Mike Begg
[00:00:00] Will: All right. Welcome everyone to this episode of monetizing your mental capital. I am really excited here. I have Mike bag here with us and I want to make sure I said that right bag, correct? Yeah, that's it. It's pretty simple. Uh, you know, solid, straightforward to the point, Mike, if I ran into an Amazon seller and they were interested in monetizing mental capital, meaning monetizing the non tangible, you know, let's say that they, my brother actually, you can see, this is a, It's one of those chip things.
[00:00:34] Will: So like you use your mouse and whatnot, you don't want to get your fingers greasy. You can pick up the chip and eat it without getting your fingers greasy. Um, these things, these things sell on Amazon for like five or 10 bucks. And he printed them off of his 3d printer for like 30 cents. So maybe there's a business to be had there, but if I gave a seller a pair of these or the blueprint or a manufacturer, maybe I connected them to my brother.
[00:01:01] Will: He, and there was demand for it. He could make money using this tangible good, right? Well, the point of this podcast is helping sellers. who want to go and find things up here, um, in non tangible goods and identify ways to make money with them. Productized service, you know, building an agency, building a freelance business on the side, like basically monetizing that intangible mental capital.
[00:01:27] Will: My question for you, Mike, is why would someone who wants to monetize intangible mental capital want to listen or hear from you?
[00:01:34] Mike: Well, uh, considering that I've built an agency and I've actually am building three other agencies all at the same time. I have a lot of experience taking what I have done or the ideas I've had on how to grow accounts and then productize it.
[00:01:48] Mike: So I think I've been down that road many times and that's probably why you would want to listen to me.
[00:01:54] Will: Okay. All right. All right. So you've got some past experience. I like that. So real quickly, you've built an agency and you're currently building three more. Tell
[00:02:03] Mike: me more. Yeah. It sounds insane, doesn't it?
[00:02:06] Mike: But obviously AMZ Advisors, that's the main agency I run. It's the largest agency I have. We've been around since 2015. Uh, we have about 60 employees and almost a hundred brands we're working with. In Amazon years, 2015 is like, that's like before dirt was invented.
[00:02:23] Will: That was on yours.
[00:02:24] Mike: That was the sweet times.
[00:02:25] Mike: That's when you just threw a product up and you were making 100, 000 a month and you printed money. Yes. I got it. I got it. Okay. Yeah. Um, so that one's been around for a little while. That one's been around. And then from that we've launched, uh, and from people that I've met and partners that I've made, we've launched other services and other agencies.
[00:02:44] Mike: So, uh, one example of that would be Go Advance. Go Advance is specific to Latin America. Uh, there's a lot of challenges that brands have with expanding to Latin America. Uh, another one I have is AMZ Global. Global focuses on expansion to Europe. So similar issue with helping, having, uh, helping us brands navigate the challenges of logistics, fiscal compliance, product compliance, all that type of stuff to get your products into Europe.
[00:03:09] Mike: Another one I have is a newer one. We don't actually have a name for it yet, but it's actually affiliate marketing and that's something we're working on right now using Amazon attribution, using recruiting platforms and a lot of different tools to, to help us. Take what we were doing for brands and then be able to launch it as a service on its own.
[00:03:26] Mike: So yeah, those are different examples of how I've done that. Okay,
[00:03:30] Will: so let's pick this apart for a minute and we're going to go on a journey together. So the way I'd like to frame this is first, I want you to travel back in time to the first time you monetize mental capital. So not necessarily this agency that you're talking about.
[00:03:45] Will: But I want to go back farther than that. So think lemonade stand, or, uh, you know, I conned my brother out of, uh, quarters for doing his chores or, or, you know, what, whatever that might be, then we're going to pop forward again to this, you know, AMC advisors thing that you're working on, right. The, the agency said that, you know, that's been around since before dirt on Amazon.
[00:04:07] Will: And then, um, I want to really dig into how you came up with some of these ideas. So like AMC advisors, you went from idea to results to now you created a product and you've then grown that those accounts, right? Yeah, I want to kind of focus on that process a little bit, but let's go back. We're getting in the time machine.
[00:04:28] Will: We're going back. When was the first time you monetized mental capital?
[00:04:31] Mike: That's actually very difficult to think about. I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but the one that comes to mind, I wasn't even that young. I mean, I was in college at that point, but this was kind of the first side hustle slash, you know, project I had.
[00:04:47] Mike: During the summers I was working at a marina and, uh, on an island called Block Island. I'm from Connecticut originally, so block island's. Right? Okay. Right next door. There's obviously on the island, there's like three, four marinas, and then there are the moorings, uh, the mooring field where all the boats that don't go to the marinas just tie up to a, to an anchor essentially and flow out in the uh, okay.
[00:05:08] Mike: In the pond. We noticed that. And I say we, it's, it's me and one of my friends. Uh, we noticed that all of the boaters that were on the moorings were looking for ice because it's the summer, they want to keep their things cold. And they were coming to our marina to buy the ice. And we were like, well, why don't we just put the ice on a boat, bring it to them and mark it up.
[00:05:35] Mike: And that was the first instance of Mental capital and monetizing mental capital, I would say. And I think we were making like a nice little spread on that. Plus we were getting tips for bringing the ice to them.
[00:05:46] Will: Okay. So I love that you, you saw demand. It came in, in the form of everybody driving all the way in to get the ice.
[00:05:55] Will: And you were like, wait a second. How much is that time that they're spending coming in worth to them? I bet you, we could mark this up a little bit. So was this like above board? Everybody knew you were doing that or. You know, it was kind of a side hustle.
[00:06:12] Mike: No, it was a side hustle. I mean, we were like, we didn't work full time shifts.
[00:06:16] Mike: We worked like half time shifts throughout the day. So half the day worked, half the day, you know, was slanging. But yeah, I mean, you make a very good point. It's like, how, A boater during the summer on vacation, how much time, how much is this time worth to get in his boat and have to go bring it to get ice versus having the ice brought to him and he can just continue drinking his cocktails and beer without any problems.
[00:06:42] Mike: So that was the problem we solved.
[00:06:44] Will: Did you, did you get it to the point where people like had a, a bright blue flag that they'd put up and then you drive over and bring the mice and the idea of selling ice. I mean, it sounds like you're selling drugs. Um, like, you know, I, I, I used to sell ice to these, you know, giant yachts.
[00:07:02] Will: Like definitely sounds like you're selling drugs. Um, when you put it that way, so it's like, sounds like slang. But, but it wasn't drugs. It was actually ice. So you would go buy it like in the store and then you'd take it out there and sell it, how much of a markup, like double? Uh, yeah, pretty much.
[00:07:23] Mike: It was like three, I think it was like 3 a bag.
[00:07:26] Mike: We were selling it from somewhere. It's dependent on the voter because, you know, you can kind of get a read from them, uh, but it was somewhere between 7 to 8 a bag. This is a really nice boat. This just turned into a 10 bag of ice. Exactly. Exactly. We were buying them for like three, selling them for like seven, eight.
[00:07:43] Mike: And then we were getting tips on top of it for bringing it to them. And each bag, you know, a boaters buy in three, four bags at a time. So each transaction is. anywhere between 30 to 50 bucks. Uh, were
[00:07:54] Will: you, were you making more money doing the side hustle or were you making more money on the docks, like working the
[00:08:01] Mike: part time gig?
[00:08:03] Mike: I was, that's tough because boaters in general love to tip. So working on the docks, you also make a good amount of money, but, uh, side hustle of bringing ice to the boats was definitely more fun because once you satisfy a customer with a bag of ice, that sounds definitely like drug dealing when I put it that way, but, uh, they tend to offer you a refreshing beverage, uh, for your health.
[00:08:26] Mike: So
[00:08:27] Will: it
[00:08:27] Mike: has a lot of benefits.
[00:08:29] Will: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think I would have quit my, uh, quit my day job and just done ice full time, which sounds like drugs too. Um, so I I'm, I'm loving this, uh, for on multiple levels, like, you know, figuring out how to price it, that, that must've been an interesting journey. I, I, for me, the first time, one of the first times I monetized mental capital was I actually started taking pictures, um, I had taken a photography class and, and, and I was like, I'm going to do some like engagements and so like, I went out and took the, these people's engagements and I gave them the engagements and I did it for free and they tipped me 75 bucks and I was like, Wait, I did it again and they tipped me 75 bucks again and that was the last time I did it for free because I was like, okay, even though I've, I've only done this twice.
[00:09:18] Will: It's worth at least 75 bucks. And so then I started inching up my price and inching up my price. And when I stopped getting tips, I was like, okay, now I'm starting to get there. Then I inched it up a little more and then people would push back on it. And I'm like, okay, now I've found, you know, the top of the market of what I can go, is that similar to what you did in terms of like, how did you figure out how much they could actually go for?
[00:09:40] Mike: It was kind of just guessing. I mean, we would just say whatever we wanted. I mean, the. The challenge, whatever we wanted, if they said, yes, we were in the challenge was selling ice is also that ice only had only last so long without being in a cooler. So I also need to figure out how to turn this ice as fast as possible.
[00:10:00] Mike: So it's a combination of finding the right price point, uh, and not letting the product melt. Um, is anyone else? I
[00:10:09] Will: think anybody else listening to this is going to be like, if I inserted the word cocaine or something else for the word ice, like, is it, the product can't go bad over it. You know, it's only good for so long.
[00:10:21] Will: Like this really does sound okay. So that's actually a really interesting problem. Um, from an e commerce perspective, you can't let the inventory sit either. And so all of a sudden the idea of like, well, and actually I saw something on on LinkedIn the other day where Amazon. They've made some different changes around, um, melting products, like products that can melt.
[00:10:43] Will: And what they will allow into FBA, like melting inventory is a real thing. Um, and yours was melting probably faster than other people's as you were, as you were getting it out there.
[00:10:55] Mike: It's funny you say that because I sold chocolate on Amazon before too. So I know all about those melting rules. Oh, chocolate.
[00:11:02] Mike: Yes.
[00:11:03] Will: You sold chocolate on Amazon. Um, got it. Uh, Mike, this is, you know, we're going to, uh, later you'll probably be getting some nefarious phone calls from somebody where they're like, you know, chocolate. Nice. I got it.
[00:11:16] Mike: Um, this is gonna, this is gonna sound so weird when you ask me where I live, but you know, oh, I we're going there now.
[00:11:21] Mike: Then where do you live? Live in Guadalajara, Mexico. .
[00:11:27] Will: This is even better, Mike. Um. You are an ice dealer. I've decided, um, this is epic. Okay. So
[00:11:35] Mike: Mike, tell me it would go advance. Go, oh man, this just gets better. Go advance. We, we help with international logistics, moving packages around Latin America. This just keeps getting better at this point.
[00:11:53] Will: You know, the nuances of, of moving packages internationally, um, especially ice packages, uh, must be quite difficult. Okay. So Mike, you learned how to price these, then you, uh, you kind of got this idea of mental capital. Is that kind of what sparked this idea of like, okay, now I can probably figure out how to resell stuff in the future.
[00:12:17] Will: Did you then move on to becoming an Amazon seller? What, what happened next?
[00:12:21] Mike: No, not actually. No, not at all. Like I. Now that I, it's funny that we talk about the size example, because I hadn't really thought about it before, but. I always say that, like, my 1st experience in entrepreneurship was really becoming an Amazon seller.
[00:12:34] Mike: It wasn't, you know, slang and ice in college. What happened after college was I went and worked in consulting. I went and worked for Deloitte. Did kind of like a typical corporate type of job. Uh, really didn't like accounting
[00:12:47] Will: Deloitte, uh,
[00:12:49] Mike: consulting. Yeah. Okay. Consulting side of Deloitte. Okay. Okay. And, uh, I really didn't like it.
[00:12:55] Mike: It was just long hours, crazy work, and I wanted to do something else. So I studied real estate at NYU. Then I went into real estate development. I got a job at Sears. Uh, Sears was. Not doing great at the time. I joined at the time in the real estate group. What we did was we created a real estate investment trust, uh, spun it off for like 2.
[00:13:16] Mike: 5 billion. And then I stayed on with Sears and kept redeveloping property. So I became a property developer for them. And that's a whole different level of mental mental capital, because you're looking at what does the property have now and how do you turn it into something that's more valuable? That was awesome.
[00:13:31] Mike: I love that. So that was a really good time. But I also saw things that were a little weird to me, like Amazon buying malls and FedEx buying distribution centers and Amazon buying distribution centers. And I was like, Whoa, what's going on here? And then I started learning about FBA, started learning about selling products online, started doing eBooks at first.
[00:13:52] Mike: And then, uh, Arbitrage retail arbitrage by going to Walmart target buying everything on clearance selling it that way increase the money that way and then started buying product from China and selling it online. And then after that started an agency. So, uh, it was a progression, but. It wasn't like, I never really tied what I was doing before.
