Podcasts about BSR

Today on the podcast:Director, Amina Robinson drops in to talk about the Interact Theatre Company production in collaboration with Theatre In The X of ON MY DEEN by Antu Yacob, commissioned as part of The Philly Cycle, on stage through June 28th. Here is my interview with Amina Robinson for ON MY DEEN.ON MY DEENby Antu Yacob directed by Amina Robinson (Fat Ham, Once On This Island, Intimate Apparel, The Color Purple)June 6-28, 2025 World premiere, commissioned as part of The Philly Cycle (A new three-part play commission project. Sponsored by THE WILLIAM PENN FOUNDATION)ON MY DEEN was written about and with Philadelphia's Black Muslim Community.West Philly. Spring 1962. Faye Ann has just joined the Nation of Islam, setting her life on a whole new path. Her best friend, Michael, would like to be a lot more than friends, but the two can't seem to agree on religion, politics, or even what makes a good pie. Over the passing decades, personal circumstances and cultural upheavals bring Faye Ann and Michael together as much as they keep them apart. Can these would-be lovers find each other while seeking their own paths to peace?In this engaging podcast episode, host Darnelle Radford speaks with director Amina Robinson about her journey in theater and the world premiere of 'On My Dean.' They explore the themes of the play, which serves as a love letter to Islam, and discuss the importance of authenticity and cultural sensitivity in theater production. Amina shares her personal connection to the story, rooted in her father's experiences, and highlights the dynamic nature of the creative process in theater. In this conversation, Amina Robinson and Darnelle Radford discuss the intricacies of staging a new play that explores Muslim identity and community. They delve into the importance of cultural sensitivity in storytelling, the evolution of the play, the dynamics of the cast, and the challenges faced during the production process. Amina shares her personal connections to the themes of faith and representation, highlighting the significance of portraying authentic narratives in theater. The conversation culminates in an invitation for audiences to experience the play, emphasizing its unique storytelling and cultural relevance.Chapters* 00:00 Introduction to Amina Robinson and On My Dean* 09:03 Exploring the Themes of On My Dean* 12:04 The Writer's Journey and Authentic Representation* 14:58 Cultural Sensitivity in Theater Production* 17:08 Cultural Sensitivity in Storytelling* 18:44 The Evolution of the Play* 20:09 Cast Dynamics and Community Representation* 21:52 Challenges of Last-Minute Casting* 24:21 Personal Connections to Faith* 25:36 The Importance of Faith in Daily Life* 27:27 Representation in Media* 29:00 Memorable Moments in the Play* 31:32 The Structure of the Play* 33:34 The Significance of New Plays* 34:54 Invitation to Experience the PlayFOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://interacttheatre.org and https://theatreinthex.com

Today on the podcast:Co-Director Steve Pacek stop say to talk about the Arden Theatre Company musical production of RENT, by Jonathan Larson. Here is my interview with Steve Pacek for Arden's production of RENT.ABOUT RENTAt the end of the millennium, a group of bohemians in the East Village struggle with love, loss, and gentrification amidst the AIDS crisis. In this exciting new production, Jonathan Larson's Tony Award™ and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical will transform the Haas Stage and shake the rafters with the iconic chords of “Seasons of Love,” “I'll Cover You, ” and the thrilling, soaring score that is RENT!FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://ardentheatre.org

BSR has published a new set of management recommendations for ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), serving as an update to our AAV guideline last published in 2017.Find out more via our blog. Join guideline working group Chair, Lorraine Harper, and group members Rosemary Hollick, Harold Wilson-Morkeh, Georgina Ducker and expert by experience member, Zoi Anastasa, in a roundtable discussion hosted by Prof Ernest Choy, Editor in Chief of Rheumatology to find out what is included in the publication and what has changed since the 2017 guideline was published. Sign up for the BSR educational webinars to accompany the recommendations here: https://www.rheumatology.org.uk/events-learning/webinars/updated-recommendations-for-managing-anca-associated-vasculitis Read the full guideline and download the summary pdf here. Thanks for listening to Talking Rheumatology! Join the conversation on X using #TalkingRheum or tweet us @RheumatologyUK.BSR is the UK's leading specialist medical society for rheumatology and MSK health professionals. To discover how we can support you in delivering the best care for your patients, visit our website.

In this episode, host Darnelle Radford speaks with Ross Beschler about the Wilma Theater's final production of the season, A Summer Day, written by Jan Fosse. They discuss the unique Hothouse ensemble experience, the themes of love, loss, and memory in the play, and the challenges of communication and language in expressing deep emotions. The conversation highlights the importance of ensemble work and the artistic journey of the Hothouse members. In this conversation, Ross Beschler and Darnelle Radford explore the themes of language, memory, identity, and the dynamics of relationships through the lens of the play 'A Summer Day' by Jan Fossa. They discuss how exaggeration in language can shape perceptions, the role of characters in navigating crises, and the importance of introspection versus action in understanding oneself and others. The conversation delves into the complexities of memory and how it influences identity, as well as the societal challenges of understanding and miscommunication. Ultimately, they reflect on the human experience and the significance of connection in the face of life's uncertainties.A SUMMER DAYBY JON FOSSETRANSLATED BY SARAH CAMERON SUNDEDIRECTED BY YURY URNOVJune 10–29, 2025Experience the haunting beauty of Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's A Summer Day, directed by inventive Co-Artistic Director Yury Urnov (Mr. Burns, Minor Character, 12th Night) in a production that delves into the depths of human connection, memory, and existential longing. Is there one day in your past you keep replaying again and again? When do we start spending more time in the past than in the present? Through Fosse's poetic language and Urnov's innovative direction and immersive visual design, audiences are transported into an epic and intimate world where past and present intertwine, inviting reflection on the fleeting nature of time and the eternal search for meaning. Often referred to as a modern-day Ibsen, Fosse won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023 – one of the few playwrights to ever receive that honor – and is rarely produced in the United States.Chapters00:00 Introduction to the Wilma Theater and A Summer Day02:40 The Hothouse Experience and Ensemble Work11:30 Exploring the Play: A Summer Day17:24 Themes of Love, Loss, and Memory20:30 Language and Communication in A Summer Day24:30 The Power of Language and Exaggeration26:41 Character Dynamics and Intrusions29:58 Memory and Identity in Relationships32:00 Understanding and Misunderstanding in Society36:45 Introspection vs. Action39:32 Replaying Moments and Learning from the Past44:53 The Essence of A Summer DayFOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://wilmatheater.org/event/asummerday/

In this engaging conversation, host Darnelle Radford speaks with playwright R. Eric Thomas and director Ontaria Kim Wilson about the regional premiere of 'Glitter in the Glass.' They explore themes of identity, community, and the cultural significance of their work, while reflecting on personal journeys and the importance of storytelling in the Black experience. The discussion also touches on the contrasts within Baltimore and Philadelphia, the impact of generational wisdom, and the ongoing quest for belonging and understanding in a complex world. In this conversation, R. Eric Thomas, Ontaria Kim Wilson and Darnelle Radford explore the significance of monuments, symbols, and storytelling in relation to African American history and culture. They discuss the relevance of historical monuments today, the impact of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the importance of empathy in understanding the past. The dialogue also touches on the role of art in reflecting identity and the necessity of continuing to tell stories that resonate with the community.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Glitter in the Glass02:59 The Journey of Ontario Wilson05:59 Eric Thomas: The Playwright's Perspective09:01 Exploring Identity Through Names12:02 Thematic Depth of Glitter in the Glass14:55 Cultural Reflections and Black Utopias17:51 Baltimore: A City of Contrasts21:06 Community and History in Black Spaces24:05 Generational Wisdom and Fear27:01 Conclusion and Future Aspirations29:32 Symbols and Their Meanings32:50 The Impact of the National Museum of African American History35:44 The Importance of Storytelling40:41 Art as a Reflection of Identity44:37 Confronting the Past51:11 The Role of Empathy in Understanding History54:57 The Call to Action for Art and CommunityWritten by R. Eric ThomasMay 29, 2025 — June 22, 2025Directed By: Ontaria Kim WilsonOpening Night: June 5, 2025Theatre Exile, 1340 S. 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147120 minutes including 10 minute intermission THIS SHOW CONTAINS THE USE OF THEATRICAL FOG Chelle, a Black mid-career artist, has written a check that she's not sure her talent can cash. When the city of Baltimore takes down the Confederate monument in the park across the street from her childhood home, she has an idea. She'll apply for a grant to create a piece to replace it. Caught between the past, the present, and the future, Chelle, portrayed by Jennifer Kidwell, is catapulted into a journey that takes her back before the Middle Passage and out beyond the bounds of this planet. “Wildly funny and thought-provoking” (CTX Life Theatre), Glitter in the Glass by multi-award winning playwright, R. Eric Thomas, is about liminal spaces, and a world on the cusp of exploding. FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://theatreexile.org

In this podcast episode, host Darnelle Radford engages with the director and cast of Inis Nua Theatre Company's production of 'Square Go.' They discuss the play's premise, themes of adolescence, audience engagement, and the rehearsal process. The conversation highlights the importance of vulnerability in performance and the unique dialect work that brings authenticity to the characters. The episode concludes with reflections on the impact of the play on both the cast and the audience, emphasizing the shared experience of theater.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Square Go01:22 Exploring the Premise of the Play03:41 Thematic Depth and Character Exploration10:30 Audience Engagement and Immersive Experience15:49 Reflecting on Adolescence and Vulnerability19:32 Rehearsal Dynamics and Creative Collaboration23:32 Dialect Work and Authenticity29:45 Takeaways and Audience ImpactBy: Kieran Hurley and Gary McNairDirected By: Kathryn MacMillanMAX - Owen CoreySTEVIE - Tyler ElliotBeing a smart arse in class has put daydreamer Max in the crosshairs of the school bully–he's been challenged to his first ‘square go,' or after-school fight. But while hiding out in the school bathrooms with his best mate, Stevie, it's his own demons he must wrestle with first. This high-octane coming of age comedy builds to an emotional conclusion about masculinity, friendship, and fathers and sons.Our all-new Philadelphia premiere follows smash-hit, sold-out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe and across the world. From ScotlandFOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://inisnuatheatre.org/show/square-go

Chapters00:00 Introduction to Obvious Agency and Space Opera10:56 The Development Journey of Space Opera19:58 Understanding Space Opera: Concept and Gameplay30:12 Audience Engagement and Accessibility in Space OperaSpace Opera is an innovative and radical combination of tabletop roleplaying games, democratic organizing practice, and theatrical spectacle, testing your very ability to work together in order to thwart existential consequences. Planets revolt, wonders appear, governments crumble, and you roll the dice. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance!June 14th, 21st, and 28th of 2025 pull up a seat and see how, in adrienne marie brown's words, "science fiction is simply a way to practice the future together."Director - Cat RamirezStage Manager- Kel FlemingGame Designers- John Bezark, Ari Gass, Daniel Park, Dain SaintPerformer/Facilitators- Joseph Ahmed, Matthew Armstead, KC Legacion, Sulu LeoNimm, Anthony Martinez-Briggs, Jackie Soro, Sam RiseProduction Designers- doug greene, Harbour Edney, Evelyn Langley, Taj Rauch, Dain SaintHospitality and Care Coordinators- Karen Orrick, Vanessa Ogbuehi, Uriah BusseyCommunity Partnerships Manager- Marisol Rosa-ShapiroCircles Administrator- Evelyn LangleyABOUT OBVIOUS AGENCYObvious Agency creates interactive, experiential art that ranges from the personal, to the institutional, to the ridiculous. Blending theatrical and digital arts, we create spaces where participants can co-create their own experiences through first-hand exploration of the worlds we create. Always serious, always silly, we believe that by helping create and define culture, we can create systemic and interpersonal change.FOR MORE INFORMATION:https://obvious-agency.com

EAST COAST PREMIEREBook and Lyrics by Mickle Maher Music by Merel van Dijk and Anthony Barilla Directed by Taibi Magar & Tyler Dobrowsky Commissioned and Co-Produced by Daryl Morey, Philadelphia 76ers President of Basketball OperationsPhiladelphia loves sports, so why not a sports-themed musical? Step into the surreal, magical world of Small Ball, where melancholy journeyman basketball player Michael Jordan (no, not that Michael Jordan) has recently started playing in the international league with the Lilliput Existers – as in Lilliput, from Gulliver's Travels. With teammates who are only six inches tall, the team's fortunes, and the post-game press conferences, rest on Michael's shoulders. Small Ball is an off -beat musical delight, commissioned and co-produced by Daryl Morey, President of Basketball Operations for the Philadelphia 76ers. Directed by Co-Artistic Directors Taibi Magar and Tyler Dobrowsky. An East Coast Premiere.Content Advisory: Small Ball contains strong language, adult themes, and surreal humor. Recommended for ages 13 and up.Adam Chandler-Berat - PIPPINPTC: Debut. Broadway: Next to Normal (original cast); Peter and the Starcatcher (original cast); Amélie (original cast); Saint Joan (revival). Off-Broadway: The Jonathan Larson Project; I Can Get It for You Wholesale; Assassins; The Fortress of Solitude (Lortel Award nomination); Rent; Fly by Night; How to Load a Musket; Nantucket Sleigh Ride; Zorba; Titanic. Regional: A New Brain, Barrington Stage Company; Sunday in the Park with George, Huntington Theatre Company; The Year to Come, La Jolla Playhouse. Film: Delivery Man. TV: Gossip Girl (HBO Max); Veep; Elementary; The Good Wife; Doubt; The Code; NCIS: New Orleans; Soundtrack.JORDAN DOBSON, MICHAEL JORDONPTC: Night Side Songs. Broadway: Bad Cinderella (Prince Sebastian, OBC); Hadestown (Orpheus); A Beautiful Noise (Shilo, OBC); West Side Story (Tony, dir. Ivo van Hove). Tour: Rent (Angel), Japan Tour. Regional: Hair, Signature Theatre and Two River Theater; Austen's Pride, Into the Woods, ACT of Connecticut; The Wanderer, Paper Mill Playhouse; Cabaret, Gypsy, Arden Theatre Company; The Color Purple, Theatre Horizon. Film: Maestro (William), dir. Bradley Cooper; Closing Night (Jericho). More: @jordandobson_.

This Talking Rheumatology Spotlight pod on burnout and mental health was recorded live at the BSR Annual Conference 2025. Pip Watson is joined by Gail Kinman (Professor of Occupational Health Psychology), Muzaffer Kaser (Consultant Psychiatrist) and Jacqui Clinch (Consultant Paediatric Rheumatologist and former Vice President of BSR). Burnout is a huge challenge for the NHS. Listen on for insights into how to recognise warning signs of burnout and mental health issues, when and how you might act to support yourself and colleagues, and learnings from a rapid access staff mental health service. Resources and initiatives referenced in the episode:Mind Wellness Action Plan for those in a workplace (remote and hybrid work versions are also available)Case study: CPFT's rapid access staff mental health serviceCambridge University Hospitals' Clinicians4Clinicians initiativeSociety of Occupational Medicine's Burnout in Healthcare reportSociety of Occupational Medicine's Suicide Postvention reportThanks for listening to Talking Rheumatology! Join the conversation on X using #TalkingRheum or tweet us @RheumatologyUK.BSR is the UK's leading specialist medical society for rheumatology and MSK health professionals. To discover how we can support you in delivering the best care for your patients, visit our website.

Join Dr Mariele Gatto in conversation with Dr Chris Wincup as they discuss all things related to lupus immunology, from pathogenesis to treatment decisions.Thanks for listening to Talking Rheumatology! Join the conversation on X using #TalkingRheum or tweet us @RheumatologyUK.BSR is the UK's leading specialist medical society for rheumatology and MSK health professionals. To discover how we can support you in delivering the best care for your patients, visit our website.

How do we approach a patient with rheumatic diseases who have cycled through multiple high cost drugs? In this pod, Dr Roz Benson, BSR Digital Learning Editor chats with Dr Arti Mahto, a consultant rheumatologist. They talk through some challenging cases discussed in the virtual biologics clinic and the role of the MDT in complex decision making.Thanks for listening to Talking Rheumatology! Join the conversation on X using #TalkingRheum or tweet us @RheumatologyUK.BSR is the UK's leading specialist medical society for rheumatology and MSK health professionals. To discover how we can support you in delivering the best care for your patients, visit our website.

BSR returns to burn brightly on episodes 4-6 of Andor Season 2. So, take a quick huff of some rhydonium and get sweaty with us.If you have a question or just want to tell us what your favorite snack is, send us a DM on Instagram @blkseriesrebels or shoot us an email @ blkseriesrebels@gmail.com

In this engaging conversation, Darnelle Radford and Susan Chase explore the themes of motherhood, artistic expression, and the challenges of self-producing theatre. Susan shares her personal journey through cancer and how it inspired her work, including her latest play, Mother's Day. They discuss the importance of music in theatre, the fear of performing in New York, and the significance of audience engagement. The conversation also touches on the realities of procrastination in the creative process and the unexpected journey to acceptance in the United Solo Festival. In this conversation, Darnelle Radford and Susan Chase discuss the intricacies of creating and presenting the play 'Mother's Day,' reflecting on the supportive environment of theater festivals, the emotional journey of writing the play after the loss of Chase's mother, and the importance of audience engagement through visual storytelling. They explore the historical significance of Mother's Day, the impact of COVID-19 on artistic expression, and the deep connections that can be fostered through shared experiences in theater.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Mother's Day and Artistic Journey03:00 Susan's Undoing: A Personal Journey Through Cancer06:00 The Role of Music in Theatrical Productions09:00 Performing in New York: Overcoming Fear and Finding Community11:58 Audience Engagement and Relatability in Performance14:56 The Challenges of Self-Producing Theatre17:58 Procrastination and the Creative Process20:47 Unexpected Acceptance: A Journey to the United Solo Festival23:00 Festival Experience and Artist Support25:05 Reflections on Artistic Changes28:06 Engaging the Audience with Visuals30:02 Historical Context of Mother's Day33:56 Thematic Depth of the Play39:01 The Impact of COVID on Creativity40:54 A Call to Action for AudiencesABOUT MOTHER'S DAY - A Theatrical Homage To The Women Who Made UsMother's Day is both a memoir of one mother, and an homage to ALL mothers. Veering from sentimental to skeptical, from harrowing to hilarious, Mother's Day celebrates the women who made us. It is especially dedicated to those mothers who are no longer with us, except in our memories and our dreams."Mother's Day is ultimately passionate and illuminating, inspiring viewers to revisit their own relationships with their mothers." (Lehigh Valley Stage 4/9/25)FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.theatreexile.org/renters-in-exile/susan-chase

In this episode, Darnelle Radford interviews Deb Block, the producing artistic director of Theater Exile, discussing the current season's productions, community engagement, and the importance of the arts. They reflect on the success of the play 'Red', the innovative 'Philly Grit' series, and upcoming events like 'Exile a Go Go' and the final show 'Glitter in the Glass'. Deb emphasizes the need for collaboration within the arts community and the significance of bringing new audiences to theater.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Theater Exile and Season Overview01:13 Exploring the Production of 'Red'06:59 Highlighting 'Philly Grit' and Community Engagement11:36 The Importance of Collaboration in the Arts16:10 Upcoming Events: Exile a Go Go22:14 Final Show of the Season: 'Glitter in the Glass'27:22 Navigating Challenges in the Arts CommunityThank you to our guest(s), Deborah Block for joining us on today's podcast. TICKET GIVEAWAY!THEATRE EXILE has provided a pair tickets to their next event GLITTER IN THE GLASS. If you would like a chance to win, visit our website and join our mailing list by MAY 15, it's that simple. On MAY 16th, we will announce the winner on social media. The Broad Street Review Podcast is An Em3ry Production. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast, visit us online at em3ry.com Get involved with Broad Street Review. Head on over to our website at www.broadstreetreview.com to find out how. While you're there, help keep us running and click “Donate” at the top. There, you can also find our social media links. Thank you for your part in keeping the conversation going.

We are so back! BSR returns for the next four weeks to break down all of Andor Season 2.If you have a question or just want to tell us what your favorite snack is, send us a DM on Instagram @blkseriesrebels or shoot us an email @ blkseriesrebels@gmail.com

In this engaging podcast episode, host Darnelle Radford speaks with Deanna Wright, an actress involved in the Quintessence Theater's production of Reckless Romance, featuring Midsummer Night's Dream and Antony and Cleopatra. Deanna shares her journey from Florida to Philadelphia, her experiences in the theater, and her reflections on playing the iconic roles of Cleopatra and Oberon. The conversation delves into the challenges and joys of acting, the significance of gender roles in Shakespeare's works, and the personal growth that comes from embodying such powerful characters. In this conversation, DeAnna S. Wright discusses her experiences portraying iconic characters Oberon and Cleopatra, reflecting on the creative process, the importance of costume design, and the power of theatricality. She shares insights on personal growth, audience engagement, and the limitless possibilities that come with embracing one's artistic journey.Chapters* 00:00 Introduction to Reckless Romance* 03:03 Deanna Wright: A Journey to Philadelphia* 05:56 The Road to Reckless Romance* 09:11 Exploring the Characters: Cleopatra and Oberon* 12:01 The Impact of Gender Roles in Shakespeare* 15:09 Creating Oberon: A Personal Journey* 19:50 The Gift of Performance* 22:15 Costume Design and Character Embodiment* 25:40 The Power of Theatricality* 28:45 Engaging the Audience* 30:15 Reflections on Personal Growth* 34:30 Embracing Limitless PossibilitiesFOR MORE INFORMATION: https://quintessencetheatre.org Thank you to our guest(s), DeAnna Wright for joining us on today's podcast. The Broad Street Review Podcast is An Em3ry Production. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast, visit us online at em3ry.com Get involved with Broad Street Review. Head on over to our website at www.broadstreetreview.com and click “Get involved” at the top. While you're there, help keep us running and click “Donate” to find out how. There, you can find our social media links. Thank you for your part in keeping the conversation going.

Subscribe to the ECB newsletter: https://newsletter.ecommercecoffeebreak.com/ ---In this episode, we explore the impact of negative reviews on Amazon sellers and how to effectively manage them. Our guest, Shane Barker, CEO and founder of Trace Fuse, shares insights from his 20+ years in marketing and his pioneering work with the first Amazon TOS-compliant negative review removal system. Shane discusses the challenges sellers face with unfair and fraudulent reviews and offers strategies to protect and grow your brand on Amazon. Visit the TraceFuse Amazon Review Checker at https://tracefuse.ai/amazon-review-checker/ Topics discussed in this episode:Why negative reviews impact more than ratings - affecting BSR, PPC costs and sales by up to 50%. How Trace Fuse removes Amazon TOS-violating reviews while staying compliant. What competitor attacks look like - strategic negative reviews before Prime Day or product launches. How to differentiate between valuable negative feedback and fraudulent reviews. Why proactive review monitoring prevents sales losses before they happen. What makes supplements, beauty and pet products most vulnerable to review manipulation. How Amazon's review guidelines determine which reviews qualify for removal. Why DIY review removal has such a steep learning curve with Amazon. How Trace Fuse achieved 13,000+ review removals for 500+ clients. What sellers should consider before investing in professional review management. Links & Resources Website: https://tracefuse.ai/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tracefuse/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shanebarkerX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/shane_barkerInstagram: http://instagram.com/shanebarkerGet access to more free resources by visiting the show notes athttps://tinyurl.com/mr2xyvjzMORE RESOURCES Enjoying this episode? Here are a few ways to grow your business: https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/level-up/ Store Optimization Beginners Guide: Instant PDF Download! It's FREE.

