Okay, so what we do at Adamwise, and this actually encompasses all of my personal research as well, which means that unlike our two colleagues, I can't present you with tons of stuff that directly talks about the data that I'm getting out of what I do, but I can sort of provide signs around it to get you an idea. But basically what we do, I was surprised to look at the demographics that we have as many biologists as showed up here. What we do is we try to detect the affinity of standard drug candidate molecules for specific receptor domains, biologically active receptor domains on medicinally important proteins. And the idea is to do this essentially sight unseen. So we rely on publicly published data from X-ray crystallography experiments.   And out of that you get sort of an electron density of the location of the atoms inside the protein. So we take these, these are actually just mathematical structures and we do some trickery called docking to estimate where the most likely position of a candidate drug that hasn't been crystallized with this protein, where it ought to be inside of its biologically relevant binding pocket. And then we train a neural network to give us a biological activity based on that. It's a very complex, difficult problem. We get IC50 usually or PKA scores from some type of assay.  These are relative and so you have to have scientists manually transform the data. But basically the idea is that we try to determine biological activity. You can also get PKA or PKI. So these are scores that come from kinetics assay, like to see at what point the activity of the protein stops going out. You have like a feature assay and some of them are V-bow like how many does. Yes. And the data is split and very large. We don't mix them together yet, but I will someday, soon, someday soon. So the idea is here, just learning about what I do. We have this proprietary structural data, some of it is public, but we make it proprietary by doing a bunch of action to it. Of course, experimental data, which we capture through working with labs or just off public domain, build a training base. We do it with stocking, which is just fitting the molecule. There are quite a bit of details in here with how we line up given examples of protein molecule docking structures. And then we put it through a convolutional neural net, which is basically what I'm going to be talking about today actually. That's the topic of today's conversation, which is let's be philosophical about neural nets. That's actually what I'm going to talk to you about. If you want to talk more later about the fancy stuff that I had planned, I was going to give you a hint about what I'm working on, and that is called tensor field networks. But I'm not going to do that now because that just would be too much math and it would take a long time to talk about. So I'm going to start up here at the top and we'll go to the slide show from the beginning, and now you can see my black box. So we want to go inside the black box. We don't want to live in a world where people... So my colleagues here, everybody's into this dynamical systems, Lyapunov stuff. And I'm surprised at how many people really grabbed onto that. Generally for the rest of us, when we use equations to make models of systems, they're usually in the form of machine learning models. That's what's in your phone, that's what's at stitch fix, that's managing your camera. So that's what I'm into. And I wanted to talk about the premier machine learning model of our time, which is the artificial neural network. I have opinions about whether or not that should be named that, and talk about the way that the complexity community has been tackling some of the behaviors of this system. So other stuff later. Okay, so to answer Professor Fischer's question, what is complexity? Well I think the idea of complexity is dynamical systems, that's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to think of it as, I often think of it as an emergent behavior that occurs as a result of small autonomous units, right? And so you can go and you can get into like the cellular automata, like the game of life. Have people played that before? Played? Yeah, by hand, right, yeah, you get like little wooden blocks. Ideally when you actually build these things, they have this sort of unpredicted emergent behavior, which is sometimes adaptive, you know, star and useful star, right? And that's kind of how we think of the neural network today. And scientifically I think of complexity as not only building this sort of reduced representation of a system, so you get the cellular automata, but using observations to refine it. So Dr. Fischer talked a lot about that. And that's kind of what I was going for today. So machine learning, a love story, right? The idea today is how did we go about getting machine learning from the complexity point of view? And Tom Mitchell famously described the computer being said to learn with a given experience with respect to some class and some performance measure, if the performance in that measure increases with more experience, right? Name whatever experience it is, there are many ways to do it. And this started off sometime in the 50s with this idea. If we want to make an artificial brain, can we make it out of artificial neurons, right? So McCullough pits sometime in 43, I mean this is like World War II, right? It's like literally during the war they're doing this research. Teach it to beat Nazis. So they come up with this model of the neuron. I think McCullough was a biologist and pits was a logician. And I'm showing it with three inputs and one output here. And the McCullough pits neuron is very simple. Basically it just takes a sum of its inputs and has some kind of function where basically if the sum of the inputs is greater than zero, then it reproduces one from its function, otherwise it reproduces zero. So it's basically a yes-no system, right? I leave it to the reader to determine if that is an actual, you know, an accurate representation of this neuron. Where is X? Where's Y? I'm not sure, you know, but we'll continue. That's a fantastic paper by the way. That Picadovic paper, that's great. You should read that. Is one of the papers explicitly called out with Y and X? No, they don't call out the Y and X. This is actually an example of complexity being evolved to learn complexity. So they used a robotic evolution strategy to develop a probe to sample electrical currents on the surface of the neuron. So they actually use this like complex, like a control systems approach to develop a molecular probe that lights up when the neuron sends out a signal. We're trying to get accurate representation of this, so there's a guaranteed way not to make progress. Right, yes. So the big thing is that you have like, I mean, it's very long. The probe sends out like one photon at a time and you use a photon counter and it's really beautiful. You can see the transduction of signals. Let's not get too much into that, but the Picadovic paper is great. That's why I have the reference there. So this simple, this McCulloch-Pitz neuron is great. It provides some powerful utility, which I think is a good example of building these small automata and having them do good stuff. Like we can basically get the or and not functions out of them just by setting what the threshold is for G. So if all of these are greater than one or one of them is greater than one, then you can get or. So this one, this one, and this one have a value of one or more or is greater than one or more than zero, basically. They add to one and then you have an or function, right, this or this. If all of them sum up to three or greater, then you have an and, and then here you can have like a switching function where if you have any value in x1, then it sends out a zero. And we can build these representations into tables, right? That's great. We can even, you know, simulate a whole computer with the McCulloch-Pitz neuron, but logical circuits are not really adaptive, right? I mean, that kind of is just using a computer to simulate a computer. So getting on to the newer forms of neurons, we have the perceptron, which actually was like a missile targeting tool for a while. You can build layers of these guys and they're pretty good at picking out positive and negative labels, okay? And they basically work by, you build like, you know, a layer of them, you have some input here and if the sum of the input is greater than a threshold value, then it sends out a one, if not zero. But the real innovation here is that these are trainable, right? So if you have an x which falls in the positive label set and for some reason it's not being classified correctly, you add x to the weight for that particular type of x, right? That particular variable. And if it's in the negative, you subtract x from the weight, right? And so that's sort of like a first example of like an adaptive automaton for this purpose. And these are great except they're kind of limited to linear functions. They just like, you know, if you have to have, if you have x or so, for example, this function only produces a positive value if these two values are different, right? You have to have one plane crossing this way and one plane crossing that way. The perceptron can't do that. But there is something that can, and that's the modern artificial neuron, it can't do it individually, but in groups