#326 – Brand Building Through Your Community And More – Izabela Hamilton

In this episode, Bradley welcomes back Izabela Hamilton, CEO and Founder of RankBell to talk about the latest changes in Amazon’s TOS, being prepared for the changes, and how to pivot your strategies to keep your business thriving. They also covered strategies on how to build your brand through community building, involving data from raving customers in creating your next product, and how can your community help in building a magnificent overall brand.

Make sure to listen to the very end as Izabela shares her top tips on work-life balance, positivity, and mental health for busy entrepreneurs.

In episode 326 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Izabela discuss:

• 04:00 – What Happened After Amazon’s TOS Changed?
• 07:00 – Don’t Put Your Eggs In One Basket
• 08:30 – What Strategies Are Currently Working For Ranking?
• 12:00 – Creating A Magnificent Brand Through Data
• 15:00 – Involving Your Audience And Customers To Build Your Brand
• 18:00 – Your End Goal Should Be Your First Priority
• 22:00 – Is It Too Late To Sell On Amazon?
• 23:00 – What Is The New Process For Rankbell?
• 27:00 – Work-Life Balance And Mental Health
• 38:00 – See You At The Helium 10 Prosper Party Social!
• 39:00 – How To Get In Touch With Izabela

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got somebody who is one of the most known influencers out there on how to do search, find, buy back in the day. So how did she pivot after the Amazon TOS changed last year? And what insights does she have on brand building and also mental health? We’re gonna talk about that and a lot more. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free unscripted, and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon or Walmart world. We’ve got a serious person on here. She’s not very serious. She’s very fun. She is one of the most I know Izabela from RankBell, how’s it going?

Izabela:

Oh my God, I miss you Bradley, and I miss the Helium 10 team.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes. You know, it’s actually funny. We try to have people here in the podcast, like every like year or so, like year and two or three months. But when, when the AM/PM podcast, you know, first back again, you know, Tim Jordan, I was like, oh, you know, I know Tim and Bela are close here. And I was like, you know, do you want to have her on your podcast? You know, we don’t wanna have the same podcast back and forth. Cuz AM/PM Podcast and Serious Sellers we’re the same team. So we don’t use the same guest and people are like, why do we even have two podcasts here? So like, are you gonna have her on yours? And then that was literally like nine months ago, I would say, or 10 months ago. And I keep asking like, when are you gonna have Izabela on there? And you know Tim, those of us who intimately know him knows sometimes he gets a little disorganized like myself. And so it just came to the part where I’m like, you know what, forget Tim, you had your chance I’m taking Izabela back for this Serious Sellers Podcast. So here you are. So it’s been a while. It’s been a couple of years since you’ve been on.

Izabela:

I love you guys. I love both of you. And you know, I have a soft spot for Helium 10. So anything you guys do, I’m always more than honored and blessed to be present.

Bradley Sutton:

Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And we feel the same about you. Now, we wanna hop into it again. We’re not gonna go too much into your backstory, you know? She’s been on the podcast before guys, so make sure to look up her name on Helium 10. Here’s a quick side note. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but–,

Izabela:

I’m always worried. Listen, Bradley, I’m always worried that you gonna bring something from the past.

Bradley Sutton:

Don’t worry.

Izabela:

Okay. Go.

Bradley Sutton:

What happens in Vegas Prosper Show stays in Vegas. There was a time where you would actually Google your name, your first and last name and the number one, the page one position one in Google was your Helium 10 bio page. For whatever reason, like that was literally like, it’s not RankBell. It wasn’t like your Wikipedia or anything like that. It was your Helium 10 bio page of because you do guest blogs for us sometimes. But anyways guys, if you Google her her name inside of heli or outside of Helium 10, you can end up there. Find her first episode. You’ll find a lot of interesting things about her backstory. We had an Elevate series where we have like HBO level documentary where you can find out about her. So we’re not gonna go too much into her backstory again.

Bradley Sutton:

But you know, the trending thing that a lot of people have been wondering about for the last three, four months ever since terms of service changed as you guys may or may not know, you know, RankBell was, was a company dedicated to, you know, helping sellers get to page one and using different strategies, you know, like search, find, buy and things like that everybody including myself used for years. And then overnight one night, it became, you know what, Hey, Amazon said that this is no longer good. Now it was always funny because even before then people would always say, oh no, no, this has always been against Amazon terms of service, which it never was. There was nothing in there. And if it was, why would they have to make a big deal about changing it outside of the terms of service? So guys, it was totally fine to use RankBell, we used that for the Project X items years ago and everything, but now obviously overnight things change. So take me back to three months ago, first of all, Izabela, as you saw that terms of service actually changed, you know, there’s rumors going around it, what were you feeling? Were you like OMG, it’s finally happening or like, oh crap, I’m screwed, or what was going through your mind?

