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Social 333 Podcast
Making Millions Selling Products with a Shopify Store | Anatoliy Labinskiy #social333podcast #71
00:43:07
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- [00:01]
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- [00:31]
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- [01:30]
Chris Bentley
Hey, welcome to the Social 333 podcast. I'm your host Chris Bentley. Today my guest is Anatoly Labinsky. Did I say it right?
- [01:37]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yes, it's correct.
- [01:38]
Chris Bentley
Awesome.
- [01:38]
Anatoly Labinsky
Thank you for having me here.
- [01:40]
Chris Bentley
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for coming in. You want to tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you got going on?
- [01:44]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah, sure. So I'm owner of the advertising agency so we run in e commerce stores like building advertising ecosystem for them like Google, Facebook, a bit of TikTok ads and email, SMS marketing obviously where all the profits are. So we're just building all this advertising ecosystem for the brands and dropshipping stores as well which are already making some results and want to become a brands and at the same time running a real estate business in United States.
- [02:15]
Chris Bentley
So the Shopify stuff is really, really interesting to me. I had Facebook FBA and I looked at Shopify and quite honestly I didn't really understand it. So I know there's a ton of like YouTube videos and stuff like that, right? Yeah.
- [02:31]
Anatoly Labinsky
But not ton of them are really going to be performing, right.
- [02:34]
Chris Bentley
So with Shopify you could go on to I think it was like Alibaba or something, right. And get like products and then you would be able to drop ship it just kind of give like the audience kind of an idea of like drop shipping. And of course so like you would be able to go into like Alibama look up or Alibaba.
- [02:55]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah, Alibaba, AliExpress, eBay. Like even Etsy can be integrated like any nice products which could be like you can negotiate or if it's Aliexpress, Alibaba, you speak with suppliers. If it's like Etsy or some other like similar tools, similar marketplaces, you speak with the like product or production people. Like hey, would you able to keep the inventory and I'll sell yourself and like we'll scale altogether. But mostly dropshipping the most like I would say regular way is that you finding out the China supplier, Aliexpress, Alibaba or private suppliers and start selling products. Let's say you buy and make a deal for five bucks selling that for $25 in your store. Your point is just to find out how to bring the traffic to the store. So the most efficient one, it's meta ads where you're running ads on Facebook and Instagram. People come into your store like the product buying for 25 bucks. You are not spend money until you receive the purchase. So 25 bucks on your store, you going with those money and buying from the supplier for five bucks and supplier taking care of the shipping and you need to take care of customer service and traffic.
- [04:06]
Chris Bentley
So how does that work? I'm really in that traffic here in a second. But how does that work with the supplier? Like you just got to email them and say hey I'm Chris Bentley, I got the store which is my store on Facebook, angry pirate sales. And like we were looking to integrate your product into our, into our shop. You know, is it a way that you know, we could do business together kind of deal.
- [04:30]
Anatoly Labinsky
So there are several ways. But if you are speaking directly to the private supplier, it will be like almost not possible to get the right one. I mean people who are really good, they won't work just with the guy who just randomly started the store a few days ago. So that's why majority of people just go into the platforms. It's not like I'm not advertising anything. I'm Just saying like the most like known names like Zandrops, CJ Drop Shipping or like AliExpress platforms where you can just go search the product, choose the product and because it's integrated to a store, you can add the product directly to the store in a few clicks. So it's the most simple way. But there could be high chances of the chargebacks refund because product haven't been delivered, product delivered broken. And I'm not saying that it's because of the platforms, it's just because like you don't have control that much. But with the private suppliers you have a lot of controls. Plus the good private suppliers giving you the best rates even like when you start scaling they can give you like credit line so you don't need to pay even like extra days. So they ship it and you just like paying in 30 days, 15 days later it's always the volume. Plus in the same time the proper supplier will record some content for you. They have a studios where like they are interested. The more you sell the matter the more money they are making. So basically they can record like some kind of content for your store. So it will be unique content without even having the product or they can do the professional photoshooting. So private suppliers you need to make like in the worst case scenario at least like 10, 20 sales a day for last like three months. Let's say they need to understand that you have experience that if they will start working with you, start investing in you, that you won't quit in couple of weeks, you know. So that's think about the private suppliers that what I mentioned about the three months is just like you know the minimum. But the best like you need to have the track record is that they can trust that you're going to be like when they fulfill, you're going to be taking care of the customers and in the same time you're going to be paying bills on time. So that's like about the private suppliers. But there are like actually nowadays a lot of platforms where you can even build your own personal brand with the personal logo, personal like branding name and everything is going to be like just super unique and it will be still dropshipping before it wasn't possible. Now so many platforms providing the service for the supplements for the like skincare products and many other similar niches where you can just put your logo on it and fulfill it. They just integrate their app to your store. You choose the product and you can drop ship per one piece, unique design, one piece, you just send it so like let's say Social 333, it's your brand and you just fulfill the supplement under your name. One piece. No need to buy inventory upfront. Before it wasn't possible. But the price will be like quite high and later on when you get because as a brand you can make it higher prices higher upfront so you could be in the okay margin but later on when you're going to be scaling so you can buy from them 100 pieces, thousand pieces, 10,000 pieces supply and the price is obviously going to be cut it. But it's incredible possibilities for people who start in this dropshipping stores can actually go directly into the brand history story. But again if you're brand brand new like you are newbie in the industry most probably go with the regular drop shipping. But in the same time if you want to build a brand there is this kind of efficient way to do this all.
