#373 – Keith O’Brien on the Intersecting Worlds of Online Selling and Pickleball
When we talk about Amazon selling and pickleball, there’s no one more seasoned than our guest, Keith O’Brien. As a veteran in the game, Keith takes us on a journey from the golden days of easy product ranking to the end of the service, I Love to Review, due to the shift in Amazon policies. He shares his insights on the evolving world of Amazon agencies, emphasizing the importance of both solo consultants and agencies in shaping the marketplace.
Managing large scale agencies, retaining good staff, and the rise of aggregators driving up the price of talent – these are just a few of the challenges we explore. And then there’s the role of AI in e-commerce, which, as we find out, is helpful in rule setting and bid management, but maybe not so much for creative tasks. As a curveball, Keith, a pickleball enthusiast, talks about the social aspect of the sport and the reasons for its global appeal.
We end our discussion with tips on what to look for when hiring an agency for Amazon listings and PPC management. A strong relationship with the agency is key, as is their track record of success and the quality of their work. Whether you’re an e-commerce seller, a pickleball player, or a curious listener, join us for this insightful conversation!
In episode 374 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Keith discuss:
- 00:06 – Amazon’s Early Days With Keith
- 15:32 – The Rise of Amazon Service Providers
- 26:55 – Automation and AI’s Impact on Jobs
- 30:34 – AI’s Role in Writing Listings
- 37:06 – The End Game for Agency Businesses
- 43:31 – Opportunities in the World of Pickleball
- 46:13 – Enjoying a New Sport Quickly
- 51:07 – Hiring an Agency for Amazon Listing
- 53:49 – Learning Pickleball and Networking on LinkedIn
Transcript
Kevin King:
Happy holidays everybody and welcome to episode 373 of the AM/PM Podcast. This week my guest is Keith O’Brien. Keith and I go back to the old days. Almost nine years ago now we started selling on Amazon and doing Amazon stuff. We talk a little bit about that in this episode some of the old, good old days of when you could rank stuff super easily within a day. We talk about the agency business and how that’s evolving and changing and we talk about one of the hottest things going on out there in the world right now called Pickleball. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to the AM/PM Podcast. It’s great to have you here. Finally, Keith, how you doing, man?
Keith:
I’m doing great, Kevin. Thanks so much for having me on.
Kevin King:
I think we’ve known each other of each other for quite some time, going back. You’ve been doing this since I don’t know if the egg or the chicken came first, but you were one of those two right Back when the old days of Amazon.
Keith:
Yeah, I started. I joined a company in like December 2014. That was a service provider. You were actually a customer of ours. Then I partnered into that company a couple months later. That was, I Love to Review, so way back in the day, the glory days when incentivized reviews were completely legit. But yeah, so that’s when I got my start. I think I opened the office here in Florida in January 2015.
Kevin King:
And that was, wasn’t that? An Australian company. There’s an Australian person involved in that or something.
Keith:
My previous business partner, who’s Australian, started that company in like October 2014. I think we were the first to launch just before Snag, shout back, man. We’re waxing nostalgic for the old guys. Yeah, we are, we are, yeah. And then I partnered in and then I took over as CEO in May of that next year and Adam moved on to creating a very successful training company out of Australia called Reliable Education.
Kevin King:
Yeah, so back for those of you that are new to this, that aren’t OGs, like Keith and I so used to, I remember the date it was October. Was it October 3rd 2016,? Right?
Keith:
That’s D day.
Kevin King:
That’s like you know. Everybody knows Pearl Harbor Day or they know 9, 11 or something in the Amazon space. October 3rd, 2016, is the day that I think I have that right that Amazon said no more incentivized reviews, and it was a game changer. I remember Manny Coates called me. He was running the MPM podcast back then. It started healing him 10. He called me, said Kevin, we got to do something right now. We got to get a podcast out right now. The word just came down. This is going to go crazy. So what you used to be able to do, just to explain to people, is there were companies and you you had. I think the first one I love to review was the name of the company. And then there’s another one called Snag Shout and there’s basically the ideas you snag a product and shout out about it. And then there’s several others that were in the space. I mean viral launchers doing it. Everybody was doing it, yeah, and you could write or you could buy a product at a discount on Amazon. So a lot of people were issuing coupon codes for like 99% off In some case. I think at one point you could even do free, but they took that away, so you could basically get a product for free. So you would sign up, for your Facebook groups were doing this. There were companies that set up to do this, and they would. You would go and get the product here’s my new garlic press. You would get it for free and then you’re able to actually, once the product came, you could go and you could write a review, an authorized review on Amazon, as long as you put in a disclaimer that said something to the effect of I’m writing this review in exchange for a product or something, something along those lines and then on October, and that’s how everybody would rank. So there was companies that started up, like Zonblast was another one, and you guys, and it would not only help you rank, but you could also get reviews and that’s how you could instantly launch it a day or two on, to the top of all the results on Amazon.
Kevin King:
It was crazy times. It’s a wild, wild West. And then Amazon clamped down on that in October of 2016. Didn’t stop a lot of people. They just kind of worked or what did it a little bit differently, but you were one of the first guys I think I love to review. They kind of moved in a dissent. You saw the writing on the wall and moved in a different direction. Right, I mean, you’re one of the first ones that said, okay, enough of this, we’re not gonna play this game anymore.
Keith:
Yeah, as soon as I mean. We got emails from Amazon legal right a bunch of us and so once we verified that the email was legit, right, and we went through a bunch of certain sources to do that.
Kevin King:
What does email say? It basically said like a cease and desist or yeah, you’re in trouble, come to the principal’s office, or what I didn’t say we were in trouble.