Izabela:

Well, so I’m glad you said that you said something very crucial. You said it finally happened. So this is something that I actually expected to happen a long time ago. And it’s always kind of the same when it comes to playing in a sense with the algorithm, which you can, you can say, you can find that also sponsored as does the same thing, right? You’re trying to rank your product. You’re going through the same means. So I expected it, I guess I didn’t expect it to be so sudden and to affect so many people, but luckily for me, I’m always, at least I try to stay a step ahead of the current trends and what is happening, which is why I built RankBell before anybody even knew what search, find, buy was. So I’ve always kind of stayed ahead in the sense of what can possibly happen, when is it going to happen?

Izabela:

Which is, you know, it’s hard to actually figure it out, but what happens after? So I’ve been working on this project even a few months before the terms of service changed and it just came at the right time. And, you know, sometimes things happen for a reason. And sometimes things happen that actually push you to move things faster in your business. And when it comes Amazon, you’re always kind of on the edge, you never really know what’s going to happen next. So you know, I’ve always said from the beginning, when you create a brand that’s worthwhile, you always wanna make sure that you do follow terms of service, which is why RankBell stopped doing the search, find, buy. As soon as I heard it immediately, same day I took the website down. I didn’t want people to be confused and I don’t, you know, I think I have enough following now and enough respect from the community for them to wait for an answer from me and let them know that this is no longer allowed. And, you know, we do play in Amazon’s terms and we just have to follow and make sure we follow the rules and that’s what I did. And then we can go into what I’m doing next, but yeah, it was, it was a shock, I guess because you never want anything good to end, right? But it wasn’t unexpected either.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. And that’s something I’ve always talked about even before this happened. I always say to people like, yeah, absolutely have your strategies. You know, if you find something that works that’s within terms of service, use it and but don’t put all your eggs in one basket where you’re unable to pivot if something changes, cuz that’s one thing that’s consistent. The only thing consistent on Amazon is changed. You know, some people will say. And so, you know, there there’s things that change every week and most of them are minor. Don’t really affect you. But then there are major ones that happen like that every now and then like the biggest one probably before then was when incentivized reviews became against terms of service. There are some people who built their whole strategy on like right in the beginning, I’m going to send out 200 free items to people. And within Amazon in terms of service, I’m gonna ask them for a review. And the Amazon even had a provision for that. They would even show something, Hey, this review was in exchange for a free product. It was totally fine. Then one–,

Izabela:

It’s like the good days Bradley, those were the good days.

Bradley Sutton:

And then one night it became the bad days because then you couldn’t do it. But for people who like weren’t able to pivot they were screwed. They’re like my whole business model is based on doing this. So use strategies, but don’t make, don’t set yourself up for failure by going so in on a strategy that you have no way to pivot. Always be ready to pivot, and you know, that’s what I did when search, find, buy, and two step URLs became kind of forbidden. I immediately went like within a day, like I was doing a case study on a PPC strategy or something else. So nowadays, you know the dust is kind of settled. I know things are still in flux. I’m sure you’re working on new strategies. I’m working on new strategies to get to page one. But what has been working for your customers or the people that you talk to, or what kind of things are you doing that now are able to be within Amazon terms of service, but that can still give valuable insights to Amazon sellers, not just, you know, helping them get to page one.

Izabela:

Right. Exactly. And this is so good, it came at a perfect timing this podcast because we are still in that transition and I know people are looking for answers and I know people expect, you know, to have on podcast, all these guests that hopefully they’re gonna give them some hacks and tricks. And, you know, it’s no longer time for these kind of techniques because we are trying here to build actual brands. And so we are really going back to the beginning and what makes that perfect brand. And you know, unfortunately, the way that Amazon works, it’s always kind of separating the shoppers from the Amazon sellers. But yet we have to find a way to get this information and this valuable data from these shoppers because they are the ones that are allowing us to create a perfect brand.

