Getting Ready For Prime Day 2024! - Is it Over Hyped? | Kevin King

Getting Ready For Prime Day 2024! - Is it Over Hyped? | Kevin King 00:00:01 Hey everyone, this is Norm Farrar aka The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch with Norm, the e-commerce and Amazon FBA podcast. Today we're going to be discussing a few different things. First of all, Prime Day; and then we're going to also be talking about newsletters or whatever comes to mind. We're going to have a Q&A. We might have a special guest appearance as well. Alright, so welcome to another Lunch with Norm, the e-commerce and Amazon FBA podcast. 00:00:42 Okay, today we had a last-minute cancellation, so this is going to; we thought it'd be a good idea to discuss Prime Day. It was just announced, I believe, today, what the dates are, so we'll get into that. And I reached out to a couple people, and I think one will be coming on very shortly. And we're also going to be talking about newsletters. So, I think, and then take some questions as well. Kels, I guess we'll go right into a sponsor and then we'll come right back and let's talk about Seller Basics. So, I'll just read this. I got this one down by now. Hey, Amazon sellers ever faced account suspensions, ASIN hiccups, or IP headaches? Introducing Seller Basics, your Amazon account's guardian, which is $99 per month. 00:01:32 Or if you put in code NORM, you'll have it for $89 a month. Seller Basics offers a dedicated team to shield your business from these challenges. Plus, this membership offers free legal consultations from seasoned e-commerce attorneys. No long-term contracts. Cancel with just a month's notice. And you can view Seller Basics as your Amazon account's health plan. You can check them out at sellerbasics. com. And let me see. Here's the disclaimer: Seller Basics is not an insurer or a law firm. Consultations come from independent firms. Results may vary. Membership is needed before events leading to claims, and terms apply. Okay. So where is Mr. Kells? All right. Hello. How are you? Hello. Good. You know, I still want to talk a little bit about Seller Basics. 00:02:29 You know, or firms like Seller Basics and how important it is. I see that there's a bunch of people on already. Thank you for listening. But if you've ever come into a legal snag or just, you know, some questions that you can't fix and, you know, it might be account suspension, it might be something else. It's so important to get involved with a service like this. Like if you're not involved, it's kind of like insurance for your Amazon account. You can call them up and it's not a retainer, but you can call them up, ask them questions, and they have connections with people within Amazon. And typically, you can go in and get those resolved. So if you haven't checked them out, you know, I would even just get a consultation. 00:03:23 So I don't have an affiliate for these services, but I would highly recommend it. So check it out for us. We like Paul Raffles and his team over at Seller Basics. All right, now you can come back on. All right, well. Good to see the Beard Nation here. We've got Simon, Steve, and Rad joining us. Hope everyone is having a great Wednesday. Great to see you. And yeah, today we're going to be talking about Prime Day 2024. The dates were released just a little bit ago, so the July 16th to 17th this year. So we're going to be talking. Sure. Take away my spiel. I'm just trying to warm up the crowd here. So good to see Marina as well. And yeah, so we did release the newsletter about your start on Amazon. 00:04:25 I think that was an interesting story. I think I've known pieces of that story, but I haven't heard the whole thing put together. So yeah, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So for me, I think it goes back to 2013. And a buddy of mine, and it's all in the newsletter, but just a little quick Reader's Digest version, he invited me down. Now, back in the day, this is way before ASM, there was something called Archon? Archon Media. Yeah, it was even something a little bit different than that. And Jason Kassenbeck was involved with that. And he had in that it was like a whole media app. And part of it was it was called PR Kaboom, which got me. 00:05:23 I was using press releases beforehand, but this would allow me to go out and put out tons of press releases. So I really love the app. And then all of a sudden it was called Archon Central. It just ended. It was just done. And I was so disappointed that it ended. But anyways, I knew of Jason from that. And then my buddy Riz calls and he says, 'Hey, you know what? There's a uh a thing uh happening with Amazon. You can sell books and uh it was a Kindle course; it was called Ama and it was with these two guys, called Matt Clark and Jason Katzenbeck, and we both knew Jason, so we went over there and we... I didn't think we could do anything with it, so I left it alone. 00:06:18 Later on, Riz comes up to me and he says, 'Hey, there's something happening in Vegas.' I got a free ticket. Let's go. So we went, you know, saw these guys. He signed up for Rapid Crush; I did later. And it was really incredible. Lots of hype; 2,500 people. And I saw... I think it was when Richard Branson was speaking. Anyways, Jason and Matt were up there and I said, oh, I got to. I got to get into this. And I said to Riz, just kind of weird, I just turned to him and said, in one of these days, that's going to be me. And it was really weird because I'm an introvert. And, you know, all of this being in front of a camera, I had to really learn how to do because even now, today, I am an introvert. 