Mindset, Journey, and Achievement – From Freelancer to Business Owner with John Ho

Join host Michael Michelini and co-host John Ho, co-founder of Alt Chiang Mai, for a candid conversation about building successful businesses and communities in the digital age. Recorded at a pre-Cross Border Summit event, Mike shares his 21-year journey from Wall Street to e-commerce entrepreneur, while discussing the critical mindset shifts needed to transition from freelancer to business owner in 2025’s AI-driven landscape.

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Speaker: Sound check. One, two, check one, two. I’m trying to lower my voice ’cause I’ve been talking for the quite a few days, but this is easier. You guys can hear me fine, right? Yeah. All right. Okay, so good evening everyone. I’m super happy to host to co-host this event because.

I have my friend here, Mike, what’s up? And hey, Mike. Hello. Hello. Hey man, he has so much knowledge and experience in this topic that I really hope whoever decides to join here will get a lot of value out from this, plus the very yummy food that we have for you after the conversation, after you guys are stuck here.

But let me make a proper introduction of Mike. I’ve known Mike since, I want to say three, four years ago at least. Yeah, it’s been a few years. Yeah. And for me, Mike is one of the very, [00:01:00] committed person in Chiang Mai that’s not from here like me, who wants to build a community, contribute to the city by creating really cool events.

And bring people from all over the world and really, add value to all these things that we’re doing together. I’ll let him do a little bit of an introduction first, but I think first of all, I would like you to give Micah the applause. Okay. Thank you for just being here and hosting this event and providing the food.

Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thanks. Yeah, Mike Micheli originally. From the us I’ve been selling online for 21 years, since 2004. China, 12 years. Thailand, about five total so far. A little bit before COVID, a little bit after COVID. And I make full-time living on selling on online, on Amazon, mostly a few different brands.

And as John said, I love community building mostly in e-comm, but also some in Web3. As well. [00:02:00] And I’ve been doing community events for, I don’t know. Yeah. Not as long as e-commerce, but since 2007.

Speaker: 2007. But you started in 2004 and let’s take a, let’s take a memory lane here because like you are from America, but how did you even came to Asia to begin with?

And this. Having an e-commerce shop 20 years ago, can you give us a little bit of like, how did it happen back then when nobody knew about e-commerce?

Speaker 2: We thought it was too late to start on e-commerce 20 years ago. There was events like this and people thought it was too late to do e-commerce.

21 years ago. In 2004, people thought it was too late. There was a much bigger group than this, and everybody’s oh, it’s too late. The guy on stage. It’s saying it’s not too late to start selling, but everybody thought they were too late in 2004. I wish I, I didn’t do the [00:03:00] vlog, I didn’t record stuff.

I don’t even think I had pictures. But the quick story is I always wanna do my own business for some reason since I was a church with my parents and great, maybe I was 10 and I saw a magazine about Silicon Valley or online, and nobody knew how to do it, their own business. And I just wanted to figure it out, but I thought I had to get an MBA.

I thought you had to get an MBA to start your own business. And I remember my kid’s the same age now. My son’s 11, and I drew a timeline of my life. Like it was some class project about what you want to do in your life. And I had get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job, get an MBA start my own business.

That’s what I thought the track was. And I was on that track. I worked on Wall Street and I started selling on eBay while I was on Wall Street. So I took the job that paid me the most money possible, not, I hated my [00:04:00] job. I don’t think anybody there liked their job, but I was just saving as much money as I could.

And I was doing my Kaplan GMAT prep test to go to MBA and as I was selling at eBay. I I went to these prep classes about this starting about this time after work, and they’re like, what’s the geometry of a circle? Like the tri, the triangle, like remembering. And I was like, this is some motion, man.

And then my favorite story is, maybe it was the first class of this prep, Kaplan Gmap prep test in Wall Street on Water Street. And they’re like, what do you do? Where do you wanna work on? What do you. Where do you, your name, where you work, and what do you wanna do with your MBA? Hi, I am Joanne. I work at Lehman Brothers.

