#720 – Kevin King’s Latest AI & Email Marketing Strategies

E-commerce OG Kevin King returns to the Serious Sellers Podcast, bringing his wealth of experience and innovative strategies to the forefront. Discover how Kevin’s unique approach helped him achieve a staggering $700,000 in sales this year, and hear about a fellow seller who managed to triple their sales using similar tactics. Adding a personal touch, Kevin shares his passion for college football and his unwavering support for the Texas A&M Aggies, showcasing the dedication and intensity that drives both his business and personal pursuits.

Excitement builds as we preview the upcoming Ecom Mastery AI event in Nashville next April, where AI and e-commerce strategies will intersect in groundbreaking ways. Reflecting on past events in Austin, Iceland, and Hawaii, we spotlight impactful presentations and behind-the-scenes moments, including a standout talk by Anthony Cofrancesco on image creation with Midjourney. AI-driven press releases are put under the microscope, with insights into how these innovations are rapidly boosting rankings and sales for Amazon and TikTok sellers.

Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at an exclusive event that places entrepreneurs in the “hot seat” for personalized advice from a panel of experts. This intensive e-commerce growth summit is more than just formal sessions; it’s an opportunity for networking and engaging workshops, all held in a luxurious setting. As we wrap up, we reflect on his journey with the AM/PM Podcast and hint at new ventures, including a potential project with Bradley that merges newsletters and podcasts. With a ton of strategies, personal stories, and future prospects, this episode is one you won’t want to miss!

In episode 720 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kevin discuss:

• 00:00 – Kevin King’s Entrepreneur Passion
• 06:37 – Billion Dollar Seller Summit Legacy
• 07:27 – EcomMastery AI Event and Business Strategies
• 10:49 – Cutting Edge Content and Memories at BDSS
• 12:28 – Maximizing AI Impact for Amazon Sellers
• 20:54 – Navigating Information Overload in Business
• 22:06 – Intensive E-Commerce Growth Summit
• 26:54 – Scaling Stories and Expert Assistance
• 30:44 – Advanced Email Marketing Strategies
• 33:48 – AM/PM Podcast Legacy and New Ventures
• 39:13 – Email Marketing Mini Case Study with Bradley?

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got the OG of e-com back on the show, Kevin King, and we’re going to be talking about a lot of different topics, including how one seller was able to triple their sales and a method that has made Kevin $700,000 this year. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. It’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we’ve got the most serious of them all as far as impact not necessarily about his demeanor, but we’ve got Kevin most serious of them all as far as impact. Not necessarily about his demeanor, but we’ve got Kevin King in the house.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, first of all, for those watching on YouTube, I have a very kind of like symbolic outfit on today, so it’s a theme. So I’ve got a Billion Dollar Seller Summit shirt on from the original and I’ve got a Montreal Expos old throwback hat. Now, the reason why this is symbolic these are things that were great and kind of morphed into something else which we’re going to be talking about and, kind of like ended as it is, and so you may be wondering what I know about the Expos. They became the Washington Nationals or whatever baseball team they became. But there’s a few things we’re going to be talking about today, that we’re going to celebrate what it was and talk about what’s new on the horizon. So very cryptic there, I guess, Kevin, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about here. But, anyways, you and I were just talking about your other passion, which not everybody knows about, which is college football and that game that Texas A&M had. Would you say that college football is like your number one, like completely different than e-commerce, hobby, as it were, or passion?

Kevin King:

Yeah, college football. Excuse me for my voice, everybody. Fighting for like a week on my voice. Actually not sick, it’s just I don’t know what’s going. What’s going on, but too much talking like this, too many, maybe too many cigars. But yeah, college football is my church, I mean so the Texas, Texas A&M Aggies. My entire schedule is built around that as much as possible, and I don’t miss a game. And sometimes people will say, hey, I won’t, you want to watch the game. I’m like Nope, I ain’t watching it with you because you’re just going to want to talk during the game. Unless you’re serious and into it, I’m watching it by myself at my house on my TV but yeah, college football, especially Texas A&M is my blood and that’s where I graduated from like 35 years ago and that’s where my religion is for sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Is that when you got, got into it, when you went to the college, or even growing up, you’re like a football fan?

Kevin King:

I played football growing up and up until high school. I wasn’t good enough to go beyond that, but I played football. I’ve been a huge football fan Dallas Cowboys. I grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, so pro football, the Cowboys, but the Cowboys. I’ll miss a game. I’m not as passionate. I mean I enjoy watching them, but it’s the Aggies. That’s your brotherhood.

Kevin King:

It’s kind of like when you go to Amazon events and the people that you meet at Amazon events you seeing them at more and more shows they become part of your family, part of your brotherhood or your sisterhood. It’s kind of the same thing, you know, and Texas A&M is a special place and it’s got a special vibe to it that a lot of universities don’t have. So some people say it’s a little bit cultish in some ways because of the yells and the way, the traditions, old military school. But yeah, that’s where I grew up. You know, that’s where I went out on my own for the first time and where I grew up and where I cut my teeth as an entrepreneur.

