Podcasts about because amazon

At the end of the year, many vendor negotiations with Amazon are on the agenda – and these are truly no walk in the park! Because Amazon, of course, has its own interests in mind – not those of the brands. But if you go into the talks well prepared, you have a better chance. Martin Heubel – formerly a vendor manager at Amazon himself and now an independent Amazon consultant – explains in this podcast episode with Valerie what is important in the negotiations. For example, he reveals who should and should not participate in the talks and when, which key figures should underlie the talks and where they can be obtained. He describes the approach and tricks of vendor managers and reveals specific methods that can be used to ountert hem. Newsflash: -     Shein grew by 68 percent in Europe in 2023, with sales of 7.86 billion euros. -     Amazon is starting its Black Week earlier than usual on November 21. -     Amazon has adjusted its requirements and deadlines for products with the Prime logo for the Christmas season. Note from the sponsor ChannelEngine: ChannelEngine is a marketplace technology service provider that was founded in the Netherlands in 2013. It is now active throughout Europe, in the USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Dubai. ChannelEngine acts as a marketplace integrator and provides marketplace middleware: Brands and retailers can use it to connect to more than 950 different online marketplaces and social media platforms worldwide. It also offers automated processes for product listings, product ranges, management and fulfillment as well as repricing. ChannelEngine thus makes it easier for its customers to grow faster and more easily on marketplaces. More information is available here or in our webinar with ChannelEngine. You will find the record here Note from the sponsor Taxdoo: On November 1, the Amazon VAT-compliant service provider Avalara terminated its contractual relationship with around 30,000 European Amazon sellers. Those affected by this must act immediately: otherwise, they will certainly fall behind with their November returns in countries such as Spain, France, Italy and Poland. So it's time to choose a new provider, for example the tax tech expert Taxdoo. The good news is that with an existing ID, the change can actually be made within a few weeks, and returns for November can still be made. Taxdoo offers a comprehensive platform for online merchants who have to carry out legally compliant and efficient Value Added Taxreporting and accounting - including for marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay or Zalando. More at Taxdoo or via Jonny Hofberger. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:55 Amazon continues to clear out vendors 05:55 Annual Review Meetings Overview 10:07 Newsflash 21:33 Strategies for Successful Vendor Negotiations 33:31 Understanding True Costs of Serving Amazon 34:41 Sales Growth and Profitability Metrics 36:06 Market Share and Category Visibility 40:31 Investment Decisions and Co-op Marketing 42:11 Performance Analytics and ROI 44:05 Setting the Agenda for Negotiations 47:27 Escalation Strategies in Negotiations 54:30 Data Sources for Vendor Negotiations

Oh yeah. Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is getting a second season. Because Amazon didn't have the good sense to cut its losses. Fans are standing by to downvote the trailer, guaranteed. ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer's point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Amazon #Tolkien #LordoftheRings #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech #LOTR

✅ Vote for TBOY to win the “Best Business Podcast” Webby Award: https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2024/podcasts/shows/businessMore Americans than ever are ordering their coffee decaf — Decaffeinated coffee is booming because consumers want drugs without the drugs.Amazon just said in the annual shareholder letter that the number of Prime Video watchers is 200M as the stock hit an all-time high — Because Amazon's using “The River Strategy” (unironically).Fanatics is launching the comic-con of athletics, a “Fanatics Fest” this August in New York City — Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, and Kevin Durant are blending the sports industry with Hollywood.And office buildings are doing weddings on the weekend.Subscribe to the best newsletter yet: tboypod.com/newsletter$AMZN $SBUX $DKNGWant merch, a shoutout, or got TheBestFactYet? Go to: www.tboypod.comFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ever wonder what it takes to turn your Walmart product listings from lackluster to lucrative? Ryan King, the savvy CEO of BlueRyse, joins us on the airwaves to share his expert strategies for maximizing your presence on Walmart's digital shelves. Together, we navigate the intricacies of PPC, the subtleties of listing optimization, and the crucial metrics that could make or break your profits. Ryan's advice, drawn from the cutting-edge tools of Helium 10, affords a masterclass in finessing your financials and leveraging Walmart's ever-growing online platform for unparalleled brand growth and diversification. In the vast sea of selling at Walmart, standing out is an art form, and we've got the brushes and palette to help you paint a masterpiece with your product listings. Our journey reveals how to ensure your offerings are not just indexed, but also scoring high on Walmart's listing quality score. We cover all bases from the precision of backend attributes to the finesse required in product type optimization. We also dissect the importance of competitive pricing and swift delivery, how to ace the A/B testing game, and even how Walmart's fulfillment services can provide a much-needed boost in ranking. As the curtain falls on this episode, we've left no stone unturned in the realm of Walmart PPC and the emerging tactics of brand conquesting. Imagine targeting competitor brand terms, a concept newly possible on Walmart, and the advantage it hands you in the grand chessboard of ecommerce. Wrapping up with a flourish, we dabble in the complexities of SEM strategies and the nuances of bidding wars, closing with a heartfelt word of thanks to Ryan for his insights. So, tune in and equip yourself with the secrets to selling success on one of the world's most formidable marketplaces. In episode 546 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Ryan discuss: 00:00 - Walmart Listing Optimization for Increased Sales 01:47 - Expert Insights on Walmart Brand Performance 04:54 - Leveraging Social Proof in E-Commerce 08:58 - Optimizing Search Terms on E-Commerce Platforms 12:48 - Maximizing eCommerce Channel Expansion 18:07 - PPC Strategies & Updates for Walmart 24:19 - Untapped Brand Defense Opportunities 29:42 - Expanding Opportunities in Walmart Marketplace 32:36 - Optimizing Walmart PPC Bidding Strategies 36:26 - Tips for Completing Applications Successfully 40:00 - Secret Strategies Ryan Uses ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On Youtube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Carrie Miller: Walmart PPC and Listing Optimization Strategies to increase sales on the Walmart marketplace. This and so much more on today's episode. Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. What was your gross sales yesterday, last week, last year? More importantly, what are your profits after all your cost of selling on Amazon? Did you pay any storage charges to Amazon? How much did you spend on PPC? Find out these key metrics and more by using the Helium 10 tool Profits For more information, go to H10.me/profits. Carrie Miller: Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast brought to you by Helium 10. My name is Carrie and I will be your host, and this is our Winning with Walmart Wednesday, where we go over all things Walmart, we tell you the latest and greatest news about Walmart, we answer your questions and we have an amazing Walmart expert guest. I'm going to just tell you a little bit about some Helium 10 tools, because I haven't really mentioned these a lot lately. I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that Helium 10 does have a lot of amazing tools that support Walmart. So we have X-Ray. It's going to help you with sales estimates and so much more. We have our Cerebro and Magnet tools that help you find amazing keywords for your listings. We also have our Profits tool and our Keyword Tracking tool. In addition to that, we have Adtomic, which is our paper click advertising management software, so that is extremely helpful. We've added day parting and a lot of other amazing things to Adtomic, so it's definitely the best it's ever been and highly recommend checking that out if you haven't checked it out. All right. So today I want to bring on our guest, and I'm really, really excited to have him on today and his name is Ryan King, and so thanks so much for being on. Ryan is a CEO and co-founder of BlueRyse, which is a Walmart agency, and I've actually known Ryan for a few years now. We met at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and we definitely connected on Walmart stuff, so he's definitely an expert in the field and I'm really excited for him to share all of his knowledge with everyone today. I know he was on last year, but for anyone, Ryan, that doesn't know you, can you go ahead and tell a little bit about yourself to the audience? Ryan: Certainly. Yeah, thanks for having me on here, Carrie. Glad to be on this episode here of the Serious Sellers Podcast, specifically talking about Walmart. So yeah, BlueRyse is a full managed service agency focused specifically on Walmart. We've been operating with third party and first party brands since early 2020. And our focus is on everything from content optimization, ad management, catalog management, interfacing with Walmart personnel, all these other elements with regard to, ultimately, the focus of maximizing Walmart brand's performance on Walmart.com. Carrie Miller: I want to first start out and just ask you, because you've been in this Walmart game for quite some time, what do you think the main advantages are for third party sellers to start selling on Walmart and do you think it's a really good opportunity? Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. It's a great opportunity. I think the advantages have continued to grow over the years. They haven't diminished. One of the reasons we saw the opportunity on Walmart was as brand owners ourselves. We began and launched and grew brands on Amazon back in the day, starting in early 2013. And we were looking for ways to, as brand owners, de-risk a bit, diversify revenues back during the aggregator boom. Part of the factor was how do we increase multiples, all those kind of elements? I think all the principles remain the same as to why those would be advantages. If you're truly building a brand, then you're looking to identify what are the channels that make sense to increase sales, increase profits overall and to de-risk. So that's one advantage of finding other marketplaces, other channels to sell through. Beyond that, there's just the fact that Walmart is pushing heavy and has been pushing heavy into the online marketplace space. They understand that for them as a business, as a retailer, while they're the number one retailer in the world, e-commerce certainly has been a major growth factor for others competitors like Amazon and everybody else, and so Walmart understands that they need to compete in the digital shelf. That means they want more sellers, they want a broader assortment, they want great products so that more shoppers come and have a great experience. So that has led to Walmart heavily focusing on building out their third-party marketplace over the last several years. I would say a couple other that come to mind social proof and reviews and ratings have been always on the forefront of e-commerce sellers' minds, especially in the Amazon space, such large motes. I haven't looked at this example in a while, but earbuds, Bluetooth earbuds. When I looked at it, probably two years ago, the average review count for Bluetooth earbuds on page one for Amazon was somewhere around 40,000. At the time, the average review count for that keyword, which was a high volume keyword, on Walmart was around 800. And so just the opportunity to enter the market. You know, if you had wished you had. You know the buzz for a long time was Walmart is Amazon of 2012 or whatever it may be. Walmart is in its own right of maturing marketplace these days, but the opportunity still exists. In that way, I think, the other ones. There is a bit of a different shopper base, and so if you have a broader assortment, your heroes on Amazon or other marketplaces may also translate to be your heroes on Walmart and you can just get a continued growth of that assortment. However, we also do see because it is a different shopper, a different marketplace, sometimes some other products that may not be performing as well in your catalog on Amazon might be your top performers on Walmart for various reasons, and so it breeds new life into your catalog, potentially. And then, finally, if you really want to identify ways of growing the brand, and maybe brick and mortar retail is a desire of yours at some point, then there is a credible pathway to getting products into brick and mortar. We work with brands all the time. Who that is part of their play, whether they've begun with conversations with merchants first, and it's a let's test and see and let's get it in, or if they're native e-commerce or D to C first, and they're, they're engaging with us in order to optimize and maximize performance planning on that conversation in the future. We see those dots connect quite consistently to at least get a conversation. So all the above and then, for those who have FOMO you know, to kind of trigger the FOMO, that it's, it's a bit of this is the opportunity to get in now, even if it's maybe a mid to longer term play for some brands. Get in now while you, while the opportunity is there, while there's more access to account managers and others who are aligned incentives with you, to get your assortment online on their marketplace. Carrie Miller: Yeah, amazing, yeah, those are all really amazing reasons. The next question I have for you is you know, people are always wanting to know how can I, you know, increase my sales on Walmart. So what are some strategies you have for listing, optimization and just increasing sales on Walmart? Ryan: Yeah, you know, I know a lot of these have probably been covered repeated ways, but it bears repeating again would be step number 1 is making sure you're not just If you're gonna, if it is a secondary or tertiary marketplace in your mindset and strategy and you're not paying attention to the unique ways you need to optimize for Walmart, then unless you're kind of the you hit the trend at the right time in the in the search volume at the right time, Walmart with an optimized listing, you're not gonna see great sales lift. And so Step one would be, know the Walmart marketplace. Understand how the algorithm works, understand what product listing optimization means, understand that it needs to be original for Walmart's marketplace and how that impacts sales. And so if I was looking and we can talk about I know we've talked about this several times in the past to some key things to look at, let's just jump forward and assume you're on the marketplace, you're trying to grow sales in your troubleshooting, first step I go to is on the listing itself. Or actually the first step would be double check search term volumes, and this is easy. Segue into talking more about Helium 10 tools, because that's what we use is look at your category. One simple way to do it you can either start with your own listing or you start with competitive listings. But one way we like to do it is as well as you go to Walmart.com, go to the category and sort by bestseller, you'll probably get a lot of 1P brands, meaning in store brands, those they're popping up at the top list. But go ahead and pull up X-ray if you have Helium 10 X-ray and scrape the Top 10 out of there and then plug those in, analyze them through Cerebral and get that, that search term volume list, and identify where are the search volumes? Are you optimized for those? One thing to call out if you're in a consumable space or anything that might be more related to grocery, for example, Amazon search volumes, you might have found success with different types of search terms. But there might be high volume search terms on Walmart you haven't even optimized for Because Amazon wasn't a grocery first type marketplace or that type of place. So there's, there can be high volume keywords that would not even exist really On the Amazon marketplace that are going to be high drivers on Walmart. So identify, get, make sure you're looking at the right search terms. Secondly is just make sure you're indexing and ranking before you even think about ranking. Are you indexing? And one of the fundamental areas that you've got to look at to make sure you're indexing properly is your category. Are you on the right shelf path? But if you go into growth opportunities and you click on your listing in your kind of table of products that show up there product type widget will show up and look at that product type and I didn't try and identify. Is this the right? Does this fit? Product type determines what the back end attributes are on your listing that you need to fill out and, just as a quick aside, you need to fill those out as exhaustively as possible. It's only getting more and more important to do so. While your listing quality score is not as heavily Impacted by attributes as it used to be, your visibility and relevance are, and they only increase increasingly. Be so. So fill those all out. If, even if it's a not applicable, you know, even if it's saying sports team and you're a toothpaste brand, you know, make sure you just say none are not applicable, whatever is there, and then test the product type. We've talked about this in the past and we can talk about it again if you like. But testing that makes sure your listings are optimized. So the algorithm on Walmart's giving you quantitative feedback Between your content, which is your back end attributes, your title, images of long and short descriptions, and are you at? You get mostly ranking benefits around 80%. But if your long term play is really to be best in class and to open up other doors with potential features and other things, 95% or higher is your goal offer. So price parity with other marketplaces is key, and speed of delivery. So, whether it's using something like a deliver, we heavily recommend just using Walmart fulfillment services. They continue to get broader distribution. You're instantly credited in the score with utilizing theirs and getting 2 day delivery. So use the levers that Walmart's given you on the marketplace, and we can talk further about other ways. If someone's listening saying I've done all that, I'm at 95%. I don't know what else to optimize. We're using WFS. There are other things to continue to do. We could talk about whether that's how do you look at imagery in a way to convert? How do you utilize advertising? How do you drive external traffic to listings? What's its impact? We go a variety of ways. Maybe the last thing I'll say, though, is the first question. The last thing I'll say is maybe the first question you should ask yourself is what's your overall business case? So sometimes we have sellers come to us and they're saying I don't want to do anything, Amazon's my main channel. I would like to sell in Walmart. What can I do? And there's going to be certain limitations. If you're saying I don't, price is going to be determined by my other marketplace, not by Walmart, or something like that, you've got to be aware of those and what you're long, how the impacts, the levers you can pull on Wal-Mart. Now there's some interesting features coming out, like couponing and different things that can maybe allow for greater flexibility there. Carrie Miller: Can you talk a little bit about how to product AB test your product type, because I know you mentioned that In there. Just how to optimize, because I know you know certain product types reach more keywords. So how do you just keep track of the keywords that you? Maybe you Get impressions for an ad or like how do you really determine which one has better keyword reach? Ryan: You can do. There's various methods. It's whether you're doing advertising. You're just saying we're not. We're not getting on to your goal when you're running advertising for any keyword. Really, if you're using search and grid, which is a sponsored product, that's what most people are thinking about when they're leveraging advertising on Walmart, you're competing for Page 1. It makes sense that from a conversion standpoint, most people aren't going to Page 2, Page 3, but literally you're competing for Page 1 because the Top 4 positions are awarded potentially for the keywords in the categories for sponsored product and the next 2 out of every 10. But you've got, on average, around 40 products on Page 1 of the listing of the search results. Those same positions are being repeated across every page. There is no, I didn't get position 1 Page 1. Maybe I'll get position 1, Page 2. Position 1, Page 1 is repeated across every page. You've got to compete for those top positions. In order to do that, keyword relevancy matters. You'll get the signals If I'm showing up and position 200 from my ad reports or whatever. Or if you're using Helium 10 again and Keyword Ranking Tracking and maybe turn on boost for those keywords where it may be and track on a real-time basis best you can, how you're performing on those keywords. Obviously, make sure it's in your title. Title has the highest ranking, has historically had the highest ranking influence on keywords. You can only get about 1 or 2 in there because you don't want keyword stuff. Then in your description both points, all those things as well. Make sure it's in your listing. If it's in description and key features, repeated just a couple of times, make sure it's readable and flows naturally. Once you've made sure it's in there, then track, get your baseline. It's not truly an experiment if you didn't really record ahead of time. Am I running an experiment? Otherwise, we use the word experiment like when we just tried something and failed but we don't know what we learned. Get your baseline, see what your rankings were. Before you try something, use Helium 10's Keyword Tracker. Then go into growth opportunities, go into pick that listing, get to that middle widget that says product type. Make sure you record which one you are right now. I've used this example in the past with you, Carrie, I believe. But one case study we did was involving a client who was in herbal supplements. Their product type it was an herbal supplement and their product type was actually an herbal supplement. The product type was a one-to-one exact match. You would assume this is the best product type to be in, but we weren't indexing for them, no matter what we did for probably 10 to 15 major keywords that we knew they should get. We went to that widget. You pick. I think it's a reporting issue. It doesn't say switch product type or anything. You have to click the link that says reporting issue. It'll give you usually 4 to 5 choices of other product type. You think it is. Basically what it's doing is creating a support ticket for you and you can submit that request of change. It's not a guarantee that it'll happen, but persistence pays off. We recommend making requests of that change once you've been informed that changes happen. Then watch for us. What we saw was in that product, all the keywords we needed were instantly indexing for and began ranking within the first couple of pages of results. That was the beginning of the journey. That's a general standard practice for us in making sure we're in the right product type as well. Carrie Miller: All right, that's really good. Yeah, that's a really good strategy. I've used your example many times because people ask me about that a lot. Usually, when they get in the right product type, they start to see a lot more traction. Thanks for sharing that. I want to get into advertising because we haven't talked a lot about PPC on Walmart, on our podcast here for Walmart. I think a lot of people have questions about it. I wanted to just get your. I know you have some basic strategies or just thoughts about PPC and then also some new things that are coming that you think people should take advantage of. Then, once we're done with that, we'll get into some questions from the audience. Ryan: By way of really brief recap for those that have been around the Walmart space, I've heard of it over the past couple of years. A lot of people were shy about getting into Walmart PPC in the earlier days because it used to be a first bid auction, which meant fundamentally different than how you would be used to utilizing Amazon. Whatever you bid is what you paid. People were just blowing through their entire budget because they were trying to figure out if they could get a keyword to rank and they thought if I just spend more, I'll get placement. In those cases they were bidding $4 a click and they were winning position 40. They were getting the click and they were spending $4 for a click on position 40. The good news is shift to second bid auction. That's been around for quite a bit now. Really, what you're talking about when we're talking about PPC is fundamentally you've got a sponsored product, which is broken down into two types of campaigns: auto and manual. You've got search and grid placement. You've got item carousels that you can get in search results. You can get item carousels on product detail pages as well as next to the buy box placement. You've got on the manual campaigns, you've got exact match, phrase match and broad match, then auto campaign is what it sounds like. You're letting the algorithm do its thing. You've got some placement modifiers. You can do modifiers for app, desktop and mobile. In some other ways you can tweak things. The big thing to know still with Walmart PPC is it's heavily influenced by algorithms. Determination of are you relevant for those keywords, and so that has a. I mean that's common practice and most ad retail media platforms. But it's a heavy influencer on Walmart. So you do need to approach it from an organic signal, cell signals as well as PPC. When you're trying to rank through PPC you just can't spend your way to the top. You need to be in striking distance. The top 256 organic ranking results qualify for placement and searching grid, but you're ultimately trying to outperform whoever's in position at least 40, or at least position 30. And so it's usually a hand and glove kind of operation of how you're going to drive signals to the platform for purchase intent, showing that relevancy, and then continue increase your PPC so that you're stair stepping your way up to, ideally, somewhere in those first four positions or somewhere on that page 1. Carrie Miller: How do you get to those 200 and it's 256?, like if you're at spot 300, how do you get down to that spot? Ryan: Yeah, it depends. It's really specific on the categories. You know, the one other element when we're talking about keywords and search volumes on Walmart is there's not as many long tail keywords. The keywords just don't go as long. So you're probably going to see a significant drop off on volumes after some of the major keywords in a lot of categories. Maybe long tails, around two to three keywords long, are going to start dropping off significantly. As kind of a frame of reference, we would say, if you can find keywords up over, if you're finding 10 keywords in your category that are relevant to you, up over 7000 in search volume, that's pretty good. There's. There are ones way bigger, but identifying those to go for to get in the top 256, you may pretty quickly already appear there. I would say pick your, maybe not the biggest keyword to put in your title right away, but maybe that second tier keyword to put it in your title and some other places, and then plan on changing it over time as you grow. But some ways to drive traffic you know whether a lot of sellers already have, whether it's influencer traffic, whether it's Google ads traffic, whatever else, if you already have a traffic funnel that's leaning to DTC or anywhere else. Consider splitting a little bit of that traffic over for a period of time to Walmart at least, and you'll be rewarded. A lot of the signals of external traffic are rewarded heavily on Walmart behaviors like certainly purchase, but even behaviors like we've, you know, add to cart purchase. Any of those elements are signals that register with the algorithm and help sending signals of relevancy to get you in that top 256. The biggest one being someone searches, finds your products and purchases. So anything you can do to do that is a big help to get that going. Carrie Miller: All right, that's very interesting. And then also, you've mentioned conquesting as something everyone should be doing. Could you just explain what that is on Walmart and you know how people can start utilizing this? Ryan: Historically you could not do brand cron questing on Walmart. You can't. You obviously can't put trademark terms in your listings. That's just a copyright issue but an advertising. Until just very recently you haven't even been able to brand conquest. Really, there's kind of some ways around that. But now you can kind of the headline. So what we'd recommend is for those brands that are starting to show some relevancy or do things and you know there are heavily branded search terms on Walmart. We've noticed Walmart is leans typically more in a lot of categories towards branded search terms with high volume. So this has been untapped opportunity for a lot of brands. Unless you're running an auto campaign to get you, you get buy box placement, you know, just under their buy box on their PDP. So now you can actually set up a manual search, a manual campaign, and you have to have, you have to use exact match keywords and you can use. Just put in every variation of that brand name in there and you can win. You can't win position 1 or 2 with that brand, but you can get beyond position 2. In most cases you're eligible to actually show up in grid for their terms and so that's one that most brands that have not been playing defense as much may still be asleep on right now. So it's a good opportunity, at least for now, until some of those brands start allocating defensive budget in that way, those brands will be again because of relevancy and how it impacts how much you have to pay to win versus someone else that's more relevant. Brands are going to effectively get a discount for defending themselves because they're the most relevant one, so they're going to have to pay less than you to defend. But if they're not really bidding on it at all, this is a great opportunity. Carrie Miller: I think that's really exciting because I haven't actually done that strategy at all yet. So I'm going to definitely get on that today and see what I can find, because I have found so many branded search terms that I think would be really great to target in the past, but I wasn't able to. So that's really good, okay, so let's go ahead and get into questions from the audience. So I'm going to start with this question here. It says I have two questions. So what type of keywords are better for sponsored and manual campaigns? And I guess that's one. Ryan: I would kind of say what I said earlier probably is it depends on what stage of the lifecycle you're in at Walmart. So if you're trying to build relevancy and it's a new product without much sales history yet, I would probably recommend starting with exact and maybe phrase in a manual campaign of those kind of second tier keywords. Go after the long, the longer tail, build the relevancy there. Every conversion is going to help with relevancy of other keywords in your listings. So begin and stair step up. Another great strategy is at the same time you might want to often will will wait a little bit to do auto campaigns or maybe do it also at the at the same time that we're starting some manuals, but with a low spin threshold, so it doesn't go crazy and pick unirrelevant keywords, irrelevant keywords, but using ultimately gold. Also be using automatic keyword campaigns or automatic campaigns to harvest the performing keywords into your manual and put those into exact match. And then the last tip I would give is using the bid modifiers in manual campaigns to really kind of take over. If you have auto campaigns as well, manual campaigns are going to perform really well in search grid and so you want your manual campaigns really doing the work for those high, high volume keywords in your grid versus maybe your auto. So that'd be a few of the tips I'd give you. Carrie Miller: Let's go to the next one. It says I heard you say that more 1P sellers for more might be moving to 3P. Is that good or bad for other sellers? Ryan: I certainly thought I didn't. I don't recall saying it, but I made up. Yeah, so the Walmart basically is leveraging the third party marketplace for a lot of reasons. One of those is historically with 1P Brands, meaning brands that Walmart has entered into a contract relationship with, where they're owning inventory and setting the retail price, those things. One of the ways that Walmart wanted to test out more of the assortment with a brand, develop a meaningful relationship, would be they would select a small subset of the products, get them in-store and distribute or online and Walmart would manage everything. Then they used to tell brands that they would do. Another program called DSV. I won't go into all of it, but it was still in an owned relationship. What we've seen is a shift more towards merchants, buyers, telling brands to put the remainder of their catalog on the third party marketplace now that it's become more mature. Is it good or bad for sellers? On one hand, good in that as you have more recognizable established brands continue to increase their assortment on the marketplace. That's bringing more shoppers, more eyeballs to the marketplace. That's good for everybody. Bad, meaning more competitive. Advertising on keywords, certainly retail media ad spend we've seen increase year over year as Walmart grows the program. That's the natural life cycle of any platform. It will certainly get more competitive. Margin's may decrease over time. If you maybe have had your business model has been dropshipping and just trying to find those places where 1P brands are there's gaps, where 1P brands aren't really owning the marketplace. I still think there's a lot of opportunity there on the third party marketplace, but they're starting to catch wind of it on Walmart as well. There's challenges there bit of both. I think there's plenty of opportunity as Walmart's marketplace continues to grow. I don't think we need to be worried right now about, are you getting squeezed out of any opportunity? This is still early stages on Walmart's marketplace. Carrie Miller: I agree there's still tons of opportunity. The next thing is is there a way to get your products from WFS or Walmart probably into in-store? Do you have to apply or be invited to have your products in Walmart stores? I think this is a good question because it seems like with open call, it's just US products, but is there a way for products that are made in other countries? If you can expand on just that whole process, I think a lot of people are curious about this. Ryan: Yeah, you mentioned open call, which is for US manufacturers. There's been different times where I think two years ago, two to three years ago, they gave FirstBot at the Apple to Walmart marketplace sellers. They got to apply first and got an opportunity. Outside of that opportunity there is if you're growing an account, if you're seeing sales and showing volume, showing growth. Some of the stepping stones would be identifying if you could get an account manager or a strategic account manager to work with on your account, identifying category manager, somebody else to begin discussions with. That starts with usually getting opportunities turned on and growth opportunities, whether that's seasonal promotions, whether that's flash picks, other elements as you continue to invest and show performance there. Walmart's team they are brick and mortar team and they're a marketplace team or basically one team. A lot of buyers and merchants will look across their whole category, even on the third party marketplace, as they're evaluating opportunity. These conversations could happen and you could ask for an introduction. We've had clients that have just a category manager. Somebody else has reached out and said would you be interested in talking with a merchant about potential opportunity for in-store? There's a lot of pathways. I don't think there's a defined Walmart's probably not going to lay out for you. Here's how every marketplace seller can contact a merchant but continue to invest in sales and growth on Walmart marketplace and those conversations certainly can happen. Carrie Miller: Yeah, that's exactly what I always hear from Walmart directly. They say to prove it on the marketplace, basically All right. Next, this is a good question: Any insights on the new SEM feature? Will that feature help ranking or index on keywords used as a GG search, maybe Google search? Ryan: We've had a few that we've worked, we've tested out. Sem. Vertic is still out right now in the early stages. Any kind of early testing. As far as depending on the goal, if the goal was measured by, do we see direct conversion at a higher row, as than you would for sponsored products, which is lower in the ads funnel, more towards conversion anyway than earlier consideration steps in the funnel. It's a lower conversion at this point but there are potential advantages. I'm still waiting to clarify this element. I believe it's true, but again because we haven't worked with a lot of resellers or people that are competing with others for their own buy box. I did hear in a recent webinar and I haven't been able to go back and fact check again by one of the product developers for SEM that one of the impacts of SEM is that you could run SEM even when you're not presently in the buy box and you could drive traffic to your instance to get the sale. For those who are struggling to win buy box, that may be a pathway to getting more sales and conversions by ads aren't going to serve on marketplace when you don't have buy box but if you're running SEM. It sounded like and again I need to. I try and fact check everything before I say it and I heard it said once and I want to make sure I heard it specifically, but that definitely perked me up and I need to go back and verify. I believe what was communicated was you can run SEM through Walmart when you're not in the buy box and direct to your instance of you owning the buy box when traffic gets there. That's one opportunity. Carrie Miller: Let's see. I've only been selling on Amazon since October. I have 9 reviews and 1 seller feedback. Is this enough to apply to sell on Walmart? Ryan: The exact criteria aren't shared publicly as to what is in that decision factor. There's a lot of factors. I'll see you all next video. What ultimate? I think that the safest thing to say is what Walmart's looking for is that you have established yourself as a company that shows that you're making good products, strong history of seller satisfaction, so customer support, and that you're a legitimate company looking to do business. The other factors they're looking for are your products, a meaningful addition to the marketplace? So are you adding products to the marketplace that makes sense to them? That's a really broad filter and subjective maybe. So I can't tell you what that looks like. If you have 9 reviews, maybe on one product and it hasn't been as long I'd probably have a lot more questions as to why you want to jump to Walmart at the moment. Maybe you see the opportunity and that might be the primary marketplace that you want to pivot to. Those are my initial thoughts. It'd be hard to answer further without knowing more context. Carrie, I don't know if you have any things. Carrie Miller: Well, they said something, too, about that. They have one product with multiple variations, and I actually have seen other sellers that have one product with multiple variations get on there as well because it's a new, interesting product or really something that would work well on Walmart. So it is really dependent on that, and I've seen some people get on very easily, having not sold for very long, and then others have a harder time. So it is kind of interesting how it's a little bit subjective on there. Ryan: And what? Carrie Miller: Definitely want to be established. Make sure all of your stuff is matching. That's the biggest thing. Your address needs to match and everything needs to be tight on your application. But yeah, anything else that you want to add. Ryan: Yeah, no, sorry for stepping on you there. Yeah, no, that was basically what I was going to say too. If you get an initial reject, don't assume that is because a human looked at your application and determined you were not a fit. A lot of the rejections can happen because the bot has looked at, maybe your information, has did not match between what you submitted and what maybe is included in your business documentation. To illustrate the point is we talked about 1P brands coming over to a three P marketplace at the request of merchants. We still get  1P brands that get rejected when they've applied on their own to 3P marketplace after they've been through even more rigorous vetting because they're in a 1P relationship already. So the bots may trip on it and it's worth reaching back out to try and appeal if you need. Even if you get the message of there is no appeal, there are usually ways to find out. Carrie Miller: And I'm going to just take one last question. We've had a lot of amazing questions. We're kind of running out of time here, so this one is what bidding strategies have you found most effective for optimizing Walmart PPC campaigns, and why? Ryan: Big question yeah. Carrie Miller: That's all I'd like to just answer. Ryan: We could do a whole another episode on this one Bidding strategy found most effective optimizing PPC campaigns. So depends again what your goal. What do you mean by optimizing? Do you mean optimizing for growth, which is going to be a lower TACos, ACoS, low RoAS, potentially because you're looking to increase market share and it's a longer play? In that case, that sponsored brand, sponsored video. I didn't talk about sponsored video. If you're looking for what's the quick wins with a higher ROAS, things like look in your category, look at the search terms Our other brands are already using sponsored video. There'll be one placement on mobile or on desktop for that search term on any page, and if you're not seeing those, that's low hanging fruit. I would go for a sponsored brand. You've got to be brand registered first, but once you're brand registered, you can create sponsored video ads. So that's one way out. Optimize I would just make sure that to optimize a PPC campaign, I think that the basics of making sure your listing is relevant and make sure your listing is optimized first, and so that'd be one major factor that we see just a lot of brands miss. They think they've got the bid strategy right and that they've got the campaign architecture correct. But if you don't have high relevancy already for those keywords, you're not going to take a lot of ground. So in general I would say you want to, in any given campaign, not oversaturate your ad groups and not oversaturate with keywords in each ad group. So maybe up to five keywords in an ad group and maybe three to five ad groups in a campaign so that you can be tracking where that spend is really going and tweaking from there. But then I'd also say the biggest level ups we've seen is when you combine really the PPC optimization with organic. So blend consider offsite traffic advertising as well in some way to blend and improve the performance of PPC. So PPC will get cheaper for you when your relevancy grows and you'll be able to maintain it more. So that's often an efficient way to optimize a bit more. No otherwise to that. But I'll end there for now. Carrie Miller: Thank you again so much for joining us. I think this has been a really fantastic episode full of a lot of information for everyone. I'm sure everyone that's listening will want to go back and listen to this again. But thanks again for all of your expertise in sharing the secretive strategies and we really appreciate you and we'll probably hope to have you on again another time soon.

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Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. Buy the audiobook of ATHEOPAGANISM: An Earth-Honoring Path Rooted in Science at https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9798368952246-atheopaganism Preorder ROUND WE DANCE at https://llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738775364   S4E22 TRANSCRIPT:----more----   Yucca: Welcome back to the Wonder Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. Mark: And I'm Mark. Yucca: And today we thought that we'd come back to some of the practical, we've been talking a lot about philosophical ideas and things like that, and we thought, let's do something that is really more kind of hands-on. And it's been a long time since we've talked about creating sacred space. Mark: Right. And that. It's kind of the precursor to everything that we do in a ritual context, right? Is to set the table emotionally and psychologically for us to do the work of a ritual. So we thought that we'd come back to that and talk about it some more. Because it's kind of an elusive concept until you experience it and then you know what it feels like and it's easier to do the things that are needed in order to experience it again. Yucca: Right. Yeah, it is, it is really all about your experience of it and your experience of it's probably gonna be pretty different than somebody else's. I mean, there are some things that are fairly universal to us as a species but a lot of the associations, the things you're gonna be working with will be very personal. Mark: Right. When, when we talk about some of the things that are universal to us as a species, some of the things that contribute to that feeling of a sacred space are low light conditions, which tend to lead us to want to speak in hushed whispers which is probably a remnant of our desire not to be eaten in the dark, Yucca: Yes.  Mark: Flickering light like candlelight or firelight. Light. Yucca: Go on. I was gonna say rhythmic noises or the white rushing noises of water or things like that. Mark: yes, like the surf or waterfall or any of those kinds of things. The sense, particularly kind of rich the sense of incense or burning herbs can be associated with those kinds of things. So it's very sensory and historically, I mean, many of these techniques have been developed, cultivated, and really refined by, for example, the Roman Catholic Church and the, the Eastern Orthodox churches. They, they really know what they're doing. That architecture that leads your eyes to gaze way up and statuary where you're, you feel very small in relation to it. And the low light conditions and the incense and the, the Gregorian chanting going on that's got those beautiful rhythmic, trance inducing kind of qualities to it. All that stuff. And then Protestantism threw all that out. And I don't feel much when I go into a Protestant or say a a, a Mormon church, but I'm sure that people who follow those traditions do. Yucca: There's certainly been some experiences that I've had as a guest in some Protestant churches that, that felt like, like, yeah, wow. They're, they're, they're getting this ritual thing. Especially one that I think of as a, a Christmas Eve, one that I. Went to several years where they turned the lights down and everyone had a candle and was holding the candle up together and singing. I think it was like silent night that everyone was singing together and some of those real kind of iconic ones. So I, it's, it's not as common with the Protestant groups as we see with the Catholics, but, and I don't have. Any experience with Eastern Orthodox. A lot of experience with Catholics, so, but, but that's still done, right? I think it's something that humans want to do. Whatever our particular background is, we, I think we seek that kind of experience out. Mark: Mm-hmm. Yucca: to a certain extent we do that with sporting events as well. I'm not a big sports person, but it, you know, when I watch other people involved in that and the rituals behind that, I go, oh wow. I recognize what you're doing. This is familiar. Mark: Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. What, what I think of this as being like, is the creation of an emotional framework, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: That makes it possible for transformation to happen, right? Because ritual is a transformative process. we go into this trans state when the conditions are right, and then we do something that either feels like. You know, recognizing the seasons and connecting with nature or healing some wound that we've suffered previously, or aspiring towards, you know, confidence and competence as we pursue some goal. All of those are the kinds of things that that ritual can do for us. And of course in the case of theism, there's just that worship thing, right? You know, just getting into that state and then feeling very worshipful towards your, your God or gods. Which we don't do, but my guess is that the feeling is very, very similar to what I feel about the cosmos and the earth. The same kind of humble. Awe-inspired reverence, Yucca: Yeah, that would be my, my guess as well. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about how to create this space. Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of different pieces. That can go into this. I mean, we just threw out a whole bunch. There's actually a document, it, it's in my book as well the Ethiopia Paganism book that describes many of the different attributes that can go into the creation of sacred space and a ritual. The, but the primary ones to me in terms of. Moving into that state are a sense of safety and privacy. Yucca: Right. Mark: You're not gonna have people come barging in who aren't a part of the process. You're not gonna be mocked. Or attacked or any, any of that kind of thing. You, you, you feel a solidity in your place which enables you to open yourself up and become emotionally vulnerable. Yucca: which means that depending on your living situation where you're creating this space may be very different. Right. If you live by yourself in a three bedroom apartment, maybe you have a whole room that you dedicate to this or you live with a whole bunch of other people. You live in a family situation or a dorm situation, and maybe it's something that you do privately in the bathroom. Because that's the only place that you can have a little bit of time and space to yourself. And so how permanent or not the, your setup for the space is gonna be, is gonna depend on that kind of situation, Mark: Right, right. And places in nature are also very good for this. You just have to make sure that they're secluded enough that you're not gonna have people stumbling across you while you're doing your thing.  Yucca: And that you're safe with the other inhabitants of whatever that place is that you're in, right? That you've checked around. There's, there's no snakes hanging out that are right under the rock there, or you know, this isn't bear territory or something like that. Mark: Right. Yeah. So I mean the beach or the woods or the desert or You know, a, a mountaintop, all of those are wonderful places to do a ritual. And we do that, it helps us to do a symbolic declaration of the space, the most common one in Pagan. Spaces is the, the casting of the circle, right? Where, you know, there's actual movement. You go around the outside of the circle some cases with a knife or a sword, or a crystal or a feather or something, Yucca: Right. Sometimes you literally sprinkle people like to sprinkle like sands or salts or things like that as well. Mark: Right to create the psychological impression of a barrier Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: that protects your privacy and safety. Yeah. So those are, those are things that you can do to, to, to help to create that circumstance. I've, I've had experiences, well, I had one experience of this ritual group. This was when I first got involved with Paganism. It was probably like the second or third time I ever went to a ritual. And they, they were, they were way out in the country, but they actually tried to do a ritual on land that wasn't theirs. And I didn't realize this until later. And everybody was looking over their shoulders all the time and, There was no sacred space. There was no ritual state. There were, it was terrible because there was not that sense of safety and privacy. Yucca: So they were concerned that the, it was private land and that the. That somebody was gonna come and, and ask him, what, what are you doing here? Mark: Yeah. Hoo them away or, you know, shoot at them. Who knows? But so, so don't do that. You know, use public land or, Yucca: Just out of curiosity, was it like a really, like special spot in terms of like Mark: it was a, it was Yucca: like what. Mark: of a, a rise of a, of a grass covered hill that commanded a, an incredible view. For 360 degrees you could see for miles in, in all directions. Yucca: is curious, what would in, what would get somebody, what would inspire somebody to risk that Mark: Yeah, I'm, and, and, and how did the person that organized this discover it in the first place? I don't know. But yeah, it was a weird, it was a, a weird experience and it taught me a lesson that you can't do these things if you don't feel safe. Yucca: Right. Yeah. And so I think that reminds us when we are organizing Ritual to be really mindful about that kind of thing and the different needs of the participants in the ritual, right, because you're talking about feeling safe in terms of, you know, not knowing if you're gonna get kicked off or not, but there's also other forms of safety. There's the emotional safety that plays that, that is just as important when it comes to our experiences and how, how effective our rituals going to be to how do we actually feel about this. So if I don't, if I'm trying to do a ritual about self-healing or something like that, and I think I'm gonna get mocked, Or I'm worried about being judged by the person next to me, it's probably not gonna be as effective. I'm probably not gonna be able to get into that space. Mark: Right. Or if you're non-binary and all the invocations are gender essentialist, Yucca: Right. Mark: right? I mean, there are a variety of kinds of inclusion that we need. There's multiple axes of inclusion that need to be addressed as well as the kind of physical safety and emotional safety in relation to what's outside the circle. There's also what's inside. And we, and we wanna make sure that that is also facilitating of people feeling at ease and, and able to open themselves. Yucca: Right now in, in most cases though, it's probably gonna be just you on your own right? Or in a small group. But I think that we can, you can still kind of take that idea and think about it with yourself and how you might be feeling once you're in that space. Mark: Right, right. And there are techniques that you can use to bring yourself into a state of radical presence. So you're not thinking about, you're not worried about the future, you're not thinking about things that are going on elsewhere. You're not, you know, Obsessing about something in the past. You're just very, very present in doing what's right before you. And we were talking before we started to record. The use of the senses Yucca: Right. Mark: can be very helpful in that. Yucca: Yeah. So using that as a framework, thinking about the classical senses of, alright, so what, what am I seeing? What am I hearing? What am I smelling? What am I feeling? Perhaps maybe not in every case, but what am I tasting? If there's something involved with that, if you're drinking something or, or if there's a component that you're bringing in. And that's a really nice framework to use for setting up the space, either if it's a permanent space that you're setting up. Or if it's going to be a, a temporary moment, right? And just taking a moment to take those into account and then be a little bit more aware of them. That really just helps bring us to being really present in our, in our bodies while we're doing the ritual. Mark: Right, right. So let's say you're going to do a solo ritual and you go out in the woods and you find a place that's. Isolated enough that other people are not gonna be coming out there and you find a stump and you put a cloth over it and you build a focus, an altar, right, with symbols of the things that you want to do in this ritual. And it's aesthetically pleasing to you. You're looking at it, it's in the woods, which are beautiful. So there's this whole kind of drinking in with the eyes component. And you can hear the wind in the trees. Maybe you're near water so you can hear some of that babbling brook sound as well. There's the smell of the, the warm pine needles or oak oak leaves or whatever they are. You can augment that by lighting, maybe some frankincense and that sweet kind of temple incense scent. Begins to transport you into a more intentional, kind of focused space. I've, one of the things that I've used in group rituals is either a single sip of wine or a single semi-sweet chocolate chip for a taste in vocation. Sometimes in group rituals, they, they do what's called a purging, which is sprinkling with water, sometimes scented water. And what you usually do is you use a sprig of some kind of herb like rosemary to flick the water onto, Yucca: it in flick, dip flick. Yeah. Mark: right. And that sensory feeling on the skin. As well as the scent that comes from it also gives you that feeling of immediacy and being in your body and being right there present in the moment. Yucca: Right. And if you have the opportunity to taking your shoes off there and just feeling the forest floor between your toes or. Or leaning up against the tree and feeling the bark and the texture of that and just noticing the wind on your skin. And maybe, you know, tasting, we were talking about tasting with food, but you can taste the air too. Be careful about tasting plants that you don't know. Mark: Yeah. Don't do Yucca: Don't. But maybe if it was like a pine needle or something like that, that you're pretty confident about, you could get that intense taste there. But yeah, don't, don't go eating or putting random plants in your mouth. They're, the vast majority of them will not make you feel good. So, Mark: Right. So that is, those, those sorts of techniques are the things that we use to create what we call sacred space. It's a very It's a very pleasurable state to be in. I find it to be very reverent and anticipatory in a way. Like, you know, there's a, there's a sense that something wonderful is about to happen. It just lends a richness to ritual practices that that I just really treasure. So, I would invite you to experiment with different ways of inducing that sense of sacred space. Personally I like to live in a context that's very much not, not kind of the full on implementation, but. My room is decorated in a way that, you know, when I light candles, it's this very kind of, sort of place. And and I, I just enjoy that. It, it helps me to feel more of a richness in my life. You may feel the same, you may want to do something similar or you may have a little box that's your portable focus kit. You take that to wherever you create sacred space and do your work there, and both of those are perfectly great, Yucca: Right, and you don't need objects either. You can do all of it just with your, just with yourself, right? The, the tools are nice, but they're just that, they're just tools, right? Mark: And you have tools built into your body. You you have breath. Yes. Right. I have seen and experienced creation of sacred space just with a deep inhale and then blowing it out like a bubble. Just, and then there you are inside that, that bubble space safe and protected and, and and cared for protected. Yeah, I said that. So, you know, be aware of that. You don't have to have a lot of stuff. This, these techniques are really about working with our psychology and our bodies are able to do that on their own. Yucca: Right. Well, I think this is a good place for us to wrap up for today. But we do have a couple of announcements. So your book is ready for pre-order, right? Mark: It is my book round. We Dance Creating Meaning through Seasonal Rituals, which will be released next April, is now available for pre-order on the Luellen website. We'll put a link in the show notes. And I'm really excited about it. And apparently they are too. They say they really love the book. So I'm I'm psyched. It's kind of an outlier when you look at the the Luellen page. It's full of all kinds of supernaturalist stuff. But they're publishing mine too, and I'm delighted. I'm, I'm just so excited to be working with them and, and having this book come out. So that's one thing. Yucca: And we had a. Ethiopia, pagan Society Council meeting recently. And there will be a, what did you call it? A changing of the guard. Mark: Yes. Yucca: So I have been the chair for three years at this point. And I'm gonna be passing that on at this point. Still be on the council, but gonna step back from that chair position. So, Mark: Right. And John Cleland host has graciously agreed and been elected to take over that chair position. He was the vice chair, for those first three years. So he's taken that over. Michael O'Hara is our our vice chair now, Yucca: Who's been on the podcast several times, Mark: yes, he has. And Rachel, w and c went, are the other two officers? The the sec, the treasurer and the secretary, respectively. And then there's several other others of us like me who are members of the council but are not officers. Yucca: Right, But stay busy doing lots and lots of stuff. We have a lot of projects. There's lots of volunteering in different capacities and all of that, so, Mark: it's so exciting and every time somebody new comes on board as a volunteer, I just, I'm reminded all over again. Wow. What a great group of people. These are just so, they're so fun to hang out with and they're interesting and the conversations are great. And they're just so kind of Yucca: Just discreet people Mark: good-hearted people. Yeah. Yucca: and we always talk ourselves into more work. Every time we get together, here's a new idea that we, we've gotta do. Mark: That's true. Yucca: Yep. Mark: Well, since I am working now, I'm having to put some boundaries around that from what I've been doing before. But so far everything seems to be working out okay. I'm doing a rework right now on the Ethiopia and hymnal. Which is downloadable from the blog site. I'm adding a bunch of sheet music in and a bunch of new chants and songs. Yucca: Oh, and the audio book. Mark: Oh, right. Yucca: I think that that would probably be of interest to our listeners. Mark: I, in the last weeks before I started my new job. I realized that I wasn't going to have a big block of available open time anytime soon once I started the job. So I took a back burner project off the back burner, which was the recording of an audiobook of my first book, op, paganism and Earth Honoring Path Rooted in Science, and I recorded the audiobook and it is now purchasable from everywhere you get audiobooks except audible. Because Amazon, Yucca: Alright Well gimme a link and I'll put that in the show notes for people for your preferred location. Mark: I should let you know the main reason that I didn't go with Audible as well is that they have extremely restrictive licensing requirements that give them exclusive right to distribute the audio book for something like three years or something.  Yucca: Seven. Mark: is it seven? Could be. Yucca: yeah. Unless they've changed it recently. Mark: Well, I wouldn't imagine them changing it to improve it, so, yeah. Anyway, it's, Yucca: That might have been if you created it through the, their platform where you can hire a voice artist Mark: Oh, right, acx. Yucca: that might be what I'm thinking of, but, Mark: Yeah. But in any case, I wanted, I. Chirp and Libro FM and you know, all those different outlets to be able to sell the book. So now you can go to any of those kinds of places and find it online. Yucca: Well, that's great. Mark: Yeah, it was, it was a fun project to do. I had to lock myself in my room for several days and read the thing into a microphone, but now it's there. Yucca: Yep. Well, and that'd be great to have it in your voice too. I always really appreciate when the audio books are read by the author because you really get the, the meaning a little bit more just in the way that they say the sentences. Mark: I, I agree. And in this case, the whole story about how I came to Ethiopia, paganism is all in the first person, Yucca: Mm-hmm. Mark: so it really wouldn't make any sense to have an some other narrator. It really kind of had to be mean. So anyway, it's in the can, it's up on the web, it's all, it's available now. So if you have a commute and want to read the book but don't have time or while you're working, whatever that's an a resource that's now available to you. Yucca: Yep. All right. Well, thank you, mark. Mark: Thank you Yucca. Always wonderful to talk with you and we'll see you next week.    

