Kevin King, creator of Billion Dollar Seller Newsletter, creator of the Freedom Ticket, the #1 course for Amazon Sellers (160,000+ students), founder & host of Billion Dollar Seller Summit: Industry’s most elite summit, host of the top-rated AM/PM Podcast for Amazon & E-commerce Sellers, he’s a Keynote Speaker and has spoken at 100+ online and in-person conferences, he was featured on: USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous & many more, has 8-figures of physical product sold and 8 figure of digital products sold online and named one of the top direct marketers by Target Marketing Magazine

In our previous podcast episode, Kevin talked about his entrepreneurial ventures and how he became the “king” of Amazon e-commerce, he also discussed his “wicked-smart” direct marketing strategies and the software tools Kevin uses to implement his genius strategies

> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, host Josh Hadley welcomes Kevin King, a seasoned Amazon seller and founder of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. Kevin shares his extensive experience in e-commerce, emphasizing the importance of understanding your target audience and leveraging customer data for sustainable growth. He introduces the Dream 100 concept, recognizing influential individuals in the e-commerce space. Kevin discusses the evolving landscape of Amazon selling, highlighting the need for expertise in areas like supply chain management and PPC strategies. He also explores the potential of AI tools in marketing and the timeless principles of human psychology in driving consumer decisions..

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Action Item #1: Be a Sophisticated Business Owner: This involves 2 things:
A. Seeking Expert Advice: Consult with experts and consultants to navigate the changing landscape.

B. Understanding Your Audience: Leverage data to tailor products and marketing strategies to specific demographics.

Action Item #2: Leveraging AI Tools for Personalized Marketing:
Kevin discussed the potential of AI tools like Benson AI for copywriting and video creation tools like Sora and Runway. These tools can revolutionize marketing and influencer strategies by enabling businesses to create personalized, high-quality videos for their products.

Action Item #3: Learning from Historical Marketing Figures: Kevin highlighted the timeless principles of human psychology in marketing. He encouraged sellers to study foundational principles from historical marketing figures like Dan Kennedy and apply them to the modern world.

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started my business in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then email me at josh@ecommbreakthrough.com and in your subject line say “strategy audit” for the chance to win a $10,000 comprehensive business strategy audit at no cost!

Transcript Area

Josh 00:00:00 – – Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Michael Gerber, author of the E-myth, Matt Clark from ASM, and Norm Farrar, The Beard Guy. Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Kevin King. He’s an Amazon seller, the founder of the Billion Dollar Seller Summit and the newsletter, and we’ve had him back on the podcast previously. He’s coming back. We have only had a select number of people that have come back onto this podcast. Obviously, we’ve got to have Kevin King back on here, so we’re happy to have the king of Amazon e-commerce. Back in our last episode, we discussed all the wicked smart direct marketing strategies of inserts and how to follow up with people afterwards. So today we’re going to be diving into something brand new, getting into where the puck is moving with e-commerce on Amazon, what should you be focused on? This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure e-commerce companies to eight figures and beyond.

Josh 00:01:04 If – – If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level, then my team and I bring hands on experience, strategic insights, and the resources needed to fuel your growth. So, if you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh@Ecommbreakthrough.com and let’s turn your dreams into a reality. Today I’m excited to introduce you all to Kevin King. Since 1989, Kevin has been at the forefront of direct marketing, Amazon selling, and internet marketing. His cutting-edge strategies and extensive experience have empowered thousands. He believes in leading by example, educating and entrusting competent individuals with the freedom to excel. He’s the creator of the Helium10 Freedom Ticket, the billion-dollar Seller Summit, billion-dollar seller newsletter, and an active Amazon seller and host of the AM/PM podcast. So, with that introduction, welcome to the show, Kevin.

Kevin 00:02:01  – – Where do I send the $20.

Josh 00:02:04  – – It was more than $20.

Josh 00:02:05  – – More than $20? It’s more than that. Well, first. First, I have to give you the exchange back because I think it was a $5 million deposit to get my name on the the Dream 100 list, right?

Kevin 00:02:18  – – That’s right. It was $5 million. That’s exactly right. I appreciate that deposit, you know. we’ll hold it in accrual for a while, you know? So it’s safe. so, as long as you don’t mess up, you know, it’s safe. You’ll get that back. I think it’s in ten years.

Josh 00:02:32  – – Ten years. Perfect.

Kevin 00:02:35  – – Or if you sell your business, if you sell your business, if you sell Hadley Designs, then we or, or Ecomm Breakthrough then, then, you know, you get. I think it’s a 50% penalty.

Josh 00:02:47  – – I love it. Well, Kevin, this episode is coming out later, or we’re recording this the day that I just saw your newsletter, I was inducted to The Dream 100, and we had a funny conversation where since that post, you know, I shared it on social media and people reached out to me, how do I get into the Dream 100? And then people were reaching out to you as well.

Josh 00:03:10  – – Hey, how do I get my name into the Dream 100? So, Kevin, dispel all the myths right now. How do people get their names on the Dream 100? And what the heck is the Dream 100 to begin with?

Kevin 00:03:20  – – Well, you gave me the $5 million deposit, so I mean that that’s, you know, it’s a bidding war. I mean, I think the next highest bid was 3.5, and you’re like, I got to be there. So no, I’m just kidding. That’s all. Jokes aside, no. So, the Dream 100 is something I started last year. I started my newsletter in August of, so it’s basically a year old now. I started at August of 2023, and one of the things I was like, how can I acknowledge the people that do good things in this space? You know, there’s a lot of riffraff out there, a lot of people that that speak or that are posting on social media or they’re doing YouTube videos, they’re just full of shit.

Kevin 00:03:55  – – and they just are. And I just want to recognize people that do a good job that are making a difference in people’s lives, either with the teaching they’re doing or the help they’re doing, or the education they’re giving or the, the, the post that they’re given. And so, I made a list of I said, I want to do, you know, in Funnel Hacking Live, they always talk about, Russell Brunson. I was talking about make your own Dream 100 of who you want to meet or who you want to work with. And I was like, okay, if I could make a list of the people that I would want to work with, and that, that if I had an issue, who would I call, to help me solve this problem? Why don’t I do that and then share that list? And so, I made a list of 90 people, and I left ten spots open. And those ten spots are people I haven’t met yet, because there’s a lot of people out there that run in different circles than us, or I haven’t met them yet, or, so I left that those open and those 90, some of them, if they mess up, you know, if I see them do something that they shouldn’t do, they may get scratched and someone else put in there, and then every, about 3 to 4 weeks, I pull one literally.

