Yonah (00:01)
In our upcoming episodes, we'll be sharing conversations with key partners who have been instrumental in the growth of brands like Ray -Bans, Tom Ford, and Biogents. Today, this episode is brought to you by Amazon Growth Lab. At AGL, we help brands on Amazon achieve explosive growth with a focus on organic visibility. Listen, Martin, one client who signed up with us this past January saw their monthly revenue 10X.

from 100K to nearly a million dollars in just five months. If you're ready to take your Amazon presence to the next level, let's make it happen. Visit amazongrowthlab .com to learn more. Now, before introducing today's guest, I wanna give a quick shout out to Zuhal Hall and Ha-kyung Qiong from Mavi. If you haven't tried Mavi jeans yet, go to Amazon and get yourself a pair immediately. They're known to be the perfect fit and unbeatable comfort.

I got one for my girlfriend and she doesn't stop raving about it. Now, let's get to today's guest. Martin Zerrudo is the Director of Enterprise and Brand Development at CoreTile and has been instrumental in helping countless brands scale on Amazon. Quartile's unique AI technology is used by over 5 ,300 brands worldwide, managing over $2 billion in ad spend each year.

Martin has been instrumental in helping brands maximize their growth on Amazon. Now, without further ado, Martin, welcome to The Amazon Playbook.

Martin (01:34)
Thank you so much for having me, Yonah. It's a pleasure.

Yonah (01:36)
Yeah, great to have you here. Really excited. We've been wanting to do this for a while.

Martin (01:38)
Damn. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Yonah (01:41)
Sweet, so yeah, just to start off, I know obviously I gave a little bit of an intro to Quartile. I'm sure you can do 100 times better of a job explaining what Quartile does, so maybe you can break it down more into layman's terms for the audience.

Martin (01:55)
Sure. So thank you so much for having me. For audience members who've never heard of Quartile before, we are one of the world's largest retail media optimization platforms. So essentially what that means is we manage ads for brands and agencies who are running, know, ad campaigns, digital ad campaigns on Amazon, Google, Walmart, Target, Instacart, Bing, so on and so forth. And really our claim to fame is our approach to algorithmic and machine learning when it comes to bidding.

as well as when it comes to machine learning and how we utilize that across an omnichannel strategy. At the end of the day, yes, it's a lot of technology, but we also have a huge, you know, we have over 350 employees, have offices. I'm in Toronto, we have our head offices in Manhattan, right beside Grand Central. We have an office in Philly, we have an office in Miami, two offices in Brazil, a remote office in UK. The reason why we have so many people is because very early on our founders recognized that yes,

Automation, yes, machine learning and AI's integral in scaling and making things super efficient, but you still need some of human intelligence. You still need that overall strategy. You still need a subjective understanding of the market and of the brand and of the product, and most importantly, of the consumer to be able to position the algorithm and the platform and the software to scale successfully. So been here for about two years now. Sorry, go ahead.

Yonah (03:12)
I imagine that's just like, there's a lot of education there where suddenly people think that, if you're utilizing AI, okay, cool, we'll just hook up our seller central account to, or if you're not on Amazon, honestly, any platform, we'll just hook it up to CoreTile and the algorithm will do all the work for us as opposed to looking at it as a tool.

Martin (03:25)
Right.

Great.

Exactly. So a lot of our competitors in our space, which is great, know, we love to have competitors, iron sharpens iron, and that's good. Having said that, you know, some of them have a more self -service approach, which is great. You know, they're really nice, you know, UI and UX, and it's easy for you to kind of go in there and learn on your own. Having said that, you know, mileage may vary in terms of how effective you are utilizing a self -service approach to automation, because yes, it will do what you tell it to do, but it may not always do what you want.

Yonah (03:41)
I think we're.

Martin (04:00)
to do. And so that's really where we've leveraged that human intelligence is that every brand is going to be different. Every product is different. Every market is different every season of the year and every quarter is different. And so how do you take all of these human and subjective elements and utilize them as factors in determining the best automated strategy for your bids? And so really it's that balance and that combination of what the mind and what the human mind knows versus what automation can do once it knows what you want it to do. That is really compelling.

and what we've seen in terms of the growth at Quartile.

Yonah (04:32)
So, you know, obviously if you're working with a brand that has 10 ,000 products, it's impossible to, you know, on a manual perspective, optimize bids to the same extent that a machine can do it. In the sense that if you have so many products, you can't really focus on each of them and people tend to just focus on, you know, the five, 10 best sellers. I'm curious, would you say that a brand that only has one SKU or four SKUs

Martin (04:38)
Mm

Yonah (05:00)
Does it make sense to have this type of automation that they're utilizing?

Martin (05:03)
Traditionally, no. I mean, we would love to work with all brands and like say you only have one ASIN or one product, but you have a significant amount of ad spend because maybe that one, say maybe like men's soap. It's a really much more you can do in terms of keywords and key phrases outside of soap, men's soap, soap for men. So you know it's a competitive category. You know that you don't really have a lot of keywords to play with in terms of finding niches in that particular category.

So technically you can use Quartile for maybe one or two ASINs if you have enough ad spend, but you know, the ideal, I guess, customer profile or brand profile would have a lot more SKUs or ASINs and a little bit more ad spend. If you are only running maybe one or two campaigns and only one product, your ad spend may be like less than 3000 a month. Then I think there's a lot to learn that you can do through manual processes and a lot of like these, you know, cost -effective rules -based tools that will allow you to do so many things.

just on your own. And then I think once you realize, like with any brand, that in order to really grow top line, it's really in product expansion, right? You can't really just bank everything on one or two products if you really want to grow and scale. And so as your product catalog starts to grow, as your brand and your business starts to grow and scale, then really have to start looking for tools that allow you to scale your ad solution as well.

Yonah (06:06)
Mmm.

That's a great answer. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. was going to say, know, I tried to, it's difficult to break down into layman's terms and you do a phenomenal job doing so. It's very impressive. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, obviously in the past year, AI has become a huge buzzword, right? When chat GBC hit the market suddenly.

Martin (06:24)
I hope that makes sense.

Mmm.

thank you very much.

Sure.

Yonah (06:45)
Every business is trying to spin as if they're actually an AI company when in reality, a lot of them, they are just selling men's soap and they're claiming to have AI technology behind it. So I get curious, how has Quartile's business shifted as suddenly the whole world has been laser focused on AI and not just e -commerce, but pretty much every industry in the world?

Martin (06:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Great question. When you say, like, hey, everybody's AI, everybody's machine learning, everybody's got an algorithm, it reminds me of that Spider -Man meme where there's like three of them and they're all pointing at each other like, are you Spider -Man? Or like, are you Spider -Man? It's like, are you AI? Are you algorithm, you're machine learning? And that's almost what it feels like. Last year when we were so accelerated as coming up next month, it usually happens in Seattle. It's one of the, yeah, I'll see you there, looking forward to it.

Yonah (07:23)
So good.

I'll see you there.

Martin (07:41)
There's two major conferences for Amazon. It's Unboxed and Accelerate. And last year at Accelerate was very much the buzzword, algorithm, AI, machine learning. And I got this question a lot. What is the difference? You say you're AI, they say you're AI, they say their algorithm is better than your algorithm. And I was in a conference last month in New York. Had a happy hour and we had a pretty prominent CEO and agency owner in our space.

come up to me and they're using a competitor of ours that also says that they use machine learning, which is great. And they're like, Martin, what's the difference? Like, you you want us to use you and we're using them, like, what's the difference? Right? So the way that I try and frame this topic is when chat GPT came out, at least mostly accessible to the public when I say come out, when it came out and everybody had a chance to sign up and start using it and like realize like, wow, prompts make my life easier. I can put in a question, I can put in a prompt and it'll give me the answer.