Izabela:

So, in my opinion, I don’t think there’s anybody else out there doing what we’re doing right now, which is customer data collection. We see it all the time with different departments stores, and even some fast food places. And we’re really going by the shopper, basically mystery shopper, but onto the e-commerce site. And as I said, I started doing this I would say probably four to six months and just kind of seeing what other people are doing out there, you know, what the Nordstroms are doing, what the Chick-fil-A’s are doing. And we’ve always noticed that the way they increase their brand recognition and they’re increasing their profits and they’re making these sales, is always going back to their own customers that they created, you know, a list over time and actually extracting that data from them to be able to implement some of these changes.

Izabela:

So the way we transcribe this into Amazon, we went back to our community, which you absolutely know, cuz we’ve worked in the past together. We have thousands of thousands of these shoppers who are actual real buyers on Amazon. And I consider myself one, I mean, I don’t even leave this house these days, but I buy everything on Amazon. So people like myself and like yourself and those who are listening those are the actual Amazon customer, but they’re also divided into different niches. You know, somebody that’s buying baby beds may not be buying like tennis rackets or whatever it is. So we wanted to kind of see what are all these people talking about? What do they actually want? And what I found surprisingly Bradley the probably the bad thing was how grateful these people were that they actually got to participate in the creation of a brand.

Izabela:

So we’ve done this beta testing with a few of our bigger clients because we wanted to see how somebody that has reached that level of let’s say seven figures. I’m not going into the higher numbers, but let’s say seven figures and they’re already doing pretty good for themselves. What is it that they’re missing that they might not even see? And again, you know, we have preconceived notions of what the customer expects and they’re still very good, having a great listing, which you are amazing at you launch your own products since Helium 10 and you know, us how important that is and, you know, making sure the quality of the pictures is great, but yet there’s one small part that we don’t get to find out, which is the true intentions and the true meaning behind what people say, even when they give you a review.

Izabela:

So we wanted to go deeper into this data analysis of how the consumer thinks because what we’re trying to do Bradley is okay. Yes, you can get on page one with different techniques that we used in the past and through the means of PPC, but we are not trying to just get that one sale. We wanna get that customer to come back again and again, and again because this is what creates an absolutely magnificent brand. And in the past, I feel like a lot of sellers have focused more on how can I get more sales all the time, but not really zoning in into how do I get that one car customer to love the product so much that they keep coming back over and over and over again. And not only that, we took it a step further, where now we’re asking the customers who are loving this product so much to help us create the next product.

Izabela:

And what happens is one, when you give somebody that power to be able to help you create the brand. Now they’re invested emotionally. Now they want to be part of your journey. So it’s no longer about how do I just get one customer to buy from me one time so I can make the quota that I have for this month, but how do I get the same customer over and over again? How do I get those raving fans? And this is what data is able to bring together something that’s never been done before again because the way that Amazon is set up and you know, how rare it is to find out the information of your customer and not only that but even deeper into how do they think and what do they actually want to see?

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, I mean, in old days when you try and do search, find, buy, or giveaways, what would happen a lot of times is the kind of customer that you’re getting. They’re just like interested in free things and they’re not gonna give you a reflection of, you know, they’re not necessarily your typical customer, you’re not gonna get any information on them. And they’re the kind of people who all they do is just search around for deals and things like that. But when, when you actually–, Amazon sellers might be surprised. There’s a lot of people out there who would take pride in like saying, Hey, I’m playing a part in this brand. You know, like how many of us, like, we get like surveys and things like I listen to a lot of, or I watch a lot of Korean dramas and so I’m a very busy guy. I’m a very, very, busy. everybody knows I’m very busy, but I subscribe to this channel, it’s called Viki. It’s like a channel that has all Korean dramas on it for streaming. And then I guess I’m watching so much that they sent me an email and they’re like, Hey, we would love to, to, to interview you to get some insights on our product or whatever. Right.

Izabela:

That’s actually very cool. Bradley, are you speaking Korean now? Let me hear some.

Bradley Sutton:

(Speaking Korean) nevermind. Let’s see. What was I saying? Oh yeah, yeah. So I was like, you know, I work so much and, I need to spend time with my kids and stuff, but they’re like, Hey, we’d like to interview you for an hour. And I was like, I said, yes, because I was like, wow, like, this company, I wants to get my insights. And maybe something I say will change the way they do things, you know, who knows? I like it. And I did the interview and everything. And there’s people out there who are the same way. Like the brand, right?

