#446 – Danny McMillan’s Insights on Adapting to Industry Shifts
Join us as we engage in a fascinating discussion with e-commerce thought leader, Danny McMillan. Danny shares his extensive knowledge on Amazon patents, AI developments, and the art of hosting successful e-commerce events. Let’s explore the unique challenges of organizing such events across different regions, particularly the logistical hurdles of drawing attendees from various countries. Danny also provides an insightful look into how the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped event planning, highlighting the need for flexibility and adaptability in the face of ever-changing safety regulations.
Their conversation also explores the dynamic landscape of industry conferences and how they are being revolutionized by thought leaders like Kevin King. They discuss innovative event formats, such as the Market Masters event, which focuses on personalized, expert-driven sessions rather than traditional presentations. The transformation of Seller Sessions into a more interactive learning experience is highlighted, emphasizing the importance of adapting event formats to meet evolving participant expectations. By sharing our experiences, we uncover the power of creating engaging, impactful environments that foster meaningful learning and networking opportunities.
Lastly, we touch on the evolving trends within the agency business, the impact of AI and automation on e-commerce, and the critical role of understanding customer objections for conversion optimization. As agencies navigate the challenges of a competitive landscape, differentiation and genuine value become key to success. Meanwhile, the rapid advancements in AI technologies are reshaping industries, underscoring the necessity for sellers and companies to stay informed and adaptable. This episode offers a comprehensive overview of the e-commerce landscape, event management strategies, and future trends, making it a must-listen for anyone keen on staying ahead in the industry.
In episode 446 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Danny discuss:
- 00:00 – E-Commerce Events and Challenges
- 04:02 – Europe vs US Amazon Seller Events
- 12:36 – Transition to Workshop-Style Seller Sessions
- 17:30 – Teaching With Lesson Plans and Goals
- 20:11 – Event Management Strategies and Security
- 24:31 – Agency Business Trends and Evolution
- 28:22 – Growth of Competition in Marketing Agencies
- 31:37 – Importance of Differentiating in E-commerce Sales
- 37:54 – Customer Objections and Conversion Optimization
- 45:17 – Discovering Consumer Preferences Through Testing
- 50:10 – Future Trends in AI and E-Commerce
- 50:38 – Challenging the Concept of Honeymoon Period
- 57:54 – The Power of Prompting and AI
- 58:05 – Enhancing Design Output With ChatGPT
- 1:01:09 – The Role of the Engineer
- 1:08:42 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 446 of the AM/PM podcast. My guest this week is none other than Dream 100 member, Danny McMillan. Danny’s been around this game for quite some time. He’s a thought leader. He’s leading the way when it comes to research on Amazon’s patents and scientific papers, when it comes to Cosmo and Rufus and all the AI changes. He also hosts an event Seller Sessions one of the most popular events in the European market, and he’s got an agency and some thoughts on what’s happening in the agency world right now. This is going to be an interesting discussion. I hope you enjoy this talk with Danny McMillan. Mr. Danny McMillan. How are you doing man? Good to have you here on the AM/PM podcast. I think it’s been a day or two.
Danny:
Yes, it has. You gracefully took care of me over in Iceland, so thank you for that. It was lovely to come over.
Kevin King:
It’s good to have you, you over, I mean, uh, it was just a short little hop. You know what’s it like to go to a conference where you don’t have to have jet lag.
Danny:
Yes, it’s refreshing, really, wasn’t it? You know, I mean, Prague isn’t going to give you jet lag, but we, we’d already just done Prosper, didn’t we like? I mean, you came straight in and put on the event, and it takes a lot out of you.
Kevin King:
Two events, two events.
Danny:
Two events. Yeah, yeah so-
Kevin King:
You’ve already Prosper three at MDS, Prosper and then a podcast show with the Norm.
Danny:
Yes, indeed, I don’t know where you get the energy. So, uh-
Kevin King:
And a few weeks before that, we did a Market Masters in Austin. It’s a lot, that’s that’s for sure. I mean, you know you produce events. You have a one uh coming up, uh, Seller Sessions, uh, probably it’s one of the top events in the European market. You’ve been doing that how many years now? About seven, eight, something like that?
Danny:
2019. So, yeah, we’ve been going six years.
Kevin King:
Oh, same as me on BDSS. I thought you started it before that.
Danny:
No, the podcast started at the beginning of 2017, and then it was 2019 that we did the first one in terms of the conference.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you’re doing they always been one day. No, you did a two day of it once you did a woman one right?
Danny:
Yeah, yeah, so what happened was we did. June 1st 2019 was the first Seller Sessions, and then, we had COVID and I moved the date six times. It cost me about 40 grand because you had to keep letting out money and obviously COVID changed. Then we did that uh, 21 in the October, and that was the one that, yeah, no. Then we did that one, just it was, it was the first event out COVID, because it’s like that little week or so gap. So yeah, we were. You know they they allow open um and it was safe to for the distancing stuff and we fell into that and I think we was the first out the traps in terms of confidence. But I did move it six times because I was over what’s the word for it, you know, not overconfident, you just want to get back. So you go look, do you know what? I’m just going to book it and we’ll see what happens. And I had to move it six times um, but we got it out. It was great because people hadn’t been out properly, you know it’s the first time. And then in 22 we did Branded by Women. What we did is we did Seller Sessions on a Saturday and then they Branded by Women on a Friday and that was that one.
Kevin King:
I was at that one.
Danny:
Yeah, that was 22. Yeah, so you were there because you were there with an Isabella. She was um, leading that with uh, with Sharon, and so, yeah, they um, that was, yeah, that was 22. So we did the two one-day conferences together and then a lot of people we subsidized the and it means it could roll into two. So people come for like workshops and VIP dinner and the Friday drinks. So by doing that and being able to do a cooped-in price for that event and that, it kind of worked well together to do both.
Kevin King:
Now the events in Europe are different than the events in the US. They’re usually quite a bit smaller. When it comes to the Amazon world and um, there it’s not nearly as many of them and, from what you’ve told me, they’re a harder sell. It’s harder to get the Europeans to come out to events than it is to get the Americans.
Danny:
Well, I always say this because we do have, uh, American friends who come over and go I’m going to go and do UK and then end up with 12 people down in Manchester and you never see them again. Because what it is and I don’t mean that in a funny way like UK is tiny, right, and if you think, when you’ve got the mindset of the US, you look around right, there’s conferences, there’s events on all the time. Yeah, and it’s a bigger country. There’s more per capita of the sellers and what happens is you find in Europe like half my audience. They fly in, so they’re coming in from Estonia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Romania, and then the other half will be UK. And what I’ve noticed is part of the reason. You know, we just sold our sixth one out. It’s incredible. We’ve done that, considering the market.
Kevin King:
Congratulations!
Danny:
Thank you. But part of that reason is one we’re small. We’re 200 or less. Now we’re at 147 because we’ve got all the workstations now, so it takes up more capacity in the venue for the layout. And I say this to people because what they do is they go. Dan, you should do it every three months, every six months. Now, if I did that, then you don’t have that demand because everyone goes. I’ll go to the next one, I’ll go to the next one, and I won’t name names. But someone tried to do that a couple years ago. Um, about 18 months ago, Amazon stuck 350 grand behind it and they went off and done all these events. But-
Kevin King:
Yeah, they did like a little tour around the world.
Danny:
Yeah, and the problem with that is—
Kevin King:
Didn’t work.
