Thriving in Chaos: Neil Twa on Strategic Business Growth, Global Trade Dynamics, and AI Optimization
February 25, 2025 • 40 mins
What if you could unlock the secrets to thriving amidst chaos in the ever-evolving business landscape? We welcome back Neil Twa, a seasoned entrepreneur with a wealth of experience in e-commerce and business growth, who left IBM to launch multiple successful brands. Neil shares his visionary outlook for 2025, offering a refreshing perspective on how economic changes like tariffs and supply chain dynamics present unique opportunities for strategic positioning and partnerships, especially on platforms like Amazon.
The episode dives into the complex world of trade and manufacturing strategies. Discover why outsourcing to China was driven by economic opportunities rather than blame, and how tariffs could serve as strategic tools for funding governmental systems instead of burdening citizens. Neil also reveals insightful strategies for avoiding direct competition with low-cost Chinese manufacturers, including negotiating tariffs to unlock profitability and access foreign markets. This conversation promises to enrich your understanding of global trade dynamics and prepare you for the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Neil also explores the transformative potential of AI tools in optimizing business operations. From negotiating with suppliers to creating compelling Amazon listings, AI is revolutionizing how entrepreneurs operate. Learn how tools like Prophecy are optimizing pricing strategies and expanding profit margins by analyzing PPC dynamics. Neil further emphasizes how AI can accelerate decision-making and streamline processes, allowing businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Finally, Neil offers a glimpse into his personal life, sharing his passion for gaming and technology, and the importance of maintaining a balanced mindset to focus on what truly drives revenue and success.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:20):
Ken Wilson.
Entrepreneurs David Shomer andKen Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast.
On today's episode, we have thepleasure of bringing Neil Twa
back on the show.
For those of you who missed it,neil was on the show on episode
243, where he dropped somemajor knowledge bombs as it
related to the world ofe-commerce and being an operator
.
For those of you who did notcatch that show, for the last 17
(00:47):
years, neil has beenconstructing businesses both
online and offline, afterdeparting his senior IBM role.
Since 2012, he's launchedfive-plus personal brands,
generated tens of millions inrevenue as eight-figure sellers
and has assisted in the growthof a thousand plus others
through consulting, coaching andmentoring, alongside his
(01:10):
partner Reed and their Voltageteam.
Neil, I mentioned before we hitrecord that you are now on an
elite list of second-time guests.
Congratulations and welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Thank you.
I feel honored Me myself and Iappreciate being the three on
the list.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Absolutely, absolutely.
So what's going on?
What's been the last time wetalked?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, dude.
Well, we have been shoot.
We've been busy buildingbusinesses, as you know.
We've been building brands.
We've been watching the aftereffects, as we're now January
February timeframe into 2025.
Can't believe we're in themiddle of February already, holy
crap.
It seems like we just ranthrough the holiday period,
which was pretty amazing.
I don't know about your guys'businesses, but there was
definitely a lot of buying goingon maybe emotional buying, I
(01:54):
don't know but there was a lotof buying going on this holiday
season and so now that it kindof came through January and we
analyzed numbers and we kind ofsaw what the potential of this
year is going to look like fornew and existing brands.
And now we're talking moreabout acquisitions and stuff and
where the economy is and justall the crap that's going on and
people talking about tariffsand Amazon, this and you know
the market, that and what willhappen with the 301 and Teemu
(02:16):
and all these other players inthe market of the econ world,
and thinking what's opportunity,while also making sure we
maintain the ship, because thewaves are a little weird right
now.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Absolutely so.
One thing I always really enjoytalking with you about is it, I
will mention you're anoptimistic person, you're a very
optimistic person, and theglass always seems to be half
full with you, and so what aresome things you're excited about
in 2025?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, I am, I'm optimistically pragmatic, okay,
I do see things for what theyare.
So that builds into therealistic aspect, which usually
is kind of blunt for most people.
But you know, I have that yeah,opportunistic side a little.
I see opportunity maybe whereothers don't.
I see disparate things and Isee, you know, a way to the
other side, where you know, mostpeople don't see through the
(03:12):
quagmire as much.
Maybe it's a gift, maybe it's aautistic thing, an ADHD thing,
who knows what, I don't know,but I just I see opportunity.
And so when I'm working mybusiness or working these things
, and so when I'm working mybusiness or working these things
, maybe I sound like Ioversimplify things or I make it
all sound like it's really easy.
You know, just push a fewbuttons and blah, blah, blah,
but that's.
You know, 17 years ofexperience talking, and with
(03:34):
that I see a forecast, I see anopportunity, I see things
changing in this first quarterof 2025.
And with all of this bit ofchallenge and chaos and
questions and tariffs, and youknow Trump and his
administration and the Dogething that's going on and what's
happening with our economy, andyou know egg prices being
ridiculous and, like you know,this ambiguity of fear and
concern.
I'm bullish that all of that isgoing to turn into a lot of
(04:10):
opportunity in this third andfourth quarter of this year and
with that we're positioning alot of things in our business
and acquisitions and our ownstrategic ventures and
partnerships, where we'repushing hard into the market to
gain market share with what Ibelieve is going to be kind of
just a situational change.
You can call it whatever youmight want to call it, but
whenever there is a bit of chaos, a disruption, a change that
positively or negatively impactspeople in a market or economy,
somebody makes money always andyou just have to figure out
(04:32):
where to position yourself.
And at this point it might feela little more risky because
you're like well, where do I go?
What do I do?
It could be as down as do Ikeep this job or do I keep
investing in my 401k?
Do I put money in the stockmarket?
Do I start my business now?
Do I wait on it?
Do I grow my business?
Do I spend more capital in mybusiness?
Do I buy more inventory?
Do I buy another business?
What do I do?
Like?
There's a lot of thatquestioning.
(04:54):
I keep hearing from peopleconstantly.
Maybe you get it too, and youknow I would the hedgehog space.
If you're not comfortable withrisk and change, that's fine.
Just realize that there arequite a few of us who believe
that this opportunity is goingto create quite a windfall in
(05:15):
the next year or two.
As it shakes down with, youknow, products and tariffs
causing change in supply chain,impacting certain vendors,
impacting certain competitors,impacting the realization that
if people are starting to payattention to more of the details
of what their government andbusinesses are doing, they're
going to come to the realizationthat Amazon, while 60% I saw
this morning 63% of third partysales are from vendors like us,
(05:39):
60% of that is made up byChinese sellers.
So how can you have the largestcompany in America that
generates the most onlinerevenue for physical products
owned by Americans, for Americanproducts being owned by a
majority of outside of ourcountry?
And you've got to.
There's an imbalance there thathas to be reconciled.
So when that changes, it'llcreate opportunity and, because
(06:00):
it's being exposed, light isbeing shined on it.
It has to change and to thispoint, it's been hiding, but
there have been a lot of thingshiding lately, as you've been
paying attention, I'm sure, andwondering even if you're on CNN
or NBC, I don't really care, Idon't watch any of that crap
myself.
Or you're just listening to theinterwebs, you're talking to
your friends.
You're like, well, what theheck is going on in the company?
Is Elon running the company?
(06:21):
Are they really finding themoney?
Is there really that much moneyactually disappearing from our
economy?
Like holy crap, are we going totake on Canada?
Like what does that do to oureconomic opportunities if Canada
becomes the 51st state of thecountry?
Greenland already said theywanted to.
Is that the 52nd one?
Like what the hell, dude?
Like it's just there's so muchgoing on.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
People.
I could see where people wouldjust sit down and their brains
would melt.
Yeah, it has been a very fastpace.
The yeah, uh, we're crazy.
And and I would say there havebeen more good things than bad
things for sure and, uh, youknow, as I look at the next four
years, I think, uh, those whoare involved in entrepreneurship
are are going to be put in abetter position than maybe they
have been in the past.
Well, it's change right.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Change is the word that you and I would explain
that in some capacity is goodwhen it's change for a good
purpose, not just change forchange sake.
And the question I have to lookat is say, is the change we're
seeing, is the upside potentialof that overarchingly going to
be good?
Even if I don't understandeverything that's happening
right now or why it's happening,could I at least perceive
(07:32):
forward that the outcome shouldbe good, regardless of who's
doing it?
And with all of the change Isee occurring, I'm going I think
the outcome is good.
I think it is questionable andwith any change, not everybody
likes change.
So they feel a bit of fear,they feel a little bit of panic.
I saw a lady on a video earlierpanicking because the $4,000 a
(07:54):
month she normally gets in foodstamps I don't know how in the
world she's getting $4,000 infood stamps.
He's gone Right Like wait, holdon who gets $4,000 a month.
That sounds like fraud.
I don't know the logic, I don'tknow the rules, but I'm just
common sense is like.
