[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 and we're back again for another Professor's Podcast. And with me, as always, is my partner in crime, Howard Thai, who I always call the man, the myth, the legend, or to me, it's just Howie. So Howie, today we got a really special guest. I'm super hyped up for this one. I even went, I took a shower and then I came over here.

[00:00:41] I was a little bit out of breath cause I walked a whole 10 feet. And that's kind of like the usual routine right now for me during the pandemic. And obviously I'm just kidding. But I will say that I am stoked for this interview more than any of the other interviews. And I'll tell you guys the reasons for it in just a minute. But Howie, how excited are you today for the gentleman that we're about to interview

[00:01:00] that has agreed to speak and to come out almost of the true underground and actually reveal himself before all the people that are actually going to participate in this event?

[00:01:10] How excited are you? Very excited, it's kind of hard to have like a really big seller to come on, like live on like, you know, like a virtual kind of mastermind because a lot of these big sellers really want to keep it very low profile. They don't really want people to know what they do in order to get that sales amount.

[00:01:29] You know, this is, this guy right here is Travis. He's one of my clients and he's bringing about $50 million in sales. So it was really hard for me to get him on here, but I did. I kind of had to like push him a little bit to get on our show. Right? And I know you wrangle them up. You kind of pretty much almost pretty much begged him Howie to get on this show because of the fact that, like I said, you can tell there's something special about this guy.

[00:01:54] He actually had the favorite answer to something that I said at the mastermind, but I can't reveal what happened behind closed doors, so I won't say what the answer to that was. But I will say this, he basically dropped knowledge bomb after knowledge bomb at that event in Mexico. I was rather impressed, and I know that you were too Howie.

[00:02:11] That's why you very much did all that you could to get him on here today. So what do you say you're ready to start? Tag teaming this guy, and again, I know there's all those dirty bastards out there. I'm talking about tag teaming, like asking him questions back and forth. Keep your minds out of the gutter people or maybe not, but Howie are you ready to go?

[00:02:32] Awesome. So without further ado, let me introduce you guys to the $50 million man, Travis Killian. And Travis is in the good old state of Texas. Well Travis, I don't know if I shared this with you. I'm actually from Texas, as you know, everything's bigger in Texas, so we'll talk more about that in private. But I will say this much.

[00:02:50] You're in a fun town. Austin is one of my favorite cities in Texas. And so I know there's a lot of exciting things to do there on your off time. But you've been at home, and you're kind of also getting possibly the cabin fever that most of us have been feeling. And I know that you agreed and out of the kindness of your heart, because you do a lot with Howard, you agreed to speak at this event.

[00:03:08] So I know that there's really nothing convincing that you have to tell Howard that he doesn't already know about you. But if you had to sort of give everybody out there listening, a quick two minute elevator pitch of who you are and what you've done, let us know a little bit more about the $50 million man other than, Hey, you're just Travis from Austin.

[00:03:28] All right. So yeah, my name is Travis. I tend to go by Travis Killing It. My last name is Killian. And, I just started selling on Amazon like, I don't know, January, 2016 and it's not my first rodeo on e-commerce kind of hit the ground running, no investors and was able to scale from zero to 15 million a year.

[00:03:49] What are we at, like a four and a half years. And to do that like requires obviously like, you got to have a lot of confidence in what you do. You got to have money behind what you're doing and you gotta be willing to reinvest everything. Like it's funny, I tell my friends all the time, I'm like, dude, like, I don't, I make all this money but I don't have a lot cause it just goes all back in the business.

[00:04:11] I mean, you can't grow like triple digits a year. And that's sort of the, I don't see enough sellers talking about that. And I guess one of my biggest assets and biggest strengths on why I was able to have a lot of success with this venture is because I come from a global SEO background. I had an SEO agency in college.

