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Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Thriving in Chaos: Neil Twa on Strategic Business Growth, Global Trade Dynamics, and AI Optimization
What if you could unlock the secrets to thriving amidst chaos in the ever-evolving business landscape? We welcome back Neil Twa, a seasoned entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in e-commerce and business growth, who left IBM to launch multiple successful brands. Neil shares his visionary outlook for 2025, offering a refreshing perspective on how economic changes like tariffs and supply chain dynamics present unique opportunities for strategic positioning and partnerships, especially on platforms like Amazon.
The episode dives into the complex world of trade and manufacturing strategies. Discover why outsourcing to China was driven by economic opportunities rather than blame, and how tariffs could serve as strategic tools for funding governmental systems instead of burdening citizens. Neil also reveals insightful strategies for avoiding direct competition with low-cost Chinese manufacturers, including negotiating tariffs to unlock profitability and access foreign markets. This conversation promises to enrich your understanding of global trade dynamics and prepare you for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Neil also explores the transformative potential of AI tools in optimizing business operations. From negotiating with suppliers to creating compelling Amazon listings, AI is revolutionizing how entrepreneurs operate. Learn how tools like Prophecy are optimizing pricing strategies and expanding profit margins by analyzing PPC dynamics. Neil further emphasizes how AI can accelerate decision-making and streamline processes, allowing businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Finally, Neil offers a glimpse into his personal life, sharing his passion for gaming and technology, and the importance of maintaining a balanced mindset to focus on what truly drives revenue and success.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson. Entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast. On today's episode, we have the pleasure of bringing Neil Twa back on the show. For those of you who missed it, neil was on the show on episode 243, where he dropped some major knowledge bombs as it related to the world of e-commerce and being an operator. For those of you who did not catch that show, for the last 17 years, neil has been constructing businesses both online and offline, after departing his senior IBM role. Since 2012, he's launched five-plus personal brands, generated tens of millions in revenue as eight-figure sellers and has assisted in the growth of a thousand plus others through consulting, coaching and mentoring, alongside his partner Reed and their Voltage team. Neil, I mentioned before we hit record that you are now on an elite list of second-time guests. Congratulations and welcome.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I feel honored Me myself and I appreciate being the three on the list.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. So what's going on? What's been the last time we talked?
Speaker 3:Yeah, dude. Well, we have been shoot. We've been busy building businesses, as you know. We've been building brands. We've been watching the after effects, as we're now January February timeframe into 2025. Can't believe we're in the middle of February already, holy crap.
Speaker 3:It seems like we just ran through the holiday period, which was pretty amazing. I don't know about your guys' businesses, but there was definitely a lot of buying going on maybe emotional buying, I don't know but there was a lot of buying going on this holiday season and so now that it kind of came through January and we analyzed numbers and we kind of saw what the potential of this year is going to look like for new and existing brands. And now we're talking more about acquisitions and stuff and where the economy is and just all the crap that's going on and people talking about tariffs and Amazon, this and you know the market, that and what will happen with the 301 and Teemu and all these other players in the market of the econ world, and thinking what's opportunity, while also making sure we maintain the ship, because the waves are a little weird right now.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. One thing I always really enjoy talking with you about is it, I will mention you're an optimistic person, you're a very optimistic person, and the glass always seems to be half full with you, and so what are some things you're excited about in 2025?
Speaker 3:Well, I am, I'm optimistically pragmatic, okay, I do see things for what they are. So that builds into the realistic aspect, which usually is kind of blunt for most people. But you know, I have that yeah, opportunistic side a little. I see opportunity maybe where others don't. I see disparate things and I see, you know, a way to the other side, where you know, most people don't see through the quagmire as much. Maybe it's a gift, maybe it's a autistic thing, an ADHD thing, who knows what, I don't know, but I just I see opportunity. And so when I'm working my business or working these things, and so when I'm working my business or working these things, maybe I sound like I oversimplify things or I make it all sound like it's really easy. You know, just push a few buttons and blah, blah, blah, but that's. You know, 17 years of experience talking, and with that I see a forecast, I see an opportunity, I see things changing in this first quarter of 2025. And with all of this bit of challenge and chaos and questions and tariffs, and you know Trump and his administration and the Doge thing that's going on and what's happening with our economy, and you know egg prices being ridiculous and, like you know, this ambiguity of fear and concern. I'm bullish that all of that is going to turn into a lot of opportunity in this third and fourth quarter of this year and with that we're positioning a lot of things in our business and acquisitions and our own strategic ventures and partnerships, where we're pushing hard into the market to gain market share with what I believe is going to be kind of just a situational change.