[00:14:11] Mike: So what did I ended up doing? It was just kind of a matter of what I saw happening in the corporate space.
[00:14:16] Will: Well, I think what's fascinating here is, um, both times it was about recognizing demand, right? Like you, you saw, Hey, wait a minute. These guys are having to come all the way in and buy ice at the Marina and I can take the ice.
[00:14:34] Will: To them, and not only will they, I mean, they'll give me, um, you know, cold, refreshing beverage on top of, you know, adding all of that to that. So, I mean, there, there was demand there, um, that you're going to, then you move to Guadalajara and continue the logistic, not just kidding. Um, I mean, I, I can see, um, Where you're going.
[00:14:53] Will: And then from, from this other standpoint in identifying, Hey, wait a minute, people on Amazon are looking for these products that are on Walmart and they're willing to pay, you know, X amount more than what I can buy it for. So if I bring it to them again in that same form and fashion of the ice, like you're, you're
[00:15:13] Mike: doing it again.
[00:15:14] Mike: Yeah. It's in a way that is exactly what we were doing. And the markups were nice on it. I mean, I don't know what retail arbitrage looks like these days, but it was like 2014. And I was buying the first product I ever sold retail arbitrage. It was like an internet router. I don't even remember the brand at this point, but bought it for like 20 bucks, sold it for like 80.
[00:15:32] Mike: And I was like, that's spread is awesome. Uh, so yeah, I mean, there's always ways of meeting demand, I guess, but it's also just seeing like opportunities or arbitrage is that you can take advantage of, and that's kind of what I was doing in both of those instances.
[00:15:47] Will: So the thing that I think is fascinating is arbitrage is not dead.
[00:15:50] Will: I thought it was pretty dead. I've run into people and I continue to run it. Like, like I ran into a guy a couple of years ago who was doing a lot, a lot of money on arbitrage. I mean, especially in sneakers and different stuff like that. I was like, okay, wow. Like this is still alive and kicking. And I, so, so recently I hadn't run into anybody in quite a while.
[00:16:09] Will: I met a family party two weeks ago and my cousin and I'm, I'm sitting down here on my phone, you know, playing a game or whatever, and I hear my cousin behind me talking to my uncle. And he's like, yeah, we've done like four grand on Amazon. Um, and, and all we're doing is just finding products on Walmart and like, like other retailers and then listing them on Amazon.
[00:16:34] Will: And like our entire front room is, uh, is, is like a fulfillment center right now. And it's just him and his wife. They're new, they're, they're newlyweds and they're like going to town on it. And he's done like four grand gross in the last month and he just got started. And I was like, hold on, hold the phone.
[00:16:51] Will: Do you know that I like, I'm an owner and like a big Amazon, like software company. And like, I do. And he was like, what, holy crap. Introduce me to people. This is like, it was so funny because like, you know, you don't really talk about your professional relationships a lot inside there. He was just talking about a side hustle that he was kind of getting into and figuring out.
[00:17:13] Will: So the answer to the question is. Apparently arbitrage is not dead. I bet it's harder to find deals than it was back then, but, uh, very interesting to see that in a marketplace, um, like this one, if there's still opportunity. For sure,
[00:17:29] Mike: and like here, I mean, I, like I said, I live in Mexico. I think there's probably more arbitrage opportunities outside of the U.
[00:17:36] Mike: S. that's part of what we're helping take advantage of with go advances on that demand. I mean, it's another good example of it. So to talk briefly about that. It's very difficult for foreign brands to get into Latin America. Number one, you need a business in each country that you're selling in. You need a partner that is local in each country.
[00:17:55] Mike: And like, you have obviously all the contracts, everything is in Spanish. It's a different legal system. Product compliance is different. Everything is different. But there's massive opportunities for brands in certain categories, electronics, supplements, uh, cosmetics, uh, food, like these types of categories, there's a lot of demand in Latin America.
[00:18:14] Mike: Uh, like computers is insane. We do a lot of work with, uh, Mercado Libre as well on Mercado on like their. Uh, Hargit product list, I think is what they call it. It's like, these are the types of products we want to get in here. And like 90 percent of it is computers, cell phones, uh, electronics, all that type of stuff.
[00:18:35] Mike: So there's a massive demand for those types of products. It's very hard for foreign brands to get in there. What we're doing at GoVets, we're solving the problem in two ways. One. We're helping these brands getting in by being the distributor for them in Latin America. And two, we're creating more product selection for the consumer.
[00:18:50] Mike: Now the consumer can come to Amazon instead of having to import it from the U S and pay all the tariffs and the import fees and taxes and everything else. They can buy it. Through us, the price would be about 30 to 40 percent less than they would pay. And we actually are able to increase the margin of each sale compared to using NARF and everything else for, uh, brand owners.
[00:19:12] Mike: So it's a win win on both sides. We saw an opportunity with unmet demand. We found a solution for it, which was not easy. And then, uh, we actually launched the service from there. And that's kind of how we started that company.
[00:19:25] Will: I think what you just described is exactly how you productize mental capital.
[00:19:30] Will: Like, like we, we saw a need, we fulfilled that need in a not easy process. And then we met that need, um, In the marketplace and maybe the only piece of it that you're missing there is we found a distribution channel to identify people who needed that to kind of push in there. So, so when you said that, my first thought was, oh, that's what, so, so my passion outside of cellular labs, I love matchmaking entrepreneurs with young entrepreneurs.
[00:20:00] Will: So I find really busy overworked solo panniers or, or small companies, 10, 10 company, 10 people in less. And I find young entrepreneurs who've got tons of time, so hungry they can't see straight but, but lack the, the skill or, or the experience to really succeed in entrepreneurship, and I vet them until I find the ones who aren't going to flake out, and then I matchmake them together.
[00:20:26] Will: And so the reason I did that is because I saw a need, a giant need where I needed to clone myself. I needed to figure out as an entrepreneur, how do I, how do I handle more stuff? And, and as I dug into that need, I then developed a difficult process of vetting and finding. I I've placed like 40 of these guys now and, um, the first 10 were total duds.
[00:20:50] Will: You know, fell out after three months, didn't work in such and such a way. Like there were things that just did not function for what's there. So now I have this very difficult vetted process. And then I figured out through podcasts like this and other discussions with entrepreneurs, how to take a channel or a group of people and tell people about this solution, and now I'm solving this unmet need, which is entrepreneurs that need an employee who cares as much as they do so they don't stop at the first roadblock.
[00:21:20] Will: For whatever new task you gave
[00:21:22] Mike: them. Right. I, I mean, that's phenomenal. Like that idea alone is worth a ton. And like, that's something that I'm constantly looking for, actually. So we may have to have a separate conversation about
[00:21:34] Will: sounds like it sounds like I may have just found some unmet need. I mean, it's so fascinating though.
[00:21:39] Will: Right. Because for me, it was just an idea. It was like, man, I really need to clone myself. And, and. And as I dug into that need and started to kind of come up with what actually made me think of it, I was totally messing around. I was talking to somebody and I was like, I wish I had a time machine and I can go back in time and find me when I was in college, because if I had found me when I was in college, I knew.
[00:22:02] Will: Cause I, what, what had happened is I'd given a virtual assistant a task to go chase something down on a website. And it wasn't a complicated thing. It was like an hour of Googling and you had to kind of think outside the box a little bit slash be a little uncomfortable with the fact that you didn't know exactly what to do next so that you go figure it out.
[00:22:22] Will: And she stumbled on it so hard. Like I had to go pick it up and do it myself. And I was so frustrated with that. I was like, if I just had me back when I was in college, I never would have stumbled on this stuff. And then it hit me like, wait a minute, there are other people in college right now. There are other people young in their career right now.
[00:22:42] Will: Oh my. And so like, that's what led me down this path. And it was like a three year journey to figure all of that out. And it sounds like you similarly, as you dug into this need, you were like, man, this is kind of annoying to set up the business and, and figure out all of these different pieces. This is hard, but once you solved it, You're onto something.
[00:23:02] Mike: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that's exactly what we're doing. And it's generally the same concept I've had is like, how do I bring the way I phrase it in your example is how do I bring more entrepreneurs into my sphere? Like, how do I bring them in to me? How do I track them? Because what we do in e commerce or what we do as an agency owner, as a service provider in general, is that you constantly recognize opportunity, but you don't have The resources typically to chase the opportunity, or to put someone responsible for it.
[00:23:32] Mike: And if you have a good entrepreneur who is skilled in business development or sales, or maybe even operations, depending on what your internal resources are, that's super valuable to be like, hey. This is the service I want to launch. Go figure it out. Like we have lead flow for you. We have deal flow for you.
[00:23:49] Mike: Like we'll help you get off the ground. How do we make this happen? And like, that's what I've been trying to achieve in that sense. What we've been doing on the go advanced side is, is similar. It's how do we get the product from one country to another? How do we make it available for everyone? And like, now the challenge we have is.
[00:24:09] Mike: We're selling across retail. We're selling, uh, on five, six different e commerce platforms here in Mexico alone. Brazil has another 10 e commerce platforms plus retail. Plus it's 50 percent of all the sales in Latin America. And then there's other countries, Columbia. So we're looking at the complexity of all of this.
[00:24:26] Will: It's like,
[00:24:27] Mike: how do I find the people to help move this along faster? Because what we're doing is incredibly valuable for these brands and it becomes even more valuable the more markets we open up to them. So, okay.
[00:24:39] Will: I love that. And I, and I think you've, you've definitely hit on several of the points that are like key to our process of identifying those different pieces.
[00:24:49] Will: I want to dig in a little bit more on this idea of identifying, um, the demand or the unmet need. Um, and the reason I want to dig there is because we, we had another episode where we talked a little bit about this with another, uh, another, uh, uh, monetizer of mental capital. And, um, I think it was a good discussion, but I think you may have some insights here where you've now done this multiple times.
[00:25:12] Will: Um, into how we identify it. So, so I want you to imagine you're an e commerce seller and you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, well, that's cool guys, but how do I find the unmet need? Uh, you know, what do I do? What, what, what steps can I take today that will make me more likely to discover an unmet need that I can then begin to monetize?
[00:25:32] Will: And then what questions can I ask myself around the unmet need that I suppose is the right one to productize? That helped me identify the right one. So, so one, what can I do today that might help me identify more places to find unmet needs? It's
[00:25:49] Mike: tough. I mean, there's a variety of different thought processes I go through, uh, when I'm looking at that type of stuff.
[00:25:55] Mike: I mean, the first one is generally just talking to customers. I mean, that's. Pretty basic. What are you struggling with in your business? What's the hardest thing, uh, that you're trying to solve right now? Is it related to Amazon? Is it related to other areas? Like, I just want to learn as much as I can from my customers.
[00:26:12] Mike: Uh, ideally, if you can follow your customer around, uh, it's even better. Like watch them do something and whatever the problem is, uh, they've probably found some solution to it. And it may be a hack of using three different tools or whatever to get around it, but seeing the way they're getting around it is a good clue that, Hey, there's probably a shortcut that can get us to the end point there.
[00:26:36] Mike: So, uh, without all this, you know, hacks. And I think that's when you can watch someone trying to, to solve their problem, that's important talking to them about their problem. I think that's incredibly important. Uh, but the biggest thing is figuring out whether they actually assigned value to it. So the thing I always do at the end of this is like, Uh, at the end of questioning or watching is asking, uh, how much are you willing to pay for this?
[00:27:02] Will: If I
[00:27:02] Mike: launched this now, are you willing to pay this much on presale? Like we're ready to go right now. How will you pay this much right now? And you put them on the spot. Hold on, hold on, back up real
[00:27:11] Will: quick. So you said two things there that I think are very key. And I don't, I don't want listeners to gloss over what you just said, because Saying what are you willing to pay and will you pay right now are two totally different things and I find that the former, what are you willing to pay?
[00:27:30] Will: Hey, would you, if I started baking pies, would you buy my pies? Like everybody is going to reply and be like, definitely buy your pies. Like that's exactly how. So many entrepreneurs get themselves in hot water. What you did is very different. And you said, will you buy this right now? We're ready to go right now.
[00:27:50] Will: Like, are you collecting credit cards on the call with them right then? Or what? What are you doing to, to actually like cement that there's real
[00:27:59] Mike: demand? Uh, typically in that instance where we're looking at a new service, what we typically do is we launch like a, it's kind of like a landing page.
[00:28:07] Mike: Essentially it's like a pre sale page, uh, where they get a 50 percent discount or like some big discount on whatever the initial fee is. Uh, so we get them to buy it at like 50 percent off right now we get the cash in and it's a good sign of the commitment and whether it's valuable enough, uh, to For them to actually pay for it.
