496: Outthink Amazon with AI | Melisa Vong

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2:42Thank you so much for being part of our AI and e-commerce summit, Melissa. As we were saying offline, you've been an incredible teacher, instructor, and a thought leader in the founder platform and network. You've introduced me and us to so many incredible founders that have also given back on our platform. But for those that are not familiar with you, your work and your brands and all the incredible e-commerce businesses, and now also you talked about local business that you're launching, a retail business as well. The first question we ask everyone that comes on is how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today?

3:21Yeah, I guess about seven or eight years ago, I didn't realize that this would be, you know, not only the worst day of my life, but also the best day of my life. But when I got denied from my vacation request at my full time job, it made me realize that I didn't have any control over my life. And, you know, when I could go to the bathroom, when I could take a vacation, like literally I'm clocking in, clocking out. but I had no real, even though I was entitled to two weeks vacation, I couldn't decide when I could take them. So it really was a light bulb moment for me. And at that point, I kind of quit my job and went full time with e-commerce and Amazon.

4:05But prior to that, I had discovered Amazon basically through just having clients that I used to build websites for. So as like a side hustle, I ended up building websites with WordPress. This was before Shopify became like this big thing. And WordPress is a lot more difficult because you actually had to know a little bit more HTML. Sure, I had some different templates to work with, but it wasn't as user friendly. But realizing that people were making a lot of money selling things online, especially building out these websites for clients, I realized, hey, like, why can't I do this? So that's when I kind of got into the weeds of, okay, like, how do I make money selling things online?

4:47I know how to make the website, but now I need a product that I can sell. So that kind of just catapulted it. And then, you know, when I got denied my vacation request, it was like, this is the last straw. I have to, you know, it's this or nothing. And that's basically how I got into it. And yeah, I've been doing it ever since. Yeah, that's awesome. And, you know, you've launched many different products and ranges and brands, and you've done very, very well with many different products and brands. And I'm curious, what's the state of the Amazon platform from when you first started to now? Because a lot has changed.

5:27Yes, you're definitely right. A lot has changed, especially since, you know, seven years ago when I first started on the platform. Obviously, it was a lot easier back then to get more reviews, to rank your products. The algorithm was a little bit different. And, you know, especially with a lot more sellers coming into the market, not just from the US, but also now you're having all these international sellers who are the manufacturers themselves who are selling on Amazon. Right. So you have a lot of these people who can undercut you in price. But what I find is, you know, the same tools and tricks of the trade from back then no longer work now.

6:07So with this business and any business, you're consistently learning. You're always learning. There's always something new, something changes. You know, even if you don't sell on Amazon and you sell on your own website with that whole iOS update, now Facebook advertising and the way that's done is changed. Like things like that can kind of nuke your business, but you have to roll with the punches and you have to keep on going, moving forward and learning and adapting. And that's just the nature of business in general. But in terms of what's working now, like what I always hammer into people's brains is that you have to build a brand.

6:46Like there's no way that you can just find a random product on Alibaba anymore and just ship been, you know, 500 units with no branding whatsoever and like make a killing on Amazon. Now you actually have to build a brand and really build that community around that brand. And there's, you know, the different instructors that teach this so well, like Greta, for example, she's built, you know, five different multimillion dollar brands. And it really goes to show that having a strong brand presence can really go a long way. And we're in it for the long run. We're not in it just, you know, for a short, short term, we want to make sure that we're building sustainable businesses and that's the way to do it.

7:25And that's how you're going to thrive in, you know, today's e-commerce and Amazon marketplace. And when it comes to building a brand, what are successful brands on Amazon doing today to stay ahead of the competition? So you're getting, they're getting very crafty. I mean, when I, when I say that, I mean, you are having to do some really creative stuff with your your marketing so not just focusing on amazon as a platform itself but also driving external traffic so whether it's google advertising you know tiktok is a big thing now where you can literally one video can can basically make your listing pop up pop off to the top of page one uh quite easily right but then there's another set of challenge where you have to make sure that you maintain your stock and everything else else but in terms of what the good solid brands are doing right now is they're optimizing their listings incredibly well and what I mean by that is they're providing high quality listing images their storytelling I think that that's a big thing too and really you know a picture is worth a thousand words there's really so much that you can pack into a single listing image but a lot of people who don't take the time to actually craft their listing very well whether it's the copywriting or the product images, the product photography, even just upgrading some of your images through renderings, because renderings can be a really good way to get high quality product photos.