Kevin 00:04:58  – – It’s like out of a hat. pull a name out of a hat, and I announce them in the newsletter and do a little story about them. A little, little bio or a little bit what they’ve done or how they’ve affected things. And then there’s a website for that at billion-dollar seller’s summit.com billion dollar.com. And there’s a little thing that says Dream 100. And then out of that I’m doing a whole bunch of, marketing promotions. There are benefits to being in the Dream 100. You get some special perks for some of my events. and we’re doing, next month, in September, we’re doing an event in Austin where a lot of the dream 100 are going to be there, and we’re helping people with their businesses. So, if someone’s, you know, you go to conferences and you go to these kinds of things, and a lot of times there can be great stuff like you speak, give good tactics and good strategies, but those strategies might not apply to everybody. There’s someone in the room going, yep, I need to do that.

Kevin 00:05:51  – – and then, you know, three fourths of rooms like that sounds cool. That looks great, Josh. But it doesn’t apply to me right now. But if you can go to an event where for 2.5 hours, you sit and get grilled on, and advice specifically on your specific pain points, whether it be SOPs, expansion, cash flow, sourcing, whatever it may be, and from some of the top minds in the space, and then get to have dinner with them and have fun with them and go play pickleball with them and just spend a weekend at a mansion together. I think that’s invaluable. And that’s that’s part of what the dream 100 is going to be. And then it’s also, honestly, it’s marketing. you know, you take a look at what you were just coincidentally, it’s. No, no, no, it just happened. I mean, this is pure serendipity that your name came up when we were doing this. It wasn’t on purpose. but, it’s marketing because I didn’t ask you to post anything anywhere.

Kevin 00:06:44  – – I didn’t ask you to do anything. You didn’t even know you were going to be in it. You probably. I don’t know if someone messaged you this morning you saw on social media or if it was.

Josh 00:06:51  – – Yeah. Izabella, if you saw the newsletter.

Josh 00:06:53  – – if you saw the newsletter first.

Josh 00:06:54  – – on WhatsApp, she’s like, hey, congrats, you’re in the Dream 100. And I was like, wait, what? So, then I, I immediately I was like, hold on, where’s my email?

Kevin 00:07:02  – – yes. And then so then what happens is not everybody does this, but most of I don’t ask you to post. I don’t ask you to do anything. But a lot of people will then turn around and they’ll post. And so in that, that creates brand awareness for BDS. It creates a prestige. It might give me a few new newsletter subscribers because the newsletter is top of funnel for me, for a lot of things that I do in the education space. and so that that it’s this flywheel, you know, it’s just like Amazon’s got a flywheel if you want to create these flywheels and it’s, it’s part of the flywheel.

Kevin 00:07:32  – – And it helps add to that. And it’s become as you know, I mean you’ve spoken at events. It’s hard to get on my stage. and I’m very picky of the people that I put on stage. And, you know, this year in Hawaii, we had a speaker that, is done very well in the past and just bombed this year. Just totally bombed. They’ll never be on the stage again. they I don’t know what happened. Well, actually, I know what happened, but, I’m I get a lot of people asking, how can I. Can I speak at your event? And I’m like, sorry, it’s full. I’m very picky. And so it’s become to be to win BDS has become almost like a feather in your cap for a lot of people, because it’s the best of the best. And if you can win that, whether it’s the hat contest or it’s the, presentation side, you’re voted by your peers and other sellers. that’s pretty high honor.

Kevin 00:08:28  – – So now the dream 100 is like, It’s like a the next level up almost. I guess you could say where I’m saying that. Hey, this is someone that everybody needs to pay attention to. And what makes me the one to choose that? I think I know a thing or two.

Josh 00:08:45  – – Yes. You do. Yeah. Well, I posted, you know, me knowing you came back in 2016 when you were running the Illuminati with Manny Coats. I joined that and that’s where I started learning all the Amazon tips and tricks from you guys way back then. And so you’ve been around this space for quite a long time, and you have that history of sharing those tips and tricks, which I think prefaces what we’re going to be talking about today. Kevin, because you’ve been around in the internet marketing sphere for a long time, you’ve seen the rise of Amazon, and Amazon is still the king of e-commerce in the US. So with that being said, Kevin, in 2024, where do you see the puck going? Where do you see? What are the biggest challenges and opportunities for people selling on Amazon right now? Well, yeah.

Kevin 00:09:39  – – A lot of people are saying, well, as Amazon jumped the shark, is it it should we be doing Shopify? Should we be looking at TikTok? To hell with Amazon. And I think they’re making a mistake. Amazon is still the place you absolutely must be if you’re selling any physical product, at all, whether it’s just in stores right now or it’s on your own website, if you’re not on Amazon, you’re leaving thousands, tens of thousands, maybe potentially millions of dollars on the table because it’s the shopping cart of choice for anybody in e-commerce. Now, there’s some people that have gotten upset at Amazon. They’re like, heck, with Amazon they don’t take PayPal. So I’m going to go buy on eBay because they take PayPal or actually eBay doesn’t take PayPal anymore. I’m gonna go buy on Shopify. Shopify, because they the seller takes PayPal and I don’t trust, Amazon or something. So you have a few people like that, but you look at the numbers. I mean, Amazon last year did something like close to $600 billion in sales.

Kevin 00:10:31  – – Now some of that’s AWS and advertising. It’s not all product sales. I think the product sales side of it was somewhere in the three 5400 range somewhere. I have to look at the charts and that’s just Amazon’s what they took in. That’s not total GMV because third party sellers are about 61, 62%, and Amazon only counts in their sales figures what they charge in fees. They don’t count the total GMV. So the total GMV, if 61%, let’s just call it for $400 billion. If 61% of that is coming from outside, that’s basically $1 trillion in sales in top line GMV sales. and that’s incredible. You look at TikTok shop, everybody’s hot about TikTok shopping and you and a lot of people should be. There’s some opportunity there. But I think TikTok just put out at the beginning of 2024 that our goal this year is 20 billion in sales. And you look at Temu and there’s a lot of buzz around them. I think, Shein this year is projecting like 40, maybe 40 billion, almost all fashion.

Kevin 00:11:39  – – But that and then Temu is like hoping to get to 2025 billion and total sale. That’s a lot of money. I mean, don’t get me wrong, but you look at Walmart.com, everybody’s always Walmart.com. Walmart.com is going to do about 100 billion in sales this year. But 90 billion of that is their own wholesale stuff. That’s their issuing purchase or the stuff they sell in the stores that they’re issuing purchase orders to big companies. Only 10 billion of that is from third party sellers. So if you take that 10 billion of Walmart.com, who’s the next biggest player out there in terms of traffic? and compare that to the 400 billion on Amazon. There’s no comparison. Amazon is the king. Amazon will do. You know, this last Prime Day that just happened in July. Amazon did basically in two days what TikTok will do in an entire year. Yeah. Put that in perspective. Or it did more than what Walmart.com will do in an entire year. So you’ve got to be on on Amazon. So the people that say that you shouldn’t be on Amazon or I’m going to go somewhere else or make a grave mistake.