Welcome to our regular look back at the news, media and talking points from the past seven days as we roll out the red carpet for our guest this episode, a true free speech crusader, Dominique Samuels. Dominique is one of the top young UK political commentators so we look forward to her informed analysis on some of the stories and issues that have caught our attention this week including..... Protect the Kids: Drag Queen Story Hour in the UK. New Zealand: Records biggest rate of excess deaths in 100 years. Vaccine Injuries: Has the dam now broken? UK Immigration: Are the authorities taking the piss? Laughable questionnaire being handed out to channel migrants/Invaders. Conservative Chaos: 'Assassins' who knifed Boris now feeling the heat themselves. Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: Traders being sacrificed on the 'great green altar'. Roald Dahl: Original books to be kept in print following criticism. Central Bank Digital Currency: CBDC and the digital pound, A new form of money for households and businesses? Dominique Samuels is 23, born and bred in Manchester but living in London. She is a conservative political commentator, who draws on her knowledge from her degree in Politics with International Relations to inform her analysis and opinions. She has appeared on every mainstream media news channel including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News, with regular appearances on GB News and Good Morning Britain. Dominique has also participated in long-form documentaries and reality TV programmes, having previously appeared on Channel 4's The Bridge and BBC documentary series Black and British which was awarded a Grierson Award for Best Constructed Documentary Series. Dominique also does her own broadcasting in the form of live-streaming on social media platform GETTR's 6.5 million users, regularly gaining an audience of up to 11 thousand on her streams. Connect with Dominique..... GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/dominiquetaegon TWITTER: https://twitter.com/Dominiquetaegon/ TIK-TOK: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMYAoMGB5/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/dominiquetsamuels/ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DominiqueTaegon?sub_confirmation=1 WEBSITE: https://www.dominiquetaegon.com/ Originally broadcast live 25.2.23 *Special thanks to Bosch Fawstin for recording our intro/outro on this podcast. Check out his art https://theboschfawstinstore.blogspot.com/ and follow him on GETTR https://gettr.com/user/BoschFawstin To sign up for our weekly email, find our social media, podcasts, video, livestreaming platforms and more... https://heartsofoak.org/connect/ Please subscribe, like and share! Links to stories discussed..... Drag Queen Story Hour https://twitter.com/Dominiquetaegon/status/1629157014684282880?s=20 New Zealand excess deaths https://twitter.com/Dominiquetaegon/status/1628088131332321295?s=20 Vaccine Injuries https://twitter.com/ABridgen/status/1626938050231009280?s=20 Channel migrants https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11785927/Have-involved-terrorism-fast-track-questionnaire-handed-asylum-seekers.html Conservative Party https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11791409/Many-60-MPs-knifed-Bors-feeling-heat-writes-ANDREW-PIERCE.html Low traffic neighbourhoods https://twitter.com/Dominiquetaegon/status/1627253856538181632?s=20 15 minute cities protest https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/thousands-protest-15-minute-city-in-oxford/ Roald Dahl https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64759118 The digital pound https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/paper/2023/the-digital-pound-consultation-paper?sf174942083=1 [0:22] Dominique Samuels, thank you so much for joining us today.   Thank you for having me this evening. Not all, and I know you're feeling a little bit under the weather, so we're gonna do half an hour. I appreciate you coming. I know it is like whenever you have an interview scheduled and you don't feel up for it, so I appreciate you coming along. We'll do half an hour and then I will let you go and I'll finish off with some of the other stories. So thank you so much for jumping on. Thanks for being understanding. It's just one of those, I don't know what it is. It started on Friday, actually, just feeling absolutely knackered. I've been sleeping most of today, to be honest. Well, that's fine. As long as you don't pass it on to me, because I'm away to CPAC on Monday. So thankfully, you know. Oh really? Wow. I'm so jealous. Look, I'll send you the pictures. Don't worry. [1:08] Thanks. Whereabouts in the US do they do it?   In DC. Oh, right. Oh, cool. I remember I went there for a Turning Point USA event in DC. It was the first time that I went there. Absolutely loved it. We went to the White House and we saw Donald Trump and Mike Pence speak in person. It was like this black leadership thing that TPUSA did. It was such a brilliant experience. Unforgettable. Wow. Well, I'm looking forward to meeting the man himself, President Trump over there and all the speakers. So it will be good fun. But I'll send you pictures and next time you, can come over. Yeah, no, one of these one of these days I'm going to CPAC definitely. [1:54] Not that I'm the one that invites people. So it's my first time. So anyway, we'll jump in. You can follow Dominique. There's her handle. Of course, you know her from GB News regularly from Mark Steyn show from Iconic from so many things. And of course, her own podcast, her own live stream on Twitter on Getter on   Now on YouTube. On YouTube. Now on YouTube. I think the handle is the same on YouTube, but I am sort of in the process of building it up. I recently did a interview with Andrew Bridgen MP, and they did particularly well. Let me just see if, do you mind if I share my screen? Of course you can. Just to promote my little thing here. On YouTube.   Yeah. So that... [2:46] Could you bring it up? I think I need to bring it up. There you go. Yeah. Right. Okay. So that is my YouTube. It's at DominiqueTaegon. So the handle is the same. And if you want to watch the Andrew Bridgen interview, it's there. Thank you for letting me do my little promo there. I didn't actually know that a guest could share a screen to thank you've taught me something. Thank you, Dominique. [3:06] Well, I'm quite the seasoned restream user.   You are, I know, I know. But yeah, I love that interview with Andrew Bridgen, really worthwhile watching. If anyone hasn't seen it, I don't know where you've been, but if you haven't seen it, then do make sure and watch that. It is absolutely worthwhile. Let's jump in with the news. We've lots of stories to cover and we'll cover these four major ones. And the first one, I know you you posted this Dominique, if it's going to come up, which is about low traffic neighbourhoods. So the link is in the description on most of them. And this is obviously about low traffic neighbourhoods being promoted as supporting neighbourhood businesses and entrepreneurs. Nothing could be further from the truth. But tell us why the whole issue of 15 minute cities has really caught your eye. [4:02] Well, the whole issue of 15-minute cities for me was quite alarming because when you actually do your research and you look on the people that promote these 15-minute cities, you know, slash low traffic neighborhoods, number one, they have a real issue with the private use of cars. So really, there are various studies done by what I call these psychopaths that do look to limit private car use. How do they do that? By making everyone swap out for electric vehicles, taxing people out of driving, that sort of thing. I mean, we've seen that with the Youles controversy with Sadiq Khan, basically just making it costlier and more difficult for drivers to actually navigate. So that's the number one thing that was quite suspicious. But the biggest thing for me was actually they mentioned COVID as this sort of convenient conduit for people to realize that, you know, actually it's so much more convenient for us to be within 15 minutes of each other. And when you actually look at that outside of their romanticized and falsified version, there are thousands, millions of people that really, really suffered during those unscientific authoritarian psychopathic lockdowns. There are people that lost their businesses, people that committed suicide, people that died at home because they couldn't [5:25] access NHS treatment. So this romanticized idea that it made us realize all of these things, maybe it did for the people that are privileged enough to have been able to enjoy that, who were celebrating working from home, but for the people whose businesses relied on [5:42] society operating normally, that's not quite a rosy picture, is it? So it's no surprise with that article that you referenced, that various studies showed that in terms of customers returning to these businesses. It dropped extremely low. I can't remember specifically, but I think particularly in Oxford, because of all of the basically hoops that these drivers have to get through, and Oxford's a touristy area, so people come from outside of Oxford to come and see it because it's a beautiful place, they're just not doing it anymore. Because what is the point? It's too expensive, there's nowhere to park, and it's basically just hostile towards the revenue that many businesses rely on. And that's the real difficulty. Small businesses do not benefit from 15 minute cities. And I mean the whole thing, congestion charge in London being rolled out, I think it's seven days a week. And that is a massive impact. And where I might think maybe jump in my car and go somewhere, Actually, I don't do that. But Projam, could you bring up the demo that there was a demo, obviously Oxford has been the one that has been pushed. And I just want to bring up this because it's the European Conservative and this is it. [7:00] Thousands protesting in a 50 minute city in Oxford. If you just scroll that down and there were massive, I watched some of the videos and huge groups of people and I was a bit jealous I wasn't able to get there. But it shows there is opposition because sometimes we'll be told don't worry, this is a conspiracy, this is just a small group of those on the right who are angry about this, but actually people are galvanised and opposing this and I saw many of those videos and I thought, wow, this is good, the fight is on, bring it on. Yeah, about 2000 people, probably more, were there, they turned out, they protested, they demonstrated, Antifa turned up calling them fascists, which is just really odd. I mean, Antifa sort of make themselves out to be these like anti-establishment radicals, but really they're just establishment boot lickers in my opinion. And I mean, who are they funded by as well? Because they've been dotted around quite a few demonstrations, you know. So there was the drag queen story hour demonstration at Tate Modern, [8:16] recently they were there and things got heated because of them. But also most interestingly, the protest in Knowsley, you know, about the refugees in the hotels. So Antifa were allegedly there as well. And apparently they actually showed up and that's when things got violent actually. And it's not an uncommon thing in America. They turn up at protests and those protests seemingly always get violent. So interesting. I'd love to know who's dotting them around in the UK because I think it's weird. Yeah, I mean, it could be hope not hate, obviously been one of the organizations who may be linked to that, but you're right, they do pop up and the violence ensues. And I, [8:59] I would love to try and understand what goes on in their, their heads with this low traffic neighbourhood. I mean, the destruction it does to businesses. If you're a local business, if you're a shop that needs people to come in, but no one can actually drive in and park outside for 20 minutes or in the car park for half an hour and pop in. I mean, it destroys your business. A local business, an independent business cannot operate online and they rely on those people and you see the empty streets and it's heart-breaking, especially post-COVID that they can't recover. Yeah. And it's like, I mean, what do these, you know, what do the proponents of these 15-minute cities want? Do they want us all to be just completely reliant on corporations? Do they, they want us to just be completely reliant on these massive chains? Do they want us to all shop at Amazon groceries? Because Amazon has grocery stores around the UK now. That's a really interesting question because all of the lefties that claim to be all anti-capitalism, oh, you know, let's be organic and independent. A lot of the things that they are screaming and shouting for destroy small businesses. [10:09] Yeah. Well, they haven't thought this through. I think that's working out Dominique. There was another story which I know you had posted on this roll down. This is a BBC story today actually saying that seems as though they're backed down. This is original books to be kept in print following criticism. So scroll down Pro Jam, and there was an attempt by the publishers to rewrite many of the books. They had issues with a whole range of the phrases. What they didn't like, female and they didn't like fat, they didn't like ugly, they had a whole list of words. But it looks like common sense has prevailed in this at least. Yeah, you know, that is the wonderful thing because common sense seems to be quite scarce in Britain today, but [11:07] I mean, let's just be honest, there shouldn't even need to be two additions in the first place, in my view, although this is a positive thing. You know, it just makes you think if you are offended by male cloud men and male non gender neutral umpah lumpahs, because these are some of the changes, by the way, guys. So cloud men in James and the Giant Peach are cloud people. Umpa Lumpas in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are gender neutral. In Matilda, Miss Trunchbull isn't a female, she's a woman. Now I have my suspicions about that because of the new definition of what a woman is. Being a woman can be anyone that puts on a skirt and decides that they are one. But female is a very distinct thing, which is obviously why they've chosen to take it out. Boys and girls aren't allowed in, I think it's the hungry crocodile. Crocodile, it's instead just children. Now the publishers said that they have a duty to protect children from offensive content. What is offensive about a cloud man? What is offensive about male oompa-lumpa? It literally makes no sense. And if you're offended by that, I would suggest, you know, you should probably, take a long hard look in the mirror or alternatively get a grip. But I'm glad that now we can actually vote with our feet and choose what we want to read instead of it being dictated to us by this insular group of people that are clearly very disconnected from reality. [12:37] Yeah, because you can have the the woke section where people who are offended by everything they can shop and then we can have the normal one for the rest of us. [12:45] Normal people to read.   Yeah, the normal section. But I was interested to see the people responding. So, you know, Ricky Gervais, who you'd expect to jump into something and cause some heat. And he jumped in on this. And then Camilla is being kind of lauded as the one who stepped in and told authors to think remain true to your calling. I thought that was a curious intervention by the Royal Family. Yeah, it was a curious thing, positive nonetheless, but I'm not going to be sitting here and being like, oh, yay, you know, all of a sudden we've got an anti-Woke Queen consort and King, because all they do is churn out Wokeism. And perhaps it's because of their offices, you know, their PR offices, they think that if they subscribe to all these mainstream sort of left-wing causes, for example, the King's coronation is apparently all, it's all going to be about refugees and NHS workers and LGBTQ. These, you know, these groups [13:52] on the large part think the monarchy represents something really pernicious and nasty and backward about Britain. So the idea that, you know, he should be pandering so strongly to these groups, I think, is counterintuitive. But nonetheless, it was good to see the Queen consort actually saying something good, rather than something woke. My suspicions, my, I suppose, little theory would be that this intervention was to get people, I think, back on their side that feel a bit alienated by the monarchy as of recent because King Charles, I mean, they obviously know what's being said on Twitter online. They know that King Charles is sort of being looked at as the woke king. So it's a helpful intervention. [14:37] I'd love to know if conversations were had before and already the publishers had agreed and then Camilla comes out and she's treated as a savior. You don't believe anything these days. So I wonder what happened behind the scenes. Yeah. I mean, the press were briefed. I know that. The press were briefed that it was about the Roald Dahl saga. Like it was specifically about that. Although she purposely didn't mention it because obviously they're supposed to be neutral. They did make a point of briefing the press. So make of that what you will. Exactly. Lets.... Drag Queen Story Hour for children, There have been a lot around this issue and it keeps happening. I don't know, can you play that video, Pro Jam, as we have it in the background? But this, again, another one of these... [15:29] [15:37] Okay, well, let's go enough with that. I don't even want to watch that. But this in South East London, it's the whole issue of children engaged in this. I mean, you've spoken about this a number of times, Dominique. Tell us your thoughts on this whole issue, which seems to be springing up more and more. [15:57] Well, you know, drag queens Story Hour imported from the US as a most really bad woke ideas. Been imported from the US, it's spreading like wildfire across the UK. As I mentioned previously, there was that protest outside Tate Modern against the drag queen Ida HD. She was hired to read to kids. Even with this particular drag queen, Ida HD has quite a checkered past when it comes to certain friends that Ida has supported online. For example, there's one called Darren Moore, who died recently, who was a convicted child rapist. He was convicted in 1999 of raping a boy under 16, four counts, and was then convicted in 2011 for breaching his sex offenders order, because he was found to be working with kids as a coach, as a gymnastics coach, I think it was, or a dance coach and Ida very publicly was like my friend, donate to this go fund me so your friend's a sex offender and you're wanting to read to kids that's concerning and anyone that's concerned about that is a far right bigot apparently but in this particular case I was messaged on Twitter [17:17] by a concerned parent basically saying I mean look what's going on in Lewisham it's the at the Honour Oak Pub in Lewisham where that video is from, where you can see a grown man scantily clad, doing the splits in really inappropriate clothing. And when people say, oh, you know, you're just paranoid that this is sexualized. If you go on to the Instagram account, it's been deleted, but there's a video that I did on Instagram actually showing the original post. This drag queen is called Copper Top Queen. [17:51] And in the caption of the Instagram post, it said, wear a mini skirt, they said. It'll be sexy, they said. And as you can see in the video, the drag queen is like hinching up the skirt to do the splits. Why would you need to look sexy at an event involving children? That's red flag number one. It's inappropriate. And the drag queen featured in that video commented on my Instagram post saying, nothing physically harmful happened to the children, you and your far right views. He's been extremely threatening towards other concerned parents with really misogynistic undertones actually, because most people that are talking about this are women, concerned parents with children. And the thing is, is that I think the UK government needs to ban drag queen events involving children. I mean, as far as I'm aware, it's been done in Florida. It needs to be done here. They're inappropriate. And I'm genuinely concerned about the safety of children where these events are concerned. If you look at the picture and the video, the only people laughing and guffawing and having a good time are the parents. The children look utterly confused because they don't know what's going on. [19:02] And they're probably terrified as well, actually. There was another person that commented on my Instagram post, a childhood survivor of sexual assault, that said, this makes me really uncomfortable. It reminded her of grooming. And it is grooming, because what you're trying to do is you're trying to desensitize children to this sort of overtly sexual and suggestive behavior so that they think it's normal. And what happens, because children's brains are literally like sponges. They absorb information and things that they see, and they mimic them and copy them. What happens when you see children acting like that with each other in the playground? It's disgusting. And I think any parent taking their kids to see things like that should be investigated, to be honest, because how on earth you could think that that is appropriate is completely beyond me. There's another baby cabaret group that I've been directed to. It's called Kababarave. So for anyone that's interested. [20:00] I'm gonna be doing a video about this soon called Kebab-a-Rave. That is a baby cabaret, so it's for babies. It's aimed at babies. And some of the images and the videos I've seen have been absolutely disgusting. Stripper gear, half naked women, men with barely any clothes on doing the splits with all of their legs spread, a Santa stripping while babies are there. It's absolutely disgusting and I'm genuinely concerned. I think the government needs to get involved, as do child services, 100%.   You've talked a lot about this and tried to highlight this. You've engaged with commentators, but when you look at politicians and how they respond to me, it's a win-win for any so-called conservative. Any parent will be on their side if they say, look, this is not appropriate. Just come up with that statement. And I don't understand. It's not a difficult issue. It's not something they need to work through or put out a group to find out what parents think. I mean, it's normal. Why do you, I mean, how is it that our politicians don't say, look, there's a line and this is not right for children, maybe right for adults and you can do what you like, children. It's quite easy to win-win. It's easy as pie. And for the so-called conservative party to not be saying something about this. [21:27] And not actually be putting forward legislation, because that's what I want to see. I want to see legislation. If they would have any chance of winning the next election, they need to start talking about things like this, because this isn't just a culture war issue. It's not. This is about a child's safety and a child's sexualization issue by people that think that children need to be exposed to heavily sexualized and suggestive themes and you need to ask the question of why? Why do they want children to be exposed to that? Now I'm not saying all of these people are paedophiles or whatever, although you know it factually has been found that sexual predators have found their way in those organizations 100%. I'm not saying, but the people supporting them, I think a lot of them genuinely do think that this is about acceptance and kindness and inclusion. And it's just not. It's really, really inappropriate. And people like that though, they need to be ignored because they don't know what they're talking about, genuinely. And I'm sick to death of trying to reason with people. Even the people that say, Oh, I mean, pantomime dames. Like, are you thick? How can you compare a pantomime dame fully clothed by the way? [22:44] To a drag queen in literal strip heels and a mini skirt with big fake boobs, gyrating themselves in front of kids. How could you even make that comparison? I know. I know. You're right. I've seen some of the comments and some of the posts you put up and when you try and engage and you can't get anywhere because these people seem to be intent on sexualizing children. [23:06] Yeah, I know. You've got to ask why? Why is that okay with you? There's something not right there. [23:12] Yeah, completely. Let's go on to, we'll do our final story together and this is on the Central Bank digital currency. This is a consultation paper. It was out the 7th of February, but you put it up and I think it's quite important because we certainly haven't referred to this specific paper. Bank of England, the digital pound, a new form of money for households and business? And this is consultation, the Bank of England. I didn't know the Bank of England did their own consultations. I thought that's a whole other area. But it says the Bank of England and HM Treasury publication, and they talk about the way we use money is changing and talking about using a digital pound. I know you've done a number of things on central bank digital currencies. Tell us kind of why you're concerned. Is this not just the way we're moving forward? Tell us why you're concerned on this.   Well, again, I think that argument is interesting about, oh, this is the way things are going now. Because look, the argument has been made. Most of us don't really use cash that much in our day to day lives or transactions. I don't. I use Apple Pay. It's just convenient. But you've also got to ask the question of what is the problem that CBDCs are seeking to be the solution to because we already have the infrastructure in the UK for contactless payments. [24:39] For card payments. That infrastructure has been there. We probably have one of the best infrastructures for these types of payments in the world. So a need for a CBDC is completely different. And the difference is, is that it will be government regulated. So that's, what it is. It's a central bank, central bank digital currency. So banks and by extension our government. I know we say, oh, but you know, the Bank of England is separate. You know, it's separate, but it's not, it's not really. This is like a government controlled currency where they can track all of your transactions. So effectively like sort of the track and trace we saw during the pandemic, they can track all your transactions, see what you're spending money on. And it makes you extremely vulnerable to financial discrimination. So say for example, you've got these psychos talking about, you know, we need to have carbon points. Everyone needs to be attributed a specific number of carbon points. Use too many of your carbon points one day, blocks from making certain transactions. Or if you have participated in a protest that's inconvenient for the government, they can block you from your own money. We saw as much in Canada. You know, remember during the trucker protests. [25:56] And we've sort of seen what the future of CBDC is in places in Asia and Africa. So in Nigeria, there have been riots recently because of a deliberate cash shortage that the Nigerian central bank has triggered. So they've actually had a digital currency since 2021. It's called the eNira. And with this eNira, do you know it's been rejected by about 99% of Nigeria, they've got about 225 million people there and cash is still favored for most transactions. I'm going to have to wipe my nose. One second... She'll be back. [26:54] But this is a, this is a huge issue and, um, from the purpose of... Woo. Oh my gosh. [27:12] Sorry about that. I could just see like shining under my nose. But just to finish off Dominique, because it's the whole issue with digital currency, the whole point of them was about privacy, was about taking control back to the individual, owning your money and not having government control. And this kind of is a perverse way of looking at it. It takes that and throws it on its head and says by the government, we're not going to let you take control of your money. We're going to pull back control. So it's, even when they talk about digital currency, digital currency is about freedom and control for the individual. But this puts it all the way back. Yeah, exactly. the thing you were right with cryptocurrency, is that specifically Bitcoin, is that it can't be tracked and traced in the same way. But our governments have obviously seen that and want to capture it and again, want it to be for some element of control. So in Nigeria, most of them have rejected the CBDC in informal transactions. So do you know what the central bank did? It created a deliberate cash shortage by announcing that all the old Naira notes were invalid and they had like probably a month to cash in all the old notes to receive new ones. So what you found were people queuing all outside of the ATMs, couldn't [28:35] get access to their money, riots. And then recently the bank announced that they were going to be using a new technology to save this eNaira that's basically failed. And I'm worried that that sort of stuff will happen here. But also I think lastly, the most important point with this is that you can't have a CBDC without a digital ID and you can't have a digital ID without a CBDC because it all comes hand in hand. It makes transactions a lot easier, but it also allows the government to track you a lot easier. And that's why we should also be talking about and speaking out against digital ID as well. Because with this sort of thing, you will have no privacy. And for people that say, oh, if you don't commit crime, then it's no problem. That's not the point. What about people that are domestic abuse victims that need cash, for example, to escape. [29:28] Their partners? What about old people who actually don't understand all of this technology? There are some real issues here that really do disadvantage the most vulnerable in our society. And also.. with regards to even the 50 minute cities. What about disabled people as well that actually need to drive and need to use cars to get around? That was something that I meant to say actually as well. Yeah, it takes away all that privacy, puts full control and your right digital ID is very much part of that. Dominique, I've got to let you go. I appreciate you coming along. Thank you so much. Even though you're feeling under the weather, thank you for jumping along and joining us today. Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Not at all. I'll carry on and I'll let you go and we'll speak soon. All right. I'd love to be back.   Thanks Dominique.   All right. Thank you. Bye. Bye. [30:17] That was Dominique. Let me, I know what it's like whenever you get called in for interviews and you're just not feeling great and feeling under the weather. And I appreciate her coming along. It's easier to sometimes say, no, I'll give it a miss. But I appreciate her giving her time. But there were some other stories I wanted to touch on. This is one that actually I hadn't put on the list with Dominique, but I think is really important. How's my sound Pro Jam? Is that okay? Give me a thumbs up. He was telling me, yeah, my sound wasn't great. Let me try and pull in some comments on, there are a lot of things, a story today that appeared. But let me try and pull in some comments. Something fell in my room. I don't know what that was. [31:09] Robert McKair, one or two Central American countries have adopted Bitcoin as their currency. Yep. Agra Shed. Who else do we have? Pemshed. Tiffengirl. Who I can pull up. Bockels42 noted NWO and WEF. I couldn't agree more. Do drop your comment. Let me know how you're watching, where you're watching with Dominique on if I can pull in some of those. That would be absolutely wonderful. Yes, let me know Bob Moran you cant fix anything if you keep asking for more government regulation. Yep, completely agree. DTaylor7, Evening All on the beginning, Villan 82, Frankie Boyes, great to have you all on. Thank you so much for being with us. This is the story that came up today and I want to touch on. And I'll spin through the other stories. [32:06] This was a story that had Lord Pearson, who is, I have the privilege of working with Lord Pearson in the House of Lords for the last 12 years. And I've also had the privilege of working with Baroness Cox, who's absolutely wonderful, actually was the Conservative Deputy Speaker in the House of Lords back in the day, now sits as an independent. And this is a secret House of Lords circle showed to have worked with the far right. Email blunder, Sparks inquiry a new issues group collaboration with Islamophobes. That could have been my email blunder, could have been Lord Pearson's, I don't know. But if we scroll down this Pro Jam, I want to pull this because it is a story that is done by, well this is The Guardian, but it's basically been done, yep, it's been done by hope not hate or hate not hope. [32:55] So, a secretive organisation, Accused of Collaborating, it's not really secretive, I've been there for many years, has been operating under the House of Lords for more than a decade. It is more than a decade. The organisation called New Issues Group, it's not an organisation, it's simply groups of people coming together under a name, so it could be easily tagged and identified, includes the former UKIP leader Malcolm Pearson and the Tory former Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, Baroness Cox. The cache of documents, I don't think there's a cache of documents. [33:29] Acquired by anti-fascist group, pro-fascist group, hate not hope, even suggests that a figure who would become one of the UK's most notorious anti-Muslim activists drafted a question to be asked in the House of Lords by group members. I think they're referring to, who are they referring to? I actually lose track. Maybe Anne Marie Waters are referring to. But it talks about this group, which is supposedly a shadowy group, there's Anne Marie's picture. It's not a shadowy group. It's simply in effect a talking house. It's a group that comes together to discuss some of the issues, especially around Baroness Cox's bill to give Muslim women the protections they don't currently enjoy because if they're married, they're not married under UK law, they're married under Islamic law and they don't get the protections they desperately need and require. That has to change to make sure that a Muslim woman is treated exactly the same [34:29] as any other married woman and her husband does not have the right to divorce you, say that three times and she's divorced with no recompense to anything because she's not married under British law. It's absolute travesty that we have hundreds of thousands of Muslim women have zero rights under British law because their marriage is not recognised under British law and the Baroness has been trying to introduce a bill for over a decade and the government refused to put it in because they don't give a damn about Muslim women who have no rights under British law. [35:04] Let's call it as it is. This was the Sky News one. Westminster accounts. Baroness Cox forced to declare financial interest after a leak revealed links to anti-Islam activists. Baroness Cox has taken funding from an American organization run by evangelical, so by Christians. Sky News have got a problem that Christians have donated money to the Baroness to help and all the great humanitarian work that she does all across the world. Wonderful work the Baroness does and she's one of the most active members of the House of Lords I have seen in my over a decade of having the privilege of working there. So Christian groups, absolutely fine. Anti-gay marriage campaigns, well, you've got every right to stand against marriages, not between one man and one woman, no problem. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right. [36:04] She holds regular meetings with prominent critics of Islam. I have had the honour of being in many of those meetings and it is wonderful to spend time with great individuals who served this country so well and continue to serve it well into their 80s and they could put their feet up and they could be sipping cocktails around the pool sometime, but no, they choose to come in and meet with others, work with others and do what is right. And yet, hate not hope are angry at these people who want to give back to Britain. Moving on, I think I'll do a whole piece on that because I was shocked, hate not hope had emailed myself or had emailed Alan. They emailed Lord Pearson, Baroness Cox, many others, finding out what the shadowy group was about, which is simply a collection of individuals, like-minded individuals that want to discuss the issues with radical Islam and the freedoms we have in the West. And when that clash comes together, what happens? And we need to discuss as Lord Pearson has always said, can we talk about Islam? He just simply wants to talk about it. And for wanting to talk about it you get attacked with every label under the sun. Let's move on. [37:32] This story is, this is why I didn't want Dominique to come on YouTube, even though she's got a YouTube channel. I saw actually the YouTube video with John Waters has gone really well. We have to be very careful with videos we put on YouTube. We have to see how we use YouTube properly because it's not a bastion of free speech like GETTR, like rumble on the website, like Twitter is at at the moment. Many others, Truth Social, gab that we use, but not for video stuff. There's so many great platforms available there and we need to know how to use them. But at the moment, we are holding off on YouTube. We need to see how we use that effectively because it is a huge platform, but it's a huge platform that you can't talk about this... New Zealand records biggest increase in registered deaths in 100 years. [38:28] Let me read that to you again. You can see it. Let that sink in. New Zealand records biggest increase in registered deaths in 100 years. This should be the biggest story. Biggest in 100 years? Not COVID. [38:47] Not COVID. Something else is happening. Is it the more or less enforced vaccination of an experimental substance that didn't even go through trials with the vaccine group on Diny and Rachel a couple of weeks ago and they talked about the vaccine control group that is there because we have no data on the unvaxxed. We don't actually have any data because it's not divided up. In fact, Pfizer initially started the trial. So they would monitor those who were un-vaxxed, un-jabbed, un-jabbed, that's not even vaxxer, vaccination, let's set that aside, who were un-jabbed with this experimental chemical, whatever went in their arm, and those who were. So those who received the jab, those who didn't. And after I think it was four months, I can be happy to be corrected if I'm wrong on this. If I remember after four months, they scrapped that and they just jabbed all those who were unjabbed as a control. The opposite of what a control group should be. You can monitor those. They scrapped that and people still think this is safe because it's been through a control group and tested. [40:05] Utter bull shit. It is not. And people need to wake up and see this for what it is. Okay, we'll blast through these. The next one, Projam, even Fox News is now covering vaccine injuries. I think we'll... [40:29] Let's play this. Do you wanna? I've got Dominique still up. Apologies. Pro Jam, do you wanna just play this? Can we play this? As we told angle viewers in February of 2020, and by the way, at the time when he came on the show to the protestations of Anthony Fauci, we could never, ever trust China on this. We turn now to a COVID controversy of a different kind. My next guest, a physician from Roseville, California says that he's treated more than 4,000 COVID patients. And of those, he says hundreds experience vaccine related injuries, including chest pain, cancer, and in women, menstrual irregularity and even pregnancy loss. [41:12] Dr. Michael Huang joins me now. Dr. Huang, thanks for being with us tonight..... [41:17] Right. Well, not you can get the idea. And it's wonderful that, sorry, messing up with graphics, that Fox News are actually covering this at long last. Someone who said they treated 4,000 patients for COVID and hundreds, they're seeing vaccine injuries. Let's take that as 10%, hundreds, let's say 400, 4,000 for sake of a, or let's say 200, 5%. If 5% of people are having injuries due to vaccine, this needs to be stopped immediately and to be analysed and tested and find out what is happening. That would be the right thing to do. That would be the correct thing to do. That would be the safe thing to do. But it's not the financially prudent thing to do for these vaccine companies. Why should they stop it if they're making so much money? And it's a printing press for them. Health, safety, that's not the main issue. Stopping the spread of COVID, that's not the main issue. The main issue is making money and taking a medical emergency and printing as much money as you can for your shareholders as a limited company. That's what it's all about. I know you know that. I know that. Many of us know that. It's up to us to try and get the word out, especially as these companies push to move away from emergency use authorization to full authorization. I saw an application yesterday with could have been Pfizer for one of their updated. [42:47] Jabs and they're moving to get full approval for it. Nothing could be more dangerous although my concern is the damage has already been done through these mRNA jabs fully untested and trialled on children. [43:04] Can't get much more evil than that.   On to the next story. This is looking at terrorism. This is a little survey that those who arrive in the country illegally are asked to do. Now the government have failed to get a grip on our immigration out of control but they're going to do a survey, an English survey, and this is going to fix our problem. So have you ever been involved in crime or terrorism? Yes or no. The fast track questionnaire handed the channel migrants seeking asylum. If we scroll down, so this will attempt to streamline the process, migrants will be granted refugee status on the basis of 10 page questionnaire. Can you believe it? Well, it is true. So let me, I'll read some of this. So this seems to get rid of the massive backlog. The questionnaire asks more than 50 questions in total, such as how they reached the UK. If we scroll down and we have, yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. The questions, no, no, keep picking it up. Yep. Have you ever been involved in war crimes. [44:17] Crimes against humanity or genocide? No, that's only the British government, I think. Maybe Matt Hancock could answer yes for that. Have you ever been involved in terrorist activities? No, I think that was just Tony Blair wasn't it? Have you ever expressed views at justified terrorist violence? Do you have any documents or other evidence to confirm who you are? No, because they got rid of it because that's how they're told to do it. Have you ever been employed by the military? [44:44] How did you get to the UK? They're asking that. Were you subject to human trafficking? How much did the journey to the UK cost? What question now? Please reply your receipts and we'll refund you. I think that's where we're going. Send us your bills and we'll give it all back to you. Don't you worry. Would you like a new house while you're at it? This is a concerted government. Please, any of you who haven't woken up to this who believe a Tory government are the saviours, they are not. They are the enemy. They are the problem and they are not going to fix this mess. This has happened under their watch, under 13 years of supposedly conservative government, conservative in name only. I don't see any political party actually wanting to, actually do anything about this because you need to be polling. Back in my UKIP days, had to be pulling 15% plus to get anywhere and really about 18% to get a slew of seats in the House of Commons. And even if that happens, you're a small party on the back benches, so there's not much you can do.   This last story, I'm not sure if we can bring up, purging of the assassins. A story on the end there, looking at the Conservative Party and how they choose those who will stand. [46:11] And this story goes one way, but I want to take it a slightly different way. And I think we'll finish off on this. Purging of the assassins as local conservative parties pick their next candidates for the next election, many of the 60 or so MPs who knifed Boris are feeling the heat themselves. This is the process that for the next general election, an MP needs to get the vote, the permission to stand as a candidate for their local conservative constituency, local conservative grouping. They can't just do it themselves and just because they're an MP doesn't get them right to stand as a conservative MP in the next election. Strange quirk of British politics. And they have to go with cap in hand and say, please, Conservative Association, please allow us to stand again. And more often than not, of course, the answer is yes. But It can be a way that the local association can punish the MP. And I guess a way of making, keeping that connection between MPs and their constituents, their local party, those on the ground and not just the, the high up part of the concerted party. [47:24] So in theory it's a good idea, but all this is about poor Boris. And it's interesting how some of these people will fare because I am assuming that many conservative associations are angry at how the conservative party have run roughshod over freedoms and civil liberties. They may be angry at how vaccinations were forced on many, the NHS, the health system, many others. It was enforced upon them and they would lose their jobs if they didn't get it. A lot of anger and little Rishi Sunak. Richie, Rishi, Sunak, rich, worth more than the queen or the king, we are on to the king, right? Worth more than the monarchy. First time ever in history that the prime minister has had greater wealth than the sovereign. He doesn't get it. He doesn't get it. And I think a lot of conservative MPs will be punished. I think a lot of them will jump ship before because there's no way they're going to win as a conservative MP when they have destroyed this country in every way imaginable. [48:35] They are the biggest bunch of crooks. Many of them are quite evil, especially with forcing a jab upon people that was never ever ever fully tested, never ever ever tested on children, never went through its trials, But the trials were cancelled after months and yet it was given to people and they were told it was fine. And now all the stories come back and injuries. So many issues and of course people like Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative Party, number 10, they didn't want people like that to stand. Independent minded MPs that will speak up for what they believe is right and not necessarily just fall under what the government say. We'll watch and see what happens. really interesting. [49:25] And I am watching this closely because of course we're all interested in what happens. I think that will be enough for tonight. Let me pull up some of your comments on GETTR if you're watching GETTR. I can't pull the other comments up. My apologies for not being able to pull them all up. Let's go from the bottom up. Okay. [49:54] Bookles, 42, know the WHO, independent candidate of the future, yep, but I don't know what they can achieve with our current electoral system. Pem's head, Tory's aren't Tory. The name Tory goes back a long time actually as a derogatory term, but anyway, we'll knock it into that history. Pem's head, Tory HQ, partially a candidate into my mum's constituency, they've just deselected her. I love it. I love it. The fight back between the grassroots part of the party and the machine at the top. Agshed, not conservative anymore. Nope. Buccos 42, unfortunately, Reform UK or ProJab genocide. That is a big concern. I'll not go deeply into that because we're not about attacking or picking off others, any party who is pro-JAB and criticises Novak Djokovic who wanted to get in Australia and did the right thing to get in and then was attacked by the leader of any political party and mocked and ridiculed. I have no time for.... But that's a whole other issue. James Simmons, there are lots of others, I'll not go into them. [51:10] James Simmons says sexualized children should be a criminal offence, a punishment by the British people. Yep, should be a criminal offence. Anyone who's involved in that should be on the sex offence register and should be jailed up until it can be proved they're no longer a danger to children, no longer want to sexualize children. I think that is about it. [51:30] So thank you for joining. Thank you for watching. Great to have you with us always. It was great fun having Dominique for the first time and hopefully we'll have her back soon. Fit and sound and well and healthy. Next week I'm off to CPAC. We've got some great interviews that we've done in the bag. We'll post those when they come out, Monday, Thursday. And I'll be reporting over there from CPAC. A message from Steve Bannon to say make sure and come to the war room. We'll have you on live. Many others will be there. I'll report there, give you an update as much as I can. Never been there before so first time. I know Nigel is going there. It'll be good to see him. I don't know if any other British folks going over, but I'll try and make a beeline for any others I can find. I'll report as much as I can, take as many interviews and clips with people over there. And I'll be back after CPAC. So thank you for being with us. Thank you for watching on whichever platform you're on and have a good rest of your weekend. We will see you back on Monday with an interview that will tell you about [52:47] closer to the time. So thank you and good night to you all.

About BenBen Whaley is a staff software engineer at Chime. Ben is co-author of the UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook, the de facto standard text on Linux administration, and is the author of two educational videos: Linux Web Operations and Linux System Administration. He is an AWS Community Hero since 2014. Ben has held Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certifications. He earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Univ. of Colorado, Boulder.Links Referenced: Chime Financial: https://www.chime.com/ alternat.cloud: https://alternat.cloud Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamthewhaley LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benwhaley/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built-in key rotation, permissions as code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency, and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn and this is an episode unlike any other that has yet been released on this august podcast. Let's begin by introducing my first-time guest somehow because apparently an invitation got lost in the mail somewhere. Ben Whaley is a staff software engineer at Chime Financial and has been an AWS Community Hero since Andy Jassy was basically in diapers, to my level of understanding. Ben, welcome to the show.Ben: Corey, so good to be here. Thanks for having me on.Corey: I'm embarrassed that you haven't been on the show before. You're one of those people that slipped through the cracks and somehow I was very bad at following up slash hounding you into finally agreeing to be here. But you certainly waited until you had something auspicious to talk about.Ben: Well, you know, I'm the one that really should be embarrassed here. You did extend the invitation and I guess I just didn't feel like I had something to drop. But I think today we have something that will interest most of the listeners without a doubt.Corey: So, folks who have listened to this podcast before, or read my newsletter, or follow me on Twitter, or have shared an elevator with me, or at any point have passed me on the street, have heard me complain about the Managed NAT Gateway and it's egregious data processing fee of four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte. And I have complained about this for small customers because they're in the free tier; why is this thing charging them 32 bucks a month? And I have complained about this on behalf of large customers who are paying the GDP of the nation of Belize in data processing fees as they wind up shoving very large workloads to and fro, which is I think part of the prerequisite requirements for having a data warehouse. And you are no different than the rest of these people who have those challenges, with the singular exception that you have done something about it, and what you have done is so, in retrospect, blindingly obvious that I am embarrassed the rest of us never thought of it.Ben: It's interesting because when you are doing engineering, it's often the simplest solution that is the best. I've seen this repeatedly. And it's a little surprising that it didn't come up before, but I think it's in some way, just a matter of timing. But what we came up with—and is this the right time to get into it, do you want to just kind of name the solution, here?Corey: Oh, by all means. I'm not going to steal your thunder. Please, tell us what you have wrought.Ben: We're calling it AlterNAT and it's an alternative solution to a high-availability NAT solution. As everybody knows, NAT Gateway is sort of the default choice; it certainly is what AWS pushes everybody towards. But there is, in fact, a legacy solution: NAT instances. These were around long before NAT Gateway made an appearance. And like I said they're considered legacy, but with the help of lots of modern AWS innovations and technologies like Lambdas and auto-scaling groups with max instance lifetimes and the latest generation of networking improved or enhanced instances, it turns out that we can maybe not quite get as effective as a NAT Gateway, but we can save a lot of money and skip those data processing charges entirely by having a NAT instance solution with a failover NAT Gateway, which I think is kind of the key point behind the solution. So, are you interested in diving into the technical details?Corey: That is very much the missing piece right there. You're right. What we used to use was NAT instances. That was the thing that we used because we didn't really have another option. And they had an interface in the public subnet where they lived and an interface hanging out in the private subnet, and they had to be configured to wind up passing traffic to and fro.Well, okay, that's great and all but isn't that kind of brittle and dangerous? I basically have a single instance as a single point of failure and these are the days early on when individual instances did not have the level of availability and durability they do now. Yeah, it's kind of awful, but here you go. I mean, the most galling part of the Managed NAT Gateway service is not that it's expensive; it's that it's expensive, but also incredibly good at what it does. You don't have to think about this whole problem anymore, and as of recently, it also supports ipv4 to ipv6 translation as well.It's not that the service is bad. It's that the service is stonkingly expensive, particularly at scale. And everything that we've seen before is either oh, run your own NAT instances or bend your knee and pays your money. And a number of folks have come up with different options where this is ridiculous. Just go ahead and run your own NAT instances.Yeah, but what happens when I have to take it down for maintenance or replace it? It's like, well, I guess you're not going to the internet today. This has the, in hindsight, obvious solution, well, we just—we run the Managed NAT Gateway because the 32 bucks a year in instance-hour charges don't actually matter at any point of scale when you're doing this, but you wind up using that for day in, day out traffic, and the failover mode is simply you'll use the expensive Managed NAT Gateway until the instance is healthy again and then automatically change the route table back and forth.Ben: Yep. That's exactly it. So, the auto-scaling NAT instance solution has been around for a long time well, before even NAT Gateway was released. You could have NAT instances in an auto-scaling group where the size of the group was one, and if the NAT instance failed, it would just replace itself. But this left a period in which you'd have no internet connectivity during that, you know, when the NAT instance was swapped out.So, the solution here is that when auto-scaling terminates an instance, it fails over the route table to a standby NAT Gateway, rerouting the traffic. So, there's never a point at which there's no internet connectivity, right? The NAT instance is running, processing traffic, gets terminated after a certain period of time, configurable, 14 days, 30 days, whatever makes sense for your security strategy could be never, right? You could choose that you want to have your own maintenance window in which to do it.Corey: And let's face it, this thing is more or less sitting there as a network traffic router, for lack of a better term. There is no need to ever log into the thing and make changes to it until and unless there's a vulnerability that you can exploit via somehow just talking to the TCP stack when nothing's actually listening on the host.Ben: You know, you can run your own AMI that has been pared down to almost nothing, and that instance doesn't do much. It's using just a Linux kernel to sit on two networks and pass traffic back and forth. It has a translation table that kind of keeps track of the state of connections and so you don't need to have any service running. To manage the system, we have SSM so you can use Session Manager to log in, but frankly, you can just disable that. You almost never even need to get a shell. And that is, in fact, an option we have in the solution is to disable SSM entirely.Corey: One of the things I love about this approach is that it is turnkey. You throw this thing in there and it's good to go. And in the event that the instance becomes unhealthy, great, it fails traffic over to the Managed NAT Gateway while it terminates the old node and replaces it with a healthy one and then fails traffic back. Now, I do need to ask, what is the story of network connections during that failover and failback scenario?Ben: Right, that's the primary drawback, I would say, of the solution is that any established TCP connections that are on the NAT instance at the time of a route change will be lost. So, say you have—Corey: TCP now terminates on the floor.Ben: Pretty much. The connections are dropped. If you have an open SSH connection from a host in the private network to a host on the internet and the instance fails over to the NAT Gateway, the NAT Gateway doesn't have the translation table that the NAT instance had. And not to mention, the public IP address also changes because you have an Elastic IP assigned to the NAT instance, a different Elastic IP assigned to the NAT Gateway, and so because that upstream IP is different, the remote host is, like, tracking the wrong IP. So, those connections, they're going to be lost.So, there are some use cases where this may not be suitable. We do have some ideas on how you might mitigate that, for example, with the use of a maintenance window to schedule the replacement, replaced less often so it doesn't have to affect your workflow as much, but frankly, for many use cases, my belief is that it's actually fine. In our use case at Chime, we found that it's completely fine and we didn't actually experience any errors or failures. But there might be some use cases that are more sensitive or less resilient to failure in the first place.Corey: I would also point out that a lot of how software is going to behave is going to be a reflection of the era in which it was moved to cloud. Back in the early days of EC2, you had no real sense of reliability around any individual instance, so everything was written in a very defensive manner. These days, with instances automatically being able to flow among different hardware so we don't get instance interrupt notifications the way we once did on a semi-constant basis, it more or less has become what presents is bulletproof, so a lot of people are writing software that's a bit more brittle. But it's always been a best practice that when a connection fails okay, what happens at failure? Do you just give up and throw your hands in the air and shriek for help or do you attempt to retry a few times, ideally backing off exponentially?In this scenario, those retries will work. So, it's a question of how well have you built your software. Okay, let's say that you made the worst decisions imaginable, and okay, if that connection dies, the entire workload dies. Okay, you have the option to refactor it to be a little bit better behaved, or alternately, you can keep paying the Manage NAT Gateway tax of four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte in perpetuity forever. I'm not going to tell you what decision to make, but I know which one I'm making.Ben: Yeah, exactly. The cost savings potential of it far outweighs the potential maintenance troubles, I guess, that you could encounter. But the fact is, if you're relying on Managed NAT Gateway and paying the price for doing so, it's not as if there's no chance for connection failure. NAT Gateway could also fail. I will admit that I think it's an extremely robust and resilient solution. I've been really impressed with it, especially so after having worked on this project, but it doesn't mean it can't fail.And beyond that, upstream of the NAT Gateway, something could in fact go wrong. Like, internet connections are unreliable, kind of by design. So, if your system is not resilient to connection failures, like, there's a problem to solve there anyway; you're kind of relying on hope. So, it's a kind of a forcing function in some ways to build architectural best practices, in my view.Corey: I can't stress enough that I have zero problem with the capabilities and the stability of the Managed NAT Gateway solution. My complaints about it start and stop entirely with the price. Back when you first showed me the blog post that is releasing at the same time as this podcast—and you can visit that at alternat.cloud—you sent me an early draft of this and what I loved the most was that your math was off because of a not complete understanding of the gloriousness that is just how egregious the NAT Gateway charges are.Your initial analysis said, “All right, if you're throwing half a terabyte out to the internet, this has the potential of cutting the bill by”—I think it was $10,000 or something like that. It's, “Oh no, no. It has the potential to cut the bill by an entire twenty-two-and-a-half thousand dollars.” Because this processing fee does not replace any egress fees whatsoever. It's purely additive. If you forget to have a free S3 Gateway endpoint in a private subnet, every time you put something into or take something out of S3, you're paying four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte on that, despite the fact there's no internet transitory work, it's not crossing availability zones. It is simply a four-and-a-half cent fee to retrieve something that has only cost you—at most—2.3 cents per month to store in the first place. Flip that switch, that becomes completely free.Ben: Yeah. I'm not embarrassed at all to talk about the lack of education I had around this topic. The fact is I'm an engineer primarily and I came across the cost stuff because it kind of seemed like a problem that needed to be solved within my organization. And if you don't mind, I might just linger on this point and kind of think back a few months. I looked at the AWS bill and I saw this egregious ‘EC2 Other' category. It was taking up the majority of our bill. Like, the single biggest line item was EC2 Other. And I was like, “What could this be?”Corey: I want to wind up flagging that just because that bears repeating because I often get people pushing back of, “Well, how bad—it's one Managed NAT Gateway. How much could it possibly cost? $10?” No, it is the majority of your monthly bill. I cannot stress that enough.And that's not because the people who work there are doing anything that they should not be doing or didn't understand all the nuances of this. It's because for the security posture that is required for what you do—you are at Chime Financial, let's be clear here—putting everything in public subnets was not really a possibility for you folks.Ben: Yeah. And not only that but there are plenty of services that have to be on private subnets. For example, AWS Glue services must run in private VPC subnets if you want them to be able to talk to other systems in your VPC; like, they cannot live in public subnet. So essentially, if you want to talk to the internet from those jobs, you're forced into some kind of NAT solution. So, I dug into the EC2 Other category and I started trying to figure out what was going on there.There's no way—natively—to look at what traffic is transiting the NAT Gateway. There's not an interface that shows you what's going on, what's the biggest talkers over that network. Instead, you have to have flow logs enabled and have to parse those flow logs. So, I dug into that.Corey: Well, you're missing a step first because in a lot of environments, people have more than one of these things, so you get to first do the scavenger hunt of, okay, I have a whole bunch of Managed NAT Gateways and first I need to go diving into CloudWatch metrics and figure out which are the heavy talkers. Is usually one or two followed by a whole bunch of small stuff, but not always, so figuring out which VPC you're even talking about is a necessary prerequisite.Ben: Yeah, exactly. The data around it is almost missing entirely. Once you come to the conclusion that it is a particular NAT Gateway—like, that's a set of problems to solve on its own—but first, you have to go to the flow logs, you have to figure out what are the biggest upstream IPs that it's talking to. Once you have the IP, it still isn't apparent what that host is. In our case, we had all sorts of outside parties that we were talking to a lot and it's a matter of sorting by volume and figuring out well, this IP, what is the reverse IP? Who is potentially the host there?I actually had some wrong answers at first. I set up VPC endpoints to S3 and DynamoDB and SQS because those were some top talkers and that was a nice way to gain some security and some resilience and save some money. And then I found, well, Datadog; that's another top talker for us, so I ended up creating a nice private link to Datadog, which they offer for free, by the way, which is more than I can say for some other vendors. But then I found some outside parties, there wasn't a nice private link solution available to us, and yet, it was by far the largest volume. So, that's what kind of started me down this track is analyzing the NAT Gateway myself by looking at VPC flow logs. Like, it's shocking that there isn't a better way to find that traffic.Corey: It's worse than that because VPC flow logs tell you where the traffic is going and in what volumes, sure, on an IP address and port basis, but okay, now you have a Kubernetes cluster that spans two availability zones. Okay, great. What is actually passing through that? So, you have one big application that just seems awfully chatty, you have multiple workloads running on the thing. What's the expensive thing talking back and forth? The only way that you can reliably get the answer to that I found is to talk to people about what those workloads are actually doing, and failing that you're going code spelunking.Ben: Yep. You're exactly right about that. In our case, it ended up being apparent because we have a set of subnets where only one particular project runs. And when I saw the source IP, I could immediately figure that part out. But if it's a K8s cluster in the private subnets, yeah, how are you going to find it out? You're going to have to ask everybody that has workloads running there.Corey: And we're talking about in some cases, millions of dollars a month. Yeah, it starts to feel a little bit predatory as far as how it's priced and the amount of work you have to put in to track this stuff down. I've done this a handful of times myself, and it's always painful unless you discover something pretty early on, like, oh, it's talking to S3 because that's pretty obvious when you see that. It's, yeah, flip switch and this entire engagement just paid for itself a hundred times over. Now, let's see what else we can discover.That is always one of those fun moments because, first, customers are super grateful to learn that, oh, my God, I flipped that switch. And I'm saving a whole bunch of money. Because it starts with gratitude. “Thank you so much. This is great.” And it doesn't take a whole lot of time for that to alchemize into anger of, “Wait. You mean, I've been being ridden like a pony for this long and no one bothered to mention that if I click a button, this whole thing just goes away?”And when you mention this to your AWS account team, like, they're solicitous, but they either have to present as, “I didn't know that existed either,” which is not a good look, or, “Yeah, you caught us,” which is worse. There's no positive story on this. It just feels like a tax on not knowing trivia about AWS. I think that's what really winds me up about it so much.Ben: Yeah, I think you're right on about that as well. My misunderstanding about the NAT pricing was data processing is additive to data transfer. I expected when I replaced NAT Gateway with NAT instance, that I would be substituting data transfer costs for NAT Gateway costs, NAT Gateway data processing costs. But in fact, NAT Gateway incurs both data processing and data transfer. NAT instances only incur data transfer costs. And so, this is a big difference between the two solutions.Not only that, but if you're in the same region, if you're egressing out of your say us-east-1 region and talking to another hosted service also within us-east-1—never leaving the AWS network—you don't actually even incur data transfer costs. So, if you're using a NAT Gateway, you're paying data processing.Corey: To be clear you do, but it is cross-AZ in most cases billed at one penny egressing, and on the other side, that hosted service generally pays one penny ingressing as well. Don't feel bad about that one. That was extraordinarily unclear and the only reason I know the answer to that is that I got tired of getting stonewalled by people that later turned out didn't know the answer, so I ran a series of experiments designed explicitly to find this out.Ben: Right. As opposed to the five cents to nine cents that is data transfer to the internet. Which, add that to data processing on a NAT Gateway and you're paying between thirteen-and-a-half cents to nine-and-a-half cents for every gigabyte egressed. And this is a phenomenal cost. And at any kind of volume, if you're doing terabytes to petabytes, this becomes a significant portion of your bill. And this is why people hate the NAT Gateway so much.Corey: I am going to short-circuit an angry comment I can already see coming on this where people are going to say, “Well, yes. But it's a multi-petabyte scale. Nobody's paying on-demand retail price.” And they're right. Most people who are transmitting that kind of data, have a specific discount rate applied to what they're doing that varies depending upon usage and use case.Sure, great. But I'm more concerned with the people who are sitting around dreaming up ideas for a company where I want to wind up doing some sort of streaming service. I talked to one of those companies very early on in my tenure as a consultant around the billing piece and they wanted me to check their napkin math because they thought that at their numbers when they wound up scaling up, if their projections were right, that they were going to be spending $65,000 a minute, and what did they not understand? And the answer was, well, you didn't understand this other thing, so it's going to be more than that, but no, you're directionally correct. So, that idea that started off on a napkin, of course, they didn't build it on top of AWS; they went elsewhere.And last time I checked, they'd raised well over a quarter-billion dollars in funding. So, that's a business that AWS would love to have on a variety of different levels, but they're never going to even be considered because by the time someone is at scale, they either have built this somewhere else or they went broke trying.Ben: Yep, absolutely. And we might just make the point there that while you can get discounts on data transfer, you really can't—or it's very rare—to get discounts on data processing for the NAT Gateway. So, any kind of savings you can get on data transfer would apply to a NAT instance solution, you know, saving you four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte inbound and outbound over the NAT Gateway equivalent solution. So, you're paying a lot for the benefit of a fully-managed service there. Very robust, nicely engineered fully-managed service as we've already acknowledged, but an extremely expensive solution for what it is, which is really just a proxy in the end. It doesn't add any value to you.Corey: The only way to make that more expensive would be to route it through something like Splunk or whatnot. And Splunk does an awful lot for what they charge per gigabyte, but it just feels like it's rent-seeking in some of the worst ways possible. And what I love about this is that you've solved the problem in a way that is open-source, you have already released it in Terraform code. I think one of the first to-dos on this for someone is going to be, okay now also make it CloudFormation and also make it CDK so you can drop it in however you want.And anyone can use this. I think the biggest mistake people might make in glancing at this is well, I'm looking at the hourly charge for the NAT Gateways and that's 32-and-a-half bucks a month and the instances that you recommend are hundreds of dollars a month for the big network-optimized stuff. Yeah, if you care about the hourly rate of either of those two things, this is not for you. That is not the problem that it solves. If you're an independent learner annoyed about the $30 charge you got for a Managed NAT Gateway, don't do this. This will only add to your billing concerns.Where it really shines is once you're at, I would say probably about ten terabytes a month, give or take, in Managed NAT Gateway data processing is where it starts to consider this. The breakeven is around six or so but there is value to not having to think about things. Once you get to that level of spend, though it's worth devoting a little bit of infrastructure time to something like this.Ben: Yeah, that's effectively correct. The total cost of running the solution, like, all-in, there's eight Elastic IPs, four NAT Gateways, if you're—say you're four zones; could be less if you're in fewer zones—like, n NAT Gateways, n NAT instances, depending on how many zones you're in, and I think that's about it. And I said right in the documentation, if any of those baseline fees are a material number for your use case, then this is probably not the right solution. Because we're talking about saving thousands of dollars. Any of these small numbers for NAT Gateway hourly costs, NAT instance hourly costs, that shouldn't be a factor, basically.Corey: Yeah, it's like when I used to worry about costing my customers a few tens of dollars in Cost Explorer or CloudWatch or request fees against S3 for their Cost and Usage Reports. It's yeah, that does actually have a cost, there's no real way around it, but look at the savings they're realizing by going through that. Yeah, they're not going to come back and complaining about their five-figure consulting engagement costing an additional $25 in AWS charges and then lowering it by a third. So, there's definitely a difference as far as how those things tend to be perceived. But it's easy to miss the big stuff when chasing after the little stuff like that.This is part of the problem I have with an awful lot of cost tooling out there. They completely ignore cost components like this and focus only on the things that are easy to query via API, of, oh, we're going to cost-optimize your Kubernetes cluster when they think about compute and RAM. And, okay, that's great, but you're completely ignoring all the data transfer because there's still no great way to get at that programmatically. And it really is missing the forest for the trees.Ben: I think this is key to any cost reduction project or program that you're undertaking. When you look at a bill, look for the biggest spend items first and work your way down from there, just because of the impact you can have. And that's exactly what I did in this project. I saw that ‘EC2 Other' slash NAT Gateway was the big item and I started brainstorming ways that we could go about addressing that. And now I have my next targets in mind now that we've reduced this cost to effectively… nothing, extremely low compared to what it was, we have other new line items on our bill that we can start optimizing. But in any cost project, start with the big things.Corey: You have come a long way around to answer a question I get asked a lot, which is, “How do I become a cloud economist?” And my answer is, you don't. It's something that happens to you. And it appears to be happening to you, too. My favorite part about the solution that you built, incidentally, is that it is being released under the auspices of your employer, Chime Financial, which is immune to being acquired by Amazon just to kill this thing and shut it up.Because Amazon already has something shitty called Chime. They don't need to wind up launching something else or acquiring something else and ruining it because they have a Slack competitor of sorts called Amazon Chime. There's no way they could acquire you [unintelligible 00:27:45] going to get lost in the hallways.Ben: Well, I have confidence that Chime will be a good steward of the project. Chime's goal and mission as a company is to help everyone achieve financial peace of mind and we take that really seriously. We even apply it to ourselves and that was kind of the impetus behind developing this in the first place. You mentioned earlier we have Terraform support already and you're exactly right. I'd love to have CDK, CloudFormation, Pulumi supports, and other kinds of contributions are more than welcome from the community.So, if anybody feels like participating, if they see a feature that's missing, let's make this project the best that it can be. I suspect we can save many companies, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And this really feels like the right direction to go in.Corey: This is easily a multi-billion dollar savings opportunity, globally.Ben: That's huge. I would be flabbergasted if that was the outcome of this.Corey: The hardest part is reaching these people and getting them on board with the idea of handling this. And again, I think there's a lot of opportunity for the project to evolve in the sense of different settings depending upon risk tolerance. I can easily see a scenario where in the event of a disruption to the NAT instance, it fails over to the Managed NAT Gateway, but fail back becomes manual so you don't have a flapping route table back and forth or a [hold 00:29:05] downtime or something like that. Because again, in that scenario, the failure mode is just well, you're paying four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte for a while until you wind up figuring out what's going on as opposed to the failure mode of you wind up disrupting connections on an ongoing basis, and for some workloads, that's not tenable. This is absolutely, for the common case, the right path forward.Ben: Absolutely. I think it's an enterprise-grade solution and the more knobs and dials that we add to tweak to make it more robust or adaptable to different kinds of use cases, the best outcome here would actually be that the entire solution becomes irrelevant because AWS fixes the NAT Gateway pricing. If that happens, I will consider the project a great success.Corey: I will be doing backflips like you wouldn't believe. I would sing their praises day in, day out. I'm not saying reduce it to nothing, even. I'm not saying it adds no value. I would change the way that it's priced because honestly, the fact that I can run an EC2 instance and be charged $0 on a per-gigabyte basis, yeah, I would pay a premium on an hourly charge based upon traffic volumes, but don't meter per gigabyte. That's where it breaks down.Ben: Absolutely. And why is it additive to data transfer, also? Like, I remember first starting to use VPC when it was launched and reading about the NAT instance requirement and thinking, “Wait a minute. I have to pay this extra management and hourly fee just so my private hosts could reach the internet? That seems kind of janky.”And Amazon established a norm here because Azure and GCP both have their own equivalent of this now. This is a business choice. This is not a technical choice. They could just run this under the hood and not charge anybody for it or build in the cost and it wouldn't be this thing we have to think about.Corey: I almost hate to say it, but Oracle Cloud does, for free.Ben: Do they?Corey: It can be done. This is a business decision. It is not a technical capability issue where well, it does incur cost to run these things. I understand that and I'm not asking for things for free. I very rarely say that this is overpriced when I'm talking about AWS billing issues. I'm talking about it being unpredictable, I'm talking about it being impossible to see in advance, but the fact that it costs too much money is rarely my complaint. In this case, it costs too much money. Make it cost less.Ben: If I'm not mistaken. GCPs equivalent solution is the exact same price. It's also four-and-a-half cents per gigabyte. So, that shows you that there's business games being played here. Like, Amazon could get ahead and do right by the customer by dropping this to a much more reasonable price.Corey: I really want to thank you both for taking the time to speak with me and building this glorious, glorious thing. Where can we find it? And where can we find you?Ben: alternat.cloud is going to be the place to visit. It's on Chime's GitHub, which will be released by the time this podcast comes out. As for me, if you want to connect, I'm on Twitter. @iamthewhaley is my handle. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn.Corey: Links to all of that will be in the podcast notes. Ben, thank you so much for your time and your hard work.Ben: This was fun. Thanks, Corey.Corey: Ben Whaley, staff software engineer at Chime Financial, and AWS Community Hero. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry rant of a comment that I will charge you not only four-and-a-half cents per word to read, but four-and-a-half cents to reply because I am experimenting myself with being a rent-seeking schmuck.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

