The Amazon Strategist Show

The Next Big Shift In E-Commerce Is Here

• The Amazon Strategist Show • Season 3 • Episode 82

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Join John and special guest Norm Farrar in this game-changing episode of The Amazon Strategist Show. They dive into the future of e-commerce and how building a strong community can take your brand to the next level. Norm shares his insights on using AI tools to engage audiences, why trust and loyalty are the foundation of any successful online business, and his bold prediction: marketplace platforms could replace websites entirely.

Get ready to uncover actionable strategies for growing your community, boosting engagement, and staying ahead in the evolving digital marketing landscape. If you’re an Amazon seller or an e-commerce entrepreneur, this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss!

Key Takeaways:
- Communities are essential for brand loyalty and growth.
- AI can enhance community engagement and translation.
- Building a community requires trust and consistent value.
- Websites may become less relevant as marketplaces grow.
- Engagement is crucial before trying to sell to a community.
- Innovative apps are changing the way products are sold.
- Personal stories can help connect with community members.
- Niche targeting can help build a more engaged community.
- Offering value through newsletters can attract subscribers.
- Understanding your audience is key to community building.

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Connect with Norm Farrar
Website: https://lwn.news
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/lunchwithnorm
Instagram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normanfarrar
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/normanfarrar
X: https://x.com/NormFarrarJr
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX5RpvwOG6WC0IRK2V8-1Qg 

Connect with John Cavendish
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgcuk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejohncavendish
LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/thejohncavendish

Know More About Seller Candy
Website: https://www.sellercandy.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/SellerCandyPro
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sellercandyamz
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sellercandy/
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Speaker 1:

One of the things that I'm going to have a bunch of people rolling their eyes is websites are dead. I am in the website business and I'm telling you websites are going to die a fairly quick death. People are going to go to marketplace and platforms. They're going to be able to. We were talking just before the podcast about know creating your own app, but I think it's going to be app driven or platform driven way before you see a website in the future, and I think you're going to see that a lot of these web development companies are going to start moving that way hello, I'm your host, john Cavendish, and welcome to season three of the Amazon Strategy Show.

Speaker 2:

the show that's all strategy, with no hacks, no silver bullets and no magic pills just real, practical strategies to grow your Amazon business. So today I am joined again by none other than the Norm Farrar, the man with the beard. I know that guy. So Norm is a visionary entrepreneur who provides online marketing and managed e-commerce services for brands. He's worked with Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, mercedes-benz and 20th Century Fox, and since the early 90s, norm has focused on helping entrepreneurs optimize their operations and unlock business potential. So currently he co-hosts two podcasts Lunch with Norm and the Marketing Misfits with Kevin. So, norm, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1:

Hey, you know, I don't know if you just said that I know this guy. That was the name of my first podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I remember Back in the day, several years ago it's still on the wall actually over there. But back in the day, several years ago, when we chatted the first time we were talking about it four years ago or something.

Speaker 1:

So unfortunately that's in the tubes right now, but I love doing that podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's great, and on the background I always remember the beard guy and I know that guy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Cool. So I mean you've had such a varied and expansive career. What are you excited about right now, norm?

Speaker 1:

Well, right now, there's so many things going on. Ai is, you know, I don't even want to say AI, but I mean that's huge. But I'm going back. I always like talking about unsexy things, you know press releases, google, business profile. Well, my unsexy thing this time is communities. They've been evolving, they've tried to evolve. I think you're going to see huge growth in communities right now, and some of it will be due to AI. Some of it will be just doing it the old-fashioned way. But if a brand doesn't have a community and what I mean by a community is a group of loyal followers you're missing out. You're leaving a lot of money on the table.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I'm a big believer in communities as well and the whole ethos that we lived through the golden age of the Internet then, when you could trust what you saw online or what was going on. And now we don't trust the internet anymore, do we? With AI, it's just getting more and more randomly generated crap. So you trust influencers and you trust communities, so it's going to be the place that people go.

Speaker 1:

Until the creators are AI-generated crap. That's very scary, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

And it's crazy how quick things are getting. Like you can't tell who is who and what is what and what's real.

Speaker 1:

I've been doing this audio like with Notebook LM, so I've been playing around with it. How can I be different than everybody else? And so I've taken it, stripped it out and then edited the notebook, and then I went over to HeyGen and started playing around. No, yeah, I went to HeyGen for some of the animation, but then I went to Adobe Animation and I started creating these figures that started talking. Now, over at HeyGen, I have this lady and this man that are talking back and forth.

