
Ep. #938 - Why Professional Curiosity Wins on Amazon
In today’s episode of Startup Hustle, we’re talking about winning! Andrew Morgans is joined by returning guest, Vanessa Hung, founder, and CEO of Online Seller Solutions. Learn how to build your network during events and get the proper education as a business owner.
Covered In This Episode
Amazon, and e-commerce in general, is a vast and competitive space. So developing and nurturing your professional network for support to achieve big wins on Amazon is crucial.
But how do you network effectively? What is the best place to find your network? Are there ways to educate yourself properly as an entrepreneur? Don’t worry! Andrew and Vanessa will guide you through these questions and more.
Prepare your pen and notepads for practical pointers. Tune in to this Startup Hustle episode today.

Highlights
- Catching up with Vanessa Hung’s life update (02:29)
- On networking at in-person events (08:49)
- Choosing suitable events to build your professional network (10:55)
- Competing in the Amazon space (13:48)
- Are you learning more during in-person events? (16:34)
- Where to shift your focus when attending in-person events (20:18)
- Thoughts on using content on Amazon for backlinking (22:00)
- Innovation in the e-commerce space (25:25)
- How Vanessa Hung educated herself in the e-commerce space (30:45)
- What is the mindset of a successful entrepreneur? (33:15)
- Where can you get the best education as an entrepreneur? (35:13)
Key Quotes
It’s obviously amazing to see people face-to-face [and] interact with your community, your clients, your fellow agencies, or companies that are doing something in the space of where companies and all that. So it’s amazing to aggregate that because after you get out of a conference, there is so much learning.
– Vanessa Hung
I feel like the e-commerce industry, the Amazon industry, in general . . . they don’t deal with fear in the same way as everybody else.
– Andrew Morgans
Back to the Gary Vee example of taking three months to learn. That part of learning could come in different ways. For you, [it] comes in experimenting and exploring what is in your role. And taking the time, for some people, to be going to events because that’s the way they learn.
– Vanessa Hung
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Rough Transcript
Following is an auto-generated text transcript of this episode. Apologies for any errors!
Andrew Morgans 00:00
Hey, what’s up, Hustlers? Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle. Super excited about today’s guests. I’m actually at the Surge Summit recording. I’ve got my friend, Vanessa Hung. She’s been on the show before. I’m excited to have her back and just get an update on, you know, a little state-of-the-union on what’s going on, what’s happening around the industry and e-commerce. You know, we’re going to be talking about professional curiosity and even sharing some of our failures today. So I’m super excited to have her on the show. Without further ado, Vanessa. Hello.
Vanessa Hung 00:36
Hi, Andrew. Thank you so much. I’m super excited that this is like an improv studio that we did. So we’re live. We’ve seen each other for the first time in a while. And I’m super excited to try this new mode of doing podcasts.
Andrew Morgans 00:51
Yeah, thank you. This is a special trip for me. I actually got my start in e-commerce here almost 11 years ago, here in Tampa. I was actually living in Clearwater, so nearby, and worked at my first startup. And it’s a little bit crazy, you know, 10 years later to be coming back, participating in the conference. And just being back in the city feels good. So I’m happy to be here. So obviously, you’re from Miami, down the road, not too far. A big seller community there. But I know I’ve been seeing you travel all over from, you know, the million dollars, million-dollar sellers. Speaking there, we want to talk about what place you got in but, you know, ultimately, you know, getting a good pulse of the industry top to bottom. What are you seeing out there? Like there are a lot more events this year? How are some of that going? What have you been doing? Where have you been, kind of speaking, getting engaged?