[00:04:27] And I was ranked like number one for SEO in my city and had a lot of clients and I built a lead generation company outside of college, a seven figure Legion company while I'm a senior in college. And I quickly realized that my math degree wasn't really going to get me very far, but that's okay. I still finished anyway, but I think that gives me a lot of a huge advantage.

[00:04:46] And just going through Google, right? Like, like a big difference from Google and Amazon, you're working against like against the tide with Google, right? Like they don't make money from organic search results, Amazon does. So I've been through the biggest algorithm updates in Google, historically and so I knew like when you find something that works, when you have, like when you're having success like you do with Amazon.

[00:05:11] Well, our first two products, my partner and I, when you have something that works, like you have a window of opportunity, it's not gonna work forever. And I knew that I was conditioned from that. I was like, if I always told myself if I were to go back to Google, back in 2009 like I would have just scaled like crazy as fast as I could.

[00:05:29] I made as much money as possible because I knew that because it's going to change, you know, we tend to get caught up in our success and think that the way that we're doing things now is going to keep us. It's going to be repeated over and over again, right? Like we don't tend to, I always look at the things, it's like we have a six to 12 month opportunity.

[00:05:49] And then it's going to change. And you just gotta be ready for that. And I think that's being able to solve problems, being able to identify trends, competitors, constantly running experiments, I think has given me a huge edge. And then just honestly, just operating by my favorite motto, which is, if you're not scaling, you're failing.

[00:06:06] And I think that's what kind of has gotten here. Yeah. Well, you just answered my last, my next question, but regarding, I always tell everyone, like, you got to watch out for these people who know a lot of the internet marketing and SEO, Google SEO people, you know, those guys are like killer, those, those guys that knows this stuff.

[00:06:25] In Amazon, it's like so much easier because Amazon doesn't get as much. Amazon changed, like, like step-by-step, not as fast as Google. In Google you could be like number ranked number one in one day. The next day the pink one comes out or some shark comes out. And then you get, you get like D ranked and you get sandbox and everything, you know, so there's a lot of like, it's, it's kinda like you gotta like milk it kinda for Google, but for Amazon it's more stable and more, more of a like a, you know, like a stoke growth.

[00:06:55] Do you agree where like if, if these internet marketers, these affiliates come into the space, it's going to be hard for these normal sellers to survive. Yes and no. Right? So the difference between affiliate mindset and like say Amazon e-commerce mindset as affiliate mindsets are always chasing something, they're chasing short term cash flow in Amazon. Amazon or eCommerce in general is way more of a complete business model.

[00:07:22] You have to be willing to like go all in and reinvest profits. You have to have really good cash flow. You've got to have like cash management, you got to have logistics strategy, like you can do really well for a couple of products. And I think we see that, right? Like you see guys that come in and kill it with a handful of products and then there's something that holds them back from going from five to 20,30, 40, 50 products.

[00:07:43] And that really is because like you quickly realize that it's, you can do this, but can you really like, do you really have the, like the motivation or willpower to like to give it everything you were. To give it everything to hire like a big team to develop SOPs, to adapt to like, so, you know to take your personal, like opinions about like how to do something and override it with facts

[00:08:10] you have. Your ability to do that, and also do you honestly like what motivates you whenever you are, are having success? A lot of people, they have a couple of good products and they're making a couple million a year and they're like, nah, I don't really want to keep going. Like I'm just going to chill and just travel the world and automate my business.

[00:08:29] I have a funny story when my top competitors and one of my, in my, one of my first niches that he, it was just us two for like two years. Like, you know, he had a huge advantage on reviews and rankings and we were just right there, neck and neck. And then all of a sudden, like we overtook them and then never looked back like, and we just created a bigger and bigger moat.

[00:08:48] And then like two years later he came to us looking to sell his business. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. We knew that he, I looked at it because I knew that there were a couple of things that he wasn't doing that we knew how to fix it. Like it would have doubled his business and put it back to where he was.