What did you see? Google with Bard and now Gemini, Meta, everybody started to come out with their algorithm or at least large language model based machine learning platform that people can start using. Why did they do that? Why did it all of a sudden start this arms race? Because when it comes to machine learning and full disclosure, I'm not a data scientist, I'm not a data engineer, somebody who's been in the e -commerce space for, I guess a decade now. When it comes to machine learning,

The true value here is time. So for example, Yonah, you come out with an algorithm, right? You've been running it for six months and your algorithm has a formula and computations and all these variables. And it's been learning for six months. It's been running that formula and that computation. And all of that data has been running for six months and it's been learning for six months. Now let's say your cousin comes out with their own algorithm, but they've been learning for a year. They now have a six month headstart on you.

Yonah (09:13)
Hmm.

Martin (09:38)
And so when people ask, well, what's the difference between core talent, other algorithms and other AI based solutions, we've been around since 2018. So can you imagine a six year headstart on machine learning? That is. Immeasurable advantage in terms of the time that you have saved and the time that has been invested in the maturity and the robustness of this algorithm. There's a reason why I think they're on a 10 now, right? The conversion 10 of Amazon's algorithm, because they learned from one.

Yonah (09:45)
Mmm.

Martin (10:06)
So it's like if you're working at a platform, if you're utilizing a platform, and no hate on Walmart, but they just came out with dynamic bidding, think is just what they just introduced into their marketplace, which is something that Amazon has had for like two, three years, if not longer. And so again, the value here is time. Does that mean we stop iterating? Absolutely not. I think last year we were finalists for technology innovation, according to Amazon. So that's great knowing that we were kind of one of the first movers in this space when it comes to automation and AI for bidding for Amazon ads and then.

Yonah (10:17)
Totally.

Martin (10:36)
Six years later, we're still being considered as like top three in terms of innovation, which is very rare because you're getting a lot of these new people who are creating their own ad tech solution around automation. But in terms of, okay, great. You have the advantage of time. You're continually iterating. What are you doing differently? And I don't want to get too much into the weeds for those who may not be as familiar with things like DSP and AMC, but something wildly, what I find wildly revolutionary in how we approach

know, AMC audiences and utilizing DSP ad types is, or programmatic ad types like DSP is, what we did was we will take somebody who's running DSP and then we'll run them through an AMC, a bunch of AMC queries to be able to categorize the people who are purchasing these products based off of DSP. We take those categories and start turning them into subcategories.

Yonah (11:23)
Mm -hmm.

Martin (11:27)
And then from there, most people would stop, right? They'd be saying, okay, we'll run the AMC queries. We'll understand a path of purchase. We'll understand keywords that are bringing new to brand customers. We'll be able to understand lookalike audiences. We'll be able to understand card abandoners. That's great. That's the power of AMC. What CoreTel has done now that's beyond what everybody else is doing is we actually, when ChatGPST allowed you to start licensing large language models to start kind of creating your own in -house LLM. I remember like mid last year,

our internal chat was like, we're building up our LLM. Start feeding us questions because we want this thing to learn super fast. And so we've actually ran a competition, like who can come up with the comprehensive queries that will allow our LLM to learn fastest? I submitted my questions. I won the award. think it was like a $200 gift card, like an Apple, like an AirPod mini or like some sort of like Apple speaker, which is great. But for me, I was like excited. I was like, no way. So we're making our own LLM. We're developing it for our ad tool.

Yonah (12:14)
You

Martin (12:24)
and platform, what was the end result? We actually took what is now a robust LLM that we've been working on for a year, and we take the subcategories from AMC and we feed it into the LLM. And what happens? Instead of just looking at audiences, it's starting to contextualize the audiences and the people buying it and the other data, there's like 80 ,000 data points that they would get from AMC. And it starts to map personas. So for example, if we have men's soap,

We take all of that subcategorization of AMC and we start understanding there's one persona that's the premium shopper. Somebody who is constantly going to high -end barber shops, somebody who's constantly buying high -end skincare products. That's one persona that's buying this men's soap. You have another persona that's like eco -friendly, that loves the fact that the soap is green, the packaging is recyclable, and their purchasing habits and their persona is centered around, well, am I buying things that are eco -friendly? And then you have another who's like,

Yonah (13:20)
Hmm.

Martin (13:23)
who loves to try premium things. They like to buy expensive, maybe Apple products. They like to buy luxury products. And so what we've done now is we've taken information that Amazon gives us, fed it into our large language model. And we're now telling our brands and our customers, hey, look, these people who are buying your products fit into these archetypes that not only can you start leveraging it through your other Amazon ads and strategy, but in your other channels as well, social media.

your direct to consumer, even your influences and the audiences that they target and they talk to that persona mapping that we just started doing this year. I was in an office in Amazon and I think it was at either DC or, or, C or Chicago. One of those two offices I was at this year and I talked to them about, this is something that we're doing. they were like, nobody else is doing that. And I'm not saying, Hey, this is the silver bullet. That's going to take you from a million dollars to $10 million overnight. But to your point.

Yonah (14:12)
Mmm

Martin (14:19)
We may have the head start, but we only keep that head start because we keep running. It doesn't mean that we're going to stop and say, hey, we're good. We'll wait for six years until everybody catches up. We keep going. Exactly, especially in SaaS. Especially in SaaS. Ad Tech is such a competitive space. And we have to be able to recognize that though we may be in a position of we're in an advantageous position, we may be ahead.

Yonah (14:28)
The moment you stop innovating, you die.

Martin (14:48)
doesn't mean that we're going to stay there if we don't keep it ready.

Yonah (14:52)
Yeah, it's obviously important to keep that humility and humbleness that is almost like crucial when being a startup. obviously you guys are doing $2 billion of ad spend, but if you're able to keep the same mentality that you were able to of learners for life and really wanting to innovate that the founders obviously had from the beginning, the moment that you lose that, suddenly you're going to fall to the wayside.

Martin (15:09)
Yeah.

Absolutely.

And what I want to add to that humility and having that vision that our founders had, like our founder, our CEO is Daniel, he's from Brazil. His childhood friends are also co -founders. His brother's a co -founder, Eduardo, Silvia, our CMO. They came up with this idea, obviously it flourished, but out of our 350 plus employees, there's a significant portion of our workforce that are from Brazil.

And what I love about that is that he gives back to that community. They give back to that community and saying, Hey, this is where we're from culturally. We know there's a really great, really smart talent in Brazil. You know, traditionally when you start thinking about e -commerce and VA's and people were able to, you you think about like Pakistan or India or Philippines, which is great. Like those are definitely hubs for a lot of e -commerce and VA talent. But Brazil has really been given an opportunity to shine through core talent. And, I commend our founders and our leaders for that because they're like, Hey, we came from this country.

Yonah (15:43)
Mmm.

Martin (16:12)
were just as competitive and up to the task. And they've really given them that opportunity and it's really bore fruit.

Yonah (16:19)
It's really beautiful and also it's rare to see. It's amazing that, yeah, I think a company is only as good as its CEO and its leaders and it sounds like Quartile has the benefit of having fearless leaders that are always putting others first.

Martin (16:29)
for sure.