Danny:
Well, it’s not just that part of it. There’s many factors, as you know, putting on an event right. It isn’t. A lot of people will look at Seller Sessions or look at a Billion Dollar Seller Summit and I’ve had people in the UK because I’ve helped them bow out. I know someone who booked somewhere over the O2. It wasn’t the arena or anything, but he said I looked at Seller Sessions and I thought I can do that and I started putting my tickets out, put them out. They were a bit more than yours then, they were 499. He didn’t have anyone on the lineup and stuff. And he said he contacted me one day. He said, Dan, I just don’t understand. I said, first thing, I’ve had an audience right and the second thing, you’ve not put anyone on the lineup. You’ve looked at what we do, the mechanics, and think that’s works. And I say that because for you, do you remember? We used to joke like you had the old school websites, like a? notepad, yeah, and I always said like it’s because you’re Kevin King right, because you built those relationships you can. It’s almost like, well, I can do websites like that, but other people that don’t have the branding or have the support or built a community and stuff like that. You can’t just stick on events and expect them to fill out. And the second thing is for us in the UK it takes a year to do that, that build right yeah, um, but and the thing is, I mean I’ve probably been doing events just as long as you.
Danny:
I did my first event in ‘94, so this is my 30, 31 years I’ve been putting on events on and off. I didn’t do them every single year, but I have done since 2019. But I put on my first events and I’ve done uh and co-promoted even at a Wembley conference center revelation for a label I worked with. We’ve done some bigger events as well, but I did a lot of smaller events throughout that period as well, but this has been more of my most consistent um part. But after years of doing events, you realize it’s about experience. It depends on your experience is going to be different to mine, right, in terms of what you do and the way that you do it and the way that we do it here, but you have a character as part of that right. So people are buying into something that they can get their head around. It’s not just generic. There’s something about it that they like, which attracts them, and that is part of doing events, because you know this as well.
Danny:
Like, events are a zero-sum game. The moment you’ve got a half-empty venue, the customers don’t come back, they go well, this is shit right. And then you’re not going to get the sponsors because the sponsors are going to nickel and dime you. So well, the last one, didn’t you know, How about we knock that down by, you know 75, and we’ll see how you get on. Do you understand what I mean? So what we do is a zero-sum game, if it’s like you know, uh, atrocious. So events are hard and they’re harder now and they’ll carry on getting harder to do. I don’t know if you agree.
Kevin King:
I agree, um, there’s a big change in, uh, both of us, when you’re pivoting we’ll talk about that in here in just a second. You’re pivoting this year in the way that you’re doing Seller Sessions. I’m pivoting next year in the way I’m doing BDSS. Yeah, because there is a change, one. There’s a ton of events and people have to choose. They can’t just go to everything, yeah, and then a lot of them are just, they’re cookie cutter, like you just said. They’re just the same old thing, they’re not really an experience. And I mean, as you know, you’ve been to a couple BDSS’s we make them a total experience.
Danny:
I mean, look, let’s look at you like, uh, when I’m like 7-eleven compared to you guys, do you know what I mean? Your high roller events? So mine, mine, is uh. I used to joke about this with Rufino. I said, look, you’ve got Instagram and we do get O Fabulous. Do you know what I mean? We’re the other end of the market and own it. Does that make sense? And you do very luxurious events, but that is your thing and that’s what makes it what it is and why people go because no one does events like you. You’re not cooking.
Kevin King:
Yeah, there’s no one even remotely close in the um, I mean the closest might be Titan, uh, from someone, what they do, from a production, production value, but it’s completely different.
Danny:
It’s a completely different um, that’s a network right, that’s a network and it’s a different vibe to what you do. People buy in to Kevin King and people have listened to the podcast. I’m not Kevin King, but what people have told me is they look to me and go Dan does his best to bring the best he can right and that’s the bit that they support, whereas people come because it’s Kevin King for you. Do you understand? So there is a difference between the two. You’ve got a bigger, much bigger audience. As I’ve always said to you, um, like you’re the, the gatekeeper of this industry. Pound for pound, you’re the guy. Yeah, so when things the ball moves, it normally moves through you. Does that make sense?
Kevin King:
I guess that happens in some cases. But yeah, there is a lot of influence through the different things that I do. That’s right, that’s for sure.
Danny:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
So in the conference space though I’m seeing, you know, like you just said, there’s a lot of people that try it and they do it and they lose. They do one, they realize this is real work. They lose a lot of money, but you’ve made a shift, and both of us. I have a new event now called Market Masters, which I don’t know if you saw, if you were in the room when we did the demo in Iceland or if you were away.
Danny:
I’d love to.
Kevin King:
Yeah, but that event is becoming my flagship event now because it’s so powerful. Because when you go to conferences, a lot of people are like what’s the difference? I just watch this on a you know one of these free things online, or watch YouTube videos, or you know. I listen to these speakers and sometimes the talk is good. Sometimes I’m bored out of my mind, sometimes in the hallway. I’m in the hallway and I miss it, or I have to go take a phone call and I miss it. Why am I going? And then I’m being spoken. These speakers are speaking at me versus speaking to me. And so now I’m doing this Market Masters event, where we have someone sits in a hot seat it’s not on a stage, there is no stage, there is no PowerPoint presentations, there’s no TV, no, nothing. And they sit in a boardroom, basically, and I curate based on their needs. They fill out this long questionnaire based on their needs. I curate seven or eight uh experts it could be dream 100 people, it could be different people. They come in and they spend two and a half hours with them uh, going up and down in a very structured, organized, curated way, their business and, at the end of the day, of each one of these, the people that they leave there were, like man, I got an action plan right now of exactly what I need to do, specifically for me. I just didn’t listen to 10 presentations on stage and only two of them applied to me.
Kevin King:
And then they have the rest of the weekend to go and network with these people, plus about 20 other experts in addition to the seven or eight that were on their, on their, on their hot seat panel over the weekend. And it’s powerful. And then the experts get a lot from it too that are participating because they’re learning from other experts during these sessions and stuff that they didn’t know. So it’s extremely powerful. And you’re kind of switched Seller Sessions this year to be more or less of a stage presentations is my understanding to more of a. You know, you hear people say we’re going to do workshop format, uh, but uh, or we’re going to everybody bring your laptops and whip them out. We’re going to, you know, do hands-on, but a lot of times those things are not executed very well. Yeah, and it turns into turns into a mess. But I know, I know you and I know the way you’re doing things, but I don’t I don’t completely understand exactly how you’re doing, so maybe you can explain. Yeah, like you said, there’s confusion with the website and you had to change it. Yeah, because people were confused so what is it?
Danny:
Yeah, they thought it was a speed dating for Amazon. So, basically, um, I used to teach audio engineering at the two uh, leading London schools. Um, Alchemy and Point Blank. I was there for like 10 years, so I come from a teaching background and when you’ve got complex subjects, there have to be means and ways to break them down. And the Vark model is as old as day, right, so visual, auditory reading and kinesthetic is through doing so. These are all your touch points in terms you learn. Some people learn more through visual. Some people, like developers, they like to read documentation right, and some people learn passively or they listen to a podcast, etc. But there is a way. If you mix all those together, it helps, because if you’re in a conference, for instance, or any note taking, when you write down notes, you retain that in your short-term memory. Yeah, but then the application part and the visual part will help with the long-term memory. Now, the way that we’ve designed it every part of it, as a live element, so people work on their laptop. We’ve got a click up document that’s been designed into a full curriculum for each section of the day and so, whilst they’d be there hands-on.
Danny:
So, Jeff, I’ll give some of it away now. He’s breaking everything down on a mil road board and going into detail what he’s helped, what 30 sellers get to like eight figures. He’s worked and obviously he had his own brand in COVID. He picked 60 mil but then sold after that and then he invested in a tea brand that’s on Amazon as well. And so if you imagine if he’s going through and he’s breaking down the whole structure and he’s well known for this he does a lot of work for agencies in the space for scaling and software companies just to make sure they’re dialed in. So he’s very good at that. But if he’s sitting there and he’s just talking, you’ve got no context right. So when you’re in front of your laptop and it changes through everyone’s different sessions because they’re not just the same way of doing things. If he’s speaking and he’s going through it, you can see on the screen. You can open the mirror board there because you’ve got your own copy of it, but then it’s got all the curriculum as well. So all the sections of the mirror board will all have the text as well, so you attend this conference—
Kevin King:
What is a mirror board? people that don’t know what that is, what is that?
