Driving External Traffic to your Amazon Listing ⎜ Steven Black ⎜ EP 63

Ryan Kramer: What's up everyone? Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host, Ryan Kramer, and this is Crossover Commerce presented by PingPong Payments, the leading global payments provider helping sellers keep more of their hard earned money. What's up everyone? I'm your host, Ryan Kramer, and welcome to episode 63 of Crossover Commerce, presented by PingPong Payments. Happy Monday to everyone. Just quickly, PingPong provides marketplace sellers and entrepreneurs global solutions for controlling their domestic and international funds. An account with PingPong enables companies to significantly reduce their costs when receiving or making international payments, all in one platform that helps increase operational efficiencies, saves time, and allows sellers to manage their business profile from one single source. For more information, go ahead and check out this link below in our show notes. If you want to save two to 4% on international payments, go ahead and just either go to that link and sign up for a free account, or you can always email me after the show. But anyways, thanks again for joining us live on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We're on all the platforms, all over the place, so that everyone out there can get all the nuggets of information in the Amazon and e- commerce world. If you happen to be on team replay watching to this later, thanks again for watching, but if you happen to download this, thanks for downloading us on Amazon music, Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, wherever you consume your podcasts. Just search Crossover Commerce in the description and give us a rating and save us for when new episodes roll out. We had a bunch get released this past weekend. So go ahead and check those out as well. But do me a favor if you're following this on social media, go ahead and share this episode and hit that reminder button to be notified of future episodes. We go live about four to five times per week. So I'm here to bring you valuable information in the Amazon and e- commerce world, you don't want to miss these guests, I'm really excited about our guests this week. And of course, today, guys, I was introduced to this gentleman as the Bruce Wayne of Amazon. How can you not have a more badass introduction than that? But to give you a little bit of a background on him, he is a marketer who has been selling for more than 15 years. He owns and runs multiple online stores in various types and consults with other companies, from startups to eight figure- plus businesses, and better their efforts. He also runs Facebook group for Amazon sellers with over 10,000 members, which is a fantastic group to be a part of, that talks about all things marketing and, excuse me, brand building. Which is called Unstoppable FBA: Marketing Hacks for Amazon Sellers. His specialty is building and growing massive, engaged audiences and driving repeat business through content marketing and buyer psychology. Without further ado, I would love to welcome onto the show, Steven Black of Unstoppable FBA. Steven, what is up, man?

Steven Black: How are you doing, Ryan? Glad to be here.

Ryan Kramer: It's been a good weekend. I know you had a crazy couple of weeks, to say in a light term. But you're down there in Nashville, is that correct?

Steven Black: I am in Nashville, most certainly.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. And then you got hit with that crazy winter storm. So everything shut down.

Steven Black: Yeah, nobody had any idea what was going on. I got stuck in a place where I was on a slight hill and there was a bunch of ice, couldn't leave the house for three or four days, it was quite a monster.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. That's the beauty of winter, everyone just freaks out and once gravity takes its hold on you, with your car or anything like that, game over. No one wants to operate, but yeah, thanks for hopping on. I'm glad everything got sorted out. You have internet, you have a computer crosstalk. You were saying, without a computer, it was like you had to shut down your businesses and things like that because you couldn't crosstalk.

Steven Black: Yeah, it was one of those things that, I got stuck in one spot from Wednesday to Sunday and internet connection was going in and out all of that crazy stuff. And so I had to go on my phone, on my cell network, for what I had. Had to go into Facebook Business Manager and Google Business Manager and just shut everything down. Because I was like, if I can't monitor it and if I can't run everything the way I normally would from my computer, I'm just not going to spend any money. We'll just take a little vacation for a minute.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, I was going to say, a nice little vacation away from the digital world where everyone's constantly running. But everyone, thanks for joining and watching us. Again, if you're watching live, go ahead and let us know where you're watching from, or what your questions for myself or Steven, we love seeing everyone participate in the show. And if you have questions for the Bruce Wayne of Amazon... Again, I'm super curious. I didn't want to spoil it for myself, I want to hear this real- time from you. Guys, I was introduced to Steven via Facebook Messenger as," Hey Ryan, this is the Bruce Wayne of Amazon. You should have him on your show," and I said," Of course I will. I will even get out my Batman mug, like I always do, for this specific episode." Just for this fact, anyone who sees my background, I'm a big comic book fan. I'm a huge movie nerd. But I have to know, where does the nickname, the Bruce Wayne of Amazon come from?

Steven Black: Well, a couple of places.

Ryan Kramer: Don't leave out any details, either.

Steven Black: Don't leave out any details. So, number one, I guess I should say I've done so many talks, I've done live events and everything else like that, normally when people see me out and about I have on a three- piece suit. If I leave the house, I'm going to probably wear a three- piece suit, that's usually my go- to. Number two, I have multiple businesses. I don't have just one brand. I have multiple businesses and I'm super quiet about them. If you look at my personal profile, if you look at all my posts across all of the groups, you will never, ever, ever see me talk about how well I'm doing.

Ryan Kramer: No screenshots of your sales and stuff like," Hey guys, look."

Steven Black: What purpose does that serve?

Ryan Kramer: For me, I don't know, because that just makes me either, one, envious or I guess to validate that you are a seller?

Steven Black: crosstalk validation. If you set goals, do it, don't have to talk about it, clap for yourself. And if you really want to help other people, find out what their problems are, and give information freely that helps them get past those roadblocks. If you're already that far up the ladder, your job is not to get praise from people that are, that are still working on those steps and say," Oh, well, I did this and you can do it too." That's great. Shut up. crosstalk down with real information and help them solve their problems and pull them up the ladder. And put them in a position to where they can keep going and further that effort. That's what crosstalk. And the other thing is, I'm not in just one space. And I came in backwards. Most people want to start on Amazon and they want to learn to market off of Amazon. I was a marketer for over a decade before I even sniffed at Amazon.

Ryan Kramer: So yeah, what were you doing, for context?

Steven Black: I had a couple of brick and mortar businesses. I was doing some digital marketing for lead gen for a few other business owners that were local. I started really, really pressing the button on content marketing because I didn't have a million dollars a month that I could run paid advertising like some of my friends are running. So I was like, okay, how do I come up with something that takes that away from them as their advantage? They can outspend me, but I don't want it to be a game of who has the deeper pockets is the winner. So what I focused on was setting up systems for customer retention. And having it to where I had assets online to attract people to my brands and my ecosystem that were going to be there. And that's publishing and running content and really understanding what people are really looking for, how they're looking for it, how they want those answers to come to them, all of that kind of stuff. And I developed a system to where, once you turn the ads off, good luck. Your message isn't out there. But if I can put out 20 or 30,000 pieces of content across multiple platforms per brand, per year. After a couple of years, uh huh, good luck. Have fun with that. Because realistically, the answers for all the questions that people have on solutions for their problems, be it a hire an expert, do it yourself, buy a product, like on Amazon. Well, the answer is already out there. And so my thought was, why the hell isn't everybody getting their answers from me?

Ryan Kramer: Makes sense.

Steven Black: And so what I did is, my whole method is not to say," Let me go through the data like everybody else does and try to find a product that I think is selling well, but there's still some room left because it's not saturated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Like everybody else does. I don't want to do that. I want to say," Okay, this is a market I'm interested in. Let me dig in and find out everything I can about who the people are. I want to be able to speak about this at a hobbyist level."

Ryan Kramer: So almost like you're customer. Yeah, knowing you're a customer. Okay.

Steven Black: I want to be able to experience it like I am a customer. Because only then will I be able to truly understand what their problems are, why they have those problems, and what they're really looking for in potential solutions. And what that allows me to do is see opportunities in the marketplace that you're not going to see in the data. And so I very quietly just assemble different sources of income as I go along. And it's wonderful. It's lots of fun. My end goal, everybody has this big end goal with their business. You hear so many people in our space say," Oh, well, I want to build a brand. And in two or three years I want to have an exit," and all this kind of thing. I don't want to exit. Over the next seven or eight years, I want to accumulate what will total up, just digitally, over a hundred different sources of income and employ a thousand people. All as ad generating monsters.

Ryan Kramer: That's not a bad business to have.

Steven Black: crosstalk as possible about it. I want the only thing people know about me, is that goofball is super helpful. If you ask him a question, he'll go deep explaining it because he wants everybody else to win. And that's it. That's my whole goal. Help as many other people win. Because what you're measured by is not the toys you can buy, but by the impact you have on those around you and how many other lives you make better. Can I use what's in my head, and my experience with the businesses I have, and the consulting jobs that I've done and been fortunate to do, to help lessen the struggle of other people? And if I can do that, that's good enough for me.

Ryan Kramer: That's awesome. So you said be as invisible as possible. What are the ways that you're educating people? Is it through this Facebook group that you've created. How are you helping people or how are they finding you? Does that make sense?

Steven Black: The Facebook group is my main thing there. And the reason I like a Facebook group is because if you're part of a Facebook group, you have to be a part of that Facebook group, because it's a genuine interest for you. It's not just a page that you visit, it's not an Instagram account where you're going to be able to just put out little short bits of information. I prefer a Facebook group because I can have conversations with people and I can archive those conversations into topics so that when we have new people coming into the group of any experience level, if they ask a question, I can point that out and say," Hey, here's some information over here. Here's the situation we've run into before." And it's an ongoing archive of experience to where I can genuinely go back over notes and help people as the situations come up. And the name of the group, because someone asked in the chat, see the name on my hat here? Unstoppable? It's Unstoppable FBA. You will see it as a group. So there you go.

Ryan Kramer: It's in the show notes too, so if you have questions, we made sure that it's in every social post. So if you go on YouTube, or if you go anywhere else, I'll even link it out in the comments section so you can click there. And it's 10, 000 people that are constantly putting out questions and you're in there one- on- one with people, all day long, just answering questions.

Steven Black: I keep a window open. I have, oh God, I have three monitors right now. Three 4k monitors, and I divide it up.

Ryan Kramer: Sounds like not a lot for you.