- [07:55]
Chris Bentley
Talk to me about the ad part of it because I've seen.
- [08:01]
I was in a group that did drop shipping. I was trying to understand it. Obviously I did a poor job, right. But because I was trying to compare it to Amazon FBA versus shop drop shipping and Shopify. And what I noticed was that you can pretty much they would have a product of the week or product of the day kind of deal and it would be like a squirt gun, right? And they'd be like, oh, the squirt gun's like so amazing. And it would be on like TikTok and they would be selling like you know, hyping up this particular squirt gun. And then in the group they'd be like, hey, the squirt gun is like really popular and this is what we're selling. And you get it from XYZ store in China, let's say. So then is that kind of how it still is now or is it more like Facebook ads? Is it a lot more just different influencers? How does it work now in terms of moving product?
- [08:55]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah, Chris, sure, it's a good question, good point. Because actually it's not like how it's now or before. It is just different ways how people advertise. So that's exactly how you'll bring traffic to your store. The Shopify store is staying as it is. And now find out how to bring traffic. You have possibilities. Find out the good influencer so you have a good network like easy for you to bring traffic through the influencers. You have to deal with them on the percentage base or retainer or test it like one Time payment and see if it works. So continue then later on running promotions from their page. Even if it's work well, you can advertise from their pages you offering them the 10% from that spend. If they agree, you just advertise from their pages and it's giving you high conversion because you buy an authority from their site from. From another hand. You can do like Facebook groups or other like forums if you have access and bring the traffic from there. So it's a highly motivated people because they are like warm, even hot. Speaking about the solution for specific problems. If you find out the way how to deal with the administrators there that they will allow you to promote, that's a perfect way as well. Like so many nowadays, the OnlyFans girls have their own products. Why? Because they have traffic on their pages and they are not advertising. They just saying, hey, by the way here you can buy XYZ and like my friend managing for only fun girls and they're organically getting like quite a bit of sales without any ads. And obviously met ads, Google Ads, TikTok ads like you can, you can choose any of them which would be working the best for you. But Facebook, it's still like a biggest platform to advertise. The biggest quantity of people are there and more pay possibilities there.
- [10:41]
Chris Bentley
I feel like Shopify or that business model Chuck or I think like Walmart kind of took the idea and I think that who's the other one Amazon kind of took it with like their own. Like if I'm like, I know this guy that's a private chef, right? And he goes and he shows videos of him going to the grocery store and he's like, I'm gonna make this meal. And he goes to the grocery store, he picks up all these steaks and mashed potatoes, whatever it is, right? And then he comes home and he makes it and he's like, well, this is the oven that I'm using. This is the spatula that I'm using. And he has like his own kind of like Amazon shop store. And I think Walmart kind of has the same idea. Like if you're, let's just say like you're into weight loss, right? And you're like to work out a lot and you go take a bunch of gym shots and then a bunch of videos and then you're like, well I use the, I don't know, power bench 1000 to lift my weights or whatever, right? And then people are like, oh, like he uses that and he orders it and it's a Little bit different because they don't really have a store. They just have like a preferred list of what they use. But this is like actually a E comm business. Like you're like actually reaching out to somebody, like, hey, I got this inventory or you have that inventory. I have this shop. I have eyes on my shop. This is what I want to sell. Exactly.
