The Full Story Behind the Man and Amazon Legend | Kevin King

The Full Story Behind the Man and Amazon Legend | Kevin King 00:00:05 Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Prime Talk. Today, I'm really, really honored and privileged to have the great Kevin King on our episode. Kevin King is a mega e-commerce entrepreneur. Of the many things he is, he's also the founder and CEO of Freedom Ticket, which is a leading e-commerce seller's academy. Kevin is going to elaborate a bit more about the businesses that he's involved with. But in general, this whole episode is going to be about him, his story, where he came from, where did he grow up, how did he start his professional career. So I'm sure it's going to be ultra interesting and fascinating. Kevin, how are you? How's everything? I'm good, man. How are you doing? Glad to be here. It's awesome. Great, great. Thank you for coming to the show. 00:00:52 You're still in Austin? I see the background. I am. I'm in Austin, Texas. That's where I've been the last 30 years or so. Great place. You know, I thank you for the opportunity back in November to come to the BDSS event, the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. It was in Austin. It was a true, true pleasure. I can't even express how much fun I had. So I hope we do it again soon after the coronavirus crisis comes to an end. But Shu, do you want to first a little bit to tell everybody about yourself and what you're involved with, and then we'll dive in right into your story? Sure, yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing you again at the next Billion Dollar Seller Summit. 00:01:30 I think you guys are sponsoring again, and it's scheduled for this July, but that's probably going to get pushed back a little bit due to the current situation out there. But yeah, it's going to be awesome times. Yeah, so. I've been doing e-commerce for 30 plus years, back before there was even a Google. I was selling things online. I've been involved in all kinds of aspects of e-commerce, from the subscription side to the product side to product development to wholesale distribution to you name it. I've been selling on Amazon since 2001 and as a private label seller since 2015. And I have several different brands on Amazon. I have four different brands, four different seller accounts that I manage on Amazon that I may either own completely or a major owner in. 00:02:25 I also do, like you said, the Freedom Ticket training course for Helium 10. Helium 10 is one of the big software companies. I have a partnership with them where I do the training, which is included for free if you have a Helium 10 membership. Basically, it's an A to Z, 70-some odd hours of training on how to sell on Amazon. And then I also do their advanced stuff called the Helium 10 Elite, which is for experienced sellers. It's more for the people that are already doing six, seven figures. And it's advanced topics, and I lead that every month. It's about a four-hour training of the latest and greatest stuff that's happening. Then I do the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, which is like-that you guys came to and are coming to the next one on, which is a small 50 to 100 people. 00:03:11 It's mostly seven and eight-figure sellers. It's an in-person event. I do that twice a year. And then I have another business that has nothing to do with Amazon. And then I have another business that's a whole product sourcing, product discovery and sourcing business. So I keep pretty busy. Nice. Yeah, amazing. I mean, I really I'm really impressed with the scope of your activity. And beyond that, beyond all the fact that you're a very active businessman is your influence. You know, you're definitely a force in influencing other entrepreneurs to take action and become successful when selling on Amazon and anything else with e-commerce. So your influence is definitely present out there. And it's really, really good. It's really positive. So it's really great to have you here. Okay, let's dive into your story. 00:04:00 You know, you're back on where you're from, where you grew up. We want to touch the Kevin King humor story behind the legend. Yeah, sure. I grew up in the Dallas area, a suburb north of Dallas up by the DFW airport. I went to Texas A&M University, have a degree in business. And since then, I've never worked for anybody else. I've only had two jobs in my life where I filled out, what do you call it? W-8, W-9, whatever the thing is. W, you're right. That's W-2. Is that what you get at the end of the year? Yeah. See, I don't even know the name of it. I filled that out twice in my life, back when I was like 16, 17 years old. And ever since then, I've-What was the job? 00:04:43 What was the job where you had to fill it out for? My first job at 16, my first official job at 16 was at McDonald's. McDonald's, there you go. After that, I delivered pizzas for a couple years. And beyond that, I've never worked for anybody else. I don't think I could. So I've had the ups and downs. I've had a bankruptcy years ago from a business. I've seen the bottom and I've seen the top. So I enjoy the ride. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I value my freedom. So I like to be able to do what I want to do when I want to do it. Even though I have a lot of businesses and I'm super busy, just by example, you know, I've got a lot going on right now. 00:05:27 We're in the middle of launching a big brand related to the COVID stuff right now. That's probably going to be a $20 to $30 million brand before the end of this year, because I have the freedom to do what I want to do. Yesterday, me and my wife just said, 'To heck with it' -the afternoon. It's a nice day here in Texas. Three hours away is the coast. Let's just drive down to the beach, take our dogs, and go down to the beach and just spend two or three hours at the beach. And I can do that. You know, if I was working a regular corporate job or something, that'd be a little bit more difficult to do. So that type of freedom, I really enjoy. 00:06:03 Before I started getting super serious on the Amazon side, I've been selling since 2001, but in 2015 is when I really started doing the FBA. That opportunity really came along. Amazing. com were the guys that originally started this whole training process that you see now, how you can bring products from Alibaba in and sell them. A lot of people started jumping on that bandwagon. I took a look at it in 2015. I never took any courses or did any trainings. I just devoured as much information as I could. I've been bringing stuff in from China and Korea for some other businesses for a while and developing new products. So it all kind of fit into everything that I was doing. So it's been cool. 00:06:46 But before that, I actually was also running a television production company where we did pay-per-view events. Television was traveling the world. And as part of that, it was fun to travel, but I was always working. So when I turned 52 years old. When I turned 40, I was like, you know what? Instead of having a midlife crisis and going and buying a nice shiny new Corvette or Viper or whatever the hot car was at the time, I was like, I'm just going to take a year and travel. So I decided I'm going to organize the business. I had about 16 people working for me at the time in an office. And I'm like, all right, you guys got this. I'm going to spend two weeks of every month out of the office. 00:07:27 I'm going to travel. And this wasn't a backpacking type of deal. What year was this? You were 40 years old, so this is about 12 years ago? This is about 2008? 