0265: The Amazon Jungle: The Truth About Amazon, The Seller's Survival Guide for Thriving on the World's Most Perilous E-Commerce Marketplace with Jason Boyce

Hi, this is Jason Boyce. You can reach me at avenue the number7media.com and this is EA Interviews.

EA Interviews episode 265, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's expert authority effect interview.

Amazon may be your best friend, you know, do you order from them in the morning, the afternoon or the prime of the evening?

I am excited to have the author of the Amazon Jungle here, Jason Boyce. Because if you've ever thought about not just buying from Amazon but selling on Amazon, does he have the secrets? And he's going to be sharing them with you right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook Publishing course dot com. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen, Jason Boyce. Jason, how are you doing today?

Hi Mario. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on your show. I'm really excited to be here.

Well, it's my pleasure. I know you and Rick are doing a lot of great things and you have your newest book, the Amazon Jungle, where you're going to be sharing with us the insights of what the best practices are to not just buy more on Amazon, but what I love to sell more.

Yeah, absolutely. There's money to be made and there's some exciting new developments in this space that happened even before we started writing the book that I'm happy to share with your viewers today too.

Yeah. I want to ask you for anyone who's never sold on Amazon because I think we've all bought from them. Can we agree on that? But if you've never sold on Amazon, why should you care and why should you be interested in it?

Well, it's a great question. If you have a product and I think that the best way to be on Amazon is with your own private label brand, your own branded product. If you are selling in any other channel and not selling on Amazon, you're likely driving traffic to your competitors on Amazon. So what do I mean by that? Rick, you know, Rick is a legend in the TV marketing world, launched, you know, George Foreman Grill, Gopro, Oxiclean and all these different brands, Sonicare. And we see this all the time when we have some of Rick's clients who are driving television advertising.

And we get them on Amazon.com, every time they run a new TV spot, their Amazon sales spike. Same thing with big ad spends on Facebook or any other TV spots. Anytime clients are spending anywhere else, they see big double, sometimes triple digit increases in sales on Amazon.com and so, you know, sort of anecdotally we say about 50% of the final clicks online are happening on Amazon, no matter where that first click came from. And we feel that people are sitting on their couch watching television. They pull up their prime app, they see us, they search for the brand name, and you should be there. If you're not there, you should be, because they're going to be. The people searching on their prima are going to search for a product using your name. Sellers using your name are going to be selling and you're probably driving traffic to them. So you got to be there. They own 60% of the online market share. Second place is the largest retailer in the world, Walmart with 5% market share. So, I mean, you really, Mario, if you got any kind of product at all, that's not a car, you gotta be there.

So I want to ask you, because I have five of my own books on there and I help people publish their business books and I have my author clients on there. And I want to ask you about. I don't want to say her name too loud, but I've been watching videos on YouTube before where the host or whoever is like, oh, all you have to say is hey, her. Just add.

The expert authority effect publishing method to my cart or check out. Or have you played with the scripting of what you're supposed to say? And literally.

I didn't even need to say it when they said it in the video. It was picked up.

Yeah, Mario, I'm assuming you're talking about the Echo device. I'm not going to say the wake up word either because I've got one in my office.

I was going to say you. You can say, I got you in my ear over here. So I don't know. Probably listening though.

Yeah, I mean, look, when Echo first launched, there was a lot of promise in terms of ordering. It hasn't happened yet where it's a big play when it comes to ordering. I know personally, I use the Echo to reorder stuff. I'll be in the kitchen and I'm running out of something and I say, hey, Echo or wake word, reorder this or that, and it shows up on our door the next day. So, yeah. So the voice recognition software that Amazon really pioneered, out of the ashes, the burning ashes of their cell phone play, they turned it into the Echo is definitely something that's going to become a bigger and bigger part of E commerce. But I mean, man, no matter where you go, there Amazon is right. I mean, how many times do you see an Amazon prime delivery van showing up in your neighborhood? I see it more times than the post office and UPS combined.

Probably when they started delivering on Sundays in their own vans and they were quicker. And especially through some of the holiday seasons, it's like they were still meeting their one to two day delivery on occasion. One out of ten items was like, oh, it was, you know, the manufacturer was behind so obviously they couldn't ship it or whatever the deal was. But I know that there was people with the post offices that they weren't getting stuff for weeks.