[00:28:24] Mike: Kind of like what you were saying before, uh, when you're increasing the pricing on your photo service, how do you get to the point where you realize is a good, uh, market entry for your pricing service? It's the same thing with this. So you would go from a higher price point. Tell me
[00:28:37] Will: about this landing page for a minute.
[00:28:39] Will: Like I want to, I want to understand. So when I've done it, it's always been on the phone and I've, I've, I've definitely done the whole, you know, I've got my system open right here. You know, I'll collect your credit card and I won't charge you until. Cool. The service actually launches and I've, I've charged full price, no discount, just grab the credit card.
[00:28:58] Will: And I found that if I do that, like they're not willing to give up their credit card, unless they're actually willing to let me, cause they know I can charge it. And at that point. To get rid of it, then have to dispute it. And that's a pain in the butt. I found that's enough commitment that, that I've been able to validate the reality of the demand that we're talking about here.
[00:29:16] Will: So yeah, that's what I've done. Tell me about this landing page thing. What, what, what tools are you using to create the landing page and how do you decide what you're And then lastly, how do you drive traffic to it? What are you, what are you doing in that process?
[00:29:29] Mike: It's not, it's not like we're using it for advertising or marketing purposes.
[00:29:32] Mike: It's really for the one off like, uh, testing examples that we're kind of talking about. So it's just Stripe for the payment, uh, the landing page. We just set it up with like a WordPress instance. It's like very basic. Um, and the reason that I've gone and like, after we have a call with them, I'm like, are you willing to pay right now?
[00:29:52] Mike: Cool. Let me send you the link. Here's the link sign up now. And it's two different things because one. We're still putting some action on them. Like we're not taking the card. Uh, we're like, all right, like how committed are you? Here's the discount. Here's the page sign up. And then it's on them at that point.
[00:30:10] Mike: And that's for me is a really good sign of whether they actually want the service or not, because if they don't do it to get the discount, uh, they don't do it with the discount, they're probably not serious about it anyway. Um, plus the other reason I don't really want to collect physical credit cards myself is I don't want to have to deal with storing all that stuff.
[00:30:27] Mike: It's a little too much private information for me to feel comfortable with. So that's really what it is. Uh, it's really just like a checkout page. Uh, when I say a landing page, it's just like, here, here's a service, a pre sale 50 percent off. And then as I continue to test it with more people, I'm speaking about, I'm increasing the price, uh, to see at what point with the discount, they aren't willing to pay for it.
[00:30:49] Will: Interesting. So in some ways, and I'm going to throw out two things for you here. Um, just ideas that have come to me as I've done this, go to market stuff. Um, and I don't know, I don't think I've even mentioned this on the podcast. I actually do go to market consulting where I help people take products to market.
[00:31:08] Will: Um, like find their first 10 customers. Um, that that's what I've done fractionally many times for many different companies, and so I, that's part of my passion around monetizing mental capital is I love this. How do you find something out of nothing? Um, or, or how do you create something out of nothing?
[00:31:26] Will: And so, so there were two, two things that popped up for me as you were saying that one, I got on a call with a sales expert a couple of months ago and she said, well, you need to stop using this word discount. What, why not? Like, I mean, I use that all the time in my go to market strategy where I'm like, you can get it at a 50 percent discount if you buy it now, before we actually are beginning to launch things and we'll take your prepayment and we'll get things rolling.
[00:31:52] Will: And that's worked really well. And so I was like, why would I stop using the word discount? She said, the reason you need to use the stop using the word discount is because if you discount too much, and if you look at that, you damage your branch. She said, think Kohl's. Would you ever buy anything from Kohl's at full price?
[00:32:07] Will: And the answer is no, right? Because Kohl's discounts everything. Like their whole store is marked up by 20 percent because they know that the only reason you walk in there is because you want to feel like you got a deal. And you didn't really get a deal until you got 30 or 40 percent off because that's how their whole inventory works.
[00:32:25] Will: And so their, their entire brand has the word discount built into it. So she said, you want to, you want to move away from that? She said, the word I would use is below market value. I was like, okay, sounds interesting. Sounds like a discount. But she said, the other thing is you exchange value for value. She said, I will trade you.
[00:32:45] Will: The ability to access this at below market value in exchange for a case study, additional phone calls, additional time on your part. There has to be some sort of, I'm asking for 50 percent below market value and I want something from you. So they're recognizing, Oh, this is actually worth the higher price.
[00:33:11] Will: And I'm paying for the higher price by giving you my time and these other things. And in exchange for my time, I'm getting it at below market rates. And I've started to shift that in my language. And it's actually been really cool because it's allowed me to raise those prices a little bit higher than I originally anticipated.
[00:33:29] Will: So I would invite you to do the same. Use the below market value. I've struck, stricken the word from my vocabulary. Don't use the word discount anymore. I just insert the word below market value. And I always, always, always try to include the exchange. Cause it's easy to ask. I'm asking for that stuff.
[00:33:44] Will: Anyway, I'm just now making it more apparent that this is why I'm willing to give you a below market rate is because you're going to give me something of value in the form of your time or, uh, Your testimonial, if this works or whatever else that
[00:34:00] Mike: might
[00:34:00] Will: be.
[00:34:01] Mike: No, that's, that's a really good way to put it. Uh, everything you just said that makes a ton of sense.
[00:34:05] Mike: And the discount or the below mark, the amount below market value is just an exchange of value in another form. And. It sounds like a win win for everyone. It's like, Oh, like, you know, whatever. I have to spend a few minutes talking to this guy and answering some questions. And so, uh, and instead of paying 5, 000, I'm paying 2, 500.
[00:34:25] Mike: It's like, Oh yeah, it's worth it.
[00:34:26] Will: Tell me what platform are you using for these checkout pages? Is it like a WordPress site and you're just, you know, using. And what plugin are you using to make, is it WooCommerce or? Yeah, we use WooCommerce and then the actual payment platform is Stripe. Okay. So you hook up Stripe and then in the background, I gotta know, are you ever on a phone call and you're like back there changing the price of it, like while you're on the phone talking to them?
[00:34:48] Mike: I have done that before. Uh, but yeah, I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty say comfortable, uh, understanding where the entry point price is and I don't need to adjust it during a call anymore. It's more that I If I'm too high, it's more that I increase the, uh, below market value as we would put it.
[00:35:08] Will: Nice. Oh, interesting. So the way you do it is you, you decrease the quote unquote discount.
[00:35:15] Mike: If the objections are too high. So like if I say I'm, it's a 10, 000 service, let's say, and I say, yeah, our below market value or discount, whatever, uh, term we're going to use, it's below market value. We just,
[00:35:28] Will: we just killed a discount.
[00:35:30] Will: It's not even a word. It doesn't
[00:35:30] Mike: exist anymore. Okay. It's 5, 000 a month. And the objections are still too high there. It's like, well, okay, we can also do this, but we also need this and we'll drop it to this price. So it's essentially like a coupon code acting in the background of like, Hey. Apply, drop it 10%, drop it 20%, whatever.
[00:35:47] Mike: You mean
[00:35:47] Will: the below market value code, right?
[00:35:49] Mike: Yes.
[00:35:53] Will: My vocabulary is going to be all messed up now. Well, it's, well, the interesting thing is it was a mindset shift for me. Like, like it was a mind and it actually really did help me begin to understand like the idea of pre selling and shifting some of the ways. I love what you've said about this checkout page, MooCommerce.
[00:36:11] Will: Have, have people, I mean, a 10, 000 service agreement that feels like there should be a contract involved or something like that. Have you gotten pushback on not having a contract or what? What's that
[00:36:21] Mike: been like? If there has been pushback, it's been more related to the price than anything. Like I haven't heard anything particular about the contract or an agreement.
[00:36:28] Mike: Like we said, I mean, we have some basic terms and conditions. Like if we don't launch the service, like you get your money back, but, uh, we don't have a physical contract that we're going to do this because we also want to, don't want to commit to something. Uh, if. We get to a point where we're like, Hey, this service doesn't work as is.
[00:36:43] Mike: We need to kind of go back to the drawing board. We're not ready to launch now. So we, like I said, we will refund the money if we don't get it, uh, to launch, but we don't put a contract in place until we're ready to launch until we know all the details of the service and every other aspect of it.
[00:36:59] Will: I think one of the things that I'm realizing as I, as I kind of consider this, because I'm on sales calls all the time and I'm, I'm pre selling and selling and kind of helping people.
[00:37:10] Will: Dig in on some of that stuff. And I'm realizing that I can remove some of the friction associated with pre selling by making the checkout process more simple and connecting those dots. So I love what you've, you know, there's probably not much out there that's more simple than a checkout page. Yeah. Um, and, and a WooCommerce kind of pushes you to, you know, you got a title and pictures and a description.
[00:37:34] Will: And so in a way they're looking at that as the contract and e commerce, I mean, you look at Amazon, for example, when I go buy a product, my contract is the product description, and if the product doesn't description doesn't match what I receive, you can bet I'm leaving a bad review and I'm returning it.
[00:37:51] Will: And so I think in a lot of ways, Amazon and e commerce has trained us to To see the product description as a contract. And let's be honest, have you, in all my years doing, um, business, I've only ever had a contract be, you know, where I went back and tried to use it. I never have been able to use it in court or anything like that, but I've only ever even had to hold the contract over someone's head to be like, no, you, you signed a contract, you need to pay me X.
[00:38:22] Will: And that's only worked like once out of the, you know, well, I don't know, 10 percent of the time that you get it, you get somebody who's a jerk and won't actually pay you, or, and I'm actually pretty careful about that now where I'll collect the money up front, or I'll collect most of the money up front so that I'm not left high and dry because that's happened too many times.
[00:38:40] Will: And so it's interesting to me how often the contract really doesn't matter. It's more about. The relationship and did they get what they were, did they get what they were asking for
[00:38:49] Mike: 100 percent and like, that's the same exact way that we look at it. It's get the money up front, have a clearly defined contract of what is going to be deliverable.
[00:38:57] Mike: Once you know everything that you're going to be delivering, you don't want to put things in there that. You're not going to deliver. Cause that's the point of friction later when they, when you bring that contract to them and they're like, Hey, you never did this it's in the contract. And then it's like, oh shit.
[00:39:09] Mike: So now we got to start figuring out that. So yeah, we've ended up in those situations before with people not paying and like the way we deal with it is. We try to, if they're not willing to pay for a service because they're upset, we try to negotiate, uh, some like exit fee, uh, based on the amount of money they do owe us.
[00:39:27] Mike: And generally that works. Uh, it's a below market value exit fee and where we've had problems with people like ghosting us and just not paying, that's been where it's been more challenging. And, you know, with our contracts, we. As an agency, we have like a personal guarantee in them. Uh, so when we don't get answers, we just send them to a collection agency and the collection agency chases them down.
[00:39:51] Mike: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but legally by signing a personal guarantee, they owe the money. So, uh, it's just a matter of someone else chasing it down at that point.
[00:40:00] Will: Interesting. Interesting. I haven't had to do the, the, uh, personal guarantee thing yet. Um, like where I've had to go send someone to collections or anything like that.
[00:40:12] Will: Usually, um, when the contract goes south that way, I've collected enough money and I've stopped it before I've needed to. Um, but I, I hear you a hundred percent, that can be a real pain. So I think one of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation is I'm probably overthinking how important the actual signature is part of it.
[00:40:33] Will: I have a, I have a software that allows me to, um, get some of that. And then these pre sale arrangements, maybe your product page is totally sufficient. And I mean, if we're talking about e commerce sellers, let's talk about e commerce seller for a second. These guys know how to put our product pages, right?
[00:40:49] Will: Yeah. Like, like following a little tutorial to set up a short, a quick WordPress website, integrating Stripe and setting all of that up. Not a very difficult process. It'll take you a couple of hours to kind of go through that, but then you've got the basics of what you would need to pre sell at a below market rate.
[00:41:08] Will: Um, whatever it is that you're trying to put out there in the market.
[00:41:12] Mike: And the reality is you're doing most of the selling when you're on the call with them, at least like the way that we do it or the way that I do it. So like the sale has probably already happened in the customer's mind while you're on the call and you know, the transaction is just whether it's done there on the call or whether it's done afterwards.
[00:41:28] Mike: So, yeah, I mean, it's really simple to do it. It doesn't take much time at all. And you could probably even find freelancers or independent contractors that can do it for you.
[00:41:37] Will: Oh, yeah. From the standpoint of. Let me put it this way. You can reach out to me personally on LinkedIn and be like, well, I listened to that episode you were talking about, you know, finding a freelancer.
