What are the best choices to make for your ecommerce business, particularly in terms of your Amazon business? Do you need a full service agency? A collection of software and service providers? How do you know who to choose? How do you vet potential partners? Chris Fryburger, CEO and Founder of nReach (The Amazon Matchmaker), joined me to discuss these very questions. We covered:

  • How to set the budget for the help you might need
  • How to vet agencies and service/software providers
  • Who some of the best in the business are, and the things they do (make sure to watch the replay for deets, and check out the list of linked resources below)
  • And more.

List of Resources Mentioned

I mentioned that I’d like to put a playbook together of all the service providers and software I would use if I was running a business on Amazon. This is not the full list, but these are all the resources Chris and I mentioned during the webinar, and the start of that playbook that’s in development now. Obviously, I’d use Teikametrics for my advertising and marketplace insights, but there’s more out there that needs to be done!

Watch the Replay

Watch this replay to learn about Chris’s background and expertise, and his philosophy about vetting potential partners. And learn about all the businesses referenced in the list above!

Read The Transcript

Liz Downing: Hi everybody. Thanks for attending a Thursday webinar. We don’t usually do them on Thursdays. This one is special. This is Liz Downing, Ecommerce Marketing Manager at Teikametrics. I’ve got my good friend, Chris Fryburger, CEO and founder of nReach with me. Say hi, Chris.

Chris Fryburger: Hey. Thanks so much for having me on.

Liz Downing: It’s so good to see you. A couple of housekeeping items as I see people are still popping in to the GoToWebinar. We are recording this. That’s usually the first question people ask, so this will be recorded. It will be resent to you, if you registered for this webinar. We do also encourage questions. In the GoToWebinar panel, there’s a little question section. Just go ahead and pop your question in there. We’ll take those as we’re rolling through what we’re talking about today because we like this to be an open conversation. If you don’t know who Teikametrics is, Teikametrics is the best company ever. Also, we help sellers and brand owners who sell on Amazon and WalMart optimize their advertising and also make great decisions about their businesses because of the amount of data we’re able to show them about their world and their different ASINs and products.

Liz Downing: If you want to know more about that, just contact me. I’ll be providing my email address at the end of this webinar, but let’s talk a little bit about Chris. Chris has the coolest title, I think, that has ever existed. He is the Amazon Matchmaker, and I am so jealous that he thought of that before I did. Chris, let’s talk a little bit about nReach, how you got into ecommerce, how you got into helping sellers and brand owners, and all that jazz.

Chris Fryburger: Sure, sure. Well, first of all, Liz, thank you so much. It’s always a pleasure to interact with you, and it’s a wonderful day here in Cincinnati, but I am having some technical difficulties so I’m not normally in front of a green screen so forgive me if I-

Liz Downing: Well, he said technical difficulties, but I forgot to tell him that GoToWebinar doesn’t support a virtual background, so there he is ready for a virtual background-

Chris Fryburger: Tear it down.

Liz Downing: … and doesn’t get to have one. That’s on me-

Chris Fryburger: It’s all good.

Liz Downing: … not on him.

Chris Fryburger: It won’t affect the content I hope.

Liz Downing: No.

Chris Fryburger: Again, I appreciate you having me on. nReach is a reaction to the fact that the advertising agency world, the traditional digital world that’s been around for 20 years or so, hasn’t reacted to Amazon pretty much at all. About three years ago I was working with some agencies, working with big clients, P&G and others, and really they turned to their agencies, “You do our creative, you do our ad campaigns, you do our social, you do our influencer, all of that stuff for us, all our ecommerce site, our DSC presence, all the campaigns around that, but what about Amazon?”

Chris Fryburger: For the most part, the answer from their traditional ad agency has been it’s still nothing. I looked over, and in this ecosphere of Amazon you see these young agencies that you deal with every day and that we all know, young sellers are building tools and selling on Amazon, but there’s really no one vetting those guys. If you’re a Fortune 500 brand, you’re looking for a professional Amazon agency of a certain size, maybe expertise in a certain category, XYZ, whatever those criteria are, I help match brands to those agencies amidst other things. Basically, the root of nReach is matchmaking between brands and services they need on Amazon.

Liz Downing: I dig that so much because I do a lot of that too as I don’t know what I am in terms of-

Chris Fryburger: You’re a trusted networker of mine, yes.

Liz Downing: I guess. Yeah, I guess I’m definitely a networker, and I aim to be trustworthy. I’ve done a lot in my previous time at eComEngine and now at my time at Teikametrics of doing that matchmaking. Obviously, one company doesn’t do it all so understanding the industry and understanding the players in the industry, understanding how it works, how you choose who to trust, all that kind of stuff has been pretty important, which is why I was super jealous of your title. I was, like, “Hey, I kind of do that too.”

Chris Fryburger: Well, you’d be great at it.

Liz Downing: We’re both really good at it. This is a mutual admiration society. I have obviously a bit of a technology stance on things, and I’ve got some insights on software providers and what kind of software you might need and all that kind of stuff. I’m not just going to be selling you Teikametrics the whole time today because there are other things that you need in terms of your software stack, and there are times that you need a full service agency. There are times that you don’t.

Liz Downing: There are decision factors that go into choosing your service and software providers, so Chris and I are going to go through that today and just anecdotally tell you some stories, tell you about some brands that we’ve worked with, tell you about certain service providers, tell us about certain organizations that it might be helpful to join and that kind of stuff. Again, if you’ve got questions, and we actually have a question right now. Oh, thank you, Omar. Omar says I’m a brand evangelist or Chris is, and we’re both brand evangelists.

Chris Fryburger: Thanks.

Liz Downing: Chris and I are both part also of a group of providers like us and friends of providers that Shannon Roddy put together. Shannon is somebody that I recommend a whole lot. He’s got-

Chris Fryburger: Absolutely.

Liz Downing: … the Amazon Brand Success Academy, and we’ll link to that in the show notes because that is, as far as I’m concerned, the most definitive complete course on how to get started selling on Amazon and how to succeed on Amazon. It’s amazing. He’s one guy, and he’s-

Chris Fryburger: A great guy.

Liz Downing: … managed to put all of that together. He put together this group of Amazon Brand consultants, and Chris and I are both in that. Chris actually put a question out to the group, “Hey, like, what do you think the biggest pain points are for people, for brands that are trying to choose a software or service provider, trying to go with a strategist or a solution?” I think the answers across the board were rooted in budget. Talk to me a little bit about how a brand should look at their internal business and then look at choosing partners and solutions to help them scale and grow.