I want to get MBA to get a raise. I am Joe, I work at Goldman Sachs. I want to get a management position. They were all just trying to move up the ladder. It came to me and it was like a classroom. I’m Mike, I work at Deutsche Bank, and I want to get an BA to start my own business. [00:05:00] And the eyeballs, like in the Matrix movie when they’re all looking at you, they’re like, the eyes just were like knives.

Everybody’s you don’t belong here. You’re in the wrong room. So I dropped out of the prep test and I had saved up a lot of money, at least for me, and I said, I’m gonna use this on my own business. And I quit. I quit my job, and I gave months notice. They thought I was all crazy. They, I worked on the trading floor.

So they said they said, tell us when you IPO, so I can short your stock. Oh my God. And no, you’re gonna come back begging for your job in less than a year.

Speaker: That’s like investment bank 20 years ago was like the best job you can have and they pay. Crazy amount of bonus because this is pre Lehman.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker: And everyone who had like you said, you were working in Deutsche and then Goldman, all those people, they’re not necessarily wrong. So if you look back in time and you said, [00:06:00] did, if you ask yourself, did you make the right decision? Like how do you have these conversations?

Speaker 2: Usually it’s around Christmas, like around this time of year, everybody’s reflecting on the new year. And there’s Christmas parties and you get drunk like every night in Wall Street. At least. Then you would get drunk, like every day you go to like different Christmas party every night and get drunk.

So we were talking about what we wanna do and everybody has an excuse and I had excuses like, oh, I hate my job, but I can’t quit. Like my bonus is coming, or my vesting is coming, or my lease is renewing and I can’t lose my lease. There was every, even I had excuses. And I left some money on the table for sure, like I was four and a half years.

In six more months, I would’ve invested in my Deutsche Bank stock, but that was the one negative. But then my lease was up in New York. They put those scary letters under your door your lease is up if you don’t resign, evict you. Or it was like [00:07:00] scary, and my roommate’s are we staying?

Are we going? Are we staying? Are we going? And my bonus came ear end. So it was the end of oh six and I quit in oh seven, like around Jan, February oh seven. And the only negative was I left six months before my vest. But if I had vested, then I would’ve been on my contract. I wouldn’t have quit my, I would’ve still been in.

So everybody has, and people buy real estate, then you’re stuck in your real estate. So I don’t regret it at all. I would go back in the day, I would go every year back to New York and I’d visit them, and they’re still at the same desk. The frame of their family didn’t even move in the year that I was gone.

Like the dust. I think if I had dusted it, like it would’ve been ready for me to dust the next year. Like they were still on the same desk.

Speaker: Wow.

Speaker 2: And they’re making money. Yeah, they’re making, yeah. I was making over a hundred thousand a year. And I got you the bonuses and everything was good, but I was really depressed, to be honest, and most people were really depressed.

Speaker: [00:08:00] And you started with eBay. Can you remember the first product you sold? I tried to do poker

Speaker 2: supplies, drop shipping poker supplies, poker sets, and romantic gifts. And, bar supplies, which I still sell to this day. Wow. My main product is bar products and it was that, so what I sold was stuff guy, stuff like men’s gift, right?

Like stuff I like, like bachelor products, so like poker stuff, drinking stuff, romantic gift stuff. I had some funny names and I have various eBay accounts. But I still tell people just start to sell. Maybe don’t put a $20,000 into inventory. But it’s to start to sell something. A lot of people say Dropship drop ship’s not a business.

Amazon’s not a business. It’s a channel of your distribution. So yeah, I saw the poker stuff and bar and romantic gifts and bar supplies.

Speaker: Yeah, and we’re definitely going to go and deeper into the technical stuff so people can actually learn how to [00:09:00] start if they are thinking about this. I can relate a lot because I spent about 10 years in culprit.

I spent one year in investment bank, which I hated. I think I was just trying to prove to my dad that I can also go into a bank if I want to. But anyway the transition period for myself at least, working in a corporate job for 10 plus years and then trying to be an entrepreneur and sell products.

