Using Blockchain and AI Agents to Stay Ahead of the Ecommerce Rebirth with Michael Michelini

The rapid evolution of blockchain and AI agents is reshaping the eCommerce landscape, driving new business models, automation, and operational efficiencies. In this episode, we explore how these technologies impact eCommerce transformation, the steps businesses can take to prepare for change, and the resources available to stay ahead in this new era.

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[00:00:00] Episode 458 Global from Asia. This is a webinar I did talking about the future of eCommerce with AI and blockchain. I’m pretty hyped about this. I hope you enjoy. Let’s tune in today. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice.

And now, your host, Michael Micheli. Thank you so much for choosing to listen to [00:00:30] or maybe watch me in my studio here trying to keep up with the Joneses, keep up with ai. Again, this is the real me, not the AI me, but the AI me is doing better than me. Seriously, as I just recorded this intro, like, um, I’ve been just, everything I’m doing now, I’m putting into the AI almost everything.

It’s like this muscle, you know, I need this. What’s that? It’s like, bam. It’s a muscle you’re developing and I’m developing it and it’s, it’s, it’s [00:01:00] really amazing. It’s scary, but it’s amazing. So I know you maybe seen a lot of stuff about ai. I feel like I gave like a very valuable free webinar the other day, just a few days ago.

And I dumped so much of my brain into this one. Uh, and I think because I’ve seen a lot of talks in there, they’re not really practical and I give you like, ideas, websites to use. I show you stuff I’ve been making. So [00:01:30] I think you’re gonna enjoy this and you can tune in. Plus it’s during this, you know, we’re actually building out Jeanette’s, our new business partner at Global from Asia decentralized program.

We have a chapter developing in the Philippines. We have great attendees and we have people joining and I can’t wait to help them upgrade as well. I’m gonna join a workshop with them this weekend. But let’s tune into the show and then after, uh, maybe I’ll tell you what I did with AI today, if you’re curious.

Uh, it’s pretty amazing. So let’s tune into the webinar. [00:02:00] People have been asking for this one. Hope you enjoy. Tune in now. Do you enjoy the podcast Global? Amazing. You enjoy all the community events that we do. The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chiang Mai this November 3rd, fourth, and fifth, 20, 25.

I have amazing speakers, am amazing people getting together. We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers and shakers and the deal makers come. It’s a limited supply of attendees and [00:02:30] tickets, and we have been selling out every year, so I recommend checking out earlier cross border summit.com.

Okay, so our session for today in global from Asia, we’re offering a, we’re having this free webinar to everyone as part of our advocacy of spreading the word about cross-border e-commerce. And our session today is all about using blockchain and AI agents to stay ahead of the e-commerce rer, discover agent tech commerce and how your [00:03:00] e-commerce business, brand and livelihood can stay relevant in this new era.

And the premise here is that the fu the, the future of AI and blockchain in e-commerce, it is evolving and what we’re seeing right now may not be the same as how it would look like in the next five years. And, but if you are believe that we are in a fundamental shift and how commerce or e-commerce is evolving through AI agents and blockchain, then this session will give you a glimpse of what to expect.

[00:03:30] And later on I’m gonna talk about the GFA program. And of course we’re launching the Empower the Seller Program. It is something that Mike has been working on since last year, and we hope that the launch of this program will also be an exciting element for our GFA members. And I hope that through this session you’ll gain some inspiration and insights and of course to make this session as productive as possible.

We encourage you to type your questions in the chat. And after Mike’s presentation, he will be [00:04:00] answering some questions from all of you. So Mike, I’m turning it over to you. Alright, thanks so much, Jeanette. This is fun everybody. Everybody ready to go? Doing good today some. This is a very new topic even for me, and we wanna always keep you up to date at the newest things here at Gulf of Asia and our community.

So I’m just gonna jump right in. There’s a lot of really fundamentally new things happening. It’s, it’s even, yes. Last night I was almost gonna update my [00:04:30] slides, but I didn’t have time. But last night I, I learned something even, even more new. So this stuff is developing on a day by day basis. So today, like Jeanette said, the purpose is to explore transformation, basically opening your mind, get some inspiration.

I’ll be living honest. I kind of been getting bored in e-commerce. It’s, it’s, in my opinion, the last five, seven years has been kind of the same. I mean, Amazon, shoppy, Lazada, [00:05:00] Shopify. I mean, it’s the same topics in my opinion. But with AI and blockchain finally coming to fruition, I know that we’ve heard about AI for a few years or even longer, but I feel like late last year and early this year has been a real explosion.

So I think I’m even more excited now than even I was in 2023 or 2024 when AI and, and blockchain was, was in development. More widespread. So we’re gonna kind of give you the idea [00:05:30] today of an overview of the tech, both AI agents or agentic commerce and blockchain technology. And in the integration of those, more specifically we’re, we’re in the e-commerce space, so we’re gonna kind of relate it more closely to e-commerce rather than general, general business.

So we’re gonna kind of focus on the e-commerce space within these technologies. Try to give you some real steps. There are real things you can do now, I know over the years it’s somewhat, [00:06:00] maybe you think you don’t know how to do it or it’s too difficult or it’s not ready yet, but there’s real things we can do now, and I’ll show you what we’re doing to give you some ideas and places to go to get more information.

So. So let’s start with the overview. And I hope people can understand, understand this. Uh, I remember when I was just learning it, even just late last year, it was, it was a new idea for me and I’m still learning it. So what are AI agents? What are they? I don’t know if somebody here wants, wants [00:06:30] to make some chats or, or say they’re what they think it is.

But ai, I think a lot of us thought of AI with chat, GPT, right? Chat, GPT was kind of the first breakthrough. I mean, I used Jasper AI before, uh, chat GPT, but I still think the most mainstream usage for most of us was chat GT and I think that was in late 2022. So like. Two and a half years ago. But what’s really gotten interesting is AI [00:07:00] agents, so that’s more of a late 20, 24, early 25 thing where they take the AI knowledge and they actually do things Before with AI by itself, you would go to chat t you would ask a question, you would ask it a prompt, it would give you the answer, but then you had to do something with it.

The difference of AI and AI agents is they actually use their AI knowledge and they actually do something. [00:07:30] So, of course, making systems, customer service operations, such as inventory management. We’ll go into that in a second. Here’s a little bit more. I’m trying to be practical, not just, not just talking theory.

This is an AI agent I make and I use called I, I gave it a name. I call her Reba. I gave her a profile picture and she’s my AI assistant. I, I use her in Telegram. Maybe when the q and a I could, I could show it more. But as you can see, this is N eight N and I’ll talk more about that later. But this is [00:08:00] a workflow I made.

So I send a message to my agent, Reba. She has a brain, a memory, and a tool set. So an AI agent, more specifically, what are they, is these three things. The chat model, I use GR here, but of course you could use open ai, you can use all kinds of different LLMs. Large learning models. Basically the brain of this person, [00:08:30] right?

The brain. Then you go into the memory. So we can, it might be hard to get into some details today ’cause there’s just so much, but basically memory can be very technical, but memory is remembering because if you ask this AI agent something and they have no memory, the next question you’ll ask them, they’ll forget like their name.

So she remembers her name, she knows she’s Reba, she has a memory. So you can ask them, give them answers, they remember it. And then tools. As you [00:09:00] can imagine, tools can be a lot of different things. So in this example, I have a calculator course ’cause they, so they can do the math, but I also connect Reba to other agents.

And I give my agents names, but like Lucinda or Manfred, and then they do different things. So one big breakthrough thing, A lot of people thought there would just be one AI and one AI agents, but it seems like what I understood in the industry is we’re [00:09:30] all embracing multiple agents. And agents have different skills and tools and knowledge.

And I like that way. So that way you can reference one agent to another agent instead. And then you just know those agents. So that’s why I give them names. Of course you could just use A-A-S-K-U number or something, but we can go through this. But this is N eight N. And then these are just some tools.

There’s so many tools, but I want to give you practical knowledge today that you can, you [00:10:00] can walk away with. So these are four I highlighted. But you can, of course there’s many more, but these are some of the more top ones. I’d say Agent AI is actually a HubSpot tool, so I think a lot of HubSpot. But Dharmesh one co-founder CTO of HubSpot, it really jumped into AI agents and made AI agent ai.

I’ve not used this too much, but I’ve heard great feedback from friends. It’s very easy to use and you can make agents really [00:10:30] drag and drop very easily. You plug in this plug in your, and your basically plug in the brain, you plug in the memory, you plug in the tools, and then you can automate it and it is the one I’m using and eight n.io.

It’s a little bit more technical. This screenshot is N eight N, but it’s because it’s a little bit more technical and I think it’s a little bit usually lower price. There’s even self-hosted. So I think some of like I like, I personally like open source and I like self-hosted, so I host this on my own server.[00:11:00]

So that’s one reason I like it. I don’t wanna say it’s just ’cause of the price, but it’s also very, it’s affordable and it’s also more flexible. And it’s open source make.com a great domain name, right? Both. These are great domain names. These are great marketing. These are both very simple to use. So make.com.

