#623 - From Amazon Influencer To Amazon Seller
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Today, we've got the queen of TikTok back on the show with over 1 million followers now, Gracie from DealCheats. And she's going to talk about all the different ways that she's been making money as an influencer and creator this year, as well as how she has actually now become an Amazon seller as well. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. ♪

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. Well, that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And we have somebody on the show. She has many nicknames, you know, Queen of TikTok and all-knowing person. No, she has a lot of names out there, but we know her as Gracie here, and this is the third time she's been on the podcast. Gracie, welcome back.

Hello, Bradley. We're back. Happy to be back. We are back. Yes, and I just changed my background to a little pinkish light since she's got the lighting going on over there. Love it, love it. This is the third time I said that she's been on the podcast. So for those of you who want to go get a little bit more of her backstory, we're not going to do too much of that today. For those who've already listened to it, go back to episode 360. Well, that's a cool number. I didn't realize you were on 360. 360 and then 498.com.

I'm not sure what episode number this is going to be. We're in the 600s by now, but 498, we talked about TikTok shop. TikTok shop wasn't even a thing the first time he came on the podcast. And so, yeah, we're definitely going to talk about that. But before I get into that, and I don't know what you're going to answer here because you know me, like I don't want you to want to think about what we're going to talk about. I just wanted to come out organically. And I told you, I was like, no, no, don't tell me anything about this. But I want to know you actually...

started selling on Amazon this year, right? I did. I did earlier this year. So it's been a good couple of months that I've been selling. Okay. All right. So like, you've just been hanging out with Amazon sellers for like two, three years now. And you're like, I got to do this myself. Well, it was, you know, I was on the other side of things. So I was on like the creator, the marketing, the external traffic side, driving traffic to Amazon listings. But I also do realize it was

more of an intention of learning what the different parts of selling on Amazon encompassed more than it was like, oh, like, let me just start selling because it's easy or fun or whatever. Like, I think everyone who sells on Amazon knows like,

It's no walk in the park, but it was more like a learning experience of like, let me see what I have to go through. Let me understand what everyone's talking about so I can better understand the other side of what I do. Exactly. You know, like that's why I started selling on Amazon, actually, because I was a consultant for Amazon sellers before I worked at Helium 10. So I kind of knew how things worked and everything. And then I stopped that because I was like, all right, Helium 10 is all my focus. And I was like, wait a minute.

They want me to be in this like educational or an educator. Like I cannot do this if I'm not in the game. So that's why I actually started, you know, not really to make money and stuff like, like other people do, but I'm like, Hey, I got to experiment with stuff. I got to be able to empathize with people. Now tell me, has that kind of like opened up like your eyes? Like, do you see things in a different perspective now when you speak to Amazon sellers? Like, like you're coming from a, a place of like empathy a little bit more and stuff.

Oh, absolutely. So a big part of it, I think, is just the profit margins that I think I'm understanding now. A lot of times, you know, I do deals. So I'm like, oh, just set up a 50% off discount. But that's until I realized I was like, oh, that's a complete loss. Like that's like just not possible for a lot of the US based sellers. So that was...

something that I knew, but also maybe needed to do it myself to realize and understand. Your product, did you manufacture it in China, made in USA? Where did you get it from? So it is sourced from China, but also right now that was a starting point because the purpose of me starting to sell it was just a learning process more than a making money type of project. So

I kind of did it the way that I feel like the majority of sellers start selling potentially when they're doing private label, which is sourcing from China and like turning it into something like more private label. So that is the format I started with. However, I'm doing more US based sourcing now.

for both like quality and I think just shipping time reasons. So hold on the first product sourced in China about how much did you invest? Five grand, 10 grand, 20 grand. Yeah. One of those numbers.