you can do it, okay? And the big difference here is that we don't fix the output to one. We actually set the output to be sort of a sinulacrum of what a real neuron does, which is it has sort of a gradated signal, right? There is a fully on and fully off, but there's also some level in between, right? And we use this function called the activation function. And you make groups of these guys and you can get something like regression. So this is a fun thing. I actually have code for it. So say that, you know, the long debate over sleep versus study is improving your grades, right? The truth is that sleep improves your grade a lot better than study. I'm actually sleeping during the lecture. Yeah, during the lecture. And good night is sleep the night before. We'll probably do a lot for your grade. I mean, assuming that you've done anything for the class. But anyway, you know, you have some values and we want to determine how this all works, right? So you put in, you have what's called an input layer of perceptrons. And this is sort of like a virtual layer. And the value of sleep goes into each one of your perceptrons here. This is your hidden layer. And the weights are adjusted until we find an accurate output for the amount of grade that you're going to get for a given input of sleep and study. And this is the basic principle of all deep learning that controls your phone and your car, right? The big question is, is how do we actually improve these weights? Because we don't just subtract x, right? We actually have to subtract the amount that the weight changes as a function of the error that the whole thing produces, right? And that process is called back propagation, which I have many long slides on. We're not going to go over them. I just don't have the time. And neither do you. We're all too hungry and tired. But if you want to talk about it more later, we can. The back propagation uses reverse differentiation to cut down the number of computations that you have to have. If you actually spend some time looking at it, it's not that complicated. But anyway, this is a pretty simple system, comparatively, right? So the titan of the modern era is the convolutional network, which is the thing I've been saying over and over again. And the big difference between the convolutional net, sorry for not putting up a reference. I'll make it up to them later. But basically, the idea is that instead of having flat layers of neurons, we actually have 2D and even 3D layers of neurons, right? So these guys consume data in the form of, say, an image, like you would with a protein, say? And they refine them through successive layers of what's called bottlenecking, basically changing the number of weights that each neuron in the layer down is responsible for. So basically, by shrinking layers, you enable it to learn a refined representation of the data as it comes in. And why is it convolutional? It's not convolutional in the traditional sense that we all learn when we were infants where you take an integral over two functions. It's convolutional in the sense that you learn these filter representations. This is a parameter in the neural net. And the filter is scanned over the input image. This is the input image. This is the filter. And you basically take the Hadamard product. You probably learned that in elementary school. And the Hadamard product is just the point-to-point product, and you sum it up. And that gets you this reduced representation of the field above it. So modern nets actually learn the filter, and the filters actually are what represents the layers. Is this closer to the discrete signal processing version of convolution, but applied over sort of tensor or higher up? It sounds like what you're describing on kind of the link. It's actually the chaotic process inside of a human brain. You have an optical nerve that consumes something, and then it goes through—I mean, if you can map the inputs, it goes through different representations as the input passes all the way back to the back of your—what is that? Medulla or whatever? Yeah, that. So your occipital lobe, right? Your occipital lobe processes it and then refines what you're seeing. I have an image of that somewhere. But basically, the idea is that your brain—and I'm not even sure that this is how it was developed—but your brain learns refined representations in very much the same way that the convolutional neural net does. So this is the model of the brain? Yes. Kind of. It's more like a model of a model, right? And so I don't want to go down that road quite yet, right? I think that that's more of the issue here. Have you ever considered that as a multilayer volumetric version of a self-organizing map? Except a self-organizing map allows it to—I think self-organizing maps allow free association between units, right? Because that's the next step between that and a neural gas, right? So we're talking about much older models, okay? This is like a pre-organized self-organizing map, right? You're giving it limits within which each SOM can possibly develop a representation. That's further way down, right? So for those of you that are a little left behind, just imagine that at the end we have to make a prediction, right? And so as it compares between the output of the net and its prediction, the weights are changing at each level, okay? And that's—I'm kind of going to get to that in a minute. So this—just this very simple process has led—and I could spend 25 minutes on this slide, I won't—but this very simple process has led to tremendously frightening outcomes. So this is the state of neural nets today. This thing is much smaller than I thought it would be, but basically this paper is absolutely stunning. This data set that they're training it on is called the Clever data set. And basically it asks the machine a question in English, and the machine is asked to select out and learn whatever question is.  They're asking the machine, what size is the cylinder that is left of the brown metal thing that is left of the big sphere, okay? And it nailed this. So this particular one solves this set at 95.5% success rate. Like it can pick it out—this particular machine can even make measurements on these, right? This one here, Google is so into this. I don't know why they're so into this. This is called a generative network. They really—they spend a lot of time on it. And they ask it to produce—this one is really impressive. They ask it to produce a description. So you write a description of a bird. An all-black bird with a distinct thick rounded bill. And then the machine actually generates pictures of birds, generated pictures of birds, that are photorealistic to the human eye that fits that description. Okay? It generates a much less variable set of them than it personally. Yes. Yeah. Right. Okay. Exactly. Yes. And that's kind of where I wanted to go. So let's keep that—keep that—oh, please, come on, man. Can I borrow like three minutes or four? All right. Just let me get—let me get through the jam here. So this raises the larger question. If convolutional neural nets are the answer, what is the problem? Because this paper—this is a recent complexity crude paper, and they go inside and they're actually measuring the gradients, right, the changes in weights as the network is learning. And as you make the network more deep and more powerful, so the more like colossus this network is, the more like white noise the gradients start to look like. So the gradients themselves, right, the changes in weights are looking like white noise. So that makes us wonder what exactly is the network learning, right? This crew here—fantastic paper—these guys are using a mutual information approach to study the behavior of the gradients inside the network. And so we're low on time, but basically the idea is that they have—they basically use this mutual information mapping to measure how well the next layer down does at representing the layer before and also against the first input using mutual information. And we get these relatively complex trajectories. So as we go from cool to warm, that's the number of training cycles that the neural network has gone through. And actually what we see here is that the network first—so this is the trajectory in learning the original representation and then this is the trajectory in learning the next layer down. And actually what we—and as you go up, that's the layer number. Actually what you see here is that the network first learns a lot about what you're putting in and then starts to forget as it curves back. And as it reaches its final optimum, this is in some place that's not much like the way a human thinks, right, or at least the way you think you think. Which is sort of getting to Dr. Fisher's point, which is that has this story really been a success, right?  Could the pathway to this level of success have been shortened? And as a bigger picture, what can we do to refine this reduced representation? How meaningful is this really? And to my friend here in the front, is a mind really the same thing as reasoning, right? Did we actually build a brain with this stuff even though it appears to be reasoning? Or is this actually poking at some underlying structure which is described apparently by white noise? So that's sort of my stump speech there. So I leave it to you to decide if we have modeled neurons. I think that the questions are big and still out there.