A lot of my friends use this make.com. You can go to, and it’s very easy to use, similar to agent, to ai, but I think you pay a little bit more than than a N. And then the last is, many of you probably know Zapier or Zapier. This is a very [00:11:30] common one. I’ve used this back in the day before ai, it was a tool, but they’re of course adjusting to this AI world.

And in addition to their normal business of Zas and Zaps, they have now AI agents that you can use. So they have that model and a lot of other tools are adding this in. There’s existing tools adding that this capability in. But these are four that maybe you could choose from these, or you could just Google search or research or ask AI for AI agents tools.

Another fun one, [00:12:00] just, just been playing with this is, is a like a phone agent. So you could even talk to me, I know Jeanette and I’ve been playing with this and you can go to this link if you’d like or maybe we can put it in the chat call.my Michael Michellin, my personal brand website.com. And I’ve trained an AI agent to be, to have my voice.

Some of you maybe seen my videos online. I have also an AI agent video like persona of me, pretty similar, but this is an AI agent or you can click on [00:12:30] it and then it brings up a phone, but it’s a voiceover IP or basically a call. And you speak to me my, my AI version of me. So there’s different kinds of ways you can do ai, right?

You could just make a totally different person called like Reba, that’s not you or anyone else. But then some people are making AI agent versions of themselves. Of course, you should be clear, it’s not really you, it’s your ai, but, but you could play with this one. This is using 11 labs. [00:13:00] 11 labs, the, the io.

They specialize more in audio and video, more audio technology. Again, there’s just so, so much. But this could also be a customer service bot. You could put on your website, say your e-commerce website. You could train your e-commerce AI, customer service agent put, embed this onto your store. Maybe it doesn’t have to be you personally.

Maybe it could make another AI agent like Reba. And [00:13:30] basically you’re uploading the knowledge into this AI agent’s brain. And then they are trained to know your products, know your business, know different information about you. So those are some more practical things, and we can share about that more if we have time at at the, at the end.

Or you can look at ’em at your own, but AI agents in e-commerce. So what are some things that we see happening with AI agents now and specifically in e-commerce, is personalized [00:14:00] recommendations. I mean, this has been happening for a long time. In previous webinars we’ve done talked about a nine on at Amazon.

So search, search engines, even Google, they all use, been using AI longer before we’ve known chat GPT. So AI has been already been used a lot in these, but they’re finally becoming more practical for us as small business owners. But of course, algorithms, search browsing, histories, preferences, the world, the future is gonna be hyper-personalized because of [00:14:30] AI and all this big data.

We already see this with Facebook, right? In politics, you only see the politics that you like. You don’t see the politics you don’t like. I dunno if you have an opinion on that, but it’s gonna get more and more like that, right? Big data already is there. AI is getting smarter. AI is gonna serve you products that you most likely will like and buy.

It’s not gonna waste your time or their time showing you products that you are not interested in. So it’s gonna be more and more personal customer service that I just showed you. You can [00:15:00] do those agents right now. It’s called conversation agents. So I like, if you wanna play with my call dot michael linney.com, you can do that.

That’ll be in real time. So you don’t need to have people up in the middle of the night or you don’t need to like have all these large SOP handbooks and questions. You just put all of that inside this AI agents and then they can handle, I mean, limitless amounts of que queries. Of course, inventory management, especially as an Amazon seller, we’re still, we’re we’re established [00:15:30] Amazon seller, multiple brands.

Amazon, one of the biggest challenges is sometimes staying in stock and inventory management. But now with ai you can make these, so some of my friends have made Slack bot, so it basically alerts them by Slack when their products are low and it tells the team, Hey, we’re low on stock here. Please make sure our production is started with the factory.

So things like that are getting done right. So like less spreadsheets, more like real time information about our products and our [00:16:00] inventory. So to kind of wrap up the more open ideas of ai, where, where are we now and where do we think we’re going? So we’re at the bottom here. We’re in the basic automations.

We’re playing around, we’re learning about these agents. We’re learning how to make a customer service agent. We’re learning how to manage our inventory with an agent. Hopefully you start to embrace this. I think we have to. There’s no choice. I mean, whether we like it or not, it’s gonna be more and more [00:16:30] integrated into what we do.

I think what’s gonna start to go next is personalized experiences. So I think maybe websites can be adjusted in the future where instead of it being like a static website that you gotta kind of like navigate through categories. It’ll probably be like more like, imagine a website you go to, like a, your, your store and you have an AI agent pop up on the homepage.

It’s not about SEO anymore. I mean, I, I personally, I, I mean you could even, I’ve said over the years, I’m an SEO specialist and I [00:17:00] still believe in it, but. I don’t think like you’re gonna make a website for SEO and to get into Google anymore. Maybe you want to get it in for chat. GPT, some pe Some of my friends have gotten sales from chat GPT as a referral on their Google Analytics.

But I think what’s gonna happen is your website’s gonna be more about personalizing the experience for that visitor. So maybe your homepage would be a prompt where like a AI agent pops up and is like you are like you go into a real store. When you go into a real store, what happens? You don’t just randomly look, look around for products [00:17:30] by yourself.

You have usually a sales agent that comes up to you at a, at least if it’s a good store, right? They have a customer service or a sales agent. They walk up to you, right? They say, how can I help you? What product are you looking for? I think that’s gonna be more and more brought into the online base, not just the offline retail.

I think there’s gonna be this integration, so you’re gonna be able to talk. I think people are gonna be used expecting to talk to people or agents. And then predictive, right? So [00:18:00] predictive would be very interesting. One way I think of it in the, in the, in the real world now is it starts raining, right?

You’re in a, in a, in rush hour traffic, you get outta the office, you go to the wait for the train, or wait for the bus, and it starts to rain. And what happens? The stores start to put umbrellas outside their door, right? You ever seen that happen? Or, or those salespeople start coming out in the streets with their bags or boxes of umbrellas to sell to the commuters in the rain.[00:18:30]

I think you’re gonna see that happening online now, right? We already have Google trends. We already have like Twitter data. So imagine something happens and immediately we’re talking about print on demand a lot. There’s gonna be a workshop this Saturday. I can’t wait to learn on that myself. But print on demand, imagine you can almost generate a image.

That’s relevant to the trend, like political of course, or environmental or maybe something like that, or earthquake happens [00:19:00] or some emergency. It’s not just about like selling things, it’s about helping people. So imagine the future where it’s not like your homepage is just this static storefront. It’s like an evolving thing.

And then of course the ultimate is gonna be we, we don’t really have to operate anything. We don’t really have to do much. The agents will see what’s happening. They’ll see the orders, they will fulfill, make sure the orders have there. They’ll reorder the inventory, they will talk to the customers, they’ll make [00:19:30] reports.

You’ll have some kind of maybe a dashboard as a business owner. But I mean, I don’t know. That’s, they’re saying, I don’t know how long, but this, this is some data I got for five years from now. I. So the second part, we could just talk about ai. And I know AI is a hot topic and I read a lot about it, but a lot of times the people in AI don’t talk about blockchain, and I think they’re related.

So I wanna explain this and see, share my connection and my, my future prediction. But basically a blockchain is decentralized, secure ledger, right? Basically it’s [00:20:00] a spreadsheet or a database that is public for people to anywhere to be able to access and see. And the other side of that is a centralized database, which is more common, especially in web two, where Facebook or Amazon or Google, they don’t have their data open.

We’ve learned that the hard way as as business owners, I, especially as SEO or e-commerce seller, I want the data and then suddenly they stop giving me the [00:20:30] data for my analytics or for my rankings or for different things. So that would not happen in a blockchain world because the data would be on a public ledger.

So the data of web two companies is not as valuable and is more open to the world for people to build on. And I believe that’s a important benefit. And of course, you can’t delete things. You can’t delete things. So the reason I bring this [00:21:00] up with the AI agents, we just said if a store, if a, if a, if a agent is able to place orders for you, order things for you inventory, and it’s in a centralized database, that means you’ll never really know what they did or when they did or if they make a mistake.

I think these AI agents are gonna be similar, like humans are gonna cover up their mistakes. If they make a mistake, you won’t be able to see it. It’ll be able, with a centralized database like Amazon, they can just delete stuff and you won’t even know. [00:21:30] It is really scary. It already happens. Now we get banned on Amazon.

It’s just like we don’t even exist. It’s just totally gone. There’s like a dog, a dog on our storefront or our product. And then smart contracts are automated, right? And verification. So like these are things I think you need where ai, especially as this, as it grows, I see some chats. Okay. Yeah. Liz, yeah, Amazon and all these things.