Speaker 1:

That looks so real. It's very hard to tell them apart. You know there are a few mannerisms. You know there are a few quirks, but if you were just looking at it you wouldn't know. And the other thing about communities right now, which is really great with AI, is that now, especially over on YouTube, they just announced this last week. Now, I knew this was coming, but I was going over to HeyGen and paying for translation, but now you can have five languages that automatically take your YouTube video, turn it into French, take your YouTube video, turn it into like if you've got the IP address coming from France or from Spain or from wherever Latin America, it translates it into Spanish. I forget what the five are, so you've got them covered and it's in your voice, wow so.

Speaker 2:

I was doing that at.

Speaker 1:

HeyGen, which was kind of cool, but it would take time. You'd have to do one at a time. But now we do that. We also do that with our titles, so that's automatically. Big announcement from YouTube last week and that's where it's going. So, no matter if you're speaking English, that French version is going to be out there. So now you can even build your community even larger and if you have that community, you can have it translated.

Speaker 1:

I'm talking about all the comments and we haven't got to that point yet, but that's something that's going to be new in the very, very near future, where I have a company called Flatworld. A lot of people think I'm a flat earther because of it and you know oh, like you know, he's crazy I'm not. Flat World was a book that came out way back when and it was talking about, like communications. Everything we are has come back to a flat world and this is what's happening. We're globalizing. I don't even know if that's the way to describe it, but it's one world and you can speak any language and people can understand. There are issues, so, especially like right now. Kevin King talked about this in one of his newsletters, just about localization.

Speaker 1:

So French Quebecoisis french is definitely going to be different, or even english dialects like in scotland. How many different dialects. I've heard that there was tons of different dialects. You know when you come, even to ontario, if you go to newfoundland completely different dialect. So that's going to be a challenge for a community. But at the end of the day I couldn't understand. I hope I don't offend anybody. I know back in the day I could say new fee, but I can't understand a new fee. I can't understand like they start talking. It's like what?

Speaker 2:

yeah, that's interesting, isn't it like? Are you gonna have hyper? Are we gonna like create an echo chamber of accents? Then, when it only parrots everyone back to you and how you would want to hear it, Based on your IP.

Speaker 1:

Who knows?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's cool, isn't it? Not necessarily that cool, just interesting. I don't know if I want that. So when you say community Norm, do you mean like, could the community be like an email list or a Facebook group, or would it be like an actually more of an interactive workplace where people can actually connect?

Speaker 1:

For me, a community is just getting a group of people together that can communicate that trust, that build loyalty. For me, I want to have a diverse community community. Uh, on, on our podcast. We talk about it when we close out. But we developed a community where, hey, who, if you don't have time or you don't like podcasts, you don't like looking me in my face, you know? Okay, don't you go to youtube. You can go over to a podcast channel. You can go over and listen or download our newsletter. You can go to the whatsapp group. You can so go to our facebook group.

Speaker 1:

We've made this huge community where you can pick and choose what you want. It's. It's it's kind of like what walmart says. You know, it's whatever you want, like we're trying to please you. You can pick it up, you can go online and order it. You can. You can uh, uh, oh, it's, it's their project glass mode, you know. So it's. It's just delivering whatever you want, the way you want it, and that's what we try to do with with communities. So it might be an email blast, like right now. If I do an email blast to my community, they trust it. I'm not going to steer them in the wrong direction. We try to build value. So by having the one podcast, that's value. We don't do any promotion. We have sponsors but we don't say, oh, we're not pitching all the time. Same thing with the newsletter.

Speaker 1:

Kelsey's job is to make sure that they take that story, and that's another thing. By the way, I just I'm going to rabbit hole this a lot during this conversation but one of the things that we wanted to make sure is that people could relate. So, okay, I'm not just the guy with a beard, that is a personal brand. But to get people to come and join the community, how would they do that? How would they? And what we decided to do is personalize it. So I come up with true stories of my life, which I have a couple, and then I turn it into a business lesson and people can relate to that. And then even in the newsletter, some people like it, some people don't. We find more people like it than don't. It's find the beard guy, and so you know we do like a Where's Waldo, but for the beard guy. And then there could be memories. But it's all interwoven with some really good content.

