Money in the Longtail, Adding 40,000 SKUs in 2 years with Mike Hartman

This week’s guest on the show is going to be a speaker at the Cross Border Summit – Mike Hartman.

He’s an American, living in Romania and taps into all the technical talents in the community there and is scaling tens of thousands of products on Amazon and on Shopify. He talks about how to make money, maximize profits, diversify and gives some of his insights…quite a bunch of amazing value including software tools, tactics and strategies, which a lot of us probably never even thought of. Let’s tune in.

√ Mike’s VIP Expert Page
√ Amazon
√ Cross Border Summit in China

Thanks so much for coming to the show Mike and sharing your insights with those who are making it and of course you have a full talk and share at the upcoming Cross Border Summit. Thanks Buddy and see you in a couple of weeks!

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Episode 274 of Global From Asia. I’m in a backseat of a Grab and gonna do discussion about Long tail, Making money in the long tail Amazon Shopify or just scaling lots lots of thousands and thousands of products with my partner. Welcome to the Global From Asia podcast where a daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight-up actionable advice.

[00:00:29] And now your host Michael Michelini. You know, I like to do these little intros. It’s been really on the move heading down to Maya Mall or Nimman in Chiang Mai after I, intense couple of weeks and four different parts of China. We are entering into Middle October and the pressures on for these events Cross Border Summit, our fourth annual and as always getting amazing feedback from the community.

[00:00:59] So thank you so much for your support and I hope to catch some of you all there. Y’all there have a lunch meeting with another amazing seller friend of mine. Nervous by getting into Hong Kong. He’s asking me for tips going into Hong Kong. It’s a it’s a weird world we live in when maybe going to Guangzhou might seem safer than going into Hong Kong.

[00:01:24] Anyway, let’s talk about this week show he’s gonna be one of our speakers at the summit. So, of course, it’s a good time to get him on to the podcast Mike Hartman. He was on the show years ago talking about Delaware US Corporation structures. He’s an American, Living in Romania Eastern Europe and taps into all the technical talents in the community there and is scaling tens of thousands of products on Amazon, on Shopify and he’s talking about how to get money make money, maximize profits, diversify and some of his insights from being a BSR seven or bestseller rank or meeting a top seven product and certain category going all the way into like something.

[00:02:06] Doesn’t matter if you’re the top ranking you got so many thousands of products. You’ll make little bit, some money from lots of little products which have all kinds of stuff. This guy is a machine. He’s a he’s a numbers data-driven person. I’m really excited first time to get him at the summit.

[00:02:24] And he is always sharing a good you can’t wait to meet some of the community and he’s given so much. Honestly this podcast we give quite a bit and of course will also be hosting the Mastermind one of the sessions of The Mastermind and speaking and but today’s given quite a bunch of amazing value and inside software’s tools tactics and strategies, which a lot of us probably never even thought of so, thanks so much Mike or Michael Hartman for coming on today.

[00:03:22] It also helped them start a podcast or us a podcast on alpharockcapital.com / podcast – radio so you can follow along the story, meet the partners and insights of starting an Acquisitions firm. So, thank you again for supporting this community Alpha Rock and I’m proud partner there. We will get them more on this show.

[00:03:44] But they also, we also have their show. We are, they or you or all. alpharockcapital.com. Okay, thank you everybody for tuning into another Global from Asia podcast. We have a guest that’s been on a couple years ago in a different, different. We don’t remember that one. Like we’re talking about US company structure of Delaware and everything and it’s exciting to have you back. Mike Hartman is a seven-figure seller American based in Romania for years.

[00:04:15] We’ve been chatting we’ve known each other through these different. You know circles and it’s a pleasure to have you on you also be speaking at the Cross Border Summit this October. So thanks for coming on Mike.  No problem, and it’s great to have me, I’m happy that you have me again. So yeah, so yeah, that’s correct kind of pivoted hard, you know had that expat contractor in the US companies things and.

[00:04:42] Figured I needed that plan B and moved into the e-comm world like all the clients that I were servicing did and as it turned out to be okay, I think you and I have similar feedback, similar story. I mean, well I was I still did a Hong Kong thing. So I’m a partner in a CPA company in Hong Kong. But like you said everybody was working with us on Amazon, on e-commerce.

