh, OK, so if we sit down and do it more Rufus, we're going to use noun phrases and we're going to use inference and we're going to focus around semantic similarity. But when we change it for Bert, we're not going to be doing that. People don't care about that. You need to do that in the tools without them thinking. Speaker 2: Yeah, and then for me then, I mean this happens in cycles and it's going to continue to happen in cycles and perpetuity, but I think the so what for Amazon sellers in terms of how you get ahead, as this happens Chinese sellers, as an example, or any seller for that matter, as this gets more and more mature, you can't differentiate anymore. And I think we've seen this in the keyword landscape, right? When you really got good at keywords, call it five years ago, you had a huge advantage. Like when you understood, hey, this isn't a 10 keyword market, this is a 200 keyword market. The people that figured that game out, they won substantially and then as things shifted heavier to pay pay-per-click and people figured out how to do that efficiently, they would be winners, right? But eventually, and then Amazon gets so good at some of their algorithms on ads and everybody gets good at keywords, it's harder to stand out with that strategy as a winner. I think we're going to be that way with all the stuff that we're talking about now as it matures. Fundamentally, it's going to come down to two different things for Amazon sellers to be successful, whether it's 10 years from now, it was seven years ago, whatever it is, which is, can you create a good offer? And can you take action consistently with discipline as fast as possible? Regardless of how things change, I think those are going to be the two winning things. But I do think that we're in a phase right now with Amazon, especially over the next 12 months, that you can still have the early mover at manage with this stuff. But as that goes away, what you need to focus on is launching good products with good offers and doing it quickly and fast. Speaker 1: And understanding your customer objections, which people hate it when I say it, because they glaze over. Yeah, they don't want to do it. It's a tough one. Speaker 2: But again, even Rufus is doing that now, too. So maybe that even understanding customer objections may become a commodity at some point. I think there's obviously always going to be nuance to it. But yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I mean, look, at the end of the day, If your product's not selling, you can go around looking for a hack or you can ask people why they refuse to buy it. And then you go, oh look, there's 10 things there I didn't see. Maybe I'll change them. Oh look, conversion rate just went up. Yeah. It's so simple, but I think it comes down to the embedding, right? So when you are in a community of any kind, there is like a framework that everyone kind of follows and there's some nuances around it. But then stuff gets rejected. No, I'm not doing that. It's not sexy. It's not this. And it is what it is. Do you know what I mean? It's funny because when I speak to people, they go, I've done this. I've done this. I've changed this. I've had this done. Spent thousands on it. And I said, have you done custom rejections? And they look at me as if like I'm pissed off now because I don't want to do this. I don't want to look at the customer injection. Speaker 2: But then the challenge is, is once the pills come to solve the dopamine that brings all the sellers to the yard and then at some point it dilutes the value of whatever that is. So I think there's these moments and times where it's clumpy, headache, clunky, headache inducing. AMC is that for me right now where it's like, oh man, this is just like I'd rather huff paint to burn brain cells. Those that are willing to put in the work at those moment in times will have a bigger incremental gain than those that wait. And then eventually it gets to be a commodity where everyone kind of solves that problem, then there's the next thing that's clunky to figure out. It's trying to get motivated enough and action-oriented enough in those moments of time, which are 6 to 12 months where you can actually have a first mover advantage before it becomes mainstream and easier to do. Speaker 1: How's your training going? Speaker 2: Pretty good. Actually, it's funny. I mean, I actually haven't had a gym membership, so it's been a little bit sloppy. And I kind of was lazy over Christmas and stuff. What's been really cool though is I was a huge cyclist. That's actually one of the main motivations I got into one of my brands in Amazon. I just kind of fell out of love with the bike, with the stroke and stuff. My balance is a little bit weird. I think I've ridden like 60 miles or something this week and I've kind of started to fall in love with the bike again. So I've been doing less on the weights and more just kind of getting out and it's been quite meditative and nice. So yeah, good. But I'm ready to start pushing some weights around again too. But the cycling has been great. I mean, Austin's an amazing city for that. There's a really long river that goes through the main part of town. There's a good little like 12-mile loop that I've been doing most days. So yeah, falling back in love with the bike but probably need to push some weight around and keep some muscle on. How about you? Speaker 1: Yeah, I've adjusted my training this year. I think I told you last year. I've taken it. I don't do squats anymore because all the boxing. Took out squats, deadlifts to protect that area of the back because like that thin line at the back. Speaker 2: If you do one little thing wrong, then you're in eight months of hurt. Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I'm 50 this year. So I have to train not to be injured. So I've got a bit of a shoulder injury at the moment, so I've just ordered. But if you're always jabbing, that's that kind of thing. Boxers would get... Speaker 2: Yeah. If you have that snap, then it's going to put some... the rotator cuff is going to feel it. Speaker 1: So it's either rest, which ain't going to happen, surgery, but I might look at... because I've done site injections before, BPC 1000 and TB 500, because it helps repair. Is that a peptide? Yeah, peptide. They're naturally made in your body anyway. But you use a combination of those. Who's the guy, Greenwood? Is it Green? Ben. Ben Greenwood, I think it is. So he did a study on that because he had- Oh, I think I know what you're talking about. Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Speaker 1: So I might do that and see if I can heal it that way. But as of today, nine days out from Prosper, The only problem is when I land on the Friday, I've got to come home and then I've got to go straight to Burton on Trent on the Saturday morning because I've got sparring and I've got a boxing show. So I go down to work and help with the kids, getting them ready for the show. I do that every three to six months. So and then I normally go in, go down, do some sparring. And we do the Heathbrook, you know, when you have a fresh fire coming every round. So we don't obviously go full on, full on, especially to the head. But doing six rounds of that, you need to be super fit. I'll get tuned up, of course. Do you know? Yeah, that's exciting. But yeah, one in one out of that, that's can be pretty brutal. And then we do the show in the evening and I'll work on the show with a coach. And it's good seeing some of the young kids. We've got a lot of all he has. He's got some really good young talent coming through. We've got like 12 year olds, girls. It's fighting as well. Really good technically for a 12 year old. So we had the youngsters on first and then it goes through the age groups into the adult and of course the heavyweights at the end. But the problem is after a week long in prosper part working, working, working. Yeah. And then coming back jet lagged and then three and a half hours down to Burton on Trent, then doing sparring, then working on the show. And then I'll come back Sunday, Monday, and then I think it's Kevin's in Iceland. But yeah, no, I'm still enjoying my training. It's been non-stop really since COVID. That's when it all kind of started for me. Unknown Speaker: Good for you. Speaker 2: Well, you don't look 50, man. I mean, I wouldn't mind fighting, you know, I'd like my chances against a lot of 50-year-olds in a fistfight, but I wouldn't want to fight you. So kudos to you for keeping it alive at 50, man. You're an inspiration in that respect. Speaker 1: Well, look, at the end of the day, this is the thing, you know, it's like, People say, you know, they see your tattoos and stuff, but... Speaker 2: No, I know you don't. No, I'm talking conceptually. You look great for your age and you're a great... Speaker 1: But you know, what's quite funny is, you know, I don't really want to go into it, but anyone who was on LinkedIn last November, I was offered an MMA fight. Fucking clown. And I still get people, come on, let's do this MMA fight. And I'm like... Speaker 2: That's not... It wouldn't be ethical. Speaker 1: It's embarrassing. No, it's not that. It's just I feel embarrassed for him. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Do you understand? Speaker 2: No, for me it wasn't embarrassment. It was just like I don't think that people realize how hurt you can get in a fight. And if you're if you're if you're mismatched, it would actually be unethical for you to fight an untrained fighter because you could kill somebody or you could damage their brains such that they don't they're not the same. It's it's not it's not it's not a joke. Speaker 1: No, it's not. It's not funny. It's not a joke. And there's a reason why, you know, there's weight classes. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm pretty solid. And I do 10 rounds a week in terms of on the bags and everything else. So if you think most even like professional fights outside the elite fights and stuff, you know, people that turn over and get their license, we're not talking about Olympians, like kids, Olympic kids, that level that go into being professionals. But all like the white-collar shows and stuff like that, you know, they're three two-minute rounds and so Even then they're not obviously doing weigh-ins and stuff But I can tell you a number of times from sparring. I can feel seven pounds heavier. Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Speaker 1: I'm 40 pounds heavier than Yeah, then the person that offered the MMA fight and there's no way I'm boiling down. Yeah, and Yeah, that's a big Difference and it was never gonna happen. It's just for page impressions. Yeah, that's what it's about It's about page impressions and I said to you, you know, look If they're serious, why don't we book a room? No clown world. Two people walk in a room. One walks out. No referee, no gum shield and stuff. And let's see if it's just a game. Because this is the thing, like when you fight and or you, I don't fight, but I train. When you work with a proper coach, my coaches had over 120 fights. That kind of behavior is unacceptable in the gym. You'll get tuned up by the kids. They throw you in with the kids and you'll get smoked. To get you humble. You don't behave like that. Who goes around offering fights? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I want to fight with you. Let's have a fight with dude. It's Clown World. It's, you know, and you can see the person like you can see right through it. If you know that someone's got a box aerobics teacher or a proper coach, because no coach will allow any of their fighters or trainers at the gym behave like that. It's about respect. Do you understand? Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you have, but you go into a changing room when fighters are getting ready. Okay. And they're warming up on the pads. You can't get away with that kind of behavior. It's respect. Do you understand? So anyone going around walking around offering fights? Very insecure and they've never been in the fight because if you know, well, I was going to say that that's a big one. Speaker 2: Like if you've never been punched in the face before, you don't know what it feels like. And it's yeah, exactly. Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what, it's a very, very lonely place when you get in there and you're pulled into deep waters, right? But I think what happens is when people walk into a gym, there's two types of people going to gym. The bully and the bullied. Generally speaking, it's a working class sport. I can't speak for MMA. Generally, the person who gets bullied is you're a kid. You know, I started when I was eight. One of the reasons I went is because of being bullied. So you go in and you learn and you gain confidence. And this is what I think is a wonderful thing for men, you know, young boys and young girls, because it really does help structure you and confidence and stuff. And then the bully comes in and that bully comes two ways. Either they get tuned up by the kids because they come in all loud and mouthy. They get tuned up and they run out the gym crying or, you know, complaining and never come back. Or it helps them shape in reality and know their limitations. They lose all their delusion around it and then suddenly they become more respectable towards other people. I still enjoy it. I do it because I still learn. Right. I'm still learning new stuff as I get older, but I've got no desires to fight and stuff. But I have it in my arsenal. If something goes on, you know, we have it. I mean, I was in I was in a club the other night and when I was away and there was a situation with a young lady and it was very uncomfortable for her. Moments like that you can step in and say no this ain't happening go and fuck off do you know I mean and they did and they thanked you for it but it shouldn't be a situation so learning A skill like this does help certain things, especially when it comes to protecting your own family or defending yourself, but you shouldn't just be fighting like a thug. That's not what it's about. Do you know what I mean? It's about the sport. It's about something you love and enjoy and respect as a sport, you know? Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I think the term that I've heard, it might have actually been Jordan Peterson, which I'm not necessarily a huge fan of, but If you have the ability to exert violence, you have the choice whether to be violent or not. So what I mean by that is if you can't do what you just mentioned and aren't capable of it, you actually don't have the choice to be peaceful or violent because it's going to be pressed upon you. If you have the capability to be violent, you have the choice to be peaceful. And so I think what your training does is it gives you the choice to be peaceful and you keep it in your back pocket and that 1% chance that you actually need to exert it. And I think that brings with it It doesn't mean that you're going to win every fight or whatever, but it brings a degree of confidence to your life that you can actually be peaceful more of the time and if you ever really need it, it's in your back pocket. Speaker 1: I think what he's trying to say is that it's better to be capable if you can. Right. It's not about ego or anything. It's about being capable. And I always say there's always someone bigger and tougher than you that comes along. So mind your business. Do you know what I mean? Mind your P's and Q's. And I'm always a big believer. And we've had this discussion. Men keep men in check. When you walk into the room. Right. We see who runs that room. Not runs it, but there's a hierarchy, if you like. Yeah, so you walk in a room, you might be the guy. You walk in another room, they're the guy. It's distributed. And I think when men tend to behave better when they look around the room and go, do you understand? And I think this is what happens when you see situations now I'm trained where a guy doesn't necessarily step in and go, hold on. We're not doing this. Do you know what I mean? And that's what I mean by men keep men in check. It takes a certain person to go. This isn't acceptable. Do you understand? Whereas a lot of people now they just turn their back and I can't turn a blind eye. I'm sorry, you know. Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it's funny. There was an incident. So I'm in Austin. It's not like a bad area but anyway, it's like a little bit on the – it's in that fringe territory. So there was a bunch of guys working on a car I think for like eight hours and they were drinking beers and whatever else. And it was probably around like 11 at night and I kind of heard these bottles get knocked over and it sounded like someone was getting slapped. So I kind of go out there and sure enough, I think just might have been buddies or I think it was all part of the same group. We're kind of going at it. Eventually the wife comes out with probably like a seven, eight year old daughter. She's screaming, the wife's screaming for them to be quiet. They're speaking Spanish so I couldn't understand, but like something's going on and I'm just like, And I think what some of that history, mine came from hockey. I'm not a trained boxer by any stretch and I might get my ass kicked half the time and win half the time. I'm not trying to say that, but for me it was like, okay, I'm going to stand here and like, if that kid or that girl gets bumped, I'm not calling the cops because that's going to take six minutes. It's like, I got to, I got to run across the street and like, That presence alone or that capability, competence, maybe you get your ass kicked, maybe you get stabbed, whatever else, there's that possibility. But generally speaking, it's a good place to be to know that I can be the guy that runs across the street. That doesn't mean that it's going to solve the problem, but I think having that in your back pocket is a good way to live life. Speaker 1: It is interesting because these situations generally that when you know I've had a number of occasion even one said to me the other day she said it always seems to happen around you and I said no. It's just I don't turn a blind