Kevin King:

I was getting in trouble, you know, using the school computers back in 1989 to print out manuals to send and send with a software tools I was making and selling on floppy disks and that’s where I started. You know the training. You know early days. You know of teaching on stage or doing like the freedom ticket that came from college, because I was know of teaching on stage or doing like the freedom ticket that came from college because I was. There was a class there called BANA 217, Business Analysis 217. And all sophomores had to take it. It was learning how to do the basic computing language and it was a weed out class. There’s probably 800 kids or so that were taking this class between four different professors.

Kevin King:

So what I would do is I started off tutoring just putting up a little sticker ads in the library, tear off this number and call me and it’s one-on-one tutoring, then two-on-one, then five-on-one, then 10-on-one, and then that grew into where I started writing a mailing list from the university, because in Texas that you can get that that’s public information.

Kevin King:

So I used the law and went go into the registrar’s office begin a semester and say give me the list of all 800 kids taking this class. And they give me, on peel and stick labels, the name and address of all 800 kids registered for the class and I’d send them a flyer and say hey, come to the holiday in the Hilton on these three dates, which is right before their three tests during the semester, and I’ll teach you everything you need to know about basic that your professors aren’t teaching you. And I would get 500 people in there paying 15 bucks a piece three times a semester. So that’s the early days of me standing up teaching and charging money to teach someone how to do something. So you know it kind of evolves into you know what we do today.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, I love hearing you know backstories and stuff and the passion behind what you’re saying, and I think that’s the reason I even asked this question. I brought this subject is I feel that entrepreneurs, business owners, workers, whatever the case is we need to have outlets where we can step out of the world and something we’re passionate about a lot. All of us are passionate about business, sure, but we need, like, a different outlet, and so for some people like yourself, maybe their primary outside passion is sports. That’s what it is for me. Our secondary passions, or tertiary, might be travel. I think you and I, you know, kind of share that, but you know, make sure it’s something that not everybody needs to be a sports fan.

Bradley Sutton:

And, trust me, guys, the heartbreak that comes sometimes with the highs and there’s lows too. You know there’s highs in sports and there’s always lows, because your team will guaranteed blow it on some important game or do something crazy and then you get depressed for a couple days, but it is what it is. So figure out what your outlet is outside of the business world, I think is kind of important. Like Kevin says, hey, Saturdays, there’s no emails being read, there’s no Slack messages being mentioned. There’s no webinars being had. That is my time to be completely away and watching my football game and similar for me with you know when, like, the Clippers play, or San Diego State Aztecs on Saturdays or Fridays, and so I think everybody out there should find something similar.

Bradley Sutton:

Now back to what I was talking about at the beginning. We’re talking about the end of eras and starts of newer endeavors, and so the first thing I mentioned was the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. So correct me if I’m wrong, but the last one we had in Iceland was the last Billion Dollar Seller Summit named and formatted as is. Is that a correct statement?

Kevin King:

Yeah, and I have to give you some props. You’re wearing the original shirt from, if you’re watching this on YouTube, you’re the only person that has been to every single Billion Dollar Seller summit. It was Howard Tai and you, and then Howard didn’t make it to Iceland, so there’s a bunch of people that have missed one out of them, or two that have been to most, but you’re the only one that’s been to every single one. Now, you’ve never been to Market Masters and that’s my best event.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, we’ll definitely talk about that.

Kevin King:

We’ll get you there. But, yeah, the name is changing next year. Part of my contract with Helium 10, I was limited on how many people I could have. It started out as only 50 people could come and it changed to 100. Then the last contract was 150. So the price one of the reasons the price was high at the beginning was to make it exclusive and I realized in talking to people, a lot of people will say, well, I can’t come to that, I’m not doing a billion dollars, like no, no, no, it’s not about doing a billion dollars, it’s about the collectively people there were doing the last one, about 3 billion, but it and then I’m not qualified.

Kevin King:

So I’m changing the name for next year and the big event is going to be in Nashville in April 8th to the 12th. It’s called ecommastery.ai, so it’s basically where Ecom meets AI, featuring BDSS. So there’s going to be my goal is 700 people and there’ll be a track for newer people and there’ll be a track for the more advanced people and there’s some crossover. So it’s going to be an interesting event. But we’re shooting for 700 people and about 350, 400 of them newer to the e-commerce world and then about 100, 150, very experienced, like the type of people you expect at BDSS, and then some in between.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, Nashville I had never been there in my entire life until four days ago or five days ago whenever Amazon, or last week whenever Amazon unbox was and it was freezing cold there, so it’s not going to be at this time of year. It’s going to be a nice time of year, but it was very pleasant, a very pleasant city and let me see if I can start a new streak of a new Kevin King event that I never miss. Top like non-business related memory from billion dollar sellers and obviously that was what it was known for also was all the outings and the and the crazy events and scavenger hunts and I remember rolling through this, the streets of Austin, zigging and zagging through buses with a scooter, you know, and stuff, and seeing volcanoes in Iceland and things like that. So the top like non-business related or e-commerce related memory and then the top like something that was game changing, like somebody gave a talk on something that changed people’s lives, or the top business related memory from BDSS.

