#369 – The World of AI for E-commerce with Jo Lambadjieva
Join us as we engage in a riveting discussion with Jo Lambadjieva, who shares valuable insights and provides a deeper understanding of the importance of strategic thinking in marketing. Her journey from a background in finance to becoming a digital marketing professional in many industries, including the Amazon space, makes for an intriguing listen.
As the conversation progresses, we explore the world of Amazon aggregators, brand acquisition, and management. Jo enlightens us about her experiences in due diligence, onboarding new brands, and the hurdles encountered. We discuss the significance of forecasting and financials in enhancing performance and profitability. Furthermore, we talk about the best practices for Amazon sellers to track their data, improve cash flow, and consider diversification.
In the latter part of our discussion, we dive into the realm of AI for Amazon sellers. We dissect the transition from manual processes to automated ones using AI tools and software, the benefits of utilizing customer data, and the current state of the AI landscape. We touch on the impact of AI technology and its potential in the Amazon selling space, and Jo offers expert advice on AI-based e-commerce strategies and the major changes Amazon sellers should watch out for. Tune in to this insightful episode and elevate your understanding of the world of AI for e-commerce.
07:39 – Exploring E-Commerce Opportunities
13:05 – Challenges of Finding Experienced Employees
15:28 – Challenges of Bringing on New Brands
26:10 – AI E-Commerce Consultancy for Amazon Sellers
33:42 – GPT Chat vs Cloud
40:12 – AI Revolutionizes Amazon Seller System
44:00 – Creating an AI Newsletter for E-Commerce
47:16 – Providing Value in AI Content
52:31 – The Impact of AI on Services
55:12 – eCommerce and AI in a Changing Landscape
56:00 – This Week’s Words Of Wisdom From Kevin
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 369 of the AMPM podcast. My guest this week is Jo Lambadjieva. Jo is originally from Bulgaria. She’s lived in the UK, now residing in Germany. She’s worked for an aggregator, run her own agency, and now she’s focusing heavily on AI for e-commerce sellers. We talk about all of that working for the aggregator, running her own agency, how she got involved in this and some cool stuff about what’s happening in the AI space, way beyond just listings and optimizing titles and stuff for Amazon sellers. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to the AMPM podcast. Jo Lambadjieva Did I get that right?
Jo:
Yes, Kevin, you did it wonderfully.
Kevin King:
Welcome to the AMPM podcast. How are you doing?
Jo:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m doing really great, though I have to admit, a little bit nervous because it’s such an honor to be on this podcast with you. So, yeah, I’m really happy.
Kevin King:
I’m glad to have you here. I think we met. What do we meet through Billion Dollar Seller Summit? Right, yes, two years ago.
Jo:
That was my first Billion Dollar Seller Summit and yeah, I just keep coming back.
Kevin King:
I know, and now we got you addicted.
Jo:
I know I can’t stop coming to all of your fabulous events.
Kevin King:
You did the first one in Austin, and then you did Puerto Rico, right yeah. And you’re considering doing Hawaii, right, well, yeah.
Jo:
I mean honestly, Hawaii has been like last time I told you, Hawaii has always been a bit of a dream of mine and to add, going to Billion Dollar Seller Summit will be extra package.
Kevin King:
What is about the Billion Dollar Seller Summit that you actually like? How did actually? How did you first hear about it?
Jo:
I, yeah, I am a bit of a researcher, so when I go for, I mean, you know, we are in the Amazon world and we all know how to research, well, product, and so this is the way I was thinking about finding a really good event where I can network but also learn a lot from sort of the best of the best. And then I started researching what events are there out there for sellers? And so research, research, research. I got to. Obviously, I had heard your name many times, I have seen the freedom ticket and I was like, ok, wow, this, this is, this is amazing. The lineup looks great. And so I was looking for, yeah, for an event where I can really up my game in terms of knowledge, and I found it.
Kevin King:
Awesome, and it’s not just, not just the knowledge. You’ve made some good connections through there too, right?
Jo:
Yeah, I mean I have to say that the Amazon community is really amazing. I thought that it’s going to be one of those events where you know you go, you have maybe a couple of drinks after the event, but then that’s it. But actually what you find is you make new friends, it’s so natural and you feel really like you’ve known these people for a while and actually you don’t. And then when you come back for the next event next year, you just basically pick it up from where you left and you really have one of some of the best learnings I got were over dinners in between sort of drink pickups in the bar, and you just actually end up talking about so many really interesting tips and tricks. But then also you just get to get to learn and get to know so many nice people. So it’s great.
Kevin King:
And then we have a WhatsApp group. That’s like you know, sometimes these, these events, they set up like a WhatsApp group for people at the event so you can like communicate, like hey, where’s everybody meeting tonight or is everybody doing? But this WhatsApp group from Puerto Rico actually started in Austin, but, especially since Puerto Rico has just been like every day, if you don’t keep up in there you get lost because there’s so much stuff coming through there of people just sharing different things way beyond just the group. And these are high level good stuff. This is not just like what did you eat for breakfast today, this is like really good stuff.
Jo:
No, absolutely, and I love the fact that everyone is out there to support each other in terms of answering when there’s an issue or just giving sharing really great content or findings. I think just the whole the whole learning sort of package that you get with the event and the WhatsApp group and then following all of your connections, is just really worth it.
