#294 – Beer, Bulls, & Community: How Manny Coats Built & Exited Helium 10 And Is Revolutionizing Another Industry

In episode 294 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin King and Manny Coats discuss:

• 00:45 – Meet Your New Host
• 02:31 – Catching Up With Manny Coats
• 03:05 – Who Is Manny Coats And How Kevin Met Him?
• 04:38 – How He Convinced Kevin To Be A Guest In This Podcast
• 06:05 – Helium 10’s Rocketship Growth And Their Favorite Work Events
• 07:17 – The Key To Manny’s Success with Helium 10
• 10:36 – Manny And Kevin’s Night Out Story
• 14:46 – Exiting Helium 10 And What’s Next?
• 16:23 – Why Manny Chose Assembly To Acquire Helium 10
• 19:05 – Being An Entrepreneur In Most Of His Life
• 19:44 – Life After Exiting Helium 10
• 20:23 – Getting Into Venture Capitalism And Seeing Investments Grow
• 22:08 – Investing In Cryptocurrency
• 24:45 – NFTs And Building A Community For Your Brand
• 26:08 – Breaking Down The Web 3.0 And The NFT Space
• 31:32 – The Bulls And The Apes Project
• 41:14 – NFTs Is The Perfect Place For The Amazon Community
• 42:13 – Clearing Up The Confusion In The NFT Space
• 47:19 – Manny’s Biggest Takeaways In Starting And Exiting Helium 10
• 48:44 – The Tool That Put Helium 10 On The Map

Transcript

Kevin King:

What’s up everybody. Welcome to episode 294 of the AM/PM Podcast. On today’s episode, we have Manny Coats, one of the original co-founders of Helium 10, we’re gonna be talking about some of the origin stories, how it got going, how it changed a bunch of lives and what he’s up to today. And in fact, when he tells you what he is doing now, and you take that information and you apply it to the Amazon business, it’s gonna completely revolutionize how you launch products and rank products on Amazon, I believe so. Stay tuned. This is gonna be a jam packed information, full episode.

Kevin King:

Hey, there everybody, a new voice here on the AM/PM Podcast, maybe you recognize my voice from the freedom ticket from some of the talks I’ve done at conventions all over the world or different podcasts I’ve been on. My name is Kevin King and I’m your new host of the AM/PM podcast. You know, Manny Coates began this podcast back in 2015 and did it a great job for about three years before he exited Helium 10 and then Tim Jordan for the last couple years as carried the torch and did an awesome job, brought on some really good guests and had some amazing content. I’ve always been listening to it and every week looked forward to seeing what he had next. And now it’s my turn. So at least for the next while I’ll be hosting this, as long as you guys are subscribing and liking it and downloading it, we’ll keep marching this thing forward.

Kevin King:

I’m gonna bring a little bit of a different twist to it. I’m bring on some amazing guests. We’re gonna talk about a lot of things, Amazon, a lot of things, eCommerce, a lot of cutting edge stuff. And as most of you know, I’m a no-BS guy. So when our guests come on, there’s gonna be no corporate fluff, no beating around the bush. We’re gonna tell it like it is. So it’s gonna be awesome. I’m excited to be here and I’m looking forward to delivering some amazing value and some awesome entertainment for everybody. We’ll have a new episode every single week. Be sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform where you listen to and make sure you don’t miss a single episode. Today’s episode’ gonna be awesome.

Shivali:

Welcome to the AM/PM podcast, where we explore opportunities in e-commerce we dream big and we discover what’s working right now. Plus this is the podcast where money never sleeps. Are you ready for today’s episode? I said, are you ready? Let’s do this. Here’s your host, Kevin King.

Kevin King:

Manny Coats. How are you doing man? Long time no hear for most of this audience.

Manny Coats:

I know I’m excellent. How are you doing? Where are we?

Kevin King:

Where are we? I know it’s kind of like a dejavu here. Isn’t it?

Manny Coats:

It is.

Kevin King:

How’s it feel to be a guest on the podcast that you created?

Manny Coats:

I think it’s full circle. It’s awesome. I remember, you know, when we started, like, it was like pulling teeth to try to get you to come on the podcast. You said, I don’t wanna talk to people. This is my stuff, my knowledge. And then look at you here. You’re actually hosting it now. Who would’ve ever that if I told you this back in the day, you would’ve been like you are crazy.

Kevin King:

I know. So those of you that don’t know who Manny Coats is, Manny is the one of the co-founders of Helium 10. And he started this podcast. I think it was like in 2015. And he was just documenting his journey back then there wasn’t a Helium 10. And I think I, I found it because that’s when I was starting to sell as a third party seller. And I was just like thirsting for knowledge. And I was just like any podcasts I could find. And I found Manny’s and it was like this is refreshing. This is a guy like telling like it is, and he is documenting, and this is what my sales are. This is what I did. So I think I picked it up on about episode seven or so. And the podcast evolved over time as many documented his journeys starting Helium 10.

Kevin King:

And then he got so busy that he couldn’t do the podcast anymore in 2018, I guess. And then it kind of switched over to a different podcast that Bradley’s doing now, Sirius Sellers. And then AM/PM was brought back with Tim Jordan, Tim hosted it for a couple of years and did a great job. And now here I am hosting it and I have the original creator of the podcast right here. And, you know, Manny, I remember that time when you called, I think it was how this star all started. People always ask someone, ask me today earlier, like, how did you actually get into this business? Or how’d you get into like teaching and speaking and it’s all your fault? You’re the reason that, that I did it because I remember in like the spring of 2016, I think it was your podcast is still pretty young. And you start a Facebook group. And there I was, some people were posting in there and I didn’t like what someone were posting because I just felt that that’s not the truth. They’re posting, you know, this is how you, you do a landing page or this is how you– I forget exactly what it was.

Manny Coats:

I remember what it was. I remember.

Kevin King:

What was it?

Manny Coats:

Yes. So, so you were in a group and I don’t remember what Facebook group it was and people were talking, I mean, everybody kind of parrots and repeats the same thing. And I was like, okay, I know this, I know this, I know that. And then there was this one dude, Kevin King, right. Had a picture of a dog for his profile picture, and you responded, it was about posting Spanish words. Remember that you were posting Spanish words to drive some extra traffic. And I thought that, I wonder if that really works. And I remember that was really cool. And then from there, I don’t remember the full details, but I remember we started talking and I was like, man, this guy’s got a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, you know, that finally somebody refreshing, that’s just talking about all kinds of new stuff. And then I mean, you did not wanna do it, but after talking quite a bit, we got you on the podcast. And I think even then you were like, eh, this is gonna be an afterthought. I think you were in your garage, like packing boxes or something with your phone sitting on a box or something. Cuz it was so about the audio. But, the content was good.

Kevin King:

Yeah. It was.

Manny Coats:

The content was great.