Keith:
But it went a step further and it said you know, with Amazon’s recent policy updates to TOS, we have deemed your service as against terms of service. And then the last part was why we stopped, which is said continuing your services will put your business and your clients businesses at risk of suspension. So or further legal action. And so as soon as it like it put in there that clients would potentially be at risk, it was a game over for us. And so you know that was never something that we would do. And ironically, I announced that we were going to shut that company down on a like 2000 person CPC strategy webinar that we were all scheduled to do, with Pat Petrillo hosting and navigating, basically unpacking this big change. But you know we pivoted, but you know our company name was now against terms of service. There wasn’t a lot of coming out of that one.
Kevin King:
So was that the only thing you guys were doing back there? Were you doing other services? Were you like a precursor to the agency model, or were you just doing the launch?
Keith:
That’s all we did and you know we took a lot of pride in doing it right. I mean, we modeled the company after Vine back in the day, so like we were the unique service where you couldn’t contact your reviewers, you didn’t know any of their history, like it was. There was a firewall, and so you know, I kind of I’m an idealist, right, so I knew the day was coming, but I was hoping to be the bubble gum force gum will last, both standing after the storm and. But it didn’t happen that way, Kevin. So, yeah, we had to kind of firewalled it and you couldn’t contact anyone, you couldn’t influence, review, none of it. But you know, we felt like we were running it all completely white hat per Amazon TOS, and I mean we used Amazon’s review guidelines to train the reviewers and you know we were the first ones to like be able to scrape the review to see if they actually put that disclaimer in there, and those that didn’t, we just kicked out. So we kept it really, really clean At the. Ironically, when we shut down, we were generating about 25 30,000 reviews a month and we had like a 97% review rate on products distributed. It was it was just really getting awesome.
Kevin King:
I remember there was guys that were gaming the system back then to. They would sign up under like 10 different email addresses, 10 different Amazon accounts and they get 10 products, and then it was a fight is like slap a nat, because they would then turn back around and sell it on my listing yeah, basically getting the product 100% free and then they would just turn around and just sell it at full price or undercut me by a few bucks and take sales away from me. And that used to be a. What did you guys?
Keith:
do to fight that. We actually implemented in our membership terms financial penalty for doing that and so it really kind of scared people into submission. So it was like $1,500 per instant incidents. And then we had part of our customer service team actually went after and police to Amazon and actually sent season to system on behalf of our clients.
Kevin King:
What was it? I can’t remember. What will we pay in back then? It was like three bucks, five bucks. What was it?
Keith:
It was like we had a small, like $400 campaign fee and then it was like I think 399 or four bucks per coupon redeemed.
Kevin King:
So you’re doing 25 to 30,000 per you said, per week or per month Per month, so that was a multimillion dollar business.
Keith:
Yeah, yeah, we were had a run rate of about 2 million when we shut down.
Kevin King:
And where did you? How did you recruit the reviewers yourself of Facebook, or they come to you guys, or do you early days of social media and social media what it is today?
Keith:
Yeah, we found, like a lot of the other ones, ran, like you know, referral contests and things like that internally and generated a lot of them for free. And we found when we did that the quality just went way down. So we actually advertised for most of them and so we were paying early days, we were paying to, you know, facebook to generate those reviewers. But it worked. I mean because the quality was better and, and you know we were able to. Most of our competitors ran review campaigns like you could do $100 a month and you could do all you want. And you know our average campaign was about a grand and you know we kept. We had a huge client retention rate and people just stayed, and you know, for a long time and just ran product review campaign after campaign.
Kevin King:
How went back then? The tools weren’t sophisticated. I don’t even know. When you first started, helium 10 didn’t even exist and there was a few other tools. But how were you determining how many people? How many did recommend a client give away or sell to actually right?
Keith:
now we built our own internal software for that. So we built a system that would generate. You could, we loaded in the codes. You know you do all single use codes and so, yeah, we have a system that we built that distributed on track at all. And, yeah, there wasn’t any ranking tools, right, so we had to go manually back through the campaigns, look at the listing and see how how much the client and climbed.
Kevin King:
Remember that one guy that he had one of the first keyword tools. It was a. The user interface was garbage, it was like a program. He’s a programming guy. There’s another fellow that had a tool keyword planner, keyword tracker, something, something along those lines and it was a really rudimentary you do. You had to copy a programmer to understand it but it was actually really good. But he also yeah, he actually wrote a little program to watch you talking about the coupon codes is one of the things that would happen is People go in there and they set their coupon codes up wrong and you want it to be like a forget the exact wording, but like One per limit, one per customer, one per redemption or something. But if you, if you didn’t click this one little button it wasn’t always the most obvious you would basically that coupon could be used over and over and over. So people would get it was a. They would send in a thousand units, say they want to do a promotion with somebody for a hundred or two hundred units, but they forget to restrict the coupon code. So someone would figure out that this coupon code is not restricted. Go wipe out your inventory and this software tool and he would look for that. Yet she wrote a cron job to actually go and look for that. He is, business Was not to sell on Amazon but provide keyword tools and to take advantage of people that were setting up program, setting up Discounts and giveaways, and didn’t set it up properly. And he would go under a different name, different company, and wipe them out and then resell that stuff.
Keith:
Yeah, I feel like I remember that same guy. Like had an embedded script in that software to turn His customers computers into mining crypto yeah, yeah, exactly that’s him, yeah, oh goodness, oh my goodness, you can’t make this stuff up, Kevin.
Kevin King:
It was crazy. Yeah, this is the wild, wild west, so what? So that came out in October 2016 and how quickly after that did y’all shut down? I love to review.
