Ep. #948 - Top Tips for Launching a Brand

Andrew Morgans 00:00
What’s up, Hustlers? Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle. I’ve got Carlos Alvarez back in the studio, I’m super excited to have him back. Before we jump into today’s topic, shout out to our sponsor FullScale.io, helping you build software teams quickly and affordably. Today, we’re gonna be talking about a little bit of different things. We’re going to be talking about a couple of different things. I wanted to talk to Carlos about launching a brand. Like some of our favorite strategies and why we use them. Carlos has some things outside the box today that might not apply to every seller. But I still think it’s relevant to think big picture and think big vision. And understand why a successful seller even thinks that way. And then, I want to double dip and talk about how sellers are drawn in from too much theory. I think that they go hand in hand. And, you know, you can think of all these different ways to launch products. But really, it comes down to just taking a leap, taking a step, kind of taking what you’ve learned and trying something. And Carlos is one of the best. I know there’s a lot of strategies and tactics. I’ve heard whispers of that. I don’t even know the details behind it. So I’ll share some of what I’ve been doing with some of the brands I’m launching. I know Carlos has one, right now, in the pipeline that he’s building. He’s super excited about it. Carlos, without further ado, welcome to the show.

Carlos Alvarez 01:10
What’s up, brother? It’s good to have you back.

Andrew Morgans 01:13
Thank you. Thank you. I had a little surgery a couple of weeks back. I’m super excited that you helped me fill this gap. And, you know, I thought who can I go to that’s gonna give us some great value. And Carlos, I really appreciate you being on the show.
Carlos Alvarez 01:27
When I heard that, I was telling my wife. I was like, babe, you’re gonna have to watch a little guy and I’m about to get on the mic. I thought we were gonna jump right in there. I love it. What’s his name? Carlos is the same as me. I wasn’t very original, but since he’s little, we just call him Carlitos.

Andrew Morgans 01:41
Carlitos, I like it because I have a family restaurant. I’ve been eating there. I’m 35, like 35 years. It’s called Carlitos. Just this little dive spot here in Kansas City. The family always goes for events. So I was like, what? That’s funny. No, but like, give me a little background. So usually, you know, I go into the background of Carlos. We’ve already covered that. So, this time, we get to just talk about the background of what we’re working on. And I want to talk about, like, you know, launching a brand in 2022. You know, it’s so much different, I think, than a lot of even the thought leaders talk about in space. Like what they did in the early days, 2012 to 2016. And some of those like, you know, giveaway-loss leader-type strategies for getting momentum on products. It’s got to be a lot different now. It’s coming from a lot of different directions. Let’s talk about the brand new working first. I know you don’t want to give all the details you can give. I know it has to do with water. I know it has to do with fish. Share what you want.

Carlos Alvarez 02:39
Yeah, for sure. This is a very unique brand in the sense that I’m going to be transparent about it. So I can talk about any and all of it right now.

Andrew Morgans 02:49
Yeah, good, because that’s the only thing I know how to do. So I was trying to navigate, but now I won’t worry about it.

Carlos Alvarez 02:53
Yeah, no, it’s all good. So the brand is going to be called Fish dock. And I’m taking a very, this term that I’m using, I can’t take credit for it, I believe it was started by the guys over at EECOM. Crew, but it’s a Content First approach. It’s something I’ve always really done. But this time, I’m just going to do it transparently. And how it begins is I’m going to be creating a content site, which is going to be the site fish dock right now, I’ll show it’s under construction. And I’m actually going to rank outside of Amazon. And then once I do that, I’m going to be selling my products and launching my products to the email list of people I get from the content site. Something unique, I’m going to be doing this time that I’ve not done before. And you know, I really hope that it works, you never know if I’m going to manufacture my own products. So it’s liquid products, so that I can get away with that. It’s not like I’m gonna build a, you know, on a mixer board or something. And in that sense, I probably have to go to China. But it’s a liquid product that’s going to help with the propagation of coral. So I priced it out at a good friend of mine’s manufacturer locally. Again, it’s not out of a sense of patriotism, either, it’s more like I want full control over as much as I can have the process. Yeah. And then and then having my community to like having a factory, I know that I want to be able to learn it and solve for problems that like new sellers are having, you know, so I know that I can’t probably justify the cost of a factory with my product in the beginning, my new PL bought I will be able to justify the cost of the factory helping other people manufacture products. So that’s the gist of it.

Andrew Morgans 04:41
That’s why I think it takes money to make money in a lot of ways when you think about that. And it’s just like as you start figuring it out, you can control more of that process. I know as an agency, I started going, I wanted to go all the way up to the manufacturers because while I wasn’t building a brand I wanted to be connected right to the people making the product so we could pivot we Just the margin was better, we could control the quality, it seems like, you know, manufacturers have been around for 50 years or 100 years, whenever I’m working with them on the agency side, they’re not, you know, they don’t make decisions and change their mind in 15 days or 30 days, you know, they’re, they’re making decisions for the future, they play in long game, they think down the road, they invest in equipment. You know, and as a musician, that was something that was very, like, easy for me to do back when I was traveling and touring full time was to invest in your gear you invest into, like, you know, your equipment. And so because of that, you know, makes you sound better and makes your quality better. Same thing here, and I think an easier one to bite off maybe for a new seller to think about is a lot of people get like, you know, kind of those T shirts, screen printing. You know, I don’t think those like getting into manufacturing within that and manufacturing would mean putting the shirt together, I understand that. But even being able to make your own shirts and print them at scale and things like that. I’ve seen a lot of people kind of try that model. I think it makes a lot of sense. Is it someone you know, someone from your community? Is it someone from the Amazon community? Or is it someone just in the Florida community?