Kevin King:
Now you’re based in Europe, right? You’re originally from Bulgaria, correct?
Jo:
That’s right.
Kevin King:
And then what? You’re living in Germany right now, or? But you did live in. London for a while too right.
Jo:
That’s it. I am bouncing around, all around, as you said last time, a bit of a digital nomad, though I hate that term. But yeah, I’m originally from Bulgaria. I moved to the UK when I was 18. And in the last five years I’ve been living in Cologne in Germany, and so I like to travel.
Kevin King:
Cologne’s a nice city. I’ve been there. That’s a cool place.
Jo:
It is. It’s a great place.
Kevin King:
I like that. So you’re, when you, after you graduate university, you started doing some, got into like marketing or something like that, weren’t you doing like some sports marketing or something along those lines?
Jo:
Yeah. So actually I, by education, I studied finance, but quickly realized that I don’t really see my whole life wearing a suit or being particularly serious. I have quite a personality and I felt like actually Korean finance not for me. And so after this I decided, you know what I’m going to give it a shot with, just generally marketing. And I actually started my career in a fairly old school media agency, but it was brilliant because it really taught you how to think strategically and so, rather, you know now a lot of the agencies are very specialized in terms of channels, which is brilliant, but what a lot of what a lot of the marketers sort of miss in terms of thinking is this kind of like bigger, broader picture about where your audience is and what, how does your audience consume media and how do you solve these pain points. And so it was a great experience to actually really think about marketing from this perspective, to like really find the audience and then build a plan around it. So that was the start. But then, at the geek I am and I love data, I kind of figured out that you know what Ecommerce and digital marketing is my vibe, and so I moved to a sort of a specialist digital marketing agency where I did everything from sort of strategies for selling really luxury lingerie to cricket tickets to just anything around, and so I really cut my teeth in terms of thinking of this wider e-commerce strategy. And yeah, it was. It was a great experience.
Kevin King:
So from La Perla to cricket.
Jo:
Yes, indeed, they used to call me in my agency the cricket queen, because I just knew so well how to sell tickets to cricket audiences. Go figure, Bulgarian, that really knows cricket.
Kevin King:
So you’re doing this, but what? How did you stumble into the Amazon’s place? Did someone just offer you a job? Or were you like you said, you’re a researcher? Were you researching different things and this looks interesting? Or how did you stumble into Amazon?
Jo:
Yeah. So you know, it’s sort of like part of my role was a lot about building strategies for these e-commerce companies and we had regularly companies like different providers coming and sort of selling what they, what they had to offer. And one of those service providers was Amazon, which in 2000, it was around 2016, 2017, amazon wasn’t really so big in the UK and I remember a lot of our clients at the time were kind of snubbing it because it wasn’t really sexy. You know, you had quite limited creative abilities in terms of how your page looked and they weren’t necessarily seeing kind of the bigger picture in terms of how much this will grow. But I just thought, hey, you know what? I know exactly how difficult it is to leverage audiences on paid social, how difficult it is to, you know, make Google AdWords work.
Jo:
But actually you know, when you look at Amazon, you have all of these sort of different elements in one audience, in one place, and I thought this is going to have a huge potential for brands. And so I started just doing evenings and weekends just reading everything I could to learn about Amazon and then in mid-2018, I decided to start my own Amazon specialist agency, which grew really, really quickly. We got in two years. We got more than 20 big brands. We were working with anyone from Pizza Cousins to Panasonic to Hillspet, and so, yeah, that’s how my Amazon journey began.
Kevin King:
And then you did that alone or with a partner, or was it just yours?
Jo:
Yeah, I did it with a partner and we sort of were we were launched as part of a bigger agency, so we had this kind of like bigger agency support, but it was very much like a specialist hub which was just catering to Amazon brands.
Kevin King:
Okay, so the bigger agency had a lot of connections with some of the clients and then you guys were like the specialty division within that agency, kind of. Yeah, it was your own business, or you just had a partnership.
Jo:
It was a separate thing but, funnily enough, actually a lot of our clients were completely separate from the clients from the bigger agency, because we found a completely different market than we already had.
Kevin King:
Okay, so you did that and then did that evolve into something else, or that. You’re still running that now.
Jo:
No. So after this, I decided to jump into the Amazon aggregator world and I was pinched or stolen by a British Amazon aggregator to set up essentially their entire Amazon division. So hired a team, set up all of their processes and build strategies for their brands, and yeah, so that is what I did up to the beginning of this year. And yeah, now I am completely solo and starting a new project.
Kevin King:
So working for the Amazon aggregator? Is that aggregator still around? Are they still in business?
Jo:
Yes, they are still in business, but they are sort of refocusing much more on e-commerce. So they were on sort of wider e-commerce, so D2C, and what they are looking for is to diversify a bit their portfolio. As you know, amazon aggregators are having tough time and so they needed to sort of refocus on a slightly different strategy.
Kevin King:
So how did you leave? So you had your own agency. Did you sell it? Or did you just turn it over to your partner when they poached you away, or how did that? Or did the aggregator buy your agency? Did it get you, or how did that work?
Jo:
Yeah, so I turned it over to my partner, I exited with what I had in terms of ownership and I decided to jump into sort of a fairly early stage aggregator at the time.
