[00:00:00] Welcome to The Professor’s Podcast, where we discuss the best strategies to massively improve the reach and bottom line of your business in the current virtual and economic landscape. Your host, Howard Thai generates over $5 billion for his clients annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.

[00:00:21] Hey everyone Hurricane Liz here back for another Professor's Podcast. And, with me is always the man, the myth, the legend himself, Howie Thai. Howie, we are coming up to another live and in-person mastermind. Finally, our first one in one and a half years. I know you're fired up. And this is our second speaker that we're about to interview here.

[00:00:41] And this is going to be a good one. Tell me more, a little bit about this gentleman and why you selected him. Why you wanted him to speak in front of everyone at the, I guess we could call it the first ever Elite Innovators Mastermind, which we again have not done in years. Well, let me see, how long has it been?

[00:00:59] I, where did I meet him here? If you can remind me, that'd be great Tim. Yeah. I'm okay. I honestly don't know. I know it's a few years ago. But I also don't know where. But let's just go, go. Well, Tim is my fishing buddy. He's also my drinking buddy and he's also my partying buddy. We do a lot, slept together. We didn't go from when I was in Vegas to all the way to like Texas, all the way to Thailand, we'd go all around.

[00:01:25] Right. We were speaking at the affiliate marketing event where it's, I guess, back in 2019. So it was crazy, all that stuff we've been through. So what it is is because Tim Jordan is pretty out there in the scene. And so, but there's a lot of stuff that people don't know about Tim, how good of a marketer

[00:01:42] He, he is actually doing his marketing and stuff, and I want to actually show the world what Tim can actually do. So, yeah, we're gonna show you a little bit of what Tim can. Amazing. And Howie, obviously, you want to show the world what he can do. That's why you decided to change your backdrop. It's no longer the Christmas trees for Q4.

[00:02:02] It's the world behind you, planet earth that you have right behind you, which is exciting. So Tim obviously Howie thinks tremendously about you. And you've been selected to speak at the event, which is October 4th and 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada, which I will be giving a link here at the end of this, telling you all how to get more information on that.

[00:02:22] But Tim, give me a little bit of backstory. What we usually have our speakers go through is we try to tell them, give us an elevator pitch of who Tim Jordan is. And let's just say, for example, you're on the elevator with Howie, and you want to convince him that you are the most qualified person to speak at this event.

[00:02:37] Who are you and what are you about. Just throw a big elevator pitch up there. So I am not a genius by any means. But I do keep my ears open and I am fortunate enough to be in the community enough that I learn a lot of different things from a lot of different people and I can consolidate and combine a lot of this stuff and turn it into a pretty, sometimes outrageous, people would say, but outside of the box, the unique ways of getting things.

[00:03:00] Right. So I've done everything from, from own shipping and sourcing companies in China and 3PLs here in the US. I've consulted for some of the biggest and most well-known, service providers and software companies in the space. I've been coaching private label sellers from beginner all the way up to, you know, seven, eight figure sellers for about three or four years now.

[00:03:17] And I collaborate with some of the other really good thought leaders in this space. Yeah, that's amazing. Was that good? Yeah, absolutely. That's amazing. I mean, I think a lot of people, you're very good, humble, cause a lot of people would say like, you know, I do this well and I do that well. And you basically said about whether you just keep your ears wide open and you just happen to party and co-mingle with the right people.

[00:03:37] And you know, it's funny that you mentioned that Tim, but I don't know if you recall or you're on the scene when ASM had Richard Branson at their conference. And one of the questions that was asked is what is your, the advice that you give a brand-new entrepreneur and his answer kind of like shocked a lot of people, but I took that to heart.

[00:03:56] And since then, that's been the best business advice that I've ever heard. He said party more because the reality is that most of the secrets, most of the business deals get made out while you're out and about drinking with Howie and Don Julio. So that's why I encourage everybody to come out. Howie, anything on that?

[00:04:13] Tim touched on. Do you have any thoughts? Well, like you said, he's like a social, a social network genius and stuff like that. So my wife calls me a social slut sometimes, but, but I think he's a, more than me - a bigger slut than Howie. That's a tremendous, I mean, that's what this mastermind needs is more sluts.

[00:04:33] So we'll try to keep it a family show, even though I think we already crossed the line with the slut comment. But Tim, give everybody just a little bit of a teaser. I know our, the last guy that we spoke to the Wolf, we'll just call him the Wolf. He, he teased the hell out of some people on some of the topics that he was planning to discuss.