- [11:57]
Anatoly Labinsky
This is like if you look on any celebrity or any influencer, especially in TikTok, there's so many unknown people who become really known for some like funny traffic, I mean funnier content or like specific like how to make steak, how to cook steak, videos. And now they're around their niche, building their own brands and not want to.
- [12:17]
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- [13:15]
Anatoly Labinsky
It doesn't mean that they become E comm entrepreneurs. Someone else reaching out to them with the skills of operations in E commerce and saying, hey, like you have audience in this place, you know how to promote. Let's cooperate. I have this kind of product or I can arrange this kind of product would be interested. And usually like when people find out the good spot, this is where you know all this energy drink prime Mr. Beast and all that stuff. It's not they are running those kind of brands. It's a good operators who reach out to them. They like the idea, they like the direction and just like cooperate it, you know what I mean?
- [13:53]
Chris Bentley
That's really cool because I was thinking about doing something like that.
- [13:58]
Especially with the show and the amount of views and stuff that I get. That I could do something very similar. Like you know, obviously not sell a microphone but you know sell something that I think that would be really good.
- [14:08]
Anatoly Labinsky
Cop next to you every episode. Some cop or cat or like yeah, yeah. I mean crazy has more good margin and brings value and you can like natively showing to people that this is cool stuff I'm using. And that's really a wonderful thing because you have audience.
- [14:25]
Chris Bentley
What do you think some of the biggest mistakes you've seen and kind of right now in terms of Shopify and just online E Commerce, like what are people mistakes? Like obviously I've been talking about my own mistakes, right? But like what have you kind of seen that with people with Shopify or trying to start an E commerce store? Like what have you seen the mistakes that you've seen?
- [14:47]
Anatoly Labinsky
Do we speak in general or brands or drop shipping?
- [14:50]
Chris Bentley
It don't matter.
- [14:51]
Anatoly Labinsky
Okay, so I would say fails expectations because first of all YouTube video, as you just mentioned at the beginning, people watching YouTube video and thinking oh my goodness, like I'll put $1 to meta ads and I will make it 100 back. And you know they're spending 200 bucks and they didn't make anything and like it, it doesn't work for me. Sorry for this word but I mean this is exactly how it's going. Like it doesn't work for me. It's a scam, it's already dead, you know. But at the end like it's as you like you open the coffee shop, you need to invest in inventory, you need to invest in the machine, coffee machine, in the tables, in everything.
- [15:28]
Chris Bentley
Marketing, marketing.
- [15:29]
Anatoly Labinsky
So marketing of course. But I mean I'm just saying like even just to open the doors, the saying that you open, you need to spend like 100, 200 in California, most probably 300 plus thousand dollars and just open the small coffee shop which you don't know will be survival E commerce. Like you need just simply build the website and run the traffic and like spend the money on ads. And this is where you have to be okay, because it's investment but you need to know what you are doing or hiring people who, who knows what they're doing. So because like people expecting that like for example latest case Ukrainian brand owner, I'm from Ukraine and like some Ukrainian brand owner with quite luxury bags like reach out to me and like said that listen, we are in Ukraine, in Forbes, blah blah blah. We would like to to United States market. So we went to United States market. It's quite good. 3.35 return on ad spend which is like from the beginning nobody knows. It's quite high. They have high margin and it's cool. But he like no, we are in Ukraine, we're doing like eight ROAs, you know seven ROAs. Like it's so super low. Our, our break even is like 2.6. I like what do you expect from the brand in the United States? Yeah, at least five roas. Like this is false expectations because compare Ukraine, I mean third world country and United States. Where is the competition? Where is the price by CPM which is cost per impression. Where is like completely different pricings and costs to deliver those ads to the end user and plus to get the attention super high costs and like big brands. Like just yesterday I had conversation one of the person doing just like 60 meals a year and they run in traffic 0.6 ROAS.
- [17:15]
Chris Bentley
Well why?