[00:05:04] I think you and I have both been doing e-commerce before so, you know, the Temptation is strong. And so I mean everybody’s doing really well and you’ve grown quite a bit. We’ve been followed. I’ve been following your story for quite some time and. Your, I think we’re going to kind of just chat a little bit about the history.

[00:05:22] But you’re also 90% off Amazon you mentioned before the recording. You’re going to be talking at The Summit in more detail about your story and how you scaled off Amazon. And do you want to kind of give us a little bit of insight? So yeah definitely so the story that I’ll be getting is about scaling on Amazon for that aspect.

[00:05:44] Scaling off Amazon is is a little bit different and it comes with its own headaches and tribulations. There, the only cool thing is instead of having Amazon own all the data and not want to give it up and control your accounts and control your cash flow. You kind of control yourself, but it’s a much different grind as we say, so it’s a little bit harder, but I feel like it’s more of a safety net.

[00:06:11] You know, so originally I went on to Amazon per that safety net of having a different Revenue stream than the expat job because I knew the expat job was a finite solution if I wanted to stay in Romania, so, you know, I didn’t want to live on a Romanian salary.  So I started the Amazon up there and scaled it up pretty good, but then I saw all my friends getting these suspensions, their reviews deleted.

[00:06:37] I like all these different things and I had the opportunity to like move on Shopify and we pivoted hard. So we have a couple we have like two seven-figure Shopify stores now trying to build up the brands and working on to run something of a new brand next year of hybrid model of running both Shopify and Amazon.

[00:07:01] congruently together because we think we’ll have the most Revenue stream but won’t be dependent on only one channel. So if. That makes sense that makes sense, totally. Yeah, I mean multi-channel, something is definitely a dream and and a goal I think any any seller should have I mean the business owner should have right like relying on one channel.

[00:07:26] I mean, I feel it has textbook College, you know. Business college discussion is you know having diversification as as much as you can is important. So then I’ve taken I’ve taken that to the extreme in the past and kind of over Diversified. Yeah. And so I learned to like focus on like three or four things and like that’s it and my partner always tells me don’t get distracted by the shiny things.

[00:07:55] And so sometimes you’ll see this new business model or new thing that looks really shiny and awesome. But they’ll take your focus off your main business and I’ll go too. So we try not to do that, you know or and rely on Amazon before scaling. Why’s this so far this year? I played around 30,000 new shoes on Amazon.

[00:08:13] Probably 35,000 when I see you prefer working on the road another set of five and that’s brought its own challenges. I’ve realized a lot this year because last year we did. I don’t know 10,000 to use. We’re about two years in on this one brand. There’s one scaling to 10,000 shoes and scaling. The 40,000 views are two different sets of Automation.

[00:08:37] And so the sets of automation that I built to get to the. Has not translated well to get to the 40,000 and our ultimate goal of 1 million. So right now we have to rebuild a lot of systems that we had built out previously that we thought would be able to scale with minimal human interaction. But at this point I want to remove the human element at all cost. True. And, just run like full automations because when you’re messing with.

[00:09:10] Let’s say 10,000 listings there’s going to be human error. If we could automate everything a hundred percent, it removes the human error. So it brings its own problems and also with Amazon updating like flat files and update updating mws permissions, or API stuff it becomes more and more of a headache.

[00:09:31] So and you know one thing about my businesses, I really go wide I don’t go deep. So I’m not looking to have a best seller that’s moving 60 80 200 500 units a day. I’m looking to move one to five units per day per month per year depending on the scale. It’s a little bit different. Yeah, I guess what, you know, we’ll call it.

[00:09:54] Like I call it long tail. Is that all right. We’re like, yeah, I’m going after a lot of long tail stuff. So hundred percent, correct? Well, not one. So how do you, well our listeners are like thinking like that? 10,000 last year 30,000 this year forty thousand total sounds pretty crazy. I mean, so yeah, I mean like going I’ve had this debate with some other friends and so we’ve I’ve messed with like a BSR 7 in overall category and that was like a nightmare because I was King of the Hill and everyone’s trying to knock me down all the time.

[00:10:31] And so white hat black hat grey hat every kind of method you could imagine suspending all the tax and there was no sleep with this one. If asins go down, I’m not as upset, right so I still have sales. I still have Revenue because I’m spread wide and it’s a when it comes to inventory management. We do a lot of stuff for my own Warehouse etcetera.