00:07:10 I had to learn to come out of my shell and talk to people and, you know, really take courses on how to talk to people, how to work my way into a conversation. So that's still a challenge for me. Anybody who's seen me on a podcast or something, I have to do right off the bat knows I start shaking, you know, that's just me. The kids know about that. You know, I hate it. I turned away. I literally turned away being a master of ceremonies for my sister-in-law because I was that nervous speaking in front of people. So Riz and I kind of laughed about it. Well, I ended up going over to Mallorca, spending a whack of cash. And I met with a bunch of people I still am good friends with right now. 00:07:59 Tomer Rabinovich, Dima Kubrick. There was a ton of them. But also I got to know Matt and Jason. Jason started this whole thing going. I owe it to Jason. Jason called me up and he said, 'Hey, you know, you were talking about some pretty interesting things in Mallorca. I want to come on stage in CellarCon, It was called ASM 17, I think, back then. So that's when I got my first kick at the can and going on stage and talking. But anyways. So I just thought I'd, I mean, there's so much more to it, but I don't want to bore you guys with it. If you're interested in hearing a bit more about the story, you can check it out in the newsletter. Okay, so we are going to be talking about newsletter a little bit later on. 00:08:47 But if we have time, we'll also talk about some Q &A if you have any, if we have time. But I was thinking about talking about. Prime Day, talking about newsletter and then, uh, the Q&A at the end, all right, so and no, no, I am not a natural Steve, uh, you didn't, Kelsey knows, uh, you know, I just, I can't, I can't do certain things, uh, I hate doing certain things, and uh, yeah. Actually, there was time by the way when I went on stage for the first time. Now, remember, I turned down 50 people, like I turned down Master ceremonies for my sister-in-law's wedding with 50 people. The first time I went on stage was at 15,000 people, so I think I practiced a thousand times. 00:09:47 I got sick. I literally got sick. Yeah, I was in my room going, 'Why did I do this? Why did I do this?' My stomach sick to my stomach. I mean, I was sick. And then just prior to going on stage I broke a tooth so uh yeah just everything kind of came down, lots of fun all right so let's uh talk about Prime Day it was just announced and uh by the way um We do have a special guest. He just popped in. Kels. That's not Kelsey, but that's Kevin King. I can't hear you. You're spoiling the surprise. That might be your audio settings, Kevin. We'll bring you back in a second. Yeah. You know what? It might be just a video of Kevin, and we're just messing with you. 00:10:46 What's better than a video of Kevin? You can't beat that. Yeah, that's right. So, Kevin, just give us a thumbs up if you think you got it. All right, let's go. I think I got it. You got it. You got it. What's up, guys? Hey. Yeah, things are going well. What's up? Sounds like marketing misfits. A bunch of marketing misfits here. That's right. Kelsey, the team leader, had to fill in for his father on the race. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes, the big Hawaii race. Yeah, representing the marketing misfits team. Norm had a bum knee, and so he couldn't go. So Kelsey and Gracie and who else was on that team? Amanda. Amanda that's right yeah Alicia Alicia no not Amanda Alicia Alicia yeah and Alicia yeah oh oh yeah Amanda wasn't on your team she was on a competing team yeah his wife uh John's wife yeah yeah crazy crazy day crazy event that you put on yeah it was an awesome event All right. 00:11:59 So, Kev, last minute, we had a guest that was coming on, and I can always depend on my buddy, Kevin, to help us out. So I was going to talk a little bit today about the announcement of Prime Day on the 16th and 17th coming up, you know, just a couple weeks away. So I thought maybe we could talk about prep. We talk about this usually every Prime Day, but, you know, two weeks out. And a week out, what should we be doing? Yeah, see, I'm one of the anti-Prime Day guys. I'm one of the – I take the opposite side of most people. You won't see me talk about Prime Day in my newsletter. I mean, I'll mention it because people need to hear it, but you won't see me doing, like, here's the seven-like, everybody and their brother right now is doing, here's the seven things you need to do for Prime Day. 00:12:49 Get ready to do this. Raise your ads. Lower your ads. Do this. Make sure your graphics have this. I'm of the opinion that it's a waste of time for the most part; um, I think it's a prime day is great, don't get me wrong and ride the wave. And there are a few things that you should do: make sure you have you know x some extra inventory depending on what you're selling, that could depend on, you know, how, uh, what type of item you know if you're selling summer items, you know, for for the beach or whatever; you should probably have a little bit more than selling Christmas ornaments for example, you know. But no matter what you're selling, you should make sure you've got some ample inventory in there. 00:13:26 You've only got two weeks right now, so it's going to be difficult. If you haven't already kind of done that, to get that shipped in, even if you've got it sitting in your garage or in your warehouse, to get that shipped in in time is going to be a little bit challenging. You might be able to get it into some other places, but making sure you have a little bit of extra inventory, making sure your pricing, making sure your listing, double-checking your listings and your keywords, and I would be running. Everything through a checker, you know, whether it's data, diver helium 10, or whatever, and making sure that you got all your holes punched, uh, on your listing, uh, but as far as like creating special graphics for your listing or doing special Prime Day sales or raising your ad spend or lowering your ad spend or doing all this off traffic, I think it's pretty much a waste, um, because if, if you look at it. 00:14:15 The only time I would ever lower prices for Prime Day or have a Prime Day special price is if I'm trying to clear inventory. If it's one of my best sellers and I have a decent rank, I would not be lowering the price at all or doing any kind of promotion or any kind of Prime Day deal at all. If it's a product where I'm positioned 16 and I think I might be able to gain a little momentum. By getting up to position and get up to position nine or something, maybe a five-dollar-off coupon might make sense or depending on your price point, some sort of promotion like that might make might make sense. But or if I got some extra stock that I'm just looking to to get rid of, it's just sitting there. 00:14:56 I'm discontinuing this product. Then I might actually lower the price on that to take advantage of the extra traffic and try to do something. But other than that, all this other gamemanship and other things, I think is a total. Absolute waste of time and effort, and I think a lot of people end up losing money. This is not about how who can sell more; it's about who can make more. So approach everything you do on Prime Day about how is this going to make me money or put money in my pocket-either right now by getting rid of some stuff or by increasing my rank um because I'm going to play a little game here to try to bump it but you got to remember everybody else, your competition. 