Thousands of dollars. You said it. Yeah. Yeah. One of those numbers for sure. Okay. It was not like a small amount. Like that's, that's something that people have been saying for a while now. It's like, if you want to be successful on Amazon, you're going to need the capital. Is it that product? You're like, Hey, let me, instead of keep keeping going, uh, importing from China, I want to start, uh, sourcing that exact product here in the United States. Or are you like expanding out your line? And now you're looking at, at, at us as a, as a source. Well,

More expanding. So I think there are parts of this product that are just not profitable if you were to source from the U.S., especially when you're going to compare them to the prices of the market competitors. Like, how am I going to be priced at double the price of a product that somebody could get the exact same product of? So with that in mind, I'm kind of expanding and growing into...

just different versions of the product and like upgraded versions as well. And I think part of it, part of launching was just like understanding what the market was like, what kind of sales is it going to get? How is this going to be met by the buyers? And that was kind of the data that I wanted before I expanded. And now we're in like the expansion part where I know like this does well and like there's a market for this and now I can successfully do this.

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To date from your Amazon sales, like what's been your biggest W and what's the biggest L that you've taken so far? Okay. So big W, I, in my humble opinion, I, I really, really wanted to just, again, learning process and like testing. I wanted a organic PPC free lunch. And I know that so many people I've maybe brought this up to, or like ran the idea by them kind of laughed at me and was like, ha ha, like in your dreams, like good luck with that one. But I did it.

I did it and it's going well and I'm ranked very, very, very well for the keywords that I want to rank for. And I think the PPC is like I'm realizing not a part that I can keep out of forever. It's definitely like a piece of the pie when you are selling on Amazon, at least to some extent. Hold on. Did you say you're not doing PPC or you are doing PPC? I recently am exploring it, but like when you launch, you didn't do PPC? Oh, none at all.

Hold on. Okay. See, that just totally went over my head there. I wasn't even paying attention. Okay, because I was like, well, why are people making fun of you for organically launching with PPC? Like, that's how everybody launches. So...

Did you get into something that was like there wasn't much competition out there or there was? I would say like it's pretty competitive. Most people who are like in the category or like know about it, they're like, oh, good luck with that one. It's very saturated. So then what was one of your things? Like did you send some traffic there like outside of Amazon? Did you get other influencers to promote it? Yes, yes, yes. My knowledge of influencer marketing...

I applied it and I worked with influencers and I, I basically tried to do as much external traffic as I could without any PPC just through influencer marketing. And that was kind of the thing that I wanted to just potentially see if it was possible. You know, obviously, you know, like I'm not, you know, you haven't been in the Amazon space for, for too long, but like, you know, like five, six years ago, you know, the way that people would rank, um,

Um, it wasn't necessarily through PPC, like you could do without PPC, but it was because you would use these services where people would send traffic from off of Amazon to certain, you know, like two-step URLs, uh, to, to rank for certain keywords or sending people to actually literally search for a keyword. And then they would get a, a rebate and stuff like that. But I'm assuming you didn't do those kinds of things, but you're just saying, Hey, I'm

organically pushing the product, not even trying to like, you know, gain the system with keywords, but it actually helped your organic ranking for some of your main keywords because Amazon recognized what your main keywords are and they saw that, hey, this product is pretty successful, decent conversion rate. So it just organically moves you up the rankings. Is that kind of like a accurate assessment? That's it. Yep. Awesome. Awesome. I tell everybody that you've got to use

your own, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, not necessarily expertise, but everybody has something special that they have that other people don't. And a lot of people don't realize what it is, you know, um, you have a big network, right? So I'm assuming you use that and there's nothing wrong with that, but like how much of what you did could actually ignore a regular person

um not the queen of tiktok do you know obviously you've got things you know like i saw on your instagram last week you're in you know new york uh you're rubbing shoulders with celebrities and famous people and obviously you know you just tell one of them hey promote my product and you get thousands of views somebody like me probably couldn't do that i don't rub shoulders with you're like the closest celebrity i rub shoulders uh with here but you know

