[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 with another Professor's Podcast and with me is always Howie Thai, the man, the myth, the legend. It is a, a Monday morning. Howie, did you have a Sunday Funday or what's going on over there? I know Zack, who is our special guest, you did have a Sunday Funday. He's continuing the Sunday Funday as he's sipping a, some kind of cocktail over there.

[00:00:41] But Howie, how about, how was your Sunday funday? Oh, Sunday. Well, I told my wife that I was going to Starbucks to work after lunch, but then someone had actually messaged me to go out, to do a happy hour on a Sunday. And then when I got there, when I got there, he made me drink more. And after like, after around three o'clock, we went to the oyster bar, this thing called The Oyster House in Wan Chai.

[00:01:09] And then, we, we ate like 25. I ate like half a dozen, two and a half dozen oysters with them.

[00:01:20] Yeah. Did some damage, Zack, what do you think of that? What do you think of Howie's shenanigans on a Sunday afternoon? Yeah, this is his normal and this is just what he does. Howie, so then afterwards, I'm assuming that you returned home to your wife and said Starbucks just closed honey. I came home. Before I came home,

[00:01:38] I went to go get some food for her, for her. And then I told her I'm not hungry. She says no way. There's something wrong. You’re always hungry. Well, what did you do? What did you eat? And then I had to do, I don't know how to lie. So you know I’m very transparent and stuff. So I told her baby someone tricked me into going happy hour.

[00:01:58] So one trick Howie. Wow. He was virtually almost.

[00:02:04] Yeah, he does. He enjoys getting tricked. Obviously he was with his best pal, Don Julio, which I tell everybody who's listening in on this podcast, if you want secrets to come out of Howie give him some Don Julio and the perfect time to do that will be February 15th and 16th, where we are holding the third ever Professor's Pandemic Event.

[00:02:22] I will let you guys know more details about that at the end of this call, but first let's jump into the interview with our very special guests. Zack Franklin and Zack let's just, this is going to be just like friends hanging out. So pretend you're hanging out with me and Howie, and you met us for the first time.

[00:02:40] Yeah. Just, let's just pretend we're in Barcelona. We're just hanging out. We're shooting, you know, we're just having a good time and I kind of really don't know much about you and you just want to let everybody out there know who is Zack Franklin and why would people want to know more about him? But most importantly, why is the Professor pretty much

[00:03:00] Wrestling you like gets you in a headlock. He's getting you a headlock to get you to speak at his pandemic event. Tell us more. Yeah. So I've been in Shenzhen pictured behind me for the last four years, working with the biggest of big Amazon sellers, the absolute Titans of the industry, everyone from valuing to Cohen.

[00:03:21] To to pretty much anyone you can imagine that has been doing something big on Amazon. I come from more of the affiliate marketing performance marketing space. And that gives me a really unique edge when it comes to doing anything e-commerce related, because I come from kind of the most hardcore marketing background that you can have that allows me to find unique tricks, unique background, you know, stuff for Amazon that allows me to do better results than most people.

[00:03:52] So, you know, the reason why I picked the Zack here is because well, this whole event is mainly based on external traffic, outside traffic. And we're bringing, bringing the, the affiliate site of the, of the mix into Amazon, you know, so we want the people out there to know what real marketers do. And actually, I would say that, you know, affiliate marketing has a

[00:04:16] It was pretty ruthless out there. So very, very cut dry, you know, it's like attacking and stealing people's ad copies and this and that, and just a lot of crazy stuff out there that no one really everyone thought that Amazon was crazy. No, I feel the world is even crazier, I believe. Well, yeah, the truth there, Howie is the most cutthroat industries in this business are internet marketing, which is pretty much run synonymously with affiliates in the porn marketing industry, which is perhaps the most cutthroat industry of all.

[00:04:53] I have a lot of stories about my friends and adults or media buy it. Yeah. So don't meet the virus. There's no one more ruthless than adult media buyers. We'll just say that much, but since we are a family show, let's, let's get this. Let's get Zack's, some exact secrets coming out. He's got some kind of cocktail over there.

