tpp012
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Professor’s Podcast where we discuss the best strategies to 
massively improve the reach and bottom line of your business in the current virtual and 
economic landscape. Your host, Howard Thai, generates over $5 billion for his clients 
annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.
[00:00:21] Hey everyone, Hurricane Liz here, and we're back for another Professor's Podcast 
with me, as always, is my partner in crime, the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Howard Thai. 
And Howie, we've got an incredible guest today that you were just describing all the 
luxurious things he actually did for you. Like this guy spared no expense.
[00:00:40] He knows who you are. He was excited to meet you. He wanted to network and 
mastermind with the best of the best. Would you want to tell the actual listeners out there 
what you did and why? What was all the fuss about you, Howie? I'm kind of like, I hung out 
with this guy in Mexico and I was actually turning, I was, Craig will be interested in all of this.
[00:00:59] I was trying to ditch Howie. I’m totally kidding by the way.  So, Howie, tell us what 
was, what was all this lavish extent that Craig went to.
[00:01:10] Let me go back. I think it was a year or two years ago that I met Craig in the 
mastermind and one of these higher level masterminds that I went to, I think I was speaking 
at. And then we, then after a while he contacted me and we help them with some issues and 
then we, we became really good friends. He flew me and my wife out first class or business 
to, I guess it's Texas.
[00:01:33] And he booked like a five star hotel for us and we stayed there for a couple of 
days and we were every day, every, every meal. We had really good food. We went to watch 
a movie and everything. It was a lot. I met his wife and then we, we, we, we went through a 
lot of a cool bonding. We talked about the business and stuff and we almost got a, we 
almost got pulled over by a cop.
[00:02:00] Well, I'll let him talk about that part, Craig. Wow, that's, that's pretty crazy. Like, 
but Howie, there was one thing that you said there, then I was like, Howie are you sure it 
was Texas? Come on now, Texas? And, I'm from Texas, so I will say this much. Everything's 
bigger in Texas, the hair, the boobs, and apparently the amount of money you make. 
Because I heard Craig's astronomical projections for what he's going to make since he's been 
in Texas.
[00:02:27] It's almost like it's his good luck charm. And Howie are you sure you were in 
Texas? Are you sure? It's kind of like another land. I think it was.  I think it was Dallas.  Right, 
Craig?  Houston.
[00:02:45] Yeah, Houston. That’s where I met him. Usually at night time I get kinda tired and 
I can't even think.
[00:03:02] Tiger beers straight from Hong Kong. I know all about the Tiger beer effect Howie. 
But anyways, just in case you guys want to know, we are interviewing Craig here and I'll do a 
quick intro here in just a minute. But he is going to be one of the 15 speakers for the first 
ever Professor's Pandemic event, and typically we do it in a real tropical setting.
[00:03:22] We knocked some drinks back as how he has become best friends with Don Julio. 
You guys would have heard me say that before. But the secrets really come out when you 
actually throw in some drinks and some people, you know, and obviously Texas, everything's 
bigger as Craig will tell us here shortly. But I want to remind you guys, because of the 
pandemic, we can't do that this time, which is extremely disappointing.
[00:03:45] Trust me, I feel it. I'm just itching to get out of my condo. But that's not going to 
happen. So what we've decided to do is to hold an online virtual event. It'll be the first 
Amazon, one of a kind, and you can pretty much get in there and watch from the comfort of 
your own home and you can wear pretty much whatever you want.
[00:04:04] All we do ask is you wear do wear a t-shirt. So if you decide to go a little nuts, 
underwear or whatever's fine down below, just don't stand up. However, we'll be more than 
happy to entertain you, number one, but also teach you the strategies and tactics used by 
underground sellers that are making upwards of
[00:04:24] Tens of millions of dollars a year on Amazon, and this guy is no exception. 
Obviously Howard was excited enough to go visit him down in the magical, magical, mystical 
land of Texas, which Howie can't even remember the city. But I will tell you what, he can 
remember how much money this guy makes on an annual basis.
[00:04:44] So Howie, without further ado, how excited are you to hear Craig speak? I’m 
pretty excited because he does what he does right now with the, what he, how he ranks his 
products and how he grows his products and brands and selling it from, from start to finish. 
We talked about it and it's really impressive how he plans for the exit.
[00:05:08] And actually, there's a little story about the exit that we just talked about. But I 
want him to talk about it to us. How, what, what he went through, what regarding selling his 
business. Absolutely. And Craig, you know, I think that's where we'll start. We'll usually have 
the guests start off with a two minute elevator pitch on who they are and why they'd want 
to actually speak at this wild event.
[00:05:30] But for you, as Howie pointed out, there is a certain element about your story 
that just makes it really exciting. It gets people motivated. It gets some energetic, and 
obviously it probably does the same for you. So you want to tell a little bit more about that 
story, Howie just talked about? Sure, sure.
