I am joined by Carlos Alvarez. Carlos Alvarez, a successful Amazon retailer, created Bluebird Marketing Solutions to empower online sellers with the techniques he learned over 20 years. He is also the founder of Wizards of Amazon, the largest Amazon Seller Meetup group in the world. In this episode, Carlos dives in to the importance of building a community online. Norm and Carlos also discuss just what you can expect after cultivating a thriving group and which social media platform is supreme for building a group! The answer might surprise you!
Date: November 27, 2020
Episode: 69
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Carlos Alvarez,a Successful Amazon Retailer, a Founder of Wizards of Amazon, a Frequent Keynote Speaker and Meetup’s First City Organizer.
Subtitle: “The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.”
Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-69-building-an-online-community-w-carlos-alvarez/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Khierstyn Ross, a product launch expert that specializes in Kickstarter & other popular channels launch for physical products.
In this episode, Carlos dives into the importance of building a community online. They also discussed what you can expect after cultivating a thriving group and with social media platform is supreme from building a group.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy here and welcome to another Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands.
Norman 0:19
Alright. So today I’m hoping that we get our guest, my buddy, Carlos Alvarez. He’s going to be talking about building communities online. Carlos is responsible for the largest Amazon group. I think I’m going to confirm this, but I think it’s over 40,000. Plus, he’s got an incredible brand or group of brands that put it this way, he’s a very successful Amazon seller. Anyways, hopefully he will be on. I know that we were just waiting for him to come on. Other than that, I think Kelsey is going to tap dance and we’ll just do this, or he might just be in the fetal position.
Kelsey 1:05
Carlos is here.
Norman 1:07
Oh he is? Okay. So you don’t have to tap dance or go into the fetal position now?
Kelsey 1:11
Not today.
Norman 1:13
Because we could do one hour just talking about that stash.
Kelsey 1:17
I think you’re gonna miss it. It’s gonna be here till Monday, and then it’s gone forever. So next year, at least. So yeah, getting rid of it.
Norman 1:28
That should be a poll in the group.
Kelsey 1:31
Yeah, who loves my stash?
Norman 1:32
There we go.
Kelsey 1:34
Put it in the comment section. But yeah, so it’s Black Friday today. So in our Facebook group, we put up a little thread for some self promotion stuff. If you know any sales discounts, you can go ahead and post there and everyone from the Lunch With Norm group can be adding to their the different sales that’s happening on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Looks like we got Rad.
Norman 2:01
Hey, Rad.
Kelsey 2:02
Just a question to the audience to get started, like, what are you looking for this Black Friday? For electronics, memberships. I know SEMrush, I think, is having a deal. So yeah, let us know what you’re looking for. Put in the comment section, but yeah.
Norman 2:20
I want to know how everybody’s Black Friday’s going. Like, when we get together on Monday. Well, that’s going to be Cyber Monday, which I think will outperform Black Friday, we’ll see. But maybe by Wednesday, we’ll get some people on and if you’re interested in coming on live, just let us know in the group. Alright, and Simon’s back as well.
Kelsey 2:40
Hey, Simon.
Norman 2:42
Happy Black Friday and Doctor Koz. Alright. Okay, so, Kelsey.
Kelsey 2:49
Yes?
Norman 2:50
Tell us to smash things. Tell us the ring things.
Kelsey 2:52
Yes. Okay, so follow us on social media. Smash that like button, ring the bell. You guys know the drill and yeah, we are on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. If you end up missing an episode, you can always find it on YouTube. The full episodes go directly there. As for podcasts, you can find us on Spotify and Apple and that’s about it.
Norman 3:15
Alright, so other than that, we are broadcasting live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn and if you’re watching on our replay, skip it. Skip all this and go right to the meat and potatoes. Or some people have said sweet potato casserole Kels? I’ve never heard of sweet potato casserole and Kelsey saying it was bugging me that I’ve never heard of this. Tim Jordan was telling me about the other day as it’s not a Canadian thing. I’ve never heard of it. But anyways, look, if you’re on our Facebook page, or my profile page, you can always go over to Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy and check out this episode with a ton of other full episodes, highlights and content. Now, let me see here. If you have any questions, throw them over into the comment section we will get to them. So sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show. Where are you sir?
Carlos 4:15
What’s up?
Norman 4:16
Holy, You almost had Kelsey doing tap dancing for the hour.
Carlos 4:22
You want to hear something funny? I was tap dancing because my calendar showed this next week. I was about to set up the new iPhone, I sit back and I see an email and obviously it’s from Kelsey. So I’m like, I’m gonna answer this and it’s like, here’s your stream yard link and I’m like, huh? So I did a total tap dance panic and I’m just like, well, it’s happening. Let’s do this, huh?
Norman 4:45
There we go.
Carlos 4:46
Can you imagine me seeing you at an event and you get to throw up in my face that I stood you up at a Lunch With Norm. I couldn’t live with that.
Norman 4:53
Hey, it reminds me of high school. It happened a lot. Alright, Carlos. Why don’t you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Carlos 5:08
I am a serial entrepreneur. The vast majority of my businesses touch Amazon in some sort of way. I have an army of brilliant virtual assistants and domestic employees that make me look really good. Having a record year this year, being predominantly eCommerce. I founded and organized the largest Amazon seller meetup group in the world. I think total members were, like 44,000 as part of the group, but just local in Miami, we have over 5000 active members, which for a local community is insane.
Norman 5:55
Right.
Carlos 5:56
Oh, I see. Sharon. What’s up Sharon? One of my favorite people.
Norman 5:58
I see Ray. All the way from Tel Aviv.
Carlos 6:02
Yeah, I feel special now. I’ve made it. Definitely. But besides that, I’m happily married, four dogs, two kids. I know Norm and I think that’s the good intro without taking up the entire show doing my intro.
Norman 6:19
Okay, I do want to talk about one thing, because you got started in this space and I love this story and I don’t think this is any secret or anything?
Carlos 6:29
Oh, no, not at all.
Norman 6:31
But with reptiles and bugs. You want to get into that?
Carlos 6:36
I will. I just don’t know if people like get bored of the story.
Norman 6:38
No I mean, just do Reader’s Digest, but it’s a really cool story.