Carlos Alvarez 06:07
Know someone in the Amazon community? China, he’s gonna kill me. I definitely listened to the show. So like, he’s gonna kill me that I’m forgetting his name, right? Oh, Alex Fedora, which is his name. Okay, so spoke at prosper. Last time, I think he was on the stage with Vanessa, who was a mutual friend of ours. And they, this was his thing, his brand, too. I’m drawing a blank. He’s open about talking about it, but he has the experience. I’m putting this together. And one of the things that I sort of, over the last 15 years, like, and I don’t know, maybe you’re saying with you is I really drank the Kool Aid in, you know, you want to launch another product, that means it’s synonymous with China, unless you’re doing supplements, or some like ingestible. And anything else means millions and millions of dollars to start something to make. So I just there was this wall, anytime I created a product, and COVID. You know, I hate to thank COVID for anything, but like COVID forced everyone to think differently. And, and one of the things I thought about was I was like, Man, I’m not saying we’re gonna be hopefully we’re not dealing with pandemics every few years, you know, this is just we did it, you know, but I am very, like, I want to learn from this. And like, what are the things we could learn from this to be stronger on the other side? And I never want to be in the position of being told I need to pay $20,000 for a container. And wait triple the time. So I was just like, how do you solve for this, and most sellers, I believe, are product agnostic. I get it if you’re already locked into a product where the only place you can manufacture is China. But if you’re product agnostic, and it’s just a matter of you creating your own filters, like just because the program or whoever you learn from says you should do this, like, you can play with that a little bit. Why not stick something in there that says it needs to be profitable manufacturing from you know, north central South America. Yeah. And that’s that that was really the genesis for me. And for me, I like creating brands around things that I know are like a huge nono, but whatever. Like it’s things that I’m passionate about, I would like to be passionate about. And then I obviously make sure there’s a market. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. But that’s what I like to do. So for me, it’s that and it’s like, okay, yes, there’s a market for it. Can it be manufactured in the Americas? Yes, let’s roll.

Andrew Morgans 08:32
Okay, so I love that, that train of thought I got there a different way. You no one growing up in Africa, I saw all kinds of makers. You know, some really cool items. So I’ve always just thought about, like, you know, I’ve seen people make amazing things by hand. I’ve seen like, you know, chess sets and mancala boards and like, I’ve always just been like, how do I get this stuff over? Like it would be so cool. So I’ve always thought even as an agency as a seller, like bringing stuff from other countries automatically can be a win over here, just like taking American products to like, let’s say Canada, or Australia or Japan can do well, you know, grabbing products from Indonesia, like a current brand I’m working with is cool and exciting. So it made me think like, okay, these people are getting stuff manufactured elsewhere. Me not really ever wanting to go to China also made me think a little bit differently. My parents lived over there, like in the Siberian part, like super cold. Just going to China and picking products in San was exciting for me. And then on the agency side, you know, 11 years of this Consulting at least like with sellers. I worked with tons of makers that were local that would like try to take a product to Amazon, you know, like golf divot tools, and like, you know, wedding signs and like custom shops and like it was smaller scale, but it was still like us makers and getting kind of acclimated to like, Okay, some products can come from here. Wow, that’s a lot easier. I don’t have to deal with this supply chain thing kind of learning through them and through what they were doing, but I think that, you know, now they’re pushing Latin America’s like, you know, can we source there? What can we get there on Duris, they’re thinking of clothing, apparel. And then on the agency side, just like, because I think this perspective for some people is like, on the agency side, if I couldn’t control sourcing, I’m still thinking about China as my main competitor, for the most part. And so I would think about China and being able to price lower, and I started thinking about branding and content. And, you know, that’s something that the West really respects is like, you know, how good is your content, whether it’s trust building, whether it’s like thought leadership around a topic, whether it’s, you know, localized translation, and you know, having real emotionally captivating images, like if you’re saving fish, you know, there’s some amazing photos you can do with like some underwater photography, or like salt life tanks, or, and really make the customer feel like a hero. By buying your product, I can automatically almost envision that. And that’s something that we can do here that China can’t do. So like our content creation, I didn’t mean to say all of that. But really, like, there’s a lot of different ways to come to the same point. And I think it’s amazing, especially on a platform like Amazon, where the review quality matters. And if you could take that feedback, like live, and because you’re running the whole thing be able to adjust quickly. I think that’s super exciting.

Carlos Alvarez 11:23
100% I love how I love how you can you’re like one of the best storytellers. I know I love how you like drawbacks, you just took me to like, took me to Africa and creators and like, the tundra and in China, and all I did there. You’re one of the more creative people I know, I was just telling that to a friend of ours, Todd, who starts working with technology. He’s like, man, we think I know, you know, I know. You know him. And I’m like, man, it’s one of the more creative people

Andrew Morgans 11:48
I know, man. I’m trying to build a brand with Todd like, you know, I know, he’s looking for a new project. And like, I’m like, okay, that’s your thing. You’re a sorcerer, like, you know, let me help you build it. And you know, that’s something I’ve been doing. I’m not sure. Like, I’ll share it for anyone on the podcast, because I’ve been talking about my vision, what I’ve been trying to do, I think, I’ve got equity in 15 brands now, although so not not completely from start to finish, like, you know, like yourself and some sellers. But having built the agency first and kind of going the other direction. It’s a lot of fun for me right now, the last 18 months, the pandemic, the aggregators, you know, and then my my long term plan coming to fruition, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about like, our strategies around launching brands, and what you said about content first, I think I’m a huge advocate, I’m a huge, huge fan, I have as an agency content has driven my business in my growth. I’m working on a project right now, where we build three months of tic toc content. And then in the last week recently started doing the Lincoln bio and directing traffic to a landing page and things like that, like the old Facebook days. And between us we have 630 organic orders so far, have grown, it’s crazy.

Carlos Alvarez 13:06
Talking to a lot of people in the wizards, Amazon community, it’s like, it’s a struggle, because I don’t like giving fluffy like wishy washy answers to stuff, right. But everyone’s in a different stage of where they are in their appeal. And I feel like there’s a massive checklist or launch list, if you will, of things, you know, tools in your toolbox, if you will, like weapons in your arsenal on what you can do to succeed with a brand. Or product even, it doesn’t even have to be that great of a product to be honest, you know, unfortunately, but there’s all this stuff yet people are struggling on this and like it’s not happening, and what’s the disconnect. And what I’ve reached and maybe a smarter person would have reached this quicker, is if you don’t go content first, right. And you don’t pick a product that is still content first. But to say it another way, you don’t pick a product that lets you create compelling emails, and send them frequently, and that people want to open which means there needs to be a lot of content there. If you don’t have a social media presence, if you don’t do any of that. And none of that was important. When you select your product, then what you are left with is who’s willing to make less and spend a ton more on ads or Blackhat. And I don’t want to be dealing with that in reality. Yeah, look if you’re at a point and you’ve really gotten good at Amazon PPC I assure you email and social media is not as difficult as you have it within you to know how to do it. It’s gonna make you have to flex. Exactly. So. Yeah, content versus everything and what it accelerated just fast. Was it yesterday? Yeah. Have you been able to hear some of the stuff that came out there? I did not. Oh my god, like this is exactly what works. They want to put the Buy with prime button, and you’ll be able to use that on tick tock on Facebook off, they’re gonna let you encourage you to send traffic from your Amazon branded storefront to your off Amazon store. Well, first time ever, you’re going to be able to do e-mail for your repeat customers, your high volume customers, customers that buy complementary products within Amazon like things that you know for you and I this is finally like validation here, you know? And yeah, Amazon This is one of Amazon’s investments in creating a program like that. It’s them saying, look content first, you’re not doing content first, your days are numbered.

