September 12, 2025 • 12 mins
Helpful episodes to listen to first
The Safe Website Checklist Episodes
Episode summaryOne tool that can be useful to help you shop safely online for quality products is paying attention to brands. On the other hand, sometimes the brand doesn't matter much.
If you can look at a product and determine for yourself if it's well made, then brand doesn't matter so much. My daughter knows how to sew, so she can evaluate the quality of dresses, so when we bought a dress online recently, we didn't stress the brand.
Anytime I buy electronics, which is often, I care deeply about the brand. In large part because it is very difficult to gauge their quality quickly, even for a computer geek like me - it takes using them over a long period of time.
When you are on Amazon, and you are wondering if a brand is a good one, check to see if they have a website. Then, apply all the lessons you learned in episodes 70-74.
Also useful to ask when you are evaluating a brand on Amazon: are they mainly an amazon seller with their own website just to seem legitimate? Or, are they an independent seller that is trying to truly build a good brand, and just using Amazon to get more sales?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Super Simple Security Principles, where you learn how to think, not just what
to do.
I'm Nick Jackson.
I'm here to learn along with you from my good buddy, my Makani Mason, Master Guardian.
All right.
(00:22):
This episode is number 80.
Which brand should I buy?
All right.
Which brand should I buy?
Tell me.
Yeah.
What about that?
Which brand should I buy?
Well, so, right, well, this is a follow-up to episode 78.
(00:47):
I'm thinking, well, Brad, well, I can't give you one specific one, but that is the question
I asked, so it made me stumble.
That was good.
But we're not going to answer that.
We're going to help you answer that anyway.
Nice.
So, and this is kind of what we promised back in 78, just a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah.
Where related to those funky brands on Amazon.
(01:09):
Right.
So, it's somewhat Amazon focused, but not entirely.
But basically, it's how I use brands to help me shop safely online and especially at Amazon.
So, I want to start with a story though.
Okay.
So, this was earlier this year, I was buying some swim shoes.
(01:31):
I didn't even know what swim shoes were, but they're just these little things, you know, that you put in there.
They're good.
You could just put on and then, you know, you don't hurt your feet if you're walking on rocks or whatever.
Right.
So, yep.
But anyway, I hate, I hate shopping.
But when I do take the time to shop, I like to buy quality by default.
(01:52):
And looking for good brands, relying on good trusted brands is definitely one of the main ways that I do that.
So, I'm on Amazon, I'm looking for swim shoes.
And of course, like usual, I've seen lots of funky brands come up.
But of course, all the funky brands are the super cheap ones.
The more reputable looking brands are all like super expensive.
(02:15):
Right.
And so, I'm struggling because I don't want to spend a bunch on there.
But I also, it kind of goes against my reflexes and my wife's like, how many times are you going to use those?
Because this was my first, probably only cruise ever in my life that I needed them for.
So, I'm like, okay, all right, fair enough.
(02:39):
You know, and look, we can look at them.
I don't know if they're going to work for my one instance.
I won't be able to tell exactly if they're going to last me for years or whatever.
But I'll get, you can look at them and get kind of a feel for it.
So, this was a case where I was like, well, all right, we're going with the funky brand that's seven bucks or whatever.
(03:01):
Because I could evaluate it well enough.
So, this is a case where I ignored, I threw the brand out the window, whatever.
I just didn't care about the brand.
Okay.
So, I just wanted to start with that because there are cases where it doesn't matter that much.
You can just buy whatever's cheapest or whatever, especially if you can look at it and know if it's going to do the job for you.
(03:23):
And if not, then you can return it because Amazon is super good at with returns.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Story number two, though.
Yeah.
I know.
I can see your wheels turning.
Makani and his crazy shopping adventures.
So, my daughter, Rachel, she wanted to buy a dress for a particular thing.
(03:49):
And we discussed brand and she's like, no, I'm not worried about the brand, Dad, because even though that was my default, she's like, Dad, I can sew.
You know, and she can.
She's very good.
And so, she can get the dress and she can evaluate it very well.
I mean, I have no idea.
Is this good quality, whatever.
(04:10):
Yeah.
So, the strategy that she wanted to do and we did and it worked out really well was we ordered three of them.
She evaluated how they looked, their sewing quality, whatever factors, I don't even know everything that she was looking at.
And then she returned the two she didn't want.
Yeah.
Thankfully, one of the three was good enough.
And so, the reason why I share this story, too, it emphasizes the point, again, just like the first one, though, is one of the major reasons why you can not worry about brands in some cases,
(04:43):
is if you can evaluate the quality of the product yourself.
Yeah.
And so, that was kind of a revelation to me this year that, oh, yeah, like, that's a whole category I can just, okay, that's okay.
It doesn't matter.
And I imagine with, like, you talked about baseball equipment, right?