Kevin 00:12:38  – – Now, is Amazon more competitive? Absolutely. I mean, you started 2016, 2015, 2016. I started selling on Amazon in 2001. But the FBA model, which is what most of us are doing, I started 2015 and it was way easier then. It’s way more competitive now. You could get by was kind of skirting, not knowing everything back then. Now you got to wear a lot of hats, or you got to have a big team that knows a lot about a lot of things about cash flow, about product sourcing, about marketing, about sourcing, about logistics, about tons of things. And there’s there’s holes in all those areas. And that overwhelms a lot of people. And they can’t handle that. And and so they fail. You know, 90% of all sellers who try to come on Amazon fail. And I think, what was it, 800,000 new sellers, I think in the US last year, something something like that. there’s about 2 million active, seller central accounts in the US.

Kevin 00:13:32  – – Now, a lot of those probably haven’t sold anything. a marketplace post probably has those numbers, but, only six was it 60,000 of those? I think it is. The stats from I think it’s 2022 or 2023. Somewhere around 60,000 did $1 million in sales. Yeah. it’s somewhere around that number. It’s probably gone up a little bit since then. that’s a that’s a decent number. You know, that’s a small city, of millionaires or $1 million sellers. Not they don’t may not be millionaires, but they’re selling over a million. And some of those, probably half of those are big companies. Half of those are Crocs and dude wipes and whatever that are, you know, big companies are not the little guy sitting in their underwear at their house, selling stuff. so that’s the opportunity is still big, but you got to know what you’re doing now. It’s become a real business. It hasn’t become a side hustle. I mean, you can make it a side hustle, but in the Western world, to make real money, it’s got to be a real business.

Kevin 00:14:28  – – and unless you’re just if you’re just looking to make some little side cash to take a vacation or pay off a bill, or if you live in, you know, Pakistan and where $1,000 a month is serious cash, you’re rich. you know, it’s hard, to to, to make a living off it. And a lot of people don’t understand the cash. You know, if you’re doing $1 million in sales. Profit margins used to be used to, say, 20, 25% is what your bottom line is, which is shoot for some people might be doing more than that, some less. If you’re doing FBA wholesale is more like 5 to 10%. But if you’re doing the FBA private label model, it should have been. But now people are like it’s 15% is considered good by the aggregators because the margins are getting squeezed, the costs are getting higher, there’s more competition, but even if you’re at 15% and you’re doing $1 million, if you’re one of those 60,000 people doing $1 million a year and 15%, 150 grand, you know, that’s decent money, but it’s not life changing money for most people in the West.

Kevin 00:15:24  – – But what most people don’t think about is that 150 grand is not going into your pocket. You’re having to take a you might be taking 20 or 30 grand to that. and living on on noodles, because you’re having to reinvest it. If your company is growing, you’re having to buy new inventory and get some additional stuff. You’re going to stay ahead of the game, and it becomes this cash flow struggle that a lot of people just they got cash coming in and going out, but they can’t keep they can’t get ahead of it. And the only way really to get ahead of it is to, either sell and have a windfall if you get 150,000. So you might be able to sell that for 3 to 400,000 right now with the multiples, and you get a hit of cash. And so you got to play the long game or you got to figure out a way to get your margins better so that 150 can go to 200 or 250. or you got to sell a lot more. And that’s a struggle that a lot of people have.

Kevin 00:16:17  – – it’s a lot to it’s a lot to, to do and. No.

Josh 00:16:21  – – Yeah. No, I completely agree. And I think your, your point is well taken in the aspect of the Amazon game has changed not to the aspect of it’s no longer a viable business opportunity, but it is more competitive in the aspect of like, you can make fewer mistakes with your supply chain, you can make fewer mistakes with your cash flow. You can make fewer mistakes with your ad spend dollars because the cost per click is a lot higher now for the ads. And so you could easily blow your ad budget really quick. So I think it is becoming more of like a you have to create a real business around it. Like you said, do you have experts that are going to be able to help you execute a wicked smart PPC strategy? Do you have an expert in supply chain that can help you reduce as much of that waste that goes into, you know, optimizing your supply chain so that you’re not sitting on too much inventory, but also not too little.

Josh 00:17:22  – – That’s the problem with supply chain. You can never forecast perfectly or either too much or too little. Right? but that getting that number closer to the perfect amount becomes more and more important. So, Kevin, I guess that would be my question to you then if that’s what’s required, then how do these small mom pop, I guess marketers that kind of, like, started things. They were a one man shop. I mean, I feel like we heard that a lot. Like, there were a lot of people that stumbled upon million dollar businesses. They had 3 or 4 or $5 million businesses. And it was just them, maybe a couple Vas. Do you see that changing and how do they need to pivot? Well, they.

Kevin 00:18:04  – – Need to go to Market Masters and hook up with a Dream 100. You know the best in the business. No. No. the answer to that is, They got to grow. Sometimes people try to grow too fast because they just quit. those mom and pops that have a couple of bars, they just quit their job, or they, like, they saw someone showed them a bill of goods, sold them a bill of goods on YouTube or a podcast or somewhere like, oh, yeah, you can make a lot of money doing this.

Kevin 00:18:27  – – And so they’re tired of working corporate job or something, and they quit way too soon. before they, they, they can actually have the cash flow to support themselves. And so they get desperate and they start trying to grow too fast. so fast growth is a big killer, of a lot of those. And a lot of them, they should not be. You need to know the basics. You should do a course. You should do. Watch some YouTube videos, listen to podcasts, know the basics of PPC, know the basics of shipping. And you know what’s the difference between a, a an LTL shipment and a, you know, full truck or whatever, shipment? you should know some of those basics, but you should not be trying to be an expert in all those things. you need to be hiring good people and then getting out of their way. And how do you know who those good people are? It’s hard. That’s one of the reasons for the dream. 100 is the point of people in the kind of in the right direction.

Kevin 00:19:17  – – There’s other you can go on LinkedIn, there’s other places, get referrals from other people that have been working with people, but hire people that know this stuff that maybe where you’re breaking it out into agencies and at some point maybe you can bring that in-house, and or hire it. But that’s part of the problem the aggregators had. They, they, you know, there’s all these billions of dollars raised in the aggregate space and they figure we can just buy all these, group them all together. We could probably hire some of the operators that were doing this to come in and help us out. And most of them didn’t want to do that because they want the freedom. They don’t want to work and go back to corporate life. And then they thought, well, we just hire some Harvard MBAs and Ivy League people that know what they’re doing and they don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve never done e-commerce, they never done guerilla marketing. They never had. It’s not their money on the line. They never had.

Kevin 00:20:02  – – Rent’s due next month or payrolls due. And you’re like, Amazon hasn’t paid me yet. What the heck am I going to do? They’re holding my money. They never dealt with any of that stuff. And so, it just it didn’t work. so those people that are small need to focus on the branding side in trying, trying to create, not just go into it and looking for product opportunities, but looking for branding opportunities. Look for opportunities where you can find an avatar and sell to that avatar, not sell products, but sell people. And so, if I’m a person, what’s my avatar? Maybe I’m a I’m a dog owner. So, does that just mean I sell dog treats? probably. Probably not. Maybe it’s too competitive, but what’s a what else does a dog owner do? They take walks with their dog. Maybe. You know, I come up with or find some sort of unique either developing myself or come up with some unique shoes for walking on rough trails around a lake.