[00:05:11] So I think he might be loosened up a little bit. He might give us a little bit of extra info. Howie, what do you have next on, on the deck for Zack? Let me see now. Well, I'm just, I just want to let, let everyone know, like I've actually kind of met Zack a long time ago in Shenzhen, I don't know, four or five years ago.

[00:05:31] We go all the way back where we, we actually went to like Global Source. We spoke at Global Source together. We went to maybe some Chinese events. And we spoke there together as well as we went to actually Thailand. We spoke at the Affiliate World Asia over there with, well, they call it the Seller’s World.

 [00:05:55] yeah, so we were there speaking to all the affiliate marketers out there about Amazon. So it was pretty interesting that after all these years, we kind of like hang out, you know. Before I came over here to Hong Kong and trapped, I was actually in Thailand at his old, at his hotel, not old house, slept on my couch.

[00:06:16] I was sleeping on his couch. I was sleeping on his couch. I was like trying to get almost like refugee, trying to leave Thailand before it closes. There's only that it was crazy. Yeah, I've had, Howie, were you sleeping in my office before on a chair? So that does not surprise me that Howie was asleep on a couch.

[00:06:34] That's one of the, one of the trips. Absolutely. So Zack, I mean, I know that Howie just mentioned to you that we were going to just jump on a call, never even mentioned that we were on a podcast, nevertheless, a video. Yeah. I have no idea, guys. You at least know that you are going to be speaking at this event.

[00:06:53] And if so, have you thought about what you could bring to the table in terms of what topics you could talk about? All right. So I do know I'm speaking at this event, what I'm speaking about. I haven't nailed about. So we're going to find out we're going to kick around some ideas right now, live on air, wherever this is going to be broadcasted, and we'll just see what's.

[00:07:14] What's good stuff I've been doing a lot. The last year is just absolutely crazy conversion rate optimization, Google shopping, Shopify, just anything that is off of Amazon. I've mostly been just hammering it and having a lot of fun. So, you know, with Google shopping, I'm selling products between like two and $6,000.

[00:07:36] And on $20 of ad spend, I hit almost $12,000. So dollar for dollar, that's probably the best ROI anyone's seeing that's going to this PB conference. As far as Amazon, we can go over tons of tricks from what we're seeing and how to find some absolutely crazy tricks that no one has discovered yet. You know how to dig so deep into your competition, that you can just pull out their best strategies and absolutely crush it.

[00:08:03] You know, I've done this tons and tons of times and all of my best kind of Amazon hacks have resulted from the way I do my kind of spine and competitive research to the point where I know more about my competitors than they know. Wow. That's pretty awesome. Zack, I really look forward to hearing about any of those things that you just spoke about.

[00:08:21] I know a lot of people would love that too. So Zack, what did you talk about at the last, I guess it's the, ad. It’s not affiliate world, but the last one that was ad world. Yeah. So for that, it was, it was a pretty fun one. So for that, because the audience level is kind of maybe lower than what's going to Howard's events.

[00:08:43] I couldn't get quite as deep as I wanted to go into things like Google shopping. I talked a lot about Google shopping and how to get set up in 20 minutes and how to absolutely fresh it on there. And then also. Where I think Amazon is headed, how I think you can build sustainable competitive advantages versus your competition.

[00:09:03] And when I see companies like Browseo and I see the big aggregator companies, or even the big Chinese companies, they're all headed towards these sort of super long-term asset strategies that no basic Amazon sellers are thinking of things like how do you blend affiliate sites with Amazon sites? You know, what kind of assets do you need to either acquire or develop like coupon sites, deal sites, stuff like this, to make sure that you don't just make money from your own stuff, but from everyone stuff that you're, you know, have a massive amount of traffic with intent to buy your products that is outside of just your brand.

[00:09:44] So what kind of things can you build up that are not just your brand focus, but that make your, you know, the pie bigger in general, that you can just bring traffic to yourself, bring traffic to your competitors and be making money from everything very similar way to what buzz does all the time with their famous DTF strategy.

[00:10:11] No. I'm just surprised that he managed to weave that in there. Now this is going to be very interesting. People ask me what the DTF strategy is. For those of y'all that know urban lingo, like DTF, it's a family show. So I can't mention what that means, but you know, use your heads. A lot of you guys are smart.