00:15:36 A lot of them are doing it too, so even though you might lower your price to go from spot rank 16 to spot nine the other guys ahead of you may be doing something similar, so you may just be just move up one spot or two spots and you put in all this effort gave all this discount that you didn't need to give-that's a lot of people would have bought this stuff anyway. Um, that I think that's that's my opinion on it. Now I'm a little bit different opinion when it comes to the holidays, when it comes to like Christmas time uh Black Friday And Cyber Monday, and what you do there, that I think you need to put more effort in because every day is a prime day almost between Black Friday and a couple days before Christmas and the sales are just up and that's where you want to put the effort that makes sense. 00:16:20 But for a single one or two-day event like this um I think it's fool's gold uh for the most part so that's that's my opinion, it's not what most people say, most people get all excited about it and um and think it's great, I just ride the wave. And like I said, I might do a couple of those little tactics depending on my situation on certain products, but don’t get caught up in it. Don’t get caught up in it. Yeah, I’ve seen that happen quite a bit where you’re anxious, especially if you’re a new seller for Prime Day, you hear a lot about it. Completely different years ago. Now, like you said, the advertising costs have gone up so much. 00:17:04 There’s a lot more competition and you could end up just losing it. Now, if you listen to Brian Johnson, he was just on the podcast, but there’s different people out there that are into PPC. They’ll do a limited budget. And when they start their account is complete or when they start their campaigns are completely different. They don’t run them at the beginning. So I'm not a big fan. I'm like Kevin. I'm not a big fan of pouring a ton of money into them. I'm into, and I know that everybody hears this about optimization. Okay. Yep. Make sure that's happening. But prior. I like to go out there and, like for my clients, I'll go out there and start doing some sort of campaigns before the event. 00:17:54 Actually, two weeks before the event, we'd like to put out some sort of notification, some sort of email campaign. If you have a newsletter, advertise it in your newsletter that you're giving out something or you're providing a special deal. I'll do a 10% discount or whatever discount that I think I can still be profitable, but we'll keep the sales going because between now and Prime Day, I don't know if you agree, Kevin, but sales will drop a little because people are waiting for Prime Day. People put off unnecessary stuff. They don't need it right now. If the in-laws aren't coming over this weekend and they need a bread cutter. They're going to hold off on buying it until they're hoping for a deal. Yeah. 00:18:42 And the other thing with Prime Day is take a look at the other platforms. Walmart usually had, last time I think they had Prime Week. They've already started it right now. Prime Week. Yeah, they've already started their whole thing; it was last week they started doing, and they're doing some other stuff too, but they started last week. So these are the platforms, and it's not just Walmart, but take a look at the different platforms and see what you can do. And plus, everybody expects that the 16th and 17th now is Prime Day. They're going to expect deals on that day. If you're not doing that on your website or promoting, just letting people know, then you're missing out. Because with just traffic, there's a lot of people. 00:19:33 I know a lot of e-commerce sites that don't depend on Amazon, but people know 16th and 17th now is going to be Prime Day. If you do something on your website that will promote it or give a simple add-on to something, something that will get you additional sales, because if you don't, you're missing out on a lot of traffic. People are expecting to spend and buy things on those two days. Anything else to add to that? Kev, uh, nope. I just saw something this will be in my newsletter tomorrow; I don't know if you saw Destiny's post a couple hours ago, she just sent it to me, uh, but uh... And now, Buy with Prime: you're speaking about your own website. Buy with Prime products are being featured on the homepage of Amazon now. 00:20:24 Really? It's actually a smart move. Buy with Prime has had some trouble getting traction. I have a story that I've been sitting on that came out a couple weeks ago, and I just haven't gotten into news there. But now I'm going to combine that story with what Destiny just said that Amazon's doing. Because they've been having trouble getting traction with Buy with Prime. It just hasn't been going as well, as many people using it as they had hoped. And that's one of the reasons they laid off like 30 people six months ago or so at Buy With Prime. And they've been trying to get it going. And she just I haven't dove into it yet, but she just posted on her LinkedIn today about now certain products. 00:21:04 I don't know what the qualifications are, how it works or if it's random, but they're starting to feature Buy With Prime products on the homepage of Amazon. And she links back to your Shopify site. Somehow. I got to look at the details. I could have it a little bit wrong, but yeah, she was pretty excited about it. It's a pretty big deal. Buy with Prime. It's a great program. Yeah, it's a really good program, but they just haven't gotten the traction with it. I don't know why that is, but I'll have the story. I've got some research and stuff on it. I just need to go back and reread it all before I actually say the facts. But they've been having some trouble getting it. 00:21:44 I think people might think that they still have to pay the 15% referral fee. No, you just pay the fulfillment fee. There is another small fee, I think, for the credit card processing or something. It may be built in. I got to take a look at that. I'm not selling on my Shopify site right now. I just have it as a