#45: Talkin' Shop - Monthly Amazon Q & A

Date: October 2, 2020

Episode: 45

Title: Norman Farrar introduces Kevin King, a Million Dollar Seller on Amazon and is a Highly-sought-after Speaker at Amazon Conferences Worldwide

Subtitle: Tips for the beginner, intermediate and advanced Amazon sellers

Final Show Link: https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-45-talkin-shop-monthly-amazon-q-a-w-kevin-king/

In this episode of Lunch With Norm…, Norman Farrar introduces Kevin King, a million dollar seller on Amazon and is a highly-sought-after speaker at Amazon conferences worldwide.

Kevin has always worked for himself as an entrepreneur. As an Amazon expert, he discussed some of his tips for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced Amazon Seller and answered several questions from the audience.

If you are a new listener to Lunch With Norm… we would love to hear from you. Please visit our Facebook Page and join in on episode discussion or simply let us know what you think of the episode!

In this episode, we discuss:

• • 6:54 : Tips for Beginner Amazon Sellers
  • 11:44 : Tips for Intermediate Amazon Sellers
  • 13:26 : Amazon posts and Amazon live
  • 17:15 : Tips for Advanced Amazon Seller
  • 20:37 : Selling vs Continuing a profitable business
  • 26:08 : Opening up multiple seller accounts
  • 32:24 : Talking about rebates
  • 41:16 : Kevin’s strategy Q4
  • 47:45 : Launching new products with Amazon’s new limit on ASINS
  • 54:07 : What impacts the IPI score

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Norman 0:03  

Hey everyone, 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 0:21  

Okay, well we’re broadcasting to you live on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you’re watching this replay on my personal page, just first of all, if you’re watching this replay at all skip ahead, but if you are watching this on my profile page, then why don’t you head over to the Norman Farrar a.k.a. The Beard Guy page, and you’ll be able to see whole episodes, videos and other content. So Kelsey, where are you?

Kelsey 0:52

Hello, hello.

Norman 0:53  

You had me nervous Kels.

Kelsey 0:55  

I forgot that I was the one in charge of clicking the go live button. So kept in suspense.

Norman 1:00  

I was just looking. I didn’t know if people were just looking at me at a blank stare for the last minute or so. But that’s your job. You just press that button right now. Okay, good. So what’s up?

Kelsey 1:14  

Alright, so everyone, you know the drill. Like us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, hit those like buttons, as Norman Farrar says, smash them. So everything that you go, like, we stream here goes directly to YouTube as well. So if you miss it, and you’re watching this as a replay, you can go to YouTube to find it and let’s see, we got Nathan Clark here, say Norm. Hey, we know that Dr. Koz is going to be joining us too. This is a live q&a, so if you guys have any questions at all, put them in the comment section and we’ll add you to the list. We’ve already got lots of questions. So just be patient and we’ll try and get to them as quickly as possible.

Norman 2:02  

We’re talking anything Amazon today or anything e-com so just throw your questions over in the comment box and even after we’ll get to it for sure.

Kelsey 2:14  

We got another Giz120256, greetings. Hello. Welcome to the show and yeah, if you’re watching this right now, please like and share. It gets the word out for us and we really appreciate it and that’s it for me.

Norman 2:29  

Okay, then get off the screen. There you go. Alright.

Norman 2:35  

Anyways, I have a special guest today. He’s a good friend of mine. He’s been, he’s got quite the past and if you ever want to hear his details about his past, you got to check out I Know this Guy, where he, like, you’ll hear about the tiger story. You’ll hear about a bunch of different stuff, Michael Jordan and a bunch of things. Let’s put it that way. It’s one of our most popular podcasts and anyways, check it out. He’s been featured in Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and that’s covered in that podcast. Entertainment Tonight, a bunch of national TV shows. He’s also been on in the USA today and in the Wall Street Journal. So my buddy, Kevin King, he knows everything about Amazon. He knows a lot about e-commerce, Amazon just running business in general. He is a serial entrepreneur. So if you have any questions, throw them over into the comment box and we will get to them. So sit back, relax. grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show and where is Mr. King?

Kevin 3:45  

Hey, what’s up Norm?

Norman 3:46

How are you Sir?

Kevin 3:47  

I’m good. How are you man? 

Norman 3:48  

I am doing great.

Kevin 3:51  

How is it up there in the Great White North?

Norman 3:52  

It’s getting cold. How is it in Austin?

Kevin 3:57  

It’s about nine degrees and sunny.

Norman 4:01  

One of these days, invite me down there.

Kevin 4:03  

Fahrenheit. 

Norman 4:07  

Celsius 35 this would be yeah, temperature of Mars or something.

Norman 4:11  

All right, sir. So hey, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about what you’re doing right now?

Norman 4:19  

How you’re beating COVID.

Kevin 4:20  

How about being COVID I’m working I mean, now that we can’t do all these conferences and see each other. Actually yesterday I was sitting there talking to my wife. She’s like, you know what, I wish there was an Amazon conference right now because I’d really like to get out of here and go like have some beers and shoot the shit with some people. But yeah, in this meantime, I’ve been keeping busy. I’ve launched a couple new companies. It’s quarter four at one of my one of my businesses is a seasonal business. So that’s that’s ramping up right now. Got caught my hands full with two new Amazon businesses on top of that, plus the product divots and working on a virtual Billion Dollar Sellers Summit that’ll be announced soon.

Norman 5:02  

Oh, very good. Those are, hey, if you’ve never been to one of Kevin’s summits, you gotta check it out. The average person attending the summit, and you don’t have to be that average person, but what’s the dollar range, two or 3 million?

Kevin 5:21  

No, that’s why I think the first one, I have to go back and look exactly. So I may have this off a little bit. But it was I think the first one was like, around 4, 3.5 to $4 million a year on Amazon and the last one was six or seven I think. I have to go back and double check. But yeah, it’s a very high level group of Amazon sellers.

Norman 5:40  

But the nice thing about that, too, is that there’s a nice cross section. So you’ve got those high level people, not only on Amazon, but right across e-com. Anybody in e-com could learn something from that conference. So I just like I’ve been to it. Yeah, I go to a lot of events, and  how to put it on right. Right from the first Illuminati conference. That’s right. That was done. I mean, you know how to throw an event.

Kevin 6:10  

You went to both Illuminatis right? 

Norman 6:14

Oh, yeah. Yeah and then even a falling?

Kevin 6:18  

I guess you are? Yeah.

Norman 6:21  

What Kevin does, I gotta do.

Norman 6:24  

First, I guess one of the things I wanted to talk about today, because when you come on, you’re coming on every month, we just talk about what’s kind of current what’s going on in Amazon and we do have three different types of people on here for first Amazon and then just online sellers, but the beginner, the intermediate and the advanced. So I’m trying to just for the beginner right now, do you have any advice for them?