Kevin King:

Yes, a non-business would probably be that one that was in Austin right after COVID. So COVID was still going on and we made it. We decided we had to cancel 2020 and we pushed it to 2021. And everybody that came, we made them go through a testing. You had to do a COVID test before you could register and that was interesting, but that same one is when we did this, this race around Austin, and a lot of people said they really love that, because usually when you go to a conference, you only see the conference room. You may not see a restaurant, maybe you go to a party, but that one people are like I had no idea. All this was around Austin and that turned into people. I think it was Vanessa Hong that got in an accident and scraped up her knee really bad,

Bradley Sutton:

That’s right. I remember that.

Kevin King:

And then we also had Alina from AZ Rank pass out in the heat and then pass out twice. I had to call an ambulance when we went to the second place. So there’s a lot of drama. That’s why we had everybody sign releases, but there was a lot of drama around that one, which that one stands out pretty good. I mean, Iceland and Hawaii were both amazing events, just from a scenic point of view, I think the race around Hawaii.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, the amazing race thing that we did. Yeah, that was epic.

Kevin King:

That was really, really cool with all the jerseys. You had the Helium 10 team, all the Helium 10 people. That was really cool. From a market, from a standout of content man. There’s so much good content out there. What is one that stands out, man? There’s just been probably one that really stands out the most is Anthony Cofrancesco, and I think it was that 2021 or maybe it’s 2022. It was before the big, before ChatGPT came out and he stood up on stage and he showed how to create these cool images with some tool called Midjourney.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, when it was first coming out.

Kevin King:

He’s like oh, this tool called Midjourney. And you can do. Look at what you can do with your listing images. And he was just wowing everybody. Nobody had heard, seen that before. Nobody had heard of that. There was no ChatGPT or anything at the time and it was just so cutting edge. And that’s just an example of the cutting edge nature of BDSS. There’s always something at BDSS where it’s on the bleeding edge and something that you’re hearing first that nobody else is doing, and a lot of times becomes mainstream. So those some that really stand out.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I love it. All right, I want to ask you about some of the other events and what you mentioned the market matches but the thing that, from day one, you’ve been known for is your hacks and strategies and things like that. So let’s give the people what they want. You’ve been focusing a lot on AI of late and I might bring you on one of our. We do this monthly webinar called AIM AI Monthly.

Bradley Sutton:

For those I don’t know what we call it millennials or Gen Z, they probably remember that when we were young, we would do AIM. AIM went to AOL Instant Messenger back in the day, but now it means AI Monthly. It’s a monthly webinar we do. We’ll have you give a training maybe one of these days, but you do a lot of webinars and trainings with a lot of experts out there. A lot of webinars and trainings with a lot of experts out there. What’s something that’s one of the most mind-blowing things in the AI world, either from one of your webinars or I know you attend a lot of events yourself and absorb a lot of information, or you actually utilize AI. So what’s something that is not just like, oh my God, that’s so incredible, but something that’s actually useful for Amazon sellers TikTok shop sellers that you think most people probably are not doing.

Kevin King:

Well, the number one thing that moves the needle the fastest and has the most impact when it comes to AI is press releases. So you remember back when we first started, amazing, and some of those guys were like, yeah, when you launch a new product, issue a press release. And people would issue a press release and like, well, that generated one sale that wasn’t worth the 500 bucks and people shied away from it. Now press releases have come a full circle, the proper press releases. You can’t just go on Fiverr and have some guy issue what’s called a tier two or tier three press release. Those are not going to move the needle, but a tier one press release, which is the ones that get picked up by the newsrooms of like the New York Times and Forbes, and those kind of things can have you ranking in the LLMs within hours and so you can do intent based stuff. And we just did this at Market Masters. We just actually for one of the people that said in Market Masters, we issued a press release for her on her. She had little. She sells little fairy doors like you put on a tree. You know, it looks like a little fairy looking back at you on a tree. And we issued a press release and within three hours she was picked up by all everything except ChatGPT that took a couple more hours and all the intent-based stuff of what someone would type. She was ranking number one and referring it to her Amazon listing, and then we added some backlinks to it. Backlinks still matter. Old school SEO is not dead. It’s on its way out, but some of that stuff still works and we got, I think, 3 million backlinks through a special tool that we do. It’s all pointed to her and what’s going to happen here in about two weeks is her sales are going to boom because anytime she’s going to be ranked number one in Google on all the AI overviews. She’s going to fill up the whole page because all these keywords she’s going to be all the LLMs.