Carlos 6:41
Yeah, Reader’s Digest version is I was starting to sell on, this is 15. I mean, this is almost 15 years ago. No, this is no, this is 17 years ago, yeah, about 17 years ago, and I was doing eBay, playing around with Amazon. But eBay was the main driver of revenue and when I start exploring Amazon, one of my hottest selling products was this adult novelty product, this little ring with a motor and a switch and I’ll leave it there, I guess it’s a very PG show and I don’t want to like put your editors to work. But like, that’s what it was and friends and family at that point, see, like, wow, this guy’s gonna, he’s gonna make something of himself now, he’s not going to just like OD or be in prison and I was a drop out of elementary school going nowhere fast. So they’re like, okay, let’s support this. So they pulled up at $1,000 and they invested in me and I immediately went to go buy these adult novelty products, because it was the only like, I wanted about $81,000 of these things that were like 21 cents a piece, right? So you can you imagine and I had no concept of the containers, the sizes, all that stuff. So in short, the factory didn’t have it on hand and I went somewhere else to get it made on Alibaba back then again, if you knew Alibaba, you were in like a very small group and I got ripped off in short. So since I lost all the money, I needed to do something to not let everybody know that I got ripped off and Carlos did it again. So I started selling the things that I had, and two of them were reptiles and two of these snakes that I went to sell, Burmese python, a Colombian red tail Boa there and pillowcases, and I’m about to sell them and that’s reptile or ask if they’ll buy them in a reptile store and person in front of me was paying $25 for 50 live worms and in desperation, I was like, I’ll dig and I’ll dig for worms, where do they live? Speeding up through some of the process I found an article on a public library that says that zoos and our pathology department should breed insects instead of paying top dollar on the private market and I was like connecting these dots and I’m like, can you sell this online and I see that some people, some reptile owners are buying live insects online. I started breeding them. Code enforcement almost kicks me out of the house, my ex girlfriend leaves me and I start selling them online. Pretty much 60-70 units a day back then at like $85 a box and then about 10 months later, a company approaches me and buys my company for $2.6 million. So I think it was a bad deal but it was the best thing to happen to me then and I almost go broke again in a year because I’m just partying thinking that that amount of money after taxes leaves you to like wealthy for the rest of your life and I didn’t want to go broke again and the only thing I had done successfully really business wise in my life was this Amazon eBay thing. So I kept going and I started another brand and since then it’s just been pedal to the metal. Amazing times.
Norman 10:00
Now I’m just curious, do you stick to the 80-20? Do you cut? If something’s going wrong for you not turning the results, you cut it quick?
Carlos 10:11
God. That’s a good question. That’s an easy question I should be able to answer pretty fast. I want to say that I’m very conservative or methodical, and what I get into and that, like, for example, let’s just use Amazon private label for an example. I know most people will, they’ll open up a few tools, and then they’ll look at these tools over a weekend and an inspirational webinar and then next thing you know, they’re ordering three things from China and while the products are on the way there then figuring out what is FBA? Like, that would be like the rapid approach, or like Sharon actually, is the person in the Amazon space that I think my approach towards, like what I look for an appeal is most similar. But I really do like to take even longer. I like to take four months of looking into what’s the content creation look like for this? If I was to build a list with an email using email marketing, like what does that content look like and am I set up for it? What does the group building and the community look like for this, and I go through all that and check all those boxes before I pull the trigger on the product. So I’ve knocked on wood. I’ve never launched an unsuccessful PL. So I’ve not had to cut it. In other areas of my life, I’ve definitely had to cut things.
Norman 11:31
That’s a great segway going into the show about building community. So, when you’re looking at a product, you do a ton of research? Sure. I don’t think a lot of people do a ton of research. But that’s the starting point of your community correct?
Carlos 11:50
Most definitely.
Norman 11:52
So why should we start our own community?
Carlos 11:55
Well, to not be a slave or to not be in a red ocean? How about that? I feel like nowadays, if you’ve ever read the Blue Ocean Strategy book, which I love, if you do what everybody else does to get into their businesses, then you’re going to kind of be where everybody else is at and I don’t want to be there. So I’ve found that most people feel things like building community, going to a farmers market, exhibiting at a show that’s just too much work nowadays, it’s too far away from laptop lifestyle. Also, if you build a community, for me, I get into products that I’m passionate about or would like to be passionate about. So it’s just a personal choice. So because I am, it leaves community building open for me.If I’m into paperclips, and I’m passionate about paperclips, Norm every time we speak, I’m going to bring up to you how you’re missing out because you’re not in the paperclip community. Like I’m really involved in it, I can be convincing, and having a community, for me, one of the most direct benefits for the right products selling more, and that I would encourage people to approach it this way as well is that I’m not as reliant on PPC. I have zero reliance on blackhat strategies for launching. I just have my list, I have my people and if I’m launching peanut butter, or paperclips, or insects, they want to support me and they want to buy it.
Norman 13:25
So when you’re doing this, what platforms are you generally working on to build the community?
Carlos 13:30
There’s not a lot of great community platforms out there currently to build a local in person community. The best one out there that I know of is meetup.com and I’ve used it for launching like I launched some PL brands in the past that had to do with the scuba industry, for example and what I did was I just collaborated with a scuba store owner and I’m like, hey, look, I want you to offer these lessons on how to get scuba certified for free, air quotes here for those are just, audio listening to this and we get on the screen. So, I want you to offer it for free and I’m going to kind of pay you on the back end and I know that anyone that’s first of all, I know it’s gonna be a huge magnet for anyone that wants to get into this and that when I try to sell you my snorkel, or like my mask, like you’re gonna buy it, like it’s nothing compared to the value that you receive from the group. So I’ve done that, we’ve launched dog grooming brushes by going to dog parks, and creating meetup events at dog parks and building community that way, but meetup.com seems to be the easiest centralized place to have it and then like anything else, you want to be connected not reliant on a platform. So many of the people in my group shockingly, even with this huge number, we have each other’s phone number like we can communicate on Telegram, WhatsApp, email, and that’s really not the same as, not to say there’s not a good thing to have like Facebook groups, I love them. They’re very powerful. But let me ask you, like in a group of 10,000 people in a Facebook group, how many actual phone numbers do you think the founder of that group has of the people in that group?
Norman 15:18
White hat or black hat?
Carlos 15:22
I know where you’re thinking. But like on average in the norm, it’s the norm you like that upon the norm.
Norman 15:30
There we go.
Carlos 15:32
Into the norm, in the norm, like in the norm, that is not the norm and being able to have such direct communication with your audience is huge. Another side benefit of it is, this has been said so much, it seems cheesy, but being in a position of leadership in your community. On authority, what is it the authority and authority in your niche that has benefits.
Norman 15:58
Sure does.
Carlos 15:58
Yeah, it has very real benefits, it does not happen by accident. But many, many people and nearly all of my competitors, what they would say is, it’s not worth it. It’s too much time, it’s too much work, there’s not a program, I can just click a button, and it does it for me, so I’m not interested. So to me, that’s music to my ears. That’s that blue ocean and I’m in it and I’ve just leveraged it in all of my businesses, except the first insect business that I’ve launched to date.
Norman 16:28
So you can use and I’ve never used meetup, I see your emails coming out all the time on meetup.
Carlos 16:35
You open all of them, and you read it.
Norman 16:36
Everyone and I respond to every one that you send out five times a day. But no, but I’ve never used meetup. This is the first time I’ve heard you talk about this and like if you’re working with meetup in Miami, so you’re geo targeting people. So you can get enough information within the Miami area Fort Lauderdale area, to do a launch or to build off of a meetup to get a much larger group or community?
Carlos 17:09
Yes, you can definitely start in the local community. But just because I’m based in Miami does not mean that I can’t have a meetup group in Germany. So I can just set it up with the address being in Germany, and it will target Germany, so I can have multiple meetup groups in different communities. So let’s say I wanted to start an Amazon and this is actually something we’re flirting with. But like, let’s say there’s somebody in Canada that wants to start an Amazon seller meetup group, and they’re like, Carlos, you create all this content, you have all the processes. Can we like, almost be a chapter of your community and how would I draw the people so it’d be very easy for me to just create that extension or that chapter in that other area that geographically I’m rarely ever at, and begin building an audience in that area. So, yes, you can do it at scale.
Norman 18:07
When you first started talking about this, so I was thinking actual meetups, because when we talk you have actual physical,
Carlos 18:16
in person events.