Kevin 6:54  

For a straight up beginner, I mean, absorb as much information as you can. Listen to as many podcasts you can. Choose a course that you resonate with, and learn as much as you can and make sure that you are going into this with the right funding. So if your budget, whatever your budget is, people always say, How much do I need to start? You can start with any amount, it’s just a matter of the product that you choose, and how fast you actually want to grow. I recommend most people start with about five to $20,000 at a minimum. But you really need to make sure that you pick a product that you’re going to be able to stay in stock on and not spend all that money on that product and that’s where a lot of people make mistakes. So you got to really focus on that first product selection and don’t let it tie you up. Don’t you procrastinate for six months, why just can’t find the right product. There’s plenty of opportunities out there and don’t necessarily shoot for the stars from the beginning, start slow and build yourself up.

Norman 7:58  

Right? Yeah, I had a experiences not a positive experience. But I had a client of mine that just would not get the proper capital together and it killed them in the end. He couldn’t do any marketing, he couldn’t fund his inventory. But he had enough to buy his inventory and that was my biggest fear that he didn’t have that two or three times his cost of goods built in for any type of marketing or promotion whatsoever. So he shot himself in the foot right from the beginning.

Kevin 8:31  

Yeah, that’s how I tell people, if you have $10,000 that you’re gonna be starting this with, you should not spend more than 4000 on your initial inventory. You need at a minimum of two and a half times whatever your initial inventory costs and so that’s where a lot of people make a mistake is like they say they got $10,000, they’ll source something, maybe it cost them seven or 8000 and then they are stuck because they can’t rebuy the inventory, if they’re successful, they can’t spend on advertising, they can’t do all the other things they need to do. So you got to take whatever your budget is, and divided by at least 2.5. or more, I mean more is even better. But in this case, if it’s 4000, if you have 10 grand, that’s landing cost because that’s what shipping and everything for thousand dollars is what you should spend and then you got to find a product that what I can sell, that I can buy enough of for $4,000 and so depending on the products, that might be something where you’re buying, if it’s a $20 items, you’re buying 20 of them. I mean, I’m sorry, 200 of them. If it’s a $1 item, then you have a lot more flexibility. So it just depends and then you have to then use that data then to go after a product and do your product research.

Norman 9:47  

Right. Yeah, we had Tim Francis on just this week and he was talking about knowing your numbers and

Kevin 9:57  

Profit first? Yeah, yeah.

Norman 9:59  

So you it is so important. We talked about going out and a lot of these free courses where guys are standing in front of a Lamborghini waving dollars. Well, Kevin, and I have nothing to sell here. This is information that we’re giving you and it’s so important. Like, I have nothing like, if you’re on your last dollar, we’re telling you not to go into the market, don’t get involved with Amazon and again, nothing to sell. If you don’t have the proper capitalization, you have to explore this, because there’s so many people that have great products, great ideas, but they’re just, it’s just not for them right now.

Kevin 10:42  

So yeah, Amazon’s recovering, you’ll hear stories of people that start with a few hundred bucks, or 500, or 1000 and they’ll show you that doing a million dollars in sales or something and those are rare cases do exist there. But that’s the exception to the rule, not the not the rule and usually those there’s a lot more to the story, they might have started with 1000 bucks or put something on a credit card. But a month later, their supplier gave them really good terms, which is unusual for a new person or they got a loan from the rich uncle or something. There’s something else to the story in most cases.

Norman 11:17  

Yeah, exactly or they took a freedom ticket.

Kevin 11:22  

Well, they took a freedom ticket, they would have known what to do.

Norman 11:24  

That’s right, exactly. So okay, now let’s move on to the intermediate. What are some things that are happening right now that the intermediate sellers should know?

Kevin 11:34  

So about intermediate, do you mean someone that’s already up and selling?

Norman 11:36  

Already up, they’re selling. They’ve already either paid their Amazon tax, and now they’re ready for the fourth quarter.

Kevin 11:44  

So an intermediate seller probably should be looking to grow and at that stage, you’re going to be looking at opportunities to grow. How can you extend that what you’ve already, what can you add? What variations can you add or looking at your brand analytics data to see what people are often buying with yours to see, like, maybe this should be my next product, because a 7% of the people that are buying my hammer are buying a screwdriver. So my next product should be, I should take a look at screwdrivers and see if there’s a good opportunity there. Expanding out that brand and then perhaps at the intermediate level, depending on where you’re at, you might be taking a look at beefing up your social media a little bit and trying to grow a little bit of an audience and that kind of thing. Potentially, even if you’ve optimized depending on the stage yet intermediate, if you’ve optimized Amazon potentially taking a look at opening up an app, other Amazon markets. I would recommend if you’re selling in the United States to go and open up Amazon Canada, before I would go to Walmart, for example, in the US, because you already know the system, you already know how it works. You already know Amazon and to be honest, Amazon Canada’s probably gonna make you more money, even though it’s a much smaller market than Walmart in the US in most cases. So let’s start looking at some of that kind of stuff.

Norman 13:11  

Okay, all right. Very good. At one of the other things that you might want to take a look at, too. We’ve talked about it quite a bit. But for that external traffic, or just stealing some traffic from your competitors is going to post and I know you’re a big fan of post as well.

Kevin 13:26  

Yeah, Amazon post is, that’s what you’re talking about right, Amazon post? Yeah. Amazon post is good. Yeah. It’s hard to know right now exactly what kind of sales you’re generating from it, or what is happening there. But it’s a great free tool to use on Amazon to get some extra eyeballs on your product.

Norman 13:48  

I like, there’s two things that I really like about what they have. Well, there’s actually four things that they’ve given us new with the scheduling with the multi image. But I like the ability now to have those five extra columns, where they don’t tell you the sales data, but they do tell you the click rate through the related posts, the brand posts, so you kind of get a feel for what’s going on and the other part, I don’t know if you’ve been checking this out, but I think Amazon’s, really trying to build a true community. Because I see this on Amazon live. Now they’ve added the Follow button, only, I think it’s only to your brand feed. So you can build up that follow, like people that will follow your product and you can also like drive traffic from Facebook now over to your own brand feed page, which has the Follow button, which is kind of cool. So anyways, I’m kind of playing around with that. I haven’t been playing around well, not that I haven’t. But I’ve done a little bit of Facebook Live. Carlos has been on, Carlos Alvarez. Anyway, he really had some great suggestions for Facebook Live. Are you using Facebook live ? Not Facebook Live, Amazon live?

Kevin 15:10  

No, I haven’t tested that yet. I have not tested Amazon live, it’s kind of like doing an infomercial getting it.