Kevin King:

Yeah, that was I remember yeah, it was kind of an afterthought and we just recorded it and then it came out, and then like, boom, all of a sudden I started getting all these calls from other people, want me to go on their podcast and that’s just kind of what started. And that just evolved into me speaking a lot of events and then we hooked up you know, some people think I’m part of Helium 10 or I own part of it or something, but that’s never been the case. I’ve just been friends with you and Gui, when y’all first started it. And we did some stuff together. We started what back then was called the Illuminati mastermind. It’s now called Helium 10 Elite. And we started that as a, like a little mastermind group, he three of us. And I think you guys were on it for like the first few months. And then Helium 10 just started on a rocket ship climb. And you guys got so busy that you just had to like step away from that and just focus on growing Helium 10. And I just kind of took that over and it’s kind of evolved to this day.

Manny Coats:

Yeah. And still, to this day, some of my favorite trips, you know, and events and doing stuff, were those, those actual work events, right. Going out to Hawaii, going out to Mexico, and doing that stuff, it was super fun. Cuz you get to hang out with your friends, you get to hang out with people that you’re hoping to change their lives for the better. And at the same time you’re doing just crazy fun stuff.

Kevin King:

So you guys grew Helium 10. What do you think was the success to actually getting, I mean he and Tim today is like, it’s gone way and beyond you guys took it to a high level and now it’s even like gone even crazy. I think something, you know, the valuation of assembly, the company that bought Helium 10, they’ve aggregated a few other companies into that. It’s like over a billion dollars now as the valuation, what do you think was the key to your success were, is it the right time, right place? Or is it because the way y’all did it, or what do you think made helium 10? What it was back then.

Manny Coats:

It was hustle, hustle. No, but there was a lot of things. Hustle was one of ’em right. Grinding, like crazy where everybody else that I knew had, you know, just regular eight hour days we were putting in 18, 20 hour days nonstop, seven days a week. So we were able to compress the learning curve and the testing and everything we were doing down to much smaller time groups. So instead of it taking six months to figure out something, we worked so much, we could actually test things out in 30 or 60 days. And I think that timing was pretty good. Like the market was, I mean, it wasn’t new, there was already tools out there that was already podcasts out there, but we did things differently. Like there’s no tool out there that actually had everything in one place. Right. So I remember that, cuz that was frustrating.

Manny Coats:

Like, well I want a ranking tool. I gotta go over here. And if I wanna go get a keyword tool, I gotta go over here. And if I wanna do keyword research, I gotta go get that over here or whatever it was. Right. So we had to do that like that jumping around and we thought, what if we can actually put everything under one roof? Right. And what if we could have a podcast, and the podcast actually came first, but what if we could have podcast that actually spit out the truth instead of what everybody wanted to hear, which is, oh, it’s easy to become a millionaire, which it’s not, right? You gotta, there’s a lot of things you gotta do to get there. And so I think by putting it all together, having the right team Guillermo as the co-founder was perfect meeting you early on and getting the training going and all the things that we did. I think it just all came together. I don’t know. It’s just one of those weird things like trying to replicate that again, if we would’ve went back in time, would’ve been difficult. Cuz everything just kind of fit perfectly I thought.

Kevin King:

You think part of it was actually partnerships too. You were able to partner well and, and do do some stuff. Well, because I remember the first time when you came out to Austin the first time we met in person, you know, I did the podcast and we talked by chatter by phone and then you’re like, Hey, I’m making a trip out. I got a business meeting in Austin which is where I’m based and you came out to visit some guys here and on that trip we have an interesting story. You might be able to tell a little bit about that as well. But do you think those partnerships were part of the key to the success?

Manny Coats:

Yeah. I think everything. I mean, I’ve been asked this question before and it’s difficult to pin it down to one thing, getting on stage and speaking. Right. And you become kind of insta-famous in the space that opens up a lot of doors. Having the podcast actually opened a lot of doors to where, you know, if you have a podcast and you reach out to somebody that normally wouldn’t talk to normal, regular, who knows, you know who they are kind of thing. If you have a podcast they’re like, oh yeah, I wanna get on your podcast. And then you can have a conversation with them and then maybe you can structure something out of that. So there was just so many different things. Like I said, meeting you was a big thing because eventually, you ended up doing all the training for Helium 10, that became so popular.

Manny Coats:

The podcast that we did, I think was something that jumpstarted a lot. I think that podcast episode got forwarded around so much and people are like, you gotta listen to this. This stuff is good. And so people started paying attention cuz you’re kind of a no BS guy. I’m a no-BS guy. We just kind of put it out there. Those things were good. I think the pricing was also important for what we were doing. Right. Keep it affordable. We weren’t greedy. One of the things that we ever did or one of the best things I think we ever did was that we had a money back guarantee where a lot of companies didn’t. So when we were doing it’s like, if there’s anybody at any point ever, that’s unhappy with what we’re doing, our service, whatever, let us know. We don’t want there to be an unhappy person. We give ’em their money back. So I think that helped that you just didn’t have people that said anything bad about us, cuz we were just, you know, we’re delivering, we’re making sure everybody was good.

Kevin King:

And that first time that we met, we gotta tell that little story because a lot of people haven’t heard this story. So, so Manny calls me, I think it was like June or July or something or 2016 says, Hey, I’m coming out to Austin. You gonna be around, I got some business meetings. I’m like, yeah, dude, I’ll be here. I’ll pick you up from the airport. And he’s like, well, you know, don’t worry I got it covered. I can take an Uber or something. I’m like, no, no I’ll come to get you. We’ll go eat some barbecue. And it’ll be a good time. And so I think you reluctantly finally agreed to that. And I picked up Manny, we went out and I ate some barbecue and then we decided, Hey, you know, I’m come back to my, my house.

Kevin King:

So you’re welcome to stay here tonight. And you know, Guillermo was coming in, I think the next day to, for these business meetings. And you’re like, all right, cool. You know, I’ll stay here. And then we opened up a bottle of whiskey or something I think and drink a little bit of that. And then we decided to hit head into town and meet another friend of yours. And we had a night out where there was beers and alcohol and all kinds of stuff. Good food. You we both ended up a little bit liquored up, I think about four o’clock in the morning, and come back and crash.

Manny Coats:

Cause I’m not a drinker. You were literally, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like, all right, I’ll have a drink here. I’ll have a drink here. We went to like nine different places.

Kevin King:

Yeah. We were like walking around in the hot summer heat of Austin. Our backs were soaked and sweat. It was just one of those nights, but I’ll let you tell the story from there after we came back

Manny Coats:

You’re doing great. You remember better that night trust me.