Kevin King:
They must have offered you like some options or something like that made it pretty attractive.
Jo:
Yep.
Kevin King:
And that was the hot time when those were all. I remember those days in like 2021 Clubhouse. You remember the App Clubhouse? Yeah, it became like the hot thing around the end of 2020, I guess it was early 2021, where everybody was on that and I remember some of the biggest aggregators Thrasio and some of the others would come on there and like the big guys and they’re just talking about they’re invincible and how there’s plenty of businesses to buy, that this can’t fail, that this is just going to scale to the moon and I’d be on there like no, it’s not. You guys are going to have serious trouble, most of you’re going to go out of business in the next year or two. And they would just argue back. It’s basically saying I don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m not involved. And I was like no, I know what I’m talking about, I know you guys don’t know what you’re doing and it’s hard to get people. I mean, that’s why they probably you’re like it’s one like you that had the experience that could come in and set that all up.
Kevin King:
It’s difficult to actually find for them to find good people, because people that sold it sell their business. They don’t want to go work for someone. The reason, the whole reason they’re doing this Amazon thing is because they want that freedom. They don’t want to report to somebody or work to somebody. So it’s an interesting thing, and now you’ve seen a lot of them consolidate. But what are some things that you learned when you went from the agency side to actually running an Amazon business? What’s some of the differences between helping people create their content and their listings versus actually being, like, really responsible for the true results of that? Was that a big shift for you?
Jo:
I mean yes and no. I think sort of the I’ve always had the mindset of complete ownership, whatever I do and whichever client I work with. But, yes, when you actually have a portfolio of brands that you are essentially the PNL owner of, you kind of start looking at everything much more holistically. And so, while in an agency you obviously they execute certain services for the client which the client requires from you, in the sort of the context of an aggregator, you really have to think about the brand from start to finish, from everything like how the product is sourced are we negotiating our, negotiating our best deal with the suppliers? Are these the best negotiated deals in terms of historical rates? To everything from just running the brand, how is the advertising setup, how are we tracking everything? How are we doing our forecasting? And so it was definitely, I guess, a push in terms of thinking much broader, but I think it definitely made me a better operator because, yeah, it really creates this ability to really think more strategically and think about all of the different elements that you need to control and all the different levers that you need to push in order to grow these brands.
Kevin King:
How many brands, while you were there, did they acquire?
Jo:
They acquired. So when I joined it was really early. I think they had only one or two brands and I think they basically stayed there for about a year and they acquired four more brands in that time.
Kevin King:
What was the most difficult thing when you would bring on a new brand? Was it just figuring out what these guys had really been doing, or was it integrating it into the system? Or what was the most difficult thing when a new brand would be brought on? Whether you’re an aggregator, I mean you learned from the aggregate side. But if someone else out there is listening and wants to buy a brand, what are the biggest challenges bringing that into your ecosystem?
Jo:
Yeah, I think the challenges get removed the better your due diligence. So the due diligence process is absolutely essential in terms of really getting under the skin of the brand and really understanding how it functions, understanding also the category and the customer. I think, as much as a brand can be a great operator from the point of view of selling a lot of product and having everything optimized, there is the big difference in terms of is this just flogging a lot of product or is there actually a brand there? And so once you understand what you’re working with, then you actually start unraveling okay, so how does this work? And so one of the main challenges is to really extract all of the information that you need from the seller, and that actually is not always so easy, and so one of the processes that is installed pretty early on is, right after the due diligence and right after we decide, okay, we’re acquiring this brand, we go through an extensive workshop processes, so like we have, for example, about 100 different questions in terms of different areas where the seller has to provide us with very detailed information, everything that they know, everything they know about the customer, and we take our time to really onboard the brand in this way.
Kevin King:
Cool, and so did all of those brands work out, or did some of them? Sometimes, even after doing your due diligence, did some of them like, eh, this wasn’t quite what we thought it was?
Jo:
Well, I think the reality is that with some brands, I think they needed a little bit longer time to really start kicking off. The brands that I was really looking after, they all grew at least 100% year on year, but then there was ones that are like slightly more heavy in the D2C part, which you know, we thought that we can actually grow much easier with existing customers, et cetera. But yeah, sometimes there is challenges and you have to take a little bit longer to make them work.
Kevin King:
So, as a brand owner, you get pretty close to your product A lot of people listening out there. They own their own brand. They’re the ones that started it, they’re the ones that sourced it, it’s their money, their blood, sweat and tears. It’s their little baby. But when well, what you’re doing, they become, you’re like adopted children, but they’re not your. You didn’t give birth to them. There’s a little bit difference there and you can see these businesses from a different lens, a different perspective than someone who’s super close to it. What do you think is something that, in your experiences in working with your agency and working with the aggregator, that you see that a lot of these mom and pop Amazon businesses are not seeing, what’s something that they’re just not quite getting, that they need to be focusing on or they should be focusing on?