[00:09:05] Right? So I knew that, and I was like, I kinda want to meet the guy. So talk to him, met him, and then realized that he had like, get all the success and then he's like, dude, like something happened. You guys came and you know, I was just never able to recover. And I found out that he outsources business. He took the four hour work week approach.

[00:09:26] He hired some VA and started traveling. He was trying to find themselves. He went through a bad breakup. He would go to personal developments and he just took his foot off the gas and and honestly like learned a lot of lessons the hard way and not as like. It's very, very difficult to just like hire like a, to just hire one or a bunch of VA's and just like completely run your business and expect them to do as good of a job as the person who got it there to begin with.

[00:09:56] And I think that, you know, doing that, doing that shift too quickly can really set you back. I think that was an important lesson for him to learn. I do agree on what you were saying it was, it's true that to scale is another, a skill level that maybe not all affiliate will have, or SEO, you know, people that have skills.

[00:10:22] So I do agree with you on that part. Yeah. And. Yeah. And you know what? Trust, I think a lot of what you just said resonated a lot with myself as well as I imagined that the people that are out there listening, it resonates with them as well. And that is, we all have friends and family members that are like, yeah, well see your product, you're making all this money on Amazon but

[00:10:40] Where in the heck is the money? And they don't actually understand that to grow, and like you said, to scale, it takes a lot of investment, not only money, but as well as time. And that's if you're the one that's actually working in your business. And I've had a lot of friends and family that always ask me that, like where's all the money?

[00:10:55] And they don't understand the simple business fact that you're reinvesting to grow for a future. So my question to you, Travis Killing It, is you've already mentioned a ton of different things that I would love to hear you talk about, but what three to five things are the things that you really, truly want to talk to with the people out there that are going to participate in this first ever Professor's Pandemic Event?

[00:11:17] Hmm. I'd love to answer this. To help, I guess for me, I've been, I've been there, done that with a lot of, a lot of things in eCommerce and Amazon related. So can you help me understand like the people that you think are listening to this, where do you think, [00:11:30] if you were to imagine like their position, what they're trying to get, what do you think that person looks like so that I can cater my response more to help them.

[00:11:38] I would imagine it's anywhere between a three to $10 million seller, and it's probably less than 10 million. I would imagine it's three to $5 million seller, mid-level, Amazon seller, still probably even trying to wrap their head around picking the right products and ranking and reviews and things of that nature.

[00:11:56] So no, we're not really talking that high level. We're talking about somewhere in the middle stuck around three to five. Would you agree Howie? I believe so because this is virtual, so I believe there’s going to be some lower level sellers. I think that Liz is right. That's about that. All right, so in that case, I have a pretty cool product development strategy that I really enjoy.

[00:12:18] I'll share a kind of a high level overview of what that looks like and it completely eliminates a lot of reliance on tools, which I think is really important, and I'll elaborate on that. Second I'm going to talk about a mindset, a mindset shift that's happened for me at least, so I know going from my seven to eight figure journey, I mean, you guys know this.

[00:12:38] Every time you, in any business, you reach a certain point and then you kind of like, you have to like make a shift and who you are to get to that next level, right? Like, like your thought process gets you here and then, you know, and then you get stuck and have to like, really like buckle down and like figure out, okay, what's holding you back?

[00:13:00] And then you make a breakthrough and then all of a sudden you hit a new plateau and then you went to the end, you'll get stuck again, you gotta make another breakthrough. So there was a pretty cool breakthrough that I had a journey that was basically like I guess another part of my background is I never came from any course.

[00:13:15] I didn't take any like how to sell on Amazon course training. And I think that made me quickly like go from seven to eight figures cause I didn't really have like, all these courses tend to tell you like, okay, like we can help you get to like seven figures. They don't, there's not really courses that, from my experience that show you how to go from like seven to eight.

[00:13:34] They're all designed to take a newbie to like seven figures and they kind of stopped right. And so I think that that pre-conditions us to think that there's, that it's really difficult to get to eight to get to that eight figure mark. So we always start, we give in that sort of fix course mindset, I think.