Norman 15:17  

There’s some really cool things that you can do with it, Kev. One of the things is you could just do a regular podcast and then you can take that podcast and repurpose it. So we do that with this podcast, we’ll take it, we’ll split it up 10-20 times, put it in social media, we can do that with Amazon live and you can create a podcast actually, like let’s just take a knife, I always use a knife, okay. But you can create a cooking show with a knife using chefs. They videotape it, they give it to you, you upload it or they can do it live and you can create this really cool following with it and you can also take all that information and repurpose it and upload it or this is another thing that we’re doing and this is with brand influencers and brand ambassadors and that’s getting them to do all the content for us. So for Amazon posts, we’re getting people to just give us influencers that give us their images, basically for free and then videos that we can upload to Amazon live. Now we haven’t done that too much. We are going to be experimenting with it right now in Q4. But I think it’s gonna be something pretty cool. What do you think about that?

Kevin 16:46  

I think that’s cool. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Amazon live. I just haven’t had a chance to delve into it yet. But I think that strategy of cutting stuff up or having that pre recorded, could be could be really good. Yeah. Interesting. Carlos, he knows his stuff. 

Norman 17:04  

Oh Carlos and I’ll never tell that to his face.

Norman 17:11  

What about the advanced seller?

Kevin 17:15  

The advanced seller, I mean, I would say the advanced seller should be looking to cut costs to really get the profit as high as they can cut all the extra fats in the company, whether that’s employees or VA, or software tools that they hardly ever use and we look into see how they can position themselves to sell. Right, I think that’s the number one thing an advanced seller could be doing and or maybe they don’t want to sell. But I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to. I mean, some people, I guess, are really tied to their business, but the money is when you sell. So even if you got really good cash flow right now, the money still when you sell. So anybody that’s not looking, I mean, someone that’s an advanced seller that’s been doing this for, has an account for 5,6, 7 years is not looking to sell tells me that this person may be full of shit, that they’re really not making any money or they’re not as good as what they they pretend to be. They’re one of these guys that drives a nice car, but has no furniture in the house, or something like that. Or it could be some people just want to leave this to their family or something. But I still say that’s a mistake. There’s so many people buying Amazon businesses right now. I mean, I just talked to another company this week that hasn’t gone come out public yet, most people have heard of Thrassio, or some of those guys that are buying a lot of businesses, but these guys have $175 million, and their initial fine to start buying businesses and there’s more of these common and so let’s not take advantage of that and gain the leverage that gets you in if you want to do this, just do it again. Take that big payday and go and start another Amazon business and flip it. My friend, David, you know him from a billion dollar seller summit, and Leah, that they’re on their second, I think they just about to complete or just recently completed their second flip and then they’re gonna go on to their third year. They got 4 million for the first one, I think they’re approaching eight figures for the next one, and then they’ll do it again and that’s, that’s where an advanced seller should be, in my opinion, looking is to max to sell it or I mean, in some cases, maybe you won’t even go buy other than that seller may say, Well, I’m doing okay now, but maybe I’ve got a little bit of extra cash, oh, maybe I can even get my multiple higher by going and buying some other Amazon businesses. Let me go buy three or four other guys. Put them into my portfolio and then sell it. It’s just the opportunity is huge right now and people should be taking advantage of that that a lot of people aren’t.

Norman 19:52  

Yeah, and you’ve got to be to take advantage of a really great multiple. You’ve got to be on incline. You can’t wait until it starts to come down.

Kevin 20:03  

Yeah, you don’t want to wait too late or wait till Amazon chase that algorithm or some competitor comes in and knocks off your best seller and it’s too late.

Norman 20:11  

Yeah. So just give a couple of shout outs here. So hey Nathan, how’s it going? Faye, Giz12056. Ricardo. Hey, Frank Sell. Hey, Frank was on I Know this Guy and he has a great story as well and a great brand. Yelchin, nice to see you back, sir.

Norman 20:34  

Okay, let me see. Let’s go on.

Kevin 20:37  

Frank is saying, what’s the advantage of selling versus continuing a profitable business. A lot of people ask that question, why would I sell if I’m making money? It’s because you may be making money on paper, but you’re probably constantly having to reinvest a lot of those profits. Unless you did profit first, and you’re taking it out front, you’re having to reinvest a lot of that stuff. Why not take a big payday, I mean, you can get a multiple. Now if you’re making $100,000 a month in profit, you could get 3 million in cash right now and you’re probably in your pocket instead of 100,000 and then to get to that 3 million would take you 30 months at your current runway to 100,000 a month. Well, with 3 million bucks, you could come back and start another company, maybe put 2 million of that two and a half million that away. Or take a nice vacation or buy something or whatever you want to do with it, take that 500,000 and start again and that’s a 30 month period, instead of being at three, instead of having at the 3 million, now you’ve got 3 million in your pocket. Plus, even if you get to the same level 100,000 again, now you’ve got another 3 million you’ve doubled your money. It’s foolish to not sell and today, in my opinion to not be looking to sell on today’s market.

Norman 21:55  

Right, unless you’re trying to build it as a legacy for your family. But yeah, for me, I would be looking at selling whenever I could, it’s nice to flip.

Kevin 22:08  

A lot of people don’t sell because honestly, it may be a little embarrassing to them, they’re not doing as well as they think they should be or they’re not doing that great. There’s a lot of people that are selling on Amazon, the only people making money is Amazon and or they’re eking out a small living and they’re able to pay their bills, they have a job, not a business.

Norman 22:36  

Just to address that, a lot of people that might be doing really poorly or just breaking even on Amazon, if you were to go back and just recheck what you’re doing, the numbers, where you can cut costs, what where you need to spend money and not where you have to spend the right money, not the bad money, you’ll start to see that the profit will start to come in line. If you’ve got everything in if you’ve got the sales, people like your product, there’s got to be some reason why you’re not making money. Maybe you’re not selling it high enough, maybe it’s just a few tweaks in the packaging so you can bring the cost up a bit. Maybe it’s just really poor PPC, but all of these things you take into consideration and just look at them one at a time, like on the weekend, just go through it, it doesn’t take a lot to clean up your account and like Kevin, if you have a clean account that’s making some money, the money that you can make on Amazon, selling your business, it’s gonna be the most that you make on Amazon. Yeah, that’s the day that you make your money is when you sell your business period.