Dr. Andrew Bailey returns to the podcast to talk about Bitcoin, or rather, the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. Amidst the flurry of President Trump's executive orders was one that was celebrated by many in the cryptocurrency world, but generally raised, at best, ambivalent eyebrows in the broader policy world: the creation of 1) a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (BSR) and 2) a cryptocurrency stockpile. On the surface, this seemed to be a major step forward in mainstreaming cryptocurrency, and Bitcoin in particular, while also fulfilling a Trump campaign promise. But how was such a strategic reserve going to work? How would American governments utilize it? Is it just a holding pen for cryptocurrencies, or is there more to it than that?In this discussion, Andrew walks us through the whats, whys, and hows of the BSR. We talk about the executive order that established the BSR as well as ongoing legislative efforts to make the BSR a permanent feature of American strategic planning. Subscribe to Tim Talks Politics⁠⁠⁠ on Substack⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for the full show notes (30% for podcast listeners)!

Today on the podcast:We continue our annual coverage of the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and the 2025 The Arts Affair, May 15th at REC Philly. Here is my interview with members of the PVLA for The Arts Affair.In this episode, host Darnelle Radford engages with representatives from the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (PVLA) to discuss the upcoming Arts Affair, a significant fundraising event for the organization. The conversation covers the PVLA's recent developments, the challenges faced by artists in the current political climate, and the importance of supporting the arts community. The guests share insights on the evolving landscape for artists, the unique entertainment planned for the Arts Affair, and the organization's commitment to recognizing contributions within the arts community. Listeners are encouraged to engage with PVLA and support emerging artists through attendance and donations.Chapters00:00 Introduction to the Arts Affair02:12 Year in Review: PVLA's Progress and Challenges04:42 Navigating the Current Political Climate09:03 The Evolving Landscape for Artists14:09 The Excitement of the Arts Affair15:01 New Venue and Entertainment Highlights18:25 Curating a Unique Experience21:53 Recognizing Contributions: Awards and Acknowledgments25:01 Engagement Opportunities with PVLA30:00 The Importance of Supporting Emerging ArtistsThank you to our guest(s), THE PHILADELPHIA VOLUNTEER LAWYERS FOR THE ARTS for joining us on today's podcast. TICKET GIVEAWAY!THE PVLA has provided a pair tickets to their next event The Arts Affair. If you would like a chance to win, visit our website em3ry.com and join our mailing list by May 1st, it's that simple. On May 2nd, we will announce the winner on social media. The Broad Street Review Podcast is An Em3ry Production. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast, visit us online at em3ry.com Get involved with Broad Street Review. Head on over to our website at www.broadstreetreview.com to find out how. While you're there, help keep us running and click “Donate” at the top. There, you can also find our social media links. Thank you for your part in keeping the conversation going.

In the US, women control roughly 85% of the household purchases, which means shopping isn't just a necessity, it's a superpower we wield. Diane Osgood, author of the forthcoming book 'Your Shopping Superpower' and co-author of 'The Carbon Almanac.' Diane, a seasoned expert with over 30 years of experience in sustainable and ethical products and services, delves into the transformative power of women's consumer spending, supporting women-owned and minority-owned businesses, combating climate change, and more through reevaluating and changing how we spend our money. This week's episode 163 of How Women Inspire Podcast is about understanding your shopping superpower! In this episode of How Women Inspire Podcast, Diane Osgood is sharing the importance of understanding the implications of your spending habits and actionable steps you can take right now to research and shop in a sustainable way. Diane Osgood is an author and sustainability strategist with 30 years of experience. She helps businesses embed sustainability and ESG into their operations to increase profits, create sustainable products and services, and manage risks.  She works with brands, HR, business and product innovation, customer experience, environmental performance, reporting, and charitable activities. Osgood was a senior advisor to President Clinton for the Clinton Global Initiative and served on the Vatican Arts and Technology Council. As VP for Sustainability Strategy at BSR, she co-led BSR's transformation by growing revenue by 28% over three years. She specializes in sustainability strategy, climate change action, sustainable finance, innovation, social-enterprise, and impact assessment and reporting.Some of the talking points Julie and Diane go over in this episode include:The impact of consumer spending on the economy and how women control roughly 85% of household spending.Diane's journey to study and work in environmental economics, started by witnessing the impact of deforestation.Practical steps for sustainable, well-researched shopping.Supporting women and minority-owned businesses as a way to vote for a more equitable economy.Don't forget to hear over to https://www.dianeosgood.com/books to pre-order your copy of Your Shopping Superpower!Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me!  And don't forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!Learn more about How Women Inspire at https://www.howwomenlead.com/podcast CONNECT WITH DIANE OSGOOD:Osgood ConsultingWebsiteLinkedInCONNECT WITH JULIE CASTRO ABRAMS:LinkedIn - JulieHow Women LeadHow Women InvestHow Women GiveInstagram - HWLLinkedIn - HWLFacebook - HWL

The 21st episode in this series focuses on “Decoding the EU Omnibus Legislation in Sustainability and Governance,” featuring Aron Cramer, President and CEO, BSR; Christine Diamente, Managing Director of Transformation, BSR; and Paloma Muñoz Quick, Director of Human Rights Standards, BSR. They were in conversation with Susan Mac Cormac, co-chair of the ESG + Sustainability and Social Enterprise + Impact Investing practices at MoFo. Suz, Aron, Christine, and Paloma unpacked the complexities of the Omnibus legislation, which is shaping the future of sustainability and corporate governance on a global scale. Their discussion also delved into the regulatory landscape, key implications for businesses, and how organizations can adapt to these comprehensive sustainability standards.

Chapters00:00 Introduction to Philly Theatre Week03:01 The Process of Organizing Theatre Week06:00 Participation Trends in Theatre Week09:08 Kickoff Celebration Details11:57 Diverse Offerings in Theatre Week15:11 Workshops and Community Engagement18:01 Memorization Skills and Their Importance22:22 Exploring Philly Theater Week24:17 Highlighting Exciting Events and Shows27:49 Remounts and Fundraisers in Focus30:26 Innovative Productions and New Musicals32:44 Family-Friendly and Community-Oriented Shows35:11 Theater Philadelphia's Ongoing Initiatives39:11 Supporting the Arts and Community EngagementFOR MORE INFORMATION: www.PhillyTheatreWeek.com

In this engaging conversation, Darnelle Radford speaks with John Jarboe, the artistic director of Bearded Ladies Cabaret, about their innovative show 'Beards on Ice.' The discussion explores the origins of the show, its focus on climate justice, and the importance of family-friendly programming. John shares insights into the creative process, the role of humor in addressing serious topics, and the significance of community engagement in climate activism. The conversation highlights the joy and absurdity of the performance, emphasizing the need for collective action and the power of art to inspire hope.What's more impossible: solving the climate crisis or teaching drag queens to ice skate?Watch us do BOTH in Beards On Ice! This hour-long icecapade comes in two dazzling variations: fun for the whole family and PG13 (a little more edge). Featuring resources from Philly's climate justice organizations and a free skate after the show, it's sure to be a “fracking” good time.Produced by The Bearded Ladies Cabaret | In partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation DepartmentMarch 15 & 16, 2025 at Tarken Ice Rink March 22 & 23, 2025 at Laura Sims Skate HouseFOR MORE INFORMATION:https://beardedladiescabaret.com/

Nora: A Doll's House follows Nora, the perfect wife and mother. She is dutiful and beautiful and always has everything in its proper place. But when a secret from her past comes back to haunt her, Nora's life quickly unravels. Over the course of three days, Nora must fight to protect herself and her family or risk losing everything.Smith's adaptation takes place in distinct time periods across 100 years of history, highlighting how women's struggles for independence have evolved but remain connected. Each version of Nora faces challenges within her marriage and personal life, confronting the limits imposed by the societal norms in each of the three eras. The overlapping narratives reveal the parallels and contrasts between our collective past and present, illustrating the complex nature of a woman's freedom and choice. As the story unfolds, the audience witnesses how Nora navigates love, power, and identity in her quest for self-discovery and autonomy.Following a recent run in the Broadway production of Susan Stroman's New York, New York, regional actor Angel Sigala (they/he) makes their Hedgerow debut playing Daniel, a family friend of Nora and her husband Thomas.FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION:https://www.hedgerowtheatre.orgABOUT ANGEL SIGALABorn and raised in Mexico City, Mexico until coming to the United States at age 11, Angel has always had the itch to be a performing artist with his biggest dream to perform on Broadway.Angel always wanted to follow in his father's footsteps (who also shares a love for dance) and began dancing at the age of 6. With training in various dance styles including latin, Mexican folklore, jazz, tap, and ballet, dance has always been one of Angel's first loves. He has performed as a dancer for Grammy and 5-time Latin Grammy winning artist Lila Downs, as well as dancing in the Philadelphia Mexican Independence Day Festival, among various other dance performances. Angel began singing at age 12 in his middle school choir. His love for singing and musicals both blossomed at that age, and Angel continued to perform with theatre camps and school musicals. In 2018, Angel graduated from Temple University's Musical Theatre and Acting programs, and has been professionally performing, choreographing, and teaching since graduation. Angel has worked at various regional theatres including Arden Theatre Company, People's Light, Theatre Exile, and InterAct Theatre Company.FOR MORE ABOUT ANGEL SIGALAhttps://www.angelsigala.com

NLW and Scott Melker count down the five most important stories in crypto this week, including the profound news that the US is actually getting a strategic bitcoin reserve. NLW argues that the way they did the BSR actually solves many of the major concerns with it. Sponsored by: Ledger Ledger, the world leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors The Breakdown podcast. Celebrating 10 years of protecting over 20% of the world's crypto, Ledger ensures the security of your assets. For the best self-custody solution in the space, buy a LEDGER™ device and secure your crypto today. Buy now on Ledger.com. Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast: https://pod.link/1438693620 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/nathanielwhittemorecrypto Subscribe to the newsletter: https://breakdown.beehiiv.com/ Join the discussion: https://discord.gg/VrKRrfKCz8 Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW

Andy Farrell is the brewmaster of Bell's Brewery, overseeing innovation and recipe development at both the Comstock Brewery. Andy has helped bring dozens of brands to life, including Hazy Hearted, Light Hearted, and Oberon Eclipse. He has represented Bell's at several conferences and numerous industry associations.Born and raised in Kalamazoo, Andy first started working at Bell's in 2000, working in brewing, cellar operations, as well as leadership roles, serving as Head Brewer, Brewing Innovation Manager, and his current role as Brewmaster.  Andy leads a great team of brewers who manage specialty brewing, including new product development, barrel aged beers, portfolio optimization, and raw material assessment, as well as research and development brewing trials at both the Comstock, and Kalamazoo breweries. Andy has been influential in building the innovation brewery, which has allowed Bell's to quickly take new ideas to market. 

BuffStampede.com publisher Adam Munsterteiger and football analyst William Gardner discuss some new topics with Colorado football, and start their dive into the BSR pre-spring ball mailbag.

Today I speak with Jen Stark and Jarrid Green, Co-Directors, of the Center for Business and Social Justice. We candidly discuss how DEI and other topics became flashpoints and ideological hostages rather than sustained corporate efforts, and how companies can break this cycle. We explore the questions executives and boards are asking, how companies can respond to activist shareholders and continue to promote fairness and equity while also fulfilling their responsibility to ensure strong financial performance - and why we're “beyond the business case” so we can adapt our narrative. Jen and Jarrid offer valuable advice on how everyone from the C-suite to DEIB and CSR professionals in the trenches can stay motivated and respond. To access the episode transcript, please search for the episode title at www.TheEmpathyEdge.comKey Takeaways:You cannot be neutral anymore. Consumers want to know what their money will support and want to be value aligned.Be authentic with yourself - you need to understand why you are doing what you are doing.Lean into your smaller, individual communities. Mass media and social media information sharing is not enough. "We've left the era of case-making. There are enough data points, surveys, and white papers that if it is was just rational thought governing business decisions, you'd be in a different place." — Jen Stark Episode References: Kerner Report: pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bombshell-political-reportThe Center's Social Justice Guidebook: bsr.org/en/focus/equity-inclusion-and-justiceHow to Survive a Plague by David France: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/209900/how-to-survive-a-plague-by-david-franceSuffs: The Musical: suffsmusical.comFrom Our Partner:SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through their tailored assessments and expert coaching at every level, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.About Jen Stark and Jarrid Green, Co-Directors, Center or Business and Social JusticeJen Stark is a strategy development and implementation expert at complex health and humanitarian organizations with 20+ years of experience. She launched BSR's Center for Business and Social Justice in 2022 alongside Jarrid Green to illuminate a path for companies to shift from performative to transformational actions with a focus on public policy engagement and influence. She is frequently cited in business press on flashpoint topics and is an advisor to Gauge.ai and GoFundMe's Compassion Leadership Network. Jarrid Green co-designs and implements programmatic efforts alongside Jen Stark for the Center for Business and Social Justice, an initiative of BSR that seeks to mobilize companies to take systemic and intersectional approaches to their social impact efforts. Jarrid's role includes developing research, thought leadership, frameworks, and capacity-building opportunities related to corporate social impact strategies. He also provides collaborative oversight and direction for the Center's organizational and administrative functions, and acilitates the execution of the Center's ongoing corporate, civil society stakeholder, and donor activities.Connect with Jen and Jarrid:Business for Social Responsibility: bsr.org/en/collaboration/groups/center-for-business-and-social-justiceJen Stark LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jenstarkJarrid Green LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jarridgreenmba Connect with Maria:Get Maria's books on empathy: Red-Slice.com/booksLearn more about Maria's work: Red-Slice.comHire Maria to speak: Red-Slice.com/Speaker-Maria-RossTake the LinkedIn Learning Course! Leading with EmpathyLinkedIn: Maria RossInstagram: @redslicemariaFacebook: Red SliceThreads: @redslicemariaWe would love to get your thoughts on the show! Please click https://bit.ly/edge-feedback to take this 5-minute survey, thanks!

A ground-breaking ninety-minute new musical, Night Side Songs explores the intimacy of illness, mortality, and the incredible dignity of caregivers through the story of Yasmine Holly, a fictional character informed by interviews with real doctors, hospital staff, and patients, many from right here in Philadelphia. Night Side Songs is a musical convergence which reflects and celebrates Philly's “eds and meds” community with humor, grace, and profound empathy. The production will tour local hospitals, community centers, and places of worship for two weeks before its run at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre. Directed by Artistic Director Taibi Magar. Night Side Songs is supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.Taibi Magar is an Artistic Director of Philadelphia Theatre Company. As a freelance director, her most recent credits are We Live in Cairo (A.R.T. world premiere, upcoming at New York Theatre Workshop), The Half-God of Rainfall (New York Theatre Workshop and A.R.T.), Macbeth in Stride (co-direction with Tyler Dobrowsky), Help (The Shed), and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 (Signature Theatre and A.R.T., Lortel Award Best Revival). Other New York credits include Capsule by Whitney White and Peter Mark Kendall (Under the Radar Festival/The Public Theater, co-directed with Tyler Dobrowsky), Blue Ridge starring Marin Ireland and The Great Leap starring BD Wong (Atlantic Theater Company); Is God Is (Soho Rep, 2018 Obie Award;) Master (The Foundry); and Underground Railroad Game (Ars Nova, Obie Award). Regional: CTG, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, Alley Theatre, The Guthrie Theater, and Seattle Repertory Theatre, among others. International: Hamburg Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne), and Soho Theatre (London). MFA: Brown University.Daniel and Patrick Lazour are brothers and music theater writers. Projects in development include a musical adaptation of Ritesh Batra's film The Lunchbox (Lincoln Center Theater) and their show with communal singing, Night Side Songs (Under the Radar, A.R.T./PTC co-production). They wrote original music for Caroline Lindy's debut feature Your Monster (Sundance 2024) and their movie musical Challenger: An American Dream is being developed with Bruce Cohen Productions and Spark Features. Their original musical We Live in Cairo makes its off-Broadway premiere this Fall at New York Theater Workshop after a world premiere at the American Repertory Theater in 2019, directed by Taibi Magar. Original songs by the Lazours can be heard on their independently released albums: Freres, Flap My Wings (Songs from We Live in Cairo), Beth's Homemade Cowboy Breakfast and Lullabies. They are Jonathan Larson Grant and Richard Rodgers Award recipients, MacDowell and Yaddo Fellows, and New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspects. They have worked with Noor Theatre Company, Ars Nova and PAC NYC, and are proud teaching artists. Patrick holds a B.A. from Boston College and Daniel holds a B.A. from Columbia University. @frereslazourFOR MORE INFORMATION: https://philadelphiatheatrecompany.org/night-side-songs/

THE HALF-GOD OF RAINFALLBY INUA ELLAMSDIRECTED BY LINDSAY SMILINGFebruary 11 – March 2, 2025Nigerian-born British poet and playwright Inua Ellams blends Yoruba and Greek mythologies into an incredible story of a demigod-turned-NBA superstar in The Half-God of Rainfall. The epic poem follows a half-Nigerian mortal, half-Greek God named Demi, who possesses extraordinary powers yet is burdened by the expectations of his lineage. Demi's powers grow as he leaves his West Nigerian village for the bright lights of the NBA, where he emerges as an all-world talent driven by passion, power, and destiny. Under the directorial vision of Wilma Co-Artistic Director Lindsay Smiling, (recently seen on stage in Fat Ham and My Mama and the Full-Scale Invasion) The Half-God of Rainfall features the HotHouse Acting Company and explores the intersection of patriarchy, imperialism, and American basketball.Suli Holum (she/her) received a Helen Hayes nomination for her role in The Wilma's My Mama and the Full Scale Invasion (co-produced with DC's Woolly Mammoth Theatre Co). Co-Founder Pig Iron Theatre Company and Stein | Holum Projects (SHP). Awards: Drama Desk Award, TCG/Fox Resident Actor Fellowship, Barrymore Award, Independence Fellowship, NEFA Touring Grant. Solo performance: Chimera and The Wholehearted (SHP) presented by FringeArts, HERE/Under the Radar, La Jolla Playhouse, Center Theatre Group (LA), Z Space and The Gate (London). In development: The Woman Question, Pew supported commission for Peoples' Light with HotHouse member Melanye Finister. Wilma: Romeo and Juliet, Dance Nation, Minor Character, Cherry Orchard, Twelfth Night. Off-Broadway: Hot and Throbbing (Signature Theater); Regional: Born Yesterday (Arena Stage); International: A Doll's House (FringeArts/Oslo Opera House); TV/Film: Baby Grief, The Fourth Wall, Ghostlight, Law & Order SVU, Mare of Easttown. FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://wilmatheater.org/event/thehalfgodofrainfall/

Camden Rep introduces girls of color between the ages of 14 and 18 to behind-the-scenes careers in theater and film with the company's first Hammer and Nails Conference on Monday, Feb. 3 at Creative Arts High School, located on the campus of Camden High. Bringing together industry professionals and mentors with young, future creatives for a day of inspiration, learning and empowerment, the conference aims to create a career pipeline to the design, technical and production sides of theater and film. The three-pronged event will include a panel discussion featuring industry professionals Toni Barton (production designer for film and TV), Pamela Hobson (tour manager and lighting designer), Kathy A. Perkins (lighting designer and professor emerita of Africa/African Diaspora theater) and Marci Rodgers (award-winning costume designer); a 45-minute hands-on session during which attendees can gain practical experience in key areas of the design and production process; and a Meet-and-Greet Lunch, offering the girls a unique opportunity to connect with the panelists and mentors, gaining inspiration and guidance for their own creative paths. WHEN: Monday, Feb. 3 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. WHERE: Creative Arts High School on the campus of Camden High 1700 Park Boulevard, Camden, NJ 08103 MORE TICKETS AND INFORMATION:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hammer-and-nails-tickets-1138645131239 camdenrep.com (856) 438-8430

The 19th episode in this series focused on “ESG Insights from 2024 and What's Next for 2025,” featuring María Mendiluce, CEO at We Mean Business Coalition, and Aron Cramer, President and CEO at BSR, in conversation with Susan H. Mac Cormac, Co-chair of the ESG + Sustainability and Social Enterprise + Impact Investing practices at MoFo.

In this episode of Lunch with Norm, Norm Farrar welcomes Shane Barker, founder of Trace Fuse, to discuss the art and science of managing and removing negative reviews on Amazon. Discover proven strategies to protect your star ratings and sales, while staying compliant with Amazon's guidelines. Key topics include: - Why negative reviews aren't always bad—and how to use them to improve your product. - The hidden impact of star rating drops on your BSR and PPC costs. - How to identify and handle non-compliant reviews with expert precision. - Shane's top tips for maintaining a 4.3+ rating and avoiding sales decline.   Whether you're a new or seasoned Amazon seller, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you safeguard your reputation, boost conversions, and stay ahead of competitors.