[00:10:59] But it’s it’s easier and it’s harder in different aspects for me. I think it’s slightly less stressful. I would just say slightly in the beginning. I thought I was going to be way less stressful. But now I would just say it’s slightly less stressful, but I think if I can get the new automations that I want to get in place in place, like I’m working with some programmers now in Romania is like the home of programmers as I hesitate.

[00:11:25] So they’re cheap and easy here. You know, we’ll see if that makes everything much simpler for me because with being able to do this I should make redundant two positions which will also help with cash flow will help with other things, but it will just I think it will make my life easier if I can do for automation.

[00:11:48] This is the biggest issue I have right now, so it’s just human error. There’s a hundred forty. Yeah, you know on 40, let’s say 40,000 SKUs at 1% That’s 400 that could be screwed up, but it’s really really hard to tell which ones are screwed up and which ones aren’t screwed up or if someone changes your category, you know, you can run Century Kate but he gets expensive when you’re running this many SKUs.

[00:12:13] Right. Now I’m using a program called bind wise and because I have so many excuse even if one little thing changes I’m getting spammed out the Wazoo e with email notifications about changes. So I have one person just going through and fighting with Amazon on their algorithmic changes.  So, like I said it is it’s a different.

[00:12:36] It’s a different Beast as we say. Yeah, I mean so you’re doing print on demand or is to make more apparel. I’m just trying to think what’s 10,000 or 30,000 mainly cell phone accessories and print on demand. Okay. So imagine you have like an iPhone 11 case, you know, how many different color variations can you have on that?

[00:12:57] Right. So you have army green, you gonna bright green you can have you know, I don’t know neon green and so we have a lot of color variations, but what’s funny is what I might put as neon green, amazon will come in and just change the green but then it’s kind of like duplicate because it’ll change something else as green too.

[00:13:17] So I’m always fighting with Amazon and I want to have like a one click solution flat file per category to just fix things and this is what I’m working on building out right now and to launch new things. The other thing is with with advertising with this amount of SKUs also becomes a a headache. So how many SKUs do you put into a campaign?

[00:13:43] I mean that’s that’s question one. We found the sweet spot to be around like 54 running tests. Well when you’re launching MOQs that’s going to be something like Oh my God 20 campaigns right there, right? There are all competing for the same keyword same everything but all have different results.

[00:14:01] So how we harvest the data how we push these things out? Into like let’s say winning campaigns is completely different. We also had a big headache over the summer because we’re running software automation with manual. And so we’re using Zone tools. Like I think a lot of people are but because the API data was completely screwed or skewed or screwed if I think the appropriate term between July and August.

[00:14:32] What was the API was reading was not actual reality? So the algorithm is Bill bidding completely their campaigns. So what we ended up having to do is because we take bulk file downloads is we re-uploaded before this API thing and trying to go up a bids that were like four months old which are three months old which isn’t necessarily the best thing to do, but just trying to recover some of those sales.

[00:15:01] So if that makes sense. makes sense, I mean you’re seeing data. I mean, you know, we’re talking earlier in the show about Amazon having the data, but you’re also getting a lot of this data because you have all these all these products right and and all these ad campaign. So you yourself must be harvesting are you, how are you?

[00:15:21] Are you using that data are you using I mean, of course there’s these tools that people have that have data but do you yourself have some internal data you can then use? We do have internal data that we use. I do use like black box to check competitors to know what they’re dealing with and what their sales are what their BSR is off of helium 10.

[00:15:45] And from there I get like good ideas of different niches to go into where I can dominate. So like one Niche my brain to to 5 km long like for example, but I can go in quickly and take 80% of that Niche within a month. So that’s an extra 4K and I can duplicate that like 20 30 40 50 times, you know, and if you do that you had some figures pretty quickly, right?

[00:16:12] So it just depends on on what’s launching. So right now we call it the Apple launch season. So they’re coming out with a new iPhones. You have new DJI mavic. It’s going to come out here shortly. You have a lot of different things that are coming out right now. So basically, we’re, my have full-time 3D render artist we never touch products and they just run.

[00:16:38] We have a lot of automation on the graphic side completely happy with that on the listing creation side I’m having more and more issues. And so that’s why we’re just we’re like scrapping what we have. We’re still using it for what we have now, and we’re completely rebuilding something new.