Danny:
Oh okay, so if you think like a mind map, there’s many softwares out there. Mirror board is an example. We’ve, uh, we’ll have, a demo account. You can use them for free because the idea even like where the tools are built, they’re all free. You haven’t got to have subscriptions and tied in to stuff as well. Um, so basically he would do. He’ll map everything out in a very, very structured way and helps with the comprehension, because Jeff is very good at getting things across and explaining, uh, information in plain English. And then what will happen? Let’s say, you’re the, your head of the brand. When you go home, you’ve got this long document, which is also like an SOP. So you haven’t got to train your staff, you haven’t got to write up the notes. You can give it to them and if you you know, like when people leave a conference, they’ll come back to their notes three weeks later, they’ve lost context because they go. Well, I got the slides, I took some pictures and I wrote some notes and then you believe you know enough about it and then you don’t execute. So the idea with the document as well, is you’re able to pick that document up in 12 months time. Even if you haven’t looked at it because of all the walkthroughs and everything else, it’s all in there. You’d be able to execute on it, does that make sense?
Kevin King:
It’s like a. It’s like a, almost like a whiteboard that just scrolls down and you’re that’s just all the notes, and everything, all the demonstrations and everything.
Danny:
So basically, you’ve seen like with a click up document. So, inside of the ClickUp document there’ll be all in sections so you add like introductions. I’ve got like a demo on the website that me and Wanda did a short one for Carbon 6 last year and it worked very well. So you will be hands-on. But then some people are going to take a break. Do you know what I mean, or not? Keep up with that part. But what we do also is what’s called shadowing, because in a classroom, let’s say you think we’re the workshop normally one or two people, what is six of us, and we’ve all been working on this since January, so we know each other’s content, so that allows you to shadow the room as well. So while, say, same is up there, me whiner and everyone else is walking around and it’s much more integrated, it’s much more interactive because when you’re, like you said, you’re not talking at people, you’re discussing with them as you’re going through it. And because you’ve got like an hour and a half or whatever, it might sound like a lot of time, but you’ve got to allow more time for the comprehensions and then the shifts there and for them to do things and demo things in the room. They won’t have to log into their Seller Central account. So that’s the whole thing. We’ve spent six months building this. How do we implement this? We have to think.
Danny:
When you’re a teacher, you have lesson plans. Part of the lesson plans is you start with the end in mind, so they know what the picture that’s being built like. I’ll give you an example. If I was demonstrating mixing down a record in the music college, I would play the track and then I’ll play the track and then I go okay, this is what we’re working to, and then I’ll break it down. I’m bringing the kick drum, the hi-hat, and do you understand what I mean? So you start with the end in mind and by the time they walk through it, they get to the end and they get something similar. Obviously, they don’t have to mix the scheme.
Kevin King:
What about people that are at different levels?
Danny:
Well, that’s the whole thing. That’s why it’s been designed that way as well. There are going to be people at different levels and so if people do drift, it doesn’t matter so much, because they’re not going to panic, because they’ve got all the documentation and they can walk through it. You know, like with my section with the tools, you’ve got all the screen grabs. You click on the link, you access the tool, you do what you meant to do, you upload, it’s all there. Do you see what I mean? I would demonstrate it. There are sample materials, so they don’t have to log in to South Central. So, let’s say, one of the tools uses a .csv file, okay, and it’s got listing information, et cetera, et cetera. They upload that, they can see how the tool works, the tool’s being explained, and so you basically everything is designed so that you can do it there. You can be efficient about it.
Danny:
Yeah, we’re not going to sit there and read out science papers and talk about the Bayesian update. That’s not what we’re doing. What’s happening is we’re sharing all the stuff that we do. So if there’s a situation where it gets voted in like, say, Sim does something and it’s similar to Matt, but Sim does it better than Matt yeah, then Sim’s version goes in because he’s had more impact with that on his business does that make sense?
Kevin King:
Yeah so it sounds like speed dating for Amazon sellers.
Danny:
It definitely sounds like speed dating for Amazon sellers, um, but yeah, so so we’re experimenting with a format and um the good one to switch.
Kevin King:
Why the switch?
Danny:
because I can’t keep getting up every year to do the same thing. If I’m not on my game interested, I can’t get up for it, because it’s a grind for me that January to March, April, May is just a grind, right? Because-
Kevin King:
Why do you do it? Why did you start Seller Sessions? Why do you continue doing it? I mean, you said you have a small margin on it.
Danny:
At the moment, I have a small margin. So what’s happened is, over the years I’ve not put my ticket price up. It’s the same price in the same group in 299, 349 and 399. And then over the years, where we’ve had to, like, move venues and increasing costs, my margin starts to disappear. So I’ll give you an example this year, the current venue, which I’ll leave. Um, what I tend to do, I do dry hires and bring all my people in. Then I own the show. In that sense I do a dry hire but which you’ll find and I’ve had to advise a few people in this like people do conferences in Germany and stuff they never know make any money, because and it’s not just about making money, right, but if you’re doing events and you don’t have a software and you’re using that as a marketing tool, as a loss leader. See right now a lot of events that you go, well, that’s a marketing spend. Yeah, if you’ve got a network and you’re signing people up or you’ve got a software.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s lead gen.
Danny:
It’s lead gen right.
Kevin King:
Yeah.
Danny:
So, even if you break even or whatever, that’s fine. But I treat it like a proper business. Why do events If it’s you’re not going to make a profit? There’s difference between that and being greedy. But what’s happened is perfect. Example is like the venue. Let’s sit down, Dan, they’ll look around and go right. He’s it right off and then it’s we need to do the food next year and I’m like I don’t know if you can compete with my catering team on the pricing. She said no, we can’t do it, we’d have to do the. I went all right, tell you what do let’s do, open book. And I showed her my spreadsheets, open book invoices, everything. And I said, just so that you know I’m not trying to be that guy, that’s like yeah, I only paid x, y and z. I gave her the invoices and the breakdown of the food and when I handed it over I said that’s what I paid in 19, 21, 22, 23, and then this year it’s gone up slightly by a little amount. And when she looked at it she went I can’t get any near anywhere near that. I said I know, and I know you can’t get anywhere near it and this is why we’re going to have this conversation where I buy a car off you for 10 grand and when I turn up you say no, it’s 20. And then you go. Well, I feel a little bit slighted by this. I’m now going to set fire to 10 grand. You know, that’s how I had to explain it to her.
Danny:
So, lo and behold, obviously because the headache of finding a new venue, it’s things like that that drives it, Kevin. Now I’ve got a situation I’ll close a venue next week. I’ve got a venue for next year and I’ll go back to not having everyone with their hands in my pocket and I get the opportunity to choose whether I want sponsors or not. It’d be a choice, because right now it has to subsidize the low price tickets. Does that make sense?
Kevin King:
You know what my favorite part of Seller Sessions is? Right, I’ve been to a couple. My favorite part of the two security guard guys.
Danny:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
Two ex-military, whatever they are.
Danny:
Special armed forces.
Kevin King:
Yeah, those guys are always so serious. When I come around I’m like Danny, why do you? You’re one of the only events where there’s like these two guys with little radios on over their ear and you know, talking to each other and like checking everything out. I was like man is it? Is it that bad? and I think you explained to me once well, there’s a lot of money in this room uh and uh it’s always, it’s always like it’s, so it’s like something out of the movies, like something I would see on the James Bond movie.
Danny:
Do you know what the ladies love it? Because it’s like they get them to walk them across. You know, flank them and take pictures for Instagram they turn them into their own pets, you know-
Kevin King:
It’s awesome.