[00:05:45] So I'm going to start from the beginning. When I first started selling on Amazon, 
and that was back in 2012 I had just recently sold a small software company that a partner 
of mine had put together back in 2010. In 2012 I exited that, and I had never been in e-
commerce before. I've been in digital marketing since probably 1999 2000 for almost 20 
years now.
[00:06:09] I've done digital marketing in the form of , I had an SEO company. I also had a 
small ad network and then a huge blog network of about 5,000 blogs. So I've been in digital 
marketing for awhile, but never done e-commerce. And in 2012, I decided to to dip into e-
commerce and learn as much as I could. I was living in Austin, Texas at the time.
[00:06:29] I decided in order to learn Amazon, I needed to be somewhere where I didn't 
have any distractions, where I didn't know anybody. So I moved to a small cabin in North 
Carolina on 17 acres. I had internet connection and. Beautiful hiking and waterfalls. That was 
the only distraction I had, and I started to learn Amazon as best I could.
[00:06:45] And back then there were really no courses or no, you know, there wasn't a lot of 
formalized learning or tutorials, so I just learned the best I could from mostly the videos that 
Amazon had put out in the instructionals that Amazon had put out. After about six months, I 
felt pretty comfortable. I realized that I wanted to launch a product that I chose the product, 
I chose the industry.
[00:07:05] The way I chose the product and industry was through the software that I had 
developed in my previous company. It was a data mining software and I was able to capture 
market trends. So similar to what the software does now that we use on Amazon to find 
opportunity. I had a similar software that
[00:07:22] That data mine mostly Google and other search engines. So I was able to look at 
trends coming up. Excuse me, I've got dogs here too. Anyway, I was able to data mine some 
trends that I, that that made me feel comfortable in going into that space on Amazon. We 
were one of the first private labelers in the category that I chose.
[00:07:42] I don't think there was really anybody else other than like big legacy brands. In 
the categories that we were, that we launched in and we, we had the two top sellers in our 
category on Amazon, number one and number two in the main category for two years 
straight. So they didn't really, well, that captured a lot of, a lot of attention from 
international distribution and from retailers.
[00:08:04] I always think of Amazon kind of as a springboard. I know I've heard other people 
say this, but it's a springboard for launching brands that are truly good brands. I mean, a lot 
of people mark it on Amazon just to make a quick buck and they get in and out of trends real 
quickly. But we wanted to launch an actual brand that we could see doing well, not only on 
Amazon, but also in the retail space and in distribution.
[00:08:27] So with the success that we had on Amazon, it captured the attention of retail 
buyers and of distributed, distributor, distribution partners. Back then, Amazon didn't have a 
lot of credibility like it does now, where retailers and big legacy brands now look at Amazon 
as a way to expand growth, but back then it was so new.
[00:08:46] They didn't really know how to view products coming out of Amazon, but we 
were getting about a hundred percent, 95 to a hundred percent of our sales. Some of them 
were coming on Shopify back then, but most of the sales were coming out of, out of 
Amazon. We started gaining traction in international space, distribute, distribution partners 
were coming forward and we were locking in those relationships today. That brand, let me 
go back a little bit.
[00:09:10] We thought about selling that brand about three years after launching it, we had 
some really significant and valuable offers, but the business continued to grow significantly 
outside of Amazon, so we pulled it off the market. We got an offer, I'll just say, I won't give 
the value, but it was 10 X our EBITDA and our EBITDA was really strong, so to get 10 X 
EBITDA is a really, really strong offer.
[00:09:32] We didn't take that offer because we thought we could continue to grow that 
brand and build value off of Amazon, which is what happened. Let me know if I'm going too 
in, too long here too. You can cut me off if it's going too long. No, you're good. We'll keep 
going. Okay, so yeah, so we kept that business. We didn't sell it today.
[00:09:49] The 85 to 90% of that revenue is now coming off of Amazon from distribution 
partners that we have internationally. We don't focus that brand so much on Amazon 
because that space is just become super competitive on Amazon, but we don't really need to 
focus as much as we used to because all the, all the revenues coming off of Amazon anyway, 
your Amazon business is super easy.
[00:10:09] We don't have to worry about reviews. We don't have to worry about all of it. No 
suspensions and things that you typically deal with on Amazon. It's just a repeat orders every 
month we fulfill them, ship them. And they pay 50% upfront. The other 50% is paid before it 
shifts, so it's a super simple business model.
[00:10:26] In the meantime, during that phase, I also launched two other brands, or actually 
three now, but we're following that same method. It's a methodology where we're finding 
products that there's always going to be competition on Amazon, especially now it's more 
fierce. It's more strategic in how you formalize your launch.
[00:10:44] Back in the day, you could launch pretty quickly without a lot of, you didn't have 
to do any real rebates or giveaways. You could just do some discounts and it was much 
easier than it is now. It costs a lot more money now because you've got to do so many 
different things related to the launch. But we're now in the middle of trying to sell our two
[00:11:01] Brands that we launched three years ago, and that's probably the discussion that 
you guys want to happen today is where we're at with that, with that sale. Okay. So, yeah, 
like I, you were saying that you were likeselling your brand and everything. And then you 
told me that you actually. It was so high that it went so good so well that you guys should 
pull it out the market.