Steven Black: Not a lot for me. No, well, I keep one of my social windows open so I always see what's happening in the group. And I'll usually work 45 minutes, 50 minutes out of the hour, and then take 10 to 15 minutes to reply to social posts and to emails and all of that kind of thing. So I keep it going throughout the day. Otherwise I would get overwhelmed. And it's like direct messages, I'm at a point now where I get about 200 direct messages a day, just on Facebook alone. It's one of those things that, if you're doing well, your job is not to just keep doing well and show off toys. Your job is to say," Okay, that's fine. I'm doing well. I have experience and if I can help someone else get past a roadblock, or solve a problem, or something else like that, that's all I want to be able to do." Because that's, I would say, living well. I've solved my own problems and I have enough experience to help other people solve theirs. It's time to do that. That's what I do.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. And you're not monetizing off of other people's lack of knowledge. I hate the fact that, not that it's not a source of income, giving away content that might be valuable, you can put a price tag on it. But I've never seen such a range in the Amazon space, being an influencer in marketing. I've never seen range of... It always ends in a seven too. Courses are courses, you can either give it away for free, which I've seen people do, and are fantastic at it. Or they charge for it and they still get really great value, but value is in the eye of the beholder, right? It's am I willing to trust someone to give away for free? And it's almost like it's not good value if you're not charging it, right?

Steven Black: Yeah, no, I mean I have a paid program where I go much, much deeper. I have a crosstalk masterclass, but if you really, really want to go, I go deep there. I mean, I'm still adding content to the whole program and I already have over 75 hours of content there. Which is-

Ryan Kramer: That's awesome.

Steven Black: It's ridiculous. And I have a lot more to add. It'll probably end up closer to... I don't know, when it's all at a point where I think it'll be settled, it'll be a little over 200 hours of content, easy. Without thinking about it. But that's just that side of it. I'm still going to post as often as possible, multiple times a week, articles and help in the group and everything else. That never stops.

Ryan Kramer: What's your favorite topic to talk about? Let's get in there. What is it, you nerd out anytime. This is my question, and you're like, hell yes. I can't wait to talk about this. This is going to be great.

Steven Black: Okay. So my favorite topic to nerd out about is definitely buyer psychology, retention, and conversions. Because that's very different than driving traffic. And driving traffic, a lot of people over complicate it, I think. Which is what we're supposed to be talking about is driving external traffic to your listings. And I have a few examples and a few things people can do today that will help them with that. But the problem is, once you get somebody in the house, you have to be a good host if you want them to come back.

Ryan Kramer: Exactly.

Steven Black: And a lot of people miss that. They think," Okay, well, my listings are converting at X amount, with 200 people a day or 500 people a day going to my listing." And that's great. That's plenty of people. You're going to make some money off of that. But what if we add a zero and a half to that? You think you're going to convert the same? You think your message is still going to resonate the same? With that pool of people? The benefits that you're putting out are only going to resonate so much. So this is where we shift from driving traffic to dealing with conversions, and understanding buyer psychology, and irrational motivations and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which is my favorite thing to dig into.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. I was going to say crosstalk... Yeah, not today, we need a lot more hours. If you're comparing that to hours of content, we can set up our own little masterclass for that. But yeah, when you said buyer psychology, I give a fist pump because that's how I got really intrigued with e- commerce in general. And that's because I was like, why are people... No offense. The stuff we were selling, I was like, why the hell is this the thing that everyone's going to pull out their credit card and buy? Is it a deal? Is it the shipping? Is it the product itself? Is it where it's coming from? I have no clue. I have to learn more about this. Because I moved, and this is my favorite thing to talk about, I found a distressed, one- off product. I used to work for a company that had 10,000 skews. That's a shit ton of product to go through and say," What's going to sell today?" I was creating deals left and right, sending out to my coupon partners," Hey, feature this, maybe this'll sell." It was spaghetti and a wall. And then I came across this thing, it had 3000 units, it was a wind spinner. It was the thing you put in the ground and it spins outside. And I go," Oh, this is kind of cool. It's a low cost of goods sold, it doesn't ship terribly, I can sell it and basically have that retail sale down to whatever I'm going to sell it at." And I did that and then moved all of the units in one day. And my boss came to me, the CEO of the company goes," Ryan, what did you do?" And I said," Oh yeah, I found this product and I sold it." And he goes," Our warehouse is slammed. We can't get these out quick enough." We made 10 grand, 20 grand, just off this one product overnight. And I go," Yeah, my bad, I guess." And they're like," How do we do that again?" And I started really digging into it. And I was like, oh, like seasonality. The seasonality hit right, the deal hit right, it was a 55% off deal. Something that I generated myself, I created the retail price and I dropped it to whatever I want to. But people felt like they had to have it because it was a deal. Is that what you get into?

Steven Black: Oh no, way deeper than that.

Ryan Kramer: That's just a surface level. Exactly.

Steven Black: For me, we haven't even gotten to the table of contents if that's what we're talking about, as beginning.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: No, I want to know before I move into something why... What people's problems, questions, roadblocks are. And what the result is that they're seeking. And is the result that they're seeking because it's a genuine problem in a physical, real world sense? Or because it is an irrational, psychological desire?

Ryan Kramer: That's even deeper than what I was just saying.

Steven Black: But I've studied that for a long, long time. Because on the non- business side, we all go through things and it's one of the things that I've had to study to kind of iron out my own mind. Why is it that I keep having to relearn this lesson? Why is it that I keep going over this? Why do I hit my head on the wall over here? And as you said, why are people trending toward this particular product? I don't see a particular real world use for it that's going to improve the utility of their lives. What goes deeper than that? And so I really started studying this a long time ago. And once you start figuring out the reasons that are underlying people's buying motivation, even if they don't understand it, the angles on your copy change. The way you write your bullets change. The way that you set up your landers, and the touch points to lead people along the choice paths that you allow them to make, be it an email or a landing page or website or through the touch points of your funnel. You can set up something that are called cow paths, digitally. Cow paths are where you congregate all of the people. And because some people see other people going down a path and converting and blah, blah, blah, they just happen to follow right along. And if you know what you're doing, you can engineer behavioral outcomes. It takes a lot of study, but you can do it. And the bigger companies, that's what the hell they're doing. That's one of the things that you can really monkey with. Now, I will say this, we may as well start the bigger topic about driving conversations or driving off- traffic stuff to Amazon.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, let's start there.

Steven Black: Everybody has their favorite tools for Amazon. I always get asked," Steven, if you could have one tool for Amazon, what would it be?" And my answer is always the same, and it has been for years, and it always is going to surprise the hell out of everyone. My favorite tool for Amazon is Shopify.

Ryan Kramer: Rob Stanley must know you.

Steven Black: Yeah. I did a couple of podcasts with him.

Ryan Kramer: Spoiler alert, Rob, come on.

Steven Black: No and that's another thing I guess I'll take a quick hat tip to, all of the other wonderful minds in this space. When I started my Unstoppable group, it was just a place for me to archive marketing topics. That was it. That was all I wanted out of it. And I have all these other wonderful guys and ladies and everybody that I've learned so much from, and that I listen to, and they're all part of the group. They all chime in. If I don't know something, or if it's somebody else's area of expertise, I'll just tag someone else and say," Hey, you need to talk to this guy. This is what's up." And it's amazing that we have all of the minds in that space. And I'm also that guy that, if I see something that's going to affect other group owners that all have their own thing going on, or if the information is better in someone else's group, I'll tag them and I'll post the group and I'll say," Hey, here's where you go." So it genuinely is trying to help other people. But back to the topic. Shopify is my favorite tool for Amazon. Why? Because what I can do is, I can get a low MOQ or some samples made. I can set up a single product Shopify store and I can set up the product page to emulate how Amazon would be.

Ryan Kramer: Almost like a product listing on Amazon, okay.

Steven Black: Mm-hmm(affirmative). I can set up the product images. I can set up pricing. I can test titles. I can test bullets. I can test all these other things. I can set up Google optimize, or VWO, and use multi- variable testing and really, really hammer down, and Google analytics too, really hammer down on what the on page conversion rate is doing. And just spend a little bit of money driving people there with a little bit of maybe Google shopping ads or Google search ads. So it matches intent like it would on the Amazon platform. Facebook ads, you got to be a little careful with, because it's not functioning similar to how Amazon would. So I usually use Google search and shopping ads there. But guess what, if I have a product that takes off, and it's a real deal winner, well, guess what? Now I know something that's probably going to work on Amazon. I can buy a little deeper. It's genuinely been demand tested and I'm much closer to being conversion rate optimized when I set up the listing out of the gate. Plus I have all of that on- site data to make better audiences from, if I wanted to run more external traffic. I have more insight. I probably have an email list going now, that I can build and launch to, before I've even spent money deeper on inventory and everything else getting produced and shipped and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm way ahead. Way ahead. Favorite tool to test ideas. And if you can set all that up, guess what, you have all that insight, all that data, all of that before you spend a crap load of money on speculation. So that's my favorite tool for Amazon.

Ryan Kramer: So when you're talking about that, do you think people fear that, hey, the customer is different. You're looking deeper than, hey, who a shopper is on a surface level.

Steven Black: crosstalk because of how I get them to the site.

Ryan Kramer: Right. Just have a path and journey?

Steven Black: I want everybody to understand that Amazon is not a marketplace. Amazon is a search engine. But the only thing that comes up when people type in a search is product listings. They've been taught over the 20 year history of the company that when you go to this particular site and you type in on the search bar, earphones, you're not going to get articles. It's not a content site like Google is. You're going to get products for sale. So you only go there when you have buying intent. When you have an idea...