You're absolutely right.

Over a month.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Merry Christmas on your birthday four months later.

Yeah. Well, listen to this. Amazon now has more contract delivery drivers than the USPS and UPS combined. So yeah, and they are. And there are no days off at Amazon. It's like, you know, I'm a former Marine. It's like being a Marine, you don't get days off. In fact, I had more days off in the Marines than I did as an Amazon seller. And that's just how they are. They want to deliver everything within an hour, or I should say within one day. Eventually they'll get to the point where they're delivering within hours. And what they did in holiday shopping season 2020 during peak Covid, in my opinion, will be studied in MBA programs for the next 20 years. I mean, they hired 400,000, almost 500,000 people in less than 10 months. They ramped up the drivers and they delivered better than anyone else out there. And Mario, I was sort of predicting that Amazon would break during this holiday season because of just the increase in volume. But they did two things. They stretched out the holiday buying season. They moved prime to October and they got a lot of early holiday shopping buyers in October that they don't typically have. And they just ramped up like equivalent of the U.S. world War II shipbuilding ramp up. I mean, one company, I mean, it's just remarkable. They truly, Dave Clark, who runs that division for them, literally deserves like the Medal of Freedom. I mean, it's insane what they were able to do this last holiday season.

So that's really inspiring. And I got so many questions I could be asking you, but I want to stay on point here with why people should be selling on Amazon. Obviously you can do the voice command and I see that as bleeding edge for sure. I thought it was cool as heck, though, because when people are like, you know, I think it's great. You can say, listen to the Expert Authority Effect interviews podcast, and it's on there. You can get my books you like. I don't even need to have my phone nearby. You can literally just say that stuff out loud. And I've been looking into it for obvious reasons, so that's, like, where it's going. And it's gonna, you know, create a vacuum and suck people into that. But let's take a step back and go, okay, I have nothing on there now. Or maybe I have a few things, but I'm not pushing it the right way. I see it's going there. Clearly they're capable. Clearly they're not going anywhere and they know what they're doing. Where do I start? What would you say are some of the first things, like with the image, the description, the pricing? What are some simple things that I could go on there right now in this week? Say, give me 10 things I'm going to check off and test and tweak and figure out to sell better. What would you say those things are?

Sure, Mario, great question. So we start off in the book the Amazon Jungle by laying out.

If you don't have a product, let's say you just have an idea. We take you from idea all the way to identifying the right product to sell on Amazon, making sure that there's a market, in other words, that there's a big group of Amazon sellers, shoppers, spending a lot of money on your category first, because you don't want to invest time in treasure if there's no market for what you're going to make. How to identify a factory or factories anywhere in the world, how do I get it produced? And then once it lands here in the United States, how then to work on the marketing, how to make it look cool, how to do the listings, how to get good images, what size those images should be, how to produce video. And, you know, Rick is the master, my co author. He's the master in creating video for products that sell and. And then how to do everything from driving traffic, handling customer service, and even some of the, you know, the more troublesome things that are become noticeable on Amazon as an Amazon seller. So we literally break it down step by step using all of the mistakes that I made. Mario, I was selling on Amazon in 2003, and I made more mistakes on that platform, I guarantee you, than anyone else out there, and learn from them, and then developed this process so that you can absolutely create your own product, create your own brand and then do all the steps to have success on Amazon. I mean, I think, you know, if you want to take a step back and say what's different about Amazon than selling to Walmart stores or the regional sporting goods store or you know, the local grocery store, it does take a different mindset when it comes to Amazon. What matters to Amazon is search. The majority of products are searched, found and purchased. Search Find Buy is a three letter algorithm that will be the most important phrase that you repeat to yourself over and over when you go to bed at night. Because that's what Amazon cares about. You have to make sure that your products are listed in a way that Amazon shoppers can search for them and find them, click through them and buy them. But when that happens, they will reward you with better and better real estate on that first page of search results. And we even break down how to do some SEO steps.

So that you can have some success on Amazon as well. We could talk about those further in the show if you'd like.

I actually we can talk about them right now. For anyone that doesn't know SEO, I'm sure they heard the acronym for it. But what does it stand for and why is it important?