Probably the same thing.
(05:04):
You can probably evaluate baseball equipment very well yourself, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yep.
Okay.
So, but that leads to the next tips, which is electronics.
Okay?
Because this is a case where, unless you're like a really serious hardware engineer and you're going to put a lot of time and effort into it, normally you can't really evaluate electronics.
(05:29):
Right?
Yeah.
Right.
Not easily and quickly.
Obviously, you could see if they totally fail or different.
There's some level of valuation, but you can't really look at them in the same way as a non-electronic and evaluate how good of a quality they are.
Right.
Now, I'm a computer geek, of course, so I care about this even more than average.
(05:52):
But this is, electronics is a category where I really pay attention to brand.
Right.
And so, and I'm going to have a forum post.
I don't want to actually mention specific brands here because that can change or whatever, but I'm going to go into some of my favorite electronics brands on the forum.
Nice.
And, yeah.
(06:13):
So, definitely go and reference that and that'll be something I'm going to do ongoing with, just like with kind of product and service evaluations, I want to do some brand stuff as well.
And another case that I had where I was able to recently is I bought a bike pump and I was able to get it and that was one where I was, I wasn't sure about the whole evaluation, but I wanted, so I looked a little bit and I was able to find a Schwinn, which is obviously a very well-known bike brand.
(06:49):
Yep.
And we've only had it for a little while, but it's been really, really good so far.
Nice.
So, anyway, there's cases where, you know, brand is important, brand isn't.
Yep.
So, when brand is important though, then the question is, how do you know if it's a good brand?
(07:10):
Right.
And we've talked about this kind of in our shopping series, evaluating like a new website.
That's part of how I would go about evaluating a brand as well.
You go to, if they have a brand website, because if they don't have a brand website, then it's just one of these little funky one-off Amazon brands, whatever.
And even some of those have their own website, but you need to use all those same strategies that we talked about in evaluating a new shopping website.
(07:39):
Basically the same way for a new funky brand, just to give you, you can get more of a feel like how real they are.
And the basic idea is to explore it.
And the big question you want to answer though is, and see if this makes sense to you, Nick, but are they primarily an Amazon seller with a website on the side to make themselves more legitimate?
(08:06):
Or are they an independent brand seller that's trying to get more sales by also listing on Amazon?
Does that make sense?
That makes sense.
Okay.
That's kind of the main question I'm looking at when I'm evaluating a brand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
(08:31):
So, and so here's another story though.
I have, there's, this was a few years ago.
Um, cause I was looking at brand, uh, I was looking for some headphones, actually, these ones I, I wear now all the time.
But when I first saw them on Amazon, it was called aftershocks, but it's spelled, uh, after S H O K Z.
(08:54):
And miss misspellings kind of reflectively make me cringe, make me think, okay, is this legitimate?
Right.
Right.
Um, but then after more, more investigation, I saw there, they had a real website and I ended up buying from them.
(09:15):
I've actually bought several from them over the years and, um, been very, very happy with them, despite their kind of wacky name.
They're just called shocks now, not aftershocks.
But so anyway, that's, that's a case that worked out well for me.
And what I do actually is I buy them from their website directly to not Amazon.
(09:36):
So that's a bigger kind of other topic, but I like to, even though I use Amazon, I'd rather be a lot less dependent on it.
I don't want them to be as dominant as they are.
Competition is healthy.
Right.
Right.
My opinion.
So yeah, that's, yeah.
(10:01):
So that's, I guess getting back to the original question, how do I pick the right brand?
I think it's my recap.
I guess I actually, you better go first because yeah, I was going to get my takeaway on that kind of recapping.
Well, let's go with it.
You recap it and then I'll recap.
Okay.
Because I want to make sure, you know, like, did I really answer the question?
(10:23):
Like, how do I pick it?
And I guess the two main tips here are one, decide if you care about the brand or not.
Right.
Because if you can evaluate it, then maybe it doesn't matter too much.
And the second, if it is, if you do care about the brand, then make sure you take some time to evaluate the brand by looking at the website and all those other things that we've talked about in previous episodes.
(10:45):
And then I'm kind of, I guess my, my, my request is if you can support the brand directly off of Amazon, do that.
Yeah.
I like it.
I like it.
I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if I were to summarize it, I would have done it very different, but yours is perfect because I would have said, look, if you're worried about quality and the product itself, do your due diligence.
(11:20):
Look into it.
Find out.
Like we've said, we've given you lots of tips on how to do that.
Look back, see those tips, use those tips.
If brand matters, if it doesn't, well, at least make sure you do your due diligence on how you just spot a fake and go ahead.
You know?
(11:41):
So for me, that's how I would sum it up.
I love it.
Super simple.
And yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, my even then I'll add one more summary is be intentional about your brand selection.