Like I’ve written a book, we’ll talk about Empower seller later. But yeah, they can just eliminate [00:22:00] you. It’s mostly you’re talking to AI agents anyway. You didn’t even just tell you. And I believe you can use blockchain to make amazing e-commerce and we feel like we’re the only ones talking about this.

Everybody thinks we’re crazy. I remember that 15, 20 years ago when I was talking about other stuff that’s kind of mainstream now and people thought I was crazy. So I think we’re very early and I hope we can get an opportunity for everybody here. So just kind of put it together here and. So this AI is gonna maybe do the [00:22:30] work and make the analysis, and then there’s decisions.

You can have decisions made by humans or AI agents, right? There’s gonna be this really confusing time now where you don’t know an A, you’re talking to an ai, you don’t know if the AI is doing something or human’s doing something. So you can have multisignature wallets, you can have different smart contracts that allows agents or humans to do things.

I don’t really think that’s so easy or possible on on a, on like a web two platform and then execution, right? So it’s on a public ledger. It’s public, [00:23:00] which I think is very important, right? So if five days later something happens and then maybe they want to cover it up, they can’t because it’s on the blockchain.

So it’ll build transparent and verifiable records. And it’s also gonna save tons of time and money because. Imagine we pay, I, I don’t know, somebody just insisted to pay them by PayPal. To me yesterday, I don’t really have PayPal. I, I kind of have a PayPal that might get banned, but they make me pay their [00:23:30] fees.

They’re three, three point a half percent. They say, you need to pay me by PayPal and you need to pay the fees. Why? So imagine we give PayPal 3.5% of all these transactions that AI is doing, they’re gonna get so rich. These banks, every likes of Stripe. Stripe has no control. If you ever really dig in, and I’ve saved some of these, they have no control.

The banks have the control. Stripe is just a front end pretty interface. Whenever there’s an actual problem, it goes to the bank. So [00:24:00] you pay them like all this money on everything. It’s unbelievable. So if you have AI agents doing things and you have. I think it’s just gonna be so obvious to me to do it on a blockchain.

I mean, it’s so obvious to me, but people seem to think I’m crazy, so let’s keep going. So it’s what’s gonna happen to us as e-commerce sellers. It is scary. It is scary, and I feel like I’ve been screaming this for even before I even knew AI was even coming, but you need to [00:24:30] build a brand. You need to build actual value if you, I, I, I know a lot of people drop ship, and I know a lot of people do affiliate marketing.

And I’ve always said it’s okay to do that. I’ve done that. But I think your end goal should be making your own brand. We have to get competitive advantages and also by being here today with With us, by learning these tools, by using these AI tools first. Still so many people are not using this even. I’m still just learning it.

By using these tools and being the first to [00:25:00] use and master these tools, we’ll be able to help you transform your business faster. Of course, operational efficiency, and I think customers are gonna actually look for it and prefer it. I think they’re gonna be impressed to see that you’re using an AI customer service agent that’s trained well.

That has answers, good answers for your business. Oh yeah. Actually, I just watched the interview about honey. Yeah, I watched the interview of the founder that sold it to PayPal. Yeah. So [00:25:30] we have to be the resistance, at least in my opinion, to to, to these. ’cause if we just go through this AI stuff and we just integrate all this as stuff and we plug it all into PayPal and Amazon, we’re gonna be in big trouble.

In my opinion. In my opinion, it’s a scary future because it’s all these huge internet companies and we have no control and no verification. So just a little bit more to re reiterate, we can save this money. Like I said, it’s credit cards, [00:26:00] but it’s not just about saving money, it’s about transparency. Like I said, the best way to be trust is to be transparent, right?

And speed and new markets. I’ve always loved international business. I mean, I’m originally born in the us I haven’t even been, been back since 2018 and I, I. I, I love international business and I’ve always been trying to solve this payments and transfers. It’s still very, very painful. Of course, some things are making it helpful.

There’s a lot of [00:26:30] great ones, like, I think crypto’s a superior way to make cross-border payments, but there are challenges, right? We have to stay on top of this. Honestly, I get overwhelmed. I couldn’t even really sleep last night. I was learning about MCP servers of AI agents to program blockchains of base base to Hamsa.

I mean, it’s, it’s like a fire hose of information. So, but we have to, we have to, I mean, there’s no choice if we don’t do it, I, I, others are will, are doing it. I will do it. [00:27:00] So let’s talk about some of the examples in these big companies. Big companies usually always do things first because they have the money, right?

And the r and d budget to be able to do it. So Walmart has been using blockchain technology for their supply chains, which I can’t wait to actually implement on a small business level, but, but right now we, we might not yet have that as small business owners. Shopify does have a lot of plugins for NFT sales and also personalization, which helps look at [00:27:30] more sales.

And then Amazon I mentioned earlier, has various tools for inventory prediction. So it does help predict on your dashboard about when your inventory’s running low. So these massive tools, these massive platforms are making these tools, but I still think we should make our own tools. We shouldn’t just rely on these massive companies and use theirs.

I believe we should utilize AI and make our own like agents for our own business rather than be reliant on them. So what are some ways that we can prepare? I’m right on time. [00:28:00] Perfect. Start small. Like I said, maybe try one of those four AI agent tools I showed you, or find one you like, maybe you like better.

I know it’s gonna be overwhelming, but there’s a little bit of a learning curve. Maybe pick a weekend. I usually do some of my new stuff on a weekend and play with AI agents. Plug in, maybe open AI or plug in a, there’s even free ones now, like especially from China. It’s been really putting out a lot of free AI tools and agents or LLMs.

So you could plug in [00:28:30] into ai LLM. If we have some time, I could show you something more. But today’s more of an overview and, and I know we’re going through a lot, but maybe play with an AI agent tool, explore blockchain again, I mean. I wish I, I mean, I, I think we all wish we did it earlier. I mean, I, I was early in Bitcoin and I was early in a lot of these, but I wish I did more and I was more involved.

But I believe it’s just gonna become more and more of a thing, right? I mean, love or hate Donald Trump, he is supporting [00:29:00] cryptocurrencies in the United States of America, which is still the global leader. And I believe governments around the world will continue to follow what the US does. So I do believe there’s gonna be more blockchain adoption and Bitcoin and crypto adoption around the world.

And I believe it’s gonna be more and more used. I know it’s still a little bit technical and not easy to use, but I believe. And we have a program we’re gonna share about that. You can of course join about a seller to get this, but meta mask maybe, [00:29:30] or, or learning some Bitcoin wallets and try to make some payments or at least hold some, never invest more than you can lose.

Just, just to get some experience. Sometimes I learn the best when actually I put some money in and then just be open-minded, right? Maybe make a plan, maybe write out what you want to do in 20, the rest of 2025, about these agents and about maybe somehow blockchain or crypto payments, maybe some of these tools or ways to start, like chatbots, which we mentioned, or even just using chat’s, EPT.

It’s almost like a [00:30:00] muscle. I still try hard, like some of our team asks me questions or I ask them questions. I’ve learned half the time if I take that question, I put it into chat, GPT or any AI tool. It gives me a really good answer and it’s getting better every day. So it’s a muscle to, it’s like instead of going to Google or instead of asking somebody.

You should try to ask the AI and the answers are getting better and better. And then there’s pricing tools, like especially as Amazon seller, we’re all [00:30:30] constantly reviewing our pricing, but there are tools and then of course data analysis. So there’s amazing stuff. Now I. Or you can just basically dump your data into an AI and it gives you trends, like you can put it straight up into open AI or I like gr, GRO k.com is free and it’s from Twitter and Elon.

There is a paid version, but I’ve got a lot with the free. But you can just dump some of this data in there and then it just gives you an analysis. You don’t need to get it so complicated. Really, A lot of times it’s just putting in a, a huge talk to it [00:31:00] like a person. And give the a report to it and it will give you an analysis.

We’re working on a white paper. We’re making a cryptocurrency for one of our project for Hamza. And yesterday we had a draft of the white paper. I literally, and the, the guy working on it, Bo asked me for my feedback. I did read it, but I also put it into the, into, I used rock, I put it into grok. It’s a humongous document.

I just pasted the whole thing in and I said at the beginning, please review this and give me any issues that you might see in this as a white paper for [00:31:30] our project. And it, it’s amazing, the output. And then I actually sent it back to him. I didn’t say I did it, but he was like, oh wow. Yeah, I changed this.

He just changed that. That was just last night. And then blockchain, we are, I am a co-founder, CEO of a of a new marketplace called Hamza Market. And we are not open to all merchants yet. It’s still very early stage. And we can accept some. So hopefully some people today could be interested to do that. [00:32:00] And we’ll share a little bit more throughout this webinar.

And then of course, your team, like I beg my team to use ai. I know it’s scary and people think they’re gonna lose their jobs, but I don’t think everybody’s gonna lose their job. Of course, I hate say it, but there will be people that might not need to do the work that they’re doing. But I believe what you should be working on is more of the idea generation or maybe on the, the community side or the, the, [00:32:30] the, the high-end touch, right?

