#417 – From YouTube to Amazon: David Quintieri on Merging Content and E-Commerc
Welcome to an insightful journey into the dynamic realms of e-commerce and content creation. In this episode, we’re joined by Helium 10 Elite member David Quintieri, who shares his wealth of experience as a seasoned YouTuber with over 100 million views. Listen in as we explore the exciting intersection of YouTube and Amazon, uncovering strategies for leveraging video and user-generated content to boost e-commerce success. We highlight staggering success stories, like those of the Kelsey brothers and Joe Rogan, to illustrate the untapped potential of monetization on podcast platforms. David offers a unique perspective on bridging content creation with e-commerce, sharing valuable insights for both aspiring and established sellers.
Join us as we discuss essential strategies for enhancing your Amazon FBA business, from effective image usage in product listings to transitioning from a YouTube career into Amazon FBA selling. Learn about the importance of storytelling and emotionally resonant language in marketing images, and hear personal experiences about transitioning from selling generic products to building a unique brand. We also explore the value of educational resources and small paid groups in overcoming challenges and inspiring entrepreneurship, emphasizing the need to understand the intricacies of the Amazon selling process.
Additionally, we examine the cultural differences in entrepreneurship between the US and other countries, exploring how understanding the American consumer is crucial for international sellers. Our conversation also touches on the innovative use of AI tools for enhancing product images and Amazon listings, offering insights into staying competitive in the evolving e-commerce landscape. Finally, we reflect on the impact of relationship quality on personal and professional growth, encouraging listeners to invest in nurturing connections. Tune in for an episode packed with actionable strategies and inspiration for e-commerce success.
In episode 417 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and David discuss:
00:00 – E-Commerce Strategies and Monetizing YouTube
07:07 – Utilizing YouTube Shorts And It’s Algorithm
11:29 – Importance of Quality Photo Composition
13:28 – Amazon FBA Business Journey
16:51 – Scaling Business With Amazon Selling
23:10 – Building Confidence in E-Commerce Business
27:33 – Transitioning From Nine to Five Jobs
29:23 – Business Opportunities in Canada vs USA
32:47 – Advantages of Pursuing Opportunities in the US
36:57 – Utilizing AI Tools in E-Commerce
38:08 – Amazon Comprehend for Image Analysis
43:54 – Benefits of Helium 10 Elite Membership
49:15 – Kevin King’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 417 of the AM/PM Podcast. This week we’re talking YouTube talking, image optimization, talking how do you find out what’s keep up, what’s going on in the Amazon world and a whole lot more, plus what it’s like being based internationally and sell on Amazon US and some of the challenges around that. Really cool episode with Helium 10 Elite member David: Quintieri. Enjoy this episode. Mr. David, how are you doing? Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast man.
David:
It’s a pleasure to be on doing great.
Kevin King:
Now, have you done a bunch of podcasts before, or no? Are you a podcast virgin?
David:
I have done podcasts, but from a different world, let’s call it in financial aspects. But I am scheduled to be on with Mina from Trivium as well, so we’ll see if this becomes a new thing.
Kevin King:
Podcasts are cool. I mean, I just came from back in, was it August? I actually went with my buddy, norm, to the Podcast Movement Show in Washington DC and all these podcasters there, and then I went from that the following week to a YouTube show all the YouTube creators. So it’s really interesting. This whole industry is a lot of stuff going on in this whole podcasting industry. I just been keeping my head down just doing a podcast, talking to cool people and I had no idea about all this other stuff that’s going out there in this whole little other microsystems besides Amazon.
David:
It’s. There’s like so much choice today and we have to be really picky about who we’re listening to, who we’re getting information from, so it’s good to know that there’s some really good voices getting really good people on, so that you can get the best stuff.
Kevin King:
Yeah, one of the things I’m doing, though I’m doing something wrong. You got to help me out here, David. The Kelsey brothers sold their podcast back in early September for $100 million. Two football players talking stuff and one of them uh, dates. Uh, I guess that’s what I’m doing wrong. I just figured out the answer. I need to date Taylor Swift.
David:
That’s the first step.
Kevin King:
That’s the first step.
David:
Get that first and the rest will follow.
Kevin King:
Forget the 17 million dollars I’m making in the NFL. I’m gonna make a date her and that’s, that’s a, that’s an investment, that’s that’s gonna make me some money.
David:
That’s I think even Prince Harry figured that one out too. You gotta marry. First you gotta marry the celebrity, and then you.
Kevin King:
That’s the answer. I answer my own question. Uh, yeah, then what Joe Rogan? 250 million bucks, I think it’s his contract with Spotify and there’s several others out there and it’s it’s big. At this YouTube show I was just at in September, there’s kids in there, 19-year-old kids with 2 billion, with a B views, and they don’t know the first thing about products. They don’t know the first thing about monetizing really, other than they work off of CPMs. So they’re working off of Amazon. Once you get to I think it’s 1,000 or 10,000, I can’t remember on YouTube followers or subscribers, you can actually monetize your channel. I think it’s subscribers. You can monetize your channel and when YouTube puts ads in, they will pay you a fraction of that. So it’s basically like someone saying the average is about $12 CPM. So per thousand views it’s 12 bucks. Now I think the creator gets only about half of that and YouTube keeps the other half, but at two billion views you can do the math on that. That’s like a 150. Uh, over a couple years, that’s like 150 grand a month.
David:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
Just, at least just just in in that portion. And then it was surprising me how many of them don’t know how to you are not doing UGC, that, this world that we know in the Amazon we’re always talking about getting people on TikTok or on Instagram promote our pros. A lot of these people don’t come from that world. They don’t know the first thing about it. It was surprising to me. They’re just creating content, just creating shows and doing silly things and whatever, just making the money on the other side, and they’re not realizing how much money they’re leaving on the table. And I think, at the same time, there’s a lot of Amazon sellers that are not doing good YouTube uh, don’t know what they’re doing on YouTube and leaving a lot of money on the table. So I was like I saw some. I was in there brainstorming, listening to some of this content, like all right, if we marry these two things together, I think there’s some people can crush it. Are you doing anything at all on out with uh, UGC or YouTube or TikTok?
David:
Well, YouTube. I’ve been doing YouTube since 2011. I have over 100 million views on YouTube.
Kevin King:
Oh, I had no idea, all right. All right, so I’m talking to one of those guys, okay.
David:
This is from a totally different world in the financial sphere and I just got into it as a passion. I’m an author of two books, so I just it just kind of snowballed from there started doing some videos. But it is a very different world now than it was when I started. I never really had an intention to be a YouTuber per se, but I ended up getting 280,000 subscribers and so on. But when I found Amazon, I knew that this was. It was a better business because it was much more scalable and I wasn’t doing my best to sell products, to create my own products, to then have, uh, multiple lines of income coming through and using the YouTube as sort of an advertising space. I definitely wasn’t doing that, so I didn’t do it in the best and most efficient way possible. It was just a passion project that happened to grow.
Kevin King:
So you’re doing financial advice, or what kind of stuff are you?
David:
Financial news, essentially Financial news. So if the Federal Reserve is going to do such and such an action let’s say they’re going to cut interest rates in September 17th or 18th or whatever it is then I would talk about the implications of that and what has come to this point. So really really intricate details about a lot about the central banks and their and their activities globally. So not not the most fun stuff, but–
Kevin King:
Two and eight thousand subscribers worth. There’s people that want that. I mean, that’s the beauty about it is just there’s all these niches. Then you can drill down Were you, were you trying? Were you just doing what you love and it just came? Or were you optimizing and trying to like, game the system and trying to grow it? Or were you just like I’m just doing my thing and whatever comes comes?
David:
At the beginning it was just, you know, I just want to post some stuff about this and, you know, hopefully some like-minded people will join and we can. You know that will be fun to do. And then it sort of took off. Took off so much that I was like, oh okay, I didn’t really even want to do this thing, but now I’m hey, I’m making some, a few bucks here, let me, let me see what happens. But yeah, it definitely takes planning to create videos that keep people’s attention, especially now with shorts. The way it’s working I could tell you this from experience is that and I’ll tell you, there’s different reasons why you have to pull people in from a short or you likely won’t get their eyeballs. YouTube’s algorithm has completely changed. We know that shorts are becoming more common, but in fact which you’ll see in a lot of comment sections that people reference the fact that the short brought them there to the full version, and I’m seeing this pervasively across different videos and music videos and all kinds of different things where people are referencing that in the comments, the comments that are pushed to the top. So YouTube even wants that as part of their algorithm. That, hey, I came from a short and now I’m at the long form video and I’m staying and I’m like I’m here with everybody else. You get very low engagement with shorts very low and you also get a very little income. So the whole game is create a short bait people in, bring them into the full version. The full version you bring them in as a subscriber. Hopefully you can keep them there for the duration of the video but also to watch the next video, and that’s how they do it today.
Kevin King:
The shorts are almost like an extended trailer, in a way. You want to keep those under 10 minutes, ideally, and actually people are saying you actually need to put the shorts on a separate channel. Don’t put them on the same channel. You need to actually, because the algorithm looks at what, what else is there. So you actually never want to start your YouTube channel with one video either. If you can avoid it, you always want to start with five or ten, because if, if you’re a video, if one of your videos is liked or catches the eye of the algorithm, then they look for other videos that of you and if there’s nothing there, they go into somebody else. But if you, you can grow your channel really quick if you start with five to ten already in there. And yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff, a lot of cool new tools that have come out and some AI tools and, like you said, it’s all you know. In the Amazon game, we’re all about titles, uh, and that’s important. On on YouTube too, titles are super important, but the thumbnail is just like our main image is critical and there’s people that that’s all they do is they’re thumbnail artists and they specialize. There’s a Twitter channel or X channel that they do thumbnail Thursdays and then like at 8 o’clock Central Time on Thursdays. All these thumbnail designers get on there and they tear apart other thumbnails. They basically hash through this thumbnail sucks and this is why this guy should do this and this guy should do this. And it’s a science. It’s just like you know they’re analyzing every in our product photography on Amazon. We teach people how to create a killer main image, but we don’t go in. It seems like, at least to me. We don’t go into the minute detail like exactly what’s in the background, exactly what’s the story, exactly what does this connotate in two seconds or less? As far as a story or an idea in your head, it’s a whole different thing. But I think there’s some things that we can adapt from what they’re doing into what we’re doing on the Amazon world and could be very valuable.
David:
The competition is getting fierce on Amazon, to say the least. When you look at how many different products are available to people today. They know that there’s no friction in returns. So if you didn’t convince them that this is a really good brand that they’re buying into, they might get hesitation all the way up until that 30 days after purchasing it. They still have that opportunity to return it. So I think you’ve got to sell people right from that very first main image and unfortunately I’ve been burned in the past before with very mediocre companies that I don’t want to call them photographers because that’s an insult to some of these people who are professional photographers but they don’t understand how to capture the essence of what the product solves. Your product, obviously, is selling some sort of solution to this person’s problem. They came to your listing to solve it. Even if it’s, I need to store my food in this Tupperware so that I can put it in my kid’s lunch. That’s a problem that’s being solved, and if we’re not thinking of the customer in mind, we’re just going to be taking a bunch of pictures and it’s all going to be lost in the sea of a million other products. I know it’s not always the best like the highest reviews that guess the best sales. Sure, you’re competing against somebody who has 10,000 reviews and you have zero. It’s a challenge, but there is a certain point at which you know it doesn’t matter so much anymore. We can really really do a lot with our photos. I think that’s in fact the number one thing. That’s uh not, we don’t put enough attention into it.