[00:11:25] Was it the same story as you just said? Right now it's similar to what's going on 
now. We haven't pulled the current business off the market yet. We did get an offer back in 
February, which is a good thing that we didn't sell then. The buyers actually had a hard time 
coming up with the full financing.
[00:11:43] They were going to put a portion of their cash up front to buy and then they were 
going to finance the second portion. Covid hit obviously that's tough for a lot of people. 
Trying to get financing and a merger and acquisitions kind of changed a little bit, but Covid I 
think actually increased the value of our business because more and more people are 
shopping on Amazon now than ever before.
[00:12:02] I think a lot of people that never used Amazon or didn't use it regularly now 
understand the value and the convenience of it. They can press a couple of buttons and a 
package arrives at their doorstep the next day, which they didn't realize they could do that. 
And now you have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of new, new shoppers coming 
on to Amazon daily to use the, to utilize that convenience.
[00:12:24] And so our business is in a category that's grown almost four times since February 
now that Covid has hit and more people are shopping online. So it's a good thing that we 
didn't sell back in February because the value of the company has gone up significantly since 
then. However, we have gone back to market since that first offer came through and that 
that funding didn't happen for the buyer.
[00:12:44] We went back to market, their exclusivity ran out, ran out a couple of weeks ago, 
and we've had tremendous amount of interest. Now we expect to get four to five new offers 
on the business within the next 45 days, and now that value has gone up so much that we're 
just going to have to play it by ear. If we, if the buyer that we're working with or that we 
consider.
[00:13:03] gives us an offer that is valued where we feel the value is strong through the rest 
of this year based on our current growth, then there's a potential, good potential that we 
will sell. Because, I'd like to take some chips off the table and use some of that capital to 
grow another brand that we just launched two months ago in a different category, but it'd 
be great to.
[00:13:23] Out of all these years of selling on Amazon and building all these businesses, I've 
yet to take any chips off the table, so it'll be kind of nice to be able to do that. I'm getting 
older. I just had my 50th birthday last week, so I'd like to kind of start slowing down rather 
than continue to grow at this pace.
[00:13:37] But it's also exciting to be able to do that. So Craig, so you're making about like 40 
million this year. This year potential could be close to 40. We had, we have something 
interesting that happened too. We had a couple of YouTubers that blogged about our 
product. Yeah, they're from South Korea and it just so happened that that's such a big South 
Korea, such a big market for digital and online sales, that those videos went viral.
[00:14:03] Our product sales went up, not only because of of Covid, but also because of 
these bloggers that blogged about our product, and we didn't hire these bloggers. They just 
use the product and it worked well for them. So those videos went viral, but we also had 
some distribution contracts come through from South Korea.
[00:14:20] We chose one distributor based on their ability to grow the brand, and that's 
equaling, their first PO purchase order on our product for the first time, their initial PO was 
$2 million. The distributor says that that could happen on a monthly basis. If that's the case, 
we'll see that putting a lot of weight into that yet, but if that's the case, that's an extra $24 
million.
[00:14:41] A year just from distribution. So we're kind of falling in that same path that my 
other companies did, you know, several years ago where we started to grow much quicker 
off of Amazon. But again, Amazon was a springboard. We gained that recognition and brand 
equity on Amazon. So it's a really important thing to remember.
[00:14:59] If you build true brands on Amazon and they do, it just opens up your overall 
potential offline and through other channels. Okay. So what kind of skill set do you think 
that allows you to have this kind of opportunity to build these brands, these mega brands to 
sell. I, you've asked me this before, Howard, and I don't have like a, a secret or I don't have 
a, I do have a method.
[00:15:25] The method evolves as Amazon evolves, as we all know, Amazon's dynamic. It's a 
dynamic marketplace. It's never static, but I try to keep up with trends in terms of 
marketing. I follow a lot of a lot of top marketers such as yourself. I follow a lot of software 
platforms that help sellers on Amazon, and I just try and stay in in the know.
[00:15:44] I don't really have any particular skill sets or secrets of my own, but I think 
consistency and I think my strengths come in the form of branding and brand equity. I think 
I'm good at building brands in terms of consumer demand. I find, I can find products that 
consumers are looking for and I also can brand them well, which I'm probably giving myself a 
lot of credit here, but I think that's my secret, it’s being able to build a strong brand and then 
leveraging all the tools that are out there and available to every seller.
[00:16:13] And then just maintaining consistency. I've had some brands or some products 
that didn't do well over this time. I've watched some that, you know, certainly were failures, 
but you learn from those as you grow. I haven't had all successes on Amazon. But I haven't 
had enough successes that make this worthwhile, and I've certainly been able to do well for 
my stuff, so I've been thankful for that.
[00:16:33] Yeah. You know, Craig, you've had a lot of success, like you said, both on Amazon 
and then expanding off it, and not just with an Amazon business, but another business as 
well. So my question to you is, you're typically like you're really underground. You've really 
not done a lot of speaking from what I've understood, so you've got a lot of real tactical 
information that you could share with people.