That sounds like who gets$4,000 a month at bootstamps.
There's something wrong withthat, yeah, so it's got to
change.
Like you get what I'm saying,Like it doesn't matter at the
(08:16):
end of the day, what exactly ishappening, that the language and
the outcome don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, yes, don't make sense.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yes, yes, I like that doesn't add up absolutely,
absolutely.
There's change, so change isn'tpositive for everybody yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So you mentioned tariffs.
Let's, let's chat about that.
And you know if I think of atypical amazon seller, china is
part of the equation generallyand you know, say what you want
about China.
If we isolate just tomanufacturing, they are very
(08:53):
good at it.
Now there is cheap Chinese crap.
I get where that that comesfrom.
But you know they have fifthand sixth generation
manufacturers.
They've been doing it a longtime and personally I've been to
China.
I've met with my, I've sat andbroke bread with my suppliers
and had pretty good things tosay about them.
(09:16):
But the tariffs change thingsand so I can tell you I have
made a pivot.
I have made a pivot to sourcingmore out of Taiwan and Pakistan
.
Now, curious, have you changed?
Your chess moves on the client?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So we got stuff out of Pakistan.
We've been talking to Taiwan.
I've got a guy on Monday who isin Thailand, who has access to
manufacturing for some of thethings we're looking at.
You know, most of our stuff isout of China as it is.
Anyways, we have a few productsand stuff that are made in
China and some, you know ourclients, but at the end of the
day, most of the stuff we'repivoting from has other places
(09:55):
to be built, other places to bemanufactured.
Some of the exclusivity ofmanufacturing and tooling in
China was done on purpose.
Right, it was done literally totake it out of the United
States, and it has been that wayfor a long time, through a lot
of geo and political andopportunity.
And I don't know, you can callit money laundering if you want
or whatever, but it pulled outof America and created a soul in
(10:17):
our manufacturing where wesimply couldn't provide, based
against inflation, the jobs thatwere required to keep the
buildings running and thetooling going, and it was, you
know, outsourced to China.
So you can blame the Chineseall you want, but they got the
opportunity that was given tothem and so they took it.
Who wouldn't right In reverse,america would have done the same
thing.
And so, at the end of the day,you know, I don't blame China
(10:38):
and everybody's like China'sevil.
What I blame is components ofChina and the people down below,
and I certainly won't domanufacturing with slave traders
and people who have childrenrunning under theft rates.
I blame that for that.
Put that where it is, you canfind that anywhere in the world.
At the end of the day, right.
So China just is anotherlocation.
Just treat it like such.
Go, go, look for a differentlocation to get your products
(10:58):
manufactured.
If tariffs are an issue, thenyou probably weren't paying
attention to the price point andopportunity of your business
and that may require you topivot out of brands or elevate
brand out of certain pricepoints.
So you don't compete with theChinese anymore.
And that's one of the things wespent the last six years doing
is moving most all of ourproduct base and elevating it
away from products that competewith China or could be competing
in Chinese manufacturing andtooling, and took them to a
(11:21):
place where the Chinesemanufacturers won't go, because
it doesn't make sense and theywon't manufacture at that level.
They're going to do the sub $20products and if you're in that
space, then yeah, you're goingto get your lunch eaten by them.
If you're in the 30, 40, 50plus in retail price point or
higher, then you're not going tosee them competing directly
with you.
So, and if they do, it's verylimited in its scope.
(11:42):
So, and if they do, it is verylimited in its scope.
Yeah, tariffs are.
In my opinion, as you look atthe constitutional law and go to
that side of the house, youknow, as a republic, tariffs
would be funding the government,not taxes.
So, as we go back to thatrealization that tariffs should
be focused on the GDP and theincome and the output of a
(12:04):
country, its gross domesticproduct, that's where the money
should be used to federal orgovernment, which means tariffs
and products would have beenhigher.
That means, if you go back intime, before inflation is what
it is, a 10 percent mortgage wasa good rate.
Right, a dollar twenty five ingas was a good rate because
that's what the price of gas wasrelative to a dollar.
Good rate because that's whatthe price of gas was relative to
(12:26):
a dollar.
Now that you have gone and seenthe dollar go down since 1913,
all the way down to like 20cents of value, closing in on
like 15 cents for a dollar value.
You see that of course,interest rates need to be at 3%
and gas has to be at $3, and soon and so forth, because it
makes up the difference in theimbalance.
And so you know, I think peoplejust need to go back and get an
economics lesson and understandthe benefit of this and then
(12:49):
adjust accordingly.
Because why I've never seen somany people fight to pay taxes
ever in my life.
I thought we were fighting ourway out of taxes.
That's right.
I thought the mission was theopposite side.
Now I see everybody screamingabout well, you can't take taxes
because they pay for thegovernment, and it's like, oh,
please, go get some history, goget an economics course, go
(13:11):
learn about a constitutionalrepublic, please, and stop
yelling about tariffs.
Tariffs are a cost of doingbusiness and they should be the
cost of businesses doingbusiness.
That's what was intended forbusinesses.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I like it.
I like it, I like it.
I like that response and I likeyour take on what tariffs are
and their purpose.
So I really like it.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
They're meant to power the government systems and
not by the people.
But the product of a domesticproduct is our output, of what
we provide and can borrow tosell good and trade with other
countries, and if we're doing agreat job of that, then, yeah,
there's going to be a cost ortariff.
What has happened is asignificant imbalance.
Did you know that cars are 30or 40% tariffs in China?
That's why we can't sell ourcars in China.
(13:52):
Huh, the imbalance has beenfairly imbalanced against
America for most all the othercountry producing nations in the
world, which is why our goodsand service and manufacturing
went down, because we can'tprovide them at a sellable rate
that makes them profitable inother countries.
I did not, I was not aware ofthat.
Yeah, so then you find out.
Well, with that occurring, ofcourse you've got to go back and
(14:14):
rebalance the tariffindifference, and so when you
negotiate from a businessposition, you take that position
of renegotiating the largestcost point that causes you to
lose profitability.
The same way, you would go to amanufacturer and say I need to
hit this landed cost of goods at35 or less or I can't use your
(14:34):
product, service andmanufacturing.
I'll go to another person.
If you can't hit it well, thesame way would happen with any
country.
You're going to go back to themand say, hey, your tariffs need
to be a 25% greater or you haveto balance your tariffs so that
we can sell our product backinto your country at greater
volumes.
It's a negotiation.
You have to understand what'shappening at the business level
(14:54):
and you understand how toappropriately manage it inside
of your Amazon seller accountand your TikTok shop and your
dropshipping or wherever else.
In fact, dropshipping isprobably a bad idea, but in any
of your sales channels you makeamends for the way you manage
the business.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, I really like that.
Why don't we turn the page andchat a little bit about AI and
we can trade some secrets?
I'll share with you what I'vebeen doing with AI but we'd love
to hear what you've been up toand how you're leveraging this
new tool you want me to startfirst, or you want to tell me
what you're?
(15:31):
doing yeah, so yeah, let me giveyou some hot takes.
So I, I love, I chad gpt isopen on my screen from the
moment I open my computer everymorning, does it say hello, good
day, david.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Welcome.
Remember how the computers wereused to talk to us in the
morning of it yeah, not yet, butmaybe someday.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Um and so a.
So I'll give a couple reallyspecific examples.
I was renegotiating with aChinese supplier.
They were trying to bump priceson me, and the point I wanted
to make was the yen relative tothe US dollar is appreciated,
and so the amount of actualmoney you're putting in your
pocket has gone up independentof your price jump.
(16:12):
You're putting in your pockethas gone up independent of your
price jump, and so I could havelooked at currency rates going
back to 2001 when I firstengaged with the factory, or I
could have plugged it intoChatGPT and had it come up with
a very well-worded analysis ofthe US dollar to the yen
relationship and how, in fact,they are getting paid more.
(16:36):
And so that is one way and justmore broadly, crafting emails
and things like that.
I've been using that as a tool.
Another thing I've seen a lot ofAI tools come on the scene, and
some of them good, some of thembad.
One of my favorites and I'vesaid this publicly, I had Chad
(16:57):
Rubin on the podcast is acompany called Prophecy.
Yep, prophecy is a pricetesting software for Amazon
sellers.
I have wanted this for a decade.
I have tried Splitly, avaguruProfitPeak.
I have tried Splitly AvaGuruProfitPeak.
The issue I always ran into wasas your price goes up,
(17:18):
presumably you would make moreprofit.
However, ppc gets moreexpensive and harder and there
tends to be a wash.
The opposite is true.
Price goes down, your profitscompress.
However, ppc gets a little biteasier as your conversion rates
go up.