[00:10:28] Amazon sellers. You should be able to figure that out. Well for, for Zack, you know, I do a lot of, I do affiliate marketing too, with some of my sites. I do own a couple of pretty big sites regarding affiliate marketing. Like, you know, when you see, when you type in like some kind of like the top 20, 21 special or something, you know, you are the best, the best seller, you know, or something that, you know, those sites where they compare products, which is usually Amazon links, Amazon products.

[00:10:56] That goes to your site or go to your, you know, like a sites that you control. So it's all about, you know, how do you get up up on the SERPs of Google and how else you can target in traffic to go to the site in order for you to get traffic? Back to Amazon. So that's something that I've been working on working on for a couple of years now.

[00:11:18] Yeah. So it's almost, it's another signal that we offer. It's like more, it's called a affiliate signals. We call it signals. You know, we got like blog signals. We've got freely at signals. We've got influencer key signals. We've got all over the place. And so, you know, stuff that we're working on. Well, what else is there a Zack, what makes you like different than other people you think that an expert on, how do you think outside the box?

[00:11:40] Well, I think the whole time on Amazon, I have been able to go outside of the box because I am basically, I've experienced in a lot of different things that most Amazon sellers don't have. I have a great programming background. So when I see some, some competitor using a custom app, I can build it and use that.

[00:11:59] Like one of those custom apps ended up getting more than 50,000 reviews or one of my clients, 50,000 reviews. It was so successful. We had to turn it off in the first hour because it was just granting reviews. We were nervous. Amazon would shut it down. One of the other things we were able to see and build was kind of a pre-sale funnel, which absolutely skyrocketed our, our traffic coming from mobile, from Facebook, from Instagram.

[00:12:25] This little seven step prequel just crushed our conversion rates up to 80% when people would land on Amazon. It was ridiculous. So we're able to do a lot of really cool things that a lot of people don't have. I've also, I have experienced working on dozens of different categories on Amazon and getting listings up to, you know, like a hundred thousand dollars plus per day.

[00:12:47] And not like prime day, not like Christmas or something like a normal random Tuesday during the year, it will be doing a hundred thousand dollars. I've released SKUs that have gone on to do like, you know, 10 million plus, you know, fighting out in the most competitive categories, like, essential oils, headphones, sex toys, dash cams, pretty much any category that I'm able to enter.

[00:13:07] We do very well. So I'm able to pull a lot of knowledge from different categories and put them into new categories. You know, you might see a product image somewhere. That's no one is using in your category. You take that and you put it in there and you're able to absolutely crush it. So by having a wider lens on Amazon and seeing more stuff, you're able to crush some of these either super competitive categories or even not very competitive categories.

[00:13:35] You can come in with lessons you learn from all over Amazon and all over the internet, like Kickstarter, Shopify, and, and even the big brands. So I actually, that's the reason why I actually brought you in to our event to show because a lot of people, they don't really know what to ask about you in order, like related to Amazon and affiliate side, I just, you know, like I have a friend and you probably know Ivan.

[00:13:59] Yeah, he's also in the affiliate side and he started out with affiliate side, then went to Amazon or we have Craig, Craig Roman. He actually has the same thing. Affiliate or, you know, internet marketing site and then comes over to Amazon. All the people that I know that are from a affiliate site going into Amazon site really crushes it because they kind of think outside the box, they're trained to think outside the box.

[00:14:24] So I wanted to ask you, so like we talked about this before, what do you think about how, how is the bridge right now between Amazon sellers going into affiliate marketing or internet marketing? Or if they're in marketing, affiliate, marketing, people going into a Amazon actually has that, that, that, that edge right now.

[00:14:44] Well, I think this is absolutely like a huge point. Like, you know, I'm on clubhouse, I'm listening to what people are talking about with a lot of the iOS 14 changes, but Facebook and actually one of the biggest things that people are saying, all these DTC brands is. They're going to start doing more in Amazon, you know. When I started listening to more and more affiliates, they do see Amazon is kind of like the grass is greener on the other side, like go into Amazon.

[00:15:11] And, but I think that they're incredibly well positioned to do so, you know, they have calves, they know how to drive traffic. They know stuff, all they don't know is exactly how to make things work on Amazon, but they're getting better and better and better at doing that. And affiliate marketing and Amazon are blending in some really interesting ways.

