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

[00:00:21] Hey everyone, Hurricane Liz here, back for another professor's podcast. And one thing that is going to be clearly apparent is that we are missing the Professor himself today. He's headed out to the Billion Dollar Summit and as usual, he's combing the globe to try and get the very best speakers for his mastermind, which is coming up October 4th and 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

[00:00:41] And I will give you guys details on how to find out more about that. But I'm still excited. The show must go on. And today with me, I have one of those speakers that has literally electrified people every single time he's spoken. Even when in attendance, the tips and tricks that he gives and kind of just talking about his businesses has made us all smarter just as a result of even being associated with him and even being in the same room with him.

[00:01:05] So I'm going to go with an introduce him here, and I will still talk a little bit about Howie. We’ll talk about how you guys met. I think we did cover that before. But none other with me today here is Matt Altman, who we called previously, the supplement king. Now, Matt, I know that that's obviously one of the particular niches you specialize in, but I mean, you're, you're literally,

[00:01:26] You got quite a bit of different niches, because you've gone from starting retail, arbitrage, you know, all about that. And you started literally from the ground up so you truly do know almost every aspect of Amazon, which is really a unique trait among high level Amazon sellers. Cause there's not many of them that started literally from the ground up and have been able to build

[00:01:47] Multiple eight figure and nine figure companies, just because of all the knowledge they've acquired. So tell us a little bit more about, if that's still the area that you like to be in, which is supplements, or if there's a couple other areas that you're  enjoying as of late. Yeah, definitely. I'm definitely still in supplements.

[00:02:04] The margins are too good to get out of it, but definitely venturing out into a little bit of everything else because it is just super, highly competitive, no matter what you're doing. But for really the last two years, so what I've been focusing on is growing my agency. So we, we manage about 5 million a month in ad spend and represented about 140 accounts right now between vendor and seller central.

[00:02:27] And kind of what we've been doing is bridging that gap between traditional Amazon agencies that are coming over from like a Google PPC type of agency relationship and kind of mixing in some of these gray hat tactics to really ramp up sales for brands that you probably see on the shelf at Target and other like Fortune 500 companies.

[00:02:48] And, you know, going and talking about a little bit more about your agency. So, you know, there's, there's a quite a bit of agencies to choose from out there. What do you feel differentiates your agency other than obviously the ridiculously huge amount of profits that you've made and you've been associated with?

[00:03:05] What else differentiates your agency among the others out there? I think the biggest thing that differentiates us is like we were helping some other brands originally find agencies and that's kind of what got me into it was the pricing structure. Either they want a commission, a profit or sales, and it's just not worthwhile because the Amazon flywheel wants to takes off.

[00:03:26] It takes off. Aren't doing that much more to put into it. So we restructured our pricing model to where everything is based on hours and hours used. We don't bill you any of the upside. It's just however many hours we put in that month is what you're being billed for. So you get a lot of efficiencies and we try and keep it as fair and honest as can be with an agency

[00:03:46] relationship. Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you said, very fair. Now I know you mentioned that obviously you guys do a lot of Amazon PPC, but is there any other type of services that you specialize in when it does deal with Amazon in general? Is it just Amazon PPC or are you doing external traffic too? So we're doing literally everything, external traffic we're doing rebate buys.

[00:04:09] We're doing remarketing funnels by getting customer data. There's still loopholes on how to get it. We're doing things outside of Amazon pushing like just general Facebook, traffic, Google ads to Amazon. And then, we also do do mainly right now, our biggest marketplaces and Instacart by far it's where all the big money's going and CPG.

[00:04:31] So, yeah. Tell me a little bit more about Instacart. Like, how is Instacart? How are you implementing that? Or how are you doing that? Is it something that you are doing for clients? Is, is that what you’re doing? Yeah. Yeah. So something we're doing for clients. Basically what we saw is a lot of our Amazon clients are actually like food or grocery related items that you could find on the shelf at whole foods.

[00:04:53] So when Whole Foods started Whole Foods Prime now, about almost a year ago now, almost 50 to 60% of their sales instantly switched over. You can't advertise whole foods listings. You can't run, search-find-buys behind them and it basically killed their Amazon business. So what we did is we helped them restructure the money, send it elsewhere to Instacart, to Thrive marketplace, places like that, where these search-find-buy tactics still do work.

[00:05:20] You can get to the very top of search and then we're injecting some ad spend on the platform behind this. Well, I wasn't even aware that you, what kind of ad spend are you sending to Instacart? It’s more than Amazon ad spend. It's probably 5 to 6 million. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, that's definitely some next level stuff that not a lot of people are talking about.