Chris Fryburger: Sure, and I want to tackle that budget question, but we’ll table that for the moment. Your question, it’s a broad question, and it’s also relatively an easy question. The reason is is that the same logic you would vet any sort of service provider that applies here. You want to look at obviously who they are, what their capabilities truly are. You want to ask for references. You want to look at their work. You want to ask for results. You want to quiz them. You also want to like them because you’ll probably interact with these people more than maybe your spouse. Maybe, I don’t want to say more important, but certainly from a monetary standpoint, it’s that kind of important relationship, and it could be that difficult for me to match two people that end up having to get married and that kind of thing.

Chris Fryburger: There’s a lot of basic considerations in there, but with the Amazon label on it, there’s some special ones. There’s things on top of hiring just an advertising agency that apply to Amazon. The long-winded answer is just do your homework when choosing a provider. There’s really some unique things in this space that you’re going to need to look for, unique capabilities around Amazon but which also aren’t maybe necessarily tied to traditional advertising stuff. For instance, can your advertising agency help you with your logistics, or can your advertising agency help you with your legal issues or bad tax or things along those lines, and you’re seeing some of that.

Chris Fryburger: For now, just staying at the marketing layer of your agency, getting your listing up, brand protection, reviews, hopefully down at the end of the line you’re doing something with Live and Posts. There are very, very few agencies in this space that exist that do all of those things, so you have to look exceptionally closely for a unicorn, which is essentially what you’re trying to find here.

Liz Downing: Or you don’t go with the full service agency, you pick and choose a la carte your software and service providers. You have to be super smart about it, but it’s like you’ve got your cable package, or you cut the cord, and you choose your streaming services to fill your needs. I just recently did that, so it’s on my mind. I have my flat fee that I pay for my internet, and then I’ve got Hulu and Disney Plus, and I don’t ever watch that and Netflix and, of course, Amazon. You say advertising agency, but a lot of advertising agencies are full service. They do listing optimization.

Chris Fryburger: True.

Liz Downing: They do all sorts of different things.

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: For instance, we handle your advertising and your data, and we don’t optimize your listing. We don’t do that. We don’t create your store. We don’t do your photography or your images or anything like that. A lot of those full-service agencies, and there are such good ones out there.

Chris Fryburger: There are. There are a lot of bad ones too, but yes.

Liz Downing: There are a lot of bad ones, and there are a lot more of them in this space than there used to be, holy moly, there are. There are some of them that have just been around forever and are killing it. They’re just doing a great job. They’re growing. They’re buying other agencies.

Chris Fryburger: Yes, true.

Liz Downing: They come with a price tag, so if you’re just getting started, or if you’re a small brand who has just launched on Amazon or a mom and pop, you’re just at a certain point. You only got a certain amount of money for months. It is possible to a la carte choose the services and software that solve your pain points, and it’s not a flat retainer fee to an agency. There are pros and cons to both ways, and I definitely don’t want to tick off any of my agency owners or employees because I love them so much. I don’t want to make Chris mad at me. I think that this is probably a great format is that Chris can talk about what to look for in a full-service agency, and I can give you tips on if you can’t or don’t want to pay for a full-service agency, here are the main things you need to think about, and here’s how you vet software and service providers on your own.

Chris Fryburger: Exactly. I would say there’s maybe stages, so if you’re a mom and pop and honestly you can’t even afford you guys, you might hire or buy Shannon’s courses and teach yourself.

Liz Downing: 60 bucks a month. Anybody can afford us. It’s fine.

Chris Fryburger: Sure and if you have the time and effort, then awesome, and albeit, it might be a little harder than it was in the day, but you can do this yourself. It’s just a time cost kind of thing. That said, then maybe the layer two, if you’re a mid-sized or say a small brand, yes, we can put your ADC together in pieces, and it’s more affordable that way. Software can do a lot of things also, if you want to go that way, awesome. If you’re a mid-term, mid-tier potentially and certainly a larger Fortune 1000 brand, you really end up needing a team and maybe that full-service package. I would just say, but I’m going to push back and just sum that up that larger clientele do need that truly a full-service agency, and even that definition can be played with a little bit as well.

Liz Downing: Well, and I don’t want to argue with you, but I also-

Chris Fryburger: Oh, come on.

Liz Downing: … know lots of really, really big brands that what their strategy is is to hire internal people to do certain things.

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: They’ve got internal people who have been trained up, understand how to create Amazon listings that convert. They’ve got an in-house photography studio. They’ve got the ecommerce department, and they just need help with one or two things, or-

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: … they get in a situation where they need a Chris McCabe where it’s a one-off, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got some things on fire.”

Liz Downing: Well, oh, so suspension and ASIN suspension and that kind of stuff, he helps you get reinstated. We’ll link to him too because you guys, if you know me, you probably know Chris because I talk about Chris all the time, but-

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, you do. Just so it’s clear, but he’s suspensions that he specializes in?

Liz Downing: Yeah, suspensions, account suspensions, ASIN suspensions, warnings, that kind of stuff. I guess he decided to give back because Amazon, when he worked at Amazon, he was in charge of suspending people. Now he helps people write their appeals, their plans of action and that kind of stuff. That’s super helpful, if you’re a huge brand especially, and you get your Amazon account suspended, Amazon doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re a huge brand, so you broke this rule, or we think you broke this rule, so we’re going to let you off the hook anyway because you’re so big.” They don’t do that.

Chris Fryburger: Any-

Liz Downing: Anybody can get suspended.

Chris Fryburger: I wouldn’t say maybe that might be a service that you might not get from your advertising agency, I mean focusing on marketing and that might, as you say, a one-off, absolutely correct. It’s just the difficulty is I think it’s just getting harder and harder to sell on Amazon. I think just all the processes and applications and the polishing that needs to happen constantly, the tools that are necessary and the like. Just for a larger brand, and we’re talking about budget, if you have the budget for that, somebody that might use a larger team might would be applicable. I also contend that maybe a full service backs into the other advertising, which is more applicable in this space. For instance, ad words can drive traffic to your Amazon listing, or what is the SEO ranking of your Amazon listing. That’s a little mind bender, but think about that.

Chris Fryburger: There’s tools as far as attribution, but, again, there’s traditional, social over there matching to Amazon social over there. There is Amazon PPC, or I’m sorry, Google PPC matching Amazon PPC, so there’s a one-to-one on both of these, but the old rule still now is applying. What is your D2C website doing? That’s where you want them convert after they buy on Amazon. You really want to drive them to the next purchase to D2C, if you have a campaign to drive all that.