Kevin King:

So proper press releases, these are you know, 700 to a thousand bucks a piece. They’re not the cheap ones, but they can if you do them right. You’re going to word them right. That is highly, highly effective. Now when it comes to AI, because AI is looking for source material stuff. They trust and they trust when the New York Times even if it’s in the newsfeed at the bottom because it came from the New York Times. It’s a high, high trust factor and so that gets in its recency. And by doing that, what you want to do is you want to do a top tier press release and then alternate a second tier and the top tier and the second tier. That keeps it fresh and the AI engines are looking for fresh content because that stuff will fade over time. It’s not like it’s going to. A press release you do now is going to be super valuable a year from now, super valuable year from now. You got to keep them going back and forth and that’s working really, really well when it comes to.

Bradley Sutton:

Every time you have to pay to do a new one or?

Kevin King:

Yeah, it’s like a subscription but the price is cheaper for the second tier ones. You don’t have to do the top tier one each time, but you got to keep yourself front and center or you got to be out there. Posting on social LinkedIn is a major source Several of the other social media platforms. It’s becoming what the old SEO backlinks are now becoming brand mentions. Brand mentions are super, super important when it comes to AI. If you look at even Rufus you know Rufus on Amazon is, you know, I know you’ve done some talks on this and it’s debatable what kind of difference it’s making and it’s still kind of clunky in some areas. But Rufus and Cosmo is referencing outside sources. So if I type in you know what’s the best beauty, what’s the best Korean skincare for a 35-year-old woman? It’s not just picking up the data that Amazon has, it’s going out and looking at listicles. It’s going out and looking at articles that have been written out there and Medium and other places to pull in data. So all that kind of stuff is super important and I think a lot of sellers right now are not paying attention to it because it’s not like PPC. Is someone said this really good the other day? Ppc is like day trading. You put some money in and you get an immediate result, either good or bad, versus AI or AEO or GEO or whatever you want. I call it AEO, some people call it GEO is more of a long-term investment.

Kevin King:

Right now, in my opinion, the opportunity is like Amazon 2013. So you remember 2013, 2014,? You could just go to Alibaba, stick your name on something, stick it up on Amazon, didn’t have to do any PPC, and just go to the beach and listen to your phone ding ding, ding, ding ding with sales. And then what? As a result of that, you built a moat and those guys that were selling vitamin C serum in 2014, by 2019, 2020, they had 60,000 reviews had a moat around them. The aggregators were eating them up even though they didn’t know what they were doing. The sellers didn’t even know what they were doing eating them up. That’s the same thing.

Kevin King:

I think this opportunity right now with AI is get in now and you’re going to build that moat because you’re going to ride that wave. Even if you get two clicks to your listing through ChatGPT and you’re getting 2,000 through Amazon search, that 2,000 is going to become five, it’s going to become 10. It’s going to become 50. It’s going to become a couple of years from now. It’s probably going to 50-50. And you’re going to ride that wave and showing that proof that people are clicking your stuff. It’s just like on Amazon. Amazon, you’re proving that this is what people want and you need to ride that wave. And that’s where a lot of sellers I think are overlooking it, because it’s either they don’t have the long term vision, they don’t have the money to invest in it, or they don’t understand it. And it’s whenever we do talk sometimes, or webinars. It’s mind blowing how many sophisticated sellers really are behind on this.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, it’s, you know, as a lot of people you know, the data shows this, but just anecdotally too, you know, like don’t completely trust AI engines yet.

Kevin King:

No no, you can’t.

Bradley Sutton:

Actual shopping, no, but no, that this is the time where, because of that, everybody’s avoiding it and they’re not getting their feet in and getting that moat and getting established because it took Amazon a good 10 years to really have an amazing algorithm and everybody trusts Amazon and I’ll just buy stuff site and scene. That’s what, in my opinion, what, like you know, AI, LLMS and ChatGPT and stuff people are going to trust it more than the, eventually potentially more than the, you know, traditional search.

Kevin King:

They already do, Brad, they already do. The younger generation especially. You look at some of the numbers. Like ChatGPT or OpenAI put out some stats that said, like 2% of the searches on ChatGPT are e-commerce related. That’s a pretty small percentage. It’s not a huge amount, and you hear different numbers about conversion. Some people say, oh, the conversion rate’s 11x. Other people say, oh, here’s a study where it’s actually lower.

Kevin King:

But the big difference is the integration. Right now, it’s cumbersome. If I go to ChatGPT and I type in what’s the best dog bowl, slow feed dog bowl, it gives me some results and I got to click over. I got to do a whole bunch of stuff. Now, though, with Shopify integrating and PayPal just made an announcement last week where they’re integrating where it’s going to be you never leave the platform, so the shopping cart is on ChatGPT. It says, yep, I want that one. Hit a button, you never leave and you continue on. It’s like TikTok shop, you know, built into TikTok.

