[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 it’s Hurricane Liz. You're back for another Professor's podcast. And as usual, I've got my sidekick along here, the man, the myth, the legend, Howie Thai, who we're going to talk to here in a minute, but first you guys should be super excited about today. His guest, he's usually known as the actual manychat King in the Amazon circles, I just actually made that up for him.

[00:00:42] He's not known as the manychat King, but people usually associate him with many chat, particularly in the Amazon sphere. So we're going to talk to him more about that here in a second, when we intro him, but Howie, how pumped are you for this gentleman? And again, I've been known, become to be known as the butcher of Amazon because of the way that I butcher the guests’ names.

[00:01:01] So hopefully I don't butcher this one. It seems pretty straightforward. I think it's Paul Baron. So he can tell me if I do that right or wrong here in a second. But first, Howie, how excited are you for this gentlemen here that we're about to talk about today? Paul is one of the few people that I actually went all over the world, looking for, you know, talented speakers and talented entrepreneurs to come onto the show and to kind of some stuff that had a lot of us don't know.

[00:01:30] So I've met him like maybe a year and a half or two. I don't remember exactly how long it is now since I've been in this Hong Kong hotel here, but it's been a while, but I did remember thinking about him with professors? That would be one, but I guess I believe that a, he now has time to speak to us now.

[00:01:52] Right? He's a busy man. And like I said, he's a manychat King. And to call him that would be an understatement. As I learned here about him a little bit earlier. So he's got a lot to share with us. And before we jump into the conversation with Paul and introduce him, I want to remind everybody that coming up very soon, how he on November 9th and 10th is the second ever professor's pandemic event.

[00:02:12] And that's going to be just amazing. I cannot personally wait for that. The first one was pretty much excellent and people were going just absolute bananas over how well the speakers did and how much they were actually able to interact with one another and get a lot of one on one attention, not only from you, but from a lot of the speakers as well as they got to actually meet each other virtually.

[00:02:33] And I know I always joke around about this actual event and say, Hey guys, and girls go ahead and attend. You can even stream it in your undies. You can be bottomless. You can be topless as long as you don't show your face, just please do not stand up. So, Howie, for this second one ever, how fired up are you about what's going to be revealed, especially with the simple fact that we have got a team of sellers that makes $50 million a year.

[00:02:56] They are completely underground and they have never, ever, ever spoken at any event before. But this time you got them in a chokehold and you made them come on. To come on and promise to talk about some of the actual things that they do in their business day in, day out. And here's the most shocking thing about that actually above all else that is we recently went to a factory where there was over 3000 employees in that factory made $600 million a year.

[00:03:22] And it was just basically nothing but employees and lines and lines of them. We toured the actual Amazon company and they were making and putting Amazon listings up on Amazon. But these people is. Or are a team of three that are doing close to $50 million year. How pumped are you for that event, Howie?

[00:03:41] That's crazy because like I said before on what, it's kind of hard for me to ask them to come out because they are really extremely busy during this time of the year because of Christmas, because a prime day that they would need to like spend some time to come out and talk to us, do our podcast. You are a YouTube channels, but then now it's going to be like, it's going to be crazy because they don't usually talk.

[00:04:06] They're not speakers. So it's going to be interesting to see what the, and talk about the last time. Like we talked about it. They did a really good, Oh, Patrick did a really good job on the smartest marketer. Right. Absolutely. Patrick won our first ever smartest marketer. And again, he's one of the team of three that did over $50 million a year.

[00:04:25] And so I encourage everybody to get out the second ever annual event. It's not annual it's actually, we usually hold it four times, but it's going to be annual cause this might be the last virtual one ever. Which means it also comes at a pretty nice discount. So if you want to learn more about that, stick around until the end of this actual podcast.

[00:04:41] So I can give you all the dirty details, but for now, let's go ahead and bring on the manychat King. And Paul, let me first ask you this. Before I jump into our usual number one question for all our actual guests here on the podcast. Did I butcher your name or what? You did a great job. It's funny. Cause the it's not that I don't, I don't think it's that hard to say, but I do get Barone every now and again.

[00:05:04] I'm like, well, I mean, I could sort of see that, but yeah, no, you good job. Public parentage. Awesome. You know, I figured that much Barone is usually like a Spanish or a Latin name, so I didn't figure you for Latin right guy. And so that's kind of why edit, I guess that I was like, I think it's barren, but you know, red Berry, I think red Baron's an actual fast food place or some kind of restaurant do people tend to like that thing?

[00:05:27] So I was like, this looks like a Paul Baron. I'm going to ask him. Make sure. Hopefully I don't butcher it like I usually do, but anyways, thanks again, Paul, for jumping on here with us, I know you have an extremely busy schedule and like how he said he literally almost had to put you in a choke hold too, because of the fact that you are such a busy man.

[00:05:44] So let's go ahead and just jump straight into our usual first question that we ask every single guest. And that first question, Paul, I want you to hypothetically, pretend you are with how we on an elevator and you all know he's the man, the myth, the legend, and you want to speak at his next event. So in two minutes, tell us a lot about who you are and why you are qualified to speak at that event.