Andrew Morgans 15:43
I feel like they’re gone a little bit from scarcity mindset to abundance mindset and Amazon, you know, and they’re like, instead of, you know, essentially going opposite directions, the Shopify and some of the other competitors are like, Look, if we just blend it together, just like we do as EECOM you know, as EECOM consultants and thought leaders, I’m always saying holistic ecommerce, holistic ecommerce, like you can check my YouTube videos as far back as they go. I’m talking about holistic ecommerce, I’m talking about content and branding, I’m talking about ways to stick stay away from China, like, you know, travel in Asia, the billboards, the marketing are completely different, you know, so these are advantages we have as a culture, you know, take not just take back our platform, but to dominate with our brands there. And I think in a culture where no one trusts anything, and attention span is like two seconds. It’s like, you know, it’s nice to see a brand that’s got months of blocks and months of emails and months of tick tock and months of, you know, Instagrammer meaning just like there’s validation there. There’s like consistency. This is sharing trust, right? I think that’s what a content strategy does, it’s like you it’s not flying by night, it’s like this brand has spent time to give value. You know, in the words of Gary Vee, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, that’s what content is, is like value, value, value, value value, ask. And I love to hear those things accelerate. I’m a buyer with a prime, you know, agency. I got to go to New York and meet with them and learn about the program that was super cool. They actually listened to us. You know, in there, I was like, This is insane. This feels crazy. But no, like super, super, really cool things. And if you’re already learning these things, if you’ve already been digging in trying to learn them, it’s like a home run. And if you’re not, you need to lean into it. Amazon has been pushing posts, and the following buttons, you can send emails and the store for the custom storefronts. And so you know, being able to just put up generic images and graphics now, now that your website is stuck into your Amazon store, and all those things, it’s not going to work.

Carlos Alvarez 17:51
I think you’re gonna have to, like really think about content differently. Amen to that.

Andrew Morgans 17:54
Yeah. Also, and also like, why is it taboo to pick a subject, like to pick a product that you care about, that you like that you’re passionate about?

Carlos Alvarez 18:03
You know, I don’t think about where it came from, and I have friends that are the creators of some of these courses, and programs. So it’s not a blanket bash on all of them. But when you get into the creation of those courses and programs, we won’t say any names. You don’t create them thinking usually wait, what’s the most narrow audience that this would appeal to? Right? So if you want a software, anything you do you want to wait till to appeal to the broadest audience possible, so that you tell the broadest audience possible if your answer to where do I find my product? If it is, what are you passionate about? It’s dead in the water? Because the number one answer you’re going to hear is, I don’t know what I’m passionate about. I don’t have anything I’m good at, you’re gonna get that and it’s BS, but like, you know, people, right, five minutes into that conversation, you’ve made a list like you and I talking to someone like five minutes into a conversation, we tell a person that they can create content, or at almost an expert level on like three different areas. And like, we could unpack that for them. You know, first, like, what do you do, oh, I play soccer. But I play soccer at this specific, you know, I will be like, Oh, my God, like this is huge. And we’ll be opening up Amazon, I’ll be showing them what they can do there. And this idea they have and how they can differentiate. That’s how our minds work. But most people, that’s not the case. So if you put out information, like just go with what you’re passionate about, what you’d like to be passionate about, and then validate it, all of it’s dead in the water. So what you have to do is you have to create this, this, this this criteria, this filter of it needs to weigh less than blank, something very plug and play that they can follow and spit out something on the other end, that is going to answer the number one question that most people have and that the broadest audience. The problem, in my opinion, is that that also has an unacceptable rate of failure. Right? And so that’s why I say I know I know this is like the unpopular thing to say. And that is, you know what I’m passionate about, or what I’d like to be passionate about. That’s why I said it. Because I know that everyone I have to like untrain myself sometimes because I’m bombarded with it everywhere. I know that everyone’s approaching product selection differently. I am happy to say though, that I have a 100% success rate with DL and my own PL so like, knock on wood 100% I don’t have anything else 100% of my entire life. But I have a 100% success rate in my PL. So I like my formula. I’m going to keep going.

Andrew Morgans 20:35
I love that. And if you get stuck, do you call me do Absolutely. Deal with it? No, like I’m thinking about, you know what I’m thinking about? The insect, the insects?

Carlos Alvarez 20:45
Of course, like, yeah.

Andrew Morgans 20:47
We are passionate about bugs. At that time.

Carlos Alvarez 20:49
You know, when I first launched it, it was out of desperation, which I won’t bore everyone with the story of I got ripped off and you know, try to find something and I thought this was easy. So I get a quick exit out of it. There was zero passion. And my approach towards PL didn’t start from day one. My passion when I started, you know, selling online was, I didn’t want to have to round up every time I put something in the shopping cart at the store to be embarrassed at checkout. Pay for it, right. So I just want to get to that point. That was my goal. It didn’t matter what I sold, like, I was totally fine with decreasing stuff at two o’clock in the morning and restaurants do to make money. But as I started treating this, like a business, yeah, then I started, you know, I’m in control of this. Now I have some breathing room with a capital like, why not? Why not do what?

Andrew Morgans 21:33
Yeah, and I think that’s where I’m at now, even just taking me a long time. But you know, I spent eight years in the agency, 11 years, and Amazon, getting to do what I love now, which is to build brands. Like my own cadence, like, you know, picking the brands we want to work with on the agency side, and then building the brands, I want to build on the PL side. And then having the team to actually be able to execute it. And if I don’t have the budget, have the capital to go hire the people. Now they’re in my team, which is like, you know, I think essentially what I’ve gotten to it’s a lot cheaper if you have the whole team yourself, you know, versus hiring it out. But I would say like, you know, I’m extremely passionate about Amazon ecommerce. And that’s why my technology has been successful. I love talking about it. Like I love building brands, I love that I’ve made over a dozen millionaires, I love that I’ve been a part of 14 exits and built those brands to exit like not just the success, but like the competition, the game of it all, the strategy of it all. And there’s not one way to skin a cat so to speak, like, you know, we’re talking about strategies to launch, I can think of like the strategies, the launch, like, pre 2017 18 And then the strategies that are 2022. And let’s be honest, you didn’t really need a content first strategy or even a content strategy or even a person based brand or an influencer, you know, pre 2018 Like I don’t really you could have but you didn’t need it.

Carlos Alvarez 22:56
You almost also didn’t need a GS one barcode or trademark like there’s so many things you could have gotten away with. It was as if you weren’t getting a trademark for your brand, before the brand registry on Amazon came out, you were probably a content creator.