Kevin King:

So we go out that night. I think we went to a restaurant about four in the morning and you were talking to the police, you know, sitting next to us, eating some pancakes or something. And we were like, Manny it’s okay. It’s okay. So we get back and Manny just crashes, just crashes. And then the next day he was supposed to meet Guillermo for these business meetings at the hotel where they’re gonna stay the rest of the trip. And what had happened is Manny had basically passed out, you know, we went to bed at four or five in the morning or something and you know, this was like noon turns out that Manny’s girlfriend was trying to find him and he wasn’t responding. And so she was starting to freak out.

Kevin King:

So she calls Guillermo who was driving in at that point from Houston said, have you heard from Manny? He’s like, no, I haven’t heard from Manny. And she’s like, well, he went to out there and this guy that we don’t know has a dog as his profile picture. We don’t even know what the guy looks like. He picked, picked him up. I haven’t heard from him. I wonder if he’s kidnapped. I wonder if he’s like bound and gagged and stuck in a basement somewhere. And so Guillermo starts freaking out and somehow Garmo figured out where I live. I don’t remember exactly how that was. And I just remember Guillermo coming to my door, knocking on the front door, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I opened it up and I’d never met Guillermo before either, but I think I’d seen a picture or something. So I was like, Hey, he’s like, Hey, Manny here. And then Manny comes about that time, stumbling out, you know, all hung over and like, Hey, what’s up? And it was an interesting, interesting time.

Manny Coats:

Yeah, that was funny. And you have those blackout shades in the room. So to me it felt like it was still six in the morning, you know, but it was whatever it was one, 2:00 PM, cuz it was pitch black in there. But yeah, that was a fun trip. That was that was exciting. They literally did think that something happened because you were kind of in the beginning and back then you didn’t have much of an online presence. Like there were no pictures of you. Like nobody knew what you looked like. I mean, I did after I met you, but up until that point, you know, I didn’t and it was yeah. They thought that I was in some kind of, I don’t know, sex dungeon tied up or something it was crazy.

Kevin King:

Yeah, it was crazy.

Manny Coats:

So that was the beginning days.

Kevin King:

That’s the beginning of days, then it became a tradition at every event, we would always do fireball shots. So it just evolved into a good friendship and a good business partnership. And then you guys just grew the thing and what made you decide to like, Hey, it’s time to exit this. I remember you coming to me and saying, Hey Kevin, what do you think if we sold this business? Like, I don’t know, man, I never done that before. I don’t know anything about it. And I think it was Scott Deetz actually that came on the Illuminati, which is now Helium 10 Elite, and talked about selling your business. And I think that one, you might have been thinking about it before then, but that kind of like rings some bells to you guys, you know, like, wait a second. And then you went out to a war room event and like learned a bunch of stuff there to how to build the business the right way. And then you guys decided, Hey, maybe it’s time to exit. What led you to that, that process?

Manny Coats:

Yeah, I mean, at this point we had really built up a solid team. You know, Bojan was now at this point was leading the tech team. It was solid. It was awesome. And it was getting to a point where it was just growing. It was quite big. It was. And the next point for us was going to be to build this thing to IPO so we had already been working on the company now for, you know, over half a decade and putting in crazy crazy hours. And it got to the point where this was gonna be the next step and it was going, it’s gonna be outside of our comfort zone in terms of what we’ve done, the whole IPO and building that high, that kind of thing.

Manny Coats:

And we had already put in a lot of time, like I said, we were putting in double shifts essentially. So even though it was five, six years into this, to us it felt like it had been a decade. And the valuation was now at a point in the company that it made sense that if, Hey, if we were gonna exit, this would be a very, very, very exciting, nice day for us. Right. And we would be done and we could do whatever we wanted. And yeah, we just talked about it, and when an offer came in that made sense. We, we discussed, it said, yeah. And moved on. And that was in 2019. And it’s funny because it happened in 2019. I’m like, all right, cool. I’ve been busting my, like crazy, so much that I’m ready to go travel the world and do all the stuff that I’ve been doing because I’ve been working nonstop and then COVID hits boom, and just shuts the world down. And we’re like, man, I can’t do anything. Now. I got, you know, I got paid really nicely and here I am in my apartment stuck. So yeah, that was bad timing, I guess, in that respect. But yeah, we were super happy with it. So

Kevin King:

Did y’all go out and actually deliberately try to sell it or were people knocking on your door and you just took what looked like the best offer or what were people coming to you and cuz you guys weren’t taking anything hardly any out. I know you and Guillermo were just like dumping all the profits back in y’all were like spending crazy on Facebook ads and just really focusing on building this business up and taken very little as a salary or anything out, you know, you weren’t out there spending crazy money or anything like a lot of people do. So were people knocking at your door? Or did y’all go out and hustle it?

Manny Coats:

No, a lot. Yeah. So towards the end at this point when we were starting to talk to different companies, it was just kind of like in the beginning there was hardly anything. And then suddenly, boom, it was company after company venture capital firm. Like it was just nonstop companies coming after us saying, we want to acquire you. We want to talk to you. And the numbers were crazy. Like we didn’t sell to the highest that the biggest number we wanted to make sure that whoever was going to come in and was going to acquire the company was gonna continue the vision. Everybody that was the company would be treated well. It was actually going to be something that continued to build up into something humongous and it has, right.

Manny Coats:

So like you said, the valuation of, of the enterprise now that owns Helium 10 is north of a billion dollars. And then hopefully the IPO and it’s a really cool, cool thing to say. You know, we started something like, hopefully, it’ll, you know, let’s say it’s it’s public. And we’re like, you see that company right there. We started that thing when we could barely rub two nickels together because we were pouring everything back into the company and, you know, and just not traveling and not spending and being really thrifty with everything we did and grill on marketing. And like, we were really watching every dollar to get there and I don’t know if you know this, but we never took any venture capital to build up the company. So when we exited, we owned a hundred percent of the company, which was fantastic.

Kevin King:

Yeah. That’s awesome. I mean, like you said, you didn’t go with the highest bidder you went with Assembly, but Assembly was a new company, weren’t they, at that time they had just kind of formed to kind of do this. Is, am I correct in

Manny Coats:

That sort of, yeah. I mean, we interviewed a lot of companies, or a lot of companies interviewed us, I guess it goes both ways. And we felt really comfortable with Assembly and the management there and yeah, ultimately we thought that’s the company that we chose to go with.

Kevin King:

Cool. So, you built this company up and this is not your first rodeo. I mean, you’ve been an entrepreneur your entire life. I mean, I think going back into the late 1990s you had what the twisted humor website, which is like a, a comedy website, and then you went into, from there into doing some CD-ROM type of security stuff. And then you went into there to the gaming industry and that kind of evolved into selling on Amazon and then building up Helium 10. So you’ve been doing this software business and this, this, this tech stuff since the early days that that’s correct, right?