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http://convocourses.com Full video on Youtube.com/convocourses Hey guys, this is Bruce and welcome to convo courses, podcasts. Every week. What I do is I talk to you guys about cyber security, mainly speaking on security compliance. And I'm opening this things up to questions. So if you have any questions during the course of this live session, feel free to ask 'em. This is the perfect time to interact with me. And if you didn't know, I'm the sole proprietor owner of convo courses.com where I got tons of free stuff. If you're interested in cyber security compliance in particular, lots of downloadables, lots of free stuff for you to check it out. You might not even be interested in cyber security, but outta, unless you try you, you must been hearing about it. It's a hot career path and let's get right into this. So what I wanted to talk about today, If somebody on TikTok said just another guy selling a book and yes, I am selling a book, but I'm also selling courses. I'm selling my time. But it, the thing is I've been doing this for years. , it's I've been putting free content out for years. My. Has something like 600 free videos where I'm putting people on how to get into cyber security, how to do cyber security compliance how to secure their system. All things, cyber security I've been talking about for free and you can still get this stuff's all out there. So if you're interested in this. The best place to follow me. If I can't, if you wanna get stuff for free, you wanna try it out or whatever, or get information is to go to YouTube. YouTube has hour long. Literally I do these every week. I've been doing hourly long videos for years, teaching people, just ask me questions and I'll just go ahead and speak for an hour straight about a topic. Yeah, I am I selling a book? Yes. On Amazon, I'm selling a risk management framework. I, this Audi, most of the people in this audience will not be interested in that book. I'm selling to a very niche group of people who are interested in this is people who are in cyber security, trying to make big money. Not everybody is willing to do, take the time to to learn this trade. And to get into this and they want that quick money, but this is not quick money. This is long term money that's gonna help you and your family for years. If you are interested in that, then you come to the right place, cuz I'm here to teach. And if you're here to learn then let's do this. Somebody said what up family? Somebody said any thoughts on IBM cybersecurity certificate on Corsera is really dope. Corsera if I'm not mistaken they're also doing the Google support it certification. So Coursera is incredible. Another one I would recommend is you to me. I've taken TMY myself, actually, TMY is incredible because it has a lot of entry level courses and stuff. IBM cyber security certification. My opinion on it is I really, this is the first time I've heard about it. That being said, one of the things that you wanna look into whenever you try to get a certification is how. How popular is that certification that matters to give you an example of why that matters is because there's a certification called the C and it's a certified ethical hacker cert certification. And it's got a lot of attraction, like HR departments, companies know what exactly what it is and what it does. It's for people who do pen testing it's for people who are looking at cyber threats. Cyber threat analysis, things like that. Now in the hacker community, if you talk to most hackers, people have been doing this for a while. People really know what they're doing. They hate that certification. The reason why is because the certification is a, not, I won't say it's a money grab, but it doesn't. It goes into a lot of the tools that you use for the trade, rather than the actual theory. And I having read through the books for C I would disagree with that. They treat you a lot of the fundamentals that it takes to learn the basics of hacking and goes a little bit deeper. So I would say it was from basic to intermediate.  But it's got a, an unfair shake in my opinion, from the hacker and the pen testing community, because it just doesn't go deep enough and they want it to be more hardcore. If you want something more hardcore, you wanna go to the SC P O S C P or Cali Linux, stuff like that. Those certifications have more hacker respect. What the point I'm trying to get at is C is a very marketable certification. If you have that certifi. You're looking at and a little bit of experience under your belt. You're looking at six figures, but that's because it's a popular certification. So IBM cyber security certification I'm saying is not super popular. I'm guessing, but let's take the guesswork out of it when I'm gonna do right now is I'm gonna go to, I'm gonna go to a. And I'm gonna show you what I'm talking about. As far as marketability of certifications, you wanna look at the marketability of a certification. Let's go to indeed.com. One of my favorite sites to go to for job searches. And I'm gonna show you, let me show you my screen real quick while I'm doing this. Somebody ask me what search do I have? I'll answer that in a second. While I'm doing this C I S P and Cap and a few other ones, but let me show you what I'm talking about. Oh man. You can not see that. Okay. I'll just walk you through it. Okay. So I've got a bunch of people watching, so I'm on indeed right here. And I'm gonna type in IBM what'd you say security certification. You said cyber security certification cyber. And this is what you wanna do with any kind of certification that you are trying to pursue. You wanna see the marketability of it? Cyber security, certifi. You can just go to any kind of job aggregator such as LinkedIn, indeed monster and just type it in. So it says there's no searches, but that's because it's only searching in my area of Colorado. Let's look at all the United States and let's see how many certifications how many people are looking for the certification. So I did a search here. And it's saying that there's 11 jobs looking for the IBM certification where that keyword came up and really it's not even it's keying in on certification security. It's not really finding the IBM certification, but let's take an equivalent certification. Let's say equivalent of cyber security certification. Let's say it's a security plus. Now watch this. I type in security plus comp Tia. In fact let's narrow it down. Comp Tia security plus certification. There are 9,000 jobs. That's what that says right there. Nine, 9,000 jobs for the comp Tia security plus, and look at the look at what they're paying. Now. This is for a junior ethical hacker, but that's not bad at. And it's getting you into ethical hacking, which is pretty good. It's I've. So my opinion about the IBM certification is doesn't have traction just yet. A lot of these vendors will try to create their own, and this is coming from somebody who has vendor level certifications. I'll get into what kind of certifications I have in a second, but vendor level certifications, some of 'em don't take off some of 'em don't they lose traction. And because it's the company, the organization doesn't market them effectively. And what they lack that some of the certification organizations have. A couple being ISACA, which has C I S a C I S M C risk and some of the others comp Tia, which has a plus certification network plus certification security plus certification and others. And then you have is I C ISC two squared, which has CS S P and a couple of other big time certifications. What these guys do right? Is they market the certification. They know who to talk to, to get in on these lists, the government lists to say, Hey, these are approved set of certifications. They market it so that other people have to take the cert. And then it becomes a requirement like they did with the C the marketing on C is incredible. Like they did a great job on the marketing aspect of it. So my opinion of the IBM cyber security certification, it doesn't have traction just. I would probably go for something like the sec security plus if you're trying to get in the field and make money. So that's my opinion about it. I hope that answers your question. That's a question from TikTok, by the way. Here's another question that I have from Floris floes leak. And it says, what kind of certifications do you have? Certifications that I have. Okay. I've got the C I S P that certification singlehandedly changed my life as a professional level certification from ISD to squared. I got it when it, not when it first came out, but shortly after it came out. So I have a pretty low number. They have a set of numbers. So I got mine in like 2006 or 2005 or something like that. And then I've got the ISC two cap, which is it's for a security compliance for N 800. I. I've had two different versions of the security plus one of which doesn't expire. Cuz I got it. Like when it first came out, I used to teach security plus comp Tia. I had the original network plus the original, a plus, which was one certification now is two. I have Microsoft C I've got, I had the CCNA, but that expired. I don't like, I don't, my, that knowledge has left me. If you don't speak a language for a while it's gone. I understand still the basics of, I, I could probably configure a router or something like that, but it will take me a minute. Then I've got a bunch of vendor level certifications. I've got one for arc site. I've got one for QS. I got one and I got a few other ones, and I'm not people call me a paper tiger or whatever, cuz I, I go out and get these certs and stuff. I normally, I would get the cert based on the job I'm in. If there's a job I need to do. And they need me to do learn this particular, this a certain thing. Then I'll go out and learn that. So that's why I have so many certifications. I got 'em outta necessity. I didn't get 'em because I was trying to get a bunch of certifications. It was all for me. It's outta necessity. I got other things to do with my time. , you know what I'm saying? Like the next certification I'm gonna get is probably gonna be a cloud based certification. Like I'll probably get that AWS. Cloud practitioner one coming up real soon because people keep asking me questions about cloud. I'm like, damn, I don't really, I'm not really deep on cloud, so  okay. Let me see. Jimmy says thanks for the breakdown, man. I really appreciate that. Hey man, no problem. No problem at all. Okay. So I wanted to take some have people call in, but I'm having, I don't have a lot of people joining me on YouTube, so I'll wait on. In the meantime, what I can do is I could take more questions and I can actually teach some stuff on a N 837. Or, you know what I think a better thing to do is to speak a little bit more on certifications since I got a lot of people asking questions about it. Okay. So certifications, I would recommend let's talk about that certifications. I would recommend I'm gonna talk about the Entry level intermediate to expert. Okay. Let's start with intermediate entry level certifications. So entry level certifications. I would highly recommend in this order. If you let's say you come in off the street, you get, you know anything about it or computers. I would recommend a plus certification. That was the first one I took. It was, it's a great introduction into the common body of knowledge that you need to know in order to troubleshoot. Systems and how to secure them as well as the networking aspect of computers. A plus certification is one of the best ones from comp Tia. So comp Tia, let me just show you what that site looks like. CompTIA. Another one I would recommend would be the Google support it certification. This is comp tier right here. It's one of the top certification. Organizations in the world, CompTIA, they got a plus they got network. Plus they've got cloud plus they've got a really good course curriculum that breaks down the basics of what you really need to know for this career field. So it's a really good starting point. I would say. And then another one I would recommend would be the Google. It support it, which a lot of people are getting jobs off of that for some reason. And then the other one I would highly recommend for entry level. If you've already taken the a plus, if you've already taken security plus stuff like that, ISS. Certification AWS cloud practitioner. This is this one's hot. Because Amazon, if you didn't know, owns a large percentage of the market share for cloud. So they're competing against Google. They're competing against, Oracles in there now, but the biggest competitors is Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has Azure, their Azure product. And then Google has their own cloud based products and the go. Of the world are, and other companies are starting to use their cloud services, but the ones that they use the most is Amazon. I believe like Netflix, Netflix uses Amazon cloud services and then other like large organizations multi-billion dollar trillion dollar organizations are using, or either they already have their own cloud service or they're using Amazon Google or Microsoft Azure. So those are the three entry level certifications that I would recommend. Intermediate let's say you're already an it person. You've got three years under your belt doing it. You, your work on help desk, you work as a customer support. What would I recommend? I would recommend for entry level or intermediate is to go for a professional level certification. That's what I would recommend. That's a CIS S. Top one, especially if you're doing cyber security, I would recommend if you're networking, then you want to go with either a CCNA security or a CCNP security. I think they have a CCNP cloud and a CCMP video and all kind of other CCMP. These are not easy certifications, but CCMP is from Cisco. It's one of the highest sought after certifications out there. It. It's gonna pay you a lot of money. That's why I'm saying that you should do it. And on top of that, you're gonna really know what you're doing because and then a, they, Cisco owns a lot of the market share for networking technology. The only other one that comes close is like Huawei, which is in China and is banned in the us and parts of Europe. Their products are, and Juniper and I think Palo Alto or something like that, that even come close to their market share, but Cisco's the best. And so that's why we recommend that's one of the, one of the few vendor level certs out. You could get by yourself. You can get that one cert by itself. And then that would be incredible. Like it would. It will butter your bread. It will. It's gonna pay your bills.  it's and then expert low level certifica. Oh, another one for intermediate would be there's red hat certifications that if you happen to be a red hat person and then there's Microsoft, if you, so once you get intermediate. Entry level is gonna be like basic stuff that you need to know. But once you get into intermediate territory or professional level territory, you have, you're going to drill down into one or two products. Like you're gonna be really good on one or two products. You're not gonna be a master of everything. So once you get to that level you're gonna wanna get a professional level cert in that field that you're in. If you happen to do Microsoft, you're gonna get I don't know what they're calling it now. MCs. MCSE. Is that still valid?  I haven't done Microsoft in a while, so I might be wrong. Let me see CSE and correct me if I'm wrong, guys, if I'm okay. Cuz I know that they changed it recently. Yes. Still MCSE. Okay. They have different. Okay. It's definitely evolved quite a bit. MCSE and MCSA yeah, that's a professional level cert as well. And then Cisco has CCMP so you'd wanna go deeper into whatever product that, once you get to the professional level, then at the expert level. That's very specialized typically. So an expert level cert would be would be a C, C I E. And a lot of people, most people don't have it. It's like the equivalent of a PhD. Not many people get those because they're super, super hard. And it takes a toll outta your life. It's serious. So C I E if you're in, if you're in networking, another one would be. I think there's an there's one in hacking called the O S C E, which is super high level. I don't know much about it. I just know it's a high level expert level certification. And then there's GS E which also not many people have, cuz it's just super expensive and super hard to get. So you've got entry level certifications, which are usually called like core CompTIA calls 'em core. They're. Entry level or associate, then you've got professional level certifications. They're called the usually professional level certifications or intermediate certifications. And then you got expert level certifications. What do you think about the IBM certification on a program on KRS Coria? So I already answered this one, but your quick answer would be that I don't think it's a very popular certification. I'm not trying to hate on IBM certification. Now, if you, if it happens to be your first certification, it just add a caveat to it. If it happens to be your first certification, go for it. If it's your first certification, you're trying to learn it and they're giving it out for free. It won't hurt to go ahead and try it. But as far as if you got the certification, would it be marketable? I don't know how marketable it's gonna be like a security plus will be way more marketable. I'm just telling you guys honestly like a, that IBM certification is not on any, it's not on the D O D approved list. It's not, I just heard about it on TikTok. It must be. They're giving it out for free because more than one person has asked me about it. If you happen to be learning this, go for it. If you're like learning this from scratch, go for it, do it. But if you wanna level up at some point, take that one and then do the security plus security. Plus once you get that certification under your belt, it's marketable. Like you could put it on your resume. And get a job. So I don't know if you can do the same with IBM cyber security. I'm not trying to hate on it or anything, but go, I'm saying, go for it. IBM is dope. I just putting IBM actually IBM itself is a key word that you could put on your resume. So IBM itself would be good to put on your resume. IBM security program. I'm sure it, it would make you a little bit more marketable than you are. If you don't already have it on there. That's my 2 cents on it. Cisco does have some free search too. I'm not sure if they're already covered. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Cisco has a C E N T, which is an entry level certification. I think that one's pretty good. And then. Above the CC E and T you have a CCNA and then above CCNA, you have specializations of CCNA, and then you have a CC N P, which is a professional level cert, which goes pretty deep on different technologies. Yeah that's the whole thing then CC I E is like expert level, top tier type certification. I've known a few people who have the C I E, but they're pretty rares. I've known a lot more people who have the CCMP or a CCNA as matter of fact, I've had a CCNA before. Okay. Let me see here. Let me see if I got any more questions or stuff I want to talk about. Okay. Here's one. I wanted to talk about the pros and cons of cybersecurity. If you guys are interested in joining a call that I have right now on YouTube, feel free to jump on. This broadcast on YouTube on just go to YouTube type in combo courses. You'll see me there. And then I will a give you a link if you're interested in this. And if not, that's cool. Let me see, I'm gonna talk to you guys about the pros and cons of it. For, I get a lot of people who are contacting me, who are new to this and who want to get in this field. And I feel like one of the questions they should ask is what are the pros and cons of this, especially if they happen to. A nurse or a teacher or some other profession trying to get in this security field in this field as a cyber security person or it person, what are the pros and cons of this and the pros and cons of it really depends on, I think, on where you're coming from. If you happen to be in the service based industry and you're dealing with a client, a lot of clients and you happen to not to hate to. Love dealing with people. You happen to be an extrovert. You love interacting with people, and it's just boring where you don't have anybody to talk to makes the day go by faster. If you have somebody to talk to then one of the negative things about can be with it is that you sometimes you're isolated. Sometimes your. Sometimes a job makes it so that you're actually isolated to where, for example when I was a network engineer, we just, sometimes we'd be in the com closet, the computer, the communications closet hooking up wires all day. And I wouldn't see a person. I wouldn't see a human for six hours a day, like four hours. I'd be in this computer room, this cold computer room. With no windows fixing a router, just trying to, trying to fix the iOS on a router and backing the router up and stuff like that. And it would take all day cuz it be something wrong with it. For whatever reason, it's not connecting to the next rest of the network. I'm connecting a bunch of systems to it. Or I'm trying to figure out which wire's not working or. Or I'm trying to turn on port security on a bunch of ports or something on a switch. Like I'd just be messing tinkering with this thing for hours. If you happen to be an extrovert, that can be a negative thing. If you really like interacting with people, that's one of the negative things about it, but. It really depends, cuz not all jobs are like that. It could be a positive thing if you happen to be an introvert, like you don't really want be in the industry, the service industry, for example, you just don't really want to talk to people you don't wanna really deal with this kind of stuff. Then it's perfect for you cuz you'll be in locked in a closet programming or something all day long  so it really depends on what you wanna do? Pros and cons of it. Let me think of some other pros and cons of it. And if you guys happen to be in it, I wanna ask you guys, what are the pros and cons of being in information technology? What are the good things about in being in information technology and what are some of the bad things about being in information technology, please chime in. Feel free to talk to me about it. I'll read your comment on there, but another one good thing I would say. It is that it, it pays pretty good. Like even if you start off entry level and you're not getting paid really good after about a year, if you put that stuff on your resume, you work your resume, you can very quickly escalate to another level. And a lot of career paths don't have that kind, that level of they don't have that kind of progression built into the structure. Like I know that my I've got a few friends and family who were nurses. Who were doing nursing or they were CNAs or something like that. And I noticed their progression's a lot harder. Like it's really hard to go from say a certified nursing assistant to a nurse. There's a huge gap in pay and skillset. And there's just this huge gap between those two things you would think it's close. It's not close at all. Like a certified nursing assistant. Is a huge gap. Whereas in it, you can quickly progress one like one skill at a time and make a little bit more money, little bit more money, little bit more money. So that's one of the pros and DG five, one says remote working is a pro. Oh my Lord. That's a great one. That's a great point, man. Thank you for bringing that up. Remote work is one of the. Things about it, the it field in my personal opinion because a lot of people don't have that option. I think if you're a nurse, you'd be a traveling nurse and you can have remote work and then, but you're still traveling. You're still going to site and stuff like that. But with it, you can truly be remote, and there's networking jobs that remote, there's Infrastructure jobs that are remote there's cyber security jobs that are remote there's computer consulting jobs that are remote. I, that was my last position. There's cyber security that are remote risk assessments that are remote customer service, technical that are that's remote. There's so many remote positions and that's one of the great things about doing remote. Let me see. So somebody said somebody said, do you need computer science degree to start no. To do in cyber security or in it? No you don't need you don't need to have a degree to get into. To get into it. So the caveat to that is that I'm gonna prove it to you. I'm gonna show you some I'm gonna actually prove to and show you what exactly what I'm saying is true. So do you need that kind of those kind of computer? So first of all, let's break this down. A computer science degree. It typically the courses typically focus on software engineering. Okay. Computer science. I don't even have a computer science degree and I've been doing it for 20 years and I'm making six figures working from home. Okay. I have a bachelor's degree in information technology, but I know people who have a bachelor's degree in information systems. I know people who had math degrees, actually I know people with double's that's a electrical engineer who are working in this field as cyber security. So typically. If there are, if they are looking for a degree, you don't even have to have a computer science degree or a cyber security degree. You just need something in stem, which is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. If you have that with a little bit of experience, you can get, you can get in there and make really good money. Now that being said, There are jobs that don't require a degree at all. Now let me qualify that. So they do expect you to either travel a lot or learn very quickly, or have a G E D high school equivalent or. Be working on a degree or have a certification or have a certain skill set. They usually want you to have something without a degree. And it's probably not gonna pay as much. That being said, two of my mentors who taught me all kinds of stuff did not have a degree. And they were the highest paid guys in the room at any given time, but they were brilliant. They were brilliant. They were coming outta the military with three, four years of experience. They were the main person everybody was relying on. So I'm just trying to qualify this, but now let me show you where jobs, where you don't need a degree working in it. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna go to a, I'm gonna go to a Job search engine. And I'm gonna show you how you can find these jobs where it doesn't need a degree. Now it does need you to know you gotta do the work. They're gonna expect you to know exactly what you're doing.  So you gotta actually have some knowledge of it. I'm not saying you can just walk in off the street. This is not sweeping floors. You know what I mean? Like you have to know some stuff to come in to do this. So if you wanna follow along, let me just explain to you what I'm doing. Cause I've got people listening in on this as well. So what I'm doing is I just went to indeed dot. Okay. And I do job search. I remove the state. You gotta remove the state. Because sometimes it'll come up with your local state. If you happen, you can also do this on LinkedIn and go to the search results. And then what you're gonna type in is entry level entry level it, okay. That's all I'm typing in entry level it and. It'll come up with a bunch of stuff. Now we've got all kinds. Okay. Here's one help desk technician. What you're gonna do is you're gonna go down this list and look for positions that don't require a degree. So you'll go to the requirements. You'll go to each one of these jobs. I clicked on one called help desk technician. And it's in it's remote job in Missouri and there's, here's their requirements. They said proven experience with help desk and customer service role customer. Customer oriented in difficult situations. Tech savvy must be able to be a part of a team be able to speak proficiency in English communication skills and it's a 40,000 to 60,000 per year job. They're not saying anything about a degree. This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. And what all I did was typed in entry level. It that's, this is the kind of jobs you can get. You don't actually need a degree. And that's another positive thing about it is that you, it's. So in demand that a lot of times you don't actually need a degree, but you're gonna have to look for those jobs. And in addition You you're gonna have to know what you're doing because you saw that what they wanted you to have was a proficiency in actually fixing the computers. And they're looking for you to already have one to two, two to three years. Actually they're saying here in a position that said, or one year experience. For entry level positions, and there's all kinds of positions like this that you can find, but you gotta know what you're doing. You gotta do your due diligence. And that's why I always tell people, Hey, go for an a plus certification, cuz it's gonna break down the fundamentals of what you really need to get into this field, to get in an entry level position, just like this. All right. I've got some people who are joining me on YouTube. Let me just read a couple of these questions here. Somebody said Tony said. Thanks Tony for the comment he says I work in cyber security and I have a criminal justice degree. I have a criminal justice degree. I have a C I S P. That's awesome. That's incredible. Tony, you should are you actually working in the field right now? Do you have a job in information technology and what's the status of that? Is it doing pretty good? I would be really interested in this. When I was in the military, I worked as a. As a security forces member, where I had associate's degree in criminal justice. And I was like, man, I don't wanna get out and be a police officer. This is, it was a tough job. Like it was not an easy job, mad respect to police officers, cuz that's a thankless job where your customers. Hate your guts. and you're dealing with the worst parts of society. A lot of times you're going and you're going in an and. Talking to people on their worst day of their life. And so they're not usually in their best frame of mind. It's a hard, it's a hard job, I know all the stuff going on with police officers today, and I'm not at any, at all, trying to justify some of the bad police officers that are out there cuz there's there's like right now, this is the epidemic and the police department's defend these guys. I'm not saying that stuff is good. Like with some of the stuff that's happening, it's good at all. When I was in, they, when I was in the military, they, if you slipped up at all, they weren't did not have your back. You were, they threw you right under the bus. Like you better you were held to a higher standard. And that's how I think police officers, the whole industry should be, but it's not, that's not what's happening. That being said, mad respect to that profession because it's very difficult and not everybody can do that. And I wish they would stop putting people in those positions that don't, that shouldn't be police officers cuz that's what's happening. Okay. Tony says I'm actually a cyber security manager at oh KPMG. That's one of the top big four. That's one of the big four, one of the top. If I'm not mistaken, that's one of the top accounting firms in the us. There's four there's de. There's ston young there's P KPMG. And then there's one more. I can't remember what the other one is. If you guys can remember what it is, please chime in. He says he acts as a cyber security manager at the okay. That's awesome, man. I do. I work in GRC work. So what kind of things do you guys do? Do you guys. So that means you're in the financial sector. Do you guys have a system security plan where is that a, it's a package where you put all the security controls into one package and then you get the system authorized. I'm sure you guys have risk assessments. You guys have things like continuous monitoring. You guys have things like, but do you guys have like a system security plan where it's. All of the documentation for all the controls are put in one place in a database. And that's shared out to the organization for some sort of approval with your C level execs and for the agency to approve that system. I'm very curious that you got, if you guys have something like that, do you guys also use Sarbanes Oxley? That's a, if you didn't know, that's a security compliance set of rules. That banks, financial institutions, investing institutions use to make sure that the organization's doing what they're supposed to do. I'm very curious about that, Tony. And while you're answering that one, let me see somebody else. Ask me another question. They said anyone trying to get into cyber and it. Should get in the help desk. That's yeah. That's definitely a big step up. It's a great way to learn the foundation that you need to get ahead. Oh man. SS that's some great advice. Great advice. Okay. So while I'm waiting on Tony to respond, I think I'm gonna go to assess this comment. So you work in KPMG. And then you said you work in GRC. Okay. I don't know if Tony's gonna respond. So let me just go to SS. So SS says anyone trying to get into cyber and it should get into help desk. It's a great way to learn foundations. It needed to get ahead. Absolutely. Another thing I would add to that is that if you do help desk for some time to help desk, okay. So there's a lot of different names for help desk. You've got customer support, technical customer support. You've got field tech, one field tech two, you've got a lot of different names for a help desk person, but essentially it's the first line of defense. Outside the user themselves, the first line to defense in the organization, the first person somebody calls. When their computer is not working properly or it needs to be updated and something went wrong or they need a backup, a quick backup of a desktop or a laptop or something like that. Or they need to reconfigure their laptop or re-image the laptop or something. That's the, when they call the number, it goes to help desk. That's the first person that they're contacting. It really is great for your resume because it's gonna give you. Like one, two years of experience where you actually get exposure to networking, you get experience with a little bit of a little bit of cloud technology. If they have that in environ environment, you get a little bit of, you might even get to touch on servers, some net routers and cyber security, of course. So you just gotta put all that stuff on your resume. So that after about a year of work with that, Being on the help desk being on the front lines of that organization, that you can go ahead and level up after about a year. So yeah, a help desk was my actual first position on the job training. It was. That was incredible. Like that experience I don't take it for granted. Like when I was there, I was just wanting to jump into routers or do firewalls or something like that, something specialized, but that foundational knowledge and skillset that I got of troubleshooting. And trying to figure out basic problems on those computers in a production environment, that experience, and that exposure allowed me to get into things like do deeper dives into things like networking. Cuz I did network engineering for a while. It allowed me to do deeper dives into. Learning to build a software in a real environment, like how to, how not to develop software  in different environments, like webpages and stuff and web applications and things like that. We didn't have that many back then, but from time to time we had to touch those. So those are some of the stuff that I learned on the help desk. I would SS I would definitely agree with you on. All right. I've been talking for a little bit. I really wanted to test out I'm on this new thing where I can actually have people call in. I'm gonna keep using this until I can get people to call in and add their 2 cents on. On things like cyber security and security compliance, maybe next week, we'll do this again and then have people call in. But if you're interested in calling in at some point give me your email and then I'll let you call in and I'll let you speak. On all this stuff. And but for today, I think that's about it. Thank you guys so much for your questions. Thank you for your comments. Thanks, SS. Thanks Tony. And all the people on TikTok. Wow. There's a lot of interaction on TikTok with just a very few people who've been follow me. So thank you guys for that, but I'm gonna close this thing out. Thank you so much. Let's close out TikTok first in the live show. And then I was also live on the podcast that's over and thanks so much once again, as always. Thank you so much for joining me on YouTube. Thanks for your questions. I'm outta here.

Main Headline: This is something that is overlooked but Shopify has a very in-depth set of tools and resources to help your e-commerce brand get to the next level. Not only do they share e-commerce success stories but they show trending products and marketing tipsCHECK OUT SHOPIFY LEARNING RESOURCESSub Headline: Nike makes a concept store in Seoul, Korea which includes augmented reality tech and customizable backdrops for content creationSub Headline: Amazon is both housing third-party sellers to sell on its platform and a seller itself with its private labeled brand. Amazon Basics products have been feared to outshow other branded products from other sellers. Because Amazon has all the data in regard to all the transactions, they know whether or not it will be a better idea to create a private labeled brand to compete with their customers and give themselves the advantage by pushing their products in the eyes of more consumers. Reports say that this is not the case but others have speculated otherwise,

So many Amazon sellers face the problems that come from wholesalers and distributors trying to resell their products on Amazon. Jessica Beck is the Project & Inventory manager at Grandpa Beck Games and has dealt with these same issues. Jessica discusses her processes to set up the right agreements with distributors, contact unauthorized resellers, and how to protect your listing's buy box.Takeaways: When you begin selling through wholesale distributors, you need to make sure to control the market to avoid competing with them on Amazon thereby driving the price down. You need to work with your distributors from the start to avoid this situation. If your distributors don't respect the agreement they have with you not to resell your products on Amazon, you need to stop distributing with them. If you find other sellers on Amazon that have your product listed in large quantities, contact them politely to find out where they received the stock from so you can cut off the source. At scale, you need to monitor your buy box!If you know that unauthorized sellers are trying to sell counterfeits of your products on Amazon, file an IP infringement with Amazon Brand Registry. Amazon will almost immediately throw the seller out, so it can protect the consumer.Amazon as a platform offers incredible opportunities to smaller companies to grow a brand and scale their market. While FBM offers greater control over your inventory, as your business grows, the cost savings and efficiency of FBA become more and more enticing. Because Amazon is so complex and frequently makes massive changes, for business owners, it's often better to outsource things like Amazon PPC ads and listing creation to companies that are experts on the subject.Quote of the Show:“Fulfilling through Amazon for us has been a million percent worth it at the scale that we're at now” - Jessica BeckLinks:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-beck-07bb74211/ Company website: https://www.grandpabecksgames.com/ Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/s?me=A3T0HXZK4MID3M&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER Shout Outs:FBLAWays to Tune In:Apple Podcast (Leave a Review)iHeart RadioPodchaser (Leave a Review)Amazon MusicAudibleSpotifyGoogle PodcastStitcherYouTube

A little while ago, I asked you guys to submit your top questions regarding bundling, and on this week's episode, I'm answering the ten most commonly asked of them. First up, a lot of you want to know how to start bundling when you already have wholesale accounts, and I advise that the very first thing you want to do, whether you have accounts or not, is your research. Open up your catalogs and get familiar with what's out there, what's available, and what products are bundleable (because not all of them are). Next, you asked about GTIN exemptions (aka UPC codes/ISBN numbers/EANs), and I explain that you don't need a GTIN for custom bundles, so long as you're not using branded products, and why that means you should steer clear of major brands. Our third question is on how to handle branded packaging, which I recommend having, both to meet Amazon's standards and so that your items arrive safely with your customer. I also have some tips on how to create affordable packaging. Then you wanted to know about whether it's possible to be successful in a niche you're passionate about—it is, in fact, it's much easier to be successful in an area you're familiar with—and if it's a good idea to order from separate vendors—yes, I recommend never relying on just one vendor for an entire bundle. Question number six asked how much money it takes to create bundles, and my answer is that it varies—you can put together a five-dollar bundle from the Dollar Store or spend a thousand bucks at a high-end store—and what you really have to spend is time, not money. You also wanted to know what kind of ROI someone new to bundling should be looking for, to which I always respond, go for at least 100% of what you're selling and use the rule of three to figure out your costs and profit. Next, some people wanted to know how many bundles are sufficient for an initial test run, and I advise starting with at least six, but preferably ten or twelve to make sure Amazon doesn't mark you as having low stock. And then we have a great question about how customers find your bundles on Amazon, so I explain the various ways customers discover your products and how carefully naming your bundle can improve its search visibility. And the tenth and final question is about whether making up your own bundles is the only way to be successful. To which I say no, it's not the only way, but it is the best way because—if you do it properly like I teach with the wholesale bundle system—you can eliminate your competition by carving out your own little piece of the marketplace that no one else can occupy. You can chat more with the Amazon Files and Mommy Income community by joining our Facebook group with today's codeword QUESTIONS, where you can learn more about bundling, ask questions, and participate in the conversation with other sellers. And if you're ready to take your business to a whole new level, visit MommyIncome.com/Coach to schedule your one-on-one coaching call today. This week on the Amazon Files: Wholesale bundles 3.0 How to start bundling when you already have wholesale accounts GTIN exemptions How to package bundles when branding is required Can you be successful in a niche you're passionate about? Using multiple separate vendors for bundles How much money does it take to create bundles? Kristin's suggested ROI for those new to bundling How many bundles are necessary for an initial test run? How do customers find your bundle? Is making up your own bundles the only way to be successful? “We need clarity to move forward. We need to be able to know that what we're doing is right, what we're doing is correct, that we're on the right track, and that we're moving in the right direction.” - Kristin Ostrander Quotes: “First and foremost, there's a step before having wholesale accounts. You could have a thousand wholesale accounts, but that doesn't matter if you don't do the work to do the research.” “The best way to create a bundle is to solve a problem or meet a need for the customer. That means you have to know the customer, and you have to know what their problems are and what their needs are, and how you can meet them with product. The best way to do that is to look for categories of products or niches or subject matter that you are familiar with.” “It's not your typical widget selling, look at the numbers, decide it's going to sell or not sell at a certain volume and then move on. It takes a lot more thinking ahead of time to create bundles, but once you do, there's no competition. They're second to none.” “Amazon gives you reasons why you can get a GTIN exemption, and one of the number one reasons you can get a GTIN exemption is if it's a custom bundle, which is what you guys are creating.” “You're not going to go to KitchenAid and say, ‘Hey, can you give me a UPC code to use so I can bundle your stuff together on Amazon?' They'll literally laugh at you.” “Steering clear of these major brands that have restrictions like that are going to be your best bet. And never, and I mean never, never try to put something in a bundle that's on a restricted list. They will eventually find it, and they will eventually kick you off, so do not do that.” “You can't just put a sticker on a box and call it your box. Amazon wants you to have as close as possible to retail packaging as you can get.” “I actually recommend you use multiple and separate vendors for your items. Why? Because sometimes, one vendor doesn't carry all the products that you want to have in your bundle. Number two, it's harder for your competition to try to copy all of the things.” “Overexplaining is better than undoing a problem that could be very costly if it's made.” “You can even start wholesale for less than $300 with no minimum orders, like, by tomorrow. People have these ideas that this has to be super expensive and costly. And is it time-consuming in the beginning? Absolutely. Yes. I'm not gonna lie and tell you it's not time-consuming. But everything in business is time-consuming.” “Pick how you want to spend your time because you're going to spend time. So if you'd rather do it in your PJs, with your laptop in front of your favorite movie while you're looking for wholesale suppliers, or you'd rather, you know, put on your boots and go outside and go from store to store to try to get retail arbitrage bundles, the choice is yours. But you're still going to spend time, it's just how you want to spend that time.” “I would suggest with a whole-case pack of something trying out like twelve or so. Why? Because Amazon wants you to have some stock, they consider anything less than that like low stock.” “Calling your bundle something is really, really important because that's how people are going to be looking it up. And the way you find those items is finding what those keywords are and what the potential customer would type that in. I use MerchantWords to look at what are the top searches, keyword phrases for those attributes, all those types of things.” “You can be successful by looking at other people's products and listing under their products. But creating your own means that you're carving out your little piece of the marketplace that nobody else can copy, that no one else can make, that nobody else can go that way because you did all the work.” “Is making up your own bundles the best way to be successful? Yes. Can you be successful other ways? Absolutely. But that is the way to where you're not worrying. I don't have to go in and change my prices on my bundles, like ever. Because I set the price because I'm the only one selling that item, that bundle, so I don't have to mess with price. I don't have to worry about that kind of stuff.” “I buy items and work with vendors that do not care what I do with the products after that. So whether I bundle them or I list them on Amazon, or I sell them in eight-packs or two-packs or nothing, they don't care. They make their money by doing business with me wholesale. And they say whatever you do with our products after this, we don't care.” “Walmart plays a volume game, they sell stuff dirt cheap, and they make a couple pennies on everything. But they sell millions of products to millions of people every single day. As bundlers, we build our profit in our margin rather than on the volume. So I want to make at least ten dollars per bundle that I'm selling. Otherwise, it doesn't feel like it's worth it.” Related Content: 2022 Workshops - Coupon code: workshop50 Wholesale Bundle System Email questions Learn With Us Coaching The Amazon Files Hub Sticker Mule – $10 off with this link Grow Your Amazon Business! Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of The Amazon Files, the show to help Amazon sellers along their business journey one step at a time with Amazon expert and your host, Kristin Ostrander. If you enjoyed this episode, head over to Apple Podcasts, subscribe to the show, and leave us your honest review. Don't forget to share your favorite episodes with your friends on social media! Use the codeword QUESTIONS to join us on Facebook. Each week, Kristin hosts a live discussion on how to grow your Amazon business. Don't forget to check out our website and subscribe to our mailing list for even more resources.

There are new tools coming from Amazon all the time and some of them go right over the heads of many sellers. Michael Yanez is providing amazing tips for using the new tools like Amazon Attribution and the Brand Referral Program so you can maximize the benefits your brands can get from them. You'll learn how to increase your traffic while increasing your ROAS, how to navigate the changes to FBA warehouse limits, and how to get started as an Amazon seller.Takeaways:Amazon Attribution is a newer tool from Amazon which allows you to create product links that can track the source of the traffic and the conversion rate of those links. To access this tool, you will need to have Brand Registry set up.The Amazon algorithm loves external traffic to a product page and will provide beneficial treatment to the ads and listings of brands that are bringing that kind of external traffic to Amazon.The new Brand Referral Program from Amazon will give sellers a credit of up to 15% on their Amazon Referral fees for any external traffic that leads to a conversion. While package inserts can be a great way to keep customers coming back to your store, you have to be very careful with how you write them. If Amazon decides the message sounds like quid pro quo, they will suspend the Seller's account.For existing companies that are used to selling pallets of products to traditional retail companies, the hardest part of switching to Amazon is the need to ship small parcels in non-standardized quantities that depend on the daily demand. Because Amazon has severely limited FBA warehouse space, it's worth it for sellers to cut down on the number of SKUs they have and really focus on selling and fulfilling the high-performing products through FBA.There are so many nuances to selling on Amazon that finding success is near impossible if you are trying to learn everything about it on the fly. Sellers can do permanent harm to their brands if they don't have an expert helping to guide them.Quote of the Show:“If you're not simultaneously launching on Amazon as direct to consumer, I personally feel that you're leaving a lot of business on the table” - Michael YanezLinks:Email: myanez@kartsmartr.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelyanez/Company website: https://www.kartsmartr.com/Ways to Tune In:Amazon MusicAudibleApple PodcastSpotifyGoogle PodcastStitcherYouTube: https://youtu.be/96z0-S31xb0

When trying to monetize a blog, affiliate marketing is one of the fastest ways to start making money from your site. Affiliate marketing is selling other people's products or services in exchange for a commission on the sale. For more on the basics of affiliate marketing, check out this post. As you get started with using your blog to make recommendations to others, there are a couple of terms you need to know. Affiliate Program vs Affiliate Network There are typically 2 types of options for affiliate marketers. Affiliate programs and affiliate networks.  An affiliate program is when a company manages its own affiliate recruitment, tracking, and payouts. Some large companies, like Amazon, do this. However, this type of affiliate marketing is more commonly used by small businesses and solopreneurs, like Side Hustle Teachers. On the other hand, an affiliate network is a company that manages the affiliate programs for multiple organizations. The networks act as an intermediary and filter for their merchants, as well as managing all the link tracking and payouts. With networks there is often a secondary layer of applying because you will have to apply for the network, then again to each merchant within the network you'd like partner with.   So with that in mind, let's dig in to the 5 affiliate programs or networks all new bloggers should join. 1. Amazon Affiliate Program Amazon is one of the oldest and largest affiliate programs on the web. Because Amazon is so ubiquitous in our 21st century lives, it makes sense for bloggers to join this program. To join, simply click here and then the sign up button. If you already have an Amazon account, you can sign in using that information. If you don't, or you want to keep your personal and affiliate account separate, create a new account. Honestly, part of the benefit of using an affiliate program like Amazon is the ease of use, so I recommend using your existing account, if you have one. Once approved, a gray bar will appear at the top of the screen when you sign into Amazon. There you can check your earnings and easily get affiliate links to share on your blog. Amazon cookies last for 24 hours and apply to anything purchased, whether it was the product you suggested or not. So, if a reader follows a link to a $3 product, but ends up buying a $600 product, you get the affiliate commission on the entire sale. I can tell you from experience! Pros: Amazon sells literally billions of products, so if you want to recommend something… it's probably on Amazon The name Amazon is well known and people feel secure buying from them Easy, free signup Cons: Relatively low commission rates Bank or check payouts only, no PayPal Short cookie life of 24 hours 2. ShareASale Affiliate Program   ShareASale is an affiliate network with more than 16,000 merchants that you can recommend to your readers, and it's wildly popular among bloggers. To join, click here to create an account. Follow the steps provided and then search for merchants you'd like to promote. ShareASale tends to work with small-to-medium businesses, so while you won't find Fortune 500 companies on this platform, there are lots of smaller, highly niched merchants to choose from. Once accepted, you will need to search ShareASale's database and apply separately for each merchant you want to be an affiliate for.  Pros: High acceptance rate for merchants Detailed analytics on each merchant on the platform Great user support for those just getting started Cons: Payout threshold of $50 means it takes longer to get paid Limited links available for each merchant 3. Impact Affiliate Program Like ShareASale, Impact is an affiliate network that was formed by former employees of other affiliate networks, and is quickly becoming a favorite for anyone looking to get started in affiliate marketing. To join, click here. The process to join takes a bit longer than it does on other platforms, but once you're in, getting accepted to a merchant's affiliate program is less cumbersome.  Impact, formerly called Impact Radius, includes many large companies like Best Buy and Home Depot, which is great for building trust with potential buyers. Again, since Impact is an affiliate network, you will need to apply separately for each merchant. When you first join, you may not be eligible to apply for larger merchants, but as you earn commissions, more will open up. Pros: Many large companies work with Impact  $25 payout threshold so you get paid faster Excellent reporting and analytics to track your progress Cons: Many of the larger, more well known merchants are not available to new affiliates Platform navigation is not intuitive 4. Commission Junction Affiliate Program Also known as CJ Affiliate, Commission Junction is another well-established affiliate network that can connect bloggers to numerous companies and products. To join, click here and select “publisher” to let CJ Affiliates know you are a blogger. The application process is relatively straight-forward, however, to become an affiliate (or publisher) you have to apply for each merchant's (advertiser) program separately. CJ makes it easy to find companies that are related to your business by allowing you to search by niche, keyword, or specific business name. When you find a company you'd like to work with, complete their application process. Some will respond instantly, some review each application manually, so it takes a few days, others will never respond. Pros: Well-known, trusted companies are part of CJ Affiliates They serve just about every niche Cons: You have to apply for each company's affiliate program separately, and some are quick tricky to get into Accounts can be cut off for low or no sales Difficult to track payouts for each advertiser 5. Your Personal Choice I know, I know. Insert eyeroll, here, right? But the fact is, the most successful way to make money from any affiliate program is to recommend products or services that are highly specific to your niche and something you use and recommend. To find these programs think about what you use to make life easier, automate tasks, make life more enjoyable, or that are must haves for people in your niche. Go to the websites of those products or services you want to recommend and scroll all the way down to the footer. If they offer a public affiliate program, there will likely be a link to click and register. (This link will often lead to a larger affiliate network, like those we've already discussed… but not always.) If there's no affiliate program available on their website, and it's a product or service you know you want to recommend, reach out to the company or entrepreneur directly and ask. Tell them you love what they do and recommend it to everyone you know. Mention you're starting a blog and would love to partner together to promote their product/service. Pros: Highly niched affiliate programs are less likely to have major competition Your audience is primed to buy these products or services, so sales are often stronger than more general products Working with smaller businesses can often lead to other business partnerships Cons: Not everyone you ask is going to be open to an affiliate relationship Private agreements can be harder to track You're responsible for your own contracts, terms, etc. Putting it All Together There are a gajillion affiliate marketing options out there, and honestly, you can't really go wrong with any of them. In fact, I suggest you join multiple affiliate programs and networks as you learn about how it works.  You will find that some merchants work with more than one network and then you can decide which network fits your goals best. 3 Final Tips: When you join an affiliate network take the time to fill in your profile completely. This will give you the best chance of being accepted to merchants you apply to and help merchants find and reach out to you. Only recommend products or services you truly find useful. Your audience needs to trust that when you tell them to invest in something, it's going to be good. Once that trust is broken, it's hard to get it back. Always disclose that you're an affiliate. This includes affiliate links you share on your blog, in emails, and on social media. Ready to take the next step? Get started with my new free mini-course, the 5-Day Content Challenge. Come up with 6 months worth of post ideas to share your affiliate links in just 20-minutes a day! Enroll for free here!