Yeah, if I can tell this really short story, I'm not sure if this is okay. So we had a summer swore. It was almost like a summer, like onsite training get together. We do this every year. We go to Philly because we had acquired a company called Sidecar. I want to say maybe like 50%, 60 % of the company is there only because when we had acquired a company called Sidecar about three years ago, they primarily did Google ads. And so the Sidecar team is based in Philly.

Yonah (16:37)
I would love that.

The whole company goes?

Martin (17:04)
quartet slash sidecar when they melded together, we kept a huge workforce in Philly. So we have our summer party in Philly. And when we were there, we go to this, it's like a venue near the water and there was like a big Jenga set up. And then of course, know, Daniel being super awesome, like he brought his like 12 year old daughter to the soiree and like, was like, Hey, do want to play Jenga? And like, there's a photo of us like playing Jenga and it's just like, you don't think this is like a...

Yonah (17:29)
You

Martin (17:34)
50 to $100 million company. You don't think that we're dealing with a company and founders and leaders who are managing $2 billion of ad spend. Like, can you imagine that? In our hands every year, we have to decide how do we spend $2 billion? And not just, hey, we're gonna spend $2 billion to try and do A, B, or C. Clients wanna see return, they wanna see growth, they wanna see efficiency, they wanna see opportunity, they want thought leadership, they want you to be attentive to their needs, they want responsiveness, they want communication.

Like all of this stuff is expected of any kind of platform and any kind of agency that's providing these kinds of services. And for us, even though we're doing that, there's still a familiarity. There's still a community. There's still very much just a culture that I find rare. And I'm very, very blessed to be a part of.

Yonah (18:24)
I know that you and I have talked about this extensively where it's sad, but there's almost a reality where when people accrue a lot of money, at least within the US, often it gets to their head. And I remember I've heard you say specifically, there's so many billionaires out there that are just total assholes. And I would much rather be a millionaire and be kind than be a billionaire and be cruel. And it feels like it really ties back to that.

Martin (18:51)
it does. It does for sure. Who knows? However long I'm going to be at Quartile, is it another year? Is it another 10 years? Like, however long, you know, a very faithful person, very spiritual. So for me, like, if God's plan is for me to stay here for however long, like, I'll be happy every day I wake up and I'm working here. Having said that, if that were to ever change, you know, there isn't...

Yonah (19:12)
Hmm.

Martin (19:16)
they're honestly in almost two years, there hasn't been an instance where I can look back and be like, man, I hate my job. Or like, man, I don't want to work here. It's incredibly supportive. And, you know, for those who I talk to and whether they want to use the platform or not, the way that I choose to kind of lead with kindness is I say, hey, and I did this at Accelerate and I'll do the exact same thing, you know, when we're there next month. When people come to us and say, hey,

Can your platform do A, B, and C because we were at this booth and that platform said that they can do A, and C better. I'm very transparent. I'll say, Hey, look, I used to run an Amazon agency. We used to use them. We got pitched quartile. These guys just came about last year. Here's where you might, if you, if you are this persona, that's probably where you're better served. If this is your persona here, then you definitely should work with us. And if you feel like, this is your advantage, or this is where you want to go, then that's.

where you should go. It's very, very transparent. Like nobody here is trying to do like a bait and switch and like, Cortile can manage the whole world. Like it really needs to be a right fit, not only in terms of what your goals are, but also the kind of person that you are. We're not here to serve rude people who are going to be assholes to our CSMs. You know, we're here to work with people who are creative and hungry, who have an open mindedness on automation, but also embrace the collaborativeness that comes with automation as well as human intelligence.

Yonah (20:38)
Yeah, that's something that, you know, running an agency, that's definitely something that I've run into too, where there's almost, when you first start off, you know, you're so hungry that you're like, I'll work with anyone and everyone. But eventually you get to a point where you're like, you know, it would be nice to have another client sign up, but at the end of the day, if it's going to add more stress to my life because they're not a kind person or they don't respect boundaries, it's not worth it.

Martin (20:50)
Correct.

Yonah (21:07)
Because at the end of the day, similar to you, I feel blessed that every day I wake up and I love what I do. yeah, working with the team at AGL every day is so inspiring. And I feel grateful that I get to be surrounded by people that honestly I feel are way more intelligent and have a deeper understanding of the Amazon ecosystem than me. And I feel like part of my duty is ensuring that we are bringing the right people to the fit. Exactly what you're saying of.

Martin (21:07)
No.

Yonah (21:37)
There's nothing worse than seeing one of our team members being talked to poorly by a client and then having to step in and pretty much say, hey, this is inappropriate. We'd love to work with you if you can shift your behavior, but we're not going to tolerate that.

Martin (21:52)
If not, then probably not. No, it's true. know, not all agencies are made the same. We don't have to name names, but some give us a bad rap. And mean, I wouldn't even classify Quartile an agency per se. Like we were a software platform. We do provide managed service, but at the end of the day we're SaaS, right? But acknowledging that there's still like a managed, you know, client to account manager relationship similar to Amazon agencies, you know,

It's on us to hold a higher standard in how we interact with our clients and how we talk about our competitors and how we present ourselves online. You know, for me, I'm very blessed in my role at Quartile that as a director of enterprise brand development, I'm doing a lot of these podcasts. I do a lot of these webinars. I speak at a lot of these conferences. I just got told this morning, you know, that I'm going to be speaking at Unboxed, which is in New York in October.

which is like the premier conference and that'll be my first time speaking there. knowing that, how am I going to present myself? What am I going to say? How do I contribute value to our space in a way that people are interested in learning more about quartile are interested in maybe giving us a shot, but they don't walk away feeling like, man, all these guys are the same or all these guys are rude or like, they're all just throwing each other under the bus. Like we have to elevate the discourse because if you know, you're, you're in sales, I'm in sales. We're all trying to

pitch our product.

If we're all gonna be in the mud, then it's difficult to build trust. It's difficult to build rapport. It's difficult to differentiate through kindness if nobody's kind. Like, you know what I mean? for me, know, agency or not, whether you're a SaaS platform or not, in this space, in any space really, like it pays to be kind, honestly. And I would rather be successful in a team where everybody is eating.

Yonah (23:33)
Totally, that makes a lot of Yeah.

Martin (23:51)
versus being the only one that's at the top and I had to stab everybody in the back to get there. know, and unfortunately, yeah, it starts with Y and leaders eat last. Absolutely, you know, and, and, and.

Yonah (23:56)
This reminds me of Simon Sinek. Have you heard of him? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's honestly been a big, for me, inspiration in what it means to be a leader. What it means to be a successful entrepreneur.

Martin (24:14)
Definitely. And I had a good friend of mine who was like all about these books. He's like, read this book, read this book, read this book. When you read these books, my opinion, my perspective is what do you get from it that can add value to your life? But don't treat it like scripture or doctrine. You know what I mean? Like there's certain books that almost say like it has to be this way. And I get it. You're trying to sell a perspective and sell a, it be very much becomes dogmatic. And then it's like, no, because it says the leader,

Yonah (24:36)
It becomes dogmatic.

Martin (24:43)
eats last, then it has to be this way and like you can't adjust. And it's like, but there are certain situations where that philosophy doesn't apply. doesn't mean it doesn't work, but it doesn't always apply. There was another book that I read where it was like, if the team is failing, then it's on the leader. And if you switch out the leader, then the team will do better. And sometimes that's very much true. But other times you can switch out the leader as many times as you want. If it's the same team, you're not really going to see much difference.

Yonah (25:04)
You

What I find really funny, and this is tangent in a different direction, when self -help books have dogmatic approaches, where there's so many times where...