Izabela:

A lot of it. Imagine how excited you felt when that company reached out to you. Like, wow, I am being recognized, even though you’re Bradley the master and it’s very hard to reach you, but still when somebody reaches out to you and it makes you feel like, oh my God, like my voice is actually being heard. And, for you to give somebody just your thoughts and what you think. And it’s just, it’s a beautiful thing because now you bring both parties together and together you can create something spectacular. And I stress this ever since the beginning of when we are starting RankBell, I’ve always tell to all people, this is how you do it. Just go do it. So you don’t ever have to use a service like mine. And that still applies today. Now, of course, because again, we don’t have access to our customers.

Izabela:

There are so many different ways for you to be able to build your community. And, you know, luckily with social media today, we have so many avenues where we can go and ask for feedback from these people. But I noticed Bradley, a lot of people are afraid of the truth because one they’re like, well, I spend like $2,000 on these pictures. I don’t wanna change them based on what some random person said, but what I’ve noticed, just doing these service for the past few months, there are some things that completely could be ignored. Like, oh, the picture needs a little bit more lighting or whatever. But when they go into the detail and you see a trend there and you see 10, 20, 50, a hundred people kinda hinting at the same exact things, guess what? This is sign that something needs to be changed.

Izabela:

And it’s always heartbreaking because they come to me and they’re like, wow, I use this company. They charge me this many thousands for the video, but all people are saying that they wanna change. What should I do? And that’s always a hard decision. So my advice to that is look at what are people saying all the time, make a list of, let’s say the five, 10 things that are super important that you see tagged every single time, and kind of work backwards. Like, what is it that I can afford to change right now? Maybe it’s just a small thing. Maybe it’s just a word in the listing, whatever it is, it may not cost you a fortune. And then of course, as you improve your listing and you improve your product, then you can obviously spend more money, invest a little bit more because your goal should always be, how can I create need that perfect product and not only for your customers, but where am I taking my brand?

Izabela:

Am I trying to sell it to an aggregator? Am I trying to go to D to C now, whatever the case may be, you should really sit down. Still beginning of the year. There’s still time to really zone into. What is your focus? What is your intention with this brand? And what is it that you’re trying to do? If you’re just looking to make a quick buck and, you know, you just wanna pour in a ton of money into PPC. You know, you may have found a campaign that really works for you, the goal for it, but what is the end goal here? What is the end goal? And that should always be the number one priority for every single seller that’s starting, or that’s been selling for years.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. And, you know I’ve always been big on this thing, but some people ask me, Hey, what’s the biggest mistake that Amazon sellers make. And I always say, it’s just trying to trust your own instincts or trying to trust your own knowledge of the product and just making that assumption that everybody, all your customers think the same way as you do, you know, the most obvious case of that is keywords. Like, Hey, don’t just think of what you would search for that product. You gotta use a tool like Helium 10 and Cerebro to find out what other people are, are using to search for a certain thing. Because I guarantee nine times out of 10, the keyword that you would think is not what your target customer does. And then that’s why we have also tools like Helium 10 Audience empowered by PickFu is don’t assume that, you know, what’s the best image.

Bradley Sutton:

You know, don’t assume this doesn’t assume that this is the best price point. Don’t assume this is the best brand name, you know, test these things out with the customers. And there are some things that you might be completely sure of and you’re completely wrong because you’re different. Like, I’ll share what happened to me last week. Last week a tool came out in Amazon. It’s only in beta, so I’m not even sure if anybody has access to it, or many people have access, but I forgot what it’s called. It’s a new feature of Brand Analytics where it actually shows you how many add to carts you get compared to sales. Now that was a method of ranking back in the day, too. Where people, you know, do these like fake ads to carts and everything because actually, the Amazon algorithm responded well to add to carts.

Bradley Sutton:

And to me, that always boggled my mind. I’m like, why would the Amazon algorithm care about adding to carts should be only on sales because me personally, I buy maybe 100 things a month on Amazon. Let’s just say, let’s just say, if I add to cart, 100 items throughout a month, 97 of them, I’m gonna, like, I never put things in my cart that I’m not gonna–, I’m like, I add it to my cart. I check out and I buy it. That’s me. I’m like, so I was like, what in the world why would Amazon care about add to carts? It’s so dumb to me. Now, this tool came out, and all of the products that I sell it is crazy. It’s five to 10 to one, people are adding to the cart for every actual sale. And that just blew my mind.