Chris Fryburger: Again, all of that requires a traditional PPC person and an Amazon PPC person, I think requires a SEO person and so requires really a full agency if you will to walk in to say like a Proctor and Gamble to say, “Look, we’re going to marry up to your existing Purell campaigns, the ones that you’re spending, you know, Celine Dion is on the TV and those type of things, but here’s how we’re going to bring that into Amazon.” That actually requires an agency that doesn’t exist right now. We can talk about that as well, but I digress.

Liz Downing: Yeah, that’s true. You were talking about what do you need? Do you just need PPC everywhere? Do you need product photography? Do you need social media? Do you need-

Chris Fryburger: Video, a short video maybe.

Liz Downing: Yeah, video. Do you video for DST? Do you need video for Amazon Live? Do you need somebody to go live for you? Finding an agency that does every single one of those things is difficult. Not a lot of people are working with the Lives right now.

Chris Fryburger: No, I actually know only a couple that I would say are respectable with Live and Posts, and those are fledgling programs by Amazon themselves, and they’ve fallen down on those a couple of times too. To be able to even participate in that stuff is it’s fringe stuff even in our sphere much less covering all the other what you and I think are basics. Even the basics aren’t even being done properly, so-

Liz Downing: Cascadia is rocking the Live thing. They’re really seeing some good conversions for their customers.

Chris Fryburger: They are, and that was one of the two. I also mentioned Podium also has a pretty strong, and that’s my job to know who’s doing what, which, if I may, gives me the opportunity to sit back and look and see what trends are happening. I want to convey this to your audience, and I say this three times a day is it’s extremely early in the Amazon world. I know it’s hard. You live it, but probably half the guys or people that are listening to this live it every day. They bump into competition. You guys go to the same webinars. You talk it all day. It seems really crowded, but it’s extremely early. The largest agency in the space, like I can only talk agency stuff, has 200 employees. I come from a world where the largest agency in the world has 10,000 employees.

Liz Downing: Who’s the largest agency?

Chris Fryburger: It’d be WPP and Publicis and those guys. They actually own swaths of other agencies, and they’re the largest agency in the world, but the-

Liz Downing: They’re the largest agency in our industry, though?

Chris Fryburger: Oh, in our industry, that would be ByBox actually by number-

Liz Downing: Yeah, BB.

Chris Fryburger: … of employees. We’ll just leave it there. I don’t want to go into specific numbers, but it states around a couple hundred they’re crossing that mark.

Liz Downing: No, I love those guys, though.

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, I do too. I just don’t want to share anything, whatever, but I think they would say the same. They’re proud to be the largest, and they have benefited from that, and they’re awesome. There are some others that are maybe more at the 50 stage or maybe the 75 stage that are coming in strong too.

Liz Downing: Even smaller that do amazing work.

Chris Fryburger: Oh, even longer.

Liz Downing: I’ll just go ahead and give a shout-out to Marknology because I’ve worked with them before, and they do amazing work-

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, Andrew is awesome.

Liz Downing: … so creative. Well, his whole team like Veronika, I believe the whole team is super creative, very collaborative. Sometimes I think of them as boutique or like-

Chris Fryburger: Correct.

Liz Downing: … Daniella, you’ve got certain people in the industry that have general knowledge but specific skill sets. They’ve got a certain jene sa qua that you might vibe with, and that might be a great fit for you, or you might want to go with a great big agency. Again, you might want to a la carte your whole situation, and obviously I advocate that because that way you get to pick and choose. I think that probably when I have my brand and I create my arches and all products that I’m going to make after I retire, I think that probably I will hire an agency. I like to say that I would just piece it together with what I know from the industry, but I think that probably when you’re busy making a product, it’s beneficial to at least for a period of time work with an agency that’s got a good strategic focus and direction.

Chris Fryburger: Absolutely. You’re going to easily get into a relationship with an agency where you’re spending a lot of money, and you’re only getting very little benefit. It’s very common and less common in this space because I think there’s less activity right now but very common in the traditional agency space. There’s a lot of hype and a lot of bluff. That said, there’s people doing great work. You mentioned a couple of them where when they open their mouths, you’re, like, “Oh, okay, they know what they’re doing,” and you defer the keys to them, like, “Okay, I’m just going to hire the best.” I would just say that one of the healthiest really agencies I think out there, I always use the word healthy maybe in terms of revenue and things along those lines, would be like a Podium or like a Market Defense.

Chris Fryburger: Where Market Defense, and again is really just a core group of a team and is outsourcing to the best players for now, and as a result of that has the best service I think and is also growing the fastest. There’s different approaches. I don’t want to pick on anybody or namedrop or anything along those lines, but it’s just every business model in this space is just almost up for grabs. There’s all kinds of different agencies. For instance, it’s very common in this space unheard of in traditional agencies is asking for a percentage of the sales. We’re going to lower our bill maybe down to zero, and as an agency, we’ll take 15% or 5% of sales. If I did that to P&G, I’m in Cincinnati, if I walked down the street and say, “Hey, here’s a proposal. I want 15% of your Purell sales,” they would throw me out of the Towers.

Chris Fryburger: What I mean by that is that that’s an unusual anomaly here. Another unusual anomaly is as a seller, you can borrow money based on your future Amazon sales and pay back based on sales. That’s another unique option. That doesn’t exist outside of this ecosphere. You cannot get money from the bank that way, and, by the way, without giving any equity away also, so you can’t get any investor either. That’s just unique, so that’s a financial vehicle that exists for the first time in this space. I would challenge that there’s other things especially logistically and with distribution and all that kind of stuff. It’s all up for grabs. Then I’ll just wax poetically one last way and just say that, again, it’s very, very early, and we’re just getting started, and it’s hard even just to figure out the dot-com, but guess what, there’s 15 other marketplaces and 52 other countries too.

Liz Downing: Another one just got announced. Pakistan just got announced.

Chris Fryburger: Pakistan?

Liz Downing: Yeah, and they’re letting people sign up for free to be sellers, so that’s super exciting. I like to say Amazon, ecommerce, this whole ecosystem within its infancy, and I think that COVID has pushed it into toddlerhood, early toddlerhood, faster than it would have. I’ve been part of the industry unofficially since 2014, officially since 2016, and I’ve seen a lot of changes. I also see more and more things like Chris was talking about cropping up that are just completely specific to this industry, and that’s something that you have to think about in that you can’t go and hire an ad agency in New York that doesn’t know ecommerce and have them make you successful on any given marketplace. You have to work within industry in order to succeed in this industry. There’s a chicken and egg thing. How did that happen?