Keith:
Almost immediately and we knew we were going to pivot right and do something else. We had a good reputation in the industry for being providing good, so we had made sellers a lot of money in those couple of years, right. So I mean, we made some money ourselves, but we made people a lot of cash, and so we knew we want to stay in the industry. And so now it was a tough time, though I mean we, we were down for a couple of weeks. We launched back with, you know, just a promotional campaign, services that didn’t, you know, didn’t create reviews, which was still per terms of service, until it wasn’t.
Kevin King:
A search find by kind of thing without you.
Keith:
Yeah, and then people would accidentally leave reviews. No, we actually.
Kevin King:
I’m not to.
Keith:
We didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, so we launched that and listing optimization services pretty much straight away. It was a different under a different name though right change the guy was it coming called market hustle, which I in turn rolled. We had market hustle then. Then, about six months later, we launched photography and design services under seller photo, and then, about a year later, I rolled them both up into page one.
Kevin King:
And page one still exists. That’s your agency you know, and what is page one? So what? What’s all in now, eight years later, seven years later, what’s incorporated into page one? What do you, what do you guys do now?
Keith:
Yeah, so about half of the business is managed services. So we manage ad spend and then we manage full account brand management, and then the other side is project work on creative and content services. And so you know the project side supports obviously our own clients, but then you know most of our other clients in the project side at this point Hasn’t always been this way, but at this point our large brands are where we do bulk orders and then we actually do a lot of creative and content work for other agencies.
Kevin King:
So is this? So your agency? Are these big companies? Are smaller sellers, or a mix, or what’s your specialty?
Keith:
It’s a man, I would say. You know our avatar would be the two to twenty million dollar a year company on Amazon. We have some manufacturers you know a couple of manufacturer clients, you know so based in the US, older companies I think our oldest that we have a client that the company was founded in 1882. Fortune 500 company. We work with their one of their DTC divisions, so it’s a little bit of a mix of everything. On the project side it’s mostly larger brands and agencies.
Kevin King:
And back like this we’re talking about. Back in the day it was people, it was keyword tools and launch tools that were the big focus, yeah, and now I think there’s I don’t know what the count is there’s got to be thousands of software tools in this Amazon space and now it seems like the agency model really didn’t exist back then. And now it seems like every failed seller is an agent and every, and it’s become inundated with eight, with service providers, and you go to some of these shows. I mean, a few months ago we were at Accelerate and think that was mostly sellers, which was a nice refreshing, but a lot. And that’s because Amazon, you had to have a seller account to actually go to the event. And you know, I know a few people, that kind of backdoor, that a little bit, but you’re able to work around that if you want to, but it was mostly sellers. But you go to a lot of these events and you and I, you know we different events all over and sometimes you feel like the sellers are 10% of the 20% of the room and everybody else there is to sell you something, is there to sell you something, and so it seems like anybody that tries this Amazon game and does it fails for them or it doesn’t work, becomes a service provider like oh wait, this is a little easier, I can sell air and time instead of trying to manage inventory. And it’s become where there’s some great agencies out there and some good people, but there’s a lot of garbage. What’s your take on what’s happened and how has that affected like your business and you guys as a service provider?
Keith:
Yeah, I mean, I think that I mean we used to not bump into other agencies, but you know, now, like most of a lot of the other agencies are our colleagues and friends of mine, right? So you know, most of the midsize agencies are run by people I know and and they do really good work. I think it’s easy to kind of like there’s a difference between, like, a consultant that has a handful of clients, right, and I think that that’s different. I think, if you’re really good at managing advertising, you know, and you want to consult on the side of maybe you ran your brand or whatnot, you know, I don’t have any problem with that, I think. But that’s not a, that’s not an agency like they’re not there yet, right, it’s just a solo entrepreneur that’s doing consulting work and probably doing all themselves, and I think there’s a need for that, right, they’re generally less expensive, but at some point, if they want to keep growing their business, they’re going to make decisions about do I become a company, right? And there’s an inflection point to that.
Keith:
You know, I think that on large scale agencies, the biggest challenge I see is agencies that overwork their staff. You know, they believe them really thin because we’re all selling time and so they’re going to pack a brand manager on with 10, 12, 15 clients. Like how do you do it? It just doesn’t. The hours just don’t make any sense. Now. You can’t manage a large or midsize brand on two to three hours a week. It just doesn’t work. So I think that’s an inherent problem, that that is an agency problem dating way back before Amazon. Right, they just people, just fill them up, fill up their, their staff, with way too many accounts. But I think you know it’s a brand’s job to vet an agency or consult them before hiring them, and you know there’s a lot of ways to do that. You know before you know, I’ve had clients that have literally asked for client referrals and go and call out and actually call our existing or previous clients and interview them. So you know, I think there’s a lot of due diligence on the on the brand’s part that’s required, especially now it’s with so many, so many people in the space.
Kevin King:
But agencies I think I’ve always said this and correct me if you, if you have a different opinion, but you’re the agency is only as good as the person assigned to your account. And so a lot of agencies say, well, we have systems and we have SOPs and we have ways, but I still that’s great and that that that helps, or maybe have special tools that you’ve developed or you know how to actually use the tools that are out there that a lot of people don’t know how to use, but it’s still only as good as that person on your account. And going back to what you said to, it’s not only their skill set, but it’s also how many accounts are they managing? You know it’s going to affect that too. So I think that’s where you see a lot of people bumping from agency to agency to agency. How do you find these people that you’re training? Are these VAs in the Philippines or Pakistan that you’re training up? Are these people that used to sell and actually have a kind of a sense of how this stuff works? Or how do you find those good people and put in good systems to make make sure you know you’re not having shurn with your clients all the time?