[00:41:47] Will: I'll steer you on automation, hunter. com. Um, I have an entire episode about how to find an Upwork freelancer. Um, you watch that. It'll take you 30 minutes that will get you to the point where you write a job post and follow it. You'll find somebody for 150, 200 bucks that will walk you through every step of the process of buying a domain name.
[00:42:08] Will: Um, you know, installing WordPress, installing WooCommerce, connecting Stripe, and now you've just got to write a product page and you're done. So now for that, you can just do a chat GPT now. I mean, yeah, let's be, let's be honest. There's, there's so much out there to kind of get there. Okay. So I get that part and I get how we're kind of testing.
[00:42:30] Will: The water is there. How do I connect with these people? Or is that kind of part of your searching? Like when you try to find something that has demand on it, you know, is that part of your process?
[00:42:41] Mike: So we do it in a few different ways. Uh, obviously existing customers are a great opportunity for us. Just talk and try to solve these problems and see if it's a, it's a need they have.
[00:42:52] Mike: So existing customers is one way where we start talking to these people and finding out what the service is. Uh, lost leads is another area where we focused. So leads that we spoke to before, but weren't necessarily interested in what we were offering at that point. We typically re engage them and see if they're interested in what we're offering on this side.
[00:43:08] Mike: And then the other way is the way I do it is like just through email marketing. Uh, so like we've have a pretty good size list of our existing company. I built a pretty good size personal list. That's a great way to do it. Um, I've done it a few times on LinkedIn by reaching out to people. Like ideal customers, but generally the response rates are pretty low on that from my experience, and I think people have caught on that most of the time someone's trying to pitch you something, uh, if they're reaching out cold and you don't know them.
[00:43:36] Mike: So generally those are the ways that we focus on. It's on existing customers, people we've talked to that we haven't closed for our existing services and then promoting whatever the offer is or promoting a free consulting about whatever the service is to our market, uh, to our audience, uh, on our email list.
[00:43:53] Will: And how many people in your email list before you started to have that be the way that you were able to launch that new service?
[00:43:59] Mike: My personal list, I only had like a thousand, uh, and I get from every campaign, I get three, four responses. So that's enough, you know, three, four people to talk to is enough to see whether I'm on the right track or not.
[00:44:11] Mike: And then from there I can just scale it up and, you know, change the copy, try to improve the email, try to get more responses from it. So I think with as little as like probably 500, you could probably start seeing results. But obviously to get to 500 still takes a lot of work, uh, from the marketing side.
[00:44:26] Will: And how would you recommend getting to the 500? Let's say that I'm an e commerce seller. What can I do today to begin having those conversations? Um, I, and I actually, LinkedIn works great. I found as long as you're willing to put in the effort of having the genuine conversation with people. Yeah. 15 minute networking call where you jump on and say, Hey, You know, who, not how, who are you looking to meet today?
[00:44:51] Will: Right. And I love reciprocity. I found like, Mike, if I ask you, who do you need to meet today? Who's who's the person that will help you solve whatever that biggest challenges. If I ask you that question, you tell me who it is. And I think. You know what? I don't have anybody in my network who meets that, but I think, I think this person might, let me do a quick intro and I actually stopped the phone call and make the intro right there.
[00:45:13] Will: If you don't come back to me and say, all right, reversal here. Who do you need to meet? If you're not, if you're not coming back to me and asking that, and if at that moment, you don't say, well, I've got this new product and this is what it does. And this is how it's awesome. And do you know anybody they're either going to say, well, that's something I need.
[00:45:31] Will: Yeah, or they're going to say, you know what, I know somebody. And so if you're willing to do that level of 15 minute calls on LinkedIn, it works beautifully. You just have to be genuine about how you're connecting those dots. And the second tip I'd give you about doing it on LinkedIn is use your phone and use the record video button.
[00:45:50] Will: So a lot of people don't know this, but if you, so very simple, generic connect requests, most people are still accepting connect requests. Especially if your profile doesn't look like one of those, I make leads on LinkedIn for you, like change your profile. If it looks like that, but if it just looks like you're an e commerce seller and you're connecting with another e commerce seller, they're going to connect.
[00:46:12] Will: Once you're connecting, open up your phone, go to the chat button. And at the bottom, there's a little plus button you hit, open up that plus button. And it says, record a video, go stand in your front room, go stand somewhere where you look like a real person. And then not, not an AI deep fake, right? And, and just use their name, like, Hey, Mike, um, you know, jumped on the profile there.
[00:46:33] Will: I'd love to just do a quick, get to know you call 15 minutes. Um, you know, this is my background. I saw this in your background. It looks like that's similar. Let me know if you want to connect, pause. If you don't get people coming back on and being like, sweet, cool, genuine connection, I'll be shocked. Okay.
[00:46:50] Will: And then once you get on that call, just open it up with what, like I said, who do you need to meet? They'll ask you the same question, and then you tell them, well, the person I'm looking to meet is XYZ new product idea that I've got, and they'll either raise their hand and say, oh, yeah, I need that, or they may introduce you to someone, you do 10 of those a week, and you'll get to those 5 to 10 conversations that you were hoping for to validate it without having to have the 500, but I think every single person you meet that way becomes added to your list, and so if you're doing 10 of those a week, do that for a year, I You've got 500 people on your list.
[00:47:24] Mike: No, I mean, you bring up a really good point there. Uh, it's that's maybe I'm just a little bit jaded because I have done some similar I've done with, uh, like audio recordings, uh, on LinkedIn messages. And I think maybe as an Amazon seller or as a physical good, a CPG product seller, you might get more responses as a agency and service provider.
[00:47:45] Mike: I feel like the responses aren't as great because they're like, Oh, this guy's trying to sell me. That could just be my perspective on it. Now, the way that I do it, or the way that I create a lead list is through content, marketing, and partnerships. So I webinars is a great example of this. You create a webinar, you invite a ton of people.
[00:48:03] Mike: Hopefully you have partners or friends that can invite a ton of people. The more people you capture, the more people you're adding to your email list add onto what you're doing on the calls, the 15 minute calls. If you're booking them through like Calendly, your calendar can push them automatically to your email list.
[00:48:17] Mike: So now you're building up. Using both of those, you can build the list a lot faster.
[00:48:20] Will: I
[00:48:21] Mike: mean, right now I do two webinars, hosts like two webinars a month, maybe. And between each of them, I'm generating anywhere from like 150 to like 300 emails per webinar, which is a lot. So that's a lot of, that's the way that I do it.
[00:48:35] Mike: And the way that I focus on is putting out content versus the individual reach out. But I can see how that could work as well.
[00:48:42] Will: I love it. Well, and I think that's good because I mean, if we've got somebody who actually has some experience and partnerships. I agree with you that those webinars can be very powerful.
[00:48:52] Will: If you're just a random seller and you're looking to try to figure out how to productize some idea, you're going to be a lot more, people are going to be more receptive. If it's other sellers that you're trying to sell to, or you're trying to connect with and validate that your idea actually has legs at all.
[00:49:06] Will: I agree with you, Mike. I think that people are getting pitched so often on LinkedIn. They're going to be more suspicious of somebody that says, you know, it says agency, anywhere, anything. It's unfortunate because there's a lot of agencies that have done it the scummy way of. Like, you know, peddling their goods and they don't actually build a relationship.
[00:49:24] Will: They just push, push the product. So I love it. Okay. So, uh, I have two final questions, three final questions in our podcast. This is how we end all of our podcasts. So first question, if you could make a phone call back to Mike selling ice. If you could make a phone call back to that guy and give him some tip about what he could do differently to monetize his mental capital faster, to grow faster, to become more, what would be the tip?
[00:49:54] Will: You know, I just handed you a cell phone and I'm like, Hey, this is Mike. He's about ready to get on the boat and go sell some ice. And like the real melting kind instead of whatever we were thinking it might be. Um,
[00:50:06] Mike: what would you tell him? I know, I think the main thing, uh, is just to trust your decision making more.
[00:50:13] Mike: Uh, I think that's, It's still something I don't want to say I struggle with, but still something that's a challenge from time to time is I see something I'll model it out. I'll look at the numbers. I'll be like, yeah, this makes sense. And I'll still have doubts. And I've realized that I've gotten much better with it is that if my instinct is taking me in this way, I'm probably correct.
[00:50:35] Mike: So do the analysis, do the thoughts, do the thought process, figure it out. But then once you make a decision, trust that you're making the right decision because you're probably going to be correct. So if
[00:50:46] Will: you were to put that in one sentence, like one, one phrase, what would be the phrase? What would you tell him?
[00:50:51] Will: I would say, uh, stop overthinking, uh, decisions. Stop overthinking it. Trust, trust your process.
[00:51:01] Mike: Yeah.
[00:51:01] Will: Yeah. That's
[00:51:02] Mike: a good way to put it. Yeah.
[00:51:03] Will: Trust your process. I like it. I like it a lot. I think at Cellulite Labs, we have focused a lot on. Like niching down and we've, we've, we've become a company that's now focused a hundred percent on agencies trying to help automate processes inside agencies around data collection and all of that sort of different stuff.
[00:51:22] Will: And so like we've built tools like an automated audit that kind of pushes that whole process and makes it really easy to have an Amazon seller connecting with an agency. And I was so hesitant to trust the process of niching down. It was ridiculous. It took me like. A year plus a new owner coming in and being like, no, well, we got a niche down for me to recognize that agencies were really the right way to go.
[00:51:46] Will: Um, and we're providing so much value there now that the agencies are coming to us and they're very happy to pay us to help them connect to the Amazon data. But I was so nervous of letting go of the Amazon seller niche and like, what was there that I thought we were going to miss out on stuff. And so I think you're right, like trusting that process.
[00:52:07] Will: Is totally key. So, I mean, that's an Alex Hermosi process where he's like, riches in the niches, right? Like, go down to that process. Trust. Um, that, that right and true. So I totally agree with you.
[00:52:22] Mike: Awesome. Yeah, no, I, I think that's what it is. And like, once you've done it, you have the confidence in the decision making and you have, you know how to do it, but before you do it, it seems like impossible, uh, or you have so many doubts or things that are stopping you.
[00:52:36] Mike: And like, that's definitely where I struggled. Uh, From advancing things faster than I did.
[00:52:42] Will: Final two questions. I'm going to give you a 60 seconds. You've just stepped into an elevator and the guy's like, yeah, I'm an Amazon seller done a couple of million this last year. And you're like, Oh, cool. What do you do?
[00:52:52] Will: And you're going to now get the opportunity, 60 seconds to tell him a little bit about one of these many different agencies you work on. Um, maybe the ice too. You can tell him about that too. Um, and then, um, after that, you're going to share tips, tricks, hacks, or books that you've come across in the last year.
[00:53:10] Will: That have helped you monetize your mental capital.
[00:53:13] Mike: Okay, good. I just, I was just thinking of one the other day. So, uh, Hey, all right. One minute go. Okay. So what we do at AMC advisors is we help brands scale from one to over 20 million on the Amazon platform. We do that in a variety of ways to affiliate marketing, advertising, programmatic, and SEO on the platform.
[00:53:34] Mike: We've worked with over 500 brands have generated close to a billion dollars in So we have a lot of experience from working with brands of your size. So that's the elevator pitch. That's incredibly quick. When it comes to books, uh, or, or tools or hacks, uh, new to big by David Kidder. Uh, that was a book I read recently.
[00:53:54] Mike: Uh, he talks about, uh, how essentially how to like create, uh, entrepreneurial, uh, processes within a company, but it's the same, uh, problem solving, uh, of like identifying your total addressable market, how to talk to them, how to question them, how to watch what they're doing and like all those steps he covers in that book.
[00:54:13] Mike: It's a really good book.
[00:54:14] Will: Interesting. So, so one more time with the title new to big, new to big, I like it. But I'm always interested, especially when I hear about a book that I have not come across, and that's one that I haven't. So I'm, I'm stoked to add that one to my list. Um, and I appreciate the suggestion, Mike, it has been a pleasure talking about everything from ice all the way down to, you know, go advance and what you guys are doing in Mexico.
[00:54:43] Will: And, and I mean, honestly, I'm excited. We're going to have to go. Well, actually, what trade shows are you headed to, um, in the next year? Do you come to
[00:54:51] Mike: trade shows at all? Uh, there's a few in Latin America. I'm going to be going to, I'm going to a, uh, coffee expo and some other interesting ones, uh, health products and stuff like that.
[00:55:02] Mike: Mainly I go to stuff here in Mexico. So if you're at, at week Latam, that's probably a good place. That's where you
[00:55:07] Will: are. I love it. Well, uh, it's been a pleasure looking forward to future conversations and thanks for being on monetize your mental capital.
[00:55:15] Mike: Awesome. Thank you for having me. You're welcome.
