Will Basta, an LA native and forward-thinking entrepreneur, brings a wealth of experience in e-commerce, venture capital, and digital innovation. As the co-founder of ACV, an e-commerce management, logistics, and marketing firm, Will contributes strategic insight and leadership to build brands and grow online businesses for savvy investors. With over a decade of success in leading startups and driving growth, Will exemplifies the ability to create meaningful change in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley converses with Will Basta, co-founder of ACV, an e-commerce management, logistics, and marketing firm. They explore strategies to scale e-commerce brands beyond Amazon, emphasizing the importance of diversifying sales channels and leveraging social commerce. Will shares insights on overcoming sales stagnation by expanding distribution channels and utilizing influencers. He also discusses the significance of mindset, recommending “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Lynn, and highlights the use of AI tools like Claude for productivity. The episode offers valuable strategies for scaling e-commerce businesses in a competitive landscape.

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

1. Diversify Sales Channels: Relying solely on Amazon limits growth potential and exposes businesses to high fees and intense competition. Explore additional marketplaces like Walmart, Etsy, and leverage social commerce platforms like TikTok to reach different customer segments and reduce dependency on a single platform.

2. Invest in Social Commerce and Influencer Partnerships: Utilize TikTok and Instagram for product-driven content that resonates with younger audiences. Start with micro-influencers for authenticity and consider performance-based models for influencer partnerships to expand your brand’s reach.

3. Leverage Technology for Efficiency and Growth: Use AI-driven video editing tools (e.g., InVideo, Lumen5) to streamline content creation and maintain a strong digital presence. Partnering with a capable agency for multichannel management can also free up time to focus on core business operations, allowing for more scalable growth.

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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!

Josh Hadley 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 Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Stephen Pope from My Amazon Guide. Today, I’m speaking with Wil Basta, the co-founder of ACV. And today we’re going to be talking about how to scale your brand off of Amazon and what are the sales platforms and channels that are working outside of Amazon today. 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. If you’re an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your business to the next level. 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 or looking for consulting, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough. Com and let’s turn your dreams into reality.

Josh Hadley 00:00:44  Today I am super excited to introduce you all to Will Basta! He is an LA native and forward thinking entrepreneur, and he brings a wealth of experience in e-commerce, venture capital and digital innovation. As the co-founder of ACV, an e-commerce management, logistics and marketing firm will contribute strategic insight and leadership to build brands and grow online businesses for savvy investors. With over a decade of success in leading startups and driving growth, will exemplifies the ability to create meaningful change in the ever evolving digital landscape. So with that introduction, welcome to the show, Will.

Will Basta 00:01:12  Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Josh Hadley 00:01:14  Well, genuinely excited to have you on the show today because I think what your guys’s firm does really helps scale brands on different social platforms on and getting into different marketplaces, diversifying. And I think that’s where the challenge is for a lot of sellers right now. I think overall, the e-commerce landscape has been getting more and more difficult. And with that, Amazon continuing to raise fees and it’s not getting any easier on Amazon, we all glory in the old days of the early 2016, 1718 of Amazon, but that’s long gone.

Josh Hadley 00:01:41  So where is the where is the getting good at right now. So but well, before we kind of dive into that, why don’t you give our audience a little bit of background on what ACV is, how you got started with that, and then we can dig into this juicy topic distribution for sure.

Will Basta 00:01:54  Absolutely. I’ll try to keep it a little brief here. My background initially was in the tech industry, but I first got involved in e-commerce at a very small scale. First Amazon product was 2014. it was a mild success, right? But really the impact of that was learning the system, learning a little bit more about logistics itself, sourcing, manufacturing side of stuff and just overall the platform and just dipping my toes in initially. Fast forward a few years from there. Had a little bit a few other different initiatives, on on Amazon and health and wellness space and the different other a few other niches that were successful. Then my business partner and I came together toward the end of 2019, early 2020, and we were noticing a few organizations were popping up that were essentially providing e-commerce services and sort of a done for you manner, meaning you can have you experience, you can not have ecom experience.

Will Basta 00:02:37  The commonality is you want to tap into or you want to have someone manage or build you out an asset online, essentially a digital asset in e-commerce on a major platform, and pretty much have it run as hands free as possible. So sort of a fully managed service. And what we did notice is that those companies that were out there doing it, which there’s a few of them, not really that many at that time, honestly weren’t really effectively executing on what it was, but there was a great business model behind it and that’s where the light bulb switched. We said, hey, we can do this better. We know exactly how to handle this. Let’s start. Let’s start this in our own way and flip the script on how to approach it, sort of building out a logistics company, a wholesale distributor or product. So a distributor company, distribution company, and as well a management firm all built into one and sort of make that hybrid approach with true infrastructure built into that. And we started early 2020 had, you know, maybe about ten clients that entire year to prove out what we we knew we could do.

Will Basta 00:03:22  And that was building up businesses on Amazon for clients both wholesale and private label as well as Walmart. Fast forward to where we’re at right now. We built over 1000 different e-commerce stores or assets for clients. We’ve got over 500 active clients. Currently, we’re in five different countries in multiple different markets. We focus on a multichannel portfolio approach, meaning, Amazon, Walmart, TikTok, Etsy, etc. in multiple markets. And there’s more to come after that. in a branded approach, really looking at e-commerce as a sustainable venture as opposed to just a quick turn and burn, make some money on it and then fade away. yeah. And that’s where we are today.

Josh Hadley 00:03:51  Awesome, I love that. What type of brands do you have that are coming to you or these kind of people with ideas like they they have this idea, but they haven’t even sourced the product yet? Or are you getting more brands that, I don’t know, they’ve maybe gotten started on Amazon and then they’re like, this is too much.

Josh Hadley 00:04:04  Then more than I can handle. And then they reach out to you.

Will Basta 00:04:06  Yeah, it’s sort of a mix. I would say we have people who don’t aren’t a brand. Right. You can have a, an engineer or someone in real estate who says, I want to tap into e-commerce. I don’t know where to start. I don’t have time. So they come to us, we start up capital. We do the absolutely everything from the ground up. We build them out the entire brand, and then we have people that come to us that yeah, like you initially mentioned, might have an idea. Those are really rare for us to take on because passion projects generally aren’t exactly what the data is telling us is going to do well, and so we generally don’t really accept those too often. It’s case by case, and then we have people that have had success. Or we do see that it can be more successful, but they’re essentially flatlined in terms of the resources they have to take it to the next level, or they’ve plateaued on one platform and they’re looking for more resources, more of a logistics network or film network or whatever it may be, or additional manufacturing contacts, whatever it is.