Andrew Morgans 23:10
Yeah, exactly. You were gonna think you’re like a high end designer or something like, you know, trying to trademark your stuff. Like me, as you know, I’ve told my story before, but I like it on Upwork. I got a chance to work with Adidas back then. And I got to work with amazing content and was like, Wow, this content is amazing. They were on vendor, you know, vendor Central, that was the only people that had a plus back then. But once I had amazing content, and I put it into play, and I saw what I could design on Amazon. I was like, I didn’t want to go back. So like that was immediately this was like, you know, eight years ago really like it immediately pushed me to be like, Okay, I want this brand registry one thing. Okay. And that takes nine months to get if they didn’t have a trademark. So then I started looking for brands that really existed in retail or on the web that had trademarks, brand registry to come out you know, and I was working with brands I’d say, Do you have a trademark you have brand registry? No. Are you willing to get it? No, well, I’m not the best fit for you. And I immediately moved away from wholesale and reselling and even private labels that didn’t have plans for a trademark because honestly the brands I was talking to were scared away of spending that much money on a trademark. But I wanted that content piece I’m just telling you I want once I saw what it could do the difference in great images and great content, I was like this is a must then Amazon comes out with the IP accelerator program. And you know you can get it in two weeks as I started building my pipeline so I stopped getting so many brands that didn’t have the trademark the ability to do it but these were all like stepping stones to getting to here. And I think as I saw Amazon like release those things, it was just like a no brainer to lean into them and you know where some people went Blackhat I was like, I’m gonna go white hat as I can and you know, try to get to Mayo Clinic’s and then Nestle’s of the World and whoever, because you know, I know how to stay out of trouble instead of get into trouble. And that also meant, I need more strategies for launching products. That’s not black app. Right? Yeah. So we talked about content strategies we in, you know, something else I wanted to talk on is like, how sellers are drowning from too much theory, I think, you know, I was just talking with Vanessa, all the conferences as conference conference, conference, event event event. At what point do you like, slow down, stay home, you know, keep the laptop out? And like, you know, really get to work and put some of those strategies into play? What are some of the things you’ve tried in launching products?

Carlos Alvarez 25:38
That hasn’t worked?

Andrew Morgans 25:40
Do you have any? Or have you made them all work?

Carlos Alvarez 25:44
Let’s see. That’s Wow. That’s a phenomenal question. Here. My mind was gearing up for like, ways to approach this, like a tsunami of theory. And I like formulating an answer. And then you hit me with, like, the best question in the world.

Andrew Morgans 26:00
So let me think about this, like, Okay, let me go let me spit with let me sit with you while you’re thinking. Okay, so, I guess I’m just like, you know, I’ve tried lots of different things. I’ve tried micro influencers, you know, I’ve tried, in a lot of these are through brands, like, meaning the brands have paid for these things, and I’ve helped execute them. They weren’t all like my own private label. But you know, you know, we’ve launched brands, where we just relied on PPC, we’ve launched brands where we had influencers behind it. We’ve launched brands where we’ve had Sirius FM or, you know, Hulu, TV, you know, we’ve tried things where we’ve done the in person trying to bring them to Amazon. I know you’ve done a bunch of stuff with all the way up to like meetups and in person events, like, you know, those are like really clever strategies. I feel like something around scuba comes to mind. Like, yeah, my close. Yeah, no, 100%. Okay, I would love to hear about some of those, or like, you know, some of the things you’re like, I’m going to spend a lot of time so for me, for example, just to bring it up, like, I spent three months with this tic toc strategy, not knowing if it was gonna work, like, and it’s working, but like, three months of effort is is for me as busy as I am as a lot of my time.

Carlos Alvarez 27:12
Right? So oh, so the super brand, the super brand has successfully exited. And the scuba brand I, I ‘s The good thing about fish stock to every brand I launch from here on out, I’m going to be open about the brand, what I’m doing and all that they’re like, these other brands, like here, I am talking cagey about like the scuba brand, like, you know, I can’t say the name. And a lot of people listening, they don’t realize why you, you know, you’re kind of tied up once you do an exit, but like, super brand, I exited. I started from a meetup group. And I gave free scuba classes, and I didn’t give the classes. I found someone who could certify people and that person ran it, and I paid them on the back end. And think about how rapidly that community grew. And then when I wanted to sell a product and launch it, I crushed it. I was the number one best seller, you know, almost immediately. And all those brands did amazing.

Andrew Morgans 28:07
So let’s talk about that just a little bit like so whenever without the exact roadmap, but you’re using so you’re building a community, you’re giving people like free scuba lessons for joining the meetup. That’s crazy. Like, I mean, that cost several $100 usually. How does that then turn into buyers and help you launch?

Carlos Alvarez 28:26
Because we’re, I’m on the back. So the scuba instructor, he’s not. He’s local, he’s struggling for business. And this person doesn’t know marketing, hence why they’re struggling for business. So every time somebody joins the community, I’m handling the content from the email side from the messages from joining social media, curating other content, since I’m not an expert in it, and putting it together in a way like this is the solid stuff you should read. I’m handling it on that end and I’m selling them my products by injecting it almost in surrounding it with that other good content. I have a gut, I’m not you know, my abs are not beach ready. I’m not going to look good in a scuba suit. So I’m not going out there scuba diving with them.

Andrew Morgans 29:12
Normally, you and I teamed up? Yeah, I teamed up with somebody.

Carlos Alvarez 29:15
And what I like about this community and that sort of approach is that I’m also not geographically confined. So when I wanted to launch a dog grooming brand, several of us were out there at dog grooming parks offering free roaming to dogs like Apple Park. And creating a meetup group though about it and finding other people that are willing to do that. I don’t have to be limited to a dog park near me. I can say you know what? I feel like we should do this in Kansas City. Let’s create a meetup group in Kansas City even though I’m out of Miami and my content can reach everyone. As far as how we got the meetup group out there is we put signs on little pieces of paper like in your local Starbucks or Panera Bread all these places. They have this public dinner board and it’s The most highly traffic spot in your town. And normally it’s covered with these little rip offs of like, efficiency for rent call here guitar lessons math tutor. And it’s very boring. It’s like written by hand and said he prints something really catchy, again content. So like really great graphics, some image rich stuff with every manner of being contacted imaginable like the QR code, your shortcode SMS when that was a thing and all that stuff. And you drive them to that Meetup group that offers that amazing offer. Something you said a second ago though, about things that I did that didn’t work. I don’t want to sound like everything I’m doing works. But I want to say this though. I’ve exited a few brands that should have been bankrupt. But because I didn’t let go and didn’t care what the book said. And I just kept grinding. And I turned them around. They worked. So that’s why I’m not saying what I did didn’t work. But for all intents and purposes, it failed for way too long. Like I should have let it go. And those probably should be chalked up as failures. But I just never, I just never let go.

