IAM2222 – CEO and E-Commerce Expert Utilizes AI Tools for Business Growth and Leadership

Title: Transcript - Sun, 01 Sep 2024 11:51:32 GMT

Date: Sun, 01 Sep 2024 11:51:32 GMT, Duration: [00:16:59.73]

[00:00:00.20] - Michael Begg

So like a brand comes to us and they want to sell more on Amazon and we help them with all of their marketing on the platform. So it's going to be the paid ads, it's going to be the content, the SEO, promotion, management, just marketing strategy. Like everything a brand needs to be successful on the platform is what we provide them.

[00:00:19.07] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEO's, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the Imceo podcast.

[00:00:46.15] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Mike Begg. Mike, awesome to have you on the show.

[00:00:53.14] - Michael Begg

Hey gresh, thanks for having me here. Excited to be talking with you.

[00:00:55.88] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm excited as well too, so that everybody can hear all the awesome things that Mike is working on. And of course, before we jumped into that conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Mike so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Mike is an entrepreneur and expert in e commerce and digital marketing. Mike co founded AMZ Advisors with his two partners in 2015, which has generated over half a billion in sales for its clients. Mike and the AMZ team also operate AMZ courses, educating Amazon sellers on how to maximize sales on the platform and go advance, which helps brands expand into Latin America. Mike loves sharing advice and help help on anything related to Amazon and building efficient businesses. And one of the things I absolutely loved before when I was preparing for this is to kind of hear a little bit more how Mike got started. I think he worked at Sears and he saw some really great opportunities, but I think he said he never thought he would go into entrepreneurship, but I imagine his experience at Sears probably kind of pushed him towards that. So I think all the time we never know how life will happen. But I think if you're open and willing to take the bull by the rain, so to speak, some really phenomenal things can happen. So Mike, love that that happened to you. Super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the Imco community?

[00:02:03.76] - Michael Begg

I am, yeah. Awesome.

[00:02:05.28] - Gresham Harkless

Well, let's get it started then. So just try to kick it off. Let's rewind the clock. I know I touched on a little bit. I want to hear a little bit more on how you got started. What I call your CEO story.

[00:02:12.88] - Michael Begg

Sure. So you have to go way back at this point, it's been almost ten years. But yeah, I was working at Sears. I was working in real estate, actually. So at the time, Sears was already starting to struggle as a company. We were trying to find out ways as the real estate team or as part of the finance team of how do we raise more money for the business? And the solution we had was a real estate investment trust. We raised about $2.5 billion that went to the company. The company went through that pretty quickly and we were trying to find other ways to make money. So we were looking at redeveloping real estate, redeveloping properties that we had at malls and even selling some assets off. That kind of brought me into the world of e commerce because one of the deals that we were doing was actually with Amazon and another one was with FedEx. And it struck me odd is why is Amazon trying to buy a big old box store at a mall? And the mall was closed itself as well. So it didn't even make sense until I figured out that they were turning it into a warehouse or like a distribution center, essentially. And that's where it started, you know, kind of clicking with me, like, all right, well, like, why do they need a distribution center? I was like, Amazon sells books. And then I figured out you could sell products on Amazon. So from there I did what's called retail arbitrage, which is essentially just going to Walmart, target, buying what you could, turning around, selling it on Amazon, then started building my own brands and then finally started a marketing company, which I've been growing since 2015. So that was kind of the journey of how I got to where I am now. And along that journey, a lot of other opportunities have come out of it.

[00:03:46.19] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know you mentioned that it brought you to some really great opportunities and ways that you get to kind of serve your audience and your clients. Could you take us through a little bit more on what that looks like, how you're making that impact?

[00:03:59.43] - Michael Begg

So I think the cool thing is what the main company, AMz utilizers, does is that we provide ecommerce marketing services. So, like, a brand comes to us and they want to sell more on Amazon and we help them with all of their marketing on the platform. So it's going to be the paid ads, it's going to be the content, the SEO, promotion, management, just marketing strategy. Like, everything a brand needs to be successful on the platform is what we provide them with. And the cool thing is that since we started this in 2015, we've seen how the platforms evolved going through some pretty high growth periods in 2017, 2018 into Covid, which is when sales took off, and now coming out of COVID wherever. We've kind of had supply chain issues and other logistics issues that have affected companies in different ways. So it's cool from our perspective, we're only focused on the marketing side, but it gives me a really good understanding of what other companies are experiencing and what goes on in those companies to make them successful. So I really enjoy it from that standpoint and kind of learning more through the work that I'm doing.

[00:05:01.13] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and you mentioned that word, the evolution and the changes, like you said, like originally, like Amazon with books and trying to see, like, all the things that they're doing now, how many ways. It's kind of like a. Like a better term, an ecosystem, wherever people are looking for specific things. And to be able to kind of connect those dots for the brands, I imagine, is incredibly impactful.