Kevin 23:49  

That’s when you make a I think our friend Scott Dietz says that’s when you make about 60-70% of the profit you’re ever going to make in your business comes on the day you sell and I mean, as Yarrow was saying there, how would you define the best moment to sell is you need to sell when you’re on the rise and I don’t know that there’s a best moment is this month or three months from now the best, you just definitely need to be on the rise and if you think you can ride it out, that’s something that like Scott Dietz and Northbound group, actually they can help you determine when is that best time to sell by putting going through some like advanced spreadsheets that say if we add these three products, and we do this, this and this and we cut our PPC costs over the next six months by this then at this point in month nine is the perfect time to sell. They can forecast all that for you based on what you’re doing right now and what’s your projected to do and they can determine when is that optimal time. It’s hard to say, here’s the exact formula. It’s a complicated spreadsheet that can tell you that and people like Scott, I’m not trying to give him a plug or something but that’s what he does at the Northbound group. He helped me with my friend’s exit for eight figures and it took them about a year. From the time they decided to sell to actually go on to the market, and then they sold and in that year time, they did all the things they needed to do to optimize it to make it more attractive to really get the most value out of the sale.

Norman 25:18  

Well, I know one thing I don’t know about you. When I start praying, it’s too late.

Kevin 25:25  

Yep, yep.

Norman 25:27  

Please come back. Please sales.

Norman 25:31  

Okay, so Kelsey, can we get into some questions? 

Kelsey 25:36  

For sure, we have tons and just a little heads up, we just hit our highest beer counter in the history of the show today. So to go not too crazy to 32. All right. That’s awesome, guys. Thank you, everyone for watching right now. That’s awesome. So let’s start with this one. I’ll try and change up the viewers asking the question. So it’s not just one person. But over the years, I’ve heard Mr. King says he has several seller accounts, how does one go about doing this exactly?

Kevin 26:08  

You opened them up. In the past, you would have to get permission, Amazon was very strict about having one guy be an associate or having multiple accounts and you would have to actually send in a little letter and get like an official permission and you can still do that if you want to be completely safe. But late last year, at some point last year, Amazon said now we don’t require that anymore, as long as you have a valid reason for doing it, you can go ahead and do it. So a valid reason for doing it would be that you have maybe a different partner, like in my case, I log into five different five different Amazon accounts and I can just switch back and forth and each one of those accounts sells completely different products. So I don’t have two accounts selling in the baby category and if you had that, Amazon could see that as a conflict of interest. So as long as they’re in different categories, it’s different products and that’s typically going to be okay. You need to make sure you have a different EIN number, a different bank account, ideally, even in a different bank, not even the same bank, and different ownership. So, it doesn’t have to be different ownership, but you I mean, I can own multiple businesses, but it’s better maybe you partner with your spouse or your partner, you get some other partners that are investors or something and there’s some reason like that, that’s the cleanest, but if it is your own, you can own multiple businesses and you can set that up just for accounting reasons. If they ever asked you that, look, I’m trying to sell, I got a baby category and an automotive and to keep the books clean, I need to have separate seller accounts. So it’s not a problem. I’ve never had an issue or one of them got frozen, or Amazon said anything to me, just as long as you go by their rules and go by the book, you should be totally fine.

Norman 28:06  

Hey, Kevin, one of the things that you have to be careful of, and some people always want to game the system. So if you’re trying to box in the product, so you have the highest or the highest middle low or highest low price, and you’re doing that for that reason, Amazon will shut you down. You’re taking an unfair competitive advantage. 

Kevin 28:36  

That’s why man you shouldn’t be in the same, you should not open multiple accounts to sell the same stuff.

Norman 28:40  

Right? Yep. 

Kevin 28:42

You should not do that. 

Norman 28:43

It used to be a pain in the butt. But yeah, now like you said, it’s pretty similar as long as you’re not trying to game the system and they’ll catch you.

Kevin 28:51  

Yeah, they’ll catch you. They’re pretty sharp at that.

Norman 28:54  

Yeah. Anything else Kels? I’m sure there’s a few.

Kelsey 28:58  

Oh, and thank you Faye. She says thanks again for the Amazon Facebook live. 

Kevin 29:05  

Man, I see Yelchin says he uses three bps for three Amazon accounts. Yelchin that’s not necessary. I mean, I know we know, Norman, I know a guy that has like six different computers and each one is for a different Amazon account. He’s very careful to login just exactly. That’s someone that’s trying to beat the system or they’re doing something you shouldn’t be. If you’re upfront and legit, there’s no problem. You don’t need a VPN or a VPS at all and this thing where people are always well don’t log in from a different WiFi. If you’re at a hotel or you’re at your buddy’s house. That’s bullshit. I’ve logged in from hundreds of hotels around the world and 20-30 different countries to my Amazon account. It’s not an issue and as long as you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be doing, don’t worry about it.

Norman 29:59  

Okay, and going back to Faye, thank you very much Faye.

Kelsey 30:02  

Yeah and I see that I think Frank shared the video. So thanks, Frank and let’s do this question from Nathan Clark. Do you think reviews that are removed by Amazon are counted as an actual review? Or after they delete it, they don’t count it against you?

Kevin 30:20  

I don’t know specifically on that, but my hunch would be, if they delete it, it’s deleted. But I don’t know what you mean, that counted against you, I don’t believe. I don’t know for sure. If it stays in your overall score, I’ve never tested that. I mean, that would be kind of hard to know, unless you just had like five reviews, and you were a five star and they do. Or you’re a 4.8 star and they deleted when you’re five stars, you went to 4.6, or you stayed at 4.8. That’s how you would have to test that. But I think if they delete it, they delete it.

Kelsey 30:56  

Let’s do one from GIZ. What is your opinion of Add To Cart strategies to initially position an asin prior to a full on launch, or to augments other ranking strategies, aggressive PPC and or rebates?

Kevin 31:09  

I wouldn’t do it, I would be very, very careful about trying to game the system. I mean, there’s people that do add to carts or they give coupon codes that they know won’t work. They’ll do spin the wheel, and someone will go and enter a coupon code and it’s not gonna work, it’s just so you get the add to cart. But if you don’t know the exact percentage, Amazon knows that every category, and every type of product has a certain percentage that add to cart that never buy and if you’re outside of that range, Amazon is going to flag you and so your product might be a 20% people that add to cart never buy. But another category might be 42% and if you get out of that range, it’s going to look very suspicious to Amazon, if they got some reason to take a look or the algorithm does, they could catch it. So I’d be very careful.

Norman 31:52  

Yeah, I don’t know who is Dima. But somebody we were talking to recently, even when you’re going in buying rebates, and you think that there’s no footprint. Well, there definitely could be a footprint depending on who and what you’re using. Because it’s just not natural, like you were just talking about somebody that’s going and just buying a product like that in two seconds,not checking around, not going to a competitor site to look around. It’s just not natural. All of a sudden, I’m buying, I’m buying, I’m buying and

Kevin 32:24  

The rebate thing, that’s where people go on Amazon, if you look in the URL code, they know, if you type in a hammer, and up at the top, it’s going to change the code, that URL is going to change a little bit, there’s a bunch of other stuff in there, one of those is the page number and so if Amazon starts seeing on a rebate that everybody is going straight to page five, skipping over page two, they’re not scrolling to page 2,3,4, they’re going straight to five and they see a pattern of that because someone did a search find buy and said look for us on page five, after you search for this word, Amazon sees that pattern and they’re like, this is not natural. People don’t just go and then actually buy it. The buy rate plus the fact that they’re skipping is not natural, and they can penalize you for that. So that’s why a lot of these rebate services that you need really need to be on page one or two before you actually even do the rebate. Yeah, so it looks more or someone will say the top five pages, but then people need to scroll through each page to find you one by one. But even then they know. So it’s always best on rebates to be on page one or two to really minimize that footprint.