Vanessa Hung 01:49
Well, there are a lot of events in the year, and the community’s been growing so fast. And I think that’s good and bad. And in certain points. So I tell you the good, it’s obviously amazing to see people face to face, interact with, you know, your community, your clients, you know, fellow agencies, or companies that are doing something in the space of where companies and all that. So it’s amazing to aggregate that because after you get out of a conference, there is so much learning. And that’s probably something that will never happen at a virtual event. So the kind of masterminds I happen to have at dinner at the table with just like three people that are friends, and they’re just sharing information. It’s just where the epiphanies come, you know. So I do think that that is extremely important. And also the power of getting a, like, a pulse on what’s happening. So e-commerce has been changing, like these years have radically changed compared to last year. Last year, we had a huge amount of money from aggregators. They were throwing money at us, like the community or the sellers or the partners, they’re another anymore, or if they are there, it’s in a different capacity. So seeing that on the venue of like, getting to understand that e-commerce could be like a rocket ship. And if it gets to while it’s, it’s gonna, it can crash, right? So it’s like, measuring yourself and your efforts, what are the things I say that don’t work, like, if there is money today, it doesn’t mean that it will be money tomorrow. So like, measuring stuff is important. So that’s what my takeaway is and what I think is amazing to be at conferences. You make friends, you make partners, clients, you have it all. But then one of the things that I’m seeing lately is that, because there are so many events, it’s very hard to focus on what really matters, right? Because when I’m at events, I am not integrating the information that I learned. Right? So it’s for me, this actually, this is gonna be my second to the last conference of the year, and I’m gonna stop and for sure, rearranging or, you know, scheduling better my next year and see like, Okay, I’m gonna go to the key events next year, because I want to have an integration, you know, mode, and I’ll be obviously super active in social media and all that I’m trying to go to, you know, to where my friends are, and, you know, have those masterminds, and we are part of one mastermind that is coming up, right, like our small, small, very small community of like, agencies that are getting together just to learn more about what we’re doing and all that, but for sure, that’s going to stop and one of the things that are sad about that the massive amount of conferences is that seller which is basically the base of the pyramid of our industry. Without sellers, nobody else will exist. No agencies, no aggregators, no brand, no software, nothing. So they are coming less and less to events because there’s so much, right. So there is an analysis paralysis of, like, wish, which is the real good event, right? I’m gonna go to that one. I cannot go to 30 a year. I want to go to five. So I’m with them. In that sense, it’s probably getting you’re going to you’re I’m getting more tire and tire. But there is a hand side of it like you get a lot of it. And what I think is that you need to have a balance of understanding. When is the right time to just stop and integrate the learnings? Because I’ve learned so much, I’ve been on the road since VDSS. In Austin, that was early last month in August. So I learned so much there, you cannot imagine that’s probably the best conference I’ve been to this year. And a lot of the things that I learned, I need now to integrate, and I haven’t been able to integrate, yeah, apply completely. Like me, I have an amazing team. And thanks to my amazing team, they’re running the things that need to be running every day, but they innovation, what’s new, where we’re gonna push the boundaries, that’s where my time to just test and that when you share of like professional curiosity, you need time for that you cannot do that while you are done event.
Andrew Morgans 06:36
Right, right.
Vanessa Hung 06:37
So yeah, that’s my thing. That’s the way I’m seeing it right now. I’ll probably take some time this year. What’s the rest of the year? And then next year, really scheduling very consciously and super. Like with the purpose of each event, what do I want for each event? Why am I going there and all that? And yeah, let’s see. I mean, one of the things that I also played around with lately was a branded webinar for the agency. So I did a webinar for my community that we just like, sent information to our Instagram community or LinkedIn community, and we have more than 250 people sign up for it. And more than 120, I like actually attending the events, like for an all-online event is like, really amazing. It’s amazing. So am I. So that happened last week, and then I realized that I have this huge community that is all over the world. So I had people signing from Hong Kong, Australia, and Europe.
Andrew Morgans 07:49
Not in rubber, we just did. We did the orange play.
Vanessa Hung 07:52
Oh, right. Right.
Andrew Morgans 07:54
Together, right. And that’s like, those are the types of events like that. And I did another one with a group out of Hong Kong. And it’s like, the network really is getting international. And how do you get those to participate?
Vanessa Hung 08:09
Exactly. So that’s the thing that I’ll say like, in-person events here in the states are, you know, you always see the same people, right, you see the same sellers, you see the same service providers, but there are the communities each time that I post that I mean, you know, Vegas or Tampa or Miami or whatever. My community is like, oh, when are you going to do something online? So finally, last week, we did it. It was amazing. The feedback that we got was incredible. So I’ll be focusing more of my efforts on that community because it is bigger, I can help more people, and I can have more time. So the more time I have to have that professional curiosity and, you know, apply the stuff and have that student mindset and explore and experiment stuff, the more content I have to create and do more, right. So that’s the thing. I’ve been on everything that I believe in my business so far. It’s been thanks to that I was part of those events that I was part of, like key dealers that got me, like, through amazing epiphanies, and I met amazing people that have helped me along, like mentors, partners, all of it. But there is a point where you’re like, Okay, you have enough information. Now it’s your time to be responsible and apply.