Keith:
Yeah, that’s a great question and one that’s probably not addressed very much, to be honest, you know, but there is there usually is a gap, right. Agencies are generally run by you know people with big personalities and they can get out and promote, but they are generally not the people working on your account. I mean, I still do strategy on a number of accounts, but I’m not internal inside accounts pulling levers, right. So I think and it’s become more challenging the rise of the aggregator last couple of years made it way more difficult to find quality staff and they drove the price up of staff massively in 2021 and 2022, because aggregator is basically just a big agency that buys their clients, right, I mean, they’re all buying accounts, but they need all the same staff that we do, and so, with deep pockets, they’re willing to pay people, you know, a fairly absorbent rates and they’ve come down a little bit, kevin, but they’re still way higher than they used to be. So we do a combination of a couple of things. So we hire out, we try to hire out good talent, all of our brand managers and we have a newer VP of advertising. They’re all US based, with experience mostly with experience at agencies previously, and some of which were brand owners or currently are brand owners as well, and so our client facing folks are all here in the US and we’ve got to pay top dollar for that. And then we have support network behind that is both onshore and offshore. You know any agency that has? I don’t know any actual agency, maybe one advertising agency that doesn’t have any offshore staff. It’s just it’s almost impossibly price competitive if you don’t.
Kevin King:
And once a client comes in and you assign them to somebody, does anybody cross check them Like do they ever trade places? Do you ever have like a guy who’s working on X, y and Z company and the other guy that’s working on ABC for a week. They swap places to see what the other one might have missed or have a different perspective on it. Or is it just that you’ve got one guy working on it and you all have weekly meetings and you kind of go over whatever? How does that work to actually keep people on their toes and make sure you’re given the best job?
Keith:
That’s a great question yeah, we cross audit a lot, so we have team leads that are not actually working in any accounts so they can stay very objective and go in there and see what is happening without being the one in the weeds all the time. But you gotta put really solid SOPs in place, really solid training, and then audit yourself all the time. Right and so, like our VP of advertising audits the PPC managers to make sure that they’re on task and meets with them weekly, I often audit the brand managers and come back over and looking for things that they’ve missed, if they’ve missed anything. But we’re constantly revising strategy within the team as well as with the client.
Kevin King:
Is it better to hire someone with experience in those positions or better to hire someone that has aptitude and skill rather than experience, and you train them up? Or is it better to get someone that actually has dabbled in seller central, because those people could be stuck in their ways and learn improperly from another agency or another client?
Keith:
I think it depends on where you’re at as a company. Training from someone up from ground zero takes a long time right. So I think if it’s catalog managers and account health people, back end, like handling the Amazon issues and listing suppressions and all the back end stuff I think you can train someone from scratch on there. But I would rather have someone’s got a couple of years that they’ve learned that someone else’s dime and not our client’s dime and then go and do really proper evaluations, the way that they work, and then teach them our processes and make sure that they’re on our path. Advertising people we don’t hire anyone fresh off the boat. There’s just too much to learn. It changes too fast and it’s too long to bring people up to seats. Same for brand managers we look for a couple of years at the agency level or inside of a brand minimum.
Kevin King:
What’s the hardest thing to manage out there. So when the clients come to you, what is the toughest thing with the people are always clients are always complaining about it. They’re always the least happy about. What is that one area that’s just a pain in the ass.
Keith:
Yeah, I think probably not the answer you’re looking for, but managing expectations in general is probably the hardest part. So we try to set very realistic.
Kevin King:
You think you’re magicians, right?
Keith:
Yeah, like, why isn’t my A plus up already? Well, we submitted it. Amazon needs to review it. It’s a process, right, it’s not instant. Like we don’t own Amazon, right, they approve everything. So I think if you do a really good job of setting a clear vision for the brand, aligning on the strategy to get there and then managing the expectations within that process and then just communicating very proactively, you do get in front of a lot of the questions and you kind of eliminate, like reactive brands and sellers and things like that. But we don’t work with a lot of folks that came out of the DIY space. They used to do it all themselves internally at the brand and then went and hired an agency. An agency is never gonna run your business like you did when you started. Like it just doesn’t work. Right, you stared at Seller Central 24-7 while you were launching your brand and fixated on all these nuances. And we’re gonna get into the weeds on a lot of things, but we’re gonna set strategy that is gonna be big rocks that are gonna move the brand in the right direction, and then try to eliminate all the stuff that stop it, like listings getting suppressed or rank dropping or sessions dropping and to do is why those things are happening, and fix it as much as we can and quick as we can, and we have a pretty good success rate with that. But it’s impossible to get everything Again. Amazon’s its own beast and you’ve gotta sometimes be reactive with, even with that, managing an account.
Kevin King:
So how are the new tools that are automating a lot of things that you might have to have VA’s in the background doing manually before? A lot of new tools have automated that process? And then you have AI. That’s the hot talk right now. That’s people are saying, oh, some people are of the school thought that, well, you’re not gonna need a PPC manager anymore, it’s AI is gonna be able to do it all. Instead of 10 people, you’re gonna be able to do it with one person, maybe sitting at a time. Where are you seeing this going? Or what are your predictions for how this is gonna affect? Or you’re like, ah, that’s just a bunch of overblown smoke.