[00:13:51] And, and I didn't, I never had that. So I think that's eliminating beliefs. I think it's really important to make your own way, you know, think about like a problem from a simple, from a simple answer to like, okay, now let's dive into the strategy and I can discuss that a little bit more with, just in general, when you think about like, how to please Amazon.

[00:14:12] So I can, I can sort of talk about like that what Amazon looks for. Product selection strategy. I think that sounds amazing. I know. I'm excited for that and for all. I'll be honest with you, every single time I talk to somebody you, I think, wow, that sounds so sexy. It sounds amazing, but this time I kind of really like, it's top level of.

[00:14:31] People that there are at this even higher and higher. And so Howie, how excited are you to hear all that information? I'm kind of interested on his non reliant on tools approach before product research or product selection because it's really important for the product to be really, really good. I believe first thing has to be the product.

[00:14:51] If was a bad product, it's hard to ramp up in sales and also a bad product, you can't do, your reviews are too hard to maintain. So I believe, yeah, I'm interested. Yeah. You know, you've accomplished a lot, Travis, and obviously your nickname was pretty awesome, Travis Killing It, but what is your end goal like

[00:15:11] seriously? Like you're already at the $50 million mark and I know you're probably gonna hit a hundred million dollar mark very soon if you haven't already by the end of the year. But let's be honest, what is your overall end goal in Amazon and where do you actually see Amazon for mid level to higher level sellers to get really serious about this and take it to a whole new level like you have?

[00:15:33] Yeah, so my end goal, I mean, I just want to see what I'm capable of. I've already kind of reached beyond where I thought I can do and it's like, I mean, I still don't even think I'm giving it. I don't even think I'm giving them a hundred percent like I work my ass off, but like, I know that there's still more left in the tank. And it's just like when I, if I can look back at myself and know that I could have given more and I don't want to look back and be like, I'm not doing it more and gotten to another level, I don't want to, I don't want to look at  myself as wasted talent or wasted potential.

[00:16:02] So if I can get to a hundred million to 150 million or whatever, like that would be awesome. And I think that'd be really cool test. I think it's also, I will explain a lot more outside of Amazon to the retail game, legitimate editorial press release, Shopify sales, like social media traffic, video marketing, getting a lot better at all that to really build like a fully developed business with a core competency in Amazon.

[00:16:27] As a, as a core marketplace. So those, those, those challenges are really interesting to me. I don't know. I'm not really tired yet, so I'm not really looking to get out anytime soon. Okay, so remind me what you're next to the Amazon landscape, right? Like what was my opinion of it? I think that post Covid is really good for Amazon.

[00:16:47] I think it's really good for e- commerce in general. I think that it's proven, and I mean, we've seen it, right? Like a lot of e-commerce, it's ahead. Like we always, we've always been unsure of where it stands and it's positioned. Like of like, okay, what happens when the economy goes down? Okay, what happens when people start losing their jobs, right?

[00:17:09] Like how does that affect e-Commerce? Does it follow the same trends as retail? And I think what we found through covid is that like, it's honestly, it could even go up more, right? Because people are less impulse buyers and more like, okay, I need this. I'm getting this, I'm buying this. Right? And instead of going into a regional and you know, being upsold a bunch of things.

[00:17:30] They're going with intent. Also think that a post covid world of people for a long time, even maybe even after like vaccines are up, I think people are gonna be more cautious of crowded environments. When I, Oh, well, okay, I'm going to miss my grandparents next week. You know, like I, I'm going to like chill in going, some super crowded places.

[00:17:51] I don't want to get them sick. So I'm just going to order more online. And also things that when people get in the habit of ordering on Amazon, ordering online, and they have that experience, positive experiences, I think that that habit develops and continues. I think there was a lot of people that still resisted the idea of shopping online and case in point, Howard, you guys know this?