Maju Kuruvilla is the CTO and COO of Bolt, a startup that offers quick online checkout technology to retailers. Previously, he was VP and GM at Amazon Global Mile, in charge of Amazon’s global logistics and Amazon Prime fulfillment operations amongst other things.Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google PodcastsHighlights00:30 - What does a VP at Amazon even do? The day-to-day experience of a VP/GM at Amazon. I think I’ve asked enough people this question that I finally have a vague sense of what these engineering leaders do (I think).04:00 - Managing global logistics in one of the world’s largest logistics companies in the middle of a pandemic09:00 - Shipping software quickly when you’re a large company. Two pizza teams with a twist.16:00 - The role of software in global logistics. Amazon’s epic migration off Oracle databases. How to get thousands of people interested in migration or similar work.25:00 - Launching Amazon Prime Now in 111 days (21 days more than what Jeff Bezos mandated).38:00 - The complexity behind a checkout operation in an online store. Tax operations, compliance (!), and other complexities.46:00 - A tech stack to solve the checkout problem.51:00 - Building trust, relationships, and making an impact as an engineering leader in a new company. Everyone wants to hire great people, but what does that really mean?TranscriptUtsav Shah: Welcome to another episode of the Software at Scale Podcast, joining me today is Maju Kuruvilla, who is the CTO and now CEO of Bolt. Previously, he was VP at Global Mile, which is an organization at Amazon that was in charge of global fulfillment. Thank you for joining me.Maju Kuruvilla: Thanks for inviting me, Utsav. It's great to be here.Utsav Shah: Maybe we can start with what exactly does a VP of Global Mile at Amazon do? How many people are reporting to you eventually and what is your day-to-day look like at that time?Maju Kuruvilla:  So I had few different roles at Amazon, the last role was the VP of Global Mile. Before that, I was a VP of the Worldwide Fulfillment technology team and the difference is when I was VP of the Worldwide Fulfillment technology team, we were responsible for all tech and products that Amazon uses in our fulfillment centers worldwide and so that's kind of global responsibility. And then a move to Global Mile, which was a little bit more a general manager role, where I was responsible for not just the technology and products, but also the operations, the sales, all of the different components of that as an end-to-end business. In either of those roles were global had more than 1000s of engineers and a lot of product managers? And even when I was managing the Worldwide Fulfillment team and even hardware teams and networking teams, all of them are involved as part of the team. The difference in the Global Mile was more being responsible for a P&L and an entire business, it is a little bit different than the Global Fulfillment side and I'm happy to explain on either side but just want to put the difference out there, what's up.Utsav Shah: So maybe you can just explain both of those things, I'm sure you're looking at P&L and then going into specifics understanding of what's going on? What does your day-to-day look like? I don't know if you can talk about any specific projects that you did, I think that would be super interesting to know about.Maju Kuruvilla: When I took on the Global Mile role; first of all, what Global Mile is, before it used to be called Global Logistics, it's all the logistics that is done to connect between countries. So whenever an item moves between countries and has to cross a border, that's where global, logistics or global mile comes into the picture. Most of the items that we sell in the US or Europe comes from manufacturing countries like Asia or China. And so when we have to bring those items from there to the US, that's part of the global logistics role. So I took on this role right before the pandemic hit and the pandemic initially hit China, which I was responsible for running the China operations at that time. And then when the pandemic then expanded and spread out to the Western countries, and then the rest of the world, and running global logistics during that time was very challenging and exciting. At the same time, there are a lot of changes that got disrupted that even today are not restored to what it was before. So the global supply chain is still recovering from all the problems that have happened since the beginning of COVID. So since I took on the role, it was largely doing catch-up on how to do, what do we do with the China operations? How do we manage our people there? How do we get the operations up and running? How do we keep our people safe during this process? And then, when all the planes stop flying or the passenger flight stop flying, the majority of the cargo space was not available after that. So we had to figure out how to create more air capacity between countries and then there was this big backlog of things that were coming from China all over the world, all the way from the challenges at the beginning of the port in China to the port of Los Angeles. For example, you could see lines of ships that are waiting to get unloaded and just managing all of that process [5:00] and reinventing and figuring out how to solve the global logistics problem in the middle of the pandemic was the highlight of my time at Global Logistics.Utsav Shah: Sounds like a fun on boarding project.Maju Kuruvilla: It's hard to get trained for global logistics anywhere because Amazon does a lot of that. On top of that, dealing with that during a pandemic was certainly something I was not ready for but like with every challenge and every job; you just have to figure things out. And they've created a lot of great opportunities for innovations, we did a lot of things that we wouldn't have done at the speed at which we did if we were not presented with a constraint. So a lot of innovations came out of that, a lot of new capabilities came out of that, and it was great to have a strong team at Amazon, where everyone responded fast, and started building things fast and get [unclear 06:08] operational in a very short time.Utsav Shah: Are you at liberty to share any of those innovations that you talked about? Maju Kuruvilla:  A few I can certainly share; one is the air capacity problem, like, around 45% of air cargo capacity comes from the belly cargo from the passenger flight. So when passenger flights stopped flying, you essentially lost 45% of the global air cargo capacity, it’s just completely gone. And so how do we recreate that, so we had to create, start thinking of running out on charters. So we started renting planes, like 747  to fly from China to the US and Europe, from the US to export countries and so we started releasing planes and started flying, which we never had before and that was something we created last minute and started flying. An interesting story there was we started even getting the cargo planes for lease became very expensive and because everyone was trying to do something similar, we started renting even VIP jets. At one point, we rented a VIP jet that even I have never been on but then we were putting packages on it and shipping all over the world. So creating that kind of air capacity in a very short time and then building that into a framework that can be used for longer-term was something amazing and quick we did and whenever we have to do that a lot of things need to come together. One is, do you need to have the right technology for us to organize all the different products at source, figure out the route at which we all need to go, and then how do we fill this capacity when on the airplanes. You put something called a ULD which is a box that you fill all the items in and that's what you load and unload. And so you have this complex math problem of how do we fill it because you want to mix the right amount of weight and cube so that you can maximize the utilization of that. And you just have to come up with all these algorithms quickly to maximize that and then you have to do the safety to make sure that the things that you don't want to get on a plane don't get on a plane. And the same thing, once it reaches the destination, how do we unload it, and then from there, how does it go into all the different distribution centers, so creating the technology for that into the end and also rocking the operational process, so we can run that end-to-end, and then making sure that the business is ready to run through all of that. Creating all of that in a matter of few weeks is the speed and scale sometimes we have to run with.Utsav Shah: First of all, I didn't even know that 45% of all cargo capacity is on passenger flights so that fact itself blew my mind. But it's also interesting that there's so much software involved to ship something like this out. One thing that always fascinated me is that even though Amazon is such a large company, it can operate and ship some things like these so fast, and maybe it's like a secret sauce, how does Amazon get that done? And we've all heard about the two pizza teams and all of that but if there's something else, like something that you've seen is a super important part of the culture.Maju Kuruvilla: One is what you just mentioned, which is the two-pizza team but the other aspect which at least I think allows Amazon to move [10:00] fast is the decision-making capability. So whenever at Amazon, we have to make a decision, we call it one word or a two word or decision. And one word or decision is something that you make a decision and there is no going back, so you have to be extremely thoughtful on whether you make that decision and decide to walk through that door. Whereas a duet or decision is a decision you can make and then if you don't like it, you can always walk back. And so for us to move fast, we have to create a lot of [inaudible 10:36] decisions, and then allow the teams and the people involved to make them because it's okay, if they make a mistake, they can always walk back. And decentralizing that decision-making, allowing people, enabling them to make that decision, and then giving them a framework where most of the decisions are just too [inaudible10:58] decisions where they can walk back so that it creates a very fast decision making. And execute and enabling people to make those decisions fast and then allow them to verify if this is working or not so that they can walk back. That kind of decentralized enablement is critical for companies to move fast and Amazon certainly takes advantage of that quite a bit, so people are not afraid to make decisions and people are not afraid to fail. Because the culture is that you can make decisions, and learn from it and if something is wrong, you need to work back from it, so long as you can do that properly, then that's great. And that is where I feel like most of the companies get stuck because nobody knows who will make a decision. Everyone is kind of marveling at the decision to a higher level. And there is somebody who's trying to make a decision that is not very close to all the action and even if it's a very good decision, it just takes a long time. So we say sometimes, a fast repair wrong decision made fast, might be better than the right decision made very slow as long as it's a two-word artist.Utsav Shah: Yes, that makes sense, and if you can walk through the example of renting airplanes, who would make that decision? Would a VP or a GM decide that we have to rent out this airplane, how would that bubble down just so that you can walk listeners through a project like that? Who would be making decisions, at what level?Maju Kuruvilla: Again, these are not qualified anywhere, per se and so whenever you make a decision, it is one thing to make a decision, the other thing is to notify and let people know, this is what we are doing and this is going to be the implications of that. In this scenario, it was brought up to me by the team itself, so they were like, capacity is down, and we got to come up with some of the new ideas. So they started coming up with options and now the challenge here was, whenever you create capacity in any supply chain if there is a little bit of a chicken and egg problem, do you create capacity first, or you create demand first. And when you build a supply chain, most of the time, you have to create capacity for us because if you create demand for us, then demand is just going to wait and you create a terrible experience for people. So you have to build capacity first and so in this particular case, it was more like, we didn't have enough demand to charter our planes. But if you can build it and create an infrastructure around that and make it reliable, are more people going to use it. And so it was a decision that people bubbled up, it was largely too for me to make that choice at that point. And I made a very strong recommendation to our leadership, and they were like, go for it and the decision were made in less than six hours, and then off we go. And now that we decide that we are going to double the capacity and we are going to figure this out, then it's all about execution.  Now, that's only a small part of the decision-making, then there is the decision-making that happens every single day, like how many do we need, which days we need to run? And when at the beginning and the source and the destination, do you have the right operations aligned and which days you don't want to come and wait somewhere? And so how do you know that there's a lot of decision-making that happens at that level? And then it's like, what do you put on the plane, how do you prioritize? Do you prioritize an Amazon retail item? Do you [15:00] prioritize a seller's item, do we prioritize protective equipment for our associates. We even transported some of the equipment for hospitals, and some others just so that we can help during the middle of a pandemic. So, there are decision makings that happen at all levels. And the key there is not making one big decision right now that it's all about when you think it's in when you are working in a very fast-paced environment like this. There's a lot of micro-level decision making and if anybody hesitates to decide because they feel like okay, now somebody is going to beat me up, and I don't know what exactly it means, or I don't have all the answers, then you can move fast. But if everybody knows that, that's okay, I can't explain this. And it's fine. And I have no I and my everybody's going to understand or at least, and if I did something wrong, that's a great learning experience for me, then you can move fast. So it’s not a decision making at a particular level and what kind, it's enabling that a culture of freeing people from the fear of failure, and allowing people to focus on what are we trying to do? How do we achieve it fast? And anything and everything is available and possible to do that? It’s the culture of this decision-making that needed to move fast.Utsav Shah:  That's interesting for me to hear and can you apply this a little bit to a large software project that you all did so that it's more relatable to people? We're more used to trying to ship a large piece of software? Maju Kuruvilla: Quite a few examples are coming to my head but one is a very complex and very technical project, even though the outcome is fairly simple. So Amazon has built the entire software on the Oracle Database platform over decades and then we were struggling and started running into constraints on Oracle and there were scaling issues because what could scale vertically, Amazon wants to scale more horizontally? So we wanted to move out of vertically scaling systems and getting more horizontally scalable systems? So the bottom line is, how do we move out of Oracle, and get to different platforms, whether it's dynamo DB or Aurora, or any of them some kind of a horizontally scalable solution. Now, doing this the entire Amazon had to go through it but for the fulfillment, which is one of the earliest teams at Amazon, it is a big ordeal. How do we now go and change your database where you have; first of all, fulfillment cannot stop right now, every day, you're fulfilling millions of units, and everything needs to move fast. But on the other side, you want to change the database, which you have been relying on for decades and this is not a small load, you're applying heavy load on this completely new technology and it's an all-in-one database. Everybody has their tables, and there are dependencies across all these tables, and how do we make it all happen in some kind of a sequential way and we want to get it all done in one year.So, this is one of those projects, where we thought it was impossible, and then we said, alright, let's go after it because our leadership all agree that this is the right thing to do for the company. And some teams were able to take their data and go and find new destinations for them and that was fine; that simple those are the 20% of the use case of that all locked. everybody else, there were a ton of features needed, some needed transactional support, that are dependent on the ACID properties on a database to kind of do whatever that feature they are trying to do. And there are also interdependencies where if this error is moved, then that service also needs to move because they share the same data and you cannot shift in different ways and this is a project. I spent a lot of time, a whole year working with every single team and you have to imagine I have around 1000 plus engineering teams, a few 100 individual teams, and hundreds of services that need to move out of this. And so this is why again, another one [20:00] where we decentralized decision making where we tell people that these are the things that need to be done and you can go ahead and get your pieces done and if you cannot, then you need to come back with a proposal, and how do we collaborate between the teams? And also, a lot of times there were decisions that need to be made where do we go from a relational database like Oracle to a completely no sequel database? Or we go from a relational database to another relational database like Postgres or an Aurora, kind of a data store? And how do we manage all of that journey? And again, this is where every team had to make hundreds and 1000s of micro-decisions on their side and they have to figure out how to collaborate across all the people. And then there were times, where some of those things were not happening like there was no plan. And so I still remember me and one of the Distinguished Engineer in the team, we know we had to tell people if something is not going to work, you need to tell us right now, you need to raise your hand because if you keep thinking that it's going to work, and if it doesn't work on last minute, we won't be able to help. So you need to ask us early enough that we can help but there are a few instances where we had to go and help. There are a few instances, we had to innovate and come up with completely new technology so that we can solve that by running that kind of an experience of moving the entire worldwide fulfillment to Amazon that has been running 20 years or so in Oracle. And in one year, moved them completely out of Oracle to a new platform and we got it done and it was no small feat and we got it run and scale just fine for a week and it was a huge outcome for the company. So I don't think running something like that in one year is something a lot of other companies may struggle to achieve, something like that in a short time.Utsav Shah:  That sounds like a hard migration way or that you said that 20% of use cases are easy, like half of them will probably get done and there'll be so many stragglers with special cases and one-offs, it just sounds extremely painful to drive.  How do you set up incentives in the right way to make sure that people wanted to do like because I'm sure a lot of it is grunt work and it's a little bit of an ordeal as you said? So one thing you mentioned was, you have a Distinguished Engineer, going to help everyone but people have so many competing priorities, they want to ship new things. How do you make it easier for these teams to prioritize this work?Maju Kuruvilla: It's all about prioritization, so you have two people look at what's important, you can say something is important but then people will pay attention to where you are spending your time. Right now, if people see that I as a leader or anybody who was a leader, spending most of their time on a project then people know that is important. It's not that they are saying it, they're doing it, and then provide with structure or guidance. For example, we created a small Tiger team and they knew how to go and audit every single team's plan, not just their migration plan but also their peak readiness plan and they will give out a report to me, and then I can review that. And if they are not ready, even if they think they are ready and if the team that's auditing did not feel like that's ready, they will come back with that and there are different mechanisms we put in place to enable teams to do that. Now, that example is more a hard groundwork of just migration, if I switch to a different example, which is the launch of prime now that is more exciting new work. Amazon wanted to get into fast delivery and there was this big plan that was created on how to do that and when debase [unclear 24:27], he reviewed a plan and he was, well, this is great, I love it go and make it happen in 90 days. So when you bait in your bases, you get to say things like that, go and make an entirely new experience of allowing people to get things within one hour in 90 days. This is said when same-day delivery is not even a thing, nobody would see our delivery is not even a thing and nobody know what it means. And so I was responsible for all the fulfillment aspect of that which turned out to be very complex, [25:00] how do we deliver something less than an hour when usually our fulfillment systems are designed to deliver in two days or less. So there is another one where we assembled a core team, we divvy up the function, and we decided to build, take some of the components of the fulfillment, created a lighter version of our fulfillment stack, and build.  Some teams built the front end, new app, how the call connectivity? How do we manage payments? How do we manage fraud? And then, in the end, how do we even create technologies within the fulfillment center where you can pick and box all these things in a lightning-fast way. And then we launched that in New York, right in the middle of the city during Christmas, and I was there because we work hard on it and I delivered, we call it rideshare. You can go with the people who are delivering and see the experience for the customer and I did that for some of the initial ones and it was fascinating to watch the people's reactions when they get it. Sometimes we delivered things within eight minutes of when a customer first presses the order button and you can just see the stars and customers' eyes when something just shows up within eight minutes of something they ordered and mind you back in the day, these things didn't exist. So it was a magical experience for everyone; so we got it done. Not just my team but the collective team recording was done in 11 days, from the basis meeting, even though here that 90 days, we got it done in 11 days, and, and I don't even know how we got it done in under 11 days and basis, we're still happy but that's the speed at which you move. And if you need to move that kind of speed, you are innovating so many things; you are making decisions on so many items. But, it's not one person making all of the decisions, the entire team making those decisions, and allowing everyone to move faster.Utsav Shah:  Just from reading one of the books on Amazon and understanding your stories, it seems the idea is to find each level so that it has enough people, so that's not what the blocker is. But then make sure there is fast decision-making and accountability. So projects get done on time, rather than not funding each level enough that it will just take forever to get stuff done because people feel they're super or something like that.Maju Kuruvilla: Well, whenever you have a big problem it's very hard to solve a big problem as is. So number one is let's agree on the problem and make sure that solving this problem makes sense for everybody and this is the right thing to do for the company, for the customer, and we have the right know-how to make it happen. And once we do that, then the next question is, how do we divvy up this problem into small chunks? If you want to move the mountain, it's extremely hard to move the mountain but assuming everybody can take a piece of rock from it and 1000s and millions of people if you can all assemble, then we can move the mountain. That's the concept of swarming a group of people around a huge problem not attacking the whole problem as one but divvying up the problem into smaller components. Now, divvying up the components is an art, you have to find out how to divvy it up because divvying up is not like, I will do this part or that part. Each of the smaller components needs to be fully functional by itself so that the team knows if they make it, they know how to test it, and how can you know if it's a car? Each of the components is like a tire and if you build the tire properly, you can have a tire team, you can have a wheel team and the good thing about that is, that team can continue to obsess over that and make it better every day. Today you can come up with some new tread wearing and all of that and tomorrow you can come up with some nails, but they have something they build that is complete in its sense as a component and that is something they can continue [30:00] to make better throughout their life, so we call that a pizza team. Or at Amazon, we call the pizza team and what that means is that team has ownership of a component that is complete and relevant [unclear 30:20]. So it's not a short term, as a project I will do this piece and that piece is more long-term ownership. And in the long-term ownership, I own this component, and I will continue to make that component better and I know how this component fits into all the other larger pieces but I don't care. So I am not going to worry about how the headlights are going to work or something, all those other things, I know it's all there but I don't need to worry about it. I'm not constrained by it because I built the right contract, if it's a tire, I just need to fit it on the right wheel and then I'm good, and then what happens after that I don't care. And I am going to obsess over this tire and all the materials that are on that forever and so we'll make it better over time. That's the concept, how do we break it down into components where each of the teams can own one of those pieces and then they can obsess over it? Every day, they have 24 7 365 days, they just tried to make it better and when a lot of components come together, you assemble to solve the larger problem you're going after.Utsav Shah:  And I'm guessing the holistic vision on the assembly is management's responsibility along with the senior engineers and the principal engineers who will give guidance.Maju Kuruvilla: Yes, more than management it is that the senior engineers and the principal engineers, and a distinguished engineers because that's the way at least Amazon is structured is you have this pizza team that it's called two pizza team because suddenly, you should be able to feed a team with two pizzas. And so the magic number is somewhere between seven and 11, that's the number of people you should have in a team and that team should have everybody you need to solve the problem with that component. So sometimes the team may have hardware people, software people, data science people, it cannot be just a software team; it's a team, what do you need to solve that problem, you need all of them in there. And then whenever you have a principal engineer, their responsibility is to look at across multiple components like this, and see how they all come together and also the senior engineers in the teams, even though they are part of the team, they look across and negotiate and make sure that all the pieces are coming together well. But the rest of the teams, are headstand focused on what they need to build, and how to and they all have a metric that they are trying to make better and Amazon call it a fitness function. So you are looking at that fit fitness function and trying to make sure that you're continuing to make progress on that.Utsav Shah:  And then that's some quality metric which is indicative of this team's component functioning properly or not.Maju Kuruvilla:  It's more than that, this team's component being the best. So,  it's not a functional metric, it's a fitness function means this is the most important thing that you can measure to see if they are doing the ultimate best, they can do.Utsav Shah: That's interesting, and then you can imagine that some people might even have an NPS score or something eventually getting tracked as part of that fitness function. And then finally, management reviews, all of these different teams is fitness functions to make sure that everything is coming together and then they can deliver the final large piece which is a huge prime now.Maju Kuruvilla: And usually there is a operate operational plan, so that that happens every year, you see how everything is going to come together and Amazon also has heavy documentation, culture, writing and reading are important. And reading is as important as writing by the way because I have seen a lot of companies tend to say we have a writing culture but most of them don't read. So I feel writing is one of those networking effects. If people don't read then writers have no incentive to write properly but Amazon has a very good doc in writing and reading culture and what that means is whenever you have to solve let's say, [unclear 34:43], another product was we did a computer vision system to completely automate the inventory, counting process in all fulfillment centers, it used to be a very manual [35:00] process. Before people used to count, it’s late, you're closing a store, you have to count the entire inventory all the time for compliance purposes, and also have to make sure that the virtual and the physical things are connected. And we completely get on with a new project where computer vision systems constantly monitor things as robots are moving things across the field and that can replace the whole process manual counting process. And again, a team of 11 people made that happen from an idea, they pitch to making it happen for momentum, Amazon's providing fulfillment centers worldwide, just loving people just made it happen. And it saves a lot of money for the company and automated a lot of processes but its more pizza team coming together. And so when you have to do that, the first things you write is what do you call a press release document or a PR FAQ document? And it's a one-page that clearly says, what's the problem? Why do we think we are the right people to solve? Is this the right problem to solve? And if you solve it, what will be the experience for the customer, so you have to write the experience for the customer, past solving this problem before you start doing anything. So that's what the press releases, you are writing down how the experience is going to be after the fact before you start any work, which is very powerful, by the way, because most of the time when you have to write that from a customer angle, a lot of things could become very clear, things we didn't think through will become very obvious because you might be solving either part of a problem or it's part of a bigger problem. And a customer only cares if the whole thing is off, not a piece of the result. So going to explain that customer experience is very powerful and then from that, there is a sequence of FAQs and usually, it's only one page, by the way. PR FAQ is just one page on the press release and then a lot of questions and that document is the first thing everybody writes and reviews. And so any of this brothers prime now, whether it's this computer vision-based inventory, counting any of that's the first thing people do, they write in a document, and then that gets reviewed by leadership. And then if someone reads and then finally says, approve, and you can go and start a new pizza team for that, or you going to allocate resources for that. And then you can go and do what there might be multiple pizza teams come together to solve that and you explain that in your plan. That's our plan, and then that's fine, you get a proof and then people will go off from that point, and make things out.Utsav Shah: So switching gears maybe a little bit, one of the things that Amazon is good at is making sure the checkout experience is super smooth,  there's the one-click option, which I think Amazon has a patent on, so it's not easy for other companies to do something similar. But a lot of reasons why people like using Amazon is also the smooth checkout experience plus, it's super reliable. So just recently, I tried to buy a DELL laptop from Dell, and twice they just canceled my order and I had to place it through Amazon. I don't know how much Dell has to pay Amazon for it, but they just lost the commission on that laptop. So can you walk through why it's so important for checkout to be so seamless, intuitively it makes sense, you don't want people to be abandoning stuff in their car, but any numbers or anything whatsoever about why that checkout experience has to be as convenient as it is?Maju Kuruvilla: It's an interesting story and the whole online commerce story is unfolding in front of our eyes as we speak, this is the time for e-commerce. Companies like Amazon created this online buying experience and people started trusting buying online before people were worried about the security and safety of their staff and the quality of the things that they might get. Amazon solved all of that and got people to buy online without thinking twice about it. What we are seeing now is the consumers are used to it, now pandemic accelerated the whole process too, pandemic accelerated e-commerce adoption, almost 10 years ahead of the previous base. So if we didn't have a pandemic ended up taking another 10 years for us to be where we are, but it accelerated 10 years. So now people are [40:00] buying, especially the newer generation, folks buying online are not a big deal. They don't even think twice about it but what comes with that is people also want a different experience, people want to buy, they will continue to buy from Amazon but they also want to go and buy from other places. Because there are a lot of different merchants and brands that want to provide a very unique experience for customers. And people having that experience is not just about buying a product as it's about that whole experience of connecting yourself with the brand and that the experience of buying and then all the post-purchase experience after that on being connected with that brand. So sometimes that relationship is more than just buying something and more people want that, and especially the newer generations are more into that process. The challenge with most of those margins is that, how do you provide a simple seamless checkout experience like Amazon? Because Amazon has, like you said, an amazing checkout experience and how do you provide that because people are used to it now, so you don't need to beat Amazon on that. But at least people, you need to provide a similar experience that everywhere else and this is where companies like Bolt come in. I'll speak about Bolt a little bit here, where we can provide that checkout experience that people are used to, and make that one-click checkout experience where you come to our site, and you just click one button, and it's yours. And if you can provide that experience, people will start engaging with brands and merchants a lot more than if they have to go through the whole kind of high friction buying process. Because when you think of buying, it's a funnel and the first is research, and then there is a discovery of product, then there is intent to buy. That's why most of the time [unclear 42:11] on and then there is the conversion and at every point, you are adding friction, and if you can have where people can back off from the process. But if you can remove all of that, it's when you have to randomly a movie, and you have to go all the way to a blockbuster or stand in line, pick up a video and come home and watch it, that seems like a lot of friction versus just sitting at home and click Netflix and boom.  People do watch more Netflix because of the ease of it, than like Hollywood or [unclear 42:51] Hollywood, or blockbuster or somebody like that because there's a lot of friction in that and the same people just do more because it's convenient. And that applies even in a checkout where we want to eliminate all that friction so that when people want their intent to buy is their conversion. There's nothing that stands between that and beyond just buying things on the brands and their website. There is also one more step beyond that. This is where most of the people are moving to and that is called social commerce where people want to buy things as soon as they see something, it's called buying at the point of discovery. So as you see an advertisement, you see a video, you will see an influencers media or you're reading a review, and you see something and you want to buy it, can you just click and buy it right there with one click, or it's a link that takes you back to some site and you have to buy it there now by going through all the process. So simplifying this whole process, whether that's buying from a website, or buying at the point of discovery at any surface, is going to be very critical in the future. And in fact, that's going to be the expectation for a lot of people as we move more and more into the e-commerce journey and that's what companies like Bolt provide out of the box for merchants so they can provide this experience to their customers.Utsav Shah: And maybe even talk to us a little bit about the impact of going through that funnel, if I'm a shopkeeper today who just set up my site without using Bolt or an optimized lead what abandonment rates and stuff would I expect? I know it's going to be different for each person, but I'm just trying to understand how much does that convenience factor play into online purchases?Maju Kuruvilla: It's substantial. So, it depends on the merchant, depends on the category, depends on the customer [45:00] and we have several case studies that we have listed on our website. But in some of the good use cases, you see an 80% increase in conversion, when you get a one-click checkout experience that's on the highest end. But it's very powerful because there are a couple of reasons; One, is it just the friction, you don't need to go and do something else to make it happen and number two is, it's just the safe, that people feel their safety and privacy. Do I want to give my information to all the websites out there? Or if I just give it to this one party I trust, and it insists that my identity is just there, and all my information is there but it enables me to log in everywhere, it's the single sign-on concept everywhere, that provides more comfort and safety for customers. So it's one side is the friction, the other side is feeling having a safe way to buy from anywhere.Utsav Shah: And I think one thing you spoke about was the fulfillment stack, building out all of this technology that provides fulfillment, maybe you can walk us through the checkout stack if you have to build a checkout system like this.  At a glance, you're adding something to a cart, and you're retrieving that cart, and you're making a purchase but how does this work? How do you make it go one-click? And what are some challenges? Because I can imagine there are all sorts of things to worry about as users might click by mistake, there's fraud and stuff, how do you solve all of these problems?Maju Kuruvilla: Great question. So when you think of checkout when from the outside, it seemed like a fairly simple process, you add something to the cart, there's a checkout button, you click on it, and it asks you for payments and few things and it's done. Checkout is one of the most complex parts in a commerce stack and the reason for that is until it is checkout, it's just browsing, you are just adding things here and there, nothing needs consistency until at that point but when it's come to checkout, it's real. The checkout system needs to check for inventory, it needs to check for taxes, you need to look for coupons, it needs to look for the pricing at that time, it needs to look for all the shipping options, anything and everything that you need to check is all done at checkout. So checkout needs to call every single system that an e-commerce stack has to make sure that it all comes together so you can present it to the customer. What does it take to buy the thing and when they can get it and so it is an extremely complex function and so behind that scene, there is the UX how we provide a seamless user experience. For example, at Bolt, we obsess over how every single pixel works in that checkout? How does it work on the website? How does it work on a mobile? How can we make sure that it's so optimized that our customers feel the whole process like a breeze but then there is the payment gateway? People may want to use a variety of different payment instruments; payments are the whole world is changing so fast that there is some new payment method or an alternate payment method coming out, or every other week nowadays. So how do we keep provide merchants and integration into the entire payment world? And how do we place all of that so that the cost the customers can choose it in the right way, which is the other layer of complexity? But then there is the identity of the user itself, how do we do provide one click? We need to save that user's name and all the payment details and all the information so that we can do that. So, a company like Bolt, what we have is, we use that user in all the shopper's data as a network. So think of all the different shoppers who are connected to our shopping accounts network and everybody can contribute to that network and everybody can benefit from that network if they use Bolt checkout. So the Bolt checkout system is built on our accounts network that is continuing to grow and evolve and as people are shopping and all of these different merchants, people are getting added to this network. So as a new merchant coming brand new use Bolt, they have access to this whole network that's created through the shared network that is created so far, and they can provide one-click checkout to every single user in that [50:00] network. So what we are finding is this virtuous cycle of as we get more merchants, we get more accounts into our network and as we have more accounts in the network, you get more one-click checkout transactions, and then more one-click means more merchants want to sign up for us. So that virtuous cycle that's happening and that's added is accelerating, kind of Bolt's growth for now. But those are the different layers, all the way from a UI to all the complexities around that, but fundamentally built on this shared accounts network that's truly powering the one-click experience for everybody.Utsav Shah: So as an end-user, do I know I'm using Bolt when I'm buying something [unclear 50:46] website, or is it just like opaque to me?Maju Kuruvilla: No, you are buying it through Bolt; however, we don't try to brand it as a completely different brand because the merchant is buying us and we want to seamlessly integrate into Martin's ecosystem, so that we want to look more like, we are enabling the merchant, and we want to stay away between the customer and the merchant because we want to provide an experience as seamless as possible. However, for users they need to know that this is Bolt so that they can trust us, they know that it's powered by Bolt, creating an icon with Bolt, or logging in with Bolt, so that they know where it is, and they can control their information, they can manage it, and they can be at peace that we are taking care of that information and in one safe place. Utsav Shah: So that makes sense to me. Now, I'm curious to learn, you were running divisions or organizations at large companies like Amazon before, you can't just take every single good idea you have and apply it at a much smaller company. But what are some things that you feel you've changed in the first few months you were there and what are some things that you feel extremely strongly about? Even at a much smaller company when the Bolt is not super small, clearly, but what are just some learning’s that you feel you had to apply?Maju Kuruvilla: First and foremost, I would say, it doesn't matter what's the size of the company, you have to be connected with the customer and every single person all the way. For engineering, it doesn't matter whether you're an engineer, whether you are an accountant, or it doesn't matter what your discipline is, if you are in a company, your mission, you're passionate about it, you need to be very connected with your customer, you need to attend to some customer calls, you need to attend some support calls, you need to be on-call, sometimes, you need to be right in the thick of things. So big, small, doesn't matter and that I'm passionate about, and I'll force to make sure that everyone is deeply connected to that. And number two is hiring great people whether it’s; again, your company is only as good as the people you have. So hiring great people and taking care of great people is the highest priority of any leader across big, large mall doesn't matter; all companies. So, for example, when I came in, hiring more people into Bolt we are growing fast, so we wanted to bring in a lot of great people. I spend a lot of time in hiring and meeting with our people, for example, in my first 90 days, I met with every single person in the engineering and the product organization, had a one-on-one with them as simple three questions on what's working well at Bolt? What's not working well? And what are they hoping that I'll be doing to help? Three questions to every single person involved in engineering and products, I enter my first 90 days and I did that north of 100 interviews in my first 90 days, to both sides of the world, you have to take care of your great people and understand the people and what they want, what's working, what's not working so you can fix them. And continue to bring in great people into the company and that to me, knowing the customer and having a great team are the two things I hold dear to me, it doesn't matter where I go.Utsav Shah: Look, that makes a lot of sense to me but how do you [55:00] gauge the right people? How do you know somebody is good or not? Is there something in the interview you do or is this just a quality? You see, I don't know, I'm just curious, everybody talks about having great people, what does that mean?Maju Kuruvilla: There are two aspects where I look for personally, when we look for hiring great people, one is the basic table stakes, which are operational excellence, their technical skills,  and all of that, which I think almost every company probably look for, which is great. But then there is the other side and this is where I will say beyond culture, I tend to look for people who are system thinkers, people who can think into it, people whenever they hear a problem, it's not just like, how do I solve this piece of the problem, but take a step back and look at, what's going on here. And what is the right way to solve it is maybe the solution is very different than what's obvious at the very beginning. And so people who can take a step back and look into and have that system thinking. And what that means is, truly solve the problem and sometimes not solving the problem you solve. But solving the original problem that even caused the problem, what you are seeing right now and so I tend to focus a lot during the interviews on things that like, what are some of the things they did? And I asked questions like, why did they do that? And why did that particular problem, the solution was the right one? How did they think that will solve whatever they're looking for? Because what I'm finding is that people can think more, can have that system level, an end-to-end, and end up solving innovative ways, than people just attack individual issues and solve them by themselves. And so I know, it's not that scientific way to think but it's a mindset, I have found that the people tend to create much resolving longstanding impact than most of the others.Utsav Shah: Yes, I think that makes a lot of sense, systems thinking framework, thinking people can understand the problem more holistically, than looking at the smaller things. But yes, I think this was a lot of useful information and we're almost on time. Thank you so much for being a guest, I certainly feel I learned a lot about a company that is pretty much in a black box, sometimes from the outside. I had no idea about so many things, about how fulfillment works, check out, thank you so much. Get on the email list at www.softwareatscale.dev

What is BookBub, and what is a BookBub Featured Deal? BookBub is a gigantic email list that sends discounted or even free books to people. BookBub curates the deals they send to their subscribers. They send them “Featured Deals.” A BookBub Featured Deal is a chance to get your book in front of hundreds of thousands of readers – or even a million+ readers – interested in your genre. You’ll sell hundreds, maybe thousands, of copies, and you may even hit a bestseller list. However, a BookBub Featured Deal can be expensive. (It’s not like a Kindle Daily Deal, which is pure gravy). My BookBub Featured Deal itself cost over $1,000. I sold over 2,500 books. (I hope to break down my full campaign results in a future article subscribe to blog post updates so you don’t miss it). A BookBub Featured Deal is not a BookBub Featured New Release, nor BookBub Ads Note that BookBub has other ways of promoting books besides the Featured Deal. There are BookBub Ads, which are display ads you can run on BookBub’s website or in their emails. BookBub does not curate these ads – any author can advertise their book with BookBub. BookBub also has the Featured New Release, for new books, which is curated but is generally not as competitive nor sought-after as the BookBub Featured Deal. How do you get a deal on BookBub? Landing a BookBub Featured Deal is highly competitive, but if you stick with it, you can one day get a deal on BookBub. My book, The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating was finally accepted after fourteen rejections, over the course of eighteen months. Here’s my advice for finally getting accepted for a BookBub Featured Deal. Go wide Many self-published and indie authors only publish to Amazon. One reason they do this is that it’s more simple. Amazon makes up about 90% of my revenue from book sales, and it has nearly that share of the entire ebook market. BookBub (generally) only selects wide books But, BookBub rarely selects for a Featured Deal a book that is only on Amazon (though I’ve heard of exceptions). BookBub has many subscribers who read on other platforms, such as Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble. So it’s a waste of email real estate for them to bother with books that are only on Amazon. By the way, what is “wide?” Amazon is so dominant in the ebook market that to have your book available in places other than Amazon is to be “wide.” Being wide is a lot of extra work: You have to upload and manage your book on a bunch of different platforms. This means any time you fix an error in your book, you have to re-upload it to all these places. Because Amazon matches the price of your book on other outlets, you also have to be careful not to have price discrepancies when you’re wide (more on a hard pricing lesson I learned in a bit). When you consider all the different markets and currencies in which your book is available, this is a lot to keep track of! BookBub is the best reason to be wide BookBub Featured Deals have been one of my main motivations for bothering with all the extra work of being “wide” (That and trying to “fight the good fight” to give readers choices other than Amazon.) Because being wide is so much work, I publish direct to Amazon, and use an aggregator to publish to all other outlets. I’ve tried publishing direct to various outlets, and I’ve tried different aggregators, but I’ve settled on PublishDrive. They have easy reporting, which saves a lot of energy putting together my monthly author income reports. If you want a shot at the “big break” of a BookBub Featured Deal, start by going wide. Rack up reviews (everywhere) When BookBub chooses your book for a Featured Deal, they’re putting their reputation on the line. Yes, they charge you money to feature your book, but they only have that privilege because readers trust them. Readers only trust them because readers know if BookBub has chosen to feature a book, it’s not just because they’re getting paid for it – it’s also a quality book. BookBub can’t go through the trouble of reading each book that applies for a Featured Deal. So how do they decide if your book is a quality book? Reviews! Work hard to get reviews for your book, not only on Amazon, but on other outlets as well. At the time The Heart to Start was accepted for a deal, it had about 275 ratings/reviews on Amazon (with a 4.8-star average), and a handful of reviews each on Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play (If you check my book out, note that I’ve since lost some of those precious wide reviews because I switched to an aggregator. It’s best to choose the right aggregator from the start.) I had and still have no reviews on Barnes & Noble. Get reviews by asking or running other promotions You can get reviews by sending an email to your audience and asking for it. Or, if you have a direct relationship with any of your readers who have reviewed your book on Amazon, ask them if they would kindly copy and paste their review to one of these other outlets. Any other promotions you can run before applying for a BookBub deal can also help rack up reviews. How did I get so many reviews for The Heart to Start? It helps that when I launched the book, it was free. I gave away more than 3,000 copies, which you bet drove some reviews. You can’t fake good reviews, so write a great book Of course, it helps if these reviews are generally positive. Having gained hundreds of reviews for my books, I can tell you there’s no point in trying to fake this. If there’s ever been a friend who positively reviewed my book just to be nice, it’s never been as powerful as the reviews by strangers who actually liked (or hated) the book. The takeaway underlying all this is write a great book. But that alone won’t bring reviews – you have to work for them. Keep trying How often can you apply for a BookBub Featured Deal? Four weeks from your latest rejection. So, each time you get rejected, apply again four weeks later! Remember, I was rejected fourteen times. It took eighteen months from my first application to my first acceptance. Why not fourteen months? Because getting rejected over and over can be exhausting! Put your application process on auto-pilot Make the process of applying as automatic as possible. Each time I got a rejection email, I used a tool called Boomerang to return the email to my inbox four weeks later. That reminded me to apply again. I kept an Evernote file where I recorded the date I applied as well as the pricing and markets I chose, and comments I made in my application. I also kept links for each ebook store, ready to be copied and pasted into my application. Once you have notes like this, you could easily delegate this process to an assistant. Mix up pricing BookBub wants great deals for their subscribers, but they counterintuitively don’t need the best possible deal for their subscribers. These days, most BookBub Featured Deals are $1.99. Sometimes books are selling for more than that, but there are also books on sale for 99¢ or even free. You might think that if you are BookBub, you want to offer as many free books as possible. But keep in mind BookBub makes money from authors and publishers paying for placement in their newsletter. The higher the price for your deal, the more BookBub charges for placement. A higher price may give you a better shot (then again, maybe not!) So, you might have a better shot at charging 99¢ for your book than offering it for free. You might have a better shot at charging $1.99 than 99¢. How do you know? There’s no way to know for sure. These choices are up to the curators of BookBub, and their preferences change based on the activity they see amongst subscribers. Keep an eye on books listed on BookBub in your genre. Do you see a pattern in the list prices and sale prices of similar books? Alternate prices in your auto-pilot process If there’s not a super clear pattern, mix up the pricing in your applications. I alternated between two prices: One month, I applied to offer my book for 99¢, the next month I applied to offer it for $1.99. ($1.99 was the price that eventually got accepted.) Don’t make yourself ineligible There are various requirements to be eligible for a BookBub Featured Deal, but the easiest to mess up is pricing. Your proposed BookBub Featured Deal must be: Either free, or a discount of at least 50% (It’s usually more like 70–85%) The best deal available in the past 30 days. (They also don’t want you to offer it for less in the near future.) I messed this up at one point. When I had an international deal (more on that in a bit), it turned out I had accidentally priced my book too low on the Google Play store in the UK. So, Amazon had been matching that price. The historical list price was too low for my sale price to meet the 50%-discount requirement. So, while I was paying full price for my deal, my deal was not sent to UK subscribers, because I had accidentally made myself ineligible in the UK. This is yet another reason I use PublishDrive to publish everywhere except Amazon. It makes it easier to avoid mis-pricing my books. Try international first Speaking of international deals, there’s one caveat to my fourteen-rejection journey to a BookBub Featured Deal. My book was rejected fourteen times in a year-and-a-half for a U.S. deal. However, it was accepted for an international deal, after seven months and “only” three rejections. An international deal covers the UK, Canada, Australia, and India. (With each application, you can choose to apply for an international deal, a U.S. deal, or “All”). I did apply for “All” until I had my international deal, but BookBub accepted my book only for an international deal at that time. An international deal is practice The performance of my international deal was underwhelming, but I’m glad I got to try it before a “big” U.S. deal. (My international deal went to 140,000 subscribers, my U.S. deal – over one million). My international deal gave me a chance to learn and plan better for a bigger deal. I also learned that hard pricing lesson: paying the full price for an international deal, only to realize my carelessness in international pricing made my book ineligible in the UK. Your international deal performance may prove your book to BookBub BookBub probably watches the performance of these international deals to consider how a book will do in the U.S. Maybe the underwhelming performance of my book in my international deal was why BookBub didn’t accept it for a U.S. deal for another year! On the other hand, if my book had done great, it may have increased my chances of being accepted. To learn the ropes and maybe even to prove your book’s worth in a less-competitive arena, consider applying for an international deal first. At the very least, if you’re accepted for an international deal, but not a U.S. deal, take it and learn. Include editorial reviews or notable blurbs On the application for a BookBub Featured Deal, there’s a “Comments” section. Use this section to show BookBub curators how great people think your book is. At the advice of Craig Martelle in the 20Booksto50k Facebook Group, I included my book’s review from Publisher’s Weekly in the comments field of my application, starting with my twelfth application. It didn’t magically get my book accepted, but within a few months, I had landed a BookBub, so it may have helped. Don’t bother copy/pasting Amazon reviews into the comments section. But if you have any good editorial reviews or blurbs from famous authors, try including them in the comments field of your application. Create your own luck (your day will come) The more times you apply for a BookBub Featured Deal, the better your chances you’ll one day be accepted. Readers’ preferences change, the publishing market changes, the world changes, and so too do the preferences of BookBub’s curators. Just because you were rejected last month doesn’t mean you’ll also be rejected this month. I think the coronavirus pandemic may have improved my chances of getting a BookBub Featured Deal. This is just a theory, but traditional publishers’ projects were delayed, and I bet BookBub was getting fewer applications for traditional books. My business as an indie author, on the other hand, was not affected by the pandemic. It’s likely I had more of a shot because there was less competition. The publishing business is a business of breeding “Black Swans”, and you never know how the world will change to bring your “big break.” You have nothing to lose by applying, and everything to gain, so create your own luck by giving yourself more chances to get lucky. Some final tips BookBub also has tips on their website. Besides similar points to what I discussed here, their tips include: Have a good cover Optimize your sales pages on retailers Be flexible with your promotion date I’ll add to these a couple honorable mentions that will probably help, and can’t hurt: Spruce up your BookBub profile. Upload a photo, fill out your profile, invite your audience to follow you, and recommend some books from your genre. It signals to BookBub you’re well-known amongst their subscribers, and that you’re professional. (By the way, you can follow me on BookBub.) Run some BookBub Ads. It’s good practice to learn how to use BookBub’s ads, because they’re useful for making your Featured Deal even more successful when you finally do get one. Plus, it can build your BookBub following, which might improve your chances of having a deal accepted. Getting a BookBub Featured Deal is a breakthrough for a self-published author. It can feel like you’ll never get accepted, but if you keep at it, it’s possible – and worth the effort. Mind Management, Not Time Management now available! After nearly a decade of work, Mind Management, Not Time Management is now available! This book will show you how to manage your mental energy to be productive when creativity matters. Buy it now! My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays. About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher YouTube RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/how-land-bookbub-featured-deal/

Adam Heist runs a great YouTube channel for Amazon sellers. So today we bring him on to talk about his Amazon journey. Adam owns 3 Amazon brands. "Amazon is not hard, it's just a lot of moving parts, graphics, copywriting, logistics. I was surprised how many papercuts had to be had."Mental game Mondays. "The game is 100% mental because it is a gauntlet." SHTF"Amazon has made sellers lazy. Because Amazon (solved) the fundamentals." Adam used a California data request to get 22 zip folders of data from his personal Amazon account. Amazon tracks your IP address, searches, purchases. They track and tag your searches that originate off Amazon.Fan of Google, Facebook, Pinterest ads, especially at launch.Do all the things B2C brands do off Amazon. List building, content generation, you name it.Have your "Amazon degree." Evaluations of Amazon businesses are undervalued. "I predict evaluations are going to go 3.5-6x earnins." 10 major players int he aggregators. 3 busineses have raises more than 100 mil each to buy Amazon brands. Adam helped a large Fortune 300 Energy Company buy electrical companies across 13 states. He runs his Amazon businesses in similar fashion. Spreads his Amazon portfolio across both building and buying. 30% building, 70% acquire. For Adam it's all about unique deal flow.Professional Era.Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/myamazonguy)

On this week’s episode of Smart Home Today, Stephen talks about the brand new tech that’s expected to fly off the shelves – literally! Because Amazon’s new in-home drone is coming soon! Stephen’s guest is Andrew Gebhart, Senior Associate Editor at CNET, who discusses the brand new smart home devices from Amazon, Google and Apple. And here’s a preview: different shapes, better audio quality, and lower prices!  

Amazon is a Momentum Game: What I mean by the fact that Amazon is a momentum game is that the more you sell on Amazon, the more your organic rankings increase for more and more keywords. The reason this is so important is because it has major impacts on the overall strategy you should take when approaching selling on Amazon. For instance, when you launch a new product,you do not want to run out of inventory. This is because running out of inventory makes your organic rank drop. Instead, what you want to do when you launch a new product is to spend money on advertising to begin to build the momentum of the sales which will then increase your organic rank, which in turn, increase your profitability because you get more sales through more keywords and pay less advertising fees to Amazon. There are two forms of product listings in the search results. One is from paid advertising, and the other is from free organic ranking. The two go hand in hand. The paid advertising drives traffic to your product, which increases your sales. And in turn, this also boosts your organic rank, which drives more traffic and increases your sales at an even higher profitability, because you didn't have to spend money on ads for the people that bought through an organic listing. The problem comes in when you run out of inventory. And you have to rebuild all of that momentum that you lost. And this can cost you a lot of money on Amazon. The fact that Amazon is a momentum game also impacts how many products you should launch at a time. Because Amazon is a momentum game, I recommend that it is best to launch just 1 product at a time. This is primarily because you want to build maximum momentum behind a product to maximize that products profitability for your company. If you have a good product, the amount of sales you can achieve for just one product on Amazon is enormous! Usually it's way more than you think. The key to achieving maximum sales on Amazon is to be ranked at the top of page 1 for as many relevant keywords as possible, especially the keywords with the most relevant traffic (don't neglect the small keywords too though as they can really add up!). To do this, my recommended strategy is to set up highly optimized listings and then drive traffic to those listings through Amazon advertising. The traffic you get from the ads will hopefully turn into sales (assuming the product and listing are high quality at a good price with positive reviews) which will increase your organic rank for both the keywords that convert to sales and those in your title and product listing. This will lead to more and more sales and better profitability as a greater percentage of sales over time shift from coming primarily through ads to primarily through organic rankings. To do this process requires that you don't run out of stock. Otherwise, your rankings will begin to drop and you will begin to waste the momentum you built which will cost you even more money to rebuild it through ads again when you get back into stock. So … try not to run out of inventory! Usually this process means that you should stick with one product until you are ranking on page 1 organically for your main keywords and many many more smaller ones and you know that you won't be running out of stock anytime in the future. Plus, sticking to one product at a time allows you to focus solely on that one product which gives that product the best possibility to succeed. Once a product has full momentum built and it can be sustained it is much easier to maintain, allowing for efforts to be redirected to the next product. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/businessinvestingsherpa/support