And for me, the biggest challenge then was the mindset because I. I was already brainwashed by the culprit world of, you’re going in, you’re clocking in, you’re doing your stuff, you get paid regardless. If you’re better, you get, a raise or you get a better promotion.

But it’s like the same routine. And once you’re in the system and when you come out from the system, for me it was a lot of struggle at the very beginning of my journey. Do you have something similar or what was your journey like, for that transitional [00:10:00] period?

Speaker 2: If you Google my name, you’ll see like Wall Street to China.

When I was in China, they loved to say like I left Wall Street and went to China. There was a six month gap. I went to California. I was almost gonna do the Silicon Valley, but I chose China over Silicon Valley. But for sure, that was scary when I stopped getting a direct deposit of my salary.

’cause there’s like a delay. You get you because you don’t, I think it was like a month after I finally got my last paycheck. Every two weeks you get that direct deposit and it’s, it was huge. What I’m saying? It was like eight grand or, I don’t know I don’t know. It was like a lot every two months to my Bank of America every two weeks into my Bank of America.

So we get like addicted. This money just gets deposited into your bank account and Right. It’s like I just gotta wake up, go to work, try not to fail, try not to mess up. Sometimes I had to ch a hot sauce. I jug a bottle of hot sauce once straight. That. Still hurts my stomach thinking about it, but I didn’t do the chicken nugget eating contest or the head shaving on the treating floor.

We don’t have that in

Speaker: Asia, but yeah.

Speaker 2: Okay. [00:11:00] But for sure it was hard and it was really lonely to be honest. I went to California. My, the story is my friend left, I’m originally from Connecticut, so he moved out there to change his life and he had extra room. And I went to visit him during Christmas or around winter oh six, and he’s oh, just come out here.

I got extra room. $400 a month to month. Just gimme a month notice. So that was part of my plus, minus quitting my job. I was like, I can go to California Ocean Beach, four blocks from the beach. 400 a month, right? No contract. And so I cut my costs really low and I went to California. And then I went to Canton Fair in China in October oh seven, and I thought it would only be for a month, and then I extended it for an extra week, five weeks total.

And then I was like, I went back for Christmas to my parents in oh seven and I was like, mom, dad I’m not, I don’t think I’m coming back, man. It’s an evolution, but. But yeah, it was definitely scary, especially the first couple months. But I did build up [00:12:00] income. I was able, it’s not like I was just burning money, but I saved up money and I was having income from my e, eBay, e-commerce business.

Speaker: I still remember the days, I don’t know if anyone has used eBay before. Okay. There’s still half. Okay. One third of the room. Now, eBay is a very different type of platform, obviously, but back then people were also selling, but they were also trying to. Find different types of products and my guess is you going to Canton Fair is also trying to source products.

Yeah. So you can find unique products you can sell on the platform. And the question I have is more relevant is does that still work today? Because you did it 20 years ago and people still go to Canton Fair. But what is the difference? Or if someone were to start today, what do they need to do?

Speaker 2: Yeah, of course. It’s totally different. I’m mostly Amazon now. I heard, I, I didn’t really totally dig into this story, so I’m not sure if it’s a hundred percent, but I believe Amazon lost a lawsuit to eBay. ’cause Amazon staff were [00:13:00] contacting eBay sellers to list on Amazon. And I even remember doing phone calls back when Amazon gave a about me as a seller.

They used to call me and I think they were just trying to get sellers off eBay onto Amazon. But of course my main, I don’t sell on Amazon, eBay anymore. If you talk to a lot of OG sellers, they usually start on eBay. eBay was the main thing from oh three to 10, 11 maybe a little bit longer.

In China too, I remember I was, when I went to China, I met a lot of sellers and they were eBay sellers too. And there was all these different communities of sellers. But now of course the game has changed. Actually I talked to somebody last week. We had a dinner and they’re like, what? I sell on Amazon.

Now, if I was starting from zero prob, probably not. I would probably start, I even, I’ll have no clue about TikTok or something. I probably would start on D two C right now, like Shopify and some get some kind of traffic through D two C, meaning direct to consumer. So there’s [00:14:00] two groups of e-commerce now.