Norman 33:30  

Absolutely and there. It’s like SEO or searching social media. There’s so many people that say that they’re rebate experts, you get these all the time in your email box, right and they’re not. They have no idea how rebates work, or search find buy works. They’re just somebody that Oh, hey, look, I opened up a mini chat account. I’m an expert. Hey, I have an iPhone, I’m a photographer, it doesn’t work that way, you have to go to a reputable company that understands how the system works and part of this is yes, I do use rebates. I make sure that I do it properly and I also want to make sure that that person has value. So they’re getting something of value. They’re getting a product that I hope they’re going to come back and buy again, if it’s recurring. But there are systems out there now, when you’re using influencers and you’re using brand ambassadors, that you will not have to use rebates to have a profitable launch or use minimal amounts and Kevin, I’ve got to talk to you after the podcast about some of these because I don’t know if you’re using any of the techniques and we can’t get into it in this podcast. But imagine being profitable on a launch all white hat using people who love your product. That’s the way to launch a product now.

Kevin 35:05  

That’s great. That’s a good way. The problem I have with influencer marketing, is it, I think it’s a great supplement. But I think it’s difficult to have to rely on it solely for launch. I think it should be part of your strategy mixed in with a bunch of other stuff. But if you’re not in a non competitive niche, I think influencer marketing can be a great way to launch even maybe on its own. But if you’re in a competitive niche where you need to sell 20,30,50 a day, or 100 a day, doing it solely off of the influencer side is going to be next to impossible in most cases. So it’s a great supplement. But back on the rebates, even some of the reputable companies still have issues. I mean, I just recently launched a product and we did rebates with a pretty well known company and we had a huge fraud rate, we had a whole fraud ring, this item was a $70 item. So we had a fraud ring that actually was buying the item. They were using the pattern after we saw the pattern after this happened. Almost all were Indian names like from the country, India and what they were doing is they were using real people. So they had some database of Indians and I’m not knocking Indians that just happened to be that we saw the pattern and they had some database of Indian Amazon buyers, they were ordering for those people having it shipped to these individual houses. But before they would actually get there, they would take the tracking number from UPS, and actually redirect it. So they get the tracking number and say, please redirect it to the closest UPS Store, I’m going to go pick it up. That way, the person that actually they were shipping it to who actually didn’t order, it never even knew about the scam, it just got automatically sent to the local UPS Store, at the UPS Store, they never picked it up and so it gets sent back. But in the meantime, the person has gotten the rebate. So they’ve gotten their $70 back from the service. When it comes back to Amazon, it goes back into Amazon, shows it as an undeliverable item, and Amazon refunds them again $70. So these people just made $70 clear profit on every single item and it’s a pretty big scam ring. So you have to be careful, even with the most reputable and that can come back and hurt you. I’ll probably never use this company again and I don’t want to name them. But that can come back and hurt me when all of a sudden Amazon sees Hey, what’s all these returns going on here, this is not normal. So you just have to be careful with who you use and who you associate out there. There’s a lot of snakes in the grass. As some of you may have seen a week and a half ago, there’s a big article that came out about some people that are well known in the space that if convicted of everything that they’re charged may be going to jail and I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Norman 38:02  

We heard about this a long time ago that Amazon was going after these types of people.

Kevin 38:07  

Well, this wasn’t even Amazon that went after them, it’s the FBI. Amazon was involved. But this is at the next level. This is the FBI and if anybody hasn’t taken a look at that case. I mean, if you go and read the actual indictment, there’s about a 30-40 page indictment. It’s fascinating that they were delivering suitcases of cash and Ubers and all kinds of it’s. It’s just like, you can’t make this stuff up. Yeah, it goes into very, very detail of everything that they are doing and you play the system and go after competitors on all the accusations, I guess and there’s a lot of bad players out there and so you got to be very careful and so I recommend everybody go by the terms of service and short term hacks are cool, little tricks are cool. But just be careful relying on that stuff. Put out a good product and do good marketing.

Norman 39:03  

Yeah, one of the other just quick tips.

Norman 39:06  

We saw this happen and we’ve stopped using this technique. But on a couple of platforms, there’s a course that came out. It’s a course on YouTube, how to scam the system of rebates and it was showing just all these people, this, well, people taking the course, would open up hundreds of Gmail accounts, buy the product, get it for free, and then basically become your competitor and we got around these types of sales by just putting it to 95% instead of 100% or 90%. Because these people didn’t want to pay for anything they didn’t want to pay a nickel, they wanted it for free. So we secured some of the product, we switched off of certain platforms now because of it. But anyways, you have to be careful like Kevin says. All right, Kels. So we’ve got tons of questions. Kevin, what’s your time like?

Kevin 40:07  

I’ve got another 20-25 minutes. 

Norman 40:09

Okay, perfect.

Kelsey 40:11  

All right. So we’ll have Tony who’s actually going to be a guest next Friday, talking about local manufacturers and importers. But he says, Hi, guys, another great podcast. Kevin, are you also facing logistical delays in products coming out of China these days?

Kevin 40:27  

Not too much. I mean, we had some delays back in April and May. But as of right now, not logistical. I mean, we might have a factory delay or something, it’s more on our side or because we did an inspection and something’s changed. But as far as logistical, no. Logistical delays getting into Amazon, yes. But not really coming out of China. Unless you’re doing some PPE or something like that. You should be okay with that.

Kelsey 41:04  

Okay and we have one from John Sims. Are you staying solely FBA this Q4? Or do you have a MF option in place? Talk about your q4 strategy to maximize sales.