Speaker 3:You can call it whatever you might want to call it, but whenever there is a bit of chaos, a disruption, a change that positively or negatively impacts people in a market or economy, somebody makes money always and you just have to figure out where to position yourself. And at this point it might feel a little more risky because you're like well, where do I go? What do I do? It could be as down as do I keep this job or do I keep investing in my 401k? Do I put money in the stock market? Do I start my business now? Do I wait on it? Do I grow my business? Do I spend more capital in my business? Do I buy more inventory? Do I buy another business? What do I do? Like? There's a lot of that questioning. I keep hearing from people constantly. Maybe you get it too, and you know I would the hedgehog space. If you're not comfortable with risk and change, that's fine.
Speaker 3:Just realize that there are quite a few of us who believe that this opportunity is going to create quite a windfall in the next year or two. As it shakes down with, you know, products and tariffs causing change in supply chain, impacting certain vendors, impacting certain competitors, impacting the realization that if people are starting to pay attention to more of the details of what their government and businesses are doing, they're going to come to the realization that Amazon, while 60% I saw this morning 63% of third party sales are from vendors like us, 60% of that is made up by Chinese sellers. So how can you have the largest company in America that generates the most online revenue for physical products owned by Americans, for American products being owned by a majority of outside of our country? And you've got to. There's an imbalance there that has to be reconciled. So when that changes, it'll create opportunity and, because it's being exposed, light is being shined on it.
Speaker 3:It has to change and to this point, it's been hiding, but there have been a lot of things hiding lately, as you've been paying attention, I'm sure, and wondering even if you're on CNN or NBC, I don't really care, I don't watch any of that crap myself. Or you're just listening to the interwebs, you're talking to your friends. You're like, well, what the heck is going on in the company? Is Elon running the company? Are they really finding the money? Is there really that much money actually disappearing from our economy? Like holy crap, are we going to take on Canada? Like what does that do to our economic opportunities if Canada becomes the 51st state of the country? Greenland already said they wanted to. Is that the 52nd one? Like what the hell, dude? Like it's just there's so much going on.
Speaker 2:People. I could see where people would just sit down and their brains would melt. Yeah, it has been a very fast pace. The yeah, uh, we're crazy. And and I would say there have been more good things than bad things for sure and, uh, you know, as I look at the next four years, I think, uh, those who are involved in entrepreneurship are are going to be put in a better position than maybe they have been in the past. Well, it's change right.
Speaker 3:Change is the word that you and I would explain that in some capacity is good when it's change for a good purpose, not just change for change sake. And the question I have to look at is say, is the change we're seeing, is the upside potential of that overarchingly going to be good? Even if I don't understand everything that's happening right now or why it's happening, could I at least perceive forward that the outcome should be good, regardless of who's doing it? And with all of the change I see occurring, I'm going I think the outcome is good. I think it is questionable and with any change, not everybody likes change. So they feel a bit of fear, they feel a little bit of panic.