Keith:
No, it’s definitely not overblown. I think, you know, to ignore the value of AI would be short-sighted, right, I think that there’s a lot of opportunity within the space, like a lot of things. It’s not there yet in many areas, like you know. Like you said, we came back from accelerated a few months back and you know when we did, we immediately started testing the listing creation AI tool. I would never put a listing up with that, you know. Like you know, early days it was like it was like scraping other competitors brand names and putting them into your listing and it was all kinds of garbage. So it’s not there yet. It gets better quickly. I think the, you know the, you know the in our space, advertising has had the longest run with AI and I, you know, we work with a platform that uses AI. We have for years. You know. There’s AI around setting rules and having those apply, and then there’s AI around bid management. Right, bid management makes the most sense because it can just, you know like, try to try to run bid management manually on a catalog of 300 products, right, like it’s just. I mean you can do bulk uploads, right, but either way, it’s still daunting, right? So you need some support there. You just got to, but you have to someone and this is the job of the agency.
Keith:
If they’re using a tool, you have to become an expert at how to train that tool, cause it just doesn’t work out of the box the way that you know it’s. It’s it’s like the project management system and you look, you go into it and you look at the sales video and, my God, this is amazing. And then you get the SaaS product and it’s just like. It’s like an IKEA piece of furniture, right, and you’re like this thing, how do you get it to do what I saw in the video? Right, I want that version. And the reality is you’ve got to customize it right To fit your brand and and and your goals and your budget and your vision right. So it takes a lot of human interaction to get there.
Kevin King:
I see the AI right now, where we’re at right now at least, and this could change but is it’s great? Some of the menial things and some of the just you know, repetitive tasks that a robot could do, you know, download this spreadsheet, move these columns over here, do that kind of stuff that you might’ve had to have a VA in the Philippines at one point doing, you know, for four bucks an hour. It can automate a lot of that and it’s. But it’s like you said on the listing manager, that the listing creator, the AI listing creator, I wouldn’t trust that damn thing either. I don’t trust Amazon when they tell me how much to ship in. You know, when they give you these estimates. I don’t trust any of that. So the only thing I trust is that they have traffic and eyeballs, I think, where a lot of people they’re too lenient on the AI, and AI is not a creative tool. It’s great with the right inputs, and so some of the image creation can be pretty cool if you know how to input. Do the input right, just kind of like what you said you watch the video and how do you make it? Do this thing.
Kevin King:
And when it comes to writing, like on listings. I think to write a listing from scratch based on a picture or a single line, it’s impossible, it’s going to suck. It’s got to suck, at least now. But if you have a listing already done and you want to fine tune it, I think it’s great at that, at finding some of the holes or rewriting it in a more clever or better way or including some additional keywords that you might have missed. And that’s where, like with my newsletter, I don’t use AI to write any of that, but sometimes, well, if I’m in a brain fog, I’m like okay, let me take this story that I wrote. I will tell chat GPT rewrite it. I will write it out, the whole thing, and then I’ll say rewrite this in a certain style or in a funny way, or what’s a good line for this. And then I go through and I cherry pick, you know you might come up with a good sentence here or there or better way to say something like that’s creative, that’s actually pretty cool and I swap it out, but I don’t just take it as is, and I think a lot of people are just looking for the lazy way out, and that’s where I think some of these agencies that start leaning on that too much are going to have problems.
Keith:
Yeah, I mean, I think you’re exactly right. It’s almost like call the AI bot, you know, like an employee, right? And so, hey, I want you to do this, okay. So I like what you did there, but let’s make it more like this. And then I like what you did there, let’s leave that and do more like this. So it’s like you’re editing drafts right, and you got to get really good at the prompts, but we’ve never we use it in the same way you did. We’ve never, ever, had a listing that’s generated by AI come out like even 90% there, let alone 50 or 60. And I think that the tricky thing is, over the years, like we’ve had to evolve to continue to write listings differently and differently and more specific and more tactile, and you know more on specific to the brand, the experience the brand wants to create, and less generic, right, and the AI tends to be a little generic. I do have a funny AI story though. Yeah, I’m in an entrepreneur group out here, and we were in Jamaica on a retreat a few million earlier this year and we were on this rooftop bar and one of my buddies was talking to this woman and she’s like oh, we’re from New York, and she’s like what do you do? And he’s like she’s oh, I write children’s book and this guy is super into AI and so, literally as I’m talking to her, he’s on his phone on chat, gpt and I’m mid-journey and within like three minutes he’s like oh, you mean like this one, and it had written out an entire children’s book and illustrated the entire thing. I mean, and it was awesome, right, it was unique and clever. So you know, Midjourney or AI is good for that stuff, Kevin, but it’s got a lot of.
Kevin King:
But you speak of that. Amazons just cracked down on that because that became one of the new get rich quick themes on YouTube over the last spring and summer is how to publish on Kindle children’s books. And it was a big issue with travel books where people were becoming Rick Steves and National Geographic and writing having AI write me a book about visiting Italy and they were spit out a travel book and they’d make some fancy cover that looked legit and put this travel book up on Amazon. People were buying them and they were pure garbage, like giving wrong directions, like saying missing things, like in Rome they don’t even say to go to the Coliseum. You know it was crazy. So it’s been a big issue on Amazon and Kindle and they’ve just come out and really cracking down on. You have no AI books are allowed anymore on there, I think you know. I don’t know how they’re policing that exactly, but it’s a. That’s an interesting. It was a big get rich quick thing. That was a major, major problem in the publishing industry.
Keith:
It’s unbelievable. The amount of things that help people that are trying to scam people think like, the amount of effort and energy they put into this stuff is unbelievable. And this has always happened in this space and it’s really interesting. It’s hard to even get fathom when you don’t think criminal, right, yeah, I mean you can write.