[00:18:13] Like on like Friday and Saturday? And then they started going back up. I think that the reason why that still happens is because people are still conditioned to think that deliveries don't happen this weekend. Right? Like that old school's e-commerce mentality where like if you don't order it on Monday and Tuesday, you're going to, it may not get there till next week.

[00:18:36] They're delivering seven days a week. Why don't we have that? Right? It's like we have a, there's a lot of people that are still like, it takes, it takes years to catch up like the Up-To-Date trends, and I think that the worst people to learn e-commerce can like be a part of your daily life, but it's really super convenient that, Oh, you're out of something at the house.

[00:18:55] No need to write it down on a list. By the time you write it down on a list, you could have just went ahead and ordered it. And I think that a lot of people, especially older generation that have been working from home or staying at home more and order online are now like having positive experiences. They are gonna continue that. A case in point like ourselves haven't really dipped post covid.

[00:19:14] You know, I guess quarantine not being as much of a thing, like restrictions being lifted and sales are still about the same. And so I think, I think it was, I think it was really good for us and I think it's really good for e-Commerce. I think it legitimizes the business model even more. I don't think that that's really good for everyone.

[00:19:32]  okay. So you just said some good stuff about the pandemic and everything for Amazon or online, e-Commerce. What kind of problems do you see Amazon sellers right now in 2020 during the pandemic that you see? For sure, from a supply chain point of view, things are taking longer. And I don't know how long it's going to take.

[00:19:57] Right. And I also think there's a lot of geopolitical uncertainty with who knows like what the relationship with China is going to be like. Hopefully it goes back to the way things were, but it could not. There's still a lot of uncertainty around like what that future looks like. If there's another wave of covid, like what does that, how does that, how does that disrupt supply chain?

[00:20:16] Again, things are, shipments are taking longer, and I think that shipping costs could go up in price and be more expensive because since you know, planes, travel industry, right? Like since that's plummeted and probably won't recover for a very long time, it means that airlines are gonna start going under and it means that there's going to be like that that costs to like ship things could potentially go up.

[00:20:39] And I think that those are, those are some uncertainties out there that, you know, you just gotta you just gotta learn to deal with. And I think that, I think the scare from it all is like, okay, we need a couple of takeaways that we got from it personally. Is that okay, we need to make sure we're diversified.

[00:20:56] So remember when Amazon was like taking three or four weeks to fulfill orders? Well, we had to quickly diversify and like learn how to do like three PL, like accelerate that process faster from a supply chain point of view. Like we realized that a lot of, we needed to have redundancy in our supply chain and we also needed that for us.

[00:21:15] Post covid, I think it's more critical than ever to have more months of inventory available. One of our huge competitive advantages is that in positions where we would perhaps are the number two, number three, we just waited it out and the top guys would run out of inventory and we were just right there in position to take it.

[00:21:35] We overstock a little bit by luck. We had just ordered a batch and revise a batch of sales estimates and out of all of our products in the U S. We only had one that ran out of stock with sales jumping 60 70% and not being able to get new orders through all of this. I think that logistically, like there's a lot of change, there's a lot of adapt, adaptations to be made.

[00:22:01] I do believe like for a seller to be like mastered into that country or that particular niche or for each country, if you're selling worldwide, you should have an, to an extent, have a warehouse in each country that you're selling in. Because like example, like what you were saying, you're, Oh, I'm doing Shopify now I'm doing B2B maybe.

[00:22:27] Or you're looking into B2B. That's where you need to like a fulfillment center or a warehouse that you control. So, cause I, I'm kind of old school, I started like 2003 e-commerce. So I kinda like I had my own warehouse, I had to do warehouse, and then I had to do my customer service, and then I had to do marketing and also a purchasing.

[00:22:47] So, so we were, we had to do more things than we do now for those people that are involved in FBA. But I think, like you said, have a, have a well-rounded solution where you're like, or redundancy? It's very, so I was actually getting to Travis, is that there's obviously a lot of opportunities out there, especially right now, the landscape we see.