Speaker 3:I saw a lady on a video earlier panicking because the $4,000 a month she normally gets in food stamps I don't know how in the world she's getting $4,000 in food stamps. He's gone Right Like wait, hold on who gets $4,000 a month. That sounds like fraud. I don't know the logic, I don't know the rules, but I'm just common sense is like. That sounds like who gets $4,000 a month at bootstamps. There's something wrong with that, yeah, so it's got to change. Like you get what I'm saying, Like it doesn't matter at the end of the day, what exactly is happening, that the language and the outcome don't make sense.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, don't make sense.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, I like that doesn't add up absolutely, absolutely. There's change, so change isn't positive for everybody yeah.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned tariffs. Let's, let's chat about that. And you know if I think of a typical amazon seller, china is part of the equation generally and you know, say what you want about China. If we isolate just to manufacturing, they are very good at it. Now there is cheap Chinese crap. I get where that that comes from. But you know they have fifth and sixth generation manufacturers. They've been doing it a long time and personally I've been to China. I've met with my, I've sat and broke bread with my suppliers and had pretty good things to say about them. But the tariffs change things and so I can tell you I have made a pivot. I have made a pivot to sourcing more out of Taiwan and Pakistan. Now, curious, have you changed? Your chess moves on the client? Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So we got stuff out of Pakistan. We've been talking to Taiwan. I've got a guy on Monday who is in Thailand, who has access to manufacturing for some of the things we're looking at. You know, most of our stuff is out of China as it is. Anyways, we have a few products and stuff that are made in China and some, you know our clients, but at the end of the day, most of the stuff we're pivoting from has other places to be built, other places to be manufactured.
Speaker 3:Some of the exclusivity of manufacturing and tooling in China was done on purpose. Right, it was done literally to take it out of the United States, and it has been that way for a long time, through a lot of geo and political and opportunity. And I don't know, you can call it money laundering if you want or whatever, but it pulled out of America and created a soul in our manufacturing where we simply couldn't provide, based against inflation, the jobs that were required to keep the buildings running and the tooling going, and it was, you know, outsourced to China. So you can blame the Chinese all you want, but they got the opportunity that was given to them and so they took it. Who wouldn't right In reverse, america would have done the same thing. And so, at the end of the day, you know, I don't blame China and everybody's like China's evil. What I blame is components of China and the people down below, and I certainly won't do manufacturing with slave traders and people who have children running under theft rates. I blame that for that. Put that where it is, you can find that anywhere in the world. At the end of the day, right. So China just is another location. Just treat it like such. Go, go, look for a different location to get your products manufactured.
Speaker 3:If tariffs are an issue, then you probably weren't paying attention to the price point and opportunity of your business and that may require you to pivot out of brands or elevate brand out of certain price points. So you don't compete with the Chinese anymore. And that's one of the things we spent the last six years doing is moving most all of our product base and elevating it away from products that compete with China or could be competing in Chinese manufacturing and tooling, and took them to a place where the Chinese manufacturers won't go, because it doesn't make sense and they won't manufacture at that level. They're going to do the sub $20 products and if you're in that space, then yeah, you're going to get your lunch eaten by them. If you're in the 30, 40, 50 plus in retail price point or higher, then you're not going to see them competing directly with you. So, and if they do, it's very limited in its scope. So, and if they do, it is very limited in its scope. Yeah, tariffs are.
Speaker 3:In my opinion, as you look at the constitutional law and go to that side of the house, you know, as a republic, tariffs would be funding the government, not taxes. So, as we go back to that realization that tariffs should be focused on the GDP and the income and the output of a country, its gross domestic product, that's where the money should be used to federal or government, which means tariffs and products would have been higher. That means, if you go back in time, before inflation is what it is, a 10 percent mortgage was a good rate. Right, a dollar twenty five in gas was a good rate because that's what the price of gas was relative to a dollar. Good rate because that's what the price of gas was relative to a dollar.
Speaker 3:Now that you have gone and seen the dollar go down since 1913, all the way down to like 20 cents of value, closing in on like 15 cents for a dollar value. You see that of course, interest rates need to be at 3% and gas has to be at $3, and so on and so forth, because it makes up the difference in the imbalance. And so you know, I think people just need to go back and get an economics lesson and understand the benefit of this and then adjust accordingly. Because why I've never seen so many people fight to pay taxes ever in my life. I thought we were fighting our way out of taxes. That's right.