Kevin King:
I mean AI can do something cool, like if you’re doing it for your kid or something like that or something. But I think people that are doing it AI books and putting them up on Kindle, you get I don’t know. You know there’s people that are. If you want to summarize something, you know, if I have, like my freedom ticket course, for example, that’s 60, some odd hours of training with Helium 10. And if I, one of the ideas is debate has been to take that and create a book out of it. Well, if I don’t want to actually Just pay someone to edit that and do that, Then having AI just summarize that and go through it might be an option, but you’re still going to have to have someone go back through it and make sure it didn’t mess something up. That could be a practical use for it and that’s a legitimate use to turn that into like a you know the Cliff Notes version or something of the course. But to just have it spit stuff out randomly or from scratch, I think is could be problematic.
Keith:
Yeah, I mean, you know you’re an author, I wrote a novel many, many years ago and, like you know, these are just think, if this thing takes off, like you know, where’s our culture going to be in 10, 15 and 20 years? And you know people actually haven’t cultivated their own work. That comes out of their, you know, heart and mind and it’s yeah, it’s scary and a little sad.
Kevin King:
Well, it’s not just the Kindle stuff, though, too. It’s also newsletters. Right now, newsletters are a hot topic because there’s some newsletters that sold for millions of dollars. You know the Milk Road Daily Hustle, several that have sold for millions. So it’s attracted a lot of people into the, into the SEO people, into the newsletter space, and they’re using AI to crank out these newsletters. That 90% of them are pure garbage and it’s just going to. It’s going to, and they’re making these big promises that you can build this thing up and sell this for gazillions of dollars, and it’s just not going to happen. You’re going to have one or two sneak through and those are the poster boys or poster girls, and that’s that’s it, and it’s every, yeah, it’s every. New technology brings on new opportunities, right.
Keith:
Yeah, yeah, a new way of people trying to take advantage of it, right.
Kevin King:
So, when it comes to the agency side of things, what is what’s the end goal? If you’re, if I’m selling, if I’m starting an Amazon FBA business, I, I your end goal should be to eventually exit that Business, cause that’s where you’re going to make the most money is when you exit it, not in actually running it. Sure, from the agency side, that’s a little bit harder to do. I mean, there are some agencies that get spot and sold, but it’s a little bit tougher game. So what’s the building up an agency with all these people and all this overhead and all this stuff to manage? What’s the end game there for someone like you guys?
Keith:
You’re making me sound crazy for doing it, kevin.
Kevin King:
so yeah, I mean, is it the pay the bills and retire, or is it? Is it actually? Is there some sort of merger or end game? Or get bought by a proctor and gamble to have them do all their stuff, or what’s the what’s the end game?
Keith:
There’s a lot of opportunity. I mean I probably, like my fellow agency owners, get. I mean I probably get contacted about every other week of someone looking to buy or invest in an agency. So there’s plenty of people out there that there’s plenty of a market for, for solid agencies. There’s been a lot of acquisitions in our space, you know, by box expert got acquired a few years back by spreetail. So my friends have made that, you know, smaller acquisitions underneath their agencies and I think you know the goal is exit at some point. I don’t, you know, I’m 52. So you know I’ve got years left. I enjoy it right now, kevin. We’re growing and I love working on brands and help and doing the strategy work and helping them grow. So there will come a point in time where I don’t want to do that anymore and so we’ll either promote from within and I’ll become a minority shareholder at that time and go do other things, maybe play pickleball full time but or I’ll look to button up underneath a larger agency and then potentially be part of a bigger exit.
Kevin King:
You said play pickleball full time. I understand you and you are like a massive pickleball player, like you carry your racket. You know I think it’s a Scott Scott Deets, he’s a massive music audio file and he actually he has this like $3,700 speaker. It’s like this little speaker, some company in Europe. It’s so cool that I actually ended up buying one too. But he had a custom, custom case, made like one of those custom roller cases or whatever you take on the plane or backpack, whatever it is, and he takes this everywhere he goes, in every hotel room. He puts the speaker in the hotel room and, you know, relaxes to music and I’m the speaker. I have to admit it does sound like I never heard anything like it. It sounds like you’re right there at the concert. When you know you play some ACDC or something. It sounds like you’re right there next to the amp. It’s really, really cool. And some I’ve been been to a few events where he’ll invite somebody up. You know, hey, come listen to a Leonard Skinner or come listen to whatever, and you know, so it’s kind of cool. But you don’t do that with speakers, you do that with a pickleball racket. So you told me like on all your trips. You pack your pickleball racket If you’re going to an Amazon event or taking a little trip because you playing like four or five times a week or something Right.
Keith:
When I’m home I play. I mean, you know, I try to give my body a couple days rest, but I play at least four days a week, sometimes six, and yeah, I try to work it into travel. I mean, it’s for me, it’s like you know people that take their workout clothes or go for a run when they’re traveling. I like to play pickleball and it’s it’s an incredibly social sport and it’s one of the unique things that you can do something. Do it with other people that you don’t know anywhere in the world that you are, and so, like you know, I know where there’s courts in Vegas, you know off strip and you know travel through other locations, and the only reason I am play when I saw you at Accelerate is because I spent four days in Utah playing once or twice a day every day leading up to that. So I love it, man, I’m like mildly addictive, but it’s a healthy obsession and, and it’s something that you know, I hope I do for as long as I can.
Kevin King:
So for those of that don’t know what pickleball is, can you explain? It’s kind of like a mix between what racket ball and tennis or something, or what’s it, what’s?