Steven Black: And you have buying intent. When you have an idea of, okay, I need to buy something to solve the problems that I have, we go to Amazon. If you're still researching what those potential ideas are. Maybe I don't need your phones. Maybe I need speakers, right? Maybe whatever. Okay. Well, I can search on Google. I'm still in research phase as to what the solution might be, but Amazon offers the most convenient logistics to get those products when you want them right now. So when I figured out what phrase to search, I go to Amazon, I type in the search bar. And as I have the intent in the moment, the product pages come up, the only other platform that functions like that is Google, not Facebook. So if I'm careful and I run Google shopping ads, right, on the product listing on Shopify, what I can then do is say," Okay, people are searching. And if they click on my Google shopping ad, that means they're still product- ready." Right. And here's the fun thing. Google makes a crap load of money. Most of it is from ad revenue. But what most people don't know is that over 62% of their ad revenue is from shopping ads.

Ryan Kramer: I didn't know that.

Steven Black: People think Amazon is the big thing and the go- to and it's a big part of it, but it is not the only game in town.

Ryan Kramer: Right. But it's just at a different point in time that you're catching people, not that buyer mentality, the research mentality.

Steven Black: Right. Well, and a lot of people like myself, if they have a buyer mentality, they'll set something up and that Google shopping ad will pop up and they'll say," Oh yeah. Okay, cool." And then it's just down to how legit your site looks so that you don't look like some fly by night operation. But if you can set that up and you can set up search ads, why not take the phrases that you're considering using on Amazon and work on expanding them into the Google ecosystem, have your Shopify store and test it out. Okay. What are you going to do? You're going to shut down the ads after you run through your 10 or 12 sample products that you had? Okay, cool. But guess what else? Now that you have it, you can shut the listing down on your Shopify store and say," Hey, we ran out of stock. Coming back soon. Here's a couple of reviews. People are waiting." And now you can buy a little deeper. And are you losing money that way? Nope, not even a little bit. And guess what else you're doing. You can build an email list that way. And that's one of my favorite ways to drive traffic to an Amazon listing is to set up an email list either through a quiz or a social contest or getting people to opt into a single page lender as a squeeze page on your site. And then using that email to drive people to Amazon. Another way is if I were using Shopify, this is the other reason Shopify is my favorite tool. When people come to your Shopify site, if it's optimized correctly, you're going to have about a 30 ish, 35 percent- ish abandoned cart rate. So three out of 10 people are going to add your item to the cart, but then they're going to leave. inaudible only actually convert three or 4% of those people on a Shopify site. I know we're not used to that because Amazon is way higher. That's also because it's also, for two reasons, number one, most people don't know how to use multi- variable testing and really optimize the conversions on their Shopify store. Number one, is you can get that thing up there eight, 10%. You've got to spend some time on it, but you can do it. And you own the data. Number two, like I was mentioning earlier, people know that they're expected to look at products on Amazon. They know they're going to probably buy something. It's what they're trained to do. It's one of those underlying behavioral conditioning things, because we've all been using the platform as consumers for 20 years. It's just part of the culture now.

Ryan Kramer: Is there anything behind that? Is there anything close to that you think with Amazon, it's on its way to being like that, like you go there to purchase, like that's your end of the funnel platform?

Steven Black: Watch how people use their language. Because when we say," I need to find something out." Oh, I'll just Google that. crosstalk something, oh, I'll go to Amazon. I'll put that on-

Ryan Kramer: I'll add it to my cart or something.

Steven Black: Yeah. I'll add it to my cart. Oh, I have the Amazon app. Yeah, no problem. And that's the thing is with conversions, the more convenient you make it for people and the less friction you make for people, that's what you're going to do. I did a podcast recently talking about the difference between funnels and flywheels. And if you look up a term called the Bezo's virtuous cycle, it's the entirety of how Amazon was built. It's built so that not only do they have customers come in and they convert those customers on platform, but that those customers then become ambassadors to bring more people to the platform as new strangers. And the way that they do that is every single decision that Amazon makes and how they set up their business is based on customer experience. Did you know that they spent$ 15 billion over the last 10 years on just logistics warehouses to make everything more convenient in getting packages to everyone?

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: To experience stuff. And that's why they are winning. I think I saw a stupid figure yesterday or something like that. That Jeff Bezos has so much money. He makes like$ 320 million a day.

Ryan Kramer: I hate those graphics. I hate them because it's amazing. I hate-

Steven Black: Yeah. But what happened is, if everything is set up to where he has a better user experience and it's easier to use to get the things we need as daily life across any subject you want to look at, yeah, of course he does.

Ryan Kramer: Right. Amazon's a logistics company and it's a company that is 10 steps ahead of everyone else. And that's why they saw it. And your virtuous cycle that you were talking about, is that more of like the influencer side of things like a micro influencer? It's not even that, it's just everyone...

Steven Black: No. It's legitimately worrying more about user experience than some of the technicalities that we talk about. As an example, if I was going to put out a piece of content and you were going to put out the same piece of content, if you just wrote an article. And it was all text. Okay. But what if I put out a similar article, might even be the same wording, but I took out certain paragraphs and made them infographics. I made an incorrect of demonstration with diagrams. I put out a podcast reading of the article with a condensed downloadable, well put together ebook on top of that.

Ryan Kramer: Shareable content. Yeah.

Steven Black: And what if my article was in a series of a playlist on my site that you could go down and research the subject and know where you were and know where you left off? My content and my user experience, you're irrelevant at that point. But good luck, have fun with that. And that's what they've concentrated on. But anyway, we're getting off topic. We got to go back to the subject. Driving-

Ryan Kramer: No. This is fine. I have been followed where people go and then for everyone who's watching, again, thanks for watching on social media, listening to a different time as well. Just kind of going through real quickly, hi everyone, it's good to see you both. We already did that. Rob Stanley slipping into the podcast. That's one of the most insightful articles on the internet. Must follow Jeff inaudible, obviously with what he's doing over there in the graphics world and ad world, he's doing fantastic stuff. He's crosstalk.

Steven Black: ...About Jeff.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, let's talk about Jeff. Let's do it.

Steven Black: Jeff employees over-

Ryan Kramer: Over 250 people.

Steven Black: Yeah. I've been working with Jeff since he was a stand- alone freelancer. And I can vouch for Jeff that he has worked with some of the biggest companies and some of the biggest sellers. And he absolutely is my go- to guy for anything graphics related.

Ryan Kramer: We're going to have Jeff on the podcast. I already invited crosstalk.

Steven Black: ...At any scale of your operation, doesn't matter how much money you're making or if you're just starting out, he is the guy. That's the person that you talk to when it's time to get things done. I will say this. If you want to get more out of working with Jeff, learn to speak his language a little bit. And I don't mean that you have to know a lot about graphic design. But guys, if you want to set up some marketing stuff and new images made, have an idea of what you're looking for, set up an editorial calendar. We need this, this, this for these dates, this is what we're working with. Here's a little bit of the colors we'd like to use in our branding. That gives them more to work with than just," Hey, we're selling a dog collar and we need a Facebook ad. Help."

Ryan Kramer: Exactly. I have a visual communications background. And when that comes across to me, I go," Okay, so this is what we could do." And then it's almost like," No, you're off, you're off." Or you're like," Oh, clearly you have an idea of what you want. So just tell me first and foremost." So yeah, Jeff's fantastic. His team is growing all over the world, remotely 250 plus people, more people comment on every single week. I walked through his operations. I looked at his back end, and I go," Dude, this is insane. You're doing this all remotely." Like no operations all around the world, just running his graphic design business. It's unreal.

Steven Black: Yeah. He's doing amazing. I'm so happy for him. All right. So-

Ryan Kramer: Back to the topic.

Steven Black: ...External traffic, crosstalk there's a few different ways that we can talk about this. And I want everybody to understand, there are five systems you need to worry about for your business. This is all about number one. So the five systems are attraction, conversions, deliverable, retention, and cashflow. This is all about attraction. There are a lot of ways you can do this. Number one, what you can do if you want to drive extra traffic to your website, this is really easy. You can run a social contest. Let's say you're selling a$ 60 product. And you actually know a lot about the space. Let's say it's an art set, right? You're selling a$ 60 art set for people that like to do artistry, drawing, painting, coloring, all that kind of fun stuff, which is a really good space actually. But if you can buy some of the accessories that go around that and have yourself like a$ 500 prize pack and create a standalone Lander with a tool like Viper or Woobox, right. Well, now you can drive ads to that on a single standalone Lander by using those platforms as a squeeze page and get people to opt into your contest. Now, you'll probably get leads for under a dollar doing that while building your email list. But how legit are those leads? Well, what you do, as let's say, you're running that for an eight week period and at week six is when your product actually goes live because you want to run this after the product is on go day. So let's say you're running it for eight weeks total. What I would do is I would set up say maybe 10 pieces of content. And all of them are really rich content like I was mentioning just a few minutes ago. You want to find out what the problems people have in the space or the things that they have aspirations about if they're not trying to solve problems, because now, you have fuel to either solve their problems and give them value before making them an offer that genuinely is helpful, they don't have to search anymore, or you're taking them further into their passion pursuits. Either way, what you're really demonstrating to them is that you understand their perspective and how they think and what is important to them and what they value. You share that point of view. And that's where they can learn to trust you, right. Now, your content on the email flow, I would say 70% is just content like that, and you don't have to make it. You can curate it. You can say," Hey, check out this YouTube video, check out this amazing article, blah- blah- blah." So you don't have to build it yourself. You can curate the whole thing or just link it out in your email flow that's attached to your Lander there. I would say 20% is trust builder." Hey, this is us. We're the people behind the company. So excited to see you."

Ryan Kramer: Face behind the brand. Yeah. Exactly.

Steven Black: "Yeah, come and talk to us. This is what we have coming next. Thank you so much for being part of the contest. Here's how you can get more points, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then 10% of that is your offer. So I usually make the offer on email two or three, right? And I will drive people to the Amazon listing. I've done this plenty of times where over the course of eight weeks, you spend a little money and on email two or three, you're giving people say 20% off of your art set if they pre- order, or it's just gone live," Hey, come and do this." Right. And okay, you're making money and you'll convert probably 20 to 25% of those people. And guess what? If you drive 5, 000 leads through, let's say 25 cents a lead. Okay. 25 cents a lead. I think you're at what?$1, 250 in spend, 5, 000 emails. And let's say, you're going to convert 20% of those. Even 10% of those, you're going to convert 500 people that you've got in for say 25 cents or 50 cents as a lead. And you're going to move 500 units that way out of the gate.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. Just launch it. Yeah, exactly.