2007, 2008. And so I made a list of places I just wanted to go. And some places I went by myself. Some places a friend or family went with me. It just depended. And I wasn't backpacking, but I wasn't staying in the Four Seasons either. A country, and I'd hire a local guide for example I went to Israel and I hired a local guide and I was like, you know someone from the place and just me, I'm not going to do some bus 00:08:01 tour, I'm not going to just go see the museums, I want to see the culture and the guy took me all over Israel for like 12 days, and by the end of it, you know he's inviting me to his house to have a nice dinner with his his wife and stuff, and you're seeing that side of things, and uh, you become almost friends with them, and I did that, uh, the original plan was to to do that for a year. And that turned into seven years. So I continued doing that until early 2014. And then I decided, you know, I better get serious again. The money's starting to run out from some of the other stuff. I better figure out what I'm going to do. So that's how I ended up focusing on the FBA. 00:08:37 It looked like that was the best. I had like three different choices of things I was looking at. I was like, this one looks like the one that has the most potential that'll still allow me to have that lifestyle. And so during this whole time, I met my wife. I went to end up going to, I've been to 87 countries. Wow. And one of those was Colombia. And I met my wife, current wife, in one of those trips in Colombia and ended up importing her to the U.S. Where did you guys meet in Colombia? Which part of Colombia? In Cartagena, yeah, I've actually been there. Colombia is actually one of the few countries I did travel. I think I traveled, I've been to like 19 countries, so I'm a bit behind you. 00:09:18 But one of the areas that I traveled was South America, and Colombia is one of them. It was in Cartagena, very nice. So I assume that you have family. You probably go visit there often because of your – Yeah, we go down a couple times a year. New Year's is a big deal for the families down there. It's kind of like – Our Thanksgiving here in the U. S., they're New Year's, and so that's traditionally when we make sure we're always there New Year's, and usually it's one other time. Nice. How's your Spanish, by the way? I can speak a little bit, but I'm not fluent, not as fluent as my wife would like me to be. So sometimes sitting down there, I get lost at the table. Lost in translation. 00:10:00 If I'm on my own, I can get by, but I can't hold a full conversation for a long time. I start fumbling around. Gotcha. I want to touch a little bit, if I may. I guess you turned into business, you were 17, 18 years old. I want to touch your first business. How old were you and what was the year? So we can get a little bit of an idea of the framework that led you to where you are now. So let's start with that. I was, I think, four years old. Four years old. What were you doing? Selling pacifiers? Selling bubble gum. I would go down to the local. Back then, there wasn't a Walmart, but there was something, I think it's called Gibson's or something, somewhere here in Texas, a little small town in Texas. 00:10:41 Buy the one-cent bubble gum, you know, those big red bubble gums? Oh, yeah. I don't know if they still sell them. You might be able to get some of the little individual packages and buy those for a penny and sell them for three cents to the local neighborhood kids. That's a good markup. I did that. I sold, I mowed yards. I painted numbers on street curbs in front of people's houses, put their address on it, painted it on the curb. I did all kinds of stuff as a teenager. I was making too much money as a teenager. My parents were a little bit worried that you're 12, 13 years old, somewhere in there, making $400 a week. This was back in the 80's. That's a lot of money. 00:11:24 I don't know what that would be now, maybe $1,000 a week or something. It's a lot of money. You can't have all this money. You've got to save half of it. They would actually make me take. Every time I come in with some money, they take half of it from me, throw it into some savings account, and they ended up giving that back to me as my allowance when I went to college. So when I went to college, my dad, he paid for my college, but all my spending money came from that. So I was 12 years old making my peer money for later on. Wow, that's a fantastic story. I mean, your parents are visionary. They realize, you know, you're a talented entrepreneur. 00:12:01 Nevertheless, you have to kind of understand or appreciate the long game. So they helped you with that. They take the money away, put it aside. So once you're in college, you mature a little bit more. You can appreciate a bit more the value of money and the value of the longer game and use it to party when you probably needed the money even more than as a kid. It created a problem, though, then. You say that. I understand the value of money, and I do. But at the same time, as a young kid, I was always able to make money. If I want to do a video game, I was like, what can I do to make this video game? 00:12:32 Oh, let's start a little stamp company and put some ads in the back of magazines for stamp collectors and start selling stamps and coins. I did that. I developed a little software, a bartending software program when I was in college. So you were, what, 18, 19, back in those days in college? Yeah. And this is what year was this? It was in the late eighties. All right. So you develop, you said, uh, so what was it? A software? Well, yes, because I had, I was making good money. Uh, I was able to in college, uh, I did something called, uh, I tutored a class called Banna 217 at Texas A &M University. If you're a sophomore business major and A &M is a big school, you know, there's a, there's about a thousand kids in the business program. 00:13:19 Uh, And every year, I mean, sorry, your second year, your sophomore year, you had to take a class called BANA 217. It was basically business analysis, which is what BANA stands for. And you had to learn the basic computing language. Nobody really uses it anymore. But it was a computing language called BASIC. People probably heard C++ or Pascal or whatever, but BASIC was one of the first. And when I was younger, when I was 15, my parents had bought one of the first desktop computers. And I spent one summer just learning how to program on my own. Stupid programs and stuff. So I already knew this and it was a big weed out class that they were teaching and kids were having trouble. 00:13:58 So I started tutoring people and I put up little signs around campus and the library and don't want to say, if you're having trouble learning how to program for this class, just pull off this, call me on this little number, you know, pull off a little tag and call me. And I started with one-on-ones for like, I don't know, five bucks an hour or something like that. And it got to be so many people. That I was actually renting rooms in the library, little conference rooms where I could get 10 people in there at one time. And 10 people grew to 20 people. And then they had to test three times a year. And the tests were standardized between all the professors. 00:14:30 And so right before the test, people would want to cram for the test. And so I'd do like a review session. And that just kept growing. And so finally, I ended up renting a conference room at the Hilton Hotel and College Station where I could put 500 people in there at once. Unbelievable. charged them $15 a head and they would come in the day, the day to say the test was on a Thursday and on Wednesday, not Wednesday, I would have two sessions and I was getting about 60, 70% of people taking this class coming to me. And so they would come, uh, and, uh, 15 bucks a head. I get, I put five, 600 people through there. 