[00:16:51] What three to five topics do you feel that you do want to share and you want to 
talk to people more about that could potentially impact their business as much as it's 
impacted your business? I think, like I said, I don't have a lot of secrets that I, that I use to 
grow my business. It's mainly coming from
[00:17:08] Consistency and making sure that I'm following. I subscribe to a lot of webinars. I 
subscribe to a lot of podcasts. Some of them make sense and some of them work for my 
business and some don't, but every nugget that I do get, I try to implement it. Be consistent 
with that. If I were going to recommend anything to a new seller, I would just say that, you 
know,
[00:17:27] there's a lot of resources out there that we can name possibly if you'd like that 
are helpful. I wouldn't follow every new shiny object. I would find something that works and 
work on that and focus on that until you see some success. Don't go for the top dollar right 
out of the gate. It's hard to do that.
[00:17:43] It's expensive to do that. Running a launch on any product now is much more 
complex than it used to be, but I think consistency is probably the key there. And this you, 
you, you talked about my speaking. I've never spoken before. I've never given any advice on 
growing an Amazon business. This format works well because I don't think I'd want to get up 
on stage and do this, but doing this virtually by all means, it works well for me and I feel 
confident doing that.
[00:18:07] So thank you for asking me to do this. But I think consistency and following, pick 
somebody that has done something well with their Amazon business and try to follow 
maybe through podcasts or through webinars, try to follow the advice that's given there. 
And that's, that's mainly what I've done. So surprisingly, I don't have a ton of secrets to share 
here.
[00:18:26] Yeah. You don't, I think it's, I feel like it's one of those spots where, you know, we 
all reach a certain level of knowledge and Amazon, especially if we're participating in 
masterminds, listening to podcasts, getting training and doing all that we can. But I think 
there comes a certain level or point that you get to where you don't feel like you really have 
much to give, but it's the complete opposite of that.
[00:18:47] You actually have so much to give and you just don't realize it because you're, 
you're basically it's, it's in you pretty much, and it's kind of like similar to, you know, after so 
much you listen to your significant other, your wife, your husband, your lover, whoever. He 
listened to talk and talk and talk, and it's kind of like the same thing.
[00:19:05] It almost becomes, you don't even really have to listen to what they're saying. 
And they could be like, honey, what did I just say? Even though they're testing you to see if 
you're listening, you already know it, but it's, it would be one of those instances I kind of feel 
like, so I feel, Craig, that you actually have a lot more.
[00:19:20] To actually share or give, and your knowledge is pretty vast compared to some of 
the people that that are listening. And I feel that you actually have a lot more to give them 
what you're actually letting on because it's almost like unconscious competence. I certainly 
do know Amazon well. I know the ins and outs of Amazon.
[00:19:39] I'm very comfortable inside of seller central, you know, after, what is it, eight 
years of selling on Amazon. I've probably gone through every pitfall you can think of on 
Amazon. And I've had issues that have been difficult to overcome within Amazon, but you 
know, it's persistence. And I think if I can give anything, it's probably inspiration knowing 
that, you know, I've had some of those failures along the way, but I went to my very first 
mastermind a little over a year ago.
[00:20:03] I've been selling on Amazon for eight years, so I've, I've mostly learned from a lot 
of other successful sellers, little bits and pieces, little gems, and I follow a couple of 
podcasts. That one being Howard's of course, I think it was a great opportunity to meet 
Howard, and that was one of the reasons I brought him to Houston, so that I could really 
engage with him and have that bond that, you know, I think is important with somebody 
who's so knowledgeable, much more knowledgeable than anybody else I know, relating to 
Amazon and just business in general.
[00:20:31] So, you know, those relationships are certainly valuable networking. I'd never 
really had that, that drive to network in the Amazon ecosystem before, or Amazon seller 
ecosystem before. I've actually worked with my dedicated account manager in Amazon in 
Seattle. They brought me to Amazon in Seattle. I never really got a lot of value out of those.
[00:20:53] And you know, I think that having those networking opportunities with real 
sellers, not necessarily if you're a top seller and maybe you have an account manager. Sure, 
they can be helpful at times, but not nearly as helpful as just knowing some of the other top 
sellers in the ecosphere and just being within the, I think immersing yourself is one of the 
things that I do every day.
[00:21:14] Every day that I wake up and I do my routine, but then I jumped into work and 
it's, it's pretty much all based on business and Amazon. How can I make my business better? 
How can I make my brand better? And branding is, to me, that's such a, I know a lot of 
people talk about that and it's hard. It's like style.
[00:21:33] Branding is like a personal style. If you have a personal style that works for you, 
and you're able to convey your style in a way that's, you know, how would I put that? Either 
way, branding also works the same. You want your branding to stand out, you want your 
branding to make people feel comfortable with your product.
[00:21:48] And I think that's where, you know, it's, it's, it's hard to learn branding. It has to 
come from within and you have to understand who your buyers are in order to appeal to 
them. So I think that's something that's really valuable. You can always launch a product and 
do well on Amazon, but the brands, branding isn't strong.