Steven Black: Good luck competing with that. And then I have them to drive repeat business too. And I have all those people off of Amazon to follow up for reviews and bring them to a Facebook page and really go to town because if they bought all of a sudden, we're best friends, I'm going to talk to you all the time. And I'm going to do whatever I can to give you content to keep you moving. Because everybody that launches on Amazon, they're all concerned about getting people from zero purchases to that first purchase. I am concerned more about getting people from one to two to three to four to five.

Ryan Kramer: Right? I mean, that's where your cost significantly difficultly drop off too. Right? Because once you acquire them, it's almost like crosstalk. Yeah, go ahead.

Steven Black: That's step number one. Can you run a social contest, bring people in, genuinely find out what their problems are and curate content in a logical sequence to where your offer falls in there and you can convert people, even if it's 5%, if you spend 1500 bucks getting 5, 000 emails through for say Facebook Ads, but you convert 5% of 5, 000, it's 250 units moved out of the gate, ready to go. That will get you some version of rank because people that are going there actually have high intent. Your conversion rates are going to be great. You can run, search, find, buy that way, to where they use the terms that you really want to rank for. It's easy. And did I have to say, you make a ton of content and work it that way?

Ryan Kramer: No. So when you're directing people to your Amazon listing, what's the TOS that people have to worry about because it's almost like, hey, search for this product. And then this is where you find, you're not doing any of that in your email, or how does that work?

Steven Black: Oh, as far as getting people to actually, the-

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, convert on Amazon. Yeah, exactly.

Steven Black: I would either use a two- step URL, like a field plus Axon or a hidden keyword Axon like I get from the Helium 10 GEMs page, or I would run search, find, buy, and say," Here's the keyword you need to search. Here's the image that you're looking for, click on that. And off you go." And what you can do afterward is you can, on both of the platforms that I mentioned, you can set up a custom kind of points thing on the platform, say," Hey, if you send us your order number, we will give you three points per dollar spent toward the grand prize so you up your chances of winning."

Ryan Kramer: What does that mean? Yeah exactly.

Steven Black: Yeah. And well, that's the thing is that if they're really an art nerd and they're going to buy my art set as the example, but I have like four or$ 500 and other accessories that I'm putting with it and they really want to win that. Okay. Well, if you give us your email to enter, that's your first entry. If you go and you join our, or if you follow our Facebook page, we'll give you another five entries. If you go and join our Facebook group, we'll give you 20 entries. If you share the post from the Facebook page, we'll give you another 15 entries. We'll give you$ 2 or sorry, two entries per dollar spent if you take us up on our offer and here's the 20% discount, like there's all these things that they can do. And all of a sudden, you get people opting in. And if you have a running leaderboard on the landing page, let's say, and people see these thousands and thousands of entries racking up. They're like," Whoa, this must really be a big deal." How many times can you run that over and over and over and over-

Ryan Kramer: For every single product. Yeah. Exactly.

Steven Black: Yay. Winning. That's one way to drive external traffic to your Amazon listing without having to deal with some of the problems of running direct paid advertising to Amazon, because that's not a good idea. Now, if you're going to run that, let's say you're going to use Facebook Ads. I would set up the view content conversion event pixel on your Thank You page of your email or your Lander opt- in. That way you can use view content conversions as your campaign objective. And you're optimizing for people that actually submit their email and make it to that Thank You page.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. That's the high level customer that you're trying to attract and then re target.

Steven Black: Here's the thing. And we might as well talk about Facebook Ads because this is the thing people don't understand about Facebook Ads. Number one, if you try to drive Facebook Ads to your Amazon listing, there's no way of working around saying this, you're burning cash. You either hate money or you're a dummy. You just don't know any better.

Ryan Kramer: One or the other.

Steven Black: And a lot of people, it's not their fault because they don't know what they don't know. And what I'm getting at is the actual campaign objectives that you're using, there's a division line in the campaign objectives and how good the leads are and how likely they are to actually buy from you based on the objective of the Facebook campaign that you're using. So anything that doesn't actually reach a website, which is reach messenger bots, video views, and traffic, none of those have to actually deal with anything that gets to the website. They don't have to measure anything on the website. It's all on the Facebook platform. Those are not good leads. That's not optimizing. That's just giving Facebook money and saying," Hey..." Or engagement, let's say, if you run engagement ads, all you're doing is saying," Hey, Facebook, I would like to pay for people to talk to me about my advertisement." Like it, react to it-

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. That's an engagement. It's not purchasing.

Steven Black: But that's all you're asking for. You're not asking for purchasing.

Ryan Kramer: It's like being that annoying dad when your kid asks you," Dad pick a number between one and four." And you go," Okay, 2. 635." And they go," Duh. Why are you like this?" That's what Facebook is. That's the best example I can give you. Like, you know what I want, stop doing that. Well, no, no, no. You asked this way. So I'm going to-

Steven Black: We answered your question. Exactly.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: And that's what that is. So traffic is just, I'll pay you no matter who comes through. I want to get as many link clicks as possible. I don't care if it's garbage. I don't care if they spend 0. 5 seconds on my site and go away, don't care, click on it. That's traffic. Why are we using that? It has its place, but not initially. We'll talk about that later. Reach the same thing. I just want to get paid for the amount of impressions. Let's say it's video views. I just want people to watch the video as many times as you can get them to watch it. Now, the fun thing is we can't run conversions to the Amazon listings because we cannot put a pixel on the Amazon listings to register a conversion event. Now, when you go on Facebook and you set up a campaign, you will see conversions and you get to choose landing page views, view content, purchases, all of this kind of thing. Guys, if you want to use Facebook Ads, to make money with Facebook Ads, you need an external website with a cart to where you can optimize for purchasers. That there's no other way of putting it. If you want people to buy, you ask Facebook for the people that they know will buy. Done. And the reason you have to do that is because people that you find on Facebook, it's through interruptive marketing, you are speculating on interest and behavior, and you're just trying to stop them and say," Hey, I know you're busy today, but I need you to stop and buy this." Oh, okay. And you're only able to capitalize on the people that have come across that message at random on their phone and have the buying intent and product awareness to say," Oh yeah. I need that." Everybody else," Nope. Nope, nope, nope." So we have to use it differently. And this is what I was mentioning earlier that when I was using Shopify, I prefer Google Search Ads and Google Shopping Ads because you emulate Amazon as far as finding people as they have intent in the moment, that's way different than Facebook Ads. Okay. So if you're going to run Facebook Ads, set up a single page Lander or set up a Shopify store and then run that secondary Cartwheel, like I was talking about. If you're going to run a Shopify store in parallel, even if you don't have inventory anywhere, but the FBA warehouse, you can run multi- channel fulfillment with a single page or single product Shopify store, sell through Shopify, it will ship from Amazon. Everybody's happy. Easy stuff. And if you have those abandoned carts, like I was mentioning earlier, this is where I would use Facebook Ads. I can make a custom audience in Facebook audience ads manager, or Facebook Ads audience manager rather of anybody that has abandoned cart. And it's a dynamically updated thing. I say every seven days that I want to set it up, abandoned carts will last seven days, run them with this advertisement. And instead of trying to bring them back to my Shopify store and say," Hey, you left something in your cart, but we're going to do you one better. You can get this on Amazon right now by clicking the link below. We'll even give you an extra$ 2 off. And if you're a prime member, you get it in two days."

Ryan Kramer: How do you set up that discount though that's dynamic like that? You can set it up-

Steven Black: Who says it's dynamic? I try inaudible Shopify stores.

Ryan Kramer: Well, there you go. But I'm saying with the coupon or anything like that, there is something specific.

Steven Black: I don't. I always run higher pricing on my Shopify stores because if people search me on Amazon after coming to my Shopify store and it's slightly lower there-

Ryan Kramer: Right. Then that's where they... Yeah, exactly.

Steven Black: crosstalk, they go, " Oh, I'll just get it there, that's much easier." Of course, it is. Thank you for buying it full price.

Ryan Kramer: Or if they're, I say dumb enough or they're not smart enough to just purchase on Shopify, then you're just getting another$ 2 incremental lift.

Steven Black: Yep. Sure. Because you're going to pay a little more for multi- channel fulfillment anyway. So if they want it, they can pay for it.

Ryan Kramer: Sorry. I didn't know that was the one piece that I was like, is the price already dropped? Are you actually sending them a coupon? But it's already crosstalk. Well, that's smart because especially if that fulfills your Amazon best of a web. And then also that's how you re target, like, " Hey, by the way, you can get it cheaper here if you're already going to purchase it." That's smart. I love that.

Steven Black: Yeah. So here's the thing. And I'm going to make everybody do a little bit of math this morning. If my abandoned cart rate is 30% of everybody that comes to my store. And let's say my on- site rate of conversions, let's say it's really optimized. Let's call it 4%. Okay. All right. Now, what if I get say 20% of my abandoned cart people to actually buy? That's another 6%. What's six plus four?

Ryan Kramer: 10.

Steven Black: It is. There's my 10% conversion rate. Kind of like the beginnings of a lower Amazon listing. Oh. But I also own all the data. Funny how that works. That's why I say Shopify is my favorite tool for Amazon, right?

Ryan Kramer: crosstalk Yeah. That's why you saw that growth on Shopify too. You saw that in 2020 in general, like I think it was a marketplace. Well, as they came up, it was like, it jumped up to 40% of the value of what Amazon is doing. It's just like doubling year over year, Shopify is continuously building a brand. It was nuts. crosstalk

Steven Black: And what everybody is quickly realizing as people navigate over to Shopify from Amazon is that Amazon is unapologetically customer focused. On the end consumer, Shopify is seller focused and that's their consumer. So everybody complaining about Amazon saying," Man, I wish they would do-"

Steven Black: So, everybody complaining about Amazon saying," Man, I wish they would do more for sellers and be a little more lenient with us, and give us more tools." That's what Shopify is being built for. Now, here's a fun thing that a lot of people just missed. Probably most people just miss, but I'm going to go ahead and say it, because it's going to be really helpful. If you have an Amazon listing and you go over to Shopify and your prices are a little higher. Even if you're on Amazon, you should do this if you're on Amazon only. Raise your prices by 10%. If you're selling a$ 40 item, sell it at 44. Do you know why? Because if you raise your pricing, just 10% of your customers, aren't really going to drop off that much. And you just doubled or more your profits for the year.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. The math, yeah.