Kevin King:

That’s going to change the game, and Amazon is concerned about this, so Amazon’s blocking it. But that doesn’t affect agentic browsers, like the new agentic browsers ignore that. So Amazon’s concerned. They’re going to be losing a lot of advertising revenue, so they’re trying to figure out how can we compete in this. Amazon’s not going anywhere. They have the infrastructure, the fulfillment, but the model may change some and there’s always going to be people going to type in the search bar on Amazon. That’s not going to go away.

Kevin King:

There’s still people that use AOL or did use AOL until just recently, but that’s not going to go away, but it’s going to become, I think, much less of a percentage as AI and there’s going to be a couple of people dominate. You’ve got all these different engines right now LLMs it’s probably going to be Google and OpenAI that win the race.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, it’s because the ramp up is not going to be 10 years, like it took Amazon to really become like the thing and that’s my point is like, hey, this stuff is sure it’s in its infancy and maybe not that many people are using it for what people think, but it’s not going to take 10 years, probably won’t take five years, you know to really might not even take three years, who knows, you know. But because I mean, even you just look at the difference of things like ChatGPT 5.0 to 5.1 is insane and these things are coming out like every couple months. So hopefully people can see that this is like Kevin said. This is like Amazon way back when you can get in and there’s not that much competition to start building your mode and get that foothold. So a lot of things to look into. But then, at the same time, you can get information overload, like every week there might be a webinar about AI or, like man, which one do I concentrate on? Do I focus on my images or do I need to do the AEO? And so this is where you got to be able to make that strategic decision, guys, of what you’re going to focus on and what makes sense for your business.

Bradley Sutton:

Like, like, not many people are using AI to search for coffin shelves. You know for me. So, like, maybe you know I might not go all in on one aspect of it, but then maybe there’s a lot of people going on my page and using Rufus to ask about my coffin shelf. When they actually get there, maybe that’s what I should be focused on. Hey, let me make sure that Rufus is answering all my questions. So this is different strokes for different folks, but I hope you guys paid attention to what Kevin was saying. All right, you mentioned a few minutes ago Market Masters, your favorite event that you do. Now, I haven’t been to one. I kind of know what it is, but for those who haven’t been to one or haven’t heard about it, what is it about and why is it your favorite event that you do?

Kevin King:

So Market Masters is not a conference, it’s not a mastermind. It’s a place where this last one we just finished this last weekend that was the third one. I made some changes to it. It’s evolved. As we do it, we figure out what’s kind of working, what’s not, but the general consensus is on this one we had six people pay money to come and sit in a hot seat. So for two and a half hours they sit in a hot seat and before they come they fill out a form that says this is what I’m having problems with. I’m trying to scale, or I’m trying to hire, or I’m trying to get onto TikTok shop, or I’d like to expand a Shopify, I’m having trouble picking products, whatever it is. They get three main things and then I go and I curate experts based on that, that, those three pain points. These are experts from the Amazon world. So we had 38 experts at this last one that I hand selected to come in. 12, 22 of them were from the Amazon world and then 16 of them were from not the Amazon world, and this could be anybody, from that’s a meta expert to a Shopify expert, to a retail expert, to a storytelling or infomercial expert it depends. And then I get eight to nine of them and they sit for two and a half hours with this person. I moderate the whole thing.

Kevin King:

The first hour is nothing but questions, so they’ve read some information about them before they come in a dossier. And then they spend an hour asking very pinpointed questions. Some of these are uncomfortable questions. Sometimes someone cries because of the question. We take a break and then the next hour, roughly, it’s nothing but solutions. All right, you need to do this. Quit doing this, do this. Here’s the resource for this. It’s super valuable, not only to the person sitting in the hot seat, but also to the experts, because they don’t always agree. Someone may say, nope, you need to use Helium 10. And someone else say, nope, you need to use X, Y, Z tool. And then it becomes a nice discussion about why. And then some of these guys make their sessions open. Some of them make them closed. Closed means you cannot.

Kevin King:

There’s just the experts and me in person in there. The other ones are open, which means people can sit in the audience and watch. They can’t participate, but they can watch, and so we had like 40 people on several of these, just back there sitting for two and a half hours watching, taking notes, learning themselves about holy cow. I need to do that for my business. What they just said oh, I’m not doing that, or I should do this it’s super, super valuable. Then you have the networking factor. I bring out my, my chef and his team come. They cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for everybody. My masseuse is there, my trainer is there. Then we do a big party. On Saturday night we did a Gatsby-themed party with gambling and all kinds of cool stuff like kids games, not like casino gambling, but like blow up balloons write your name on a balloon, pitch $20 and drop it into a pit and turn on a Roomba with knives attached to it. It goes around and pops all the balloons.