[00:00:00] Will: All right. Welcome everyone to this episode of monetizing your mental capital. I am really excited here. I have Mike bag here with us and I want to make sure I said that right bag, correct? Yeah, that's it. It's pretty simple. Uh, you know, solid, straightforward to the point, Mike, if I ran into an Amazon seller and they were interested in monetizing mental capital, meaning monetizing the non tangible, you know, let's say that they, my brother actually, you can see, this is a, It's one of those chip things.
[00:00:34] Will: So like you use your mouse and whatnot, you don't want to get your fingers greasy. You can pick up the chip and eat it without getting your fingers greasy. Um, these things, these things sell on Amazon for like five or 10 bucks. And he printed them off of his 3d printer for like 30 cents. So maybe there's a business to be had there, but if I gave a seller a pair of these or the blueprint or a manufacturer, maybe I connected them to my brother.
[00:01:01] Will: He, and there was demand for it. He could make money using this tangible good, right? Well, the point of this podcast is helping sellers. who want to go and find things up here, um, in non tangible goods and identify ways to make money with them. Productized service, you know, building an agency, building a freelance business on the side, like basically monetizing that intangible mental capital.
[00:01:27] Will: My question for you, Mike, is why would someone who wants to monetize intangible mental capital want to listen or hear from you?
[00:01:34] Mike: Well, uh, considering that I've built an agency and I've actually am building three other agencies all at the same time. I have a lot of experience taking what I have done or the ideas I've had on how to grow accounts and then productize it.
[00:01:48] Mike: So I think I've been down that road many times and that's probably why you would want to listen to me.
[00:01:54] Will: Okay. All right. All right. So you've got some past experience. I like that. So real quickly, you've built an agency and you're currently building three more. Tell
[00:02:03] Mike: me more. Yeah. It sounds insane, doesn't it?
[00:02:06] Mike: But obviously AMZ Advisors, that's the main agency I run. It's the largest agency I have. We've been around since 2015. Uh, we have about 60 employees and almost a hundred brands we're working with. In Amazon years, 2015 is like, that's like before dirt was invented.
[00:02:23] Will: That was on yours.
[00:02:24] Mike: That was the sweet times.
[00:02:25] Mike: That's when you just threw a product up and you were making 100, 000 a month and you printed money. Yes. I got it. I got it. Okay. Yeah. Um, so that one's been around for a little while. That one's been around. And then from that we've launched, uh, and from people that I've met and partners that I've made, we've launched other services and other agencies.
[00:02:44] Mike: So, uh, one example of that would be Go Advance. Go Advance is specific to Latin America. Uh, there's a lot of challenges that brands have with expanding to Latin America. Uh, another one I have is AMZ Global. Global focuses on expansion to Europe. So similar issue with helping, having, uh, helping us brands navigate the challenges of logistics, fiscal compliance, product compliance, all that type of stuff to get your products into Europe.
[00:03:09] Mike: Another one I have is a newer one. We don't actually have a name for it yet, but it's actually affiliate marketing and that's something we're working on right now using Amazon attribution, using recruiting platforms and a lot of different tools to, to help us. Take what we were doing for brands and then be able to launch it as a service on its own.
[00:03:26] Mike: So yeah, those are different examples of how I've done that. Okay,
[00:03:30] Will: so let's pick this apart for a minute and we're going to go on a journey together. So the way I'd like to frame this is first, I want you to travel back in time to the first time you monetize mental capital. So not necessarily this agency that you're talking about.
[00:03:45] Will: But I want to go back farther than that. So think lemonade stand, or, uh, you know, I conned my brother out of, uh, quarters for doing his chores or, or, you know, what, whatever that might be, then we're going to pop forward again to this, you know, AMC advisors thing that you're working on, right. The, the agency said that, you know, that's been around since before dirt on Amazon.
[00:04:07] Will: And then, um, I want to really dig into how you came up with some of these ideas. So like AMC advisors, you went from idea to results to now you created a product and you've then grown that those accounts, right? Yeah, I want to kind of focus on that process a little bit, but let's go back. We're getting in the time machine.
[00:04:28] Will: We're going back. When was the first time you monetized mental capital?
[00:04:31] Mike: That's actually very difficult to think about. I'm sure there are plenty of examples, but the one that comes to mind, I wasn't even that young. I mean, I was in college at that point, but this was kind of the first side hustle slash, you know, project I had.
[00:04:47] Mike: During the summers I was working at a marina and, uh, on an island called Block Island. I'm from Connecticut originally, so block island's. Right? Okay. Right next door. There's obviously on the island, there's like three, four marinas, and then there are the moorings, uh, the mooring field where all the boats that don't go to the marinas just tie up to a, to an anchor essentially and flow out in the uh, okay.
[00:05:08] Mike: In the pond. We noticed that. And I say we, it's, it's me and one of my friends. Uh, we noticed that all of the boaters that were on the moorings were looking for ice because it's the summer, they want to keep their things cold. And they were coming to our marina to buy the ice. And we were like, well, why don't we just put the ice on a boat, bring it to them and mark it up.
[00:05:35] Mike: And that was the first instance of Mental capital and monetizing mental capital, I would say. And I think we were making like a nice little spread on that. Plus we were getting tips for bringing the ice to them.
[00:05:46] Will: Okay. So I love that you, you saw demand. It came in, in the form of everybody driving all the way in to get the ice.
[00:05:55] Will: And you were like, wait a second. How much is that time that they're spending coming in worth to them? I bet you, we could mark this up a little bit. So was this like above board? Everybody knew you were doing that or. You know, it was kind of a side hustle.
[00:06:12] Mike: No, it was a side hustle. I mean, we were like, we didn't work full time shifts.
[00:06:16] Mike: We worked like half time shifts throughout the day. So half the day worked, half the day, you know, was slanging. But yeah, I mean, you make a very good point. It's like, how, A boater during the summer on vacation, how much time, how much is this time worth to get in his boat and have to go bring it to get ice versus having the ice brought to him and he can just continue drinking his cocktails and beer without any problems.
[00:06:42] Mike: So that was the problem we solved.
[00:06:44] Will: Did you, did you get it to the point where people like had a, a bright blue flag that they'd put up and then you drive over and bring the mice and the idea of selling ice. I mean, it sounds like you're selling drugs. Um, like, you know, I, I, I used to sell ice to these, you know, giant yachts.
[00:07:02] Will: Like definitely sounds like you're selling drugs. Um, when you put it that way, so it's like, sounds like slang. But, but it wasn't drugs. It was actually ice. So you would go buy it like in the store and then you'd take it out there and sell it, how much of a markup, like double? Uh, yeah, pretty much.
[00:07:23] Mike: It was like three, I think it was like 3 a bag.
[00:07:26] Mike: We were selling it from somewhere. It's dependent on the voter because, you know, you can kind of get a read from them, uh, but it was somewhere between 7 to 8 a bag. This is a really nice boat. This just turned into a 10 bag of ice. Exactly. Exactly. We were buying them for like three, selling them for like seven, eight.
[00:07:43] Mike: And then we were getting tips on top of it for bringing it to them. And each bag, you know, a boaters buy in three, four bags at a time. So each transaction is. anywhere between 30 to 50 bucks. Uh, were
[00:07:54] Will: you, were you making more money doing the side hustle or were you making more money on the docks, like working the
[00:08:01] Mike: part time gig?
[00:08:03] Mike: I was, that's tough because boaters in general love to tip. So working on the docks, you also make a good amount of money, but, uh, side hustle of bringing ice to the boats was definitely more fun because once you satisfy a customer with a bag of ice, that sounds definitely like drug dealing when I put it that way, but, uh, they tend to offer you a refreshing beverage, uh, for your health.
[00:08:26] Mike: So
[00:08:27] Will: it
[00:08:27] Mike: has a lot of benefits.
[00:08:29] Will: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think I would have quit my, uh, quit my day job and just done ice full time, which sounds like drugs too. Um, so I I'm, I'm loving this, uh, for on multiple levels, like, you know, figuring out how to price it, that, that must've been an interesting journey. I, I, for me, the first time, one of the first times I monetized mental capital was I actually started taking pictures, um, I had taken a photography class and, and, and I was like, I'm going to do some like engagements and so like, I went out and took the, these people's engagements and I gave them the engagements and I did it for free and they tipped me 75 bucks and I was like, Wait, I did it again and they tipped me 75 bucks again and that was the last time I did it for free because I was like, okay, even though I've, I've only done this twice.
[00:09:18] Will: It's worth at least 75 bucks. And so then I started inching up my price and inching up my price. And when I stopped getting tips, I was like, okay, now I'm starting to get there. Then I inched it up a little more and then people would push back on it. And I'm like, okay, now I've found, you know, the top of the market of what I can go, is that similar to what you did in terms of like, how did you figure out how much they could actually go for?
[00:09:40] Mike: It was kind of just guessing. I mean, we would just say whatever we wanted. I mean, the. The challenge, whatever we wanted, if they said, yes, we were in the challenge was selling ice is also that ice only had only last so long without being in a cooler. So I also need to figure out how to turn this ice as fast as possible.
[00:10:00] Mike: So it's a combination of finding the right price point, uh, and not letting the product melt. Um, is anyone else? I
[00:10:09] Will: think anybody else listening to this is going to be like, if I inserted the word cocaine or something else for the word ice, like, is it, the product can't go bad over it. You know, it's only good for so long.
[00:10:21] Will: Like this really does sound okay. So that's actually a really interesting problem. Um, from an e commerce perspective, you can't let the inventory sit either. And so all of a sudden the idea of like, well, and actually I saw something on on LinkedIn the other day where Amazon. They've made some different changes around, um, melting products, like products that can melt.
[00:10:43] Will: And what they will allow into FBA, like melting inventory is a real thing. Um, and yours was melting probably faster than other people's as you were, as you were getting it out there.
[00:10:55] Mike: It's funny you say that because I sold chocolate on Amazon before too. So I know all about those melting rules. Oh, chocolate.
[00:11:02] Mike: Yes.
[00:11:03] Will: You sold chocolate on Amazon. Um, got it. Uh, Mike, this is, you know, we're going to, uh, later you'll probably be getting some nefarious phone calls from somebody where they're like, you know, chocolate. Nice. I got it.
[00:11:16] Mike: Um, this is gonna, this is gonna sound so weird when you ask me where I live, but you know, oh, I we're going there now.
[00:11:21] Mike: Then where do you live? Live in Guadalajara, Mexico. .
[00:11:27] Will: This is even better, Mike. Um. You are an ice dealer. I've decided, um, this is epic. Okay. So
[00:11:35] Mike: Mike, tell me it would go advance. Go, oh man, this just gets better. Go advance. We, we help with international logistics, moving packages around Latin America. This just keeps getting better at this point.
[00:11:53] Will: You know, the nuances of, of moving packages internationally, um, especially ice packages, uh, must be quite difficult. Okay. So Mike, you learned how to price these, then you, uh, you kind of got this idea of mental capital. Is that kind of what sparked this idea of like, okay, now I can probably figure out how to resell stuff in the future.
[00:12:17] Will: Did you then move on to becoming an Amazon seller? What, what happened next?
[00:12:21] Mike: No, not actually. No, not at all. Like I. Now that I, it's funny that we talk about the size example, because I hadn't really thought about it before, but. I always say that, like, my 1st experience in entrepreneurship was really becoming an Amazon seller.
[00:12:34] Mike: It wasn't, you know, slang and ice in college. What happened after college was I went and worked in consulting. I went and worked for Deloitte. Did kind of like a typical corporate type of job. Uh, really didn't like accounting
[00:12:47] Will: Deloitte, uh,
[00:12:49] Mike: consulting. Yeah. Okay. Consulting side of Deloitte. Okay. Okay. And, uh, I really didn't like it.
[00:12:55] Mike: It was just long hours, crazy work, and I wanted to do something else. So I studied real estate at NYU. Then I went into real estate development. I got a job at Sears. Uh, Sears was. Not doing great at the time. I joined at the time in the real estate group. What we did was we created a real estate investment trust, uh, spun it off for like 2.
[00:13:16] Mike: 5 billion. And then I stayed on with Sears and kept redeveloping property. So I became a property developer for them. And that's a whole different level of mental mental capital, because you're looking at what does the property have now and how do you turn it into something that's more valuable? That was awesome.
[00:13:31] Mike: I love that. So that was a really good time. But I also saw things that were a little weird to me, like Amazon buying malls and FedEx buying distribution centers and Amazon buying distribution centers. And I was like, Whoa, what's going on here? And then I started learning about FBA, started learning about selling products online, started doing eBooks at first.
[00:13:52] Mike: And then, uh, Arbitrage retail arbitrage by going to Walmart target buying everything on clearance selling it that way increase the money that way and then started buying product from China and selling it online. And then after that started an agency. So, uh, it was a progression, but. It wasn't like, I never really tied what I was doing before.