Manny Coats:

Yeah. Yeah. I was on the internet in 99 and went through the whole.com stuff, got into the mobile gaming space after that, or actually, we were doing PC software before that yeah, then the mobile gaming space. And then from there, we got into the Amazon space, Helium 10 and then also during that time, crypto was starting up pretty good. And yeah, we’re always trying to jump into new technology. It’s super fun

Kevin King:

When you exited Helium 10 like you said, you wanted to travel but the boom here came COVID and you couldn’t really do much. So what did you start doing? I mean, or were you sitting around the pool drinking margaritas all day? Or what, what were you doing during those couple years? If you couldn’t travel.

Manny Coats:

Yeah, yeah, no, the pool was definitely closed. So obviously, you know, we had a very nice payday and, you know, I’m at home a lot. And so I was like, well, what do I wanna get into that would be really in interesting and exciting. So I started looking into the investment side of things, right? Like, what am I gonna do with the money? I don’t want it to just sit there. So I got into venture capital. I started really looking to startups, right, because we were a startup, we went through that whole process and I thought it would be interesting to go in and review the decks that people have for, you know, whatever their pitch deck for whatever it is that they’re trying to raise for. And then eventually I found Syndicates and I found just different ways of speeding up the processes and funds and things.

Manny Coats:

And ultimately long story short over the course of about a year, I ended up investing in a couple hundred companies. So that became, it was fun. I’d wake up every morning, I’d go through, you know, a ton of different deals. I’d see what made sense. And I would invest anywhere from $2,000 to a hundred thousand dollars depending on the deal. Most of them were, were relatively small in the beginning. And then over the course of between then and now I’ve invested in over 600 companies and I’ve invested, you know, much larger amounts into, into companies than I did back in the day. And it’s funny, cuz I can look back at some of those deals back in 2019, the very small deals I have. Like one of the biggest successes I have is where I invested like three grand that’s worth something like 240 grand or something like that right now.

Manny Coats:

So to me, that was super fun. I now have a network of Syndicates. I have a network of Venture Capital firms and, and VC guys. They’re now sending me deals that are handpicked, cuz I was just getting too much deal flow. I just didn’t have time to go through everything. So now I’m just like, Hey, just wait until you have something that you think is gonna be the next unicorn. You know, I know you get 10 deals a month or whatever only send me the one that you think is the best. So now I can take it easy a little bit. Look at those, decide if I wanna invest, and then I’ll put a larger check into those. That’s why I’m saying now I’m putting in bigger checks than I did in the beginning because the deal flow has slowed down, but I’m actually investing bigger amounts into the better deals. So, and it’s cool. I love it. It’s fantastic.

Kevin King:

And at the same time, you’re dabbling a little bit in crypto cuz I remember you’re telling me Kevin, you gotta take a look at a few different coins you were looking at and a few different things. Yeah. And so you’re dabbling a little bit there. As well, right?

Manny Coats:

Yeah. Not, not crazy amounts. I was already in I’ve been in Bitcoin now for, for like seven years. I’ve been in it for a while. So Bitcoin, I kept the accumulating. I was dollar cost averaging. So, you know, well, I don’t remember what the timeframe was, but every month I think I would be putting a little bit of money in. And then there were some other altcoins, I guess, that I was getting into that I felt would be interesting. They would have some, some potential and sure enough, some of those like really took off, you know, like 10,000 X. And so I still hold those, you know, I was able to take out a lot of profits on those. But for the most part I stick to probably three different cryptos, not including Ethereum, which I use, you know, for, for the NFT space. But yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at.

Kevin King:

So this is kind of evolved into something that you’re doing right now that I wanna talk about that I think is really freaking awesome. And it’s something that I think a lot of Amazon sellers need to pay attention to. And I know at the beginning when you started this project, we’re about to start talk about you didn’t actually want to mix the two worlds, but when you, you kept pushing me a little bit, Kevin, Hey, you should take a look at this. You know, I remember we had dinner back in January and you were talking about, Hey, I’m working on this new project. And I was just like, yeah, I just, I just don’t get it. You know, I don’t understand it. But then I started looking into it a little bit more in March of this year for one of the companies that we’re doing on Amazon.

Kevin King:

And as a lot of people know on Amazon, it’s becoming more and more difficult to launch a product. And one of the things is you gotta build communities of loyal followers and you know, people are using Facebook ads or they’re using the search, find, buy and all that stuff. And Amazon has cut a lot of that away now and made it much, much more difficult to do that. And so I started taking a look at, you know, seeing what you were doing. I joined you, you had a discord group for this project you were doing. And I look in there and I spent a little bit of time with it and I was like, I talked to my partners on this Amazon company that we’re doing, we’re doing stuff in the sustainable field. So we’re doing stuff with products out of sustainable things.

Kevin King:

So, you know, taking bottles outta the ocean or the rivers and, and converting that to materials, to actually make life jackets for dogs and plastic bags and all kinds of different things. And we already have a few of those products launched up on Amazon already, but it’s becoming harder. They’re very competitive niches. And so it’s becoming harder to actually compete and to launch those. And so when I saw what you were doing, I was like, you know what, wait a second. Maybe we should take a look at this crypto space and actually at a concept called NFTs. And maybe there’s a way we can actually tie these NFTs into building a community that has some value that can then help launch products on Amazon. And then people on Amazon find out about this community and they come and join that community and there’s rewards and there’s a whole cycle there and a whole flywheel.

Kevin King:

And so we started investigating it and we said, holy cow, we can do something really cool here. As we started to dive deep into it, we were like, this is amazing. And I’m gonna be talking about this at the upcoming Billion Dollar Seller Summit in August. And I’m gonna be talking about it at Sell and Scale Summit, the Helium 10 event happening in September in detail. And I think this is revolutionary in how Amazon sellers if you do this right, there’s a lot of different applications to the NFT space. But if you, if you do it in the way that we’re doing, I think it can, can do huge for your business and building brands and launching products. And I’m super hot on it right now. And one of the things I’m doing is I know Manny and Gama are successful with pretty much everything they touch.

Kevin King:

And so I’m like, I’m following what they’re doing right now. And they launched a product in the NFT space called the Bulls and Apes Project. And I’ll let Manny talk about it. But you know, after a while, after, like Manny said, they retired and they were doing some investing, but sometimes you get bored and you’re looking for what’s that next thing. And, and they didn’t really wanna start and work these, you know, huge days again, I don’t think, you know, two, two shifts and all that, but they say, Hey, there’s this new space. You know, we kind of disrupted the Amazon space back when we started Helium 10, there’s this new space where there’s a lot of issues in the space. And there’s a lot of, there’s some good things and there’s a lot of bad things. What if we came into this and revolutionized that space and that’s the project you’re working on now. And if you can talk about that and tell the audience a little bit about that, that would be great.