- [17:16]
Anatoly Labinsky
Because they have subscriptions, backend setup, email, SMS marketing and all that stuff which is printing later on from LTV of the client. But they like you have to know your calculations how much will cost you to bring the client into your store. So you have a data forever. One time you pay for the client and done from this moment you can run email, sms, subscriptions, any kind of promotions, anything what you want because you bought that data. Like for example to compare Shopify and Amazon. That's the difference. Amazon can run by the key ranking. Amazing. But you are not owning data. You cannot run SMS email marketing. You're only one time selling and that's why you don't know who is that in Shopify. You're owning the data. So by biggest mistakes it's a fails expectations from I'm doing that almost 10 years from the beginning it was people complaining it's dead, it doesn't work. It's scamming because they just watching the YouTube video and believing that okay, so this is how it works. But when they implementing nothing is working as it was said because like you need to go deeper and understand your sophistication level of your avatar. You need to understand who you're going to be selling to. Like for example. Great, perfect example for that. Can you imagine you want to sell meat. You open your meat store like amazing fresh meat like one of the best like from Australia, Argentina, whatever. And like you open the door and nobody coming, nobody buying. Like you thinking what's wrong? You start like doing promotions, nobody buying. And after that you realize that you didn't do research who is your avatar and you open the Muslim street to Europe like beef store, you know, a Pork store. I mean it's, it's just common sense which is unfortunately beginners thinking that I will copy and paste and that's going to be Perfect. But number 1% of the advertisers who are making majority of the results is people who trying to understand who they going to be selling to. And after that only running ads, not spending any single dollar before you understand who is your perfect avatar. If it makes sense, it does.
- [19:25]
Chris Bentley
Talk to me about.
- [19:30]
The winning product because.
- [19:34]
You know, sometimes I feel like people just kind of boost something to move it and you know I have no problem doing that. Like I've been in sales for a long, long, long time so I understand all that stuff. But what really makes a winning product for you? Like when you're looking at products that sell in your shore in your store, you're looking to maybe a promoter product. Like what really defines like a winning product for you?
- [19:58]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah, of course I would say first of all like winning product obviously what is taking attraction here. And nowadays TikTok brings a lot of winning products because it's where the eyeballs in like most of the eyeballs there.
- [20:15]
But for example I opened my latest Ecom store just this year and this product I was selling in 2018, right now it's burnout. It's dead. Like I mean nobody advertising that I opened the store. I just done the whole research again which I 2018 I was like doing without this. Well I was a research just running ads. I made like around 600k plus in a couple of months. Then I we shut out the store because of COVID And then.
- [20:47]
This year I just done all the full research. It's a burnout product and I just done unique ads and from first testings sales start coming in and this store already generated multiple six figures. The thing is that it's not a luck. It's exactly like step by step process where you doing the full investigation before spending any dollar on ad. And it's not like I know what I'm doing. I'm not just. I don't want to be some kind of guru, you know what to say, like hey, come to me and it's like $1 and you'll make a thousand. It's not about that, it's about I'm sharing that I have an experience. And as a marketer I done whole stages before launching the product and after I launched the product. First ad, first product was success. It's not always working that way. But I'm just saying that this is a winning product which is actually not a winner anymore. It's a burnout product product. So in my opinion, any kind of product could be a winner. But sometimes if product doesn't work, whatever you do and it doesn't work, you should not get married on it. So that's why what counts as a winning product. It depends what kind of approach you are doing. If you're just like find out what is hot on the market and just copy pasting your competitors, you are just hoping on luck that it will sell or no. But if you got the hot product and make it 111 percentage better the ads, the landing page than your competitor by doing the research, most probably that winning product will be on your store winning product as well. Not guaranteed, but high chances. And the same like unknown product can become a winner just because again you done one percentage more approach than any other dropshipper E commerce marketer around there. So by that being said, I would say directions were the biggest quantity of the winning products. In our days. It is supplements, it is the home improvement, it is the like health and beauty, especially skin care and.