Kevin 41:16  

No, I think this quarter for if you don’t have FBM, which is March East, that’s MF, Merchant fulfilled. For those of you that don’t know what that is, it’s the same as FBM. If you don’t have that set up with FBA, I think you’re making a big mistake. Because this quarter four I think it’s gonna be a disaster. We’ll see on Prime Day what happens here in a couple weeks. But I think we have all the ingredients for disaster right now, from a seller’s point of view. Amazon’s gonna do fine and be fine. Yeah, from a seller’s point of view, I think we have all increased disaster because you have increased demand just because of COVID in and products, e-commerce is up 30 50% or whatever, on Amazon. So you’re gonna have that you have quarter four, you have Prime Day, you have Amazon busting at the seams, you have all the limits on how much you can ship in, whether you’re a new product or even existing products, you have massive delays at both FBM. If you’re using a third party fulfillment company, I know there’s one in like Michigan, that does a lot of stuff and I talked to them a month or so ago and they said, yeah, we can, we can take you on if you want because I was looking at it for my freedom ticket course. So if somebody may recommend and I like, but we’ll be honest with you, it takes us two weeks to get something checked into our warehouse. So the UPS trailer drops it off and sits over here and by the time we open up your boxes and sort of takes us another two weeks, so that everybody’s backed up and so that’s gonna affect everybody. It won’t affect Amazon because they’ll sell whatever, they don’t care, they don’t care if they’re selling your hammer or the next guy’s hammer, they’re selling a hammer, they make money either way. But from a seller’s point of view, it’s going to be interesting and these rules of the shipping in 200 for a new product, I don’t think those are gonna go away, I think this is here to stay. I think they may modify it and maybe raised to 500, there may be some other algorithm based on your past history or past sales or something where that gets some sort of adjustment. But I don’t think that’s going to go away because Amazon’s really trying not to be a warehouse, but be a fulfillment center and you have a lot of people that have been using Amazon’s warehouse. They take a course or watch a YouTube video, send 1000 of their widgets into Amazon, and sell 16 of them and Amazon stuck with the rest of that stuff just sitting there taking up space, and they’re tired of that. So there’s some challenges for sure.

Norman 43:44  

Yeah and on that note, you want to make sure that by October 15, before October 15, you’ve checked your inventory, because long term fees are coming out again, October the 15th and for some people, it might not even make sense having that inventory in the Amazon warehouses. So Kevin, when you’re setting up your product, like if you have a let’s say you have a warehouse that’s in Kentucky, or if you have a outside of the COVID areas. So outside of California, I try not to ship anything into California, because it’s a nightmare for me. I have stuff I told you about this before. I messaged you and I just said hey, I got a big problem. I’m waiting. This is the third month for a container to get received into Amazon. Three months. I’ve never heard that. I mean, I’ve heard of that. Like I’ve heard of three weeks, four weeks, but this is month three, and there’s nothing we can do to get them to receive this thing.

Kevin 44:52  

You’re paying storage and dredge phases and stuff while it’s sitting there for those three months. Yeah, I’ve had stuff that shipped in June. I had some stuff I shipped, one the container is pallets shipped June 16th from Washington. They shipped out; we have a 3PL in the Seattle area shipped out of Washington and Virginia, Mississippi and Arizona, I think and all of them took at least three weeks to get checked in. The Virginia one took nearly two months and then I had another shipment after that and it took forever, as well and so we switched from shipping by pallets or in your case, you have a container to actually UPS ground. Because UPS grounds are getting checked in significantly faster than anything that’s palletized right now and so we have some products where I cannot use Amazon’s UPS rates. Amazon has a really low shipping rate if you’re able to use them, but some of these products are in the hazmat category, so you’re not allowed to use Amazon’s shipping. So we have to put it on our dime. So I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but what we did is we get set up with a service called ground with freight pricing.

Kevin 46:09  

Are you familiar with that Norm?

Norman 46:10  

Yeah, yeah. You told me about that. I owe you Kobe beef.

Kevin 46:13  

That’s right. So we set up with that, and that’s really saved us a lot of money and solved the problem of getting stuff checked in much, much quicker. I’m not saying delays are more than two or three days on that.

Norman 46:27  

Yeah, like you said, it’s very quick to get set up. We have mentioned it on the last podcast. I started doing that about a month before we were on the last podcast, Kevin and it’s not only saved a ton, you’re right. It’s very quick, you get the product and you’re not seeing a month delay. Alright, so okay, let’s go on to the next.

Kelsey 46:53  

Yelchin, I’m trying to get back to Germany and France but the agency says it takes five to seven months. Do you guys know how to get by in a short time? Not five to seven months? Thanks.

Kevin 47:04  

Yeah, I don’t know enough about the VAT stuff in Germany and France to give you good advice on that one Yelchin. I’m sorry. I don’t know. Norm, do you know anything on that? 

Norman 47:13

No, but we’re gonna post the company that knows everything about that.

Norman 47:19  

No, I want to say ask them. But anyways, the company’s fantastic. I wish they had a simpler name to remember. But I’ll make sure that we post it after the podcast. Okay Yelchin?

Kelsey 47:37  

Then we got a few, how do you suggest we launch new products with a 200 unit limit on new asins?

Kevin 47:45  

So it depends on the product, there’s a couple different ways you could do that. One is you’re gonna have to have FBM. So you can send in your 200. As soon as you sell through FBA and have the listing just automatically switch over, I think we’ve talked about that, how to do that on a previous podcast with Norm. The easiest way to do that, so it’s automatic, and have that shift shipped over to FBM and then ship in your next, while you’re waiting for the next one to get checked in, you have to go seesaw back and forth. The other way you can do that is if your product is not a top seller, you might be able to get away with it. If you’re only selling five units a day or something, you might be able to manage under that 200 limit. Or if it’s a big seller, you’re going to change your strategy and go after the eat the lower lying keywords, not the big keywords, go after keywords that have a 1000 searches a month or something or 500 searches a month and try to capture a bunch of sales off of that, and just build up slower rather than going after the intermediate or big keywords in the beginning and just gonna take you longer to reach your full potential. But that’s one way, those are basically the two main ways to get around that.

Norman 48:57  

Right. Have you been one of the things that we were going to be playing with is rebates. So we have a product right now that’s just getting into Amazon, I hope we get it received within the next couple of days and we got stuck with our 200 limit. We’ve done the FBM, like you’ve said, but we were going to hit it with rebates and we’re going to do the full launch. We’re going to drive some traffic over using like we’ve already got it set up with posts and everything. So it’s all set up. Now we want to get traffic and we’re hoping that this is a great product, that with the rebates that we put in we’ll get the organic sales, and we’ll be monitoring it very closely and as soon as we have 50 units, we’ll be sending out another 50 units even though it may cost us a lot more in freight. We just want to have the cost of the product constantly in motion and if we’re not, if it does get stuck the unfortunate part about it. This sounds like it’s an Amazon nightmare show. But it’s not, Amazon is great. But this is another instance that happened that we are allowed to have 5000 units of something at one point, we’ve sent it in. But Amazon has lost it. But we can’t replace the 5000 units until they find it. Have you ever experienced that Kevs?