There’s the Amazon. Or marketplace. And then there’s D two C. D two C usually means Shopify, but it doesn’t have to be Shopify. It could be TikTok, or it could be WooCommerce, it could be Wix. It’s just a way to get traffic and people buying from your own website. Marketplace means like Amazon, maybe eBay Shopify or Shop Shoppy, Lazada.

Taobao, Tmall. Those are market. Places, right? D two C is like getting to your own

Speaker: website. So you started with eBay and then you transitioned to Amazon. You told people if you were to start from zero now you wouldn’t do Amazon and so you would probably D do D two. Sorry. D two C. And why is that, like why is that the trend or why do you think that’s that has a better advantage?

Speaker 2: A little plug, I have a conference coming up in a week and sorry, it’s just [00:15:00] I don’t wanna have a screensaver on while I talk. You need a lot of money to do on Amazon. Now, we’re having, one of our sessions is product research and people send three is 3000 to $10,000 on research before they launch a product.

I don’t know if I wanna tell people here to do three to $10,000 on product research. They do polls. They use these survey platforms and they spend three to $10,000, which I think it’s hard for me to tell somebody here to spend that. But even I am scared to relaunch new products on Amazon as established every

Speaker: single product used.

People usually spend three to 10,000. We’re recommending

Speaker 2: it now. Oh, okay. That’s like what we’re, the experienced sellers are saying spend three to 10 before you launch, because once you launch it’s really hard to stop. ’cause you gotta buy from China or anywhere Thailand. I do a lot in Thailand.

So you want to reduce [00:16:00] the risk of inventory and like all that work by product research. So surveys, in Tel Aviv is one fu is another. Even MTurk, any way you can get product research. So your customer will buy it once you actually list it on Amazon. ’cause it takes so long to make the product, shipped the product, get the product into Amazon, get the reviews.

So it, you want to reduce the risk of that as much as possible. I. Feel, if I start from zero today, I would do a D two C website. I would do Facebook ads or some kind of advertising to then validate this product, and then maybe I would go to Amazon later.

Speaker: And what do you think is that in terms of saving costs or the chances of success?

Because the other thing about D two C is you don’t have the marketplace. You don’t have the platform, so people can’t find you, and then the money will be spent on ad. [00:17:00] Or how good you are with SEOI suppose so there’s pros and cons or, yeah, I

Speaker 2: mean so I’ve talked to Amazon’s staff, they’ll say, yeah, it does cost a lot, but it’s still the cheaper or the same as doing Facebook ads or Google ads.

’cause you’re gonna spend a lot on those ads anyways. And I still make most of my money on Amazon personally, but I just feel lately the last few years it’s gotten just really. Competitive and expensive and a big, you have to go big.

Speaker: Okay. I want to go to the topic because this is more like a prelude, but more understanding why you picked the topic from freelance to e-commerce brand owner.

How do you define a freelance? Even though, like for me or for some people they said, oh, I’m a freelancer, but I’m also a business owner, so what is that different?

Speaker 2: I define a freelancer as somebody that sells their time. So maybe they have an hourly rate or a somewhat, they’re charging based on their time, [00:18:00] and they may be maybe bill by the hour, maybe they bill by the month, but they’re trading their time for money and e-commerce.

Of course, you think about physical product, but it, I was also hoping to just give you some ideas about productized service. So productized service, I think is the next LE level where you can take a service, you do, and instead of you delivering it, you sell it. Maybe somebody else in your team does it.

So I think that’s like agency or productized service. But freelancer, I define as selling your time for money. Direct, pretty much directly.

Speaker: Okay. And I wanna gauge interest here. Who here is thinking about selling a physical product? Raise your hands. Just want to check. Okay, and who here is thinking about selling a productized service?