Kevin King:

The last balloon standing gets the entire pot. I think Antonio Bindi won like $700 on one of the pots. So we do cool stuff like that. And then this year we added another element of workshops, and these are I brought in six people and they each did an hour and a half workshop. One was on vibe coding how to vibe code an app. Another one was on LinkedIn how to optimize your LinkedIn for AI, for your brand and for yourself and that was eye opening. Another one was on generating a thousand UGC videos. Another one was, one of the co-founders of Helium 10, Guillermo Puyol and Manny Coats, the two co-founders. They’re now working with Matt Clark and Bojan, who used to be at Helium 10. And they have a new company that’s doing a video, AI video and they came in. The tool wasn’t quite ready, but they did a demo of what they’re doing and showed how it works. So that was one of the workshops that was really, really cool.

Kevin King:

Then we had another one on product you know like PickFu type of stuff, you know how to optimize your images and giving out tools, and we had there’s one more, I’m forgetting right now, but so we did those for an hour and a half and the whole idea was like it’s not a presentation, it’s more like here’s how you do it, let’s walk you through it. Oh, you have questions. I got someone here to answer your questions and then you walk out of the room with it done. It’s not like go back and give this to your team and people really, really love that. So we had about 95 people at this event. It’s all in a big mansion, an 18, 000 square foot mansion. This is the best one. It’s life-changing.

Kevin King:

We had someone come last year. The first one, she was doing $1.5 million in the home goods space. Now she’s doing $5 million and I asked her. I said what happened? Did something go viral? Did Oprah Winfrey feature? She said no, I just did what y’all said. We had someone doing $110 million at the last one in February. Now they’re doing 200 million. I can’t take credit for all that, but we played a factor, had someone else at a negative 8% CM3 or bottom line profit, and now they’re at plus 24.

Kevin King:

So the people that listen and that implement are seeing massive results, because it’s unlike a conference where you’re listening to someone talk or you’re coming to a webinar. It may or may not be for you, everything is for you and everything is geared directly to you and so, as long as you’re willing to be vulnerable, it’s amazing the results. This is not a moneymaker for me. I actually lose money on this event, but I do it because it makes such a difference. You know I don’t lose a lot of money. I lost a lot of money on the first one, but I lose this one. I probably lost 25 grand, but to me it’s worth it because of what the outcome is and the impact it can make. And you know I’ll make that up down the road, someone that’ll get paid back to me and goodwill somewhere down the road.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I mean that’s the concept is similar to what we’re doing with like Scale Stories, just a different scale. You know it’s more virtual and we’re doing a series and but we’re bringing in smaller sellers and trying to trying to help them, you to grow. Actually, that was kind of my original pitch when I was being interviewed by Manny and Guy and Bojan, when I didn’t know it was an interview. Before I started working at Helium 10, they invited me out to lunch at this Italian place right here in Irvine or up in Irvine and they’re like, hey, what would be your one idea of some kind of series we can do? And eventually it became Project X, which was different than this, but that was kind of like my idea was that would be a good thing to do, to just like, hey, bring experts in to help people when you know, imagine if you had a company of just the top minds in the world for each different aspect of a business and you could actually just pick their brains. I think it’s a great format of a event and very different. So it’s usually once a year and around this time of the year.

Kevin King:

Next one is going to be in August of 2026. So, Bradley, you got to make it to this one because I think you’re going to love it.

Bradley Sutton:

Give me the dates when it comes out and I’ll put it in my calendar way early to make sure I don’t have it this time. This has never been mentioned in the e-commerce situation in the history, nor will it ever. But I missed this event because I was uh refereeing a 4 000 person sumo competition in in the middle of nowhere in in Connecticut. But yeah, so I had other um things I was doing at that day. But all right, going back to some, uh hit us with another top strategy uh slash, hack of something, hack of something that sellers you don’t think are utilizing.

Kevin King:

I mean, as you know, I have a new company with Norm called Dragonfish, dragon.fish and we’re doing some of that AO stuff helping people. But the biggest thing I think that most e-com sellers are missing, especially Amazon, is email marketing. Very, very few know how to properly do email marketing, or a lot of people think email marketing is so 1990s. But I can tell you my newsletter, the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter I will personally put in my pocket in profit over $700,000 this year off of that newsletter because of email marketing. Email marketing works if it’s done right. If it’s done wrong, it’s spam. And there’s so many sellers that don’t have a list or, if they do, they’ve been capturing some emails off of a warranty card or a registration or something like that and they’re afraid to email them. They don’t know how to email them. They only email them Black Friday sales or they only email them offers. But there’s so much you can do with email marketing right now. That’s ridiculous. Your sales as an Amazon seller if you’re doing 2 million a year on Amazon, you should be doing 2 million a year by email as well, and there’s no reason you can’t do that if you do it right. But you got to know how to do it right. And now you remember back when Trump first ran for election in 2016,. There was something called Cambridge analytics and this is where Facebook was getting all their targeting data. They’re getting all this massive data. It became a big brouhaha with privacy. Well, there’s no such thing as privacy in the United States. It does not exist. Period. Does not exist.