Will Basta 00:04:49  And essentially I want to step away from it a little bit and let a firm sort of take over. So it’s sort of a mix of all those. Those are the ones you take on more commonly. But I’ll be honest with you, overall, I’d say that’s about 20%. Majority of people actually don’t have e-commerce experience, and they’re trying to tap into the industry itself. They have investing experience in general, but other than that, that’s sort of how it looks.

Josh Hadley 00:05:06  Interesting. I want to maybe focus our time on, you know, maybe that 20%, those brands that are coming to you that have maybe started flatlining. Give me a quick overview, like what issues are these guys running into? Why are they, why are they flatlining? And then from there, how do you kind of ramp things back up to where they start growing again?

Will Basta 00:05:24  Yeah, I mean, it’s there’s obviously every scenario is different, right. Some, some brands might just be a they might actually just be a wholesaler where they’re reselling products.

Will Basta 00:05:33  And those, those, those products are obviously wholesaling has got returns that have been sort of dissipating year over year and having issues as it becomes more saturated in the wholesale market. And then people that have had in developed products or sort of have a hybrid approach that aren’t doing well but just can’t get to that next level and that next level, essentially, it’s like even if you spend more on ads or you do this, you do that, you’re really not going. You can’t take it to the next stage in terms of revenue. Most of the time it’s because they are really focusing strictly on one platform only, and they really haven’t been able to expand out of that or know where to go. And so the most common thing that we come across is a successful client that has a successful Amazon store that can easily be successful on Walmart as well, which is more of a simple transition, not really transition, but to duplicate it on Walmart. Not it’s not always exactly the same, but that’s obviously it mirrors Amazon a little bit more depending on the product category than, let’s say, a TikTok.

Will Basta 00:06:20  TikTok is considered social commerce. So that means that means, you know, people aren’t going with the intent to purchase. They’re actually compulsively purchasing. They’re going to scroll on social media, right. And then they end up buying as opposed to Amazon. You’re going to buy something, right? You’re going on that website generally to purchase something. And so depending on the product that it is, the clients that come on, a lot of them actually do have products that can do very, very well on these other platforms. And my going to talk towards TikTok, and that’s where the traditional marketing that I’m not saying is dead, but historically has been used most of the time, whether it be a PPC or ads and those kind of things. They hadn’t really looked outside of that scope and looked on these other platforms. When I say that TikTok is a very, very, very it’s a perfect vessel for influencer marketing and micro influencer marketing, as well as running off the algorithm of that platform and being able to leverage actually AI generated animation and, and just certain things that are going to really bring that brand to the next level.

Will Basta 00:07:09  And so it’s sort of a mix of all of that. I mean, I can speak deeper to that, but generally it’s someone who has sold on Amazon, has success, wants to see where else they can go. And then on top of it, this is case by case. There’s also this. The scenario depending on what they’re actually selling is they’re not selling in Canada. They’re not selling in Mexico. And it can do well. They’re Amazon Mexico. They’re not selling in this market, this market, in this market. And we have access to multiple different markets. And we know how to sort of penetrate those markets for our clients depending on the scenario. And so again it’s case by case, but it’s sort of encompasses a little bit of all of those.

Josh Hadley 00:07:36  Yeah I love that. So it sounds like the biggest growth lever you’re helping these brands when they’re flatlining is just expanding their distribution channels. So getting into additional marketplaces, expanding internationally, Is that the gist of it?

Will Basta 00:07:50  That’s that’s the gist is distribution channels and marketing and the marketing strategy behind it, because a lot of a lot of the the brands that have been successful on Amazon for a while just haven’t really thought about leveraging affiliates or social media that much.

Will Basta 00:08:01  They’re just running off the Amazon foot traffic and PPC or whatever it may be, and you can really revamp your strategy. This is I’m not saying you have to get Kim Kardashian to promote your product. I’m saying you can you can literally have someone who’s even got 5000 followers on TikTok. But the way that they actually post hits the algorithm right where it gets tens of thousands, hundreds and thousands of views, or someone 50,000 followers, right? And we have an entire network that we leverage for that, depending on the product. some products obviously are not really suited for influencer marketing, but a lot of products are. And a lot of clients that come to us from Amazon really have to leverage that. so.

Josh Hadley 00:08:31  I love that and I want to dig deeper into that. But before we get into the social commerce and the tactics that you guys are using there, I’m curious that I want to get your take on this because as I’ve talked with a lot of other Amazon sellers, one of the things that I hear over and over again is the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to dealing with Walmart, or dealing with Etsy, or dealing with Sheen or whatever the other sales platform is.

Josh Hadley 00:08:54  It’s like, wow, this is a beast. This is a hurdle. And to be honest with you, do you really want to, you know, do you want to bend over to pick up this, you know, one, two, maybe 3% of sales over here on this platform if it’s going to soak up 80% of your time. So I’m curious from your perspective, maybe dispel those myths or are they are they founded myths and maybe it’s just product dependent. But give me your thoughts. Yeah.

Will Basta 00:09:15  It is product dependent for sure. There is some truth in that. Absolutely. But there’s also something to say for if you are putting, you know, blood, sweat and tears in your Amazon business and then it’s actually running, you know, and making its good revenue are looking to expand into one of those other platforms. You don’t always have to do it yourself. That’s exactly why our agency exists. Would you rather make zero extra money? Perhaps someone take a cut of it and do it for you, or you don’t touch it, but you’re making that extra 2% and they’re just taking 1% incentivize to grow it.

Will Basta 00:09:42  That’s the entire purpose of our company. People don’t have time. You don’t want to deal with it, right? Even if there is only a 5% more you can make out of it. Maybe whoever you work with, I’m not the only company that does stuff like this, but whoever you work with takes a percentage out of that. Because we do a profit sharing based on the results we can provide to our clients, right? So we’re incentivized to grow the business. And so your hands off, but you’re essentially getting free money out of that. Because if you don’t do it, you don’t make anything right. So if you look at it like that, why not? Right. Because time is our most important currency, obviously, right. Our entire purpose here is to be 99% hands off for our clients. And so if that is the case, the numbers can be clear. If you look at an agency to handle it for you, whether that’s worth the squeeze. Right. If it’s so minimal, minimal.