[00:14:11] Mike: So what did I ended up doing? It was just kind of a matter of what I saw happening in the corporate space.
[00:14:16] Will: Well, I think what's fascinating here is, um, both times it was about recognizing demand, right? Like you, you saw, Hey, wait a minute. These guys are having to come all the way in and buy ice at the Marina and I can take the ice.
[00:14:34] Will: To them, and not only will they, I mean, they'll give me, um, you know, cold, refreshing beverage on top of, you know, adding all of that to that. So, I mean, there, there was demand there, um, that you're going to, then you move to Guadalajara and continue the logistic, not just kidding. Um, I mean, I, I can see, um, Where you're going.
[00:14:53] Will: And then from, from this other standpoint in identifying, Hey, wait a minute, people on Amazon are looking for these products that are on Walmart and they're willing to pay, you know, X amount more than what I can buy it for. So if I bring it to them again in that same form and fashion of the ice, like you're, you're
[00:15:13] Mike: doing it again.
[00:15:14] Mike: Yeah. It's in a way that is exactly what we were doing. And the markups were nice on it. I mean, I don't know what retail arbitrage looks like these days, but it was like 2014. And I was buying the first product I ever sold retail arbitrage. It was like an internet router. I don't even remember the brand at this point, but bought it for like 20 bucks, sold it for like 80.
[00:15:32] Mike: And I was like, that's spread is awesome. Uh, so yeah, I mean, there's always ways of meeting demand, I guess, but it's also just seeing like opportunities or arbitrage is that you can take advantage of, and that's kind of what I was doing in both of those instances.
[00:15:47] Will: So the thing that I think is fascinating is arbitrage is not dead.
[00:15:50] Will: I thought it was pretty dead. I've run into people and I continue to run it. Like, like I ran into a guy a couple of years ago who was doing a lot, a lot of money on arbitrage. I mean, especially in sneakers and different stuff like that. I was like, okay, wow. Like this is still alive and kicking. And I, so, so recently I hadn't run into anybody in quite a while.
[00:16:09] Will: I met a family party two weeks ago and my cousin and I'm, I'm sitting down here on my phone, you know, playing a game or whatever, and I hear my cousin behind me talking to my uncle. And he's like, yeah, we've done like four grand on Amazon. Um, and, and all we're doing is just finding products on Walmart and like, like other retailers and then listing them on Amazon.
[00:16:34] Will: And like our entire front room is, uh, is, is like a fulfillment center right now. And it's just him and his wife. They're new, they're, they're newlyweds and they're like going to town on it. And he's done like four grand gross in the last month and he just got started. And I was like, hold on, hold the phone.
[00:16:51] Will: Do you know that I like, I'm an owner and like a big Amazon, like software company. And like, I do. And he was like, what, holy crap. Introduce me to people. This is like, it was so funny because like, you know, you don't really talk about your professional relationships a lot inside there. He was just talking about a side hustle that he was kind of getting into and figuring out.
[00:17:13] Will: So the answer to the question is. Apparently arbitrage is not dead. I bet it's harder to find deals than it was back then, but, uh, very interesting to see that in a marketplace, um, like this one, if there's still opportunity. For sure,
[00:17:29] Mike: and like here, I mean, I, like I said, I live in Mexico. I think there's probably more arbitrage opportunities outside of the U.
[00:17:36] Mike: S. that's part of what we're helping take advantage of with go advances on that demand. I mean, it's another good example of it. So to talk briefly about that. It's very difficult for foreign brands to get into Latin America. Number one, you need a business in each country that you're selling in. You need a partner that is local in each country.
[00:17:55] Mike: And like, you have obviously all the contracts, everything is in Spanish. It's a different legal system. Product compliance is different. Everything is different. But there's massive opportunities for brands in certain categories, electronics, supplements, uh, cosmetics, uh, food, like these types of categories, there's a lot of demand in Latin America.
[00:18:14] Mike: Uh, like computers is insane. We do a lot of work with, uh, Mercado Libre as well on Mercado on like their. Uh, Hargit product list, I think is what they call it. It's like, these are the types of products we want to get in here. And like 90 percent of it is computers, cell phones, uh, electronics, all that type of stuff.
[00:18:35] Mike: So there's a massive demand for those types of products. It's very hard for foreign brands to get in there. What we're doing at GoVets, we're solving the problem in two ways. One. We're helping these brands getting in by being the distributor for them in Latin America. And two, we're creating more product selection for the consumer.
[00:18:50] Mike: Now the consumer can come to Amazon instead of having to import it from the U S and pay all the tariffs and the import fees and taxes and everything else. They can buy it. Through us, the price would be about 30 to 40 percent less than they would pay. And we actually are able to increase the margin of each sale compared to using NARF and everything else for, uh, brand owners.
[00:19:12] Mike: So it's a win win on both sides. We saw an opportunity with unmet demand. We found a solution for it, which was not easy. And then, uh, we actually launched the service from there. And that's kind of how we started that company.
[00:19:25] Will: I think what you just described is exactly how you productize mental capital.
[00:19:30] Will: Like, like we, we saw a need, we fulfilled that need in a not easy process. And then we met that need, um, In the marketplace and maybe the only piece of it that you're missing there is we found a distribution channel to identify people who needed that to kind of push in there. So, so when you said that, my first thought was, oh, that's what, so, so my passion outside of cellular labs, I love matchmaking entrepreneurs with young entrepreneurs.
[00:20:00] Will: So I find really busy overworked solo panniers or, or small companies, 10, 10 company, 10 people in less. And I find young entrepreneurs who've got tons of time, so hungry they can't see straight but, but lack the, the skill or, or the experience to really succeed in entrepreneurship, and I vet them until I find the ones who aren't going to flake out, and then I matchmake them together.
[00:20:26] Will: And so the reason I did that is because I saw a need, a giant need where I needed to clone myself. I needed to figure out as an entrepreneur, how do I, how do I handle more stuff? And, and as I dug into that need, I then developed a difficult process of vetting and finding. I I've placed like 40 of these guys now and, um, the first 10 were total duds.
[00:20:50] Will: You know, fell out after three months, didn't work in such and such a way. Like there were things that just did not function for what's there. So now I have this very difficult vetted process. And then I figured out through podcasts like this and other discussions with entrepreneurs, how to take a channel or a group of people and tell people about this solution, and now I'm solving this unmet need, which is entrepreneurs that need an employee who cares as much as they do so they don't stop at the first roadblock.
[00:21:20] Will: For whatever new task you gave
[00:21:22] Mike: them. Right. I, I mean, that's phenomenal. Like that idea alone is worth a ton. And like, that's something that I'm constantly looking for, actually. So we may have to have a separate conversation about
[00:21:34] Will: sounds like it sounds like I may have just found some unmet need. I mean, it's so fascinating though.
[00:21:39] Will: Right. Because for me, it was just an idea. It was like, man, I really need to clone myself. And, and. And as I dug into that need and started to kind of come up with what actually made me think of it, I was totally messing around. I was talking to somebody and I was like, I wish I had a time machine and I can go back in time and find me when I was in college, because if I had found me when I was in college, I knew.
[00:22:02] Will: Cause I, what, what had happened is I'd given a virtual assistant a task to go chase something down on a website. And it wasn't a complicated thing. It was like an hour of Googling and you had to kind of think outside the box a little bit slash be a little uncomfortable with the fact that you didn't know exactly what to do next so that you go figure it out.
[00:22:22] Will: And she stumbled on it so hard. Like I had to go pick it up and do it myself. And I was so frustrated with that. I was like, if I just had me back when I was in college, I never would have stumbled on this stuff. And then it hit me like, wait a minute, there are other people in college right now. There are other people young in their career right now.
[00:22:42] Will: Oh my. And so like, that's what led me down this path. And it was like a three year journey to figure all of that out. And it sounds like you similarly, as you dug into this need, you were like, man, this is kind of annoying to set up the business and, and figure out all of these different pieces. This is hard, but once you solved it, You're onto something.
[00:23:02] Mike: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, that's exactly what we're doing. And it's generally the same concept I've had is like, how do I bring the way I phrase it in your example is how do I bring more entrepreneurs into my sphere? Like, how do I bring them in to me? How do I track them? Because what we do in e commerce or what we do as an agency owner, as a service provider in general, is that you constantly recognize opportunity, but you don't have The resources typically to chase the opportunity, or to put someone responsible for it.
[00:23:32] Mike: And if you have a good entrepreneur who is skilled in business development or sales, or maybe even operations, depending on what your internal resources are, that's super valuable to be like, hey. This is the service I want to launch. Go figure it out. Like we have lead flow for you. We have deal flow for you.
[00:23:49] Mike: Like we'll help you get off the ground. How do we make this happen? And like, that's what I've been trying to achieve in that sense. What we've been doing on the go advanced side is, is similar. It's how do we get the product from one country to another? How do we make it available for everyone? And like, now the challenge we have is.
[00:24:09] Mike: We're selling across retail. We're selling, uh, on five, six different e commerce platforms here in Mexico alone. Brazil has another 10 e commerce platforms plus retail. Plus it's 50 percent of all the sales in Latin America. And then there's other countries, Columbia. So we're looking at the complexity of all of this.
[00:24:26] Will: It's like,
[00:24:27] Mike: how do I find the people to help move this along faster? Because what we're doing is incredibly valuable for these brands and it becomes even more valuable the more markets we open up to them. So, okay.
[00:24:39] Will: I love that. And I, and I think you've, you've definitely hit on several of the points that are like key to our process of identifying those different pieces.
[00:24:49] Will: I want to dig in a little bit more on this idea of identifying, um, the demand or the unmet need. Um, and the reason I want to dig there is because we, we had another episode where we talked a little bit about this with another, uh, another, uh, uh, monetizer of mental capital. And, um, I think it was a good discussion, but I think you may have some insights here where you've now done this multiple times.
[00:25:12] Will: Um, into how we identify it. So, so I want you to imagine you're an e commerce seller and you're listening to this episode and you're thinking, well, that's cool guys, but how do I find the unmet need? Uh, you know, what do I do? What, what, what steps can I take today that will make me more likely to discover an unmet need that I can then begin to monetize?
[00:25:32] Will: And then what questions can I ask myself around the unmet need that I suppose is the right one to productize? That helped me identify the right one. So, so one, what can I do today that might help me identify more places to find unmet needs? It's
[00:25:49] Mike: tough. I mean, there's a variety of different thought processes I go through, uh, when I'm looking at that type of stuff.
[00:25:55] Mike: I mean, the first one is generally just talking to customers. I mean, that's. Pretty basic. What are you struggling with in your business? What's the hardest thing, uh, that you're trying to solve right now? Is it related to Amazon? Is it related to other areas? Like, I just want to learn as much as I can from my customers.
[00:26:12] Mike: Uh, ideally, if you can follow your customer around, uh, it's even better. Like watch them do something and whatever the problem is, uh, they've probably found some solution to it. And it may be a hack of using three different tools or whatever to get around it, but seeing the way they're getting around it is a good clue that, Hey, there's probably a shortcut that can get us to the end point there.
[00:26:36] Mike: So, uh, without all this, you know, hacks. And I think that's when you can watch someone trying to, to solve their problem, that's important talking to them about their problem. I think that's incredibly important. Uh, but the biggest thing is figuring out whether they actually assigned value to it. So the thing I always do at the end of this is like, Uh, at the end of questioning or watching is asking, uh, how much are you willing to pay for this?
[00:27:02] Will: If I
[00:27:02] Mike: launched this now, are you willing to pay this much on presale? Like we're ready to go right now. How will you pay this much right now? And you put them on the spot. Hold on, hold on, back up real
[00:27:11] Will: quick. So you said two things there that I think are very key. And I don't, I don't want listeners to gloss over what you just said, because Saying what are you willing to pay and will you pay right now are two totally different things and I find that the former, what are you willing to pay?
[00:27:30] Will: Hey, would you, if I started baking pies, would you buy my pies? Like everybody is going to reply and be like, definitely buy your pies. Like that's exactly how. So many entrepreneurs get themselves in hot water. What you did is very different. And you said, will you buy this right now? We're ready to go right now.
[00:27:50] Will: Like, are you collecting credit cards on the call with them right then? Or what? What are you doing to, to actually like cement that there's real
[00:27:59] Mike: demand? Uh, typically in that instance where we're looking at a new service, what we typically do is we launch like a, it's kind of like a landing page.
[00:28:07] Mike: Essentially it's like a pre sale page, uh, where they get a 50 percent discount or like some big discount on whatever the initial fee is. Uh, so we get them to buy it at like 50 percent off right now we get the cash in and it's a good sign of the commitment and whether it's valuable enough, uh, to For them to actually pay for it.