[00:05:19.25] - Michael Begg

Yeah, no, it's super rewarding. And for us to have a brand come to us that's either struggled or seen flat growth or not grown at all on the platform, or it's just launching on the platform to start taking off once they start working with us is awesome. And we've done that I don't even know how many times at this point, but where our brand either comes to us at a flat line and they experience 100% growth within the year, or we launch a brand and they go from zero to over a million dollars a year in the first couple months. So it's pretty awesome. Like, it's a really cool experience. It's a really good feeling. And, like, obviously we love it because clients are happy.

[00:05:51.49] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It gets to be a win, win, win. And I almost wonder if that's part of, like, what you feel like is your secret sauce. The thing you feel either sets you or the organization apart and makes it unique. Is it that you use the word conceptual? Is it that conceptual piece to be able to kind of understand the concept, but at the end of the day, be able to see the forest for the trees and bring all that together so that the clients are, at the end of the day, seeing and getting those results?

[00:06:13.74] - Michael Begg

I think conceptualizing is really important. I think strategic planning is really what that ties into a lot more is like, how do we see a bigger picture at the end of the day as a CEO or as a business leader or an entrepreneur, if you have employees or a team working for you or even clients that you work with on a services side, you have to be able to communicate a vision to them and where you're trying to take them or where you're trying to go. And the best way to do that is to show that through the strategic planning process is like you essentially state a goal that you're trying to achieve and then you try to identify the different steps that you need to take to get to those goals. And sometimes you're going to find out that the steps you're taking aren't right and you have to reverse course or find another way around. But it's part of, I think creating a successful organization is just having that roadmap or having the end goal and starting to develop the roadmap to get there. And that's really what I think makes an effective organization.

[00:07:06.60] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's so huge, you know, obviously for the organization, you know, that we all might have, but also too, for thinking about your clients and customers. I think to have that holistic perspective as you start to understand that, and it sounds like that is kind of what led to the evolution, the adding on of different ways that you can kind of serve your clients because you didn't, you understood it wasn't just about going to Amazon and you understand the holistic part of a customer journey, what that can look like and how to serve on each and every level.

[00:07:32.33] - Michael Begg

Yeah, and I mean, the funny thing is you can actually even leverage this more in your personal life, too. It's like you have a certain goal. Like, I want to get to this point, I want to have this job. I want to start this business. I want to get this house, whatever it is, like whatever the goal is. And you just start putting the pieces in place of how you get there. So I think, like, strategic planning is valuable across all aspects of life. Obviously work, it's super valuable. But your personal life, you can leverage it too.

[00:07:55.02] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. We start to realize that, you know, again, it's being able to kind of see further, at least one step ahead, maybe not all the steps, at least one step ahead. Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even habit that you have, but what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:08:15.12] - Michael Begg

Oh, that is a really good one. I think it's changed a lot, especially over the last year. I think now more than ever, I'm leaning on AI a lot, which is phenomenal. I think there's different types of leaders and there's different types of managers. There's people that are really good at managing. They're the most efficient when they're planning, they're having calls nonstop, and then there's those that are actually good at building. And it's like coming up with an idea, bringing it to fruition, the whole process, all the operations along the way, I fall into the later, the latter one there into building. And I think that's where AI has really helped me in that. A lot of the ideas I've had or the concepts I've had on ways we can improve have been able to come to fruition a lot faster because I am working actively with an AI tool like chat, GPT, cloud, whatever it may be. But it's helped me develop a lot of solutions over the past year that would have taken me way longer. I would have paid way more for it. So, I mean, AI has been incredibly powerful over the past year. I think another thing that's not AI related is just, I'm a big fan of Richard Branson and his team principles of kind of managing a business. And it's like, take care of your employees. That's a big thing that I put into practice, is like, when you take care of your employees, they take care of the actual clients. And I think that's a big part of it, is like having a good team you trust. Making them feel supported, making them feel that they have the resources they need to get the job done is a huge. Another hack. I would say, from a leadership standpoint is like, just take really good care of your people and bring in really good people to start with and let them do their thing. Don't try to micromanage it or it's gonna become a problem.

[00:09:54.79] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, those are two phenomenal hacks. And so, what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I like to call a seal nugget? So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client if you were to hop, or if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

[00:10:09.63] - Michael Begg

So I think I'm a big fan of stoicism, and I think this is kind of a. A very clear nugget that I got out of it, and I kind of try to reiterate it to my partners and to our employees, is that, and it comes from Ryan Holiday's book, the obstacle is the way. The obstacle is the way, like, whatever you. The one thing you don't want to do is exactly the thing you need to do because that's what's going to move the business forward. When you have an obstacle in your way, you can find ways around it, but those aren't going to be long term sustainable solutions. You need to figure out a how to actually tackle the problem in front of you. And I think once you start focusing on that and start committing to solving these big problems, is really where the company starts to make progress. And you can avoid what's right in front of you as long as you want, but it's never going to go away until you actually focus on it.

[00:10:59.34] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I almost wondered, as we were talking about with the self awareness, because we end up knowing ourselves more than everybody else, we can sometimes realize when we are avoiding the problem, we aren't actually tackling. Have you found ways that you can really say that, I know this is a problem. Is it time away? Is it something that you found that you've leaned on and said, okay, this helps provide clarity on what that looks like and what I need to do.

