[00:00:00] 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.

[00:00:21] Hey, everyone, welcome to the Professors Podcast. And today we've got a very special guest, which I will be introducing in a minute, but first let's go ahead and jump into straight away with Howie, the man, the myth, the legend, the professor himself, Howard Thai. Howie, how excited are you about today's guest, but not just that.

[00:00:39] How excited are you about your second annual PPE event, which at the end of this actual podcast slash video, I'm going to reveal the URL that you guys need to go to in order to find out more information for. But Howie, how excited are you about the guests and the second ever annual event, or I should say bi-annual event.

[00:00:57] Cause it looks like this might be the last live online virtual event, which if you guys didn't attend the last one, you're going to be shocked at the price and the value that the professor and all of his special guests give. So Howie tell us a little bit more, how, how pumped are you? I'm very pumped right now.

[00:01:14] I actually are gathering all the guest speakers into our podcasts, talking and hyping and making sure that everyone knows who's going to be speaking. And one of our person that we chose here right now, it's Paul Harvey. And so that was really exciting that he was able to be a speaker at our PPE 2.0. You bet.

[00:01:37] Right? And I'm super fired up. You know how he's not at a guy that shows that much emotion. He's not a guy that has many words, but I will tell you this much. I can tell by the look on his face, that he is fired up about this guy. And I am too, and let's face it, this guy has a long history of selling on Amazon, of helping sellers sell better on Amazon.

[00:01:56] And he's going to tell us a little bit more about some of the projects he's working on as well as what we might expect him to speak about at the actual event. And I, for one am super fired up because I've used a lot of chatbots. So I know that most of you listening have probably used chatbots. I know Howie has, how we, how excited are you about this guy and how we can speak.

[00:02:17] We can talk about him as evolving the game of chatbox. That's what I've kind of understood, but. What, what things about him stood out to you when you met him and why of all people, did you pick him to speak about chatbots, I know he’s an expert, but let's say, you know, there's everybody out there says expert at chatbots, but I can say this much, just having a 10 minute conversation with this gentleman earlier, I realized, wow.

[00:02:42] He definitely knows his stuff when it comes to chatbots, but Howie, what stood out about him when you first met him or spoke to him about chat bots? Well, the community of experts, I mean, real experts, not the ones that proclaim that they are experts, but people that we we know in the field that really knows their stuff, and there's only a handful of them.

[00:03:01] So we kinda know who we want to, to speak and who not. So from Paul's side, I've been kind of like following him, seeing what he's been doing and as well as I believe he was following some of what Anthony has been doing too. So Paul, you want to say anything about how, how you follow Anthony? Yeah. So one of the four, thanks for being here.

[00:03:25] I'm a big fan of Anthony before I actually met him in person. And wasn't about the guys that anything he publishes, he's transparent. He says, you know what, here’s the month’s data go ahead and critique me. Here it is. Very transparent and a liberal transparency that only comes with experience as one of the few guys that can legitimately follow and happen.

[00:03:49] Yeah. For those of you that don't know who Howard is talking about, that is Anthony Lee, who was a speaker at our last actual mastermind. And he's also one of the cofounders of Signalytics, which is a whole other platform. We could have an entire podcast about it. We probably should, but Anthony often publishes white papers that.

[00:04:07] Just kinda like Paul said, they show all of his data. He's very transparent. He blew the house down last PPE event when he spoke about external signals from other sources, other than Facebook. Now I don't want to reveal too much, but I am fired up that Anthony will also be speaking at the second annual PPE event as well as Paul.

[00:04:26] So. Paul. I know a lot of people don't know a lot of your background. So usually what we like to do is put people on a hot seat and it's not, not a big deal. Paul, don't don't sweat it or anything. What this is, is I want you to pretend that you're on an elevator with the professor. This is the first time you've ever met him.

[00:04:41] You know, he's got one of the best Amazon events on the planet, and you're going to give him your best two minute elevator pitch as to why you're qualified to speak at a second annual PPE event. So go for it, Paul, you got two minutes. Cool. So pretty much I've sold Amazon for a good number of years and the best way for me to pay my, to pay for my Amazon business was consult.