[00:22:05] You're not going to be able to compete at that next level where maybe you have 
the opportunity to go offline and into distribution and retail. So I was asking a lot of our 
speakers, what kind of problems do you see Amazon sellers are having in this 2020 
pandemic time? You know, I think a lot of it revolves around ranking at launch.
[00:22:28] I think I've noticed search volumes double, at least in a couple of the categories 
that I watch. Search volumes have doubled in the last month and we're now in end of May. I 
think that's because again, a lot more people are shopping online. I also see that being a 
challenge because let's say, let's say you're doing a launch and you need to show, you need 
to show volume sales volume at a certain level.
[00:22:52] Well, if search volume increases, that means your, your sales volume needs to 
increase in order to achieve those rankings. So, you know, it just becomes more expensive 
for someone who's launching a product nowadays, and you've got to also show that you're 
sending traffic to your listing from so many different sources.
[00:23:08] You know, back in the day, you could just send Facebook or you could just send a 
Google traffic, or you could be a much more simple launch whereas now it's much more 
complex. And Howard, I know that you're, you're working on something now that could help 
with that. It sounds like you've got some, some tricks up your sleeve that could potentially 
help with that.
[00:23:27] I would certainly be interested to learn, but I think that's probably one of the 
challenges right now with a search volume and more competition increases on Amazon, it 
becomes more difficult for sellers to get to achieve those top spots when they're trying to 
rank. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think like, like I was saying again, Craig, earlier, I find 
that when I hear you talk, you actually have a really good, I would have bet you would have 
a good stage presence.
[00:23:52] So I think it would actually do well for you to actually speak out there and you're 
extremely motivating. It's so motivating to the point that I actually forgot to ask you a very 
important question because I was so blown away by what you were saying and taking some 
notes. But that question is, with this knowledge, like you grown so many different brands, 
you have the experience of getting into negotiation with actual companies to purchase your 
brands and things of that nature.
[00:24:17] What Three to five topics now, I know that you said you really, really didn't feel 
like you were a hardcore expert. You just had a huge knowledge base, but based on that 
huge knowledge base, what topics or three to five topics do you feel that you would talk 
about? I've gained a lot of of skillsets recently when I've taken my business to market, and I 
think choosing the right broker.
[00:24:43] Is a big help as it's super valuable to have somebody on your side that can help 
you, not only bring offers to the table, but also field field offers based on your criteria. So we 
have a certain criteria that, you know, the type of buyer that we want, the type of deal we 
want to take place  and without the broker that we have and are doing a tremendous job.
[00:25:04] If you want, I can, I can certainly plug their name. They, they've been in the 
Amazon ecosphere for awhile, Howard, is that okay if I mention who we're working with or 
should I? Yeah. So it's the FBA, the FBA broker. We chose them because they're super 
knowledgeable about Amazon businesses. They're bringing buyers to the table who fit with 
what
[00:25:24] The type of buyer that we're trying to link with, and they've been super helpful in 
making this happen. So if somebody is going to take their business to market, I would highly 
recommend speaking to them and see if they're the right fit. But that's one of the things I 
would highly recommend is making sure you choose a broker that that fits for your business.
[00:25:42] You've got to understand your business inside and out before you go to market 
too. I know a lot of discussion and topics evolved around selling your business these days, 
but you really have to know your business when you go to market. The buyers are gonna, 
you know, run super heavy duty diligence on your business, your finances.
[00:25:59] I have a CFO for all of my companies. It's one CFO. He kind of runs my companies 
and my personal CFO, so that makes it easy. I'm not a finance guy by any means. So having 
the right finance person or people behind your business is really helpful because when you 
go to market. They're going to tear you apart.
[00:26:15] They're going to look into your finances. They're going to get close to running an 
audit, if not running an audit, which means everything has to be in place. So if there's any 
kickback from the buyer, based on your finances, it could derail the entire sale. Or it could 
just slow things down to where, or it could de-value your business if they uncover things that 
didn't match up.
[00:26:32] So, you know, I think that's primarily the, one of the main things you need is to 
understand your business inside and out. Have somebody, if you're not a finance person, 
have somebody that is a finance person that's dedicated to starting with you when you 
launched that business. That way they understand it from the, from the ground up or 
bringing somebody in that can go back to your day one and understanding your business to 
that point of sale because otherwise.
[00:26:55] You could run into some issues there and it could slow things down or it could 
completely derail the sale. So that's one bit of advice, a bit of, bit of advice that I can give is 
making sure that you work with the right broker and totally understand your business in 
terms of finance. Okay. So I know I just asked you about the problems people are having and 
how about the opportunities in 2020.
[00:27:18] Well with those problems of, of higher search volume and more difficulty in, in, in 
ranking, in launching, you know, there's the opportunity there to, like I said, I've seen search 
volumes double just in the last 30 days. So you know, that just, if you can maintain those 
positions or gain achieved those positions in rank, that just means there's twice as many 
buyers potentially looking for your product.