Kevin King:

I just had someone show me at a burner they have at Market Masters. He has a burner phone and that he only turns on and searches for very specific things and turns it back off and as soon as he does that, within an hour his normal phone Facebook feed is filled with the stuff that he only used on the burner phone. There’s Whole Foods, Amazon and Whole Foods right now. If you ever go into a Whole Foods and you see those TVs they’re like kind of like little billboard TVs and Amazon they’re placed around the store. There’s trackers inside the chips that you just those healthy chips you just picked up and put back down. There’s a tracker in that board that knows that you just picked that up. Within five seconds, that TV screen behind the deli can change to your competitions chips with DSP and retail media. It’s crazy. You can do that with email marketing.

Kevin King:

I can now know if someone went to Seller Central and within 30 minutes I can have an email in their box saying come to my event or come sign up for my thing. Or someone that went to Chewy.com and just searched for a slow feed dog bowl, I can have an email triggered to go out to them within 15 minutes. It says, hey, I’ve got this on Amazon. I can build email lists, I can create. There’s 212 points of data I have on every consumer in the United States, from the type of car they drive, so this type of handbag they carry, to what their American. The last three charges, the specific companies, their last three charges on their American express card were.

Kevin King:

I have that data and you can mix that data with AI now and do customized email going out very specific, not a mass email to the same email to 10 000 people, but very specific email to uh, to you, to bradley, saying you know, as a montreal expo expo fan uh, blah, blah, blah, blah. You’re like, hey, that’s me, how do they know? Or as someone who likes to uh, as a montreal expo fan who loves to um referee uh, sumo, events, you know something like. Damn, how you can. You can freak people out, but you can also do stuff at such a granular level with email marketing and you can turn this into pixels and stuff too, but email marketing is best.

Kevin King:

You can run circles around your competition and I think that’s where a lot of sellers are not paying attention. They don’t understand it. They don’t come from that background. That’s why, like in my event, I had 16 people that aren’t from the Amazon world, because what I’m seeing out there is we used to all go to Amazon conferences and now I think you need to not be doing that. You need to actually go to Amazon conferences but also go to affiliate world or go to a go high level or go to some of these others, because there’s really smart people doing some really amazing things that when you blend these two worlds together, you can do some crazy stuff that just blows your competition out of the water. So that’s a big one right now that I think a lot of sellers need to pay attention to.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. I like it. Now, along with the theme of end of an era, we have two more ends of eras, the first one being Kevin King as host of the AMPM podcast. And I’m not sure if you know this, but there have been three main hosts of the AMPM podcast. Manny, the founder you know the AMPM podcast for those who don’t know was the start of everything. Like there was no Helium 10, like that was the thing. Like helium 10 was started a full, a few tools because Manny wanted to grow the AMPM podcast. And then he quickly realized like wait, a minute, I’m focused on the wrong thing here, but out of all the three hosts, you have hosted the most episodes out of anybody, more than Manny, more than Tim and you never miss one.

Bradley Sutton:

Like you, were you, you would record these a month, two months in advance, and so, oh man, as  a producer, mel and myself definitely appreciate that, like, like um, even Manny would miss episodes before and then we’d go dark for one week or two weeks but you never missed a deadline, never missed an episode, never missed you know, like the edits you needed and lined up, and so, we really appreciate. Well, you guys will find out soon, in a couple weeks, what, what new direction the AMPM podcast is going. But just wanted to, on behalf of the entire company, thank you for your time as a host there. Anything stick out, uh, I mean, obviously you were a guest on the AMPM podcast way before you became the host, but in your host time, like any good memories, or like, wow, this, this guest was. I wasn’t sure about this person, but oh, my goodness, the info they gave was incredible.

Kevin King:

Yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity. It has been a lot of fun. I took it over. I think episode 296 or something like that. And I had Manny Coats as the first guest, because you know he’s one of the co-founders of Helium 10. He came out. He doesn’t like to really talk anymore, he kind of hibernates, but he came out and did that. And then the last episode coming out here in a week or two is with Guillermo.

Kevin King:

So, it’s kind of like a good book and we tell some good stories, uh, but yeah, the podcast. You know, doing podcasting is awesome because you get to. You can get to be a little selfish sometimes too. So I was booking my own guests. So I would book people that I want to know more about and ask questions, or maybe for my own, in my own ways, want to know the answer to and by default, then the audience gets to listen like a fly on the wall. So that’s one of the cool things about doing podcasts is that I could call up someone I could call up if I didn’t know Bradley. I could call him up and say, hey, would you come on? Can I spend an hour picking your brain? And he’d be ah, I’m pretty busy man.