Will Basta 00:10:21  Yeah. Sometimes you just say why not? There’s no purpose to even do that. But if you can save your time, not spend any time in doing this, and bring on someone who can do it for you and make that extra cash flow, I see no reason why you wouldn’t want to do that. But to answer your initial question, yeah, those. If there wasn’t such thing as an agency like ours or a company like ours to be able to do that, then yeah, I, I agree with some sellers that why would I want to You might as well just look at other things that have a little bit more of an ROI. Or maybe you know, the upside potential with a little bit less time involved, whatever it may be, right? As opposed to using your resources directly on something that might have little impact. But it really does depend. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:10:56  Yeah. And I like that mindset shift of, you know, maybe that’s the way you view an agency partner is not that, hey, they’re going to be the end all be all, but maybe they’re able to pick up some sales that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Josh Hadley 00:11:07  Yeah. And I’m also curious. Well, since you live that agency life, I mean, sometimes agencies get a bad rap, right? Because nobody cares about your business as much as you do. So if you’re the entrepreneur, how do you how do you say like, man, our Walmart business, we could actually do 10% of our Amazon business if we did it ourselves. But maybe an agency only gets us 5%. And again, those are just random numbers thrown out. But yeah. What are your thoughts on that and how does an entrepreneur kind of make that decision?

Will Basta 00:11:34  Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, we do have some unique scenarios where there’s more involvement wanted from the client, right, until it gets to a certain level, but it really just depends on how the partnership is set up, right? You know, the majority of the money that we make from our clients comes from the back end profits. So what is the margins that they’re making? How much are they’re making.

Will Basta 00:11:50  And that’s how our team is structured. And the people that manage the businesses, for our clients that are structured, the more that they make the client, the more that we make, right. But if you’re putting yourself in the entrepreneur’s shoes, essentially it goes back to what the phrase is. Is it just worth the squeeze in terms of where else could you allocate your time? If you don’t do this and you give up that 5%, is there something else that can make up for that? Even if that is true, that 5% less would be made by giving it to an agency or a provider. Can you make that 5% up or more than that? 5% up, allocating your time that you’re saving to another project, right. Because it’s not all maybe start a new brand, a new line or whatever you feel like you can allocate your time to. Or maybe it’s just spending more time with your family, things that are valuable and you can’t put a price on them. Right? You really have to balance what’s most important to you and sort of where you’re at before you make a decision like that, because it’s not as simple as this percentage, that percentage, black and white, depends on the person’s life, what they do professionally, where their products are going, what they want to do and what they’re really trying to get out of it, you know?

Josh Hadley 00:12:44  Yeah, no, that makes that makes a lot of sense.

Josh Hadley 00:12:46  And I think being able to identify like, yeah, how much is your time worth? And then at the same token, how do you decide, you know, which agency partner is going to be the best to work with. So one question I do have for you will hear is so I love following Alex Mosley stuff. One of the things that he has done is he’ll use agencies to kind of get the ball rolling, but then he’s very clear and upfront with the agency. It’s like, I’m going to hire a team member that I want to be on the calls and be learning alongside you because we want to bring this in-house. So do you ever have any clients that you work with that say, hey, thanks. We got up and running on Walmart and things are looking good there. We’re ready to take this in-house. Is is that something that happens. Would you recommend that. It is.

Will Basta 00:13:22  It has happens. Yeah. We’re not against that by any means. Your business you own the asset right.

Will Basta 00:13:27  We’re not like we’re not here. There is something to say for, you know, the access network that we have depending upon if for manufacturing something for someone or whatever it is. But if they’ve got their own product and we’re, we’re essentially just launching it on a platform for them, it’s a little bit easier to just sort of hand it off to them. and I would, if I were their shoes, I would understand. I understand that perspective from Alex. It makes perfect sense. Right? That you want to also build the talent and educate the talent that’s directly underneath you, right? It’s also a way to to have a little bit more not in a not a negative way, but to have more control over their actual business. Right. It goes back to what you initially said about people that are working directly for you, as opposed to just agency care more about what they’re doing, how they’re doing, and how they can grow within the company, meaning the results that they can bring and all of that when they learn it.

Will Basta 00:14:04  Right. It’s always good to have your team be as educated as possible if you have a company, right. That’s a great way to do it. We’ve had people who have gone through their contract with us two years, three years and decided they wanted to do it themselves, and so we just helped them with the transition plan out as opposed to renewing. And we’ve had a couple scenarios. People come on and they say, hey, I want to do this for a year and after a year because it’s for us, it’s obviously well under a year. We’re getting things moving well under a year, but one year and then I like to end it early and sort of do exactly what you mentioned. It’s not too common. And then people just decide that randomly, you know, throughout the part of it. And we’re happy to educate them on what we’re doing. And we’re not a rigid company when it comes down to our agreements with clients. And so for us, it just depends on the scenario.

Will Basta 00:14:42  Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:14:42  Great perspective. And I think yeah it depends on every situation is going to be very different. yeah. But it’s interesting to hear kind of what you’re seeing on that side now Will, I know our audience is going to be really interested to dive into like what are the strategies you guys are using when it comes to social commerce? And so let’s talk about Tick Tock, Tick Tock. Shop is, you know, the hottest thing in e-commerce right now. Everybody’s talking about it. I think it’s it’s a platform that is very product dependent. Right. Because not every product is going to go viral on TikTok. So you’ve got to just test things out. But I’m curious to hear, how do you guys launch brands on TikTok shop? How do you generate sales? Are all of the brands that you work with? Are they always a home run? Like you guys have figured out the secret sauce there? give me the lay of the land on TikTok shop.

Will Basta 00:15:25  Yeah, yeah, it’s there’s a lot of the interesting thing about TikTok I will just preface with this is that, like, obviously it’s still a high growth stage.

Will Basta 00:15:31  So what you said is completely true, that it is product sort of product dependent. There’s not everything’s going to go viral, etc. but there are categories that we see that, you know, six months ago would have been a category you would have never thought of to do well on TikTok. Right? We all know that we have a big background in health and wellness. The health and beauty categories, that kind of stuff is very, very good. Easy to actually leads into what I’m saying about the the influencer side of things. Essentially, there’s two pieces here. The starting something from the ground up. It’s a little bit different. So when we’re starting from the ground up, we’re not just developing a product based on product research. Initially, we’re doing a little research on that, and then we’re actually testing products directly with sales and categories and sourcing potential future competitors, and selling on TikTok for four or 5 or 6 months, because ultimately a lot of things can change, and we sort of see the kind of traction and how that product sort of does.