[00:06:05] Okay. So I've been in marketing too, or another, basically my whole life. You could look at it that way. I started at five. I was selling a little drawings to grandma’s was a grocery store. So I would take him on and hand them to the grandma’s and I'd say, Hey, do you want this? And they'd say yes, of course. And then I'd be.

[00:06:24] Like, well, that'll be 10 cents, you know, get them to say yes before I tell them how much it is. That's a good little tidbit, but fast forward to my Amazon experience. So I have experienced in doing digital marketing about a decades worth, started a company with my wife back in 2015 and within a year, let's see, we were flown out to New York to be on the ratio, ratio.

[00:06:46] We had a meeting with Barbara Corcoran and we were featured in Forbes magazine all within about a year and a half of launching. And I started doing like speaking engagements around the world and stuff. And my very first speaking gig was actually about building a brand that the media loves and how you can kind of hack your way to get some awesome media attention.

[00:07:04] You know, even we went on to we're in the baby space. So we are, our products have been named best in category by parents.com. If you do a search for. For what we sell will come up in the seven of the 10 top, top, like best of lists, um, that are on page one of Google. Like next year will be in all 10 of 10.

[00:07:21] Um, so I feel like I'm pretty good at building a brand that people love. And the willies that I do that is a leveraged nano influencers, which a lot of people don't really know what they are, how to use them. And I really focus a lot on chat marketing. And so like you were saying in the, in the community, people know he is like the chatbot guy or I don't know.

[00:07:40] I like, I like the, what, what did you say that the chatbox King mainly checking, checking. Yeah. So yeah, people, people know me as that guy, right? Because I started at course back in 2018. It was the first course actually ever on chat marketing and the first definitely for Amazon seller. And we were teaching people how to launch and rank products, build audiences and get reviews.

[00:08:03] Using many chat and monster short. I've had a lot of fun traveling around the world, meeting people like Howard. Yeah. We met at billion dollar seller summit last year, which was a ton of fun. That was a great event. Yeah. Like throwing it out taxes and stuff like that. Right. Cheating is throwing, throwing axes and shooting machine guns.

[00:08:25] I just want to hello a year and a half ago now, like he was a year. It was. I want to say September or November. I don't know I was in Austin like two or three times last year. And so they all kind of like learn better in my head. And I can't remember which time. So how, for your first class that you were teaching many chat, how, how long ago was that?

[00:08:47] That was back in. We launched it in January, 2018 and I've been using chatbots since about mid 2016. Really got into them in 2017. And I, I was looking for courses to learn more and there was nothing online. And so, you know, being an entrepreneur, my logical next step was like, well, I guess I must know more than the other people.

[00:09:08] So I started actually telling my friends, teaching my friends and then it got too much. And so I was like, I'm going to start a course. And I thought that would be easy to start a new course. It's not easy. Yeah. What was he like? How did you market your course when you were doing it? Um, it was all through affiliates, honestly.

[00:09:26] Like we didn't do, we didn't pay a dime in ads. We, we, we, we use a lot of the connections with amazing, so amazing.com. I took ASM five and I've spoken at different, amazing events. I think. Shoot, I think last year or the year before, I can't remember. I don't know. It was like four or five times in a year, so I'd spoken at a bunch of their events.

[00:09:47] So we did a lot of, a lot of just. Networking with influencers and people that are in the Amazon space. So let's tell our audience, like regarding mini chat and your expertise in branding, what do you feel like you really hit the spot on what's your true expertise in many chat? Like what can you, what's so different about you than other people who know many chat?

[00:10:14] I'd say. Well, I guess first and foremost, most people that you're learning from learning from me. So there's that most people that you're learning from now took one of my courses or is it something which I think is really cool now, I don't want to sound like everybody that is learning is teaching me something on Amazon did learn from me because I don't know if that's, I don't have any way to verify that, but I know that we've had between 14 and 1600 people go through our PR like various programs that we offer, whether it was like a.

[00:10:43] Premium workshop or the actual flow course. Um, we've had quite a few people go through our, our material and in terms of what makes me different, there, there are a hand, well, the people that teach in the chat bot space, um, some of them don't even

[00:11:00] actually sell on Amazon. If they're, you know, you're teaching Amazon sellers, there's a few people that teach chat bots and like run chat bot campaigns, and they don't even sell it on Amazon, which.

[00:11:11] The reason why that matters. And I don't know if I need to tell you how, but, you know, I mean, Amazon changes like every single day. I mean the ranking algorithms, what you're, what we're doing now. So rank is not what we were doing six months ago, and it's definitely not what we were doing two years ago.

[00:11:28] And so it's really important in my opinion, when you're working with somebody. Who is running a service or even you're learning from them on a course level that they actually have a skin in the game because of the speed of which all the technology changes, whether it's like messenger terms of service or Facebook terms of service or Amazon's terms of service, or even just platform changes.

[00:11:52] Like it's really important that you actually know what the heck you're talking about in the space. So like, yeah, I really agree with what you're saying because Amazon does change a lot. That's why I actually do a lot of experiments with like selling, well, I don't people say, do you sell? I said, I would say no, but then I do have a, like, I do have a count that I would test a lot of stuff with.