If you’re doing basic redundant work, then I think you have to really start to up and change your skillset to do more of like high-end work or idea work. It, make some projects, maybe don’t do it on cross your main website, like we still want to implement it more into global from asia.com, but it’s a massive website with thousands and thousands of posts and podcasts and blogs for over 11 years now.

So I, I’m not doing that right away. I [00:33:00] take like a small website or a small project tested on something that’s not as critical to your business right away, or put it on a limited part of your website, right? Get it, get confident, get familiar with it, and then building relationships with partners, communities like ours, we’re gonna be talking more and more about this in our community.

Also, even just talk to the tech companies. I’ve talked to these AI tools. Sometimes you can talk to the founders or the creators, I mean they’re listening, and then try to measure, [00:33:30] see if it’s actually improving, right? If it’s not improving your business, and you shouldn’t use AI just because you’re using ai, but I believe if you’re using this, it should improve your business.

Of course the up and to the right, but like I said at the beginning is called traditional e-commerce. I haven’t really seen much change, right? Like whether it’s growth or whether it’s new innovation, it’s, we did a cross-border summit, which will be again this November. And I, I try to always get good topics and speakers, but of course Covid was a lot of [00:34:00] talks and, and it changed the world.

But, um, it’s really gonna be, I believe about AI and this block, and I believe blockchain. Some people don’t believe blockchain. Some people think everything AI is just gonna be plugged into Amazon and PayPal and Stripe. I’m really scared about that for both security as well as for power reasons. And just to recap, we should be embracing this.

We should not be hiding from it. We should not be scared of it. You’re gonna be able to lower your costs, you’re gonna be able to do faster [00:34:30] sales. You’re gonna be ready for the future, and you’re gonna have happier customers. So another example is sometimes I, I have these calls with people sometimes. And I don’t have time to prepare for the meeting, and I’ll just put into AI and I’ll say, I’m having a meeting with X person from X comp Y company and my company, or I, I do this.

Can you help review their website and give me ideas of what we should discuss for a collaboration? And it just gives me this amazing one. And then what I actually do is I share it [00:35:00] to the person I sit. I’m like, oh, I’m excited for our call coming up. Here’s an outline that AI gave me. I don’t really try to take credit from it.

Sometimes I even just share the link of the AI directly so they can see it’s from ai, but they, they’re excited and it, it just allows you to save time on the, the, the, the, basically the mundane work. And it lets you do the high, high value impact work. And it skips even those meetings, right? So rather than having a whole half hour meeting [00:35:30] introductions, and then maybe a second meeting, we can skip the introductions or at least accelerate the introductions and get right into a deal.

Faster. So Jeanette’s going to help go through the next section, but we’d love to have some of you here join our early merchant program at Hamza Market. And by doing that, we have an program, as we mentioned at the beginning called Empower to Seller. You can read about it, empower seller.com. It’s, it’s part of the global from Asia community and it’s [00:36:00] helping you prepare for all of these new things to, and the reason of the empower to Seller is I feel like Amazon and, and a lot of these platforms try to treat us like a commodity.

They try to treat me just like another number in their system, right? And I believe we are more than just another product in their catalog, right? Another price in their system. So I believe that there is a, [00:36:30] a, sorry, I’m reading some of this. Okay. I believe that there’s a lot of opportunity in being creative, and I believe there’s ways that we can, can take back the old, old ways.

I mean, I, I actually, I miss Web 1.0. Everybody talks about web two. I miss web one, and then some people say Web3 is just a new iteration of Web one. It just seems like we all got tricked. I feel tricked. I feel tricked. Come to my [00:37:00] platform. It’s better, it’s easier. Come to my Facebook, put all your information into my Facebook thing.

Put all your information into my Amazon thing. Put all my information into Google thing. We’ll help you. And then, oh wait, yeah, we’re not gonna show your information. To the people, even though you, you sent all of your users to our Facebook page to like our page. When did that rule happen? Facebook really just made my pages worthless.

I think that was like 20 15, 20 16. You had to [00:37:30] basically boost ’em to get, even to show ’em to your own FF fans when before you would get organic reach because people followed your page. They just take it away from us, right? So we’re trying to give that back to the people, back to the sellers. So we’ll have expert support.

We’ll work with you on, on regular mastermind sessions to help you get set up on Hamza if you’re comfortable, how you get with crypto, with AI agents and all of that stuff. So we’ll, we’ll, we’ll share more about how to join and what’s included [00:38:00] later, but that’s the bulk of my conversation for now.

Jeanette, how did I do on time and. Well, thank so much, Mike. We have time, so maybe we can use this as an opportunity to get questions from the participants. And maybe Mike, while people are entering questions, I’d like to welcome everyone for joining us today. Thank you. Anthony. Benjamin says, Deza, Ella, Eric.

Gina. Joanne. Jolene. George. Kyla, Leah, Liz, Lisa, mark, [00:38:30] Mar, Maria, NA. Ralph. Reggie, Tina, Tommy, try and Savior. I hope you can use this opportunity to ask questions, and maybe Mike, while we’re waiting for questions, maybe you can give us a better perspective about Hamsa. I mean, for, for a lot of online sellers, I’m, I’m sure they’re more familiar with Shopee, with Lazada or with Amazon.

Maybe you can explain how Hamsa is set up and what’s, what’s the idea behind it? [00:39:00] Sure. Sure. So I can just, you can still see the screen, right? Or is it just the slides? Yes, I can see the screen. Okay. So we build, we’re building in, we’re building in public. Like actually the developers would’ve liked to probably wait until it is totally finished.

But we’re building and we’re showing as we’re building. So it’s, uh, it’s a work in progress, but it’s a work project and we’ve gotten orders already, but it’s still rather new. So you can see here, I, in my opinion, it’s not much different than a [00:39:30] web two front end. But if you wanna buy this, this power adapter, notice the price is in USDC.

So I should have, so this is my meta mask, okay? And this is, I don’t know how familiar everybody is here, but I have some Ethereum. So you can also have USDC or USDT. So basically what that means is. It’s basically money on a blockchain instead of on a bank account or in a [00:40:00] printed paper form. So if, if I want to connect my wallet, so I just logged into my wallet, but notice I can switch this to Ethereum.

So now it’s this amount of Ethereum. I don’t know if any people are familiar with the Ethereum. I know Bitcoin’s the most popular and biggest, but the second biggest cryptocurrency is Ethereum. See, and then Mike, in this scenario, how does the delivery happen? I mean, the, do the customers take care of the delivery themselves?[00:40:30]

So the way we’re more like an eBay or a, we’re more, we’re, we’re not FBA where we don’t warehouse and ship your products for you. You need to do that, or you need to use something called a three PL third party logistics. I don’t think we’ll ever do it for you because we want to be decentralized. We might have third party partners that integrate with Hamza that you could subscribe to, but I really hope it’s never only one.

I always [00:41:00] hope to have multiple, but, but the idea is, notice here to shipping this ships from Shenzhen, China. This is their returns policy. This is their payments method policy. Of course, you can just use the standard terms that we can suggest you to use, but it’s up to the merchant to decide their shipping returns and payments policy and their delivery time.

So this item here is shipping from she China. So the customer should hopefully be aware that it’s gonna take seven to 16 days to receive [00:41:30] this. And once they purchase this, the, the order would go on the admin side. So this is the, it’s not open for every seller, but just like you connect your wallet as a buyer, you connect your wallet as a seller.

I’m not sure if my current wallet is a seller, so this is my seller side. But for now, you would have to either connect to a third party logistics where your inventory is, or ship [00:42:00] it yourself, and you get the order information from the order. I don’t wanna show this on the screen, but you’d see your orders here and then get the address and fulfill it yourself or with a third party.

So, Mike, when the, when the merchant sign up, do they also set up their shipping costs depending on where, where in the world the person is ordering? Yep. So some, we have a, I think we have seven vendors right now that are early stage, like alpha, that are like [00:42:30] even doing phone calls later today with our developer team.

So they set their shipping price. Some actually do free shipping. You can do free, I know everybody likes free shipping. You can do free and just of course in, put that into profit margins, into your profit forecasts, into your price, right? Of course you have, you pay for the shipping. It’s not really free, but you just put into your retail price, selling price.

But yeah, you, you as a vendor set your shipping terms and again, this is a work in progress, so. To build [00:43:00] a whole backend seller system is gonna still take a few more months. But we have the major ones like products and orders, but some of these things we’re still manually doing on the Hamza side for these early merchants, such as shipping terms.

So you, so you would just instruct our, our team and we would help put your shipping policy. It’s not yet able to be done in the admin panel as a merchant. But you would set it, the question here, Mike, how would the buyer’s journey be different in Web3 E-commerce [00:43:30] platform compared as to what we see in marketplaces like Amazon?