Will Basta 00:16:16  And then we go into the development stage a lot. A lot of what we’re actually doing now, a big piece of it is that drives a lot of the success. There’s two big components. It’s the algorithm of TikTok, which I’ll touch on in a second, which is so unique. And then TikTok being a social media platform, being able to not like I mentioned earlier and I alluded to earlier, it doesn’t have to be an influencer that’s got 100,000 followers. That’s the beauty of it. You can find multiple people that know how to post and get their posts viral, and they don’t have a lot of followers. Right. And we have a network of about 50,000 where we actually will do everything leading up to the product development or client comes with the product. We’ll actually post it almost like it’s a job board internally. Right. And then shirt influencers will essentially apply to be the affiliate of that. But I’m a big proponent of building out a very large affiliate network around the product in the beginning.

Will Basta 00:17:02  Right. You might be giving away some of your your profits early on, but you’re getting enough traction. And then you can minimize that as time grows and then building brand ambassadors around the product as well. I’m not every ambassador, essentially, you know, influencers that are going to be consistently potentially promoting it. But if you are not big on the spending piece, it all goes down to the algorithm, right? There’s a lot of testing with the algorithm, and it’s so unique that it’s not really there’s things that we know that are trending, but no one can ever predict any algorithm, whether it be Amazon or whatever it may be. There’s no there’s only things that we know have been working. Any person out there that says, hey, I know the TikTok algorithm, I’ll make this viral and they know the direction to go with it. But no one 100% knows, right? But our big thing here is you want to ride that wave on the algorithm. I can’t keep all the secrets on this call, but essentially we do a hybrid approach between how we are leveraging the post.

Will Basta 00:17:47  Don’t always have that people in it. Right? So we can do animated post generated by AI that we know will ride the algorithmic wave of TikTok, which gets more views, etc. and can drive traffic directly to the shop piece. Then we leverage a micro influencer network as opposed to one large influencer, maybe 15, 20, 25 different influencers that have sub 10,000 followers, right? Mix it with affiliates depending upon the structure. Some are paid per post, some are profit sharing based on the product sales. And we honestly we test different variations of that until we sort of find the silver bullet based on the product, and then we narrow it down to more of an elite squad underneath that as we start to get traction. I don’t want to sound too general, but that’s really what it is, obviously, again, specifically, depending upon the kind of product that we’re working with, what what time of the year it is, what other channels it may have. Amazon, if they’re coming from Amazon as well, that now I mentioned before we started this that Amazon is now integrated within TikTok as of August, which is pretty awesome.

Will Basta 00:18:35  Awesome feature in terms of frictionless paying. That’s why shop is so great. TikTok shop is so great because, you know, the less friction you have with checkout, the better. The big thing here is flash sales. Flash sales on these posts are really, really big on TikTok. People are constantly, you know, going through, clicking, going through, boom, boom, boom. But if they see a flash sale where they know that they’ll lose that actual sale discount if they go to the next post. Impulsive purchasing. Right? Generally, that works a lot more with products under $50, but that’s a big thing that we use because, you know, obviously it’s that goes to the human nature piece of it, right? Fear of missing out on the flash on the flash sale side. And that’s that’s something we’ve seen drive a lot of business to clients really on on TikTok until it gets sort of more established and you can run a bunch of those kind of promotions on TikTok early on. And so that’s not really a secret, but it’s something that that should 100% be used with every single product that anyone is launching is flash sales.

Josh Hadley 00:19:22  I love that. Well you’ve given us some juicy nuggets here. Let’s, let’s break these down even further. So you’ve got influencers. So your guys’s approach when you get on to TikTok shop is you’re creating your own, like post on a TikTok account, correct? You’re using some animations, some AI tools, you’re featuring the products. You said it doesn’t necessarily have to be a person in those shots. Is that true? We.

Will Basta 00:19:43  So we mix UGC, animation, etc. on sub accounts. So just generic TikTok accounts that we’re trying to run our own algorithm on that will drop. These are not.

Josh Hadley 00:19:50  So these are not like the branded TikTok accounts.

Will Basta 00:19:54  Now they don’t have to be the brands TikTok accounts or TikTok. The brand has its own TikTok shop. We make a ecosystem of sub accounts around it, and we have a team that’s just posting content to go viral, whether it be UGC, so people involved on it. Maybe we get a couple of things filmed with some people or just straight animated eye type stuff or whatever it may be, and we’re sort of pushing that out from multiple different accounts.

Will Basta 00:20:15  And all of its goal is to drive traffic directly to the shop of the actual brand.

Josh Hadley 00:20:19  So do you post on the brand TikTok account then at all?

Will Basta 00:20:23  Yeah, there’s there’s there’s always going to be that too, of course. Absolutely. And that is just a heart. That’s the foundation of all of it, is making sure that you’re keeping that the TikTok account itself established. But we’ve noticed it’s slightly a little bit different with TikTok. It’s not like it’s Instagram where people go on the page, they follow it and then like, oh, they’ll buy it later. That is there. But it’s again, this is a little bit more impulsive. You see quick reaction purchases on TikTok a lot more. So yeah, you want to make sure there’s presence on the TikTok account for the brand. But the whole point of driving a lot, the traffic, obviously, because the traffic that you’re driving from these sub accounts, they might not go and just buy immediately. They might just go and they might follow the page.

Will Basta 00:20:55  So there’s always that vessel for sure. And you need to make sure that that piece is there. Right. The direct brand account. And you’re posting, you know, 2 or 3 times a week for sure. But I think the real the real piece of it that is that’s really driving the most of most of the success is really in the initial stages on that side is really driving, you know, how building that ecosystem around the actual account from just sub accounts? Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:21:16  Give me an example. Like how many sub accounts are you talking about to support a brand?

Will Basta 00:21:19  again, it depends on the product. But we’re looking at between 510 and 15. Okay. Yeah I’ve seen much higher. Obviously it just sort of depends. And these are.

Josh Hadley 00:21:27  All like for the most part I generated.

Will Basta 00:21:29  So do I. If something’s sort of trending, we can run with AI and do some some kind of like NMR thing depending on the product. We’ve done some health and wellness brands that are really cool because it’s like animated, sort of like an animated ad in a way, but it’s really catchy and you want to see what’s happening in it.

Will Basta 00:21:42  And that just really intrigues people. and then some of it is depending upon the client and how they were working with us. We’ll film, you know, three. UGC actors with the product specifically are they’re actually real customers, but there are people that are their clients that have actually used the product, obviously, and versions of those sort of mixed in and we’ll slice and dice it and you can get, you know, you can turn with the animated stuff as well as the UGC stuff. You know, you can turn 10 minutes or 5 minutes of filming into like 100 clips or something, right? You can just keep sort of making different versions of them, and we use those and sort of just guerrilla market them, I guess, on the platform itself.