This tool takes into accountwhat's going on in your PPC and
accounts for those movements,and so I have seen, on average,
(17:40):
between a 10% and 12% marginexpansion, and as an Amazon
seller, that is a huge win, andwhen I am looking at a piece of
software, I always ask myself isit going to return to me more
than I'm paying this vendor?
This one is a huge win, and I dothink there's advantages in
being an early adopter, becauseat some point, there's going to
(18:04):
be a flood of people using toolsthis tool or tools like this
and there's rewards for gettingto the party early, and so
that's a second way, and I thinkthe third thing I've been doing
is using it for systems andprocesses getting to a first
(18:30):
draft.
I don't think, in terms ofrunning my business, ai is not
better at it than me, but itjust makes me work faster.
I would liken it to maybe usingsteroids in baseball, where you
can hit the ball farther ifyou're juicing, and I'm trying
to feel like the truth doesn'tmake it right, it just makes it
true.
Right, yeah, this is legalsteroids and and I love it, I
love it, I love using it and Ilove it, I love it, I love using
(18:51):
it.
And so, yeah, those are likethree things that I'm using AI
for as we sit here talking inFebruary 25.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
What about?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
you.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That's great, dude.
I love that.
And you know, getting 10 to 15%back on your Amazon is.
I mean, if you're smart, youturn that right back into
budgets on your PPC and go buy abull market share or, you know,
take a little bit to the bottomline.
Of course, one way or another,it's not a bad thing.
That's cool.
Well, I mean, one of the thingsthat I'm always trying to solve,
of course, there's business andoptimization, which you talked
about, which is, of course,maximizing profitability and
(19:23):
operational costs, which isalways extremely important.
There's that growth and scaleaspect.
There's that startup aspect,and what I found usually is
they're very similar problems tosolve, both in the growth to
scale side as well as justgetting started, and it always
revolves around the what theheck do I actually sell?
And it ends up being like whatproduct lines do we develop at
(19:46):
the top end beyond the currentsuccessful SKUs we've had?
Or what the heck do I sell whenI'm an aspiring entrepreneur
and just getting going?
They seem to be, at times, verysimilar problems to solve in
these businesses.
So I focus a lot on that andone of the things we developed
is faster ways, using AI agents,to go out and acquire data,
combine data, analyze data andcompress down to the data-driven
(20:10):
aspect of a product selectionprocess, to the data-driven
aspect of a product selectionprocess and in our tool set,
having all this data and yearsof experience in our green light
process to evaluate anddetermine what the heck we
should sell.
With agents and AI, we've beenable to compress faster, we've
been able to get access to moredata quickly.
We've been able to use productopportunity explorer and
category data now to createdifferent touch points of true
(20:33):
data points based on thatinformation and kind of really
got a picture to allow thisagent to be smart enough to come
back and tell us these are thetop products by category, by
node, by customer need.
That then ties into thisspecific intent and intent based
aspect of what the actual AIengine is starting to do now
inside of Amazon's ecosystem andby proxy.
(20:54):
I'm going to believe this hashappened with other algorithms
that are churning, like TikTokand others, that literally just
say like you know a beacon, likehere's your green light, here's
your product, go here, this iswhat the need is, this is what
the demand for that needactually looks like from a true
data perspective.
And then here are the productsor product that actually matches
(21:18):
that demand right now, and thenthis is the one you need to go
test.
So it kind of inverts the wholeprocess of product selection
from typical data mining andthen product selection and then
product and data analysis andthen do I launch it.
We've actually inverted thatprocess and gone after the need,
and AI tool sets and data havenow helped us do that much
faster.
And then once we get that dataand it says, go test this
(21:40):
product and I determine landedgoods, then I take it to an AI
agent that we've developed andthese aren't public yet.
They're going to be this yearbut this one particular goes out
and says what do you think thisfocus group act like a focus
group of people who are stillbuying on Amazon, have this
demographic, have this intent,have this ability to purchase,
(22:01):
et cetera, and then give me asummary profile of that, like a
case study of feedback it woulddo and tell me which of this
product type, data informationand conversion and graphics you
would buy and then tell me howto build that.
And so we have this listingoptimizer now that takes that
data from the engine of theproduct and then goes in and
then basically spits out a wholelisting of information prompts,
(22:24):
what they should look like atthe graphic level, how to copy
and conversion should look andwhich one was the highest rated
from the focus group.
And we took this process andactually went out to physical
groups that we had usedpreviously and compared the two
and then came back with fivedifferent brands of information
and it was 99% accurate on theagent every time.
(22:45):
So we stopped going to thephysical focus groups.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I blew it away when we saw that happening.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I had a light bulb go off mid mid.
Answer.
And you, one thing that takesme a long time is communicating
with my videographer on what Iwant included in my 52nd 52nd
Amazon video.
And you know, being able to,you know, highlight the primary
pain point in the first 10seconds would be great.
(23:16):
Um, you know, ordering ofinfographics, things like that.
What are the number oneunanswered questions?
I think that could really speedup communication and improve
communication with your listingcopywriters, with your image
editors, with your videographersand so what if AI just did that
(23:37):
for you?
Yeah, well, I said that's aninteresting topic.
Let's dive into that.
And this is something I thinkas an entrepreneur that has
employees, this is somethingthat can be somewhat scary.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, it could be.
I don't have an employee thatdoes the listing that way.
We deployed a tactic by which wecombined information and what
we call a composite listingprocess, by which the listing
presented itself from the datathat was given by the tool.
We just took that and massagedit and gave it to an agent
instead and fed it moreinformation and then it became
(24:13):
the copyright listing writer andit basically told us exactly
how to build the listing andthen use a virtual focus group
to say which version of thelisting I believe would be the
highest converting based on thatfeedback.
And we took that and then wewent out to an actual group and
said which one of these listingcopy graphics would you buy from
and which one you wouldn't buyfrom, and every time the agent
(24:34):
was right.
So, in other words, no oneneeds to write the listing for
us anymore, no one needs topresent how the images and
graphics are going to be done,because I have the copy for it
and we give it to thephotographer and he just
literally follows the imagescript, takes the photos and
gives it back to the editor, whothen massages the product and
we have a listing ready or sizeof the graphics and we have a
listing ready to go.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's.
I really like the idea of thatand I have not just personally
speaking, I have not gotten to.
It sounds like your process isgetting you to a final draft and
I think my process currently isgetting me to a draft one.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah getting me closer to a final draft so that
when I do the market test, I'mas close to what I believe.
The audience and intent keywordis building a narrative, a
lexicon and a taxonomy ofinformation around that listing
to determine how the agent Rufusand Cosmo are going to display
(25:37):
it in a ranking methodologywithin Amazon.
Most people aren't even talkingabout this.
They don't even understand ityet.
They're behind the eight ball.
They're two miles back.
If you're not even thinking ordoing this right now, you're
going to find that as theranking engine is changing
towards an AI-driven narrative,down to your graphics and what
they actually say and read as incustomer-intended outcome,
(25:59):
you're going to be behind theeight ball.
You're going to watch yourconversions go down when others
figure it out in your marketshare and start eating your
market share because the engineis going to start pervuring
their narrative to what thecustomers want and intent and
you're not describing thatbecause you're still back in
keyword land.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's a hot take that people should rewind,
unless they should really payattention to this right.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, we're building all of our innovation systems
towards that, changing all theway we think about customer
relationship with product andintent, and then backing that
into demand right with the data.
And then the data basicallytells us, based on customer
intent and demand, this is theproducts you should actually
test.
We take the listing copyinformation, we go test the
(26:38):
products and then whichever oneresponds most positively from
the engine is the one thatusually is ending up being the
one the ai said would be theright one, because basically
what we're talking about isengine to engine communication.
It it's AI to AI talking.
Yeah, yeah, I, I it's a littlehuman out of the equation.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I really like it.
So what is that from?
Like a staffing team, from astaffing and team standpoint One
?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
operator can take care of that.
You don't need a listingcreator.
We have a graphics and listingimage person who basically gets
the output of that, can read thelisting and creative, see the
way the images should be prompt,build the listing images using
ai or photoshop or illustrationand combination and then produce
the images and we have alisting that's ready to go to
market with like 99 confidence.
(27:24):
It's intended to tell theengine that we match the
customer need for that productbecause it's all data driven
right.
Yeah, yeah, so it's verytwo-stepped.
We have literally two people inthe step.
We have a third one.
If we want to, if we want to doa higher end product, we're
going to go and get a photoshoot done, but we're literally
taking the engine and copy thatthe operator took out and giving
(27:46):
it to those two individuals forphotos and then post-production
and then the listing is doneokay, okay, on the AI-created
images, is that I have heard,and it's been anecdotally.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I haven't seen any data behind this, but Amazon is
punishing AI-generated images.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
No, that's a rumor.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
No, any more than Photoshopped images were
punishing people who arebestsellers now and you know
they're bestsellers withPhotoshopped images, right?
Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely, yeahso that's a misnomer, a myth,
an idea that you know mine's notconverting.
So the system must be doingthis and it's not actually
happening.
Okay, Truthfully, the higherquality of the image, the higher
quality of Always.
Take actual photos of yourproducts.
(28:31):
Now you can use AI to put themin different environments right,
and with hyper-realisticprompting and stuff, you can put
an actual, real, photographed,nice image into a background or
use case.
That's done by AI.
Now that looks really good,right, no different than
somebody messing with it in thefield.
But we will typically AI imagesslightly differently in an after
(28:53):
effect, not the primary, If youwant to really put a good
production down.
We take high resolution, actualphotographs where we have a
photographer take those picturesand then AI kind of cleans them
up and changes them.
But really, at the end of theday, what's the most important
thing about what I said?
Will the AI actually read theimage and interpret exactly
what's happening in that imageand will it do it accurately?
(29:16):
And if it does not, that's theproblem I have to fix.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah Right, whether I photoshopped it, took a picture
of it or whatever I did withthat image, okay, it's more
important that the AI is able tounderstand what that image
actually says and is doing,because the whole thing is
changing.
Yeah Right, ai listings arecoming now that there's a beta
version of the AI flat file toolcoming out, which is intended
(29:42):
to basically make it easier toget data that translates
backwards into Cosmo and intoRufus, because when they're
putting it up in flat files it'sstill search related, it's
still search term related, it isstill based on human interface
machine language learningstructures of the original
algorithm, but it's not based onthe latent semantic and intent
(30:03):
based engine that is Cosmo andRufus.
So they're actually rolling outa beta version of their listing
to help people get the data incorrectly, so it will be read
correctly by the AI systems.
And you can already do thatbecause that's how it's changing
.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
That's it.
So you're using let me makesure I heard that correctly.
So you would like upload acategory listing report and have
AI optimize it?
Fill in all of the empty cellswhere there should be.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
In other words, ai is going to fill in the gaps that
most people are missing, inorder to make it more, to speak
more to the current engine thatis running the backend right now
and is actually going to berunning probably all of the
systems by next year.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Is there a specific tool that you're using for that?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
So it's coming, it's in beta.
It's going to be their AI flatfile uploading thing.
There's going to.
It looks like they're going totry to make Excel obsolete
altogether, and so now it's justa matter of you being able to
go into AI systems like chat,gtp or other tools and say does
this actually explain what myproduct and value is?
Yeah, do my images actuallyexplain what the product value
(31:07):
is?
Because you're you're primingthe engine now as an AI to AI
system, right, and so the lastpart of that is you know what is
going to happen next.
Okay, is that PPC driven,keyword based searches for the
PPC site is going to have tochange.
It's coming, not there yet, butit's going to have to come.
(31:29):
You understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, because once they get toa point where they know the data
better than you, because it'sin their system, it's
voluntarily given up by thecustomers through purchase
orders and through their creditcard information, unlike
Facebook, which got totallytagged with this because they
were capturing it incorrectlyand they got sued and they had
to stop with interest-basedtargeting and people interest
(31:50):
targeting because they hadthird-party data they were using
.
Amazon has all first party data, so, with that and you giving
them their information.
They're not going to need youto tell them which keywords to
target in the coming systems.
You see how this is going toplay out, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I see what you're saying Going back to.
I need you to be my therapistfor a minute.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Let's couch the topic man.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Uploading a category listing report to GPT and having
it optimized and then uploadingit to Amazon particularly with
some of my brands that have likea couple hundred SKUs gives me
extreme anxiety.
I've had flat file disasters.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Flat file.
Anxiety is a real thing.
It's like range anxiety in aTesla For Amazon sellers.
It really is.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, and so that will be something.
I will maybe be a little lateto the party on that, just
because of maybe some previousPartial, partial updates.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
The concern that people jack up usually is they
do a full update on theirlistings and they jack up their
entire listing, and that's amistake an amateur will make.
But always do a partial update.
Never let Amazon force a fullupdate or you will jack with
your listings.
Any other things that can easemy anxiety on, because this is
something I know I need to donot much you need to start
(33:13):
thinking about the way yourproduct fits a customer need and
then your language, copy,graphics and intent need to
start slowly moving towards therealization that it's filling a
need.
It isn't a search term Ifsomeone's looking for a heavy
duty jacket.
Why?
What was the intent of that?
Because the engine is now goingto be looking at the intent and
(33:36):
then trying to match productintent with customer behavior.
Could be literally that you aregoing to go on a ski trip and
go.
You've been purchasingparticular tools for your ski
trip and you haven't actuallypurchased a jacket.
And so then it pops up and sayshey, you should have this down
jacket that's rated for negative20.
And you're like oh yeah, I needa jacket.
Click.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah.
Now that shift from keywords tointent, I think is going to be
us, as operators, are reallygoing to need to kind of reframe
how we're thinking about thingsand since I've been in the game
, it's been a keyword game.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And keywords are going away, brother.
Yeah, customer need is the nameof the game and, as I said,
you're going to be part of alaunch here soon where I'm going
to launch this particular toolset into the world, which is
going to blow away most of thedata sets out there, because it
is need intent based what thehell do I sell?
Backed into demand thatactually backs into target
products, and with that we willbe shifting the way everybody
(34:36):
thinks about data and analyticsand running successful
businesses, and that will go forthe existing entrepreneur on
Amazon selling products and thebrand new person who wants to
keep going.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Absolutely.
I love it and I'm excited.
I'm excited for that grandunveiling.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
So Yep, it's coming Been a long time in the process,
but Amazon itself is movingthat way, and if you aren't
paying attention to that, juston your own right now, pay
attention to it If you don'tunderstand it at all you better
gear, because there are othersellers that already are.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Absolutely yeah, all right.
Well, before we wrap up theepisode, I would like to turn
our attention to the fire round.
This is four questions that weask everybody at the end of the
episode Are you ready for thefire round?
Yes, yes, no yes, all right,here we go.
What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Feel the Fear and Do it Anyways.
By Susan Jeffries.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Lovely.
I need to add that to myreading list.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I would trump that with Bible, sorry God.
But then I would say veryclosely would be, which is also
Do Not Fear.
360 times in the Bible, 365,excuse me, there you go, feel
the Fear and Do it Anyways.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
What are your hobbies ?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
What are my hobbies?
Well, I geek out on technology.
I geek out on, you know,learning new things and testing
new things.
And I have a closet gameaddiction where I play Call of
Duty on my mobile phone todecompress.
When everybody's asleep and thewife finally falls asleep at 11
o'clock, I might be foundplaying Call of Duty mobile for
an hour or two justdecompressing my brain.
(36:05):
So that's become a bit of ahobby.
But we also have an operationalhomestead, so I'm always busy
out here doing something on thehomestead which keeps me busy.
And of course I always have apassion for business.
It is almost a hobby of mine,along with something I do, so to
me it never gets boring, it'salways fun and there's always
something new to do.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Absolutely.
Uh, what is one thing you donot miss about working for the
man?
Speaker 3 (36:30):
One thing I do not miss about working for the man
yeah, wow, can I Just one?
My brain starts crashing into amillion answers.
One thing I do not like In myworld at that point I would say
no longer getting on an airplaneagree, agree, especially if
(36:51):
you're a family man well,especially if you're a family
man, and it just especially ifyou uh yeah, well, that's the
best way to put it yeah, beingtaken away from my family.
Yeah, yeah, I haven't beenanymore and getting on the the
what uh felt like a air bus withchickens and goats and people
hanging off the side of it allthe time I was like I agree, I
(37:11):
don't miss that either.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
All right, final fire round question.
All right, lay it on me.
What is one thing that setsapart successful entrepreneurs
from those who give up, fail ornever get started?
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Personal coping mechanisms.
I like it your ability to getout of headspace, out of mind,
out of competition with others,out of the big scarcity and
turning into more of abundantthinking and then being able to
purposely drive that forward foryourself and others.
It's a typical problem.
Many entrepreneurs have to feelthat there's a fear of failure,
(37:49):
a fear of FOMO.
I could do something better,I'm not doing enough.
There's this constant push wepush on ourselves and I think
building a series of healthycoping mechanisms, whatever it
is that helps you decompressfrom those things, is extremely
important to focus on the rightactivities, the actual revenue
generating activities, and tryto shut off all the other
nonsense you think you should bedoing because you saw someone
(38:12):
else maybe have success with itor whatever, and then just focus
on the things you know you needto be doing.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I love it.
I love it, Neil.