Search Engine Optimization. If they can't search your product and find your product, you will not sell it. And Amazon has a number of fields where you enter product specific data. Think of a spreadsheet with headers all across the top of the spreadsheet. For each product you need to enter information. Right.

With each, you just excited half the people and freaked out the other half.

Well look, you got to enter your product title, you gotta add your bullet points, description. There's a field for search terms, there's a field called subject matter and all of those.

I know the image is important.

Absolutely. You have to have not just one image either. What we do at our agency, Avenue 7 Media, we create additional images, up to six or seven images and then each of those images we use marketing and graphic design techniques to make it look each one look like a high gloss magazine ad.

Do you think I can do that with books?

You absolutely can. I will tell you this, books has been frustrating, Mario. You know in the book I recommend selling on Amazon as a third party seller through seller central versus versus selling to Amazon. But most publishers now will still sell to Amazon. So it says ships from sold by Amazon. Yeah. So it's frustrating to me. I wrote my book, Rick and I's book went through a publisher, Morgan James Publishing, which is a great publisher, they have a 1P relationship, so they give a price to Amazon and Amazon marks it up like a traditional retail relationship. So I don't actually have access to my own listing to go in there and edit it. So I'm, I'm feeding information to them to forward to the Amazon buyer to, to update it. Yeah, but it's great.

I mean, look, because I know when you're doing the drop shipping, as far as you, you send the, your products to the Amazon warehouse, they list it and it will say have you as a third party seller, that's what you're talking about, versus actually having it go directly through Amazon. That's interesting. I never really looked at the pros and cons because it was just more work. I mean, to be flat honest, it's like I didn't make sense at the time. But the more I learn about it, I've kind of been like, huh, maybe this would be worth at least a test or something. And in the vein of SEO, I wanted to ask you about the AMS keywords. What do you think of those and how much do you use them?

Yeah, so I use them continually.

I break out Amazon advertising into really two sections. There's the sponsored ads, sponsored products, which is basically pay per click advertising that gives you that headline banner space on the search results. And also there's 12 placements on the first page of search results where you composite a PPC ad. So those are called sponsored products. You can also do retargeting now on a PPC pay per click basis. And you can also do video ads now on a pay per click basis. So that's one division of Amazon Advertising. We do all of it. All of it's amazing. And you know, nothing works better than sponsored ads, sponsored brands, video ads and retargeting. But what's become, it's sort of blown up. I mean the last few years in a good way, not blown up in a bad way in a good way, it's become really big. Is this Amazon DS demand side platform. So if you think about dsp, it's basically Amazon's Facebook ads division, if you will. Right. So Amazon owns digital real estate on all of its properties like IMDb.com, amazon.com, and they have banner space that's available for sale on a cost per impression or CPM basis. So for every thousand impressions you pay a certain dollar amount or pennies. And so they also own enormous amount of digital. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. That's another huge one. They Own an enormous amount of unowned Amazon display ad property as well. So they will serve your products ads across all of that. Everything from top of funnel all the way down to retargeting. And we have been seeing just in the last 12 months or so amazing results, amazing return on investment and I think honestly that's kind of the future Amazon offering video ads and pay per click ads and sort of this banner CPM ads driving people back to Amazon.com so we run both it can get, I mean shoot, we could come back Mario, and just do a class on Amazon advertising or just do a show on Amazon Advertising. But yeah, all of the above. Anywhere you can get traffic to drive that searching, finding, buying algorithm will help you get to the top of search results, will help you become a top seller and then, then you're on your way.

So two devil's advocates right here. One, but I rather get referrals than I don't need to pay for ads. And two, we already spend a lot of money on ads. Nothing seems to be working.

Yeah, you're probably not doing them right.