Kevin 00:20:55  – – when you’re walking your dog or I’m just. Or when you’re walking your dog for an hour. Maybe you need a sun visor for you and the dog. Or maybe you need something to hold your phone on you on your in your pocket or on your shoulder or on a show on your arm or whatever. Those think of the avatar and think of disposal, specialized in a category, but specializing in a lifestyle person and sell to that person because then you can sell them over and over and over. It becomes it’s a long-term play. It’s not a short-term win, but then it becomes something that’s more sustainable. And that’s what I think a lot of people are missing. they’re just looking for they’re using tools out there and just seeing. Oh, that’s a great opportunity. Let me launch a, a blender, that makes cool smoothies. And then, oh, here’s another cool opportunity. It’s a dog bowl that slows the dogs down from eating fast. Let me launch that. And there’s no congruent.

Kevin 00:21:45  – – no togetherness there. It’s not creating a brand. It’s just looking for those things are usually short lived. And you can make a little bit, maybe some quick cash. That way if you need to do a couple of those, okay. But you need to move off of that and start creating true branding. So as is the trick is you need to use these platforms, whether it’s TikTok or Amazon or Walmart or wherever, Shopify, your own Shopify to get you need to own the customer. There’s nothing more valuable than owning the customer, because if you own, you look at my calendar business. This is a perfect example. I’ve been selling calendars, since 1995, printed wall calendars. And I remember I was on a webinar about a month ago talking given similar example to this. And in the comments, people were like, who the heck buys a wall of a wall calendar? Use your phone. It’s all digital now. Who needs. That’s stupid. I don’t believe that you’re selling, you know, into the millions of dollars of these calendars.

Kevin 00:22:43  – – This doesn’t sound right. And I’m like, dude, you’re missing the boat. You have no clue what you’re talking about. And that’s there’s a perception out there, a lot of people that they don’t understand markets. They don’t understand their customer. They don’t understand because that’s not what they would do. They think everybody’s that way and that’s a mistake. A lot of new sellers make. And then because I’m selling calendars, I have it’s a recurring it’s something that I go to buy every year. So it’s like selling eggs, you know, they go they go bad, you need a new one. And I can go on Amazon and put my new calendars on every year, and I and I do, and we sell a lot. we sell a ton of them. but I do everything I can to try to get that information off of Amazon. Amazon doesn’t want to give you that customer data. but I try to get it, through different package inserts and different ways not to get reviews, not to manipulate the system, but I just want them in my database.

Kevin 00:23:30  – – So, I’ve got 17,000 active people right now that have bought calendars from me. And what do I do with those? Well, every year when the new calendars come out, I send them an email and I send a direct mail piece, physical printed direct mail piece in the mail with a stamp. It doesn’t have a stamp on its bulk rate, but and it has our calendars we do for different ones that we print in South Korea, and then we sell in the United States. And we have several others that we do print on demand just for testing concepts and testing ideas. And we do print on demand. If one of those works, then we roll it out into a mass production the next year, and then we are also I pick up other people’s calendars. So, there’s in Austin where I live, there’s a company called calendars.com. You may have seen them in the malls. They have all the little kiosks, you know, a lot of times the holiday times and the malls and they have calendars.

Kevin 00:24:17  – – Dot com biggest seller of calendars in the world. and I worked out a deal with them, where I can go in and get just in time inventory. So, they’re buying all these calendars from all over the place, and I, I don’t want to deal with 50 different mom and pop calendar makers. So, I go into them, and I pay about a 10% premium, but I just tell them, hey, I need 46 of this unit, I need 119 of this unit next month, and I get just in time inventory. I don’t get stuck with anything that has a date on it, and I resell them for about a 40% margin on top of ours that have like a 90% margin. and so, it adds extra money. And I’m able to do that because I have a customer list. And then I see what people are buying and directly from me. And I can tailor the next year what I’m doing to that. And then when that new calendars come out on Amazon, I send these flyers and these emails and I say, hey, Josh, the new calendars are out for 2025.

Kevin 00:25:09  – – go grab yours. you can bomb from me. it’s 1995, plus 995 shipping and handling. Or if you’re an Amazon Prime member, just go buy it on Amazon. just here’s the here’s the link. If it’s in, in the email and it’s not a special link that has keywords hidden in it or anything, that’s just a straight link to the product. But what does that do that a lot of them have Prime membership. So, they go, and they buy. These are collectors. A lot of them are. So, they buy all four calendars, or they might go buy my calendars and then go buy some Corvette calendar or some other, you know, dog calendar or whatever. But because my calendars were also in their cart, I get in the frequently bought togethers or customers who viewed this also viewed. I get my four calendars linked together as, you know, by the in the bought together by these three together sections or, you know, bundle section or whatever they call it. and it snowballs and flywheels.

Kevin 00:26:00  – – And so, I launched them in September when nobody’s buying and like, you’re selling three units a day, but by Cyber Monday, we’re selling hundreds and hundreds of units a day of every single one of them. And it’s this. They’re all linked together. I do zero PPC, and then there’s some guys that still send me that check or money order in the mail and an envelope with a stamp on it. It’s handwritten. and, and it’s, it’s fun to go to the mailbox that time of year of a little P.O. box, just south of me in a different city. And I go down there about twice a week, and, you know, the boxes. I had to get a bigger box. The boxes you open, you had the key you can’t see inside. You open it up. There are stack envelopes like this high and you’re like, just pull them out. They’re falling on the floor, you know, and you pick them up and turn them all the same way and stack them like you start flipping through them and you’re like, oh, there’s, there’s Johnny, there’s Sam.

Kevin 00:26:48  – – Yeah, he’s been buying for 20 years. You start recognizing names and then you get one of your flyers back. That said, it has a sticker on it from the post office says undeliverable deceased. And you’re like, oh, man, there went a thousand bucks. That guy was, no, I’m just kidding. That guy buys every year. So that’s the type of mentality you got to be thinking is use these marketplaces as lead magnets. Yeah. And then get them, and then get these people off onto your own list so that you can monetize them in other ways. and that’s, that’s exactly what I do with the Billion-dollar sellers’ newsletter. I mean, that’s when I say top of funnel. Top of funnel means what’s the easiest way to get somebody on your list? and you’re not really necessarily. So, the newsletter is free. I get you on the newsletter. You may not know me and maybe you don’t like it and you cancel it. That’s okay. If you don’t like what I’m doing and you cancel, you’re probably never going to be my customer anyway.