placeholder. I'm not using the Buy with Prime. You know, we have clients that we're dealing with. And for the life of me, I can't get them to use Buy with Prime. I don't know why. That's like saying I'm not going to use Apple Pay. If I go to a website now, Shopify website or anybody's website, I see an ad on TikTok or I see something in Facebook and I'm like, that looks cool. 00:22:33 I'm going to go buy that. And it doesn't have Apple Pay as a payment option. I typically will not pay there. Unless I really absolutely want this, uh, I will, I will not, I will back off and not pay it, uh, you know if it's an impulse buy the that buy with uh Apple Pay button gets me to oftentimes, I had the heck with it. I just bought something the other day and I probably wouldn't have bought it, some sort of sleep thing, uh, some sort of, uh, it's a pre-order but it's a a deal that goes over your head like a headband kind of thing, it's supposed to help moderate your sleep and like help you, uh, really sleep soundly and all kinds of stuff, it's like 300 bucks and I saw saw it mentioned, uh, and I ended up going to their website buying it because Apple Pay was there but in fact that wasn't there. 00:23:22 I might have had second thoughts, the same thing with Buy with Prime, I think people that are not using the Buy with Prime that are selling off Amazon on on a product site, I think that's a mistake and so I don't know why your clients will do that. Yeah. It's almost like, see, I'm not going to take Discover or Amex or MasterCard. We only take Visa. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. Maybe they don't understand it. Well, take a look at, there's a ton of cards out there, just what you said, but I get a lot of things delivered to the house or I go onto a lot of sites. There's still a lot of sites that will take either Visa, MasterCard, no American Express because of that extra point. That's stupid. 00:24:08 It's really stupid. I mean, American Express has some rules in certain categories like gambling and adult materials and things like that where they just can't. But because of that extra 1%, that's not going to make or break you. If that 1% is going to make or break you, you've got other problems. And it used to be Amex would pay you. a day or two later it was a cash flow thing but that's all gone away too now all lumped into into one when you when you're doing your processing but in the old days there was a there was an issue there and then the old really old days like you go back this far probably 25 30 years ago when you had to do the little things oh god yeah and you had a little piece of paper with a like a the raised letters the boss letters and you you turn those into the bank like you would checks you would go down every day the bank 00:24:58 That's how you got paid for all you young'uns out there. We couldn't process it. You know, someone would call over the phone. It wasn't go online and order. It was call 1-800. And Norm's sitting there with his secretary. And she's like, he's looking over her shoulder. How big is this order? How big is this order? She's like writing out everything. Gets the credit card number. And then she has to do one of those little slips. And then you take that slip. And every day you take it down to the bank and you deposit it like you would cash or a check. And then you wait a week. Or something to get paid Amex back in the day was this: it was slow uh was a little bit slower for whatever reason but that's why some people didn't do it because they're like, 'I want my, I need a cash flow.' So we used to, uh, we used to be in the promo, the promotional incentive trinkets and trash business, right? 00:25:44 Cups, keys, keychains. But we did it for massive companies. And so the one company, let's see... you'll know M&M Meat Shops; they're a big, big, big franchise across Canada. And we ran all of their corporate uniforms. So every one of their franchisees, we had their sweatshirts, their t-shirts, their golf shirts, their hats, mugs, pens, whatever it was. But there was a ton of different things. And there was, at that point, there's a lot more now, but there was 300 and some franchises across Canada. And each one of them would call in or fax in their information. We'd have to write down per slip their number and everything, right? And address everything, yeah. Everything. And then rip it off, go to the bank. And it wasn't one or two. 00:26:42 It was like hundreds of these. And we'd have somebody just writing out these bloody things because you wouldn't have the card. Yeah, yeah. And Kelsey's looking at us like, what are these guys talking about? This is before his time. But when you punch it in, you just hit a button and it pays. You just connect your phone and it's done. Yeah, it didn't used to be like that. I saw someone just posted that Jessica posted Costco in Canada only takes MasterCard. Yeah, that's true. In the U . S. they take, but they also take debit cards and cash. But that's because MasterCard is paying them millions and millions of dollars to do that. So that's that's a that's a they're making that up on the flip side. So that's their case. 00:27:29 And Costco is one of the biggest retailers in the world. So it's massive, massive volume. And if MasterCard can go in there and say, oh, you're I don't know the exact numbers that Costco does, but it's it's in the hundred billion. Maybe it's not being two or three hundred billion dollars in sales. I have to go look that maybe Kelsey, you can look that up real quick. Just Google that. Um, what does Costco do on annual sales worldwide? Uh, but for Mastercard to have be exclusive on let's call it 500 billion dollars in worldwide sales, that's they'll pay for that plus lower the discount rate that you know because they charge typically anywhere from $2. 9 to as much on riskier stuff, 15, 16 uh, you know, gambling and some adult products and stuff. 