eye to it. There's a difference between the two. This kind of things up and I can't stand two things, predatory behavior and I can't stand bullies. And that's when these things happen. That's when these problems arrive. And yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, that's a trigger that sets me off to understand. Wrong or right and people might not agree and I don't agree with any form of violence or putting hands on men or women or children is unacceptable or even pets. I think there comes a time when things happen, people need to be checked and there needs to be a filter in place to go, that's not good. Back up. This is going to stop. Speaker 2: No, but I think it's a good point. I think bringing that peaceful but like don't fuck around energy, but you bring it in a peaceful way. I think like the machismo and maybe us in our younger years might have been bringing the. Speaker 1: We live in a world now where it's the safest on record, but there are still people that feel predatory behavior. They behave in a certain way because they see a weakness in the person. And then you've got people that turn a blind eye and then you've got people go, actually, no, I'm going to This isn't going to happen. I'm going to step in and make sure it doesn't. And that makes the world, I think, a bit of a better place. You know, like you said, we might get a end up with a few slaps or whatever. We don't know the outcome when we walk over. I think at the end of the day is we're on this planet and people need to be taken care of. And you should look after the people around you by any means necessary. What's required, you know? What's next for you and then we'll wrap up. But I've enjoyed the show. Speaker 2: Yeah, likewise, man. So yeah, I'm basically in Austin until the end of April. Then I'm going to be actually flying out May 1st to London, which I'm super, super excited about. It's one of my favorite times of year. So I'll be there for called a week and a half or a little over a week, capping off obviously with Seller Sessions. And then I'm going to India for the first time for a month basically that will take me through the end of May. So that's kind of my next little tranche. And then kind of back to North America and I'm actually probably this summer for the first time in over a year and a half going to like get an address, going to actually hunker down, be non-nomadic. So it's been really nice. It's hard to establish community routine. Going to the same coffee shop going to the same gym seeing the same people so I've I've enjoyed my my freedom and my kind of I guess loose lifestyle with the nomadic stuff last year and a half but That's the next phase for me is to kind of get back to normal life and really excited about it So that's that's my mind. How about you? Speaker 1: I'm just got my head down with everything we discussed earlier on is breaking through my full day with all like the tools, the agency, obviously Seller Sessions. We're just I'm not very good at this stuff, but I fitted my first kitchen. Well, the pain. Speaker 2: You actually did the work? Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, well, no, it just wasn't me. It was Cheryl as well. Speaker 2: Fair enough. But you guys, it wasn't contractors that you guys. Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: No, we didn't do the plumbing, but I ripped all the kitchen. I had to take these tiles off the wall, right? They're like this big, nine ounce. Speaker 2: Oh God. Speaker 1: Nine ounce, one at a time. It was like Chinese water torture. Speaker 2: Oh God. Speaker 1: So did that, gutted that, took the floor up and then we had to fit like the units and stuff. But you know, like I'm not very into that kind of stuff. So it's like, all right, yeah, I'll do it. You know, be immature. We'll do this. But there'll be things like you have days where all you've done is hung one unit, but then you've done the Krypton factor. With the measuring, the cutting, the placing. Speaker 2: Oh yeah. Speaker 1: And then you put one unit up and you're like, that just took six hours. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And you go, I've got another four of those. And then you start to lose the will to live. And then you come back another day. So I've had the enjoyable experience of that. Actually, this weekend, I've got two more units to do because I said I will get it done before Prosper. And then, yeah, it's just 50 odd, 60 or 58 days, I think, out from Seller Sessions. The crazy stuff starts soon. You know, all the moving parts, you know, this goes missing, that delivery, all that kind of stuff. But it'd be worth it. I'm looking forward to it. And yeah, be interesting to roll out this new format. All the guys will come and stay over mine for three days. We're all working on obviously on the content to build it out. And then once that's all laid out in the room, they say, Sims on speaking, the rest of the guys, because we all built it, were able to work with everyone on their laptops, go out, you know, are you stuck? It's very much in that kind of what we call shadowing in teaching. So you go in and you shadow the room to make sure everyone is taken care of. So yeah, different concept. Let's see how it goes down with the sellers and see if they enjoy it, you know? Speaker 2: Yeah, I just bought mine last week and I'm super excited, man. It's one of my favorite times of the year. Seeing good people and you learn a nugget or two and you're in a cool city, it's hard to beat. Speaker 1: Yeah, no. It is enjoyable, then I have about a month for CPTSD getting over. Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Speaker 1: Then I say I'm never going to do it again. And in about first week of June, and I'm like, alright, one more. Just one more. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Cool. Alright, brother. Lovely to see you guys. Thank you for joining us. I'm sure we'll get Adam back more this year. We'll do a few of these. Speaker 2: Definitely. Speaker 1: And take care of yourself. And I'll see you guys back here next week.