[00:04:50] Give us a little insight on a couple of the handful of things that you've tossed around, potentially speaking about at this event. Before you say that is there's. This event is like a competition, right. There is going to be like 11 speakers and they're going to be a, like a cash prize of $7,000. And so this is going to be like, so we want the best of the best out of you.

[00:05:12] So go ahead. No pressure. So one of the coolest things that I've been experimenting with probably for 18 months and kind of ready to share now is this strategy for outside traffic that I've never heard anybody else talk about. And if we talk about, you know, ways to succeed on marketplaces, like Amazon outside traffic right now is everything. You know, a lot of the ways that we used to be able to rank and, and, you know, drive sales and get reviews.

[00:05:34] Are getting harder, frankly. So we have to start doing things a little bit more legitimately. We have to play a little bit more by the rules and really the best way to get Amazon's really take attention or focus attention on your product is by driving traffic to the platform. But it's tough. You know, we're seeing like the iOS updates happening with Apple.

[00:05:51] We're seeing, you know, Google ads and Facebook ads going through the roof right now. So we have to think kind of outside the box and we have to think about like guerilla marketing on how we can get traffic, the best marketers in the world. Our affiliate marketers. They are, and maybe this revelation came, Howie back, you know, two years ago when we were hanging out in Thailand with some of the best affiliate marketers in the world.

[00:06:13] But they are typically, you know, operating on slim margins. There's, they're operating in very, very competitive spaces and they have to be the best marketers in the world. So what I started doing was figuring out how we can utilize digital marketers and affiliates to drive traffic to our products. So I figured out this method that I started experimenting with, like I said, probably 18 months ago and it works. And it's, I'm not going to give too many secrets, but I'm giving the exact blueprint. I'm giving, you know, templates.

[00:06:41] I'm giving SOPs, I'm giving the exact strategy and exact secrets to how I find the best digital marketer affiliate sellers in the world and how I get them to push my products directly on it. That's very sexy, Tim. I got to say that that is a very sexy, very slutty. I love it. I'm looking forward to hearing about that, especially the template part.

[00:07:01] And I know how he said it earlier. He was telling the Wolf that there's, we've had quite a few speakers, but usually the ones that give and give things like SOP, they typically take home the grand prize, which is how he mentioned is $7,000 in cash. So I can totally see how. With a set of sunglasses, maybe a black suit, black tie and a little silver briefcase.

[00:07:21] We're going to make how he, the man in black. And he's going to award that to the one speaker, which, we did not mention. There is also a prize for smartest marketer. So that is also going to be a cash prize. And I believe that cash price was at like two and a half thousand, Howie? What was that? I believe so.

[00:07:38] Yeah. So, so one thing, Tim, so one of my questions to you is obviously aside from this traffic, with the affiliate thing that you've been working on, that you've been doing very successfully, it's worked out what at the present time is your other favorite forms of external traffic to drive onto Amazon. So I like finding existing traffic that nobody's looking at.

[00:07:58] And the way I do that is find unique product opportunities. I look for, you know, keywords that people are searching for and there are no products available. So instead of generating outside traffic, I'm finding outside traffic, that's not being catered to yet. Right. I call these, my Yeti products. It’s products that people are looking for, but nobody's selling and it's tough to find those because traditionally we would.

[00:08:19] Products already on market place to see what their sales revenue and see, you know, how many clicks are getting things like that. But this is like completely random. An example would be if someone were looking for, you know, Pink Christmas trees. And there was nobody selling pink Christmas trees. I would find the keywords and the search volume of pink Christmas trees and know, Hey, there's already enough people looking for these things.

[00:08:41] All I have to do is back, fill it with the product. And I look off of the marketplaces. I look in social media, I look in the social forums. I look at digital marketers, driving traffic things to different platforms, and I find where there is demand. That's not being backed up. Do you ever find any instances, Tim, where you reverse engineer and there's obviously a lot of traffic on other marketplaces and, or like you mentioned, like if you looked for pink, Christmas trees and it's popping up in a lot of different spots, do you ever find.

[00:09:10] Products where you get them on Amazon and then the traffic's not really there. Or does it start to come once you put the product? Does it there's like a delay in time because obviously the demands there and other markets. Yeah. So there's two ways to look at that, one is frequently there is a delay.

[00:09:27] Right. If I see a popping up on Etsy, I know that in 16 months it should be popping up on Amazon and I can park it there and I could wait it out. Amazon, for some reason is super delayed. It always has been. It's behind everybody else. Maybe it's because there's such high buyer intent and not browsing intent, like other search engines.