00:28:16 Um, those. So they'll lower that half a point, and Costco works on pretty low margins, supposedly. I don't know that I believe everything that you hear about what they say. It's only a 7% markup. I think that's bullshit. But maybe a 7% over, you know, once they factor. It's kind of like when the movie companies say that we're going to give you, you know, Tom Cruise, we're going to give you 7% of the gross box office. Out of that comes a bunch of other fees, before that seven percent. Uh, it's not the total dollars, it's the net gross. There's probably something about that with Costco, but they're not working on a seven percent margin; it's better than that. 00:28:54 Yeah, and the other thing is that the members themselves join the Costco Mastercard as well, so you've got yeah, hundreds of thousands of people joining Mastercard and using that Mastercard for other stuff, and Mastercards getting that uh, that little bit off of every single one of those that they get now, that's two. 9 They don't get everything a Mastercard itself that underwrites it um is getting about a half a point or something off of that some of a lot of that goes to the bank, so if you go to if you have a CitiBank Mastercard, CitiBank's getting one or two percent of that uh if you have a Capital One Mastercard, they're getting because they're the ones that are actually underwriting the loan, underwriting the money is the bank, Capital One or CitiBank not Mastercard, Mastercard it's one of the most profitable businesses there. 00:29:45 I just saw a stat I get a newsletter uh called Compounding, Compounding quarterly comes out every week and Mastercard and Visa are two of the companies he highly recommends investing in because their margins are something like 70 profit margins, it's crazy profit margins that they have because they're running such serious volume and and They just take that little tiny sliver of half a point or whatever. It may be 0. 25. It's something that's very small, but it adds up when you're doing that kind of serious volume. And so that's how that whole system works. So that's how you have airlines. Now, airlines, most people don't realize this. They don't make their money flying airplanes. They make their money off of their frequent flyer program. You go Google this if you want to learn more about it. 00:30:33 It's kind of fascinating. You look at American Airlines. Why did American Airlines just change with Barclays, their main credit card, their Aviator MasterCard, to where if you spend money on the credit card, you get actual credit towards elite status. In the old days, on most airlines, you had to sit in a seat and fly a certain number of miles to get certain levels of status. American Airlines, you can get Executive Platinum, their top-tier status, which means free upgrades and free bonuses for international going from coach to business, and all kinds of stuff just by spending a couple hundred thousand dollars a year on your credit card. And as a business owner, a lot of us on Amazon, that's an easy thing to do, yeah. 00:31:18 The average person, that's not, but we're also their type of customer um so that and they're willing to to give you that because Citibank or whoever or whoever will come to them and barclays in this case and will pay them x millions of dollars for the right to actually be their exclusive to give out those Frequent fire miles they sell that stuff and that's its huge profit on that and that that whole industry is is built around there's some changes about to come um I did with Delta yeah and so it's um no I mean change is about to come in a way that's reported as tax reasons and stuff like that oh They're fighting it. If you look at some of the frequent flyer programs, there's websites that follow this, like My Points Guy. 00:32:05 There's some legislation that's trying to dilute the value of this. It's an interesting concept. We're getting off the topic here. That's fine. Today, we're all over the map. It's fine. I mentioned that at the beginning that we're going to be talking about a variety of different things. One of the things Going back to these loyalty points that you don't realize, my buddy Russ, he's got a really interesting story. I should actually talk about it one day. But he had an audit done. Auditor came in, took a look. His books were all pretty good. And then he came across this one line item. And that was his credit card. Well, he was putting so much money on his card. He had tons of points. But he took a trip with his family, went to Florida. 00:33:01 He got a $40,000 fine because a business credit card is not for personal use and he did not claim the tax. So he did not claim the income based on that. So he got fined $40,000 for using this credit card. So just crazy. Be careful. My credit card points. For business, they never use personal. Never. You notice that I know on American Airlines, I fly American a lot, they actually ask you, this didn't used to be there, but they actually ask you when you're booking a flight, when you're putting, I want to go from Austin to Toronto or whatever, it says, is this for business or personal? It's a button you've got to push now, and I think they're logging that. Yeah, Delta 2. For auditing purposes. 00:33:48 That didn't used to be there. Yeah. And so that may be exactly like what you're saying. Um, could be around that um, but yeah, that they're valuable, I mean in my case so I get frequent flyer miles. My rule is I won't redeem them unless I can get at least two cents per mile um, you know they're worth uh about a a penny per mile you know some cards like American Express, you can use your miles to pay your bill so if you got 500000 miles on Amex like I have, I have way more than that billion dollar store so I just got a lot because paying for a lot of stuff uh on 00:34:25 a card you get bonuses and everything um but um, I said oh I just curious what would give me it said pay your bill with the miles so I hit the button and said okay 500000 miles or five thousand dollars off your bill I'm like okay that's cool that's five thousand dollars cash but I can actually if use that for a plane ticket or for like you and I going to a podcast show in August and I like looked at the price of the hotel and it was like 1100 bucks or something for the nights to pay for this Gaylord in DC. I'm like for three nights and I'm like, yeah, what can I do in miles? But the miles was only like 70 something thousand miles. 00:35:07 So that's that's almost a two cent almost by the time you had taxes stuff to the hotel. It's like two cents to a mile, that's a better deal than taking the cash; um, so that's how I look at it, and and try to game, and if I can get what's the site there's a site out there, Kev, uh, that X well, there's points. Me, uh, is one where you can go and you'll tell you like what's the best; when I went to Japan back in April, I was trying to get airline tickets in the uh, I wanted to fly business class in America and wanted some ridiculous amount, like 700, 000 miles for round trip and business class, I'm like, no way am I paying that; yeah, I went on this points. 