Martin (25:12)
Sure, sure, sure.

Yonah (25:22)
It's almost like, it's like, who do you think you are to say that like you, you know, you're just another human, you're no smarter than me. Why do you think that you have the answers and you can tell me how I need to live my life? When I think like, you know, the whole beauty and goal behind it is, hey, if anything I say lands in you, beautiful, take it, run with it. Otherwise just like let it go in one ear and out the other and just take whatever kernels of truth lie true to you.

Martin (25:34)
It's 100%.

Yeah.

100%. And, know, and, and, and to kind of buttress this topic and point, what is the age old adage in our space when it comes to sales and trying to get new customers? It's the customer's always right. And guess what? That's not true. We know this because we have been customers where we were right. And we have been sellers where we know they were wrong. And it's like, you can't, to your point, take one or two.

dogmatic approaches and apply it to all. I real leaders in our space, real leaders, I say that as like, if you're not doing it, then you're not real. But like those, I think who succeed are able to kind of pick and choose different kernels of truths, different perspectives, and then kind of form their own overall vision for what they want to do. And then they go. Yeah, go from there.

Yonah (26:37)
Completely agreed. Well, congrats on getting asked to speak in a box. That's really exciting.

Martin (26:43)
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of trust that was placed on me. You know, it's been pretty hot and heavy in terms of like this year and this role where I think in the next, if we include last month and next month is probably like seven webinars that we're doing or doing videos and doing conferences. And like, it's difficult because I have a five month old, you know, it's our first and yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah. He's, he's grown super fast and

Yonah (27:04)
Wow, congrats, Martin.

So working a quartile is the easy part of the day. It's changing the diapers when it gets difficult.

Martin (27:13)
Honestly, it's like, wait, so you don't want to sleep longer than 20 minutes? Well, you want to sleep longer than 20 minutes. Why don't you get, you know, so the hard part of it obviously is being away. And honestly, the real hero in this whole story and journey is my wife for, holding down the household and like, you know, being such a fantastic partner and, mother to our son. having said that, you know, I appreciate that she understands what I do to be able to provide for our household.

Yonah (27:29)
Mmm.

Martin (27:42)
our leaders have put a lot of trust in me. And so I appreciate the trust and knowing that.

they made this thing, is their baby, Cortell is their baby, whether they wanna exit, they wanna grow it to 200 million or 300 million or whatever, whatever role I may play in whatever window of time I'm part of this company, I'm gonna ensure that I take care of it with the utmost respect and responsibility.

Yonah (28:06)
So just so I understand, is it that Unbox reaches out to Cortile and then Cortile asks you to speak on behalf of Cortile or does Unbox reach out to you directly?

Martin (28:15)
no, they went through our leadership and then the leadership are like, Martin should probably be one of our speakers for this. know Daniel's speaking at X -Tower. I'm going to take a picture and post it everywhere and be like, look, mom, I made it because last year I was at Unboxed and my only participation there was they had like a NFL because they had just announced like a prime NFL like streaming deal. And I think they were like Monday night football on Amazon prime TV or something. And they had like this, they had this like,

Yonah (28:21)
I imagine that's such an honor.

Martin (28:43)
like an activity where you throw footballs into a target and the one who gets the most amount of footballs in the target gets like a NFL helmet that's like signed by a bunch of like these famous players. I did it twice. Disaster. And I was like, okay, well that that defines my unboxed experience. I went to this thing. I came, I saw, and I failed exponentially, but I guess never coming back. And they're like, Hey, do you want to speak? And I'm like, I'm coming right back.

Yonah (29:05)
You're like never coming back to this again.

That's so good. So do you get nervous to like, you always, I know you've been doing podcasts for 10 plus years and you're obviously a natural with it. At one point in time, was there fear around it? Did you get nervous? And what about like being a keynote speaker? Like, do you get nervous every time you speak? Does it come naturally?

Martin (29:17)
Mmm.

totally.

Yeah.

Great question. think, you know, people say they fear public speaking more than death. I think there's like some sort of statistic or scientific, you know, study where like they would rather die than stand in front of a group of people. For me, I think I've been very blessed with a skill set where, yes, I'm still nervous. Yes, it's very nerve wracking. But for whatever reason, like, hey, I put me in front of a group of people, I'll figure it out.

doesn't mean I'm the best speaker. And actually one of my ministers spiritually just told me great advice. He was like, you could be the best speaker in front of a group of people. And there's always going to be two people in the back. They're going to hate you. So it's like, you can't walk into a group setting and public speaking situation thinking that I have to impress everybody. I have to appeal to everybody. I have to be funny and then I have to be serious and then I have to speak with gravitas and then I have to dance and then I have to make a joke. Like just be yourself. And I know that

Yonah (30:17)
Mmm.

Martin (30:27)
saying that is difficult for people who have extreme anxiety when it comes to doing any kind of public speaking, whether it's gonna go on YouTube or a podcast or a conference or whatever, but at the end of the day, like how can people fault you for being you? There literally is only one of you. And if you're there and you say your truth or your perspective and one person walks out with a value, then you've accomplished your job. Then you've done your part. You're not there.

Yonah (30:39)
Hmm.

Martin (30:52)
to please everybody. You're there to provide value to somebody who might find value out of it. And that's really the best you can hope for. I think the challenge with most people when it comes to public speaking is they have such huge expectations for what it's meant to be. This word that I learned after getting married and me and my wife are hitting five years of our five year anniversary in October. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You know, we've learned a lot from each other, but I think the word of the marriage.

Yonah (31:13)
Congratulations.

Martin (31:19)
in terms of five years of learning it is is calibrate. You know, like if something is happening and I'm upset, I have to calibrate. Is this a big deal? Is this not a big deal? You know, when she's going through something, hey, is this worth getting worth fighting over? Let's calibrate how we expect ourselves, how we react to both. Both. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes she has to remind me, sometimes I have to remind her. So I think when it comes to public speaking and an e -commerce, any kind of situation, just calibrate.

Yonah (31:27)
Mmm.

Calibrate together, calibrate separately, depends on the moment.

Martin (31:47)
You're gonna speak for 45 minutes. That is a drop in the bucket of your life. You're gonna speak for 15 minutes. That's an even less of a drop. 100%. And then now that you have a perspective of what's really gonna happen, then you can kind of go from there.

Yonah (31:54)
Really just put it in perspective.

Just have fun with it.

I completely agree with you conceptually and I also know that if I was on the stage of Unbox, I probably wouldn't sleep for two weeks.

Martin (32:11)
But I bet you you did it a second time, you'd crush it the second time and learn from the first. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're all learning. We're all learning.

Yonah (32:15)
Yeah, words of wisdom. So, you know, when it comes to business, I know that most of my friends that I speak to feel this and I myself feel this. It's easy to continually push the goalposts, right? So at one point in time, you graduate, you get your first job, you're really happy about your salary. You know, years later, your salary's doubled and it still doesn't feel like enough. So with where you're at, you know, it's amazing where like unboxed,

massive, massive deal that you're going to be a speaker there. From the outside world, I'm sure a lot of people look at you and they're like, wow, Martin has made it within the Amazon space. He's really at the forefront of this intersection of AI tech and e -commerce. And I'm curious, do you feel that about yourself?

Martin (33:07)
wow. That is, wow, that's a, that is a question. Wow. You got me there. I'm usually like, I'm so good to think on my feet. was like, as you're saying this question, I was like, where am I going to go with this answer? First of all, thank you. I think I'm just one of many who are in this cross section. And I think, you know, the term thought leader,

Yonah (33:22)
Yeah.