So forgetting those kinds of things, like what is something that, Hey, you did it, but literally I could do it. Literally somebody who's listening could probably do the same thing. Great question. I took this into account. So I wanted, I did not want to use my own personal platform to promote this. So I didn't because I wanted, no, yeah, seriously. I did not use my own platform. I did not like make, I didn't make any pieces of content myself about this product. So I really wanted to just create something that I could do for myself.

somebody else or that anybody else could do anybody else who like first of all I have never ever ever gone to any of my friends creators influencers anyone famous and be like here's my product I would never do that um not to say that it's not like I don't think there's anything wrong with that oh nothing wrong with that but I didn't want to use like a network or friendships to be like oh hey you're an influencer why don't you do this because I've seen that happen and like not a bad idea at all if you have that but obviously not everyone can do that I wanted to do something replicatable

That was the whole thing. So I literally used sites that bring organic traffic, brand referral bonus program. I used those external traffic. I use deal sites like all of this in combination, a bunch of different sources. I also set up a deal like so I was taking advantage of like the deal marketing, which I, you know, I do. So that is great.

kind of the strategy behind it. But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't using like things that only I had access to. Did you put a 50% coupon out there? Like you used to tell people do? Or did you go a little bit more conservative? I think the discounts that I would I would be setting up would be between 30 and 50% off. And that is just what I've seen to work

I also, of course, took that into consideration when I was figuring out what I wanted to sell. I wanted something that I was able to build that margin into so I can set up a 50% off discount code if I needed to and still be profitable. So that is something I had to consider. Interesting. And that is, yeah. Like for the most of us, like I think we probably would do those kind of discounts. But actually for me, if I did that online,

on mine, I would probably lose money, which I'd be okay with. Like for me, I'm okay with losing money when I'm trying to launch and get that initial momentum. But obviously the ideal thing is to go ahead and get a percentage that not only works, but it also makes you, or still allows you to be profitable. So it sounds like you were able to do that. Exactly. And the other thing is, I think, um,

One of my strategies is like the secret promo code. It's like, it's not a price drop. It's not a coupon. It's not a seven day deal. It's not a lightning deal. It's literally, you might have a price drop if you want, but there's a secret promo code that is not publicly visible on the listing. And then you're basically just using it for external traffic. And these are just select deal sites or influencers or groups of people that you're sharing this code on. And all of those are external sales that boost the ranking. So maybe you're, you know, breaking even or even at a loss for those people

specific sales but every one of those sales is organic it's external what did you use the social media coupon or just the private uh the uh private uh discount where it's just a code but it doesn't show up on the page just the code doesn't show up on the page which i guess you could technically also do that with like a social media promo code i actually don't like those social media like i had i forgot what it was but i had an issue with that one time i i tried to uh

uh, to run it. I think it was because I couldn't get like a strike through pricing or whatever it is, but I, I try not to use the social media, uh, coupon code, but then this, this discount was only for, you know, the deal sites and things like that. Now, how many units did, did you kind of like target for, uh, or, or set aside, uh, you know, for these promotions? Honestly, because I, again, like this wasn't like a money grab. Like I, I understood that this was potentially just a learning experience. So I think, uh,

on purpose set aside any exact amount of units that I wanted to sell with this. It was more like as many as possible. Let's see what happens to the ranking. Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense.

these products that you're trying to source now it's going to be under the same brand as what you your first product was i think so yeah i think so it'll just it's like the similar similar product so it wouldn't make sense to like start a whole new yeah yeah well let's go ahead and switch to to like the creator side and and your your bread and butter what have you been doing recently that's new what did you stop doing you know like we've talked in the past about just you know you

You had Instagram channel, I believe YouTube, you were doing Amazon live. I don't know if you were doing any TikTok lives, but what's new on your creator front? So creator fund, I took a little time away from Amazon live, but I'm getting back into it. I think just...