So there’s really not much of a difference really, honestly. That’s even our vision. Our vision is not to make it that much more difficult or different. This, this wallet, I don’t have a, I don’t have an order, which is probably better ’cause I don’t wanna share this publicly, but you, the main difference is you connect your a wallet and that fundamentally is a different concept.

I don’t know if to, it might not be [00:44:00] make sense to you really, but what this means is I’m not depositing money into Hamza. I am connecting my wallet and then sending money from my wallet, not from my bank account. Right. Not from my top up globe account or my top up gift card. I’m sending it from the wallet money that’s in my wallet that I could also use for other things outside of Hamza anytime I want.[00:44:30]

And if Hamza were to some reason ban me as a buyer or a seller, I wanna be clear. Hamza could do it, but there’s a protocol layer, there’s the blockchain layer so you can get banned. Okay. I wanna, I wanna be clear, but there is a public, a DAO structure, which again is, it can get technical and I can’t really.

Possibly go through all of the fundamentals, but the main point is it’s a community driven way. So if you are banned [00:45:00] for breaking the terms, because we don’t want you to sell anything, right? We’re not, we’re not trying to be a platform to sell illegal products. We’re so we will have a terms, but the main difference is you can raise this to the kind of like a court or a dao, which is the group of people.

And even you could be in this judge pool. So instead of it going to, I believe Amazon’s law is in India, I believe most is in India for their disputes. ’cause I talked to a lot of’em [00:45:30] and it seemed like they’re in India or of course ai. In our case, if you have a real big, if you have a dispute about being suspended or your order.

With your seller, you would raise it to our judge pool. So those people would be assigned to your case anonymously. It would be from a pool of vetted and approved judges, and then they would, they would decide about your case. You could then again escalate it. [00:46:00] But basically what we’re doing is we’re taking the Amazon or Shopee or Lazada backend and making it more public and making it more verifiable.

And, but of course, we don’t wanna say the judge, like if we say it’s Jeanette and then you’re upset, we don’t want you to know it was Jeanette, but we would tell you it’s a pool of approved judges that follows our criteria that’s been assigned to your case because we, we also want privacy, [00:46:30] right? So this judge would be assigned your case.

So instead of it going to like Amazon’s or Shoppes or am PayPal disputes and you don’t know anything and you have no course recourse, the dispute process is one of the fundamental improvements. And of course the payments. And for now I have to say we’re we don’t have all the technology done, but also the data.

Right now, the data’s still in Hamza, but if you trust us as we develop this, [00:47:00] the data will be on blockchain of your product data. Because we don’t want to, we don’t wanna make another Amazon. I’m not here to try and make another Amazon and control everything and all your data. All your money. So the money’s yours.

The data will be yours. I can’t say right now, but in the near term, you would be the owner of your data as well, so that you have more control and power, but the front end doesn’t look so much different. It’s more [00:47:30] about a dispute problem. It’s more about a data, a case problem, brand problem. So I hope that makes sense.

Okay. We have another question here. Can we sell digital goods? Yep. We actually didn’t plan to because we thought that wasn’t really a big need, but we can sell you. You see there’s Roblox. I bought this for my daughter. You can buy gift cards right now from from here. One person put their ebook, I live for $1.

[00:48:00] This is about breathing in Chiang Mai. It’s one US dollar ebook. So you could buy this for a dollar and then have this delivered to you digitally. So that was actually not in our plan, but we have much more requests for digital than we had originally thought. And to be very clear, the long-term vision of Hamza is to make something called dcom.

1. Network. So this is not as developed as Hamza. [00:48:30] Hamza is the first dcom marketplace. DCOM is a blockchain we’re building for Hamzas and others. So the idea is you can make your own platform. I mean, that would, that’s my vision in my dream, is to have local entrepreneurs from various world parts of the world set up their own marketplace for their own communities or cultures and languages and other things.

But for now, yes, it’s all Hamza and you could do digital products, but a lot of people have been complaining about Upwork. So many [00:49:00] people complain about Upwork to me. I, I’m not active on Upwork. I used to be a buyer on Upwork or employer, but I, I don’t recently. But they say they’re very difficult lately and expensive.

So this could also, I don’t wanna say that now, but we could. I don’t think hams would ever have people, but within a DCOM network, we could probably build another Upwork. Where it would be blockchain based and using the same framework as Hamza, but with a different design. But the whole idea of the [00:49:30] disputes and the payments, things like that would be the same.

So will the payment go to Ham Hamsa first and then given to the merchants, or will it go straight? I can show the technical slides. This is just five days ago. And there’s also another question here is Hamsa, or already has an ai, a agent or integrate blockchain technology. How could you share more details about how Yeah, so I have to say the AI agent layer has not yet been [00:50:00] completed.

We’ve had startups contacting us to integrate their AI agents. We, as of this moment, don’t have that. But we are, like I said last night, I, I can’t say it’s in our roadmap and. I can’t wait to do that. And we’re talking to a few different startups, making AI agents, but it’s not yet publicly built, unfortunately.

But I’m hoping I don’t have, when is always the next question, but [00:50:30] hopefully in months to come. But here’s the escrow system. It’s a little bit technical maybe, but the buyer places the order. Maybe Meg, you can full screen that because it’s a little bit small because we’re seeing your entire screen. Okay.

So the, the buyer places the order, and then there’s some swaps for LPs, but essentially it’s held in escrow. And then once the funds are [00:51:00] the, the goods are delivered, I’m, it’s released. And of course, what if the buyer doesn’t confirm the release? Why can’t I slide to the next slide? It’s frozen or something.

I’m stuck. Let me try to open it. So essentially it’s called a smart contract. I, I know it’s a technical word, but we as Hamsa don’t have your money. It’s in a two of three multisig for right now, to be honest. So I don’t know if people know what that is and long term it will be [00:51:30] in a permissionless smart contract.

So I’m not sure how crypto savvy everybody here is, but the idea is two out of three multisig means buyer seller Hamza. So if buyer and seller both confirm the goods are received and are happy, then the funds are released to the seller. If buyer and seller both don’t agree, then it can be escalated to Hamza as a arbitration and they review the case and then [00:52:00] it’s released to the buyer or seller based on the case decision.

So for now that’s somewhat centralized, but like I said earlier, there’s gonna be a pool of judges and then it will be a smart contract. So if the buyer or the seller escalates it to a dispute, it would go to the the third signer. I hope I’m making sense and I don’t know if I have a good enough graphic, but I hope that makes sense.

So it is a sort of an [00:52:30] escrow. It’s a bit as escrow. It’s one of our core technologies. So it’s a two outta three buyer, seller, and Hamza. For now, it’s Hamza like, but even I’m not the sole signer of Hamza. I have a team and there’s a, a few of us that need to also, three people out of four need to confirm to.

Release the escrow to the buyer or seller, but the money’s not held by Hamza. It’s in a smart contract. It’s two outta three for now, [00:53:00] and then as it develops, it’ll be into a smart contract, which would then go to a, the third signer, the arbitrary, the judge would go to a pool of approved dcom judges. I hope I’m making sense.

Essentially, instead of basically right now in, in Amazon or Shopee or Lazada or all PayPal, the, it’s same thing, basically similar idea escrow. The funds are held by PayPal. The funds are held by Amazon in their bank account, right? [00:53:30] If you dispute it right. If the buyer and seller don’t agree, they escalate it.

It goes to that company, it goes to their customer service or their ais, and they make a decision. And usually they say, our decision is final. Right? They usually say, this is our decision. There’s no way you can do anything. But the difference with us is this is what you are, judge. Our judge has decided you can further escalate as part of our token ons, [00:54:00] but I hope it make sense.

And then Mike, what’s the, because usually when you sell on Amazon, the seller shopee, there are fees and usually the fees keep increasing. So will model also for how merchants are charged fees. Yep. So that’s this slide here. Yeah, I didn’t talk about it too much, but like Amazon, we pay about 50% or more now to Amazon.

That does include shipping, to be fair. But our fees will be voted on by the holders of the token, which [00:54:30] would be the buyers and sellers. So we’re starting at arbitrary 5% just because we have to start with something and we believe that’s a competitive and fair rate. But this fee doesn’t go to like me, right?

This fee goes to the, to the community, it goes to the pool, but this can be voted on to be increased or decreased. So I hope, I hope that makes sense. And then this is the token ons of the of it. So the [00:55:00] distribution of the token. But you can see we have a lot for the community. We are fundraising and we a team is compensated.

But you can see early seller here is people like you. We have a 10% of the whole supply for sellers, right? And community incentives. So it’s really meant, you can see the majority, this is maybe early investors and early builders, but this is for various forms for the community, which is over half. [00:55:30] That would be where these fees would be going to.