Kevin 00:27:42  – – But if you stay on there and I just did this on my newsletter, and I did it in July. Last month in July, I took a look and I have at that point I had about 10,000 active subscribers. these are opt-ins. This is not me just blasting my whole list of whoever’s I got their email. You had to opt in, and I kick you out if you don’t open it and click at least once a month. So, I’ve kicked out about 3000 people because they’re too busy. They’re not. Maybe they want it, but they’re just too busy. They’re never going to buy. so, it also helps with the deliverability. And there’s a bunch of other issues around that. But all those 10,000, I went in there and I said, all right, who has opened at least 80% of the last eight newsletters and who is clicked at least 20% of the time, and what have they clicked on? I put some other criteria and made an audience of raving fans. These are the raving fans.

Kevin 00:28:28  – – These are the people that are like, I can’t wait for the newsletter to show up. And you know, it makes my day. I got to make time to read it every day, or at least skim through it. And there’s about a thousand people out of those 10,000, those are my diehard customers. Those are people that are most likely going to buy something. And if I can get more people into that, and it builds this brand because the newsletter is coming every Monday and Thursday, I’m staying top of mind. And then what I do, there’s a membership side coming to the newsletter soon, and then there’s my events, the online event, the in-person events that are high ticket. There’s some other stuff that’s going to be coming. I sell affiliates, I have I make five figures a month off the newsletter right now in gross revenue. And just from affiliate commissions. Walmart’s bought into the heavy five figures to buy a whole series of ad placements. So, it monetizes itself that way and it builds credibility.

Kevin 00:29:22  – – And people can do you can do this for products to physical products. But you got to have the name, you got to know who they are, and then you can leverage that in all kinds of directions. And that’s, that’s something that I think that’s the last asset I would ever give to anybody is a list. You know, you sometimes go on these webinars or people that have bought stuff, and they give the list, like people always ask me for the list, you know, from the attendees of B.S. can I get the sponsors do? And I only give it to two people each time. It’s the two people and I charge a heavy premium. They pay like more than double the price to sponsor, and then they get the list of attendees, but everybody else doesn’t. You can go out there and get them yourself, because I know how valuable that list is. And too many people don’t understand that. They just they they’re just trying to get the next sale from the next customer, not trying to sell more to.

Kevin 00:30:15  – – It’s a lot easier to sell more to someone who already knows you and already appreciate you and likes you than it is to sell someone new. And I’ll give you another perfect example of this. And when we were doing these calendars, the calendars that we do feature pretty models, pretty girls, that’s what we do. And we shot a whole bunch of, you know, Mark. Mark’s a photographer by trade. Shot a lot of high-end fashion for Neiman. These aren’t porn calendars. Just when I say pretty girls, the first thing that comes to mind, some people are like, oh, porno calendars. I don’t know. he used to shoot for, like, Neiman Marcus and Levi’s, and he shot a lot of famous celebrities and high-end fashion type of stuff. and that. So, these calendars features that we shot heavily until about 2009, we were doing TV stuff for some of the big TV networks and TV stuff. We were doing, books and magazines and calendars and all kinds of collectibles like little baseball cards and all kinds of stuff.

Kevin 00:31:11  – – And then around 2009 or so, YouTube came out, some other free stuff came out, and people were like, why do I need to pay for this stuff? I can just go watch it online for free or whatever. So, sales started going down and we’re like, we need to pivot to another business model. But because I had a customer list of at that time, probably 7 or 8000 people that had been buying baseball cards or calendars or whatever from me, I was able for seven years to live off of those customers without doing anything else. I was able to travel the world and I went to. I’ve been in 94 countries That time frame I probably went to about 60 of them, 65 of them or so, over seven years, just traveling a lot. and how did I make a living during that time when we had an office with 16 people. We closed it down over, over. By 2011, 2011, it was closed down. and so, the next several years, I lived off of selling those people.

Kevin 00:32:09  – – And what did I sell them? I had two things I had assets, I had content, you know, about this with design. I had actual content, which is these libraries of videos and photos, and I had a customer list. So, what I did is I and I knew my I knew my customer. Like I said earlier, I knew my avatar and my customers were collectors. These guys not only want to have stuff of calendars of pretty girls, but they collect them. They become a fan of a model. And they want everything that models ever been on. and some of these guys, they to this day, they buy two calendars, they buy one to open, one to keep in the cellophane in the wrap. And I’ve seen stuff going on eBay calendars of ours from ten years ago for $500 because it featured some somebody, some model that was unknown at the time. And now it’s famous, for some reason. And so, people do that. So, I went to them, and we took all the pictures and we put them on a USB hard drive.

Kevin 00:33:00  – – I’m on Amazon. Back then, you could buy a one terabyte hard drive for $39. And so, I was buying, and I would have limits. Some people were putting selling limits. You can only buy 5 or 10 or whatever on the account. So, I had a couple different ones I was using, and I would buy 50 or 100 hard drives, literally, one terabyte hard drives for 39, 95 apiece. They come to my house. I had three computers, Macintosh computers, and I format all these is, Microsoft, DOS, not a DOS or I can’t remember what it’s Microsoft formats that way. They work on them on both PC and Mac. and we would copy off libraries of photos. So, this is like the complete collection of photos of Suzy Q and the complete collection of photos of this. And oh, you might have missed this video from this one. And we would sell those. We start off selling for $599. and now to this day, we still sell them. And every single one of my calendar flyers that goes out, it’s still on the website, and we sell 30 or 40 a year, to new people that didn’t know about us.

Kevin 00:34:02  – – But back then, we were selling hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of these. And then it got so good. I was like, Holy cow, what else do we have that we can sell them? I need to take another trip. And so, I would I was we’re digging around an office drawers, like finding old CDs and old hard drives that had, like, the unpublished secret director’s cut or whatever, came out with another one and came out with another one. Then we went to other people that were photographers that had massive library and said, hey, we’ll do this for you. give us your list. We’ll mix it with our list. So, we got free customers that we could cross-sell and we could sell to their list and ours to theirs. And we blew that up. That’s all because we had the data and we knew our customer and I was able to live and travel the world, pretty comfortably for seven years, doing that without any other, no other business. and it kind of dried up over time.

Kevin 00:34:50  – – And that’s when I switched to FBA. I was like, oh, right. I was almost semi-retired, and my dad was like, what are you going to do? I was like, I start this FBA thing. I think I; I saw some, some, four-part video series of amazing. Com showing you how to make money on Amazon. They wanted $5,000 for a course. I’m like, the heck with that. I’ve already been sourcing and all over the world I already know how to do this stuff. I already do an e-commerce. I don’t need them. I’ll just do it myself. And so that’s when I launched five brands in 2015, on Amazon.

Josh 00:35:22  – – I love that. The rest is history.

Kevin 00:35:25  – – So sorry I just talked so long.

Josh 00:35:27  – – No, I think no, Kevin, I think that story. I think it’s so important, though, that I hope people go back and hit the rewind button on that, because what you shared is a lot of golden nuggets that people in direct response marketing have been doing for decades.