00:15:07 Uh, I do two sessions, one at I don't know, five o'clock and another one at eight thirty and it'd be like three hours of just, here's everything you need to know for the test. And so I was making pretty good money off of that. Professors didn't like me too much, but it was good. And what I would do is to market this, I would go at the beginning of the semester, I would go to the registrar's office at the college and say, look, I want a mailing list of the address of every kid taking this class. And they say, no, no, you can't do that. It's private information. We can't say here's the. the mailing addresses of a thousand kids. I'm like, yes, you can. 00:15:47 There's something in Texas called the Sunshine Records Act, which is open information for any public institution. So you have to give it to me. I have to pay you, you know, whatever it costs to print these labels, but that's it. And so they ended up having to give me a mailing list of a thousand kids, their name and address. You know, here's Kevin King. He lives at 123 Main Street, whatever. They print them out on these labels, just peel them off. So I'd give them 40 bucks or something, get this list. And I'd go down and I'd make, at the beginning of the semester, go to a place similar to Kinko's at the time. For those of you who remember before, it was FedEx Kinko's. It was just Kinko's. 00:16:24 It was a coffee in place. And I would print up a flyer and mail it to every single one of those and say, 'Here's the dates. Come and I'll teach you everything you need to know.' And so that worked really well. But as a result of that, I had a lot of money. And so our apartment, I was living with three other guys off campus, and we became the party place, if you picture anyone else. You sponsored your own frat house. Yeah, we had; it was six nights. We took Tuesdays off. But six nights a week was, it was pretty crazy. We always had people there. You know, we had a sign at the door when you walk in. 00:17:01 They had the rules of the place, and like no unshaven legs from girls, and we have one of the guys they'd be there like checking their legs when they walk in, like it was all kinds of crazy, crazy. You know that's hilarious; you can't, you can't leave sober, I mean it was. We had the police, the police would come on a pretty regular basis, our neighbors would call the police for disturbances or whatever. Every time the police would come, um, it wasn't like every single time, but it was often enough that we would actually The roommates would take turns going out to talk to the police, and we would take pictures with the police. We had a whole wall of each of us posing with the police officers. 00:17:37 Some of them would shine a flashlight. They wanted to kind of ruin the picture, but it was crazy. But I got to the point where people were coming to drink for free, and I was like, 'This is stupid. Why am I supporting everybody to drink? At least I should cover the cost.' Here, you should donate some money and so I went and took a bartending class at A&M. It was like an extracurricular, you know, not on the books class but one of those little special ones. And I wasn't 21 yet, so you couldn't actually use real alcohol, so we're just using water in these bottles. And I was like, 'Screw that, I want to know what this stuff really tastes like so I went bought an entire bar, like everything. 00:18:19 And so we had all that there and then people started coming and I was like, 'I need to keep track.' So I developed a little program on the Apple IIe computer, old laptop computer, one of the first laptop computers, and more of a little program, a little marketing program that would have the recipes and it would keep track of everybody's tab. And I ended up deciding I'm going to sell that. And so I ended up putting ads in computer magazines. Ended up selling, and I didn't sell a whole lot, but ended up selling some of that. So I've done all kinds of stuff. Wow, that's a wild, wild story. I mean, what I take from this is that a few things. 00:19:01 Your sense of entrepreneurship is obviously very clear, but also the way that you are relentless in a good way to pursue your ambition. The mission is you have a target, you laser focus on it, you push it, you make it happen. You support a lot of people along the way. That's what's so magical with your story because all these people eventually, they signed up, they made money on it, but it wasn't just about the money. At the end of the day, they needed it because it helped them to achieve something and to get progress for their own needs. So, the connection there between your ability to have vision of how to develop something new and innovative that's helpful and that's in high demand. 00:19:41 It connects with the consumers or the people who need it, and it's a beautiful connection. And then you take it on to the next step, and to the next step, to the next step. You create basically a frat house and a party house, and then that develops the software, and you sell that. It's just the magnitude and the intensity of your trail is just, for me, it's from looking from the side. It's mesmerizing. It's pretty cool. All right, so after the software, you developed it. Hopefully, you graduated in college a billionaire. What was your status back then? I graduated from college and ended up moving to Austin. College Station is about an hour and a half from Austin. And Texas A &M and the University of Texas are big rivals in sports and football and stuff. 00:20:25 So I ended up moving to Austin because I had some old friends from high school here. And I slept on the couch. As much money as I was making, I slept on the couch in their living room for a year and a half. Why is that? Because I didn't want to live by myself, and they already had three or four roommates, and they're like, yeah, you can sleep on the couch. So I slept on the couch, and I ended up doing some stuff with them where we actually made T-shirts. Right around that time, the MC Hammer song, You Can't Touch This, was super popular. That one? Yeah, that one. What's ironic is I'm about to make some money off of that song again. One of the other things I'm doing right now. 00:21:04 But anyway, back in 1990, that was a hot song. So we made a shirt that said, it's the University of Texas. Their initials is UT. So we made a shirt that said, it had you, can't, and then the T touched this. So you can't, like just the word, just the letter U, can't touch this. And the UT in different colors. So it was like the logo. And then one of my buddies who was still in school. He was in the engineering school, and he got permission. Like, how can we sell these on campus? You know, we need to be able to sell these things on campus. And he's like, well, we could do it as a fundraiser for the engineering department or something. So we got authorized at some sort of club. 00:21:43 We never gave a dime to him, but we got authorized at some sort of club. We were supposed to actually donate 5%. I don't know what it was. But by having that, we got a permit to actually sit on campus. Started with that shirt, and we'd park. Me and some other guys, we'd set up a little table, and we'd find the high-traffic corners on UT campus. It's kind of a condensed university. There's about 50,000 students. So we'd find the high-traffic corners and sit there with a table and these shirts and sell them for $10, $15 a piece. What was that corner where the George Washington Monument is or the MLK or where they have the tower? What was the spot? I did a little tour, so I'm a little bit familiar. 00:22:24 There's one on 26th Street in Guadalupe. There's one right on the drag. There used to be a dormitory that was a pretty hot place for lunches. There's a whole bunch of different places. Got it. And then at the football games, you have a stadium here. Massive stadium, massive stadium. Yeah, now it's about $100,000. Back then it was, I think, $80,000 or something. For these games, we want to be out there. In front, during a football game. So we'd be out there with our table. And the first time we did, it's like, nobody can see us because we have our little fold-out table and we have our shirts all displayed and everything, but the crowds are just walking in and nobody can see you. And so my buddies were engineers. 