Hello amazing dropshippers and welcome back to our YouTube channel. I'm Laura and in today's video, I'll be providing you with 11 steps in order to become a successful dropshipper in 2022. These are the following topics that I'll be touching base on in the sky. So make sure to stay tuned. These topics include how to find dropshipping products, what dropshipping supplies to choose, which selling channels you should be hosting your dropshipping store on, finding dropshipping automation tools, how to create your websites, how to import products, how to set up your finances, how to do online marketing, how to fulfill your orders, how to provide exceptional customer service and how to multiply your success when dropshipping. So what are we waiting for? Let's do a quick intro and get straight into it. Alright, let's begin this guide. How to become a dropshipper in 2022, a full guide. Do not forget that if you don't feel like reading this article on our blog page, you can just have a listen at the audio that we've now embedded in our articles and you can press play and it will basically read the entire article for you. Okay, so let's go over the most obvious question. What is dropshipping and how does it work? So let's take a look at our three step model over here. We have the first step being your store. Customer purchases a product from your store. So keep in mind that this is now your dropshipping store that's either on the selling platform, Facebook, Marketplace, eBay, Shopify or Wix. Then we have a look at step number two, which is our suppliers. We then go to our suppliers website and purchase the exact product that our customer ordered at wholesale price, which would be $100. And then we have step number three, which says customer. So this would be the shipment of the product from the suppliers warehouse, straight to your customer's location. The buyer receives the product and you keep the profit, which is $50. Now it's time to explore the essential steps that you need to know in order to become a successful dropshipper in 2022. Okay, so our first step is to finding profitable dropshipping products. And we can do this through the four following strategies. AliExpress dropshipping center, supplier product research, competitor product research and AutoDS product research tool. So let's first take a look at what AliExpress dropshipping center has to offer us. So AliExpress dropshipping center is a dropshipping platform that provides specific product analytics, such as sales performance. So with this information in mind, we're able to discover the best selling products that will assist us in converting leads into sales. Another strategy that we can employ is by taking a look at the top sellers and new releases that supplies lists on their websites. For example, we can go to Amazon's Movers and Shakers. So if we go to Amazon, their top selling category is called Movers and Shakers. And these are their biggest gainers in sales ranked over the past 24 hours, updated Ali. So we can have a look over here and we can see which products are trending within their various niches. Like over here we have baby niche, then we have clothing shoes at jewelry niche and we can see what products are ranking under there. And this will generally give us an idea of what products we should be stocking in our dropshipping stores and what products consumers are currently interested in buying. Besides the method I've just shown you for Amazon, we can also uncover what products work best for other sellers by conducting competitor research on the various selling channels. The selling channels can be eBay, Shopify and Wix and Facebook Marketplace. So let's now take a look at how we're able to conduct competitor research on eBay as a selling channel. Okay, so first things first, we're going to head over to eBay. And let's say for example, my dropshipping business is all about selling crystals individually in packages as gift sets. So let's take a look at what sellers are offering for crystals. Wow, okay. So we have more than 660 plus results for crystals. And I mean, I just checked this yesterday. So it's gone up, it was on 640,000 and it's gone up by extra 20K. So that's very interesting. And we can see all the various crystals that sellers are listening for their customers. Because I'm doing competitor research, I want to see which are in fact the crystals that are selling and the crystals that customers are wanting to buy. So I'm going to head down over here to show only. And I'm going to filter out completed and sold items. It completely filters out all the other crystal products and it only shows me the crystals that have been sold. And at what price points as well. It's very important to note the various price points. I mean, for example, you can see here this bracelet costs 140, the Jasper crystal will cost 190. So doing things like this, especially when you're filtering out the sold items, it helps you to understand what are the recent purchases from your customer and at what price point they are buying it at. Next up, let's take a look at how we're able to conduct competitor research for both Shopify and Wix selling channels. For Shopify and Wix, we can utilize the Kuala Inspector to uncover the success behind other drop shipping stores. And yes, you can do that. By using this tool, you're able to get hold of other sellers metrics such as product sales, marketing strategies and reliable suppliers. Finally, with the help of the Kuala Inspector, you're able to get fresh product ideas and also test their sales potential in your drop shipping stores. If these items do perform well in your online store, you can add similar variations in order to maximize your profits. Let's now take a look at how we're able to conduct competitor research on Facebook Marketplace. Because Facebook Marketplace is a new drop shipping platform, we simply just have to list our best sellers in our niche from our suppliers. In turn, we'll get free organic traffic and sales if the product is in demand. We can also drive free organic traffic when customers visit our stores upon finding our listing or page in the search engine results. In addition to this, Facebook Marketplace has low competition, so selling the right items and products will likely lead to massive sales for you. And to conclude our list of the best product research strategies, we have the AutoDS Product Research Tool, an easy to use product finding software for drop shippers. So let's head over to the AutoDS platform and see what this product research tool is all about. Okay, so we are in our account and the first place we're going to go to is up here and we're going to click on Product Research. And over here, we have all the latest trending products that AutoDS has gathered for us to sell. So I'm going to click into a random trending product, let's say this boot. So here we can see all the information pertaining to the specific trending product, such as the product reviews, how much the item costs, how much you will be selling the item for, the warehouse that it will be shipped from, the various sizes that it comes in, the various colors that it comes in, how long the shipment will take, the product information, the specifications, the policy, as well as the product reviews. And if I'd like to add this trending product to my store, all I have to do is just click Import Products, easy as that. Don't forget that you're also able to see the product category, the product source, where the product is sourced from, where it is listed on, the product ID, as well as the product title. A quick tip when looking for products to sell, avoid selling trademarked or illegal products since they go against intellectual property rights and e-commerce community policies. So now that we know what competitor research strategies as well as what product research tools to be using, let's now take a look at which drop shipping supplies you should be working with. When choosing our supplies, we should look out for the following attributes. Top quality products. Remember that the standard of our products speaks about the quality of our business. Therefore, we should only drop ship products that we know will satisfy our customers' preferences. The next feature that we should be on the lookout for is the shipping speed of drop shipping suppliers. The shipping times depend on many factors, such as the origin and the destination of the warehouses which stock these products. Regardless of anything though, we should ensure that our suppliers are able to deliver our customers' orders within the most reasonable time possible. Buyers expect to receive outstanding customer service in exchange for their shopping expenses they made at your store. So it's only fair. With this in mind, we have to work with suppliers who can offer excellent customer service to drop shippers. Take note that the kind of service that we receive is the same service we extend to our customers. Another feature that we should address efficiently are concerns related to returns and refunds. We should thoroughly check our suppliers' policies on returns and refunds so that we're able to be transparent with our customers and they are fully aware of these guidelines. If a drop shipping supplier meets all these requirements, then hooray, you're guaranteed customer satisfaction and long-term success for your drop shipping business. So our next topic is working with multiple drop shipping suppliers. And this is quite an interesting topic too because I recently ran a poll on both our Facebook community as well as our YouTube community page where I'd ask drop shippers, do you work with multiple drop shipping suppliers? And towards the end of the poll, I'd actually found that 47 to 69% of drop shippers do not work with multiple drop shipping suppliers. So that's quite interesting to see. Let us know in the comments below if you'd like to see a full YouTube guide on how to work with multiple drop shipping suppliers. To maximize our drop shipping stores' processes, we should be working with multiple drop shipping suppliers. Working with multiple drop shipping suppliers ensures that your business is constantly running smoothly and efficiently. So how would we go about all of this? Well, one way to do this is by sourcing different products from several drop shipping suppliers so that we're able to offer a variety of items to sell to our customers in our stores. Also, when sourcing products from multiple drop shipping suppliers, you have more free reign on selecting shipping arrangements and return policies. As I've mentioned previously in this video, that quick shipping times and practical return policies are crucial for your business. And if we're able to fulfill customers' expectations, well then, we've just gained a new loyal customer to our customer base. So let's take a look at the three excellent drop shipping suppliers if you're wanting to work with multiple suppliers. So our first supplier is Aliexpress, which is a China-based drop shipping supplier known for its vast selection of over 100 million products on sites. The drop shipping platform boasts competitive prices, low competition, and global shipping. So as a result, working with the drop shipping supplier will help you to gain sales in no time. Our second supplier is Amazon, which is one of the largest organizations based in the US that offers millions of product choices under various niches. Amazon provides an impressive two-day shipping in the US and extends superb customer support to its clients. So many drop shippers trust Amazon because of its reliable products and services it offers. Our third supplier is Banggood, a drop shipping-friendly supplier that offers low prices for thousands of trending items. Banggood is also a one-stop shop that covers a vast selection of niches and it has low market competition. Therefore, sourcing products from this supplier will help you to gain significant profits in no time. So let's move on to our next step, which is step three, and that is selecting a selling channel so that you're able to offer the products you'd like to sell to your customers. So generally, we have two types of selling channels. The first type would be marketplaces and the second type would be customizable websites. So marketplaces are existing websites where we can just add our products for sale. Meanwhile, customizable websites allow us to build our stores from scratch, enabling a customized domain name. Keep in mind that both selling channels offer global audience targeting, which means that we can reach customers all over the world. So let's have a look at what are the base selling platforms in the drop shipping scene. Our first selling platform is eBay. eBay was the world's second most visited marketplace in 2021. They experienced over 1.7 billion visits. So what are the pros and cons that we can expect from this selling platform? Well, for one, it's free organic traffic due to the millions of users on its website. So that means many customers can see our stores. eBay also offers sellers free accounts, which allows them to list up to 250 products without additional charges. If you'd like to increase your listings, you're able to choose from any eBay subscription plan. However, drop shipping on eBay entails expensive selling fees and less store customization options. The significant market competition on eBay can sometimes hinder us from maximizing our profits. Another excellent selling channel is Shopify. Working with this popular sales platform can provide you with the following advantages and disadvantages. Unlike eBay, Shopify allows you to fully customize your store. It also enables us to list thousands and thousands of products without any limits.  