Josh 00:35:43  – – Kevin and I, we actually attended, one of Dan Kennedy’s recent events, the Super Conference, and we were both there. And what’s interesting is that there was I what I think we ran into one other Amazon seller, at least that we know of that we were on shoulders with while we were there. But everybody else, they were in extremely different industries. Right. You had people that were landscapers. You had people that were selling courses that were teaching other people like, I like SEO optimization and just random things like this. But here’s the common thing that they all. Here’s the one thing that they all had in common. They were all focused on building a raving fan base and an audience, and then catering something to their needs. Right. And so that is, I think, the example, I think a lot of the Amazon sellers that stumbled upon $1 million Amazon brand, and I’m guilty of this as myself. We kind of stumble into it thinking like it’s all about the product that you stumble upon, right? I found this golden nugget that’s untapped potential on Amazon.

Josh 00:36:51  – – That’s great, but it is short lived. And so, if you can’t then create a brand and say, okay, if a customer buys this, what else will they need afterwards? That’s really where the true business forms. And so, a lot of Amazon sellers are focused just on that front end sell. But time and time again. Any businesses that have gone into the hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, they all have a very good back-end process. And so, Alex Hormozi’s podcast I was listening to it the other day, The Game. And one thing he talked about, he was like, if you truly want to scale an ecommerce brand to $100 million and beyond, like if you want to do big things, you have to start with the end in mind first, which he said, you have to focus first on the back end. What is the back end going to look like? Then I’ll work all the way up to the front. What is going to be my tripwire? What’s that cheap product that maybe gets somebody their foot in the door and into my community.

Josh 00:37:52  – – So I think that’s a good mindset shift.

Kevin 00:37:55  – – That’s a good example. Now someone will say, like when I felt when you, you know, a lot of podcasts that go and they have you fill out a form and says, what do you want to promote? You know, do you want to? At the end, we’ll give you a little shout out or a little plug or whatever. What do you want to do? Do you want me to, sometimes ask me, I’ll promote your upcoming event in Iceland. the billion-dollar seller summit in Iceland. I was like, no, please don’t. We’ll talk about it if you want, but please don’t promote that. You know, if you want to mention the URL. Okay. But no no no, no. Tell them to go to my newsletter. BillionDollarsellers.com. It’s free because a lot 100 people that are listing might do that versus 0 to 1 people that are listening are going to go to the billion-dollar seller summit. They may go there and look around, but I don’t know who they are unless I’m using retention.com or datazapp, or one of these tools that will grab your identity when you don’t know it.

Kevin 00:38:44  – – but they only hit about 30 to 50% of the time on those. But I want you in that type of funnel because then I’ve got you. I know your email address. You want, you got I gave you something for free. You didn’t have to pay for it. And then down the road, I’m going to see how active you are. I’m going to see what you click on. I know everything, Josh, that you’ve clicked in the newsletter. I know everyone that you’ve opened. I know I can talk; I can segment you and I can say, oh, this Josh guy, he’s super into AI tools because every time I run an AI, I’m just making this up. This is not factual, but every time I run an AI tool, he clicks on it. and he always, always clicks on this one. Always the video tools more often than the text tools. So, then I can build enough audience, and I can go to advertisers and say, hey, you want to reach 500 people who are really into video tools? instead of paying me 500 bucks for an ad, these are premium.

Kevin 00:39:34  – – These are pre-qualified. These are like the cream of the cream. Give me five grand and I’ll let you. I’ll send you any. I’m not going to give you their email address, but I’ll send a direct email to them on your behalf. I just had this happen. Someone’s doing a doing something. And with the newsletter to monetize it, they’re like, your audience is really good. She was doing this, this, this promotion, and she said, hey, can you promote it for me? And I’m like, sure, I’ll put it in the newsletter. It’ll get some hits, but it’s a single one off. email to the list. I’ll do one a week max. for total between all people. And I don’t want to burn the list or whatever people out, but you got to pay for that, and the response will be way the heck higher. So, she paid me 2500 bucks to send a one-off email. It did so well that she lets me back a couple days later and said, this has gotten so many.

Kevin 00:40:21  – – Your conversion rate off the clicks is above 50%. We don’t see that with anybody else that’s doing any kind of promotions. Forget how many clicks they get, just the clicks don’t convert. Your audience is so good. Can you run a second follow up email? and we’ll give you some more money. And they gave me a bunch more money. And so that I’m able to do that because I’m anonymous and I have the data and you can do that with physical products. I do it with a lot of my, my dog stuff and the calendar stuff. I can spend things off, you know, back on that, that hard drive thing. we would know we had a website at one point that where you could download. We had probably 200 different models. And somebody like, you know, people are into different things, and they have different things that they like. Some people like blonde, some people like brunette, some people like Asians or whatever it may be. And we could see who’s downloading what.

Kevin 00:41:10  – – So we segmented all the models instead of buying a membership to the whole site, you could do that, or you could just get the one you wanted. And then what we what we what do we do? Behind that is they downloaded all these pictures. We came back and offered them a print on demand calendar of just that girl, and we actually made it to where they could go through the 100 pictures or 200 pictures or whatever they had, and select the pictures they want, and then hit a button and it would set it off to a print on demand and print a calendar of just those 12. And we would charge like $100. So that calendar work really, really well. So that kind of stuff is what you got to be thinking about and doing. usually use your Amazon business or I call it Amazon business. Use your physical products business as a, as a lead magnet. These are channels to get customers. Amazon’s already done the work to get people there. They trust it. Do anything in your power that’s legal and not going to break the terms of service to get them onto your list, get a physical address and email address.

Kevin 00:42:06  – – Most people don’t change their email address. You’re probably still using an email address you use 15 years ago. you may have other email addresses on top, but there’s probably still one main one. Unless it’s just gotten so flooded with spam, you’re like, the heck with this? but if you can get their physical address, that one, you can always tie it back to an email address. There’s big databases out there. So, if you’re Josh@Hadleydesigns.com and you’ve been using that for 15 years and you suddenly, decide that I’m getting too much spam here, I’m just going to shut this account down and do a J, JH@HadleyDesign.Com if I have your physical address, I can use big databases and I can go in and I can match that because you filled out some form somewhere else or somewhere some data. And I can find your new address if I have your, if you have your mailing address, and you can also follow people in the United States for, for up to four years if they move, if you ever move and put in one of those change of address to forward your mail.

Kevin 00:43:02  – – I can get all that data. It’s free. I mean, they sell it to you so I can follow you. So, there’s all kinds of things like that that a lot of people don’t understand that you can do. And to make sure you keep in touch with these people. And like I say on the calendars, I sell them calendars every year until I get one of those things back in the mail, it says, you the guy died, you know, deceased, or a lot of times we would get them back and it would be funny. I was like, quit sending me this garbage. This trash is. Don’t send me this trash again. I’m going to call the police if I ever get another one of these pretty girl calendars in the mail or whatever. And we this we look at their history and they’ve been ordering every year for like ten years, like, all right, Billy just got married or the girlfriend found out or something. and they she said, you got to write this letter.