Norman 18:17
Yeah. In person events. But yeah, I guess you could do all this virtually and just set it up. Is that correct? You just have zoom events.
Carlos 18:24
Yes, but I feel like there is a difference between, if I go just virtual and just online, then it’s not the same as in person. I’m now getting closer to that red ocean. I’m competing against much bigger fish. What I mean is, if I connect with somebody to create a meetup event into a meetup group in Canada, then that person’s actually going to host events and I’m going to support in the way of content topics, processes on the back end that do the whole promotion cycle of what needs to happen. There’s a lot that goes behind an actual event.
Norman 19:06
Right. So let’s talk about, we’ve got meetup. What are some other types of community platforms that we can use and we’ve got Facebook groups that you can build, and we’ll talk about that in a sec. But any other platforms that you’re using, or that you can suggest?
Carlos 19:23
There’s not even a close second. The next thing after that is public message boards like, you go on Google and you’ll hear something like, you’ll put in a niche and then put the event near me and you’ll find out that the first Tuesday of every month, there’s a group that meets and talks about reptiles and brings their reptiles and they have a raffle and then once you get in there, there’s a tight knit community that’s supported between events with WhatsApp groups, Telegram groups, Facebook groups, but there’s not even a close second to meet up when it comes to that.
Norman 20:04
Well, that’s not what I was expecting. So I’ve never worked with meetup. I might take a look at trying to set this thing up and even in Canada and Toronto is in a bloody lockdown again, IT started this week. You’re in Florida, so anything goes.
Carlos 20:23
It’s freezing down here too.
Norman 20:25
Oh, is it?
Carlos 20:26
76-77 degrees.
Norman 20:28
Oh, I’ve got a buddy. You know Wilfried?
Carlos 20:30
Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I have him on a list somewhere I want to reach out.
Norman 20:36
Just let me know, he was my old business partner in Digital Blacksmiths and he’s doing great
Carlos 20:41
Ligthart right?
Norman 20:42
Ligthart. Yeah and his skill was building communities and it didn’t matter if it was on YouTube, or on Facebook, or wherever. I’ll tell you what he did and I think this is important. So you’ve got the overall group, which might be pets, and then he would go in, and he would have dogs and then he would have schnauzers, or Bulldogs or and then he would go into keywords like bully sticks and I know the Schnauzer group that he built very quickly had 175,000 people and what he told, what he always said is, you have to be engaged before you get married, that was Wilfried, or by giving value, you’re adding fuel to the fire and it’s so true, because there’s so many of these groups that arise. Now, I can’t talk about meetup, but I can talk about Facebook groups and by putting in really great content all the time, your group can grow very quickly and like 175,000 schnauzers around the world. That’s pretty powerful and the beautiful part of what he did was, if you’re building this group, people are going to be liking you, they’re going to come back to your page, and they’re going to like your page, you’re going to start following your posts and even without doing any promotion, you’re going to be the authority that people trust and then they buy. So by going over to your website, or your Facebook page, or profile, wherever you are, you can start promoting your products there. So he’s very successful, he was very successful at that and because you’re getting real people that are coming here that want products in your niche, you can build up a very good group of people, even driving them over to your website, not even necessarily over to Amazon. Amazon’s always good. I still drive tons of people over to Amazon and while I’m trying to drive them over to my eCommerce store one way or the other, to give them value there. But yeah, I’ve got to check out, I really do have to check out meetup. I had no idea you were gonna say that you took me off guard. But I gotta check that out. But for me, like Facebook groups, Kelsey’s in the middle of building out the one Facebook group and we’re doing it all organically. We don’t want any cheap clicks and I think that’s important too.
Carlos 23:21
Absolutely.
Norman 23:22
You can go out and I made the mistake of one of my brands giving it to a social media person when I had a social media company. I still have a social media company, but the person went out there, and we got over 100,000 likes on the page. So 100,000 people are liking and following. Well, then Wilfried came in and he took a look and he goes, this is crap. He says, I could post all day long here, valuable content. But what this person did is they went over for really cheap clicks. It was more along Pacific Rim and India, Bangladesh, because they were cheap clicks like they’re a penny a piece and he says this has no value at all. Yep and that was a learning lesson, back a few years ago that wow, I just paid somebody a lot of money to do this and I can’t even use it. I have to create another group that’s real.
Carlos 24:24
You didn’t say this directly but this is gonna be the first time that I verbalize this. So like, be prepared to like, go back and forth with me. I find that the caliber of people, let me say it and then we’ll clean it up. So finding that the caliber of people that join your in person meetup event, RSVP and actually attend are willing to go so much further with you and for you than someone that hits the join group and has the option to be like a 99% lurker in a Facebook group.
Norman 25:07
Right. No, I would agree 100%. If you are going out and I’ve seen this with, we have our ASM, our Toronto Meetup group, which hasn’t met in a long time. But, you get to know people, you break bread with people during these meetings, you get to talk to them. It’s a whole different ball game than over a virtual summit. Let’s say, which I still have problems with, because I love going to the events and no matter what, if you have breakout rooms, or whatever it is, it’s not the same as doing a virtual summit this whole year, it’s horrible. Because you can’t meet people.
Carlos 25:49
Yeah.
Norman 25:50
I met you. Well, we knew each other before, but I met you in person last February. That was the last event I went to.
Carlos 25:57
Yeah, we were. I think San Fran was getting shut down while we were there.
Norman 26:04
While we were there. Yeah. So anyways, one of the other things that this sounds like, and you tell me if this is we could go look down this path? Influencers. Okay. So basically there’s five types of influencers. The bottom two are a micro and a nano and micro influencer and that’s basically people that have under 100,000 in following.
Carlos 26:34
I’m writing this down.
Norman 26:38
Oh you’re for it. Come on, you talk to me.
Carlos 26:39
Let me get my notes real quick.
Norman 26:42
So the only type of influencer that I would go after are nano and micro influencers, because nano influencers are 1000 to 10,000. Micro are 10,000 to 100,000 and then you’re getting into, the 250,000, the up to 2.5 and then 2.5 and up, which are typically the celebrities. I don’t go there, no need to waste your money, what you should be looking at, or, at least in my opinion, where we get a lot of success are nano and if you go and target nano influencers, find nano influencers, do your homework, and just try to target them in your niche and reach out, they’re usually way more than happy, they’re honored to really get somebody noticing them, and the beautiful part about nano influencers. They have a small group, their friends and family and if they are posting on like blogs, or if they are on Instagram, and they tell somebody to or you ask them to tag you or do something, they’ll do it and if you continually work with them and engage and comment, then you can bring them over to the best. I call it like if you really want to build your community, you do it with brand influencers and brand ambassadors and brand ambassadors, basically, for us would be an army of nano and micro influencers, willing to do anything for free or at a very low cost. They love your product. So let’s say bully sticks. So pet enthusiasts who may have just large dogs, small dogs, you name it, then you can go after the breeds of dogs, then you could start looking for these nano influencers and it’s very easy to find these types of influencers. But you can start just targeting them, letting them know that you like what they’re doing, engaging, commenting, following, and it would not take much to get somebody to really love your product. The other way of doing it, Carlos, I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but Paul Baron, Shane and I and Jason Harris like we’ve got the chat agency. Yeah, the squad and Paul is the brain. Paul is definitely the brain behind all of this but he’s been doing this for a couple of years where he has a system where he’ll find the audience, the influencers. He’ll get them to buy real like they buy on Amazon. It’s not like a rebate they buy. Then he reaches out and he tries to convert the customer, the nano influencer over to providing content. Then once he starts to see that there’s interest, he asks, and he drives people over to a landing page, which says, hey, look, if you want to be a brand ambassador, you love our product. They enter into a contract, an agreement that they have to post three times, they add content, they do whatever, it’s perpetual. You never run out of content and I talked about this, or Paul was on a little while ago, where we talked about getting for his brand 2000 images in three months.