00:23:04 And so they're like, we're going to fix this. So they developed a catapult system. We call them catapults. They went to Home Depot and bought all this wood. And so we had these like things that collapse and they would fold the big, long sticks, like 10 feet long. They would collapse down, but they would fold up. uh like a picture a goal post of a football in a football stadium yeah and we can hang the shirts across the top so it would be 10 feet up in the air so people walking from way the heck down the way could see it and know we're there and like oh we want those shirts and visibility you basically did a little visibility hack yeah and uh we would we would do twenty thirty thousand dollars on a game day and t-shirt sales forty thousand dollars all in on cash 00:23:46 credit cards and back then we didn't have internet credit cards you know we had to actually take the credit card and iron it you know you gotta iron it with a little piece of paper and take them to the bank and deposit them like checks uh you know it was uh old school old school yeah so it uh we did that and then that uh and what year are we in this is pretty much yourself like you said after college It was after college, so to the dismay of my dad, I didn't go get a corporate job and start making $50 ,000, $40 ,000, $50 ,000, $60 ,000, $80 ,000 a year with my degree. I went sleeping on a couch and selling T-shirts. 00:24:22 Yeah, but you're making revenue of $40 ,000 a week. Games were almost every week, right, in the season? There was like six during the season, and I had some partners, so we split that. But yeah, it was good money. It was probably lucrative. Yeah, go ahead. And then we decided, well, let's do this for a spring break. You know, we're young, 22, 23. We want to see some hot chicks. Let's do this for a spring break. So you had fun with it. And this is what, 1990, which year? 1991, yeah. So we would actually. Yes, you know, in 1991, I believe I was in first grade and I was under quarantine, not because of the coronavirus. I was, the whole country, I come from Israel, right? 00:24:59 So the whole country was in the shelters with their gas masks because there was a Gulf War with Iraq. And Iraq was bombing Israel with all these missiles. And we're always afraid that's going to be chemical missiles. And therefore, we had to have these masks. So today, in a very, very strange way, I feel almost like it was back in 1991 during the Gulf War where everybody is, you know, quarantined at home. We have a mask. Although it's not a chemical mask, it's just, you know, surgical, whatever. But one thing I'm sure that, you know, the same way we prevailed that war and we came out from the ruins successfully, hopefully everybody else right now from this situation will come out from the ruins. But yeah, sorry to cut you off with that. 00:25:35 No, that's interesting. You know, Israel actually, you know, of all these places, back on that story, speaking of Israel, of all the places I've been, that's one place where I learned the most. I'm not religious. I'm spiritual. So I can't say I, identify with Catholics or Jewish or Islamic or Hindu, but I've seen all the religions around the world, you know, because I've been everywhere and I've seen what they, and I respect them all. But going to Israel, you know, for a lot of people, it's a very spiritual journey. What year was this when you first came to Israel to visit? My first trip to Israel was in 2010. About a decade ago, 10 years ago, yeah. Yeah. But just having someone that was an ex-college professor that was my guide that took me around everywhere. 00:26:22 I went from north to south. We went over into Bethlehem. We went everywhere just to see that and to see the misconception that the media places on Israel. You used to see stories here in the news about The Palestinian territories and all these different things and to see it firsthand and see how this everything is manipulated It was really taught me about the media. You can't trust the media, most media. They've got anything. Can be slanted to make a story. Seeing it firsthand, and then seeing three religions living on top of each other where all of them say this is their mother Most holy if not their most holy one of the most holy sites, and how you know. All these governments are like, we're going to make peace in the Middle East. 00:27:07 Like, no, you're not. There's never going to be a peace in the Middle East. All these guys are kind of got their flag planted and they're not moving. None of them are going to move. It's too holy for them. And so seeing all that firsthand and seeing how the people are, how sophisticated the people are, the systems are, it's just really opened your eyes. So that's one of the things I always tell people is like, look. You know, I'm a little bit different most people. They're trying to make enough money in their Amazon business or whatever so that they can travel. Or I've kind of done it the opposite way-I've traveled first. It's one of the best educational things you can do. You know, a lot of people are Americans, and most Americans don't have passports. 00:27:45 I'm sorry to get on my little high horse here, but most Americans don't have passports or if they do, they went on a cruise to Cancun or to Mexico or maybe they went to London-they went to familiar places that You haven't gone somewhere where you don't speak the language. You don't understand what the heck the food is. You need to get out of your comfort zone and get out there and experience the world because that's why it started out as one year for me, but it turned into seven. I was like, 'Holy cow, there's another place I need to go, another place.' It became like I had to see everything. I've been to all seven continents, including Antarctica. You've been to Antarctica? Yeah. I had to see and it changes you. 00:28:23 Now when I see... it changes my opinion of people. It knocks down prejudices. You earn a different respect. We're all the same. You realize how similar we all are, not how different we are. There's cultural things and beliefs and stuff in some cases, but we're all humans. I think this COVID thing has kind of highlighted some of that as well. Sorry, I digress there. If you're listening to this and you haven't traveled or you've only been somewhere where It's comfortable. You know, like in China, for example, my parents went to China before I did. And when I went to China, first time was 2006 or 2008, I guess. They said, how do you like it? How do you like the food? I was like, it's really good. 00:29:11 Well, all we ate was chicken and rice and the buffets. I'm like, what? You've got to get out, man, hit the Peking duck and you've got to hit this and hit that. And one time, a good example is I was in Morocco. And my guide, I had a driver and a guide, and they took me to a lunch restaurant. And I said, here's a – it was just meat. But they're like, 'This is for you to eat here.' Here's the menu. And I look at the menu. It's in seven languages. I'm like, 'I'm not eating here.' And no, it's good. It's a tourist food. It's good for you. It's safe. I'm like, 'No, where are you guys going to eat?' Around the corner, you know, a little thing on the – a little stall on the street where it’s, I don’t know, it’s 50 cents for them to eat lunch or something. 