Martin (33:32)
just thrown around a lot and I would love to be considered as such, you know, a thought leader is someone who has maybe a good thought once in a while. Doesn't mean they're like the exclusive owner of good ideas and good thoughts. And it doesn't mean you're leading everybody, but you know, I accept the premise. appreciate it. Have I made it? I think.

When I had started the agency and I was able to close my first deal, I was like, I made it. Like I made it. Like I'm a CEO of a small agency, close the deal. I, my words generated revenue that I am now able to use to pay for people so they can buy food and eat. And for me in my mind, I was like, my God, I made it. And then, you know, after doing that for so many years,

Yonah (34:16)
Mmm.

Martin (34:23)
I was like, I don't know if this is something that's fulfilling for me anymore. I don't know if this is something that is purpose driven. And at that point I was like, did I really make it? You know, it's like.

Yonah (34:35)
What made it shift? Like, if there's something that brought you so much joy...

what made the fulfillment rot.

Martin (34:44)
Good question. I think...

And I think, you know, we've had conversations about this, know, business is easy, people are difficult, people are tricky. And I think at the beginning where I felt like I had made it, I was at a point in my life where I was going from working nonprofit, making very, very, little and just trying to be as scrappy as possible to, as scrappy as possible to provide for my wife. At one point it was pandemic. So we were all locked.

in lockdown. was living in a basement that had barely any windows. So I'd like I'd wake up, go to my office, eat, go back to sleep. And it felt like the days had blended together. And like sunshine was like a luxury, like every weekend when we would like go for a walk. And then after that back to the dungeon. Yeah, you know, the shackles of trying to provide for a whole household, like, it was hard time. It was a very, hard but the but for me, I was like super driven. I was like,

Yonah (35:33)
when you escape the basement.

Martin (35:47)
If I have been trusted with being the head of this household and we didn't have a child back then, but like I took it very seriously. I got to provide for this girl. She, she moved here to Toronto. She's not working. We just moved out into our first basement apartment. How am going to provide? And so at one point, I kid you not, I was working for a nonprofit for, for my church. I was working as a like part -time manager.

for the senior director, I think senior director of senior real estate at Berkshire Hathaway in San Diego. Like she was a friend of a friend of mine that I got very close to and she was like, hey, I need help. I need an online, I guess like a digital marketing manager. And so I was doing that on the side, like helping her with her like senior business and real estate for Berkshire Hathaway. And then at the same time, I was working with some people in our space that was like,

Hey, do you want to write copy? Hey, do you want to do Amazon? Hey, do you want to do this agency? So it was like all of this was happening at the same time. So for me, absolutely. There was fulfillment there because I was like, look, I'm hustling and I'm finding a way to provide for my wife. And then eventually two years later, it's like we're living in a condo. Condos beautiful. You know, I'm the CEO of a seven figure agency and like I control my time. And at the height we had like 90 VA's from like Philippines and Pakistan and Serbia. And like, it was amazing.

And then you're like, wait, I no longer have time to spend with my wife because I'm in meetings 12 hours a day, Eastern time zone, Pacific time zone, Philippines time zone, client's time zone. Number two, the burden, not just of my household, but now I have the burden of how do I provide enough revenue to feed 90 plus people? A thousand percent. Because it's like, imagine having to tell somebody, hey, Yonah,

Yonah (37:22)
you

Did that stress you out?

Martin (37:46)
Let's say if we role play, Yonah, you've been fantastic. You've done nothing wrong with your job and everything that you've done is so valuable to us. Having said that, unfortunately, we're gonna have to let you go. Like I have to look you in the eye and tell you that out of no fault of your own, I have to now take food off of your table. I can't provide a means of livelihood for you anymore.

Now that conversation multiplied by five, multiplied by 10, you know, like there's a lot of turnover in our space. And agency life is feast or famine. You have a quarter where you have like five new, 10 new closed deals. You're hiring all over the place because you're expanding bandwidth, you're expanding everything, expanding features and offerings and blah, blah. Hey, can you do that? Yeah, we can do that. Can you do this? yeah, we can do that. you're maxed out with five. Okay, we need a new account manager, right? I think you recently hired an account manager, so that's part of it. But then what happens next quarter, you lose five accounts.

Yonah (38:39)
you

Martin (38:43)
You can only float so much that if you're not able to recoup those five with five new accounts, then it's in your best business interest to unfortunately let some people go or at least shift their hours or shift their pay structure. And that's very, very taxing. I know some people say like, Hey, ivory tower, you're at the very top and like you make the most money near the sea. Like, boo hoo, who cry me a river, but like, Hey, not all CEOs are assholes. And some of us take it very seriously when we have to let people go. And like, I wasn't living so lavishly that I was like,

flying on a personal jet or private jet and like, know, like, absolutely, everybody got a chance to ride. But, know, like, heavy is the one who wears the crown. Heavy is the head who wears the crown. And for us leaders in our space that have to let people go and then spend less time with family and then take all of the stress and the burden of making sure that this thing is going to survive or not, it was becoming too much. And so at that point, I'm like, yeah, I don't know if

Yonah (39:17)
You share your private jet with your neighbor, no?

Hmm.

Martin (39:43)
I don't know if this is fulfilling for me anymore. I don't know if this is what my purpose should be. And then, you know, in terms of who somebody that I want to give a shout out to, it's always going to be Brad. Brad Davis, who's our VP of partnerships at Quartile. You know, I met him through, you know, a conference through Seller Universe and through Quartile. We'd met a couple of times in person through some networking activities. And I was like, Hey man, I don't know what to do. Like, I don't know if this is where I want to be. And he's like, well, we have an opening.

And it didn't end up being that opening. They ended up asking me if I wanted to take a different role, which I ended up getting director of enterprise sales, which then turned into this role now this year, which is director of enterprise brand development, which has a little bit more front facing responsibilities. And now I'm like, I work from home. My son is across the hallway. Now outside of having to travel, I have the ability to spend time with them as much as I can. And yes, some people would prefer to be the boss. I find I thrive most in being in a situation where I can kind of push the on.

I can provide solutions and even though it's not my head or it's not my name on the door or my name on on the wall like I can still proudly provide and contribute and have balance and time and space for myself and my family. I hope that didn't sound too long -winded.

Yonah (40:53)
No, not at all. wanted you to keep going for another 20 minutes. I'm a little upset that you stopped. It's beautiful to hear, especially because I myself am essentially in the position that you were once in, where you're saying you were running an agency that was catering to helping brands scale on Amazon. And I'm like, huh, is this going to be me in the future? Because right now for myself, I feel immensely fulfilled. And for me, my background came from

Martin (40:58)
No, I mean just at the end of the day like

Yonah (41:23)
You know, at one point in time, I started my own brand and launched it on Amazon and scaled it to seven figures and then really wanted to get to a new challenge. And yeah, life is unpredictable and who knows, you know, who knows if we'll be alive tomorrow and who knows what's gonna bring us passion in a month, a week, a year, or a decade from now. But in this moment, I love it and yeah, I hope that continues.

Martin (41:44)
Yeah.

Likewise, likewise.

Yonah (41:54)
so, you know, it sounds like Brad has been really instrumental in making a big shift in your career. there any other mentors, that come to mind or like, is there any advice that you've been given that, you want to share today?