Kevin King:

But, if I call you up and say, hey, will you come on the podcast and you’d say yeah sure. I would come on the podcast? So that’s the beauty of it. So there’s been a ton of guests on that delivered some really amazing stuff, someone that stood out. Man, there’s been 180 episodes or 190 episodes or something like that. I can’t remember exactly one particular one off the top, but I had fun doing them all and I appreciate that opportunity. You know I’m still not out of the podcast game. I have Marketing Misfits podcast that I started a year ago with Norm. We co -host that. It’s not an Amazon podcast. We’ve got about 90 episodes. We’ve had Neil Patel on there, we’ve had Forbes Riley, we’ve had a ton of big name guests and that podcast is a lot of fun as well. So I’m not disappearing. Just AMPM is going in a different direction as Helium 10 evolves and I know whatever happens, it’s still going to continue to be an amazing podcast that everybody should listen to.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep, and then the last thing of end of an era is you were the kind of face of a Helium 10 Elite Program since the beginning, since before it was called Helium 10 Elite, it was called Illuminati and that was one of my entrants into before Helium 10. Like, I was an Illuminati member even before I was selling on Amazon. I saw the value in it. I saw a webinar with you and Manny or I heard AMPM podcast where you guys talked about it way back in like 2016, I think, and I was paying the $400 a month that used to cost. That back in those days it didn’t include Helium 10. There wasn’t even a Helium 10 really, as we know it now, and I’m like hey.

Kevin King:

You had to blow five extra yards a week to pay for that right.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, like I was, like this is the value, and so you’ve been doing that, you know, for even way longer than the AMPM podcast.

Kevin King:

We started that February 2017.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep. And so now we’re, you know, like that has become more of a, because you know the world is different. You know like that was the only kind of like mastermind you know back then and then everybody of course copied that that kind of format. Now it’s unfortunately lost a lot of its luster, just because it’s kind of a normal thing now. But so Elite is going in a little bit, or has been for a while, going a little bit different direction and so you’re doing your last monthly trains. We’ll definitely have you on as a future guest. But again, all the appreciation I know I speak for not just Helium 10, but for all the thousands of Helium 10 Elite Illuminati members we’ve had over the years who have benefited from your seven ninja hacks you do every month and your monthly networking calls. So man really really appreciate the time and dedication it’s taken to put these things together.

Kevin King:

Yeah, I appreciate that, it’s nine and a half years of doing that every single month, but I’ve enjoyed it. It’s been great working with the team, working with you and with Mhel, Carrie, Shivali and everybody else over there, and it’s one of those things that’s kind of sad, but at the same time it’s also kind of exciting, because you need change. You don’t want to get stuck in the same old rut both Helium 10 as a company and me personally. So it’s good to mix it up and bring some new life in and change it up and make it version 3.0.

Bradley Sutton:

I like it. You know what. Something just came to my mind. I might hit you and Norm up in Dragonfish for we should do a case study and I’ll pay for it. I’m not looking for freebies or anything, but I want to show you and I can sit here on podcasts and stuff and talk about these things. But you know me, I’m the kind of person who will then spend hours going through it and then making a Project X and then showing people the results and stuff. You and I let’s work on a different kind, not just any. Everybody’s doing newsletters now, but let’s make it a newsletter slash podcast where it’ll be me but coached by you and Norm. Or I’ll hire you guys to make my side persona, you know, separate from Helium 10. I’m allowed to do my own thing, you know too, like I’m trying to make some money for my kids and things too, and maybe you know my daughter’s a video editor. Let’s start like something just to show people that hey, we’re not just talking about it and I’m not going to make something that does $700,000 a year like you not at that level but hey, I can do something that probably makes a good penny that people out there. So that’ll be our next endeavor. We’re going to connect offline, Kevin. I’m saying this out loud just to put myself on blast, otherwise I won’t follow through with it. Everybody can ask me you and I are going to do something big, a sumo newsletter or something like that. We’ll do, and then people can see that, hey, this stuff actually works. How’s that sound?

Kevin King:

That sounds great. You don’t have to do a newsletter. By the way, when I say email, that doesn’t mean necessarily newsletter. Newsletters are a different kind of commitment. But just emailing, just doing a five-part sequence to sell your brand and sell your stuff and educate, it doesn’t have to be a proper newsletter like what I do. That’s a whole another level of commitment, just to clarify that there’s a lot you can do there.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, let’s get that done. So we’ll figure out a fancy name to call this little mini case study or something. But anyways, Kevin, thanks a lot for everything again, and definitely not the last time you’ll be on the podcast. You’ve been on the podcast, the serious sellers podcast probably more than any other guest, and I’m sure it’s going to continue that way because of all the great information you give. So really appreciate it and we’ll see you later.

Kevin King:

Thanks, Bradley.

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