Keith:
it’s probably yeah, probably. The best analogy would be you know, tennis meets ping pong meets badminton, so the court’s about a third of the size of a tennis court. You’re playing with hard paddles, no strings on the paddles, and the ball is like a wiffle ball, like we used to use as kids in the in the sandlot, right. And it bounces 20 ways. It doesn’t bounce very much at all, right. So it definitely bounces, but you don’t get a lot of height out of the bounce, like every bounce. Going to be lower on like a tennis ball really is spring. This is made out of plastic, right, and the paddles are like newer ones, are like carbon fiber and, yeah, the court is small. So it’s a. It’s a position game with a massive variable and pace throughout one point. Right, so it’ll go from really slow to really sped up and fast. But, unlike tennis, you play most of the game literally standing 14 feet away from your opponents, like right up to what they call the kitchen line. So it’s, it’s fast, it’s strategic, it’s a phenomenal workout. I think I lost 15 pounds in the first couple of months when I started playing and it’s just super fun. So I’ve made friends everywhere I’ve played and it’s. That’s that you. It’s a very unique thing. Like tennis, you can’t do that. I mean, I don’t know any other sport that you can just walk on and create a social circle.
Kevin King:
So the ball can’t hit the ground, is that right? Oh no, it can yeah yeah, one bounce.
Keith:
There’s a zone on each side of the neck called the non volley zone. It’s like seven feet off the net on each side and you cannot play a ball out of the air when you’re standing in that area, so it prevents you from going right up to net and slamming it yeah. So once the ball bounces, you can play it from within that area, but you can play the ball in the air anywhere else outside of that zone.
Kevin King:
Is it a one on one game or two on two, all the time?
Keith:
They play singles, but predominantly people play doubles yeah.
Kevin King:
I hear they’re now they’re converting like the old bed, bad bath and beyonds into like indoor pickleball courts and that’s like I know here in Austin I think the world head there’s something but they’re building the world headquarters or World Federation of pickleball or some.
Keith:
They’re building some huge thing here in Austin there’s like 82 courts and like some sort of like you know, the NFL of pickleball or something in the sports world, pickleball is currently the gold rush right. You know, on Amazon there’s a lot of opportunity in pickleball products and gear. You know paddles as a kind of a red ocean at the moment. It’s so competitive, you know. But there’s lots of opportunities outside of it, you know there’s large companies that have built, you know, from two to 10 facilities. There’s a couple of franchises chicken and pickle Pickler Club, USA Pickleball, and I mean in Florida there’s crowdfunding going on to be part owners of facilities. It’s crazy and they’re converting old unused tennis courts and old unused retail shops like nuts.
Kevin King:
So is it free to play, like when you show up, when you’re, when you’re in Utah and you played four days in a row? Do you have to have some sort of membership, or you just show up at a court and buy a beer?
Keith:
and you’re in, or it depends on where you play. So public courts are generally free and there’s a lot of them, right? I mean, where I live in Florida, we probably have 70 ish, maybe more, public courts that are all free, different locations. You know 10 years, six years, six years. We did play indoors once in Utah when I was there at a club called the Pickler, and you know that’s a membership based program and you know you pay a membership fee, you pay a little amount for court time and you play, but you’re inside under AC, no way, and it’s awesome.
Kevin King:
How do you control it If you said you just randomly come up and you you put your racket in a little hole or something and say I want next game, kind of like putting your quarter on the edge of a pool table or whatever in the old days. What is what? If you’re new, I mean, I’ve never played it. I’ve wanted to. But I show up and you’re on the court and I jump in. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Are you just like dude, get the freak off of here, Go over there and play with the little kids, or what do you? How do you control that?
Keith:
I’ve brought lots of my friends in the pickleball zone where they’re over the last couple of years, so I always recommend the same thing. So there’s it’s very similar to the Amazon journey, right? There’s tons of free training on YouTube. So I’d say you know, go, go watch a couple of videos on the rules, go watch a couple of videos on strategy, beginner strategy so you know the basics right. And then find in your local area a group clinic for beginners and that’ll probably put you in a group with 20 or 25 other people. So you, but at that point you don’t need individualized coaching, you need the basics right, so it’ll teach you how to hold the paddle, it’ll teach you to go over the basic rules. You know, the basic shots you know, and then, once you’ve done that, you know you can actually get out. And the first time you go, grab a group of people that are all around, you know brand new and just go play for fun, right, and the reason and one of the reasons the sports growing so fast is cause you’ll have fun the very first time you play, regardless of what level you’re at, you know. So it’s it’s very hard as an adult to start something and suck at it and still have a good time, right, I mean, we just don’t do this very often, like we want to be good at something from the beginning. So and then you can make, make gains really quickly and you’ll get to a point where it gets hard to improve, but you can get to a comp, you know, a level that is least competent fairly quickly.
Kevin King:
Is it always on a hard court or do they do it like volleyball is hard court and sand? Or is it always on a hard?
Keith:
court. It’s all, all hardcore you have. You have indoor around the country like playing that, like on a basketball court. But it’s a very different game and you know the the, the true purists. The game don’t care for it very much.
Kevin King:
So what? What is it that makes it so much fun? Is it just it’s very? You said it could be slow or it can be fast paced. Is it just? Is it the challenge of it, or what is it that? Just a little bit you’re, you’re everybody’s competitive? What? What is it that makes it so addictive and so fun?