Kevin King:
I agree, I think a lot of people spend a lot of time on keyword research, uh and and their title, but they, they, they cheap out on the photo one because for some people it costs money to do it right. I mean, it used to cost a lot more money, now it’s with AI and some of the things you can do, it’s way down, but still it takes money and a lot of people just don’t understand it. They don’t have that critical eye, they don’t have that composition, they don’t know how to compose photos properly. I mean, there’s the rule of thirds of the. You know the tic-tac-toe board on how you position things and everything, and a lot of people don’t. They don’t know that and nobody’s really teaching that out there and I think there’s a demand for that. In fact, in September at the last Elite Helium 10 Elite quarterly workshop in Seattle right before Accelerate, Destiny Wishon came on and talked about PPC and you know she’s really good at what she does and all the intricacies of ACOS and tacos and all that kind of stuff. But I did a presentation actually on advertising, psychology of advertising. And like one of the things that I mentioned is you might want to consider actually developing your ad, your, your main image, first, before you develop the rest of the product, and develop or an ad.
Kevin King:
If you create an, an ad for a product, basically this is your five by five grid and this is the ad then go to the product after that. So the other way around developing the product, then coming up with the ad on it, because it’ll force you to think in a different way and you might modify the product. You might not do that product, even though they might have a good opportunity on Amazon based on just critical numbers on a spreadsheet. But if you can’t hit that emotional, if you can’t solve a problem and you can’t or give them a feeling, you can’t hit that emotional touch point, you’re not going to succeed. And then I gave some examples of it. Here’s a bunch of ads to show you exactly how to actually psychologically do this and it’s almost like image hacking and people seem to like that and I think we need more of that in the space, like you said that we don’t spend time. So what do you do when it comes to images? How are you doing your images?
David:
I think what needs to be done is that we have to. Well, here’s one thing I wanted to mention is now, with video, and if you’re going to do the 360, you really have very few images to work with, Because I think this is speculation, but most people don’t even know that you can click on an image to reveal all of the images. I think that they are just going to scroll, they’re going to get your I think it’s four, they’re going to get the four images and then they’re going to see video and maybe the 360, if they’ll even make it there, and it depends on mobile too. We have four images, including the main image, to sell everything. What I do is paper and pen write down what are the absolute key, based on keyword research and based on reviews. Looking through the reviews, what are the key points that I need to sell to this customer? Then look at them and just write everything out like a brainstorm and then say to myself which ones kind of go together, Like if I’m talking about the material of it, because that’s like an important feature or whatever from this thing, then I could probably squeeze in two or three different aspects of that material. Okay, it’s weatherproof. Okay, it’s durable, whatever, something like this I can kind of squeeze that in to one image.
Kevin King:
But are you using the word weatherproof or durable? Are you using those words like in bullet points or in the image, or are you using it to words Instead of taking that describe it? That actually means durable. Well, instead, so it’s Latin. A lot of people they’ll have bullet points say waterproof, durable and whatever the other things are, but instead durable. You want to connotate a picture or emotion and you want to say something like like uh will last a longer, will last beyond 20 years, beyond your death, or I don’t know some crazy, you know whatever that instead of saying just durable, uh, you know last last seven generations, or or something like that, um, yes, yeah, so you’re doing that kind of stuff, okay?
David:
Yeah, I, I just try to like when I’m thinking about the image um, which of these selling points do I need to get across to the customer, and how roughly? At this point it’s all rough. Which sort of image can I take to get these things? Okay, I need a close-up image because we’re going to show details of it. I want lifestyle image where it’s shown in the setting of how people are actually going to use it. We need, of course, the white background image and these things, and so I can kind of get a rough story board of how I want those first four images. Those are my key ones. The other one’s great, but I honestly believe few will see them. And then even A plus, I think, is today even less important than it’s ever been because of just short attention spans and everything else still there, still valid, is still, of course, important to get it all in, but I just think that you have to sell it in those first four images and you really have to spend so much time planning those pictures. And I just think there’s a saying that I heard once and I always think of it it’s measure twice, cut once, and I always just it just always replays back in my head like spend more time upfront and then do that action and hopefully that will pay dividends for you.
Kevin King:
So if you, if you want anybody listening to this, if you are a Freedom Ticket or Helium 10 member and you want to go back and look at the September Freedom Ticket training that I did every month we do a live webinar and then the replay gets put into the Freedom Ticket area. Go look at the September 6th one that I did on on marketing and differentiation and you’ll actually see exactly how to do an image stack that I that I did for one of my products, and how those first four are critical and how I I used them to sell a $55 set of three bully sticks when everybody else is selling 30 bully sticks for 30 bucks, and how I use that image stack to justify that. I recommend everybody go back and take a look at that. Let’s go take a step back real quick. So you were doing financial stuff and then you got just said I get enough of this YouTube, I want more control. I want something that is more scalable, not just requires me. So how did you stumble upon what year was that and how’d you stumble upon the Amazon stuff?