So I hope it makes sense. It’s much different than Amazon or these platforms. The money usually go, it goes to the shareholders and it usually doesn’t go back to the community. Right. But our idea is the funds goes to the holders, but the holders would benefit and the holders hopefully are gonna be buyers and sellers and builders.

So that it’s, it’s growing the ecosystem rather than extracting the money out to like Wall Street or to large [00:56:00] large companies. Okay, Mike, thank you so much. And, uh, so let me proceed and talk a little bit more about GFA and the Empower the Seller program, and then we’ll have another round of q and a again.

So if you have questions for Mike, please type them into the chat box and Mike will also respond to you on the chat box and maybe Mike has more to add, that can be sent to the chat box as well. And, and I guess the first step also is to sign up for meta mass account. So if you haven’t. If you [00:56:30] don’t have one yet, maybe it’s time for you to have one.

So welcome everybody. So I’m here today to discuss with you the critical aspect of international business. No building a strong cross-border e-commerce community. And in this, I think it’s important nowadays to be part of a thriving ecosystem that can make all the difference for entrepreneurs and businesses wanting to expand themselves globally because that is now an important concern among [00:57:00] entrepreneurs.

No, and we hope this is something that we all, we all can agree on in so far as it’s important is, is concerned. So. Let’s talk about the state of global e-commerce. So e-commerce continues to experience growth worldwide. No, according to it is projected to reach 8 billion by 2027, driven by an increasing adoption of improved payment infrastructure and logistics.

E-marketer also [00:57:30] estimated that there are now 2.77 billion digital buyers. According from the 33 accounting for the 33% of the population. That means one of every three worldwide is now engaged in online shopping. And this growth is largely attributed also to advancements like artificial intelligence like Mike shared right now.

Product recommendations, automation, the streamlining of order fulfillment and digital payments are now of course happening cross border, making the [00:58:00] transactions more smoother than ever. If before, you’re limit your limiting your payment abilities through platforms like Pioneer. Or, or through marketplaces like Amazon.

And as Mike is showing, there’s now a group of digital buyers who are now going through crypto and US is undergoing a major change because Donald Trump has a different perspective on crypto. And I think there’s, it’s now categorized like a, a, a currency saving. Michael, I, I, I believe they, [00:58:30] he put crypto on a different category now with the federal system.

So. So it is, it is expected to become a popular currency because the US government is promoting the use of the, of the digital currency. And it is likely that more countries will, will follow suit. No, especially if us is leading the way in terms of its adoption of a digital currency. And more businesses are embracing multichannel selling, combining [00:59:00] marketplaces like Amazon shopping ada.

In fact, in the past few years we’ve seen platforms where you just log into one platform, but you are actually managing your presence in four to five marketplaces all in one platform. So we are now ex, we are ex entrepreneurs are more or less are expanding also their presence and using tools like that to carry it out.

But of course engaging into global selling has its own respective [00:59:30] challenges as well. No. And that includes having problems with the logistics? No, not right now. Tariff is a major concern for everyone, and although there have been a different stance on tariff, but I think for businesses from Asia there, there’s no strict tariff.

There’s no increase in tariff so far, but we don’t know if there will be. In fact, the, there’s a discussion right now that if there will be an increase in tariff, should the country also impose [01:00:00] reciprocity or reciprocal tariff or not do so, so that to have more leeway for negotiation rather than appearing to be adversarial?

No. There’s also the regulatory compliance element because of the changing regulations. There’s also that aspect of market saturation as well as, as as there are products that are abundant or oversupplied. In certain countries because products are stuck there. And of course there’s also the [01:00:30] trust and fraud risk.

Even in legitimate marketplaces, sometimes undesirable sellers are able to penetrate it, selling bad products or selling fake products. So expanding internationally. It’s not just about putting your site on an e-commerce marketplace. No. There are also a lot of concerns like important export taxes, IP rights.

If you want to be cost competitive, you also want to get access to manufacturers in other parts of the [01:01:00] world. In fact, if you’ve been monitoring the news, China and Vietnam are, are really benefiting, know from all of the movements in the manufacturing right now because they’re able also to streamline their cost and efficiency.

Mike has a lot of experience working with manufacturers in China and has been working also with manufacturers and other countries. So we really appreciate Mike’s insights as a resource for this topic and [01:01:30] especially something that our members in global from Asia. Can, can maximize, no. So a strong e-commerce community, of course needs, needs expertise, mentorship and business connection.

So even if you’re looking for connections as well, you can also, you can also use the community to gain access to other people that you might be looking for. So at this point, I’d like to introduce for those of you who are not yet familiar with Global from Asia. So Global from Asia [01:02:00] actually started as a blog owned by Mike now back in 2013, that focus on helping entrepreneurs navigate cross-border e-commerce, especially between China, Southeast Asia, and the Western markets.

And over time it evolved into a full fledged community and business platform that connects international sellers, logistics providers and service professionals and marketers who also want to expand their businesses beyond their home country. So as global from Asia evolved, it focus on [01:02:30] three main things, no part, particularly education.

Actually. If you become part of the community and you gain access to the backend of the site, you’ll be able to gain access to resources, courses, and events to help you stay ahead of global trends. We also have, uh, networking activity, so you can consider this as partly as one of our activities. And then for members, we, we have a lot of interaction also, especially once we start rolling out the programs like this coming Saturday, we have an [01:03:00] activity, so we expect our members to interact there.

And we also help members access. Tools, insights and partners to grow internationally, and we just launched the local chapter program. So before for GFA activities to take place, Mike has to be there. In fact, Mike has been to the Philippines several times. We’ve done GFA events in Manila and Cebu, but now we’re launching the local chapter program.

We’re looking for local chapters in different parts of the world, in different [01:03:30] cities, so that to localize GFA and let others run GFA and make it more relevant for their community. So just to give you an idea, of course, for a local chapter program to be effective, we need strong leaders. No. That’s why we’re aggressively looking for leaders who can add value to their community, who could, who could make an impact and help other people get into cross border e-commerce.[01:04:00]

So our GFA local chapter leaders have the chance to expand their professional networks and engage with e-commerce sellers, logistics experts, and digital entrepreneurs now, and of course, GFA is not just about organizing events, it’s about creating an ecosystem of collaboration, learning, and business growth.

So you’ll be, our chapter leaders are the driving force behind bringing valuable training programs, networking opportunities, and cross border business initiatives. That’s [01:04:30] why. As you notice, GFA is very active now, and there will be, there will be more and more activities to come now as we grow the number of chapters in different parts of the world.

So if you are, if you are a GFA chapter leader, that also means you’re positioning yourself as a thought leader in the cross-border e-commerce space. So that’s also the intention. So it can also add to the credibility of the leaders, and of course the leaders also lending their credibility for the growth [01:05:00] of their GFA chapters.

Other activities that you can expect from us that we will be organizing this year through the GFA local chapters, and that would be the Cross Border Matchmaker event. So this is where we connect entrepreneurs, suppliers, service providers, and investors who are looking to. Expand internationally. So you can either join the Cross Border Matchmaker Expo in your own country, or you can join a crossbar Border Matchmaker Expo happening in [01:05:30] another country.

So we’re expecting our chapter leaders to be organizing this one as part of the advocacy in promoting cross border train. And of course not to be missed. It’s our annual cross border summit. I was able to attend this one before the pandemic at Shenzhen, China, and I was telling everyone about my experience, like, you’re in Asia, but 90% of your participants are westerns.

So right now this is happening in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and it’s also the same experience, like [01:06:00] 80 to 90% of the participants are westerns who are doing business from Asia. So, but, but for this year, we hope that the local chapters will make a strong splash or strong presence at this event. So for the Philippines, we’re trying to organize a group of 10 people to go to this event so that we can have a, a showcase booth.

So that is an incentive that we’re giving to all the local chapter leaders who bring in 10 people. We’ll give them a showcase booth and of course, be part of the program. Know, be part of [01:06:30] the people who will influence also the direction of the cross-border summit. So the cross-border summit is where experts share insights on cross-border trade, digital marketing, logistics, business models and strategies for global expansion.

Even though we have sponsors, Mike is very adamant in, in sticking to the value of the program. This is something that he doesn’t really delegate to anyone. He really wants to be in charge as to as to the content who will speak, because this is really a [01:07:00] personal project for him. That is where he’s most passionate about.

Yeah. And at this point I’d like to talk about the Empower the Seller program. I wanna make sure that my video won’t block the slide. So Mike talked about the Empower the seller.com, but the training program is actually in the G-F-A-V-I-P program. So that means only global from Asia members. Whether you’re part, you’re a member directly on the website or you are a member [01:07:30] of, of a local chapter, you are the one who’d be able to access this.

No. So, and actually just for disclosure, this is where we rolled out Mike ai, the first my AI video. So before we were teasing Mike that because he’s so busy, it’ll be very hard to pin him down to record training videos. So we decided that we will implement a Mike AI training program for this. And of course he has to approve the script, the slides, just to make sure that they are in its [01:08:00] intended content.