Jo:
Oh, it’s, it’s. There is so many different options for answering that question. I think it really depends on the seller. A lot, of, a lot of sellers I’ve seen. I then don’t necessarily put together really rigorous processes. So, you know, as a solopreneur or as a mom and pop shop, you have a gazillion things you have to do and sometimes it’s nice to shortcut and just you know, do it quickly. But actually over the doing it quickly you lose a lot of efficiency that you can over the long term. And so what I’ve seen is that a lot of, a lot of these sellers sort of missing some of the main sort of processes that can actually get them to level up. Another area I would say is forecasting and financials. I think I don’t, I don’t necessarily think, that a lot of sellers are really dissecting their P&L properly to understand, okay, where does their profitability get drained over time? What are the main levers that are actually like moving their performance? So I mean, again I mentioned I’m a little bit of a geek, but you really need to start understanding how every single metric is moving your performance and really start drilling down to all of the all, down the level, to your individual CPC bids, to you know your like your conversion rate but then like a level up to how, for example, your logistics costs are moving along, how it basically seasonality affects your, your profitability. So I think that’s one skill set that is absolutely crucial in terms of growth and I think people are necessarily because it’s not very sexy, people are not necessarily spending that much time on mastering that.
Kevin King:
What would you recommend? Somebody that’s maybe either ignoring that or not good at that dude? Should they hire somebody? Should? Is there a way to learn that? I mean, you have a finance background by training, so that’s kind of in your blood, but for someone that’s not, what’s the best way to get a handle on creating these systems and getting a grip on their financials?
Jo:
Yeah, I mean, I have to say, being a seller in 2023, I think people are, in a way, very unlucky because it’s become much more difficult to, you know, launch a product, but at the same time, they’re very lucky because there’s so much more resource out there and so I think there is so many great training courses. But I think the best way to start is by just Starting simple. Get your spreadsheet in one place, get all of your costs, start tracking your results. One of the tools that we use is Celeboard. It’s not the best, but it’s a great start to actually looking at what’s happening from your account and then starting to add layers and layers and over time, you’re going to start seeing trends and start to understand okay, how does everything kind of move and influences all of your other metrics? So I would say, start by collecting all that is happening from an excess expense point of view, from your performance point of view, and start tracking these numbers. Visualize it, make it easy for yourself to actually understand the data and then, over time, build sophistication.
Kevin King:
From what you’ve seen with the clients in the business that you’ve worked with, what you do you think is better to have lots of skews, like hundreds of skews, or to have a handful of skews and manage a handful that are doing okay, versus maybe hundreds where a couple are doing okay and the rest are just so-so.
Jo:
Oh, I think that’s a no brainer. You won the fewer skews because it’s also at the end. We all know it is a cash flow problem. I think we know that Amazon doesn’t pay the bills immediately and if you have hundreds of skews, firstly you increase your complexity, but then also it’s just a nice mirror from a cash point point of view, and I always am a firm believer of focus, focus, focus. There should be a portfolio diversification, but up to a point. And if you can focus and make these fewer skews much better and you really can actually narrow down your main levers like how can you make your image, your title, your product listing at least 1% better every week, every month, then I would say that that will be a far better investment than trying to spread yourself too thin, trying to manage too many skews.
Kevin King:
You mentioned earlier that the aggregator is kind of diversifying and going more D to C, more just off of Amazon, maybe other marketplaces or direct to consumer. What are your thoughts on that? Should a lot of people be looking at that right now, or should they just be focusing on Amazon and trying to conquer that before they start worrying about going out there? What should they be doing? People are always wondering that question.
Jo:
Yeah, I think, again, it depends on where at your journey as a seller you are at. I think if you’re just starting and you are a fairly young seller, you’re trying to figure out Amazon. Again, focus, focus, focus. You probably have so many more levers to move on Amazon before you start spreading yourself too thin. If you are already quite a mature seller, you feel like you have done most that you can do. From a new product development perspective, yes, of course you can start looking to diversify, but again, it has to be a meaningful move. A lot of brands say, oh well, we sell on Amazon, but we also have D2C. Then when you look at D2C element, it’s less than 10% of their revenue. It’s a bit of a crappy website. No love has been given. That’s not really being on D2C. Also, d2c is very appealing for aggregators but is a much more, I would say, difficult and expensive channel to make work. Just because you don’t have the audience that goes to your site. You have to drive that audience and that is expensive. That means on Amazon, it’s an ecosystem and you know some of the channels to really optimize, while on D2C you can drive traffic from TikTok, Facebook, Google, whatever, and you need to be expert in all of these channels. That increases the cost. You either go in or maybe try and see how much more you can make Amazon work first.
Kevin King:
You mentioned that after you left the aggregator. Now you’re doing your own thing. Is that still in the Amazon space, or what are you doing? What are you up to now?
Jo:
Yeah, so my latest, what I was starting to really geek out at the end of 2022, and especially in the beginning of 2023, is AI. I’m sure that probably I should give a penny every time I say the word AI because I’m like, at least to my partner, he’s like no, not again about AI, but yes, it is what’s happening. I think it’s really one of the most significant things that is happening to our society, probably since electricity has been invented, and so the latest thing that I am working on is an AI e-commerce consultancy, so essentially, helping sellers integrate AI into their processes and make them more efficient.
Kevin King:
So this is AI for e-commerce.
Jo:
For e-commerce and Amazon sellers.
Kevin King:
So you’re focusing, you’re niching down. So it’s e-commerce, but then even more specialty for Amazon sellers. So a lot of people, when you say AI for Amazon sellers, they think about listing optimization. Okay, I’m going to run some AI program and it’s going to optimize my listing. Read my reviews and tell me the good and bad, but it goes way beyond all that. Where are you seeing this going and what are you doing differently than about 100 other people out there that have come up with some sort of AI kind of thing?