Bradley Sutton:

So I posted in the Helium 10 slack. I’m like, guys, this gotta be wrong. Right? Like nobody adds stuff to their cart without buying it. Right. And then everybody started reply. What are you talking about? Like, I add million stuff to my cart and I let it sit there. And then I decide what product I’m gonna get. Or my wife adds things to cart. And then I just check it outlet. I’m like, what? Like I had no idea. So here all along, I was like positive. Nobody adds things to cart without buying. And then I find out that I was completely wrong. So guys, don’t just assume that you know what’s going on.

Izabela:

That’s Interesting that you said that Bradley because if I didn’t hear about this, I would be more like you because if I want something on Amazon you know, the same thing. I’ll just go and start search for the keyword that I’m looking for. Like, I just bought this like beach I dunno, like a little Kimono. It’s so cute. I never buy clothes from Amazon by the way. But I did. And I’m like, holy cow, Amazon is coming up, but of course it’s been up for so long, but I look for it and I’m like, I don’t think I would ever put things in a card and actually let us sit. But you know what I do think, I mean, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe if the price was a little higher, maybe over a hundred dollars, maybe that will let me simmer and think. But really for things that are like, I don’t know, $10, $20, $30, it’s an immediate buy because one, you know, you can return it at any time. Amazon has made it so easy for that, but you, right. Like I actually, I would’ve never thought of it.

Bradley Sutton:

People always keep saying that it’s too late to sell on Amazon? And answer is of course, no, because new niches come up now, is it more competitive to sell on Amazon nowadays? Absolutely. Like, you know, you used to be able to sell on Amazon, you know, five years ago and didn’t matter that there was no such thing as Helium 10 back then you didn’t need to do that. You just throw stuff up. But then a few years ago we got to the point where if you’re not using a tool like helium 10, it’d be very tough to have success, but now it’s going to the next level. Sure, you could be using Helium 10, but we now have what seven 700,000 active users for like our Chrome Extension. And you know, so like, everybody’s kind of on, not everybody, there’s still a lot of people who don’t have Helium 10, but you know, a lot of people are looking at the same data.

Bradley Sutton:

So what now can you do to differentiate yourself? And these things are important now, you know, me for the old RankBell, like I knew exactly, you know, I used it. I knew exactly what did it. We have a product, I had a keyword I wanna rank for. I was like, Hey, I need this many people to search fine and buy this product in X number of days. And then it was like clockwork, get to page one. No problem. I don’t know what the new RankBell is doing. So you’ve alluded to it to some of that, but can you walk me through the process? So like, let’s say for Project X, I’m gonna launch a new I don’t know a coffin picture frame or something. Let’s just say, that’s my new product for Project X. And I go to you, what are you gonna do for me? Like, what do you suggest I do? And then what information am I gonna get? And what benefits do I have from, or what’s the outcome gonna be after when we’re, we’re done doing what we’re doing.

Izabela:

I love this question because actually, this is one part of our service. So we have a few parts and again, we haven’t launched yet. We’re still in beta. But for those of you listening, feel free to inquire. We should be done soon. But this actual–, this specific part of the service is very important because we had actually even some aggregators tested in the past and they love it because now, you have your coffin product and now you wanna launch a new product. We definitely always advise and recommend our clients to use Helium 10, to find out what those keywords are and try to find who is your competition. Again, going back to basics guys, nothing gonna say now it’s going to be crazy. Okay. But I just want you to remember simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

Izabela:

It’s the best course of action. You’re going to use Helium 10. You’re going to see who your competitors are and have, let’s say a hundred customers, hundred shoppers order, five of your competitors’ product. Just like we used to do before Bradley, where you wanted to launch a product and you would order it yourself, have it home, open each package, see what you like, what you don’t like, and then kind of create your own idea of what you like to improve. But what if now you have a hundred people that are actually interested in your future product that you haven’t even listed yet, and have them tell you how they wanted to see it. Imagine the power of that. Imagine creating a product right from the gate, the way your shoppers want to buy it. No more guessing. No more like, oh, well, I think in my opinion, this should be this way or this way, this way.