Chris Fryburger: It is.

Liz Downing: Did we do that? Is it our fault? Is it Amazon? Is it just the unique nature of this business and the challenges associated with selling on Amazon because Lord knows there are so many of them.

Chris Fryburger: It was created by Jeff Bezos, and we’re all living in the wake of it. Think about it. There’s no developer program here. Microsoft, the first thing they did was put a developer program so you can get certified in these tools, and you knew that somebody was certified that was a certain skill level. You could hire them, and there was experience and there’s college courses on how to use Word and all the way up to programming and MSDN or whatever. There’s none of that here. In fact, there’s no one to call. I would even contend that we form the community that helps people. There’s really no place for somebody to just go and ask a question and get an answer. Here’s my big theory. You can tell me that this is bunk, but I think it’s actually slowing down the marketplace.

Chris Fryburger: I think it’s actually a bad decision on Amazon’s part because it affects the user’s experience. If the information is not there, if the picture is not there, if it’s not descriptive, I’m not going to buy that product, which obviously hurts everybody including Amazon, but moreover it’s more likely to get returned. It’s most likely to have support questions around it. What I mean is that I don’t know why they’re not populating some sort of college programs or whatever. I know a country that is, which is another interesting information is all this talent is coming from the Philippines. If you want to hire in this space right now, you probably will not be able to hire in this space especially at the exec level in butts in seats too. PPC folks and stuff, you can’t hire them in the US. I know this because I work with a lot of recruiters and things. Most of those employees, in fact some of the companies I mentioned, a good chunk, like 40% of their employees are from the Philippines.

Liz Downing: There are a large, large group of people in the Philippines that understand this industry really, really well.

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: That’s how Yoni Kaminski, his company, all of his people get it-

Chris Fryburger: Yes, link-

Liz Downing: … but they just are sitting in the Philippines.

Chris Fryburger: … to multiple, I mean, you were just referring to Multiply Mii

Liz Downing: Yeah, well, I’m jotting down everybody we’re mentioning.

Chris Fryburger: We’re doing favors for everybody. The thing was that he was in early, recognized that the Philippines is native English speaking that’s highly educated. Almost every citizen was college educated. They also had primed this maybe about the last 20 years doing the virtual VA thing, which his what you think of when you hear the word VA. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got my assistant or whatever that’s virtual,” which is great, and they killed on that, but the president of the company came down from on high in the university system and everybody came down to train a high-tech workforce. A large tongue of that they’re realizing is Amazon skill sets, and guess what, they’re killing it. The whole country is employed in COVID times and smart.

Chris Fryburger: Last thing is altruistic. I wish the US in this current environment, I want to encourage anybody that’s unemployed that’s listening to this or knows somebody that’s unemployed, comes from the digital world or knows anything about marketing or really anything about anything, I mean, if they’re a lawyer or an accountant, just add Amazon to it, in front of it, and it’s crickets over here. It’s blue sky. There’s tons of opportunity, and it’s the next 20 years. It’s the next 20 years.

Liz Downing: The thing is he’s right. It’s absolutely true. There’s so much opportunity in this space, but you have to understand this space in order to be successful here. That’s when you get down to vetting the people that you work with, vetting your partners. I’ve actually heard from so many traditional digital advertising agencies that were asking me, “Okay, how do I learn Amazon?” I’m, like, “Do you have several weeks because it’s going to take that long.” Everybody, our organization has to learn it, and you’re going to have questions.

Liz Downing: Another thing that you said earlier struck me, and that’s it’s not like you can Amazon up and say, “Hey, I’m a digital marketing agency that would really like to learn how to support third-party sellers on the Amazon Marketplace.” You can’t call up Amazon and say, “Hey, I’m a third-party seller on the Amazon Marketplace, and I’d really like some advice on how to optimize my listing.” There is plenty of documentation in Seller Central, but Amazon has grown so quickly that things like Seller Central, Help Documentation, rules and regulations, terms of service-

Chris Fryburger: Thank you.

Liz Downing: … thank you, who to contact, I mean, you’ll get a hold of somebody, and they don’t know because there’s no playbook for a lot of things. It’s still very much the wild west on dot-com, and most of the other marketplaces are a couple of years behind dot-com. I was talking to Yanna, well, I have to definitely link to YLT because if you’re looking for international expansion, you need vocalization to translation, and she’s really good at that.

Chris Fryburger: Oh, yeah, it’s the only choice. Boy, you’re going to make lots of affiliate dollars here, man.

Liz Downing: I don’t do affiliates, so-

Chris Fryburger: Oh, you don’t, good.

Liz Downing: … no, I’m not.

Chris Fryburger: Oh, well, you should. I don’t know.

Liz Downing: I just dearly believe in these people, but-

Chris Fryburger: A little kickback.

Liz Downing: … I was talking to her because we’ve gotten some complaints from brands that are selling on Dotco.uk. They’re selling on .ZE. They’re selling on other international marketplaces, and they’re, like, “I don’t understand why I can’t do this with my advertising. It’s just not available yet on that platform.” She also said some rules and regulations, some TOS that exists on dot-com doesn’t exist on .ZE or .ES, so you can get away with some things in those marketplaces that you can’t get away with in the US. You have to be really, really careful, so understanding as a seller you have to understand the rules. You can’t go back to Amazon ever and say, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know that that was a rule. I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. It was worded weird,” you know.

Chris Fryburger: You won’t have the chance to apologize.

Liz Downing: No, and there’s no excuse. It’s your job to know. It’s your job to understand. It’s your job to interpret even if the internal employees at Amazon don’t take interpretation as seriously as you do.

Chris Fryburger: Correct.

Liz Downing: That happens a lot. I worked with reviews because that’s obviously a huge deal for anybody selling on Amazon but especially brand owners. You’ve got to have those reviews. That’s a power supply wheel. I mean, get the reviews, and then you get more sales, and you get reviews, and you also get increased visibility. If you’ve got lots and lots of bad reviews, it’s really, really bad. It’s harder and harder to get reviews. Everybody that I talk to, they’re, like, “What should I do?” I’m, like, “Well, first of all, automate, automate, automate, automate your review request.” I refer everybody to Feedback Five, so I’ll return them.

Chris Fryburger: Awesome. There’s another one.