Manny Coats:

Yeah. A little background. We mentioned it earlier, you know, I was in web one, got worked through that, got through web two, all the really cool tech with web two, right. That everybody is used to today. And now we have what’s called web three and the NFT space, which is now part of web three in the de you know, decentralization of everything. And eventually, all of us being in the Metaverse right. Was super exciting to me, cuz I was part of all these little tech technological jumps, right. And even including mobile gaming, because before mobile gaming it was, you know, it was crazy. Like everybody now is using their phones for everything. So what we decided to do is get into an NFT project and a generative one where there’s 10,000 actual NFTs in a collection and think of it kind of like baseball cards or any kind of collectible where you have 10,000 unique pieces and people can actually go in and they, they can collect these things.

Manny Coats:

But we wanted to do something different. We thought, well, how do we leverage our background? What we’re good at to actually do something cool. Cause it wasn’t a money play. You know, venture capital is way easier. And at least in my opinion way less time than getting into the NFT space for us, it was more of a legacy thing. Gui and I talked about it and we thought this space right now is full of so many holes and so many scammers and so many problems that what if we could actually create something that becomes kind of like a, like a benchmark, something that other projects try to achieve. So that two years from now we can look back and say, Hey, see how this is how the space is really cool right now we were a part of that.

Manny Coats:

We helped clean this up. We helped do this up. So, so one of the problems with the NFT space is that everybody, I shouldn’t say everybody, but almost everybody when we started was anonymous. So if you’re investing in a project, you don’t know who that person is. You don’t know if they’re, you know, a man, a woman, 50 years old, 15 years old, if they’re in the US or even if it’s a real person at all or anything like that, right? So you’re dealing with, you know, skinnypuppy12 or whatever the name is, and you’re investing money into this stuff, right? You’re putting money into their project and they have all these, these roadmaps and things that they say they’re gonna do and they promise. But then they end up doing, what’s called a Rug Pull. You know, they, they make it look really cool.

Manny Coats:

They do the most minimal amount of effort. They take all this money in, which is, you know mostly Ethereum. So it’s crypto that comes in and that’s anonymous as well. And then they disappear. The project dies and everybody loses and they move on to something else. And the person who owns that wallet can then cash out and go do stuff. So we thought, first of all, if we do our project, we’re going to docs ourselves. So we’re going to, we’re going to, we’re gonna announce who we are. We’re gonna have our LinkedIn profile. They can look us up. I mean, I’m all over the place, right? I’m in podcast. I’ve talked about my entire life. I’m there, but that’s the first thing. And second of all, we thought, well, we can pre-fund this whole thing. Right? So a lot of companies, a lot of these people that are putting these projects together, they’re creating these NFTs and they have to get to the mint date, which is that’s the date where everybody is actually buying these NFTs and all the money’s coming in.

Manny Coats:

And it goes into a wallet, right? Like a MetaMask, wallet, whatever, whatever wallet that you have set up. And then they have funds that they can use to like market the business and build the business. And it’s kind of reverse. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s the opposite of what you do in real life. Like if you’re gonna start a business, you go out and you secure funding, then you run your company, right. This is like, let’s start this company, and let’s try to get the funding by getting to mint. And then by then hopefully we have enough money if it mints out to do what we need. So we thought let’s skip that process. Let’s make it so that we pre-fund the entire company and the mint for the first couple mints. So we don’t need the money. And then when the money comes in, let’s do something cool with it.

Manny Coats:

Since we don’t need it, what could we do that would change the space. And we thought, what if we reverse the risk for everybody, right? What if we could get rid of the Rug Pulls? What if we can secure those funds that everybody’s paying for their NFTs and put them into a smart contract that locks ’em up so that we can do an Ethereum money back guarantee. So essentially we’re giving everybody six months. That’s the way we set it up, six months to evaluate what we’re doing, to see that we’re delivering on our roadmap and what we’re saying. And if you don’t like it, you can come back within six months and you can click, you know, connect to our website with your wallet, click a button, and you get your Ethereum back. And then the NFT bot goes back to us.

Manny Coats:

And nobody in the space is doing this. So we’re like, why aren’t they doing it? Well, that’s the reason, the space is so young that there’s not a lot of money or big companies coming in that are funding these things. So we started doing that. Then of course it took way longer than we thought to actually create all the art and get all the tech in place. And we were hoping to launch back in March and we didn’t launch until the end of May. And we started entering into the, I don’t know, a bear market, the crypto winter as we’re going in as of today, right. Crypto market is a blood bath. It’s really, really bad. Right. And so people are like, you shouldn’t mint right now. It’s the 31st of the month. It’s before payday, it’s a bear market. Your price is too high. You have way too many mints. It, it was just like, everything was against us and we’re like, no, we’re gonna do it. And we launched. And yeah, we minted out you know, you got a lot of people, luckily you got the word out just in the nick of time. And we got a lot of Amazonians that come in and get into the project, The Bulls and Apes Project. It’s awesome.

Kevin King:

Yeah. I mean, like I told you earlier, I started looking into this a little bit more seriously in March. And then in May, we started ramping up. We’re doing, and then I saw that Manny was about to do his launch. And so he reached out and said, Hey, you know, if you know anybody in the Amazon space that might want to get involved in this, you know, we got just a few days left and I took a deep dive into their project and they’re really doing it totally different than anybody out there. There’s a lore video like this whole creative, like a comic book type of storyline. They’ve created all these like you said, 10,000 different Bulls. And later there’s gonna be I think 10,000 different Apes that are introduced.

Kevin King:

And these Bulls are, they’re like trading cars. They have traits and it’s almost like it’s gamification. So it’s not just buying NFT and hope the price goes up, you know, like the board yacht club or something from last year, they’re where people bought these things for a few hundred bucks. And now they’re worth, you know, well right now with Eth down, but they’re worth two, $300,000. And, and or more, some people paid millions of dollars for ’em just for the right to do that. But it’s, so what Manny has done and Guillermo has done is, and, and there are other partners has created not only something that should go up in value but there’s gamification to it. And, you know, like my wife is super into the gamification and you gotta match up these bowls to like, if you got, they got guilds.

Kevin King:

And so you have to have a North Guild or South Guild, East Guild, West Guild, it’s kinda like villages. And if you can collect two from the same Guild or the same village, you can, you can mate them and you can create additional NFTs after a certain period of time along with something called Neth, which you, you earn the longer you keep these Bulls, the more of this like Methane kind of like a, like a bonus thing that you earn that you can combine all this stuff together and you can create teenager Bulls out thin air, basically that could be worth money. So your initial investment might turn into who knows what, because you can create all these additional NFTs out of it. That’re gonna have value because they’re rare. And there’s all these different traits. It’s, it’s kind of, you know, we would need like three podcast to explain the whole thing here, but, but once you get your, you know, it took me a while, but once I got my head around it, I’m like, Manny has taken everything he’s learned in the past, you know, from his, his days of running Web One stuff, you know, with the joke site and everything, to the software stuff, to the gaming businesses that he and Giermo did together to the SAS business of helium 10 and the way they, they did the customer service like he was talking about, you know, that, that basically lifetime money-back guarantee kind of thing that they had, and, and applying that to this whole new industry and gamifying it and just, and the artwork is amazing.