[00:23:11] Okay, cool. I'll say it. I'm saying that I think the opportunities on Amazon are that I've noticed, a lot of the game is the same, at least for me, but I think video is becoming more important. I think that organic video placements are being tested, and I think that sponsored ad placements are being tested, and I think videos are something that I mean.

[00:23:33] Unlike in enhanced brand content. Well, I also think in enhanced brand content is a bit, is like something that everyone says they do, but maybe like 5% actually do it really well. Like I was a bit at the beginning when enhanced brand content came out, I knew like I even tested it on our all listings. A lot of people were like, Oh, just get it out there.

[00:23:52] But actually, did you touch your conversion rate before and after? Right. Our listings actually converted better without the enhanced brand content than with it. And we had to keep doing revisions over and over and over again. So finally, like finding an enhanced brand content to actually like work better than the listing with no enhanced brand content.

[00:24:10] And I don't think people were testing that. I think people were just slapping it up there subjectively thinking that it looks good and assuming that, you know, because it's a feature, Amazon allows you to use that. It’s a feature and you should use it. I think that’s the same thing with the videos. I think that a lot of people are rushing videos.

[00:24:25] I see a lot of competitors videos on their listing, but they're shitty. And I think that honestly, it's hurting their conversion rates. I think that for people that spend the time to do it correctly, to hire like legitimate video companies that spend the time, so like. You know, work, don't, don't just hands off the approach, like actually have like a team member that understands the brand and the brand and the brand proposition and how he wants and has a unique attention to detail and professionalism are going to stand out even more given, when given the opportunity to show videos more.

[00:24:57] So I think those are some opportunities going forward. Yeah. Those are some great tips. Actually, you know, one, one thing came to mind. I know that you've been working on a lot of other sites off of Amazon, which one of the actual projects that you have brewing up right now off of Amazon is the most exciting and why?

[00:25:15] Like for me, I can say that I've actually been doing some Walmart and then know Howie knows this, and I've gotten my first Walmart store up and running, and so I'm excited about the prospect of selling more on Walmart. But for you, Travis, just being an innovator and like I said, what's going to help take you to the hundred million dollar point?

[00:25:32] What other marketplaces are you working on and which ones are your favorites?

[00:25:40] Shopify’s my favorite because of multiple reasons. One, obviously you control the customer better. Two, it gives me a lot more presence from Google, right? Search engine. So I'm getting like a lot more organic traffic from, organic is like the, you know, the ROAS in organic is zero. So any customer, I don't have to pay for it. I want to maximize that.

[00:26:01] And Google just launched a free shopping ads. So, now, like a lot of my listings are appearing organically in Google shopping without having to pay for them. And I also paid for them as well. But getting, I'm getting like, I don't know, like 10% of shopping ad on the shopping sales from Google shopping now are free.

[00:26:19] And it was, it was zero a couple of months ago. So that's just like, that's just like icing on the cake. I also use Shopify to manage all of our marketplaces. So like Walmart, can we manage your Shopify? So like I have one place, pricing, and then it syncs up with the marketplaces, right? So if I want to do FBM offers, have them run through Shopify.

[00:26:40] So I'm using that to like manage the, manage price synchronization listing optimizations and create bundles, all sorts of cool shit, and do the fulfillment as well. Shopify is building their own fulfillment networks, which is going to be sick. They're building it from the ground up with robotics, so like it's going to be like really, really good and cost and cost competitive.

[00:27:00] And also I think Shopify is going to want a strong marketplace called Shopify marketplace or shop something marketplace with Shopify and all Shopify sellers are automatically going to be a part of it. And I think that's a huge channel opportunity that can actually compete with Amazon. They've already got that unique checkout experience across all stores.

[00:27:18] That's the biggest reason why a lot of people shop on Amazon as their information is saved and it's a quick checkout. Well, Shopify is already working on that, so I think that's a really big opportunity. And then of course, I know I've had friends now and I have, one of my brands has been approached by Walmart retail just strictly because of their success in the category of Walmart.