Yeah.
Basically care about it or ignore it, but be intentional.
Be intentional.
I like it.
(12:02):
Okay.
Are you ready to take action and wondering where to start?
Get my Bulletproof My Identity Starter Kit for free.
The seven most vital layers of protection everyone needs.
I'll send you one step at a time and help you if you get stuck.
Just go to BulletproofMyID.com and enter your name and email and I will send you the first step.
(12:29):
Again, that's BulletproofMyID.com.
Welcome to Super Simple Security Principles, where you learn how to think, not just what
to do.
I'm Nick Jackson.
I'm here to learn along with you from my good buddy, my Makani Mason, Master Guardian.
All right.
(00:22):
This episode is number 80.
Which brand should I buy?
All right.
Which brand should I buy?
Tell me.
Yeah.
What about that?
Which brand should I buy?
Well, so, right, well, this is a follow-up to episode 78.
(00:47):
I'm thinking, well, Brad, well, I can't give you one specific one, but that is the question
I asked, so it made me stumble.
That was good.
But we're not going to answer that.
We're going to help you answer that anyway.
Nice.
So, and this is kind of what we promised back in 78, just a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah.
Where related to those funky brands on Amazon.
(01:09):
Right.
So, it's somewhat Amazon focused, but not entirely.
But basically, it's how I use brands to help me shop safely online and especially at Amazon.
So, I want to start with a story though.
Okay.
So, this was earlier this year, I was buying some swim shoes.
(01:31):
I didn't even know what swim shoes were, but they're just these little things, you know, that you put in there.
They're good.
You could just put on and then, you know, you don't hurt your feet if you're walking on rocks or whatever.
Right.
So, yep.
But anyway, I hate, I hate shopping.
But when I do take the time to shop, I like to buy quality by default.
(01:52):
And looking for good brands, relying on good trusted brands is definitely one of the main ways that I do that.
So, I'm on Amazon, I'm looking for swim shoes.
And of course, like usual, I've seen lots of funky brands come up.
But of course, all the funky brands are the super cheap ones.
The more reputable looking brands are all like super expensive.
(02:15):
Right.
And so, I'm struggling because I don't want to spend a bunch on there.
But I also, it kind of goes against my reflexes and my wife's like, how many times are you going to use those?
Because this was my first, probably only cruise ever in my life that I needed them for.
So, I'm like, okay, all right, fair enough.
(02:39):
You know, and look, we can look at them.
I don't know if they're going to work for my one instance.
I won't be able to tell exactly if they're going to last me for years or whatever.
But I'll get, you can look at them and get kind of a feel for it.
So, this was a case where I was like, well, all right, we're going with the funky brand that's seven bucks or whatever.
(03:01):
Because I could evaluate it well enough.
So, this is a case where I ignored, I threw the brand out the window, whatever.
I just didn't care about the brand.
Okay.
So, I just wanted to start with that because there are cases where it doesn't matter that much.
You can just buy whatever's cheapest or whatever, especially if you can look at it and know if it's going to do the job for you.
(03:23):
And if not, then you can return it because Amazon is super good at with returns.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Story number two, though.
Yeah.
I know.
I can see your wheels turning.
Makani and his crazy shopping adventures.
So, my daughter, Rachel, she wanted to buy a dress for a particular thing.
(03:49):
And we discussed brand and she's like, no, I'm not worried about the brand, Dad, because even though that was my default, she's like, Dad, I can sew.
You know, and she can.
She's very good.
And so, she can get the dress and she can evaluate it very well.
I mean, I have no idea.
Is this good quality, whatever.
(04:10):
Yeah.
So, the strategy that she wanted to do and we did and it worked out really well was we ordered three of them.
She evaluated how they looked, their sewing quality, whatever factors, I don't even know everything that she was looking at.
And then she returned the two she didn't want.
Yeah.
Thankfully, one of the three was good enough.
And so, the reason why I share this story, too, it emphasizes the point, again, just like the first one, though, is one of the major reasons why you can not worry about brands in some cases,
(04:43):
is if you can evaluate the quality of the product yourself.
Yeah.
And so, that was kind of a revelation to me this year that, oh, yeah, like, that's a whole category I can just, okay, that's okay.
It doesn't matter.
And I imagine with, like, you talked about baseball equipment, right?
Probably the same thing.
(05:04):
You can probably evaluate baseball equipment very well yourself, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yep.
Okay.
So, but that leads to the next tips, which is electronics.
Okay?
Because this is a case where, unless you're like a really serious hardware engineer and you're going to put a lot of time and effort into it, normally you can't really evaluate electronics.
(05:29):
Right?
Yeah.
Right.
Not easily and quickly.
Obviously, you could see if they totally fail or different.