[00:09:42] The other way to go about this is let people know, Hey, it's on Amazon so I could park it on Amazon. I can redirect that existing traffic at other places and say, Hey, here you go. So if it's, you know, popping off on Pinterest, And there's all these Pinterest ads and nothing on Amazon and no demand on Amazon.

[00:09:59] I could park it on Amazon and then run ads from Pinterest, Amazon, right. Using that existing interest in demand and just pump it over to Amazon. So I artificially create that flow. Yeah, that's very cool. Howie, I know you might have something to add there. I knew I'd get myself in there, but I don't want to interrupt anyone, but yeah, right now, most recently, like in China, Shenzhen they actually, because of a lot of the sellers are getting suspended.

[00:10:27] The government is actually doing some incentives to, for people who are actually, products that are made in China. Sold on Amazon sellers. They're actually giving them incentives. They're giving them 2 million Yuan in too many rounds, probably 300K USD worth the money just to give them away. Their only, only qualification is if they are seller that has

[00:10:51] 300K sales per month. So what there is, is maybe a flood of money coming in by Chinese sellers, being able to use it for marketing dollars or other things. So Amazon PPC should or could be gaining more and more expensive because that marketing dollar is going to be used towards that most likely. So we as an Amazon seller should look into other venues such as the low, low CBC prices.

[00:11:17] So. Maybe take talk and other venues and stuff like that, and really needed to level up or else other people are going to take advantage and take over. Because right now it is the era of electronic, external traffic. So if you don't, if you're not on that, you're going to be left behind. Yep. Yeah. That's, that's a good, good point

[00:11:36] Howie, and you know, which brings me a question for Howie. We definitely won't don't want to leave you out on this Howie, but that brings me a question to you. Howie, what platforms are those Chinese sellers with the surplus of money? What platforms do you predict they're going to be using aside from Amazon PPC?

[00:11:54] So they normally do either Amazon PPC or Facebook. So those are the two main platforms that they working on. So right now in China, they're really gaining popularity is Tiktok as well. Everyone's jumping into Tiktok ads and Tiktok influencers and stuff like that. They're building this influencer network, for the Chinese sellers right now.

[00:12:17] I could see. So that's a lot of things, but a lot of stuff that right now, I know that, you know, in the Western world, it's supposed to be the best marketers out there for branding. And so, but at this time take talk is from China. So everything actually, what you see in Tiktok USA is light years behind if they talk China.

[00:12:40] So they call it. So right now, they even have already shoppable, live shopping, and things like that. So that they're creating billions of dollars for, for the industry and stuff building, I mean, a lot, lot more than the billions. Right. So we're just way behind from China's Tiktok or, and how it's running on.

[00:13:00] So they're probably going to do more to talk as well. So they talk as a, is really low price right now for ads and just need to get in there. Before you left. So again, not FOMO, but you know, but you guys got to get on it. Yeah. And you know, that, which reminds me something that Tim said earlier, that kind of combines with something that I learned at one of Howie’s masterminds.

[00:13:22] I want to say this was two years ago when I attended the last mastermind in Shenzhen. And I guess that was the last time, I don't know if China's allowing people in. I don't think they are, but the last time that we attended that we actually maybe two and a half, three years ago, it was a long time ago.

[00:13:37] And you had a guy on staff, Howie’s, named Darwin who's just absolutely girl crazy. And he showed me Tiktok for the very first time. And at the time Tiktok, wasn't even in the United States and you guys were going off about Tiktok, this and that. And I came back, I gave back to, it was actually genius network, which I'm wearing the t-shirt for right now, came back to genius network, telling everybody that Tiktok was the next best thing. People were looking at me

[00:14:00] Like I was just a complete, like alien. Like I was from another planet. Back there where, Howie has behind his back. They thought I was nuts. They thought I was just out of my mind and look, what's happened here. With that being said, it kind of connects it to something that you said to him, which is this affiliate traffic and finding that next pocket of traffic.

[00:14:19] And since I know you have, you’re up and out everywhere, you, you constantly get information from other people. What kind of opportunities like this are you seeing for 2022 and beyond in both like external traffic, as well as the Amazon atmosphere. I think that there's kind of two pieces of this. One,

[00:14:40] there are big opportunities. But two, there's a lot of people claiming there's big opportunities and there's none right. There's a lot where things is influencers. We're seeing a lot of influencer marketplaces where people are claiming to be influencers in these categories. But even though they have a lot of Instagram or Tiktok followers, the conversion and the actual engagement rates are super low.