[00:11:20.39] - Michael Begg

Ultimately, I think it kind of comes back to partially strategic planning, like partially analysis, and just, like, understanding the business. Like, for me, I make a lot of, I come up, my process really starts with, like, analysis. So I'm going to look through what's going on in the business, as much data points as I have. From there, I'm going to try to infer things in the strategic process of, like, all right, this looks like a block. Like, this number doesn't look right. How can I improve this number? How can I improve this number, whatever it is, and then start identifying the actual different ways that I can do that on the strategic plan and start creating the vision from there. So I think that's like just my thought process and the way that I approach those things. And I think it helps in the long term when you have a good process like that. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's what I would say.

[00:12:06.57] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Do you find, like, that ends up being a really big thing? I imagine, too, when you're working with your clients, sometimes I feel like maybe they're not looking at the obstacle, they don't realize what it is, and they can sometimes avoid that. So I imagine that can help out with those conversations as well, too, for sure.

[00:12:22.04] - Michael Begg

I mean, clients don't always want to hear about the obstacles in their business. But, like, sometimes that's exactly what they need to hear. And you can show them the data. And I like, sometimes they're just gonna argue with the data, but at the end of the day, like, the problem's there, whether they wanna address it or not, it's on them. All you can do is try to help them recognize the problem and start addressing it.

[00:12:41.16] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And it's being such a huge thing that sometimes we also don't realize that there's a book called who not how. And it talks a lot around, like, realizing that it's not always about you solving all the problems or you solving all the obstacles. Sometimes it's finding the right who. And being able to kind of lean on people that have the experience and knowledge, like you all and your team have, ends up being a really great thing, because a lot of those obstacles sometimes could be avoided by making sure that you're finding that right. Who? So that you can work on the things that are your superpower and the thing that you need to have move.

[00:13:11.21] - Michael Begg

Move to move forward 100%. And it's especially tough sometimes, like, if you're an entrepreneur, because you have kind of that great and the determination to figure out something, but is the best use of your time and resources. No, probably not. Like, whatever is making you money or whatever's working right now is probably where you need to focus. And, like, the other things that can come up and. Or the other people that can come in and kind of help solve problems or help move things further along is really where you should be hiring for. So, yeah, that's 100% I would agree with that.

[00:13:42.42] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different, quote unquote, CEO's on the show. So, Mike, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:54.38] - Michael Begg

I've kind of already mentioned it a few times throughout our conversation, but I think being a CEO, to me, is just setting the vision and then helping people, people get to that vision or understand the vision and be able to start working towards it. I call it when everyone's rowing in the same direction. And I think that's the really important thing. And I think that's exactly what it means to be a CEO, is you have to have the vision, people have to believe in the vision, and then you have to get everyone working together, and then the ones that aren't helping you get there, you got to start replacing them and putting more skilled people in place. So I think that's really what it comes down to. And that's. That's really my favorite part about it.

[00:14:30.25] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that definition. I love that kind of analogy as well, too, because you end up realizing sometimes when you have everybody rowing the same direction, how impactful it is, how quickly more, I guess, more quicker that you make it to where you're trying to be. But I also think it's so true, too. When you don't have somebody that is rowing in the same direction, they're not necessarily the right fit or in the right position or whatever that might be, how detrimental that could be for your success. And being able to kind of identify that, understand where you're trying to go and communicate, that is such a huge under probably valued skill.

[00:15:04.12] - Michael Begg

Definitely. And like, the way we always kind of think about it within our company is there's a players, there's b players, and there's c players. Like identify your a players, keep them around, try to replace c players and get higher level players, and then b players just try to get the most out of them while you can. And that's kind of the way that we just evaluate things within the company to determine who's helping us reach the goals and who's holding us back.

[00:15:25.89] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Ends up being a really somewhat challenging thing, but at the same time, it ends up when you realize the mission of what you're trying to serve and solve, and that ends up being the thing that can kind of propel you forward.

[00:15:37.58] - Michael Begg

Yeah, definitely.

[00:15:39.09] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Mike, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get hold of you, your team, find about all the awesome things that you all are working on.

[00:15:55.00] - Michael Begg

Of course. Yeah. And I mean, the best way to get in touch with me is either my email directly. Mike, mzadvisors. You can also go to my personal website, mikebeg me. I'm also available through amzadvisors.com dot. I mean, at the end of the day, if you're a brand owner that's looking to go from one to $10 million a year on the Amazon platform, we're ready to work with you. Feel free to reach out and we'd love to have a conversation.

[00:16:17.28] - Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate that, Mike. And to make that even easier, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you, find about all the awesome things you and team are working on. Thank you. Thank you so much for doing that, my friend. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:28.54] - Michael Begg

Thank you guys for having me. Have a good day.

[00:16:30.41] - Intro

Thank you for listening to the Imceo podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. Imceo is not just a phrase, it's a community. Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at Blue one six media.com dot. This has been the Imceo podcast with Gresham Harkness Jr. Thank you for listening.