Danny:
So yeah, it’s not anything to do with vanity or anything else. I’ve been in the promotions game 31 years and I’ve seen the unseen when it comes to events, the good, bad and the ugly and when they’re and it’s never normally on the event but it’s a round event and my thing is safety first. So if someone goes, why have you got those guys? So one day I had to explain um, these guys are not as expensive as you think and I interviewed a couple of um security people and I’m thinking they’d be standing behind me if it went off. They’ll be hiding behind me. How can I put someone out there like that? There was one guy bless him, and I show respect to my older generation he wouldn’t turn the camera on. So I’m thinking this guy, he’s gotta be in his 70s, 80s and he sounded like really serious. He knew his stuff and everything. I said can you turn your camera on please? He turned it on. He knew why. You know and I don’t want to judge him I said, look, I am not going to judge you. Like we can discuss this. You’ve got other team members. You run the team. Like I was happy because of his experience.
Danny:
The second thing is you don’t want people on the door that are aggressive and you want them to be invisible in a way, if anything happened, no one really notices. And when you’ve got uh, ex-special armed forces who do royalty protection, they do Premier League, they look after premier football players and um, they’re. They’ve got that um attitude where if you come to the event, I know you say they look scary, but people, people love them, they have conversations. Hello vas, are you doing? Because they like normally regular guys, they may look serious but they’re good gentlemen and uh, the crowd like them and they, they built relationships. You know, I know that some of my friends speak to them. I was actually at Caters a few weeks ago and a friend of mine came to London and I’m thinking, why is ash phoning me? I think it’s a bit weird, like, and it’s marled off in the conference, and they both popped up on the phone just saying hi, like they become friends.
Kevin King:
Do you know what I mean so?
Danny:
Um, it’s all down to safety. For me, um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a premium price for a good night’s sleep, because when I do the events, my it’s always with me. My main thing does everyone get back safe? Because we do party, we do drink and it’s London, so they’re more party party than, say, some other countries and cities. You know when they roll up, but you remember that year when uh I think it was Anthony Lee and uh Casey Goss rolled in six o’clock in the morning, I was banging on his door. He’s meant to be on stage.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I heard that one yeah yeah, so you’re usually DJ until late in the night.
Danny:
Yeah, yes.
Kevin King:
Are you doing again this year?
Danny:
Yeah, I’m, I think, uh, I’ll put Vinnie on as well, because he gets I know it gets a mixed response, but now you’ve set off a little trend. There’s like all these DJs now at these events. Have you noticed I started?
Kevin King:
Yeah.
Danny:
Doing it.
Kevin King:
I always remember the BDSS where it was as a few years ago here in Austin, and uh, it was uh, I think I invited you to DJ. And then Leo’s like hey, uh, you know I can DJ too. And like, all right, I’ll bring, I’ll bring both of you, and both of you were like who is this guy? Does he actually know what he’s doing? as when y’all got here, you came and like we’re sorting out equipment and doing some testing, and then you both realized like all right, um, the other knows what they’re doing. Uh, and then then, when we went out, we went on to the boat. It was almost like it was this competition beforehand. And then, when y’all got there, you’re like all right, this is pretty cool, we can compliment each other. And we did that boat.
Danny:
We were vortex mixing, weren’t we?
Kevin King:
Yeah, that boat thing. And then we got rained out. So we were like, and I remember we were like, all right, that’s it. Sorry, we’ve got to call it early this afternoon. And then you or came up to me and Mark and like is there somewhere else, like at the hotel, what? Because y’all were having so much fun yeah, everybody’s having so much fun like is there somewhere where we can like just get a room? And we thought about it and Mark uh found a studio and we set up this like little impromptu rave, which was, uh, that was really cool um.
Danny:
It was his photography studio, wasn’t it?
Kevin King:
Yeah, it was a photography studio we just improvised, like in a matter of hour, a couple hours, and set up this whole little party and you and Leo went on and that that was cool, yeah. But speaking of other things, I mean, um, you, you, you’re seeing some big changes in the agency business too. I mean, you’ve had data brill for a while now and you got one of the top data scientists in the world working with you as your partner and you guys do some amazing stuff, uh, doing a lot with uh Juana and Andrew and on all the uh, the Rufus and Cosmo stuff. But I know you, you’re we were chatting recently. Yeah, he’s given me a couple messages about what you’re seeing happen in this agency business and how it’s just becoming uh, just dog after dog uh in that business. What are you seeing happening in this agency world? And you’re making a few pivots. You said yourself around what you’re doing there, can you? Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t realize what’s happened and how this. Can you just explain that?
Danny:
So me and Ellis uh, it was actually seven years in March we’ve been going and, um, what you’ll notice now, like when we started, look, competition’s good right, because it raises, competition raises and it’s better for everyone else, but what you’ve got is we’ve now got a market where there’s what? Maybe over a thousand agencies, if not more, and then—
Kevin King:
I‘ve got 868 on a list.
Danny:
Yeah, but that’s been curated.
Kevin King:
Yes, curated. So, there’s a lot of other, a lot more that I think that someone told me it was 3000. Who was it? Tom Shipley, I think, who said they’ve got a list of like 3,700 people that have a shingle off. That says they’re an agency.
Danny:
There you go right and they come in all different shapes and sizes. As you know-
Kevin King:
We’ve Pakistani guys and some are big, huge agencies with.
Danny:
It goes across the scale. Yeah, so a number of things happened is because of that as well and the changes in the market. The agency space is a commodity business, so you’d bounce from one to another because there isn’t much separating them there. And I, I know I joked with you, but it is kind of true, right, you got two, two things. You either got to develop something, which is what we’re working on at the moment, and accept that because it’s part of evolution, you’re gonna have something that separates you. Like when we started, we were one of the only agencies in the space that built our own technology, you know, and we had the advantage because back then you got the percentage of ad spend if you’re going to use software or it’s not software managed right, and that doesn’t mean leave software a run. We’ve developed every line of code since we’ve started, right. So, if you think we have flat rates, we’ve got Dr. Ellis, which I’m lucky to have. He, you know, he splits the atom. You don’t mind him being your account manager looking after stuff, as an example. And then what will happen when you look at the space. You can’t pay engineers like Ellis. Like Ellis is the co-founder and we pay ourselves our salaries. We’re not paying ourselves huge amounts of money or anything. But if you put him out on the market as an engineer, you’re looking at the top end of 175. Now if you’ve got to pay an engineering team and then pay under grand or whatever it may be per head, if you’re not running a sweatshop like some of them, then you’ve got to think that the numbers are not going to add up right.
Danny:
But then over time that’s changed. Yeah, things evolve. Um, software’s changed. There’s ones where they’ve removed the percentage of ad spend because that’s a killer for sellers, right, because that ends up getting passed on to them, that’s. And then, as you’ve seen over time, margins have been squeezed. It’s more competitive to do PPC and um. Our experience is we’ve always been fine because I gave you the example right, we are not super expensive, we’re middle. We always focus on seven figure sellers. I’ve never taken on anyone below seven figure sellers, because I don’t believe you should do that, because the sellers should be keeping their money in their business for growing their business to get to a stage where they actually need to output that as a department if they wanted to, and keep the money for inventory. Yeah, so what we experienced is we had a very, very low churn rate. You know my customers. I’ve had six years, not three months, six months because they’re not being promised magical strategies. That don’t exist from a sales team. But what’s happened over time because me and you know some of my clients, you know. So we’ve sat down and we have a joke, like a weekly joke is what’s the magical strategy of the week? And now that’s kind of developed is like, right now, the only thing and agencies won’t like me to say this, right, you’re going to be separated by something that you do is different from others, right, or it’s your sales team, they’re going to be the two demanding factors, like so what you’ll find? And I’ve seen this and, as I said, we sit down and we with magical strategy of the week and the clients will have a joke about it, and we go back and forth.