[00:05:05] So I allowed myself to consult with other big sellers and pretty much I became the Guy. When you were launching your product, use me because I know what's working and so much. So is that on initial markets? That's using chatbots. I love mini chats. I really do, but we can do it better. So we created our own platform where we can just launch at scale using chatbots without all the hassle and far, far easier.

[00:05:32] Right now, I know that you said before that you found that mini chat has a lot of problems, Paul, without revealing too much. Can you tell us what some of the biggest problems or let's just say the biggest problems that you know, Amazon sellers have with mini chat and how you do it better. So, first of all, I'm a big fan of mini chat.

[00:05:51] I really love it. But mini chat is a Jack of all trades. I don't really want a platform that's used by my dentist. It doesn't make sense. So I want to platform that's used for my Amazon business. So all my strategies are used and are published. It's inside the chat bots. It's there for people to use.

[00:06:08] So at the box, you can take my rebate plus, absolutely everything back to the past. No, I didn't test it. I wonder lose our rebate float in there. We've spent over $25,000 on this flow. So it works. So in persona, there's no learning curve plug and play. You're good to go. And it makes life a lot easier. And also I love mini chats, but everyone uses mini chats.

[00:06:34] So Amazon's aware of that. Mini chats are sending signals to Amazon. That people are using mini chats. That's the fact that everyone uses it, it loses its effectiveness. So, Paul, I want you to know. So regarding mini chat regarding chatbots, uh, what do you, what can you say yourself as the foremost expert in, regarding even inside the whole realm of chatbot?

[00:07:01] So pretty much anyone earlier people with lots of you guys say, well, I use chatbots for everything that you don't. People only use chatbots to re rank and for reviews, that's it? So that, that, that's what we double down on. So people will say, I can do this and do that, but actually a platform is good for launches re ranking.

[00:07:21] And if you want to. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, it's up to you. If you want to get reviews and some people get reviews, some rebates completely up to you, your business. So you just talk to you before the show, when you're talking about you analyze every single thing that, that you do when you're doing the ranking. And things like that.

[00:07:41] So can you give us example of most recent things maybe that you can access? For example, one thing we do is that we make sure we stand by this or that traffic resend to your product is looks like organic traffic. We don't use to be URLs. We tell the customer, you pretty much tell them here's the keyword, go find it on Amazon.

[00:08:02] And then we send them a link to the Amazon home page. Now, when we send them the link to the Amazon home page, it may originate from a messenger or Pinterest or Google or whichever, always run bets. So Amazon sees traffic coming, not just from messenger from different platforms means it works really well.

[00:08:22] And then we follow back with the customers off to it, say, Hey, how did you buy the product? That was the buying process. Please talk me through. So when they do this, say for example, we gave them the keyword baby blankets, they would say, now this products would be on the page, maybe baby, maybe blankets.

[00:08:41] So we tell them, how do you find it? They say, Oh, I looked at the image. You said, it's not top 10 baby, but if you blank it brand name and then the keyword and then happens is we noticed that as soon as customers gets, have a product that's already on page two, as they find on page two eight, don't do the brand name.

[00:09:00] It go straight up for the keyword. So we do, we mimic that traffic. We get that customer. So if the product is not on page one or two, you said you give them the keyword with the brand name. So it'd be a baby grow, baby blankets or baby blankets. Baby grow now. That's exact normal buyer behavior. If you, if you go buy a pair of shoes, Utah, Reebok shoes or shoes, Reebok.

[00:09:27] So people will say rebates are gaming. The system, the search fund bot. I'm doing exactly what customer, exactly what comes on expect. Right. And you know how a lot of things that you mentioned are very fascinating to me. Cause I, for one have been a long time mini chat user. So I've constantly used mini chat and a couple other tools to help rank.

[00:09:48] But I wanted people to know before I go into the next question, like Paul and I have actually crossed paths back. I want to think, I think it was 2016. Is that right Paul? 2016? in the UK. And so this guy is legit. He's been doing this kind of stuff since way back then. And we actually met in the UK at an Amazon event.