Speaker 1:

What's happening in Amazon? Social influencer, creator movement no promos Very, very, very few. Like most of the newsletter, you won't even see a promo. A lot of people don't even know my business and that's a strange. You know that's kind of strange. People have no idea what I do other than talk on a podcast. And I do it that way for a reason I want people to trust the community, and that's the key. If you don't have that, if you lose that, if you try to promote, if you're trying to be selfish and just me, me, me with a community, the money will come. You know, people know and trust you, and then when you do have something or you do go to an event or you are selling a service, they'll trust you. So that's the important and I'm talking about all right, there's service providers like myself, but for your brand.

Speaker 1:

I was in Florida talking to a huge pet company this week. They have the. They have 380 000 emails and they don't have a community. Do you think a pet owner or dog owner would like to be involved with a community and start talking about their dog? This other other group that I was with they do a cat animation. Every day they send it out to 750,000 people. They have the second biggest GIF downloaded on the Internet 3.3 billion times. It's been downloaded. They don't have a community. What do you think you could do with your brand, and especially if people are accepting that download? You've already got the community and you don't realize it.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean. So how would you build a community? Say somebody has a small email list or even a probably not 750,000, but somewhere in the middle between zero and 750,000 on their email list and they want to start building a community. Like, where would you start?

Speaker 1:

Well, the first thing would be get that list. So it could be with your Amazon or any type of packaging. You could have something, a QR code that could drive people over and you can get their email list. The problem is, so many people are they're too close to their product and they're not, they're not thinking outside of the box, right, oh, um, okay, I'm gonna get a warranty. All right, I might sign up for that, but I'm very I'm careful with who and what I give my email list or my email to nowadays. So, oh, I'm going to download a pf file. I don't care, I mean, if it's a cookbook and I buy a knife, maybe, but all right, uh, here's some research. I don't care. So you have to give some sort of value added it. I know we did this back in the day. You will remember this where you do the VIP program, remember that, yeah, everybody was a VIP, but you could do something like that, like it could be the founders, it could be something. But QR code over something valuable, even as simple as a newsletter. So, join our newsletter, right, and? And you could describe the newsletter, the, the, the value stack that that's going to provide.

Speaker 1:

Going back to the uh, the pets. That's an easy one. People want to know. And what can you do? What? What's your usp? Well, you could bring in pet owners on a podcast that's part of like oh, listen to our podcast on our newsletter about the pet owner and what they've done. Or some unique pets, pet tricks, pet health for elderly dogs. It could be a wide variety of different things and you can niche it. You could say this is a large breed, medium, small, it could be for health benefits, it could just be funny pet things that happen. I really haven't given it too much thought, but that's one way of starting it. But then the other way is on LinkedIn or not LinkedIn, but Facebook groups we've been able to see huge growth in Facebook groups that have been able to carry over to our newsletter. So we started out with zero period, zero on YouTube. We started mentioning you know other things that we could do which led us over to WhatsApp and what's led us over to our Facebook group, and then we mentioned something very you know what we were doing and all of a sudden the newsletter instantly got tons of traffic. Then, from the newsletter, we were able to do some dedicated emails, which again, tons of traffic.

Speaker 1:

I'm not doing it. I do doing this all organically. But I know Kevin's got one step further and he's been spending in some ways very inexpensive Facebook ads to drive traffic over to gain subscribers on his list. Once you have those subscribers, you can really build out and extend where you want to go with it. You don't want to be all things to everyone. If you can niche down as a brand, that's probably the best. And here's another way to get people Go into other groups, see what they're talking about.

Speaker 1:

People are going to know whether you're a poser or not. You know just by the way you talk your lingo. You know if I'm in a dog group and I'm trying to be something, I'm not, they're going to know. So there's certain terminologies that people are going to.

Speaker 1:

Stephen Black talks about this going into scuba diving groups and niching down to a specific type, like a deep sea welder. There's groups for that. There's a group for everything, but he had lingo that he pulled out of there and nobody except a deep sea welder would know about it. And that's what you're trying to achieve. And those people go aha, this person really knows what they're talking about and there's all sorts of little things that you can. Also when somebody I know. I did something with a what's it called A Sanskrit group where, if you join up, you got this 30 bracelet. Well, the bracelet cost me less than three dollars, and you know to to acquire a person for three dollars pretty, pretty cheap. So those are just a couple of things that you can do. Now that's not even talking about ai or, uh, you know, scraping. I'll leave that one alone, but there's so many things that you can do to get a really good list. But even I'm I'm just talking about focusing on your amazon brand insert. Gepua is not breaking tos, you know go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. You know, register for whatever it is, join your community and then what's the different, what makes difference being this, can like this being a community and it's just being a list of people that you're sending emails to trust and loyalty.