Later, you're then able to use your customer's contact details to your advantage for email marketing. Behind these benefits, Shopify also has its own disadvantages, one of which is no organic traffic on Shopify's websites. In order to manage this issue, we need to allocate a marketing budget towards paid advertising. This will help to drive traffic to your store and you're able to track your advertisement analytics to see what is and what is not working. Lastly, Shopify offers you a free trial account, but you'd have to pay for a monthly subscription plan once this free trial ends. Next up, we have Facebook Marketplace, which hosts about 250 million active stores globally. These are the following pros and cons of this new dropshipping marketplace. Facebook Marketplace has low competition and there are no subscription fees as long as you have an active Facebook account. The great thing about Facebook Marketplace is that it provides personalized product suggestions to its customers depending on their needs and preferences, which is of course, helping us to scale our dropshipping business. The only disadvantage about Facebook Marketplace is that it only serves the US markets. So if you do not hold a US citizenship, sorry. Our last selling platform that we're going to discuss is Wix, which is home to about 200 million sellers worldwide. This e-commerce website creation tool offers dropshippers the following perks and drawbacks. A primary advantage of working with Wix is that there are no selling limits. This means that we can list endless products in our stores. Every dropship is dream. Plus, we're also able to customize our stores in order to provide the utmost user-friendly and convenient shopping experience for our customers. Wix also offers numerous design templates when customizing your shop. Another benefit that Wix offers is its low startup investment. So creating your Wix account in the beginning is free, but over time you'll begin paying charges for connecting your domain name or removing ads from your page. You're also able to settle payments through flexible payment methods such as PayPal and credit cards. The only downside to Wix is that there is no organic traffic. So as a result, we would have to incorporate effective marketing techniques so that our customers would be able to find our stores. Let's hop straight over to step number four, which would be to find a dropshipping automation tool. So now that you're aware of what dropshipping supplies you should be working with and which selling channel to host your store on, it's now time to automate our dropshipping business. So as you all know, you're able to manage your dropshipping business either manually or automatically.  Then you'll have to insert your customer's details one by one. With that being said, you'll also have to manually monitor and give updates on the orders from time to time. And that is why automation is here to help us eliminate the stressful and tedious process of manually managing every transaction. Not only that, a dropshipping automation tool allows us to scale our business because it takes care of the day-to-day operations. And because of this, we as dropshippers will be able to dedicate our time to providing exceptional customer service and marketing. So where do we find this automation software in the dropshipping scene? Well, look no further. AutoDS is a top grade automation software that can automate the following processes. So our first process would be the product research, which I discussed earlier in this video. And you're able to conduct the product research with our convenient tool to find the best selling and top quality products. So let's go through it one more time. It's head over to our AutoDS platform. Let's go to product research. So we have all products and these are all the trending products. See, it's changed compared to when I was lost on you. And then we also have the popular products. And then we also have the new products as well as holiday products. So essentially you have four different genres to explore to conduct your product research through. Okay, let's head back to the guide. So once we have the products in mind, we can then utilize the AutoDS automated importing methods to add products to our stores. So let's head back to our platform and let's go to a popular product. Right, what do we have here? Some jade pebbles. Okay, so I think I'm going to import some jade pebbles. So let's click on it. So we can see all the products information and now I can just import the product straight to my store. Now I'm in my drafts, go straight to imports, import this item to your store and to the products page. There we have it. Jpebble for plants started to import. Another really cool thing with AutoDS is that we can add and import single products or multiple products to multiple stores from our suppliers website. So for example, I'm going to head over to Amazon and earlier I showed you some of the crystals. So let's have a look. So let's go with this very cool pyramid crystal in AutoDS. We can add the products from our suppliers website with a URL or a product ID. So I'm just going to grab the URL and I'm going to paste it. And then we have an option edit now quick or publish to store. So everything that you see here, the description, the images, the title, all of that will show on your store too. So if you'd like to change some stuff around we can click edit now. Okay, and there we have it. So there is the product title. As you can see, it's the same as what we can see on Amazon over here. The location, the tags, the shipping methods. So it's imported literally everything that you've seen on this product page straight into our stores. You also have the option to edit the product description and we also have the images as well as item specifications. And I think I'm happy with everything. So I'm going to save and import it straight to my store. What I just did for a single product you can also do for multiple products. You have the option of the URLs or IDs or you can upload as a CSV too. Our drop shipping solution also offers auto automation that automatically collects and forwards your customer's details from your store directly to your supplier. How cool is that? We also provide price and stock monitoring that tracks prices and stocks on your supplier side to ensure that your business is constantly optimized. So with all this automation information in mind you're able to jumpstart your drop shipping business with AutoDS for only $1. Let's move on to step number five which is creating your own drop shipping websites. A drop shipping website is an online platform where you sell your products and present your business information. So let's explore the different drop shipping websites for our business. First up, we have Facebook Marketplace websites. As one of the most popular drop shipping platforms Facebook Marketplace offers its users free account signups. Although we cannot create a storefront the platform has a new feature called Facebook Shops which AutoDS will soon integrate with. So by using this new feature Facebook Shops you can optimize your drop shipping store with business automation whilst also customizing it to fit our brand. Therefore soon enough we'll be able to have a storefront on Facebook. Next up we have eBay drop shipping websites. Just like Facebook Marketplace eBay also provides free seller account registrations. We can also customize our storefronts and add featured products to our eBay stores. eBay also allows you to add a cover image, logo, featured categories and other relevant information to help boost your sales. Next up we have Shopify and Wix drop shipping websites. Even though these are excellent e-commerce platforms driving organic traffic to our websites can be challenging. We have more potential to increase our profit margins by incorporating the proper branding solutions to our stores. Before our buyers can check out our stores we have to make sure that we set up the following front pages, product pages, business policies, return policies and various shipping options. Having all this information presented on our drop shipping websites will help our customers to understand how our drop shipping business works. So our next step would be to import your products. I did go through this in step four where I discussed how you're able to import your products but we're briefly going to go through it again. So after setting up our drop shipping websites which I've just discussed in the previous step it's now time to start importing our products. And we also now know that there are two product import methods. We have the manual method and we have the automatic method. So with the manual import method we have to copy and download our products information one by one from our suppliers websites then paste and upload these texts and images to our selling channels. And by doing this process it's just very time consuming and it consumes a lot of our efforts as well. Then we also have the automatic import method. So this drop shipping tool enables the automation of importing products which I showed you in step number four. So because of this drop shipping tool you will now be able to automatically transfer products information from your suppliers page to our selling channels through a drop shipping platform. So because this automatic drop shipping software does the process for us importing becomes faster and way easier. So we have the one click importer which is basically this we're going to go into our Autodesk platform product research. Let's say I would like to add this beanbag chair cover and all I have to do is just click import products. It'll go to your drafts. You can click here and once you've reached the draft folders you'll see beanbag chair cover which is what I'd like to add. And I'm just going to click imports add it to our stores. Great stuff. Our second importing method is the single product upload which allows you to add one product URL or ID at a time. So let's have a look at how we're able to do this. We're going to head back to our Autodesk platform click on add products and then you'll see single product import one product to one store. Let's click on that. So now I need to get the product URL that I'd like to publish to my store. I'm going to hit to Amazon. Let's say I'd like to sell this croc. Right. So now I have the product URL and I'm going to head back to our Autodesk platform paste it in and now you'll see you'll be able to edit now which means that you can optimize on top of what is already given. So you can optimize the title if you'd like. You can optimize the images. You can optimize the description. If you feel that what you've seen on the product page is enough and you feel that you don't need to change anything then you can just click publish to store. And there we have it. Items has been added to your stores. If you would like to edit the product we can just click edit now under this section we're able to optimize the listing once again. We can change the title. We can change the tags or we can add more tags to what is already given. We can choose the country location. We can choose the description. Would you like to edit the product description?  