[00:10:07] So that just goes to show the level of dedication that we both have to getting better at Amazon. And that's certainly one thing I respect about Paul. So the next she really has piqued my curiosity, Paul. I know you're a man that has many levels of knowledge when it comes to Amazon, but I'm curious, have you thought about what three to five topics you could actually speak about at the PPE that would absolutely blow people's minds.

[00:10:32] Yes, they're pretty much first and foremost launches and re-ranking. That's the main thing. And then launches any ranking with optional, how to get reviews out of that with the most Tier risk friendly way, or maybe not most tier risk friendly way to look at that and we are showing them how to do launches, find the ideal customer, and then repeat that time.

[00:10:55] And then you run these ads. You can run these strategies at scale. Other than that, you're completely within TOS and how to get reviews according to TOS. Right? It's about earlier as well. We talked about how there's a lot of people having problems with Mini chat right now, specifically because they're getting these letters from Amazon that warn them about their review process.

[00:11:16] So obviously that's a gray hat area, but have you seen any of those yourself from people that you've worked with in. Have you seen, heard or seen of anyone suspended? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, is that a master service where you say we do rebates, but we wash our hands of reviews. We don't want to do reviews.

[00:11:37] As soon as reviews can be locked back to an order, a rebate, then there's a footprint for those bad customers. That's a big deal because let's face it. What does the typical Amazon customer do? When they're running rebates, they then automatically check the Amazon order ID to make sure it's a good product.

[00:11:57] I want to make sure it's a good order. And then they follow up with that customer to ask for a five star review. So Amazon sees traffic coming from messenger. They see you checking order ID and then see you, or I supposedly see the customer and leave a five star review. All of those are flags, footprints.

[00:12:17] Right. And you know, I know one other thing that you mentioned that you have your own special source for sort of finding customers and trying to make them new and new batch of people. Is that something you actually teach people? Is that something you show them? I know we also talked about, sometimes people don't like to do it themselves.

[00:12:36] They'd rather pay you to do it, but is that part of your whole, what you teach people to do with chatbots? Absolutely. I'm 100% transparent. What I do really are put out there. Everyone can do it right now. If someone signs up as a, as a customer to say, chat bots, they get absolutely everything, but maybe they don't want to put it together.

[00:12:57] That's why stuff comes in. And also the  reason that people are not suffering is because Facebook is screwing them hard and they don't realize why. Because when people create the ads on Facebook too, for the rebate

[00:13:13] Hey this is a rebate ad. So I know that I'd feel okay. So the Facebook algorithm is then targeting the typical rebate customer, which is low by quality. To go and buy your product. So Facebook is like a screen now, because six months ago, this wasn't an issue, but now

[00:13:34] is there any other more other problems that you see in 2020 regarding like mini chat and other chatbot services that people should work and worry about? Basically the thing is we all know this. I mean, we've all been in the game for a long period of time. When any one strategy is being abused, it's going to lose its weight from the time of doing massive discounts or ordinary strategies are now.

[00:14:01] So it's going to get harder rebates now are not as effective as they were a year ago. So it's going to get some, what customers need to realize is that it's not about one strategy. It's about a whole myriad approach. We're using your rebates. You make sure the customer is hitting on all the social signals to make sure they come across as an organic customer.

[00:14:24] Interesting social signals. So, and I'm usually that, that one. Thank you for the 2020, what kind of opportunity do you see that sellers should follow or to watch out for? So the new opportunity, we're not created rest of the chatbots. Shouldn't say we, when we created the chat bots, we did it in a frame that we were pissed off with Amazon, Amazon holds all the cards.

[00:14:51] So it creates a checkbox to be the bridge. Off of Amazon. Now, in our opinion, we can see what Facebook is doing on the back end. And Facebook is pushing messenger hard. They wouldn't messenger to be kind of like the chats of the West. So when Facebook finally figures out what they're doing with messenger, you'll be able to blow it out.