It was outstanding to talk toyou today and to catch up.
If people are interested ingetting in touch with you,
what's the best way?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
VoltageDMcom.
Voltagedimmarketingcom.
You guys can check it out.
There's a book to check outover there if you want to grab
an instant digital copy of it ora paperback and learn more
about what we're doing and theprocesses by which we figure out
what the hell to sell and turnit into a going concern in a big
business.
Maybe a life generationalchange, who knows?
Maybe an exit opportunity.
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a
show for anyone who wants to betheir own boss.
If you sit in a cubicle everyday and know you are capable of
more, then join us.
This show will help you build abusiness and grow your passive
income streams in just a fewshort hours per day.
And now your hosts serialentrepreneurs David Shomer and
(00:20):
Ken Wilson.
Entrepreneurs David Shomer andKen Wilson.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast.
On today's episode, we have thepleasure of bringing Neil Twa
back on the show.
For those of you who missed it,neil was on the show on episode
243, where he dropped somemajor knowledge bombs as it
related to the world ofe-commerce and being an operator
.
For those of you who did notcatch that show, for the last 17
(00:47):
years, neil has beenconstructing businesses both
online and offline, afterdeparting his senior IBM role.
Since 2012, he's launchedfive-plus personal brands,
generated tens of millions inrevenue as eight-figure sellers
and has assisted in the growthof a thousand plus others
through consulting, coaching andmentoring, alongside his
(01:10):
partner Reed and their Voltageteam.
Neil, I mentioned before we hitrecord that you are now on an
elite list of second-time guests.
Congratulations and welcome.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Thank you.
I feel honored Me myself and Iappreciate being the three on
the list.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Absolutely, absolutely.
So what's going on?
What's been the last time wetalked?
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, dude.
Well, we have been shoot.
We've been busy buildingbusinesses, as you know.
We've been building brands.
We've been watching the aftereffects, as we're now January
February timeframe into 2025.
Can't believe we're in themiddle of February already, holy
crap.
It seems like we just ranthrough the holiday period,
which was pretty amazing.
I don't know about your guys'businesses, but there was
definitely a lot of buying goingon maybe emotional buying, I
(01:54):
don't know but there was a lotof buying going on this holiday
season and so now that it kindof came through January and we
analyzed numbers and we kind ofsaw what the potential of this
year is going to look like fornew and existing brands.
And now we're talking moreabout acquisitions and stuff and
where the economy is and justall the crap that's going on and
people talking about tariffsand Amazon, this and you know
the market, that and what willhappen with the 301 and Teemu
(02:16):
and all these other players inthe market of the econ world,
and thinking what's opportunity,while also making sure we
maintain the ship, because thewaves are a little weird right
now.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Absolutely so.
One thing I always really enjoytalking with you about is it, I
will mention you're anoptimistic person, you're a very
optimistic person, and theglass always seems to be half
full with you, and so what aresome things you're excited about
in 2025?
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, I am, I'm optimistically pragmatic, okay,
I do see things for what theyare.
So that builds into therealistic aspect, which usually
is kind of blunt for most people.
But you know, I have that yeah,opportunistic side a little.
I see opportunity maybe whereothers don't.
I see disparate things and Isee, you know, a way to the
other side, where you know, mostpeople don't see through the
(03:12):
quagmire as much.
Maybe it's a gift, maybe it's aautistic thing, an ADHD thing,
who knows what, I don't know,but I just I see opportunity.
And so when I'm working mybusiness or working these things
, and so when I'm working mybusiness or working these things
, maybe I sound like Ioversimplify things or I make it
all sound like it's really easy.
You know, just push a fewbuttons and blah, blah, blah,
but that's.
You know, 17 years ofexperience talking, and with
(03:34):
that I see a forecast, I see anopportunity, I see things
changing in this first quarterof 2025.
And with all of this bit ofchallenge and chaos and
questions and tariffs, and youknow Trump and his
administration and the Dogething that's going on and what's
happening with our economy, andyou know egg prices being
ridiculous and, like you know,this ambiguity of fear and
concern.
I'm bullish that all of that isgoing to turn into a lot of
(04:10):
opportunity in this third andfourth quarter of this year and
with that we're positioning alot of things in our business
and acquisitions and our ownstrategic ventures and
partnerships, where we'repushing hard into the market to
gain market share with what Ibelieve is going to be kind of
just a situational change.
You can call it whatever youmight want to call it, but
whenever there is a bit of chaos, a disruption, a change that
positively or negatively impactspeople in a market or economy,
somebody makes money always andyou just have to figure out
(04:32):
where to position yourself.
And at this point it might feela little more risky because
you're like well, where do I go?
What do I do?
It could be as down as do Ikeep this job or do I keep
investing in my 401k?
Do I put money in the stockmarket?
Do I start my business now?
Do I wait on it?
Do I grow my business?
Do I spend more capital in mybusiness?
Do I buy more inventory?
Do I buy another business?
What do I do?
Like?
There's a lot of thatquestioning.
(04:54):
I keep hearing from peopleconstantly.
Maybe you get it too, and youknow I would the hedgehog space.
If you're not comfortable withrisk and change, that's fine.
Just realize that there arequite a few of us who believe
that this opportunity is goingto create quite a windfall in
(05:15):
the next year or two.
As it shakes down with, youknow, products and tariffs
causing change in supply chain,impacting certain vendors,
impacting certain competitors,impacting the realization that
if people are starting to payattention to more of the details
of what their government andbusinesses are doing, they're
going to come to the realizationthat Amazon, while 60% I saw
this morning 63% of third partysales are from vendors like us,
(05:39):
60% of that is made up byChinese sellers.
So how can you have the largestcompany in America that
generates the most onlinerevenue for physical products
owned by Americans, for Americanproducts being owned by a
majority of outside of ourcountry?
And you've got to.
There's an imbalance there thathas to be reconciled.
So when that changes, it'llcreate opportunity and, because
(06:00):
it's being exposed, light isbeing shined on it.
It has to change and to thispoint, it's been hiding, but
there have been a lot of thingshiding lately, as you've been
paying attention, I'm sure, andwondering even if you're on CNN
or NBC, I don't really care, Idon't watch any of that crap
myself.
Or you're just listening to theinterwebs, you're talking to
your friends.
You're like, well, what theheck is going on in the company?
Is Elon running the company?
(06:21):
Are they really finding themoney?
Is there really that much moneyactually disappearing from our
economy?
Like holy crap, are we going totake on Canada?
Like what does that do to oureconomic opportunities if Canada
becomes the 51st state of thecountry?
Greenland already said theywanted to.
Is that the 52nd one?
Like what the hell, dude?
Like it's just there's so muchgoing on.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
People.
I could see where people wouldjust sit down and their brains
would melt.
Yeah, it has been a very fastpace.
The yeah, uh, we're crazy.
And and I would say there havebeen more good things than bad
things for sure and, uh, youknow, as I look at the next four
years, I think, uh, those whoare involved in entrepreneurship
are are going to be put in abetter position than maybe they
have been in the past.
Well, it's change right.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Change is the word that you and I would explain
that in some capacity is goodwhen it's change for a good
purpose, not just change forchange sake.
And the question I have to lookat is say, is the change we're
seeing, is the upside potentialof that overarchingly going to
be good?
Even if I don't understandeverything that's happening
right now or why it's happening,could I at least perceive
(07:32):
forward that the outcome shouldbe good, regardless of who's
doing it?
And with all of the change Isee occurring, I'm going I think
the outcome is good.
I think it is questionable andwith any change, not everybody
likes change.
So they feel a bit of fear,they feel a little bit of panic.
I saw a lady on a video earlierpanicking because the $4,000 a
(07:54):
month she normally gets in foodstamps I don't know how in the
world she's getting $4,000 infood stamps.
He's gone Right Like wait, holdon who gets $4,000 a month.
That sounds like fraud.
I don't know the logic, I don'tknow the rules, but I'm just
common sense is like.
That sounds like who gets$4,000 a month at bootstamps.
There's something wrong withthat, yeah, so it's got to
change.
Like you get what I'm saying,Like it doesn't matter at the
(08:16):
end of the day, what exactly ishappening, that the language and
the outcome don't make sense.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yes, yes, don't make sense.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Yes, yes, I like that doesn't add up absolutely,
absolutely.
There's change, so change isn'tpositive for everybody yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So you mentioned tariffs.
Let's, let's chat about that.
And you know if I think of atypical amazon seller, china is
part of the equation generallyand you know, say what you want
about China.
If we isolate just tomanufacturing, they are very
(08:53):
good at it.
Now there is cheap Chinese crap.
I get where that that comesfrom.
But you know they have fifthand sixth generation
manufacturers.