So ideally if you'd like to edit the product it just means that you'd like to just optimize on top of what is already been given to you. So next up we have multiple product URLs and IDs as well as bulk products. So let's briefly look at how we were able to do this. So we're going to head back to our Autodesk platform click add products. And here we have multiple products stores import multiple products together. We're going to click on that. And let's say let's head back to our Amazon products. I want to import this jellyfish lava lamp. I'm going to click on the URL head back to the platform, paste it. And another product that I'd like to add is a Himalayan salt lamp. So let's click on that. And I'm going to copy my product URL, head back and paste it in. Okay, we're going to add in one more product. So it will be three products in total. Copy the product URL, head back, paste it in. And now I'm going to say add as a draft. Items has been added to drafts click here to track the progress. And there we go. We have the natural Himalayan salt lamp, the Moonology Oracle cards and the jellyfish lava lamp, which are all added through the multiple products, import multiple products together. So now that it's in the drafts, let's import it live to our stores. And if we have a look on the top of the earth, we'll show you the imports products that are in progress. So we have one finished, one finished. And we're just waiting for the last product to upload. Which is finished. Let's take a look how it looks. Our item is now live. Easy as that folks. So before we move on to marketing our products and gaining high sales, we first need to sort out our finances, which brings me to our next step. Step seven, setting up your finances. Here are the financial processes that we have to complete for our drop shipping business. The first one is business registration. And the common question we receive is, do you have to register your drop shipping business? When you're establishing your e-commerce venture, it's best to check your region's local policies in order to know whether or not you should register your drop shipping business. Next up, we have tax obligations. Is it necessary to pay for that and other drop shipping taxes? While when running a drop shipping store, you need to fulfill several tax obligations. For example, you need to collect sales taxes under the following conditions. When the country where your business is operating in requires such tax. As well as a customer who purchases something from your store who shares the same state residence as you. In particular, marketplaces such as eBay automatically charge sale taxes on purchases and then deduct this amount from drop shippers. However, the collection of these sales taxes varies from one region to another. To avoid any confusion of tax obligations, it's best to rather consult with the local accountant. You can also have a look at one of our YouTube videos that Leeran, our content manager, posted. He gave a full guide on drop shipping taxes and I'll leave a link to that video in the pinned comment down below. All right, let's move on to step eight, which is online marketing. So in order to drive traffic to our stores through online marketing, we can utilize several marketing strategies depending on our selling channels, of course. So let's have a look at Wix and Shopify. Since Shopify and Wix receive minimal organic traffic, we need to strategize how to market our stores on these selling platforms carefully. To achieve this, we can utilize the following marketing methods. Our first one is PPC ads, which is pay per click. So PPC ads referred to promoting our store or product on Facebook, Google, or YouTube. In PPC campaigns, we pay every time a customer clicks on our ads on these platforms, Google, Facebook, or YouTube. It's essential to keep in mind that we need to set aside a marketing budget for something like this. Not only is this a worthwhile investment, but it will also produce positive long-term results for our stores. Another effective marketing technique that we can use is email marketing. This marketing technique utilizes emails in order to reach our current customers or target new customers. Keep in mind that this strategy requires an initial audience in order to establish your customer base. So how would we retrieve email addresses in order to do email marketing? Well, we'll be able to do this by offering discounts and newsletter subscriptions. For example, if customers subscribe to your newsletter, you automatically gain their email addresses. Next, we're going to be speaking about some of the online marketing techniques for eBay. So eBay generally receives a large number of organic traffic to its selling platform. So let's see how we can further boost our audience by utilizing the following marketing strategies. First up, we have promoted listing standard, and this provides sponsored placements all over eBay, increasing the visibility of our products to customers. Keep in mind, though, that an eBay seller must have enough account activities in order to utilize this marketing technique. And although this marketing technique helps to increase our product's visibility, we have no control or say over where our ads are placed. We also have promoted listings advanced, and this allows us to compete for higher ranks on eBay's search results. So when customers search for keywords related to our products, our products could be the ones that pop up first on the search results. So through this marketing technique, we have more control over where to place our ads and to whom to offer our product listings to. And last but not least, let's discuss the marketing techniques for Facebook Marketplace. So similar to eBay, Facebook Marketplace provides us with a massive amount of organic traffic to take advantage of. There are various ways to promote our products on Facebook. We can do this through Facebook promotion, such as boosting our listings or promoting our pages, and we can post our products on several buy and sell groups on Facebook. Generally, posting ads on these groups are cost-free and straightforward. Woo-hoo, you made your first sale. So what would be the next step? Step nine is to fulfill your orders. After your customers place their orders, you need to fulfill them immediately. There are two ways to go about this, the manual or automatic order fulfillment. So as you know, when manually fulfilling orders, you need to purchase the items from your suppliers' websites. Then you need to input all your customers' shipping details upon checkout. Doing this process manually consumes both time and it entails risks. You can easily make mistakes by inserting the wrong information, such as your customer's address, their telephone number, or the email address. All this will do is cause frustration amongst our customers, which will probably result in them never ordering from our stores again. To save ourselves from this, we can utilize automation tools. Auto DS's dropshipping tool automatically fulfills orders on our behalf by using automated order fulfillment. This software provides timely updates on customers' demands. And by knowing these updates, we'll know what steps to take next. So let's have a look at Auto DS's two efficient automatic solutions. Our first one is fulfilled by Auto DS. This remarkable feature allows for 100% automation of order fulfillment through Auto DS's supported suppliers. To utilize the service, all we have to do is load our balance in our Auto DS account. Then once loaded, the program will automatically process customers' orders and provide tracking information no matter what time of the day it is. We also have the Auto DS automatic ordering system that requires our buyer's accounts when fulfilling customers' orders. A buyer can't use our payment methods such as credit cards or bank transfers when processing our orders from suppliers. You'll be able to find both automation tools on your Auto DS dashboard and you'll be able to monitor updates regularly. This is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction and you'll just be able to sit back, kick your feet up, relax and watch your sales grow. Let us take a look at step 10, which is customer service. As we know, delivering optimal customer service to our customers is a critical aspect of every business. We need to establish good relationships with our customers and provide them with the best shopping experience possible. When you provide an optimal customer experience, not only do you build a loyal customer base, but you also gain positive feedback which increases your brand's credibility. So let's take a look at some of the tips for managing your store's customer support. Always answer your customer's messages and inquiries daily. Always make sure to look after these returns or replacements and make sure to send these replacements or refunds on time. Make sure that no customer's messages goes unanswered. I mean, there's nothing worse than being ignored especially when you've purchased something from somebody or so offer promotions when your customers reach out. It will improve their chances from purchasing something from your store again. AutoDeers also provides a customer service solution for eBay sellers. With this feature, drop shippers can efficiently manage, track and answer customer queries and cases all under one screen. And finally drop shippers, we have reached the last step in this guide which is step 11, how to multiply your success. Scaling your business will multiply your success and here are some tips on exactly how to do that. To begin with, we can use the AutoDeers' tagging system to help us track which are the top selling products or collections. Also, remember to add more products to those products that are selling well in your store. We can also replace or remove slow movers and items that require high return rates. Also, remember that you need to allocate a higher daily budget for scaling ads. Don't forget to also track the ROAS, return on ad spend in order to find that sweet spot. On the other hand of this, also discontinue ads that do not convert to sales. Lastly, keep listing in-demand items using automated importing methods. Bear in mind the more in-demand products you list, the more sales you'll make. Do not forget that we also upload monthly product finds on our YouTube channel. This helps dropshippers to know which products they should be listing in their dropshipping stores for that particular month. While dropshippers, give yourselves a pat on the back for completing this guide. You are now confidently equipped with proper knowledge in order to become a dropshipper. All you have to do is apply these steps and take the first step to establishing your dropshipping business. Start searching for those trending products and start adding them to your online stores by using the proper automation tools. Let me know in the comments below what you thought of this guide and how it has assisted you on your dropshipping journey. Don't forget to give this video a thumbs up too if you appreciated the valuable information. Don't forget to also hit that subscribe button so you can always stay up to date with what's happening in the dropshipping scene. It was a pleasure presenting this guide to you dropshippers, all the best with your dropshipping journey and I'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.