[00:15:29] And you see a lot of people from the affiliate space come into Amazon and just clean up. So I, I really actually think that it's kind of scary for the animals. People who are not actually gaming are increasing their game, because affiliate marketing that I know of is really knowledgeable of how to send traffic to pages.

[00:15:52] So I think it's that traffic or outside traffic to Amazon pages, that's just like, like. You know, like money pretty much. I get more and more excited about this because I love seeing people try new things on Amazon. You know, I'm used to a level of competition that maybe doesn't do everything that they could be doing.

[00:16:15] So I'm not learning as much as when I see some of these affiliate brands come into Amazon and see how they're doing things. And I get a lot of inspiration and a lot of creative ideas from watching some of these affiliates, Stripe, Amazon, because they're doing things that normal Amazon sellers just don't do.

[00:16:34] That's correct. It is hard for someone new to come in. I feel like after they kinda get, get the hang of it, they'll gonna, they're gonna lead the edge as well as, you know, they're. The affiliate marketers or these, these new software will come out out of nowhere, sooner or later, wouldn't affiliate marketers, or are these inner markers come in and right.

[00:16:55] Music, software cups, cup keeps on, popping up for Amazon. And these are not just Amazon software, which you're talking about. Like, like I'm, I don't want to say bad about some software, but they're not really, really like for traffic. They don't, they're not really there for helping you improve marketing.

[00:17:15] It's mainly like pretty emo, analyzing stuff and not really marketing is basically. There's a website called like Martech 5,000, pretty much that tracks a new kind of marketing technology. And the last year was its highest growth rate ever. The list almost doubled. And now it's more than like 8,000 different types of ad tech, marketing technology and stuff like that.

[00:17:41] Like so often I see Amazon sellers, they think marketing is just four things, right? They think it's a PPC on Amazon. They think it's manychat. They think it's click funnels and they think it's Facebook ads. They don't go outside of those board things to the other like 8,000 plus different types of technology that they could be using for better results.

[00:18:05] They, you know, if we're in 2021 now and we got to sell and we got a market, like it's 2021, we need to constantly be learning new stuff. And I think that, you know, A lot of Amazon sellers have been complacent for a while and now is the time we need to push forward and, and keep developing. Yeah. So like, I think manychat is old school to me for what I'm saying, because it's really stuck on the Facebook messenger.

[00:18:36] So what we created is a, we call it a web flow, but you know, it's like, it's a web chat bot. So that you can actually advertise anything you want from Snapchat to Instagram, to Facebook, to your own, maybe other blogs or something, you know, anywhere everywhere. It goes onto a web based chat platform. So you can funnel all the traffic into one place and it will be like a chat bot and none of the manychat and required restriction under the Facebook restrictions, you know, very.

[00:19:11] Yeah, there are a lot of other platforms out there to run bots on. And I think everyone's just stuck on Facebook, but, you know, depending on where you are in the world or who you're marketing to, there are a lot of different buckets like if you were marketing to Thailand's Line, chatbots are a huge thing.

[00:19:28] Yeah. You know what brings me to a question? I was going to ask you, Zack, what, what do you feel are the emerging ad platforms that. Amazon sellers should be aware of or should it should become on the radar. I think for a lot of sellers what's happen is if every conference I go to people are really just talking about Facebook, and no one is talking about other very powerful platforms that people are overlooking, which is crazy.

[00:19:57] But I think Amazon sellers are overlooking Google at their own peril, and this is Google. It's huge, but I, the amount of conferences I go to, which is hundreds, I've heard only one person talking about Google. And that person is me. I haven't heard anyone else at any Amazon conference ever talk about Google, but you know, we as Amazon sellers, I think Amazon sellers should start with platforms that are very familiar to what they're already using, which is search-based PPC.

[00:20:29] Because the intent is very high and you can sell the type of boring products that most Amazon sellers are doing. You know, a lot of Amazon sellers are not doing like super sexy Bluetooth, headphones and supplements and stuff like that. A lot of, a lot of very successful Amazon sellers. RSL and stuff like the garlic press or, you know, like Howard was saying like a spatula or even like garbage bags.