Danny:
But, as you’ve seen things going on, there’s more panic out there. Yeah, and obviously, and it should be rightly so, depending on on uh, on what your views are agencies are getting the kicked out of them on LinkedIn because the old divided conquer, because you have to have an enemy for this, like, if we look at it, everyone loved the aggregators and because it gave them really good opportunity to exit, yeah, until it crashed. So then you have to cycle uh, aggregators, get the shit kicked out of them. Then we add the giveaway thing they all got the shit kicked out of them. Currently is this the agencies. They’ll get the shit kept. I mean, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but it’s cycles. People need stuff to get on right and then something else will come along, like everyone shits on Amazon for the sneaky fees and that. Do you understand what I’m saying? So when you add all of those in the mix and then you’ve got um sellers who are struggling and eventually, they want to believe in those strategies, do you understand what I mean? It’s like you get to a point. It’s like, well, I’ll give it a go, even if they don’t kind of believe it. And there are good agencies out there. I’m not going to lie, but there are. There are shocking people.
Danny:
I actually, about 18 months ago, I done a 10,000 word article breaking down the whole agency model from magical software that you do 12 months deal in and now that all breaks down and stuff like. So it gives people education to know what do you want to pick like? I’m not interested in selling it to people. I want people to come to me and I solve a problem. If I can’t solve their problem, you need to go somewhere else because, at the end of the day, their business is the most important thing. Yeah, so what’s happened over that time? We’ve been okay with that and no churn. And then we lost um, a very big client, and then two after that. And then it was like right, and then I had to do layoffs. But what I did was I had an option you go, carry on on this path. Me and Ellis knew that we need to adapt. Anyway. All it’s done is put the accelerator button on to do that. And, um, I had to let some staff go. But what I’ve done is I’ve helped them. They’re all out getting interviews and hopefully by the end of the month they’re all employed. So karma’s taking care of that. And then me and Ellis are gonna do what we’re doing now. We still got the agency and we’re still going to be doing PPC because we’re still servicing our customers. But we do realize this and there’s a few, you know, some of the younger guys in the space you have come to me and sit down and give them a bit of guidance because they’re concerned, right, you know they’ve got factoring uh, CFOs in, you know, to make sure ends meet. But I do see a, a thing which will come up where, if you’re trying to scale and but you’ve got this churn because a lot of people churning don’t believe what you’re reading.
Kevin King:
They bounce from what’s it. They last about two or three months on average, or something like that.
Danny:
Yeah, I think what happened—
Kevin King:
I think they bounce either because they feel you’re not performing or it’s not. Something was over promised and under delivered. Yeah or uh, someone else just comes in, so they’ll do it cheaper.
Danny:
Absolutely, and that’s fine, like competition’s healthy Kevin. Right, it needs to be in place. So I’m not bitter or anything. I’m like we did this as we did for seven years, and we had a position. Do you see what I mean? But when, when you see the changes in Amazon and the price is going down, it’s not good enough to go, oh yeah, we’re going to start taking on, we’ll do listing optimization and one of the reasons we never, ever did full service. I actually looked into it and I thought for me personally I can’t speak for other agencies. I’m like, for what, though? Right, so PPC plays a role right. So that could be anywhere from 15 to 35% of yourselves roughly. Yeah, depend on, so you’re still playing a role in generating sales, so it adds value. But if you look at full service agency, how many of them do product development? How many of them are dealing with the headaches of logistics, shipping and everything else? So what are you left over with?
Danny:
You’re going to have daily routine checks on seller central, right? You’re going to do some listing optimization. I mean, how many, how many times you’re going to optimize the listing every month. For how long? Three years, let’s be realistic, right? You don’t optimize the shit out something that works. You optimize it to the point where you’ve got it where you want it to be and then you optimize when it drops. Yeah, so, unless you’re not measuring and I’ve seen people do that like just upload images oh, hopefully it does. Well, I’ve just changed the main image. I’m like you haven’t even run the Amazon experiment. What’s the matter with you? Do you know what I mean? Like you can’t do that because that will just crater people’s businesses. So you, you’ve got that and I looked at that model and you I’m trying to think of his name ex-Amazonian at a successful agency, and I think he still is, really nice guy, Brad, you know him as well.
Kevin King:
Brad Moss.
Danny:
Brad Moss, right, he was one of the first to scale back. Then we’re talking 2019, because we launched in 2018. And I was looking into what do we do? Do we do full service? And I just couldn’t see any value in it. Me personally, I can’t speak for anyone else, right, because I’m like how many? A lot of the stuff, not now, but a lot of stuff if you think back then as we’ve evolved. Now, if an Amazon seller has got 60 hours a week they’re putting into a business on average 45 to 60 hours a week, how the fuck are you going to be able to do what they do? And you’re managing 10 accounts. It’s not scalable.
Kevin King:
It’s hard to get good people too. People always say who’s a good agency? And I always say, well, it depends. I mean, someone’s going to have a good experience with this one and someone’s going to have a bad experience. It’s all who you get.
Danny:
Yeah, it’s two things actually. It’s two things.
Kevin King:
It’s who you get in that agency, whether that person is. There’s a lot of factors there, so I can’t say this is the best agency.
Danny:
There’s two things. Is the agency competent? Let’s have it right when you look at it, as much as you can pretend otherwise. PPC has got more complex, agreed right. But at the end of the day. It’s an amplifier. And then what happens? When you’re at top of search and the person doesn’t buy? You’ve been amplified. There’s two parts to this. That’s why you have to be selective. Right, because someone takes on a client and you know if the, if it’s not gonna work, pretty much straight away. I’ve seen over a thousand accounts. Your job is to turn that down, thank them, give them some guidance, not take on that and then promise them because at the end of the day and I’ve asked this question and hopefully you’ll be the one person who can tell me a better metric can you tell me and I’ve never asked you directly before is there a greater metric that will move the needle than understanding your customer objections and then having the ability to fix it? No, AI, nothing. Remember what I just said.
Kevin King:
Or you’ve got to know the psychological triggers that motivate your avatar. If you know that it’s not copy, copy is copy, ads are ads and everything else. But you have to know, you should spend more time fully understanding inside the head of your ideal customer what their pain points are, what their pleasure points are, and once you understand that, then everything else comes later and most people do it the other way around.
Danny:
Absolutely.
Kevin King:
Or they don’t even know what that stuff is.
Danny:
And understanding yeah, the understanding of customer objections doesn’t bring you any guarantees, but it reduces the pain. And if you consider, time is money, let me give an example. Right, this is how it generally works. People will do their research AI otherwise very diligent out. They’re like scientists that are sellers, right, they’re really good and they take the time. And what they do is they go and look at someone else’s reviews, right, and do all the other things. They understand the market, the customer, uh, who their customer they’re profiling. Then they look at the competition. They’ll look at their reviews and say, ah, I’ve got an idea here, I’m going to build a better mousetrap, right, based on their reviews. Then they go I’ve done all my research, now I’ve built a better mousetrap, I’m good, they’re all going to buy this. And then they take it into production.
Kevin King:
Better doesn’t mean—
Danny:
And then they build this mousetrap, this Frankenstein mousetrap in most cases respectfully, I’m not talking because it’s hard to innovate from scratch, right. So they build tank better, better quality, all these kind of things add all this complexity, change the color, whatever they’re doing, right, so they’ve done all of this research. And then they’re going below a load of cash on a launch load of PPC, right, and they’re entrepreneurs. So what do they do? My gut says this is right, keep going, all right. Another five grand, ten grand, bam bam. Because entrepreneurs, what do they do? They’re single-minded. They ain’t gonna listen to people. They got there for a reason not through listening to everyone, unfortunately if they spent two, three, four hundred bucks and then said put it in front of a number of people and said what are your objections to buying this product? So you’ve just done all this dough on everything else, you’ve blown a load of cash, but you didn’t do that bit, and that would have been something that helped you with all the bleed on PPC and everything else.