Andrew Morgans 09:31
I couldn’t agree more because I think I kind of had that revelation last year, you know, is the pandemic 2020 And part 21. And then it was just like, Okay, we’re let out, and I feel like the e-commerce industry, the Amazon industry, in general, was like the first like, they’re just, you know, they don’t deal with fear in the same way as everybody else. They’re like entrepreneurs, you know, so they were like, Let’s have events. I miss everyone. They are already kind of doing business alone. You know, a lot of them wanted to meet up, And it was amazing. It was as fun as exciting. Finally, all of a sudden, there was like, you know, some firepower behind our events, and really making them have some fun and be cool and kind of elevate. Well, it just exhausted me as an agency owner. You know, it was just like, you go from like, not interacting with any humans at all to like interacting with like, tons of humans. You know, the networking, the follow-up. And it was about, like, for me, it was like, I just, I traveled to get inspired. Like, that’s really where my ideas come from, where I get inspiration, my creativity, and I was losing some of that, like while traveling, and so then I’d come back and unable to implement because I was so tired and exhausted. And you know, so for me, you’re right. It’s been about choosing the right cities, the right events that I want to be, how do we pick what those are, you know, which ones are there. And I still think there’s a lot of room in this industry for brands to start joining us in a big way. You know, I think they exist at the social media world events, and like, you know, some of these trade show events. But I talked to brands all the time that I’ve never seen at conferences like this, you know, smaller brands, they can learn so, so, so much. You know, the difference between an Amazon seller and let’s say, like, you know, a DTC site, or a website that’s doing well as a brand, or in retail as a brand, and they need to learn about Amazon, they need to be on Amazon, they need to like have an Amazon strategy in place. I still think that’s an untapped market when it comes to events. And we’ll be excited to start seeing some great brands represented.
Vanessa Hung 11:38
I couldn’t agree more. Actually, I was in June, during my birthday, I was at a conference. Of course, in Salt Lake City. So this company pattern, they put together a conference for brands. So this was one of the first times that I went to a conference and I totally knew nobody, yeah, nobody, because they were the owners of the brand, the CEO, the marketing, you know, head of the marketing or VP of sales, or whatever, that they were there to learn. And seeing that there. There’s actually a hunger for those. But I don’t know if the people that put together events in our space completely understand their needs. Yeah. And how to reach them. Right. It’s and it’s funny, because today, I was reading a post on LinkedIn that talked about why DTC brands are seen by Amazon as the enemy, right? They’re like, Oh, no, let’s say it. I mean, we’re losing sales. Instead of complaining about it, just like, learn how to own that channel. It’s so important, because if you don’t get your brand to Amazon, somebody else will do it for you, for sure. And, and, yeah, and we are in an industry where we teach people, for example, in the wholesale community, we teach people on how to source those rents, right how to search those inefficiencies in the market to get that opportunity and resell on that.
Andrew Morgans 13:09
But this is the next level in regards to, or a different side of the ball, so to speak. If you’re if you’re competing, right for that metaphor, but it’s like you, from this side is brand protection, it’s how to protect the brand, how to get, you know, combine ASINs, and how to do how to get profitable on Amazon when you weren’t, you haven’t built a model for Amazon, your model is built for retail margins, your model is built for website margins. And the way that you deliver content, the way that you run an SEO strategy, the way that you get direct to, or you get, what’s the word direct response is completely different. You know, you might have a blog article that’s broad about a subject that you’re trying to sell somewhere in the article versus on Amazon, that would never work. And this is something that I know Marknology is something that we’re very passionate about and have been leaning into for a number of reasons, but strongly because, you know, there’s so much change on Amazon. If you started working with a client or a brand or a manufacturer that has sales channels and retail and sales channels on their DTC, they already have a certain level of understanding about their products and their brand. But then when we take it to Amazon, it’s more so getting it fit for that marketplace. Think about it like social media where you don’t post on Instagram the same way you post on LinkedIn, yeah, posts on Facebook and the same we post on tick tock but like you’re posting the same content, like repurpose for each one. And I think that’s, that’s something that as someone that’s always been looking for brands, manufacturers as potential clients, these events for me are more so like continued education for me and the team networking, maybe new software’s and services and what you said before resonated with me which was like, I think even Amazon prosper used to be like this back in the day It’s kind of a long way, I felt like a lot of speakers brought a ton of content, it was just a lot different even the last couple of years. But it used to be that everything was sponsored and driven by software companies that were built for sellers. And those were the speakers, those are the ones hosting the events. So they knew they were selling to they knew who they’re marketing to, they’re creating events for, you know, they were the ones behind it, putting it together. And so now there’s more opportunities and more events popping up as the community grows, I think we have to just shift a little bit. And that’s honestly why I’m here speaking on, you know, creating content that can emotionally connect with customers and the reasons why and how, like, basically, conversion rate optimization, in a lot of ways. That’s something that applies on DTC it applies on Amazon. But these are the conversations that brands are hunting for all the time. Yeah. And that brings them over to our industry, for sure.