[00:20:57] Like I once went into a seller and they're like, exactly, we want you to run Facebook ads for these trash bags. And I'm like, that is not the right channel for this. Like, you can't run these sort of boring products on sort of platform that needs things to be positioned in a very like exciting, visually interesting way.

[00:21:18] But when people are going to Google and they're typing like best trash bags for my kitchen, you know, you can show an ad there. If they're searching best garlic press or whatever, you can show that. And Google shopping is just going crazy right now. They're adding tons and tons of new countries. I think this year they added or last year, they're like 30 plus countries.

[00:21:38] And I think they're taking over the world. At this point, I'm able to get dirt, cheap traffic, dirt, cheap traffic, like 10 cents a click. And make sales on items that are like thousands of dollars. So I think Google is definitely not something overlook things shopping, depending on what age and demographic your customers usually are.

[00:22:00] I think being is actually pretty good. It's lower volume, but it's very similar and you can actually import campaigns from Google to bang as far as other ad networks, maybe working more directly with publishers. Or building your own sources of traffic and websites that are not just on Facebook. You know, I would in general, runaway from Facebook right now, just because I'm seeing everyone, I know get ads banned constantly right now.

[00:22:29] And just in general, you want something, you can have an idea of what the performance is going to be on Facebook. What I'm seeing is, it swings constantly. But what I see with Google is very consistent, steady traffic that I, you know, uses a little less machine learning and it's a little more manual. And I like that same thing was still like native ads and still, you can pretty much run all kinds of crazy things on native ads.

[00:22:55] And it works very well. In terms of Google, are you talking about Google shopping or Google PPC, the old standard PPC or YouTube ads. In general, you want to use both search ads and Google shopping. Especially for Google shopping, there are a lot of different specs about what you can do. But with Google, you know, they have a lot of different placements.

[00:23:19] They have display, they have YouTube, they have Gmail. They have even, even more than this, but Google is some of the best retargeting that you can do. They have a lot of data. And so I really recommend that at least during the retargeting campaign, I like Google, but you can do a lot of YouTube video, YouTube sniping.

[00:23:38] You can snipe at your competitors unboxing videos. You can snipe at your competitors, that review videos, and you can put your own stuff right there, or your own little, it's like little overlay of your products on top of their product. You know, Google has just as good kind of custom audience and, and lookalike audience stuff like Facebook, and they also have something called in-market audiences.

[00:24:04] So you can actually like put in a bunch of different websites that your competitors might use. Like, for example, what you're doing Amazon. So you could put in helium 10 jungle scout, you know, it's always central.amazon.com, stuff like this. And then it would be targeted people that go to those websites or similar websites.

[00:24:21] Which is just absolutely crazy. And it's a wild level of targeting that like Facebook doesn't give you, but you can only find this on Google. So I wanted to add that, you know, Google is very important. It's also very important in Amazon's eyes. I know for a fact that Amazon actually monitors Google all the time.

[00:24:42] Where, what traffic coming from Google, they actually give more love to you. The reason why is because they actually want you to actually not use Google as your starting place to search for products. They want you to go to Amazon. So the more love that they'll give you from, from Amazon's STR or any traffic that's coming from Amazon, they kind of treasure.

[00:25:06] More and gets you ranked better and stuff like that. That's just a example of how powerful Google is. And they will also look at how much of the, your keywords are missing out on Google, for those, for your brands and everything like that. So your asylums or whatever comes up. Yeah. I mean, Amazon just has such a high domain, rank and authority with Google.

[00:25:31] That it's amazing how much of our sales are coming from Google without our us realizing it. Okay. So, um, just wanna, like, I always ask everyone this, let me know your S your situation in your eyes, your point of view and your, what do you think is the problem or opportunities in 2021? Well, I think. A lot of the trends from 2020 are sticking around until at least the summer, you know, especially the inventory headaches, you know, right now it's ridiculous to ship anything.

[00:26:02] But for a lot of people, I know that worked out really well. A lot of Chinese sellers that had a massive amount of inventory that they didn't know how to get rid of the pandemic was the best thing that could've ever happened to these guys. So I think people are looking a lot more at their home. I noticed this with a lot of the stuff I sell is home products and people are going nuts for these.