Speaker 3:I thought the mission was the opposite side. Now I see everybody screaming about well, you can't take taxes because they pay for the government, and it's like, oh, please, go get some history, go get an economics course, go learn about a constitutional republic, please, and stop yelling about tariffs. Tariffs are a cost of doing business and they should be the cost of businesses doing business. That's what was intended for businesses.
Speaker 2:I like it. I like it, I like it. I like that response and I like your take on what tariffs are and their purpose. So I really like it.
Speaker 3:They're meant to power the government systems and not by the people. But the product of a domestic product is our output, of what we provide and can borrow to sell good and trade with other countries, and if we're doing a great job of that, then, yeah, there's going to be a cost or tariff. What has happened is a significant imbalance. Did you know that cars are 30 or 40% tariffs in China? That's why we can't sell our cars in China. Huh, the imbalance has been fairly imbalanced against America for most all the other country producing nations in the world, which is why our goods and service and manufacturing went down, because we can't provide them at a sellable rate that makes them profitable in other countries. I did not, I was not aware of that. Yeah, so then you find out.
Speaker 3:Well, with that occurring, of course you've got to go back and rebalance the tariff indifference, and so when you negotiate from a business position, you take that position of renegotiating the largest cost point that causes you to lose profitability. The same way, you would go to a manufacturer and say I need to hit this landed cost of goods at 35 or less or I can't use your product, service and manufacturing. I'll go to another person. If you can't hit it well, the same way would happen with any country. You're going to go back to them and say, hey, your tariffs need to be a 25% greater or you have to balance your tariffs so that we can sell our product back into your country at greater volumes. It's a negotiation. You have to understand what's happening at the business level and you understand how to appropriately manage it inside of your Amazon seller account and your TikTok shop and your dropshipping or wherever else. In fact, dropshipping is probably a bad idea, but in any of your sales channels you make amends for the way you manage the business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really like that. Why don't we turn the page and chat a little bit about AI and we can trade some secrets? I'll share with you what I've been doing with AI but we'd love to hear what you've been up to and how you're leveraging this new tool you want me to start first, or you want to tell me what you're?
Speaker 2:doing yeah, so yeah, let me give you some hot takes. So I, I love, I chad gpt is open on my screen from the moment I open my computer every morning, does it say hello, good day, david.
Speaker 3:Welcome. Remember how the computers were used to talk to us in the morning of it yeah, not yet, but maybe someday.
Speaker 2:Um and so a. So I'll give a couple really specific examples. I was renegotiating with a Chinese supplier. They were trying to bump prices on me, and the point I wanted to make was the yen relative to the US dollar is appreciated, and so the amount of actual money you're putting in your pocket has gone up independent of your price jump. You're putting in your pocket has gone up independent of your price jump, and so I could have looked at currency rates going back to 2001 when I first engaged with the factory, or I could have plugged it into ChatGPT and had it come up with a very well-worded analysis of the US dollar to the yen relationship and how, in fact, they are getting paid more. And so that is one way and just more broadly, crafting emails and things like that. I've been using that as a tool.
Speaker 2:Another thing I've seen a lot of AI tools come on the scene, and some of them good, some of them bad. One of my favorites and I've said this publicly, I had Chad Rubin on the podcast is a company called Prophecy. Yep, prophecy is a price testing software for Amazon sellers. I have wanted this for a decade. I have tried Splitly, avaguru ProfitPeak. I have tried Splitly AvaGuru ProfitPeak.
Speaker 2:The issue I always ran into was as your price goes up, presumably you would make more profit. However, ppc gets more expensive and harder and there tends to be a wash. The opposite is true. Price goes down, your profits compress. However, ppc gets a little bit easier as your conversion rates go up.
Speaker 2:This tool takes into account what's going on in your PPC and accounts for those movements, and so I have seen, on average, between a 10% and 12% margin expansion, and as an Amazon seller, that is a huge win, and when I am looking at a piece of software, I always ask myself is it going to return to me more than I'm paying this vendor?