Martin (42:01)
Absolutely.

man.

people in this space you know what yeah sure

Yonah (42:14)
I know for myself, just a quick shout out, Martin, you're one of my mentors. And that's why I'm really, really, really honored to have you as the first guest on my podcast. They just started with just, you know, a random networking message on LinkedIn. Actually, funny enough, I reached out to Martin because I wanted to hire him. And then after talking to him for a little bit, I was like, huh, can I just pay you to be a consultant?

Martin (42:26)
Appreciate it.

Can you just talk to me and let's figure this out together? And I'm like, yeah, 100%. That's so much more fun.

Yonah (42:44)
Yeah, yeah, some people pay for friends, know, other people pay for good service. But yeah, I know that working with you has been instrumental in my own personal growth. So yeah, just curious to hear who your mentors are.

Martin (42:54)
I appreciate it.

Yeah, so I would probably say, I guess we kind of share him in our connection. I would definitely say Jeremy from Rise 25 has been a really good friend of mine. what I love about what I learned from him was that there was a, like I'm all about genuineness, authenticity, but there's also a financial benefit.

to just being a good person, knowing how to network and connect with people and utilize great intellectual conversation to build a book of business. And that's what I learned with him and at Rise 25 and been able to pass that on to yourself and others who have been interested in creating content and utilizing it as a means of driving revenue. It's been such an eye -opening approach to B2B and...

There have been times where even after we stopped working together, where like he'll text me, hey, like how are things doing? Are you things are okay? I'm like, yeah, a hundred percent. You know, where are you right now? How's the family? And you know, he'll send me pictures of he's on vacation. I was in Seattle and I was having dinner and I was sitting beside Jeff Cohen, who's the tech evangelist of Amazon ads. And we were at a conference in Seattle. He was the keynote speaker and I was there speaking as well. And I was messaging Jeremy and he's like, yeah, Jeff is my neighbor. He like lives like

like either two, three houses down from me and like, was like, no way. And I was telling Jeff, was like, Jeff, let's take a photo. I took a photo with Jeff and I sent it to Jeremy. And it's like, you know, our space is small. And when you find some of these people who are just really genuine and nice and are able to pass on some wisdom. And then even after that engagement is over, they're still there asking how you're doing, wondering how you are, how they can help like that. Not only as a mentor for life, I feel as like a friend for life. Like, for example, if for you and I, at some point you're like, you know what?

Yonah (44:30)
Hmm.

Martin (44:49)
My goal in our relationship is that you're gonna get to a point where you're gonna know, you already know way more than I do, but like I've given you all of, all of I can help you with, you know? I'm still gonna see how you're doing. I'm still gonna be interested in how you are doing over there in your neck of the woods. You know, if you and your girlfriend eventually get married, you start having kids and like whatever your future may be, like I'm invested in making sure that you guys are okay, that you guys are happy and that whatever I can do to help, you know, I'd love to do that regardless of.

Yonah (45:04)
Hmm.

Martin (45:17)
how this relationship develops. And so for me, that's definitely Jeremy, somebody who has always been invested in seeing if I'm doing okay.

Yonah (45:28)
That's so beautiful and I feel the exact same way where, you know, the moment that I met Jeremy, you know, it's funny because I expected that like, if he runs a business that essentially helps people start a podcast, I was going to hop on and he was going to like have this incredible studio space and super high tech. And he's just like hanging in a room, standing up with like a banner in the background. I'm like, wow, guy hasn't like.

Martin (45:33)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Yonah (45:53)
He hasn't shifted his like studio space in probably 15, maybe 20 years and he's just crushing it because he's such a kind, genuine...

Martin (46:04)
He really is. He really is.

Yonah (46:06)
Yeah, just like wonderful human. like, you know, he's a person where like I didn't hop on a call feeling like I was being sold. I really felt where he was like, yeah, we're down to help you. And also if it doesn't make sense, no biggie. But yeah, I would love to like get to know you and hear more about you.

Martin (46:09)
Yeah.

another person that I have to shout out that is both connected personally and also e -commerce. Her name is Elio Pablo and her husband, Jason Pablo. So I've known them for almost my whole adult life. And we used to work together like they're still there in the nonprofit side of our church. But she was and still is very much a very, very, very close friend and mentor of mine and my wife. She was at our wedding.

her and her husband are, I wouldn't say godparents, but they're just like, they were primary sponsors at our wedding. So they're very, very close to us. How does this work in terms of e -commerce? So during COVID, as we were trying to build up this agency, they came up with this idea to start being private label sellers on Amazon, and they needed some help getting set up. know, logo, brand registry, sourcing a product, know, A plus content, images, brand store, blah, blah, blah.

Yonah (46:59)
Hmm.

Martin (47:19)
And we took them on as a client and we charged them nothing. And I was like, look, we may have some sort of partnership agreement or when you start hitting some of these sales goals, we start getting a percentage of it. But at the end of the day, we didn't really collect anything from them because one, you know, they're good friends of ours. And two, like they just had this dream of, of launching this product, Bunso Baby. Bunso meaning the youngest in the family in Tagalog, which is the Filipino language. And we helped launch that brand.

Yonah (47:41)
Bye now.

Martin (47:45)
I remember I, I, that I was the first or the second person to buy their bag. And I like took a screenshot and I was like, look, it's shipping to my house. Like it's real, like it's happening. Like you're actually sellers on Amazon and three plus years later, they're crushing it. They're on like their third product now. And they still very much devote like 99 % of their time to church and to service and to God, but they still have this side business going and it's going really, really well. And I think, you know, if you ever get a chance to talk to them.

They provide a perspective of like, they are legit, the mom and pop private labelers who did it on the side, figured it out, got a little help on the way. And now they're doing it so well. Like they're crushing it now they're on their next product and they learned from their, you know, they had to fulfill from their garage and they had to set up their own DTC because some of the stuff they got returned. then like, they literally went through that prototypical journey of somebody who realized like, Amazon could be a thing.

Yonah (48:27)
you

Martin (48:42)
It's not going to be easy. It's going to take a lot of investment and time and it's not going to be an overnight profit generator, but they put in the work, man. They put in the work. They listen. for sure.

Yonah (48:49)
think that's something that's really rare to see. think that 99 % of people that want to launch on Amazon are like, okay, cool. I invested $10 ,000. Within the first 30 days, I'm losing money. What's going on? This is not a sustainable business.

Martin (49:00)
Where's my money?

Yeah, like that might've been Amazon like five years ago. That's not Amazon.

Yonah (49:11)
When you had conversations with people that were interested in your services at Sella Universe, how did you respond to that? Because obviously there's an education process of, one, you're not going to be profitable right out the get -go if you're just launching. And secondly, people want to know, hey, how much exactly is it going to cost? And what's an ETA of when I'm going to break even? What's the exact date?

You know, those are almost impossible questions and I'm curious, how did you actually tackle them?

Martin (49:45)
Great question. you know, some may will take my answer and be like, Hey, that's the terrible answer. But honestly, how I approached it was if you're asking, when am I going to make money? Then you're asking the wrong question. Then you shouldn't be selling on Amazon because the way I frame it is if you want to get into Amazon one, do you have 20 to $50 ,000 that you're ready to lose? Question number one, if it's no,

because that's your life savings. If it's no, because that's like your retirement. If it's no, because that's tied to equity to your house that you cannot pay back. If you know, mortgage rates change and blah, blah, blah, then you should not be on Amazon. There are so many justifications that you can make it say, but like, can make money and somebody did it. And like, you could find all the many reasons for gambling away $50 ,000. People lose money gambling every single day. So if you can, if you cannot part with 20 to $50 ,000, then no.