Liz Downing: You also have to get more sales. Amazon themselves are sending out review requests. If you are sending your one through the Request a Review on the order details page, then you’re doing what you can to get more reviews. I think that the consumer world is getting a little more savvy about reviews, like, “I should leave a review for that because I understand that it helps.”

Chris Fryburger: I wish that Amazon would get serious about reviews. I mean-

Liz Downing: Well, they are serious about reviews. That’s the problem with it.

Chris Fryburger: Having more faith-

Liz Downing: Amazon is serious about reviews, but they’re also, like, “I don’t know what to do about reviews.”

Chris Fryburger: I’m just commenting that it’s been proven that half of the reviews on Amazon are fake, which hurts, again, the customer experience. His primary raison d’etre is supposed to be customer experience, so why if you read a review and then you clearly got the object, and it wasn’t for that object or it was clearly canned or whatever, but if you are playing the game right now, you kind of have to put a gray hat on.

Liz Downing: Yeah, just-

Chris Fryburger: I mean, you can disagree with that. Well, you may-

Liz Downing: … put a gray hat on. I mean, some people wear gray hats.

Chris Fryburger: I know, but you know what I mean. I’m not saying that, but you’re going to find that the competition from China not only replicated your product but also has fake reviews too. There’s been some-

Liz Downing: Well, and they had global reviews, and now that’s gone. Global Review, and now all-

Chris Fryburger: True.

Liz Downing: … your reviews are specific to your marketplace. I think that we’re coming up on a change-

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: … but it’s not happening fast enough-

Chris Fryburger: Correct.

Liz Downing: … because now-

Chris Fryburger: Well, it’s happening fast, but nobody can track it.

Liz Downing: It’s happening fast in a really bad way, though. You know what I mean. No more global reviews. You can’t comment on reviews anymore. You can’t address people’s problems. It was devastating to not be able to do incentivize reviews, and that’s not just paying for a review, but, like, “Here, test out my product and please leave a review.” That was great for lots of people, and people are still doing it by the way even if it’s completely against Amazon seller policy.

Chris Fryburger: You know those little cards? Are you allowed to do those?

Liz Downing: No.

Chris Fryburger: I mean, you’re not allowed to put it into-

Liz Downing: No, I mean-

Chris Fryburger: … almost half of them I get.

Liz Downing: You can request a review on an insert I think. You’d have to check with an expert because I’m not an expert on that anymore. You can’t do that-

Chris Fryburger: I was curious.

Liz Downing: … and offer a coupon on the same insert.

Chris Fryburger: Oh, I see, I see. How interesting.

Liz Downing: Then that’s incentivized. You’ve-

Chris Fryburger: Oh, I see. Wait, I get free stuff, anyway, whatever. Well, I’m curious what the answer is on that because the little card that says you get a free product, and I left the review, and then I send them a screenshot of the review, and I got the free product.

Liz Downing: That’s totally against the rules.

Chris Fryburger: Well, okay. As a consumer, I do it all the time. I would never recognize it.

Liz Downing: Well, they’re not going to take away your consumer account-

Chris Fryburger: Exactly.

Liz Downing: … for doing that.

Chris Fryburger: That’s for sure.

Liz Downing: Clearly not.

Chris Fryburger: I hope not, but, yeah-

Liz Downing: Well, and I agree that I don’t think that it’s been taken seriously enough at Amazon. I was working with a big brand who was having an up-vote problem. Somebody was thumbing up the negative reviews. They had one negative review out of 400 reviews, and it had-

Chris Fryburger: Right, it got tagged.

Liz Downing: … 400 thumbs up, and none of the other reviews had any thumbs up. Obviously, that’s fishy, but they contacted Amazon. Amazon said, “We have no way of seeing who gave it a thumb.”

Chris Fryburger: First of all, that’s crap. Second of all, seriously, there’s tools right now that help me like Fakespot, or what am I thinking of, some of the tools you run. They’re not perfect. It’s an algorithm that figures out most likely these listings are comprised or completely are a part of fake reviews. It technically can be challenged, and obviously it has to go a human maybe for a review to actually make sure of that, but they could stop it. The short answer is they want more reviews because they want people to buy more. You’re going to buy a product that has more reviews. You’re going to read maybe two of them, and you may or may be aware that one of them is fake, but that’s just my rant on reviews. I think it could much more cleaned up because I think it’s critical. It’s how I came to Amazon.

Chris Fryburger: For me, that’s why I ordered from Amazon for the first time because I can read about the product, and then I can do my own research through these guys, these people that own the product. Now I’m going to buy this because of the reviews. That was the first time from an ecommerce standpoint that hooked me. I think that’s true maybe was a hook for Amazon in general was that review feature, but they woefully languished with it in my opinion.

Liz Downing: I want to pause and ask everybody here to pop in the chat if you remember the first thing you ever bought on Amazon.

Chris Fryburger: That’s a good question. That’s a good question.

Liz Downing: Go ahead and pop it in the chat, y’all. A book. Me too, Laura. I bought a textbook. A book.

Chris Fryburger: What year?

Liz Downing: For me, it was 2004 I want to say. I’m a late bloomer. Anybody else? More books. More books. Yeah, Michael bought a book around 2000.

Chris Fryburger: That’s about like what I was too, I think.

Liz Downing: I was in college. Phone case circa 2012 for Kendall. Right on. Books for Meyer. Yeah, I mean, it was a bookseller.

Chris Fryburger: It was.

Liz Downing: I remember people talking about it when I was in college saying, “Yeah, I order my books online.” I’m, like, “I’ve never had a computer before,” which is weird considering what I do now, and it really shows my age because-

Chris Fryburger: That’s not fair because I’m older than you, so what I’m going to say is that I remember reading about them in Forbes or something in 1998 or something. That was the pre-IPO, and I’m like, “This is crazy, like, you’re going to sell books. I mean, how can you make that profitable? It’s, like, it takes too much to ship a book, right.” Was I wrong like 15 times, but I’ve got reason being as I’ve gone through the dot-com days. I was wrong on a lot of things in the dot-com days as well. This environment reminds exactly of that again. If you will, it’s 1997 post Netscape, or it’s 2001 post Google Ad Words or something along those lines. That’s the environment we’re in right now, and I get that same feeling. I’m old, so I can say these things, like, “I remember back when.”