[00:16:55] Awesome. Yeah, I remember we had talked earlier. You said you’re not even dealing with physical samples in your team. Everything is rendered like and so nobody in your team is touching a product. No, no, not touch products at all. So which is really really funny you have to understand that we are such segmented.

[00:17:13] So I have Graphics marketing automation tools all built in Romania Warehouse everything in the US. So I get expensive to ship stuff back and forth like every week and so literally we’re just building out renders off of images were buying existing renders and building the case isn’t doing what we need around those of the devices and it seems to work out.

[00:17:38] Okay, we have like a big what I call rendering guy dropped a lot of money into this thing and so we can produce. I think our record right now was we did 12,000 custom images in about four days through Automation and so out of those 12,000. It was like mm listings six images each. Well, so yeah, we just crazy time you could never do this with photography it just then it won’t it won’t scale.

[00:18:13] This is all yeah. Yeah, so we wrote a whole bunch like when we originally were building out these automations. Basically, I want to my 3D guy and I combined him with my programmers and I said any task you have to do more than once you’re going to screen capture that explain it and we’re going to automate it.

[00:18:34] And so that’s what we did and we did that for one year until we had every task. He was duplicating to the point now he is just building the renders. Setting positions clicking a button and we’re producing listings on the graphic side. Well, so and eventually I want to get there with the listing creation.

[00:18:55] There’s always going to be manual with the listing creation because you have keyword research. You have you know, Bullets and description are going to be different but similar, so in that aspect we have the automation right now where we have some Dynamic keywords that are changing and some static, but I want to make that more robust feeding off our existing like database.

[00:19:21] And then run like for automation scripts to create the entire flat file, the only issue that I foresee happening is every so often is Amazon’s changing the flat file. So maybe once a quarter I’m going to have to remap everything. Hmm. And that’s basically at we have pretty good automation now, but it still needs to be touched up by a flat File Expert sometimes or Amazon doesn’t like our categories and I don’t want to be in the categories.

[00:19:49] They want to put me. Because let’s say on if I want to sell an Amazon Echo Dot case they’re taking a 45 percent commission if I can push that thing into a tablet case or smart speaker case, they’re taking a 15 percent. So the huge difference makes sense, man. Yeah, I mean, I’m well, what’s rendering rig I mean like is that that’s all Hardware software and some type of Hardware.

[00:20:16] So, it’s Hardware. So all we have I don’t know forty eight gigs of video RAM on a giant massive computer that we built custom just to run these Graphics intensive process. And so we’re just we put it through some automation software and we’re running it through this. We have three separate computer setup for one guy just to manage those.

[00:20:42] Well interesting it is it’s a different Beast. It’s a different Beast Man. So then you just yeah, like you’re saying so remapping flat files and then battling Amazon to stay in lower cost categories that you consider more than it depends. I mean, it depends on the Amazon. Let’s say Amazon Echo dot accessories.

[00:21:01] We do fairly well, but the conditions are so freaking huge it wipes out like all the profit margin for taking 45 percent. So we try to push them into let’s say other category. Cell phone accessories tablets electronics laptops, whatever I need to put it in and just to save the money on the feet. So I mean by putting it into different ones we can save up if you know fifty to a hundred dollars a day in piece.

[00:21:33] Which adds up? Not only yeah, I mean we’re I’m gonna probably titled we didn’t pick a title. I think we’re going to go like making money off the long tail. That’s kind of what I feel like this is discussing here for sure. Yeah, so. I mean, I basically it also with Amazon’s algorithm recently from what I can tell is I used to be able to take up 80% of the landing page and now they’re only giving me around 40% of like the you know positions on on a landing page.

[00:22:04] So it’s a little bit different. So it seems like a brand can only own so much of One landing page.  mmm, one keyword one long tail. Makes sense. So then you’re just running everything through one Seller Central account seems probably you’re just doing everything. I’m running everything on this account through one Seller Central because it’s a bigger brand and so I’m leveraging the brand.

[00:22:29] I don’t want to you know in dilute the brand value something like that, but it’s different. Also, there’s I used to do a lot a lot of cell phone, Vaporizer accessories and there’s been a lot of bad PR about vape accessories recently. If you look at the search volume on that it is it is ranked in the past month.

[00:22:55] And you know, the sales were really affected by that because it was it was for me with a cash cow. And so now the cash cow is gone. It’s all the bad PR and everything in there is gone. And so instead of relying so much on like one Niche were expanding more and more into different niches to diversify the revenue stream even even further.