you know, those situations where like you kind of dread something, but then you, you stop doing it and you're like, wait a second, I kind of miss it. So, um, I, I wanted to get back into Amazon live, but I think obviously the big thing of the last year is TikTok shop. And so there's a lot that I've been doing both on the creator side. I've been working a lot with the TikTok team, understanding the creator side. There's this really cool program where they just take creators. Some of like, um, the, the first people to like,

do really well with the content creation. Like they created a group of creators and they've been hosting events, just giving them a lot of educational webinars and tools and incentives. And basically they want to take this group of creators and basically have them trained, ready to go and be available to brands who are wanting to find creators. So

I really like the education and the support that TikTok has been giving creators and it's really made me motivated to want to do more for TikTok Shop, both live and short video. And obviously, I think we've all been seeing people talk about it, see the success from it and see the potential from it. So

That is definitely highlight of the last year. I've also been like working with helping brands get set up. There was a brand I've been working with. We got a couple of viral videos and it was just like really cool to see the behind the scenes of that. See, you know, how many sales happen and then see all these creators and other TikTok shop affiliates just like all of a sudden want to work with a product. Obviously, when you start on TikTok shop, you're going to have to gain that traction, get those first pieces of content and like

Maybe nobody's ever heard of your product. Maybe nobody knows about it. There's like no volume there, but it's cool to like get the ball rolling and then see how it snowballs. In the past, I didn't think about it this way. You know, like I kind of felt like it was two totally different trajectories. Somebody being an influencer slash creator, as opposed to somebody being a seller. Obviously you're breaking boundaries already yourself. You went the opposite way. But now I look at it more and more that,

Like you said, you had to invest thousands over $5,000 into your product. The fact of the matter is a lot of us out here, we don't have $10,000 or whatever to just drop on a product. And I feel that now...

Being an Amazon influencer or a TikTok influencer or whatever, some kind of affiliate program, that could be a way that somebody without having to invest money can actually start to make money. Actually, you probably didn't know this, but even Helium 10, our regular tool, we...

In our Chrome extension, we actually have an influencer mode for the Chrome extension. And then what it does on Amazon, instead of seeing all the details that are important for Amazon sellers, it's showing all the details that are important for Amazon influencers. Like how many videos are in the upper carousel on the platform?

on the page? How many are in the lower carousel? What's the percent of commission for affiliates? What's the percent of commission for influencers? And so now people can, you know, influencers can use our tool to do that because people don't realize that this is a, you know, like you invest nothing, you know, like you're just reviewing products that you maybe have already bought or you're already, that you were going to buy anyways. And yeah, you know, it's not like you're going to make a million dollars off of all these videos, but, you know, you get your video on the top carousel and people, you know,

that's what they see is the last video that they see before they, they, they buy the product. You're getting like, you know, one, two, three, whatever, you know, percent commission. And that can add up on, on some, some good selling products. Absolutely. And I think the shop will video era, it's like, it's still continuing. Of course, it's getting a lot more saturated and competitive with, um, and there's parts of it that are kind of out of our control. That might be a little bit frustrating, but,

for the most part, you're totally right about that. If anybody out there like wants to be a creator slash influencer, like affiliate thing, think about it. Like when you're, when you're talking about selling, you have the capital, you have the PPC costs, you have countless other costs that you have to invest into it. And then what you're getting back is like a slim margin of profit. But when you're promoting products, getting the affiliate commission, like

Most of the time the only investment you might have to make is like if you're looking for a specific product that you want to talk about or promote or have and you buy that but a lot of times there's no investment. There's no official investment like look around your house like you have things that are sold on Amazon you can get started and then you can kind of reinvest your earnings as you go but I do think that Helium 10 influencer tool amazing so helpful of the millions of products on Amazon we do need to do product research of like what's worth investing our time in so like huge.