If you're spending a lot of money on ads and nothing seems to be converting. You really gotta start and look at your listings. There's a lot of metrics that you can break down. You know, I don't wanna get too wonky on this particular podcast, Mario, but if your click through rates aren't good, look at your main image. Remember when some when you serve an ad on the sponsor side of the house, take a look at what your image and your product title looks like on the search results page compared to your competitors. Is your image tiny? Is your image grainy? Is it not an exciting col? Does your product title not give as much information as your competitors? If it's not, your click through rate will likely not be as good as your competitors. So you could start there. Secondly, once folks get to your listing, we're talking about the details page. Looking at your image, you're looking at your messaging, the copy of the video, perhaps on your details page you want to make sure you answer the question. When your shoppers get to your detail page on Amazon, what's in it for them? Are you telling them blatantly in plain English what the benefit of the product is to them? Not the specs. Like specs are secondary and important, but they're secondary to, you know, what's the real benefit of this product? I'll give you an example, Mario. I used to my previous life as a big Amazon seller, top 200Amazon seller I sold air hockey tables, among other home wreck equipment. So before I met Rick and Rick and we talk about this in the book, before I met Rick and Rick trained me how to do these brand response and direct response marketing tactics. I just put a spec sheet up, had one image. It looked like a factory photo out of factory floor. It wasn't very pretty. And I put all the details like the thickness of the table is this, the legs are this size and that size. All important information. But it missed the whole point of the product. I start talking to Rick. He and I start having coffee every Friday morning. He tells me to write a book and we start talking about this Amazon stuff. And I'm like, well, we should do it together because you know about this. I start following his techniques. And then my messaging went from a factory spec sheet to the following message for my air hockey table. Bring friends and family together. Right. That's the point of an air hockey table. The point of an air hockey table is to get you and your friends doing something non digital together with family, making memories. Right. That's the benefit of an air hockey table. And so those are a couple elements. Start at the start of the main image, start at the product title. But then really investigate and ask yourself, why, why, why would someone give me their money? I need to answer that question before they have the opportunity to ask it. And you'll see amazing results on your ads. Your ads will perform better. Yeah.

And I don't know what it is about being your own stuff. I think it's be flat out for me sometimes it's like I just want to get this done. I got 58 million other things and I'll just give it to my team because.

Frankly, they care a lot more than I do on most things. I mean, let's be honest.

I'm like, officially the same way Mario.

Let's get it done. And I'm like, I don't even care. It's like I just spent however long I did writing the book and I'm like, whatever, just use that photo. I just want to be done with it. And I know that's not the best. It's why have help? But when I'm looking at other people's ads, I'll do the exact same thing. I'm like, now why would they write that? Why do they have that that pictures crap. Even recently, I just got a 10 terabyte helium drive for the show. It's awesome. It's actually you're one of the first episodes it's running in. But I will never forget ordering it. And it was like the picture said 1 TB, but the description said 10. I'm like, 1 of them's right, we'll see. I was like, I hope the description is not the image, but for how visual I am. That really messed with me. And I almost didn't buy it, but I'm like, let's go for it.

Cognitive dissonance created from a product listing is bad for your ad performance. Right. You know, you gotta lay the foundation first and then sort of the next piece of that, Mario, is are you going after the right traffic? Are you negating the keywords that aren't converting, that don't work for your product? And are you doubling down on the keywords that are? And that's just basic, you know, PPC management and optimization over time. And, you know, if you can, you can employ some of those tactics. You'll see sales go up, clicks go up, and conversions go up. And then the Amazon algorithm will reward you.

Oh, man. I just got two more great questions. You're amazing, by the way. One, it was a good one. It was a real good one. It had to do with the Amazon affiliate. Is there any third party software that I could have my team create links, but it would generate my code?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you're talking about layering on tracking software on your website. So when you send your own customers to buy your book on Amazon, you get a rip for that, you get a percentage for that. Right.

The only way I know right now is to go to site stripe, grab the code and I give it to my team for the show notes of the episode or whatever.

Well, you can go to Amazon Associates, that's the name of the Amazon affiliate program, and they'll break it down for you exactly how to load the code up onto your site to become an Amazon affiliate.

Well, I get that. Is there any way for my team to access my Amazon account to get the correct affiliate links without logging into my Amazon account, my actual account?

Oh, no. Oh, yeah. So you'll have to log into your own seller central account. You can give email permission to your staff. You can invite them to your account and give them permission for only certain things. Like you want them to be able to go into your brand store. Your brand store is where you want to go in order to get that trackable code.

Yes.

So if you want to post a link on your, on your Facebook channels, on all your. Great. So you got amazing social media, Mario. You want to post and drive traffic from those channels, do it through your brand store. Right. That's the best way to do it.

Yeah. Because every episode, people are mentioning books and different things. And I'd like to remove that bottleneck because 80% of the time, it doesn't get done if I have to be doing it. Just whatever. So that was one thing. Thank you for that.