Josh Hadley 00:22:17  Yeah. So on that note then, so can you take like the videos that like, let’s say these influencers, these brand ambassadors that you give out free samples too. Can you even take some of their videos? Right. And maybe cut them up a little bit and put them on those other channels, those other channels, because they’re not really connected to you as the brand as a whole.

Josh Hadley 00:22:36  Like, is that part of the strategy you have.

Will Basta 00:22:38  In the past?

Josh Hadley 00:22:38  Yeah. Is that allowed, I guess, or is that like a big no no like we have in the past?

Will Basta 00:22:42  It’s also just depends on the scenario where we’re not trying to step on anyone’s toes. Right. So like depending upon the relationship with the influencer and if you do things like that and the collaboration contract with them, they might that door might be open regardless of them just working with us and filming one thing. Right. So it just sort of depends. It has been leveraged in the past that for sure.

Josh Hadley 00:22:57  Cool. Love that. All right. So we talked about kind of like generating your own content. Are there any like cool tools that you can maybe share with our listeners of like, hey, here’s some cool AI video tools that could help you kind of create content at scale that you guys are using.

Will Basta 00:23:11  specifically, I probably have to defer to Jason, who runs that department. I know we use about like 4 or 5 different ones.

Will Basta 00:23:16  And we also have, you know, it’s more of a tech question, on who’s handling that because we have a sort of a team that does all that animation. There’s like, we we’re really big on not focusing on one software, even with the business that we’re doing and all that kind of stuff. The same thing with animation tools and all of that, because all of them have little things that are better than the other. So we started to do a hybrid approach of all of it, but we have a department specifically for that. I know that you can, you can cut up. There’s an easy way to use AI to cut up, content that you already have through, I believe. Is it in video is one of them? obviously cap cut is one. Yeah, I’d have to say that I’m not. I’m not the biggest expert on that piece of it. but there is honestly one Google on animated AI, and you’re gonna be able to find the top ten ones out there. Pretty simple.

Will Basta 00:23:56  Yeah. Awesome. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:23:57  Love it. All right. So now let’s transition to when you talked about you know having some influencers and then brand ambassadors are those are one and two the same thing. Or do you see them as two different types of people? I see them as.

Will Basta 00:24:07  Two different things because an influencer micro-influencers an influencer ambassador can be an influencer. but an influencer doesn’t necessarily mean they’re an ambassador. That makes sense. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:24:17  So tell me, give me more. Yeah.

Will Basta 00:24:19  So essentially an influencer can be a one and done. Maybe they do a couple of different videos here and there for us, etc.. that could help. The brand ambassador is a little bit more committed to be the face of the company or not the company. Sorry. More a little bit more of a face of the brand itself. It’s a little more intimate with what it is, more frequent posts they might post on their own social a little bit more as well. they’re actually a little more vocal about partnering as an ambassador.

Will Basta 00:24:43  again, there’s sort of a definition between these can be sort of interpreted a few different ways. That’s how I really look at it, though. You’re an ambassador, you’re a little more close, close knit with the actual brand itself. And it’s a little bit of a longer term thing, because there’s an ecosystem you can build around the entire brand, which includes Instagram, TikTok, you know, socials, Shopify, almost everything. And part of that Ambassador P’s do is they their posts are not just posts that you use for ads or to drive or to drive TikTok stuff. It’s actually just they might be presenting an educational piece randomly on your Instagram too, right? So they’re representing the brand too, and a few different ways, just to be part of that entire kind of funnel, right, as opposed to just an influencer doing a couple different posts, seeing the traffic go there and then they move on to the next, you know.

Josh Hadley 00:25:19  Yeah. Interesting. So what, what is the relationship look like then? If they’re a brand ambassador, are you paying them, like, a monthly retainer to create X number of pieces of content per month? Or are they strictly like commission based, or is that more on the influencer side? The influencer more influencers or more commission based? I mean, there’s lots of things.

Josh Hadley 00:25:38  I mean, you even rambled off like paying per post, right?

Will Basta 00:25:41  Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:25:42  Maybe explain those details.

Will Basta 00:25:43  It’s a tough one because it’s going to you can you can really go in any direction based on the negotiation you have with them in the early stages, but it obviously always iterates and evolves so early on. You know, the paper post stuff is generally more on the influencer side where they have a lot more followers. Right? Because you’re getting a huge impact with just one post that they have, because the engagement that they get on there, you know, so they’ll charge a thousand of posts or 1000 a story or 500 posts, whatever it may be. Right? they can also have an affiliate piece of it, but I think the, the piece where it where you go into more of the paper posts and more deeper retainer type stuff comes when the established, the actual relationship is established a little bit further down the line, because you might have micro-influencers and people that are posting around.

Will Basta 00:26:22  Like I said, you can build a network of ten, 20, 30. They’re not all going to be with you a month or two months on the road. The whole point there is to find out which ones connect the most, click the most with the consumers and your brand, and then you sort of renegotiate your terms with them and the actual partnership itself. Right. So a lot of it starts off as like a performance base with maybe a small, maybe a small video, retainer or something like that. And then once you get 2 or 3 months down and you see traction with your business, that’s when you actually start to discuss a little bit more of, hey, this is a flat rate here. Then maybe an incentive here based on results. But it really does vary. But the whole point here is not to just like with most things, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket, because even if they do have a lot of followers or whatever it is, the specific type of product it is and the specific type of people following them might look good on paper, but it might not resonate right.

Will Basta 00:27:04  And so you don’t know until you test it out. And that’s why I’m really big on obviously less risk upfront, less spending upfront, larger amount of different types of personalities and personas and influencers that are actually marketing this or presenting it. And then you sort of narrow it down as you go and you sort of get at least even if all 30 of them aren’t ones are going to use later, you know which ones align the most. And then you can mirror that when you look for other collaborators.

Josh Hadley 00:27:24  Okay, so if I were to kind of repeat what you said the process would be like, try to go out and find a bunch of micro-influencers and you can do that very easily on TikTok shop. I mean, they have the whole creator platform, right? Yeah, that’s the beauty of it. You can create it. Yeah. Create those targeted campaigns. You can reach out to people. And so you’re going to basically seed a bunch of like free samples to these people. You’re going to give them permission.

Josh Hadley 00:27:46  And that seems to be working right now. Maybe there’s a couple in there that are going to ask, you know, for a pay per post. but you’re going to you’re going to spread that out maybe 30 or 40, 50 different creators, and then you’re going to see who performs. And then based on who performs is that when you try to deepen the relationship with them?