[00:15:10] I can get subscriber base through messenger. Then Amazon came through their base and then the winner is the person who has the most subscribers understands messenger. Yes. And then it opens up Shopify, Etsy, eBay, Walmart, all those platforms will soon open up your messenger. And the winner there is who has the bigger list on day one.

[00:15:34] Right? Amazing, amazing. Paul. So I'm going to tag you Paul, as the chatbot encyclopedia. I think you have so much information about chatbots. I think it's all tried and tested and you've put in a lot of elbow grease to learn all this knowledge, including some of the nuances that there are. And I, I gotta be honest.

[00:15:50] I don't know if Howie agrees with me. I think you could just speak about the evolution of chatbots and perhaps what's in store, in the future, on Amazon for chatbots, anything like that. How, Howie, what do you think about that? Well, you know, like for these events that I really. I put out, I really want these really crazy, crazy stuff like that.

[00:16:11] We're going to talk about that. It's not like a presentation outside. We want like, like mastermind levels and stuff, you know? So for Paul, I wanted to see what you can bring out to our audience and see where he can make them wow them. So I'm super excited about what you're going to put together here.

[00:16:30] You've mentioned a lot of great things, but before we sign off here, we've already talked a lot about chatbots. We know for one, the chat bots were very effective of couple a year back. Now they're getting somewhat harder. And we know that the road for chatbots is perhaps unknown and a lot of people have been getting warning signs for the chatbots, but there also is this huge amount of traffic outside of Facebook.

[00:16:54] Facebook, so Howie calls it. Social signals. Is there anything that you guys are doing  to try and incorporate some of that with your kind of next generation of mini chat or your, your Amazon version of mini chat in order to make it a little bit more organic? Absolutely. So I'll call out Howard here because we are testing his strategy.

[00:17:17] Isn't the sense that we have data where we are hitting on our version of social signals. So I'm very excited to share if you didn't see how effective we have with that data as opposed to stuff. So Howie it’s on.  Interesting. Yeah, absolutely. How he's got some pretty good ideas there and, happy to see that your, your test out and putting them into the chat bot.

[00:17:41] Howie, any last words from you before we kind of wrap it up with Paul? I think he's kind of put everything together. In a nutshell, we know that he's probably got some really good data that he's going to be able to share with people, but any last words from you, Howie. Well, I only the best to want to see kind of what kind of data you have there.

[00:17:57] So I would say that let's, let's see what you can bring up, bring on with the data that you have regarding what works and what doesn't work. So from what I just talked to him, the things that we do, a social signals and things that we're working on are kind of like the state of VR stuff. So it's kinda like the norm of the

[00:18:17] How much giveaway you're supposed to give away for a keyword? We probably can, can probably say that with, with analyzing it, that we can actually do like 40 or 50% less than what the district standard of the giveaways. So do you agree, Paul? Absolutely. And that's the thing though, is that we all know, we all think we know that what is the best KPR?

[00:18:40] What's the best metric, how many giveaways to do for a day, but few people have data to back it up. So I'm looking forward to go through that. Right. And my last question for you, Paul, is what's the actual service that you have, called. We haven't even touched on that yet. So basically thanks for that. So basically our run, so the chat bot just sent a chat bot, chatbot.com and going through there.

[00:19:01] And also is that if you, if you, if you feel like you don't want to do yourself self service for you, So chat bots then rankster, R A N K S T E R. Awesome. Amazing. And I know you shared a lot of great information. I look forward to your talk. I know a lot of people probably look forward to your talk and any final words from you, Paul, before I give people the URL to be able to attend to second annual ever professor's PPE event.

[00:19:28] So, yeah, so it's a, I've been given to everyone for literally every presentation for the past few years. Today is the best day to learn about checklists and learn about it. Just understand how they can be used and understand your competitors are using them in good and bad ways. So make sure do it now, it's only a way to benefit you for you in the future.

[00:19:50] Yeah, absolutely. That's one thing that we did not touch upon. I don't know if Howie he remembers when we were in Mexico. Last time, there was an attending that talked about how a seller, a malicious seller use the chatbot to do giveaways for his product, made people buy the product and then never reimbursed them, which resulted in him getting.