Steven Black: Whoa! Time out. You really think there's a huge difference at,$ 39. 99 versus$ 42. 97? Not really. Not a huge amount. Right? If it's still within the realm of normalcy and you can make it look a little more premium. I have been talking about this for two years and almost every single person that does it says I can't believe conversions actually went up and I'm making so much more money that I get to keep now. Yeah.

Ryan Kramer: So, is 10% that lift that you are seeing? Like, it's that sweet spot that it's not too much crosstalk

Steven Black: That's always where I start. When people say," Oh, well I'm having trouble and it's not profitable." Raise your prices. Always raise your prices. Don't don't ever go low price. No way. But if I'm on Shopify, usually 10- ish percent, 10 to 12%. Okay. So, if I'm selling, say a$ 50 item, it might be 50 on Amazon and 55 on Shopify is around numbers and people see that and they go," Oh, I can save$ 5, and I get free shipping because of Prime."

Ryan Kramer: 10%, yeah, exactly.

Steven Black: Of course. Off you go. Go buy it. Thank you for full price purchases. Have fun with that. And guess what? Even though they bought on Amazon, if I re- targeted them from my abandoned cart sequence on Shopify, I still have the data to make lookalike audiences from purchasers don't I? That's crosstalk.

Ryan Kramer: Exactly.

Steven Black: ...happens.

Ryan Kramer: I hate the retargeting capabilities that ads are now. Well, it's sad because of this reason, like everything now, because of when you put it in your profile or just, if you even have your... People can skim your like profile look like of," Hey, this is my customer I can skim, and I can re- target that way." Rob Stanley, and I have done that on the past. We've done other marketing things like all this information is public knowledge, but people are like," I don't know how they know it." Well, it's a pretty easy reason. You're telling it what to serve you. It's not science. Well, it is science.

Steven Black: Now, here's the fun part. If you set up these audiences and you set up these systems, here's my campaigns. Here's how many people I want to run in. Here's my remarketing campaigns, let's say, on the Facebook platform, if you set them within certain time windows, you can set them to where they dynamically update. All your job then is, is some days you're going to have going to have bad days where you got to shut the campaigns down and reset the next day, but just keep coming up with new creatives and new headlines and new angles. And you can just kind of run that dynamically. And it's not much maintenance. That's how I'm able to run so many things at once is it's not much maintenance, because I've already got the pieces in place, I just change the oil so to speak right.

Ryan Kramer: Right. crosstalk... play book is there you just crosstalk... along the way.

Steven Black: And so a lot of people are worried. A lot of people want to think," How can I make a million dollars a year?" Okay. You really want to make a million dollars in cash a year? Don't focus on a million dollars in cash. Can you have... Let's say I was running a store and my average profit per unit was 20 bucks. Okay. Can I move 15 units a day? If I have say 50 products on there, chances are five or 10 of them are going to be my hero products. Cool. Can I move three units of each of those five per day? Not that hard.

Ryan Kramer: No.

Steven Black: But guess what? That's 300 bucks a day. If I do that across 10 stores, there's not that much maintenance, is it? So, what if I do that across 10 stores every day, consistently? I make$ 1,095, 000 a year.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. You make the math crosstalk

Steven Black: ...completely different mindset on making a million dollars. You assemble it by setting up the systems to where it kind of moves itself along a little bit. And you just shut up and make sure that you keep things moving and change the oil. Once you set it up, you're good. Now, so we talked about social contests. We've talked about Shopify. We've talked about Facebook ads. My real favorite way, we'll talk about a couple other ways, but they kind of go together. One of my other favorite ways is everybody who says," I want to build an audience", because they know that's like the holy grail for businesses. And what that really means is having a captive portion and of the segment in your space, that loves to talk to you, that loves to have conversations, that loves to bring things up that loves to... That loves your brand, because of the customer service that you give and the products that you sell are quality. Well, okay. That's kind of the holy grail. What do I got to do with that? Well, you have to quit thinking like a marketer and think more like a publisher. So I always think about it like I'm a dinner host. If I'm throwing a big party and I have, say, 50 people over to my house, right. I could do business with all of them, but are they really there to talk about me and my hobbies and the things that I like to do? Nope. Nope. If I want to do business with them, what I really want to do is I want to know enough about them before they come over to my house before the dinner party, let's say I was selling, I don't know, hockey equipment for youth hockey players. Right? Sure. Okay. Well, if everybody that's coming into my house has kids that are youth hockey players. They don't give a crap that I play the guitar. crosstalk I don't want them to know anything about me other than that I understand what their children need for hockey. And so I'm not even going to try to sell them. They don't know me. They just know I'm the host. Welcome to my group, right? It says youth hockey dads, as example, social media. And all I'm going to do is I'm going to curate every single topic that I could possibly find that people are already commenting on elsewhere. And I'm going to make an editorial calendar and I'm going to post two or three or four or five times a week, sometimes even per day, if it's shorter stuff, on all these different subjects and insights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to help them go further into being hockey dads, as example. Now, if we go back to the dinner party analogy, all I'm really doing is I'm going around and I'm talking to them about their favorite subject. And I get them to talk about themselves. They get to be significant amongst their peers, too. That's very valuable to people, especially right now where everyone's isolated and guess what? The more they talk back to me and we have these lovely interactions, the more they trust me, the more they understand, I share their passion and their insight on things. I just genuinely want to be helpful. But the other thing that happens is, well, if I'm a continued source of information, and I can genuinely talk with them. What happens is I'm putting them in a situation of forced situational obligation. And that's a terrible phrase, right?

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: But basically it's saying," Hey, I'm going to do you a favor. Here you go." It's like having your brother call you and say," Hey, let me do you a favor", and you go," No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want any favors." Why? Because we feel like we're going to have to give reciprocity. And so if I have an audience that I genuinely give reason to continually come back and talk to me and I'm not asking them for anything that reciprocity builds. So when I make my offers and it's exclusive for the group, people are going to buy. Happens all the time. All the time. Now here's the other fun part. All of those conversations that they don't realize what I'm actually doing. By getting people to talk to you, they're revealing what they value. And when you find out what someone values, you find out what controls them. Show me where to put the shackles. Right? I'm serious. It's a terrible phrase, but it's crosstalk When you openly talk," Oh, I love this, and I love that. And I really stand with this." Keep talking crosstalk.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. You just built your customer crosstalk.

Steven Black: ...writing angles, here's my bullets, here's the emotion I'm going to attach to the features.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. Here's my problem. And this is how you solve it. Exactly. You crosstalk Exactly.

Steven Black: Facebook groups that you can just be a Phantom within. If they're within your space, let's say you're selling hockey equipment and you'd go to the hockey dads group, and it's not your group. You can lurk. And you can read all of those conversations because it's an online focus group of archived conversations that you can pick through for free to find out what everybody's problems are, the things they complained about their buying motivations blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Ryan Kramer: And they come back. And they come back. That's the other thing.

Steven Black: And so all of a sudden, if I host that group, they're all coming to me. I don't have to chase them. I give them a reason to come to me in a central point. And all I do is talk to them all day long. Like everybody sees my unstoppable group, and I have stuff like this for all of my brands. Just have open windows on it.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, secretly.

Steven Black: Yeah. It's a social inbox that I use for every single platform. It all comes to one place, and I just respond to comments and keep things moving. Sometimes it's me personally. Sometimes it's the brand page responding, but everybody knows my name. Everybody knows who Stephen is. Even if it's just my brand page, they know the first name behind it so they can ask because it makes it more personal. You can't say no to a person, but you can say no to a company. Most people are not disagreeable enough if you're being nice to them to say" No, go away." So I use that against them. Now, can I use conversions that way? Can I run the same...? Here's the engagement, here's the trust builder, here's the offers. 70, 20, 10 can sure do that. The other side of it is okay. Can I, then, if I have product ideas, involve them in the process and make it look like I'm making it just for my audience? Sure. Even if you only have a couple thousand people in there. Sure. You can say," Hey, guys, I see everybody talking about this. We're thinking about developing something like this over here, but have you guys ever seen this other feature?"" Oh, man, no. Haven't seen that before. If you guys do that, that would be awesome."" Cool. We'll get some samples. Maybe we'll get them in your hand. See what you guys think." You're building iPhone hype before you have to buy deep and spend your cash. The other side of it is now people can also say," Oh, yeah. Well, we saw that a couple of years ago. Here's this other company that did it. And it sounds like a good idea, but leave that dress on the mannequin. You don't want that one.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. crosstalk.

Steven Black: ...spend money and waste money and speculate and get stuck with all that garbage, especially with all the inventory restrictions and everything else. And having to have inventory in multiple places as a new listing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I can use social referrals in that way. I can run social contests within that and drive traffic to my Amazon listings for launch day. And that's that's me making content and engaging the audience. I already talked about how to do it without engaging the audience, and just curating stuff and running ads to it. I can use Shopify and retargeting. I can use...

Ryan Kramer: Well-

Steven Black: If I really wanted to go deep, I could have articles written on all of my basic keywords. Look up something on Google called SEO niche vocabulary. That'll be the phrase and what it will teach you to do, it's a thing you're going to have to learn is going to take some time. But it's how to find all of the phrases and words that people use as a cluster around a topic. And people will write articles, and multiple articles around these clustered ideas and they get ranked on Google, and guess what? If you have a product on Amazon that deals with some of those questions, now you're catching people upstream from being product aware. They're stilL sorting out what problems they have and how different solutions are going to affect them. Why can't you write articles like that and lean them toward your solution? Click to Amazon. Okay, fine. And guess what? Once you make that it's there. You have all these assets floating around in space versus just paid ads.