They've been doing it a longtime and personally I've been to
China.
I've met with my, I've sat andbroke bread with my suppliers
and had pretty good things tosay about them.
(09:16):
But the tariffs change thingsand so I can tell you I have
made a pivot.
I have made a pivot to sourcingmore out of Taiwan and Pakistan
.
Now, curious, have you changed?
Your chess moves on the client?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
So we got stuff out of Pakistan.
We've been talking to Taiwan.
I've got a guy on Monday who isin Thailand, who has access to
manufacturing for some of thethings we're looking at.
You know, most of our stuff isout of China as it is.
Anyways, we have a few productsand stuff that are made in
China and some, you know ourclients, but at the end of the
day, most of the stuff we'repivoting from has other places
(09:55):
to be built, other places to bemanufactured.
Some of the exclusivity ofmanufacturing and tooling in
China was done on purpose.
Right, it was done literally totake it out of the United
States, and it has been that wayfor a long time, through a lot
of geo and political andopportunity.
And I don't know, you can callit money laundering if you want
or whatever, but it pulled outof America and created a soul in
(10:17):
our manufacturing where wesimply couldn't provide, based
against inflation, the jobs thatwere required to keep the
buildings running and thetooling going, and it was, you
know, outsourced to China.
So you can blame the Chineseall you want, but they got the
opportunity that was given tothem and so they took it.
Who wouldn't right In reverse,america would have done the same
thing.
And so, at the end of the day,you know, I don't blame China
(10:38):
and everybody's like China'sevil.
What I blame is components ofChina and the people down below,
and I certainly won't domanufacturing with slave traders
and people who have childrenrunning under theft rates.
I blame that for that.
Put that where it is, you canfind that anywhere in the world.
At the end of the day, right.
So China just is anotherlocation.
Just treat it like such.
Go, go, look for a differentlocation to get your products
(10:58):
manufactured.
If tariffs are an issue, thenyou probably weren't paying
attention to the price point andopportunity of your business
and that may require you topivot out of brands or elevate
brand out of certain pricepoints.
So you don't compete with theChinese anymore.
And that's one of the things wespent the last six years doing
is moving most all of ourproduct base and elevating it
away from products that competewith China or could be competing
in Chinese manufacturing andtooling, and took them to a
(11:21):
place where the Chinesemanufacturers won't go, because
it doesn't make sense and theywon't manufacture at that level.
They're going to do the sub $20products and if you're in that
space, then yeah, you're goingto get your lunch eaten by them.
If you're in the 30, 40, 50plus in retail price point or
higher, then you're not going tosee them competing directly
with you.
So, and if they do, it's verylimited in its scope.
(11:42):
So, and if they do, it is verylimited in its scope.
Yeah, tariffs are.
In my opinion, as you look atthe constitutional law and go to
that side of the house, youknow, as a republic, tariffs
would be funding the government,not taxes.
So, as we go back to thatrealization that tariffs should
be focused on the GDP and theincome and the output of a
(12:04):
country, its gross domesticproduct, that's where the money
should be used to federal orgovernment, which means tariffs
and products would have beenhigher.
That means, if you go back intime, before inflation is what
it is, a 10 percent mortgage wasa good rate.
Right, a dollar twenty five ingas was a good rate because
that's what the price of gas wasrelative to a dollar.
Good rate because that's whatthe price of gas was relative to
(12:26):
a dollar.
Now that you have gone and seenthe dollar go down since 1913,
all the way down to like 20cents of value, closing in on
like 15 cents for a dollar value.
You see that of course,interest rates need to be at 3%
and gas has to be at $3, and soon and so forth, because it
makes up the difference in theimbalance.
And so you know, I think peoplejust need to go back and get an
economics lesson and understandthe benefit of this and then
(12:49):
adjust accordingly.
Because why I've never seen somany people fight to pay taxes
ever in my life.
I thought we were fighting ourway out of taxes.
That's right.
I thought the mission was theopposite side.
Now I see everybody screamingabout well, you can't take taxes
because they pay for thegovernment, and it's like, oh,
please, go get some history, goget an economics course, go
(13:11):
learn about a constitutionalrepublic, please, and stop
yelling about tariffs.
Tariffs are a cost of doingbusiness and they should be the
cost of businesses doingbusiness.
That's what was intended forbusinesses.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
I like it.
I like it, I like it.
I like that response and I likeyour take on what tariffs are
and their purpose.
So I really like it.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
They're meant to power the government systems and
not by the people.
But the product of a domesticproduct is our output, of what
we provide and can borrow tosell good and trade with other
countries, and if we're doing agreat job of that, then, yeah,
there's going to be a cost ortariff.
What has happened is asignificant imbalance.
Did you know that cars are 30or 40% tariffs in China?
That's why we can't sell ourcars in China.
(13:52):
Huh, the imbalance has beenfairly imbalanced against
America for most all the othercountry producing nations in the
world, which is why our goodsand service and manufacturing
went down, because we can'tprovide them at a sellable rate
that makes them profitable inother countries.
I did not, I was not aware ofthat.
Yeah, so then you find out.
Well, with that occurring, ofcourse you've got to go back and
(14:14):
rebalance the tariffindifference, and so when you
negotiate from a businessposition, you take that position
of renegotiating the largestcost point that causes you to
lose profitability.
The same way, you would go to amanufacturer and say I need to
hit this landed cost of goods at35 or less or I can't use your
(14:34):
product, service andmanufacturing.
I'll go to another person.
If you can't hit it well, thesame way would happen with any
country.
You're going to go back to themand say, hey, your tariffs need
to be a 25% greater or you haveto balance your tariffs so that
we can sell our product backinto your country at greater
volumes.
It's a negotiation.
You have to understand what'shappening at the business level
(14:54):
and you understand how toappropriately manage it inside
of your Amazon seller accountand your TikTok shop and your
dropshipping or wherever else.
In fact, dropshipping isprobably a bad idea, but in any
of your sales channels you makeamends for the way you manage
the business.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yeah, I really like that.
Why don't we turn the page andchat a little bit about AI and
we can trade some secrets?
I'll share with you what I'vebeen doing with AI but we'd love
to hear what you've been up toand how you're leveraging this
new tool you want me to startfirst, or you want to tell me
what you're?
(15:31):
doing yeah, so yeah, let me giveyou some hot takes.
So I, I love, I chad gpt isopen on my screen from the
moment I open my computer everymorning, does it say hello, good
day, david.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
Welcome.
Remember how the computers wereused to talk to us in the
morning of it yeah, not yet, butmaybe someday.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Um and so a.
So I'll give a couple reallyspecific examples.
I was renegotiating with aChinese supplier.
They were trying to bump priceson me, and the point I wanted
to make was the yen relative tothe US dollar is appreciated,
and so the amount of actualmoney you're putting in your
pocket has gone up independentof your price jump.
(16:12):
You're putting in your pockethas gone up independent of your
price jump, and so I could havelooked at currency rates going
back to 2001 when I firstengaged with the factory, or I
could have plugged it intoChatGPT and had it come up with
a very well-worded analysis ofthe US dollar to the yen
relationship and how, in fact,they are getting paid more.
(16:36):
And so that is one way and justmore broadly, crafting emails
and things like that.
I've been using that as a tool.
Another thing I've seen a lot ofAI tools come on the scene, and
some of them good, some of thembad.
One of my favorites and I'vesaid this publicly, I had Chad
(16:57):
Rubin on the podcast is acompany called Prophecy.
Yep, prophecy is a pricetesting software for Amazon
sellers.
I have wanted this for a decade.
I have tried Splitly, avaguruProfitPeak.
I have tried Splitly AvaGuruProfitPeak.
The issue I always ran into wasas your price goes up,
(17:18):
presumably you would make moreprofit.
However, ppc gets moreexpensive and harder and there
tends to be a wash.
The opposite is true.
Price goes down, your profitscompress.
However, ppc gets a little biteasier as your conversion rates
go up.
This tool takes into accountwhat's going on in your PPC and
accounts for those movements,and so I have seen, on average,
(17:40):
between a 10% and 12% marginexpansion, and as an Amazon
seller, that is a huge win, andwhen I am looking at a piece of
software, I always ask myself isit going to return to me more
than I'm paying this vendor?
This one is a huge win, and I dothink there's advantages in
being an early adopter, becauseat some point, there's going to
(18:04):
be a flood of people using toolsthis tool or tools like this
and there's rewards for gettingto the party early, and so
that's a second way, and I thinkthe third thing I've been doing
is using it for systems andprocesses getting to a first
(18:30):
draft.
I don't think, in terms ofrunning my business, ai is not
better at it than me, but itjust makes me work faster.