[00:23:19] Well, yeah, so we’ll meet Zack at the event, but he. I don’t know if I should exploit something. Sheall we got kind of wrong things. Yeah, I got rock to I mean, so I went from moving like let’s say a hundred two hundred Tina today to like Donald Trump trump tweeted one Friday. Yeah. We talked Donald Trump.

[00:23:43] They completely screwed the business and even from like off Amazon perspective, you know. That one product used to bring an easy, you know mid five figures per month and that dropped drastically. I mean drastically drastically to the point that I don’t even think we’re bringing maybe we’re hitting like made for figures.

[00:24:07] So you’re talking about like a 30 40 50 Grand hit per month per month just on one product set. That’s that thing used to jam. Yeah. I mean it is what it is. I did you have to understand that. When you get into this this Market cell phone accessories accessories Market in general, you’re always going to be hunting the trends and getting on the trends.

[00:24:29] And the idea is this hit the trends before other people hit them and to grab market share while you can and then defend our market share or to come in and dominate the market by better listings by having cool EBC, by having video by just dominating it this way. So you have a lot of different options to penetrate different things but it is what it is.

[00:24:52] I would say for The Vape, the vape Market though right now from what I seen across all channels. It’s it’s dying. So we got all this bad PR now and it’s just dying. So maybe it’ll bounce back some but not like it used to be. Yeah, I can imagine I know did to the tweets of Donald Trump that have rocked.

[00:25:13] Industries the last couple of years. It’s unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. I saw him tweet I said oh and then I looked at my sales. I was like month. That’s basically it.

[00:25:30] Well, yeah, let’s dive into the accessories like you said. So your Apple launched season, there’s the mavic so you. You’re like hunting these Trends and you’re deciding to dive into this vertical or this, you know this accessories Game and then you’re going all in on renders and packaging even before you have weight and maybe they haven’t seen the see the actual product.

[00:25:56] I’m looking at Google Trends and demands bro. So good, man, and so before I even like touch the product, I’m trying to have like right now we’re building out the iPhone 11 cases. We should be launching them. I don’t know this week and then Nintendo switch light which just also released and we’re building out the cases for that.

[00:26:18] And I’m launching those things. I never had physically had the prophets in Romania. So so so, you know, it’s just a different beast. And so I’m punching release dates of hunting trends of hunting competitors. I’m trying to get to you know, use their b.src how they’re trending see where they’re making their money and then just to come in and what I call sniper so I just come into a category.

[00:26:47] And I might do some micro launches. So the you know, like 10 20 rebate keys. Get you know, five ten reviews put it up jam it with some PPC rank it and just start stealing market share. I know because I can blow like 5 grand on a release of it’s going to make me five grand in a month. Like I don’t care but I can do this multiple times over like so I have all the pieces in place to do this multiple times over.

[00:27:12] It’s just it’s a different story. It’s a different game. So. But I would say overall this year across different segments in business the past two months have been terrible. I mean terrible as far as sales concern. I don’t know if it’s the the Trump War. I don’t know if it’s Vape accessories, but I’m looking at the different markets that I’m in Beyond this like the different websites and other stuff.

[00:27:40] It’s only just been the past week. That sales have really started to like pick up on the other businesses from what they were, you know over the summer before this hit the bed whatever that was. It’s an overall sales today or for the last day of September. I think I got I got obliterated. I mean they were literally.

[00:28:08] Half of what I did in August, but I’m also thinking that a you know, I was heavily reliant on those Vape accessories which were trying to get off of now so it becomes addictive it becomes a drug when you have such a good seller, you know, or a good market so, you know and know this won’t has been up and down some days.

[00:28:27] We have really good days. Some days. We have really bad days and can’t really pinpoint it. You know, I can’t really pinpoint what exactly is affecting it at least in my let’s say cell phone accessory market and the accessories Market in general.  Yeah, I agree. I mean. Before recording your asked me to you.

[00:28:47] I think everybody is feeling feeling something’s not normal. I think is spooking on spooking a lot of people, but maybe that’s you know, that’s another advantage of long tail or multiple listings. You think I mean, of course you’re said you want to be sr7. I mean that prize much more risky than where you’re at now.