[00:26:22] So I think a lot of the opportunity is just understanding where your customers are out develop products with them, you know, understand what niches are really going up right now. For example, travel stuff is not, I know a lot of people selling travel stuff that have to make that pivot immediately. But I think if you can overcome the logistics difficulties, which seem to be getting.

[00:26:44] No, there's hope for it to get better in a couple of months, you know? But the opportunity is massive because all of these people that resisted more online shopping, they didn't usually use Amazon or something like that. Now they're using it multiple times a day to buy stuff, you know? Cause they don't want to leave their house.

[00:27:02] I think a lot of people that got used to buying stuff all the time on Amazon are going to get tenured, to be used to buying stuff with Amazon prime because they got to get soap and familiar with the process and just how easy it is. You know, people are used to going to Amazon so much more than they were even just just a year ago.

[00:27:23] So understanding what products are going to do well, understanding how to mitigate the inventory and logistics issues. And, you know, in general, everyone I know on Amazon that has product in stock is, is doing good. Yeah. So, yeah. So can you tell us a little about, about like, How the people in China, how they work, what's their work ethics.

[00:27:47] Why are they increasing so, so much more than the Western side, as well as about, maybe you can talk about the nine, nine, six as well as you know, like what is driving them? Yeah. So Howard and I are both very familiar with the situation going on in China. I'm the only white dude speaking at Chinese Amazon conferences in all of China.

[00:28:11] So you have basically in most companies are, let's start with the Western side, most Western sellers, I know, you know, they get an Amazon because they're watching like they're reading the four-hour work week or they're seen an ad by like Kevin David, like surfing with dolphins or something like that in a villas.

[00:28:30] And I'm not working very much but making money. And so when a lot of people from the West get onto Amazon, they do it with the goal of the lifestyle business of making some money, hanging out on a beach, sipping Mai Tai's and just having a good life. But when you go to China, China, they say, I don't care if I work until I die.

[00:28:48] As long as I die in a Lambo, you know. There is zero desire for them to be sitting on a beach or relaxing or doing any of this stuff. They want to work. They love it. And so in China, for the most part, most people are expected to work at least in like tech and e-commerce industries. Nine, nine, six. This is 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM, six days a week.

[00:29:12] I did more than that. My first year in China as evaluate to the point where I actually won an award for a hard work in a Chinese company in front of 600 Chinese. I beat them all, which is something that like, you know, it was just unbelievable. And just to see walked up on stage and see six hundred Chinese faces, like brush that they did not win this white dude did was just ridiculous.

[00:29:35] But, you know, expect if you're working in Shenzhen and to get calls at like midnight or 1:00 AM from your friend, that's like, yo, I have a crazy Amazon idea. I like, you know, 1:00 AM in the morning and you're like, okay, let's do it now. And that two in the morning, you're there like working on it, you know, it's, it's crazy.

[00:29:53] But it's amazing to be in an area where so many people are so focused on that same thing, especially in Shenzhen, where, you know, the entire city, it was basically designed as the Chinese experiment for capitalism. For the one place Chinese can go to get rich, you know, to where they, it was the only place that could buy bread with their own money or open their own company or do all this stuff.

[00:30:19] And because of that, that's why Shenzhen is growing faster than almost any other city on the planet. 40 years ago is rice village, and now it's this behind me, you know, I, every second I'm in that city, I feel just inspired to do better things. You know, I've been in Bangkok for the last year. I haven't really been doing as much work as I would usually be doing, but the second I go to Shenzhen and I feel that energy, I feel that, you know, drive and motivation.

[00:30:48] Yeah. Because it was recently like on, on like I guest marketplace pulse, were saying 75% of new sellers are Amazon, are from China compared to like a year before, which is 49%. So you see it. Yeah. I wonder how many of those are like multiple accounts versus like, you know, actual new business activity. Yeah. I don't know how they, how they track it, but yeah.

[00:31:15] It's like, they, they actually do work really hard compared to like the Western side. And, you know, it's like kind of like a New York style where everyone's fast paced and stuff like that. But in Shenzhen that's how that works. Yeah. I mean, that's like the defaults. I remember going from Shenzhen to Thailand and for three weeks I was infuriated with all kinds of stuff.