[00:27:40] So that's certainly a big opportunity now. But with the opportunity comes, it's 
challenges. So it's a much more difficult to get to those opportunities if you don't have a 
strong plan and strong branding in a, in a, in a wonderful product or fantastic product to 
launch. No, I know, Craig, we've been talking about a lot of off of Amazon, and I know that 
you said that
[00:28:01] You kind of had some experience doing that with your other business and then 
now you've launched obviously tons of brands on Amazon, some successful, some not, 
which is, I feel like that's really being transparent because I think a lot of people don't share 
the failures on Amazon. Like I, for one, I know I've failed so many times on Amazon, but 
because I do so much more on it, I keep having a ton of success.
[00:28:24] But my question to you is based off of your experience off of Amazon. What 
platforms do you see are an absolute must in 2020 and beyond for Amazon sellers to expand 
into, you know, I've been getting a lot of interest for some of our products, not only in other 
marketplaces for Amazon. I see that, Howard, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I see that 
the, what is it was, I'm trying to think.
[00:28:46] Japan is a big network as a big marketplace, but also what's another Asian 
marketplace there, Howard, that may have just opened up for a brand, Amazon Singapore, 
right. Singapore I think could be a potentially big one. They speak English there. So if you're a 
[00:29:00] US seller and you don't want to deal with the translations and the issues that 
come along or the challenges that come along with that.
[00:29:05] I think Singapore, you know, that's an opportunity because the buyer population, 
they're so used to purchasing online. You're probably going to get a lot of traction there with 
minimal effort because of the lack or the, what do I want to say? There’s no need to 
translate your listings there. I'm also seeing a lot of traction coming in from international 
distribution.
[00:29:26] I think a lot of international distributors are trying to find Western products that 
can sell well in their, in their foreign countries. And if you're, if you're showing up well on 
Amazon and you've got great reviews and your rankings are standout, there's a good 
potential for you to attract that, to attract that international.
[00:29:45] I think also running, I tried this back in the day and it worked well. We ran some 
press releases that we translated into local languages for other countries. Saying that we 
were, you know, our products were coming to those countries. We also had one where we 
had a very small distributor back in the day that picked up, maybe, you know, a couple 
hundred units of our product.
[00:30:05] But I wrote a press release that said we sold out in that country and I translated 
into that local language, you know, selling out, sure, it was only a couple hundred units. Is 
that true or false? It's true because we actually sold out. Right. But that gained a lot more 
traction from bigger distributors who were placing bigger orders because they saw that, you 
know, this is a product that sold out in our country.
[00:30:25] It must be popular. So that was a trick that I used back in the day. So you might 
try that. You might try writing a press release or having it written then translated. You don't 
want to lie, of course. But you know, I certainly. Push the envelope there in terms of what 
we, what we were capable of capable of.
[00:30:41] But it worked. And now in that, we're now, we are the biggest brand in that 
category, upcoming brand in that category, in that country. It's Saudi Arabia, I'll say the 
country. So it worked really well. Now, you know, the entire middle East, we have a really 
big presence there. The GCC is one of our biggest buyers of international in terms of 
international distribution.
[00:31:00] So that's a, that's a. I guess that may be one of the secrets that I have. I kind of 
forgot about that, but that's something we've done in the past. That helped, helped a lot. 
Well thanks for, thanks for coming on and cause I know you didn't want to be, it's kind of 
hard for you to speak on stage, so you're, you're, you're interested that, Oh, you're 
interesting that we can get you on line here today.
[00:31:23] I just wanted to see if you have any other final words for our audience here. You 
know, I think if you're launching a product now with the, with the increased volume, search 
volume on Amazon, I think you need to pick a plan. My plan would be to don't go after that 
top high volume keyword. Go after a keyword that's going to bring in 30 or 40 sales a day.
[00:31:43] You'll need, it'll be less expensive. It's less complex to do that. Focus on one or 
two keywords in that lower to middle range. That way you can subsidize the money that's 
coming in from those sales can subsidize your future growth where you can go after those 
bigger keywords, you know, and chip away until you get to the top.
[00:32:01] The highest volume keyword. It's going to take some time, but it's certainly not 
going to be as expensive than it is if you've gone after that top keyword and it won't take so 
long. So try and gain some small, get some small gains under your belt before going after the 
top tier keywords. But I think that would be my advice, especially now with search volume 
increasing on Amazon.
[00:32:20] Yeah, absolutely. Great, great advice overall, Craig, I think for me, some of the 
things that I found that were pretty fascinating about you that I've not heard anybody else 
talk about, and  I am pretty much like an Amazon information whore, pretty much I can 
admit to that. I know some other people would say I was a whore at other things, but 
Amazon information is certainly the number one thing that I am a whore about.
[00:32:43] And the fact of the matter is, I've rarely heard anybody talk about international 
distribution, especially at the scale you've been able to actually take it to Singapore, Saudi 
Arabia, and I'm pretty sure there's a lot of other channels, so that's something that to me is 
fascinating. How about you Howie, what did you find that Craig said that for you was like.