I got the same problem, my friend.

Because I know someone going, okay, I want to sell. I want to do this. I just don't have time for all this, for all the linking. Same boat we're in. The other question I had for you, and it came back to me, and it is a good one. SEO, how many keywords should be you be loading for for a single item? I've heard 50, 100, a couple hundred. Couple thousand. 50,000. It's kind of a wide range. What do you say?

Yeah, the real answer is it depends. It depends on your product. You know, if you have a product that has multiple different use cases.

You know, I'm thinking of an example where I have a client who makes the most amazing sort of organic raw materials used to make things like shea butter soap and like these sort of cosmetics. Right. So that product can be used not only for. Well, I take that back. Let's take the coconut oil, for example. He does the same thing with coconut oil. Coconut oil can be used for cosmetic purposes and for cooking purposes as an example. Right. So each of those different use cases has loads of keywords. So that product has probably double the amount of keywords as a product that only has one use case, like an air hockey table. Right. So it really is dependent, and it's really not a matter of keywords. What we do, our approach is you come to us, Mario, and say, hey, I got this widget. I want you to sell it on Amazon. We start by doing a research, going through this research process.

Steven clearly will edit this.

Oh, good, it's working again.

Oh, good.

That was a. That was a total zoom crash. Because my Internet was fine. I checked. Speed test. Sorry about that.

No worries. Just pick up where you left off. I didn't stop anything. It's still recording in live.

Okay, great. So let's see.

Picking, talking about the process that you have, it wasn't. It's not dependent on the keywords. You have a process.

Right, Right. So our first step of the process is we begin to research to identify the highest volume, most relevant keywords for our client's product. Right. So you want to sell the Mario widget. We're going to try to find out what we're going to try to find out what the essence of this product is and identify not just keywords with high volume that are irrelevant because that'll hurt your score and hurt your ranking. We want to make sure they're highly relevant. It means that if people search for this and see our product, they're likely going to buy it. So we start by identifying those keywords. It could be six keywords, it could be 60 keywords. Mario, honestly, it really depends on the product level. Then once we've identified those, we go through those four different fields on Amazon. Product title, bullet points, Product Description, and then search terms and a couple of others. And let's say the main keyword is Mario's widget, Right? Let's say it's Mario's widget. So we're going to have the name, the keyword Mario widget in the product title and we're going to duplicate it in one of those other fields. And that's it. That's all you got to do. If whatever that high volume relevant keyword is, just make sure that it's located in more than one of those fields.

So when they're searching for it, it appears more.

So when you're searching for it, it appears more than just that one time. It might actually be showing up five, six or seven. And I'm just willing to bet if your competition only has it one, two or three, you're going to be above them because you have it in there more.

Well, you know, Mario, ironically, if you got two or three placements, you're good. It doesn't matter if somebody else has more. I've run through the numbers and we've tested this with our team. If you have more than two, if you do more than duplicate your keyword, there's no real value.

So two to three, they just want to make sure you're doing it professionally versus just slapping that this is relevant. Okay?

Yeah, exactly. They just want to make sure that you're, you're not only announcing it as your product, but you're describing it in your description.

Let me ask you about the reviews. How important are reviews on a product?

You know, reviews are really important. And sort of the method that I propose in the book is you have your own brand. You get a registered USPTO trademark, and there's a program called the IP Accelerator, which I describe in the book. That's a great way to get a trademark and get brand registry. So you can get brand registry where you are the authority for all of the content on Amazon for your brand. And that's, that's, you know, that's really important. Another benefit of this brand registry program is when you launch a new product, you can go out and give away, you know, Amazon will let you do this. You can give away up to 30 of your products through a Vine program and they will give those products away to real Amazon shoppers who will receive your product and leave what they claim is an unbiased review. Now you can't do that on your own, Mario, or you'll get suspended. But you can give away your product to Amazon buyers in exchange for 30 reviews. And look.