Kevin 50:26  

Yeah, yeah. What’s the new rules? I haven’t had, yeah, I had some stuff. I had 3000 that got checked in, but then lost in August. Yeah and I opened up, you have to wait 30 days, and you have to wait for this and then open up a case for them to go look for it and at one point, I was like, cool, I’ll get 60,000 bucks, they’ll pay me for these as if I sold them. They take at less their discount. But then they actually mysteriously suddenly found them. But during that whole time, I could not ship in more. So it is because of these new rules. I mean, one thing you can do on a new launch too I have not tried this, but I’m just thinking, thinking out loud here is yes, that that 200 limit, go do a rebates and try to do 200 in a day or two days, just do some big huge blast is on some lower level keyword just to get that initial going and then at the system within a week, it’s gonna save you so 200 a day or two, and it’s got project out over three months, because the inventory is the projection for three months and it actually then may come back and say, now you can sip 700 in, or 800 n or something and then immediately when it does that, don’t wait a week, because the algorithm will keep we’ll just downward, go ship those 800 in and then you can maybe start your true launch. So it’s kind of like you have a false start and then you kick it into gear.

Norman 51:53  

Yeah, that’s a great point and that was what I was trying to explain on a smaller scale with this new client.

Norman 52:03  

Okay.

Kelsey 52:05  

We got a few more, we have only eight minutes left, approximately. So everyone watching, if we don’t get to your question time. I don’t know if we can answer them in the comments maybe afterwards, or something like that, or wait till the next lunch with Kevin.

Norman 52:22  

Or you can beg Kevin to stay on a little longer.

Kelsey 52:25  

But we got a jump right into another one. Let’s see. All right, I am launching products only on FBM due to FBA warehouse delays, but cannot get the buy box. Any tips on getting the buy box? I’m Dr. Koz.

Kevin 52:40  

I don’t know why you’re not, if you’re the only seller on that product. If it’s your own private label products, and you can’t get the buy box. That would mean maybe your pricing bands are off. That’d be the first place I would look at your price, your pricing bands are either too low or too high, you can adjust that. Just go into Seller Central, and the column on your inventory tab, there’s some there’s a settings for your columns, like you can turn your and you hit that button and you can turn on and off columns that show up in that report and two of those columns are lowest price and highest price. If you go ahead and turn those columns on, they’re off by default, turn those columns on and it’ll show up there with your BSR and your asin and your fn skew and all that stuff and those in the FBA inventory report and set that price to something that’s much lower than what you think you’re going to sell it for and much higher. That will change your pricing bands that are set by default and then any pricing you do you’re not going to get warnings, you’re not going to get error messages and it should affect help you with get that buy box. That would be the first place that I would go and check if you’re having that problem.

Norman 53:51  

Very good.

Kelsey 53:53  

From Kyle, our IPI score has been reducing steadily by two points for the past couple of months with no explanation or change, although we’ve tried many different things. This week, we hit 500. Any insight on what really impacts the IPI score?

Kevin 54:07  

Yeah, the IPI score there’s I forget all the things but it’s it’s how quick you’re moving your inventory, how fast you get rid of when Amazon sends you out those warnings that hey, you’ve got inventory you need to dispose of and how much of that sits around affects your inventory turnover. How well you’re shipping stuff in,  if you’ve gotten warnings that you’re overweight or you didn’t pack something right or use packing peanuts, or something like that. All those things affect it. But the one that affects it the most is being overstocked inventory. But you should be able to Google there’s a few more things on that should be able to Google IPI score Amazon factors and someone has got a whole list for you there. 

Norman 54:59

Yeah, the main for excess inventory, stranded inventory, sell through and then popular products is basically that you’re letting popular products go out of stock and if you’re checking out that go into Seller Central, go into inventory ]planning, and they’ve got something new. I don’t know if you’ve checked it out, but go into health. So it’ll be inventory health, and you’ll see all four there and you can click through and get some really detailed information. So for your excess, you’ll see that you’re 91 to 180, 181 to 365, 365 plus and if you see that you’re anything over especially in the 365 that’s hurting you, that’s really hurting you and why is it there and just get it removed. With stranded you can just click the button up top, there’s a tab stranded and you can see if there’s anything and sell through, it’s really cool because they tell you what to do. lower the price, create a deal, need more traffic. So they are giving you much better reporting when you work with your inventory health right now. But yeah, if you work, those are the I think those are the four main ones. Right?

Kevin 56:24  

Those are the four main ones. 

Norman 56:25  

Yeah. So anyways, that’s probably the best way to try to help manage that.

Kelsey 56:36  

From Jessie, I heard the UK at the end of the year will separate from EU markets and have shipped goods to the UK and Amazon fulfill the products to the other EU countries will no longer be available. So is it possible to ship the goods to Spain and have the same benefit? Or do we need to get that for each country and send our inventory to each country?

Kevin 56:59  

Yeah, the UK that the full divorce is coming at the end of this year, unless they delay it due to the COVID stuff. But that is gonna affect where people in the past would ship stuff in the UK, and you could do cross border fulfillment into Europe. You could, you’re gonna have to change that to cover the rest of Europe. Besides the UK, you’re going to have to separate basically the warehouse you have your UK inventory and then you’re gonna have to have your European inventory. So whether that’s in Spain, or Germany or Italy, or wherever. That’s what you’re going to have to do. Separate those two unless they have offered some sort of program where they’ll handle that for you. But kind of like, it wouldn’t surprise me if they do something like they have in the US where we have the North American market where it’s Mexico, Canada and the US. There may be some trade agreement that I’m not familiar with between the UK and the EU, where they have something along those lines. But that’s something I would check to see because that could affect as far as your VAT and each country, it’s best to have a VAT in every country. But there’s different rules at what point do you have to have that VAT and each of those countries depending on your sales threshold, so you’d have to check I don’t know what you’re selling Jessie, so what levels you’re at, but depending on the levels depends on when you trigger that requirement for VAT.

Kelsey 58:23  

Okay, and we just have a few more. So first of all, is the ground with freight pricing available in Canada too or only for the USA?

Kevin 58:32  

I don’t know, I use it in the USA. Do you know Norm if it’s vital in Canada too?

Norman 58:37  

No, my account is strictly out of the US.

Kelsey 58:42  

Okay, what is your feeling on Amazon Canada, Amazon Mexico? Are these marketplaces worth the extra effort?

Kevin 58:49  

It depends on what you’re selling. I think Amazon Canada is for most products. I’m finding that I sell 5% of what I sell in the US, five to 7%. So Canada, I definitely think is worth it for most products. Mexico, depends on the product. I’m doing some Mexico testing right now. But for every one product I sell in Mexico, I sell 10 Canada. So Mexico is definitely smaller, but I’m not translating my listings. I’m not doing anything. I just have the cross border shipment set up for Mexico. For Canada, I actually ship the stuff into a warehouse in the Brampton and Toronto area.

Kelsey 59:27  

Okay, great. 