00:29:51 I’m like, no, I’m going with you. Like, no, no, no, no, you stay here. And I was like, no, I’m going with you. Okay, so I go with them and I eat. You know, I want to see how the local people are doing it. That’s part, food is part of a culture. And you got to experience that. And it's something I encourage everybody to do. It's one thing I take from this, you know, first I appreciate, you know, that this is, we're going astray, but this is a very interesting path because what I take from this about you is that you have this attraction to find the source, what's the source of things, what's the truth behind things, you know, so that's what attracts you. 00:30:27 You want to get you know because you know where the source is, that's where you get the taste of something that's authentic, it's unbendable, it's unshakable, and that puts everything in the to the right perspective on so many levels-business levels, spiritual levels, physical, whatever it is. So I think that's it also connects to where you are today, you know, you're it's fair to say that you're you're a major influencer in the e-commerce space world, you're some sort of a magnet that empowers a lot of sellers, a lot of businesses. And I think one of the driving forces in that energy is that your ability to, what's the source of things? The relentless pursuit of the source and where it all starts. If we jump into the Amazon world, it's like, where is this traffic coming from? 00:31:09 Why is this listing or this product is number one? The source, what's the source of things? And then you get all these widgets and gadgets and funnels that you discover. Then you share it. You actually share it. You don't just keep it to yourself. You make your money, which is all good. Then your ability to share it and reward everybody else with that knowledge and that ability then also comes to reward you. So there's an interesting cycle how you discover things. You explore the world. You explore the cultures. You explore the e-commerce domain, which is its own digital world. But it all correlates into one perfect storm of doing business and making a good living, tasting the world, enjoying the world. It's a very, very interesting angle, the way you were able to construct your life story. 00:31:56 That's a good point. No one's ever put it that way. I actually like that. I might steal that from you. Whatever it is. No copyright infringement. It's all open. That's a good way of saying it. Never thought of it in that exact terms, but it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I'm trying to discover the source of you. That's pretty much the, you know, what's your driving forces? That's pretty much the purpose of this episode and this exercise. If you may, I want to touch a bit, you know, 1991. Let's, you know, try to briefly go into, I guess, 2001, that decade until you started, you know, the Amazon world. Yeah, I was in the internet world doing, I was developing products and television programming. 00:32:32 And I have a calendar business that we do printing calendars, you know, but they have the dates on them and stuff. We were doing a whole bunch of stuff in there. I was dealing with pretty girls, so with models. Yeah, you've got to have a pretty calendar. Pretty girls help us out. We were traveling the world shooting, I think, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. That's what I did for a long time; we'd get on a plane with a bunch of pretty girls and we'd go to a beach and they'd not be wearing much when we did a photo shoot. So it was a good life. And this is in the 10th year, the decade between 1991 to 2001, yeah? Well, yeah, there was pretty much; yeah, it started with baseball cards, actually. 00:33:16 There used to be little baseball cards, you know, every little kid collects, or used to, I don't know if they still do, but collects baseball, was collecting baseball cards. And someone came up with an idea, it wasn't me, that, hey, why don't we put pretty girls on baseball cards? And you had everything from Hooters restaurant girls to Playboy centerfolds to you name it uh strippers um do you uh any kind of sports illustrator any kind of pretty girl they kind of all these baseball card sets that had the pretty girls on them collect them all you know collect them all yeah that's right we started doing we started doing that uh producing some of our own uh and at the time I was like, 'You know what? 00:33:58 How can we get some lead gen here?' Um, and so everybody was putting in their packages. You buy a pack of cards and have a little, I have a little registration card in there. You know, Amazon sellers still do this to this day, but it had a little, some do have a little registration. Go to, uh, back then it wasn't go to our websites, fill this out and mail it in. And someone will give them a free bonus card or that someone, nothing. But I said, I was like, I want to sell more of these things. What if I could sell everybody else's? Cause this guy over here, that's selling uh sports illustrated cards, that's a good buyer that would buy my cards. How can I get that buyer to buy mine? 00:34:34 This is before the internet, before you could just put stuff this is you know there was very few places you could advertise this so I was like I had to get creative on how to build a customer list. So I went to all the other people that were making these cards uh and I said 'Look, what are you doing with your little your little pieces of paper, you know warranty things? Oh we stick them in a shoebox or I don't know they're sitting somewhere in the office like give them to me I'll type, I'll get them typed in for you and give you back the list. Like oh that'd be great but in exchange for that, you got to give let me be able to mail something one time to these People, oh yeah, sure no problem and so I was able to get 20 of these companies to send me literally boxes of these like registration cards. 00:35:13 I hired a company in Jamaica, I think it was Jamaica, to actually type all these in. That's before I knew about Philippine VAs and all that stuff. That was like your earliest VAs, Jamaicans. Yeah. Interesting. I had them type them all in, ended up with a list of, I don't know, 20,000 or some crazy number of hot leads, hot customers. So then I developed a catalog. And so I developed a printed catalog, like a full-blown printed catalog of of these cards. And I was like, well, if the guys are buying cards, they're also going to buy calendars, but they're also going to buy books, you know, like Elfegren pinup books or anything related to pretty girls. 00:35:51 And so I, I developed a whole catalog and sourced all these different, basically became a distributor, but I have a whole catalog, a really nice four-color catalog. I learned how to do PageMaker at the time. Now it's CorelDRAW or InDesign, or I learned how to do all the Photoshop stuff. And literally it was me designing this whole thing. Pictures taken, you know, whole works, little descriptions. It's a precursor to Amazon. And then I would mail this out. And we would mail out 20,000 of them, and people would just eat it up. We were doing, you know, huge amounts of sales off of this. And I had a full warehouse with three full-time shipping people shipping this stuff out. Two other guys sitting there managing a postage machine, sticking stamps on things, sticking stuff in envelopes. 