Ryan Kramer: Right.

Steven Black: So there you go.

Ryan Kramer: What are your thoughts on the Amazon editorial content that they're like," Hey, this is like the number one", or like, if you're looking for top. This search phrase is top, hockey equipment that we're going over or based on our example. And then there's those articles that these like top tier publication companies are putting out. Do worry about that? Or is that conversion rate or lift worrisome to you or?

Steven Black: Nope, it doesn't bother me.

Ryan Kramer: Okay.

Steven Black: It doesn't bother me. And here's the thing. A lot of people are worried about what their competitors are doing and all of this kind of thing, but you know where your competitors are never going to be able to beat you, no matter how much money they have? User crosstalk.

Ryan Kramer: ...or user experience, yes.

Steven Black: User experience. If you can create a genuinely better user experience, you're going to win. And that's the long- term too. You're going to make more short term and you're going to make better long- term. As an example, something very, very simple. Your bullets on your Amazon listing. If they're a wall of text, no matter how good they are, I'm not going to read them. If you make them scannable, now I can come to your listing, I can understand, should I read deeper here? Is this really something at first glance? Or do you really what everybody else is doing? So, let's say this is something I'm getting ready to name actually, because we can't actually measure this metric. I wish people would, but it's an invisible metric in plain sight people don't realize. If your listing is converting at 20%, one in five. Congratulations. But here's where we're going to bite you one in five, that's great. But that means four out of five people are going click, scan, back. Might be because they can't scan it at first glance, and see if it's something they need to spend more time reading.

Ryan Kramer: Right.

Steven Black: Ouch.

Ryan Kramer: Almost like almost like a, this isn't what I thought it was, correct? Yeah. Okay.

Steven Black: Yeah. Or you go in the initial listing, even on like, your phone is just this wall of text. You go," Ah, Nope."

Ryan Kramer: Garbage. Get out of here.

Steven Black: Before, or you look in the title that's completely keyword stuffed, and you go," I have no idea what I'm looking at. I'm not even going to... Like, what is that? Oh, I can't even read it. It's not normal." But let's say you're going to write your bullets, right? Let's say, you're going to write your bullets. Hockey equipment, we'll use that as an example. If you say, padding has a breathable lining, what's a feature you might see on a listing? Padding is made of X, Y, Z, breathable lining, X amount thickness blah- blah- blah, and that's the bullet. You go," Oh, terrible." Instead, it could be, what if I went to the hockey dads, Facebook group, and I was just going in as a seller and being invisible. And I read," Hey, does anybody know of any hockey pads with a breathable liner? Because, number one, my kid's getting a little dehydrated out there on the ice. And number two, that stuff stinks, and I can't wash it if it's not breathable." Oh, can I use that? I go back to my Amazon listing instead of this garbage crosstalk... relevant to the user. It's a feature, but it's not, I say, breathable lining so that when your kids come off the ice, your house doesn't stink afterward. People go," Oh, man. Yeah, I need that." Because anybody that's ever read anything about, about hockey or American football or something where you have these compression pants on or something like that. And that's like real close to your body and you're sweating, that stuff's hard to wash and it gets funky. So, crosstalk...so, if I say my product addresses that, aren't you more likely to buy it versus all the other stuff? It's just changing wording a little bit, super simple.

Ryan Kramer: Fixing the problem and not selling the product.

Steven Black: Yeah. But now if you go to my listing and you scan, you said three seconds." I don't know. Oh, it doesn't stink up my, yeah, okay. Wait a minute. I'm going to read a little deeper here. What else does this product have?" Is it missing anything else? And what most people do, we don't realize their shopping behavior, and this is one of those buyer psychology things that we talked about. Most people don't realize the way that everyone you and I included, even people that know this, shop on Amazon, very rarely do we look for something that is the absolute perfect ideal product all the way through. It's too time consuming to really pick through and find that. Instead, what we do is we have an idea of what we want when we go, and we type our intent in the search bar. And the products come up and we peel through and all that kind of thing. And we pick the first product, and buy it that we think is going to meet our needs and has the least possibility of being disappointing, and being a hassle to try to return it. And I can prove it to anyone that will ever listen to this podcast from live here or ongoing. And here's how I prove it. How many products have you bought on Amazon, and you do not know the name of the seller?

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. That's crosstalk a good point. That's a good point.

Steven Black: Unless it's Nike or Sony or something like that crosstalk

Ryan Kramer: I mean, unless you're looking for it or you live in the space like you and I do like," Oh, it's the third party seller, not a big deal, or sold by Amazon." crosstalk.

Steven Black: ...party sellers being sellers, ourselves, everybody listening to this, we do not remember the name of the third- party seller, unless it's a monster household name, like-

Ryan Kramer: Anchor.

Steven Black: ...Sony or Samsung or Apple, we don't remember. We have no idea. I have this amazing hydroflask I love it's my favorite purchases I have made on Amazon. I have no idea. I left a good review. I have no idea the name of the company that makes this. It's amazing. I love it. I use it all day long every day. Couldn't tell you who I bought it from. Why? Because I had an idea of what I wanted. I went in, I found it and I said," Okay, this one looks really, really well made. It's a half gallon like I want it to be. Pretty sturdy looking. Doesn't look like it's going to be a problem. Off I go." And guys, when people peel through your views, they're not actually looking at people reviewing your product, the reviews really speak to if there's a problem with the product, how dire is it, and how big of a pain in the butt is the company to deal with if I have a problem? People do not mind losing money nearly as much as they don't want to be hassled with a company that has garbage customer service. And that's what reviews are really for.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. I go to the storefront. I look at how often, negative reviews and things like that. I look at that personally. That's what I look crosstalk at.

Steven Black: Oh, a lot of people do. That's what they have that feature as far as feedback versus just a on- page product reviews.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. I was going to say like product views at some point, like, there's a threshold that's like a magical, like, if you hit a certain number, then they're like," All right, maybe I'll look into this."

Steven Black: Yeah. Most people, even if they're really discerning, there was a big study. I have a link to it, but I don't have it right in front of me, but most people only read about 10 deep if they're really, really going to read them. And they want to see five stars and the two or three stars, because sometimes if it's a negative review, people are," Okay, well, they just had a really bad day, and it has nothing to do with the product." inaudible... left a garbage review. Because people want to see that there's humans involved and it's not just, everything is stellar because if it's too good to be true, it is. And so having only five stars on your listing can also be detrimental.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: So, there you go.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, exactly. It's hidden psychology or it's that psychology matter? I know I've already took up 13, almost 14 more minutes than what we initially said, but what's kind of like the thing that's getting you excited about 2021. Is it like driving traffic in different ways? Like we didn't even touch like TikTok or something crazy like Clubhouse, like just audio forums crosstalk different...

Steven Black: ...in two minutes.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah, go ahead. Go.

Steven Black: Here's what I want you to think about your operations of attraction do not have to be complex just because I talk about all these things that I've run. You have to keep in mind, I've been doing this for 15 years. Like it's just a thing. And I've had multiple businesses. I have multiple businesses now. I have helped companies from startup all the way to a few companies doing over a hundred million dollars a year with their content and strategizing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, you do not have to do it like me to win. Please don't. You have to be kind of a lunatic. And this is one of those things that I would wake up and do, because I just love to do it. And it's like a fish being in water. It's just what it is, as opposed to just one of the things I do. I just love it. So, yeah, don't be a weirdo like me, unless you're inaudible But when you're setting up your systems of attraction, whether it's Amazon PPC or it's Google Search, or it's TikTok, or Snapchat, or Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook, or SEO, or a combination, here's your real goal. Your goal is not to have so many arms on the octopus that you can't keep track of what's going where. That's not going to impress anybody. It's not going to change your life, except for the worst. Most people. What you want to do is you want to set up something that you can reasonably manage. That is going to give you more business experience without added extra expense in a gigantic way. And without making you time poor to where you hate your life. And when you manage that channel, then you can say," Okay, I've kind of got this beast wrangled in. I can manage more problems here. I've got my operation figured back out. I got a little more order to my life." Now, maybe I can add another channel, as example, if you wanted to do SEO work and blogging and writing articles as your main source of attraction, it's longer term, it's going to take a little longer, but okay, cool. Once you have that as a workflow, maybe you can get some writers on board, blah, blah, blah. You get it moving, cool. If I said," Okay, now I'm ready to tackle Instagram." Maybe a year later, who cares? It's fine. Can you take all of the articles that you have and chop them up into five or 10 bits each, get some graphics made for them and make each of those individual Instagram posts to start cultivating that audience out of assets that you already have.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah.

Steven Black: You do not... And then, okay, cool. Maybe I can run a few Facebook ads to those Instagram posts. Ooh. Here's level three. But do you have to do all of that at once? Please don't do that. It's way too much to deal with, out of the gate, right? So you're just trying to set up your next system of attraction. If you don't understand, Amazon PPC, that's the place to start. Get more people to your listing and then dig a little bit into some Facebook groups, do something called social listening, right? Figure out what phrases people are using and what problems they have in your space and add a why, the reason why, that it relates to the buyer onto the bullets of all your listings, and you'll convert even more, even if you're already converting great. So you're converting 25%, but you could squeeze another three or four or 5%? Money just waiting. Right? But that's where you start, and you say," Okay, cool. I've plugged the holes in my bucket." Now maybe, if I have something moving, maybe I'll set up a single page, Shopify store that's tied into FBA through multi- channel fulfillment, and I can use the keywords I already have...

Steven Black: inaudible through multi- channel fulfillment and I can use the keywords. I already have set up some Google shopping campaigns with the images that I already have from Amazon. Just a couple bucks higher. Okay. Easy and start learning to manage that. And that's how you grow incrementally while still having sustained profitability. The other cool thing that you're doing now with all of that is you're not overwhelming yourself to where you have to learn all these skills at once. And, whole lost my train of thought there for a second. You're not only gaining all that experience, but you're also, what's the best way to put this? You're not wasting money unnecessarily, I guess, is what I want to say.