Andrew Morgans 31:06
Carlos, I disagree. I think there’s a perspective here. That’s really interesting. And honestly, why have I had a lot of success? Well, one is a little bit of tenacity, right, and just like relentlessness to win, you got to have some of that. But also when you’re not thinking like an investor and you’re thinking like a Brand Builder. There is no like, when is a successful? When is it not? Like you’re like I’m building a brand. Like, you know, that’s how I feel about my agency is like, I’m building my technology, I want my technology, not Andrew Morgans, I want Marknology to be synonymous with like, a great Amazon agency, you know, and so to do that, I’ve made chances with people, I’ve made chances with equipment, with gear, with buildings with environment with directions to take my company, do we focus on content and branding, when no one’s doing that, and they’re not spending on that? Well, for me to build a team to be great at that when no one was really in the Amazon community is spending quite a bit of money on branding or content, or eight plus pages or images didn’t make a lot of sense. You know, and so there’s some of these moves, I made that like on paper, if I was having a exit coach with me, or like, you know, an agency coach to help me build probably would have said no, but because I was building a brand and I wanted to be synonymous with like one of the best Amazon agencies in the space, I think I did some I did things that like, long game, like, you know, more long game and I think, you know, even like I have a brand that’s a pet supplement company, I own I own equity in it been building it six years. And we’re several million dollars, you know, a couple of countries. And, you know, our A cos are our tacos, like, you know, whatever you want to call it, like are a cost if we had a partner working on it, you know, sometimes it’s 150%, it’s a lot to get to grab customers. Well, we’re playing a long game, and I know that I have like a 44% customer retention rate over time. And so we slowly get more new customers, you know, we keep them and we’re building like, you know, we’re building a list of eventually that that start passing, Subscribe and Save customers are returning customers grow. And that’s a long game strategy, that if I had investors, or I had like, you know, a diff a shorter term, like owner kind of driving direction, that play wouldn’t work, you know, we’d either get fired and moved on or change strategy, right?

Carlos Alvarez 33:22
So like, if you would have quit, and I’d be asking you that question, then you’d need to add those things. But since you didn’t quit, they tactically didn’t fail, and you kept going. So it’s like you lose when you quit. And I rarely did two other tactics that one of them never panned out. And the other one I stopped was early days. So like early days, many chat it was I was just doing, you know, running ads likes to page on Facebook, getting people in my bot, and then I would sell them when it started getting, you know, really saturated with, like, let’s just call it like gaming the algorithm. We’ll just leave it at that. But when that started happening, I backed out. But in the early days, you were getting like an 18 100% ROI on many chats. So for a while I did that. And then it stopped and it wasn’t working well anymore. Since I stopped, I quit for launches. The other one that I played with a lot and I plan on resuming after I accelerate is I’ve spent a lot of resources in Alexa, like a hope mine isn’t like Alexa voice technology. So figuring out ways that I’m just convinced that within the next five years, like search, as we know it is going to be a lot different. And it’s going to be a lot louder. So trying to figure out all the ways of how that is going to impact us as marketers. So that’s where we are, you know, I mean, like how is that going to impact us? That’s something that I’ve tried a lot but I don’t have. I don’t have super good results to show for it yet. I’m just convinced I’m not quitting. I’m super convinced that this is going to be Eat everything.

Andrew Morgans 35:01
So, okay, so what’s the day like September 15? I know I’m not supposed to say dates on here, but I kind of wanted to make a mark, because we’re gonna come back to this podcast like, you know, I love making like a little bit of like, some predictions, some thought leadership, you know, calls, so to speak some prophecies of like what’s coming down the road because I think whenever I can look back on that and be like, Look, three years ago, two years ago, I was talking about this and what’s going to be similar to like Gary Vee, I think it’s amazing when he does those mashups that are like 10 years ago, he’s been on the same shit. Like, just like hammering it. For me, I think it’s, that’s why they’re pushing video. That’s why they’re pushing video. And that’s why they’re getting so much video to have captions in it. Because the captions are going to be what the algorithms search to find and match us up with those, as well. They also have chapter headers in the YouTubes, they can call it that is for the hearing impaired, right? They can call it whatever they want to get, you know, brands that do that alt text in the back of images. You know, if AI can scrape images, and you have clearly in your images, not just a bunch of random facts, but like your actual value ads, or like those things, that customers are actually searching the Amazon bar, you’re then validating them by having that in your images, you’re like, you know, this is the strategy that people should be doing. And why these things are so important is because Alexa does that voice search by combining your images, you know, the back end of your images, the back end of your videos. For search, I very, very much believe that.

Carlos Alvarez 36:32
Yeah, in a way we as podcasters, we’re going to benefit a lot from that, because like we just mentioned, Alexa in the show, and we’re going to spy on we talked about it for a minute, we’re gonna talk about it for a minute or two. But this shows title and the show the majority of what’s going on, and today’s episode is not going to be Alexa. But when what we say right now is going to be able to be crawled by a voice is going to change everything, like an e-commerce I invest a lot of resources into figuring out like, how is that going to? What does that gonna look like? And how can I be ahead of that?

Andrew Morgans 37:10
Yeah, and I think it’s gonna make the black hatters that are still playing and you know, scheming on Amazon, even that much more upset. Because you know, it’s not just about gaming, the algorithm is not about hacking it. And they’ll still be some of that there’ll always be some of that, right. But it’s going to be who has the right SEO, who’s doing all the small things, dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, you know, making sure your template files look amazing, making sure your images have all that extra work done, making sure you have the backend search terms. And it’s a ton of work. You know, it’s why I’ve built a team, not as a shameless plug for the agency, but it’s like you have to be doing this kind of stuff. And I think that like, when you just, it’s really not even that rocket science, like, you know, leaning into what Amazon is doing whenever they’re launching new stuff, and just learning every single thing you can about it is, is the best way to go and the best way to stay up to speed. Before I jump to this next question, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor FullScale.io helping you build software teams quickly and affordably. without our sponsors who would make this podcast happen? And Amazon Alexa, if you want to sponsor us, you know, just hit me in the messages that would be amazing as well. Okay, so we’re talking about content. And we talked about the website in progress. I just want to close out with a little bit more details around your strategy for content. Okay, so like I’ve been playing with, I feel like I’m a little behind on the big Facebook boom of really being an amazing Facebook marketer. You know, I leaned into Amazon at the same time that Facebook was exploding and booming and like people were crushing it. You know, so then by the time I get to that point, people are already amazing at Facebook. So jumping in like you know, costs are high, whatever Tik Tok, not the same thing. It seems like you know, I’m really working with some young guys. It’s really hard for me because I’m a deep thinker. I’m an over-thinker, and the content strategies on Tik Tok are very simple, very straightforward, very direct, like with a hook and it definitely has a recipe to the type of content that’s doing well there. But I’m getting amazing results, one as an influencer, a personal brand pushing product, and then also as like a brand creating content for the brand, like, you know, like fish stock, or it would be like, did you know, the you know, and then like, be kind of being an educational platform like that. Outside of like blogging, and maybe some of the traditional what are some things you’re thinking about when you’re building your content strategy for the launch?