Danny:
Because, just because you built a great product, just because you use post-purchase reviews, two different things a customer objection and a post-purchase review two completely different things. why is that? They’ve already bought the product and they go. I love it, or this is the piece giving my money back, or somewhere in between. There’s no objection to buying it. They got over the hump to buy it. They just felt it was great, or they felt cheated in a way, because they go. I didn’t expect that. It’s not good quality. Do you understand what I’m saying? If you’re able to get the customer objections and then work out how you can measure those and do some stuff where you may be able to optimize and improve. That will do more to your conversion rate than pretty much anything else, because in order to have a conversion rate, you need to make a sale. So if you’re at top of search and no one’s buying, or less people buying, what happens to your conversion rate? So therefore that metric for me is undefeated. I’m asking people is there a better metric than that? And again, I’ll say it doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed, because you might find it’s not fit for market.
Danny:
The only thing for that, you know you can put that to bed and you know, like the idea is, when we’re on Amazon, you build through SKUs, right, keep growing, put out more products, you refine it and then you find a way, the quickest way, to get away with the products that failed at the lowest uh impact possible and the fastest speed. Yeah, so you launch, you keep, you lose, you launch, you keep, you find a cycle in there. Right, and this is why a lot of brands would die if they’re not launching new products and they don’t have a product pipeline. But just that bit there skipping that, Kevin, is really fundamental right. You’ve decided what the customer wants. You’ve decided to build something based on someone else’s products through post-purchase reviews, yet you ask no one what is your objection to buy my product and do you know what—
Kevin King:
The number one thing people to ask on that is not a mistake people make on that point is they ask the people that don’t buy why did you not buy my product, and that’s the wrong thing to do. You want to ask the people who did buy what made you almost not buy this.
Danny:
That’s another good question. That’s a good objection.
Kevin King:
That’s a big difference in understanding, and people make a lot of times that they go after the wrong side of that. And you want people who bought what made you not almost not buy? Not the people who didn’t buy. Why didn’t you buy? Because those people might not have bought anyway. They’re just going to say something. But the people that bought, they bought, they overcame something. But what did they overcome in their mind? And what do you need to do to double down on that objection, to make sure other people don’t back off.
Danny:
Yeah, because basically you’re looking for patterns, right? Let’s say you do it 100, 200, 300. If you are same and product pinion boys and others, it’s an iteration process as well. Like you can also do it pre -launch. So you can mock up the product and have it simulated and get some ideas of. Oh yeah, there’s certain things you won’t see. I’ll give you a read.
Kevin King:
I used to do dry testing back in the day, because you can use Product Opinion or PickFu or IntelliV or any of those guys and that’s good. You should. You get a base idea, but at the end of the day you people speak with their wallet. People will say one thing and do something.
Danny:
I agree. That’s what—
Kevin King:
I used to do I used to do split testing with uh with pricing on a website where we would one price was 1995 and one was 995, and they had to actually go through the whole process internet credit card, uh, and everything and then we just didn’t charge them, we just, you know, held it and we just did a test that way. But that way they went through the motions and we knew okay for sure which one works.
Danny:
No, look, as I said, there’s no guarantees, but I’ll give you some examples that you probably would never really find out. We had a situation once, um, where a client was usual one leading the market right and couldn’t work. It just died off, blamed. You know, like Chinese come in and, uh, couldn’t recover. It couldn’t recover it and it’s got multi-variations right. So we run some uh, some tests custom rejection tests on it and what we found out is I really like the green widget, but I prefer the color pink. So what happened? Because this had like 5,000 reviews and that was always the winner, right, it’s like the focus was on that, but it was the wrong focus. The reason why the other people bought the other product is because they preferred the color pink and to address that, it didn’t recover fully. But to address that, they led with the pink and then they performed better. You would never have found that. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because you’re looking in the wrong places, and that’s what I mean by you do enough tests and you know you do 100 to 300, 400 people and 30, 40 percent or more are saying, yeah, but I prefer the pink, I prefer the pink, I prefer the pink and like, well, I pink, I prefer the pink. And you’re like well, I don’t, I got a pink SKU. Should we leave with that version? Do you know what I mean? The pink variation? Sorry.
Danny:
It’s things like that that you don’t find out. And when you spend six months spending dropping a couple of grand on, you know, maybe updating your A plus content and stuff, are you guessing? Oh, I better get more images done. Let’s get the new. Let’s move that over there. Let’s get some more lifestyle images. Let’s do that. Let’s change the bullet points. That takes time, especially if you’re going to test it right. Well, that didn’t work, that didn’t work. You might be a few hundred dollar test. Now, what we should understand as well, a lot of people don’t test and the expectancy of the results of tests.Lik e you know, Dorian Gorski, yeah, you know Dorian? Number one in the world in our game when it comes to stopping the scroll. I I’d like to see anyone challenge that. He’s been doing his 10 years. He cut his teeth doing Ash Thompson, who hit 100 million the next year. You’ve met Ash.
Kevin King:
Yeah yeah.
Danny:
He does all same stuff and highly respected. He has got to a point. He’s got it down to a fine aisle that he is got it down to 60 percent failure rate of his tests. So every 100 tests he runs 60. I don’t move the needle or fail, and that’s 10 years and that’s good. Do you understand? I think, with the expectancy someone runs it, go that shit, that didn’t do, that’s crap. And that’s the problem. You refine it over time, like every other process, and I think we’re moving, we have to move more towards this now. You know it’s like you’re going to have full stack engineers in your Amazon business, especially not maybe full stacks junior and some prompt engineering work. You know you’re going to have a tech team working with you, from your data to your listings. You’ve seen this firsthand. Right, you know people that have set up automation. They’ve got in 80 in eight running or make.com, or they’re on the lower level to use up here and that’s where we’re moving.
Kevin King:
That’s all the AI stuff, and you’ve been diving deep in in some of that too, with a wanna and Andrew with, uh, some pretty deep dives on researching, analyzing the research papers and what’s going on with Rufus and Cosmo. What, where did that come from? What made you decide to do that? And you put out some really good breakdowns of that.
Danny:
Yeah, I mean back in 2020, is where I got interested in and I don’t know where he is. But for me, I remember when I was with you and Steve in Australia a couple years ago. I’ve always said look, science isn’t about being right, it’s about getting to the truth. It don’t matter who gets there. You, everyone wins right. And uh, and thank you to you because it’s been ignored for the last four years until pretty pictures appeared and they called it Cosmo. So suddenly it was acceptable. Science paper has become acceptable because Cosmo was like a coloring book, right, because it had some pictures. So that becomes acceptable.
Kevin King:
The yellow dog with Rufus.
Danny:
Yeah, and now we’ve got the dog with Rufus, which is some interesting stories. I have to tell you about that. But the situation with that is I really wanted to understand and it does take a long time, right, because I heard you on the on the podcast we want, and said like people are venomously opposed to the honeymoon period doesn’t exist and everything else, and the thing is they should have that opinion because that’s what they see. I’m not here to question you. I’m not here to tell you, you can’t, I’m just going. Okay, look, there is a 10,000 word article, there’s two patents and I’ve charted everything you call the honeymoon period from 2015 in paper form. You’ve read it, Kevin, and we spent 200 hours on it.
Kevin King:
That was Andrew Lee that coined that term, by the way.
Danny:
I know, and he’s also the one who denounced it as well.
Kevin King:
Yeah, exactly.