Cool. Love that. If you guys haven't tried it out or you don't know how to use it or you don't know much about the Amazon Influencer Program, if you're a Helium 10 member and you're listening to this, go into your dashboard and hit under the big menu under learning. I literally didn't even see this until this second here and I can't share my screen. I'm on the wrong video here, but

It's called Amazon Influencer Bootcamp. It's like a maybe one hour course or something. Take that. It's completely free. It's right in your dashboard, Amazon Influencer Bootcamp, and learn a little bit more about it. Now, are you on the Amazon side? You said you had taken a little step back from lives in the past. Were you still doing any of these videos or were you generating any kind of creator income on Amazon like last year? So you're talking about like just on-site stuff, aka lives or shoppable videos, not counting affiliate links, right?

are you talking about let's go with that first like were you maybe the answer is no like were you doing any of that stuff last yeah yeah so um from the live streams what i what i did was actually i would take a live stream that would probably be like an hour and a half to two hours long i'd probably go through 20 products within that one and a half to two hours and then i would chop them up into individual shorts and i would like actually upload those videos as shopable videos to amazon to my storefront

and repurpose my live streams that way it would save me a lot of time of like not repeating myself and doing a product and i'm already doing it anyway and i have the footage and why not use it and then amazon came out with a really cool tool it's called clips which is exactly what you think it is it's taking a live stream cutting it up into clips and then being able to like use those as shopable pieces of content so that's what i did hold on hold on can you explain that a little bit so if i take like like you said you've got a video you do live it's got 20

20 products in there. So using the clips, let's say you reviewed this water bottle here, and that was one of the 20 products. The clips cuts it, and then now what happens to that clip?

of this water bottle video, it goes onto the listing of this water bottle as a regular influencer affiliate video? - Potentially. So all I can do in my power is create the clip, upload it to my storefront, tag the product ASIN, and then put it into the universe. And if Amazon wills it, it'll show up on the product page, I'll earn commission. If Amazon doesn't will it, then it will sit on my storefront.

And I drive traffic to my storefront and it's still like a shoppable page. Um, but yeah,

I'm typically not driving traffic to my storefront. So it's probably going to say, yeah. Okay. That's interesting. That's another use case. I never even thought about, you know, like I might need to revise the Amazon influencer bootcamp here because I was mainly thinking of, all right, you just go ahead and, you know, look around your house at what you've bought and then do a video and then upload it. But that's interesting. If somebody is doing Amazon lives, it's like, you know, it's what Gary Vee says, you know, repurpose, repurpose, repurpose, you know, like, like don't,

don't do things five times over again, just do it once and then repurpose it five times. So that's pretty cool that Amazon has that as an option. - Yeah, yeah. And I actually was doing this before the clips feature came out. So really I was just, Amazon has an option where you can download the entire live stream. You don't even have to record it from the streaming software. You download the entire live stream. I was using CapCut just to like chop it up. I would take out the parts where I was like, oh, it's this price. Oh, it's on this deal. I would take out anything time sensitive. That's like really important. Make it evergreen, make it very just about the product.

And I would upload it. And I probably did a couple hundred videos from my live streams that way. That was probably a lot of time to do if I had to do it again. But now you're saying that the clips thing kind of like takes away the need for CapCut.

Sometimes I still prefer cup cut because I can kind of chop out the parts that I need to. If you're not talking about price and you're just talking about product, I think clips is like much faster and much easier. But because I had parts where I was like talking with the chat, just having like stupid conversations off to the side or like just mentioning funny stories that probably weren't funny. But like I was just talking like chitter-chattering. So I had a lot more like little pieces that I had to like watch really closely and then cut out manually. And you were doing this all on your own. You weren't having a virtual assistant or anything do it?

probably silly of me, but yeah. All right. Cool. Some people like to control their own stuff as long as you can, you know, do it safe, save some money instead of having to hire, uh, hire somebody, you keep everything. Uh, um, now what about on Tik TOK? Uh,

how are you making your money from what you do on TikTok? Cause that's where you have the most followers, right? How many followers are you up to now on TikTok? 1.1 million. 1.1 million. So are you using just Amazon affiliate links to send them to Amazon? Are you making TikTok commission? Like, like doing the, the TikTok shop, you know, sending people a TikTok shop. Where is, what's the kind of like division of, of income on TikTok? The climate of TikTok. So basically ever since TikTok shop became a,