Vanessa Hung 15:54
Just my recommendation, that learning of this conversation is just like, events are the best thing that can happen to you if you learn how to use them properly. Because they can be an amazing investment of learning connections and epiphanies. Or it can be just a waste of time. And I do think that most people don’t realize the ROI either. So how much does it cost me to be at an event versus how much will I be? If so, I thought about it the other day when I was coming back from Vegas from ASD. I said, Okay, I spent X amount of money at this event, what if I will use that money and put advertising on it? How much would my community grow? So those are the things that once you get the point, and I think that I get the point a lot, and I’m in the space now not as an observer, I’m in the space as an educator, right? I’m speaking at all of the events. So now I won’t be I’m not part of the attendees. I’m part of like the people that are bringing in that content. But I do think that I will put more time and effort into building new content. And that’s something that probably is a trap, because I always think that my content is all and when I go to events, people are amazed about it. And I’m like, okay, maybe it’s not that, oh, I can just keep teaching and the community is so big, there are so many sellers, and so many sellers that are not even selling yet on Amazon. That is the opportunity is incredible. So that’s where you’re like, Okay, this is an amazing opportunity. But also you need to be learning and you need to be implementing those things to see if they work and you weren’t sharing with me a story about an influencer. So if you were to be at an event or traveling all the time, you probably wouldn’t have the time to invest in that relationship. See what’s new, in the TikTok and all that. So those are the things that I see. And a lot of the times are dangerous. That’s a very dangerous one. And I’ll tell you, like you mentioned the fact of like, oh, you get tired. The trap here is that I don’t get tired of networking. I like it more than working nights. I really get energized when I’m around people, and I’m a people’s person. But then it’s like, okay, you like this is amazing. Now where to stop. And this analogy can work for anything guys have information wise, we are in a time where information is just like at one click in our fingers, where is the time where you stop consuming and you start implementing? Right? That is the biggest thing. And sometimes there are so many there are 10s of 1000s of things that you could implement. But you need to realize that in a world of limited resources, you cannot do it all. So you need to pick them, and you need to apply them and you need to learn how to excel at them. Because another thing is to imagine that a brand is going to an event, they see 10 speakers, 10 speakers with four different things that are amazing, that are cool, that are sexy, that they will drive their business forward. So now they have 40 things that they need to apply. They will try to apply all of them at the same time, and they will fail at every single one. So that’s not the point. My recommendation is like, go there, go to events with a goal. It’s like, okay, I need to go to this event because I want to know really how to get ticked off-topic.
Andrew Morgans 19:38
Should I be focusing on what you get from the event? What should I be focused on your checklist?
Vanessa Hung 19:43
Exactly. And then when you get that list, you’re like, Okay, can I implement this guy excel at this? Can I do it fast with low investment? And if that’s yes, yes, yes. Then you go and apply instead of going into a paralysis analysis or driving your team crazy. Because that’s another thing that can happen. A brand owner can come to an event, think that everything is amazing. And then when the team is trying to implement, they don’t have the same perspective so they could fail also. That’s the thing that I’m seeing. And I’m very excited. Now it’s so funny because I come from a community background like I am the result of the communities that I’ve been part of the community Miami, we started Sophie calm that my community online, the community of all events, you know, we are friends, because we met each other at an event. So that’s amazing. But now it’s like, it’s my time to get that knowledge and that experience and apply it to other communities. So my focus on 2023 will be for short, online communities. Because they’re bigger, they’re a little bit under-serving that sense of like, and that’s something that I always see for events in person. They, people that go to events in person, are sharing huge, huge knowledge. So basically, if you don’t go to that event in person you are missing. They don’t share that content online. So I did last weekend.