Keith:
So I kind of compared to pizza sometimes, right, so compete. Pizzas just got this very unique set of things that together make it very addictive. Right, there’s sugar in the sauce. You can have all these different ingredients. It’s really easy to eat. You do it with your hands, right, it’s somewhat interactive. And the others, yeast in the bread. All these things combined to make pizza very, very addictive food, right. And so you know pickleball easy to play from the first time. You have a blast the first time you play it. You’re laughing with people. Almost every time you play you create it instantly, kind of creates a new social network over this. It’s very like. The ethos of the game is very community based and inclusive and then as you progress, you can get more competitive. Like I’m playing in a tournament next weekend. I never thought I would compete at sports again, you know, after high school and now, 30 years later, 35 years later, I’m now competing actively against peers. You know so, and you can continuously like you can make improvements by working on your game intently. You know over time, quickly. So all those things combined just make it just awesome.
Kevin King:
Now, is this a Fat Man’s game or for someone that’s in shape to do this, or is it for, basically, you have 90 year old grandmas and kids all playing the same court? Because it’s, it’s, it’s, or is it? Take a certain like level of athleticism to actually do this.
Keith:
I think you can play at all levels regardless of your athleticism Right. And that’s another really cool thing about it. I’ve been on a court where I’m playing with a with a 14 year old kid, and the other on the other side of the court is his dad and his grandfather, and all could be really good at the sport Right. So that’s super unique. There’s not a lot of things like that.
Kevin King:
So how long do you play? Is it like for an hour? You play several games an hour. Will you play at 15 or 10 or?
Keith:
Games are over in 10 to 20 minutes generally, and so your that’s another part is constantly rotating. It’s quick, you can take a long attention span. You’re kind of in and out, and then when you’re not playing, you’re talking to all the people that are waiting to play, and so that’s where the a lot of the social part comes in. I will say, although all fitness levels can play, you got to take care of your body, right. So as we get older, things hurt, right. That didn’t hurt before. Pickleball is kind of put occupational and physical therapist back on the map, right. So it’s easy to get injured. So you got to kind of prep, you got to stretch, you got to warm up and uh, and to take care of yourself and be smart while you’re playing.
Kevin King:
So, back on the Amazon side, if I’m an oven brand out there listening to this right now and I’m like I need to hire an agency to help me with my listing, to help me with my PBC, to just do it. What are some of the criteria? What should? What are like three of the top criteria I should be looked for when I’m interviewing you versus your competition. What are some things that I need to take Three most important things I should take into consideration Try, hire an agency.
Keith:
Yeah, I think, uh track record of success is one they should be willing to share client examples, whether it’s creative or advertising. Um, you know, generally speaking, you know the days I don’t like, back in the day, no one wanted to tell anyone what they sold and all that stuff. But, um, you know, if they’re working with larger brands, these, these brands, don’t care, right, they don’t, you know, compete. So you know getting some references from them. You know, if they’re saying that they’re good at creative work, get examples. They should have hundreds of them, right? So, um, you know if they’re examples or not of A plus content you wouldn’t put on your own listings? They’re probably not a good fit. Uh, find out what, what their wheelhouse is, right, like, so we started as a creative agency and had to build our PPC business over time. So, you know, for years our, our wheelhouse was creative that converts, and that’s what we were really good at. We’re still good at that, but it took us a while to to build the advertising side. Um and uh. And then you know, all brands are going to be in a life cycle. So, like, if you know if, if you’re going to be the smallest brand in their portfolio, probably not a good idea, right, because you’re just not going to get the attention. You’re paying a lot less money than other people, um and uh.
Keith:
So, and then just dig a little deeper. What you know, how do they set up their brand managers, how many accounts they work on? Find out who actually is going to be working on your account, right, whether you’re going to have a, a figurehead, and then at all the work’s done, you know somewhere else. Um, all that makes a difference, you know. And then I think, ultimately you got to. You got to want to be in relationship with them and you know these are generally year long contracts or or sometimes longer. And you got to want to. You got to feel like you’re. You know, you’ve got someone that you want to take the dinner, that knows what they’re doing and how to run your brand, because you’re going to talk to them a lot, and so if your personalities just don’t mesh, then it’s not a good fit, awesome.
Kevin King:
Well, Keith, I’ve got some, uh, pickleball videos I got to go watch here to learn how to how to play Um, so if, uh, this has been great chatting with you. If people want to find out more about your agency, or for about find out more about you, um, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Keith:
Yeah, just hit our site. We’re at page dot one. Uh, so not dot com, but dot one. I think we come up for both, um, but, and then I generally do my networking through LinkedIn, um, so I’m on LinkedIn, I keep the O’Brien.
0:54:21 – Kevin King:
Awesome, Keith. I really appreciate you taking the time today. It was great uh chatting about the old days and uh what’s happening today.
Keith:
You’re the master interviewer coming, man. It was really a pleasure. Uh, you asked phenomenal questions, man, and they’re great. Um, thanks so much for having me on. It’s good to connect and, uh, certainly always a pleasure to spend some time with you.
Kevin King:
It’s always a good time to speak with someone like Keith who’s been around this business. We can reminisce about the old days somebody that are new to the business. You get to hear how it used to be and how the it was quite a bit easier than it is right now. It’s still a great opportunity to sell on Amazon, but those good old days were some crazy times. Uh, just printing money left and right with hardly any efforts. In some. Some cases it was great. I hope you got a lot from this episode. We’ll be back again next week with another incredible episode. Don’t forget to sign up for the Billion Dollar Sellers Newsletter. billiondollarsellers.com. I have a virtual event coming up in February that you can attend from anywhere in the world. I have my event in Hawaii coming up in May, but in the meantime, sign up for that free newsletter. It’s twice a week, billiondollarsellers.com. Before we leave today, I’ve got some words for advice for you. You know your gift is what you do well, naturally. Your gift on this planet is what you do well, naturally. Have a great week. See you next time.
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