Kevin 00:43:50  – – So that’s when you lose them. But, yeah, that’s what most people don’t understand about what they’re doing is they’re just looking for the quick, easy win and play the long game, play, play the long game and you can see what you know just on the calendar business. I’ve been making money off these people for 30 years, over and over and over with virtually no cost other than a postage stamp and a little a printout. And we’ll spend about seven, to send those 17,000 in perspective between postage and printing, because we do bulk rate and, it’s a foldout flyer. It’s like a big 11 by 17 that folds out print on heavy cardstock. Got all the pictures and the order form in there and everything. I think it’s about eight grand that we’ll spend to send out 70, So call it. Let’s just call it $0.50 apiece. Call it $0.60 apiece. Round up $0.60 per piece. Can you run a Facebook ad for $0.60 and get a click? Probably not. Can you? And these are customers.

Kevin 00:44:51  – – Remember these are already customers. and offer that we’ll do hundreds of thousand dollars of sales off of that one mailer. That’s a really good ROI and I don’t want to do anything else. and that that’s I used to be where if someone would write me a letter, on this calendar business and I get an email. Hey, do you have any pictures of Sally, Sally, Jane and we don’t. I would write them back. Sorry. We don’t we don’t have anything to Sally Jane. But this is someone that found us off an internet site. They their buddy told them. But what would I do is I made sure that that name on the return address on the envelope, it, I would cut it out or tear it out, and make sure that went in our database as a potential customer. That’s how anal I was. about every one of those is a potential lead. And that’s what a lot of people miss the boat. Use every one of your e-commerce sales as a potential lead and get them whatever you can do get them on your list and then resell to them.

Josh 00:45:54  – – Yeah. Kevin, this is, I think we could probably keep going on for another two hours just on this specific topic here. maybe we need to save it for a part two, because I think getting into the nitty gritty nuts and bolts of this is kind of where the magic lies. But I think today I think this has been a, in my opinion, hopefully a good mindset shift for a lot of sellers that are maybe two front ends focused that are just like, when am I going to make my next sell on Amazon? Because it’s much more than how do I make my first sale on Amazon? There should be a community building, there should be back-end products and services that you’re able to offer to those customers because you know them and you’re communicating with them, you’re interacting with them. You have a newsletter. You have the all the information on them, just like you have on everybody. That’s part of your billion-dollar seller newsletter. You know what they’re clicking on, what they’re interested in, and you can better create products to serve these unique customers on your list.

Josh 00:46:57  – – And again, that’s where this flywheel keeps going around.

Kevin 00:47:00  – – Building communities is one of the biggest things that people overlook product sellers. You can be building I mean, you know this with your with your wife and the designs and stuff. If you can build a you need to try to be if you’re not, if you’re not going to do what I just said and try to get do everything in your power to get their name and email, their address, their name and their email address on your list, their physical address, their email address in their name. let’s think about building a community, around what what are your avatar is that you’re selling because you look and look at look at the you’re on the billion dollar sellers WhatsApp group. You have to have been to. You have to been to $1 billion seller event to get in there. So it’s five, 600 people or something there that are in there. But look how active that is. And that community, is there’s no spam going on other than me posting stuff from time to time saying, here’s what’s going on around my event.

Kevin 00:47:52  – – and the same thing I do for the newsletter. I don’t know if you’re in that one or not, but you got to refer at least three people to get into a special WhatsApp group for the newsletter that qualifies you as like you’re someone that actually likes the newsletter. You’re not just someone that just wants free stuff, you’re actually benefited. So, build those in those communities are very active. and you can do that around products, around your avatar, not around your brand necessarily. Don’t build a, I wouldn’t necessarily build a Kevin King community. I would build it around whatever the avatar is. I’m building it around sellers. I’m building around people seeking education. I’m building around on my dog product brand, people that love dogs, and are looking for a niche and niching it down even further, not just dog owners, but niche down. They all have. They all have dachshunds or something like that. that’s the kind of thing everybody should be thinking about too, because I’ve heard several people just recently. Harry Belcher’s just one of them, just saying this the other day.

Kevin 00:48:45  – – They believe. And you just said about Alex and stuff. Communities are one of the big things going forward that are going to give you a major magic bullet, if you can. If you have it.

Josh 00:48:56  – – Yeah, I believe it. Kevin, my last piece of wisdom here because I’m going to wrap things up. I’m going to share three actionable takeaways from today’s episode. You let me know if we’re missing anything here. So, action item number one, you talked about how the game is changing on Amazon. You need to be a more sophisticated business owner in order to actually excel at Amazon. And I would agree with that. Now that doesn’t mean that if you just crossed $1 million in sales that you can go out and hire a bunch of, oh, I can go, find a full-time supply chain manager, I can go find a full time PPC manager, because those are going to be six plus figure salaries if you want the cream of the crop. Right. So, here’s one recommendation I have for you.

Josh 00:49:46  – – If you’re looking for expert advice and consultants. That’s where I would argue you begin and one of the best places you could go. There are different tools, but there are a lot of websites. Intro.co is one of the examples where you can hire experts in their particular field, set up calls with them, and you pay a, you know, sometimes a high hourly rate, sometimes three for $500 an hour to speak with these individuals, but you’re going to get people that are in the weeds that can give you direct, valuable experience just for your brand, and they can help you rather than hiring a full time person. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two, you talked about how the game is changing on Amazon in terms of the products. And I think this also leads into the AI conversation, which we didn’t really dive into today. But the game on Amazon is going to change to where you Amazon’s going to know what your type of product, which audience that serves best. So, in the calendar business, are you? You and I are both in the calendar business, but our demographics couldn’t be more different than they are because I’m selling to women primarily between the ages of 20 to 55, their moms, a lot of schoolteachers.

Josh 00:51:03  – – That’s my demographic. I know who that customer is and yours is the opposite. Yours is going to be more on men. And so, knowing that customer and who that audience is, create products around them and then create your A+ content, create your images to feature and double down saying, this is my avatar I’m trying to sell to. And that’s going to help the whole AI algorithm down the road. But at the same token, it’s going to set you apart, because if you just come off with, hey, I got I found that blenders are crushing it on Amazon right now. So, I’m going to go create my own blender. If that’s your only basis. You have like a one, not even maybe a 0.1% chance of actually succeeding. Whereas if you say I’m creating a blender for hippies that love very unique designs and they want something that’s super obscure, like then, then maybe you’re on to something there, especially if you’ve got a community. Last but not least, my third action item is this build a community and focus on the back end of your entire Amazon based business.

Josh 00:52:13  – – So, if you have a physical products-based business where 90% of your sales are coming from Amazon, you’ve got to focus on how do I start to build an audience and a tribe that I can market to and identify? Let’s say if I have teachers, maybe there’s some type of teacher course or bundle or maybe supplements that I could maybe even start selling that’s dedicated just to teachers, right? That’s the type of things you need to be thinking about. And so, my final thing on that note would be step outside of the Amazon space. Because guess what, Kevin, you and I have both learned these strategies not by going to Amazon events, but I was a part of War Room. So I was with Perry Belcher, Ryan Dice, Roland Frazier. I was with those guys, and they come from a very different background and experience, and I stole a lot of their ideas that are working in their industries and applied them into mine. Same thing with Dan Kennedy. and it’s the same principles there. So, Kevin, my missing anything else here? No, I think.