[00:14:57] So there's a lot of, kind of Hyped up demand out there, not demand, but performance, right. A hyped-up performance. So I think there's a big opportunity, but we need to become really savvy about sorting through and seeing which of those opportunities are better than others. Right. Because there's a lot of fluff.

[00:15:15] So when we look at something that is cutting edge, that is just getting started, that's easy to filter through and figure, you know, what's actually legitimate here the further and the more like established these methods and process, the more savvy we have to become. Think about like digital marketing agents.

[00:15:33] You know, when this whole thing was just getting started, it was fairly simple. There's a few agencies out there crushing it. If you could get into them, it was great. But now everybody thinks that can be a digital marketing agency and probably three quarters, do not have a clue what's going on. Right. So I think that coming up at 2022, the way that tools that developed where the platforms are developed, the way that we're able to segment audiences, target audiences, and actually find different audiences that are applicable to different products on different platforms.

[00:15:58] That's all great. Well, we're going to have to start becoming very, very good at deciphering what's real and what's not, we're going to start throwing bad money at bad opportunities. Yeah. That's a good answer. Howie, what do you have to add to that? Just like I said, you go to every event you're like Tim, you guys pretty much see each other, pretty common.

[00:16:17] You’re drinking buddies, you’re fishing buddies, which says a lot about you guys. What do you see in 2022? And beyond that, some subject that we've not touched on with you, Howie either. So I'd like to get you your insights as we got your drinking buddy on. So right now is all about how to get traffic and sales outside of Amazon external traffic.

[00:16:37] And how do you do it in a cheap way in a, in a practical way, because it's not. In Amazon PPC, it's getting more and more expensive, but that's actually the best conversion usually. But how do you convert higher? How do you get a good conversion rate on the money that you spend, the high ROI, And the loss and low ACOS.

[00:16:58] So that's, that's how you figure it out. So what it is is how are we going to be able to rank using that kind of technology and product rebates are kinda, really kinda, kinda old, old days stuff, you know? Cause it works still, but it's getting less and less important. So you gotta know how. Well, where's the traffic is the signals that are shot up.

[00:17:20] We'll shoot up the algorithm so that they'll rank you higher and faster. So I think. Knowing how to pick on the influencer marketing side is really important. Like Tim said, first of all, there is influencers and influencers with a lot of following count. It doesn't lead to sales. And first, second influencer with a lot of follower accounts with a lot of high engagement, doesn't relate into sales either.

[00:17:46] If you're a dancer, And you're dancing around, you know, half naked and then going on and you have a lot of engagement as well. Maybe, you know, you know, someone with the, for you page with like a, what only fans club and stuff like that, people are interested, you know, then you got. I  don’t know what that is Howie. Oh, I don't know either.

[00:18:03] I heard about something like, I don't, I'm just trying to be kind of smart, but yeah. So, you know, like things like that, you know, you're getting a lot of attention and stuff like that. People are talking to them, but you know, you're talking about selling a product. They've not even co-related and I related to, and especially, maybe not even in your niche, right.

[00:18:22] If you're selling maybe baby, a baby, Maybe toys or something like that. And then they're doing like dancing around and doing other things, but you have to really find a niche and a person. So as well as a good closer knows how to do the hook, knows how to do a storytelling on the videos and stuff like that.

[00:18:40] To hook them to get that following count we seen and done some influencer marketing where we see like a video that goes up to 54 million views, millions of likes and a lot of followers. So those are like, and then they, that becomes a best seller badge. Like not like nothing. So, you know, and then, and then most of the time people don't expect it being doing so good that they run out of inventory because they sold so much at a hundred percent of the price.

[00:19:11] So that's where vitality comes into place and people in the Amazon community needs to get ready for that kind of. Yeah, Howie. Now I perfectly understand why your wife calls you a social slut. Makes perfect sense to me. You're on Tiktok. Sorry. I want to clarify, I didn't want Tiktok. Yes. I am going to Tiktok three to four hours a day. It’s all about marketing.

[00:19:38] My wife left and right. But I don't think she believes. I perfectly understand Cat now, but Howie, that was a terrific answer actually, Howie. You know, Tim, my last question for you before we wrap this up, I'm not sure if you've actually had a chance to look at the other speakers that are going to be at the event.

[00:19:55] And obviously since you go to a lot events, you've got your ears up. You're trying to pay attention to what's going on in your social life. Interactive with everybody. Is there anyone on that page that you look forward to speaking with that you haven't had the opportunity to meet? Well, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings and list someone specifically, but I do want to make a note that that surprised me.