Carlos 30:33
Sounds expensive.
Norman 30:35
It was free.
Carlos 30:38
Free? Sign me up.
Norman 30:40
Yeah. I’ve been trying, you don’t listen. But anyways, and the majority, so most of that content came from nano influencers, and a good chunk and I’m talking about the content that people write and then get this, he went out there and he said, Oh, I need video for Amazon live and I need it to pinpoint these benefits of my product. Over the weekend, over the week, he got 30 really great videos, and he paid zero.
Carlos 31:19
That’s insane.
Norman 31:20
It is, it really is. So I got to have him on. But, now that I’ve taken up all your time. It’s just a really great process and, again, building a community, I can show you, you think if you have that group on meetup and you combine it with a nano influencer, you’re getting the exact same thing. A brand ambassador has passion for your product, they love it, they’ll do anything for you. A meet up, you get the same sort of, they respect I guess or authority, you’re the authority, talking to them about your product, if I understand what you’re talking about.
Carlos 32:04
No, you’re absolutely right and at a certain stage, if done correctly, you become the nano influencer, like you become the influencer in that area with that group. I had a guest on the meetup group on the Amazon Meetup group, October 24th. His name was Craig Mount. He’s the co-founder of Nerdy Nuts. I don’t know if you heard about it, but it’s an amazing peanut butter. He’s a genius when it comes to branding. I’d love to get you in this guy in the same room. But, as a matter of the time that we were speaking they had just for like, for some advertising some Kool Aid, we’re gonna release a pumpkin spice peanut butter. So they decided the way to do it was to go buy a 2200 pound pumpkin and carve it and that was going to be like the awareness.
Norman 32:54
2200 pounds?
Carlos 32:57
Yeah, it was either like 1800 pounds or, 2200 pound pumpkin. There was this massive thing. It’s on his Facebook and his YouTube like you could check it out and look up Nerdy Nuts. Craig Mount, but he mentioned how he was doing almost exactly what you’re talking about with nano influencers with TikTok, and that he was selling Jesus out of this peanut butter with these influences and was paying nothing because they didn’t know their worth sort of yet at that stage. Like they were just, this was such a huge plus for them that they were like, let’s do it. But what a great episode too, that’s in the video vault. So if anyone decides to get that free month of the video vault, check it out.
Norman 33:41
Oh, we haven’t even talked about the secret giveaway that we were giving away at the end of the podcast. Thank you, Carlos so much.
Carlos 33:51
I know I was seeing it.
Kelsey 33:53
Yeah, Norm can’t really read the fine print.
Norman 33:57
I can’t see anything. It’s like a millimeter on my screen.
Kelsey 34:03
But yeah, maybe we can just talk about that for a second. The prize. So Carlos, the Amazon Video Vault. I think we got two free passes, I believe?
Carlos 34:16
There’s over 1000 videos in there. workshops, presentations, how tos. There are recordings of our actual meetup events and just a wealth of information is broken up by topic too. So you’re not just combing through 1000 different videos trying to figure it out. Cool stuff and a lot of cool stuff coming out in the next week or two that you just be in there and be able to get obviously
Norman 34:41
Way before I met you, Carlos I was a member of the Video Vault Wizards of Amazon and tons of value and when you get to see like he said, there’s hundreds if not thousands of different episodes in there or training or, it’s really worth it. So we’re gonna do a giveaway at the end and we’ll wait till the end I guess.
Kelsey 35:12
Sure. Well, post #weloveCarlos in the comment section and you’ll be entered into it.
Norman 35:19
We love Carlos.
Carlos 35:20
I got to see this. Say that again Norm, what is it? What is it?
Norman 35:23
I love Carlos. There we go. I said it. I’m sorry. Alright. So, just again, a couple of shout outs here too. It’s Black Friday, and we’re taking you away from your time. But look, Hey, thank you, Rad and Simon and Dr. Koz, Marina, Facebook User that must be coming from our group.
Kelsey 35:48
That’s Victor.
Norman 35:49
Victor. Alright. Victor as well. Yep and we’ll get to that in a second. Elchin, Sharon, David. Thank you, everybody. Marcia, Darwin. Thank you all for watching and taking time out of your day. Yarrow.
Carlos 36:07
These are real people too. This is crazy.
Norman 36:09
Yeah, for Black Friday. Absolutely. But anyways, thank you all for our community, which is growing and we just love everybody, who’s not only watching this live, but watch this afterwards and are part of our group and if you’re not part of our group, please join the group. Kelsey will tell you all about that at the end. I swear he’ll tell you about 10 times during the podcast, too. But let’s get back to the questions. Kelsey, is there anything?
Kelsey 36:41
Yep. So we have a couple questions coming in. One is from Simon just about the brand ambassadors. How many brand ambassadors do you recommend using?
Norman 36:53
Well, it depends on the conversion, I would use as many as I can convert. So if you’ve got people out, and it’s very simple, like you can target brand ambassadors, by going out, I’m gonna go down a different rabbit hole here for a second. But you can go to places like Tomson, Buzzsumo, Intellifluence, and find paid nano influencers. You’re still gonna pay, you’ll find that there’s people out there willing to help you out, it’s gonna be some form of payment, plus the membership. So Buzzsumo is $99. Tomoson has special rates for a group, I think it’s 50 bucks for their $699 package. But anyways, then you can go out and what I recommend is, let’s say that you’re in the pet niche, let’s say bully sticks. You find an article that’s about bully sticks that’s written by an influencer. So just bully stick blog, bully stick influencer, dog influencer, pet blog ins fluent, just find it on Amazon, go to there, find the page that you like, copy the URL, this is the simplest thing, type related colon and put the URL there and it will give you a ton of other blog or other influencers that you can pick from and then you can reach out to. You can also go and do something really simple. Type in search string, so is another search operator called site colon and then you can put site colon, Instagram, space, bully sticks, space, advertising and this is the tricky one, quotes in quotes, put Instagram photos and photos and videos, and then at the end of it space, minus sign explorer. So what’s this doing? It’s going into Instagram.
Carlos 39:03
So it’s a trend?