Ryan Kramer: Right.

Steven Black: How many people get excited about an idea and they want to just throw stuff at the wall. Nope. One more thing.

Ryan Kramer: You're smart about it.

Steven Black: Uh. Systems. That's what I was going to mention, thank you.

Ryan Kramer: You're welcome.

Steven Black: When you set up your first business and you start expanding onto another channel, and then maybe another channel after that, maybe it's a two year process, but who cares? Because guess what you just did. You spent two years figuring out the workflows that work for you. You put yourself in positions to where you could fail incrementally without putting the entire operation in jeopardy. And that's where you're going to learn what really works for you. Like me and TikTok and Snapchat, nope.

Ryan Kramer: Don't work for you?

Steven Black: I'm not fricking near it. Not even close. Steven and making graphics. Hell no. If anybody that's followed me for a minute knows I will write my face off. I can crank out 2000, 2,500 words, like I'm not even going to get out of bed for that. That's easy. I can do that. Making graphics, oh my gosh. It takes me for ever to get it proper. The way I want.

Ryan Kramer: And then he presented somebody and then it comes across completely.

Steven Black: I gave Jeff a really hashed out idea, it would probably take him an hour. It's Facebook Messenger where it would take me all day. Like yeah, you want this? Okay. This that them done get out my face. It wouldn't even take anything. So when you hire out for those roles, when it's time to start that part of the process, setting up those systems, figure out what you're really amazing at. And that's your part of the beehive, protect that role, set up the other roles of your team around you. Even if it's outsourcing to other professionals and say, okay, I need you to do this. So I'm not distracted on this part. That's what you get.

Ryan Kramer: That's what business in general.

Steven Black: Yeah. But a lot of people miss that, they think, oh, well I have to do it all myself first. You have to have ideas. And then don't go cheap, hire people that are smarter than you. Pay them for the years and the experience and everything else. Pay them. Because you're going to pay three times as much fixing it. If you try to go cheap.

Ryan Kramer: I've seen that in businesses. I've seen it in e- commerce I've seen it outside business in general.

Steven Black: It doesn't mean you always have to go out trying to buy Rolls Royces of people. You don't need all that. But you do want someone that you communicate well with that can do a reputable job to where you can say, okay, my brain is free. I don't have to micromanage. And there are some times, well, I'll have graphics made and it'll come back as example. And I just go, that's not going to work. Is that what I asked for? Yeah. This is what you asked crosstalk. Here's what we got out of your description. I'll say, okay, all right. I will change how I communicate here because that's not at all what I was looking for. And all you can do with somebody that you're hiring to do any version of work for is have them fulfill what you requested. So you got to get better at requesting stuff, if it's an assistant, if it's a graphic designer, if it's a writer, if it's someone who's managing your social media profiles for you, if it's optimizing an Amazon listing or if it's product photography or whatever, you have to be better at requesting what you want. Now, how do you shape what your requests are by going onto social media and reading the conversations of everybody in the space. This is what we look, these are the images that were most responsive to. Ooh, I like that. I like that. Oh man, I wish I could take that kind of picture. Oh shit, I'm going to use that in my listing. Have fun with that.

Ryan Kramer: There you go. Make your content work for you. Make your audiences work for you.

Steven Black: And that's where most people miss, how to do all that. And if you're going to run external traffic, that's where you start. Is learning as much as you can about your customer. Can you speak to them at a hobbyist level? If I were selling, what's an example I could use? I'm a computer nerd, if I were selling a computer parts accessory, I could absolutely go all day talking about building computers and specking out systems and all kinds of equipment and are they going to game, are they going to do video design? What are they really using it for? You know, blah blah blah. I could do it because I've just casually read those conversations for so long now, that if wanted to make something, I have like 10 different ideas of things I could move on. Just haven't yet. But it's one of those things. If I wanted to say, Hmm, I'm interested in a beauty line. That seems like a fun space. I don't know anything about it. You're going to be invisible, but read a whole lot of conversations about female beauty routines or male beauty routines. Some of us have majestic facial hair, like Ryan and I do.

Ryan Kramer: I probably actually have hair up top.

Steven Black: Oh no. It's all gone up there.

Ryan Kramer: Exactly. Some people are lucky in life.

Steven Black: Yeah. I know. So you're going to read about all this. Oh, well, you know, I have this problem. I have that from say, oh, and this is how you're addressing it. Where's the gap. What, can I know? Hm. Oh, well you need to know this. Well, go check out this other article that was in the group. This other guy posted this. That might be helpful for you.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. Follow the rabbit hole.

Steven Black: But all you're really doing is driving the conversation forward because the more you drive the conversation forward, they're associating your name with someone that's helpful and they're confessing what they really value. So as you develop your products and as you develop your listing and everything else, as far as angles and everything you could ever use for external traffic, if you're using the customer's language and their intentions motivations back against themselves, so you can convert higher and that makes it a win- win.

Ryan Kramer: And just put this on a product, but where do something like this. Like," Hey, this is my idea. Everything listed out." So you can just obviously go back to that every single time.

Steven Black: Well, I have a running list. And when it's time to open up a new product line, let's say I'm not scaling horizontally within an existing brand. If it's time for a new brand, I have SLPs for that. I call the accountant. I call my banker. I call my attorney if I need to incorporate another LLC under the umbrella company. And I say, okay, cool. Here's the assets we're going to need for the beginnings. Here's how I want. Here's the two or three channels we're going to use to attract people in. Here's how we're going to do conversion optimization. Here's what our deliverable experience is going to be. Here's what we're going to pool people for customer retention and repeat business. And that's the system. And everybody on board knows. And that way, when I get to capacity for everybody's workflow and some people are stressed out and I start seeing the cracks come through, like we can't handle this amount of work. Cool. We already know what your role is. I'll let you guys help me pick someone else that you have to work with to hire, and you can use everything you're already doing and what else? Screen recordings and train them. I don't have to do it. And there's somebody you'd like to work with to help handle some of the increased capacity for the next thing we're going to do. So when you're scaling, let's say you want to open up external traffic to your listing. Just like you mentioned earlier, that at the top of the podcast here, Ryan, you were selling an item and the logistics under the warehouse was not ready. What do we do? So when you're scaling, make sure the entire part of the operations is ready to go. If you're going to start selling external, and you're really going to run that real heavy, and you've got it going on your production company better be ready. Your payment authorizers better know what's coming. Your banking people better know that this is going to hit the account. You're going to see this many more payments come through. The logistics company has to know about deliveries, your packaging people better be ready because it's coming. You have to make sure all the hands are deck. Absolutely. If we're going to increase workflow, a certain percentage, everybody needs to be able to deal with that because it will be terrible to spend money and say," Yeah, I got all these extra things coming in. Everybody's buying that's great." And your production company says," Hey, we're smoked. We can't produce all that. We're four months out now. That's way too much for us." You go, oh oh. Timeout. Now I have to worry about refunds, or I have to worry about bad customer service or delay. Oh my God, what just happened? Especially with the COVID thing. And most people don't realize a lot of the backup that we had in Q4 is it's still going on here and there. But that is because the U. S. Post Office is smoke, backed up. There's articles from commercial delivery drivers, truckers that are saying we're having to wait sometimes up to a week to get offloaded, because there's just nowhere to put everything. That people can't go to stores. So everything went to online. And so everybody's having to use logistics company to move it all around and everyone is delayed. And so you need to be able to communicate that to the entire supply chain and to your customers. So I run a few print on demand, kind of things. And people ask me, they're working on print on demand. Are you worried about COVID and delays in shipping? Said, No. I make it clear on the product pages. This is what's up. Here's a few links. We're doing the best we can. Feel free to buy later or send us an email if you have questions. But the fact that we're open on it, I never get any complaints about it.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. I mean, that's the best form to defense is a good offense.

Steven Black: I was like," Hey, this is what's up. It was there when you click buy, we're happy to work with you." That's it. And it just makes life real easy. So you set that up so where you're not stressed out, but there you go.

Ryan Kramer: I'm just sitting here listening man. I know we've run probably the longest podcast I've run, but this is on purpose because just the amount of content like this is how deep you can go, and this is just scratching the surface is, this is something that's super important because as you build a brand, this is why I'm advocating most of, won't be more than just somebody who's doing this on the side and you want to build a brand and you want to scale it to either exit or build your own behemoth like you are. This is where you got to start. You got to start thinking about these logistics. You got to start thinking about traffic, what make these things work for you. Instead of like, Hey, I'm just going to pay ads on Amazon. But like, how does that work for you long- term repeat customers so on and so forth, make it really scalable. So that's why I was like, I'm going to make this really broad and we're just going to go with it.

Steven Black: I had a ton of fun.

Ryan Kramer: I appreciate.

Steven Black: Everybody that would join us live here. That was really great.

Ryan Kramer: I've had a consistent audience. That's been sitting here not moving, but commenting. And this is all I imagine. They're just taking notes, you're like, all right. They don't have time to call in or ask questions that first they did. But once we get into nitty gritty, this is something that's going to be useful for everyone. Long- term but hey, thanks so much. I know you're pumping out 200 hours of content that you're eventually going to have in your course like inaudible.

Steven Black: It's going to be finished very quickly. I just had to move my offices. And the environment that I moved to is much more conducive to cranking everything out and getting it all done. Most of it has already been filmed. I'm just finishing edits and adding little pieces. But yeah, if you want to go much deeper into my brain and go step by step and all of that fun stuff on all manner of subjects as far as, got everything. Actually-

Ryan Kramer: I'm going to block out three hours of time. Next time we talk.

Steven Black: Yeah. Well, I mean, for anybody that really wants, there's two ways to do this. Number one, you can go to my free group that Ryan has linked. It's The Unstoppable FBA Group. And you can ask all manner of questions and there's a pinned post there in the announcement section of knowledge bumps. Over a hundred articles that I've written and posted on various subjects. It's all indexed and organized for everybody. If you want to go deeper and you want to crawl around in here and have me more one- on- one with anything you have going on, go to your search bar and type in seller. school. And that is the link to my Unstoppable Marketing Masterclass.