So I want to say like within the past year, really, I think the whole goal of TikTok shop was to keep users on the platform. So obviously here I am like go over to Amazon, like TikTok hating it. So funny story about that because very recently within the last couple of weeks, TikTok

there's been a new program where TikTok allows you to link affiliate links within the video that actually drive off the app. It's in beta. It's only for certain creators. It's very interesting because it's literally designed to shop from TikTok, but like to take people to Amazon or take people to Target or whatever retailer. It was like, it's designed to drive people off the app. I don't know what will happen with that. I don't know if it's permanent. I don't know if it'll roll out to everyone, but just like interesting that TikTok is becoming popular

more open to driving off the app. Another thing I realized yesterday, I think I was looking for like travel deals or something on Google and I was just Googling and kind of halfway down the page, it was like, oh, here are videos about what you're searching for. And it was like just a row of TikTok videos that were about the travel deals. And so I realized that Google search results were driving to TikTok videos. So that just emphasizes... On the desktop or on a phone? Both.

Well, I was on my phone. But well, yeah, I was I was actually on my phone. Good point. So that just emphasizes how important it is to like, keep your videos evergreen and make sure they're like SEO. Well, SEO well. Yep. Yeah. SEO optimized, I think is the word you're looking for. Optimize or has good SEO has good. It's your tick tock and your vocabulary lessons here on the Serious Sellers podcast.

Okay, so there's TikTok. So then are you still doing both? Like, is it 50-50? You're trying to send people to Amazon 50% like sending people back to TikTok shop or what would you say the breakdown is? One thing is you can't do both. And I tried doing both. I tried to make like an Amazon video and I tried to like link the TikTok shop products that I was also like talking about. But I was like, go to Amazon. I got a violation for that. And it wasn't, it was like a no-no. I don't know if it's like still the same way. It was a while ago and I didn't try to like double down and like try it again. So yeah.

Interesting. So a TikTok like slap you on the wrist. Yes. Cause I was like driving to Amazon and also trying to like, the queen of TikTok slapping her on the wrist. The audacity that's going on here.

I never tried to do it again after that. So if I make a video about Amazon, I'll keep an Amazon. No mention of TikTok shop, no linking products. If I'm linking products, I'll be like TikTok shop only. No mention of Amazon. I also have no issues since you've been doing that way. And I've also realized whenever I do stumble upon like Amazon related content on TikTok, it's typically not like going viral like it normally would have been back in the day. Like Amazon content really slapped on TikTok back in the day. But now when I'm seeing it, it's like,

It's on my For You page maybe, but the views are very little or maybe it's not doing so well as it probably would have been. So I am clocking that as well. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. Any other mediums that you are making money as a creator other than TikTok and Amazon affiliate program? Yes. Okay.

First of all, disclaimer, not sponsors, not an affiliate, like not an ad, please. Okay, so I will speak on LaVonta really quickly. I know LaVonta is kind of a new platform for both creators and sellers. And I kind of chalked it off to one of those like, oh, it's just like creator connections. It's just like the premise of LaVonta is like you get external traffic to your Amazon listing. They give you a link. I think it's like an attribution link. The creator gets

extra commission from the brand. So as you know, Amazon commission ranges between two to 4%, as low as 0%, very, very small numbers. And hopefully you're doing volume. That's where you make the money. But if you're not doing volume, like the numbers are not huge.

It's very like win-win situation. And I was very casually just like using Levante here and there, and then very shocked at how much it was making and how well it was doing. And now I'm like really going full force into it. I've been using it probably since prime day in October, like as a creator. Yes. As a creator, not even as a brand, as a creator. And it's been going phenomenally well. And I want to like,

probably just emphasize like sites like that, like LaVonta. And there's another one Archer affiliates we all know of. There's a couple of new ones wayward. Um, those and then creator connections on Amazon as well, but yeah,

Those the big four, you know, like you as a brand to get the external traffic. If you have the margins, offer the extra commission to the to the creator. And it's like such a good win win. And it's working out so much better than I imagined. Now, all the stuff we've been talking about, your Amazon business, your creator program, aside from your travels, which I know you travel a lot, a normal week when you're at home.