Jo:
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I think that’s a great question. I think the reality is that of course, there is a lot of people who joined the AI game and probably there is a lot of more people who might be even better specialists from a programming like very technical point of view. I am not someone who can do Python Like that is not who I am but what I can do is really understand very well processes and understand how AI can essentially make them better. So I would say I translate AI in layman’s terms, without sort of removing a lot of the complexity for sellers and showing them how they can utilize it from day one. I think of course you can do like you can play around with ChatGPT and optimize your listings and whatnot, but really the interesting bit starts at the moment when you start looking at everything more holistically. So, again, one of the things that we offer is essentially a full audit of how your process is structured, who is doing your processes and what tasks and what everyday how can I say? Dummy jobs can be taken away and either be replaced by an AI software or an AI tool or a completely independent integration, and so it comes from the point of view of having this very deep expertise about how to work Amazon and how to make Amazon successful as a channel, while also integrating AI. Does that make sense?
Kevin King:
Yeah, no, it makes total sense to me. So it’s like if one of the things that you do is if you right now, if I’ve got 10 VA’s and three of them their job is to every day fill out some source spreadsheet by going and grabbing this number from a PPC, this number from here, and it’s a menial, manual task, but it’s important for my reports. You’re coming in and seeing what those processes are or you understand them already and helping people fully automate that to where those people can be doing more high level. Either you can save a little bit in payroll or you switch those people to more of a high level thinking type of job versus just a menial task. Along those lines, right.
Jo:
Yeah, absolutely, and I think the AI cake has many layers. For a lot of sellers in the beginning is very much how to automate processes, how to maybe save on some of the resources that they need, how to leverage tools like Chachi, pto, cloud2. But then the higher you grow in terms of complexity, the more interesting it becomes, because then you start thinking about all right, you have so much data as a seller, how can you leverage that data over time to actually integrate AI, to actually get better insight into your audience, into your performance, into your advertising and hopefully, over time, maybe even build your own tools to create your own sort of little AI ecosystems within your organization. So there is many sort of steps on sophistication that you can apply with AI.
Kevin King:
One of the cool things too. If you’re working with, like a DTC brand or an Amazon seller that has a lot of customer data either customer names or customer and order data you can actually have the AI go in and analyze all that and actually create two, three, four avatars of the customer. That would be difficult or painstaking, only long to do by hand, that it can instantly figure out. These are the four types of customers you need to be targeting and switch up your ads and switch up your messaging and everything to target those. If that audience is big enough, there’s lots of cool things you can do there.
Kevin King:
Everybody knows chat is heard of ChatGPT, but a lot of people still haven’t played with it. But in our space, more and more people are starting to. What about some of the other LLMs, like you mentioned, Claude? There’s Bard, there’s Anthropic, there’s several others, Betta’s got theirs. What are you finding right now? There’s some discussion out there that ChatGPT has actually become worse instead of becoming better. I mean, they’ve opened up some new capabilities, but some people are saying it’s starting. The AI is starting to be trained on other AI and sometimes that other AI is bad. There’s some argument saying that and other people say, no, that’s all just a bunch of BS. But what are your thoughts on which of the LLMs are the best right now? Where do you have the best success with, or what do you like the best?
Jo:
I would say yes, of course, I think maybe about four weeks ago there was definitely a dip in ChatGPT’s performance. I use ChatGPT daily and so it’s very easy to really see. Okay, are you giving me a bit of a crap in output or is this okay? Yeah, about four weeks ago I was doing a bit of a poopoo job, but I think since then it’s definitely improved Now what I actually. So I’ve tried most of the biggest ones. So I would say don’t pay attention to Bard. Bard is a baby, we don’t care about Bard. Bing is okay, but again, of course, it’s so nice to think, hey, access to internet, et cetera, but again with Bing it feels very much like you have to work hard to get good output. But so the two that I actually use daily and I actually use them combined are ChatGPT and Cloud2. And Cloud2 is fantastic. I think there is obviously there.
Jo:
There is a lot of articles out there discussing the differences in terms of output between ChatGPT and Cloud, in terms of which one is better in terms of text output, which is better in analysis?
I would say, from my experience, ChatGPT is slightly better in terms of the sophistication of output, but Cloud2 has a massive benefit in terms of tokens, and so, for the listeners that don’t necessarily know what tokens are, tokens are essentially how much input and output, how much data you can give to an AI to train it, and then how much output it can give you in the same prompt.
Jo:
And so, just to compare, ChatGPT has right now the utmost model has 32,000 tokens, but that’s not even the publicly available option. The sort of the publicly available option with ChatGPT4 is 8,000 tokens, so you basically give a prompt to ChatGPT and ChatGPT gives you an answer and you have to work with these 8,000 tokens, which is maybe around 6,000 words, which is not very much. But Cloud has a 100,000 tokens, and so you can really feed the beast and get really, really good outputs. So, yeah, so I have found that actually combining the two so maybe like analyzing a lot of data through Cloud, summarizing that and then feeding it to ChatGPT actually gives me the best output.