David:
It’s a funny thing. So I started YouTube 2011, years past, and I’m doing it. I wrote two books, all these things.
Kevin King:
Was this a full-time gig on YouTube or was this a side hustle?
David:
Yeah, it started as a side hustle, but then it became full-time. And then I I heard about Amazon. Of course, there’s all these different business models. I’m hearing about dropshipping, I’m hearing whatever, and within three, maybe within a two-week period, from three different places. I heard about Amazon FBA. That was the first time I’ve heard about Amazon FBA, but it all happened within like a two-week period and I was like I think this, I should be looking into this, like what is this thing? So I’m into it, I’m watching it.
Kevin King:
What year was this?
David:
This is a 2017, 2017.And I’m like this is interesting, because I didn’t know that, I didn’t understand FBA. I knew, okay, you can sell products on Amazon, but I thought it was more like eBay kind of thing, and I’m like this is interesting. Okay, I’m going to check this out. So I started watching the videos. I took one of those guru courses.
Kevin King:
You don’t want names.
David:
Yeah, it wasn’t at the Freedom Ticket original.
Kevin King:
Alright alright
David:
I’ll be honest, but I did watch that and the new version 4.0. I took one of those guru courses. Thank God it was good enough to get me going. I realized that the guru didn’t actually sell on Amazon, but he gave me the instructions to sort of get along and I did and launched a product. Funny story about the product was I’m selling it’s doing so well, like I can’t keep the stock. It’s going crazy. And six months into it I get an email notice, you’re selling a restricted product. Okay, I go, oh no. And just to back up, I looked at this product. I’m like I don’t know if this is an FDA type of product. I emailed. I got three email confirmations from Amazon saying that this is not a restricted product and that, of course, means nothing seller support, they told me. In the end, they told me yeah, we told you that before, but not anymore. So, yeah, so six months in, I got screwed over and then fighting back, trying to fight back and forth. They weren’t having it, so that product killed it right there. And then I just went on to go back to the drawing board, product research again. I used the Helium 10 tools actually to find that product and I just went from there and I’ve been selling that brand. So in 2018, into 2019, I think 2018 was probably when I started it. That’s when I started this brand that I currently sell today.
Kevin King:
What category are you in? Or products?
David:
I’m in like house products, home and household.
Kevin King:
Here’s something that’s interesting to me notice how David just I sold that product. I sold I’m in home and household but he didn’t say what he sells. And this is a thing in Amazon space and it’s always kind of it makes sense in the early days like 2015, 2016,. Nobody would ever say what they sell because they’re afraid that someone’s just going to knock them off. I’m going to get someone on my listing. Someone’s just going to see that I’m doing well in this. They’re going to go find it on Alibaba, stick their name on it and be my next competitor. And back then that was probably a valid concern. But nowadays, with the way Amazon is, I think it’s much less of a concern, and I notice this in other industries. Talk about their products. You’re a Shopify seller. I meet someone at YouTube show that sells on Shopify. They tell me exactly what they sell. Uh, they’re not. They’re not worried about it. But as soon as you meet an Amazon seller, it’s like prying prying teeth out of them to actually get them to tell you what, unless they’ve got a big moat around it. Um, you know strong IP in a big moat. They won’t tell you. I had the same problem. I did a think tank in uh in in Austin, which went really, really well in September. Had 12 people that paid to come and have for two hours had seven experts and a moderator sit at a table and basically dial in on their exact problems and their exact pain point to actually solve their problems and some of them walked away from that crying like this has been so profound. So this has been the best decision I ever made in my life to actually come to this. It’s called Market Masters. I’ll probably do another one next year, but to come to this and get this direct advice. You know you can go to a Helium 10 conference or you can go to any Amazon conference and some of the stuff applies to you, some of it doesn’t. This is very tuned in, with experts curated to your needs.
Kevin King:
But selling this thing was a nightmare because people nobody’s like yeah, that sounds cool, but ain’t no way. I’m sitting in a chair and telling seven other big time Amazon freaking people what I sell because they’ll just knock me off and the mentality is they’ll just knock me off. So I think what you. What needs to shift and it’s a lot of that’s from the training and the guru training is the way people actually are developing products and the way that they. You know this. This notion of find, find a hole on Amazon, a keyword hole, go find a product on Alibaba, stick a logo on it and put it up needs to go away and especially in the days of the new Temu, what Temu is doing and what Amazon’s doing basically knocking off Temu helping factors go direct on Amazon. You need to target an audience and avatar and create a brand. Amazon. So what are you doing with this home stuff to actually do that and not just be let me find a keyword opportunity that someone’s missing out on on Amazon, but actually create an audience and avatar and a true brand?
David:
When I first started learned from the gurus. The guru doesn’t even sell, but it allowed me to get in. The first product I sold was a Me Too product. No question about it, straight from Alibaba Me Too product. But what it allowed me to do was to gain the confidence to then sell the next product, to launch new products, to start to develop a real brand. I get about 3,000 searches in a given month on Amazon for my brand name.
Kevin King:
That’s actually good. I mean, that’s my rule. I’ve always tell people if that is 3,000 searches for the brand name alone means you’re actually become a brand. If you’re not getting 3,000 searches, if you’re getting less than that on your brand name standalone, then you’re not a brand yet. I just made that rule up. That’s just my little arbitrary line. So that’s good. That’s good.