[00:12:17] You know, to see if this algorithms we can crack the algorithm, the new changes and stuff like that. So we do do a lot of testing and stuff, but with me and Anthony and we do a see a lot of really cool stuff that we're going to be talking about on that PPE2.0. So yeah, I understand what you're going through.

[00:12:34] What are you saying? Yeah, yeah, I guess, yeah. The thing that would make, what I do different than what most people do is that, you know, prior to the hitting the cord, we were talking about like everybody's so in love with these a hundred percent self giveaways. And it's really funny because they started coming into play.

[00:12:53] I'd say really about a year and a half, maybe even two years ago that people were really liking them. I guess it was yeah mid 2018. And I personally never understood that. Like, you know, back in the day, like viral launch. Right. But the service viral launch prior to what I have no idea what's going on there now.

[00:13:12] But supposedly they're still in business, but you know, you couldn't, you couldn't participate in their, their brand. Like I used them to launch products in the past. I just, I didn't like it for one, because it was really expensive. I didn't like giving away my products for free. I think that that's a terrible business strategy because we don't have consumables.

[00:13:30] Now it's one thing to say, like, if you're selling like soaps or, or like supplements or something, you'd give away like a trial. Something for free like that, like that's normal business practice of loss leader. But I think that in my head, when I'm, when I'm launching a product, I want to build a list that I can launch to again.

[00:13:48] So when I used viral launch way back when I was like, I'm paying them to build them up list four. And I didn't like that. I didn't have access to those people too. Sell to again. The second thing was, they're getting my stuff off. Like 90 to 100% off for free. And I like, I was eating all this costs, hopes that it would stick and it's kind of a crap shoot that that's, that's a lot of money that a lot of Amazon sellers can't really afford.

[00:14:15] So. I mean, thankfully I've, I've been really obsessed with about building a real brand and really carving out a name for ourselves, ourselves in our niche. And I feel like we've done it and really good job of that. I mean, if you go to Amazon, if you know what I sell, shouldn't be that hard, like five minutes Googling.

[00:14:30] But if you look for what we sell, I mean, our products are twice the cost of our competition on Amazon. And we even have some Chinese suppliers that are. Direct selling like three packs for like 1299. And we sell a single item for 1697 or 17, like $18. And in my head, that's the, yeah, I have a real brand.

[00:14:53] When you build a real brand that has draw that, that like we've got all this work off of Amazon, you know, apparently, like I said, Forbes magazine, parents.com, Barbara Corcoran, Rachel Ray, plus hundreds of others, small blogs. Point to us as being the best in our niche. When people are doing their research, they're not doing it in a vacuum.

[00:15:11] They're not going to Amazon and just buying a product. Um, some people do, but a lot of, a lot of people, especially in the baby space, the mothers are doing a lot of research off, off Amazon. And so when I teach chat bot and chat marketing strategies, I do it with brand first mentality. I'm always, I'm always telling my students, you have to think of how you're solving your, your, your customer's problems.

[00:15:31] You have to think of your brand experience, and you have to think of your customer service because. No product launch problem. Review problem is a product launch or a review problem. It's a, it's something else. If you're getting bad reviews, look at the product. Do you actually have a good product? Anyway, I'm, I'm, I'm going off on a rabbit trail, but I guess that's, that's the one thing that it sets me aside from a lot of the other educators, I guess, in the many chat spaces that I really focus on a longterm building, a solid brand.

[00:16:01] Longterm and not just using quick, short hacks that may or may not work two or three months down the road. Yeah, that's pretty, you've got a pretty stable, like skill set. Paul, I have to say, like, it's very diverse. You've done a lot of things that even though you've been classified as the ManyChat King, I kind of just made that up for you here.

[00:16:18] I kind of liked the sound of it, but my question to you is knowing that you have such a diverse. Kind of level of expertise of a lot of things at Amazon. What three to five topics have you considered talking about at the next actual professor's PPE event? Yeah. So what we're, what I'm really focusing on now is nano influencers.

[00:16:40] And that's something that nobody in the space is talking about. And so I'll just boil it down to one of them because that's the one thing that I'm talking about. I mean, um, obviously chatbots there's ways to use them, but a lot of people are not doing them correctly. But when it comes to influencer space, a lot of people when nobody's talking about influencers or nano influencers, I mean, they might give it a shout out.

[00:17:02] And the problem is that most people, when they think of it, influencers do it in a traditional, in a, in a traditional method, which is okay. I don't go out and like DND people and find them and ask them department with them. Or maybe they'll go and tell him, listen, Or some sort of influencer my marketplace.

[00:17:16] I mean, there was one called FameBit that was owned by YouTube, but now they're consolidating stuff, YouTube. But my point is, is that influencer marketing in itself getting it to work. Right. And you're trying to do it yourself. It's kind of hit or miss. And that's why I feel like a lot of people haven't, they don't really like talking about it or, or having figured it out.