Speaker 2:This one is a huge win, and I do think there's advantages in being an early adopter, because at some point, there's going to be a flood of people using tools this tool or tools like this and there's rewards for getting to the party early, and so that's a second way, and I think the third thing I've been doing is using it for systems and processes getting to a first draft. I don't think, in terms of running my business, ai is not better at it than me, but it just makes me work faster. I would liken it to maybe using steroids in baseball, where you can hit the ball farther if you're juicing, and I'm trying to feel like the truth doesn't make it right, it just makes it true.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, this is legal steroids and and I love it, I love it, I love using it and I love it, I love it, I love using it. And so, yeah, those are like three things that I'm using AI for as we sit here talking in February 25.
Speaker 3:What about?
Speaker 2:you.
Speaker 3:That's great, dude. I love that. And you know, getting 10 to 15% back on your Amazon is. I mean, if you're smart, you turn that right back into budgets on your PPC and go buy a bull market share or, you know, take a little bit to the bottom line. Of course, one way or another, it's not a bad thing. That's cool.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, one of the things that I'm always trying to solve, of course, there's business and optimization, which you talked about, which is, of course, maximizing profitability and operational costs, which is always extremely important. There's that growth and scale aspect. There's that startup aspect, and what I found usually is they're very similar problems to solve, both in the growth to scale side as well as just getting started, and it always revolves around the what the heck do I actually sell? And it ends up being like what product lines do we develop at the top end beyond the current successful SKUs we've had? Or what the heck do I sell when I'm an aspiring entrepreneur and just getting going? They seem to be, at times, very similar problems to solve in these businesses. So I focus a lot on that and one of the things we developed is faster ways, using AI agents, to go out and acquire data, combine data, analyze data and compress down to the data-driven aspect of a product selection process, to the data-driven aspect of a product selection process and in our tool set, having all this data and years of experience in our green light process to evaluate and determine what the heck we should sell. With agents and AI, we've been able to compress faster, we've been able to get access to more data quickly. We've been able to use product opportunity explorer and category data now to create different touch points of true data points based on that information and kind of really got a picture to allow this agent to be smart enough to come back and tell us these are the top products by category, by node, by customer need. That then ties into this specific intent and intent based aspect of what the actual AI engine is starting to do now inside of Amazon's ecosystem and by proxy.
Speaker 3:I'm going to believe this has happened with other algorithms that are churning, like TikTok and others, that literally just say like you know a beacon, like here's your green light, here's your product, go here, this is what the need is, this is what the demand for that need actually looks like from a true data perspective. And then here are the products or product that actually matches that demand right now, and then this is the one you need to go test. So it kind of inverts the whole process of product selection from typical data mining and then product selection and then product and data analysis and then do I launch it. We've actually inverted that process and gone after the need, and AI tool sets and data have now helped us do that much faster. And then once we get that data and it says, go test this product and I determine landed goods, then I take it to an AI agent that we've developed and these aren't public yet. They're going to be this year but this one particular goes out and says what do you think this focus group act like a focus group of people who are still buying on Amazon, have this demographic, have this intent, have this ability to purchase, et cetera, and then give me a summary profile of that, like a case study of feedback it would do and tell me which of this product type, data information and conversion and graphics you would buy and then tell me how to build that.
Speaker 3:And so we have this listing optimizer now that takes that data from the engine of the product and then goes in and then basically spits out a whole listing of information prompts, what they should look like at the graphic level, how to copy and conversion should look and which one was the highest rated from the focus group. And we took this process and actually went out to physical groups that we had used previously and compared the two and then came back with five different brands of information and it was 99% accurate on the agent every time. So we stopped going to the physical focus groups.
Speaker 2:I like that.
Speaker 3:I blew it away when we saw that happening.