What everyone agreed on: Two cars collided. One, driven by a Hasidic Jew, veered off the road and critically injured two Black children, one of whom ultimately died. A crowd formed. Police arrived.What no one agreed on: Anything else.In the summer of 1991, Crown Heights, NY exploded into three days of violence fed by rumors and competing narratives formed from incomplete facts. In the chaos, some saw anti-Black police bias. Others saw violent anti-Semitism. But playwright Anna Deavere Smith heard the honest voices of a divided national narrative. Join us for this remarkable play that features the real words of more than 20 people, interviewed immediately after the events, speaking honestly, the way we do in private. Let's listen.Run time: 2 hours, plus a 15-minute intermissionContent Warning: Fires In The Mirror catalogs reflections of the Crown Heights Riots, a racially-charged conflict that engulfed the New York neighborhood in 1991. This play contains strong language and references to racism, slavery, lynching, antisemitism, sexual violence, and the Holocaust.Phyllis Johnson (all roles) works in Theater, Film, TV, & Voice Over. Nominated for two NY Innovative Theatre Awards, Phyllis understudied A Naked Girl on the Appian Way/Doug Hughes, Director (Broadway). Recent TV projects include Zero Day (Netflix) starring Robert DeNiro, Equalizer (NBC), Uncoupled (Netflix), Law & Order: Season 22 (NBC), Blue Bloods (CBS), and Pose (FX). Phyllis is a voice actor and has leant her voice to 400+ film/TV episodes including Oscar winners and favorites such as Black Swan, American Gangster, and The Devil Wears Prada. She executive produced the award-winning film I'm Through with White Girls. Phyllis is a graduate of the David Geffen Yale School of Drama where she won the Fox Family Foundation Grant and The Oliver Thorndike Prize. FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://brtstage.org/shows/fires-in-the-mirror/

This conversation explores the reworking of Mae West's play 'The Drag' by a collaborative team of playwrights and directors. They discuss the origins of the play, the process of adapting it for contemporary audiences, and the importance of incorporating diverse voices and experiences in the rehearsal room. The conversation also highlights the role of choreography and movement in the production, the star-studded cast, and the audience's expected experience. The participants reflect on the political implications of the play and the importance of fostering conversations about queer identity and history.About EgoPo's 2024-25 Queer RevolutionsEgoPo's 2024-2025 season celebrates some of the century's most influential Queer plays and theater artists that have had a lasting impact on our culture. EgoPo's first mainstage production is a new version of The Drag by Mae West, directed by Rebecca Wright, devised and developed with AZ Espinoza and Thomas Choinacky. EgoPo's next mainstage production will be Turds in Hell by the Ridiculous Theatrical Company's Charles Ludlam and Bill Vehr, directed by Dane Eissler. The Drag will open on January 31, 2025 with Turds in Hell opening on April 11, 2025. We end the season celebrating the queer nightlife community with Philly is Burning: A Pride Gala. June 8th, enjoy an exquisite chinese banquet by the fabulous Jane Guo, a silent auction and performances from top Philly drag, ballroom and burlesque performers.TakeawaysMae West wrote 'The Drag' in response to negative portrayals of gay people in other plays.The collaborative process involved discussions about contemporary queer experiences.The rehearsal room is a space for diverse voices and feedback.Choreography plays a crucial role in expressing queerness in the production.The production aims to create a party-like atmosphere for the audience.The cast is composed of talented queer and trans individuals.The play engages with both historical and contemporary queer narratives.The production seeks to inspire empathy and understanding in the audience.The design elements will evoke a vibrant and colorful aesthetic.The conversation around the play includes reflections on politics and identity. Chapters00:00 The Origins of Mae West's 'The Drag'06:02 The Ensemble Experience: Voices in the Room11:57 Visual and Thematic Elements of the Production18:03 Audience Expectations and Experience24:01 Future Conversations and Audience TakeawaysFOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://egopo.org/thedrag

Amazon changes the game for retail advertising. TikTok Shop is opening in a surprisingly new country. eBay makes a move to join a popular social media network. These buzzing stories and more on this episode! ► 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 We're back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10's VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10's newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level. Amazon aims to expand advertising business by letting retailers use its ad tools on their stores https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/09/amazon-to-expand-ad-unit-by-letting-retailers-use-ad-tools-on-stores.html Title Rule Clarifications https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/3c9f0b3c-4594-4efc-a05f-0f8d371fa466 How TikTok Shop is changing the way brands reach customers https://www.retaildive.com/news/how-tiktok-shop-is-changing-the-way-brands-reach-customers/736726/ EBay shares soar after Meta allows listings on Facebook Marketplace in U.S., Europe https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/08/ebay-shares-soar-as-meta-allows-listings-on-facebook-marketplace.html Conversion Path Reporting (beta) https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/ad-touchpoints-drive-sales-with-conversion-path-reporting/ TikTok expands e-commerce operation into Mexico amid potential US ban https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tiktok-expands-e-commerce-operation-093000468.html Switching gears, we explore the new features in Helium 10's Magnet and Cerebro keyword translations, designed to aid sellers operating in multilingual marketplaces. The training tip of the week highlights Helium 10's exclusive Amazon Recommended Rank feature in Cerebro, which evaluates how relevant Amazon considers specific keywords for your product, scoring them. This tool helps sellers identify potential ranking, indexing, or advertising issues, especially for new products, by analyzing the top 20 keywords and ensuring Amazon correctly understands your product's relevance. Listen in for these crucial updates and insights that will help you stay ahead in the competitive world of e-commerce. In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley covers: 00:54 - Amazon Retail Ad Service 02:27 - Title Rule Clarifications 06:46 - TikTok Shop Stats 08:50 - eBay x Facebook 10:02 - Amazon Conversion Path Reporting 11:07 - TikTok Shop Mexico 12:24 - Helium 10 New Feature Alerts 14:19 - Training Tip: Amazon Recommended Rank Transcript Bradley Sutton: Amazon changes the game for retail advertising. TikTok shop is opening in a surprising new country. eBay makes a move to join with a popular social media network. These stories and more on this week's Weekly Buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 Weekly Buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shop and e-commerce world. We give you training tips of the week and let you know what new features that Helium 10 has. That will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing All For serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let's see what's buzzing All. Right, this is the first buzz of the new year, or second buzz of the new year, I should say. Let's go ahead and hop into it.   Bradley Sutton: The first thing we're going to talk about is an announcement they made at CES this week. The one who's reporting on it is actually CNBC, and the article is entitled Amazon aims to expand advertising business by letting retailers use its ad tools on their store. So some of the TLDR here is that Amazon is letting other retailers now use its own homegrown advertising tools to run sponsored ads on their own website. The service is designed to make it easier for other retailers to run targeted ad campaigns on their online stores. All right, so, as we know, ads has been big, you know, for Amazon over the years. We know that as Amazon sellers. But this is this is different. All right, so basically, like, let's say, I've got my own retail website, I can now use Amazon's advertising console to use the ad tech or the technology the advertising technology that Amazon has to run ads on my product pages on my website, on search, and this is going to help Amazon. You know like build it's like and how it can anticipate buyer behavior and things, but it's going to help. You know retailers as well, because you know, obviously, amazon's advertising system is very robust and you don't even have I believe you don't even have to be selling on amazon to take advantage of this service. So, uh, this is going to be interesting to watch as it rolls out and how this this changes the game for retailers. Perhaps you know, like, how many are going to adopt the amazon advertising um, as opposed to whatever they were using before. How many might start advertising more because of what's going on be definitely worth taking a look at.   Bradley Sutton: Now, last week we talked about the new title requirements and there was an Ask Me Anything in the Amazon forums a few days ago that kind of clarified some things and even some things that I was confused about. I'm not sure if I said it wrong last week, but like I probably read it right, but for sure I understood it wrong last week. But like I probably read it right, but for sure I understood it wrong. All right. The way I understood the title was that you can't duplicate words in the title. Did some of you guys get that too out of what their announcement was? But actually the fine print says you can't have more than two. All right, it's not, it's not. You can't have two or more, it's more than two. Little bit of dyslexia there, um. So basically that means if I have the word in the title you know, coffin shelf uh, for home decor, something, something coffin, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's okay. Last week, when I read this, I thought that wasn't okay, um, because I just must've switched the words when I was looking at it.   Bradley Sutton: But that's the first big thing that came from this AMA, but let's go ahead and open up some more of the questions and answers. There's some things that you guys might have had that I think are notable. Here is one question that I know a lot of us had. It said are the plural and singular versions of a word considered the same and count towards the maximum? And this seller said for example, if I had cake pan, loaf pan and muffin pans, is the word pans counted as the same as pan? And then that would make it three times, meaning that it's above two, meaning that that's against Amazon terms of service. And Jim from Amazon replied plural of the same word would be considered redundant. In the example you provided, pan and pans imply the same and thus it would be considered duplicate. All right, so there's the. I know people are asking about that. How are plurals considered? That's the answer, right there.   Bradley Sutton: Another question was from what impact will it have if we don't update? Changing the title like this could significantly affect our search traffic. And Jim says if the title is not updated, amazon will modify the product title to comply with a new policy, while retaining all relevant information. All right. So there you have it? It like you're not going to get your listing suppressed per se, but amazon's going to go in and change your title. Sounds like Another question by PTC Tim Do words that are part of the brand name count towards the count of reusing a word?   Bradley Sutton: For example, if the brand name is Muffin King, could they have a title such as Muffin King Beginner's Kit includes chocolate chip and banana nut muffin mixes and a 12 muffin pan. All right, so muffin is there three times in singular version. So you might think, oh, that can't be allowed. But Jim from Amazon says no, this will not be considered a policy violation, because the word or phrase is considered duplicate only when there are three or more instances in the same context. But muffin, the first instance is a brand name and the other two describe the product. So if you have a word that's part of your brand like maybe my brand was Manny's Coffin Shelves that first coffin doesn't count as the use of the word coffin in the title. That makes sense.   Bradley Sutton: Another person asked a question and says you know, there were some punctuation marks that were listed, like dollar sign, question mark, underscore, et cetera, and it says are these the only special characters allowed? What about dash colon, open parentheses, close parentheses, et cetera, and Jameson actually answered. He said hyphen, colon and regular brackets are allowed as they often have functional value. Uh, there actually were some other uh characters not allowed that Amazon didn't announce. And these are the tilde, you know, like the little ñ that goes over the N in Spanish when you say baño right. The greater than and less than symbols, those are not allowed. The semicolon is not allowed and the I don't know how you describe it, but it looks like a top of a house, the roof of a house. That symbol is not allowed. There were more different kind of like specifications and questions that people had that you might want to look at. So make sure to check the link in the comments to see some of the more the other clarifications on this new title policy.   Bradley Sutton: Next article we have here comes from Retail Dive and it's entitled how TikTok Shop is Changing the Way Brands Reach Customers. All right, so there's I brought this up because there's a lot of just interesting kind of like factoids here, and one of them it says 70% of TikTok users say they discover new brands and products on the platform 70%, that's crazy and 83% report TikTok playing a role in users' purchase decisions. I guarantee you we're not seeing that kind of stuff on Temu, right? The company also reports that three in four users are likely to buy something while using TikTok. Think about that, guys. How many users of TikTok are there? And three in four are likely to buy something. You might think, well, that's not something that you know. All marketplaces everybody should be buying something. But remember, TikTok is not a marketplace, TikTok is a social media. If you think three out of four people on Instagram are buying something, three out of four people on YouTube are buying something, it's like I don't know what the number is. It's probably like less than one in 10, one in 20. So this is like kind of an astronomical number.   Bradley Sutton: Now, why is TikTok so powerful? One reason is here. It says nearly three in five Gen Z consumers say they trust recommendations by local or micro influencers. Per a survey, over a quarter of US consumers who responded to the survey reported buying a gift directly based on an influencer's recommendations. That's kind of crazy and that's what drives, you know, TikTok shop sales is influencers and micro influencers. So, guys, if you're not selling on TikTok shop, you know, get out and do it. We have some, uh, some training on how to get started. We're going to have some more training. We're going to have, like, different tools that, uh, you guys might ask for that that would help you sell on TikTok shop. But, um, I was trying to. I'm starting to ramp up. I launched a couple more products on TikTok shop last night. I'm going to keep launching some products and let you guys know what I find, but I really think that TikTok shop is going to be one of the major marketplaces moving forward.   Bradley Sutton: Speaking of different marketplaces, let's switch gear and talk about a marketplace that I barely ever talk about but I actually personally sell on. That's eBay. All right, so this is articles from CNBC. It says eBay shares soar after. Meta allows listings on Facebook marketplace in US and Europe. All right. So in Germany, France and the US. What's going to happen is eBay listings are now going to be able to show up in Facebook marketplace. All right. So like that's going to give eBay listings a lot of visibility. So let's say I'm browsing on Facebook and I go to the Marketplace or maybe, who knows, maybe there'll be some way to put ads like in my Facebook feed. I'm going to be able to click on that product and then purchase it by signing in on eBay, I believe right there on the Facebook app still. So imagine being on Facebook, going to the Helium 10 members Facebook group, because you're getting all the good information there, and then you see an ad or something for an eBay product and while still on Facebook, you go ahead and purchase. I mean, if that's the way it's going to work, that's going to be, I think that might be a little bit successful for eBay. I'm definitely going to look into it for my eBay listings that I have. How many of you guys sell on eBay out there? Let me know in the comments below.   Bradley Sutton: Going back to the Amazon marketplace, last week, in case you missed it, there was a new conversion path reporting, a beta program that Amazon has. It kind of like reminds me of how AMC is set up, but now you're going to be able to see the ad touch points on a customer's 30-day path to conversion, starting with the purchases. All right, so this is available in sponsored ads and DSP. Make sure to check the link in the article below for more links on where you can find it, but like you'll be able to see oh, they saw the streaming TV, then they went to a sponsored display ad and then they went to a sponsored video ad. They saw a sponsored product ad. Now, this is good information, but there's definitely some things missing. Like you can't see the ACOS, like all right, great, I see that this kind of ad is what drove my sale, but my ACOS on that exact ad was like 400%. It's not exactly viable, right. So I mean, it's not perfect, but this is great, you know, step in the right direction as far as visibility goes with your advertising.   Bradley Sutton: Going back to TikTok, now guess what? TikTok is opening up a new marketplace and it's right here in North America. It is opening to Mexico. Per Yahoo Finance says TikTok expands e-commerce operation into Mexico and it says that they've already started inviting merchants to open stores on the platform ahead of the expected startup transactions in February. Now, who can sign up for Amazon or TikTok shop Mexico? Merchants with a locally registered entity are eligible to sign up. Now, that's interesting, because what's the requirement for USA? As we know, you could have a local entity being a US corporation, but if you're a foreigner with no US employees and nobody with a social security number, you can't sign up. But if this is to be taken at face value, you maybe can be a foreigner, but as long as you have a Mexican entity or business, it looks like you might be able to sign up on the platform and the first 90 days of activity for TikTok shop Mexico zero commission, zero commission fee in Mexico, or have a Mexican entity. Make sure to go ahead and consider starting up on the platform.   Bradley Sutton: All right, let's go into our new feature alerts now. This one is going to be for, I believe, all plans, Platinum and Diamond. It's been for elite for a while because it was actually elite members who first asked for this, but this is going to be in Magnet and Cerebro, um, at the start. It might be in other tools, but what sellers were looking for was a way to translate keywords. All right, like this could be, for, let's say, you're in the US marketplace and you see a whole bunch of Spanish keywords and you're just curious what it means. Well, what people were doing is that they would copy the keywords from Helium 10 and then put it to Google Translate or something like that.   Bradley Sutton: Or let's say you're doing keyword research in a marketplace that is not your native language, like maybe you're trying to make a listing for Amazon Japan. Of course, you can use Helium 10 Listing Builder to make a listing in Japanese, but you want to make sure you're feeding it the right keywords and you don't know what the keywords mean in Japanese. Well, this is what you can do. If you go into Listing Builder or into Cerebro, there will be a translate button right here, all right. So if you got the results in Magnet or Cerebro, just hit that and then you can go from, like English to Spanish, to German, to Chinese, et cetera, and you're going to have an option Like I'm going to pretend that maybe I'm somebody from China and I'm not. I don't speak English that well. Well, I'm going to go ahead and translate these English results into Chinese by default. It's actually going to show up right underneath the actual English keyword or whatever keyword or language you're looking at, but I can also change it where I can have it in a separate column, all right. So here now, all of a sudden, side by side, I've got the English keyword and the Chinese translation side by side. So this definitely helps English speaking people who are doing research in other languages or are curious what kind of meaning some of the keywords that are coming up in your own marketplace that are in different language, or if you speak a different language and you need just some quick translations, this is going to help. All right.   Bradley Sutton: Now let's talk about the training tip of the week, and this is actually. I'm still going to stay right here in Cerebro, actually, and I want to show you guys something again. Only Helium 10 has this, and what it is the Amazon recommended rank. So actually here in Cerebro, I've got my coffin shelf here Now. This is especially helpful if you ever start getting ranking issues like you start losing your rank, or if you maybe like lose indexing somehow, or maybe there's some keywords that you know you're relevant for in your index for, but you just can't get PPC impressions. This is especially helpful when you are first launching a product. As a matter of fact, you know, like this is what I've been teaching for the last two years, where if you launch a product, I say that you almost should always do a test listing first that you're not really going to sell, but just to check this metric and this is Amazon relevancy.   Bradley Sutton: Everybody always uses the term relevant and we can kind of insinuate hey, what is relevant for a product due to the keywords that are ranking for it. But until Helium 10 had this, you never knew what is really relevant to Amazon. What does Amazon think the product is? This Helium 10 is the only tool that's tying directly to Amazon to give you how relevant Amazon thinks a keyword is for your product and it's called Amazon recommended rank. It's listed from like a score of one to 900. The number one means it's the most relevant according to Amazon, et cetera.   Bradley Sutton: Now is the number one and number two and number three keywords always the top keywords for your product? No, but looking at the top 20, I always sort it in helium 10. And I look at the top 20 ones and it will tell me is Amazon confused about my product, especially if it's a brand new product, right? So let me just show you, for example, this is my coffin shelf here and if I go to this column of Amazon recommended rank and I hit it, it's going to sort it by the top ones and like look at this number one keyword that Amazon says I'm relevant for coffin shelf wall Manny's mysterious oddities coffin shelf coffin shelf small. So just by looking at these top you know 10 keywords, top 20 or so. Um, I can tell that. Hey, amazon pretty much knows what my product is. Now, something concerning is the actual keyword. Coffin shelf is the only the 28th keyword, so you know what that tells me. I might have some issues with advertising on my product. I might have to look at what's going on, but at the very least Amazon isn't very confused about my product.   Bradley Sutton: Now let me give you a contrast here. I went to the search results of coffin shelf and obviously my product is on page one. But here I scrolled all the way down to page four and then I saw just some random coffin shelf. Where did it? Here's a coffin shelf very similar to mine Pachyon floating shelves, coffin shape, shelf, wall mouth. This is a terrible title, but you see, their BSR is like 7 million. They are not selling any units at all of this, and they are right, even though this is one of the few coffin shelves. I mean, page two and three and four don't even have that many coffin shelves, because there's not even seven pages worth of coffin shelves.   Bradley Sutton: So you might be wondering why in the world is this product ranking so low? Well, outside of listing optimization, one of the reasons is the relevancy. Take a look when I run this product in Cerebro and I sort it by Amazon recommended rank. Let's go to that column right here. Look, do you remember what my mind was? Let's just look back here. Remember the top ones coffin wall shelf. Coffin shelf small spooky hanging coffin shelf Halloween decor indoor home. Look at the top keywords of what Amazon thinks is relevant for this poor. Selling coffin shelf. Floating shelf wall. Floating shelf. Selling coffin shelf. Floating shelf wall. Floating shelf. Wall shelves, room wall. Do you notice something? These are just generic keywords. So, for whatever reason, they must not have their listing optimized. Or maybe there's a category issue. But Amazon is not even picking up the word coffin in the top keywords that it is saying it's relevant for. So this product is probably never going to rank very well for coffin shelf. Nor are they going to be able to advertise if they wanted to.   Bradley Sutton: You can see right here with Helium 10, they're not advertising. But this just kind of like illustrates what can happen if you, if Amazon, gets confused about your product, you're going to have some issues. So make sure to check that out. All levels of Helium 10 can access that platinum diamond and above. Go into Cerebro. Run it on your own product, especially your brand new products. Or if you ever have trouble ranking or indexing and check sorted by the Amazon recommended rank, take a look at those top 20 keywords and see hey, does Amazon kind of like have a good idea about what your product is, or is it confused? And then you can take action from there. All right, guys, that's it for this week's Weekly Buzz. Hope you enjoyed these articles and also these new features and training tips. We'll see you next week to see what's buzzing.  