[00:17:33] Like we all know, right? Like Gary Vee, like the dude's been raving about influencers since. 2010, I don't know, 2012, something like that. And so we see all these big names in marketing and traditional marketing and digital marketing talking about influencers, but nobody in the Amazon space is, I don't know how are, do you know anybody?

[00:17:52] I, you, you know, I feel like a different and more people than I do. Huh? Well, uh, there, there, there, there is, there is some, there's some software out there that does do micro-influencers viralytics. It's one of them, the last event we had from Israel, he owns a software company that does micro-influencers called viralytics, as well as I think we are also doing, micro-influencers using promotional as well.

[00:18:20] So with Anthony. So we do do use them as well, but we just, because we are more into like, we're more managed service with, with them. We're not like viral launch. That is for the public for everyone. We mainly do it for the bigger sellers, the entrepreneur, the price level sellers. So we don't really announce what we do too much, but we do do it, but not, probably not as big as scale as you are now.

[00:18:47] Okay. Yeah. And that's what I'm seeing is that people are talking about it. People are trying to figure it out, but we've been doing it. And so what we focus on is nano versus micro, meaning like micro, depending on the source that you're needing. Some people will define life lumps or between like followings of 10,200,000.

[00:19:05] I really find that the sweet spot is less than that between one and one 10. And we built an army of brand reps, brand ambassadors, whatever you want to call them, we call them brand reps because that's the data space on Instagram. That's what they're called. If you're in like the supplement space, where for example, you'd be a brand ambassador beauty.

[00:19:25] It'd be a brand ambassador. So we just call it the conference instead of working one-off partnerships with people. And typically what happens is the influencer will want to get paid upfront. And so let me give you an example. Like we, we did a thing, I was trying to do this YouTube, uh, too many chat strategy couple of years ago.

[00:19:46] And my, my plan was here. So this, I feel like this is a really good plan. Okay. So you remember, like, back in the day you could do a giveaway on Amazon with a, with all kinds of different objectives. Right? So he actually did Amazon giveaways. So you could do an objective of like tweak this or, or watch this video normally that you have a, yes.

[00:20:08] You give away. Right. What I did was I was bargaining with them and said, Hey, why don't you give us a decrease in cost? If we drive you views. So I did a giveaway risk. I did $200, no, $150 strollers. So I spent $300 and I was driving the traffic to their video, bargaining down like their rate. And they didn't give it to me for free, which is what my goal was.

[00:20:28] But they still charge me like 750 bucks for this video here. And they put me, so, okay. I was thinking credit spread and we get all these views. Like they have 50,000 people following the date. They're a small family with a baby that this is perfect, but they put me like 13 minutes into a 17 minute video.

[00:20:48] And they gave me like 30 seconds of time and they mispronounced her name and we had five people sign up for the review for the, for the, for the giveaway. So I was like, This is bullshit. Sorry. Can you say that this is garbage? No, we're not family channel. I was like pissed because I'm like, you know, you you're like, Oh, it's normally $1,500, but we'll give you a half off deal.

[00:21:13] Anyway, I was really pissed because they just want the money up front. They didn't want any, they didn't care about saying money, right. They didn't care about driving just traffic. And that really pissed me off. And that just further reinforced, like every time we worked with influencers where we paid them, my friend.

[00:21:27] I don't see any, like the, just that's it. They just want the money to be done. So what we do is we, we seek to create longterm partnerships with people that are aspiring influencers and that's in the nano influencer space. And so those nano influencers with bonds between, you know, 500 to 10,000 or a thousand and up in our space because we're baby, baby, baby products.

[00:21:50] They're all moms, they're all stay at home moms. And they just are trying to do stuff to get free products. Maybe make a little bit of extra money on the side because you know, the average American family, like you bring in up extra 200 bucks a month, like that's date night money, or that's saving for a vacation money.

[00:22:05] You know, not everybody lives in the space of Amazon where you're like, well, shoot, I only made $5,000 yesterday instead of seven. Dang. You know, not everybody's like us. So that extra 200 bucks a month really goes a long way. So that's in a nutshell, that's what we do is we. Create inbound funnels to get people, to talk to us and for the brands of the clients that manage, we put together marketing systems to get people, to contact them because we have more bargaining power if they reach out to us the other way around first and foremost, and then we have sold Sufis number we put in when we put them through it, we, we, we train them how to be better.

[00:22:41] Influencers, how to take better photos, how to get more notice is that funny? I had a Skype call to meet there. I apologize about that anyway. So we put them into the system where we help them become better influencers. And we also actually haven't signed a contract with us where they release rights to whatever photos or creative work that they do,

[00:23:00] videography stuff to us in perpetuity so that we can use those, those assets forever.

[00:23:05] There's a lot of other things that we do with them. Like we use them for content creation, blog writing. If they have a blog, they read about us and their site, which is SEO value. We leverage them to help get us into best articles, that sort of thing. But today over the past three and a half years, we were sitting on about 16  photos, plus the 6,000 shout outs that we've gotten from them.

[00:23:25] So in terms of value, like the costs that we've gotten for this, like. If you'd worked with influencers in the past, typically an influencer is going to charge you at least a hundred bucks per post. Most micro-influencers charge between $102,000 per post. So by the numbers, we've gotten over a million dollars worth of either lifestyle, photos or exposure because lifestyle photo, and you're going to pay like 500 bucks or maybe it's 20 photo shoot to location, maybe a half day shoot or something like that.