Daniel Rodriguez is the head of marketing at Simplr, which is upending the traditional customer service model by providing premium brands with flexible, 24/7 on-demand specialists for all digital channels. The company's specialists are unique work-from-home pool of highly educated professionals who use Simplr's, AI-powered platform to replicate tone and brand integrity with speed, empathy and precision.   Danielle has extensive marketing and entrepreneurial experience, having served as the VP of marketing for Seismic and the co-founder of multiple companies, including Indivly Magic and PrizeTube. Daniel earned a BA in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from MIT. Questions Could you share a little bit with us about your history? I know it says here that you are Head of Marketing at Simplr and that you've gained a lot of experience as it relates to digital marketing and also entrepreneurial skill. But just share with us a little bit about how you got to where you are today. Simlpr recently conducted a study, a customer experience study, where it says 27% consumers say their brand loyalty has wavered during the pandemic due to long customer service wait times. Could you share a little bit about some of the insights that you gained from that study? Let's say our audience; they do have some of these issues that we're talking about. What are maybe two or three things that they should do that maybe they're not doing now in a very practical sense, things they should really be focused on to just give that great customer experience? Could you share with us what is the one online resource, website tool or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read since the pandemic, or it could be a book that you read many, many years ago. But it still has had a great impact on you. Now, can you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about - either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can they find you online? Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you will revert to this quote, it kind of helps you to move forward, to keep pushing. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Daniel’s Journey   Daniel shared that he spent the past 8 years of his career running marketing teams at start-up companies, tech companies in the B2B space. So, very high growth companies, they're all venture funded and have high growth expectations. And it's been a really rewarding journey, he thinks, for him, because he started his career on the consulting and finance side, and he had this moment as the wise poet John Mayer once said. He had a quarter life crisis and realized that if he didn't actually be the doer, meaning, be actually on the operating side, he was going to have regrets in his own life about the career choices that he was making.   So that really started him down a path and he’s very thankful to Brad Rosen, who's the CEO of a company called Drink, for taking a chance on him and letting him work for him on kind of a volunteer nights and weekends basis and Drink is a wine app. And for him, it was great to be able to dive into on the operating side, dive into something that he was also passionate about just at a personal level.   So that gave him his first taste, if you will, of actually being at a start-up, super early stage start-up and that really scrappy mode. And once he had that taste, he was completely hooked. So, that started his path then to go to business school, which was giving him an opportunity to learn a lot more about entrepreneurship, experience entrepreneurship himself, try to start a company himself. And it was kind of from there and from some of those failed experiences of his own and trying to get companies off the ground that he was able to then get jobs at more established, albeit still very early stage companies. And so, that's where he has been spending the majority of his career at this point.   Simplr’s Insight on Customer Experience Study Me: So, in preparing for this interview, we were informed that your company Simlpr recently conducted a study, a customer experience study, where it says 27% of consumers say their brand loyalty has wavered during the pandemic due to long customer service wait times. Being in customer service myself, I know that's like one of the biggest pet peeves of customers waiting, whether it be face to face or over the phone or even in a web forum if you have to wait on a chat for somebody to give you feedback, could you share a little bit about some of the insights that you gained from that study?   Daniel shared that they've conducted 3 of these mystery shop reports, the survey that they've gone out, partnered with a third party. They've done 3 of them over the past year. So, they did one in June where they mystery shopped about 800 eCommerce retail brands. And they were looking for areas where they could identify the things that are really important to customers and therefore result in customers having an exceptional experience, an experience that they would want to give somebody a 5-star rating about and tell their friends.   And so they looked at dimensions of Reliability, Relatability and Responsiveness. So, one of the hypotheses that they had was and this was predominantly U.S. based brands, although there are people purchasing products from all parts of the world. And they also then interviewed 500 U.S. customers of those brands, consumers not necessarily specific to any of these brands, but just 500 hundred people that are consumers in the United States.   And they asked them, how did they feel about wait times? How do they feel about brands and their willingness to stick with that brand, if there was going to be a longer wait time?   And their hypothesis was and this was something that they have also been feeling themselves during the pandemic. When the pandemic began in March and April, there was a lot of forgiveness. People were willing to say, “Oh my gosh, the world has just been completely turned upside down. I'm not going to hold it against my favourite brand that things are messed up. And they have shipping delays and they can't figure out where things are. And they might be getting slammed with a backlog because people weren't able to go into the office to answer to these questions.”   So, this idea that he thinks we as consumers were permitting, we were okay with the dreaded backlog happening, consumers don't think of it as a backlog. But we, of course, as the providers of a great customer experience, we think of backlogs and the dreaded backlog, which happens to many companies and for various reasons, he thinks reared its ugly head for many brands.   And what they saw then happen was consumers stopped being as forgiving, basically, they were saying, “Hey, now that we're three or four months into this thing, I've gone back to my previously picky ways and I'm no longer willing to put up with this.” And that obviously is concerning because it's still very difficult for many brands to figure out how to provide a great customer experience.   Me: So, your study focused on ensuring that you are looking at brands that were providing a really fantastic customer experience. And the biggest pet peeve that you picked up in this report was wait times. Why do you think customers as the pandemic got more and more deeper, people got less forgiving or patient as it related to giving brands the breather that they needed?   Daniel shared that what's really interesting about this finding is that he does think that part of this finding is cultural. And by that, he means, Americans are not the same as people from other countries. They had a webinar and they had a couple of guest speakers on the webinar, one of which her name is Alex, she runs customer success at Princess Polly. Princess Polly is an Australian brand. So they have a lot of customers in Australia.   And this idea that felt very validated by an American hypothesis in the data by Americans doesn't actually play out anecdotally anyway, in Alex's experience for their Australian customers. They were just very willing to be forgiving still of things being delayed and challenges, a lot of things relating to shipping and the forgiveness around that.   So, he thinks there's a fair amount of a cultural challenge around this. He thinks the American market; you can probably say that the American consumer has a very high bar. And unfortunately, it's harder than ever before to probably deliver on that high bar.   What he means by that high bar by the way, he thinks that high bar is, he doesn't want to use words that are that are either positive or negative in kind of describing the American consumer here. He is an American. He is an American consumer, but he thinks that the American consumer has been very much influenced by a lot of the existing technology and the way that American consumers have been catered to by that technology.   So Amazon, which is absolutely a ubiquitous company in not just the United States, but as he’s speaking specifically about this has he thinks created an expectation of you get whatever you want, whenever you want it, and it comes fast and that whole idea of hyper catered to.   And so, he thinks that's what we're kind of seeing play out here. There has been a very significant trend that was already happening before the pandemic of both his generation, as well as the generation below us, so the millennial.   He’s a reluctant millennial because sometimes the pejorative to call someone a millennial, he’s like the oldest millennial you can get, he’s like, “No, not those millennials. They're all so young and don't respect their boss and all this stuff.”   But as a millennial and then as Gen Z, there is a there's a pretty significant shift in the way that we want to interact with our brands as consumers away from that kind of unilateral, “Hey, here's the phone and we're available when you need us, if you ever have an issue. And by when you need us, I mean, between the hours of 9:00 and 5:00 Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday.” So, that expectation that customers then have, “Well, actually, I want to be able to interact with a brand on a different channel. I want to be able to use email. I want to be able to use Instagram. I want to be able to use chat right on the website. And by the way, I want to be able to do that whenever it's convenient for me and it's convenient for me probably not when it's convenient for you.”   And that expectation has been exacerbated actually by the pandemic. And the data that they collected also reflects this narrative where brands have now recognized because of the pandemic that they need to offer more digital options for people to interact with them.   They just have to, it becomes table stakes and then it becomes punitive if you're not actually playing the game. The problem is most of the brands in the study hadn't quite cracked the nut on how do I actually deliver a customer experience that is expected by this customer. I'm offering something, I have chat, but then, sometimes it takes more than 5 minutes to respond to a chat and 92% of the people who experience a 5 minute wait time on chat give the brand a very poor rating on responsiveness.   Me: Because their expectation is immediate response.   Daniel agreed and stated that 30 seconds or less, “If it's more than a minute, I'm starting to really get mad; I'll give you a minute. I might start wavering, but if it's more than a minute, I'm actually going to get mad.”   And this world of CX that we've kind of immersed ourselves in here, it's an emotional world. He thinks of times in his own life where he can remember either good or bad experiences with brands. And his blood gets boiling, really bothers him. And these are things he can remember from like 10 years ago.   So, he thinks it's so important for us to remember that in a time, particularly in a pandemic, in a time where everyone is feeling kind of raw, actually, and we're willing to then if we put our own feelings on a 10 point scale, he thinks that our capacity to feel at a 10 is actually heightened by the fact that we are in this kind of simmering state of anxiety.   And so, providing somebody with a very good experience can make someone feel amazing, providing something the very poor experience can make somebody maybe kind of tip over. And this will finally be the thing that I feel like I can scream about.   Me: Agreed. So, you touched on a few stuff that I thought was really, really interesting. One was you said that you thought that at the end of the day, even though you did a study and it was primarily reflective of the American consumer, you also think it's very cultural. And it's funny you said that because I do agree with you, but at the same time, you went ahead to then allude to the fact that Amazon has kind of set the bar so high and I'm doing some research for a customer experience management program I'm building for a client.   And in my research, one of the things that I realized was, no matter what industry you're in, whether are you're a bank or you're a supermarket or you're delivering pizza. Because Amazon has created technology or an experience by which you can just go online and press the button and within minutes or hours depending on what it is that you're ordering, you can get the item delivered to you. You can see where it is every step along the way, it's almost like consumers expect that same experience in other types of businesses, even if the business model is not similar to yours.   And I don't think that's specific to country. I don't think it's because Amazon is an American brand. I think Jamaicans have that expectation as well. Two nights ago, my godchildren's father called me and he asked me. So a lot of companies in Jamaica, especially the fast food restaurants, have been doing delivery services now. And companies like Kentucky Fried Chicken, for example, that never used to deliver in Jamaica, that was like something that we never thought we'd live to see. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't deliver just like pizza delivers, because when I did some research, KFC delivers in Trinidad, but it doesn't deliver here in Jamaica.   And I was like, well, if they can do it in Trinidad and population is less, why can't they do it here? Anyhow, he called and said that his wife ordered some food from like 6:30 pm and it was like 9:00 o'clock and the food hadn't come. And when he called the lady, the lady at the delivery place says to him, “Oh, but we told you 30 to 45 minutes.” I don't even know how giving that statement to the customer is relevant because we're now way past 45 minutes. Six thirty to 9:00 is way past what you would have told them to expect.   So at this point, he's so mad he wants a full refund and then they further said to him, it's going to take them 7 to 10 business days to process this refund. And remember when they took his money; I'm sure it didn't take 30 seconds to run that money off of his card or whatever payment, well, it would have to be off his card if it was a digital payment, because he did it through an app that he use on the phone.   But I'm saying this is say Daniel, you are correct because of the experience that Amazon has created for us and as I said, I don't think it's necessarily cultural. I think, generally speaking, regardless of the country that you are from, if you know of Amazon and you've done business with them, it's almost like your brain is saying to yourself, “Well, if Amazon has human beings that work in their organization and they're able to create these technologies that create this type of experience, why can't other businesses think like this and operate like these to create a similar kind of experience to make life less stressful for me, because there are other things that I have to worry about, and this would be one less thing for me to stress about.”   So I thought that was really, really brilliant. And I think all organizations should really be looking at benchmarking themselves, not against companies that are in the same industry as them, but even companies that are outside of their industry because that's what their customers are viewing their businesses.   Daniel shared that he totally agreed with that. And thanks Yanique for just sharing that anecdote as well. They actually we work with a large restaurant, quick serve restaurant. And they have an application and it's a very similar type of thing where you see a lot of times confusion that people have. And what was sad, they saw recently this really great kind of interaction with the brand they're helping out on helping them answer these customer inquiries. And somebody writes in with basically that same story like, “Hey, something got messed up with my order. It hasn't been here for way too long.”   And he thinks that the bar is currently so low, actually. Here's the saving grace. We don't want to give doom and gloom to everybody. But maybe the saving grace is that the bar is actually quite low in terms of reality and if you then are responsive to people and you are empathetic and this was another thing that their data showed is the relatability aspect.   So being empathetic, showing somebody that you're a human, which bots obviously struggle to do, and which is why people get frustrated with bots. And he’s not saying bots should never be used, but he’s saying and in certain instances, if you put a bot in front of somebody and they are unable to get their situation resolved, it will make them even more mad than they would have been in any other situation.   But when we talk about just that bar being kind of low, you give somebody a quick response, you immediately tell them, “Hey, I am so sorry that your food did not get there when it needed to. That must have been extremely frustrating. And you're probably hungry right now.”   You immediately have made the person feel validated because being validated is the cornerstone, he thinks, of being able to make somebody feel open to then working with you and coming back, so you start with that validation, which is, he thinks, the cornerstone of empathy. And then you give them that refund, you get that processed much more quickly and then what does that person do? And this is actually a real example, by the way.   So, they saw this exact example happen and this person wrote back 5 out of 5 star review on the CSAT survey. And then they write in and they say, “I just have to tell you, I didn't even think anyone was going to write me back. And you've totally blown me away.”   But that first initial idea that they had actually written in, they'd taken the time to write in to express their frustration and they still didn't even expect to hear back to him shows that there is a real disconnect between where people's bar is in terms of like, if you can get over this bar, you're going to actually satisfy people. And then if you can really go beyond it to just the expectation that we want to have for our consumers, that there's plenty of 5 star moments out there to be had.   Me: Agreed. So, true. So one of the things your study actually said, which I thought was really very important, reinforcing what you just said. So, “AI driven chatbots are making significant strides in providing Real-Time information to solve simple customer concerns. But it still remains important to the customer experience that a company brings empathy and humanity to each customer interaction.”   Because, as you said, bots are here to help us, the technology is there to help us. But at the end of the day, there are some circumstances that require human interaction. I honestly don't think that even though technology has advanced so much that the human element of a customer experience is ever, ever going to be void and null, it's still going to need some form of human interaction.   Daniel agreed and shared that a couple of years ago, they were living in the rage; AI bots are going to be able to completely take over multiple parts of the organization actually, it was customer success, it was also sales. He remembers hearing we're never going to need sales reps because the bots can do all the work.   And the reality is, we think of ourselves as a human enabled technology company and we think that there is a place for technology and we see companies and he’s not even talking about their own customers. They see big brands, there's a place for bots and it has certain limited scope. And it's an incredibly valuable way for them to reduce their overall cost of service.   And we see companies that then are using people to answer questions in an on brand way. And you really got a nail that kind of tone and brand. And you have to have the knowledge and the people have to have that knowledge. And we play that role; we play that role for companies. But there's different ways that companies do that. And then there's also always this like core team internally where things need to get escalated to, if something is really going bad, you really need to have some people that are inside the organization that might be able to move larger mountains if need be.   And so, that's kind of where things he thinks sit today. And he doesn't necessarily see a lot of companies saying, “What we really need is more bots.” He hears them say, “What we really need is fewer backlogs.” Because the backlogs are what is killing their customer satisfaction. And bots don't necessarily take away the backlog, they might give you an immediate quick responsiveness, but they won't necessarily be able to resolve the issue. And of course, if you don't resolve the issue, you don't really change the situation.   So, they see a lot of companies also really focused on resolution, first time resolution. Just resolving something is obviously important but if it takes you, “Hey, we're on chat and I can't help you, now email us and I'll get back to you in a few days and we'll work on this over the course of the next week.”   That's not okay, that is just not okay. And when he says it's not okay, the data reflects that CSAT scores are not good when that happens. So, they're really focused on and he thinks a lot of companies agree with this, really focused on getting that resolution to happen in that first interaction.   Things to Focus on to Give Great Customer Experience   Daniel shared that yes, he would say the First Time Resolution. And you accomplish a first time resolution by making sure that the people who are responding on your behalf are empowered to be able to resolve the issue that they are being asked to resolve.   So that's critically important. He would say another thing to do is around Relatability. Oftentimes, we have people that are doing the customer service response, they’re writing back and yet for a variety of reasons, whether it's the incentives we're giving them or whether it's a lack of directive, we are taking out their humanity from the interaction.   If we're just telling somebody, just get through this quickly and get it done, which is sometimes the way that we align the incentive, we then just get them to just do something really fast. And you can tell when you get an email when it's kind of fast, somebody is just being quick. And so, when he means relatability, he means empowering people to actually show that they're people and using that personality.   So, giving a potential anecdote, being able to be empathetic like we were talking about before, validating how somebody is feeling, it's hard for bots to do those things, credibly. They can do them maybe in a way that will get it right some of the time and then not some of the time. And that not some of the time is really a disaster, basically. So, this is where human beings, we have this capacity to allow somebody to have an emotional connection to what you're saying because you're showing your humanity and we need to encourage people to do that.   And the last that he’ll say is it is important to be able to be Reliable with your customers and where they want to be, the data does suggest this, and this is also where the world has been going. If you have chat and you cannot respond to people on chat, it's like what is worse, having it in the first place or giving people a terrible customer experience. It's like a two sides of the same thing. It's terrible because you're going to miss out on these presale opportunities by not having it and a lot of people just prefer to go in through chat for even for a post sale inquiry. But if you don't service it properly, it's a terrible experience.   Same thing with email. People offer up email and they should because many people like to email and they recognize that I'm going to send you an email and he thinks the expectation from what we can see, is the expectation is a day. If you're getting back to him in 24 hours on an email, that is about what he would expect. That's how he kind of think about it even in his own life in business. He writes somebody an email; he expects them to get back to him within 24 hours.   Me: Even if it's just an acknowledgement.   Daniel agreed and stated that just to be able to say I hear you right. Oftentimes in our customer service world, we end up giving people an automated response, just let them know I received your email and we will be getting back to you.   But, in the survey that they did, the average response time on email was 48 hours. He thinks that people recognize that that's probably not acceptable. He thinks that the bar for what we should be attempting to provide, it is attainable because where things currently are has plenty of room to get better. And I think that when you impress people, so if you then get back to people every time in less than 24 hours, every time, and you never create a backlog.   So, because you never want to have a backlog and because customers feel the backlog, the backlog means you can't get back to them for days or chat if your chats are piling up and he’s not talking about at 3:00 a.m. when for some strange reason somebody doesn't get back to a chat, maybe you can be forgiving of that. He’s talking about during a time where you expect somebody to be able to chat and they're piling up, that's a chat backlog. That's a disaster and those should be avoided at all costs.     App, Website or Tool that Daniel Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business When asked about on online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Daniel shared that they use a technology called Gong to listen to their sales calls. And he will say that it has been very powerful. As somebody on the marketing side where they are really trying to support their sales team, make sure that they understand what their prospective customers are actually saying about their pain, what is that language and their ability to then provide the right information to their sales team so that they can be successful in those selling interactions.   Gong has been amazing because it allows them to asynchronously participate in the sales conversation, because they can listen to the calls, they can listen to them at faster than real time speed. So you can make it play at more than 1X speed, which is great, too, because it allows him to catch up on some things that at a faster pace. He can skip forward and listen, what they've done is within the Gong platform, they're using Natural Language Processing to tag what people are talking about.   So, when somebody is talking about pricing, when somebody is talking about positioning, He can kind of see where that is in the conversation so he can kind of skip forward to the things that are going to be really useful for him. If it's 2 minutes or 5 minutes at the beginning of just kind of set up time, he can see what that is because that's tag there so he can move past it. So Gong has been a real benefit to them, and he’s only assuming that also because of the pandemic, that it's even more useful because he can't easily just kind of hop in a room and join one of his sales teammates on a call.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Daniel When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Daniel shared that on the professional side, Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, which he loved, was 10 years ago. He still loves that book because he thinks in many ways, Tony's way of thinking about the business model as customer centric and obviously he also sold the business to Amazon, which at the time felt like, well, maybe that's not a win and if he's been holding onto that Amazon stock, most of us would think he's probably a billionaire at this point. But they were two companies cut from the same cloth because Amazon also has done the exact same thing and he has listened to podcasts and things where people from Amazon are talking about how do they think about solving business problems.   And they always start with the customer perspective. What will make the customer happier in this circumstance? And he thinks that that ethos and Tony just talks about this basically throughout the entire book, that ethos is what makes the whole discipline of CX a reality, it's not just your customer support function. You have to be thinking about this in every part of the company. Well, what would be better for the customer? And that informs what we do on the marketing side too, what you make this easier for the customer to be able to understand our value, understand what we do, how can we give them more useful information that will make their jobs easier? So, he loves that book.   On the personal side, he recently finished reading How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and it's an amazing book. It he thinks gave him a lot more language to be able to understand the role that he needs to play in the world and how he’s going to be part of change that needs to happen and the role that policy needs to play and what he needs to do to support policy that is anti-racist so that we can dismantle the systemic racism that has plagued not only this country, obviously, but many parts of the world for a long time for centuries.   And so, he’s incredibly grateful for the scholarship of Ibram X. Kendi. He’s actually attending a seminar that he's putting on. So, he’s very, very excited about that book and if anybody else has read this book and is interested in talking about it, he’s very much looking to connect with people who are interested in this as a topic.   What Daniel is Really Excited About Now! Daniel shared that the funny thing about a pandemic is that it can change a lot of the priorities of what you’re able to try to do or not do. One of the things that he’s passionate about is meditation. He started meditating about 10 years ago and has been meditating on a daily basis for close to 4 years at this point. So he's kind of gone on and off in the past with some different ways of doing it. And one of the things for those who have meditated regularly and have done so kind of alone, one of the things that he was realizing he was doing, he has been doing a guided meditation, a daily 10 minute guided meditation through an app called Calm. And there are different apps for this; Headspace is another app. WakingUp is an app that was recently introduced to him. There are lessons that are being broached and he wanted more opportunities to kind of talk about those, talk about those lessons and to reflect on them and hear other people's thoughts on them.   So, he feels like he has been doing this in kind of a siloed, personal way. And recently he brought this to Simplr and he said, “Hey, does anyone want to do a meditation?” He'll talk about why he’s into meditation and they can do one of these guided meditations through the through the app. And to his pleasant surprise, a bunch of people were very interested. And there were also a bunch of people that have meditated, either sporadically in the past or that meditate quite regularly for longer periods of time even more than he does.   So for now, they're starting a company meditation practice where they get together every couple of weeks, every two weeks, and they have a prompt that they are going to then reflect on and then when they get together, they are going discuss what was covered in that prompt as a way of trying to deepen their own practice and understanding. And also just to get to know people on a kind of a different level. So, really, really excited about the things that they can do that will bring them together while obviously, they can't actually see anybody face to face.   Where Can We Find Daniel Online Daniel shared listeners can find him at – LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/drodriguez4/   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Daniel Uses When asked if he has a quote or saying that he reverts to in times of adversity or challenge, Daniel shared that in meditation, he thinks so much of what he’s trying to do is actually just come back to the present and come back to the breath. So, he actually really like to remind himself to just breathe and then to actually do it. And oftentimes, if he’s feeling overwhelmed, if he just focuses on that feeling of his breath and just tell himself the word breathe, that it has an incredible effect. So, he will just leave everybody with the single word, “Breathe”   Me: That's brilliant. It's funny you said that because I have an Apple Watch and every now and again I see the breathe thing comes up on it and it says breathe. I guess it's reminding me to breathe. I don't know if it's built into the watch like that or maybe it picks up that my body energy needs to kind of cool down, I have no idea. But yes, breathing definitely does help. I don't know if I intentionally sit down and breathe from time to time because I do meditate sporadically. But breathing, it can definitely create clarity for you; it causes you to kind of just slow down and as you said, brings you back to the present. I have actually experienced that on many, many occasions.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners Links Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi In New State of CX Study by Simplr, 27% of Consumers Say Their Brand Loyalty Has Wavered During Pandemic Due to Long Customer Service Wait Times by Simplr   The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Welcome to the Recruitment hackers podcast show about innovations, technology and leaders in the recruitment industry. Brought to you by Talkpush,  the leading recruitment automation platform. Max: Okay. Hello everybody. And welcome to the recruiter hackers podcast by Max Armbruster. And today I'm pleased to welcome on the show the global talent acquisition capability leader at Accenture, Jason Roberts. Welcome Jason. Jason: Thank you. And thank you for saying all of the words in that title. I know it's a lot. Max: Can we mix them around? We can move them.Jason: You got it exactly right and t's a bunch though.  We were just talking and it's a whole lot of words. I'm not sure that it says anything. So, What that means is that I have a pretty fun gig and that I'm responsible for processes and technologies and how we do recruiting for Accenture's customers. And we will do that for large organizations where we hire several hundred thousand people per year.So we get to try out lots of technologies. We have a pretty nice clean standard process that we work from. And I get to, to be a part of that and work with smart people every day. It's good.Max: Yeah. Fantastic. You said a few hundred thousand people every year. And I guess that number is getting bigger than ever now where the industry is kind of figuring out how we're going to get these 30 plus million people back to work in North America and I don't know, it must be hundreds of millions worldwide. So the pressure is on to, to deliver you know, I'm gonna say a good, maybe a decent experience for most of them. Jason: Well, what's interesting is what I worry about with, with COVID is that candidate experience will stop being a priority because candidate experience is a big deal when you've got 3% unemployment and it's necessary in order to, to achieve the hires that you need to achieve. But when there's 25% unemployment or 20% unemployment, you don't need candidate experience, people just need jobs. So it's, it's one of those things where if I'm worried that we might lose ground in the candidate experience side of things. I think we all want to be in a position where we treat people well, and we had started seeing real improvements in that space. And it was because companies were making investments in the right things in order to make it happen.  I'm hoping we get to continue that, but there's a, I think there's a real risk that we'll take a step backwards in that space. Max: Yeah. I've definitely noticed that people are not getting back to candidates as fast as they should be and positions are being kept open even though they're not real. And so it's kinda like candidates sending beautiful offer letters and resumes and hearing nothing back, hearing crickets.On the plus side, the candidate experience is improved by the fact that companies are not defaulting to asking people to come physically in person. And when you consider how time consuming that can be and demanding, that can be, well.. We were meeting in person. It was a lot of work for me. I mean, I had to take a plane to come and meet you. Jason: Well, no, you didn't have to. I was always great with being on video if you want to do that.  I found that suppliers really wanted to meet in person. And I've worked remotely for over a decade, probably 13 years now, something like that, that I've worked remotely. And I was completely good being on phone and people would just would want and meet, man. Okay, well, I'll meet with you. You know I actually had an office for the sole purpose of meeting with suppliers when they came into town. That's the only time I went to the office when I met with somebody that came in town to meet me.Max: I remember that office. It was, it was a, We Work Jason: It was a We Work, We Work, right. That's why I only went there every once in a while. I just, I would reserve a conference room. And I think you, you came back to the actual inner sanctum. You saw the actual office. Yeah. Max: Yeah. Well I know you have a very cool job with Accenture today and you had a very cool job with Randstad before.  Can you tell for our listeners, give us a quick overview of, where you come from and how you got into this space? Jason: Oh, gosh. Yeah. So I started recruiting, my age will show for sure. 1997. Was my first,  my first piece of recruiting work.I was, I had a person, a friend that I knew... The internet was still pretty new. Right. So,  like I got email for the first time in 1994, I think.  So it was, it was still relatively new and a friend of mine said, Hey, I'm a recruiter. And I, hear you can find things on this internet thing. Can you help me with that? I said, well, yeah, I can help you search the internet. So I became an early sourcer and it was with a staffing firm and,  that sort of, I progressed over a period of time so that, so that ultimately, I, I worked for the staffing firm full time then,  did some consulting then I spent about seven years with Cisco systems and started out as a recruiter. I recruited Sales and sales engineers for them. Ultimately we built our own applicant tracking system back then there were no web based ATS everything was client server. So we thought, okay, well we're the backbone of the internet we should probably have something that's a web based deal. So we built our own and it was my job to be sort of the functional expert on that. And I worked in HR IT for a little while, built my own ATS with Cisco. And that was fun. Max: 2003 ish around that. Jason: Yeah. That's about right before Taleo showed up.Max: Yeah, it must have been frustrating to see the startup Taleo pick up all this business thinking... Jason: Yeah you know what, we built my module and of course dot com bubble burst along the way. And things slowed down a little bit in recruiting. And we built the module that was basically how we take job orders and approve things and we hadn't built a lot of the candidates stuff yet. And Taleo came out and with a few other things there and and we were like, Oh, these things are way better. Let's not build the rest. Let's just find a way to connect to these other deals. And that's what we did. We never finished, we just did the sort of requisition piece. It was called cafe rec, was the tweaks that..Max: Back then recruiting happened mostly in Starbucks. Jason: Well, apparently  that's how it worked. It was a good thing. And, I learned a lot. Along the way, I became a certified project manager and it was great and then I had a boss that told me, you know, I'd become the operations leader for Cisco. And my boss said, you can either have my job, which I don't plan on leaving anytime soon. Or go to a place that does recruiting for a living. And I said, Oh, that's not a bad idea. And I'd outsourced our recruiting along the way. And I was responsible for the relationship between outsource company and Cisco and I played that sort of client side role. So the company that went through the RFP process, they actually told me no, they said, yeah, I don't think we can help you much. What you're trying to do is, is really not exactly the right thing.And there were a hundred percent, right. Like it was the, the worst conceived RFP and a terribly conceived sort of a model that we had designed and the only company that came back and said, this is a bad idea, we're going to bow out. We wish you luck and we'll help you with something else the next time. It was Accenture.I thought, man, that took a lot of integrity to do that. So, when I went to look for a job, they were the first people that I called. And, they made a job for me. So I went to work for Accenture, loved that, did that for six years in various roles. And then went to Randstand Source Right. And I loved Randstand Source Right. That was a good time. I, I went over to lead operations for them. And I did that for a number of years, uh, moved on to the, Senior Vice President of Strategy. Uh, it was Strategy and Standardization because a big part of the strategy was to standardize. Um, so that was that. And then, um, ultimately I ended my run there as Head of Technology and Analytics, uh, around the globe and, uh, Accenture is a funny place, man. It, uh, it calls you back at some point. There's lots of us that are boomerang. So we've come back. That's the role I'm in now I really, um, I really like. I remember the guy who had the role when I was here before and, uh, I loved what he was doing and we where he got to spend his time.So I, when that was open, I said, all right, let's do it. I came back back to Accenture. Max: Now, if you could go, you know, you go back 15 years. Um,  um, would you do what I'm doing and start, uh, an ATS company. I started one in 2008, 2009. I was, I think, a few years too late, uh, on my first run. Jason: You know what? I do look back and think, um, I wish I had been a founder.  I have a lot of respect for the founders that I know. And I look back, I think that quite a bit, um, I was, I had a family very, very young, uh, so, uh, we had our first child. I was in that spot. So the gamble wasn't my gamble. It was the whole family's gamble. So I, I never did it. And if I knew, then what I know now I might have, like, I understand the venture capital space. I understand how that all works. And I did, I was just so clueless back then. I had no idea. Um, but, uh, who knows? I have an idea. Maybe one of these days, I'll get to try it out. I do have and idea.Max: Oh, don't do it. Don't do it, Jason. It's the worst, worst thing that can happen to you. No money. Uh, no, uh, I don't recommend it. Jason: Ok, that's good to know! My other founder friends are like do it, do it today! I'm gonna wait until we're not in a, you know, a crisis.Max: Apparently recessions of the best time to start a business. Jason: Well, you know what a bunch of people that did that, did well doing that.  Max: Yeah. Um, it, it sounds like, uh, throughout your career, while you were not an entrepreneur, you were able to tinker and build things and build toys. Um, and I picked up on the job title you shared with us. You said it was a Standardization in it. That doesn't sound too sexy, but there were also, um, some more creative exercises that you were involved in. Um, you were telling me before we started the video that you, learned about the limits of automation and where the humans were needed in an experiment that you ran a year or two years ago. Um, could, um, could you elaborate on that? Jason: Yeah. Well, we're actually experimenting with that right now, even. Um, so the technology exists to fully automate the recruiting process, especially at the, in the lower level jobs. So think retail, uh, warehouse workers, things where you're not making big decisions on the skills and capabilities, but it's more processing someone through with a very low threshold of qualification. So we call those high volume, low skill. And so for those roles, it's possible to fully automate. There's not a lot of discernment involved that needs to be made, a human doesn't need to make that decision on “Do we hire this person or not?” Everyone is qualified if they hit some basic knockout questions, like, can you lift 50 pounds? Literally, “can you have work boots on your first day?” Um, those are the sorts of things you have to, you have to ask them.  So when that happens, uh, I remember I went to one, one interview center for massive distribution, uh, site, uh, one of the biggest in the world, I think. And, um, There's a building for interviews.And I sat down with a lady who had been interviewing in that building, interviewing candidates every day. Um, for, uh, I think it was six years. She had interviewed candidates every single day. And I said, well, how often do you say no to a candidate? And this lady said, “Oh, I've never said no.”She had never said no. She had interviewed for six years and never said no. So when that's the case, that you don't need the interview anymore, right. That discern was done necessary. So we tried this with a fully automated process. And what we learned is these sorts of roles. You always, you have dropout rates at certain points. You know, you're going to have a certain percent that fail the drug screen, way more than you would think if you do white collar work. You hear the failure rate, it would surprise you if that's all you've ever done. Um, But there's a failure rate of drug screen, you know, you're going to have, and then there's a certain number of people that just won't ever show up for the job.And, um, what we learned when we fully automated is we could get people all the way through the process up until the day they're supposed to start and they just didn't show up. They didn't think it was real. Some of them would get nervous when filling out the background, check paperwork, thinking it might be a scam because they're asked for, you know, personal information, social security, and so forth, even though it was from a reputable company, they're worried that it's a scam. So in order to ground the position, we are experimenting with the right place to insert a human contact. So where do you insert a phone call to ground this, to be that it's a real position, a real job for someone? Not because you need to say yes or no, but because they need human contact to feel good about the job.Max: Well, that's what the lady was doing for six years, right? It was, uh, she wasn't saying no, but she was saying here's, here's a human contact. Jason: That's it exactly right. That's what she was doing all the time. Max: Uh, yeah, I I'd like to insert more video in the process where you know, that human contact could be, Hey, check it out You know, here's the, the warehouse where you'll be working. You know, do a little phon, recording, and say, we can't wait to see you on Monday. And that, little video can be, it can feel personal, but it could be actually general, you know, you could send it to everybody. Jason: Yeah. I think you're right. I think you're exactly right. And we're seeing more of that. In fact, we're seeing, um, seeing a shift to video interviews for certain, um, a lot of companies are just using zoom or Skype or not Skype, but Microsoft teams, the Skype, Skype got replaced, uh, Google meets for some, but they're, they're using sort of their conferencing platforms to do that instead of, uh, instead of the the formal sort of modern, higher and higher and things.  But it's a little bit broken, right? When they do that, because they don't have the formal scoring, they don't have, they don't have the staff, the they're not able to what's happening like the candidate, your platform. Um, they it's, it's not as strong of a solution.Um, so I was talking at one point with, uh, With one of the founders of another one of these companies. And they said, they said we're running into companies that have sort of the scrappy solution. And  they're using zoom. And then the ones that are, that were prepared for something like this, um, the adoption rate just skyrocketed.So people, cause video, I always had trouble getting people to use it and getting people to actually lean into it because you still have to review the videos. But once we, um, once we hit this pandemic, everybody seems way more comfortable or, you know, it's become a necessity in their world at least.And they're accustomed to it. Max: Yeah. Yeah. We've, we've done a lot of zoom and team integrations and then, um, have the live video call asynchronous video. Um, I still, I'm still a luxury for, a lot of positions they're more interested in getting people through binary, you know, outcomes or multiple choice questions and getting them to move to a human interview through a phone call. Um, and also still a lot of markets where asking people to log in for a zoom call would be too, um,  demanding on the bandwidth. So they do phone calls instead. And, uh, you know. Jason: Well you're, in markets that where that's a significant challenge. Right? But you guys have WhatsApp integration, correct? Max: Yes. Yes. WhatsApp integration allows for collecting video, but asynchronously, you wouldn't be able to do a live video call connected through the business API. You can do it person to person, in the consumer market, but it's not yet supported for businesses. Unfortunately. Uh, same way that, uh, Facebook picture, you know, otherwise. Yeah. I mean, all those companies, whether you're, you're an ATS and CRM, um, uh, social media or a communication platform, you all have video now and everybody has it and everybody can switch it on and it's relatively cost free. So I don't understand how the Highervues of the world are going to stay in business if their story is we're good on video. So is everybody else.Jason: Yeah, that's true. No, it's true. Max: Yeah. Um, Very commoditized. Jason:I thought they needed to do something different. Um, but yeah, we're we are seeing more video. Um, SMS is big for us in the US um, of course, different mediums elsewhere as well. So, uh, we're seeing a lot of that shift as well.Max: The, um, uh, continuing on what we were talking about, the lady, um, that says yes. Um,  um, do you think her job will still be around in, uh, in 10 years time? Or do you think that, uh, eventually, you know, um, we can go to a full automated process with no human contact. Jason: Um, I think probably not. I think probably her role probably doesn't exist the way it is. What I think we'll end up with is, you know, instead of a 40 minute actually interview candidates were scheduled for an hour, an hour time slot to come in and do your interview. I think we're going to have 10 minutes, um, basically, uh, uh, Welcome calls. They're their introductions. We're welcoming them to the company. “Oh yeah we're ready to make you this offer. It's already been sent to you. Welcome to the welcome home. And here's your, here's all the stuff you need to know. Here's where you show up what you do” but it's a 10 minute make somebody feel good call, um, and not an interview. Max: Yeah, that's a big productivity gain potentially there.Um, and I've seen, uh, for, uh, some people doing group interviews as well. Because then you have that human factor, uh, you know, you were saying, is it real? Well I mean, there's 10 other people logging into the call and I can see their faces and it's probably real. Jason: Yeah, I saw I was, um, there's, uh,  uh, one of the big online retailers, uh, they were doing this thing where they would do a drug swab. This was years ago. This is before I came back to Accenture. Um, they were doing a drug swab. Yeah, as a part of their interview process. So they would have these massive hiring events. They still do it right now, I think. And, um, basically you go, you sit down, you watch a video about working at this, at this place.If you're good with it, um, they have like a long Q-tip. You swab your cheek, it's a drug test. You put it back in the package, you seal it up. You sign an offer letter and you're done, like, that's it. That is the whole, that is the whole process you've been processed and the way that they were paying their suppliers was based on the number of return offer letters and, uh, drug screens that they got.Max: Wow. Well, I mean, I just had to do my first swab, uh, coming into Hong Kong  to check, they were checking for my coronavirus. Uh, yeah. Um, but that uh,  sounds brutal. And I guess these drug tests have had to, I mean, those are private enterprises can ask whatever they want. Right. it's they can decide what drug tests they ask. There's no, restrictions on state law or anything like that. Jason: No, it's strange. You'll have more stringent drug screening requirements for Businesses than the States in which people live. Yeah. So there might be a state where marijuana is legalized, for example, but it's not legal for the drug screen.Well, tell that to the, you know, 18 year old warehouse worker that they're interviewing for those warehouse job, you know, they're really just picking up boxes. They've been moving them from point A to point B. And I'm not sure that whether or not they smoked it makes much difference in that, but that's there oftentimes there's rules that say, yeah, you can't hire themMax: After a stressful day of carrying boxes.Jason: It may be, I don't know, but it's, there are these more stringent things, but if it's legal in your state is if it's legal where you are, I guess nine, 18 year old, usually usual is 21. So 21 year old warehouse worker, I guess she could have a problem. You could, you, it's not as big of a deal in my mind, but the 18 year old, shame on them, they should wait till 21 based on that wall.Max: It should be the other way around. Absolutely. We should have a world where it's illegal in the state, but it's legal as soon as you come inside the company. You know,  Basically an office where we only accept people here who smoke cigarettes all day long. Jason: So you joke, but, um, one of the big tobacco companies I did work with years and years and years ago, um, And the first time I walked in there, I saw the ashtrays on the desks, the whole thing.So, yeah, I don't know if they still do that, but this was way back when. But yeah, it's the only company I ever walked into with ashtrays on the desk, because that had sort of gone by the time I made it into this line of work. Max: Yeah. Well uh, I've experienced that as well.  I've had business meetings with cigarettes, um, in Asia. So  it does feel, uh, like you're, traveling in time when that happens. Jason: Well, I've had business meetings with cigars.  That's a different story. Max: Yes. Yes. I don't get invited to those then. Okay. Um, before we wrap it up, Jason: Max I'm pretty sure that i invited you to one at some point along the way.Max: With cigars? Jason: Yeah. I'm pretty sure along the way. Maybe when we were in San Francisco, but I don't know. Max: Oh, I missed it. Well, okay. Talking about the, uh, the current events and where you see the market going a few months ago when, uh, the world uh, was collapsing. You, told me that the RPO industry had rebounded strongly in 2008 and 2009 and had its best run right afterwards and gave me some hope for your industry, our industry. Uh, coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, um, um, has your, um, yeah.  Are you on track with your predictions or, um, or you, uh, surprised with, uh, the pace of the slowness of the recovery, I guess, um, how do you anticipate the next few months will pan out for people in staffing and in the RPO world in particular?Jason: Um, so yeah, uh, I don't know what the starting point of the sort of rebound is. Right? So coming out of the 2008 slowdown, um, 2009, when companies started bringing you back. Uh, employees, um, the recruiters came back first, right. And, uh, when the recruiters came back, the ramp began very quickly. And a lot of times they said, okay, well, let's bring people back, but via outsourcing. That's why outsourcing grew so much at that time. What's difficult about this one is we're not yet at the place where I think we're ready for the rebound. I think  um, we're still sort of in the low point. Uh, and we're, nobody's really sure when, we sort of swing out of this thing, I'm confident that we will, right?I'm confident that yeah. Eventually everybody gets to take off their mask and go back to their jobs. And there are some hurdles that have to be reached along the way for that to happen. So I'm confident that the world will go back to what we were accustomed to one day. Um, but it's not something that happens, you know, in three months or four months, it's something that happens, uh, over a long period of time.Max: There's a cycle to recruitment. And normally, you know, end of the summer, everybody gets ready for the big shopping push towards the end of the year. Jason: October. Yeah. Max: Yeah. So now is when people need to, normally when they start ramping up and start you know, setting up the machine. You're saying well, maybe it's taken a little longer this time.Jason: Well, what's funny is the online machine is ramping like you wouldn't believe. So the people who do your online shopping through, and then who fulfill those orders on the back end. Yeah. That that's going strong. It hasn't slowed down. In fact, um, It's where we're seeing the most competition for workers, uh, warehouse workers are right now.Like it's like a software developers and Silicon Valley in the early two thousands. Max: No, I don't know if I want to go into a, you know, carrying boxes or data science. Jason: Seriously. What I think is going to happen is those wages are going to start increasing really significantly. Much to the chagrin of my customer base, but they, I think that, um, you know, we're, we're being asked in some cases to monitor, um, uh, to monitor salaries or offers like what the, the offer that people are making to candidates on a daily basis. Because Amazon, when you drive past has billboards that say I'm offering X number of dollars per hour and they change. And sometimes they'll change uh, there'll be a different number when you go into the office from versus when you come back and yeah. Yeah. If that's how fast this, this thing is moving and it's not going down, it's all going up. Uh, and the reason that we think that is that, um, These jobs used to be the jobs that were, you know, the next level, they were the good paying jobs. If you didn't have an education necessarily, um, but uh, you wanted something that could actually pay your bills. Um, it's sort of the, the first job that was able to do that most of the time, um, you know, just above you would see the grocery stores and things paid just above minimum wage. And these jobs were always several dollars per hour or more.What's happened is Target, Amazon, even Walmart now have pushed that based salary up to, you know, if anyone wages somewhere in the eight or $9 range, they've pushed to 13 or 14, a minimum wage, the California minimum wage, I think through the end of this year, end of next year. Uh, it will be $14, right? Max: So they as high as high as, as a logistics or, yeah.Jason: Right. So it's, it's now you can, you can either, you can either work in a really, uh, challenging environment in a warehouse where you're lifting things a bunch and you're, um, it may, it's probably climate controlled. They've all added climate control, but there's these big Bay doors. So where the trucks have to pull in. So, uh, it's you can't get that completely cool or, uh, completely warm in the winter time. Um, so you've always got to deal with the weather to some degree when that, when that happens, you can't have total climate control. So you've got those jobs that are uncomfortable and require more physical activity versus, you know, the, the grocery store chain, the, uh, big box retailer, those, those other ones paying the same amount of money. So all those people that have to work with your packages from the Amazon people who have to load them to the, uh, delivery drivers, to the, uh, uh, you know, the UPS guy, whoever, um, all of those, workers, um, they're in great demand. Cause there's more, we need more of them, but their salaries are deeply compressed because of what's happened with all of the retail salaries. Yeah. Max: Yeah. Well I'm, um, you know, from an economic standpoint, I think increasing minimal wages, does uh, accelerate the pace of automation and ultimately, um, force companies to automate more. Uh, so that's probably the response as well as, you know, um, in the short term an increase in, uh, and paper hour, but we know that, um, it's going to drive more automation and will eventually, potentially cost a few jobs. Uh, but if those are the hard jobs, um, that may not be such a bad outcome, it's just that, as you were saying if you have no education, um, and you need to pay the bill, those jobs are very precious. So I don't know. Um, I'm not, uh, a policy guy, but, uh, um, it sounds like you're in the right market. Even though you're fighting some, uh, difficult trends. Jason: It's fascinating, right. If it were easy, the clients wouldn't call us to help. Right? They'd be able to do this themselves. Max: So many times after eight hours in front of my webcam I'm like, Oh man, I wish I was outside doing physical work and I always thought that that would be like a good employee branding employer value proposition. Come in to work in our warehouse and check out, our guns, you know?Jason: You know what you need to do? You need to go, and I don't know about tha EVP, but the next time you feel that way, go dig a ditch and see how you feel afterwards. Because one time I at one  was hiring people who would bury the lines for the phone company and they literally were ditch diggers and I could not think of a worst gig. And they, uh, so every time I, when I look at this, I think. I could be doing that job. That would be terrible. Yeah, it's exhausting by the way. Max: I, uh, when I was, uh, 16 years old, I had a chance to go work in, um, an, a modeling agency to just to do intern work. But then my mother insisted, I go instead, go work in our plastic factory so that I would understand the cost of physical labor. And so  I did end up going to school afterwards and pursuing an education. Jason: Wow, How old were you when you could go to the modeling agency? Max: 16. Yeah, peak of my purity. Jason: At that age. I think, I think your mom might not have done the right thing. Max: Um, I'm pretty sure she will not be listening to our conversation, but, uh, if you are, I'm still so grateful for, uh, for your choice, mom, and I'm very grateful for your time, Jason. Today and in previous conversations, helping, helping me understand the macro trends and the limits of automation. Uh, thank you very much for joining us today, uh, on this podcast and looking forward to our next chat. Jason: Happy to do it. Thanks. Max: A treat talking to Jason Roberts from Accenture and, and learning about the new dynamics of the marketplace currently shaping, uh, North America with the pickers and the people working in logistics in higher demand than the engineers of the Silicon Valley.Who would have guessed? And if, uh, if you liked this interview, please subscribe for more on recruitment hackers, podcast, and share with your friends. Hope to see you here again soon.

Most Ecommerce brands are starting to feel like they can’t beat Amazon and thus, they must join them. Ryan unpacks the benefits of joining Amazon and the things you need to watch out for if you do. TRANSCRIPT: Jon: So, Ryan, we've all heard the old adage, "If you can't beat them, join them." Right? Ryan Garrow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So from what I hear on a daily basis in the conversion optimization world is that most eCommerce brands are starting to feel like they just can't beat Amazon, and thus, they must join them. If nothing else, they're looking to have a presence on Amazon so they can at least be found. It's becoming a huge search engine. I'm sure we'll talk about that. But I see a lot of good things that brands get from participating in the Amazon game, but there seemed to also be a lot of downfalls in doing so as well. So today, I'd like to pose the question, Amazon, fight or join? So Ryan, I think start just by breaking this down a little bit. What are the benefits to joining Amazon? Ryan Garrow: There are a lot. I mean, the easiest answer for that is volume, volume, volume. I mean, Amazon. There's no statistic that shows Amazon is not dominating the online ecosystem as far as volume of sales. They're over 50% every holiday season. They somehow made July into a shopping holiday because every retailer on the planet has low sales in July until Amazon comes along and says, "Well, I'll just put Prime Day out there." There are sales on Amazon. They have figured out how to remove friction from the purchase process better than any other retailer has so far in at least initially looking at it. The benefits of joining Amazon? There's a lot of volume. You can sell stuff. Jon: Okay. So what are the benefits to fighting Amazon? Ryan Garrow: Well, you enjoy pain. You like losing. The benefits of fighting it is you get to control a lot more of your brand. Amazon has been trying to do some things to improve that, but you get more control. You get customer data. It could increase your chances of having repeat purchases if they buy from your website. You get to personally handle that conversion optimization after the purchase, and you get to keep some additional margin. Amazon does charge for the platform when you sell. So there are some benefits to not selling on Amazon. Jon: If you were to choose to join Amazon, what would be your recommendations? Where should we start? Ryan Garrow: Whether you join or fight Amazon probably needs to start with what type of business are you. If you are a retailer selling other company's products through your website or even with a retail storefront as well, Amazon may not be the best place for you. Amazon, largely speaking, is the biggest retail. I mean, Walmart and Amazon are both massive retailers. Other people sell their own stuff on Amazon. Amazon also is a brand. They do have their own products that they sell as well. But as a retailer, it's probably less beneficial. Your margins are already smaller, and you're going to give another retailer some of that benefit. You race to the bottom when you're competing with the same exact product that other retailers are also selling on Amazon. If you're a manufacturer, I think there's a little more upside. You get to control your brand exposure on Amazon. As a manufacturer brand owner myself, I limit my retailers. I don't let them sell on Amazon. I want to own that and keep my cost as low as possible from an ad perspective. But the big key here too is you need to be able to protect your product. Hopefully, that's with some patents. Hopefully, it's a difficult thing for Amazon to maybe find your factory in China to have them make them cheaper for Amazon because they probably will. If you make or sell clothing, you better have a powerful brand. I mean, even Nike doesn't sell on Amazon right now. They went down that path and decided not to. I don't know the intricacies of their agreement and why Nike backed out, but Amazon is the biggest clothing manufacturer in the world. Most of the brands on Amazon for clothes are actually owned by Amazon, even if they don't say the Amazon name. It's just clothing would be difficult, but generally, most manufacturers should be considering it, at least in their process. Retailers, there's probably some different things you need to be looking at. Jon: Well, we've probably all heard the story about Allbirds, the shoe company, right? That Amazon went out and basically created a knockoff because Allbirds was selling so well on Amazon. As a consumer coming to the site, you really can't tell the difference. I've heard from numerous brands that the biggest downfall has been that they have a product that is easily reproduced or that Amazon... Maybe we should get into this a little bit, but I've even heard from people where they've done direct factory to Amazon shipping. So it's not Amazon Fulfillment Warehouse. Amazon then knows who's making the product, and then they contact those people and say, "Hey, we'll pay you a little bit more. Make it for us," or, "We'll do a much larger order if you make it for us," and then they lose their... The retailer loses the factory, and so it's something where Amazon is a double-edged sword for sure. That's why this is going to be such an interesting topic. Ryan Garrow: It is. Amazon basically is going to be frenemies with every company on the planet. They're a necessary evil for certain companies. Google and Amazon are very much frenemies. They both will say that, hey, their biggest competitor is... Google will say it's Amazon. Amazon will say it's Google. They're fighting over that search volume and that revenue from search traffic and paid ads, but Amazon is... I don't know this for sure, but I would argue probably the largest advertiser on Google and driving traffic to the apps into their website. So you have to go into Amazon with your eyes wide open, understanding that Amazon is aggressive. They are not your friend. They will stab you in the back. They will cut you if they get the chance. So you have to always be on your guard and looking at Amazon as, "How could Amazon steal this from me?" and just being operating as a paranoid brand owner or even a retailer. However you're operating on Amazon, protect yourself as often as possible, and look at it through the lens of, "If I was trying to steal this product from me or make money off of me, how would I do that? What would it look like?" Always use that lens on Amazon to see, "Does it make sense? Does it not make sense?" There's too much of a risk. There's a problem because even if you have a patent, which I'm sure Allbirds had some protectable intellectual property within their product. Amazon has more money than you, guaranteed, and they can fight you in court, and they can also probably have... They probably have enough smart lawyers on staff that they can say, "All right. Here's the patent. How can we get close enough to compete, but not necessarily actually break that product or break that patent?" It's probably going to get Amazon in trouble long-term, but in the short-term and where we're at right now, they are able to operate that way, and it's been very effective. I don't dislike Amazon, so don't hear me saying that Amazon is bad for what they're doing or how they're operating. You just as a retailer, or a brand, or a manufacturer have to understand what you're getting into in this relationship. Jon: Yeah, and I think that goes into why Nike left Amazon because Nike, I believe, originally joined on to fight counterfeits on the platform. The problem was is that it just wasn't effective. It actually made more counterfeits because they had more products on there that people could counterfeit, and then list and say it's a Nike product, and list it for cheaper than what Nike was willing to do. So then, it just became even worse for Nike. I think that's why they decided to pull out. That was my understanding. Okay. So if you choose to join, I'm hearing a couple things. Make sure you have a brand that you're selling that people know. Make sure that you have some type of protections in place not only for production of your product and manufacturing, but also on the legal or IP side with doing patents. What other things would you recommend if you choose to join into Amazon that brands do? Ryan Garrow: Based on my experience of selling multiple different ways with the same brand on Amazon, I would say utilize their FBA shipping. I don't necessarily think you need to go Vendor Central. So there's two ways you can go in there, Vendor Central or Seller Central. Jon: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ryan Garrow: Most of the time, I advocate for Seller Central because you get to control your pricing. Whereas Vendor Central, as of now, Amazon is not great at protecting your MAP pricing. They have incentives, and they will undercut. They have some things in their agreement in the past that they've since eliminated where they have to be the lowest seller. But I think just for controlling a brand, Seller Central is good. I think a lot of Amazon is moving towards that. They've even removed a lot of people from Vendor Central that probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. In Vendor Central, you sell your product to Amazon at wholesale as a retailer, and they buy a large volume typically to get you excited. Jon: Okay. Ryan Garrow: In Seller Central, you put your own listings up and are responsible for all of the content and selling it, and you're going direct to the consumer in a way on Amazon's platform. But then, in Seller Central, you can actually do seller fulfilled shipping where you're shipping it from your warehouses or your location, or your third-party fulfillment center is sending it, or you can do FBA, which is Fulfilled By Amazon, where you send it into Amazon, and then they ship it for you. They make Prime very easy. For most companies, I'm going to advocate for FBA. Some companies want to own a little more of the packaging process, inserts, things like that, be able to communicate with the customer a little bit better direct to the consumer, and that's where maybe a third-party fulfillment or sending out on your own warehouses makes more sense. But what we've seen is that FBA seems to be getting a little bit better placements or your organic rankings are benefited a little more from having FBA on your products. As Amazon goes to one-day shipping, same-day shipping for a lot of products, it becomes a disadvantage to say, "Hey, yes. We have Seller Fulfilled Prime, but it's going to arrive in two, three, four, five days," because there's a dissatisfaction to the customer having to wait that long. Amazon is really using their competitive advantage of warehouses all over the country and a distribution network that is unrivaled probably on the planet, and that FBA allows it. Also, their shipping rates are just ridiculously good. It's just so cheap. Jon: As they became even more aware with a few presidential tweets complaining about the deal they have with the Post Office. Yeah, so what about advertising on the platform? What do you recommend there? I mean, because it seems like if you're going to join them, you might as well promote your products on the platform. Right? Ryan Garrow: Yes. I mean, there's so much search volume. There are so many people going there to buy that advertising makes sense, and Amazon is, as of now, not a great platform for product research. It is not an easy system to go start looking... If you're going to buy a coffee cup, it's not a great platform to start by searching coffee cup, and filter your way down, and try to figure out what you actually want. At this point, Google is still better at finding the products you're looking for, and so by advertising on Amazon, you do get better placement obviously and can compete for that. The conversion rates are crazy good. I mean, I don't know if I've told you, but one of my brands, my conversion rate is 25% to 35%, depending on the amount of traffic I'm driving. Jon: No. That's a good return on ad spend. Ryan Garrow: Yeah. Well, it's a $15 product and I am paying between $1.75 and $2 per click. Jon: Okay. Ryan Garrow: So you need a high conversion rate to make it work. But when you are a price point that makes sense, 15 bucks, most people in the planet won't blink at that. You click "Buy" like it's worth trying, and you trust Amazon's brand. They've built a huge amount of trust and one of the most trusted brands in the world. They know that if they don't like the product they're buying, they can easily return it with no questions asked and get their money back. So there's very low risk on Amazon to buying, which is another reason that it's nice to utilize Amazon because they send a product back, and it's resellable. It goes back in their inventory. It's not a huge issue on that part. So I would advertise for most companies at least covering your brand names, ensuring competitors aren't there. If your product page is on Amazon though, we'll have competitors on them, so that's a no, and there is some risk as well there to be considered. You might want to be bidding on your own product pages because some [inaudible 00:12:30] their products, and I would always own a trademark. It doesn't matter if you're a retailer, if you're a brand. Owning a trademark and being able to register that on Amazon gives you advantages that are not available to companies that don't have a trademark. You get a storefront. You can get specific ads that are available to you that aren't available to other companies without a trademark. Trademarks aren't that difficult to get. I went through the process myself just trying to see if I needed to pay a lawyer 2,500 bucks to get it, and I was able to get one, but just by spending about an hour of my time. Jon: Right. Ryan Garrow: So any trademark, whatsoever gives you the ability to get some benefits. Jon: So that's not a protection angle, right? If you own a trademark on a term, can other people run ads on Amazon for that same term that you own the trademark for? Ryan Garrow: As of now, yes, but you get some additional ad placements that are only available to brands, which a brand has a trademark and you get a store URL. Jon: I see. Ryan Garrow: So you get the "amazon.com/" your store, and you get to put your products on there and curate your own website, if you will. You get to put your A+ or enhanced brand content on your product pages, or we've been experimenting to see if that actually does impact conversion rates, our own... I would call it CRI for the improvement, not CRO, which Jon would correct me if I said it was CRO. But at least seeing if that has an impact. Honestly, as of now, having it as a benefit, there's not much optimization or changes you can do that will materially impact your conversion rate at least that we've seen. Jon: Okay. So this is really helpful. I feel like I have a much better understanding of why I should join in. Jon: Well, what if I choose to fight? Right? Obviously, I like the pain. Right? I like losing. Right? So I'm going to do it. Forget Amazon. I'm just going to go DTC all the way. What are your recommendations there? Ryan Garrow: You're going to need to advertise on Google and Bing through Microsoft ads to keep Amazon from taking your traffic. So both on brand and on your product searches or service searches. Don't forget Microsoft ads. So many companies forget that and Amazon is all over Bing searches. It's really cheap traffic, and too many companies overlook it, so don't forget about that one. But then, if you're going to fight Amazon and not be on there, you really have to be on brand building mode. You are not just selling products to consumers. You are building a brand, and you got to do it aggressively. So think Nordstrom, Sephora. Those are strong brands. They are just retailers. They have some of their own products, but they have a loyalty that is unparalleled in the market. If everything else is equal, my wife will buy from Sephora or Nordstrom because she wants the loyalty points and she trusts the brand more than the brand she's buying from them. So loyalty programs are going to be very important to ensuring that people come back and buy additional products from you. That lifetime value is huge, and that's whether or not you're on Amazon or not. You need to be doing these things, but it becomes more important when you're deciding that Amazon is not going to be an outlet for your product. Jon: Yeah. I was just going to say, so first of all, I know that Nordstrom notes loyalty very well. Right? Ryan Garrow: Those are dangerous. You spend a lot of money to get a glass of champagne. Jon: Yeah, yeah. The 10-point days and all these other things that Nordstrom does is a Harvard Business School case study on how to do loyalty, so that's great to hear. What else should brands be thinking about if they're going to fight Amazon? Ryan Garrow: I would consider what I call a destination retail. So my wife has been passionate about retail her entire life, and so we actually have a retail store even though in this world of eComm, and that's where I spend my entire day, I know that retail is not the best place, generally speaking, to be jumping into. Physical storefronts are struggling. Malls are closing. But if you are looking at retail, which I think there are still some significant advantages to having a physical retail presence, you need to be looking for your brand beyond just a retail store. One of the best examples I've seen of building the brand and creating an experience at retail that is not just simply going into a store and getting something off a shelf. If you've heard of Magnolia like Chip and Joanna Gaines in Waco, Texas, there's literally nothing in Waco, Texas. Other than Baylor, there's no reason that anybody would ever go to Waco. It's not easy to get to. You fly to Austin, drive a couple hours, and it's usually really hot and sweaty. No reason to go there, but they have a destination retail store that I've been dragged there, and it's a phenomenal store. There's a reason that people flock there. They just retail other people's stuff. They have some of their own brands, but my wife's retail store can buy a lot of the same things that are sold at Magnolia, but they've done a phenomenal job at building and curating their brand and causing people to want to go shop from them even if they can get the same product cheaper at a store down the street or on Amazon. Not everybody is going to be able to get their own TV show and do all the things they've done, but at least begin studying what they've done and try to emulate some of the ways they've built that crazy passion and loyalty that causes people over the country to fly and land in Waco, Texas. I went there in August. Jon: Yeah. Ryan Garrow: Ugh, it is hot, sweaty, sticky, and... Jon: Husband of the year right here. Ryan Garrow: My wife was literally in heaven. It was like the closest she's going to get to heaven on earth, and that was Waco, Texas. Jon: But I think that expresses the power of brand, one, right, and how if you've done all that other work to build the brand, then if they were to move on to Amazon at some point, I'm sure people are going on Amazon and searching Magnolia to find their products. Ryan Garrow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: They're not finding them, so then they have to go elsewhere. But I think that definitely speaks to the power of brand and why that's going to be massively important if you don't want Amazon to go after you. Ryan Garrow: Yeah, and I would say even if you're going on Amazon to sell, you need to be building a brand. So don't take that as, "Oh, I'm going on Amazon, so don't worry about brand." It's always going to be important if you want to grow and scale, but just the magnification needed to compete with the... just sales volume, and ease of conversion, and how we are training. Amazon is training us to just do nothing, but look on Amazon and click "Buy." Sometimes I don't even price check. How sad is that? I'm super cheap. I spend all day on a computer in eCommerce, and I know that there are always better deals or easier ways to get it, but it's like, "Okay. It's going to be $3 more expensive on Amazon. I probably don't even care. I just want to get it because it's going to show up tomorrow and I don't have to worry about it." Jon: Right. It's the convenience factor, right? Ryan Garrow: It is. They've done a great job. Bezos is the richest guy in the world for a reason. He's created a monster that is phenomenally successful and very good at getting people to purchase. Jon: So what have we not covered that you feel would be really important for folks to know about the Amazon fight or join question? If they're considering this, what else do you think they should know? Ryan Garrow: I mean, just be aware of customer data, what that looks like. How valuable are repeat purchases to your brand? Does everybody buy a product you have no margin on the first one and you need them to come back and buy another one or something different to actually make the brand work and the lifetime value work? Because Amazon owns your customer if you sell on Amazon, so you have to treat them as a retailer that owns the customer. So Nordstrom, if you sell at Nordstrom, Nordstrom is going to own the customer, and they don't care if they ever buy your brand again. Amazon doesn't care if they will buy your brand again. They want the customer. So treat it like a retailer and just always go with your eyes open. There's always risks to copycats no matter where you are. If you find success, people are going to copy you. So that's just one of the functions of success. You'll always have it, but it gets, again, magnified on Amazon. Even eBay sellers will take your Amazon listing, and start selling it on eBay, and shipped direct to the consumer off of eBay from Amazon. The order will come in on eBay, and they will go immediately, automatically, usually with bots, buy it on Amazon and have it shipped directly to consumer with a gift receipt. They don't even touch the product. I have some people selling my $15 product for $25 on eBay. We're going to be a registered brand on eBay eventually at this point. There's other things that are higher priority right now in our brand growth, but just know that people are going to take your stuff, and it's just part of... what comes with success. But I would also keep some of your products on your website. Don't give Amazon everything if you choose to go there. You want to have a reason for people to maybe get your gateway drug product like the thing that people always need to start with you and that create high lifetime value customers. But try to get those customers to come back to you through your website. Once they've experienced your brand, you always want your URL on the packaging if possible because Amazon can't control your packaging, like control what goes in the box and the smiley face that goes with it, but keep your website on the packaging. A lot of companies are printing their loyalty program on the packaging. So if somebody goes to Amazon and buys, they are able to still be a part of the loyalty program with that purchase. Again, that's a way of getting that customer data off of Amazon to you as the brand so you can communicate directly. But I think step one for most companies is at least test it. There's no reason not to test what's there, and how much volume, and how it operates, so at least you can better see. If you're going to fight Amazon, you'll have some of the insight into what goes on in Amazon, and you better be prepared internally to take it on. Jon: Which brings me to a really great question, I hope, if I do say so myself because I'm about to ask it, but I'm wondering. What kind of tools exist out there to help brands on Amazon? There's going to to be a whole ecosystem of these, right? Ryan Garrow: Oh, yeah. There are tons. There are repricing tools, which can be very powerful. As a retailer, price is a huge driver of the Buy Box and the whole algorithm behind. If there's 20 people selling that same product, they all get mapped together. There's one listing officially. There are sometimes rogue ones that Amazon eventually will catch. But then, only one of those 20 retailers gets when they click "Buy," and so there's part of the algorithm that's price. If you're cheaper, your chance to get in the Buy Box are much higher. So repricing is a big deal. There's a partner of both of ours. SellerActive here in Portland does a great job at that. There are companies that will help you with listings to make them appear better. So if you have A+ content, they'll get like photographs or images in there. Product images are huge. So make sure you have good product imaging because that will be a big part of the clicks you're going to get. I'm telling most retailers to be ready for 360 images. If you can put 360s on your website, do it now. Have those ready when Amazon does release that to everybody. Right now, it's been held back to some of the larger brands at this point. I think some of it is just a bandwidth issue. 360 images are large, and it's just a... If you put a few million products all at one to have 360 images, that's a lot of server space, but just be ready. Jon: Well, if anyone has that server space, it's Amazon. Right? Ryan Garrow: Yeah, it's probably... They have it. Whether or not they're going to use it for themselves or lease it to somebody else, it's there. I would also say there are some companies out there that will own your brand on Amazon for you, and they will do the advertising. They will act as a retailer and help control Amazon. If you're going to go directly on Amazon through Seller Central or Vendor Central, you have to have some time internally to dedicate to managing that and controlling it. So if you've got retailers who are selling on there and you don't want them violating your MAP, it's going to take some work on your end. Some of these companies who will take over your brand on Amazon will help you control that. So if you just don't have the time, there are some of those companies available. Most brands now can handle Amazon direct, but it still does take some investment of time. Jon: I feel very well educated at this point. I feel like there's so much to think about, but you've done an amazing job of breaking this down, so thank you. Any final thoughts on this before we head on our way? Ryan Garrow: Just don't be scared of Amazon. Yes, it can be dangerous, but it can also be really fun, and it can be very beneficial. But if you'd go in just scared of Amazon, I think you're going to trip up, and you're going to have more issues rather than if you look at them as a potential upside or partner. I think just be optimistic rather than pessimistic when you're looking at Amazon, and I think you'll do a lot better. Jon: That's a great perspective. If you do make the leap on Amazon, hit Ryan up, and he'll help you advertise on there as well. Ryan Garrow: Yeah, or even just set some strategies so you don't lose a bunch of money. Jon: There you go. Always has proved valuable for me, so thank you so much for sharing today, Ryan. I really appreciate it. Ryan Garrow: Thank you. Jon: You've made us all smarter about Amazon and deciding whether we want to fight or join the cause. So have a wonderful day. Thank you for the interview today. Ryan Garrow: Thank you.