I would liken it to maybe usingsteroids in baseball, where you
can hit the ball farther ifyou're juicing, and I'm trying
to feel like the truth doesn'tmake it right, it just makes it
true.
Right, yeah, this is legalsteroids and and I love it, I
love it, I love using it and Ilove it, I love it, I love using
(18:51):
it.
And so, yeah, those are likethree things that I'm using AI
for as we sit here talking inFebruary 25.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
What about?
Speaker 2 (19:01):
you.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
That's great, dude.
I love that.
And you know, getting 10 to 15%back on your Amazon is.
I mean, if you're smart, youturn that right back into
budgets on your PPC and go buy abull market share or, you know,
take a little bit to the bottomline.
Of course, one way or another,it's not a bad thing.
That's cool.
Well, I mean, one of the thingsthat I'm always trying to solve,
of course, there's business andoptimization, which you talked
about, which is, of course,maximizing profitability and
(19:23):
operational costs, which isalways extremely important.
There's that growth and scaleaspect.
There's that startup aspect,and what I found usually is
they're very similar problems tosolve, both in the growth to
scale side as well as justgetting started, and it always
revolves around the what theheck do I actually sell?
And it ends up being like whatproduct lines do we develop at
(19:46):
the top end beyond the currentsuccessful SKUs we've had?
Or what the heck do I sell whenI'm an aspiring entrepreneur
and just getting going?
They seem to be, at times, verysimilar problems to solve in
these businesses.
So I focus a lot on that andone of the things we developed
is faster ways, using AI agents,to go out and acquire data,
combine data, analyze data andcompress down to the data-driven
(20:10):
aspect of a product selectionprocess, to the data-driven
aspect of a product selectionprocess and in our tool set,
having all this data and yearsof experience in our green light
process to evaluate anddetermine what the heck we
should sell.
With agents and AI, we've beenable to compress faster, we've
been able to get access to moredata quickly.
We've been able to use productopportunity explorer and
category data now to createdifferent touch points of true
(20:33):
data points based on thatinformation and kind of really
got a picture to allow thisagent to be smart enough to come
back and tell us these are thetop products by category, by
node, by customer need.
That then ties into thisspecific intent and intent based
aspect of what the actual AIengine is starting to do now
inside of Amazon's ecosystem andby proxy.
(20:54):
I'm going to believe this hashappened with other algorithms
that are churning, like TikTokand others, that literally just
say like you know a beacon, likehere's your green light, here's
your product, go here, this iswhat the need is, this is what
the demand for that needactually looks like from a true
data perspective.
And then here are the productsor product that actually matches
(21:18):
that demand right now, and thenthis is the one you need to go
test.
So it kind of inverts the wholeprocess of product selection
from typical data mining andthen product selection and then
product and data analysis andthen do I launch it.
We've actually inverted thatprocess and gone after the need,
and AI tool sets and data havenow helped us do that much
faster.
And then once we get that dataand it says, go test this
(21:40):
product and I determine landedgoods, then I take it to an AI
agent that we've developed andthese aren't public yet.
They're going to be this yearbut this one particular goes out
and says what do you think thisfocus group act like a focus
group of people who are stillbuying on Amazon, have this
demographic, have this intent,have this ability to purchase,
(22:01):
et cetera, and then give me asummary profile of that, like a
case study of feedback it woulddo and tell me which of this
product type, data informationand conversion and graphics you
would buy and then tell me howto build that.
And so we have this listingoptimizer now that takes that
data from the engine of theproduct and then goes in and
then basically spits out a wholelisting of information prompts,
(22:24):
what they should look like atthe graphic level, how to copy
and conversion should look andwhich one was the highest rated
from the focus group.
And we took this process andactually went out to physical
groups that we had usedpreviously and compared the two
and then came back with fivedifferent brands of information
and it was 99% accurate on theagent every time.
(22:45):
So we stopped going to thephysical focus groups.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
I blew it away when we saw that happening.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I had a light bulb go off mid mid.
Answer.
And you, one thing that takesme a long time is communicating
with my videographer on what Iwant included in my 52nd 52nd
Amazon video.
And you know, being able to,you know, highlight the primary
pain point in the first 10seconds would be great.
(23:16):
Um, you know, ordering ofinfographics, things like that.
What are the number oneunanswered questions?
I think that could really speedup communication and improve
communication with your listingcopywriters, with your image
editors, with your videographersand so what if AI just did that
(23:37):
for you?
Yeah, well, I said that's aninteresting topic.
Let's dive into that.
And this is something I thinkas an entrepreneur that has
employees, this is somethingthat can be somewhat scary.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Well, it could be.
I don't have an employee thatdoes the listing that way.
We deployed a tactic by which wecombined information and what
we call a composite listingprocess, by which the listing
presented itself from the datathat was given by the tool.
We just took that and massagedit and gave it to an agent
instead and fed it moreinformation and then it became
(24:13):
the copyright listing writer andit basically told us exactly
how to build the listing andthen use a virtual focus group
to say which version of thelisting I believe would be the
highest converting based on thatfeedback.
And we took that and then wewent out to an actual group and
said which one of these listingcopy graphics would you buy from
and which one you wouldn't buyfrom, and every time the agent
(24:34):
was right.
So, in other words, no oneneeds to write the listing for
us anymore, no one needs topresent how the images and
graphics are going to be done,because I have the copy for it
and we give it to thephotographer and he just
literally follows the imagescript, takes the photos and
gives it back to the editor, whothen massages the product and
we have a listing ready or sizeof the graphics and we have a
listing ready to go.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
That's.
I really like the idea of thatand I have not just personally
speaking, I have not gotten to.
It sounds like your process isgetting you to a final draft and
I think my process currently isgetting me to a draft one.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah getting me closer to a final draft so that
when I do the market test, I'mas close to what I believe.
The audience and intent keywordis building a narrative, a
lexicon and a taxonomy ofinformation around that listing
to determine how the agent Rufusand Cosmo are going to display
(25:37):
it in a ranking methodologywithin Amazon.
Most people aren't even talkingabout this.
They don't even understand ityet.
They're behind the eight ball.
They're two miles back.
If you're not even thinking ordoing this right now, you're
going to find that as theranking engine is changing
towards an AI-driven narrative,down to your graphics and what
they actually say and read as incustomer-intended outcome,
(25:59):
you're going to be behind theeight ball.
You're going to watch yourconversions go down when others
figure it out in your marketshare and start eating your
market share because the engineis going to start pervuring
their narrative to what thecustomers want and intent and
you're not describing thatbecause you're still back in
keyword land.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
That's a hot take that people should rewind,
unless they should really payattention to this right.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, we're building all of our innovation systems
towards that, changing all theway we think about customer
relationship with product andintent, and then backing that
into demand right with the data.
And then the data basicallytells us, based on customer
intent and demand, this is theproducts you should actually
test.
We take the listing copyinformation, we go test the
(26:38):
products and then whichever oneresponds most positively from
the engine is the one thatusually is ending up being the
one the ai said would be theright one, because basically
what we're talking about isengine to engine communication.
It it's AI to AI talking.
Yeah, yeah, I, I it's a littlehuman out of the equation.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I really like it.
So what is that from?
Like a staffing team, from astaffing and team standpoint One
?
Speaker 3 (27:03):
operator can take care of that.
You don't need a listingcreator.
We have a graphics and listingimage person who basically gets
the output of that, can read thelisting and creative, see the
way the images should be prompt,build the listing images using
ai or photoshop or illustrationand combination and then produce
the images and we have alisting that's ready to go to
market with like 99 confidence.
(27:24):
It's intended to tell theengine that we match the
customer need for that productbecause it's all data driven
right.
Yeah, yeah, so it's verytwo-stepped.
We have literally two people inthe step.
We have a third one.
If we want to, if we want to doa higher end product, we're
going to go and get a photoshoot done, but we're literally
taking the engine and copy thatthe operator took out and giving
(27:46):
it to those two individuals forphotos and then post-production
and then the listing is doneokay, okay, on the AI-created
images, is that I have heard,and it's been anecdotally.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I haven't seen any data behind this, but Amazon is
punishing AI-generated images.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
No, that's a rumor.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
No, any more than Photoshopped images were
punishing people who arebestsellers now and you know
they're bestsellers withPhotoshopped images, right?
Yeah, yeah, oh, absolutely, yeahso that's a misnomer, a myth,
an idea that you know mine's notconverting.
So the system must be doingthis and it's not actually
happening.
Okay, Truthfully, the higherquality of the image, the higher
quality of Always.
Take actual photos of yourproducts.
(28:31):
Now you can use AI to put themin different environments right,
and with hyper-realisticprompting and stuff, you can put
an actual, real, photographed,nice image into a background or
use case.
That's done by AI.
Now that looks really good,right, no different than
somebody messing with it in thefield.