Will Basta 00:28:02  Yeah, it’s the data behind it. Right? You essentially you start with 50 and you’re going to slowly be trimming the fat wherever you want to put it right. Then it’s then you have 25 and you still filter and maybe replaced with an extra five. And you have 30, right? You’re essentially looking at essentially the engagement around it and the results. It’s not just about you perform it’s performance, but under performance is a few different factors, right. There’s the you’re getting more followers on your page. Are you getting more sales and what are the metrics. And then as these metrics progressed and you sort of get a better scope after, I would say probably a month in the beginning stages, the first month of it, then you can start to see the kind of influencers in that bucket that are the best, and then you want to gear towards probably, you know, you reduce the amount that you have and you allocate those financial resources to the ones that are having the most impact.

Will Basta 00:28:47  And then you have that conversation with them again on the future of working with you, right? Yeah. Another three months, maybe build out a contract or whatever it is.

Josh Hadley 00:28:53  Yeah, I love that. So could you give maybe our listeners just some ideas? I know every brand ambassador, you know, contract is going to look a little different because every creator is going to want something a little different, but maybe just throw out a few different, like creative structures that you guys have done with brand ambassadors in the past, just to get people’s minds thinking like, oh, this is an option. Oh, that’s an option. Could you give us some ideas?

Will Basta 00:29:13  Yeah, Yeah. There’s, there’s a, there’s a few different things. You know, you can in the beginning it’s not there’s no term on the actual I mean essentially you can do X amount of posts and a per post post, whether it’s a story or an actual post that they have, you can do a split of less per post and a small, tiny, tiny, tiny flat amount they get per cell that comes from it.

Will Basta 00:29:31  So a hybrid approach of that, or you can just do a flat rate and they do X amount altogether, which is sort of really the same thing as a per post thing, but just in a different kind of format. You do that for the first certain amount until you can see traction. So whether it be, you know, 30 days or 60 days or a certain amount of volume, and then after that is when you negotiate things further. But it’s going to depend on a lot of factors. How many followers do they have? Have they worked in your kind of niche before? Are they brand new to it? You’re going to have a lot more flexibility. You know, if they if they’re getting hit up, if you’re selling a skincare brand and they’re always in health and wellness, they have the pick of the litter. So it’s gonna be a little bit harder, right? You have someone that hasn’t really done that, but you think that their demographic is going to align pretty well. You can be a little bit more, you know, it’s a little bit less, you know, it’s more to go.

Will Basta 00:30:15  You can negotiate a little bit better. Right. But I’m a big proponent on in the beginning actually giving up part of the performance. So more performance based. Right. Because you know we all know it’s the history of marketing. It’s like you burn money for three months. And so until you until it clicks and then it’s you know what I mean. And the beauty about this is that you can really do a lot of performance based off here. You’re not spending money directly on ads. And so I like that a lot of that is easier with people with less followers. So you you work on a performance based piece and you build out a lot of them. Whereas essentially you’re getting either a tiny percentage of the sale or a flat rate dollar amount per transactions that are happening. Right. And then as that progresses, then you can move into, you know, there’s results behind it. You can reduce that percentage even though you’re making less profit off your sales, you’re getting brand presence and you’re getting traction on your business.

Will Basta 00:30:56  You can reduce that percentage and you can build this into the great insurance sort of preface it a little bit. You reduce that percentage and you increase something that they’re getting guaranteed monthly, like a retainer. I’m really big. You’ve heard me use the term hybrid a lot on this show. I’m really big on using that approach a lot of the ways, because again, it’s also a little bit of both sides, because everyone’s gonna think one side might be better than the other if you do a mix of both. They’re both winning performance based. And also they know that they are consistently gonna get something out of it.

Josh Hadley 00:31:21  I love that. So hybrid approach with some commission, some retainer in there. Now if you have somebody on like a retainer in those agreements again every everyone’s going to be a little bit different. But what are you requesting from them as part of those agreements. Are you saying, hey, when you create this content, we have the ability to run ads behind it. Like if you’ve put together a TikTok video, I’m going to go take that and I’m going to go put it on Facebook, run some Facebook Instagram ads on it, and drive that directly to my Shopify store.

Josh Hadley 00:31:49  Right? Yeah.

Will Basta 00:31:49  And some creators are going to say, fuck no, right? Right. There’s some just for my friends. Some will just they’ll just say no to that, because I feel like most of them have taken advantage in the past. That’s probably why. But some are open to it. Right. And those are the ones that generally are going to have a higher, they’ll request either a percentage of anything you’ve ever used, like a smaller piece of whatever that is, or charge a larger upfront or monthly retainer you can use in your disposal, whatever. I think again, it is case by case, and that you want to have that conversation and you’re going to have a lot more flexibility. If it’s a micro influencer that doesn’t have a shitload of followers and hasn’t been doing it forever, right. That’s why I like working with people on TikTok that, you know, just can get views. But aren’t some celebrity like some celebrity? You know what I mean? So I think it’s always good to preface the conversation about all of these things, because if they are someone that connects really well with the brand, you do want to work with them long term.

Will Basta 00:32:37  You don’t have friction, you know, three months in or it’s like, hey, you said this, now you’re using this, I want to get paid for this, but blah, blah, blah. It’s always going to be good, as transparent as possible upfront and essentially open the door to that possibility down the line. And again, it’s better to have that and to be maybe potentially paying a little bit for that if the results are where they are. Right, as opposed to just, you know, running into trouble down the line because, you know, maybe it wasn’t in the agreement not to do it, but you ended up doing it. And they are asking for something, right? Yeah. You’ll learn your lesson if you if you try to stick around because I’ll always find out, it’s not it’s not a good move anyway. So to answer your question, Yes, you can put that in there. Have a conversation ahead of time, see what their experiences with it are. Sometimes don’t know right up front that they are not cool with it.

Will Basta 00:33:13  Or if you are going to do it, then you’re going to have to pay X amount of money or whatever. Okay.

Josh Hadley 00:33:18  So yeah, have you ever just like bought somebody video paid a one time fee to be like I just want this video.

Will Basta 00:33:24  We’ve done that. Yeah, we’ve done that in the past. There’s also ways there’s a lot of stuff. I mean you see people’s you know, Joe Rogan stuff is like getting used randomly on products. And he’s not he never approved it. Right. But apparently it’s legal to just do that if he’s mentioned something on his podcast. Right. we don’t really go down that direction. we’ll reach out if he thinks something super impactful and we’ll just offer, like, hey, we’d like to use this. And if they say no, then we offer obviously a little bit of a counter or something, right?