A prize-giving ceremony was recently held for the winners of the first-ever Proud of Taiwan and St. Lucia Lantern Competition. A collaboration of the Taiwanese Embassy and the Cultural Development Foundation, the contest was organized in observance of Taiwan's National Day, October 10th. Out of 12 of the most accomplished Lantern builders on island, Gilland Avril walked away with a $1,500 first-place prize for his Lantern piece entitled Proud of Where I Am From. It was the winning project of the 2020 Proud of Taiwan and St. Lucia Lantern Competition, the first of its kind coordinated by the Cultural Development Foundation, on invitation by the Taiwanese Embassy to celebrate Taiwan's National Day. During the prize-giving ceremony, Executive Director of the Cultural Development Foundation, Ramona Henry-Win, said the CDF targeted experienced Lantern crafters for the competition in the interest of time. We quickly called our participants, either they were winners in previous years or they were facilitators at our training because in the interest of time we felt that would have been the best approach. So we called them in and everyone, we called, accidated to the request. They were excited about doing this competition. They did a level of research. They recognized the partnership that was so dear between the two cultural institutions in Taiwan and that was displayed in the lanterns that were prepared as you can see all around you. So to our artists, the CDF say we are very proud of you. Bravo to you. Local observance of Taiwan's 104th National Day celebration was held at the Sandals Golf and Country Club on October 8th where the lanterns submitted were displayed for judging. I have to say I was deeply touched by all the creative and spectacular lanterns when the moment the lights were switched off at our National Day celebration reception. And today, although this is the third time I see all the lanterns, it's still breathtaking. And art is something that has the major power to connect people. And the proud of Taiwan and Senutia lantern competition really showed the beauty, the vitality and the diversity of our two countries and especially the strong ties between our two people. Minister with responsibility for culture, Senator Fortunabel Rose, commended the CDF for pulling off the inaugural event that displayed the strong ties that the two nations share. Last year we sent a delegation to Taiwan and when we sent people off our island, it's for them to go, learn, grow and come back and make a contribution. And what we see here is a clear manifestation of that. Last year we sent a team out headed by of course the chair of CDF who is back here today celebrating the occasion with the Taiwanese ambassador through this lantern competition. This is what we want. We do thank the chair of CDF and the team at CDF for the work that you did to realize this simple project that made a statement in terms of how we value our relationship and of course how we see the importance of the arts within our society. Winning the second place $1,000 prize in the 2020 Proud of Taiwan and St. Lucia Lantern competition is Perry Marshall for his piece entitled Our Gift to Taiwan and the third place $700 prize went to Kirk Peter for his piece Thank You Taiwan which also won a $500 People's Choice Prize for most innovative lantern.


On the women's side another week and another ranked opponent on the schedule and this may be the toughest test yet on the road Friday and Saturday against number one Wisconsin the Badgers 8-0 on the season so far but the Beavers are excited for the opportunity. Going down to LaBona is always a challenge. They play very well they got a great crowd. It's a fun environment to play in to be honest with you because it's generally a very very packed house and you know so from that standpoint it's exciting but again you're going against a very very good team. We're all just kind of getting prepared and I don't know jitters will hit us later on but I think that the upperclassmen will help us calm down a little bit and seeing all those fans in there maybe we can come out with a W. So another tough one this week in both games scheduled for 7 p.m. puck drop in Madison. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Hey everyone, welcome back to this episode of Proud News. I hope you enjoy it. We have a lot of good stories for you today. I also want to remind you to enter our Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Nintendo Switch giveaway through the Gleam.io link down in the description. And hey, by the time you get to it on this video, if you happen to enjoy it, drop a like and subscribe for more content. So late last night, as well as in a video I made earlier today, we talked about how Best Buy has a leak going on out there leaking Metroid Prime 4, Persona 5, and a link to the past all for Nintendo Switch. In addition, a Twitter user that goes by Stealth is saying that Twilight Princess HD and the Wind Waker HD will be coming to Nintendo Switch, at least to the Nintendo Switch eShop. If you would like more information on this, I'll include a link to my original video that details this out over six minutes. I just want to say right now that it is a rumor, but it's one rumor I really want to be true. So Ed Boon answered a whole bunch of questions at GameStop. One of those who don't know, Ed Boon has a lot to do with the Mortal Kombat series. And in order that Mortal Kombat X is the best selling Mortal Kombat game of all time, having moved 11 million units, it does make it the best selling fighting game ever behind games from the Super Smash Bros. series. So that does bring into question how well is Mortal Kombat 11 going to sell, especially since it's not just on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and all the platforms that got X to 11 million, it's also on Nintendo Switch. Obviously we don't know, but the game does launch later this month, so it'll be very curious to watch those sales and see how those sales compare to both Mortal Kombat X as well as potentially Smash Bros. That would be a very interesting comparison as those two franchises continue to sit at the top of the fighting game mountain. Are you waiting to hear more about Rune Factory 5? You do not actually have to wait that much longer as tomorrow on Niko Niko in Japan they will be hosting a live stream talking about new details for Rune Factory 5, which was announced in the last NINDI showcase. Now it does take place at 6 a.m. Central Standard Time, 8 p.m. Japanese time, and obviously a lot of us won't be able to tune in because it'll be way too early, it'll also be in Japanese without subtitles, so we'll just have to probably wait a little bit to get translators out there early in the morning to get the news, but you can bet that any news about Rune Factory 5 will be covered in tomorrow's episode of Prime News, so stay tuned if you happen to be a Rune Factory fan. Video Game Accessory Maker PDP has announced the Face-Off Deluxe Plus audio controller for Nintendo Switch. It is the first controller to feature an in-line audio jack. What that means is it has a headphone jack that can be used for voice chat and for listening with a standard headset. It is a 3.5 millimeter jack. Now we all know the Switch Pro Controller is great in many aspects, has some weaknesses as well, and one of those weaknesses is there is not a headphone jack, so to see this on a third party controller is great. Now they do plan to start taking pre-orders for it at some point next month, and if you can't guess the Face-Off name of it is because you could change the faceplates and all that and customize it to your liking, and I honestly think this is a great accessory, and again, just like Hori who put a D-pad and a Joy-Con, it's a third party accessory maker solving a problem that Nintendo created, so hopefully we see more of this, especially since there are native voice chat games on Switch such as Fortnite and other third party offerings that would massively benefit from having a headphone jack readily available in something