In this episode, our expert guest answers your Amazon PPC questions. Learn how a seller scaled from $200K to $4M during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Get actionable tips to optimize holiday sales and achieve remarkable growth!   In this episode, our expert guest answers your Amazon PPC questions. Learn how a seller scaled from $200K to $4M during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Get actionable tips to optimize holiday sales and achieve remarkable growth! ► 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 What if you could transform your holiday sales from hundreds of thousands to millions? Destaney Wishon of BTR Media, our expert guest, reveals the art of crafting your own demand and skyrocketing sales with strategic off-platform investments, such as TV and video ads. We dissect the tactics that took one brand from $200,000 to a whopping $4 million, focusing on differentiating branded and non-branded sponsored product campaigns, and structuring these campaigns based on search intent to maximize their impact. We also break down Amazon advertising strategies for those looking to boost performance and profitability. Discover how to make the most of tools like the Search Query Performance report and Amazon Marketing Cloud for comprehensive insights into conversion rates. Learn to balance profitability with traffic through dual campaigns, explore the potential of DSP for bigger budgets, and navigate the nuances of keyword targeting. With Destiny's insights, you'll be equipped to optimize your strategies using metrics like TACoS and tools like Helium 10 Adtomic for periodic assessments. As we explore the intricacies of Amazon PPC campaign optimization, we cover everything from keyword volumes to match types. Learn how to effectively manage budgets with keyword volume, and understand the importance of automatic and manual campaigns, especially for new product launches. We also touch on the importance of influencer collaborations and product targeting to improve conversion rates in high window-shopping categories. Join us as we conclude with a special Q&A, where Destiny continues to share her expertise and engage with our community. In episode 625 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Destaney discuss: 00:00 - Strategies for Amazon Holiday Sales Success 00:35 - Welcome to TACoS Tuesday 06:17 - Optimizing for New Product Launch Strategies 10:26 - Optimizing Amazon PPC Campaigns for Higher Sales 16:56 - Amazon PPC Campaign Optimization Strategies 17:57 - Optimizing Keyword Match Types in Campaigns 21:14 - Influencers and Organic Sales on Amazon 27:02 - More Q&A and Follow-Up Questions Transcript   Carrie Miller: In this week's episode of the Serious Sellers podcast, we have expert Destaney Wishon with us and she's answering all of your questions, and we're going to be talking a little bit about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and how one of her clients actually went from $200,000 to $4 million this holiday season. This and so much more on today's episode of the Serious Sellers podcast.  Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think, think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. Well, that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and this episode is our monthly live TACoS Tuesday show, where we talk about anything and everything Amazon and Walmart PPC and advertising related with different guests, and today's host is going to be Carrie Miller. So, Carrie, take it away.  Carrie Miller: Hello everyone, Welcome to TACoS Tuesday. We have our expert guest here, Destaney Wishon. Thanks so much for joining us, Destaney.  Destaney: Happy to be here. Very excited. I mean the chaos of the holidays Black Friday, Cyber Monday, what better time to get all your questions in?  Carrie Miller: Yeah, exactly.  Destaney: On our end, almost across the board, we saw Amazon's extending this holiday period, you know, taking some pressure off of their shipping for two days. So for the first time ever. You know, if we're just comparing Black Friday to Black Friday, year over year, this Black Friday was a little bit lower, but the overall holiday period was up. I don't know if consumer sentiment around shopping is higher, but sales were almost incredible and I would say our ROAS was pretty in line. We had one brand go from $200,000 to $4 million in sales month over month. It's obviously a giftable item, but it was pretty crazy to see that. So it's been really strong now. Carrie Miller: Oh, that's amazing.   Destaney: Didn't run deals whatsoever. You did nothing for lead-in CPCs are up and your sales weren't that much stronger. But for the brands who leaned in, they did fantastic.  Carrie Miller:  That's amazing, was there a specific strategy you think that they changed, because that's a pretty substantial jump.  Destaney:   They did a fantastic job. And this is kind of the new topic I've been coining in my training is when you list on Amazon, you're just capturing the demand. Amazon's doing all the work. They're driving the people that are searching for your product. You're just, you know, you got a little bucket and you're capturing it.  Carrie Miller: Yeah Destaney: What they did incredible was they created their own demand, so they went off platform, they invested in TV and video and they educated their customer based on why they need to buy their product. So when Black Friday, Cyber Monday came along and they typed in their search term, they stood out in the page because the customers were already familiar with their products.  Carrie Miller: Wow, that's, that's pretty incredible. Yeah.  Destaney:   Yeah, it was insane to watch.  Carrie Miller:  I was. I've been curious about the tv ads and how. You know how those are going for people, so that's sounds like they. You can do a really good job with them, depending on- Destaney: 100%. We're seeing a lot of success. It's also just like rewiring your brain. I think a lot of brands are spoiled because sponsor products are so successful. But I'm like, of course they're successful, a customer's already planning on buying you. You didn't do any work, you just fit on a keyword. Like Amazon did the work of bringing people on the platform. Carrie Miller: Very true, so would you like to get on and start answering some of the questions from the audience?  Destaney:    Let's do it. I mean, typically these run over, so we might as well start strong.  Carrie Miller: Well, yeah, okay, this is from Spencer, and he says What is considered best practice for branded sponsored product campaigns. Do you make a separate campaign for each SKU or do you make one campaign and put all the SKUs in it?  Destaney:     It kind of depends. Your branded searches aren't always the same, right, if someone's typing in Coca-Cola Diet Coke versus regular Coca-Cola, you can change your strategy. So we segment based off search intents. We almost always separate branded versus non-branded, like that is table stakes. You have to separate branded versus non-branded campaigns. But when it comes to lining up your SKUs, we depend on search intent. But also from a reporting perspective, it's sometimes nice to break out into single SKU campaigns because then you can look at your TACoS per brand and you can say you know SKU A is doing really well. Maybe I should increase my branded search investment on this SKU and increase my budget on that campaign while pulling back on my branded investment for SKU number two. Breaking out into single SKU campaigns as a whole just makes it really easy to control your budget distribution if you have good naming and good organized campaign structure.   Carrie Miller:   Daniel says afternoon. Is there a I think it's morning for me, but afternoon probably for you guys Is there a golden ratio of CTR to CVR for measuring effectiveness of ad campaigns? Destaney:   I'm not going to give a golden ratio per se because it's really dependent on category. Click-through rate's also really difficult because it depends on things like pricing and reviews. So your advertising is going to be influenced by that. Same for your conversion rate, but your conversion rate. You can figure out what your category is converting on really easy using tools in Adtomic or using the search query performance report and clearly see using brand metrics. Hey, my category is converting at 20%. You should be converting better than category average, like that's kind of the standard. If you're going to increase your ad investment, you need to be converting better than category average. That being said, again, it's also dependent on search intent. Probiotics is going to be a lot more expensive than probiotics for kids back to school, right? So you can't just blanket look at your conversion rate across the board. You have to understand intent.  Carrie Miller:   Awesome. Okay, let's go to Joshua. He says if you came to Helium 10 from an agency and had hundreds of their old campaigns in your account, what is the best practice? Should I delete all of the non-performing campaigns and start over? I am not sure how to proceed. Destaney:   Great question. No matter what software you're transitioning to or an agency you're transitioning to, we don't ever recommend just pausing everything and hard stop. It's really bad for relevancy and it's difficult for the transition. What we do recommend doing is pulling your search term report for the last 60 days. Pull out all of your keywords that are successful and build them out into the new structure that you want to move forward with using the new software and then slowly rolling those out at the same time. As your new campaigns pick up traction, you can slowly pause out your old campaigns that are maybe a bad structure or maybe they're a weird single keyword structure that you don't want to move forward with. You slowly transition them over. First thing pull all your good keywords. Second thing pause all your bad keywords. Third thing slowly launch and transition your budgets over from old to new.  Carrie Miller:     What are the best practices for 2025 for new product launches. What's changed? I mean, I don't know if that's in regards to that's what I would put it, as I think.    Destaney:     I mean I don't know if that's in regards to me, but I would put it as yeah, I think quite a few things have changed. In terms of product launches, I would say driving external traffic is still doing really, really well and something that I think needs to be leaned into. A lot of brands cannot afford the CPCs in the category on a product that has zero reviews, so any way you can use external traffic that's maybe a bit cheaper to get your reviews up before leaning really heavy into Amazon advertising is a little bit more profitable. I would also say we're seeing this transition to creative matters so much more. So, making sure your click rate and conversion rate is good with your main image, but on the Amazon advertising side, really focusing on your sponsor brands, your sponsor brands video, your headline search ads, anything that makes you stand out on the Amazon advertising side. Really focusing on your sponsor brands, your sponsor brands video, your headline search ads, anything that makes you stand out on the page, because when you're launching, you don't stand out on the review perspective, so find unique ways to stand out within the search results.  Carrie Miller:   My product launched in October and I'm struggling to get sales. I've been using auto and manual campaigns, spending between 30 to 50 per day on a $20 product. I've launched the product in another territory where it's selling well. So feel confident with the product and listing. Any suggestions? Destaney:   Yeah, so I would say the first thing is to look at the keywords and really make sure they're the right keywords. Type them into Amazon. Do you see similar products? Once you see similar products, are those products priced at the same as you or are they cheaper than you? Do those products have a lot more reviews than you? Figure out the competitive advantage that they may have over you and improve your listing in that way. On the advertising side, it's really as simple as again looking at the keywords and trying to expand the keywords in which you have that competitive advantage and then optimizing your bids to make sure you can be profitable. The biggest thing, though, I would say, is understanding that competitive advantage. When you type in your main keyword, what do your competitors look like? What's the price? What's the reviews? Is the main image different?  Carrie Miller:   And the next question is from an Elite member of ours. Hi, Andrew. For SB product collection campaigns we find basically all our sales come from top of search. Is that common? Also, is it worth spending time bidding on other placements for those campaigns? Great question.  Destaney:    In general, I would say it is common. If you think about how the search results are set up on desktop and mobile, what is the biggest ad on the page? It's the sponsored brand top of search ad. The headline ads, the sponsored brand ads on the product detail page are typically video. It's not typically product collection, it's sometimes store spotlight and video. The only other sponsored brands that show up on page one are way down in the middle of search, sometimes the bottom of search. So this is very typical, not surprising. You can bid on the other placements. It's not going to drive a huge difference. Just know that the majority of your traffic and visibility comes from top of search because that's where all of the customers are clicking and viewing before they scroll down the page. Carrie Miller:   All right. The next one is from Keith. He says my BSR is improving and my PPC is converting. However, the organic ranking for my main keywords are not improving much. Any advice on how to improve rank?  Destaney:    Yeah, the two biggest factors that you can then break down is sales velocity or conversion rate. So again, figure out your category conversion rate. That's super easy with brand metrics, insights and planning or Helium 10 Adtomic, it's Amazon given data, it's first party data. So look at brand metrics. If you're converting lower than your category, you're going to need to drive a lot more traffic to your category, so you're probably going to need to spend more in order to improve that organic rank. On the flip side, let's say that you are spending more than the category or driving more in the category. Then it comes down to again like improving that conversion rate. It's traffic or conversion. Those are the two levers you really need to consider. So again, traffic the easiest thing to do is spend more it's not always the best answer or improve your listing and convert better, so that way you can easily spend a little bit more.   Bradley Sutton: Did you know that just because you have a keyword in your listing, that does not mean that you are automatically guaranteed to be searchable or, as we say, indexed for that keyword? Well, how can you know what you are indexed for and not? You can actually use Helium 10's index checker to check any keywords you want. For more information, go to h10.me/indexchecker. More information go to h10.me/indexchecker. Carrie Miller:    Hello, 80 to 90% of my PPC campaigns coming from SBV. I see the CPC and SBV a lot lower than sponsored. I am thinking to double down on I'm assuming that's sponsored brand video and let the SP sponsored on the second plan. Would that be a good way of going?  Destaney: This is. I'm not going to say this is wrong, but this is really really unusual to see because on page one there's one sponsor brand video ad, so it's very limited in terms of advertising inventory. On page one there's 15 to 20 different sponsor product camp placements, so almost actually across the board. As an agency with over $100 million in spend, 70% of sales almost always come from sponsored products because they have more real estate and inventory on the page than anything else. Very unusual. Also, sponsored brands view can get competitive really fast because since there's only one placement on page one, when everyone starts increasing bids for that placement, you can kind of lose control as CPCs go up and you're going to lose a lot of your sales velocity. So I love sponsored brands video. It's a great format, but it's very, very limited in terms of advertising inventory and you should be investing more in sponsored products. That is, across the board, the highest sales driving tactic because there's so many more sponsored product placements than anything else.  Carrie Miller: Keith says or asks what is the best way to check my conversion rate versus competitors on keywords?  Destaney: I would say your search query performance report is probably like one of the easiest ways as a whole to look at search query performance. It's not specifically related to advertising. When you're specifically looking at advertising, you can't compare directly on the keyword level. You can look at it at the subcategory level but you cannot see directly on the keyword level. You have to use SQP and then overlay it with the rest of your data.   Carrie Miller: How can you measure the effects of having a loss leader to help bring in additional traffic into your brand or variation listing?  Destaney:    Great question. I would probably dive into AMC for a lot of that. AMC is going to help you understand if someone clicks on one product, do they then end up buying another product? That's the easiest way. Without that, you could probably use depending on where you're advertising the sponsor product to advertise product report to see if people are clicking on one and then buying another. That's a really easy way to justify. It's just limited to only your advertising data where, if you use the appropriate AMC report, then you're gonna be able to see all of your organic data and that's gonna help you understand much better.    Carrie Miller: My sponsor campaigns are doing well when I have a lower bid. Whenever I raise my bid to try and get more juice out of them, my budget gets blown and they become unprofitable. Do you know what I should do in order to make this work for me?  Destaney:    There's really no perfect answer here. I mean is the balance that is Amazon advertising. One of the things that we do to help this is we'll create two campaigns with the same keywords. One of our campaign will be lower bid, focused on profitability, and the other campaign will be higher bid, with focus on sales, and we'll shift our budget back and forth. You know, 70% of our budget is going to go to profitability, 30% of our budget is going to go to the high traffic. That way we're not having to constantly fluctuate our bids. This kind of allows us to move the budget from both to maximize profitability and then, when we're done with that, it's okay, we can shift more and turn on higher sales. It's just easier budget distribution. The other things that you could look at is your bid management strategy. Maybe there's a better middle ground. Are you optimizing for placements? Are you moving broad phrase and exact? Sometimes your long tail keywords are going to be a little bit cheaper from a CPC perspective, so you're going to be able to drive more profitability from your long tail keywords. All of those additional measures are going to be hugely beneficial for the strategy.  Carrie Miller:   The next question is what's your take on DSP and data from AMC?   Destaney: I'm going to start with data from AMC, because it is now available for everyone. Brian Lee asked later on in the chat who can use AMC. Helium 10 has actually rolled it out, so you first need to request your instance being set up, but you do not need to run DSP ads to get access to AMC now. AMC is basically analytics and audience platform that just gives you a ton of insights into your Amazon advertising data. If you're not incredibly familiar with Amazon ads, it's gonna be probably a shiny object syndrome and I don't recommend you dive into it just yet. But if you understand sponsor brands and sponsor display. The second part of this question is what's my take on DSP? DSP has a bad reputation in the space because agencies and or Amazon managed services haven't been running it well, but DSP as a tool is incredible. It's one of the most powerful Amazon advertising tools out there, I would say, if used appropriately. You do need to be spending at least $10,000 on DSP a month for it to make sense, but DSP is incredibly, incredibly powerful for brands that are ready for it.  Carrie Miller: What do you recommend for Ad campaigns when you have separate listing variations. Do you recommend to merge or manage in each campaign??   Destaney: Again, it depends on search intent. In my opinion, if I have a black t-shirt versus a red t-shirt, and that's how they're variated, I like to separate out my campaigns so I can create search terms based off the variations. So I can create search terms based off the variations. If my only variation difference is size. No, not size price $20 variation, $10 variation I may not segment them. I would typically put my lowest price first because that's going to have the highest click-through rate and then lead customers to my other variations. If it's flavor variations, weight variation, something with different search intent, I recommend segmenting campaigns so you can curate your keyword experience.   Carrie Miller: What is a good way to determine keywords that you are ranking for, then comparing them to PPC campaigns to determine which keywords you may not be advertising for? Any quick way to do this.  Destaney:   Quick way is the fun part of this question. So the biggest thing I would say is to 100% 80-28. We kind of look at if we're ranked in the top four. We're going to pull back on sponsored product spend and move budgets to our sponsored brand, so we're winning the top of search and showcasing our brand. That's our overall strategy. You can use TACoS correlation to do this. If you have a TACoS objective, you'll see that when you spend on a sponsored product ad that you're ranked for, your TACoS is going to increase because you're cannibalizing your organic sales. So you can almost use TACoS as a lever to push and pull. It's not a perfect solution but it will help. The second thing to do would be to dive into you know, using Helium 10 and on a monthly, quarterly basis, pulling probably those terms, that on average you're above number four, number eight on, and then we create segmented campaigns for ranking that we can turn on and off as needed. So I don't want to turn off that keyword as a whole, I just want to lower the bids. So I'll shift my budget for my ranking campaigns to my profitability campaign. So I'm still running, but I'm not showing up in the top four sponsored ad placements.   Carrie Miller:    Jason says what is an optimal amount of keywords per exact campaign. I started with 15 or so, but as keyword harvesting creates new targets, the list has grown quite a bit. Break them into new campaigns question.  Destaney: Absolutely I personally don't love harvesting new keywords into an old campaign because it's going  change the performance of your old campaign right. If you have 10 new keywords that aren't proven, then your overall campaign may stop, start performing worse. So 15 is a great number. This is one of those fun like depending on what influencer you follow in the space, you're going to get a different number. It's really dependent on your budget. You know we've had brands that are spending a million dollars a month and they're able to have 100 keywords in a campaign because their campaigns had a thousand dollar budget. So we could afford from a budget perspective to drive traffic to every keyword. If you don't have that budget and you're only at $100 a month or a day, then you're going to need a lot smaller group of keywords to make sure you're collecting data on those keywords. So start with 15, maybe go to 20 to 30, depending on how high you want your budget to be, but then always break them out to new campaigns past that point.  Carrie Miller:   Are exact keywords generally expensive than broad? What, according to you, is the right mix of keywords, match type within a campaign and how many can should be added? Destaney: This is a fun one. There's a ton of misconceptions around this. In my opinion it just depends, because it's an auction model. If someone is bidding more on their exact match term than they are their phrase match, then maybe your exact match keywords are more expensive because your competitor is bidding more. We test all three match types across the board. They all three run in a very similar ACoS or ROAS because we control the bids to what's converting best at that certain point in time. I think for us, phrase match is one of our highest selling match types right now because broad sometimes goes too broad and doesn't convert as well. Exact match typically converts the best but can be the most expensive. If we're in a category where our competitors are bidding a lot more on exact, highly recommend running all three. Later on, someone asks can you put them all in the same campaign? You can. It's not necessarily going to hurt. We break ours up most of the time. There's instances where we won't, just so I can control again where my budget's going. But we continue to test every single keyword and every single match type and then just negate and or pause or lower bids depending on the performance in the CBCs.  Carrie Miller: I recently launched, about two weeks ago. I'm running an automatic and manual campaign. Is there any other campaigns I should be running? Destaney: No, I'd say that's fine unless you have a really high budget and look at maybe video or sponsored brands. Those are going to do really well for you. It's unique advertising inventory but considering it's only been two weeks, I think an auto and a manual is good. An auto is going to be used for keyword research and data collection for you. Use your manual campaign to really control where your traffic's going and then just continue adding those automatic keywords you're finding into your manual campaign.  Carrie Miller: Mike says, I'm in a category where there's a lot of window shopping, so my advertising spend is high as lots of clicks, no and low sales. Long tail keywords have low traffic and the keywords with higher search volume are very general, expensive and saturated by competitors. Any other strategies to consider?  Destaney:   Yeah, I would say, like the home decor, apparel, puzzles those categories can be really difficult because of the window shopping. So you got to think how do you stop someone from window shopping? Video does really really well because then you're educating them on why your product's better and why they're interested. And the good thing with sponsor brands video is if they're just watching the video you don't get charged. You only get charged if they clicked, and if they click they're interested. But again, I'd put this back on you to ask why are people clicking on your listing but not buying? Like even in high window shopping categories, you need to have a competitive advantage. The second thing I would say is product targeting, sponsor product product targeting, sponsor display product targeting can do really well. Target all of the competitors who have lower reviews than you, a higher price point than you, worse reviews than you. These do really well in window shopping categories because, as you mentioned, people are looking at competitors and then clicking on other listings and other listings. So this is a good opportunity to kind of take advantage of that mentality.  Carrie Miller:   Would you also say influencers are probably really the best way for those particular categories.  Destaney:  Yeah, I think influencers do really well because they're again, it's the same as the video concept. You don't want to just capture the demand and be compared to every other product in your category by price or reviews, which is what Amazon's known for. How do you educate a customer on why they need your product before they even click? Influencers, video ads, off-platform traffic does that job.  Carrie Miller:   Do you think Amazon rewards or gives more ranked juice for organic sales more than PPC sales, or do they treat them the same?  Destaney:    I would probably say more to organic sales. This is why your big retail brands your Johnson and Johnson's, your Pepsi or Coke's can get away with having listings that maybe aren't as fantastic because their organic conversion rate is so much higher, right? Even before they were spending a ton like seven years ago when I got started in this space those brands did so well because their conversion rate was higher. Customers were searching for their brand name and buying right, so their organic is already inflated and doing much better. Nowadays, PPC of course plays a role, but Amazon knows that they're going to max out on how much PPC opportunity they can have within the search results, so I think organic is weighted a little bit heavier in terms of conversion rate and click-through rate.  Carrie Miller: Do you ever increase budget on a PPC campaign, even if it isn't maxing out?  Destaney: It doesn't hurt. I don't think it necessarily helps. It can. I've seen a few people kind of make statements like I ran a campaign at $50 a day budget and it did nothing. When I increased it to $500 a day it did something. I've never really seen that, but it doesn't hurt anything. Carrie Miller: Joshua says wait. So I thought it was best practice to segment campaigns, as in keywords and such, to determine the performance. So is it best practice to clump keywords together for campaigns in groups of 10 to 15?  Destaney:   It doesn't really matter. Single keyword campaigns are okay, they don't hurt, but they're a pain to scale. We have brands that have 500 keywords doing well, so I'm not going to create 500 campaigns when it doesn't drive that much added value. We do 10 to 15 because it's controllable, it's easy to scale, it's easy for us to build out. Because it's controllable, it's easy to scale, it's easy for us to build out. In an absolutely perfect world, single keyword campaigns could be the best solution, the most value added, because you can do your placements at the same time, but they're not scalable for most people. Most people don't have the operations to run it appropriately and the software's out there that are recommending single keyword campaigns have a really terrible bid management strategy that doesn't make sense for them. So I would say if you're a small brand, only have one product, go ahead and run single keyword campaigns if you want. Just make sure you have a good system for naming and structuring.  Carrie Miller: This is a good question. If you're new to Helium 10 Adtomic, what's the best place to start? I feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the system.  Destaney:   I would start by saying that that is the nature of Amazon and Amazon probably going to feel overwhelmed. So the biggest thing is to actually go through, like the videos that are directly within Adtomic. Like that's what I would say one of your best bets and start learning each piece individually. That's something that I kind of got overwhelmed with, like in the beginning. Keyword research and bid management that should be our core focus when it comes to advertising. So go through those segmented videos and help yourself understand the system that way. Do you have anything else, Carrie?  Carrie Miller: Yeah, I mean we do have kind of a PPC Academy. If you are a paid subscriber to Helium 10, you can go into that course. But Bradley also has done some. He did some masterclasses on Adtomic and then there's also kind of learn videos, like you were saying, just like watch those little videos for each different thing within the actual tools. There's kind of little training videos. I would suggest doing that. We also have it in our academy. We have videos in our academy that show you how to use Adtomic.  Destaney:   General, it just takes time and, to not get overwhelmed, you have to hop in and you have to test and learn. By the time you learn something Amazon will change some button or some switch. So don't get overwhelmed by like. We have incredible comments and questions that are being asked that I would say are pretty advanced here. So, like, don't get overwhelmed by all of that. Just start simple, start small and you'll figure it out as you go. Carrie Miller:   I think we'll do maybe one more here. I think this is a good one. I use Cerebro to extract keywords from competitors ASINs and then include those as exact and phrase match within the same campaign. As a result, my campaign sometimes ends up with 500 plus keywords. Is this approach okay, or should I create smaller, more segmented campaigns? Destaney:   I'm going to assume what's happening with your 500 plus keywords is only 10 of them are actually getting impressions and clicks. That is the problem with that strategy. Unless you have a thousand dollar a day budget, you cannot afford the data across all those keywords. And what I mean by that is the industry standard is you need anywhere from 10 to 20 clicks per keyword before knowing whether or not it's a keyword that can be optimized right. So let's say 10 clicks at a $1 bid across 500 keywords. I can't do that math. What is 500 times $10? Like 5000?  Carrie Miller: Yeah.  Destaney:  Please, you guys I just got the zeros. This is one of those memes I was like what is the most embarrassing thing you typed into your Amazon or your calculator this year? I was about to say you cannot afford to collect data on all those keywords. You're going way too big and you're going to have campaigns that only have 5 to 10 keywords getting clicks, because that's where all of your budget's going. Your budget's only going to go to those keywords. Amazon's not going to spread it across all of your keywords. So there's no point in doing any of that keyword research when 480 of those keywords you cannot afford to get impressions on. That is why we break them out in a segmented campaign. So I can have a $10 campaign focus on one to two keywords, collecting data. I can turn on and off as my keywords are successful versus your 500. Again, you can't necessarily afford it unless you're going to be spending 5 to $10,000 to collect data on all of those terms.   Carrie Miller:   All right, I think that's the last question. I think you've done an amazing job for pretty much 45 minutes straight answering questions. So thank you. And Andrew says Destaney is the GOAT. And then Cory said “Agreed, this is awesome!”. So thank you so much for joining us for TACoS Tuesday and thank you to everyone in the audience. We had lots of I mean, we still have questions we haven't answered. I'm sorry about that. We just don't have time to do all of them every single time, but if you join next time early, you can get your questions in early, right when we start and get them answered. But thanks again for everyone who joined and also Destaney. If anyone wants to reach you, where can they reach you? Destaney:    Facebook or LinkedIn is probably the easiest. I see a few like good questions that came in last minute. Cory Benson, like all of my content is pretty much on LinkedIn, based around your question, so feel free to follow me on either of those platforms or reach out in the Helium 10 groups. I'm pretty active in those groups, so if you have any questions that we missed, we'd love to hop in and help.   Carrie Miller: Yeah, if you're not following Destaney on LinkedIn, you're missing out, so you got to go go follow her there. So, all right, thank you again, and we'll see you all again next time on TACoS Tuesday.