[00:23:55] So. That would be what I would talk about at any of that. I am talking about that at various events, speaker, it's super powerful. And instead of those one off partnerships for building an army of people that love us, that rave about it, to have real people that follow them, instead of like Kim Kardashians of the world, these are real mommies and all of their, all of their friends are following them.

[00:24:18] So they're, they're 500,000 or 2000, 3000 followers are friends of theirs. They know them. So when they post this about us, They're posting to an audience that already know likes and trust them because they're friends. And that is, I mean, we use those photos in Amazon posts. We use them, we're starting to do some experimentation using them, the influencers doing Amazon live where at the start of the year, we were training them how to be outside sales reps so that we can get to wholesale.

[00:24:45] And we take baby retailers. I mean, the possibilities are endless, but it's yeah, that's what I'm secret. That's what I'm excited about them. Yeah, it sounds really exciting. Now, one other question for you, Paul, and then I know Howie's got a few for you, but I want to just go back a second, even though the nano influencer sounds very sexy to me, it sounds incredible.

[00:25:07] I personally, I got a YouTube channel with like 20,000 followers and you can't imagine all the things that I'm bombarded with and I don't even, I'm not sure if that is considered a nano. Or micro or what kind of influencer it is, but I do get bombarded with things quite daily, but my question going back to the chatbot, because I know that's not what you're really going to be focused on talking about too much at the actual event, but I know a lot of people are wondering from the manychat King, how do you see the future of chatbots?

[00:25:34] Are they still going to be doing what they do are, do you still see people able to be doing giveaways with them? Cause I know they're overused in your opinion. And I know that you also mentioned that people are in some ways using them the wrong way, but how do you see the future of chatbots, particularly in the Amazon space since we're mainly talking about an Amazon event here?

[00:25:52] Yeah. So in general, the future is super bright because right now the only thing you really have to work with is messenger. But recently at the time at the mini chat conference, they just spoke at, they announced that they're they're beta testing, the WhatsApp integration, because so WhatsApp, Instagram, I am in fate and messenger on all are all owned by Facebook a couple of years ago at Facebook, Zuckerberg announced that they're playing and to unify the messaging platforms.

[00:26:20] So we're seeing a lot of movements and unity, and those three platforms meaning that from the, the owners. And so you're in the Amazon seller. It doesn't matter where your audience lives. If they're on WhatsApp, Instagram, or Facebook, you can set up you in the future. We'll be able to set up a chat bot to communicate with them.

[00:26:37] Additionally, Apple has been beta testing. I message for business for almost three years now. And in another shell, what that is is that is a chat bot for I message last year. I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with this too, but last year, starting in November. Android Google. I started using unified messaging on SMS, on their Android platform as well.

[00:27:03] So they're moving from SMS, which is this, which is, which was the standard. There's no security in SMS. It's easily hackable. To a new standard called RCS. And that stands for rich communications or rich chat system or service. Remember it's chatter communication. Anyway, so they're moving to two RCS, all the, say like every major carrier in the world is moving towards a more robust ecosystem.

[00:27:29] That one of the statements, if you read the press release about this move to RCS by Android is to make it easier for businesses to interact with their customers. So what that tells me that shows me that that's chatbots now, will Amazon sellers be able to leverage Apple? I iMessage RCS. I, I don't know if I had a crystal ball, I would guess that they would Apple really locks down stuff very hard.

[00:27:54] So you might be able to get in. Well, my point is, is that now is not like. Now is not late in the game. People are talking about how, like, you can't do what you used to do in chat, which was namely just span your audience. And so everyone's like, Chat's dead, Messenger's dead. Don't use it. That is not even remotely true.

[00:28:12] It's just the start. Everything everybody is moving towards. And by everybody, I mean, major players, like every single telecom company in the world is pushing for this. It's pushing for the ability for businesses to set up chat bots, to communicate with people. So the future is really good, really bright, and it's going to extend beyond just messenger, which is where we're at now.

[00:28:33] So now is. A perfect time for people to jump in and get familiar with, you know, the core terms of service, which are natural. I can just boil it down, down for people. The core thing you don't want to do is just don't spam people. Don't annoy people, provide them with valuable content that they want and you'll have an engaged list.

[00:28:52] And yes, that's, I think that's where the future there's going. There's a lot of advancements in artificial intelligence and Symantics, Language processing as well. So I think we're going to see more AI chatbots rather than just decision tree type. You know, if this, then this type chat bots did that, did that adequately answer your question?

[00:29:14] I feel like that was kind of. Yeah, I thought that was actually perfect. I thought that was excellent. You gave me a lot of information. So I was actually taking notes the whole time so that I could actually be able to convey that to people when you speak. I know a lot of them will be disappointed a bit pot cause you are the manychat King as I've coined you here on the actual podcast, but we're going to move away from that and allow Howie too, he's got a few more questions for you.