like a Pro Controller. As if there weren't enough games already arriving this month on Nintendo Switch, Warhammer Age of Sigmar is landing on April 16th. It is one of those card games brought into the virtual world, and it's obviously based in the Warhammer series. I massively enjoy the Warhammer series. I actually, if you guys ever look in the background in some of my videos, you'll notice in my bookshelf, I actually have a Warhammer book, and I also play the Warhammer MMO as well as Warhammer 40,000, and like just a whole bunch of Warhammer stuff in my history that I don't really get to talk about because it's not ever really on Nintendo, but this one is, I don't know the pricing on it just yet, but hey, it's pretty neat to see another game coming to Switch here in April. I pretty much at any point this month, if you go in the eShop, they'll probably find something you want to play. We have some potential news about a Switch Pro or a Switch Mini as Nintendo is hiring someone to work with the USB-PD protocol. This protocol is actually something that's better than the standard USB-C that Switch currently uses. It allows you to have faster power draw so you can do a faster charging of the system, and while it allows you to draw more power and transfer data faster, all of this can lead to better technology in a Switch Pro or a Switch Mini, assuming that this is what they use it for. Again, hiring someone that specializes in this doesn't mean they're actually ever going to use the technology, but it's clearly something they are looking into implementing in a future provision or something of some type, maybe a future VR device who really knows what Nintendo's working on, but Nintendo, but they're hiring for this, so it does mean it is a protocol they are looking into and who knows what this is going to lead to in the future, but I am pretty stoked if that's the case because while I love USB-C, Nintendo uses it in a non-standard way, so using an even better technology for faster charging and data transfer is something that really piques my interest. You guys, let me know what you think down in the comments on what they might be doing with such a technology. And our last story of today deals with GameStop. I was going to make a standalone video on this, but honestly, it felt like a good way to just kind of end Prime News. And GameStop's in a bit of trouble. They've been in trouble for a while. I don't know how many of you guys pay attention to the stock market and financial earnings for them, or how many you even care, because I know a lot of people out there just don't like GameStop for a number of reasons.  And I believe their stock valuation has hit the lowest it's been since 2004, so 15 years ago, that's usually not the direction you want to be heading as a successful company. Now, I did go through their earnings call, which has a lot of mumbo jumbo in there that only investors are going to care about. But some of the things you kind of get out of it as one, yes, they did lose money overall over the past fiscal year. They lost money in the fourth quarter of that fiscal year. And it's a year over year loss that doesn't really look like it has any future coming up. Now, they are hiring a brand new CEO who starts on April 16th. The CEO has previously worked with Verizon and has seen a lot of success at what he did at Verizon. So, there is hopes here that the CEO knows what he's getting into and isn't going to just leave the job after a month or two like the last few CEOs did. In fact, it was so bad they've had an interim CEO for the past 10 months who was never intending to keep the job and just kind of sat in the seat because they had nobody else to do it. And that CEO wasn't even at the earnings call because he's on a vacation. So, let's you know how serious that CEO might have been taking the GameStop job. That being said, there are some interesting things we learn about this because there's a lot of doom and gloom going out there about how this might be the end of GameStop finally for the 20 billionth time that people have said it over the past decade. But it's weird because GameStop's actually doing okay. They're not losing as much money as people think they are. In fact, they are sitting on $1.6 billion in pure cash assets that are just sitting in a bank. They just have $1.6 billion in cash. They are super flush on money. And part of this is because $700 million or so was from the selling of Spring Mobile last year. But more than that, they had almost $900 million just sitting in the bank that has been sitting there as reserves or as pure profits over the years. And they are actually taking $400 million of that in paying off a debt that they owe, like the last major debt they owe according to the financial call, to some senior people that are going to basically save them about $19 million per year over the next however many years. So essentially, they're going to take a chunk of that, they're going to pay that off, and they're still going to have over a billion dollars left sitting in a bank. So this does give the new CEO quite a bit of money to play with and quite a bit of opportunity to maybe turn the business around. The reported losses aren't extremely dire. I know a lot of people make it sound like it's way worse than it really is. We're talking like year over year losses of like 3% in terms of revenue. It really isn't as big of a dip as people are making it out to be, but there's always this doom and gloom out there about GameStop and people wondering when they're going to go under. And as it turns out, if you actually listen to the earnings call or read about it anyway, as I'll put a link to it in the description, it's really not looking good, but it's also not nearly as bad as it is. There is a real opportunity here for a new CEO under a new direction to turn GameStop around. I don't know what it's going to take to do that. I'm definitely out of ideas, so I wouldn't be the best person for the job. But whoever this guy from Verizon's going to do, he's at least going to have the money and the backing of the board to potentially turn it around. So we'll see. Again, there's a thought out there that maybe GameStop might not be around when the PlayStation 5 launches. I think that's massively overblown. I think just based on cash reserves alone, GameStop is going to be around for at least another five to 10 years. I honestly think it's just overblown. But hey, you know what? You can go through the earnings call yourself and tell me your conclusion or down in the comments. Anyways, folks, I am Nathaniel Robledjens from Nintendo Prime. I want to thank you for tuning in. And hey, if you do notice a quality bump in this video for starters, we built a new editing rig. So we're able to do fancier edits that don't cripple my system and crash and blue screen and make take me 10 years to get this edited. And number two, hey, you know what? You're number two old to learn new tricks, right? I have this really nice camera. It only took me a year plus to figure it out. But hey, now things are starting to look better. Or at least I hope so. Maybe things are still blurry. I don't know. Don't know my glasses on. Can't tell if I'm in focus. There's been focus issues. I think I fixed it. I don't know. You guys let me know. Also, hey, go check out our Nintendo Prime podcast. We just hit episode 102. And if you would like to show some love for our podcast or any content we make of this channel, why not check out patreon.com slash Nintendo Prime? Okay, I think I'm done with all the shameless plugs, I think.  I mean, go check out 5G gaming. He's a cool dude. I've been watching a lot of beat them up lately. Good guy, nice channel, like his stuff. I don't know. I mean, go check out Spawnwave. He does shows like this probably better than I do. I mean, hey, we're giving away a switch. So let me hit 50,000 subscribers. That's kind of cool. Then again, like player essence gives away a switch like everywhere the week it feels like. So yeah, what am I even doing here? I don't know. I guess this is prime news.