[00:27:39] I think the future of getting into Walmart retail is going to require you to go at walmart.com first demonstrate success on walmart.com and then getting reviews in order to even get a shot at going to resell. And that's the trend that I've noticed them taking this year in 2020 and that's from like people that I know personally that have gotten into Walmart retail and it's all because of how their walmart.com sales were.

[00:28:02] So I think that's, that's like the best channel online channel to be a part of. Those two, I would have spoke with, some Shopify, Walmart. I wouldn't, I mean the other ones, I'm sure they're going to add some value here and there, but it would not be a top priority. That sounds good. So let's wrap it up. Well kind of final word.

[00:28:21] you have for, you want to leave too, for our audience here. Yeah. So you know, I really think it's important to know your business. Imagine yourself being a kid again. You remember when you were 11 you could tell yourself you're a 10 11 nine like you were. You just knew like if something cool is happening or someone was doing something cool, like you were just like, Oh, I want to do that.

[00:28:47] And there was no hesitation. There was no limiting belief and you just did it. And I always knew, like, you know, if someone else is having a lot of success in Amazon. Well, why can't I write like, I don't, I don't think any less capable. I think I just, they just like figure something out and figure it out too.

[00:29:06] And I think it's important to come up, come to the, to figure your own way on Amazon, right? Like don't simply rely on the tools to figure out how the tools even work. A lot of people don't understand how the tools even work or develop the strategies that the tools have and try to like not follow what everyone else is doing.

[00:29:27] So like, rebates are great examples. Everyone's getting rebate customers from ManyChat and Facebook. Well, it worked really great like 12 months ago when I started doing it, and then now it's like, okay, well the reviews are not sticking. Okay. You know, it's a little riskier. Now. The weight isn't the same anymore for the purchases for rankings.

[00:29:49] The buyer profiles tend to be abused, the Facebook, and it all turns down to the fact that Facebook's algorithm is just going to give you has worked well with customers that have interacted with similar ads  as yours, which means they're going to display your ads to similar people regardless of your targeting options that have engaged with those types of ads, right?

[00:30:07] And so those same people are getting or buying tons and tons and tons of products are getting reimbursed for leaving reviews. What's going to happen, I mean, Howard, you know this better than me, but like the internal buyer score algorithm says that as a buyer's trust goes down, the impact of the actions that they take go down.

[00:30:25] And the likelihood and the risk profile that they pose on your listing goes up. So like, don't do what everyone else is doing? Where else can you get customers to do that that haven't been abused? Right? So it's not that a strategy itself it’s proper execution and reliance on the same way that everyone else is doing it is that it has been abused.

[00:30:48] So can you do something different. Just thinking about that with everything, right? It's like product selection. Can you think of a different way to analyze products, but when it comes to like ranking, okay, like what is this simple solution that Amazon’s trying to solve? Are they trying to find how search results can maximize the amount of money.

[00:31:09] So would that entail high conversion rates, you know, middle of the mid market pricing. Would that entail making sure that your listings are converting well for keywords all the way through the purchase? Will that entail like historical data or like trends with your listing? Would that entail you know, attributes like reviews or a certain listing elements, time on page, things like that, right?

[00:31:32] Like now you can start thinking, if I want to maximize that simple goal, then what would I look at if I were Amazon and I just think, like just having the simple way to look at creating a simple answer first and then dialing down a strategy has always worked for me. And I think that's a really good strategy to take with all things Amazon related.

[00:31:50] And I think that would be a good takeaway. Awesome. Anything for you, Howie that you'd like to add there based off of what Travis just said? Oh, you said it perfectly. That's crazy. Oh, he's, I like how he is. He thinks like high level, you know? That's where we like all our mastermind members to be at. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:11] I enjoy a lot what you said, Travis. I felt that it was super helpful to me, like I could take some of the things that you actually just said right now and implement them. And, probably have a great deal of success with them if I keep testing and keep doing them. You basically gave me a whole bunch of crap.