Okay. Oh, and I see someone also raised their hands twice. I see like twice too. Yeah. Okay. Is there any breakdown or is there any guidance in terms of, okay, what is the difference or how do you approach the different types of products to sell on a platform or an A? No, I don’t [00:19:00] want to,

Speaker 2: I don’t wanna say do both, but you could do both or you could eventually do both.

1. The way I try to tell people like I do the bar supplies and it’s funny, I don’t really drink as alcohol like I used to in New York days, but I still feel like I’m not doing what I say ’cause it’s a lot of work. But I could do a productized service of that same niche that I sell physical products of.

So I try to tell people to do something. You have some kind of a passion about. In a niche, not just a product.

So if you are very passionate about something, maybe in a, even your freelancing of what you’re doing or product has service, you can sell physical product. So you try to, it’s like vertical integration.

So you could sell services or pro, you’re solving problems, right? I think an entrepreneur’s job is to solve a problem. We get caught up in the solution, like that’s the solution. Selling a physical [00:20:00] product, doing a productized service. I think you should step back, think about what is my why, right?

There’s Simon Sinek. I, yeah, I feel like I say his name wrong and he’s start with why, right? So we can talk about the solution, what we’re doing to solve the problem, but maybe you should step back and think, what is maybe my passion, my purpose? Like I was downstairs, there’s this recycled pro. I didn’t have time to dig into it, but there’s like a recycle section down there.

Yep.

Speaker: We

Speaker 2: have some bins. And maybe that’s a service. Maybe that’s a product. Maybe that’s both, like even a factory. I’ve learned, I think factories, they’re not product businesses. There’s service businesses. In my opinion, a factory is a service business. ’cause factories don’t take inventory, they don’t have inventory.

Usually they sell a service, they get paid. They have humans usually are robots now delivering the service and then they ship the product. So you could be a [00:21:00] factory you. So what I’m saying is I hope you enjoy what you sell or what you do. ’cause I think especially with AI, now you have to have a passion about it.

You have to wanna solve some problem or help some kind of people.

Speaker: When you say a freelancer is selling their time. Versus a business, a e-commerce or a e-commerce owner, business owner is productizing their service or a physical product and branding it. What’s the difference? Because I’m still not a hundred percent clear how to tell people you like or how to define people.

You are a freelancer or you are, you’re a brand, or is it you just need a brand? I

Speaker 2: mean, I think the difference is hopefully. Hopefully you can get yourself out of selling yourself. ’cause yourself is not scalable.

So I think a freelancer means if you’re out sick, you’re not getting paid. But if you’re a protest service brand owner, if you’re [00:22:00] out sick, you’re still getting paid or the bus, as long as the service or the you’re delivering your service or your product you’re getting paid. So I think. I know it’s not for everybody. You can still be a freelancer your whole life and there’s many people that are happy as a freelancer, but it’s one step up from an employee,

Speaker: meaning your revenue source is independent of your time or activities.

Yeah. I believe

Speaker 2: the goal, most of my friends that are business owners, we try to not be connected to the service or we’re delivering directly. Maybe at the beginning we are. But I think our goal is to have other people and other systems to do it so that I don’t need to be the one to have to deliver it, to get the money for it.

Speaker: I look at myself as a case study, right? Because like I tell people I have a brand. I tell people I have a business, which is a service, right? But if I look at my daily routine or how many [00:23:00] hours I put into my work. I still feel very involved in it. It’s enjoyable. I’m not complaining about it.

But then if I look at the definition and I say, to what point can I extract myself from the operation so that everything is still running dependent to my time? I don’t know how to answer that question myself.

Speaker 2: I was here early. You were, there’s. GG is here. Yep. He seems to be doing good.

And then your front desk. And what I’ve been going crazy the last couple months is vibe coding or AI coding, right? My dad wanted me to be a programmer and I just couldn’t deal with it when I was younger ’cause I didn’t have patience for all the bugs. But now I’m trying to be a developer because that’s the ultimate scale.

So I think maybe you should look at the ’cause SOPs, a lot of us say standard operating procedure, so you try to teach managers or staff how to do things by standard operating procedure, but now with software, you can make like a software and then they operate the software. [00:24:00] So maybe make software that standardizes the process so that people follow the software, both the customer and the staff or the employee, and that takes you as the owner out because I think software is the most ultimate way

Speaker: of doing that.