[00:31:38] Right. I would walk out of the airport and there were not 800 taxis waiting for me. And I'm like, what is this? And I went to go set up my internet and they're like, Oh yeah. In two weeks we can go and set it up. And I'm like, no, that's not going to work. It needs to be in 20 minutes, you know, like just.

[00:31:53] Being used to like that Shenzhen where everything is just instantaneous. You know, if you want to see your supplier, you can take a taxi or sometimes they'll go take a taxi to you. You know, I think Chris Davey has, has the story of, he was working at a company in China. Someone walked up to him, Hey, do you think this product would be good?

[00:32:09] And he's like, yeah, I don't know. He went to the bathroom, he came back and they're like, Oh, the supplier will be here in 20 minutes. So let's, let's go. You know, and in America you just don't have that kind of thing. And in Shenzhen, imagine like you want to deal with Payoneer or you want to deal with world's burst, or like any of these software companies for Amazon in America, you will just call them or email them.

[00:32:29] And in China, they will go to your office in 20 minutes and give you a presentation and cut you a better deal. So there's a lot more kind of community and sense of also like urgency. When you are in very high levels in Chinese companies, you realize they don't care as much about anything except time.

[00:32:50] They're always talking about how much time things will be and how to do things faster and faster and faster. They don't care at all about efficiency. It's just, can we do this right now? You know, in value link, whenever Jerry, the CEO would say to do something, one minute later, it's being worked on by somebody.

[00:33:11] You know, even there's no discussion about, is this a good idea? Should we do it doing the idea is how they come up with the testing. That's how they know, is it good or not? And just living in, in Shenzhen for awhile allowed me to, you know, before I was in Shenzhen, I had a lot of maybe analysis paralysis or just like just really not taking as much action and immediately in Shenzhen, that part of me just disappeared.

[00:33:37] You know, I think of something I'm immediately doing it. And I think that's, that's something we all should be doing. Well, that kind of says something about me too, because When I got in Hong Kong, I didn't have that drive to work as hard as I if I was in Shenzhen, I would be like working so much harder and so much faster.

[00:33:59] And, but in Hong Kong, I guess I'm not with the Shenzhen crew or something like that, that I'm like a little slower in, in working. The one I talked to that left Shenzhen has the same thing to say. I don't know how it was. I was, does it. You know, Zack, what can I say? You know, like recently must he says, he told everyone, Hey, on a Sunday, 1:00 AM in the Sunday to come as an urgent meeting, everyone went on the main meeting call and everything.

[00:34:32] That was crazy. And. The topic was saying, why aren't you guys hitting the goal? And someone says, Oh, we don't have enough people to work 24 seven because you know, Ian mine says, Hey, no, one's going to change the world in 40 hours a week. So they have to work like so super hard. And they, the next day they, they like hired like 300 more people for the next.

[00:34:57] It's really true if you're working just 40 hours a week on your business, you know, there's the joke that goes like, Oh, I remember my first part-time job, you know, like of course we're working to be free, but at the same time, like we do need to put in a lot of the work at first or, you know, make sure the work is getting done.

[00:35:17] I used to do it in Shenzhen. I would work every day from when I would wake up to when I fall asleep for like three months at a time. And then for like two weeks, I would do some absolutely just crazy things. Like I would like scan the globe, put my finger down and be like, all right, I'm flying to Japan.

[00:35:33] Doing crazy stuff, just dropping thousands of dollars every day in Osaka and just like drinking until noon every day on time. Like I'm sick of this. I need to work like just super hung over, like just work, Zack. What's a weekend. Yeah, I've been, I've been taking a break for a year, but you know, back in Shenzhen and I didn't want to take breaks.

[00:35:57] Yeah. Like a lot of people don't know the culture in Shenzhen or in China. It's not the thing. They always complain. Oh, Chinese is, it must be doing some black hats though. That's why they're growing so fast or not because they actually work more hours than anyone in the Western area. You got to understand.

[00:36:13] Yeah. I would argue like half the time they are wasting their time. You know, I have been in a lot of companies where I see them, like just sitting at the computer, terrified, like isn't only going to catch that. I'm not really working hard. You know, we were talking about the water. Yeah. When I walk into new companies and I pretty much do like a time audit to see where they actually spending their time on their Amazon business.