David:
Yeah, like. But at first what I needed was can I even do this? Like I was, just, I’m like, I’m just going to go for it, like I’m just going to try it, let me see what happens. And so, with really a small minimum of invest, like I think I probably put in 2000. Like that first order was about $2,000 or something, not knowing anything, and it ended up working. I could see that I was selling. I could see people were, you know, giving a positive reviews. That is unsustainable long term. Me too products. You just get crushed because of the competition. They’ll run those prices down. But I think if people can just sell a product online, like anything, like even selling 20 products, 20 units, they will gain the confidence to then sell a real product that they want later. So my, the further like, as we got further along, then we have to create a new mold for the product that fixed the issues of the previous model and of course, this was a long time in the making. There was bad reviews, some bad reviews. Overall, even that earlier model was getting 4.6 in that range, but there was definitely some bad reviews, and so I knew there was an issue. So I’m like talking to my supplier and just saying these are the problems I’m having, like constantly feeding them the problems and saying Can this be solved, can this be adjusted, what can be done? There’s a pushback, you know back and forth, but ultimately we got that done. So you know it was a long time coming. I just think for people they don’t have the confidence that they can even they work a nine to five job. They’re like I don’t know what I’m doing here. I feel like it should be done in stages, like can you even sell.
Kevin King:
I agree with you. I mean, I agree with you that, on it, to start a true brand and go in this like the quote unquote right way, it can be daunting, especially if you don’t have experience on that. So, actually getting your feet wet with something a little bit simpler that you’re not trying to quit your job off of, you’re not trying to. If it takes off, great, awesome. But you’re not really trying to, you’re just trying to figure it out. I did that. I was selling on Amazon since 2001. But I wasn’t doing the FBA model until 2015. So in 2015, before I actually launched, I launched five brands at this, almost back to back. But before I did that I was like I need to figure out how do I ship something in Amazon, how does a listing work, how does this work? And so I just did arbitrage. For like a month I was hitting Walmart and the dollar stores and there’s a sauce company here in Texas, that Salt Lick, that has their own like little barbecue sauce and they weren’t on Amazon. So I went and bought a couple of cases from them, threw it up on there just to just to learn, um, how it works. So I agree with you on that and that’s kind of what you went through is like you went through that process and now, okay, now I get it, now I know what I need to do, now I see the opportunities and now let me do this right.
David:
And I feel like for a lot of people that I talk to. So from my YouTube thing, I ended up getting a small group of people together who want to sell and just like, hey, if you want me to help you out, I’ll help you out, kind of thing. So with these people they have, there’s such hesitation and they just aren’t certain about you know, I don’t know, am I making the right choice? Am I doing this and that? And just really trying to emphasize to them like you can do it. You can do it. Like, look at who your competition is. A lot of times it’s these Chinese sellers that are all about price, terrible photos, like everything is not good about the listing except for that attractive price. And I’m like you can do so much better. Think about what you’re doing, your nine to five job. You do so much hard work. Maybe you got a family, you got all these things that are so difficult. You can do these things. You can do it. I’m just trying to give them the confidence.
Kevin King:
Sorry, is this something you do? You just volunteer this, or is this like a paid little thing?
David:
Yeah, it’s a paid group but it’s not paid much. But it’s just something that I want to help people, because I felt like the guru thing was like after watching the course and realizing I’m like, oh man, this guy didn’t know what he was doing and then I learned just through failing. Obviously, I failed pretty bad there, um, and just trying to hopefully get people up to speed and they can get out of their nine to job, nine to five job, because I hated my nine to five job. I can, I can definitely tell you that I worked for a financial company and, um, it wasn’t uh wasn’t the best time. So–
Kevin King:
Now that’s something I can tell by the pronunciation of a few words. Uh, you’re Canadian, right?
David:
That’s right, that’s right.
Kevin King:
The pronunciation of a couple of those words. So have you always been in Canada, or do you live in the states at all?
David:
Always born and raised in in cold Canada, that’s right.
Kevin King:
Well, not all Canada’s cold. Some areas are actually pleasant, but what part of Canada are you in?
David:
I’m in Toronto.
Kevin King:
Oh, okay.
David:
But uh it’s, it’s, uh, that’s the summer is this short. The summer is this short. So–
Kevin King:
Well, half the population of Canada, I think, is in Toronto. I just saw some stat like the Toronto metro area not Toronto proper, but when you build in the whole metro area it’s something like 10 million, nine, 10 million people or something, I think.
David:
Yeah, I’m not sure what. I mean, we gained about a million in like one year. So it’s like this unsustainable growth path. But yeah, it’s a place for, not for, entrepreneurs, and that’s sort of the one thing that I would say is not good about it, definitely. So it’s hard. It’s harder to grow when you’re, when you’re up here in the cold.
Kevin King:
What do you think it is? I just heard something I think it was on my first, my first million podcast recently. They’re talking to this British guy and he was talking about the difference in attitude in the state in the States versus England. And he’s talking about July 4th. And he’s talking about he was here for his first July 4th and he was just amazed at how many flags there were everywhere, how many people were doing fireworks and wearing red, white and blue and clapping and having fun and doing all this. He said it wasn’t. Until I saw July 4th here I had to go look it up. When is British Independence Day? I had no idea. It’s King George’s Day or something like on April 23rd or something like that. He’s like nobody celebrates it. Really, in this we don’t have this sense of, uh, patriotism like you have in the United States. It’s just this you know you can be somewhere in the United States and, um, you know all this, someone will say something and the crowd just starts chanting USA, USA. Or you have jets flying over the stadium at football games. You know military jets and stuff right off the national anthem. But that extends to business, I think, and there’s something about the US. There’s parts of the US that are really bad, not good. There’s parts of America that are really good, but one of those is entrepreneurship, and it seems like there is no better place in the world to actually get a leg up or to start or to build a business than the United States.