[00:28:24] Mike: Kind of like what you were saying before, uh, when you're increasing the pricing on your photo service, how do you get to the point where you realize is a good, uh, market entry for your pricing service? It's the same thing with this. So you would go from a higher price point. Tell me
[00:28:37] Will: about this landing page for a minute.
[00:28:39] Will: Like I want to, I want to understand. So when I've done it, it's always been on the phone and I've, I've, I've definitely done the whole, you know, I've got my system open right here. You know, I'll collect your credit card and I won't charge you until. Cool. The service actually launches and I've, I've charged full price, no discount, just grab the credit card.
[00:28:58] Will: And I found that if I do that, like they're not willing to give up their credit card, unless they're actually willing to let me, cause they know I can charge it. And at that point. To get rid of it, then have to dispute it. And that's a pain in the butt. I found that's enough commitment that, that I've been able to validate the reality of the demand that we're talking about here.
[00:29:16] Will: So yeah, that's what I've done. Tell me about this landing page thing. What, what, what tools are you using to create the landing page and how do you decide what you're And then lastly, how do you drive traffic to it? What are you, what are you doing in that process?
[00:29:29] Mike: It's not, it's not like we're using it for advertising or marketing purposes.
[00:29:32] Mike: It's really for the one off like, uh, testing examples that we're kind of talking about. So it's just Stripe for the payment, uh, the landing page. We just set it up with like a WordPress instance. It's like very basic. Um, and the reason that I've gone and like, after we have a call with them, I'm like, are you willing to pay right now?
[00:29:52] Mike: Cool. Let me send you the link. Here's the link sign up now. And it's two different things because one. We're still putting some action on them. Like we're not taking the card. Uh, we're like, all right, like how committed are you? Here's the discount. Here's the page sign up. And then it's on them at that point.
[00:30:10] Mike: And that's for me is a really good sign of whether they actually want the service or not, because if they don't do it to get the discount, uh, they don't do it with the discount, they're probably not serious about it anyway. Um, plus the other reason I don't really want to collect physical credit cards myself is I don't want to have to deal with storing all that stuff.
[00:30:27] Mike: It's a little too much private information for me to feel comfortable with. So that's really what it is. Uh, it's really just like a checkout page. Uh, when I say a landing page, it's just like, here, here's a service, a pre sale 50 percent off. And then as I continue to test it with more people, I'm speaking about, I'm increasing the price, uh, to see at what point with the discount, they aren't willing to pay for it.
[00:30:49] Will: Interesting. So in some ways, and I'm going to throw out two things for you here. Um, just ideas that have come to me as I've done this, go to market stuff. Um, and I don't know, I don't think I've even mentioned this on the podcast. I actually do go to market consulting where I help people take products to market.
[00:31:08] Will: Um, like find their first 10 customers. Um, that that's what I've done fractionally many times for many different companies, and so I, that's part of my passion around monetizing mental capital is I love this. How do you find something out of nothing? Um, or, or how do you create something out of nothing?
[00:31:26] Will: And so, so there were two, two things that popped up for me as you were saying that one, I got on a call with a sales expert a couple of months ago and she said, well, you need to stop using this word discount. What, why not? Like, I mean, I use that all the time in my go to market strategy where I'm like, you can get it at a 50 percent discount if you buy it now, before we actually are beginning to launch things and we'll take your prepayment and we'll get things rolling.
[00:31:52] Will: And that's worked really well. And so I was like, why would I stop using the word discount? She said, the reason you need to use the stop using the word discount is because if you discount too much, and if you look at that, you damage your branch. She said, think Kohl's. Would you ever buy anything from Kohl's at full price?
[00:32:07] Will: And the answer is no, right? Because Kohl's discounts everything. Like their whole store is marked up by 20 percent because they know that the only reason you walk in there is because you want to feel like you got a deal. And you didn't really get a deal until you got 30 or 40 percent off because that's how their whole inventory works.
[00:32:25] Will: And so their, their entire brand has the word discount built into it. So she said, you want to, you want to move away from that? She said, the word I would use is below market value. I was like, okay, sounds interesting. Sounds like a discount. But she said, the other thing is you exchange value for value. She said, I will trade you.
[00:32:45] Will: The ability to access this at below market value in exchange for a case study, additional phone calls, additional time on your part. There has to be some sort of, I'm asking for 50 percent below market value and I want something from you. So they're recognizing, Oh, this is actually worth the higher price.
[00:33:11] Will: And I'm paying for the higher price by giving you my time and these other things. And in exchange for my time, I'm getting it at below market rates. And I've started to shift that in my language. And it's actually been really cool because it's allowed me to raise those prices a little bit higher than I originally anticipated.
[00:33:29] Will: So I would invite you to do the same. Use the below market value. I've struck, stricken the word from my vocabulary. Don't use the word discount anymore. I just insert the word below market value. And I always, always, always try to include the exchange. Cause it's easy to ask. I'm asking for that stuff.
[00:33:44] Will: Anyway, I'm just now making it more apparent that this is why I'm willing to give you a below market rate is because you're going to give me something of value in the form of your time or, uh, Your testimonial, if this works or whatever else that
[00:34:00] Mike: might
[00:34:00] Will: be.
[00:34:01] Mike: No, that's, that's a really good way to put it. Uh, everything you just said that makes a ton of sense.
[00:34:05] Mike: And the discount or the below mark, the amount below market value is just an exchange of value in another form. And. It sounds like a win win for everyone. It's like, Oh, like, you know, whatever. I have to spend a few minutes talking to this guy and answering some questions. And so, uh, and instead of paying 5, 000, I'm paying 2, 500.
[00:34:25] Mike: It's like, Oh yeah, it's worth it.
[00:34:26] Will: Tell me what platform are you using for these checkout pages? Is it like a WordPress site and you're just, you know, using. And what plugin are you using to make, is it WooCommerce or? Yeah, we use WooCommerce and then the actual payment platform is Stripe. Okay. So you hook up Stripe and then in the background, I gotta know, are you ever on a phone call and you're like back there changing the price of it, like while you're on the phone talking to them?
[00:34:48] Mike: I have done that before. Uh, but yeah, I've gotten to the point where I'm pretty say comfortable, uh, understanding where the entry point price is and I don't need to adjust it during a call anymore. It's more that I If I'm too high, it's more that I increase the, uh, below market value as we would put it.
[00:35:08] Will: Nice. Oh, interesting. So the way you do it is you, you decrease the quote unquote discount.
[00:35:15] Mike: If the objections are too high. So like if I say I'm, it's a 10, 000 service, let's say, and I say, yeah, our below market value or discount, whatever, uh, term we're going to use, it's below market value. We just,
[00:35:28] Will: we just killed a discount.
[00:35:30] Will: It's not even a word. It doesn't
[00:35:30] Mike: exist anymore. Okay. It's 5, 000 a month. And the objections are still too high there. It's like, well, okay, we can also do this, but we also need this and we'll drop it to this price. So it's essentially like a coupon code acting in the background of like, Hey. Apply, drop it 10%, drop it 20%, whatever.
[00:35:47] Mike: You mean
[00:35:47] Will: the below market value code, right?
[00:35:49] Mike: Yes.
[00:35:53] Will: My vocabulary is going to be all messed up now. Well, it's, well, the interesting thing is it was a mindset shift for me. Like, like it was a mind and it actually really did help me begin to understand like the idea of pre selling and shifting some of the ways. I love what you've said about this checkout page, MooCommerce.
[00:36:11] Will: Have, have people, I mean, a 10, 000 service agreement that feels like there should be a contract involved or something like that. Have you gotten pushback on not having a contract or what? What's that
[00:36:21] Mike: been like? If there has been pushback, it's been more related to the price than anything. Like I haven't heard anything particular about the contract or an agreement.
[00:36:28] Mike: Like we said, I mean, we have some basic terms and conditions. Like if we don't launch the service, like you get your money back, but, uh, we don't have a physical contract that we're going to do this because we also want to, don't want to commit to something. Uh, if. We get to a point where we're like, Hey, this service doesn't work as is.
[00:36:43] Mike: We need to kind of go back to the drawing board. We're not ready to launch now. So we, like I said, we will refund the money if we don't get it, uh, to launch, but we don't put a contract in place until we're ready to launch until we know all the details of the service and every other aspect of it.
[00:36:59] Will: I think one of the things that I'm realizing as I, as I kind of consider this, because I'm on sales calls all the time and I'm, I'm pre selling and selling and kind of helping people.
[00:37:10] Will: Dig in on some of that stuff. And I'm realizing that I can remove some of the friction associated with pre selling by making the checkout process more simple and connecting those dots. So I love what you've, you know, there's probably not much out there that's more simple than a checkout page. Yeah. Um, and, and a WooCommerce kind of pushes you to, you know, you got a title and pictures and a description.
[00:37:34] Will: And so in a way they're looking at that as the contract and e commerce, I mean, you look at Amazon, for example, when I go buy a product, my contract is the product description, and if the product doesn't description doesn't match what I receive, you can bet I'm leaving a bad review and I'm returning it.
[00:37:51] Will: And so I think in a lot of ways, Amazon and e commerce has trained us to To see the product description as a contract. And let's be honest, have you, in all my years doing, um, business, I've only ever had a contract be, you know, where I went back and tried to use it. I never have been able to use it in court or anything like that, but I've only ever even had to hold the contract over someone's head to be like, no, you, you signed a contract, you need to pay me X.
[00:38:22] Will: And that's only worked like once out of the, you know, well, I don't know, 10 percent of the time that you get it, you get somebody who's a jerk and won't actually pay you, or, and I'm actually pretty careful about that now where I'll collect the money up front, or I'll collect most of the money up front so that I'm not left high and dry because that's happened too many times.
[00:38:40] Will: And so it's interesting to me how often the contract really doesn't matter. It's more about. The relationship and did they get what they were, did they get what they were asking for
[00:38:49] Mike: 100 percent and like, that's the same exact way that we look at it. It's get the money up front, have a clearly defined contract of what is going to be deliverable.
[00:38:57] Mike: Once you know everything that you're going to be delivering, you don't want to put things in there that. You're not going to deliver. Cause that's the point of friction later when they, when you bring that contract to them and they're like, Hey, you never did this it's in the contract. And then it's like, oh shit.
[00:39:09] Mike: So now we got to start figuring out that. So yeah, we've ended up in those situations before with people not paying and like the way we deal with it is. We try to, if they're not willing to pay for a service because they're upset, we try to negotiate, uh, some like exit fee, uh, based on the amount of money they do owe us.
[00:39:27] Mike: And generally that works. Uh, it's a below market value exit fee and where we've had problems with people like ghosting us and just not paying, that's been where it's been more challenging. And, you know, with our contracts, we. As an agency, we have like a personal guarantee in them. Uh, so when we don't get answers, we just send them to a collection agency and the collection agency chases them down.
[00:39:51] Mike: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but legally by signing a personal guarantee, they owe the money. So, uh, it's just a matter of someone else chasing it down at that point.
[00:40:00] Will: Interesting. Interesting. I haven't had to do the, the, uh, personal guarantee thing yet. Um, like where I've had to go send someone to collections or anything like that.
[00:40:12] Will: Usually, um, when the contract goes south that way, I've collected enough money and I've stopped it before I've needed to. Um, but I, I hear you a hundred percent, that can be a real pain. So I think one of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation is I'm probably overthinking how important the actual signature is part of it.
[00:40:33] Will: I have a, I have a software that allows me to, um, get some of that. And then these pre sale arrangements, maybe your product page is totally sufficient. And I mean, if we're talking about e commerce sellers, let's talk about e commerce seller for a second. These guys know how to put our product pages, right?
[00:40:49] Will: Yeah. Like, like following a little tutorial to set up a short, a quick WordPress website, integrating Stripe and setting all of that up. Not a very difficult process. It'll take you a couple of hours to kind of go through that, but then you've got the basics of what you would need to pre sell at a below market rate.
[00:41:08] Will: Um, whatever it is that you're trying to put out there in the market.
[00:41:12] Mike: And the reality is you're doing most of the selling when you're on the call with them, at least like the way that we do it or the way that I do it. So like the sale has probably already happened in the customer's mind while you're on the call and you know, the transaction is just whether it's done there on the call or whether it's done afterwards.
[00:41:28] Mike: So, yeah, I mean, it's really simple to do it. It doesn't take much time at all. And you could probably even find freelancers or independent contractors that can do it for you.
[00:41:37] Will: Oh, yeah. From the standpoint of. Let me put it this way. You can reach out to me personally on LinkedIn and be like, well, I listened to that episode you were talking about, you know, finding a freelancer.