[00:29:35] So hopefully we're going to get you out of that actual classification. That's fine with me. So, you know, like SMS is a new thing, like in ManyChat has that SMS feature for shooting SMS out as well as a lot of the new, like what you were saying about like the integration between WhatsApp and Instagram and, uh, and Facebook.

[00:29:57] Together. Like, I think I remember there was an article that was telling everyone that people were able to go from a chat from Facebook chat to an Instagram chat, like where they can kind of they're like uniting those two platforms. So you don't have to be have Facebook in order to talk to instincts.

[00:30:17] You don't have to have a Facebook account in order to talk to Facebook people, you can use your mini Instagram account. Yeah. So for that, like, do you, do you see any other problems other than, cause I went on the news. I heard that, Oh, Hey, Facebook's going, not going to be able to get a lot of the targeting with the iOS, a crowd, because Apple is going to make it harder for Facebook to be able to target them.

[00:30:43] Is there, is that one of the problems that you see in the future or is there anything else that you would believe it's a problem? I don't see this as a problem, but the problems that people are running into now is not understanding the rules of engagement. If, I guess if that would be right.

[00:31:00] I mean, I was just on Facebook and somebody had said there's a new black hat tactic where people are, your competitors are targeting your giveaway ads and reporting them to Facebook.

[00:31:10] And then you're getting your account, man. Alright, so. Without knowing the data, just knowing what I know. I don't think it's black hat. I don't think it's your competitors. I think it's mismanagement. I think it's people inadvertently unknowingly breaking Facebook's terms of service in getting their account banned.

[00:31:30] I don't think it's competitors doing this. I mean, it could be, but you know, the oftentimes the most simple logical answer. Is the answer and you don't have to go looking for some smoking gun with like some conspiracy theory. I don't think that it's like black hat people. And the reason for this is that there's the rules haven't changed on Facebook.

[00:31:50] They've just been refined. You know, since the advent of being open to message people, they've very, been very adamant. Facebook has with how and why you can contact people. And there was kind of this. Wild West period, where literally you could just, you know, build this list of a hundred thousand people and just broadcast message them whenever you wanted.

[00:32:14] And the problem with that is that it was really annoying people. And so what Facebook cares about, and as they expand into Instagram and WhatsApp is because their user base, because if their user base gets annoyed by businesses on the platform, that user base is not going to be using that platform. So it's really important to Facebook for that user base to love using messenger, to love, using WhatsApp, to love using it.

[00:32:36] Yeah. And how they're going to protect that is by putting restrictions on businesses from spamming people, because they don't want it to turn into an email inbox where you ignore it. You hate it. So first and foremost, and some of the problems that I see are balancing how you can get people to make an action, take an action purchase, like promotional offers with that, I guess not annoying people.

[00:33:01] I don't know, but I don't know if it really said that effectively, but yeah. I mean, say like you run an ad, right? Let's say a normal giveaway ad people are interacting with your ad and then they make the purchase and then they come and you get the rebate and then they move on. In the past, people would then blast that same audience with them, you know, broadcast them like, Hey, we're running a new promotion that would annoy people.

[00:33:21] So you can't do that anymore. So there's, there's tips and tricks that you can do to basically just filter people out, whether or not they're engaged or not. And my first trick is don't give your product away for free because the only time that anybody on that list that you built, if you gave away for free, all they're gonna care about is getting another free product.

[00:33:42] They're not going to buy it. At full price, like giving away products for free to maintain rank is not a sustainable business practice. If you can do it so that you're giving your you're launching products with a promotion at breakeven they're minimum, or hopefully profitable, that's a longterm sustainable business practice.

[00:34:01] And when you think about it in those terms, and you think about it from your customer's mindset and you put together an offer for him or her, that would appeal to them. Then you're going to be building a better list that will prevent you prevent a lot of this stuff from happening, getting your account banned and that sort of thing.

[00:34:16] So I'm just thinking that people built build audiences are bad, they just feel bad audiences. And they were inadvertently breaking Facebook's terms of service, which. Um, is what I'm saying. Yeah. I do agree with you, um, regarding, um, like kinda like training your buyers to get stuff for free and that's not great for branding.

[00:34:39] Right? So we had, we had two or three scenarios where we had a group we'll promote, we promote to as promotions coupons and another one with guarding, maybe like just a giveaway groups. So when we give coupons to a giveaway groups, There was no one, no one, no one really wanted to get that promotion. But when we have another group who actually are used to getting coupons, then they will actually buy it with the discount.

[00:35:09] So it's like in a different kind of scenario. You don't want to train your, your audience to just get freestyle. That's not really a believe in, that's not really a. Great to keep them in your raving fans club, you know? So like you would say so. Yeah. So you see that's the problem. So what, what do you think about the opportunities that you see for Amazon sellers?

[00:35:35] So, I mean, there's, there's, there's always opportunities. I think that looking at, so do you want me to do, do you want me to talk about chat specifically or just in general, in general, it's up to you. See whatever you want to say. Well, I think that the, a lot of the research message methods that are being taught, you know, the sort of jungle scout, helium, 10 black box methods.