Andrew Morgans 21:20
Where it’s like a website holding some products from putting it on Amazon to get people to end up on their website. Correct on their email list. It’s not a strategy.
Vanessa Hung 21:27
Correct. Correct. Exactly. So they’re, they’re using it as a bait, you know, to get you on, I think that that’s super cool, because then you get like amazing content at one point. And that can result in super cool things. But you have millions and millions of people that are endangered that I’m watching your content that could be out there that need your help. And you’re undeserving. Right. So at the end, I said, Okay, I’m gonna do it differently. And I did a webinar, it was a week, three webinars Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and I share everything. It’s like, okay, let me put it out there my best content. And the feedback was Vanessa, that’s the best webinar the whole year. So I’m like, wow, they do really want these kinds.
Andrew Morgans 22:16
Didn’t cost you that much. And it was already the network you’ve been building, you could have technically been at home, or wherever you wanted to be. Without all the travel expenses that come with that.
Vanessa Hung 22:26
Yes, savings for brands. And I do believe that we are going into a time where community it’s so important. So one of the things that I learned at VDSS. And that’s something mind blowing is this whole web 3.0 You know, all of the things that will happen with that huge shift, and how brands will need to behave. So if you think that now brands struggle to get into a different marketplace like Amazon, just because they have power regulations, they want to survive the shift that will come with the web 3.0. So at these events, we are looking into the future into what’s going to happen in five years. And if you start building your business, that way, you’re definitely gonna get ahead and faster ahead of the game completely ahead of the game. And these guys, they were, they are doing amazing stuff with NFTs, with communities in discord and stuff like that brands, brands that you can go on by and target. And you’re like, oh my god, this is an amazing opportunity. And I do think that the time that it’s coming for the US in an economic perspective, will make some people start looking into those air spaces, and leveraging those and the ones that do. We’ll be way ahead of the game, like from now in 10 years.
Andrew Morgans 23:59
So it’s just I couldn’t agree more and I have some feedback on this. Before I jump into it, I do want to give a shout out to our sponsor FullScale.io helping make all these episodes and the podcast possible. If you’re looking for software engineers, developers, FullScale.io is a great place to start. Simply just go there and type in your needs your search right there and you’ll see you know what’s available. So thanks again they make these episodes possible. Thinking about that innovation piece and so like this episode is like why professional curiosity matters in E-commerce and, you know, I saw I think I saw something from Gary Vee. I’m always quoting him but like he said something about taking three months off to learn. And he’s like, Yeah, you understand like the money I could make if I was just like working and producing those three months but he’s like, I believe that stopping slowing down letting money go buy me in order to learn and educate myself about let’s say NF T’s or let’s say web 3.0 Or let’s say influencer marketing, or let’s say, who knows what he’s studying, right? I, but it matters. And that was something that gave me a little bit of justification, I guess, for my reasoning in regards to, I want to go to less events, I want to have more time for learning, I want to have more time for myself. There’s something that I get very inspired and fueled by when I’m learning something new. I’m like an innovator. I’m a creator, like building. And I get very fueled by that. I know the educational piece is important, right? I’m here as a speaker, I enjoy it. But when I’m educating, I’m essentially building community. I’m building a network. I’m building a brand. But I’m not innovating. And I’m not, I’m not trailblazing and you know, something self said of myself. But like, I’ve been in this space a long time, I felt like I’ve been out there in front. You know, talking to brands, manufacturers about Amazon, why they showed us how to do it, how to get people back to your website, how do you get customer retention? All these strategies have been things I’ve been learning, and not to say that we’ve maxed Amazon. But as Amazon gets harder, margins get harder, supply chain gets harder. For me, it’s been looking at, okay, what’s the next thing? My Amazon-like world will continue to evolve and grow and get better as Amazon keeps out new things and all that. But how do I start thinking about holistic e-commerce? What do I think about what are the newest and latest strategies out there that people are doing? What’s a new opportunity? If costs are rising and CPC on Amazon and you need ads to grow? How do I go out there and get organic traffic? What’s an organic strategy? You know, just those different opportunities that take time to learn. And unless someone is speaking about them, like I remember when I was putting out content on YouTube, about brand protection and things that brands need to think about instead of sellers. It was like, no one was searching for that stuff. Okay, like I was there, like, I’m going to do this, I was headstrong, like, I’m going to do this because no one’s doing it. And I know the answers to it, I’m gonna let everyone know, like, you can be a brand and you can do this and like, you know, and then now there’s, there’s content, and there’s like, this is a this is a whole thing. And it’s continued to evolve. But what’s the next thing? And I think that like, even as an agency owner, that’s something that’s always on my mind. Not to not get great at something, but also, okay, we’re going to continue to need to have an r&d department so to speak, and what does that look like for us? Whether that’s getting better at our own content for me this last year, it was like systems and processes internally like with SOPs and bringing in a scaler as a partner to help us get that done. And in migrating to click up and project management, or like managerial scaling types of things, you know, so that was that what’s next for me, that’s like, you know, working with influencers, working with influencers to launch brands, understanding how that kind of attribution ties back, you know, kind of operating more as like fractional CMOS for companies, with Amazon being our strength. That’s something new that I’m going to be learning. And there’s, it’s just interesting what energy comes with that for me.