Kevin King:
Interesting. Yeah, I’ve had to do that with a token limitation on ChatGPT. Sometimes I need to summarize a big document maybe it’s some big scientific paper or some big sort of document and I have to cut into pieces to feed it in there If it’s a 20 page document or something. I mean there’s some tools where we’ll read a PDF, but I haven’t had great success with some of those. But I have to just do it in like five chunks or something. Feed like chapter one and two okay, summarize this. Chapter three and four okay, summarize this. Chapter five and six okay, summarizes. And then take all those summaries and then feed it back in again to make a master summary or a master list. But with Cloud I wouldn’t need to do that because the token is so much higher. Where are you seeing this AI stuff go? I mean, some people are like oh, that’s just the next NFT, that’s the hype right now. It’s the bandwagon everybody’s jumping on. But there’s some smart people in this space that say it’s overblown, that the power is overblown, that its impact’s overblown. What would you say to those people?
Jo:
I would say you just wait. I would say I think there is definitely a bubble happening right now, just like the internet bubble. This is probably going to end up in a bubble. There is, you know, every day. I mean, one of the things that I do is I curate an AI free, commercial Amazon sellers newsletter and so every week I go through I don’t know hundreds of articles about new AI tools and new AI tech and for sure there is a lot of crap out there. So there will be a bubble of sort of useless tools and useless investment that has gone into AI because AI is the hot potato right now. But if I really think about the capabilities, what this thing can really do for businesses, I am so excited. I’m a little bit scared, but I’m so excited because look, just from a very basic perspective, this can be your teacher, this can be your brainstorm buddy, this can be your VA, this can help you really build a plan, this can be your data analysis person. I mean I feel that, for example, for solopreneurs and for Amazon sellers, this is a no brainer extra person in your team to help you with so much and just from a bigger point of view, a pretty smart extra person, absolutely A pretty smart and experienced extra person.
Kevin King:
Yeah, a person who was sometimes gets drunk. Sometimes gets drunk and talks some gibberish, but for the most part it’s a pretty smart person.
Jo:
Hey, don’t we all have a colleague that gets drunk sometimes, right? But yeah, if you just really think, If you just read even the bigger picture like I read so many articles about AI now being used in medicine and how it helps with people who are paralyzed I think one of the things that I read a few months back is that it’s discovered essentially a new antibiotic. There is so many applications. I don’t know how people are not more excited.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and I think we’re just on the cusp. I agree with you. I think there is a little bit of a bubble. There’s what? Seven. If you go to there’s an AI for that or some of these other directories. There’s seven, eight, 10,000. Who knows, by the time you’re listening to this, how many tools there are out there, and a lot of them are just garbage and a lot of that stuff is going to go away, just like the internet in the late 90s. This is back when you were still a little girl, I guess, but I was there for when Yahoo was the big player and then Google came along and the crisis, the internet bubble of 1999, where all these companies went out of business. They were spending crazy money on Super Bowl ads and they had a buddy that worked for a company here in Austin that raised like $50 million bucks and I think he told me they had had a total in the first year of sales of like $7,000. And they ran a Super Bowl ad for millions of bucks they took twice a year. Take everybody to Cancun or somewhere on a vacation. Just crazy, just crazy, stupid stuff. And that company went out of business about a year later. And I’m going to go on over there and buying at auction some of their servers and getting on these. Back then, when servers were like $5,000, I got a server for $300 or something for our business and I think you’re going to see some of that same thing happen. But the AI is here to stay and it’s going to revolutionize the world and I think if you’re not getting on the bandwagon now, you’re going to be left behind. And now, as an Amazon seller, you have a perfect opportunity. It makes sense. You have one of the best businesses where you can actually apply a lot of principles of it and it’s a great brainstorming tool, it’s a great Analyst tool. It’s great in a lot of ways and it’s going to continue to permeate everything even more, because when quantum computing comes out and I don’t know if you know what quantum those listening with.
Kevin King:
Quantum computing is a different way of actually chip architecture, where everything right now is basically bits and bytes, it’s zeros and ones. Everything in computing language is on or off, but in a quantum computing they’re either all on or they’re all off and it speeds up things dramatically and it takes a special chip, it takes a lot of energy and that’s in development right now and it’s probably going to be here in the next three to five, six years on, maybe at least not widespread, but it’s going to start emerging. That’s the next big thing and just to give you an idea of the power of that is I forget the exact number, so these are not exact but right now, if you have like a 16 character password for your bank or something like that, it takes a computer as long as you’re using uppercase letters, lowercase letters, some symbols, the traditional, make it a tough password will take a computer something like 23,000 years or something like that to actually break that, to actually go through all the permutations, to actually figure that out. With quantum computing you can do that in about 45 seconds. So that’s where we’re going and it’s going to affect AI. It’s going to affect everything, from automated driving to the way you do everything, and right now it’s the time to get your feet wet and get in on it and use it to your advantage for your business.