[00:35:57] Those are still, I still think that those still have value, but I think that now with it being so saturated with those tactics being so saturated, Amazon sellers to succeed are going to have to start thinking more creatively. About actually solving problems for customers versus just selling products that people are already buying.

[00:36:19] So think of it like this, right? Let's say like the backpack or, or the suitcase luggage has been around for millennials, right? Like as people have moved, you need to take your stuff with you. And so it's evolved over time, right? Like it used to be an actual suitcase. And then somebody at one point in time was like, Hey, let's put wheels on a suitcase or let's put a telescoping handle.

[00:36:42] My point is that like now suitcases and travel luggage to not look like we did when they were in 1950. And the companies that are, that are doing well are the ones that are continually innovating and better solving their customer problems, then the competition. Right? So for Amazon  sellers, what, what I see as opportunity now is really just.

[00:37:05] Looking at if you're, so if you're an existing seller, you can look at your existing audience and you can just ask them, what are you looking for? Like, is there anything that like, like you're looking for that we don't sell? I mean, that's a really straight up question, but yeah, we have this whole segmentation survey that we will send out to people in chat.

[00:37:25] And we divide it into two parts, demographics with data and psychographic data. So demographic data, right? This is all about like, where do you live? What's your name? Are you married? Do you have kids? You know, that sort of stuff. Like, that's the, you know, if you're looking like at Facebook, it's like income level areas, we live in that sort of thing.

[00:37:41] Psychographic data are, are, are points that like are the internal motivators. Like what's most important to you about buying from when you buy from a brand what's the most important thing to you? When you make a decision, what's the most important thing to you in life? What magazines do you read? Where do you shop?

[00:38:00] Those things are psychic graphic because they all talk about the inner workings of their mind and what motivates them. So when, when we're developing new products, we'll go to our, as, as one was asked them, like, what do you want? What are you buying and elsewhere? And if we start seeing patterns emerge, we look at that.

[00:38:14] And then we say, okay, is there a way. Like, can we compete in that market? And if so, how can we make our products better than the continent, the existing competition. So coming back to, so current sellers, you can just pull, pull your audience, sort of them, what do you want to buy? And then you can find out ways to make that solving that problem for them better than the competition for new sellers.

[00:38:34] Getting started a great way to do this is just go to Pinterest or Etsy or even. I liked going into Reddit, like Reddit groups, where like life hacker groups, you start seeing patterns emerge of things that could be potential product ideas that nobody has yet to sell or create. And so if, if you can, if you can get in one of those ideas, like a life hack idea, right.

[00:38:58] That maybe somebody is doing something, a life hack is literally just a product that they're hacking together because they're trying to solve a problem themselves, but there's no problem or there's no product yet that is on the market that solves that product problem for them. So I see, I see opportunity for Amazon sellers to be more innovative and really it comes down to obsessives, really focusing on the customers and figuring out how you can solve their problems.

[00:39:24] That's the biggest opportunity that I see for Amazon sellers. No, it has nothing to do with chat or nano influencers. Right. That's where I see things going. Yeah. And Paul, I know that you have been, like I said again, again, I can't stress this enough. I know. I know it. And it's kind of like, is there any, do you have any I'm a lot of people call you like the mini chat explanation.

[00:39:49] Does it ever kind of like, do you ever have like enough of it. Out there. Like, I kind of sense that sometimes you have enough of it. Like, you know, sometimes how he's known to be the guy that does like all the ranking and all the tests, but, you know, sometimes you get kind of get tired of it and you want to kind of move out of that and move into something new.

[00:40:07] But does that ever kind of irritate you sometimes? It's, it's funny. I mean, yes and no. I mean, yes, because there's a lot more that I do that. Like many chat is it's like the tip of the iceberg, right? Like that's the thing that people know me for because it's, it got all the buzz specifically like a year and a half ago.

[00:40:25] But everything else, like the many chat strategies are not little islands. They don't live on their own. They're just strategies on top of is their tactics, I guess, rather on top of strategies, like. One of the issues that I see with Amazon sellers in general, is it like we're so tactic heavy, right? Like remember the billion dollar, solar summit last year, everybody was so obsessed with like the endless lightning.

[00:40:49] Yeah. Which is cool. Okay. As a tactic, if you, if it serves a purpose, but most Amazon sellers have all these tactics that don't really serve a purpose. They're just like, wow. I can do endless lightning deals. I'm like, I don't want to do. And it was lightning deals. Cause that means that I have to lose a whole bunch of money.

[00:41:05] Like I don't, I don't like that personally, but my point is. And is that like, everything you do is built on strategies and I'm always testing stuff like YouTube Howard, like we've always got something going on and most of my tests fail, but yeah. Yeah. And I'll tell you the other annoying thing about doing endless lightening deals is you got to stay in inventory.

[00:41:27] Like that becomes a nightmare, especially right now with what we're seeing with customs. I saw my stuff has actually been stuck on boats. Longer than two months. And plus I'm getting customs, examining fees left and right. So I'm getting kind of slapped around there. So as you lightening deals and endless amount of them can be nightmarish.