00:35:46 me and it said oh on continental i'm not kind of on united used to be continental on united i still call them continental uh united um you can actually go for 200 000 miles round trip and i was like oh shoot i'll just i'm not in the united program so i was then it tells you what you can transfer from if you got i forget who it was you know mx or marriott or something you can transfer them over into the united program and so i was looking to transfer but for whatever reason i didn't have enough miles and the one that could uh could transfer but yeah you play that kind of game um and that's how a lot of us you know like there's even a little group that tim jordan and i and ali ramirez and 00:36:25 mark and a few other i'm surprised you're not it and norm we gotta get you in it it's Called EP, executive platinum's, on American, well, because you fly Delta, I guess that's why you're not there, yeah, um, but we're in this little group and we share little tactics and stuff, and there's another one called Expert Flyer, another website, uh, where I will show you availability for like points redemptions and where the best seats are and what your odds are if you're gonna get an upgrade or not, uh, so you can say, oh, I'm not gonna take the 313 flight, um, I'm going to take the 407 because there's nine empty seats, uh, versus only one on the 313, so my chances of getting a free upgrade or better or whatever, there's all kinds. 00:37:03 Of ways to to game the system, you know I was talking uh about my horrific trip to Turkey coming back, you know when I was i paid extra to uh let's see this was I was paid extra for um a A window. OK, so a window seat. Yeah, it was over the wing, which is the most stable, safest part of life. Right. And they had the side hooked in so I could only put my one knee and my other one had tons of leg room. And I'm sitting here going, 'I have to sit in this seat for seven or eight hours with my knee bent.' And, you know, I've got bad hips, bad knees. So I complained, and they wouldn't move my seat. This is your assigned seat. 00:37:58 So anyways, it's a long story, but I was able to move my seat, but it was uncomfortable. It was one of the worst flights I've ever been on. But why I'm saying this is I would have known if I would have gone to Seat Guru or an app like that to check out your seat. So, you know, if you're taking a flight. Just because there's a window seat, I always try to get a window. But usually it's not a problem. You know, I like flying in business class. Again, I'm a big guy. I got bad hips. So I'm usually in business class or premium economy. But there's still a lot of bad seats. Yeah. Like you said, the window seat. Because I like those two because you have a lot of times a little extra room. 00:38:51 There's a little hole at the window. You can get a couple extra inches. You can lean in there or put your shoulder in there or elbow or whatever. But sometimes that window is actually filled in. It's actually like a window. It looks like a window from the outside of the plane, but on the inside, it's completely walled off. And Seat Guru will tell you that. I've had it where I thought I was getting a window seat, and it's one of those non-window window seats. And see, Google will tell you that. They'll tell you if you're next to the bathroom. You know, people are going to be lining up on a long flight, you know, standing in the aisle. You know, smells coming out of there. 00:39:24 It'll tell you which seats don't recline or which ones are a little bit wider. That's a good site that everybody should be using. It's free, too. Yeah. So the worst trip, I had to go to Taiwan. And it was a it was a quick flight. My brother and I decided that we'll go to the airport. We bought tickets at the airport. OK, that's how last minute it was. And we paid a lot of money for these tickets because it was last minute at the airport. And Air Canada will screw you any way they will or they can. And we ended up the very last row. The seats don't recline and we're economy, right beside the bathroom. The worst flight ever. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's terrible. Okay. 00:40:15 So there was something else I was going to talk about on travel. Yeah, lounges. What do you think about lounges? Are there any particular lounges that you like to stay in or use when you're traveling? Yeah, I mean, some of the better lounges are in Asia, Europe. I mean, London and Germany have some pretty good lounges. The United States, for the most part, has really bad lounges. I mean, you have a couple good ones in, like, San Francisco. Polaris. Yeah, and a couple in New York. But even the Miami lounges are not that great. A lot of these big hubs, Chicago's is okay. Dallas's is, I was just in there. First class premium flagship lounge, or whatever, and I was not impressed. 00:41:00 I mean, they had someone in there making fresh tacos, I guess, so I guess that's the upgrade. But it i wasn't really impressive. But the best ones I've seen are in Singapore and Hong Kong. Um, there's some really and actually Japan, Tokyo, and uh Narita, um, the Japan Airlines one there is; they do free massages, um, and you just book it, and you get like a free 15-minute massage in this little massage spa. And then in Qatar, that actually Qatar was the best, Qatar Airways when I went to the World Cup, um, that's the best. You've got to land not land; you drive up to the airport and there's a special entrance from the street, uh, special security like from the street. 