Vanessa Hung 27:56
Yeah, I love it. I think that the part that you mentioned at the beginning of, oh, you need to go there and take so back to the Gary Vee example of taking three months to learn. That part of learning could come in different ways. And for you comes in experimenting and exploring what is in your role and taking the time for some people to be going to events, because that’s the way they learn from some others will be just like learning or being online or whatever. So I think that each of them have their benefits. And they have their like cons and they have their traps. If you get too comfortable in your own world, you will never come to these events, and you will never meet the next partner that will shift your business completely, or the person that will tell you something that will change your mind. Or if you just come to these events, and you run, you know, do like introspection and get time to work on yourself and your business or whatever. You still have that. So I do. I don’t think that events are bad. I don’t think that time alone in your business is bad. But there are times for it. And we really need to be conscious of where we put the energy and understand that when you get comfortable. That probably is a dangerous ride for comfort. So I actually, yeah, I hate confrontation. That’s one of the things that will probably be my comfort zone is the discomfort. So I want to always be comfortable. I always want to be like what’s next for you. Let me try and let me fail. I want to fail many, many times. So I get the thing that somebody doesn’t know about or I can start teaching. And yeah, for example, talking about professional curiosity. Remember that a long time ago well, not a long time ago but beginning of the year i i share some information with you on what’s the power of their Hispanic marketplace. We actually had a podcast about this.
Andrew Morgans 30:01
Like the number one tip of prosper for that. Yeah.
Vanessa Hung 30:05
Yeah, well, that education happened just because I was experimenting, exploring the space and seeing like, hey, what is going on here. So that curiosity of like, let me explore and see what happens. And if it breaks, it breaks and if it breaks down into some word and he doesn’t have an ROI, that’s amazing, but I at least now I know. So that’s a lot of the things so I tried to use at least 40% of my energy and time on those very, very uncomfortable things or could be the heat or not. And most of them are just not are not a thing that will blow in the community. But when they do use content that nobody has seen before. So the same thing for rats, if you’re here listening and you’re building your brand’s allocated resources, and allocate time for things that you don’t know if they will succeed. Because if you always do that’s another thing, Andrew is like, if you go to the events, and you learn from the experts, the experts have already been trying stuff for a while. And that’s why they are experts. They’re trying content that works. But if you don’t try yourself something that you don’t know if it’s gonna work, or what if this is new, or what if you know that thing of like, nobody has seen a massive, massive success with a brand with a DTC and an NFT like not yet, like in the NFT community, there are some but not a brand. And that’s why Nike, Louis Vuitton and all these brands got into the metaverse and you know, they trademarked NFT’s and Ola. So they are experimenting, testing in the future, they are invested in the future for sure. So you allocate time and energy and space resources money to do that. And probably one of one of 10 will be the heat, but that he will make up 10 times million times more, whatever you invest. So that’s what happened to me with the content of the Spanish market. Nobody has ever put any content of our son actually changing the algorithm to have surgeries in Spanish in 2017. It wasn’t until 2022 that I discovered that I put up.