Kevin King:
There’s a lot of downside. You can’t just trust it completely, but there’s a lot of cool stuff and the biggest issue I think that’s going to cause problems in AI is power, because to run these chips you look at NVIDIA and some of these other companies that are making bank right now. I think NVIDIA is up 3,000% or something like that. I think I saw something if you put $1,000 in NVIDIA stock 20 years ago now, that $1,000 would be worth $350,000, and it’s continuing to rise. There’s companies that are going to emerge just like that out there, and it’s the power that’s going to be the issue, and so they’ve got to come up with a technology that these chips use a lot of power. It takes a lot of energy, and I saw something where the current power usage right now for AI is something like 3% of the world’s power is being used on AI right now, and by 2030, they’re saying that could be 13% to 20% if they don’t figure out how to make these chips more efficient, and so that’s going to affect a lot of stuff in our daily lives. It’s going to be interesting time, like on this newsletter that you have. You just started that. What gave you the idea for a newsletter? Why did you decide to do a newsletter? Is it a lead magnet for your agency? Is it you just have all this information? You want to help people? Where did the newsletter come from?
Jo:
Kevin, you know the answer. You are a massive inspiration. There you go. I feel like I’m doing a massive sales job for the BDSS, but basically you’re listeners. Kevin did an absolute ace job on BDSS, sort of scooting us all on how rubbish most newsletters are in the space and the fact that there is a very good way to do a newsletter, and so I was very inspired by that talk and I took a lot of the learnings from your talk and applied them to my newsletter. So the main objective of the newsletter is really A for me to learn. I think I don’t know. Have you read this book called Atomic Habits?
Kevin King:
Yeah, I have. Yeah, James Clear.
Jo:
Exactly, this is one of my favorite books, and in this, in order to form a very good habit, it says you need to essentially make yourself sort of accountable to yourself, and so, in order to always be at the forefront of everything that is happening on AI, I have to make myself accountable to myself. But what better to make myself accountable in front of like a thousand thousands of really good sellers and have to make sure every week, I deliver to them the best and the most interesting AI developments, analysis, etc. And so that was one way to look at it. The second way is I just think that there is so much to learn in this space and not anyone right now is doing specifically an AI summary for the e-commerce space. There is like tons of very nice general AI newsletters, but not one that is actually specifically targeted towards that community, and I just thought, hey, you know what, this will be very useful for people. And yeah, I also, like you know, I’m really big on LinkedIn, but one of the frustrations we all know as sellers is, if you don’t own your audience, another platform is owning your audience and you can’t actually talk to them directly, so I thought it’s also a great way to you know, have a direct link to the people I talk with daily.
Kevin King:
So your newsletter? It’s once a week, right?
Jo:
Yes, every Tuesday.
Kevin King:
It comes out every Tuesday, I think, and it’s great if you haven’t checked, if you haven’t seen her newsletter and you need to actually go and sign up, it’s totally free. What are they go to actually sign up for that?
Jo:
Yeah, so best way to go is to go on Beehive, and it’s with the catchy title AI for e-commerce and Amazon sellers. Now say it quickly or easier. Just follow me on LinkedIn and the link is right there on my profile.
Kevin King:
You don’t have, like a website, a URL that just redirects to the Beehive, or you I do I do, I do so actually.
Jo:
another way to get in touch with me is to go and to actually subscribe to the newsletter is to go to amazingwave.digital. There you have a direct link to the newsletter as well.
Kevin King:
Amazing Wave digital. That’s right, wave, like I’m waving my hand. So for those of you driving or running or on the treadmill right now, amazingwave.digital All right, cool. So what’s the biggest challenge in actually doing this newsletter? Is it finding enough content, or is there enough content out there? Is it just sitting down and putting it together? Is it deciding what’s cool and what’s not cool? What’s the biggest challenge that you’re seeing on doing a weekly newsletter? Because, like you said, you’re holding yourself accountable. If it doesn’t come on Tuesdays, people are going to be like, hey, what’s going on here? And you lose some of that touch with the audience.
Jo:
That’s it. I mean, I think the most challenging thing is every week to provide actually real value to the audience you’re writing to. You know, again, there is so much AI content out there. You know I read on LinkedIn. Somebody posted today at LinkedIn saying hey, has anyone noticed that everything on LinkedIn right now is about AI? And I understand. You know there’s so much noise, everybody’s jumping on it because it’s very exciting. But the challenge is really how do you really just pick what that audience needs to learn from their professional point of view? And, yeah, guess what, not every week, google, amazon and Meta are doing anything exciting about AI that I need to write about. But then it’s then about like finding these analysis pieces, these prompt databases, these tools that actually really bring value. I don’t ever want to ship out a newsletter that is just a filler and people read it and is like, well, this is not relevant and so it’s taking the time to really find the right content. And also, the other thing is not just say hey, this is what these guys are doing, but say why do you, should you care? So every single sort of be your piece of content that I do ends with what does it mean for e-commerce sellers. I think the insight, the analysis, is the most interesting thing about the newsletter.
Kevin King:
So is your newsletter. Are you writing it or is AI doing it, or is it a combination?
Jo:
It’s a combination, so obviously I am doing this completely on my own right now, don’t have a team, so there is. So basically all of the curation is done by me and a lot of the analysis writing is done by me, but then there is some cheeky AI summaries here and there.
Kevin King:
All right, all right. What are three big things that Amazon these sellers should pay attention to when it comes to AI? What are, like, the three things that are either here now or that you see coming on the horizon, that are going to make the biggest difference for them in your opinion?