There's some level of valuation, but you can't really look at them in the same way as a non-electronic and evaluate how good of a quality they are.
Right.
Now, I'm a computer geek, of course, so I care about this even more than average.
(05:52):
But this is, electronics is a category where I really pay attention to brand.
Right.
And so, and I'm going to have a forum post.
I don't want to actually mention specific brands here because that can change or whatever, but I'm going to go into some of my favorite electronics brands on the forum.
Nice.
And, yeah.
(06:13):
So, definitely go and reference that and that'll be something I'm going to do ongoing with, just like with kind of product and service evaluations, I want to do some brand stuff as well.
And another case that I had where I was able to recently is I bought a bike pump and I was able to get it and that was one where I was, I wasn't sure about the whole evaluation, but I wanted, so I looked a little bit and I was able to find a Schwinn, which is obviously a very well-known bike brand.
(06:49):
Yep.
And we've only had it for a little while, but it's been really, really good so far.
Nice.
So, anyway, there's cases where, you know, brand is important, brand isn't.
Yep.
So, when brand is important though, then the question is, how do you know if it's a good brand?
(07:10):
Right.
And we've talked about this kind of in our shopping series, evaluating like a new website.
That's part of how I would go about evaluating a brand as well.
You go to, if they have a brand website, because if they don't have a brand website, then it's just one of these little funky one-off Amazon brands, whatever.
And even some of those have their own website, but you need to use all those same strategies that we talked about in evaluating a new shopping website.
(07:39):
Basically the same way for a new funky brand, just to give you, you can get more of a feel like how real they are.
And the basic idea is to explore it.
And the big question you want to answer though is, and see if this makes sense to you, Nick, but are they primarily an Amazon seller with a website on the side to make themselves more legitimate?
(08:06):
Or are they an independent brand seller that's trying to get more sales by also listing on Amazon?
Does that make sense?
That makes sense.
Okay.
That's kind of the main question I'm looking at when I'm evaluating a brand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
(08:31):
So, and so here's another story though.
I have, there's, this was a few years ago.
Um, cause I was looking at brand, uh, I was looking for some headphones, actually, these ones I, I wear now all the time.
But when I first saw them on Amazon, it was called aftershocks, but it's spelled, uh, after S H O K Z.
(08:54):
And miss misspellings kind of reflectively make me cringe, make me think, okay, is this legitimate?
Right.
Right.
Um, but then after more, more investigation, I saw there, they had a real website and I ended up buying from them.
(09:15):
I've actually bought several from them over the years and, um, been very, very happy with them, despite their kind of wacky name.
They're just called shocks now, not aftershocks.
But so anyway, that's, that's a case that worked out well for me.
And what I do actually is I buy them from their website directly to not Amazon.
(09:36):
So that's a bigger kind of other topic, but I like to, even though I use Amazon, I'd rather be a lot less dependent on it.
I don't want them to be as dominant as they are.
Competition is healthy.
Right.
Right.
My opinion.
So yeah, that's, yeah.
(10:01):
So that's, I guess getting back to the original question, how do I pick the right brand?
I think it's my recap.
I guess I actually, you better go first because yeah, I was going to get my takeaway on that kind of recapping.
Well, let's go with it.
You recap it and then I'll recap.
Okay.
Because I want to make sure, you know, like, did I really answer the question?
(10:23):
Like, how do I pick it?
And I guess the two main tips here are one, decide if you care about the brand or not.
Right.
Because if you can evaluate it, then maybe it doesn't matter too much.
And the second, if it is, if you do care about the brand, then make sure you take some time to evaluate the brand by looking at the website and all those other things that we've talked about in previous episodes.
(10:45):
And then I'm kind of, I guess my, my, my request is if you can support the brand directly off of Amazon, do that.
Yeah.
I like it.
I like it.
I like it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if I were to summarize it, I would have done it very different, but yours is perfect because I would have said, look, if you're worried about quality and the product itself, do your due diligence.
(11:20):
Look into it.
Find out.
Like we've said, we've given you lots of tips on how to do that.
Look back, see those tips, use those tips.
If brand matters, if it doesn't, well, at least make sure you do your due diligence on how you just spot a fake and go ahead.
You know?
(11:41):
So for me, that's how I would sum it up.
I love it.
Super simple.
And yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, my even then I'll add one more summary is be intentional about your brand selection.
Yeah.
Basically care about it or ignore it, but be intentional.
Be intentional.
I like it.
(12:02):
Okay.
Are you ready to take action and wondering where to start?
Get my Bulletproof My Identity Starter Kit for free.
The seven most vital layers of protection everyone needs.
I'll send you one step at a time and help you if you get stuck.
Just go to BulletproofMyID.com and enter your name and email and I will send you the first step.
(12:29):
Again, that's BulletproofMyID.com.
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