Chris Fryburger: It’s just all the signs are there. The ridiculous evaluations, if I may, for the players in the space right now, the mergers that are still going to happen, the consolidation that still has to happen, the professionalism that has to happen that still has to come in. I don’t mean that in the way it sounds, but there’s not a lot of gray air in this space. It’s not me. It’s just a maturation, I think, that has to happen, but it’s-

Liz Downing: I have plenty.

Chris Fryburger: … the lightening strike moment. Back in the day, I would use the term “inside the tornado.” If somebody is old enough to remember that, you’re old like me. It was a guy that wrote a Harvard study book, a famous author back in the ’90s that had a series of books on the dot-com type phenomena of companies. The first stage is inside the tornado where things are crazy. You can’t hire for this stuff. Back in the day, if you knew HTML, you were killing it, and you double your salary. It’s the same thing here, same thing happening. Young companies are going to get bought up, and there’s going to be some ridiculous IPOs and things along those lines. Then it’ll taper off, and in six or seven years there’ll be a correction, the dot-com bubble. The Amazon.com bubble will burst. I would say it’s probably going to be more like 20 years. Regardless, Amazon Amazon Amazon Amazon, is that the answer? More Amazon?

Liz Downing: More Amazon.

Chris Fryburger: More Amazon.

Liz Downing: I am seeing some pretty amazing growth with brands that are selling on other channels.

Chris Fryburger: True.

Liz Downing: Walmart specifically, we have some brands just killing it on Walmart. It-

Chris Fryburger: Instacart, is it also a great one.

Liz Downing: Well, and Walmart is so nice to work with. If you’re a third-party seller, it’s, like, they’ve learned a little bit.

Chris Fryburger: They’re trying to woo you guys. They’re trying to woo sellers over to their platform. They have about 8% of the traffic of Amazon. By the way, did you see that the Marketplace grew 60% last quarter?

Liz Downing: Thanks, COVID.

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, think about that. That’s stunning. Instacart is great to deal with too. They have a real program with a real rep on the other side. They’re welcoming because they know that they want brands on their platform too, so, yes, there are others out there.

Liz Downing: Laura feels that for a 1P, Walmart is harder. Laura, email me, and let me see if I can help you. We also-

Chris Fryburger: You know-

Liz Downing: … Lee asked a good question. This is a tactical, brain twisty question, so let’s see if we can help. Can we discuss the difficulty of reaching support for gated category product selling permission? I have been struggling with getting permission to sell in OTC drug categories, so over-the-counter drugs. We are a respected company in the US. I cannot get approval. Where can I go for help?

Chris Fryburger: I have a resource for you or actually a couple of resources I’d point to. Just to clarify, I’m not the expert. I’m an expert in the experts, so I can’t answer. That goes down-

Liz Downing: That’s what she’s asking, though. Who can you refer me to to get ungated here?

Chris Fryburger: We need to talk about it a little bit more. I’d have to think about it a little more and go back to my network. I don’t want to be cagey and not provide the answer, but I encourage just to reach out to me because it just depends you mentioned the drug category, and the hair goes up on my back and my neck. It’s just going to require a different Mr. Wolf. I guess I’m Mr. Wolf. It’s going to require somebody to clean up that for you, and it’s going to have to make some calls on that one.

Liz Downing: Can I send her your email address?

Chris Fryburger: Please, of course.

Liz Downing: Which is chris@nreach.com.

Chris Fryburger: At nReach without an I, nReach.com. As with anybody, if you have any questions, anybody, please reach out. Happy to help.

Liz Downing: That is a whole different kettle of fish than it used to be because back in the wild west retail arbitrage you could just go to the endcap at Rite-Aid and scan a bunch of stuff with your seller app and send in this razor-

Chris Fryburger: No.

Liz Downing: … and this stuffed animal because I did that.

Chris Fryburger: Arbitrage had its day, but that’s where we all came from. Well, actually, I shouldn’t say “we,” but all of us, but it’s just where everything rooted from.

Liz Downing: Back then, all of sudden Amazon was, like, “Hey, if you’re going to sell this brand, you kind of need an invoice from the brand to prove that, you know, you’re allowed to see it.”

Chris Fryburger: Real quick to that last question, the other thing that hasn’t been mentioned really is Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. For lack of a better description, Prime has got its own channel images, and that’s where most of us operate all the time. There’s all kinds of stuff and good work being done in that space, and may you have a partner in that space. I wish you the best and can help you with that. Then there’s this chasm, and then there’s Fresh. I think I’m saying this correct. I’m fair in saying this because I’ve hunted for them. There’s actually only one agency in the world that actually does Fresh, will walk a brand up to the application process. You get Whole Foods and Fresh, so there’s a retail thing going on there. Again, to the person who asked the question, there may be opportunities there also, so even if you’re a cosmetic brand, the lipstick, you can get lipstick at Whole Foods or Amazon Fresh.

Chris Fryburger: There’s still a play there, and I’d say actually a third of the products I see probably should be investigating that channel as well. It takes a completely different agency and a completely different set of skills. If we’re rare over here for unicorns, over here it’s unicorns with plumage and rainbows or something. Just to clarify that.

Liz Downing: Purple unicorns with squirrel tails and-

Chris Fryburger: Yay.

Liz Downing: … extra sparkles and extra sprinkles. This is a great question, and I don’t think that we can tackle it fully. Cameron asks, “We like fulfilling our own orders as we give it the family personal touch, but it appears that Amazon is going for a trend to get everything FBA. What are some ways to compete while being FBM?” I’ve got some thoughts on that in terms of your keyword strategy, how you’re advertising your listings, how you’re managing your supply chain, so that your fulfillment speed is fast enough, so you don’t get that prime surge because so many go, and they type in a keyword, and then they sort by Prime, and then they sort by star rating. If you don’t have the Prime part of it, your price needs to be right, your listing needs to be absolutely perfect.

Liz Downing: Your product has got to be amazing. You’ve got to be putting enough ad dollars behind it to get it seen, and you’ve got to make sure your fulfillment is as fast as humanely possible and that your reviews are good and that your seller feedback is good. There are ways to do all that. That sounds overwhelming, but there are ways to do all of that. Cameron, do email me, and let’s have a little sit-down strategy session because I’ve got some ideas for you. That was a good question, though. I like that too. I have a friend in New York. I don’t know if he’s still selling or not, but he would merchant fulfill all of his stuff because he had a certain way he liked to package things. It was a luxury item. He was, like, “You know what, I don’t want to send it and have it put in a box with somebody’s, like, you know, diapers and pacifier and hemorrhoid ring. You know, I need my stuff to be special.”

Chris Fryburger: Sure.