In this episode, Travis Kling joins the show to discuss financial nihilism, the logistics of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, and the potential impact of the incoming administration. We also delve into the crypto market outlook, product market fit across the industry, and much more. Enjoy! — Follow Travis Kling: https://x.com/Travis_Kling Follow Felix: https://x.com/fejau_inc Follow On The Margin: https://twitter.com/OnTheMarginPod Follow Blockworks: https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ — Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors On The Margin. As Bitcoin adoption grows, Ledger celebrates 10 years of securing over 20% of the world's crypto. Buy a LEDGER™ device now for true self-custody and peace of mind in securing your Bitcoin. Devices are also available in Bitcoin orange. For every device ordered in BTC Orange, we'll donate $5 to brink.dev. Buy now at Ledger.com. MANTRA is a purpose-built RWA Layer 1 blockchain capable of adherence and enforcement of real world regulatory requirements. As a permissionless chain, MANTRA empowers developers and institutions to seamlessly participate in the evolving RWA tokenization space by offering advanced tech modules, compliance mechanisms, and cross-chain interoperability. Key Features: Built using Cosmos SDK, IBC compatible, with CosmWasm supported Secured via a sovereign PoS validator set Scalable up to 10k TPS Built-in Modules, SDKs and APIs to create, trade and manage regulatory compliant RWAs Improved User Experience to onboard non-native users and institutions to Web3 Learn more: https://www.mantrachain.io/ — Join us at Digital Asset Summit 2025 March 18th - 20th. Use code MARGIN10 for 10% off general admission! https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (01:32) Macro Outlook (06:26) Philosophical Vibe Shift (11:51) Financial Nihilism (15:52) Unpacking The Next Administration (19:24) Misaligned Incentives (22:35) Ads (23:59) Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (36:51) BSR & The US Dollar (45:42) Crypto Market Outlook (48:40) Crypto Product Market Fit (53:53) Fundamentals Bearish? (55:42) Learn More About Travis' Work — Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on On The Margin should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

In this special crossover episode with On the Margin, Travis Kling joins the show to discuss financial nihilism, the logistics of a Bitcoin strategic reserve, and the potential impact of the incoming administration. We also delve into the crypto market outlook, product market fit across the industry, and much more. Enjoy! — Follow Travis Kling: https://x.com/Travis_Kling Follow Felix: https://x.com/fejau_inc Follow Forward Guidance: https://twitter.com/ForwardGuidance Follow Blockworks: https://twitter.com/Blockworks_ Forward Guidance Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance Forward Guidance Telegram: https://t.co/G7Ljv4x5Dp — Join us at Digital Asset Summit 2025 March 18th - 20th. Use code FG10 for 10% off general admission! https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2025-new-york __ SKALE is the next evolution in Layer 1 blockchains with a gas-free invisible user experience, instant finality, high speed, and robust security. SKALE is built different as it allows for limitless scalability and has already saved its 46 Million users over $9 Billion in gas fees. SKALE is high-performance and cost-effective, making it ideal for compute-intensive applications like AI, gaming, and consumer-facing dApps. Learn more at skale.space and stay up to date with the gas-free invisible blockchain on X at @skalenetwork GlobalStake delivers institutional-grade staking with self-owned, SOC2-certified bare-metal infrastructure, carbon-negative operations, and comprehensive security. Enjoy competitive pricing, decentralized operations, and slashing insurance backed by top-rated carriers. Learn more at globalstake.io Meet Kraken Institutional. Whether you're an asset allocator, a trading firm or high net worth individual, Kraken Institutional unlocks the powerful tools you and your organization need to trade and manage crypto — at scale. Reliable, easy to integrate, with white-glove service and 24/7 support. Get in touch today at https://blckwrks.co/Kraken — Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (02:20) Macro Outlook (07:14) Philosophical Vibe Shift (12:39) Financial Nihilism (16:40) Unpacking The Next Administration (20:11) Misaligned Incentives (23:23) Ads (25:24) Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (38:15) BSR & The US Dollar (47:06) Crypto Market Outlook (50:04) Crypto Product Market Fit (55:18) Fundamentals Bearish? (57:07) Learn More About Travis' Work __ Disclaimer: Nothing discussed on Forward Guidance should be considered as investment advice. Please always do your own research & speak to a financial advisor before thinking about, thinking about putting your money into these crazy markets.

One-Man Nutcrackerwritten & performed by Chris Davisdirected by MK Tuomanenchoreography by Campbell Tosneysound design by Adriano Shaplinlighting design by Krista Smithnarrated by Severin BlakeYou know the Nutcracker the ballet, but what if the ballet was performed by only one man? If the daughter Marie, little boy Fritz, creepy uncle Drosselmeyer, the mice, the Sugar Plum fairy, were all channeled through one actor. Chris Davis is proud to bring you One-Man Nutcracker, a re-telling of the original E.T.A. Hoffman Nutcracker Story and the Ballet.One-Man Nutcracker returns to Philadelphia after a sold-out run in Germany in the Thespis Festival 2024.FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://www.realchrisdavis.com/

Learn how to audit old Amazon listings to uncover new keywords, drive sales, and gather valuable customer data that can help in listing optimization to boost your conversion rates. ► 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 Could Amazon listings that you haven't touched in a while be the hidden goldmine you've been overlooking? In this episode, Bradley Sutton reveals his tried-and-true method for breathing new life into overlooked product pages and uncovering keywords that boost sales and conversions. As 2025 approaches, it's vital to stay ahead of trends and search habits to refresh your listings. Using the Project X egg trays, he demonstrates how to effectively audit and optimize your Amazon listings using tools like Search Query Performance and Helium 10. We'll explore how examining new reviews and tweaking your advertising and product images can align your listings with consumer trends, ultimately driving profitability. Keyword optimization isn't just about throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Instead, it's an art form, and Bradley is here to guide you through crafting a keyword strategy that resonates. With a focus on a wooden egg tray example, we'll uncover unexpected opportunities by analyzing platforms like Etsy and Search Query Performance. Discover how an overlooked keyword like "porcelain egg holder" can unlock new potential. By analyzing click-through rates and impressions with Helium 10's Cerebro tool, you'll learn how to capture untapped markets and expand your advertising reach. Understanding sales dynamics is crucial for any Amazon seller. By leveraging BSR history, we can pinpoint sales spikes and identify the keywords that fueled them. Bradley will show you how to use Helium 10's historical data tools to track keyword sales and ranking changes over time and outsmart competitors. It's not just about finding what works but creating a Standard Operating Procedure to efficiently manage the process across multiple products. Get ready to unlock hundreds of dollars in additional sales by strategically optimizing your keyword usage. Let's make tangible financial gains a reality. In episode 624 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley talks about: 00:00 - Auditing Amazon Listings for Optimization 00:56 - Refreshing Product Listing for Project X 02:34 - Market Analysis Tools for Sellers 04:43 - Analyzing Keywords for Optimization 08:36 - Keyword Research for Wooden Egg Tray 14:14 - Utilizing Historical Data for Product Ranking 15:19 - Analyzing BSR and Keyword Data 17:40 - Organic Ranking Improvement Analysis 20:49 - Analyzing Keyword Performance Through Sales 25:33 - Analyzing Feedback for Product Improvement 28:24 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Sales 28:41 - Discovering Profitable Keywords for Increased Sales

It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play Frank Capra's beloved holiday classic comes to life as a live 1940s radio broadcast. Capturing the charm and warmth of the original story, actors portray multiple roles and create live sound effects to bring George Bailey's uplifting journey to life. This production - featuring Christopher Patrick Mullen and Brian Anthony Wilson; and directed by Pete Pryor (the team behind A Christmas Carol Comedy) - offers a unique, immersive experience that celebrates the enduring message of hope and community.FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION: https://www.hedgerowtheatre.org

A world-premiere hilarious and heartfelt solo-romp through Christmas classics.Starring Barrymore Award Winner Amanda Schoonover*Created by Brenna GeffersRun time - 60 minutes with no intermissionDecember 12-19, 2024She'll be home for Christmas --- home alone that is. It's Christmas Eve and after a tough year one lady is determined to get into the holiday spirits. Armed with eggnog, she's going to binge drink and binge watch every Christmas story available. Elf-help be damned! Who needs loved ones when you have the Hallmark Channel?FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://www.shakespeareinclarkpark.org/christmasAmanda Schoonover is thrilled to be making her Shakespeare in Clark Park debut with her long time collaborator Brenna Geffers. Amanda is best known as the sassy eavesdropping Waitress on the GLAAD nominated Dispatches From Elsewhere on AMC where she co-starred opposite Jason Segel, Sally Field, and Andre (3000) Benjamin. She is a two-time Barrymore Award recipient and 9-time nominee, as well as being a Jilline Ringle Solo Performance Program Artist in Residence at 1812 Productions for our show The It Girl and an F. Otto Haas Emerging Artist Finalist. Film/Television: Candy Cane Lane with Eddie Murphy, NBC's Do No Harm opposite Phylicia Rashad and HBO's Perry Mason. Regional Theatre: Arden Theater Company; Theatre Exile; Pig Iron; Lantern Theater; Azuka; Simpatico; Hedgerow; People's Light. Brenna Geffers (she/her) is a theatre-maker and director based in Philadelphia. She is the co-founder of Die-Cast, along with Thom Weaver. Die-Cast is an artist collective that creates new, immersive, and site-specific work. She has created over two dozen pieces around the country with Die-Cast. She serves as the literary and casting director for PlayPenn's 2025 New Play Development Conference. She has created work and directed for local companies, including the Wilma, Theatre Exile, Revolution Shakespeare, EgoPo, Philadelphia Artist Collective, and Tribe Of Fools, to name a few. Regional credits include Spectrum Theater Ensemble, Troy Foundry Theatre, Winnipesaukee Playhouse, and Provincetown's international Tennesee Williams Festival. She has been nominated for Outstanding Direction, Outstanding Choreography, and Outstanding New Play, as well as the Harney Award for Best Adaptation of a graphic novel. She earned her MFA at Temple U. @diecast.philly

THE COMEUPPANCEBY BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS DIRECTED BY MORGAN GREEN A CO-PRODUCTION WITH WOOLLY MAMMOTH THEATRE COMPANYSet in 2023, Jacobs-Jenkins' witty and moving dark comedy focuses on five friends who reunite 20 years after graduating from a high school in Prince George's County, outside of Washington, D.C. Known as the "Multi-Ethnic Reject Group," the group was once bonded by their outsider status and the traumas of their teenage years. Gathered on a porch ahead of their high school reunion, they reminisce about their younger selves over adult jungle juice and pot as they each reveal how their lives have unfolded since graduation. As the evening continues, they drink, fight, play a truth game, and lament the disappointments of their adult lives. Throughout the evening, they are haunted by a mysterious otherworldly figure that inhabits each character, forcing them to confront the possibility that their past actions may have sealed their present fates irrevocably.Jordan Bellow - EmilioSarah Gliko - KatelynAlana Raquel Bowers - UrsulaTaysha Marie Canales - KristinaJaime Meseda - Francisco/SimonIn this episode, host Darnelle Radford engages with Taysha Canales to discuss the Wilma Theatre's production of 'The Comeuppance' by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. They explore themes of parenting, community support, character dynamics, and the importance of kindness in the context of the play. Taysha shares her experiences balancing motherhood with her acting career, the significance of the theater community, and the unique challenges of performing in different cities. The conversation delves into the play's exploration of human connections and the impact of the pandemic on personal relationships. In this conversation, Darnelle Radford and Taysha Canales explore the intersection of theater and politics, audience engagement, and the impact of uninterrupted storytelling. They reflect on personal connections to high school, the importance of streaming options for accessibility, and the profound themes of life and death presented in the current production. The discussion concludes with thoughts on the future of theater and the joy of sharing experiences with others.Thank you to our guest(s), Taysha Marie Canales for joining us on today's podcast. The Broad Street Review Podcast is An Em3ry Production. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast, visit us online at em3ry.com Get involved with Broad Street Review. Head on over to our website at www.broadstreetreview.com and click “Get involved” at the top. While you're there, help keep us running and click “Donate” to find out how. There, you can find our social media links. Thank you for your part in keeping the conversation going.

MORENOby Pravin WilkinsNovember 1-24American Premiere!When Kaepernick kneels, will he?
2016. The NFL has been shaken by Colin Kaepernick's controversial decision to take a knee during the national anthem to protest against police brutality. Superstar running back Luis Moreno, who is all about his game – and his paycheck -- has joined a new team with championship aspirations. But America's leadership is changing, and when a painful new reality hits close to home, Luis is forced to ask whether politics have a place on the field, and if he is willing to risk his career to take a stand for his own community.CastFrank Jimenez* - LUIS MORENOCharvez Grant* - EZEKIEL WILLIAMSAbdul Sesay* - CRE'VON GARCONGabriel Elmore* - DANNY LOMBARDO* appearing courtesy of a contract agreement with Actor's Equity AssociationIn this podcast episode, host Darnelle Radford engages with directors Seth Rozin and J. Paul Nicholas to discuss the Interact Theater Company's production of 'Moreno' by Praveen Wilkins. The conversation explores the play's timely themes surrounding social change, the complexities of its characters, and the dynamics of influence within the context of sports and politics. The directors share insights into the character development, the authenticity of the dialogue, and the audience's reception of the play, particularly in relation to current events. In this conversation, the speakers discuss the vital role of theater in promoting social change, fostering empathy, and building community. They emphasize the importance of understanding diverse perspectives through performance and the value of audience engagement, particularly through talkbacks. The discussion highlights how theater can reflect societal issues and encourage critical thinking among citizens. The speakers also share insights on the current state of theater and its relevance in today's world, concluding with a call to action for audiences to participate in the ongoing conversation.FOR MORE INFORMATION: https://interacttheatre.org

Advanced Ranking on Amazon in Q4: Garfield Coore In this episode of Seller Sessions, Danny McMillan welcomes back Garfield Coore, a top-ranking strategist, to break down Amazon's algorithm. Garfield shares insights for sellers to maximize organic rank, external traffic, and achieve ranking stability as Q4 peaks., Garfield shares essential techniques for sellers looking to stay competitive and profitable. Key Takeaways The Three-Stage Ranking System: Primary Ranking Events: Roughly 90% of ranking impact comes from core behaviours on Amazon. Key actions include searches leading to a product page, add-to-cart from a search click, and purchases from a search pathway. Garfield stresses avoiding variations that interrupt the ranking pathway. Keyword Cohorts: Leveraging keyword "families" (using Amazon's Opportunity Explorer) helps products gain ranking bleed-over. Start ranking with smaller keywords, allowing spillover to higher competition terms. Territorial Influence: Minor ranking factors include BSR and inventory location, affecting regional rank. BSR reflects category sales ranking relative to competitors. Conversion Events Beyond Sales Clicks, page visits, and add-to-cart actions all serve as ranking events, which Garfield calls “conversion events.” Focus on generating quality traffic to accumulate these events, which can boost rank without immediate sales. PPC Strategy: Maximizing Click-Through Rate PPC placement relies on expected revenue from clicks, not relevance. Garfield explains that a history of clicks improves PPC placement probability.   Timing Event-Driven Ranking Garfield advises starting campaigns for seasonal events early to establish a low-cost rank before high-demand periods. For example, healthcare and weight loss products should begin ranking efforts before New Year's resolutions in January. Reach Garfield - https://www.facebook.com/garfield.coore Out Now on SellerSessions.com The Cold Reality of the Honeymoon Period And External Traffic

On Saturday, Nov. 16, Prism Arts Philadelphia will host the event, which features fine art, highlights Black excellence, and showcases the diversity of Black drag kings. It will feature drag performers from Philadelphia Black Drag Kings Cyrus K. Stratton, Manny Lovett, Mo Betta, Mister Right, Gemini Mxr, Sir Suavey, Mr. Tee, Deej Nutz, Kyng Dom, and Reese the Beast. The event will also feature a gallery viewing of fine art, including original acrylic paintings by Cyrus K. Stratton and photographs by Gemini Mxr.CYRUS K. STRATTONFrom the Haus of Stratton's, this King is known for his 80s & 90s excellancé and showing us the moves needed to win your hearts all over the dance floor. Cyrus comes clutch from hosting and having involvement in multiple amateur drag shows and Drag King events in Philadelphia.https://mulletcreativeservices.com/products/the-coronation-show-tickethttps://metrophiladelphia.com/the-coronation-all-black-drag-king-philly/

In this episode I'm sharing a new record for the lowest BSR that I've seen on an Amazon Merch shirt, ever! Making this shit the most popular shirt I've seen in the almost 8 years since I joined Amazon Merch