[00:20:08] A huge amount of negative reviews. Do you remember that gentleman? Howie? I don't remember who it was, but I remember the topic that you're talking about. He gave him, he gave the someone that he was trying to get a lot of bad reviews. A lot of in trouble and the trouble. Same thing happened to one of my clients, exact same thing.

[00:20:30] And what they did is that the bad competitor actually then led somewhere, install reviews, good model clients kicked off Amazon for a while. So when I found that out, would it compare to actually did, was. He went through his chatbot flows and then copied the chat bot flow. And then once his complaints was kicked off, then rent his own chatbot flows.

[00:20:50] And, um, like, unfortunately, like I was really upset. So then I say, great, I'll small whole team. And what we did then is that we got his Facebook ad shut down Facebook ads. He lost his brand page, everything. And that was two, three years in the making. That really hurts him deeply. And then it's like, to make matters worse, we did some, the various things to his listing to kind of even the sales that he took from us.

[00:21:17] Right. And that's exactly what happened to one of our actual people in our mastermind. I'll have to let you know his name later, Howie don't want to reveal his name, but remember we talked about all that and I think that people should be well informed and I'm sure Paul will, will inform us about the malicious things that sellers can do, because I think it's just as important to know all the positive things that you can do with it, but also the things that you can fall victim to and what to be aware of.

[00:21:42] As well as how to counteract measures and how to be able to protect yourself. Because I will say this much as alarming as this might be to some of us, there are people that have too much time on their hands and that are complete jerks and will do anything it takes to win the game of Amazon. Like there's a lot of people out there doing that.

[00:22:00] So we definitely will probably have a chat about that. So thank you so much, Paul, for telling us all that information, giving us a rundown of what your area of expertise is. I for  one am super fired up for your talk, and I know Howie is too, especially the social signal and the other external traffic, other than Facebook that we could send to our actual listing, but to find out more about the professors.

[00:22:24] second annual PPE event, you want to go over to howardthai.com/ppe.2. So again, that's howardthai.com/ppe.2, which is going to take place November 9th and 10th, virtually online. So like, I like to tell people, you don't have to show up. You don't even have to show your face. If you don't want to, you can be in your underwear.

[00:22:46] You can be hitting the vodka early in the morning. You could be hitting the mimosas. We're not going to make any judgment upon you. Some of us might join you, but we won't know it'll be virtual. You won't have to leave your own home. So you'll be safe. No worries

[00:23:00] about coronavirus. No one worries about spreading that, but you will learn strategies and tactics from eight to nine figure sellers or people that I've consulted with eight to nine figure sellers.

[00:23:09] And I will say this much. On the last one, I took a ton of strategies and implemented them, and they were extremely successful, including some of the PPC tactics, as well as brand new ways to give away your product. And there was $50 million seller that is back by popular demand. So we have a couple of returns.

[00:23:27] People speaking, including the $50 million seller and Anthony Lee, which Paul mentioned is amazing. He gives amazing data, amazing information, and I'm sure he's going to have some really good stuff. Howie, how fired up are you again? I can't stop singing. How excited are you for that event and who do you look most forward to other than Paul in terms of speaking at that event?

[00:23:48] I think I, I, I said it last podcast. I'm still pretty excited to have one of my friends and plus, and also kind of ours that are doing $35 million, 3PL. So that's what I'm actually excited to have him talk about his is his thing, you know, is what he does to get that $35 million with 3PL.

[00:24:12] Right. And I did want to say this much about him. He actually won the first ever smartest marketer contest. And the strategy they gave was just off the chain. It was seriously just mind blowing. So I look forward to see what he's going to talk about. As I said, he won that first event ever, the smartest marketer.

[00:24:28] And so this time he's coming back as a speaker. So again, if you want to find out more information, head on over to Howardthai.com/PPE. Other than that, that is on November 9th and 10th. We look forward to seeing all you guys, and we look forward to seeing what each and every one of these handpick experts have to say at that event.

[00:24:46] So I'm going to sign off here, in behalf of how we and Paul, thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you on the next podcast. 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.

[00:25:10] annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.