What's the breakdown hours wise? Like how many hours are you putting on Amazon as a seller? How many hours are you creating content? I don't know what else there is, you know, like editing hour, you know, I would call the editing hours like you're in CapCut and stuff. That's the creating content in my opinion. And then, you know, your analytics are looking for brands or whatever. So what would be the breakdown? I mean, totally you're working only 20 hours a week. You're working 40 hours a week and 10 is this, 30 is that. What would you say?

A day in the life. A day in the life. All right. So what does my life look like? I'd say I work late hours because sometimes I do have calls with people in like China. So, you know, like the time zones are very off. So like a lot of times I'm sleeping very, very late. A lot of times I probably haven't gone to sleep before 2 a.m. in many years. Same, no different. Yeah. So like I'm probably sleeping between like 2 and 4 a.m., which is

I'm not that bad. Okay. That is a little bit different. Yeah. And I wake up a little bit later in the day just so I can survive that. But then I think the first thing is like make a coffee, check my emails and then have any meetings. I like getting, do you ever have the feeling of like when you have like a meeting at like 4 PM and you're like, I can't do anything else today. I have a meeting. Right. And then it's like Korean drama right after that. Right.

I'm a victim of that. So I like like meetings and emails before noon, preferably. Here we are at like 3 p.m., but like normally. So typically I like taking the afternoon time and creating content is one of those things where like if you if you don't create content, you're probably like this. This is so easy. How how could anyone dare, you know, make this 30 second video and like take more than a minute making it?

So there's like a whole process to make it just one 30 second video. There's like the research of like brainstorming. And then if you're working with a brand, there's like the concept that you have to fill out of like, where are you filming? What are your ideas? What's your script? Like, are there any other people? What music are you using? Like talking points. And then you have to fill that out, get approval if you're working with a brand. But typically if you're,

just making a video, there's the brainstorming there. I never script anything. I've never, I just never found any benefit to like reading off a script or like thinking about what I'm going to say before I say it. I usually just don't think and talk. So,

There's the brainstorming, there's the actual filming, and then there's the editing, and then there's the posting. And then once you post, you got to think about repurposing of like, okay, I'm posting on TikTok, I'll repost it to Instagram or Pinterest or Amazon or Reels, Facebook Reels and like all these other platforms. So repurposing does take a bit of time. I know there's softwares out there for it, but...

There's that. And then of course I'm on like seven, eight different platforms. So got to post my, my deals every day. And aside from that, there's live streaming, which I do a couple times a week usually. And that is always an hour and a half to two hours, not to mention maybe the hour of prep beforehand of just setting the products up, getting to know what the products are, figuring out if what's on deal, what's not on deal anymore, if it is expired or whatnot. So yeah,

There's a lot behind the scenes and I think there's a lot of coordination that goes on. Not to bore anyone. It's really not that interesting. I'm not just prancing around the world with celebrities. In a week, I don't think you have any two days that are exactly the same or you're in such a locked schedule. Even on the Amazon side, you probably go a couple days without even looking at it, potentially. You don't have any messages. But like...

What is it like 80, 20, 80, uh, being the 80% being the creator stuff and 20% Amazon is at 90, 10. It really depends because when I was, when I was first starting out, I was putting in a lot of time. I was having a lot of meetings. I was having a lot of like emails and coordination and just like back and forth. But then of course there's like the kind of slower times where you're maybe like waiting for a stock. Maybe you're low on stock because you're selling out, but you don't want to like push it because you don't want to stock out. So I just kind of finished that. Like,

period of time where I was like waiting for the stock to drop. And like now, right before Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it's like, okay, marketing time, setting everything up, getting the deal set up and like all the things that encompass that. So there was like a slower period, but I would say typical day,

There's days where I obviously do more Amazon stuff than creator stuff, but I would say like 90, 10. And then is it more than 40 hours a week or less? My heart wants to say I never stop work. My personal phone is my work phone. So I could be in bed at 3 a.m. answering emails. I could be watching TikToks at 3 a.m., which is product research. So it's like I'm never really not...