Izabela:

Now you have the ability to open it up to a market of people that are actually interested in buying your future product and let them create the product for you. And again, you’re going to be surprised, because you’re gonna say, wow, you’re going to even doubt yourself at times, because all these people are saying one thing, but you already had made up your mind what your product is going to look like. And it’s, you know, takes a lot of courage to actually change it and create the product that your shoppers want. So for starters, you would come to us, we would have you you know, let us know what, what the niche is, who your competitors are. If you don’t know who they are, we can help. We use Helium 10 for everything that we do, literally for everything that we do for keyword research, for product research.

Izabela:

So we will use the same tools. You can use it yourself. If you’re a Helium 10 member if you feel free to join. But if not, we can help you with that. We’ll do some of the legwork for you. And then we’ll be able to tell you, these are the best competitors that you should look at and let the buyers decide what the product should look like. And as I said, you know, we had some aggregators use it for some of their brands and again, still in beta and they absolutely love it because now you don’t have to think, I mean, obviously, it’s still good to do your own homework and order the products at home. And we actually been able to do that also directly from, from China, from the factory we had again, we’re just testing different things right now.

Izabela:

We had, you know, a seller pick two or three suppliers from China and what we had. We had them send the products directly to the consumer’s home and see which, you know, which terms, which action will be better. We’re still trying to figure out. But I think, you know, just looking up the keywords, finding out who your competitors are, order some of those products, and then let the shoppers tell you what they like. And they don’t like about the product. In another case that we did, we took the same exact situation. But now we added your specific product in this rotation without telling the buyers, which one is which, and had them compare and side by side. And again, the changes that they were able to make within a few days we’re pretty staggering. I mean, I don’t want you guys to think like, oh my God, a hundred percent, you know, sales the next day. No, but imagine if you do even 5%, even 10% of change every single month, you will be able to create that perfect product.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Now let’s switch gears a little bit, you know as entrepreneurs, you know, regardless if we’re a service provider, you know, if we’re an Amazon seller, whatever kind of entrepreneur we are, there’s always the question of, you know, like work life balance and mental health and things like that. Not getting burned out. And then, I follow you and stalk you on Instagram sometimes I notice like you just did like a retreat recently and different things. So what have you found, you know, in the last few years what has helped you, keep your family life balanced, keep your mental health good? You know, like, I don’t know anything about that retreat. Like, do you suggest doing retreats? What has worked for you and what have you seen with network, like is working for people who are entrepreneurs to keep them from getting burned out?

Izabela:

Oh, Fred, I, I love you. And I love that you asked this question and unfortunately I don’t get asked this question. That often you’d be surprised. And I understand, you know, people wanna get to the needy and greedy, you know, they wanna see what works, what doesn’t work. Then what I found that’s most important, more than anything in this world, it is your mental health. And how do we make sure that we have that imbalance? It differs from person to person, you know, for me, this retreat, it was very deep. It was a meditation retreat. It was Joe Dispenza for those who know who that is, he’s like the, the doctor of like neuroscience now and like everything meditation and how, you know, the brain rewires through different situations. And I got to sit down and actually meditate for eight hours a day, which is insane because the most I’ve ever done was like five minutes.

Izabela:

And, you know, I don’t want you to guys to freak out. I mean, you kind of get used to it as the days progress. You don’t go on the first day. And you’re like, okay, sit here for eight hours. It doesn’t work like that. But what I found out Bradley is that you know, having that internal piece, it’s so crucial. And a lot of people just put that aside. They’re like, well, I’ll get to that when I can, I’ll get to, you know, I’ll work out next weekend. I’ll meditate, but it’s so important to just sit with yourself and your thoughts, because, you know, the way I heard it best Bradley is like when you pray, you’re praying to somebody outside yourself. But when you meditate, it’s like, you are talking to your own self and now you are in your heart, in your soul.

Izabela:

And when you sit and listen, magical things happen and you know, it’s cool making money. And everybody knows. It’s like one of my favorite things, but I think I’m a lot more these days, a lot more into my soul and into my body and into my mind more than anything because I realize that when you really go deep inside yourself, everything starts working out. You know, cuz you asked me, did I freak out when search, find, buy was taken down? You know, most people would’ve freaked out, but you know, I was like, you know what, thank you, God, thank you universe for bringing me back into the moment and letting me know that it’s time for a change. What is there that I can do to better improve my client’s life? What is there that I can do to improve my own life?