00:36:36 It grew pretty big and as a real soul of that. We we started doing a whole calendar line and that just grew, and then that grew. I go ahead we're out here and some pretty beaches and in Bali shooting pretty girls. We started videotaping it and just behind the scenes just create some little promotional stuff. Well, then somebody from pay-per-view came along and said, 'Hey, look, we got these boxing channels and when there's no boxing, that's just kind of just sitting there. We're going to start putting these bikini shows on-not porn or anything like that, just you know, bikini bikini shows. That is the pay-per-view so don't produce this with porn but um, and just bikini shows.' And she's like, 'You know, I've got to deal with Direct TV and with Dish Network and with Time Warner and Comcast and all the big players, you know, where we can put these shows on for pay-per-view. 00:37:27 This is before YouTube. And so I'm like, 'Yeah, we'll do that'. And you get 35%. So if someone sits down at their table on their TV and hits, yeah, I want to watch whatever, Bikini Girls in Bali, it's $10. We get $350. And our agent took 25% for working the deal. So we get $250, $275, whatever that math works out to be, per sale. And we were doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to us just off of this byproduct. And so we're like, holy cow. Let's do more of this. And so we did that for a while. The bottom line is things change in this world. Baseball cards went out of vogue. And then we had to evolve. Calendars, people still buy calendars to this day. 00:38:12 I still do those. We sell six figures of calendars a year on Amazon on just five different SKUs in a month period. And then we, so we started evolving. Well, I just lost my train of thought there. But it started evolving. The product lines started doing the pay-per-view television. Then YouTube came out. And then all these other websites, the internet started really growing. You could get all this stuff for free. You didn't need to pay $10 for it. So that whole market fell down, you know, fell. But I was able, so I had to pivot again. And that's where I pivoted into the Amazon stuff. So 2001, let's dive into Amazon. So, you know, you had a whole lineup of, I guess, all these ventures that you dealt with. 00:38:57 You know, there was ups and downs. You know, there was a trend that you were able to jump and follow on and enjoy. But as it faded out, you had to reinvent yourself every time. So 2001, what was the trigger? You come into the Amazon world. What was it like? What was it about? What was it full-time? That was in 2001. That's where we started selling the calendars on Amazon. To Amazon or on Amazon as sellers? What was the structure? Well, there wasn't an FBA. There wasn't a third-party platform back then. Right. Fulfilled by merchant. Yeah. What we did is they had a program called Advantage, and I think they still have it to this day. And it was for books, media, and DVD. 00:39:32 It was kind of a precursor to what we do now as a third-party merchant. Well, we would send stuff in on consignment. So Amazon would actually – they would issue a purchase order on Mondays and Wednesdays. We would send it in strictly on consignment, and then they would sell them. I think the first year, we sold 200 calendars or something to Amazon. It wasn't a lot. Yeah, it was a drop, yeah. You started dripping it in. But now, we sell more than that a day. But now you're selling it as a third-party seller, or you still have that relationship with Amazon where they put a PO? No, now we sell it as a third-party seller. But yeah, that's how we started. And so that was the first, and then I was flipping stuff on Amazon. 00:40:09 I was selling old DVDs, old CDs and converting them to DVDs or old VHSs. I was, if I had a, I'd use it almost like an eBay, you know, because you get to go in there and you could say, if you, on some product listings on Amazon, it says 'Sell yours' or whatever. So you could sell as used. So if I had a, an old, I don't know, computer or something, instead of putting it on eBay, I might try it on Amazon and sell some stuff there. So I used it like that. So I really wasn't, I was selling the calendars and through the which was seasonal. And then doing just the mods and end stuff. So the real Amazon selling, the serious Amazon selling didn't start until 2015. Got it. 00:40:48 So from 2001 to 2015, those times you were dabbling a little bit on the sidelines with Amazon, but your main core business was what? My main core business was the Pretty Girls, the calendars, and the television production. Throughout the years, 14 years, that was your bread and butter, that was your core. Yeah, we had three full-time video editors. We had three full-time graphic artists. We had two full-time shipping people. It was a big production. We were doing a lot of products. We were doing really high-end collectibles at the same time. We would do really nice things like glass cases. Nice. Nice. So, so, but in 2008, that's when he was, you know, during this, this business model and these business years, you started traveling the world, correct? Yeah. So I, yeah, 2007. 00:41:40 That was instead of like a few weeks, it turned into a seven-year journey for you to visit 80 plus countries. Until early January, until January, 2014. And I decided, okay, I need to get serious again. Because I was able to coast. I mean, we made a lot of money, as you can see from that other stuff. And we had residual money coming in. You know, we had something that we shot on a beach in Bali in 2004. You know, we were able to repurpose that and still make money off of that in 2011 or 2002, whatever, you know. So we were able to. Basically, go back to the well and keep we had content 00:42:20 that we could keep it's like Disney, you know they make oh yeah it's like uh it's like Jerry Seinfeld he makes most of his money after the show ended because the royalties you know broadcasted that content went all over the world every year repetitive and you get residual exactly it's very similar to that so we were able to coast uh basically for a while so I was my dad said I was semi-retired and so we That's how I was able to travel. You and your dad, did he work in the business at some point or just because he was retired from his other job he had? No, he was a government worker. He doesn't relate. What I do is too unsecure for him. Got it. 00:42:59 2015, let's enter the modern age and the current age of Kevin King. In 2015, you decided, you know what? Third-party selling on Amazon. This is where I find my new major interest. What was it like? In 2015, I saw a webinar from Amazing. com. They're doing some pitch for their $5,000 course. It's like a four-part video series. I watched the little free stuff they had. I was like, I don't need their course. I can do this. This makes sense. I know how to do all this already, so I just started doing it. Back then, I remember, I think Kevin Reiser had a podcast. Scott Volker had a podcast. You're talking about Private Label Movement? PLM? Yeah. Uh-huh. Got it, yeah. That was pretty much it. 00:43:45 Maybe there's one of the guys somewhere here or there, but there wasn't what there was now. The content with the software tools didn't exist. There were a couple of private things. So it was a wild, wild, still a wild, wild west. On charter territory, that's what I call it. Yeah, you could, you know, all the reviews where you give the product to anybody for free in exchange for a review as long as they wrote it. It was just, it was crazy times. Much easier than it is now. But I got into it, and I was like, you know what, I'm going to start this, and I want to see, you know, everybody says start with one product or one niche, and I still recommend that to most people, but I had some money, and I was like, I'm going to start with five products and five different niches. 00:44:22 Three of those, I did with a traditional private label, find it on Alibaba or Global Sources or somewhere, you know, change it up a little bit, stick my logo on it. Two of them, I completely developed from scratch, completely, with molds and I mean, the idea came out of my head. I sketched it on paper. I found someone on Upwork to actually do all the CAD designs. I had my factory make prototypes. One of the molding costs on one of them was $35,000. Wow. Serious business. Yeah. So, I went into it deep and launched those five products. And the idea was like, a couple of these might not work. A couple might not be worth my time. I should focus on these. And that's what happened; is I ended up narrowing it down. 00:45:04 And during that time, I just had my head down. I was a one-man show, no BAs, no nothing, just learning everything I could. Literally, my wife was in law school at the time, so I wasn't spending much time with her. So I literally would just all day, 14 hours, 16 hours a day, listen, consume as much as I could, and trial and error. And as a result of that, I was on one of the Facebook groups that Manny Coates had started from Helium 10. And it was a high FBA high rollers and someone posted something on there. And I usually don't participate too much in Facebook groups. I'm only on Facebook for business. I don't do any personal stuff. You're not going to see a post, hardly any personal stuff on Facebook. 