This comes to another aspect that I also think about, which is the skill sets you need to create a product, to sell a product or to actually create the systems to sell the products. So what is your experience in that? When you started, at, ’cause I’m sure you have that journey of being a freelancer that

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker: You, you try to learn those skills and then now you’re like, okay, this is too much of my time. I can’t commit this, and then I need to switch. But that’s not just like a switch.

Speaker 2: So many people still, especially in Amazon sellers, they’re like seven figure make. That means like multimillion dollar sellers yearly, maybe not profit, but at least revenue.

And they do everything themselves still. There’s people coming to our conference next week. They still do everything [00:25:00] themself and yeah, you can do that now. AI is even saying that there’s gonna be, the future’s gonna be like unicorns that are like no staff or just one, one human in all ai. Maybe that. So that might be the new way, right?

But I still think you need other humans in your organization. Maybe you don’t need as many now, but I still think you need humans in your organization. So I think the goal is, hiring. Of course I have a lot of people in the Philippines that work with me. So I have a lot of Philippine VAs they call ’em.

I don’t like calling ’em VA virtual assistant. Usually the first step is maybe get like one va, right? It doesn’t, or one person. Start with one person. Don’t hire like 10 people, right? Hire one person. Maybe they’re your assistant. Usually call it like a general VA g gva.

Speaker 3: Yep.

Speaker 2: So they maybe are a wide range of stuff they do for you.

Maybe your email or your social media or some various basic tasks just to get the experience of [00:26:00] giving them. So I do a podcast. This will be a podcast. And that was actually a really good experience for me to learn about standard operating procedure. So the podcast started in 2013 and it started, I didn’t want to edit the audio, I didn’t want to edit it.

So it was like one of the, not the very first, but one of the second or third people I hired was an audio editor to edit my podcast. But then you broke down the process of making a podcast and you not one person can back then, especially, cannot do the whole thing. So you break it down and you make, use Google Doc for easy right first, and you write down all the tasks.

Okay. So basically. It was called like non programmer business processes to make SOPs. So we all talk about SOPs, but now with software, now, I can even make like software that’s like an so P.

So I’m almost not really making SOPs anymore. I give my staff a software I make for them to operate.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker 2: Anyway,

Speaker: so [00:27:00] Freelancer, I think I have more clarity now because it’s more like a solopreneur business. You’re working by yourself. You don’t hire people. Now you need to figure out how to outsource or delegate some of the task.

So then you want to, look at your budget and say, okay, I want to hire people to help me out with some of it, if not all. And how do you approach that as in okay, ’cause there’s again there’s 10, like I, I imagine my operation again, right? There’s always someone I want to hire.

I wanna hire an hr, I wanna hire like more house cleaning, I want to hire an operations manager. But then there’s only a finite type of resources. So let’s say if I am a solopreneur to begin with, it’s an online platform. So I imagine the labor is less intensive. How should I go about, okay, who is my first person I need to hire?

Speaker 2: Of course this is, I feel like it’s changing right now with ai, so I feel like I don’t want to go through old stuff. I’m changing my whole organization this year I’ve made like a three month announcement to my whole team. It’s even related to this. I’m [00:28:00] actually putting them in this program.

I’m trying to help them change. I don’t wanna let go of my team. My team, a lot of ’em have been with me like 4, 5, 6, 7, some even 10 years. But I think the, I don’t really feel like talking about the old way and I’m inventing a new way, but I’m trying to even take my kind of staff now and make them an entrepreneur.

Make them an entrepreneur. It’s hard. And,

Speaker: why do you wanna do that?

Speaker 2: It’s even why I’m here today. I feel like I want to, I feel like that’s the future. I feel like people need to operate a service. I think everybody has to operate a service now or a product. I think you the new way. I don’t see the future of jobs and freelancing the way it is now.