[00:41:44] So, Paul, once again, I want to thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge, all that, you know, not just, just about chatbots, but it's very apparent that it's much, much more than that. Especially I get that. I got a new name for use the brand master. I think the brand, yeah, master sounds a lot better than the manychat King anyways.

[00:42:00] Right? So that's what I'm going to be introducing you from now on. I'm going to, I'm going to cross out the mini chat part, even though you are an expert in many chat. And like you said, you were the very first course that ever originated talking about mini chat. And a lot of the people that actually teach it now were people that were actually your students.

[00:42:15] So my hats off to you, sir, and I wanted to thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast and how we ha why did you, how did you find that? Did you get some good information, anything that has this going in your brain that you're ready to go out there and test out? Nothing right now. I have to go re, watch this podcast and see if I can remember if I can get some of the tips that he talked about, but I do really appreciate that he's on a podcast for, with us, with the audience.

[00:42:42] And I, I can't wait until we get him on our, a PPE 2.0 event to talk about what, what, what while mowing our, our, our guests. Hopefully they'll get so wild that they'll start retaking those manychat courses. Yeah, I kind of got a lot of great information from Paul. So I wrote down a ton of ideas as he was talking there.

[00:43:05] And thanks again, Paul, for being a guest on here. And now let's talk about that event. We know that how he's a man of few words. He doesn't say much thank goodness that I am here to be able to say those words for him. So this is the point in the actual podcast where I want to invite everybody out there to find out more information about the second ever.

[00:43:24] Howard’s professors, pandemic events. Notice I put Howard's there because I was about to say annual again. I don't know. I keep saying annual because it's not annual. So if you want to find out more information on how to actually attend this event, it's at howardthai.com/ppe2.

[00:43:43] Don't spell it out, just put a two. And once again, that event will happen virtually from the comfort of your own home. And as I said before, or you can be bottomless, you can be topless, whatever. Just do not stand up, put your screen black. However, you will get the chance to not only meet and greet with Howard tight and.

[00:44:00] Over 13, brilliant underground speakers. As Paul mentioned, talking about tactics. Amazon is very tactic heavy, but they won't just be talking about that. They'll be talking about how they built businesses, businesses that make as much as $50 million a year like Patrick and Jeremy who have shared and shared already brilliant information in the podcast we did with them.

[00:44:20] They talked about how they had over $4 million stuck in their Amazon account when Amazon decided to shut down their account. Now think about. What could happen if you had $4 million stuck in an account and not getting it back? I'm sure they sweat that one out. What do you think Howie? Well, they differ for sure.

[00:44:37] It did because they had to do like really crazy stuff to get Amazon's attention. Yeah. I mean, I'm even sweating thinking about it, but I'm going to try to get away from that topic because that, that kind of makes me nervous. I've had money stuck in Amazon before, and it's very nerve wracking. So I cannot imagine what it would be like to have 4 million stuck, but again, they will be talking about that and the things that got them to where they are, which is a three person team making over $50 million a year.

[00:45:02] To sign up for that actual event. Go once again to Howardthai.com/ppe2. And that's pretty much a wrap for this one. Any last words from you? Two gentlemen, before we say goodbye here, Paul, we'll start with you. And anything else? Yeah, I guess if you want to reach out, you can find me on, on Facebook.

[00:45:20] If you want to kind of take a look at the nano influencer stuff and how that ties into. Chat marketing. You can go. I have a funnel set up that you can get. You can get a giveaway, go to cmu.life/nano, and that'll walk you through a little funnel. I'll gather some information from you and then I'll. Give you the templates that we use to find an attract nano influencers.

[00:45:43] So it's cmu.life/nano and. That's amazing. Awesome. I look forward to that information, Paul and I also look forward to your chat at the second ad ever. And there I go again with annual professor's pandemic event and Howie, see here, what else do you have to say to everyone before we say goodbye here?

[00:46:02] I'm a man of few words. I don't really like to, I don't know how to chat too much, but I just want to say, I can't wait for Paul's talk and I hope you can wow us Paul. There's no pressure, no pressure. And Howie, I know you're a man of few words until we get some Don Julio and you then. Okay, well, that's a different story.

[00:46:20] That's a different story. I was about to say the same thing. I mean, if we were sitting at, you know, by a fire okay. On the outside of like, you know, top floor of a hotel sip and Don Julio that's, that is completely different. Cause I've seen this guy in his own and he is not. We won't be able to get them. I remember that date.

[00:46:45] It was fun. I'll go home and me. And then we started talking and then I also wanted to see how Liz, this is, comes out with the hit, her alcohol. I've heard big stories. I, after all these years, I still haven't. You know what I'm not going to ever forgive you.

[00:47:00] I'm not going to hurricane. I don't know when you're going to realize that I'm always the hurricane.

[00:47:04] I'm always bringing it. I'm always 100% energy. I don't need no Don Julio inside me. I know, but I heard you a different story when you do get some drinking. I don't think you can get any more wild than this Howie, but yeah. Well, we'll be on. Guys, thanks so much for joining us. And I look forward to seeing all you guys at the second ever professor's pandemic event.

[00:47:29] Again, that's howardthai/ppe2. I'll see you all 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.