00:45:45 And I posted something. Someone said something. It was totally wrong. I corrected them. And I added a little bit to it. And Manny sold that. And he liked it. And he reached out to me and said, 'Hey, would you come on my podcast? I'm like, no, dude. I'm not interested. I'm just a seller.' He's like, 'No, just come on the podcast. It would be cool.' So eventually, I think it was March of 2016. I hadn't even been selling a year. I agreed to go on his podcast. And that podcast became, I think, if not his number one ever, it became his top two podcasts. And I think it just. I just said it like it is, you know, and that's one of the things I guess a lot of people like is I don't sugarcoat. 00:46:24 I know I'll, I just say it like it is. Like I said, you go to the source, the source of things you like, you're not, you're just, you're just a messenger. This is what the source is like. Yeah. So I just say it like it is. And I don't sugarcoat. And, uh, I think that that resonates with a lot of people and I have experience. And so a lot of people, you know, that may teach this stuff or that are making presentations. They're talking out their ass. It's something they just researched, and they put the slides together, and they're like, 'I'm not quite sure exactly how this works, but this is what everybody else says, so that's what they teach.' And I don't do it that way. It resonated. 00:46:57 So his thing resonated, and I just took off from there. I had no intentions of being a speaker or being on a podcast or doing all this stuff, and people started reaching out to me. Other podcasts, can you come on ours? Can you come speak at this event? And it got to the point where It blew up, and then at one point, Manny's like, 'Hey, we're starting this training called Illuminati Mastermind for high-level sellers. We'd love you to be one of the trainers in there.' I was like, no, I've got to work on my business. We'll make it worth your while. They gave me an offer I couldn't refuse. We started doing that in February 2017. That's where the training site started, the Freedom Ticket for new people. 00:47:36 I wasn't planning on doing that, but I got frustrated with all the misinformation, all the people that have YouTube videos, don't know what the heck they're doing. And they sold $10,000 in their life on Amazon and now they're trying to teach other people or they don't cover it in detail. They say, look, I've seen videos. Look, you can source something. Here's a video. There's one big guy that runs a lot of ads right now. Look at this. You can get this on Alibaba. He sorts a screenshot for $1. 70. Look right here. It's selling on Amazon for $20. $18 profit. And look, it sells according to this Jungle Scout screenshot, 100 a day. You could make almost $2,000 a day selling this product and have a Lamborghini like me. 00:48:17 And I'm like, that's such BS. You're leaving off the shipping costs. You're leaving off the Amazon fees. You're leaving off. And I just got frustrated with so many people getting suckered. I'm just going to do a course and show them. You're going to break it down. You're going to break it down like it is and show all the components and all the ingredients to make somebody successful. I give them a huge spreadsheet, a financial spreadsheet that nobody else gives them. Plan this, look at this, and people appreciate that. That's how that evolved, and that evolved into speaking. Then I was able to actually start charging for some of my speaking for me to show up at an Amazon event. You've got to pay my airfare and hotel, but you've also got to pay me. 00:48:59 It's one of the only speakers that would do that. I did that, and then I was like, you know what? That's great. It got my name out there. It helped for the course stuff, but then I was like, look, I can't really scale this. This is all on me. So I can make money off of this, and it's good, but I'm not going to sell my course business or my speaking business for $20, $30, $40 million one day. So I was still selling along the way, but it was not. My focus was mixed. It was some speaking, some business. I was like, I've got to double back down on the products because that's where I can actually secure my future is on products. 00:49:38 If I build a company and sell it, I start seeing all the guys that are making good money selling their Amazon businesses. I made a couple of mistakes when I first started. I was doing okay, but I was like, 'I need to build something from scratch the right way.' I could sell what I have now for a few million if I want to. But why not let that just coast and use that as an experimental account, experimental stuff, start over from scratch, knowing everything I know now, knowing all the top people, build something from day one with the intent of selling it in three years for $20, $30, $40 million. And that's what I'm doing with two companies right now. 00:50:13 And that's how I will secure, that's scalable, and it's something that will give me a much bigger payday than continuing to do teaching. Which I'll continue to do on the side, but to focus on that is short-term versus the product is a long-term play. That's what I'm doing. What I can see, once again, it's in your veins at this point. One thing leads to another. The scale and magnitude of your capacity is, first of all, it's very big because, you know, like you mentioned, you bring out a spreadsheet with full of content, full information. I know because I've been to your lectures and events. It's overwhelming. You know, for a standard joke from the street, it can be very overwhelming. All this knowledge that you bring out there and putting all together successfully. 00:51:01 But nevertheless, you're able to do it and you're able to do it on so many levels and so many businesses. But that's always like the stepstone for the next one and the next one. So, you know, having a business plan to do an exit for 20, 30 million, that's, you know, I think that's a great plan for you at this stage. You know, at this stage where you see all your accomplishments, you know, from the early 90s to now, you see all these stepstones that you achieved and all the accomplishments. It just keeps driving you up over there. My mom says it's like all these other things in the past. I was training for what I'm doing now. Yeah. 00:51:36 It seems like it, it seems that that's your essence of your story, but let me take you a push you a bit further from that. You know, hopefully when you're successful and you're reaching that 20, 30 million mark of exit, I think that will open the path in the way for all the other sellers. Cause the way you opened it up for a lot of sales to exit their business for a few million, right? Because, you know, think about a story where somebody, you know, went into your freedom ticket courses. They started, you gave them the fundamentals, the foundations. They did it for a few years. They did well. And then they sold the business for a couple million. You know, you paved the way, so to speak, for that scale, that magnitude. 00:52:10 I think what now you're doing is probably preparing the next scale, which will be, you know, exit of 10, 20, 30 million and up. And who knows, once you get there, maybe the next exit will be in the higher echelon. Um, I think that's, uh, that's, uh, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm really looking forward to, uh, to what's to come with your next endeavors because it's going to be intense. It's going to be creative, innovative and wild and hopefully very, very successful. Um, okay. So, I mean, right now, as we can see, this is what you're focused on, and, and, and all your businesses, but, uh, we got to kind of come into a little closure here on the episode. Um, so. I want a little bit of your attention on, I guess, COVID-19 and the coronavirus. 