David:
There’s no question about I mean this from my perspective. I completely agree.
Kevin King:
What do you think that is? What do you think that is?
David:
It starts with the availability of everything. Let’s say services, oh, I want to get a particular bank. Let’s just say, oh, that’s not available to Canadians. Oh, I want to get access to this thing, oh, it’s not available to Canadians. Like you, go to the dropdown list and there’s, like you know, it’s just I’m not there, I’m not able to get it. So, TikTok shop. You want to sell on TikTok shop? Sorry, we only allow Americans. Oh, I have my ITIN, I have my EIN. No, no, no, you got to be from United States. So, like, all the way from there. But in terms of, like Independence Day, on July 1st we have Canada Day and people do celebrate and so on. But what has happened is like it’s like people I know a lot of people that they come to Canada if they can’t get into the US. It’s like, okay, okay, we can’t get into the US, no, we’ll go to Canada, we’ll try later, like that sort of mentality. It’s like, yeah, it’s a good place to stop along the way. Um, it’s you know I’m telling you–
Kevin King:
I’m in Canada, take a piss and get some sodas and get some ketchup chips and then we’re on our way.
David:
That’s right. Like I know people that literally—
Kevin King:
Fries, the little thing with fries and a little sauce on it. What’s that called a bully? You know sauce on it. What’s that called Bully? No, what’s it called it’s big in Canada.
David:
Oh, the poutine.
Kevin King:
Poutine, that’s it. Yeah, poutine, it’s a poutine.
David:
That’s right. Yeah, that’s just unfortunately the way it is and they’re not going to change that. They’re not going to change that. It’s a very socialist kind of place. It’s not a place for entrepreneurship I mean, let’s just be clear about that and so that makes doing things business more difficult. So I would not invest in Canada, that’s for sure. But the US has so many advantages. People don’t realize this. As an American, even as a Canadian too. We have a safety net. We have things that allow you to just say I’m just going to give this a try. And too many people are stuck in where they are and just like they’re miserable about everything. Instead, just take the leap, give it a go and try to make it happen. I just know too many people that like they say they want to do stuff, but they never end up doing it. You have so many opportunities as American, Canadian, whatever, but especially in the US, I mean, there’s so many people around that are just so driven. They’re so driven, it’s amazing.
Kevin King:
So what do you think it is for someone outside the United States? That’s like they hear about the FBA, like you did. They’re like okay, I want to, I’m going to sell, I’m going to, but I live in Italy, but I’m not going to sell an Amazon Italy, I’m going to go to the United States and sell, cause that’s where all the training, a lot of the cool trainings base, it’s where a lot of the action is. But I’m just like, like you just said, I don’t know this culture that well. I’ve seen stuff on TV, I’ve seen some TV shows. You know, I met a few Americans passing through at the pizza shop or whatever, but I I’m nervous about this. What are some of the hurdles you see that maybe international sellers that are coming into the US market? besides, a language barrier for some of them are having, and how do they overcome that?
David:
For a lot of people that are selling coming from international. I think they love number one, they love to look at the US market because they see the dollar signs. But I would have to say, though, some of those people do sell onto the European markets, which is crazy because of the difficulty, just to get in on them. But I just think that they have to understand the American consumer just like you would any other consumer. You still need to know your, you know you hear the term avatar. You still need to know who is ultimately buying your product. And keeping it in mind, like when I talk to my supplier, they tell me something and I’ll literally will tell them you do not understand the American consumer, they don’t want to see that and I, just off the top of my head I can’t think of any examples, but I’ve said this to them multiple times before. I’m like you don’t understand, you don’t understand it and I try to explain. This is what they want to see, and largely Canadian and American consumers. You know approximately the same. So the listings and everything would translate, but perhaps in Europe and things it might be a little bit different. I’ve heard the German market’s really different and everything else. But I just think you’ve got to understand it and the best way to do that better than keywords? Keywords is key, but no pun intended. But the reviews are like they just have so much knowledge and we can use the AI to summarize that and everything. But I also like just reading the reviews. I just like to get the whole context of what they’re talking about.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you can get inside someone’s head sometimes in those reviews and you can see their language patterns and the way they’re describing things. Sometimes the emotion will come out in reviews. You can understand someone a little bit better. Video reviews are even better If you’re able to watch, you know video reviews of somebody.
David:
Bradley talks about the collagen peptides thing and he would said this, said this for years. He was saying you look at the keywords and you don’t see coffee mentioned anywhere. Now, today you do, but years ago when he started looking at it, because that was his default, like instead of garlic press, he would look at collagen peptides and then in the reviews it would say in my coffee, in my coffee, in my coffee, but that’s not a keyword. And so if you’re just looking at the keywords, you’re never going to see these people put the collagen peptides in their coffee and use it like a creamer to thicken it up. So that’s like information you’ll only get from reviews.
Kevin King:
What are you doing with this big push that Amazon is doing towards AI? Are you paying attention to this right now with like Rufus and Cosmo and making any changes? Are you just kind of waiting it out to see what happens? What are your thoughts and what are you doing in regards to this AI change that you see coming?
David:
Number one. I’m bullish, long-term about AI. I think it is not there yet in what they want. I’ve seen on X a lot of talk about how Rufus is spitting back some information that’s not even making sense. It’s like out of the 12,000 reviews and the product has like 70 reviews, is it even reading the right data? They don’t even know. They’ll get there. They’ll get there eventually. I think it should have been left in beta. But what I am doing is when I go back to the drawing board of my images which I had done recently to make sure that the pictures tell a thousand words. That’s really what I’ve tried to do, so that the image itself shows the context of how the product is supposed to be used. So that if I were to feed that to ChatGPT and say, hey, what’s going on in this picture, without showing any text on it, it would understand what’s being done there.