Join us for an insightful journey with Joe Sanhanga, a remarkable e-commerce entrepreneur generating millions annually through unique and high-priced products. Listen in as Joe shares his inspiring story from his roots in Zimbabwe to his educational pursuits in the UK and the US, ultimately landing in Las Vegas. His journey began on platforms like Shopify and WordPress, selling distinctive items such as African-style swimsuits and nano tape toys, before discovering the immense potential of Amazon's FBA and FBM models. Through their conversation, Bradley and Joe emphasized the transformative power of networking at conferences like Amazon Accelerate. Explore the strategies behind Joe's successful transition to selling on Amazon, starting with assisting a soil business during the pandemic and leading to the creation of "Wonder Soil," a private-label product on Amazon. Joe's ventures into innovative products like tanning lamps, vitamin D lamps, and seasonal depression lamps highlight the importance of team collaboration and strategic Amazon sales optimization. With aspirations to surpass a $30 million run rate, Joe shares valuable insights into leveraging Amazon's platform to achieve extraordinary growth in niche markets. Discover the challenges and tactics involved in marketing high-priced products, like a $599 lamp, in a competitive landscape dominated by lower-cost alternatives. We discuss the advantages of having larger margins for experimenting with keywords and bidding strategies, alongside the creative approaches necessary to maintain product visibility amidst Amazon's policies. Joe also shares his experiences optimizing advertising strategies, managing warehouse transitions to Amazon's Warehousing and Distribution system, and utilizing tools like Helium 10's Adtomic to automate and enhance PPC strategies. This episode provides a comprehensive view of the perseverance and innovation required to thrive in e-commerce, offering inspiration and actionable advice for sellers at any level. In episode 604 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Joe discuss: 00:28 - E-Commerce Strategies and Global Perspectives 04:54 - Amazon Product Sales Success Story 05:41 - Amazon Brand Growth During COVID 11:37 - Strategies for High Price Point Products 11:50 - Product Pricing and Brand Strategy 15:23 - Optimizing Keywords for Product Sales 18:21 - Amazon Advertising Strategy Discussion 19:14 - Managing $120,000 of Ad Spend With Adtomic 23:49 - Amazon PPC Management Strategies 27:52 - Optimizing Ad Placements to Lower ACoS 30:51 - Pricing Strategy Impact on Sales 32:45 - Warehouse Cost Savings and Amazon Advertising 34:28 - Inventory Management for Amazon Sellers 38:14 - Optimizing Amazon Listings for Conversion 41:17 - Online Presence and Networking ► 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 Bradley Sutton: Today we talked to a $30 million a year seller who is selling, and has sold, some of the most unique products I've ever heard of, including one at a $600 price point, when everybody else is priced at only 40 bucks. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.   Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. In my travels recently, one of the things I like about going to conferences and it's what I always tell people about is that you know you can meet different people, network with people and find out about their story, and that's kind of like how I structure this whole podcast. But then I actually did that recently at Amazon Accelerate and I'm glad I did it, because I'm glad I did it. As I went to this one mixer that they organized and I was at first, I was like, oh man, I was so drained after that day and I'm like, oh man, it's gonna be a crowded place. I don't like to be in crowded places, but you know what? I'm going to hop on this little lime scooter from my hotel and go over to this restaurant where the event was and I was sitting down talking to some people at the table and then I met today's guest there, Joe. How's it going?   Joe: I'm going good. Thanks for having me on.   Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. Now, you said you're in Vegas right now. Right?   Joe: Yes, we're in Las Vegas, Nevada.   Bradley Sutton: Now, that's not a typical Vegas accent you've got. So where were you born and raised?   Joe: Yeah, so I was born in Zimbabwe, raised as well in Zimbabwe, then I moved out to England where I spent a lot of my time there doing some education and stuff and then I got tired of the cold being a Zimbabwean.   Bradley Sutton: You went to the opposite, then if you went to Vegas, I cannot imagine a more opposite than cold place.   Joe: Oh yeah, 100%. I just went on to Google and I was like okay, I want to go somewhere in America, but I need to find somewhere warm. And I think the first thing that came up on the search was Death Valley, but there was nothing over there. So the second thing was Phoenix and Las Vegas. So, I eventually found myself in Las Vegas just because of the ease of doing business. Ability to meet people here is really good.   Bradley Sutton: And did you go to university uh over in UK or in the US?   Joe: yes, I did university in the UK as well as in the US, so I got an accounting degree back in uh UK um and then in the US, I did a um was a business management degree with some entrepreneurship uh additional to that   Bradley Sutton: was it like a unlv or?   Joe: I know this was in um in Phoenix in ASU, yeah.   Bradley Sutton: ASU, uh, Sun Devil right? Joe: yes, sir, okay, there, you see it.   Bradley Sutton: I always test my I don't know. I'm not going to ask you any kind of mascot because from England I don't know anything about England schools, but I know most of the US schools have mascots here. Actually, I'm wearing a. We'll talk about this later. I'm wearing a mascot from a minor league baseball team is my hat. This is called from nearby to Arizona is Albuquerque Isotopes. But the reason I use this today was because this is very similar, this logo, to our Helium 10 Adtomic logo. I know you and I were talking about Adtomic, doesn't it look like the A from Adtomic yeah,   Joe: it actually does. Now I see it when you mention it.   Bradley Sutton: So that's why I wore this on purpose. There's a method to my madness, but anyways, before we get to Adtomic, talking about Adtomic, I just want to talk about your e-commerce journey. So when you graduated from, after you know, there at ASU, did you get into e-commerce at all, or at what kind of?   Joe: So this was actually still back in England , around 2017 is when I kind of got first into my e-commerce kind of journey, which was on Shopify. Specifically, Shopify and WordPress was where I started out and I bought a random course of somebody online, learned all about basically advertising from like Facebook, from Instagram, from Google, sending it to this website and landing pages that we used to do. And then, within being in that realm, I started hearing this FBA term being thrown around.   Bradley Sutton: What were you selling on Shopify in those days?   Joe: Oh, so I remember we had to go at, we did these other swimsuits that we did African style print swimsuits, and then we also went on and started doing it was like these little tape toys, sort of like double-sided type tape. Yeah, exactly so we were doing those. It's called nano tape, um, so, yeah, that's basically how, how that started and then,   Bradley Sutton: and then that's when you, when you kind of like, learned about the amazon, uh potential.   Joe: So I heard, obviously, being in that space, I started hearing this word FBA being thrown around uh, the acronym, and you know. Then I went on Google, searched up, okay, what is FBA? And it's some sort of Amazon selling thing. Okay, and then there's FBM as well. So now I'm like, okay, there's these two terms, what is this all about? And that's basically when I started doing my research and I was like, okay, this Amazon thing seems to actually have some stuff to it. And at the time I think the platform is not the way. It's so different now, because sometimes I've got screenshots of my old dashboards and it just looks completely different. So, yeah, that's how I basically then started with Amazon.   Bradley Sutton: Did you start selling like your own account, you know, on Amazon, start selling your own products, or did you just start working for other companies that were selling on Amazon?   Joe: Yeah, so to begin with I was working with this other lady. She basically had soil and the way we actually started working together was I created a website for her, put on Shopify, to sell the soil, and then she was bagging up the soil to try and get it to consumers, because her business was mainly sending thousand-pound totes to farmers. But she said, how can I get this you know three-pound bag to people that are at home and want to grow some plants and what actually it was? This was around 20.   Bradley Sutton: Soil on Amazon, man, when you think you've heard it all.   Joe: It's called Wonder Soil. It's actually one of the rivals to Miracle-Gro and we actually I actually raised it to get the Amazon choice badge. We were on Business Insider as one of the top growing brands on amazon too, um, but basically the cool thing about it was we've tried to find a way to get the soil to consumers and everything worked well, because this was during covid, so people were at home, people had nothing to do, and you know people are growing stuff at home, people. You know we're just trying to, yeah, so the product hit at the right time uh, what year is this 2020.   Bradley Sutton: Okay. 2020 okay yeah. Oh yeah, I mean that was a good time. Yeah, during covid, people were always are really trying to make their own gardens and stuff like grow their own vegetables and stuff like that okay yeah this is a private label brand or you're reselling um others?   Joe: oh, so we actually have manufacturers in China. Uh, that we get all that product for We've actually gotten rid of our warehouse Now. We've gone full into AWD, so we're getting.   Bradley Sutton: Let's talk about that a little bit later in the show too. I haven't talked to many people who are doing that, so I'll be interested in that, ok.   Joe: Yeah, so that's, that's what that one. And then there's another lamp company, which is pretty funny, is tanning lamps and vitamin D lamps, so we run through those on Amazon as well. Those are actually the only there's a lamp that can give you vitamin D.   Bradley Sutton: It's the only lamp the same like the sun.   Joe: Yes, you spend five minutes every other day in front of it and it'll give you. And there's studies on YouTube. People use this lamp, where this lady her name is Carnival Doctor on YouTube. She did a study with a lamp for six weeks and her levels went from 20 something to 40 something vitamin D. She feels healthier than ever and it's perfect. It stopped her from having to buy, you know, vitamin D pills and, of course, all those sorts of things. So, yeah, it's the only one, and you get tan at the same time. So now, that's the difference. So, there's two lamps One gives you vitamin D and one gives you a tan, because there are some people that don't want the tanning effect. So that's what it is. So, it's-.   Bradley Sutton: Now what if you put this tanning lamp over your miracle magic soil? Are you going to create some like hybrid plant? Oh my, you sell the most interesting things. All right, there's a third account too,   Joe: yeah, so it's basically the third account is also in lighting, but this one is seasonal depression lamps where basically you look at it so that one is its own brand.   Bradley Sutton: Did you say depression? Yes, depression lamp Like as in I'm very depressed and I'm sad like that word depression.   Joe: Yeah, depression, you're sad. What does that have to do with a lamp? So, you look at this lamp for 30 minutes and you become happy. I know it sounds stupid, but minutes and you become happy. I know it sounds stupid, but that one doesn't give you vitamin D.   Bradley Sutton: That one doesn't give you vitamin D. Nor a tan. Yeah, you see. Hey, there's a product idea. You got to combine all three and then, oh my goodness, you'd have the most amazing.   Joe: That would be powerful. We've had people that have requested you know, do you have one that does both, or this, this, this? But because of FDA regulations, we've had to separate a lot of the things.   Bradley Sutton: Is these three separate companies or is it like the same group of people who's all owning all three of these?   Joe: So two of the companies is one group of people and the other one is one person.   Bradley Sutton: And then, what do you do in these?   Joe: So I run just an Amazon account. So I run just an Amazon account. So running the ads, running the listing optimization, making sure the account is obviously hitting the sales numbers, everything that just literally goes through Amazon and inventory everything.   Bradley Sutton: What's the overall projected sales for all three combined on Amazon?   Joe: So for all three combined, we're looking at 28. We're on pace to do 28 million this year on all three.   Bradley Sutton: Will that be your best, our biggest year yet.   Joe: Yeah, this would be our biggest year yet. We've seen record numbers in previous months. In previous, like this past quarter, we'd had record sales as well. I know we had our biggest. We had, I think, our first. We had two days in September where we had 100K sales days, which was the first time we've done that. We also had our highest sales days in the past two years. Nine of those days in our top 10 sales were all in September. So we've had record sales. Especially Q3 was really, really amazing. I think we were up about 800K across the board in Q3 alone. So we're on pace to do a really good year and it sets us up for our plan is to do a 2.5 million month at least once this year in total and that will set us up for a run rate for next year. We want to push over to that 30 million stage.   Bradley Sutton: If you're like me, maybe you were intimidated about learning how to do Amazon PPC, or maybe you think you just don't have the hours and hours that it takes to download and sort through all of those sponsored ads reports that Amazon produces for you. Adtomic for me allowed me to learn PPC for the first time, and now I'm managing over 150 PPC campaigns across all of my accounts in only two hours a week. Find out how Adtomic can help you level up your PPC game. Visit h10.me forward slash Adtomic for more information. That's h10.me forward slash A-D-T-O-M-I-C. I'm just curious, before we get into some more details about, like, your advertising because I know that's one of the things that is your specialty these lamps that you're doing like, were these kind of like inventions, or? Or there was an existing market of vitamin D lamps or an existing market of lamps that make you happy Like was that an existing keyword or is this something that you're you guys invented and kind of like created the demand for?   Joe: So it's actually crazy. You say that is because the first vitamin d lamp started in 1924. It was a guy by Dr. Sperti is his name. He's the guy who made it. He invented it and he started selling it throughout the US. It was a company in Kentucky, um, but he was just selling it out of his own like little warehouse and then eventually he got old um and then sold off for business and then basically that's where we put it online, um to run it through Amazon, and we first were going like, for example, the vitamin D one it's the only lamp that's there. The only competition are these vitamin D pills that you'll see on Amazon. But our price point for the lamp is like 599. And we're competing against people that can buy a bottle for four bucks, five bucks on Amazon. So it's been a pretty interesting game competing against people that can buy, you know, a bottle for four bucks, five bucks on amazon. So it's been a pretty interesting game. But it moves. It moves um on amazon. What's the price of the product?   Bradley Sutton: you said 599 599, 599, yeah, wow, uh, I want to. I'm trying to look at, look for it on amazon right now. What's the brand name called?   Joe: SpertI s-p-e-r-t-i, and then you'll see vitamin d we got to show the audience this.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, oh, my goodness gracious, here it is. Hold on, this is incredible. All right.   Joe: That's it and it's right. That's the first one that's popped up against our competition. All those are competitors on the right.   Bradley Sutton: So 500 and Sperti. So that was what the doctor's name was. Who?   Joe: made this up.   Bradley Sutton: Yeah, Dr. Sperti, that was his name yeah, there was a ready demand for this out there.   Joe: Oh, huge, because, if you think about it, vitamin D pills are basically the same target market as us. Yeah, so this is just a non-invasive way that you buy and you keep this for a very, very long time. So that's that. So something interesting. As you go through this, this listing, you're not going to see the word vitamin d anywhere on the listing and you'll notice our carousel images, our images on there. we have our box images because amazon actually took us down because our lamp has the word vitamin d on it.   Bradley Sutton: ah, yeah, yeah, I see it in the video there, so you don't have vitamin d anywhere in there, but you probably got indexed for the keyword by Amazon.   Joe: Exactly so. That's why we use UVB, which is basically the term for vitamin D. So Amazon is not allowing us to use it, even though we're FDA approved and everything. Amazon is just not letting us go for that.   Bradley Sutton: I see some of your main keywords. Yeah, vitamin D lamp.   Joe: Oh yeah, we can use them in the back. Vitamin D light.   Bradley Sutton: Vitamin D therapy lamp, vitamin D light therapy. Now, I'm just curious. I don't talk very often with people who have this high price point. What is different about having a product that's in the hundreds of dollars? Like, do you approach advertising differently, cause it's not like where I mean. You might now you know you, you might get a hundred clicks with no sale, but still you just get one, the 101st click. All of a sudden, that's $600 of revenue. So, so, like, how is it different, uh, with something like this, compared to your, your other products, which I'm assuming is like more you know, regular pricing 10, 20, 30 bucks.   Joe: So the cool thing about it is that across all the catalog that I, that I that I run, I have products starting at like five bucks, all the way to this one that has $5.99. So the landscape with this one is totally different. Like you said, you can set up an ad, you'll get 50 clicks at $1.20 CPC and, based on our margins, we're still clean on a sale. If we get one sale, we profit. So the cool thing about it is you just have to be a bit more patient. However, because we have such kind of should I say a big space for those clicks, it allows us to test a lot of keywords in this space and we really kind of exhaust any keyword that's there without having to really be careful, unlike if I was selling a smaller, less priced product, I can't just throw in all the keywords and just you know it'll go crazy if it's like a $60 product.   So with this, it gives me that comfortability to go out and bid higher and also it allows me to, like I said, like if you saw on that page where you searched, my competition were those pill bottles that are like five bucks, six bucks, seven bucks, so I can bid above all of those guys. So I ensure that every time you search the keyword I'm going to be first, because there's no way they're going to bid the same amount of dollars. I'm going to bid because their price points are different. However, they can take a loss on a sale because they have repeat products. So people finish that bottle, they come back and buy another With ours. That person buys a lamp and is done. So we obviously have to gauge it to a point whereby, okay, this is our ACOS target and at this A-cost target we're profitable. So that's now how more I manage that one. It's more ACOS targeting, but I'm basically trying to make sure I stand out for every single eyeball that's there because I have the room.   Bradley Sutton: So this is interesting because, regardless of the price point, there are similar kind of scenarios where it would be like this they're probably actual keywords of how somebody who's searching for this exact thing is probably very limited Vitamin D lamp or lamp for tanning, you know for your other product, or it's not. Like oh there's you know 5,000 way, you know 5,000 ways that are going to come up in Cerebro to search for this one thing. You're like it's kind of like that way with coffin shelf. If you're looking exactly for a coffin shelf, that's pretty much it, that's it. Coffin shelf or shelf shaped like a coffin, like there's very limited number of words. The other keywords I get sales from is more like the, you know, gothic decor or spooky things. So how are you doing your keyword research? Like using Helium 10 or amazon, for you mentioned you do a lot of testing for targets. So like, where are you coming up with these keywords to test to see if any of them stick?   Joe: So that's. It's more like said, I run Cerebro on a lot of those vitamin D bottle and pills and basically a lot of my. So, like I've said, I've exhausted the keyword vitamin D and the more you get long tail with this product, the less traffic you have. You know, for some of the products you can get long tail with a bunch of keywords and you still have traffic. Like, for example, if it's like a Ziploc bag, I can put Ziploc bag for Legos, Ziploc bag for sandwiches, Ziploc bag for this. You know the list is endless and you have traffic with this. Not many people even know this lamp exists.   So what I've actually done is sometimes I go and target competitor company names and key names. So if it's like some company that sells a bottle of vitamin D lamps or vitamin D pills, I'll actually target their brand because when I look at their keyword, it's people that are repeat purchases, so it always has traffic. And but because I can bid high on their own company name, I'm going to show up first and I have the room with my price point to show up consistently and eventually, if you're somebody that is very hooked on buying these products, for vitamin D pills, you're going to see my product and think, okay, what is this? Because it's coming up. I've seen it so many times when I come and buy this product that when you read about our process, you then be like, okay, so this is something that actually can benefit me and can work as an alternative for ingested pills and all the other disadvantages that come with that. So that's basically how I find other keywords and start going for those.   Bradley Sutton: You know, price game is something nobody ever wants to play, and you're not playing at all, you're doing the opposite. You know, like on some of these keywords I do see some like people ranking for, like vitamin D lamp, but they're, just like you know, $20 products and they're selling thousands of units. But then are you going after those people too, Like the people who are going after that or how? How, how do you still get sales when people can technically get something one 10th the price? People you just got to like, make sure that they know the value of what you, that yours is different.   Joe: Yeah, so that's where we have to communicate that through the listing, and it's because a lot of those $20 lamps that you're seeing there, those are not actually vitamin D lamps, those are seasonal depression lamps. So if you're looking at, can you see that Alaska Northern Lights big box on the right where your mouse is? Yes, that's one of the lamps that I sell. That's for seasonal depression.   Bradley Sutton: Okay, I was about to click on that, but no, I'm not going to click on the sponsored ad and charge you $3 right there. So good thing I didn't.   Joe: But then if you look at to the left, you've got that product. That's 19 bucks. Those are actually seasonal depression lamps, so they don't give off vitamin D. So somebody would purchase that and then they'll realize that doesn't give you vitamin D. So they'll probably return it and then come back to ours. But if they're looking for seasonal depression those would be those ones.   Bradley Sutton: This is just an interesting niche. This is kind of fascinating to me. So then, overall, almost $30 million. What are you spending per month? Or what are you paying Amazon for advertising per month?   Joe: So monthly. Right now we're spending total across the board with about 120K a month on advertising budget.   Bradley Sutton: Advertising. And then, what's your TACoS then? At kind of, is it different per account? Are you looking at your TACoS?   Joe: yeah, so the lamp TACoS are, like, I think, close to two percent um, and then uh, because that ACoS is really low, um. However, with uh, with the one that's got the majority of the products, our tacos right now we are sitting at a 5.38. That's what we just closed out at, okay. Okay, our ACoS is at 15 point. I think it was 15.5 is what we ended on in September. We brought that down from a 20 ACoS down to a 15. Our goal was to bring it down to 10, but obviously we've done about 50% of that target. Now, which is hard, you know, if you're spending, you know, over a hundred K. To bring down a cost by 5% is really difficult. So that's, that's where we are.   Bradley Sutton: Are you using Adtomic for all of this spend, all of this $120,000 spend?   