I give all these funny keywords, I don’t feel like boring. You. I have all these keywords. I call it centar the human horse half, human half horse. And I’ve told my team, I call it the Centar model, so [00:29:00] I’m telling them you have to use AI. Now I still want to keep you humans and I try to even break down tasks by AI and human in the project, and I want them to operate the ai.

And then I want to pay them on a project output base. ’cause what I notice, a lot of my other business owner friends we’re all pissed off at our staff because we’re like, okay, I gave you all this chat, GPTI gave you all this stuff, and now you’re still billing me the same amount of work for the same output with all this AI stuff.

So either A, you’re screwing me, B. You’re not using these things and doing them manually, or I don’t even know what a third one is. So we are, I’m trying to say, okay, I, I told ’em you just gotta do more output. If you want the same amount of money, you can get the same amount of money, but you’re gonna do more output.

Speaker: And that’s just the reality. [00:30:00] So I understand, and this is a topic that a lot of people talk about with the AI revolution. How jobs are going to be replaced. Or you either become really good at using AI ’cause so you can increase your productivity and you can be more valuable for the organization that you work for, or you just don’t work because now you have AI to help you build your business.

That is way easier than before. So then you have these knowledges that you learn from work. And this is your topic that you’re telling everyone who has a job to say, you should not keep having a job anymore down the road. You should really try to find a passion that you want. You can ideally productize even if it’s a service, or you just find another product you wanna build.

And then you become your own business person.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [00:31:00] That’s what I’m trying to do with my staff. Like I could give you an example. But I’m trying to give them like a software to operate and then I’m their customer.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker 2: And then maybe other customers can buy

Speaker: that service. Can we talk about opportunities?

Because then you have a head start. You’ve been in this 20 years ago. You’ve seen the evolution, the trends. You can identify what product or services is going to be in demand. What are the opportunities right now if someone wants to jump into this game,

Speaker 2: Like I I said, I think you can, I think we have an advantage as even a individual or a small company.

We have the advantage now over big companies. These big companies are downsizing. They got legacy software, they got legacy employees. We can disrupt huge companies like this poster, I made a whole events platform. I showed John a lot of you didn’t register with it, but whatever. I’m just getting it out there.

Yeah, but I made my own like meetup event with ai. And [00:32:00] I think he’s about hyper personalization. So I think rather, I think the old way of one big SaaS doing everything is dead. I think the future is picking a SaaS. You like making a vertical. Maybe Stefan, he does all those meetups. He should make his own meetup website for a very specific vertical or maybe Chang Mai.

Instead of going on these huge platforms, I think those huge platforms are gonna get eaten alive. I think Meetup, LinkedIn, Facebook, you can make your own mini one. I’m making my own mini software now. It’s, it’s vibe coding, but basically I think the opportunity is just like drop shipping of physical product.

You can still do that, but I think you could take a big software and niche it down. And make money with it, like having a very hyper-focused custom software to just almost copy Facebook and make it for a specific group of people.

Speaker: I can imagine because of ai, because of the internet, [00:33:00] obviously the knowledge is there to create a product is way easier than before.

It’s late. It’s way less costly than before. But what about the sales and marketing side because. I think this is something that I struggle to teach people or to tell to, or to explain to people the importance of understanding how to do good sales and marketing. And that’s not what AI can train or trained.

Speaker 2: I like a lot of my staff, I’m trying to tell ’em to do community management. Like community management I think is the most important role, and I think that’s gonna be really impossible or hard for AI to do. I think that’s the role and I think. It’s, I don’t think about sales and marketing.

I think about community management. I think community management’s more valuable than sales and marketing. ’cause essentially, it’s almost the same thing really if you break it down. But it’s better to be a community manager. I feel like I should call myself a community manager. I’m trying to identify a group of people that have a common interest, maybe common problems, common goals.

I try to [00:34:00] find the problems that they have and I try to make a solution for that.

Speaker: I’m building a community. Yeah.

Speaker 2: So you have a good,

Speaker: This is my community. Yeah, exactly. Now the interesting thing is I don’t necessarily see them as dollar signs or customers, even though they are paying me.