Chris McCabe is an Amazon consultant with a prolific voice in the Amazon space. He runs his own consulting firm that focuses on helping sellers with a myriad of different issues. Chris & his team help with all things related to Amazon that can potentially break your business down such as the little notifications you get that your listings have been shut down, your store is in disarray, or that you're late on your shipment.  Chris has appeared on many podcasts and YouTube channels in the past as well as in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Business Insider.   In this episode… There are a good number of Amazon sellers who have been flagged for engaging in “black hat” tactics. Many of them do this to beat their competitors and improve their rankings despite these moves being unethical and detrimental to Amazon itself. Why? Because Amazon is customer-focused and works to ensure that customers get the best shopping experience and when things are manipulated by black hat tactics, the experience for their consumers won't be as amazing as they would want it to be. The question now is, how can a legitimate brand run its affairs in a black hat world on Amazon?  Chris McCabe, a former fraud investigator at Amazon, knows all too well what to watch out for and how to navigate the world of Amazon like the back of his hand. He joins Eric Stopper in this episode of the Buy Box Experts Podcast to help sellers learn how to run a legitimate business on Amazon without falling into the trappings of black hat strategies. Stay tuned.

EP206 - Amazon Q4 2019 Earnings Deep Dive  Amazon released their Q4 2020 earnings on Thursday Jan 30th.  In a holiday quarter that has proved to be challenging for many retailers, Amazon soundly beat analyst expectations, and raised their governance for Q1 2020, driving their stock up.  Amazon's market cap is currently larger than the next six largest retailers combined, and their competitive advantage may be even greater. In this weeks episode we do a deep dive into all the details of the earning report. We look at top line results, AWS, ads, physical retail, and Logistics. We break down what it all means, and leave you with our conclusions. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 206 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, January 31st, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Google Automated Transcription of the show Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 206 being recorded on Friday January 31st 2020 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners it's exciting times in the world of retail and e-commerce Amazon reported their fourth quarter results back from 2018 feels like a a year ago even though we're still in January of 2020 and they were so impressive and important to I think everyone in the ecosystem not only retail but e-commerce and shipping that were really going to focus to do it dive in this episode on really understanding and unpacking these results probably in a deeper way than we've ever done so look forward to taking you on that journey and love any feedback you have on that before we do that Jason you in a couple short weeks are going to be representing the podcast sadly I can't make it but you will be in each OS tell us about that. Jason: [1:27] Yeah I'm very mixed feelings I'm super excited to go to Palm Springs Palm Desert area in February which is a much warmer than it is in Chicago as you. You may know and we have a bunch of I think pretty interesting guests lined up for podcast so so stay tuned for that but of course it's always sad to be an industry event without you and I always feel like I'm cheating when I record a. Show without you but obviously there is a segment of fans who feel those are the best shows in their favorites. Scot: [2:00] Yeah your mom and it's pretty much pretty much it. Jason: [2:04] I'm pretty sure she's not in that segment. Scot: [2:06] Boom Cooper I look forward to seeing who you can rope into doing some interviews those are always really good but that is coming up in let's talk about Amazon. Jason: [2:23] News new your margin is their opportunity. Scot: [2:33] So we're kind of mixing it up as I mentioned at the top of the show this was such a big quarter that we think it's really important to spend a fair amount of time on it so so we're going to break this into three parts so we're gonna talk about the setup going into kind of holiday and what we learned before Amazon announced I'm going to go through the highlights of the results there we can spend the bulk of the show on an analysis really kind of picking apart what's this mean for the industry so Jason want to take us through the setup going into Amazon's. Jason: [3:05] Yeah so obviously Q4 is a super important quarter for all of retail and it's been a little checkered coming into this Amazon announcement so MasterCard which has a panel of all people that shop with a MasterCard had reported that retail sales for the quarter were decent I think they said total sales were up three point five percent which is average to good. Growth rate for total retail and they said e-commerce was up 18% and so that, in and of itself didn't seem so surprising but then individual retailer started reporting. [3:51] And the folks that you you might have expected to be distressed we're generally more distressed than expected in the people that you might have expected to do well also seemed down so it's been this odd thing where MasterCard said hey overall it was kind of an average quarter and then the overwhelming majority of people that were reporting we're reporting a pretty disappointing quarter so you know that that created extra anticipation coming into. The two biggest retailers which were Amazon last night and then Walmart is on a really goofy fiscal year and so they won't be reporting toll February 18th, if I have it my memory serves but so. You know you wouldn't expect JCPenney's to kill it but they were down like 7.5% Cole's was down which has off-price retailer had traditionally been more resilient bunch of the apparel companies were down Macy's was down L Brands was down even some like value stores like five below which is in that dollar category those guys were down and Target was up but they were way below their guidance. [5:06] In general you know reading into this quarter it's felt like a pretty depressing quarter we've also seen a lot of evidence that the quarter was way more promotional in any quarter ever which means profits are likely going to be down and we've heard anecdotally from a bunch of these retailers that manufacturers, have way more inventory than they usually have this time of year and so there's a lot of distress inventory that manufacturers are trying to pump through the retail Channel right now so all sort of bad indications leading up to Amazon's announcement last night so Scott can you tell us how that what what how it transpired. Scot: [5:48] Yeah I would say that it was Wall Street was was extremely surprised pleasantly surprised in the world of public companies you have this kind of you know what what's the current period expectation and then what's the forward period expectation so the current period and this conversation of fourth quarter of 2019 the forward quarter would be q1 of 2020 so this is what's called in Wall Street lingo a classic beat so they beat the fourth quarter of 19's expectations and then they raised the q1 2020 expectations. When you do that you frequently. I'm have a pretty immediate and exciting stock action and that was certainly the case here so Amazon stock surged today Friday to 2008 that's a price not not a year which is a over 7% one day increase if you follow small stocks you know that may not seem like a big deal but this is a trillion dollar stock so 7% is seventy billion dollars of market cap that was created so I don't know how that compares this probably like 20 JCPenney's or something something like. Jason: [6:56] Yeah so I did look at it and it's fluctuated a little today it actually like as we're recording this show it's. Slightly nominally under a trillion dollars but, it's the equivalent of the next six largest retailers in the market so Amazon's market cap is the same as Walmart plus Home Depot + Costco + lows + CV s + T.J.Maxx. Scot: [7:20] Yeah but even just the 74 billion created today is larger than many individual retailers. Jason: [7:25] Oh yeah the 74 billion today is a larger market cap than TJ Maxx or Target it's. Scot: [7:32] Wow so you talked about it but that put some work just shy of the trillion dollar Club I think they're going to get there and we'll talk about what Wall Street thinks that's going. Shoot Em Up There, but just for folks that are tracking this apple is ahead at one point three five trillion and Microsoft's 1.3 trillion so Amazon's flirted with the trillion market cap club and I you know I think it's pretty safe to assume here that they're going to get there pretty quickly and stay there for the rest of 2020 so let's talk about the highlights that caused this this exciting and peeled onion a bit so you know, one thing that's not customary for Amazon is talking about how many prime users they have so in they're releasing on the call they talked about having a hundred fifty million Prime users and in the fourth quarter they sold more Prime memberships than they ever have before in any other period that's pretty material because you would think maybe Prime day would beat fourth quarter but you know that's not the case so so fourth quarter compared 30. Prime days in third quarter so so they must have sold more Prime memberships from the holiday sales than they did from Prime day. [8:39] Last time they announced this it was for the calendar year 2017 they announced it in 2018 and they said they had a hundred million so they have added 50 million Prime subscribers over a two-year period essentially so that's pretty impressive from that there's a line item that counts that revenue and that's called subscription services that accelerated to 32 percent growth again kind of supporting that, that that kind of more vague statement that those more sign ups than ever before those pretty material acceleration of that metric and then another nice thing is that's that's five billion dollars just for the quarter so that's essentially. Customers giving Amazon money in the future for you know fast kind of quote unquote free services that you know helps Amazon's cash flows which is pretty amazing I don't think we ever see anything quite like that it's kind of like prepaying for products on this you we see subscriptions but you don't see kind of like almost. Soccer is a service type prepayment so then. [9:42] The third party unit share came in at 53 percent of overall units meaning first party was 47% that was steady now what, what that doesn't capture is and I'll talk about this in our deeper analysis is unit volume is not the same as gmv and we'll talk about, so the transactional dollars you could have unit volume kind of flat quarter-on-quarter but you could have a huge surge in the dollar volume because the average order value could go up in three p down in one p there's a lot of things that can change that. The revenue from what they call 3rd party seller services this is largely what they charge sellers use FBA That Grew 31 percent year-over-year and surged, I almost wonder. If they're having a problem keeping up with this demand because they're building out fulfillment capabilities at about a fifteen to twenty percent clip and if the demand for FBA is growing at 30% you know that that's. It's going to be interesting and it will talk about fulfillment side in a second I talked about this being a beat so Revenue came in 2% above the top line which is a I would say a moderate beat but what really surprised everybody was. The operating income it came in 34 percent above the high end of where Wall Street would think so what happened here we'll talk about this in the gnosis so. [11:02] Amazon so this was obviously a big question in Amazon said you know it was overall adoption of the Prime platform due to the new prime one day offering so if you remember in Q2 they started offering one day Prime and this isn't available on every product they're working to get it on more and more products all the time but increasingly you will find products that are available to come in one day. Versus used have to pay a fee for one day delivery anywhere between like three and ten dollars it always varied based on what I saw the. [11:36] Um inside of that Revenue grew 21% year over year to 87 point four billion paid units grew 22%. This gets Wall Street really excited because. Because Amazon has you'll talk about this the cloud computing which is Amazon web services or AWS the ad business you know those things kind of. Could be used to prop up growth and The Core Business which is we would think of as retail could be growing slower. Paid units takes those things out so when paid units accelerates and is growing you know I think you talked about the high-end Mastercard at 18% this is growing faster than kind of what we thought was pretty you know aggressive number that is a really big signal that something has changed and most Wall Street analysts kind of view that as the signal that prime one day has really been a game changer. [12:27] Within their North America grew 22% year over year and International Group 15% another thing that's interesting is North America's well over two thirds of the business now Internationals about one-third so that's how you can have you don't take those numbers and average them North America as growth is able to swap the growth on International incidentally both those were above wall Street's expectations and then you know you and I speak a lot and we always hear that Amazon is not profitable. Well operating income came in at 3.9 billion so that is pretty darn profitable by my calculations Jason you dug into the cloud computing stuff how did that go. Jason: [13:06] Yeah so first caveat you talked about the the rumor that you know people out the talking point that Amazon is not profitable if they don't have that talking point they have this talking point that. Amazon is profitable but exclusively because of AWS which is also annoying and not true but that being said AWS is a darn good business and so they had another good quarter of growth revenue for the quarter was to nine point nine billion which was up 34% from the corridor they're by far the market leader so when you're the market leader and you're growing at 34% that's a pretty good story and it did beat Wall Street expectation. However it is part it is a clear deceleration of the growth so. You know from as far back as i q 1 2017. This this business has been growing 40% or better every single quarter and then Q 2 of this year for the first time at dip below 40 it was 37 percent growth last quarter 35 percent growth this quarter 34 percent growth so it does feel like. The law of large numbers is starting to kick in and and this crazy growth rate is slowing down a little bit but like for any business. This is still great growth in its great growth. [14:34] On a big number and it is highly profitable business and then the other you know thing to keep in mind about this whole AWS service is. The bulk of the the Computing world is still not yet on the cloud right so there's a lot of estimates that you know it's maybe ten to fifteen percent of all compute is on the cloud right now so the. Potential future market for these Services is very large and you know it is. Certainly a challenge for their biggest competitors Google and Microsoft. Interestingly Microsoft reported today and you know they have a competing product called azure and as your you know on a much smaller base is growing much faster so they they dramatically beat Wall Street expectations. Who are Juliana Azure 62 percent growth which also made some news so it's a pretty competitive. Hot cycle but Amazon continues to do a lot to maintain their lead and I think they also rolled out something like a hundred new AWS services this quarter. Scot: [15:46] Yeah there's there's one argument and this is not our purview so I'm not an expert on this but that Microsoft's kind of stuff in The Ballot Box because I think they put Office 365 another cloud computing there's simply kind of taking the office build it kind of license converting it over to cloud and then kind of counting it in that as your number if I understand right. Jason: [16:07] Yeah I think that is potentially true but I'm not actually sure that is stuffing The Ballot Box because of you you know if you think about they. Previously they had to sell those customers on office every. Year and often people didn't upgrade right and so if they're successfully able to migrate all you know a big chunk of customers to Assassin model and they're delivering that from the cloud like that that actually is indicated of of them growing the business so I you know I'm not sure I would call that super nefarious but for sure it helps to have some super popular products like that to Goose your Cloud business. Scot: [16:45] It's not a nefarious it's apples and oranges will agree to disagree. Jason: [16:49] Fair enough okay yeah as as per usual. Scot: [16:51] But you're on how about the ads business Jason. Jason: [16:58] Yeah so this was another I mean I feel like we shouldn't be saying another bright spot because they all seemed like bright spots but so Amazon has this segment of Revenue they call other which is not exclusively but mostly this the advertising business and it was another huge quarter for that the other segment of group 41% to 4.8 billion so you know they were on a run rate to do 10 billion in 2019 and I think with this number they're actually going to have an added it up but I think this actually puts them at like 11 or 12 billion for 2019. Scot: [17:41] Are they I think last time I looked they were passing Snapchat and had a bead on Twitter set that kind of. Jason: [17:47] Nope they passed them both. Scot: [17:49] Okay yep so they just have. Jason: [17:51] They're the third largest digital advertising platform in North America. Scot: [17:56] Yeah those Facebook and Google are so big it's gonna. Jason: [17:59] Yeah yeah we'll talk about that a little bit more in the in the analysis but definitely a good quarter for ads and it's having a ripple effect on the rest of the retail industry. Scot: [18:11] Cope about physical stores. Jason: [18:12] Yeah so this is a new category Amazon had to add after they acquired Whole Foods. And this is down 1% it's about the only thing in the whole earnings report that was down and it was down 1% to 4.4 billion it was also down 1% last quarter. So this is almost exclusively Whole Foods that I think there's like 80 other stores besides the 500 Whole Food stores. [18:42] And it is interesting that it's down again you know normally brick-and-mortar retailers growing at like three or four percent you know Amazon's doing a bunch of interesting things in the whole food stores and and their stores that cater to a relatively affluent customers. Which is you know a segment that has been more resilient so you'd you would kind of expect it to be up. Um and the thing that really kind of skus this number and makes it not all that useful for me is Amazon has aggressively converted those Whole Food stores to home delivery stores so. You know they launched a delivery service out of Whole Foods and they used to charge per delivery or they would. Sell a separate membership they did away with all of that and so you now can get free two-hour delivery from a whole food store and they haven't disclosed how many customers have are regularly using that service but if you use that service you're in their e-commerce sales not in there. They're physical retail sales because they they. [19:45] Attributed based on on where the order is collected and those orders are collected on the web so I suspected we knew what the. The sort of bow purpose and home delivery number was from Whole Foods and added it to this like you know I'm not saying it would be a huge growth but it probably wouldn't be negative but as it is you know they're they're slightly declining in a market with where other Grocers are slightly growing. Scot: [20:12] Yeah that it's interesting too because they've opened up so many of these kind of little bookstores and four-star stores and all that jazz you think that inorganic growth would help this number so it must. Either it's like seriously declining in there having trouble just treading water or to your point there we categorizing it and we there's a one piece of data we can't see to really understand what's going on. Jason: [20:33] Yeah and probably very likely a little of both. Scot: [20:36] Yeah wrinkle so then that was that captures kind of the highlights of fourth quarter 2019 now let's look forward again a Wall Street thing is you give guidance so companies give a range of how they think things are going to go. And they did a beat and raised on guidance so revenue for the first quarter of 2020 was guided to above analysts and. Amazon says 73 billion at a a midpoint if they get that would be twenty two percent growth they're essentially saying look The New Normal is 22 percent growth so buckle up. So that's going to be interesting there in Amazon's historically somewhat conservative so there could almost be I won't see ya shot that maybe like 25% I don't know you get the sense that they are seeing something in the data from prime one day and that is a game changer and really. Almost changing the business. But that being said it was a little mixed because margins were muted and guidance and they were very careful to call out exactly why in all. Pick that apart when we go into the analysis side Wall Street brush that off they effectively said look, you guys have shown us that this is paying off this investment in prime one day we're comfortable with you continuing to do that and in Amazon's got really good about articulating. [21:59] How much they're spending where it's going and what's really interesting about it is it's kind of forever dollars which is nice so effectively capex investing into new things that will be used for years and years so. So then another area of investment that they specifically called out as India there's a lot of press Jeff Bezos was in India you've probably seen the pictures of him wearing kind of a funky jacket and doing like a lots of fun things in India it's a huge market for them and announced they're going to invest a billion dollars, don't think they put a time frame on this I kind of mentally. Wrapped it up to 2020 but it could go beyond that certainly not going to be 1/4 that's a according to emarketer that's a two hundred billion dollar a year in five years area that's growing really rapidly and then Amazon again kind of in a uncustomary way they. [22:50] Put out some data around that market they said they have 550,000 sellers now sixty thousand of those export products and then they've created 700,000 jobs kind of amongst their three peas in India there there exclusively third party so they don't have a first party kind of business and they've created those 700,000 jobs since their 2013 launch. They did announce a huge investment fulfillment centers will talk about in the end now section and then based on all this data and the results of Q4 analysts nudge their price range is up between 2275 and 2500 I saw some a little bit higher than that but that seems to be kind of where everyone's clustering in that that section so again they kind of ended the day at 2008 I think they only have to get up to 2100 to be in the trillion dollar Club so and I'll start expecting that they will get there and stay there. [23:44] So those are the results we did the set up heading into this this announcement the highlights now let's really dig into what this means and do it dig that deep dive on it I wanted to spend some time talking about this prime one day so so one way to think about Amazon is it's a capital intensive business because of fulfillment center parts of it. Unlike eBay so eBay is a pure digital business they don't have fulfillment centers or delivery trucks or anything like that they may have some office space but other than that it's pure digital business and what's interesting is Amazon has now kind of shown to Wall Street look we're gonna go into these invest modes and we're going to invest heavily against something that we think is going to work but then we're going to have a harvest mode and that's what gets Wall Street really excited because when they have these Harvest modes Wall Street is typically perpetually surprised where I surprised investment works and then they're surprised by how much profitability comes out of that Harvest so I would characterize that is what's going on here so Amazon again started in Q2. And what they did is they said they announced prime one day they said we're going to announce 800 million in that quarter and then in Q3 announced about a billion and then in Q4 they've now announced that they spent one and a half billion all on prime one day. [25:03] So you throw all that together and you get about a four to five billion dollar investment in this new initiative that seems that's a really big number and it's very easy to be skeptical on that but now we're seeing that 22% paid units number accelerate nicely so Rin that entering that Harvest mode and what Wall Street analysts are thinking is once we kind of lap Q2 that those investments will taper off the infrastructure for Prime Monday will have largely been built they'll still be some more but maybe it's going to be like 500 million kind of level of investing and then we're going to hit this really big Harvest Motes that's what's got everyone excited. [25:43] Where does that dollars goes when we say four to five billion dollars where does it go it's all in shipping infrastructure so it's more fulfillment centers one of the big things about so if you think about this supply chain the end of the supply chain the the start I guess in the supply chain is the Fulfillment center so the products being there for consumers then a then that then you have the consumers primarily a residence so in the middle the two important pieces where I think the bulk of investment are going is sortation centers so to be able to ship all this stuff one day you have to sort it into not only zip codes but zip plus 4 so that you can get it on a truck that's going to do a very tight route and be super efficient so Amazon's invested heavily in that so used to be they didn't have any like five years ago they had very few sortation centers there were relying on the USPS FedEx and UPS for that function so now they've built out that and then they've also built out the trucks I go to work every morning I have about a 30-minute commute and I probably see 30 Amazon Prime trucks on one of the major highways here in this area so. Jason: [26:45] And those are just trucks following you to deliver. Scot: [26:47] Yeah like slow down we're trying to give you all your packages so you know. So again this amazing amount of investment and then what's also interesting is they build these things but then they you know. They're going to last for very long time you know fulfillment centers last for presumably 10 plus years they the insides frequently have to be updated but you know the big kind of the pad the walls all that stuff in the sortation centers I think that technology lasting longer and of course trucks last a relatively long time so so what they're building is they already had more infrastructure than anyone else and they are just kind of like. Quadrupling down on that infrastructure so so. That's kind of what prime one day means and then you know my other point on it is consumers love it so consumers are buying more and more frequently and signing up for Prime because they love the one prime one day feature. Jason: [27:46] Yeah and I mean I the way I think about it like that faster delivery service does mean they win more orders against other eCommerce sites so you know maybe you ordered something from Amazon instead of Walmart because it will arrive faster but also it just entices households to order more stuff online that they previously might have ordered or purchased in a store and so like it you know they're not just stealing share from competitors like they're actually like increasing. They're addressable market so. Scot: [28:23] Yeah good point. Jason: [28:26] So that that is very strong the. Question I get asked a lot about Amazon lately when I visit other retailers is around the ads the. [28:41] You know as we've already highlighted a little and we'll talk about more Amazon has this Rich echo system and everything feeds on everything else and so you know increasingly Amazon has this great Diversified Revenue. [28:55] Echo System right and all these different places they make money and you know all the all these Services they make money on that support the retail business like FBA fulfillment all these new things if you're a traditional retailer that you know is just has e-commerce with all those other services it's really difficult to be profitable. And so in general when we look at you know a omni-channel retailer that you know they generally have separate accounting for their e-commerce business and that e-commerce business generally isn't profitable or certainly. It's less profitable than their brick-and-mortar business and so you know most retailers are looking for ways, to improve profitability and then you see wait a minute you know Amazon's building this huge highly profitable advertising business, on top of the retail business. So estimates are right now that that Amazon's ad business is about 9% of All Digital ads. And so to put that in perspective Google is currently I'm sorry Facebook is currently at. 22% and Google is it 36 percent so Amazon's already the second largest Advertiser the forecasts are of course for Amazon to gonna grow much faster than those other so. So the 20:23 forecast is. [30:19] Amazon at 14% Facebook at 20% and Google at 31 percent so that you know they're potentially getting much closer to the size of these other. Big guys and they have a ton of other revenue streams that these other big guys don't have in General ad sales is highly profitable because. The cost of goods sold is almost negligible. And so if you're Walmart or Target or any retailer in you're struggling for profitability on e-commerce and you look at Amazon you go man I need to get some of that lucrative advertising business to supplement my business as well and so we've actually seen a bunch of other retailers. Invest more effort in their own sight monetization efforts or their own retail media efforts and, Walmart used to Outsource ad sales to a company called Triad and they fired Triad and and built an internal team they have now launched a bunch of Their Own Self Service apis so that you can programmatically by ads on Walmart. Target you know double down on. They're their ad sales team and they now call it R and L Kroger bought a division of dum-dum humby and rebranded and they have this hole. Precision marketing thing but I'll be honest at the moment. [31:42] Like obviously none of these these retailers have close to the traffic or eyeballs that Amazon does so they're you know they're certainly not getting the same kind of share and at the moment all the dollars that every other retailer is getting in their ad program. [31:57] Um are what I call Trade dollars which means sort of your the. Frito-Lay sales team at Walmart and Walmart agrees to buy you know a billion dollars of free delay and Fritos and part of the trade agreement when Walmart agrees to buy all this Fritos is that Frito-Lay will kick in. Some advertising dollars and historically those dollars might have been used in a store circular or an in cap or some kind of sampling program in the store and increasingly, those trade dollars are getting used for digital ads on Walmart.com but those dollars are all being paid by the sales team you know that sells stuff at Walmart and what's unique about Amazon's ad sales is they're not just getting trade dollars there's a lot of Chief marketing officers that have a budget to build their brand and they're deciding to take dollars that they used to invest in Google and Facebook and put those dollars in into Amazon because there's a lot of eyeballs there with a lot of high buying intent and so at the moment, it feels like. Like a huge Advantage for Amazon that they're getting these these incremental dollars and other retailers are are trying but really not being successful to sort of follow suit. Scot: [33:17] Yeah it's interesting I get your point on there being no cost of goods I would say I've had more random people that aren't in our industry complain about the searchability and findability on Amazon lately and I think it's the ads kind of you know so I think there is a quote-unquote cost of goods maybe maybe a better call it a cost of consume user experience or something. I do worry that it feels like we may have crossed over a point where the ad load is too high and it's kind of confused the buying experience and then you know there's been a lot of negative press around counterfeits Bad actors those folks are going to be very aggressive on the ads because they you know they presumably have better margins than anyone because they're selling a product that is counterfeit thus doesn't have the normal. Price structure of a real good so it's gonna be interesting to see is there a point where. Windows Amazon say hmm your customer experience is suffering from the ad load. Jason: [34:17] Yeah no for sure if you're a business that just sells ads so you know that's almost the exclusive revenue of Google or Facebook you know there's this, this like familiar pattern they like create some organic benefit that gets a bunch of eyeballs to come and they trick people in a building an audience there by giving them free eyeballs and then they increasingly take away all the organic visibility and make you pay for visibility right so used to be you could have funny interesting content on Facebook and people would see it now you know nobody's going to see anything on Facebook unless you pay an ad for it and that that's not the world's greatest customer experience but it it kind of works if you're exclusively an ad platform but in Amazon's case where they're trying to provide all these other customer benefits you're exactly right it absolutely roads the customer experience as more and more of the pixels on the first page of search results are paid for pixels instead of organic pixels and a lot of people point to that as the most obvious deviation from Amazon's stated goal of being the most customer-centric company on the planet is you know when you asked for Duracell batteries in you use and you get an ad you know that takes up half the screen for for amazonbasics Batteries like you're clearly not being customer-centric. Scot: [35:40] Yeah yeah it's gonna be interesting to see and then another interesting thing is whenever I talk to folks and say well we're a shopping target comes up a lot so I don't know if there's something about the Target demographic that really doesn't like those those add load but you know in my mind this is like maybe the I don't know if I'd call it an Achilles heel it's like a little tiny microscopic. Spot on a hill. Jason: [36:01] And Mark Lori did an interview at the code Commerce show asked her which would have been like September and he specifically called it out he's like look we're gonna lean heavily in the ad sales and we want to improve our our site monetization Revenue but we aren't going to do is compromise the customer experience the way some other people did and he didn't he didn't name them but it was pretty obvious he was talking about Amazon. Scot: [36:26] Some large book stores in Seattle. One of my favorite topics is gross merchandise value or gmv longtime listeners will be aware of this but bear with me so when Amazon reports their revenue it includes only their revenue their derivative revenue or their take rate from the third party sales so if Jason sells $100 Star Wars toy on the third-party Marketplace Amazons Blended take rate is about 15% so Amazon so while Jason you know sold a hundred dollar widget and presumably Target and Walmart lost out on that hundred dollar widget Amazon's revenue is only $15 from that so so there's this hidden transactional value in Amazon that makes Amazon actually larger than you would think it is so let's do put some numbers on this Amazon's revenue for 2019 was 280 billion. Of that 87 billion was in the fourth quarter I used to have my own analysis of this and thankfully the Wall Street analysts do this now so I'm going to quote Ron Josie who's an analyst at JMP Securities Amazon now gives you enough data to kind of back into this number where I had to you some assumptions so the. [37:45] So when you unpack the gmv fourth quarter total gmv was a hundred and eighty billion so just shy of about 2X and then the annual gmv was 569 billion again compared to revenue of 280 billion so what happens in there is 28 billion of that 280 is third party that you have to gross it up about. Eight times to actually get the DMV this is important because I think that's the Apples to Apples comparison for how Amazon's doing in our industry revenues important and. And whatnot but to really so when Macy's or Walmart or any other retailer reports Revenue it's a hundred percent DMV. [38:26] Asterix and let's have a Marketplace and they're going to do the same thing but they don't have marketplaces that are 53 percent of their business so there there is a little bit of space under that Iceberg but Amazon's is massive it's almost twice as large so so I think that 569 billion number for 2019 is the right number that's the transactional value that went through Amazon this excludes AWS excludes ads Etc so Amazon's impact is twice what you think it is and that gmv actually grew faster it grew at 26%. And that's because I think the physical stores and so that other stuff kind of ways on that growth metric if we if we you and I kind of share a chart I guess I forget which was actually created so we'll split it split the baby where we show a lot of people feel like Amazon's not as big as Walmart well if you that look at GM V again Amazon's 2019 gmv 569 billion Walmart trailing 12 is about five hundred twenty billion so I would argue that Amazon is now ten percent larger than Walmart on an apples-to-apples basis. [39:31] One more tidbit there and then we'll dig into the Fulfillment center is first party is growing pretty slow at about ten percent year-over-year again this is dollars not unit so it's really interesting because the doll at the gmv from 3p is going very slow but the units are holding steady and what I think is happening is you have a lot of these kind of Kindle units in Amazon music units just kind of like these one and two dollar kinds of things whereas in the 3p you're seeing big screen TVs and really big kind of priced items so so we don't see it in the unit volume but we are seeing it in the gmv mix third-party grew gmv grew 26 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter so. So you know any thoughts on that Jays agree disagree. Jason: [40:15] Yeah no I generally agree and I think like not only is that that 3p Marketplace a big deal it's like a again intrinsically it, it's going to be more profitable than a 1p business because once again you don't have cost of goods right and so there's way less risk against your capital and and they never reported profitability separate from their 3p sales if they did. It's totally viable that this looks like a Better profitability Business than AWS would and these days they even have a huge accelerator like not only is the the 3p huge and growing. A bunch of the services that Amazon is wildly profitable delivering their primarily delivering to 3p sellers so you know the FBA premium Analytics like all of the advertising like they're all tools to help 3p sellers be more successful and they make money on all those services so it's a. Um you know even if you took AWS completely out of Amazon they're you know they're still is this. Secret highly profitable business model within the Retail Group segment and it's the biggest part of the retail sales. Scot: [41:44] Wrinkle about any thoughts on fulfillment. Jason: [41:48] Yeah so in my mind like. The two overwhelming moats that Amazon has these two huge competitive advantages that are extremely difficult for any retailer to overcome is. The Prime membership and that whole flywheel and the other is this insurmountable investment they've made in fulfillment centers and you talked about this a lot in the in the prime one-day section but you know they announced that they're going to build something like why. 47 new fulfillment centers in. Again it's hard to talk about logistics buildings anymore because they have so many different types right like they have these huge cavernous fulfillment centers which are the most expensive thing and as you mentioned increasingly they have all these these various hubs and sortation centers and delivery stations and things they add on top of that but. Super oversimplify if we just talked about fulfillment centers Amazon has a hundred and sixty six of those in North America that are operating right now. [42:58] The next biggest Ecommerce provider if you count super generously you might say Walmart has 20. So like they're they're an order of magnitude fewer fewer centers and then you know Amazon plans to build 47 more which is. You know more than double what anyone else even has and so you know to me it's they've been taking all the cash. That they generate from this business and they've been making these Investments and as you point out these are investments that are going to pay dividends. For ten plus years and they make it totally viable for Amazon to increase the quality of their services right so that you know the most obvious example is they could promise customers much faster deliveries and you know they had. To make some investments in that they kind of missed their guidance last quarter primarily because of the these unforeseen costs and so I like to talk about you know one day delivery was hard for Amazon and and they gave themselves a cold by doing it but they gave the all of their competitors the coronavirus because. Nobody else was in a position to do to do ever anything like one day and you know it's much more expensive and much more difficult and so you know we've seen retards like. [44:20] Walmart or Target kind of promised one day to match it but there are really only matching it on a tiny percentage of the skews that that Amazon offers so this is a super important super powerful. Competitive advantage. [44:37] They do spend an awful lot of money delivering stuff to people so you know a line item they do have in in their earnings report is that that. Fulfillment costs and it was up 43%. Year over year so they this quarter they spent twelve point nine billion dollars on delivery it was up huge last quarter to it was up 46% so this is the fastest growing cost they have. But you know increasingly that that investment is. In making things more optimal by delivering themselves rather than relying on you ups and u.s. post office. So you know there was that Morgan Stanley report that came out late last year and it had two pretty impressive factoids in it number one it said. That Amazon may already be delivering more than fifty percent of its own volume um so instead of relying on USPS and and UPS more than half the packages they ship you know are now being delivered by their own Amazon Logistics which is. Part of the only way they could they could do that one day delivery and the Morgan Stanley report says you know you game this out and you forecast by 2022 Amazon will be delivering more Parcels than UPS or FedEx. [45:56] So this is a you know just another huge huge moat that Amazon has against every other. Competitor and you know it's it's having a material impact now on the traditional carriers like FedEx and UPS. Scot: [46:15] Yet the Fed Ex gave FedEx CEO Fred Smith he's kind of legendary entrepreneur he's been at this for like 50 years something like that since he was in his 20s they had an interview with him and I saw a lot of people kind of online. Mocking his approach and I think they were misreading it so what he said was effectively my read on it was the they had to pick sides right so they realized the Amazon was going to be a competitor. They chose to not not kind of continue to do business with competitor but now they're more aligned with omnichannel retailers and he feels like. [46:52] That's going to be a winning strategy and that they will be able to get back on track and become larger than ups and, better than their he didn't say it outright is that because UPS has chosen other path of continuing to partner with Amazon at some point Amazon will yank that volume, in these networks live on volume right because if you can build all this infrastructure you got to keep it busy and utilize and then. That will allow them to catapult forward there is some evidence to support this I saw a lot of people say oh you know FedEx is going to save them all that's ridiculous well I think it's pretty clear. [47:24] What do you think of which omni-channel guys need FedEx either in a partnership or even, in an MMA to your point about Walmart having 24 filament centers FedEx could help them keep up with and maybe even pass Amazon's capabilities I don't I don't have that broken down like like you know we talked about there with Amazon's fulfillment centers but you know they have a substantial infrastructure across from fulfillment centers for Tatian centers both in ground and air and then obviously trucks and planes so I think that's kind of what he was talking about is really more partnering with a Target and Walmart maybe both of those guys and providing an alternative to Amazon. If I'm FedEx UPS I kind of personally think that's the right strategy because you know you partner with Amazon clearly is going to be race to death I think maybe they'll give you some volume the least profitable stuff but I just don't see it as a winning winning strategy what are your thoughts and I know you you kind of Drew straws and I got FedEx and you got UPS I'd love to hear what you're thinking what you. Jason: [48:28] So they just just to pile on the FedEx thing like there are some ridiculous things that Fred Smith has said in the past about this base like you know two or three years ago I think he called the notion that Amazon could be a meaningful. Logistics company Fantastical and I you know I think he's pretty clearly wrong there but I agree with you you know. This year their plan to sort of you know move completely away from Amazon like is not a bad move because both. FedEx and UPS have constrained capacity like they sell all the trips that they can make. And there are more e-commerce is growing faster than their capacity is growing so when you have a constraint supply of something you want to get the most money you possibly can for that. And the way you get the most money is not go to the biggest customer that has the most elaborate and negotiates the lowest rates right so FedEx can you know better maximize its capacity by partnering with these people. That need it more than Amazon needs it so that like that seems like entirely. Smart strategy on FedEx's part I would I would say and then there was this little I don't know how much of it was real versus Tit for Tat but you know there's this small service that's. People talk about but it's not very large yet and I you're going to remind me what the vernacular is but vendor fulfilled Prime. Scot: [49:55] Yes seller fulfilled Prime and then in their the seller can choose which. Jason: [49:59] Yeah so in that scenario you don't put your goods in. [50:04] In Amazon's fulfillment Network you keep your goods in your own warehouse and you promised Amazon that you're going to deliver them within the terms of prime shipping and Amazon has to certify you for this and around holiday this year they said hey if you want to stay certified for so fulfilled Prime you can't ship your packages via FedEx. [50:26] FedEx on time delivery rate is too low for to meet our high standards and so they turned off at X in the peak of holiday and then they they turned it back on and they alleged that that's a data-driven decision but it certainly got a lot of Buzz so slightly contrasting this like UPS has continued to be a big partner of Amazon's and you know they are the third largest provider to Amazon so of Amazon's the biggest second biggest is the post office third-biggest is UPS and the you know the thing you have to remember about UPS and FedEx is they both built their businesses primarily to deliver stuff to offices right so you drive a truck to an office and you get to drop off 30 boxes when you drive a truck to a house and only get to drop off one box it's way less efficient so FedEx and UPS although they're trying to improve were built for commercial deliveries not residential deliveries and that's where the US Post Office really comes in as they're good at these residential deliveries. [51:35] And for your point as Amazon builds out more of their own capability that more and more of their likely you know taking the the efficient deliveries themselves that they can make the most money on and giving the the bad deliveries too. To the their partners and you know their Partners like price their services based on and having them profitable mix and so like that's another way that. [51:59] That this whole business probably hurts hurts the UPS is of the world but we are seeing UPS. Add some interesting e-commerce friendly services so I've noticed three big announcements this this month UPS is going to a seven-day-a-week delivery and they're adding a ton of weekend delivery capacity which again when you were. Primarily delivering you know contracts to businesses. Businesses weren't open on the weekend so weekends weren't important but now that you're doing e-commerce the weekends are potentially the most important delivery days. They are UPS is also making a big investment in rural delivery infrastructure which you know we just mentioned is something Amazon's are likely to need. More help with for longer and then they also this week announced this new technology that they're rolling out that they called Dynamic routes. And essentially what that means is they're using AI every morning to decide. Where that that truck driver goes right so that driver you know in one shift is likely going to stop at a hundred locations to do deliveries. And in the old world like they you know do ever do the hunt same hundred locations in the same order every day and now that's going to be. Sort of optimized using artificial intelligence to save gas and optimize the amount of deliveries they can. [53:24] So we are seeing them try to do more e-commerce Centric stuff. [53:30] You know I would point out and argue if you're Walmart and you get make a huge partnership with FedEx and Amazon is primarily now relying on their own delivery infrastructure. [53:43] That is still a huge advantage to Amazon because. By the fact that they own it it's much easier for them to change and improve their own service so if. Amazon decides customers really like being able to track the driver and know that the drivers half an hour away from your house they can do that if Amazon finds out the customers really want a picture of the box when it's delivered so they can see where in their building it is that they can do that they can add all kinds of customer-friendly services if Amazon wants that driver to pick up returns they can do that but if you're Walmart in you're paying FedEx to provide all these Services you have a lot less control over sort of Designing and improving your own product so. Again yet another big big Edge to our friends in Seattle. Scot: [54:34] Two last things on fulfillment here in and we're spending time on this because we think you'll see when we do this kind of put the bow on things why we think this is so important but number one FedEx has a market cap of thirty four point seven billion Walmart is 30 324 so it's. It would be a big one but it's not outside the realm of possibility it's not like they're equals UPS is 88 billion so that one's kind of out of the realm for someone like a Walmart or Target to acquire. [55:04] And I think that's kind of where this is going to have to go maybe you know there's there's a corporate strategy there's a whole thing why buy a cow if you just have the milk so maybe there's no need for them to buy these things but. And maybe some Walmart I'm okay as long as you're not doing Amazon I'm okay sharing that infrastructure with Target effectively so that's gonna be interesting to watch the other thing I wanted to bring up is the challenge that the carriers have this is the same for UPS FedEx and USPS is residential deliveries they've tried for kind of each individually 20-plus years with the smartest route optimization and sortation. To get the stops per truck up and there have been range bound to between 70 and 80 stops a day so so that's kind of the capacity of the system is really driven by how many stops in a residential delivery can a truck make here's how Amazon solves that, we mentioned at the top a hundred and fifty Prime subscribers now a hundred million of those are you in the United States there's something like 200 million households so the way to get the stops for truck up is if you're stopping at every other house right because you know I don't know the data but I imagine you know you could probably. [56:18] 4X that stops so I bet these Prime trucks are making you know certainly double that if not triple that so they could be making 200 stops in fact I bet that it has changed the dynamic and it's really just how much each truck can hold. Because I think the stops have gone so high because they've got the Loyalty program where they're delivering stuff to every house every other house essentially not every day but it's enough that it really dramatically solves this this routings. Stops per truck problem. Jason: [56:49] Yeah all true I will say well you know we talked about there being like a slight negative that other people could attack the one incremental headache that Amazon inherits by having their own Logistics delivery capability is you know they're now getting a lot of negative press for like you know having all these. You know there's this high pressure on all these drivers to maximize their deliveries and get everywhere as quick as they can and so there's a bunch of, Amazon employees and independent contractors working on Amazon's behalf, driving unsafely on the roads and you know potentially hitting people and causing accidents and even deaths and I think it was disclosed. Not too recently that like this happened a while ago but the the first CFO of Amazon apparently was. Actually killed walking across the street and he was hit, via Amazon delivery driver so the company literally killed their first CFO. Scot: [57:55] I think that was a woman. Jason: [57:57] It was a woman you're right. Scot: [57:59] Jennifer something yeah. Jason: [58:00] Yeah it's super sad story but so they're going to have to deal with that like I you know I don't know people remember but in the 90s all the pizza delivery companies used a promise 30-minute deliveries and you know that created the the same problem and they sort of figured out how to manage it so I kind of suspect Amazon will as well. Scot: [58:18] Cool so we've gone through the setup we went through the results and then our analysis now we're going to conclude by kind of giving you an action item so so we're trying to say all right we're going to put ourselves in our listeners shoes a lot of this may seem a little scary if you're a retailer even if you're a brand what do you think about this so so here's my take my conclusion is prime one day is a complete Game Changer and it took his kind of a year to figure this out but it's really showing up now number one customers love it. Number two it's a knockout punch to competitors you talked about it increasing the addressable Market which is great but people are you know competitors already can't do two day Prime now they're up against one day Prime what's next same day Prime you know I think this infrastructure can largely be used for all that stuff to the number 3 it is effectively. Kind of already paying for all this shipping and structure so so again I think it's paying for itself right now and it's gonna be around for four five to ten years plus so [59:20] Also Amazon it's offered on a small number of skus so I think there's going to be two to three years where they're going to be able to expand the number of skus that are there available in prime one day and then that will get them 20% plus growth for two or three years long enough to find the next Catalyst for an acceleration maybe that same day Prime maybe they figure out growth tree Alexa ads they have so many so many irons in the fire they have a really good chance of finding that next big thing so the action item is I think retailers need to really. Kind of take action on this for this holiday holiday of 2020 we have a lot of time thinking this and really start figuring out. Can you partner with UPS or FedEx to offer one day and what's that going to be like and. How do you build that out because it's clear consumers love it and it's clear Amazon has invested massively in this and will continue to do so based on the results Jason what was your conclusion and action items. Jason: [1:00:17] Yeah so I mean I think at the highest level they've they've established these two dominant modes Prime and they're their fulfillment capability and I think this point no retailer strategy should try to be to catch up with him and go head-to-head with him on either of those two things I think just the idea of trying to be in everything store and ship hundreds of millions of products and the in the same day to any us consumer in competition with Amazon is a lost cause at this point and so you know if you're a retailer you need to think about the white space that that Amazon's decisions has created for you right and so you know that you've got to think about. [1:01:02] Products and services that benefit from the fact that you have this brick-and-mortar footprint right and I see Target in particular doing a really good job of leveraging the store I know I talk about grocery a lot but groceries a perfect example you know groceries never you know bananas are never going to live in all these giant fulfillment centers and get delivered through the sort ations a center and all that to the consumer there probably always going to get delivered from a store or micro fulfillment center so you know if I'm Walmart in particular but any big retailer you know groceries one of the categories I want to try to win from Walmart I really want to think about services that customers want that might make the Fulfillment centers obsolete right so you know what's not very good if you're if you own 200 fulfillment centers that have billions of dollars of inventory in it is if consumers stop buying off-the-rack products and start ordering products that have to be made to order or personalized to order suddenly all that fulfillment infrastructure isn't so valuable so if I'm any other retailer I might be winning in a personalized products if a lot of these products shift to Auto fulfillment the ability to ship really fast and quickly may not be quite so important so if I'm another retailer I'm leaning into that and you know for sure I'm doing things like. [1:02:29] Thinking about using my customer base to design my own products and sell stuff that Amazon can't sell because you know competing with Amazon by selling other people's stuff I think is just going to be. Increasingly unviable for almost anyone and that's my shtick. Scot: [1:02:51] I totally agree. Jason: [1:02:52] Awesome well it has happened again we've gotten slightly over our allotted time but I feel like this is a. Particularly important event in our year and it's well worth the time that listeners spent sort of get their arms around all the various things that are going on in Amazon and as usual if you have any questions or comments. Hit us up on Twitter or visit our Facebook page and you know it's time to get some fresh five star reviews so I know I say this every time. But seriously it'll take you ten seconds jump over to iTunes and give us that that five-star review because we need we need some 20/20 reviews not those those older views from those of you that have been with us for a long time so appreciate you doing that. Scot: [1:03:42] Except when we hope you enjoyed this new kind of format for an Amazon quarterly result where we do have a little bit deeper and if you have any feedback positive or negative we'd love to hear. Jason: [1:03:53] And until next time happy commercing.