[00:20:15] Most of the events that I go to. I know all the speakers. Most of the events that I see and know all the speakers, I looked at the lineup for this event and thought who the crap, three quarters of these speakers, I don't even know who they are. And that's great because some of the best content comes from people that are operators that are in the trenches getting stuff done.

[00:20:32] And they're not on the speaking circuit, so to speak. Right. So it's going to be very interesting to see and hear from people kind of outside of the typical bubble, which is one reason I think that an event like this is so, so intimate and so unique. Oh, yeah. And I'll tell you this the last time I know we had Travis Killian, he blew the house down and Howie told me, blast me that Travis was coming back on.

[00:20:52] So Howie, who are you pumped to hear this time around? Oh, we heard Travis. We heard Matt killed it as well. Corey's killed it before he won several awards. Leo won a couple of awards. Who are you looking forward to most Howie, before we wrap this. So far, I wanted to see what the Wolf has to say, you know, cause these are from the internet marketing affiliate side.

[00:21:15] So we want to bring them in to see how that cohesion with Amazon works and how that would relate to more sales and especially Bringing in a lot of those in-depth knowledge, I think he was saying SOPs and stuff like that into our, into our event. Like, like, like what you said, Liz, we had a lot of good speakers and a lot of them, I try to bring back this time around, like from the PPEs, all the best speakers of the PPE that we had, we brought them back like Matt Altman, $150 million seller.

[00:21:49] Plus we have Travis, you know, I think he was like 89 million from the last time. And he, and we had like, you know, we have Leo, we have a lot of the old speakers, special lot of people from the Cabo. Cabo man that is really good. They had so much value that I brought all the best of the best back onto stage to give us as much value as possible.

[00:22:10] Right. The Cabo one was terrific. I got to say that it's got to go down one of my favorite one all time, but, we do look forward to adding Tim Jordan to the lineup. And you guys heard, he's got a lot to talk about it. Some days he's going to give out some steps and tell us how we do things. So I, for one, I'm looking forward to that.

[00:22:25] I know Howie’s looking forward to that. And we thank you so much, Tim, for joining us and to find out more information, as well as those speakers that will be signing up and alongside Tim for the competition. Remember, in addition to the $7,000 in cash money, They're going to take, they're also going to take a belt home, a worldwide championship belt.

[00:22:44] We call it the Mr. Worldwide belt. They will win that title. It's better than Pitbull's Mr. Worldwide title. I'll tell you that much and they're going to win a cash prize. So they're going to bring it. They got there. Things to speak about things that you've not heard them speak publicly. And as Tim just mentioned, a lot of them don't speak publicly.

[00:23:00] So these are underground guys that are actually out there making some money. So to find out more about that event, which is October 4th and 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada, head on over to howardthai.com/elite2021. Like. again, that's howardthai.com/elite2021. And that's on October 4th and 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[00:23:19] We do have most of the mentioned rooms sold out already. So make sure to schedule your call at that page. So other than that, Howie, any last words before we say goodbye on behalf of Tim, myself, and obviously the man, the myth, the legend. No, I'm just wanting to make sure that we get to see a Tim Jordan drunk.

[00:23:38] I don't think I seen him. What's your drink of choice. And, but the most, the most important is I've been working with this for so long, you know, never seen the Hurricane Liz that everyone's been talking about. We want to see her drunk shit face. Well, that's going to happen. Howie, so I guarantee you. I'm coming out in full form.

[00:23:59] You'll see the hurricane back along with Howie, which we know Don Julio is his drink of choice and Tim, what is your drink of choice. I'm never telling anybody, that's a secret, you know, like, like, like there's some women that say tequila makes their clothes fall off, but they don't tell anybody that because they try to feed them tequila.

[00:24:14] I'm not, I'm not telling you my secret. I can't do it. All right. Well, we'll just have to figure it out Tim. We're going to have to buy several different drinks. So sampling, sampling. Fantastic. All right. Well, on behalf of Tim, Howard and myself, Goodbye. And I look forward to seeing you guys there. I'm fired up for October 4th and 5th.

[00:24:30] I know how he and Tim are. So we're going to do it. See you guys soon. Take care! Welcome to the Professors Podcast, where we discuss the best strategies to massively improve the reach and bottom line of your business in the current virtual and economic landscape. Your host, Howard Thai generates over $5 billion for his clients annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.