[00:36:42] And I do see like 50% of the stuff that they're doing can be eliminated. You know, or, and replaced with higher value activity. Yeah. That's pretty interesting. Well, I can say that, you know, I've always been a fan of working smarter, not harder. So I do have a lot of life hacks that I've managed to live through, but Zack, the thing that makes me most curious, and it's the last question I have for you before we let people know how to find out more about PPE 3.0, is what did your prize look like?

[00:37:14] What did you win in front of these 600 Chinese people? Like what was it that you got. Well, I get this wonderful, huge certificate. You know, it's still in Shenzhen. Like it's, it's this here huge thing. And then also like this like golden bowl, like statue that's yours, but I've, I've won tons of stuff by that company.

[00:37:33] I won like free Iphones and all kinds of stuff just for out working the rest of the chatter. I feel like they should have gotten you something much sexier than a golden mole, but it was bragging rights. Right? That's the main thing, like I can put on a resume, like. Only right. The Chinese company. We've definitely been talking stuff.

[00:37:55] There Zack, but I'm proud of you. You, you just made every American proud of you for winning that award.

[00:38:04] Yeah. All right. Well, thanks Zack. Thanks so much. That was incredible. I, I know we got a little bit off topic there with, with the work thing, but I still think it was rather important. Hopefully it inspires people out there that are listening today to get to work on your Amazon business. And the best way to do that is by making sure you attend Professors' Pandemic Event 3.0.

[00:38:22] Happening February 15th and 16th live virtually from the comfort of your own home, we will be streaming. And of course you will get copies of the recording. If you decide to show up, if you don't no worries, you got copies of the recording. So it's all up to you what you want to do. But I will say this much, that for a very limited time, we do have a 50% early bird pricing, which means you get 50% off.

[00:38:44] You pay the same amount that people that have attended previous masterminds. Get. As that is the lifetime price. 50% off. Once you are in the brotherhood of the most elite Amazon sellers, and this year, we can finally call it a sisterhood. How we, we have our first ever female speaker. And by no means, did you go light on this one?

[00:39:02] As this one is a pretty big seller that is scaling very fast. In fact, she attended one of our live events in Las Vegas, where she was able to literally pick the brains of the 600 to $700 million a year, Chinese seller. And she got the goods, ladies and gentlemen, because she has managed to scale her business to $20 million plus, and we also have a nine figure seller doing a $150 million.

[00:39:24] So I do predict there will be some fireworks. Howie, how fired up are you for this PPE 3.0 and tell people how you truly want them there. These will be your last words for today. So. I know, I know this I've been speaking a lot today, so yeah, like I'm really pretty happy. And because this is going to be our first PPE rent where there's going to be a speaker that's over nine figures.

[00:39:50] So nine figure, $150 million seller coming in and teaching you, schooling you on the art of Amazon. You know, you guys, if you guys don't listen or learn from other people, Then it's kind of, you're just wasting a lot of time and money and figuring it yourself. So why don't you just let you know, spend a little time, spend a little resources and try to learn from the best.

[00:40:13] That's it. Right, absolutely. So I'm looking forward to that. Zack will be among the 13, very talented speakers who are bringing you the goods. Right? These are people that are on the forefront of Amazon. They are pioneering strategies, tactics, as well as relationships, which is the whole purpose of this. So to join us, make sure you, you go to howardthai.com/PPE3

[00:40:37] To find out more details as well as how to get the 50% off early bird pricing. So other than that, we had a tremendous interview today. Thank you so much, Zack, for joining us. So on behalf of Howie, remember to find out more about PPE 3.0, head on over to howardthai.com/PPE3.

[00:40:53] PPE the number three. I always mess that up. Howie is howardthai.com/PPE3. 15 straight times. It's pretty difficult. So all right, thanks guys, so much. Thanks so much, Zack. Thanks so much Howie. On behalf of everyone, I bet you guys have a terrific day wherever you are in the world. Get out there and do the nine, nine, six thing for a couple of weeks and then report back how it was before we see you at PPE 3.0 on February 15th and 16th.

[00:41:22] 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.