Kevin King:

There’s a lot of crap artwork in the Ft space, you know, little stupid drawings and like who the hell’s gonna buy this. But it’s really, really cool. And the way that is 3d, it’s like, you know, it’s like a Pixar movie or something, the way they’ve done it. And then there’s this whole gamification. So you have this, these worlds with these Bulls, and then you’re gonna have these worlds with these Apes coming, and who knows what’s gonna happen? You know, they, they’ve got some ideas and it’s gonna be very interesting.

Manny Coats:

So a lot of projects that come out will eventually come out with tokens if they make it to that point if they don’t die out. And sometimes it takes a year who knows sometimes most projects, I would say, 99% of projects should never have it. We wanted to make sure that we had tokens from the beginning. So we have the methane token, right? We got bowls. We thought it you know, the methane token be kind of a fun play, but it’s an ERC 20 token, just like an Ethereum token or one of the many, many tokens that are out there. So it’ll have value at some point, right? It’s part of our ecosystem. We don’t know what the value will be. They hit the market in about two weeks on July 1st and by owning a Bull, we set it up.

Manny Coats:

And we’re very, we have to be very careful about how we do things because of SEC regulations, but by holding the Bull, you’re not staking it by having these Bulls in your wallet, you start generating these methane tokens, these ERC 20 tokens, every single day, each Bull generates 10 tokens per day. So 300 tokens per month. And then you’re using those tokens to actually min new characters. Like Kevin was just mentioning, but what we thought was cool, and you just alluded to it a little bit here. We thought, okay, even with all of this, even though you can create new characters that you can then either can either keep them or cuz you can use them for even additional characters down the road or you can sell them for profit or you could do whatever you want. We thought, how do we make people live a better life?

Manny Coats:

We call it live your best life. Right? And so holding one of these NFTs, right, that you just paid $300-$400 for, it’s kind of like your American express black card, it’s an entry to our me or to our club, right? It’s our inner circle, we call it. So you’re part of the inner circle. You’re part of this community. You’re part of, you know, 2000 people that are now at least at the time we’re doing this podcast part of this circle that you now can leverage for networking and for hanging out and for fun and for in real-life events and all that kind of stuff. And as Kevin mentioned, we have experts in various areas, and where I feel like I’m pretty well versed is the venture capital side. So I’m investing in companies like I’ve invested in the open sea and I’ve invested in MetaMask or the consensus the company owns it.

Manny Coats:

I’ve invested in SpaceX over 600 different companies. Right. I can bring these deals now to the inner circle okay. That they normally wouldn’t be able to get, even if you’re a Venture Capital or Angel Investor, you can’t get some of these deals unless, you know, either one of the founders or somebody that knows a founder or you’re part of some kind of venture fund that actually has access to it. So, you know, 99.9, 9% of people that can’t get these, we’re bringing these deals to them or we’re planning to bring these, we haven’t, we just started this. I think the first deal’s gonna be happening here in the next few weeks. And you have an opportunity to invest in it. If you’re an accredited investor, right. You have to qualify for that with them. We’re not the middlemen, by the way, we don’t go in and try to get in the middle there we say, this is the deal.

Manny Coats:

My name’s Manny. I put my money into this. I like it. I, you know, I think it’s cool. Do your own research. And if you like it, go talk to this guy over here at this company. And they can set it up for you. So that’s where we’re at. And so it’s cool. So you have Kevin, you have all the gamification that you were saying that your wife is in love with, right? It’s amazing. You have the lore in the story. So we’re trying to build things up so that we have IP. So, you know, we’re gonna have swag clothing, maybe there’s gonna be film work. There’s gonna be all kinds of stuff. Then we have the token. So you’re building stuff just by holding this and then the Metaverse is coming. Right. The Metaverse is coming. And when we’re all in that Metaverse, we plan to be there wherever that’s gonna be. And you’re gonna have all these Methane tokens, you call it meth. Right. A lot of people call it meth. That’s the short version, which is perfect. It’s funny. Like, don’t take my meth.

Kevin King:

Don’t take my meth.

Manny Coats:

Yeah. So we have this.

Kevin King:

It’s in my stash.

Manny Coats:

Right. So you have your meth and then you’ll be able to use that also in the Metaverse to, you know, depending where we’re at, like buy stuff there, whether it’s property or character augmentations or stuff like that. Cuz it sounds crazy to think, oh, we’re not gonna be in the Metaverse that sounds silly. That’s the same. Those are the same people that said that about Facebook. When Facebook came out, why would anybody spend so much time on Facebook? Nobody wants to know what everybody else is doing. Like, no, you know, it was crazy. And now it’s Twitter and then you got all the social media, right. With TikTok and everything else. So it’s super cool. This is just the first step. And yeah, we’re excited when the Apes come out, they will be synergistic with the Bulls.

Manny Coats:

And if you guys are curious, it’s called the Bulls and Apes Project, bullsandapeproject.com. You can check it out. It’s never too late. It costs actually. It’s funny. Kevin, I dunno if you did the math, I’m sure you did. You’re really good at this stuff, but it costs more in terms of us dollars to mint on mint day than it costs right now to go buy it on the secondary market at open sea, because Ethereum has come down so much in price that if you go and convert your dollars to Ethereum, it costs, I think it’s like 300 bucks to buy one now where it was like 450 on the mint day.

Kevin King:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s because Ethereum has fallen in price and I think that’s gonna go back up. So that’s one of the beauty about, you know, one of the reasons I didn’t get involved in like buying in Bitcoin or buying an Ethereum or some of these other altcoins is because to me, it’s almost like hedging against the pound or the dollar. I mean, to the yen or something, it’s almost like currency exchange or you’re betting on something going up. But the beauty about it’s singular, but the beauty about NFTs in a project, like what Manny’s doing with The Bulls and Apes Project is that not only does the NFT have value, but you get the, you get the value and the fluctuations in the, the underlying crypto below it too. So you could, you know, just like they have a money back guarantee.

Kevin King:

It’s too late for that right now. But if you were on the first day and you got you mint it before they sold out, you would have a six month money back guarantee. So you could buy that for 0.17 Eth, which was roughly like you said, three 50, $400 somewhere in that range. If you were on the whitelist and you bought it, bought it before they sold out that value just by holding it, you know, if Ethereum goes up and you just say, okay, I don’t like what they’re doing. I want the money back. If Ethereum doubles, they’re not paying you back in dollars. They’re paying you back in Ethereum. So right there, you could have made $700. So that’s the beauty about NFTs is you got the two different places where you can potentially make money on.