So, you're a vegan, aware of the horrors of animal agriculture, but you've just been invited to a gathering where they'll be serving the bodies of animals or products made from their suffering. What do you do? People often ask me, Joey, what would you do in a situation like this? How would you handle it? Well, because we're all very different people with different kinds of personalities, I don't really like to give advice on what I would do. I'm very disagreeable and I have quite a thick skin. I also have lots of experience with debate and knowledge on the topic. So, instead, I thought I'd give you what I believe might be good strategies for everyone, from the shy type to those who don't mind a good debate. Here are three kinds of general personalities I came up with based on my experience in the vegan movement. One, agreeable, shy, peacekeeper. Two, disagreeable, advocate, peacekeeper. Three, disagreeable, uncompromising, principled. For the agreeable, shy, peacekeeper who is fine to be around family when non-vegan food is concerned, this advice is for someone who's not too clued up on vegan issues. Maybe a new vegan or someone who's just not that good at communicating the message. They might be anxious or just trying their best not to stir up the situation at all. For this person, it would be better to be subtle in your approach. I think bringing amazing tasting vegan food to the table and enough for everyone to share will be enough to plant a positive seed without having to explain too much. But make sure you bring your favourite foods that you know for sure taste amazing. If the vegan conversation comes up, use some short, polite explanations that avoid being critical of others. That way, you won't trigger defensiveness and a subsequent heated exchange. You might use phrases like, I felt that I no longer wanted to consume animals because I cared deeply about what happens to them. Then, following that, ask them some questions about what's been going on in their life to change the subject nice and quickly. We all know people love to discuss their interests. If you let them speak enough, maybe they might become genuinely interested in your lifestyle and not feel attacked. Keep the focus on your own perspective and avoid accusatory language. Change the subject when you feel like things are getting uncomfortable and could possibly sprawl out into a debate that you're not wanting to get into. You might even find that being excused to go to the toilet might be a good way to end unwanted exchanges. You might even feel better recommending people watch your favourite activist or documentary. After suggesting they watch it, use a subtle art of changing the subject to something a little more family focused. For the shy, agreeable peacekeeper, maybe just not mentioning your lifestyle at all around certain family members might be the best way to keep the peace. You can save the animal advocacy for social media. Now for the disagreeable but peacekeeping advocate. This person is much more experienced and researched on vegan issues and also likes getting into discussions. This person also knows how to keep their cool when emotions arise. They have a thick skin and know how to navigate tricky subjects with very good communication. For this person, I'd recommend some of the advice from personality one. Bring tasty vegan food. Ask people about their interests. If the topic of your veganism arises, give a much more robust explanation. Politely explain why you boycott industries that violate the rights of animals. Make connections that they might understand. Explain that there's no morally significant difference between farm animals and their pets at home. Feel the energy of the conversation. If it feels like they're becoming interested, you can even begin to ask them some questions about their views on animals. Just remember that as someone is eating meat while you're having this conversation with them, they might feel more of a reason to become defensive and double down. If this happens, try to disarm their defences by bringing it back to yourself and how you used to eat meat as well. This way, they might feel less like you're trying to be superior and more like you're just sharing your realisation. If you feel like this conversation is about to be a good exchange, then answer any objections they might have. Here are some good resources on how to answer common objections. Again, keeping your arsenal a graceful way of changing the subject if things begin to feel a little too heated. After changing the subject, try some light, harder tumour to show there's no hard feelings. Bear in mind that family, friends and work colleagues might have a psychological barrier that would lead them less inclined to listen to you. This is very common, so it might not be that you've done anything wrong in your communication. But if you feel there are barriers like this, instead, try sharing with them some of your favourite speeches or documentaries when it's time to go home. If they won't listen to you, maybe they'd be more inclined to hit the message from a messenger they feel more rapport with. Or as a member, depending on the personality of each friend or family member, you may be able to employ a different approach to suit each of them. I think the Socratic Method and asking leading questions is one of the best ways to help people come to their own realisation about this topic. Keep in mind some conversations might be better to just avoid because it's just a battle that won't end well. Disagreeable, uncompromising and principled. This person does not compromise on their position. They may or may not be educated on the topic. They may or may not be experienced in vegan education. They may or may not be able to answer any objections. This person here is just not willing to be around the body parts of animals who have had their rights violated. They just can't bring themselves to do it. They know if they do come to a gathering when there's meat present, they will create a scene and they will not compromise and change the subject and they may not be able to keep their call. They know if they attend when there's meat present, they will fall out with family members and ruin the gathering. Or it might just be that being around animal products affects their emotional state and they just don't want to be in that situation. For this person, I would give this advice. Let your family and friends know ahead of time that you don't feel comfortable around animal products. You can send them a documentary like Dominion so that they truly understand why you feel this way. You never know. They might even agree to make the gathering a vegan one. I mean, it's one meal. Why wouldn't they if they really cared about how this affected you? But if they don't and you still would like to connect with your family and friends, you can come after the food has been served and bring some vegan cakes or you can catch up with your family and friends doing a completely different activity. Food doesn't have to be the basis for every single family gathering. There are many things to do with friends and family that don't involve food at all. If it's about sharing company, then make it about sharing company and you can avoid food entirely. But if you must socialise with food, you can skip their meat filled event completely and invite them to a vegan restaurant at a later date or invite them to your house for dinner and you call the food. If your friends and family who are not vegan don't show you at least a little bit of respect just enough to accommodate your ethical beliefs in any one of these ways, then I would question if they truly cared about you at all. In that case, I would show yourself the respect by distancing yourself from those people entirely.  Even family. There are many vegan groups online where you can find friends who share your views on animals and I'm sure they'd love to hang out with you. There are sometimes uncomfortable situations in life but what I like to do in these situations where I'm around non-vegan family and friends and when I'm around meat and all these situations where chopped up animals are involved is I like to instead of thinking always of my emotions, I like to remember the victims. The victims who are suffering in farrowing crates, the victims who are strung up by their little legs and shackled, electrocuted and have their throats slit, the innocent beings who are terrified on the kill floor about to have their life robbed from them. I use perspective to look at it from the real victim's position and although some of these situations are uncomfortable I'd encourage the shy, avoidant, agreeable peacekeeper to step out of their comfort zone and start to move into the second personality where you start to talk to people about this and for personality three maybe you can move into personality two for some situations and talk to people you know get yourself in an uncomfortable situation to advocate for animals but no matter your personality type you don't have to advocate for the animals in real life it's just not something you are required to do you have social media these days you can create a faceless account and advocate for the animals in many different ways you can investigate you can donate you can do many different things for animals and it doesn't have to be in this family setting sometimes we put so much pressure on ourselves to be an activist in every setting I do but it's not required you can do things outside of these settings that help the animals so you don't have to narrow it down to that dinner table where you've got all your family there and you're about to create a massive war some people can't help themselves and that's fine but I'm just saying think differently about this think outside the square with this and you'll be able to navigate any situation as an activist or as a vegan this advice is not for every situation in the interest of time I kept it quite focused you might have a completely different situation and your circumstance might not even be mentioned here but my advice would be to always carefully pick your battles and know your audience if someone is just impossible to communicate with and you must be around them for whatever reason don't even bother engaging with them about this save your strength there are eight billion people on earth and so many of them are very open to hearing this message and ironically you'll find the most success persuading people who you have never even met before this has been the vegan survival guide to friends and family please leave your comments below and let's make the comment section a place where we can support each other


Right now it is as though she has vanished into thin air. Quite often when a person has guilty knowledge or they're involved with a person missing, they'll give several examples of what they think may have happened and they'll keep going back to the one over and over again. The person who didn't do it will say, you know, I don't know how you do it or where they went. I don't know what happened. Like this guy is doing, she just vanished. It's important to keep in mind with all the information you gather. Each person is different and every situation like this is different. You have to recognize what road that person is going down that you're talking to. Outside of that, I don't think this guy is hiding anything. His demeanor stays the same the whole time. There are not three or four scenarios. He's not going back to one scenario every time. He just says, we don't know what happened. It's just like she vanished. No, no idea. I have no idea what happened. That's why I think we're going to somebody who is most likely innocent.