[00:05:38] I mean, people are still so preoccupied with how do we get this product ranked on Amazon? What are the new things happening? But that's definitely some next level stuff. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, or I'm not sure if Howard told you this, but the top speaker at this event, which is going to be held October 4th and 5th is going to get $7,500 in cash.

[00:05:57] They can go crazy with it. They can go gambling with it. They could do whatever the heck they want with it. What are some of the things that you've thought about possibly talking about at this event in order to take that prize home? Yeah, definitely. I think the biggest thing that we've found, obviously, everyone kind of knows about Google links of those point.

[00:06:14] They work, they will get you ranked no matter what. But if your listings aren't up to par, if you don't have enough reviews, you're not going to stay at the top no matter what you do. And so we've initiated about four different tactics that will guarantee your reviews before you launch and continue to get you 30 to 40% review rates after you launch.

[00:06:32] And then the other big component that we've really been driving on is still getting the customer data through some of the APIs and some of the apps that still have access and really focusing down on using them for your search-find-buys because they like your product anyways, you don't have to give them a full rebate.

[00:06:49] And then continuing on just to get those rankings and subscribe and saves up on those replenished bolts, because we've seen, that's been the biggest driver of maintaining top rankings plus Amazon's choice. Yeah, that's all exciting stuff. I'm certainly interested to hear that I've not even heard anybody even touch on that.

[00:07:08] The majority of the speakers that we've heard thus far are going to be talking about external traffic tactics, things that go on with TikTok, the Google Display Network. And a lot of different types of external traffic that I've never really heard many people speak about. I think there's the Wolf, they call him the Wolf, Maor, he's going to be talking about GDN in great detail.

[00:07:30] So I think that's going to be an excellent supplement. Now, let me ask you something a while back before we were at one of these events, you are actually at the event, you talked about a form of traffic that very few people were using, and it was one of Howard's absolute favorite tips. Are you still using podcast traffic?

[00:07:49] And if so, how is that going for you? We are. So our agency writes, set up, actually manages, I think we're the largest podcast agency now in the US, or marketing wise. But we send almost all of our nationwide Amazon clients that are in store as well through podcasts. We're seeing 5 to 6X returns on everyone that we've run.

[00:08:10] And basically what we're using it for is the fuel our search-find-buys. So we're sending them to a landing page and we're walking them through the process. We're giving them an offer they can't refuse because that's how you get people with podcasts. And then we're getting our buys and truly net new customers that will probably come

[00:08:26] And buy again because they expressed interest in the first place. Yeah. That sounds exciting. You know, one of the things that you do that I find exciting, I mean, obviously, I don't know if other people are going to find that it's exciting, but you and I have some very similar hobbies that we like to do on the side.

[00:08:41] And it's kind of funny, but you talked about, on the last time we had you on this podcast, that you were reselling things like Pikachu or Pokemon game boys. What's the, what's the thing that you're doing now, Matt? I guess it's kinda like one of those things where it's always exciting to hear what you got going on because you really truly  like to keep your nose in the thick of things and you just love reselling for the game of it.

[00:09:06] So I do this every year, every year Lego's highly valuable, made more money on Legos and stock market like the last three years. Is that the advent calendar? Yes. So I buy pallets of these and just store them at my warehouse. And then you resell them three to four years later for about 10 X what they sold for originally. Lego Advent Calendars are one of the best.

[00:09:25] I think we also have a Harry Potter advent calendar. Do they not? They do. Yep. I've got a Harry Potter one. They have a Marvel one. They've got all kinds of them now, but they're limited release. They'll sell out very quickly and then always go up in value. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, which brings me to another question.

[00:09:42] Like obviously everyone out there is going nuts. Like there's so many different, like you're also a sneakerhead, which is another something. Obviously to get a lot of pair of shoes can be rather challenging with the way that they do the, what are they called? I even forgot it off the top of my head, the draws, or what do they call them where you have that got some bots that were using the snap, some of those up.

[00:10:04] Yeah. So let me ask you this, the biggest thing right now, obviously I'm pretty sure people that will listen to this podcast will have somewhat of an interest in this. What do you think right now about the big NFT craze going on and do you see it ever, somehow being involved, especially like the one area that I think, and I did see that Dior is going to have the first, like luxury NFT drop that they're planning.

[00:10:27] But do you ever see that becoming somehow mainstream and retail? And if so, just give me your thoughts on what you're doing in that market if anything? So I absolutely hate NFTs to be fully honest. I am very much, if you can't tangibly hold it, it's worth Jack shit. So don't be buying them. You know, there's a lot of people, there was just a pack of a hundred board, eight yacht clubs that sold for 24.4 million through Sotheby's.