Izabela:

Has this been stressing me out? So there’s two things that can happen when we’re faced with a, terrible, right? You can be the victim and you can say, this is always happening to me. This is terrible. I never have luck. I have to close my store. I have or say, okay, I am actually excited that this is happening because I look forward to what happens next. And it takes a lot. It takes a lot to switch the mindset and really it that’s all it takes. It’s like because the facts remain and changed in this case, search, find, buy is still unavailable, right? How I reacted, that situation is going to make or break my future. I can go and cry and say, oh my God, my whole life is over or whatever the case may or let me see what is there that maybe I been overlooking, is there anything that I can improve?

Izabela:

And that is how everyone should make decisions every single day of their life. Not only in Amazon, something bad happens at work. You know, something bad happens in your family. You know, somebody’s sick. How can I leave the facts and change, but yet, how am I going to respond to this situation? And that is how I stay sane. Bradley. That’s literally how I stay sane because I know it doesn’t matter. RankBell can go away tomorrow. I can lose everything I have. And I know inside of my heart, I will be at peace because all we have to do is really put ourselves in. What’s the worst thing that can happen. What’s the worst thing that can happen. Am I going to, you know, lose my Amazon stores? Am I going to get fired? Am I going to lose my wife?

Izabela:

Am I going–, put yourself through those worst scenarios, situations, create a list of all the action items that you could be doing if that happens. And what happens is all of a sudden then you are going to be at peace. And most people don’t wanna walk through that exercise because it’s painful. Nobody wants to think about like, oh my God, I just lost my eight figure Amazon store. But if you are prepared, then you are kind of giving your mind a break and say, okay, I do have a list of all the things I could be doing. If I were to lose my store, maybe I don’t know, get hired for a PPC agency. I don’t know. You can come up with all the best scenarios for yourself, but it comes down to give yourself time to sit in silence with yourself every single day.

Izabela:

And ever since this retreat, you know, I’ve been meditating anywhere between an hour and two hours every day. And I am a busy person, you know, not only RankBell, but I mean, I wasn’t gonna mention this, but it’s, you know, you’re one of my favorite people, but RankBell is actually working on a brand new company me and so between the two and having a kid and, you know, having conferences and all this I still have time for myself, Bradley. Because if I don’t take care of myself and my mental health, how can I ever serve you? How can I ever serve Helium 10 members? How can I serve my community? How can I be a good friend? How can I be a good mother? How can I be a good daughter? How can I be any of these things if inside of myself it’s turmoil and chaos? I cannot. Absolutely. And you can only put on a face for so long before it takes you down and before you go into depression. So thank you for asking that question. I know it’s a long answer.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. It’s important for people to know this stuff. You know, sometimes we just get caught up on one side of being an entrepreneur and then we forget the other side and what’s gonna happen is if you don’t take care of that other side guys, guess what your business is gonna start, you know, suffering from it as well. So you, you gotta kind of have that right balance. All right. Well, as you know, we do things at the end where it’s the TST 30-second tips. So save just one. Maybe we can do two different ones. Like maybe you can mix it, like maybe an Amazon strategy that you know of that people can implement or who knows, maybe it’s a mental health exercise that, that you like, let’s do two different TST for us today.

Izabela:

Thank you. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Let’s do one Amazon. And again, you know, I’m going back to simplicity. You’re just launching a product or you already have a product that’s been selling for a while. Don’t feel like you’re too good to reach out to people? Cause that’s another thing. Bradley, it’s like our egos now letting us do things, and guess how do I know this from personal experience? Sometimes I do think I’m too good to create my own banner. Sometimes I do think I’m too busy to do this, but you know what look at, what did you do when you first started? When did you start your business? How tough you were and how you were ready to like smash it, you were ready to put in 10, 20 hours a day. If you wanted to go back to that and kind of bring that feeling again and then say, what is it that I could do right now to create this community?

Izabela:

And the other one, you know, the other tip again, is just really take care of your health. I mean, health is so important. I mean, I don’t have to stress this enough guys cuz you know, being in the pandemic and check in with yourself. And when I say check in with yourself, literally take a moment. Whether it’s before you walk into work or you’re getting ready to start driving somewhere, take a minute, close your eyes and just kind of like go through your body parts. Like how’s my head. Do I have any headache? How’s my throat. How’s my chest. How’s my stomach. You know, how are my legs? Is there any tension anywhere in the body? And I never used to do this before Bradley like the simple, like how did I go through life all these years and never even think about checking with myself?