Speaker 1:

So, uh, when you're building a community, it's not just a group of people Uh, you're, you're getting a group of loyal uh, it could be just loyal members. So in my whatsapp group um, I don't even have to if I'm away for a week or two I've got people that are taking care of it. Like people answer a question, my group's awesome people will remember yeah, so people will.

Speaker 1:

And people answer the questions when I'm not there and, um, you know people, if it looks like spam, I I'm not removing them, but you'll see in about if, if somebody sees it, they're complaining and they want them out of the group. So it's trust. And again going back to that, if somebody sees that it's pitchy, now people can pitch in my group. So I know Afolabi is doing some webinar, right, and he asked, he asked permission to post. I said, yeah, go ahead. But there's pitching, but it's quality, like it's vetted, vetted, and the people in the group all of a sudden are this community that will come together and let you know really quickly that this post doesn't belong in the group but at the same time they're not afraid to voice their opinion, put in a question that might, at some people might think are pretty novice questions and that also, this depends on the group.

Speaker 1:

I have an open group with service providers beginners, intermediate and advanced sellers and I could niche that down, but I don't want to. I want to accept everybody that's in the group. Also, if I were to post anything in that group or in my newsletter, which is a group, a community all by itself really, if anybody mentions anything in the group, it's already vetted or it will be vetted very quickly by everybody in the group. Or if I mentioned something, you know it's uh, it's great, like norm is not going to mislead us. I, I, I had, I had to slip once bloody ai. I had, um, one of my vas do something on ai when, when, back january a couple years ago, and it was horrible and I didn't realize that the person posted this in the group and also on LinkedIn and I got so much feedback negative saying this isn't you, you don't talk like this and it's true, like if you try to fake out, fake and just hire somebody, it could backfire on you very quickly. So we made sure that that never happened again.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I understand that and I see that. Yeah, I mean, you see that all the time, don't you? You see that on LinkedIn or in communities, people just outsourcing content, because I think definitely everyone wants to build a community or wants to build something, but not everyone is a good community ambassador or community manager. And having someone to help you do that whether that's a team member or, as you said, people stepping up in the community to help you run it I think that's essential to long term, unless you're naturally a community person, like community builder, and I think that's a personality type.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and people are going to lay off the engagement too. Like community builder, and I think that's a personality type, yeah, and you know you've got a people are going to lay off the engagement too. I'll just use a podcast. So some, we were doing it three times a week and it's a community, right, I know anybody in that comment section I pretty much know, I know who they are, I know their business, I know their products. If somebody new comes in, I welcome them and that's building a community. Just on a podcast. However, three times a week, three, four years into it, all of a sudden it starts to fall off and new people come on.

Speaker 1:

I was at an event again this weekend in Fort Lauderdale. All of a sudden, this is like how much I know my community. I saw a couple of people there and it was just like, oh, these are there's so-and-so and there's so-and-so. And we started talking and they were actually apologizing for not commenting on the video or on the podcast because they were doing some other things and I thought, oh, don't worry about it, but that's a community. When you know, you get to know even two years if we've never talked, if I put something out or if they want to join back in, or you know it's great, but at some point you're going to have fall off and you got to make sure that you're always doing something new or you have a USP. So for me, you know, I, I I have that wheel of Kelsey. I give away mugs, I give away M&Ms with my beard on it Kind of sounds gross to eat, but just little things to let people know they're appreciated. If you take it for granted, you've lost your community.

Speaker 1:

I didn't part of that. You know, wilford, right? Wilford Lightheart, maybe not Digital Blacksmiths, no, we started that company together years ago and one thing I I loved when I was talking to him it was, uh, you have to get engaged before you get married. I've never forgotten that. It's so true. You have to engage people. You have to. You can't look like you've got some ulterior motive. You know, uh, it will come.

Speaker 1:

If you want to sell something, if you've got a service, I know I can go out to my community and I can say, hey, I'm doing an ai and we did. You know, we're doing an ai project and all of a sudden, a thousand people came on a webinar to listen to this ai presentation that kevin and I were doing. And, um, and that's not even hitting it too hard, you know, with the service provide for us, it's the service providers. For other people it could be their suppliers, but you can tap into their list as well. So if I come to you and I said, hey, I got a favor and I have done this, hey, I've got a favor, I've got this thing coming up, would you be able to help promote it? Absolutely, and I would do that for you and I would do that for any member in the group. So as a brand, you could reach out like that too. You know you got something you're going to promote and I'll give you an example.