[00:33:02] Wow. And again, I know you've heard it before with him, you, you went down to 
Houston, you were living it up and all that good stuff Howie but, even though you don't 
remember the place, that makes me wonder how much you had to drink while you were in 
Houston. But what exciting things did Craig say that you have not heard?
[00:33:19] Well, I did stay there for like two or three days, so I really did talk to him a lot and 
I heard most of what he does. I'm sure there is some stuff that he doesn't want to say that 
he told me about. But yeah, it's really interesting how he does his ranking, how he ranks his 
product and launch it. And like last time he told me he spends over a hundred thousand 
dollars just to rank one product.
[00:33:43] Was that right Craig? Yeah, it's probably going to be close to that. Especially now 
this is a 2020 launch where, you know, it's a lot more complex to do launch. You've got to 
send traffic from so many different sources. You've got to show Amazon that your product 
indeed deserves to be ranked at the top.
[00:33:58] You've got to show that sales velocity that matches other products that are 
already maintaining those top ranks. So to show Amazon that, you know, you've got to, 
you've got to move a lot of products and it's got to last through, you know, at least I would 
say close to sometimes 30 days. You've got to move product at that velocity.
[00:34:13] So in order to achieve those rankings we had, we were fortunate enough to go 
after some of the bigger terms right out of the gate. So that certainly, you know, costs a lot 
more. I gave some advice earlier where you don't want to do that. If you have the funding to 
do it and you have the skillsets to do it, then.
[00:34:28] By all means you can do that. But we're also going after some of the smaller 
middle terms at the same time, just to help solidify rankings across the board. So there's 
different strategies based on your skillset and based on your finances. But I think, you know, 
spending a hundred thousand dollars on a launch today, and in this age of, depending on the 
complexity and the search volume, you know, it's certainly.
[00:34:51] It's certainly what I want to say. It's not something that a lot of people have the, 
have the appetite for, but we certainly did. And so hopefully we can, we're, we're, we're in 
the middle of that launch now and we're starting to see some traction, so we're doing what 
we can. So hopefully we'll get there.
[00:35:06] But thanks for having me on, on today, guys. It was really nice. I appreciate it. 
Hopefully you guys learned a little bit. So I mean, when you, like you just said, you don't just 
throw, throw everything at that Amazon, all these signals from left and right everywhere, 
and then just get with good conversion rate and good signals.
[00:35:25] And of course you know what Craig is doing right now is something that he's been 
doing for a long time. He knows Amazon, so I'm not expecting like the new people to come 
in and it's not a hundred thousand dollars for a product to launch something. It's just, it 
could be less, but he wants to go aggressive.
[00:35:42] He wants to go make sure that what he does is best meant that you get onto the 
first page beyond the top three with what his, with his investment. No, this is a for sure thing 
because he knows how to do it. You know? I'm just telling, letting everyone know that it's 
not for, it's not like every single product really mean to spend that much. But because Craig 
is in some kind of niche that is very competitive, he, you know, you gotta think about it like 
advertising the big brands, the big guys, you know, the a hundred thousand is nothing for big 
brands.
[00:36:13] You know, for those big guys like let's say Sony TV, or I mean Samsung TV coming 
out, you know, advertising. They're not going to only advertise a hundred thousand dollars 
probably advertise millions and millions, you know? So, and that's what I'm saying, Howard. 
And that's the thing. A lot of our competitors are those big brands that have really deep 
pockets.
[00:36:32] So we're going up against brands that, you know, we have to kind of do the same 
that they would do. They don't, I would have to say that they don't have quite the skill set 
yet on Amazon, but I think that's coming. I think a lot of the big brands are now seeing 
Amazon as a viable channel to grow their business, especially with retail having been shut 
down over the last couple of months.
[00:36:51] Due to Covid, you know, a lot of those brands were suffering in retail, and now 
that they see Amazon as being such a viable channel, they're going to start spending the 
money that it takes to maintain those, those rankings on Amazon. They're going to start 
figuring it out. I think that's going to be a challenge too.
[00:37:07] We hadn't touched on that, but I think some of the bigger legacy brands with 
really deep pockets are going to start to become some of our competitors. Some of us 
Amazon sellers who you know, typically never had to compete against. Those brands are 
probably going to start seeing a little bit of that more in the future.
[00:37:21] So what I'm, what I, what I'm seeing is, yes, it's right. I see a lot of big brands 
coming onto the market and very aggressive. I'm talking about, they're using tons and tons 
of money just so that they can conquer. For example, HP Printer cartridges, they're like 
throwing everything there they got on money-wise over to PBC and they're just kinda like 
killing it because no one's going to be able to even be having these spots on there because 
they're just like throwing so much money at it.
[00:37:51] You know? Right now I've seen that, yes. There is these big brands going on, but if 
you're looking at it, the real skill sets are the people like Craig and like other or a lot of our 
mastermind members and probably a lot of the listeners here are so much better than a lot 
of the big brands that are selling right now.