- [22:47]
Anything what is gummies, powder and so on. Consumable products. It's so hot. Majority of our stores, our client stores are exactly in such kind of niches because it is replay replaceable. I mean consumable products which is people will buy again and again if you do the right funnel. And by that means and it's a super huge LTV and as well brings the high AOE average order value. So winning niches I could say is the supplement is the health and beauty, especially skin care. It's overwhelming. But like you can get piece of the pie. I mean, you need to do analysis if it's still, especially with AI, if it's still trendy, if it's still growing. Is the population of people who are actually interested in this product going down or going up or it's stuck. And as well like when you do the research, you can do the deep research. What exactly nowadays in E commerce, what kind of niche and what kind of product is actually has highest possibilities and lowest competition. And right now, one of the lowest competition, which is already growing by the way and has high demand is the menopause products. So anything related to menopause want to.
- [24:03]
GoFundMe Commercial Announcer
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- [25:01]
Anatoly Labinsky
Pause. Anything related to skincare with organic ingredients. Anything related to the pet supplements or pets health. Before it was just pets, you know, like leashes, pets, food containers. Now pet supplements. It's such a hot niche, which is. I was quite surprised when I figured it out like one year ago. And it's growing as hell. And especially like this, Minnie Paul's sleep improvement niche. It's incredible. Well, because, like, people struggle with all these things. What's going on in the world, like wars, economics, global economics problems, and the crypto going up and down stock markets. People have stress and even killing themselves. I mean, one week ago, one big influencer in crypto killed himself because he was a trader and, like, he lost a lot of cash. So by that being said, it's people in stress and like, sleep improvement is incredible. Good niche to play with.
- [26:00]
Chris Bentley
I had a lot of success with niches. And when I was selling Amazon, like, and I noticed like, trends. That's one thing that I'm like really good with is, like noticing trends and marketing. Obviously things that work really great for me were like grocery stuff, sleeping stuff. Like I have what kind of melatonin pills are really good because they're chewable.
- [26:24]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah. And then it's one of the things very easy to consume. That's very important.
- [26:29]
Chris Bentley
And the thing that happened to me was that they. This is a great thing about selling inventory is that something will happen, will drive demand out of nowhere. So they had changed the ingredient on the label and so they had to pull all the supplies from all the stores. So I went in and I bought all the supplies. Like, I bought everything I can find, like anything and everything else had a big pile in my apartment just of just pills. Right. And then I sold them and it was, I think they're, I don't know, maybe like six bucks or something. And I was selling them from 18, 19 bucks because they couldn't. There's. How do you sell them on Amazon?
- [27:10]
Anatoly Labinsky
Amazon.
- [27:12]
Chris Bentley
And it was great. And I was like, dude, like, I'm just like rolling. But then the thing is, I think there's like these little windows of opportunity that happen and then the window shuts, right? Like, it's just. Yeah, it's just like business, right? Like, you will create a store, like you said, a coffee shop, and you have like this amazing coffee and then it goes great for like six months and then people get sick of that coffee and they want to go to another coffee shop or something opens across the street that has coffee and donuts and they go over there instead of, you know. So like a lot of things change and like that window kind of collapses. But I think that there's. If you take as much.
- [27:50]
Like effort as you can to sell in that window before the window shuts, even if you get, like you said, just a small piece of the pie out of the bigger piece of a piece, time, you should just be happy. And that was one of the things that I always struggled with, was the window would open up and whether it be like real estate or mortgages or whatever, like, and the window would open up and I would try to get as much as I could. And then like, you know, it's kind of like a poker player, right? And you get all your chips and you count the chips and then I look over at you and you got more chips. And I was like, damn, like I could have worked better, right? But like, I think one of the keys just in life is just being happy with what you got.