00:52:50 What's your message of resilience to entrepreneurs out there or Amazon sellers out there about what's going on with the virus, and especially for the ones who are hurting? The ones who are doing well, it turned out to be good for them. They already know the upside. But the ones who can't see the upside right now, what's your message of resilience? Well, every crisis presents opportunities. So those of you who are having trouble, maybe you're in the travel niche or you're in party supplies or something like that that's taking a big hit. That's going to come back. This is not the end of the world. That's going to be back. In the meantime, you have the skill sets. You've been doing this for a while. You know what to do. 00:53:24 You just have to pivot. You may have to take some bumps along the way. You may have to make some painful decisions, but you can pivot. Like I said, I had a bankruptcy in 1998 from one of my companies, and I was able to rebuild from that. I've had other things that went sour, and it's the ability to pivot, and it's not easy, and it's some hard decisions, and you have to eat some crow sometimes, but there's a tremendous opportunity out there right now. I mean, it's huge, and there's so many different things that I see in every day, like, holy cow, you can do this, you can do this, you can do this. The world has changed. COVID-19 is not going to be the same. 00:54:09 You know, you've got 30 million people here in the U. S. that are out of work right now. A lot of those jobs aren't coming back. You know, everybody has this mental mindset. Well, not everybody, but a lot of people have this mental mindset. Like, oh, let's get the economy back started. Everybody's going to be back to work. You know, I've seen studies. I follow this COVID stuff extensively. And just like you said earlier, I like to go to the source. So I look at the conspiracy theory people and what's there, where they're getting it, and why are they thinking that. I look at the scientists. I look at the governments, and, you know, I get all the information, and I make my own decision. 00:54:39 And I think this is going to be with us for a couple years, despite what Trump is saying, and despite the information that's being suppressed, despite what the media-there's not going to be a vaccine for quite some time, if ever. I think there's more likely to be a pill that's going to help you recover, you know, some sort of medicine that will help you recover quicker or give you a better chance of recovery. But a full-on vaccine, I think, is a long way away. And let's say there even is a miracle and they come out with a vaccine, you know, say in September, October, one of these countries, you know, somebody develops one, which could happen, but I think it's not likely. But if it does happen, that's great. 00:55:15 But then how are you going to give this to 7 billion people? And what's the supply chain? I mean, we know this is Amazon sellers. Does it have to be in a syringe? Are you going to be able to get enough plastic? How do you scale that? Yeah, that's just the beginning. Finding the vaccine is just the beginning. How do you scale that? That would be a global challenge. That's not discussed. There are very little discussed. People get these false hopes. It's become political, at least in the States. It's all about winning an election or keeping some people happy. Let's lead them for a little while so they can be in power. It's crazy. In that, as a businessperson, there's opportunity. I'm doing a COVID-19 product right now. 00:56:01 It's a product that I normally would not have done when we first looked at it. We're like, it's hot because it's COVID right now. It's not masks. It's not, you know, it's not PPE stuff. Is this a fidget spinner? And we looked at it like, no, the world has changed. People are going to be using this type of thing for a long, long time. It may not be at the level it is right now, but it's going to stay at a much more elevated level than it was. So I used all the tools. What was it doing last June? Okay, it was doing decent on Amazon. Now it's through the roof. What's it going to be two years from now? It's not going to be what it was last year, but it's not going to be what it is now. 00:56:39 It's somewhere in the middle. But a really good business there. And mindsets have changed. So you've got to get into the mindset of what are people needing now? How are they going to be changing? And some people right now, they haven't changed. Some people are like, 'ah, business as usual.' Now states are letting you go back. This thing is over with. There's going to be another rude awakening, in my opinion, for a lot of people here in a month or two. Maybe not until the fall. It just depends. We'll have to see how the next month or two, but I think there's going to be some rude awakenings. People are going to be like, holy cow, this is not just the flu. It's a little bit more serious than what the naysayers may be thinking. 00:57:18 They're going to have to change their ways. A lot of people are going to have to change professions and change jobs. You can be there providing what they need or what the companies need, maybe not the people, but the businesses need. Don't always focus on the the individual consumer who may not have money, but focus on the business-what are these businesses, uh, how are they going to evolve and what are they going to need to deal with all this? And there's tons of opportunity out there, tons. So I would say for the people that are down right now, don't uh, don't be just desperate or despair, uh, just start thinking of how you can pivot and how you can even repurpose some of your stuff that you have into something else, or how can you use maybe what you have you can't sell and you can donate it in some way to get some publicity to help launch your next thing. 00:58:04 Got it? There's all kinds of things you can do right now. So if I, if I could kind of summarize your message of resilience-is trust your skill set, be ready to pivot, look for, you know, the demand, look try to identify a clear demand that you know opens up a business opportunity and strike it go for it, don't, don't back down, and you should be all Right, very good. You have a unique skill set that most people don't have. You have an understanding. And it may be where if you get 15 employees, unfortunately, someone might have to be let go. You have to take care of yourself and your family first. But you have a skill set or you and a couple of your employees have a skill set that you could remarket to one of the companies. 00:58:46 Maybe you can't go forward to do it now because you've taken a beating, but go out and find someone else that's. That needs to explode their online business, that has the money, that's in a better position than you and offer to help them or partner with them. And you'd be surprised with what you can do with what you know. Got it. So you're saying the last point would be be ready to cooperate, to collaborate. You'll be surprised to see what's available out there with making connections. All right, great. Kevin. Maybe in the future we'll do another episode because it's so extensive and so deep. I know we can get more wisdom out of you and more about your experience, but we're going to have to finish it for now. Thank you so much for taking the time, we really appreciate it. You know, we wish you the best of luck with the current projects, and hopefully, you know that things will get better soon across the world with the pandemic, and you know we'll survive this with minimal casualties. Thank you, thanks again, be well, be good, thank you everybody for watching today, stay well, stay healthy, and God bless. Appreciate it, thanks man.