Norman 39:05
Yeah and all you’re doing is you’re gonna go in, it’s gonna look for people on Instagram, who are advertising or looking to advertise bully sticks and they’re an Instagram profile that has photos and videos as part of their profile and it’s going to get rid of all the junk stuff for you. So minus explore, I learned that from Dan Fernandez over Tomoson. You can do something very similar for Facebook site colon, and then you put facebook.com space and you can put in quotations 1000 dot dot dot 10,000 space, like end quotation, and run that and you can put home space home, and that’ll take you to the person’s profile page. So those are just some simple ways to go and find some influencers now how many, I went down a whole other rabbit hole there. But that’s a really quick, fast, dirty way to do it. Other than hashtag, hashtag bully sticks, you’ll see all the influencers and you just check them, it’s a manual process and then you can just start to follow them and comment on them. At the end of the day with influencers, if they’re nano, micro, mega, you name it. They all want to have engagement. So comment and let them know that you like what they do and then when you do reach out to them, do not be egotistical. Tell them how you want to connect with them, because you have a similar personality or tell them about your brand, you want to align it with them because they’re so awesome and you’ll get a much better response and talking about yourself. Just like when I was in high school, when I talked a lot about myself, I always got stood up, always got stood up.
Carlos 41:12
You went back there.
Norman 41:14
If you talk about yourself, that’s the last thing people want to hear. So anyways, and that’s the same with influencers. Yeah, you really want to pat them on the back and get them to come out to you and you’ll find that you’ll have a much better chance and if you can get influencers to do it and if you can get 100 of them to start doing something for you. Awesome. If you can get 30 of them doing something, great. Brand ambassadors, it’s a tougher go. Because these are people now that are going to actually do this for you for free. They love the product. I was just telling Kelsey, I bought a beard shampoo and Carlos, I went around to Connie and and Kelsey and said, you gotta smell this, then I used it.
Carlos 42:08
A shampoo or in your beard?
Norman 42:10
Well, both.
Kelsey 42:11
The beard, it was the beard.
Norman 42:14
Yeah, I went around with that smell on the beard. Kind of gross. But, now I’m reaching out to them. Because it was such a great product and I’d love to be able to represent this guy’s brand, because it’s so great. It’s the same thing. If somebody buys the product from a pet audience, and they love what you’re doing, some of these influencers will reach out to you. That’s a lot easier to get, then, having to follow up and engage and engage and engage.
Kelsey 42:50
Alright, we do have a couple more questions coming in. This one is from Darwin. I’ve never used meetup before. What stage of my business or let’s call it the Amazon journey would starting a meetup community be a good option?
Carlos 43:07
I’ll do both. But this could be I don’t know, if you’re asking, you’re an Amazon seller and you want to know when you should start a meetup group that’s supporting your brand that you’re selling? Or should you start a meetup community to support Amazon sellers?
Kelsey 43:23
I believe it’s the first one.
Carlos 43:26
Well, before you get your product is definitely a perfect time. If you’re wanting to use people from that community, too, you could do it a year before your launch. As a matter of fact, I know some people are like, I don’t have the finances for this right now. But I know for sure next year, I’m going to be launching my PL product and I’m like, well build that community now. Build your social media now. Engage, build your community and you’d be lightyears ahead of people by this time next year when you’re launching your product. So you can definitely start well before you launch your product.
Kelsey 44:01
Okay, and we got another one from Dr. Koz.
Norman 44:03
Oh hold it just a sec there. So Carlos, also if you don’t have anything to sell, then it just looks like there’s pure engagement, right? I’m not selling anything. So people are talking to you because you were the authority of the niche.
Carlos 44:24
Yeah, absolutely. So when I start my events, that’s a pretty popular question I get they’re like, Look, you’re hosting the events for free and you’re successful at doing blank. What’s the catch? Like, why are you doing this? My answer for the Amazon seller meetup group, which is a good one, you get somebody new in there. They’re like, wait a minute, I heard you on a podcast. You say you make x, and you’ve been, all this stuff going on? Why are you hosting these events for free and my answer was really straightforward. I was like, Well, right now I don’t have anything to sell you in that regard. Like I’m going to create courses. I’m hoping I have a community to be able to sell them to in the future. I want to write a book and I want you to buy that $10 book, I don’t want you to ask me for a discount, I want to create an event and I’m going to ask you to support it by buying a ticket. When I haven’t asked, I’m going to ask it. Right now, I just want to build community and geek out with you and enjoy what we’re doing. So there is a goal and there is honesty involved. But not selling all the time is good. So you have nothing to sell, build the community, focus on those relationships and getting to know people. So you could definitely start that Meetup group way before you even start sourcing your product.
Norman 45:43
It’s so refreshing when you go and you meet somebody and they’re not trying to sell you something.
Carlos 45:49
Yeah, it’s a rare thing nowadays.
Kelsey 45:54
Alright. Okay, so Doctor Koz. Hey, Carlos, you’re the man. Can you give advice for a new brand, three top action items to take to build your group or following?
Carlos 46:07
Yeah, definitely. Well, one is to actually build it. If you’re talking about meetup.com, create the actual meetup.com group, some good things, I would not name it a business name, I would name it something that everyone could kind of get around. So if you had a dog grooming brush that you wanted to sell, your business name was ABCdoggroomingbrushes.com, I wouldn’t name your group ABCdoggroomingbrushes.com. I would name it something like Dog Lovers of The World of Earth. I don’t know, like something fun that people would want to engage with and then other things that I would do is, almost immediately, I can’t emphasize this enough, almost immediately start looking at what would a leadership team look like for this to succeed? Who are the ideal people that you’d want to have in your group that could host events on their own as well that could help you connect with a broader audience. For me, without having a team or knowing what a team was before I even launched the group wouldn’t have allowed me to do what I’ve done. Finally, be receptive to the actual group. As far as building community, it’s a community and not a dictatorship. It is yours. But if you want a dictatorship, you’re not going to have a very big community. Like, for example, my Amazon business, talking about the Amazon meetup again is 85%, private label and 15% wholesale. I no longer do arbitrage. I used to do arbitrage a long time ago. I used to do a lot of different things. So if it was kind of up to me, I would think that all of my Amazon meetup events would be my 85%, which is a private label. But my community is everything. It’s a private label, it’s wholesale. It’s just starting. It’s merged by Amazon. It’s Amazon self publishing. It’s our a, it’s a, it’s handmade and I love it. I love it all. So to be supportive of my community, I put an equal, I take that into account and I say, you know what, I’m probably not going to be thrilled to listen to this event about arbitrage. But I know a lot of people in my group will be and I know that that might be the quickest path for them to get to private label. So treating it like a community and not a dictatorship is important. Those would be my three that I can think of. That’s an awesome question.
Norman 48:43
Okay, so when do you and how do you, let’s say you have a community and you have somebody that how do I say this nicely? Is a bit of a jerk? Sure. Okay. So you just approach them and let them know, look, Well, first of all, you’re probably not gonna say, You’re out of here, right? The first time, but like, I’ve seen people that just disrupt meetings and just want to be the person talking all the time, similar to what I’m doing right now, over talking all the time. But how do you handle that?