[00:29:05] Oh, it’s that was way more risky than where I’m at. Now. I mean, but instead of having to focus on 40000 listings, you can’t. You only have to focus on one but the problem is that one man. This is this is why I have no hair left, you know, so put it that way but it’s just a different game the cool thing about my business is it’s flexible and I’m fluid so I can can pivot really quickly with where I’m at.

[00:29:36] I have really short RD time. It’s like two weeks from RD to like product launch, so I’m able to move really quickly through the markets and You know, we have a very solid marketing team both on Amazon and off Amazon. So I have no complaints right now. Great. Yeah, I mean team is really, you know, you’re building a massive Foundation.

[00:30:02] You know, you said you got you got the systems in place to team in place, you know, knowledge data collecting. So I think this has been a great conversation so far and. Can we move chat a little bit about the Summer where you got lined up to share with those that are coming out? Yeah, so I hope to drop some knowledge bombs in the summit will leave it for the summit.

[00:30:25] Not for the party. I hope whoever is coming out for the VIP. I will give you you know, some added benefit. There’s some things that I’m doing right now in the business that have recently been game-changing. So and I will go over that at the summit. So in less than 30 days I’ve been able to use one marketing channel to generate 25% of overall Revenue that I neglected before.

[00:30:52] Great, so which has been huge? I mean, it’s been uh, it’s been a game changer and so it taught me a lot about neglecting, you know, we’re neglecting different channels because they say so. I’ll be in the summit, I guess from the 21st through the 23rd. I hope to see you guys out there. Who’s ever coming to the VIP looking forward to meeting you guys and having a productive Mastermind also be hopefully dragging my business partner out there with me.

[00:31:21] He’s also full of knowledge and. Yeah, I know really looking forward to it. So you like you said Mike you’ll be hosting one of the one that hosts of The Mastermind the day before where those that get the VIP ticket can enjoy some more intimate time with you and the others like Howard and Danny and Will and some other great people so it’ll be amazing time.

[00:31:45] And of course you have a full talk where you share at the actual Summit. We’ll be rubbing shoulders with some really cool people from all around the world man. I’m really happy. I finally got you. We’ve met at other events, and we’ve been knowing each other for a few years now, so I’m really happy to have you coming out and sharing with with those that are making it.

[00:32:03] So, thanks again, Mike.  Yeah, no problem. And thanks looking forward to it. And I guess any other plugs for people to find. Find you or what you’re doing online if there’s any current blogs. That man really I pretty much shut down the agency because I make more money with my own Brand down tonight.

[00:32:21] Okay agency, so II can’t really plug anything for myself right now because I’m just focused on my own businesses. People can look me up on Facebook Michael Hartman. Or they can email me. I still have the old email Michael@innoventic.com. Awesome need to reach out. Yeah. Thanks so much for sharing buddy, and I’ll see you in a couple weeks.

[00:32:45] See you in a couple weeks, man. Are you a gladiator e-commerce? glad to hear maybe you enjoyed the series e-commerce Gladiator we had here in global from Asia got a pretty close to well. It’s double digits of the episodes and I have been working hard with Andre Morton my amazing editor of the book.

[00:33:05] We made a book e-commerce Gladiator.com. It’s going to be coming soon. We’re going to launch it at the Cross Border Summit. But if you want to see more and get on the waiting list to learn about this new book and opportunity. Check it out at www.ecommercegladiator.com.  So it’s my blah blah blah session still hopping up and down on a pretty smooth ride.

[00:33:29] And in this grab car, I’ve been on but 20 minutes out from downtown or Nimman by car and I just just budget grabs and seem to schedule doing podcasts intros one a month to move just because I like to you know, I like to maximize time and my mornings are my grind just doing so much focused work.

[00:33:53] This one I can get to this one I can get to do while I’m in the car and I go and I think it’s more fun. At least I think it’s hopefully more fun if it’s not too much of an eruption for you to listen to this. And we got pretty good Mike, you know, and I got an adapter for new Macbook so that I can plug in my USB microphone.

[00:34:11] But today was pretty cool. You know, I don’t know what you guys think about thousands tens of thousands of SKUs in Amazon or Shopify. And if you think that’s a better way or you know what Michael said, he lost sleep on just a few products. There’s course two sides of every coin. Whether it’s heads or tails on that quarter, you’re flipping you can go with diving deep on one.