[00:41:47] Will: I'll steer you on automation, hunter. com. Um, I have an entire episode about how to find an Upwork freelancer. Um, you watch that. It'll take you 30 minutes that will get you to the point where you write a job post and follow it. You'll find somebody for 150, 200 bucks that will walk you through every step of the process of buying a domain name.
[00:42:08] Will: Um, you know, installing WordPress, installing WooCommerce, connecting Stripe, and now you've just got to write a product page and you're done. So now for that, you can just do a chat GPT now. I mean, yeah, let's be, let's be honest. There's, there's so much out there to kind of get there. Okay. So I get that part and I get how we're kind of testing.
[00:42:30] Will: The water is there. How do I connect with these people? Or is that kind of part of your searching? Like when you try to find something that has demand on it, you know, is that part of your process?
[00:42:41] Mike: So we do it in a few different ways. Uh, obviously existing customers are a great opportunity for us. Just talk and try to solve these problems and see if it's a, it's a need they have.
[00:42:52] Mike: So existing customers is one way where we start talking to these people and finding out what the service is. Uh, lost leads is another area where we focused. So leads that we spoke to before, but weren't necessarily interested in what we were offering at that point. We typically re engage them and see if they're interested in what we're offering on this side.
[00:43:08] Mike: And then the other way is the way I do it is like just through email marketing. Uh, so like we've have a pretty good size list of our existing company. I built a pretty good size personal list. That's a great way to do it. Um, I've done it a few times on LinkedIn by reaching out to people. Like ideal customers, but generally the response rates are pretty low on that from my experience, and I think people have caught on that most of the time someone's trying to pitch you something, uh, if they're reaching out cold and you don't know them.
[00:43:36] Mike: So generally those are the ways that we focus on. It's on existing customers, people we've talked to that we haven't closed for our existing services and then promoting whatever the offer is or promoting a free consulting about whatever the service is to our market, uh, to our audience, uh, on our email list.
[00:43:53] Will: And how many people in your email list before you started to have that be the way that you were able to launch that new service?
[00:43:59] Mike: My personal list, I only had like a thousand, uh, and I get from every campaign, I get three, four responses. So that's enough, you know, three, four people to talk to is enough to see whether I'm on the right track or not.
[00:44:11] Mike: And then from there I can just scale it up and, you know, change the copy, try to improve the email, try to get more responses from it. So I think with as little as like probably 500, you could probably start seeing results. But obviously to get to 500 still takes a lot of work, uh, from the marketing side.
[00:44:26] Will: And how would you recommend getting to the 500? Let's say that I'm an e commerce seller. What can I do today to begin having those conversations? Um, I, and I actually, LinkedIn works great. I found as long as you're willing to put in the effort of having the genuine conversation with people. Yeah. 15 minute networking call where you jump on and say, Hey, You know, who, not how, who are you looking to meet today?
[00:44:51] Will: Right. And I love reciprocity. I found like, Mike, if I ask you, who do you need to meet today? Who's who's the person that will help you solve whatever that biggest challenges. If I ask you that question, you tell me who it is. And I think. You know what? I don't have anybody in my network who meets that, but I think, I think this person might, let me do a quick intro and I actually stopped the phone call and make the intro right there.
[00:45:13] Will: If you don't come back to me and say, all right, reversal here. Who do you need to meet? If you're not, if you're not coming back to me and asking that, and if at that moment, you don't say, well, I've got this new product and this is what it does. And this is how it's awesome. And do you know anybody they're either going to say, well, that's something I need.
[00:45:31] Will: Yeah, or they're going to say, you know what, I know somebody. And so if you're willing to do that level of 15 minute calls on LinkedIn, it works beautifully. You just have to be genuine about how you're connecting those dots. And the second tip I'd give you about doing it on LinkedIn is use your phone and use the record video button.
[00:45:50] Will: So a lot of people don't know this, but if you, so very simple, generic connect requests, most people are still accepting connect requests. Especially if your profile doesn't look like one of those, I make leads on LinkedIn for you, like change your profile. If it looks like that, but if it just looks like you're an e commerce seller and you're connecting with another e commerce seller, they're going to connect.
[00:46:12] Will: Once you're connecting, open up your phone, go to the chat button. And at the bottom, there's a little plus button you hit, open up that plus button. And it says, record a video, go stand in your front room, go stand somewhere where you look like a real person. And then not, not an AI deep fake, right? And, and just use their name, like, Hey, Mike, um, you know, jumped on the profile there.
[00:46:33] Will: I'd love to just do a quick, get to know you call 15 minutes. Um, you know, this is my background. I saw this in your background. It looks like that's similar. Let me know if you want to connect, pause. If you don't get people coming back on and being like, sweet, cool, genuine connection, I'll be shocked. Okay.
[00:46:50] Will: And then once you get on that call, just open it up with what, like I said, who do you need to meet? They'll ask you the same question, and then you tell them, well, the person I'm looking to meet is XYZ new product idea that I've got, and they'll either raise their hand and say, oh, yeah, I need that, or they may introduce you to someone, you do 10 of those a week, and you'll get to those 5 to 10 conversations that you were hoping for to validate it without having to have the 500, but I think every single person you meet that way becomes added to your list, and so if you're doing 10 of those a week, do that for a year, I You've got 500 people on your list.
[00:47:24] Mike: No, I mean, you bring up a really good point there. Uh, it's that's maybe I'm just a little bit jaded because I have done some similar I've done with, uh, like audio recordings, uh, on LinkedIn messages. And I think maybe as an Amazon seller or as a physical good, a CPG product seller, you might get more responses as a agency and service provider.
[00:47:45] Mike: I feel like the responses aren't as great because they're like, Oh, this guy's trying to sell me. That could just be my perspective on it. Now, the way that I do it, or the way that I create a lead list is through content, marketing, and partnerships. So I webinars is a great example of this. You create a webinar, you invite a ton of people.
[00:48:03] Mike: Hopefully you have partners or friends that can invite a ton of people. The more people you capture, the more people you're adding to your email list add onto what you're doing on the calls, the 15 minute calls. If you're booking them through like Calendly, your calendar can push them automatically to your email list.
[00:48:17] Mike: So now you're building up. Using both of those, you can build the list a lot faster.
[00:48:20] Will: I
[00:48:21] Mike: mean, right now I do two webinars, hosts like two webinars a month, maybe. And between each of them, I'm generating anywhere from like 150 to like 300 emails per webinar, which is a lot. So that's a lot of, that's the way that I do it.
[00:48:35] Mike: And the way that I focus on is putting out content versus the individual reach out. But I can see how that could work as well.
[00:48:42] Will: I love it. Well, and I think that's good because I mean, if we've got somebody who actually has some experience and partnerships. I agree with you that those webinars can be very powerful.
[00:48:52] Will: If you're just a random seller and you're looking to try to figure out how to productize some idea, you're going to be a lot more, people are going to be more receptive. If it's other sellers that you're trying to sell to, or you're trying to connect with and validate that your idea actually has legs at all.
[00:49:06] Will: I agree with you, Mike. I think that people are getting pitched so often on LinkedIn. They're going to be more suspicious of somebody that says, you know, it says agency, anywhere, anything. It's unfortunate because there's a lot of agencies that have done it the scummy way of. Like, you know, peddling their goods and they don't actually build a relationship.
[00:49:24] Will: They just push, push the product. So I love it. Okay. So, uh, I have two final questions, three final questions in our podcast. This is how we end all of our podcasts. So first question, if you could make a phone call back to Mike selling ice. If you could make a phone call back to that guy and give him some tip about what he could do differently to monetize his mental capital faster, to grow faster, to become more, what would be the tip?
[00:49:54] Will: You know, I just handed you a cell phone and I'm like, Hey, this is Mike. He's about ready to get on the boat and go sell some ice. And like the real melting kind instead of whatever we were thinking it might be. Um,
[00:50:06] Mike: what would you tell him? I know, I think the main thing, uh, is just to trust your decision making more.
[00:50:13] Mike: Uh, I think that's, It's still something I don't want to say I struggle with, but still something that's a challenge from time to time is I see something I'll model it out. I'll look at the numbers. I'll be like, yeah, this makes sense. And I'll still have doubts. And I've realized that I've gotten much better with it is that if my instinct is taking me in this way, I'm probably correct.
[00:50:35] Mike: So do the analysis, do the thoughts, do the thought process, figure it out. But then once you make a decision, trust that you're making the right decision because you're probably going to be correct. So if
[00:50:46] Will: you were to put that in one sentence, like one, one phrase, what would be the phrase? What would you tell him?
[00:50:51] Will: I would say, uh, stop overthinking, uh, decisions. Stop overthinking it. Trust, trust your process.
[00:51:01] Mike: Yeah.
[00:51:01] Will: Yeah. That's
[00:51:02] Mike: a good way to put it. Yeah.
[00:51:03] Will: Trust your process. I like it. I like it a lot. I think at Cellulite Labs, we have focused a lot on. Like niching down and we've, we've, we've become a company that's now focused a hundred percent on agencies trying to help automate processes inside agencies around data collection and all of that sort of different stuff.
[00:51:22] Will: And so like we've built tools like an automated audit that kind of pushes that whole process and makes it really easy to have an Amazon seller connecting with an agency. And I was so hesitant to trust the process of niching down. It was ridiculous. It took me like. A year plus a new owner coming in and being like, no, well, we got a niche down for me to recognize that agencies were really the right way to go.
[00:51:46] Will: Um, and we're providing so much value there now that the agencies are coming to us and they're very happy to pay us to help them connect to the Amazon data. But I was so nervous of letting go of the Amazon seller niche and like, what was there that I thought we were going to miss out on stuff. And so I think you're right, like trusting that process.
[00:52:07] Will: Is totally key. So, I mean, that's an Alex Hermosi process where he's like, riches in the niches, right? Like, go down to that process. Trust. Um, that, that right and true. So I totally agree with you.
[00:52:22] Mike: Awesome. Yeah, no, I, I think that's what it is. And like, once you've done it, you have the confidence in the decision making and you have, you know how to do it, but before you do it, it seems like impossible, uh, or you have so many doubts or things that are stopping you.
[00:52:36] Mike: And like, that's definitely where I struggled. Uh, From advancing things faster than I did.
[00:52:42] Will: Final two questions. I'm going to give you a 60 seconds. You've just stepped into an elevator and the guy's like, yeah, I'm an Amazon seller done a couple of million this last year. And you're like, Oh, cool. What do you do?
[00:52:52] Will: And you're going to now get the opportunity, 60 seconds to tell him a little bit about one of these many different agencies you work on. Um, maybe the ice too. You can tell him about that too. Um, and then, um, after that, you're going to share tips, tricks, hacks, or books that you've come across in the last year.
[00:53:10] Will: That have helped you monetize your mental capital.
[00:53:13] Mike: Okay, good. I just, I was just thinking of one the other day. So, uh, Hey, all right. One minute go. Okay. So what we do at AMC advisors is we help brands scale from one to over 20 million on the Amazon platform. We do that in a variety of ways to affiliate marketing, advertising, programmatic, and SEO on the platform.
[00:53:34] Mike: We've worked with over 500 brands have generated close to a billion dollars in So we have a lot of experience from working with brands of your size. So that's the elevator pitch. That's incredibly quick. When it comes to books, uh, or, or tools or hacks, uh, new to big by David Kidder. Uh, that was a book I read recently.
[00:53:54] Mike: Uh, he talks about, uh, how essentially how to like create, uh, entrepreneurial, uh, processes within a company, but it's the same, uh, problem solving, uh, of like identifying your total addressable market, how to talk to them, how to question them, how to watch what they're doing and like all those steps he covers in that book.
[00:54:13] Mike: It's a really good book.
[00:54:14] Will: Interesting. So, so one more time with the title new to big, new to big, I like it. But I'm always interested, especially when I hear about a book that I have not come across, and that's one that I haven't. So I'm, I'm stoked to add that one to my list. Um, and I appreciate the suggestion, Mike, it has been a pleasure talking about everything from ice all the way down to, you know, go advance and what you guys are doing in Mexico.
[00:54:43] Will: And, and I mean, honestly, I'm excited. We're going to have to go. Well, actually, what trade shows are you headed to, um, in the next year? Do you come to
[00:54:51] Mike: trade shows at all? Uh, there's a few in Latin America. I'm going to be going to, I'm going to a, uh, coffee expo and some other interesting ones, uh, health products and stuff like that.
[00:55:02] Mike: Mainly I go to stuff here in Mexico. So if you're at, at week Latam, that's probably a good place. That's where you
[00:55:07] Will: are. I love it. Well, uh, it's been a pleasure looking forward to future conversations and thanks for being on monetize your mental capital.
[00:55:15] Mike: Awesome. Thank you for having me. You're welcome.