Liz Downing: It’s hard to talk somebody into FBA when that’s how they’re thinking about FBA.

Chris Fryburger: Right. My answer would be just what you said. Again, I’m the expert in the experts, even if I would know that, I know enough to know that it probably changed since I’ve known it, if that makes sense. You guys, you’re drinking from the hose, and I admire that. I’m just going to stand over to the side and respect the fact that you’re following all this and are the experts in it.

Liz Downing: All right, and Lee actually said she knows you and has worked together with you in the past, and she will call you.

Chris Fryburger: Oh, awesome. Great, thanks.

Liz Downing: She has your number.

Chris Fryburger: Well, there we go.

Liz Downing: What’s up with that?

Chris Fryburger: It’s a good number to have.

Liz Downing: Let’s talk a little bit about technology because there are just a couple of things that I want you to always, always think about when choosing technology. Even when you have a full-service agency, sometimes there are things that full-service agencies don’t do. Then there are companies that are a combination of technology and service like us like ATETA that perform certain functions. We’re actually getting ready to perform more functions, but the number one thing that you always have to think about when you’re choosing a technology partner is that they’ve got to be in the Amazon App Store. That means that Amazon knows that they’re accessing data from Amazon, they’re an API because got to have that permission.

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, and they’re cracked down, way down on that too by the way. Amazon does not like people accessing their data. They have a trusted set of partners, and you need that app status.

Liz Downing: They’ve got to be in the App Store. I don’t know exactly what to tell you about the reviews in the App Store. I think that’s even further behind the reviews on products.

Chris Fryburger: I can imagine. I can imagine.

Liz Downing: I don’t think that we’ve seen a huge problem with it here at Teikametrics, but I know that I’ve talked to a lot of other companies that are providers that are, like, “Man, it’s really hard to get reviews on the App Store. I just, you know, my competitor-

Chris Fryburger: It’s competitive.

Liz Downing: … just got 60 in one day. How did that happen?”

Chris Fryburger: Yearh, it’s pathetic. It’s just hurting. Well, it’s obvious, they’re in a globe grabbing mode. They’re just grabbing real estate as fast as they can just shoving it through the systems and then rewiring everything. It’s sort of forgivable, but they have a lot of money. Why don’t you just develop out your support more.

Liz Downing: Yeah.

Chris Fryburger: I don’t know. There’s so many aspects to it. How could you support this? Could you support all of these things, if you were Amazon? I don’t know. I don’t think you could do it internally, so anyway I don’t know, I’m waxing again.

Liz Downing: Then why build it, if you’re not going to make it good or know how it works?

Chris Fryburger: It’s great. You order-

Liz Downing: I guess they-

Chris Fryburger: … a product, and you shows up on your door two days later or maybe one, maybe a couple of hours for one.

Liz Downing: That’s all that needs to work.

Chris Fryburger: Right.

Liz Downing: Unfortunately, when you’re a third-party seller or brand owner on Amazon, you sure wish that other stuff would work, and when you’re a technology or service provider. Tip number one when choosing software, definitely pick somebody that’s in the App Store. That means they’re allowed to access Amazon’s data, and they’re going to be around for a while instead of accessing Amazon’s data all willy-nilly and then getting shut down. Two, listen to the industry. It’s here. It’s on Clubhouse. There are webinars like this. There are podcasts. I’ve got a list. If you want them, email me, ldowning@teikadev.wpengine.com. I’ve got a list of podcasts of interest. There are people like Chris I think that probably he doesn’t deal with software a whole lot.

Liz Downing: There’s also we just did a giveway yesterday with the EcommCollective, which is a group of sellers and service and software providers that it’s just a free resource for the seller community. You can sign up. You can ask any question you want to the email address. Somebody will answer you, and I think it’s 24 hours. They go through the whole network, and they’re, “Okay, that specialist knows this,” and then they put that out. Add to the fact that we’ve all, all of the people that are participating have given some sort of significant item or service of value that you can win. Yesterday I think we gave away over $100,000 worth of software and services over the course of 2:00 to 5:00 last night. It was pretty fun and amazing.

Chris Fryburger: It sounds great.

Liz Downing: It was Yoni and of course I thought, “Okay, I’m just going to, like, do the giveaway,” and he gets on. He’s, like, “Talk to me about this and tell me about this,” and I’m, like, “Of course.” He makes everything so much more valuable because he’s got such an inquisitive mind. It’s amazing and so much fun. That’s You for you. We’ll link to them too, if you’ve got reimbursement that Amazon owes you, they find that, so that’s a super thing, and a lot of agencies don’t do that for you. That’s a different kind of thing that you would need to be add-on.

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, more like a full-time, absolutely. You’re right. I’m going to give in a little bit. There is no such thing as a full-service agency. You, by default, have to piecemeal some of this stuff. Ideally, you have a good agency that covers the core obviously and works together because I think some of these parts move best together. You made the wild west analogy, so I’ll run with that and say you’re really only as good as the posse that you have and that there is no sheriff so good luck with that.

Liz Downing: Although I do have strong opinions. I have strong opinions, and I have people that I think are amazing at their work. If anybody actually wants to know what my dream team would be, if you didn’t want to go with the full-service agency, but you did need to get everything done, I will go ahead and put the work in to put together my dream team of software and service providers and hand that over to you because that’s fun for me. It’s not like I don’t have enough to do with the work in our week.

Chris Fryburger: I would be interested in that, Liz. I think I can speak for everyone listening, it would probably be very interesting what that would look like.

Liz Downing: You’re going to give it to all the agencies and be, like, “Look what Liz did. We hate her now, right.” I’m just kidding.

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, yeah. By the way, yes, yeah, you just did my job for me. Thank you. Appreciate it for creating. Awesome, thanks.

Liz Downing: Oh, Stew says, “We’re crushing it with driving sponsored traffic to brand stores. Conversion rates are, like, 30% or more. Are you seeing this across the counts?” It is absolutely working to do sponsored traffic to brand stores right now. That’s a great strategy, and we’re seeing that be killer. Stew, keep on rocking with that. It’s a great thing to do, and never forget how brand stores can change your traffic.

Chris Fryburger: In that vein, I would just add there’s an opportunity of DSP as well. There aren’t a lot of people that are doing that.

Liz Downing: Oh, man.