Carlos 49:25
This is also an advantage of meeting in person and having that in person community over online and again, I’m not saying it’s either or you should definitely do both. But if you’re doing this via a Facebook post, it’s really hard to get everything behind that like just a written word. But if somebody is disrupting the group, and I can tie that to body language. I can tell the difference immediately whether it’s coming from a place of frustration or coming from a place of like aggression, and just that alone would change how I would do it but what I would do usually if somebody’s being disruptive in the group and they’re going the route of I know it all. It’s me. Your way sucks. There’s only one way to succeed on Amazon. Like, if that’s the one, what I do? I’m a builder, not a destroyer, you know what I mean? I want to build this person, I want them to be in front of the group. I know they know things that I don’t know yet and I want to know those things. So what I will do is I like to take the for the first step of, let’s embrace this person, build them, there’ll be a better person, if they’re part of this community and what I’ll say, look, I love what you’re saying on that, like, I definitely want to talk about this over drinks afterwards that you seem like a fascinating person. Do you mind coming up front with me, and co hosting this event with me? So it’s almost like the teacher gets the unruly kid and brings them like to that special spot next to them, it allows you to do a few things. One, the person’s probably never been in front of a big group speaking before. So they may just bow out and if they bow out, then they really don’t have a position of keeping to talk from the back of the room. They do come up front, they now need to be able to answer a field of questions and not shoot everybody down. So that forces them into a position of look, we can be friends. This doesn’t have to be aggressive. You now need to like being in front with me and like shine and the other one is I get to learn from them to finally like I mean, the end of the day like everybody knows things that you don’t. I love the fact that what we do, there’s new stuff to learn every day. Wow, you have some rock stars here. McLean’s here. She’s awesome. I actually got to meet her when she came down to Miami once.
Norman 51:40
We met virtually but not in person yet.
Carlos 51:44
There were like five different people that day that she was in Miami that I had never met and I was bouncing all around. But my home saying that right? McLean is somebody on social media that I’ve seen from a distance for a while that I’ve always wanted to meet and connect with so cool seeing you here. I’m glad you like what I’m saying and I know you’re not saying that because I’ve seen you rip people apart too, because like no filter for that stuff.
Norman 52:13
Okay, more questions Kels?
Kelsey 52:14
Okay. So there were a couple questions about the roadmap for the brand ambassador route, so maybe, I don’t know if we can make like, we can make like an illustration for them in the show notes or something, but I think Huisman and someone else was asking, Marsha was asking for them. But, another one, this is from Fe. Being that yesterday was Thanksgiving, I like to thank you Norm for the show that has so much valuable content.
Norman 52:50
Okay, very well.
Carlos 52:51
Looks like you need to pay that invoice Norm.
Norman 52:54
That $20 went very far.
Kelsey 52:58
We have currently three people entered in the draw. Again, if you want a free month for Carlos his video vault, write the hashtag.
Norman 53:12
Say it Kels. Say it.
Kelsey 53:14
We love Carlos.
Carlos 53:16
Yes. We all love Carlos, right? Darwin has a question. I don’t know if you got to him.
Kelsey 53:21
Yeah. Let’s see? Okay, so he’s got a couple. First one, have you seen or heard of meetups in New York?
Carlos 53:31
Yeah, definitely. There’s two fairly large Amazon seller meetup groups in New York. I don’t know. I think they met once a month or once every six weeks. Ours is 16 events per month. There’s a difference. Mines a divorce where the amount of everyone’s like, what’s the secret for doing it? It’s like that your wife is okay with that and she is supportive of that. That’s like the key to making it work. But yeah, there definitely is. Something cool is we opened up an actual location now that’s dedicated to our event called Wizards of eCom and should it go well? Our plans are in 2022 to actually open up a location in New York. So maybe we’ll be in New York soon.
Norman 54:17
What about Innisville? I also saw a question from Oleg. Why did they do it for free? Why do influencers or brand ambassadors do something for free? So what they’ve done is they’ve used a product. So let’s say it’s soap, they’ve used the soap or the beard shampoo. So I would go out there as an influencer, if that company ever came to me and said, Hey, would you help promote this? Absolutely. I would do this. If they wanted to convert this over to a brand ambassador where I’d have to provide content, I’ve got to love this product and I might use a bit more of their product, I might see over a period of a month what it’s like. They will come back to me and they’ll probably send me an email and saying, look, get 15% off, you have to buy at least three of the products over a period of the next quarter and you have to provide three images every or one image a week or one video every quarter, they’ll tell you exactly what to do and if I love it, and I want to get product at a low rate, then I can go in and I can do that and I’d be happy to do that. Just a rule of thumb, don’t abuse brand ambassadors. Brand ambassadors will do things for free for you, especially images, social proof that you can use for Amazon posts, videos that you can use for Amazon live, but also all your social media for repurposing, but one of the rules of thumb, this is the way that Paul sets it up. Any content that people write and distribute, it’s only fair that you pay them. They’re giving up their time and I find that if you would pay somebody for that, then you got somebody for life and they’re doing it for free, all that other stuff, just because they love the product and I guarantee you, I don’t know if it’s plastic shoe stretchers, you’re not going to get a huge influencer group. But if you’ve got something like a beauty product or dog related product, you could get a ton of influencers.
Kelsey 56:49
Okay, we are coming up to the hour mark. So I don’t know, Carlos, how you are doing for time? Oh, are you mute up there?
Carlos 57:00
Sorry, I muted myself. I have this acid reflux cough going on. No, I have time.
Kelsey 57:06
Okay, so from Darwin, again. Carlos, with all your businesses you do, do you find yourself looking at the next thing too much or spreading it too thin to where you start losing focus and it affects your business? Do you know how to combat that?
Carlos 57:24
There’s no quick answer to that. So that’s something that I’ve never solved. I’m not sure that I’ll ever solve that in my life. We’re blessed with a mind that thinks that way. They’ll seize opportunities. I don’t think you can stop it. I think you need to what I’ve done is I get to a point where I can acknowledge it and I can put it in a place that I know is safe because a long time ago I would need to execute on it and breathe life into it and then build processes and step back but it just burned me out. It made me average out a bunch of things and what I do now is I have a safe spot to put in my safe spots, actually Trello and or writing pads. I still like to write a lot of stuff down and when I get it there, I no longer need to go on this loop about, you need to execute on this what you need to do. If I do have a great idea about it, I go back to that spot where it’s at and I add to it and it’s safe for me to revisit at a later date and then the way I combat this and imposter syndrome and all this beating myself up every other day about you’re not good enough to do this. Who do you think you are and you have so much on your plate? I think it comes down to a mastermind and not your typical mastermind. I think to be a successful entrepreneur, you need one mastermind and that needs to be in the home. So your significant other needs to be at least that one mastermind and mine, I have an amazing wife and she’s not an entrepreneur and that’s what keeps me reined in. That’s when I’m like all mentally beat, mentally and emotionally beat up and taking too much on I can go back and she can clearly see it and we can work my way out of it. I hope that helps.
Norman 59:18
Very good.
Kelsey 59:19
Okay, awesome. Also, if you’re commenting in the Facebook group, you’ll see what comes up is like a Facebook user. This is Yelchin. It says Oh my God, I was nearly missing the just fantastic discussion. Hello, guys. Yeah. Hello to our boss Carlos.
Carlos 59:37
Yeah, Ching is amazing. That is a brilliant, brilliant entrepreneur there.
Norman 59:42
He is.
Carlos 59:43
Yes he is.
Kelsey 59:45
Okay, let’s see. I think we have another one. So Marsha is asking are these meetups in person or in Zoom now?
Carlos 59:52
Currently, they’re on Zoom, except for one Thursday evening event each week as we slowly transition into going back to in person. When we go back in person, currently, it’s scheduled for the first Saturday of 2021. So all of those events now are still on Zoom and when we do go back to the new norm, we’re still going to have six solely Zoom based events per month, in addition to our in person events, because we’ve just met a lot of amazing people on Zoom that otherwise could not have been part of the group.