That'S the only way you should do reviews. That and the natural way, sell more product. If you do anything nefarious, if you, outside of this network, this vine network, you go out and you pay somebody, you give them a free product in exchange for a review and Amazon finds out not if, but when, they'll suspend you, they'll take down your listing, you have a couple of offenses and then you're done. You're done selling on Amazon and your privileges will be taken away long term. So, you know, I'm a big believer that reviews are important. They're not nearly as important part of that algorithm as Search Find Buy. But if you think about it, you're comparing a couple of products on a search results page, one's got 10,000 reviews, one's got 50. You know, you're probably going to take a look at the one with more reviews, you make it a higher click through rate. But if you've done everything right on your listing with the 50 and people click through and they see you've got this beautiful presentation, you tell them what's in it for them. You know, you're doing great benefits marketing and you sell it, you'll do just fine. And over time you'll go from 50 to 100 to 1,000 and you'll build up reviews naturally. So that's, I think that's the way to focus on reviews.

So I would never tell anyone to pay for reviews and have just, just random stuff on there and everything. But to have a better context, you're saying if you ever give anything away for free and ask for a review, they don't like that. But even, but even if you, but selling it and asking for a review, that's fine.

Yes, you can sell a product, people will pay full price for it or even, you know, on a sale price. And when they buy the product, if you ask them for a review, you can absolutely do that. You can do it within The Amazon channel. You can ask them one time and one time only. If you ask them more than once, your privileges for sending unsolicited messages to your, to your shopper will get revoked. So you can only do it once. So that first message, Mario, better be good. Please, you know, thanks for buying my product. Thanks for buying my book. Please let us know how you felt about the book by leaving us a review. Here's a link.

Interesting.

I didn't know you could message them.

It's very restrictive. You can through Amazon Seller Central. Through or through some. We use Feedback Genius. Another seller Labs product, which is great, but there's, there's a lot of others. Econ, Ecomengine and others.

And they don't want you spamming. Use their software system, just asking every three days or something.

Yeah, they will, they will shut you down. They will shut you down if you spam.

And again, I'd never advise that. But it's interesting because it's like there's these things here and I think maybe people don't talk about it because they obviously haven't done it as much as you have. And two, it's so restrictive. Like you're saying, maybe they just don't even bother with it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, this goes back to what we discussed earlier in the show, Mario, which is Amazon requires a different mindset. You know, if you sell your physical product to a brick and mortar store, you give them a price, you sell it to them, maybe you give them some markdown money, maybe you give them an ad budget or percentage of the sale, but that's it. The rest is on them. That's not the way it is on Amazon. Even if you're selling to Amazon versus the way I'm a proponent of selling on Amazon through Seller Central, you. This is a DIY platform. You have to do this yourself. Amazon is not your friend and they're not going to lift a finger to help you, but they will provide the tools for you to follow through and help yourself earn success on the platform. But you better not break the rules. If you break their rules, they'll kick you off the platform. And then you've just said goodbye to half of the online market share.

Wow, that's a great expert authority insight, because that is definitely a different mindset than, oh, they should be helping me this and that. But it's basically like, go in your corner and shut up. But you're still allowed to be here and you get access to our amazing audience.

Yeah, look, I've been waiting for Them to help me out for 20 years. Mario, it ain't going to happen.

Maybe next year, huh?

Maybe. I keep saying that every year. Maybe next year, maybe next year Amazon will reach out and help me grow businesses. But no, it doesn't happen. They're, they're, look, they're great. They're great. They got all the customers, they got the great technology, they got the supply chain, the delivery network and then the membership. 150 million prime subscribers, something like 126 million here in the United States. That is basically the entire buying public in the U.S.

That'S pretty awesome. So I have one more question for you before we go to the imperfect action round and thank our sponsor. And it is.

The wheel of whatever.

Is it going to land on yellow or black?

It's going to be yellow for sure. I'm just liking my odds with yellow.

There we go.

So my question for you is, my question for you is.

What is a brand you would love to work with that you haven't yet?

Nike. Nike. Let me set up your third party seller account and clean up that mess of Nike listings, that 60,000 strong mess of listings on Amazon. They famously abandoned Amazon because they didn't know.

It was worse than that. They didn't know that Amazon was a DIY platform. They made this big famous deal many years ago that Amazon was going to take care of them. Amazon lied to them, said they were going to take care of their brand, clean it up. They wouldn't do it because they didn't understand the platform. And then Nike said, we're done with Amazon, we are not going to sell on Amazon. But here's the thing. Pull up your phone right now and do a search on your prime app for Nike shoes. There's 60,000 some listings and they all look terrible. They're all awful. So if Nike had come to the table with a third party strategy, with the right law firm, with the right channel control plan, they could be crushing it on Amazon and protecting their brand integrity, their brand pricing, et cetera. And so yeah, give me a call. Nike. I'm waiting, I'm waiting anxiously by the phone.