Joe: We've launched. So with Adtomic, we've put in some rules for some SKUs and we're watching that and I actually had a call with Travis, like I said before, to try and we've got different rules for different products and we're trying to see how we can build out those rules in Adtomic.   Bradley Sutton: Like rules that you were just using manually, like downloading search term reports. What are some of the rules? Tell me how you run your PPC.   Joe: So most of my rules would come into the shipping product, one where basically first rule is identifying the product, pricing. So if it's a bag so let's say Ziploc bag, right, we've got a Ziploc bag, a four by six size. We have different variations. So we have a hundred pack, five hundred pack, thousand pack. The hundred pack could cost maybe 19 bucks, five hundred pack 50 bucks, other one 99 bucks.   So based on those, we make rules where if it's the $19 one, we want to start our bids at $0.40 or something like that. Somewhere it makes sense. But then if it's for the 1,000-pack one, we can start off our bidding at $2, $3. And that's because if somebody then buys it it's $99. So it's more of guiding based on that price threshold of the product and getting that rule in. And then, as we keep going, we want to make sure that if it's not getting any spend after two weeks it'll look back and add, you know, 10 cents to it if it's getting too many clicks. And if it gets like 10 clicks at that price, at that um, 44 cents, uh, whatever, 40 cents, um, and no sales, it'll dial it back by five cents or something like that, just to just to start, you know, bringing it back to see what we can get. So those are.   Bradley Sutton: So then, instead of basing your rules in Adtomic, like, necessarily on ACoS, you're like doing it on the, the performance, like clicks and. Are you doing impressions at all, or just mainly clicks? Mainly clicks and then sales? What about your keyword harvesting? Did you set up any keyword harvesting rules on your auto or broad campaigns? Yes, and what's your thresholds there?   Joe: So with there we do have our keyword harvesting set up and we usually just go in when it shows us. Then we'll add and accept whatever we want to Others we don't and we basically just throw them in. So we have one that right now has some rules and we've been working with the one that keeps the ACoS threshold in different margins. That's been looking good. So we've actually decided that when we've got launch ASINs because we're planning to launch another 42 products, I think it was soon is put those into the ACoS threshold, get those spending. Then, once we've gotten some traction with those, we start messing with the bids ourselves because we look at these in different silos as well in terms of market share.   So if it's like tapes, we might not be the biggest player in tapes, so we can't really go out the income on the market. But if it's like Ziploc bags, Celo bags, we have tons of market share. Our brand is known. The moment you see our packaging on our default listings, you know it's us. So we bid higher on those ones to really just take up and kill anybody that's coming in. And we're happy to take up that high bid because people repeat purchase on those ones so we can lose money on the first sale because we can look at the lifetime value of those customers and it makes sense.     Bradley Sutton:   How many targeting type, different targeting types are you doing per product? You know for me, sometimes a lot of some. I'll have three main keyword ones, at least, obviously, to start, because then I'll cap it and start new ones, but I'll have an exact, you know, like, like atomic calls, a performance campaign. I'll have a broad campaign with broad targets. I'll have an auto, but then I'll also a lot of times have an ASIN targeting campaign, product targeting campaign. I'll also do a sponsor display campaign. I might do a video, two video campaigns, like a keyword video campaign, an ASIN video campaign and then maybe, if I have, you know, three products in a certain brand, I might have a sponsor brand that's feeding a few of those. Like, are you doing all of those or just you're just keeping it to the basic keyword targeting campaigns? What do you guys do so?   Joe: So for every ASIN we basically have five different ads and it starts off with broad, which is obviously our broad keywords, and then we'll go to exact keywords where basically we don't start off by putting keywords in the exact. We let you know, get it from helium and atomic and then we put those in uh based on what it's telling us, and then we've got auto testing. So we uh, or it's called a auto cam, just normal campaign, which is obviously we let that run in the order category. Then ASIN testing, where basically we're running targeting that specific category of that product. And the cool thing about those ascent testing is it helps us identify new markets. So let's say we have a variation in poly and plastic packaging and let's say this product is sitting at number two. We might actually take that product. And then let's say we have other products that are like three, four, five, six in that category. We might take the number two product and move it to mailbags. It'll drop the BSR because of its historical performance and its ability to perform. We might actually start testing a different category just to gain more market share in a different category because we know we've kind of succeeded in that one. So that's more for ASIN testing.   Then we have ASIN targeting, where we actually we use our Cerebro to get competitors, Black Box to get competitors Then we obviously target those competitors depending on how many reviews they have. So if it's somebody that's got anything less than four stars, what they're targeting you, because most of our products are sitting within the 4.5 to 4.89 range. So anybody below four stars we're targeting you, and then we also use what's it called. Then those are basically the five that we do per ASIN and then we also use what's it called. Then those are basically the five that we do per ASIN. And then we have started testing some display campaigns. We had VCPM running, which was a waste of money really. It was just the attribution was wrong. So what we're doing now is some display campaigns to actually do some retargeting and basically that's where we've got started going. We haven't done much sponsored brands. Things have just really been working in sponsored product for us.   Bradley Sutton: Or the auto and maybe broad campaigns. Did you set any atomic rules as far as when to suggest a negative match or like a poor performing search term? Or how are you managing the spend on your auto campaigns? Because you know, sometimes if you just let Amazon do what they want, they'll just show you for all kinds of crazy stuff and they don't care about how much your spend is. So what are you doing to keep your auto campaigns under control?   Joe: Yeah, so what we basically do, obviously we have the loose you select the loose substitute compliments and all that type of stuff. We have those like basic keyword rules that we set our bids at where, and we do that based on our pricing. So, depending on the product's price, we'll add in those rules and then basically when Adtomic starts showing whatever negative is in there, we'll go in and either accept the negative and or reject it. And I remember I don't know if it was Travis who told me we don't want to is it reject the negative or something, because it will completely kind of block it out forever or something like that In Adtomic. If you were to do that on a negative, I think it was if you fully approve a negative. So we kind of just watch it and see if it's really a negative and then we test it out. But that's how we kind of do it. So we haven't really put much rules on that side. It's more depending on the price of the product.   Bradley Sutton: And then you said for like keyword harvesting, like if an auto finds something like is it just one for you? And then you, hey, I'll go ahead and move it to one of my manual campaigns. Or do you want to see like two or three orders of some new keyword before you put it to your exact campaigns, or what's your threshold there?   Joe: Yeah, usually we try and get up to about five, five orders. Um, cause, that's that we've, we've, cause we've had keywords where you might get an order or two, and then it just starts burning money after that. So, yeah, um, we let whatever's winning win and then if something shows promise and you know it comes up with like five orders, uh, that'll be cool and then we'll add it back in. And the cool thing about it is, if it was obviously like the, the lamps, five orders is a bit too many for a keyword. But if it's the Ziploc bags, we know we can easily get those five orders and it justifies because you know that the, the traffic on those is way more than the people that are looking for the lamps. So it just depends on the product as well.   Bradley Sutton:     What is what brought you from, I forgot what you said like, from 20 to 15 a cost, like? What specific strategies you think? Like, was it something different? You were doing um, or, or you just change the rules, or what. What can you attribute that lowering of ACoS to?   Joe: Okay. So basically, we started a KPI where we looked at the number of ACoS campaigns that are above 100% in our account, because I think we have about 4,000 something campaigns running. So basically, when we sorted that out, we would start off with, like, let's say, 40. Then of those 40, that's our priority for the month and basically, we'd look at what the ad type is. We'd look at what the ad type is, we'd look at where the you know impression share is going. Is it top of search, is it product key, is it product pages or is it in the categories? And then basically sometimes we would notice that, let's say, if it's product search for this specific ad, it's showing a way better ACoS but it's not getting as much spend and impressions as this one. But you know, the product page is just spending money. So what we'll do is we'll change the percentage on the impression share to show more on that specific placement that's actually performing the best.   And what we realized is a lot of our ACoS started just, you know, dropping for those campaigns where we doubled down. Yes, it might not spend as much, you might not as much traffic, but if our ACoS drops, you know, by 50% on that campaign, that's a win. So that's what we're doing. And then sometimes it's actually where you're getting a bunch of sales at like 60, 70% ACoS from top of search, but this product page placement is at 20% ACoS but it's not getting as much spend. So now we'll move our spend and our impression share more on that product page and reduce the top of search. Even though it cancels out some sales, the profitability of investing in that product placement on the product pages makes more sense. So that's how we've been kind of juggling the placements and it's been helping really well to cut ACoS.   Bradley Sutton: When you launch new products. What's your strategy? Is it strictly I mean, like do you have this big audience that you're able to promote to and then they send a lot of traffic that way, or is it 100% with PPC that you're launching products? What's your strategy? Like?   Joe: So 100% of PPC. We have been talking about, you know, starting to get an email list together, but, as you know, with Amazon you don't get that information of your customers, so it's very difficult. If we had like a website, then maybe we could leverage that side of it. But, like I said, 100% of all sales is Amazon and unfortunately, we don't have the customer data. So what we usually do is set up our PPC. Sometimes, depending on the market or the product, what we'll use are the deals, if it's promotions, and sometimes we've actually, you know how you can now put price, the strikethrough pricing. So sometimes when we launch a new product, we launch about a few bucks higher than we're actually planning to sell, and that's because we just want to get the featured offer pricing going. And then, once the featured offer has registered onto Amazon, we'll set a strikethrough price at the intended selling price that we want to and then we'll pump up our PPC. Why? Because now our product is showing amongst everybody else to have this discount of like 20% or whatever it is, and that increases our conversion rate because obviously people are seeing this discount. And then sometimes you might actually get the badge that says lowest price in 30 days and on a new launch. That helps quite a lot and basically that's what we do.   Then we start pumping PPC and then, once that ends, we actually noticed with another product where we were averaging about, I think it was 0.78 run rate so which is basically close to a sale a day on that product at 24 bucks. We raised the price to 28 bucks so that we could make a strike through at 24. And then at the end of the strike through because after 30 days when you set the strike through it stops the deal, we actually realized that our run rate went to 0.68 at 28 bucks. So we started noticing that the difference in sales were not actually bad from the price going back to four bucks. That's because we just had forgotten to change it back to that 24. So it actually helped us realize like wait, we were still selling at that 28 bucks, so now we just drop it back and when we drop it back to 24 with that strikethrough it just increases the sales and obviously the conversion rate and the ACoS, which allows us more dollars to spend on that product.   Bradley Sutton: Before you switched to AWD, did you guys have your own warehouse? Did you have multiple 3PLs, One 3PL? What were you doing?   Joe: So we had our own warehouse and basically obviously we're shipping it from China to our warehouse and then from our warehouse to Amazon, and then basically with AWD, and the fees just got out of hand. It kind of priced us out of obviously doing that route, which is why we went with AWD. And it's kind of been our first kind of-.   Bradley Sutton: The new fees you're talking about, like the inbound inventory placement fees and things like that,   Joe: all that type of stuff, yeah, it kind of really hit us hard. So we realized, and we priced everything up in Seoul, it's way more lucrative to go with AWD, and you have to have   Bradley Sutton: Is that AGL too? Or just like? Are you actually having Amazon ship from China or you're shipping it into AWD?   Joe: We're shipping it into AWD. Right now, we haven't fully gone into Amazon shipping it from China, but we're shipping it into AWD. And that's basically where we just noticed that economics-wise it just made way more sense to go with AWD. So we took that big step of obviously getting away with our warehouse and now just sending product into AWD. How big was your warehouse? It was pretty big. It was pretty big. I don't know how many square feet on the top of my head.   Bradley Sutton: Do you know how much it costs per month? About?   Joe: Yeah, it was close to about. I think it was like 25 grand.   Bradley Sutton: Oh my goodness, yeah, so we're talking probably 20,000 square feet or above. They're in Vegas. Yeah, it was pretty big. And then how many full-time employees had to run it?   Joe: So we had four people there   Bradley Sutton: and then now you had to let them go after you close the warehouse. So then it's not just $25,000 a month, but then probably another $10,000 of salary you're saving.   Joe: yeah, so there's a big saving, when you look at it, from everything. And we've kept one person I think it was that basically helps us with inventory forecasting and just helping manage kind of the inventory side of AWD. Because right now we've moved into AWD. But some issues we've had with AWD is when FBA goes out of stock there's like a two-week period we've seen that it takes for that transfer of inventory to go into FBA and that's because AWD hasn't learned our sell through rates yet. So right now, for example,   Bradley Sutton: you can't control that at all. Like you can't just force AWD to say, hey, I know I'm going to sell more, send more to FBA. Like you have to wait for them to be able to see it.   Joe: Yeah. So you can manually send more. But because we have a catalog of 900 products, it'll be very tenacious to look at FBA for all these products and then go to AWD and manually click one. So what we've done is we put the auto replenishment. But because Amazon hasn't learned our products yet, literally, we had a product that had a sell-through rate of I think it was it'll go through about 300, 400 products a month. We ran out of that product and AWD transferred 10 units to FBA and it took two weeks to get those 10 units and those sold out within a day. So it was just the worst and the worst.   Bradley Sutton: I got to start you on Helium 10 inventory management, because helium 10 inventory management is created for people who have three PLs and then and then we tell you, all right, set up a new shipment. But theoretically somebody just asked me to say the other day we don't integrate yet with AWD. I know that's on the roadmap, but like a third-party warehouse, like you know how much inventory is there, so you put the number in and then you know what you know. Helium 10 knows what your inventory is in Amazon. And then so we would just tell you the same way hey, it's time to trigger, you know. So I know you said before like hey, yeah, you might not have time to, you know, be checking 800, but that's the whole point of inventory management where you just you know you better send, you know, 500 units in from your warehouse and so, yeah, we'll get you started on that.   Joe: Yeah, that would be a lifesaver because this is how it's impacting my ads now. So you know back in the day, if you run out of stock on FBA, your listing is not showing anymore, your ads are not delivering. However, with AWD, if you've got stock, what it's done now is it changes our seller delivery date. So we realize that with this duct tape,   Bradley Sutton: and you're conversion like tanks right, because it says like oh, delivery in three weeks or something crazy like that.   Joe: So this duct tape product had delivery in two months. I'm not waiting two months to get duct tape.   Bradley Sutton: So instead of the listing going dead, it still shows available, but then two months.   Joe: So people are clicking on this sponsored ads and they're like, yeah, I'm not waiting two months to get a duct tape, I'm going to the alternative person which is their competitor. So, I'll add just hitting, hitting, hitting, hitting, no sales. And you're like what's going on? And then now when you look at it and it's fine detail, delivers in two months. You're like that's so. Now we've had to end the crazy thing about when you've got 4,000 ads, because you've got five ads SKUs, you can't go and manually turn all those off and then wait until it comes back in stock to turn it back on. So that's been a nightmare as well.   Bradley Sutton: Now Interesting, okay. So yeah, it looks like AWD, like overall pretty decent. You save all those fees, probably thousands and thousands of dollars of fees. You're saving tens of thousands of dollars in warehouse, tens of thousands of dollars in warehouse. But on the flip side, you almost have to, you know if, if you're not using Helium 10, um for inventory management, you almost have to like hire another full-time employee just to manage that, depending on how many SKUs you have, or else, or else you're going to lose, you know too much money.   It's not just the lost sales, what's advertising, like you said, very good, very good, uh, very good point. Um, if I were to ask you like, all right, hey, end of the day, not everybody can, can have a business that does 30 million a year. What set? What has set you guys, uh, apart? Obviously, you know you have some cool patent and some product. You know for one of them that that nobody else can get. That's been around since 1920, but it's anybody you know. I'm sure there's billions of or millions of businesses that were made a century ago, that that technically you could sell, but that doesn't mean you're going to be a 30 million dollar seller. So what sets you guys apart, would you say?   Joe: I think it's that consistency and never give up mentality when you start off a product, because a lot of things that I've seen with other sellers is they're quick to write off a product because they're not profitable with it within the first kind of initial launch phase. And what I've noticed is we stick out with the product and our launches are in strategies here. So we start off with a launch. So, let's say, we're doing zip bags right and we have these zip bags. They're heavy duty, so it's four mil size. When we start off with a zip bag, we're happy to lose some money on that because we know it's repeat purchases. So we now have to calculate and understand okay, this is the frequency of those sales, this is what we expect to come in, what sizes are winning, and basically having the consistency to keep pushing, even though it might not be profitable to start. Eventually, when you start getting those repeat sales, you'll see the profitability come in and that's where those products, when they start winning. You do the exact same thing with new launches and it's, like I said, that consistency to keep doing that with new launches and new launches and new launches has been a game changer. And then also just not being afraid to test Amazon. So you know, like I said with our vitamin D one, we've thrown different keywords in there, we've thrown different words in there, even at times where you get delisted because Amazon said these things don't work or this is, you can't put that writing, so it's.   It's helped us push our listing and appear in different places and we always do tracking to see if it's click-through rates, if it's the title. So, for example, some of our titles have our brand name, which is spot and industrial. That's a pretty long brand name and if you look at our uh, a product of ours on mobile devices, our brand name takes up should I? I say, 40% of the title. So a lot of our keywords and use cases don't actually show on mobile. So what we did test was removing the brand name and leading with the use cases and the product keywords and it started converting better because nobody cared what our brand name was.   But if they're seeing that zip bag for Legos, for this, for this, and it's heavy duty and it's waterproof, that's what people want to see and it increased our click-through rates, which increased our conversions as well. So stuff like that and they're minute tests. But if you do that on a catalog and with products at a volume, it can be a massive scale. And when you realize that from a potential of okay, we have 800 ASINs, 50% of them increase in conversion rates by just 10, 20% I mean in click-through rates you're bringing in even way more traffic and if you hold your conversion rates, that increases your sales without having to do any change in bids and anything like that. So those key changes allow you to save your dollars but still gain on all that traffic.   Bradley Sutton: Now, if I were to ask you your favorite Helium 10 tool, is it Cerebro, is it Adtomic? Is it Magnet? Chrome extension, what is it?   Joe: I would say I love the Chrome extension because it helps me. If I go onto a competitor, straight away I see what they're lacking If they don't have 150 characters in their titles, if they don't have enough bullets, if they don't have, you know, enough bullets, if they don't have enough images. So the moment I see a competitor that doesn't check all the boxes that the Helium tool shows, I'm targeting them. Why? Because if you look at my products I have 10, you know most optimized on your thing. Then at the same time I look at keywords and it gives me a breakdown of how much revenue is in this keyword, how much revenue is in this industry. So before we go launch a specific product like we were launching an anti-slip tape because we want to add to our tape ranges so just looking at that, you'll look at that keyword anti-slip tape. It brings in 600 million a month from all these different competitors.   Now I can run those competitors through Black Box and I love Black Box as well because it helps me really fine tune what I'm targeting and who I'm looking for. So, I can say they get X amount of revenue monthly with X amount of reviews. Like I said, if they have anything below four, Black Box shows me those people. Those are easy people I can add to my product targeting campaigns and I know, because our listings are optimized, we'll easily take some sales from those people. Campaigns and I know, because our listings are optimized, we'll easily take some sales from those people. So, I would say the listing Blackbox and also the Chrome extension will be my two favorite.   Bradley Sutton: All right. If anybody wants to find you on the interwebs out there, like on LinkedIn or somewhere like you open to saying how they can find you guys out there.   Joe: Oh yes, of course, on LinkedIn obviously it's just Joe Sanhanga, my name, and then on Instagram it's j.sanhanga, which is my last name, s-a-n-h-a-n-g-a, and that's mostly where I am on social media. But any questions or whatever I can on LinkedIn, you can just pop it in and I'll try and help where I can.   Bradley Sutton: Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and hope to see you at an upcoming event soon then.  