8:54And now with AI, even like you can get really, you can do a photo shoot for super cheap as I, as I kind of go through my presentation. And it's, it's really crazy with all these tools that you have now, how easy and how quickly and swiftly you can move. So because, you know, if you're at a point where you're a small business, you can be very agile in the decisions that you make. Whereas a Johnson and Johnson, you got to go through so much red tape. You got to, you know, you got to go through your manager's manager's manager to get approval to upload a listing image. Whereas you can stay on top of like all the trends you can change.

9:31You know, for example, during Christmas time, like Christmas is coming up, usually we'll add like a little Santa hat on top of our products or like a little Christmas bow just to like Christmasize it. And that's a good way to pop off, like pop out of the page so that people are clicking on your product. So that helps with click through conversions, sort of click through rate. And yeah, there's a lot of really creative little things that you can do, especially because you have the, you know, you make the decisions at the end of the day and you can really push go on them quickly. And when it comes to, you talked about AI and how easy it is to do product shoots like you did in your workshop.

10:13I'm curious around how Amazon's AI advancements has affected sellers and selling on the platform. A hundred percent. I mean, you're seeing a lot more AI generated descriptions. You know, people are optimizing their bullet points with more keywords, especially the more relevant keywords as we kind of went through. There's so many different tools out there that it can be overwhelming with all the different tools. We talked about Genie AI, for example, that's giving us customer insights on how, you know, it basically summarized all of the different reviews for a single product. so you can look up your competitors.

10:54And instead of you having to spend hours and hours and hours reading through every single review, literally tools like Genie AI can aggregate it all into a one page for you to summarize all of those different pain points that customers are having in the negative reviews. And it provides a lot more insight on how you can maybe improve that product. Hey, Founder Fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works.

11:32Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling the seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50. Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Yeah, and on the kind of you talked about a few different tools, kind of what are the tools that are your favorite that you're using in your business right now?

12:14and what are some that you're seeing other e-commerce founders use? Well, I feel like the fan favorite is ChatGPT just because even just as a sounding board, when my fiance is like tired, he's sleeping right now. Like if I wanted to bounce ideas off of him right now, I can't, right? But ChatGPT, they're up all night, every day, all day. And I can, you know, pull up my phone and quickly just ask a quick question or what do you think about this? Um, you know, I can just sound off some, some spitfire questions and get them answered fairly quickly with chat GBT. Uh, I can come up with ideas. Usually at nighttime is when I cut, like I'm most creative for whatever reason.

12:59Like sometimes I lie in bed and I'm like, oh my God, like I have this idea and then I have to get up and I have to like, you know, hash it out, um, at like two in the morning. Like sometimes you get like these things in your head and you, you need someone to like run by these ideas and use usually chat GPT is great for that especially coming up with you know if I want to come up like with a brand name for example I did that with you know the claw machines that I designed like there's just so many different tools that you can use not just traffic GPT but there's a lot of tools that can help you remove backgrounds off of images nowadays.

13:42Canva is a good one, but sometimes it does lack in some areas. But now there's like AI advanced background removers where you can actually then transport that product image into different scenes. And even Adobe, they have their illustrative filth feature where you can literally highlight one section of the photo and it'll generate using AI, a very realistic prop, or, you know, if you want to put a leaf, like a palm leaf in the background, or if you want to, you know, have a beach or a sunset, it can actually do all of that for you without you having to pay a photographer thousands and thousands of dollars to go to Hawaii to take a sunset photo of your product on the beach.

14:24Yeah, it's crazy. Okay. And what do you think are the main challenges that founders are facing when it comes to implementing AI solutions, especially in the e-commerce space or in their operations? I think that there's just a lot of noise out there in terms of, okay, which tools are actually useful. And then you see a lot of tools that don't perform as well as you would thought it would, because a lot of these tools are still, you know, in infant stages and they're only going to get better. They're going to get refined. I think that people are inundated with all this information and all these processes and some things aren't as user-friendly because these new tools are coming out just to have some sort of prototype, but they're not refined enough for you to use it.

15:16So it is a bit of a learning curve, especially for some of the newer tools. Even a simple tool like mid journey, for example, you still have to go through the process of actually setting it up with, you know, discord. And if you've never used discord before, now you got to download this new app, and then you got to, you know, plug it in, and you got to set it up. And that kind of prevents people from actually being able to use the tool. So I think that that entry to use it, sort of that friction for people to learn those tools can hold people back from actually using them. and sometimes you think, oh, I can just do it myself faster than it would take me to have to learn this new thing, set it up, and then play around with it.