Jo:
I think probably so. From Amazon, like from Amazon’s set of point of view, I think the first biggest thing is watch what Amazon does. Right, so they have already started making noises. They’ve introduced an AI listing optimization tool, but what I would find very interesting is how the whole Amazon customer journey changes because of AI, and I think Amazon is working on that. My prediction is that the search bar is going to have a massive evolution, and so, from an Amazon set of point of view, I would definitely watch out how Amazon is integrating AI in everything, but particularly in terms of how they engage with the customer. What do you think? Would you agree with that, Kevin?
Kevin King:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think it’s going to radically change. Yeah and the way we do in back-end optimization listings, and everything is going to radically change. I think it’s going to be, in some ways, a great equalizer for new products too, because part of the problem right now with Amazon is the way the system is. If you’ve got 100,000 reviews and you’ve been selling for seven years, you have an advantage, even though your product may stink and someone else has come out with a better product that actually would make the customer happier. They don’t have a chance in a lot of cases and I think the AI is going to level the playing field. So for people that are old, experienced sellers they’ve spent a lot of money developing these listings and time, they might be upset and they need to be the ones that need to be scared. In my opinion, and I think, the opportunity for new people coming in we had this wave in 2014, 2015, 2016, where it was just easy to get on Amazon and put something up and go to the beach and just listen to your phone ding, ding, ding, ding, ding as sales came in.
Kevin King:
Those days have gone away and I don’t think it’s going to get to be that easy again, but I think there’s going to be a. I think we’re in a wave right now where it’s a bell curve or not a bell curve, but an up and down, where it’s become much more difficult to sell on Amazon. I think it’s actually going to become in some cases. If you know the AI side of things and know how to optimize for the AI, I think you’re going to have a competitive advantage and new people are going to have a chance again once this change happens, and some old people that have just been coasting are going to be in serious trouble, just like the aggregators. They’re sitting pretty getting money coming in, thought they ruled the world and realized they didn’t know what they’re doing. I think there’s a lot of sellers that were right place, right time. They’re going to be caught with their pants down when this changes and they’re going to be embarrassed and going to be crying quite a bit, and so I think there’s big changes coming.
Jo:
Yeah, absolutely I think. From a second perspective, I think a big change will happen as a result of AI in terms of services. I think so many services that are happening right now they’re offered by agencies that just can’t disappear. I mean, there’s already a tool that helps you do Amazon Optimize images through AI. I just think that actually, what will be far more interesting for sellers is finding companies that can help you from a more strategic point of view, help you how to leverage AI versus the actual physical output like product listings or the images or the A plus content, Because a lot of this is going to be then taken care of AI. I mean, I just really can’t believe the speed of things. You know, GPT-4 came out in March this year and now we have this massive explosion of so many different tools and literally it’s been five, six months, so by the end of the year. I just think that there will be such amazing tools from a visual point of view, from a video point of view, and a lot of the content creation will be definitely taken care of by AI. There will be room for creativity, but I think just the legwork is going to be gone.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I think you always need a good human babysitting and overseeing everything, but the AI is going to take a degree with a lot of the legwork and make things much more efficient and make things a lot easier to systematize. Cool Well, Jo, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing today. This has been great. See, it wasn’t so bad. I know you were a nerve-racker, you were good the whole time.
Jo:
Thank you. You made me feel very comfortable. Thank you so much.
Kevin King:
You did really good. Good talk, good information. So if people want to follow you, what’s the best way to LinkedIn or what’s the best way to actually follow what you’re doing? We already told them how to sign up for the newsletter. You can tell them again just to remind them. But what’s the best way to keep up with Jo?
Jo:
Keep up with Jo by following me on LinkedIn. I post AI e-commerce content daily. So, Jo and my very long surname, but you’ll find me, don’t worry, or you can just reach out directly. Just type in Jo at amazingwavedigital and I’m there, so yeah.
Kevin King:
Awesome. We’ll appreciate it again and I’m sure I’ll be seeing you at another BDSS or at something in the future.
Jo:
I’m excited to do so. All right, thanks, Kevin.
Kevin King:
Thanks. Great stuff this week from Jo. I really love the AI stuff. Ai, you know it’s a hot topic right now. A lot of people are talking about it. It’s the big buzz, but it’s seriously something you need to pay attention to. And the tools that are coming and the changes that are going to be coming on Amazon and the way we do things, I think is going to be radically changing over the next six months to a year and it’s going to alter the landscape like we talked about in this episode.
Kevin King:
So if you haven’t started diving into that, start paying a little bit of attention to that, subscribe to her newsletter and try to stay up to date on what is happening in that space, and that kind of goes along with what we’re going to be talking about as our partying words of wisdom today. I’ve got something great for you. Before I do that, make sure you sign up for the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter. billiondollarsellers.com is the URL to sign up for that and today’s words of wisdom one of the most critical skills in life, and something that you really never taught in school, is choosing where to direct your attention. You know, after graduation, the valedictorian will often be lapped by the average person. Better invest their time. So one of the most critical skills in life and yet it’s really never taught or mentioned by gurus or in school or anywhere is choosing where to direct your attention After graduation. Valedictorians are often lapped by average people who better invest their time. Think about that when it comes to e-commerce and AI. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome guest. I’ve got Frankie on the show next week. It’s going to be really cool talking about branding and a whole bunch of other stuff. So be sure to check in next Thursday. Until then, have a great week and we’ll see you again soon.
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