Carlos Alvarez 39:39
Um, prior to the fish dock. I exited three brands at the beginning of this year. So one of the things that happens around that time as you start dropping software that you used, you know, in conjunction with those brands, you’re no longer using it. So I’ve I’ve always used sem rush as a, as something to do with a lot of spying, if you will are really validate what I’d like to do with content and see if that makes sense sort of like I’m passionate about a product, you probably have Amazon tools you use to show if there’s a market for it. So this is the same thing, here’s the content I’d like to create. Let’s use SEMrush to figure out if that’s working. So I switched over to H refs. And it was just, you know, a new business, you want to keep costs low in that business, and the traffic was more affordable and more bang for the buck on that level. So I’m going to try to use some of the href terminology that I can. So one of the things that I do is I look at, I try to narrow down as much as possible. So when I first thought about a fish doc, it fell into what I would like to be passionate about. Big difference is that if I’m already passionate about it, I’m already drilled down. I’m already niched down. So I’m doing what I’d like to be passionate about. An example of that would be and I’ll say it because you know, Tom, too, you met Tom, and you came down to speak in Miami. You got to see him again soon, too, by the way, so that’s cool. But Tom was like, Look, I’m passionate about cash flowing. So he’s like, you have all these ideas like why don’t you come for lunch tell me once I told him one, it was bonsai. So it was brand leaves and sold on Amazon. The number one bonsai accessory ran right now. And for me, I don’t know anything about bonsai. But the ideal doctor telling me hey, you need to chill out, you’re stressing out, it’s going to take years off your life. Banzai seems like this very zen chill by yourself with your own thoughts. So that’s why I would like to be passionate. So I don’t know what brand I would like to be passionate about, I need to drill down though. So efficient, Doc, that’s the stage I was in. So I’m like, I get my hands dirty. I want to do this. So I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna get a tank. And then I say, wait a minute, it’s freshwater saltwater. So like, that’s huge. That’s huge in space, like one side almost doesn’t even like the other sometimes. So I’m doing all this research. And for me, it just took walking into the store and saying, Oh, my God, that looks beautiful. And the other one just seemed like a, you know, so the beautiful one for me, it was like a reef tank. So now I’ve narrowed it down. So the first process for me was like narrowing it down. I don’t just want saltwater tanks. I want saltwater reef tanks. And I want a heavy emphasis on coral. And then within coral. For reef tanks, there’s a big talk into life, helping them grow faster the propagation of them. They’re not cheap. And I mean, people that are in this hobby. Now I’m also seeing they got money because every quarter you get like 350 to 600 bucks. And like for the majority of people in America, that’s two paychecks. So. So like, I’m like, Okay, I’m not going to be dealing with this race to the bottom type of product here. Because people here got some money to spend no one looks for the cheapest thing that’s going to hurt their $600 thing. So I’m like, I like this, I found my niche I’ve narrowed down. So now I go to H refs. And I’m like, I decided that I’m going to get into liquid based products that help with the propagation of coral. And I go to a truss. And I’m like, I just plug that in. And I do like a Keyword Explorer search. And it’s going to show me what on a competitive level like what are the parent keyword topics, if you will, that are most relevant to what my search was. So I put propagation of coral, and it would probably be something like coral treatment. And I look at Coral treatment. I’m like, Okay, this is a mid level of competition score. And then Href. Just so that I don’t go to SEO Geek on everyone here, but like, let’s do it. But like a trust gonna break down like what does that really mean in this category that is in a trust gonna say that’s about 16 quality backlinks that’s X amount of, you know, you know, what, if I’m drawing a blank, like, featured posts, it’s X amount of articles is SMR. I’m like, Okay, I’m looking at this. And I’m like my content team to create all this, I can assign dollar values to it. It’s kind of like what you built out in your agency, you couldn’t be the quality agency you are now if you hadn’t built out the amazing team that you have. But now that you have it and a project comes your way, you can look at this and say, well, that cost x x x x, I can price this out. This makes sense. So I look at it and I’m like, Okay, this is gonna cost me this is gonna cost me like, let’s just call it 4k. This is gonna cost me 4k of content. And you don’t want to just drop all this on day one. That’s not how Google works. But like, this is going to cost me 4k. And this is going to cost me four months. So we’re looking at like a grand a month. This is nothing compared to launches, right? Like we were paying more than that on shipping. So I’m going to do that. And all that means is that doing that should put me roughly on the first page of Google, right not top of the first page, but the first page of Google for those specific keywords. Same thing on Amazon like you when someone says I rank number one on Amazon for my product. I’m like, Yeah, you just started ordering, like, what keywords do you rank number one, four. So same thing with Google site. So I do that. So that’s that’s really how I guide it and then that dictates everything else that’s going to dictate the types of blogs I’m going to create in that search is going to show me who are the people that I didn’t invent the skyscraper technique I forget who did but like, I believe it’s from a common to get it wrong. But I’m going to look at the content that’s currently ranking and say, Hey, how do I text this? Like? How do I add in my infographics? How do I jazz up this copy? How do I make it more current? How can I insert a podcast episode or a YouTube video? There we go. Full Scale was amazing with this, by the way, like checking out their blog or anything. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna look at someone like Full Scale, who knows how to do this, and I’m gonna inject this stuff in my content, and I’m gonna 10x there. And then I’m gonna reach out to the people that are linking to this and say, Hey, check this out. So that builds the direction of what I want to do. It will also when I want to create a meetup group on this topic, which I’m going to do, and I’m going to have, it’s not going to be wizards of fish, right. But it’s going to be like, when I create the fish dock meetup about, you know, reef aquarium enthusiast, this is also going to dictate what the topics are going to be of those meetup events. Yeah. Because I can tell how, you know, like, sort of like using the answer of the public, I can tell how popular they’re going to be amongst people that are in that niche, does that help? I don’t want it.