Josh Hadley 00:33:49  So I love that, given a great lay of the land. so is that kind of the same process that you use? So we talked about that for TikTok shop.

Josh Hadley 00:33:57  Is that the same process you use for Instagram shopping and how impactful is, you know, Instagram shop versus TikTok shop?

Will Basta 00:34:05  I mean, we’re not the biggest on Instagram shop. It’s part of the it’s part of the ecosystem that you have built in a little bit. I’d say the biggest thing I can speak to, to that, I mean, I love me personally as a consumer. The shop feature is great, right? I buy, I use shop, it’s all about having your your payment details already preloaded. Right. And that’s the impulsive piece of Instagram. There is a lot of similarities. It’s a little bit different on the algorithm side. The algorithms are not the same. It’s more based around, you know, spending more money for promoting right on Instagram and leveraging people with actually a lot of followers, because most of the time the people with the followers are the ones that are getting views. It’s not really as easy as it is with TikTok. Mostly it’s easy to TikTok, but you’re not really going to come across someone that goes viral that’s got a thousand followers.

Will Basta 00:34:46  It’s just not common, right? So you have to look at it in that approach. But also the demographic is a little bit different, right? I personally want the TikTok. I’m 34, right? I buy a lot of stuff off Instagram. Right? I don’t really mess with TikTok, believe it or not, myself, I don’t care to. Another social media platform is just not my thing, right? So it depends on what you’re selling, how you’re approaching it. All those kind of factors play into what the product is. But I do see TikTok growing and older demographics, millennials and older. It’s not. I’m a unique circumstance. I think I’m going to be more and more unique because more and more people are going on that platform in general, but Instagram overall is just a little bit different. They didn’t. They also haven’t put as many resources behind it. You know, they sort of, I think sort of paused on it a little bit. They were putting a lot of money into it.

Will Basta 00:35:24  And now it’s a little bit just there. Right. But it’s just it’s the not it’s not the algorithm isn’t the point I’m trying to make here. It’s more about it’s pretty black and white. On having a lot of followers or spending money to promote something, right? More traditional.

Josh Hadley 00:35:36  Do you do a lot of advertising for your clients on Instagram TikTok at all?

Will Basta 00:35:41  Yeah, we do. We do paid ads. Yeah. I mean, you call us the agency. People think it’s really just a marketing agency. You know, we’re a lot of different things, agencies, just a term that could sum it up. But we can run ads and we have historically for years. But it’s just not like our biggest thing is trying our best to generate money without spending money. Honestly, that’s that’s been our big thing. That’s all. We’ve always focused on third party platforms as much as possible, running off traditional foot traffic that’s already there. proper SEO, proper influencers, affiliates, stuff like that. And then there’s always a piece for traditional marketing, no matter what.

Will Basta 00:36:08  So we do do it, but it’s not going to be something that we always lead with.

Josh Hadley 00:36:13  I love that so well, that’s kind of how we’ll kind of start to wrap things up here is I think a lot of business owners will share that same sentiment. I want to make as much money as I can without investing as much as little money as I possibly need to. Easier said than.

Will Basta 00:36:25  Done, right?

Josh Hadley 00:36:25  So out of your decade of experience doing this right, if you’re a business owner right now and you only have a select number of levers you can pull in your business, which ones are you pulling right now? Which channels are you running to, and what levers are you pulling in order to grow the fastest right now based on your experience? Yeah.

Will Basta 00:36:42  Great question. Again, fully loaded and all dependent upon the product. But I am on three channels or more and I’m on minimal at minimum two different markets. And I see two different markets. I mean, the US and a market outside of the US that’s at minimum across the board.

Will Basta 00:36:56  And I don’t care what product you have, you can do it. You at least you should be in Canadian market with what you’re selling. Right? So the UK market is also an option too. But I think the biggest approach here is making sure you’re multi-channel, no matter what the scenario is. You want to bring an agency and this is going to apply to, I think, 75% of Amazon sellers that have a private label product or product that they’ve developed, most of them will have a channel that they can sell on. They’ll have enough juice will be worth the squeeze, especially if you want to bring in an agency for and you look at time right on. And so I think at least three channels, depending upon what you’re selling and at least two different markets, if you’re in the US, open up in Canada selling Canada as well, maybe going to the Middle East, depending upon what you’re selling, maybe going to the EU. Some factors that play into this obviously, but that’s my big thing and that’s a big thing I do for my company.

Will Basta 00:37:39  You know, there’s two founders of the organization. But you know, we’re I’ve been working on recently in the last year or two is really manufacturer contacts and are not in Asia. Right. For manufacturing products Latin America are really bullish on. That’s also something I can add to that is where your manufacturing look towards the future. And the future is Latin America. If you’re selling in the US, obviously there’s always a place for Asia, but there’s geopolitical reasons and there’s trade reasons. There’s a lot of reasons why, you know, people are looking at Mexico, people are looking at Columbia, people looking at Peru a lot more when it comes down to manufacturing, depend upon what you’re saying. But again, look towards the future. Look where you’re manufacturing. It’s not always about what the actual labor cost is. It’s also about a lot of the factors that play into the trades, the trade and all of that kind of stuff. And then look at markets outside of the US. Not as difficult as it may sound, and make sure you’re on more than one channel.

Will Basta 00:38:20  You’re missing out for sure if you’re just selling on Amazon.

Josh Hadley 00:38:22  Yeah. Love that. And that’s a great way to wrap things up here. Well, so as we leave the audience here, I love to leave three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. Will let me know if you think I’m missing something. So Action item number one goes back to just what you talked about, which is getting onto multiple marketplaces. Okay. And this goes into, look at the up and coming ones that are doing the best. So you’ve got TikTok shop that lots of people are having success with, but very product dependent. And it’s also a very different strategy. You don’t just post your products on TikTok shop and people start buying them. It’s it’s a, it’s a whole other ballgame to drive traffic to those but people are seeing success on getting on Sheehan and, Tamu right. There’s a lot of new platforms and Amazon is trying to compete with those guys as well. So jump on them.

Josh Hadley 00:39:08  Cian Timu, all those guys, they are being very aggressive in terms of the discounts they are giving sellers to try to get some sales traction. So ride that wave while the Gittins good, so to speak. Action item number two is if you don’t have the resources in order to do this yourself, or you don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze, then the option is to go with an agency. And so one of the things as you vet agencies is you talked about it. Well, there’s a good number of agencies that do this now. Like it’s definitely like there’s a lot of distribution agencies that tell you that you’re going to fly on all these different marketplaces. So at the end of the day, interview, a lot of them, reach out to them, jump on calls and pick their brain and see if your values align and your strategies align, and even ask them that question, which is what Alex Ramsey does with any agency partner he begins working with, which I’m stealing in my own business is, hey, I want to set this up as an 18 month deal.