But I guess in a business owner point of view, if you want to approach this aspect of community management, which is like a rebranding of sales acquisition. H how, what is the different in terms of approach?

Speaker 2: Like you said I think I’m similar to you. Like I hate I have a problem with even money.

I have a problem with selling. That’s why I like e-commerce. I love i, I love to put something online. People like it, they give money. It goes to my bank. Like I don’t need to like outbound sell, like I like to create stuff people like, but I feel like community is similar and I feel it’s a softer sell, but you are selling ’cause you’re, what is good salespeople is just listening to a problem and making a solution.

Maybe I’m good at sales, I don’t think I am, but [00:35:00] I you half the time you just shut your mouth. Let them talk and to just say, yeah I, you don’t wanna lie, but listen to what their problem is. Hopefully you have the solution that, yeah, I can do that. That’s usually a good sales in my opinion, is listening to the problem.

And offering a solution. So as a community manager, community leader, you’re listening to problems and you’re giving a solution, software, product, whatever. But

Speaker: do you worry that, because I think about this again, and this is my last question before we, we might Yeah. Want take a break? I want the food.

I’m hungry. Yeah. And then maybe we can wrap some food and then come back and for a discussion. Because every company or every platform wants to use the word community. And then they’re creating a community. Is that going to be something that gets, what do you call it, watered down it’s just like a word that people use, but then at the end of the, they still, they’re still trying to

Speaker 2: there’s fake communities and there’s real communities.

Like I said, I’m somewhat in crypto. I’m, I go up and down in crypto, like I was, I’ve always, I [00:36:00] think Bitcoin is always a, something you should get exposure to, not financial advice, but I feel pretty confident that you should. Maybe consider some Bitcoin. But the other stuff is like we have a big community.

Look at our Twitter followers. Look at I did some fundraising Web3 recently, right? And it seems like all hot air. And they all say even the community says their community so that they can get some other soccer to buy their coin, to pump the price to say we’ve got a big community so they can like exit liquidity.

Yeah, there’s lots of scams that everybody says they’re a community member or community leader. ’cause they’re saying, like you said, that’s like my customer or my exit liquidity or my buyer. But they’re still real genuine communities. And usually it’s like you, you people know you care about your community and they want to support you and the cause.

But there’s definitely still real communities. There’s tons of fake communities. But I think it’s gonna be more and more important with ai. People want to join a real community. I think it’s even more valuable not just some one, I just say, I follow you on Twitter and I [00:37:00] subscribe to your newsletter, like real community.

Speaker: Got it. Okay. I want to take a pause here because we got some really yummy food and Steve says maybe we have another wave of people coming in. What, I’m

Speaker 3: sorry guys. I just realized in my session, 7:00 PM

Speaker: No problem. But why don’t we see, I know. I’m hungry too. So prep some food and then Mike’s gonna be here.

I’m gonna be here for a while. Yeah. We can come back if it’s needed or you can talk to us. And I definitely want you to introduce yourself to him so that you can ask him questions personally and we can start mingling around. And then if the feeling is right, we can sit down and we can have a closer group of the discussion about what kind of ideas he has.

Yeah. I

Speaker 2: mean, I’m really here to just talk. Yeah. And if you have

Speaker: some ideas you want to pitch to Mike, he can tell you whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea. Yeah. I. It’s not really an upsell, but I’m gonna do

Speaker 2: like a call. My plan is my staff will join too. Okay. November 14th, I’m gonna have a Zoom call,

Speaker 3: right?

Speaker 2: Even if it’s just my staff, but I, if some other people want to join I’m really gonna try to like, maybe have a, like a regular call, maybe a workshop, something like that. Maybe,

Speaker: maybe we’ll ask Mike to set up [00:38:00] some office hours here so he can actually pick his screens. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Okay, thanks. All right, let’s take a break.

Thank

Speaker 2: you. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. That’s fine. I hope it didn’t bore everybody. Oh, okay. Maybe put some music or.