00:41:45 You don't even walk in with everybody else, and like peer off to the right where it says VIPS. You actually have your own VIP entrance at the end of the terminal. And then you walk in, and it's like its own little security right there, scanning the X-ray machine. And right once you exit the X-ray machine, you're right into the lounge, directly into the lounge. And it's a beautiful lounge also with a spa. But they do even more there. Everything's free. And then they do – the food was really good. That's probably the best lounge I've ever been is the Qatar lounge in Qatar, Qatar Airways Lounge. But there's-As far as chain lounges, I know a lot of them, if you have the Capital One card or some of these Centurion lounges, those things always seem to have a line outside the door now. 00:42:29 Yeah, they've limited it. I know Delta just made some changes on theirs about how many guests you can have. I'm usually in the One World lounges, the American Airlines ones. That's usually or their partners, British Airways or Cafe Pacific or whoever. But, yeah, there's a Malaysian lounge I was in one time in Kuala Lumpur that was for Malaysia Airlines that was really, really good, too. The best you'd like at Norm. They had Haagen-Dazs ice cream, those little cups. And I'm like in a little freezer. I don't eat from the cups anymore. You just go over and you grab one of the little cups of Haagen-Dazs. Nope, you're not tricking me anymore. They had like seven different flavors. And I think I was in there like; I had like a three-hour layover. 00:43:13 I think I went through four or five of those cups at least. Those little cups. And the reason I'm talking about this is, you know, when you travel to these events, so you arrive to the airport, a lot of times, you know, you're two or three hours, you know, international flight here from Canada, you know, it should be there three hours in advance. Well, what do you do? Or if you're on a layover, one of the things, and I always. taught the kids about this too. You could be out there and you could be having these speakers blasting and you can have this slow wifi and all these people running around you, or you can go. And even if you don't have a card, a lot of the times you could pay to get into the lounge. 00:43:59 Now, sometimes they've since last year, they've changed some of this, but if you want to, you can go in and you can like 40 bucks. and you can go in so if you have a regular american express card you want to go to centurion you can pay 40 bucks go in and spend up to three hours in that lounge or if you spend enough money on that card you can go in for free right right and uh but you know i always would highly recommend because you know you can get work done uh the wi-fi is better there's usually good food like you were taught i was i called you the one day and i said have you ever checked out the polaris i was in san francisco yeah and it's a it was a beautiful lounge but um like delta lounge in atlanta so it's a major hub for delta it's 00:44:49 it's a beautiful uh and they have different lounges But the main lounge is uh is really you know quite nice, you get stuff done and uh it's just a better way to travel, and there's another thing that if you're not willing to do that uh or if you can't do that, there's a lot of these um I I I it's relaxation areas where you can go in. You can rent a room. It has a TV. It has a workspace. You can go and take a shower and it's 30 bucks an hour. It's like in London and stuff. And, and I've seen them, I've done them in London. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's like, I forget the price, but yeah, it's something like 30 bucks an hour, but yeah, you go in there and you get a shower and you, it's actually a little private area. 00:45:37 You can take a little nap or whatever, if you want. I've seen some of these little pods, sleep pods, some airports like out in the. Outside the gates, they have these big things. It's like a little sleeping area. You go in there and you see them for women to breastfeed, but there's also some that kind of look like that, but it's actually for you to go in there and take a nap or to go in there and have some privacy. You need to get on a phone call and yell at the kids or something. Yeah. Yeah, I've used that many times. But these are the little things that, you know, there's sometimes I'm not going to waste my money on that. But these things help you travel and take the stress off traveling. 00:46:22 And when you do a lot of traveling or if you're going to an event or you don't want to miss that gap. And like nowadays, back in the day. It was a lot different, and I'm talking about just a year ago. For Delta, Wi-Fi was really sketchy. Now they've got it on a lot of their flights, now that it's free Wi-Fi, high-speed, and as long as you're a member. It's awesome. You don't really miss that beat. In the past, if we wanted to communicate, it might have been a WhatsApp chat, or there was no chat until the end of the flight. So these are things. Remember the days when you had a phone in the back of the seat in front of you? There was actually a phone? Yeah, that's right. 00:47:12 There's one for every row of three seats. You have three seats. There's one in the middle. The middle seat in front of you would have a phone in. You'd pick up the phone and swipe your credit card, and then you could call to the ground. In some planes, they didn't have them in the back of the seat, but there'd be one at the front. By the bathroom by the front and one in the back where you could, it's like a pay phone, like you go up there and stand, uh remember those days? I remember it in the front, yeah, you'd pop it out and swipe your card and like seven bucks a minute later. I did one of those once time and called my dad, and he's like, 'I'm like, where are you?' I said, 'I don't know somewhere over Nebraska, he's like, 'What why are you calling me? 00:47:52 Why are you wasting this kind of money? Two dollars a minute or whatever it was.' I was like, 'Because it's cool, Oh yeah. So, a lot of people don't remember those. But if anybody has any questions or, you know, we could take one, maybe two before the end of the podcast. Kind of went into the travel side of things. But anything else that we could talk about travel-wise since we're on travel? Well, some people should be traveling to Canada with us. Oh, yeah, there we go. Some people should be considering, you want to come hang and learn all kinds of cool stuff like this, just shooting the shit. That's what we're doing in August in Canada. Yeah, so that's called our Collective Mind Society. And that's happening August 4th until the 9th. 00:48:44 And it's starting in Vancouver, ending in Calgary. It's going to be quite the trip. An entrepreneur, if you want to just hang and do something completely different, like a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And when I say that, like look at our last trip with the Formula One. Like everybody that came gave us like raving reviews for what we did. Yeah, it's going to be a really cool trip. I mean, there's no presentations. It's not like one of these conferences or something. It's Norm and I, and we got. Uh, right now about eight other people, um, we have a few spots left so it's a small, small group of people and we just we start in Vancouver. We have a nice meal in Vancouver and then we get on this train that goes through the Rockies. 