But of course, where Mike will be adding more value is through the mentoring sessions. So the moment participants starts joining the Empower the Seller Program, we will be scheduling Empower, empower the Seller Masterminds, so that for those who are either trying out Hamza. Or trying out other e-commerce platforms where you are implementing Web3 and blockchain technology, you’ll gain access to Mike for, for the mastermind session.

So expect [01:08:30] us to be announcing the first mastermind session so that for those of you who got access to the Empower the Seller Program and would like to share your experiences also on how on doing it, and maybe you have questions, whether you’re building your own Web3 technology or Web3 marketplace, you can gain from Mike’s expertise on this subject as well.

No. So for this program, our intention is to equip e-commerce entrepreneurs. The knowledge, tools and strategies for [01:09:00] implementing Web3 blockchain? No. So this is not just an e-commerce course, it’s a hands-on training program on the future of e-commerce. So at least it gives you a purview of, of the next level e-commerce and how can you benefit from it, either from a seller perspective or maybe from from a platform creator perspective, or maybe you’re building tools in this area.

And that is also an area of collaboration that we can also do with GFA. So. So [01:09:30] who is the target audience of global from Asia? Global from Asia can be for. Everyone, but not everyone is for global from Asia. So our idea here would be people who are in the e-commerce space. You can become, you can be a product or product and design creators, print on demand sellers, marketplace sellers, importers, exporters, manufacturers, service providers, startups and professionals who wants to expand to global trade.

[01:10:00] And it’s cross border because when you organize a chapter, you’re not just looking at your own chapter, but we expect collaboration with other chapters in other countries. So, so we just started becoming active this month publicly, but as in the months to come, you will see more cross border, cross chapter activities because that is really the intention of global from Asia.

1. So our first chapter in the Philippines is actually GFA Next, and we have nap Jan. [01:10:30] Hi Na, how are you? Let me, maybe I can, or maybe I, I’ll unmute Map nap later during the q and A part. So, so for the members of GFA next they can gain access to the local and global events, meetups, webinars, and workshops.

We also have a private community business matchmaking opportunities, and we also give discounts for the cross-border matchmaker and the cross-border summit. So we’re, we have a special rate for members, but for a lot of our trainees, especially if you’re [01:11:00] a member of the local chapter, that is given for free.

Any content that is intended for all G-F-A-V-I-P members, local chapters also get that for free. So at the minimum, the benefit or the value of that is at $6,000. And um, and typically if you are A-G-F-A-V IP member, actually when you go to GFA vip.com and you want to become a member, the membership fee for that is $497.

Oh, and by the way, this Saturday we’re [01:11:30] having a, an AI powered Print on Demand Bootcamp, and we’re napp, who is an Amazon seller, particularly Amazon merch, will be guiding participants on how to start their own Amazon merch business. But instead of charging local chapters $497, Mike wanted to reduce the price because he really wants to grow the GFA community, and he decided that the local chapter rate will be at $200.

Now, if you go to the website, you cannot avail of the [01:12:00] $200 there because when you go to the website, the signup registration is actually 497. However, there is a special code that can be given to people who really want to become a member of GFA, particularly the local chapter, so that you can avail of it.

For $200 a year. That includes attending NAPS workshop this coming Saturday nap. Thank you so much for allowing me to share to you the screenshot. So [01:12:30] actually, if you’re, if you can see my screen nap, this is an example of a print on demand product that NAP created. And as you can see, this product alone, the royalties that he earned is already at $1,300.

And actually Napp has created, oh, for the past few weeks, NAPP has been creating products like maybe after a day or two. It’s already earning like $200, $300, some at $50 just to prove that the concept really works. You [01:13:00] know, and he will be sharing this. So just to. So if you are Anus chapter leader or a chapter member, you’ll be able to attend the AI powered Print on Demand Bootcamp for free this Saturday.

And for GFA and VIP members who are not local chapter members, but VIP members, they can still attend. They just only have to pay a modest fee of $50. And non-members. You don’t want to join GFA, but you want to [01:13:30] attend this learning session. The fee for that is at $120. So if that is something that will interest you, let us know.

So what will happen after this, after this session, the Print on Demand Boot come this Saturday. We’re going to announce that we’re going to have a POD Mastermind. So the idea behind the POD Mastermind is that for those who attended the session, and for those who are interested in if you are in POD already, so you don’t need to attend this learning session because you’re doing it already, but you just [01:14:00] want to exchange insights with other people who are doing p.

Or maybe you have questions like maybe your pod, your pod business strategy is not doing well as you expected. Maybe you need some, you need another perspective on how you can improve it. So being part of a Mastermind community can be one. But of course the idea behind the mastermind is that you must already be in pod or at least have taken the POD program.

So that, [01:14:30] but by the way, when I say pod, I’m referring to print on demand so that you can, you can also learn from others. All right, so, so our vision for GFA, just to give you an idea, is that we want to. Have a community, really a world where local entrepreneurs can thrive in a globally inter-connected economy.

So we are expecting a lot of chapters to be formed. In fact, I’m talking to someone who wants to form a chapter [01:15:00] about e-commerce agencies, so to help service providers to establish an an e-commerce agency and work with. Different countries service work, work with merchants in different countries. I’m also talking to someone who wants to form a chapter that is more focused on tourism promotion, so that to help tourism promotion establishments also get clients abroad.

And at the same time, how can they improve the business, their, their current businesses so that they [01:15:30] can, they can get clients. And I said, yeah, why not? Because at the end of the day, you really need technology to improve the way you market, the way you improve your services. And maybe that is where entrepreneurs can also interact with each other, with a focus of getting tourists to come to their, to their respective countries.

So our mission is to build a decentralized network of business leaders. Can collaborate, innovate, and drive local and global impact. So our core [01:16:00] values, basically as a GFA community, we believe in community because together we are stronger. So we wanna foster collaboration. Like for GFA Nexus, we don’t expect not to be, to have a monopoly of ideas.

We want members also to share what they’re good at. And grow. Also in the chapter, we also want to foster innovation leading the future of cross border business. That’s why we insisted for Mike to share his insights on AI and [01:16:30] blockchain, although a lot of people are new to this, but we want the community to be at the thick of it and really understand and be practitioners of it so that we can say that we are ahead of what we’re, what’s happening globally and empowerment, no empowering leaders to make a difference.

So we really wanna spread and grow the GFA community globally. So we hope that is something that you can be interested in. If, if, as I said, GFA can be of [01:17:00] help to a lot of e-commerce entrepreneurs, but not all entrepreneurs can be for GFA, but if you are passionate about cross-border e-commerce, let us know if this is a space where you want to grow into and you think GFA can be part of your business strategy.

By the way, we run GFA as a business, so we expect also local chapter leaders to run it as a business in order to make it sustainable. Otherwise not, not everyone will grow. So really, we’re really running GFA as a business so that it [01:17:30] can grow and foster helping chapter leaders and helping chapter members.

All right. So thank you so much by the way. Na, I’d like to take this opportunity. Maybe I can, I am unmuting you. I am inviting you to unmute and maybe you can you, you wanna say something or maybe you want to give maybe a quick invite to everybody who might want to join this Saturday? Hi Janet, can you hear me?

Maybe you can speak a little louder. [01:18:00] Hi, Janice, can you hear me? Yes, yes, go ahead. Hi, I just want to invite everyone if you have time to attend this workshop on Saturday. I’m a little bit excited as I shared it earlier with Janet. It’s just like the concept that I am doing right now is it really works except that of course there’s like some niches that you might not be very assist.

There are niches that that do really [01:18:30] well on Amazon right now. Especially if you’re into what’s trending. And so just a few things, like you really have to be updated with what’s going on around the world. And once you get into that niche, it’s, there’s a really big opportunity for you to make money. Just like, just like today, I was like really surprised.

’cause I did a design lab yesterday and I just waited for it to go live. And when I woke up I had like a hundred [01:19:00] dollars from one design. So I mean, the, the opportunity is there and I’m, I’m really like, would like to share how it works and hopefully there are more Filipinos to get Who would like to be involved with the print on demand?

It’s, the market is too big for. For a lot of people to really get into print on demand and hopefully have a passive income as because, because on print, on demand, like once you make design, as long as [01:19:30] sits live on the, on Amazon, then you can still earn like from the same design even after a year as like what, what Janet showed you on in one of her slides.

It’s a screenshot, a design that I need like last September, but up to this day it’s still earning me almost every day. Thank you, Janet. If you want to know what’s the logic behind 45, 47, you’ll know about it on Saturday. [01:20:00] So Matt will talk about and explain the design and how come that design is selling.