Let's Talk about Meal Prep for Good Nutrition... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry I got the chance to talk with Dr. Lisa Folden. I love her story as she is a physical therapist in training but soon realized the importance of nutrition and the lack thereof was having on her practice as well as her personal well being. Dr. Folden has her own practice Healthy Phit Physical Therapy & Wellness Consultants where she marries the art of physical fitness with nutritional behavior. She is on this week to talk about one of the most commonly noted but overlooked aspects of lifestyle modification which is meal prepping. As I have made lifestyle changes of my own, I know how difficult it can be to not only make the change to better eating but then to plan out those better meals but Dr. Folden does an amazing job giving us easy & actionable tips to get our journey started. We also got a chance to talk about her book "Healthy Made Easy: The Ultimate Wellness Guide for Busy Moms” and her upcoming book on meal planning. Text LUNCHLEARNPOD to 44222 to join the mailing list. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member. 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Introduction Dr. Berry: Welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I'm your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com as well as a CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy, education and promotion. Today we have another amazing guest on the podcast. Again, the theme this month is nutrition. And I thought, what better place to start when we talk about nutrition is meal prepping. Again, if you Google nutrition, you Google trying to lose weight one way or the other, you're gonna come across a blog post or a page or a video that talks about the importance of meal prep. And I get this question a lot. Honestly, I'm in the process of trying to be more diligent when it comes to meal prep and myself. So I figure, let's talk to someone who's been there, right? And really speaks about wellness and nutrition as a whole. And really is trying to hit it home. Out the park. I mean, when it comes to meal prepping and meal prepping for patients and her clients. This week we have Dr. Lisa Folden. She’s a licensed physical therapist, naturopathic lifestyle coach. She's a movement expert, women's health advocate, and she works to educate the general population on exercise safety as well as other aspects of physical wellness. And I thought it was very important to have her on the show because not only does she talk about the aspect of physical wellbeing. And obviously her being a physical therapist that makes a way, that may just as obvious, right? But she understands and she had almost like an epiphany that because she was dealing with just one side of the table, she was only doing half the job. When she wasn't educating her patients and our clients on the actual function of nutrition and how nutrition plays such a big role on the physical aspects of health. She knew she had to make a change. And right now she owns healthy fit physical therapy and wellness consultants in Charlotte, North Carolina where she works with clients of all ages, recovering from orthopedic as well as neurological injuries. She's also been featured on the Oprah magazine, Shape magazine, Lift Strong, bustle, because she's a writer as well too. She loves writing and she actually has her own book Healthy Made Easy: The Ultimate Wellness Guide for Busy Moms that we get the chance to talk to her about that as well as well as an upcoming book focusing again, hint on meal prepping. So again, I definitely decided for you guys to catch this episode. Again, like always, if you have not had a chance to go ahead and subscribe the podcast. At least leave us a five star review. Let us know what you feel about the podcast. Let us know what you feel about the episode. And then, tell a friend and tell a friend as always go. Again, I don't expect you to tell 50 people, but as long as you tell one person, that's all I can ask for. So again, get ready for another amazing episode here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community. Again you just heard another amazing introduction. You know the theme this month, we're talking about nutrition. We’re getting ourselves together when it comes to the subject of nutrition. And of course you know I ain't the expert, right? So I bring experts onto, you know, now kind of get you guys to get myself right as well too because I learned just as much as you do. So again, Dr Lisa, thank you for joining today's podcast. Dr. Lisa Folden: Thank you so much for having me. Dr. Berry: So Dr. Lisa I got a lot of my guests and a lot of my listeners who like to skip right past the introduction. They like to fast forward, past stuffing. They like to go straight to the meat and potatoes, given the pan, right? If they just missed your bio, let's say to even read your bio, what is something that made me not be in your bio, but says, you know what? This is what really kind of expands the person who I am as far as Dr. Lisa is concern. Dr. Lisa Folden: Yeah, well, being in the health field, I obviously have a passion for helping people. I think most people in our professions do. But for me personally, I'm just so passionate about health and exercise and making things fun and making nutrition and life manageable. So some of the things that don't go on my bio, a little tidbits about me. Number one, I love to dance. Like I could dance all day and if I thought that, if I had a little more confidence in myself as a dancer, when I was younger, I would probably not be a physical therapist. I'd probably be a professional choreographer or dancer. Because it's something I love, I incorporate it into my fitness lifestyle because I enjoy it. But yeah, that that's, you know, one of my things, I'm a neat freak doesn't have as much to do with nutrition necessarily, but I like to have things organized. I read organizational books and I follow organizational logs. And I'm the type of person that gets really excited going to the container store. You know what I mean? Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. I love this. Okay that makes sense. I didn't even know there are organizational books, but now I'm even more intrigued by that aspect. And again I think it calls to the discipline and I'm pretty sure, and we'll talk about it. I'm pretty sure you understand how important discipline is with the subject of nutrition and getting ourselves together. For those who may not know or still may be just kind of coming into their own, when we talk about nutrition and its overall benefits to our health. What would you say it is? The grand scheme of things? Dr. Lisa Folden: Well first I'd like to say I don't consider myself a true expert on nutrition. My education and physical therapy, we have some nutrition training, but it's not, I definitely, I'm not a nutritionist by any means. So I never like to tell my clients or my audience people that I'm working with that I am the authority on nutrition. But I have a good grasp of it. Just from my work experience and history. And then of course living my own life and trying to figure it out. So what I have learned is that nutrition is so much more important than we were taught growing up. It's probably, as it relates to weight loss or weight maintenance, it's probably 80% honestly. And that's hard for me because I'm like an exercise and like I love to work out. So you know, you get in that mindset for a long time like, oh I'll eat that, but I'll just work it off. And that is no, not how it works. And I learned that the hard way for years and years. So I just think nutrition is, it's really primary. What you put into your body is, you're going to be a product of that. So it's, it's really important and it's hard in this country to find the right stuff and the good stuff. And sometimes when you think you got the right stuff, you read an article on Google that says not the right stuff. So it can be very confusing and very challenging. But it is very important to put at least a decent amount of effort into defining a nutrition plan and program that works for you, your family, your lifestyle. Dr. Berry: And what I love, and I think this is especially because we looked at it, you touched on it in the beginning is I think a lot of times, especially in when it comes to health and just health care in general, really just knowledge in general is that a lot of times, we kind of attribute the aspects of like, you know, having some type of degree or paper and at like sponsor us as experts when we all know job applications all day. Talk about what is your experience associated with what you're trying to do. And here, like especially in health, I see it all the time and you already know, it takes someone, they do a couple months of training and all of a sudden they propound themselves as this the expert de facto, right? Unfortunately, there isn't. If someone follows them and someone believes they are the expert, that's where it is. So I don't think, I never put too much, I put some on this right. And onus of meeting certain degrees certificates or something like that to say like, Oh, I'm an expert. But I always put more focused on like, oh, are you in the trenches? Are you getting down and dirty when it comes to it? Because that's the person I want to listen to you. I want to listen to the person who's had struggles. I want to listen to the person whose hats assessors. I want to listen to the person who is then able to initiate and then pass that knowledge on. Especially in Lunch and Learn community, I think that's always been a big thing for us, is understanding that those paper degrees is fine. But tell me what your life is about and that way. Because unfortunately most people are more likely gonna follow that type of person. A person who got whole bunch of degrees on the wall but don't talk about nothing, can't talk about nothing because they can't teach us. And I think it's interesting because you talked about the fact that you had to go through your own aspect of learning that, oh nutrition actually is the real deal. It was it because you are so active and you were able to balance it out. Was that someone you kind of leaning on the fact that you're so physically active and you are able to kind of get away with, maybe some of the nutritional discretions in the past? Dr. Lisa Folden: Well, I think it's probably most of us when you're an adolescent and you're exercising and moving all day and your metabolism has not yet come to a bit of a halt. You can live a lot more freely and do a lot more of whatever you want. You don't see the repercussions of it and then you're not even talking so you're not even thinking about it at that age. So for me, I was always very athletically built. Always very athletic in regard to the activities I chose. I ran cross country. I was a dancer in high school. So when I went into college, I think that was, that first shift, they talk about the freshman 15 and this and that. But I think that was my first shift and seeing like, oh, my body is changing a lot, growing up. But also based on the foods that I'm eating. What was accessible to me, with a lot of stuff that I don't think I normally ate. And so I saw changes happening. Wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly what to do about it at that point. But that's when I became more aware. And it wasn't until I got into physical therapy school and I started learning a little bit more that I started to understand, oh, okay. But even still, I mean that was like 15 years ago. And you still, because of you know, the way that you grow up sometimes you still have this desire to like, okay, I can just work it out. So I played that game for years and years and I think it was probably starting to have children and then seeing real changes. It's like, oh, okay, I cannot eat the things that I was eating at the rate and the consistency that I was eating them before. If I want to be healthy and be able to function and not continue gaining more and more weight. It all came to a halt I think with children. So I leaned on my youth and yeah, my activity level and then just not really understanding what was happening all the time. I did put on a little weight, which is fine. And I like to mention that I don't do a lot of heavyweight focused in my practice when I work with people for wellness needs. If you have a goal of changing your weight, I'm cool with that and we'll work with that. But I try not to make the primary focus to do with your weight because it can be so misleading. Some people are just naturally thinner, naturally smaller, naturally, way less. And it does not speak to their health as far as what they're putting in their bodies and what their body is able to do, what their lab work would say. So I don't focus heavily on that, but sometimes, oftentimes, weight is the most visible descriptor of what's happening as far as what you're eating. So for me, yeah, definitely seeing changes and fluctuations in my weight and then also when some activities that I could do before it became more challenging. And it's like, hold on what's going on here? I don't remember needing this much water in a day. But now if I don't get my 64 to 98 ounces, something is wrong. You know what I mean? So yeah, just being more aware of those changes and seeing being their effects on my body. Dr. Berry: And when I look at, and I know you talked about being a physical therapist. I'm pretty sure with a lot of just on that aspect of your work and in seeing where you know and if a person's nutrition, isn't optimal. And makes that side of the job part of it as well. What were some of the things that kind of led you to say, what I think I want to take a more proactive role. Not only in myself but in others when it comes to nutrition. Dr. Lisa Folden: I was working, let's see, I graduated in some so long ago, 2007 from physical therapy school and I started out doing contract work. So I would just work at a location gym for 13 weeks or so and then move on to another. And I enjoy that because I have a tendency to get bored. So it's nice to kind of switch up my environment, switch up my caseload. I got to see adults and children. So I have a pretty wide spectrum. But what I noticed is when I kinda got into the field of and staying more consistently in a location, it just became like the same thing over and over again. So and so need for this. Run them through a program real quick and then six months later they're back for something else. So I started to feel like a factory worker and I was just kind of repairing the same people over and over again. And it dawns on me, and this was around the time that I started contemplating starting my own practice which I eventually did. It just dawned on me that we spend a lot of time on rehab and no time on prehab. So I started… (Oh, I love that. Hey, alright, okay). It goes with our American system, right? We're not necessarily a healthcare system, we're more of a secure system. And so it became annoying and frustrating to me that I could probably instill some knowledge and people that would prevent them from having these injuries over and over and over again. And a lot of it, a lot of the injuries is of course related to weight or just poor nutrition in general. And so that's when I contemplated to start more practice a few years later. I did and I immediately my practice is like wellness. We’re going to do physical therapy, absolutely. You get injured, I'm happy to help you. We're going to do wellness. So almost all of my clients know that we'll be finished healing their injury, the very acute thing that's happening in them. We moved right into, okay, what's next? It's like alright now, now the core is strong. How are we going to keep it that way? What are we going to do? So I just make that, my focus now is really getting people to consider how they don't want to come back for the same thing or deal with the same issues. So how we can sort of revamp what you're doing. And I do that a lot with my moms. I have a fit mom program that I work with and I help women, especially after babies. It gets real challenging. Your whole world gets kind of turned upside down. And I have a heart for that because I've been through it myself three times now. And so I work with them on their nutrition and making things very simple, easy, creating some grabable meals, things that are healthy and fulfilling to their bodies that they don't feel like they're in the kitchen, slaving over, for hours and hours and hours. So, yeah, I just, all of that, you know, that whole experience and seeing people do the same thing over and over again, and me being there to facilitate it, it was like, this is insanity. Let me, let me figure out a new plan here. So. Dr. Berry: And I love that especially because the fact that, and I think a lot of times when we hear of nutrition, people always go to a weight. If your nutrition is bad, your healing's bad, right? If your nutrition bad and mentation is bad. There’s so many other things associated with nutrition that like weight becomes more of a byproduct more than the actual targeted aspect and goal. And so one of the reasons why, I definitely want to highlight here, is because obviously in this day and age we're in August, right? I had a previous guest tell me 80% of people who had new year's resolutions have already kind of failed and dropped them right in. They're already thinking about next year's resolutions. (Yeah. Unfortunately). One of the big things, especially when people start thinking about, trying to get better as far as with their eating right, is the onus and is the practice of meal prepping. And again, full disclosure, Lunch and Learn community members, I am going to be like kind of taking down notes as well because I have trouble with justice. The just getting behind the mindset of it. Let's talk about meal prep and why is this such an important aspect? Because I know you're big on it as well too. Dr. Lisa Folden: Yeah. I spent a lot of time meal prepping and revamping my meal prep process because it is more than a notion. I always tell people start small because it takes some effort and some energy and some thought. But I like to look at the idea of meal prep like this. You know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, right? And you have to take that same thinking into your food. If you are just going to fly by the seat of your pants. And that works for some people. So I don't, not the process. You have to find your own process. But most times if you're going by the seat of your pants on your eating, then you're not going to be eating good. And that's just the bottom line. If you're not planning out what are going to be my breakfast options this week, my lunch, my dinners, then you're likely ordering fast food, carry out, going out to lunch multiple days a week, or eating a bunch of snacks. We’re human, right? And that is usually what it lends itself to. So for me, the construct of meal prep starts in the mind. It's like, all right, let's think this through. What do I know to be good for my body? How can I incorporate as much of that into my daily eating as possible? How can I avoid spending my money and eating things that are probably made from mostly, not great products and putting them into my body every single day? And so I look at it from that standpoint and then I create affirmations around it. Dr. Berry: We love affirmations out here. We love it. Dr. Lisa Folden: Right now on my bathroom mirror, I have like five or six affirmations associated with my eating. And one of them is my taste books are not more important than my physical health. Right? So sometimes I want some cheese cake or some Oreos and those things are fine in moderation obviously. But I know myself, I have a moderation problem. Dr. Berry: I love that. See, we're right here with it, right? We know that we can't even, like now we can't even go to, because we just don't stop. Dr. Lisa Folden: I can eat a whole, like a whole row of Oreo. So for me, I don't bring it into my home. Now from out somewhere and there's a cookie, oh, I'll take one, that's fine. But I don't bring those foods into my home so that my whole concept of meal prep just revolves around that idea that my being healthy and eating fuel and food that is good for my body and it's going to make my body work better is more important than that temporary satisfaction of a taste. And so I plan for it, I create affirmations around it. I write out a menu, I shop forward, and I meal prep and I go from there. And when I do step outside of it, because I'm meeting friends for lunch or dinner or whatever, it's not a huge deal because the vast majority of the time during the week I'm sticking within my plan. So that's how. Dr. Berry: So what would you say and you talked about preparation. What other benefits are really associated with those who are looking to get into meal prep, or doing meal prep or are in that process like you know, a lot of times, for us, we gotta mentally kind of put ourselves in that process first before we can take that. Dr. Lisa Folden: Yes. As you should. I suggest that because like I said, if you just, sometimes when you jump into it, it's like overwhelming and it's too much. But the benefits of meal prep, I mean they're numerous. Number one, you're more aware of what you're eating, right? So you know what's going in your body. If you're a calorie counter or someone who likes to be very mindful of how much they're eating. You plan it out. You literally portion it out. You size it out. You make sure you're getting the right serving sizes. Number two, of course you save tons of money. I don't even like to do the math sometimes. If I'm all not doing my meal prep, I check my bank account and I see what I've spent on carry out and like a week or let alone a month. I have a family of five so it gets real bad. Dr. Berry: Same here, same here. I got two twins and an older daughter. So we just can't just go out. Dr. Lisa Folden: It’s depressing to the bank account. So what I do, obviously you saved a lot of money when you meal prep. To me like I said, it just keeps you organized and you know, that speaks to my inner organizational person. I love the idea of knowing, all right, here's the kid’s lunches. These are my lunches. These my husband lunches. Here's the freezer prep for the next four meals. It saves time. Meal Prep can take you several hours obviously, but it saves you so much time during the week when you can come home, get off work and all you have to do is throw your dinner in the oven. You know what I mean? It's so easy if you can get up in the morning and get your kids off to school or wherever they're going and all they do is grab their already premade lunch out of the fridge. It free up so much time. And for me the personal benefits are when you free up that time, then you get to do more things you love. Like spend time with your family, go figure right or shoot, lay out on the couch and watch TV if you want to. You know what I mean? It gives you the ability to spend more time doing things that you enjoy because now you're prepared and your week is set as far as your nutrition goes. So, of course the weight benefits, the nutrition, making sure you're eating good foods, all of that is there. But saving money and time and restoring memories and things that you don't always get to make because of our busy, busy lives. Those are the big benefits to me. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love all of them. But Dr. Lisa, you already know, and I'm pretty sure you probably ran through most of them. You going to have people, going to hit you with the excuses. (Yes). What are some of the more common, I'll call it misconception, but you know really what are some of the common excuses you hear for people who say, Oh, I can't, I can't do that. Dr. Lisa Folden: Oh, there's so many. Let me pick out my favorites. First, let me say, excuses are tools of incompetence. (Let's talk). Okay, so the reality is this, if you want something bad enough, you're willing to work for it. And I take that into every aspect of my life. Period. Family, schooling, education, career, nutrition, health, fit, all of it. It goes into every category. The most common excuses I get are time. It takes too long. I'm not interested in that. And I respect that one because time is valuable, for me too. And so for people like that, I suggest we take a small. Maybe instead of meal prepping once a week where you're spending three or four hours, maybe you meal prep twice a week. So maybe on Sunday you meal prep, a few things to get you through Wednesday and then maybe on Wednesday you meal prep, a few things to get you through, you know, Thursday, Friday or the weekend, whatever. I also suggest that people take time off. Like sometimes meal prep, it can be a lot when you're doing it consistently every week. So to give yourself a breather, take a week off. That week, just make sure you shop for things that are healthy and grabable. And then you plan your curiosity around sort of your healthier food options in your neighborhood or wherever you work or live. So there's ways to get around it. But that's the biggest excuse that I don't have time. Another excuse I get is, their families. People who have like picky eaters with kids and I have a whole chapter in my book about that, so I'm ready for that one too. And it's just sometimes people don't, you know, we'll Google everything, right? I got a scratch on my arm or let me look this up. Sometimes people forget when it comes to meal planning and recipes and things like that. Use the internet, use Google, find some things that sound attractive to your kid. Find ways, if you know what your kids like, find ways to incorporate things they like into the meals so that you're not, you know, meal prepping and basically being wasted. So picky eaters can be tough, but there's definitely ways. I hide food, hide vegetables inside of food all the time. My kids have no idea. You can say, my kids don't eat vegetables. I'm good for making them like a cheese and chopping up fine, yellow bell peppers and they have no idea, that way it blends in with the cheese. I'm all for that. I'm all for problem solving. But yes, picky eaters. And then I say the third most common meal prep excuse I get is, well, two, one people think it costs too much, which, you know, I can totally refute that it does not your fast food and your carry out is way more expensive. Dr. Berry: Way more. Quickly too. At least for me, I know one session and then I'm like, oh my God, what are we doing right here? Dr. Lisa Folden: Exactly. But that one is easy to get rid of. But the other one is for people who are single and you know, live alone or just don't feel like, oh, I don't want to eat that. I don't wanna eat the same thing all the time. Or I don't want to cook all of that food. And I totally get that. But I think that the single person, the person that just meal prepping for themselves has a great advantage. You have the opportunity to really switch your stuff up because you're making such small portion sizes and grocery stores have gotten real hip now. They got a lot of single serving options for you. So to me it's not really a reasonable excuse anymore because there are ways around it and there's ways to take a meal prep it, just pull out a couple for your week and then freeze the rest. And that can be a prep for later in the month or whenever. So there's ways to get around all of that. So I'm ready for all the excuses. But those are probably the top three or four that I get. Dr. Berry: It's a little incompetent. I love it. I love it. When you started and you made that transition where nutrition was important, where meal prep, was this like a tag team combo where like when you were making the nutrition turn, you said I need to do it while meal prepping or did that come at a different timeframe? Dr. Lisa Folden: That's a good question. They came very close to one another. Yeah. I think within the month or so of me feeling like, hey, I need to really step up my nutrition game. I think I was like, yeah, meal prep is just a natural part. It was sort of a natural progression to me. Because it was like for me, I'm a planner anyway, so it's like, okay, if I'm going to eat right, how am I going to make sure I eat right? It' I can't just rely on what's here because we're always gonna go for what's quick. So I may have all the healthy ingredients in my cabinets and refrigerator. But when I get off work and I'm literally exhausted, I don't want to make that. I don't want to stand in the kitchen. So I will order food. Post mates has been seen like the best and worst creation ever because I will post mate in a second. All of those. So for me, they came very close to each other because I realized even though I want to eat better and I know a little bit more about how to eat better and I shop a little better. If I don't have stuff already prepared, I'm going to still reach out to the stuff that's not great for me. So yeah, so they were close. They were close together. Dr. Berry: Now of course the minds are gonna want to know, what is Dr. Lisa eating when she's meal prep it, right? Like what? Because you do these Google searches, right? They got these immaculate looking meal. Dr. Lisa Folden: Let me just say a little disclosure here and people who will follow my Instagram. They already know this. I wrote my book last year and it's called Healthy Made Easy: The Ultimate Wellness Guide for Busy Moms and I touch on meal prep and exercise and tons of things in there. The sequel to that book, I guess in a way, and this was by popular demand, was a recipe book. And let me just say, I am about three quarters of the way through the recipe book that was supposed to be released in May and it has been more than a notion and it's because of just what you said, it is so hard to put out a recipe book that does not look like the stuff that you see when you Google. And I'm like, so it has been a huge stress to me to where I've been contemplating whether or not I'm going to release it. But yes, it can be overwhelming when you see these great looking whatever to flay. Dr. Berry: They have it lined up and some got chicken. Some type of protein, red meat. Then you got your asparagus you got, and I'm looking like, I look nothing like that. What am I? Okay. Alright. Dr. Lisa Folden: Well here's the thing. Neither do I. My stuff is simple. For the most part, I pretty much, I have this go-to garlic and herb seasoning that I use on almost everything and it's literally like I just buy it in bulk at this point. Because I can, I do not have time to be doing like 15 ingredients dishes. Now there's times when you want to splurge and go crazy or I saw this cool thing, I want to try it, but my regular, no. So my things are simple. At least two weeks out of a month. I am eating egg muffins for breakfast. It's so simple. I literally cracked 24 eggs in a bowl, sprinkle some pepper, and then I make a decision. Is it going to be bell pepper this week? Is it going to be a little Turkey or chicken sausage? What am I going to put in this egg? I scrambled them up and I pour them into a muffin pan, two muffin pans, and I bake them for 20 minutes on three 50. I throw those in a Ziploc bag and my kids and I and my husband, we grab them every morning for bread. I don't even want mine up. Super simple. So everything I do, I try to keep it very basic. When I step outside of the confines of basic, I typically find myself annoyed or frustrated. So I put myself back in. Dr. Berry: Because it takes a little bit longer or is that the? Dr. Lisa Folden: It takes longer. The stress associated with it. It's like, oh I want, you know, you see this on Google and its like, oh this is a beautiful, I want to do that. And it's like, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. Just make some food that's edible and tastes decent and go for it. I tell my kids all the times, we are not living to eat. We are eating to live. Okay. (Yes). So everything is not going to be the very best thing you've ever tasted, but we're going to get through it. I try to make my food tastes good just as a disclaimer. So I try to keep it very simple dinners. I mean we tip, I don't do red meat and it's really just been a preference since I was like 12 years old. So I don't eat red meat. I don't eat pork. But we have a lot of chicken dishes, a lot of ground Turkey or Turkey breasts, dishes, and then a lot of fish. So we do a lot. We have one fish meal at least every week. So this week we had a shrimp stir fry that was so easy. I literally bought the frozen raw de veined and unsheltered shrimp from my local BJ's and then I bought a couple bags of frozen stir fry vegetables. I put them in a Ziploc bag together. I sprinkled some low sodium soy sauce on them. It's my famous garlic and herb seasoning. A little bit of olive oil. I kind of wish the bag around, throw it in the freezer. Yesterday when I came home from work I threw it in a pan and we ate it. It was so easy. Dr. Berry: I love it because you keep knocking down now, time, come on. Dr. Lisa Folden: It doesn't take time if you do it wisely. It doesn't take a lot of time. Some people love cooking. So some people meal prep is cool. It's like an expression of their art and they don't mind being in the kitchen for a long time and making fancy stuff. And I'll say more power to you. I'm not that person. I cook because I have a family. If I did not have a family, I'm sure I will be ordering like hello fresh or one of those. And I often recommend that to people. I'm like, I meal prep. I think it's the best thing ever. But you know what, it's not for every single person in the way that I do it. So if you can afford it and fit it into your budget, order from a digital delivery service that you have researched and found their ingredients and their options to be healthy. Do it that way. And a lot of those, you still have to do the cooking and they just give you the fresh ingredients kind of prepped. So whatever works, I'm here for whatever works for you. And you know, everybody. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love it. I have to make that. Mentally, I see myself, I just haven't made that leap where I got in. Of course, but those who may not know. But you should already know. Like I'm dealing with the fact that like I'm still in my rehab process. I’m only got one leg. I'm just willing around in places, but like I already know mentally, once I get on my feet and figuratively, that's definitely gonna be the direction I want to go and go there. Because it makes so much sense and aware of it, if you prepare. And I love that I'm still thinking about that one line. Because we got to eat. We know we eat. It's a surprise that I'm going to be hungry Wednesday night. I'm going to eat Wednesday night, so if you're going to eat, why don't you just go ahead and prepare the food now and not have to spend that money going out and eating and I'm 100% I here for that and we got here on record that she's going to be finishing her recipe book soon. So we're gonna keep pushing it. My friends know me, I will DM every week and like, hey, what's going on? How's that book going? Everything alright? We waited for the book to come out. So I am going to be on Lunch and Learn community. You don't have to worry about and that you gotta get that book out of it because it I think is definitely needed. Especially if people asking for it. You gotta give it to them. Dr. Lisa Folden: I will. I definitely will. And I appreciate the accountability. So I will. I will get it together. Dr. Berry: Especially in your line of work, when you're working with people and you're working with the whole aspect of wellness, whether it be planning and goal setting. What has been some of the benefits and what has it been some of the successes that you've seen thus far and the whole kind of onus of it? Dr. Lisa Folden: Oh, I mean, it's so many things. A lot of my clients who make the decision to transition to a lifestyle where they're just being accountable and being knowledgeable about what they eat, planning for and things like that. I mean everything. From the very obvious weight loss, inches lost, fitting into clothes they hadn't before to more internal and personal benefits. I have clients that are like, I couldn't walk from the back of the parking lot before, you know what I mean? Or I couldn't do the stairs without my knee rubbing or I couldn't even see myself getting back to the gym. So tons of tons of things when people make a decision that they're gonna change and do something to better themselves no matter how hard it is, that's the key. We've got to get over that hump apart. Because most of the stuff that's worth having is harder to do. So once they get that mindset and we sit down and we set a plan, the positive results are just so many. There's just so many good things. And it'll be like, because everybody is not like, oh I need to be a size five. I got to lose this weight. Some people are very, very genuine about like, I just want to be able to chase my grandkids around. I don't want to be out of breath. You know what I mean? I want to feel better. I don't want to be sleepy every single day, all day. My clients come to me dragging sometimes. You know what I mean? I'm exhausted. I was up to two in the morning working. I didn't have breakfast. I didn't go extra. It's like Jesus, I can't live, that's enough pressing way to live, for so long. So it just so many benefits to just getting that action plan set, getting your life in order. And it translates to everything we do. Every single thing. You are going to be a better worker, you're going to be a better husband, father, wife, friend, everything. You're better when you're taking better care of yourself. And it's a big part of the self-care journey, so big on that. Dr. Berry: I love it. We love self-care here. A love affirmations. We love preempting the inevitable and that's where the meal prepping and Prehab and everything else kind of comes in. And I know you talked, especially with your practice where you focus on you, obviously you have patients you know who have some physical ailments that you take care of and then you kind of deal with the ones. Do you also just take care of patients on just strictly who may not have physical ailments but like, oh I just need to get my wellness together? Dr. Lisa Folden: Absolutely. So I offer just straight wellness. Several people, they will contact me and they will say I want to get into the gym but I'm uncomfortable. I don't really know what to do. Or maybe I just lost a lot of weight and you know, now I want to kind of tell but I don't know where to go or what to do or how to keep it off or you know, I get all kinds of stuff. So yes, I take people straight for wellness. I also offer kind of a newer service is called a Mobility Visit. And this is a whole separate podcast, I'm sure, but I have a true passion for teaching people the benefits of stretching and mobility in their body with regard to the muscles and joint and, Oh God, I want to say maybe 80% of us like don't stretch unless we're maybe about to do something. Dr. Berry: Again, Lunch and Learn community, we do full disclosure here. I had to go to, I went to Disney with the kids, right, because that's what got to do. I'm in Florida. There's one of the rides or that wasn't even a ride. It was just some session that we went to. Where you got to sit like Indian style. I couldn’t even sit Indian style. I didn't even know how hard it was to see. I'm like, oh my, I used to be able to do this. And mind you, I'm going to the gym and I thought I was doing something but clearly I wasn't working the right muscles because I tried it and I couldn't do it. Dr. Lisa Folden: Some of the most athletic strong aesthetically perfect looking people are the tightest and never stretch. It's amazing. So I spent a lot of time offering a new service called the Mobility Visit where you literally come in, have 45 minutes, but I'll do a very quick assessment. And then I take you through guided stretches for every major muscle group in your body. And then we end with a little bit of soft tissue work just at the base of the skull, right in the neck. And people get up and they literally feel like a new person. And it's like this is something you could have almost all done on your own. But it's a service I've had to offer because people don't know how to stretch. They don't know how long the whole stretches. They don't know what position is best to stress stretch particular muscles. So that is one of the wellness services I offer. It has nothing to do with physical therapy or injuries necessarily. It's not a service that they can necessarily cover with their health insurance. But it's a wellness service that I offer. Dr. Berry: Clearly needed. I had to put my leg, let us stretch one leg out because I couldn't not do that any side. I'm like alright, okay. Dr. Lisa Folden: It’s very common though, especially among men. Dr. Berry: I said okay, I got to get myself, need to get this type of some type of yoga, someone need to teach me how to stretch. That's what it was. That like someone just probably gotta like try to do that like some online thing like you gotta probably like formulate like some a video step process. I think that would definitely do well for you. Before I get you out of here. Because again I'm very nosy. (Me, too. That's fine). Let's talk about healthy made easy and I want to talk about all of your business ventures because I'm always impressed by my guests and all the amazing things that they do. Like I said, they helped motivate me, they kind of get me together. Let's talk about that first book, the motivation behind that first book and obviously, and they were going to kind of spill the beans on every, again you talked about the mobility. Let's talk about everything that you're doing. So the people who are listening can know, where you're from here, location wise? Dr. Lisa Folden: So I'm originally from Detroit but I have been living in Charlotte, North Carolina, eleven years. So that's where I am and that's where my practice is. Dr. Berry: Okay, perfect. So what made you write the book? What was the driver forced, you know what, I need to get a book out here. Dr. Lisa Folden: Yeah. It's so funny. So a lot of things. I blog a lot, I write a lot. I've always been into writing, but usually short little things, essays. So what I was finding in my practices, I was repeating a lot of the same information, especially to my moms, to people who were trying to sort of organize their life and combat that primary excuse for healthy living right time. I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to go to the gym. I don't have time to meal prep, my kids this and I do this and work in that and that, dah, dah, dah, dah. All of that sounds like, you know what? I started jotting down some thoughts and I was like, you know what? I need to write a book. So this was maybe early 2018 and put it off, put it off, and then I finally just went to town. I think I wrote the bulk of my book proudly in a two month timeframe because I was literally coming home from work just I was typing on my phone in between patients, you know, so it's called Healthy Made Easy: The Ultimate Wellness Guide for Busy Moms. And I say that, mom's a big market, but it's really for busy people. I mean honestly it's anybody who has a lot going on in their life and doesn't feel like they can make time to exercise. So I have a chapter on meal prepping where I talk about how to make it easy, what to do. I recommend some websites for recipes. I have a chapter on incorporating your children and your family into your new lifestyle, especially when you have picky eaters. Talk about ways to, you know, hide foods and make the meals attractive to children or to your spouse or whomever. I talk about social eating. People don't recognize how challenging it can be to go out with your friends or family when you're trying to eat a certain way. And so I give some very, very simple tips for that. I talk about that. That's mostly the part of the book on nutrition. Second half of the book is all about exercise and fitness. So I have workouts in here, sample workouts for when you're taking your kids to the playground or you have your kids at a sports practice, give suggestions and tips and things you can do. I try to, I have a chapter talking about incorporating fitness into your everyday lifestyle, like making exercise double as family time. So you guys all go for a hike or things like that. Everybody involved because it's a lifestyle. Right? And if you go to my Instagram, you'll see my kids are on there with me exercising all the time because they see me do it and it's just a normal part of their lives. I talk about having navigate gym equipment and I have some very unpopular thoughts on the unpopular opinion on some of the equipment at the gym. I'm more of a home workout person myself, but I do appreciate the gym but only for certain aspects. And then, the last chapter in the book talks about focusing on your fitness without comparing your journeys to other people. We so often, especially as women, and I think men do it as well. We see someone else and it's like, well I want to do that, I want to look like that. This is your body and your process and you need to want to look like you. And whatever byproducts of being healthy and fit is for your body will thankful for that. But trying to formulate a plan to look and be like, someone else is always wrong. So I talk about that in the book. But I'm very proud of it. It's available on Amazon and through my website. It was my little labor of love and it took me a little under a year to complete. So that a good tool for people but especially for women, people with children, pets, if you're taking care of elderly, family members, you got a lot on your plate. It's a good book for you to understand you’re making time for your fitness. My practice here in Charlotte, it's called healthy fit, physical therapy and wellness. And I have a little spell fit, the normal way. It's actually spelled P, H, I, T and that was just a play on words, the P and the T for physical therapy. So, but yet we see clients literally ages zero to a hundred. I see pediatrics adults. I consider myself a generalist. Though I do have a lot of work in the pediatric world as well as low back pain. That's a very, very, very common diagnosis that I get. So I do a lot of lumbar stability and core strengthening, things like that. And I'm here for all of it. I refer out if I feel like you know, what you got going on is a little bit more in depth than I feel like. So have some people I refer out to, but in general I see most patients. So if you go to my website, www.healthyphit.com. You can sign up for my mailing list and I have a free posture packet that you will receive via email. And that's been really good for people because most people don't really know what good posture is. When I see a client and I tell them to, let me see your best posture. What I typically get is some exaggeration of that posture. Dr. Berry: Yes. Lunch and Learn community, I can't see, but mentally I was actually, once she said that I was actually about to sit up. Oh she looking at my posture? I don't know. Dr. Lisa Folden: Whenever someone says posture, I'm like whoa. So I usually see some exaggeration of good posture where they're like in that military stand or you know. Dr. Berry: Is that even a good posture though? Is that? Okay. Dr. Lisa Folden: It is not. So I send out to sign up for my mailing list, I send out sort of a sheet that that shows you some of the common poor posture positions and then the best ideal posture. And the goal is to get as close to that as possible. Our bodies are our bodies. Everybody's not going to be the exact same, but just some general ideas and then some information about areas of back pain and what might be causing themselves. I like to share that information with people for free and that also have on my website, if you go to our shop tab, I have a couple of trainings. I'll have some more up. I have one that I'm working on now that is for like managing chaos in your life. Simplifying and making things smoother. But right now what I have on the site of training for people interested in physical therapy. So I kind of go through that whole process of initial interests through school and then journey into private practice. And then I have another one. Yeah, that's a good one. I was fortunate enough to do a presentation for the North Carolina health occupation, students of America, their conference here. And so I basically did that presentation. So I just rerecorded it, kind of condensed it a little bit and offer it for people on my website, for a much reduced amount. And then also because I do a lot of writing and I have been very blessed to be featured in a lot of great places. Some of my tips on health and fitness. I have a Webinar that is up on my website right now recording that is for people who are interested in that. So if you're interested in having your blogs or you’re just your writing featured in major publications like Oprah or shape magazine or Reader’s Digest. Dr. Berry: Drop the names on it so they know you're not playing out here. Because I read the bio, they might've skipped the bio. Let folks know what just some of the places that you've been in so they know. Dr. Lisa Folden: Thank you. Yeah that webinar is for people. It's just five steps to getting your writing speeches but yes, I have been fortunate enough to be featured in the Oprah magazine. I was a big one for me because you know is Oprah is Oprah. I've been teaching in shape magazine. I've been featured on livestrong.com, Bustle, She knows, oh, there's so many. I mean I don't have my list in front of me, but I love writing and that is why I love writing and it's so cool because I'm writing about health and fitness related things and exercise. And so literally, I mean the topics from, I got emailed an article today from, what is it? I can't even recall, but I was talking about foam rolling. So I love to put my 2 cents out there about some of the latest health trends and give people tips and tools and things from someone who has some experience, with those things. So yeah, if you want to be featured and do that type of work, I have a webinar on that and yeah. And I'll have more, I'll be loading more as weeks go by just having to sit down and make times for recording. Dr. Berry: Too busy. I hear we gotta to get you like a VA or somebody to have direction. Dr. Lisa Folden: Just had that conversation. I totally need one of those. Put that in the show notes. Dr. Berry: We need. Because we can get the second book. You don't free up some of her time. So we need to be able to try to free up some of your time to get the second book out here. Love it, love it, love it. And you talked about the second book so this is going to be essentially a kind of a recipe book just based off the meal plan. Okay. Dr. Lisa Folden: Yap. So it's going to be just basic recipes that I'm going to right now the format I have is sort of a set section for breakfast, recipes, lunch, dinner, and then I'm going to have sort of a bonus section for kids’ lunch ideas. Because I tried to get very creative with my kids because I'm not really the sandwich maker. I get very bored with that. So I try to get creative with their lunches. And so sometimes when I post them to Instagram I have people like what is that? How'd you do that? So I'm like, you know what, let me just throw a few. So I'm thinking maybe five to seven kid lunch idea. So you guys have some options for that too. Because sometimes it's nice to make their stuff fun. You know, we'll do like Turkey dogs skewers with like piece of Turkey dog, some string cheese, Turkey dogs, cool stuff. You know, it doesn't take long. I'm not that mom, I don't have a whole lot of time. But sometimes I try to give them little cutesy ideas for that. So yeah, we're working on that. I'm gonna maybe if I say it out loud, I'm gonna set a tentative deadline of. (Let’s go, let’s go). December, by the end of the year. Dr. Berry: Alright. You heard it here and again, I'm one of the best accountability partners. I'll be in the DMs. I'll be in the comments like, Oh hey, Christmas is coming around. That'd be an amazing Christmas gift. Dr. Lisa Folden: I'm going to get it and I'm going to send you one, that’s what I’m going to do. That gonna be Christmas present from me. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love it. Before I let you go, I always ask my guests, how is what you're doing helping to empower others to take better control of their health? Dr. Lisa Folden: Well, what I hope and what I believe based on some of my client feedback and see that I'm leading by example. You know, I'm not just sitting here giving you a list of impossible things to do that I have not done or tried myself. But I'm actually being very honest. I'm being tried to be very honest about my own shortcomings and my own struggles with this whole journey of wellness and nutrition. Dr. Berry: It is a journey. I think that people need to realize that this isn't like a stopping go. The journey contained some ups. It does have some downs as well. Dr. Lisa Folden: Absolutely. And it's ongoing. So my goal is to just be authentic and transparent and open so that people can see that I'm doing this with them and leading by example. And I'm trying to do my part because my goal is to provide some level of inspiration. If it's just enough to get you at the starting block. We're doing something, we're going somewhere. But I teach people to be accountable for themselves and to recognize that your happiness, your joy, your health is only your responsibility. These kids that we love so much, they will drain every ounce of your energy and they don't care what you eat, okay? They'll find if you eat cheddar cheese popcorn all night and hang out with the people in your life that love you the most, are not necessarily checking for your health and it's your responsibility all the time. So I just try to, I put it back on them. This is your life, your body, your health. You only get to do this once, right? As far as we know, at least in this space. So you gotta do it right? You're trying your best to do it right. And that does not mean perfect. Like I said, we all fall short. We all have tough days, weeks, sometimes a month, right? But the point is you get back up, you keep going. So that's my goal and I hope, you know, and I've had some people say it, but I hope that I continue to inspire people to do this on their own and just and take the reign and say this is my life and I don't have to be governed by what I was taught growing up or what I saw growing up or what the people around me are doing. I can carve out a plan and a direction for my life that I think is better for me and that's it. And I'm not better than the next person because I'm doing it. I'm just trying to be good to me. So. Dr. Berry: And where can people find you? Where can they track you down working stock and make sure when that book comes out, they know where to purchase. And again, remember Lunch and Learn community, all of this information, it will be in the show notes so you don't have to like write it down scurrying down. Now it will be in the show notes. But wait, where can they find a website? All that. I know you said it before, but for our late stragglers. Dr. Lisa Folden: So I love Instagram. I tried to limit my time on there, but I am on Instagram all the time. So that's at healthy phit. H. E. A. L. T. H. Y. P. H. I. T. That's me on Instagram. I'm also on Facebook. I will be honest, I do smaller interactions on Facebook, but everything that I post to Instagram goes to Facebook so you can see my posts there as well. Dr. Berry: Just go to Instagram. Some great pictures. Dr. Lisa Folden: Thank you. And Twitter is the same way. I don't really spend time on there, but everything I say that I can get to my Twitter page goes there as well. So everything is at healthy phit. And then, of course, my website, which is healthyphit.com. You guys can email me if you have questions. info@healthyphit.com and yeah, join my mailing list cause I send out my blogs, which is also on our website and I send out specials and you guys are the first to know and when I do release something or when a webinar's available and things like that. So. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love it. Dr. Lisa, again I want to, and I thought we'd talked earlier but I do want to show the graciousness of being able to take time and get me together. I get our Lunch and Learn community members together on a topic that is so important. Once you Google lifestyle changes, you know, meal prepping, nutrition is such a big thing that pops up and just the fact that you're able to simplify it and really give that personal touch. We really appreciate me taking the time to talk to us today. Dr. Lisa Folden: Thank you. I'm so glad you had me on. I appreciate it and I love your podcast. I will be a continued subscriber and listener. Dr. Berry: I love it. So you have a great day. Again, thank you. And again, guys, remember, she said December. So we gotta, we'll plan a campaign around November time frame to start like just dropping comments, and so we can get a good little Christmas gift like that. That's going to be us. We want that Christmas gift. We want, we want it the book to come out and again, again pick up the book is as on your website now as well as Amazon? (Yes). Right. Okay. I always tell my listeners if you can get a chance, always get the books off the person's website, right? Because Amazon, you know, they try to take all that money, right? Like so you can get the book off the website first, right? If you have to, right. If you gotta get it kindled out, whatever, that’s okay. Dr. Lisa Folden: I understand. We don't care how you get it. Dr. Berry: Just get it. That's probably the goal. We don't care how you get it. Just get it done. And you know, we're gonna appreciate you for it. Thank you again for joining the podcast. Dr. Lisa Folden: Thank you so much. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Hey, what's up, everyone. This is Quin, with only one "N". And I have an excellent question for you today. This question is from Luis and without further ado here we go. "Hi, Quin, this is Luis from Columbia, South Carolina. My question today has to do with PPC campaigns and more specifically, with the search term report. I'm running an automatic campaign and I noticed that under the customer search term, instead of a search term there's an ASIN. Can you explain why that shows up and what information-- or what I can do with that information to design a custom PPC campaign? I appreciate the answer to your question. Again, thanks a lot for all you do and I'll talk to you soon" Thank you very much, Luis. That is a great question because a lot of people have the exact same question. I know I did when I started. And the answer to this is quite easy. When you do a search on Amazon, Let's say you go to Amazon.com right now and you do a search for the keywords or the search terms "Bluetooth speaker", you're going to get of course on top of the page, you're going to get a three sponsored ads. And below that, you're going to see the best seller, which more than likely is going to be the Amazon Echo. And then, if you go and open one of those, let's say go below the Amazon Echo and click on that product, it's going to open the product that you clicked on, of course. Obviously. So that product is going to open and you're going to read the description and you're going to look at the bullet point. And you're going to scroll down below the images in the description, you're going to see the frequently bought together. Right. That's normal. Below this one, you're going to have more sponsored products. And this one is going to say-- let's see if I remember what it says. Something like "sponsored products related to this one" or "related sponsor products." If you click on one of these products, these are of course sponsor products so people are bidding on these, pay-per-click. So when you click on this, the keyword or the search term that's going to show up on the report for the person that owns that product is going to be the ASIN of the page that you had opened. For example, if you were looking at the Amazon Echo and then you scrolled down and you saw your own product and you clicked on your own product, right, now you're paying for that. So it's going to show up on your search term report, the ASIN for the Amazon Echo. That's what's happening there. OK. Now, you are paying for those now a lot of people say-- I heard them say that you don't pay for those, but you do. Anything that shows up on your search term report, you paid for it, right? Now. Another thing that I heard and is wrong, (remember, it is wrong) is to copy those ASIN and put them on a negative campaign. Now the reality is you do not want to do that until you know it's basically how many sales are you getting for this. If any sales or not. Because if you're going to put it on a negative campaign, now you're not going to show up anymore So if you are showing up when somebody opened the page for Amazon Echo (and that's just an example, of course), you want to continue to show up because that is the number one seller within the keyword that you want to rank for. So if Amazon is showing you as another option, you want to keep being that option on the best-sellers page. You are showing up on the best-seller page. So that's the good news for you, right. Somebody is doing a search for whatever keywords that they are. Because Amazon is not going to show you the keywords they opened the other product. So you can go see what your other product is. You have the ASIN. Go see what that is. And now you know that when somebody searches for that product or when they land on that page, Amazon is giving them the option to look at yours instead. Right. So here are other products that are related to that.

Have you heard of Ring?  Well they make some pretty cool video doorbells.  But today we are going to tell you about some things they did not get right. Bitcoin is in the news but so is Russia.  We are going to talk about how huge this is and what Russia is up to. And we have to talk about Alexa? Did you know there are 100 million of them out there?  We will talk about what that means. We've got these huge corporate websites and not just any website getting hit but other sites hacking going on an unprecedented scale. Did you get a Smart TV for the holidays? Did you ever stop to think why was it so affordable?  Well, we will discuss spying and your privacy as it relates to you TV.  These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 01/19/2019 New Privacy Concerns with Ring Doorbell Camera, Smart TVs Collecting Your Data, Rumors about new Russian Bitcoin Craig Peterson: 0:00 Hey everybody. I love this beat. This is Craig Peterson. This is show number 990. Isn't that just amazing? We get right down to it. That's a lot of weeks because 990 is one per week. Okay, we're not talking about these guys that are doing dailies, although I have done dailies, that's not part of this. That means we are a matter of what a couple of months out from show number 1000. Wow. That's a lot of show. So anyways, welcome everybody. Hope you're having a good day and hope you like this bumper music. I don't know I kind of like this. It was between this and a kind of a Beatles-ey type rock song. I really like them, right? These songs I think you got to choose it's got to be whoever the host is that decides that But I'd love to hear from you too. And what you think I I think Sheryll who does most of our show transcriptions might not like having a lot of music in the background. But I'm kind of liking this, I don't know, I never played the guitar. I played a lot of instruments over the years, you know, back when I was a kid, right? I kind of stopped when I had a family That's really nice. It's got a nice beat to it. Anyhow, we're going to talk about tech as we always do. And of course, a lot of that tech has to do with security, as it always does. And we've had a few shows this year so far. But it's been a busy year. And I haven't really been trying to keep up on all the latest latest latest stuff. So that's what this week is all about. And I want to start by talking about some of this Bitcoin stuff because I think this is absolutely huge, and what Russia is doing, and this is going to drive up the price of bitcoin. We've got now 100 million Alexa devices that have been sold. So what's next for us out there after they've got 100 million of them? What does that mean to us? We've got this huge corporate website and not just website but other sites hacking going on an unprecedented scale. So what's happening there? What does it mean to your business? Do you think your websites been acting strangely, maybe this has been going on, particularly if it's been acting badly, the top tech trends of 2019 according to the tech experts out there. And the simple reason, by the way, if you got a new Smart TV for the holidays, why was it so affordable? Well, you will believe this, I think, hey, it's kind of scary, frankly. And if you've been worried about your TV spying on you, while Ben Gilbert from Business Insider has some news for you, and we'll start out with Amazon's Ring. Now, this is a pretty cool device. In fact, my wife wants one of these for our house. And I've thought a lot about it that the Ring started with just kind of a doorbell with a built-in security camera. You've probably seen these before, right and you can have the strangers come up to your door and ring the doorbell and that I think the commercial shows someone on a beach in an in a tropical area and just sitting there answering the door on their phone and seeing who it is and what's going on which is really cool. But this article from the Intercept is talking about excuse me talk Rings frankly abysmal privacy practices. And there have been a number of reports about that in the news over the last little while, but they've got cameras all around. Now it's not just the doorbell. These devices are providing high definition feeds from all around the house. We're talking about the doorbells, but also in garages and on bookshelves. And it's not just for keeping tabs on your home while you're away. But a lot of people are using them kind of like nanny cams to find out also when their kids are home when they get home from school, that they bring some friends with them. Maybe some friends, Mom and Dad don't like it. There's all kinds of things are used for neighborhood watches. People are putting together boards where all of the cameras in their neighborhood are on one website you can go to, and you can see what's happening in the neighborhood. You know, that can be really good. I know my wife helped to found a kind of a neighborhood watch thing here in our neighborhood. And everyone kind of keeps tabs on what's going on. And the founder of Ring his name is, or she I'm not sure, Jamie Siminoff, he said that our mission to reduce crime and neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring. And you know, that marketing message has really hit with consumers. Frankly, they got a $1 billion acquisition from Amazon, who now owns Ring. And that's kind of nice if you have the Alexa as we mentioned a little bit earlier, 100 million of them out there right now. So that that Ring device ties into all of that. So despite this mission that they have talked about to keep people a d their property secure, the company's treatment of video feeds has been anything but secure. And this is according to people who have been talking to the Intercept to say they're pretty darn familiar with what's going on. According to one source, starting in 2016, Ring provided its Ukraine based research and development team, virtually unfettered access to a folder on Amazon S3 cloud storage that contained every video created by every Ring camera everywhere around the world. Now, this is just if this is true, this is just an enormous invasion of privacy. And we're talking about a list of highly sensitive files and could be browsed and viewed by these developers over in Ukraine, you know, could be wonderful people. But if it's out there on S3, if there are any security lapses, we know Ukraine got hit really badly last year, or actually a little more than a year ago now with some malware, some ransomware that was aimed specifically at Ukraine and companies, what's going on here? Well, apparently these files are also not just on S3, but they were left unencrypted. And they said that was it because of the expense of implementing encryption and lost revenue opportunities. Because of restricted access and you know, all the excuses you can think of. Now, you might be familiar with Uber's God Mode. We talked about it here on the show before Uber, of course, that ride-sharing service where people are taking their vehicles and are driving the streets and picking up strangers for money, right. It's not what mom said not to do when we were a kid. But Uber had this God Mode that let anyone in the company basically look at every ride that was currently occurring, where everyone was, who was getting a ride, they were watching celebrities. And just crazy what Uber was doing. This is vaguely familiar of that, isn't it? And in fact, I think it's kind of worse because now you've got the video. So who knows, right? reporters, competitors, email addresses, all of these people could view all of their cameras. That's all they needed in order to get at the data. And apparently, there were instances of Ring engineers teaching each other about who they brought home after romantic dates. In other words, they were watching each other as well. So this is something we have to be careful of. We know about some of the risks that we've heard for years, about nanny cams, baby cams being hacked. And believe me, they are. If you bought yourself a camera system for your office, and your little bit worried about it well, if you bought it, and it was just one of these lower-end camera systems that most of these video surveillance companies sell. Or if you bought it at Harbor Freight or the local big box door, almost all of those are a very high percentage. And I've seen numbers as high as 90% of them have been hacked by the Chinese, very hackable, let me put it that way by the Chinese and many of them have been hacked. And we have done that we've seen that we have come into a business who was having security problems, they thought maybe there were security problems, they thought maybe there were viruses on their machines. So they brought us in, we checked, Of course, the word viruses on their machines, but what did they come from, they were being hacked from the camera system that was installed. Some cases one case it was installed by a professional firm, but you know, people don't want to pay money for the good stuff from Cisco or some of these other resellers that really check this and keep tabs on this and so that's what happens so you know, it's going to happen. If you're using these types of devices hopefully like in the case of Ring, you've got Amazon buying them and Amazon kind of whip you into shape so I think it's important to keep that in mind. Right. Ring very big company they paid a billion dollars for it. You think they do a little bit better than that, don't you? Well, let's talk about TVs now. Smart TVs. You know smart TVs, have been all the rage. I who was I was at my one of my brother's houses, I think it was. Oh, it was my mom's house and they had just bought a smart TV over the holidays and they had set it up and I had to help them reconfigure some things because they just didn't have it configured right. And it was kind of interesting to ask some questions of her and her Smart TV because it has all of these features on it. She's got it hooked up to the internet so she can stream Hulu and Amazon and she can stream her CBC stuff that she wants to stream from Canada when she is down in the US. She was completely oblivious to the potential problems here but here's another one to add to your list and to seriously complain when you are going to buy a smart TV about these things spying on you right because you have a right to be upset It doesn't say anywhere on the label that they're spying on you but Have you wondered why that smart TV was so cheap right they remember how much they used to be Why are they cheap well here's a great story Ben Gilbert over the Business Insider and of course all of these articles I've mentioned today including the ones I'm going into more detail on are available at my website http://CraigPeterson.com hopefully you are a member of my insiders email and you got an email comes out every Saturday morning if you're not subscribed, just go to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. You'll get all of this and more when there are big hacks or big things happening in the news that I think are worth you knowing about. And kind of jumping on top of I will let you know, and I let you know via that email list. So you will see these articles right there. You just click on the links, I'll take you right to my website. But here's what Business Insider had to say. The vast majority of televisions available today are smart TVs. We knew that right? You go into any store. That's what you see that they have internet connections, and they aren't connected to the internet. Sometimes it's via wireless because the Wi-Fi in our homes has gotten so good and sometimes as via hardwire, but they've gotten internet connections. I've got advertisement placement as part of the TV where the TV recognizes that maybe the channel you're watching has a commercial coming on right now. So the TV overlays a commercial or to overlay it in the corner. They also have streaming services built into them. So despite the all of this added functionality, think about what that all costs to put together right there. They aren't Roku that aren't making the hardware and then selling streaming services. They aren't Apple TV who is selling new or the Apple TVs set-top box and also making the real money off of streaming services, right. They're not a fire stick where Amazon can give it to you at a great discounted price. Because Amazon selling new video content, right. All of that stuff just plain adds up. We have to seriously consider what business these people are in. You know, you can go out right now you can buy a 65 inch 4K Smart TV with HDR capability for less than 500 bucks. That's a massive piece of technology. It's going to last you for years. Are you kidding 4K? I don't have 4K my house. My TV is half the size of this one. Right? How can you get it for that cheap? Well, there is a caveat. Some manufacturers that are selling these TVs are making their money on the back end. Now we understand the back end with your fire stick, you understand the back end with your Apple TV or your Roku because they're all making money off of the streaming. But how about the TV set? Well the TV manufacturer may also have deals with these you know Australian providers so that they get a little bit of a cut in the action just like you buy a Windows PCs especially if you buy it retail you know if you get a Windows PC from us it's going to be clean but these retail machines that you buy come pre-loaded with all kinds of crapware. Right? Right? They've got Norton Antivirus or Symantec can have viruses tho those are going to do you any good. And they've gone to these games that you can play, they've got all of this stuff that you can have, if only you pay them money, right. So you get a free 30-day trial or something. But you know, you have to go through all the trouble taking the software off of your machines. So they make an extra 10 bucks per machine. It's estimated by putting all that junk on your machine before you buy it. So how are the TV manufacturers going to make that extra money? Well, they are collecting data like the types of show you watch which ads you're watching when you're flipping channels, right? The eyeballs, that's what they want to know, and your approximate physical location. And we talked before on the show about how some of these people manufacturers are actually even using cameras to figure out who's watching the TV. Now, there is an interview on The Verge. They have a podcast, and they had Vizio chief technology officer on there. I think his name's Bill Baxter, and Vizio is a big TV company. I have one of their TVs. And he was talking about how this technology works. And he said this is a cutthroat industry. This is a direct quote. I've found it here. It's a 6% margin industry. The group greater strategy is I really don't need to make money off the TV. I need to cover my costs. So more specifically, companies like the Vizio, V-I-Z-I-O, don't need to make money from every TV they sell because they're making money on the back end. So there's the answer you can tell your friends if they're wondering why those TVs or smart TVs are so cheap now you know the answer. And we're going to talk about Russia here right now and the whole Bitcoin thing. Now we just had a Canadian sentenced to death over in China and we know that two Chinese executives we had, Huawei executives and that made the news was arrested in Vancouver, Canada when she was changing airplanes there. And another Huawei executive with just arrested last week as well I think that was in South Korea but I don't remember and Huawei courses in trouble I heard just I think it was the last couple of days that Huawei is up on some criminal charges, which you normally don't see for Corporation. But it's a real problem. Why was there a warrant for that Huawei executive to be arrested that caused her to be arrested in Vancouver? Well, there was a warrant because the United States is accused, Huawei of violence, this sanctions against Iran. So Canada honored that warrant and arrested her and you know, the aftermath is still kind of kind of me trying to figure out there. So what does this all mean? Why did I bring this up? And when I'm mentioning Russia? Well, there are also sanctions against Russia. And there is a lot of fake news out there as well. Right? But the big fake news started with was Dan Rather, right, who was who made up completely made up this story about George Bush, President Bush and his lack of service and what he did in the Texas National Guard, completely fabricated, right. And then he lost his job over the whole thing and got defensive about it, and you know, it, it was the wrong thing to do. And that was really, really the beginning of the fake news that we have today. So fake news. We've been seeing I'm going to put this up on my website. Hopefully, that'll be up by the time the show's over here. We got my people working on it, but hopefully what we find is that this is fake news as well. So here's what's been going on. If you listen to me before, you know I am not a fan of cryptocurrencies, not because of the fact that cryptocurrencies can help you maintain a degree of anonymity And believe me, it's only degree people can be tracked down, they have been tracked down and they have been arrested, okay, criminals doing evil things with Bitcoin. Now, there's nothing wrong with Bitcoin or these other things, you know, cryptocurrencies, as far as you're using them for legal purposes. And of course, if you make a profit in selling any of these cryptocurrencies, you have to report that to the Internal Revenue Service, right? Pretty straightforward, pretty simple. Well, how does this tie into Russia and Iran and China? Here's how it ties in. There's rumors that Russia is looking to buy bitcoin and the rumors are that it's going to invest about $10 billion in Bitcoin. Now, this is an economist that's saying that the guy's name is Vladislav Ginko, and we'll see what happens because he's saying hey, this could start as early as February 2019. Well, first thing why would Russia buy bitcoin? Well, according to this economist Russia wants to get away from the US dollar as being the world's currency and when you buy and sell oil it's always done in US dollars right so he's saying that we've got our wonderful president or prime minister the president of Russia Putin over there saying hey listen we want to get away from the US dollar so let's make Bitcoin be the reserve currency for the world now uh. How would that be something? What do you think that would do the price of bitcoin? Bitcoin that struggling to get back up to $4,000. Remember it at one point in some markets it was as much as $40,000 but generally speaking was about 18,000, 20,000 at its peak. So it's a lost a lot as have pretty much every other cryptocurrency and these initial coin offerings that were happening every day, last year, they're pretty much dead now. Because the cryptocurrency boom has faded. It's faded in a very big way. So what do you think that starting a rumor that Russia was going to put $10 billion into bitcoin? What do you think that would do to the value of Bitcoin? So we're looking at this saying, okay, maybe that's legitimate. We've got the Trump administration, adding some more Russians to the list of sanction entities that US companies and persons cannot trade with. And the sanctions, of course, are this aggressive stance that the Trump administration has had against Russia, although Trump's been colluding with Russia. So he, you know, the Trump administration has been much tougher on Russia than any previous modern administration. So maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't, but I'm looking at all of this same, you know, maybe really, what we're looking at here is not that Russia is looking to buy bitcoin, and maybe they are, maybe they've considered it, but no one except Ginko was saying that they're seriously considering that is this another fake news and that may be what it is if it's not fake news I don't know maybe Bitcoin to be something to put money into this is not investment advice you know I've never bought any of this stuff I don't want any of this stuff because it's it's frankly way too volatile but I thought I'd bring it up because it's an interesting angle and from what I've been able to tell online doing research on all of these various cryptocurrency websites this is not a legitimate story well we were not going to have time to get to all of the articles today. As I mentioned before you can get them by just going to my website at http://CraigPeterson.com. Read my newsletter that hopefully you get every week my little insider newsletter letter and you get that by going to http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. And hey I want to shout out here and a big thanks to everybody who's left comments we got a few comments on my podcast the more of those we get you know the more coverage we get the more people that are going to hear about the podcast well I've been doing this for a very long time huge labor of love here for everybody I really am trying to help you out so please share but also leave a comment go to http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes. http://CraigPeterson.com/iTunes and that'll take you to a place where you can subscribe right there on iTunes. They are the 800-pound gorilla. I would really love it if you subscribe there because that's where the numbers come from. that the show is rated on and leave some five-star comments. Hopefully, I've earned five stars from you. But do it right there. subscribe and leave a comment. I so appreciate it. http://CraigPeter son.com/iTunes. Okay, so we got a couple more minutes. Let's talk about the biggest tech trends of 2019. This is a FastCompany article FastCompany still seems to be a pretty good magazine, I have a subscription to it. And I enjoy a lot of the articles. But they're saying that this might be more of a quiet year, 2019 more about laying the groundwork than any historic breakthroughs. And what is the groundwork? Well, number one, the growth of AI. Artificial intelligence is really going to grow. It's frankly, most of its still really machine learning. But IBM is actually now selling quantum computers, how's that for amazing? And these things are going to change the whole world of cryptology for prediction for weather, a prediction for earthquakes at a kind of everything. Okay, so that's kind of rolling out right now. I think they've only sold one of those quantum computers. They had one on the floor at CES this year, and they may be putting more of them out there. We're also going to see technology that is really going to kind of blur some of the boundaries between what's real and what's synthetic. When it comes to the reporting you're reading. You might have noticed this already articles that the English kinda is terrible in right? Have you noticed that? So we're gonna have more synthetic media This year, we're going to have more ethical questions. As we have these autonomous vehicles rolling out an AI rolling out. Consumers may start adopting some more these are you know AR glasses, really, we'll see what happened. 5G is going to really start rolling out this year, it's going to start showing up in some phones, we're going to have new user interfaces available because of the virtual reality an augmented reality, we're going to see more on the wireless side, you might have heard me a few months ago, talking about how Wi-Fi is about to change again, we're going to seem more the slow death of cable TV is has become to be known. It's going to move over to frankly, our wireless devices, voice platforms, you know, you've seen Alexa, Google Home rise up, we've seen Siri kind of plod along but that's going to be improving as well. So keep an eye on your mailbox. You should have gotten an email from me this week. yesterday. Yeah, Friday. And I made a note of it too, in this morning's newsletter. I have something going on right now. This is my first in a series of special reports. It's absolutely free. All you do is make sure you are on my email list and you can sign up for but this is why you should not be buying some of this so-called insurance for identity theft and what you can do for free. So I'm writing that absolutely free. I have a special I actually have like four or five special surprise bonuses that are part of that everything there is for free. And if you want to attend some of my master classes, there's information about all of that there. So check your email for an email from me@CraigPeterson.com and have a great week. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye. --- Related articles: Airdrop Assaults On The Rise As Criminals Cyber Flash Strangers Are Your Holiday Gifts Safe? Apple Watch Can Now Detect Your Irregular Heart Rhythms And Other Problems: Here’s How It Works Facebook Never Really Cared About Connecting The WorldHow To Stop Apps From Tracking Your Location --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. 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Has Facebook ever suggested that you tag a person in a picture you posted? Craig joins Ken and Matt to discuss what Facebook is doing with Facial Recognition and why you should be concerned.  Patents are issued every day. Craig tells Ken and Matt about a Patent that Walmart just got and why everyone who shops there should be aware of it.   Are you concerned with someone hacking your iPhone?  Craig explains a new feature available on the iPhone that will protect your iPhone. Find out more on CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles:   Facebook Is Still Abusing Your Privacy   Walmart’s Newly Patented Technology For Eavesdropping On Workers Presents Privacy Concerns Apple’s USB Restricted Mode: how to use your iPhone’s latest security feature --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors. Airing date: 07/18/2018 Facebook Facial Recognition, Walmart Privacy Concerns, Apple USB Restricted Mode Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] Hey, Craig Peterson, here this morning we talked about a couple of things now. One of the subjects I kind of talked with Jim Polito about yesterday is your Facebook privacy but we always take a little bit of a different angle especially with Ken and Matt and we went into some more detail on the privacy that you can get in a Wal-Mart store. What's new patent about? And of course iPhone's right. With the new software update from Apple how much privacy are you going to get from that and who are they trying to protect your information from, anyway.  [00:00:35] So, here we go with Ken and Matt. We are back again 738 and the WGAN Morning News on Wednesday which means it's time to Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us at this time every Wednesday. Craig, how are you this morning?  [00:00:49] Hey, I can't believe you guys were talking about Dr. Pimple Popper. Did You ever watch that show, man?  [00:00:57] No, he did not have to look it up.  Did you see the view count on some of those videos? There's definitely some sick people out there as well. [00:01:05] It's absolutely amazing and it's showing that something to talk about the fact is sex but Instagram is where she started in 2014 it said in the YouTube in 2015 and they are talking about 4 million people.  [00:01:20] So she gets picked a crazy. [00:01:24] Now, she is a reality TV show. Can I point out that I know nothing about this woman nor do I want to. I'm showing this man I'm going to I'm going. [00:01:32] I don't what I'm going to trick you into watching this. Why am the way I hate it? I was just hearing about it. I mean, realistically all you got to see is about two seconds worth of that video. I can make you see I can fool you and you can think Look get cute puppies or something you can click on and you're like oh my god, no.  [00:01:48] So of course is calm as we go. When he got all his valuable information.  [00:01:54] Let's talk about Facebook are they still abusing me, abusing my privacy. [00:01:59] Was that a big faces type thing you know a nice segue pimpled.  [00:02:06] Yeah. [00:02:08] Very clever, very clever, Yeah. Here is the problem. I remember when the Zuck went and sat before Congress three months ago and Congress kind of drilled him and said, hey privacy what's going on. And, he continually said well I'm going to have to get back to you on that. Do You remember that? Well, he finally got back to Congress and told them kind of what they wanted to hear. Well, that's kind of the bottom line here because he did answer their questions and basically he goes he goes on and on and on for dozens. I think it's more than 100 pages long answering the questions about privacy. But, now we've got another problem with privacy and it's something that we've mentioned a little bit on the show that I know Matt's been concerned about and that is our faces no Ken has a phone and an iPhone 10. And in order to unlock his phone, he has to have his face in front of the phone right. [00:03:06] Yes that's correct. I mean this in fairness since I have been critical of the Apple, Apple cult. You know my face also unlocks my Galaxy Note. So, [00:03:15] There you go. Same sort of thing. But, it's concerning right because I know, Matt, you've expressed concerns. Do you really want Samsung or Google or Apple to have your face on file? [00:03:28] No, no I really don't. Yeah, Yeah exactly. [00:03:31] Now with Apple the face does not leave the phone, none your fingerprint does not leave the phone it's kept in this enclave that sharing passwords.  [00:03:43] But, the bottom line is you really don't know. Well, if you're on Facebook and I know Ken doesn't use Facebook he uses what was my face space, exactly. But over on Facebook if you post a picture you can take someone in that picture, and the way that works is now you say yeah right here's a picture of Matt and I. And, so you post that picture up there on Facebook and you tag Matt. And, now it tells Matt, Hey listen Ken tagged you in a picture and it's kind of cool because wow, ok I remember there that being there you share your picture with your friends Etcetera, Etcetera. It's really kind of a cool feature. Well, have you guys noticed that Facebook is now suggesting people to tag in the US with their facial recognition software. Yes, exactly that's exactly what's going on. And, Facebook has now got this massive database of faces that it's been using and it built it over the years, as kind of an interesting technology, Using basically a kind of, logical deduction, as to who it is in the picture. But, now people are getting concerned because we already know that Facebook, isn't, well you know all big on privacy. That's not their business. And, we know that they are doing this and some people are alleging that, in fact, what actually happened here is that Facebook is not telling people what it is doing. [00:05:19] In fact, there's a number of people that are talking about lawsuits. Congress has gotten involved now because Facebook's core business model of course built around advertising. And I have to mention Tom Cruise here, Minority Report. Remember him without somebody else's eyes walking past a billboard and the billboard yeah changed and offered him a deal. Right. It's just incredible what can happen to expect that in the future. Expect that it's going to recognize you. There are already billboards. That will change based on your car or the predominance of a certain model car on the road and you're going to see that more and more of. The technology is just incredible. But, combine having pictures of people's faces making it easy to find those pictures online. So, let's say Facebook ends up with a face search function and 3D printing where you can now 3D print a mold of maps face. The legal ramifications for this is starting to get really kind of crazy. And, even though we know Apple has done a lot to make sure that you cannot unlock it with a just a picture. Someone Samsung's worked on that too you know the future here it's getting kind of terrifying. Frankly speaking of terrifying surveillance oriented future, is Wal-Mart listening in on their employee's conversations, yes they have filed a patent to do just that. [00:06:54] Are they monitoring their people and why are they doing it. [00:06:57] Why they're doing it? Well. Wal-Mart, of course, in a battle for its life against a company that cannot keep its Web site up. What are Prime specials? Of course, we're talking about Amazon and Amazon, of course, had their big prime day yesterday with all these prime deals. I took advantage of a couple myself. There were a couple of good ones but Wal-Mart is trying to figure out how can we make their stores more efficient. Because Amazon doesn't have cash registers. It doesn't have to keep the air conditioning on, in the whole place. It doesn't have to stock the shelves like Wal-Mart does. You know they can have millions of Skew's Amazon can. So, don't have to be selective about what they carry. So, how can Wal-Mart compete? Wal-Mart was just awarded a patent for technology that listened in to the employees and the people's shopping in the stores. So, it's called listening to the front end, this technology. We don't know if Wal-Mart ever going to build it, but they did get this patent and it will provide them with some performance metrics for employees. It will tell them how many people are up there that front end of the checkout registers it leaves and it's even able to tell how many bags an employee uses to package your goods that you just bought. So, you know all the efficiencies are what they're aiming for. And some employees are kind of concerned as, Matt, just indicated that maybe this is going a little bit too far. And, of course, there's a number of people that agree with that including the professor over Cornell's industrial labor and relations school. [00:08:47] We are happy when Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us. Everyone's here Craig Peterson speak to my apple 10 so is my apple Ten now more secure from prying eyes like police officers or NSA or the government. [00:09:04] Yeah. There's concern about those guys and there's also concern about bad guys. So, for instance, you can go and you can buy a machine for about 30 thousand dollars from a company and all you have to do is plug an iPhone into it. And supposedly it will crack any iPhone. Now, it might take a few months. It seems to depend on how many digits you have in your passcode or whether you use in your face or your thumbprint. But, they can break into them, apparently. They are certainly getting paid for it. And, the government is getting the information. But, how about somebody that just grabs your iPhone off a table at the local coffee shop? How about if you go to China for a business trip? Or you go to Russia? China is known for getting their hands on your devices even while you're sleeping in a hotel room and copying the devices. So, Apple has come up with a new feature. If you just upgraded your iPhone you've got it so if your phone has not been unlocked for one hour they cannot plug one of these devices in order to copy your iPhone. So, I think it's a good idea. This is not just an anti-law enforcement thing. This is a privacy thing. Bad guys in this country, as well as, around the world are using it to unlock the iPhone and now there are some ways around this and we will discuss those right now. But bottom line, if your phone has been locked for an hour your phone, is pretty safe. But if you're in a coffee shop you probably just used it and that bad guys get to have access anyway. [00:10:41] Craig Peterson our tech guru joins us every Wednesday at this time to give us an eye on technology around the world. Craig thank you very much. We will talk to you again. Thank you, gentlemen. All right so we're going to take a quick break here and we'll come back on the other side maybe call. --- Don't miss any episode from Craig. Visit http://CraigPeterson.com/itunes. Subscribe and give us a rating! Thanks, everyone, for listening and sharing our podcasts. We're really hitting it out of the park. This will be a great year!  --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