Norman 59:30  

Yeah. With that, like for me I made a mistake in Canada with what I was selling, I was selling soap and it just didn’t make sense. It was $10 soap. It ended up with the conversion like $14 soap, then you’re paying 7.95 to ship it out the pick pack and the ship charge was 7.95. So for one bar soap it ended up at like 20 some odd dollars.

Norman 1:00:01  

You got to make sure you have the right product.

Kevin 1:00:03  

Yeah, it’s probably dependent for sure.

Kelsey 1:00:06  

Okay, and I think we’ll just do the last two, and then we’ll call it the day.  For this case q1 question, let’s assume that we have everything in place for q4. I’m going to smash it, what is Q4 going to look like and how should it be forecasted? 

Kevin 1:00:22  

What a lot of people think is that Q4 is great and just everything dies in q1 and it’s not the case, January is almost as good as February in some categories, supplements or fitness, or anything around New Year’s resolutions that can actually be better. But for most products, January is just as good as December. So what I’ve been doing this FBA for a long time, and what I normally see is that up until about, I don’t know where Christmas falls this year, but up until around December 23rd, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, it’s just like going balls to the wall, and then suddenly just falls off a cliff for like two days and then right after Christmas, it picks back up and it continues until mid to late January and I think part of the reason of that is a lot of people get products as gifts on Amazon for Christmas and then like I didn’t want this one, they buy me these socks, I’m gonna send these back and Amazon gives the customers remember anything bought from October 1st until January 31st can be or until Christmas can be returned until January 31st. So even stuff that people weren’t buying his gifts in October, a lot of them are returning, there’s a lot of returns, there’s a heavy dose of returns, and you need to factor that in on your product to expect your return rate to go way up and so they’re returning stuff they don’t want or gifts they don’t want and exchanging it for other things, which could be your product, or a lot of people get gift cards, there’s a heavy dose of gift cards that are bought on Amazon and so they’re redeeming those gift cards and they’re buying products. So January, a lot of people get year end bonuses and other things. So January is a very, very good month, I typically don’t see sales really start to fall off until mid February and then from mid February, if there’s not a covid, or crisis, like there was this year, it’s a normal year, mid February until depending on if you have seasonal Easter or Father’s Day or Mother’s Day or something, but it’s up until the end of September. It’s just kind of a ho hum, summer can be good if you have some really good products and then October like right now, it’s like someone turns a switch a lot of times in October, all of a sudden things just start going back up, up, up, up, up, up.

Norman 1:02:38  

I don’t know if you touched on it, but they’ve got the new return rate as of October the first. So as of yesterday, you have until January the 31st to return.

Kevin 1:02:51  

Yeah, they normally do that. They did that with COVID, too. They get extended the return period. Back in things that were bought in March and April and I think May could be returned and I forget what it was but you had like three months to return something. Yeah.

Kelsey 1:03:08  

Last question from Sarah 45, when you restock, do you use the recommended replenishment quantity set by the seller central or do you use your gut feeling?

Kevin 1:03:22  

I use whatever fits most economically in a case. So the restock what Amazon sometimes will tell you how much you should restock. They don’t know what I’m doing. They don’t know if I’m doing rebates or if I’m doing a promotion or I’m gonna bust up on my ad. So I take their recommended restock with a grain of salt. I do my own projections. Based on what I think I can do and what I’m doing.

Norman 1:03:49  

Very good. I think that’s it for questions Kels?

Kevin 1:03:54  

Yeah, I’ve got a run. I got another call in a few minutes. Just checking it on my phone.

Norman 1:04:01  

We kept you a little long today.

Kevin 1:04:04

That’s okay. I enjoyed it so no problem. 

Norman 1:04:09  

We love having you. So yeah, thanks a lot for coming onto the podcast again. You’re a regular guest, so I can’t wait till you’re on next month and again, if anybody has any questions, just throw them in the contact or comment section and Kevin, we’re gonna let you go and thank you sir, for coming on. I owe you Kobe beef, small Kobe beef.

Kevin 1:04:32

No problem man. Take care.

Norman 1:04:34  

All right, buddy. See you later.

Norman 1:04:39  

Okay, so I think that’s it for this version of Lunch With Norm. I just, there were a couple of other things that we were going to touch on too, but we’ll get to it next Monday and if there are any updates, you can always go over to the Facebook page, Norman Farrar a.k.a. The Beard Guy and we’ll be posting them there. Because right now we’re seeing increased updates from Amazon and we want you all to be aware of it. Not just Amazon, but anything to do with online selling. So I think that’s it for today’s show. Kelsey, where are you? 

Kelsey 1:05:16  

Yes. Hello, everyone. Welcome or thanks for watching everyone. This is great. Everyone, John, Victor, Yelchin, Michelle, Nathan, everyone that joined it was awesome. 

Norman 1:05:33

Thanks for the engagement, everybody. This is what makes the podcast the podcast. 

Kelsey 1:05:38

Speaking of engagement, we’re kind of thinking about opening a Facebook group, along with the page. So this would be an area well, where we will do something fun. We’ll talk to the guests. If there’s any questions about anything that we talked about, we’ve put it there, upload the files, and you guys can build a community inside of it too. Maybe we’ll do some giveaways and give out some monks. But it’s an idea that’s out there. So if you are interested in something like that, put it in the comments and yeah, if we get a lot of engagement with it, and then we’ll go ahead with it. Yeah, so Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Michelle says the group would be great, perfect. If you haven’t yet, please like and share this and if you haven’t, if you like listening, instead of watching, you don’t like to see our faces. We understand. But, you can listen on Apple podcast, and Spotify. All the contents there. We have stuff everywhere. Yeah, I think that’s about it.

Norman 1:06:45  

All right. So also, if you want to get outside this type of content, we have the newsletter, which, like I always say, does not suck. It’s constant content. So every Monday you’ll receive something with news about all sorts of different articles from the e-commerce world, so not just Amazon everywhere. So tune in everybody, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern Standard Time and that’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you all next Monday.

Kelsey 1:07:21  

One little thing, just to answer the question quickly. Yeah. Can we have a calendar for the next few topics so we can prepare questions ahead of time? If you go to Facebook, Norman Farrar, a.k.a. The Beard Guy, or hyphen Lunch With Norm. I put out the calendar for right now it’s a week ahead. I try my best. It’s dependent on a lot of things. But I can give a list of the names of the guests that are booked in advance but we may not have topics sorted out. It’s all logistics. But if you go to the events section, you’ll see the guests that are available that are coming up, usually at least a week ahead. If I’m really on the ball, I can get two weeks ahead.

Norman 1:08:09  

He wants to get paid.

Kelsey 1:08:14  

All right, on that note.

Norman 1:08:17  

Okay, everybody. So thanks for watching and we will see you next Monday.