Speaker 2:I had a light bulb go off mid mid. Answer. And you, one thing that takes me a long time is communicating with my videographer on what I want included in my 52nd 52nd Amazon video. And you know, being able to, you know, highlight the primary pain point in the first 10 seconds would be great. Um, you know, ordering of infographics, things like that. What are the number one unanswered questions? I think that could really speed up communication and improve communication with your listing copywriters, with your image editors, with your videographers and so what if AI just did that for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I said that's an interesting topic. Let's dive into that. And this is something I think as an entrepreneur that has employees, this is something that can be somewhat scary.
Speaker 3:Well, it could be.
Speaker 3:I don't have an employee that does the listing that way.
Speaker 3:We deployed a tactic by which we combined information and what we call a composite listing process, by which the listing presented itself from the data that was given by the tool.
Speaker 3:We just took that and massaged it and gave it to an agent instead and fed it more information and then it became the copyright listing writer and it basically told us exactly how to build the listing and then use a virtual focus group to say which version of the listing I believe would be the highest converting based on that feedback. And we took that and then we went out to an actual group and said which one of these listing copy graphics would you buy from and which one you wouldn't buy from, and every time the agent was right. So, in other words, no one needs to write the listing for us anymore, no one needs to present how the images and graphics are going to be done, because I have the copy for it and we give it to the photographer and he just literally follows the image script, takes the photos and gives it back to the editor, who then massages the product and we have a listing ready or size of the graphics and we have a listing ready to go.
Speaker 2:That's. I really like the idea of that and I have not just personally speaking, I have not gotten to. It sounds like your process is getting you to a final draft and I think my process currently is getting me to a draft one.
Speaker 3:Yeah getting me closer to a final draft so that when I do the market test, I'm as close to what I believe. The audience and intent keyword is building a narrative, a lexicon and a taxonomy of information around that listing to determine how the agent Rufus and Cosmo are going to display it in a ranking methodology within Amazon. Most people aren't even talking about this. They don't even understand it yet. They're behind the eight ball. They're two miles back. If you're not even thinking or doing this right now, you're going to find that as the ranking engine is changing towards an AI-driven narrative, down to your graphics and what they actually say and read as in customer-intended outcome, you're going to be behind the eight ball. You're going to watch your conversions go down when others figure it out in your market share and start eating your market share because the engine is going to start pervuring their narrative to what the customers want and intent and you're not describing that because you're still back in keyword land.
Speaker 2:That's a hot take that people should rewind, unless they should really pay attention to this right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're building all of our innovation systems towards that, changing all the way we think about customer relationship with product and intent, and then backing that into demand right with the data. And then the data basically tells us, based on customer intent and demand, this is the products you should actually test. We take the listing copy information, we go test the products and then whichever one responds most positively from the engine is the one that usually is ending up being the one the ai said would be the right one, because basically what we're talking about is engine to engine communication. It it's AI to AI talking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I, I it's a little human out of the equation.
Speaker 2:I really like it. So what is that from? Like a staffing team, from a staffing and team standpoint One?
Speaker 3:operator can take care of that. You don't need a listing creator. We have a graphics and listing image person who basically gets the output of that, can read the listing and creative, see the way the images should be prompt, build the listing images using ai or photoshop or illustration and combination and then produce the images and we have a listing that's ready to go to market with like 99 confidence. It's intended to tell the engine that we match the customer need for that product because it's all data driven right. Yeah, yeah, so it's very two-stepped. We have literally two people in the step. We have a third one. If we want to, if we want to do a higher end product, we're going to go and get a photo shoot done, but we're literally taking the engine and copy that the operator took out and giving it to those two individuals for photos and then post-production and then the listing is done okay, okay, on the AI-created images, is that I have heard, and it's been anecdotally.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen any data behind this, but Amazon is punishing AI-generated images.
Speaker 3:No, that's a rumor.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:No, any more than Photoshopped images were punishing people who are bestsellers now and you know they're bestsellers with Photoshopped images, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely, yeah so that's a misnomer, a myth, an idea that you know mine's not converting. So the system must be doing this and it's not actually happening. Okay, Truthfully, the higher quality of the image, the higher quality of Always. Take actual photos of your products. Now you can use AI to put them in different environments right, and with hyper-realistic prompting and stuff, you can put an actual, real, photographed, nice image into a background or use case. That's done by AI. Now that looks really good, right, no different than somebody messing with it in the field.