Kevin King:

That’s one of the things I like and you have the community and you have a lot of other things around it. And once you, you know, they say that right now, this space is basically like the internet in the late eighties, early nineties. And it’s moving at a very fast pace, you know, a month in and the crypto world is like six months or a year in the real world or something. And it’s moving very fast, but it’s in its infancy. And I think that you know, if you take a look at what Manny’s doing and what some other people are doing, there’s a perfect place here for the Amazon community. And that’s why we’re talking about this here if you want to just get dabble in it and you don’t know what this is, you could go to his project, which I endorse.

Kevin King:

And, and you could take a look at and see what they’re doing. You could get involved, maybe don’t get involved and, and, and go do your own research and go see out there. And there’s a lot of junk there’s a lot of crap. Like you said, there’s a lot of scams, but there’s some really good stuff. And the underlying technology of what you can do is amazing. And if you take that and you apply it to the Amazon space that we are all in here and for launching products and building community, forget the Facebook groups, forget the ManyChats, forget all that stuff. This is where I think the future is going. And I think every Amazon seller needs to set up and pay attention, at least, you know, you’re all entrepreneurs, you’re smart people. You’re a lot of times on the cutting edge of things. And some of you have decent war chest to deal with some of your bigger sellers have been selling. You need to take a hard look at this because, and like I said, at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and at Sell and Scale Summit in September in Vegas, the big Helium 10 event, I’m gonna be showing you exactly how we are using this technology and NFTs and community building to launch products on Amazon and create this huge flywheel.

Manny Coats:

It sounds confusing right now, but so did the internet back in 98, 99, right. And then before that it was really confusing. So, and most people didn’t even know what it was at that time. So that’s kind of where we’re at right now. Most people don’t know what NFTs are. They don’t know what that stands for. They don’t understand it. They think why are you buying a picture? You know, of something when you can just right. Click and save it. And so there’s this crazy confusion going on with how that all works. So this will all start to make more sense as time goes on and people realize it. Same thing when I was talking about crypto back in 20 15, 20 16 to friends, you know, they just thought you’re crazy. Yeah. Like it makes absolutely no sense. And now they have big bags of, of crypto, right? So it’s just a matter of time. You’re very, very, very, very, very, very early right now, even though people will say, oh, no, no, no, that, you know, it’s passed, you know, but there’s nobody in this space, that’s an expert that’s been in this space for more than two years. That’s how early it is. Right. Most people haven’t even been in it a year. I’ve only been in it for like eight months. So yeah, it’s super early.

Kevin King:

Yeah. And there’s a lot of up and downs, you know, right now at the time of this recording, crypto is crashing. You know, my dad sent me an article today. It says, crypto millionaires, billionaires losing you know, 75% of their fortune or whatever. And like, you sure you wanna do this? You know, this is up and there’s some up and downs, but the internet was the same way back in. We were back in the late nineties, early two thousands, you know, there’s the.com bust you know, and there was a lot of scams and people were like, who’s gonna buy dog food over the internet, you know, pets.com and look what came out of it. Google came out of it. You know, all these Amazon really emerged kind of weathered through the, the

Manny Coats:

Real company came out of it. Right. That’s what happened.

Kevin King:

Exactly. And that that’s, what’s gonna happen now too, in this space. And if you’re early and especially applying it to your Amazon business, if you can learn the ins and outs by looking at Manny’s project or other projects that are out there and learn the ins and outs and get yourself familiar with it, I think you’re gonna be in a really, really good position to really take your physical products business to the next level and just to just crush it and you’ll be early and you’ll be a leader. And it’s gonna add, we’ve already talked to you know, the guy that helped you guys when you did your exit Scott Deetz at Northbound, you know, we, he’s on our advisory committee for our company and he’s like, look, you guys do this right. You execute this, right. It’s gonna add so much valuation to your business that it’s gonna be crazy.

Kevin King:

We’re already seeing it right now. And he’s like super stoked about some of the stuff that we’re doing and how it’s gonna really increase the value. And don’t, you know, there’s a lot of naysayers out there. Those are people, a lot of those are people that they might have got scammed because there are a lot of scams in the space, or they might be people that just don’t understand it fully. But once you understand the underlying technology and it’s gonna get easier right now, there’s a barrier to entry to it. You know, you gotta be a little bit technical to learn how to set up a wallet and how to do all these things. And to make sure you don’t click on the wrong thing. But that’s gonna come down. You know, it’s gonna come down to where it’s as easily as swiping the credit card, you know, in the coming years to where you don’t even know what the technology behind it, you don’t even know what blockchain is or NFT. You don’t care. It’s just the final end product is, is what’s gonna happen. And I think it’s a great opportunity.

Manny Coats:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s it’s funny cuz any, any new technology that comes out is always confusing. I remember used to have to log in in order to get internet service. Now everybody takes it for granted. You have internet service everywhere. You don’t have to log into anything like you have a wifi password and that’s it. And you always have internet. I remember the days where you had to download your, you know, you had to choose what browser you wanted to get. And so you can get on the internet. Now, every phone device has, it’s just automatic. And I think at some point I think you’re right, you know while it won’t be something you have to go get, it’ll just come ready to go. You just have to fill out a couple of things.

Manny Coats:

And, and and then of, of course you have legislation legislation’s gonna come in just like the internet the internet in the early days, right. It was wild, wild west. We called it back then. Right? There’s no regulation. Technology was moving way faster than regulation. And then you could get away with doing a lot of crazy stuff because you didn’t know if you could do it or not. It’s like, can I send a million emails? Is that legal? You know? And now, you know, you have regulations for certain things there and then we’re gonna have that in this space too. And, and it’ll clean up and then you’ll see, that’s when you’ll start seeing really big money, institutional money coming into that space. It’s already starting now, but you’ll really see it coming in and it’ll be good, good companies building things up.

Manny Coats:

And right now we are going into it, it’s a crypto blood bath, right? It’s, it’s, everything’s kind of dumping, but that’s when fortunes are made, if you’re smart and you look at the right deals, you can pick things up at bargain rates, right. But you gotta get into project. You gotta quit be having that FOMO moment where you’re just jumping into garbagey projects because everybody else is doing it when it really doesn’t have a backbone. Right. It’s like, there’s nothing there there’s no substance to the project. So find the good ones. Look, like, for example, everything’s crashing right now, but our price on our Bulls and Apes project is actually up, right. It’s it’s up from the white list, it’s up from the the public sale price. And I think it’s gonna continue to go up. So while everything is crashing ours going up, so it’s just proves that, you know, you just gotta have a really good community. You gotta have good systems in place.

Kevin King:

So tying this back to Helium 10, what’s one of a couple of the biggest takeaways you took starting Helium 10 and growing it and then exiting it, what’s something that’s some nugget that something that you learned, or even a mistake you made that you learned from that the audience could take away from

Manny Coats:

That. Oh my gosh. Yeah. There’s so many. Man, I would say the biggest thing, like the first thing that comes to mind anyways, would be team, I think right off the bat, if you don’t have the right team for what you’re doing and maybe it’s just you in the beginning and that’s fine, but if you start bringing in on the wrong people, it’s gonna kill you. It’s gonna crush you. You’ve gotta get the right people on. And I remember very specifically, as we added specific members to our team and they became the superstar of that particular position and those that are listening, know who they are, right. You can see the company expanding and growing and blowing up at that point. And those were really good moments. And we also remember the times where we had people that just, it was just frustrating because we just couldn’t get them to perform the way we wanted to.