Danny:
So the thing is you’re going to get a thing there and people get pushed back. And I don’t mind being wrong and I’m not trying to be right, like if people say I don’t agree with that because such and such, it’s a beautiful discussion, right? I mean, I had that clown world moment on LinkedIn with an idiot last year who offered the MMA fight but it’s like but, but that wasn’t about anything other than attention seeking. Do you know what I mean? Because you’ve you. You see this, I won’t you know, go into it and keep bringing it up, but you’re going to get some people just want the attention for the sake of it. Some people are bought into it and I totally understand why, like, look at the oxymoron of this the honeymoon period is an observation, but it doesn’t exist, but it exists only as an observation. Let me explain, right, so it’s called the cold start, yeah, so you go to an Amazon engineer and you go oh yeah, the honeymoon period. You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. So the honeymoon period is an observation that was created by us and what we tried to do is sketch out that observation. So when you drop an article to explain that people it gets their backup. So basically, it’s like I’m gaslighting to say there’s no honeymoon period, even though the honeymoon period doesn’t exist. I mean, do you understand what I’m saying? And I’m not. We don’t do this to gut people’s asses and oh, let’s piss that person off. Let’s say there’s no honeymoon period, for some attention. Why would we waste 200 hours and then give it all away? It’s because we want people to move forward with what’s going on out there.
Danny:
And when you do things like that, people are going to push back, and that’s fine, right. And they’re going to ridicule you. They’ll talk about you behind your back, and that’s absolutely fine. But as you’ve seen yourself, Kevin, things have changed. Yeah, so every time we got Rufus the dog and uh, and then clown world kicks off. What happens? It’s in the. It ends up being in the search bar. Oh, this ain’t gonna take off. Two days later, it’s in the search bar oh this. And then something else happens and you’re not going to stop it, right, and then they’ll go. The same people that would say that will then say, yeah, no, I’ve been on this a while now. Yeah, you know, and it’s like, no, you’re not, you’re just in switching sides. So we stand where we stand, Wana and um and Andrew, and there’s a few of us we’re trying to push things and trying to find easier and easier way to break it down. So when we did Rufus, we took the learnings from doing the cold reality of the honeymoon period, because there was a certain person I highly respect who was like it was a bit dense. I struggled to read it and I’m like well, that’s useless to do another article and no one can understand it when your end goal is to help people understand and give it away so it becomes useful. That’s why Rufus was a lot different to the last one. You could easily read that and digest that versus that, and that’s our goal. We’re trying to get better at doing that. How do we get the information over to people and let them make up their own mind but don’t feel a way about? It is like, oh, he’s just trying to be clever because we’re not. It does take time to break that stuff down and it takes time to learn how to break it down and then trying to deliver it, you know. So that’s where we are with it, and and again, because of you, we’re not still in the dark ages, because you put you on.
Kevin King:
I feel that, uh, it’s the future and it’s the writings on the wall for it. And you see, this, it’s, it’s slowly, like you just said, people deny it. Then two days later, here it is in the search bar. It’s coming, yeah, and I think there’s a lot of sellers. Uh, something I’ve been saying is there’s a lot of people doing millions of dollars of sales right now that are not paying attention, and including software companies that you know, some of the biggest names in the space that are not really paying attention, and people are still going by the old way. And right now you’ve got to kind of ride the line between the two. But if you’re not preparing to move to this new reality, a new way of doing things, your $5 million a year in sales is going to go to $500,000. And I think you’re going to see a shakeout, just like you’re seeing the shakeout in some of the agency business. Yeah, I think you’re going to see in the next few years, uh, a big shakeout there. And on top of that, you have this whole agentic agents stuff, like you just touched on, uh, where I think that’s going to. Um, you know, make.com automations or Zapier is the easiest, then make.com is the middle one. And then NADN is the detailed one.
Danny:
We’d be on that. Now we’re at Skynet level. We’re talking about autonomous on your computer editing videos. I’ve seen it on my own.
Kevin King:
I mean, just look what just happened with ChatGPT, with what you can do with photos, a couple weeks ago. I mean that put a lot of people out of business, uh, software companies out of business. Yeah, uh, it’s going to get to. I don’t think a lot of people realize this. The people that are on the cutting edge of it understand where this is going and how fast it’s moving. Yeah, but the average Amazon seller, their idea of AI is use ChatGPT to analyze my reviews, to help me write, write email, uh, or something like that. They don’t get beyond the little basic core things how this is going to revolutionize everything in the next five years, uh, or sooner.
Danny:
I actually I got excited last night. I got uh Milan, one of my engineer guys um because—
Kevin:
3 am right?
Danny:
I’ll start at 3 am today, but like last night. Um, I looked at it because with Claude you can make Claude autonomous. But the problem with it is I’ve set it up on Docker and then we programmed it in with the terminal because I’m hoping like, oh great, so Claude can do this as well. So I’ll give it some actions. I’ll start with clearing up my Google drive etc, etc. And then see where it goes from there, cause the stuff I’ve seen and I’ve signed up for the research release, so I’m waiting to get in. But I mean, we’re talking about editing videos in Premiere Pro, this level, on your desktop.
Kevin King:
No, no. I mean, just yesterday I was trying to embed something in one of my apps. So I’m searching online, I’m looking through their support docs, I’m looking through everything how do I actually get this embed code to work? And I couldn’t find anything. So I was like let me just take a screenshot of this error message that’s coming up and throw that in the ChatGPT and say how do I fix this. And it came back with here’s five things to try do this and number four worked. I mean, it knew better than any human could and it gave me the answer just like that.
And I know a lot of people they’re at that level. But that’s just a basic thing of what these things can do on their own, autonomously and just like in the agency stuff. I think you’re going to see a lot of change in the agency business. The ones that survive are going to be much less people and you’re going to have a lot of these agents doing this, and I think the people, like you said, what’s your differentiating factor on an agency? I think it’s the people that are on the cutting edge of the software and the technology, that are always one step ahead, are going to be the ones that win, not the ones that are a commodity doing the same old stuff.
Danny:
Yeah, and I think we have to also and I’ll try and explain this in a positive way is right now engineers are far from scared of AI, and the reason being is—
Kevin King:
It empowers them.
Danny:
One. It empowers them. The other thing is, even with me, with the no-code platforms, I’m sitting here building apps that work, functional in the browser, like apps and useful. Well, at least I hope they’ll be useful that I’m doing and then I get my engineering team to pull over. So with the tools of building for Seller Sessions, I’ve got more in there and I just send them the code and then from there we can work from there. But the point I was going to get to, you know, like you said a couple of weeks ago about the prompting, what it’s allowed to do and it’s amazing is it’s give you that next level up. Let’s say that um, are you any good with Photoshop, Kevin? Like a whiz, can you do drop shadow?
Kevin King:
Yeah, I can do the basic stuff. I’m not a whiz, but I can do the basic stuff.
Danny:
Okay. So imagine what you can now do with ChatGPT. By articulating an eloquent prompt with the right details, you get an output right. So what’s happened is the output’s changed. It’s got better. So you get excited. So let me give an example. Let’s say you buy your images of um Fiverr, Upwork, junk shit that you get on now and there will be two reasons who you buy them and not everyone’s blessed with an eye for design because they’re brilliant at everything else. They just decide might not be their thing, so they might go. Oh yeah, that looks good. And then, when they prompt, something like that looks amazing. So what they’ve got is an improved output. We said this on my pod a little while ago. Mark’s a photographer. You start talking about aperture and those kinds of things. Who’s going to get better output? So let’s talk prompt engineering. A junior developer with three years of experience in a couple of languages and a vibe coder who do you think comes out on top? The difference between two? Well, the, the levels, the domain
Kevin King:
The one that has the experience is the one that comes out on top.
Danny:
However, the good thing about the other person is the input, so they might not get what they know how to.
Kevin King:
They know how to prompt it.