Kevin King:
That’s an interesting, actually approach. That’s actually a good little technique is actually take your images, stick them into chatGPT or Plexi or Claude or whatever, or there’s actually some image analyzation tool I’ve mentioned those like on the Helium 10 Elite a couple of times that will analyze it and ask it what it thinks is going on and if it comes back with something totally different than what you intended or what the intended use is, you may need to make some changes to those photos. Uh, and and play, go through iterations of that and until it gets it, gets it right four or five times in a row, um of what, what you’re actually trying to do, or cross. Maybe I would even use all. I would use several different LLMS.
David:
Yep
Kevin King:
And see, see how they all, because some of them can interpret it totally differently. And and that’s actually a good approach to take. I mean, amazon has Comprehend, Amazon Comprehend. That’s part of AWS that you can actually get in and it will analyze the images from Amazon’s lens, which is actually a pretty cool little thing, and they actually give you a score If you go back one of the episodes in May, towards the end of May I think it May 20th or May 27th, somewhere around that time Matt Altman was on the AM/PM Podcast and he talked about using Amazon Comprehend and how you can upload your images into Amazon Comprehend on AWS. I think it’s free, you just got to have an AWS account and you actually it will analyze it and it’ll give you a score. It’ll say, on a scale of one to a hundred, you’re an 82. And you really want to be I think he said I can’t remember the exact words that you want to be above a 90 or 95. And so they would go back and they would change something in the image or change something in the listing, cause it also looks at the listing and change something in the listing and then resubmit it and, like 30 minutes later, come back with a new score.
Kevin King:
It’s almost like if you ever send, if you ever done mass emails, and you send something first before you send a big email out to a, a spam checker and I’ll say this has these seven words in it are triggers for spam. If you take these seven words out, you know, guarantee free money back, whatever, your likelihood of going into the inbox versus the spam folder goes up X amount. It’s kind of kind of like that, so that that’s another way you can do it. Um, but AI, I think a lot of people AI is a great tool and if you use AI tools properly, letting ai do everything but use the tools for analyst, analyzation, uh, to automate like mundane tasks and steps, is a major, major advantage that people are into that have right now. Are you doing? Are you using any AI tools when it comes to your amazon listing, using any of the review analyzation tools or the list building tools or or the split testing image tools or anything like that?
David:
I I’ve been using. So when GPT first came out, I immediately I’m like I need to immediately do something about this. That was in the earlier days of AI. I started using that. Then Helium 10 brought in their tools as well, both on the reviews side as well as listing. Listing builder just checked it out. I like to. I like to use them as sort of okay, give me a good base to work with and then let me like what I love, that it does the hard work for me. I I’ve told them, I’ve I’ve gone into ChatGPT and kind of given a list of all my keywords and said these are the most important in order and I want to fit these in. And this will be like for backend description. For instance, I got A plus content but I can stick it in the backend here and it just can fit it in in such a way that would take me hours to do but it’s doing it in five seconds. So that’s the things that I’ve. I’ve done a lot of and it just helped me build a stronger listing and just take a lot of the workload. It’s not something that I of course I could do that too, but it just makes the process really easier.
Kevin King:
How are you staying on top of what’s happening in Amazon right now? What do you do? I know you’re in Helium 10 Elite. You’re an Elite member. You participate in a lot of the month, the, the weekly uh mastermind sessions and on the trainings and stuff. I know you’re in a few other uh Facebook groups and stuff. I see you posting from time to time like lunch with norm and some of that stuff. But what, where are you? What is your main way of staying on top of your game? I mean, you guys stay on top of your product and what’s happening uh when it comes to the money side of things, but also you to stay a step ahead when it comes to what’s coming next. What’s what’s team up to? What’s Amazon doing? What’s the AI doing? How do you, how? How do you stay? What do you do? What do you follow? What do you?
David:
X, x is I completely transformed my X um to get rid of all the nonsense that’s there and you know all the silly videos and stuff and I followed. I unfollowed a couple people and I followed a whole bunch of people. Uh, one of them that was recommended by you, Steve Roll. Uh, you know, at one from one of your newsletters. I found him. Then I found, uh, Molson Hart. Then I found, uh, all these other people that are basically, um, actually selling, not like selling their course and promoting Amazon, but they actually sell. The guy from Simple Modern was doing nine figures on there. The guy Zuley Kitchen they’re all posting content on there and there’s such good information that’s being given out on X. You’ve got to weed out all that not so good stuff. But I find it to be amazing because my whole timeline is just filled, absolutely filled, with Amazon-related content every day, or e-commerce-related content. That, to me, has been incredible.
Kevin King:
Are you doing anything on LinkedIn at all?
David:
I don’t, I don’t. I find LinkedIn. I know LinkedIn is really good for certain things, but I find it too much like rah-rah, like you know. Hey, congratulations on your promotion sort of thing versus X is like if your content is not good, the algorithm won’t feed it. It’s like you got to work hard for those likes and and those views. So that’s the way I see it. But I know there’s a lot of Amazon guys that are doing, uh, LinkedIn
Kevin King:
It seems like LinkedIn maybe maybe is more people, their service providers, trying to provide value in the hopes that you then turn around and use their, their company, versus what I’m seeing on X because I monitor a lot of this stuff for my newsletter is, like you just said, these are people actually selling and they’re just they’re providing value just to help other people, just because they love to do this or they love they’ve discovered something that is sharing it and I found that the content typically is a little more dialed in on X and less promotional, much less promotional.