- [28:25]
Anatoly Labinsky
Got 100. I mean, you're looking on the competitors or like some like bigger brands as a motivation motivators and plus as providing like to make the analysis according what's working for them and creating your own story. You should not. Like, if you're going to be comparing yourself with anyone, like there is Elon Musk, you far away, whatever you go far, you're still going to be seen on us, you know. So by that being said, like, you should be build your own story. Like otherwise it's going to be really suicide or whatever because people lose motivation drive and start getting depressed because they are not happy with whatever they get in. And it's unfortunate because everyone trying to prove someone else instead of proving themselves what they can and what they actually achieving and by, by that what you Are saying I want just a comment in terms of room opening and closing. That's exactly what is happening. But. But I would say we are lucky enough in our days that meta changed the algorithms that now this kind of room could be much longer. Because I'm speaking about the paid ads only if you are on the paid ads and like you properly run in the Facebook ad account, you gonna be understanding that you can run for a while the same product, the same things just all matter is creative. In our days, whatever you going to be doing, the number one thing is the creatives. So like for example, if you want to be in 10,000 a day in sales, you will be Most probably testing 50 creatives a week testing to be on that kind of level consistent. If you start running less, your revenue will be like going up, up, up, up and drop down. And while you're figuring out you're running in minus all the profits start burning out, you again find out if you are like you start getting again this momentum and again down and it's dying. As if you like pushing, pushing, pushing and reach some kind of level and you want to stay in exactly the same level. You have to continuously doing what you are doing to reach that level. So like for example, sometimes it's possible with one creative. It's cool. But you like there is a prediction if you run to 10k a day, let's say with one creative, amazing creative. Now to find out how to do variation of that creative. So when you're doing variations it means from one single creative you can do from 30 to 90 variations. Like there is a bunch of things. Change the voiceover, change the music, change the background, change the sub captures, whatever you want and plus AI exist. Change the avatar to like let's say African American to the white American to the Asian American like different to find out any other angles of potential avatar. Maybe you don't know who you sell to in general. And after that you catch that actually your audience is just African Americans. Your conversion is double and you just focusing on only on that avatar. So by that being said, quantity of creatives on ads will allow you to keep this momentum longer and changing the offer. As you said on other street, someone just giving as a gift. Let's say supplements spoon you have in your supplement. If it's a powder spoon for sure it's inside. But if you bring that as a gift, it's for sure already there. But the smart marketers just showing that upfront on the picture that we give you powder plus spoon as a gift which is like nonsense. It doesn't make sense. It's like it's already there. But like consumer behavior and brain built on. Oh, it's nice. It's gift. Oh this spoon. It looks amazing. And people buying your conversion growing and so on, so on. You're testing different offers. Yeah. Second thing after creatives it's offer testing for sure.
- [32:01]
Chris Bentley
Talk to me about AI. How much has that changed your business?
- [32:05]
Anatoly Labinsky
Oh my God. This is how much.
- [32:08]
End of 2022 when AI came out, I mean ChatGPT for example one of the first one and in January we start playing around and the store which is giving us. I don't remember 1.3 or 1.5, 1.8 conversion rate. So basically a thousand people came and only 1.58 person bought it. We run that through the AI before it would take us five working days more or less to figure it out. Do the learn feedbacks in Amazon, I mean reviews. Go through the forums, go through the Reddit and read all of that make it the word document with all the bullet points. Then sit down with copywriters and media buyers and figure it out what kind of message will be according to all those points. Now we just like. I mean that time we just use the AI exactly the same process but with AI it took us because it was first time like couple hours next day when we implement in 24 hours 2.5 conversion rate. Wow. So that's where we understood what's the power it but now, now it's a creative creation. It's the copywriting is the store building is the like brainstorming what to do next. When you feel that you stuck what next how to increase the aov. You describe in all your case all your brand ideas, put it in one chart and it's saving forever. And basically we just like non stop like okay, this doesn't work anymore. My conversion drop from here to here. What should I do? It's giving you full picture. You should know not follow that and trust that 100 person. But it's give you some ideas like for example increasing every charter value. If you say hey how can I what should I upsell with my supplement for example or like with my hair loss oil like what what what should I sell extra? If you ask this way it will give you a bullshit answer. But if you'll say something like hey, let's let's predict that you are ecom professional which is working with specifically Shopify over 10 years and your focus professional focus on conversion conversion rate optimization for all those Years and especially let's say in the health niche how what kind of products to my brand? Because you already give before information about your brand to this specific store. Would you recommend me give me at least 20 variants? At least 20. And why it's almost so much. Because it will be still a lot of bullshit. Not bullshit but I mean, I mean.
- [34:50]
Too naive, too simple answers but two or three gonna be golden nuggets. And you like even on store which I open I increased from $100 AOV to 1:17 in first two weeks by just like asking what will be really make sense to upsell. And there was a lot of digital offers which has zero costs. I just said it plus specific product which is I wasn't thinking to added but it's describe it in the way the logic. So this is starting like no, your product is this. So by buying this it will predict of problem here. So basically this product will help you to avoid this future problem. So it's like super deep down like thoughts it's explaining to you this is upsell and why. This is upsell and why. And I just decided to trust because it makes sense and like it's increased the AI with you.