[00:10:52] Did you see that? Yeah. I was like, I just couldn't believe it when I saw the price, but I think it's either 101 or 111 board, a yacht clubs and it was 24.4 million on Sotheby's. Kind of shocked what, I mean, there's a lot of celebs buying it. There's a lot of celebs that have bought crypto punks. Visa or MasterCard just bought a crypto punk.

[00:11:13] And like I said, Dior is launching their first crypto. I mean, the, the, they are launching their first NFT, which, you know, Dior always seems to be at the cutting edge. Like they just, they also launched the first Dior Jordan, which was the first luxury air force one Jordan. And now they're launching a second red and black one.

[00:11:32] So how do you feel about the Dior Jordan? I've got a pair. I'll wear them to the event. Fantastic. I also have a pair, so I will also wear them to the event so we can be matching. That'll be like one of, I don't think it was like, what is it, 55? That is 55,000. I can't even remember how many. Yeah, well, fantastic.

[00:11:50] That sounds like, that sounds like a lot of fun, but let's get back on Amazon. I know I got a little off track, but I do know that you love the game of buying and selling. So for some reason, I thought, Matt might actually be in the NFT game. That would be very logical thing, but I see what you mean.

[00:12:03] You're a stock market guy. You believe in being able to hold something tangible, especially when you know, you can get a 10 X on things like Star Wars legos. Exactly. So, all right, let's get back to Amazon. Let me ask you this question. So since the last time that you attended the live event, which I believe was Cabo, San Lucas, back in February, like over, almost a year and a half ago, all the buzz was about chatbots.

[00:12:27] How you feel about chatbots now? I do see some people still using them. Some people have lived and died by chatbots. But, how do you see those going right now? Do you still in your agency use them somehow or have you gone a completely different method? So we still use them, but very limited, we've formulated a way set up our own landing pages and are running through our own like deal clubs and things like that.

[00:12:50] We have clones to rebate key that we use. We've got like three of them right now that are fully automated. So we tend to do that more than anything. The only thing we're really using messenger for is when we're pulling those customer lists than retargeting and were putting them through their search-find-buys if needed.

[00:13:07] But most of the time we're still redirecting that traffic back to our own landing pages cause it's just a better, easier process. You don't have any of that Facebook headaches. Right, and would that being said, is that where you see or where do you see the next generation of ranking? I honestly think the next generation of ranking is whoever figures out the outside traffic sources.

[00:13:29] Like we mix and match all kinds of outside traffic. We're always testing things. And to be honest, like we truly have no idea what's working, what's not because you get different results every single time. But there's gotta be a code and whoever cracks is gonna win big time. I definitely think it's going to be exciting to see we've got all these different speakers that are each focusing on one thing or another.

[00:13:51] It's going to be exciting to see if any of them have actually created test or just a test that just involve that form of traffic. That will certainly be very beneficial. And that's one of the reasons why I'm excited to attend this event. And, you know, usually we've Howie here joining us, Matt. So I'm pretty much out of questions.

[00:14:08] Is there anything else that you wanted to add? Like how people will be able to contact you if they are interested in any of your services before we say goodbye here? Yeah, they can just reach out to me directly at [email protected] if you have any questions on our services and we do offer services outside of Amazon as well.

[00:14:25] Amazon is actually only about 20% of our overall agencies. So Facebook ad-words wherever you need help with feel free to reach out. Rhen just look forward to talking with everyone at the live event. Yeah, I do too. And for those of you that didn't get that, that was [email protected]. Is that right, Matt?

[00:14:41] That's correct. Cool. So like I said, I was going to keep this short and sweet. We've been able to get things answered. Sometimes Howie gets on here and ask some questions, but he's here in spirit. But let me just remind people how to get more information if they want to attend the first back, getting back to being live event

[00:14:59] for the professor's mastermind. It’s called the Elite Innovators Mastermind now. It'll be held October 4th and 5th in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you want more information on that, head on over to howardthai.com/elite2021. That's howardthai.com/elite2021. And Matt, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:15:18] I'm looking forward to seeing you in person, catching up and hanging out, being able to go out a little bit, have some fun, let loose. I know there certainly will be a lot of secrets being shared at this one. We've got a lot to catch up on. So thanks so much for joining us. Definitely. 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.

[00:15:46] Your host, Howard Thai generates over $5 billion for his clients annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.