Speaker 1:

So, going back to the pet industry, so you've got the Humane Society in Canada. They're having an event. You can see that you're selling your bully sticks in Toronto or in the outlying areas. You could do a press release to get people to know about the event. At the event you can have QR codes showing that you know you were the supplier of the bully sticks and that you believe in XYZ. All of a sudden you're going to get a whole bunch of new people because you started to zero in and just do this geo-targeting, because you know that's where your sales were. And all of a sudden you've got all these people that that care about dogs and now they're in your newsletter about dog and that could be another niche. You know just how how to help these rescue dogs or rescue dogs. I could go down a whole path on just that topic that I talked about this or that I heard and I learned about a rescue. You know it's a great. Somebody should take advantage of that, because that's a big community right there.

Speaker 2:

For sure, yeah, I mean we used to foster animals in Ho Chi Minh City when I lived over there. For sure, yeah, I mean we used to foster animals in um in Ho Chi Minh city when I lived over there and one of my friend's wives she was big involved in the community of of. She called them the cat ladies, but mostly women that fostered cats and organized the, organized the rescue. And yeah, I mean just super tight community and easy, easy to get into. They want it, they encourage people, they want people to people to get involved.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's the thing that they're encouraging continuously I, I, I, like I did this influencer challenge two years ago to try to get to 100 000 followers in a year, should almost do that with that. I, that's like. I'm just thinking about it. That's a newsletter in a community, I bet you I could easily get to over 100,000 subscribers in a year and, like you know, just the people who fly it fly the dogs in the different services I mean the services would probably sponsor it. Just think of all the dog food companies out there, or the dog products I'm talking to Kev, okay, I just so. Kevin and I you've heard it here We'll be launching a dog rescue newsletter coming to your inbox soon.

Speaker 2:

All right, I'll take 5%.

Speaker 1:

All right, there we go.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome, though. So that's the key. That's your sharing is that's the key to staying relevant is to continuously give value and move with the community to what's the next thing. Is that right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and USP.

Speaker 1:

You've got to have something that's different than anybody else and you have to stay up with a trend. So for us, um, back in back, when the oranges and the blacks were coming together, I think I was one of the first uh of the in the amazon group to ever come up with that color combination and creative, like. My background is in branding. So you know, orange has always been on the creative side. That's what the color. If you look at an orange logo, you'll see a lot of creative companies, advertising agencies. They'll use orange and black.

Speaker 1:

Restaurants, it's red and yellow, meats it's blue and orange a deeper orange. But there's certain colors that you should look at and you can type it into ChatGPT. By the way, I had a client that was doing fitness projects and he had purple and I said it sucks, you're missing the market. You're probably 10%, 15% less sales because you don't have the colors associated with fitness. And I know Planet Fitness is purple, but for somebody launching it on Amazon it's the wrong color. So what I do now is, if I'm using a brand or if I'm into a niche, type it into ChatTPT, create a prompt and find out what colors are associated with that when you're creating the brand. But you also want to check out.

Speaker 1:

You know what could be a usp. See what it comes back with. Like I have for the podcast um is the wheel of kelsey. Like we're close to giving away 500, 600 000 in prizes right now. You know, but that's something we started and and kelsey, he gets asked to go on to podcast. Uh, just because of the wheel of kelsey I mean, sometimes it's podcast management, but you know, I know he's been asked to do guest wheel of kelsey's and you know stuff like that. It's just unique and so it doesn't have to be expensive. It could be a giveaway, but you have to just think outside of the box a little bit so you can differentiate yourself from other communities.

Speaker 2:

I love it and I think that anyone who's listening to this, if they haven't got a community already, they should definitely do it. Where else is a good place for people to, like you know, learn more and consume more about how to start their community? Do you know any good resources?

Speaker 1:

Well, I'm sure there's a bunch out there about community. I think that people should probably look at starting their own podcast if you're a brand. The best lead generator by far for me which shocked me was my newsletter. I get more people asking me about what I do or can I help them, and any questions that come to me directly I always answer. It's not an assistant. You can go into WhatsApp, start that group, but just do something. Think about what your demographic, what your avatar would be interested in, and just go for it. It doesn't cost a lot of money just to start a newsletter or building a list. You've got to get that list and once you get that list, you can start sending out valuable. So here's another one. By the way, you could just send out a fact or a recipe or something interesting just by uh sms. So if you can trap people's uh emails or their phone numbers and send it over, you can do it daily.