Izabela:

Like because we’re never really present. It’s like, okay, I’m going into the next meeting. Now you’re thinking of the next meeting. You’re thinking of the next email. You’re thinking of what the kids are gonna eat for dinner, but what do I, what do I, Bradley? What do I, Izabela feel in this very moment? And the more you practice this and I swear to you guys, the more you practice, this is going to take to become a little bit more comfortable for you. And then you can take this and apply it into businesses. Like how do I feel about this deal right now? But you’re not gonna be able to tap into that unless you come into yourself and start getting to know your mind and your body and you know, again, I feel like I’m a little late into this, but is it really late?

Izabela:

I feel like anytime in your life, if you’re listening to this, like take a moment and really tune in with your body and ask yourself, how am I feeling today? Am I feeling sick? How is my mental health doing? Am I feeling sad? Am I feeling depressed and why? And try to dig down into your soul and really ask yourself these hard questions. I’m depressed. Why am I depressed? Well, you know, I just got fired. Why did I get fired? Try to find out, dig so deep that you’re like, holy cow, I just realize what’s been bothering me cuz sometimes we just put things in a background and then they start like going into the subconscious and you don’t even know why you’re mad all day. You don’t know because you never take the time. So, those are my tips for today. And I could talk about this forever because there’s nothing more important than your mind. You can create businesses and you can lose them. But if your mind is right, I swear to you, you can do whatever you want.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep. Thank you so much for that. Now, you know, thinking back how we met, we met networking at a conference like at after parties at a conference. So guys, one of the bigger Amazon conferences the biggest one is actually in September guys. So we got some amazing announcements coming up with that called Sell and Scale summit, some crazy stuff. But we got one in a couple weeks. It’s not by Helium 10, but we definitely have a booth there. And a lot of Helium 10 employees will be there, Izabela I’m sure will be there, Prosper Show. So look that up guys is March. You know, I wanna say March 14 around there, but on March 14th at night, we actually have our Helium 10 Social Party and it’s gonna be really, really great.

Bradley Sutton:

So guys, if you wanna get tickets there, you can meet Izabela in person, meet me in person, meet other Helium, 10 employees there and other influencers, get your tickets before they sell out h10.me/prosper2022. Even if you’re not going to The Prosper Show, you can get to Vegas, I mean, who needs a reason, another reason to go to Vegas, anybody should go to Vegas and have fun come to that party, do some networking. I mean like literally, you know, that’s the reason why we’re talking now. We’ve been we met at a conference and we’ve stayed in touch ever since then. So come there. If any, if there’s any ’90s kids out there like, like me, you know, we’ve got Mark McGrath from SugarRay, who’s gonna be performing lives. So you know, we’re aging ourselves with that. But if you know who he is good for you, but you wanna get some nineties vibes he’ll be there. So make sure come there now. Other than meeting you in person, how can people find you on the interwebs these days out there?

Izabela:

Oh, you’re so sweet. Bradley. Yes. I, I think, let me just say that again, guys. Networking is the motherload of, of everything you can achieve in this lifetime. And like Bradley said, come say hello to me. I don’t think I looked that scary. And Bradley definitely doesn’t look scary. He’s the most fun person to be around. So please come say hello to us. Come to the Helium 10 party, feel free to come say hello to us. You can find me on Facebook at Izabela Hamilton. Izabela so Z and one L guys. I’m on Instagram if you wanna follow my crazy conspiracy theories and mindset, days that I have, but before anything, I just wanna tell you guys, I love you so much. I love that you’re supporting Helium 10. I love that. You’re supporting me. I just love people. I don’t know if I said that enough, but I truly do from all my heart. And I think it’s all about love in this lifetime. I want everybody to spread this. So come to Helium 10 party and let’s hang out,

Bradley Sutton:

Love it. And then as of actually, you know, a few days ago, you can also find her contact info at directory.helium10.com. Our, partner directory. You can find RankBell in there as well. So Izabel about, I’ll be seeing you been a while since I’ve seen you in person. So we’ll be seeing you in a couple of weeks and hopefully the rest of you guys out there. And let’s see if Tim Jordan will finally bring you on the AM/PM Podcast next year. If not, then you’re coming back here. Right?

Izabela:

I would love that and save me bachata dance. I told you I’ve been taking bachata dance lessons. Love you.

Bradley Sutton:

I love it.

Izabela:

Thank you. I love Helium 10.

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