Andrew Morgans 46:12
What you did is you just explained how to build a brand, right? Because when you get all the different areas of what you’re doing as a company, working together, in synchrony, where you know, my Instagram is a simplified version of my blog, which in my LinkedIn posts is a simplified version of the blog, but a little bit bigger than the Instagram. And the Tick Tock is five seconds of that blog. And then maybe a podcast episode is in correlation with that major blog topic, because I bring in someone that’s an expert. And now I’ve got, you know, and then my newsletter goes out the post, my blog, and the podcast episode is kind of talking about the same thing. And not that you’re over in, in dating, everyone is just that you have a community that’s everywhere. Or you have people that care about these things in different areas. And whenever they see LinkedIn and Instagram and the email, and like they’re all talking about this thing, it starts building trust. And that’s what brand does, and it’s like, you know, you’re top of mind because they’re seeing you in their different mediums. And it’s that intentionality and that level of strategy. But what’s also amazing is yes, it takes time, it takes investment, it takes, you know, it takes learning and failing, but it also like for all of those Amazon sellers, that are so afraid, right of the algorithm changing that are so afraid of rising PPC costs are so afraid of some of those things. This gives you something that like you know, if you put four or five months into an article, or into a topic to kind of rank for a keyword, that that exists in perpetuity, like, you know, you have to keep building and going. But it’s not something that’s like one and done, I paid for a 20 foot or 40 foot container. And you know that cost is lost. And PPC, if you’re doing it intentionally to build organic ranking and to build strategy and things like that. It’s something that they can’t take away from you. And that’s something that I love. That’s something that I love about it gives me a little sense of security and whatever I’m building, like it’s got a firm foundation. And so while it’s also a very strong tactic to use, it’s also something that by doing it, you’re not wasting, you’re not wasting anything. I think it’s absolutely brilliant, and it’s cool to see you, it’s cool to see you digging in like that, like I was gonna, I was gonna bring up the Full Scale blog. You know, one I’ve learned a lot from my mentor, Matt DeCoursey is amazing at SEO ranking. And that’s how the podcast has gotten, you know, as many views as it has. And it’s also just like, you know, if you’re gonna sell something, as a company, as a brand, you should know, you should know something about it. You know, the one thing I was going to add a curveball, and I want your opinion on this is like, whenever I started putting out YouTube content, and I have I had a small team with a small bootstrap budget and like, you know, so I’ve gone in some directions and pulled back and like different things like that when I really was passionate about ecommerce and Amazon I was, I felt like I was the only one really dealing with brands or manufacturers having those combos, not just the private label, not just the Amazon sellers that were already open to Amazon, this was more like the companies that are resisting Amazon, you know, and really pushing pushing myself through those doors. I wanted to put out content that hadn’t been talked about. Okay, so if I went to sem rush, if I went to h ref, like you wouldn’t have seen these topics searched, you know, and some of that is to my detriment, like being a first mover and being too early and no one’s really searching it. But you know, it was things like how to tackle you know, Matt pricing on Amazon or how to handle resellers or reseller strategy or, you know, bundling and price strategies on Amazon or knowing your profitability and breaking it down. And now all these things are commonplace, like they’re commonplace in the Amazon industry. But when I started looking for things to write about, there was no traffic searching for these things because the brands were not open to hearing about it. At that time, I truly believed that I liked and then also liked launching products on Amazon that don’t have keywords. You know, they don’t have a lot of keywords, volume of people searching maybe on Amazon, you can launch a product there, do types of strategies, like on a blog or on tick tock are influencer marketing that are less like keyword driven and drive them to your product. So in a way you’re like, you can launch a product early on amazon before there’s keyword demand, use some of these other content tools that are so keyword focused to actually drive traffic to those and make it a successful listing before the search volume catches up. Just something that I’ve got a little chip on my shoulder about like always using the tools is not always the way to go. If you really feel passionate about a product or something before, like if you’re that early before the trends catch on. I do think there’s ways that you can do it. Obviously not a beginner move, I would say more. So like if you’ve done it a few times. And you know, you kind of know how to launch a product and you know how to create content you can play. So I know I gave a lot there. But that was what I wanted to think about, just like when there isn’t keyword volume. Have you ever found success in that way? Have you ever launched a product that you felt strong about that wasn’t in high demand on Amazon?

Carlos Alvarez 51:15
Yeah, so. So two things on that one? I let myself have Well, first, yes, I have. Tim talks on this a lot. But you see things on Etsy, and you know, that haven’t begun being searched. But somebody’s making these things. And they’re getting a ton of sales. So you’re able to see like on Etsy, on Pinterest. There’s a lot of interest in this. But if he jumped over at the same time, and it’s not a it’s not a it’s not a fault of any of these softwares they’re limited if you would see if you were going to go search for this product, same product to launch it that there’s no search. Yet, if you did launch this product and say, You reached out to the Etsy creator, this person can crank out 100 a day and you brokered something with them, and you dropped it over there on Amazon, you would see this thing gets sales almost immediately, because the people that are shopping on Etsy, just like everyone else in the world, there’s an alarmingly high percentage that start their search on Amazon. So they would see this thing immediately on Amazon. And then they would tell the other people on Etsy, and people would start buying on Amazon. So yeah, 100%, I’ve seen that. And then the other part of what you said, I love, I have this reward in my head, what I call it, when I’m creating content. So for the wizards of Ecom, I don’t, I’m not the one that actually creates the blog content. And I think it could be a lot better to be fair, but you know, up until recently, it wasn’t treated as like a business. But for my private labels of unselfish doc, and including fish Doc, I create a lot of that content, like I enjoy that written writing process. It’s almost therapeutic for me, you know. So not everything I write about, though, is what I would enjoy writing about. There’s some things that require writing. So I feel like I put my dues in and then I reward myself with reward time. And usually the reward is time for what I want to write about. But it’s not backed up by search. It’s either early mover, it’s my thoughts on this thing. And what I find is that about half of them, you know, for a bit of time in the beginning, they don’t get any traction and look like Yeah, what a waste. I felt good doing it, I don’t care. But then about half of them half about half of them die like no one ever sees it. The other half though, it’s like, you become like a genius. In space. Like you can see the date when that thing got put out, and no one was talking about this. And you were that awesome. I think everyone should reward themselves with whether it’s a reward or a strategy. For me, it’s a reward to write about, like, what you’re actually thinking you are smarter than these tools, you know, you are immersed in this thing. Just do it.