Speaker 3:But we will typically AI images slightly differently in an after effect, not the primary, If you want to really put a good production down. We take high resolution, actual photographs where we have a photographer take those pictures and then AI kind of cleans them up and changes them. But really, at the end of the day, what's the most important thing about what I said? Will the AI actually read the image and interpret exactly what's happening in that image and will it do it accurately? And if it does not, that's the problem I have to fix.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, whether I photoshopped it, took a picture of it or whatever I did with that image, okay, it's more important that the AI is able to understand what that image actually says and is doing, because the whole thing is changing. Yeah Right, ai listings are coming now that there's a beta version of the AI flat file tool coming out, which is intended to basically make it easier to get data that translates backwards into Cosmo and into Rufus, because when they're putting it up in flat files it's still search related, it's still search term related, it is still based on human interface machine language learning structures of the original algorithm, but it's not based on the latent semantic and intent based engine that is Cosmo and Rufus. So they're actually rolling out a beta version of their listing to help people get the data in correctly, so it will be read correctly by the AI systems. And you can already do that because that's how it's changing.
Speaker 2:That's it. So you're using let me make sure I heard that correctly. So you would like upload a category listing report and have AI optimize it? Fill in all of the empty cells where there should be.
Speaker 3:In other words, ai is going to fill in the gaps that most people are missing, in order to make it more, to speak more to the current engine that is running the backend right now and is actually going to be running probably all of the systems by next year.
Speaker 2:Is there a specific tool that you're using for that?
Speaker 3:So it's coming, it's in beta. It's going to be their AI flat file uploading thing. There's going to. It looks like they're going to try to make Excel obsolete altogether, and so now it's just a matter of you being able to go into AI systems like chat, gtp or other tools and say does this actually explain what my product and value is? Yeah, do my images actually explain what the product value is? Because you're you're priming the engine now as an AI to AI system, right, and so the last part of that is you know what is going to happen next.
Speaker 3:Okay, is that PPC driven, keyword based searches for the PPC site is going to have to change. It's coming, not there yet, but it's going to have to come. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah, because once they get to a point where they know the data better than you, because it's in their system, it's voluntarily given up by the customers through purchase orders and through their credit card information, unlike Facebook, which got totally tagged with this because they were capturing it incorrectly and they got sued and they had to stop with interest-based targeting and people interest targeting because they had third-party data they were using. Amazon has all first party data, so, with that and you giving them their information. They're not going to need you to tell them which keywords to target in the coming systems. You see how this is going to play out, yeah.
Speaker 2:I see what you're saying Going back to. I need you to be my therapist for a minute.
Speaker 3:Let's couch the topic man.
Speaker 2:Uploading a category listing report to GPT and having it optimized and then uploading it to Amazon particularly with some of my brands that have like a couple hundred SKUs gives me extreme anxiety. I've had flat file disasters.
Speaker 3:Flat file. Anxiety is a real thing. It's like range anxiety in a Tesla For Amazon sellers. It really is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that will be something. I will maybe be a little late to the party on that, just because of maybe some previous Partial, partial updates.
Speaker 3:The concern that people jack up usually is they do a full update on their listings and they jack up their entire listing, and that's a mistake an amateur will make. But always do a partial update. Never let Amazon force a full update or you will jack with your listings.
Speaker 3:Any other things that can ease my anxiety on, because this is something I know I need to do not much you need to start thinking about the way your product fits a customer need and then your language, copy, graphics and intent need to start slowly moving towards the realization that it's filling a need. It isn't a search term If someone's looking for a heavy duty jacket. Why? What was the intent of that? Because the engine is now going to be looking at the intent and then trying to match product intent with customer behavior. Could be literally that you are going to go on a ski trip and go. You've been purchasing particular tools for your ski trip and you haven't actually purchased a jacket. And so then it pops up and says hey, you should have this down jacket that's rated for negative 20. And you're like oh yeah, I need a jacket. Click.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Now that shift from keywords to intent, I think is going to be us, as operators, are really going to need to kind of reframe how we're thinking about things and since I've been in the game, it's been a keyword game.