Andrew Morgans 32:27
My English market is studying like, oh, the level of the Spanish market. So it was kind of left on top in a lot of ways.
Vanessa Hung 32:35
So think about what are the things that are in your world right now that are a mystery for you or they’re interesting enough to be worth the time and energy to explore. Some explorations go wrong for you. You’re like, Oh, my God, I was, you know, down, down, up or down so much, you know, time, but when he works, it is just so fulfilling, not only because for your brand, it will be amazing. And the story you were sharing about this VC influencer? Oh my God, that’s an amazing opportunity. If you didn’t take the risk of engaging with some world that you didn’t know, that wouldn’t happen, right? So now that you know, it’s okay, how can I do this more and more and more, the same thing with brands, and I do believe that their world is gonna move towards the web 3.0 in the years to come. And that’s like, undeniable, now’s the time to start preparing for it. So today, I was asked to actually like listening to a podcast. They were interviewing one guy, one of the biggest partners of Sequoia, the VC firm of venture capital, like investment funds and stuff. And he said, like, their vision is just like five years, 10 years in the future. So yes, they are short-term decisions that you need to put on processes that you need to have to have success now. But that energy and that, you know, resources are allocated to the future and see what that could look like. And be prepared for that to be successful or failure. You don’t know that you only started trying. So I think that that’s basically the core of intrapreneurship. Like, try stuff. That is not a guarantee, you know. Success is identity.
Andrew Morgans 34:33
Totally. And I think like this is kind of like the mindset that you have to have, like, the aggregators come into the space and stress me out. I wasn’t trying to sell an agency. Why? Because I’ve been planning for five years in the future about what I plan to build, and I’m not close to it, right. So it’d be like, why that’s not that wasn’t the point, whether you’re a brand or an agency, or you’re thinking like, Why Why are you doing this now? Well, I’m investing in the team. I’m investing in myself. I’m investing in our learning. I’m trying to hire people that also have professional Curiosity so that we compound at that level, and it just takes, you know, it takes losing, it takes sometimes finding success to be like, Oh my God, what do I really want to obsess about? Even the things that I’m studying now, I met a lot of people that I go to, to talk about that at conferences, right. So those are the people I’m brainstorming with. Those are the people that I’m. I’m digging into the next level of what that is. And, you know, I think for Amazon sellers or for brands, you know, you’re like, Oh, my God, we got so good at Facebook ads, and that’s what made us successful, or, we got so good at Amazon that I can’t do, you know, web or like, whatever. But it’s like, you need to learn those things. If you’re playing the long game, and you need to be better at those things, even speaking, educating, or podcasting. For me, it was like I needed to try something new for my business. I’m here in Kansas City. I needed to start like, you know, expanding and getting our reach to Miami and to New York and to Chicago and wherever. And so, for me, that meant speaking and pushing those envelopes. So you know, innovate, continue to grow, like it’s changing, and e-commerce is not one that you can be left behind. We’re coming right up on time. So I think we’re actually even a couple minutes over our slot, but where like, as we sign off, you know, I’m super excited about this conference. I’m excited about, like, you know, where the industry is going. I think it’s to this next chapter that I’m getting really excited about because I think it’s just bringing, we got the eyeballs, we’ve got the finances, we’ve got the funding, you know, people are taking this seriously. And I think the next level of growth for E-commerce and Amazon is right around the corner in this economy. So before we sign off, like where can people find you? You’re like putting out webinars and this content we were talking about earlier. Where can people find you and sign up for those? Sure.
Vanessa Hung 36:42
So my primary social media right now is LinkedIn. So you can find me, Vanessa Hung. That’s my favorite one so far. Then we have Instagram, which is like reels and cute content and super easy, like, you know, user-friendly, cute graphics where people can understand about Amazon and the back end, which is what I specialize on. That’s fulltime.Amazon. And the website of the agency is online seller solutions. So yeah, those are the places if you have them on the website. You have all the resources. You can see all of the videos that I have in past interviews, like webinars, whatever. Three resources, a contact button, so if you want to contact me or contact the team, just like reach out through a website, or if you want to message directly is Vanessa full time. Amazon.com.
Andrew Morgans 37:42
Thank you, Vanessa. This has been awesome. Thank you, Hustlers, and shout out again to our sponsor FullScale.io. Helping you build software teams quickly and affordably. Talk soon.