Ryan Kramer: Seller dot?

Steven Black: Yeah, seller. school. It's a short link. And when you click through on the second page, if you scroll down, you will see all of the subjects sorted out by levels that I go into. It's lots of fun.

Ryan Kramer: Well, I appreciate your time here today. I'll make sure I'll link that out real quick. I spell school correctly though, but yeah, make sure that you guys, yeah, Unsolvable Marketing Masterclass. Got you. Go check out Unstoppable Marketing Masterclass. I'll actually link that out. So it's easier for people to find. And then Steven, obviously that this is just a short amount of time. We got to spend with you today. I say short an hour and a half is a lot of time, but you have been awesome just to talk with us and walk through just all the information that you have, like you said, rattling around in your brain. It's a lot when you go through everything, how you can make that work for you. But once you build up that ecosystem, it's a little bit easier to scale your businesses up.

Steven Black: The way that I tell everybody to get to where I am and the people that are my mentors that are well beyond where I am. The easiest thing is use your first business, nice and easy and slow and sort out your systems. And then you only take on opportunities that fit those systems ongoing. So all of my function, the same way, it's opportunities that I have seen and taken advantage of because they fit my systems and workflows. I don't want to change my systems and how the team operates for a new opportunity. I want the opportunity to match. Can I work this with how I like to work? What lifestyle do I want to live? How much time do I really want to put in here? What can I build? What do I already know exists? And can I just clone it over to this new system? So the new businesses get up much faster because we cut our teeth on the initial ones that we got moving. 15 years in and counting, trying to get to get to a hundred sources.

Ryan Kramer: That's way longer than what a lot of people say. Like, oh yeah, I started back in 2018 or something like, yeah, we've been around a long time, 15 years in the industry going on, that's amazing. Congratulations for that. I'm excited to see where that continues to go. You said I'm not selling them. This thing's humming.

Steven Black: No.

Ryan Kramer: My multiples are going to go up.

Steven Black: Yeah. And that's the thing though. Is I don't want a big exit. I'm not looking for that. I've had people talk to me about it for a couple of the things I have moving. And I'm like, no, I just like that it's coming in because I'm the type. If you haven't figured that out already that I don't like to sit still. I like to be able to pivot. And I like to be able to keep things moving. And if I feel like I'm just going to burn the whole thing down and move somewhere else and figure out a new life whenever I want, or I'm going to travel somewhere and deal with all of that for a month. As long as I can have my computer with me and I can communicate with everybody, I can keep the whole thing moving. And when you want something else or another opportunity comes up, you say, okay, cool. Do we need to open a new brand or take advantage of a new opportunity because we already know what it takes. I call the people and say, Hey, it's time for it. We're going to take one off a list here. We're going to open a new one. Team meeting. This is what's going to go on. Graphics guys know what's up. I know what emails to set up. The flows are already pre- made I know the amount of articles I'm going to have to write. I know where to find the subject material. I know what the Facebook campaigns look like. I know the phases that we're going to go through to deploy all of that as a new member of the family, so to speak.

Ryan Kramer: That's awesome. What's that, is there something that you're kind of on the edge of, like, this is the next thing?

Steven Black: I can't say that. I know-

Ryan Kramer: I almost had you.

Steven Black: No. There are a few people that I'm rather close to that know what's going on. When I told my CPA what my overall idea was, I shot him an email. It was over the holidays. I shot him an email said," Hey, I've been working on this, what I call a math problem for three years." And I was taking a walk one day and I finally hit me and figured it out. And I emailed him, I said," This is what we're going to do with all this." And he just shot me an email back. He said," Are you out of your effing mind? You're going to give me a coronary." Okay, fine. I love the way your brain works, but good Lord. That's ambitious. And that's what I wanted. And it's not that I want to make a bunch of money. Once you have money coming in to cover your liabilities, you go, okay, cool. That's great. But what else is there? What else is there? And that's why I try to do things like this and I post in the group and I try to just help people as much as I can because a life well lived is based on the impact that you have and how much you can lessen the struggle of those around you. And if I really have been fortunate enough to do the things that I've done and that I'm doing, I couldn't imagine a way of being more selfish than to not use that to help everybody else. And I'm just not that kind of person. I would rather do what I can to help other people get over their roadblocks because maybe they have a color in them that when they get through that roadblock, it can be added to my world. It's going to come right back out of them. And that might be my new favorite thing. I don't know until I crack their head open and help them. And that's all I want to do. That's why I've been doing it for 15 years. I just want to help other people solve their problems. That's what I like to do every single day.

Ryan Kramer: That's awesome man. Well, I'll be picking your brain as much as I can. I'll try to stand out from those 200 messages. You're getting on Messenger every single day. It's like, Hey, tell me what's up.

Steven Black: And if people are sending me stuff through direct message and I don't get right back to you, it's probably because it got buried, but-

Ryan Kramer: It's all good.

Steven Black: The good news is if you go to the Facebook group, you can tag me there. You can post up there. I'm always in there. People think I'm online all day long on Facebook. That's because I keep the window open.

Ryan Kramer: You're chatting in other different capacities too. I know you're in all the different, I just blinked on what the Audible app, there's so much content that's being thrown around out there, but you're at the forefront of a lot of that, I think. But Hey Steven, thank you so much man for hopping on today. I loved our conversation. I would talk to you all day. There's few people that would just like, say," Hey, just keep it coming." But I know my boss would be like," What'd you do all day?" And I'll say," Oh, I talked to Steven Black for eight hours today. No problem. I missed five meetings, but that's good."

Steven Black: Yeah. You will be in trouble for that one.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. I know. I won't do that right now. So Steven, thanks so much man. Go ahead and join the Unstoppable FBA Facebook group, check out Steven. He's had hosted talks across YouTube, just search Stephen Black as well, or Unstoppable FBA. You'll make sure to find it. Your YouTube channel up- to- date or will that be where content gets kind of really smart.

Steven Black: I don't pay as much attention to the YouTube channel. I do have quite a few videos on there. I have a whole list of content that I'm going to start making for YouTube, but I have a few other things on my plate that have priority as far as videos that I am producing. And I can only produce so many per day.

Ryan Kramer: You're only one person man.

Steven Black: Well, I'm me. And if the videos require me to be in them, I can only do so much on top of all the other things that I have to manage. You'll see more out of the YouTube in the springtime.

Ryan Kramer: Cool. Okay.

Steven Black: Over the next couple of months where that'll be more-

Ryan Kramer: I'm subscribed and I have the bell already checked. I'm waiting for more content already coming.

Steven Black: It's one of those things that, and this I guess I should talk about, if people are going to use YouTube to drive external traffic to their stuff, the goal is to get people to a place where you can have conversations. YouTube should be, here's something you can learn, but then here's where you can go to talk to us for more or talk to me for more if it's that particular channel, the Unstoppable Channel, but yeah, happy to share wherever I can and help whatever, anybody that comments on any of those videos. I always respond to all of them.

Ryan Kramer: That's awesome man. You're a giver, that's what I take. You're a giver, you're trying to get back and help other people be successful. So thanks so much for your time. Just such a master class in just a little less than two hours now. I feel like, no this is not your fault. I feel like I've almost tried wrap it like three times, but then wrap it up and then we go on another topic or ask a question.

Steven Black: We're wrapping now.

Ryan Kramer: It's my fault. We're wrapping now. Well, I appreciate your time today and thanks so much for all the content. Again, go ahead and join his content. I'm going to stamp all inaudible Facebook and then for future episodes again, thank you Stephen, friend of the show now, we'll touch you later and get you back on either a round table or another timeframe where we just block it off and you just say like-

Steven Black: Good job. And I'm happy to do it. Just reach out.

Ryan Kramer: Awesome man. I appreciate. The Bruce Wayne of Amazon, always doing something secretive and just dominating the Amazon world. So thank you so much.

Steven Black: Thank you. Talk to you later.

Ryan Kramer: Yeah. Talk to you later. Again, this is Crossover Commerce. Thank you so much for joining our almost two hour episode. I love it. That was just such an amazing content. Hopefully you guys stick around to either ask Steven individually and message him directly or just join the Facebook group. But again, this is what the point of this show is for at Crossover Commerce. We go live four to five times a week with guests like this who are going to just drive information and awareness to a specific topic or point. Again tomorrow, I actually have a former colleague of mine joining me with Viral Launch. I have a Cameron Yoder, scary. I had to look at my list and make sure that was who's hopping on Cameron Yoder, he's going to talk about we're what data is telling us about Amazon 2021. I'm a big data guy. I love learning about what insights they're doing over there. He's going to hop on and share his insights there. And then of course the rest of the week, I actually have a husband and wife team, which is really cool. They're traveling in the world. They're making how to set up an e- commerce business that funds your life. It's a summer and Allie Hobart. Last I looked on their YouTube page or Instagram page, they're in Turkey. So they're hopping around the world, making Amazon work for them so that they can have the life they want to live. It's going to be really cool and exciting. I'm going to do it dual interview with them at the same time, just to pick their brain and what it's like as a husband and wife selling team. And then on Friday taking off Thursday to do just catch up on everything. But on Friday I have Michael Mayer of Cardology. We're going to talk about how, he sail fits in the e- commerce world in 2021, how things are shifting and how the retail world is going to respond to e- commerce and the waves that are going there. So again, lots of topic and more guests that I have coming up. I'm really excited to share this with you guys. So make sure you tune in and subscribe to Ping Pong Payments, Facebook, YouTube, and our social channels so you get notified every single day. I'm Ryan Kramer. The host of this show. Go ahead and tune us. Join us again next time with all of our different guests we have this week again, 11: 00 AM, cross the board this week. So check us out live. Or if you're on team replay, go ahead and download these episodes again, wherever you might consume podcasts. I'm Ryan Kramer. Thanks for joining us again on Crossover Commerce.