[00:38:12] But you got to watch out. They have money. They might just throw in the PPC. So 
PPC is very important nowadays. You need to make sure you know how to play play with 
PPC because the positioning, the amount of position for organic, it's going less and less. And 
like before, like like maybe like a couple months or a year ago or half a year ago, you can like 
an organic, you can be in spot six.
[00:38:35] Uh, or you know, or Spot three, and you'll get all the cells, but you know, but now 
maybe with going spot three, you're probably equivalent to spot limit at 12, because of all 
the other widgets that they have. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's weird how some of the search 
results pages. Are laid out now compared to how they used to be.
[00:38:55] It's not weird. It's just interesting because you know, like you said, the widgets 
are kind of getting in the way, or in this first few positions. Some of them are coming from 
recommendations for Amazon bestseller or from, I'm sorry, Amazon's choice. And then the 
others are coming from Amazon influencer program.
[00:39:09] So those take up a lot of space, a lot of real estate at the top of the page there. So 
you know, PPC. And those two widgets that I just mentioned certainly are, I consider them 
to be competitive spaces. Because even if you're ranking well, that doesn't necessarily mean 
you're going to be in the position where you're going to be found well.
[00:39:26] So that's something to consider too. But you're right. Some of these legacy 
brands have unlimited spend on PPC. They're driving up the cost. That's going to be another 
factor in, in launching in the future. And even right now, we're seeing that where it's 
becoming more and more expensive, and that's part of the cost that we're having to incur.
[00:39:44] During this launch is ensuring that we're able to compete with some of those 
brands who are just spending a ton of money and losing money. They don't care. They can 
lose money for a year more just to, you know, to grab hold and get a foothold in those, in 
those categories. Yeah, absolutely. Great points, Craig, andI think you said it very elegantly.
[00:40:02] You said you have to have the appetite to do it. I say it more a little more crude. 
I'm a little more critic. I say you got to have the guts or the balls to do it, and having guts and 
balls are two things that are required if you're going to sell on Amazon because of the 
shitstorm of things that can actually happen, and there's two other things really, you need 
the whole recipe for success.
[00:40:23] Although a lot of people would argue that it's a lot more. But it really is just 
number one, having the guts to do it. And number two, taking a chance on just doing 
something instead of overindulging on information and things of that nature. So hopefully 
we provided to you all some tactical information that you can take and start looking at ways 
to advance your business by looking at international options and things like that.
[00:40:47] And hopefully you have the guts to take that and put it into effect. And, one of 
the places that you can do that at is the Professor's first ever online virtual Pandemic Event, 
which will be held at the end of the month on the 29th and 30th. Craig, as you met today, will 
be one of the 15 underground speakers that have pretty much all not spoken anywhere 
before.
[00:41:07] So if you want to find out more information about that, go to 
a9mastermind.com/ppe and or if you're just ready to take the plunge and invest in yourself 
It's a9mastermind.com/secure-ppc. So before we say goodbye, I just wanted to thank Craig 
for that immense knowledge that he just dropped on us and for having the guts to, like he 
said, putting his money to the test and then kind of almost sharing the tactics with us.
[00:41:36] But Howie, what do you have to say to Craig and for the people listening about 
this event at the end of June. Well, I'm like a lot of these speakers right here is like once in a 
lifetime kind of speaking because they're not really out there like trying to teach people their 
knowledge and their secrets.
[00:41:55] So this is the one, once in a lifetime that you'll hear all these big sellers coming 
out and talking and speaking about all their skillsets and all their techniques that they're 
doing to rank products or to, you know, other things like selling businesses or whatnot. You 
know? So it's, I believe that you guys should jump on, join the PPE event with us and 
hopefully we'll see you then.
[00:42:21] Yeah, absolutely. Now as Howie said, these guys have luxurious tastes it's not 
going to just be Don Julio. You're going to have to buy this guy outside of this event. If you 
see him out in the street and invite him for dinner, you're going to have to wine him. You're 
going to have to diamond, and you're going to have to do all sorts of things just to get his 
attention.
[00:42:38] But here on the first ever online virtual professor's pandemic event you get to not 
only hear Craig talk about one of these exciting topics that he laid out here for us today, but 
you can ask him questions in the Q and A. So I'm excited to see him. I want again to thank 
you so much, Craig. I know your time is money because you've got a ton of businesses to 
manage.
[00:42:58] So get out there and go make that money and the rest of you all, I hope you do 
the same thing. Get out there and make that money and we will see you again live at the 
event, June 29th and 30th.  A9mastermind.com/ppe. See y'all later. Thanks for having me, 
guys. Thank you, Howard. Thank you, Liz.
[00:43:15] Thank you for coming. Welcome to the Professor’s Podcast where we discuss the 
best strategies to massively improve the reach and bottom line of your business in the 
current virtual and economic landscape. Your host, Howard Thai, generates over $5 billion 
for his clients annually using innovative tactics, both on and off Amazon.