Can your brand truly stand out in the crowded Amazon or e-commerce marketplace? This episode features Kevin King, a master of product differentiation, marketing, and branding, who shares game-changing strategies to elevate your business beyond the basics. Kevin walks us through the creation of his innovative Basecamp Apple Watch charging dock, illustrating how identifying market gaps and blending functionality with aesthetic appeal can help you craft a premium product that demands attention. We then uncover the critical role of visual storytelling and emotional appeal in successful product marketing. Kevin shares compelling real-life examples, including a groundbreaking product launch during Christmas 2015 and the branding triumph of Liquid Death. We dive into the challenges and rewards of rebranding, drawing lessons from Kevin's experience with his dog product line transformation. The conversation underscores the importance of innovative packaging and impactful imagery in driving sales and maintaining a brand's identity. Finally, we explore unconventional marketing strategies that can turn an ordinary product into a thriving brand. Kevin recounts the phenomenal success of a hand sanitizer brand during the 2020 pandemic, revealing how creative tactics like catchy jingles and engaging public interactions led to remarkable sales figures. Whether you are an aspiring Amazon seller or a seasoned seller, this episode is packed with valuable insights and strategies to help you achieve a standout presence in a saturated market. In episode 598 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Carrie and Kevin discuss: 00:00 - Product Differentiation Secrets With Kevin King 04:36 - Multi-Functional Charging Dock Design 06:57 - Product Development From Scratch 10:16 - Illustrating a Product's Transformation With Cartoons 10:54 - Product Innovation and Differentiation Strategies 14:33 - Brand Identity Success Through Innovation 15:48 - Premium Bully Sticks Differentiation Strategy 16:50 - Researching and Deciding on Bully Sticks 21:35 - Listing Strategy for Niche Keywords 27:09 - Differentiating Products for Marketplace Success 27:36 - Pet Product Influencer Partnership 31:24 - Building a Brand With Differentiation 35:19 - Hand Sanitizer Market Frustration and Innovation 41:52 - Unconventional Marketing Strategies for Brand Success 42:45 - Successful Million Dollar Marketing  Strategy Transcript Carrie Miller: In today's episode, Kevin King is going to be sharing his secrets on how to differentiate your products so that you stand out from the competition.   Bradley Sutton: How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Are you a six, seven or eight figure seller and want to network in a private mastermind group with other experienced sellers? Or maybe you want to take advantage of monthly advanced training sessions with Kevin King, an expert guest? Do you want to come to our quarterly in-person all-day trainings at Helium 10 headquarters? Or do you want the widest access to the Helium 10 set of tools? For all of these things, the Elite program might be for you. For more information on Helium 10 Elite, go to h10.me/elite. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Seller's podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world.   Kevin King: You know, a lot of times people don't in the space, don't like to share their products. They're afraid people are going to copy them. I'm afraid like, oh, if I share this, this cool thing I found, I'm going to have a hundred different copiers on it. And that does happen. You know, Bradley's had that with the coffin shelf, you know, here at series, and now there's I don't know how many coffin shelves that are A lot, a lot. Yeah, so it does happen. But I'm going to show you some ways to make that almost impossible today. I mean not to say that someone can't mimic you, because sometimes when people copy, that's a nice way of flattery. But there's a lot of things that you can do to differentiate your product and it's becoming super important. You know the days of when I first started. I know you've been doing this for a while 2015, 2016. You just go to Alibaba. You'd find a product look at Helium 10, see where the gaps are and just stick a different name on there and maybe create a logo, put it on there and put that up and sell it. Those days are long gone. I mean, can that still happen? Occasionally, someone can have success doing that, but it's extremely, extremely difficult. And branding true branding and true product differentiation is where it's at. And some people think, well, I'll just add a warranty or I'll add an eBook to my product or I'll bundle it with something else and that'll make it different enough. And that's usually not enough. And in today's world, you got to change your approach and that's what I'm going to show you today with real-life, real-world examples of my actual products. Some of these I'm not selling anymore for different reasons. Pricing got priced out of the market with raw supplies or something like that. But I'm going to show you exactly what I do and to try to give you some insights and some perspective on how you can approach this differently for what you're doing.   Carrie Miller: Very nice, I'm excited.   Kevin King: When it comes to business, there's really only two things that matter, and when you cut it to the core, that's innovation and marketing. I mean, yeah, there's all the details of finance and money and all this kind of stuff, but really, if you look at any business look at Apple, you look at Microsoft, you look at Tesla, you look at any of these. It's innovation and marketing. Those are the two fundamental things that you should be focusing on first. So, I'm going to start off with innovation. So the first thing I'm talking about is innovation. This is a product on screen called Basecamp. This is an Apple watch charging dock. It also charges your iPhone, charges your iPad. It has a night light on it. This is a really, really cool product that came out in 2015. It was launched in 2015.   Kevin King: So almost nine years ago, right when the first Apple Watch came out, and where this product, how this originated. This is a product that I sold and I actually created this product from scratch. This was my actual product and I created it from scratch right when the first Apple Watch came out. And what happened is I went on Amazon to try to find some ideas for products and I saw that Apple Watch charging docks were trending at the time and most all of them were like these cheap bamboo kind of wooden docks for 15 to 20 bucks, all coming off of Alibaba, with just different names on them. Each one looks exactly the same, just had a different name, and I was like, if I'm going to spend 500 bucks for a watch or whatever the watch costs back then. I don't want some cheap, cheap stand to put it on, I want something that looks cool. So I developed this that I would want and I was like I don't want something where there's cables hanging across my desk, cables hanging across my nightstand, so I want to hide all the cables and I want to be able to charge like three things at once. And so that's what I developed, and so this particular product you can see here has a little light on it.   Kevin King: I later added a Bluetooth speaker to it in a version two. It put the watch up on top, the phone would sit on the side and it had a. The charging was buried inside all the cables. Um, the back actually had two additional USB ports so that you could actually charge an iPad or put something else on the back of it. It had. The cables were all hidden underneath, so you'd wrap the cable around underneath so it's not like just all messing up your, your desktop or your, your nightstand or whatever the night light there you can see it. You can hit that button a few times and adjust it up in different levels. I created a really nice box for it and I had all the different adapters. I was prepared to sell this in the US market, and so I created one charging dock and then had them make the different adapters that go in the end, depending on if it's for the UK or for Europe, or for the US or for Australia the bigger markets. I later added a Bluetooth speaker to it. I changed that nightlight to not just a nightlight but actually a Bluetooth speaker so that you could this is the days before there was beats or any of that kind of stuff so it actually was a cool, cool thing to be able to have your phone sitting there charging and have a little speaker that would play your sound music or your wake-up call or whatever. You can see there are the little nightlights turned on. As an example, these are actually some of my listing photos that you're seeing on this. You can see that it would fit all kinds of different watch bands. I created a really nice box for the outside of it to differentiate it so that when you got it felt like you're paying 80 bucks for this thing.   Kevin King: This was a little video that I had made. I found the way I got this made is I came up with the idea. I found a factory on Global Sources Comm. So I didn't even use Alibaba. I use a company called global sources comm, which is another alternate sourcing place. It's not as big as Alibaba, but you can find some better factories sometimes on there. So if you haven haven't checked that out, check it out. And I found a factory in Shenzhen, China, that would do this and I ended up paying them a thousand dollars for the design and so they had their internal guys do all the design and then the molding and everything. It was expensive. It cost me about 30 grand to do all the molding because it's electrical parts and USB and there's a chip in there. So this is not for everybody, but I spent about 30 grand on that.   Kevin King: We've created all kinds of prototypes and they would send me these files, these 3D rendered files and these like SFP files, I think they're called. And then I took that actual file. So before this was ever manufactured, didn't even exist, there wasn't even a prototype yet. I sent it to a guy in Eastern Europe and he made this rendering from me from those files and this is a video. He made this entire video, this. The product did not exist so I could see it exactly as it was gonna be. He made these 360 degrees, basically before there was AI. AI video of the actual product. You can see this one only has one charging dock on a USB on the back.   Kevin King: I had a second one, but I did this and then I sent this out and did some testing, like what do you guys think of this? And I was able to get the people at one of these big Apple insider blog posts. They're like, when this comes out, let us know, we'll publicize it. So right there I was, like they thought it was cool. So, I had my launch ready to go. Like I said this didn't come from Alibaba, this didn't come from the Iwo market or the Canton fair.   Kevin King: The idea for this, this came from my head, and so I created this from scratch from my head. I've done that for a dog bowl and for some other products as well, and so I also. At the same time, back in 2015, I launched five different brands at once. Some of them were the traditional find something on Alibaba, change it up a little bit, change the packaging, put your logo on it and then send it out. But this one I actually designed from scratch. I think that's where you need to start thinking more and more about is designing things from scratch, and it's not always about a better mousetrap, it's about what the people want.   Kevin King: With today's technology and with the AI, you can do so much that I couldn't do nine years ago when this was launched. That you can do now with iterations and these renderings, that you could have 20 different types of this and do all kinds of testing on PickFu. You can do so much more now with this. So this was the renderings that they would send me. So I would open this up, these EASM files, and I could play around with it on my computer and spin it and everything and say, oh, let's modify this or let's change this, or I don't like where this is positioned, put the logo over here. So this before we even made a prototype.   Kevin King: And then what I did is I did 3D printing. So I had there's a guy in Austin where I live that had like 30 different 3D printers in his garage, literally, and so he had all kinds of different sizes and machines. I just took it. They followed him and he made this. This is a 3d printed uh sample. And then I took this to the Apple store in Austin and I said can, can you open up the drawer of all the watches. Uh, I want to make sure every watch, every band, fits on here and doesn't touch the light, and we'll make sure the cable fits through the, the fits through the, the channel on the back and everything. So, I had a total like piece of crap, basically, but 3d printed, but it's actually at least something that's I can hold and touch and feel, kind of get an idea of how it's going to be. And then we made modifications. So after I tested it with this, then I went through and I made modifications oh, we need to make the cable doesn't quite fit, it's not quite snug enough or it's crimping in the corner. So we went back and I, I, we made some modifications to it and then this was a prototype. So then they do what's a machine prototype? Um, there's a specific name for it, but it's a machine Like it's. They make like 20 of them before they make the mass run, and then I could actually test it and so I took it and that's what we created.   Kevin King: This is one of the product photos for the actual that I used on Amazon that I had taken. This is one in my guest room and so we just put it on a nightstand and just showed it. They're actually charging three different devices and how it works. It works like magic. And for the listing also, I actually showed. You know, I create cartoons. I found someone on Upwork.com that would do this for 50 bucks and I had them actually said I want a before and after. I could shoot this with photography and it would be expensive. So I just had them make a cartoon and say, look, show the before. Because every product you need to be trying to solve pain points. I mean there's three or four different things you want to focus on when you're developing a product. One of those is solving someone's pain point. So you want to show them what it's like before your product and what it's like after your product. So that's what I did here. Instead of using photos, I used these cartoons.   Kevin King: So I show on the left how you got all these cables everywhere and stuff all over the place taking up your whole nightstand just a mess. You're having trouble sleeping over there, the person you know. There're all kinds of little hints all throughout this thing. You got a light that's flashing on it instead of a night light. That's all bright, keeping you up. And then then you got the one on the right. That's like you having a peaceful sleep, everything's organized, everything's nice, and so these are things that you want to think about when you're actually creating your images is show the before and the after. You can do it in photos, you can do it in, or you can do it in cartoons and like this one and this, it worked really, really well. You're going to see another example of this in a minute. So this is the way you can do an example of how you can do innovation.   Kevin King: This product on 2015, Christmas of 2015, I was selling about $30,000, $40,000 a day of it at $89. And then what happened is the reason. I and I did a second version, I did a version two with feedback and put the Bluetooth speaker in, did some other changes, and then in March or April of the next year this is before there was Gatita, before there's any or Helium 10 that had the refund ability, and someone posted on a Facebook group, on the FBA High Rollers Facebook group on Helium 10, saying, oh, did you know that Amazon will refund you for damages and lost items? And so, I was like, oh, that's cool, they lost some of these things when I shipped them in. So, I filed a claim. And when I filed that claim for like 10 missing units, amazon suspended the listing and said, oh, we're going to do what's called a bend check. And they went and they actually said we're going to stop all sales. And we got to do a total inventory across all of our warehouses and I was like no, no, no, don't do that, don't do that, I don't care about the 10 units, just forget it, forget the claim. You're killing, you're crushing me on my momentum. Well, I was down about 10 days while they did this quote unquote Ben check worst decision I ever made and that basically killed the momentum of the product. But I was able to bring it back up, but never back to that level, because there's all kinds of other competition coming in. Um, and I sold this on uh, uh I forget the name of the website. Now it's kind of like a sharper image uh, website for dudes. I sold this in the best buy. I sold it a lot of places, but then the market started changing and I was able to ride this for a couple of years and it was good. So that's a way that you can think about doing innovation. That's an example of one that I did.   Kevin King: Now let's talk about something on the marketing side. On the marketing side, you can differentiate with your packaging. A lot of people do that, you know. You could have just a generic bottle that you see on the right or a really nice bottle on the left and put your differentiating bullet points in your image how they're showing one's made from bamboo and no plastic or biodegrade super-fast. The other one's going to take hundreds of years, and so on. These are great ways you can do it in your, in your image, in your image stack, to actually show the difference. Because it remembers, on Amazon, people, people buy, buy photos. They don't buy products. My buddy, Perry Belcher, is actually the one that actually said that. But they can't touch the product, they can't hold it in their hands, so they're buying based on the photos. So you got to remember that so many people skimp on their photos or they don't spend enough time creating the right photos to create the right emotions. People buy on emotion and they buy on photos, and so by differentiating like this, you can do a lot of cool stuff in your infographics and your stack.   Kevin King: Look at another one. I mean this is someone selling a commodity Liquid Death is water, it's just water. But look what they did with the branding and the way they actually packaged it. They put it into a can instead of a bottle. They had this liquid death name. All the graphics it's just most of the cans are actually oversized. Liquid Death is a great case study if you want to go and look at how someone actually has developed a brand on something that everybody else is selling and actually stand out. Now it's over a billion-dollar company and there's crushing. It's a really, really good case study. At some point I'll go into deep detail on this, but I want to show you one of my products where I did this. I had a brand that was originally called Tailwaggles and I made a mistake on this brand. I filed for trademarks to get brand registry and all that kind of stuff and about three months into the trademark process I get a note from the trademark office saying oh sorry, your name, Tailwaggles, is too close to something else. This is three months after filing and I'd already done the homework, but they found something in the system so I had to change it to Wag Haus. So I had to. Actually, I was already in production on some dog bowls and I actually had to call the factory, said throw away all those old molds and those imprints. We got to change the logo and logo and to change the whole name mid-production. It cost me a lot of money to Wag Haus, but one of the products that I sold under this this is the Wag Haus logo. Here it wore bully sticks.   Kevin King: If you're not familiar with what bully sticks are, they're still popular today. It's a dog treat. It's made out of the penis of a cow, so they use every part of a cow to maximize the value when they when they butcher it for meat and they take the penis and they actually make bully sticks for dogs. It's a very popular dog treat. So, there's six inch versions, there's 12 inch versions. Those are two typical sizes, and it in 2016, 2017. I was doing some research of what's selling on Amazon. I saw that these things are just crushing it. I already had a dog bowl out, so I was looking for another type of product to accentuate my slow feed dog. Well, and bully sticks came up and back then there's Helium 10 didn't have what was just getting going, so they didn't have Magnets and they didn't have Cerebro and all that stuff. So, I had to use this old program called amazing product validator. And so, I punched in bully sticks and look there, I was like boom, big green result thing saying that's a really good keyword, excellent BSR. You know, look at that search 359,000 search volume. I was like, all right, I'm going to do bully sticks.   Kevin King: So I started researching bully sticks and I looked at these. This is another tool back then where it was popular, called merchant words, and these are results from Merchant Words. They showed these search volumes actually are probably not right but it's the best we had back then. We didn't have much more accurate stuff like Helium 10. So it showed 7 million. I was like, all right, all the different keywords are based off of that free range and those are beef bully sticks and bully sticks for dogs and all had some decent search volumes. So I like, all right, I'm going to go into bully sticks as my next product on this brand. So I pulled up and did a search and I see that, um, there's all these different brands that are selling bully sticks and a lot of them, this are selling for around 20 to 30 bucks and it's a pretty much a package like a plastic bag full of 20 30 bully sticks, all for around 30 bucks, so somewhere around a dollar and a half a stick is basically the cost to the consumer for these. And I was like, okay, that looks good. So I started calling some factories and I was like I need to differentiate. I don't want to be just another guy selling 30 bully sticks for 30 bucks. What can you do? What can you make special?   Kevin King: And I started reading all the reviews on all the products and the reviews were coming back with like, oh, these bully sticks stink because you can just imagine it's the part of the cow that you know that area stinks sometimes and so people the it. My house has an odor to it. After my dog chews it or some liquid drips out onto my couch, my dog jumps up on the couch. It's just. And then people were worried about where are these bully sticks from. Is it US cows or is it some? There's a big scare of like Chinese beef back there. Are they Chinese cows? Are they from Brazil? Where are they from? And so, I was like I need to differentiate this product and I don't want to just put it in a plastic bag either. I want to put it in something really cool, and so the way I differentiated the product is I found this through tracking down. I wanted to make sure it was US made US beef, not imported, and I wanted to set it apart. And so, I found this guy who was a classically trained French chef, like worked in Michelin star restaurants and he was up in the New England area and I got in touch with him and said you make bully sticks. He's like oh yeah, I don't, but I don't do them on machines, I hand carve them, we smoke them in a certain way. We have a 15-step organic process that we do. I'm like this sounds perfect. This is like I can differentiate this from all these little cheap bully sticks.   Kevin King: I was like, well, they cost. He said you're not going to like this part, they're very expensive. So, I ended up having to sell three bully sticks, three 12-inch ones for $54 and 95 cents, so 55 bucks for three bully sticks. Now remember everybody else on Amazon selling 30 for 30 bucks roughly. So, I'm like way crazy overpriced. I was like I don't know if this is going to work. You know everybody, everybody always says on Amazon it's all about the price, all about the value. And I'm like I don't know if this is going to work. But I'm like you know what? I think there's people on Amazon that don't care about the price. If you know the avatar of your customer, you know that there's a lot of pet owners that a pet is just a farm animal. You know they keep the dog out in the backyard and it's just a farm animal. But for other people a pet is part of their family, it's their best friend, it's their compadre. I just saw a story my dad just forwarded me a couple days ago about how people take care of their pet's health better than they take care of their own health. And it's true and I was like I can market to that. There's people that have dogs that are willing to spend really good money for their dogs to give them the best. So this is classically trained French chef. That's a good story. It's organic. I'm solving all the problems of the juice because the way he cooks these and he does the smoking and stuff. They don't have all that extra liquid in them, they don't stink. They're organic. It's from the US, I can solve all the review pain points, and this is before all the AI tools existed to analyze reviews.   Kevin King: I was having to read reviews, so I was looking at how can I package these different, and so these were some of the packaging ideas I came with. But what I ended up doing is putting them in a cigar box. So I had a custom cigar box. I found a company in Brooklyn, New York, that's close to this guy, so I didn't have to pay shipping across the US or across the world. They'd make these boxes for me. I'd put a sticker on the outside with, like a cool textured label on the outside of it, and then we put them in the cigar boxes. So this is the six inch version. So there's five, six inches and those sold for 40, uh, 44, 95, I think it was. And the 12-inch version was only three sticks and sold for 54, 95. But I packaged it. So when you got it, you felt confirmed. You're like, if you just spent 44 bucks for five of these bully sticks, you're like, did I just get ripped off? But when it comes in the, in the, in the Amazon box, and you open it up, you're like, oh, this is a cool box. It's got a cool texture to it. It's all about the sensation when you feel the box. There's like a little edge on it, like a texture. The label had like a texture on it, so like, oh, this is kind of nice. So it helps justify in the mind that I'm getting value here. These are premium.   Kevin King: I created the listing. This is actually the bullet points and the title for the listing. All the keywords are in there and what I focused on is I couldn't compete on the word bully sticks, because the word bully sticks, as you saw earlier, was super popular and almost everything on that page is cheap, and so I could do a launch. Back then you could do all these coupons and all these giveaways and rank to the top within a day or two. It's crazy stuff you could do back in the day and I would get there. But then as soon as I stopped doing these promotions, I would fall off to page two, page three. But on long tail keywords like bully sticks made in USA or bully sticks no odor or premium bully sticks, those I could stay on page one for and there was enough keyword depth on all those where I could stay ranked for those and it worked because there's enough niche, enough variation in the keywords where it actually worked.   Kevin King: And so, then I created pictures. I went to a dog place, a dog kennel, where my dog would stay, sometimes like hey, can you get permission from some of the owners, I want to come in here and do a photo shoot with dogs? So we did a little cute little dog with a chef hat on, did another dog holding it. So actual, real pictures, not my iPhone, because a lot of other bully stick people were taking their iPhone, just taking a picture of a dog sitting on the ground or something. Just horrible pictures. So I create all these kind of cute pictures. Remember, selling is about emotion and so this creates emotion of oh look, how cute he is. And then I did a whole series of image stacks to show the difference. Because if you see something on Amazon for 50 bucks, you're like and it's three sticks, and you're like this guy's out of his freaking mind, $50, $55 for three sticks. I can just go buy 30 for 30. So I had to show the difference. Remember what I said people buy photos on Amazon, they don't buy products. And so, I showed them in the box to show that these are big. You know these aren't little skinny little things, they're like big honking sticks. I listed all the reasons people wouldn't buy, all the objections basically, and all the things that were important in all my research. You know these are kosher. You know you don't think about that, for a dog, I mean, but some people. That's important to them. So everything that was important I put on here. These are kosher sticks.   Kevin King: I showed the comparison look, ours are full. The other guys they stretch theirs. That's how they can sell 30 for 30 bucks because they're stretched and they're hollow. I showed look, ours are wide, the other guys are skinny. I showed look, ours has no odor, it's glossy and smooth, but the other ones stink. I showed look, ours are with a knife and there's something sitting on the table there. They're hand cut. The other ones are on some nasty ass machine that's never cleaned. So I showed all the reasons why you don't want these cheap ones and why you want mine. And then I showed a comparison of ours versus others just to keep.   Kevin King: I kept driving at home Like you're going through this image stack. You're like, all right, all right, all right, I get it, I get it. I showed them on a scale, like look, this is what they weigh. Don't just trust my, trust me. I mean, yeah, you could Photoshop this, but don't. I showed them. It validates it. So I showed everything. At the top here's some dogs driving through like a fast-food place and they're just getting some cheap, cheap, you know happy meal type of cheap hamburgers or something. And then I show in the bottom if you want Wag Haus sticks, you'd like go into a nice steakhouse where there's a maître d' with a bow tie on a serving these on a platter and just connotates that image and creates that emotion, creates that feel and helps justify why you should give these a try. And then I did another cartoon. I tested different cartoons, so I had another one go from fast food to Wag Haus Premium similar concept. Now it's still in a car, they're inside the restaurant and you look at the sign there. If you look at it, there's all kinds of details. If people blow this up, I know you can't see it very good here on the screen, but on Amazon if they blow it up, they would see. You know other, all these kinds of like making fun of the other sticks all in the menu and stuff. It works.   Kevin King: And then I created, you know a put back. Then I was called EBC but now it's called a plus content. So I created a plus content and I used pretty people. You want to use pretty people. You want to use faces whenever you can, even though you have the dog use and faces. There's science that shows that's a 35% lift in conversion rate when you use faces. A lot of people don't use faces in their photos. They just show the hands or they show the dog. But you need to have people and showing that they're having fun, their dogs happy. You're creating that emotion. I went out. This is before. It was popular to find influencers, influencer. The whole influencer UGC game was just getting going at this time. But this guy I found him on I think it's called Fame Kit. I forget the name of the website. I don't even know if it still exists, but you could go and you could hire people to create UGC.   Kevin King: I'm just going to play you a little bit of this video. I did not script this. I sent this to the guy. I sent him my bullet points to say, hey, this is kind of what I'm looking for. Can you do something? But I'm just going to play the first part of this because it's pretty cool what he did and you're going to see where he actually sniffs these things. He actually pulls them up to his nose yeah, they're right there. He actually pulls them up to his nose and does a demonstration of showing, look, there's really no smell, and I mean it just creates that trust and that yes, it's true. And then he's got playing with his dogs and he just did a really good job. Then I take a look at my reviews. Now these are some of the real reviews that were coming on the products. You know I was getting some fives and fours highly recommended. I would get the occasional one-star review. Someone like this is the biggest rip-off ever Three sticks for 50 bucks. You've got to be freaking, kidding me. But look, I got constant reviews. I had a 4.6, I think, average overall and it just worked really well. And I had one guy I subscribe and save. It had just begun back then, so I was on subscribe and save. One guy I think he did 86 or 87 times on subscribe and save Just kept buying them over and over like every, every. Every time that he would get renewed, he'd buy them. And he'd buy them in between too because he needed more. It just this work.   Kevin King: This is how you differentiate a product, uh, and how you approach a market where it's saturated differently and don't always think it's always about the price. As long as there's long tail keywords, you can do some amazing stuff. There's just a few more the lifestyle pictures the on the right there's my actual dog, Zoe, when she was a little much younger, and what happened is the guys that owned the best bully sticks, which is the biggest brand on Amazon. They saw what I was doing and they're like how's this guy, this guy in Texas, selling $50 for three sticks? We need to reach out to him. So they reached out to me and they said hey, why don't we partner up? Why don't you actually sell some of our stuff? You can basically private label some of our other treats. We've got duck feet and we've got, uh, pig's ears and we've got all these, uh, you know, antlers and all this other kind of stuff. Why don't we, why don't we partner up and you just, you just use your brand and private label from us. We manufacture here in the States, we'll ship it to you. So I tried it and it didn't work. I actually I need to package it differently. So, instead of putting in a plastic bag. I had these custom bags made and we tried this. It just didn't work. But my other bully sticks because of differentiation, the way I marketed it, the opportunities there and appealing to the rabid pet owner wanting to take care of their best friend, their member of their family it worked. This is an example on pets.   Kevin King: Now, if you want to get some ideas, if you're trying to ideate this oh, Kevin, this sounds good, but how do I do this? This is a really good link here that you can go to actually get an idea on how to position. This is a positioning, marketing positioning. I'm positioning the product against everybody else and this five-step process it's free at aprildunford.com that link there. Take a screenshot of this or maybe someone can post it in the chat. And this is a good five-step process to help you brainstorm through and to know how can you truly differentiate your product. So, I recommend you at least take a gander at that or have someone on your team take a gander at that. So, when you're trying to come up with your next product or differentiate what you've currently got, maybe something's kind of on the down and outs right now, but if you just re-engineer that product and come up from a different positioning point of view. You can do really well. So that's a resource for you there. That should be really good.   Kevin King: Now let's take a look at another thing on differentiation how do you turn a commodity into a brand, a commodity? You got Temu coming in that's selling all these cheap things on Amazon. You got Amazon now going to start allowing factories to ship directly from China under this Amazon whatever. It's called Amazon Direct there's a name for it but where they're going to basically have their own version of Temu on Amazon. That is going to kill some people. You're going to see some people go out of business on Amazon because of this, because they're not differentiating. They're just another me too product. There's no differentiation other than maybe the price, and it's who can sell the cheapest price is going to win, and if you're competing on price, you you're playing a losing game. You're going to lose against these Chinese factories. They're going direct because they're going to sell it on Amazon for less than you're buying it from them for. Let me repeat that when Amazon launches this section, which is basically a Temu type of section, your factory will sell it for less on Amazon direct to the consumer for less than what the price they're willing to give you to buy it from them. That's going to happen.   Kevin King: So if you don't differentiate your products or you're not thinking in terms of some of these examples I've given you, you're going to be. You may be in some high water and maybe going out of business, or if you're just starting, you may not have a chance to actually succeed. You've got to approach this game differently now. It's more complicated, it's harder, it's a real business. It takes thought, it takes effort. In some cases, it takes money, but this is how you can do it with a commodity product. This is a periodic table. It's a really good thing take a screenshot of this that when you're creating a brand, it's a periodic table of branding. You always remember most of us from school, you had to learn the periodic table of elements. This is a periodic table of branding and this is some of the things that all go into creating a brand.   Kevin King: A brand is not just a logo. A lot of people think, well, I've got my brand on Amazon. You don't have a brand, dude, you have no brand. This is no brand. This is a logo and a name. A logo and a name does not make a brand. A brand connotates a feeling. It connotates a message. It connotates an identity, an affinity for people. There's a lot more to it, and these are some of the things. Does the type of type style you use matter? Yes, that's part of it. Does the logo matter? Yes, that's part of it, but every brand has a voice, every brand. The name is important yes, but that's not a brand. You've got to go way, way beyond that, and this shows you some of the elements in a really nice, concise way that you need to focus on when you're truly building your brand, and I'm going to show you an example of this right now on how to do this with a commodity product, with one of mine.   Kevin King: We all remember the pandemic of 2020 and hand sanitizer was going nuts on Amazon. It was booming worldwide. Everybody's freaking out need to buy hand sanitizer. Around April of 2020, this was the SQP report, the Search Query Performance report on Amazon. It had just come out as a brand-new kind of thing on Amazon and hand sanitizer was number six, and some partners of mine and one of my other Amazon companies saw this and they're like we should do hand sanitizer and I'm like no dude, everybody and their brother's going to be doing hand sanitizer. This is going to be like hoverboards, going to be like fidget spinners. Everybody's going to be doing it. And they're like, no, we can do it. We got this, this company in India that can make this stuff for us. Yeah, I started doing homework on it. I'm like, well, okay, maybe there's something to it, but let me look into it. So I looked into it and I used some other tools. This is not Helium 10, it's a different tool. It's a private mastermind tool that shows showed me last week's sales volume and on the hand sanitizer it showed this was in April. It showed 129,000 units on Amazon on the word hand sanitizer alone just that single keyword. And then other ones. I was like all right. And then there's all these.   Kevin King: The Polaris, this big market research company, came out and said this hand sanitizer thing, even if the COVID goes away, people are going to change their habits. And yeah, you're going to have a huge bump because everybody's now using hand sanitizer but a lot of places are going to install hand sanitizer machines. It's going to become more pervasive in society. And I was like, yeah, okay, so if this has a big boom, boom up, it's going to go down when COVID goes away, but it's going to probably be higher than what it was before COVID started, just because people have changed their habits or they're more aware of it. That's basically what this Polaris study said. So, I'm like, all right, let's look, let's look school.   Kevin King: Then there's a story came out of this this kid that was in, uh, in in the middle of the United States I think he's in Tennessee or Kentucky or somewhere and he was going to all the dollar stores, uh, and buying out their hand sanitizer and then arbitraging it on Amazon for those crazy amounts. He ended up getting sued by the, by the uh, the state, uh, for price gouging and stuff. But I'm like, all right, and he's just crushing it. And so, you're all this stuff coming out. And then I look on Amazon and this is what was selling, because hand sensors, all the Perel and Germ Sharks, Germ X the two big brands in the US were hard to get.   Kevin King: And then what Amazon did is they created something called the COVID store and they gated, basically Perel. They said all the first responders, all the hospitals need to have access to this, not you people at home. We need to save this for the people that really need it, that are dying in the hospitals. So in order to buy the big hand sanitizers, you had to go into the COVID store and get authorized, and so it took a lot of the competition away on Amazon. I saw that and I started seeing all these like weird hand sanitizer people are making almost like felt like in their backyard coming up on Amazon. Some of it was long shipping times is coming from China and you'd order it and take a month to get to you and it's just garbage. And you look at, look at the reviews on they're just bad and they're selling for like crazy amounts it's $11.59 for these little bottles.   Kevin King: And so I was like, alright, guys, let's do this. We're not gonna use this company in India. We're gonna get proper FDA approval, we're gonna. There were some rules where you could at the time, where you could actually make this without going through all the steps of FDA if you did certain things. We figured out all that's figured out, all the legal side. We came out with a brand name of germ shark. We came out with and this logo. So this is where the name Germ Shark and we started this company. It was me and four other guys. I was handling them Amazon side of things and all the branding and all the marketing. And there's other guys handling all the sourcing and dealing with the factories and all that. And then the other three guys were the money guys and these guys put in about a million and a half bucks, before it was all said and done, of their own money.   Kevin King: Luckily, crypto was doing really well at the time. One of these guys was just making bank selling NFTs and on crypto, so he had a lot of extra cash just sitting around doing nothing. So he threw a bunch of that in and we started this brand, Germ Shark, and I was like, okay, if we're going to sell hand sanitizer in this super competitive commodity, hand sanitizer is like one to three ingredients, it's nothing. Anybody can do it. How do you differentiate a product that everything is basically the same? Yeah, you can put a smell in there or you can do a few things, but it's basically the same thing. How do you differentiate it? So, we came up with some bottles. We said we're gonna do a three pack of these small bottles and I tested it on Pick Fu and so I took R3, the ones that says winter there with the green box around it. Those were R3.   Kevin King: And I tested against these no-name brands, like these Chinese no-name brands, and we won, hands down won. Everybody said we would buy this one. This one looks legit, the others are sketchy. And then I tested against the top brands, like Perel, which is a number one brand in the US, and I got my butt kicked. Perel beat me because that's a bigger brand, people trust it more. So I was like okay, as long as Perel is not on the main Amazon site and they're locked away in this COVID store where nobody can get in there, I can crush it, I can be number one on Amazon until Perel comes back. And when Perel comes back onto the normal Amazon website, I'll be okay in spot number two or spot number three, because I've positioned myself, I've gotten my rankings, I've gotten my reviews. There's still enough depth in the market share that even if I'm spot two or three or four, I'll still make some good money. So we're like all right, let's go forward with this.   Kevin King: So then we create a whole line of products. We ended up going. We saw that there's wipes. We're having trouble. We had the big bottles to refill, like the canisters at, like the restaurants and malls and airports and stuff. We create little toys we actually created with our brand. We created like a little stuffed toy you see the little stuffed shark there. We create little holders. That little kind of turquoise looking thing in the middle is a holder for the clip onto your purse or onto your backpack or something for the small bottles, and then, oh, there's a better picture of it, these little guys here.   Kevin King: We created this kind of stuff, and why did we create this? Not to sell it, but for branding and for promotional purposes. So what we did with it is we went out and we did a campaign to hospitals, and so we reached out to hospitals and we said, hey, we'd love to send you a free gift. Thanks for your service, thanks for everything you're doing. We'd love to send you a free gift. So we made this little brochure here thanking them for everything. And then we sent a package of like 25 in a nice like four-color box, like a gift box. We put some of that little like shredded paper in there that makes it all look kind of fancy. Put them all in there and then we included, like you know, there's some kids and stuff in the hospital. So here's some stuffed toys. You know along the branding. And then what did they do? These are the actual ones getting it. You can see the box there and they started posting it all over social media and we started actually getting sales and this legitimized us. It showed like, look, this is legitimate, doctors are using this and they're showing this stuff off.   Kevin King: We create our A-plus content page and actually did some really good stuff with A-plus and we showed how, for every bottle, every package you buy, we donate a bottle. So we had a cause with it, too is we donated a bottle to charities. We created memes and graphics for social media that would actually show play off of different things. During that time, we ran huge campaigns on this. We did actual physical postcards in the mail. A lot of people was like, oh, the mail is dead, nobody checks the mail, bs. We did these physical postcards through the mail and sent them to hospitals, sent them to people that previously bought sanitizers. We got some lists. We got editorial recommendations because of our branding. People love the branding and the mission that we're giving a bottle for every three sold. And then we did stuff like jingles. We actually created a jingle for the brand because, remember I said, selling is emotional and this is a really good study here. You should take a look at this sometimes.   But sound is the most important thing to our brain, not visuals. So you can be watching a YouTube video and if the YouTube video is grainy or jumping around a little bit, then you might accept it, but as long as the sound quality is good. If the sound quality is good, you can deal with lesser quality video, but if the sound quality is bad, you're going to skip this. You're going to move on to something else and it's an area of your brain called Broca's area, and it's an interesting science. If you take a look at this from a branding point of view, if you can reach Broca's area, you can do things, really amazing things. Think of old jingles like the Oscar Mayer Wiener jingle, if you're old enough to remember that, or some of the old jingles that you see on TV now you know the State Farm jingles or some of the other ones that are out there. That's all branding and marketing and it's creating these visual images. There's a really. There's a lot more to this.   Kevin King: We could go and do a whole presentation just on this, but so we dialed in on Broca's area and to use influence, and so what we did is we created a jingle and then we created a video. I had, uh, one of the amazon companies that does these nice videos. I had a couple of them actually do it. I actually had a contest with pick food to be to be on water. I had four different companies doing and competing and we create these jingles and just this is not the best singing, so don't worry about the singing, but the music in the song. It will stick in your head. I'm here to help you, uh, keep your germs away. I'll bring the bottle to you. I've got the germ charge for you. Rub it, rub it, rub it, rub it. Germ charge protection. Peel your hand, catch the germs away. Brother, strength, the best protection, no matter where you are. It can't be too far.   Kevin King: Anyway, this was a really cool jingle that had all these lyrics to it and I sent this to Bradley here at Helium 10, and he watched it and he was like damn, dude, I can't get that out of my head now. I was like that's the point. So the next time that you want to get hand sanitizer, that comes to your mind. And it worked really well. So we had a couple of them. We also went out man on the street, we had these costumes and we would go down to a park and walk around, give them out and we'd go mess with people and we'd create all this stuff. We went to a grocery store and grabbed grocery carts and had like 10 of these sharks walking into this grocery store and freaking people out and just, we did all this kind of marketing to help differentiate and it didn't sell a lot locally but it helps us create the content that we could put out there worldwide. And it really worked really well.   Kevin King: These were our sales on seven, you know, $40,000 on one single skew on that day. And you can see, we just started crushing it and we started standing out, and this is how you take a commodity and you truly make it into a real brand. These were some sales, the first we started selling in July of 2020. We went live so this is basically the first month. Sales was a million bucks on a brand-new product, and so this stuff works, but you got to come at it from a different point of view. So, what I'm trying to do today is just show you a different way of thinking of this. Can you do everything I did? Maybe, maybe not, but you can start thinking in this direction and start moving in that direction, and that's what we have for you today. Thanks everybody for joining us.