Josh Hadley 00:40:01  And by month six, if this is working, I’m having my team member that you’re going to basically be training alongside so that we could take this internally at the end of this engagement. And if that agency partners up for that, like a that that could be a good fit. And then ultimately you can turn that in-house, right? Totally, absolutely. All right. My third and final action item is regardless of what platform you are selling on, but I think this is very valuable if you’re going to dip your toe in the TikTok shop, water is implementing a very good and robust micro influencer strategy, which is you are sending out hundreds, if not even thousands of samples to creators just to see what will stick and what will work. It’s that guerrilla marketing tactic. Now, I know this probably works great for people that have cost of goods that are just a few bucks, and for somebody that has a $50 cost of goods product, you’re probably not shipping out a thousand different free samples to people.

Josh Hadley 00:40:52  But, the principle is still the same. It’s reach out to people, see where you can gain that traction. Because what I love with these influencers is, yes, they can bring sales and traffic on that original marketplace. Maybe it’s Instagram or maybe it’s TikTok shop. But guess what? The bleed over is massive. Sometimes as much as at least 30% of the sales are going to end up on Amazon. If not, maybe 50% of the sales end up on Amazon, which you get your full commission on because there ain’t no track in any of that stuff, like if they’re driving to TikTok shop. But the customer then goes search, finds and buys your brand on Amazon. yeah, that that does wonders for your organic ranking. It also helps in terms of it’s a more profitable sale theoretically for you. So those are my three action items. Well anything you think I missed.

Will Basta 00:41:34  That’s it. Now you hit the nail on the head.

Josh Hadley 00:41:35  Absolutely awesome. All right well so final three questions. What’s been the most influential ebook that you’ve read and why?

Will Basta 00:41:43  I’m going to go with something that’s more recent which is don’t believe don’t believe Everything you think by Joseph Wynn.

Will Basta 00:41:52  I think this is a very influential book because first of all, it’s a short read, which is nice. and you can sort of open it up anytime and pick a page and read it, and it’s impactful, which I love to do. and you can read front to back, but a big thing about it is essentially not having, you know, we all were humans, right? So we all have things that are negative that may happen, negative thoughts, etc. all this kind of stuff, and it really shows you how to channel these and not be affected by them the same way you normally do. Let it bleed into your day, right? Something happens. You have that thought in the morning that could ruin an entire day, right? it’s a really unique perspective. And it’s also how to channel positivity through the thoughts that you have that may not feel like they might be positive on the surface. Right. There’s a lot more to it than that. But really recommend the book because all that’s applicable to everything you do in your daily life, including business, whatever it may be.

Will Basta 00:42:33  Our minds are always racing and thinking a thousand times a second, right? and it’s a short read and it’s something you can always open up to at any point. So. Yeah. Don’t believe everything you think. By Joseph Lynn.

Josh Hadley 00:42:42  Fantastic. I have actually never heard of that book before, but I like what you’re talking about there. I think it all starts with your mindset. And so I love that recommendation. Adding it to my personal list.

Will Basta 00:42:51  Yeah. Please let me know.

Josh Hadley 00:42:52  All right, well, second question. What’s your favorite AI tool that you’ve been using and why?

Will Basta 00:42:57  I’ll be pretty basic here and say cloud. I use cloud more than ChatGPT. I use Claude. I think the most use I get out of it is essentially when I, I move very fast throughout the day. And if I want to get a lot of thoughts down, I can type really fast. This is really funny. I’ll say this is my best use for it, but when I type really fast, whether it be on my computer or my phone, it is literally there are so many typos, they’re all over the place, and I honestly can just throw a bunch of thoughts on that are great.

Will Basta 00:43:26  But when you read it, Josh, if you were to read it after I did that for ten minutes or an hour and one day you’d be like, what the hell does it say? But Claude knows what it says. So my point is, is that I like to leverage. Claude is essentially a means to consolidate my thoughts about business or whatever the things that are there, and organize them right, to be a little bit more legible, both for myself and be able to actually present it, whatever it actually the need for it is right. That’s a very, very basic use of it. But I do that a lot because I’m doing a lot of things throughout the day, and I’ll always keep a tab open, and I’m writing a bunch of stuff that I need to be doing for something. It might look like nothing, and then Claude can clean it up and make it look like something. And it’s still everything that I thought was out there without Claude’s input. Right. So it’s so true in nature.

Josh Hadley 00:44:07  Yeah. So beautiful. Beautiful use case there. Somebody that can interpret your your legibility of. Yeah.

Will Basta 00:44:14  Exactly. All right.

Josh Hadley 00:44:15  Well final question. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following in? Why?

Will Basta 00:44:22  I know we talked about this earlier before the call started. I, you know, there’s I honestly don’t have someone specific on the e-commerce space that I mean, there’s a lot of stories and people out there that are really, you know, have had success. I what it did inspire me a while ago because I was actually working in the, you know, I have a background in the health and wellness industry a little bit, too, in the e-commerce and supplement side. I know Aubrey Marcus started on it, which is a health supplement brand, which then sold the Unilever. Right. And that started all the way back before supplements were even a huge thing in 20 1314 and he exited that. I think he still may be on the board or something, but he’s not an e-commerce person directly.

Will Basta 00:44:55  But that was an e-commerce success story, right? And I think it was really, really inspiring. And it was also during the period of me starting my company and the things that I’ve been doing. Right. And so I’d say Aubrey Marcus with on it and the launch of On It as a supplement brand, it’s probably the most inspiring and most runs the most parallels in terms of my experience and what I’ve done.

Josh Hadley 00:45:12  Wonderful, very inspiring person. So Will, if people want to reach out to you, they want to learn more about your agency. They want to follow you. Where’s the best place people can do that?

Will Basta 00:45:21  Absolutely. Our website is.com with ACV IO that’s e-comm with ACV. I always call this there a lot of stuff on our website. Obviously ecom eCommerce ACV is our Instagram and ACV, which stands for Accelerated Ecom Ventures is our YouTube as well. We’re posting constantly on all of those. You can always call us consultation wise, etc. and then sort of take it from there.

Josh Hadley 00:45:43  Awesome.

Josh Hadley 00:45:43  Well, Will, thanks for joining us on the show today.

Will Basta 00:45:46  Thanks for having me. This was good. Appreciate it.