Speaker 3:And keywords are going away, brother. Yeah, customer need is the name of the game and, as I said, you're going to be part of a launch here soon where I'm going to launch this particular tool set into the world, which is going to blow away most of the data sets out there, because it is need intent based what the hell do I sell? Backed into demand that actually backs into target products, and with that we will be shifting the way everybody thinks about data and analytics and running successful businesses, and that will go for the existing entrepreneur on Amazon selling products and the brand new person who wants to keep going.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I love it and I'm excited. I'm excited for that grand unveiling.
Speaker 3:So Yep, it's coming Been a long time in the process, but Amazon itself is moving that way, and if you aren't paying attention to that, just on your own right now, pay attention to it If you don't understand it at all you better gear, because there are other sellers that already are.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, all right. Well, before we wrap up the episode, I would like to turn our attention to the fire round. This is four questions that we ask everybody at the end of the episode Are you ready for the fire round? Yes, yes, no yes, all right, here we go. What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3:Feel the Fear and Do it Anyways. By Susan Jeffries.
Speaker 2:Lovely. I need to add that to my reading list.
Speaker 3:I would trump that with Bible, sorry God. But then I would say very closely would be, which is also Do Not Fear. 360 times in the Bible, 365, excuse me, there you go, feel the Fear and Do it Anyways.
Speaker 2:What are your hobbies?
Speaker 3:What are my hobbies? Well, I geek out on technology. I geek out on, you know, learning new things and testing new things. And I have a closet game addiction where I play Call of Duty on my mobile phone to decompress. When everybody's asleep and the wife finally falls asleep at 11 o'clock, I might be found playing Call of Duty mobile for an hour or two just decompressing my brain. So that's become a bit of a hobby. But we also have an operational homestead, so I'm always busy out here doing something on the homestead which keeps me busy. And of course I always have a passion for business. It is almost a hobby of mine, along with something I do, so to me it never gets boring, it's always fun and there's always something new to do.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Uh, what is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?
Speaker 3:One thing I do not miss about working for the man yeah, wow, can I Just one? My brain starts crashing into a million answers.
Speaker 3:One thing I do not like In my world at that point I would say no longer getting on an airplane agree, agree, especially if you're a family man well, especially if you're a family man, and it just especially if you uh yeah, well, that's the best way to put it yeah, being taken away from my family. Yeah, yeah, I haven't been anymore and getting on the the what uh felt like a air bus with chickens and goats and people hanging off the side of it all the time I was like I agree, I don't miss that either.
Speaker 2:All right, final fire round question. All right, lay it on me. What is one thing that sets apart successful entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:Personal coping mechanisms. I like it your ability to get out of headspace, out of mind, out of competition with others, out of the big scarcity and turning into more of abundant thinking and then being able to purposely drive that forward for yourself and others. It's a typical problem. Many entrepreneurs have to feel that there's a fear of failure, a fear of FOMO. I could do something better, I'm not doing enough. There's this constant push we push on ourselves and I think building a series of healthy coping mechanisms, whatever it is that helps you decompress from those things, is extremely important to focus on the right activities, the actual revenue generating activities, and try to shut off all the other nonsense you think you should be doing because you saw someone else maybe have success with it or whatever, and then just focus on the things you know you need to be doing.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it, Neil. It was outstanding to talk to you today and to catch up. If people are interested in getting in touch with you, what's the best way?
Speaker 3:VoltageDMcom. Voltagedimmarketingcom. You guys can check it out. There's a book to check out over there if you want to grab an instant digital copy of it or a paperback and learn more about what we're doing and the processes by which we figure out what the hell to sell and turn it into a going concern in a big business. Maybe a life generational change, who knows? Maybe an exit opportunity.