Danny:
It’s the ideas, right, yeah. So we’re in that gap, right, you’re in that gap where you’ve got no code but you can’t fix it when it starts to go off. If you know nothing about coding, you have to get that person to help you to fix it, correct it, right. But you’re getting the output, yeah. And then an engineer would need to clean it up so it’s functional. Then, if you’ve got a seller that’s prompting their images, great cause it’s going to be a better output that they could do in Photoshop If they’re not a designer. So you go, great. So it’s money. It doesn’t mean that image is good, it’s good to you because of what you know and the nuances around design, right. So if you’re an engineer, you would see prompting there’s. You know, not that they’ll snigger or anything else like that, but there’s a difference from prompting, running all the APIs and everything else, and having that level because of what you can do with that and how you can put stuff together. Another example we share a friend who was in and he’s worried about it and I’m coming around to the point of this uh, because their point would be important uh, legal guy that was at your event, don’t name, his name. We had a private conversation and I said to him look, you’re a lawyer. I said it comes back down to domain knowledge. Right, like my lawyer, I can knock up contracts in ChatGPT right, and my lawyer would pull it apart because you know all the nuances, because he’s a lawyer and you get fucked over. But to me looks bollocks, right, it’s all in legalese and it looks great. So we’ve got that element there. And so the point I’m trying to get around to is domain knowledge will win unless ideas outweigh it. So the idea of the engineer.
Danny:
Give an example I was a record producer and I was a self-taught engineer. I put out maybe 50, 60, 70 records, two albums, mix album, collaborations. As soon as I trained properly as an engineer, as I started teaching, I went through the ranks and technically come better at an engineer. I couldn’t fucking write why, because it wasn’t exciting anymore. I knew how to make that baseline. I would spend three hours fiddling because I knew the parameters to change, put it through the envelope and then low pass field. Do you understand what I’m saying? So you’ve got engineers If you look at in the studio. You’ve got the record producer, you’ve got the artist, you’ve got the engineer. The engineer puts the output out, the sound really good, but it’s the producer the vibes up. The musician say they all kind of work together, right? So the engineer is not going to be very good as a singer doing falsetto if he’s just some scruffy engineers. But he could do it. He just wouldn’t be as good.
Danny:
And so what happens? You get an artificial lift through prompting, and that’s not to downsize anything. And I think what we’re going to come into is we get on to discussing Manis, right? So someone goes oh yeah, I’ll just do this and build it on Manis and everything else, and they’ll focus on this. So there’s a couple of things to think about in terms of the focus, and it’s the same with NAN. Are you gonna set up NAN to message back your mum through Whatsapp and I don’t know some other application? Or you’re going to build something that’s going to move the needle and move your business forward? Are you going to use them for the right things? And what I uh experience with everything that’s going on with my businesses? I literally solved everything I needed to solve and I’m not a prompt engineer. Um Friday, Sat and Sunday, bank holiday weekend. I spent 16 hours a day, roughly give or take for a week on Manis and I knew there was something in there. I burnt a shit ton of like tokens, I got my account and I just keep buying 39,000. I don’t give a fuck, you know. You just spend because you know you get results. And with that, because I was able to solve all my things because Manis gave me the opportunity, whereas some people might be going, oh yeah, we’ll just do some copywriting and stuff. No, don’t use it for that.
Danny:
You’re an Amazon seller struggling at the moment. You need to come up with solutions. You’ve got things like Manis there. It’s the questions that you ask. Yes, you want to be able to prompt, but you’d be surprised of how many problems you can solve. So hence I had someone come to me the other day, a good friend of mine. You would know him as well. He’s struggling and I knew the phone call was you got any money, Dan, like I’m struggling, and da, da, da. And then I put him on to Manis, set a few things up for him. He’s able to fix those solutions because he asked the right questions. So what I’m trying to propose to Amazon sellers is don’t look at AI as a replacement for something. Use it to help you get it out of you, out of this shit that you are in with margins, instead of fucking around on Manis, trying to do, you know, listing optimization. Use it for that, or waste of time. You might as well use Claude. Why burn all the tokens? But if you really want to think about improving, improving your business, you’ve got to think about asking the right questions yeah.
Danny:
And that is something that I think people struggle with they don’t know what questions to ask because they don’t know what the problem is to solve, and that’s why it took me 16 hours a day going down rabbit holes till I come to the solution, and that solution was to solve pretty much everything that’s going on around me. I’ve got a new venue for Seller Sessions next year, so I won’t have everyone in my hands, in my pocket and, um, I can choose whether to have sponsors or not, because you know yourself when you put on events, you’ve got that pressure like. Last year, I turned down 22 sponsors disguised as speaking gigs. That’s a lot of money, yeah, but as soon as you break that line, I will lose my Seller Sessions crowd and I won’t be able to sell it out. So my thing is how do I get back to before, before everyone’s got my hands in my pockets and you’re being leaned on and they’ve got some demands where you want to compromise. So another part of that, because I’ve given codes out to everyone that I’ve spoken to that have been struggling go and do this and they’re getting results, Kevin, because they’re asking the right question.
Kevin King:
Well, Danny, we’ve been going here for a while. We’ve got to. I think we could keep talking for several more hours, but this has been uh, this has been great. I really appreciate uh you coming on and uh and sharing everything from uh what’s going on at Seller Sessions and the event industry to uh what’s going on the agency side, uh how people need to use AI and what’s going on with uh with Amazon. This has been uh, we’ve covered a lot of bases.
Danny:
Well, hopefully it’s useful. I know it’s not always orthodox with what I’ve just said there, because everyone will speak about prompting and everything else.
Kevin King:
No, no, it’s good stuff. It’s stuff that people need to hear and to get their head around.
Danny:
Because the last part of that sorry, just to cut in Kevin the last part of that. Where we’re moving is we can get so much output from AI, but how do you have time to implement it right? So I can see the domain knowledge thing. Think of like your accounts team that are doing laborious tasks. AI whips through. That replaces all that. What are they? They’re the safety valve, their domain knowledge. They come at the end to the checks and balances and I think that’s where it’s going to be really powerful as well domain knowledge. It will reduce a lot of labor. But then we move to the mind economy. That experience is still valuable, so you can still scale. Does that make sense? A lot of people were proud of themselves out there on LinkedIn. Oh yeah, I was sacked to 10 people. That’s 10 families out of job and you’re proud of yourself. But for me, it’s like AI, if you can use your domain knowledge. I think that’s where the win is and able to implement after and have the checks and balances in place. You’re going to do very well.
Kevin King:
Well, if people want to reach out and learn more about what you’re up to, or read some of your papers that you guys are working on, or what’s the best way to do that, or come to Seller Sessions or listen to your podcast, I mean, what’s, what’s the?
Danny:
Hit the podcast sellersessions.com or on all the podcatchers. Um, we sold out now, as of yesterday, finally, yeah, um, so we’ve got to deliver that in in a couple of weeks. But you know, if refunds come up, I’ve got it on the website now where we sold out. You can put your email address in now when you come to the ticket page, because people can still buy dinners for the conference delegates. But then if we get refunds, we put it out to the list and then mark them back and then transfer them over to the uh, to the new peoples on the list.
Kevin King:
So sellersessions.com, uh, it’s the best way to uh to get all right.
Danny:
Yes.
Kevin King:
Awesome. All right, Danny, I appreciate it, man. Thanks for coming.
Danny:
You’re welcome. Thank you for your time.
Kevin King:
So I hope you enjoyed my chat with Danny McMillan. We’ll be back again next week with another amazing episode, and if you like this episode, be sure to hit subscribe. If you’re watching this on YouTube or if you’re listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure you hit that subscribe button. And if you like this episode or any other episode, be sure to go and forward it to a friend and let them know about the AM/PM podcast. As well as Helium 10 Elite, you can always go to h10.me forward slash elite and find out more about Helium 10 Elite, which I host training and a live call every single month. Before I leave you, just got some words of wisdom for you. While you’re hustling and doing the grind, remember to enjoy it along the way, because one day you’re going to have no time to enjoy anything again. Take care and we’ll see you again next week.
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