David:
It’s raw, you know. It’s like you’re getting the guy posting a picture of his kid, maybe, but then the next minute he’s like oh yeah, by the way, I lost a thousand units at Amazon, and so you’re getting like a really raw.
Kevin King:
You’ve been a Helium 10 Elite member for a while. Why did you decide to do Helium 10 Elite and what benefit are you getting from it, if any?
David:
Yeah, basically, the one thing was trying to find other people doing the same thing as you and you have questions and you can’t go ask your buddy from high school. You can’t go ask your. You know your mom and dad. You you got to find people so you go online and you know it’s there’s too many. I don’t like the people that just go and complain about Amazon oh, Amazon’s increasing the fees. You know that’s you, it’s all over now, or whatever. I want people who are actually doing stuff, who are actually making it happen and what are they doing. I want to learn from them too, and so we all teach each other, we all learn from each other. We ask questions hey, did you guys see this? It’s a good place to be because you’re all in that same space, you’re all trying to grow your business and things. So, um, yeah, I’ve been enjoying it the whole time and it’s good. You got, and then you got, the Facebook group, which is more in between the weekly sessions. We can post stuff in there.
Kevin King:
So you’ve been doing this since 2017. You started this brand. That’s actually working for you. Now, around 2018 that’s almost, you know, coming up on seven years uh, six, six plus years, almost seven on that brand. What’s? What is the goal? Is this seven figure brand a figure brand? What’s the goal is to sell it. Seven figure brand?
David:
Um I’ve been, I’ve been playing around with the idea of selling and I’ve talked to brokers. Um I’ve I’ve um spoke to seller x, who is just recently, yeah, no longer just recently had some issues, but that was during the peak, by the way, and they approached me, which is funny. But I also wonder if that’s the right course of action. I don’t know. I’ve been considering that I feel confident enough to be able to find new products and new brands and new things. It’s a hard road at the beginning, but I’m not scared of it anymore as I was in the absolute beginning. So it could be a way to kind of cash out. The only problem is different story Canada, US. In Canada, if you sell your company, you’ll be taxed, your great-grandchildren will be taxed, you’ll be paying that tax, uh, whereas in the US you’ve spoken about it before where there’s something to do in the first 30 days of your setting up that business. If you do something, then you get so much. Yeah, there’s so many cool things with the US, so um.
Kevin King:
Are you a Canadian-based business, then not US based?
David:
Yes, Canadian-based.
Kevin King:
Okay, all right so you gotta take, so yeah yeah, you dug your own grave on that one.
David:
Living here you gotta, you gotta face that music regardless, even if you had an LLC or C Corp or whatever. But, um, uh, yeah, that that’s kind of the things. Longer term I’m not so sure, but but I but I love the idea of an exit and starting over right from scratch again, not not then going becoming a guru, but starting it off all again.
Kevin King:
So what drives you in this business? What is it that makes you get up every morning and go? Man, I love what I’m doing.
David:
I love the scalability. I think it’s so cool. And the fact that I literally be in Cayman Islands, like you know, on my phone and I’m like, okay, still selling, like you know, it’s just that that’s so cool, that’s the coolest thing I feel ever. Like you know, you’re, you could literally be anywhere in the world. It’s like those videos that sell you on some course or whatever, but like this is real and you could actually be anywhere doing the same thing. I don’t have. I don’t even keep files on my computer, my desktop at all. Everything is cloud. So I’m like a hundred percent in the cloud. I just I love the whole idea. I think it’s the coolest thing in the world. Not quite James Bond, 007, but it’s pretty cool.
Kevin King:
That’s why we do it. We do it for the freedom. It’s a really good business to be in and it can be difficult at times and stressful at times, but it’s still and you can lose a lot of money sometimes but still, probably one of the best opportunities in the last hundred plus years in business is to actually do the FBA model, starting out on Amazon and hopefully extending beyond that at some point.
David:
A hundred percent.
Kevin King:
Yeah, David. I really appreciate you coming on. If people want to follow you, I guess you must be on X then if they want to follow you on X or somewhere else because you must be posting occasionally, just to keep up with the Joneses. Something, something.
Kevin King:
How do they find you. What do they do?
David:
You can find me on X. You can get me at TheMoneyGPS on X, TheMoneyGPS and you’ll find me and I hope to see you there.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Thanks for coming on, man. We’ll see you in the Helium 10 Elite one of the next calls, I’m sure.
Kevin King:
So make sure you hit that subscribe button and if you really like the AM/PM Podcast, if you’ve been listening to this for a while, refer a friend. Tell someone out there in the space like hey, hey you gotta check this out message them send them a dm say hey I don’t know if you’ve been listening to the AM/PM Podcast, but you might enjoy this. Or if you have an episode that was your favorite, be sure to send that on to somebody so that they can take a look at that and maybe get some benefit from this podcast as well. Because that’s why I’m doing this trying to help you out and tell stories untold stories and give you some valuable insights. And hopefully you’ve been getting that, if you have. I’ll look forward to seeing you again next week for the next episode of the AM/PM Podcast. But before we go, make sure you’ve subscribed to my newsletter, billiondollarsellers.com. It’s totally free every Monday and Thursday, billiondollarsellers.com. And I just want to leave you some words of parting wisdom. You know, it’s the quality of your relationships that will determine the quality of your life. The quality of your relationships will determine the quality of your life. T So invest in your relationships, even those that might seem a little inconsequential you just never know where it’s going to come around and make a huge difference. See you again next week. Bye
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