- [35:46]
Chris Bentley
Well, I use AI ChatGPT more and more and more and what I've been finding out is if you're more inclined to write a lot, it'll give you a very, very more exact answer. So if I were to just be like, hey, like tell me about. Because I have, I usually use it for a lot of like relationship advice. So even though I have a therapist, right. But like I'll put in a bunch of stuff and I'll be like, you know, I've been with this girl for this long, you know, she has this issues. I had this issue, like we keep having an issue about this, like blah blah, blah. And like I'm very, very detailed and I spend a good couple minutes writing the exact problem and it could be like a paragraph form, whatever it is and it will take a couple seconds but it'll give me the exact thing that I need and not just.
- [36:38]
Know go buy her a handbag, right? You know, like. Or like go take her on vacation, right? Like nothing like that. Or go buy her flowers or something, right. It's just very detailed. This is the situation, this is what you need to do. Step one, step two, step three, step four, if you don't like that, like I'll give you like a way of like you know, explaining to her why this isn't working and it's really really cool. And I know there's like so much more to AI than just obviously relationship stuff, which is really, really cool that you're using it to figure out like niche stuff. Even I when I was on Amazon before I got off of it, I would look up stuff and I'd be like, hey look, I'm really interested in doing something in the grocery section and what is the hottest product under this price that has inventory, that's moving, you know, a certain amount of units that isn't seasonal, blah, blah. It would just break it down and give it to me like quick. Yeah, it helped me out a lot.
- [37:31]
Anatoly Labinsky
I would say that's like especially like this latest version which is 5.0. Like it's really became not smarter, but sharper. And the more data you're providing, especially like if you are coming back to let's say E commerce, relationships and anything else you like, you have to do like or proper explanation of situation or Unicom, let's say give it a task direct prompt what you need and what kind of expectations you want to achieve. And asking to do the deep research, which is like taking usually 20 minutes if you're speaking about chargeability, like 20 minutes. And this deep research will like it will go to Reddit, to all the forums, to all the Amazon reviews. It will go everywhere and provide you exact like for example sophistication level. It's like five different awareness of people about the problem, about the product or about like like problem solution product is a different levels of awareness. And for example in the eight Asia for I'm selling in Asia, I'm selling in US in Canada, Australia and in Asia. Sophistication level is one. So people not aware they have a problem, but they're not aware about a solution. They're not even aware about the problem. You need to educate them about the problem. When here everyone already heard about the problem, about the solution, even heard about your product. But like they need to explain why your product is better. It's a fourth level of sophistication and basically each market has different different ways of approach and AI by doing the deep research and giving the what kind of outcome you want to get the detailed it giving you such a really incredible and sharp answers like for example this different sophistication level for America, United States, Canada and Australia and to Europe and separately to Asia. And it's like really different kind of ways of people behaving and like to get that information manually by yourself. And especially such a sharp information without the deep research it Would takes quite a bit. Oh and plus after that instantly okay, make for me 20 headlines, not more than five words. So I will be able to add in the ads and place it on my landing page. It won't be like. It will be look sharp and sharp give me 10 sub headlines. So which is like must have. And after that give me like landing page structure according sophistication level four because this is for Asian market and according to one and a sophistication level four because it is for United States market and it's giving you like everything why the success was happening with the story. Like what I was just. I was doing exactly those kind of steps. Research, copywriting and exactly what people want to see and hear on the page. And in that. And that's like kind of simple.
- [40:26]
Chris Bentley
Simple.
- [40:26]
Anatoly Labinsky
But you just need to understand how to treat AI with the details. And then more you're asking the questions regarding this subject like regarding the brand. Then later on even in other charts because it's collecting all information from whole your account and actually outside as well. But it's trained on your account. It will be like in new chat. Doesn't matter if it's not chat with the brand. Like hey, you know that what kind of brand I'm running. So I have this kind of idea or I need to find out this. This instantly giving you the more details you provided. And it's already done deep research. So now it's every they know every AI know everything about the not your brand but about problem, solution and struggle of the audience. That is instantly giving you whatever you are asking from and giving ideas. For example, on the way to your podcast. I was just asking because I was yesterday on Ecom even it was like quite high level. Like we were like in total maybe over 2 billion a year revenue generators in E commerce. And basically the people were really awesome in the room and we were brainstorming and one of the points which I got like that.