Kevin 00:53:19  – – That’s, that’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. You said it was intro.com

Josh 00:53:22  – – intro.com.

Kevin 00:53:24  – – Is it? Yeah. That doesn’t come up.

Josh 00:53:26  – – intro. Oh. Intro.co, that’s c-o.

Kevin 00:53:30  – – All right. I just want to make sure everybody had that, that was listening. Okay. Intro.co. All right.

Josh 00:53:35  – – Cool. All right, Kevin, here’s my final thing. I’d love to ask each guest the following three questions. I didn’t prep you for these, but I know you’ll be able to answer them. What’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Kevin 00:53:48  – – Probably guerrilla marketing. Jay Levinson. I read that when I was in my early 20s. I think there was a series of them, that was really good. And Wizards of Ads. is another good one is a little short stories about all these successful people. Those two are. You know, I was probably the two. I’ve got a huge bookshelf. you can’t see it here of probably 100 books that people have recommended from different saying, oh, you got to read, find your wine, you got to read persuasion, you got to read it.

Kevin 00:54:18  – – I haven’t got to most of them. there’s, you know, they look good on the bookshelf. and I want to get to them, but, those. So some of those could take their place, but those would be the two, that I would say.

Josh 00:54:29  – – Those are great, great recommendations. All right, next question. What is a new AI tool that you’ve been impressed with that you think is maybe an undiscovered hidden gem?

Kevin 00:54:40  – – we talked about it a little bit before we got started. Bnsn.AI for for people in our business that are doing copywriting and vsls and stuff like that, it can be pretty game changing. that it’s B-N-S-N.AI, from, for Amazon sellers point of view. man, there’s a lot of good tools, but they’re, they’re focused. I think what I end up doing is I use 4 or 5 different tools together. Some of it’s the general stuff, like perplexity. I use perplexity, Claude and ChatGPT, all three of them I use I’ll use some of the Amazon specific tools.

Kevin 00:55:16  – – so there’s one, I think the ones that are going to make the biggest impact, that could change the change a lot in our business and change a lot in the entertainment business or. Or like Sora and Runway, these video tools where you can just type in a text prompt and say, what you want. It creates this Hollywood movie level video, and being able to do that for your products, I think that’s going to be a major. And your influencer marketing is going to be major, major, major. It’s not quite there yet. It’s almost there. But within the next six months to two years, you’re going to be able to do. You don’t need actors or actresses or anything anymore. You want to put your blender for hippies in a scene where there’s a bunch of people at Coachella sitting around a campfire with your blender, telling stories. You just type that in, and it’ll make an amazing video, and you put that and run that on social medias or send that to your audience.

Kevin 00:56:15  – – If that’s your audience and they’re going to identify immediately with it and you’re going to be able to do this instantly. And if that one didn’t work, you’re like, oh, shoot. the we forgot to it’s not supposed to be oak on the fire because the hippies don’t like oak. It needs to be redwood, Redwood or whatever. Switch the logs to Redwood and put it back out and oh, look, the conversion rate is now 20% higher. You’ll be able to do all kinds of cool stuff like that. So those types of tools, I think, are going to revolutionize some of the ways that we can market and we can build these audiences to where they relate to what we’re doing, rather than just telling them or showing them in a still photo. We can bring them into our world. and I think and I’m not talking about Metaverses or anything like that, I’m talking about bringing them into our world. I think that’s going to be game changing.

Josh 00:56:57  – – Yeah, I love that. Those are some great recommendations.

Josh 00:57:01  – – All right, Kevin, last question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Kevin 00:57:08  – – Oh, geez. I respect them most. I mean, I think there’s people like, Alex Hormozi. It’s really good at what he does. listen to what he says. A lot of his advice is good, and these are not Amazon people. these are more general marketing people that you can apply their principles across multiple disciplines. I think people like, Ryan Deiss and, you know, from the War room and Perry Belcher, you know, Perry Belcher is kind of a little renegade. you know, he’s not for everybody. He’s a little raw on the sides, but super smart people always got good ideas. those people are some that are really good in the e-commerce space that I think are at the top of the game. There’s others out there we’ve had them on, like the norm, and I’ve had them on the Marketing Misfits podcast.

Kevin 00:57:55  – – and like, Katie Wells, I think she’s a super smart girl. Hopefully she’ll be in Iceland next year with us at, at elevate 360. there’s a yeah, those some that just come to mind right away. There’s plenty of them, but those would be some that come to mind. I think Dan Kennedy is still really good. You know, we went to a super conference back in May. I think he’s just getting a little bit aged a little bit, a little bit, you know, old around the collar. but the principles that that don’t change the psychology and the principles don’t change, why humans buy is the same reason now as it was in 1850, 170 years ago. it’s the same. It’s just the technology and the methods of the delivery systems have changed. But the psychology of human behavior has not changed. And so, a lot of these go back and study a lot of these old writers from the 50s and 40s and 30s that were breaking ground in marketing. And a lot of those principles still apply to the modern world.

Josh 00:58:52  – – Yeah.

Josh 00:58:53  – – I love that, I totally agree. Kevin, if people want to follow you, I think you already know. I already know what the answer is going to be. But if people want to follow you, where should they follow you?

Kevin 00:59:05  – – billiondollarsellers with an s dot com, billiondollarsellers, with an s dot com that’s the newsletter. Sign up for that. You’ll keep on top of everything I do.

Josh 00:59:16  – – Yep.

Josh 00:59:16  – – I highly recommend it. I’ve been, to his billion-dollar seller summit. 2022 was my first one. And, haven’t looked back since, and so hit the I think the biggest benefit that you have and again, attending one of Kevin’s events is because it’s a high-ticket event. Here’s the best part. The people that have gotten into that door, you’re dealing with high level sellers. So compared to a lot of other conferences that I’ve been to where there’s people like, oh, I just started yesterday, it’s like, okay, I want to go talk to the people that are doing more than me.

Josh 00:59:50  – – And that’s what I find at Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and that’s what I love. So Kevin…

Kevin 00:59:54  – – Don’t be the smartest person in the room. You never want to be the smartest person in the room. If they’re the smartest in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

Josh 01:00:00  – – That’s exactly right. So till I till I get to that, billion dollar valuation, it looks like it’s coming.

Kevin 01:00:07  – – It’s coming. Yeah, that.

Kevin 01:00:08  – – Could tell me. It’s almost. It’s coming, it’s coming.

Josh 01:00:12  – – Kevin, thanks so much for your time. And, we’ll chat with you again soon.

Kevin 01:00:16  – – All right. Glad to be here. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.