Kelsey 1:00:27
Okay, and this is from Faye. Carlos, any AMZ meetings in North Carolina, I totally come down to Florida for years. Where can I find out more information?
Carlos 1:00:38
Yeah, I’ll tell you what, if you come all the way down from New York, I’ll cover the Airbnb, you just reach out and I’ll take care of it. I’ll stick you in one of my Airbnbs. Or I’ll do that and you can pick the topic, like you handle the flight, I’ll let you pick the topic and I’ll put you in an Airbnb. Where can you find out more info? The easiest way, because meetup.com itself is challenging to navigate on meetup or South Florida FBA Amazon sellers. But if you want to find an easy way to get a link there plus see all the different events we have going on. Like we have entrepreneurs, book clubs, 16 different events, we have events in Spanish, we have events in English, we’re starting events in Russian. It’s pretty wild. The easiest way to do that is going to be we have a, Norm, can I put the Telegram group in here? The chat group?
Norman 1:01:31
You can do anything you want.
Carlos 1:01:32
Oh, I like that. Don’t say that. So we have a completely free Amazon chat group on Telegram. So if you go to amazongroupchat.com, it’ll show you how to get in there and then you’ll see all of the different events that we have. Or you can just text the word Amazon to 69922 and it’ll give you the link to our Amazon group.
Norman 1:01:56
Then you’ll get Jenny.
Carlos 1:01:57
Yes.
Kelsey 1:02:02
Okay. Just saying sorry. I was just typing in the link. Okay. Yeah. So we had a couple of people asking about how to join these Zoom groups. Marsha. So I’ll put the link, I’ll find the Amazon group chat and put in the comments. This has been such a treat. Thanks to all three of you. Thank you, Marsha.
Norman 1:02:24
Thank you.
Kelsey 1:02:25
I think the last question is from Oleg about the ambassadors or influences? How do you manage the rights for the content that they produce?
Norman 1:02:34
Oh, nice. So that is a great question and if you don’t do that, if you don’t manage the copyright or the transfer, I had this happen with a client who went out, spent a ton of money, like thousands of dollars on a video and he got it, it was a beautiful video. But then when he put it on Amazon, for his listing the guy, it was a copyright issue and he could only use it on YouTube. So what you need to do is make sure that you have a copyright, or sorry, a contract between them saying that they transfer the information over to you, that you have the rights to promote it and then that should be fine and I’m sure you can find templates for that on the internet. If you’re having problems with that, just let me know. But yeah, you have to make sure that you get 100% ownership of the copyright, or at least the accessibility to use it in any way that you want.
Kelsey 1:03:46
Okay, I think that’s it for comments and questions. Yeah. So we can start the wheel if you’d like.
Norman 1:03:56
I just have one last question for Carlos. So I know that you’re like me, you like writing processes, SOPs. So is there a way or is there a process, like what types of processes should people write to help scale their group?
Carlos 1:04:18
That’s amazing. Something that’s been very helpful for me with groups and processes to do this is, I’m losing the word right now. It’s such an easy word. Every Friday something’s going to happen.
Norman 1:04:39
A recurring event.
Carlos 1:04:41
Something you know that every Monday this is going to happen, every Wednesday this is going to happen. So consistency, that’s the word okay. Yeah. So consistency is just king when it comes to that. So what I find you cannot be successful in is, every Monday at 9am, you post an inspirational meme and that’s all you do, right? So what I like to approach groups is and actually learned this from Digital Marketer is you create five buckets and these buckets are going to be the themes of content that or satellite topics that your group posts on. So let’s say that I have a, let’s just say we’ll go with beard oil. I’ll try to do beard oil to stay in the spirit of Norm right? Now, you know what? Well, let me use the actual example they gave in case I mangle this for time sake. So Rosetta Stone, Rosetta Stone does an amazing job with their Facebook community and you can look at everything they post and you know the buckets that it falls in. So one of them is customs. Obviously, if you want to know about customs around the world, then you’d be hard pressed to not also talk about the languages that affect those customs. Another one is famous people that know multiple languages. This is an obvious one. What’s implied is that there may be super famous and intelligent, because they know multiple languages and what were those languages? Another one is content that allows you to consume large amounts of new information quickly and that’s something if you want to learn a new language, nobody’s like I want to learn a new language and be able to converse in 10 years, like everyone seems to want to do it in a week. So this is very, very relevant here and I have one more, which is travel. Obviously, if you travel, you want to know how to say give me a cup of coffee, I need help, where’s the train? So all of their content that they post falls into those buckets. The content creators, even they don’t create the majority of this content, but it allows me to say, Wow, Norm constantly puts out information on how to create, how to learn large amounts of information quickly. So I’m going to constantly be sharing Norms’ new information with my group. Norman turns sees this and he’s an influencer in his community and he’s like, wow, this person really pushes out my content for me all the time. Now, there’s a great synergy there and an opportunity to create a, what would you call it? Influencers, like relationships when I do reach out, so creating that ahead of time for a group gives you a solid roadmap and gives you a clear path on who you want to be connecting with to build this group. The one thing I can say that has helped a lot in a community because we’ve been talking a lot about Amazon selling, and my Amazon seller group, but for physical products, is I found that it’s important to add a bucket, which almost trains people to know like, hey, eventually, I’m going to post something here for you guys to buy and the easiest way to do that without always having something to buy is you want it to have like a sense of urgency. You want people to act, and you want to know who has an Amazon account and you also want it to be a deal and you want it to be relevant to what you’re talking about. So where do you find this? Amazon, Amazon Lightning Deals, it’s very easy. They’re constantly updating, it’s a very real sense of urgency. It’s a trusted site and it’s the platform I’m usually going to want them to buy from. So what I’ll do is weekly, I’ll drop in an email list or anything like that, an Amazon lightning deal so that when I do come out with a product, it’s like, wow, this person hasn’t posted something for us to buy in two years, and now he’s posting it. This seems weird. No, people are almost expecting me to post something about that. So that would be my answer. I hope that helps.
Norman 1:08:32
It does.
Norman 1:08:35
Okay, and I think we’re coming to the end. By the way, just one more thing, #weloveCarlos to enter into the one month of the vault. So please, if you haven’t done it, do it over the next 30 seconds or so and then we’ll have our draw. Alright, Carlos, is there anything else that you’d like to add? This is the last question. The last tip, whatever you think is relevant.
Carlos 1:09:07
I think we covered a lot.
Norman 1:09:08
We did.
Carlos 1:09:09
I think I just can’t encourage people enough just how rewarding it is to build a community rewarding in financial profits. But as well as just a rewarding period just in life. You’re building connections in your niche. Having people sharing your stuff out and wanting to talk about you. It’s just extremely rewarding to do and I suggest doing it now. Don’t think you need to be an expert in the field to do that and this is another thing I see people get hung up on. If you do encounter that and you feel like Who am I to create a group about this? I don’t have a doctorate in that. Believe it or not, you would be more connectable. Is that a word? Connectable? Like people would connect with you more. In some of my events, I’m getting up there. I’m presenting and we have a beginner hour and people ask questions and I’m noticing, like, wow, I’m not getting the types of questions like I imagined beginners would ask and then we had somebody come up and I was like, Look, let me get a total newbie to come up and sit up here in the beginner hour with me and all of a sudden, everybody started asking those really cool, awesome questions to the newbie. They felt almost intimidated asking me, so there’s a strength in starting from the beginning.