In the last six years I (Joe) have only had two people tell me that Vendor Central is a great opportunity for Amazon sellers to grow their business. The first was at IRCE in Chicago in 2015 when an ex-Amazon Vendor Central executive told me his view of Vendor Central. The next time – was on this podcast. Both opinions were very favorable! And you know…I believe them both. If I owned an Amazon FBA business or was purchasing one, I would look very closely at Vendor Central and at least test it out with a SKU or two. That's right – you do not have to make the leap of faith with Vendor Central. At least not any more. According to our guest expert, Fahim Naim, Vendor Central is a viable option that most Seller Central sellers should consider. He openly states it is not for everyone, yet he took his first client from $4,000,000 in Q4 revenues to $16,000,000 by expanding the customer reach using the Vendor Central tools. Do I need to say more? Yes (apparently)…you do not need to be selling 4m per quarter to make Vendor Central work for you. Listen to Fahim's expert advice and make your own decision, it could be the best investment of time you have ever made. Episode Highlights: Hear firsthand how Fahim's Clients have done when engaging with Vendor Central. You don't have to make a “leap of faith” and leave Seller Central. If you haven't gotten an invite to Vendor Central – find your representative and contact them. Learn how to get more attention from a hugely overwhelmed Amazon representative. Vendor Central is not right for every product or seller. Some categories are more competitive and require higher volumes to be accepted to Vendor Central. Vendor Central is not just for brands…distributors can use it as well. “Seller Central” on steroids…that is what Vendor Central is. Links: www.eshopportunity.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fahimnaim/ 10 Tips When Considering Vendor Central Transcription: Mark: Joe how are you? Joe: I'm doing great Mark. How are you, sir? Mark: Good, good I heard you explored the depths of the mysterious Vendor Central recently? Joe: Yeah. Listen, the good, the bad, the great Amazon sellers that we know…that we've talked to over the last decade for the vast majority they all say no way don't lose control to Vendor Central, don't do it, don't do it. When you when I went to IRCE in Chicago in 2015 I talked to somebody that was an ex-Amazon Vendor Central manager, he's the first person that ever told me that it was great and that he could double somebodies business using vendor Central and I believed him. We never reconnected afterwards; this guest today is the second one. His name is Fahim Naim, he's from…originally he was an Amazon Category Manager and he left and went and started his own company called ‎eShopportunity. And he gave me one example and this is a huge one so don't get scared away if you're doing $50,000 a month in revenue listeners. His first client he took and quadrupled the revenue in Q4 alone by using Vendor Central Tools. So he took it from 4 million dollars a quarter to 16 million by using Vendor Central. Mark: Oh wow, a huge growth. Joe: So that alone is reason enough to listen. And as firsthand information from somebody that's actually done it, and seen it, and uses it services and he's quite honest and open about it. It's not for everyone and it's not take a leap of faith and you no longer run Seller Central anymore. It used to be that way and I think that's why people feared it. He's got some great ideas on how to take just one skew and test it out and slowly move over and things of that nature. I'll make a whole lot of sense if I were a seller, if I were a buyer, I would very very closely at Seller Central. Mark: Fantastic. Well, I can't wait to get into this before we get into the episode though I'm going to make a public plea to the listeners out there. I want to know what conferences you guys go to because we like to go to conferences. We'd like to meet you so send me an e-mail at mark@quietlightbrokerage.com with your favorite conferences to go to throughout the year and I know that's completely unrelated to what we were just talking about but you mentioned the IRCE and it just sort of triggered that. All right with that, I'm actually anxious to hear this because like you I've heard the same sort of feedback from most Amazon Sellers. They're saying no way, I don't want to do it but it's really hard to ignore quadrupling revenues by jumping over there so let's get into the episode and hear what he has to say. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe with Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Fahim Naim with me on the call today. How are you Fahim? Fahim: Wonderful how about yourself? Joe: I'm doing good man. Welcome to Quiet Light Podcast. Listen, you've got a ton of experience from being at Amazon as a Category Manager and now running eShopportunity I was going to try to do the intro and talk about you a little bit but I just want to make sure it's done right. So if you could brag about yourself a little bit, tell everybody that's listening about your experience in e-commerce world, then Amazon, and now at eShopportunity that. Fahim: Wonderful. I was previously a Category Manager at Amazon, managed one of largest category at Amazon retail, managed a team of vendor managers, and one of the categories in Consumer Electronics, super sexy stuff like computer components and portfolios and things that are going to computers; very exhilarating as you can tell. Joe: That's exciting, yes. Fahim: All jokes aside it was tons of fun, it was over a half billion dollar business, they booked to double the size of my category while I was at Amazon even though the market was flat. Had a fantastic time but ultimately made the decision to leave and start my own venture. I started eShopportunity about a few years back, we wanted to help companies grow and be on the other side of the table of some of those conversations that happened at Amazon. Started off with one initial brand, hard time, we grew his Q4 business from four million dollars to 17 million dollars that year eventhough he's been set in declining he was excited, introduced me to a couple of other brands, I started tailing the team and I guess fast forward about three years we've worked with over a hundred brands to date. Some fortune 500 brands, some brands we've seen a shark tank, a bunch of startups and companies in between. Either brands that had been on Amazon for a while but really wanted to take it to the next level. Brands that have had successful businesses off of Amazon and finally wanted to launch on Amazon or a [inaudible 0:05:06.5] of the type. Joe: That's an impressive resume. You took somebody from four million to 17 million and he was only excited? I would think it'd be ecstatic. Fahim: He was probably more excited when we went on the phone. I think he did a good job keeping his poker face that I'd imagine based out of his expectations when we started he threw a pie in the sky number saying if you help me go to twenty million this quarter that would be beyond real and I was pretty angry that we fell just short of it. So my take is probably a little bit different than his. I was hoping that we could get to 20 and again his Q4 business the previous year was maybe…it was about flat to where he was that year so it was a…he had some phenomenal growth and the good news is that after I checked in whenever the project concluded the business had continued to grow. So I think a lot of Amazon is how do you start the right foundation, how do you get the things clicking, and then organically if you're doing the right things and you [inaudible 0:06:07.9] screwing up which is probably easier said than done you see that your business continues to scale which is obviously great for the business owner's standpoint. Joe: Right. Now you mentioned you manage a team of vendors and Mark and I talked in the intro about Vendor Central, you and I are here to talk today mostly about Vendor Central and your expertise in that area and why some people should start paying attention to it. As I told you I don't think I've talked to a single Amazon seller that has a seller account whether they're doing fifty thousand a month or a million or two or three or four million dollars a month in revenue, they all say there's no way I'm giving up control to Vendor Central, absolutely not and there's a huge paranoia about it. The only time I've ever heard that is a good thing is from you and from someone else that I met at IRCE in 2015. Tell us if you will with the basics what's the difference between Seller Central and Vendor Central and then let's get in to the details of Vendor Central and who's a good candidate for it and how you can help somebody grow their business by using it or how anybody that chooses to use it can use the cheat sheet that you and I have talked about that we're going to share in the notes and to go ahead and do it themselves if they want to go that route, the difference between the two as well. Fahim: Well first off, Vendor Central is often treated as a red-headed stepchild, people not very optimistic based off of what they've heard in the seller communities especially. I'm in the forums, at speaker conferences, I do a fair amount of publishing and I've similarly heard a couple of things. One is I think that's a misinformation that hopefully we will dispel at least a certain degree in just doing this podcast and some of it is probably warranted. I think the decision between Seller Central and Vendor Central depends so much on the specific details of that brand that anybody who says hands down this platform is better than that platform is probably doing you a disservice in that Seller Central certainly has some benefits, Vendor Central has some benefits. Back to the matter as most of the largest brands or the businesses that are doing the most amount of volume on Amazon all have Vendor Central. It seems to be working for people that are growing very quickly and have larger business. Yes there's probably some bias on it that a lot of those are large companies anyways and are Fortune 500 brands that sell across the board but I can't tell you the number of times we've taken a brand and got their business from a let's say a couple of hundred thousand, two or three hundred thousand dollars on Seller Central per month and got that business grow up three or four X when they made the transition to Vendor Central when all things align. Things don't always align and again we delve with the details and we'd get to that but there is certainly an opportunity. If you want to scale your business and become a five, 10, 15, 20 million dollar brand on Amazon and more, Vendor Central offers you a set of tools that are much tougher to get to than Seller Central or possibly not even available to Seller Central. So to answer your question more specifically, Seller Central you do have more control, direct control of the pricing and inventory. Seller Central they're starting to open up some of the things that used to be available just to vendors, things like A+ Content like me deals, catch deals. headline search, so certainly this becomes this a little more parity to come into the seller part [inaudible 0:09:29.8] but when you sell your products directly to Amazon Wholesale, a couple of things, one is it's not you sell it to Amazon and then take care of the rest of it. It's very similar to Seller Central in that you get a tool kit that you can use to grow your business but it's not Amazon's going to optimize your pages, Amazon's gonna run all these ads for you, Amazon's gonna give you higher search results and check out what the right pricing is for you and run promotions by themselves etcetera. Vendor Central is very similar to Seller Central in that it's how much you put in to it and you have access to tools in Vendor Central in many cases that you may not have access to on Seller Central. For example, let's talk about deals, lightning deals on Seller Central are recommended only and even that just we can't go build on the last year to; at the Vendor, you can submit a proposal. It doesn't mean it will always get approved but you can submit and be a lot more proactive on lightning deal on Vendor Central. There is something called Best Deals which most people on Seller Central don't have access to unless you have an account manager that's idea that you show up on Today's Deals Page which is the most popular page on Amazon after the homepage. And you can run a deal for up to two to even four weeks but they with less aggressive discount at the Lightning Deal. In many cases, Best Deals has been phenomenal for [inaudible 0:10:47.8] that's another option. Coupons just became available to Seller Central until a couple of months ago that had been a popular program that many vendors have utilized for a long time. Subscribe and Save Again started on Vendor Central before it became available on Seller Central. Programs like Amazon Prime Now, Amazon Fresh, Prime Pantry are primarily not exclusively focused on Vendor facing brands so that's another example. If you want to be on the homepage of the furniture page on Amazon to be…go to navigations click on Amazon Furniture Amazon Computers Components and Peripherals and there's a lot of people that search for products that way, most of those placements are available for vendors only. If you want to be on Gift Guide and Amazon has done a great job over the last couple of years holding some excitement over this idea of having a holiday gift guide we can browse through products. Because Amazon obviously has been a great place to shop if you know what you want, it hasn't been ideal if you want to browse for things and Amazon has [inaudible 0:11:46.8] most if not all the brands in many of the gift guides or vendor. So again there is a unique set of tools that vendors have of or have access to. That set is certainly not all rosy; things get a lot more complicated. You have a little bit less direct control on inventory, you get a weekly purchase sorted that Amazon cuts every week and that's the amount that you can send tens and more. You could send less although that's probably not a good idea unless you don't have inventory- [crosstalk] Joe: So you…holding on right there in terms of that inventory because as I know as people are listening to us they've probably written down twenty questions there hoping I asked. Let's just talk about that inventory for a minute. So many Amazon Seller Central folks send money to inventory directly from their manufacturer to Amazon, in this case do Vendor Central folks have to have a 3PL where they store the inventory in between and ship on a regular basis? Fahim: That's what most people do. There are some variants where you can get around that. Amazon and on the Vendor Central site has a direct import program where you can import all of your inventory likely from Asia directly to Amazon. Not the easiest thing to work with setup to be transcribed but certainly exists and I know some brands that have done well with that. I think the vast majority of brands on Vendor Central either have their own 3PL or use a separate 3PL to fulfill those orders. And in some cases, you could do a little bit of both. You can have some inventory and multiple warehouses and you get PO's from different warehouses and you have to send it to different places. So there is some level of flexibility although it tends to get a lot more complicated on how this passes works in Seller Central. Seller Central, I want to send 500 units I go on create a shipment, it will tell me what [inaudible 0:13:33.3] I want to use, I even have the option in inventory placement service dependent to just [inaudible 0:13:37.8] and I'm done. And then Amazon manages all the interactive shipments, Vendor Central doesn't- Joe: [inaudible 0:13:43.2] for [inaudible 0:13:44.0] center right? Fahim: Correct. On the Vendor Central- Joe: [inaudible 0:13:47.2] Fahim: Yes, no that's good. Stop me because I live in acronym words so if you will- Joe: Okay. Fahim: It's good to get clarity. On Vendor Central when you get a weekly Purchase Order or PO they can have you send it to eight or nine [inaudible 0:14:03.0] but sometimes less, sometimes more. So the process again works all over differently, for some brand that's not a big deal and for some brands that's probably a little bit more complex and they want to be…especially early on in the lifecycle of the business. Joe: Okay, so you just used the word brands this is in assumption maybe everybody already knows this or is thinking this that Vendor Central is really for brands, not resellers simple? Fahim: Yes or no, I think primarily most of the brand…most of the companies that are on their own brands. There are a good number of distributors that also have Vendor Central accounts. Some of the largest, most of the large distributors or many of the large distributors have Vendor Central accounts and they supply directly at Amazon. And even if you are a brand meaning manufacturer and you sell to Amazon, if Amazon consorts your product cheaper to a distributor they'll buy from the distributor in many cases. And that sometimes business pisses off brands but yes you…it could be either in the context of a lot of things I'm talking about I'm probably talking more down the brand manufacturer route but you, to answer your question you could be a distributor and have a Vendor Central account and you could be the company that's been selling Purchase Orders from a variety of different brands or distributor. I know some distributors that are doing 10, 20, 30 different vendors, different selling inventories for 10, 20, 30 different vendors- Joe: Okay. Fahim: That are not exactly their brand. Joe: Well the fear that I think a lot of the brand owners have that I speak with is that they lose control and going back to that you mentioned it they don't lose control. They still have control, they can…can they write their copy? Can they work on their keywords? Can they send organic traffic to it? Can they…and then do all of those discounts and promotions you talked about as well is it essentially Seller Central on steroids where they've just got access to more things? Fahim: I like that. I like the Seller Central on steroids, I'm [inaudible 0:15:58.2]. Yes, it's…I would argue, you probably have more control on Vendor Central than Seller Central. [inaudible 0:16:04.0] common that very often even if you're a brand registered on Seller Central, I hear it all the time brands say somebody changed my copy, somebody changed my picture, somebody changed my variation, even if you are the brand owner and you're on Seller Central there's a brand hierarchy in terms of who owns [inaudible 0:16:20.9] page edits and at the top of the list is vendors. So anybody who has an Amazon Vendor Central account has ultimate [inaudible 0:16:28.4] goes on. Even if you are the brand owner and you have a Seller Central account and you have brand registry but the distributor is selling that to Amazon and they have a vendor account, they actually have ownership over that page copy. In most cases over the brand that's on Seller Central. So I'd say you can change titles, you can change bullets, you can update images, it actually works much easier on Vendor Central than Seller Central. At Seller Central sometimes doing things like variations could be fairly complex with Vendor Central it could be as easy as a ticket and somebody would do it for you. Images similarly the turnaround time of Vendor Central is pretty good but ultimately up to you have at least as much control probably more control over your page copy, and content, and landing on Vendor Central than Seller Central. Joe: And then all of the other things that Seller Central folks do whether it's striving outside traffic, keyword optimization, discounts, reviews, YouTube social media reviewers that are talking about and driving traffic to that Amazon page they can do the same thing it's just an Amazon vendor page correct? Fahim: Correct. You can do all that and to the average customer, they can't tell the difference of a vendor and reseller. Joe: Okay. Fahim: Most people don't even realize it so yes it works the same way. You can send X number of traffic, you can run discounts, you can run promotions, all of the same- Joe: Okay. Fahim: As both cases the same way at Seller Central. Joe: Is…I mean we've got people that you know if they're doing a million dollars a month and running a lifestyle business meaning they've got some VA's and they work from home part time they don't want to really risk very much. There's no sense in going I'm going to just lose that million a month and I'm going to jump into Vendor Central. Tell us about if they're doing Seller Central what the leap is from Seller Central to Vendor Central? So they have to shut down the Seller account and then open Vendor or can they have both running simultaneously, is it a one way street? Talk to us from that perspective as if you were that guy running a lifestyle business making a million dollars in revenue on a monthly basis. Fahim: A couple of things, if I were running a lifestyle business and I was happy at my current run rate and didn't want to…if I was more risk averse I'd potentially keep it as is. If I wanted to grow that business and take it to next level I think Vendor Central becomes a lot more interesting. Joe: What's the risk part in terms of Vendor versus Seller? You said risk- Fahim: Well you know- Joe: More riskier? Fahim: Yeah if you're risk averse you already know what to expect, you know how to manage everything as the current process that takes on Seller Central. When you transition to Vendor things change. Typically for the better if everything aligns. But the way pricing works changes, the way pricing should work certainly changes, the way inventory fulfillment work changes etcetera, etcetera. At the end of the day once you get on boarded and in most cases not all cases but in most cases you do a good job in negotiating with your inventory manager which we'll talk about a couple seconds but imagine on your terms and you are not paying that net much more on Vendor Central than Seller Central I think there's a little bit less [inaudible 0:19:35.3]. If you are going into a category where your net margin expectations from Amazon is severely higher on Vendor Central than Seller Central there could be some risk that at the same amount of volume Amazon is taking a bigger cut of that. So I think there are some nuances but I think the risk is the unknown and it's a new process and you have to manage that. Joe: And do you have to shut down your Seller account or to open the Vendor Central obviously that it's not you lose days or weeks of revenue, I would assume that its very seamless. Fahm: It's semi-seamless. Amazon has changed their stance on this on the last couple of years. A couple of years ago it [inaudible 0:20:14.6] have both a Vendor and Seller Central account. And in many categories now and the Vendor Manager technically has the ability to shut down your Seller Central account if they want to. If you were doing anything to really damage your Vendor Central business, there's officially a clause that says if you sale wholesale and you have a Vendor account that they can shut down your Seller Central account. I actually haven't seen that happen although I've seen some threats but that exists for a couple of good reasons. In the last couple of years, Vendor Managers and teams at Amazon have been a lot more open to the idea of having both but being strategic about it. The idea is the Vendor Manager owns the retail or what they would call the retail part of the [inaudible 0:20:54.5] and Seller Central is almost a competitor to that Vendor Manager. And they do that to keep more competition on the platform so better for that costumer at the end of the day. So the Vendor Manager doesn't get a lot of benefit when you have a Seller Central account. If you're competing on the same skew and you have lower prices on your Seller Central it actually hurts this plus on the metrics, they're out of stock, their loss by box, a bunch of their metrics or sales are going to be a lot lower here. What many brands do today, they do which…a little bit more strategically with is I'm gonna have both the Vendor and the Seller Central account, I'm going to do some skews on Vendor Central to start. I'm gonna keep some skews on Seller Central to start and see how that process goes. Depending on how close that brand is with the Vendor Manager that person may push to get more and more of the catalog from Seller Central to Vendor Central. But think of it as like you're negotiating with a buyer at Walmart, or Best Buy, or Target, there is a lot of negotiation that goes back and forth. So maybe you decide that it's not a good idea to transition your entire catalog or maybe things are going so well and you want to everything overnight. I think that's where it's a very personal decision. For many brands the way they started, they open a Vendor Central account, get a couple of skews on Vendor Central, get used to the process and things work a little differently. One thing we should mention is pricing because a lot of people worry and I hear this misconception a lot that Amazon will lower your prices and you lose control of it. It's not really true, and what Amazon's pricing and there's certain things that I'm allowed to say and not allowed to say. Ultimately, Amazon [inaudible 0:22:23.6] in a game of let's proactively lower your price so we can sell more inventory and create a price war in the market. That's not Amazon's idea, that's actually what a ton of other retailers do and I can tell you firsthand many of the big box retailers like to put things on the go back and promotion and discount pricing. On Amazon Vendor Central if you have control over your pricing in the market, so externally and third party wise there's nobody undercutting your price, you have a lot more control on the pricing than many people think. Joe: And most of the cases I think the people listening to this podcast, they own their brand and they do not sell it to distributors so it's not going to be an issue. They're the sole person or company selling that brand so- Fahim: Yup. Joe: They're going to get their wholesale price from Amazon anyway. It doesn't really matter if the Amazon decides to sell it for two dollars above they're still going to get their wholesale price from Amazon correct? Fahim: Yes but it's a dangerous way to look at it because let's do an example. Let's say you're selling the gross sales price of [inaudible 0:23:24.6] but the price the customer pays is 20$ and I'm just making up some numbers. The price that you sell it to Amazon is 16$ net of all cost and whatnot. If you then have somebody selling your product on third party or let's say externally at Target. You have a small assortment that Target decides to lower that to 18$ or let's call it 17$, Amazon will match this 17$ likely and in your mind, you may say you know it doesn't matter Amazon paid me- Joe: [inaudible 0:23:55.9] they're not gonna buy any from you again obviously it has to be profitable. Fahim: Exactly. Joe: Yeah what I was referring to is that most of the people I think listening to this podcast are not selling to Target and Walmart retail big boxes display. I really like the idea for I just want to repeat it that you don't have to take a leap of faith from Seller Central to Vendor Central. You pick a couple of skews and you test Vendor Central with that. And you talked about negotiating with Vendor Central, do you actually get to talk to a live person and have that one person as your contracted contact, your trackling? For those that are not watching this on YouTube he smiled and he looked up to the left going oh my God could I tell you some stories I think, don't but is it a human that you get to talk to or is it email? Fahim: It depends, like with everything else it depends. There is a human that lives behind the desk that ultimately manages that and the team that manages that. It depends on if you're able to get a hold of that person. So sometimes the Vendor Manager is a lot more proactive especially for brands that have a larger business whether on Seller Central or externally and the Vendor Manager or somebody on that team reaches out and you have that direct line of contact. Sometimes people find the Vendor Manager Buyer on LinkedIn then and they start a relationship [inaudible 0:25:18.6]. That way sometimes a leverage, consultants and agents and people like myself, I get a hold of the buyer and broker a meeting and start some of those conversations, and many times the invite comes from a separate team. We get on boarded to Vendor Central and your business is not large enough in the eyes of the buyers [inaudible 0:25:38.1] you get a whole lot of time and attention. And you're often told to use Vendor Central's tools and file tickets to get answers so it does depend on the brand some of the brands that we work with…some of the larger brands or brands that more potential has better chances of getting some of that one on one relationships with the buyers. And some brands especially when they're earlier on their business isn't fully at scale form an Amazon perspective. They're often told to use Vendor Central, file tickets and try to leverage from the automated processes that exist. So it's possible but- Joe: Let's talk about that then. Two points, number one I want to hear your top negotiating tactic with vendor Central that you want to share with people today. Number two, maybe start with number two, size wise when…how big does a brand have to be in terms of let's just say that I'm going to peel off a couple of skews again what kind of revenue does that have to be producing in Seller Central to make a difference to the point when I can actually negotiate your top negotiating tactic? So if somebody is doing 50,000 $ a month is that enough, if they're doing 25 is that enough, do they need to be doing a hundred, what's the number? Fahim: It differs so widely by category as you can imagine. I'd say generally a lot of times I put the benchmark growth sales you want to be doing over a million dollars a year that will probably get the attention of the Vendor Manager. Again, it differs; if you're in a category, a huge consumer electronics category that number may need to be five million annual gross sales, if you're in a growing category, if you're in help and personal care, if you're in grocery, if you're in passion that number may end up being even lower than one million dollars. But I would say if you're doing less than a couple hundred thousand dollars annually on Amazon it's probably a lot of low hanging fruit to scale your business from Seller Central initially. If you're already doing north of a million plus dollars annually on Amazon then it depends on your category, it depends on your ranking and how big you are as a portion of that catalog but certainly the bigger your business the higher the likelier that you're gonna get the ear and the attention of that Vendor Manager. If you're doing some 10 million dollars annually in almost any category the Vendor Manager should not always does but should want to convert your business. Figure out how they can scale your business and they have tools again that you wouldn't have in the [inaudible 0:28:09.7]. So they really could if they wanted to help you grow that 10 million dollar business to be 15 or 20 million fairly quickly. Which is doing that on Seller Central is certainly possible but it's almost like you have one hand behind your back because you don't have access to the same set of tools. Joe: All right tell me about the negotiating tactics you and I have talked about. You're gonna create a little cheat sheet it's in the notes for people to download in terms of top negotiating tactics with Vendor Central. Can you give me one or two that we can share with folks? And I know it's going to be…it's going to depend upon the category and all that but throw something out. Fahim: Yeah, take them to dinner create a- Joe: Take them to dinner? Fahim: Yup take them to dinner or when you go to Amazon [inaudible 0:28:50.3] you want to create a relationship with that person and treat it like you are sitting from their side what do you want to hear. So it's less complaining and demanding it's more this is what I've been able to do so far I know you have the tools to help me really grow this business, I want my brand to be a big part of your business- Joe: You're not gonna say what I tell every buyer which is just be likeable. The more likable you are the more people are going to work with you is that? I mean this is part of the secret [inaudible 0:29:17.6] likeable? Fahim: I think that's certainly some part of it. I mean I think in the context of the conversation put yourself in their shoes again and why should they…this person literally has thousands of brands that technically fall under them. Why should they spend some time trying to invest in you? And being likeable certainly a part of it explaining why your brand has a big opportunity. Whether that's your growth rate on Amazon, whether that's things that you've done off of Amazon, whether that's new products that are coming on, whether that's quest and things that you've been able to capture externally, make them care. The more they care about it and certainly it helps if you likeable, although that's not always the case, the more that person is gonna want to invest in it. This person literally has to make a…there's not enough hours in the day for the Vendor Manager to keep everybody happy. And I know now being on both sides of the table how difficult that job can be and it can be very frustrating from a brand's perspective. But every day as a Vendor Manager you have to pick who are the 95% of people I'm going to piss off by not answering them by giving them the time of the day. Just because they have so many things going on and by creating a relationship, by understanding what they need, by taking care of the easy things yourself and not bothering them with things that you can complete by yourself by filing tickets on Vendor Central you're certainly gonna increase the chance that that person is going to invest in you. If they feel like their time on the phone with you, or in meetings, or doing annual planning meeting from Seattle, or meeting at trade show is valuable and they're actually helping you grow the business they're going to want to invest more. If most of the time you're talking to them it's about I filed this ticket and it's not working, or can you help me with this bank account issue, or I can't figure out why this [inaudible 0:31:06.8] of a thing is not working that person's again going to be stretched up and the answer is probably going to be file a ticket, reach out to somebody on Vendor Central anyway. So I think the more you can keep the picture on the long term and understand there's going to be some bumps along the road the better the chances that that buyer is going to want to invest in this relationship. So nothing, no silver bullet except for be likable, think about long term, think about it from that person's perspective. Joe: Got it, geographically where are you located? Fahim: In San Francisco and I spend my time in Texas as well. But between San Francisco and Texas. Joe: And the vendors, the Vendor Central Managers are they all up in Seattle, are they located around the country, where are they? Fahim: For the most part, most of the Vendor Managers are in Seattle yup. Joe: Okay and if someone wants to learn the basics of Vendor Central to make sure that they're understanding it as much as they can, is vendor Central on Amazon.com? The best resource and knowledge base to learn the basics out there or is there another resource that you'd suggest? Fahim: Vendor, so there's certainly less and this is a little bit frustrating I think for brands, there's less information about Vendor Central than there is for Seller Central externally, there is lot of tutorials, there's a lot of training, there's a lot of information, there's Seller Central's forums etcetera that exists for Seller Central and not a lot for Vendor Central. There is a lot of information on Vendor Central if you get an invite. The help section has tons and tons of guides probably not [inaudible 0:32:33.5] to go through all the different guides. So it's a little bit [inaudible 0:32:36.0] by fire. I would certainly spend a little bit more time on the operations and figuring out how inventory management works and if you want EDI support and what that looks like and managing that part of the process early on and getting a feel for it. There are some pretty good documents on Vendor Central again but they're pretty long and exhausting. So I think you have to scour Vendor Central support, talk to other brands that are on Vendor Central potentially, pop in to the Vendor Manager and kind of just learn by doing. The good news is that you- Joe: Sounds like there's a [inaudible 0:33:11.0] in the making here. Somebody should be creating [inaudible 0:33:13.7] and teaching Vendor Central. Fahim: Yup. Joe: And you and I get a royalty for that right? Now it's just an idea. Fahim: I like the idea. Joe: It's just an idea. Now, okay this is just a theory but I want to hear what you would say and this is really not just for sellers but it's for buyers of Amazon businesses. We're running short on time so I'm gonna just say I'm launching a listing this is all theory quote unquote for air quotes for those not watching, it's going out next week, the brand has been around for about three years growing quite rapidly, there's 12 skews and 60 variations doing about 1.3 million dollars in revenue in the trailing 12 months and there is a design patent on the product as well; Seller Central only. I'm going to come to you or I'm going to try to figure out Vendor Central myself. It's in a category of well I can't really say what it's in but it's not in a massive category with tons and tons competition. It's just something that you'd look at me if we were having a beer right now you'd say, Joe, you're nuts not to look at Vendor Central. Fahim: Potentially I think you could I mean within your interest to evaluate it. So maybe you're nuts if you're not thinking about it and evaluate it. Not necessarily that it's the right decision but you need to start doing your homework to figure out if it is. And the interesting thing is it may not be right now, it may be next year or maybe six months from now. But I think if you'd simply wrote it off and say it's too complicated I don't want to do it then I'll tell you're nuts. If you said I looked at it here's the pros here's the cons, ultimately Seller Central makes a lot more sense then I think you're doing exactly what you should do. Joe: What's the first step in evaluating it? Fahim: Getting the invite. So Vendor Express used to exist and fortunately that platform is retiring in this month. It was the idea that you can sign up…anybody can sign up to be a vendor on Amazon through this Vendor Express platform and you get a lot of the same tools, not everything, but a lot of the same tools with Vendor Central. Vendor Central is an invite only platform so you need to get invite from somebody at Amazon. Whether that's your category manager or there's a selection team or somebody who lives within that retail team. So it's tough to get a lot of information until you actually get that invite because when it comes down to look to your total margin, and what is this going to look like, what's your payment terms, you don't get that information until you get the invite. So I'll tell you the first step is starting to figure out who your Vendor Manager is and starting to have some conversation. Before that I think you could probably do some level of research and see other brands in your category; how many of them are vendors, how many of them are sellers. If you are continuously being ranked in the top 20 but never in the top 10 for your category look at…you should be looking at who those top 20 are on a regular basis, what are the brands, what are the skews, what are they doing that you're not doing. And if you find that 80% of them seem to be vendors and they have access to much better A+ content than you have and videos and they're all over holiday gift guides and you see them all over Today's Deal page, and they're getting Deals of the Day, and they're on Amazon Prime or Fresh and what not then I'd certainly be keeping that at mind. If you look at the list and say nobody's doing any of that everybody has the same tools as me, maybe you come out and say I'm not getting hurt or maybe you'd say there is an opportunity just for the go. So I get…prior to getting the invite and having a conversation certainly wanting to understand what you're dynamics are. I've seen categories like luxury beauty for example, where the vast majority of brands [inaudible 0:36:40.0] are vendors. And again it's because of a variety of different tools that they have access to that are not on the Sellers Central side. So in that category if you're a brand that wanted to do north of a million or two million dollars a year I would probably very heavily consider Vendor Central and start looking into the process of figuring out who the buyer is and what can I offer and how do I get a hold of them and what would this look like for example. So I think unfortunately there's not a whole lot of prep and information out there on exactly what your margins and your…would be ahead of time and some of those other details and how much inventory they're going to order or anything like that until you actually get the invite so just the first process is research, second process is find out who the Vendor Manager is, where you could get an invite off. Joe: Yeah if you can find out who your Vendor Manager is through LinkedIn or however you might be able to strike up communications and get that invite if need be. This may be a simple question but how do I look at Amazon and find a competitor and tell if they're Seller Central or Vendor Central, is there an obvious way? Fahim: So if you're going through a listing and you look under the price there's three different options that you'll see one of them for ships from and sold by Amazon.com, one of them will say sold by ABC and fulfilled by Amazon.com, and the third one will say ships from and sold by ABC.com. Joe: Gotcha. Fahim: The third one which says ships from and sold is a seller who is also doing their own fulfillment, most cases are not Prime eligible unless they're [inaudible 0:38:09.8] prime. The second option when it says sold by ABC.com and fulfilled by Amazon means they're a seller that's [inaudible 0:38:17.7]. And the first one that says ships from and sold by Amazon.com means that Amazon is buying that. In most cases that means that brand has a Vendor Central account but again there could be a case where the brand actually doesn't sell to Amazon but a distributor does. But either way that is what they would call retail or Vendor Inventory is a ships from and sold by Amazon.com. And a final tidbit is there's been a lot of research done that shows that it differs by category but customers have more [inaudible 0:38:49.4] when it that ships from and sold by Amazon.com and conversion could be significantly higher even than an FBA listing. Certainly, both a retail and FBA listing would have higher conversion than something that's not Prime eligible than something that's not SFP but in some categories I've heard the conversion could be 30-50% higher, all else equal for something that's been shipped from and sold by Amazon.com. Not all customers understand the difference but people are becoming a little more savvy and if you're on the fence and you say I've never heard of this brand but if Amazon is buying it it's a little bit easier. But [inaudible 0:39:23.7] work a little bit easier because the brand doesn't even need to get involved. I can just reach out to Amazon Customer Service, sometimes that's the difference [inaudible 0:39:30.9] when somebody is making a difference. Joe: I hadn't even thought of that conversion rate on things 30, 40% percent maybe that's just even if you divide by four and you get a 10% bump. That's a pretty big bump for a lot of people that are listening today. Well, listen Fahim you've been great, we're running out of time I know you're gonna put together a cheat sheet for negotiating with the Vendor Central, maybe you can throw in some links there for any place that people can learn about Vendor Central. You'll share some details about eShopportunity as well and how do people find you if they are listening to this now and are driving down the street and they don't want to go to the notes. How do they find you right now? Fahim: Probably the easiest way is going on eShopportunity.com and there's a contact us form. I also do go to a bunch of conferences so oftentimes I meet and talk to brands there. I'll be at IRCE, I'm the Chairman of the Amazon conference for this year so I'll be around all day so if anybody would love to have a conversation in person that's certainly possible as well. Joe: Fantastic. Man, you've been great I appreciate it. You've cleared up a lot of things I think a lot of people are gonna ask a lot more questions and hopefully look at Vendor Central more realistically both sellers of businesses and those that are investing in them to help take it to the next level. Appreciate your time, thank you so much. Fahim: Absolutely. Thanks, Joe, wonderful time. Thank you. Joe: Talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast for more resources from this episode head over to quietlightbrokerage.com. If you're enjoying the show please leave a rating and review in iTunes, this helps share the messages from the show with more business owners like you.    

It's the new winter season and we're feeling the seasonal affect disorder. Find out why we've felt that this season of anime has been kind of... ehhh. We cover all the big (and weird?) names like The Saga of Tanya the Evil and Little Witch Academia. Where are you watching your anime? Because Amazon has unleashed a new anime streaming service called Anime Strike. How does it match up to Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Netflix? Finally we talk about the movie that everyone (except for the Oscar Board apparently) loves and adores: Your Name. Utterly unrecognized, the skyrocketing hit was set aside in favorite of a few other choices for Best Animated Picture. Join us as we brave the cold and complain!

In today’s episode of the podcast you’re going to hear a very detailed, step by step account of how a brand new Amazon Private Label seller went from zero to $10K per month in roughly 30 days… and he did all of it AT THE SAME TIME he was working a full time job. How is it possible? It takes dedication, attention to detail, and lots of hard work. Scott is happy to highlight Jaime’s success story here today because it’s proof not only that an Amazon Private Label business can work, but that anyone can do it… even people who are busy or working full time already. So grab a pencil and paper (you’re going to need it) and take some good notes because Jaime drops a couple of mind bombs on us in this episode.   The value of “Just in Time” learning… and how Jaime did it in his business.   In the process of building any business there are so many details, so many ins and outs to pay attention to that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Very easy. Building an Amazon Private Label business is exactly the same. That’s why Scott advocates and practices what he calls “just in time” learning, which is the process Jaime followed in establishing his business and products on Amazon. What is JITL? It’s doing enough research and study of the process to do the next step only. That way you are able to focus, do one thing at a time, and move ahead only when you’re ready. You’re not looking at 20 steps in the whole process, you’re just focusing on one. Hear how Jaime applied the JITL approach to his product research, samples, launch, and sales in this episode of The Amazing Seller.   Pay attention when you start interacting with potential product suppliers. You can learn a lot.   This is one of the biggest info bombs Jaime drops in this episode of the podcast. He contacted many suppliers to potentially source his products and then he started watching their interactions with him. Did they respond promptly? Did they respond professionally? Were they easy to communicate with? Did they send things to him in the appropriate time frame and in packaging that was right for the product? All of these things added up to show him whether the company he was talking with was trustworthy, concerned about quality, and reliable to do what they said they would do. Jaime explains it so much better from his real life experience, so you’ll want to listen to this interview. Logos and branding issues for Amazon Private Label Products can be a pain.   Many people find a designer on Fiverr or someplace similar to create their logos, take their product photos, etc. And that’s a fine way to go about it, but both Jaime and Scott have found that finding someone local to where they lived was a wonderful thing. Why? The communication and time frames were much better, the quality was great, and the ability to be a part of the process was so much easier. Jaime even went to his product photo shoot and got to give input on how he wanted the products displayed and photographed. It’s another tip Jaime shares from his success that you can take from this amazing episode.   30 minutes a day to keep his Amazon product updates and rolling.   No kidding. Now keep in mind, we’re not talking about the product research and launch phase. This is after all that work has been done and the product is live on Amazon for the first time. Watching the stats and sales, keeping products supplied, tweaking PPC campaigns, responding to customer issues - all of it takes 30 minutes a day or less. How it that possible? Because Amazon does the heavy lifting by handling all your marketing, shipping, and sales. It’s an amazing business to get into. Now don’t hear that to mean that it’s easy. The product identification and launch process is anything but… but it’s a rewarding way to build a business, not just an income stream. Hear how Jaime and Scott are doing that on this episode. OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE OF THE AMAZING SELLER   [0:03] Welcome and introduction: Another case study from a new seller who is doing over $10K in revenue with his first product. [1:00] Congrats to one of our TAS community members: Nancy Ramirez. [3:14] Get to know Scott’s new friend, Jaime - a new Amazon Private Label seller. [4:13] How did Jaime get started selling on Amazon? [6:12] Why Scott began this podcast. [7:14] What pushed Jaime over the edge to give Amazon sales a try? [10:03] Did Jaime follow Scott’s course step by step? [11:32] The importance of “just in time” learning. [12:05] How Jaime got his initial product ideas and how he switched products after discovering some interesting data. [17:42] The next step: Product samples from many suppliers and the lessons Jaime learned through email, packaging, and interactions. [19:59] How Jaime paid for his products and how he had them shipped. [20:30] Jaime’s response when he got his first product samples. [22:08] Branding decisions about logo and design. [23:02] Packaging choices and how Jaime handled that issue. [23:20] Ordering the first bulk set of products in a variety of colors. [24:40] What was the time frame for product production? [25:12] Why Jaime had the first batch of products shipped to him and not to  Amazon or any processing company? [28:11] In the pre-launch phase: pictures, logos, listings, etc. [31:20] Keyword research: What Jaime did to find the right ones. [34:10] The first order came in… shipping the product in, and a hiccup in his first shipment going in to Amazon. [37:12] When the product went live! - reviews, PPC, etc. [38:20] How long before sales began? [39:24] Jaime’s plan for doing reviews - 80 giveaways. [41:25] Cost of his PPC campaign and how sales have progressed. [44:46] Jaime’s experience with an auto PPC campaign. [46:29] Jaime’s goal for the product: 10 sales a day, and he’s hit much more. [48:48] Jaime’s future: scaling up his sales, preparing for 4th quarter, adding products. [50:23] How much time is Jaime spending each day now that his products are selling. [53:54] Scott’s recap of Jaime’s story and process. LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE   Scott’s free workshop  - http://www.TheAmazingSeller.com/workshop   www.TheAmazingSeller.com/FB - the TAS Facebook Community   Pat Flynn’s episode featuring Ryan Moran   www.JungleScout.com

Today I will be talking to Tim Castleman. He did something amazing. He wrote two 8k words in under 8 hours. Both books became Amazon bestsellers and ended up generating him over $3k in royalties in just 2 months from the launch + hundreds of glowing reviews! Tim's Story been doing online marketing since 2009. He found a partner with whom he worked for a year. And then, when they parted he had his lowest times of his life. He almost quit and was already thinking of going back to 9-5 job. That was when his friend contacted him telling about the Amazon self-publishing. So Tim decided to do it. He hired a ghostwriter for his non-fiction book. But when he received the text he realized that he could not release it under his name. It was not his voice and was not written well. So Tim had to write the book in 48 hours because he had a deadline. He wrote his book, which was over 8k words in just 4 hours. Now that book is an Amazon bestseller for 90+ days. And being frank with he Tim admits that he did not expect such good results in the beginning. Q: Once you finished the book and it was ready, did you do anything with the marketing of the book? A: I mentioned already that I am Internet marketer and I do have a customer list. Some people will turn immediately off and say “Oh that’s how he made all his sales”. Let me tell you I actually tracked with software the sales that actually came from customers that were on my list vs. social media. And for my last book the clicks from my customers and the clicks from my social media were between 200-300 of each other. Meaning that if you don’t have a list you can to do what I will share with you via social media. The key is you need to find a group of people, that you’re talking to and they actively involved. My first book is called “The creativity Checklist”. That’s a checklist that I use to create products and services for my market. So I’ve already been in several Facebook groups and several forums. I’ve already made my presence known there by being useful and active contributor. So I didn’t just show up by saying Hey everybody here is my book buy it. I showed up I said hey let me help this person. Let me get my name known. And then when it was my turn I said hey guys I have this book out. It is limited for 3 days if you be so kind please purchase it and enjoy the discount. And it’s really all I had to do to get that initial push. I really think when it comes to sales and marketing Amazon looks at 2 things. Your sales obviously initially but then they look at your reviews as well. And the best way I can describe this is imagine you have this friend. And you want to introduce this friend to all your other friends. If Amazon sees that you are making lot of sales and people are leaving positive reviews, then they will show your book to other people. Because Amazon does the majority of marketing for me now. They e mail out their customers, they tell people about my book. And all I had to do was get the initial burst of sales and reviews and Amazon takes from there. Q: Do you know how many books were sold to have that initial push in the beginning? It’s always gonna depend on your niche and your genre and your industry, but I would say if you could do 10+ sales initially you’re gonna at least get that initial momentum. Cause what happens is you get those sales Amazon puts you in a ranking category, so let’s say you’re the 5th most popular book on writing. They also put you in the Hot New Release list. So Amazon puts it in front of the customers, they start buying it and it basically just becomes a big snowball Q: Did you launch the book at 0.99 cents?  A: It was 99 cents. Here is how I do all my launches. I do 99 cents at the very beginning for 3 days. I tell everyone hey it’s for 3 days and then from 99 cents I bump it up to $2,99. The 99 cents is meant to get sales and get reviews at cheapest price possible. Q: You have big amount of reviews for your books. Were they organic reviews or you did something to get them? A: I did something and then they started to come organically. So here is what I did. I basically sent to my list and my social media contacts “hey if you buy the book just do me a favor and leave a review. And if you leave a review and send me a copy of the review to my e-mail address then I’ll send you either another book or a bonus video or something along those lines. They key there you obviously can’t tell to leave a 5 star review so if you get 1 star review you still have to send the book. But the whole goal is to get those reviews initially up there. So I would say 2/3 of my reviews came from the initial push. What is amazing to see is those books continue to get reviews that are what I would call organic reviews. That is you see a book you read it and like it so much that you leave a review of it. Q: Can we say that if you launch the book successfully and get the initial push and reach the momentum, later on there is much less to do? A: Right, exactly. Like I haven’t done anything with either of my 2 books probably in the last 35 days as far as advertising, promotion, sales, discounts, etc and I still make thousands of dollars out of them. Q: The problem with Amazon is that you don’t get the contacts of your readers. How do you deal with that? Do you have an opt-in form in the books? How do you engage people, who have bought your book? A: I have an opt-in form right at the very beginning of my book. I think it’s the first or second page or the third. They see the title, they see the table of content and right there I give them a free gift for signing up. The key is to be successful you have to be a frequent publisher, so you have to be producing content on regular basis. No fewer than every 60 days. You have to build a list of your buyers. There is so much information out there that the only way you can get to them is to have their e mail addresses. And then frequent promotion. KDP days, Kindle Unlimited, you can bundle your books… there are many things you can do to increase your availability and ability to make more sales. Q: You mentioned that every 60 days one has to come up with a new book. Why 60 days? A: Here is my belief and this is untested but it is based on my own experience. Q: Do you send your e-mail list anything before your new book comes out? A: You can send out a survey with possible book subjects, which they choose. I also make teasing by telling that my book is almost finished. Then I send e-mail the day it goes to Amazon. Then the day it launches I send them the e-mail that it is live and priced 0.99 for three days. Then I ask for a review and offer them a free book for the review. The most important tips Tip 1: Come up with your hook or angle before you even start to write your book Tip 2: Come up with the outline Tip 3: Come up with a system or process that works well and then trust that process Bonus Tip: [spp-tweet " Done is better than perfect!"] Links Tim's website 8 Hour Bestseller Don't Forget to Get Your Free Book Click Here to Download