Speaker 1:

All of a sudden, I used to work in addiction and people that are addicts uh 90 the high, high, high majority relapse and 90, the high, high, high, majority relapse. The people, the parents, usually the enablers girlfriend, spouse, you know the parents. They always want to be informed because you know they go to 30-day treatment. They're right back. It's a revolving door. They don't go long enough, so they start getting all this information fed to them, fed to them, fed, and then you're in the. You're in their face when something does happen 30 days a year from now. You know, they remember and you're giving them all your valuable information. Well, it's the same thing if you are a pet owner and all of a sudden your dog is sick. They're thinking of you because you've been putting out all these facts. You know, you know, through SMS, very inexpensive to do. Same thing with emails, um, but you're in the face of people. They're part of your community. Maybe they haven't joined, but they're definitely going to buy your stuff because you're in the forefront of, you know of of what they're thinking.

Speaker 2:

I love it and I think there's a lot of value there for people to take away and think about, if you're listening to this, what could you do to add value and be your USP for your community? So I love that Right. Exactly. It's always amazing to talk to you. Last time we talked about Google business, this time we talk about communities. It's such a varied topic every single time.

Speaker 1:

I have got. If you want me back at some point next year or something. There is something huge coming up from Google that we should be talking about, but it hasn't quite happened yet. So if you'd like reach out in about six months, and even if we're not doing a podcast about it. If you're in the group, you'll hear about it.

Speaker 2:

Looking forward to it, as always. All right, let's move on to the next bit, then. Norm, I want to hear your controversial take. So, at this part of the podcast, we ask you for a controversial take, and what is your most debatable or controversial opinion related to? Could be Amazon, could be the e-commerce industry, or it could be anything that you want.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I'm going to have a bunch of people rolling their eyes is websites are dead. I am in the website business and I'm telling you, websites are going to die a fairly quick death. People are going to go to marketplace and platforms. They're going to be able to. We were talking just before the podcast about, you know, creating your own app, but I think it's going to be app driven or platform driven way before you see a website in the future, and I think you're going to see that a lot of these web development companies are going to start moving that way. But you know to go on to TikTok or either TikTok TikTok shop, any of the new ones that are coming out, which I don't know who they'll be, but I'm sure there's going to be a few that are going to be emerging fairly quickly. It could be Instagram, it could be Facebook, it could be the Google Marketplace All of these places. Youtube is gearing up for this. So why do you need a website when you have all of these other marketplaces that are sitting there? And it's not expensive. I sell beauty products. It is bloody expensive to have a website products. It is bloody expensive to have a website. You know just the amount that you have to give back to the website, the subscription percentages. I mean it's just, it's expensive. But that is my first prediction that you're going to see that, with all the AI, with the way that everything's going, you're going to eliminate websites. It'll take a bit of time to phase off, but anybody new that's coming up, all the younger people getting into e-commerce, you're not going to see them on. There's no need for it.

Speaker 1:

And I'll give you an example. So a friend of mine and this is local and this is with a dog walking service. Okay, so this dog walking service went and started to license out what they were doing. And this is in Toronto. The company started out just locally. They make I didn't realize how much dog walkers make. I should quit doing what I'm doing and start walking some dogs. But, uh, also like a, like it's a doggy daycare. So you start not a franchise, but this licensing out.

Speaker 1:

So, uh, I asked about what do they do? What's your website? Oh, we don't have one. What do you mean? You don't have one website? Oh, we don't have one. What do you mean you don't have one? Well, we don't need one. We put something on facebook and you know, we, we target certain areas and we fill up our pipeline with basically free, like very inexpensive. And why do I need a website? Why do I need to pay hosting? Why do I need to pay for anything, any of the widgets, you know, and so that's what they do. And this is just about a week or two ago. It was just kind of well. There you go, I'm right. I'm absolutely right. I'm absolutely right.

Speaker 2:

Confirmation bias. Immediate confirmation bias that's great, that's awesome. I love it. And I love a business where you can just turn on Facebook ads and suddenly your entire pipeline is full for your new location. That sounds amazing.