Yonah (50:24)
Mmm.

Martin (50:42)
You shouldn't be doing Amazon. Okay. Let's say, yes, I have $50 ,000 and if I lose tomorrow, I'm still a okay. Great. What is your timeline? If you're comfortable with the timeline where you're not seeing profit for six months, let's move on to the next question. If you're expecting a profit in six months, a sustainable profit, then no, we shouldn't be working together because even though there's ways you can find a product market fit and like, Hey, like I was able to time it perfectly. Like, great. A lot of that is timing and a lot of it is luck.

Yonah (51:10)
Hmm.

Martin (51:11)
That's not a strategy. That's not something that you can predictably plan around. Hey, in the second month, I'm going to go viral. Well, like, hey, in the third month, we're going to hit a global pandemic and I'm the only one that's selling toilet paper. Like that's not a strategy. You can't predict those things. And even if those things did happen, you know what happened after that? Everybody got slammed with shipping container fees that were like instead of 5 ,000, it was 20 ,000. Right. And like, instead of you having those things shipped to the warehouse right away,

people were bribing dockers, dock workers to unload their crates first over other people. And it's like, see, even if you had the best conditions, you still can't predict all the other stuff that you're gonna have to deal with. So do you have money to give away? Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, so to recap, do you have that money? And if you're comfortable losing it, great. Is your timeline realistic that you're not looking to return a profit at least in the first half of a year? Yes, great, okay. Now let's start talking about your product. What is it? How does it differentiate?

Yonah (51:51)
Hmm. No, please keep going.

Martin (52:09)
What price point are you comfortable with? You know, where do you go from here? What is the second product? What's the third product? What does this brand look like? If it's only gonna be this one or two products, what does your ad spend budget? How much have you allocated in your war chest? Because maybe inventory is 20 to 30 ,000. That 20K really should be going towards your ads. Vine program, giving it away. Social, how you generate traffic, go back to your listings. Like all of these considerations need to happen. If none of this is in your mind and none of this is like you've thought about

yet, then you're not ready to start. Because what will happen is you'll sign them up and then they'll ask you a million questions. And that's not really your job. Your agency role is not to educate somebody on how to do what they're paying you to do. Right? Your job is to execute on a strategy where there is a congruency of understanding. I am paying you X so that I can get Y. I'm going to do Y because you're paying me X.

Yonah (52:58)
Hmm.

Martin (53:09)
It's not, I'm paying you X and I need you to teach me Y, Z, A, B, C, D, and E, even though I'm only paying you for X. And then when you

Yonah (53:16)
Did you see that happen with most people that you worked with?

Martin (53:18)
Scope creep is the bane of every agency's existence, right? Because it's like, my God, I'm gonna sign them up. Here's 5 ,000 MRR, here's 10 ,000 MRR. Maybe for five, definitely for 10. Let's scope creep away. Let's build this stairway to heaven of scope creeps that I can get you from 10 to 15 to 20. But if you're paying me $1 ,000.

Yonah (53:22)
Hmm.

Martin (53:42)
less than $3 ,000 and you want me to give you the sun, moon and stars and all of my time and attention and then I teach you how to do all of this and give you all the answers like, one is that that's not worth my time and two, it was not an equitable foundation to begin with because I'm not just serving you, I'm teaching you, I'm handholding you, I'm over communicating with you that has nothing to do with me trying to get to you to where you wanna be. Does that make sense?

Yonah (53:59)
Mmm.

Makes a lot of sense. So what about when there's catalog issues that arise with Amazon, right? Like it's not your fault, it's not the agency's fault, but it can be suddenly Amazon changes the category that you're in, or you try and update the new listing optimization or new images and it's not showing on the front end. And for some clients, you may do an audit and you may see, hey, out of your 10 ,000 SKUs that you have, you actually have issues with

you know, 20 % of them. And now suddenly they have an expectation, cool, I'm paying you, I want you to fix it all. How do you even have that conversation around scope creep so that they feel that they're getting their money's worth in the sense that if someone is paying you five or 10K a month, it's difficult to tell them, no, I'm not going to do this without them being upset.

Martin (55:01)
For sure. I think one, you have to determine as an agency, is it worth the creep for retention? Is it worth the creep to maintain the relationship? If the answer is yes, then unfortunately, we all have to do what we have to do to keep the client. Having said that, if it's no, then you're not really paying me all that much to care. To care to the point where I'm doing more than what you're paying me for. Again, if it's like 3 ,000 or less, then I'm sorry. Here's what we could do as per our agreement.

Yonah (55:24)
Mmm.

Martin (55:31)
but anything beyond that is like a level of service that unfortunately you're not paying for, right? That's just the reality of it. That's why there's tiers to begin with, because if there were no tiers, then why shouldn't everybody be paying the lower tier and expecting the top tier premium service, right? That's why there's differentiation. Okay, let's go back to the original situation. If they are paying you a lot, I would frame it as here are the things that we can control, here are the things that we cannot control. And within the things that we can control,

Here are the things that you can do if it was yourself. And here's what we're doing for you and how we're able to either accelerate or accomplish the things that are in our control faster than if you were doing it yourself. The reason why I would frame it that way is then they get to understand, I technically could do this myself, but because Yone and his team are so much experts in dealing with these issues, they could probably get it done in half the time, or they know how to fill out certain forms that they know how to, you know, talk to the right people.

I remember when there was any kind of issues, you'd call into Amazon support, our CSMs or account manager would call us to Amazon support to kind of resolve some of these suspensions or flags or whatever. I don't know if this is the case anymore, but there was like a hack where instead of going through traditional Amazon customer service, you would call Costa Rica. And in Costa Rica, they obviously speak Spanish and you would ask for an English translator or English speaking.

assistant or assistant or CSM or whatever customer service rep from Costa Rica and you essentially bypass having to go through the entire North American customer support service because the Costa Rican team has less volume of calls but they still have the same access to all the resolution tools that Amazon US would have so you kind of just cut the line and you overcome the language barrier because you're asking for an English speaker which they should have and so

Yonah (57:18)
How did you discover that hack?

Martin (57:20)
One of our account managers was like, hey, know, instead of calling North America, we should try calling Costa Rica. And I was like, we can do that. And she's like, yeah, I've tried it a couple of times and I got connected to somebody right away and they helped. And it was like, whoa, whoa, we got to do this for everybody. And so now in these situations where people like, our thing got taken down or we've been trying to do with Amazon. But I say, hey, look, we actually know a way to bypass that and get to it a little bit faster. It doesn't mean we're going to get a resolution that we want, but it means we're going to be able to talk to somebody sooner so we can understand what.

we can do these are things that are in your control. Absolutely. Yeah, but also having them understand like it's not like I'm putting these boundaries because I don't want to help you. The boundaries are set there by Amazon itself. I cannot control whether or not Amazon's algorithm will scrape through your listing and not your competitors. We got that question all the time. Well, my competitors hero images and all white or my competitors, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I understand that the algorithm flagged you. It didn't flag them.

Yonah (57:53)
So basically setting boundaries and clear expectations.

Martin (58:19)
That's not on you, that's not on me, that's not anybody. That's out of our control, right? At the same time, I bet you there's a hundred other competitors that have looked like products to you that Amazon took down that you didn't even know existed, right? Because that algorithm caught them, not in our control. All we can do is affect the levers that we can actually pull. And what you're paying me to do is to pull those levers either faster or quicker or know that they exist unlike you.