00:49:32 This train's expensive, uh, that's first class. I mean they sermon us breakfast and lunch on there. It's got clear glass ceiling so you can see and we're driving through this just stunning rocky mountain terrain and just enjoying the sights and the wildlife and everything else. And then we stay the night in the hotel about halfway, and then we get back on the train the next day, and then we continue on. And we end up at Lake Louise, and we're staying at the Fairmont in Lake Louise. This is another really expensive hotel, but it's right on the edge of Lake Louise, just stunning, just lake in this valley. And then we're going up to the Icefields Parkway and going on some glaciers and some cool stuff there, and then ending up in Calgary and doing some fun stuff in Calgary. 00:50:15 Just hanging out, having a good time, traveling together, shooting the shit, having some cars, whiskey at night, if that's your thing. If not, that's okay. And also enjoying some nice meals and good company. So it's a fun little kind of hangout type of thing. And, yeah, if there's anybody listening that might want to join us, we've got a couple spots. This is not a moneymaker for Norm and I. Actually, Norm and I were talking about it the other day. We're looking at the numbers, and we're like, holy cow. This is more like a charity event for us. It's like this isn't a money-maker. So it's not it's not cheap, but the price has zero. We're talking about margins a minute ago on credit. This is negative margins for us. 00:51:00 We're just it covers everything except your airfare. So you don't have to pay for anything, you know, other than maybe if you do some laundry or, you know, incidental stuff, but covers everything: Hotel food. Everything but uh, it yeah hopefully uh, some of you uh, somebody listening might be able to join us. We got a couple spots left and the the quality of the people that are going to be on there too uh, they're going to be great entrepreneurs right so we upped the quality because you said Kelsey can't go right oh yeah yeah that's right yeah we were a little worried we had to raise the level of quality so we had to kick Kelsey out that's it. But then he said he might bring Gracie and we said, okay, you're back in. 00:51:53 So I think we're coming to the end of the podcast. If you're interested in the Collective Mind Society, check it out. We're hoping that this is going to be an annual thing. Our first event was spectacular, it was fantastic, uh, we did a lot of different events there, uh, we didn't make any money on that, uh, and like that one just that one private show with marshmallow, uh, the VIP tickets with the cars and Ed Sharon, I mean, that's why we didn't make money, it's like Norm and I, we got into it like you know what, let's just make sure this is like the best and we don't care, let's just spend a little money even it's coming out of our pocket, uh, to um, Yeah, so I think we lost three or four grand each on that one. 00:52:43 Yeah. But we were like, this is cool, man. We're having a good time. We enjoy doing this. So we're doing this. This is not a money-making thing. This is out of love, and we just love hanging out with entrepreneurs and doing this kind of stuff. So it's more of, as I say, it's an entrepreneur charity. Yeah. Donating to the Canadian economy. That's right, I guess. Okay, so Kevin, thanks for the last minute. Yeah, no problem. I love it. I can always depend on you. No problem. I moved a couple things around. I do have to jump back to one of them now. It's still going for another 30 minutes. But no problem, man. Glad to come on. All right. Sorry someone didn't show up, but glad to fill in. Okay, buddy. 00:53:28 So we'll talk to you soon. All right. Take care, man. All right. Okay, everybody. So I hope you learned a little bit of something today, a little bit about Prime Day, a little bit about travel. Again, like I said at the beginning, I didn't know where it was going to go. And it was awesome that Kevin could show up. But there are certain things like. Travel is so important to all of us and these little travel hints. And if you do have any questions about travel or about loyalty points or about whatever it is, put it in the group and we'll try to get the answers for you. Because sometimes you get that double the points or triple the points or quadruple the points. 00:54:15 Man, they add up quickly and not having to pay for a trip or a hotel room one of these days, it adds up. All right, everybody. So Kels, is there anything else? All right. Well, I shared the Collective Mind Society link here if you're interested in checking it out. It's collectiveminds, with an S, society. com. So the trip is August 4th to 9th. So, check that out. Also, your latest Marketing Misfits episode with Mark DeGrasse came out yesterday. So I also dropped that link here. Check it out. That is Norman Kevin's podcast that launched about, say, two months ago. Right. Yeah. So what we're doing is we're gathering content right now. We've got a bunch of episodes in the can, but we're just editing them, putting them up. 00:55:07 And then we'll start to market it a lot more. They're really cool stories. I had a podcast before called I Know This Guy. And this is a cross between I Know This Guy and AMPM podcast. You merge those two together. It's really kind of cool. Kevin and I do a lot of bantering back and forth. It's really interesting to see how we progress-the first one where we weren't sure we're both podcasters how to talk to each other, and then like the the 10th one, I think we had, where we're just going back and forth and it's just emerging, so over the next 10, 20, 30 [be] interesting to see how this goes. But that's the Marketing Misfits-they come out every Tuesday. Okay, I think that's it. So join me every Wednesday at noon Eastern Standard Time. And thanks for being part of the community. If you want more of The Beard, check out our newsletter or our WhatsApp group or Facebook. All right, everybody. See you next Wednesday.