Manny Coats:

And it just stifled everything. It just held everything back. And if you have a bad apple in your group, it just spoils everything. It spoils it for everybody. Right. So I would say team is probably one of the biggest things. And I mentioned in the beginning, I think you just have to love what you’re doing. You gotta have hustle and drive and you can’t do that if you don’t love what you’re doing. So make sure that you’re not you’re not doing something you don’t like and get in there and go, and then try to get in getting an early Kevin helps. Let me tell you that.

Kevin King:

Yeah. I learned that lesson seeing with you guys. I remember those days where I think what was it Index Checker, or we were like yeah. Y’all I think you launched Scribbles and Frankenstein and you were adding maybe–

Manny Coats:

5K Checker that what really took off. Yeah,

Kevin King:

The 5k Checker that’s yeah, the 5k Checker. And I think it was like two o’clock in the morning. One night you were in California and me, you and Gui. He was like sitting in a closet in his house, cuz he had a young baby and like couldn’t wake the baby or something. He was literally sitting in a closet behind the dresses or something, you know? And we were like, checking this thing like we gotta make sure this thing works. We gotta make sure this works. I remember what’d we do. I think we tore down a listing. I had like an old listing. We didn’t need, we tore it down and put like, went to the dictionary and found all the letters that started with Z, cuz we’re like, nothing’s gonna rank on Amazon that starts with a Z and filled it in. And we’re like, okay, how many of them did it show up? And yeah, those days were crazy. And then yeah that was a lot of fun.

Manny Coats:

There was those epiphanies, like we’d see something and you’re like, oh my God, like, look, it’s working. The results are coming. I’m like this tool. And then it becomes one of those things like, do we wanna release this tool? It’s like super powerful. You can build million dollar companies off this thing. But yeah, no, we released it right away and people loved it. And that actually that tool helped put us on the map for sure.

Kevin King:

And you started at making stuff that you needed as a seller. So you started as a seller and this is stuff that I need and then you showed it and you know, man, you’ve changed a lot of people’s lives. You know, mine included you’ve changed thousands if not tens of thousands of people’s lives through the Helium 10. And it’s gotta be a proud moment when you look back and I know you’re not in that space anymore, but it’s gotta be something that, that you’re proud of. And you you’ve really, you know, people that are in Pakistan that are making, you know, $300 a month as their wage. And now they’re using the software that you and Giermo created to make a thousand or 5,000 or $10,000 a month and change their entire family’s lives. It’s gotta be something that you look back on it and can take a great pride in and great honor in and in doing that.

Manny Coats:

Yeah. it does, it means so much to us and we, and we hear it. Even today, it’s funny because we’ll get on Twitter spaces and somebody will raise their hand, they’ll come up and speak and they’re like, Hey Manny. I’m one of the very first people that actually used Helium 10. I remember back when you had Scribbles, you know when it first came out and then they tell us how much it’s impacted their life and that they’re in a successful place now. And because of that, they’re able to come in and become one of our whales in, our project now or something like that. So yeah, that to me, is just awesome. I think, I mean, there’s no better feeling than helping people and that’s what we set out to do with the tools. We try to make it as affordable as possible for everybody and it worked and yeah, I’m super happy.

Kevin King:

And now with the new project, The Bulls and Apes Project, you you’re sitting back and, you know, we just had a phone call the other day and you’re like, ah, this is so cool. People we never thought they were gonna do this and they’re gonna do this. And they’re forming these groups and these like little clicks and this is so cool. So it, it’s always cool. It’s a creator to see how people use and enjoy and get, get value in entertainment out, out of what you create.

Manny Coats:

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I hope that people listening, give us a shot check, check it out. In my opinion, one of the safest projects you can get into just because of all the safeguards and things that we’re doing, but yeah, it’s fun. It’s a really good environment. We got an incredible community. We have tens of thousands of people that love our project. And we have, like I said, a couple of thousand people that actually got into our project and bought in and owned Bulls. They’re very Bullish on our project. I love that. And you’re one of them, so yeah. Thank you.

Kevin King:

Now. Cool. Thank you. I’m looking forward to what the future brings and Manny, I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing some time. And as the first guest of me taking over the PM podcast, we brought this back full circle from when you started. It’s an honor for me to actually be sitting in this chair right now, hosting this, and taken from someone who you know, as we used to say, I learned everything I know from you about this space.

Manny Coats:

You’re my best student.

Kevin King:

I’m your best student? I’m your best student?

Manny Coats:

No, I love you, man. You’re you’re awesome. And yeah. Thank you so much for letting me be the first guest on the new podcast. So, yeah. Thanks.

Kevin King:

Awesome. Thanks, Manny. Appreciate you coming on, man.

Manny Coats:

Take care everybody. Thank you, Kevin.

Kevin King:

So how cool was that? Manny Coats, the co-founder of Helium 10, the original creator of the AM/PM Podcast coming back full circle as a guest on his own podcast in the first episode that I’m hosting. it was really awesome. So make sure you subscribe and hit that download button because we’re gonna be bringing you some amazing episodes every single week. The next week we’re gonna be bringing on Brandon Young, and Brandon and I are gonna be talking about everything from ranking to keyword research, to getting to page one, to judging your competitors. It’s gonna be a lot of very actionable stuff for sellers of all levels. So make sure you don’t miss that episode. And before I go today, you know, a lot of people know me as a guy who delivers nuggets. When I speak on stage at different events. A lot of people really like it when I do, you know, 20 fast nuggets or people on the Helium 10 Elite, which is the training that we do for advanced Amazon sellers for Helium 10.

Kevin King:

We do a training every month on that one. I do a seven nuggets every single month where we, we deliver some amazing, just quick bites of information. And so what I wanna do on the close of each one of these podcasts, I wanna deliver you a little nugget, but instead of it being Amazon-related, it’s gonna be more general business or life or just life-related. I often hear different things that are said on TV shows, or I read something in a book and, you know like that’s just a nice, good, concise way of saying something. And I take a note of those, and I add those to my, my notes app on my phone. So what I wanna do is just share one of those with you at the end of each of these episodes. And so that’s what we’re gonna do right now. So the one that I wanna share with you for today and leave you with this golden nugget is this one. “Never get so busy, making a living that you forget to make a life”. Think about that, “never get so busy, making a living that you forget to make a life”, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time.

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The post #294 – Beer, Bulls, & Community: How Manny Coats Built & Exited Helium 10 And Is Revolutionizing Another Industry appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.