Chris Fryburger: There aren’t a lot of people doing Amazon DSP. If you’re looking fire line, that’s where to be. The targeting to do that blows Google out of the water, but there’s a layer. I will just say that it seems like, correct me if I’m wrong, Liz, there’s a certain layer where it applies. It’s expensive. It’s not for maybe smaller sellers. You need a budget to work with, and-

Liz Downing: Yeah, and you’ve got to have the right ingredients for it to be really, really effective, but you don’t really have to be great big though because we’re seeing it work for a lot of different sized brands. You don’t have that $35,000 minimum buy-in when you work with us because-

Chris Fryburger: With you, yes.

Liz Downing: Yeah, and with other providers. You skip that-

Chris Fryburger: Yeah, but with you.

Liz Downing: … when you’re working with us, and you should work with us because we’re really, really good at it.

Chris Fryburger: Yes.

Liz Downing: We’ve got some amazing things happening with DSP actually. We can’t do case studies fast enough, you know what I mean, because we’re just trying to rock and roll these accounts.

Chris Fryburger: The importance there is it just, as everybody knows, whether big or small brand, if you look at all the ad dollars spend, the digital ad dollars that are spent around the world, right now it used to be Google and Facebook, and then it was some Bing and some others, but Amazon now owns a third of that and climbing. This is advertising off of Amazon but also non-Amazon products. For instance, the top advertiser on Amazon, I learned this, is State Farm. They don’t have a product on Amazon. That’s an opportunity for them, for others to bring brands in, and maybe you didn’t think of Amazon. If somebody buys a car part, and Google can tell you when you bought your first car because they know when you bought parts and you maybe bought the fuzzy wheel cover and that kind of stuff.

Chris Fryburger: They can figure out that, “Okay, you just bought a car or a new car or a first car.” Well, State Farm wants to know that, and they’re going to target that person for insurance. It’s brilliant, and they know it. Outside of that also Amazon has got just like Google and Facebook and others have a widespread ad mot only on just on their platform but elsewhere as well. That’s basically DSP is their entire digital service platform. That said, everybody knows that that are probably listening. Blah, blah, blah, I just told everybody something they knew.

Chris Fryburger: The problem is that is brand new, and there’s very few people that are players that even had access to it. You have to have a certain spin. Correct me, Liz. I don’t remember what the number is. It might be over a million a year in spend just to be invited to the program. The smaller sellers can’t even get in the door, so they have to work through a third party like Liz and others that are out there. There’s a handful that have this, and even that handful, if I may, are trying to figure it out, trying to hire for it and just trying to run as fast with it. It will be the billion dollar play and advantage for sellers and everyone that adopts it soon enough, sooner than later.

Liz Downing: Those of you that are still hanging out raise your hand and go to webinar if you’re currently running DSPS. I’m just curious. Cameron is. Laura is. Good. Good, good.

Chris Fryburger: Cool.

Liz Downing: Not a ton of you actually. Yeah, it’s definitely that’s actually what I’m speaking with Jason, VoiceComputer, Kerns about at Prosper in a few months is we’re talking about the amazing, amazing, and Meyer is going to start it soon. If you need help with that, call me. We’re talking about the power of all of these different options, and we’re doing a special focus on DSP. Also, I’m going to include a link. I’ve got a special page for the Prosper show, because I’m on the advisory council, that’s got a coupon. If you guys want to go to it, you can use this coupon and get a $100 off your ticket. We’re also doing next week’s webinar is on Wednesday doing all these weird days, guys. You’d think I had something to do on Tuesdays. I don’t. I just think, “Uh, I should be doing a webinar.”

Liz Downing: Next week I’ve got some Prosper advisory council members and Brian Anderson who’s the conference coordinator joining me to talk a little bit about what the agenda is going to look like, what kind of safety measures are in place, where all of the secret events are, where the parties are, all that kind of stuff. You guys should tune into that. That’s on our webinars page on Teikametrics.com.

Chris Fryburger: Is there a keynote yet for that? Keynote speaker? I’m just curious have you guys picked on yet?

Liz Downing: I think so. Brian is taking a much needed vacation right this second.

Liz Downing: Hopefully, we’ll be able to tease that out during the webinar next week.

Chris Fryburger: Listeners come to Prosper. I know there’s a question some are and some aren’t, but I am, so come meet me. Cool.

Liz Downing: I’ll be there too, and it’ll be so much fun.

Chris Fryburger: I look forward to meeting you for the first time, Liz.

Liz Downing: Yeah, Chris and I have never met in person. I think that’s wild.

Chris Fryburger: I’ve never met anybody in this space ever.

Chris Fryburger: … well, there’s a couple of people I work with locally, but we’ve had coffee. That’s it.

Liz Downing: I’ve been at Teikametrics since August, and the only person I’ve ever met in person from this organization is Jason Magee who I knew before he or I worked here. I haven’t met my boss. I haven’t met Alistair. I haven’t met the people I work closest to in person because this COVID thing has been so weird. Yes, Laura, Prosper is in person this year. The special workshop day is July 13. The actual show is the 14th and the 15th. It’s at the Westgate in Las Vegas.

Chris Fryburger: She can get you a coupon, but I got an email today that today is the last day of the early bird discount. It’s actually substantial, so just if you’re going to make a decision, probably best today and then use the coupon.

Liz Downing: Shoot me that link, Chris, and I’ll-

Chris Fryburger: They just emailed it out. If you signed up, you got that newsletter today I think or whatever that email today.

Liz Downing: Okay, so try to take of early bird, and if not, I’ve got $100 off coupon code that you can attend. There is not going to be an online component. It’s going to be in-person only. I think that they release some of the content afterwards, and there are going to be a couple of webinars leading up to it that you should attend. That was just the ending. Hey, we’re going to Prosper, and we’re super excited about it, but tune in for a webinar next week. Chris, you’ll sign up for it and not come-

Chris Fryburger: I will.

Liz Downing: … but you can watch it later.

Chris Fryburger: Hey, I can listen to it later.

Liz Downing: All right, well, Chris, thank you so much. This has been so fun.

Chris Fryburger: Thank you.

Liz Downing: Thank you everybody for attending on our Thursday webinar, but I hope you learned something. If you’ve got any questions, you can email either of us. Thank you for that, Michael. That’s awesome. Mark, contact Chris with that question.

Chris Fryburger: Sure.

Liz Downing: We’re at the top of the hour but thanks again. We’ll see you guys next week. Chris, thank you so much. You rock the boat.

Chris Fryburger: Thank you. Always a pleasure you guys. Thanks, guys.

Liz Downing: Take care everyone.

Chris Fryburger: Bye.

Liz Downing: Bye.