But we will typically AI imagesslightly differently in an after
(28:53):
effect, not the primary, If youwant to really put a good
production down.
We take high resolution, actualphotographs where we have a
photographer take those picturesand then AI kind of cleans them
up and changes them.
But really, at the end of theday, what's the most important
thing about what I said?
Will the AI actually read theimage and interpret exactly
what's happening in that imageand will it do it accurately?
(29:16):
And if it does not, that's theproblem I have to fix.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah Right, whether I photoshopped it, took a picture
of it or whatever I did withthat image, okay, it's more
important that the AI is able tounderstand what that image
actually says and is doing,because the whole thing is
changing.
Yeah Right, ai listings arecoming now that there's a beta
version of the AI flat file toolcoming out, which is intended
(29:42):
to basically make it easier toget data that translates
backwards into Cosmo and intoRufus, because when they're
putting it up in flat files it'sstill search related, it's
still search term related, it isstill based on human interface
machine language learningstructures of the original
algorithm, but it's not based onthe latent semantic and intent
(30:03):
based engine that is Cosmo andRufus.
So they're actually rolling outa beta version of their listing
to help people get the data incorrectly, so it will be read
correctly by the AI systems.
And you can already do thatbecause that's how it's changing
.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
That's it.
So you're using let me makesure I heard that correctly.
So you would like upload acategory listing report and have
AI optimize it?
Fill in all of the empty cellswhere there should be.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
In other words, ai is going to fill in the gaps that
most people are missing, inorder to make it more, to speak
more to the current engine thatis running the backend right now
and is actually going to berunning probably all of the
systems by next year.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Is there a specific tool that you're using for that?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
So it's coming, it's in beta.
It's going to be their AI flatfile uploading thing.
There's going to.
It looks like they're going totry to make Excel obsolete
altogether, and so now it's justa matter of you being able to
go into AI systems like chat,gtp or other tools and say does
this actually explain what myproduct and value is?
Yeah, do my images actuallyexplain what the product value
(31:07):
is?
Because you're you're primingthe engine now as an AI to AI
system, right, and so the lastpart of that is you know what is
going to happen next.
Okay, is that PPC driven,keyword based searches for the
PPC site is going to have tochange.
It's coming, not there yet, butit's going to have to come.
(31:29):
You understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, because once they get toa point where they know the data
better than you, because it'sin their system, it's
voluntarily given up by thecustomers through purchase
orders and through their creditcard information, unlike
Facebook, which got totallytagged with this because they
were capturing it incorrectlyand they got sued and they had
to stop with interest-basedtargeting and people interest
(31:50):
targeting because they hadthird-party data they were using
.
Amazon has all first party data, so, with that and you giving
them their information.
They're not going to need youto tell them which keywords to
target in the coming systems.
You see how this is going toplay out, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
I see what you're saying Going back to.
I need you to be my therapistfor a minute.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Let's couch the topic man.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Uploading a category listing report to GPT and having
it optimized and then uploadingit to Amazon particularly with
some of my brands that have likea couple hundred SKUs gives me
extreme anxiety.
I've had flat file disasters.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Flat file.
Anxiety is a real thing.
It's like range anxiety in aTesla For Amazon sellers.
It really is.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yeah, and so that will be something.
I will maybe be a little lateto the party on that, just
because of maybe some previousPartial, partial updates.
Speaker 3 (32:52):
The concern that people jack up usually is they
do a full update on theirlistings and they jack up their
entire listing, and that's amistake an amateur will make.
But always do a partial update.
Never let Amazon force a fullupdate or you will jack with
your listings.
Any other things that can easemy anxiety on, because this is
something I know I need to donot much you need to start
(33:13):
thinking about the way yourproduct fits a customer need and
then your language, copy,graphics and intent need to
start slowly moving towards therealization that it's filling a
need.
It isn't a search term Ifsomeone's looking for a heavy
duty jacket.
Why?
What was the intent of that?
Because the engine is now goingto be looking at the intent and
(33:36):
then trying to match productintent with customer behavior.
Could be literally that you aregoing to go on a ski trip and
go.
You've been purchasingparticular tools for your ski
trip and you haven't actuallypurchased a jacket.
And so then it pops up and sayshey, you should have this down
jacket that's rated for negative20.
And you're like oh yeah, I needa jacket.
Click.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, yeah.
Now that shift from keywords tointent, I think is going to be
us, as operators, are reallygoing to need to kind of reframe
how we're thinking about thingsand since I've been in the game
, it's been a keyword game.
Speaker 3 (34:14):
And keywords are going away, brother.
Yeah, customer need is the nameof the game and, as I said,
you're going to be part of alaunch here soon where I'm going
to launch this particular toolset into the world, which is
going to blow away most of thedata sets out there, because it
is need intent based what thehell do I sell?
Backed into demand thatactually backs into target
products, and with that we willbe shifting the way everybody
(34:36):
thinks about data and analyticsand running successful
businesses, and that will go forthe existing entrepreneur on
Amazon selling products and thebrand new person who wants to
keep going.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Absolutely.
I love it and I'm excited.
I'm excited for that grandunveiling.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
So Yep, it's coming Been a long time in the process,
but Amazon itself is movingthat way, and if you aren't
paying attention to that, juston your own right now, pay
attention to it If you don'tunderstand it at all you better
gear, because there are othersellers that already are.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Absolutely yeah, all right.
Well, before we wrap up theepisode, I would like to turn
our attention to the fire round.
This is four questions that weask everybody at the end of the
episode Are you ready for thefire round?
Yes, yes, no yes, all right,here we go.
What is your favorite book?
Speaker 3 (35:25):
Feel the Fear and Do it Anyways.
By Susan Jeffries.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
Lovely.
I need to add that to myreading list.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
I would trump that with Bible, sorry God.
But then I would say veryclosely would be, which is also
Do Not Fear.
360 times in the Bible, 365,excuse me, there you go, feel
the Fear and Do it Anyways.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
What are your hobbies ?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
What are my hobbies?
Well, I geek out on technology.
I geek out on, you know,learning new things and testing
new things.
And I have a closet gameaddiction where I play Call of
Duty on my mobile phone todecompress.
When everybody's asleep and thewife finally falls asleep at 11
o'clock, I might be foundplaying Call of Duty mobile for
an hour or two justdecompressing my brain.
(36:05):
So that's become a bit of ahobby.
But we also have an operationalhomestead, so I'm always busy
out here doing something on thehomestead which keeps me busy.
And of course I always have apassion for business.
It is almost a hobby of mine,along with something I do, so to
me it never gets boring, it'salways fun and there's always
something new to do.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Absolutely.
Uh, what is one thing you donot miss about working for the
man?
Speaker 3 (36:30):
One thing I do not miss about working for the man
yeah, wow, can I Just one?
My brain starts crashing into amillion answers.
One thing I do not like In myworld at that point I would say
no longer getting on an airplaneagree, agree, especially if
(36:51):
you're a family man well,especially if you're a family
man, and it just especially ifyou uh yeah, well, that's the
best way to put it yeah, beingtaken away from my family.
Yeah, yeah, I haven't beenanymore and getting on the the
what uh felt like a air bus withchickens and goats and people
hanging off the side of it allthe time I was like I agree, I
(37:11):
don't miss that either.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
All right, final fire round question.
All right, lay it on me.
What is one thing that setsapart successful entrepreneurs
from those who give up, fail ornever get started?
Speaker 3 (37:27):
Personal coping mechanisms.
I like it your ability to getout of headspace, out of mind,
out of competition with others,out of the big scarcity and
turning into more of abundantthinking and then being able to
purposely drive that forward foryourself and others.
It's a typical problem.
Many entrepreneurs have to feelthat there's a fear of failure,
(37:49):
a fear of FOMO.
I could do something better,I'm not doing enough.
There's this constant push wepush on ourselves and I think
building a series of healthycoping mechanisms, whatever it
is that helps you decompressfrom those things, is extremely
important to focus on the rightactivities, the actual revenue
generating activities, and tryto shut off all the other
nonsense you think you should bedoing because you saw someone
(38:12):
else maybe have success with itor whatever, and then just focus
on the things you know you needto be doing.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I love it.
I love it, Neil.
It was outstanding to talk toyou today and to catch up.
If people are interested ingetting in touch with you,
what's the best way?
Speaker 3 (38:24):
VoltageDMcom.
Voltagedimmarketingcom.
You guys can check it out.
There's a book to check outover there if you want to grab
an instant digital copy of it ora paperback and learn more
about what we're doing and theprocesses by which we figure out
what the hell to sell and turnit into a going concern in a big
business.
Maybe a life generationalchange, who knows?
Maybe an exit opportunity.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!