Yonah (58:44)
Hmm. Well said. Well said. So I have one final question I want to ask or I point out. No, not at all. Not at all. I'm honestly I'm I feel like there have been 20 times throughout this conversation where I'm just like, wow, Mike drop.

Martin (58:50)
Sure, sure, sure. I hope this wasn't a boring conversation. Brutal.

Yeah, shame, lack of shame. That's really where it starts.

Yonah (59:04)
I want to point our viewers over to CoreTile. So if you're not familiar with it, go to www .coretile .com. And I just want to ask one last question. What is your favorite podcast, Martin?

Martin (59:16)
thank you.

Sure.

My favorite podcast. geez. Okay. This may come to a shock to some people who know me, but I used to be a huge Joe Rogan fan and listener because I was very much into MMA. I still am somewhat. Like I'm always going to be a GSP fan, Anderson Silva. Like those are my goats. Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell. Like I was very much steeped in MMA. I remember for those people who are MMA. Really? Yeah.

Yonah (59:47)
I'm absolutely shocked right now. I had no clue you were in MMA.

Martin (59:52)
There you go. And for those people who are, and I don't know if you're a fan of MMA, but the defining moment that allowed the UFC to explode was this fight between Stefan Bonner and Forrest Griffin, which is the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, which was like a reality MMA show on Spike TV. And because that did so much ratings, it actually propelled that company out of like debt and was able to kind of turn it into the billion dollar business that it is today. if, but for those two.

Yonah (1:00:03)
Hmm.

Martin (1:00:21)
putting such a monumental like slugfest that people had never seen on public TV before, you the UFC wouldn't exist. So me following Joe Rogan and him being such a promoter, not just commentator, but thought leader in that space to educate people on what's happening in the octagon, I was very much drawn to. Nowadays, obviously his conversations are a little bit different, a little bit more controversial. And so I'm not saying that everything that he does is bad. He actually came out with the Netflix special recently and was like,

If you're getting health advice from me and like COVID vaccine advice for me, like why are getting it from me? I'm like an MMA commentator. So it's like, it's almost like he's flipped the script now where it's like, I've made my, yeah, I've made a hundred million dollars off my Spotify exclusive deal. So don't listen to me, listen to me, whatever. Just don't blame me if you, if you think that I'm right, but I was actually wrong. but super.

Yonah (1:00:54)
Very self -aware.

He's definitely really polarizing. But I think, you it of goes back to what we said before of with most people, they drop knowledge and whatever hits you, take it. And whatever you disagree with, that doesn't mean they're bad person. It's just they have a different opinion.

Martin (1:01:20)
a hundred percent. but yeah, that was definitely one of my, was one of my favorite ones. But if we're talking about like in our space, one of a really fantastic podcasts for people who are brand new or kind of like thinking about Amazon are already sellers that are trying to find ways to learn and level up. Good friend of mine. I haven't spoken to him in a while, but he lives in Vegas. His name is Mike Jackness and he actually runs the e -comm crew podcast and

that guy has had probably like a thousand almost episodes now, like 500 plus episodes. Like he is one of the OGs in terms of our space, in terms of Ecom podcasts. He's very much well known. You know, he has run multiple brands and there's multiple exits and what have you. So he's in our space, a genius, definitely much somebody that I look up to and has some mentor vibes as well. anybody who... I do, I do.

Yonah (1:01:50)
Wow.

Hmm, you know him personally? cool.

Martin (1:02:15)
Yeah, happy to make the intro. But he's a nice guy. He runs that podcast and well connected, really smart guy in our space. So I would definitely direct people to watch and listen to his podcast versus Joe Rogan's. You know, probably not going to get a lot of Amazon advice from a Joe Rogan podcast episode, you know. But for personally, like when I used to run a podcast, like a Christian relationship podcast for my church, I would listen to Modern Love.

Yonah (1:02:28)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Martin (1:02:41)
which has gone through various iterations, but I think the OG host, I forgot what her name was, but she's gone now, but that was run by either the New York Times or the Boston Globe or one of these like legit newspapers. Modern Love is such a fantastic podcast. Yeah. I don't know what, and now I listen to like League of Legends podcasts. I'm a big League of Legends player. Eclectic, I think is a fair description. Also weird. So maybe a combination of both, but yeah.

Yonah (1:02:59)
You're all over the map.

Martin (1:03:07)
Little bit of MMA, little bit of League of Legends, little bit of NPR and modern -

Yonah (1:03:10)
Sounds like I have a road trip that I gotta plan because I have a bunch of podcasts I gotta listen to now.

Martin (1:03:14)
But Econ podcast, Econ crew podcast, Jackmas, he's the guy for sure.

Yonah (1:03:18)
yeah, I'll check it out. Well, we've been talking to Martin Zaruto, Director of Enterprise Brand Development at CoreTile. Martin, you mind telling people where they can learn more about you CoreTile?

Martin (1:03:29)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn, linkedin .com and then just look up Martin's Zerudo. I should be there. If you want to email me martin .zerudo, Z -E -R -R -U -D -O at quartile .com. And yeah, if you're to be at Accelerate, please stop by. I'm not sure if this is going to be published either before or after. But if you're going to be in Seattle at that time, Yonah is going to be there as well. Quartile is going to have a booth. We'll be there. Please stop by and say hi. Unboxed as well. If you're going to be in New York around October time.

I would love one person to be at the event where I'm speaking. I'll take as many as willing to listen to whether my 15 minutes of whatever I'm going to be rambling about. But yeah, at the end of the day, if you've listened to this, one, thank you so much. Two, the real value here is Yonah and what he does. I've gone through Amazon agency life and what I can legitimately say with no interest, personal gain of my own is that

The way that you are approaching it, Yonan, how you are systematically approaching Amazon account management is quite frankly revolutionary in terms of systems and processes in place. It doesn't mean it's perfect. It doesn't mean it's not gonna have to iterate and change somewhere down the road. But I think what a lot of entrepreneurs and agency owners miss is if you're not building a scalable foundation at the beginning and everything's kind of ad hoc and know, like fail fast and like that definitely is possible.

And some of the most successful companies started off that way. But if there are certain unforced errors that you can avoid, I think that's totally what you're doing right now. And kudos to you because the time, the effort and the money and the focus that you're putting towards things that may not necessarily be the most profit driving will definitely pay dividends because once that machine is churning at a hundred percent and you're bringing in leads and you're churning out success story after success story, you'll know that.

The fruits of your labor are being born through the work and the effort that you're putting right now.

Yonah (1:05:27)
No.

I really appreciate that. That really hits. And yeah, thanks so much, Martin. I couldn't be where I am without you and excited to keep growing together.

Martin (1:05:32)
Of course, of course.

Again, it's a 30 % cut for all deals that you wanna get through me. I'm just kidding. You know what, if you're listening, take your time before you decide on who to work with. There's a lot of really great thought leaders and agencies out there and there's a really large amount that are not. when I say the value of time for algorithms and machine learning, there's also the value of time in picking the right partner. Take your time.

really investigate who are these people that are providing these Amazon solutions? What have they done? Have they grown brands before? Who have they worked with? And it doesn't mean that you have to go with the agency that has the most amount of logos on the door. You want to work with an agency that understands where you're at and knows how to get you to where you want to be. And maybe nine times out of 10, that might be Yonah.

Yonah (1:06:21)
Hmm.

Thanks, Martin. Great chatting. Really appreciate having you on the show, and we'll talk soon.

Martin (1:06:34)
course they can come up

Absolutely. Thank you so much.