Well, of course, if you’re not familiar with the community where the shirt is popular in, then maybe it’ll not make sense. Right. Okay. Anyway, thank you so much. Na. Mike, is there anything you would like to add? Maybe, maybe a call to action to people, especially for Hamsa and the Empower the Seller program?

Sure. I mean, the point is the world’s changing fast and I, I think we have to always keep an open mind, [01:20:30] and I think working with a group of people, we’re really excited for this. I mean, like I said, there’s a few sellers that are more technical working with our development team, but we’re kicking off this program now, and it’ll be the, like you said, the Mike AI workshop we already have made, but we’ll also have these mastermind calls.

Where we’ll actually be sharing as we’re learning and growing together. And I think that’s, that’s a real way to, to grow and succeed. And I think it’s an amazing opportunity and, and we want to work with you to succeed. But of [01:21:00] course you have to make your own efforts as well. So to be open-minded, to learn to take action.

And, and we’d love to, to work with you if you have questions for us. Let me, let me know now or later, or you can call my AI agent. Still configuring that one. But it’s great. I mean, the world is so fast changing now. I think we’re going, we’re in the exponentials. I think 25 is the year of like this Mike. So, so Mike, if someone wants to participate in Hamsa market, what [01:21:30] would be the step?

Do they just go to the site and fill up a contact form or There is a merchant form to reque to, to request to be a merchant. So we’ll collect your request, but we havet opened that up. The buyer side is, is open for now, and that is rapidly developing and we’re adding much more technology to it. But I think the real, the best way is to join our Empower Seller program because we’ll work with you and make sure you’re ready and know what, how to do it and what to do and, and prioritize it.

But, um, and, [01:22:00] and at least understand the technology before plunging into the marketplace. Right. Yep. And we’ll, we’ll do cohorts. So this will be the first cohort and work with you as you get to know each other and help each other and, and launching. It’s a, it’s a new way of launching. I mean, there’s, the Web3 communities is much different than Web two on Twitter and other more Web3 crypto communities.

So I guess if any of you, of course, becoming part of the Hamza [01:22:30] market is not exactly tied to GFA if you just want to be a merchant, especially if you’re already familiar with Web3. But of course, we’re prioritize prioritizing the G-F-A-V-I-P members to become members of the Hamza market. So expect us to send you the merchant form so that if you’re interested in becoming part of the program, but we also expect that you will go through the key training program.

And then we will schedule a mastermind for that as well so that we can properly launch maybe [01:23:00] Hamsa Philippines, uh, featuring. Yeah, I’m excited featuring Hamsa Merchants from the Philippines. So maybe that is something that we can do for the second quarter for our G-F-A-V-I-P members. So, so let’s keep in touch about that as well.

So I guess now we can open also the floor for more questions. If you have a question, please type it in the chat box. Are we okay? Or maybe you have clarification. Mark. Gina, Tina, Anthony [01:23:30] n Ralph, set, Maria, Reggie, Christina Maby, Leia, me, DEA Savior Benjamin Ella, George Ly Toy and Leeway. Do you have questions?

Uh, you can raise your hands so I can unmute your microphone if you have questions or type it in the chat box. I also would like to introduce Sally, by the way. Sally is our powerhouse of a woman coordinating with all the members and the [01:24:00] chapter leaders going once, going twice. Okay. I guess we don’t have questions anymore, but was the session helpful for you?

Can you type one in the chat box if the session was helpful? Okay. Okay, great. So they’re here, they’re just shy or don’t have questions. Yes. Or maybe they were, or I’m, I’m not sure. Maybe they were overwhelmed with everything that we have shared. I mean, it is, it is overwhelming. I mean, like I said, I’m, I’m honestly overwhelmed.

I’m, I’m gonna study it right after this call. Some [01:24:30] of this newer stuff I saw last night. So, yeah, it’s, it is overwhelming. And then we, we also have our members here. We have Tina Bernabe, who’s our first Nexus Chapter member, and then we also have Maria p who is also a chapter member. I’m not so sure. Um, I’m curious if Tina and, uh, Maria, if you’re okay in introducing yourself, kindly press the raise your hand button and I will unmute your microphone if you want to introduce yourself so that letting everyone know also what [01:25:00] what do you do or, or what you’re into.

Are you okay Tina and Maria? Would you like to, is it okay if I ask to ask you to unmute? If you want to introduce yourself? Okay. So Tina said yes. Go ahead, Tina. Hi, Tina. Tina, you can now unmute yourself. Okay. All right. Hi. Good. No, I’m Tina. Nothing much to introduce. I am currently like kind of online [01:25:30] kind of, how do you call it?

It’s like I translate. English to Japanese kind of source of my income for now. And I’m like kind of checking what I can do. So I joined this group. I think it’s very interesting. I am from in mid now, but I also live. I go and come here in Cebu. It’s something like that. Thank you. Actually, we should talk about Japan.

Amazon Japan is a big market. It [01:26:00] was, we’re we’re working on, we have a few people in Amazon Japan. Mm. Great, great. Nice. Okay, great, great. So Mike? Yeah, get in touch with D and you will meet her this Saturday also during the pot bootcamp. Yeah. I see. And then we also have Maria P Ma, would you like to introduce yourself to everyone or Hello?

Yeah, ma, would you like to introduce yourself? Yes. Hello. Good morning. I am [01:26:30] Mare. I’m from Keon City, so I work as mainly as a va, but I am, I’ve also been doing e-commerce on and off through the years. I sell, use books, use stuff. So pardon the cluttering. So I’d like to learn about POD because I have friends who are graphic artists, so I’d like to go into that too.

So I’d like to learn from everyone. Thank you. [01:27:00] Okay. So see you this Saturday. Yes, as well. And look forward working together in terms of growing our pod space. Alright, thank you so much everyone for joining us and if you have a question, feel free to click the raise hand button. But if there are no more questions, I guess we’re letting everyone go now.

So thank you so much. And if you are interested in joining GFA, either form a chapter or become a member, please get in touch with me and if you want to join also Nexus, of [01:27:30] course, you can either contact me or contact Napp so that we can, we can answer your. Questions about it. Alright, so thank you so much everyone.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thank you all. Thank you all. Thank you. It was great. Have a great day. Do you enjoy the podcast, global community? Do you enjoy all the community events that we do? The best way to support is coming out to our annual cross border summit.com in Chang Mai this November 3rd, fourth and fifth, 20, 25.

I have amazing speakers, [01:28:00] amazing people getting together. We’re pushing the limits. We’re making things happen. This is where the movers of shakers and the deal makers come. It’s a limited supply of attendees and tickets and we have been selling out every year. So I recommend checking out earlier cross border summit.com.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed that. I had fun. I was all hyped up. I think anybody knows me, 11 years doing this podcast or more, and I. You know, so many years, 20 years in [01:28:30] e-commerce or more than that, 15 years in Asia. I don’t like to hype, but I’m hyped about this just in my blood, in my heart and my soul.

This is like the new internet. Actually, maybe we put that clip my professor sent me, uh, if you could put that clip of me and the year 2000, I call it Mike 2000, about me being on tv, about will the internet change the society? And at that time, in the year 2000, people were [01:29:00] wondering, is this really gonna change things?

Is this serious? Is, I remember I had a, like my first laptop and I looked really dumb on this video, but I’m gonna show it to you different types of answers from different people. But my friends, they, there’s a wide range of, um, colleges from, from where, where they came back from for vacation. And uh, some of ’em are actually used to computers even though they have no, no kind of technical.

Major in their, in their school. [01:29:30] And a lot of people have grown up with computers, using computers daily in their, for either their internet, access for their projects, type up word processing, uh, so that everyone’s having access to computers knowing, knowing that it can be the future. Okay. So I hope you enjoyed that one.

I am kind of shy about that. My professor, CEI doc LA City, I, I love you, man. Thanks for, thanks for, he recorded that on his, he didn’t know how to export it. It was a VHS and he took it with a camera phone and [01:30:00] uploaded iCloud and sent it to me over here in Asia. So, thanks, doc Lati in New Jersey. I, I learn a lot from this guy and I appreciate him and even still in touch to this day.

And, uh. We have to, this is the next level. This is the next level. That was the internet. This is ai. Um, I know many of us are scared to lose our jobs, to lose our business. Everything’s gonna change. But I think if you were thinking like that 25 years ago, seriously, with the internet, you would’ve [01:30:30] lost. If you’re thinking, oh my com, my business is gonna lose ’cause of the internet.

You gotta adapt. You gotta adapt. And I’m adapting like crazy right now. I feel like this is the next internet. And of course blockchain, I believe it’s gonna be needed. ’cause I believe I don’t want AI to just do anything they want in the database. And I have no, no idea what’s happening. So it’s coming.

It’s happening. I hope you’re ready. Thanks for watching. Mike Global from Asia. Take care. To get more [01:31:00] info about running an international business, please visit our website@ww.global from asia.com. That’s ww.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.