I can never take a break from it. I can, I've never turned my brain off to it. I haven't taken a day off of posting or quote unquote working. Wait a minute. Wait, really? Like not even a day. Like you haven't gone to, you know, like Maldives for a couple of days and just try and like disconnect. I'll be in the Maldives, but I'll be working in the mall. Like, okay, you need to go to one. You see, you're like me. And this is what everybody tells me. Like I need to go to, there's like these places that people go to. Yeah. We're on purpose. Like there's no internet connection. Oh,

You know, like in Bali or somewhere where it's not like, oh, they're technologically not advanced in this town. No, it's like literally on purpose, a place where people go like, hey, I need to disconnect. So I don't even want to have the temptation of, you know, both of us need to go to some place like that. It sounds like because we're both tied to our phones and stuff. What a privilege it is to be able to disconnect, huh? Right? Yeah.

I wouldn't know. I might be traveling and posting the highlights on my Instagram. However, just know that in the morning, I probably work for three hours and at night, I'm panicking and pre-working for the next day. I might be looking like I'm having fun, but I'll be at dinner or brunch with my friends working on my phone and my friends hate it and it's really embarrassing. I don't like it, but it's what I signed up for. I'm not sure when next year you're going to be able to come on the podcast, but I would like to...

I would like to you to be able to say, Hey, there was a few days where I was able to disconnect. That's your homework. Uh, everybody else who's listening to this podcast has a lot of homework to do as far as like, Hey, looking into this Amazon influencer program, you know, maybe Tik TOK influencer program and some of the other strategies you've talked about, but your homework is to get some days, some greasy days off, uh, here. Uh, no promises, but I'll try. Yeah. I was like, this is sounding very noncommittal. I'll think about it for a second. All right. All right. Sounds good. All right. Um,

So when you were launching your Amazon business, what was your favorite? I'm assuming you use Helium 10. What was your favorite tool that you use in Helium 10 that helped you? That's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's tons and Helium 10 is my favorite. I really love that you guys do have an influencer tool, but that's like so...

like helpful. It's so relevant. Nobody would have ever thought like two, three years ago that a healing intent is going to have like an influencer tool, but Hey, you're, you're part of the reason, you know, like, like, like you and others like you who have kind of like opened our eyes to, to this kind of stuff are part of the reason that we do. And you saw the need for it and you did it. And now it's there. And now I think more, more creators need to learn about it because I think I've seen a lot of creators like

struggle of like, this isn't profitable. I'm putting in a lot of work, but I'm not getting the return that I want. So like tools like this are maybe the make or break of like what makes you profitable, what you spend more time on and all that. A tip for newer influencers out there, newer creators, like, you know, either a warning about, hey, don't fall into this pit

a whole or or a word of advice on something that they should focus on? What is it? If you are going to become a creator, just know that you are probably going to get a lot of inquiries from all different angles. Your inbox is probably going to be full and you're going to be asked to

do a b c d through z every single day and it's really really easy to get caught up in things that potentially will waste your time or not make you money or just take a lot of mental capacity of back and forth working with the wrong people and then like getting in your head about that i'm really big on i i fell into that like where i was probably taking on too much saying yes to too much i'm a people pleaser and i don't like saying no to anyone so

That has probably got me in over my head. And so I think just prioritizing what you want to focus on, knowing that there's limited time in the day and there's also limited mental capacity of like everything you can do. So yeah.

you'll be like inquired from all angles, but just to focus on and take on what you can handle and what you actually want to do and what will move the needle instead of saying yes to everything that comes your way. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, Gracie, every year you, you redefine yourself here on the show, you know, like this year you became an Amazon seller. So very excited to see next year when you come back, what new things you have to share with us. Thank you so much for coming on and look forward to seeing you at an event soon. Me too.