16:04Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode and learning a ton. As you know, in this series, we interview some of the greatest founders of our generation to find out how they did it. However, if you're thinking of starting your own business and you want to hear from some incredible stories from everyday people like you or I who are actually in the trenches, only been building their business for maybe one year or two years, like they're building right now and they're really in the early stages, but they're getting success. You should come and check out our new podcast, From Zero to Founder, hosted by our community manager, Molly Flynn.

16:41These are in the trenches stories from our very own successful students that have gone through some of our programs. People just like you who are deep within the process of building their very own successful business. These are the founders of tomorrow. You can find the From Zero to Founder podcast on all platforms. And remember, it's founder without the E. All right, now let's jump in the show. So I'm curious when you talk about ChatGPT, are you using other tools like BARD or Copy AI or for using chat GPT mainly for copy or like talk me through that and how you how are you doing the prompting any tips there on prompting yep chat GPT is a lot more for the copywriting side of things so in the Amazon space keywords are super important so you have to have them throughout your listing title your bullet points your description even in the back end and what we do is once you have those keywords or you have a list of keywords that you're gonna target, you can actually copy and paste them in the chat CPT and ask it, hey, write me five bullet points integrating all of these keywords for X product, right?

18:00And then it can spit out a very SEO rich description and bullet points for you to then use on Amazon. Of course, there is gonna be some fine tuning there, but it's gonna get you, you know, 80 % of the way there and it saves you so much time. And that's the biggest thing, right? People are buying back their time. And if you aren't utilizing tools like ChatGPT, especially for copywriting, you not only are saving money, but you're also saving time. And if you have more time and money, you have more resources to be able to facilitate the growth of your brand. So in terms of other tools that I really like to use on day in, day out, I've actually been playing around a lot with Bing.

18:45I know people are like, oh, Bing, like no one uses Bing. So Amazon or sorry, Microsoft, they have this chat tool within their Edge platform. So you have to download Microsoft Edge to then get access to Bing chat. So it is powered by chat GBT4. However, you can do things like upload images to it to then get it to create like logo ideas for you. So you can actually provide reference photos and have conversations that way. And there's like a creative assistant mode. So essentially, you've hired a creative assistant. You know, I used to hire them to write up the briefs for all of our listing images and stuff like that.

19:31But now I can easily use Bing as a tool to create those briefs myself. And within the platform, you can actually get it to create those logos, at least those concepts. And then sort of like I go through in the presentation, you can also turn those into vectors with Vectorize AI to then turn that into a high quality logo that you can use for your packaging, for your website, assets, stuff like that. And that's all free to use. Yeah, crazy. Okay, interesting. And what about chatbots? Are you using chatbots for your customer support? And what's your take around chatbots versus human customer touch?

20:13So we haven't implemented any chatbots or things like that. Obviously, Amazon does handle a lot of our customer service. So if someone purchases on Amazon, if they don't receive the product, Amazon actually handles a lot of those customer queries. But the odd time when we do get emails from customers or a message through Amazon's messaging system. we can then generate you know templates um using chat gpt for copy and basically i received this email or this message from this customer you know how should i respond to it and it'll literally write up a whole response to it um and you can just you know instead of spending the time to write up your own email from scratch it cuts back time so you're saving that time there but in terms of chatbots itself, I still think that there's still some work to be done.

21:03I think it helps to filter maybe some of the queries for sure. Like gorgeous.gorgeous is another, you know, customer service platform that essentially takes all the keywords that come in from different customer emails, and then it sorts them into priority sequence, or they'll have auto replies based on what people are saying. So that can definitely help if you have a large volume of customer emails. But for now, we haven't really had to deal with that high volume where it made sense for us to implement some sort of chatbot. Yeah, got you. And then when it comes to, I guess, the future of AI, where do you see it going in the next five years, especially when it pertains to kind of e-commerce, brand building, Shopify, Amazon, where do you see it going?

21:52It's only going going to get better and exponentially from here, which is the scary thing. Like it's exciting, but it's also scary. I think that it's definitely going to create a lot more competition. So if you have already positioned yourself right in the market right now, obviously you can use this to your advantage and really optimize your strategy going forward. But if you're just starting from scratch, obviously you can now use all these tools to become a new competitor in the space relatively quickly. I think soon there will be some sort of tool where you literally input what you want to sell.