Well, that is a great one. And I'm trying to think if I know of anyone that has any connections, but if I ever do cross paths, for sure, I'd love to help you with that. But.

I'm gonna retract what I said about maybe next year. If they're ignoring Nike.

With 60,000 products and I did not know this. Let's, let's give them the benefit of the Doubt. Maybe two or three years. What do you say?

Then they'll help everyone.

Three years. That's a good. That's a good bet, Mario.

That's more realistic. We like to ground our delusions in reality. All right, we're gonna thank our sponsor and come back with the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business. Book eight weeks. But you know what? Don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori. I went from having an idea and.

A possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author. Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody. I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world.

I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past.

It didn't serve me.

As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process.

Adele, if you're looking for an amazing.

Business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner.

I can't make a higher recommendation.

To.

Work with Mario Ficcini. He has been great for me and.

Right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now and I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free businessbook publishing course.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Jason, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Let's do it.

Mario, I got three questions for you. 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Fastest path to the profits would you've got to develop your own brand in today's day and age. Come up with your own brand, make it amazing, make it, you know, put all of your heart and soul into it and go direct to consumer. The days of distributor, the days of wholesale are over. Make your own brand, go direct to consumer.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it.

So many problems. How to narrow it down? Look, I would say, as it relates to my client base, which are folks with great brands, great products, looking to have success on Amazon. It's forgetting everything, you know, forgetting everything you know about the success you had on tv, the success you had selling to brick and mortar chains, because it requires an entirely new mindset. You're no longer selling to human beings. You're feeding the algorithm. And if you know that and you know how to lay the foundation.

You'Ll be a much, much happier business owner.

Number three.

What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Oh, gosh. Treat those customers better than you treat your wife. You know, the great thing about Amazon is the Amazon shoppers will tell you when something is wrong with your product. They will tell you in the form of reviews the best thing you can do. And look, a lot of brands, and I was guilty of this too, in the early days. Mario, this is your baby. Your product is your baby. You don't want anyone calling your baby ugly, right? But if you can set aside your ego and your feelings and just say, please, customers, tell me more about what I'm doing wrong. Identify it, take action to improve that in your product or service and then shout it from the rooftops. You will become a best in class in your category. You will become best in class in your services business as well. Listen to those customers. It's better than a focus group. These are people who paid real money for your stuff or for your product. Listen to them, make them happy. And you know there's a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when you do that.

It is a great expert authority insight. Thank you for sharing it. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority World?

Oh, boy, that's a good. Well, the Amazon Jungle. I mean, you're going to be on Amazon. You got to have that, right? That's the book of the hour, right? Now.

When I was back in the Marines before, when I was thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, I read Robert Kiyosaki's book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. If you're kind of out there, you're not in business yet, but you're thinking about making the leap. It's a great book to read. Just sort of get your feet wet in terms of what are the true benefits of being a business owner. Look, tax season's coming up, Mario. Having your own entity is a great way to go through tax season, right? There's a lot of expenses that you can run through the business et CETERA So look, Rich Dad, Poor dad does a great one. There's a book called Blue Ocean out there as well. Rick Cesare recommended that to me and I loved it. It talks about when you want to create a product, find something that's never been done before or find something that hasn't been done in quite the way that you're going to do it. And it's better than locking horns with big competitors who may be well funded. Find your niche, take care of your customer and grow from there. And the Blue Ocean is a great book to lay out how to do that.

Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing those. Where would you like people to learn more?

Well, you get, you know, your viewers, Mario. Feel free to reach out to me directly by email. Just Jason Jasonvenue the number7media.com that's also my website, avenue the number7media.com. You know, if you're thinking about getting started in the Amazon game or you're in the game and it's, you know, kicking your butt and you need some help, reach out and I'd be happy to help you out.

Excellent. Well, appreciate you sharing and it's been a pleasure having you on the show.

Thank you, Mario. It's an honor to be here. Thank you so much.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the Expert Authority Effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now, once again, that's freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. Also, be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.