Norman 1:10:32
I gotta tell you this. So I had an event with Dave Kettner, in Hawaii, just after the Illuminati event, which is Helium 10 Elite now. So anyways, we had this event, Kevin King came, so he was at the event as well as one of the speakers. Anyways, there’s a group of people that are the students participants and anyways, he came up, Kevin came up to me, and he said, holy crap Norm. Have you ever talked to this guy over here about what he’s doing and I did, like I’ve talked to him about what we’re doing on Amazon. He goes, I gotta hire this guy. Guess who that guy was? Wilfried. So Wilfried Ligthart attended as a student. Nobody knew that he was this guru with building communities and all of a sudden bang, he’s teaching us, he’s up there talking. So yeah and that’s one last thing I’d like to say is that, if you don’t know something, don’t fake it. If somebody asked this question here, I don’t know it. Say, I don’t know it. Same thing with events, you can start a community and if people are asking you questions, you don’t know it, just I don’t know. But I’ll find the answer.
Carlos 1:12:00
It’s just as good to be able to say or better when someone asks a question, even if you do know it. Instead, say you really want to talk to Norm about that. Norm is the go to guy like you, you connect, that’s what you want to do. You want to foster those communications. So when someone asks the question, sometimes it’s maybe not even the best thing to be the smartest person in the room. Like you want to get somebody else answering that and if you don’t know it even better. Yeah, have somebody in your group that I say this, sometimes I’m like, you don’t want I’m gonna let the group weigh in on this. What do you guys think? Who wants to chime in on this? 35 minutes later, everybody feels like they’re in the best event of their life and communication dialogue. Yeah, I agree.
Norman 1:12:42
Okay. So Kelsey.
Kelsey 1:12:46
Yes. I’m here.
Norman 1:12:48
It’s that time.
Kelsey 1:12:51
Quickly before that, we have one that’s not getting done. My wife or my partner, we both bring things to the table. We agree and disagree regularly, but ultimately come down to a good conclusion. Would you recommend starting a meetup with her?
Carlos 1:13:05
Well, anything you start, your wife is your partner on it. So I think what you’re saying is, attendee facing, does it show that she is the co-organizer with you and your group? Yeah, of course. I mean, I think that’s great. I think it’s a great thing to do. My wife and I don’t, we only have like two businesses that we’re legal partners on and neither one of us wants to add to that, just because it just adds one more thing that we would potentially need to disagree about sometimes. That’s your partner again, whether you add her or not, she is your partner. So anything you start or she starts, you are the partner of it? Like so? I’d say yes.
Norman 1:13:55
Okay, I can see your wife in the background just nodding.
Carlos 1:13:58
So I’m getting a lot of points off this. No, she’s not even here.
Kelsey 1:14:05
Alight. Okay. So now it’s time for a wheel. Carlos, you haven’t seen this yet. But this is what we do now. Okay, so we’ve got two giveaways. So I’ll spend this twice. That’s correct. Right, two?
Carlos 1:14:23
Yes.
Kelsey 1:14:24
Okay, good. I don’t want to be giving away too much. Alright. So here we go. 321.
Norman 1:14:41
Okay, Faye gets this.
Kelsey 1:14:43
Okay, Faye is number one. Congratulations, Faye and next.
Norman 1:14:51
These are good odds.
Carlos 1:14:54
Norm what I do, I’ve just sent you the link or code or you pass it through or?
Norman 1:14:57
Yeah, just send it over to Kelsey and then he’ll take care of it and Evelyn wins. Okay, very good.
Carlos 1:15:03
So, there’s five entrances. Yep. I’m gonna give one to all five if you permit it. I’ll give one to all five people.
Norman 1:15:12
There you go guys.
Carlos 1:15:14
It’s Black Friday. Everybody wins. You ride for an hour and Norm’s rabbit holing.
Norman 1:15:21
Alright, so there you go. So Kelsey, all you have to do is get the link from Carlos and everybody who entered, one. Thank you, Carlos. That’s really great.
Carlos 1:15:29
Am I going to send you a link or a code? I have to figure out which is the best way to do it on my end, and then you’ll make sure that it gets everybody. Is that how it works? Yeah.
Kelsey 1:15:37
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I’ll reach out to everyone or you can also email me guys at k@lunchwithnorm.com.
Carlos 1:15:51
Cool beans.
Norman 1:15:52
Okay. So hey, Carlos, we didn’t get a chance to talk before the podcast, but when we leave you, it’s going to look like you’re gone. Right? Just hold on, and I’ll bring you back after the podcast. Okay?
Carlos 1:16:10
Okay. Sounds good.
Norman 1:16:12
Alright. So okay, so I think that’s it for the puck. Carlos, sir. Thank you so much for coming on and spending so much time, again, just how do people get a hold of you or the group?
Carlos 1:16:25
Anywhere on social media at Wizards of Amazon, and you can text me 3059021283 and then the Telegram chat group, I constantly have it open. It’s open over here to my left right now, which is amazongroupchat.com
Norman 1:16:41
I also want to say that Carlos hasn’t talked about this. I don’t know where it stands this year. But he’s got an incredible Amazon cruise that he hosts every year and what where does that stand?
Carlos 1:16:57
It got canceled by the carnival. It was January 30th. But it looks like it’s going to move to the following January. But every year, we may throw in some kind of Alaskan cruise or something like that. Yeah. But as of right now, it’s going to be January of the following year just because of cruise regulations.
Norman 1:17:15
Right. Yeah, I didn’t know where that was gonna go.
Carlos 1:17:19
onlinesellercruise.com
Norman 1:17:20
Yeah. It’s a great cruise. Tons of people come out. But Alright, Carlos. Thank you again. Thanks for your generosity with all those giveaways too, by the way.
Carlos 1:17:30
Absolutely.
Norman 1:17:31
Alright. So we’ll talk soon and that’s it for today’s show all about community. I hope you guys learned a lot. We’re going to have our next podcast on Monday. I think Afolabi Oyerokun is going to be talking about working with China before Chinese New Years. Let me see Kelsey, let’s finish the podcast off.
Kelsey 1:17:58
Yep. Okay, so if you haven’t yet, please like and share the video. You can join our Facebook group Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA and eCommerce Collective. Yeah, we’ve got I think 250 now, we hit that mark, and we’re getting close to 1000 followers. I think we’re at like 950 or 997, something like that. So if you know anyone interested in Amazon FBA, or an online seller. You can go and get them over to Norman Farrar, aka The Beard Guy on Facebook. Alright. That’s it for me.
Norman 1:18:37
Okay, and Kelsey didn’t do his job. Smash likes, ring bells. Follow us. There we go. Okay. So and next time you see Kelsey, there will be no stash.
Kelsey 1:18:50
No, November. It’s still Afolabi’s episode.
Norman 1:18:54
Oh, okay. Alright. Okay, so we can still see the board thing going on. Alright guys, so every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, please join us live Eastern Standard Time at noon and like I said, Afolabi is going to be on from Honu Worldwide and we’re gonna be discussing the Chinese New Year. So again, I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you Carlos for being on and we will see you on Monday.