22:29And it is going to basically create a whole brand for you, like from start to finish. I think that that's definitely among the horizon and something that we'll probably see soon. If someone isn't already working on it, I definitely see that being, you know, something that's definitely possible in the next year or two even. Are you hesitating to take the next step in your e-commerce journey? Founder Plus has you covered. With proven frameworks tailored to your business needs for fast results, a supportive community of over 30 ,000 like-minded entrepreneurs and weekly live mentorship sessions, Founder Plus is your key to success.

23:06Try Founder Plus today for just$1 for seven days and start building your dream business with confidence. You can visit founder.com forward slash start dollar trial or click the link in the description to claim your trial. Yeah, that's a crazy thought, right? Like just imagine and saying, I want to sell pet supplements. And then you now have a brand name, a logo, you have a whole brand kit, you have your customer avatars, everything is already put together for you to basically press go. Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, look, so with, yeah, in the coming years, it's going to be easier than ever to launch a business.

23:42How will, and even grow a business to an extent, but how will brands and e-commerce brands in particular use AI to maintain a competitive advantage? Talk to me about that and what's your thoughts? Yeah, I think the thing is people, trends are always cyclical, right? Even with fashion, you always see, you know, what was hot in the 70s and is now coming back and like even the 90s. Now we're a trend, you know, 90s babies, you're seeing Halloween costumes of 90s costumes. It makes me feel old. But I think that it will come around. It'll come back around to having that human element and how human can you make the AI, right?

24:29In a sense where people are always going to want that, that, that relatability, that human factor. That's why you're seeing a lot of creators who are creating brands and document it behind the scenes, creating content around that. Sure, they can use tools to help them make that content a lot easier now, but they're combining that human element where it's like, okay, I'm a real person. These are my struggles. You know, I'm creating this business. I'm taking along the ride for me, and it's creating this cult following of people that want to support you and buy your products. You're seeing people like Ryan Dubbs absolutely crushing it.

25:07He created Do of the Gods and he documents literally everything in his life from, you know, the ups and the downs. You see people like Iris. She created the Quick Flick and I believe she started in this in the start and skill group. And that's how I got connected with her. and you know she shares when she has issues of packaging like one of her packaging had a misprint but then she was able to turn that around by you know doing like a promotion saying hey like we we messed up um but we're gonna give a discount on this product and she ended up being able to recoup that and sell through her inventory because she was you know she was human she was letting people see you know they were vulnerable with this issue and problem and like just that transparency is going to go a long way.

25:56Yeah, that's a really good point. I think using your personal brand as a way to differentiate yourself is going to be critical as the years come, for sure, no doubt about it. And I think we're seeing, and I've noticed a trend throughout this summit, a lot of e-commerce brands are growing through TikTok now and using your phone, creating content, being the face of the brand, taking people on a journey, going behind the scenes, all the stuff you're talking about. It's key. Yeah. I mean, I definitely am sleeping on the TikTok trend. I feel like I definitely should be posting more on TikTok. But yeah, the people who are doing it are doing it well and they're absolutely crushing it.

26:39Yeah, I agree. Okay. Well, look, we have to work towards wrapping up. Any other final words of wisdom, any questions that perhaps I should have asked that didn't ask around kind of, yeah, building an Amazon brand, building an e-commerce business product selection, using AI to get a competitive advantage? Yeah. I mean, like I kind of mentioned earlier, never stop learning. That's the biggest thing. As soon as you become comfortable and complacent, you will lose your edge. You will fall behind. Sure, you can, you know, put systems in place and that's where standard operating procedures are super important.

27:21Documenting anything that you do more than once, document it and put it in a Google Drive. Start and build those habits early on because the sooner you can get used to creating those habits of documenting everything, the easier it is going to be for you, especially if you're looking at potentially exiting your company. You're creating almost like a black box of all this information and that's going to increase your multiple at the end of the day, because you now have, you know, the playbook on how you run your business. And not only that, but you can create content around it too. If you really want to kind of do double duty.

27:59But if you're, you know, screen recordings, great loom, I use on a regular basis. If I need to explain something to someone, I create a loom, I do it once. And now if someone asks me the same question later, Hey, I already recorded this loom, like go watch it. And it saves me time. it saves me effort it's also a lot more visual so the person that is receiving that video they can actually go through it in their own pace and you know even make their own notes you can even get nowadays there's actually tools where you can do screen record and it turns it into an SOP I forget the name of it I will let you know once I remember but it was a game changer for me yes so it actually would you know take screen grabs of your screen recording and turn it into an SOP and it was like brilliant.