Andrew Morgans 54:02
Yeah, I definitely have that chip on my shoulder. Some of that’s not a tool creator, I didn’t create a software, but I’ve been in space for 11 years. It’s not that I’m predicting anything you know, is that I’m just like, I’ve studied this system for 11 straight years, 1000s and 1000s, you know, 20,000 plus hours on the platform, you start to just see a rhythm, you know, a little bit and you’re like, I see it going toward, you know, what’s why they have Amazon’s choice badge. And that’s why they’re pushing video. And that’s why they’re doing posts. And while they’re coming out in Instagram type content, and now an email type content and like, you know, they’re doing everything that everyone else is doing well off Amazon, they’ve always done that. And so, you know, attribution. All of these tools that exist for a couple of years as a third party tool, they you know, they bring them in house, pay attention to that, and pretty soon it’s not even that you’re predicting it. You’re just you’re in the trend early, you know, and so I think that that’s where like, you know, everyone talks about Well, I didn’t see this in Jungle Scout. I didn’t see this until Overall, I didn’t see this in helium 10 tools, I didn’t see this in Merchant words. You know, I’m like, Well, if you were early enough on this platform, there was tons of that. There was like, you know, high end mid suspenders, I’ve told that story where there’s only like 20 suspenders, and I started selling $120, men suspenders, that’s $100 price difference in the next competitor. And I believe in it, even though there wasn’t exactly, you know, search demand for that. So some of it, you just have to go with your gut. And I believe in that more and more and more as I as I actually get experience, and I’m actually working a lot on my EQ skills, like my emotional intelligence skills, because I want to trust my gut more, because it’s actually faster than my logical brain, you know, on some of those things, and that’s where you can get some big wins, like those reward means, I think. And then also, being able to like, you know, speak your mind, put it out there, you’re not going to be a thought leader, as a brand, or as an individual, if you’re not out there, kind of like saying how you see it, you know, so some of these, the last thing I’ll say is that, like, I think of two things. And I know, it’s been said before, but domain capture and demand generation. And so, you know, Amazon as it is with all the research, and data is great for domain capture, like, if someone’s looking for it, and you have a product out there, and you’re optimizing it the best, what better place to capture a sale than on Amazon. But demand generation products, like an invention, or a product, maybe that demand generation means at first, you need to create demand for this type of products and have people understand why they need like, you know, IQ drops, or like, you know, that’s what I think of when I think of like a fish stock is like, you know, I’ve had fish with IQ back in the day, and you put, you know, drops in the water, and you got to treat it. And, you know, so you’re like, if people don’t know that, you’re saying, Hey, did you know that you need this for your tanks and like, you know, you’re trying to educate them on all this stuff. Oh, so this sunblock is bad for you, you actually need this organic type of sunblock that won’t, you know, give you skin cancer or whatever you’re having to create this like demand for your product that people didn’t even know about. And to do that off Amazon channels are so much better to do that, because you’re able to kind of use video, you’re able to use longer form explanations, you’re able to create engaging, captivating, top of funnel kind of awareness. But you might need to start three or six months ahead, to start building that to then be able to launch on Amazon. And that’s something I’m learning a little bit later and being able to tell the difference in the two types of products. That I think if someone’s thinking about selling on Amazon or launching products, they need to think about that. And they need to think about is a demand generation product, or is it a demand capture? Should I be focusing on web or content, or should I just like launch directly on Amazon, trying to win more often, you know, with products. And that’s been a big part of it. This has been I love just shooting, shooting, shooting the game with you, Carlos is good to talk to another expert and I love saltwater tanks, I think I also love the category, you’re immediately dealing with a certain type of customer, they do a ton of research themselves. So they’re going to be like, you know, very knowledgeable about the subject. So it even makes it easier as you build the content to specifically build for what they’re looking for. Because they’re an intelligent shopper. You know, my cousin was really into this and he actually bought a bunch of tanks as the shop closed. And so he had all these like display tanks that were just like massive in his house. And we had so much fun, it was his dollars in my fun. You know, he’s like six years older than me. So I was just like living through him. But I’m super cool brand to get into. And so please keep posting on Instagram. I want to see more pics of the corals and kind of like what you’re doing. As always, before we sign off, like, talk, talk about one event you have coming up that people should know about and then where people can reach you. You know, join wizards V comm get to know get in on your podcast and what you’re doing there. Be involved in events happening in the Miami area. And I think you’ve even expanded if you want to share a little bit of that as we go.

Carlos Alvarez 58:58
Oh, heck yeah, man. Thank you so much. So the events are coming up. Two big events. One of them is traffic and conversions like my go to event every year since it came out. It’s digital marketing. So I know that turns off a lot of Amazon sellers, but whether you know it or not, you are a digital marketer. And it’s what’s moved the needle the most in my Amazon business, even though it’s not Amazon focused probably especially because it’s not an Amazon focused conference. So that’s in San Diego from like the 26th to the 30th. While I’m out there, you know wizards V comm has expanded our location or groups I’ve expanded to tamp off San Diego and LA. So while I’m out on the West Coast, we’re going to make the official announcement that you know San Diego, San Diego Amazon Meetup group la Amazon Meetup group fall join forces who are part of the wizards of econ family. So that’s super exciting and it’s a new thing to figure out and the community is exploding. Another event coming up that you’re speaking at. So I look forward to hanging out with us down here in Miami. It is going to be the queue for bash put on by carbon six, and hosted by Tim Jordan, anybody that wants to get in on that. And I still have, I still have a few free tickets. So I’ll put the lure out there. If you want to get a free ticket, join our telegram chat, which is free at wizards of ecom.com/chat. And just ask me for it and I’ll DM you and send it and I guess the only other thing that can I mention is the podcast you might leave Yeah, please. I’d love you to know, I try to listen to ear hustle. Awful all of Andrew. So I tried to learn a bunch and incorporate it into my podcast, which is wizard to be calm. And if I’d love it if you jump over there and listen, and if you think it’s worth a review. Great.

Andrew Morgans 1:00:47
Awesome. Carlos, thank you so much. for your time today making this happen. I really do appreciate it. I can’t wait to see you. Traffic and Conversion is a stretch for me. But I honestly am going to try to make it. I’ve heard so much. I’m really all about the non Amazon conferences just as not that I am not getting anything from the Amazon conferences, I’m actually at them I’m speaking to them. And if that’s where you need to be, that’s where you need to be. When you think about content strategies, you think about ways to not get stuck. You know, just with your Amazon business only and feeling like you can’t make moves like understanding how the rest of digital marketing and the rest of e-commerce works. And how to execute a plan there can just give you a ton of confidence in your brand and building it. And so there’ll be a lot of fun. Love to see the community growing to those cities like those are some cities I mean, so I can’t wait to visit some of those chapters. And thank you, Hustlers, for the time and attention today. And shout out again to our sponsor FullScale.io. Helping you build software teams quickly and affordably. We’ll see you next time guys.