Speaker 1:

Isn't that something?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's great, great niche or great blue ocean market that they've stumbled upon or discovered in that area.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that they've stumbled upon or discovered in that area. Yeah, you know another thing, and I just thought of this a second ago. I was on a call the other day and I heard about this for the first time. It was called Whatnot. I was listening to Sean Hart's hacks and this came up. It was the Offer Mafia call. So so went in there and I was listening and he's talking about this whatnot thing and what the hell is that? So I went and checked it out and what? This is okay. This is why we have to be on our toes.

Speaker 1:

So I like innovative apps or any type of innovation. You got to keep your eyes and ears open and this is one that came. It's an app that lets you go in and sell things. You're the seller, there's a group that's out there and you sell it really quickly. Like you know, here's a coffee mug blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's the chinese style of selling product, completely different than what we've seen. You know it's it hasn't picked up steam yet, but this could be something that we start to see, at least in north america.

Speaker 1:

Very quickly, sean went on with his wife afterwards and they had a very successful session. They literally just went around the house and they were, you know, selling everything. But you could, like I'm looking at it going could I not do that with my wholesale? Could I not go in, like one of the things you could do? I'm just thinking out loud but go to some local stores, say, hey, I'm gonna help out, you give me a 20% commission on every sale I make and you go into that store I'm not sure which one, I'm just going to say Louis Vuitton. They would never go for it. Maybe they would If they meet a spokesperson.

Speaker 2:

I'm here, but they could go in and they could talk about what's that You're definitely their target demographic Norm.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. So, Harley's, but you can go on there. Hold up a purse, talk about it for 15 seconds, move it out. Next, talk about it, move it out. I think that that's something that we're going to see in the North American marketplace or in the Western marketplace fairly quickly. China's already had their previous that's huge western marketplace fairly quickly.

Speaker 2:

china's already. That's huge, yeah. Yeah, I mean they've had live selling in since, like last eight years in vietnam, but it's, you know, it's crazy the amount of volume some of these people move. It's just incredible like they've got such big reach and people just watch it. Apparently, as people watch, it's like qvc, but it's like qvc with a person you know or you've built the community relationship with and they just pick up stuff and put it in front of the camera. And there's that famous one isn't there with the boxes where the woman gets to get people slides in boxes.

Speaker 1:

She's like for a second and she moves 20 million dollars worth of products in a day there's a very famous uh influencer uh in china and I don't know the guy's name, but he challenged Ma, so Alibaba, that he could outsell, on a webinar or a selling session, lipstick.

Speaker 2:

Oh, lipstick King, yeah, he did like $19 million worth of lipstick in a day or something. It's a guy putting on lipstick and he did like $19 million in a day.

Speaker 1:

It was crazy he outsold. Yeah, I believe it was between Alibaba and him.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And he outsold them and, like you said, $19 million a lipstick.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's crazy, but it's that model, right.

Speaker 2:

Mm.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's amazing, I think you're going to see some creators or influencers kind of heading off in that direction and there'll be a whole bunch of new people coming up. You know, 12-year-olds, who's the next billionaire?

Speaker 2:

I mean, I've got a good idea for that, which I'll tell you about another time. I think there's a gap there in the market the trust between creators and brands. There's a software play between that, like closing the trust, the trust between creators and brands. There's a software play between that, like closing the trust gap, because at the moment, everyone's just doing a bunch of cold outbound to creators and there's got to be a better way to bridge that trust. No, like trust through a platform. You know where you can offer real money, because you don't just need to spray and pray. If you can pay real money, can you?

Speaker 1:

because if you've got yeah there must be a.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, we'll talk about another time because I know we have to go to the next podcast very soon. So, norm, thank you so much for coming on the show again, like if people want to get in touch and want to join your community. Um, what's the best way to do it?

Speaker 1:

oh, now that's a nice plug for my community. Okay, so the best way to do it, I I've got a podcast Lunch with Norm. It's live every Wednesday. I've got a newsletter and it's different from a lot of newsletters. If you want to check it out, it's LWN, like lunchwithnormnews. You can join my WhatsApp community and that's just lunchwithnorm. You'll have a couple of questions, we'll invite you in and that's about it. Um, if you want to message me directly, it's just norm at amz, like amazon amzclub awesome.

Speaker 2:

So thanks so much for being here and if you've been watching and listening to the show, um, please do feel free to like, rate and subscribe, because that's a way in which we get more reach. So come back next week, looking forward to seeing you back on the show and thanks for being here, norm.

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