- [41:34]
I have after sale post purchase. But I need to improve that because of XYZ reasons. And I like explaining hey, you remember we done after sale with you. So I already done setup sales are going on. But because of XYZ it can improve my efficiency. How should I do that? In what way it will be implemented to my brand. Give me exactly what makes sense. And because it's already know well my audience, my brand, my product. And basically I just need to know like when I'm going to be free in the evening, sit down, make the difference. And I'm sure that it will Slightly improve the performance.
- [42:09]
Chris Bentley
Wow.
- [42:11]
Anatoly Labinsky
And it's not only chargpt it's like there is a lot of those like cloud IO it's good for copywriting. It's more creative. Creative let's say so copywriters using cloud G mini great like this Nana Banana like image variation creation in a couple of seconds bunch of variations of the same creative you can make it charge Beatty like general deep research and like awesome think it's like awesome tool. It's audio reporting. So for example you've done the deep research it's like 20 minutes read but you're just asking. Okay. Make it podcast style and it's give you audio line of two minutes Podcast style is sharing with you what exactly written there. So so like different AIs for different needs but in general AI is 100 speed in your business. If you're not using your business, you'll be out of the door in the near future. Not yours you're going to.
- [43:01]
Chris Bentley
Yeah, very near future. We were talking about that earlier.
- [43:06]
Now you started a new project, you're investing in real estate.
- [43:10]
Anatoly Labinsky
Yeah, it's like last two years. So far we are at 14 units. We started with Berman Method. So we buying, renovating, renting out, refinancing, repeating and basically like first year it was of full of learning curve mistakes, eviction with the tenants and all that stuff. But now we have good screening, incredible deals on the flow. We buying in specific small towns. So before diving into the real estate market we were doing the screening of the towns what kind of town we should go, what kind of state, which state is the the landlord friendly, which state is actually.
- [43:51]
The tenants friendly and so on. So what should we avoid? And basically like first year we ended at 5 units and the second year already at 14. So the next year goal is like at least 40. If you will not find out the portfolio for 40, 50 billions, that's going to be awesome. But yeah, using lenders, hard money, loans, own money and like DSCR refinances obviously.
- [44:14]
Chris Bentley
Awesome. Last question and one of my favorite questions is that if you were to go back and do anything to change, you know where you're at now, maybe to speed it up or change the course a little bit, what would you do?
- [44:32]
Anatoly Labinsky
That's a great question because I asked that question to myself several times during my journey. As I said almost 10 years in the business and and first year, it was the hardest year in my life. I mean we didn't speak about that. But if I will start it's another podcast for two Hours. But the thing is that I haven't built a business on luck. It was on all hard work and a lot of mistakes. And I was asking myself question, what would I change? I would bring. I will run there and say to myself like, don't do that, you'll lose the money or it doesn't work, something. But after that I realized if I'll go back and do that, that I will not become mentally strong and smart person as I am today. I will, I will be weak. I will be weak because everything is just like coming with solutions, with advice. I mean, I had some advices, wrong advices, then I started getting right advices. But still it was on the shoulders of me to implement. And every single human is quite the same. And if I would go back, back, I would love to see myself from the side. I would love to like discover, understand the like not understand, like just to get the nostalgy and see. But I would not even speak to myself because who know. I have a beautiful two kids, I have amazing wife which is was with me before everything. But maybe I would not have second kid if I would change something, maybe I would leave. Not like I'm living now. Maybe I will get divorced, maybe I would die. You know, any small changes are like, no, I would be super weak. And most probably I would quit in the first year or two in the business because if any struggle, which I haven't experienced here in the past years, but any new struggle would come, most probably I won't be managed because I would be weak because I got advice on everything. Except that that's what I said to myself. I would not change anything. It's what made me who I am.
- [46:30]
Chris Bentley
Anatolia, I appreciate you coming on the show.
- [46:32]
Anatoly Labinsky
Appreciate you, Chris.
- [46:33]
Chris Bentley
I hear you.
- [46:36]
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