[00:32:25] to add my to do list, so thank you so much, Travis Killing It. I really enjoyed you on this actual. Yeah. Let me add one more thing. So like I've been telling everyone like, you know, like these Facebook and Facebook mini chat stuff, if everyone is using it, then how you're just like everyone else, you know, you're not special at all.

[00:32:44] So that's why on our stuff that we do, we try to throw all different kinds of signals, you know, instead of just one signal at all. So that's where Amazon itself is, is looking at looking at how everyone else is getting the traffic, and then when there's something different or their AI will learn it, and they'll also like reward you with a different kind of channels or signals that you give it.

[00:33:08] It's just not just rebate or through mini chat and Facebook. You always want to emulate natural behavior. You start creating an association between your listing and what like a shady sellers are doing. You don't really want to follow those trends. I also like, you know, go back to my like anti-course mentality.

[00:33:31] Like there's, when someone, how you phrase something is really important. So like when I asked for help from my team, instead of telling them, I'm like, Hey, like you know, mini chats, not really working. Facebook's not really working. You know, they immediately like start thinking about, okay, well maybe there's something that we need to change in our scripts.

[00:33:50] Maybe we need to change a certain link. Maybe we need to like change the frequency of how many rebates we're doing per day. Like maybe they, they don't like look back and ask, can we execute the same strategy differently? So when I'm phrasing a question asking for input from the other people, I immediately just say, look, we're trying to accomplish this.

[00:34:10] We're trying to get people to buy a product that not every other seller is getting. Right. And we want them to call a certain actions and incentivize them. But we want to stay within Amazon COS. This is how we've been doing it. I'm worried that the way that we've been doing it has been abused. So is there another way that you could think of that may work? And, immediately by phrasing it that way

[00:34:34] Like I had team members telling me, okay, let's hire some people to go to malls and just literally go. And like, if you want them all to do it, I'm just like, okay, like that's a good idea. How can we scale this a little bit better? And perhaps not have brand ambassadors in malls, but you know. So I started really getting a lot of really good input that way.

[00:34:56] And I think it's important, as Howard was saying, like you know, look at the end goal and then work your way back. And don't never assume that the way that the industry says is how you're supposed to do something is actually how you're supposed to do it. Right. Absolutely amazing. Another amazing bit there, and I know, I'm excited to hear what his speech is going to be at

[00:35:16] Again, the end of the month, June 29th and 30th the first ever Professor's Pandemic Events live from your actual living room. You can be in your pajamas, you can be whatever it is that you want to be. And it doesn't really matter cause we're not going to see the bottom half of you. However, you will get to hear the best strategies, the best tactics, and the best overall business systems that.

[00:35:38] The underground people in all of Amazon have built and created $50 million empires. You heard Travis here. Travis Killing It is going to hit a hundred million soon, so you get to listen into what is going on inside of his genius mind. And I know, again, I can't say this enough, but I am super excited for this.

[00:35:56] To get more information, go to a9mastermind.com/ppe and you can learn all about the event again, June 29th and 30^th. And before we leave here and say goodbye, Howie, any last words from you? I mean, I hate to say this, but I'm not, I don't really speak too much on words, but I'm totally excited to see what all our speakers are trying to, are going to talk about and hopefully we'll bring more and more of a community that we're building a community and have everyone there and be excited to teach more of the next generation sellers.

[00:36:33] No worries. Howie, you bring the tactics, you bring the strategies. I've got enough mouth for the both of us. And so with that being said, I will say goodbye to everyone here. I hope to see you again, live virtually in the comfort of your own home, the first ever professor's pandemic event, June 29th and 30th to get more information, go to  a9mastermind.com/ppe and I will see you all there.  So peace out.

[00:37:00] 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.