[00:34:34] I mean, I know people that have one product to make, you know, millions of dollars and but it is a little bit of a stressful situation, you know with black hat white hat gray hat Amazon suppliers, everybody coming at you trying to maybe knock you down, which is what Michael seemed to have said in the talk where you’re more Diversified with thousands of different products.

[00:34:57] I do like to say diversification, but I think a lot of you know me and I do million different things. So it’s probably a weakness of mine depending on how you look at it, but it’s just diversifying takes a lot more work, you know to have multiple sales channels or multiple products. So something you should be thinking about but I think no matter what the future is automation the future of technology and software.

[00:35:21] So I think we as business owners have to always think about how to automate our businesses to reduce the human error, right? You know, that’s kind of one thing that Michael said and I don’t have too much automation. I’ll be honest this podcast is about five or six different people to make this show go online.

[00:35:39] For example, I. Guess we could automate it more. You know, I think there’s even software’s that auto edit that automatically edit. And what’s happening is there are mistakes but you know, sometimes a human touch is something a computer can’t do but I think with Michaels case, you know, if it’s just changing the colors and just changing the, you know some certain variations.

[00:36:06] All those products then, you know, you can totally automate that, you know, just changing the pattern of the of that rendering so that’s pink and green and army color and gray and tie-dye Thailand different logos designed. So I think you’re doing that kind of style. You can definitely kind of like program that.

[00:36:29] I hope all of us are just trying to think of Technology Solutions. I mean, that’s what happens to me when I’m selling online. I think of the software Solutions and obviously there’s the greats like Greg Mercer and jungle Scout and others that have been sellers are are still Sellers and then they see these opportunities and software’s I think Michael sitting on some opportunities to make some software’s maybe we can talk about that at the cross-border summit when he’s there.

[00:36:52] And I’m just really, you know always excited about connecting people. He’s really want to meet some bigger Sellers and China Community Asia community and I’ve been lining up some some connections already. We have one attendee to it’s two women from Chengdu actually a lot of Chinese women business women come to our event, which is pretty amazing.

[00:37:14] I’ve noticed that every year, it’s a lot of female Amazon sellers in China do really well, I guess they’re good at managing different personalities and people usually are better at English. They started my business English in college, and I can’t wait to introduce Jessica and Linda coming down from Chengdu China with forty five person team and Amazon since 2013 I’m shotting her an email just preparing the attendees that are coming to make sure they get the most out of their event.

[00:37:46] And we were just talking about it and just a lot of insights from from her about what she’s looking for. She wants to meet more people from around the world, you know, and they say they’re younger which I don’t like to ask anybody there, especially women, but she says that her and her colleague are younger and more open-minded Chinese and they’re really excited to meet foreign International Sellers and business owners.

[00:38:12] So I can’t wait to introduce them and tell me Michael Hartman here when he’s coming in. He’s flying in from Romania to China flights. All book hotels are booked. Can’t wait for him to come out but probably do some more meetings and events while he’s there. We also have a secret secret session after party Michelle Zhou our sponsor from WanB Express.

[00:38:38] She she lined up one of her Chinese seller friends that is willing to share but doesn’t want to publicly say who they are online and they don’t want to even really promote themselves at the event will come to the after party to do like a fireside chat Q&A session. So it’s just always stacking that value stack in that cash, but I can’t wait as always and we’re almost at Maya that wasn’t so long, right?

[00:39:07] Are we almost I think we’re almost there so this might be a shorter blah blah session but just try my best to add as much value to these events and to this community and try to balance what we put on this free podcast and what we put into these paid events, but I think the biggest one is the people you’ll meet the people the deals you’ll make when people are always amazed what we’ve been able to somehow do is keep the Chinese and International Community together and we really try hard.

[00:39:36] Of course, my wife is Chinese and she helps a lot with the Chinese side. And you know, I’m the white guy try my best to keep the international people, I mean there’s people all different colors, but let’s say English Language World there. So, you know processing China visas and getting people on WeChat.

[00:39:56] Wish they had a referral program, but basically getting your way into we chat. We have pretty good. We chat groups. We’re going to put together for the event as always. So I think I’m about to get out of the car and I had a great time sharing with you and Michael thank you for making out to the summit and I hope to see some of you listeners there as well crossbordersummit.com.

[00:40:20] Get more info about running an international business, please visit our website at www.globalfromasia.com that www.globalfromasia.com. Also be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.